There was a thump as the retro pack straps gave way. I thought the pack had jettisoned. A piece of steel strap fell against the window, clung for a moment, and burned away.
“This, Friendship Seven. I think the pack just let go.”
An orange glow built up and grew brighter. I anticipated the heat at my back. I felt it the same way you feel it when somebody comes up behind you and starts to tap you on the shoulder; but then doesn’t. Flaming pieces of something started streaming past the window. I feared it was the heat shield.
Every nerve fiber was attuned to heat along my spine; I kept wondering, “Is that it? Do I feel it?” But just sitting there wouldn’t do any good. I kept moving the hand controller to damp out the capsule’s oscillations. The rapid slowing brought a buildup of G forces. I strained against almost eight Gs to keep moving the controller. Through the window I saw the glow intensify to a bright orange. Overhead, the sky was black. The fiery glow wrapped around the capsule, with a circle the color, of a lemon drop in the center of its wake.
“This Friendship Seven. A real fireball outside.”
I knew I was in the communications blackout zone. Nobody could hear me, and I couldn’t hear anything the Cape was saying. I actually welcomed the silence for a change. Nobody was chipping at me. There was nothing they could do from the ground anyway. Every half minute or so, I checked to see if I was through it.
“Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven. Over.”
“Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven. Do you receive? Over.”
I was working hard to damp out the control motions, with one eye outside all the time. The orange glow started to fade, and I knew I was through the worst of the heat. Al’s voice came back into my headset. “How do you read? Over”
“Loud and clear. How me?”
“Roger; reading you loud and clear. How are you doing?”
“Oh, pretty good.”
The Gs fell off as my rate of descent slowed. I heard Al again. “Seven, this is Cape. What’s your general condition? Are you feeling pretty well?”
“My condition is good, but that was a real fireball, boy. I had great chunks of that retro pack breaking off all the way through.”
At twelve miles of altitude I had slowed to near subsonic speed. Now, as I passed from fifty-five thousand to forty-five thousand feet, the capsule was rocking and oscillating wildly and the hand controller had no effect. I was out of fuel. Above me through the window I saw the twisting corkscrew contrail of my path. I was ready to trigger the drogue parachute to stabilize the capsule, but it came out on its own at twenty-eight thousand feet. I opened snorkels to bring air into the cabin. The huge main chute blossomed above me at ten thousand feet. It was a beautiful sight. I descended at forty feet a second toward the Atlantic.
I flipped the landing bag deploy switch. The red light glowed green, just the way it was supposed to.
The capsule hit the water with a good solid thump, plunged down, submerging the window and periscope, and bobbed back up. I heard gurgling but found no trace of leaks. I shed my harness, unstowed the survival kit, and got ready to make an emergency exit just in case.
But I had landed within six miles of the USS Noa, and the destroyer was alongside in a matter of minutes. Even so, I got hotter waiting in the capsule for the recovery ship than I had coming through reentry. I felt the bump of the ship’s hull, then the capsule being lifted, swung, and lowered onto the deck. I radioed the ship’s bridge to clear the area around the side hatch, and when I got the all-clear, I hit the firing pin and blasted the hatch open. Hands reached to help me out. “It was hot in there,” I said as I stepped out onto the deck. Somebody handed me a glass of iced tea.
It was the afternoon of the same day. My flight had lasted just four hours and fifty-six minutes. But I had seen three sunsets and three dawns, flying from one day into the next and back again. Nothing felt the same.
I looked back at Friendship 7. The heat of reentry had discolored the capsule and scorched the stenciled flag and the lettering of United States and Friendship 7 on its sides. A dim film of some kind covered the window. Friendship 7 had passed a test as severe as any combat, and I felt an affection for the cramped and tiny spacecraft, as any pilot would for a warplane that had brought him safely through enemy fire.
The Noa like all ships in the recovery zone, had a kit that included a change of clothes and toiletries. I was taken to the captain’s quarters, where two flight surgeons helped me struggle out of the pressure suit and its underlining, and remove the biosensors and urine collection device. I didn’t know until I got the suit off that the hatch’s firing ring had kicked back and barked my knuckles, my only injury from the trip. My urine bag was full. A NASA photographer was taking pictures. After a shower, I stepped on a scale; I had lost five pounds since liftoff. President Kennedy called via radio-telephone with congratulations. He had already made a statement to the nation, in which he created a new analogy for the exploration of space: “This is the new ocean, and I believe the United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.”
I called Annie at home in Arlington. She knew I was safe. She had had three televisions set up in the living room, and was watching with Dave and Lyn and the neighbours with the curtains drawn against the clamor of news crews outside on the lawn. Even so, she sobbed with relief. I didn’t know then that Scott had called to prepare her in case the heat shield was loose. He had told her I might not make it back. “I waited for you to come back on the radio,” she said. “I know it was only five minutes. But it seemed like five years.”
Hearing my voice speaking directly to her brought first tears, then audible happiness.
After putting on a jumpsuit and high-top sneakers, I found a quiet spot on deck and started answering into a tape recorder the questions on the two-page shipboard debriefing form. The first question was, what would you like to say first?
The sun was getting low, and I said, “What can you say about a day in which you get to see four sunsets?”
Before much more time had passed, I got on the ship’s loudspeaker and thanked the Noa’s crew. They had named me sailor of the month, and I endorsed the fifteen-dollar check to the ship’s welfare fund. A helicopter hoisted me from the deck of the Noa in a sling and shuttled me to an aircraft carrier, the USS Randolph, where I met a larger reunion committee. Doctors there took an EKG and a chest X ray, and I had a steak dinner. Then from the Randolph I flew copilot on a carrier transport that took me to Grand Turk Island for a more extensive medical exam and two days of debriefings.
At the debriefing sessions, I had the highest praise for the whole operation, the training, the way the team had come back from all the cancellations, and the mission itself – with one exception. They hadn’t told me directly their fears about the heat shield, and I was really unhappy about that. A lot of people, doctors in particular, had the idea that you’d panic in such a situation. The truth was, they had no idea what would happen. None of us were panic-prone on the ground or in an airplane or in any of the things they put us through in training, including underwater egress from the capsule. But they thought we might panic once we were up in space and assumed it was better if we didn’t know the worst possibilities.
I thought the astronaut ought to have all the information the people on the ground had as soon as they had it so he could deal with a problem if communication was lost. I was adamant about it. I said, “Don’t ever leave a guy up there again without giving him all the information you have available. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a manned program?”