by Mike Jenne
Watching the altimeter, he heard a loud clunk as the fiberglass cylinder that contained the paraglider automatically ejected from the blunt nose of the spacecraft. Like clockwork, the paraglider smoothly deployed. Finally, dreading this step in the process, he threw the switch to transition the spacecraft to the two-point suspension mode. Compared to the equivalent experience in the Gemini-I, he was extremely surprised—and pleased—at the relative softness of the transition in the stripped-down Gemini-B.
Since they were over dry land, with no ocean or open water within hundreds of miles, he went ahead and lowered the three skids for landing; a green light flickered on, indicating that they were fully down and locked in place. He breathed a sigh of relief; they were almost home.
As he activated the gas-powered control motors for the paraglider, he heard a faint but familiar voice in his earphones: “Trident One, this is Charger Two on Channel Three. Do you read?”
“I … read … you … on Channel Three,” gasped Ourecky.
“Trident One, Charger Two, roger. This is Mike Sigler. Parch and I are flying chase. Ground radar reports that we are four miles north of you, approximately five thousand feet below. We are maneuvering to close, will pick up your six, and will follow you down. Have you acquired TACAN?”
Ourecky checked the TACAN board on his instrument panel; the acquisition light was green and the DME—Distance Measuring Equipment—display was clicking numbers into place to indicate his distance from the touchdown point. “I … have … TACAN … on Two,” he declared. Forgoing the controllability and stall checks, he steered the paraglider to pick up the heading to the TACAN beacon.
“Trident One, this is Charger Two. We know you’re pretty smoked, so we’re going to relay all instructions to you and help you with the landing. Okay?”
“Okay,” croaked Ourecky.
“Trident One, you’re on heading, but you need to burn off about a thousand feet of altitude to acquire proper glide slope,” offered Sigler. “I recommend that you perform S-turns for approximately sixty seconds.”
Following Sigler’s advice, Ourecky gently rocked the hand controller back and forth, causing the paraglider to execute a series of long, graceful turns that maintained his general heading but depleted his excess altitude.
“Altitude looks good now,” stated Sigler. “You’re cleared for a straight-in approach to Runway 17. Winds are four knots out of One Nine Zero. Altimeter is 28.50. Field elevation is 3913 feet. Surface is dry lakebed. I see your gear are down. Can you verify that they are locked?”
Ourecky checked the light again. “Gear are … locked,” he replied. “I copy … straight-in to Three-Five … winds four out of One Nine Zero … altimeter two-eight-five-zero … uh … field is three-nine-one-three feet, dry lakebed.”
“Trident One, good copy,” replied Sigler.
“Field in sight …” announced Ourecky a few seconds later. “I have … the lights … gear down … and locked. On final …”
“Just fly the ship, Scott,” declared Sigler. “Don’t talk. Save your breath. You’re lined up on the strip. Just hold what you have, and gravity will do the rest.”
Gravity? Groggy, eyes burning, gasping for breath, Ourecky struggled to remain alert. Watching the marker lights march towards him, he verified his glide slope, confirmed his alignment on the runway and center-indexed the hand controller. With his task all but completed, his consciousness seemed to gradually fade away, and then he was gone. Now, gravity did have the controls, at least for the few remaining seconds of this mission.
Northrop Strip, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico
Gazing at the northern sky through binoculars, watching the Gemini-B’s approach on short final, Admiral Tarbox waited on an elevated wooden platform that overlooked the landing area. A senior enlisted Air Force firefighter, responsible for coordinating the emergency response actions at the site, stood alongside him.
Alarmed, Tarbox abruptly realized that the landing was not going exactly to plan. For whatever reason, possibly because he was unconscious, Ourecky didn’t flare or jettison the paraglider as he touched down, so the reentry vehicle still had a considerable amount of forward speed as it made contact. Accompanied by a terribly shrill screech, the three skids threw off a shower of sparks as they scraped the packed gypsum of the runway. The spacecraft plowed fairly straight for a hundred yards and then veered at the last moment, finally coming to rest at the right edge of the marked runway. Apparently ignited by the glowing heat shield, the nylon paraglider slowly caught fire as it fluttered behind the vehicle. Overhead, a pair of T-38 chase planes buzzed by before swooping skyward.
