The next morning the three of them gathered together to resume the choosing of the crew for Prometheus.
"Who's recommended for Communications Officer?" asked Jinjur. "Technically, whoever is in that position is Third Officer."
"The person recommended is Colonel Alan Armstrong," said Dr. Wang. "But there's a portion of his file that's classified."
"That hunk of pseudo-Adonis?" shouted Jinjur. "I'd love to have him in bed, but not in my command. Who else?"
"There are others, General Jones," said George. "But methinks thou doth protest too much. What saith you, chirurgeon?"
"George is right, Jinjur," said Dr. Wang. "Alan is the best choice."
"OK," said Jinjur. "But I still don't trust Greek faces bearing cleft chins."
Colonel Alan Armstrong walked briskly through the familiar corridors of the Pentagon and made his way to the office of General Beauregard Darlington Winthrop III, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The General's secretary had her back to the desk, putting something in the filing cabinets along the wall. Alan looked her over before he spoke and noticed a slight bulge of plumpness that was not there two years ago. She must have let herself go once he'd stopped seeing her.
"Hello, Maybelline," he said in a deep voice.
The secretary jumped—then turned with a wide-eyed, hopeful smile on her face.
"Why, hel-lo, Col-o-nel A-rm-strong," she said, batting her eyelids nervously at him. Her face developed a longing expression.
Alan's automatic protective mechanisms turned on his charm. His blue eyes sparkled, his cheeks dimpled, and the radiant smile above his cleft chin so dazzled the poor girl that she forgot her heartache at being jilted, and just wanted to do anything to please this wonderful man.
"Could I see General Winthrop now?" he asked her.
"Su-re-ly," she said, and without taking her eyes off him, she reached for the intercom lever.
"Col-o-nol A-rm-strong to see you, sir," she announced. She turned to watch him as he walked past her through the ornate wooden doors. His smile shifted rapidly as it switched from emitting one type of charm, to another more suitable for friendly superiors instead of idolizing inferiors.
Alan walked across the acres of blue carpet with little concern, for he had scuffed his feet across the Seal of the Air Force Chief of Staff many times in his career. He thought back to his first time. He had been scared then, when as a young First Lieutenant he had risked his career by demanding a private meeting with the Air Force Chief of Staff. It had been General Youngblood at that time. Alan, fresh from studying mathematics and astrophysics at Cambridge on a Rhodes scholarship after a brilliant career at the Air Force Academy, had found a military use for the new digital astronomy technique that he had invented, and he refused to tell anyone about it but the Chief of Staff. Fortunately for his neck, he had been able to convince General Youngblood that he knew what he was talking about.
The Russians had always wondered why the space astronomy budget for the Greater National Aeronautics and Space Agency suddenly grew almost as big as GNASA's budget for manned space flight. They also noticed the meteoric rise in rank of a young Air Force officer named Armstrong, but fortunately they never connected the two, and Armstrong's invention was still one of the best kept secrets of the Greater United States.
Alan marched briskly up to General Winthrop's desk, gave a snappy salute, a "Colonel Armstrong reporting, Sir," and without waiting for permission, turned and sat in the straight chair sitting at the side of the desk.
Winthrop looked up and beamed at the bright young man. His face then took on a worried look as he paused to figure out how to break the bad news. Colonel Armstrong had asked to be commander of the Barnard interstellar mission. It was beyond Winthrop's understanding why anyone would want to set off in a cramped spacecraft for a forty-year one-way trip to nowhere. But... what Alan wanted, Alan usually got. Not this time, however. Alan's lack of flight experience had made it impossible for Winthrop and the rest of the Air Force to convince the President to make Colonel Armstrong the mission commander. Major General Jones, the Marine Lightsail Interceptor Fleet Commander, had been chosen for that position. Winthrop had been sure that he could get the second spot for Armstrong, and had promised Alan the position and a promotion to Brigadier General.
Winthrop had forgotten about Colonel Gudunov's friends in Congress. When the dust had settled, Gudunov was second in command and Alan was third. As far as Winthrop knew, this was the first time Alan had come in third at anything... sports, school grades, and womanizing included. He coughed nervously and looked off to one side, refusing to meet Alan's eyes. Armstrong's famous smile faded during the long pause. There was now a furrow of concern on his brow. Suddenly, they were interrupted by a buzzer on a pink telephone. Winthrop grabbed it.
"Winthrop here," he said. "We're secure." He listened for a moment, then said.
"I'll be right down. I'm bringing Armstrong with me. Alert the guard."
He turned to look at Alan, who had risen to his feet at the words.
"They have your 'Pink-Eye' locked on General Molotov, Head of the Russian Strategic Forces, and he's receiving his classified dispatch case."
Winthrop led the way through a door to his private suite at the rear of the office. A small bedroom, bathroom, parlor, and kitchen/bar made it possible for him to stay within reach of his command desk and their all-important colored telephones twenty-four hours a day.
They didn't go into the suite, but stopped at one of the three multi-colored elevators at the end of the small hallway. Winthrop entered the pink one, waited for Armstrong to board, then pushed the single button inside. A pink door hissed shut and they dropped rapidly downward into the bomb-proof bunkers deep below the Pentagon.
The door hissed open and they stared at the barrel of a machine-gun sticking through a swivel-port under a thick pane of bullet-proof glass imbedded in a tiny triangular room lined with armor plate. The guard recognized them and a tinny voice echoed in the cramped metallic box.
"You first, General Winthrop."
Winthrop went to the featureless door on the right side, palmed a panel, and walked into a man-lock. A moment's pause, another hiss, and the voice spoke again.
"The lock is clear, Colonel Armstrong."
Armstrong palmed the door open and stepped in as the door closed automatically behind him. Having been here many times before, he knew the procedure. Both palms on the slanted glass plates and both eyes in the rubber cups of the iris scanner. There was another hiss and the exit door opened. He stepped out and hurried after Winthrop, who was halfway down the corridor. They met another guard, who opened a pink door. They entered the room that only a small handful of people knew existed, the Pink Room, run by the Air Force Space Intelligence Office, an organization that never appeared on organization charts.
