Perigee (5 page)

Ryan couldn’t hear the reply over the surrounding noise and shrugged it off, figuring that retirement must be looming large in his thoughts.

5

Polaris AeroSpace
Denver

They followed the “yellow brick road”, a safe pathway painted along the pavement that led into the main hub complex. A wide hallway encircled the building, providing some measure of soundproofing for the warren of offices and maintenance areas along the opposite side. Stopping at a door marked CREW OPS, they paused to swipe their ID badges across a digital latch and entered a bustling room, brightly lit and filled with network terminals.

Pilots hovered over nearly every computer, catching up on business or getting a better look at their next trip’s weather. A gaggle of others congregated around a long table, programming updates into their flight manual tablets. The incessant drone of printers, added to the noise of innumerable conversations, made for a clamor that had caused Tom to describe the environment as “brain surgery in a bingo parlor”. He went to locate flight plans for their next trip as Ryan made a beeline for an open terminal.

“Flight 1202?” he asked a clerk.

“Just a sec, please,” a harried young man replied. He took a minute to clear up some item with another crew’s paperwork then looked for Gentry’s.

“Nothing yet,” he said after a fruitless search. “It may be a while. Whole system’s really shot to hell tonight. Most of the northeast is below minimums. Don’t know how much it’ll impact us here yet but a couple of feeders already had to divert. Europe’s not shaping up much better.”

Tom resisted the urge to groan aloud. Add in their maintenance problem, and no one would have any idea what was going on until nearly the last minute. His crew had already been on duty six hours with another trip still ahead of them. Their next leg to Tokyo could be complicated enough on a good day, which this wasn’t shaping up to be.

That’s why they pay us the big bucks
, he thought. “Thanks anyway. Let me know when you hear something from dispatch,” he replied, though he knew the young man would surely forget about them in the rush.

Resigned to waiting, he headed off to find Ryan. As he waded into the crowd of pilots in navy-blue uniforms, a petite woman sidled up alongside wearing the same sleek attire. A short bob of blond hair accented the four gold Captain’s stripes on each shoulder of her jumpsuit.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, big guy,” she said, punching him in the arm. Penny Stratton was fairly new to the company, but her status as a former space shuttle commander had moved her well up the unofficial pecking order. She had quickly earned the respect of the old boy’s club with her piloting skills, iron will, and clean good looks; a combination which threw many would-be competitors off balance.

And she had always enjoyed a natural rapport with Tom. Though not a former astronaut himself, they had traveled many of the same paths over the years before ending up together here.

Genuinely glad to see her, his mood lifted a bit. “Lighten up there, Rocky,” he answered, dramatically nursing the spot where she’d landed a punch.

“Wuss.”

“Cheap shot. Was that your flight that just blocked in?” he asked.

“Actually I’m the staff puke in flight control this week,” she replied with a mock salute. The control center kept a line captain around in case a pilot’s perspective was needed for any problem-solving. “Got time for some chow?” she asked. “Just flew dead-head up from home this morning, and you know how airline food is.”

Tom knew the punch line, but took her bait anyway. “It’s like a jet engine.”

Penny finished for him. “It sucks and blows.”

“How’s everything back in Houston, anyway?” he asked with some concern, slightly changing the subject. They were accustomed to socializing in short bursts between talking shop.

“Life on the opposite side of the clock. You know how it is,” she replied with a cocked eyebrow that said far more than her words let on.

Tom certainly did know. He sometimes had barely kept his own family together over the years, which wasn’t helped by a pilot’s lifestyle. Gone for days at a stretch, crossing time zones by the fistful, they’d return to their families in a narcoleptic-zombie state. In the end, time could not be denied and took its toll on everyone. “Tell you what. I can catch up to Ryan later. He’s big enough to look after himself, even goes to the bathroom on his own now,” he said with a sly grin.

“Meet you upstairs, then?”

…

Tom spotted her in a far corner of the cafeteria, staring out the window while idly turning a cup of black coffee in her hands. Outside, the clouds had broken enough to reveal the sun setting behind the Rockies. Her mind clearly elsewhere, she barely noticed him work through the crowded room and slide into the booth. He sat there quietly for a few moments as she tapped idly at her cup.

“Sorry,” she sighed, finally acknowledging him. “I’m still sorting out a lot of things in my head. It’s been quite a day, you know?”

“Actually, I don’t,” he said. “Want to tell me about it?” Penny usually wasn’t one to beat around the bush.

She gazed down and sipped from her mug. “Not entirely sure I know. Joe’s been real distant lately, and when he’s not he’s just…punchy. On a tripwire. I suppose it’s always been there under the surface since I came here, but it’s really gotten bad in the last few months. I don’t even know how to talk to him anymore.”

“You guys have been together, what, two years?” Tom asked rhetorically. He’d been at the wedding, after all.

“What’s your point?”

“Look, I don’t want to sound like a shrink...” he began tentatively. Penny shot him a skeptical look in response.

“...but I’m going to anyway,” he continued. “You both came into this widowed.”

“Dan had been gone a long time,” she protested. “And we both knew the risks,” she said, reciting NASA’s party line.

“And until now, Joe’s only known you as a semi-retired astronaut,” Tom interjected. “He wasn’t there when you were working eighty-hour weeks just to get noticed.”

She was forced to concede that point. A well-kept secret of astronaut life had been that far too many overachievers were funneled into too few opportunities for an actual mission, which made for brutal competition over the most trivial assignments. After her husband’s death aboard
Orion
, Penny stayed around just long enough to help wind down the program and had finally left at Tom’s behest.

