Orbit

by John J. Nance

  ABOARD MARINE ONE EN ROUTE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO

  ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE,

  MAY 18, 10:30 A.M. PACIFIC/1:30 P.M. EASTERN

  People first, Ronald Porter thinks to himself, smiling. It’s the reason he came aboard as Chief of Staff, jumping political parties for a man who keeps earning his respect.

  The President doesn’t notice Ron’s smile. He’s talking to one of his Secret Service agents whose wife has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, comforting him as best he can.

  They’re passing over Bolling Air Force Base on the east bank of the Potomac as the President turns his attention back to why Ron has decided to hop aboard a routine Air Force One flight to New York.

  “So how is the Commerce Committee going to vote?” the President asks.

  “That’s…they’re with us. But there’s something else we need to discuss.” He hands the President a one-page summary of an intelligence report less than an hour old.

  “What’s this, Ron? The Russians?”

  “Our buddies in Moscow have decided to ride to the rescue and go after the ASA spacecraft.”

  “A special launch?”

  “Actually, they’re moving up a scheduled ISS resupply mission.”

  “Don’t they know we’re going to send the shuttle?”

  “They don’t believe we can.”

  “Well, hell, Ron, get someone on the phone to set them straight. Have Shear make the call.”

  “It all started with Kosachyov a few hours ago. He’s determined to be the white knight. So, should we stand down?”

  “Cancel our effort?”

  “Yes. I talked to Shear. He heartily advises it.”

  “I’m sure he does. I had to order him to get cracking.”

  “He may have a solid point.”

  “About safety?”

  “Safety and cost. As he says, we only have two shuttles left, and when you push something on an emergency basis, you cut corners and take additional risks.”

  The President sits back in thought, his eyes watching the forested beauty below as the Marine One pilots begin the descent to the presidential ramp at Andrews, where one of the two specially built Boeing 747s used as Air Force One is waiting.

  Suddenly he’s forward again, in Ron’s face.

  “There’s a principle here, Ron, and in my view it’s worth the risk. One, we protect our own, civilian or government. Two, we may have only two shuttles left, but we don’t have to plead for help because we’re afraid to use them. Three, this goes to the heart of American trust of and pride in our capabilities, and in NASA, and four, I know what Kosachyov is up to. There is a commercial purpose behind it I can’t ignore. This is like letting Airbus snag a U.S. Air Force contract, something that will never happen on my watch.”

  “So, we fly?”

  He’s nodding. “Damn right we fly. Unless there’s a solid, no-foolin’ safety concern beyond the routine.”

  “I’ll tell Shear.”

  “Oh, we need to do more than that.” The President’s already pulling the receiver out of its cradle in his armrest.

  “You’re calling Moscow?”

  A naughty grin that would fit a much younger man breaks across the President’s face.

  KALGOORLIE-BOULDER, WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 10:50 A.M. PACIFIC,

  MAY 18 /1:50 A.M. WST, MAY 19

  The connection to the Web address carrying the alleged transmission from space has apparently frozen, and Alastair thinks he knows why.

  The e-mails pouring into his own mailbox from addresses he doesn’t recognize have overloaded it.

  And now the frozen transmission.

  He pulls up another screen and calls up a bulletin board he’s found, a site for people nuts about space travel. Sure enough, the message from the man calling himself Kip is there, too, and still actively scrolling!

  Right! They’re retransmitting it.

  Another excited message from Becky has made it to an alternate mailbox and he opens it quickly.

  So why are all my messages to you on the normal channel getting bounced? I don’t want to see another of those @%!^#$ “Mailer-Daemon” things! If you get this, let me know. Your stranded spaceman’s transmission is exploding. Someone’s retransmitting it everywhere and I’ve already seen it on eight sites. And Ali-boy, I think the poor guy IS really up there and is really, REALLY screwed! And the story he’s telling is so amazingly rad.

  Me

  Alastair checks the time, amazed to find it’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. He feels like he just sat down. The only light on in the room is the gooseneck over his keyboard, but suddenly he feels the need for more. It’s chilly and he’s already pulled on a sweater, but it’s not enough. He snaps on the ceiling light, aware of how closely his dad monitors the electrical bill, but there’s still too little heat and he pulls a small ceramic heater from the closet, the one he’s been told never to use, before sitting back down at the keyboard.

  Whatever all this is, he decides, it is way more than he can handle now. But there is one thing he hasn’t done yet that just has to be accomplished. He checks his notepad for the e-mail address he wrote down of the company in California that launched the spacecraft, and writes as simple a message as he can.

  Dear American Space Adventures,

  I don’t know if it’s real or not, but there’s a guy saying he’s a passenger in your spaceship Intrepidand he’s sending a continuous letter into the Internet, and I’m forwarding the Web site address. It’s frozen up on me, but you can see it being retransmitted at two other places. I’m sending a file with my record of the first part of what came in.

  If there really is a problem, I hope everything turns out okay.

  Your friend, Alastair Wood.

  Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia

  Jeez, what would it feel like to be up there all alone? he wonders, knowing that some of the words he first read—words he thought were part of a scam—might hold the answer to that.

