Perigee (28 page)

“Roger that,” she muttered. They’d only have once chance at shifting orbits. “A thousand things can happen when you light a rocket motor. Only one of them is good.”

53

Houston

Audrey wanted to get up and pace, stretch her legs, run around the room…anything but sit. She had to settle for hunching down and grabbing the equipment rack handles on her console, a common stress response in mission control. Looking around, it was clear she wasn’t the only one feeling it. Half the guys on her team were hanging on with death grips.

Tension mounted as the time neared to start approach vectors, and was compounded by their inability to do anything. If that had been their vehicle, her team would have been fully immersed. Instead they found themselves struggling to curb their instincts as frustrated spectators rather than participants. She made a mental note to not allow them to be put in such a helpless position again.

Beyond the rows of controllers, a clock above the big screen dispassionately counted down the seconds. This burn would be their only chance to match orbits with the station, and there was next to nothing anyone here could do about it. If they screwed up, any conceivable risk to the ISS would take the better part of a day to manifest itself. But it would guarantee the deaths of seven people she didn’t even know, and perhaps six more she did know.

It was all up to the Europeans now...along with two pilots she’d never met.

…

Austral Clipper

“Chronometers synched?” Tom asked. Timing would be crucial.

“Dialing in Houston’s clock now,” Ryan confirmed, one hand hovering over his keypad. “Three, two, one…
hack
,” he said, stabbing the screen with a flourish. Both were now counting down in concert with each other. “All set, skipper.”

Tom looked over the sequence of events with tired eyes. “Just in time. First retrograde burn in…three minutes.” He keyed his headset. “Denver, 501 checking in. You guys awake down there?”

Penny’s ever-steady voice answered. “Just waiting on you part-timers up there. We show you go for course correction. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

“We’re go, checklist complete,” he replied, then whispered at Ryan as he covered the microphone boom. “Assuming
they
didn’t forget anything.”

“501, didn’t copy your last. Say again?” she asked mockingly.

Agh! These mikes are sensitive
, he thought with a frown. “Ah, Denver, 501 confirms go for retrograde burn. We were, um, talking about the Europeans.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Don’t worry, we’ve got you boys covered. This ain’t my first rodeo.”

That was surely the truth. “Sure could use you up here right now.”

“I’m as up there as can be, hot dog. You just don’t know it. The force is strong with me.”

“Not strong enough to will us back onto the ground,” he said with creeping fatigue, and felt a tickle across his scalp like before. He looked over at Ryan, who seemed not to notice anything weird.
Need to let him take over and get some sleep, he thought. I’m getting punchy.

Static filled the air during a long pause. “I would if I could, hon. Lots of people want you back home.”

54

Denver

Penny’s watch was the only timepiece in the room that was set to local. It beeped quietly, letting her know it was time to make an important call. She picked up the receiver and dialed the Gentry’s private number in Castle Rock. She took great care to not disturb Elise’s routine.

“Hi,” she said cheerily. “Glad to see you made it home okay. How are you feeling?”

“Better today,” Elise said. “Comes and goes, you know?”

Thank God I don’t
, Penny thought. “You know better than to ask me that. I wouldn’t presume to.”

“I know,” she sighed. “And we both appreciate that.” Casual, polite concern was not something she tolerated well. And like her husband, she could switch gears and get down to business quickly. Penny had always wondered which one of them brought that trait out in the other. “So where are they now? When I left yesterday it sounded like you had your hands full.” She had been determined to not pay attention to any news during the interlude.

“Let’s just say I’m going to owe Houston a lot of favors. They’re hitching a ride to the space station.”

Penny explained their plans to Elise with the news that her husband’s ship was already on its way to safe harbor. But something still wasn’t connecting with her: “That sounds wonderful, but how are you going to get them off? Can they connect…dock, whatever it is?”

“No, they can’t do that either,” Penny said, and described the rest.

“This is sounding like not such good news, then.”

“I know. But I have to tell you, I’ve run through scenarios like this back at NASA and have confidence in it,” she said, sounding like a cookie-cutter astronaut again. “It’s their only real choice. We can get four people out at once with those rescue balls, plus the two suited-up crewmembers.”

“I think that leaves one out in the cold,” Elise pointed out.

“We need one pilot in the cockpit to manage the pressurization cycles,” Penny said, rather apologetically.

She still didn’t like it, but could at least see the logic. “So everyone else gets out, and they bring a suit or one of those hamster ball things back for whoever’s left behind?” She didn’t have to guess who that would be. The captain would always be the last one out.

“That’s about the size of it, hon.”

…

Austral Clipper

The brief return of gravity had been a welcome sensation. As the tug pushed hard against them, everyone happily found they could lie back against their seats once more. The sense of relief was palpable as the force drove home the feeling that they were at last
going
somewhere, instead of hopelessly freefalling.

“Passing ascending node...shutdown in five...four…three…two…one,” Ryan said evenly. Main engine cutoff occurred on cue, and the feeling of gravity once again slipped away. Earth still rolled overhead against bottomless dark, though it was more uniformly distant now that the ATV had circularized their orbit.

“How’d our numbers look down there?” Tom asked. After Penny’s experience on the Block II plane, they had only dared turn on one flight computer.

“Stand by…they’re looking at residuals now,” Penny said, and came back after a few moments. “Okay boys, here’s the verdict…perigee three forty-four, apogee three fifty-six decimal two. Inclination five-one decimal six, point two relative to ISS. Good enough for now.”

