"I didn't know if I'd get a chance, and I really think I'm in the way."
The harried petty officer, Cogley, came up to the captain with still another clipboard. "Excuse me, sir—"
"Cogley, dammit, shove off with that stuff. Tell the officer of the dock to stand by until I'm ready."
Cogley hurried off. "You're convincing me," Ann said, "that that guy's name is 'Cogley Dammit' or 'Dammit Cogley.' "
"I know, I know…" Matthew Page steered his daughter away from the head of the stairway. "Listen, honey, I wanted you to come with me on board so we could have a little chat—"
"About what?"
"About you. Your shuttle flight." He paused. "I still can't believe it. My daughter, a shuttle astronaut—"
"C'mon, Dad… "
"No, now wait a minute. I'm not going to get all gushy over you. I just want to—"
"Yes?"
"Ann, I've heard things. There's real concern about your mission, about this Skybolt laser you're working on."
"I really can't talk too much about Skybolt, Dad. Not even to you. You can understand—"
"I know, I know, but dammit, you know I've never been too happy about your decision to fly to this Space Command station. The dangers are—"
"Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant?"
"Ann, honey, you're not listening."
"I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot, I know you don't go for that male chauvinist stuff. But, face it, if you were talking to a son…"
"I'd still be damned worried. This space station project of yours is dangerous. Things are happening, weird things. I just wish you'd—"
"Stay on the ground? Safe from the action. Away from my work." Ann shook her head. "Whatever you say, you still think it's okay for men to go off and face whatever's out there, but not women—"
He looked at her. "Could be, honey. I guess I am a bit old-fashioned."
"You're a damn sight better than most, but you have tended to put Mom and me on a pedestal. We're not china dolls. We won't break. I'm a scientist. Mom is your wife. We're both pretty tough. No kidding."
Her father shrugged, knew she was right even if he couldn't buy all of it.
"And Dad, I know about the dangers. We get briefings, too."
The loudspeaker gave another warning for visitors to clear the ship. Ann took her father's hands. "I'll. be thinking of you up there," he said. "And I still wish you weren't going."
"And I wish you weren't going on this cruise… to the Persian Gulf." The mention of the California's classified destination startled him. "How…"
"It doesn't matter," she said quickly. "But you have about as much chance of keeping me from going on the Enterprise as I have of dragging you off your ship… Now" — she stood on tiptoes and kissed her father on the cheek — have a safe cruise and hurry home."
He straightened, hugged her. "And success and a safe trip to you, Ann."
The Marine escort guided her to the wide covered main gangplank on the California's starboard gunwale. A small knot of reporters were waiting for her when she stepped off the platform onto the dock but she ignored them and quickly found her mother standing near the raised officer's wives' railed greeting area. "He'll be all right," Ann said quietly. Her mother's eyes never left the bridge as the USS California began slowly to slide away from its mooring toward the Golden Gate.
CHAPTER 5
"Lift off. We have lift-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger, STS Mission 51-L. It has cleared the tower." The Challenger's pilot ran his fingers down the Space Shuttle Main Engine, the SSME status readouts on his computer monitor. "All main engines look good… "
The young woman beside him acknowledged with a nod. No NASA simulator could ever fully prepare a person for the feeling of a space shuttle at lift-off. Noise. Incredible, earsplitting, thundering noise. Vibration enough to feel intestines shake…
As the stowed service arm and gantry slid from view out the forward windscreens, Ann Page could even see a few seagulls scurry from the fiery behemoth as it lifted upward. The sight of the petrified sea gulls made her smile despite the adrenaline coursing through her, tightening her muscles, constricting her throat.
"Instituting roll maneuver… roll maneuver complete, Challenger, you look beautiful…"
On hearing the last report from Ground Control, Ann reached up through the gradually building "g"-forces to the upper left of her left forward instrument panel and flicked the ADI attitude switch to LVLH. "ADI attitude switch to local vertical, local horizontal," she announced over interphone. Her pilot in the right seat nodded and did the same on his panel. "Thank you, Dr. Page," the pilot said over interphone, and suddenly the pilot looked young — very young. Like a guy she had known in high school.
Ann watched the mach meter on her main instrument panel while at the same time checking her number-one cathode ray tube computer monitor and panel C2, the computer control panel and manual main engine controls. The engine control sequence for launch and ascent was controlled by computer, but she was obliged to be ready for any malfunction right up to complete engine failure. If that happened, it would be up to her and her pilot to control the engines manually and set up her shuttle for an RTLS-Return to Launch Site abort. As she watched her instruments she kept in mind her training — think "abort, abort" until five minutes into the flight, after that think "orbit, orbit. "
Forty seconds after takeoff the shuttle exceeded the speed of sound, and Ann saw the main engines throttle back automatically to sixty-five percent. "Control, this is Challenger. Main engines at sixty-five percent. Confirm."
"Challenger, we confirm SSMEs at six-five percent, right on the mark. "
They were approaching a critical phase of flight when all aerodynamic forces affecting the shuttle — thrust, drag, gravity, and lift — were exerting equal pressure on the ship all at once. It was "max Q. " The main engines were throttled back to avoid tearing the shuttle apart as it reached, then exceeded max Q. The shuttle's computers would control the delicate transition as the huge craft sliced its way skyward.
A few moments later Ann could see the pilot give a sigh of relief as the main engines began to throttle up under strict computer control. "Control, this is Challenger. Max Q. Main engines moving to one hundred percent. "
"Copy that, Challenger. Max Q. Max Q. Max Q…"
A blinding flash of light, a sensation of warmth, a feeling of weightlessness. "Max Q., max Q."
Ann was suddenly awake, waves of pain lancing through her abdomen. The rumpled sheets felt like damp mummy's shrouds, strangling her. She fought back the pain and kicked the sheets free. "A damned nightmare," she said half-aloud, her breath coming in gasps. After months of briefings, simulators, studying, she had finally had a Challenger nightmare.
Exhausted, drained, she rolled across the bed and glanced at her watch on the nightstand. Two A.M. That made the eighth time in five hours she had been forced awake by butterflies invading her stomach and her dreams. Butterflies? Those things were dive-bombers, nuclear explosions, earthquakes. Forget it, sleep was impossible.
They had warned her about Challenger nightmares, everyone from mission commanders to local food-service people — nearly everyone even remotely involved with the rejuvenated space shuttle program seemed to get one. But she figured it was even worse for her… a civilian mission specialist with very little flight-deck training. Well, even though she had two hours until her alarm would go off, she crawled out of bed and into the bathroom. Trying to sleep would only prolong the punishment.
Feeling as drained as if she had run a marathon, Ann stripped off her nightshirt and panties and stood in front of the mirror in the glare of the bathroom's single light bulb. Her doomed attempts to wrestle a few hours sleep had left her, she noted, with light brown circles under her dark green eyes… "Too bad they don't wear helmets in space any more, at least the visor would hide this," she told the unappetizing mirror image. In fact, little she saw in a mirror ever pleased her. People said she was always her worst critic, but still… She frowned at the too-round green eyes, the straight auburn hair, the unremarkable breasts, the too-skinny legs… although the ankles were good. (But great ankles never got a girl a date.) All right, she wasn't bad, but nothing to write home about either. A seven. Maybe a seven and a half…?