Back to the Moon by Homer Hickam Page A

disengaged halfway between the fourth and fifth level where there was no floor structure.
    THE IG TEAM
    Fixed Service Structure, Launch Complex 39-B, Kennedy Space Center
    On the highest level of the tower, where even the pad rats rarely ventured, Jack stood beneath a vast bowl of clear blue sky and savored the salt-laden breeze coming off the rumbling Atlantic shore. He turned as Virgil came up the steps behind him. The big man nodded, took off his hard hat, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I checked the ET, boss. Tribble and Estes did a great job. I couldn’t see the seam at all. We’re ready to rocket and roll.”
    Virgil was talking about the inside job two MEC employees had performed in the external tank plant in New Orleans. MEC had contracted with Lockmart, the tank manufacturer, to study the use of the ET as a cargo carrier. It had been expensive but it had gotten Tribble and Estes inside the plant, working all hours of the day. One night they’d put cargo in the base of
Columbia
’s tank, then covered it with insulation, leaving no trace. Then they had gotten the hell out of there.
    Virgil was in the white coveralls of a NASA IG (Inspector General) team official, festooned with all the necessary badges, all perfectly authentic, all completely fake. IG teams were feared on the pad. They came looking for errors and could destroy a career with one critical report. “Everything else copacetic, Virg?” Jack asked his engine man.
    â€œAs long as my little girl’s getting help, I’m happy.”
    Jack patted Virgil on the shoulder, gave him an encouraging smile. Virgil had put much of the bonus he’d received for the mission into gene therapy for his daughter. The experimental treatment for cystic fibrosis was expensive and medical insurance wouldn’t pay for it, but Jack knew their daughter meant everything to Virgil and his wife.
    Virgil left and Jack watched the ocean waves marching in and out, line after line, as if translucent blue ranks of soldiers. Then he heard the ringing of another set of footsteps coming up the steel steps. Craig “Hopalong” Cassidy, outfitted in blue astronaut coveralls, leaned on the rail beside him. “Hot damn, Jack,” he bellowed over the roar of the surf. “It’s gonna be a fine day, one for the books, eh? God, I can’t wait!”
    Despite his bravado Jack caught a flash of anguish on Cassidy’s face.
He’s scared,
Jack thought. Captain Craig “Hopalong” Cassidy, the best shuttle pilot on the planet, was scared. Cassidy was blond and blue eyed and looked every bit the part of what he had once been: America’s premier astronaut and fantasy figure of millions of women. He had piloted each of the shuttles several times, spent six months aboard the Russian
Mir,
joined a team of spacewalkers to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and commanded a team of scientists on the
Spacelab XXI
mission. He had flown every high-performance aircraft in both the Air Force and Navy stables and even built his own experimental airplanes, using one to break the civilian altitude record. He could fly anything that had wings and land it on a dime. Or at least, that had once been true. Now, he was another NASA outsider, thrown out for one drunken brawl too many. And he was scared, needed reassurance. Jack gripped Cassidy’s shoulder. “This is going to be your day, Hoppy. You’re going to show the world you’re still the best shuttle jock there ever was.”
    Cassidy nodded. The wind rustled his blond locks. “Thank you for believing in me, Jack,” he said after a moment. “I’ll do you proud, I promise.”
    â€œYou’ve done that already, Hoppy, just by agreeing to go with us.”
    â€œWouldn’t have missed this for the world.” Cassidy laughed. “Or the moon.”
    The two men, outcasts to the community they loved, laughed together, and faced defiantly