Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

  MISSION PHASE TWO FUNDING CANCELLED.

  EXECUTE PNR CONTINGENCY PLAN ALPHA-ONE FOR MIN TIME RETURN. ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT ASAP.

  And just like that, they pulled the plug on Magellan’s expedition to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

  Convincing Roy Hoover and his crew of any obligation to obey was another matter. The terse order and all of its other ugly details had been timed to arrive over the Deep Space Network datalink right before their watch turnover.

  “We’re halfway to Pluto,” Jack protested, staring blankly into his coffee. Roy had awakened him and Traci early for an emergency meeting. “We’re supposed to turn and burn for home because of money? The bulk of our mission budget’s been spent. We’re sitting in it,” he said, patting the bulkhead next to him.

  Noelle tried to be diplomatic. “I think we all know it’s not up to Owen or even the administrator. There are times when symbolism trumps common sense.”

  “Or math,” Traci said with a fire in her eyes that could melt steel. “How much does it take out of the budget to keep our support team going in Houston?”

  “More than they’re willing to spend,” Roy said. “They’ve canned the science back room and let almost half of Owen’s mission team go. They’re running port-and-starboard shifts in the control room right now. Once we’ve turned around, they’re drawing down to a basic caretaker crew since we’re mostly autonomous anyway. All we really need from them is navigation support so we don’t screw up a trim angle and go careening out of the solar system.”

  “Autonomy,” Traci said. “That’s what gets me. At this point we require very little commitment from HQ. Can’t they just let us finish the job?”

  “All nonessential government functions have been shut down,” Roy explained with uncharacteristic patience. “And I don’t mean the usual election-year grandstanding, I mean no-kidding nonessential.” He emphasized each word for effect. “Whole departments are being shut down. If it isn’t for national defense or keeping disabled retirees from starving, it doesn’t get funded. It’s a libertarian’s wet dream.”

  “Research grants, environmental protections, social programs . . . ” Noelle’s voice trailed off as she recited the dreary list of particulars. “The only space activities they spared are defense and weather satellites.”

  Jack searched for a hopeful angle. “Now that Atlas has finally shrugged, are any of our launch vendors picking up the slack?”

  “They’re not much better off. Almost half of their business came from us and NOAA. Ripple effect.” Roy paused a beat and tried to change the subject. “Anybody hear from home?”

  Traci raised her hand reluctantly. “Remember that old country song, ‘We was too poor to notice the Depression’? Kind of like that.”

  “So your family’s all right?”

  “Right as they can be,” she said. “Mom and Dad were mostly off-grid already. They always were a little paranoid.”

  “I think ‘paranoid’ just became the new ‘self-reliant.’ Maybe we can all move in with them when we get back.”

  “How’d they even get comm relayed to you?” Jack asked. “I didn’t think the DSN was compatible with smoke signals.”

  “Living ‘off-grid’ doesn’t make them Luddites,” she said, annoyed. “Daddy can’t be without SEC football, so that means internet.”

  “Hopefully he’s not forced to give that up,” Roy said. “Even the fruits and nuts in California are trimming the fat. Maybe we needed this in some perverse way.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said. If even the superrich were having to reconsider their priorities, it must be serious. “But that doesn’t solve our immediate problem. We have to turn this thing around in less than twenty-four hours.”

  Each new day seemed to arrive with new challenges for Anatoly Rhyzov. Being trained in the physical sciences, he was disciplined enough to realize his life was no more immune to gradual decay than anything else in the universe. Entropy would have its way with him as it did everything else.

  The Americans had taken fine care of him; Owen had seen to it that his medical team was top-notch while still remaining unobtrusive, beginning with a private nurse at his rented house in Houston. Though he knew full well the U.S. government had until now been willing to pay top dollar to keep him healthy and in solitude, he likewise knew that all good things must come to an end.

  But this . . . this was maddening.

  “They are recalling your spacecraft?”

  Owen nodded.

  “They are sending me back me to Moscow?”

  Owen could barely look him in the eye when he nodded yes once more.

  Rhyzov frowned. “I have spent my life in technical pursuits,” he sighed, “but for as much as I may have mastered mathematical theories, economics has always eluded me.”

  It had taken most of the day to prepare for the emergency return maneuver, time during which each of them was so busy with their own checklists that there’d been no more time to discuss how they felt about it. A palpable sense of frustration had settled over the crew as they each took their positions in the control cabin.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Jack tried to argue. “By the time our new state vectors make it back to their consoles, we’ll be past PNR.”

  “You forget I’m still active duty military on loan to NASA. I can’t just ignore inconvenient orders,” Roy said. “They’ll court-martial me as soon as we get back.”

  “Those orders came from NASA HQ, not the Pentagon,” Jack insisted, before he noticed Noelle hanging her head dejectedly. “Okay, I get it,” he sighed. “But be honest—you don’t want to do this any more than we do.”

  Roy glowered back. Jack had hit a nerve and waited silently for what was certain to be an acerbic response. It was all the more surprising when none came.

  “Boss?” Traci prodded warily.

