“Thanks, John.”
“I’ll call you with any news. Immediately. But you hang in there and have faith.”
The call ends and he sits back, his mind spinning with possibilities, his personality geared to analysis, action, and cure. The course seems clear: Prepare for the worst case, regardless of Shear’s rancid attitude.
He lunges from his chair, swinging open his office door and sticking his head into the outer office where a half dozen other astronauts and engineers are waiting.
“Everybody come on in here. None of this leaves this room, but we’ve got to plan a rescue, just in case.”
Chapter 8
There is a magnificent planet to admire just outside his window, and Kip forces himself to look up and take quick note of it. He remembers standing beneath the star field last night at the side of that desert road, wishing he was up here. Now he wishes he was back on that deserted road looking up.
But whatever happens, he made it to space, and the incredible beauty of it somehow blunts the lethality of his situation.
In other words, he thinks, it is worth it, whatever happens.
But the thought is short-lived, and he feels fear returning like a thief to steal his resolve.
He brings his eyes back to the checklist, hopeful he has his jitters sufficiently under control to begin a run-through of the procedure for automatic retrofire. The prospect of having to fly Intrepid manually if the automatic system flubs up terrifies him.
The autoflight panel is called something else, but it serves the same purpose, since Intrepid is programmed to fly automatically. The ship was set to keep its length parallel to the planet below, the nose in the direction of flight, and rolled over on its back so that the Earth is actually the ceiling, the “up” in the up/down equation. He’s verified the blinking lights and read the messages on the computer screen to make sure it’s all working as advertised, and he’s heard and felt the little reaction jets firing to keep Intrepid from turning or yawing around.
According to the checklists, just prior to firing the engine to slow down, the astronaut is supposed to feed the computer a new set of coordinates, three numbers which Kip has already found and written down. When those numbers are safely locked in the tiny silicon brain, the machine will automatically fire the reaction jets in just the right sequence to turn their tail end around almost a hundred and eighty degrees and get the ship in the correct position to fire the engine backward.
Kip looks at his watch. Thirty minutes to the turnaround maneuver, which he’s decided to do about halfway through the second orbit. If Intrepid was programmed to turn itself automatically on the fourth orbit, he wouldn’t be messing with it. But—provided he’s read everything correctly—the commands have to be manually typed in or the ship will never turn around. And only if the rocket motor is firing almost precisely against the direction of flight will they be able to slow down and essentially drop out of the sky.
He feels momentarily frozen. Part of him wants to stay for the full four orbits, but another part clamors to know whether or not he’s going to survive this. He feels a turf battle in his brain between those competing desires.
Maybe we should do it now, he thinks. After all, the automatic system can hold us in that backward position for a half hour as easily as it can keep us flying forward.
He thinks about the fact that he keeps using the pronouns “us” and “we” in every thought of what he should do and what’s happening. Bill is dead. No other living being is aboard, yet he can’t bring himself to shift to “I” and “me.”
Not yet.
His hand hovers over the small keyboard and he pulls back, deciding to be disciplined enough to wait for the right moment. Twenty-nine more minutes. Right before the sun sets behind him, which means he’ll be able to see it this time. Sunrise has been in his face, and it was incredible. But he can do twenty-nine minutes.
He takes a deep breath, the first time in perhaps the past hour. At first there were short, panting, almost hyperventilating breaths, sheer panic. Then his reluctance to breathe deeply lest floating debris from the projectile’s passage get in his lungs. But while some tiny things may still hang in the weightless environment, the air is mostly clean, and he supposes the air filters are responsible.
But the air does taste a bit stale and processed. He thinks about the class ASA gave on the oxygen system and how the ingenious little devices behind him scrub the air of carbon dioxide, adding small amounts of oxygen as necessary to maintain the right balance, recirculating it all with the correct amount of water vapor and at the correct temperature. And he remembers someone saying the system can keep five people going for thirty hours before the CO2 scrubbers fail. With one person, he guesses, that means much longer. Still, the sooner he gets the hell out of this hostile environment, the better.
He wonders if ASA will give him a second free flight to make up for this one. Sort of an overbooking penalty type of thing. Give you the damaged flight and provide a new round trip as an apology? The thought triggers his first small chuckle in many minutes. He’ll have to think about how to phrase the question so they can’t resist saying yes. After all, if he’s to be the poster boy…
The image of Diana Ross at the door of his suite swims through his mind, pleasing and somewhat startling. What was it, eleven hours ago? He supposes he should be thinking of Sharon, but however suppressed it is, the realization that the marriage is over is percolating, and Diana is a great stand-in for other possibilities.
When things were going so well, the poster boy idea was great. Of course, now he’ll be the very symbol and face of disaster, whatever happens, and surely of no value to her efforts. That thought adds fuel to his bonfire of anxieties.
Another deep breath and he feels himself calming somewhat, glancing again at the Earthscape passing above, and surveying his surroundings. He thinks about taking a minute or two to meditate, but he doesn’t know how. Sitting quietly with a stiff scotch is as close as he’s ever come, though he’s always wanted to know more about achieving inner peace.
He looks down, amused at the phrase and the idea. Astronauts in flight suits don’t have time for such things though, do they? Bill Campbell had repeated the advice of a favorite Air Force flight instructor: If a pilot has time to relax, he’s forgetting something. The same mental urgency feels like it’s transferring to him—or maybe it’s just the flight suit.
The spiffy royal blue flight suits with the large, colorful mission patches were provided to each of them on the first day of class, two apiece. He kept this one pristine for the flight while wearing the other to class, but clothes really do make the man. He feels like an astronaut, from walking through the classroom door in that zipper-festooned coverall with a pen in the left shoulder pocket even to sitting here now. The only thing missing, he supposes, is some sort of military flight cap.
His left ear itches and he reaches up, surprised to encounter the earpiece from his headset, still inserted in his ear. He takes the whole apparatus off and scratches his ear liberally. That’s what’s been missing, he thinks. Other than Bill’s companionship and guidance and just human presence, all the way up he had a host of other voices in his ear, and now they’re gone, and it feels, well, lonely.
All that beauty just outside the canopy bubble and side windows and who can he tell? Not that most humans on earth haven’t seen hundreds of spectacular pictures from space and Earth orbit, but this is what his eyes are seeing, and it feels barren. A reporter without a paper. A TV correspondent without a mike.