“Five weeks?”
“Thirty-eight days, give or take a few,” Tom said. “Orbital decay depends on a lot of things, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said sullenly. “Atmospheric density, sunspot activity…hell, I’d appreciate a good solar flare right now. Just microwave us like a frozen dinner and get it over with.”
“Control yourself,” Tom said. “We’ve got to present a united front to the passengers or it’ll turn into pandemonium back there. And Marcy’s not going to be able to handle them herself. She needs your help.” He knew she would look to Ryan to draw her own strength.
“I don’t know if any of us can handle them,” Ryan said. “What would you do in their situation?”
“I’m not even sure what I’m going to do myself,” Tom said. “But I’m expecting the worst back there,” he added with a grim look towards the cabin. “We have to be prepared to restrain people.”
Ryan checked the compartment by his seat where a Taser was stored. “We should probably count on it.”
28
Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas
Audrey Wilkes was nearing the end of another long night at the flight director’s console. Her team’s shift ended at seven a.m. Two more hours and she could look forward to another day of fitful sleep before coming back for more. She rubbed her eyes and looked around the room. Individual lamps at her controller’s stations randomly punctuated the uniform blue glow of the subdued lighting and familiar wall screen. Most of her team sat hunched over their terminals while a few stretched back in their chairs, thumbing through printouts and mission rule binders.
With the Shuttles long gone, Space Station control was the only real action left in the Mission Operations directorate. And midnights weren’t exactly brimming with activity. While the crew slept, station controllers spent their time monitoring systems and fine-tuning the next day’s planned activities. Occasional troubleshooting of minor problems punctuated the long nights, but for the most part the graveyard shift was a training ground for new controllers.
It had been a long road back from the trauma of her first day in mission control, when Orion shredded itself in that awful launch abort.
“Abort” was also a fairly apt description of what happened in Washington not long afterward. The program, already on thin ice with Congress, was unceremoniously shut down. She’d been expecting a pink slip when the Mission Ops director surprised her with a seat in ISS control instead. You handled a bad situation very well, young lady, he’d told her. You are one steely-eyed missile girl.
When things were really slow in the control room, Audrey occasionally allowed herself time to reflect on those events. But she was also one of the few flight directors who didn’t live and breathe mission ops; a personal choice she had to make each day, like an alcoholic determined to stay sober. She forced herself to put the program out of her head every morning when leaving the console. If not, the job would surely consume her as it had so many others. She’d watched too many colleagues succumb to SIDS: Space-Induced Divorce Syndrome. If I ever find a husband, I’ll probably want to keep him around for awhile, she had joked with her “normal” friends outside the Agency.
The warm Houston weather made leaving work behind a little easier. A cross-country devotee, she could usually get out in the early morning at the end of her shift and literally run away from the job. The vigorous after-hours routine forced her to forget about Station control and focus on the miles of road ahead.
Green Team would start arriving in another hour or so for their turnover brief; another hour after that and her team could go home if all was well. And things were nearly always well, save for the occasional power spike or balky zero-g toilet, but that situation was measurably changing over time. How can we ever fly to Mars one day if half the crew’s lined up for the john? Some of the more jaded controllers had derisively begun calling the aging complex “Cattlecar Galactica”.
She took a quick bite from an apple and considered grabbing a last-minute cup of coffee, then thought better of it. I’m doing twelve miles today, she thought. Last thing I need is to run off to pee under a bush. With my luck I’d stumble onto a rattlesnake.
The phone on the cabinet behind her seat rang, startling her back to the here and now. It didn’t ring very often, especially at this time of night. Anyone with access to that number knew to never call it unless absolutely necessary. Occasionally the mission ops director would call to check in, usually when he was having his own problems sleeping.
“Station Control, Blue Team flight director,” she answered in a practiced, professional tone.
“Good morning, Flight. May I ask who I’m speaking with?”
That took Audrey by surprise. She’d quickly learned to recognize every voice that might call the director’s console, and this wasn’t one of them. This better not be another telemarketing call. A few years ago, one of those confounded random-number robo-callers had given them fits when it hit the jackpot and repeatedly called every number at Johnson, in sequence. But this one knew the call sign for her position…maybe it was a crafty reporter?
“This is Audrey Wilkes. And who, may I ask, is this?”
“Audrey…” came a halting reply, then recognition. “Audrey! You used to work the Booster console, right?”
What the hell was going on here? “Yes, I did. Once. Long time ago. Now maybe you can tell me who I’m speaking with.” She did not find this amusing.
“Sorry. This is Penny Stratton at Polaris AeroSpace.”
Audrey sat dumbfounded for a second and stared at the receiver. Unpleasant memories flew back in a rush. Sights, voices, feelings—a sick emptiness in her gut she hadn’t felt for years. She replied, tentatively at first.
“Penny? What…what the heck are you calling for? How did you even get this number?”
“Nice to hear from you too. You have to ask? I know how long it takes for things to change down there.”
That lightened her mood and she chuckled quietly. “Guess I can’t fault you for that.”
