by Mike Jenne
Startled, Ourecky quickly extracted the toothpick from his mouth and stood up; he wasn’t yet used to being addressed by his new rank. “Good morning, sir.” He hadn’t showered or shaved this morning, and his clothes were more than a bit rumpled.
“Young Captain, just how long have you been down here working?” asked Wolcott.
Suddenly self-conscious, Ourecky rubbed his stubbly chin. “Uh, since yesterday morning, sir. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Wolcott nodded. “Well, you need to draw some fresh air into your lungs, son. I think it’s high time that you and I moseyed out to the back forty, so you can see another special part of our little ranch. Grab your hat, pard, and let’s go.”
Ourecky followed Wolcott out of the building. Crossing a parking lot, they headed toward a decrepit-looking brick hangar of pre-war vintage. Gesturing at it with his white Stetson clutched in an outstretched hand, Wolcott drawled, “Yonder is our Simulator Facility. Currently, we have one Gemini procedures trainer in there, and we’re trying to wrangle a second one from NASA. Right now, we have three crews in training. Of course, we can only run one crew through the simulator at a time, so we cycle the others through technical and contingency training.”
“Contingency training, sir?”
“Yup. That’s a fancy high-falootin’ term for survival training. If you’re a pilot in this man’s Air Force, bub, you definitely get your fill of survival training. Of course, not so much as we endured back in the fifties, when Iron Pants Lemay was holdin’ court and SAC was center stage.”
Wolcott waved at a colonel walking by; the man casually waved back. “Myself, I didn’t exactly cotton to all that survival training, mostly since the instructors seemed hell-bent on makin’ everyone miserable. Most folks don’t need any practice to be miserable; they usually get it right the first time.
“But since our pilots could presumably land up anywhere on earth, we owe it to them to be ready to survive in any situation. So we send the boys all over the world: down to Panama, to the Philippines, to Alaska, and out to Stead in California. Anyway, if you’re ever stranded on a desert island, you better hope one of my guys is with you. Unless you’re lucky enough to be marooned with Ginger or Mary Anne, but even that ain’t going to be very entertainin’ when you’re both starvin’ after the first week.”
Ourecky considered the desert island scenario briefly, trying to decide whether he preferred the sultry redhead or the more wholesome brunette but couldn’t really settle on either.
The two men arrived at the hangar and entered an anteroom where a sergeant kept guard. Wearing fatigues at least a size too large, he was armed with an M3 “grease gun” and a .45 caliber pistol, and appeared anxious to use both. A bandolier of extra magazines was strapped around his skinny waist, perhaps to mercifully finish off anyone who survived the initial volley. Wolcott flashed his credentials, signed an access roster, and stated, “The captain is with me.”
A red light bulb, mounted in a fixture by the interior door, blinked on and off continuously. “There’s a session in progress right now, Virgil,” noted the humorless guard. “I came on duty at six this morning, and they had already been going at it all night.”
Ourecky noticed a handmade wooden sign above the door, bearing an inscription in a foreign language. “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrante,” he read, stumbling through the pronunciation. “What does that mean?”
“Dunno,” replied the guard, shrugging his shoulders, “That Major Agnew tacked it up there. He’s kind of a jokester, so I figured it was something funny.”
“It’s Latin, pard,” explained Wolcott, “It’s a mite long-winded, but mostly it just says Welcome to All.”
They passed into the hangar’s inner sanctum, a massive space with a curved metal ceiling and a gray-painted concrete floor. At the far end was a life-sized replica of something that looked vaguely like a futuristic aircraft. Ourecky recognized it as a mock-up of the now defunct X-20 Dyna-Soar space plane. It seemed almost forlorn, like it had been hastily shoved to the side and abandoned.
Ourecky marveled at the training facility. Its centerpiece was a full-scale mock-up of the two-man Gemini spacecraft, mounted atop a short platform. The Gemini was upright, so that its blunt nose pointed toward the ceiling. The platform was surrounded by three concentric rings of workstations, metal cabinets, and boxy instruments. The consoles in the innermost ring were manned by technicians who apparently orchestrated the training simulation. The second ring was comprised of ordinary desks and chairs, and the third ring was a bank of metal cabinets that enclosed large computers and other electronics.
