Deuces Down Read online

  But one of the parties found out. “Some guy named Warren Skalko. Ever heard of him?”

  “Yes,” I said. In order to keep Dearborn from pressing further (since I doubted I could lie to him), I added, “he’s the local godfather. Bad news.”

  The bad news explained the flurry of activity in the hangar. Jokers and deuces were shredding papers; a burn barrel out back was a-flame. Every few moments, a car would launch itself out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel. “You’d think we were about to be bombed,” I said to Dearborn.

  “From what Tominbang said, that’s a distinct possibility.”

  “How can we launch tonight if he’s not here?”

  “He’s not making the trip.”

  “Given the situation, I’m not sure I’m making the trip.” In fact, I was, at that moment, quite and sure I wasn’t. I was two minutes away from making a hasty departure from Tehachapi-Kern.

  “Well, Cash, as you know: without you, there is no flight to the Moon.” He smiled to take the edge off what was clearly a threat: “I’d hate to have to kidnap you.”

  “In that case,” I said, “when do we leave?”

  Dearborn clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

  Seeing one last opportunity to put an end to this madness, I said, “Can we operate Quicksilver with a crew of two?”

  “Operate, yes. But the mass properties have been very finely calibrated to your talents, Co-pilot. We’ve got to have a certain amount of mass in that right-hand seat. And, given that we can probably use the extra hands on the Moon, I’d rather not just fill it with a sack of cement.”

  Just then, Bacchus walked in, brought by Eva-Lynne. “You wanted to see me?” the joker physicist said.

  “Yeah, how much do you weigh?”

  “In the mornings I mass 185 pounds,” Bacchus said, his voice like a hiccup. “By evening that decreases to around 182, depending on my fluid intake-”

  Dearborn held up his hand. I could have told him that with Bacchus, there was no such thing as a short answer to a direct question. “Sorry. That puts us over our weight limit-”

  Before I could even think it, much less say it, Eva-Lynne announced, “One hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “What’s that?” Dearborn said.

  “How much I weigh.”

  Bacchus snorted. Dearborn and I looked at each other.

  “Do you know what we’re talking about?” I said.

  “Going to the Moon, Cash.” As if she were talking about a drive to Barstow, or possibly as far as Las Vegas.

  “Can we take a girl to the Moon?” I asked.

  “I don’t know about you, Co-pilot, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have along.” He grinned at me and Eva-Lynne. “Let’s kick the tires and light this candle.”

  It was the evening of Friday, December 20. I realized that Christmas was only a few days away, and I had bought nothing for anyone-not even Eva-Lynne.

  Dearborn and I struggled into our pressure suits. Eva-Lynne, after spending several precious moments wrapping her blond tresses into some kind of braid, wore hers as if she were born to it. I said as much as we walked toward Quicksilver. “This suit is nothing, compared to a girdle.”

  Thinking of women’s undergarments triggered another worry: “Uh, what are you doing to do about… sanitary matters?”

  Eva-Lynne stifled a laugh, and motioned me close. “I helped raise a dozen babies, Cash. I know how to make a diaper!” My curiosity more than satisfied, I was about to climb into Quicksilver’s cockpit when she added, too loudly for my taste, “What are you guys using? Can-o-pees?”

  Dearborn was already in the forward seat as I strapped into the left rear position. Then Eva-Lynne wedged herself into the one to my right-Tominbang’s former seat.

  Sobel was about to close the airlock hatch when he leaned in, agitated. “Bikers are storming the gates!” he said. “What should I do?”

  “Lock the damned door and take cover,” Dearborn growled. He had already started the engine.

  Sobel froze with indecision for a long moment. Then, apparently deciding that Dearborn ’s order made sense, gave me his hand. “Good luck! Bring back some green cheese!”

  He wiggled out of sight and closed the hatch behind him. We heard several clicks as the latches fired, and we were sealed in.

  “One minute,” Dearborn said. “Hold on, people. You’re going to take the ride of your lives!”

  Eva-Lynne reached back to take my hand. I felt no fear: I was too convinced of Dearborn ’s luck to think I could be killed in his presence. But I felt trapped in the pressure suit, my movements hampered.

