to him and shouted above the whine of the turboprop engines, “I thought military personnel were banned from Antarctica.”
The commando checked his M-16, stared ahead, and replied,
“What military personnel, sir?”
Conrad groaned. This was precisely the sort of bullshit he had to put up with his entire life as the son of Griffin Yeats, a washed-out NASA astronaut who had somehow managed to march through the shadowy corridors of power at the Pentagon to become an Air Force general. Yeats firmly believed that truth should be divulged strictly on a “need to know” basis, starting with the circumstances surrounding Conrad’s birth.
According to Yeats’s official version of events, Conrad was allegedly the product of a one-night tryst between a Captain Rick Conrad and a nameless Daytona Beach stripper.
When Captain Conrad died in Antarctica during a training mission, the woman dropped off their bastard child at the doorstep of the Cape Canaveral infirmary. A short time later she herself died of a drug overdose. NASA, eager to maintain the squeaky clean image of its astronauts, was only too eager to cut the red tape and let Captain Conrad’s commanding officer and best friend, Major Griffin Yeats, adopt him.
Growing up, however, Conrad began to doubt the veracity of Yeats’s story. His stepmother, Denise, certainly did. From the beginning she suspected that Yeats was Conrad’s biological father and that he used Captain Conrad’s death as a convenient cover to explain the birth of his own illegitimate son. No wonder she divorced Yeats when Conrad was eight and moved away with her daughters, ages eleven and nine, the only friends Conrad had.
Finally, after years of base hopping and misery, Conrad had become enough of a rebel to have been tossed out of several schools and to confront Yeats. Not only did Yeats deny everything, but he refused to use his government contacts to help Conrad decisively identify his biological parents. That alone gave Conrad all the reason he needed to hate the man.
But by then it was obvious that General Yeats didn’t really seem to care what Conrad or anybody else thought of him. Despite his failed career as an astronaut, Yeats went from one promotion to another until he finally got his star, and with it command of the Pentagon’s mysterious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Thanks to the financial backing of the Reagan administration throughout the 1980s, Yeats and his team of extremist military planners invented the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology, and the computer mouse, among “other things.”
This mission, Conrad concluded, no doubt fell into the latter category of “other things.” But what, specifically?
Conrad had long suspected that a fabulous discovery lay under the ice in Antarctica. After all, East Antarctica was an ancient continent and at one time tropical. Yeats had obviously found something and needed him. Or maybe this was merely a sorry attempt at some sort of father-son reconciliation.
Two big turbo jolts brought Conrad back to the freezing fuselage of the C-141. Without asking permission, he unbuckled his strap and stumbled toward the cockpit, grabbing an occasional strut in the fuselage for support.
The glass flight deck was deceptively bright and airy.
Conrad could see nothing but white beyond the windshield.
Lundstrom sat in the pilot’s seat, barking at his copilot and navigator. But the engines were whining so loudly that Conrad couldn’t catch what he said.
Conrad shouted, “Could I at least see this phenomenal discovery before you kill me?”
Lundstrom definitely looked annoyed when he glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Get back to your seat, Doctor Yeats. Everything’s under control.”
But the pilot’s eyes betrayed his anxiety, and suddenly Conrad knew where he had seen him before. Until four years ago, Conrad recalled, Lundstrom had been a space shuttle commander. His leather glove,
The commando checked his M-16, stared ahead, and replied,
“What military personnel, sir?”
Conrad groaned. This was precisely the sort of bullshit he had to put up with his entire life as the son of Griffin Yeats, a washed-out NASA astronaut who had somehow managed to march through the shadowy corridors of power at the Pentagon to become an Air Force general. Yeats firmly believed that truth should be divulged strictly on a “need to know” basis, starting with the circumstances surrounding Conrad’s birth.
According to Yeats’s official version of events, Conrad was allegedly the product of a one-night tryst between a Captain Rick Conrad and a nameless Daytona Beach stripper.
When Captain Conrad died in Antarctica during a training mission, the woman dropped off their bastard child at the doorstep of the Cape Canaveral infirmary. A short time later she herself died of a drug overdose. NASA, eager to maintain the squeaky clean image of its astronauts, was only too eager to cut the red tape and let Captain Conrad’s commanding officer and best friend, Major Griffin Yeats, adopt him.
Growing up, however, Conrad began to doubt the veracity of Yeats’s story. His stepmother, Denise, certainly did. From the beginning she suspected that Yeats was Conrad’s biological father and that he used Captain Conrad’s death as a convenient cover to explain the birth of his own illegitimate son. No wonder she divorced Yeats when Conrad was eight and moved away with her daughters, ages eleven and nine, the only friends Conrad had.
Finally, after years of base hopping and misery, Conrad had become enough of a rebel to have been tossed out of several schools and to confront Yeats. Not only did Yeats deny everything, but he refused to use his government contacts to help Conrad decisively identify his biological parents. That alone gave Conrad all the reason he needed to hate the man.
But by then it was obvious that General Yeats didn’t really seem to care what Conrad or anybody else thought of him. Despite his failed career as an astronaut, Yeats went from one promotion to another until he finally got his star, and with it command of the Pentagon’s mysterious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Thanks to the financial backing of the Reagan administration throughout the 1980s, Yeats and his team of extremist military planners invented the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology, and the computer mouse, among “other things.”
This mission, Conrad concluded, no doubt fell into the latter category of “other things.” But what, specifically?
Conrad had long suspected that a fabulous discovery lay under the ice in Antarctica. After all, East Antarctica was an ancient continent and at one time tropical. Yeats had obviously found something and needed him. Or maybe this was merely a sorry attempt at some sort of father-son reconciliation.
Two big turbo jolts brought Conrad back to the freezing fuselage of the C-141. Without asking permission, he unbuckled his strap and stumbled toward the cockpit, grabbing an occasional strut in the fuselage for support.
The glass flight deck was deceptively bright and airy.
Conrad could see nothing but white beyond the windshield.
Lundstrom sat in the pilot’s seat, barking at his copilot and navigator. But the engines were whining so loudly that Conrad couldn’t catch what he said.
Conrad shouted, “Could I at least see this phenomenal discovery before you kill me?”
Lundstrom definitely looked annoyed when he glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Get back to your seat, Doctor Yeats. Everything’s under control.”
But the pilot’s eyes betrayed his anxiety, and suddenly Conrad knew where he had seen him before. Until four years ago, Conrad recalled, Lundstrom had been a space shuttle commander. His leather glove,
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