“There’s about a million things that could go wrong up there,” said Jones. “All we need is a simple plan that we can roll out at any point, without anybody noticing.”
“Simple.” said Costello. “You’re crazy.”
“There is no simple plan,” said Elbing. In a fit of democratic élan, his father Mannfred had dropped the particle from the family name even before the war. Elbing was by far the oldest of the three assembled men. His harsh teutonic consonants cut through the smoke hanging over the table in the small conference room. “There is only a decision. We admit failure as it happens, or we put together this impossibly complex plan to postpone the admission. In either case, the eventual result is failure. The decision is sooner, or later.”
Jones was formally in charge. The Senior Manager. “This comes straight from the White House. There is no failure. If anything goes wrong, we need a backup plan. It has to look to the world like they made it all the way there and back, without a hitch.”
“And they expect us to come up with that,” said Costello. “Just us. How are we supposed to do that?”
“Just us,” said Jones. “This has to be a very small planning group. Whatever we come up with, we have to put it in motion if needed, and the people carrying out the plan can’t know what they’re actually involved in. That’s the rules. And no leaks.”
“Can’t be done,” said Costello.
“Has to be,” said Jones.
“This is crazy,” said Costello. “And I don’t mean just this backup plan. I mean the whole project. We’re going too fast. We’re not testing anything properly. This is just a political stunt. We should be getting actual science and engineering out of this, and we’re not. The space plane was the way to go. People have died already. There’s gonna be more.”
“And that’s why you’re here, Costello,” said Jones. “Because you always see the bright side in every situation. And because you know the mission profile. But mostly because you’re such a pessimist.”
Costello half smiled and took a sip of cold coffee from his thin paper cup.
Elbing, the Junker fatalist, stood up and walked to the only window in the featureless concrete room. There was only desert on the other side. The lines on his face grew harsher in the southwestern sun. He’d already seen enough desert for two lifetimes when he’d been shot down over North Africa. Twelve days of dodging the Brits as a sort of honour game. They probably could have caught him, but they hadn’t been trying so hard. They probably preferred the chase. He’d dodged the Italians too, just in case, and he’d played the locals against the imperialists and against each other, to get a bit of bread and water every few days. But still, he contemplated this brown and yellow patch of desert now. There was nothing else to look at. “Then we do it. After that, whatever happens, happens. It’s not up to us. We’ve done our job.”
“Ok,” said Jones, “Where do we start?”
Costello focused on the last few milliliters of coffee haunting the bottom of his paper cup. “We start with the main potential failure points, I guess.”
Jones had entered his element. He loosened his thin black necktie, undid the top button of his spotless white shirt, and he moved to the easel next to the door, marker in hand. He turned over a fresh sheet, and he popped the cap off the marker with a satisfying click. The smell gave him purpose. “Let’s list ‘em.”
“That’s easy,” said Costello. “All of them.” He looked up at Jones. “Obviously there’s the launch. Good luck with that one.”
Jones scrawled “Launch” at the top of the page in his most authoritative managerial block letters, next to an oversized roman numeral I.
“We have to be extremely clear with them,” said Elbing. “There is nothing we can do about the launch. If that fails, we can’t hide it. Anything after the launch, once they’re in orbit, or wherever, maybe we can help. But not before. That has to be crystal clear. No ambiguity.”
“He’s right,” said Costello. “A Saturn V launch is gonna be visible all the way out from Alabama to South Carolina. We’re talking, I don’t know, millions of people.”
“Not to mention Cuba,” said Elbing.
“Oh, crap,” said Costello. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Hiding failure from the public,” said Elbing, his Rs scraping across the wooden surface of the conference table, “even the world public, is one thing. Hiding it from the KGB and the GRU, that’s quite another. I don’t mean just about the launch, either. I mean about the whole thing.”
“Let’s focus on the launch for now,” said Jones, from his easel-side post.
“And if that thing actually blows up during launch,” said Costello, “they’re going to see it a lot farther away than Alabama and South Carolina.”
“How far,” said Jones. Not that he thought the question mattered at this point, but he was a completist.
