Dreams of the Stars

Without being invited, Felter sprawled into one of the chairs Boddy had set up around the desk and stretched his long legs out. Leaning back, one hand behind his head, he grabbed a handful of crackers with the other hand and began to munch. “So tell me something interesting,” he said to Reichmann.

“Well, it is hard to know where to begin,” Reichmann said.

“Yeah, I hear that,” Felter said with his mouth full and with another cracker entering a maw that still somehow managed to articulate words. “Crazy shit goin’ on.”

“Yes,” Reichmann agreed. “But for now, at least, things seem to have calmed down.”

“Calmed down!” Felter took another munch of a cracker, then said with his mouth full, “We can’t presume that anything has caaalmed dowwwn until, y’know, our instruments actually verify experimentally that the phenomena have ceased, and I doubt that we’ll see that happen so long as we’re, y’know, traveling at relativistic velocities.”

Felter had copped one of the mannerisms that annoyed Boddy the most—overenunciating every word so that he sounded like a cross between the host of a kids’ educational show and a roaring drunk. Knowing such thoughts weren’t helpful, Boddy jumped in. “Well, I think Reichmann was just making conversation. That’s the whole point here, isn’t it? Let’s kill the job talk, hey?”

As though Boddy hadn’t spoken, Felter went on. “I’m just saying, you can’t just assoooome that the situation has improved just because we haven’t obserrrrved any recent events. Science has a method to it. We need to measure the effects of the high energy environment on our neural patterns and determine from that whether the phenomena have ceased.”

“Yes, but part of science is observation. My observation is that things have calmed down. Should our measurements of our brains’ high energy begin to lack correlation with the observation, we must modify our theory.” Boddy couldn’t tell if Reichmann was affronted by Felter’s haughty statements or simply participating in the conversation. Either way, it was nice to see Felter put in his place.

“Well, enough job talk,” Boddy tried again. “We’re here to unwind a bit. Felter, you never told me how you became an astronaut.”

Felter glanced from Boddy to Reichmann, seemingly torn between pressing the argument and succumbing to the temptation to talk about himself. It was at that moment that Samuels entered.

“Hey, guys,” Samuels said as he entered. “Door open or closed?”

“Go ahead and close it,” Boddy said. “Have a seat. Grab a beer. I put out some snacks.” Of course, Felter had already munched up most of them. “Felter was just about to tell us how he became an astronaut.”

“Well, I guess it depends on how you define the exact, y’know, point that I actually became an astronaut,” Felter said as Samuels crossed the room and found a seat. “I got my astronaut wings when I was just out of high school and flew the AB-75 for my entrance exam. Spent seventeen minutes weightless, saw the curvature of the Earth for eight minutes. It was a suborbital parabola, although the 75 was designed for orbital missions. It was built to be an emergency vehicle for Space Station Beta ...” He prattled on, oblivious to the fact that both Boddy and Samuels were quite familiar with the AB-75; though in all fairness, Reichmann might not be. After about ten more minutes of lecturing about the AB-75, Felter finally moved on to a detailed account of his college years until he had gotten so totally off track that Boddy wondered if he even remembered the point of the story. Reichmann and Samuels listened politely—Boddy was irritated that Samuels even nodded and laughed now and then—as Felter moved on to numerous anecdotes of his various engineering professors, some of whom Boddy had known. He completely disagreed with Felter’s description of Bill Haller as a half-man half-turtle, nor did he see the resemblance between Dr. Nathan LaZerre and the twentieth century comedian Robin Williams. But he didn’t bother to argue the point, he simply waited patiently to see if Felter would eventually get to the story of how he became an astronaut.

Half an hour later, when Felter was only up to his landing certification, Boddy was ready to break this up. “Well,” he broke in, “we probably all have things to get done and I seem to have run out of snacks.”

“It’s okay, it’s cool,” Felter said. “We don’t mind hanging out. So anyway, the FAA sent this whack-job for my check ride, some punk by the name of Silverton—“

Boddy had known Silverton—a skilled and knowledgeable pilot who, some years before the Eldorado had left, had been killed while flight testing the ZX-1104 World Circler. Evidently Felter had considered him rude and arrogant; perhaps because he had been more knowledgeable about flying than Felter?

