Delta Green - страница 33

Dimatta figured Williams’s mother had told him to do it that way.

Williams said, “It’s not the same, Gancha. Can’t come up with a name for her.”

Dimatta didn’t have to ask for clarification. Williams had always called Delta Green’s computer Josie for undisclosed reasons.

“Don’t try so hard, George. It’ll come.”

“I don’t think so.”

Their combined depression was interrupted by the squawk of a siren from the vicinity of Launch Pad Two. Red and blue strobe lights erupted in the gathering dusk. Figures in silver protective suits scattered for bunkers.

The squat HoneyBee sitting on the pad lost its only companion as the gantry tower slid away.

Seven minutes elapsed.

Dimatta finished his first sandwich, opened another beer, and started on the second sandwich. For some reason, the meatballs tasted spicier.

Since the rockets used the pellet form of solid fuel, launches were much safer than in the past, and the countdowns were considerably foreshortened.

White-hot flame spewed from beneath the pad, and the rocket lifted off, slow as heavy cream. After a moment’s indecision, the rocket abruptly accelerated, now trailing white vapor. The roaring thunder of ignition rolled across the dunes, and by the time it reached them, the HoneyBee was a mile high. In minutes it was a mote on the darkening sky, indistinguishable except for the vapor trail.

“I wish to hell I was on board that thing,” Williams said.

“No, you don’t,” Dimatta told him. “It’s all remote controlled. You wouldn’t have a damned thing to do.”

McKenna caught a ride back to Themis on a milk run Mako carrying foodstuffs to replenish the stores of Army Staff Sergeant Delbert O’Hara, the chief Steward aboard the station. Almost all of the station’s food was pre-prepared Earth-side, brought up in refrigerated bins, and stored in the hub. It was transferred to the dining modules as needed by O’Hara, who reported to Deputy Commander Milt Avery. O’Hara did a credible job with what he had to work with, making frequent changes in his offerings and developing new recipes of his own for the specialists on Earth to develop into pouchable products.

Though it pained him to do so, McKenna rode in the cargo bay, in one of the passenger modules, since he would never usurp the flight command of one of his pilots, in this case, Navy Commander Art Ingram. McKenna used the Mako craft as the screening and training program for pilots — or in the naval tradition of Ingram’s case, aviators — who might eventually graduate to command of the MakoShark. The Mako pilots never got close to a MakoShark until McKenna was ready for them to do so, and he knew that all of them yearned to do so. If Brackman had been successful in obtaining a new MakoShark this year, he had already selected Ken Autry, commanding Mako Three, as its pilot. Now, with Delta Green gone, it appeared as if the schedule was again going to be delayed.

Benny Shalbot directed the docking, then closed the hangar doors and pressurized the hangar with breathable atmosphere. While he waited for technicians to free him from his cocoon, McKenna unbuckled his harness and spoke on the intercom, “Nice ride, Art. You, too, Glenn.”

Glenn Farrell, the backseater, was a Marine major.

“Thanks, Colonel. Do you have any pointers for us?” Ingram asked.

“None. You get gold stars on your OERs.”

The Officer Efficiency Reports, completed by supervising officers, were the primary sources of information for promotion boards.

With the craft’s payload bay doors open, one of the technicians unlocked and opened the hatch to the passenger module, and McKenna pushed himself downward through it. Momentum kept him going until he reached a hangar cell wall — every surface of every compartment aboard the station was a wall. Flexing his knees at contact, he straightened them with a snap and ricocheted off the wall toward the hatchway in the center of the inside bulkhead, sailing under the nose of the Mako.

The old hands aboard the station, practice making perfect, zipped around in the zero-gravity environment with alacrity. Strategically placed handholds and the textured plastic surface of bulkheads were launch, diversion, and landing points. The veterans found comic relief in the flight patterns of newcomers who learned quickly that momentum did not die away and that accuracy in launch meant fewer heads bumped against the wall next to a hatchway.