Brown, Dale - Independent 01

by Silver Tower (v1. 1)

  “For too damn long, for too damn long. But that’s not the problem. You’ve been away but at least I’ve known where you were—Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Houston. I knew if something... happened to your father that you’d be back and we’d be together no matter how far away you were.” She turned back to the railing. “I can look out there and see your father’s ship and I know that he’s surrounded and protected by the best men and the best equipment in the world. But when I think of where you’re going and the risks you'll be taking, well, it’s hard for me even to comprehend it. I don't think I've ever felt this scared before. I admit it. .. .”

  Ann didn’t have an answer, and now it was Amanda trying to reassure her daughter, which she did by giving her a quick hug.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I guess I’ve been so wrapped up in this thing, so preoccupied with my research that I never thought about how it would affect you.”

  Amanda shook her head. “Nor should you. You’re like your father. He’s said how sorry he is to be leaving me alone hundreds of times but it would take the guns of all his battleships to keep him from going. I admire you both so much; I wish I had more of your drive, I wish there was more time for the three of us to be together. Years pass quicker than any of us realize, you know. It’s easy to take things for granted— not to mention feel sorry for myself. I’m sorry....”

  Ann held her mother close, then lifted the cup of beer she was holding in her hands. “The captain will be getting powerfully parched,” she said.

  Her mother gave her a knowing smile. “I heard some more Officer’s Wives Club gossip,” she said as they walked past two young boys selling Oakland A’s pennants. “About that space station, Silver Tower... and how the Russians hate it. And how vulnerable it is. But I suppose I’m being an alarmist about that, too?”

  Ann was about to reply but stopped abruptly. What could she say that would really help? As a diversion, a welcome one, she pointed to a man with a portable video camera standing in front of the officers in the skybox. She guided her mother back to the box, where they took their seats at either side of Captain Page.

  “Smile,” the cameraman said. “You’re on Diamond Vision!”

  The family surrounded by the other men and their families waved at the camera. As they did, Ann glanced at the huge scoreboard in center field: Her father’s image was flashed, displaying his gold- trimmed hat with the words “DLGN-36 USS CALIFORNIA” on the peak and his Oakland A’s T-shirt. A caption under his picture on the full-color scoreboard screen read “Captain Matt Page, Commander, USS California” Ann’s picture was on the screen too: “Dr. Ann Page, Mission Specialist, Space Shuttle Enterprise,” the legend underneath it read. A ripple of applause came from the crowd.

  “We’re famous, babe!” Matt Page said to his wife, hugging her close. Amanda Page looked at her daughter, forced a smile, waving with restraint into the camera.

  It turned out the only possible way to stay clear of the dozens of sailors tramping in and out of the bridge of the USS California was to stand behind the captain’s high-backed seat, which was what Ann Page found herself doing one week after the baseball game. On the bridge was sheer bedlam: volleys of shouted orders, ringing phones, and a hodepodge of engine and equipment sounds.

  Through it all, Ann noticed, Captain Page was very much in control. No comparison to the overaged boy at the ballgame.

  It was actually exhilarating to watch. He seemed to know just when a man would be in arm’s reach or earshot when he needed him. The phone mystically stopped ringing when he needed to use it. His coffee mug never grew cold or was less than half full—in spite of the activity, a steward would somehow make his way to the captain’s chair to refill the short, stubby mug labeled “The Boss of the Boat,” and of course it never dared slide down a table or spill one drop onto the boss’ plywood-starched khakis.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?” Ann asked at a relatively quiet moment. Her father waved his coffee mug around the bridge.

  “Of course it is.” He turned to a young officer. “Dammit, Cogley, out of the way, if you please. I’m trying to talk to my daughter.... No, I’m glad you wanted to come aboard. Your mother, as you know, doesn’t feel right coming on board before a cruise. She never has, not in all our years of marriage. Not once. She stays on the dock until the ship passes under the Golden Gate or wherever, but she never comes on board.”

  “Yes, I know.” Half her response was blocked out by a thick clipboard of papers that Cogley had thrust between her and the captain, every sheet of which Page impatiently initialed at the comer.

