Forecast (11 page)

Fortune changed for Gable a couple of years later when Mike Townsend offered him a temporary job at F1 Mission Control. Working in the Flight Control Room monitoring an event being televised around the world seemed like the ultimate job. Townsend knew all about Gable’s computer capabilities and had employed him to oversee any technical anomalies. Data Processing System Engineer had been given to him as a title because he was responsible for processing data. Analysing the data processing systems was calculated to keep him out of mischief. Townsend suggested that if he did a good job and proved himself employable, there might be something more permanent in the near future as both Sutcliffe and Matthews were looking to explore a commercial avenue involving civilian space flights if the mission proved successful and they would need competent, experienced staff working from the ground.

“What are you doing on the ground?” The receptionist was glaring at him from her desk.

Gable slipped the fifty-pound note into his boot. “Just tying my shoelace. I can tie yours while I’m down here, if you want?”

“I’m wearing high heels.”

“How about a polish?”

She frowned upon him.

“I’d better get back.”

Grinning, he walked along the corridor to the Flight Control Room passing the men’s toilets where he felt his feet sink into the carpet. He looked down to see his boots deep in water, the flood coming from the toilets, gushing out from beneath the door. Peering inside, he noticed one of the pipes beneath the sink had split and water shooting up at the wall. “You’re jofting.”

In the Flight Control Room, Mike Townsend was busy monitoring the balloon’s flight path with Adam Fraser. Everything had been running according to schedule. Fable
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1 had long since cleared the altitude used by commercial airliners. The nearest Boeing had been eighty miles southeast and had departed Paris on a northwest bearing. There had been a lot of flight activity further east – the congested traffic of Gatwick and Heathrow, and several over the Atlantic Ocean heading for the American continent. An hour ago, Fable
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1 had passed through the tropopause and into the stable air of the stratosphere, nearing float altitude.

Adam Fraser had just recorded vital readings from the crew. Their respiration rates, heart rates and temperatures had all been satisfactory, except for Burch, whose heart rate had been slightly faster than the others. What concerned both Fraser and Townsend, though, was that the balloon had just lost GPS tracking and they had only an approximation of the balloon’s present position. To make matters worse, they had temporarily lost communication with the crew and the added source of stress had Townsend in a stir.

Then Gable burst into the room in a sweat. “Um…there’s like a huge leak in the toilets.”

Townsend barely took his eyes off the monitor. “You’re the engineer, Trev, you sort it out. I’m busy right now.”

Gable froze.

“You heard me, Trev. Go!”

You’re jofting, he thought.

There was nothing in his job description about mending broken toilet pipes. He was the Data Processing System Engineer for God’s sake, not the plumber. Appreciating that Townsend was a busy man with a lot of responsibility, he turned and skulked out of the Flight Control Room.

The spinning figures on the altimeter, which had slowed down dramatically, had just struck 128,000 feet, physics playing its part with the heaviness of the helium beginning to outweigh the thinness of the air as the balloon crept towards float altitude. Due to the drop in pressure, the helium inside the balloon had expanded to more than four hundred times its volume at sea level to a staggering forty two million cubic feet.

Burch, studying the navigation monitor in front of him, had a prime view of the sky as uplinks from a weather beacon affixed to the gondola fed his monitor. It also presented him with the balloon’s geographic coordinates. As he stared at his navigation screen, cramp nibbled at his calf muscle and his leg instinctively jolted.

“Everything alright, Keith?” asked Hennessey.

“I’m fine, just a little stiff.”

Hennessey eyed the Atlantic stretching off to the west, thinking about her country at the other end. She couldn’t see America, just the endless spread of ocean, but it did make her think of Dennis Thatcher. He hadn’t gone with her to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. He hadn’t even called to wish her good luck. But he had spent the night with her two days before her departure and they had explored each other in the bedroom all night long. He said he had missed her and when she thought about it, she had missed him too. They’d been a college couple, though it wasn’t until later, when he had applied for a career in the United States Air Force and she had started extensive training with NASA, that their relationship had become more serious. Since then, they had separated so many times Hennessey had lost count. When he’d come to the house to resolve their relationship problems and she’d announced, after sex, that she was joining a space balloon expedition in Great Britain a few days later, she didn’t expect him to walk out on her. Obviously, he would never accept her for who she was so she decided she was never going to accept him back.

“Earth to Jen,” said Matthews.

She snapped out of her daze. “Sorry, in another world.”

“Claris is going to prepare the camera wing in a moment. Perhaps you should unleash that dust buster thing first before we start documenting.”

Faraday was rummaging through the chest for the solar
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wing. Hennessey thought she was being heavy
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handed. “Careful, Claris. Akroid is a very expensive collection device.”

“I’m sorry. It seems to be caught on…no, got it. ”

Five hours and thirteen minutes since takeoff, the balloon had reached a little over 132,000 feet – float altitude. They hovered in a supernatural silence, free of wind and noise, the only sound their breathing. Twenty five miles high, almost four times the height of commercial airliners, the sky was an intense indigo blue. To block out the glaring afternoon sunlight, the crew further adjusted the blinders on their visors, each taking a private moment to reflect on their experience. They had achieved the unthinkable, setting a new world record for the highest altitude ever reached by a manned balloon, breaking the one previously set in 1961 by Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Vic Prather after they’d launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico.

Matthews interrupted the silence with a moan. “Ah…that’s better.”

“Just took a slash?” asked Sutcliffe.

“Yeah, enough to fill a petrol tank twice over.”

