Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (49 page)

            “Huh. Well, sir, that can certainly be arranged.
Excuse me a moment.” Jeff pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed
Chrissie’s number. “Yeah, grab everyone and get up here… now!” Jeff hung up and
turned back to the sheikh. “It’ll be just a moment, sir.”

            Shortly, Gabe, Abby, Susan and Chrissie appeared
at the door. Jeff motioned them in and began to make introductions. When Abby
started to step forward and extend her hand, Jeff caught her eye and quickly
shook his head. She paused, bowed slightly, and stepped back.

            “
Salāmu `Alaykunna
,” said the sheikh. “It is a pleasure to meet you all. I have noticed
in my travels that American women are not like Arab women. That is not
necessarily a bad thing. Go with God, and good luck.” The sheikh turned to
Jeff.
“I shall take my leave of you now. Our business is concluded and I
know you are a busy man, Captain. I shall take no more of your time.”

            Jeff walked Sheikh Salem to his car. “Thank you
again, Sheikh. I don’t know what to say.”

            “Just come back alive, Captain Grey.”

            “We’ll do our best, sir.”

            “Oh, that reminds me, there is one other item.”

            “Yes, sir?”

            The sheikh reached into his coat pocket and
produced a small, leather-bound book, and held it out to Jeff. “This is my
personal Qur’an, it was given me by my father, who received it from his father…
and so on. Perhaps, Captain, you would take it with you and… bring it back?”

            Jeff turned the book over in his hand; it
appeared very old. “Certainly, Sheikh, I think I can find a place for this in
the manifest. Of course, whether or not I bring back is in the hands of Allah.”

            The sheikh smiled. “I would be most grateful,
Captain. And, good luck to you.” And he got in his car and departed.

            Jeff watched the car turn down the drive and
disappear, and then walked back into the house, closing the door behind him.

            “What the hell was that all about?” said Abby.

            “The government of Kuwait just gave us a grant
of one billion dollars.”

            “Holy shit!”

            “Yeah.”

            “What was that business with the handshake?”

            “In business, Arab men do not shake hands with
women.”

            “Really?”

            “You’ll get over it.”

            “Boss, for a billion dollars I’ll shake his…
well, never mind.”

            “Uh huh.” Jeff smiled. “What are you all
standing here for? Get back to work.”

            “A billion dollars, huh?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Holy shit.”

            “Yeah.”

Saturday, December
14, 2013 (T minus 829 days)

“MOD, FLIGHT, how we doing?”

“FLIGHT, at this time Canaveral LCC
is reporting Go for launch on all pads. T minus 28 minutes and counting for
Mars One Bravo on LC-40.”

Chrissie looked around the MCC and
nodded. “Alright everyone, buckle up and suck it in. This is the real thing.
FIDO?”

“Go, FLIGHT.”

“GUIDANCE?”         

“Go, FLIGHT.”

“GC?”

“GC is Go.”

“PROP?”

“Go, FLIGHT”

“GNC?”

“Go.”

“MAX?”

“Go, FLIGHT.”

Chrissie worked her way around the
MCC. Having received a “Go” from each station, she turned to Jeff and smiled.

Jeff returned the smile, nodded,
and mouthed the words, “Go, FLIGHT.” He sat in the back of the MCC with Gabe
and Susan, acknowledging this was Chrissie’s show and, as much as he wanted to
jump in and take part, she had to do it alone because next time they would be
the cargo and she would be on her own. Seated with them was SURGEON, Rebecca
Stockman. As there was no crew in this launch, her job was superfluous and Abby
had commandeered her console in case of a malfunction in the auto-docking
sequence, necessitating Abby’s taking manual control and docking the spacecraft
herself.

“Three near-simultaneous launches,”
said Gabe. “Why did we have to try something that’s never been done before?”

Jeff shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe
because there was no other way?”

“Maybe we should have found a way.”

“Didn’t we try that?”

“Maybe we should have tried
harder.”

Jeff rolled his head toward her. “I
think we’re a little beyond that now. Don’t you? What say we just keep our
fingers crossed and pray that we know what we’re doing?”

The PAO, Heidi Christianson, was
seated just a few feet in front of Jeff, making it easy to hear her commentary.

PAO, “We are at T minus 26 minutes
and counting. Launch Control at Cape Canaveral reports the Falcon 9 Heavy, Mars
One Bravo, on pad 40 is Go for launch. Mars One Bravo will be launching the
first heavy lift to Mars. It’s payload, contained within an aerodynamic bent
biconic lifting body, includes three human habitable modules, the first group
of nine that will eventually comprise the Mars station; 13,000 pounds of food;
a Mars rover capable of completely autonomous operation; a surface exploration
trailer, capable of accommodating two crew members for several weeks; a twelve
kilowatt solar cell array; and a Sabatier process plant for the production of
water and fuel on Mars.”

