by Jason Frost
"… Two, one, lift-off."
"Why don't they say 'blast-off?'" Piedmont complained. "It sounds more dramatic. Blastoff!"
The Columbia shook as the two solid-rocket boosters strapped to the big, white external tank exploded to life, lifting the craft on five columns of fire. Paige looked out the side window, watching the shuttle slide up the side of the tower like an express elevator. She hardly noticed the 160 decibels of racket outside.
"Hey," Piedmont said, "who farted?"
"We have lift-off." Weaver yipped through the speakers.
"Blast-off!" Piedmont corrected him.
The Columbia's tail was pointed south, so immediately after clearing the tower, it did its preprogrammed pitch and yaw maneuver to position itself east-northeast toward Gibraltar.
Jesus, Paige thought. Jesus, Joseph and Mary this feels so good!
"What's our altitude, Steve?" Paige asked.
"Just passed 170 thousand feet."
"Jettison solids."
"Right."
Paige pictured what was going on down on the Florida launch pad right now. The force of the blast-off would knock down several hundred feet of wire fence strung to keep the spectators back. Any grass within a mile of the launch pad would be seared. Buildings within a three-mile radius would be rocked. The thousands of people who'd gathered for this seven a.m. flight would have their heads all bent back staring up into the early morning sun as they watched the spaceship disappear behind a six-hundred-foot tail of flame.
Within two minutes and eleven seconds after lift-off they were twenty-nine nautical miles high. A bright, yellow-orange flame brushed across their windows. Six-tenths of a second later it was gone, along with the solid rockets. Eight booster separator motors had flared up and fired the solids off into the Atlantic.
Dr. Bart Piedmont was singing. "The joint is jumpin', it's really jumpin'."
"Give us a break, huh, Bart?" Steve said, annoyed.
Paige looked over her shoulder at Bart Piedmont, who was sticking his tongue out at Steve's back, panting and holding his hands up like the paws of a dog. Paige laughed again and Steve whirled angrily to look at Bart. By now Bart had on his serious scientist expression, as he intoned, "Two minutes to MECO."
"Check," Paige said. She glanced at the other two passengers, Daryl Budd and Phil La Porte. They remained silently strapped in their seats. They weren't really astronauts, merely Special Forces soldiers specially trained for this mission. Both were twenty-seven years old, with lean, hard bodies. During their special space training sessions they'd maintained serious expressions despite the usual tension-easing kidding among the astronauts. But she had to admit, they'd learned fast and never once complained. Right now they were gripping their seats with clenched fingers, grinding their teeth as if they feared the entire craft would explode at any moment.
"This is Mission Control in Houston. Press to MECO."
Paige relaxed as the MECO, main engine cut off, kicked into place. If they'd gotten that far, there was no turning back now. Columbia leveled off the trajectory and Paige could see the earth through the window. This was her third time with such a view and it never was anything less than startling. The curvature of the earth against the black velvet of space. The various shades of ocean water. The blue shimmer at the top of the atmosphere.
"Jesus," Bart Piedmont gasped. "I didn't know."
Like the two soldiers from Special Forces, it was his first flight.
Paige didn't have any more time for sightseeing. In less than four minutes they'd have to jettison the external tanks. Pieces of white insulation from the tank were drifting by the windows like chips of ice. Routine.
The ship was flying upside-down underneath the tank to make getting away from it easier. The main engines cut off and the computers activated a sixteen-second separation sequence. The umbilical propellant lines were yanked out of the tank and back into the orbiter. Explosives blew the bolts fastening them to the tank.
The Columbia was flying free.
Soon the tank would begin its downward trajectory. Whatever pieces survived the atmospheric heat would plunge into the Indian Ocean.
"Are we free?" Paige asked, but she could see the three red lights wink out as well as Steve.
He pointed to them anyway. "Guess so."