A small fleet of emergency vehicles converged on the returned capsule. Normally, their procedures called for the emergency personnel to wait at least thirty minutes to allow the spacecraft to cool down before making an approach, but this situation was far from normal. A pair of boxy red O-11 crash-rescue firefighting trucks rumbled in close; one drenched the scorching spacecraft with a dense blanket of “A-Triple F” firefighting foam and the other sprayed water to extinguish the smoldering paraglider. Dripping with white froth, billowing clouds of scalding steam, the spacecraft’s still-sizzling metal shingles popped, crackled and squealed.
A crash-rescue truck’s water cannon doused the Gemini-B with a cooling stream as a thick-skinned M113 armored personnel carrier joined the armada. The rear ramp of the hulking troop carrier hissed down, disgorging a squad of firefighters. Encased in heat-reflective “proximity” protective suits, the rescuers bore an arsenal of crash axes and specialized tools. Resembling faceless aliens from a science fiction movie, the silver-garbed men cautiously approached the spacecraft from the front. One removed an emergency hatch-opening tool from a bracket in the blunt nose. He inserted the tip of the bar-shaped tool into a small receptacle in the right hatch and vigorously twisted it to actuate the unlocking mechanism. In seconds, the firefighters had popped open both hatches and were reaching inside.
Staring through his binoculars, Tarbox impatiently monitored the proceedings. He suddenly realized that the Air Force firefighters were risking their lives to gain access to the crew. Since Ourecky had not flared and released the paraglider upon touchdown, probably because he had lost consciousness, it was a virtual certainty that he had also not safed the ejection seats and various pyrotechnics in the cabin. A minor blunder was more than adequate to detonate any of a multitude of explosive charges. If the ejection seats spontaneously fired or the hatches inadvertently blew open, the resultant force could immediately kill the rescuers.
The firefighter standing alongside Tarbox listened to a terse message on his handheld radio, acknowledged it, and then reported, “Admiral, they’re both alive but unconscious.”
Lowering the binoculars from his eyes, Tarbox relaxed for the first time in several hours. “Thank you,” he replied quietly, letting the binoculars dangle from the lanyard around his neck.
Even as the emergency workers carefully extracted Ourecky and Russo from the Gemini-B, a UH-1 “Huey” medevac helicopter was arriving to ferry them to the hospital at nearby Holloman Air Force Base. The transfer was quick; only moments later, the helicopter clattered into the air and departed towards the east. In the west, the sun was falling under the horizon. Night would come soon; in anticipation, a crew of workers set up portable generators and light sets to illuminate the spacecraft for the detailed recovery operations that would go on until morning.
Anxious to take possession of the cases that contained the intelligence data accumulated during the MOL’s short-lived mission, Tarbox clambered down the ladder and strode towards the spacecraft. Midway there, he paused to reflect on what had just occurred. With the knowledge that the two men were alive, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Thinking of how Ourecky had risked his life to bring Russo home, he smiled to himself. The indefatigable whiz kid had delivered the mail more times than the Pony Express, but had never sought any recognition for himself. Tarbox wished that there wa
s a way that Ourecky and Carson could be publicly recognized for their bravery. It could never happen, but then again … maybe it could. He grinned as a tiny seed of an idea took root in the back of his thoughts. Farfetched, the oddball idea would have to wait, but it was one that might answer the fondest wishes of both men. Moreover, thought Tarbox, looking towards the Gemini-B, it might advance his cause as well.
Aerospace Support Project
6:15 p.m., Sunday, August 20, 1972
With his hands on his hips, Tew stood behind his desk and gazed out his small window at a tranquil blue Ohio sky. The past couple of weeks had been momentous, although fraught with some very trying moments. There was much to be thankful for, but still plenty to mourn over. But although Tarbox had lost a man in orbit, his men were safely on the ground.
Outside, the weather could not be any more beautiful or inviting. It seemed ironic, considering that they were awaiting news of the damages wrought by Hurricane Celeste when it passed just twenty-five miles north of Johnston Island yesterday. It was now morning there, but a preliminary report wouldn’t be available until a recon flight, flying out of Hawaii, passed over the island.
