Orbit Page 25

  “Then we’re scrubbed!” Cully barks.

  Launch control explodes into action as the practiced team at the pad begins moving toward an emergency extraction of the two crew members while Cully Jones begins running through the checklist to purge the dangerously overpressurized tank before the contents can explode.

  Griggs Hopewell sits quietly, watching and listening and slightly stunned.

  My God, this one was real, and I led myself into the assumption that Sheehan did it.

  If they had launched with a true overpressure, the remains of the shuttle and the two astronauts would probably be raining back on the launch pad right now.

  Chapter 39

  OFFICE OF THE ADMINISTRATOR, NASA HEADQUARTERS,

  WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 21,

  9:16 A.M. PACIFIC/12:16 P.M. EASTERN

  Somehow, Geoff Shear is thinking, he’s going to need to do something really special for Dorothy Sheehan. Not that he’s given to overt displays of appreciation beyond NASA award dinners and other official stroking, but in this she’s succeeded against overwhelming odds.

  Word that the launch went to a hold and was then scrubbed brings a smile to his face. He assumes the scrub was for being out of the launch window, but there’s the slightly puzzling news of fuel overpressure in one of the shuttle’s tanks—and the call for an emergency evacuation of the crew. But even those developments can’t dilute Geoff’s smug feeling of restored control.

  His cell phone is vibrating in his pocket and he whips it out, expecting the female voice he hears to be his wife’s. But this voice is different. Frightened and tense. It takes him a few seconds to realize that he’s talking to Dorothy herself.

  “Why are you calling?” he asks, puzzled. She knows better.

  “I’m in trouble, sir. I think I’ve been discovered.”

  “What did you say? I heard we just scrubbed down there. So, thanks for everything you were doing down there to keep us safe…”

  “The fuel overpressure is real. It’s…unexpected.”

  “Well, of course.”

  Geoff feels his mind racing. How to deal with this? Any call could be monitored and if anyone should know that, it’s Sheehan, which means she’s seriously frightened, and dangerous.

  “Where are you calling from?” he asks.

  “I’m outside now, in my car, and getting out of here.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “I…I guess I just need some coordination since my purpose here is done. All the safety checks and such.”

  “Well, Dorothy, your assignment was clear. Double check to make certain we weren’t pushing safety limits. Just come home.”

  Now he hears a telling hesitation.

  “Well, sir,” she says, her tone hardening. “I got this call and I responded as requested.”

  Five seconds of silence pass before she speaks again, her voice this time low and serious and no longer pleading. “You’re going to let me twist in the wind, aren’t you?”

  “What does that mean? Dorothy, if you’ve…done something improper, then you need to tell security about it. I have to go. And this call never happened.”

  He punches the phone off and erases the number from the display, a small chill climbing his back as he realizes his cellular bill will have also captured the number.

  The phone is vibrating again and he sees her number and punches the button to reject the call, erasing the second record of the number before depowering the phone altogether, feeling off-balance. Sheehan was supposed to be rock solid reliable, his own ex-CIA operative with steely nerves and endless resources. How could she crack? And after all, the only thing that’s happened is a launch scrub for an apparently legitimate reason. This is all containable, he tells himself, remembering the moment he decided to trigger the so-called nuclear option. The launch would have had to be scrubbed anyway! But knowing that doesn’t soothe him, and with the sixth-sense survival instincts of a high-level bureaucrat, he can already hear footsteps behind him.

  ABOARD SOYUZ, 10:05 A.M. PACIFIC

  Sergei Mikhailovich Petrov is not surprised to find himself precisely where he expected to be: on orbit, four hundred ninety-eight kilometers above the planet and precisely one hundred fifteen kilometers behind the private American spacecraft.

  He glances at his companion, Cosmonaut Mikhail Rychkov who is hunched over his computer display.

  “Our closing rate is what?”

  Mikhail punches another button and replies without looking over.

  “Forty meters per second.”