Across the front of the room were a number of status boards. The first showed a picture of the globe and the present position of the large GNASA Interstellar Telescope. It was an unusual telescope and its basic design had been invented by Alan when he had been studying at Cambridge. It was a spider-web mesh of glass fibers carrying optical signals back and forth from the complex optical computer at the center to millions of coherent optical detectors sitting at the intersection of each node in the hundred kilometer diameter net. Each optical detector peered outward into the blackness of the deep sky through a holographic tissue-lens that captured as many of the weak interstellar light photons as it could. Each lens was a meter across, and was only capable of resolving moderately spaced binary-star pairs.
Alan's design for the telescope as a whole, however, had a phase-locked reference laser signal sent to each detector to mix with the incoming light photons. The result was an amplified copy of the incoming photons, with a frequency and phase tag that told the central computer just exactly where in space and time that particular photon packet had been captured. The computer took all these quadrillions of pieces of information and used them to electronically synthesize a perfect telescope lens a hundred kilometers across. The GNASA astronomers (sometimes they were Russian astronomers on exchange visits) were not only able to resolve close binary-star systems throughout the galaxy, but were also able to resolve continent-sized objects on the planets around the nearest stars. They were currently mapping Gargantua and its many moons in the Barnard system.
The Russian intelligence experts had originally been suspicious of such a large eye-in-the-sky. But the design was in the open literature, and as long as the array of lenses was pointed outward toward the stars, they stopped being concerned about it.
What they didn't know, and what Armstrong had suggested to General Youngblood many years ago, was that one hologram lens looks just like any other, a colorless sheet of plastic film. It is trivial to design the rings of varying index of refraction in the hologram lens so that the sheet acts like two lenses at one time. It can be an outward-going lens at one frequency, and a retro-reflecting lens at another frequency. It had been simplicity itself to set up a covert holographic lens manufacturing facility and underbid the competition for the production of the lenses for the GNASA construction contract. As a result, GNASA got more than they paid for—two lenses in each holo-tissue instead of just one. The only other modification was a separate laser tuned to the frequency of the retro-lens and a covert optical demultiplexer that extracted the retro-beam information before it got to the GNASA computer.
There were three optical computers on board the Interstellar Telescope for redundancy. They were all kept powered up so that the backup computers would be instantly ready in case the prime computer failed. They were good designs, and it was seldom that the Air Force had to turn off its covert connection to the third backup computer to allow the GNASA astronomers to use it. Right now, everyone was happy. Some visiting Russian astronomers at the GNASA Space Astronomy Center at Goddard were pulling high-resolution images of planets in the Barnard solar system from one side of the telescope, while the Air Force intelligence officers in the Pink Room at the Pentagon were pulling high resolution images of General Molotov's office from the other side.
On the other screens in the room were pictures of various scenes inside Russia, such as submarine pens, railroad cars, and truck convoys, while on the central screen was a picture of an office taken through French doors that opened onto a small garden on the roof of a windowless fourteen-story office building. The desk in the room was large and ornate. It reminded Winthrop of his, with its many different telephones. There was a flag to one side, and the sharp point of a sickle could be seen in the folds in the upper corner. There were three men in the room. The burly one with his back to the window stood up to sign a piece of paper, which he handed back to the smaller man. In return he received a locked dispatch case. The messenger saluted and left and the third man approached the desk holding a key. He unlocked the case and left, taking the key with him. The bulky man sat down and Alan could see the four stars on his shoulders. It was Molotov all right.
"Now just lean back a little," said Winthrop under his breath, and obediently the image leaned back comfortably in his swivel chair and started reading the highly secret document, little realizing that someone was reading over his shoulder from ten thousand kilometers out in space.
The intelligence officer zoomed in until the sheet of paper filled the screen. A tell-tale blink indicated that an image had been permanently recorded.
"Noviye Strategicheskiye Obyekti..." said Armstrong softly.
"You can read those goddamn hashmarks!?!" asked Winthrop in amazement. "What does it say?"
"Russian is one of the three languages I picked up at Cambridge in addition to Etonese," said Armstrong. "The heading of the letter is 'New Strategic Targeting Assignments', and it seems to be a list of the principal strategic targets in the Greater United States, Europe, and China. The interesting thing is that a number of missiles that used to be targeted for us have been switched to China."
"That's consistent with the heating-up of tensions on the Mongolian border," said the head of the Pink Room staff, who was standing on the other side of Winthrop. As General Molotov reached the end of the first page and turned it over, he sat up in his chair and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk.
"Lean back, you goddamn Commie!" hollered Winthrop. But the head of the Pink Room, having seen the blink, reassured him.
"We got it before he moved, General," he said. "Let me show you." He went over to a nearby console and soon one of the side screens showed a still picture of General Molotov reading the first page. He flicked through a series of stills, then froze on one showing General Molotov's hand flipping the first page. Except for a small portion near the bottom where the General's shoulder had gotten in the way, they could read every word on the second page.
"We'll keep watching him until the satellite position gets so bad we can't maintain a beam," he said. "I just thought you'd like to see your old buddy in person."
"He's no buddy of mine," said Winthrop. "I could kick his goddamn ass for all the goddamn hassle he gave me on the Strategic Missiles sub-panel at the last disarmament talks."
Winthrop turned to Armstrong. "Too bad you couldn't put some kickback into that spy system of yours, Armstrong," he said. "We seem close enough so I could kick that goddamn fat rump of his.
Winthrop turned and marched out the door. "Cum'on Alan," he said. "Let's go back to my office."
"So that's the way it turned out, Alan," said General Winthrop. "General Jones got the top post and that goddamn Gudunov was made second in command. I did my goddamnedest, but the best I could get for you was third post."
"I don't understand it," said Alan. "I outrank George. He's only a Lieutenant Colonel and I'm a Bird Colonel."
"He isn't any more," said Winthrop. "The President gave him a promotion along with the position."
"Well, then. Why don't you promote me? That way I'll outrank him, and he and I would have to switch posts. Besides, you promised me a promotion."
