Back to the Moon (9 page)

Crew access arm catwalk, FSS, LC 39-B

Jack heard
Columbia
's pumps start to whine and knew she was about to come alive. The sound of the pad's massive deluge system hit him first, a roar from the great waterfall of water sweeping beneath
Columbia
's tail. Then the shuttle began to shake and a burst of fire and billowing exhaust suddenly erupted from her mains.
Columbia
's engines were being fed by turbo pumps capable of emptying an Olympic-sized swimming pool in seconds, each of her SSMEs producing nearly a half-million pounds of thrust. That thrust pushed up against the shuttle stack. The external tank took the brutish strain, absorbing the energy, shooting it throughout the structure, storing it in minute twists and strains.
Columbia
had turned into a coiled, monstrous spring.

From the end of the access arm Jack reached for Virgil's hand just as the sonic blast created by the shuttle mains struck him. Knocked off balance, all he could do was jump, aiming for the hatch. He hit it, bounced off, grabbed air, and then fell away. Virgil, in a desperate lunge, caught his coveralls. Jack reached up and grabbed his savior's big arms to pull himself inside, both men falling on the curved plate of the airlock.

Virgil got to his knees to close the hatch. Just as he clamped it down, the solids let go. A combined total of five and a half million pounds of thrust kicked the
Columbia
stack off the pad. In a crashing thunder of fire and smoke it all began to rise, not slowly like the lumbering giants of the
Saturn-Apollo
era, but like a white-hot arrow unleashed from a huge bow.
Columbia
leapt for the sky, the jackrabbit of all manned spacecraft, her solid rocket boosters screaming, her main engines erupting in licking thunder. Virgil went howling onto his stomach. Jack was pressed against the middeck firewall. The massive g-forces felt like an elephant standing on his chest.

NW Florida

The MEC tractor-trailer crawled out of Cedar Key, turned left up highway 19, heading north. It would be traveling, day and night, along back roads for as long as
Columbia
was in space. Littleton, boss of the MEC ground team, scrolled down her PC screen, and clicked on an icon shaped like a computer monitor. A red light on her modem flared for five seconds and then went off.
Columbia
's guidance parameters, the code that instructed the shuttle where to aim her nose throughout her ascent into orbit, had just been completely overwritten. She looked up at the monitor tuned to NASA Select closed-circuit television.
Columbia
was batting for the sky. “Go, sweet Jack,” she whispered.
“Go!”

Columbia

Jack knew it was critical that someone answer Houston if they called. If Mission Control believed there was no crew on board, it might recommend to Cape Safety that it blow the explosives on the solid boosters and external tank to abort the launch. And that meant death to all on board.

Virgil was wrapped around the airlock. Cassidy was on the other side, curled into a ball on the aft bulkhead. Jack fought the g-forces, felt them ease a little as the mains cut back to make the roll. The bulkhead rivets still felt like nails being driven into his back. His arm seemed to weigh a ton, but he managed to reach up and plug his headset into the jack located on the back of one of the empty crew seats. Just as he clicked it in, he heard a Houston controller's callout for the roll maneuver completion. Jack flipped the external comm switch. “Roger, Houston. Roll maneuver complete,” he gasped.

Then
Columbia
lurched. Her engines boomed in Jack's ears, rattling the crew compartment. It felt as if she were coming apart.

SMC, JSC

Sam saw the capsule communicator mouthing something to her assistant. “Talk to me, CAPCOM,” he boomed. “I need to know what you know!”

“Sam, I didn't recognize who called down the roll maneuver,” the CAPCOM answered, chastened. “It wasn't Ollie Grant.”

“Engines realigning!” the booster systems engineer yelled. “There they go! Coming back up!”

“Flight, GNC.” GNC was the guidance, navigation, and control systems engineer.

“What the hell is going on, GNC?”

“Um, Flight, something caused
Columbia
to change her flight path. It doesn't match up with the predicted trajectory at all. Whatever course she's on sure as hell ain't the one we programmed. We don't know where she's going.”

Sam had trained for this contingency, hoped it would never happen, but now it had. He had a bird out of control. “LCC, this is Flight. Prepare for autodestruct.”

Columbia

Jack heard the solids punch off and felt the g-forces abate. He needed to get to the flight deck. He pulled himself to his feet and caught sight, for the first time, of Penny High Eagle. She was riding uphill with her eyes closed, her seat rattling with the thunder of the booming mains. She opened her eyes and saw him. “Who are you?” she asked, gasping.

