by Timothy Zahn
"I'm sure they'll be thrilled at the prospect—and don't worry, I wasn't volunteering." Greenburg twisted his head around the other direction. "Now, as to the shuttle door... hell. I can't be certain, but it looks like the edge of the collar is overlapping it—the shuttle must have slid back and then shot forward and starboard as the collar was engaging. What the hell kind of guidance system error could have caused that?"
"We should know in ten or fifteen minutes," an unfamiliar voice put in.
"Who's that?" Greenburg asked.
"Sorry—maybe I shouldn't have butted in. I'm Peter Whitney; I'm helping to run the diagnostic program that will hopefully locate the problem."
"Peter Whitney?—ah, the McDonnell Douglas computer expert Paul Marinos had said he was bringing in. Have you got the program running yet?"
"Yes; a friend just radioed us the loading code."
"Well ahead of ground control's efforts, I might add," Betsy said. "We'll let you know when we identify the glitch. For now, let's get back to the shuttle door, okay? We think the sensors indicate hydraulic pressure problems in the emergency collar. Is there any chance we could fix that and get it to lock onto the shuttle? Then we could release the main collar and get the shuttle door open."
Greenburg shifted position again and peered at the top of the shuttle, wishing all the floodlights hadn't gone when the craft hit. "I don't think there's any chance at all," he said slowly. "As a matter of fact, it looks very much like the emergency collar's responsible for most of the cockpit damage. It seems to have come out of the wall just in time for the shuttle to ram into it. If that kind of impact didn't do anything more than rupture a hydraulic line or two, I'll be very much surprised."
Betsy said something under her breath that Greenburg didn't catch. "You sure about that?" she asked. "I can't see any of that on the monitor."
"As sure as I can be on this side of the bay. I can go to the starboard side if you'd like and check through the panel there. Probably have to go over there to find out exactly where this fluid came from, anyway."
"Maybe later. Any other good news for us from there, first?"
"Actually, this is good news. Somehow, while the shuttle was rattling around the bay, it completely missed the Skyport passenger and cargo tunnels. If we can get everybody out of the shuttle, we can get them into the Skyport."
"Well, that's something. Any suggestions on how we go about carrying out that first step?"
Greenburg frowned. Something about the shuttle was stroking the warning bells in his brain... but he couldn't seem to put his finger on the problem.
"Aaron?"
"Uh... yes." His eyes still probing the vibrating fuselage, Greenburg replayed his mental tape of Betsy's last question. "The, uh, side window of the cockpit seems undamaged. It should be big enough for most of the passengers to squeeze through. Of course, it's a four-meter drop or thereabouts, so we'd need to rig up some way to either get them down and then back up to the tunnel door or else to get them across to it directly. Maybe rig something up to the ski lift mechanism in the tunnel..."
His voice trailed off as the warning bells abruptly went off full force. The nosewheel was slightly closer to him!
"Bets, the shuttle's sliding backwards!" he shouted into the mike. "The collar must be slipping!"
For a few seconds all he could hear was the muffled, indistinct sound of frantic conversation. Eyes still glued to the slowly moving nosewheel, he jammed his earphone tighter against his ear. "Bets, did you copy? I said—"
"We copied," Paul Marinos's voice told him. "Betsy's getting the shuttle to boost its thrust. Stand by, okay?"
Pursing his lips tightly under his oxygen mask, Greenburg shifted his gaze back along the shuttle to its main passenger door. If the collar was slipping he should be able to see the door slowly sliding further and further beneath the huge ring.... He still hadn't decided if it was moving when Betsy's voice made him start.
"Aaron? Is the shuttle still moving?"
"Uh... I'm not sure. I don't think so, but all the vibration makes it hard to tell."
"Yeah." A short pause. "Aaron, Tom, you've both done some shuttle flying, haven't you? What are the chances Rayburn could bring this one down safely, damaged as it is?"
Something very cold slid down the center of Greenburg's back. Betsy knew the answer to that one already—they all did. The fact that she was asking at all implied things he wasn't sure he liked. Surely things weren't desperate enough yet to be grasping at that kind of straw... were they?
