Perigee

by Patrick Chiles

  “You look tired,” he said to the reflection. It was probably just the lighting, but the wrinkles around his face looked deeper. He’d barely given them a second thought before. And he almost envied the women with their makeup kits; it would’ve been nice to hide the bags under his eyes. Ryan was right—he needed to get some sleep. But that was undoubtedly about to become a lot harder to do.

  Serves you right. This was your bright idea in the first place.

  Tom knew that was a dangerous line of thinking and forced himself to stop. Solving problems on a normal airplane, even in flight test, was so much easier. A good pilot knew his machine and procedures and fell back on his experience. If things went south, there wasn’t time to think about any boneheaded move you might have just made. That could wait for debrief, providing you did your job and made it back. Decisions often had to be made with incomplete information. There was never time to wait for more.

  Now, time appeared to be the one resource they had in abundance.

  He opened the cockpit door and swam into the cabin. Marcy had subtly managed to get the passengers collected in one area and was positioned behind them.

  Tom was thankful they had such a small group, because they didn’t appear as happy as before when help was on the way. He knew that Ryan and Marcy hadn’t uttered a word, but the passengers could certainly read their faces.

  Their cold, tired faces were accented by the almost completely fogged-over windows. He had consciously made the decision to leave his jacket off, if for nothing more than psychological reasons. Dante’s vision of condemned souls trapped in a frozen Hell flashed through Tom’s mind. Stop thinking like that, he silently rebuked himself.

  “I’m just going to get right to the point,” he finally said to the group. “The rescue flight isn’t going to make it.”

  Magrath gave up no emotion, while his assistants gasped in panicked disbelief. Wade simply closed his eyes in silent frustration. “What happened?” he whispered.

  Tom cleared his throat. “They had control problems during the ascent to orbit and had to abort the mission,” he said, perhaps too analytically for his own good. This wasn’t the time to sound like a test pilot with ice in his veins. “There wouldn’t have been enough maneuvering fuel to catch up with us and still manage re-entry.”

  The young lady, Whitney, grew wide-eyed. “So that’s it? We’re going to die up here,” she wailed, “just like that?” Carson tried to place his arm around her but she brushed off the comforting gesture. “Get away from me!” she hissed. “Screw this! You’ve got to get us out of here!”

  Marcy braced against some foot restraints and firmly gripped the girl’s shoulders. “You’ve got to settle down, hon. Just hear him out, okay?”

  She nodded meekly and wiped her eyes.

  Tom normally thought appearing apologetic was a bad tactic, but he couldn’t muster any other response. “I’m sorry, I really am. But there’s just not a lot more to tell you other than our people back home are not giving up on us. I don’t know exactly what they’re up to, but they are bringing in outside help.”

  “About bloody time,” Magrath groused. “Because you people have managed to cock this up quite well enough on your own.”

  …

  Houston

  Audrey Wilkes reluctantly sipped from a cup of coffee. No way would she get her running in today anyway, she thought. Well past the end of her normal shift, she needed to be alert for a while longer.

  She sat in a waiting room outside of the Center director’s office. On the bland government-issue chair beside her sat a stack of documents: Station activity plans, orbital elements, mission rules and a pile of structural analyses.

  “Director Abbot will see you now,” the middle-aged executive assistant said with formality, reinforcing her role as gatekeeper. NASA was nothing if not a fiefdom, with each Center under its own lord. And Donald Abbot was the chief overlord of manned spaceflight.

  “Thanks,” Audrey said cheerily, hoping a collegial attitude would gain her easier access in the future. If they were going to pull this off, she’d need it. She gathered her stack of files and walked through the open door.

  Her boss, Ronnie Bledsoe, was already there in front of Abbot’s desk. She’d briefed him earlier on her idea—it was way too early to call it a “plan”—and he’d approached the Center director with it. Time was short, but if she didn’t follow the chain of command it would all be for nothing. Going around the head of Mission Operations would have killed any hopes they had, and probably her career as well. Sadly, over the decades this proud agency had mutated into just another ass-covering government bureaucracy. Hopefully there were still enough gutsy people left here to pull off something worth writing home about.

  Now if she could just get it past the Ron and Don show.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Wilkes,” the Director said in a solicitous tone. He was in his mid-fifties, plump, with pale skin and rosy cheeks. Her boss, Ronnie, nodded in recognition: “Hello again, Audrey.” She thought of him as trustworthy and generally a good guy; so far he’d done nothing to change her opinion. Bledsoe had originally started as an Astronaut Candidate and washed out for an irregular heartbeat. Transferred into Mission Operations, he’d thrived and risen rather quickly to lead. Tall, thin and deep brown, he was Abbot’s exact opposite.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Abbot. Afternoon, Ronnie,” she said, settling into the chair offered to her. “My apologies ahead of time if I start to ramble. It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “That’s quite all right, Miss Wilkes. I’ve been watching the news, too. So let’s cut to the chase and let you go home and get some sleep.”

  Sounds great to me. She’d hardly slept since getting that call from Penny yesterday morning. Sure wish he’d look at my eyes, though. Abbott was notorious for ogling the younger women around the center. Audrey liked to think this behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at a regular business, as much as sexual-harassment stories still appeared in the news from the “real world”.