From Felter’s certification flight to a lengthy lecture on the proper placement of a landing gear on a clipped wing design. Finally Boddy could take no more. “Listen, guys, I’m gonna wander down to the galley and get some more snacks. Be back in a flash.”

As he headed for the galley, he let his breath out in a rush. For a moment there hadn’t seemed to be any air in his cabin. His ears rang with the incessant droning and overarticulating and y’knowing of Felter’s monotone. He wiped his brow, surprised how dry it was.

Then he noticed Samuels behind him. “Dennis. You don’t need to come with me.”

Samuels shrugged. “Figured you’d need to vent.”

Boddy shook his head, made a guttural sound that transformed slowly into a growl, then a hysterical cackle. “There. How’s that for venting?”

Samuels chuckled. “Well, the way Felter’s in there downing beer, this is gonna have to be quite the shopping trip.”

“Actually, Dennis, now that we know just where Felter is and what he’s doing, now might be the time for you to sneak into his cabin, see what you can come up with as far as why he refused to take command when he had the chance. I’ll keep him talking about himself all night if I have to.”

Samuels nodded. “Okay, fair enough. If I employ my usual magic, I won’t need much time.”

Boddy laughed. “I don’t know how you do it, Dennis.” Then, pondering the thought of a whole night listening to Felter’s bragging and lecturing, he said, “I don’t know how I’m gonna do it.”

Samuels clapped him on the back. “I have faith in you, Ed. Of you could pull that Hercules VII out of that flat spin over Edwards, you can deal with Felter for one evening.”

“There’s a big difference, Dennis—that Hercules VII eventually learned to listen to me.”

Samuels chuckled, slapped Boddy on the shoulder, and headed down the hall. Boddy continued toward the galley, thinking, “Keep Felter talking.” Easiest assignment I ever had.

When he reached the galley, he grabbed a jar of peanuts and a six-pack, figuring that ought to be enough to keep Felter interested for a while, and headed back toward his cabin, the peanuts in his right hand and the plastic harness of the six-pack dangling painfully from two fingers of his left. The things I go through. Again he thought about how absurd this situation was; from a ridiculous, forced “get-together” intended to foster an impossible sense of amiability between himself and Felter to a melodramatic effort to keep Felter busy while Samuels snooped through his cabin. Didn’t they have enough to worry about?

On his way down the curving corridor, he happened across Reichmann. Like all astronauts, Boddy’s instinctive reaction to the unexpected or emergency was an implacable calm and clear-headedness. In an instant it occurred to him that if Reichmann was no longer in his cabin, then Felter might not be. “Reichmann,” he said, his voice reflecting no more than mild surprise. “Funny meeting you here.”

“Yes, I am sorry,” Reichmann said, sounding flustered. “I know this get-together was my idea, but I...I simply could not stand another minute by myself in there with Felter. This was a bad idea. I am sorry.”

“He still in there?”

“I do not know.”

“Okay. Well, it’s okay, Reichmann, I understand.” Truly, he did. Felter could test anyone’s patience. Of course, Reichmann seemed more disturbed than annoyed. Well, all he could do was hope that Felter was still there. If not, if he returned to his own cabin and found Samuels there, he was sure Samuels would improvise some plausible excuse and pull it off with charm and credibility. Anyway, it wasn’t like Felter was going to shoot him with a welding torch, was it? Then again...

Felter was still in Boddy’s cabin. He was crouched in front of Boddy’s computer, perusing files. Boddy wondered if Samuels was the only one spying on his shipmates. But Felter didn’t seem startled when Boddy cleared his throat. He simply turned, said, “Hey, you’re back,” and went back to looking over the files. Boddy looked over Felter’s shoulder at the screen. It was a directory of photos of various aircraft and spacecraft that Boddy liked. All astronauts had something like this. Felter pointed at the screen. “I love that Starfire 3C. She has the best upper wing design I’ve ever worked with.”