Lewis, after a short pause, gave the only answer there was. "Chances are poor to nonexistent—you know that, Betsy. He'd have to leave here at a speed of at least a hundred sixty-five knots, and with one or more windows gone in the cockpit he'd have an instant hurricane in there. He sure as hell won't be able to fly in that, and I personally wouldn't trust any autopilot that's gone through what his has."
"You can't slow down past a hundred sixty-five knots?" Whitney, the computer man, asked.
"That's our minimum flight speed," Lewis told him shortly.
"I know that. What I meant was whether you could try something like a stall or some other fancy maneuver that would pull your speed temporarily lower."
"Wouldn't gain us enough, I'm afraid," Betsy said, sounding thoughtful. "Besides which, wing sections aren't designed for fancy maneuvers." She seemed to sigh. "We've got a new problem, folks. The shuttle's backwards drift, Aaron, was not the collar slipping. It was the last two supports bending, apparently under slightly unequal thrusts from the shuttle's engines."
Lewis growled an obscenity Greenburg had never heard him use. "What happens if they break? Does the collar fall off the shuttle?"
"The book says yes—but exactly when it goes depends on how fast the hydraulic fluid drains out. My guess is it would hold on long enough to turn the shuttle nose down before dropping off and crashing somewhere in the greater Fort Worth area."
"Followed immediately by the shuttle," Greenburg growled. His next task was clear—too clear. "All right, say no more. Tom, there should be a supply locker just forward of here. See if there's any rope or cable in it, would you?"
"What do you want that for?" Betsy asked, her tone edging toward suspicious.
"A safety harness. I'm going to go inside the bay and see if there's any way to get that forward clamp connected. Tom?"
"Yeah, there's some rope here. Just a second—I have to untangle it."
"Hold it, Tom," Betsy said. "Aaron, you're not going in there. You're a pilot, not a mechanic, remember? We'll wait for some professionals from the ground to handle this."
"Wait how long?" he shot back, apprehension putting snap into his tone. "Rayburn can't keep firing his engines all day; and even if he could you have no guarantee the thrusts from all three turbofans would stay properly balanced. Do you?"
There was a short silence, during which Greenburg was startled by something snaking abruptly across his chest. It was Lewis, perhaps sensing the outcome of the argument, starting to tie Greenburg's safety line around him. "No," Betsy finally answered his question. "Rayburn's on-board can't give us those numbers any more, and the support stress indicators aren't really sensitive enough."
"Which means chances are good the shuttle's going to continue putting stresses on the clamps—variable stresses, yet. They're bound to fatigue eventually under that kind of treatment."
"Mr. Greenburg—Aaron—look, the program's almost finished running." Whitney, putting in his two cents again. "Once it's done we can have people up here in fifteen minutes—"
"No; only once we've found the problem and made sure the other wing sections don't have it. Who knows how long that'll take?" A tug on the rope coming off the chest of the makeshift harness Lewis had tied around him and a slap on the back told him it was time. Gripping the edges of the opening, he raised a foot, seeking purchase on the curved wall. Lewis's cupped hands caught the foot, steadied it. Greenburg started to shift his weight... and paused. He was still, after
all, under Betsy's authority. "Bets? Do I have permission to go?"
"All right. But listen: you've got one shot at the clamp, and whether it reaches or not you're coming straight out afterward. Understand? No one's ever been in a docking bay during flight before, and you're not equipped for unexpected problems."
"Gotcha. Here goes."
Greenburg had spent the past couple of minutes studying the curving bay wall, planning just how he was going to do this maneuver. Now, as he shifted his weight and pushed off of Lewis's hands, he discovered he hadn't planned things quite well enough. Pushing himself more or less vertically through the narrow opening, he twisted his body around as his torso cleared, coming down in a sitting position with his back to the shuttle. But he'd forgotten about the oxygen tank on the back of his belt, and the extra weight was enough to ruin his precarious balance and to send him sliding gracelessly down the curving metal on his butt.
