Orbit Page 23

  The tool kit, that’s it!

  The suit has a small tool kit like nothing he’s seen before. They showed the components in ground school but he barely paid attention. Now he turns and pulls the suit to him, searching for the correct pocket and pulling out the silver-plated kit.

  That is what I remember! he thinks, finding a pair of wire clippers and three colors of electrical tape along with several garden-variety wire nuts. The thought about a spacewalk wasn’t for hurrying his demise, it was all about trying to repair whatever had been screwed up by the object that hit them.

  He can visualize himself wiggling into the suit, figuring out how to pressurize it, stuffing himself in the tight little airlock, and floating outside. Maybe another meteor will get him, fast and painlessly. Or cosmic rays sterilize him (not that there’s any chance of that being a problem now). And he’d be doing all that struggling to play in-flight mechanic? Get real.

  Yet he thinks, it’s like guzzling chicken soup for a cold. It may not help, but it can’t hurt.

  Whether the fatigue he feels suddenly is emotional he can’t tell, but the thought of flailing around trying to put on that complicated pressure suit is exhausting, and he decides not to decide for a few hours. After all, there’s another delectable cereal bar and much more to write before he’s ready to think about trying. And maybe it would be a lot more comfortable just to stay inside and slip away slowly.

  But there it is again, that misguided feeling of hope, a glimmer that there could be some way out he hadn’t considered as he turns back to the keyboard.

  NASA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:10 A.M. PACIFIC/9:10 A.M. EASTERN

  The fact that it’s ten minutes past nine and his phone hasn’t rung can’t be good.

  Geoff Shear opens the tiny instrument and finds the symbol that confirms the ringer is set to on. It is.

  The Chinese Long March missile boosting their crew capsule into low Earth orbit should have cycled through first- and second-stage cutout by now and their astronaut—all by himself in a three-person craft—should be approaching orbital velocity.

  The cell phone suddenly corks off, startling Geoff who didn’t realize he was that jumpy. The practiced act of sweeping the phone toward his face while flipping it open is completely unconscious.

  “Yes?”

  “The Chinese scrubbed, Geoff. This is Jake at NRO.”

  “Shit! How’re the Russians doing?”

  “Still on countdown for a noon-our-time liftoff.”

  “I knew the Chinese would fink out.”

  “I think they tried hard, but there was a major fuel leak early this morning, and they couldn’t resolve it. One of my people speaks Mandarin and we had him patched into their comm channels.”

  “So they’re completely out?”

  “Yes. I’ll call you back, as things progress at Baikonaur.”

  Chapter 35

  CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE

  DEFENSE COMMAND, COLORADO

  SPRINGS, COLORADO, MAY 21, 8:41 A.M. PACIFIC/9:41 A.M. MOUNTAIN

  “What now?” Chris Risen asks, glancing at the chief master sergeant and noting his sudden shift of attention to the commercial television feed being displayed on his console.

  “The Secretary of State, sir. They were just interviewing him coming out of the White House. Kip set off another controversy by recommending a type of death penalty for countries that don’t cooperate with the civilized world.”

  “And the Secretary has to respond.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are we on the countdowns, Chief?”

  “At the Cape they’re at T minus eighteen minutes. At Baikonaur, T minus nine.”

  In the old days of the Soviet Union the idea of a live video feed from the Russian spaceport would have been James Bondish, a fantasy. But now, Chris thinks, we’re sitting here watching that very video feed live and in color, as are the Russian people.

  He can see the liquid oxygen venting from the Russian proton booster assembly, the gantry now moved out of the way, the scene looking very similar to the video feed coming in from the Cape.

  “Chief, do we have a pool going on whether NASA will cancel if the Russians lift off?”

  The chief is grinning. “A pool, sir? You mean, as in gambling? As in a chief master sergeant informing the commander of NORAD that his people are violating regulations?”

  “Sorry. Of course I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put me down for twenty that we scrub.”

  “Yes, sir. But for the record, I know nothing.”

