Perigee (15 page)

“Yeah, I know,” he said sullenly. “Atmospheric density, sunspot activity…hell, I’d appreciate a good solar flare right now. Just microwave us like a frozen dinner and get it over with.”

“Control yourself,” Tom said. “We’ve got to present a united front to the passengers or it’ll turn into pandemonium back there. And Marcy’s not going to be able to handle them herself. She needs your help.” He knew she would look to Ryan to draw her own strength.

“I don’t know if any of us can handle them,” Ryan said. “What would
you
do in their situation?”

“I’m not even sure what I’m going to do myself,” Tom said. “But I’m expecting the worst back there,” he added with a grim look towards the cabin. “We have to be prepared to restrain people.”

Ryan checked the compartment by his seat where a Taser was stored. “We should probably count on it.”

28

Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas

Audrey Wilkes was nearing the end of another long night at the flight director’s console. Her team’s shift ended at seven a.m. Two more hours and she could look forward to another day of fitful sleep before coming back for more. She rubbed her eyes and looked around the room. Individual lamps at her controller’s stations randomly punctuated the uniform blue glow of the subdued lighting and familiar wall screen. Most of her team sat hunched over their terminals while a few stretched back in their chairs, thumbing through printouts and mission rule binders.

With the Shuttles long gone, Space Station control was the only real action left in the Mission Operations directorate. And midnights weren’t exactly brimming with activity. While the crew slept, station controllers spent their time monitoring systems and fine-tuning the next day’s planned activities. Occasional troubleshooting of minor problems punctuated the long nights, but for the most part the graveyard shift was a training ground for new controllers.

It had been a long road back from the trauma of her first day in mission control, when
Orion
shredded itself in that awful launch abort.

“Abort” was also a fairly apt description of what happened in Washington not long afterward. The program, already on thin ice with Congress, was unceremoniously shut down. She’d been expecting a pink slip when the Mission Ops director surprised her with a seat in ISS control instead.
You handled a bad situation very well, young lady
, he’d told her.
You are one steely-eyed missile girl.

When things were really slow in the control room, Audrey occasionally allowed herself time to reflect on those events. But she was also one of the few flight directors who didn’t live and breathe mission ops; a personal choice she had to make each day, like an alcoholic determined to stay sober. She forced herself to put the program out of her head every morning when leaving the console. If not, the job would surely consume her as it had so many others. She’d watched too many colleagues succumb to SIDS: Space-Induced Divorce Syndrome.
If I ever find a husband, I’ll probably want to keep him around for awhile,
she had joked with her “normal” friends outside the Agency.

The warm Houston weather made leaving work behind a little easier. A cross-country devotee, she could usually get out in the early morning at the end of her shift and literally run away from the job. The vigorous after-hours routine forced her to forget about Station control and focus on the miles of road ahead.

Green Team would start arriving in another hour or so for their turnover brief; another hour after that and her team could go home if all was well. And things were nearly always well, save for the occasional power spike or balky zero-g toilet, but that situation was measurably changing over time.
How can we ever fly to Mars one day if half the crew’s lined up for the john?
Some of the more jaded controllers had derisively begun calling the aging complex “Cattlecar Galactica”.

She took a quick bite from an apple and considered grabbing a last-minute cup of coffee, then thought better of it.
I’m doing twelve miles today,
she thought.
Last thing I need is to run off to pee under a bush. With my luck I’d stumble onto a rattlesnake.

The phone on the cabinet behind her seat rang, startling her back to the here and now. It didn’t ring very often, especially at this time of night. Anyone with access to that number knew to never call it unless absolutely necessary. Occasionally the mission ops director would call to check in, usually when he was having his own problems sleeping.

“Station Control, Blue Team flight director,” she answered in a practiced, professional tone.

“Good morning, Flight. May I ask who I’m speaking with?”

That took Audrey by surprise. She’d quickly learned to recognize every voice that might call the director’s console, and this wasn’t one of them.
This better not be another telemarketing call
. A few years ago, one of those confounded random-number robo-callers had given them fits when it hit the jackpot and repeatedly called every number at Johnson, in sequence. But this one knew the call sign for her position…maybe it was a crafty reporter?

“This is Audrey Wilkes. And who, may I ask, is this?”

“Audrey…” came a halting reply, then recognition. “Audrey! You used to work the Booster console, right?”

What the hell was going on here?
“Yes, I did. Once. Long time ago. Now maybe you can tell me who
I’m
speaking with.” She did not find this amusing.

“Sorry. This is Penny Stratton at Polaris AeroSpace.”

Audrey sat dumbfounded for a second and stared at the receiver. Unpleasant memories flew back in a rush. Sights, voices, feelings—a sick emptiness in her gut she hadn’t felt for years. She replied, tentatively at first.

“Penny? What…what the heck are you calling for? How did you even get this number?”

“Nice to hear from you too. You have to ask? I know how long it takes for things to change down there.”

That lightened her mood and she chuckled quietly. “Guess I can’t fault you for that.”

“So you’re in the big chair now, huh?”

“As big as it gets on midnights. Somebody has to make sure they’re keeping the fish fed and the pantry stocked up there.”

“You go where they put you. Glad to hear it, though.” She abruptly ended the small talk and got to the point. “Look, Audrey, I don’t know if you’ve heard from J-Spock yet, but we’ve got a big problem with one of our birds.”

