There was a jumble of excited voices, people talking over each other, some arguing. He saw Grant over in the dispatch area: “Okay, calm down everyone. Keep your heads. They have a backup plan and they’re going to execute it. So watch your telemetry.”
He most definitely did not like the sound of this. “What’s happening up there? What kind of overshoot are we looking at?”
“Right now, best case is they set down in Brisbane.”
“Australia? How the hell did they get all the way down there?” Hammond exclaimed, not realizing his voice was raised. “How much gas did you guys tanker?”
“About eighty thousand pounds,” she said. “Enough for the next leg.”
He closed his eyes and winced, as if in pain. The spaceplane’s design had been in his head for decades, so he had a pretty good idea of what was coming next. “What kind of velocity are we talking about?” he asked quietly, fearing the answer.
“Enough. I just worked it out on the fly with an educated guess at drag loss and got 8,600 meters per second. Throw in angular momentum from Earth’s rotation…”
“Yeah, I got it,” he sighed. “And the RCS jets couldn’t alter trajectory?”
“Not enough to get them down. That’s hard to duplicate with the flight plan software, but the telemetry confirms my math. They stopped pulsing the jets when prop went below 40 percent.”
“Grant hollered something about a backup plan. What’s that?” he asked, clinging to hope.
“Right now they’re blowing the fire bottles to see if that shuts them down. If it does, they’ll try and dead-stick to Brisbane. Might have to ditch at sea. We’ve alerted their Coast Guard for possible SAR ops.”
A sick feeling swept over him. No airline manager ever wanted to hear “Search-and-Rescue” associated with his fleet. He studiously avoided asking what the likely weather conditions and water temperature would be down there. “What do you think happened up there?” he wondered, “maybe a hard fault somewhere in the plumbing?”
“That’d be my first guess, but we’ll have to let tech ops work on that later. Right now we need to get them down in one piece.”
Of course, he thought. First things first—stay calm for the troops. “Well Penny, this is why I hired you away from that cushy government job. I presume you have a plan if they can’t?”
She was clearly skeptical. “Not exactly a contingency we’ve planned for, Arthur. First let’s see if they can turn those things off.”
He sank into an empty chair next to her, searching for a way to comprehend what was happening at that moment.
It’s probably a done deal by now, he thought. You’re about to see your aspirations realized, genius. Just not in the way you’d wanted.
…
The news didn’t make Taggart any happier. “What do you mean it’s not working as planned?”
“Relax,” his contact said with a self-assurance he found increasingly grating. “This may yet turn out even better than we hoped. Time plays into your hands, am I correct?”
“Yes, of course,” Taggart said, gathering his composure.
“Then you should be pleased. They’re about to have a lot of it.”
19
Austral Clipper
Though the climb wasn’t as steep now, they were still mercilessly accelerating. The nose and wing had cooled down as their ruddy orange glow was dissipated by the surrounding vacuum. The engines, on the other hand, shone red-hot, perversely becoming more efficient in vacuum. An incandescent fireball grew behind the plane as it continued into orbit.
“Still burning at 100 percent,” Tom said for no reason in particular. Apparently nothing was going to stop that, save exhausting their propellant.
“My side reads the same,” Ryan confirmed against his own panel. “Thrust dropped a little when the halon bottles discharged, just not enough,” he sighed. “Fire suppression system wasn’t meant to function under that much pressure.”
“Engines weren’t meant to still be running right now, either. Guess it was too much for the bottles to handle.”
Wade piped up behind them, unable to contain himself. “Your objectivity is remarkable, but we are about to be in a world of hurt.”
“We’re aware of that, Mr. Kelly,” Tom said, “but we’re pretty well out of ideas unless you have any.”
He took the rebuke in stride. “Sorry guys - aviate, navigate, communicate. First rule in an emergency.”
Tom remained quiet but at least seemed to accept his apology. The mocking howl of the engines was the only sound they heard. The cockpit was bathed in the blue glow of the Earth’s limb, from their angle now just barely visible against the deep black outside.
“We know we’re in deep kimchee,” Ryan finally said. Right now it was important to let the flying pilot do his job and not worry about guest relations. “Engines don’t just refuse to quit, at least not on any jet I ever flew. Sometimes it’s easy to forget we’re riding a rocket.”
“Kind of hard to miss that point right now,” Wade snorted.
“Well, we’re not going to do ourselves any favors by freaking out. We’ve got to control this bird first. They’ll shut down eventually…then we’ll figure out the next step.”
“No use from the maneuvering jets then?” he asked more calmly. Just watching over the pilot’s shoulders, it was hard to get a feel for what was actually going on.
“Zip,” Tom said. “At least not enough to point us back downhill. And I don’t want to push it too hard and have her getting unstable on us.”
“Unstable?”
Ryan chimed back in. “At our speed those thrusters have just enough impulse to screw us good. We get divergent at Mach 20 and things will come unglued fast.”
Wade understood that was meant literally. The plane could tumble back into the atmosphere and quickly tear itself to shreds if it became unstable under power. “So how long until we run out?”
