Asteroid Discovery

by Bobby Akart

  “Launch is scheduled for seven eastern. It’s six a.m. in paradise, son. Up and at ’em!”

  Gunner pulled a sweatshirt over his head and made his way to the kitchen. Pop had already started a pot of coffee and was spreading the beignets out on a platter.

  “I’m pretty sure I told you I wasn’t interested in watching this—”

  Pop cut him off. “Son, I’ll never forget watching the coverage of Apollo 11 as a boy. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were American heroes for what they accomplished on that mission to the Moon. What we are about to witness today is a crew who’ll quite possibly be saving the world. This isn’t some kind of movie or make-believe story. It’s real stuff and we need to be a part of it. All Americans should want to support them.”

  Gunner sighed. Of course, Pop was right. He usually was. When Gunner wanted to sulk and be left alone, Pop kicked him in the ass. When Gunner wanted to drown his sorrows in a vat of Oyster City Beer, Pop reminded him that he could be called to duty at any time. And when Gunner appeared to throw caution to the wind a little too much, it was Pop who tried to remind him that he had something to live for—no easy task.

  The two munched the still-warm beignets, piling on the powdered sugar to add to the delicious flavor. After the coffee was made, Pop glanced at the clock on the microwave and panicked.

  “It’s almost time!” He ran over to the coffee table, which held the remotes, some empty beer bottles, and an iPad. He shook his head in disgust and powered on the monitors. “Fox News?”

  Gunner replied with a mouth full of beignet, “Nah, CNN. They’re better for stuff like this.”

  He wandered over in front of the television. He gazed upon the awesome sight of Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, by far. Pop turned up the volume on the monitor, and the CNN reporter described the scene.

  “This incredible rocket has been modified to send the orbiter and its crew deeper into space than any other in history. Its first stage is powered by three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores, whose twenty-seven Merlin engines will generate over six million pounds of thrust at liftoff. To put this in perspective for our viewers, that’s the equivalent of eighteen Boeing 777 aircraft.”

  “I’ve got the chills,” said Pop. He rubbed his arms and appeared to get a little teary-eyed. “I mean, look at that thing.”

  T minus thirty-one seconds and counting.

  The reporter continued. “This is an important moment as we await Launch Director—”

  A female voice could be heard, obscuring the reporter’s sentence.

  Go for launch.

  A spontaneous cheer erupted at Launch Control, which put Pop further into an emotional state. He began to applaud.

  “Man, oh man!” he said excitedly.

  Ground launch sequencer is a go for auto sequence start.

  T minus sixteen seconds and counting.

  The CNN cameras, rebroadcasting the feed provided by NASA, focused in on Falcon Heavy as the hydrogen burn-off system was initiated. The screen split as their cameras panned to the many thousands of onlookers waving their flags, not trying to hold back their tears of joy.

  T minus ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.

  Pop joined in the final countdown with millions of others around the globe.

  Three. Two. One. Zero!

  Solid rocket booster ignition and we have liftoff of Orbital Slingshot One!

  “Woo-hoo!” yelled Pop, startling Howard, who jumped out of bed and began his quintessential hound-like howling bark combination that was irresistible. Pop grabbed Gunner’s arm and began to hop up and down like a child, his exuberance eventually rubbing off on Gunner.

  A test pilot of Gunner’s caliber had certainly experienced the kind of rush that astronauts felt, only they hadn’t traveled as far into space. Gunner tried, and it had almost killed him. However, Pop’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Gunner quickly got caught up in the moment.

  He studied the telemetry that was superimposed in the bottom left of the screen. Gunner’s mathematical mind quickly appreciated the sheer power of the massive Falcon 9 engine cores. That amount of thrust was surely exerting a tremendous amount of gravitational force on the crew.

  Power and telemetry are nominal.

  OS-1 was one minute into flight. The cameras picked up the sound of the rockets forcing Falcon Heavy in a northeasterly direction away from Florida’s Atlantic Coast toward the island of Bermuda.