“There’s the Box,” stated Wolcott, sweeping his Stetson in a flamboyant gesture toward the Gemini mock-up. “That’s the main attraction.”
As the guard had previously indicated, a simulated mission was currently underway. There were about a dozen civilian technicians seated at the consoles. In the outer ring, two men were changing a large tape reel on a freezer-sized computer. It looked as if there was a dress code in effect; the civilian technicians uniformly wore short-sleeved white shirts, dark ties, dark slacks, and black shoes. Off to the side, a table held a metal coffee urn and several open boxes of Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts. Judging by the hefty appearance of some of the men, Ourecky wouldn’t be surprised if they subsisted solely on coffee and stale doughnuts.
“Rise and shine, buckaroos,” announced Wolcott, striding up to the control area. The technicians appeared exceptionally tired, but they looked up at Wolcott and smiled.
One man—seated at a console marked “SIMSUP”—turned to the technician next to him, and said, “Take it, Chris. I’m going to take a smoke break.” With his white shirt stretched to the point of bursting, the man was well beyond portly. His black hair was greasy, slicked across his broad head. He wore black-framed glasses; the thick lenses were smudged with fingerprints. He pulled a pack of Winston cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit one, and inhaled deeply. He walked over to greet Wolcott. “Good morning, Virgil.”
“Und guten Tag to you, Gunter. Ourecky, this is Gunter Heydrich, our token German rocket scientist. He’s our Simulation Supervisor. He’s the honcho who rides herd on this rodeo,” declared Wolcott. “Gunter, the good captain is TDY from Eglin, helping us to streamline procedures for the intercept missions.”
“Nice to meet you, Gunter,” said Ourecky.
“Likewise.”
Wolcott interjected, “Captain O, begging your pardon, but Herr Gunter and I are long overdue for a powwow. I need you to hang back here for a few minutes. I’ll collect you shortly.”
“You’re welcome to watch the simulation,” noted Heydrich. “But don’t bother my controllers. They have a lot to keep track of. They don’t need any distractions.”
As Wolcott and Heydrich strolled toward the front row of consoles, Heydrich asked, “Well, Virgil, what can I do for you today? I assume that this is not a social call.”
“I come bearing good news. I just got a call from the contractor building our paraglider landing simulator. They’re in the final stages of their testing. Once they’re done with the testing, they’ll disassemble it, crate it, and ship it here. We can expect delivery around the middle of next month. Ain’t that just splendid, Gunter?”
Heydrich looked at the ceiling and groaned.
“That ain’t quite the response I expected,” Wolcott said. “What’s the problem?”
Heydrich gestured at the men working at the consoles. They all looked frazzled, like they hadn’t slept in days. “Virgil, I know how anxious you are to get this new machine up and running, but I’m not sure that I have the manpower to handle it, especially if you expect me to run both simulators simultaneously.”
Heydrich took a long draw from his cigarette and exhaled. “As it is, I’m running two twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week. A lot of these men haven’t seen their families for over a month, and some of them don’t even bother to go home anymore.” He pointed at a row of Army cots a
t the far end of the hangar, under a drooping wing of the disused Dyna-Soar mock-up. Swaddled in blue wool blankets on loan from the base hospital, two men slept there.
“What if we wrangled you some extra hands?” asked Wolcott.
Heydrich shook his head and replied, “Mark has promised me that he would hire extra folks, but I haven’t received any reinforcements yet.”
“Mark’s doin’ his utmost, Gunter. He’s still shufflin’ around the funds to make it happen.”
Heydrich shrugged and said, “Virg, as dedicated as they are, my guys aren’t naïve. They know they’ll never see any official recognition for their work here, whether we’re successful or not. These are smart men, with skills that are currently in high demand. They could be working for North American, Grumman, or any of the other contractors building Apollo. At least they could go home at night and tell their wives what they accomplished that day. As it is, they’ll leave here with a five-year blank spot on their resumes, so it’s hard to keep them motivated. We can only wave the flag in front of them for so long before their eyes just permanently glaze over.”
