Orbit

by John J. Nance

  His eyes follow the curvature of the forward panel to one side, where a small, three pound laptop computer nestles in a rack. He’d forgotten about that. A backup, Bill had explained, for the main computer and keyboard. That’s right! He’d completely forgotten. The thing is connected to the Internet and he’d been told, along with the others, that they would be able to e-mail their families from orbit if they wanted to take the time.

  There were also supposed to be two phone calls for each passenger, though on this flight—as the only passenger—he’d been told to plan for four. One call to Houston for his three little girls and an angry wife, and a call to the Air Force Academy from a number his son would not know to ignore, were his choices.

  But he’s already tried the built-in phone on the side console, and it’s dead. Surely the computer connection will be equally useless.

  He unclips the laptop and opens it, surprised to find a garden-variety Dell which spins up just like millions of its counterparts below. He waits until the desktop screen is stable, checks to see if there’s a word processing program, and then clicks on the Internet explorer icon, not unsurprised when it comes up showing no connection.

  He looks around, almost frantic to be doing something, but well aware there’s nothing more to be done until it’s time to fire the main engine to leave orbit.

  His eyes fall on the laptop again, and he feels the urge to communicate, even if it’s only with a hard drive. His handwriting has always been just short of a scrawl, the keyboard his best means for written communication.

  The little laptop is powered by Intrepid’s circuits, not just its own battery, and there is a word processor program loaded, all of which means he can use it as a notepad. He positions the laptop in the middle of his lap and feels it promptly float up and away from him before he can start typing.

  Never thought about that aspect of weightlessness.

  He looks around, letting his brain work on the problem until the long strips of velcro straps in a side compartment come to mind. He rummages around and pulls out one long enough to cinch the laptop to his lap.

  Feeling almost clever, he brings up the Word program and sits for a few seconds trying to figure out a message that’s suddenly appeared asking if he wants to authorize a continuous download feed.

  Download what?

  He shrugs, irritated at the interruption and aware it doesn’t make any difference anyway, since nothing he types will leave the hard drive.

  Okay, so I click on the “yes” box and make it go away.

  The dialogue box disappears and he opens a blank page and starts to type, stalling out almost immediately.

  Log entry—middle of Orbit 2.

  Log entry? He chides himself. What am I, Captain Kirk?

  Maybe a more personal approach.

  I have less than twenty minutes before trying to turn the ship around.

  Oh come on, Kip! How about a glimpse of humanity, for Chrissake?

  I have less than twenty minutes before trying to turn the ship around, and I’m scared to death.

  Yeah, that’s more like it. But I need some description if this is going to be for the kids.

  The view outside is utterly amazing, and if I wasn’t so anxious to be sure I can get home, I’d want to stay as long as the oxygen lasts. It’s hard to describe, Jerrod, Julie, Carly, and Carrie, how deep black the background of space is and how magnificent the Earth is as it revolves below me…even though “below” right now is above. All those pictures we’ve watched from orbit, some live from the space shuttle, can’t really prepare you for what it’s like in person. Worth a lifetime! Of course, I’m going to make it back to tell you all this in person, but I thought you might like to “hear” about it in words as it’s happening. Your dad in space! What a concept, though in your lifetime, this may become routine.

  He sits back and rereads, taking care to save the page before checking his watch and continuing. Five more minutes. But this feels good, and someday they’ll love it. Or maybe his grandkids will.

  Chapter 9

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA,

  MAY 17, 10:05 A.M. PACIFIC

  Arleigh Kerr stands at the end of the small table in the conference room of Mission Control, a freshly emptied bottle of water in his hand. His gaze is fixed on his boss as he clears his throat.

  “Richard, I’m sorry to tell you, but we have no rescue capability. Venture is down for a month or more.”

  “What?” DiFazio is almost out of his chair, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in a combination of pain and alarm. “A month? When did you find that out?”

  Arleigh’s sigh is heartfelt, his eyes on the papers at the edge of the table. There are only the two of them in the room, better for such bad news. He carefully places the empty plastic water bottle next to the papers, as if adjusting a family treasure, his eyes focused on the base of the bottle until he can’t dally any longer.

  “I just got the word from our maintenance chief. The right wing spar is cracked in addition to the gear problem. If we try to fly her, we could lose her going up or coming down. Complete wing loss.” His eyes rise to meet DiFazio’s.

  “Can’t we rush the repair?”

  “You’re the composites expert, Richard. Not me. They’re telling me with cure times, the best they could do is ten days. Something about rebonding that spar.”

  “Oh my God! Without Venture, we can’t even…we couldn’t even keep to our schedule if this…”

  “I guess the only good news is that we’ve only got the one passenger.”

  DiFazio is shaking his head in pain. “So what options, if any, do we have?”

  “We can’t mount a rescue mission, we can’t communicate…”

  Richard’s voice cuts him short.

  “No! Don’t tell me what we can’t do, goddammit! Tell me what we can do.”

