Nimec breathed. Maybe it hadn’t sunk them, but Max was dead, and he owned a share of the blame. Maybe, too, he deserved to be making reparations.
“Who you plan on sending to Mato Grasso?” he asked.
Another dead moment.
Megan shifted in her chair.
“Gord’s asked me to go,” she said.
Nimec looked at her.
“I apologize.” She averted her eyes for the briefest instant. “I probably should have told you sooner.”
He was quiet.
“Pete, one more thing,” Gordian said, breaking into the silence at what he thought was an opportune moment. “Have you heard from Tom Ricci? We can’t afford to get hung up as far as the Sword position.”
“He left a message on my voice mail this morning. I plan to return the call as soon as I get back to my office.”
“No indication yet about how he’s leaning?”
Nimec shook his head.
“He’d want to talk to me directly.”
Gordian nodded. “I can see that.”
Megan smoothed her skirt over her legs.
“Must be a guy thing,” she half-muttered.
Gordian looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“You haven’t spoken to my wife lately, have you?”
“No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
Gordian looked at her another moment.
“Never mind,” he said, and scratched behind his ear. “It’s nothing important.”
TWELVE
Annie Caulfield had been thrust into the role of NASA spokeswoman often enough to have grown philosophical about it. See it as a burden and it would become one, and when it became one it would start to show on camera, and when it started showing on camera you’d be perceived as touchy and evasive, i.e., having something to hide, and the press corps would pound you without mercy. See it as a sort of friendly jousting match with reporters and interviewers, get too cute, and you would come off as one of the gang, an egotistical, overly glib insider who was enjoying the limelight, cozying up to your questioners for personal advancement — perhaps in anticipation of joining their ranks as a pundit, or expert consultant as it was formally called — and had very likely gotten into cahoots with them to put one over on the average citizen. See it as a means of serving the public’s legitimate right to know while doing your best to shape a positive perception of the agency, be honest about the facts you disclosed and equally aboveboard explaining instances when you
It was a tough balancing act that often put her resilience and composure to the extreme test.
The day after she accepted the assignment of
Her first booking was a five-minute spot with the same Gary Somebody-or-other who’d snared her for the cameras just before the shuttle launch was to have taken place. A genial man in his thirties, his plain-vanilla good looks and honey-voiced manner contributed to his talent for reducing conversations about wars, disasters, and the latest showbiz buzz alike into a homogeneous puree that washed down smoothly with breakfast and made him a consistent Nielsen winner. While Gary was certainly opportunistic, Annie had to admit that she sort of liked him, finding him to be further removed from a Gila monster than many of his peers, and a whole lot sharper than his soft and fuzzy veneer let on.
“We appreciate your taking the time to join us, Ms. Caulfield,” he began in a tone of gentle empathy. “On behalf of this broadcast’s staff and viewers, I’d like to extend my condolences to NASA and the family of James Rowland. Our thoughts go out to all of you.”
“Thank you, Gary. The support we’ve gotten from the public obviously means a great deal to us, and has been a particular comfort to Jim’s wife and daughter.”
“Can you tell us what sort of impact the tragedy has had on you personally? I know that you and Colonel Rowland were close friends as well as colleagues.”
“Well… like anybody who suffers the loss of someone dear, I find it hard to put all my feelings into words. Jim’s death has been devastating for everyone who knew him. He had a huge, warm personality, and it’s hard to believe he’s gone. He’ll be terribly missed and remembered always.”
“You flew several missions into space with Colonel Rowland, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“As crewmates on several missions, did the two of you ever discuss the possibility of being harmed in what is, after all, a highly dangerous occupation?”
“I don’t recall that we ever did. I think every astronaut feels a sense of privilege about being chosen to go into space. We’re always aware things can go wrong and try to prepare for these eventualities in training, and I’m convinced it’s because of this training that the rest of Orion’s crew escaped the shuttle unharmed. But we really can’t afford to dwell on the risks of our job any more than a firefighter or police officer can worry about them when he starts out each day.”
“Of course, I understand, and believe it’s one of the main reasons that astronauts have come to epitomize an almost mythic spirit of heroism to those of us who’ve only been able to see the stars from the ground, and
“On the subject of your present duties as Orion task force leader, how do you intend to proceed with your efforts to determine the cause of last Tuesday’s terrible calamity at the launchpad?”
“Speaking in general terms, and that’s the best I can do at this juncture, we’ll assemble a team that will look at what happened and search for clues to help us isolate the factors leading up to it. Any forensic probe is largely a process of elimination, and it’s going to require a painstaking examination of
“May we assume your investigative team is to be composed of NASA personnel?”
“As we expressed in our initial statement to the press, we’re quite firmly committed to using experts from inside and outside the space agency—”
“When you say outside experts, I find myself wondering where they’d be drawn from, this being an occurrence that’s had few historic parallels. Other than
