Titan

by Stephen Baxter

  “We’re copying, Endeavour. Hold on that. Endeavour Houston. Negative TAL now.”

  “Copy, negative TAL.”

  Another abort option had passed out of operation. Now i was impossible for the orbiter to attempt to cross the Atlantio and land at the emergency airstrip, at Zaragoza in Spain.

  “Four minutes fifty seconds,” White said. “We’re still with you guys.”

  Despite the situation, his tone was even, deep, immensely reassuring to Benacerraf. This is a man who has been to the Moon, she thought. Marcus won’t feed us bullshit. He will make sure we’re okay.

  Angel was hunched forward, against the acceleration, studying his main engine temperature gauge.

  If only, she thought, White was here in the cabin with them.

  Angel said, “Okay, the center engine has gone through its red line. Do you copy? Nine hundred fifty centigrade. And—’

  Benacerraf felt an immediate decrease of acceleration, a lessening of the Gs that pressed her against her seat. The flight deck was filled with a loud, oscillating tone. Four big red push-button alarm lights lit up on the instrument panels around the cabin.

  Angel pushed a glowing button on a central panel, above a CRT, to kill the alarm. “Master alarm,” he snapped.

  I know, Benacerraf thought bleakly.

  Just to the right of the lowest of the cockpit’s three CRT screens was a small cluster of three lights. They were mair engine status lights. Benacerraf saw that the centermost light had turned red.

  “We lost the center engine,” Angel called. “It got too hot and shut itself down.”

  “We copy, Endeavour” Marcus White said. “Endeavour, Houston…” The capcom fell silent.

  “We’re waiting,” Angel said heavily.

  Deeke tried to keep from looking out of the cockpit.

  What would he see? —a cloud of dispersing liquid oxygen from a ruptured External Tank, the bright orange glow of RCS hypergolics, fragments of the orbiter wheeling out of the plume, like another Challenger?

  Had it worked?

  … He approached his peak altitude. Deeke began to push his nose down, with RCS blips, so that he climbed to the top with a ten-degree nose-down attitude.

  In the moment of stasis at the top of his trajectory, he saw the Earth, spread out before him, through his mailbox window.

  The world was very bright, like an inverted sky. Under the nose of the aircraft it curved away, in all directions, as if he were poised above some huge blue dome. Out ahead, he could see the ocean, a deeper, bluish gray color. The atmosphere was clearly visible, as a layer of blue haze over the Earth. Above him there was only blackness.

  It was extraordinarily beautiful.

  My God, he thought. What have I done?

  He probed his soul for remorse.

  His main regret, actually, was that he would surely, in any conceivable future, never again fly like this, never see the Earth from this extraordinary altitude, spread out like a bright blue quilt.

  As he went over the top, the change was rapid; the flight path changed from a climb of plus thirty degrees to minus thirty in minutes.

  The deep ocean receded from him as he fell. The lighter blue of the coastal waters expanded below him, coated with lumpy cloud. The air seemed to reach up and clutch at him.

  The black nose of the X-15 began to glow as the plane dipped back into the thickening atmosphere. The sensation of speed returned, and negative Gs piled on, soon climbing to four or five.

  Deeke pulled X-15 up through twenty degrees. He could feel the aircraft fighting him. The leading edges of the wings glowed a bright cherry-red; now, at the climax of the reentry, the heat of air friction was dispersing around the airframe, raising its average temperature above a thousand degrees. But here, in his little aluminum shell, Deeke could feel nothing but the brutal eyeballs-out deceleration. He felt blood pool in his arms, painfully.

  Canaveral said, “Ease it on over. Watch your nose position, Linebacker. We have you low on altitude. Bring it back up. Pull your nose on up, Linebacker.”

  “Okay, it’s coming up.”

  “Turn left three degrees. Left three degrees.”

  “Rog.”

  “Speed brakes in. And maintain your altitude, you’re still a little low, Linebacker.”

  “Rog.”

  “Okay, you’re about ten miles from your checkpoint. You’re looking very good here, Linebacker.”