  LAUNCH CONTROL, KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA,

  8:44 A.M. PACIFIC/11:44 A.M. EASTERN

  “Out of limits means out of limits, Griggs!” The launch director is standing now, hands on hips, one of his people standing beside him, the computer screen showing the excessive temperature readings displayed on his master console.

  “Stand by, Cully. Do not declare a hold yet.”

  “Look at the count, Griggs! How long do you need?”

  Griggs has a receiver to his ear and a prepositioned computer team on the other end, physically stationed at a hastily constructed war room one building away.

  “Two minutes.”

  “You’ve got forty seconds.”

  Cully Jones shakes his head and turns back to the screen, rolling his eyes at the engineer waiting for direction on what to do with the temperature indication climbing in a tank that could theoretically explode if it, in fact, was to heat up another twenty-five degrees.

  “Watch it like a hawk. If it tops redline plus thirty, we open the vent and hold the countdown.”

  “Got it.”

  Cully turns back to Griggs, aware of what he’s doing but equally aware that a high reading can’t be easily written off as just another artificial computer-generated anomaly. Like a pilot’s guiding philosophy of instrument flight, safety demands belief in your gauges, until you have solid, almost irrefutable evidence they’re lying.

  Cully can feel his blood pressure inching up, something he can usually control, but the series of bad readings and interrupted communications that have marked the last ten minutes are either evidence of a serious, systemic computer glitch—as Griggs insists without much evidence—or a launch sliding toward disaster. This does not feel right.

  Griggs turns back to him.

  “Okay! Cully, check it now. We’re reading raw pickup data and bypassing the distribution processor that’s been causing so many bad readings.”

  The display blinks and the high temperature suddenly drops thirty critical degrees into the green.

  “Jesus Christ!” Cully snarls, his eyes on the reading lest it rise again. He turns to Griggs. “That’s real? I can trust it?”

  “You bet. This is just more of the nonsense we’ve been fighting all morning. The basic distribution processing program is apparently corrupted and we have no time to reboot the system.”

  Another engineer is in his ear on the intercom, and Cully closes his eyes to concentrate on what he’s saying.

  “Talk to me.”

  “I have a complete data dropout on the SRBs. Total.”

  “Stand by!” Once more Cully Jones turns to Hopewell, who is still hanging on to the receiver with his emergency computer team on the other end.

  “Griggs?”

  “I heard, goddammit! Hang on.”

  “I’m declaring a hold.”

  The countdown is descending through T minus sixteen minutes, the tension in the control room increasing exponentially.

  Chapter 36

  ABOARD INTREPID, MAY 21, 8:44 A.M. PACIFIC

  Kip leans into the keyboard once more.

  Having now solved all of mankind’s problems (the doomed passenger says, facetiously) it’s time to turn my attention to some of my own. The challenge is how and when I should pull the plug, or should I just plan to slip off to “sleep.” That problem has been rattling around my head all morning (as measured by my
watch, of course, rather than the continuous ninety-minute cycle of sunrises and sunsets that have me humming the song from Fiddler on the Roof, and shedding tears.)

  The other thing that has me fibrillating is an embarrassment: If I had a boat that sprang a leak, wouldn’t I at least try to plug the leak? Of course. But I’ve sat here for days waiting for Godot, assuming that nothing more can be done, even though deep down I’ve known all along it’s not true. There is one more overt, physical thing I can do, or at least try.

  I’m going to wiggle into Bill’s space suit and see if there’s anything I can repair outside. What are the chances? Below absolute zero. Yes, I’m somewhat mechanically inclined and I can wire up a mean set of speaker wires. Actually my BS degree in electrical engineering is really a smoke screen, since I never used it, and especially not with high-tech messes caused by high-speed objects hitting spacecraft.

  And what’s the worse case? I die outside instead of inside, but better with my boots on…space boots though they may be.