Jack shook off his surprise at seeing the famous Dr. Penny High Eagle in the seat. However she had managed to get aboard, he'd deal with her later. He clawed his way past her, got a handhold on the ladder going up to the flight deck. “Are we going to die?” she asked, plaintively.

“Not if I can help it!” Jack called, and then pulled himself up, his arm muscles feeling as if they were being torn apart. He grasped the pilot's seat, got a toehold on the edge of the deck, and kicked himself up. He fell into the seat, breathing hard. He wasn't a shuttle pilot. He desperately tried to recall what Cassidy had told him needed to be done, how the switches had to be configured.

“Are we going to die?” High Eagle had asked. All of a sudden Jack wasn't certain of the answer.

SMC, JSC

Sam tried to suck the blurred video picture of the
Columbia
stack into his brain. When the solids blew off, the picture changed to a view of the big boosters coming down, swinging on their parachutes. Then the NASA Select video went back to the shuttle, three glowing circles at its base showing perfect mains. Sam had to take his frustration out in some way. He kicked his chair, sent it flying.
Dammit!
The most beautiful machine in the world and it was going to be lost on his watch! Reports were rolling in from KSC. An ingress team in the escape bunker, screaming bloody murder about hijackers. A crew apparently stuck on the elevator. Up there, high above the contrail wisps blowing away in the jet stream, were some goddamn assholes
who had stolen his spacecraft
! By damn, he'd see about that!

Sam suddenly realized Bilstein was on the KSC/JSC loop, trying to talk to him. “We've got a situation here, Sam.” Bilstein was nearly sobbing. “I think it's a runaway shuttle.”

“No shit, Aaron,” Sam hissed. “You blew it. Where the hell was your security?” He tore off his headset, not waiting for a reply, and vultured his people. Many of his controllers seemed to be praying. Some were crying. Sam looked over his shoulder. Bonner was standing, his hands pressed against the VIP-room glass. Sam tossed a handful of antacid tablets into his mouth and stood at the rail, hands on his hips, his long face drawn down to a baleful stare, thin nose pushed ahead, his jaw crunching the tablets. He had to get control. Carefully, he fitted his headset back on. “Aaron, are you prepared for autodestruct?”

There was a pause. “Roger. Is that what you want?”

Sam chewed his lip. He looked down on his troops, took his frustration out on his chair once more, giving it another kick with his size-twelve shoe. “No, dammit! There's somebody on board. We don't know who.”

Sam took a deep breath. The room was completely silent except for the intermittent chirp of a push being reset. All his troops were looking at him, waiting for his guidance. He remembered
Apollo 13,
the
Mir
fiascoes. But there had never been anything like this before in space. He took a deep breath. “Folks,” he boomed, “this institution has a reputation. We've never lost a ship once it reached space and we're not going to start today.” He paused as if daring anyone to contradict him. The space shuttle
Challenger
had never made it to space, barely reaching 65,000 feet before that awful conflagration.

Sam continued, low and slow. “There's only one way we're going to be able to continue that record, and that is if every one of you does your job exactly as you've been trained. That is what I have demanded of you before this
. . . thing. . .
and it is what I expect of you now. I will give you information about what we are dealing with as I learn it. You have my word on that. Now hop to it. Protect
Columbia!”

There was a brief moment of silence but then all at once his people, first the GNC and then the other controllers, began their clamoring systems readouts and parameter checks.

“Bonner is gone, Sam,” Crowder advised. Sam didn't acknowledge. He didn't care about Bonner, didn't care about anything except how to recover from what had happened. He watched and listened and was satisfied by what he heard coming over the loops. He had no doubt about the outcome as long as Shuttle Mission Control kept its head. No one could fly a shuttle without them. There were things a shuttle crew, any shuttle crew, would need. It was all a matter of time before they called and Sam was going to be right where he was supposed to be, ready to reach down their throats and tear out their stinking livers when they did.

At Base of Pad Hardstand, LCC 39-B

Bilstein saw four white-smocked men walking unsteadily from the bunker beside the pad. Guards were posted around them, their pistols drawn. Up on the pad hardstand he could see four of the five astronauts he'd sent out to fly the shuttle. They had been found in the elevators, deafened by the launch but otherwise in good shape. The tiny one—Janet Barnes, he remembered now—had been yelling about a shooting. Ty Bledsoe was there to debrief them on the bus, find out what the hell had happened.