“Yeah,” Boddy said, setting the beers between Felter and the screen as a hint. “Good, narrow fuselage too.”

“Only lifting body I was ever able to do an unpowered climb in,” Felter said, pulling a beer loose and plopping down in the chair across from the desk. “The aerodynamics are fantastic.”

So here he was, trapped alone with Felter. He sat at his desk, his eyes drawn to the directory. At least here he and Felter had a common interest, assuming he could hold up a conversation against Felter’s incessant monologues. “I never flew it, but I flew chase in a TC-200. I saw Frank Hatch do an unpowered climb. About two thousand feet.”

“Two thousand feet?” Felter frowned, burbled some beer into his mouth, wiped his upper lip with his wrist and then wiped his wet wrist on the arm of the chair. “I don’t think so. The best you could maybe do is two hundred feet. If he cut in his rockets during the climb, that’s one thing, but nobody can make an unpowered climb of two thousand feet.”

Boddy wanted to interrupt with “I saw it,” but the Joe Felter Class of Aerodynamics had begun, and he could do little more than sit and pretend to listen. Even if he interjected comments of his own, he doubted Felter would even hear them. But at least he was keeping him busy.

Bad idea all around. Bad idea. Bad idea. Not only had Reichmann once again put himself into a situation in which he was alone with Felter, but had done so at a time that Felter was slightly inebriated, and furthermore had allowed himself to be known to be spending time with Boddy. He already had his cover story in place, that he was observing Boddy and searching for any sign that he suspected anything. If he was lucky, neither Garr nor Jameson would even know he had spent the evening in Boddy’s cabin. But it was a small ship, it was hard to keep secrets. At the same time, though, nobody cared what anyone else was doing. This crew of quiet, serious, self-absorbed professionals generally took to their own work and ignored everyone else.

But these were not ordinary circumstances.

Garr had been especially irritable lately, but just to put his own mind at ease, Reichmann decided to look in to the engineering office, just to see was Garr was thinking. At this time of the evening, he probably wouldn’t even be there, but then again, you never knew. Frankly, Reichmann wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Garr outside of the engineering section or the control center.

The door to Garr’s office was closed when Reichmann arrived, and no light issued from underneath. So unless he was sitting there in the dark, which would be strange behavior even for Garr, he had probably gone to his cabin. Very well, he wouldn’t know until morning whether Garr was aware of the evening get-together with Boddy. Might as well settle in for the night and try not to worry about it.

On his way to his own cabin, he spotted Jameson. He thought about probing Jameson to see what he was thinking, but decided against it. The best thing to do was just keep quiet and have his story in place if anyone asked him what he’d been doing in Boddy’s cabin. He and Jameson passed each other without a word. It was impossible to tell whether Jameson was wrapped up in thoughts of the mutiny or math. Either way, Jameson rarely emerged from the labyrinth of his own mind to say hi to anyone. Likely he hadn’t noticed Reichmann’s whereabouts; he usually wasn’t even sure where his own assistant was.

Reaching his cabin, Reichmann once again tried to shake off memories of Felter’s behavior. Slurring, gruff, rude, and arrogant, Felter’s inhibitions had fallen away. Reichmann shed his overalls and threw them down the chute into the ship’s laundry, but his thigh still felt dirty where Felter had touched him. His arm still felt as though little body-odor germs had wriggled through the overalls where Felter had snuggled up to him. Something had to be done about this; he had been willing to forgive and forget before, but now this was getting out of hand.

But what could he do? Felter outranked everyone on the ship except for Boddy, and as he had seen tonight, Boddy had no control over Felter. No one had control over Felter—not even Felter.

This whole thing had been a bad idea. You’d think astronauts would be able to get along with one another; you’d think a crew of hotshot pilots who all have the same personality, the same interests, the same training, would fit together aboard a spacecraft like cogs in a machine. But each man was different, each brain operated in its own mini universe. And each of those mini universes continued to expand as the ship traveled faster and faster. Who would have imagined that human psychology would play so fundamental a role in the physics of relativity?