  The calm, competent dialogue went on, routine and almost meaningless.

  Nobody had said a word since he’d deployed the ASAT. He still didn’t know whether he’d succeeded or not.

  Just get onto the ground, Linebacker. Time enough for all that later.

  The flight dynamics engineer, Fido, was talking steadily in Fahy’s ear, outlining available abort modes to her.

  The RTLS and TAL modes were already unavailable to her. But they could lengthen the burn of the remaining engines and the OMS, and so reach some kind of orbit. That was an Abort to Orbit, ATO. It had actually been flown before. Later, an abort once-around would be available, with Endeavour completing a single circuit of Earth, and reentering immediately.

  The ATO gave some chance of salvaging some of the mission’s objectives. And getting Endeavour up, intact, into some kind of orbit would provide time to figure out what in hell was going on here, and what resources she had to work with.

  But an ATO would be a gamble. She would have to hope that the remaining main engines kept working nominally for the rest of the ascent. And as Booster kept pointing out, there was no guarantee of that.

  Someone shot at us, damn it. I can’t believe it.

  The launch sequence was unfolding rapidly, a ticking clock. In the next few seconds, she had to make the decision: to abort or not, and which mode.

  Again that strange feeling of decoupling settled over her, as if she was paralyzed by her anxiety, as if she could no longer make her body function in conjunction with her will. She wanted to just sit here, listening to Fido’s brisk voice outlining the technical options.

  It’s as if I was hit by that damn missile, whatever it was, rather than the Shuttle. We’re all just flawed, limited beings, struggling to cope with these monstrous machines we create, and failing.

  I can’t do this any more, she thought.

  But I must.

  She thought about her assets. After all, the Shuttle’s main engines were the most complicated ever built. They were throttleable, and had to deliver high thrust with great efficiency. They had inbuilt control systems, so they could monitor their own performance. They were heavily over-engineered, made to be rugged for multiple reuse. Each of the engines on Endeavour today had flown a dozen or more times before, on different orbiters, running up thousands of seconds of hot-fire time each.

  The hell with it, she thought. Those engines are tough. No asshole is going to shoot us down. Especially as they all but missed.

  She felt determination gathering in her, dispelling her doubts.

  She turned to Marcus White, her capcom.

  When White came back on the loop, he sounded more decisive.

  “Endeavour, Houston. Abort to orbit.”

  Angel glanced at Libet. “Say again, Marcus.”

  “Endeavour, Houston. We’re going to abort to orbit, Bill.”

  “About fucking time,” Angel said.

  He reached down to a small panel close to his right hand, and turned a rotary switch from OFF to its extreme right position, ATO. Then, on the same panel, he pushed a button to confirm the abort. Now they had a course of action ahead, Angel looked as if he was actually enjoying this, as if he was already thinking ahead to the sea stories he could spin out of it.

  He was one unimaginative asshole, Benacerraf thought angrily. And yet right now, her life was in his hands…

  “Uh-oh,” Libet said.

  “What? What now?”

  “I got temperature rises in the remaining main engines.”

  “Which one?”

  �
�Both of them, Bill. Look here.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Benacerraf tried to remember what the procedure would be it they lost another main engine now. She had a sinking feeling that there wasn’t one.

  Is this how, after all, human spaceflight is to finish, for the foreseeable future?

  Beyond the pilot’s windows, the sky was growing dark.

  “Endeavour, Houston. We copy your temperature rises, Bill. Here’s what you have to do. We want you to override the main engine auto shutdown.”

  “Say again.”

  “Override the shutdown. Don’t let the engines shut themselves off.”

  Angel and Libet hesitated for one second. Then they began to work switches.

  The first engine had shut itself off when its internal multisensor noted the pump operating temperature exceeding its safety limit. Perhaps Mission Control was speculating that the readings were flaky, that identical temperature rises in the other pumps were unlikely. If that was so, then a well-meant auto shutdown of a perfectly functioning engine might be the greatest hazard facing the crew.