  Arleigh’s retort is just as quick. “How about pray?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We don’t have a lot of options, Richard. Christ, I’m not sure if we have any options. If we had our other spacecraft, yes, we could launch and try a rescue. But we don’t. And you know NASA isn’t going to help. Some other country? The Russians? The Europeans? The Japanese? I don’t know. I haven’t called them. But it would cost more money than our entire capitalization to buy a Soyuz launch from the Russians, for instance, even if they could get one together in time.”

  Richard is watching him, subdued now, but hair-trigger restrained as Arleigh continues. “And that raises another major, honking question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Is anyone even alive up there?”

  Richard looks staggered. Arleigh concludes he hasn’t considered this. “We…we don’t know?”

  “We don’t know anything, except that the ship is still on orbit and appears to be pressurized, according to NASA’s analysis…or was it NORAD’s? But zero communication, zero telemetry, no indication that Intrepid is doing anything more than automatically holding its pitch and roll position, and…and, we’re just guessing.”

  Richard is shaking his head, eyes on the floor. He takes a deep breath before looking up. “Sorry, Arleigh. I just wasn’t ready for this, I guess.”

  “Hell, neither am I! No one’s ever taken even a major nonfatal hit up there before. Why us? Why now?”

  “You know this could kill us. I don’t mean to discount those two lives, but this could put us out of business.”

  Arleigh sits heavily, swiveling the chair around to face the glass wall. His words are to the wall.

  “Richard, you, of all people, know how risky this so-called business is. The forces involved, the explosive power, the number of life support things that can go wrong. I mean, we’re vastly more reliable than the shuttle could ever be, but…we’ve been hanging it out from the first.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just…”

  “We’ve all deluded ourselves into thinking we couldn’t actually lose one. We’ve had so many successful launc
hes.”

  “But we haven’t lost them yet. At least, we don’t know, right?”

  “True, but a word of warning, okay? I mean, I’m only your flight director, but when this blows into the public eye, we’d better not be heard kvetching about the financial losses.”

  “Of course not. I’ve got Diana inbound right now. We’ll put together a quick strategy.”

  “It’s gonna leak, Richard.”

  “I know it.”

  “It’s gonna leak, and the media is going to smell blood and be all over it, and I don’t have a clue what to say or do…other than wait and watch and lean on NORAD and NASA for more information. We’re trying the radios constantly, but if we see the capsule turn around in position for retrofire, or if, at the end of the fourth orbit, it actually does retrofire, then we know for certain someone’s alive up there and following the checklists and we’ve got a chance.”

  “Has someone called Campbell’s wife?”

  “Yeah, I have. It was brutal. She’s tough, but she’s scared to death.”

  “And…our passenger?”

  “Dawson. Kip Dawson. We’re holding off for another hour or so before we call his wife.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t wait too long. Don’t let her hear it from the media.”

  “No. No, we won’t.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “The end of Orbit Two. I figure…without any rational reason…I figure if Bill’s alive and functional, he’ll want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, and when he passes through the window for second orbit return, that’s when I’d expect something to happen.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Twenty-three minutes from now. At least that’s the end of the window. Otherwise, he overshoots California, or worse.”

  “But we still have two more orbits before it has to come down, right?”

  “They could go longer. We figure they could keep breathing up there for, roughly three days, or a bit less.”

  “Before the CO2 scrubbers saturate?”

  Arleigh is nodding. “That’s always the limit.” He gets to his feet, leaving Richard still seated. “I’d better get back in there. I’ve been whipping everybody into a thinking frenzy to see if we’ve missed anything.”

  Richard nods, waving him away as he picks up the phone, then replaces it in its cradle, his eyes on the far wall as he thinks through the consequences of dialing the person he was ready to call.

  Not yet. Not just yet.

  Chapter 10

  ABOARD INTREPID, May 17, 10:20 A.M. PACIFIC

  It’s time.

  Kip powers the laptop to standby mode and reinserts the machine in its holder before gathering the checklists and positioning himself in Bill’s seat. A confusing feeling of excitement comes over him, a small rush before the sprint, he figures, his mind relieved finally to be at the threshold of action.

  He runs back through the planned steps and reviews the three coordinates. Intrepid has to turn around one hundred eighty degrees to fly backward, and the pitch and roll readouts on the attitude indicator must be precisely right before firing the engine. The master keyboard is in front of him and he pulls it closer. With care he punches in the three numbers and triple checks that he’s got them right. His finger hovers shakily over the “execute” button for several seconds as he wonders if there could be anything he’s forgotten, then he forces his finger down, hearing a small click.

  The screen changes, registering the fact that the new coordinates have been accepted, and suddenly there’s a small box proclaiming that the automatic realignment maneuver has begun.

  Thank God!

  He holds his breath, wondering how it is that the small reaction jets on Intrepid can be firing so gently that he can’t even feel them. It’s almost as if nothing is happening, despite the announcement on the screen.

  He looks at the attitude indicator, willing it to move at least in some direction, but it’s static, the display as steady as if the whole spacecraft was sitting on some concrete floor back on the planet.

