by Timothy Zahn
For the first time since the shuttle crash, Betsy felt the tightness in her stomach vanish completely as all her unnamed fears, now robbed of their anonymity, scurried back into the darkness. If controlling Rayburn was what was required, then that was what she would do, pure and simple. All it took was strength and self-confidence—and both were already returning to her. She would have to thank Whitney later for his well-timed brashness. Right now, however, she had work to do. "Greenburg?" she called into the intercom grille. "I've got a couple of suggestions on how you might fix that clamp."
—
Seen through the distorted view of a fisheye camera, the escape system apparatus resembled nothing more dignified than a jury-rigged carnival ride—but it worked, and it worked well, and that was what counted. Even as Betsy returned her attention to the monitor, a pair of legs poked out the cockpit window and, above them, a line and hook were handed up to the man leaning vertically along the windshield. Eye-level to him was the newly built ski lift track; into it he dropped the end of the hook. The hook immediately moved toward the passenger tunnel, and as the line tightened, the dangling legs bounced forward and out and become a business-suited man seated securely in a breeches-buoy type of sling. Even as he traveled toward the tunnel, an empty sling passed him going the other direction, and another set of legs poked tentatively out the cockpit window. Total elapsed time per passenger: about fifteen seconds. For all one hundred sixty of them... Betsy glanced at the clock and did the calculation. Maybe three or four left aboard now. And once they were off, a new confrontation with Rayburn was practically inevitable. Her throat ached with new tension as she tried to plan what she would say to him.
All too soon, the familiar voice crackled in her ear. "This is Rayburn. Everyone's off now except John and the two doctors. What's next?"
His harsh, clipped tone made the words a challenge, and Betsy felt the self-confidence of ninety minutes ago drain completely away. "We're leaving for L. A. in a few more minutes," she told him. "With the cable on your tow bar and the extra support of the escape system framework, the docking collar should hang on even after you run out of fuel."
"Who are you trying to kid, Liz?" The bitterly patronizing tone struck her like a slap in the face, and she felt her back stiffen in reaction. He continued, "I saw that so-called cable when they brought it in—it wouldn't hold for two minutes. And you're drunk if you think a little spot-welding along the fuselage is going to do any good at all."
Betsy opened her mouth, but no words came out. In smaller quantities, she shared his own doubts about the cable looped around the nosewheel and the end of the clamp; they'd done the best they could, but the clamp simply wasn't designed to handle a line of any real diameter. Heavier cables were available, but there weren't any good places to attach them, either on the shuttle or the inner bay wall. "There are other things we can try on the way," she said, getting her voice working at last. "A stronger line, perhaps run through the access panels we've been using." Though where the ends would be anchored she had no idea.
But Rayburn didn't even bother to raise that point. "Swell. And what about John—or don't you care if he bleeds into his gut for another four hours? What're you going to do, just keep pumping blood into him and hope the leaks don't get worse? Or maybe you're going to stuff an operating room in through the window?"
"And what do you think the shock of landing will do to him?" Betsy countered.
"He's got to land sometime. Better now than later, when he'll probably be weaker." Rayburn paused, as if waiting for an argument. But Betsy remained silent. "So okay, I'm going to take him down. I'll give you fifteen minutes to get rid of that cable and junk pile by my window; otherwise I'll just have to pull them out when I leave."
Betsy swallowed. She had no doubt that he could indeed tear off the cable if he really worked at it—and the chances were excellent he'd damage his front landing gear in the process. And that would essentially be signing his death warrant, because even if he somehow managed to keep the crippled plane from diving nose-first into the ground, there was no chance whatsoever that he could control it accurately enough to safely belly-land on a crash-foamed runway. He had to know that; he couldn't be that far gone. But she didn't have the nerve to call his bluff. "Eric, if you disobey orders like this you'll never fly again for any airline," she pointed out, trying to keep her voice reasonable. "You know that, don't you?"
