Eyes in the Sky



  Eyes in the Sky

  by Cliff Burns

  The guard's name was Chorney.

  It was printed on a triangular badge pinned to the tunic of his spotless, meticulously pressed uniform: A. Chorney.

  A for Al or Anthony or Andrew.

  A for pompous, over-efficient ass.

  "May I see your identification, sir?"

  Seething at the delay, Pete Vukovich dug into his pocket and produced his credentials, waiting as the burly soldier took his sweet time, examining the laminated card and accompanying photograph with exaggerated care. "Can we move it along, please, Corporal Chorney? You know who I am. And right now I'm running late, so if you don't mind..."

  Chorney gave him a withering look. "It's Sergeant Chorney, Mr. Vukovich. Since February. Three stripes, see?" Showing Pete the hash marks on his sleeve, giving him ample time to count them. "And they call you folks watchers, huh?"

  As far as their routine went, it was a pretty typical exchange. The guard was insolent but he was also the size of a defensive tackle and could kill him with one flick of his little toe. So Pete held his tongue and kept his temper, grinding his teeth until at last Chorney passed back his I.D., snapped him a mock salute and sent him on his way.

  He kept meaning to lay a formal complaint against the jerk but somehow never got around to it. Not sure what, if anything, would come of it and reluctant to rock the boat. To be honest, once he passed beyond that last checkpoint and entered the egg-shaped inner chamber, he rarely gave Chorney--or anything else from the outside world--another thought.

  By then, his mind was preoccupied with other, far less mundane matters.

  The air in the RVC was dry and none too fresh. It smelled of sweat, cheap cologne and over-worked machinery.

  Reese sauntered past. "Welcome back to Weirdo Central," he offered by way of a greeting. That was Reese. The man was an enigma, the wild card in the deck. A petty criminal and chronic gambler. He made all kinds of extravagant claims, bragging about how when he was on a real tear he couldn't lose. The right card or die always popped up, like he'd willed it. As far as Pete could tell, Reese's main talent appeared to be an innate ability to annoy just about everyone in the vicinity. General Murray referred to him as "our resident misanthrope" and cut him some slack for the sake of the program. But there were whispers circulating that he was hanging on by the fingernails. His scores woefully low, his intel obscure and frequently contradictory. Not good.

  Tonight the RVC was bustling, a full complement of watchers along with the usual support staff and requisite military types. No one below the rank of Major. General Philip J. Murray, their sponsor, mother hen and avenging angel, was present, conferring with his junior officers. The program was his baby and its success or failure weighed heavily on his career prospects. From the expression on his face, he was definitely feeling the strain.

  Pete's attention was drawn to a group off in one corner. They were gathered, three deep, around a television set, a big Motorola someone had wheeled in and parked by a convenient wall outlet. Technicians, mostly, two of them wrestling with a troublesome antennae, another playing with the controls, trying to get better reception. More and more people came wandering over, jockeying for position, vying for a good viewing angle.

  Pete went to see what all the fuss was about. On screen, a commentator was talking to a bespectacled man wearing the patient expression of a long-suffering saint. He noticed Reese, shouldered his way closer. "What's going on, Tom?"

  Reese grinned mirthlessly. "Tonight's the big night. Those crazy space boys are giving it one last shot. That's von Braun, selling more snake oil. He just got finished explaining how this one's got new, improved engines, performed perfectly in every test run."

  Pete scowled. "Won't those idiots ever learn? Every single one of their death machines blows up and still they keep wasting taxpayers' money."

  "But this is it. If their latest rocket-propelled coffin doesn't perform as advertised, they've shot their wad. And this time they ain't sending up no damn monkey."

  Right on cue, they cut away to a shot of the interior of the command module, jerky, crackling footage of a suited figure, strapped in, immobile, listening to the countdown along with the rest of them. A fine specimen of American manhood, selected for his physical stamina and steadiness of nerve; the best of the best, secured to a sacrificial altar, pointed at the stars.

  Pete felt sick, knowing what was about to happen but helpless to do anything to prevent it. At least tonight would be the end of it. A brave man wasn't dying in vain.

