Mission One Page 2

  “Don’t you and your boys handle crowd control?” Kate asked.

  “Usually. But today’s different, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is,” she said quietly.

  Kate looked in the direction of launch platform LC-44, where Jeff and his team were already waiting. She could only see the very top of the distant rocket over the roof of the Diamond Aerospace building. From where she was sitting, it looked like a toy.

  Ed tapped the roof of her car. “Good luck in there,” he said.

  “Thanks. We’ll need it.”

  Noah Bell stood at the large picture window in his fortieth-floor penthouse, overlooking Manhattan. It wasn’t a great morning in the lower atmosphere. A wet and heavy fog enshrouded the tall buildings in downtown New York.

  Far below on the busy sidewalks, nearly lost in the haze, streams of umbrellas flowed on either side of a blockade of unmoving taxis. Noah wondered if the people on the street ever looked up at his penthouse, or beyond, to the stars. He could remember his days down there on the sidewalks, amongst all the umbrellas. He had somehow always found the time to look up, even if it was raining.

  Fortunately, Noah wasn’t worried about the bad weather blanketing his adopted hometown. The only thing he had to worry about was if the skies would be clear during the launch window that evening in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

  He stretched his back and adjusted the waistband of his three-hundred-dollar silk pajama bottoms.

  At thirty-eight, Noah still had a thick, natural head of light brown hair. He was neither overly tall nor unusually short, instead falling into the comfortable, inconspicuous middle territory. Outgoing, yes, but consciously guarded when asked bluntly about the intricacies of his operations. His boyish exuberance masked a razor-sharp intellect and a quick temper, the latter of which he worked hard to unleash only upon ignorant reporters during what he called his moments of weakness.

  As he looked at his shirtless reflection in the window, a pinkish scar from a recent shoulder surgery caught his eye. He pressed down on it hard with two fingers, grimacing from the pain. Noah had earned that one by not diligently checking his abseiling harness while canyoning in the Swiss Alps several months ago. He had slipped off his rope and slammed into a couple of boulders on his way to the ground.

  Yet, he didn’t mind the scar. It was good to have a visual reminder of a past failure. It helped him stay focused while taking new risks.

  Thirty-eight years old, he thought, and today you make history.

  Almost immediately after having the thought, his deceased father’s voice barged into his mind.

  Don’t get cocky, junior, said the gruff voice – gruff, but kind. Even in Noah’s imagination, his father’s voice still carried a thick Australian accent. You’ve put the cart in front of the horse before, and it didn’t work out.

  But this isn’t losing ten million on a bad stock tip, thought Noah.

  You’re right. It’s actually dangerous.

  Noah smiled faintly as he pushed the thoughts from his mind. Today was not the day for hesitations, nor for second-guessing himself.

  The massive proverbial ball was rolling downhill, picking up speed. It was impossible to stop it now.

  Noah was considered a late-comer to the realm of the nouveau riche. While most young millionaires made their fortunes in Silicon Valley from explosively popular internet apps and data-mining technologies, he had taken his time by playing the stock market as a fresh college graduate, feeding whatever expendable cash he saved from working three jobs into his growing portfolio. He wasn’t even a blip on the radar until a small nanotechnology startup in Montana was bought out by an undisclosed computer corporation.

  Noah just happened to have stock in nanotech. He made fourteen million dollars in one night.

  He rolled it all back into his portfolio, and by the end of the next year was sitting on well over half a billion. His talents were not limited to a preternatural understanding of stock market systems. He also turned out to be one hell of a businessman. Diamond Aerospace was his fourth successful company, and would likely become the world’s most profitable if it could be the first to get a team to Titan.

  It was launch day, and Noah felt like a million bucks. Several million million bucks, to be more accurate.

  The company he had built from the ground up was going to Titan after years of careful planning and financial maneuvering. The automated mining stations on the moon and Mars made it possible. Without the financial windfall from those endeavors, Noah would never have made it close to Titan. He had expected the majority of his company’s profits to come from the asteroid mining division, but they had yet to secure a cost-effective way of transporting raw ore back to Earth. That department hadn’t been able to claw its way out of the exploratory phase, and had been operating in the red since the beginning. Noah was only able to keep it operational due to the success of the other two automated mining outposts.

  And now, if he could unlock the secrets of Titan and of the strange object orbiting that distant moon, he could perpetually run all of his gestating pet projects at a financial loss until he dropped dead of overstimulation. Not that that was the goal, of course. Noah enjoyed being fiscally responsible, but he also had to admit that it was nice knowing he would never have to worry about the bottom line ever again.

  He struggled, and not for the first time, with whether or not he should tell the crew the supplemental addendum to their mission. Originally, the purpose of the first manned voyage past Mars was to begin construction of an orbital research station around Titan. Riley and his team were to lay the groundwork for future missions, delivering and constructing the skeleton that would eventually become the most distant occupied human settlement in history: Space Station Glory.

