Despite the roominess of the launch-control cabin and booster section in the rear cargo hold of the DC-10, the flight deck up front was cramped and relatively uncomfortable. Along with the two pilots, there was the flight engineer’s station behind the copilot, with his complex system of fuel, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic cortrols and monitors; he also controlled the aircraft’s weight and balance system, which was designed to compensate for each ALARM booster launch by rapidly distributing fuel and ballast as the boosters were moved or launched.
Behind the pilot’s station, back-to-back with the flight engineer, was the alternate launch-control console and the primary launch-communications center. The system handled the communications interface between satellites and ground stations and the ALARM booster until a few seconds before launch, when the booster’s onboard computer received its last position and velocity update from the launch aircraft and was sent on its way. The ALARM booster’s onboard flight computers continuously navigated for itself and provided steering signals to the launch aircraft to position itself for orbital insertion, but it needed information sent to it through the launch aircraft’s communication system, and'right now the system was not picking up data from the tracking satellites. Helen Kaddiri, who was in charge of the console for this launch, had been trying to restore communications, but with no luck.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation as Masters rushed through the pressurized cabin door. “Jon, if you don’t mind, I can handle this…”
Masters immediately checked the status screen for the launch aircraft’s communication system — everything was still reporting normal. “I asked you to run a self-test of our system, Helen.”
Kaddiri sighed as Masters peered over her left shoulder to watch the test process on the screen…
“There!” Masters announced. “Umbilical fiber optic hardware continuity. Why did you bypass that test?”
“C’mon, Jon, get real,” Kaddiri protested. “That’s not an electronics check, that’s a visual check—”
“Bullshit,” said Masters, dashing out of the cockpit and back into the cargo section.
The ALARM booster, its gray bulk huge and ominous in the bright inspection lights of the cargo section, had been wheeled out of the airlock and back into the cargo section so technicians could look it over again.
“Push her back in and check the umbilical connections,” Masters said. “We might have a bad plug.”
“But we need a safe connectivity readout before we can push her into position,” Red Philips said. He checked the status board on the launch-control panel. “I’m still showing no tracking data from—”
“Bypass the safety locks, Red,” Masters said. “Get the booster into position to launch.”
“We lose all our safety margins if we bypass the safety locks, Jon—” But Philips could see that Masters didn’t care. He punched in instructions in the launch-control console to bypass the safety interlocks, which usually prevented an armed but malfunctioning booster to be wheeled into position for release. The interlocks prevented an accident on board the plane and the inadvertent dropping of a live booster out the launch bay — now there were no safety backups.
The bypass showed up immediately on Helen Kaddiri’s alternate launch-control board. “Jon, I’ve got an ‘Unsafe Warning’ light on. Is the booster locked down? I show the interlocks off.”
“I turned them off, Helen,” Jon said on interphone. He stood with a flashlight at the mouth of the launch-bay airlock as the huge ALARM booster was motored back into launch position. “We’re checking the umbilical plug.”
“You can’t do that, Jon,” Helen warned. “If it’s more than just a plug problem, the booster might proceed to a final launch countdown before you can open the bay doors or before we can inhibit the ignition sequence. You’re cleaning a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger and the hammer pulled back.”
Masters glanced up at the cylindrical launch-bay airlock, which actually did resemble the chamber of a gun; inside, he could see the nosecap of the Air-Launched Alert Response Missile, which certainly resembled a bullet, as it motored into position. His head was right in the muzzle. “Good analogy, Helen,” he said wryly.
The booster slid into position. “Try the umbilical selftest,” Masters said to the launch-bay technician.
A moment later, Philips gave him his answer: “That’s it, Jon!” he said with a shout. “There’s a break in the umbilical connector — we had proper voltage but no signal. Come out of there and we’ll have it fixed in no time.”
“Forget it. No time. I’ll do it myself.” Before anyone could say anything else, Masters had scrambled inside the launch airlock and began crawling down along the ALARM booster.
“Jon, are you nuts?” the technician said. “Helen, this is Red. Jon just crawled down into the airlock. Put the interlocks back on.”
“No!” Masters radioed from inside the launch airlock. “Continue the countdown.”
“This is Kaddiri. I’m setting the interlocks, operator-initiated countdown hold. Crewman in the launch airlock. Interlocks on.”
Just then the self-test on the booster’s umbilical ended with a satisfactory reading. “Continuity restored… you got it, Jon, you got it,” Philips said. “But we’ve passed the launch window.”
“Start the countdown at T minus sixty,” Masters said. “The booster has the endurance to make the corrections, and we built a little leeway into the launch window. Continue the countdown…”
“I am not going to reactivate the system until you are out of there,” Kaddiri said testily.
“I’m out, I’m out,” Masters said as his sneakers appeared from the muzzle of the airlock. “Let’s do it.” Masters closed the airlock doors the second he was out of the chamber. Philips gave him his portable oxygen bottle, and he was just putting it on and strapping himself into his seat when the airlock was depressurized. Less than sixty seconds later the booster was on its way.
“Good separation, good first-stage ignition,” Helen reported as the forty-three-thousand-pound missile accelerated ahead of the DC-10 and roared skyward. “Clear connectivity in all channels… wings responding, swiveling on schedule… twenty seconds to first-stage burnout…”
Masters waited a few more moments as Kaddiri continued to monitor the launch, then said with a faint smile, “Well, that was close. You know what happened? The plug was off by a fraction of an inch. It was in close enough to report a closed and safe reading, but there wasn’t any data transfer. Worse, that would have only shown up when the booster was in launch position and the interlocks were removed. On the dock, it was hooked into a different data bus and reported okay. No wonder we thought it was TDRS’ fault.” Kaddiri continued to read off the booster’s primary performance more for the benefit of the mission voice recorder than anything else. The recorder served as a backup to the computerized data-retrieval system. She didn’t say a word to Masters. Wouldn’t even look at him.
Masters noticed the silence and fidgeted a bit. Every launch flight lately seemed to bring out the worst in her. Where was her sense of adventure? Forget it, he decided, she didn’t have one. Still, she was part of his team and he wanted to keep things on an even keel.
“Good thing I caught it, huh?” he asked almost sheepishly.
“No,” Kaddiri said evenly, not looking at him. She didn’t want to go into it with him. Not now. They were, after all, being recorded. Still, he had removed all the safety interlocks, leaving them totally unprotected in case there’d been an ignition-circuit malfunction or a guidance-computer malfunction. That booster could have easily gone off in the cabin and killed them all. Worse he’d reconnected a malfunctioning plug on a live booster. Who knows, she wondered, what that would have done?