  Everyone around them was talking excitedly, some of them even laying bets, morbidly predicting how far the craft would get before becoming the world's most expensive firecracker. General Murray had to bark for silence as the countdown approached zero and switches were engaged, chambers flooded with volatile fuels, intermixing, channeled downward with tremendous force. The people in the room gasped as flames poured from the base of the rocket, streams of bright energy erupting from its powerful engines. Pete watched along with the others as the supporting clamps and restraints fell away and the craft began to ease up from the launch pad, fighting the stiff bonds of gravity, rising with reluctant grace.

  "It a miracle!" A woman next to Reese cried, clutching his arm. "He's going to make it!" Reese caught Pete's eye and winked.

  "Not in a million years!"

  Pete thought about the man in the metal capsule. They told him he would be a hero, exhaustively trained him for this moment. Half killed the guy in their efforts to find out if he could withstand the physical and mental rigors of life beyond earth. Stuck him atop a device so complex no one man could understand it. Ten thousand different people drawing up plans, conferring on the science, spending a couple of billion dollars in the process...but if you asked any single one of them how it worked, you'd get nothing back but a blank stare.

  But it wasn't working, that much was immediately clear. The bullet-shaped craft had barely cleared the gantry and was already looping back on itself, metal crumpling and then, inevitably, a massive explosion, billowing gouts of yellow-orange fire that consumed the spacecraft, launch pad and anyone unlucky enough to be within two thousand feet of the blast zone.

  Viewers in the RVC reacted with horror, recalling that there was a human being in the fiery heart of that inferno, a man who likely suffered a great deal in the long seconds it took him to succumb. Some of the women were weeping and everyone was smoking cigarettes, looking grim. But not Tommy Reese. He appeared unmoved by the tragedy.

  "So much for Smilin' Al," he quipped. Roth, one of the twerps from Recon, glared at him. "Hey, I ain't cryin' over spilled milk. Remember when Sputnik went kaputnik? At least the Russkies had the decency to cash in their chips right then and there. Not us. We gotta spend another billion bucks and charbroil a good American boy, just to prove rockets don't fly!" People were nodding and through the throng, Pete caught glimpses of von Braun, looking shell-shocked, trying to explain what had gone wrong.

  "Well, everyone, we're back in business!" A lusty roar greeted the announcement.

  Pete Vukovich drifted off, not interested in celebrating what amounted to the official end of the so-called "space age". Schadenfreude wasn't his cup of tea.

  "Sickening, isn't it?"

  Marla Dunbar stood a short distance away, so small and undemonstrative you hardly noticed her. Achieving invisibility at will, a faculty he secretly envied. The others called her "the mouse" and were always taking little digs at her, but he liked Marla--she seemed like the real deal to him, unlike Reese and a few more he could name. That was the problem with this business: it was hard to tell the charlatans from t
hose who genuinely possessed the gift.

  "You thinking about that poor astronaut? Whazzis name?"

  She shook her head. "I mean how smug everybody is. Building reliable rockets with our present technology is virtually impossible. They still haven't perfected fuel mixtures and many of the alloys are untried or--"

  He headed her off at the pass. "You don't have to convince me, kid. I got nothing against those rocket jockeys. Brave men...they'd have to be." He resisted the urge to pat her head. "But Reese is right: what we just witnessed was a--a pointless exercise and we lost a good man for absolutely no reason. Now explain to me how that makes any kind of sense."

  She looked glum. "They're saying that's it. Now the President will be forced to cancel the program."

  "About time too." Then he softened his tone. "They've been wasting vital resources on a lost cause. It's time to divert those funds into programs that have proven worth, that yield reliable, real world data."

  "You sound like our fearless leader," she muttered and he realized she was talking about Murray.

  Pete blushed, embarrassed and somewhat nettled. "I'm no super patriot, all right? I have a job to do and I do it. It's thanks to people like you and me that our nation can sleep safer at night. Is that such a terrible thing?"

  She gave him an odd look, like