As Boddy placed his hand on the bathroom counter, he was amazed as he saw the stream of water from the faucet ever so slightly alter its trajectory in his direction. To be sure he wasn’t imagining things, he moved his hand around the stream. Not only did the slight bulge in the stream follow his hand, but he felt his hand drawn toward the water. “My God,” he whispered. “Orbital mechanics in my bathroom sink.” It astonished him that they could now be carrying so much mass and yet still live. No wonder their thoughts had been coming to life.

“Ed?” the voice of Samuels called from the door.

“Come in!” he called. He shut off the water, ran a towel through his hair, and slipped on his robe and slippers, then joined Samuels.

“Sorry to bother you,” Samuels said. “I just, uh, really had to talk to you.”

“It’s all right. I was just about to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“Well, I won’t keep you long—though you might not sleep so well after I tell you what I need to tell you.”

“I’ve heard a lot of bad news today,” Boddy said, slipping into the chair behind his desk. He hit it more solidly than usual, and the impact sent a powerful tingle up his spine. He thought he felt a physical bulge travel up his back. “I hardly think you can add anything significant.”

“I think I can. You probably know by now that Jameson and Garr want you out.”

“I haven’t slept through the past three days—although I feel like I have.”

Samuels didn’t laugh. His expression remained grim. “I’m in with them. I thought you ought to know.”

Boddy was not as surprised as he would have been yesterday. He was more surprised that Samuels had come right out and told him. “For God’s sake, why?”

“This ship is coming apart at the seams. Inhibitions are coming to the surface. Reality itself is altering to suit divergent thoughts. Tomorrow, time itself could start coming apart.” Samuels sighed. “I’m really sorry to say this to you, but frankly, I think you’re the cause.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Relativity is the cause.”

“Yes, the root cause of the general phenomenon, but the general dislike of your command performance is the cause of the specific problems. God, Ed, don’t take it personally, I got you this freakin’ job. But we need a commander that the whole crew will rally behind, and we need that before tomorrow.”

“I see.” There really wasn’t much of a sense of betrayal. Oddly enough, knowing where Samuels stood and where the rest of the crew stood brought him a feeling of peace and resolve. He felt he knew now what to do—not specifically, but he believed he could now react to the evolving situation with certainty. “So it’s true, then—you did get me this job.”

Samuels nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I did what you asked, I followed up on Felter’s decision not to relieve you, and some of the things I uncovered were things I already knew—others shook me to the core. There are lots of things I didn’t know about this mission, and I feel pretty damn sure you didn’t know either.”

“About Felter?”

“Felter’s only the most visible part of it. Felter’s the part of the iceberg that peaks above the surface.”

“And I’ve got a feeling I’m the Titanic.”

“In more ways than one.” Samuels sat casually at the desk, as though this were another normal conversation and he had not just told Boddy he was conspiring to oust him from command. “I’m afraid I don’t have any documentation; I didn’t want to risk removing anything from Felter’s cabin, so you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Trust you? You’re plotting a mutiny!”

“Oh, come on, Ed, you know I’m on your side.”

“What an odd thing to say.”

“Look, if I thought there was another way out of this, I’d be on board with it. I figure we know each other well enough that I can make a professional decision that you disagree with without you losing your faith in me.”

Boddy had to laugh at that. Samuels just watched him guffaw, unsure of how to react. “’I’m stabbing you in the back, but don’t take it personally.’”

Samuels huffed. “You know what I mean. That’s why I came clean with you. I want you to know where I stand and why. I can’t blame you if you feel betrayed, but whatever happens, you know I always tell you the truth.”

Not the pertinent discussion at the moment, Boddy told himself. “I guess so. Go ahead, what did you find out?”

Samuels took a deep breath, then reached for a drink that wasn’t there. Boddy was only a little surprised when a glass of beer suddenly appeared there. Samuels seemed not to notice the feat of magic he had worked. “Okay, now, as you well know, this mission was Reichmann’s brainchild.”

“Of course.”

“But he didn’t start by pitching it to Congress. He started by pitching it to aerospace companies.” Samuels took a swig of the magic beer, swished it in his mouth, and continued. “You can imagine their reaction. You can also imagine how exasperated Reichmann must have been by what he would have perceived as lack of vision.”