“Depending on the altitude,” said Costello, “they could see it all the way to Canada. Maybe parts of Western Europe.”
“Bermuda,” said Elbing.
“Definitely Bermuda,” said Costello. “And even if it fails early, they would know in the Bahamas, for instance. It’s not that far downrange.”
“And if the Brits know something,” said Elbing, “the Russians know it for sure. This is a principle we have to remember absolutely in this entire planning exercise. Remember it.”
“You think they’re that compromised,” said Jones.
“Not at all,” said Elbing. “They don’t have to be compromised.”
“What do you mean,” asked Costello. “What about Philby and all that?”
Elbing struck a match and put it to the polished acacia bowl of his pipe. He puffed a few times, until embers glowed in the tobacco. He shook the match a few times in the air, leaving a thin trail of swirling smoke. “Think about it. Since the eighteenth century at least, the very foundation of the British grand strategy has been balance of power. In whatever conflict, they support the weaker side, automatically. At the moment, the weaker side is the Soviet Union.”
“Are you seriously going to claim,” said Costello, “that the Brits are working with the Russians?”
“A crushingly dominant American behemoth,” said Elbing, “is as undesirable to the British as a global communist dictatorship. They will go to great lengths to avoid both.”
“Even looking like idiots on purpose,” said Costello, “with their intelligence services looking like a sieve. Sure.”
“A small price to pay in the short term, in pursuit of their long-term, unchanging geostrategic goals,” said Elbing. “That’s the problem with you Americans. Everything is short term. But then, you have no history, so I can forgive you for your strategic nearsightedness. Listen to me, the British are very good at what they do. They have been doing it successfully for a very long time. To the world, they like to appear as the bumbling English country gentleman. The amateur. In fact, they are nothing of the sort. Believe me, I have dealt with them. They are a deadly adversary whenever they choose to be. Precise and ruthless. They would not miss someone like Burgess, or Philby. That was completely and typically a British balance of power operation. And those men have been suitably protected and rewarded for their service, if you will notice.”
“It’s not because they beat you,” said Costello, “that they necessarily know what they’re doing. Maybe you were just worse than they are.”
Elbing looked at Costello through the smoke from his pipe. “Costello. You’re Italian, yes?”
“We’re getting distracted,” said Jones. He went to the table and took a cigarette out of his pack. He struck a flame from the big desk lighter in front of him.
“Actually, I think this is important,” said Costello. “I want to hear more of his crazy theories before I start sticking my neck out for this old geezer.”
“We are not being distracted at all,” said Elbing, in between puffs. “We are focusing on the larger picture, instead of letting ourselves be led astray by the details of your minor misdirection operation.”
“What about the launch,” said Jones, “that’s our first point of failure, you said. Let’s stay focused, ok?”
“About the launch,” said Elbing, still looking at Costello, “we do nothing. There is nothing we can do. We let it happen, and it is for someone else to deal with the unconcealable consequences of failure at that early point in the mission.”
“I think he’s right about this one, at least,” said Costello. “The launch is out of scope. If they want our honest assessment, that’s what it has to be. Anything else, we can probably deal with, maybe. At least we have a chance. But the launch, no way.”
“If the rocket blows up at launch,” said Elbing, “or if it falls into the sea, or whatever, before reaching orbit, that becomes a standard public relations operation. The rocket blows up for all the world to see. Ok. So those men died in a noble pursuit. Young American men die every day in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism. These brave astronauts are added to the global body count for that day. Walter Cronkite dramatically removes his glasses and cries on live television on behalf of all patriotic Americans. The New York Times uses the largest type ever on the front page. They run out of ink, ok. The astronauts get a stunningly beautiful national funeral in the rotunda. Twenty one gun salute at Arlington. Whatever. We fix the problems with the rocket, we try again in six months. The good news is that the Russians are still behind us in the space race, yes? We will get there first, freedom and capitalism will prevail, and so on, and so forth. Hire the newspapers for this part of the plan. This is nothing to do with us.”
Costello put his cup down on the table in front of him, and he looked at Elbing. “You are one cynical kraut bastard, aren’t you.”
