Orbit

by John J. Nance

  Chapter 44

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE INTERNATIONAL AEROSPACE

  PORT, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, MAY 21, 10:59 A.M. PACIFIC

  Arleigh is losing it, Richard DeFazio thinks, but who can blame him? The telemetry all the way down has told of an excruciating series of near disasters—the wrong entry point, the wrong attitude, a near fatal problem with the tail boom, and just before the datastream dropped out completely, the unmistakable signature of a complete stall and a spacecraft dropping uncontrollably toward a spot in eastern New Mexico.

  And then nothing.

  Frantic calls to Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center produce a bit more information, along with confirmation that there was what appeared to be a precipitous drop toward the ground tracked by radar, but then Albuquerque watched what they thought was the same target fly west, toward Roswell, and disappear.

  There are phones to both of Arleigh’s ears as he tries to get more information. With the world aware that Intrepid has somehow boosted out of orbit and is reentering with an untrained Kip Dawson at the controls, the guesswork on where the spacecraft will come down has launched scores of camera crews in airplanes and helicopters, some merely circling their home cities, waiting for word. The moment New Mexico seemed to be the end point, an airborne armada headed in from all points of the compass.

  In the meantime, a worldwide television audience too large to measure has been watching long distance images of Intrepid descending, turning, configuring, reconfiguring…the shots ranging through handoffs from satellite-borne cameras to ground shots with amazing clarity until Intrepid dropped below thirty thousand feet and out of sight of the installation at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. With Kip’s fate hanging in the balance, billions are holding their collective breaths in the most widely watched global cliffhanger since Apollo 13.

  Richard glances at Diana Ross, who has been progressively destroying pencils. He knows better than to ask what she thinks. She thinks what he thinks—that it will be a miracle if Kip survives.

  But it’s already a miracle that he figured out how to guide Intrepid through reentry.

  A secretary has appeared at their side noiselessly with word that a car is waiting to take them to Richard’s jet now fueled and waiting a quarter mile away. Diana almost pushes Richard over in her haste to get out the door, knowing that the flight will take nearly ninety minutes with no certainty how close they can land to the remains, she figures, of Intrepid, Kip Dawson, and Bill Campbell. All Richard knows for certain is the section of New Mexico into which Intrepid has disappeared, but the exact location of the crash should be known in an hour.

  Somehow, Richard has already put a private jet on standby to fly Kip’s family in from the Houston area, just in case—something he has yet to tell the family.

  WEST OF GLADIOLA, NEW MEXICO,

  11:04 A.M. PACIFIC/12:04 P.M. MOUNTAIN

  The quiet is overwhelming. Somewhere behind the instrument panel, gyros are still spinning and cooling fans still running, but once he snaps the master switch off, the sound of his own breathing is startlingly loud.

  Kip looks around at the plastic bag that contains Bill Campbell’s body.

  “At least we got you home, Bill,” he says, as reverentially as he can. And just as quickly his need to be out of the tiny cabin overwhelms him, lest it suddenly bursts into flames. The need for air alone dictates panic.

  Kip works to open the inner hatch, glancing at the brick building through the window. The walls of the old structure are deteriorating, the stucco un-patched and crumbling, the windows tilted crazily as if the building was melting slowly back into the desert along with the rest of what had to have been a World War II Army Air Corps field.

  Intrepid’s inner door swings open easily and Kip pulls the equalization lever to make sure any remaining air pressure in the cabin is dumped before working the lock and swinging the outer door open. He’s still wearing Bill’s space suit, but now without the helmet, and the trip out through the open hatchway is quick. His feet land on a dusty slab of broken concrete, and he works to regain his balance, walking shakily to the edge of the slab and onto the sandy ground. His legs feel weak, strangers to gravity, and he sinks to his knees to scoop up some of the earth as if it will evaporate if he doesn’t touch it. He lets it run through his fingers. Incredible feelings of relief and deliverance course through his body like an electric current, but he feels removed slightly, as if it were all happening to someone else. He remains on his knees looking up in the sky and letting the unfiltered light fill his eyes as he takes a deep breath of the sweetest air he’s ever tasted. There is springtime in the flavor of it, oxygen-rich and redolent with life, even in the absence of greenery in the surrounding terrain. The stiff breeze that helped keep his relative landing speed down is still blowing out of the west and kicking up dust, but he gratefully breathes that in as well with a huge smile as he gets to his feet at last, aware of the approach of a vehicle somewhere behind.

  He looks around as an old Ford pickup rumbles around the corner and squeals to a halt, its stocky occupant getting out carefully, as if approaching a suspected crime scene. Jeans and a flannel work shirt, Kip notes, wondering why he’s even aware of what the man’s wearing. The sight of another human is such a relief, it couldn’t possibly matter. The man waves as if embarrassed, a grin on his broad, squarish face as he gives the spacecraft a thorough looking over and walks close enough to offer his hand.

  “Hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this,” Kip says, his voice sounding strange and unused.

  The fellow is probably younger than he, Kip realizes, his face tanned and deeply creased as if he’s spent a lifetime on the open range. But there are laugh lines as well and the etched evidence of an easy smile.

