Bandin had a sudden thought. “Has anyone bothered to work out where the orbit will be at the end of the twenty-eight hours when that thing is supposed to come down?”
“Yes, sir. It has been done.” Dillwater put a slip of paper on the table before him. “The orbit will be swinging down from the north Pacific at that time, cutting across the Gulf of Alaska at that time.”
“That's good,” Bandin said. “We're not going to worry about icebergs and some polar bears.”
“No, sir. But this orbit, the twenty-eighth orbit continues south in a track along the entire west coast of this country. Going over in turn Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.”
In a stunned silence the enormity of what he had said slowly sank in.
28
GET 15:08
“This is a crew meeting,” Patrick said. “I want you all to know what's been happening with the engines, with everything…”
He was surprised to find himself stumbling over his words. In his years of test piloting he had become used to long hours, even long days of work. Fatigue was something he had learned to control. But he had never been as tired as this before; if he had not been floating in free fall he would have been collapsed on the couch. Not that the others looked any better. If his eyes were as red as Nadya's, he did not want to look into the mirror. Ely's skin was pale with strain and fatigue, the dark marks under his eyes looked as though they had been brushed on with soot. Only the other two looked remotely human. Gregor, still looking dim after his drugged sleep, fought to keep his head erect. Coretta was calm and relaxed. If she was feeling any strain she was not showing it. And she was looking at him with deep concern.
“You look like hell, Patrick,” she said. “And you know you're having difficulty talking?”
“I sure do, doctor. Because I'm plenty tired.”
“I suppose you wouldn't try to get some sleep.”
“You suppose correctly.”
She kicked off to the wall and opened her medicine locker. “In any other circumstances I would not be doing this. But I've plenty of uppers here, Benzedrine, Dexedrine. Do you want something? You know you'll only feel worse afterwards?”
“There may be no afterwards. Let me have a handful of them.”
“What do you mean?” Coretta was shocked at the sudden brutality of his words.
He swallowed the pills and washed them down with water before he spoke. They were all listening now, rigid with attention; even Gregor snapped out of his drugged haze.
“Let us lay all the facts out, get them absolutely straight,” Patrick said. “We cannot afford to kill ourselves by making any mistakes. The chances are slim as it is. Right now” — he looked up at the GET — “it is 15:11. We're still in a low orbit that it is estimated will terminate at forty-three hundred hours, about halfway through our twenty-eight orbit.”
“How can they be so sure?” Coretta asked. “I mean we'll be slowed by the air, won't we? That will be sort of a gradual thing.”
“Not really,” Patrick told her. “We're already being slowed now by the traces of the atmosphere at this altitude, slowed just enough to drop us lower and lower all the time. But you must remember that our orbit is not really circular, but more like a big ellipse in space. At apogee — that is our highest point in the orbit, when we are furthest from Earth — we are about a hundred kilometers higher than at perigee, the closest. On our twenty-eighth orbit when we hit perigee we will hit the atmosphere and that will be that. End of the voyage.”
“The engines,” Gregor said abruptly. “You must start the engines.” The tension was back in his face again, his fists closed so tightly the knuckles were white.
“We'd like to, Gregor, believe me we would. But the four good ones can't be fired until we find some way to disconnect the broken one. Ely, you have any ideas about that?”
“I do.” He shook out a complex diagram he had been studying. “Mission Control is doing this in more detail, but I've been trying for myself. The trouble is that the five engines are interconnected. They share a common supply of hydrogen, for both moderator and the fuel supply as well. Theoretically it's possible to seal off engine four. It would mean a space walk and closing a lot of valves, cutting pipes and wires and isolating them, sealing them. But it's dangerous. Cut the wrong pipe and that is the whole ballgame. Plus the fact that when you're through with the spatial plumbing job and the engines get fired up, if they do, what kind of thrust do you get? Can the off-center thrust be allowed for? I don't know, but I hope the boys in Houston do. Plus one final and vital factor.” Ely stared around at the circle of watching faces and could not look them in the eyes. He turned away abruptly. “You tell them, Patrick. You're captain of this sinking ship.”
“Not quite sunk yet,” Patrick said. “But the final difficulty is that even if we fire up the engines — will we have time enough to break out of this orbit before the twenty-eighth orbit? The upper atmosphere is a strange area about which nothing can be predicted precisely at any given time. We might have time enough, we might not. But all we can do is try.”
“Is that really all?” Gregor asked, his voice too loud.
“No. I've already contacted Dillwater, and the President, about getting us off Prometheus before the twenty-eighth orbit if the worst comes to the worst.”
“It can be done?” Gregor asked eagerly.
“It's a long shot, but a possibility. The space shuttle that was supposed to change crews in a month's time is not ready. However there are US military shuttles and Soviet ones. All the possibilities are being looked into. So that's the situation. As soon as Mission Control tells us it can be done we try to isolate the knocked out engine. Then fire up. Then, with luck, get up into our correct orbit. In case it can't be done alternative plans are now being made to get us off.”
“And if we don't get off…?” Coretta asked, her voice very low.
“I just don't know,” Patrick said. “If you mean do we get out of this alive, why then the answer is no, we don't. This thing may burn up, or it may ride in in one lump. In either case we won't be walking away from it.”
“But — couldn't it be landed, somehow?”
“Negative. No chance at all.”
“But, if Prometheus hits, could something horrible happen like with that English city?”
“The chances are against it,” Patrick said, as calmly as he could. “The odds are well against it. Two-thirds of the Earth is water, so Prometheus will probably impact the ocean. And about three-quarters of the land areas are mountain, jungle, desert, things like that. I doubt if there's another disaster in the making---”
“You doubt it!” Gregor shouted hoarsely, turning in the air as he tried to push himself erect. “The disaster is for us, is that not bad enough? We are going to die and that is the end of it!”
“You're going to have to keep your cool, Gregor. For your sake as well as for ours…” The radio contact signal beeped and he turned towards the hatch.
“I will take that,” Nadya said, and pushed by him and was at the hatch before he could respond. She was right, his place was here.
“It is tough on all of us, Gregor,” Patrick said. “I know how you feel, shut in here with nothing to do. But we may get through yet and if we do you're the indispensable man. Don't forget that. All this effort is to get you up there, not us, into orbit with the generator. You are the guy who has to do the job.”
Nadya came floating back into the group and they turned to her.
“Mission Control says there is a good possibility that the faulty engine can be isolated and the others fired. It will have to be done from outside the ship.”