“Thanks, that’s a lovely image,” commented Faraday.

Sutcliffe wasted no time and got down to business. “Keith, can you report to Mission Control, tell them we’ve reached float altitude and that we’re all doing okay. Confirm our position with Mike.” He paused in thought, his excited eyes hidden behind the metallic
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gold- plated extravehicular visor. “Claris, get this camera up and running as soon as possible, please.”

“Jen is going to release the Akroid payload first so that NASA can see it successfully launched from the images of the solar
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wing, if that’s alright with you?”

“That’s fine.”

Burch felt a pang of worry. Double
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checking, he alerted the crew. “The navigation system isn’t working. Mission Control Base isn’t receiving our GPS coordinates.”

“You mean they’ve lost our position?”

“Temporarily, yes.”

“Call Mike and let him know.”

“I can’t, the communication system is out too.”

“How long has it been out?”

“I don’t know, I’ve only just noticed it. As for navigation, if we can’t get it back online, we can trigger the emergency tracking beacon so that ground crew will be able to triangulate our position from the beacon’s transmitting signal.”

“Do it anyway. What do you think caused the fault?”

“Maybe a failure of the diplexer or the antenna.”

“Alright, keep me informed. Jen, how is Akroid coming along?”

“Fine.”

Hennessey had employed the brawn of Matthews to help lift Akroid from the chest. They stood on the platform with a harness attaching them to bars in the centre of the gondola. Attached to Akroid was a self
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inflating balloon with a high
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pressured helium gas cylinder. Hennessey looked a little unsettled and confused as faffed around with Akroid and the balloon. Matthews believed that she didn’t really know what she was doing. It made him wonder if she had received adequate training. He watched her with growing suspicion. From day one, something bothered him about her, he felt. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was that he’d always been confident of his own professional ability, but had doubts when it came to the professionalism of others, even when their status and skill far exceeded that of his own. Still, it bothered him. And from now on, things could get sticky. A single mistake could cost them their mission, their credibility, their careers or their lives. Matthews took an unsteady step forward and caught his shin on the corner of the chest, which tugged at his suit. For a moment, he was still, his heart in a flurry. In Moscow, the Russian space coordinators had warned the crew during their training that if the spacesuit fabric tore at an altitude greater than fifty thousand feet, the oxygen would escape and the wearer would have no more than seven seconds until their blood boiled. Luckily, the suit hadn’t been penetrated and Matthews breathed a sigh of relief.

“What exactly will this box thing do?” Faraday asked.

“More than ten thousand tons of micrometeorites fall to Earth each year. Akroid will simply collect the meteoroid particles in the stratosphere on xerogel samples, which will be sent back to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre to be analysed.”

“How long will the balloon stay afloat for?”

“That’s up to NASA. By radio command, the payload will be detached from the balloon and parachute back to Earth where it’ll be retrieved.”

“What happened to the telescope, Sandra?”

“Chandra? It developed a technical fault and had to go into repair.”

Hennessey flicked the valve on the helium canister and the gas began to fill the Akroid balloon. Using a long rope, Hennessey and Matthews lowered the heavy payload over the edge as the helium slowly inflated the balloon. Reaching the end of the rope, Hennessey leaned over to see if the balloon had almost inflated. It had, and she released the rope, watching as Akroid descended to its float altitude, dropping roughly a thousand feet beneath Fable
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1 before reaching equilibrium where they could make out the small rounded crown of the balloon with Akroid suspended beneath it. “It’s still inflating so it should rise further in the next ten minutes or so,” said Hennessey.

Sutcliffe looked across the gondola at Faraday. “How’s the solar
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wing coming along?”

“I’m sending it out now.”

Faraday released the seal from the rectangular case keeping the solar
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powered camera secure. The rocket motors, fuelled by sun-light, powered four propellers navigated by remote control. The flying wing operated on solar panels linked to a regenerative fuel cell so powerful that the solar
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wing could produce enough power during the day to remain in flight well into the night. The sensitive, low
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light camera attached to the solar
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wing had a video
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audio micro -wave transmitting device with a remote controlled one hundred and eighty degree pan
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tilt video camera attached to a thirty
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five
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millimetre still camera with remote triggering. The camera had been installed into a custom
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made cradle and was mechanically attached to two Futaba servos allowing the camera to pan and tilt freely.

With Matthews’ help, Faraday launched the solar
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wing camera away from the gondola. It swooped off, immediately powering into life from the solar rays of the sun, its seven
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foot structure gently flexing and bending as it dived. Using her remote control with its split screen monitor, she toggled with the controls and sent the contraption to a range of eight hundred feet before looping back and homing in on the crew, hoping to get a full image of Fable
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1, the type of image the papers would salivate over.

Meanwhile, Burch focussed his full attention on the balloon’s geographic position and the communication malfunction, hoping to identify the problem and restore power, distracting himself now and again to look up at the solar
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wing camera gliding around the Fable
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1 balloon like a hungry vulture identifying its prey. Sutcliffe also marvelled over the solar
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wing making circles around the balloon. At the same time, he worried about the sudden loss of communication with Mission Control. The solar
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wing camera had been launched successfully, but Faraday didn’t know if the pictures were beaming back to Mission Control. Not until Mike Townsend’s voice emerged over the radio.

“
Thought we’d lost you
,” he said, and they could tell by his voice that he was quite relieved. “
I don’t know what happened but, anyway, the balloon images are coming through very clear. How’s the view up there
?”