"The emergency collar?"
"Hasn't engaged. I don't know why yet; the sensors in that area got jarred pretty badly and they aren't all working."
"The front clamp didn't make it to the nosewheel, I take it?"
"No, sir." Betsy studied the TV screen. "Looks like it's at least a meter short, maybe more."
"Those clamp arms aren't supposed to run short, no matter where in the bay the shuttle winds up," someone spoke up from one of the other wing sections. "Maybe it's just hung up on something, and in that case you should be able to connect it up manually from inside the bay."
"There isn't supposed to be anything in there for the arm to hang up on," Greenburg muttered, half to himself.
Young heard him anyway. "Unless the crash jarred something loose," he pointed out. "Checking on that should be our first priority."
"Excuse me, Carl, but it's not," Betsy said. "Our first priority is to figure out whether something aboard Seven caused the crash."
"A board of inquiry—"
"Will be too late. All our fuel comes up via these shuttles. If a flaw's developed in Seven's electronics or computer guidance programming we've got to find out what it is and make sure none of the other wing sections has it. Because if something is going bad, it has to be fixed before we can allow any more dockings. Otherwise we could wind up with two smashed shuttles."
Behind her, she heard Lewis swear under his breath and head over toward the flight deck's seldom-used computer terminal. "You're right," Young admitted. "I hadn't thought that far. Can you run the check, or shall I send someone over to help?"
"Tom's starting on it now, but I'm not sure what it'll prove. The computer's supposed to continually run its own checks and let us know if there's any problem. If there's a flaw the machine missed, a standard check isn't likely to find it, either."
"Then we'll go to the source. I'll put a call through to McDonnell Douglas and see if they can either run a deeper check by remote control or tell us how to do one."
Betsy glanced at her watch. Six-forty St. Louis time; two hours earlier in Los Angeles. They'd have to get the experts out of bed, a time-consuming process. She was just about to mention that fact when Paul Marinos, Six's captain, spoke up. "Wait a second. There's a guy aboard who works for McDonnell Douglas—Erin told me he'd asked her about a tour of the flight deck."
"Does he know anything about our electronics?" Young asked.
"I don't know, but she said he does something with computers for them."
Betsy turned around to look at Lewis, who shrugged and nodded assent. "Close enough," she told the Skyport captain. "Can you get him up here right away?"
"I'll go get him myself," Marinos volunteered. "I'll be there in a couple of minutes."
"All right. Let's get back to the shuttle itself, then," Young said. "Betsy, you said the collar supports were broken. Any idea how that happened?"
"I can only speculate that the collar had established a partial grip before the shuttle did its sideways veer into the bay wall."
"In that case, the crash may have left both the outer shuttle door and the exit tunnel intact. Any chance of getting the two connected and getting the passengers out of there?"
"I don't know." Betsy peered at the screen, made a slight adjustment in the contrast. "They're out of line, for sure. I don't know if the tunnel will stretch far enough to make up the difference."
"Even if it does, we'd need portable oxygen masks for all the passengers," Henson pointed out from behind her. "They have to be using the shuttle's air masks, and they can't travel with those."
"That's not going to be a problem," Young said. "I've already invoked emergency regulations; we're bringing her down to fifteen thousand feet."
"Well, there's nothing more I can tell from here." Betsy shook her head. "Someone's going to have to go down and take a look. Who aboard this bird knows the most about docking bay equipment?"
There was a pause. "I don't know whether I know the most," Greenburg spoke up diffidently at Betsy's right, "but I've seen the blueprints, and I worked summers as a mechanic's assistant for Boeing when I was in college."
"Anyone able to top that?" Young asked. "No? All right, Greenburg, get going."
Betsy put her half-headset back on as Greenburg removed his and stood up. "A set of the relevant blueprints would be helpful," he said, looking back at Lewis.
"I'm having the computer print them," the other told him. "If you want to go down and get the oxygen gear together, I'll come down and give you a hand."
Greenburg glanced questioningly at Betsy. "Can you do without both of us that long?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Sure. But make it a fast look-see. You're not going down there to do any major repair work."
"Right," Greenburg started for the door. "Meet you by the port-aft cargo access hatch, Tom."
Lewis waved an acknowledgment, his eyes on the computer screen, as Greenburg exited. Betsy turned back to face forward, and as she did so Rayburn's voice crackled in her ear. "Skyport, this is Rayburn. The doctor says John's alive!"
A small part of the tightness across Betsy's chest seemed to disappear. "Thank God! Is the doctor still there? I want to speak with him."
"Just a second." There was a moment of silence punctuated by assorted clicks, and then a new voice came tentatively on the line. "Hello? This is Dr. Emerson."
"Doctor, this is Wing Captain Elizabeth Kyser. What sort of shape is First Officer Meredith in?"
"Not a good one, I'm afraid," Emerson admitted. "He seems to have one or more cracked ribs and possibly a broken collarbone as well. The way the fuselage has bent inward and pinned him makes it hard to examine him. I could try pulling him out, but that might exacerbate any internal injuries, or even drive bits of glass into him from the broken windows. He's unconscious, but his vital signs are stable, at least for the moment. I'm afraid I can't tell you much more."
"Just knowing he's alive is good news enough," Betsy assured him. She thought for a moment. "What if we could cut the whole chair loose? Is there enough room behind him to move the chair back and get him out that way?"
"Uh... I think so, yes. But I don't know what we would do after that. I heard the flight attendant say the door was jammed."
Betsy frowned. Rayburn hadn't mentioned that to her. "We might be able to force it open anyway and get it connected to the rest of the Skyport. Are the rest of the passengers all right?"
"A few minor injuries, mostly bruises due to the safety belts. We've been very lucky."
So far. "Yeah. Thank you, Doctor. Please let us know immediately if there's any change."
"Got the prints, Betsy," Lewis called as she turned off the mike. "I'm heading down."
He was gone before she could do more than nod assent, leaving her and Henson alone. For some reason the empty seats bothered her, and she briefly considered calling in some of Seven's off-duty crewmen. But as long as they were stuck in this virtual holding pattern, extra help on the flight deck would be pretty superfluous. Turning back to the instrument panel, she felt a wave of frustration wash over her. So many unanswered questions, most of them crucial to the safety of one or more groups of people aboard the Skyport—and she was temporarily at a loss to handle any of them. For the moment there was nothing she could do but try and line up the problems in some sort of logical order: if A is true then B must be done, and D cannot precede either B or C. But it was like juggling or playing chess in her head; there were just too many contingencies that had to be taken into account every step of the way.