Operation Moon Rocket

Chapter 9

Home was a bungalow in Cocoa Beach.

They got there by cab from Orlando and Nick didn't care that their journey would be easy to trace.

So far he had a reasonably good cover story. He and Joy Sun had been talking in low voices on the plane, walking hand in hand at McCoy Field — things incipient lovers were expected to do. Now, after a draining emotional experience, they had sneaked off to be by themselves a while. Not exactly what was expected of a true-blue astronaut perhaps but at any rate not actionable. Not immediately, anyway. He had until morning — and that would be time enough.

Until then McAlester would have to cover for him.

The bungalow was a squared-off block of stucco and cinder right on the beach. A small living room ran the entire width of it. It was pleasantly furnished with bamboo beach chairs upholstered in foam rubber. Palm leaf matting covered the floor. There were broad windows facing the Atlantic, to the right of them a door that led to a bedroom and, beyond that, another door leading out onto the beach.

"Everything's a mess," she said. "I left so suddenly for Houston after the accident that I didn't have a chance to clean up."

She bolted the door behind her and stood against it, watching him. Her face was no longer a cold and beautiful mask. The broad, high cheekbones were still there, the finely sculptured hollows. But her eyes flickered from the aftermath of shock and her voice had lost its cool certainty. For the first time she looked like a woman instead of a mechanical goddess.

Desire began to build up inside Nick. He moved to her quickly, gathering her into his arms, kissing her hard on the lips. They were firm and cold but the warmth of her struggling breasts shot through him like a current. The heat grew. He could feel a pulse beating in his thighs. He kissed her again, his mouth hard and brutal against hers. He heard a smothered "No!" She tore her lips away from his and pushed against him with her clenched fists. "Your face!"

For a second he didn't know what she meant. "Eglund," she said. "I'm kissing a mask." She shot him a shaky smile. "Do you realize that I've seen your body, but never the face that goes with it?"

"I'll go peel Eglund off." He headed toward the bathroom. It was time the astronaut was retired anyway. The interior of Poindexter's masterpiece had turned soggy in the heat. The silicone-emulsion had begun to itch intolerably. Besides, his cover value was at an end now, too. Events on the plane from Houston suggested that "Eglund's" presence was actually a danger to the other Moon Project astronauts. He took his shirt off, wrapped a towel around his neck, then carefully peeled away the pliable plastic hair mask. He fished the foam padding out from inside his cheeks, pulled the blond eyebrows off and rubbed his face vigorously, smudging and smearing the leftover makeup. Then he leaned over the sink and popped the hazel-pupiled contact lenses out of his eye sockets. He glanced up to see Joy Sun's reflection in the mirror, watching him from the doorway.

"A definite improvement," she smiled, and in the reflection of her face the eyes moved, traveling the length of his metal-smooth torso. All the muscular grace of a panther was packed into that magnificent frame and her eyes missed none of it.

He turned to face her, wiping the last of the silicone from his features. The steel-gray eyes that could smolder somberly or turn icy bright with cruelty were lit with laughter. "Do I pass the physical, Doc?"

"So many scars," she said in wonderment. "Knife. Bullet wound. Razor slash." She ticked the descriptions off as her ringer traced their jagged courses. His muscles contracted at her touch. He took a deep breath, feeling the tension knot below his stomach.

"Appendectomy, gall bladder operation," he said tightly. "Don't romanticize."

"I'm a doctor, remember? Don't try to kid me." She glanced up at him, eyes bright. "You never answered my question. Are you some kind of super-secret agent?"

He pulled her to him, propping her chin up with his hand. "You mean they didn't tell you?" he grinned. "I'm from the planet Krypton." He touched the wetness of her lips with his — softly at first, then harder. There was a nervous tautness in her body that resisted for a second, but then she softened and with a small whimper her eyes closed and her mouth became a hungry little animal searching for his, hot and wet, the tip of her tongue probing for satisfaction. He felt her fingers undoing his belt. The blood pumped within him. Desire grew like a tree. Her hands moved, trembling, over his body. She took her mouth away, buried her head against his neck a second, then drew back. "Wow!" she said shakily.

"Bedroom," he grunted, need exploding in him like a gun.

