Perigee (39 page)

“You got me there,” Ryan admitted. “Just have to keep trying.”

“I have a better idea,” Max said, firming his grip on the handle. “Renee, please translate back slightly. About one half-meter.”

He held tight as she pulled them back with the arm, and the latch swung free. Turning it, he let go and pushed the door inward along its track.

“Nice work,” Wade observed.

“We improvise a lot up here,” he explained. “You would not believe it sometimes.”

“After this week, there’s not much I wouldn’t believe,” Ryan said, pushing off into the open door. Using the inside latch as a tie down, he carefully lashed another safety line to it. “All right, I’m secure.”

Max slipped his boots free of their foothold, pulling himself and Wade into the ship. It felt like the morgue it had become. With no power, the only light came from the unfiltered glare of the sun which cast deep shadows into the darkened cabin.

Ryan was already quickly pulling himself toward an electrical panel. “I can turn on the emergency lights from here,” he said, “but that’s it. Can’t put power on until we get in the cockpit.”

“And you’re certain we can get in?” Wade asked, concerned about the cockpit security door.

“It’ll work,” Ryan replied. “Once the power is gone, the lock assumes we’re shut down and resets itself. I should be able to open it from outside.” Recessed lighting along the ceiling came alive as he activated the batteries, bringing some welcome warmth back to the cabin.

“Never thought I’d be glad to see this place again,” Wade said.

“We’re not done yet,” Ryan answered grimly as he sifted through a storage compartment, sending blankets and other random items drifting by.

“There it is,” he finally said, pulling out a thick rubberized bag. “One more thing we hope never gets used in flight. You ready to do this?” he asked Wade.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he gulped. “Even if we can’t pull off the rest, I don’t want to just leave him up here any more than you do. Wouldn’t be right.”

“I’m with you,” Ryan agreed as he worked the cockpit latch. “But I’m not going to enjoy this.”

He opened the door and drifted inside.

77

Austral Clipper

Tom had fortunately spent his final moments in the sleeping bag they had rigged days earlier. Rigor mortis had long since set in, and it otherwise would have made their work impossible. They proceeded silently, carefully finding footing on the embedded Velcro so as to not go tumbling around during an already difficult task. They gently zipped him up and carried him back to the cargo deck, carefully attaching the bag to the tether. Each remained for a few moments to quietly pay their respects before Max pulled him across.

You did it, skipper,
Ryan thought.
You got us all out safely. Now it’s up to us to get you home.

I’m already there
, he imagined the reply.

“I’m taking care of them as best I can,” Ryan whispered as he opened the big door. “Let’s hope this doesn’t flush it all down the drain.”

…

Emerging from the hatch, Ryan gave Max a thumbs-up to signal he was ready to proceed with the rest of their plan.

He drifted into the cockpit and settled into the left seat with some hesitation, considering what had transpired to lead him here. Wade had more eagerly strapped in to the copilot’s seat and was already turning through the laminated quick-reference book, getting himself familiar with the ship and its controls.

The burden of command weighed heavier than he anticipated. The fate of their company, his friends…all rested on his shoulders now. There were no passengers aboard, just a willing copilot by his side. The guy may not be fully checked out but Ryan wasn’t about to call him an amateur, either.

As the panel lights came on, both men plugged their suit umbilical cords into the ship’s life support and would breathe from its emergency system now.

Wade had been observing Ryan in silence for several minutes. “My turn to ask now. Are you ready to do this?”

His face showed grim determination. “You’d better believe it. I want to go home,” he said, pushing the microphone switch. “Max, we’re ready. You all set out there?”

“Affirmative. I am back on the footrest.”

Satisfied, Hunter scanned the primary flight displays. “We’ll have full power soon. There’s enough juice to run critical systems through retro burn and re-entry,” he said, and noted in relief that Wade was still intently studying their flight manual. “Any questions?”

“Are you for real?” Wade snorted. “I don’t even have that much fixed-wing time, other than warming the right seat in someone else’s airplane.”

“So kind of like this?”

He nodded, smiling. “Yeah, kind of like this.”

“I’d say you’re ready then. Critical procedures have red tabs: re-entry and no-power landing. You’ll find that one in the ‘Non-Normal’ section,” he added wryly.

“Figured as much,” Wade replied. This was definitely ‘non-normal’. “So the re-entry profile is no different?”

“Oh, it’s
different
all right. You won’t find anything in there about the skip profile we’re about to fly. That’s just to bleed off energy a little more slowly, so we don’t take all that compression heating at once. But setting up for it is the same as normal. I’m just going to set alpha a couple of degrees lower,” he said, referring to their angle of attack.

“You guys fly skipping trajectories on the longer legs anyway, right? So this shouldn’t be that different?” Wade asked hopefully. The procedure transmitted from Denver would enable them to glance off the upper atmosphere twice, at a shallow enough angle to skip back into space. It would absorb some of their velocity and cool them down after some brief heating. The next pass would get them fully back into the atmosphere at something closer to their normal re-entry speed.

“Yes and no,” Hunter said. “Yeah, we let her settle back in the atmosphere and hop back out, but that’s with thrust coming up from idle. This’ll be a tad dicey with no power. We’re light enough, but our angles need to be dead-center or we sink right down.”

“There you go again. I was just starting to feel okay about this.”

“Let me finish the power-on checklist, then we’ll brief the re-entry procedure. That’ll make you feel like a pilot again.”

“You’re putting an awful lot of faith in my abilities,” Wade observed dourly.

