Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  When the press had started forsaking the weekly shuttle launches, NASA had learned that it could keep up public interest and help pay for its operations by selling tickets to the press mound at the Visitors Center. At forty bucks a shot (ten bucks for youngsters and senior citizens and half-price for card-carrying members of the National Space Society), not only could the public see the launches from the edge of the safety perimeter instead of seven miles away on the Bennett Causeway to Merritt Island, but NASA also benefited by circumventing a cynical press’s snubbing of the space program.

  A middle-aged tourist from Delaware watched through his binoculars as the crew-access arm of the gantry tower was retracted from the spacecraft. He lowered the glasses for a moment, letting his eyes relax. He had been a space fan since he had been a freshman in college and had watched the first launch of the shuttle Columbia on the TV in his dorm; now, after all these years, he was getting to see a launch in real life. He smiled and started to raise his binoculars again when a hand tapped him on his shoulder.

  “Hey, mister. Wanna buy a souvenir?”

  He looked around, slightly startled, to see an old man standing next to him. He had long, iron-gray hair tied back in a braided ponytail and a grizzled beard, and wore cut-off denim shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals. On his head was a well-worn blue cap with scrambled-eggs braiding on the bill; embroidered on the front were the words “Hornet Plus Three.”

  The tourist from Delaware had spotted the old guy working the crowd at the press site earlier, carrying a box full of tie clasps, bumper stickers, patches, postcards, and various other knickknacks. The tourist had promised himself that he would pick up a few items for his nephews back home, but he couldn’t see himself giving the old geezer any of his business. The bum would probably just waste the money on a bottle of cheap wine, or something worse. “Um, sorry, no thanks,” he murmured.

  The old man wore a huge grin. “Hey, I got a lot of good stuff here. Cheapest prices on the Cape, too. Authentic NASA souvenirs.”

  “No thanks.” The tourist raised the binoculars again, hoping the gesture would ward off the old coot.

  “Really something, ain’t she?” the old guy said, making no move to leave.

  “Huh?”

  The old man nodded toward the distant launch pad. “The Willy Ley. One of the first of the second-generations. Let me give you a tip, sir. Don’t watch it go up through those glasses, you’ll just miss everything. It’ll just seem like watching it on the tube, that’s all. Lots of people make that mistake, and it’s funny how unimpressive it is when you’re using binoculars or a telescope. Also, when this is over, go over to the landing strip and watch when the flyback booster comes in. Just glides right in, smooth as silk, just like a big jet. Not at all like the days when they used to drop in the ocean, no sir. A lot different from the old space capsules.”

  “Um.” The tourist barely remembered when space capsules used to make splashdowns in the ocean. That had been when he was just a kid in elementary school. He checked the big digital countdown clock several feet away. Four and a half minutes to go…

  “Y’know,” the old guy said, “I once walked on the Moon.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you have, old-timer. Plenty of times.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back, affronted. “Hey! You think I’m some kinda crazy old geek, but I’m not foolin’ ya! I walked on the Moon, back when you were just a little kid!”

  “Sure… go on, get lost, willya?”

  “Hey, look here!” He pointed a gnarled forefinger at his cap. “See that? You read what it says? Now what do you think the Hornet was, huh?” He pointed at a patch sewn to the sleeve of his garish shirt. “See that patch? See that eagle landing on the Moon? You read what it says?”

  A NASA security guard had suddenly materialized behind them both. Laying a hand on the old man’s shoulder, he said to the tourist, “Sir, is this man bothering you?” Without waiting for an answer, the guard gently took hold of the old man’s forearm and started to lead him away.

  “Enjoy the launch, sir,” the old man said with a grin. “Have a nice day.”