  She blinked, bringing herself back to the matter at hand. Bright Texas sunlight poured in through the window behind Abbot’s desk. Her mind was wandering as she grew more fatigued.

  “Of course, sir. First, do you have any questions about the information I gave to Ron earlier?” She had briefed him on the phone call from Polaris, the details Charlie Grant had given her that didn’t make the news, and the favor Penny had asked.

  “No questions. So what else do you have for us?”

  Here we go. “Polaris calculates orbital decay, followed by uncontrolled re-entry, will occur in thirty-eight days.”

  Abbot seemed unmoved. “Uncontrolled makes a difference? That thing wouldn’t stand a chance anywhere near those velocities, under any circumstances.”

  It was well known that many Agency careerists held a professional grudge against Polaris. They saw it as one more dangerous upstart trying to usurp manned spaceflight from its rightful place: under the government’s purview. This crowd was giving the public an unjustified impression that flying through space was now uniformly safe and even routine. They all expected it to be like the movies. “It’s the twenty-first century, where’s my flying car?” Abbot had often mocked. And worse, the business was making a tidy profit to boot. Everyone should have known that spaceflight was, well, expensive.

  For that reason alone, Hammond’s success had frosted a lot of people…the same people who Audrey needed to get onto her side, quickly.

  Undaunted, she continued. “They haven’t made a final determination of that yet. Empty, it appears to be a pretty fluffy vehicle. But they’re absolutely certain a ballistic re-entry would not be survivable.”

  Abbot studiously folded his hands over his belly. “I can’t imagine they have enough consumables to last that long in any case. Go on, please.”

  She could tell this current line of argument would go nowhere. Save it for later; get the big idea sold first, she told herself. At least the next point would play to his as
sumptions.

  “You’re absolutely correct on that point, sir. They have maybe one week’s worth of consumables at the outside. That estimate is five hours old, and I suspect it’s not improved since. Based on the specs they’ve sent me, it could have gotten worse.” She was thinking of the hydrogen and oxygen they’d have to draw down to keep getting power from the fuel cells.

  Abbot said nothing; Bledsoe likewise remained silent. No question, this was Audrey’s show. Ronnie was sympathetic, but it would be the Center director’s call. She had to close the deal with him, or those people were sure as dead.

  Audrey was exhausted, and there was no more time to screw around. Decisions had to be made now.

  She drew in a breath. Cut to the chase, the man said… “Dr. Abbot, I’m not going to mince words. I know you don’t like Polaris; you probably think Art Hammond is a dangerous snake-oil salesman, and any of our people who went to work for him are gutless traitors.”

  “And you would be right, Miss Wilkes,” he said with a penetrating stare.

  At least that took his attention off my boobs, she thought. Good. “There’s no time for us to study this in a committee, and I’m too damned tired to argue with you.”

  She heard a stifled cough. From the corner of an eye, she saw Bledsoe grin. “We are their only hope. If we don’t mount some kind of rescue, seven people are going to die by the end of this week. Real people with real lives and real families. And if we can’t find it in us to pull this off, they might as well just blow open a hatch now and get it over with. So NASA can stand by, let them suffocate and get cremated on re-entry—all live on TV—or we can show the world what we’re still capable of…also live on TV.”

  She kept her hands tightly clasped over crossed knees, looking for a change in his expression… a raised eyebrow, anything. Abbot slowly unfolded his hands and laid them flat on his desk, his eyes seeming to bore holes right through her.

  I blew it.

  The silent treatment went on for what felt like an eternity. Without taking his gaze away from her, he finally asked Bledsoe: “Ronald, I presume you have someone who can cover this young lady’s shift?”

  Her heart sank. That’s it, then. I’ve talked my way clean out of a job and left those people for dead.

  The Mission Ops director glanced towards Audrey. “We have people who can step in. I can fill in as Flight if need be.”

  “Good,” he sighed. “Miss Wilkes, this will certainly beat watching overpaid Ph.D.’s doing high-school science experiments up there. You’re in charge of this little expedition. Make it happen.”

  A surprised blink of her eyes was the only reaction she dared muster. Jumping from her chair and screaming would have been inappropriate.

  …

  Audrey had one item of business left before she could finally get some sleep, though she probably wouldn’t see the inside of her home for several days. This was what she got for volunteering, after all…

  She plopped tiredly into an empty chair beside the day shift Flight Director. He was surprised to see her back so soon, but before he could say anything she cut in.

  “Rob, I need to hijack your CapCom for a sec. You’re welcome to listen in.”

  “Umm, okay…” He didn’t know what to make of her being in here when she should have gone home hours ago. “We just have some current-day planning items to uplink first. Can you give us a few minutes?”