He didn't slide far; Lewis, belaying the line, made sure of that. Getting his legs back around underneath him, Greenburg checked his footing and nodded back toward the opening. "Okay, I'm essentially down. Let me have some slack." Moving carefully, he stepped down into the teardrop-shaped well under the shuttle and walked to the nosewheel.
The forward clamp was designed to slide out of the wall as the landing gear was lowered, locating the tow bar by means of two short-range transponders installed in the gear. Earlier, up on the flight deck, Greenburg had confirmed the clamp operation had been begun but not completed; now, on closer study, the problem looked like it might be obvious.
"The shuttle's not only angled into the bay wrong, but it's also rotated a few degrees on its axis," he reported to the others. "I think maybe that the clamp's wrist rotated as far as it could to try and match, and when it couldn't get lined up apparently decided to quit and wait for instructions."
"The telltales say it is fully extended, though," Henson insisted.
"Well... maybe it's the sensors that got scrambled."
"Assume you're right," Betsy said. "Any way to fix it?"
"I don't know." Greenburg studied the clamp and landing gear, acutely aware of the vibrating shuttle above him—and of the vast distances beyond it. But even if the shuttle fell out and my rope broke I'd be all right, he told himself firmly. Standing in the cutout well that gave the shuttle's nosewheel room to descend, he was a good two meters below the rim of the bay's outer opening. There was a fair amount of eddy-generated wind turbulence plucking at his jumpsuit and adding a wind-chill to the frigid air—but it would take a lot of turbulence to force him up that slope and out. At least, he thought so.... "Why don't you try backing the clamp arm up and letting it take another run at the tow bar?"
"We'll have to wait for Peter's program to finish," Henson said. "The computer handles that."
"Oh... right." Greenburg hadn't thought of that. "How much longer?"
"It's almost—it's done," Whitney said.
"Where's the problem?" Betsy asked. Even with the turbofan engines droning in his ears Greenburg could hear the twin emotions of anticipation and dread in her voice.
"There doesn't seem to be one."
"That's ridiculous," Greenburg said. "Something made the shuttle crash."
"Well, the program can't find it. Look, it seems to me I felt the Skyport bounce a little just before the crash—"
"Clear air turbulence," Betsy said. "That shouldn't have been a problem; the guidance program is supposed to be able to handle small perturbations like that."
"Let's forget about the 'how' of it for now," a new voice broke in—Carl Young's, Greenburg tentatively identified it through the noise. "The point is that we can start bringing shuttles back up again. Greenburg, is there anything you can suggest we bring up from the ground to secure the shuttle with?"
"Uh... hell, I don't know. Something to use to get the passengers off would certainly be handy. And if this clamp arm won't rotate any further we might need an interfacing of some kind—maybe an extra clamp-and-wrist piece to extend our clamp's rotational range."
"I've already ordered some spare ski lift track from the ground—it should be coming up aboard the first shuttle, along with men to handle it. The clamp-and-wrist section we may be able to remove from one of the other bays; other people will be coming up to try that. What I meant was, can you see anything from there that we didn't already know about?"
"Not really." Greenburg was starting to feel a little foolish as his brave descent into the bay began to look more and more unnecessary. With the guidance system coming up clean, shuttleloads of experts would be here in minutes. So much for the value of impulsive heroics, he thought acridly; but at least it hadn't wasted too much time. He'd always been much better as a team player, anyway. "Hold on tight, Tom; I'm coming up," he called, getting a grip on his safety line.
"Just a second, Aaron," Henson said. "I've got the computer back now. Why don't you stay put while I try the clamp again like you suggested."
"All right. But make it snappy—it's freezing in here."
There was a heavy click, and the clamp arm telescoped smoothly back into itself, rotating to the horizontal as it did so. It paused for a second when fully retracted and then reversed direction, angling toward the landing gear like some rigid metallic snake attacking its prey in slow motion. It stopped, again a meter short, and with a sinking feeling Greenburg saw his mistake. "It's not just the angle the nosewheel's at," he informed the others. "The clamp rotates a little as each segment telescopes out, not all at once at the end of the extension. It's not quitting because it doesn't know how to proceed—it's quitting because it's run out of length."
