by Mike Jenne
Copyright © 2016 by Mike Jenne
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Jacket design by Haresh R. Makwana
Jacket photo credit: Gemini Mission courtesy of NASA
Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-066-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-072-7
Printed in the United States of America
For Andrew Grant Hindman,
A young man who appreciates the treasures found in words and numbers:
Dream big, as big as the sky, and follow fast after those dreams.
Author’s Note
The Cold War is raging—a highly classified AF space program—in modified Gemini capsules—astronauts fly missions to intercept and destroy Soviet satellites suspected of carrying nuclear weapons. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, project Blue Gemini is led by Air Force Major General Mark Tew (whose health is progressively failing) and his civilian deputy, retired General Virgil Wolcott.
Scott Ourecky joined the Air Force as a brilliant engineer and mathematician, but repeatedly failed the aptitude test to become a pilot. His recognized ability sees him take right seat in a flight to space with the most proficient pilot assigned to the Project, Major Drew Carson (who yearns to fly in combat in Vietnam).
A Delta Airlines stewardess, Bea Harper, daughter of an Air Force pilot killed in the Korean War, agreed to marry Ourecky only if he promises not to become a pilot.
Air Force Airman Matthew Henson is trained as a covert operative to support Blue Gemini's global search and rescue operation and is later dispatched to Africa to establish a contingency recovery site.
Two astronauts are killed in a launch accident during Blue Gemini’s maiden flight.
An Air Force sergeant, Eric Yost, a would-be spy, monitors the Project’s hangar convinced they are hiding UFO remains. Deep in debt from gambling losses, he plans to contact several magazines.
Soviet Lieutenant General Rustam Abdirov is selected by the Soviet General Staff to develop Krepost, as a nuclear orbital bombardment system. Seeking a powerful, compact computer for the Krepost, Abdirov gets a protégé, Major General Gregor Yohzin to arrange a GRU (Soviet military intelligence) operative, Colonel Felix Federov to steal a Gemini computer from a Smithsonian Institution warehouse in Maryland and for Major Anatoly Morozov to go to Ohio to investigate rumors that the Air Force is storing captured UFOs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Before Apollo 11 astronauts land on the moon, Ourecky and Carson are secretly launched into orbit to intercept and destroy a suspect Soviet satellite. Despite a major power failure on their spacecraft, they disobey General Tew’s orders to return to Earth, and instead continue their mission. In so doing, they discover a previously unknown class of Soviet reconnaissance satellites. Upon their return to Earth, Tew grounds the pair.
1
OVER THE MOON
Flight Crew Office
Aerospace Support Project, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
2:35 p.m., Thursday, July 17, 1969
Pondering the most expedient solution to a complex equation, Major Scott Ourecky tapped his pencil eraser on the desktop, scratched his ear, and then reached for his favorite slide rule. He eased it from its cordovan leather sheath and admired it before placing it into action. The trusty Deitzgen slip-stick had served him well, from his college days in Nebraska to the ordnance research labs at Eglin, and now it had accompanied him all the way to orbit and back.
Since arriving at Blue Gemini over a year ago, he had come full circle on his tangential journey; he was now back to compiling calculation “cheat sheets” for future intercept missions and preparing formulas to be processed into computer programs. The only significant change was his environs; instead of laboring in the secluded depths of the Project’s basement, crammed into a musty space only slightly larger than a broom closet, he was afforded access to the spacious Flight Crew office on the second floor. It was the inner sanctum of the inner sanctum, and by virtue of having flown into space, he now possessed a permanent passkey to the pilots’ hallowed bastion. Perhaps only Bruce Wayne had a cooler asylum, but even that could be debated. Yes, Batman had his Bat Cave and a really groovy rocket-propelled car, but Ourecky’s office came complete with a ticket to orbit, even though his all-access pass was temporarily revoked.
His attention was distracted by a news alert faintly emanating from a radio on his desktop. Anxious, he twisted the volume knob on the small AM receiver and twiddled with its flimsy telescoping antenna to optimize the signal. Apollo 11 had blasted off yesterday morning; its three astronauts were well on their way to the moon, and he diligently tried to stay abreast of the mission. Half-expecting bad news, he breathed a sigh of relief as he listened to an announcer state that the lunar crew had fired the engine of their Service Module to successfully execute a mid-course correction maneuver. They were due to arrive in lunar orbit on Saturday, and if all went well, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would touch down on the moon on Sunday. Reflecting on the moment, Ourecky closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Men landing on the moon. It was almost too much to believe.
He opened his eyes to focus on a large color world map taped to the wall. A gift from Gunter Heydrich, autographed by all of the controllers in the Blue Gemini mission control facility, the chart was a mission tracking map for their flight in June. It depicted the graceful undulating parabolas of orbital paths tracing over the Earth’s surface, as well as the far-flung contingency recovery zones that would have been their safe harbor if the flight had ended early. Ourecky set aside his slide rule and looked at the heaping backlog of worksheets yet undone. Here, he was immersed in his natural element, applying arcane mathematics and physics to define the paths of objects in space, but he reminded himself that it was not long ago that he had actually followed those parabolas as he orbited the Earth.