"Oh God, yes, I think you're the one I've been waiting for." Her breath came in heaving gulps. "After Simian… then that business at the Bali Hai… I was off men. I thought for good. But you could be different. I see that now. Oh lovely, dammit," she shuddered as he drew her to him, thigh to thigh, breast to breast, and in the same movement ripped open her blouse. She wore no bra — he'd known that from the way the ripe cones had moved beneath the material. Her nipples were firm points against his chest. She writhed against him, her hands exploring his body, her mouth glued to his, her tongue a darting, fleshy sword.

Without breaking contact, he half lifted, half carried her across the hall and over the palm leaf matting to the bed.

He laid her down on it and she nodded, beyond speech, as his hands moved about her body, unzipping her skirt, smoothing her thighs. He leaned over her, kissing her breasts, his lips crushing into their softness. She moaned softly and he felt her warmth spread open beneath him.

Then he wasn't thinking any more, just feeling, bursting out of the nightmare world of treachery and sudden death that was his natural habitat and into a bright, sensual flow of time that was like a great river, concentrating on the feel of the girl's perfect body, floating on the ever-quickening tempo until they hit the rapids and her hands caressed him with a growing urgency, and her fingers dug into him and her mouth melted against his in final supplication and their bodies tensed and arched and flowed together, thighs straining deliciously and mouths blending, and she sighed a long, shuddering, happy sigh and let her head fall back against the pillows as she felt the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed…

They lay for a while in silence, her hands moving rhythmically, hypnotically over his skin. Nick drifted toward the edge of sleep. Then, because he had stopped thinking about it for the last few minutes, it suddenly came to him. The sensation was almost physical: bright light flooded into his head. He had it! The missing key!

At the same instant, terrifyingly loud in the stillness, came a hammering sound. He threw himself away from her but she came up with him, entangling him in soft and caressing curves, unwilling to relinquish him. She wound her curves about him so that even in this sudden crisis he came close to forgetting his peril.

"Anybody in there?" a voice shouted.

Nick broke free and darted to a window. He drew the Venetian blinds aside a fraction of an inch. An unmarked patrol car with a whip antenna was parked out front. Two figures wearing white crash helmets and riding breeches were shining their flashlights through the living room window. Nick gestured to the girl, directing her to throw something on and to answer the door.

She did, and he stood with his ear against the bedroom door, listening. "Howdy, Ma'am, we didn't know you were home," a male voice said. "Just checking. The outside light was off. Last four nights it's been on." A second male voice said, "You're Dr. Sun, aren't you?" He heard Joy say that she was. "You just got in from Houston, is that right?" She said it was. "Everything okay? Nothing disturbed in the house while you were away?" She said everything was as it should be and the first male voice said, "Okay, we just wanted to make sure. After some of the things that have happened around here you can't be too careful. If you need us fast, just dial zero three times. We're on a direct hookup now."

"Thank you, officers. Good night." He heard the front door close. "More of those GKI police," she said as she came back into the bedroom. "They seem to be every place." She stopped in her tracks. "You're going," she said accusingly.

"Have to," he said, buttoning his shirt. "And what's worse, I'm going to add insult to injury by asking if I can borrow your car."

"That part I like," she smiled. "It means you'll have to bring it back. First thing in the morning, too, please. I mean that…" She suddenly stopped, a stricken look on her face. "My God, I don't even know your name!"

"Nick Carter."

She laughed. "Not very imaginative, but I suppose in your business one phony name is as good as another…"

All ten lines at the NASA Administration Center were busy and he began redialing the numbers without stopping so that the moment a call ended he'd get his chance.

A single image kept flashing through his mind — Major Sollitz, chasing his hat, his left hand reaching awkwardly across his body for it, his right arm held rigidly against his torso. Something had bothered him about that scene out at the Texas City plant yesterday afternoon, but what it was kept eluding him — until he'd stopped thinking about it for a moment. Then it had quietly surfaced into his consciousness.

Sollitz had been right-handed yesterday morning!

His mind raced along the complicated ramifications spreading in all directions from this discovery as his fingers automatically dialed and his ear listened for the ringing sound of a cleared connection.

He sat on the edge of the bed in his room at the Gemini Inn, hardly noticing the neat stack of suitcases that Hank Peterson had delivered from Washington, or the keys to the Lamborghini on the night stand, or the note under them that read, Let me know when you get in. The extension is L-32. Hank.