There was no feeling of motion, no sense of the explosions firing. Paige took the stick and began manually flying off to the side to make sure they didn't run into the tank as it fell. The orbiter had forty-four reaction control engines, thrusters that allowed her to maneuver the direction and attitude of the craft while in space. She veered to the side and the computer fired off one thruster on the nose and one aft. The spacecraft shook violently as if hit by a meteor. Thirty-foot spears of fire leaped from the thrusters.
Paige grabbed the rotational hand controller and pulled up the Columbia's nose. She jabbed a button and the two large OMS (orbital maneuvering system) engines, sitting above the main engines at the rear, fired. The ship was urged smoothly into orbit. About twenty minutes later the OMS engines were fired again to keep the orbit circular.
Now they were sailing 130 miles above the earth.
Paige unbuckled her belt first. Fortunately she'd taken a motion-sickness pill before takeoff, just as the others had. Some of the earlier astronauts had found themselves too spacesick in zero gravity to do any work for a couple of days. She didn't have that kind of time.
She floated to the aft deck to open the doors that cover the payload bay. The doors had to remain open during most of the time in orbit so their built-in reflectors could radiate into space all the heat that built up from the massive electronic equipment aboard.
Steve and Bart were busily entering data into the computers. Bart was moving very carefully, trying to get used to the weightlessness. He looked like someone walking barefoot on a bed of nails.
"How'd the tiles do?" Steve asked.
Paige peered at the dark patches on the pod housing the OMS engine. "Missing a few. Nothing serious."
"RTV?"
The RTV was the red compound used to bond the heat-shielding tiles to the craft. The compound itself could insulate against heat up to nine hundred degrees. "Fine. We're just fine."
Paige looked at the two soldiers, still strapped tightly into their seats. They neither spoke nor looked around. Sweat had puckered their faces like acne. She felt a little sorry for them.
"How you boys doing?" Paige asked them.
"Fine, ma'am," Daryl Budd replied, his voice a little squeaky, his eyes wide while watching Paige float in front of him.
"Just fine, ma'am," Phil La Porte managed to choke out.
"Well, fine then, I guess." Paige floated back to her chair.
Bart Piedmont drifted past, starting to enjoy the sensation. "Hey, guys, how they hanging. Whoops. I suppose in zero gravity they aren't hanging at all, huh?" He laughed to himself as he checked one of the computers.
Steve looked disgusted. "You know, Piedmont, even if this mission isn't going out on TV, everything you say is still broadcast back to Houston Control."
"How they hangin', Houston?"
Muffled laughter filtered through the speaker from Houston. "Got a little static here, guys. Better check out your end."
"Will do, Houston," Paige said, grinning. Christ, Steve was even stuffier than before. Meat and potatoes, high school football letter, degree in engineering from the navy. All he wanted from her is to be his little cheerleader, forever young in her miniskirt. Thing was, sometimes that seemed almost appealing. Almost.
She felt the slight stinging in the crease of her index finger where she'd burned herself a couple of nights ago. She'd decided to bake a cake. It was a ritual she performed every few months, an attempt to do something culturally feminine. It was her way of thumbing her nose at those, even within her own family, who said, "Sure you can orbit the earth, but why can't you keep a man?" By choice, was her answer. But sometimes she felt that guilt, that doubt, that longing to fulfill the
role expected of her. Last March after her thirty-third birthday, she'd felt it even more. If she was ever going to have a child, she'd have to decide soon, while it was still safe. It made her feel a little like a time bomb.
In the meantime, she proved herself by cooking a fancy Chinese dish, making an apron, taking ballroom dancing. This time it was baking a cake. She'd never done it before, but how hard could it be? She'd opened the cookbook. German chocolate seemed easy enough. Maybe too easy. She'd make it with coconut-pecan frosting. She methodically lined up all the ingredients she would need: flour, sweet cooking chocolate, buttermilk, pecans, coconut, etc. Everything in a neat row. Not only would she bake the fucking cake, she wouldn't even make a mess doing it.
Three hours later it was done. Perfect. Just like the lemon chicken, the apron, her dancing. And the kitchen was neater than when she'd started. Except for the tiny blister on her finger where she'd touched the hot pan while stirring the frosting. It seemed every time she took on one of these projects she injured herself in some small way. Not enough to be bothersome, but kind of like a reminder. She shook it out of her head.