  On Willy Ley’s flight deck, Lisa Barnhart’s hands moved smoothly across the consoles around her, making final adjustments. The digital timer in front of her read two minutes until launch. Now her reflexes had taken over, sharpened from previous flights and hundreds of hours in the simulator. Both she and Coffey worked without conscious decision, by preprogrammed function like the redundant computer systems in the spacecraft itself. It was as if she was merely functioning in a dream-world, and if she thought about the complexity of her actions, she would be intimidated. But she didn’t have time to think much about it, so she wasn’t frightened.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, she was seventeen years old again, and making her first solo flight in a Cessna 132 from Columbia Regional Airport in Missouri: taxiing toward the runway, alone in the cockpit without her instructor, the thrill and the terror combining to shoot cold electricity up her spine. Whether it was a single-engine airplane or a space shuttle, it was always the same, the first time or the fiftieth time: getting off the ground is always the hardest part.

  “Control, this is Willy Ley,” Coffey said into his headset mike. “APU to inhibit, over.”

  Roger, we copy, Willy Ley, CapCom responded. After a pause: Willy Ley, this is Launch Control. H-two tank pressurization okay. You are go for launch, over.

  “Roger, go for launch, out,” Lisa replied. Glancing across the console, she saw that the registers on the liquid oxygen tank pressure meter had built to maximum limits. The orbiter had already switched to internal power; her main engines swiveled into launch position. Her eyes went swiftly across the board, a built-in reflex from the old days of flying Cessnas. All systems were green and ready for launch. You’re cleared for takeoff, the voice of the control tower in Missouri intoned in her mind.

  Willy Ley, this is Launch Control. APU start is go. You are on your onboard computer, over.

  “Roger, out,” she said. Now the control of the launch had shifted from Launch Control to Willy Ley itself. It’s all in your hands now. Don’t embarrass me, Lisa’s old flight instructor said to her again. She checked the timer. T-minus twenty seconds and counting.

  The lights on the console blinked as the computers started the booster’s main engine. She heard the sudden roar as the engines ignited, felt the tremor of an earthquake roll through the vessel, the shuttle trembling like a great animal straining at its leash.

  We have main engine start, CapCom intoned. Two…

  The wheels lifted off the runway…

  One…

  Oh, dear God, this is great…

  Zero… FRB ignition…

  Green lights flashed across the engine status board.

  Lift off… we have lift off…

  Now she was firmly pressed back into her couch as the spacecraft trembled and shook and began to rise, and through the windows she saw the launch tower disappear and the deep blue sky mover closer, and the thunder began a steady roar as Willy Ley headed for the abyss of space.

  Strangely, there was no sound at first as the shuttle rose from the launch pad. It was like a silent movie; flame, a blossom of dark reddish smoke, a bright light which made the tourists squint and involuntarily step back a pace, the shuttle rising from the pad and clearing the tower, but no noise.

  It had cleared the tower and was several hundred feet in the air when the sound arrived from three miles away, a bristling crackle like the world’s biggest blowtorch being ignited, thundering across the marshes, causing wood ducks and hawks and geese and white egrets and sparrows to take wing from the pines and palmettos. The people standing on the edge of the basin stared up at the spaceship as it streaked toward the sky, as the booster’s eight engines sent back a descending pillar of rich, dense smoke which obscured the launch towers and the crackle boomed across the watery plains. A cheer rose from the crowd, all but drowned out by the spaceship
’s roar.

  At the very edge of the basin’s steep bank, the old huckster jumped high in the air, thin arms thrust over his head, trinkets and paper stuff showering from the box as it dropped from his arms. “Go, baby! he yelled with his hoarse voice. “Go, bay-bee, go! We have liftoff, Apollo!”

  Seven seconds after launch and arcing out over the ocean, Willy Ley made a 120-degree turn to the right, which put the shuttle with its back down toward Earth. The spaceship hit Mach One a few moments later, with a boom which was heard all the way to the Cape, where watchers were still transfixed to the spear of exhaust still rising into space.

  In the OTV tucked in the cargo bay, the noise was incredible. Jack Hamilton grimaced and was thankful for the helmet the whiteroom technician had given him to wear. His body felt flattened into the acceleration couch; three g’s on his chest would have made it very difficult for him to move, even if he had wanted to move.

