MICHELLE: I’m the Mission Control Communications Commander
for the Space Shuttle Program.
SCULLY: What brings you to Washington?
MICHELLE: I have reason to believe there may be a saboteur at work
inside NASA.
MULDER: Do you have evidence of sabotage?
MICHELLE: I don’t know. I may. Two weeks ago, a shuttle mission was
scrubbed three seconds before lift-off when an auxiliary power unit valve
malfunctioned. If the flight had not been aborted, there was a great
chance the liquid fuel system and the Orbiter would have exploded on
the launch pad. This was sent to me in the mail. It’s a material analysis that shows deep grooved
scoring marks inside this APU valve. Marks that could have caused a malfunction.
MULDER: Evidence of tampering?
MICHELLE: That’s what it looks like, but.. according to the person who gave
me your names you have expertise in unexplained phenomena, and
what’s unexplainable is how and when anybody could have done it.
SCULLY: How do you mean?
MICHELLE: The valve is made of ferrocarbon Titanium. To score that
material would take extreme temperatures : launch pad temperatures.
If anyone at NASA were to take a look at that analysis, they would
say that it would be impossible for anyone to do that type of damage
undetected.
SCULLY: Do you have any idea who may have sent that to you?
MICHELLE: No. No idea. But I can tell you that the official analysis of the
malfunction was simple mechanical failure.
MULDER: Does anybody share your suspicions?
MICHELLE: If they do, they’re not talking to the FBI. I believe in the space
program. I believe in the people who run it, but there’s another launch
window tomorrow and my reasons may sound selfish, but my fiancee
is a shuttle commander on that mission.
SCULLY: Why would somebody want to sabotage the Space Shuttle?
MULDER: Well, if you were a terrorist, there probably isn’t a more potent
symbol of American progress and prosperity. And if you’re an opponent
of big science, NASA itself represents a vast money trench that exists
outside the crucible and debate of the democratic process. And,
of course, there are those futurists who believe the Space Shuttle is a
rusty old bucket that should be mothballed. A dinosaur spacecraft built
in the 70’s by scientists setting their sights on space in an ever declining
scale.
SCULLY: And we thought we could rest easy with the fall of the Soviet Union.
MULDER: Not to mention certain fringe elements who accuse our
government itself of space sabotage. The failure of the Hubble
Telescope and the Mars Observer are directly connected to a
conspiracy to deny us evidence.
SCULLY: Evidence of what?
MULDER: Alien civilizations.
SCULLY: Oh, of course.
MULDER: Wow, look at that –- Gemini 8.
SCULLY: What?
MULDER: Well, the man we’re gonna see? Colonel Marcus Aurelius Belt
nearly died on that mission. Had to make an emergency landing right
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
SCULLY: You remember all that stuff?
MULDER: You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?
SCULLY: Guess I missed that phase.
SCULLY: Do you have any reason to suspect sabotage at all?
COL. BELT: No reason whatsoever. And if you have any respect for this program
and for the people who have devoted their lives to it, you’ll be careful to
whom you make those accusations.
MULDER: Do you think there would be a
problem with us watching lift off from Mission Control?
BELT: Well, being that you’d probably go over my head anyway,
please, be my guest.
MULDER: (to BELT) It was an honor, sir.
SCULLY: (to BELT) Thank you. (leaves with MULDER)
Didn’t you want to get his autograph?
MULDER: I can’t believe that Col. Belt would endanger the lives of those
astronauts knowing that something might go wrong. He was an astronaut
himself.
SCULLY: So you think this x-ray is bogus?
MULDER: God, I hope so.
MULDER: I can’t believe how much faith we put in machines.
MULDER: I have to admit, that fulfilled one of my boyhood fantasies.
SCULLY: Yeah, it ranks right up there with getting a pony and learning
how to braid my own hair.
MULDER: Come on, Scully. You have to admit that was exciting.
Mission control...countdown.
BELT: I know you have a lot of questions, and I’ll get to them.
SCULLY: (to MICHELLE) How did he know what he did was going to work?
MICHELLE: He didn’t. They could have died up there and there would have
been nothing we could have done. They’d have been a ghost ship stuck
in orbit.
SCULLY: Why would he take that risk?
MICHELLE: Bring those men back without delivering that payload?
