“What, Arleigh?”
He lowers the receiver as he searches for the right phrase.
“What, Arleigh?” Richard snaps.
“Okay, Richard. NASA is pulling in a live long lens picture, and it shows Intrepid is tumbling.” He sees the question in Diana’s eyes. “Rotating around its center of gravity in all three axes.”
“I understand what tumbling means,” she says.
“Which indicates to you, what?” Richard prompts.
“He may be out of control.”
“Jesus.”
They all know the rest of the equation. A tumbling spacecraft can’t fire its rocket motor and drop out of orbit.
“How long to the retrofire window?”
“One minute. They’re watching.” Arleigh raises the receiver back to his ear and turns away, as if expecting his monitor to burst to life with good data streams from Intrepid. Every technician in the room somehow seems to know what he knows, and there is a collective quiet as the seconds tick away and more and more eyes turn to the flight director. He holds the receiver with one hand and rubs his eyes with the other, willing the nightmare to go away.
Chapter 11
The centrifugal forces have begun to pull Kip in opposite directions, but they aren’t half as bad as the increasing frequency of alternating light and dark pulsing through the main windscreen.
He wills his hand off the joystick and realizes he’s been clutching it with a death grip. He reaches over with his left hand and pries his right fingers open, working them back and forth until they feel almost flexible again. There was something one of the astronauts told him in the simulator a week ago. Something that had to do with control sticks. What the hell was it?
For the first time in minutes the rate of tumbling isn’t increasing, and he realizes that it’s because he isn’t jamming the joystick back and forth in panic. The tumbling is remaining constant, and he’s feeling increasingly dizzy and ill, his upper torso and head being pulled toward the ceiling while below the waist he’s being pulled downward.
Fingertips! That was it. He said that instructors could calm down pilots having trouble with formation flight by teaching them to fly with their fingertips to avoid overcontrol.
Kip moves his hand back toward the joystick, this time placing only the ends of his fingers on the top of it and moving them in concert backward to fire the control jets in just one axis against the tumbling. He hears the jets hiss and feels the reaction, and for the first time the gyrations begin to slow. He does it again, tentatively, letting as much as a minute elapse between each burst, and finally daring to hope he might actually succeed.
He glances at the clock, hoping for a few more minutes before retrofire, but realizes it’s already too late. Firing the rocket now—even if he was in position and ready, which he isn’t—would bring him down somewhere far to the east of Mojave, and maybe way across the continent. No, he decides, he’s stuck for at least another orbit, another ninety minutes.
And with that realization, some of his panic leaks away.
Tentatively, he tries a small burst to the left to stop the right-hand roll, and the frequency of the Earth’s appearance in the side windows begins to slow. But he can’t twist the control and affect the yaw with fingertips, and he tries gripping the joystick with only thumb and forefinger and finds it works. A few short bursts in that direction and the sideways turning slows, too.
One axis at a time he works at it, trying hard to keep the bursts very, very brief, letting minutes elapse between each attempt, and watching the Earth’s movement relative to the spacecraft slow burst by burst, until after many very long minutes he realizes he’s finally in the right attitude, flying right side up, tail first, and steady.
Kip punches at the computer screen to try to reengage the automatic attitude controller, not believing it at first when the small box on the screen suddenly glows green. But the reaction jets are hissing quietly and he feels the craft steady itself, the coordinate readings all within a few degrees of what he’s supposed to have for retrofire.
Damn, I did it!
He’s covered with perspiration, still breathing hard, and his right hand is aching, but he’s in the right position and only that matters. A surge of confidence returns and he smiles the smile of a football player spiking the ball in the end zone.
He checks the time like a veteran. A little more than an hour to the next window, and this time he’ll be ready. He’s already ready, though drained and still shaking. He takes the barf bag he’s been issued out of his breast pocket and restows it in the zippered one by his right ankle, proud that he hasn’t needed it.
Once again he finds himself looking at the transmit button connected to his headset, wishing he could tell someone below of his success. He was spinning into oblivion, but he kept his cool, remembered the training, brief as it was, and he did it!
Arleigh suddenly raises the phone handset over his head like a trophy, his voice booming through the control room.
"Yes!"
All eyes not already on him snap to as he shakes his head and exhales before explaining.
“He’s stabilized! The craft is no longer gyrating and is apparently in position for retrofire. He’s missed this window, but he’s under control and alive!”
There are shouts and applause as a wide variety of body English transmits the relief in the room. The monitors and the radios, however, are still vacant of contact and information, and the mood returns to watchful waiting, though with an improvement in hope.
“No cigars yet, people,” Arleigh is saying into his headset. “But Bill’s obviously on duty up there, so let’s prepare for a deorbit in eighty minutes.”
It takes a few minutes for Diana to remind the flight director and the CEO that the story is already leaking and she needs direction. Arleigh reluctantly leaves his console and follows the two of them into the glassed-in conference room.
“This will sound very cold, but it’s my job,” she says. “We have an incredible opportunity here.”
“For what?” Arleigh asks, indignant. “What the hell does that mean?”
Richard has his hand out for silence, his trust of Diana’s judgment all but total.
“What it means, Arleigh… Richard… is that our future as a company depends on how we handle whatever occurs next. Good or bad. If we show strength, authority, perfect honesty, and a vision beyond the moment regardless of the depth of this disaster, we will build an invaluable trust in the public mind. If we show fright, hide any fact however small, sidestep questions, or appear confused…”
“Any appearance of weakness, in other words,” DiFazio adds, nodding slowly, knowing she’s right but disliking the need of it.
“Exactly,” she continues. “Vulnerability breeds lasting distrust and even contempt.”
“I’m not a damned actor, Diana,” Arleigh snaps.
“No, you’re not,” she interjects before he can continue. “You’re a steel-willed professional who knows private spaceflight will remain and succeed and lead. All I’m saying is, be careful to show that true face to whoever’s watching. And they’ll be watching every moment from here on.”
“Talk to me.”
In John Kent’s perfect world, there is no need for verbal niceties when there’s an urgent mission to accomplish. “Hello’s” and “How’s the weather’s” are time wasters in a crisis. Nailing the point as he walks through the door of the teleconferencing suite is greeting enough for his old friend and senior manager at Kennedy Space Center, Griggs Hopewell.