Project Rescue

by Mark Kelly

  Chapter 26

  * * *

  On the way down the dirt road to the launch facility, Mr. Drizzle’s old car was stuffed with kids and their pent-up excitement. Even so, it was Mr. Drizzle himself who kept up a steady stream of conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized when he realized no one else was talking. “I’m just so excited!”

  “We all are,” said Lisa.

  It looked like clowns at the circus when the kids piled out of the old car and headed for the Mission Control blockhouse. Almost the instant Egg switched on the lights, the phone rang.

  Howard got to it first. “Barry?” he said hopefully, then he smiled one of his rare smiles. “Man, am I glad to hear from you. Steve!” He waved. “Pick up a phone and press the button that’s lit, see? Mr. Drizzle, can you pick up too?”

  Steve and Mr. Drizzle did as they’d been directed and began to listen intently. Mr. Drizzle pulled a slide rule off his belt and started penciling calculations on graph paper. Howard pressed a button on a computer keyboard to bring it to life, then began entering data.

  A whole lot of variables go into setting a course for a spacecraft and keeping it there. Where the thrusters are pointing, how much fuel is being burned, how much mass is in the fuel and the spacecraft, the gravitational pull of Earth, the moon, and the sun—all these affect the navigation. Meanwhile, the team also had to predict how much fuel each and every maneuver was likely to use to ensure that the spacecraft didn’t run out.

  While Howard and his team talked to Barry, Egg turned to Scott and Mark. “Where’s your flight plan?” she asked.

  Mark nodded agreeably. “Flight plan. Right,” he said.

  Egg rolled her eyes. “What were you doing last night, anyway? Didn’t you finish up the flight plan?”

  “We ate a good healthy dinner to nourish our growing bodies,” Mark said. “Does that count?”

  “No,” said Egg. “But fortunately I’ve got my own draft of the flight plan right here.” She handed over a clear plastic folder. Inside were many pages of lined notebook paper covered in neat handwriting.

  “Did anybody ever tell you that you have lead-er-ship po-ten-tial?” Scott asked her.

  Egg was too busy to respond. She turned to Lisa. “Lisa, you have the prelaunch schedule, don’t you?”

  “Right here,” said Lisa, and she read aloud. “Breakfast, thirty minutes. We can check that one off. Then ten minutes for a physical, ten minutes to put on the pressure suit, twenty-five minutes to test the pressure, and five minutes to walk over to the launch tower and ride up to the white room.”

  Egg looked at her watch. “Okay, ten minutes for the physical.”

  “How do you guys feel?” Lisa asked the twins.

  “Physically or mentally?” Scott asked.

  “Both,” said Lisa.

  “Mentally, the only thing that worries me is being cooped up in a small space with this guy,” Scott said.

  Mark nodded. “Back at you, bro.”

  “Okay, in that case I declare you sane,” Lisa said. “How about physically?”

  “I’m not sure I should’ve eaten that second bowl of Cap’n Crunch,” Mark said. “Otherwise, fine.”

  “Same here,” said Scott.

  “You’d better get going, then,” said Egg.

  “Yeah, you’d better.” Howard by this time was off the phone. He looked a little pale.

  “What is it?” Scott asked. “Is Barry all right?”

  “Yes,” Howard said. “At least he didn’t say he wasn’t. We were kind of too busy to ask.”

  Then Howard looked at the clock on the Mission Control wall and drew in a deep breath. “We have to start the countdown now at T-minus-60 minutes,” he said. “Given the Salyut’s current orbit, our best rendezvous time will be 1400 Zulu or MET 05:30:00. That’s midway through orbit three, or about five and a half hours into the mission. If we don’t make that, the next-best rendezvous point is five days from now—”

  “Five days!” Scott repeated. “But we can’t—”

  “We can’t, and neither can he,” said Howard. “By then Major Ilyushin won’t have good atmosphere anymore.”

  Unlike Howard, Egg did not look rattled. She tapped her pencil against her clipboard and spoke up. “Okay, everyone, take your places, pull out your checklists, and get to work. Howard, you need to specify the added velocity for each maneuver.

