spoken with Hans. Did something happen during his last flight?”
Sanchez said nothing for a moment. He settled his wiry frame back in his chair and solemnly regarded them with his unfathomable black eyes.
“Hans says they saw an angel,” he said at last.
Monday, January 14, 1998: 11:58 A . M .
A frigid blast of wind followed Murphy through the rear entrance of the National Air and Space Museum. Pausing for a moment by the Robert McCall mural to unbutton his parka, he glanced around the lobby. Save for a boisterous group of elementary-school children on a field trip, the ground floor was uncommonly quiet. A handful of people strolled through the Hall of Flight, pausing now and then to examine the Apollo 11 command module and Alan Shepard’s Mercury capsule, while kids in hockey jackets chased each other beneath the Wright Brothers flyer and the Bell X-1. By next spring, the museum would regain its stature as one of Washington’s most crowded public sites, yet during winter it was mainly visited by locals taking advantage of the dearth of tourists.
Blowing into the palms of his chilled hands, Murphy quickly walked through the museum, entering the Hall of Astronautics in the building’s west wing. He had been here countless times, yet still he hadn’t become jaded to the exhibits on this side of the building. A life-size mock-up of the Skylab space station; just beyond it, Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, permanently docked in low orbit; betweenthem, a small forest of boosters—Scout, Mercury-Redstone, Atlas, Titan II. As often as he had seen these giants, Murphy still found himself slowing his pace to marvel at them, and it was only when he happened to spot the digital clock above the entrance to the IMAX theater that he remembered that he had a lunch date to keep.
At the far end of the hall, symbolically positioned in front of the tall windows overlooking the Capitol Building, rested a full-size mock-up of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Schoolchildren impatiently shuffled their feet while a teacher attempted to explain its historical significance; they were more interested in the posters advertising the Star Wars exhibit on the third floor. Yet the tall gentleman standing near the red velvet rope seemed fascinated by the spacecraft. As Murphy walked closer, he saw him hunch forward slightly, as if to more closely examine one of the silver Mylar-covered panels on its lower fuselage.
Murphy approached him. “Dr. Benford?”
Startled, the visitor looked around sharply, then turned to face him. “Dr. Murphy, I presume.” He pulled a hand from the pocket of his parka. “Greg Benford. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for taking time to . . .”
“No, no, really. The pleasure’s all mine.” Murphy returned the affable smile as they shook hands. “Like I said on the phone, this is a real surprise. I never expected . . .”
“Any chance I get to come here, I take it.” Benford glanced again at the LM. “Always seems a little bigger than you think it is. When you see it in pictures from the Moon, it looks small, but then you get up close . . .”
“I know what you mean, yeah.” For once, though, Murphy found himself ignoring the LM. It was an odd experience, meeting someone whose photo he had previously seen on the back flaps of book jackets. Nonetheless, it was the same person: trim gray beard, salted brown hair, calm and studious eyes framed by wire-rim glasses. About his own height, with a middle-age paunch around the waistline. The barest trace of a Southern accent.
So this was Greg Benford. The author of “Doing Lennon,” the story which caused him to blow a high-school chemistry exam because he preferred to read it behind his textbook when he should have been paying attention to a review session, and In the Ocean of Night, which made him forget that he was supposed to take Karen Dolen to the freshman mixer, and Artifact, which he read during his honeymoon vacation in England, and . . .
“It
Sanchez said nothing for a moment. He settled his wiry frame back in his chair and solemnly regarded them with his unfathomable black eyes.
“Hans says they saw an angel,” he said at last.
Monday, January 14, 1998: 11:58 A . M .
A frigid blast of wind followed Murphy through the rear entrance of the National Air and Space Museum. Pausing for a moment by the Robert McCall mural to unbutton his parka, he glanced around the lobby. Save for a boisterous group of elementary-school children on a field trip, the ground floor was uncommonly quiet. A handful of people strolled through the Hall of Flight, pausing now and then to examine the Apollo 11 command module and Alan Shepard’s Mercury capsule, while kids in hockey jackets chased each other beneath the Wright Brothers flyer and the Bell X-1. By next spring, the museum would regain its stature as one of Washington’s most crowded public sites, yet during winter it was mainly visited by locals taking advantage of the dearth of tourists.
Blowing into the palms of his chilled hands, Murphy quickly walked through the museum, entering the Hall of Astronautics in the building’s west wing. He had been here countless times, yet still he hadn’t become jaded to the exhibits on this side of the building. A life-size mock-up of the Skylab space station; just beyond it, Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, permanently docked in low orbit; betweenthem, a small forest of boosters—Scout, Mercury-Redstone, Atlas, Titan II. As often as he had seen these giants, Murphy still found himself slowing his pace to marvel at them, and it was only when he happened to spot the digital clock above the entrance to the IMAX theater that he remembered that he had a lunch date to keep.
At the far end of the hall, symbolically positioned in front of the tall windows overlooking the Capitol Building, rested a full-size mock-up of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Schoolchildren impatiently shuffled their feet while a teacher attempted to explain its historical significance; they were more interested in the posters advertising the Star Wars exhibit on the third floor. Yet the tall gentleman standing near the red velvet rope seemed fascinated by the spacecraft. As Murphy walked closer, he saw him hunch forward slightly, as if to more closely examine one of the silver Mylar-covered panels on its lower fuselage.
Murphy approached him. “Dr. Benford?”
Startled, the visitor looked around sharply, then turned to face him. “Dr. Murphy, I presume.” He pulled a hand from the pocket of his parka. “Greg Benford. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for taking time to . . .”
“No, no, really. The pleasure’s all mine.” Murphy returned the affable smile as they shook hands. “Like I said on the phone, this is a real surprise. I never expected . . .”
“Any chance I get to come here, I take it.” Benford glanced again at the LM. “Always seems a little bigger than you think it is. When you see it in pictures from the Moon, it looks small, but then you get up close . . .”
“I know what you mean, yeah.” For once, though, Murphy found himself ignoring the LM. It was an odd experience, meeting someone whose photo he had previously seen on the back flaps of book jackets. Nonetheless, it was the same person: trim gray beard, salted brown hair, calm and studious eyes framed by wire-rim glasses. About his own height, with a middle-age paunch around the waistline. The barest trace of a Southern accent.
So this was Greg Benford. The author of “Doing Lennon,” the story which caused him to blow a high-school chemistry exam because he preferred to read it behind his textbook when he should have been paying attention to a review session, and In the Ocean of Night, which made him forget that he was supposed to take Karen Dolen to the freshman mixer, and Artifact, which he read during his honeymoon vacation in England, and . . .
“It
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