Blue Gemini

by Mike Jenne

  “Understood, sir,” replied Ourecky.

  “Good. When you’re ready to quit, just say the word. But let me warn you: If you feel a sudden urge to freak out, you had better restrain yourself and stay on your side of the Box. If you pull an Agnew on me, I’ll send you to the hospital. Understand, Captain?”

  “Uh, I understand, sir.”

  “Good.” Carson reached out and switched the intercom circuit back to the voice-activated mode. He spoke into the microphone. “Toggling back to VOX. We are ready to restart in here. Call the clock, please.”

  Heydrich’s tired voice came over the intercom circuit. “The clock was stopped at Ground Elapsed Time 20:12:25.”

  “I copy clock stopped at GET 20:12:25,” answered Carson. “Ready to resume.”

  “Clock will resume at GET 20:12:25, at my count,” declared Heydrich. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Mark. Clock started. Good luck, gentlemen.”

  8:45 p.m.

  Wolcott returned and took a seat next to Heydrich. “How goes it?” he asked. “Are they still in orbit, Gunter? No bloodshed?”

  Heydrich strained to hear a piece of the intercom dialogue and then answered, “Virg, they’re just a few minutes from lighting their retros. This whole shebang will be wrapped up in less than thirty minutes.”

  Wolcott was astounded. “Ourecky made it all the way through to reentry?”

  Heydrich nodded. “He did. I don’t know where you found that kid, but he knows the procedures book inside and out, at least as good as Agnew. It’s kind of scary. He lagged some during the intercept and power-down, but while Carson was snoozing during the loiter phase, he studied the checklist. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of it during the power-up.”

  Wolcott scratched his chin. He picked up a clipboard and reviewed the reentry procedures checklist. “Pard, do you s’pose Ourecky could fill in until we find someone to replace Agnew?”

  “Maybe,” replied Heydrich. “Virgil, if you gave me sufficient time, I could train anyone to fly the Box when things go right. The real test starts when things go wrong. Ourecky almost kept up today. When I say he almost kept up, you need to remember that we didn’t throw any curveballs at him. No glitches. No malfunctions.”

  “Duly noted, pard.” Wolcott sat down and turned up the volume on the intercom speaker.

  Inside the simulator, Carson announced, “Retro Attitude indicator is amber.” He pointed at a series of lighted switches running along the left side of the center instrument panel and added, “Captain, unless I dictate otherwise, keep your eyes glued on these sequencing lights.”

  “I confirm Retro Attitude,” noted Ourecky. Sweat beaded on his face. A small fan did little to dissipate the heat. The cabin was considerably more cramped than he had previously imagined. Shifting slightly in his seat to relieve some pressure spots, he found it difficult to move without inadvertently bumping into protruding switches and circuit breakers. He and Carson were lying virtually shoulder to shoulder, separated by mere inches. With the hatches closed and dogged down, the cabin fit like an uncomfortably tight glove. It was definitely not a working environment conducive to anyone even mildly claustrophobic. To make matters even worse, the cockpit’s cross-section was funnel-shaped, so there was scarcely any room for their feet in the narrow footwells at the truncated lower end of the cone.

  As he tried to make himself comfortable, Ourecky recalled a story he had heard about the Gemini’s development. After he had made his suborbital spaceflight aboard the Mercury “Liberty Bell 7” space capsule, NASA astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom had become intimately involved in the design of the Gemini spacecraft. Much of the cabin’s interior layout, to include positioning of critical controls and instruments, were the result of his personal input to McDonnell Douglas engineers, even as the two-man spacecraft was still on the drawing boards.

  While Grissom’s contributions were obviously instrumental in creating an agile and versatile spacecraft that flew almost like a fighter plane, there was also a negative aspect of his legacy: the engineers built a spacecraft perfectly suited to accommodate Gus, who at five feet-six inches was the shortest of the original seven astronauts. The other spacemen, not quite as diminutive as Grissom, referred to the fledging spacecraft with a humorous but fairly accurate moniker: “The Gusmobile.” After realizing that some of the taller astronauts—like five-eleven Ed White, who would later become America’s first spacewalker—could not possibly fit into the small cockpit, the engineers were forced to alter the specifications to allow the larger men to squeeze—barely—inside. Ironically, Ed White later burned to death alongside Gus Grissom aboard Apollo One, in preparation for the maiden flight of the new three-man spacecraft.

