© 2011 by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Chapter Four

“They are in orbit now” the aged wolf Kirby Landers reported to his waiting assistant. “They are as safe as they can be.”

“Two days to the Tin Can” Jerry added, the stag silently impressed by his employers plans to slip his chosen twelve into his private space project while a salivating NASA watched. “Scheduled for two weeks in space, four dry runs launching STARDUST then back home. A heros welcome then back to their families. I wonder what the families would be doing if they knew the full truth.”

“I need a nap, call me when lunch is ready Jerry” the wolf explained before turning his chair to take him to his bedroom. He never let anyone but a long time maid enter that room, not ever.

Jerry returned to his own office, one as equally lavish as Kirby Landers. He was going to miss this place the stag thought as he settled down to review what he knew. NASA, who had done nothing without being paid up front was a strangled government agency that again had no man rated ships of their own. Congress and successive pandering to special interest groups had almost killed the space orientated agency, even now they barely received sufficient funds to maintain a minimal presence in space, that being three astronauts aboard the Tin Can, a station they had built that Landers had purchased at scrap value when the agency was planning to de-orbit it in he late twenties.

Certainly even Landers impressive fortune could never have managed a project of this size without the Tin Can. Originally called Freedom Station it was decommissioned because well, NASA had a use it and discard it’ attitude about everything. Take the Space Shuttles for example, still viable, desperately needed until the next man rated ship would be read they picked a date and when that date came they trashed badly needed equipment simply because some bean counter said it was time. This had happened to the station as well, as soon as it started costing big money to repair NASA dumped it.

That was where Landers had come in, he had bid for the station not for scrap but to raise it into a higher orbit then maintain it as a ‘private research station.’ Now instead of owning the station NASA paid big money to have people aboard and access to equipment that they once owned. A more blatant and visible example of government stupidity did not exist.

Landers space program had caught the public attention, his use of very good advertising agents had fired the public imagination in a way not seen since Apollo Eleven. Jerry had vetted everyone of those companies and he had okayed or killed every suggested announcement (and there had been more killed that let breath) the companies came up with. Project STARDUST was as much his vision as it was the old mans now.