Heydrich had clearly been waiting for a good opportunity to vent. “Virgil, my manpower problems are just the tip of the iceberg. Look, at the rate we’re going, it’s just a matter of time before the hardware fails. This verdammter simulator wasn’t designed to operate around the clock. We barely have time to swab out the sweat and grime from the last crew before it’s time to wedge in another pair. We just can’t sustain this pace, especially when there’s no downtime for maintenance.”
“Duly noted, Gunter,” replied Wolcott, lightly fanning himself with his Stetson.
“Just get me more men, Virg. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll do my best, Gunter. I promise. Now, how about this new paraglider simulator? If it arrives in mid-June, how long will take it take you to get it installed and operating?”
Heydrich scratched his forehead. “Probably no earlier than mid-July, assuming that I can get my guys trained in time. But getting it installed and functioning is a lesser issue, Virgil.”
“How so, pardner?”
Heydrich waved his hand toward the interior of the crowded hangar. “There’s no room at the inn. I don’t have adequate floor space to put any more equipment. Unless you can get me another building, we’re cubed out.”
Wolcott nodded. Heydrich was right. There was a pregnant moment of silence as he scratched his head and closed his eyes, as if pondering the dilemma. Opening his eyes, he looked at the Dyna-Soar mock-up at the far end of the hangar and asked, “Gunter, why do we still keep that danged old monster stashed in here?”
Heydrich chuckled. “Why do we keep it, Virg? Because over a year ago, Mark Tew personally directed me to retain it. He thought it might be a museum piece someday, so we should make sure it wasn’t accidently destroyed.”
“Museum piece?” Wolcott sniffed. “Yup, I guess it might eventually land a prime spot in the Museum of Grandiose Ideas. Man, I get the willies every time I clamp eyes on that danged thing. It’s always felt like a bad omen to me. As soon as I wean Mark from his nostalgic streak, we’ll haul that damned piece of junk out of here to make some room.”
“Sounds good to me, Virgil.”
“So long as I’m over here in your domain,” said Wolcott, looking toward the Gemini mock-up, “how about a scoutin’ report on our first string? How is Crew One handling the new plays?”
“Carson and Agnew? Drew Carson flies the Box faster than we can throw problems at him,” answered Heydrich. “My troops can’t keep up with him, and he knows it.”
Heydrich coughed, and continued. “But Tim Agnew, there’s another matter entirely. This whole game hinges on the right-seater keeping pace with the calculations and feeding them to the left-seater. To his credit, Tim’s the most qualified right-seater in the bullpen, but he just can’t keep up with Carson, and he can’t keep up with us.”
A technician looked back over his shoulder and said, “Hey, Gunter, Carson is just sitting there, cooling his heels. We’re going to throw a stuck maneuvering thruster on him. Scenario item number Two-Oh-Six, failed circuit breaker. Go on that?”
Heydrich stuck up a thumb and replied, “Go on the kerplunk thruster. Keep ’em guessing.”
The technician threw toggle switches and twisted knobs to introduce the problem into the simulation. True to form, Carson diagnosed and resolved the errant thruster in record time, and resumed the ongoing mission without breaking stride.
Wolcott turned back to Heydrich and asked, “So how do we fix this problem with Agnew?”
“Fix? Fix? You really want my opinion, Virg?” Heydrich replied in an exasperated voice. He stubbed out the cigarette in an empty paper coffee cup. A small desk fan hummed nearby, riffling papers on the console as it slowly pivoted side to side. “It’s not Agnew’s fault. We’re asking him and the other right-seaters to execute tasks that NASA hands off to big computers on the ground, and it’s just more than they can handle. I don’t see us flying any missions until the Block Two computer is delivered, regardless of the deadlines we’re under.”
“How about the current onboard computer, pard? Is it any help at all?” The Gemini spacecraft was equipped with a fifty-nine pound computer custom-made by IBM. During missions, it performed several key roles, assisting the two-men crew from lift-off all the way through to their reentry back into the Earth’s atmosphere. It was a powerful tool, but it was designed for NASA’s flights, in which it was almost constantly updated with mission data uploaded from the ground. The long-anticipated Block Two was based on the sophisticated new Apollo Guidance Computer, but with one substantial improvement: the Apollo computer relied on “core rope memory,” in which an individual mission’s data and software instructions were physically woven into a series of wires and washers, while the Block Two could be reprogrammed—using tape cartridges—for different scenarios, even while on orbit.
