Apollo's Outcasts - By Allen Steele
On my sixteenth birthday, I went to the Moon.
"Jamey, wake up." My father's voice was soft and persistent in the darkness of my bedroom. His hand was on my shoulder, gently prodding me out of sleep. "C'mon, son...you need to get up."
"Huh? What?" It took a few seconds for me to realize I wasn't dreaming; he really was there, and he really did want me to get up. I pried open my eyes to see him sitting on the edge of my bed, silhouetted against a sliver of light seeping in through the half-open bedroom door. It wasn't morning yet; there was no reason for me to get up so early. "Lemme 'lone," I mumbled, rolling over. "Wanna sleep."
"I'm sorry, but you have to get up." Dad shook me again, and when I didn't budge he let out a sigh. "Lights on," he said.
My bedside reading lamp and the ceiling light came on at once. "What are you doing?" I groaned, wincing against the unwelcome glare. I pulled a pillow over my face. "It's too early..."
"I know it is, but you have to get out of bed." Dad took the pillow away from me. "And you need to hurry. I want you dressed and in your mobil in five minutes." His voice gained a no-nonsense edge as he stood up. "I mean it, Jamey. Up and at it...now."
He left the room before I could negotiate with him, or even ask why he was doing this. I gave myself a few seconds to rub the sand from my eyes and take a deep breath, then I told the bed to elevate to sitting position. My crutches were leaning against the wall where I always left them when I went to bed. Swinging my legs over the side, I took hold of the crutches and used them to help me stand up.
On the way to the bathroom, I noticed the calendar on my desk terminal: 12:07 AM AUG. 22 2097. What the...? I thought. It's midnight! Sure, it was my birthday, but there was no reason for him to wake me up this early.
Across the hall, I heard Melissa yell something nasty. At first I thought she was saying it to Dad, but then I heard Jan's voice and realized that Dad had given my oldest sister the task of waking up my next-oldest sister. Smart guy, my father. Melissa might be able to argue with him, but there was no way she could win a fight with Jan. But why did my sisters also have to get up, too?
Too tired to think, I put everything on automatic. A quick trip to the toilet, then I hobbled back into the bedroom and told the closet to give me something to wear. I realized that it must be unseasonably cool outside when it extended to me a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Yesterday had been pretty hot, though, and I figured that I'd probably be switching to shorts and a T-shirt by lunch time. For now, though, I'd take the home comp's advice and dress warm. I continued to lean on my crutches until I shoved my feet into a pair of mocs, then made my way over to my mobil and carefully lowered myself into it.
The mobil woke up as soon as its padded seat registered my weight. "Good morning, Jamey," it said. "You're up early."
"Tell me 'bout it."
"I'm not sure what I can tell you. If you'd be a little more specific..."
"Never mind." I yawned and shook my head, and a sharp beep from the mobil's biosensors warned me that this small motion put a slight but noticeable strain on my upper spine. I ignored the warning as I folded my crutches and leaned over to lock them in place on the mobil's left side. "Living room," I said.
"Certainly." It started to roll forward on its two fat tires before it abruptly came to a halt. "I've just received instructions from your father. He's told me to tell you that you're to pack an overnight bag with a toilet kit and a change of clothes. And you're to hurry, too."
Okay, this was too much. "Dad!" I called out. "Why do you want me to pack a bag?"
No answer. From Melissa's room, I could hear her bickering with Jan; apparently she was even more cranky about all this than I was. I spotted my prong where I'd left it on my bedside table, and went manual to swing the mobil around so that I could pick it up. Fitting the prong into my right ear, I said, "Dad? Why do you want me to bring an overnight bag?"
"We're making a little trip, son," he replied. "You'll need to take along a few things."
"Where are we...?"
"I'll tell you and your sister later." His voice became stern. "Please don't argue with me. Just do it."
When my father spoke like that, I knew better than to quarrel with him. So I muted the prong and turned toward the closet, where I used the mobil's manipulator arms to pull out a nylon bag and stuff it with clothes. Figuring we weren't going far, I chose cargo shorts, a light shirt, and sandals; as an afterthought, I threw my trunks and swim fins into the bag, too. Maybe this was a surprise birthday trip to Virginia Beach or somewhere else where I might be able to get in the water. Swimming was my sport, and I knew Dad wouldn't take me anywhere that I'd have to completely depend upon my mobil to get around.
I was only half-right, but I didn't know it then.
I unplugged my pad from its solar charger and stuck it in my pocket. Another visit to the bathroom for my toothbrush and my medicine box, which I tossed into the bag before I zipped it shut, then the mobil carried me out of my room. Melissa's door was half-open; she'd put on a fashionably short skirt and a halter top that showed off as much of her breasts as she dared. Looking good for the boys was a big deal to her, but her uncombed dark hair resembled a rat's nest. She glanced up from putting on her sneakers to give me a scowl that was pure hatred. Apparently she figured that her little brother was to blame for being hustled out of bed at such an ungodly hour. I ignored her as the mobil rolled past her room.