That gave her pause. Besides watching for enemy missiles, the Joint Space Operations Command tracked every piece of orbital flotsam and helped guide the occasional maneuver to avoid them. So what would they have to do with a spaceplane full of pampered millionaires?

“Um, no, we haven’t,” she answered with apprehension. “What are you talking about?”

Penny explained.

“Sweet Mary…you’re not kidding are you?”
Of course not, dummy,
she chided herself, before curiosity took over: “You guys really pulled off single-stage-to-orbit?” she asked, almost awestruck.

“Yeah, we’ll all be very proud if they make it back alive.”

“Sorry…it’s just about the last thing I expected to hear tonight is all.” They kept the news turned off, and no one in management would have been awake to call in the story to her anyway.

Penny dropped the sarcasm. “Don’t sweat it. We’re all standing around wondering what happened, too. But that has crossed everyone’s mind. Theoretically I knew it was possible with a low enough mass fraction. We sure wouldn’t do it on purpose.”

Audrey immediately recognized a flight director’s worst nightmare: a stranded crew with no conceivable way home and nothing to do on the ground but listen and wait for them to die.

“Good Lord, Penny. How are you going to get them home? Can that thing even handle re-entry? It’s got to be in a pretty squirrely orbit.” Then she realized why she must be calling. “Are you worried about a collision risk with the station?”

“We don’t know yet. They’re not in coplanar orbits, but the tracks intersect at a couple of points. Right now we’re focused on consumables and heat distribution. They’re coming down at some point, obviously.”

“Outer mold line on that thing’s got to be complicated at high Mach numbers,” Audrey observed. “It has a lot of stuff hanging in the breeze on the underside, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Penny agreed. “The intakes would be a problem.”

Audrey was still pondering why she called, since they weren’t worried about a collision risk. “But you’re not looking for advice on boundary layer heat transfer, are you?”

“No,” Penny said flatly. “We’re going after them. Remember those orbital rescue scenarios we worked out back in the Stone Age?”

“Sure do,” Audrey said. Like closing the barn door after the horse was already out, NASA had developed extensive plans for quickly launching an on-orbit rescue mission for a crippled Shuttle after the gruesome in-flight breakup of
Columbia
. “If you need copies of the studies, I’m sure we can arrange it under the circumstances. So which launch service are you using?” she asked while searching her computer for the old reports.

“We’re not,” Penny said. “None of the commercial companies can carry enough pax.”

Of course. I know better
, Audrey thought. “You’re right,” she admitted, but that still left a rather large question hanging. “So that rules out a Soyuz or Shenzou, doesn’t it?” The Russians would launch anything for a price, but were notoriously slow when it mattered most. The Chinese were even worse. And neither ship could carry more than three people.

“Not enough time, even without their payload limits,” Penny said. “We’d need three vehicles to get everyone out anyway.”

“That doesn’t leave you with very much,” Audrey ventured. “You’ve just eliminated all of the launch providers.”

“You’re right,” Penny said, and drew a breath. “We’re going after them ourselves. The Block II model is being prepped for launch at the Moses Lake test site right now.”

“You guys already have that thing flying? I thought it was still in testing.” The Block II was an upgraded Clipper with more powerful engines and large expendable fuel tanks slung beneath each wing. Designed for reaching orbit, NASA had planned to give it serious consideration for supplying the station one day.

“It is. But it looks like our only option. We’ve calculated a launch window for tomorrow afternoon.”

“You don’t have much time, then,” she said. “I’ll get those tech reports to you ASAP.”

Penny hesitated. “That’s not all, Aud. I may need an even bigger favor.”

Audrey sat back for the next few minutes, listening to her idea. It was a big favor, all right. It was either brilliant or certifiably nuts.

Well, they don’t pay me to sit here and look the other way
, she thought. “Let me think this through and get back to you.”

29

Denver

Walt Donner was livid, spit flecked his beard. “What do you mean they’re
investigating
?” he stammered. “We fixed that bird. They can talk to the idiots up there flying it!”

Chen sat calmly, listening to his outburst while trying not to show any emotion. Donner habitually took out every momentary frustration on whomever he happened to be working with; junior technicians usually fared the worst, especially when they came bearing bad news.

“That’s all I know. Don’t freak out,” Chen said, hoping to sound objective. “Even if we really had done something wrong, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Not that it mattered, but maybe it would calm him down. “Don’t you think they want to find out what went wrong so this doesn’t happen again?”

Donner spun and angrily turned off a radio on the workbench behind him, killing the background drone of country music. “You really don’t know how things work around here, do you?” he said coldly. “You think we come in, do our jobs, mind our own business, and just get left alone?”

“I guess that’s about right,” he said calmly. It had the desired effect.

Donner glared at him as he worked up a righteous tirade. “Since the ink on your ticket’s still wet, let me tell you something…”

Some things are just too easy,
Chen thought.
Here we go.

“Those SOBs up in the corner office think they know this place. Think they know how we make things work. They get some bright idea burning up their innards then tell us to just go make it happen. Doesn’t matter how stupid it is, how much more work it puts on us wrench monkeys. And that’s all we are to them. And your buddies up in Ops and Maintenance Control ain’t any better than those other prima donnas. Don’t you ever forget it.”

“Come on, Walt. They’re not all that bad are they? Some of them must know what they’re doing, or we’d all be out of a job.” This was entertaining, at least.

Donner sneered. “What did they fill your head with in school? Sure wasn’t anything to do with making airplanes work, sounds like.”