"I know I did," said Winthrop with a frown. "And I thought it would be easy, especially if you were picked for the second spot. But that would make you the youngest general in the Air Force at only 31 years of age. You may be good, but I couldn't get the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to go along with me, especially considering the problems it would cause by having that goddamn Gudunov over you. Even though it is technically a non-military mission, it just wouldn't do to have a Colonel bossing a General around."
"You promised me a star, sir," said Alan petulantly. "I want my star."
"OK! OK!! I'll work on it."
Suddenly Winthrop grew pensive. "Hmm," he said. "That may be the way to pay that goddamn Gudunov back for all the goddamn trouble he's caused. Once the mission is underway, General Jones will be in complete charge. Even the President won't butt in to tell her what to do. Jinjur is a strict do-things-by-the-rules military commander, and even though this is technically a civilian mission, she wouldn't allow a General to be subordinate to a Colonel.
"You just take this third-rank slot, Alan, and once the mission is underway, and there is no way anyone can do anything about it, I'll get you promoted to General. Then, unless you goof up, like not giving the General what she wants," he paused at this point, an evil-minded sneer on his face. "You'll soon find yourself second-in-command, and that goddamn Gudunov will get the kick in his goddamn ass that he deserves.
"Now. What we need is some way for you and me to communicate without anyone else knowing, especially Jinjur and that goddamn Gudunov. Since you're going to be in charge of communications, that should be easy. But how?"
Alan looked upward at the ceiling for a moment. "There are a number of ways," he said. "Let's see...
"Now the rock-hounds," said Jinjur. "I really feel at a loss here. These types love to muck around in the mud, while the last thing I want to do is pound dirt again. Whom do the GNASA people recommend?"
"We have a real dilemma here, Virginia," said George. "The one most qualified has a number of significant problems. He doesn't have an advanced degree, he's too tall for the beds on Prometheus, and worst of all, he's forty-three years old."
"You should talk, greybeard," said Jinjur. "Who is he?"
"The head of the Galilean satellite mapping expedition, Sam Houston."
"He's too tall?" said Jinjur, in genuine bewilderment. "I've escorted a number of his expeditions and met him many times. Are you sure he's tall?"
William looked at George questioningly. George figured it out and told him in a loud stage whisper.
"When the only time you meet someone is at a station in free-fall, everyone comes to the same level. It's a comment on Jinjur's ego that she always thought she was taller than Sam. I've met him twice, and there was never any question in my mind."
Jinjur ignored them. "Sam it is, then," said Jinjur. "But we need two of them. Who has the next best recommendation?"
"It's a brave young man," said William, with a flash of his mischievous smile. "He has a generally good background, but there's a reservation in it."
"I'm beginning to catch on to your twings, Sail-Ears," said Jinjur. "It must be Richard the Red."
Richard Redwing leaned his not inconsiderable hundred-plus kilograms on the ice drill and lifted himself up on tip-toe. He could feel the motor whining through the gloves of his space-suit, but there was no downward motion. He wished he had some purchase so he could use his muscles to drive the drill-bit through the rounded pebble that was blocking its path, but on Callisto there was never any purchase, no topography whatsoever...
"...and no gravity to speak of," complained the planetary geophysicist, who finally gave up and pulled the incomplete core from the hole, breaking it into segments as he did so, and throwing the striated columns of ice to the crust in disgust. He moved over a meter and started in again, cursing under his breath in resignation. He was three meters down when his suit speaker relayed a message.
"Sam requests your presence at the Main Dome as soon as convenient," the whispered sonorance announced.
Richard was bewildered by the message. He stopped the drill and asked, "What in Sam Hill does Sam Houston want?" There was a long pause from the speaker, and Richard finally realized that the commsat had gone over the horizon. He leaned on his drill again.
"GOOD NEWS!!!" boomed the speaker in an imitation of Sam's voice. "Sorry that I didn't check the 'sat positions before I called. Can you come in?" Richard didn't physically flinch at the booming voice, but emotionally he had almost jumped out of his skin.
As subtle as a tomahawk in the ear, he murmured to himself. "I'll be there as soon as I finish this core, Sam," he replied. "Can the good news wait?"
"Sure," said Sam. "See you soon."
Richard loped into the office of the head geophysicist on the Outer Planets. He was relieved that he didn't have to duck as he came through the door. Sam was not only big enough in status to obtain special treatment for his living and working quarters, he was big enough physically to need them. At a full two meters, Sam Houston's spare frame had to bend to get through any doors but his own specially constructed ones. Richard's hairline, nearly five centimeters less, went through without ruffling the invisible feather that he subconsciously wore on his head like some people wear a chip on their shoulder.
"Good news!" Sam boomed again, this time in person. He didn't waste time. "You've been chosen to be one of the crew of Prometheus!" he said.
Richard was elated.
"Wow!" he said, his normal reserve dissolving into a smiling, exuberant, caricature of himself that was more appropriate for a college freshman than a professional. He had stoically resigned himself to the fact that there were hundreds of applicants for each position on the crew. When he had lost two toes during a mountain rescue in his twenties, he had figured that the minor physical handicap would be enough to keep him out. It wasn't much of a handicap, but when you have a dozen young, intelligent, fully qualified applicants, why pick one that was stupid enough to lose two toes?
"That is good news," Richard said. "When do I go?"
"The ferry-boat coming to pick you up will be arriving in three days," Sam replied. "You'd better get ready."
"Gee, Sam," Richard said, "I hate leaving you in the lurch like this, with us five ice-cores behind schedule."
"Found another round-rock layer, have you?" grinned Sam, his smile getting broader as he talked. "But that is neither your problem or mine," he said. "You aren't leaving me in the lurch."
"But all those cores..." protested Richard.
"All those cores are the next director's problem," Sam said. "You weren't the only one chosen for the expedition!
"We're both going to the stars!!!"
