“We build them pretty tight, Doctor.”
“Yes. And you have two of your best pilots up there.”
“My best. I know.”
“Any word from Moscow, Admiral?”
“Yes, Colonel.” The big man did not turn to face the table. “It’s Sleep Tight.”
“But they have their own man in there.”
“Yes they do, Major. But LACE was and is to be a totally… antiseptic operation. With extreme prejudice if necessary.”
“If I may: I cannot believe that the Kremlin would advocate such a senseless waste.”
“I agree, Commander.” The old fatigue crept into the Admiral’s deep voice. “They have their ‘upstairs’ and we have ours. I imagine the Kremlin knows as little about this operation as our own government. Even the President has not been briefed on all these little details.”
“Admiral, I cannot support assassination.”
The tall sailor turned to glare coldly and wearily at the small assembly.
“None of you were invited here to vote! The votes are all in. You are here to help your country out of her worst embarrassment since the Bay of Pigs in ’61… Doctor, will your Programmed Test Input Seven do the job?”
“Absolutely. With the left aft RCS pod disabled, the shuttle has lost one-third of her total Reaction Control System impulse for precision attitude control. The key here is attitude rates: She will be slow in attitude changes. The PDPU maneuver of PTI-7, that’s push-down pull-up, will crack her spine… just like that.”
The Admiral winced as the little man snapped his fingers.
“Major? Will the crew run the PTI if they have doubts about it with partial RCS capacity?” The Admiral spoke slowly.
“That is their job… Of course they will run it, Admiral.”
“Then I shall relay the go ahead to the network feed.”
“Mike, you can’t!”
“That is my job.”
The large man in his dress blues turned away. He looked up at the small video insect which crawled across eastern Brazil toward open sea and its local midnight darkness. Then the old dragon of the Tail Hook Club closed his tired eyes tightly.
“Nine minutes, Skipper.”
The mission clock ticked up past 09 hours 46 minutes. Endeavor flew upside-down and tailfirst through the night. Below, it was almost midnight. The starship left Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the coastline behind as she made for open water and Okinawa, now 15,400 statute miles away. There would be no more major landfalls until wheels-on, except for a brief glide over Southeast Asia.
“Feet wet.” Enright studied the television on his right side of the forward cockpit.
When Endeavor crossed the coast, she entered a 5,130-statute-mile stretch of the South Atlantic Anomaly. Now it did not matter. An ionic orange glow warmed Shuttle’s inverted 26-foot-long tail which led the way southeast making 300 miles per minute. That made no difference to the crew, either.
“Entry attitude hold, set.” The Aircraft Commander read his checklist. “Ten degrees up bubble on the bow…Yaw right 007 degrees. Set.”
Shuttle’s nose was lower than her tail section from the local horizontal as she flew backward. But since the crew was oriented headsdown, the nose appeared to them higher than the tail. The computers directed the nose to hold slightly off center. This side drift would help the single OMS engine deliver its 6,000 pounds of thrust in a thrust vector through the ship’s center of gravity. The single right orbital maneuvering system rocket can also swing from side to side through an eight-degree arc to direct the line of fire.
“Looks fat on propellant, Will. Good news.”
Enright had run a check of the OMS propellant tanks in the single right pod in the tail. The OMS pod was loaded with propellant for 1,250 seconds of firing. Only 190 seconds worth of fuel and oxidizer were burned during the two firings of the OMS pod to insert Endeavor into orbit 9½ hours earlier. Very little had been consumed during the first-orbit rendezvous with LACE. Ordinarily, with both OMS engines firing to slow Shuttle for leaving orbit, the de-orbit bum lasts 150 seconds. With only one OMS pod to fire the 77-inch-high, 45-inch-wide Aerojet General rocket engine, the burn would take a full five minutes to jar Shuttle from her circular orbit 149 statute miles high.
“OMS prep, your side, Jack.”
Enright looked up through his bandages at the panels of switches and pushbuttons on the ceiling. The AC challenged and Enright readback.
“Overhead Panel-8: Helium pressure vapor insolation valve, Loop A, to General Purpose Computer.”
“Alpha to GPC.”
“Loop B to GPC.”
“Bravo to GPC.”
“Propellant tank isolation valve, Loop A, talk-back open.”
“Alpha, open.”
“Loop B, talk-back open.”
“Bravo, open.”
“Right OMS crossfeed, closed, Loop A.”
“Alpha, closed.”
“Right crossfeed, Loop B, closed.”
“Bravo, closed, Will.”
“Panel Overhead-16, engine valve, on.”
“On.”
“Engine lever-locked arm.” Parker checked the toggle switch on the center console by his right elbow.
The clocks reached 09 hours 50 minutes, MET, and the event timer ticked down through minus five minutes to OMS ignition.
Endeavor flew on her back, tailfirst, over the black water below and with the faint star Acamar in the southern constellation Eridanus above. In the west, 1,400 nautical miles away, Montevideo, Uruguay, slept away a summer night. Below, it was midnight, six days before Christmas.
“State vectors loaded,” the AC confirmed. “Major Mode 302 running and Mother likes it.”
On the center of three television screens, the plots were up for the de-orbit maneuver. At the base of the green screen, numerics counted down in tandem with the event timer near Parker’s painful right knee.
“Jack: ADI to inertial mine and yours, ADI error and rates to medium. And DAP to auto.” The crew set their round attitude director indicators for the final plunge home.
“Four minutes, Alexi,” the AC called over his right shoulder.
The Soviet survivor nodded to the back of Enright’s bandaged and blistered head. Then he tightened his lap and shoulder belts.
“Let’s do it, Jacob.”
“Think I’m old enough, Will?”
Dozens of greasy hands reached into bowls of popcorn on the floor. The large hands belonged to adults but their voices and their eyes were those of children.
“Told you it was already on TV.”
“You were right, Emily. Let’s just remember that the television people don’t know everything.”
“Oh, I know that, Cleanne. I wish everyone would shush so we could hear about my daddy.”
The two women leaned toward the television in the airy, institutional family room. Outside, it was a dark winter evening.
“Dan, the day has certainly taken on a tone far different from this morning.”
“Yes indeed, Walter. There was that magnificent launch of the Shuttle Endeavor from Florida this morning. Even though we have seen Shuttle ride that pillar of fire other times, it is still awesome and the crowds still line Coco Beach to watch her go. Then that first-orbit rendezvous with the lost Intelsat-6 satellite and with the Russians sent up for this first truly international space repair operation…”
“And then, Dan, it became unglued this afternoon. Somehow, the whole thing just unraveled. And we know very little tonight. First we had Astronaut Parker going outside instead of Jacob Enright who was injured, mysteriously, inside Shuttle. Barely two hours ago, we were told that Parker’s spacewalk had failed to secure Intelsat-6 to Shuttle. And then an hour ago: that terse announcement from NASA in Houston and from Moscow that Intelsat-6 had been destroyed, that a Russian cosmonaut was dead, and that a Soviet survivor was picked up by Shuttle.”