“Reichmann’s definitely no capitalist,” Boddy said.

“No, he’s an idealist. It took him a long time to realize he had to modify his package. The whole ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’ thing wasn’t gonna get him far. And that’s where Felter comes into it.”

Boddy tried to imagine Reichmann approaching one desk after another, painting lofty images, invoking the names of James Cook and Christopher Columbus and Leonardo da Vinci, placing the Earth in its perspective as a tiny dot in a vast universe, he imagined the probing questions the bland faces would have asked about corporate profits and economic value and costs and tangible benefits, he could imagine Reichmann becoming flustered and confused, then politely dismissed. But he had no idea Felter had entered the picture so early.

“You probably know that Felter was a test pilot for LunaTunes before he joined NASA,” Samuels said. “Now, he was already in the NASA astronaut corps when Reichmann was making his rounds, but he read about Reichmann’s proposal online and was interested. He voiced Reichmann and asked to meet and talk about it, and Reichmann was so disillusioned by then that he would agree to meet with anybody who would take him seriously.”

“I should think he’d have been delighted to have an astronaut taking him seriously,” Boddy said.

“Astronauts are not the romantic heroes we once were,” Samuels said. “We like to think we are, but the general public doesn’t know our names or our faces, hell, some people don’t even know or believe that we’ve got bases on the Moon. Ordinarily Reichmann would have written Felter off, because an astronaut doesn’t carry any weight. But in this case, this particular astronaut did.”

“Now, wait a minute. The Deke and the flight directors and administrator always took us seriously,” Boddy said, remembering long, warm, open and frank dinners and meetings and golf games and fishing trips with the NASA higher-ups. “How can you say an astronaut doesn’t pull any weight?”

“Because he doesn’t, Ed. Face the facts. Yeah, our opinions mean a lot when we’re contributing to a project that we’re assigned to, or even a project we’re not assigned to that’s in the pipeline. But we don’t set policy; never did, never will.”

Boddy shrugged. “True. Okay, so why is Felter any different?” And do I want to know?

“Because of his work with LunaTunes. You know they were an international corporation that not only involved China, Russia, the EU and India, but they also had government contracts with those countries’ national space programs.”

“Oh, please don’t tell me Felter was some sort of spy.”

Samuels laughed. “Well, I wasn’t going to put it so melodramatically.”

“But he was.” Boddy buried his face in his hands as Samuels continued to laugh. “God, that man makes a career out of outclassing me.”

“No, seriously, he was no spy,” Samuels said, his laughter dying down. “He test flew various single-stage surface-to-lunar orbit vehicles, including the DX-180 and the Excel Hybrid. But the one that’s really relevant here is the Míngxīng Tiáo Sù, the Chinese Star Speeder, a high-velocity spacecraft capable of single-stage surface to escape velocity, capable of direct, low-energy flights from Earth to Mars and back. It was ultimately a failure, otherwise it would have gone on the open market—but not before getting a contract with the Chinese government for a secret project for their national space program.”

“What project?” Boddy was beginning to make connections. He would never have thought so vital a piece of intelligence would have been kept from him.

“A relativistic flight to circumnavigate the universe,” Samuels said. “Felter learned about it, but if I’m correctly interpreting what he wrote in his journal, he was scared shitless to let anyone on that he’d found out.”

“How did he find out?”

“That I don’t know. By accident, I’m sure. But when he heard about Reichmann’s proposal, he decided to meet with him and spill the beans. Reichmann, of course, was delighted to have some competition in the works. It furnished him with a reason to take his proposal to NASA.”

“Interesting...did the government know about it? Were they already working on an answer to the Chinese program?”

Samuels was downing his beer. He took a moment to savor it, then continued. “Remember, I’m getting all this from material I looked at in Felter’s quarters without his permission. My information is fragmentary.”

“Seems pretty thorough to me.”

“Thanks. It seems to me the government knew about the Chinese program, but in their usual way they were hemming and hawing in the way the government tends to do, trying to decide what to do, and then suddenly there was Reichmann with the solution to the problem.”