  “O2 High Rate switch is amber,” stated Carson. He pushed that switch and it changed to green. “Battery Power telelight is amber. Switching off the adapter power supply.” He waited a moment and then said, “Captain, switch on the main batteries. Now.”

  “Huh? What? Main batteries?” asked Ourecky, scanning the instrument panel immediately to his front. His head reeled, trying to remember the locations of the battery switches. He thought he had a good grasp of the reentry checklist, but he was struggling hard to stay abreast.

  “The main batteries,” snapped Carson, reaching over Ourecky and pointing at a small panel. “There. Look to your right, on the wall. Those four switches right there. Switch them on.” Ourecky did as he was instructed and toggled the switches. “Main battery switches all to On,” he announced.

  “Now, try your best to keep up, Captain. Battery Power light is green. RCS light is amber.” Carson reached out and pushed in the switch. “Squibs fired. RCS is activated. RCS is green.”

  “RCS is green,” confirmed Ourecky.

  “SEP OAMS LINES light is amber.” Carson yawned audibly, flexed his fingers, and then pushed in the switch. “OAMS lines are separated. SEP OAMS LINES light is now green.”

  “SEP OAMS is green,” stated Ourecky, verifying that the light had indeed turned green.

  Carson continued with the checklist. “Separate electrical light is amber. Pyrotechnics activated. Separate electrical light is green.”

  “SEP ELEC is showing green,” said Ourecky.

  “SEP ADAPT light is amber. Pyro activated. Sensors confirm adapter separation. SEP ADAPT light is now green.”

  “I confirm SEP ADAPT.”

  “ARM AUTO RETRO is now amber.”

  Ourecky wiped his face with his sleeve. “Confirm ARM AUTO RETRO is amber.”

  “Watch your hands. Watch your hands. Don’t flail around so much. Keep your hands away from the instruments,” snapped Carson. “Counting down to retrofire. 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Retrofire.”

  Ourecky heard a loud thump behind him, followed by a dull roaring sound, which was followed by three more thumps and an even louder racket.

  “Four retros,” said Carson, counting the rockets as they fired in turn. “All four retros firing.”

  “I verify that all four retros firing.”

  “IVI 328 aft, 102 right, four up,” noted Carson. “Attitude looks good.”

  Within a few minutes, the simulated mission was complete. Exhilarated, Ourecky all but bounded out of his seat. After Carson gingerly slid out of the mock-up, two simulation technicians climbed in. Armed with diagrams of the control panels, they painstakingly reset the instruments to the way they would appear when the spacecraft was on the launch pad.

  Two folding chairs waited at the base of the stairs. Carson stiffly sat down as a technician offered him some crushed ice wrapped in a white terry washcloth. Wincing, he pressed the ice against his bruised eye. A medical technician assisted him in unzipping his flight suit and pulling it down to his waist. Carson was an impressive physical specimen; his body had changed little since his days as an athlete at West Point. The technician took his pulse, then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his large bicep. Carson’s eyes were red from strain and sleep deprivation.

&nbs
p; Ourecky took out a notepad and jotted down some observations. “Hey, Major, can I ask you something? It’s kind of personal.”

  “What?” asked Carson impatiently, examining his Omega wristwatch. He angrily shook his head; the face of the expensive timepiece had been scratched during the earlier altercation.

  “Well, uh, I kind of have a date for Friday night, but I’m not from around here, so I have no idea where to take her. Can you offer any suggestions?”

  “You’re kidding me, aren’t you? A date? You have a date for Friday night? My God, don’t we live in a world just filled with irony.” Massaging his swollen eye, Carson yawned. Smiling broadly, he said, “Well, Captain, here’s what I would do. Friday night? Probably your best bet is to take her out for dinner at a nice place and then maybe go to a nightclub afterwards.”

