Perigee (18 page)

…

Austral Clipper

Tom and Ryan both pressed against the cockpit windows, straining for a glimpse of the Block II Clipper climbing out of the atmosphere below them.

“Tally ho!” Tom exclaimed as a bright yellow pinprick emerged from the haze atop a faint exhaust trail. “Bogey at eight o’clock.”

“I see them,” Ryan said, feeling relief for the first time. “Man, they look good.”

…

Denver

“This operation has me concerned,” Taggart said. “It’s very short notice. Are you certain you can pull it off?” One day he’d make it a point to find out his contact’s real name.

“Relax,” the voice replied. “The last one worked, didn’t it?” Better than expected, he had to admit. “We just had to come up with this one on the fly, as you say.”

“So what’s in your bag of tricks this time?”

“It’s best that you remain ignorant of that.”

Ignorant
was not a word Taggart preferred to be associated with. “Now just one second,” he said testily. “Remember who’s controlling who here.”

“Trust me,” the voice laughed. “You’ll definitely want to watch. It’s going to get lively up there.”

33

Denver

Unable to exercise any direct control, Hammond had to settle for absorbing himself in the video from their tracking cameras in Washington. The plane’s image grew fuzzier as the long lenses struggled to keep up. His thoughts occasionally strayed into what would come next if this didn’t work, and were mercifully interrupted by the crosstalk around him in the control room.

“Mach six,” Grant said quietly, “passing through one hundred thousand feet. Coming up on tank jettison. Three…two…one…punch ‘em,” he said while following along with their fuel totals.

As soon as the drop tanks registered empty, he saw the disconnect commands flash over his monitor. On the big screen, they watched the silvery cylinders tumble away as the Clipper sped into ever-darkening skies.

“Clean separation,” they heard Penny report. “Inlets are closed and engines are on internal O2. Pressing to orbit.”

“Copy that, we show same,” Grant replied as he double-checked their velocity against his own predictions. “Go for orbit.”

Hammond admired their intense focus and was thankful for having been able to surround himself with such people. It allowed one less concern for a man who had more than enough to occupy his mind.

A brief flicker of light caught his attention as a door opened into the darkened control room. He was the only one who noticed Leo Taggart slip in and quietly step over to a chair beside him. Grant and the others were far too absorbed in their work at the moment. “Where are they now?” he whispered, even though the plane’s track was plainly visible on the map projection. He appeared distracted by the streams of information that cascaded across the array of monitors.

Hammond allowed himself a quick smile. He had to remember that Leo was a marketing guy first, and didn’t take those frenetic displays for granted like Charlie’s people did. “South Dakota,” he said. “They just jettisoned the conformal tanks so they’re on internal fuel now. Main engine cutoff is in about five minutes.”

“That means they’ll make it to orbit, right?”

Hammond was about to answer when they heard a systems controller speak up. “Charlie, it looks like there’s a propellant imbalance in the aft RCS. Can you have the crew confirm?”

…

Rescue One

Well above most of the turbulent atmosphere, they were now able to better feel the reassuring vibrations of the big engines. “Starting to feel a bit less like a paint mixer now,” Penny said as they heard Grant’s voice in their headsets.

“Rescue One, we need to confirm your aft RCS prop. You see anything funny?”

Frank punched up the reaction-control system on screen. “That’s affirmative,” he said brusquely. “Starboard side is already down about ten percent.”

“Take another look,” Penny said, checking her own screens. “We shouldn’t have burned nearly that much.” They had just started using the control jets, after all.

“I’m showing the same back here,” Will said. “Starboard RCS is thrusting, like it’s compensating for something.”

“You’re right…it is,” she said, suddenly feeling a slight sideways pull. They watched the horizon twist across the windows, too subtle to notice before but now alarmingly obvious. “Trim controls act like they’re correcting for a yaw,” she reported to Denver.

“What yaw?” Will asked. “We were rock steady until a few seconds ago.”

…

Austral Clipper

There was a slight delay in the warbling signal as it bounced down to them from the relay satellites, but that last exchange got their attention.

“You hear that?” Ryan asked. “Should they be using that much prop yet?”

“Not hardly,” Tom said, searching his memory for the Block II model’s mission rules. “Did she say it was yawing?”

Before Ryan could answer, the radio crackled with another call. “Coming up on MECO,” Penny’s voice said. “Shutdown in three…two…
damn it!
”

34

Rescue One

“We’re spinning!” Penny shouted as Earth abruptly whirled beneath them. Once the main engines had shut off, the control jets immediately became much more effective. The spaceplane’s tail swung violently about, throwing them hard against their straps. She rapidly pulsed opposite controls to compensate, and in turn the starboard jets fired even more aggressively. The ship rocked back and forth, caught between one axis wrestling against the other. “The damned thing is fighting me!” she said. “Will, what’s going on back there?”

“No idea,” he yelled from his station. “Starboard pods are still firing!”

“No kidding,” Kirby snapped. “It acts like it’s correcting for a left yaw.”

“There
wasn’t
any,” Will protested, “not until that thruster quad started pulsing.”

“
Shut it down
,” Penny barked as she kept twisting the control stick against the spin. “Or we’re going to blow all of our maneuvering prop.”