“I wonder why Reichmann never mentioned any of this.” Boddy was surprised that he felt more betrayed by Reichmann’s holding out on him than Samuels actually joining the mutiny. There must have been a concerted conspiracy of silence since the beginning of the mission.

“Well, to Reichmann, the Chinese threat was never anything but an excuse to sell the project to the government. Then it didn’t matter; once the Eldorado project was greenlighted and funded, the Chinese project was terminated because of costs. But by the time the next administration came along, the Eldorado project had become entrenched. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed in it, the country had invested billions of dollars in it, and every state had major Eldorado facilities. Killing the project would have been political suicide.”

“Well, this is all fascinating, but what does it have to do with Felter refusing to relieve me of command?”

“Well, possibly nothing. Felter didn’t even write about that in his journal, so I can only guess at his motives. But I’m only just getting started: remember I speculated that there might be a homosexual relationship between Felter and Owen James?”

“I sure do.”

“Well, I was right. In fact, I was righter than I thought I was. Those two were serious, and I mean super serious.”

The image came unbidden and unwelcome to Boddy’s mind of Felter and Owen James kissing. He shoved it from his mind as quickly as he could, but not before James himself briefly materialized, ghostlike, nude, holding (of all things) a large serving tray piled over with mashed potatoes; now, what in the world did that mean?—then he was gone.

If Samuels noticed the apparition, he said nothing, merely chugged the remainder of his beer and continued. “It seems they were planning on turning the Eldorado into their own little love nest, a romantic voyage to infinity. Hard to say where the rest of the crew would have factored into their little fantasy—and of course, remember, this was before the mission, before our relativistic predicament, before everything went weird, so chances are it was always just that: a fantasy. They probably would have been completely professional.”

“But you never caught on to that part of it,” Boddy said.

“No, no, I just found this in Felter’s journal. But like I told you before, I had my suspicions about them—and apparently Deke Skedd verified them.”

“Does that mean you brought your suspicions to the Deke?”

Samuels nodded, looking ashamed of himself. He shrugged. “I owed you one. You got me Hercules XXVIII.”

Boddy smirked. Samuels was exaggerating. He had known that Samuels’ ultimate dream (at that time) was to go to Mars, and that he had been dropped from the rotation for unknown reasons to work on the Venus Terraform Project. Boddy had had beer with Dan Brantley, prime commander of Hercules XXVIII, and they had discussed Samuels. A few weeks later, Kuniholm had been pulled from the flight when he was diagnosed with leukemia. The Deke then selected Samuels as his replacement. Hercules XXVIII was no history-making voyage; it was just another Mars Base One personnel relief and supply cache delivery, one year on the surface—but it was Mars. At that time, Mars was every astronaut’s dream, and Samuels’ in particular.

But then, Samuels’ trick wasn’t all that different. He hadn’t pulled any special strings, he had simply mentioned a rumor. It was up to the Deke to decide what to do about it. So they were even. Well, they’d better be, now that Samuels had turned traitor.

“I had a long talk with the Deke about you and your impartial command style, your experience, you seniority. He nodded and nodded and didn’t say much, and to this day I still don’t know how much that conversation really had to do with your selection. I mean, I didn’t lie or exaggerate, and even if I did, he knew your qualifications as well as I did—better, in fact.”

“Yeah, but still. The word of your peers says a lot.”

“So it does.”

Well, at least now he knew. Samuels had gone to bat for him, and whether or not he was really responsible for Boddy’s being on the Eldorado was something he would never know. But at least now he knew exactly what had happened. It was nice to know that he could be grateful to his friend and yet also know that he had truly and legitimately earned his spot. But still—he was here at the expense of Owen James on the basis of some parochial attitude that meant nothing out here.

Or...remembering James and his mashed potatoes...did it?

“Once you were named backup commander, the in-depth training began. I spent so much time sequestered with Jameson I didn’t see much of Felter or James, but we did have those six weeks of compatibility testing. I’d already had a funny feeling about those two, but it was that period that solidified it to me. So, once that phase was over and we had that two-week break which I’m sure you remem-ber—“

“Do I ever,” Boddy said, smiling. “Those girls from Jacksonville.”

