“Whatever on earth for?”
“For a drink, if you must know.”
The eyebrows slowly dropped and a suspicion of a smile touched the corners of the rigid mouth.
“I will join you.”
Dillwater had a small dry sherry while Flax poured a half glass of whiskey, diluted it with water, then drank it straight down. “My God,” he said, striking himself lightly on the protruding stomach with the thumb of his closed fist. “That is going to cure or kill me.” He belched cavernously and shuddered. Dillwater finished his last sip of sherry, tapped his lips with his handkerchief, and waved to the door. “Into the lion's den, if you please, Mr. Flax. I'm afraid we have no choice.”
They came in by the side entrance and were unnoticed for a few seconds. Minford, the PR man, was behind the podium and fielding the questions. If his sweat-drenched face was any indication, he had not been having an easy time. Heads turned, one by one, as they crossed the front of the hall and the cameras began to click. Minford had the expression of a man just saved from the lion pit as they came forward.
“Now if you would please hold those questions for a moment or two you will be able to ask the people who are completely in the picture. Mr. Simon Dillwater you all know. He has just jetted down here from Washington to give you a full report. With him is Dr. Flax who has been in the hot spot at Mission Control ever since takeoff, and has been in contact with the astronauts all of that time. Will you please address your questions to them….”
Hands, pencils and pads were being waved; there were hoarse shouts for attention. Minford looked them over quickly, and pointed to the Science Editor of the LA Times. They had worked together for years and he might just be a little more sympathetic.
“Dr. Flax, just what is the situation in space at this moment?”
Flax relaxed, ever so slightly, no trouble here. “Separation has been achieved as you know. At the present time the crew is repressurizing the flight cabin so they can work in shirtsleeve environment again. The program now calls for the check-out of the nuclear engine in the lower compartment, the engine which will now be fired to lift Prometheus to its final orbit….” Hands were waving again and Minford stabbed his finger at the nearest.
“What about the core body, the last booster still there in orbit? If it fell couldn't it cause immense destruction? As much as an atomic bomb?” They were silent now, waiting for his answer. Flax spoke slowly, counting off the major points on his fingers.
“Firstly, nothing can 'fall' from orbit, despite what you might have heard. This last booster, like the previous five, will be inserted into a proper descent orbit and soft-landed just as the others were. Secondly, if anything were to go wrong, though this is unimaginable, the worst that would happen would be the destruction of the booster by combustion in the atmosphere…,”
“If a malfunction is unimaginable,” a voice called out loudly, “what do you call the failure of the core body engines and the failure to separate?”
Flax was beginning to sweat heavily. “Perhaps I chose the wrong term. We can imagine an uncontrolled landing, in which case the booster would burn up.”
“It couldn't hit a city, explode?”
“Impossible. Thousands of rockets have been launched, all of them with disposable stages. All of these have burnt up on re-entry and none have ever caused the slightest damage.”
One man had been calling for attention since the interview had begun and Minford could ignore him no longer. “Mr. Redditch,” he said.
The Newsweek correspondent was one of the senior men present, well known to all the reporters. They quieted, waiting for his questions, knowing he could speak for most of them.
“I appreciate your arguments, Dr. Flax,” Redditch said. “But aren't you referring to far smaller boosters than this one?”
“Possibly. But the scale isn't that great.”
“Isn't it?” There was frank unbelief in Redditch's voice. “This type of booster is bigger than any other, and Prometheus is many times bigger than the booster. Is that not correct?”
“Yes, but…”
“So forget the booster for the moment. What would happen if Prometheus itself slammed back to the Earth? Wouldn't it make one hell of a hole in the ground?”
“But Prometheus is not going to return to Earth.” Flax could feel the sweat trickling down inside his shirt. “It's already in orbit and will soon be firing its engine and going into higher orbit.”
“Isn't it in now what is called a decaying orbit? Is it not true that if the engine does not fire soon that the entire satellite itself could plummet back to Earth after contact with the atmosphere? Is it not true that this decaying orbit will not last more than eighteen hours more?”
Flax did not know what to say. Where had he gotten those figures? Someone had talked — they were NASA's own figures. What the hell could be done?
Dillwater saved his bacon. Cool and calm as always he coughed into the microphone and nodded in Redditch's direction.
“There has been too much loose talk today,” he said. “Unfounded speculation by a certain irresponsible minority. You gentlemen of the press are absolutely correct in your attitude, in your questions. You have heard these speculations and you wish to know about them. To determine the truth, if there is any truth, to lay to rest rootless and absurd speculations, dangerous speculation I might say, if that be the case. You are not gossip mongers, but representatives of a free press dedicated to telling the truth---”
“Well, could we have some?” Redditch said, unimpressed. “My question still stands. If, at the end of the sixteen-hour period, Prometheus hits the atmosphere — what is going to happen?”
“Nothing. Because Prometheus is not going to do that. As we are talking here the fusion engine is being tested and will soon be building up thrust. There have been difficulties and they have been surmounted. We are on our way.”
Oh, baby, you had better be right, Flax thought. You had better be very, very right. His fingers crept out, unseen by the newsmen, to the back of the podium, where he knocked, ever so lightly, on wood.
20
GET 05:39
“It looks like it belongs in a submarine,” Coretta said, looking down at the round hatch with a handwheel in its center that was set into the floor of the crew compartment.
“It serves the same function,” Patrick said, turning hard on the wheel. Ely had anchored himself and was holding Patrick's legs, giving him something he could thrust against. “Right now there's just space on the other side of this hatch. The crew compartment and flight deck of Prometheus are a single unit designed to be ejected in an emergency. We sort of shoot out sideways propelled by rockets. Since we didn't eject we can now hook up with NTECS, the Nuclear Tug Engine Control Station which is behind us. The engine room. I'm pulling up a retracted tube now that will seal against the other side here. There! Your turn, Ely. Use the wrench to take all the sealing nuts off.”
It was not easy work. In a few minutes Ely was muttering with exasperation. “Why the devil does it have to be dogged down so hard?” he said, wrestling the wrench to the next stud.
“You know why,” Patrick said, carefully putting the removed nut with the others in the plastic bag hanging from his belt. “There's hard vacuum out there. Any leak would evacuate the engine room and we'd have to operate in suits. But if the pressure readouts are fine we can do it in shirtsleeves — which is much easier.”
Ely fitted the jaws over the last nut and tripped the switch.
The flywheel spun and the nut came free. But he did not kill the motor quickly enough as he lifted the wrench off, so the nut was propelled violently across the compartment to clang loudly into a locker door. The thin metal dented and rebounded, slinging the steel nut back with a good deal of-its energy still remaining. It struck Nadya in the leg and she shouted with pain.