by Homer Hickam
Durrance lined up on the assigned course and drove the Cow like some gigantic eighteen-wheeler down an air-slab highway in the sky. The monitor bank on the cockpit console did the counting with no voice output, the numbers filling the screen, going from red to orange and then green. Far below, a gigantic cloud formation swarmed toward the coast, the Atlantic glittering through a tear in the bank. Durrance, with the L-1011 on autopilot, gloried in the view. God bless OSC for letting him drive the Cow. God bless the Peg, and Godspeed.
The winged rocket dropped away cleanly. Durrance powered the Cow over, diving away. Five seconds later the stage 1 motor ignited and the Pegasus-E pulled out of her fall and dug into the air, the Hercules engine pushing her to an altitude of 38 miles, wings and fins mounted on the first stage providing pitch, yaw, and roll control during the initial powered flight and the coasting period after burnout. The second stage ignited four seconds later, driving the Peg up to 105 miles. Five minutes and forty-six seconds later the third stage turned itself on, pushing the rocket all the way to an altitude of 558 miles and into orbit at the same inclination as Columbia. From there tiny sensors searched the cold vacuum, sensed Columbia two miles off and slightly behind. It had been a perfect launch. The Peg used her cold gas reaction system to nudge herself toward Columbia, a lateral shift. In slightly less than thirty minutes she was in position. The Air Force called Houston and took Mission Control off-line. This operation would be handled entirely by the Air Force from Eglin and the DIA in Maryland.
Columbia
The galley aboard Columbia consisted of an oven, a rehydration station, and a hot water tank. Food trays were warmed in the oven, and dehydrated food was moistened via a needle injector in the rehydrator. The pantry was well stocked, including almost every kind of spice that the astronauts could tolerate—needed because the aroma of food did not drift into the sinuses or caress the palate in a microgravity environment. Sweets were also much appreciated in space. Jack, waking alone in the middeck and starving, had finished a spaghetti meal and was on his third brownie square when the message on the SAREX came through.
DUCK. SHOT ACROSS THE BOW ON THE WAY.
He stared at the screen. What the hell?
“This is Colonel Bud Ragusa,” a voice crackled over his headset moments later. “United States Air Force Space Command. And this is. . . ?”
Jack, still disoriented after the EVA, remembered nothing except. . . He shook his head. He had this odd memory of High Eagle undressing him. He’d heard astronauts often had strange dreams when they were in space. This was one of the strangest.
“Jack Medaris, Colonel,” he replied cautiously. “What can I do for you?”
“Can it, Medaris, and listen up. We’ve let you have your little ride into orbit but it’s time to come down.”
Jack finished the brownie and went for a wet wipe. “Colonel, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but be advised we have a legal contract that allows us to be aboard Columbia.”
“You don’t have a contract to murder and kidnap astronauts, Medaris.”
“We didn’t murder or kidnap anyone,” Jack replied curtly. “Listen, our lawyer—”
Ragusa interrupted him. “That dog won’t hunt, boy.” His voice softened a little. “All of us down here have read your 201 file. You were once a good man for NASA. Then you kind of went overboard. Looks to me that’s what you’ve done again. Jack, I want you to think about what you’re doing and to help you think, me and the boys down here are going to give you a little demo. You may think you’re safe up there, outside our reach, but it just ain’t so. We can splash you, Jack, any old time we want to.”
Ah, a shot across the bow. Got it. “Let’s don’t do anything foolish, Colonel. Wait until our lawyer gets our case out.”
“No can do,” Ragusa answered. “I’m assuming you’re in the standard plus-X attitude, cargo bay down. Check your cockpit windscreen. Demo of our splash capability coming up in two minutes.”
Penny flew down through the hatch from the flight deck. “I need to tell you something,” she said, rotating so she was in the same foot-down position as Jack. Jack noted it was slickly done. She had completely adjusted to weightlessness. “No time right now, High Eagle,” he answered her brusquely. “The Air Force is up to something.”