You’re talking millions of wasted dollars. That’s all Congress would
need to shut down NASA.
BELT: As of 2200 hours, the crew has been conducting onboard tests and
tasks and resting up for their first full day in space tomorrow. I’m happy
to say after a beautiful night launch the Shuttle Orbiter has performed
magnificently.
SCULLY: (to MULDER) So much for your boyhood hero.
MULDER: Col. Belt? Col. Belt? Can I talk to you for a moment?
BELT: You want to know why I lied to them. You’re asking yourself if
this means I’d lie to you. You know what it means to
be an astronaut, sir? You risk your life every time you get into your
spacecraft for nothing more than the good progress of mankind.
MULDER: You’ve got no argument from me, sir.
You’re true American heroes.
BELT: Heroes? We used to make headlines when we did our job right.
Now they bury them in the back of the paper. Name me two astronauts
on the last shuttle mission. You make the front page
today only if you screw up. They only know your name if you’re the
unlucky SOB sitting on 500 tons of dynamite. That’s what they’re
really waiting for.
MULDER: Sir, I have to ask. I’m sorry, it’s my job.
Do you think someone is sabotaging the shuttle?
BELT: My answer to you sir, will be to bring those men back safely to earth.
SCULLY: Why does [Michelle] need Belt?
MULDER: She doesn’t know how serious the leak is.
SCULLY: It’s an oxygen leak. Even I can figure out what happens when
you run out of oxygen.
MULDER: Col. Belt’s been up there in the same situation before. He’ll
know better than anybody else what to do. He’s got to make the decisions.
SCULLY: Where the hell is he?
SCULLY: Michelle!
MICHELLE: They’re going to die.
MULDER: You don’t know that.
MICHELLE: It’s absolutely unconscionable putting that payload before
those men’s lives.
SCULLY: I think she’s right, Mulder. You saw him in there. He’s losing it.
MULDER: He saved their lives earlier.
SCULLY: Did he? Or did he put their lives in unnecessary jeopardy?
If he can’t deliver that payload, Congress is going to kill the Space Program.
MULDER: And you think killing those astronauts isn’t going to have the same
effect?
SCULLY: Look, Mulder. I think somebody must have sabotaged the space
shuttle because too many things have gone wrong. I think Col. Belt knows
about it and he’s known about it from the beginning.
MICHELLE: We have to stop him. We’ve got to pull them out of orbit.
SCULLY: What exactly are we looking for?
MULDER: X-rays, diagrams, schematics -- any proof that Belt
knew about a sabotage.
SCULLY: A needle in a haystack.
SHUTTLE: Holy God! There’s something outside the ship!
There’s someone outside the ship!
BELT: Can you repeat that, OTC?
SHUTTLE: There’s some kind of .... ghost outside the ship!
BELT: (losing it) No. No. No no noooo!
SCULLY: Mulder, I found it. This is the same diagram that was sent to
Michelle ... ordered by Col. Belt. Which means he knew about the faulty
valve.
MULDER: This is from the Challenger. It’s the O ring fitting that failed dated
January 21, 1986. That’s one week before the space shuttle blew up.
And the analysis was ordered by Col. Belt.
SCULLY: Are you saying he might have known about the Challenger defect?
MULDER: Something weird is going on here, Scully.
SCULLY: Mulder, you’re risking an aneurysm.
BELT: They don’t want us to know. They don’t want us to know.
MULDER: Who?
BELT: It came to me. It lives in me.
SCULLY: The doctors who examined him said he was experiencing severe
dementia.
MULDER: I don’t think he ever really knew exactly how it was working through him or that he ever knew...that he was...responsible for his own actions.
SCULLY: He ordered those x-rays of the damaged parts.
MULDER: You saw what I saw, Scully. I think he was trying to warn her.
I think that he sent Michelle those x-rays like he was trying to reach out
to her without quite knowing why, as if...his own instinctual impulse
was to save those men.
SCULLY: While simultaneously trying to kill them?
MULDER: Hey, Scully, we send those men up into space to unlock the
doors of the universe, and we don’t even know what’s behind them.
I think what ever it was, he took it with him. And in the end that was
the only way he knew how to stop it.
SCULLY: There’s an investigation, you know. They haven’t ruled out foul play.
MULDER: He gave his own life. As an astronaut, that was something he was
prepared to do.
