1) each nation will refrain from using the technology for covert observation of the other, and
2) that each nation will do everything possible to limit the spread of the technology for the next few years.”
The Secretary of Defense then spoke again: “If we mount a mission like this it cannot be easily kept secret. In fact we can probably create good press for ourselves on the world stage by being seen to help another nation in their time of need. It can be just like in the sixties, when everybody knew that nuclear bombs existed even though all the details of the technology were kept secret. We will have to reveal to the world that LeviStar technology exists, even though the technology itself will remain our most closely guarded secret.”
Finally the President spoke: “I think the strategic situation is clear now. If we rescue the cosmonauts we will definitely build goodwill with the present Russian administration because it is their Premier’s daughter who is up there. This will surely help Madame Secretary’s goodwill initiatives. We don’t have time for any kind of treaty, but in the circumstances it looks like an auspicious opportunity for a gentleman’s agreement – no mutual surveillance in near space and no proliferation of the technology without joint consent. That can only be to our advantage and we cannot make the situation any worse than it is. So to my mind if we perform the rescue then we don’t have anything to lose, and we will certainly gain some benefit for the near term. Madame Secretary, will you attempt to put these understandings in place?”
“I will try my best,” replied the Secretary of State. “Getting a gentlemen’s agreement with people who may not have the concept of a gentleman is likely to be tenuous. But if we go ahead with the spirit of generosity and everybody realizes that this deal cannot be enforced except by appealing to honor, then we will most likely get something out of it and we have almost nothing to lose. Give me an hour to conduct talks and I will get back to you.”
“Thank you everybody!” said the President, announcing the end of the meeting. “Be ready to regroup here in about an hour when the talks have been conducted.”
An hour later the meeting regrouped. The Russians had agreed to the gentlemen’s agreement and the mission to rescue the Russian cosmonauts was approved by the United States President.
Chapter 57
Back at Homey airport the word came through at 5 p.m. Monday that the rescue mission was authorized. At the White House John and James were immediately helicoptered back to Andrews Air Force Base to take an executive jet back to Homey airport. John took the opportunity to nap during the five hour flight. At area 51, most of the LeviStar staff had stayed over for the night to make sure that the Delias were checked out as thoroughly as possible ready for the rescue mission. As soon as John got back to the LeviStar hangar, he discreetly took Judy aside and asked her how she felt about the mission.
“Shitty!” was the straightforward answer.
“Would you rather not be flying on this one?” asked John.
“I really could not put my heart into it,” said Judy. “You have other people who can make a crew. Both you and Terry are qualified to fly the Delias. If something really testing happened I would not feel as committed as the mission demands and might demoralize the rest of you. It’s best if you go without me. But please take care! I’ve lost one man in my life already and I don’t want to lose another!”
“Don’t you worry – We’ll be really careful” said John. “Maybe you can man the communication link to keep in touch with us as we go along. The Air Force satellite radio can keep us in contact the whole way.” John and Judy embraced for a few moments and John seriously felt that he would rather be there on earth next to the tender feel of Judy’s body than anywhere up in near space. However his sense of duty prevailed and he bustled off to work on preparations and planning for the journey.
John chose for Delia 1 to be manned by Terry with Harold, and John himself piloted Delia 2 with Tanya as the flight engineer. They loaded up the galleys with food sufficient to keep four people going for 24 hours in each vehicle. Pressure suits had been hastily flown in by NASA and quick lessons on using them were conducted. These were the Advance Crew Escape suits known as ACES used on the space shuttle, each having a back pack with 30 minutes supply of oxygen for the wearer. Five pressure suits were packed in each vehicle, so that there could be one spare in case of emergency. All night long preparations and checks continued, and each of the crew members was finally able to don their ACES in under an hour. Harold loaded the avionics of the Delias with data maps to allow their GPS systems to lead the way directly to where the stranded craft was located, and then back again to Homey Airport. The galleys were loaded with cans, dried foods and bottled water, all of which could stand a brief exposure to the almost total vacuum of near space. Anthony performed a close scrutiny upon a simple valve going right through the pressure hull that would let all the air out of Delia and into space when it was needed to depressurize the vehicles. Finally at first light Tuesday the two Delias set off, simply rising vertically up to their planned flight altitude of 70,000 feet. Since a mid air collision was something which nobody needed, they deliberately traveled about two miles apart, just in visual contact. For the first time they were using strobe lights and John and Terry set their transponders to reflect a United States Air Force aircraft.