…

Denver

“Ops, aft RCS is pulsing starboard,” they heard her report. “The ship keeps trying to swap ends on us. Will is shutting down the bad thruster quad now.”

Grant and Hammond both looked at the repeater displays on the wall screen, which showed duplicates of the crew’s essential flight instruments. And they gave up nothing. The artificial horizon’s eight ball showed a perfect attitude for orbit. “That’s assuming it actually
is
the thruster quad,” Hammond said, growing suspicious.

Grant turned to meet his questioning look. “Systems, you see anything weird?” he asked. “We can’t see jack.”

“Just that prop imbalance,” the controller said. “But we’re not seeing any thruster activity.”

“So our feeds are out of synch?” Hammond wondered. “Now how is that possible?”

“No idea, Arthur.” He always used the more formal address under stress. “Our telemetry isn’t matching their instruments. We’re damn near blind.”

“Or
they
are.”

…

Rescue One

The plane’s nose swung back and forth all through its climb to orbit. For every pulse of the bad control jets, Penny countered from the opposite side. She wouldn’t have the fuel to do that much longer.

As the horizon skidded past, it now began to tilt away as well. “Starting to roll,” she said coolly. “How’s it going back there? This thing’s turning into a rodeo ride.”

Will just hoped to keep from throwing up in his helmet as his head whipped around. “Stand by,” he grunted. “Taking the aft thruster quads off line…
now
.”

“Nothing,” Penny said, tapping the stick. “I can’t null the rates.” The firing thrusters filled the ship with a muffled, staccato banging as Earth rapidly tumbled across the windows. The plane was now violently spinning in two different axes.

“Inertial coupling!” Will shouted. “That’s not going to get any better.” They were already battered by g-forces working against them from two different directions. If they couldn’t get it under control soon, they would be in real danger of passing out.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Frank said. “Quads are thrusting all over the damn place…keeps showing correction for uncommanded inputs.”

“That’s crazy.
We’re
compensating against
it
,” Penny said. “Will?” she asked expectantly.

Will closed his eyes tight in concentration as much as against the mounting g-forces. The pilot’s flight displays didn’t agree with his other screens, which showed an increasingly out-of-control spaceplane with thrusters firing wildly in all directions. Shutting down the one balky pod had just made matters worse. He had his suspicions, but this was no time to troubleshoot the control software. They had to take it out of the loop entirely.

“Can you guys fly us out of this manually?”

35

Denver

Hammond was unconvinced. “They want to do
what
?” He knew the Block II design just as well as the current model, and understood the paucity of options that would leave them.

“Shut down the FMS,” Grant said. “Take all three flight computers off-line, and the crew will stabilize it manually.”

Taggart couldn’t hide his shock. “They can do that?” he asked. “Can the pilots still land it?”

Grant was conferring with the structural engineer and hurried back over. “We’ll deal with that next,” he said. “If they don’t get it under control, nobody’s landing anything.” He pressed his headset back into his ear and thumbed the microphone switch. “Rescue One, we concur. Take the FMS off-line and use the emergency system.”

“What happens after that?” Taggart asked.

Grant rubbed his temples in frustration. “We have to bring them down. They need those computers for rendezvous, but we can’t trust them enough to put the primary system back online.” He looked over their propellant levels. “I don’t think they’ll have enough maneuvering prop left to match orbits anyway.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

Hammond was seething. “It means this just got a hell of a lot more complicated,” he grumbled, and stalked out of the room. Taggart scrambled to follow him.

…

Rescue One

“This is really starting to piss me off,” Penny said as she fought to keep her head from bouncing off the side window. Earth still careened wildly outside, alternately flashing into view and disappearing as they tumbled. “My eyeballs are about to come out of my ears.”

Frank strained as inflatable bladders in his pressure suit constricted his leg and stomach muscles, keeping the blood from rushing out of his head. “Ops concurs. Shut down the FMS,” he grunted as soon as the reply came from Denver.

“Good thing,” she huffed, “because we’re doing it anyway.” She reached for the panel and stabbed at the flight management system’s master switch. All three screens went dark as backup digital instruments simultaneously brightened. The spaceplane still tumbled along its orbit but at least the wild thrusting had stopped, so it would not get any worse. “Emergency system’s up. What say we tame this beast?”

“Hell yes. This feels like the tilt-a-whirl at the state fair,” Frank said, grateful that the sideways acceleration had finally stopped. “Want me to handle roll?”

“Do it,” she said. “You get us right-side up, and I’ll get us out of this spin.” She looked over her shoulder. “Good work back there, Will.”

He didn’t answer.

“Will?”

She pulled herself around and saw his helmeted head lolling along with the plane’s motions. His arms flopped about like a rag doll in a puppy’s mouth.

He had passed out.

“Guess we’ll save the hugs and kisses for later,” she said, and turned back to the task at hand.

…

Austral Clipper

The two pilots had listened, dumbfounded, as their rescue had fallen apart within a matter of minutes. “They’ll have to abort,” Tom said, frustrated by their forced passivity like spectators at a football game. “There’s no other choice.”

Ryan had likewise tried to think through alternatives and could come up with nothing. The hope they had clung to so tentatively was quickly slipping from their grasp. “I know,” he finally said, and turned to look past the cockpit door. “But I’m not sure how we break the news back there.”