“I just hope we don’t get ramp-checked,” he joked. FAA inspectors could randomly walk up to any plane and quiz the flight crew. “Might get in trouble if someone finds out I let you play copilot.”

78

Denver

Arthur Hammond strode to the front of the control room and stood before the wall screens. Clasping his hands behind his back, he looked over the group of anxious controllers. The normal hum of activity became absolutely quiet.

He coughed, clearing his throat.

“Reports of my demise,” he said, “have been greatly exaggerated.” They rewarded him with anxious laughter.

“So let’s cut the crap. You’ve all no doubt heard the rumors that this whole affair has put the company in trouble...well, they’re mostly true,” he said, pausing to see that he had indeed captured their full attention. “It would help our case greatly if we could get that plane back on the ground. We have the opportunity to do just that. So we’re going to ‘borrow’ the European tug for the thrust needed to de-orbit. It’ll happen when they move away from the docking node to make room for that Russian supply ship, and the retro burn will occur over our East Coast. They’ll do two atmospheric skips over about three-quarters of an orbit to land on the West Coast ninety minutes later.”

The room had grown unusually quiet. “I know a lot of this is beyond your experience. So stay focused and don’t be afraid to speak up if you see anything turning sour...Charlie?”

Grant looked to each member of their small re-entry team. Penny gave a thumbs-up to confirm that Houston was still playing ball. “We’re go.”

“Very well,” Hammond said, smoothing his tie. “Let’s bring them home.”

…

Austral Clipper

“Make sure those shades are down tight,” Ryan said, tugging at the window coverings. “We can’t let any light out. If the wrong people downstairs see we’ve got power on, it’s all over.”

“Got it,” Wade grunted. He was struggling with the stiff, non-reflective fabric on his side of the cockpit. “What’s this made of, anyway? Kevlar?”

“Something like that,” Hunter confirmed. “We tend to be kind of hard on stuff flying the line. The trick is to be smarter than the window shade.”

“The pressure gloves don’t make it any easier…” Wade said, tugging at the locking straps. “There…I think I’ve got the secret handshake figured out.”

The cockpit windows were now almost opaque; the flight deck seemed noticeably smaller now that its commanding view was gone. Thick frost that had gathered over the windows during the past week began to retreat from the returning warmth as sunlight peeked around the fabric coverings.

“They roll up easier, right?” Wade asked, knowing they’d have to be able to see well enough to maneuver away.

“You’d better believe it. Just make sure you don’t have anything important hanging in the breeze when you release those straps.”

Wade laughed, looking at his spacesuit-clad arms and legs. “Not likely.”

Ryan checked the clock on the FMC: twenty minutes until the Progress ship would begin final approach. “All right then, let’s brief the re-entry procedure. Still got your copy?” he asked.

Wade tapped the checklist clipped on the yoke in front of him. “Got it.”

“We bring up full systems on battery power in nineteen minutes, right before they release the manipulator arm. Retract the shades and shut the main door. You’ll go through some motions out there in the cargo deck until then. Make a show of pulling all our gear together. When that door starts coming down, get your butt back in here, pronto.”

“So I’m a diversion?”

“Absolutely. Once they see our lights come on, they’ll know something’s up. Soon as you’re in, we push off with the starboard thrusters. A two-second pulse should do it. Max will punch the ATV main engines at twenty-eight minutes. We’ll be in night side by then, so that’ll be a real show.”

“And the first skip?”

Hunter looked at his checklist. “Twenty-three minutes after that. Soon as the retro burn is done, Max will retract the docking ring and we open the number two exhaust vanes. We’ll do another two-second forward translation to pull away, and he’ll use the remaining prop to push it clear.”

“How much maneuvering prop will we have by then?” Wade asked with some concern.

“We figure about twenty-four percent. Plenty.”

“Seems like awfully low reserves.”

“We’re a bit off the map here, aren’t we?” Ryan observed. “No worries. Once we start down, that’s it. There’s not much we could do even with full tanks. The real flying starts back down in the atmosphere.”

“And that’ll be somewhere around Anchorage?”

“Farther south, actually. We’ll be down to around two-hundred thousand feet off southern Oregon. That’s when I’ll set us up for best lift-to-drag, and we glide down to Edwards. If our energy state’s too low, we’ll land short at Moses Lake,” he said, pointing out the field in eastern Washington on a chart.

“Just like that, huh?”

“Hey man, I just make it
look
easy.”

79

Austral Clipper

“Final approach in three minutes,” Becker reported. “Station is holding for your all-clear. Manipulator arm is ready to disengage.”

“Copy, three minutes,” Ryan answered before killing his outside microphone. “Showtime, Wade.”

Wade moved back to the cabin, turning on the main deck lights as he’d been shown. He unclasped a pressurized container which held the maintenance logs, and gently pushed it along to the pulley lanyards. “Coming your way,” he said, pulling the cable across. It was their final piece of insurance in case
Austral Clipper’s
re-entry failed. No matter what, some evidence would eventually make it back to Earth.

“Got it,” answered Becker. “Securing your materials in the airlock now.”

Satisfied, Wade radioed back up to Hunter in the cockpit. “They’ve got it. We’re clear.”

“Roger that. Button us up, Wade.”

Making sure his feet were tightly in the flooring, Wade reached up to the side panel and silently pulled the door shut. He could feel the shudder through his feet as the locks engaged. “Cabin door’s secured.”

“Get back up here,” Ryan almost barked. “I need you strapped in fast.”

Wade pushed off through the hatch, gently bouncing once off the ceiling before stopping himself at the cockpit door. “Fast enough?” he asked.

“Not bad. You’re getting the hang of it.”