The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  “Neither man has family, Mike. The people upstairs have thought of everything, so it would seem. Just too late.”

  No one responded.

  “Now, Dr. Pritchard, you have been briefed thoroughly. I understand you speak HAL/S, the program language of the shuttle’s five on-board computers.”

  “Fluently,” the small, bespectacled engineer gloated. “You have analyzed your assignment, Doctor?”

  “Yes. In every detail, I might add.”

  “Can a termination program be implanted into Endeavor’s computer banks, Doctor, without detection?”

  “Excuse me, Admiral. We are talking assassination here, murder—and of our own people!”

  “Colonel, I know that!” The harried Admiral sagged in his great chair. With his elbows upon the shining table, his hands rubbed his face.

  “I know that, Colonel. May I remind you that when you were a light colonel taking daily health checks on your senior officers in hopes of an opening so you could go silver, I was working and drinking with these two men, Parker and Enright. I was eating in their homes. Don’t tell me what we are about here! We are here to avert a space war, nothing less than global suicide . . . Let’s get on with it. Please, Doctor?”

  “Thank you, Admiral. May I lay out for everyone the system we’re discussing? The shuttle’s on-board data-processing systems.”

  “Can you do it without putting the rest of us into a coma?”

  “I’ll try, Colonel Stermer. If I may continue . . .”

  The thin engineer bore the pursed and sallow features behind his thick glasses of a man with too much bile circulating through his translucent skin. His hollow cheeks had a sickly yellow pallor.

  “First, the nuts and bolts. The general purpose computers, or GPC, five in all, are exquisitely complex, utterly beautiful. Almost sensuous.”

  As the little wizard prattled on in his engineering reverie, the five listeners with half-closed eyes squirmed in discomfort.

  “Imagine: each of the five computers—four primary and one backup—has as its heart a central processing unit. This CPU can perform 450,000 functions every second. The CPU’s talk to thirty-eight Shuttle systems. The link between the CPU’s and Shuttle’s subsystems are electronic relays called multiplexer-demultiplexers, or MDM’s. The computers speak to Shuttle over the MDM’s. The CPU’s think forty times faster than the computers used in the Apollo moon-landing spacecraft!

  “The four, primary shuttle computers are completely isolated from the fifth computer. This fifth GPC is reserved for the backup computer system. The four primary GPC’s compare electronic notes among themselves. They actually vote on major flight-control decisions at least once every second. They synchronize themselves with each other three hundred times every second. And, they speak their computer language at the rate of 787,000 words per second.

  “Now, here is my plan: The GPC’s have an internal separate Control Application Program. This is the computer program, about 400,000 written lines of it, which flies the shuttle’s re-entry profile into the atmosphere.

  “Now, the programs and the re-entry trajectories are physically stored in two tape-recorder type, mass memory units, MMU’s. Shuttle’s operations sequences programs are stored in the MMU’s. The program software is subdivided into smaller core programs called major modes. The actual re-entry into the first fringes of the atmosphere is Major Mode 304 . . .”

  “Doctor, please!” the Admiral pleaded with his face in his large hands. “Get to it.”

  “Well, all I have to do is tinker with this Major Mode 304. Put in a programmed sequence of re-entry flight maneuvers—put it into both the primary and the backup flight control systems, the BFS. Such maneuvers would subject Endeavor to lethal structural loads. Break the ship’s back, as it were . . .”

  Five men grimaced.

  “You see, re-entry is profoundly delicate for Shuttle, which comes home from orbit as a 100-ton glider without main engine power. It is flown with a maximum of three G’s. A load of only 3 and three-tenths G’s will fatally overload the wings and body of the shuttle. Program in a sudden dip of the nose from the normal, forty-degree, nose-up attitude down to say twenty degrees . . . and it is done. We call this maneuver an ‘alpha sweep.’ Takes only a few seconds. I figure an automatic, computer-induced pitch-over to twenty degrees would take two seconds, at most. The crew takes another second or two to realize that they have a flight-control system failure. Then another two or three second pull-up manually commanded by either pilot—it will be a reflexive pilot response. The high G load in the pull-up will do the job.”