"I don't give a damn about the airlines or your tin-god orders—you should know me better than that by now. All I care about any more is John's life. Fifteen minutes, Liz."
Stall, was all she could think of. "We have to get Dr. Emerson off the shuttle first," she told him, "You can't risk his life on this."
Rayburn snorted impatience. "All right. Doc! No, you—Doc Emerson. You're to get your things and leave; Skyport orders. Sorry, no... but, look, thanks for everything."
The earphone went silent. Betsy pushed the mike away from her with a trembling hand. Whitney's earlier words echoed through her mind—but it did no good to recognize on an intellectual level that once Rayburn defied her instructions she was absolved from all responsibility for the shuttle's safety. Emotionally, she still felt the crushing weight of failure poised above her shoulders.
Because, down deep, she finally knew what the real problem was. Not theoretical concepts like command and responsibility; not even Rayburn's open rebellion.
The problem was her. Leadership is what command is all about, she thought, a sour taste seeping into her mouth. A captain needs to act; but all I can do with Eric is react. She should have seen it long ago, and recognized it as the one remaining legacy of their long-since-broken relationship. Then, for reasons that had seemed adequate at the time, she had allowed his overpowering personality to take charge, submitting to his lead in all things, until in its subtle and leisurely way a pattern had been set for all their future interactions. He acted, she reacted; a simple, straightforward, and unbreakable rule... and men would probably die today because of it. And even as she contemplated that consequence of her failure, a second, more brutally personal one drove itself into her consciousness like a thorn under a fingernail: for a year and a half Rayburn's name, face, and voice had been instant triggers of guilt-tinged pain to her... and if he died now, under these circumstances, he would haunt her from his grave for the rest of her life. "No!" she hissed aloud, beating gently on the edge of her instrument panel with a tightly curled fist. The pattern could be broken; had to be broken. She couldn't afford to accept his assumption that no alternative solutions existed. Their lives, and her future sanity, could depend on her proving him wrong.
Gritting her teeth tightly together, she stared at the monitor screen, her eyes dancing over the broken shuttle, the inside of the bay, the inadequate cable. Somewhere in all of that there was an answer.... Dr. Emerson's legs appeared through the cockpit window, his hand groping upward with the hook until the man on the windshield took it from him and set it in place. The line tightened and the doctor popped out of the window, flailing somewhat with his carry-on bag as he swung in midair.
And Betsy had the answer. Maybe.
"Peter!" she called, spinning around in her chair. "Did you finish that second landing-distance analysis yet?"
Whitney looked up at her. "Yes—it came out a little better this time: about seven point seven one kilometers, plus or minus five percent, maybe."
"How much worse would it be on a foamed runway?"
He blinked. "Uh, I really don't know—"
"Never mind. Warm up the machine again; I need some fast numbers from you." She flicked on her mike again. "Eric? Hold the ceremonies; I've got an idea."
"Save your breath. Whatever you've come up with, I'm going anyway."
"I know," she said, smiling coldly to herself. "But you're not going alone. We're going to hand-deliver you."
—
The sky had been a perfectly cloudless blue when the Skyport first approached Dallas earlier that morning. Now, five hours later,
it looked exactly the same, giving Betsy a momentary feeling of d?j? vu. But the sensation faded quickly. The airport that was just coming into view through the flight deck windows was to the north of them this time, instead of to the west, and even at this distance the heavily foamed runway was clearly visible in the noonday sun. And the throbbing roar of the engines behind her was a powerful reminder that this time the silver giant that was Wing Section Seven was fully awake.
"Range, twenty miles," Greenburg said from the copilot's seat. "Sky's clear for at least five miles around us."