Even if the damages appeared to be minor, reoccupying the evacuated atoll would still be a laborious process. Besides the PDF launch facility, the island was home to a chemical weapons stockpile relocated from Okinawa. Before most of the island’s five hundred workers could return, rubber-suited chemical warfare specialists would sample the air and physically check the casks inside the storage igloos to ensure that they weren’t breached or weakened by the storm.
The door creaked open. Looking as if he had just witnessed a massive train wreck, Wolcott trudged slowly into the office. He plopped his Stetson on his desk, sat down, opened a drawer, and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s finest. Opening another drawer, he extracted two shot glasses and filled them with whiskey. He looked towards Tew and said, “Tragic news, pard. Fancy some anesthesia? It’ll sure make this go down easier.”
“Thanks, but no,” replied Tew. “And isn’t it a bit early for you to be drinking, Virgil?”
Wolcott threw back one shot and replied, “Not today, it ain’t. And if you ain’t partakin’, pardner, it would be a shame to let this other one go to waste.” He gulped down the other shot and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Bad news?”
“Well, we have one more stack, but we ain’t got a place to launch it from,” replied Wolcott somberly, handing Tew a folder. “Read it and weep, pard. That bitch Celeste slammed Johnston Island much harder than anyone anticipated. On a good note, the chemical weapons stockpile looks like it weathered the storm, but our end of the Island got hammered. Our pad was leveled and the dock facilities were washed away. The Project 437 Thor gantry was flattened, too.”
Tew nodded solemnly as he scanned the report and examined an electronically transmitted photo taken by a reconnaissance jet hours earlier. The stark image corroborated Wolcott’s bleak assertions. The coral island’s hardpan surface had been scoured by gusts exceeding a hundred miles an hour. High winds and heavy tide had scraped most of the PDF complex—including the gantry, the massive concrete launch pad and the dock facility—into the surf. The sandblasted blockhouse appeared to be still intact, or relatively so, but the sensitive electronics that it housed had assuredly been ruined by floodwaters and drifting sand. He expected it to be bad, but not quite this bad.
“I guess you know that it’s going to take us months to rebuild,” noted Wolcott. “Of course, that’s assumin’ that we secure funding for the second phase. And that’s contingent on …”
“Virgil, we’re not rebuilding,” declared Tew. “We’re done.”
“Done? You’re just going to surrender the fight and scuttle this thing?”
“I am. If we’re ordered to rebuild the PDF and continue Blue Gemini, then I’ll do my utmost to make that happen. Otherwise, I am not pursuing any effort to prolong this, and I’m asking you to do the same.”
“But …”
“No,” interjected Tew emphatically, not displaying even the slightest inclination to budge. “We’ve run these men through the wringer, Virgil. Not just Carson and Ourecky, but all of them, every single one. It’s an absolute miracle that we’ve only killed two men in this process. It’s time to shut it down, and if this damned hurricane isn’t the omen that causes you to see that, I don’t know what will.”
Tew slowly walked over and put his trembling hand on Wolcott’s shoulder. In a faltering voice, he said, “Please accept that it’s over, Virgil. My doctors tell me that I have less than a year to live, but they also said I have less than a month if I don’t abandon this pace. After the dust settles, I want to go home and live out that year. Can you grant me that? We made it to orbit, Virgil, which is what we always wanted. Isn’t that enough?”
“Yeah, Mark,” muttered Wolcott, pivoting his head to look up at his friend. “I s’pose you’re right.”
Lackland Air Force Base, Texas
12:15 p.m., Wednesday, August 23, 1972
Carson strolled down the hospital corridor and nodded at a security guard posted outside the hospital room occupied by Ourecky and Russo. He quietly entered the room, eased into a chair by his friend’s bedside, leaned back against the wall, and opened the daily San Antonio newspaper. He had just returned from a brief visit to the base headquarters, where he had a brief conversation with Virgil Wolcott via a secure telephone.