  Spang! Something struck Quicksilver! “What was that?” Eva-Lynn said.

  “I think the SOBs are shooting at us,” Dearborn said. “Hang on, we’re go.” And go we were-

  For perhaps a hundred yards down the runway. Even with my limited visibility, I could see the flashes of bullets striking the pavement in front of us. Then one of them struck home, making the cockpit ring. Then I heard hissing.

  Red warning lights erupted on Dearborn ’s console. A bell sounded. “Goddammit,” he snapped. With inhuman-or joker-calm, he tried to stop our rollout. The whole vehicle shook as we skidded off the runway. Only then did I realize just how fast we’d been going.

  Quicksilver slewed to the left and slammed into something immobile. Eva-Lynne and I were thrown to the left; I hit the bulk-head, though my harness and suit protected me from injury. Eva-Lynne seemed to be fine.

  Not so Dearborn. Perhaps his harness had been loose. In any case, he had hit the instrument panel. He was breathing hard, waving weakly at the two of his with a free hand, “Get out!”

  I obeyed, hitting the emergency egress switch on the canopy. It flew off with a muffled thump! The next few moments were chaotic as I unstrapped, helped Eva-Lynne, and got both of us out of Quicksilver.

  Lights blinded us. Shadowy figures boiled out of the darkness, swarming over Quicksilver and Dearborn like insects.

  Eva-Lynne and I were hustled to our feet, and half-dragged to the hangar building. I still had my helmet on, so sounds were muffled and vision was impaired. I saw some of the Quicksilver team members lined up against the wall, hands (or, in the case of Kafka, pincers) in the air, as beefy nats and jokers in the black leathers of Hell’s Angels held them at gunpoint.

  I saw Sobel lying face-down on the ground just outside the hangar, a trail of blood marking the path of his death crawl.

  We were shoved into the same equipment room where poor Sobel had helped us into our suits not an hour earlier. We barely had time to catch our breath when Mr. Skalko entered, accompanied by several of his thugs. “You,” he said, pointing to me. “Out.”

  I was hauled to my feet and essentially stripped of my suit. Then, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts, I was marched out of the hangar. Dearborn and Eva-Lynne remained behind.

  “You cut it a little close,” Mr. Skalko said.

  “Tominbang moved up the launch.” I’m sure I sounded angry, because I was. I had assumed that Skalko would take action once he knew the Quicksilver launch was imminent. I hadn’t expected that action to be a mob shootout.

  “I know that now. Good thing for you.” I’m sure Skalko knew all about Tominbang’s plans. For one thing, he had surely interrogated the poor man. For another, I doubt I was his only spy inside the program. “Kind of a shame,” he said. He actually sighed. “I was still thinking about it when you called.”

  “Why did you stop it? The money?”

  Mr. Skalko looked at me with amusement. “You mean, what he stole?”

  “Yes.”

  “I deal with stuff like that all the time. No, I had to kill this whole idea. Going to the Moon.”

  Now I was as intrigued as I was angry. “Why would you care?”

  “One flight means nothing. It’s what happens after the flight.” He looked at me as if weighing my worthiness. Apparently I was found worthy. “Once you’ve proven you can
do this, other people will follow. They’ll build a little outpost up there. Then a bigger one. Then a whole damn city.

  “And to service that city, they will have a regular system of transportation that I can’t control.” He stood there, in the darkness of a desert night, looking at the stars. “Things will come into this country that I can’t stop. That would be bad for my business.”

  I saw the point. Not that I cared. “What’s going to happen to them?” I said, meaning Dearborn and Eva-Lynne.

  “I don’t know yet.” He saw that I was ready to go back into the hangar. “I want you to go home.”

  He tossed me my car keys. I don’t know if he found them with my clothes, or whether he had his own set, which would have been a typical Skalko touch. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “we’re ending our association.”

  In spite of the fact that I wanted our association to end-better yet, to have ended some time prior to this-I started to protest. Mr. Skalko held up his hand. “You’ve done good work. You’ve been paid well. But I know people, and this one is going to haunt you. Keep your mouth shut and you don’t need to see me again.”

