"I can't take all the credit." She knew when to be self-effacing and when to change the subject, fast. "We owe all this to the Bed Sox's oldest living fan."
By which she meant Isaac Mannheim, the retired MIT professor whose revolutionary propulsion idea had made the whole project possible. In 1969 he had demonstrated his ground-based laser concept to NASA, but they had backed away, claiming they had too much invested in conventional chemical rockets. But he knew it would work, knew it would change the way space was used, so he had taken the idea to entrepreneur William Bates and offered to sign over the patents for a piece of the profits. Bates was impressed. He took him up on the offer, raised the money, and then hired the best aerospace engineer he could find to head up the project. Together they were a perfect team.
Mannheim, with flowing white hair and tweedy suits, was now in his seventies and lived in retirement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was due in tomorrow, just in time to watch the first lift-off of a full-scale vehicle. When he arrived in Athens, Cally always dispatched the company Agusta to pick him up. A first-class corporation, she figured, ought to behave like one.
"If the Cyclops power-up goes off without a hitch tonight, then we should have plenty of good news for him this trip," Bates said. "I'll let you be the one to brief him."
"Oh, he'll know it all before he gets here. He calls me every day at 1700 hours, our time, to check things out. I could use him to set my watch."
"Isaac's like the voice of our conscience, always telling us to work harder and better. Well, good for him." He smiled and flicked a gold lighter. The young technicians around the room gave him a disapproving glance, but kept their silence. The boss was the boss.
Besides, everybody in Command, poised in front of their screens, had other things to worry about.
8:22 P.M.
Eric Hamblin, formerly of Sweetwater, Texas, had worked as a guard for SatCom for the past two and a half years and he loved the job. He was twenty-four, a college-dropout casualty of the go-go eighties who got to spend his afternoons hanging out on one of Greece's most beautiful islands. He was tall, thin, and bronzed to perfection. During his weekends on Crete he could almost pass for French as he cruised the German Frauleins who lined the sands in their string bikinis.