Jan's door was shut, but I could hear her moving around. I recalled what my father had said to me: I'll tell you and your sister later. Sister, not sisters; singular instead of plural. So Jan already knew what was going on. Which made sense, if you knew my family. Although she was only two years older than Melissa and four years older than me--make that about three-and-a-half, counting today's birthday--Jan was almost as much of a surrogate mother as an eldest sister. Dad never remarried after my mother died, which happened so long ago that I had no memory of her, and lately he'd come to depend on his first-born daughter to shepherd his two younger children.
Jan must have heard my mobil, because she opened the door as I rolled past her room. She wore slacks and a sleeveless T-shirt, and was tying back her long blond hair. Before she graduated from high school last year, some of her classmates used to ask me whether she was available. If you have to ask, I'd tell them, then you haven't got a chance with her... which was both a good dodge and also the truth. Jan was as serious-minded as she was beautiful; she was going to the local community college when she should have been at MIT or Stanford simply because it allowed her to continue living at home and help Dad take care of Melissa and me. Mainly me; Melissa wasn't the one who'd be good as dead if she fell out of her chair when no one else was around. So getting and keeping a boyfriend was the farthest thing from Jan's mind.
"You've got your--?" she started to say, then she spotted the bag in my lap and nodded. "Oh, okay...good. Dad's waiting for you."
"Yeah, I know." I stopped the mobil. "What's going on?" I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper. "Where are we going?"
Jan didn't say anything, but instead regarded me with a solemn gaze with which I was familiar. A long time ago, we'd reached an agreement: ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. I knew at once that this was one of those times. "You need to hurry," she finished, turning away from me. "I'll be there in a minute." And then she glanced back and smiled. "Oh, and by the way...happy birthday."
"Thanks," I said, even as a chill went down my back. I knew that Jan hadn't answered my question because Dad had told her to lie to me if I asked. And because she wasn't going to do that, this meant that whatever was happening here was serious. Really serious.
The living room was dark save for the reading lamp above Dad's lounger, and I noticed that the curtains had been drawn. The kitchen lights were on, though, and I saw that the back door was open. I took me a second to put all this together. Although the mobil could climb down the back steps if necessary, the front door had a ramp for my convenience. So if the living room lights were off and Dad had propped open the kitchen door, that meant that he didn't want any of our neighbors to see that we were about to leave.
Nonetheless, I was more curious than apprehensive as I rolled through the kitchen to the back door. The night was colder than I expected, the first chill of approaching autumn setting upon our suburban Maryland neighborhood of two-century wood-frame houses. Our van was parked in the driveway, its side-hatch already open and its ramp extended. In the luminescence cast by the dome light, I spotted the top of my father's grey-haired head. He appeared to be kneeling beside the open driver's side door, working on something beneath the dashboard.
Dr. Stanley Barlowe was a scientist, but he'd never been much of a mechanic; what was he doing down there? Dad raised his head to peer over the front seats as my mobil lowered its auxiliary climbing wheels and began to slowly descend the back steps. "Jamey...good! You have your bag? Excellent." He pointed the screwdriver in his hand toward the van's rear compartment. "Get on in. I'll find your sisters as soon as I'm done here."
"Dad, why are we...?"
"Not now." His head disappeared again; the quiet snap of a service panel being shut, then he stood up and walked around the back of the van, the household tool kit in his left hand. "Climb on in. I'll be back in a sec."
I'd maneuvered the mobil into the van and had just finished clamping its wheels within the floor chocks when Jan appeared. She was carrying a small bag of her own, and she gave me a nervous smile that was meant to be reassuring--and wasn't--before she opened the back gate and tossed the bag into the back. "You okay there?" she asked as she strode past the side hatch on her way to the front passenger door. "Want me to put your bag back with mine?"
"No, that's okay." I liked having the bag in my lap; it gave me some small comfort. A quick glance at the kitchen door; neither Dad nor Melissa were in sight. "Jan, please...will you tell me what...?"
"No!" Melissa yelled. "I don't want to go on some stupid trip! It's the middle of the night and I just want to sleep!"
She appeared in the kitchen door, hauling a sequined pink overnight bag as if it was loaded with bricks, complaining every step of the way. Dad must have made her change; the teenage-slut outfit was gone, replaced by jeans and a hooded pullover. But her hair was still a mess, and it must have irritated her to no end that she was being forced to leave the house before she had a chance to spend an hour primping at her mirror just in case she happened to meet the boy of her dreams.
Dad was right behind her. "You're going, MeeMee--" our family nickname for her, which she detested, "and that's final." He planted a hand against her shoulder, not exactly shoving her down the steps but not giving her any choice in the matter either. "Now get in the van with your brother and sister."
"But I haven't even showered...!"
"Melissa." Jan jerked a thumb toward the back seat next to where I'd parked my mobil. "Get in. Now."
