Back in Phoenix, Bob Wisdom and the other guys had become the nucleus of the team that was designing the SSZ prototype. The program would take years, we all knew, years in which we had assured jobs. If the SSZ actually worked the way we designed it, we could spend the rest of our careers basking in its glory.
I was almost getting accustomed to being called over to the West Wing to deal with bureaucrats and politicians. Still, it was a genuine thrill when I was invited into the Oval Office itself.
The President’s desk was cleared of papers. Nothing cluttered the broad expanse of rosewood except the telephone console, a black-framed photograph of her late husband (who had once also sat at that desk), and a gold-framed photograph of her daughter on her first day in the House of Representatives (D-AR).
She sat in her high-backed leather chair and fired instructions at her staff.
“I want the public to realize,” she instructed her media consultant, “that although we are now in a race with the Russians and the French, we are building the SSZ for sound economic and social reasons, not because of competition from overseas.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the media consultant.
She turned to the woman in charge of congressional liaison. “And you’d better make damned certain that the Senate appropriations committee okays the increased funding for the SSZ prototype. Tell them that if we don’t get the extra funding, we’ll fall behind the Ivans and the Frogs.
“And I want you,” she pointed a manicured finger at the research director of TURD, “to spend every nickel of your existing SSZ money as fast as you can. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get the additional appropriation out of Congress.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Roger K. Memo, with one of his rare smiles.
“But, Madam President,” the head of the Budget Office started to object.
“I know what you’re going to say,” the President snapped at him. “I’m perfectly aware that money doesn’t grow on trees. But we’ve got to get the SSZ prototype off the ground and do it before next November. Take money from education, from the space program, from the environmental superfund—I don’t care how you do it, just get it done. I want the SSZ prototype up and flying by next summer, when I’m scheduled to visit Paris and Moscow.”
The whole staff gasped in sudden realization of the President’s masterful plan.
“That right,” she said, smiling slyly at them. “I intend to be the first Chief of State to cross the Atlantic in a supersonic zeppelin.”
Although none of us realized its importance at the time, the crucial incident, we know now, happened months before the President’s decision to fly the SSZ to Paris and Moscow. I’ve gone through every scrap of information we could beg, borrow or steal about that decisive day, reviewing it all time and again, trying to find some way to undo the damage.
It happened at the VA hospital in Hagerstown, a few days after Mark Sequoia had been rescued. The hospital had never seen so many reporters. There were news media people thronging the lobby, lounging in the halls, bribing nurses, sneaking into elevators and even surgical theaters (where several of them fainted). The parking lot was a jumble of cars bearing media stickers and huge TV vans studded with antennas.
Only two reporters were allowed to see Mark Sequoia on any given day, and they were required to share their interviews with all the others in the press corps. Today the two—picked by lot—were a crusty old veteran from Fox News and a perky young blond from Women’s Wear Daily.
“But I’ve told your colleagues what happened at least a dozen times,” mumbled Sequoia from behind a swathing of bandages.
He was hanging by both arms and legs from four traction braces, his backside barely touching the crisply sheeted bed. Bandages covered eighty percent of his body and all of his face, except for tiny slits for his eyes, nostrils and mouth.
The Fox News reporter held his palm-sized video camera in one hand while he scratched at his stubbled chin with the other. On the opposite side of the bed, the blond held a similar camcorder close to Sequoia’s bandaged face.
She looked misty-eyed. “Are . . . are you in much pain?”
“Not really,” Sequoia answered bravely, with a slight tremor in his voice.
“Why all the traction?” asked Fox News. “The medics said there weren’t any broken bones.”
“Splinters,” Sequoia answered weakly.
“Bone splinters!” gasped the blond. “Oh, how awful!”
“No,” Sequoia corrected. “Splinters. Wood splinters. When the balloon finally came down, we landed in a clump of trees just outside Hagerstown. I got thousands of splinters. It took most of the surgical staff three days to pick them all out of me. The chief of surgery said he was going to save the wood and build a scale model of the Titanic with it.”
“Oh, how painful!” The blond insisted on gasping. She gasped very well, Sequoia noted, watching her blouse.
“And what about your hair?” Fox News asked.
Sequoia felt himself blush underneath the bandages. “I . . . uh . . . I must have been very frightened. After all, we were aloft in that stupid balloon for six days, without food, without anything to drink except a six pack of Perrier. We went through a dozen different thunderstorms . . .”
“With lightning?” the blond asked.
Nodding painfully, Sequioa replied, “We all thought we were going to die.”
Fox News frowned. “So your hair turned white from fright. There was some talk that cosmic rays did it.”
“Cosmic rays? We never got that high. Cosmic rays don’t have any effect on you until you get really up there, isn’t that right?”
“How high did you go?”
“I don’t know,” Sequoia answered. “Some of those updrafts in the thunderstorms pushed us pretty high. The air got kind of thin.”
“But not high enough to cause cosmic ray damage.”
“Well, I don’t know . . . maybe . . .”
“It’d make a better story than just being scared,” said
