The hab theory, p.46
The HAB Theory, page 46
“Provided the world doesn’t tilt before then,” put in Steffanie, and then joined the laughter of the other three. The colonel’s wife was a reasonably handsome woman of thirty-three, three years younger than Robbie, but already beginning to show a slight double chin. Her hair, which years before had been a luxuriant brown and very thick, was now streaked with gray, obviously thinner and a bit more coarse. There was something of an unhealthy pallor to her complexion as well, as if she hadn’t been out in the sun for a long time, which in itself was odd, since she had always been the outdoorsy type and the Texas sun is not especially kind to the skin.
“We’ve laughed about it,” the President said, “and I suspect that’s what people all over are doing — certainly the comedians on television are making the most of it, from what Steve Lace tells me — but there just could be more truth to it than we care to admit.”
Until now, as if by unspoken agreement, there had been little talk about the HAB Theory. For one thing, the family got together so infrequently that Grace liked to keep their conversation light and pleasant, if possible, and steer clear of matters of presidential concern. For the most part, Sanders would go along with that. Yet, Robbie and Steffanie had flown up to Washington this time only because his father had specifically requested him to, so obviously there was something definite in the wind. The meal had been a very pleasant get-together in the privacy of the First Family’s own quarters in the White House and they’d chatted about a wide variety of things. Now it seemed that the elder Sanders was ready to get down to the point of his having Robbie get up here. They waited for him to continue, but he seemed in no hurry to do so. In the short silence he finished the last swallow of coffee in his cup and then looked over at Grace.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you ladies would excuse Robbie and me for a short while? There’s a matter I’d like to discuss with him.” He glanced at his daughter-in-law. “I don’t think I’ll keep him away too long, Steffanie.”
“However long you need him is fine, Dad,” Steffanie said.
“We’ll sit here a while longer, dear,” Grace put in, touching his hand. “I think I’d like another cup of coffee and Steffanie has some new pictures of the twins that she’s promised to show me.”
Sanders nodded appreciatively and both he and Robbie rose and left the room, strolling side by side toward the small, cozy study where the President did a great deal of his work. As they walked along the heavily carpeted short hallway, Sanders spoke without looking at his son.
“How goes it down in Houston, Robbie?”
“Not badly. Space-Stop Five’s still performing beautifully and now Space-Stop Six has turned out to be just about the most trouble-free launch we’ve had. That was the day after you got shot.”
The elder Sanders closed the door after them as they entered the study. They seated themselves in deep, soft leather, overstuffed chairs placed at angles to each other with a small table between on which there was a tall lamp and a heavy sterling silver ashtray.
“Any people problems?” Sanders asked.
“We were worried some at first that we might have some personality conflicts in the confinement up there with so many aboard, but not a trace of it so far. That’s fairly remarkable when you consider that there are twelve astronauts aboard this one and half of them are women. Hell, there were minor conflicts during the Skylab Project back in the seventies and even more serious ones after that aboard Space-Stop One, Two and Three almost from the beginning. Nothing desperately serious and certainly no more than anticipated, but there were clashes. I suppose the compatibility in these recent manned efforts is because there’s more for them to do now, as well as more diversion and roomier quarters. It’s a wonder to me that the three men each in One, Two and Three weren’t at each other’s throats constantly because of the cramped quarters and overlapping functions they had to perform. Jesus, they were bored stiff half the time! I’m damned glad I wasn’t in on those. They answered a lot of questions for us, but they were a lot of headaches, too. We had a lot less trouble nine years ago with Space-Stop Four, with six men inside, than with the previous two. And, as I say, none at all yet with Five, and it has seven men and three women. We’re hoping for the same now with Space-Stop Six, although,” he reached out and knocked lightly three times on the table, “it’s still pretty early to make any real judgment; they’ve only been up for less than three weeks now. It may be a different story when they’ve been up there four months.”
The President nodded and then jabbed a button at the base of the lamp and a warm glow sprang to life. The twilight was growing deeper outside the narrow window and soon it would be full dark.
