“Good to see you, too, John. Okay, let’s get to it. We can make it happen, but we’ll need twenty-six hours a day for four days and a blowtorch to everyone’s behind.”
“Endeavor is ready, then? Enough to roll out to the pad from vehicle assembly?”
“Not as ready as I’d like, but yes. So who’s going to fly, if this impossible mission comes about?”
“Paradies, White, and Malone. Tell me what you need to pull this off, Griggs.”
“How about authorization for starters. You’re talking tens of millions in prep expense. Shear is dead set against it and we’re essentially in a mutiny here even talking about it on company time.”
“Look, I don’t have a green light yet, but I’ll get it.”
“From Shear? What, are the Houston refinery fumes affecting you? John, I love ya, man, and I owe you for a lot of things, but you don’t run this organization.”
“Neither does he.”
“Jeez, John. We’re talking the administrator. We’re also talking about a guy who has an industrial-strength hatred for DiFazio. John, he wants DiFazio and anyone dumb enough to fly with him to bite it.”
“All true, but he doesn’t make policy. The White House does.”
“And they’re suddenly going to go across town and politically bitch-slap their boy? I don’t frigging think so.”
“Griggs, ten minutes ago ASA’s craft stabilized and aligned for retrofire. He may get down on his own. This is just a feasibility exercise.”
There is silence from the Cape. “And if he can’t?”
“He just proved someone’s breathing up there and capable of controlling the spacecraft.”
“John, Bill’s a friend of mine, too. I also want him back safe.”
“Not the point. He comes down on his own or we go up to get him. Shear will be shamed into doing it by public pressure if nothing else. But this is just a contingency exercise until we know whether we need to go up.”
“Okay, a word of warning. I know what you’re thinking, and who you’re thinking of calling. But keep in mind that, despite nice handshakes and smiles when you’ve visited, there are people around the President who don’t necessarily like you, John, and they were never Boy Scouts like us. Approach them with reason and logic and compassion and they’ll jam it all back up your tailpipe and leave you seriously retired.”
“Duly noted. Keep your fingers crossed and get a playbook together for me, Griggs. Please.”
“Whoa, did I hear John Kent say please?”
“Kind of.”
“My God, that’s a first. Okay, I’ll slam a plan together, but if Shear gets wind of this, neither of us will be holding NASA IDs past tomorrow morning.”
“Who’s gonna tell him?”
“John, I’ve got a Cape full of irritated, overworked employees with more dedication to spying and informing than Stalin’s KGB.”
Chapter 12
The countdown ends in silence.
The only roaring is in Kip’s head, along with the soft hissing of the air cycle fans that are no match for the pounding blood in his temples. Kip’s eyes dart around the checklist and back to the screen as he sits in disbelief, the enormity of the silence settling over him like a heavy shroud. He’s been prepared for retrofire for over an hour and never considered that the engine might have other ideas.
He’s heard the engine fire before. He knows what it sounds like, feels like. When Intrepid was dropped by the mothership so many hours ago, the rocket engine roared and shook. But whatever he’s hearing and feeling now, it’s not the engine.
Kip punches the manual firing button again, just to make sure he hasn’t been too timid. It clicks.
Nothing changes.
Only seconds have elapsed since the exact programmed firing point. There’s still time to fire, he thinks.
There must be a safety. Something else I need to throw! Obviously he’s done something wrong, something that can be fixed.
The checklist items begin to blur, but he forces his eyes to take them in item by item, his finger still stabbing at the ignition button. He checks the screen, the fault annunciator display, the switch panel to each side, expecting an “Aha” moment of recognition, the easy answer. So he’s a bit late. So he comes down in Las Vegas instead of Mojave. What the hell. Just get the damn thing to fire!
But still the engine remains silent, and even though it’s only the end of Orbit 3, Kip feels himself losing control. He balls his fist and crashes it into the central liquid crystal screen, changing nothing. He begins flipping switches at random, snarling at the display and flailing, each wild action propelling him left or right in the zero gravity, restrained only by the seat belt.
No! Goddammit, no!
With one final burst of frustration he hurls the checklist behind him, sickeningly aware of what it’s hit as it thuds into the dead astronaut’s body, bouncing back to slap the windscreen, and ends up hitting him in the face.
"Shit!” he yells, the sound of his agonized voice encouraging another yell, eyes closed, fists pounding the armrests of the command chair.
But he’s hurtling away from the retrofire point at the speed of twenty-five thousand five hundred feet per second, and the engine is still quiet as a tomb.
His anger subsides and in its place flows a cold and heavy fear, worse than anything he’s experienced. Terror would barely describe it. No brakes, no parachute, no skyhook, no lifeline. No rescue of any sort if the engine won’t fire.
Until a few minutes ago, his major concern was to find a way to pilot an unpowered gliding spacecraft with stubby wings to a safe landing somewhere flat and hard. Now even a crash landing sounds okay, as long as it involves getting out of orbit.
Kip looks over his left shoulder, as if a living relief pilot might be sitting quietly back there. He feels the bile rising in his stomach, his head spinning. The view of the Earth turning below suddenly seems an exquisite form of torture—home being dangled in front of him, but out of reach.
No! Oh my God, he thinks, swallowing hard. What the hell am I going to do now? I can’t just sit here and wait to die.
He yanks the barf bag from his ankle pocket just in time, and when the release is complete, he cleans his face and disposes of the thing in a sidemounted trash receptacle, glad for something rote to do, his mind still reeling with the thought that he’s missed something. He opens the relief port then—a small funnel-shaped urinal dumping to the vacuum of space—and drains his bladder, before retightening the straps connecting him to the command chair.
This can’t be it. I can’t be stranded. There has to be a solution I haven’t thought of. Calm down! This is just a machine. Machines can be made to work!
He remembers the spacecraft simulator back in Mojave. The door in and out is on the rear cabin wall of the simulator and he remembers how comforting it was to know that at any time they could just turn the doorknob and walk out of the box into the hangar to safety. Just like that. Just open a door and leave the nightmare.
The urge to turn around and look at the rear cabin wall obsesses him. He struggles against the seat belt to turn around far enough, gripping the back of the command chair, his focus snapping to the unbroken surface of the back wall.