The shuttle was a double-decker craft, two vehicles one atop the other, joined together like a pair of technological Siamese twins. The bottom one was the jet-powered Lifter. It was all fuel and engines, with a tiny cockpit perched high up on its massive blunt nose. It flew to the topmost reaches of the 215 atmosphere, more than a hundred thousand feet above the ground, and then released its piggyback partner. The Orbiter, smaller of the two mates, carried the passengers and payload on into space on the thrust of its rocket engines. Both planes landed at the airstrip, separately, to be reunited for another flight.
Standing at the airstrip's edge, Kinsman stared at the ungainly-looking pair, one atop the other. She'll never fly, Orville. Gimme a good old rocket booster and a lifting body re-entry vehicle like the Manta, the way God meant men to go into space. But he knew that this new shuttle was making space operations practical. Military men could rocket into orbit atop bellowing boosters, but businessmen and their cargoes rode the new shuttle and saved money. It was cheaper, more efficient, and the gee loads on the passengers were negligible.
Fred Durban could ride into orbit on that bird, Kinsman knew, if he was healthy enough to get out of bed.
The shuttle would carry fifty passengers on this trip. NASA was making three flights with the same bird to the completed space station, all on this one day. The entire world would watch the station's official dedication ceremonies via satellite-relayed television.
"Hey, you! What the hell are you . . ."
Kinsman turned to see an Air Policeman yelling at him from a jeep parked a dozen meters away. The AP was in crisp uniform, with gleaming helmet and dead-black sidearm buck- led to his hip. Kinsman was in his summer-weight blues. He walked slowly toward the jeep.
"Oh, sorry, Major. I couldn't see your rank with your back turned." The kid sprang out of the jeep and saluted. He dwarfed Kinsman.
"You expecting trouble, Sergeant?" Kinsman asked, returning the salute.
"Hard to say, sir. We were told some kook groups might try to stage an antigovernment demonstration. Or maybe something more violent by terrorists, like a bomb attempt."
"Well, I'm on your side. I just wanted to see the bird before everybody else got here."
"Sorry I hollered, sir."
"It's okay. Can you give me a lift back to the administra- 216 tion building parking area?"
"Yessir, sure." He waited for Kinsman to seat himself in the jeep, then sprinted around and slid under the steering wheel. As he switched on the nearly silent electric motor, the big sergeant asked incredulously, "You walked out here from the admin building, sir?"
Kinsman nodded as the salty breeze blew into his face. All the way back to the administration building he wondered at the insanity of anyone who would even think of bombing a beautiful piece of hardware like this shuttle.
The rest of the morning was a hateful blur to Kinsman. Now I know what it's like to be invaded and conquered. Crowds of strangers. Solicitous young Air Police—men and women—pointing you in the right direction. Smiling unctu- ous public relations people from NASA and the big corpora- tions taking you by the elbow and telling you how proud and happy you should be that you're here to help make this day a success.
Not one of them knew Kinsman. No one recognized his name. No one commented on the astronaut's emblem on his tunic. He was a six-foot chunk of meat to them, a statistic. I was working in orbit when you were in high school, he fumed at them silently. But they just smiled and pointed and moved him along: an anonymous visitor, a VIP, a nonperson,
Kinsman was locked into a group of forty-nine strangers and walked through all the preflight ceremonies. A brief physical exam, little more than blood pressure, heartbeat, and breathing rate. The medic giving the blood-pressure tests muttered something about everybody being so excited about flying into orbit that all the pressures were reading high. Kinsman shook his head. The equipment's miscalibrated, he thought. I'm not excited enough to raise my blood pressure.
The safety lecture was designed to soothe the nerves of jittery civilians who had never gone into orbit before. Then came a five-minute video about how to handle the brief spell of weightlessness until the shuttle docked with the space station—mainly how to use the retch bag under zero-gee conditions. And every minute of the preflight rites took place under the staring eyes of the news cameras.
Kinsman resented it all: these newcomers, these stran- gers, these moneygrubbers who had fought against any pro- 217 grams in space until their boards of directors finally became convinced that there were profits to be made Up There.
His forty-nine "shipmates" included sixteen news report- ers (eight female), three freelance writers (one a scenarist from Hollywood), eleven board members of thirteen inter- locked corporations (none of them less than fifty years old), nine NASA executives who had never been out of downtown Washington before, and ten men and women (five each) who had been chosen by national lottery to represent "average taxpayers."
They all looked excited and chattered nervously as they were marched from the briefing room, past a double column of news cameras, and out into the muggy morning sunlight. A couple of the business executives seemed to be having some quaims about the thought of actually taking off in a vehicle that was built entirely by the lowest bidders, and several of the NASA desk jockeys looked a bit green. Maybe the space-sickness video got to them. Kinsman thought.
"I thought there were going to be entertainment stars," said one of the women taxpayers.
"They're on the other flight," someone answered.
The PR guide hovering nearest them said, "Two dozen stars from various fields of entertainment will be aboard the second night, together with an equal number of senators and Congresspersons. There will also be religious leaders from all the major denominations coming up, as well."
Feeling thoroughly out of place and resentful, like an architect who is forced to serve as a clown. Kinsman climbed aboard the big glass-topped, air-conditioned bus that would take them out to the shuttle waiting on the airstrip. He took the seat that a young PR woman with a frozen smile directed him to.