That shut her up. Melissa might give Dad trouble, and she seldom listened to me, but when Jan put a certain tone in her voice, she knew better than to argue. Seventeen years of futile resistance had taught Melissa a few lessons she'd never forgotten; Jan wasn't a bully, but she didn't back down either. A final, melodramatic sigh, then Melissa marched around behind the van, taking a second to hurl her pink bag into the back before yanking open the rear passenger door and climbing in to sit beside me. A cold glare in my direction--say anything and I'll murder you--was meant to keep me meek and quiet, but I couldn't help myself.
"Nice bag," I said.
"Drop dead." She pulled out her pad and started to tap something into it. No doubt she was about to text her friends--all 78,906 of them--and tell them her tale of woe.
Dad saw this. "Melissa...no, you can't do that." Before she could object, he reached forward and took the pad from her. "I'm sorry, but this is something you can't talk about."
She squawked about this, but he wasn't listening to her. He took the pad into the house and returned a moment later without it. Melissa could always buy another one from the next vending machine she saw, of course, but as my father closed the back door and used his remote to lock it, I realized again that secrecy was something he was taking very seriously.
Dad slammed shut the van's side hatch and rear gate, then climbed into the driver's seat. He thumbed the ignition; the engine beeped twice, but he didn't switch on the headlights. Instead, he placed his hands on the wheel and slowly pulled forward, moving down our short driveway to the street so unobtrusively that even the neighbor's cat couldn't have been awakened.
But when he turned right and drove past our house, I noticed that he'd left the bedroom lights on. That wasn't like him...unless he was deliberately trying to give the impression that we were still home. And it wasn't until we were away from the house that he finally switched on the headlights.
"Okay," Melissa said, "I've had it. I've really had it. I want to know..."
"Be quiet, MeeMee, and listen to me." Dad glanced back in my direction. "You, too, Jamey. This is important, and I only want to say it once." He paused, taking a deep breath as he slowly drove through our darkened neighborhood. "I know this is unexpected, and I know you'd rather still be in bed. If there was any other way..."
He stopped himself, then went on. "Something has come up, and you've got to leave. Not tomorrow, but now...right now. So I can't have any arguments or disagreements from anyone. I just need for you to do what I say, with no ifs or buts about it. Understand?"
Jan nodded, even through his words weren't meant for her. Melissa opened her mouth to protest, but then she caught Dad staring at her through the rear-view mirror. Apparently she realized that this was a bad time to be hard-to-please MeeMee, because she sulkily folded her arms across her chest and nodded.
"I understand," I said, "but...why won't you tell us what's going on?"
My father didn't respond, but Jan did. "Trust me, mon petit frere...the less you know, the safer you'll be."
That's when I began to get scared.
Burtonsville, the town where we lived, is just north of Washington, DC, about a quarter of the way to Baltimore. Dad got on I-95 just outside of town and headed south. This was the route he normally commuted to his job at the International Space Consortium's American headquarters in DC. He went to hover mode and retracted the wheels, but he didn't switch to auto. Instead, he kept his hands on the steering wheel, carefully watching the dashboard display so that he kept within the 80 mph speed limit. That wasn't legal; cars on the interstate were required to be navigated by the local traffic control system unless there was an emergency.
Melissa noticed this, too. "You're going to get pulled over," she said, smug in her knowledge that our father was breaking the law.
"No, I'm not," Dad replied, not looking back at her. "I removed the GPS and traffic control chips before we left and put in ringers instead. So far as anyone is concerned, we're still parked in the driveway." He pointed to the traffic scanners we passed every hundred yards. "When they tag us, the phony chips identify us as another car and tell the system we're on auto. So long as I maintain a constant speed and don't make any strange moves..."
"It'll think we're someone else and won't be able to track us," I finished. "But why...?"
Jan gave me one of her looks--no questions, Jamey--and I shut up. At least I knew what my father had been doing when I caught him beneath the dashboard. And I had little doubt as to where he'd been able to lay his hands on outlaw tech like this; ISC was full of guys who could make ringers in their basement workshops. But Dad had always been the law-abiding type. Why would he do something like this?
From behind us, the warble of a siren. Turning my head, I looked back through the rear window to see flashing blue lights. A Maryland state trooper, approaching fast.
"Dad..." Jan had spotted it, too. "Do you think...?"
"No. Take it easy." Without reducing speed, my father moved quickly and easily from the center lane to the right, just as cars under traffic control would do. But he seemed to be holding his breath as the police cruiser came up on us. For a moment, I thought my father was wrong and that we were about to be pulled over. But then the cop flashed by...
And right behind it, the two hovertanks and three troop carriers the state trooper was escorting. We hadn't seen them earlier because the vehicles were in camouflage mode, darkened pitch-black so as to blend in with the night. Probably coming from the Navy base in Aberdeen.
Why would they be out on the highway at this time of night with a state police escort? I was about to ask this when Dad let out his breath. He glanced at Jan, and she slowly nodded.
"You were right," she said, looking straight ahead. "It's started."
"What's going on here?" Melissa yelled.
"MeeMee..." Dad began.
"Don't MeeMee me!" she snapped, which should have been funny but wasn't. She slapped the back of Dad's seat so hard that he jerked; the van swerved for an instant, and I found myself praying that the traffic control system wouldn't notice the slight deviation. "I want to know what...what this is all about!"
