Perigee (19 page)

…

Denver

“Spacecraft is stable,” they finally heard Penny report. “But we burned a hell of a lot of prop in the process.”

“We show same,” Grant replied. “Looks like you barely have enough for re-entry.”

“Concur,” she said.
Damn it,
they couldn’t hear her say off-mic. They would do an abort-once-around, which meant they’d finish one orbit and land. “But we’ll need your numbers for a retro burn and re-entry target. We’re not turning that thing back on.”

Grant had expected them to leave the flight computers off. “Already working on that. We’re initiating recovery plans for the first abort alternate at Guam. Second alternate is back at the launch site. Retro burn data will be uplinked within the minute.”

Her response sounded urgent. “Negative, negative…we’re recovering at Denver. You need us there.”

“Copy that,” Grant said calmly. “But we need a few more minutes to recalculate.” It hadn’t been part of their contingency plans, but at least it would give him a little more time to finesse the numbers. “Anything else?” he asked, knowing what came next would be even riskier.

“Affirmative,” she replied. “Text message coming your way. Rescue One out.”

Within seconds, a message appeared in his data-link window:
CHARLIE…CALL AUDREY AT NUMBER I GAVE U…TIME TO MOVE ON PLAN B. TELL TOM TO HOLD TIGHT.

36

Austral Clipper

Tom habitually checked his personal appearance before speaking to the passengers, something he considered vitally important if it involved bad news. Floating in the crew lavatory, he did his best to smooth the wrinkles out of his uniform, a fruitless effort in zero-g. He gave up, rubbed his face with a wet wipe, and stared into the mirror.

“You look tired,” he said to the reflection. It was probably just the lighting, but the wrinkles around his face looked deeper. He’d barely given them a second thought before. And he almost envied the women with their makeup kits; it would’ve been nice to hide the bags under his eyes. Ryan was right—he needed to get some sleep. But that was undoubtedly about to become a lot harder to do.

Serves you right. This was your bright idea in the first place.

Tom knew that was a dangerous line of thinking and forced himself to stop. Solving problems on a normal airplane, even in flight test, was so much easier. A good pilot knew his machine and procedures and fell back on his experience. If things went south, there wasn’t time to think about any boneheaded move you might have just made. That could wait for debrief, providing you did your job and made it back. Decisions often had to be made with incomplete information. There was never time to wait for more.

Now, time appeared to be the one resource they had in abundance.

He opened the cockpit door and swam into the cabin. Marcy had subtly managed to get the passengers collected in one area and was positioned behind them.

Tom was thankful they had such a small group, because they didn’t appear as happy as before when help was on the way. He knew that Ryan and Marcy hadn’t uttered a word, but the passengers could certainly read their faces.

Their cold, tired faces were accented by the almost completely fogged-over windows. He had consciously made the decision to leave his jacket off, if for nothing more than psychological reasons. Dante’s vision of condemned souls trapped in a frozen Hell flashed through Tom’s mind.
Stop thinking like that,
he silently rebuked himself.

“I’m just going to get right to the point,” he finally said to the group. “The rescue flight isn’t going to make it.”

Magrath gave up no emotion, while his assistants gasped in panicked disbelief. Wade simply closed his eyes in silent frustration. “What happened?” he whispered.

Tom cleared his throat. “They had control problems during the ascent to orbit and had to abort the mission,” he said, perhaps too analytically for his own good. This wasn’t the time to sound like a test pilot with ice in his veins. “There wouldn’t have been enough maneuvering fuel to catch up with us and still manage re-entry.”

The young lady, Whitney, grew wide-eyed. “So that’s it? We’re going to die up here,” she wailed, “just like that?” Carson tried to place his arm around her but she brushed off the comforting gesture. “Get away from me!” she hissed. “Screw this! You’ve got to get us out of here!”

Marcy braced against some foot restraints and firmly gripped the girl’s shoulders. “You’ve got to settle down, hon. Just hear him out, okay?”

She nodded meekly and wiped her eyes.

Tom normally thought appearing apologetic was a bad tactic, but he couldn’t muster any other response. “I’m sorry, I really am. But there’s just not a lot more to tell you other than our people back home are not giving up on us. I don’t know exactly what they’re up to, but they are bringing in outside help.”

“About bloody time,” Magrath groused. “Because you people have managed to cock this up quite well enough on your own.”

…

Houston

Audrey Wilkes reluctantly sipped from a cup of coffee. No way would she get her running in today anyway, she thought. Well past the end of her normal shift, she needed to be alert for a while longer.

She sat in a waiting room outside of the Center director’s office. On the bland government-issue chair beside her sat a stack of documents: Station activity plans, orbital elements, mission rules and a pile of structural analyses.

“Director Abbot will see you now,” the middle-aged executive assistant said with formality, reinforcing her role as gatekeeper. NASA was nothing if not a fiefdom, with each Center under its own lord. And Donald Abbot was the chief overlord of manned spaceflight.

“Thanks,” Audrey said cheerily, hoping a collegial attitude would gain her easier access in the future. If they were going to pull this off, she’d need it. She gathered her stack of files and walked through the open door.

Her boss, Ronnie Bledsoe, was already there in front of Abbot’s desk. She’d briefed him earlier on her idea—it was way too early to call it a “plan”—and he’d approached the Center director with it. Time was short, but if she didn’t follow the chain of command it would all be for nothing. Going around the head of Mission Operations would have killed any hopes they had, and probably her career as well. Sadly, over the decades this proud agency had mutated into just another ass-covering government bureaucracy. Hopefully there were still enough gutsy people left here to pull off something worth writing home about.