  You know, I’m feeling a little punchy. I wonder if the CO2 buildup has already begun? I feel more loose. Or maybe just feeling relieved we’re getting close to the end. Relieved and scared out of my mind. That, I think, is the real reason I’m going to go outside and play with the vacuum. I need something to do besides sit here and wait for the inevitable.

  I hope you understand—whoever you are and whenever in the distant future you read this—just knowing another human is absorbing all this verbiage has given me a form of companionship. I thank you for that! I thank you for sitting through my grumbling and pontificating and crying and the poor expressions of how I would do things down there if I had the proverbial magic wand.

  If any of my kids are still alive when this is found and read, please see that they get the separate letters I’ve written to all four individually. And as for Sharon, in case she is still alive, just this: I’m sorry. I wish things could have been better for us as a couple.

  And there is one last overall message I guess I want to leave.

  I want for all of you a future in which every human has firmly in his or her mind the scene the three Apollo 8 astronauts saw back in 1968 when this tiny, beautiful blue marble we live on rose over the edge of the moon as they raced along the far side—an almost iridescent oasis of beauty in an endless, star-speckled sea of black nothingness—and they realized they were looking at spaceship Earth, their home. Suddenly wars and borders and conflicts based on economics and theories seemed utterly stupid, and while in reality we’re a long way from being a species that universally shares that startling view, we must—you must—keep moving in that direction.

  That goal of harmony and love that a man from Galilee tried to teach us in amazing simplicity so long ago is still the goal we should strive for, regardless of what labels we put on the message. “Us” seems a strange concept, since I’m leaving. But I was a part of spaceship Earth and the human family, a pioneering species that is still relatively blind to a very profound truth that’s so hard to see when you’re working hard and paying bills and raising kids: We are all so very connected! Even me, here, waiting to die in space. I’m connected to everyone down there, and…you know, it’s amazing…. as soon as I type these words I feel the warmth of uncounted prayers and a sea of good will and good wishes, as if the entire population of the planet was somehow telepathically saying, “Everything’s okay. Regardless of what happens, it’s okay.” I know that virtually no one down there can discern a single thought of mine, and may never read a word of this. But since I’ve been up here I haven’t felt as enfolded as I do at this moment. But now it’s time for some pro forma struggling. Some self-help that I have to try, so that I will know I didn’t just sit here and ignore options, no matter how bizarre and impossible they may be. So, if I don’t get to write another word, thank you. I left this life as calmly as I could. Not bravely, just calmly. And you know, after everything is said and done, I have been very, very fortunate.

  Kip sits back and rereads the last few lines, hoping to feel a rush of satisfaction. But the only closure is that now he can’t wait any longer.

  The space suit is floating behind the command chair as he unstraps and moves into position to use the breadth of the small cabin for the struggle. Bill was at least ten or fifteen pounds lighter and a little shorter.

  He unzips and prepares it as best he can before shucking his flight suit, finding it surprisingly easy in zero gravity to pull the legs and arms in place, hauling a bit to get his head in and up through the metal helmet collar. He can feel the fabric of the shoulders pressing down firmly because of the difference in their height.

  Item by item, gloves, boots, zippers, interlocks, and air packs, he assembles the space suit until the only remaining items are the helmet and pressurizing.

  He checks the “Emergency Donning” checklist again, puzzling through some of the nomenclature and finally finds the appropriate lock once the helmet is in place, the white inside hood pulled over his head. The small control panel on his left arm is already glowing with a small LED annunciator, and he pushes the button to power it up and pressurize, hearing the tiny fans come alive as the oxygen mix floods the suit and the arms and legs go semirigid.

  He checks the clock on the forward panel. Twenty-five minutes have elapsed.

  Not bad for a rank amateur, Kip thinks, checking that the small tool kit is secured inside the Velcroed pocket before floating to the airlock.

  Even for a small, naked man slicked up with grease, the airlock would be a challenge. For a moderately sized man in a pressurized space suit, it’s like folding himself into a post office box, and at first Kip all but gives up.

