The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  DEAD SPACE

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . . ignition!”

  Lt. Commander Jacob Enright checked the monitor directly in front of him on the control panel. Space Shuttle Endeavor’s Payload Assist Module engine fired its 17,360-pound molten thrust at the lethal weapons satellite LACE on schedule to push it out of continuous orbit. In twenty-five minutes, it would hit the atmosphere in the middle of the Indian Ocean and hit the water as harmless debris soon after.

  “Ignition plus twenty seconds. Range two miles, Skipper,” Enright called out as he read the constantly changing computations. “One minute now. Still burning.”

  “Range below?” Colonel Parker asked.

  “Four miles. Slant range two miles and counting.”

  The PAM’s attitude thrusters were programmed to keep the PAM horizontal and to hold at a slight tilt. This off-center component pushed LACE down and away from the shuttle as it slowed her speed.

  “Seventy seconds. Range six miles below.”

  “Prepare for shutdown,” Parker barked, his eyes fixed on the chronometer. “Shutdown, now!”

  The huge engine cut power and both men kept the shuttle on an even keel.

  “She’s slowed by 898 feet per second, Skip. She’s on her way.”

  The death fall had begun . . .

  Other books by Douglas Savage:

  A Mouthful of Dust

  The Sons of Grady Rourke

  Highpockets

  Incident in Mona Passage

  Cedar City Rendezvous

  The Court Martial of Robert E. Lee

  Untold History of the Civil War Series:

  Women in the Civil War

  The Civil War in the West

  Civil War Medicine

  Ironclads and Blockades in the Civil War

  Prison Camps in the Civil War

  Rangers, Jayhawkers, and Bushwhackers in the Civil War

  The Soldier’s Life in the Civil War

  THE GLASS LADY

  A NOVEL

  Douglas Savage

  TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

  For David L. Hall:

  The Skipper

  Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannery Street, London SE11 4AB

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 1985 by D. J. Savage

  First Taylor Trade edition 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014955408

  ISBN: 978-1-58979-845-8 (paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-58979-846-5 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1 December 12th

  2 December 13th

  3 December 14th

  4 December 15th

  5 December 16th

  6 December 17th

  7 December 18th

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Acknowledgments

  The detailed technical and engineering materials in this story would have been impossible without generous assistance from many sources. The Public Information Office of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Tx., and especially Mrs. I. L. Scott, were most generous with Space Transportation System documents, Crew Activity Plans, and shuttle mission profiles.

  For detailed engineering descriptions of the space shuttle and of the LACE laser weapon system, the author is indebted to the editors of Aviation Week and Space Technology and particularly to Craig Covault, Aviation Week’s Space Technology editor.

  The detailed descriptions of Shuttle’s onboard systems would have been impossible without the long-suffering patience of Ms. Sue Cometa, Rockwell International, Space Operations Division.

  The author cannot adequately thank Ms. Elizabeth Gasper for her time, trouble, and tea, in editing the final galleys of this story written in a foreign language. Even old Smokey had to wait.

  The author assumes responsibility for inaccuracies in flight-deck procedures and protocols caused by failure to secure certain important checklists. When NASA or Rockwell declined to release to the author such cockpit checklists, the author attempted to compensate for such loss with the kind and generous counsel of project subcontractors.

  Certain historical figures, living and dead, who have played a significant role in the United States and Soviet manned space programs are mentioned by name in this text. The author assumes full responsibility for offense taken by such figures and by others who, by coincidence, may resemble the otherwise fictional characters in this story.

  1

  December 12th

  “Assbones. That’s what it takes to be a real stick-and-rudder man: Assbones. What else does flying by the seat of your pants mean, anyway? Some got it, some don’t.”

  The tall man’s lips broke into a grin behind the microphone which crossed his stubbled cheek. William McKinley Parker looked through the cockpit windshield into the darkness.