"We need two heavy-lift pilots," said Jinjur. "This handsome young one with the stuttering name, Thomas St. Thomas, is an obvious first choice. What bothers me is the rich bitch, Elizabeth Vengeance," said Jinjur. "Why did the evaluators pick her over hundreds of other candidates for lift pilot? And why would she want to give up all her billions to spend the rest of her life cooped up in tin cans? I think she's on a publicity kick."
"Red was the first of the asteroid belt miners and has more experience landing on small rotating moons than anyone else," said George. "As for her billions, it all came in a lucky find of a ten-kilometer asteroid of nearly pure nickel-iron. I think she is getting tired of being a rich ground pounder."
"Did you read all the way through her file?" said Dr. Wang.
"No, Doc. I didn't," said Jinjur. "I know her type only too well."
"Read it again," said William. "Especially the handwritten part after the signature."
General Jones pawed her way through the voluminous file, ignoring the numbers in the financial section that seemed to exceed those found in the Space-Marine budget. She finally came to a hand-printed line below the scrawly signature. It looked like the printed grade-school scratchings of an twelve-year-old.
"I want to go to the stars."
A tall aristocratic woman with a lean, high-boned, freckled face walked across the exoplush carpet toward the wall communicator. She touched a tiny circle on the control plate and stared at the face that appeared in full color on the screen. She frowned slightly, her green eyes flitting over the image. In a smooth motion, her right hand reached down to pick up a hair brush on a table in front of the viewer as her left index finger touched another circle on the control plate. The image on the screen reversed as if she were looking in a mirror. A few quick brushes of her short, close cap of red hair and she was satisfied. She blanked the screen and set up a call to her financial advisor. It didn't take long—calls from Miss Vengeance had priority at Holmes and Baker, Pty.
The face of a young business executive flashed into view.
"Good afternoon, Mycroft," she greeted him.
"The same to you, Miss Vengeance," he replied. "Although it is still early morning here. What can I do for you?"
"What's my net worth today?" she asked.
"Hummm..." he replied. "That will take a few seconds." As he talked, his hands flickered over the control plate in front of him and numbers appeared at the top of both their screens.
"Well, your stocks are worth about 22,475 million, and you have about fifty million in your various checking and credit accounts, but that is offset some by about thirty million in short-term debts..."
"No—not just my accounts," she protested, "I mean my total net worth—businesses, asteroid mining leases, real estate, homes, cars, everything; right down to the clothes on my back."
The image on the screen took on a puzzled expression, and Red smiled secretly at his discomfiture. If he thought this request was unusual, wait till he heard her next one!
"Everything?" he said after a pause.
"Everything," she insisted. His hands continued to flicker across the control plate hidden below the view screen. "It'll take a bit of time," he apologized. "The computer can only make guesses at what we can sell some of your personal possessions for."
"That's OK," she said. They both watched a figure at the top of the screen grow in size, then finally stabilize, fluctuating slightly in the last five or six places as the stock and commodity markets around the world continued with their buy and sell transactions.
"It looks like 61,824 million dollars, plus or minus a few hundred million," he said.
"Damn!" she exclaimed, "I thought I'd be over a hundred billion by now. But it's still pretty good for a slum-kid grade-school dropout from Phoenix." Her eyes dropped from the numbers and stared straight into his eyes.
"Liquidate it," she ordered. "You have six weeks."
"Yes, Miss Vengeance," he said with a noticeable gulp. Then, with an avid curiosity he asked, "What are your re-investment plans? Mining on the moons of Jupiter?"
Her face took on a pixie-like grin as she replied, "No. I am not going to reinvest it, I want you to turn it into cash."
His face broke into a frown, and he forgot his formal business manner as he protested, "...but Elizabeth, you won't get anywhere near a decent return on your investment if you put your money into a savings account..."
Her smile grew broader, "You don't understand, Mycroft," she replied, "I want you to turn it all into cash."
"Cash!?!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," she replied calmly, "I want about ten million in gold coins, and the rest in bills."
"But..." he protested, "There isn't that much cash in the banking system, and if you piled it all up in one place it would fill a football stadium!"
"You may not find that amount of cash in the banks, but I'm sure you can find it in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. Why I'll bet even Las Lunas has that much floating around. And don't worry Mycroft, I'm not going crazy. I'm just indulging in a whim, and since it's my money, I don't see why I can't do with it what I want."
"Yes, Miss Vengeance," he replied, his past dealings with Red Vengeance having taught him that it was no use to argue with her when she was in this mood. "I'll arrange for the warehouse and let you know its location, then start the liquidation."
"Fine," she said, "Oh... and make sure the warehouse is heated," she added, reaching for her control panel to make another call.
"Heated?" Mycroft said as he stared at the blank screen. "She wants to convert everything to cold cash, and then she wants to warm it up. I wonder what she's up to?" His fingers played over his control plate as he got busy. Meanwhile, Red Vengeance's next call was wending its way through the system-wide comm nets.
"Hello. Fred? This is Red Vengeance. Do you remember that conversation we had last year at the Ford Foundation banquet? You mentioned that with the new IRS rules on disbursement of assets the Foundation was going to run out of money soon. I think I've got the solution for you, but it's going to cost you. I want your Blake & Company twenty dollar gold piece...
"I know there are only two in the world, and with one in the Smithsonian the other is worth millions, but..."
"Are you sure it's not for sale? Ask the Board of Directors if they will take sixty billion for it...
"That's right, billions, not millions. Ask them and let me know by next week."
Thirty days later Mycroft was standing by a cinderblock warehouse in the secured section of the Los Angeles Air Freight yards as truck after truck pulled in to discharge its cargo of green paper. The first fifty trucks had been able to enter the doors to drop their cargos, but the rest pushed their loads into a blower that expelled a green and black blizzard into the interior of the large building.
The Brinks guards near Mycroft half-consciously reached for their hips as a humming sound that had been hovering on the horizon of their consciousness burst into a burbling roar. A high-powered car appeared, weaving its way around the armored trucks. Mycroft motioned to the security guards, who relaxed as the fiery-red Liberian Sword came to a expertly controlled stop in a parking space beside the building. A tall, red-headed woman dressed in a green satin jumpsuit unfolded herself from the front seat and strode over to Mycroft.