  Maybe he should reread them.

  But first, he decides, he’ll take a look at his jammed-up mailbox. He opens the long list and pages to the latest one, not believing the address: ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, his national network.

  Dear Sir or Madam: We have been forwarded a copy of an e-mail you sent to several friends last night with a Web address that apparently is the only live transmission from a stranded space tourist on an American craft in orbit. If this is true, and you are the one who somehow found it, we would very much appreciate the opportunity to interview you this morning as soon as possible. We would like very much to know how you managed to come across such a transmission, and how you reacted. Won’t you please call us at our toll-free number in Sydney? Wherever you are in Australia, we can send a camera crew to you.

  James Haggas

  Executive Producer

  The number is at the bottom and Alastair sits there staring at it, wondering what to do and remembering that the way this thing started was by his hacking into a private transmission. Not terribly legal.

  I should get on the telly and tell the whole bloody world? I don’t think so!

  Suddenly the urge to shut down the computer and hide overwhelms him.

  Can they find me through an unregistered e-mail address? he wonders, his stomach contracting with worry. Dad will kill me.

  He snaps off the ceiling and desk lights and dives under the covers. The bedcovers always feel like the best defense against a world gone mad.

  Chapter 23

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA,

  MAY 18, 1:18 P.M. PACIFIC

  For the previous agonizing day and a half, Arleigh Kerr has had to deal with the reality that without communication a flight director has virtually nothing to direct. Two of the staff have kept Mission Control operating in the hopes that somehow a data stream or other useful information will once again start pouring through their monitors, but nonetheless it’s felt like a deathwatch.

  And now, fr
om the most unlikely quarter, contact?

  Arleigh stands at his console, waiting for the room to fill, as his people rush back in, each wearing cautious expressions. When the room is back up to strength, Arleigh leans down and looses a flurry of keystrokes into his computer keyboard, then glances up at the largest of the screens before them, waiting for the text to appear.

  “What’s this, Arleigh?” the flight dynamics controller asks.

  “It’s coming in through an obscure site on the Internet, one of the servers we’ve used for e-mail. We would have never seen it except for someone way out in the boonies of Australia. The guy e-mailed us a half hour ago where to find this.”

  “But what is it?”

  “We think,” Arleigh says, “that it’s our passenger, Kip Dawson, trying to communicate. But apparently he doesn’t know anyone’s listening…or reading. I’ve got a lot more, and if this is truly him, it tells what happened yesterday.”

  Arleigh highlights the first portion about the impact and Bill Campbell’s demise and lets it sink in.

  “I want everyone to read everything he’s written, then punch up line eighteen to pick up with his real-time transmissions. I don’t know what we can learn that can help him, since we can’t talk back, but I want you to scour every line for facts that might help us get him down.”

  “How is this being transmitted, exactly?” the woman in charge of capsule communication asks.

  Arleigh shrugs as he looks around the room. “Who has the details on this computer interface to the Internet. Janet? How is this possible?”

  A tall woman with her hair severely pulled back meets his gaze with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

  “Well…theoretically…I mean, we included a downlink in the S band transmitter package, which is a dedicated line out to the server, and there are no restrictions on your reaching the Internet with it, but we’ve lost all the S band transmitters.”

  “Could that be a separate transmitter?” Another of the team wants to know. She’s starting to shake her head when an adjacent engineer stands.

  “Yes. Yes, it is separate. We put a very small transmitter package on there to handle the volume of downlinked photo files so the passengers could reach their loved ones by Internet if they wanted. It weighs just a few ounces, and uses the same antenna array. But it’s powered separately.”

  “Then it’s two-way?” Arleigh asks, excitement building. “We can send as well as receive?”

  “No. Unfortunately, we only set it up for downloads. The two-way function is done with a regular transmitting array that’s off line. But, Arleigh, I don’t understand how he could possibly know to use this. He wouldn’t be getting any response. No replies, no e-mail, no indication of a successful transmission.”

  “I’m told,” Arleigh replies, “that he seems to have no idea anyone is watching or reading.”

  “Oh, okay. Then it’s just a single downlink transmitter that somehow remained online.”

  “But…how did he trigger it?”

  The engineer shrugs. “I don’t know, unless one of the autoconnect features on that laptop kicked it in. Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Arleigh, are you familiar with what they used to call ‘spyware’?”

  “No.”

  “Programs that record each keystroke in an endless string and store it in some nondescript little file. I think our programmers put one of those in the computers on Intrepid as a kind of digital recorder. If somehow the output of that keystroke recorder got routed to that individual transmitter, it would explain why we’re only getting what he types when he types it.”

  “Somebody get the programmers who worked on this thing and find out, okay?” Arleigh asks.

  “Are we relaying this to NASA?” the engineer adds.

  A commanding feminine voice fills the room from behind, and Arleigh turns to find a startled-looking Diana Ross standing in the entrance.

  “Arleigh? Everyone? It’s not just NASA getting this. Thanks to a sharp reporter at the Washington Post, what we’re apparently doing…our server, I mean…is relaying this to the world. Most of the media have picked up on it, and they’re breaking in everywhere with it.”