  I had just stepped out of the shower, having taken inventory of a new set of bruises, when I heard wheels crunching on the gravel drive. By the time I was dressed, there was a knock at my door.

  Dearborn and Eva-Lynne. He was limping, and Eva-Lynne was supporting him.

  Skalko’s men had let them go. After all, the purpose of the attack had been to stop the flight to the Moon. Tominbang had already been punished.

  I wanted both to spend the night, but Dearborn shook his head. “Co-pilot, we’re not out of the game yet. We need your car.”

  The drive to Los Angeles took two hours, perhaps because it was Friday night, with the holidays approaching. South from my place in Lancaster, through the Antelope Valley into the San Fernando Valley. Then down the new freeway into western Los Angeles. I asked Dearborn several times where I was heading, but he just smiled (or grimaced; he was clearly in pain). All he would tell me was my next turn.

  Eva-Lynne dozed in the back seat.

  Eventually we arrived at Douglas Field, a small airport in Santa Monica bordering the plant where so many aircraft had been built over the decades. The Douglas Company had moved its manufacturing elsewhere, leaving behind a number of huge, empty buildings. I was directed to drive up to one of them.

  Eva-Lynne woke as the car stopped. “What are we doing here?” she said.

  Dearborn postponed his answer until he had unlocked a side door.

  We walked into a hangar much like the one at Tehachapi-Kern. Even more strangely, a Quicksilver vehicle sat in this middle of this one, too. And my old friend, Kafka, was busy in the cockpit!

  “Here is where we’re going to launch the first flight to the Moon,” Dearborn said, looking pale but satisfied. As Eva-Lynne and I stared in wonder-and began to recognize other members of the team from Tehachapi-Kern-he explained that Tominbang had always felt that Mr. Skalko would eventually learn of his plans, and strike at him. So he had paid for modifications to a second Quicksilver vehicle, the “ground spare” originally ticketed for the museum!

  That was astounding enough. But then Eva-Lynne asked another question: “You’ve got another vehicle. Great. But you can’t possibly fly it.”

  “I know,” Dearborn said. “Mike!” he called.

  A vaguely familiar figured emerged from the other side of Quicksilver. Major Sampson, Dearborn’s old X-11A colleague, his alternate.

  “Remember what I told you, Cash. Always, always, always have a backup.”

  The preparations resumed, almost as if the horrifying incident at Tehachapi-Kern had been nothing more than a fouled-up dress rehearsal for some high school drama. Dearborn assured Eva-Lynne and me that Sampson was perfectly capable of flying the mission. Better yet, that he knew all about my lifting power and just how that integrated into the flight plans.

  As the sun rose over the mountains to the east, on the cold morning of Saturday, December 21, 1968, Sampson, Eva-Lynne and I once again donned our suits (brought here from Tehachapi-Kern by Kafka) and boarded Quicksilver.

  We were much more business-like this time, due, I think, to our improved realization of the seriousness of what we were attempting, and also to Sampson’s more disciplined methods.

  At 6:51 a.m., the main rocket kicked in, and we started down the runway. On Sampson’s order, I grasped the tiller, and we lifted.

  Even though the test hop had prepared me for the experience of flying into orbit upside down, I was startled by the sight of Douglas Field, then downtown Santa Monica and the Pacific, all of Southern California and finally the blue earth itself growing smaller while rising to the top of the window.

  We were feeling heavy, of course. Kafka had told me we would endure at least 6 Gs. But we were strapped in so tightly that it was merely a mildly unpleasant feeling, not something truly stressful.

  What was unnerving was being able feel every burp and pop of our rocket motor. “A little instability there,” Sampson said, far too casually, following one particularly wrenching example.

  Our flight on the rocket lasted less than three minutes, and ended with an abrupt shutdown which flung us forward in our harnesses. (This was, for me, the single most disquieting sensation of the whole voyage. I felt as though I would fly right through the forward windows.)