  “I saw you headin’ for the runway. Man, you were smokin’.”

  “I know,” Kip says, shaking the man’s hand.

  “What were you doing, two hundred knots on final?”

  “Close. I didn’t see the runway until the last minute.”

  “It’s kinda overgrown all right. Sometimes at dusk I can’t even find the damn thing. But you did good, man! Helluva landing.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You do know we don’t have any services here, right?”

  “Sorry?”

  “We don’t have any gas.”

  Maybe it’s the sudden reapplication of one g to his body or a delayed reaction to the greatest stress he’s ever known, but Kip suddenly feels light-headed, as if whatever the man just said has been completely garbled on the way to his ears.

  “This…runs on a different type of fuel,” Kip says, feeling idiotic.

  “I’m just kidding you, Mr. Dawson.”

  “You…know my name?”

  “Hell, yes! Who doesn’t? I’m Jim Waters, by the way.”

  Kip looks around at the ship, as if Intrepid might have disappeared. But no, it’s still there, looming behind him with the incongruity of a pink elephant in a parlor.

  “I should have landed in Mojave, California,” he says.

  “Yeah, I know. But the interesting thing is, you landed your spaceship pretty damn close to Roswell,” he chuckles. “That strike you as coincidental?”

  The reference soars past. “I couldn’t make Roswell,” Kip replies, knowing he missed a point somehow. “I mean, I was just trying to find a runway.”

  “Well, boy, howdy, I’m really tickled you’d pick my little duster runway. Although there was a time it was a big military field.”

  “Where am I, exactly?”

  The smile broadens as Jim looks down momentarily, taking his time with the best straight line he’s had in ages.

  “Why, this is a planet called Earth, Kip.”

  “No, no…I mean, obviously it’s Earth. Dumb question. And I know this is New Mexico, but where in New Mexico?”

  “Oh, about forty-five years to the west of the tiny town of Gladiola.”

  “I really need to use your phone
, Jim, if you have one. You know, to let everyone know I made it down okay. They probably have no idea where I am or anything.”

  Jim is shaking his head. “You can use my cell phone if you like, but I really don’t think it’s going to be necessary, Kip.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take a look.” Jim gestures to the northwest, toward Roswell and Albuquerque, and Kip follows his gaze to where something undulates on the horizon, the shape indistinct in the rising heat, coalescing quickly into several objects. A small air force of helicopters rises into view, racing toward them, as a fixed-wing business jet swoops in low from the north and passes over the field with a deafening roar at the same moment Jim’s cell phone starts ringing in his pocket.

  Chapter 45

  AIR FORCE CLINIC, HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, NEW MEXICO,

  MAY 21, 12:30 P.M. PACIFIC/1:30 P.M. MOUNTAIN

  Somehow, Kip thinks, the reaction of everyone he’s met so far is wrong. Weird would be a better word.

  There was all the excessive handshaking the moment the Air Force crew members tumbled out of their helicopter to prepare him for transport to the nearby base. It was as if some celebrity had suddenly shown up asking for their help, yet everyone seemed to be sidestepping his questions.

  It was too loud in the helicopter to say much, and he’d written off their enthusiastic grins as nothing more than satisfaction that he’d made it down safely.

  Even stranger, however, has been the greeting at Holloman. The wing commander and the base commander met him at the door minutes ago, fussing over him obsequiously as they ushered him into this private room where a Colonel Billingsley, the chief of the hospital, was waiting for him.

  Now the doctor motions him onto an exam table and begins checking his vital signs, the craggy features and silver-gray hair suggesting a man in his late fifties.

  “Doc, when did you hear I was coming down?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, when did they alert you I might end up in New Mexico?”

  “Oh, not until just before you landed.”

  “And…the whole base was alerted then?”

  “Not at all. Just the rescue forces and the clinic. Breathe deeply for me. Now, hold it and let it out slowly.”

  “Okay.”

  Kip complies, waiting out the multiple stops of the stethoscope around his back before speaking again. “Everyone seems so…engaged with this, you know. Has there been something on television about me?”

  There’s a knowing laugh. “Yeah, well…that’s one way to put it. I need you to turn around and sit on the side of the table now.”

  Kip repositions himself, looking back up at the doctor. “But…I really would appreciate an answer.”

  “To what?”

  “Was there a lot on television about my coming out of orbit today? Everyone seems to be so aware of it.”

  It’s the physician’s turn to look puzzled as he straightens up, the blood pressure cuff in his hands. “You mean, about the spacewalk, and your decision to try the engine?”

  “My…decision?”

  “You know, when you wrote that about burying your father and giving him back his operating system?”

  Kip sits staring at Billingsley not comprehending.

  “I thought that was well put, by the way,” the doctor continues. “In fact, I think you’re a good writer.”

  “How…how on earth could you know anything I said up there?”

  Colonel Billingsley laughs, cocking his head. “You’re kidding, right? I know you have a good sense of humor.”

  “I don’t understand…how do you know I have a good sense of humor?”

  “Kip, we may be out here in the wilds of New Mexico, but we have cable, so to speak. You wrote it up there and we read it down here.”