"Melissa..." My father started to reply, then shook his head. "Just shut up, okay." Melissa stared at him; he'd never spoken to her that way before. "Radio on," he said after a moment of stunned silence. "Scan news channels."
The radio skipped through the channels, pausing every few seconds so that we could listen to one news station or another. Baseball and soccer scores, a local weather forecast, a couple of late-night talk shows. "Nothing," Jan said after a few minutes.
"Didn't think so," Dad replied. "They're not going to make any sort of announcement until they've got the Capitol locked down." He gripped the yoke a little harder as he stared straight ahead. "They'll be closing the Beltway soon. I just hope we're not too late."
I-95 had just merged with the I-495 Beltway leading around Washington, DC; we were headed southeast, following the signs to the Maryland coast. I noticed that there was little traffic, unusual for the Beltway even in the early hours of a Wednesday morning. It wasn't hard to imagine armed soldiers taking up positions at the interstate ramps, forming roadblocks to prevent any vehicles from getting on the Beltway. But why...?
"The president is dead," my father said.
For a second or two, neither Melissa nor I knew what to say. Then I found my voice. "What...what did you say? How do you...?"
"I got a call from...from a friend...just before I woke you up. He told me that President Wilford died a few hours ago."
Dad spoke as matter-of-factly as if he was discussing the mineralogical contents of main-belt asteroids, his usual line of work, but he couldn't have shocked us more. "The president's dead?" Melissa shrieked. "What...how...?"
"I don't know that yet, but...well, something is going on." Dad shook his head. "It's too much to explain now, but..."
His voice trailed off, but it wasn't hard for me to guess the rest. "It's about the vice president, isn't it?" I asked.
"Uh-huh. Lina Shapar will be sworn in as president, if she hasn't already. And according to people I know, she's going to declare a national emergency."
"Which they haven't done yet," Jan added, "only because they're still getting everything in place. But it's coming, and when that happens..." She looked back at me again. "Dad will be in danger. We'll all be in danger."
"But why?" Melissa demanded. "I don't get it? What's this got to do with us?"
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Melissa lived in her own world of clothes and boys and sock bands, and rarely paid much attention to anything else, even when it was happening inside her own house. "This has something to do with the ISC petition you signed, doesn't it, Dad?"
My father didn't reply at once. In the soft blue light of the dashboard, his face was grim. "Yes, it does," he said after a few moments. "Shapar didn't like the position we took. From what I've heard, she considers everyone who signed it to be a political foe...and she's not the sort of person who tolerates opposition. If things happen the way I think they will..."
"They're going to be coming after him." Jan twisted around in her seat to look back at me. "Shapar is going to order Dad to be put under arrest, along with anyone else she considers to be an enemy." She paused. "And they may come after us, too. As collateral, to make sure that he cooperates."
"But they can't do that!" Melisa protested. "It's against the law!"
"You're right, MeeMee...sorry, Melissa, I mean. Not under the Constitution, at least. But Lina Shapar has never been a big fan of constitutional law and neither are her cronies, so there's no reason to believe that she's going to let a small matter like the Bill of Rights get in their way."
I was gazing out the window as Jan and Melissa spoke. In the far distance, beyond the rooftops of Washington's northeast neighborhoods, I could make out the spotlight-illuminated dome of the Capitol, the Washington Monument rising behind it like a tiny white pencil. The sight was familiar to me, and its serenity made it hard to believe that a crisis was unfolding within a stone's throw of these historic buildings.
The radio was still on, turned to a late-night sports talk show. A couple of guys were discussing the Orioles when a new voice broke in: "We interrupt this broadcast for a special news report from..."
"Turn up the volume," my father said.
The radio obeyed, and another voice came on. "We have received official word from the White House that President George F. Wilford is dead. Repeat...George F. Wilford, the president of the United States, died tonight in Washington, DC. White House Press Secretary Andreas Sullivan confirmed the initial Secret Service reports, and has stated that the president appears to be a victim of assassination carried out by a lone gunman who managed to penetrate White House security...."
"Oh my God!" Melissa's eyes were wide. "He was shot!"
"I don't think so." Dad's voice was very quiet, almost lost beneath the radio. "That's what they're saying, but that's not what my friend told me."
I stared at him. "How do you know? I mean, how could they know? The White House..."
"Quiet, Jamey." Jan reached over to turn up the volume.
"...Reports that Vice President Lina Shapar was summoned to the White House from her official residence at the Naval Observatory, where she was sworn in as the new president by Supreme Court Chief Justice Marco Gonzales. In response to the crisis, President Shapar has declared a national emergency, and issued an executive order placing the District of Columbia and its environs under military curfew. She has requested that the FBI and federal marshals immediately detain any individuals who may have played a role in President Wilford's death..."
"I'm on the list." My father's voice was little more than a whisper. "You can count on that."
"But you're not involved." I stared at the back of his head.
"You couldn't be involved," Melissa insisted, almost as if to reassure herself. "You're not, are you?"
