"That's stupid!"
"That's bureaucratic thinking," Captain Kyser corrected—or agreed; Whitney couldn't figure out which. Leaning over Whitney's shoulder again, she spoke toward a small grille next to the display screen. "Carl? Did you get all that?"
"Yes," the intercom answered, "and I suspect Mr. Whitney's basically right. But there have to be emergency procedures for something like this—else why have the program stored aboard in the first place? It should simply be a matter of getting an adequately prominent official to give an okay. I'll get the tower on it right away."
"And hope your prominent official can move his tail this early in the morning," she muttered under her breath.
Whitney had been thinking along a separate track. "There's one other thing we can try," he said. "Can you patch me into the regular phone system from up here?"
"Trivially. Why?"
"I'd like to call my former supervisor back in Houston. He might be able to get the package, either from his own office or from someone in L.A."
"You just said it was illegal to release the code," Henson objected.
"To you, yes; but maybe not to me. I work for the company, after all."
Henson started to growl something vituperative, but Kyser cut him off. "We'll complain to the FAA later. For now, let's take whatever loopholes we can get our hands on. Put on that half-headset, Mr. Whitney, and I'll fix you up with Ma Bell."
The call, once the connection was finally made, was a remarkably short one. Dr. Mills, seldom at his best in the early morning, nevertheless came fully awake as Whitney gave him a thumbnail sketch of the crisis. He took down the names of both the diagnostic program and the loading code, extracted from Captain Kyser—via Whitney—the instructions for placing a return call to the Skyport, and promised to have the package for him in fifteen minutes.
"Well, that's it, I guess," Whitney remarked after signing off. "Nothing to do now but wait."
"Yeah. Damn."
Whitney looked up at her as she stared through the computer console, concentration drawing her eyebrows together. She had been something of a surprise to him, and he still found it hard to believe a Skyport wing captain could be so young. Marinos, he estimated, was in his early fifties, and Henson wasn't much younger. But if Betsy Kyser was anything past her early forties she was the best-preserved woman he'd ever seen. Which meant either United was hard up for Skyport personnel or Captain Kyser was one very fine pilot. He fixed the thought firmly in his mind; it was one of the few things about all this that was even remotely comforting. "Uh... Captain?" he spoke up.
She focused on him, the frown lingering for a second before she seemed to notice it and eased it a bit. "Call me Betsy," she told him. "This isn't much of a place for formalities."
"I'm Peter, then. May I ask why you need to know about the electronics right now? I would think the shuttle's safety would be the thing you need to concentrate on."
"It is, but we can't do anything about that until we're sure more shuttles can dock safely." He must have looked blank, because the corner of her mouth twitched and she continued, "Look. Whatever we wind up doing to the shuttle, odds are we don't already have the necessary equipment on board. That means—"
"That means you'll have to bring it up via shuttle," Whitney nodded, catching on at last. "So you need to find the glitch in your docking program and make sure it hasn't also affected the other modules' equipment."
"Right. After that the next job'll be to either get the passengers out or secure the shuttle into the bay, whichever is faster and safer."
Whitney nodded again. In his mind's eye he could see the damaged shuttle hanging precariously out the back of the Skyport, holding on by the barest of threads. The picture reawakened the half-forgotten vertigo of his first—and last—rollercoaster ride twenty years ago, and he discovered he was gripping the arms of his chair a shade more tightly than necessary. Firmly, he forced his emotions down out of the way. "There's going to be a fair amount of drag on the shuttle from the Skyport's slipstream," he commented, thinking aloud as a further distraction from discomfiting images. "That means a lot of stress on the docking collar. Would it help any if the shuttle dumped its fuel, to make itself lighter?"
"Just the opposite; the eng—" She paused, a strange look flickering across her face. Behind her, Whitney saw peripherally, Marinos had swiveled around, his attention presumably attracted by Betsy's abrupt silence. "Paul," she said without turning, "run a calculation for me. At its present rate of burn, how much fuel has the shuttle got left?"
"What diff—?" Marinos stopped, too, the same look settling onto his own features. Turning back, he began punching calculator buttons.
"Right," Betsy muttered tartly. "We've gotten too used to the easy transfer of fuel between shuttle and Skyport... or I have, anyway." Whitney had figured out what was going on, but Betsy spelled it out for him anyway. "You see, Peter, the shuttle's currently firing its engines, at about medium power, to counteract the drag you mentioned. I guess I was subconsciously assuming we could feed it all the fuel it needed from the Skyport's reserves."
"But the connections are out of line?"
"Almost certainly. The fuel line's on the starboard side, too, which means there's not likely to be enough room to even get in and connect them manually. Probably no access panels close enough, either, but I guess we'll have to check on that." She grimaced. "Something else to do. I hope someone's keeping a list."
"Got it, Betsy," Marinos said, looking up once more. "At current usage, he'll run dry in a little over seven hours."
"Seven hours." She pursed her lips. "And that assumes neither of his main pumps was rattled loose by the impact. Carl?"
"I heard, Betsy," the intercom grille said. "That's not a lot of time."
"No kidding. How much fuel has the whole Skyport got; for our own flying, I mean?"
"At our current speed, a good ten hours. All the tanks were pretty full."
"Okay. Thanks."
"Still no word from ground control on your program," he added. "They're trying to look up the regs and track down the guy who's got the actual package, and doing both of them badly."
"Betsy?" Marinos again. "Sorry to interrupt, but it's Eric Rayburn on the shuttle. He wants to talk to you."
Whitney started to reach for the earphone he was wearing, but Betsy shook her head, stepping back to her chair and picking up her own set. "This is Kyser," she said into the slender mike.
"Liz, what the hell's going on up there?" a harsh voice said into Whitney's left ear.
With the kind of crisis they were all facing up here, Whitney wouldn't have believed the tension on the flight deck could possibly increase. But it did. He could feel it in the uncomfortable shifting of Henson in his chair, and in Marinos' furtive glance sideways, and in Betsy's tightly controlled response. "We're trying to figure out how to get you and your passengers out of there alive," she said.
"Well, it's taking a damn sight too long. Or have you forgotten that John's in bad shape?"
"No, we haven't forgotten. If you've got any suggestions let's hear them."
"Sure. Just open this damn collar and let me fly my plane back to Dallas."
Betsy and Marinos exchanged glances; Whitney couldn't see Betsy's face, but Marinos's looked flabbergasted. "That's out of the question. You don't even know if the shuttle will fly any more."
"Sure it will! I've still got control of the engines and control surfaces. What else do I need?"
"How about electronics, for starters? You apparently don't even have enough nav equipment left to know where you are. For your information, you wouldn't be flying 'back' to Dallas, because we haven't left—we're circling the area at fifteen thousand feet and about two-seventy knots."
"All the better. I won't need any directional gear to find the airport."