George sat down beside him. “No we won’t,” he said. “You’re not the only one who’s frightened, you know. We all are.”
Dwayne glanced at him. “Why are you being nice? I ripped your baseball cap. I’m always mean and sneaky with everyone.”
George shrugged his shoulders and thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you are always mean and sneaky. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Nobody’s going to laugh at you.”
He stood up. “Come on, we’ve got to get back to the others.”
Dwayne stuffed his snuggly into his pocket, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. They started to make their way out of the cabin. At that moment, the station began to shake. Things fell off bunks and shelves all around the crew quarters.
“I think we’ve just reached the outer layer of Earth’s atmosphere,” said George. “It’s going to start getting very bumpy now. We’d better hurry.”
They were about to leave when George felt something hit the side of his foot. A badly packed travel bag had tumbled across the floor beside him, and a mini-screen had tumbled out of the bag and landed next to where he was standing. He picked it up, read what was on it, and realised he’d found something very important indeed.
The two of them hurried back to the others as fast as they could. The station was beginning to shudder alarmingly.
“They’ll have come up with a plan by now,” said George. “Just you wait and see. They’re all clever people and they’ll be working together, as a team, to get us out of this.”
They arrived at the corridor to find everyone in the middle of a fierce argument. Everyone had a different idea about what they should do, or not do, or could do.
Commander Ferguson was pacing back and forth like a caged lion. “So much for the rule book! So much for regulations! We’ve followed procedure. And it’s got us nowhere!”
Panic was setting in. George decided that they needed something to snap them out of it, something to focus their attention.
“You may be interested to know …” he shouted.
Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. The station trembled and shook under their feet. When he saw he’d got their attention, George continued: “You may be interested to know that we can now identify the saboteur. We know who caused all this.” He held up the mini-screen he’d found. “I have proof.”
“Who was it then?” barked the Commander.
George turned to a figure who was huddled in a corner. “I’m afraid it was you, Mr Snodbury.”
Chapter Eight
One Way Out
“W-what?” cried Mr Snodbury. “What proof could you possibly have?”
George held up the mini-screen. “This is yours, Mr Snodbury. It fell out of your travel bag. It’s got instructions on it for causing an overload in a fusion reactor.”
“How dare you!” declared Mr Snodbury loudly. “I’ve never been so …” His words tailed off and he slumped like a deflating balloon. He hung his head in his hands. “You’re right,” he wailed. “It was me. What have I done? I never thought it would be this bad. They told me the station would only be without power for a few days. They never said there’d be an explosion.”
“Who said?” growled Commander Ferguson. “Who are you working for?”
“MaxiBoost Spaceways,” said Mr Snodbury. “They offered me a huge amount of money. And I took it. They said they wanted this station to go wrong, so MegaZone Corporation would look bad and MaxiBoost would get the contract to build space stations instead. They told me it would only cause a power failure, I swear! I never wanted all this to happen. They said nobody would get hurt.”
“What about Ash?” interrupted Amira. “I’ve read about those backpacks countless times. They’re foolproof.”
“That had nothing to do with me, honestly! That must have been a one in a million faulty pack. They said everyone would be fine. But now they’ve left me here to die, the miserable so-and-so’s.”
“To get you out of the way,” said Parker, “and hide the fact that you were working for them.”
With a yell of rage, Commander Ferguson grasped Mr Snodbury by the collar and hauled him to his feet.
“You worm!” he roared. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t tear you limb from limb!” “Because that won’t help!” cried George. “Time is running out. We have to work together. We have to think!”
The Commander pushed Mr Snodbury aside with an angry grunt. “What’s there to think about? Life support is all but gone, every system in this station is wrecked and the rescue shuttle will miss us by half an hour!”
A couple of sudden tremors added to the shuddering motion all around them.
George stepped right up to the Commander. “You might be giving up,” he said, “but I’m not.” He turned to Amira. “Can you work out how long we’ve got now?”
After a few calculations, Amira said, “The station will break apart in about twenty minutes.”
“OK,” said George. “Let’s think. Is there anything we can use to get clear of the station?”
“Nothing,” said Parker. “The two escape pods were destroyed in the first explosion, remember. And the only spacesuit we’ve got is the one the Commander used.”
“Will whopping great chunks of this place hit the Earth?” said Josh.
“No,” said Parker. “When the station breaks up, most of it will burn away as it falls. I expect it’ll look like a shower of meteorites from the ground.”
“Most of it?” said George. “Will some parts of the station stay intact?”
“Maybe a few sheets of metal,” said Parker.
Josh suddenly perked up. “What about the main engine housing? Those things are made of micro-bonded carbon fibre. I read it in the technical manual on the way up this morning.”
George and Amira stared open-mouthed at Josh, amazed that he had remembered such useful information.
Parker thought for a moment. “I suppose the container holding the main engine is the toughest part of the station. Yes, I expect it would probably reach Earth in one piece. But if it fell in one of the oceans, it would sink to the bottom, and if it hit land it would smash apart instantly. By the time it reached ground level, it would be falling at several hundred kilometres an hour.”