One of the ingress team jerked his arm away from a security policeman. “I don't need your help now, you sumbitch!” he bellowed. Bilstein realized the man was nearly deaf, the result of being so close to the shuttle at liftoff. The gruff little techie saw Bilstein, stomped up to him. “Everybody be a witness!” he yelled, handing Bilstein an envelope. “I turned this over to NASA!”

Bilstein took the envelope, a standard manila mailing pouch from the look of it, and withdrew a thin pink slip of paper. With trembling fingers he unfolded it. When he saw what it was, he stared at Guardino. “This doesn't make any sense.”

The team leader cupped his ear and then his face registered understanding. He'd obviously looked inside because he roared, “You got that right, buddy!”

Bilstein looked again, just to be sure he wasn't mistaken. He wasn't. The pink slip of paper was a receipt “pursuant to our agreement.” There was much more, all in fine print. The letterhead on the receipt said “MEC.” Bilstein had heard of the company but couldn't quite place it. Attached to the receipt with a paper clip were also two cashier's checks from the First Bank of the Cayman Islands, BWI. One made out to the Department of Transportation. The other made out to NASA.

Each for one million dollars.

LOW EARTH ORBIT

Cut off from the land that bore us,

Betrayed by the land that we find,

When the brightest have gone before us,

And the dullest are most behind—

Stand, stand to your glasses, steady!

'Tis all we have left to prize:

One cup to the dead already—

Hurrah for the next that dies!

—Bartholomew Dowling
, ”The Revel”

POSTINSERTION CHECKLIST (1)

Columbia

Jack savored the orbital maneuvering system burn, the last punch
Columbia
needed to insert herself into orbit. He rode with joy the two engines in the pods above the mains, merged with them, delighted in their sound and vibration and power. He knew every valve, line, and sensor in the OMS, could picture the monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide pushed by pressurized helium to mix and explode in thrusting power.
Columbia
's reaction-control system jet-puffed hot gas at opposing sides of her nose and, snorting like a giant flying bull, she turned herself over according to her program until the cockpit was head-down toward earth. Then, with a final grunt, the OMS and RCS snuffed out and there was silence. The shuttle was in a free-flight trajectory. Physics and orbital mechanics would keep them aloft for at least a week without another burn.

Jack didn't bother to check the onboard computer. There'd be time enough to check exact positioning later. He looked instead through the cockpit window, allowing himself a moment to rise out of his seat, move in closer, press his nose almost up on the glass, and relish the view of the vast expanse of blue and brown turning beneath him. The Indian Ocean was a glittering blue lake, snowy clouds winding sinuously over it. Ahead was a gigantic black shadow, swallowing the planet. The translucent rainbow hues that defined the curved edge of the earth were crushed by the vast gloom and then
Columbia
's nose penetrated it, disappearing into the darkness of planetary night. Jack saw a wondrous spiderweb of lights below and realized
Columbia
had taken him over a vast city. Then, as the city receded, another wonder could be seen. On the face of the Pacific Ocean there rode a molten orb, dancing on the shimmering dunes of the dark water. The moon! Transfixed, he stared at it until he was distracted by a woman's voice coming from the middeck. “Houston, we have a problem. Houston? Dammittohell!
Houston!
”

Jack pushed away from the windscreen, marveling at his ability to fly in the microgravity of space. He allowed a small moment of pleasure in it, then pulled himself quickly over the seats to the hatch to do what needed to be done.

CEDAR KEY (1)

Beach Road, Cedar Key, Florida

Every morning Cecil Velocci ritually took a drive along the beach. On this morning, as always, it was peaceful. Cedar Key, Florida, Cecil's hometown, had spent its history being quiet. For a brief period it had been the pencil capital of the United States but after the cedar trees were all chopped down, the pencil factories went away. About all that was left was the fishing, and it waxed and waned; nothing seemed to stay permanently on the island except the solitude, and perhaps the colorful characters who were drawn to it. Cedar Key sat off by itself, a piece of Florida that was always about to be discovered but never quite was. And for that, Cecil Velocci, the Key's only lawyer, was profoundly grateful.

