Perigee (9 page)

“Good man—almost forgot that! Guess I’m a little excited.”

“You
are
easily amused.”

“Just easily bored. You all set back there, Mr. Kelly?”

“Wade, please,” he said again, adding with mock bravado, “and I was born ready.” He would never admit his own trepidations to either pilot.

“Put the spurs to her,” Ryan drawled as he cinched down his four-point harness.

Tom slid the throttles forward, simultaneously unlocking a safety lever beneath his thumb to light the afterburners. This injected more fuel into an already furiously burning mixture in the tailpipes to dramatically boost their thrust. The steady rumble of the engines suddenly became a howling vibrato as the plane bolted ahead.

“Whoa,” Wade gasped against the sudden acceleration.

“Warned you.”

Their speed and climb angle had to be pitch-perfect, or they would not make Singapore in a single hop much less set any records. The flight computers were programmed to precisely hit those targets, but Tom was so closely following the yoke and throttle that it was hard to see the computers were in control. He was prepared to hand-fly it all the way over the top if necessary. “Autothrottles are working so far,” he finally said. “Another nice surprise.”

…

Marcy was likewise pressed hard into her seat at the rear of the cabin, but kept an attentive eye on her passengers.

Magrath sat by himself up front with his staff sequestered in the seats behind him. Marcy watched as one alternately looked out the window and down at a notebook in his lap. He appeared to be earnestly working on something, one more person who didn’t feel the need to listen to her safety briefs.
He’s going to have to pick a head position fast
, she thought, and thumbed a switch on the microphone cable in her lap. “Please keep your head and arms in one position for your own safety. Just lay back against the seat and you’ll have a nice ride.”

The man’s head came to a stop just as Tom’s voice could be heard over the cabin speakers. “Good evening everyone. If you’re watching the display up at the front of the cabin, you’ll see our speed and altitude. Once we reach Mach seven, we’ll pull into a steeper climb and turn this into a real rocket ride for you. You’ll eventually feel about three times normal gravity. This will be a longer boost than you might be used to, but you’ll get to enjoy a longer weightless period when it’s over. We’ll top out with an apogee a little over four hundred nautical miles with a speed of almost twelve thousand miles an hour. We’ll arrive at Singapore in ninety minutes.”

…

The
Austral Clipper
thundered across the night sky above Nebraska, faintly silhouetted against the darkness by its blazing exhaust. Farther south, another Clipper could be seen on its own high-speed climb to space. Far removed from interfering city lights, anyone watching from the ground could discern their own shadow by the distant glow from above. For a few minutes they were the brightest objects in the sky, man-made meteors climbing swiftly into the night.

14

Denver
One day earlier

At the crew hotel on the other side of the airfield, Ryan was just thinking about catching Marcy downstairs for lunch when his phone rang. It was a control center number, no doubt crew scheduling calling with a new trip.

“Hunter,” he answered with feigned irritation, “what do you want?”
Hope they don’t have to airmail me somewhere,
he thought. Deadheading into a new trip was never a good deal—arrive bone-tired from one flight, only to pick up your own and fly it to wherever they tell you.

“This is Frank Kirby.” Surprised, Ryan pulled the phone from his ear to double-check the number.
Why is the chief pilot calling me…and from a scheduling phone?

Whatever it was, there had to be a good reason. “Afternoon Frank,” he replied pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”

“We need your crew to ferry a spare plane to Frankfurt. 508 got struck by lightning on final. It’s sitting in a hangar with pinhole burns through the nose and tail, and there’s a maze of fried electronics in between,” he explained. Lightning strikes were a subtle problem that rarely left behind the smoking holes that were popularly imagined. “The whole fleet’s scattered to hell and gone, and we’re trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So you’ll ferry into position, recover the live leg back here, then pick up your normal line to Sydney. Sound good?”

Ryan kneaded the back of his neck, wondering why the Chief Pilot was calling him for this.
One thing at a time, hot dog. Answer the question first
.
“Sounds great. I was afraid you guys were about to deadhead me somewhere. When’s our show time?”

“1900 local.”

“I’ll be there. Who am I flying with?” he asked, hoping to lead their boss into answering his unspoken question.

“Gentry, if we can find him,” Kirby grumbled, not attempting to mask his irritation. He was famously short-tempered, a very senior captain who was barely tolerant of all the rocket-jockeys that had invaded his airline. “That’s why I’m calling you, slick. We need to get him briefed ASAP.”

Goody—more surprises
, Ryan thought. “I can find him,” he answered helpfully. “He doesn’t live that far away…I’ll drive down there if I have to. Can’t imagine why you guys haven’t located him,” he wondered aloud, and tried to change the subject. “So…struck by lightning, huh?”

“Twice.”

“
Twice?
”

“Did I stutter? Two strikes on approach while they were diverting into Cologne. They never made it to Frankfurt. Just find Gentry.”

15

Austral Clipper

“Heating up out there,” Tom observed as the familiar reddish tint spread across the nose. “Remind the pax for me, will you?”

“Got it,” Ryan said as he grabbed the intercom phone. “Good evening again folks, this is your first officer. We’ve just passed Mach 5, so you might notice the tips of the wings are starting to glow. That’s okay, but it means your windows are heating up too. Until we get into space, for your own safety please don’t touch them. Believe me, they get hot. Don’t ask how I know,” he ended glibly.