"How's it going, Mycroft?" Red asked.
"About three more loads, Miss Vengeance," he replied, "The total keeps fluctuating because of the gold prices and the extra costs that Brinks keeps adding when I ask for something else, but the last calculation was $61,834,745,901.34."
"...and 34 cents," echoed Red with a wry smile, "Mycroft—your devotion to detail amazes me, but that's why I wouldn't have anyone else for my personal accountant." She smiled and walked through the small entry door into the guard room, Mycroft following close behind. One of the Brinks guards was watching the four electrocameras that were monitoring the interior of the warehouse from the four corners. There was a blizzard of paper blowing in from one side and the floor of the huge warehouse was piled deep with paper bills. Mycroft watched Elizabeth's face looking at the cloud of greenish grey and spoke up.
"I had quite a bit of problem with the banking system when I asked that your accounts be paid in cash and not checks. Most of them were willing to go along, but I had to read the Banking Act to a few of them before they admitted that their checks were not an adequate substitute for the cash money that they had implicitly promised when they took your account."
She turned to look at him, then lifted an arched red brow in a silent query at his concerned gaze.
"You aren't going to keep all this cash out of circulation are you?" he asked. "It could cause a serious financial disruption until the Treasury gets around to replacing it. Besides," he went on. "These assets are drawing no interest while they're in cash."
"...and that is anathema to your accountant's soul," laughed Red. "No. These bills will all be back working for their keep in one or two days, but it won't be for me."
Mycroft looked at her quizzically, but had found out long ago that the best way to handle the legendary Red was to keep quiet and listen, for she had her own puckish brand of humor.
Red Vengeance turned back to the screens, and looked at one of them intensely. "I see that you took that bit about the bathtub seriously," she remarked.
"Of course, Miss Vengeance," he replied, "and all the gold coins in the buckets next to it are either proof or uncirculated."
As they were talking, the snowstorm of cash had stopped, and they gazed into a room stacked with drifts of bills.
"How many more loads to go?" Red asked.
"That was the last one," said the guard, looking up with awe at the legendary billionaire. Red looked at the guard, and smiled inwardly. It seemed to be a characteristic of the personality that would work for Brinks. The guard was not as tall or as Irish as she was, but her makeup and hair-style were as close to a copy of Red's as the beauticians could get.
"OK. Everybody out!" ordered Red. Mycroft and the Brinks guards went outside and the door slammed shut on one of the largest fortunes in the world.
It was nearly an hour later when a call came from one of the perimeter gate guards.
"There's a guy here who says his name is Fred Fortune from the Ford Foundation. It sounded phony to me so I alerted the local police, who are on their way. I'm reporting in case he's a diversion and some other trick is being tried somewhere else."
A voice spoke from the door to the warehouse. It was Red Vengeance. "Believe it or not, that's his real name. I asked him to come here tonight. Please tell the guards to let him in."
Fred Fortune was escorted to the Brinks command post.
"Do you have it, Fred?" Red asked.
Fred hesitated, looking at the strangers. Fortunately, two of them seemed to be in police uniforms. "Yes," he finally replied, "Do you have the check?"
Fred's question was the culmination of a tense evening for Red Vengeance. She started to laugh, and the sight of Fred's discomfiture at her undignified behavior just sent her into further hysterical fits of laughter. The guards and Mycroft had initially joined Fred in their bewilderment over Red's behavior, but after a few seconds Mycroft suddenly broke into a fit of giggles himself. "...a CHECK!" he finally exploded, and with that the billionaire and the account executive fell helplessly to the floor in a paroxysm of laughter and tears.
"I'm very sorry for my rude behavior, Fred," Red finally apologized. "I've been under quite a strain lately."
"Has this been a joke?" asked Fred quizzically. "If so, I don't think it's very funny."
"No!" said Red seriously. "I really am going to give the Ford Foundation sixty billion dollars. Do you have the Blake?"
"Yes," said Fred, taking a small leather case out of his coat pocket. He opened it up to show a small round gold coin. Red reached for the case, and as she took it she spoke to the Lieutenant.
"Open the door to the warehouse," she said. As the door opened, Fred Fortune looked in and his eyes widened.
"Now you can see why your request for a check brought on my fits of laughter. There is your sixty billion—in CASH! Is it a deal?"
Fred nodded, too numb from the sight of the money to reply.
Red started to leave, then turned at the door. "Watch out for the newly-printed bills, Fred, they can cause paper cuts when you roll in them."
Red opened the small leather case that she still held, stuck a green-lacquered fingernail under the small gold coin, and levered it out of its niche in the case. She looked at both sides closely, threw the leather case away, then buttoned the coin into one of her breast pockets. Fred looked askance at the cavalier treatment of a mint-quality numismatic gem.
"What are you going to do with it?" he asked. "You certainly can't sell it for what you paid for it."
"I'm not going to sell it," said Red, "I'm going to keep it—as a good luck charm. I'm going to need all the good luck I can get where I'm going." She walked outside, Fred and Mycroft following in her footsteps.
"...going?" echoed Fred.
"Haven't you heard?" said Red. "I'm taking a tour, Mycroft."
"A tour?"
"The grandest tour the human race can devise!" she said. "I'm going to the stars! And this gold coin is going along with me to keep me company. Soon there will be one of them shining by sunlight, and one shining by starlight."
She thought about that for a moment, then reached back into her amply-filled pocket and took out the flat disk of gold. A green-enameled thumb flicked the disk upward toward the stars, where it crossed the beam of a laser perimeter fence. There was a momentary flash of red-gold light, echoed by an alarm from some distant guard post. Red chuckled throatily as she caught the coin. She folded herself into her Sword and drove away—free forever from her avaricious drives.
The next batch is really a rubber stamp choice as far as I am concerned," said Dr. Wang. "We need at least two computer types that understand the systems built into Prometheus, the planetary landers, and the atmospheric aircraft. GNASA's top choice for the hardware side is the astronaut and aerospace engineer, Shirley Everett. She was chief engineer for the design and test of the airplane we will use and was also involved in the building of our lander. For the software side of things, the GNASA experts's first choice is David Greystoke. He wrote most of the programs for the computers on the various craft."