Shortly after Ourecky and Russo touched down at White Sands, after they had received preliminary treatment at Holloman, they were flown to the Air Force’s flagship hospital—Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas—for more definitive care.
After his solo landing of the Gemini-I in California, Carson took possession of a T-38 and immediately zoomed to Lackland. He pledged to remain at Wilford Hall for the duration, until Ourecky was sufficiently healthy to return to Wright-Patt. During their phone call, amongst other issues, Wolcott had authorized Carson to remain in Texas for as long as he saw fit.
Lifting his arm, Carson quickly took a whiff of his left armpit. He was getting a bit ripe. Since arriving here in a borrowed flight suit five days ago, he had slipped over to the base exchange to purchase a pair of khaki chinos, a knit sport shirt and a cheap pair of canvas deck shoes.
He read the front section of the paper, set it aside, and looked up to watch Ourecky. Attired in hospital issue blue pajamas, with his mouth and nose covered by a translucent oxygen mask, the sleeping engineer really looked none the worse for wear. Of course, that was merely an illusion, since Ourecky still was very much on the mend.
Shortly after arriving in Texas, Carson finally learned what had happened when his friend entered the MOL. It was his first inkling of what the engineer had faced after his umbilical was severed, as well as the life-and-death decision that he had made to continue with the mission. Carson had been shocked to learn that Ourecky had willingly sacrificed his supplemental oxygen to repressurize the MOL’s airlock, but was happy that there was finally a logical explanation for his seemingly inexplicable sudden decline in health.
In the first breath he drew before leaving the airlock, Ourecky had unknowingly exposed his respiratory system to a frigid atmosphere that was nearly two hundred degrees below zero. As tests would later show, the momentary exposure to super-cooled air had flash-frozen a substantial number of bronchioles and alveoli. That explained Ourecky’s persistent cough for the first few hours aboard the MOL, an annoyance that swiftly deteriorated into a hacking cough and inflamed lungs. When describing his phlegm in orbit, the “little particles” he saw were in fact granules of dead tissue than had begun to slough off from the interior of his lungs.
Shortly after he had arrived at Lackland, after sheepishly recounting his ordeal in the airlock, Ourecky had been subjected to an extensive battery of chest X-rays and other tests. The doctors diagnosed him with severe bronchitis and confined him to a hospital bed where he received a daily reg
imen of painful respiratory treatments and a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics to stave off further infection. Although Ourecky’s coughing grew progressively worse as he expelled still more dead tissue, the attending pulmonologist assured Carson that the lingering inflammation would clear up in a few weeks.
Carson looked towards the opposite side of the room, towards Russo. Except for an occasional twitch or faint sputter, Russo could readily pass for dead, but even though he had only briefly regained consciousness twice since returning to Earth, he was also healing. Although his situation was still dire, he was expected to eventually recover. According to the doctors treating him, although Russo would probably never regain his full eyesight and would suffer lasting health effects as a result of his radiation exposure, his overall prognosis was fairly positive.
Slowly stirring, Ourecky pushed his oxygen mask to the side and weakly spoke. “Hey. Where did you go?”
“Hey yourself, buddy,” replied Carson, folding the newspaper before sticking it under the chair. “I had to go over to the commo shop at the base headquarters to hear the latest news and gossip from our friend Virgil.”
“Anything … new?”
Nodding, Carson leaned over the bed and quietly said, “They received the recon report from Hawaii.”
“And?” asked Ourecky. “Is the PDF okay?”
“Nope. It’s kaput. Defunct. No more,” answered Carson. “Almost totally destroyed.”
“You’re kidding,” muttered Ourecky. His expression seemed to suddenly brighten at the news. “It’s gone? That means … that means … we’re done?”
“Well, not quite. There’s still another stack, and Virgil isn’t too inclined to let it go to waste. He said that they’re looking at alternatives for contingency missions.”
“Oh. For a moment, I thought we were off the hook.”
“Well, you certainly are, at least for the time being, until you heal up,” replied Carson. “But you know, Scott, your overall stats really aren’t looking too great. You’ve flown eight missions, and landed in a hospital bed twice. Maybe you should just fly in pajamas from here on.”
