CHAPTER 5

At least there was some good news this time. Ever since the Presidential announcement of America’s intent to launch the first interstellar voyage, in history, such things as pleasant surprises were rare. For the first time, since Pete had goat roped him into this mess, Jack found that he had a job he actually liked. It was finally something concrete and, by Jack‘s way of thinking, needed to be done.

Now that he was settled into his new office he was finding more and more of his work load revolved around reviewing his old star ship designs. He was trying to find one that they could use. All of that work, that Jack had spent years on, appeared to have been shelved since he had left. That was of no real surprise of course.

Back then, Jack had argued for an interstellar mission. To him it seemed like the next logical step to take. No one wanted to hear it. The powers that be, including people in his own agency, were more concerned with how to silently phase the space program out. That made Jack a royal pain in their ass and they wasted no time running him off.

Why couldn’t those people see it? The practical engineering had not been invented yet but the theoretical sciences had progressed well to the point of making such a trip possible. Ten years ago, if the country had set their minds to it, they could have built a fleet of starships by now! Back then, Jack had shouted that to anyone who would listen and unfortunately the only people who would listen were other men just like Jack. Such people were few and far between.

Jack recalled when the notion for such a mission had first struck him. He couldn’t help but remember it when he stumbled across the very first starship design that he had finished. He scrolled over the blueprints on his computer screen and sighed. Looking at it should have made him proud but it only drudged up years of frustration instead.

Jack remembered when he first heard about the theoretical breakthrough that made all of this possible. A Russian Scientist named Yurgani Vitosk had won the Nobel Prize for his paper on particles known collectively as Tachyons. For years physicists had been salivating over the possibility of matter that moved faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Vitosk had been the one to finally prove they existed.

Of course, Jack had assumed that was what the Russian had done. Apparently Vitosk thought it was a lot more. After Jack finally met the man he discovered that Vitosk compared his work to being a breakthrough that was on the level of Newton and Einstein. Jack could never follow half of what that guy talked about and just grunted and nodded a lot. Particle Physics wasn’t Jack’s thing.

Still, Jack could half understand where Yurgani was coming from. After all, Einstein had said that matter couldn’t travel faster than light, and if Jack understood the Russian well enough, that was what Tachyons allegedly did. Only Yurgani served to confuse the issue even further by claiming that his paper did not violate Special Relativity. At that point, Jack gave up at even trying to figure it out.

Jack had always considered himself well educated but Yurgani always left him wondering about that. Jack figured that either he was really that stupid or the Russian was really that smart. Then again there was always the third possibility. Maybe, Yurgani was just that good at slinging manure. It was very hard to tell.

That was all in the past now. Jack was finally going to get his dream. At least he hoped that was the case. It was certainly looking better than it was a couple of months ago when his greatest ambition in life was to score an eagle on hole ten. Now if he could just figure out which one of these designs he wanted to start working on.

As Jack scrolled down the computer screen Gina came walking through his door. She had a little cubicle just outside Jack’s office and was now playing more the personal assistant role than chaperone. She looked incredibly busy and very much in a hurry. What else was new?

Jack found her to be quite the tight fisted little manager and he started to understand why Pete had picked the girl. She was sharp as a tack and methodically organized in everything that she did. People like that were useful anywhere and even on another planet.

“Sir,” she said as she read from a sticky note in her hand, “you have a meeting upstairs in fifteen minutes. After that, Colonel Winston needs you over in Building Thirty-Six. That Doctor Wu guy needs you to call him back. Last but not least, Doctor Mike called and said he wants to stick some more glass tubes up your rear end.”

Jack winced, “you’re kidding? Right? He really said that?”

“No,” Gina shrugged, “but I bet that’s what he’s going to do. Anyway, after that,” she turned over the sticky note and read on.

Jack took the pause to inject, “I think I can read all that for myself Airman. Hand it over.”

As she did Gina also left one parting comment, “oh and you might want to turn on the television, sir. I think you might need to know about this one.”

“What’s that?” Jack stood up from his chair and grabbed for his coat. He walked by the small TV sitting on a side table and switched it on, “did Entertainment Tonight finally figure out I’m really a cross dresser?”

Gina stopped at the door and looked back. She was a bit sullen, “Colonel, I really don’t know how you put up with that crap. Do you know my Grandfather in Atlanta had some reporters trying to camp out on his front lawn? My mom called me from Seattle and bitched me out because she caught some of those guys ripping up her garbage bags.”

Jack shot the girl a half smile, “kind of makes you think twice about volunteering for blind missions don’t it?”

She let out a heavy sigh, rolled her eyes, and went back to her cubicle. Little miss Gina was obviously less than pleased about all of the attention. Jack had to wonder if the girl understood it was only going to get worse.

That left Jack fixing his tie as he watched one of the all news channels. It was really hard to turn on the television these days without seeing something about the proposed mission. Most of it was rubbish and Jack had long since given up on watching. He had little time to waste on talking heads who were all self appointed experts and always yapping their gums about things they really knew nothing about.

Gina had been right however. This report was not some network exec’s idea of filling dead air time. Jack even reached down and turned up the volume. He watched it until the news anchor was starting to repeat herself. After that, Jack switched it off and headed for the top floor and his meeting.

