CHAPTER 27

The situation they now faced had been explained to Jack over and over again. As he waited in the ante chamber, to be called for the congressional hearing, Jack was still having to listen to endless blabber about the politics they faced. He was now tuning it all out as he carefully flipped through some of the reports in front of him. While he was waiting he decided to get some real work done.

Where did they find all this junk? Jack found himself amazed at the steadily growing list of crap that was being readied for departure to his ship. Why would anyone want a box of special Hermes commemorative key chains on another planet? The bad news was that it was not the weirdest thing on the list.

There were all sorts of stuff here that had been donated to the program. Most of it had come from special ceremonies, given by cities all over the country, during the recent public relations tour. Everybody wanted to say they had sent something to another planet and they got to present it to a genuine member of the crew. Of the forty seven would be astronauts, over thirty were now involved in that tour. Jack did some quick math and if they each brought back a case of stuff from every stop then that was some serious baggage they were being loaded down with.

“Jack,” Rockmont said as he paced about, “can you at least listen to the man?”

Looking up from his reports, Jack nodded to the OK lawyer, “I heard you Jake.”

“That’s Jess,” the lawyer replied politely enough. He went on, “and do you understand exactly what this committee is?”

Jack rolled his eyes, “let me see. Dorothy will be the one with the pig tails? The wicked witch has the pointed hat and Santa Clause is the guy who lost all the weight recently?”

Rockmont dipped his head and grabbed his forehead, “Jack? Do you understand how desperate we are here?”

After closing the folder, Jack turned in his seat to face the two men who had been hounding him for the last hour, “you must be pretty desperate to let me speak in public when it counts.”

Rockmont shook his head in agreement, “that sums it up rather well. Now how about playing ball and learning what to say?”

Jess started mumbling. Jack had already pegged him well enough. If you asked the guy what time it was he’d tell you how the watch was made. Jess Greenway was a real technical type and couldn’t seem to help it. He saw details, only, but had a hard time with what they added up too, “well I wouldn’t exactly say public. This is a closed meeting.”

“Yeah,” Jack replied, “so if they decide something that will piss everybody off they won’t have to live up to it. I got that part.”

“That’s not exactly true Jack,” Rockmont stated. “They’ve felt the public pressure now. We got the bill out of the senate. Now if we can get it past this committee, then we’ll have a compatible bill between both houses of congress. That’ll get it right over to the Presidents desk and you guys are Alpha Centauri bound.”

As Jack began to chuckle it only seemed to confuse the OK lawyer, “what’s so funny Colonel?”

Jack was still snickering as he said, “just thinking of a joke. How many trips to Washington does it take to get to outer space?”

Rockmont, “Jack would you please be serious?”

Jess, “how many?”

A nasty look from the Director of NASA got Jess back to business. He cleared his throat and then looked to his cousin. Dee was sitting, quietly fuming, on a couch and had yet to say a word. Even a direct question from Jess only got a sneer.

Before that could escalate, a phone call to Rockmont got an answer that sounded every bit as frustrated as he currently was, “yeah what?” When he put the phone away, “they just brought Vitosk over from the Russian Embassy. You ready to brief him?”

Jess politely nodded and both men left the room.

Jack snickered a little more and went back to his folder. Only this time his attention was not all there, “so what’s wrong with you?”

Where Jess had failed to get a response, it was almost like Dee had been waiting to lash out at Jack. She jumped to her feet and began to pace as the welled up anger poured forth, “this was mine!”

Jack flipped a page, “what the hell do we need drinking straws and paper plates for? Do they think we’re going to fly four and half light years to have a picnic?” Only then did Jack look up, “what was that Dee?”

She stopped pacing. Dee crossed her arms and cocked her head, “you heard me Kelly.”

With a half sigh Jack closed the folder and shifted back around in his chair again. He put his elbows on his knees and got comfortable. “Well what are you taking it out on me for? I’m just as much at the mercy of these jackals as you are.”

“In case you didn’t notice Jack,” the way his name rolled off her lips sounded quite insulting, “you’re wearing a uniform. Nobody invited you guys to our little party. Now I’m sitting here watching my entire life’s work start to evaporate. Why shouldn’t I be pissed?”

Jack sat straight but, remained easy going. He shrugged the question off, “you’re still young Dee.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

That got a groan from the Marine, “I hate to burst your bubble here but you aren’t the only person who’s had to watch a life’s worth of work get snatched out from under you. Something I learned a long time ago. It all comes around. If something is up and coming, on the horizon, no act of congress is going to stop it.”

“Really think so Jack?” She said in a very short and abrupt manner.