  “Okay, now weigh anchor, Cogley. . . . I’m sorry, Ann. No, your mother doesn’t seem to like it on board the California.”

  Ann tried to tell him he must know why, but a horn blaring from just outside the bridge drowned out her words, followed by “All ashore, all guests ashore.”

  “I’ve got to go, Dad,” Ann said, but he didn’t hear, his attention elsewhere. She followed the outstretched arm of a gray-and-blue-uni- formed Marine escort and headed for the exit.

  She had just reached the top of the steel ladder that led down to the main deck when she felt a hand on her shoulder, turned and found her father standing in front of her.

  “You weren’t going to leave without saying good-bye, were you?”

  “I didn’t know if I’d get a chance, and I really think I’m in the way.”

  The harried petty officer, Cogley, came up to the captain with still another clipboard. “Excuse me, sir—”

  “Cogley, dammit, shove off with that stuff. Tell the officer of the deck to stand by until I’m ready.” Cogley hurried off.

  “You’re convincing me,” Ann said, “that that guy’s name is ‘Cogley Dammit’ or ‘Dammit Cogley.’”

  “I know, I know_____ ” Matthew Page steered his daughter away from the head of the stairway. “Listen, honey, I wanted you to come with me on board so we could have a little chat—”

  “About what?”

  “About you. Your shuttle flight.” He paused. “I still can’t believe it. My daughter, a shuttle astronaut—”

  “C’mon, Dad....”

  “No, now wait a minute. I’m not going to get all gushy over you. I just want to—”

  “Yes?”

  “Ann, I’ve heard things. There’s real concern about your mission, about this Skybolt laser you’re working on.”

  “I really can’t talk too much about Skybolt, Dad. Not even to you. You can understand—”

  “I know, I know, but dammit, you know I’ve never been too happy about your decision to fly to this Space Command station. The dangers are—”

  “Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant?”

  “Ann, honey, you’re not listening.”

  “I’m sorry, that was a cheap shot, I know you don’t go for that male chauvinist stuff. But, face it, if you were talking to a son....” “I’d still be damned worried. This space station project of yours is dangerous. Things are happening, weird things. I just wish you’d—”

  “Stay on the ground? Safe from the action. Away from my work” Ann shook her head. “Whatever you say, you still think it’s okay for men to go off and face whatever’s out there, but not women—”

  He looked at her. “Could be, honey. I guess I am a bit old-fashioned.”

  “You’re a damn sight better than most, but you have tended to put Mom and me on a pedestal. We’re not china dolls. We won’t break. I’m a scientist. Mom is your wife. We’re both pretty tough. No kidding.”

  Her father shrugged, knew she was right even if he couldn’t buy all of it.

  “And Dad, I know about the dangers. We get briefings, too.”

  The loudspeaker gave another warning for visitors to clear the ship. Ann took her father’s hands.

  “I’ll be thinking of you up there,” he said. “And I still wish you weren’t going.”

  “And I wish you weren’t going on this cruise... to the Persian Gulf.” The mention of the California
's classified destination startled him.

  “How... ?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “But you have about as much chance of keeping me from going on the Enterprise as I have of dragging you off your ship.... Now,”—she stood on tiptoes and kissed her father on the cheek—“have a safe cruise and hurry home.”

  He straightened, hugged her. “And success and a safe trip to you, Ann.”

  The Marine escort guided her to the wide covered main gangplank on the California's starboard gunwale. A small knot of reporters were waiting for her when she stepped off the platform onto the dock but she ignored them and quickly found her mother standing near the raised officer’s wives’ railed greeting area.

  “He’ll be all right,” Ann said quietly. Her mother’s eyes never left the bridge as the USS California began slowly to slide away from its mooring toward the Golden Gate.

  June 1992

  VANDENBURG AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA

  “Lift off. We have lift-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger, STS Mission 51-L.lt has cleared the tower....”

  The Challenger’s pilot ran his fingers down the Space Shuttle Main Engine, the SSME status readouts on his computer monitor. “All main engines look good. ...”