  There will be a turnaround and a braking burst from their main engine necessary in forty-eight minutes, followed by the delicate task of carefully approaching the winged craft from beneath and slightly ahead. In the rushed briefings and preparations of the previous two days, the plan coalesced only as far as parking the Soyuz just above the private space plane and sending Mikhail out on a dangerous spacewalk with the spare pressure suit they plan to stuff into Intrepid’s airlock.

  The right leg pocket of Mikhail’s suit is brimming with black markers able to take the exposure to the vacuum of space. Using a white poster-board and a tethered cloth, he’ll write instructions in English for Kip Dawson to read through the forward windscreen.

  At least, that’s the plan. The backup is equally risky, given the size of their space suits and the tiny airlock on Intrepid; Mikhail has substantial doubts whether he can fit inside if he has to go in to prepare Kip for the transfer.

  Sergei has the high-powered binoculars out and is searching the void ahead, a smile forming on his face that Mikhail notices.

  “You see him?”

  “Da! And he’s still flying backward, facing us, which will make it easier, I think.”

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE INTERNATIONAL AEROSPACE

  PORT, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, 10:05 A.M. PACIFIC

  Had a wayward buffalo wandered into and through the control room, the effect would have been much the same. The disbelieving looks on the faces of the control room technicians accompany a stunned paralysis as their collective minds try to grasp the fact that every monitor, including the big-screen display, has suddenly burst back to life with numbers, graphs, and information coming from Intrepid!

  The first technician to get to his feet glances at the door, then back at the screen, wanting to call Arleigh Kerr in from his office but not wanting to look foolish if this is some sort of hallucination.

  Or maybe, Chuck Hines, the assistant flight director thinks, we’ve somehow triggered one of the training simulation tapes.

  “What the hell is this?” someone else is asking.

  Yeah, Chuck thinks. That’s it. A computer display training tape. He looks away from the main display screen to answer the question, his heart still racing as if he’d jumped out of the path of an oncoming truck. “Okay, we’ve accidentally triggered an old simulation run, everyone. Let’s stop it and figure out how it got triggered.”

  “Ah…Chuck?” One of the occupants of the front tier of monitors is standing, and she turns toward Hines, her blonde hair swinging across her cheeks from the move.

  “Yes?”

  “Look at the time signature.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The time signature. Look at it.”

  “What’s your point?” Chuck asks, fatigue masquerading as irritation noticeable in his tone.

  Arleigh Kerr has entered the room and is standing now, taking in the slightly surreal scene, and Chuck can see him in his peripheral vision.

  “My point is that the time and date stamp are current. Today. As in now. Chuck, this isn’t a simulation. This is Intrepid’s live telemetry back online! Chuck, he did it!”

  KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA,

  10:05 A.M. PACIFIC/1:05 P.M. EASTERN

  Griggs sits heavily in his office chair, waiting for the confrontation with Dorothy Sheehan, feeling certifiably old. Despite the continued presence of the shuttle on the pad rather than on orbit, the system worked, but the net effe
ct has been depressing.

  He hears a door opening at the end of the corridor leading to his office, the assigned locus of the meeting he’s ordered. It will take less than a minute for the footsteps to reach his door.

  Griggs pushes a crystal paperweight around in a small circle on the desk. It’s an expensive thank-you from a past launch crew, an intricate replica of the shuttle in flight on a tiny pedestal, his name engraved on a gold plaque at the base, but for some reason it feels like the stereotypical gold watch, marking the end of a career.

  Admitting he’s tired is hard, but he’s coming to it more often these days, and the past week has pushed his limits. He’ll have to think about that. John Kent has years of fight left, but—as he’s loved to put it over the years—his get up and go has, this time, really “got up and went.”

  “Griggs? We’ve got Miss Sheehan here.”

  He snaps to mentally, being careful not to change his relaxed, almost slouched position in his swivel chair. There are times to sit on the throne behind the desk, and there are times to come around to the chair facing his small couch and be more approachable. This is one of the throne times.