Although there was little air resistance outside, the APUs were not highly powered by aviation standards and it took about half an hour to build up to their cruising speed of 1000 mph. They planned a similar length of time to slow down again at the other end.
The next three hours were uneventful and boring as they sat there and watched their instruments for progress. After three hours they started the slowing down procedure, and in each vehicle they took turns where one person kept watch while the other wriggled into the ACES. Finally after four hours they were within 30 miles of their target, and each of them only had to pull down their helmet and turn on the oxygen to be ready for exposure to vacuum. They shut down the APU and enjoyed the relative silence in the cabin. They had been using aircraft to aircraft radios to talk to each other through the journey, and now John, feeling tingling and tense, tried to be very professional as he imagined a pilot should be and inquired of Terry: “Delia 2 to Delia 1, are you ready to go up now?”
“Let’s go John!” came back the reply.
Each of them pulled back on their collective controls and commenced the long rise up to 100,000 feet just using the batteries. It was still day time and they were picking up a useful amount of energy from the solar cells on the roof. It had been pre-arranged to use a certain frequency to contact the stranded cosmonauts, and for the first time Tanya did this now. Speaking in Russian, she used the radio to call the Russian vehicle which they knew carried the code name Sofia. “Delia 1 to Sofia! We should be within 20 miles of you now. Can you hear me?”
“We hear you loud and clear,” came the terse response, this time in a man’s Russian voice.
“Can any of you speak English?” asked Tanya.
“We are two men and two women here. One of the women, Valentina, can speak English.”
“We are coming for you in two vehicles, Delia 1 and Delia 2 which contains me, Tanya, the only Russian speaking person. Delia 1 will come to you first. So make sure that Valentina gets transferred to the first vehicle, Delia 1.”
“Understood!”
“Please make sure that you have strobe lights and your transponder operating so that we can see you visually and on radar.”
Suddenly the word “Sofia” popped up on the radar screens of the Delias.
“They must be over there to the left,” said Terry.
“I can see them,” called out Harold sharply. “they are still about a mile above us over on the left. We are going straight for them using the thrusters.”
Tanya continued making arrangements. She had never done anything like this before, but with her technical knowledge of the Delias and her bilingual Russian capability, she was proudly f
ulfilling a very unique role: “Please get your pressure suits on ready for transfer. Have you got a rope or strong cord in the vehicle?”
“Yes, we have a rope by the hatch with a winch for rescue lifts.”
“In a few moments when we are there, we will want you to open the hatch and dangle the rope out by thirty meters or so. We will open our emergency roof door and will come up underneath you. We will attempt to capture the rope and trail it inside our ship. Then we want you to slide down the rope and into our vehicle.”
“Understood. Tell us when you are in position.”
Looking out of the windshield, Terry could see Sofia looming large in front of him, seemingly dwarfing the 25 foot diameter of Delia. Sofia must have been at least 60 feet across. With slow patient nudges and taking full advantage of the inertial stabilizers, Terry coaxed Delia 1 right underneath Sofia.
“OK Delia 1 is in position now,” said Tanya. “We are going to close our helmets and depressurize our vehicles, which may take us 5 minutes. Then we will open the hatch and look for your rope. We want you to close your pressure suits and depressurize the vehicle now, so you can put out the rope.”
“The reply came back: “There is a problem. It was never anticipated to depressurize the vehicle deliberately. We have no valve to let the air out.”
John and Terry muttered curses under their breath. Tanya and John conferred hastily in Delia 2.