“Yeah I really think that,” Jack replied just as assured.

She remained short, “you know who Heronas was?”

Jack sat back in his chair and thought about it. At least he pretended too at any rate. He looked as if the answer had suddenly hit him. Then he told her in no uncertain terms, “no.”

Dee was unimpressed by his theatrics, “he was a Greek engineer. He lived in the first century BC.”

“All right Dee. I’ll bite here. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“He invented the steam engine Jack,” she said with no small amount of disgust. “He took it to the powers to be and said look at all the tasks my wonderful machine can do. What wonders it can create. What doors will it open?” The sneer on her face grew, “and naturally the powers to be looked back at him and said. ‘What will we do with all the slaves? Go back yonder and invent something useful like a sundial that glows in the dark.’ As you may very well know Jack, it took the world fifteen hundred years or more to figure out he was right.”

That was an issue that Jack had yet to figure out. He had no good answer for Dee. On the one hand she had every right to be angry. This project had been a private venture, and almost exclusively hers, till the government up and carjacked it. Now the project had been led down a path where it might never reach fruition. If Jack were in her shoes he would have been pissed too.

Of course had the government not taken control then Jack would have been a simple spectator in what had been his dream. For that, he was not sorry one little bit. Maybe there was a pang of guilt there, at least as far as Dee was concerned, but definitely no sorrow. Of course all of that would be academic at best if those elected officials in that little chamber decided to close them down. At that point they would all be out in the cold.

Jack could not honestly say that all of this political garbage made any sense to him. Jack considered himself above all else, an engineer, a scientist, and a pilot. If those things were the sum of his existence then just maybe he would have been as angry as Dee was. Jack was also a Marine who had sworn an oath to protect certain things. They were little things like the Constitution of his nation. That document said that these hearings mattered. It said that politics was a part of the process. It said that everyone got to have their say.

Ever since his conversation with Rockmont, on this matter, Jack’s mind had been chewing on a lot. Even if he accepted that the due process of government had to turn, he could never make himself understand why there were certain people so fanatically against this mission. The Apollo Program had certainly racked up it’s fare share of critics but none of them had taken to the streets over the matter. Those people opposing the Hermes Program were not voicing concerns about what they saw as a mistake. They acted as if they were fighting against pure evil!

There was a certain logic to the rational arguments against Hermes. Jack would admit that much. The United States was still recovering from the war. Adequate housing was still in short supply. Lots of cities desperately needed a face lift in general. Plenty of bridges were still lying on the bottom of the rivers they used to span. Power lines had not yet reached many rural areas and the generation stations were inadequate to cover the growth rates.

Everyone knew these problems but even if Hermes didn’t go, would that solve them? The simple fact was that life on planet Earth was never going to be perfect. Even before the war, before the old ways had been blown to hell and back, in what many people looked on now as a golden age, there were plenty of problems. It all boiled down too the fact that problems were always going to exist and there would always be people who were not happy with the way things were.

Did eliminating a historical venture solve those problems? The only answer Jack could reach was that it would not. Space Exploration could only help. At least that was how Jack saw it. If nothing else, it told people that life went on. It was a signal to everyone that despite all of those problems, we as people, were willing to endure and push forward instead of looking back. It said we would not let our problems consume us. This was, of course, the moral high ground. There were other aspects to the argument though.

Apollo had generated all kinds of new technologies and techniques that would have never existed otherwise. It had created entire new industries that made products that had practical applications in daily use. Industries such as the medical field, communications industries, transportation, computer, and even agriculture all became direct recipients. Some of the benefits were not direct, or obvious, but more like ripples in a pond that flowed forever outward in widening circles. Many of the results were less than dramatic by themselves but, their collective weight had been felt.

Was it any coincidence that something like the internet came along in the wake of Apollo? Directly, the consequences had been in the development of small and useful solid state electronics. Those had led to the personal computer becoming a house hold fixture. Once that became the case people naturally wanted them all linked up.

Indirectly, the improvement in rockets had worried the military. They wound up building a communications infrastructure that could withstand an attack by those rockets. Once that combined with the sudden proliferation of personal computers then the network was born and the internet became reality. All of it owed thanks to the Apollo program even if nobody ever realized it.

When you considered the vast scope of things that the Apollo Program did change, one had to consider the old line quite unfair. They should have been saying, ‘we can put a man on the moon but why can’t we on Mars? Then maybe we’ll get better Velcro and computers that don’t lock up.’ The thought made Jack quietly smirk.

Dee noticed and was almost resentful, “what’s so funny?”

Fortunately the door opened and Rockmont stuck his head in, “they’re ready Doctor, Colonel.”