“Nothing you can’t handle all by yourself, I’m sure,” Penny replied, rolling her big browns.
“I guess I can,” he replied. He left her in the middeck and headed upstairs.
Virgil was strapped in the pilot’s seat. “What do you think they’re gonna do, boss?”
“Just scare tactics, Virg. They haven’t had time to get anything organized. You’re doing better, I see.”
“Some. As long as I don’t move around much.”
Jack floated over and examined him. “Your skin’s still clammy. Better stay strapped in. Thanks for getting me cleaned up after the EVA, by the way. That couldn’t have been easy for you. Guess I was bushed.”
“I don’t even remember the EVA,” Virgil said. “How’d it go?”
“It went fine,” Penny said, following from below. “Except our leader here managed to go into heat exhaustion. I had to take care of him.”
Jack peered at her. “You took care of me?”
“Well, somebody had to.”
He looked down, remembering he had woken up in nothing but his shorts.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she sang.
The speaker crackled. “Not much time left, Medaris. One minute, thirty seconds.”
Jack stopped staring at Penny and keyed his headset. “Listen, Ragusa. Mr. Cecil Velocci of Cedar Key, Florida, will verify our contract.”
“One minute.”
Penny was hanging in front of Jack, a smirk on her face. It angered him far more than it should have. “You talk to them, High Eagle,” he spat. “Your butt will be in the same sling as Virg and me if they damage Columbia.”
She shrugged. “What can I say? They know I’m here. Apparently they don’t care.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Dammit!” Jack hit the mike again. “This isn’t right, Ragusa!”
“Zero, Columbia!”
Low Earth Orbit
The Peg was in perfect position, aimed directly at Columbia ’s nose from a distance of one thousand yards. At the ground sequence command the SADD deployed its SPRAH payload, five hundred bags of water propelled by a spring ejector. The bags immediately began to spread apart, unfolding like black orchid petals. At a distance of two hundred feet from Columbia the bag cluster had expanded to a diameter of one hundred yards and still growing. At that moment the timed squibs inside each bag split the thin plastic, releasing the water, which instantly became a spray of icy needles. The Air Force had done its calculations perfectly, the sun at its best possible angle for the effect. To the trio on Columbia it looked as if a gigantic firework had erupted directly in front of them leaving a hoop of rainbow fire. Columbia pierced the hoop, the droplets turning into fireflies, darting and turning....
Columbia
It was beautiful. The droplets spread and then formed a doughnut of shimmering particles. Jack watched the display coming at them and then moved aft to watch it pass behind.
“Ragusa,” Jack called, “it’s incredible! Glorious! Thanks for the great light show!”
Jack’s mood changed in an instant from wonder to concern when Virgil pointed at the starboard cockpit windscreen. In the center a white smudge had suddenly appeared. Jack inspected it, squirming to get his eye as close to it as possible. “Something hit us,” he concluded. “Probably from the container that held the water.”
“Will it be okay?” Penny worried behind him.
“Probably, but we’d better do a high-tech NASA repair job on it just in case.”
Virgil perked up. “You mean...”
Jack smiled and watched for Penny’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. “That’s right, Virg,” he said, winking at his partner. “Where’s the duc
t tape?”
THE TEST STAND
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, had been expressly built for the purpose of designing and building rocket engines. Big high-bays, utilitarian and factorylike and reflecting their Army heritage, squatted within a web of blacktop roads and railroad tracks built to hold the gigantic boosters constructed by the von Braun team for the Apollo program. Frank Bonner drove through the center, scarcely looking at it. The JSC director had an executive jet at his disposal and he’d used it that morning, clipping in to land at the Redstone field, where a rental car awaited him. Ordinarily, it would have been impolite for him to come to the center without letting the Marshall director know he was there. But this was a personal quest. He had awakened with a need to see the place where she had last lived, where Medaris had killed her, his Kate, his life. He’d given the astronaut chief, John Lakey, blanket authority to run JSC for the day. Then he’d taken off. He had to come to this place.