  The doctor starts to wrap a blood pressure cuff around his left arm, but Kip pushes him away slowly.

  “Wait…you were able to read that comment down here somehow? Did I say anything else? When did the radios start working?”

  The cuff goes on the table and the doctor sits down carefully on a metal stool, his eyes searching Kip’s face, the realization sinking in.

  “May I call you Kip?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Kip, hasn’t anyone told you yet?”

  “Told me what?”

  “I mean, we all know from what you wrote that while you were stuck up there you weren’t aware there was a working downlink. But I figured someone had told you about it on the way here.”

  “Doc, excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?”

  The physician is smiling at him as he would to a child. He chooses his words carefully now that he’s alerted to his role. There is only a decade separating them in age, but he has to fight the urge to address Kip as “son.”

  “Kip, for the last four days everything you wrote up there on your laptop was actually sent streaming real time back to a single channel monitored here on Earth.”

  “WHAT? The Air Force was able to read what I wrote? The whole time? How?”

  Silence fills a dozen seconds as the doctor glances at his feet, then back.

  “My God, Kip,” he says softly, “I had no idea you didn’t know. You see, every time you punched a key up there on your laptop, that letter appeared almost instantly on television screens and computer monitors and even outdoor signboards all over this planet. Worldwide, Kip. Billions and billions of people have been hanging on your every word, reading everything you wrote as you wrote it, sitting on the edge of their seats in pure terror, as you were at times, crying with you over certain things you said, and…basically…living vicariously through the whole experience. Not a whole lot of productive work has been accomplished on Earth in the past few days, thanks to you.”

  “Everyone’s been reading…everything?”

  “Yes. And thinking very hard about a lot of what you’ve had to say. Kip, simultaneous translators have been changing your words into, I don’t know, maybe a hundred or more languages. The President, senators, kings, queens, billionaires like Gates—and damn near everyone at this hospital and base—I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to blink or tear themselves away.”

  “I was just writing for myself, and…and…”

  “And whoever would find that hard drive fifty years from now. I know. We all know. That’s what makes it so incredible. We were watching the real-time thoughts of a doomed man grappling with his fate and his life. And, I might add, a guy who utterly refused to give up. That makes you heroic in my book.”

  The physician can see the blood draining from Kip’s face as it begins to sink in. He squints, looking at the doctor for signs that he’s the butt of a joke, then moves back slightly, as if to distance himself from what he’s heard.

  “This can’t be true! This isn’t true! I had no communications up there. You must have just received something after I spliced those wires, or…or someone was playing a cruel joke on the world.”

  “Four days, Kip. From the very first sentence you wrote—although at first only a few were seeing it live. But all of it was captured and replayed endlessly. Even your first lines where you were saying something about having twenty minutes before you had to turn the ship around, and it was scaring you silly.”

  “I don’t believe you! With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t fricking believe you!” He’s gripping the sides of the table now with white knuckles, almost wishing for the security of the spacecraft again.

  Everything I wrote?

  He struggles to find his voice after long seconds of wide-eyed silence, aware that the doctor has given no sign of suddenly breaking into a grin and saying “April Fool.”

  “You’re…not joking about this?”

  “No, Kip. This is no joke.”

  He tries to call up a memory of everything he wrote but it’s impossible, given the stream-of-consciousness that flowed through the laptop. But what he does remember is enough to curl him into a fetal ball.

 
Oh, my God! Sharon! The way I talked about her, and about Jerrod, and sex and everything else to the whole world! How can I ever face anyone again?

  The doctor is clearing his throat in an unsuccessful effort to refocus Kip’s nearly dilated eyes.

  “Kip,” he says at last, “I’d say that right now it’s safe to say that you are probably the most famous living person on Earth. I realize you didn’t intend that to be, and I realize it’s like having the whole world read your diary, but that’s what’s happened. I know it’s going to take you a while for this to sink in so you can come to grips with it.”

  “They broadcast everything?”

  “Every word. And people were acting on it. For instance, you talked about your employer’s misconduct with that bad batch of antibiotics, and federal indictments have already been issued.”

  “Against me?”

  He laughs. “No, Kip. Against the guys in your company who did what they did. Hell, man, you’re probably not even aware someone filed your divorce for you?”

  “My…divorce?”

  “You wrote out the papers up there and someone printed them out down here and raced to the nearest courthouse, I think in Tucson.”

  He feels the room getting a bit fuzzy.

  What on earth will I tell Sharon? “Do you suppose my wife knows?”

  “Well, she’s been interviewed on TV a dozen times, so I’d say she…you okay, Kip?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Kip, breathe deeply a few times. There. Hey, fellow, the world isn’t laughing at you, we all have great respect for you. You needn’t be embarrassed.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!”

  “What’s amazed all of us is the way you just told the truth about your life and your thoughts and everything.”

  “Doc, I feel like I’m standing buck naked in front of the whole world. You know that dream everyone has where you’re suddenly out in public without clothes? But I’m naked in front of the whole planet.”

  “Hey, man. One of the greatest things about what you wrote was the glaring truth about your own feelings.”