  Roy punched a key on his command screen, and a plot of their trajectory appeared on the center display. Magellan was a pulsing dot along a long hyperbola—actually two superimposed over each other, which diverged at a point in space that crept steadily toward them. From there, one path continued outbound while the other began curving back sunward: PNR, the absolute last chance to turn back for home. Physics dictated that it was close to the point when they’d have to begin decelerating toward Pluto, just one more out of hundreds of go/no-go decisions they’d had to make beginning with their launch from Florida last year. But those had been collaborations with Mission Control whereas this had been dictated from on high, something an old pilot like Roy didn’t take to very well. Especially when it was going to shave only three months off their total mission, reducing it to its original duration.

  “We have two hours until Point of No Return,” Roy said. “I show our velocity vector is on target for Recovery Orbit Intercept. Anybody see different?”

  “Negative,” they replied, one after the other. Daisy’s interface screen flashed a simple “ROI COUNTDOWN” prompt.

  “Sure about that? We have to be absolutely certain here, people. Minimum signal return time with Houston is now over seven hours.” We’re on our own was the implication left hanging.

  “Inertial platform realigned itself with the star tracker four hours ago,” Traci said. “Angles are good.”

  “Within our probable margin of error?” Roy pressed. That margin grew slimmer the farther and faster they went.

  “Right at the edge,” Traci said warily. “Within one sigma. Barely.”

  “Are we comfortable with that result? I need to know our safest course of action.”

  Aha, Jack thought. That’s where Roy was going. He impatiently tapped a finger on his chin, studying every parameter for a potential failure point. There—it wasn’t much, it wasn’t even strictly required, but it might be enough. “You said INS checked itself against the star tracker, right?”

  “Yeah,” Traci said.

  “What about PPS?” Pulsar Positioning System was one of the new techniques being proven during Phase Two, when they w
ere deep into the outer solar system and navigation errors compounded at ever greater rates. Using the regular radio bursts of fourteen known millisecond-class pulsars as interstellar beacons, Magellan’s guidance platform could calibrate itself to a degree even greater than the well-proven optical star tracker. It was like supplanting old-fashioned celestial navigation with GPS satellites. Being ever cautious, Owen’s mission team had long ago decided PPS would be a secondary reference. Never mind it had proven to be orders of magnitude more accurate than the old system.

  “PPS doesn’t agree. It says we’re outside of one sigma deviation,” Traci said with a cautious glance at Roy. They’d planned to use it for fine-tuning their arrival at Pluto, whereas heading sunward would give them plenty of opportunity to tweak their trajectory toward Earth as they flew deeper into the gravity well.

  “So the combined probability of error is outside mission parameters,” Roy said.

  “We don’t have to consider the PPS—unless you think the primary’s unreliable.”

  “This far out? I’m not comfortable with it,” Roy said gravely, an implicit challenge to the others to come up with something better. As they looked on in varying states of confusion, he began typing a message into the Mission Control datalink. The twinkle in his eye was only noticed by his wife, who suppressed a giggle as he hit “send.”

  Four hours later, Owen wondered if it was worth trying to hide the grin threatening to break out across his face from the rest of the team. He’d been sitting behind Capcom’s chair, looking over her shoulder when the burst packet arrived.

  ROI BURN ABORTED //REPEAT// ABORTED. GUIDANCE PLATFORM DISAGREES W/ PPS INPUT. CDR NOT CONFIDENT IN COMBINED ERROR PROBABILITY. CREW AGREES. CDR SENDS.

  “Notice he didn’t cite that mission rules don’t require the secondary platform for an emergency return,” Capcom noted. An astronaut herself, she could picture Roy Hoover guiding the “debate” amongst his crew.

  Owen took the printed copy and handed it off to the flight director, himself waffling between amusement and frustration. “Does this mean we can keep our jobs?”

  “You, maybe,” Owen sighed. “Anybody want mine?”

  They were well past the customary watch turnover and no one cared at this point who would be on which shift. In the end, Roy had decided whoever felt the most awake would take the next watch. That turned out to be Daisy.

  “You’re certain you’re comfortable with this?” Jack asked. They’d never completely handed over control to the computer before. Someone was always on duty to at least watch the ship fly itself. In reality, that was all they’d asked it to do. Still unable to intervene, it could certainly sound the alarm if something started going awry.

  yes, i am quite comfortable monitoring the spacecraft. you all need rest.

  “He wasn’t asking you,” Roy grumbled at the ceiling. “Yes, Jack, I’m comfortable with it. For the time being.”

  Jack laughed to himself. “Careful, Daisy. That means Roy’s rapidly running out of patience.”

  i believe your confidence will improve after enjoying a full sleep cycle.

  “You’re not helping your case,” Roy said. “Smart machines give me the creeps.”

  that is unfortunate. perhaps i could—

  “Shut up.”

  Jack drew his hand across his neck, signaling Daisy to quit trying so hard.

  “Can she—it—interpret hand signals like that?”

  “Wasn’t sure until now,” Jack said. “But I believe she just did.”

  “I suppose she can read lips. I saw that movie too, you know.”

  “You’re not as culturally barren as I thought, then. I think we’re safe, seriously—”

  A chime from the comm panel interrupted him, though Daisy remained silent.