  “Mr. Drizzle? You’ll be updating the delta V as the flight goes forward to calculate the de-orbit burn for reentry. We’re looking at a daytime landing, I hope? Tomorrow morning?”

  Mr. Drizzle looked as happy as a kid at a carnival. “Roger!” he said.

  “Lisa? You’re done being flight surgeon. Now you’re going out with the twins to precheck the cabin and set up the switches.”

  “Roger,” Lisa said.

  Scott couldn’t wait to get going. Having been in space before made him eager to go back, and gave him confidence that everything would turn out okay. Mark was eager too, but if he was honest with himself, he knew he also felt scared.

  On the short staircase to the exit, he looked back at Egg, Howard, Steve, and Mr. Drizzle, all hard at work, and felt a tug that was sort of like affection. Also, he wished he had said a better good-bye to his grandfather that morning.

  Scott looked back impatiently at his brother, but when he saw the expression on Mark’s face, he understood. “Come on,” he said, his voice deeper than usual. “We gotta go. We gotta get this done.”

  Chapter 27

  * * *

  Without much discussion, the boys decided in the elevator that Scott would fly as commander and Mark as pilot. It made sense, since Scott had been in space before. Ordinarily, the commander would do the EVA, leaving the pilot in charge of his ship. But since both boys desperately wanted to float around in space, Lisa offered to flip a coin.

  They had emerged into the white room by this time. Lisa took out a quarter from her jeans pocket.

  “Heads!” Mark called—and heads it was.

  “Two out of three?” Scott said.

  “Ha—you wish!” Mark said.

  “Okay, fine,” said Scott. “Just don’t expect me to wait around if you’re late getting back.”

  Inside the white room, the astronauts suited up as efficiently as possible with Lisa’s help. Once in their suits, they turned on their oxygen supply. Breathing oxygen for a while before launch would get rid of the nitrogen in their bodies. Otherwise, when the cabin was depressurized for the space walk, that nitrogen would form bubbles in their bloodstream—a painful, dangerous condition known as “the bends.”

  With their tight countdown schedule, the boys were barely buckled into their seats when Lisa leaned in one last time and secured shoulder harnesses, seat belts, oxygen hoses, restraining clamps, and communications wires.

  “Kelly twins to the rescue!” she said, and gave them a thumbs-up.

  Scott looked up from his checklist to say thanks, but she had already lowered the hatch. Mark, who was closest, unstowed the locking handle and cranked it shut.

  Meanwhile, Mark and Scott went to work, checking switches, making sure electrical circuits and pipes supplying water and oxygen were all in good working order, turning off unnecessary circuits.

  They cycled the computer through its software programs, then checked the control system, the radio frequencies and telemetry, the tracking beacons and guidance system. They armed the pyrotechnics, took a look at the battery voltages, and pressurized the reaction control system. In spite of their preparation the day before, both twins felt like they were scrambling to keep up as the countdown progressed.

  Mark was updating the altimeter when he felt a jolt. “What’s that?” he asked his brother, alarmed.

  Scott didn’t even look up. “Access arm swinging away.”

  “Oh, sure, okay,” Mark said. A moment later, there was another bump. “What was that?” he asked.

  Scott grinned. “What a nervous Nellie,” he said. “It’s
the rocket engines being gimbaled—swiveled around to make sure they move like they’re supposed to. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you if it’s something bad.”

  Lisa by this time was back at Mission Control, and her reassuring voice came on their radio headsets. “Wind is at sixteen knots. Scattered clouds at two thousand feet, visibility fifteen miles.”

  “We are T-minus-3 minutes and counting,” said Egg. “Crazy 9, do you read?”

  “Loud and clear—too loud. You don’t have to yell,” Scott replied.

  The minutes ticked down. On the radio, Mark and Scott heard Egg poll Howard, Mr. Drizzle, and Lisa on the systems for which they were responsible.

  “FIDO?”

  “Go!”

  “GUIDANCE?”

  “Go!”

  “EECOM?”

  “Go!”