  The thin engineer paused. His exhausted observers scrutinized his yellow face. A smile?

  “So, Dr. Pritchard. You just saunter on over to Pad 39-A with your little screwdriver and a few key-punch cards?”

  “Not at all, Colonel. The automatic, computer-controlled countdown by the Launch Sequence Processor can be instructed to insert my computer programs into the five flight computers over the pre-launch Ground Command Interface Logic software. This is a normal prelaunch computer and navigation up-date always done on a shuttle launch about twenty minutes before lift-off . . .”

  “And our crew just quietly incinerates themselves?”

  “Not quite, Major. We simply tell the crew that we intend to fly an automatic test of the re-entry flight systems. It’s called a Programmed Test Input. These PTI’s, sets of up to seventeen of them, were routinely flown on the first six shuttle missions. Tell the crew we need another PTI sequence to check out the flight systems and they won’t raise an eyebrow.

  “Just before the re-entry, we advise the pilots either to execute the PTI or not to run it as part of Major Mode 304. We only use the lethal PTI if it is necessary.”

  “That’s it, Doctor?”

  “In full, Admiral: Clean, quick, and buried within 400,000 lines of computer programs. And the final beauty of my plan: If the go-ahead is given to the crew for my PTI, it will be run during the early re-entry, during the normal communications blackout caused by the initial heat pulse. Endeavor will go into the blackout, but she will not come out of it.”

  The Admiral felt his bowels twisting.

  “You can do all that between tonight and launch in fifty-six hours?”

  “Admiral, that is my job.”

  “Tell you one thing, Jack, give me a good old truck stop over a dinner jacket joint anytime.”

  “I’ll buy that, Skipper.”

  With morning sunshine warming their faces by the window of a truckers’ diner along Interstate 45 just north of Houston, the newly anointed prime crew for the Intelsat-6 rescue mission relished bacon and eggs laced with greasy hashbrowns and the scent of diesel fuel.

  “The best, Number One,” the big man drawled. His face looked uncommonly drawn to his junior partner.

  “Look tired, Will,” Jacob Enright offered cautiously over his black coffee. He braced for a captain’s look to warm his face at 8 o’clock in the morning.

  “Just worked late and too early to the office, Jack. A mornin’ off before we fly to the Cape should restoke the old furnace.”

  Enright was surprised by the Colonel’s benign response. The long pilot had not raised his face from his eggs.

  “Yeh, Skip. I’m lookin’ forward to a few hours off. No simulator, no briefings, no Stoney, no Hutch, no Tommy. May take my cycle for a spin.”

  “You be careful, buddy . . . Does feel good, don’t it?” The command pilot smiled a tired grin.

  “About this morning’s briefing, Will. I’m still surprised about running a PTI this late in the game. We’re pretty much routine since the first few flights after the Challenger stand-down. Maybe they’re still learning how she flies? Strange, though.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Jack. We’ll be there anyway. Might as well give the backroom its money’s worth. Just push a button and let Mother fly us home. No sweat.”

  “I suppose. What you gonna do with your whole hour of R and R?”

  “Got
a visit I want to make. See a friend up north. Drive from here.”

  “Got a girl, Skipper?” the thin pilot smiled.

  The gray-haired airman thought for a long moment. Enright attended to his eggs. He thought the older flier had forgotten his question.

  “Yeh, Jack. A girl.”

  Hastings Manor sprawled majestically across the sundrenched hills an hour from Houston. White stucco buildings glowed in the clear, chill air. A relic from the Mexican heritage of Texas, the old mansion was elegant as Colonel Parker walked with a limp along a pathway between cottages.

  Staff members in street clothes waved cheery goodmornings at the familiar, long-legged visitor. “Have a safe trip, Colonel,” they called and smiled. The tall man nodded and returned the cheer of the glorious winter’s morning.

  Colonel Parker stopped outside a large, single-story cottage, white and ancient, with clay arches over a red tile veranda.

