They could not speak. There were no words to convey their feelings as they realized this unthinkable — yet possible — greater tragedy.
“Nothing,” Cooke said. “Nothing yet.” He looked out at space, at the stars, unseeingly.
“They can't burn, not when we're this close,” Decosta said. He opened his belt and kicked up, floating away from his chair. “I'm getting into the pressure suit.”
“We don't know for certain or not if you are going to get a chance to use it.”
“Don't you think I know that?” His voice was bitter, angry. He opened the locker in the rear and hauled the suit out. “It's like knocking on wood. You do it even if you aren't superstitious. I am putting this thing on and I am going to use it, hear?”
“You tell them, tiger.” Cooke tried to be funny, to smile as he spoke, though he had never felt more depressed in his entire life. He pressed the microphone switch, “Orbiter to Mission Control. Have you heard….”
“Nothing,” Flax said. “Sorry Cooke, nothing at all yet. The program is still running and you're due for a burn in about twenty minutes.”
“Roger, Mission Control. Out.”
Flax was beyond all fatigue, beyond all caring. That it should end like this, now, so suddenly with salvation just beyond their grasp. He looked at the GET. Less than an hour from hook-up…
“Something on the wavelength.”
The voice from communication jerked them all about like puppets on a string, to stare at the wall speaker that hissed and roared with interference, to strain to hear if that was a voice behind the electronic waterfall. There were words, barely comprehensible words.
“… in… Control… this… is Prometheus…”
43
GET 33:34
“There's no more of it,” Coretta said. “The fire, the burning pieces, they're all gone.”
“Five minutes now, at least,” Patrick said. “We're through and into our last orbit.”
“What do you mean?” Coretta asked.
“We were at perigee, the closest part of our orbit to Earth, going past it and moving higher. That's when we hit, grazed the atmosphere. Any more than that and we'd have slowed and burned. Just touched lightly like a skipping stone on water, then away. Now we know almost to the minute how much time we have. At next perigee we go down. A little over an hour.” He fumbled in his darkness to find the mike switch, turned it on. “Mission Control this is Prometheus. I want to talk to Orbiter.”
“Roger, Patrick, Orbiter is listening. “
“How's your bird, Cookey?”
“A — OK and in the green all the way.”
“What's your ETA for hook-up?”
“Just about forty minutes.”
“That'll be fine as long as you get here on time. It will give you about twenty minutes for the approach and exit. Might I suggest you make the approach a good one and get us on the first pass.”
“Suggestion accepted, Pat. I will do my goddamnedest.”
“I know you will, Cookey. Out.”
Nadya waited until the radio connection was broken before she spoke. “Do we have time to repressurize and evacuate this cabin again before hook-up?” she asked.
“Yes, more than enough time,” Patrick said.
“Could we please, my eyes. . there is discomfort, a little pain perhaps.”
“You should have said something — Gregor, pressurize, you know where the controls are.” Patrick groped out through their darkness until his fingers found the other couch, felt along it until he reached her arm, her hand. He held it tightly, realizing that they had forgotten about her and she had not bothered them while they got on with the job. Blind, locked in her pressure suit, uncomplaining.
“I'm sorry,” Patrick said.
“Don't be silly. You have done everything possible for all of us.”
“Pressure,” Gregor said, loosening his helmet and removing it. After the stink of his own body inside the suit even the canned, recycled air of the cabin smelled good. Coretta had her helmet o(f now and was helping Nadya with hers.
“I'm going to put a fresh dressing on and give you a shot,” she said.
“I don't want to sleep.” There was a sharpness in Nadya's voice that had not been there before.
“Don't worry, honey. Just a little one for the pain. And for Patrick too.”
She bent efficiently to her task and Gregor watched her. Her hair was rich and dark, a contrast to his blond curls. And her skin; brown, warm, soft. She was different from anyone he had ever met before. He wanted to bend and kiss her throat, there above the hard neckring of her suit. He did not, did not want to interrupt. Instead he looked up at the numbers clicking over on the GET, then out of the port at the darkness.
“When Coretta is finished we must depressurize. I must go and finish HOOPSNAKE.”
“No!” Coretta gasped out the words, turning about. “We don't have to now, they're coming to get us.”
“That does not alter the fact that this spacecraft must be destroyed completely. For the benefit of the people below.”
“But you heard Mission Control, they think it will hit the ocean---”
“ Think is not good enough. There is just as good a chance it will strike California. I must not allow that chance to be taken.”
“I'm afraid we have no choice,” Patrick said. “We did our best but I don't think you'll be able to finish the job. There's a very good chance that the AMU was carried away, if the debris was as heavy as you say. Without it you won't be able to get back to the engines again.”
“I hadn't thought!” Gregor said. He pushed off, floundered, slammed into the wall by the port, then righted and pressed his face closely against the cold glass. He could see the outside of the hatch. Nothing else.
“It is gone,” he said wearily. “That is the end of it.”
Coretta broke the disposable hypodermic needles in two and pushed them into the waste holder, then went over to him. She had moved too fast, forgetting, and had to grab him as she floated up so she would not hit too hard. She held onto his arms and did not let go.
“Why so sad? We did our best. No one's to blame.”
He gazed at the pilots, at their bandaged faces, a look of pain cut deep into his face. When he spoke it was a soft whisper that only she could hear. “I wanted to do it, it was important. Look at them, there, blinded, perhaps forever. It was my country that did that and I am ashamed. I thought we could, I could, make up for it somehow by putting things right. Destroying Prometheus. Destroying the threat to the world.”
“But you heard the radio. It wasn't the Soviet Union that sent up the bomb. Just one man…”
Gregor smiled crookedly and raised his gloved fingers to her lips.
“You are a child, darogaya, a lovely woman yet a child when you say that. Accidents like that don't happen in my country. It was planned, a scrapegoat was found….”
“It's a scapegoat, not a scrapegoat, and I believe anything you say. But there's nothing you can do about it now — except put it from your mind. If that bus gets here in time we'll be alive and out of it and back in the State of Florida in time for dinner.”
Her dark eyes were wide open, staring into his blue ones, as she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth. The metal collar rings of their suits clattered together and she had to lean far out so their lips could meet. It could have been funny, two thick figures swaddled in fabric and plastic, holding to each other like shapeless bundles. It could have been funny, but it was not. He kissed her as she did him, eyes open, saying more than words ever could.
“What is the GET?” Patrick asked suddenly.
“34:23,” Coretta answered, drawing back from Gregor and looking up at the numbers.
“Time to depressurize. Helmets on. Take care of that, Gregor, when we're all secured. The Orbiter will be making the final approach now.”