  “Everyone come on in.”

  A somber delegation files into the room and he sees Dorothy Sheehan’s been cuffed. The head of security for the space center follows with one of his officers, trailed by Cully and the head of the legal staff. Sheehan’s glare is meant to melt steel, but the fear in her eyes is ruining her act.

  “For God’s sake, Nelson, take those cuffs off this lady. What’s she going to do? Run out and steal the shuttle?”

  “We did catch her trying to run out of the front gate, so to speak,” the security chief says while pulling out his cuff key and unlocking her.

  “Twenty miles per hour is hardly running out the front gate,” Dorothy says, her voice subdued and tense.

  “Have a seat, Miss Sheehan,” Griggs says, motioning to the couch.

  She complies, her eyes boring into his face as he looks at the others with a smile and then locks on hers.

  “You’re familiar,” Griggs begins, “with the old term ‘red-handed’?”

  “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing…”

  Griggs raises his hand, stopping her. “Honey…” he sees the lawyer and the human resources chief stiffen at the term and throws a smile at them. “Hey, guys, lighten up. I run this place.” He looks back at Sheehan. “So, Miss Sheehan, would you care to tell us precisely why you were attempting to sabotage the launch of our little rocket out there?”

  “I was doing no such thing!”

  The moment has arrived, Griggs thinks, and he comes forward slowly in his chair, letting his stocky build shift toward her like an old grizzly leaning forward to sniff its frozen, terrified prey.

  “Honey, let’s get one thing really straight, okay? We have you. We have the evidence to put you in a federal prison, probably for life, and the only thing that you have to cling to right now is the hope that if you tell me who, what, where, when, how, and why—including every conversation in exquisite detail you had with Mister Geoffrey in Washington leading up to your actions—I might decide it’s the bigger fish who need frying. Now you’re a big girl. Nod your pretty little head if you understand, and let’s cut the bullshit and get to, as they say out in West Texas, the nut-cuttin’.”

  “You want to deal?” she asks, triggering a broad grin from Griggs.

  “You have no idea how much,” he says. “So you cut the cards, Ma’am.”

  She nods, her eyes on her manicured fingernails drumming the table in front of her. The drumming stops and her jaw clenches. Her eyes become mere slits as she fastens them on his and speaks through tightened lips. “If I’m allowed to walk, I’ll give him to you in a sealed box.”

  “You do that, Sheehan, you walk. You’ll never set foot on a NASA installation again in this life, but you won’t have to limit the rest of your days to having an intimate relationship with a cell mate.”

  “Please cut the sexist crap and answer one question,” she snaps. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Well, if you can deliver, l’il sister, then yes. We have a deal.”

  She nods. “All right. So happens, I have tapes of just about everything Shear and I discussed. And because of where they were made, they’re admissible.”

  Chapter 40

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE INTERNATIONAL AEROSPACE

  PORT, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, MAY 21, 10:10 A.M. PACIFIC

  Diana Ross stands in silent shock at the back of the reactivated Mission Control room, recalling the story of Lazarus. If Kip can be brought back to Earth, there would be room for the word “miraculous.”

  Yet, if he doesn’t reenter Intrepid before an hour and a half are up, all the cosmonauts will be able to do is recover bodies.

  News that the telemetry downlinks from Intrepid are working again took a few minutes to reach her office, and she figures it is some sort of overwrought misinformation. But there it is, she thinks, live and in color, the data streams moving across the screens as if nothing had ever been amiss—with the exception of voice communication, which has not been restored.

  She thinks back to the shock hours ago upon reading of his intent to leave the ship and the frustration she felt at not being able to scream at him to hang on, that help was coming.

  In the background she hears ASA Mission Control’s repeated attempts to hail Intrepid rolling over and over again like some sort of exotic Tibetan prayer. But no answer from Kip, and no further typing, and the world is, quite literally, waiting on the collective edges of a billion seats for the next act.