She nodded receipt of the information, her eyes tracing a circuit between the windows, the computerized approach monitor, and the engine and other instrument readings. They were barely six minutes from touchdown now, and the pressure was beginning to mount. For a moment she wished she'd accepted Lewis's offer to do the actual landing, which would have left her with Henson's task of coordinating operations with the shuttle. But Lewis had already put in a full shift when the accident occurred, and whether he would admit it or not he was bound to be getting tired. Besides, this gamble was Betsy's idea alone. If something went wrong, she didn't want anyone else to share in the blame. Or in the physical danger, for that matter—but there she'd met with somewhat less success. Ordering Lewis and the rest of Seven's off-duty flight crews to join the passengers in moving across to Five and Six had resulted in a quiet but firm mutiny. They'd helped the flight attendants get the passengers moved out, but had then returned en masse to the lounge, where most of them had spent the rest of the morning anyway, out of the way of the on-duty crew but close by if needed. Betsy had groused some about it, but not too loudly; though she couldn't imagine what help they could possibly be, their presence was somehow reassuring.
And reassurance was definitely something she could use more of. "Eric, we're about four minutes away. Are you ready?"
"As ready as I'm going to be." Even half buried in the rumble of Seven's engines, Rayburn's voice sounded nervous, and Betsy felt a flash of sympathy for him. The shoe that had been pinching her all morning was now squarely on his foot. Not only was his plane going to be brought down by someone else while he himself had to sit passively by, but he was going to be essentially blind during the entire operation. "You just be sure to hold a nice steady deceleration once we hit the runway."
"Don't worry." Betsy stole a quick glance at the bay monitor. The escape system had been dismantled before Seven broke off from the rest of the Skyport, and the passenger tunnel retracted into the bay wall; the front landing gear, freed from the tethering cable, had been similarly retracted into its well. Betsy's jaw tightened and she winced at the thought of the shuttle hitting that foamed runway belly-first at a hundred-twenty knots. Rayburn would have a massive job on his hands at that point, trying to maintain control of his skid while bringing the shuttle to a stop. But there was no way around it—the shuttle couldn't leave the docking bay with its nosewheel extended, and with less than a six-foot drop from its docked position to the ground there would be nowhere near enough time to get the landing gear in position once the shuttle was out. She hoped to hell the airport people had been generous with the foam.
"Seven miles to go," Greenburg murmured. "Final clearance has been given. Speed at one-seven-five."
One hundred seventy-five knots—one statute mile every eighteen seconds; a good fifty knots higher than the shuttle's own landing speed—and even at that Seven was barely staying aloft. Betsy's mouth felt dry as she made a slight correction in their approach path. Not only did she need to put Seven down on the very end of the runway if they were going to have any chance of pulling this off, but the runway itself was only two hundred feet wide, barely thirty feet wider than Seven's wheel track. She needed to hit it dead center, and stay there... and all of its markings were hidden by the foam.
"Betsy!" Henson's voice crackled with urgency. "Rayburn's lowered his main landing gear!"
"What?" Both her hands were busy, but Greenburg was already leaning over to switch the TV to Seven's outside monitor... and Henson was right. "Rayburn!" she all but bellowed into her mike. "What in hell's name do you think you're doing?"
"Trying to make this landing a little easier," he said, his voice taut.
"How?—by skidding into Dallas on your nose?"
"No—listen—all I have to do is control my exit from the bay so that my nosewheel is clear before I'm completely out."
"And then what—dangle by your nose until the wheel is down?" Betsy snorted. "Forget it. If you don't make it you could go completely out of control when you hit. Retract that gear, now."
"I can do it, Betsy—really. Please let me try."
For Betsy it was the final irony of the whole crisis; that Rayburn, having resisted her authority all morning, should be reduced to wheedling to get his way, even to the point of discarding the use of her hated nickname. But she felt no satisfaction or sense of triumph—only contempt that he would stoop to such shabby tactics, and bitter disappointment that he thought her fool enough to fall for something that transparent. And with sudden clarity she realized the reason for his new submissiveness: with Seven flying at such a low altitude Rayburn couldn't risk the unilateral action he'd hinted at earlier, because there was no way to guess whether or not the collar, once torn loose, would fall off fast enough for him to regain flying trim.