  “Sorry, no. Their plans are about to change,” she said curtly, handing him a memo on Agency letterhead:

  TO: MISSION OPERATIONS PERSONNEL

  FROM: RONALD R. BLEDSOE

  SUBJ: ISS SPECIAL TASKING

  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, BLUE TEAM FLIGHT DIRECTOR AUDREY WILKES IS LEADING A SPECIAL-PURPOSE PROX OPS MISSION INVOLVING ISS AND DOCKED VEHICLES. ALL STATION AND CREW ACTIVITIES ARE NOW SUBJECT TO HER DIRECTION UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. YOUR FULL COOPERATION IS EXPECTED AND APPRECIATED. ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS TO MY OFFICE OR TO JSC DIRECTOR DR. ABBOT.

  RONALD R. BLEDSOE, DIRECTOR

  MISSION OPERATIONS

  Pursing his lips, he clipped the memo into the flight director’s log and made a few notes. Once finished, he nodded towards the cable news feed now displayed in a corner of the wall screen. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with current events, I suppose?”

  She smiled. “You always were a sharp guy, Rob.”

  37

  Aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

  Hastily completed in 2011 after years of stalled construction, the ISS was now crewed with a full complement of six astronauts and cosmonauts. They swapped out in six-month rotations, now dependent on the aging Russian Soyuz system for rides to and from orbit. The European Space Agency was now handling the bulk of resupply missions with their “Jules Verne” class of robotic tugs; ESA had been talking about turning it into a manned space vehicle for years, but the wheels of industry turned slowly in Europe.

  The United States, for all its dynamic entrepreneurism, hadn’t fared much better the last several years. The death of the Shuttle and Orion programs had occurred during particularly hard economic times, and contracts for private companies to supply the station had never made it past early promises. NASA had insisted on so much oversight that their potential vendor base had dried up and gone its own way, selling short tourist rides into space. There were up-and-down cargo missions to be had, but crew transportation never made it past the talking stages.

  So, the mostly American-built station continued to rely on Russian equipment just to get there. It was a touchy relationship at best.

  As it was, the U.S. insisted on keeping their astronauts in command of the Station. After being designated a National Laboratory, they at least had some legal standing to do so.

  The current commander was Simon Poole, a former Navy submariner. After decades of pulling astronauts from the ranks of test pilots and scientists, the Agency had finally started listening to some of their psychologists: any long-term space missions could benefit most from the people who’d actually done similar things.

  If anything, sub drivers had it worse, he’d sometimes thought. Crews on the strategic nuke boats, or “Boomers,” often found their normal 90-day tours extended, spending the entire time underwater with absolutely no outside contact. At least up here they could occasionally email their families. And there were windows.

  Finally, if conditions grew dire enough, home was just a day trip away on a Soyuz lifeboat. If something went really wrong on a sub, he’d reminisce, we’d have been lucky to make it back to the surface. That would have probably involved getting just close enough to hopefully get everyone out the escape trunks, left to swim the last few dozen feet to the surface. Things could get out of hand on a sub just as fast as in space, he’d come to realize. So does one prefer to drown at bone-crushing depths or asphyxiate in a freezing vacuum?

  Otherwise, Poole found life on Station a lot like the old days. He grew used to the taste of the food, the smells, and the constant background hum of life-support machinery. He’d also managed to grow a full beard, a luxury the Navy had long allowed its sub drivers on cruise.

  Dealing with some of the personalities was more of a challenge. The Navy employed agonizingly thorough psychological exams to select their sub crews. NASA claimed they did likewise for spaceflight crews, but from what he’d seen the evidence was unconvincing. It didn’t help that the Agency hired too many astronauts in the first place. There was simply no realistic chance of all of them getting even one mission. Throw highly-educated, naturally competitive people into an environment with very little real work to do and problems ensued rapidly. If they’re serious about sending people to Mars, they’ll have to do better than this.

  And for that goal, he also knew the public relations machine would have to get past its institutional fear of nuclear propulsion. He’d lived in very close proximity to reactors for twenty years, and had no patience for what he saw as yet another irrational cultural phobia. Far more people had died in coal-mining accidents t
han they had ever lost on nuke boats, and for comparatively mundane reasons.

  It was simply the most practical way to do long-duration missions all the way around, he thought. And if the day ever came, it would make a lot more sense for the Agency to recruit astronauts from the submarine service than those hotshot zoomies they’d been catering to for the past fifty years.

  He had already been up several hours, roaming the complex just as he’d been accustomed to as a nuke boat skipper: it’s always my watch. The crew had just finished their morning wakeup routine and was getting ready to receive the daily plan from Houston.

  Renee Watson, a “scientist-astronaut,” swam purposefully down the corridor looking for him. She was on comm duty with Houston this morning, which clearly irritated her. Whatever undergrad-level experiment she’s running, he thought, always takes precedence over actual crew duties. It was one more budding psychosis for him to manage.

  “Simon, you need to come down to the control block,” she said, actually sounding serious. Maybe she was finally starting to think like a crew member—that would make for a good day, at least.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing with the station,” she assured him. “Houston needs you on comm. Flight director asked for you personally,” she said. “But they’re totally screwing up our activity plans.” Her customary irritation hadn’t taken long to show itself.

  Maybe not so much, he thought. Clearly she felt there were better things to do than relay messages to the Station commander. But something was up. He pushed off for the main control block, making one smooth pass through two open hatchways. Floating up to the comm station, he slipped his toes under the foot restraints to secure himself.