“Yep—I’d say you and I had more fun then than we did in Hawaii after the sailing regatta.”

I’ll say, Boddy thought. At least there were two girls rather than just the one in Hawaii. That was the closest he and Samuels had ever gotten to blows.

“Anyway, after that I played golf with the Deke and just casually brought up the relationship between Felter and James. You can guess the rest.”

Boddy felt a stab of pity for Owen James. Felter was a prick, but James had always been sturdy, efficient, and an all-around nice guy.

“Felter never knew I was involved in any way with James being pulled from the flight,” Samuels said. “In his journal he talks about how devastated he was, how he considered pulling out. He wrestled with the decision—a voyage to infinity was like a siren’s call to him, some romantic image of destiny, his destiny, that he’d carried with him since childhood.”

“That’s rather odd. I mean, we all signed on this mission because we were intrigued by relativity and the prospect of circling the universe and finally unlocking the ultimate destiny of the cosmos. But I don’t know about you, but I never even thought about such a thing until this mission was proposed.”

“No, most of us didn’t. We’re pilots, engineers, scientists, we’re flying the mission we agreed to fly. Few people outside the most theoretical mathematicians and astronomers and physicists really think about the ultimate destiny of the universe—and out of them, how many would give up their lives to fly a mission to explore it?”

“More than you might think. After all, we’re here, and we’d never even thought about it before.”

“True enough.” Samuels summoned up another beer; Boddy wondered how conscious he was of the fact that he was performing these casual feats of magic. “But it held a special attraction for Felter,” Samuels went on. “From his journal, I gather it went back to a piece of science fiction he’d read as a boy; though I can’t remember the title he gave. Something about a man who lived for centuries until he voyaged alone through the universe to the very end of time. Felter always had the vision that the story was a glimpse of his own future. He had to do this. But that wasn’t all there was to it. If it was, he might have stayed behind to be with James and just hope another relativistic mission came along.”

“Jesus, you mean this gets even more convoluted?”

“Afraid so. As I said, it was Felter’s own experiences as a test pilot that had blown the top off of the Chinese plans to build a relativistic starship, and so in a very indirect way, Felter shared with Reichmann the very origins of the mission. And you know Reichmann is no salesman, no politician, certainly no economist. So enter a new character in our drama: Senator Iago Rashawn.”

“I remember him. Senator from Utah. One of our biggest backers. I always thought it was strange to get some support from Utah; there have never really been any big NASA interests there.”

“No, but Utah was the home of the headquarters of Oort-To-Go-Farther Astrospace, a startup company with its eyes on the Outer Solar System—a company that just happened to be run by young Diego Rashawn, the senator’s brother.”

“Good lord.” Boddy had to laugh. “When are the black helicopters going to enter this tale?”

“Take heart, I’m almost done. Figure this scenario—your brother has spent billions on a company whose express purpose is to put the first humans in the vicinity of the outer planets. You are a senator who has kicked back lots of funds to your brother’s company. Now an eccentric German scientist and an astronaut testify before your Congress about a foolhardy plan to build a government starship to leap into the unknown, never to return—the ultimate waste of taxpayer money. What happens in all likelihood? Either the project is canceled and NASA’s further deep space projects are delayed for decades, or the mission is built, succeeds, disappears into deep space, and NASA spends the next twenty years searching for a new mission. In either case, your brother reaches Saturn before anybody else. On the other hand, if the Eldorado mission is rejected, well, hell, China launches its spaceship into the unknown, people shrug and forget about it, life goes on, and NASA dedicates its efforts to deeper and deeper space exploration, and before long, poor young Diego is reading about astronaut Ed Boddy landing the first human space probe on Titan.”

Boddy huffed. “Goddamn politics. I should have known. Our whole mission wasn’t about exploration or science or expanding the frontier of space—or even beating the Chinese. It was Goddamn politics.”