  On the other hand, if the sensor readings were not ratty—if the operating temperatures in those pumps really were rising as the data showed—then probably, before they reached orbit, one of the pumps would blow itself to pieces. And that would finish Endeavour anyhow.

  After all, they had all heard and felt that bang. There was more than just a telemetry problem here.

  Fahy, Benacerraf sensed, was taking a hell of a gamble.

  Maybe she is compensating, still, for what happened with Columbia. Even overcompensating.

  But what choice do I have but to trust her?

  “Okay, Houston, Endeavour. Auto shutdown disabled. Now what?”

  “Endeavour, we’re going to ask you to burn your remaining two main engines for an extra forty-nine seconds. And the OMS one burn will be extended. And augmented with an aft RCS burn. Do you copy all that?”

  Benacerraf had scribbled down the instructions on a scratchpad. “Forty-nine seconds, then an extended OMS. We have that, Houston.”

  Meanwhile the orbiter continued its climb.

  They were eighty miles high, and moving at Mach fifteen.

  Now Benacerraf felt the orbiter pitch further over, almost onto its back.

  “Okay,” Angel said, “we have single engine press to ATO. Houston, Endeavour. Single engine press to ATO.”

  “Copy that, Endeavour. We’re breathing a little easier down here.”

  “Keep your pacemaker charged up, Marcus.”

  Another barrier had been passed. Now, even if another main engine failed, the Shuttle could still continue to MECO—main engine cut-off—with one engine, and so, presumably, achieve some kind of orbit, even it lower than planned.

  Benacerraf knew that the risk of catastrophic failure had receded a little.

  “Main engine throttle down.”

  “Throttle down, copy.”

  “Seven minutes forty. Endeavour, Houston. Engines down to sixty-five percent. You’re looking good.”

  “Sure we are.”

  She could see a muscle ticking in Angel’s cheek. He was itching to do something, she saw. The launch sequence was so automated that there was almost nothing the crew could do to influence events. They could only sit here, gripping checklists and seat frames, wait while some piece of abort-procedure software flew the craft, hope that nobody had screwed up. No wonder the astronauts had always fought to retain control systems in their ships. Inactivity drove them rapidly crazy.

  “Eight minutes thirty-eight,” Angel said. “Okay, people. Now we’re in the extended thrust regime. Here we go…”

  According to the original timeline, MECO should have come at eight thirty-eight. They were off the flight profile, then.

  “Endeavour, Houston. Coming up on MECO at revised time of nine minutes twenty-seven.”

  “Copy that, Marcus.”

  “At this time you are go for MECO.”

  “We’re relieved to hear it.”

  “Coming up on MECO, on my mark.”

  As the tanks emptied, the acceleration built up to its dynamic crescendo, shoving Benacerraf harder back in her seat.

  “Three, two, one. Mark.”

  The acceleration faded immediately.

  Benacerraf was not thrown forward. The force which had pressed her back simply vanished.

  She still had a sensation of motion, of high velocity, as if she could feel the huge energy which had been invested in her body and the rest of the orbiter’s mass.

  Her arms, limp, floated up from her lap before her.

  “MECO on schedule,” Angel said. “Houston, Endeavour. I got me three red engine status lights.” He turned and grinned through his faceplate at Benacerraf. “Those balky main engines can’t hurt us now.”

  “Endeavour, Houston. Bill, you are go for ET separation. On my mark. Three, two, one. Mark.”

  There was a remote boom.

  “ET sep is good,” Angel said. “Beginning minus zee translation.”

  “Paula,” Libet said. She pointed upward. “Look out there.”

  The orbiter, without its External Tank, was still flying upside down, almost parallel to the Earth’s surface. So when Benacerraf squinted upward, she could see the blue skin of the Indian Ocean.

  And there, dark and ugly against the ocean, was the bullet shape of the External Tank. The brown insulation foam over its aluminum-lithium lightweight honeycomb shell was battered and badly charred, by the air friction of the ascent and rocket exhausts. It would fall back into the atmosphere to a height of a hundred and sixty thousand feet, where, glowing white hot, its fragments would hail down over an empty slice of Indian Ocean.