He was not surprised to see that Dee Brewer was back from California. If the news media had just reported that the Japanese were starting to assemble their own starship, in orbit, then it was a sure bet that the CIA, NSA, DIA, OK, and a few other anagrams, had known about it for a good deal longer. Now that the story had broken publicly it was sure going to light a few fires.

Rockmont was sitting at the end of the conference table and looked none to happy. In fact, he seemed kind of like a man who was trying to make it to the lifeboats on the Titanic.

As Jack sat down across from Dee, he had to ask, “I take it that you both saw the news reports?”

In unison they both answered at the same time, “we heard about it.”

Jack clicked his teeth and asked, “so what does this do to our time table? I’m pretty sure the C in C is not going to go for being second runner up in this.”

“Gee Jack,” Rockmont’s words dripped with sarcasm, “with that kind of political sixth sense it’s a wonder you’re not a politician.” He became serious and leaned forward, “all right people the fact is I got the Vice President breathing down my neck right now. I just spent two hours on the phone with him and I can assure you it was not fun. The fact is our time table is very dependent on what you two tell me, right now. I need a no bullshit assessment here. When can we see a completed model?”

Dee blinked, “you’re kidding, right?”

Jack was not sure if the OK corporate hot shot was really as surprised as she appeared to be. He finally decided he really didn’t want to know and got down to business, “the hull is straight forward. I’m pretty sure, with the engineering team we’re putting together, that we can adapt one of my designs to something a little more conventional. You know? We can use pre existing parts that we have in stock or that factories are already tooled up to produce. That‘ll save time.”

Apparently Rockmont missed everything but the first part, “what do you mean putting together? Jack in case you haven’t noticed the President of the United States has stuck his neck out on a chopping block for this. He wants that damn starship built three days ago. How many more people do you need?”

“No,” Jack shook his head. Some things never changed, “it’s not that simple. It doesn’t matter how many people you stick on something like this. The only thing that does matter is who does it.”

Rockmont leaned back in the chair and tossed his pen on the table as if he were just giving up now, “all right Jack. Get me a list of people you’re going to need and have it to my secretary before the end of the day.” Then Rockmont rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Winston is just going to love this.”

Dee was busy with her laptop as the two NASA guys sparred across the table. She finished her download just as Jack and Rockmont finished tossing out names to each other. She slid the disk across to Jack, “these are the specifications we think we’ll need for the drive train.”

Now Rockmont winced once more but this time he turned all of his attention on Dee, “what do you mean think, Doctor Brewer? Are you telling me that OK has been working on this propulsion unit for seven years and you don’t even have an inkling of the finished product yet?”

“No,” Dee was not inclined to argue with Rockmont. In her years as the OK rep here in Houston she had never stooped to such a thing. To her, Rockmont was nothing more than a petty bureaucrat that had about as much influence over her career as a dead animal in the road. “We have some idea.”

“Some idea?” Rockmont growled in frustration. “The White House is not going to want to hear this Doc.”

Dee licked her lips and waited till she could force a smile on her face, “Mister Rockmont, nobody invited you guys to tag along. If you don’t like it then tough. We’re doing the best that we can.”

After the NASA Director finished getting control of his own temper he got back on the subject at hand, “look, biting each others heads off isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re all on the same team here and I’ll put the same question to you that I just did to Jack. Who, or what, do you need to get this done?”

Dee looked at this man carefully and wondered if he was serious. Then she surprised Jack by giving him a questioning glance. Jack just shrugged and nodded to her. Dee kind of giggled. That made Jack want to giggle. For the first time he was wondering if she was not really as stuck up as she seemed to be. Maybe she was just shy?

“I really don’t think that’s possible Mister Rockmont, but thanks for the gesture.” Dee began to collect her things.

Rockmont’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, “I’m not kidding Doctor Brewer.”

Dee stopped packing up her laptop and huffed out her reply, “Mister Rockmont. What we’re dealing with here is trying to take a scientific principle, that is almost entirely mathematical, and turn it into real engineering. Not as simple as it sounds when there isn’t even anybody around who completely understands the theory it‘s all based on.”

Jack formed a wry looking grin as he stated, “you need Vitosk don’t you?”

Once again it seemed to Jack as if Doctor Brewer was on the shy side. She let out a sigh and meekly replied, “couldn’t hurt.” Was that wounded pride in her voice?

Rockmont’s answer to Dee’s ‘request’ was not made to her. He simply picked up the phone and commanded, “Roxxie, get Colonel Winston over to my office ASAP, please ma’am.”

When the phone was cradled Jack looked at Rockmont like the man was insane. Jack just had to say it, “you don’t really think you can find him do you?”

Rockmont shrugged, “CIA has to be useful for something.”

Dee really was having a hard time believing they were even seriously discussing this, “let’s just suppose you can even find this guy. He’s not going to help us. You know, OK tried to hire him a while back and that was before he vanished. He turned us down cold as I understood it. I remember my Uncle talking about it. Sounded to me like this Russian had a pretty big chip on his shoulder.”

Jack almost laughed, “that’s definitely Yurgani.”

Rockmont stood up, “we’ll see what we’ll see Doctor Brewer. For the time being though, I suggest we all get back to work. You know we do have the Federation Starship Enterprise to invent.”

Dee seemed rather confused, “the what?”