“Jack. Will,” the Director said, laying his pipe upon the bare table.
“Hutch,” greeted the Colonel with what was left of his strained good cheer.
The airmen waited impatiently while the Director studied his own hands upon the table.
“The next mission is yours.”
That was it. The Flight Director’s facial muscles did not move.
“Oh,” offered William Parker from his dry throat. He whispered, but his brain did handstands.
The Flight Director’s words rattled around behind Enright’s heavy eyes. The full thought did not root in Enright’s mind before the Director continued his monologue.
“Does the LACE mean anything to either of you?”
“Don’t know, Hutch,” Jack Enright smiled. “I’ve never been married.”
“Hot damn, Skipper!” Jacob Enright sang beneath the blinding arc lights of the midnight parking lot. He fairly danced in the cold, black drizzle between his sensuous driving machine and the Colonel’s battered truck.
“Four days?” the Colonel asked blankly with his wornout face pressed against the rain-streaked side window of his pickup. With his large hand cupped to the sides of his wet face to shield his eyes from the glare of the flood-lights, he surveyed the puddle of water growing on the front seat of his flatbed relic.
“Come on, Will,” Enright pleaded, unable to restrain his pleasure. “The LPS can get her off in four days. We’ve run fully automatic countdowns since Eight.”
Colonel Parker turned to his young partner in the light rain. He envied his copilot for his passion and his vigor. The Colonel had been that way—20 years earlier when he had posed thin and proud beside a sleek jet amid the rice paddies. He had saved the picture.
“Maybe the Launch Processing System can push us off well enough. But I need a little time to kick the tires before cranking up.”
“We’ll make time, Skipper. Unless we have pneumonia. Let’s get out of the rain.”
Enright led his captain to his little treasure, a shining chassy tightly wrapped around a monster engine. Enright squeezed in behind the wood steering wheel.
Inside Enright’s four-wheeled cockpit, Colonel Parker looked at his knees pulled up to his sweat- and rain-soaked chest. The array of battery and engine dials gave the illusion of a jet cockpit idling on the apron, aching for the purple sky. The low midnight sky leaked softly upon the windows.
“Look at it this way, Will,” Enright counseled as his breath fogged the windshield close to his face. “We’ve trained for Palapa-Westar Six and for flying the MMU. And we’re already working on next year’s rendezvous and recovery flight to retrieve a fused-out, recon satellite for the Defense Department. The Manipulator Arm has flown successfully since STS-2. The Plasma Diagnostics Package checked out perfectly on Three in ’82. It’ll sniff out any radiation or flux leaks from LACE just fine. This thing is exactly what we are trained to do: First-orbit rendezvous with a target, go outside with the MMU, stabilize LACE with the manned maneuvering unit and the flying grapple fixture, attach the pyro package with the RMS, and push ’er off. All in a good day’s work, Will.” Enright was still euphoric, itching for his first ride Out There. He looked longingly at the black and rainy sky, his sky at last.
This would be Colonel Parker’s fourth flight into the blackness. Another day at the office was all.
“What do you know about LACE, Jack?” Will Parker asked with his face looking over his right shoulder toward his truck. He could hear it rusting in the rain.
“Only what I read in Aviation Week.”
“Well, buddy. Whatever is in Aviation Week must be the truth.” The Colonel smiled at his truck.
“Then, Skipper, let’s do it!” Jacob Enright beamed, filling his youthful face with teeth.
The weary Colonel thought about tomorrow, which was already two hours old. In only six hours, they would again get their feet wet in the Johnson Center’s huge, neutral buoyancy pool to simulate working upon their deadly target in watery weightlessness. With his mind full of slow-moving, exhaustion-numbed thoughts, the Colonel faced his excited partner. Jack Enright’s boyish grin infected the Colonel’s deeply lined, pilot’s face.
“You betcha, Number One,” the Colonel smiled as he pried his long body from the cold, damp cockpit.
4
“Moscow wants its piece of the pie.” Admiral Hauch shrugged wearily. Three nights of midnight meetings were darkly written upon his face. “Joe, would you, please?”
Joseph Vazzo extracted a notebook from his briefcase. Opening the binder inscribed “Confidential Cables,” he addressed the midnight assembly of officers and diplomats.
The ventilators filled the plastic cave with the chill, scentless sigh of filtered air. The man from State adjusted his bifocals.
“Following our Vienna connection, the Soviets informed us through direct communications that they are agreed to maintaining a secrecy lid on LACE, but at a price.”
Even the somnolent Marine stenographer opened his eyes to hear what his fingers were tapping as the diplomat continued.
“The Russians will observe a news quarantine only if they are permitted to have a cosmonaut crew on-station in space for the Intelsat-6 operation. I am advised that a Soyuz, Block-TM spacecraft is already stacked and ready for launch…”
“Do the bastards understand the risk to their crew, Mr. Secretary?” demanded a Colonel in shirtsleeves.
“May I suggest, sir, that our colleagues behind the Kremlin wall understand the risks of LACE, and that they did even before your special projects people.” The graying diplomat glared coldly over his glasses toward the officer. “We believe that’s also why Moscow is sending their people up in the Soyuz-TM spacecraft. The TM version is new, but the basic Soyuz design is old, reliable — and expendable. They are not risking their new, more efficient, but radically more expensive Buran space shuttle.”
“Thanks, Joe. The new crew of Parker and Enright received their initial briefing earlier this evening. Our people here and at NASA’s Office of Space Science in Houston are confident that our substitute crew is the likely choice and in need of virtually no retraining. After all,” said the Admiral as he lifted a coffee mug to his round face, “Parker and Enright have trained for months for this precise mission. We’re only changing their target and the applications package to be attached to it onorbit…”
“Not to mention that your mislaid communications satellites could only have winked at them,” Deputy Under Secretary Vazzo offered dryly. “LACE can crisp them… and the Shuttle Endeavor… and the Soviets in Soyuz.”
“Joe, Joe,” muttered the tired admiral, pleading from the head of the table.
“Admiral,” interrupted a gray-suited National Security Council representative.
“Pete?”
“NSC remains curious about Endeavor’s extraordinary turnaround schedule. How confident are you about going up in three and one-half days?”
“I think the KSC people are better informed than I on that one. Colonel Stermer?”
“Sir: as Commander Rusinko pointed out last night, Endeavor is already rolled out to Pad 39-A at Kennedy. With a fully automated checkout and countdown, the LPS — that’s Launch Processing System — can get her off in 80 hours. That’s not our critical weakness. Let me be specific.”
As the liaison officer between NASA and Defense shuffled through his stack of papers, a dozen hands raised coffee mugs toward faces sagging with midnight fatigue.
“Systems integration is a serious constraint on our timeline. Endeavor’s payload bay is stuffed with the communication satellite payload. We must get the bird out of Shuttle and lay in the Mylar reflector blankets. Also, the Payload Assist Module and an OSS pallet with a plasma diagnostics package must be mated, connected, integrated, and checked out in the payload bay…” The speaker paused to catch his breath. “Ordinarily, this complex operation would be executed with Shuttle in the horizontal position in the Orbiter Processing Facility. To go in three days, this operation must be done with the system stacked vertically on the pad. We are pushing the time-line, pushing the structural limitations, and pushing the launch team.”