  “Crazy 9. This is Greenwood Control. Are you go for launch, Scott?”

  “Go!”

  Egg summed it up: “All systems are go for launch at T-minus-2 minutes.”

  It wasn’t totally silent in the CSM. Oxygen hissed in the pipes, and fans whirred. Mark and Scott could hear their own breath inside the helmets, which they would wear for launch and remove once they were safely in orbit. They didn’t know it, but at about the same time each thought to himself: This is dangerous and crazy but totally cool!

  At T-50 seconds, electrical power was transferred from the launchpad to the command module. At T-minus-9 seconds, the lights on the panel blinked as the first-stage engines of the Titan ignited, and thrust began to build. Mark watched the clock, the engine lights, and the tank pressure meter. He had never felt such a strange combination of joy and terror as he did while listening to Egg’s calm voice:

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . liftoff!”

  There was a low rumble followed by a solid surge of power—Is this normal? Mark wondered—and then, two seconds later, the twins felt a jolt as the big bolts that had been holding the rocket in place fired to release it. A moment later, the electrical umbilicals to the launch tower dropped away. Then, with 430,000 pounds of thrust behind it, the Apollo CSM rose from the pad. It was 10:30:99 ET, and Crazy 9 was leaving New Jersey behind in the rearview mirror.

  “Liftoff, and the clock is running,” said Scott, then, ten seconds later, “clear the tower.”

  Before Mark’s eyes, the instruments were going nuts—lights shone, dials jumped, the computer burped numbers. The spacecraft rose slowly at first, then, abruptly, the power in the fuel won its struggle with gravity and Mark and his brother hurtled skyward. With the noise and vibration, Mark couldn’t help remembering that he and his twin were balanced on top of a missile.

  He tried to steal a look at Scott’s face, but couldn’t.

  If something felt wrong, Scott would know and say so, right? And if something were really wrong, he would twist the T-shaped handle by his left hand that aborted the mission and ejected them from the spacecraft.

  “Pressure good, temperature good, azimuth good at seventy-five degrees,” said Lisa.

  “We are green and go,” said Egg.

  “Roger, Mission Control,” Scott responded. “Just took a quick peek outside, and the view is incredible. This thing sure has better windows than Crazy 8.”

  By the time Crazy 9’s velocity reached Mach 1—the speed of sound—the control panel in front of Mark was shaking so much it was hard to read the gauges. The first-stage fuel tanks were emptying out now. Soon all the fuel would be gone and the first-stage engine would shut down and separate. At which point, the Titan’s second stage would take over.

  “Staging,” Egg said. “One hundred thousand feet, two and one-half minutes.”

  The G-load had been near five—pressing the twins into their seats—but now it dropped back to one, same as on Earth, and then it kept right on falling till Mark’s body rose within its harness, nearly weightless.

  Mark’s eyes had been intent on the instruments in front of him. Now he looked out the window and almost wished he hadn’t.

  It was hard not to keep staring out the window at the planet, but he still had work to do.

  Now the g-forces mounted again. Eight minutes into the flight, they hit seven, and Mark felt like a giant gorilla was sitting on his chest. “It’s just like the roller coaster at the Great Adventure amusement park,” he reminded himself. “We’ll be over the hump in a sec, and then I’ll be able to breathe.”

  “One hundred miles now,” said Egg. “Stand by for second-stage engine cutoff. Looking good, Crazy 9! Right down the alley!”

  Another jerk, and the second stage rocket shut down, then—on schedule—it, too, detached from the CM and fell away.

  Crazy 9’s flight path started vertical, then arced southeast. By now, the boys were over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of one hundred miles and a speed of 17,500 miles per hour.

  “Mission Control, Crazy 9, we are downrange two hundred miles,” Scott said.

  “Flight path looks good,” said Egg.

  At last, Mark felt free to relax for a minute and take in the view. Scott had tried his best to describe it to him after Crazy 8, but Mark saw now how inadequate the description had been. Sunlight streamed through the windows, but with no atmosphere to turn the sky blue, it remained dark outside. Earthward, the overwhelming impression was of brilliant color, distant blue ocean, brown-and-green coastline, every variety of cloud imaginable. Mark was filled with awe . . .