  “You can speak now,” Roy said. “No need to show off.”

  sociological studies indicate that remaining unobtrusive while observing others is an effective way to integrate oneself within a new group. also, comm channel one has just received a new data packet from deep space network. it is compiling the message now.

  Roy shot a questioning look at Jack. “She means she’s keeping her eyes open and mouth shut,” Jack said, “and that we have a reply from Houston.”

  “I got that part. Are we done yet?” Roy said, rolling his head back toward the ceiling in his way of addressing a machine that was annoyingly omnipresent.

  affirmative.

  There was an electric hum as a strip of paper emerged from a thermal printer. “It even knows I prefer hard copy?”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders. Beats me.

  you’re welcome.

  “Don’t get cocky.” Roy checked his watch before reading Mission Control’s reply. “Four and a half hours. They didn’t take long to digest it.” With a satisfied look, he handed the printout to Jack:

  FLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGES YOUR LAST MSG, CONCURS W/ INS+PPS PLATFORM MISALIGNMENT. REVIEWING MISSION RULES. DC HQ ADVISED.

  “So are we in the clear? This doesn’t tell us anything,” Jack said. It was his turn to look puzzled as a rare grin spread across Roy’s face.

  “Are you kidding?” Roy laughed. “This means Owen’s taking the heat. He just cleared us to Pluto.” Not that they’d left him much choice, but at least Owen would be providing them with some much-needed political cover. He talked back to the ceiling. “Now I can rest, Daisy.”

  21

  Mission Day 158

  This is Mission Control.

  On flight day 157 at 2210 CST, the Magellan crew was forced to abort the Emergency Return maneuver ordered by Mission Manager Owen Harriman. Commander Roy Hoover reported that the alignment of primary and secondary guidance systems did not agree to within an acceptable degree of accuracy. Considering the round-trip signal delay of over seven hours, this information could not be communicated to the flight control team in enough time to diagnose and correct the anomaly before the ship passed its Point of No Return. Since Magellan is now committed to completing the second phase of the flight plan, the crew has been ordered into a mandatory rest period of no less than twelve hours while the control team reviews telemetry to isolate the source of the anomaly.

  Owen had been to NASA headquarters many times over his career, but this was the first time he’d met in private with the administrator herself. Retired Air Force and a former astronaut, the lady had flown just about everything from the old shuttle to experimental spaceliners to piston-powered bush planes. And she knew how to cut right through impenetrable bureaucratese like nobody’s business.

  “The emergency return order was transmitted as soon as we got it,” he explained. “But we were already inside the optimal window for issuing an abort call.”

  The administrator twirled a strand of graying blond hair between her fingers as she looked out over the sprawl of Washington beyond her office windows. “One of the most readily abused words in this business is ‘optimal.’ Don’t try blowing sunshine up my skirt,” she said, turning to face him for the first time.

  She had a reputation of being able to cut through the toughest facades. Owen stared back at her ice-blue eyes and valiantly fought averting his own. He’d been warned to not let her stare him down. “Anything we transmit, add eight hours,” he said. “That left them roughly eighteen hours to respond and begin configuring the ship for the return. That’s a lot of gear to stow and guidance to reprogram.”

  “Mr. Harriman, in a few short hours I’m going to have to face a budget committee full of some very skeptical senators. Most of them are primed to flush the entire agency down the crapper. And since not a single one of them has a NASA center in their states, it would be remarkably easy to do that given the current environment.”

  Owen nodded his understanding. “Do you think it would help to explain this from a flight crew’s perspective?” he offered. “The time compression you feel from being task saturated?” Veteran astronauts had reliably been able to disarm hostile politicians over the years.

  “Be
lieve me, those old tricks don’t work anymore. The Congress-critters who pushed through the Phase Two mission are either out of office or running for cover. Nobody in this town is interested in what a bunch of overpaid rocket jockeys think, Mr. Harriman,” she said. “You ever hear of the ‘nine meal’ rule?”

  “No ma’am, I’m afraid not.”

  She counted on her fingers for effect. “Society is perpetually three days—nine meals—away from falling into anarchy. People rapidly run out of patience and good manners when they can’t eat. This currency crash is even worse than that meteor strike off Florida a few years ago. Just between us, Treasury says they still don’t know where the bottom is.”

  “If I need to tender my resignation to take the heat off of you—”

  She waved him off. “That won’t be necessary. If anything, I need your butt in the seat now more than ever. We’re going to be running this mission on a skeleton crew, so don’t plan on seeing much of your family or getting much sleep for the next year or so.”

  “I understand.” He’d moved a cot into his office weeks ago.

  “Anything else you can tell me that isn’t in the timeline? No hints from Roy or the others before he called abort?”

  “No ma’am. It’s all there in my report.”

  She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “This is going to be such a fun meeting. Explaining physics to a bunch of empty suits is my least favorite pastime.” She began twirling a loose strand of hair again as she thought through her next action, and came to a decision. “The only card we have left to play is Arkangel. Once it’s out in the open, maybe public opinion will turn enough that Congress won’t be able to run away from it. I assume you’ve thought about what you’ll say to the press?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve had the white paper written for a year now.”