  He didn’t. Hamilton gripped the armrests, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried hard to concentrate on remembering the comparative oxygen-carbon dioxide ratios for tubers in hydroponic conditions. It was stupid; it was a lecture he remembered Dr. Vishnu Suni of the Gaia Institute giving once at the University of Massachusetts, and in his initial moment of panic upon liftoff his mind somehow flipped to and fastened on that particular event.

  “That’s great,” he whispered through clenched teeth as the shuttle completed its gut-lurching roll, which kept him lying on his back on the ceiling, staring down. Even giving voice to his outrage was too much effort. His thoughts tumbled about wildly: The ship’s gonna blow up or crash, I’m getting sick to my stomach, I’m helplessly strapped into an overgrown beer can, and I’m thinking about goddamn potatoes.

  Completing roll maneuver, he heard Lisa Barnhart say over the headset.

  Roger, Willy Ley, you’re looking good, CapCom replied. Oh, go to hell, Hamilton thought.

  Launch control, this is Willy Ley. Main engines at sixty-five per cent. Two minutes, forty-five seconds to FRB separation, over.

  Roger, Willy Ley, we copy.

  Acceleration and flip-flopping; the whole ship shaking; a roar which worked through his helmet’s padding. Hamilton shut his eyes tight and concentrated on thinking about dumb, safe, pastoral Idaho russet potatoes. As long as they didn’t turn to french fries, it beat thinking about his roiling stomach.

  Sixty seconds after launch, Willy Ley had reached an altitude of four and a half miles and was traveling faster than the speed of sound. Cape Canaveral had vanished behind the spaceship, and the sky had changed from blue to dark purple as it raced into the upper fringes of the atmosphere. The shuttle was now throttled back to 65 per cent of its engine power, and the crew prepared to disengage its flyback booster.

  Lisa and Steve worked with quiet efficiency as Copland’s “Hoedown” heralded their arrival on the fringes of space. As Coffey throttled the engines back up to 100 per cent, Lisa consulted the flight trajectory on the CRT screen of the shuttle’s navigational computer, preparing herself for the separation. A glance at the gauges in front of her confirmed the computer’s signal that the orbiter’s tanks were fully pressurized.

  “Launch Control, this is Willy Ley,” she said. “We have FRB burnout. Ready for FRB separation, over.”

  Roger, Willy Ley, out.

  Lisa worked the digital control board beside her, bringing the spacecraft into a shallow, long drive in preparation for casting away the booster. The change in course was so slight that it was barely perceptible even within the cabin; on the ground, an observer with a telescope would detect no change at all relative to the ground. But they were now traveling four and a half times the speed of sound, and as the spacecraft began the dive eighty miles above the ground, she felt the force of three g’s push her back again into her couch.

  The MECO light flashed on her console, signifying main engine cutoff. “Control, this is Willy Ley,” she said. “Main engine cutoff on schedule.”

  We copy, Willy Ley. Go for FRB separation in twenty seconds.

  Now the roaring had ceased entirely, leaving only the sound of the Copland ballet reaching its crescendo and the hiss of the cabin’s air regulators. Lisa rested her fingers on two buttons on the console beside her and watched the CRT screen as the flight computer counted back; when the countdown reached zero, she pushed both buttons at once.

  There was a bright flash of light through the portholes and a thump, unheard but felt, as explosive bolts triggered on the underside of the Willy Ley and the streamlined booster separated from the orbiter. In her mind’s eye Lisa could see the narrow rocket with the stubby little wings angling into a somersault for its reentry into the atmosphere and remote controlled landing on Kennedy Space Center’s shuttle landing strip. “Control, this is Willy Ley,” she said. “We have FRB separation.”

  Roger, Willy Ley, we copy. You are go for OMS-one burn, over.

  “Roger, OMS-one burn, out.” Steve’s fingers were already gliding over the digital autopilot panel, punching in the instructions to the ship’s computers which would start the orbiter’s main engines and send Willy Ley farther into space.