  “That mean we got ’em, Skipper?” smiled Jacob Enright from the right seat opposite the command pilot.

  “And then some, Number One,” the long man drawled in the left seat. “How’s the EGT on APU Number Two?”

  “A tad high, Skipper. No sweat.” From the right seat, Enright’s hands worked the flightdeck instrument displays to the right of three green television screens covered with numbers and graphs. The television screens blew their eerie green glow upon the two tired faces.

  “Endeavor, Endeavor: Configure AOS, Houston remote, Yarradee local,” the pilot’s headphones crackled.

  “Ah, rogo, Flight. Acquisition of signal by Australia.” The pilot in command brought his boom microphone closer to his lips. “We have deorbit burn status report when you want it.”

  “Ready to copy, Endeavor.”

  “Okay, Flight: The GPC swallowed the re-entry state vectors whole; we have OPS-3 running in Major Mode 303; and we have three good APU’s cranking away. Three water spray boilers are on line. Number One thinks the exhaust gas temperature on APU Number Two is peaking a bit, but he says to fly with it. We burned on time, BT two minutes, 27 seconds, with two good OMS engines. Delta-V is minus 297 point 5. And we’ve pitched about to entry attitude. Alpha now 40 degrees and attitude hold in Y-POP.”

  “We copy that, Endeavor. We have Operations Sequence Three running in the GPC. Your auxiliary power units look fine. Backroom says to ignore the APU-2 EGT warning. We copy burn time of 02 plus 27, delta velocity minus 297 point 5. Understand entry attitude hold at forty degrees up, wings level.”

  “You got it, Flight. We’re goin’ over the edge here. See you over Guam in about six minutes. This is the AC.”

  “Roger, Aircraft Commander. Configure LOS Yarradee.”

  “Rog. Loss of signal, Australia.”

 
; “And we’re about 15 from entry interface, Skip.”

  “Uh huh.” The pilot shifted his weight in the tight seat as he stretched his long legs above the rudder pedals underneath the wide, forward instrument panel.

  “Let’s hear the Air Data Probe checklist, Left, one more time, Number One. Just to be sure.”

  “I think we’ve already danced that waltz, Skipper,” sighed the pilot in the right seat who wiped beads of sweat from his chin.

  In nature, there are certain looks which require no words. There is the look of an angry horse, the look of the twice wounded, and the look of a father at the birth of his firstborn. And then there is the captain’s look which pierces the air, warming it as it passes. Jacob Enright felt his face singed.

  “Air data probe, Left,” the second in command recited as his moist fingers fumbled through his two-inch-thick Mission Procedures manual. As he recited the protocol, his captain laid a long index finger upon each switch and square pushbutton.

  “ADTA, No. 1, circuit breaker, Main Bus A, panel Overhead Fourteen, Row E, closed. ADTA, No. 3, circuit breaker, Main dc Bus C, panel Overhead Sixteen, Row E, closed. Multiplexer-demultiplexer, Flight-forward One, panel Overhead Six, on. ADP, Left, panel Center Three, locked stow. And, ADP, Left Stow, panel Center Three, to enable.” When he had finished as Colonel Parker gently touched the last switch on the center console between their seats, Enright nodded So There. But the tired command pilot had his face turned toward his side window over his left shoulder.

  Six triple-pane flightdeck windows wrapped around the cockpit from the command pilot’s left shoulder to the copilot’s right shoulder. The night sky was the glossy and perfect blackness of space. One hundred thirty nautical miles below, the faint lights of Cape Londonderry on the north coastline of Australia’s King Leopold Mountain Range passed over the western horizon behind the Shuttle Endeavor’s white body. The two fliers rode heads up over the dark South Pacific.

  “Thermal conditioning initiated,” the thin pilot in the right seat called out. Working the triple hydraulic systems’ switches two feet from his sweating face, the second in command directed warm hydraulic fluid through the spacecraft’s wings and tail. Without sound or vibration, the four aileron-elevators at the back edge of the wings moved slightly as the warm hydraulic blood pulsed through aluminum veins.

