Heaven's War by David S. Goyer, Michael Cassutt Page B

substantially wider.
     
    “My ears popped,” Sasha said.
     
    Harley’s had, too. “I hope that’s increasing pressure, not decreasing.” He took a deep breath…the air actually smelled and tasted fresh, like a spring morning. Of course, any air would be an improvement over the fetid stew he and the others had lived in for the past two days.
     
    “Friends,” Gabriel Jones announced, “I think we have arrived.”
     
    “In what?” Weldon asked. It seemed to Harley as though the former flight director and chief astronaut got angry every time Jones opened his mouth. He realized he would have to watch Weldon; he wasn’t handling the situation very well.
     
    “In a docking bay?” Bynum said. “Isn’t that what you NASA people would call it?”
     
    “It’s as good a name as any,” Harley said. He turned to Sasha, who was staring up, openmouthed. “What?”
     
    “Just…looking,” she said.
     
    On the “ceiling” Harley saw what appeared to be squiggly luminous tubes growing brighter.
     
    “I think there’s a door,” Bynum said. He was pointing behind them to a glowing rectangular opening.
     
    “I, for one, am heartily sick of waiting,” Harley said. He turned to Sasha. “Could I trouble you for a little help? I want to be first, as in, ‘one small roll for Harley Drake, one giant push for Sasha Blaine.’”
     
    She smiled, took a moment to run her fingers through her hair, then settled her hands on the handles.
     
    They were joined by the others now, all crowding behind them as they moved en masse toward the “door.”
     

ARRIVAL DAY: GABRIEL
     
    Their arms filled with whatever they could carry, the Houston group had trudged several hundred meters down a broad, rock-lined tunnel. “Better bring everything,” Jones had said. “We may not be coming back this way!”
    And while she no doubt meant it to be an aside—this chamber had amazing acoustics—Gabriel heard what Sasha said to Rachel next: “Why does he think we aren’t coming back? Does he know where we’re going?”
     
    Harley couldn’t let that pass. Nor could he let them continue complaining, believing that they couldn’t be heard.
     
    “Ladies,” he said over his shoulder, “right now we are forced to
look
good rather than
be
good.”
     
    Gabriel knew that was how many NASA people—and some outside the agency—would describe his entire career.
He’s slick and superficial, no substance. He’s affirmative action all the way.
     
    While acknowledging that he had, indeed, benefited from affirmative action—hell, if it worked for Obama’s career, it could work for his—he also knew what he knew. He’d literally done his homework since junior high in Baltimore. He’d managed to balance a promising baseball career with solid academics, enough to get him noticed by scouts for the Ivies, who wouldn’t offer money, but rather a hell of a lot of prestige and connections.
     
    But a lucky visit to Rice University had given him his first exposure to Houston and the great state of Texas, neither of which were high on his go-see list. And the aero engineering team he’d met there seemed far more experienced and practical than their equivalents at Princeton and Dartmouth.
     
    Then there was the weather. Houston wasn’t anyone’s garden spot, but at least it didn’t have snow on the ground for several months of the year.
     
    So he’d graduated from Rice, then gone to MIT for grad school. A taste of the commercial space world with Lockheed had convinced him he was not cut out for that type of pressure, even with the potential rewards. (Besides, in technical circles, it was still just a bit tougher for an African American to rise than, say, for an Asian. That was another thing the folks who snickered “affirmative action” tended to forget.)
     
    He had joined NASA Goddard outside Washington. Working on NASA’s uncrewed programs was not the road to space program glory—until Gabriel found that he was being