  The young woman beside him acknowledged with a nod. No NASA simulator could ever fully prepare a person for the feeling of a space shuttle at lift-off. Noise. Incredible, ear-splitting, thundering noise. Vibration enough to feel intestines shake. . . .

  As the stowed service arm and gantry slid from view out the forward windscreens, Ann Page could even see a few seagulls scurry from the fiery behemoth as it lifted upward. The sight of the petrified sea gulls made her smile despite the adrenalin coursing through her, tightening her muscles, constricting her throat.

  “Instituting roll maneuver.. . roll maneuver complete, Challenger, you look beautiful....”

  On hearing the last report from Ground Control, Ann reached up through the gradually building “g” forces to the upper left of her left forward instrument panel and flicked the ADI attitude switch to LVLH. “ADI attitude switch to local vertical, local horizontal, ” she announced over interphone. Her pilot in the right seat nodded and did the same on his panel.

  “Thank you, Dr. Page, ” the pilot said over interphone, and suddenly the pilot looked young—very young. Like a guy she had known in high school.

  Ann watched the mach meter on her main instrument panel while at the same time checking her number-one cathode ray tube computer monitor and panel C2, the computer control panel and manual main engine controls. The engine control sequence for launch and ascent was controlled by computer, but she was obliged to be ready for any malfunction right up to complete engine failure. If that happened, it would be up to her and her pilot to control the engines manually and set up her shuttle for an RTLS—Return to Launch Site abort. As she watched her instruments she kept in mind her training—think “abort, abort” until five minutes into the flight, after that think “orbit, orbit. ”

  Forty seconds after takeoff the shuttle exceeded the speed of sound, and Ann saw the main engines throttle back automatically to sixty-five percent.

  “Control, this is Challenger. Main engines at sixty-five percent. Confirm.”

  “Challenger, we confirm SSMEs at six-five percent, right on the mark.”

  They were approaching a critical phase of flight when all aerodynamic forces affecting the shuttle—thrust, drag, gravity, and lift— were exerting equal pressure on the ship all at once. It was “max Q.” The main engines were throttled back to avoid tearing the shuttle apart as it reached, then exceeded max Q. The shuttle's computers would control the delicate transition as the huge craft sliced its way skyward.

  A few moments later Ann could see the pilot give a sigh of relief as the main engines began to throttle up under strict computer control.

  “Control, this is Challenger. Max Q. Main engines moving to one hundred percent ”

  “Copy that, Challenger. Max Q. Max Q. Max Q. ..

  A blinding flash of light, a sensation of warmth, a feeling of weightlessness. ... “Max Q., max Q.. .

  Ann was suddenly awake, waves of pain lancing through her abdomen. The rumpled sheets felt like damp mummy’s shrouds, strangling her. She fought back the pain and kicked the sheets free.

  “A damned nightmare,” she said half-aloud, her breath coming in gasps. After months of briefings, simulators, studying, she had finally had a Challenger nightmare.

  Exhausted, drained, she rolled across the bed and glanced at her watch on the nightstand. Two a.m. That made the eighth time in five hours she had been forced awake by butterflies invading her stomach and her dreams. Butterflies? Those things were dive-bombers, nuclear explosions, earthquakes. Forget it, sleep was impossible.

  They had warned her about Challenger nightmares, everyone from mission commanders to local food-service people—nearly everyone even remotely involved with the rejuvenated space shuttle program seemed to get one. But she figured it was even worse for her... a civilian mission specialist with very little flight-deck training. Well, even though she had two hours until her alarm would go off, she crawled out of bed and into the bathroom. Trying to sleep would only prolong the punishment.

