NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR SCOTT SHAWLER
The digital clock in mission control showed twenty minutes until burn. Harley heard confirmation that uploads had been completed, that every antenna but one had been retracted—and that the big circular solar arrays were going to be rotated sideways. (Seen nose-on in its nominal configuration, Destiny looked like a hat from the Mickey Mouse Club.) “They’ll be edge-on to line of impact during the snowplow,” Shane Weldon had said, briefing not only Gabriel Jones and Brent Bynum, but Harley as well. “That will minimize damage, we hope.”
“What if we lose both arrays?” Jones asked. Harley knew that Destiny depended on Houston for guidance updates in the best of times, in a mission that followed a flight plan. This situation was far more challenging.
“Then the crew is going to have to get off Keanu in a huge hurry. They only have a couple of days’ battery power if they can’t use the arrays.”
Bynum made a face. “What the hell is a ‘snowplow’?”
“That’s pretty much what Destiny will be doing.” Weldon said, unsuccessfully keeping contempt out of his voice. “Sounds better than crash-land , don’t you think?”
Harley agreed, but talk of the landing made him ask about the equally tricky business of taking off from Keanu. Weldon turned to Josh Kennedy for this answer: “The gravity is so low that once we fire the main engine, Destiny will just pop off the surface. It should be clear of any surrounding terrain in a few seconds.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought it through.”
“I sure as fuck hope so,” Kennedy said, startling Harley with the uncharacteristic profanity.
Neither Kennedy nor Weldon needed any distractions, so Harley backed away. He knew his presence in mission control was not vital—except to him. He lived for the real-time tension of a critical event, whether it was launch or docking or touchdown . . . and in this case, the first-ever attempted “snowplow” of a vehicle that was never designed for it. This controlled adrenaline rush was what he remembered about flying jets. Mission control was the one place he could experience that rush again, if only for a few moments. . . .
But he no longer belonged here. He had been put in charge of a back room—a vital, unique resource. And whether or not he had been the ideal choice to lead it, it was his job.
As was keeping an eye on Rachel Stewart, who had been slumped in a chair in the visitors’ gallery. Gabriel Jones had found her. Harley was afraid that could prove to be awkward for the girl, a suspicion confirmed when he entered the gallery and heard: “—Remember that daddies are human, too. We’ll be selfish, we’ll be distant, we’ll be off chasing some dream of our own, but it doesn’t mean we don’t remember our daughters, that we don’t love them—”
Eyes closed and face wet with tears, the man was kneeling next to Rachel, holding her hand. Rachel’s eyes were wide and her face sent Harley a clear message: Rescue me!
“Gabriel,” Harley said, as gently as he could. “Bynum says he has a question for you.” This was an outright lie, but a useful one.
Sniffing, forcing a smile, Jones rose, patting Rachel on the shoulder. “Take care, young lady. And know that we are doing everything we can to get your daddy home safely.”
The moment the door closed behind Jones, Rachel turned to Harley. “God, that was creepy.”
“He just lost his daughter.” Harley knew that Gabriel Jones had lost his daughter years ago. “You’re not a middle-aged man or colleague. He could be . . . weak and emotional with you.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It wasn’t for you.”
Sasha Blaine and the other members of the Home Team were as wilted as Rachel Stewart—or, for that matter, as Harley. As he wheeled his powered chair down the corridor to his domain, passing two of the other back-room groups, both with doors open, both deathly silent and populated by exhausted people, Harley realized he was hitting his own redline. He needed a whole list of things, from a bath to a decent meal, but number one was rest.
Maybe once Destiny was safely down and Tea and the other survivors got aboard . . .
First, of course, Destiny had to land. Snowplow. Slide into home.
Then? Zack Stewart. The moment Harley entered the room, Sasha turned to ask him, “When will we be able to use Destiny to link with Zack?”
“Not until that thing’s safely on the surface,” Harley said. “And maybe not even then.” Destiny likely made a better relay satellite in orbit. On the ground its systems would be trying to punch or receive signals through denser rock and soil.
For that matter, it might not have antennae at all. It could go deaf, dumb, and blind. And the same would apply to poor Zack.
Well, Harley thought, let’s burn that bridge when we come to it.
On the Home Team screen, the feed from one of Destiny’s forward onboard cameras now showed a clearly defined image of a snowy, rocky landscape, with actual mountains or, at the very least, high hills dead ahead. “It’s like flying,” Sasha Blaine said.
“Too low,” Harley said. “If I could feel my feet, I’d be pulling them up.” Like most people who heard one of his little jokes about his infirmities, Blaine pretended she hadn’t heard it.
Nevertheless, Destiny was low. Jasmine Trieu was saying, “Altitude fifty meters, down at ten . . . ten seconds to snowplow.”
Harley realized that because of lag, Destiny had already made it—or smashed into the surface.
Suddenly the picture went blank. “Oh shit,” one of the Home Teamers said.
Wade Williams spoke up. “Do they have telemetry?”
Harley had been thinking the same thing, concentrating on the figures on the bottom and side of the screen showing altitude, rate of descent, and a dozen other factors. The screen flickered—a momentary loss of communication, or a sign that Destiny had ripped open as it spread itself across the landscape of Keanu?
But then figures returned to the screen. Altitude and descent showed zero. Other figures seemed nominal; at least none of them was red.
“They made it,” Sasha Blaine said.
“Houston, this is Tea!” The astronaut’s voice was barely recognizable through the crackling and hissing in the speakers, but her joy was impossible to hide. “We saw it all, baby! Perfect landing about half a kilometer east! I think you lost one of the solars, but the other one is still intact! We’re heading there now!”
Harley was seeing imagery from some camera on Destiny, a view of the surface of Keanu, but tilted ninety degrees.
The denizens of the Home Team room remained silent . . . possibly uncertain of the protocol, more likely just exhausted beyond belief.
“Feel free to applaud,” Harley said. He rolled to the door and opened it. Distant cries of “Woo-hoo!” could be heard. For the first time in two days, Harley Drake felt that Tea, Taj, Natalia, and Lucas had a chance to make it home.
There was going to be life after Keanu.
For some of them, anyway.
LOTS of traffic on Slates, pads, PDAs. White House bombarded by queries from Roscosmos, ISRO, AEB, just to name the most obvious. Probably UN and Vatican, too. Somebody tell ME what’s going on out there!