Fatal Orbit

by Tom Grace

  “So what about this Wan Hu?” Moug asked.

  “According to legend, he was a sixth-century Chinese poet and inventor who dreamed of touching the heavens. Using the highest technology of his day, Wan attached forty-seven rockets to a chair and strapped himself in for the ride.”

  “Did he make it?”

  Skye smiled. “On launch, Wan, the chair, and the rockets disappeared in a burst of fire and smoke, and were never seen again.”

  Moug glanced down at Skye’s monitor. The yellow line denoting the path of Shenzhou-7 stopped over the eastern Pacific. “Looks like Wan Hu is getting some company.”

  “They shouldn’t have undercut my bid on the Asian satellite radio project. Now, if the Chinese react as I expect, their space program will be stalled for a few years while they try to determine what went wrong.”

  “Leaving our field with one less competitor. On a similar note, I got word today that one of ZetaComm’s new satellites is going up in two months.”

  “Who’s handling the launch?”

  “NASA,” Moug replied. “It’s going up on the shuttle Liberty.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

  AUGUST 1

  This is the moment I’ve worked for my whole life.

  Kelsey Newton stepped out of the Operations and Checkout Building and glanced up at the night sky. It was black and featureless. During the preflight weather briefing, she and the rest of the crew of Liberty had learned that a high-pressure system had swept the skies and the prospects for tonight’s shuttle launch were excellent. A halo of bright light enveloped the space center, obscuring the stars she knew were here.

  Despite the heavy orange flight suit, Kelsey moved purposefully. Press photographers bathed the seven astronauts in bright lights and pulsing flashes as they strode to the Astrovan, each member of the shuttle crew smiling and waving, proud that their moment had finally come. In the throng, Kelsey caught a glimpse of camera crews from her home state of Michigan and, like a nervous bride coming down the aisle, she hoped she wouldn’t stumble. This was her first mission and she strove to maintain a professional demeanor, but at this moment she found it impossible to suppress the broad smile on her face.

  As a young girl, Kelsey had cheered when Sally Ride became the first American woman in space and vowed that she, too, would make the journey. At an age when the only stars her girlfriends dreamed about were in rock bands, she immersed herself in math and science. Physics was the key to her dreams, not Duran Duran. In addition to training her mind, she followed a disciplined regimen of running and swimming to train her body. As a senior at the University of Michigan, Kelsey had led the women’s swim team to a Big Ten championship and earned All-American honors. Every activity she embraced was in some way a part of her long-term goal.

  A doctorate and research grants followed as Kelsey pursued a career in experimental physics. Her work in ultrafast optics led to the creation of a light-based computer processor—an invention that brought her notoriety, patents, and a potentially lucrative stream of royalty income. Along the way, she developed many ties with NASA, assisting other physicists with experimental payloads. She officially joined the astronaut corps as a mission specialist for the International Space Station in 1999, eagerly awaiting her turn to travel into space.

  Her opportunity came when construction on the ISS was finally complete and plans for more aggressive scientific missions to the station began to move forward. Kelsey and one of her experiments, a detector array specifically designed for the station, were assigned to shuttle mission STS-173. Kelsey’s moment had finally arrived.

  This shuttle mission had three primary objectives: the deployment of a communications satellite, the installation of Kelsey’s array, and an exchange of crew at the ISS. Kelsey and two of her Liberty crewmates were the first half of a six-woman crew that would live and work on the station for the next five months—the rest following in early September. While the selection of an all-female crew had not been planned, the world media latched on to the possibility of such an arrangement as crew assignments from the United States, European, Russian, and Japanese space agencies evolved. After the fervor of the America’s Cup win by an all-woman crew, NASA could not ignore the public-relations potential of six highly trained, intelligent women from around the world ascending quite literally to the high point of their profession and made the selections official.

  Liberty’s crew of seven was composed of two groups: those returning to Earth with the orbiter in fourteen days and those staying aboard the ISS for the rest of the year. And on more than one occasion during the course of preparation for their mission, members of the first group offered to swap places with those in the second.