“Tell them that they are going to have to smash a window to depressurize the vehicle so that they can open the hatch,” ordered John.
Tanya was calm and professional: “We only have 30 minutes of oxygen in our pressure suits, so there is no choice but to proceed. Close up your helmets and then use any tools you have to break one of the windshields!”
“We are doing that,” came the response.
Watching from Delia 2 off to one side, John and Tanya watched with anguish as they saw the cosmonauts hacking at their cabin windows with what looked like a crescent wrench. Even though it was not his life at stake, John winced at each blow against the windows.
“The windows are very strong, but we try hard,” came the message from Sofia.
John could see them take something quite large, maybe a metal toolbox, and hurl it desperately at the windshield. Even with this assault, the windshield held – it was very strong armored glass intended to be indestructible.
“Tell them to stop,” commanded John to Tanya. Tanya dutifully relayed the message. “We have to try something else quickly. We have all got our pressure suits on now and we only have 30 minutes to get them out of there. He swallowed hard. Talking sternly to Terry, Harold and Tanya, John said: “We have got a power drill in our tool kit. I will bring Delia 2 over on top of Sophia and then we can use the power winch to lower me down on to its roof. I can use the power drill to make holes in the roof which will depressurize the vehicle. While I put Delia 2 into position on top, Terry, you and Harold get Delia one in position underneath their bottom hatch so that you can receive them as soon as the pressure is released. Tanya – you explain to the cosmonauts what we are going to do.”
While Tanya talked excitedly in Russian to the cosmonauts, John piloted Delia 2 over the top of Sophia and parked it just five feet above its roof. At this point he noticed that Sophia actually was not completely stationary but seemed to be drifting slowly to one side. “Tanya – you can lower me down on the winch and then work the controls and watch me on the surveillance camera,” ordered John. Grabbing the power drill and putting in the biggest drill bit, about 8 inches long, he opened up the bottom hatch. The winch cable came with a large loop at the bottom. Sitting on the edge of the hatch opening, John put his foot in the loop, and steadied himself against the floor of the vehicle. Tanya operated the winch control levers and slowly lowered the cable down towards Sophia. John, with his foot in the loop at the end of the cable, clung to the cable with one hand and clutched the drill in the other. After a few seconds he was standing on the roof of Sophia. Gingerly stepping out of the wire loop, he immediately bent over and started drilling away at the nearest bit of roof. The hardened steel bit went through the aluminum alloy with only a few moments of drilling. John could see gas venting out of the hole immediately. Without a moments hesitation, he started drilling another hole, and then another.
Moments later, Terry in Delia 1 reported: “They have got the hatch open and have dropped a rope down now.”
John, crouching on the roof of Sophia, looked around for a few seconds and with horror saw that Delia 2 with the cable dangling below had drifted off a few yards to one side, with the cable now out of his reach. For a split second John saw his whole life go spinning past before him, and he marveled at how he got from the secure farm house in Iowa to being stranded on the roof of a Russian Spaceship, perched 20 miles up over the North Atlantic. “Tanya – I think that you have forgotten something – like me!” remarked John with deliberate sang froid. Delia 2 slowly started moving towards him, and after a few moments he was able to grasp the cable again and put his foot in the loop. “OK – I’m on the cable – winch me up,” said John. There was an anxious pause while Tanya moved in her clumsy pressure suit from the flight controls to the winch controls. Then the cable started moving up and seconds later John was back on the floor of Delia 2.
“Harold is opening our roof hatch,” reported Terry.