Maybe it was this mission that brought out those questions. Thinking about her father. Not that he'd been anything but encouraging to her. Still, with her mother dead for the past eight years, her father was all she had left of a family. Maybe that's what kept her thinking about starting her own family. It didn't matter. Right now, only the mission mattered.
"California here we come," Bart was singing. Only this time, he wasn't smiling.
"We're going down," Paige said.
Capt. Steve Connors and Dr. Bart Piedmont scrambled back to their seats. The two soldiers, Daryl Budd and Phil La Porte, had never left their seats, hadn't even unbuckled their belts.
"You guys don't know what you're missing," Bart said as he swam through the air toward his seat. He pursed his lips and puffed in and out like a fish.
So far everything had gone perfectly. NASA needed film to supply to the news programs to convince them of the routine aspect of the flight, so for half an hour they'd all looked busy and professional for the onboard cameras. Even Bart had kept his joking clean. Budd and La Porte had been kept in the background as much as possible, and would probably be edited out later anyway.
"What's that?" Bart said, pointing out the payload bay. They were flying upside-down, as usual, which made the payload bay the best view.
Thick ribbons of red and brown and white swirled on the earth below. "Dasht-e Kavir," Paige said. "Salt desert in Iran."
"It's magnificent."
Paige nodded. "My favorite too. Except for the Amazon when there are thunderstorms."
"I prefer the Bahamas," Steve said. "Greener than a jealous woman's eyes." He chuckled at his own wit.
"But not greener than our two friends here," Bart said.
The speakers crackled. "You guys ready to de-orbit?"
"Ready, Houston," Paige answered.
"Pressure suits secure?"
"Check."
"Biomedical sensors strapped on?"
"Check."
"Payload doors closed?"
Paige flipped the switch. "Check."
"Computers programmed for re-entry?"
"Check."
There was a pause. "Got your maps to the stars' homes?"
Paige laughed. "And tickets to the Tonight Show."
"Then you're ready. Good luck, Columbia."
"Thank you, Houston."
Paige began the process of bringing the craft down from its speed of almost twenty-five times the speed of sound. She fired the OMS engines to slow them down to less than three hundred feet per second and push them into an elliptical orbit the low point of which would be closer to the earth's surface. When the OMS burn was over, she pitched the ship over so it was in a forty-degree nose-up angle that would let the insulated underbelly deal with the atmosphere's heat.
They hit the atmosphere at Mach 24.5 after passing Guam. Immediately they lost radio contact with Houston since there were no tracking stations in that part of the Pacific. Also, the heat of re-entry would stifle any radio broadcasts for the next sixteen minutes.
Paige saw the blips of orange out of the corners of her eyes as the reaction-control jets fired. Five minutes after losing contact with Houston, they noticed the pinkish red glow as the thirty-one thousand chalklike square tiles made from pure Minnesota sand began to absorb the heat.
"Get those visors down," Paige commanded.
Everyone did.
The visors sealed the pressure suits so that they would automatically inflate if re-entry heat burned through the cabin and released the air.
"It doesn't feel hot in here," Bart said, amazement mixed with relief.
"It's not supposed to," Steve said.
"Here comes the tricky part," Paige announced.
They could see the dense huddle of gray clouds almost a thousand miles long just off the western coast of the United States. North America looked funny, not at all like the shape they all had etched in their memories. With California gone all the way from San Francisco to the Mexican Baja, North America now looked like a one-armed man. The clouds shrouding the island of California looked like an empty sleeve floating out to sea. They could even make out the tiny dots that were navy patrol boats preventing anyone from entering or exiting that fog.
"Christ," Steve Connors said. "You're the scientist, Bart. You sure we're going to be safe going through that thing? You've seen what it's done to the few who've gone through."
"Don't worry. We've got a special decontamination chamber onboard that should do the trick. Besides, the heat from re-entry should kill anything it touches."