“Alright,” said Jones. “Let’s park the launch for now. Maybe we can come back to it when we’ve had a think about the rest. What’s the next failure point?”
“Next is the transit,” said Costello. “Anything can happen in transit. They can depressurize, they can miss a burn, the engine can fail, they can die of food poisoning.”
“What happens then,” said Jones.
“Most likely,” said Costello, “they end up stuck in orbit forever. Not enough energy to make it back, you know, all that fun stuff. Or maybe there’s no one at the controls. No chance to send them anything before they run out of oxygen, anyway. In fact, there are rumors that it happened to a couple of Soviet crews. But the Soviets don’t announce their missions ahead of time, so it’s hard to know for sure. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don’t.”
“And of course,” said Elbing, “their secrecy about the missions makes this kind of contingency planning unnecessary for them. You Americans could learn from that.”
“We’re a democracy,” said Costello.
“So you think,” said Elbing.
“OK,” said Jones. “So our guys are stuck in space. What do we do now?”
There was dead silence. Then Costello spoke. “As soon as it looks like it’s unrecoverable, we have to jam their communications. Lots of HAM radio operators on Earth follow the space missions. There’s a couple of guys in Italy that say they heard a Soviet mission go dark after it got stuck in orbit.”
“And then,” said Elbing, “we need a backup, to continue the mission, at least in appearance. We need communications to resume as normal. Problem solved, solution implemented, all the top experts worked on it, that sort of thing.”
“We’re not launching two missions,” said Jones.
“We would need some repeater satellites at least,” said Costello, “to make the radio signals convincing. It would be tricky.”
“But it can be done,” said Jones.
“It can be done,” said Costello.
“The military would have to launch some secret missions to deploy the satellites within the next few months,” said Elbing. “What’s a few more spy satellites, after all?”
Jones scrawled some more across the page on his easel.
“I think this kind of solution might create some problems down the road,” said Jones, still looking at the paper. “If they’re stuck, but everybody thinks they’re fine, how do they come back?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Elbing. “One thing at a time.” He lit his pipe again.
“So from this point on,” said Jones, “whatever happens, we’re simulating the mission, in other words.” He sat down and lit another cigarette.
Costello went to the urn and refilled his coffee. “Next major hazard is the moon orbit insertion. But the problems are pretty much the same as the transit. As soon as something goes wrong, you jam the comms until you can get a simulated mission profile on the air.”
“Then there’s the landing,” said Elbing.
“There’s the landing,” said Costello. “The whole world is gonna be watching. There’s a hundred opportunities to crash and burn. It’s a lot like the launch. Not sure we can help with that.”
“It’s a fascinating problem,” said Elbing. “You realize that no one has ever piloted that landing module in those conditions. Airless, moon gravity, the lighting conditions will be absolutely unfamiliar to the pilot. The terrain completely unknown. Light and shadow are extremely important for flying, especially for landing. Navigating over unknown terrain, in unknown lighting conditions is extremely tricky. Then the feeling on the controls. That is crucial. He will have never had the feeling on the controls that he will have that day, at that moment. If you ask me, this is pure suicide. The odds are a thousand to one. But still, there was a time when I would have stepped forward and volunteered for it. The utter madness of the young. That’s the only explanation.”
“And that’s why we’re here,” said Jones. “Because the whole thing is risky.”
“If they really want to show this live on global TV,” said Costello, “there’s gonna be no time at all to react if something happens.”
Elbing chuckled. “Someone better be very quick on that button. But if the screen goes dark, everyone will know that something happened. That it all went wrong. I don’t know how you hide something like that.”
“If they fail in transit,” said Jones, “the plan is to use simulated mission audio, right? If they fail on landing, maybe we use simulated mission video?”
“Where are we gonna get simulated video,” said Costello.
“They need training films,” said Elbing. “They are doing detailed and precise training exercises, yes? Even as we speak.”
“Sure. As close to the real thing as possible,” said Jones.