  “I haven’t been off base yet, so I don’t know any clubs.”

  “Really? There’s a place called the Falcon Club, just outside the main gate. It’s where me and the guys hang out when we’re in town. Trust me, if she’s from around here, she knows where the Falcon Club is.”

  “Thanks, sir,” replied Ourecky. “Uh, I think I’ll go with your suggestions.”

  Carson grinned, turned to the medical technician and said, “Are you done with me, sawbones? If you don’t mind, I would really like to head back to my billets and hit the sack.”

  14

  THE FALCON CLUB

  Aerospace Support Project

  9:35 a.m., Thursday, July 18, 1968

  Ourecky was hunched over his makeshift desk, meticulously penciling an arcane equation onto graph paper, when he heard footsteps in the hall. He glanced up to see Wolcott entering his miniscule office.

  “Pardner, I ain’t had a chance to chat with you,” drawled Wolcott. “But I really appreciate you fillin’ in yesterday. You did a bang-up job in the Box, and I ain’t goin’ to forget that anytime too soon.”

  “Uh, my pleasure, General. I was honored that you would even ask me.”

  Fanning himself with his hat, Wolcott smiled. “Well, hombre, I just wanted you to know that we might be a little shorthanded for a while to come, and we may need you to help out with the simulator more often. Any problem with that?”

  Ourecky grinned. “None whatsoever, sir. Working in there gave me a lot of ideas on how to improve the worksheets to make the whole process flow even smoother. I think the more time I can spend in the simulator, the better I’ll understand the details of the intercept missions.”

  Wolcott frowned, and then said, “Pardner, you should know that if you go back into the Box, you’ll be climbin’ back in there with Carson again. Are you sure you two can geehaw?”

  Setting aside his slide rule and pencil, Ourecky nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m confident I can work with Major Carson, sir.”

  “Good. Very good. Hey, we’re due to receive our Paraglider Landing Simulator next month. It’s brand spankin’ new. I sure would appreciate your help in workin’ the bugs out of it.”

  “Sounds like fun, sir.”

  “Look, I have another favor to ask of you, Ourecky.” Wolcott plopped a thick stack of paperwork on the drafting table. “I want you to haul this stuff over to Colonel Walters at the base hospital. He’s a flight surgeon who works with us. I want you to schedule a flight physical with him.”

  “Flight physical, sir? What for?”

  “Two reasons, pard. First, the simulator rules require that you have a full-blown flight physical before you can participate in extended mission scenarios. Second, I don’t want your head to swell bigger than your hat, but it’s becoming pretty danged apparent how important you are to this Project. That means your time is precious to us. As it is, we’re burnin’ up a lot of that time when you fly commercial. Our crews fly T-38s to stay current, so I reckon we could whack two birds with one stone. One of the guys can swoop down to Eglin, drop you in the back seat, and you can be here in a flash instead of sittin’ on an airliner all day.”

  Leafing through the medical forms, Ourecky’s first thought was of Bea, and that he would no longer see her on the Monday mornings that he flew from Atlanta to Dayton. “You don’t want me to fly commercial anymore, sir?”

  Wolcott shook his head. “It’s a waste of time and resources, pard. Call me selfish, but so long as you’re punched in on our clock, I want you up here working. There are a few other things that you’ll need to accomplish before we can strap you into a back seat, though. We’ll make an appointment at the altitude chamber to have you checked out, and you’ll go through egress trainin’ over at the base parachute loft.”

  “Egress training, sir?”

  “The survival gear techs will run you through a day’s worth of ejection seat trainin’ and show you how to work a parachute if the need should ever arise.” Wolcott looked around the tiny room where Ourecky worked; he always seemed claustrophobic when he came in here.