  Liberty’s permanent crew consisted of Commander Dick Lundy, Pilot Stoshi “Tosh” Yamaga, and Mission Specialists Caroline Evans and Pete Washabaugh. Liberty’s commander was a lanky, balding, fifty-five-year-old Air Force officer from Nebraska with three previous shuttle missions under his belt. Tosh—a cocky, Asian-American naval aviator with graying black hair and the combat credentials to back up his swagger—saw this mission, his second behind the controls of a shuttle, as further proof of his aeronautical prowess. Caroline Evans and Pete Washabaugh came to the astronaut corps as civilian aerospace engineers and between them had completed twelve spacewalks. At five-four and a hundred pounds soaking wet, Caroline was the most petite of NASA’s currently active astronauts. Pete presented an equal challenge to NASA’s outfitters: His six-four frame required the largest spacesuit in the agency’s inventory. Fitting problems aside, both had proven equally adept at extravehicular activities in space.

  As for the group bound for the ISS, Kelsey, at thirty-five, was the youngest of the crew assigned to STS-173 and the mission’s only rookie. The other two women—Molly Peck and Valentina Shishkov—had made five previous trips into space between them.

  Based on seniority, Molly was named commander of the five-month expedition. A flaming red-haired fisherman’s daughter from the west of Ireland, she was the first ISS commander drawn from the European astronaut corps, further enhancing her standing as the pride of Galway.

  Valentina was a forty-four-year-old gymnast-turned-biochemist and a veteran of launches from both the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Kennedy Space Center. She smiled knowingly at Kelsey as the Astrovan approached Pad 39A, her dark-brown eyes glistening with the shared excitement, fondly remembering her first journey into space.

  The ride out to launchpad 39A took just fifteen minutes, but anticipation slowed the time to a crawl. During their days of quarantine at the Cape, a nervous excitement had permeated the crew. Now, as the reality of the moment hit them, that adrenaline-induced mood dissipated like a morning fog. They were now just a few hours from space.

  Launchpad technicians helped Kelsey and her crewmates step out of the van. There, the astronauts paused to gaze at the shuttle towering over them—an action shared throughout history by brave voyagers and the vessels that carried them far from home.

  Banks of powerful work lights bathed the shuttle in a halo of cool white—an artificial sun under which dozens of men and women labored. The external fuel tank rumbled and fumed like an expectant volcano as over a half-million gallons of cryogenically liquefied propellants boiled inside.

  “Looks like you’ve done a heck of a job getting her ready,” Lundy said to the launchpad manager. “Thanks.”

  The manager nodded. “Have a good flight, Commander. They’re waiting for you upstairs.”

  The astronauts rode the elevator up to Level 195 and followed the steel-grate catwalk into the sterile white room. There, several technicians clad from head to toe in lint-free suits guided the astronauts through the hatch and seated them inside the orbiter. Liberty’s four permanent crewmembers were seated on the flight-deck, with the ISS-bound astronauts strapped in below on the mid-deck.

  After helping Kelsey into her padded seat, the technicians secured her restraints and tied her int
o Liberty’s comm system. Air-to-ground voice checks filled her ears—calm, professional, and reassuring. Kelsey gave the techs a thumbs-up and they departed, closing the hatch behind them. Launch was now less than two-and-a-half hours away.

  Kelsey tried to relax, but she knew what was coming and the primal part of her being was preparing for flight or fight. And never far from her thoughts were the tragic losses of Columbia and, just sixteen months afterward, Shenzhou-7. The two disasters, so closely spaced in time, had erased the casual hubris fostered by so many years of successful manned spaceflight.