"No, Melissa, I'm not...but neither was Wilford assassinated." He let out his breath. "Look, I can't tell you anything else. At least not while there's still a chance that we may be arrested. Right now, the main thing is to get you kids to a place where you'll be safe."
"Where's that?" I asked.
A tense smile. "The last place they'd ever think of looking for you."
The fifteen minutes it took for us to get the rest of the way out of Washington were tense. Just before we left the Beltway, we spotted another military convoy, this one in the northbound lanes of I-495. My father continued driving as steadily as he could, maintaining the pretense that our van was under local traffic control, and the vehicles swept past us without incident. We left the Beltway at the New Carrolton exit and continued east on Route 50, and when we didn't see any more convoys we were able to breathe a little easier...but not much.
We listened to the radio, occasionally changing channels in an effort to get more info. By then all the stations had interrupted their normal routine to carry news about President Wilford's death. A lot of reporters must have been woken out of bed for this, but none of them seemed to have learned much more than what had been reported in the first few minutes. In the meantime, the White House imposed a press blackout until 10 a.m. local time, when President Shapar was scheduled to address the nation from the Oval Office.
I wanted to go online and see if I could learn anything from sites I regularly visited, but Dad stopped me. That would mean I'd have to uplink my pad through the van's satphone; like the GPS and traffic control systems, this could allow someone who might be searching for us to track our location. So we had to rely on normal radio stations for what little information we had.
We passed through Annapolis on our way toward the Chesapeake Bay. When we approached the long causeway that would take us to the other side of the bay, Dad headed for the cash-only tollbooth even though our van had all-state plates with toll stickers. The guy sitting in the booth was only half-awake; he didn't appear to notice that my father had stopped to hand him a few dollars when we could have driven straight through.
"Why did you do that?" Melissa asked after we moved through the tolls and entered the causeway. "We have stickers."
"Because the scanner would have recorded our plates," I said before Dad or Jan could reply.
Dad nodded. Jan gazed pensively at the dark waters of the Chesapeake Bay below us. Once again, Melissa asked where we were going, but neither of them would answer her.
On the other side of the causeway, Dad turned south on Route 50. As before, he continued to driving on manual, not switching to traffic control even though we were on a four-lane highway. There were only a few other cars on the road this time of morning, and there wasn't much to see except mile markers and motels. Now and then I'd catch sight of one the bay's many inlets and rivers; they glowed beneath the light of the full moon, an omen whose portent I'd only later appreciate.
After awhile I cranked back the mobil's seat and shut my eyes. I don't know how long I slept, but I was awakened by the soft jar of the van's wheels being lowered. Dad had taken the van out of hover mode; that meant that we must be on a road that didn't have a traffic control system. Sure enough, when I looked out the window, I spotted a sign stating we were now on Route 13. And a moment later, another one: WELCOME TO VIRGINIA.
"Where are we?" I asked, elevating my seat back to sitting position. Melissa had gone to sleep as well, but she didn't wake up when I did.
"The Outer Banks." Jan had pulled up a map of the Virginia coast on the van's dashboard screen. As I peered over her shoulder, she pointed to a long, narrow cape that separated the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. "We'll be there soon," she said. "If you look out MeeMee's window, you'll see where we're going."
I turned my head to the left. Through the windows on Melissa's side of the van, I could just make the dark expanse of the ocean. It was just a little after 3 a.m., so the sun hadn't come up yet, but I could see the tiny lights of ships heading to and from the Atlantic Sea Wall locks just south of us. If Dad was heading for Virginia Beach, where our family occasionally went for vacations, he'd picked an odd way to get there; a little shorter, maybe, but not as quick as if we'd stayed on the interstate.
Then I spotted something: a long string of lights, low upon the horizon, which extended straight out toward the ocean. Flashing red and green against the night sky, they resembled those you'd see on an airport runway, only the single row they formed was much longer. I'd just realized what they were when the van slowed to make a left turn. As Dad pulled onto a side road, I caught sight of a sign:
WALLOPS ISLAND SPACE LAUNCH CENTER
INTERNATIONAL SPACE CONSORTIUM
RESTRICTED AREA - AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY
"That's the magcat!" I exclaimed.
That woke up Melissa. "Whu...where?" she said sleepily. "Are we there yet?"
"Yes, we are," Dad said. "And you're right, Jamey...that's the magcat. There's where you and your sisters are going."
Because my father was a planetary geologist who worked for the ISC--along with other reasons--I knew a little more about space than the average guy. Perhaps not quite as much as Jan, who actually aspired to go out there, but I'd picked up a few things over the years, not only from dinner table conversations but also from books and vids I'd downloaded into my pad.
One of the things I'd learned was a good working knowledge of ISC launch facilities. There were three in the United States: the primary one at Cape Canaveral, Florida; a slightly smaller one on Matagorda Island in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast; and the smallest, located on Wallops Island, Virginia.