  . . . and at the same time he felt something else filling his head, something uncomfortable. In response to weightlessness, his bodily fluids were rising into his head and face. Ew!

  This was not a good feeling at all. Mark had read that astronauts’ faces puffed up like chipmunks’ in microgravity. Until their bodies adjusted, it was like hanging upside down on the jungle gym.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Scott said.

  Mark snorted, trying to clear his sinuses. “Yeah, it’s really something else.”

  Then all at once they both laughed. They were relieved to have survived the launch. They were excited to be in orbit. And it was comical to use plain words to describe the magnificent spectacle of Earth below them.

  The twins loosened their chest straps. They had checklist after checklist of things to accomplish if they were going to rendezvous on time. As he got to work, Mark noticed something else to worry about. Tiny pieces of the spaceship itself seemed to be floating everywhere—screws, bolts, washers, and blobs of cement compound.

  Was Crazy 9 disintegrating?

  At the risk of sounding like an idiot, he asked his brother.

  “No, no, don’t worry about it,” Scott said. “Anything that got dropped during construction reappears in weightlessness. In a little while it’ll get sucked into the ventilation system and start to clear up. If we had had more time, we could have vacuumed before launch.”

  Bits of spacecraft weren’t the only things floating around. Mark’s hands floated too. It was a strange sensation to have to work to hold them down.

  “Crazy 9, come in, Crazy 9,” Egg said. “We’ll be losing radio contact shortly.”

  “Roger, Mission Control,” said Scott.

  “But we have a UHF lock for you to communicate with Barry in Moscow when you’re in range—about twenty-five minutes if all goes well, at MET 00:40:00, I mean. We’ll upload the link from here. Stand by.”

  Chapter 28

  * * *

  According to the flight plan, the rendezvous would take place during Orbit 3. Periodically during the next few orbits, Howard at the computer at the Greenwood Lake Mission Control center would feed updates into the Crazy 9 guidance system. Once the changes to their trajectory had been loaded into the computer on board the spacecraft, Mark and Scott would configure the propulsion system and perform a burn of the reaction control system engines to change their flight path. This would bring them closer to the Salyut.

  Between rendezvous burns, Scott and Mark could sit back and enjoy the ride. Staring out the windows,
they tried to figure out where they were over the planet. Sometimes it was obvious, like when they passed over the Mediterranean Sea and looked down on Spain and the boot of Italy, which looked, well, just like a boot.

  Other times they had no idea what that was below them. Were they over Australia or the United States? It all looked the same.

  What was obvious was that the planet below was big, round, and incredibly beautiful, and they were traveling around it at nearly 18,000 miles per hour. If you looked straight down, you could tell you were going that fast. Five miles of land or water passed beneath them every second.

  Mark switched his radio to the intercom loop so he could talk to his brother without everybody else listening in. “I thought Earth would look smaller,” he said, “like it does in those photos from the Apollo missions. Instead it’s huge! It fills the whole window.”

  “The moon missions traveled almost two hundred and fifty thousand miles away from Earth. Compared to that, we’re not very high up at all. While we are still above the atmosphere, we are only about two hundred miles above the planet’s surface,” Scott said.

  “Is there any atmosphere up here?” Mark asked.

  “A little bit,” said Scott, “enough to create a small amount of drag. But altogether, Earth’s atmosphere is scary thin. You can see that when you look at the horizon.”

  Mark did, and it looked to him as if the atmosphere was so fragile it would blow away in a cosmic storm.

  Scott continued, “If Earth were an orange, the atmosphere wouldn’t even be as thick as the peel.”

  “You sound like Mr. Drizzle,” said Mark, then he straightened out his legs for a few seconds, trying to get comfortable. He couldn’t. His back had started to hurt. He complained to his brother.

  “Oh yeah, mine, too,” Scott said. “It’s normal, I think.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, you know how your backbone is made up of little bones called vertebrae?” Scott said.

  “Sure,” said Mark.