  This damn thing must be here for show only! Kip thinks after trying first an arm, then a leg, then his head through the inner door, and finding that either the service pack with the air supply and batteries or some other appendage catches on the door sill each time. He feels an urgency propelling his struggle and cautions himself to slow down. A ripped suit or damaged service pack will doom the entire effort.

  Okay, then, let’s go back to headfirst.

  He rotates himself around until he’s floating on his back and slowly guides his head and shoulders and torso inside, curling forward as he carefully pulls in his legs, folding them just enough to let the boots clear.

  Like crawling into a front-loading washing machine, he thinks.

  He pulls the inner plug-type door closed and works the locking mechanism until a small green light illuminates on a panel he barely can see.

  There are several switches to be thrown before the pressure dump valve will motor open, and he goes through the sequence carefully until he’s down to the last button push.

  Kip takes a deep breath, remembering almost too late to unfold the nylon tether strap and hook it into the metal loop within the lock. He assumes the outer door is supposed to remain open while he’s outside. Nothing else would make sense.

  The button pushes easily and he takes a deep breath, as if the air in his suit was going to be sucked out as well. The pressure gauge begins dropping in pounds per square inch, moving toward zero, but nothing changes in the suit except the sudden increase in the rigidity of the arms and legs.

  An orange zero-pressure light illuminates on the panel, and then a green light on the latch mechanism, and Kip begins rotating the vaultlike wheel to remove the latches, surprised at how easily the door just swings open into the void.

  Chapter 37

  ASA HEADQUARTERS, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA,

  MAY 21, 8:51 A.M. PACIFIC

  Like a gathering of pallbearers, Diana thinks as she glances at the stricken faces of those standing outside Richard DiFazio’s office. Richard hangs up the phone and motions them in, most electing to stand, hands thrust deep in pockets, eyes downcast at the latest message from Kip.

  Diana finds the couch and sits, sensing their immense frustration.

  “We’ve thought through everything we know, boss,” Arleigh begins. “Using a las
er to blink Morse code at him was about the last, most desperate suggestion. But there’s no way to tell him no fewer than two spacecraft are trying to get off their pads to reach him.”

  “He’s going to die trying to spacewalk, right?” Richard asks.

  The deeply weary breath Arleigh Kerr draws and exhales seems to answer the question.

  “Not necessarily. We taught him—we teach all of them—the basics about a spacewalk. If he can’t get the suit on and get it inflated and tested to a green light status, he probably won’t try it.”

  “But if he does?”

  “There’s no way this guy can fix a spacecraft, and he doesn’t have a hand thruster, so if he forgets to connect his tether, he’ll…just float away. Or he’ll tear his suit and die trying.”

  “Or he’ll just spend his final hour outside on purpose,” Richard adds, speaking their collective thoughts. “I know I probably would. With Bill’s body inside getting ripe and all.”

  “Well, the view’s going to be better out there,” Arleigh agrees.

  “So, bottom line, there’s no chance for him outside, and even if he succeeds in not floating off, there’s no way he can fix the ship. Right?”

  Several of the men shrug and Arleigh voices the response. “We don’t have any idea what it would take to repair the ship, but the chances are slim to none. Anyway, if we figure an hour for him to get ready past the time he stopped typing, he should be heading for the airlock now. That means about one and a half hours and he’ll either be dead or back inside and typing again.”

  ABOARD INTREPID, 9:06 A.M.

  Kip floats out of the airlock the same way he got in: head and shoulders first, checking to make sure the tether is tight before turning around and facing the surface of the Earth passing below without the constraint of Intrepid’s tiny windows.

  Oh my God!

  Words are failing him, even in his mind. With almost a hundred-and-eighty-degree view from his helmet, he’s simply flying along, his own satellite, as part of Texas slides along soundlessly beneath him. Only the fans and the small hiss of the air supply break the silence, and he turns starward, shocked by the moon hovering clear and bright above. For the longest time he just stares, floating, flying, incredulous, and wishing he’d done this days before.