“But perhaps we could hide inside it?” said Josh. “At least we’d survive the fall.”
“And then either drown or get squished,” said Amira. “No thanks.”
The rattling and rocking of the station was becoming ever more violent. The corridor was feeling even colder. Everyone’s breath was beginning to steam. Very soon, the reverse would happen, and the temperature would rise sharply. The outer hull of the station would heat up to melting point as it tore through Earth’s atmosphere.
Mr Snodbury curled up into a ball. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why did you do it?” said George. “Just for the money?”
“I wanted to leave teaching,” sniffed Mr Snodbury. “I’ve always wanted to run my own gardening centre. But I never had the cash. And now look what I’ve done. I’ve destroyed this magnificent space station and killed innocent people. Even with all our technology, space is still a dangerous place. Remember that project we did on the twentieth-century Apollo missions? They had little more than a giant tin can and a pocket calculator, but they got to the Moon and back. From Apollo 11 to Berners-Lee, a story of great achievement. And I’ve just ruined it. I’m glad I can’t go back to Earth – I don’t deserve to go back! I couldn’t face telling everyone what I’ve done.”
Suddenly, George let out a cry. “That’s it!” He leapt up. “I know what we can do! I know how we can use that engine housing to survive! And you will come back, Mr Snodbury, we all will.”
“Well, we’d better do it quick,” said Amira, pointing to her mini-screen. “I’ve done a few more calculations. It isn’t only our lives at stake now. When the station breaks up, it will be directly over northern Europe. When that engine hits the gr
ound, it’s going to smash right into the centre of CentralCity. It could even hit the district where we live!”
Chapter Nine
Only Chance
The remains of the space station fell towards Earth, faster and faster. The nine survivors inside were shaken and buffeted until they thought their teeth would fall out. A howling whine was steadily rising all around them, as the air outside screeched against the station’s hull.
“Parker!” called George above the din. “Can you and the two technicians undo every bolt that holds the main engine compartment in place?”
“Yes, but – ?”
“Just do it, I’ll explain later! Everyone else, listen! Collect up anything you can that’s soft. Cushions, blankets, anything at all. Get moving, we’ve only got a few minutes!”
The crew cabins were quickly stripped of pillows and bedclothes. Parker and the technicians hurried to the engine room and loosened everything that held the main engine in place.
The engine housing was about the size of a small school bus, cylindrical in shape and covered in a network of pipes, dials and screens. Two-thirds of the cylinder, from which jutted a series of stubby tubes, was the engine itself. The other third was a chamber in which there was a complex system for keeping the engine running at the correct speed and temperature. There was a hatch at the end of the cylinder, through which technicians would regularly crawl to carry out checks and maintenance.
“We need to pad out the maintenance chamber as much as we can,” said George. “We’ll get bashed around against all the equipment in there if there isn’t anything to cushion us.”
“What’s the point of being cushioned against all the bashing about we’ll get on the way down,” said Josh, throwing some pillows in through the hatch, “if we’re just going to hit the ground with a huge splat?”
The engine’s maintenance chamber was a tight squeeze for five adults and four kids. George found himself squashed tightly beside a small porthole, wedged between Mr Snodbury and Amira. The hatch was pulled shut with a clang and sealed by turning a metal wheel at its centre.
Inside, the noise of the rapidly crumbling station was dulled, but the shuddering tremor of the falling station felt even worse in this confined space.
“Now we wait for the station to break up,” said Parker. “Any minute now. George, you’d better tell everyone what you’ve told me. Your idea for saving our lives.”
“This engine housing is much heavier at one end,” said George. “The end with the actual engine in it. So we know it will fall engine-first, right?”
“Right,” said Amira.
“Remember what Parker told us a while ago? That there’s still some power left in the engine. Not very much, but some.”
“There’s nowhere near enough power to let us fly this thing to the ground, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said the Commander.
“I know,” said George, “but when Mr Snodbury mentioned the old Apollo space missions, way back in the twentieth century, it reminded me how they managed to survive a fall through the atmosphere. On the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, the three astronauts only had a tiny pod in which to return to Earth. It fell through the atmosphere, very fast, heating up like mad. Just like this engine housing is going to do. Then, when they were a few thousand metres above the ground, three parachutes opened which slowed their fall. They splashed down safely in the sea.”
“We don’t have parachutes,” said Josh.
“But we have enough power for one good burst from the engine,” said George. “Instead of having parachutes reduce our speed, we wait until we’re approaching the ground, then blast every last bit of power we’ve got left out of the engine. The downward push should slow us enough. We’ll still hit the ground with a big bump, but in theory, we’ll survive. Well, we should survive. Well, we might survive.”
“You’ve got to admit, sir,” said Parker to the Commander, “it’s a genius idea. I’d never have thought of it.”