Sitting as they were this way, in a relaxed manner under the soft light, the physical resemblance between father and son was more evident than it had been under the harder light of the dining room. There was that same strong line of chin and jaw, a trace of the same gentle firmness in the set of the mouth, a similar directness in the gaze. Robbie was an inch less in height than his father’s six-one and was considerably more solid and chunky than the President, but the resemblance definitely was there. In some instances, even the mannerisms were the same: the small wave of the hand while emphasizing a point, the raising of one eyebrow in question, the lifting of one mouth corner in amusement, the pinching of the chin when steeped in thought. But Robbie, even out of uniform like this, had much more of a military bearing about him than his father had ever developed, though understandably so, since eighteen of the younger Sanders’s thirty-six years had been spent in the United States Air Force.
“I’d hazard a guess,” the President remarked, continuing the conversation, “that the compatability among the present ten in Space-Stop Five and the twelve in Space-Stop Six is due to the diversions you’ve dreamed up for them. The microfilm library, for example. It’d take them a year or more to read all that’s been made available to them, even if they read full time.”
Robbie gave a little shrug as if to minimize his own significance. “It helps,” he admitted, “but then so do the exercisers and miniaturized videotapes, and I had nothing to do with them,”
“What’s our tally now, son, on orbiting craft?”
Robbie shot a glance at his father, but the elder Sanders was leaning back, looking idly toward the ceiling without much expression on his face. It was the first time his father had called him ‘son’ in conversation for years.
“Total, you mean?” the colonel asked. “Since the initiation of the space program?”
“No, what I’d like to know is how many do we have orbiting right now?”
“Manned? Unmanned?”
“Both.”
“Total of seventeen, but that includes eight for either communications or weather, plus the two manned craft, Space-Stops Five and Six.”
“That leaves seven unmanned. How many of those can we dock with and enter?”
Robbie looked puzzled. “All are dockable. That’s built in on all. Four, though, are thin-skinned. They can be opened and checked inside, but there’s no way to enter. The remaining three can be entered. The Cosma Nine unit up there is tight with equipment, and if we had to do any repairs, it’d be rough. The two Phobos units, though, are pretty roomy. Three men inside comfortably, if necessary, with room for work. What do you have in mind?”
The President didn’t reply. For a long while he continued contemplating something and then at last he looked back at his son and smiled.
“Sorry,” he said. “Momentary cogitation. Are you still smoking?”
The younger man nodded, not terribly surprised at the abrupt change of subject. “And still those vile cigars, as Steffanie calls them. You’d think after fifteen years she’d be accustomed to them, wouldn’t you? About the best you can say is that she’s tolerating them. Even the twins are badgering me to quit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she put them up to it. I smoke cigarettes more at home now than cigars, but Jesus! I enjoy a good cigar.”
“Smoke now, if you want,” Sanders said. “Are you going to give them up as Linda and Laurie want you to? As I recall, you tried to quit a couple of times in the past.”
The answering laugh had an affectionate ring, but he was shaking his head. “No, I expect I’ll be puffing away when they finally carry me off. The only thing I’ve given up is giving up. That in itself makes smoking a whole lot more enjoyable.”
He stripped away the cellophane from the long dark cigar he’d taken from his breast pocket and lit it, sighing with pleasure at the first puffs. A heavy wreath of smoke drifted away toward the duct near the door. “Old Rudyard Kipling told it right when he said, ‘A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.’” They both laughed.
“I know someone who agrees with you completely, Robbie,” the elder Sanders said, his eyes twinkling. “You know him, too.”
“Only one person that could be, Dad — Uncle Mark. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him when he wasn’t chewing on one, as often unlit as lighted.”
The President laughed again. “True,” he said. “Mark Shepard once told me in all seriousness that he smokes seven cigars per day, and eats four others.”
The humor of it struck them both and once more the small room reverberated with their laughter. It was Robbie who spoke next.
