The thin engineer paused. His exhausted observers scrutinized his yellow face. A smile?
“So, Dr. Pritchard. You just saunter on over to Pad 39-A with your little screwdriver and a few key-punch cards?”
“Not at all, Colonel. The automatic, computer-controlled countdown by the Launch Sequence Processor can be instructed to insert my computer programs into the five flight computers over the pre-launch Ground Command Interface Logic software. This is a normal prelaunch computer and navigation up-date always done on a shuttle launch about twenty minutes before lift-off…”
“And our crew just quietly incinerates themselves?”
“Not quite, Major. We simply tell the crew that we intend to fly an automatic test of the re-entry flight systems. It’s called a Programmed Test Input. These PTI’s, sets of up to seventeen of them, were routinely flown on the first six shuttle missions. Tell the crew we need another PTI sequence to check out the flight systems and they won’t raise an eyebrow.
“Just before the re-entry, we advise the pilots either to execute the PTI or not to run it as part of Major Mode 304. We only use the lethal PTI if it is necessary.”
“That’s it, Doctor?”
“In full, Admiraclass="underline" Clean, quick, and buried within 400,000 lines of computer programs. And the final beauty of my plan: If the go-ahead is given to the crew for my PTI, it will be run during the early re-entry, during the normal communications blackout caused by the initial heat pulse. Endeavor will go into the blackout, but she will not come out of it.”
The Admiral felt his bowels twisting.
“You can do all that between tonight and launch in fifty-six hours?”
“Admiral, that is my job.”
“Tell you one thing, Jack, give me a good old truck stop over a dinner jacket joint anytime.”
“I’ll buy that, Skipper.”
With morning sunshine warming their faces by the window of a truckers’ diner along Interstate 45 just north of Houston, the newly anointed prime crew for the Intelsat-6 rescue mission relished bacon and eggs laced with greasy hashbrowns and the scent of diesel fuel.
“The best, Number One,” the big man drawled. His face looked uncommonly drawn to his junior partner.
“Look tired, Will,” Jacob Enright offered cautiously over his black coffee. He braced for a captain’s look to warm his face at 8 o’clock in the morning.
“Just worked late and too early to the office, Jack. A mornin’ off before we fly to the Cape should restoke the old furnace.”
Enright was surprised by the Colonel’s benign response. The long pilot had not raised his face from his eggs.
“Yeh, Skip. I’m lookin’ forward to a few hours off. No simulator, no briefings, no Stoney, no Hutch, no Tommy. May take my cycle for a spin.”
“You be careful, buddy… Does feel good, don’t it?” The command pilot smiled a tired grin.
“About this morning’s briefing, Will. I’m still surprised about running a PTI this late in the game. We’re pretty much routine since the first few flights after the Challenger stand-down. Maybe they’re still learning how she flies? Strange, though.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jack. We’ll be there anyway. Might as well give the backroom its money’s worth. Just push a button and let Mother fly us home. No sweat.”
“I suppose. What you gonna do with your whole hour of R and R?”
“Got a visit I want to make. See a friend up north. Drive from here.”
“Got a girl, Skipper?” the thin pilot smiled.
The gray-haired airman thought for a long moment. Enright attended to his eggs. He thought the older flier had forgotten his question.
“Yeh, Jack. A girl.”
Hastings Manor sprawled majestically across the sundrenched hills an hour from Houston. White stucco buildings glowed in the clear, chill air. A relic from the Mexican heritage of Texas, the old mansion was elegant as Colonel Parker walked with a limp along a pathway between cottages.
Staff members in street clothes waved cheery goodmornings at the familiar, long-legged visitor. “Have a safe trip, Colonel,” they called and smiled. The tall man nodded and returned the cheer of the glorious winter’s morning.
Colonel Parker stopped outside a large, single-story cottage, white and ancient, with clay arches over a red tile veranda.
“Morning, Colonel,” smiled an older woman with a plastic name tag upon her chest.
“And to you, Sister.”
“You are well, Colonel?”
“As any old salt can hope to be, Sister.”
“I shall pray for you and that other young man tomorrow.” She looked worried in the sunshine.
“I would be very grateful, Sister.” The Colonel did not smile. His face was thin and tired. A slight flush burned his hollow face.
“Emily is in her room, Colonel.”
“Thank you.” The tall man nodded as he limped past the large woman to enter the cool, clean building made of clay baked starchy white by two centuries of Texas suns.
Inside, young adults laughed with pleasure when the Colonel in his faded blue flightsuit entered the large room. They ran or hobbled or wheeled themselves toward him.
Parker coaxed each muscle of his lean face, one neuron at a time, to open into a warm, familiar greeting. He touched many hands, many happy faces. As the Colonel greeted the grown men and women with the childlike faces, he could taste his heart.
The Colonel steered through the throng toward a long hallway. On the walls hung framed lithographs of oceans and mountains.
At a closed door marked “Emily Parker,” the doorknob disappeared into his large hand.
“Daddy!” cried the young woman inside who ran to embrace the big man. She buried her clear face into his chest. The airman held her thin shoulders and he laid his chin upon her auburn hair.
“How’s my Emily girl?” the Colonel smiled, pushing the woman to arm’s length.
“Awful fine! How’s my daddy?”
“Awful fine. Awful fine… Come sit beside me.”
The Colonel backed into a large chair which filled a comer of the small but airy room filled with a girl’s peculiar softness: stuffed animals, thick books full of pictures with bright colors, and a flowered bedspread upon a single bed.
The woman in her late twenties sat cross-legged at his feet, resting her lovely face upon his left leg above his knee. She held his hard, left hand to her face in both of her small hands. For a long time, they sat in silence. The low morning sun shone orange upon her hair, which was askew upon her forehead.
“I’m sorry I have not come for four days, Emily girl.”
“That’s okay,” she smiled with a child’s face. “You have to be a colonel. I know.”
He squeezed her face gently with the hand cradling its softness.
“Emily, I have to go flying tomorrow with Mr. Enright. I’ve told you about him. Remember?”
The woman pursed her eyebrows in thought.
“Very far?” She became serious.
“Yes, Emily. But only for two days.”
The woman opened the fingers on one hand and she counted off two with her other hand.
“Yes. You are very good.” He smiled.
“I am very good,” she giggled.
“Emily, while I am away, Dr. Casey will visit you. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I like her lots. She reads to me and we take walks. She knows all about animals and sailboats… Do you like her, Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, does she like you?”