"Doesn't matter," she insisted. "They're separate divisions. As soon as something hits solid earth-or solid anything-planetary kicks in."
"I'm not sure that matters right now," Pete Graham interjected. He wasn't watching Peak or Thruston. His eyes flicked nervously to the man who stood silently behind them.
"But the asteroids are spatial bodies," Thruston insisted, ignoring Graham. "And Virgil could explore them."
"Apples and oranges," Alice dismissed. "At present asteroid exploration falls under the Director for Intra-Mission Energy. Not applicable in the current situation."
As the two spoke about the various NASA divisions and how neither of them could be blamed for the malfunction of the Virgil probe, the third person in their small group pushed himself to his feet.
Zipp Codwin had been leaning against Graham's desk. He had listened with chilling patience to the Virgil designer's digest of the events in Mexico. Not once during Pete's five-minute summary had Codwin so much as blinked.
Codwin was NASA's current administrator. A retired Air Force colonel, Zipp had been drafted into the space program during its earliest days. Older now, he retained the thin, muscled frame of his youth.
His short steel-gray hair was cut at right angles. A level could have rested on his granite square chin without the bubble shifting a single millimeter. His eyes were as lifeless and black as the void he had twice visited in two of the tiny Mercury modules.
When he saw Colonel Codwin straighten, Pete Graham gulped reflexively. Of the three people in his lab, Zipp was the only one who inspired real fear in Graham.
Buck Thruston was still arguing with Alice Peak. "But we're still in phase one of asteroid exploration. Prestage two should fall under the Director for Outer-"
He never finished his thought.
"Faster, better, cheaper!" Administrator Zipp Codwin barked hotly. His words were as clipped and sharp as his yellowing fingernails.
Buck jumped; Alice gasped. Shocked to silence, both directors wheeled on their superior.
"Faster, better, cheaper!" they echoed with military sharpness. Buck offered something that might have been a salute if a salute involved two shaking hands and a thumb in one eye.
The NASA administrator crossed his arms. A deeply skeptical expression settled in the angles of his face.
"I hear the words, but I do not see the results," Zipp Codwin snapped. "FBC is policy at the new user-friendly NASA. Or have we forgotten?"
Alice and Buck shook their heads so violently they bumped foreheads. Nearby, Pete Graham shook his head, too.
None of them could forget NASA's new policy. They weren't allowed to.
The Faster, Better, Cheaper slogan was now a mantra around the space agency, hauled out whenever anyone questioned its fiscal irresponsibility. Zipp had personally hired an outside public-relations firm to come up with the slogan. It had cost NASA five hundred thousand dollars.
"No, sir," Pete Graham replied.
Codwin's nostrils flared like an angry bull's. Marching over to where Virgil crouched, he extended a hard finger.
"Okay, let's figure this out, then. You built this fast and cheap, right?"
Some of the tension drained from Graham's voice. He was on more familiar ground here.
"Yes, sir," he answered. "Under time and under budget."
"Okay, son," Zipp growled. "I know that. But did you build it better?"
Graham didn't hesitate. "I thought I did," he said honestly. "I can't begin to fathom why it stopped working."
Zipp dropped his hands to his hips. He noted a laptop computer hooked umbilically into the side of the Virgil probe.
"Can't you get the information from it? See what happened while it was in the volcano?"
"I've been trying," Graham insisted. "It seems to be locked in some kind of self-diagnostic routine. I haven't been able to access the affected systems." There was clear frustration in his tone.
Zipp Codwin looked back to the probe. When he beheld the cold metal outline, his face puckered unhappily.
"No beauty to this program anymore," he muttered in what, to him, was a wistful tone. It sounded like he was grinding glass between his molars. "The lunar landers looked like pregnant praying mantises and even they had more grace." He gave an angry sigh, the only kind he was capable of giving. "Don't think faster, better, cheaper cuts it alone. Have to put something about prettier in there."
When he spun back around, his brow was furrowed.
"I'm not happy with the results here, Graham," Zipp stated. His dark eyes were penetrating.
"I'm not, either, sir," Graham said weakly.
"You shouldn't be. You're the one who screwed the pooch. Access that data," he commanded as he marched to the door. Peak and Thruston stumbled over each other in their race to follow. "Whatever glitches are in that thing, I want them worked out in the FBCest manner possible. Clear?"
He didn't wait for a reply.
The door had already slammed shut by the time Pete Graham offered a weak "Clear, sir."
Alone, Graham exhaled.
He hated the relief he felt whenever Zipp Codwin left the room. At least he wasn't alone in the feeling. The colonel inspired the same level of fear in everyone at NASA.
As his nervous sweat began to evaporate, Graham walked over to the immobile probe. He had just retrieved his laptop from a chair next to Virgil when the lab door creaked open cautiously.
Hoping Zipp Codwin hadn't returned, Graham glanced anxiously to the door.
Clark Beemer's worried face jutted into the room. "Is the coast clear?" the PR man asked.
Sighing again, Graham only nodded. He took his seat as Beemer scurried inside.
"Ol' Zipper reamed you out, huh?" Beemer said as he shut the door behind him. "I figured you'd get off okay. At least you brought it back in one piece. Not like the Mars Climate Orbiter. Twenty-three directors lost their jobs after that fiasco."
"I'm working here, Beemer," Graham said tightly. His laptop balanced on his knees, he was entering commands into Virgil's systems. At least, he was trying to. Every time he thought he was in, the system unexpectedly dumped him out. It was like playing a game of computer chess where every move was countered perfectly.
"I'm working, too," Beemer insisted. "Unglamorous as it is, I'm the one who has to sell this thing. I wish you told me it talked. I can work with that somehow."
"It doesn't talk, Beemer," Graham insisted.
This had been going on since Mexico. The entire plane ride home Clark Beemer had insisted that Virgil had spoken to him when he first discovered the probe next to the command trailer. When pressed, Beemer wasn't exactly sure what it was the probe had said.
"I know what I heard," the PR man insisted. His brow clouded. "At least, I think I know what I heard. It didn't make much sense. Something about wishing how it could offer me a drink but that we were on a volcano and there aren't any liquor faucets on volcanos."