"We've already gone over this, Steve," Paige said.
"Yeah, but that was sitting on our asses in Florida. I'm talking about a couple minutes from actually entering that crap. What happens when we take off again? We won't have that re-entry heat to protect us then?"
Bart sighed. "No, but we'll still have the decon chamber. The heat's just an extra bonus. So don't worry, you're perfectly safe." He paused. "Unless you've had sex within the last week."
"What?" Daryl Budd hollered.
"They didn't say nothing about that," Phil La Porte said.
"Sure they did, fellas. Told all us guys. Have sex and pass through the Halo, your dong drops off within the hour. Right, Dr. Lyons?"
Paige kept a straight face. "Absolutely, Dr. Piedmont."
"Penis shrivelitis is the technical term, I think," Bart continued.
"Knock it off, Bart," Steve said. "We've got work to do." He frowned at Paige. "Why do you encourage him?"
"I like him."
"Yeah, I bet you do."
Paige laughed. She'd forgotten Steve's ridiculous jealousy.
The computers had the shuttle doing rolls to slow it down as they slipped through the approach corridor. The thrusters were still firing. They did their last roll at Mach 2.6 and the thrusters stopped. They shifted to the all-aerodynamic mode.
Suddenly the windows were dark with the Long Beach Halo swarming around them. The orange-yellow of the Halo mixed with the orange-yellow of the re-entry heat. It was almost beautiful, like fireworks viewed through a thick fog. Then they were through it and could see the airfield where they were supposed to land.
Steve began calling out the air speeds so Paige didn't have to keep scanning the instrument panels as closely. "350 knots…"
Paige adjusted the pitch.
"… 300… 250… 200…"
The airstrip spread out before them like a rocky carpet. They'd been warned that it might not be in good shape. It wasn't. The quakes had buckled sections, cracked other sections.
"Doesn't look good," Steve said.
"There's enough good left to make it."
"You're the boss," he said sarcastically.
They touched down at 185 knots with only the slightest bump and rolled smoothly down the runway, rocking occasionally when they hit a crack.
"Great la
nding, Paige," Bart said.
Paige hit the radio switch. "Come in, Houston."
Static answered back.
"Well, now we know why we've never been able to establish radio contact with the survivors here."
Steve and Paige began flipping switches, shutting down systems.
Bart unbuckled himself and gestured to Budd and La Porte. "You two follow me. Once I'm decontaminated, you're next. Let's go."
When the systems were all secured, Steve and Paige unbolted the metal locker in the downstairs cabin. Steve pried open the lid and handed Paige a 9mm H amp;K P9S side arm. She strapped her holster on, slammed a full clip into the gun, and jammed the gun into the holster.
"Well," Steve said.
Paige shrugged. "Yeah, well."
The hunt was officially on.
12.
"So that's what they look like," Tracy said.
Eric nodded, drank from his canteen.
"It's different than I imagined. I don't know, bigger, I think. A lot bigger."
They laid belly-down in the rough weeds, their heads lifted just enough to peer at the parked Columbia. Not that there was anything suspicious to see. They'd only arrived an hour ago, but Eric calculated that the craft couldn't have touched down more than an hour before that. Still, there was no movement so far. No one had come out since they'd arrived.
Eric shaded his eyes with a folded yellow flyer. "Annie and I took the kids to Edwards Air Force Base to watch the Columbia land from its first flight. Runway twenty-three on Rogers Dry Lake."
"Must've been quite a show."
Eric smiled. "Yeah. The kids were kind of bored. Tim sulked because it meant missing a chess match and Jenny flirted with some boy whose parents had driven in all the way from Ohio. But Annie and I were acting like kids on our first date, staring up in the sky with our binoculars, nudging each other. Giggling. Funny, huh?"
Tracy felt that familiar surge of tenderness for him. And jealousy over Annie. Annie's dead, damn it, she wanted to scream. I'm not. And yet she didn't have the right. He treated her with love and respect. Still, there was something missing. That something he'd felt for Annie. "Yeah, funny."