  Gunner closed his eyes for a moment and recalled that day in DeFuniak Springs when Heather had declared that something was wrong with the launch of Artemis One. He tried to remember.

  “Two minutes,” he mumbled aloud.

  “What?” asked Pop.

  Vehicle is supersonic.

  The calm voice of someone at Launch Control was providing periodic updates of Falcon Heavy’s progress. The CNN reporter began to provide the benefit of his knowledge.

  “You can hear the applause building to a crescendo at the Cape, both within the confines of Launch Control and from the tens of thousands of Americans who’ve lined the highways surrounding the Kennedy Space Center.” He began to well up in tears as he looked around at his fellow news reporters; all of them were truly caught up in the moment.

  Maximum dynamic pressure achieved.

  “I apologize for my emotions, ladies and gentlemen,” the reporter began, in between sniffles. “Maximum dynamic pressure, or max-q, is an important part of lift off. At this point, the rockets aerodynamic loads are at their highest, a very good sign.”

  He could barely be heard over the shouts of delight from those who’d made their way to Cape Canaveral.

  Gunner was apprehensive as he focused on the telemetry displays. Falcon Heavy was approaching ten thousand miles per hour. It had shot up through the stratosphere, quickly approaching the dark layer that surrounded the earth, where oxygen dissipates and space begins—the mesosphere.

  It was also approaching the two-minute mark. The visions of Artemis One flashed through his mind. The sadness Heather had felt when she saw the inaugural lunar mission fail in spectacular fashion.

  The CNN announcer described this stage of the launch. “We’re at two minutes now, and the power will begin to drop in the side boosters to decrease loads on the center core.” He paused for a moment.

  BECO.

  The Launch Control announcer spoke calmly into the communications system.

  “To our viewers worldwide, BECO is an acronym for booster engine cutoff. It marks an important point in the launch process, as you can now see via this split screen that the two side booster engines have separated from the rocket. These side boosters have begun their return to the launchpad at Cape Canaveral.

  “There! You can see on your screen that the side boosters have safely fallen away from Falcon Heavy and their grid fins have deployed. The side booster’s engines have refired, and their guidance systems will carry them back to Earth to be used on a future mission.”

  “Wow! Wow! Wow!” exclaimed Pop as he wiped the tears away. He’d abandoned any attempt to control his emotions, allowing them to pour out as the excitement continued to build to a crescendo.

  Gunner exhaled for the first time in a minute. They were past the two-minute mark. He managed a grin and leaned down to scrub on Howard’s back, whose tail hadn’t stopped wagging since liftoff.

  “The center core has powered up once again and has achieved a speed of ten thousand miles per hour.” The CNN reporter, having managed to regain some sense of professionalism, continued to describe the process for the viewers.

  The mission time clock clicked away as they approached three and a half minutes.

  MECO.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, MECO is an acronym for main engine cutoff. The three Falcon 9 engines have done their job, and with the drop-off of the main engine, the orbiter will begin to operate under its own power as it soars into space on its mission to intercept asteroid IM86!”

  Separation ignition.

&n
bsp; Gunner smiled. It was gonna be all right.

  He’d learned a lot about the process of launching rockets into space from Heather. Many a night was spent as she explained to him that it was safe, despite what they had witnessed during the Artemis One launch. She’d done her level best to convince him that her first mission into space, to the ISS, would be the two-hundredth time NASA had carried out a launch. She tried to explain the odds, and that they were better than driving down the highway.

  He recalled her words. The promises of safety. The convincing nature she had when she wanted something bad enough.

  And then Gunner was grabbed back into the present as the image of Orbital Slingshot One disappeared in a flash of bright, hot-white light.

  Chapter 55

  Friday, April 13

  Gunner’s Residence

  Dog Island

  “Wait. What’s happened?” Pop walked up to the large screen and tried to reach into it, as if touching the rocket would provide him answers. He stood there for a moment in stunned disbelief.