At this hour very few of the permanent population were up, except for the fishermen who had gone out through the cut at sunup. All that could be heard was the lapping of the Gulf of Mexico, and the whisper of the wind in the big white oaks that grew near the shoreline, and the forlorn call of a seagull missing its flock. Three small motels and a bed and breakfast in a redecorated old general store on the narrow main street catered to what visitors there were. Richard Boone, of television Western fame, had been the B & B's most famous guest and his picture in his all-black cowboy suit hung in one of the tiny rooms. In a protected sound there were real fishing families in small frame homes, their weathered old boats tied up on rickety piers. Cecil had come out of one of those families. His great-grandfather had been the first of his line to come to Cedar Key. To escape the battles raging between unions and businessmen in the garment district of New York, Levi Feldman had chosen to come to the strange semitropical climes of northwestern Florida to work as a clerk for one of the pencil companies. He eventually became the patriarch of a small but active Jewish community on the island, and imported a young woman from New York to be his wife. Levi had sired only daughters. One of them had married Cecil's grandfather, an Italian fisherman named Antonio Paggiano, and one of their daughters had been Cecil's mother. She also married an Italian fisherman, Bernardo Velocci. Through all those marriages the women had steadfastly clung to their original faith, and so it was that Cecil was an Italian Jew, although hardly anyone on the island was aware of it, or cared.

Cecil had decided not to follow his father and grandfather into the fishing business. He had been the first in his family to attend college and had gone on to law school at the University of Florida. Because he loved the place, he returned to Cedar Key, set up practice in an office just beside the B & B—mostly working real estate, some criminal law on the side—married a local girl, had a son and a daughter barely a year apart. Cecil anticipated a quiet life working small law on a small island. That was, of course, before MEC arrived. Since then life had been a bit more complicated.

MEC had leased the old abandoned Harper Aviation hangar at the airport and Cecil had drawn up the lease. With the arrival of MEC it was as if the heart of the sleepy island sped up a few beats. The MEC workers moved into town and became a part of it, hanging out in the bars at night, shepherding big trucks filled with machinery and things covered with canvas into the hangar by day. For the price of a beer they were only too happy to regale the locals with tales of the glory days of space, of the
Atlas
booster, which they called the Beast, and the
Titan,
which they called the Old Lady, those grand machines built for war but used to explore the heavens instead. And, of course, they spoke in reverent tones of the great old
Saturn,
the rocket to which some of them had given their youth, others too young to work on it but knowing its design as if it had been their own.

In the process of working the property deal Cecil had gotten to know the president of the company, Jack Medaris. When Terri, Cecil's wife, had been hired as Medaris's personal secretary, Jack gradually became a family friend. Cecil had given Jack a standing invitation to go out to fish and sail anytime he had a minute free. A couple of times Jack had taken Cecil up on his offer. During those day trips on Cecil's small sailboat he and Jack had gotten to know each other, spent hours talking about philosophy and politics. Cecil had come to admire Jack but was never certain he ever understood him, at least not until Jack finally told him about his wife and what had happened to her in Huntsville. Another time, during a visit to the plant, Jack had walked Cecil through the bustling little factory, leading him to a big rocket engine on a hardstand in the center of the hangar. “That's the nozzle and there's the combustion chamber,” Jack told him, not even asking if he wanted an explanation. “Controlled explosions occur in the chamber and then hot gases flow through the throat of the nozzle and out the bell. That's the action. The reaction is motion. It's Newton's third law, Cecil. Do you understand?”

Cecil didn't, not entirely, but he claimed he did and kept listening. Cecil remembered Jack circling the engine, his hand reaching out but not quite touching it. “That's the physics involved,” Jack said. And, in fact, this is an advanced hybrid engine. It combines the best features of liquid and solid propellants. “But do you know what really makes this rocket fly, Cecil?”

“No, Jack. What really make this rocket fly?”

Jack had touched the engine,
caressed it,
Cecil thought. “This rocket flies on dreams.”

Cecil turned at the beach road, contemplated the lapping sea. To his delight he found Paris and Helen and their kit, Magnus, feeding in the shallows. He stopped his truck and smiled at the dolphin family. They ignored him, intent on the hunt, but Cecil didn't mind. It was enough that he could enjoy the sight of them. He watched as little Magnus darted between his doting parents. Paris was big but moved quickly past the fry, which reacted by condensing into a tight, protective ball. He circled them, building up a vortex, and then Helen clipped the ball, taking her fill. She touched Magnus with her fin and the stubby dolphin-child followed her example, gulping in two quick bites of fry-ball. Paris then went in hard, going for the center, the silvery fish scattering like a shattered mirror. Cecil felt like applauding as the dolphin family vented for air and then eased out toward deeper water. “Good luck,” Cecil wished the family. He wished the same for himself.

