Skyfall

“Fine. If I could start with you, Coretta, since you're the newcomer and the only one I haven't talked to before. Can you tell me something about yourself?”

“I can't add a thing to that press release you must have seen. Just school, then research, then more research with NASA.”

“I'm sure your life has been much more interesting than that. Certainly a woman succeeding in a man's field is something people will be interested in. And a black woman as well. You've come a long way against what must have been difficult odds.”

“I don't see it that way,” she said calmly. “America's a civilized country and given the skills a woman can do as well as a man. And skin color doesn't enter into it.”

“Really?” Redditch said, his eyebrows lifting. “That'll be good news in the ghettos.” He made a note on his pad. “Can I be frank, Coretta? I've been a newsman for a number of years and I know the facts. And I can't stand bullshit.”

Her face was calm but her voice was icy. “I'm giving you the facts and they're not bullshit.”

Redditch threw his hand up in mock surrender. “Okay! No fights. You call them as you see them and I'll write it down.” He flipped through a wad of NASA releases. “No, in this copy about you, it doesn't seem to mention anything about either your marriage or your divorce.”

“You've been doing your homework,” she said calmly, then sipped at her drink. “The marriage lasted less than a year. An old school friend. It was a mistake on both our parts. There were no children. We're divorced but still see each other once in awhile. Would you like names and dates?”

“No thank you, I have all that. Just your personal point of view. Another question if you don't mind. Do you think there was anything political in the fact that you, a newcomer to the space program, were chosen to go on this flight?”

This was the cruncher, the big one, the question that Red-ditch had been setting up. The early stuff was just teasing. Patrick sat unmoving and saw the sudden reddening of Flax's neck. Neither of them said anything. Redditch made an adjustment on the recorder while Coretta sipped her drink, then put it down.

“I don't think so,” she said in a calm, unhurried voice. “I'm no newcomer to NASA, in fact I have been connected with space research for five years. I have always wanted to practice my specialty in its proper setting, in space. I'm sure my age helped me. Some of my colleagues are senior to me but they may not have the physical resiliency for a long space flight. I was just lucky that my number came up now, for a flight as important as this one. I am very happy to be a member of the crew.”

Well done, Patrick thought, then went to pour himself another drink. Cool delivery, no fluster — and every word smacking of the NASA speech writers. She had learned her lines very well. Redditch was going to have a hard time flustering this baby.

Redditch never did. He asked the same question from a couple of angles then appeared to lose interest. Was Coretta's smile a bit wider as he turned his back? Flax was at the bar and pouring himself a large glass of ice water, then a second. Red-ditch flipped the cassette over and turned to Patrick.

“Now the sixty-four thousand dollar question. I know you have been asked it about three hundred times already but I hope you won't mind if I ask again now. What is Prometheus for? Over to you.”

“Before I say what the project is for, or designed to do, can I fill in with a bit of history?”

“Say it any way you like, I have all day. But keep it non-technical. I'm the guy who failed first-grade arithmetic in the eighth grade. Take it from there.”

“Right. First, think of the energy shortage. No politics now, greedy Arabs, profiteering oil companies, all that stuff. Just the physical reality that, at the present rate of consumption, we're going to burn up all the Earth's oil in a couple more years. So we've got to do something drastic about it. Prometheus is that drastic thing. Oil is really two things. Not only the stuff we burn in our cars and planes, but a basic raw material for most industries, chemicals, fertilizer, the lot. So every drop we burn is a drop wasted for this other vital need. Therefore if we get our energy needs from something other than petroleum we have all the oil for its other uses. Okay so far?”

“Perfect. Clear as a bell. More.”

“Right. Alternative sources of energy. Primarily all our energy comes from the sun.”

“I don't get that. Coal? Oil? Wind? What do they have to do with the sun?”

“Everything. Coal and oil contain solar energy stored away by plants millions of years ago. The sun heats our atmosphere and it moves and we get winds. The wind blows and makes ocean waves, so even wave power is direct solar power. The time has come to utilize the non-polluting, eternally available energy of the sun directly. The Prometheus Project.”

“Slow down. It's going to take billions of dollars to even begin this project. Wouldn't that money be better spent on Earth, say tapping the solar energy in the desert?”