“Not just for the crew,” said Elbing. “For the technicians, for the administrators, for everyone. So they can think about contingencies and so on. We ask for a few more training films. As detailed and precise as possible. As realistic as possible. Especially of the landing and of the activity on the surface of the moon. Purely for training purposes.”
“And we use the training films if it goes sideways,” said Jones.
“Precisely,” said Elbing.
“Do you realize,” said Costello, “the level of detail they would have to go to, if they want it to pass for the real thing?”
“Well,” said Jones. “The plan, is that we won’t have to use the plan.” He took a long drag on his cigarette.
“I don’t see this working,” said Costello. “It’s too complex. Too many potential errors. It’s just a classic cover-up. It’ll go wrong for sure.”
“Fortunately,” said Elbing, “this is not a job for a mere engineer like you. This is for people with imagination and vision. This is for Hollywood people.”
“Hollywood,” said Costello, “what the hell do they have to do with this?”
“We use such people often in our work,” said Elbing. “They make training films for us, that we can use mainly in propaganda operations. We hire them to make disaster preparation training films, mostly, for building collapses, plane crashes, civil massacres, those sorts of things. All terribly realistic. They give you nightmares. They don’t know the actual purpose, obviously. But then, sometimes, even I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We have to make training films of this landing and the surface activity with the actual crew, very realistic, before they go on their mission. This is the most difficult part of the mission. It makes absolute sense. No one will question it.”
Costello leaned back in his chair. “And the backup. Your Hollywood people have to make two of every one of those training films. One with the main crew, and one with the backup crew. Just in case. The crew could change at the last minute.”
Jones got up and went back to his easel. “Both crews. That’s important. We have to make a note of that. And I guess that includes the simulated mission profiles, too.”
“Too many people,” said Costello. “Everyone in Mission Control. That’s a couple dozen people in the room and in the building. They all have access to the information as it comes in. Once the landing module separates and starts a descent, there’s no hiding it from them.”
“That is a lot of people,” said Jones. “The ones who aren’t directly in Mission Control, we can probably handle them with some tricks, but the ones in there, that’s tough.”
“Dozens of people is normally manageable,” said Elbing. “Hundreds, that starts to be more difficult.”
“You’re gonna get all those people to forget that they saw the landing module smash into the lunar surface,” said Costello, “or maybe they can fail to notice that one of the space suits broke open? That’s not realistic.”
“There will be many kinds of people in that room,” said Elbing. He put his hands together and looked up at the ceiling. “A few of them are real patriots. They believe in the mission. They believe in something larger than themselves. We can work with them. Many of the others are simply scared. It is relatively easy to scare them even more, so they keep a secret. These are competent people. This is why they are recruited. But they are not brave. Besides, most of them have secrets of their own. Objectively, these are mostly small secrets, irrelevant in the scheme of things. But all those little secrets are significant to those particular people. If one of them, or even a few lack discipline in some years, it is easy to discredit them as witnesses, or to shame them into compliance. We can use these small secrets.”
“You’re a piece of work,” said Costello. “A real piece of work.”
Elbing walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. “Then you have the incorruptible truth tellers. Very few, but they are very difficult to handle. They are usually upstanding persons, well respected. They have few secrets to hide, and they would normally rather tell the truth than save themselves. There is little leverage. You have to work with them quite intensively. Find out what they believe in. Find out what they think they’re protecting. Convince them that by keeping the terrible secret, they are doing what they believe in, and protecting what they value. If that fails, or if it looks like it could fail, it is possible that they become the victim of some random accident. But by the time those decisions must be made, I am no longer involved in the work, fortunately. Not anymore, at least.”
Costello stared at Elbing, still standing by the coffee pot. “They can go to the papers. Anytime.”
“I hope they do,” said Elbing. “This is normally a best case scenario. The men who own the large newspaper conglomerates are keenly aware that national shame does not sell. And they would normally check with someone I work with before they print something like that.”
“There are leaks,” said Costello. “Some of them, the government doesn’t like at all.”
“Nothing sensitive is printed in a major newspaper in the West,” said Elbing, “without a good reason that follows government logic. Of course, some in the government may not be aware of that reason, and they often complain. It helps with appearances.”