Penny nodded in silent agreement. “I’m gone half the time and he’s left holding the bag. Maybe he’s wondering what comes next and doesn’t like the answer,” she thought, letting the idea hang for a moment as she absentmindedly twirled a strand of hair. “I’m home for a week at a time. You’d think we’d be able to make the most of that. It’s gotten to where I can’t wait to get back to work, but can’t leave because things are…unfinished,” she lamented. “I either want to take a stick to him or sashay through the front door naked just to get his attention. Depends on what kind of mood I’m in.”

Tom considered her remarks in silence, apparently for longer than he’d realized.

“
Hello!
You still with me?” she asked, slightly annoyed.

“Couldn’t help but think about my own problems a while back,” he said, looking up in embarrassment. “And I’m afraid people will get the wrong idea,” he added self-consciously.

“I never knew!” she laughed, and fluttered a hand in front of her face. “Sorry pal, you’re too old for me. But you’re right, I know how this place can be,” she said with a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. They used to get a kick out of fabricating wild stories just to see how long it would take the rumors to get around the company. “Your record is what, three days?” she asked with a smile, having the same thought. “The one that had everyone thinking Hammond was going to sell the company back to Leo Taggart? The union got pretty worked up over that one.”

“Art sure went on the warpath,” he replied with his own wily grin. “Wasn’t much choice but to own up to it. If we hadn’t just started proving flights I’d probably be hauling rubber chickens for some fly-by-night freight dogs.”

“Art also knows you’re not exactly a big union guy,” she said, leaning back and gulping down the last of her coffee. Their seniority rules were the sole reason Tom hadn’t been appointed chief pilot as soon as the Clippers had gone into service. “Back to the subject, or would you rather eat?”

“Eat. Not long until I have to fly,” he said, checking his watch as a waitress finally appeared. It was apparently a busy evening for everyone.

…

As they traded stories, another man strode briskly down the long corridor outside. Other hurried workers perfunctorily stepped aside as he passed. Crisply dressed, he habitually swept a thumb around the waistband of his trousers. Arthur Hammond turned the corner and ended his walk at a set of double doors leading to the flight control center, his traditional last stop of each day.

Hammond immediately noticed the room carried a low but steady rumble of conversation, the only indication that the route system was falling into disarray. Running an airline—
spaceline
, he kept correcting himself—was an exercise in chaos management, much more so than manufacturing had ever been. He’d frequently compared it to playing chess, except that as soon as you arrange the pieces some idiot kicks the board over and announces a rule change.

With that in mind, he made his way to the manager’s station and looked over the consoles. No internal phone lines lit up, no outstation lines lit, no aircraft calls.
Wow. That can’t be right
,
he thought. “What’s going on, Charlie? Anything I need to know about?”

Grant swiveled about in his chair. “Plenty, but nothing that can’t wait,” he answered with a knowing look. “The front that blew through here is going to be screwing up the Northeast corridor tomorrow morning. There’s a nasty little system forming over Europe, and we’ve got one bird still down for maintenance. We’ll be scraping each other off the ceiling by midnight.”

He knew Grant wasn’t kidding. The flight schedule ran like a tightly choreographed ballet, and it didn’t take many missteps to wreck the whole show. Broken aircraft, sick crewmembers, or bad weather could each create enough trouble on their own. The problem was they had a tendency to all converge at once.

Hammond took another look around, appreciatively gauging the activity. “So if you’re on top of things, what makes you think I’m staying out here?” he jabbed. “I have to cut the cord with you sometime.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “And I’ve got some beachfront property down in Pueblo to sell you. Whose cord needs cut there, boss? You’re the one who should be going home right now—or taking care of the pile of crap in your inbox,” he goaded, pointing back down the hall towards his office. “Penny’s in tonight to babysit us, we’ll be fine.”

Hammond nodded glumly in defeat. Grant had him dead to rights as usual. “Good point. Where the hell is Stratton, anyway? I’m not paying her to schmooze with her buddies.”

“Last I heard she was down in crew ops, schmoozing away,” Grant laughed. “That’s okay…it keeps those guys off our backs up here. Give yourself a break and get lost, Arthur.”

“All right, I’m going,” Hammond said, waving his hands in surrender. Much as he enjoyed the energy of the control center, his real job had to come first. That so much activity occurred after hours made it all the more difficult for him to pull back. His ultimate responsibility was for the entire company to run safely and on time, and he was continually surprised at how often those two goals seemed at odds with each other.

…

In a corner room off of the cavernous hangar floor, Walt Donner waited for an avionics technician to finish testing the balky engine controls.

“Can’t find a thing wrong with it,” the young man said nonchalantly, studiously turning the module over in his hands as he emerged from the test cell. He was Asian, fresh out of school by the looks of him, but the Aviation Electronics field tended to attract the younger techno-geek types. “Good current, normal resistance, logic and bit checks are perfect. I cleaned up a little crud on the chips, but that’s all. Your problem’s somewhere else, bro.”

That drew a derisive laugh. “You ain’t kidding! Knew damn well I’d just end up signing it off as ‘could not duplicate’,” he groused.

The technician agreed. “I don’t doubt something’s going on here but it’s not showing up on my rig, and I bench-tested it eight ways from Sunday. If it has the same problem in flight, it’ll just be the next station’s problem to solve, right? Which gets you off the hook,” he offered in consolation.

“If we can’t find nothing wrong, then it ain’t our fault anyway.”

“Didn’t know we were getting blamed for anything, Walt.” He was notorious for taking work problems personally.

Donner was oblivious to the rebuke and continued ranting. “I swear these birds were made by wizards or something. Same reason nobody can work on their own damned cars anymore. Who knows if those dumbass pilots even configured the switches right in the first place?”

“Okay Walt,” he said coolly, carefully showing no reaction since it was clear Donner’s mood wasn’t improving. “I’ll go finish the paperwork so you can be on your way. Anything else?” he asked, hoping there wouldn’t be any wild goose chases.