After the MEC hangar had burned on that dark night back in February, Jack and his people had gone into a shell for a while. They'd kept to themselves, working, it seemed, night and day. Cecil could see the lights on at the old airport far into the night. Then Jack had taken a big chance, telling Cecil, an officer of the court, about what he and his people had decided to do to meet the terms of their contract with Isaac Perlman and the January Group. Jack must have known it was entirely possible that Cecil would run straight to the FBI. He hadn't, of course, but he had certainly thought about it. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought his friend and the hardworking, good people of MEC, including his wife, might be involved in such a scheme. It had taken a lot of quiet walks along the beach road, and arguments with himself, and long discussions with Terri, before Cecil made up his mind to help. After a while he wasn't certain why he had joined the project except that Jack was his friend, and obviously determined to do the thing, no matter what it took, and also because Cecil wanted to keep the MEC people, including the mother of his children, out of prison.

From that moment Cecil had kept himself strictly above the details of what MEC was doing. He worked only on matters of law involving the legitimate contract involved. Although Cecil knew it could be argued otherwise, he had not, to his knowledge, broken any law—just followed it to its arcane letter. Cecil had once discounted classmates who argued there are times when principle and purpose must be above the law, no matter how moral the law itself. Now he finally understood why that was so.

Cecil had also arranged for Jack to sell the patent for his sling pump, saw to the division of the money to the thirty employees. Jack took nothing for himself. MEC was out of business, perhaps forever.

The strange thing was when you came right down to it, all this effort was for dirt. Cecil pondered that as he walked up the old wooden steps that led to his office. It seemed to him there was always something else Jack was after, something that he kept from everyone.

Cecil looked through the stack in his in-box and then went to his desk and had a slow cup of coffee and watched cable news. As he knew they would, the announcements concerning the shuttle finally came on. The correspondent, a frowning woman with a puffy blond hairdo blowing in the Cape Canaveral breeze, reported that
Columbia
had gotten off but there were irregularities still unknown. “If you only knew the half of it,” Cecil said to the television set. He put down his coffee cup and picked up the phone. It was time to get the plan going.

He dialed the Department of Transportation number he had memorized. A woman answered, explained that the officer Cecil asked for was on vacation (as Cecil well knew), and asked if she could be of assistance. Cecil identified himself. “I called to tell you,” he said, following the script he had rehearsed a dozen times, “that I have received word from my client that, pursuant to the clause in paragraph four dot five dot one of contract Alpha one dot two dot two four three five, the company known as MEC is notifying the Department of Transportation as required in said contract that it is initiating its physical study of the capabilities of the Space Transportation System in a modified mode, utilizing the orbiter
Columbia
and having provided experts in the field of pilotage, navigation, and engine design for safety purposes as according to OSHA regulation four seven nine dot two dot three dot—”

“Wait a minute,” the contract officer interrupted, exasperated. “I'm not familiar with this agreement.” Cecil heard the click of fingernails on a computer keyboard. “Okay, here it is. Now would you mind telling me what you just said, only in English this time, okay?”

Cecil cleared his throat. “The clause I just cited requires MEC to notify the Department of Transportation that it has invoked the clause in their contract with you that allows them to fly a space shuttle in order to conduct tests.”

The DOT woman still didn't get it. “Fly a space shuttle? In a DOT contract? That doesn't sound right.”

“It's in the contract,” Cecil replied, trying hard to sound nonchalant. “MEC has paid the United States government in the form of two checks drawn on a bank in Grand Cayman, British West Indies, a sum of one million dollars each to DOT and NASA as specified. That seems to be about it. Are there any questions?”

There was a short silence and then the contracting officer asked, in a voice so faint, Cecil had to strain to hear, “Would you say again about the shuttle thing, the
Columbia
?”

“Yes, of course. That, as authorized in the contract, MEC is conducting its tests in the orbiter
Columbia.”

There was a strangled sound and then the woman, in a voice suddenly loud, demanded Cecil's name. He calmly gave it again along with his telephone number and then asked her if she wanted him to fax a copy of the contract showing where the DOT officials had signed. “Yes, right away, please,” she said, her voice so tight Cecil thought it could have been plucked like a violin.