Back to the Moon-ARC by Les Johnson, Travis S. Taylor Page A

O’Conner will take care of you until my return,” he said as he motioned for Caroline O’Conner to join him. As he moved toward the door, he lowered his head and softly said to O’Conner in passing, “I just hope it isn’t longer than that.”
    “The wolves look hungry,” she whispered back to him. Gary only raised an eyebrow at the comment and hurried to the main control room. The real control room.
    Childers entered the room just as Gesling’s voice once again came over the loudspeaker. “Control, the pressure is starting to drop again. We need to scrub. This whole thing is going the wrong way.”
    Not uttering a word, uncharacteristic of Childers in a business meeting, seemed entirely appropriate as he waited to hear the response from the experts, his experts, hired at considerable expense to make this whole venture happen.
    “Paul, we concur. Prepare to save onboard systems and stand down” was the only reply from the engineer responsible for the test flight.
    “Damn!” This time it was Gary doing the cursing. “Shit!” He promptly turned on his heels and began walking back to the VIP room. Now he had to explain this mess to his potential investors and hope that they would be willing and able to hang around until the problem was resolved and the Dreamscape could take flight. Childers was too smart to ever try to overturn a technical decision from his team. They were the experts; he paid them to make technical decisions, and he trusted them completely. That didn’t mean, however, that he was happy with them or the situation.  
    But when he had started out on this venture, he had hired a company to complete an extremely detailed analysis of the space industry and why NASA was not economically viable. The space shuttle program had been designed to offer cheap access to space but turned out to be a money pit. The analysis showed that when NASA managers started putting pressure on the program to fly more missions to improve the cost efficiency of the shuttles, that was when the major accidents had occurred. Gary hadn’t paid heavy for the analysis just to ignore it. That was their job. He’d just have to find a way to make the day’s lemons into lemonade. That was his job.
      
    Aboard Dreamscape, Paul Gesling began the ground abort procedures with the skill of a trained pilot, always glancing at the checklist of required tasks and procedures as it scrolled across the LCD screen, checking each item off as required. In the back of his mind, he was frustrated. But he was a professional, and professional pilots knew that procedures saved their lives—taking out his frustration would have to come later. He was thinking about a bottle of scotch and a punching bag.
      
    The press was having a field day. Soon after Childers returned to take charge of his guests, Caroline O’Conner had the unpleasant task of going to the press observation room and telling the assembled reporters that today’s flight would not happen. She didn’t yet know when it would happen, and she didn’t exactly understand the reason for the delay, but she knew enough to provide the media with the immediate facts.
    O’Conner took up her position behind the podium and microphone at the front of the room and said, “May I have your attention, please?
    “Today’s maiden orbital flight of the Dreamscape has been scrubbed due to a pressure leak in one of the ship’s propulsion systems. Our experts are looking into the problem, and we will let you know soon when the next attempt will take place.” O’Conner, as usual, sounded knowledgeable and self-confident as she made the announcement.
    “Ms. O’Conner, Ms. O’Conner!” shouted the reporter from Space News, the major online news outlet covering all things space. “How will this affect your schedule? Your schedule shows that you’ll be taking paying customers around the Moon in just a couple of months. Do you expect to keep the schedule?”
    “At this time, we don’t know.