  The news feed switched back to the CNN newsroom, where the hosts were speechless, and the panel of experts were fighting back tears.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve lost the feed to the OS-1 spacecraft. We’re not sure if, um, we’re hoping that some kind of malfunction has resulted in the camera being disabled.”

  Gunner calmly set down his coffee mug and stormed onto the deck, rubbing his hands through his hair as he tried to process what he’d seen. He knew there was a difference between a camera malfunction and an explosion. He’d blown up plenty of aircraft to recognize a catastrophic failure.

  “Gunner, what just happened?” asked Pop through the open door. The tears streaming down his face had changed from an emotional high to ones of utter devastation. He could sense it in his gut as well.

  Gunner leaned over the rail and shook his head without answering. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. The anger that he’d suppressed for so long was beginning to well up inside him again.

  “Son?” His father was pleading with him.

  Gunner manned up and turned to Pop. He stretched his arms out and gave his father a hug, the first one the two men had shared in a long time.

  After a moment, Pop broke away and looked into Gunner’s eyes. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”

  “Most likely, Pop. We’ll wait to hear something official, but, um, it doesn’t look good.”

  “But they were on their way. I mean, all the hard stuff was over. It’s not like before, right? They were past all that.”

  “Yeah, Pop. They were.” Gunner turned away and walked back to the rail. He gripped it with both hands and squeezed the teakwood until his knuckles turned white. He looked up and down the beach, which was devoid of the usual seashell hunters and hand-holding strollers. Everyone, it seemed, had been captivated by the launch, and now, he presumed, they were mourning the dead.

  Pop walked back inside and began to flip through the channels, hoping to find a news report that definitively gave him answers.

  Gunner already knew in his gut what had happened. He wasn’t sad; he was angry.

  The sound of his phone ringing caught his attention, but he ignored its incessant demands to be answered. No, I don’t want to talk about what just happened.

  Minutes stretched into more than an hour. Periodically, Pop would walk onto the deck and report some kind of update and the opinions of a talking head who purported to know why the OS-1 mission ended.

  By nine a.m., the finger-pointing and blame game had begun.

  NASA overloaded the orbiter’s fuel tanks.

  SpaceX misrepresented their capabilities.

  Rumors were the president was obsessed with the Russians and forced the launch to be moved up a week.

  We weren’t ready.

  Gunner spoke to Pop briefly and took a shower. For ten minutes, he allowed the hot water to pour over his head, hoping to erase the memory of another mission failure. By the time he got dressed and emerged from the bathroom, Pop had recovered and was now focused on the media topic du jour—now what?

  “Look here, son. They’re already working on a plan B.”

  Gunner snickered and said sarcastically, “I’m sure they are.”

  “No, seriously, we’re a great nation and you can’t keep us down. I say jump back in the saddle and ride.”

  “Sure, Pop,” said Gunner, agreeing but not really agreeing. He glanced at the clock. It was already ten a.m. He opened the refrigerator and retrieved a beer, convincing himself that it was beer-thirty.

  “Son, your phone has been ringing and they’ve been leaving voicemails.”

  “Yeah, you know, I just don’t feel like talking about it. Listen, Pop, I need to head into town. Do you need anything?”

  “Into Apalach? I’ve stocked your pantry and there’s more beer in the downstairs cooler.”

  “Nah, I just have an errand to run.”

  Pop knew his son was lying. “Gunner, come sit down and talk with me for a minute.”

  “No, Pop. I really need to go.”

  “You mean run away, right? Escape? Go anywhere but have the conversation I want to have with you.”

  Gunner swigged some of his beer and set it sharply down on the wooden table that served as a kitchen island and dining table. The bottle hit so hard that beer foam began to rise up the neck.