  “It looks more beat-up than I expected,” Benacerraf said.

  “Yes. Like it’s been in a war,” Libet said.

  “So it has.”

  “Software in mode 104,” Angel said.

  “Endeavour, Houston. You are go for the OMS-one burn.”

  “Copy that, go for OMS-one,” Angel said.

  Libet worked switches. “Attitude indicator to inertial.”

  Angel began to punch the relevant navigation software into the computer, using the keypad to his right. Benacerraf, still following her checklist, monitored his keystrokes: ITEM 27 EXEC.

  The small orbital maneuvering system lit up with a crisp jolt, a dull roar.

  “We’re going to come out of this low,” Libet said.

  She got no reply. There was silence, on the ground, on the flight deck.

  The burn seemed, to Benacerraf, to go on and on.

  White called from the ground, “Coming up on OMS cut-off. On my mark. Three, two, one. Mark.”

  The gentle thrust died.

  In the FCR there was a burst of clapping.

  Endeavour was in orbit.

  Barbara Fahy thumped her clenched fist against the surface of her workstation. She felt a surge of savage, exultant joy. She had acted; her decision had been correct, and had maybe saved the mission.

  She wished she could get her hands on whoever had shot at her orbiter. She felt she could destroy them herself, with her bare hands, unleashing primitive, savage energy.

  She tried to calm herself down. She started to talk on the voice loops, calling her controllers to order. There was still a hell of a lot of work to do, not least the planning of the next big burn, the revised OMS-two burn.

  But, even as she forced her mind to work analytically once more, she clung to the memory of that wild moment of exultation.

  Jackie stayed in the press stand, listening to the fragmentary, incomplete announcements from the NASA PAO. It was as if she was somehow connected to Endeavour, that huge pile of metal to which she’d been so close, just three miles from it, before its explosive launch into space—as if she had to stay here until the crew were safe, as though if she moved away she would somehow break the spell that was somehow preserving the crew, her mother’s life.

  In the distance
she could hear cars, the squeal of brakes and tires. The car park around the VAB was filling up, and there was a lot of activity in front of the TV networks’ big glass-fronted studios. More press were hurrying here, and presumably to the other NASA centers around the country, now that the launch had turned into some kind of genuine news story.

  They finally did it, she thought. She’d understood, technically, only a fraction of what she’d witnessed today; but the meaning was clear.

  At last, the military-industrial complex of the United States—the sprawling, interconnected mass of semi-covert interests and alliances out of which the space program had been spawned in the first place—had turned in on itself, and was consuming its own children.

  The column of smoke and vapor from the launch still towered into the sky, dwarfing everything, dwarfing even the VAB itself. It broadened and twisted as the off-shore winds pulled slowly at it.

  I always knew this was a dumb idea, Mother.

  “Seventy thousand feet.”

  “Okay, all out.”

  “Keep on coming downhill, looks real good. The strip is off to your ten o’clock, do you have it in sight?”

  “Yep.”

  “Coming through Mach two now, real nice. Keep your brakes out. Okay, you can bring the brakes in now, have you about ten miles out. One point five Mach. What’s your attitude, Linebacker?”

  “Coming through forty-five now.”

  “You’re about six miles out of high key here, Linebacker.”

  “Rog.”

  “Velocity one point two Mach. Watch that angle of attack.”

  “Rog.”

  Deeke was flying an unpowered aircraft now. He was facing perhaps the toughest moment of the flight, an unpowered deadstick landing. And this wasn’t Edwards, on the tabletop of the Mojave, with its hundreds of miles of surrounding glass-smooth dry lake beds. He would get just one chance at this.

  But he had always been a pretty good stick and rudder pilot. He wasn’t really concerned.

  In fact, he’d rather the flight never ended.

  At thirty-five thousand feet he reached the high-key position. He was now directly over his landing site, and he would go through a three hundred and sixty degree spiral, to line himself up for the runway.