  The first OMS fire occurred less than two minutes later and it brought the shuttle out of the shallow dive. There was no vibration on the flight deck when it happened, no sound, only the instruments showing that the engines, with a combined thrust of 12,000 pounds, were firing to place the shuttle in a low elliptical orbit 300 miles above the planet.

  “Control, this is Willy Ley,” Lisa said. “We have OMS cutoff, FRB umbilical doors closed.”

  Roger, out.

  “Okay,” Lisa said, “let’s take ’em the groceries.”

  “Spoken like a true housewife,” Coffey murmured, taking off his helmet and stowing it under his seat.

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “Real housewife.” She stowed her own helmet, then checked the notebook held open in the holder in front of her, to confirm that the second OMS burn would occur in half an hour. This one would put them on course for the Freedom space station. She shut down the auxiliary power unit while Coffey changed the computer program, resetting for the roll maneuver which would align Willy Ley for the deployment of the OTV she carried in her cargo bay.

  Oh hell, she thought as she watched Steve punch in the coordinates. I forgot all about Jack Hamilton. She punched the intercom button and said into her throat-mike, “OTV-Four Navajo, this is Willy Ley. The button’s next to your right armrest, Jack, talk to me.”

  There was a pause, then she heard Jack Hamilton’s voice in the intercom. He sounded weak. Hi. Lisa.

  “Hi, yourself. How are we doing down there?”

  I don’t know how we’re doing, the hydroponics engineer replied, sounding a little surly. Personally speaking, I’m sick as a dog.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. She heard Coffey guffaw and cast him a dirty look. “I’m sorry, Jack. Didn’t you take your pills?”

  Yeah. Didn’t help once you started doing loops, though. I found the bag, though, so at least I didn’t make that bad of a mess. Nice of Skycorp to take that into consideration.

  “Sorry I can’t come back there and help you,” she said, “but you’re sealed off from me.”

  That’s okay. You wouldn’t want to see me now, anyway. He paused. They don’t have a TV screen or anything back here. What’s it look like out there?

  She gazed through the windows at the planet slowly turning above her; the sight of the world upside down would have been enough to upset her own stomach if she wasn’t already so used to it, and she was careful not to mention the angle to Hamilton. “Well, we’re going over Australia now,” she said. “Clear skies in kangaroo land. There’s the Coral Sea and the leading edge of the Bismarck Archipelago….”

  New Guinea? he asked.

  “Yeah, I can just see New Guinea,” she said. “There’s the Great Barrier Reef, and I swear I can see a school of blue marlin… no, no, I think that’s just waves, maybe a current or something.”

  That’s great. We�
��ve gone halfway around the world already. Bet you love this every time.

  “Ah, I dunno. I get used to it.”

  No. You’re only fooling yourself. When she gets old enough, you should bring Annie up with you. Let her travel around the world in eighty minutes.

  Inexplicably, she felt her eyes getting moist. She tried to dab at them with her fingertip, but only succeeded in jostling little round droplets, which floated in midair. She snuffled and glanced toward Coffey, who seemed to be pointedly gazing out the portholes on his side of the cabin. Or perhaps he was just as transfixed by the southwestern Pacific.

  You okay? she heard Hamilton say.

  “I’m okay,” Lisa said, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s just… a little post-orbital nasal drip, y’know?” She laughed.

  You’re a good woman, Lisa, Hamilton said. Damn it that you’re married. I could fall in love with you.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Happily married.”

  Sorry. I didn’t mean anything, y’know.

  “I know. I realize that.” She paused. “Listen, Jack, I like you. If you ever need anything… like, if you ever get sick of the view and want to stow away on a homeward shuttle or something… you can call me on the phone. My number’s in the directory.”

  Call you? On the phone?

  “Sure. It’s just like making a long-distance phone call. Same comsats, only a little more expensive from where you are. Gimme a call if you need anything smuggled up or something, y’know.”