The old test stand had been originally constructed to test the huge F-1 engines that boosted the Saturn V. Bonner remembered how Medaris had begged for funding to refurbish it for a series of engine firings. He’d received nothing. Naturally, he’d done it anyway, shifted accounts, broken NASA directives, and juggled budgets to get what he wanted.
Shimmers of heat rose from the packed earth that surrounded the stand. It stood tall and gray, its center still showing evidence that something had once gone terribly wrong there, a scorched shadow and melted framework about halfway up. Signs warned of danger but Bonner ignored them. The gate was unlocked. Some of the surrounding buildings were still being used for storage. Bonner walked up the steel griddled steps, each footstep ringing hollowly. The only evidence of life on the stand was the cooing of unseen doves, and the flutter of wings high above, deep in the dark vastness of the structure.
Bonner reached the level where the nozzle bell of Kate’s engine had been held in place. It had long since been removed, of course, needed for the investigation and evidence for the hearing that followed. The media had followed the tragedy briefly, then dropped it. Only one person had been killed. Only one. In a world where thousands died daily from war and tragedy, what did it matter if only one person died?
Bonner stood at the edge of the scorched platform. His head seemed as if it were going to explode. She was here. He could feel her. She seemed to be reaching out to him as she had once done so willingly, so long ago. . . before Medaris. “It’s too late,” he moaned so loudly that he heard the scratching of something in the bridgework, behind the steel panels, some startled animal scrambling to get away.
Save me.
It was her voice. He looked around. “How, Kate? How?”
Bonner squatted and looked out over the peaceful landscape, a forest of trees, the line of mountains that cut off the Cumberland Plateau. When Kate had died, it had been a cold winter night. The trees had been ugly, leafless skeletons, and the mountains lost in the frigid night. He let himself cry. Tears ran down both his cheeks. This was where she wanted to be, he thought. This was what she loved. But Medaris should have known that, should have held her back. Bonner suddenly realized had he stayed with them, he would been there that night and the accident wouldn’t have happened. He was too much the stickler for rules and regulations. He would have stopped them.
Bonner took off his jacket, threw it over his shoulder, thought about his life, how it might have been, how it instead had gone. He was ashamed. He could feel the dream of the people who’d built the test stand, the dream Kate shared of a better way to get into space. Bonner had all but forgotten that there was a dream, a purpose, for all that NASA did.
It was too late now. Bonner had gone too far in the other direction. He had to stay focused on Medaris. Bonner climbed to his feet, walked back to his car. On the flight back to Houston he remembered Bernie Sykes’s promise. He could be the administrator of NASA. Then, perhaps, he’d have the power to make Kate’s dreams come true. To do that for Kate, Bonner thought, required the one thing he should have done from the day he knew the man existed: stop Jack Medaris.
HIGH EAGLE’S DECISION (2)
Columbia
Penny watched Virgil finish taping the cracked windscreen. Then Jack inspected it and clapped him on the shoulder. “Perfect,” he pronounced.
He was too happy by far to suit Penny. “Is that it?” she questioned incredulously. “You’re going to trust our lives to duct tape?”
“Give it a rest, High Eagle,” Jack said. “NASA’s been flying spacecraft held together by duct tape for years.”
If that was supposed to make Penny feel better, it didn’t work. “You give it a rest, smart guy,” she snapped. “We got hit by a something the size of a gnat and look what it did. What if they hit us with something really big?”
“Relax. They’ve shot their wad.”
“What makes you so sure? I think we’d better start thinking about what else they might try against us.”
“We? Us? When did we get to be we and us?”
“Sounds like the good doctor’s become a fellow hijacker, boss.” Virgil grinned.
“Spacejacker,” Penny corrected him.
Jack swung from an overhead handrail, approached Penny. She stood her ground. “Is that right, Dr. High Eagle? Are you part of my team?”