"Haven't heard of him," said Jinjur. "A typical computer-nerd, I suppose. Yet the name sounds familiar."
" 'Visions Through Space'," said George, trying to help.
"That David Greystoke?" said Jinjur. "But he's a sonovideo composer."
"Just one of his many talents," said Dr. Wang. "And we'll be privileged to have him illuminating our humble abode with delicate sights and sounds on our long voyage together.
The computer console screen was alive with writhing brightly-colored abstract forms that roiled and curled in deep blues and lavenders, while scintillating sparks of orange and white marched over and under the billowing waves of color. The display stopped suddenly, then started over again with the lavender shades just a bit less red in color.
Watching the screen critically was a tiny, thin, quiet young man with orange-red hair—a computer leprechaun. The long fingers on his neat hands played over a specialized input panel as they controlled the computer generated images on the screen. He finished the sequence, saved it in a computer file, then combined it with several others. He pushed his glasses up on his long thin nose, sat back in his console chair, and watched the performance as the computer played the whole sequence back from its memory.
As the artistic computer-animated show was reaching its conclusion, some white letters appeared in the upper part of the screen.
MAIL FOR DAVID GREYSTOKE
David noticed the words, but waited for the end of the file before saying, "Read mail."
The screen blanked and a short letter scrolled its way rapidly down the screen and hung there. David's eyes widened as he read the message. He gave a quiet smile of satisfaction and reached for his sonovideo panel. As the realization of the meaning of the message sunk into his body, his soul was reaching out through his fingers to create a new optical masterpiece, a moving view of the splendor of the heavens as seen from the bridge of a starship leaving the solar system and stretching for the stars.
As the starship approached a distant deep-red point of light, the ship grew wings—long, thin gossamer wings. The winged spaceship-turned-dragonfly circled the star, then swooped in to land on a small planet with a tenuous breath of atmosphere. It was all imagination, but the magic of the motion through the imaginary air gave a reality to the dragonfly as it settled slowly to the surface of the indigo planet.
"At least three of the planets in the Barnard system have an atmosphere," said George. "Including the strange double-one. We're going to need some good pilots."
"I've got one," said Jinjur. "You. Unless you've lost your flight instructor's rating."
"But I'll have to sleep sometime," said George.
"There's no question about the other pilot," said Jinjur. "Arielle Trudeau wins it hands down. Y'know, after that exploit where she single-handedly landed a crippled shuttle with two dead pilots, I always thought she was the best aerospace pilot in the world. As for the rest of the crew, I don't see why we don't just go along with the choices of the Space Administration experts. Let's call a meeting."
"We'll be missing a few people," said George. "Sam Houston and Richard Redwing are both busy on Callisto. Rather than coming all the way back in, they'll meet us at our training base on Titan. The hydroponics expert, Nels Larson, and the computer expert, David Greystoke, are already on Prometheus checking out the systems they designed. The solar astrophysicist, Linda Regan, is stationed on Mercury. We'll pick her up there when we visit the Mercury laser transmitter base. The rest should make it to the meeting. The three astronauts should be on their way back now if they aren't already on Earth."
Two women sat side by side in the Super-Shuttle cockpit. The one in the pilot seat was small and fair, almost delicate in appearance. She sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. The flickering dark-brown eyes under the short, curly light-brown hair scanned the board and flight display, missing nothing in their vigilant watch over the nerve center of the multi-ton spacecraft.
The woman in the copilot seat was working the controls, her strong capable hands making tiny adjustments as her eyes alternated views of the flight display and the curved arc of the horizon outside the windshield. She was a very tall, superbly-built young woman with blue eyes and a blonde mane of long hair—a California palomino. While she nervously handled the controls, the other woman's calm test-pilot voice quietly guided her through the reentry procedure.
"...Keep nose at right attitude, Shirley. Also watch those nose and wing thermometers. If nose go down, we dive in too fast. If nose go up, we skip out, miss landing field, and have to dump our nice Super-Shuttle in the ocean. Hold steady now... that is good. That is very good."
The vacuum outside the windshield started to have some substance. They could look out at the wings and see the dull red glow of the protection blanket. Bits of dust and frost were swept from between the expansion cracks in the frothy protective skin as the thin supersonic wind flew by.
There was a dull thud. The view outside the windshield started to roll.
"What's happened, Arielle?" said Shirley, her voice tight with panic. "There's no roll response!"
Arielle didn't move, but her eyes were studying a distant corner of the status board where a red light had come on.
"Attitude control propellant tank is busted," she said. "Shut him down and bring up auxiliary system."
Shirley searched over the board, found the proper switches and flicked one down, then the other up. The new propellant tank pressure dropped as Shirley used the jets to reverse the roll and bring the heavy spacecraft around.
"You let nose get low," Arielle remarked calmly. Shirley looked out the window at the wings. The white-hot incandescence left green-yellow streaks in her vision as she glanced back and looked at the temperature indicators. They were all high, with the right wing indicator well above the danger line.
"Take over!" pleaded Shirley, "I'm going to lose it."
"You doing just fine," Arielle replied in a soothing tone. "You already have nose up. Besides, we may have computer glitch if consoles be switched now."
The air was getting thicker. The temperature indicators were dangerously high, but as the massive craft shed its orbital energy to the air outside, the temperatures started to drop. They were nearly through the critical reentry phase.
"You start switch to aerodynamic controls?" Arielle reminded and was pleased to see that Shirley had anticipated her.
There was another warning klaxon and the spacecraft started to roll again. A red message light flashed, indicating that the main hydraulic system was failing. Shirley reached to switch on the backup system. Arielle started to warn her that she should turn off the malfunctioning system first, but just then the high pressure oil hit the inactive actuators and jerked them wildly about. The nose dipped, and the view outside started to whirl violently. The windshield turned red, glaring white, then black...
A cool Arielle popped the top of the Super-Shuttle trainer and stood up. She stared over the head of the shaken Shirley at a grinning black face peering over the top of the simulator console.