  “What’s there to talk about, Pop? It’s a repeat of past failures. It’ll probably happen again and again. I mean, how many good people does NASA have to kill until they get it right?”

  Pop scowled. “They are lessons learned in blood, but necessary.”

  “And that makes it okay?” Gunner didn’t like to argue with his father, but maybe he needed to let him know how he felt.

  “No, of course not,” Pop replied. “But you can’t take your ball and glove and go home. You don’t quit. You pick up the pieces and try again.”

  Gunner gritted his teeth. He was beginning to get the sense that Pop was discussing more than the explosion that ended the flight of OS-1. Before he could counter his father’s statement, Pop continued.

  “You can’t let a setback, a failure, stop you. You chase your destiny. If it involves risks, then so be it. That’s what it takes to insure you achieve your goals, or at least progress in that direction.”

  Gunner didn’t want to hear any more. He stomped toward his nightstand and retrieved his phone. He glanced at the display and saw that he had nine missed calls. He set the phone to mute and shoved it in his pocket.

  He could not, however, mute Pop, who continued. “Son, if risk is the price of progress, what’s required to save humanity?”

  “Apparently, eleven more dead astronauts,” he snidely replied.

  “Yes, son, that’s right. The ultimate price. Death. Death is the result of pursuing the nearly impossible. But, as they say, with great rewards comes great risk.”

  Gunner’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket again. He reached for it and then decided against it. He just wanted to get away.

  “Pop, how many lives will it take? How many?” Gunner suddenly became emotional and the tears filled his eyes. He turned his head away from Pop and made his way to the stairwell, not wanting to bother with the elevator.

  “Son, please don’t go,” pleaded Pop. “I’m sorry. We can talk about this later.”

  Gunner waved his hand over his head. “I’ll be back later.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Pop, but Gunner was gone.

  Chapter 56

  Friday, April 13

  Apalachicola, Florida

  It was all Gunner could do to lay off the throttle as he navigated his boat away from his bayfront dock and through The Cut. Despite his melancholy mood, he was still very much aware of the dolphin pod that had taken up residency in the nearby waters around the two barrier islands.

  Once he was clear of The Cut, he opened her up. The Donzi lurched forward and quickly reached seventy-five miles per hour, and it began to crash w
ildly into the incoming waves. Gunner didn’t mind the rough ride, as he simply wanted to go fast. As fast as he could toward the middle of the Gulf, and away from everything.

  He was miles from shore and glanced behind him to see that Florida was fading from view as sea spray obliterated his line of sight. Then he looked down at his gauges and realized his fuel was low. Dammit! Really? He was in no mood to call Sea Tow to get a five-gallon refill at four hundred dollars per hour.

  He stopped the boat and allowed it to idle, rocking with the waves as they rolled in toward shore. It was a beautiful day, weather-wise, but it was more than glum as it related to his state of mind. For the first time, he actually wanted to speak with Dr. Dowling at Eglin. All of the pent-up emotions demanded to be released—the memories that he’d suppressed for so long.

  He rocked along for a moment, his brooding being interrupted one time by a fixed-wing Cessna flying nearby, ambling low to the water along the coast in the direction of Mexico Beach. Gunner took a deep breath of the salt air that he loved so much, and held it, allowing its intoxicating taste to soak into his body. The warm sun gave him new life, and he tried to force himself into a better frame of mind.

  Gunner immediately felt bad about leaving Pop the way he did. He powered up the boat and turned it back toward Dog Island. He retrieved his phone from his pocket and was about to send a text when another call tried to come through. He hit decline, immediately sending it to voicemail. He opened up the message app and typed out a text while driving with his knee.

  GUNNER: Hey, Pop! I’m sorry I was being an asshole. Can I buy you a beer and a dozen on the half shell as an apology?

  Several moments later, his good-natured and, thankfully, forgiving father replied:

  POP: No apologies necessary. I get it. See you at the dock.

  Chapter 57