  “Breaking in?” Arleigh asks.

  “All the cable news networks. I haven’t read everything that’s come down yet, but…the poor guy thinks he’s dying and I guess he’s writing about his life. Very private stuff.”

  There’s a slight glistening in the corners of Diana’s eyes and Arleigh realizes she’s tearing up as she turns to go. She’s hoping no one reads back far enough to see a brief reference to her. Not that his kind words about her are a problem, but they’re personal, and instinctively she knows that he’ll be going into the most intimate details of his memories.

  Oh my God, if we could only warn him or shut off that feed!

  Behind her in Mission Control a stunned silence prevails as one by one the controllers read what’s been written so far, then tune into the live feed. The letters are marching in stop-and-start staccato fashion, exactly as they’re being written, making it seem almost like the writer is sitting right next to them composing with an imperfect hunt-and-peck technique. They can almost feel his fingers touching the keys, hesitating, punching some more, forming the words as he thinks of them.

  As if his voice were in the room.

  You know, I never knew it could be so much fun to describe moments like that one in the backseat, on that mountainside. We were lucky, Linda and me. We were too young and I too inexperienced and uninformed to worry about accidentally making babies. I just wanted her. I felt I’d go mad if I didn’t have sex with her while my head—full as it was of warnings about duty and responsibility—knew that the responsible thing was to never have sex without love. So I loved her as well as made love to her.

  And there was something else funny about those years, as testosterone-soaked as they were (something girls will never understand is the insanity of that period for a guy). I was born and bred to measure my life by accomplishments, and I really and truly considered Linda an accomplishment. I don’t mean a notch-on-the-bedpost type, I mean the fact that I made her feel good, and I cared for her that summer, and she became a part of my life, however briefly, and I a part of hers. If time is really eternal, then we’re still out there doin’ it in the backseat of that old Chevy. Was that an accomplishment? I guess I’ll find out from a Higher Source in about four days, but I always thought it was. And as long as I could point to something and say, “See, I was productive, I accomplished that!” it was okay, even if ultimately it was the wrong decision.

  KALGOORLIE-BOULDER, WESTERN AUSTRALIA,

  3:58 P.M. PACIFIC, MAY 18/6:58 A.M. WST, MAY 19

  Daylight is streaming into the room as Alastair wakes up seconds before his alarm clock corks off. He reaches for the clock to silence it in time, liking that he can pull off being the last to bed and the first up, when he’s startled by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Heavy footsteps.

  Dad!

  The events of the preceding night are slow to return, but in a sudden rush he remembers all of it and the e-mail from ABC in Sydney, and fear looms with his father’s footfalls. He can hear a television on somewhere in the house.

  The door opens and Dad walks in, pulling the curtains open.

  “Alastair, wake up!”

  “I’m awake, Dad. What’s happening?”

  His father’s hands are on his hips but he looks more puzzled than mad.

  “I’ve been watching the news, son, and there’s something on now you’re going to want to hear. I know I’m on you all the time for being on the computer so much, but, well, get on a robe and come downstairs.”

  Alastair is already in motion, sliding from beneath the covers and grabbing for his robe. “What is it?”

  “There’s the most amazing message coming down through the Internet from a guy stranded in orbit on a private American spacecraft, and they wouldn’t have found it if some hacker right out
here in Western Australia hadn’t broken into someone’s computer.”

  “R-really?”

  “Yes. He’s a bit of a hero and they’re looking for him. They think he may be a student. He may also get a twist in his knickers for the hacking, but overall he’s got a thank-you coming. Come on down and see this. Could be someone you know.”

  Chapter 24

  DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, COLORADO,

  MAY 18, 4:20 P.M. PACIFIC/5:20 P.M. MOUNTAIN

  A stunning young woman with shoulder-length, blond hair has been watching him for the past ten minutes. Jerrod Dawson assumes it’s his uniform, because he certainly isn’t exuding anything but gloom.

  She can’t be more than twenty-five, he figures, with a modest, tight-fitting suede skirt and an achingly feminine, well-filled frilly white blouse set off by calf-length high heel boots. Normally, he would be falling in lust. After all, the women at the academy are untouchable. His opportunities for any intimate female companionship these days are severely limited.

  But the copy of USA Today in his lap with the headline about his father’s perilous situation has numbed and deflated all that’s normal, leaving him awash with guilt as he waits for his Houston-bound flight to board and tries to keep unbidden tears from showing.

  Why he’s even going to Houston isn’t clear, and even as they were granting the emergency leave orders and helping arrange a military fare, he felt reluctant about going there at all, except to see his sister and two half-sisters. The thought of Sharon in the role of his mother is infuriating. He can barely be civil to her. While he likes Sharon’s father, Big Mike, he can’t believe he is actually, voluntarily, going to put himself in Sharon’s presence again—and in Houston, to boot! He couldn’t believe it when he found out Sharon had left his father and run back to her daddy in Houston.

  And, of course, there’s the small matter of Sharon never liking him. He loathes her for what she’s done to his father, roping him into having two more children. As if they hadn’t already been a family.