  “Morning, Colonel,” smiled an older woman with a plastic name tag upon her chest.

  “And to you, Sister.”

  “You are well, Colonel?”

  “As any old salt can hope to be, Sister.”

  “I shall pray for you and that other young man tomorrow.” She looked worried in the sunshine.

  “I would be very grateful, Sister.” The Colonel did not smile. His face was thin and tired. A slight flush burned his hollow face.

  “Emily is in her room, Colonel.”

  “Thank you.” The tall man nodded as he limped past the large woman to enter the cool, clean building made of clay baked starchy white by two centuries of Texas suns.

  Inside, young adults laughed with pleasure when the Colonel in his faded blue flightsuit entered the large room. They ran or hobbled or wheeled themselves toward him.

  Parker coaxed each muscle of his lean face, one neuron at a time, to open into a warm, familiar greeting. He touched many hands, many happy faces. As the Colonel greeted the grown men and women with the childlike faces, he could taste his heart.

  The Colonel steered through the throng toward a long hallway. On the walls hung framed lithographs of oceans and mountains.

  At a closed door marked “Emily Parker,” the doorknob disappeared into his large hand.

  “Daddy!” cried the young woman inside who ran to embrace the big man. She buried her clear face into his chest. The airman held her thin shoulders and he laid his chin upon her auburn hair.

  “How’s my Emily girl?” the Colonel smiled, pushing the woman to arm’s length.

  “Awful fine! How’s my daddy?”

  “Awful fine. Awful fine . . . Come sit beside me.”

  The Colonel backed into a large chair which filled a comer of the small but airy room filled with a girl’s peculiar softness: stuffed animals, thick books full of pictures with bright colors, and a flowered bedspread upon a single bed.

  The woman in her late twenties sat cross-legged at his feet, resting her lovely face upon his left leg above his knee. She held his hard, left hand to her face in both of her small hands. For a long time, they sat in silence. The low morning sun shone orange upon her hair, which was askew upon her forehead.

  “I’m sorry I have not come for four days, Emily girl.”

  “That’s okay,” she smiled with a child’s face. “You have to be a colonel. I know.”

  He squeezed her face gently with the hand cradling its softness.

  “Emily, I have to go flying tomorrow with Mr. Enright. I’ve told you about him. Remember?”

  The woman pursed her eyebrows in thought.

  “Very far?” She became serious.

  “Yes, Emily. But only for two days.”

  The woman opened the fingers on one hand and she counted off two with her other hand.

  “Yes. You are very good.” He smiled.

  “I am very good,” she giggled.

  “Emily, while I am away, Dr. Casey will visit you. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. I like her lots. She reads to me and we take walks. She knows all about animals and sailboats . . . Do you like her, Daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, does she like you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then can she be my mom, and take care of you and me?”

  The big man turned his face from the child-woman in his hands.

  “I don’t know, Emily,” he said toward the dazzling daylight beyond the single window.

  “That’s okay,” Emily smiled.

  For many minutes, he stroked her hair. Her gray eyes closed.

  “Tell me about it again, Daddy. About the black sky even when the sun shines. Please?” Emily adjusted her face upon his lap. She cuddled his firm hand to her smooth cheek.

  William McKinley Parker closed his heavy eyes. The morning sun was warm and crimson behind his eyelids. He listened to Emily’s gentle breath, warm upon his left hand. With his right fist, he rubbed the throbbing heat above his right knee.

  “Just as on the Earth,” he began, “in space, there is a daytime sky and there is a nighttime sky. Only, both skies are black way up where there is no wind blowing and no bird singing.

  “When the sun is shining, the sky is still black. But it is a dull black. And even though the sky is black, there are no stars in it. From way up there, the sun shining upon the blue Earth is more than daylight. The Earth glows like a shining blue jewel. The clouds which closely touch the seas and the mountains are the Earth’s warm breath. The warm Earth with her blue water and green land and red deserts reflects the daylight sun back into the black sky. This warm and breathing dayglow washes out all but the brightest stars, all but maybe Sirius in the North and Canopus in the South. Up there in the daytime, only these two stars and Venus and Jupiter shine against the black sky.