  “Okay, Jack. Payload bay vent doors coming closed.”

  Behind the roomy cockpit, the ship’s four primary computers sealed eight vent doors in the 60-foot long payload bay of the shuttle.

  “Check, Skipper. Confirm forward RCS propellant dump, radar altimeters, and TACAN to standby.”

  “Got it, Number One. Confirm TACAN landing beacon Number One mode select to receive and Number Two to mode GPC. And TACAN antenna select auto for One and Two, and upper for Number Three.” The commander studied the green glow of the left television screen at the center of the front instrument panel. His long fingers reached for an array of switches. “Forward RCS purge complete . . . Helium pressure, Loops A and B, talk-back closed, manifold isolation Loops One through Five, talk-back closed, and items 12 through 19: All forward RCS Reaction Jet Drivers off on panels Overhead Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen. Forward jets configured safe.”

  “Endeavor, Endeavor: Configure AOS by Guam. You’re Go at seven minutes to entry. We see you have trajectory plot One up on the CRTs. Your data dump is good. We show you 6,056 miles from landing, and velocity now 24,235 feet per second and rising.”

  “Ah, rogo, Flight. All three televisions are Go. We have attitude hold in plus Z, alpha at 40.”

  “Copy, Endeavor. Now you’re flying right: Heads up, feet down. Your APU’s are in the green. We’ll be losing you momentarily. Entry interface in 4½ at 400K, 4390 miles range-to-go, at 24,446 feet per second over the water. Confirm CDR’s entry roll mode select, Will.”

  “Rogee, Flight,” the Colonel called. “We’re right and tight in the sky. Lookin’ for interface in about four minutes at 400,000 feet. My roll mode is lever-locked auto, Panel Left Four. Do you have a sunrise time for us?”

  “Stand by, Endeavor . . . We show daylight in 15 minutes. We have S-band data dropout. Good . . .”

  “And we’re on our own, Skip . . . Just you, me and Mother.”

  “About that, Jack. Why ‘Mother?’ I’ve been meanin’ to ask you about that for about six months.”

  “Easy: Calling it the General Purpose Computer is too damned cold and impersonal. The old GPC watches everything; it watches over us when we sleep, it tucks us in, it wakes us up, it monitors 3,000 parameters, it flushes the biffy; it does everything but wipe our noses . . . Only a Mother.” The small pilot in the right seat gently patted the glareshield atop the broad instrument panel. “Mother,” he smiled.

  “ ‘Mother’ says entry interface in 30 seconds at Mach 24 point 6, Number One. Major Mode 304 is running.”

  “I’m hangin’ on, Skip. EI in 5, 4, 3, 2, and we’ve hit the wall!”

  The cockpit shuddered as the uppermost wisps of the Earth’s atmosphere 80 statute miles above the dark Pacific nipped at 100 tons of space glider. With all of her forward rocket thrusters shut down for re-entry, the shuttle is designed to come home from space without engines, hot and heavy, gliding in at 25 times the speed of sound.

  A pink glow outside the large windows bathed the cockpit in cherry light as air friction seared the black belly of the shuttle. Outside, the re-entry heating is twice as hot as the melting temperature of the shuttle’s aluminum skin. Only the ship’s 35,000 heat-absorbing tiles of 99 percent pure glass fibers insulate it from incineration at Mach 25.

  Mounting deceleration forces pushed the crew forward and their chest straps tightened as the Earth sucked fiercely at the glass-covered starship riding 40 degrees nose high across the nighttime Pacific Ocean.

  Outside, air friction generated its glowing heat at the temperature where steel burns white. The cocoon of roaring fire in the sky enveloped the heavy vessel in a molten plasma sheath through which radio beams will not penetrate. The digital autopilot, DAP, flew the ship steadily eastward to her landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

  “EI plus three. Elevons enable.” The airplane control surfaces on the broad wings were alive and flying along with shuttle’s small jet thrusters in her tail section.