“Well, at least in Rashawn’s case. I think the rest of Congress was just being accountable to the taxpayers. Sometimes even politicians learn; the debacles that followed the cancellation of Apollo, Shuttle, Constellation, StarForce, and Regulus finally hammered home the lesson that you don’t just cancel on a whim a project that the nation has already invested billions in, nor do you continually change the whole focus of a very complex space program every time there’s a new president.”

Boddy sipped his own beer—part of his mind registering that it had not been there before—and said, “So again, I have to ask, what does that have to do with Felter’s refusal to take command?”

“Well, again, I can only speculate as to his motives there, but remember, he was sort of Reichmann’s silent partner in selling the Eldorado mission to the government and the taxpayers, and Rashawn was its champion. Oh, sure, Riechard of Florida and Simms of Texas were all for it, and Coburn in Alabama, and then Pennsylvania got in the mix when they built the huge rotating simulator in Johnsonville—but Rashawn was a voice in the wilderness as far as non-space states, and so Felter knew he had to cater to him. So did the senators and representatives from the space states. That meant putting a damn fine face on NASA. Fortunately, that was a job Felter was well suited to. Always the spit-and-polish astronaut. The consummate professional. The astronaut’s astronaut. That, more than anything else, is why it was just impossible for him to turn down the assignment when James was yanked. If Rashawn had withdrawn his support, others would have too. It wouldn’t have been hard to build the case that our mission was a waste of taxpayer money. Never mind the thousands of jobs tied up in it, once you turn the tide of public opinion, the one who cancels the big boondoggle is in good with the voters.”

“I see—and so Felter had to put that public face on so often, so perfectly, and to so many people that it became part of him. The line between the pretense and the real guy became fuzzier and fuzzier until it was so second nature to him to obey the chain of command that there was no way he could take command from the guy NASA put in charge.”

“That would be my guess—even if he hates you for replacing James. Actually, because he hates you for replacing James. His personal animosity toward you is a damn compelling reason for him to continue to treat you with utter deference and respect.”

Boddy chuckled. “I think he’s dropped the ball there a few times. The one area where his image as the perfect astronaut falters a bit.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Samuels said. “With friends like me, who needs enemies? But the one person you can really count on, of all people, is Felter.”

“Well, thanks for the heads-up.” A tinge of bitterness came into Boddy’s voice there—too much, really, considering he wasn’t really angry at Samuels for joining the mutiny. “Well, thanks for digging all this info up. We’ll see how useful it is.”

“Sure. Guess I’d better get back to the science lab.” Samuels stood, taking no notice of the empty mug of beer. There being no more need for it, it disappeared, its energy returning to the seething swath of energy which accompanied the spinning ship as it approached the speed of light. Samuels paused at the door and said, “If we don’t diffuse into pure energy or burst through a hyperspace corridor into another universe before we can really get the mutiny started, I just wanted to wish you luck. I hope we lose.”

“I think I believe you.”

Samuels waved and left the room.

Alone now, Boddy mused over what Samuels had said. What a complex person Felter was; were he not so damned unlikeable, he would be fascinating.

It seemed that Garr had no more use for him, so Acker slouched back to his quarters, feeling small and useless. He had done his job, he had fixed the circulator, he had tried so hard to help Garr to build his Boddy-zapper—this despite his own ethical reservations—and now his contributions seemed extraneous. Once again, he wondered why he had even been assigned to this mission. It seemed everyone else could get along just fine without him.

He thought about going up to the cupola—but that wouldn’t be right. He had told Garr he was going to his quarters. He should stay here in case Garr needed him. Either that or return to the engineering section. But then again, Garr had made it quite clear that he was just a nuisance—so why shouldn’t he go wherever he damn well pleased? Wasn’t that what the intercom was for?

Still, his sense of duty—and his all-consuming need for approval—prompted him to signal Garr’s office.

“What?” Garr’s voice grumbled.

Acker recoiled at the sound of irritation in Garr’s voice, but reminded himself that Garr knew only that his intercom had buzzed; his irritation was not directed at him personally. “Hi, Garr,” Acker said in his most affable voice. “Listen, if you don’t need me, I thought I’d head up to the cupola. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Do what you want,” Garr replied.