Penny barked a laugh, cut short. “Don’t hold your breath for that to happen, Medaris. I only work for myself.” She plowed on. “This is a commercial enterprise, correct?” she asked.
“We have a contract,” Jack replied cautiously.
“I pray for the day I get to see that most magnificent document,” she said.
“I saw it about an hour ago,” Virgil said, looking around him.
“Shut up, Virgil. You’re not funny.”
Virgil put on a hangdog expression. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Medaris, here’s the way it’s going to be. If you want me to help you, I’ll need a contract as well.”
Jack looked at her suspiciously. “What kind of contract?”
“A contract for my services. I know this may be a little too complex for you, Medaris, but it’s like we sign a paper and then you pay me x number of dollars and I do y.”
“Define the x in your equation.”
“One million dollars.”
“That’s very funny....”
“All right. Two million dollars,” Penny said stubbornly, letting go of the handrail and putting her hands on her hips. She started to rotate. “Care to keep negotiating?” she demanded, grabbing the handrail to stop her spin.
“I wish you’d stop spinning around. And are we negotiating? I didn’t know we were negotiating. In that case, forget it.”
“You’re rejecting me?” she chided.
“That’s one way to put it.” He turned his back on her. “Virgil, I need one good EVA out of you. Are you up to it?”
Virgil touched his stomach tentatively. “I’ll try.”
Penny couldn’t stand that Jack had turned away. She pulled him around to face her. “You’ll do no such thing, Virgil,” she declared over his shoulder. “If you throw up in your spacesuit, you could choke to death.”
Jack smiled mockingly. “Spacesuit? It’s called an extravehicular mobility unit, High Eagle.”
Penny felt as if steam were going to come out of her ears. “Really? Well, this is called the finger, Medaris.”
“Children, children...” Virgil admonished them.
Jack pushed away. “Come on, Virg, let’s suit up.”
The SAREX tone sounded. Jack headed down into the middeck to see what the message was, Penny following closely behind.
ENDEAVOUR BEING READIED. YOU ARE TARGET. LAUNCH TOMORROW 8:32 A.M. EDT.
“I never thought they’d try this hard to get at us,” Jack marveled.
“There’s a lot of things you haven’t thought about, Medaris,” Penny griped, shoving her way to the keyboard.
N
AME CREW.
“What difference does that make?” Jack demanded.
“Maybe a lot,” Penny muttered.
The laptop whirred.
CMDR OLIVIA GRANT PLT TANYA BROWN MS1 BETSY NEWELL MS2 JANET BARNES.
Penny stared at the message. “I knew it! Grant, Newell, Brown, and Barnes—the witches of NASA. And I have a hunch they’re in a take-no-prisoners mood.”
Penny tapped on the keyboard.
WARN US AT LAUNCH IF POSSIBLE.
The answer came back quickly.
COUNT ON IT.
Penny worried over the monitor, thinking about what she was signing herself up to do. “Medaris, I help you do your stupid tests and then it’s over?” she asked. “We land, right?”
“That’s the plan.”
Penny pushed away from the SAREX and made a figure four with her legs, her right foot pointed toward the floor, hooking a footloop with a toe. “Answer my question straight. No funny stuff. You call Houston and they get us down, right? Everybody safe and sound?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“I hate to be cruel, Medaris, but these engines in the cargo bay aren’t going to blow up, are they?”
He frowned. “They’ll work.”
Penny pressed. “How did they get into orbit?”
“After I left NASA, I went over to India and helped them work on some of their boosters. Made a lot of contacts.”
“India put them up for you?”
“They were well paid.”
Penny pulled hand over hand to the flight deck, her dark ponytail floating behind her like a black flag. She positioned herself at the aft viewing ports and looked at the locked-down shuttle arm holding the engines. Jack came up beside her. “The big one is going to push us around in orbit,” he said.
“What about the little one?”
“Another test. It’s going to fly around on its own.”
“What’s in the sausages?”
“Inflatable modules. We’re going to test them, see if they work in space. We’ll inflate them and I’ll climb inside.”