A long time ago, this place had been operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a launch site for experimental rockets. After NASA was dissolved, ISC took over Wallops and expanded it to become the major East Coast launch spaceport. Rising ocean levels had damaged many of the launch pads at the old Kennedy Space Center before the Florida stretch of the Atlantic Sea Wall was finished, but Wallops had been protected by the mid-Atlantic part of the wall, and for awhile it and Matagorda Island had served as the two biggest US launch sites.
And the magcat was the principal means of sending people and cargo into space.
Something occurred to me just then. A thought that nearly stopped my heart.
"Dad," I asked, "why are you taking us to the magcat?"
He didn't reply, but instead stared straight ahead.
"Dad, are you putting us on the magcat?"
"Oh, no...no way." Melissa was fully awake by then. "There's no way I'm going to..."
"Hush, Melissa." Jan opened her armrest compartment and pulled out a laminated card. She placed it on the dashboard below the windshield. "Whatever you do, just be quiet."
The van was approaching another causeway, this one above a river. It was blocked by a security gate. A uniformed guard stepped out of a booth beside the gate and held up his hand. Dad came to stop beside him; rolling down his window, he held up his ID badge. The guard briefly inspected it, gave the dashboard card a quick glance, then nodded and walked back into the booth. The gate opened and Dad drove through.
Jan let out her breath. "We're in. So much for the hard part."
"No...that's just the beginning." Dad looked back at me. "All right, Jamey...now you and Melissa can hear the rest. Yes, I'm putting all three of you on the magcat. There's a cargo shuttle scheduled for takeoff at 5 a.m., just about--" he checked the windshield display "--an hour and a half from now. All three of you are going to be on it."
My fingers involuntarily curled around my mobil's armrests. "Dad...you know I can't ride that thing. It'll kill me."
One of the reasons why I was interested in space was because I was born on the Moon. However, I'd always figured that vids and books would be the closest I'd ever get to going there. Because I'd spent my infancy in low gravity, my bones were weaker than normal. Lunar Birth Deficiency Syndrome was why I'd spent almost my entire life in a mobil. I couldn't walk without crutches, and it was only in the neutral-buoyancy environment of a swimming pool that I was able to move about without assistance.
Sure, I could have been fitted with an exoskeleton, but they were incredibly expensive, and besides, I didn't want to go through life looking like a robot. So I'd tried to build up my muscles over the years, and swimming laps had put me in pretty good shape. There wasn't much anyone could do about my bones, though. Even with calcium supplements and other medicines I routinely took for LBDS, I'd break my legs if I tried to run, and a hearty bear hug could crush my ribs.
Mom made a major mistake when she decided to go to the Moon with Dad, but it wasn't her fault; neither of them realized she was pregnant. I was beginning to suspect that Dad was about to make a similar mistake, but this time consciously.
"Relax," he said. "We've taken that into account. There's a way of sending you up that won't hurt you. Trust me...you'll see."
We were on the causeway by then, and I could see the magcat more clearly. No longer simply a row of lights, it was now an elevated monorail nearly two and a half miles long that extended straight out toward the Sea Wall. Until then, I'd regarded it much the way just as about anything else I'd read about. A nice bit of engineering, but nothing I'd ever thought I'd have to experience myself.
Suddenly, that changed. Now the magcat was utterly terrifying.
I didn't reply to what my father said. I just hoped that he was right.
We reached the other side of the causeway and drove past marshland and saltwater ponds; Dad had left his window half-open, and a cool sea breeze drifted in. After a mile or so we turned left onto another road, this one running parallel to the beach. A chain-link fence barred our way, but the scanner mounted above its gate read our dashboard card and opened the gate for us.
A half-mile down the road, we entered the launch center. We drove past administration buildings, the containment dome of the fusion reactor that powered the magcat, and three giant spacecraft hangars--the doors of two were shut, and the third was open and empty--until we reached a semicircular building with a control tower rising from its domed roof. TERMINAL, its sign read.
Dad entered the parking lot, but he didn't head for the front entrance. Instead, he drove around back to the employee lot. Two cars were parked next to a rear door; a small group of people stood near them, apparently waiting for us. Dad brought the van to a halt beside them; as he got out and walked over to them, Jan opened the side hatch and lowered the ramp for me. Melissa reluctantly removed our bags from the back; her uncustomary silence told me that she was just as frightened as I was.
I hadn't yet received my last surprise this morning. The next one came when I told my mobil to take me toward the people waiting for us. The group included three kids, and among them was someone I knew well.
"Logan?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
Logan grinned at me. "Same thing as you, I think."
Logan Marguiles was my best friend. We'd known each other for as long as I could remember; his father was another ISC senior administrator, and our families were close. We were classmates at school. I'd seen little of him since the summer trimester had ended last month, but that wasn't unusual; his family traveled more than mine did. I expected that we'd be on the swim team again when the fall trimester began next month.
It was looking like it would be awhile before either of us swam relay again.
Dr. Marguiles was talking to my father. Logan's mother was with them, and she was wiping tears from her face. Another pair of grownups was nearby, kneeling beside the other two kids. The boy was about two or three years younger than Logan and me, and his sister couldn't have been any older than eight or nine; I'd never seen either of them before.