"Thomas St. Thomas!" she said severely. "She's third time on a reentry and you dump two breakdowns at her. You be shamed! Look at her!"
Shirley quickly recovered, gave them both a weak grin and extracted her long frame from the copilot seat.
"The trouble with that landing wasn't Thomas's fault, it was the simulator. It's so realistic I was fooled into thinking it was the real thing and panicked. Shall we try it again?"
Arielle was about to protest when the door to the simulator room opened and the Chief Administrator of the Johnson Space Center strode in, followed by a few newstapers.
"Don't you three ever take a break from training?" he said as he approached. He stopped, looked at the names on the front of three envelopes that he held in his hand and reading them off, passed them one at a time to the three astronauts.
"Captain Thomas St. Thomas, Arielle Trudeau, and Shirley Everett."
Thomas got his open first.
"YAHOO!" he hollered. "I'm going to Barnard."
He looked at the expressions on the faces of the two women as they looked at their letters, then he hollered again, "YAHOOO! We're ALL going to Barnard!!"
He leaped over the console, picked up Arielle, whirled her around once, and deposited her on the top of the simulator. He started to pick up Shirley, but she just stared him down with her two-centimeter height advantage. He passed her by and proceeded to pump the hand of the Chief Administrator vigorously as the newstapers got it all on tape.
The Houston TV stations that night ended their news program with a shot of the three astronauts—Thomas with one arm around Shirley's shoulder and talking, while Arielle stood in front of the other two. She looked out of place. One would have thought she was a beauty queen, with her pretty face and short curly hair, rather than what she was—one of the best aerospace pilots in the world. As usual, it was Thomas that had the last word as their pictures faded for the commercials.
"We're going to the STARS!!!"
It was another drizzly winter day in Washington, DC, so George stood in the narrow portico at the front of the Space Administration Headquarters building and waited for the crew to arrive while Jinjur and Dr. Wang were upstairs checking out the meeting room with the Space Administration staff. The first to arrive were Caroline Tanaka, fiber-optics engineer and astronomer, John Kennedy, mechanical engineer and nurse, who bore a striking resemblance to his distant relative, Captain Anthony Roma, lightsail pilot from the Space Marines, and Katrina Kauffmann, former nurse and now a biochemist with a specialty of levibotany. She would help Nels Larson and Dr. Wang keep the hydroponics tanks and tissue cultures healthy. They had all flown into town yesterday and had spent the morning across the street at the National Air and Space Museum. During a lull in the rain they ran down the short block on Sixth Street to where George was waiting. He greeted them and sent them upstairs to the briefing room.
It was five minutes later when he saw a tall uniformed figure come up from underground on the Metro escalator on Maryland Avenue. It was Colonel Alan Armstrong. He had taken the Metro over from the Pentagon. He shook hands with George perfunctorily.
"I look forward to being in your command," said Alan coolly. "I think I'll go see if General Jones needs any help."
Just then a Space Administration station wagon pulled up with the three astronauts. They had flown in that morning in their trainer aircraft. Alan, seeing that two of them were women, paused to wait. The first one up the steps was a good-looking young black man. He headed for George and stuck out his hand.
"Hi! Colonel Gudunov. Remember me? I was one of your students in flight school."
"I never forget a one, Thomas," said George, smiling and shaking his hand. He turned to Alan.
"Alan," said George. "I'd like you to meet three of your crewmates, Captain Thomas St. Thomas, Shirley Everett, and Arielle Trudeau. This is Colonel Alan Armstrong."
They shook hands around. At the end, Alan kept hold of Arielle's hand and looked quizzically at her face.
"Such a gorgeous creature you are," he said in a flattering tone. "I'm sure I've seen you before... Say... weren't you Miss Quebec in ought five, just before Quebec separated from Canada?"
Arielle blushed. "Yes," she admitted, "but the Quebecois always want to live in past. I want to live in future, so like rest of Canada, I leave Quebec and become citizen of Greater U.S."
Alan took her by the arm. "Let me take you to the meeting room," he said. "I know the way." Ignoring the others, he took her off.
A humming sound in the distance became louder. A high-powered sports car appeared, working its way down Independence Avenue through the Washington traffic. They turned to watch as the fiery-red Liberian Sword pulled into the reserved parking area in front of the building. A security guard compared the licence plate with the numbers on a list and went down to put a special card under the windshield-wiper blades. A tall, redheaded woman dressed in a green satin jump suit that matched her green eyes unfolded herself from the front seat and strode up the short flight of steps toward them. Her long thin legs glistened in their shiny, green, high-heeled alligator boots.
George stared in fascination at the legs. Probably the new mutation-green stock from the hide farms, he thought. He started forward to greet her, but Thomas beat him to it.
"I bet you're the famous Red Vengeance," said Thomas, sticking out his hand. "Few people can afford a Sword, much less drive it so well. Y'know, you're the dream girl of the heavy-lift pilots. We'd all like to take a prospecting trip with you."
Red raised her eyebrows and shook his hand politely. "Not all at one time, I hope," she said, with a faint smile on her face. "I'm Elizabeth, and you?..."
"Thomas," he said. "Thomas St. Thomas, and this is Shirley Everett, and over there is Colonel Gudunov.
Red stared for a long moment at George as she slowly extracted her hand from Thomas's grip. George tried to return the look but finally had to glance away from the deep green eyes. He coughed nervously.
"We're all here," he said. "Let's go up to the briefing room."
Jinjur was waiting at the podium in the front of the briefing room when they entered.
"Get yourself a hot cup of coffee to ward off the chill and have a seat," said Jinjur. "Thomas? You'll be talking right after me, so get your viewgraphs out."
After introductions around, Jinjur returned to the podium. "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know all of you well now, but since I am going to be spending the rest of my life with you, I hope that soon you'll all be my friends." She paused, and took a sip out of a coffee cup that had the laser and lightsail emblem of the Space Marines on one side and black letters spelling "THE BOSS" on the other.