  In the confines of the helmet, Kelsey could hear the blood pounding in her ears. She closed her eyes and began taking long controlled breaths. Slowly, her body released some of the anxiety, taking the edge off. Kelsey had sacrificed a lot to be in this seat and wished right now to simply enjoy the moment. Her pursuit of this lifelong dream, coupled with the demands of her work as a physicist, had left very little room for family or a social life. This situation troubled her parents, who hoped to be grandparents while they were still young enough to enjoy the little ones, but they also understood what being an astronaut meant to their daughter. At this moment, she knew they were in the visitors’ gallery proudly awaiting the launch.

  Then she thought of Nolan, and knew that somewhere, he too was watching. No matter how often they were separated, or by what distance, their connection to each other, which had begun when they were children growing up on the same block in Ann Arbor, was never entirely broken.

  Nolan Kilkenny had traded paradise for an inferno. After an arduous flight from Hawaii, he’d followed the Beeline Expressway due east toward the Cape. The air-conditioner in his rental car had struggled the entire way with the summer heat and humidity, and as traffic choked the roads near the Kennedy Space Center, it was near expiring. Sensing the futility of inching across Merritt Island, Kilkenny sought the advice of a Florida state trooper and headed south to Cocoa Beach.

  He reached Jetty Park early in the afternoon along with a small but steadily growing crowd. By sunset, the park was full and a prelaunch beach party was in full swing. One nearby group seemed intent on proving they indeed knew a CD’s worth of Jimmy Buffett songs by heart. Kilkenny kept to himself, patiently gazing at the island on the north side of the Banana River, his thoughts on Kelsey and the adventure on which she was about to embark.

  Near where he sat, a young child moved tentatively across the beach toward the river’s edge. He watched as she stood with her toes just inches from the cool dark water, uncertain if she dared to take one more step. She bent and scooped up a handful of sand, some of the granules slipping through her pudgy fingers, then tossed the rest at the water. The constant breeze blew much of what she’d thrown back in her face, the coarse grains blinding her. Nolan was on his feet just as the first wail sounded from her trembling lips.

  “There, there, it’ll be all right,” he said in a soft, reassuring tone. “It’s just a little sand, that’s all.”

  He carefully brushed the sand from her face and slowly, the girl reopened her big brown eyes.

  “Tamara!” a woman called out, “What’s wrong, baby?”

  Nolan looked over and saw a woman, well into her last trimester, rising from a beach blanket.

  “Is that your mommy?” he asked.

  The girl turned toward the voice, tears still dribbling down her cheeks, and pointed at the woman. Nolan scooped her up in one arm and met the concerned mother halfway.

  “I think she’ll be okay,” Nolan said to the concerned mother. “Just got some sand in her eyes.”

  The girl stretched her arms out and wrapped them around her mother’s neck. With the safe return of her child, the woman’s expression softened.

  “That was very kind of you.”

  “No problem. I have a little experience with this kind of thing.”

  “You have children?”

  “Not yet, but sand in the eyes was an occupational hazard for me a few years back.”

  “Tamara, can you thank the nice man for helping you?”

  “Fank woo,” the girl whispered, a thumb planted in her mouth and most of her face nestled against her mother’s shoulder.

  Nolan smiled and returned to his spot. If NASA hadn’t called, he and Kelsey might be sitting on a beach somewhere, perhaps contemplating a new life growing inside her. A small part of his brain still selfishly resented that call because it put what he saw as the next and most important stage of their lives on hold. He loved Kelsey and was ready to be a husband and a father. Single-mindedly, they had both pursued their professional goals and achieved a level of satisfaction and status that now gave them the freedom to make choices about their future together.

  Twelve months down, Nolan thought as he watched the horizon, only five more to go.

  At T minus nine, the launch entered the final built-in hold. The backroom controllers had completed all the system checks and it was now time to determine the go/no go status of the launch. The buzz of the nearly three hundred voices in the firing room faded into a restrained quiet in anticipation of NASA Test Director Hal Atwood’s final poll.

  “STM?” Atwood began.

  “Support Test is go.”

  “OTC?”

  “Orbiter Test is go.”

  “TBC?”

  “Tank Booster Test is go.”

  Atwood polled the eleven test contractors and each replied in the affirmative.