  Yet informing the crew about the more recent secondary objective created too much opportunity for an information leak. Noah didn’t like handing over critical information to people until it became absolutely necessary. People made mistakes. People blabbed. Riley and his team were still going to deliver and construct the foundation for Glory; that part of the mission hadn’t changed. Now they would just be taking some time out of their schedule to investigate the mysterious object one of Noah’s deep-space probes had seen in orbit around Titan.

  Titan was supposed to be naked. An empty, untouched world, primed for exploration and discovery. And yet the artifact was there, in slow orbit around the moon, defying all attempts at explanation.

  Of the competing companies that were capable of sending a craft so far from Earth, only Noah’s Diamond Aerospace had an engine that could get one to Titan quickly. He had to concede that it was possible MarsCorp had surreptitiously launched a vessel half a year ago or more, but Noah paid good money to stay informed of his competitors’ clandestine actions. If they had launched a ship, he would have known. And besides, without Noah’s unprecedented solid core thermal antimatter drive, the journey would take too long. He knew the suits at MarsCorp. They didn’t have the patience for that kind of campaign.

  Which gave rise to the question: if his own company hadn’t put the mysterious object in orbit around Titan, then who had? It was a question he asked himself a thousand times a day.

  Noah sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  Yes, he decided for the nth time. Better to tell the crew about the new addendum to their mission en route and avoid any potential fallout. He couldn’t imagine they’d be too angry to learn they were the first people in human history to personally investigate an unknown object orbiting a body in their home solar system.

  A soft form groaned pleasantly in the large bed behind him.

  Speaking of bodies, Noah thought as he turned around.

  The oversized bed was the main feature of his penthouse. The rest of the sparse furniture was oriented around it, drawing a visitor’s attention toward it. Noah did his best not to bring work home. Long ago, he learned the value of keeping the two separate. His home was a sanctuary, and he did his best to eliminate any outside infl
uence. There was no television and no computer. His team of secretaries intercepted all calls and only forwarded the emergencies.

  The penthouse was his own personal Zen palace high above the streets of Manhattan.

  He walked barefoot across the tile floor and sat on the edge of the bed, admiring the shape of the body beneath the silk sheets.

  The body rolled over. Slender fingers pulled down the top of the sheet, revealing forty-three-year-old Elena Riley, ex-wife of the man who would be flying Noah’s spacecraft to Titan. She pushed her thick, wavy brunette hair away from her face.

  “Are you watching me sleep?” she asked with the slight hint of a flirtatious smile.

  “No, but I’m watching you wake up,” said Noah. His own Australian accent was stronger than usual because of his imagined conversation with his father. He knew the effect would only last a few minutes. With years of practice, he had become capable of eliminating the accent altogether for brief interviews or speeches – situations where foreign investors might have an easier time understanding him.

  “That’s not usually as graceful.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “From the cafe downstairs?”

  “I can have some sent up.”

  She thought about it for a moment. Noah recognized the hesitation, but also the eagerness. He usually saw it in people who had spent so long getting their own coffee that it would always be second nature for them to have it delivered.

  He smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

  He walked to the other end of the three-thousand square-foot penthouse and opened the door. One of his assistants, a young man so well-manicured he looked as if he were cut from a mold, waited in the hallway with two cups of coffee.

  “Thank you, Trevor,” said Noah as he accepted the lidded cups.

  “Anything else Mr. Bell?” Trevor asked.

  “Not right now. Flight’s at eleven?”

  “Yes, sir. Pick you up at nine?”

  Noah glanced back at Elena. “Make it ten.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Trevor.

  Noah closed the door with his foot, then went back to bed and handed Elena her coffee.

  “How long was he standing out there?” she asked.

  “With these particular cups? Only a couple of minutes. But I had him make three runs earlier while I was waiting for you to wake up.”

  “You did not,” she said playfully. She sat up and the silk sheet slipped off her smooth skin.

  Noah admired her beauty and silently thanked Commander Riley for taking her for granted to the point that she left him.

  Elena took a long sip of coffee. Her eyes rolled up with pleasure.

  “So tell me,” she said, looking at Noah coyly, “don’t you usually wake up next to gorgeous young models?”

  “You’re not a model?” he replied with mock surprise. “You have been paying too much attention to gossip news. I prefer women who have a little…substance.”

  She returned his gaze over her coffee cup. “Just a little?” she whispered.

  Remarkable woman, thought Noah. His cheeks flushed with desire. He gently took her cup and set it next to his on the nightstand.

  “Trevor can bring more later,” he said.

  Elena sank down into the silk sheets, her sparkling eyes locked on his, and he followed eagerly.

  Kate swiped her badge outside the automatic sliding glass doors that led into the heart of the Launch Command Center building, then pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner. The lock beeped approval at her, but she hesitated.

  Now that she knew what awaited her inside Mission Control, Kate wasn’t in such a hurry to start her workday. Beyond the doors on the main operations floor, several of her coworkers chatted and sipped coffee, enjoying the easy pace before the launch. Three rows of workstations on the operations floor split by a walkway down the middle faced a screen that fully covered the far wall from corner to corner. A grid of virtual panels broke up the screen, each one fully dedicated to a specific feed of information pouring in from Explorer I, the Neptune III rocket, the astronauts’ Mark IV Suits, and two dozen other monitoring points. Live video, heart rates, fuel levels, temperature – it was all up there. At a casual glance, everything appeared normal.