"This is not a military mission, but we will be lightyears away from Earth authority, so like the old-time sea captains, I will have final authority on everything. I will allow discussion and even straw votes, but this mission will not be run by popular vote. I know you all understood that when you volunteered, but if you don't agree, then now is the time to say so. There are plenty of others willing to take your place." She waited for a few seconds, then relaxed.
"Enough of that," she said. "We're off on an adventure to visit some exciting worlds. We only got a long distance look at them as the robotic interstellar probe flew through at one-third light speed, but Thomas, Alan, and Caroline have put together a picture of the Barnard system. Thomas?" She stepped down and Thomas took her place.
"First, let me give some details about the star," said Thomas. "Here is a dull table that summarizes what we know about it." He put a viewgraph on the machine. "Barnard is a small, red dwarf star about six lightyears away. The only star system closer is the Alpha Centauri system with three stars. As you know, exploring that three star system will require a larger and more complex operation than ours. They will launch later than we will, but will get to their target first.
Barnard was called plus four degrees thirty-five sixty-one until an astronomer named Barnard measured its proper motion and found it was tearing through the sky at the terrific clip of ten seconds of arc per year. It is an M-five red dwarf with a temperature of thirty-three hundred degrees Kelvin compared to the G-zero yellow-white fifty-eight hundred degrees of the Sun. Probably the thing we will find hardest to get used to is the dull red illumination. It will be sort of like living by the light of a charcoal fire. Not only is the temperature low, but the diameter of the star is only twelve percent of the Sun's diameter. It is going to be cold there—except very close to Barnard.
"Now comes the interesting part," said Thomas. "The planetary system around Barnard. The robotic probe only got a glimpse as it went through the system, but it looks as though there are only two planets. However, one of the planets is so large and has so many moons, that it is practically a planetary system by itself." He replaced the Barnard data table with an orbital diagram, then walked up to the screen with a pointer.
"The main planet is a gigantic one, called Gargantua. It is a huge gas giant like Jupiter, but four times more massive. If Gargantua had been slightly more massive, it would have turned into a star and the Barnard system would be a binary star system. Gargantua seems to have swept up all the material for making planets, since there are no other large planets in the system. Gargantua has four satellites that would be planets in our solar system, plus a multitude of smaller moons. We plan on visiting as many of them as possible after we have taken a look at the most interesting planet—Rocheworld." He switched to a viewgraph drawing showing a double-planet.
"Rocheworld is a corotating double planet whose two halves are so close to each other that the planets are not spherical, but are drawn into egg shapes. This shape was first calculated by an ancient French mathematician called Roche, hence the name for the system. Rocheworld is in a highly elliptical orbit about Barnard. Caroline, using Alan's hundred meter optical multiferometer, was able to resolve the planets and track the orbits for the last two years. According to her, Rocheworld has a period that seems to be exactly one-third the period of Gargantua. We know that such orbital 'resonances's are usually unstable. Whether this nearly three-to-one ratio is real or a coincidence is one of the things we hope to figure out when we get there."
"What are the sizes of the orbits?" asked Anthony.
"Small," said Caroline, turning around to look at him. "The radius of Gargantua's orbit is thirty-eight gigameters, while the semimajor axis of Rocheworld's elliptical orbit is a little over eighteen gigameters. The whole thing would fit inside the orbit of Mercury."
"What are the conditions on Rocheworld and the moons around Gargantua?" asked John. "Can we land on them?"
"We know that Rocheworld and the larger moons have atmospheres," said Thomas. "And that one of the two parts of Rocheworld seems to have a liquid on its surface. But the probe couldn't get very much detail during the flyby. That's one of the other things we're going to have to study when we get there."
Next came other briefings for the crew. Some by Space Administration experts and some by members of the crew.
"Now we come to one of the more sobering aspects of our journey," said Jinjur. "Dr. Wang, could you please give us a short medical briefing."
"Certainly," said Dr. Wang, smiling as he rose and took Jinjur's place at the podium. "This expedition is a long one. Longer than the normal life-span of the human body, even with all the medical advances we have made. Therefore, after the initial launch phases of the mission, we will all be treated with the life-extending drug, No-Die. When it has thoroughly saturated our tissues, it will slow our aging process to one-fourth of normal rate. Thus the forty years that it will take for us to travel to Barnard will only produce ten years of aging in our bodies.
"Unfortunately, our intelligence will also be lowered by roughly the same factor. That is why No-Die is not used more on Earth. Fortunately, you all have been picked as persons with higher than normal intelligence, so that the No-Die will merely reduce your functional level to that of a small child. We will have a semi-intelligent computer on board to keep us out of trouble during the trip out. It will stop administering the No-Die as we approach Barnard so that we will be back to normal intelligence when we arrive.
"As for sexual matters. The engineers cannot make Prometheus go any faster. So even if they designed the system for a round-trip journey, No-Die couldn't stave off death long enough to bring us back alive. Thus, this trip is a one-way journey for all of us. The planets there are not habitable without using highly technical life-support systems to protect us against the poisonous atmospheres, so this cannot be a colonization mission. There must be no children born during the mission, and since we cannot count on your intelligent cooperation during the No-Die phase, all of you will have to undergo surgical operations to ensure that your reproductive organs are blocked."
George leaned over and whispered into Jinjur's ear. "I'm already fixed so I only shoot blanks."
Jinjur didn't blink an eye. "Bang, bang," she muttered.
Dr. Wang continued: "Although this procedure should have no physical side effects, there are occasionally psychological reactions to the loss of your reproductive capability that produce physical effects, including loss of sexual appetite and impotency. If this happens to you, please don't hesitate to consult me." A twinkle came to his eye. "If the normal medical procedures are ineffective, I have a book describing some ancient Oriental procedures that are guaranteed to produce spectacular results." He sat down amidst whispered conversations.
"Thanks, William," said Jinjur. "Well, that's enough to today. I assume you are all taking care of your personal affairs. After your final physicals, we'll head down to Mercury to visit the laser propulsion center, then go out to Titan for some practice sessions using the planetary landing rockets and the aerospace planes, then board Prometheus for the trip out. Good day."