But it wasn't going to work. She was finally in command here, and nothing he could say or do was going to change that. If he didn't retract his gear as ordered she would simply pull out of her approach and circle the field until he did. This would be done her way or not at all.
Beside her, Greenburg shifted in his seat. "It's your decision, Betsy," he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear over the engines. "What do you think?"
She opened her mouth to repeat her order to Rayburn... and suddenly realized what she was doing.
She was still reacting to him.
It's your decision, Betsy. For the first time in years she really paused to consider what the words decision and command required of her. Among other things, they required that she dispassionately consider Rayburn's idea on its own merits, that she weigh his known piloting skill higher than his abrasive personality. And for perhaps the first time ever, she realized that accepting a good suggestion from him was not a sign of weakness. Perhaps even the opposite...
The airport filled the entire window, the foamed runway pointing at her like a sawed-off spear less than a mile away. "All right," she said into her mike. "But you damn well better pull this off, Eric. And do not jump the gun."
"Got it. And... thanks."
The individual undulations in the foam were visible now as the edges of the runway disappeared from her field of view. Betsy eased back on the throttle, remembering to compensate for the fact that the shuttle's extra length limited the attack angle she could use to kill airspeed just before touching down. The leading edge of the foam flashed past—and with a jolt the wing section was down.
"Chutes!" she snapped at Greenburg, tightening her grip on the wheel as she braced for the shock. A moment later it came, throwing her roughly against her shoulder straps as the two drogue chutes on each end of the wing burst from their pods and bit into the air. Grimly, she held on, riding out the transient as she fought to keep Seven's wheels on the slippery runway. Within seconds the shaking had subsided from dangerous to merely uncomfortable, and Betsy could risk splitting her attention long enough to ease in the brakes. The straps dug a little deeper into her skin as the wheels found some traction. But it wasn't nearly enough, and she knew at that moment that Whitney's numbers had indeed been right: there was no possible way for Seven to stop on this runway. She could only hope the other numbers he'd worked out for her were equally accurate.
Through the vibrational din she could hear Greenburg shouting into his mike: "One-sixty... one-fifty-five... one-fifty..." Seven's speed, decreasing much too slowly. Betsy gritted her teeth and concentrated on her steering, trying to ignore the trick of perspective that
made the end of the runway look closer than it really was. There were no shortcuts that could be taken here; if Seven was moving fester than a hundred-twenty knots when they released the shuttle, the smaller aircraft would become airborne, with the disastrous results she was risking Seven's crew precisely to avoid. "...one-forty... one-thirty-five—get ready—" A sudden thought occurred to Betsy. "Eric!" she shouted, interrupting Greenburg's countdown. "Just before we release the collar we'll cut all braking here—that'll give you a constant speed to work against instead of a deceleration. You copy that, too, Rick?"
"Roger. Cue me, will you?"
"Right. Aaron, drop the chutes at one-twenty exactly."
"Roger. One-twenty-five... three, two, one, mark!"
There was no jerk this time, just a sudden drop in shoulder-strap pressure as one of the discarded drogues flashed briefly across the outside monitor screen. Simultaneously, Betsy released the brakes, and Seven was once again rolling free. "One-nineteen," Greenburg sang out.
"Collar!" Betsy snapped to Henson—and for the first time since touchdown gave her full visual attention to the monitor screen.
It was probably the finest display of engine and brake control that she had ever witnessed. Released abruptly from all constraints, the shuttle's tail dropped the short distance to the runway, landing on its main gear with a bump and splash of foam that made Betsy wince. At the same time the shuttle slid backward across the screen, as the extra air drag on its less aerodynamic shape tried to pull it out of the bay. But almost before the sliding began it was abruptly halted as Rayburn, with a touch even more skillful than Betsy had expected, nudged his engines up just exactly enough to compensate. She watched, fascinated, as the shuttle drifted back another few feet and again halted. There it sat, balanced precariously by its battered nose on the docking bay rim, its wheels and engines kicking up foam like mad, while its nosewheel—finally clear of the bay's confines—descended and locked in place.