Logan nodded to Jan and Melissa. Jan smiled back at him while Melissa pointedly looked away; it was obvious which of my sisters liked my friend and which didn't. Stepping closer to me, he squatted beside my mobil.
"Guess your dad signed the same petition as mine did," he said quietly.
"Looks like it," I whispered back. Logan and I didn't often talk about what our fathers did; for us, ISC was just the place where they went to work every day. But we knew about the petition, and Logan must have learned that it made his father just as much a marked man as mine was. "I'm getting the feeling they worked this out ahead of time, just in case."
Logan raised an eyebrow. "He didn't tell you?"
I shook my head. "Only Jan knew. I'm just the little brother, remember?" I glanced at Melissa. "But I don't blame him for not letting MeeMee in on it..."
"Oh, hell, no! Not unless you want it all over DC by lunchtime..."
"I heard that!" Melissa said, still not looking at us.
Logan ignored her. "Looks like they planned this in advance." Lowering his voice, he cocked his head toward the other kids standing nearby. "Same for their folks. They work at ISC, too."
"Yeah, okay, I get that," I said. "But who ever thought Wilford would be assassinated and Shapar would take over?"
Logan gazed at me evenly. "Who said that the president was assassinated?"
"It's on the radio. The White House..."
Realizing what I was saying, I stopped myself. Logan slowly nodded. "There's more here than meets the eye," he murmured.
I was about to reply when Dad turned away from Logan's folks and started walking toward us. Jan followed him, and he paused to take Melissa by the arm. Logan excused himself as they approached my mobil; he knew a family meeting when he saw it coming.
"Here's where I'm going to have to leave you," Dad said. As usual, he got straight to the point, but even though my father wasn't the sentimental type I couldn't help but notice that his voice was choked. "You're in good hands, and when you get to where you're going, there's going to be people who will..."
"I don't understand." Melissa was both scared and impatient. "Where are you sending us?"
Clueless as always, she hadn't figured it out yet. "We're going to the space station," I told her before Dad could reply.
"No, Jamey," Dad said. "You're going to the Moon."
Now it was my turn to be surprised. No...surprised isn't the right word. Shocked? Stunned? I'm not sure there's even a word for what I felt at that instant.
When Dad told us that we were going to board a shuttle, I'd figured that it was one bound for Station America. Certainly it was big enough to take in six kids; more than three hundred people lived on the giant wheel in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above Hawaii. And since it was visited almost every day by passenger shuttles, no one would notice one more scheduled arrival.
But...the Moon? I opened my mouth to say something, but the words refused to come out. I wasn't the only one who was speechless. Melissa had gone pale; she swayed on her feet, and for a second or two I thought she was going to faint. Jan wasn't surprised; she'd known all along what Dad and his friends were planning.
"I can't...I can't..." I finally managed to stammer.
"Yes, you can...and you will." Dad knelt down beside me, gently put his hand on my wrist. "There's no other place for you to go. The government has extradition treaties with just about any other country where we might send you, and they could easily pull you off Station America...and I have no doubt it'd be only a day or two before they found out that you were there. If I could send you guys all the way to Mars, I would..."
"The Mars colony is too small," Jan murmured. "Even if we had a launch window, it'd take months for us to get there."
"Right." Dad nodded. "Mars is impossible, and the space station is only a temporary solution. But Apollo is big enough for you to disappear into, and even if the government finds out you're there, it's under international control." A grim smile. "And believe me, I have friends there who'd sooner walk out an airlock than hand you over."
"But Mom..." I stopped myself before I could say the rest: But Mom died there. She gave up her life to save mine, and I've been haunted by that my whole life....
"If Mom were still alive, she'd welcome you and your sisters with open arms." There were tears in the corners of his eyes; it was hard for me to see that, so I quickly looked away. I knew that he'd never remarried because Mom was the only woman he'd ever loved; the couple of girlfriends he'd had since her death had only reinforced his loyalty to her memory. "And the people up there you'll meet knew her, so..."
The terminal's back door opened and a man about my father's age stuck his head out. "We're ready," he announced. "You need to hurry...launch is scheduled for one hour from now."
I ignored him. "Why can't you go?"
"There's only six seats available. If we can get on another shuttle, we will. But until then...well, so long as they're searching for us, they're not going to looking for you." Dad glanced at Logan's folks and the parents of the two other kids. "We're getting out of here as soon as you lift off. With any luck, we'll be a thousand miles away by the time you reach orbit."
I rather doubted that--the shuttle would be in orbit only a few minutes after it left the island--but I let him get away with the exaggeration. He gave my shoulder a fond squeeze, the closest thing he dared to giving me a hug without hurting me. "I'll get in touch with you guys as soon as I can," he said as he stood up, speaking to Jan and Melissa as well as me. "And I'll bring you back home when..."
His voice trailed off. He didn't know when we'd be able to come home; he knew that, and so did we. Or at least Jan and I did; I wasn't sure if Melissa yet realized the full extent of our situation. But it wasn't going to be any time soon; of that, I was certain.