“Is Uncle Mark still over in Turkey?”
Sanders nodded. “In and out of Ankara. He’s onto something very big, but I’m not yet sure exactly where he’s going with it. Anyway, I’ve just sent him five boxes of the cigars he likes best. The reason I’ve done so is because I got a letter from him the other day saying the Turkish cigars he’s been forced to smoke over there, simply because there aren’t any others available, are very fat and very strong. He says they’re composed of twenty-five percent ragweed, twenty-five percent mattress stuffing, twenty-five percent rope, twenty-five percent crankcase oil, and fifty percent camel dung.”
Robbie guffawed. “That,” he said, “totals a hundred and fifty percent.”
“Exactly — and so Mark went on to say the way they do this is that when they have the cigar finished with the first four ingredients, they weigh it and then they punch a hole in one end and pump in half that weight with camel dung.”
Again there was a deep-chested laughter from both men and then they fell into a comfortable, reflective silence. Robbie felt good being with his father again. There had been times in the past when they couldn’t get far enough away from each other, but in recent years they both thoroughly enjoyed their occasional visits.
“Anything else about the space program I should know, Robbie?”
The fact that his father had returned to the subject made the colonel realize that this was the key reason for his being here and the levity diminished. He leaned forward and gave the characteristic little wave of the hand which was holding the cigar.
“Budget problems, of course, but then when haven’t we had those?”
“The appropriations cutbacks hurt?”
“They hurt like hell, but we’ve lived with them before and we’ll manage this time.”
“I tried to keep it from happening.”
“I know you did. I appreciate that. I keep getting the sly old look that says, ‘You’re the President’s son, so how come you can’t get him to make Congress come through with the allocations we need?’ Their thoughts, Dad,” he added quickly, “not mine.”
“You didn’t have to say that,” Sanders said softly, “but I’m glad you did. It’s difficult to push too hard for increased space program appropriations when my son happens to be Number Two at NASA, because then it begins to smack of favoritism, even though it’s not.”
“I know — and so does almost everyone else — that you’d never be guilty of that, Dad.” He leaned over and tapped the long first ash of the cigar into the shiny metal ashtray.
“Never’s a long time, Robbie.”
Something in the President’s tone caused Robbie’s gaze to sharpen. He looked at the older man in silence, a further measure of the easiness between them disappearing. When Sanders unconsciously pinched his chin between thumb and index finger, Robbie knew they were coming to the crux of the discussion.
“When a politician has a relative who is damned good in his line of work and wants to use him in that capacity, he’s almost sure to get criticism about favoritism from the opposition and even some of his own party. Nepotism is an ugly word in politics, Robbie.”
“As I said, you’ve never been guilty of that.”
“True. But I’m about to be. At least that’s what it’s going to look like. Maybe it is. I don’t think so, because I don’t know of anyone more qualified than you to handle what I have in mind. Still, there’s probably an element of nepotism to it, even if only subconsciously.”
Robbie said nothing and Sanders went on. “I’ve talked over my idea with Oscar and Al and they’ve both strongly advised against it, saying it would be bad at any time, but especially so in an election year. I agree with what they say but I’m not taking their advice, which doesn’t make either of them very happy. I haven’t followed much of their advice at all lately. As I said, I’ve made up my mind to go ahead anyway, providing you want to take it on.”
“I’ve never known you to talk around the edges of anything, Dad,” the younger Sanders said. “I suspect I’m going to turn down whatever it is you’re planning to involve me in, but let’s hear it anyway.”
“All right. I know you’re sincere in thinking you’re going to turn it down — this matter I’m beating around the bush about — but I think I know you well enough to say you won’t, once you’ve heard me out. Let me backtrack a moment, though. What’s your feeling on this HAB Theory?”
Robbie shrugged. “Sounds pretty far out, what I’ve been able to gather from the papers. I don’t think I can buy it. At least not unless there’s a whole hell of a lot more of a convincing nature that I don’t know about.”