“It’s crackpot,” muttered the Commander. “A dozen things could go wrong. We could start spinning out of control. We could fire the engine too late. Or too early. We could – ”
“But it’s a chance,” said Parker. “It alters our chances from zero to, well, OK, only about twenty per cent, but it’s better than nothing.”
“This is a twin-pulsed ion thruster,” said the Commander. He twisted his head to look at a screen close to his jaw. “At… two point four per cent power, you’ll have less than seven seconds of kick.”
Suddenly, the engine rocked wildly. The sounds of twisting metal made George’s stomach lurch. Light shone through the porthole beside him. He could see large sections of the station drifting away. Each broken section was wrapped in searing white flame, trailing smoke and debris.
Behind them, George could see the graceful curve of the Earth, the horizon gradually flattening as they fell closer and closer to the surface. He felt terrified.
He turned to look at the others. A couple of them had their eyes screwed up tightly. Dwayne pulled his snuggly from his pocket, looked at it for a moment, then tucked it behind him to add to the padding of pillows and blankets. He looked up at George and gave him a feeble smile. George gave him a thumbs-up.
Parker was tapping at Amira’s mini-screen. “About three minutes to impact,” she said. “We’ll have to boot the engine manually. George, you see that little black and yellow plastic cover, just above you?”
“Yes?”
“Flick it up, but don’t press the switch beneath. That fires the power cells.”
George did as he was told. The switch was small. It seemed so unimportant. But all their lives rested on it. And possibly the lives of many people down in CentralCity too.
“Two minutes forty seconds,” said Parker. “We fire at five kilometres from ground level. You got that?”
“Yes,” nodded George.
“I’ll count you down.”
The engine housing dropped through the sky like a stone. By now, it too was shedding flames. The occupants were rattled from side to side. All around them was the howling roar of the air, like a screaming dragon diving to its death.
“One minute fifty.”
Through the porthole, George could see coastlines and ocean, just as he had from the shuttle that morning. They grew closer every second. He felt as if his heart would leap from his throat.
“One minute ten. Get ready!”
Mr Snodbury had the back of his head pressed against a cushion, and his fists clenched so tight that his knuckles were white. Josh and Amira kept their gaze fixed on the porthole, their faces grim and blanched. The Commander held his hand across his chest.
“Ten kilometres above target height …” yelled Parker above the roar. “Nine… eight… stand by to fire, George… seven… six …”
George looked up at the switch.
“Five… four …”
He raised his hand. It juddered as the engine rocked.
“Three …”
The ground was shooting up towards them.
“Two… one …”
George’s finger hovered unsteadily above his head.
“Fire!”
He flicked the switch. Instantly, the engine housing bucked as the machinery underneath burst into life. The sudden braking effect pressed them all painfully into whatever was below them. The engine flared with a throbbing WHOOSH. Bright greeny-blue light washed around the porthole.
George thought he would be crushed to death. His whole body felt as if it weighed tonnes. The pulsing of the engine filled the air with static, and there was a sharp smell of electricity.
Then it cut out. Suddenly there was silence.
“Power gone,” gasped Parker. “Thirty metres off the ground! Brace yourselves!”
George felt a yawning sensation, like a sudden dip on a rollercoaster.
Then the engine housing, battered, scorched and steaming, hit the ground with a crunching, shattering sound. The jolt made everyone yelp with pain.
The engine tottered and rolled, crashing onto its side and scraping along the ground for twenty metres or more. Through the porthole, George could see what looked like the surface of a road.
Everyone groaned and stretched their limbs carefully. The impact had dislocated Parker’s shoulder, but apart from that they seemed to have suffered only cuts and bruises.
The Commander reached over and turned the wheel on the hatch. It fell back with a hiss. Cool, clean air flowed into the compartment from outside.
One by one, they crawled out. The engine housing was a crumpled, fire-ravaged piece of junk. Where it had hit the ground was a small crater, and a deep furrow marked where it had skidded.
George, Josh and Amira looked around themselves, feeling dizzy and slightly sick. They were standing in the middle of an ordinary street. On both sides, people were staring out of windows at them, goggle-eyed. From the distance came the sound of approaching sirens.
Chapter Ten
Commander
Minutes later, the battered engine housing was surrounded by police, ambulance crews and amazed sightseers. The nine survivors of the Berners-Lee were sitting on raised stretchers, wrapped in blankets and being attended to by medics.
A van drew up and a TV news team piled out. They barged their way through the crowd of onlookers and approached Commander Ferguson, camera and microphone pointed in his direction.
“Get out of my face!” he growled.
The news team did a smart U-turn and looked for someone else to interview. Mr Snodbury spotted them, and moved aside the nurse who was seeing to the scratches on his forehead.
“Over here!” he called.
The news team descended upon him like a flock of vultures.
“Can you tell us your name?” gushed the reporter, holding a microphone under Mr Snodbury’s nose. “How do you feel? What happened on the Berners-Lee? How did you feel?”
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