Ryan looked down at the fuel flow gauges. “Eighteen seconds.”
“What happens then?”
He took one last look at their velocity. “Then we all get a much longer ride than we bargained for.”
20
Denver
Penny anxiously paced behind the flight control desks as the controllers stared in dismay at the big projection map. Telephones rang incessantly in the background but remained largely ignored. A hastily programmed on-screen timer counted down the seconds until predicted cutoff from fuel exhaustion.
The whole miserable business had taken all of ten minutes. The people around her were used to rapid-response crisis management; it defined their existence. But no one had been prepared to stand by and watch a situation get so thoroughly out of control.
At least Tom and Ryan would run out of fuel before running out of oxidizer, she thought. The precious liquid oxygen also fed their life support system, and would by design keep those tanks full at the expense of the others. That is, if the isolation sequencers still worked. Right now she didn’t have much confidence in even basic plumbing. She finally stopped behind Grant’s console as the counter reached zero.
“Charlie?” Her voice was steady, measured—barely above a whisper. “Please contact the flight, have them confirm shutdown and O2 quantity. I want voice acknowledgement.”
He reached over and hit the touch-screen panel for their satellite radio. “501, Denver. How copy?”
Fuzzy, warbling voices responded. From the attenuation, it sounded like the relay satellites were having trouble tracking them. Which made sense, she realized.
“Denver, we copy you broken. Over.”
He continued more slowly. “501, we show your propellant exhausted. Request you confirm your O2 levels.”
A few seconds passed before Tom’s voice broke through the hissing static. “That’s affirmative, engines are shut down,” he replied, seemingly devoid of emotion. “Life support tanks are full. Pressure and temperature differentials are nominal at present time.”
“That’s some good news at least. Ho
w’s your emergency O2 supply?”
“Crew bottles are full.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Penny. “Anything else? I’m out of ideas.”
“Join the club,” she grumbled. “Record their exact position and time, then confirm their final velocity and altitude. Make sure they stay on freq.”
Grant turned back to his console and took a screen-grab of their position information before calling back. “501, one last item. Please confirm velocity and altitude.”
They didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“Velocity is 9100 meters per second. Altitude is 713 kilometers, decreasing rate. Projected apogee is 800 kilometers.”
That put the high point of their orbit at over five hundred miles above sea level. She figured that would put the low point—perigee—at maybe one hundred miles. But this gave her enough to work out a two-line element, a description of the orbit which they could use to project their position in the future.
Before Grant could reply, Tom continued. “We are open to suggestions. Things could turn into a crap sandwich awfully fast up here.”
Like they haven’t already, Penny thought, not realizing she must have said it aloud. She heard a few nervous laughs from around the room, and saw that most of the other controllers were listening in. A withering glare from Hammond told them he didn’t share their humor.
She broke in on the link. “501, this is Stratton. I’m confirming your orbital elements so we can track you down here. I’ll have the flight data group work out a software patch to uplink so your computers can do the same. We’ll figure out,” she paused, struggling with what to say next, “when you’re coming back down. Until then you need to work on stretching consumables. How copy?”
They picked up on her suggestion immediately. “Roger that. Hoard the water and O2. We are also shutting down all non-essential systems. Hope Art’s whiz kids designed a lot of margin into this beast.”
She cocked an eyebrow in Hammond’s direction. He looked away, lost in thought. “Roger that, boys. We’ll have a hard look at heat transfer and O2 boil-off. How much maneuvering prop do you have?”
“RCS tanks are at three-eight percent.”
“That’s good,” she said while straining to see one of the maintenance controller’s displays. “Our telemetry shows the same. How are your passengers holding up?”
“Everything’s under control so far. Will advise if that changes.”
…
Austral Clipper
The sensation of weightlessness never lost its unique appeal. Colin Magrath had to admit he enjoyed the freedom, but he always found it unsettling at that first moment when it felt as if his stomach would leap from his throat. And the pilots hadn’t been joking—this had been a much longer boost than he’d ever experienced before. At least his staff seemed to be enjoying it, judging by the muted giggling from back there.
Ah, well. A good single-malt will make this all much more tolerable. Even from one of those cursed sippy-cups, he thought, and pressed the attendant call button by his seat just as the cockpit door opened. A young pilot with a close-cut bush of black hair floated out. He watched as the man pushed off against the sidewall and flew directly to the flight attendant’s station in back of the cabin, turning in midair to land on his feet against the wall beside her.
The crewmembers appeared unflappable, tumbling about like bloody Cirque du Soleil, but he hadn’t achieved his position without a keen ability to judge expressions and body language. The flight attendant’s worried eyes had already given her away, and they grew even wider as the copilot whispered to her.
As if that weren’t enough, the cabin lights dimmed unexpectedly. Suddenly aware of his own heartbeat pounding inside his ears, he didn’t think it was due to weightlessness. Something was up. He jammed his thumb on the call button again.
They both looked up in his direction. “One minute, sir,” the pilot said for her, clearly attempting to assert some authority.