Sollitz was the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. Take him into account and everything else fell neatly into place. Nick remembered the Major's shock when he'd first come walking into his office and quietly he cursed himself. That should have been the tip-off. But he'd been too blinded by the sun — Dr. Sun — to notice anyone else's behavior.

Joy Sun had been surprised, too, but it was she who'd first diagnosed Eglund's condition as Amine poisoning. So her surprise was natural. She simply hadn't expected to see him back so soon.

A line cleared at the Administration Center.

"Red Room," he told them in Glenn Eglund's Kansas drawl. "This is Eagle Four. Give me the Red Room."

The wire hummed and twanged and a man's voice came on. "Security," he said. "Captain Leasor speaking."

"This is Eagle Four, top priority. Is Major Sollitz there?"

"Eagle Four, they've been looking for you. You missed the debriefing at McCoy. Where are you now?"

"Never mind that," said Nick impatiently. "Is Sollitz there?"

"No. He's not."

"Well find him. This is top priority."

"Hold on. I'll check."

Who, besides Sollitz, would have known about Phoenix One? Who, besides the Apollo Security Chief, could have had the run of the Medical Research Section of the Spacecraft Center? Who else knew every phase of the medical program, had an intimate knowledge of its dangers, could be seen anywhere without raising suspicion? Who else had the run of both the Houston and Cape Kennedy facilities?

Sollitz, N3 was now convinced, was the Sol who met with Pat Hammer at the Bali Hai in Palm Beach and plotted the destruction of the Apollo capsule. Sollitz tried to kill Glenn Eglund when the astronaut found out what the Major was up to. Sollitz hadn't been told, however, about Nick's masquerade. Only General McAlester knew about that. So when "Eglund" turned up again, Sollitz had panicked. It was he who had tried to kill him on the moonscape. The giveaway was the right- to left-hand switch, the result of the broken wrist he'd sustained in the struggle over the knife.

Now Nick understood the point of all those questions about his memory. And Eglund's reply that "bits and pieces" were slowly coming back had further panicked the Major. So he'd planted a bomb on a "stand-by" plane, then had manufactured a phony bomb scare enabling him to substitute the alternate aircraft for the original one without having it first checked out by a demolition team.

A crisp voice came on the wire. "Eagle Four, this is General McAlester. Where in hell did you and Dr. Sun disappear to after your plane landed at McCoy? You left a whole gaggle of top security brass cooling their heels there."

"General, I'll explain everything to you in a minute, but first — where's Major Sollitz? It's of the utmost importance that we find him."

"I don't know," said McAlester flatly. "And no one else seems to, either. He arrived at McCoy on the second plane. We know that much. But he disappeared somewhere in the air terminal and hasn't turned up since. Why?"

Nick asked if their conversation was being scrambled. It was. So he told him. "My God," was all the NASA Security Chief could say at the end of it.

"Sollitz isn't the boss," Nick added. "He's been doing the dirty work for someone else. The USSR maybe. Peking. At this point it's anyone's guess."

"But how in hell did he get security clearance? How did he manage to rise as far as he did?"

"I don't know," said Nick. "I hope his records will give us a clue. I'm going to have Peterson radio AXE with a full report and also request an exhaustive background check on Sollitz as well as on Alex Simian of GKI. I want to double check on what Joy Sun told me about him."

"I've just been speaking to Hawk," said McAlester. "He told me Glenn Eglund has finally recovered consciousness at Walter Reed. They hope to question him soon."

"Speaking of Eglund," said Nick. "Could you arrange for the phony one to suffer a relapse? With the Phoenix countdown under way and the astronauts tied to their stations, his cover is turning into a handicap. I've got to be free to move around."

"It can be arranged," said McAlester. He sounded happy about it. "It'll explain why you and Dr. Sun wandered off. Amnesia from hitting your head in the plane. And she went after you to try to bring you back."

Nick said that was fine and hung up. He fell across the bed. He was too tired to even get undressed. He was glad everything was working out so neatly for McAlester. He wished something convenient would happen along his way for a change. It did. He fell asleep.

He was awakened an instant later by the phone. At least it seemed an instant, but it couldn't have been because it was light out. Groggily he reached for the receiver. "Hello?"

"Finally!" exclaimed Candy Sweet. "Where have you been for the last three days? I've been trying to get you."

"Called away," he said vaguely. "What's up?"

"I've found something terrifically important out on Merritt Island," she said excitedly. "Meet me in the lobby in half an hour."