Free Space in His Heart by Roxanne St. Claire

Maybe cost cutting
had nothing to do with the problems they faced on Endeavour .
But if a hungry reporter started digging around, the real story
might not be that hard to uncover. Very few people in the room even
knew there was another story. Including Jessica Marlowe.
    She turned her attention to Skip Bowker.
“You’re the heart and soul of safety at the Cape, Mr. Bowker. What
do you think?”
    “Ditto what the Colonel says, ma’am.
Absolutely everything is in order: inspected, re-inspected and
triple-checked—”
    Colonel Price held his hand up to interrupt.
“We’re not going to give them confidential technical information,
Miss Marlowe. How can we kill the rumor started by this memo and
stop this reporter from yellow journalism?”
    “We can drown him in key messages about
NASA’s unparalleled commitment to safety.” She took out a legal
pad. “Then we’ll confuse and overwhelm him with indisputable,
quantifiable, and non-confidential facts.”
    Deke leaned forward, ready to fire facts at
her. Too much too soon could confuse and overwhelm the pretty spin
doctor instead of the reporter. At least he hoped it would.
    They shot figures at her, answering her
questions as fast as she could ask them. From the number of times
the shuttles were inspected before a launch to the aggregate years
of experience of inspection teams. Skip Bowker knew most of it, but
he was a little unsure on circuit inspections and rewiring. Deke
filled in the holes with rapid-fire statistics and mechanical terms
that had to bury her.
    She wrote furiously, throwing back questions,
forcing them to fine-tune the answers and sending an occasional
dirty look in his direction when he went so fast she couldn’t keep
up. But, he admitted with grudging admiration, that wasn’t very
often. In fifteen minutes she had filled two long, yellow pages
with bullet points.
    Colonel Price reached out and spun the pad to
read it. “I can get these across in an interview.”
    “With all due respect, Colonel, the real goal
is to kill the story.” She closed her eyes for a moment and shot a
look at Deke. “I have a rather unorthodox suggestion.”
    A black ball of anger formed in his gut. He
opened his mouth to argue, but she deftly cut him off, addressing
the Colonel with her practiced, professional voice.
    “Perhaps Commander Stockard could do it.
There is no better person on earth to speak about safety than
someone who has to take the risk. And it would be an excellent
introduction to the reporter for… our positive publicity
campaign.”
    She tapped a pink fingernail on the page and
turned back to Deke. “You deliver these sound bites, but weave them
into a heartfelt speech about your belief in the program and why
you became an astronaut. You can convince this reporter he doesn’t
have a story.” She looked innocently at the Colonel. “Colonel
Price, well, sir, you don’t have to fly that shuttle. Commander
Stockard speaks for the people who do.”
    Colonel Price nodded slowly, his gaze lifting
to Deke. “I think she makes perfect sense.”
    The brat. The little she-devil brat. There
was no way he could contradict Price in front of all these people.
“Of course.”
    “Here.” Jessica slid the pad down the table
toward him. “Can you read my handwriting?”
    Deke clenched his jaw and stared at her. “I
don’t need your notes, Miss Marlowe.”
    She paled. Good. At least she knew she’d betrayed him. She cleared her throat and pulled a
speakerphone closer to her, tapping an open line.
    “I need to present the idea to Zimmerman
before we put you on the line,” she said over the dial tone. “And I
need to remind him of something.”
    Paul Zimmerman answered on the first ring.
“Jessica Marlowe. So you’re working on NASA now? You didn’t mention
that when we had dinner last month.”
    “A new plum assignment, Paul,” she said with
a pointed look at Deke. “I couldn’t turn it down. We have to get
you to Kennedy for the next