  “Houston, are you a go?” Atwood called out to Fred Jesup at the Johnson Space Center.

  “Mission Control is go,” the flight director replied.

  Atwood nodded to the people in the firing room. “Liberty, you are a go. From all of us at the Cape, good luck and Godspeed.”

  “Launch Control, this is Liberty,” Lundy’s voice boomed clear over the speaker. “Thanks for everything. It’s a beautiful night to fly.”

  Nolan’s cell phone pulsed with the opening bass line of “Brand New Cadillac” by The Clash. He answered before the clip recycled.

  “Kilkenny.”

  “Did you get there?” a woman asked, her voice smooth and self-assured.

  “What do you think?”

  “If you’re half as smart as you pretend to be,” Roxanne Tao replied, “you’re somewhere near that shuttle.”

  “I’m about as close to the space center as someone without a guest pass can get.”

  “Good boy. This is Kelsey’s big day and you owe it both to her and to yourself to be there.”

  “I can’t argue with you about that.”

  “If you did, you’d lose.”

  “Probably,” Nolan admitted. “Hey, thanks again for helping me patch things up with Kelsey.”

  “You two would have figured out things on your own, all I did was speed the process up a little. If you hadn’t been so pigheaded in the first place, my little intervention would have been completely unnecessary.”

  “True.”

  “And on the positive side, you did learn some very important things about wedding planning.”

  “Namely to keep my nose out of it.”

  “Exactly. The rules of etiquette clearly state that the groom is an invited guest. To suggest that a girl toss aside a lifetime’s worth of dreams and simply run off and elope, for convenience? It just isn’t done.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that I’ll be hearing about this for the rest of my life?”

  “Because you will. And if there’s any justice in the world, this story will be handed down among your descendants, passed from generation to generation as an object lesson about the appropriate place of men in a relationship.”

  “A morality tale of failure and redemption?”

  “Exactly. Are you nervous?”

  “Why? Because the love of my life and future mother of my children is strapped to a rocket capable of releasing as much energy as a small tactical nuke?”

  “Something like that. I’m not superstitious, so I don’t believe bad things come in threes. Kelsey will b
e fine.”

  “I know.”

  At two minutes to liftoff, Kelsey locked her visor down and switched on her oxygen supply. The walkway on which the crew had boarded Liberty had already pulled away and, one by one, the shuttle’s ties to Earth were being severed. The spacecraft shuddered as the main engines gimbaled into position.

  At T minus fifty seconds, Liberty switched over to internal power.

  Listening to the seconds being counted down, Kelsey suddenly became aware of her own heart pounding inside her chest. As her senses heightened, time dilated. She remembered feeling the same mix of fear and excitement crawling up the first hills on the roller coasters at Cedar Point. The training simulations had taught her what to expect, but had never made her feel this way.

  At T minus thirty seconds, Liberty’s onboard computer took control of the launch.

  At T minus sixteen seconds, three hundred thousand gallons of water flooded into the space beneath the launchpad to dampen the roar of the shuttle’s engines.

  At T minus six seconds, Liberty’s three main engines fired off in succession. The shuttle bucked, straining against the eight bolts that held it to the Earth. Billowing clouds of smoke and steam roiled out from beneath the launchpad.

  Kelsey gripped her armrest tightly as the engines thundered beneath her, counting down the last few seconds.

  At T minus zero, the twin solid rocket boosters ignited. As Liberty’s main engines reached 100 percent thrust, the restraining bolts detonated and the shuttle lifted off.

  Kelsey gritted her teeth and held on. The energy released by the engines shook the spacecraft violently, the vibration so intense she could barely hear communications through her headset. As the shuttle cleared the launchpad, it performed a combined pitch/yaw/roll maneuver that aimed the craft on a broad high arc across the Atlantic. Kelsey felt the rollout but, with three g’s pressing her back against the seat, she had no sense that Liberty was now flying inverted. Her limbs were so heavy she found them difficult to move.