“So you’re in the big chair now, huh?”
“As big as it gets on midnights. Somebody has to make sure they’re keeping the fish fed and the pantry stocked up there.”
“You go where they put you. Glad to hear it, though.” She abruptly ended the small talk and got to the point. “Look, Audrey, I don’t know if you’ve heard from J-Spock yet, but we’ve got a big problem with one of our birds.”
That gave her pause. Besides watching for enemy missiles, the Joint Space Operations Command tracked every piece of orbital flotsam and helped guide the occasional maneuver to avoid them. So what would they have to do with a spaceplane full of pampered millionaires?
“Um, no, we haven’t,” she answered with apprehension. “What are you talking about?”
Penny explained.
“Sweet Mary…you’re not kidding are you?” Of course not, dummy, she chided herself, before curiosity took over: “You guys really pulled off single-stage-to-orbit?” she asked, almost awestruck.
“Yeah, we’ll all be very proud if they make it back alive.”
“Sorry…it’s just about the last thing I expected to hear tonight is all.” They kept the news turned off, and no one in management would have been awake to call in the story to her anyway.
Penny dropped the sarcasm. “Don’t sweat it. We’re all standing around wondering what happened, too. But that has crossed everyone’s mind. Theoretically I knew it was possible with a low enough mass fraction. We sure wouldn’t do it on purpose.”
Audrey immediately recognized a flight director’s worst nightmare: a stranded crew with no conceivable way home and nothing to do on the ground but listen and wait for them to die.
“Good Lord, Penny. How are you going to get them home? Can that thing even handle re-entry? It’s got to be in a pretty squirrely orbit.” Then she realized why she must be calling. “Are you worried about a collision risk with the station?”
“We don’t know yet. They’re not in coplanar orbits, but the tracks intersect at a couple of points. Right now we’re focused on consumables and heat distribution. They’re coming down at some point, obviously.”
“Outer mold line on that thing’s got to be complicated at high Mach numbers,” Audrey observed. “It has a lot of stuff hanging in the breeze on the underside, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Penny agreed. “The intakes would be a problem.”
Audrey was still pondering why she called, since they weren’t worried about a collision risk. “But you’re not looking for advice on boundary layer heat transfer, are you?”
“No,” Penny said flatly. “We’re going after them. Remember those orbital rescue scenarios we worked out back in the Stone Age?”
“Sure do,” Audrey said. Like closing the barn door after the horse was already out, NASA had developed extensive plans for quickly launching an on-orbit rescue mission for a crippled Shuttle after the gruesome in-flight breakup of Columbia. “If you need copies of the studies, I’m sure we can arrange it under the circumstances. So which launch service are you using?” she asked while searching her computer for the old reports.
“We’re not,” Penny said. “None of the commercial companies can carry enough pax.”
Of course. I know better, Audrey thought. “You’re right,” she admitted, but that still left a rather large question hanging. “So that rules out a Soyuz or Shenzou, doesn’t it?” The Russians would launch anything for a price, but were notoriously slow when it mattered most. The Chinese were even worse. And neither ship could carry more than three people.
“Not enough time, even without their payload limits,” Penny said. “We’d need three vehicles to get everyone out anyway.”
“That doesn’t leave you with very much,” Audrey ventured. “You’ve just eliminated all of the launch providers.”
“You’re right,” Penny said, and drew a breath. “We’re going after them ourselves. The Block II model is being prepped for launch at the Moses Lake test site right now.”
“You guys already have that thing flying? I thought it was still in testing.” The Block II was an upgraded Clipper with more powerful engines and large expendable fuel tanks slung beneath each wing. Designed for reaching orbit, NASA had planned to give it serious consideration for supplying the station one day.
“It is. But it looks like our only option. We’ve calculated a launch window for tomorrow afternoon.”
“You don’t have much time, then,” she said. “I’ll get those tech reports to you ASAP.”
Penny hesitated. “That’s not all, Aud. I may need an even bigger favor.”
Audrey sat back for the next few minutes, listening to her idea. It was a big favor, all right. It was either brilliant or certifiably nuts.
Well, they don’t pay me to sit here and look the other way, she thought. “Let me think this through and get back to you.”
29
Denver
Walt Donner was livid, spit flecked his beard. “What do you mean they’re investigating?” he stammered. “We fixed that bird. They can talk to the idiots up there flying it!”
Chen sat calmly, listening to his outburst while trying not to show any emotion. Donner habitually took out every momentary frustration on whomever he happened to be working with; junior technicians usually fared the worst, especially when they came bearing bad news.
“That’s all I know. Don’t freak out,” Chen said, hoping to sound objective. “Even if we really had done something wrong, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Not that it mattered, but maybe it would calm him down. “Don’t you think they want to find out what went wrong so this doesn’t happen again?”
Donner spun and angrily turned off a radio on the workbench behind him, killing the background drone of country music. “You really don’t know how things work around here, do you?” he said coldly. “You think we come in, do our jobs, mind our own business, and just get left alone?”
“I guess that’s about right,” he said calmly. It had the desired effect.