  “But at night when the sun is gone, the sky is more than black. It is blacker and starrier than the sky over a meadow far from the city. The space sky without the sun is a shiny black, a wet blackness. It is like the midnight sky seen by looking down into a glass smooth lake with a midnight sky above it.

  “And the stars at night: More than can be counted, more than could be named, more than one star for every person alive in the world, more than one star for every person who ever did live in the world. The stars are forever. The same white stars and red ones and blue ones that Moses looked at and that Jesus looked at.

  “At night, the Earth way down below is not perfectly dark. It never is. The living Earth at night always glows with the faint lights of cities, and of towns with their white churches and an old courthouse at their centers.

  “The nighttime stars never twinkle up there.

  “At the edge of the world, the stars which do not twinkle move down toward the west. Only when they touch the thin, chill breath of the glowing dark Earth do they twinkle. But only for a minute. At the hazy corners of the Earth, the stars become misty and dim, like a light under water. And then they go out when they fall swiftly, silently, over the edge. At the place far, far below a starship, where the stars go out, there it is nighttime. Nighttime for all of the people, the farmers, the factory workers, the children, everyone.

  “Just like down here, the sun comes up in the East, but very fast.

  “At morning, from a spaceship sailing round and round, morning and night come eighteen times every day, once every forty-five minutes.

  “First the Earth’s hazy, black edges in the east become red. A ribbon of red is no thicker than your little finger held out as far as you can. And the red ribbon after a minute gets redder and redder until it becomes orange. And with the orange, the sun peeps up over the edge of the world, a burning white globe no bigger than a quarter held out at the end of your arm. But it is too hot and too white bright to look at. The new sun is a white fire in the black sky which burns away the shadows on the Earth below.

  “From a whirling spaceship that goes all the way around our little world every ninety minutes, the sun moves upward and across the sky so fast that you can see it moving, rising and setti
ng.

  “When the white sun climbs all the way up and over and then starts down toward the western edge, it stops at the edge of the world for the blink of an eye, maybe two.

  “The setting sun stops right at the edge, barely touching the far corner of the world. But instead of going white and full over the edge, the sun first becomes flat. Imagine holding a half-dollar so you can see it all round in your fingers held way out. Now, very slowly turn it over on its side until it is flat, just a straight line. The sun does this before it falls over the world’s western corner to where it is evening far below. The flat sun makes the Earth’s far corner burn orange and red. And all of the little white church steeples are red and all of the old courthouses, and the trees and the blue mountains, too.

  “With a final burst of white and red, the flat sun is gone, gone over the edge to where it is daytime somewhere very far away . . .

  “When a body so high and so far away has seen the sun go flat up there, and has seen the black sky go all moist in its starry fullness, he is not the same ever again . . . Never.”

  For many minutes the bright eyes peculiar to airmen blinked as they watched the brilliant daylight swirl in through the window. He could feel upon his left hand the warm, wet breath of his life which nuzzled his fingers.

  The woman did not stir, not even when a distant lunch bell chimed in the hallway and the walls rang with the clamor of those who would be forever children. William McKinley Parker wondered if Emily slept at his feet.

  “Daddy?”

  “Emily.”

  “Will Mister Enright take care of you up there?”

  The tall flier thought and he blinked hard until he could find his throat.

  “I believe that he will.”

  6

  December 17th

  “Finally, ladies and gentlemen, we now want to end this pre-flight press conference. Our crew, Colonel Parker and Lt. Commander Enright, are probably a little tired after flying here from Houston an hour ago. We will break for lunch after which the crew will go over to Pad 39-A to observe the fueling of the Shuttle Endeavor. At this time, we have loaded Endeavor’s cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks in the orbiter. These super-cold fuels power the onboard electrical system and the cabin’s air systems. The liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for the main engines will be loaded into the external tank later tonight. Although it may look rushed, our countdown is essentially quite routine as we rely on the automatic Launch Process Sequencer.