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “One more thing, hoss, and this is kind of a sensitive topic. Doc Walters will subject you to the same work-up as our flight crews. It’s a lot more extensive than a normal flight physical, but it’s the only type of physical that’s authorized in our budget. I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t share this little nugget of information with Carson and the other crew guys. And the same applies to Mark Tew. He’s always tryin’ to squeeze more copper out of every penny, and I don’t need him crossways with me over spending a little extra money to move you around the country a mite faster. So, just to be safe, let’s just keep this secret twixt you, me, and Doc Walters. Fair enough, buckaroo?”

  Setting aside his pencil, Ourecky nodded.

  “Splendid,” said Wolcott. He turned to leave the room, then hesitated. “By the way, is there any reason you decided not to be a pilot when you joined the Air Force?”

  “I wanted to, sir, but I flunked the aptitude test. I’ve applied for a waiver to attend flight school, but was turned down five times. After all that, I just figured that flying just wasn’t in the stars for me.”

  “Interesting,” observed Wolcott, departing the room.

  Ourecky placed the stack of medical forms on a bookshelf. Bea. I’m supposed to call Bea tonight. He pulled out his wallet and found the folded scrap of paper with her number. Looking at it, he suddenly realized that he didn’t even know her last name.

  Parking Lot 20, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio

  9:00 p.m., Thursday, July 18, 1968

  With his hands jammed into his pockets, Air Force Staff Sergeant Eric Yost strolled out of the warehouse where he worked. He was roughly midway through his daily stint—the graveyard shift that ran from four in the afternoon until midnight—so he paused for his allotted hour “lunch” break. As he crossed the darkened parking lot, he watched the lights of a Ford Mustang fade in the distance; the car was occupied by his three co-workers, on their way to an all-night diner in Dayton. He wasn’t at all hungry, so he would do as he customarily did every night at this time: shuffle out to his 1957 Chevrolet panel van, smoke a couple of cigarettes, contemplate his miserable life, and wish that he could sneak a drink without getting caught. It had been over a month since he had tasted any liquor, and Yost was having a tough time with sobriety.

  Alcohol had wreaked a harsh toll on his military career; summarily busted two pay grades after showing up for work drunk twice in the past year, he was now on the verge of losing his security clearance. After over eighteen years spent tracking critical electronic components around the globe, he was now relegated to driving a forklift in this warehouse. The menial job was Yost’s last chance for redemption. If he didn’t stay sober and make good, he would be booted from the Air Force right at the cusp of twenty years’ service, with no chance of drawing his retirement pay.

  He had serious doubts that he could squeak through the next twenty months in his current assignment. The hours were horrible and the working conditions left much to be desired. His workplace—Contingency Stocks Commodity Warehouse #2—was a
n old brick aircraft hangar that pre-dated World War II. It was poorly lit, drafty, musty, and infested with mice. As best as Yost could determine, none of their “contingency commodity stocks” ever actually departed the warehouse. Mostly, he and his co-workers spent their time shifting the pallets from one rack to another, when they weren’t playing poker or telling war stories.

  If work wasn’t agonizing enough, he dreaded going home, since his wife was driving him absolutely crazy. Gretchen constantly harangued him about his recent demotion and griped that they didn’t have enough money to make ends meet. Thankfully, they owned their house free and clear—courtesy of a windfall left by his mother after she died last year—or they would really be under water with their bills. Of course, the house wasn’t much to speak of; located in a crappy neighborhood, it was in constant need of costly repairs.

  Out of school for the summer, their three kids screamed and squawked all day long. Gretchen used the kids as an excuse not to get a job to help with their finances, even though she ignored the little monsters most of the day as she watched soap operas and stuffed her face with candy and potato chips. Since it was futile to obtain any rest at home, he had taken to driving onto the base several hours before the start of his shift. He would habitually park in a back space, jam cigarette butts in his ears to dull the noise of planes taking off from the adjacent runway, and doze for a few hours in the back of the van before going on shift.

  Dozing now, Yost was awakened by a dull rumbling noise. He opened his eyes and watched a large flatbed truck park in front in of a nearby hangar. The hangar doors gradually clanked open, and a strange object slowly materialized. It appeared to be some sort of aircraft, mounted on a roller-mounted platform, being pushed by roughly twenty men.