Donner glared at him as he worked up a righteous tirade. “Since the ink on your ticket’s still wet, let me tell you something…”
Some things are just too easy, Chen thought. Here we go.
“Those SOBs up in the corner office think they know this place. Think they know how we make things work. They get some bright idea burning up their innards then tell us to just go make it happen. Doesn’t matter how stupid it is, how much more work it puts on us wrench monkeys. And that’s all we are to them. And your buddies up in Ops and Maintenance Control ain’t any better than those other prima donnas. Don’t you ever forget it.”
“Come on, Walt. They’re not all that bad are they? Some of them must know what they’re doing, or we’d all be out of a job.” This was entertaining, at least.
Donner sneered. “What did they fill your head with in school? Sure wasn’t anything to do with making airplanes work, sounds like.”
Chen appeared to get his back up over that remark. “It was a four-year program, Walt. We had to take a lot more than just the technician’s classes. Calc, physics, econ…”
It at least took the edge off his temper. “Figures,” he snorted, almost laughing. “Makes you think you’re a rocket scientist and you know how to run this place, when all you need to worry about is learning how to keep these birds flying.”
The younger man grinned. “Well, I guess that’s why they stuck you with me, Walt.”
…
Hammond sat with Penny and Charlie Grant in the emergency operations center. Projected on the screen before them were diagrams and timelines for the rescue mission they were still cobbling together. Behind them sat the rest of the tiger team, waiting to be assailed with questions.
He rubbed his eyes as they flipped through briefing slides. Uncharacteristically rumpled, he looked even more drained than the rest of them. Charlie traced a pointer along a chaotic graph of colored arcs, each swirl representing different orbits. “Final approach vector will be from underneath relative to 501, Y-axis minus 500 meters for maximum visibility. They’ll offset Z-plus 50 meters and complete the final approach while on the day side. If they can’t close for any reason, they’ll wave off and hold position until the next sunrise.”
“And the cargo deck?” Hammond challenged. “You’re comfortable with them using it as an airlock?”
“Not much choice,” Charlie said. “There’s no other way to get them off. We think its safe enough for at least one depress cycle, maybe two.” The Clipper’s cargo bay was contained in its own separate pressure hull, with an access hatch at the rear of the passenger cabin. They would keep it closed off, vent its air, and open it to space. “The flight test engineer will run the extra-vehicular activity. He’ll float over to 501 with attachment tethers and the flexible docking tunnel.”
Hammond turned to a tousle-haired young man behind them. “You ready for this, Will?”
Will Gardner had been managing the test flights and crunching data on the Block II spaceplane for weeks, up until being drafted to help devise a rescue. “Not sure if I’ll ever be ‘ready’, Mr. Hammond,” he said. “But it looks like I’m all we’ve got.”
“What kind of experience do you have with EVAs?”
“I interned at a space adventure-tourist company for two summers in college. Suited up a couple of times for their neutral buoyancy trainer,” he said, referring to a deep swimming pool used to simulate spacewalks. “And I’ve participated in a couple of emergency suit drills during flight test.”
“That’s better than nothing,” Hammond said. “And as long as you’re willing to hang your young ass out on the line, you can call me Art.” He turned back to Grant. “When’s your next launch window?”
“We have a ten minute window starting at noon Pacific time tomorrow. Our test site is one piece of luck in this whole mess,” he said. “The inclination at Moses Lake is pretty close to their orbit, so it keeps
our windows open longer and frees up reserve propellant.”
“Any chance you can launch earlier?”
“They can’t have the bird ready any sooner,” Penny interjected. “And I’ve got to figure out how to get some sleep between now and then.”
“For Pete’s sake, let Charlie manage things while you get ready to fly,” Hammond said. “That’s what I hired him for. Not like we have anything else going on,” he added dourly. They had cancelled all other flights until the cause of 501’s malfunction could be determined. It was probably the smart thing to do, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to absorb the losses for long. Like other airlines, they were heavily dependent on cash flow. Shares of both the spaceline and his manufacturing company were already tanking on the news.
“We’re not leaving here until morning,” she insisted. “I’m the only one in the company that’s ever flown orbital rendezvous.” Much less ever practiced a crazy-assed stunt like this, she thought. “They need me in on the final planning. We can’t just wing it.”
Hammond held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, you win,” he said. “And the company jet’s at your disposal, by the way. I’ll have the Gulfstream crew on standby to take you guys up to Moses Lake as soon as you’re ready. But get some damned sleep. You’re not doing this on caffeine and adrenaline. Got it?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Art.”
30
Austral Clipper
Tom fiddled with the adjustable sunshades around the windows, trying in vain to find one angle that worked. They were back in full daylight and blinding sun filled the cockpit. The harsh light at least brought some warmth—it was beginning to get awfully cold. Frost formed around the edges of the windows, the glass sharply cold to the touch after forty minutes in nightside. Reaching into a boxy leather flight case behind his seat, he finally grabbed at some airway charts as they floated out and began clipping them above the big window.
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