"That's impossible," Betsy retorted. "I've checked the stats—the arm's got to be long enough to reach."
"Then it's been damaged somehow," Greenburg said irritably. If they had to replace the whole arm, and not just the clamp... He shivered as a newly sharpened sense of the shuttle's vulnerability hit him like a wet rag.
For a moment the drone of the turbofans was all he could hear. Then Carl Young said, "We'll have the ground people check it out when they get here. Greenburg, you might as well come out of there. You'll need to put the access panel back in place temporarily so we can repressurize the deck."
"Understood." Turning back to the curving wall, his hands numb with cold, Greenburg began to climb.
—
"The shuttle will dock in Six in about four minutes," the Skyport captain's voice came over the intercom.
"Okay, Carl," Betsy said. "Six, do you have someone at the bay to meet it?"
"Not yet," was the response. "We wanted to have all the stations up here manned during docking, to watch for any trouble. We could call in somebody off-duty, if you want."
"Don't bother," Paul Marinos said, unbuckling his seat belt and getting to his feet. "I'll go down and meet the shuttle. You won't need me before Tom gets back, will you?" he added looking at Betsy.
She shook her head. "Go ahead. As a matter of fact, you can probably escort Mr. Whitney back down on your way. Mr. Whitney, we very much appreciate your help here this morning."
"Uh, yeah. You're welcome."
Unlocking her chair, Betsy swiveled around. Whitney was hunched forward in his own seat, frowning intently at the computer display screen. "Anything wrong?" she asked, her mouth beginning to feel dry again. That shuttle would be trying to dock in a half-handful of minutes....
Whitney shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the screen. "I'm just rechecking the readout, trying to see if there's anything that looks funny but somehow didn't register as a problem." He keyed for the next page; only then did he look up. "If it's not too much trouble, though, I'd really like to stay up here for a while. I can be an extra hand with the computer, and there's another project I want to discuss with you."
"Passengers usually aren't permitted up here at all," Marinos said with a frown.
Whitney shrugged. "On the other hand, I am already here."
"All right," Betsy said, making a quick
decision. Even if Whitney's primary motivation was nothing more than simple curiosity, he'd already been a big help to them. It was an inexpensive way to pay back the favor. "But you'll have to stay out from underfoot. For starters—" she pointed at the display—"you'll need to finish that up quickly, because Tom Lewis's on his way up to make some more blueprints."
"Yes, I know. I'll be finished." He turned back to the console. Nodding to her, Marinos left the flight deck.
Swiveling back forward, Betsy squeezed her eyes shut briefly and took a long, deep breath. The tension was beginning to get to her. She could feel her strength of will slowly leaking away; could feel her decision-making center seizing up—and this only some eighty minutes into the crisis.
The strength of her reaction was more than a little disturbing. True, the lives of a hundred-sixty people were hanging precariously in the balance back there... but she'd been holding people's lives in her hands since her first flight for the Navy back in 1980. She'd had her share of crises, too, probably the worst of them being the 747 that had lost power in all four engines halfway from Seattle to Honolulu. She'd had to put the monster into a five-thousand-foot dive to get the balky turbofans restarted—and she hadn't felt anything like the nervousness she was feeling now. Was it just the length of this crisis that was getting to her, the pumping of adrenaline for more than five minutes at a time? If so, she was going to be a wreck by the time this whole thing was resolved. Or—
Or was it the people—be honest, Betsy; the person—involved? Could being forced to deal with Eric Rayburn again really hit her this hard? "Excuse me, Captain; is it all right if I sit here?" She opened her eyes to see Whitney standing beside her, indicating the copilot's seat. Craning her neck, she saw that Lewis had returned and had taken over the computer terminal again. "Yeah, sure," she told Whitney, thankful for the interruption. "Just don't touch anything. Tom, you need any help?"
"No, thanks; just getting the schematics for the clamp arm mechanism, the emergency collar, and whatever I can find on the Skyport door and tunnel." Paper was beginning to come from the printer slot; Lewis glanced at it and then looked at Betsy. "Anything new from the shuttle?"