  Diana moves into the back of the room with a newfound ability to stand away just a bit and observe. She’s had too much opportunity in the last four days to think. Endless hours in her office waiting to be useful, and she’s been reading and rereading every word that her would-be poster boy composed.

  The shock of Intrepid’s sudden telemetry reactivation is still ping-ponging back and forth among the fine technical minds in the room and despite the obvious, there is still no widespread willingness to accept the idea that Kip Dawson, a rank amateur, has actually repaired Intrepid’s radios.

  “Is there a master circuit breaker for all the radios he could have pushed back in?” one of the structural experts asks, wondering why the rest of the group merely shake their heads as if the question is technically embarrassing—which it is. She hears the ongoing discussions of the oxygen and nitrogen mix and the CO2 levels, the adequacy of the remaining fuel, and the fact that all systems except voice communication appear to be working as if nothing had ever impacted the ship and killed its pilot.

  “The external airlock door is showing open,” Chuck Hines reports.

  “You didn’t see that before?” Arleigh asks over the interphone.

  Chuck turns and addresses him directly. “It just now came up on the telemetry readout. The inside door is still closed, inside atmosphere still breathable.”

  “Dammit, he’s got less than fifteen minutes of air left to get back in there,” Arleigh is saying, as much to himself as to the control room.

  Over and over again Diana hears them returning to the almost hushed discussion of the apparent “far out” reality of how Intrepid’s downlinks have sprung back to life—the “impossible theory” first fueled by the startling decision Kip Dawson had written about several hours ago:

  I’m going to wiggle into Bill’s space suit and see if there’s anything I can do outside to patch up the damage.

  “How could he know? Do we cover how to do an emergency spacewalk in ground school, Arleigh?” Chuck Hines is asking.

  “Yes, to the same extent airline passengers are schooled on emergency evacuation.”

  “If I wasn’t looking at all this stuff streaming down,” Chuck says, “I’d tell you the chances he successfully put on Bill’s suit and went outside and repaired the ship are zero. But you tell me, which is more likely? He did it, or the problem was cured by mystical e
quipment self-repair uncontaminated by human contact?”

  “I’d vote for Kip.”

  “Yeah,” he sighs. “Me, too.”

  Diana tunes out the discussion, focusing on the numbers cascading down on one side of the screen while her mind reaches for him so many miles away. Daring to hope, just a little, where no hope had been was logical. But the startling reality is how much it impacts her. She knows fatigue is in charge now. If there’s some uncontrolled, starry-eyed tendency to slide toward falling in love with him, it would be, she thinks, like falling in love with Elvis before he passed. She’s mature enough to know that myth and reality are seldom connected, except in the mind.

  She knows all of it, and yet Kip to her has become as compelling as gravity.

  Diana shakes her head and tells her common sense to immediately search out and destroy such little-girl fantasies. After all, the man is married.

  The thought is interrupted by a shout from one of the console positions.

  “Hey, everyone! Intrepid’s outer door just closed, and I’m getting a pressure drop inside!”

  ABOARD INTREPID, 10:12 A.M. PACIFIC

  Strange, Kip thinks, how climbing back inside feels like spoiling a good stage exit. He looks around the tiny, tublike interior of the airlock, working to suppress his feelings of claustrophobia.

  The whoosh of air from the interior fills the tiny space quickly and he can feel the rigidity of the space suit diminish. The green light indicating equal pressure comes on and he works the inner door locks and swings it open, taking his time again in extricating himself.

  For just a moment he considers leaving the suit in place and pressurized before remembering the limited oxygen in the airpack. He cuts it off and secures the little arm-mounted control panel before removing his helmet, securing it before working to adjust himself back into the command chair. The bulky space suit is a bit easier to handle when deflated, but he wishes he could have just kept it sealed. Bill’s physical decomposition is now stomach-turning. All the more reason, he thinks, to take his leave outside in the most spectacular arena imaginable.