“I don’t think the control is as good as you assume,” said Costello.
“And you, young Costello,” said Elbing. “I wonder what kind of person you are, when it comes to these secrets. If I have to make a guess, you are a combination of the true patriot, and the incorruptible truth teller. The most difficult client of all, in my business. And probably you are brave.”
“I signed all the papers,” said Costello. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“Yes,” said Elbing. “I am sure you did know.”
“But those people in Mission Control, they sure as hell don’t,” said Costello.
“Gentlemen,” said Jones from the easel. “We’re getting distracted again.”
“War means sacrifice,” said Elbing, “something your people once knew, Costello, and which they need to learn again.”
“My father was in the Pacific,” said Costello.
“Yes,” said Elbing. “I am quite sure they would not have trusted him to fight in Europe. Certainly not in Italy.”
“You should come to New Jersey one of these days,” said Costello. “I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’d have a few things to say to you.”
“Alright, let’s get back to business,” said Jones. “We still have a lot of work to do.”
Elbing sat back down and lit his pipe again. Jones grabbed another cigarette. Costello got up and refilled his coffee.
“So,” said Jones, “now they’ve gotten to the Moon, they’ve landed safely, it’s all hunky dory, they’re on their way back. It’s a new transit, right? Same procedure in case of failure? Jamming comms? Simulated radio for the mission profile?”
“You’re missing a few steps,” said Costello.
“Ok,” said Jones, “tell me.”
Costello took a deep breath. “The landing module could fail to launch.”
“Museum exhibit for future generations,” said Elbing. “Maybe they put the first national park on the moon around the landing site. Visit the mummified astronauts inside their space suits. It should be quite popular with the children of the next century, I think.”
“The biggest risk,” said Costello, “is the orbital rendez-vous. We haven’t even done many of those in real life. And the docking. Anything could go wrong. A little tumbling, a little out of alignment, maybe a bad seal…”
“And we’ve got three forever spacemen,” said Elbing. “They can keep the lost Russians company. I imagine it must get lonely up there, after all.”
“Right,” said Jones, “so what’s the plan for those contingencies.”
“At that point,” said Costello, “I guess it’s still up to Elbing’s wizards of Hollywood. I hope they’re real good, mister. I don’t see how you fake a launch from the lunar surface. Nobody’s ever even seen one of those for real.”
“Exactly,” said Elbing. “That works in our favour. Imagination is given full reign. They’ll need a good physicist as a consultant, but this is still training film territory. As is the orbital rendez-vous. If the launch fails, we cut the communications and re-establish them once the engines are fixed, just in time to watch the module rise into the lunar sky. We’re all home in time for Christmas, just like the Great War.”
“Except they’re not,” said Costello. “They’re on the Moon, or maybe stuck in some exotic orbit somewhere. At some point, we’re gonna have to deal with that. I don’t think even your Hollywood people can help.”
“That is the easiest part of the plan,” said Elbing.
“How so,” said Jones.
“Whatever happens before they are back on Earth,” said Elbing, “we have to hide it, at least long enough until it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s relatively difficult and risky. Some events must be hidden for a few days, and then it doesn’t matter. Some, for a few decades, until we’re all dead and no one cares anymore. That is the maximum horizon. The approach is fundamentally the same. Even if we limit the number of people aware of the situation to an absolute minimum, at least some people will know about it. Dealing with those people is always the most difficult. My filmmakers can give us some tools to work with, and Costello’s transmitters and his gadgets can mask many unfortunate and unexpected events, and there could be many of those. What happens out there is completely outside our control. We are simply reacting. But once the astronauts are back on Earth, at least in appearance, we control the situation.”
“I don’t see how we control the situation,” said Costello. “Even if it all goes well for re-entry, there’s the recovery. That’s a major naval operation. Ship’s crews, helicopters, live TV, the press, ticker tape parade down Broadway, Dinner with the President. Doesn’t sound like control to me.”
Jones turned to Elbing.