  The room formed a large half-circle, with the monitoring wall on the outer curved edge, the rows of workstations facing it, a raised viewing platform behind the workstations, and a glass-fronted conference room behind the viewing platform.

  From where she stood at the security doors off to one side of Mission Control, Kate could just see her boss, Frank Johnson, inside the conference room at the back, laughing with a group of other men.

  Money men slowed everything down. They asked too many questions and distracted employees. These were representatives of some of the richest men in the world – men who usually only wanted to know two things: when is more money coming in and why is it taking so long. Noah had been very clear with them that the Titan project was not a typical quick-return scheme. The investors were unlikely to see their money again any time soon. So far, every penny of their Diamond Aerospace investment money had gone toward development of the thermal antimatter drive that would get Explorer I to Titan. The project would only become profitable if, and only if, the company could find a way to operate an automated natural resource depot on the surface years down the line.

  The money men knew this. They had been reminded repeatedly. Yet they answered only to higher powers, and if the higher powers said to get back out there and keep kicking the tires, they flew back to Cape Canaveral and kicked until they needed new loafers.

  Kate would have been happy with a new car, but she hadn’t gotten into the aerospace industry to buy a mansion. She did it because she had to; because ever since she was a little girl, the mysteries of the stars had been the only thing consistently pulling her attention from the banalities of everyday life.

  She stepped toward the glass doors, but they didn’t open. She sighed in frustration and swiped her badge and stuck her thumb in the scanner again. The lock beeped and the doors slid open, letting out a heavenly rush of cool air. The Florida humidity had kept her sweating since her interaction with the security guard outside. Kate hoped to God she had remembered to toss a spare stick of deodorant into her desk drawer.

  Instead of heading for her desk, she turned left and lightly took the few steps up to the viewing platform, making for the conference room. One of her coworkers down on the operations floor, Rick Teller, caught her eye while sipping coffee at his workstation. His dark, thick eyebrows went up with a warning over the rim of his glasses as he rotated his chair to track her brisk movement.

  He wore one of his three faded yellow button-down shirts over one of his two pairs of faded black slacks. He and Kate had been working side-by-side for two years. In that time, Rick had turned forty-five, lost most of his hair, gained a pair of glasses, and told Kate more about his wardrobe than she ever wanted to know. According to him, wearing the same clothes every day made it more difficult for third parties to keep track of his movements. They couldn’t be sure if he went to the laundromat on Thursday or to the movies, when in fact he had done both on Tuesday. It confused their procedures, said Rick, and they couldn’t keep their heads screwed on without their precious procedures. Kate told him that he was being paranoid, and that no one was watching him. She had repeated the same line countless times throughout their relationship, but Rick always just smiled and wagged a scolding finger at her, as if she were a simple child who would never understand.

  She caught a glimpse of the large digital clock at the very top of the monitoring wall. It was just after nine o’clock, and the director of Mission Control needed to be out on the operations floor, guiding his crew, not hamming it up with the representatives of investors whose money was already spent.

  Kate pushed open the glass door to the conference room with a smile. The five visitors talking with Frank didn’t acknowledge her.

  The men stoo
d next to a circular, glass-topped table, which took up a large portion of the room. A ring of black, high-backed chairs surrounded the table. Dark wood paneling covered the rear wall, meeting slate gray carpet at the floor. The only object adorning the table was a pyramidal black conference phone in the middle.

  Besides Frank Johnson, the mission director, she didn’t recognize any of the other five men, nor would she have been able to pick any one of them out of a police line-up – mid-thirties, slim, broad shoulders, average height, thick, full heads of hair, no glasses, clean-shaven, and tan-but-not-too-tan, which was hard to pull off in the harsh fluorescent glow permeating every crevice of the operations center. Frank had just passed fifty yet looked to be in his early forties, helped mostly by his full head of short, black hair, a rigorous workout regime, and a strict diet. He seemed to fit right in with the money men, in cold demeanor if not in the price of his cheap suit.

  “And as I mentioned earlier,” Frank said, glancing briefly in Kate’s direction, “Diamond Aerospace leases this building and the launch pad from NASA. They are contractually forbidden from interfering in our day-to-day operations.” He grinned. “It’s a perfect relationship. They needed more money to send their toys into space, and we needed the space to send our people and your technology to Titan. That’s the reason you won’t see any government employees on the operations floor this evening. Diamond Aerospace is and will remain a private company, not beholden to anyone or anything but the clear vision of its CEO.”

  “And where is Mr. Bell?” asked a Chinese man with a heavy accent. Kate had never seen the actual figures on paper, but she knew that of all the outside investors, the Chinese had the largest interest in the mission.

  “He’ll be here this afternoon,” Frank said soothingly. “As you can imagine, members of the nouveau riche always have a lot on their plates.”

  Kate had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She had heard Frank mention Noah’s prodigious bankroll to investors more times than she could count. It was supposed to inspire confidence that there was no way they could lose money, falsely hinting that Noah would simply reimburse any lost capital.