Now if she could just get it past the Ron and Don show.

“Good afternoon, Miss Wilkes,” the Director said in a solicitous tone. He was in his mid-fifties, plump, with pale skin and rosy cheeks. Her boss, Ronnie, nodded in recognition: “Hello again, Audrey.” She thought of him as trustworthy and generally a good guy; so far he’d done nothing to change her opinion. Bledsoe had originally started as an Astronaut Candidate and washed out for an irregular heartbeat. Transferred into Mission Operations, he’d thrived and risen rather quickly to lead. Tall, thin and deep brown, he was Abbot’s exact opposite.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Abbot. Afternoon, Ronnie,” she said, settling into the chair offered to her. “My apologies ahead of time if I start to ramble. It’s been a long couple of days.”

“That’s quite all right, Miss Wilkes. I’ve been watching the news, too. So let’s cut to the chase and let you go home and get some sleep.”

Sounds great to me
. She’d hardly slept since getting that call from Penny yesterday morning.
Sure wish he’d look at my eyes, though
. Abbott was notorious for ogling the younger women around the center. Audrey liked to think this behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at a regular business, as much as sexual-harassment stories still appeared in the news from the “real world”.

She blinked, bringing herself back to the matter at hand. Bright Texas sunlight poured in through the window behind Abbot’s desk. Her mind was wandering as she grew more fatigued.

“Of course, sir. First, do you have any questions about the information I gave to Ron earlier?” She had briefed him on the phone call from Polaris, the details Charlie Grant had given her that didn’t make the news, and the favor Penny had asked.

“No questions. So what else do you have for us?”

Here we go
. “Polaris calculates orbital decay, followed by uncontrolled re-entry, will occur in thirty-eight days.”

Abbot seemed unmoved. “Uncontrolled makes a difference? That thing wouldn’t stand a chance anywhere near those velocities, under any circumstances.”

It was well known that many Agency careerists held a professional grudge against Polaris. They saw it as one more dangerous upstart trying to usurp manned spaceflight from its rightful place: under the government’s purview. This crowd was giving the public an unjustified impression that flying through space was now uniformly safe and even routine. They all expected it to be like the movies. “It’s the twenty-first century, where’s my flying car?” Abbot had often mocked. And worse, the business was making a tidy profit to boot. Everyone should have known that spaceflight was, well,
expensive
.

For that reason alone, Hammond’s success had frosted a lot of people…the same people who Audrey needed to get onto her side, quickly.

Undaunted, she continued. “They haven’t made a final determination of that yet. Empty, it appears to be a pretty fluffy vehicle. But they’re absolutely certain a ballistic re-entry would not be survivable.”

Abbot studiously folded his hands over his belly. “I can’t imagine they have enough consumables to last that long in any case. Go on, please.”

She could tell this current line of argument would go nowhere.
Save it for later; get the big idea sold first,
she told herself. At least the next point would play to his assumptions.

“You’re absolutely correct on that point, sir. They have maybe one week’s worth of consumables at the outside. That estimate is five hours old, and I suspect it’s not improved since. Based on the specs they’ve sent me, it could have gotten worse.” She was thinking of the hydrogen and oxygen they’d have to draw down to keep getting power from the fuel cells.

Abbot said nothing; Bledsoe likewise remained silent. No question, this was Audrey’s show. Ronnie was sympathetic, but it would be the Center director’s call. She had to close the deal with him, or those people were sure as dead.

Audrey was exhausted, and there was no more time to screw around. Decisions had to be made now.

She drew in a breath.
Cut to the chase, the man said
… “Dr. Abbot, I’m not going to mince words. I know you don’t like Polaris; you probably think Art Hammond is a dangerous snake-oil salesman, and any of our people who went to work for him are gutless traitors.”

“And you would be right, Miss Wilkes,” he said with a penetrating stare.

At least that took his attention off my boobs,
she thought.
Good
. “There’s no time for us to study this in a committee, and I’m too damned tired to argue with you.”

She heard a stifled cough. From the corner of an eye, she saw Bledsoe grin. “We are their only hope. If we don’t mount some kind of rescue, seven people are going to die by the end of this week. Real people with real lives and real families. And if we can’t find it in us to pull this off, they might as well just blow open a hatch now and get it over with. So NASA can stand by, let them suffocate and get cremated on re-entry—all live on TV—or we can show the world what we’re still capable of…also live on TV.”

She kept her hands tightly clasped over crossed knees, looking for a change in his expression… a raised eyebrow, anything. Abbot slowly unfolded his hands and laid them flat on his desk, his eyes seeming to bore holes right through her.

I blew it.

The silent treatment went on for what felt like an eternity. Without taking his gaze away from her, he finally asked Bledsoe: “Ronald, I presume you have someone who can cover this young lady’s shift?”

Her heart sank.
That’s it, then. I’ve talked my way clean out of a job and left those people for dead.

The Mission Ops director glanced towards Audrey. “We have people who can step in. I can fill in as Flight if need be.”

“Good,” he sighed. “Miss Wilkes, this will certainly beat watching overpaid Ph.D.’s doing high-school science experiments up there. You’re in charge of this little expedition. Make it happen.”

A surprised blink of her eyes was the only reaction she dared muster. Jumping from her chair and screaming would have been inappropriate.

…

Audrey had one item of business left before she could finally get some sleep, though she probably wouldn’t see the inside of her home for several days. This was what she got for volunteering, after all…

She plopped tiredly into an empty chair beside the day shift Flight Director. He was surprised to see her back so soon, but before he could say anything she cut in.