“Sweetness,” Ryan said, to no one in particular. “That at least gets us in the same zip code.”

“Felt good up here,” Tom replied. “Please send our regards to the wizards in France.” He pulled his headset off and rubbed his temples. “Thank goodness. They only had enough prop to try this once.”

Ryan nodded. “Changing altitude doesn’t take much if you time the burns right, but plane changes are a killer. Shuttle never could carry its full capacity up here, all because we had to go and partner with the Russkies.”

Wade had been observing silently from the jumpseat. “Why the political critique?” he challenged. “How is that relevant?”

“Because the station was really designed by politicians,” Ryan replied, perhaps too sharply. “They wanted to make a big show out of partnering with old adversaries, and reworked the whole design based on old Mir modules. The Russian launch site is down there in Kazakhstan,” he emphasized with a jerk of a thumb as West Asia conveniently rolled over the horizon.

“High latitudes make that much difference?”

“Huge. It’s a lot easier to launch from the inclination you want to end up at, instead of doing what we just did.”

“All about weight, like any other kind of flying,” Tom added. “Makes more sense if you think of it as added distance...which it is, really. You need more propellant for the climb uphill, so there’s less payload margin. And all so some empty-headed politicians could feel like they’d accomplished something important.”

“Sounds like someone has an axe to grind,” Wade said.

“Maybe,” he admitted. Tom had come close to becoming an astronaut himself, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. He often wished his old friend, Penny’s first husband, had followed his lead. The same kind of top-down mandates that he’d just railed against had ultimately led to the disastrous
Orion 1
mission six years ago. “You know, I saw a Saturn V launch when I was a kid. Now
that
was a space program. If Congress is going to throw my tax money down a hole anyway, that would be the particular one I choose.”

Wade pointed toward the horizon. “Right now I’m content with the one waiting for us out there, half Russian or not.”

Tom laughed. “Touché.”

55

ISS

Poole searched for any sign of the approaching spaceplane. As big as it was, he had expected to find it by now. He scanned the region of space where it should have appeared, not looking directly in one spot for very long, allowing his night vision to tease out pinpricks of light he might otherwise miss.

A faint glint finally caught his eye, not quite where he expected, and chalked it up to using offset vision to spot it. But the polished metal of
Austral Clipper’s
dorsal hull was unmistakable, dazzling in fresh light as it silently emerged from night side.
There she is
. Still dozens of miles away, it briefly flashed like a beacon suspended in the darkness before receding into the background.

“Tally ho,” Poole called down from the cupola while lifting a pair of binoculars. “Big sucker, too,” he said, not hiding his lingering doubts. “You sure we’ll be able to hold on to her?” he asked his crewmate.

“
Yah
,” Becker replied. “The docking collar can handle the torque. That is no concern.”

“You’re leaving something out.”

“The plane’s exhaust nozzles are the unknown,” he said dispassionately. “If they can’t carry the load, the ship could…
detach
when we connect the arm.”

“The structures team in Houston had a good look at the specs,” Poole said. “No one held anything back, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I am always concerned by the unknown, Simon. We can predict loads, but we cannot know how the total system will behave outside of specifications,” he observed. “Not until it happens.”

He was right, of course. “You’re always full of good news, Max,” Poole said as he surveyed the station from within his ring of windows. Above him, their delicate solar panels extended over a hundred meters in either direction. If anything went screwy in close, they’d almost certainly be damaged.

“Houston, CDR,” he called into his headset. “We’re ready here. Just make sure those boys bring her in nice and steady.”

…

Austral Clipper

They fell towards the station tail-first, one wing pointed toward Earth as they approached from slightly below. They would not be able to actually see their target until they were almost on top of it. “Why is it we seem destined to back up into everything?” Tom asked in mock frustration.

“It’s called ‘anti-normal’ direction, if I recall,” Ryan said. Once the approach burn was finished, they would yaw around 90 degrees and match rates relative to the station.

That drew a laugh. “Anti-normal?” he said. “That’s an apt enough description. Heck of way to join up a formation.”

“It messed with me a little in the sims,” Ryan agreed. He was dressed out in one of the emergency pressure suits; the only items left were his helmet, gloves, and life-support pack. “It’s like skidding through a turn on ice. We should be able to view the station coming up on our left,” he said, tapping the windshield, “once the ATV shuts down. The idea is to maintain a nice, steady yaw rate and come out of it right at cutoff.”

“You ready to do this?” Tom asked with concern. “We’re putting an awful lot on your shoulders here.”

The younger pilot thought about that for the first time. “Guess I’m just being task-oriented, skipper, but it makes sense. I’ve been through the rendezvous and docking sims, might as well be flying this leg.”

“And the spacewalk?”

“Always wanted to,” he said. “Sounds like the pros are going to do most of the work. We’re just along for the ride. Customer service for the passengers.”

“Station-keeping shouldn’t be that hard once we’re in proximity,” Tom said. “Everything sounds intuitive once we’re parked there.”

“Except for the fore-and-aft part being backwards,” Ryan said skeptically.

“Ship gets bigger, push the paddle forward,” Tom recited, tapping their jury-rigged translation controls. Each was marked with permanent ink over some duct tape they’d scrounged from the supply bin. “Ship gets smaller, push it aft.”