Harold opened the valve releasing the cabin air into space. Their pressure suits ballooned up. Impatiently he tried right away to open the roof hatch, but it took quite a bit of shoving to pull it open because there was still a small amount of air remaining in the cabin and holding it shut. After a minute of heaving and perspiring inside his pressure suit, Harold had the hatch open and he was staring out of the gaping hole looking at the underside of Sofia. A small ladder was clipped to the ceiling next to the hatch to facilitate emergency exit in case of water ditching, and Harold carefully took this down and swung it into position under the hatch. It was hinged close to the edge of the hatch and could be locked against the floor. Climbing up the ladder, he looked around for the rope. “Forward ten feet.” he called out. “OK stop! – I’ve got it.” He pulled the rope down inside Delia 1’s roof hatch, and holding the rope tight he beckoned hastily to the cosmonauts peering out through the bottom hatch of Sofia. The first cosmonaut came out of Sofia’s hatch feet first and holding on to the rope slid down it into Delia 1’s roof hatch, landing almost on top of Harold who hastily retreated. He pulled the rope tight again and then without any hesitation a second cosmonaut did the same thing. Harold next climbed up the ladder and threw out the rope. Then from the bottom of the ladder he swung shut the roof hatch and bolted it. “OK, let’s move over and let John in,” he excitedly commanded to Terry. Inwardly he felt a tremendous surge of relief, but he continued to maintain his professional poise. They had used 15 minutes of their precious 30 minutes of ACES oxygen.
John quickly slid in Delia 2 underneath Sofia to repeat the performance. Meanwhile Harold operated the controls to fill up Delia 1 with air again. As the pressure rose, their pressure suits which had been ballooning out, slowly crumpled down to normal size. Reading the air pressure gauge, Harold could see that the cabin was finally back to normal pressure and with a sigh of relief removed his helmet, and told the others that it was safe to do the same. Out of the windows they could see the last cosmonaut descending into Delia 2 and somebody inside throwing out the rope just as Harold had done. The vessel moved slowly to one side to make some clearance away from the stricken Sofia.
Inside Delia 1, the astronauts wriggled out of their pressure suits and shook hands with the cosmonauts. They found that they had rescued Yuri and Valentina, who were ecstatically happy to be there. The Russians were wearing close fitting white full length underwear under their pressure suits. Over in Delia 2, the new guests were Olga and Ivan, who enthusiastically pumped the hands of their rescuers. Although the other three cosmonauts could speak some broken English, conversation proceeded with Tanya translating in Delia 2
and Valentino translating in Delia 1. Once they were all comfortably out of their pressure suits, the guests were asked to buckle up in their seats and the two Delias made a regenerative descent down to 70,000 feet again, where they could restart the APUs. Then they set course for Homey airport.
As they went along, Tanya in Delia 2 and Harold in Delia 1 behaved like cabin staff on a plane, and courteously served water and snacks to the guests. The cosmonauts were slightly embarrassed at such hospitality. John sent a radio signal back to Homey telling everyone that the cosmonauts were on board and that all was well. Rules had been agreed in advance that no conversation about LeviStar technology was to take place, and considering the circumstances this put a considerable damper upon the conversation. The cosmonauts were obviously amused that the Delias had a regular aircraft toilet on board. Nobody liked to ask them what they had been used to.
When they got back to Homey airport, it was dusk on Tuesday evening and once they pulled into the hangar, the cosmonauts were quickly helped into cars to take them onto an Air Force flight directly to Washington, where they were to be handed over to the Russian embassy for repatriation. There was only time for a quick handshake and a “Thank you again.” John, Harold, Terry and Tanya exchanged high 5s and hurried wearily off to get the shuttle back to Vegas.
On the Janet Air flight John sat next to Judy, who was looking morose and depressed. Her face was tear stained.
“How are you feeling?” he asked solicitously.
“I feel shaken to my core,” replied Judy. “Last 24 hours has made me like relive my whole life over again. I feel sort of like orphan, battered around by forces outside my control. I feel lonely and insecure. Frightened that somebody will take you from me again. Please don’t ever leave me again!”
John, who at this point had been awake for most of the last 30 hours and had just conducted what many would have considered to be a heroic rescue in near space, privately felt quite sorry for himself as well, but he kept his thoughts to himself. “I’ll tell you what,” he said valiantly, “let’s have a nice dinner together in Mon Ami Gabi at the hotel when we get back, and we can really talk about things. We have done all kinds of things together recently but you have never told me the whole story about yourself and your family background.”
A Disruptive Invention Page 26