“There is, Robbie. Let me fill you in on some of the facts from the preliminary reports of the Scientific Advisory Committee — facts that haven’t been released to the press yet.”
As the colonel stubbed out his cigar and almost immediately withdrew another from his pocket and unwrapped and lit it, Sanders talked. For fully twenty minutes without interruption he explained the essence of what he knew so far and concluded with the Boardman survival plan involving the use of thermonuclear devices to reduce the Antarctic ice cap. Robbie was holding the cigar gently between his lips and at the same time rolling it back and forth between his fingers, a habit of long standing which he couldn’t seem to break. It was a habit, in fact, which had caused one of the more serious arguments in his household. Immediately after he had inadvertently dropped a long gray-white ash on the new carpeting at home, Steffanie had become furious. She’d stood in front of him with arms akimbo as he rolled the cigar in his mouth like that and then told him that his sucking on it was a symptom of repressed homosexuality. The remark had infuriated him and it took a long while to calm things between them. After that he didn’t smoke cigars much in the house, but she’d planted a seed of worry in him, and he wondered if what she’d said was true. Now, realizing he was twirling the cigar again that way, he removed it from his mouth and set it down on the slot of the ashtray.
“That’s one hell of a solution.”
“To one hell of a problem, Robbie.”
“You’ll never get Congress to appropriate funds for something like that, Dad, much less arrive at some kind of international agreement to do it.”
“Not even to save mankind from extinction?”
The air force colonel sniffed and momentarily drummed his fingers on the fat leather arm of the chair, shaking his head. “If you could prove that this HAB Theory were valid and if you could establish an actual date for when this great cataclysm is supposed to occur, you might just possibly get cooperation. But you can’t, and they won’t. I’m no gambler, but I’d give odds of a thousand to one against it. And, Dad, I don’t want any part of it, so you’re wrong in thinking I wouldn’t turn it down. I wouldn’t touch—”
The President held up a hand, cutting him off. “Quit jumping the gun, Robbie. I haven’t even approached the point yet. I tend to agree with you that there’d probably be no cooperation, nationally or internationally, on ice cap reduction along those lines, even if we had the proofs you mentioned. But now that you’ve heard the known facts, how do you view the theory?”
Robbie pursed his lips, considering, then sighed. “All right, I’m more convinced now than I was before you began, but fifty-fifty is about the best percentage I can muster up for believing it. And if you’ve told me all you have, Dad, then I have to put it on the line and say I think you’re on damned thin ice. Jesus! You’re apt to lose reelection over something like this.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Sanders said resignedly, “but I also know at this point there’s no other way for me to go. Just before he left for Africa, John Grant finished correlating the Herbert Boardman material and dictated a summary of the whole thing, including some of the more convincing proofs, onto tapes which he passed on to Kermit Knotts. Knotts’s people finished the final transcript of that summary and it runs about fifty pages. It’s pretty convincing stuff. I’ll give you a copy of it first thing in the morning. I want you to read it carefully.”
“Sure, I’ll be glad to, but don’t expect it to change my thinking very much.”
“It will, Robbie. It will.” The elder Sanders glanced at the door. “Well, let me get on with what I want to say before we have a couple of impatient women beating on our portals. Robbie, because I believe as you do, that there’s precious little likelihood of Boardman’s survival plan being adopted, it becomes necessary to think of how else — assuming the reality of the theory — that man and his civilization might be preserved. I told you about the pivotal point centered over in Kenya and the word I’ve just received from Grant about Ngoromu’s willingness, reluctant though it might have been, to go along with my idea for a survival complex there. I’ve already started the ball rolling on that without consulting Congress and it’s going to take one devilish lot of push on my part here to get them to go along with it, but as an alternative to the ice cap reduction plan it may not look so bad. Now, there’s only one other possible area besides Kenya where man is going to be safe if and when such a capsizing of the globe occurs. If anyone should know where that is, it should be you.”