A plaintive coo disrupted his thoughts; he looked up to see a mottled gray dove perched on the red brick windowsill. He smiled at the bird through the soot-smudged windowpane. The skittish dove wagged its tail feathers and jerkily nodded its head in reply, as if acknowledging a secret shared between the two, and then quickly flittered away.
Ourecky longed to fly. As much as he didn’t relish the thought of being jammed back in the Box for pre-mission simulations, he desperately yearned to go upstairs again. It didn’t look to be in the cards, at least within the foreseeable future, since General Tew was holding fast to his vow that he and Carson would remain indefinitely—if not permanently—grounded. Despite Tew’s reluctance, there was a faint glimmer of hope; Virgil Wolcott had quietly confided that the pair would fly within a year, perhaps even sooner, once Tew had sufficient time to calm down. In the meantime, he and Carson were tasked with ensuring that Crew Three—Parch Jackson and Mike Sigler—were adequately prepared to go up on Blue Gemini’s next mission, which was currently scheduled for December.
Whether
by circumstance or Tew’s design, he and Carson rarely saw each other during working hours. Ourecky normally divided his time between the Flight Crew Office and working with the computer programmers on the fourth floor. While he toiled at his equations and paperwork, Carson spent most of his days in the simulator hangar, relegated to the unenviable position of perpetual CAPCOM. Tew apparently believed that Carson had instigated the impromptu mutiny on their flight—which was not entirely true—so the general seemed intent on doling the pilot’s punishment from a heavier ladle. On the other hand, maybe Tew thought that Carson and Ourecky had grown too close and their disparate working conditions would eventually drive a wedge between the two.
Ourecky and Carson still met to run and work out at the base gymnasium long before dawn. Occasionally, they met for dinner or drinks after duty, but that was becoming progressively more rare, since Carson was typically worn out by the end of his twelve-hour shifts covering the CAPCOM desk.
Although Ourecky was notionally being punished, the arrangement lent him a huge degree of freedom. So long as he stayed ahead of the programmers, which wasn’t a particularly difficult feat, he was essentially free to set his own routine, so he normally worked long days—twelve to fourteen hours at a stretch—from Monday morning until Thursday afternoon. Consequently, every Thursday, he was able to zoom home before the afternoon rush and be there when Bea returned from her weekly five-day circuit of flying back and forth from Atlanta. Every weekend was effectively a three-day vacation, and they took full advantage, savoring every minute they could spend together.
Bea. He sighed as he looked at a framed picture of Bea and him, taken last Christmas at his parents’ house in Nebraska. In the month’s time since he had returned from orbit, they were finally able to live almost like a normal married couple. With his more predictable schedule, they had drawn considerably closer, finally sharing the kind of emotional intimacy that had been severely lacking in the past few hectic months. So, as much as he wanted to fly again, he wasn’t anxious to sacrifice the progress he had made at home, and he hoped that when the time came, he would be able to strike an effective balance.
Simulator Facility, Aerospace Support Project
4:30 p.m.
Major Drew Carson adjusted his painfully tight headset, hoping to alleviate some of the aggravating pressure on his ears, and then kneaded his throbbing temples. It felt like his head was clamped in a cast iron bench vise that was being gradually torqued down on his ears. Just eight hours into another twelve-hour stint at the CAPCOM desk, he was miserable. The rest of the nation was over the moon, fixated on Apollo 11’s historic flight, and yet here they were, cooped up in this hangar, preparing for a secret space mission that was still months away.
Struggling to remain alert, he cracked his knuckles, took a sip of lukewarm coffee, and then glanced at the mission clock on his console: the GET—Ground Elapsed Time—was 38:12:18. The two men in the Box had been conscious for over thirty-eight grueling hours; by now, they were long past frazzled. Having endured countless hours in the Box, Carson knew well their agony. Time was their unmerciful enemy. Without sleep, their brains were turning to mush. What were once logical thoughts were now mired in a muck of exhaustion and distraction. The stiff seat backs were unrelenting, but by now the aching cramps in their spines had been replaced by numbness punctuated by sporadic sharp spasms. Thirty-eight hours, and still four more yet to go.
At this point, they were likely suffering from at least mild hallucinations. Carson knew what they were experiencing; at one point or another, he had seen and felt it all. They would reach to throw switches, only to see them suddenly vanish. The rest of their instruments would also refuse to stay put; it was almost impossible to maintain a disciplined scan as their dials and indicator lights swam around on the gray face of their control panels. The “eight-ball” attitude indicator would spin and dance like a dervish possessed. A phantom buzz of static would plague their earphones, periodically interrupted by faint garbled voices demanding an immediate response. Leering gremlins would flagrantly lurk in the cabin, taunting them as they tugged and yanked at the critical wiring behind the breaker panels.
Carson pitied Jackson and Sigler. Outwardly, he hoped for their success, but secretly he longed for their failure. The plain truth was that they weren’t ready, and they weren’t going to be ready, not next week, nor in a month, nor six months from now when the next mission was scheduled to fly. It was futile to believe otherwise.
