“Do we know where Dick is?” I’m grateful ART and I are back to talking freely. “And I’m wondering what his interest in the space vehicle might be exactly.”
“What is your question?”
“Also, I’m wondering who decided to put Snap inside the test model. No one should have laid a finger on her, frankly. Especially after all the time and resources I’ve devoted to overhauling her. She was in very bad shape when I first met her. I realize that was before your time.”
“I don’t understand,” ART says as I retrace my steps, following the same route home that I took 4 mornings ago during the blizzard.
“Do we have any further data on the drop test that was conducted at the Gantry earlier? More to the point, what’s being done to Snap as we speak?” and when it comes to my hand-tooled and personally engineered mannequins, I’m as fiercely protective as my mother is toward Carme and me.
“The drop test was considered a success,” ART answers blandly, reminding me of Dad’s dry way of talking. “All test devices performed as designed, the results within normal limits.”
“But what is this spacecraft supposed to be? It appears to have all sorts of atypical features?” I monitor the live feed as I drive, not expecting ART to answer beyond reminding me I’m not authorized.
“A reusable combination rescue vehicle and space ferry that can both land and take off,” he surprises the hell-o out of me.
Echoing the very details Dick and I have discussed for years, what ART’s talking about is a spacecraft with a retractable landing gear. It can set down on legs or skids in environments with little or no atmosphere such as the airless moon where wings won’t fly with no wind beneath them.
00:00:00:00:0
“An M-O-B-E, a Manned Orbital Ballistic Escaper,” ART spells it out, the very acronym Dad and I came up with one summer while Dick was visiting us.
“It appears to have landing gear similar to helicopter skids,” I point out. “Only for space landings in little or no gravity. When the vehicle returns to Earth, it splashes down in the ocean like most crew capsules. Sort of a getaway car.”
“A MOBE isn’t designed to be used for criminal activity,” ART takes me literally.
“An escape car,” I restate what I mean.
Pronounced MOBY like the whale, its powerful propulsion system can blast away from a damaged spaceplane, a failing inflatable habitat or other trouble. Then AI-assisted telemetry would rendezvous the vehicle with the most direct descent profile to return to Earth.
Or the MOBE could power its way to the safety of the International Space Station, the Lunar Orbital Platform, and other gateways and facilities already in the works up there. I envision the huge unmarked wooden crates that arrived on an Air Force transport Globemaster C-17 several weeks ago.
There’s little doubt what was on those pallets tucked out of sight inside the aviation hangar, a MOBE high-fidelity test model and whatever might go with it. As I think of the blue-luminescing spacecraft wing I saw inside the full-scale wind tunnel, I suspect that whatever was going on in there might be related.
“Thanks for answering because I didn’t expect you to,” I say to ART while noticing that Papa John’s Pizza is open as was Hardee’s a moment ago, my stomach growling as if it might lunge. “Not so coincidentally, I wasn’t unauthorized this time.”
No response.
“Not that I believe in coincidences. So, it sounds to me that Dick or whoever’s editing you thought it okay to tell me about the MOBE test model, one that hasn’t been mentioned before you just did. A concept I’m all too familiar with since I worked on it with Sierra Nevada Corporation a few years ago, and before that brainstormed about it with Dick.”
ART has no comment.
“Anyway, I didn’t know anything had gone into production, and it shouldn’t be you breaking the news to me. He should have. And you can tell him I said so.”
Silence.
“I hope Dick isn’t taking sole credit or much at all really,” I admit, and the thought irks me more than I let on.
Truth be told, very little about the MOBE was his doing. It was Dad and me. Also, Mom always adds her creative touch just as my fighter pilot twin has her hawkish ideas. But it would sound petty to point it out.
“So, what happened?” I resume quizzing ART. “Why did you answer me this time?”
“Unauthorized.”
“Dick or somebody must have changed the algorithm since I asked about Snap earlier? When I didn’t see her in the hangar and got worried? Remember? Because you wouldn’t answer me then.”
“Unauthorized.”
“Well, you didn’t tweak your own algorithm unless you’re now self-programming. What a scary thought, and that will probably be next.”
Silence.
“Who gets to decide what I can and can’t know?” I keep pushing, and the 7-Eleven glowing up ahead makes me want a Big Bite hot dog something awful.
I imagine drowning it in chili and cheese, extra mustard, and my mouth waters.
“Unauthorized,” ART always says it in a monotone.
“Because it’s not you who’s deciding,” I add, “that’s for sure. Or at least I hope not. And never mind why certain topics are off limits because I know you won’t tell me.”
Crickets.
“It’s like trying to get something out of Mom. Well forget it,” as I reach the Hampton Hop-In, lights out, no sign of the pearl-white Cherokee with its damaged front bumper.
There are no cars at all, the plowed parking lot empty, and I find it strange that the convenience store would be closed on a weekend night when the snow’s melting, the weather good. There have been plenty of people shopping, in restaurants, getting ready for the holidays, catching and cleaning up after the evacuation and storm.
“Do we know why the Hop-In is closed?” I ask ART as if he’s an oracle with the answer to everything even if he doesn’t tell me.
“I’m sorry,” his voice through my truck’s speakers. “I have no information,” and it’s probably my imagination that he sounds chagrined.