  “I see it, Skip. We have aerosurface amplifiers on line. ASA is Go, Channel One.”

  Far behind the flightdeck, the great aileron-elevator surfaces at the rearmost edges of the wings were guiding the plummeting starship in concert with the Reaction Control System jets in the tail.

  “EI plus 4 and 40. At Mach 24, out of 280,000 feet.”

  “Roger, Number One. Out of 280K. Roll jets inhibited aft. Dynamic pressure at ten.”

  “I see it. Lift over drag is a tad high, Skip. Traj One is right down the slot.”

  “Roger, Jack.”

  The blazing daylight outside turned from pink to apple red as the autopilot steered through the fiery shock waves.

  A siren wailed mournfully through each pilot’s headphones.

  “Master Alarm! Flight Control System! I got it, Jack.”

  The commander pushed in the blinking Master Alarm light in front of his face to extinguish the alarm claxon.

  “FCS Channel One to override . . . That’s got her,” the long pilot sighed deeply.

  “Five minutes into the blackout, Skip. FCS has the con at Mach 24. Stand by for roll reversal.”

  The cockpit rolled slowly into a steep right turn laying the pilots on their sides.

  “Out of 263K, Mach 22 point 3, 80 degrees of bank, Number One. Hang with it,” drawled the tall commander lazily.

  “Auto looks good in roll rate at five degrees per second, Skipper.” The copilot scanned his winking green television screen as a tiny, bug-shaped shuttle chased a small, square box down the television screen’s seven-inch-wide face. “Point 176 on G loading; drag at four; guidance internal. Range-to-go is 3,170 miles.”

  “Mot
her is really flying hands-on today, Number One. Traj One looks super. Confirming aft pitch jets inhibited at 6½. How do the APU’s look?”

  “All three purrin’ along. We’re running main pump pressure low on Number Two. They’re burning 1 percent propellant per minute. Temps and speeds all green.”

  Outside, the brick-red glow ebbed to pink.

  “Rog. At 12 minutes: Mach 21 out of 232,000. Standing by for equilibrium glide. Steady as she goes! Major Mode 305 is running.”

  The Mission Commander counted off the minutes since entry interface when Shuttle began her plunge into the inferno over the Pacific at daybreak far below.

  “Go at 15 since interface, Skipper. Mach 18 out of 220K. Range-to-go: 1,000 even.”

  “Goin’ to Trajectory Two on the left CRT. Auto roll reversal left. Velocity 18,450 feet per second . . . We’re really hauling the mail, Number One.”

  “SM alert, Skipper!”

  “Systems management. You got it, Jack. Find the stinker.”

  “Looks like the microwave landing system. Yeh, MLS. We popped breaker Main dc, Bus A on Number One receiver. I’m taggin’ the breaker, Row E, panel Overhead Fourteen. Bringing MLS Number Two up on the line . . . That’s got it. Lights out, Skip.”

  “Out of 194K at Mach 16, Will. Constant Drag is initiated right down the slot. Profile at 33 feet per second. We’re 715 miles from target, now out of 190,000 feet. Mach 15 at 17 minutes since entry.”

  As the ship rolled on her side to dissipate the energy of flight en route to landing in California, the pink glow outside gave way to a morning sunrise 35 miles above the blue-green, north Pacific. The shuttle’s nose slowly dropped from her nose-high entry attitude of 40 degrees toward a target attitude of 14 degrees nose-high a few minutes closer to home.

  “Endeavor, Endeavor. We copy your S-band modulation, out of the blackout at interface plus 18 and a half minutes. You’re Go out of 188,000 feet at Mach 13 point 8. Your range-to-go now 497 nautical miles. Confirm AOS Houston remote, via Buckhorn.”