Chances were very good that no one could reach the windows anyway. They were arranged as parallel rows of portholes, each about the size of a dinner plate and by design almost a full arm’s length from any adjacent seats.

Two more chimes from Marcy confirmed the passengers remained safely in their seats. “Cabin is set for climb.”

“O2 inlets closed?”

“Affirmative. Both sides are buttoned up tight, all access points barber-poled.”

“Okay then,” Tom said. “Hang on to your butts.” There was an even more dramatic push backwards as he smoothly pulled the control yoke into his lap, setting up a steeper climb angle.

Austral Clipper’s
nose and wings glowed cherry red as it shot out of the atmosphere. Hurtling past two hundred thousand feet, nothing about it resembled an airliner anymore. Aerodynamic controls became useless as the air they needed to bite into was rapidly left behind. From now on, any adjustments would be made using their reaction-control jets.

Confident they were holding pitch angle, Tom stole a sideways glance from a side window. He found the view to be forever irresistible. They were above Canada now, streaking towards Labrador. Sparsely lit cities receded beneath them as the sky ahead transformed from deep violet to black. Icy Hudson Bay fanned out towards the northern horizon, barely visible in the early gray light as the land fell away.

Faint wisps of seawater traced along barren shoreline in the rapidly approaching dawn. They would soon be over Greenland, with barely enough time to see its immense icecap painted by the early sunrise. It would pass mostly unobserved beneath them as they raced along the top of their arc over Europe, too early yet to roll over for a look.

…

Wow. So this is what the astronauts felt like
, Wade thought, then realized that he was about to join their ranks. “I must weigh a ton,” he grunted from his perch behind the pilots. The plane vibrated steadily but the ride had become much smoother as they left the surrounding envelope of air. The dark sky ahead was all he could see; they were climbing too steeply for him to make out the horizon but for a fleeting glimpse through the corners of a side window.

“More like six hundred pounds,” Ryan said. “But it gets your attention.”

Wade searched the barely-familiar displays on the control panel, looking for their speed and altitude. There it was: 8500 knots and two hundred fifty thousand feet.
Holy crap—that’s like Mach 12
, he marveled. “So you guys still use knots and feet?”

“Not for long. We have to keep ATC happy until we cross the Karman boundary,” Ryan explained, referring to the semi-official threshold of where space began. “Units will switch over once we pass 100 kilometers.”

“When’s shutdown?”

Ryan pointed at the center display. “See the eight ball?”

Wade saw the familiar attitude indicator, which showed their position relative to the horizon. Below it was a less-familiar graph of their vertical profile.

“Just below that spaghetti chart,” Ryan said, “are speed and altitude targets.”

Wade could see the empty graph filling in as they approached the shutdown point, accompanied by a timer counting down steadily. Hit those targets, and the rest of their flight would be governed purely by physics. As the astronauts used to say, Isaac Newton would take over the wheel.

…

Colin Magrath looked out the window above his shoulder as they thundered past three hundred twenty thousand feet—over sixty miles high. They were now technically in space, but it had been impossible to tell the difference for the last few minutes. The sky was deep black with earth’s curvature clearly visible. The atmosphere below traced a distinct and startlingly thin blue glow along the horizon. They would be weightless soon and he could breathe easy again.

Bloody hell
, he thought.
They weren’t mucking around, were they?
He tightened his grip on the armrests until the pain in his knuckles distracted him from those sensations he wanted to block out. He found himself longing for the simple company of his assistants seated behind, but would never let anyone know how truly terrified he was of flying.

16

Austral Clipper

“Propellant state?” Tom asked, not taking his eyes off the heads-up projection. He couldn’t afford to spend much time with his head down looking for numbers.

“Eighty-three grand,” Ryan replied. “O2 at sixty.”

A new symbol appeared in his display, the hollow diamond of a velocity target creeping up to signal their shutdown point. A quick look down at the profile graph agreed, telling him the flight computer should command a throttle chop right on time. So far, he hadn’t seen any of the hiccups they’d experienced before. The diamond began to brighten as it drew closer to merge with their shutdown target. “Coming up on MECO.”

“I show same. Standing by,” Ryan confirmed, once again keeping one hand over the autopilot cutoff. He turned to face their observer. “That’s main-engine cutoff.”

“Can’t wait,” Wade grunted in reply.

…

Denver

Penny began to relax as she watched the same information on their monitors. A crisp white triangle traced along the arc of 501’s path, marking their position as they closed in on the predicted shutdown point.
Those guys are really smoking
, she thought, checking their energy state against her own rough calculations.

“Clipper team, this is Stratton.”

One of the dispatchers picked up on the loop. “Go ahead.”

“They look good from where I sit. Anything I need to know?” she asked, preparing to call Hammond.

“All go, not that it matters much at this point. Goose Bay’s close to velocity blackout, Keflavik and Bergen are still clear if they have to divert.”

Any diversion short of their destination would be impossible in another few minutes; the flight’s ballistics would guarantee that. They were committed to some kind of suborbital hop, it was just a question of where they would end up. That sometimes made ocean crossings dicey—everything had to be working perfectly before any flight could be allowed past the no-return point. And the faster they were going, the sooner it would appear.

…

Austral Clipper

Following the shutdown projection on his display, Tom quietly recited his own mental countdown. “Cutoff in three…two…one.”

The sonorous howl still reverberating from below confirmed what their instruments showed: all three engines were still running at full power. The automated controls were still buggy. They would have to hand-fly it now, but at least they weren’t doing a skip burn.