Dad gave Jan a brief hug; she was dry-eyed, but her mouth was trembling. Melissa was angry, and for a moment I thought she was going to throw a hissy fit and stalk away as she usually did when she didn't like something, but she relented and let Dad put his arms around her. Logan was saying farewell to his mom and dad; they seemed even more reluctant to let him go. As for the other kids...the boy was weeping within his mother's arms while his little sister remained stoical, calmly accepting a quick embrace from her father. Strange.
"Folks..." The guy in the doorway was becoming nervous. "I don't want to hurry you, but you need to..."
He suddenly stopped, and I saw that he was gazing past us. Turning my head, I spotted what he'd seen: the headlights of another car, turning off the road to enter the terminal parking lot. As it approached the rear of building, we saw that it was a black sedan with government plates.
"Oh, God, no," Jan whispered. "They can't have found us already."
"No," Dad said. "I don't think so..."
The sedan glided to a halt next to our van. The front doors opened and two men climbed out. Both wore dark business suits and straight black ties, and if it hadn't been night I'm sure that they would've been wearing sunglasses. The guy who got out on the passenger side waited beside the car while the driver approached our group. No one spoke, but I could practically hear everyone's hearts pounding with fear.
"Dr. Marguiles? Dr. Barlowe? Mr. Hernandez?" The driver looked like an average guy in his midthirties, but I had a sense that he could've killed any one of our fathers--or even all three at the same time--with his bare hands. "May I have a word with you, please?"
The three of them traded wary looks with each other, then they reluctantly walked over to him. The driver spoke to them in low tones that none of us could hear; my father and his friends listened, occasionally glancing back at us kids, then they spoke as well. The conversation lasted a few minutes, during which Melissa moved closer to me to kneel beside my mobil.
"You think these guys are here to stop us?" she asked.
"No." Logan came up behind us. "If this was a bust, they would've brought more people."
I had to agree. There were only two of them...or at least so I thought, until I saw Dr. Marguiles nod his head and my father reluctantly do the same. The driver turned toward his companion and made a small gesture; the other guy walked to the back of the sedan and opened the rear passenger door.
A girl about my age climbed out of the car. She wore black jeans and a dark grey pullover, and her ash-blonde hair was tucked up under a Washington Nationals ball cap. She had a small bag under her arm, and although she was trying hard to hide it, it wasn't hard to tell that she was just as confused and scared as I was.
She gave Logan, Melissa, and me a wary glance, then let her companion escort her over to where my father and his friends were huddled with the driver. Melissa glared at her. "You don't think she's trying to come along, too, do you?" she asked, not bothering to keep her voice down.
"If she is, she's out of luck." Logan nodded to the Hernandez kids, who were still hovering near their mother. "Counting those two and Jan, there's six of us...and my dad said there's only six seats on the shuttle."
The conversation came to an abrupt end. While the girl waited nearby, bookended by the two suits, my father and the other two men walked back toward their respective families. Mr. Hernandez looked angry; he said something in Spanish to his wife and children, and his son stared at him before bursting into tears again. Dr. Marguiles took his wife by the arm and gently led her over to where Logan was standing with Melissa and me. My father followed him, motioning for Jan to do the same. Jan stared at the girl for another moment or two, then reluctantly stepped over to join us.
"Her name is Hannah...Hannah Johnson," Dr. Marguiles said once we'd gathered together. "And...well, it's like this. She has to get on the shuttle."
"But there's no room," Ms. Marguiles said. "Didn't you tell them that?"
"They know there's only six seats. I've explained that to them already. But..."
"What Paul is trying to say is that she has to go to the Moon." Dad's face had become a mask; it was impossible to read the emotions behind it. "Jeanne, there's no time to explain, but..." He let out her breath. "It's absolutely imperative she gets on the shuttle. That's all there is to it."
Ms. Marguiles stared at him. "Even if one of our own children is left behind?"
My father nodded, and so did Dr. Marguiles. "Even if one of our kids stays here, yes," Dr. Marguiles said. "Tomas knows this, too," he added, looking over at the Hernandez family. "He's telling Rosita and the kids now."
Ms. Hernandez wasn't taking the news any better than Ms. Marguiles was. She addressed her husband in rapid-fire Spanish, angrily pointing at the girl who'd shown up out of nowhere. Hannah Johnson looked embarrassed; clutching her bag against her chest, she stared at the pavement, afraid to make eye contact with any of the kids who'd arrived before she did. Nor could I blame her; if our fathers had their way, one of the six of us would be bumped from the shuttle.
"So who's it going to be?" Ms. Marguiles's voice rose. "One of our children is going to stay here. We're going to have to pick which one, aren't we?"
My father slowly nodded...and as he did, his eyes shifted toward me.
Melissa looked at me, too. So did Logan, and even the Hernandez kids were gazing in my direction. Like it or not, they were right. Whoever Hannah Johnson was--she looked vaguely familiar, even though I was positive that I'd never met her before--someone had to give up a seat for her, and I was the one least likely to survive a magcat launch.
The others would get on the shuttle. I was to be left behind.