We’ll see about that, he thought, ignoring the “fasten seat belts” sign and unbuckling his harness. I chartered this bucket; it’s mine until we land.
21
Austral Clipper
“Taking off is optional. Landing never is.”
“What’s that?” Wade asked as he stared out of a side window, lost in contemplation of Earth sliding by beneath them—or above, whatever it was. Blazing sunlight filled the opposite window. Like so much else up here, it was disorienting: the black sky led him to expect night’s cool darkness, yet the sun was more intense than anything in his experience. He was alternately awestruck and terrified, depending on which line of thought he followed.
Tom hovered by his shoulder. “What goes up, must come down. But nobody ever said you had to go up in the first place. Come on, you never heard that one before?” he said, hoping to soothe Wade’s anxiety.
“I have, but coming down is what I’m most afraid of. We’re really screwed, you know.”
“How so?” he asked with a composure that Wade found annoying.
“Are you serious?” Wade snorted in disdain. “So what happens now? We eventually suffocate up here or burn up on re-entry. Some choice that is.”
That raised Tom’s hackles. “What happens now, Mr. Kelly, is that we figure out the next course of action. We’re not out of altitude, airspeed or ideas just yet, to use another cliché.”
“You know, I really wish you’d quit calling me that.”
“Calling you what?”
“I have a first name. ‘Mr. Kelly’ is my dad. And I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck last night. I do some flying myself, so cut me some slack. You ever do life flight or search-and-rescue? It’s pretty hairy stuff. Try threading the mountains in weather with nothing but Night Vision Goggles.”
Tom considered that for a moment. Maybe he had been too hard on the guy. And he certainly hadn’t asked to be put into this rotten situation.
“You’re right,” he sighed. “I’m sorry, Wade.”
Thank goodness, he thought. “You know, before everything went to hell up here I was thinking about how these things have actually made people excited about travel again. Your average frequent-flier can’t wait until ticket prices come down enough to afford this.”
“It’ll happen,” Tom said. “That’s the plan, at least. Art has other stuff in the works, too.”
“You guys have brought back some fascination that’s been missing for a long time, especially since we went nuts over security.”
“I suppose so,” Tom said. At least until now. Watching the world slip past as they glided along brought his mind back to their predicament. “We’re in real trouble, I’ll grant you that. But we’ve also got work to do, and I don’t like the feeling of someone looking over our shoulders, to be blunt. I don’t want to get burned…provided we get out of this mess alive.”
“Well, getting burned is my number one fear right now.”
“Don’t worry. I know this machine pretty well, and we’ve got some sharp people figuring out how to get us back.”
…
Denver
Penny idly twisted a strand of hair as she hunched over a waist-high chart table with Grant, occasionally tapping at a calculator and looking up at the big screen to check Austral Clipper’s orbit against her own rough predictions. Hammond resisted the urge to linger behind and gave them room to work.
They were working out the plane’s orbital elements—how high, how low, and how long they’d be up there, among other things. Hammond had already peppered them with questions: they’re going to decay back into the atmosphere at some point…when and where? And how long can we make their consumables last, assuming they can even fly a controlled re-entry?
Which was her biggest fear: keep them from burning up only to see everyone die of dehydration or carbon-dioxide poisoning. They had some smart people here, but this required a whole different level of expertise. And the phones would be ringing off the hook soon. Art’s got to think about public
relations, too. We can’t let this get any worse than it already is.
She glanced back at the system manager’s station, where Grant had brought in one of his senior people to fill in. Grant apparently had the same thought and looked up at the same time to catch her attention.
“Liz, do me a favor?” he asked. “Alert the media relations team and make sure they understand exactly what’s going on. Somebody has to call the families ASAP before they find this out from the local news.”
She was almost embarrassed. “I already did. You guys looked a little busy.”
“Still are,” Penny said, cracking a smile at the understatement. “No sweat, you did the right thing. You mind holding off the phone calls for a while?”
“No problem. But they’re already freaking out over what to tell the press. Any suggestions?”
Penny drew her lips tight and rolled the kinks out of her neck. That’d mean I have some ideas. “Your show, Art,” she said to Hammond.
“I’ll handle that,” he answered without hesitation. Someone would no doubt have to jump in front of the cameras soon. “I’ll let Taggart know, if the PR gang didn’t get to him first. Just tell them we’re working on contingency plans. We have not given up,” he said, with a firm look at Penny. “Right?”
She nodded. “Number one problem is duration. Consumables…power, water, air. We solve that first. Then we figure out how to get them home.”
22
Austral Clipper
Colin Magrath pushed away from his seat and tumbled toward the ceiling. He managed to steady himself against a handrail just in time to keep from striking his head against the paneling, and suddenly realized that was most certainly why the ceiling and sidewalls were so well-padded.
His legs flailed behind as he clumsily pulled himself along toward the back of the cabin, where that flight attendant and pilot were still talking. Her expression had given way from shock to what he took as grim resolve, which only cemented his idea that something was indeed very wrong. He watched as the pilot whispered in her ear, determined to find out precisely what secrets they might be keeping from him.
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