  Feeling as drained as if she had run a marathon, Ann stripped off her nightshirt and panties and stood in front of the mirror in the glare of the bathroom’s single light bulb. Her doomed attempts to wrestle a few hours sleep had left her, she noted, with light brown circles under her dark green eyes.... “Too bad they don’t wear helmets in space any more, at least the visor would hide this,” she told the unappetizing mirror image. In fact, little she saw in a mirror ever pleased her. People said she was always her worst critic, but still.... She frowned at the too-round green eyes, the straight auburn hair, the unremarkable breasts, the too-skinny legs.. .although the ankles were good. (But great ankles never got a girl a date.) All right, she wasn’t bad, but nothing to write home about either. A seven. Maybe a seven and a half...?

  Besides, a body was not something to show off—it had always been something to work on, to operate. She had exercised hard all through high school and college, not because it was the thing to do but because she wanted to excel at one thing—running. She had trained her body to perform well in track and field events, not to win beauty contests. She even had a few trophies on display at her parent’s house. The results of her efforts were a healthy if less than spectacular body, a daily running habit—and dates too few and far between. Who was it who said you couldn’t be too thin or too rich? Half-right, whoever it was....

  She unwrapped clear plastic from a drinking glass, filled it with lukewarm tap water and took a sip. She could feel the liquid go down, then seem to solidify in an acid lump in her throat. Wouldn’t go down and it wouldn’t come up. Great way to start the day. Strange, she hadn’t thought about high school or college or her social life in months. Even the shuttle pilot who’d popped into her dream had been a long-forgotten high school boyfriend. On a day like today she’d better be thinking of something else.

  She took her time after her shower, drying herself and combing her long red hair, and still found herself with an hour to go before her planned wake-up time—two whole hours before her taxi was due.

  She dressed in thin cotton long underwear, cotton gym socks, and her powder blue NASA flight suit. She put up her hair in her trademark ponytail, redid it twice to kill time. It didn’t help. Still an hour and forty minutes until the taxi was to arrive. Nothing on TV at three in the morning.

  Once again her stomach started to gnaw at her.... To hell with waiting for the taxi. She slipped on her black flying boots, left the room key on the bed, turned out the lights and closed the door behind her.

  In the lobby of the Vandenburg Air Force Base Visiting Officers Quarters, she had to cough twice to get the clerk’s attention. “Can you call the base taxi and get me a ride to the Shuttle Flight Center?”

  The clerk stared at her shutt
le crewmember flight suit and did a double take—even with one-a-month shuttle launches from Vandenburg, a shuttle crewperson was an unusual sight. “Transportation is swamped on a launch day,” the clerk said. “The Shuttle Flight Center will pick you up—”

  “At four a.m. I want... I have to go out there now.”

  The clerk caught the hesitation in Ann’s voice, and her expression changed from bored to irritated. “I’ll check.”

  As the clerk dialed a desk phone Ann wandered through the lobby and over to a wide, floor-to-ceiling window facing the Pacific Ocean. Washed clean by the night air and lingering Santa Ana winds, the predawn sky glistened with hundreds of stars. A tiny sliver of moon was about to dip a horn into the cold water, and the big bright planet Jupiter sparkled brilliantly.

  “Miss?” The clerk had to raise her voice to get Ann’s attention. “Transportation says they can’t get out earlier than four-thirty.”

  “Never mind,” Ann said, heading for the door. “I’ll walk.”

  “Walk? To the Shuttle Center? That’s ten miles....” But Ann was already out the door....

  Ten blocks later she had left the main base behind. Ahead was miles and miles of emptiness—abandoned thirty-year-old wooden barracks, parking lots, crumbling buildings and athletic fields giving way to occasional sand dunes and grassy meadows.

  As the bright glow of civilization behind her melted away, the feeling was electric, and she found her pace quickening. The ocean breeze was like an amphetamine. To the west the stars appeared so bright and near they seemed to cast a reflection off the gentle ocean waves. To the east the first faint outlines of the San Rafael Mountains could just barely be made out.

  She found herself now in a gentle, easy jog.... the butterflies, the nightmare, even the grouchy desk clerk, all seemed part of some happy conspiracy to make her experience this rush, this mysterious communion with earth and sky. Her boots crunched on hard sand, and her cheeks stung from the cold breeze as she stepped up her pace, the chill air seeming to flow into her veins and through her whole body.