Summer Cool

20

Circling in to Tucson Airport, he could not locate Kitt Peak, and soon gave up, concentrating on the beautiful dry city itself, nestled into the sandy mountains of lower Arizona like a solitary desert bird. Tucson was like no other place he had ever been. From the air it looked lonely, an earth city set in an alien landscape of brown, dry mountains and desert bluff_; from the ground, it was transformed into a Disney version of any other American city-clean, wide, with the same stores as any other city but under a clear blue wide sky.

The sky, he knew, was not quite so clean, because once he left Tucson behind in his rented Ford and began to climb into the dry summer heat of the mountains, sloping up gently through cactus fields and Indian towns, the orange haze that covered Tucson like a bowl became evident.

From the top of Kitt Peak, the ancient sacred Indian mountain that held eight of the largest telescopes in the world at 7,000 feet, Tucson was only a hazy brown memory forty miles away.

Paine was early. He parked the Escort and wandered down to the solar telescope. There was a tour just going in, and he joined it.

Down into the bowels of the mountain, 700 feet, and into a small dark room. Above them, the odd white tube of the Heliostat let in the burning harsh light of the sun and let it fall onto a large white table, where they watched an image of the solar disk covered with groups of sunspots, each a black magnetic pimple.

There was a short film in a nearby room, the sun flaring before him, throwing long tendrils of white-hot gas from its surface into space. Paine watched it, ever fascinated by the violence of the seemingly benign yellow disk that lit and warmed our planet, and barely felt the hand on his shoulder.

He turned, seeing Billy Rader's bearded smile in the near darkness.

"Howdy," Rader said, but some of his usual effusiveness was gone.

"What's wrong, Billy?"

"Later."

When the film ended, they filed out of the cold shaft of the solar telescope and up into real sunlight.

"What is it?" Paine asked.

"Plenty of time for that," Billy said. "Let's look at the rest of the scopes."

They went first to the 108-inch telescope, a massive squat tube, the largest on the mountain. Paine and Rader stood regarding it from a galley, separated from the telescope by a flat plate of glass.

"Not like MacDonald Observatory in west Texas, hey, Jack?" Rader said, putting his hand on the glass. "They let you go right up and touch the sucker there."

"And they've got cops like Landers in Texas, too."

Rader laughed. "Ole Landers has got problems right now, Jack. Somebody said something earthshaking to him yesterday, and he up and took a long leave of absence." Rader laughed. "Probably be working at the Motor Vehicle Department when he gets back."

Paine said, "You've got that much power down there, Billy?"

Rader looked at him levelly. His face became serious. "Not really, Jack. It's just who you know. I know a lot of people. Too many. Sometimes I can't do anything at all."

"What happened?"

Rader smiled, but his eyes stayed flat. "Little while, Jack. Let's see the rest."

They saw the other telescopes, the sixty-inch used for planetary research, the relatively small thirty-inch. Billy insisted on stopping at the gift shop, and bought a dark blue T-shirt with the Andromeda galaxy spread across the front that said Kitt Peak National Observatory on it, along with some postcards. "Got a great telescope postcard collection," he explained. "Come on, let's go look at the scenery!"

They moved away from the other tourists, down a sloping stone path to the edge of the cliffs that gave them a panoramic view of Arizona below them. The air was thin and dry the scene magnificent-wide, flat desert plains dotted with mountain ledges, purple ridges of rock to the far and beautifully bleak horizon.

"No getting away from the heat, eh, Jack? But if you gotta have heat, this is the kind you want. A hundred degrees, but dry as a bone."

"Sure, Billy."

Billy Rader found a seat on one of the cliffs and sat down, dangling his feet over the edge. Paine stood beside him and looked down_; there was only a drop of about fifty feet before a second slim ledge fell off a thousand feet below.

"You like sitting like that, Billy?"

"Shit, yeah. Makes me feel like God. Even if I am an asshole."

"What happened, Billy?"

"Well," Rader said, scratching his beard, looking at the vista spread below him, "what happened is I can only do so much, Jack. What happened is that I can't help you anymore."

"Why not?"

Rader stared out at nothingness, and then suddenly spit out into it. "Because I can't."

"That's the best you can do?"

"We all do our best, Jack. I almost didn't even come today. Yesterday I got my buddy in the Pentagon out of bed and made him sit in front of his computer and tap a few codes in. He was only too happy to do that, considering the poker money he's owed me for five years. So far, so good. Then he calls me back early this morning, and-" Rader looked up at Paine, the flat look back in his eyes "-he tells me a couple of things and then tells me to forget them."

Paine looked down at him and waited.

Billy Rader stood up, stretched, and turned his back on the spread of Arizona before them. He stared at the high white dome of the 108-inch telescope. "I think you should go home, Jack, go back to fishing. Better yet, come back to Texas with me and look at the sky. We could drive out to MacDonald Observatory."

"What did your man tell you, Billy?"

"I'm not going to tell you, Jack. For a couple of reasons. One of them is I like you a lot. The other is, I like me a lot."

Paine said, "Did he tell you anything?"

"Oh, he told me, all right. Because he's stupid, and thought he'd be paying off that bet. I guess he did. What he did was break national security."

Paine waited.

Rader looked at him closer. "You're not going to quit, no matter what?"

"No matter what."

"All right, then, I'll tell you this much. Your friend Bobby did some very bad things in a place called Cambodia." Paine waited, unblinking.

"Shit, Jack," Rader said suddenly. He looked at the sky at the telescope, at Arizona beyond the cliffs. "You won't go home, forget about it?"

"No."

Rader sighed. "Maybe this will help. You knew I'd tell you, anyway." He looked at Paine. "Looks like your friend's going around the mountain. Seems he thought he was doing his business in Cambodia for the old red, white, and blue, but in fact his little covert operation was unauthorized." Rader's stare was trying to make Paine give up. "Looks like he couldn't handle that, Jack, knowing he did the wrong thing for the wrong reason."

"Thanks, Billy."

"Jesus Christ! Don't you see the big picture? Mr. Clean Marine found out he was dirty and couldn't take it! That's all there is!"

"Maybe," Paine said.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Find out why he's in Tucson."

"Christ!" Rader stomped his foot like an angry horse, looked back at Paine. He reached into his pocket, took out a slip of paper.

"Here," he said, handing it to Paine.

Paine looked at it; on it was a name and address.

Billy Rader said quietly, "That's the other guy in his unit. My friend at the Pentagon gave it to me."

"Thanks."

"You're an asshole, Jack." Rader began to walk away. "I'm gonna have me another look at that big telescope, then I'm going home. If you want anything, don't call me."

He stopped, turned and smiled. "Go ahead and call me, Jack."

"I will, Billy."