  “Everybody okay back there?” Sampson asked, in that peculiar, fatherly tone of his.

  “Fine!” Eva-Lynne answered brightly. I glanced over at her, and was rewarded with her best smile.

  “We’re going to loop around the earth once,” Sampson explained, for Eva-Lynne’s benefit, “then let Cash do his thing. That will send us toward the Moon. In the meantime, enjoy the view. I plan to.”

  Of course, being forward, Sampson actually had a view. Though shortly even he didn’t have much to see, as we flew over the nightside of the earth. Below us was darkness punctuated by a surprising number of lightning flashes. Hundreds, in fact.

  Eva-Lynne and I removed our helmets and watched this display with enthusiasm, as Sampson tended to the business of orienting Quicksilver. Rolling the vehicle tended to change our view, and, ultimately, made me ill.

  In fact, as we neared the completion of our first orbit, and Sampson gave me warning that I would be lifting in ten minutes, I realized I was too sick to do anything. I opened my mouth to say so, and promptly repeated Al Dearborn’s greeting to met that first day at Tehachapi-Kern-I threw up.

  “Oh, dear,” Eva-Lynne said. Fortunately, she had noticed that I was turning green, and had a paper towel and airsickness bag ready. The mess was blessedly minor, and within minutes I was feeling better.

  Better-but nowhere near capable of doing a lift. “Two minutes,” Sampson said. “Are you ready back there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He twisted and faced me. “Eva-Lynne, seal your helmet.”

  With a speed that astonished me, Eva-Lynne did as she was ordered. Then Sampson turned halfway toward me and began speaking in a voice so low I could barely hear him without my helmet open. “I know all about your phone call and your friend, Skalko. But she doesn’t. Want to see the look on her face when she hears you sold us all out?”

  I felt a sudden, and all-too familiar, surge of anger.

  “Now!” Sampson said.

  My hand found the tiller, and we lifted.

  Because we had taken off earlier than planned, we sailed toward a Moon we couldn’t see. With his telescope, Sampson claimed to be able to see a dull sliver limning the nightside, but I couldn’t. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s out there.”

  “I’ll just have to take your word for it,” I told him.

  The day-long flight would have been intolerable if we’d had to stay strapped in. Fortunately, the airlock behind the two rear seats provided a certain amount of room-and privacy.

  We all needed it, especially Eva-Lynne. But I also crawled inside the lock, primarily to get aw
ay from Sampson. I understood the rationale for his nastiness in forcing me to lift. He must have known that I needed a strong emotional charge, however brief, to channel. But I didn’t like him for it. Perhaps it was his general air of smug superiority; perhaps it was just knowing he had a tool he could use against me again.

  Perhaps it was the nagging feeling that we were doomed because the lucky Commander Dearborn had somehow managed to miss the trip, and we were left with the man who would always be in the right place at the wrong time. I spent the entire flight from the Earth to the Moon feeling like a man who has just been told he has months to live.

  I dozed for a fitful couple of hours, and woke to find the Moon not only visible, but growing in size.

  “Looks like we’re here,” Eva-Lynne said.

  I had no difficulty getting in the proper mood to make the braking lift: the sheer spectacle of seeing the lunar landscape provided all the adrenaline I needed. To my mind, we were falling lower and lower, going faster and faster, about to crash into a bleak world of mountains, craters and rocks. The craters themselves were filled with smaller craters as well as giant boulders-

  I made the braking lift; Sampson followed with a series of bursts from the main engine, and we began our descent.

  I wish I could say I saw it, but with Quicksilver in a wings-level, nose forward position, only Sampson could see the lunar surface. Eva-Lynne and I saw nothing but the black sky of lunar night, until, at that last instant, the sunlit peaks of the dark gray mountains appeared. “Thirty seconds,” Sampson told us. (He was giving us-not to mention Dearborn and the rest of poor Tominbang’s team back on Earth-a terse commentary the whole way down.)

  At the last moment, it seemed that we were traveling far too fast. Sampson announced, “Contact!”

  And we scraped to a stop, rocking for a moment, as if on the edge of a cliff, then settling gently.