“Is the existing machine of any help? Yes and no,” answered Heydrich. “For our mission profiles, the current machine may handle roughly forty percent of the workload, but that still leaves a lot of stubby pencil work for the right-seater.”
Wolcott shrugged and asked, “Okay, Gunter, are you implyin’ that it ain’t feasible to do these intercept profiles without the Block Two?”
Heydrich yawned, stretched and replied, “No, Virgil. What I’m telling you is that it’s just beyond the capacity of the guys we have now. Granted, all of these boys are superb test pilots, and most of them are extremely talented engineers, but we’re working in a whole new realm here. Now, if you could stick Buzz Aldrin in the right-hand seat, this would be a wholly different ballgame. But Aldrin’s not available to us, because he’s busy doing other things. So in my opinion, again, we should wait on the Block Two.”
Wolcott grunted. “That’s easy for you to say, friend. But I’m concerned that we’re going to lose the initiative. If we keep crawfishin’ on the schedule, we run the risk of having the whole danged program scrubbed. We’re treadin’ on thin ice as it is. I would hate to see this Project go the way of the dinosaurs.” He looked toward the Dyna-Soar mock-up.
Heydrich nodded in agreement. “Amen. Five years working on that monster, all for naught.”
Suddenly there was an explosion of profanity from the simulator, blaring over the speakers mounted on the control consoles. Heydrich cringed at the outburst. “Ouch. That’s Drew Carson at his finest, in his natural element. Sorry you had to hear that little tantrum.”
Even with the speaker volume turned down, Wolcott could still hear Carson’s anger. “TRY . . . TO . . . KEEP . . . UP!” Carson bellowed. “Just this once, Agnew, try to keep up with the damned program. At this rate, I’ll never have a chance to fly!”
“Whew. How long have they been in the Box, pardner?” asked Wolcott.
“Eighteen hours on a twenty-four hour full-up,” replied Heydrich. “I’ll be surprised if Agnew makes it through the last six hours without a nervous breakdown.
And to make matters worse, if we adhere to the current schedule, we commence forty-eight hour full-ups in two weeks.”
Wolcott shook his head at the prospects. Even after years of working under Bennie Schriever at AFSC, slogging for days without normal sleep, he could hardly fathom operating at that intensity for two straight days without a break. Unfortunately, according to preliminary computer models generated by the experts, it could theoretically take forty-eight hours of continuous flying to intercept some potential targets. That equated to forty-eight hours of Agnew working calculations and taking star shots, while Carson converted the calculations to operational maneuvers. On orbit, they might snatch ten to fifteen minutes of rest at a time, at best.
“Well, pard, aren’t they just about due for a break?” queried Wolcott. “I thought you gave them fifteen minutes every six hours.”
Heydrich nodded in assent. “Their next break is at the top of the hour. Two minutes away.”
“Well, let’s lend them the extra two minutes. Unlock the Box and let ‘em out, pardner.”
Heydrich noted the deviation on his log and then directed the technicians to pull the pilots out of the simulator. Two technicians clambered up the platform to unlatch and swing open the big hatches. Carson slid out, bounced to his feet, stretched, and made a beeline for a Coca-Cola machine against a wall. He dropped a quarter in the dispenser, selected a bottle, popped off the cap in the door, and then drank deeply before sauntering toward the latrine.
Assisted by the technicians, Agnew slowly emerged from the Box. Obviously in agony, he stood up and then carefully negotiated the four steps from the mock-up platform to the main floor. He took two faltering steps and then crumpled to the painted concrete like an exhausted kitten. He lay there, quietly whimpering, trembling in pain. Agnew’s flight suit was drenched with sweat. Wolcott noticed shiny wet spots, one on each shoulder blade and third one just below the small of his back, and suddenly realized the stains were oozing blood.
Concerned, the two technicians rushed toward Agnew to aid him. Shaking his head, Wolcott raised a hand to stop them in their tracks. He walked to Agnew and knelt beside him. Agnew’s face was a white masque of anguish. In a low, quiet voice that only Agnew could hear, he spoke. “You are a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force. Get to your feet and act like one.” There wasn’t the slightest nuance of folksy twang in Wolcott’s voice.