  He takes in the screen, then the keyboard, and punches the execute button a second time, but still no movement. The annunciator screen indicates that everything should be working, the jets firing, and Intrepid should be turning around tail-first. Right now!

  Okay, I forgot something, he decides. Complex procedures can be thwarted by one simple mistake—like getting no toast because you forgot to plug in the toaster.

  What did I miss?

  He runs back through the checklist, feeling a cold, creeping trickle of panic.

  Focus!

  One by one he reenters the coordinates, his fingers shaking visibly now as he triggers the execute button.

  And once more—despite the signs on the small LED screen that all is well and working as indicated—Intrepid continues flying straight ahead and on her back. No pitch. No yaw. No roll.

  No change.

  Kip checks his watch. Eight minutes remain before the time for retrofire. If the automated system won’t work, all he has left is the manual control, and he alone to manipulate it.

  But he’s clicked the manual control button on that joystick before, in training, electing “active mode.” And in that simulator he promptly lost control so badly they had to stop the spinning simulator. All of the instructors and fellow students were holding their sides and laughing when he climbed out, and the follow-up session wasn’t much better.

  “Kip, I guess we forgot to tell you,” the instructor had heehawed. “The object was to stop the spinning, not set a new record for the highest number of revolutions per minute.”

  He stares at the joystick, a tortuous, diabolical little tool that in the hands of a qualified astronaut is a singular thing of interfaced beauty, giving the ability to move in all three axes by just turning the wrist and hand.

  But to an amateur, an invitation to spinning disaster.

  I’m not touching that thing! he thinks, testing the words.

  The spacecraft is still not turning. He thinks about entering the numbers a third time, but he’s already done it correctly twice. It’s already acknowledged his entries twice. And yet nothing automatic is happening.

  I’m only on Orbit Two. I’ve got time to figure this out. I don’t have to force it right now.

  The logic of waiting is impeccable, but it’s no match for his massive urge to get home now!

  And without thinking he succumbs, adjusting his hand over the joystick and consciously punching the red button on top that reverts the spacecraft to manual attitude control.

  He can hear his breathing rate increase, but nothing much is happening. There is a little drift now to the left, just a few degrees, and maybe a bit of roll, but he’s not sure.

  Okay, time to try it.

  He knows the controls are sensitive. The watchword will be moving in only one axis at a time, and he reviews the basics without moving his hand.

  Push forward to pitch forward, pull to pitch up. Twist left to yaw left, right to yaw right. Nudge the entire stick left to roll left, nudge it right to roll right. Okay, which way first?

  The Earth is still passing along above him, and it’s easy to see the horizon, the Earth’s curvature. So maybe he should take care of the main event first and just turn around backward before turning planet-side down.

  Yaw right a full one hundred eighty degrees, putting the tail into the line of flight. Then I can fine-tune it to exactly the right numbers.

  Slowly, carefully, he begins rotating the stick to the right, a millimeter at a time it seems, his muscles protesting until he suddenly feels and hears the hiss of the reaction jets yawing him in the right direction.

  He releases the rotational pressure on the control stick, impressed at how smoothly Intrepid has begun to rotate to the right around its center of gravity. The rate is steady, and he doesn’t seem to need any of the other two axis controls, at least not yet. He’s turning, through ninety degrees at last, finally completing a fu
ll reversal, and he leads his arrival at the right coordinates by twisting the control back to the left until he fires another small burst to stop the turn.

  But it’s a bit too much, and the turn now reverses, very slowly at first.

  He tries a tiny burst back to the right, but it, too, is overdone. Once more he’s turning right, passing through the one-hundred-eighty-degree point and continuing on around, this time beginning to pitch up, the nose heading toward Earth.

  He pushes the stick forward for a small corrective burst and tries to arrest the yaw at the same time, and suddenly he’s turning back left slightly, pitching down away from Earth’s surface, and beginning a left roll, all at the same time. He can feel the sweat beading on his forehead as he tries to steady his hand and oppose the motions one axis at a time, but each burst is too much, and the memory of what happened in the simulator returns like a nightmare, as Intrepid begins to tumble, slowly at first, then faster, the Earth beginning to gyrate and roll in front of his eyes.

  Somehow he manages a glance at his watch. Four minutes left before he has to be rock-steady for retrofire.

  MOJAVE INTERNATIONAL AEROSPACE PORT, CALIFORNIA,

  10:53 A.M. PACIFIC

  The chirp of her car alarm system arming behind her is all but unheard as Diana races through the front door of ASA’s building and accelerates toward Mission Control in search of Richard.

  Sleep had been difficult after returning home from her trip to see Kip. Nevertheless she’d had every intention of being on the tarmac as they taxied out and grossly overslept instead.

  Her cell phone is ringing and she curses quietly as she yanks it to her face, hearing a familiar name from the small list of aerospace reporters. She comes to a halt in the corridor and pulls the cell phone back for a moment, staring at it as if she’s discovered a pipe bomb in her hand.