Elbing blew a ring of thick blue smoke toward the ceiling. “You don’t read enough cheap novels, Costello. I recommend it. It’s a very instructional exercise. It fires up the imagination. You see, during the return trip to Earth, one of the astronauts has experienced mild symptoms. It is difficult for the physicians to identify a precise cause. Out of an abundance of caution, the astronauts will remain in their space suits after recovery, until they can be properly quarantined. It is only logical that we don’t want to bring some kind of space bug back to small town America, yes?”
“Even if you do that,” said Costello, “you still need astronauts to step out of a capsule at some point. Hell, you need a capsule to splash down, and you need the quarantine to end at some point.”
“The capsule is a simple trick,” said Elbing. “I have one friend at the Pentagon who handles these sorts of things for us. A C141 Starlifter can carry seventy thousand pounds up to forty one thousand feet. That is more than enough to drop your capsule into the ocean. The pilots don’t even need to be aware of their payload. Only a flight plan, and a release point. The aircraft will need to be modified, I’m sure, but there is time.”
“Forty one thousand feet,” said Costello. “Any kid who’s seen a Gemini recovery on the news is gonna know that thing never went through re-entry.”
“My Hollywood wizards, as you call them,” said Elbing, “will be more than happy to touch it up a few months before the actual mission, and very convincingly. They love that sort of work. For a training mission of course. It will look like it’s been through the fires of hell.”
Jones was listening. Elbow on the table, chin in hand. “What about the astronauts. They have wives, you know.”
“This is how you handle the problem of the astronauts,” said Elbing. “We can easily find three men who will play the part. We make them relatively convincing, at least from a distance, once we clean them up. It may involve a bit of surgery. The homeless men’s shelters and the prisons are full of such men. After a few days in preventive quarantine, everything is fine. The astronauts are flown back to the continental US. Tragically, there is a plane crash on the way back. No one survives.”
Costello stood up from his chair. “You’re gonna pull a Gagarin on these guys? We’re not the goddam Soviets, we don’t kill people.”
“Of course not,” said Elbing, “we’re not barbarians. There is a reported plane crash, but it is far over the ocean. We put the men in Montana somewhere on some horse ranch, whether we end up using them or not, in fact, just to be sure. They live happily ever after, under suitable supervision. That’s no problem. And these brave astronauts, these men who have won the space race, who have risked everything for truth, freedom, and the American way, these men who have completely succeeded in every part of their mission, they deserved better, but they died gloriously after all, in the line of duty, and their memory will be honoured. They will receive the highest decorations, posthumously. The widows and orphans will be well cared for, the school books will tell the story for generations.”
“With a plan like that,” said Jones, “I mean with the fake astronauts supposedly dying…”
“You mean the stand-ins,” said Elbing.
“Yeah,” said Jones, “the stand-ins. You have to be really specific. The people who carry out those plans, they tend to be literally minded, if you see what I mean. We wouldn’t want them to misunderstand any part of it. I mean, plane crashes and all that.”
“Very clear, and very specific,” said Elbing. “Normally, that kind of clarity is in the drafting. But in this case, there will be no draft, correct? This is too sensitive, yes?”
“Correct,” said Jones. “There’s us in the room, and then there’s the instructions we communicate to the various players in our respective fields, if and when it becomes absolutely necessary. I’m giving a general sense of our discussions to a few people upstairs, but nothing specific.”
“Very wise,” said Elbing. “You’ll go far, young man.”
“You think this can work,” said Jones.
“I really don’t think so,” said Costello.
“It can work,” said Elbing. “Certainly, anything we do is better than doing nothing.”
“So you say,” said Costello.
“The general outline of the plan is reasonable,” said Elbing, “as far as these sorts of things go. Not the craziest I have ever attempted. The plan is flexible, we will have to improvise, but the division of labour between us is obvious and logical.”
“This is crazy,” said Costello. “Disaster all the way.”
“But you’re willing to try it,” said Jones.
“Sure,” said Costello. “Why not.”
“Tomorrow,” said Jones, “we start with the details. And remember, the plan is that we won’t need the plan.”
“Amen to that,” said Costello.