It was their own fault that they hadn’t grabbed any rest. Unlike him and Ourecky, they hadn’t developed a working rhythm to allow each other to doze for a few minutes at a time. Even brief catnaps would fend off the onset of hallucinations, but the sleep deprivation they endured was reflective of a much more significant deficiency. Taken as individuals, they were tremendously proficient test pilots, but despite their personal competence, the two men just couldn’t work effectively as a cohesive team. In Wolcott’s homespun Oklahoma argot, Jackson and Sigler just didn’t geehaw.
Their incompatibility was no closely guarded secret; everyone here knew it and talked openly about it. Even Jackson and Sigler lamented their shortcomings and candidly expressed doubts about whether they could ever hope to accomplish that which had seemingly been so easy for Carson and Ourecky.
The root cause of their problems was that they simply didn’t trust one another. They were civil enough outside the Box, but once they were locked inside the simulator and a mission profile was in progress, they bickered and second-guessed each other almost constantly. Jackson was almost always skeptical of Sigler’s maneuver solutions and regularly insisted that the right-seater rework his calculations. When they failed to hit their marks on executing the maneuvers, Sigler berated Jackson for not correctly flying his fixes. As a result, they just slipped further and further behind. If that was not enough, the two perpetually feuded over the cabin environmental controls, so the uncomfortable cockpit was always too warm or too cold for at least one of them.
As he spent his days eavesdropping on their grumbling and angry rants via a hot VOX mike, Carson felt less like a liaison, and more like a marriage counselor for a hopelessly doomed union. When he was able to talk to them during contact windows, he tried his best to calm them down and nudge them in the right direction. Although he was supposed to be a strictly impartial intermediary, he found himself often gently prodding and coaxing the quarrelsome pair towards the solutions that they should be developing entirely on their own.
To make matters even worse, Tew had decreed that they adhere to the excruciatingly strict rules for a “hard” lock-in—no stretch breaks or latrine calls—just as Carson and Ourecky had endured back in January. Glancing over his shoulder towards the back row of consoles, Carson observed that both Tew and Wolcott were present. It wasn’t uncommon for Wolcott to frequently linger in the hangar, but Tew almost never ventured out of the main building. Carson was curious why he seemed so concerned now, since he rarely showed any more than a passing interest in previous simulated missions.
Watching the clock, he knew that a decisive moment was near. According to the simulated mission’s profile, the crew had been out of contact for the past seventy-two minutes. During this interval, they should have executed a significant phase shift maneuver.
Carson watched the clock as he listened intently. Finally, nineteen seconds past the designated start of the contact window, he heard Jackson’s hoarse voice over the intercom: “CAPCOM, this is … Scepter Three. We, uh, executed the phase shift burn as scheduled. Ready for … data download?”
“Scepter, this is CAPCOM,” replied Carson. “Go for download.” A few seconds later, he watched a small green light blink on his control console, indicating that telemetry data was being “received” from the simulated spacecraft notionally passing overhead in orbit. In reality, Jackson had misjudged the timing at a crucial juncture, approximately an hour prior, and it was unlikely the crew could recover from the blunder in sufficient time to make their interc
ept.
As the download continued, Carson asked, “Scepter, are you ready to copy reentry guidance?”
Barely coherent, Sigler answered, “We are … ready to copy.”
Knowing that their hands were painfully cramped, Carson slowly read the current instructions for primary and contingency reentry, concluding with, “Scepter, you are still go for reentry to PRZ One-Two on your twenty-eighth rev. How copy?”
“CAPCOM, this is Scepter. We copy PRZ One-Two on Rev Two-Eight,” stated Sigler. He read back the contingency reentry data in an agonizingly slow monologue, occasionally slurring his words.
“Roger, Scepter. Good copy. Do you have visual or radar acquisition on the target?” asked Carson. Even though he already knew the answer, he watched the clock carefully; the contact window was due to slam shut in just a few seconds and they wouldn’t talk again for almost another hour.
Jackson’s exasperated tone conveyed far more than his words. “Uh … negative,” he muttered. “Uh … we have not acquired the target … we …”
Replicating the spacecraft’s passage out of radio range, there was a faint warbling noise before the intercom abruptly clicked off. Switching off the voice loop, Carson scowled as he opened a black leatherette binder. Although it was the responsibility of Heydrich and his controllers to analyze the telemetry data and issue a formal verdict on whether the crew had been successful with their last burn, Carson could refer to a collection of graphs—formulated by Ourecky—to quickly assess the mission’s status.
Balancing the binder in his lap, he flipped through a series of predicted progress diagrams until he found the one that corresponded to the last maneuver. Although he had long since memorized the numbers and their relevance, he traced his finger along a red-penciled curve on the graph and double-checked the parameters on the X and Y axes. He scratched a faint pencil mark where the two graph lines converged, and saw that the crew was woefully behind the curve. Even if the hapless pair somehow possessed an inexhaustible stock of fuel and consumables, they could not possibly compensate for their lapses and still salvage the mission. Try as they might, the deed was undone and would remain so.