“FLIGHT, MOD, Canaveral’s Launch
Control Director wants to talk to you on channel-C.”

Julio Mendoza, MOD, sat next to the
PAO, right in front of Jeff, and could be overheard easily. Chrissie was a row
further up and Jeff could only hear her when the room was otherwise quiet. He
watched intently as she spoke and listened, occasionally nodding her head.

After a minute, Chrissie announced,
“All stations, FLIGHT, Canaveral has instituted an unscheduled weather hold at
T minus 20.”

“Crap.” Jeff started to get out of
his chair, but Susan grabbed his arm.

“No. Not your job. Let Chrissie
handle it.”

Jeff glared at Susan, but after a
moment his glare turned into a sigh of resignation and he nodded and sat back
down.

“Just let her do her job.”

“Sorry, you’re right.”

Chrissie removed her headset,
dropped it on the console and walked back to Jeff. “Okay, here’s the deal.
We’ve got high upper atmosphere shear winds at Canaveral. We’re still within
the envelope and could get Bravo off, but the next few hours are really iffy. I
don’t want to launch Bravo if there’s any chance we can’t follow up with
Charlie and Delta. Tomorrow looks a bit better, though there’s still some
question. After that we’ve got three days of probable bad weather, which leaves
us with only the 19
^th
, the last day of the window. After that, we
drop back ten and punt. If we’re going to scrub today’s launch, the sooner we
do it, the more time we have to prepare for tomorrow. So, unless you have an
objection, I’m gonna call it now, and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

Jeff nodded. “Any objection I might
have is irrelevant. It’s your call.”

Chrissie nodded, returned to her
console, and got back on her headphones. The room was dead quiet as she spoke
with Cape Canaveral Launch Control. Jeff could only hear her side of the
conversation.

“Okay.

“Yeah, we agree.

“Well, you know Thursday is our
drop-dead day.

“Right.

“Okay, that works for us.

“Right, then I’ll talk to you
later.” She removed her headphones and spoke to the room. “Alright, everyone,
listen up. We are scrubbing today’s launch. High shear winds aloft and the next
few hours don’t look good. We’ll try again tomorrow. We don’t know what time,
but stay close to your phone, and stay sober. We’ll let you know just as soon
as we know. So, everybody stand down.” Chrissie turned around, looked at Jeff
and shrugged.

Jeff nodded and crooked his finger
at her, then called Abby over as well. The three of them, along with Gabe and
Susan, huddled in the back of the MCC. Jeff gently grabbed Chrissie’s shoulder
and gave her a smile and a little shake. “Good job. And, for what it’s worth, I
agree with your call.” He looked around at each of them. “Still, we’ve got two
more opportunities to get this off the ground. But if it doesn’t happen by
close of business Thursday, well, I think the five of us are going to have to
sit down and have a serious talk about our next move; beginning with whether or
not there
is
a next move.”

The other four nodded in
understanding.

“Okay. Chrissie, what’s the
prognosis at the Cape?”

“Their meteorologist is gonna take
a look at it and get back to me in an hour or so. I’ll know more then.”

“Alright. Well, for what it’s
worth, here’s my two cents. If we’ve only got a small window, I’d just as soon
take a crack at Plan B rather than wait till Thursday and face the possibility
of a complete washout.”

Chrissie groaned, “Oh, jeez.
They’re not gonna like that.”

“I know, I don’t like it either,
but they said it was possible. All we need is fifteen minutes and we can get
all three into space and stop having to worry about what Mother Nature is gonna
do next.”

“Okay, but I can’t make them do it.
I can only ask.”

“Understood. But if it comes to
that, hold their feet to the fire. These launches don’t get off and it’s no
skin off their nose, no money out of their pocket, and they’re all gonna go
home and get a good night’s sleep, and collect their regular paychecks next
Friday. For us… well, you know how that sentence ends.”

Chrissie nodded. “Why don’t we wait
and talk to their weather-guesser, and then we’ll see.”

“Okay.”

An hour later Chrissie approached
Jeff with a scowl.

He grimaced. “Uh oh. You don’t look
happy.”

She shook her head. “It’s not good.
Tomorrow is looking bad and the storm that’s due in on Monday is stringing out
and could easily spill over into Thursday.”

Jeff rubbed his forehead. “What do
you recommend?”

“Well, Plan B. I don’t see where we
have a choice.”

Jeff nodded. “Agreed. Okay, call in
your crew. We’ll go to the mattress here – I’ll send Gabe and Sue out and get
some stuff – and we’ll man up whenever we need to and when we have a window,
we’ll launch.”

Chrissie nodded. “Okay. I’ll go
give the Launch Directors the bad news.”

Jeff found Gabe, Sue and Abby in
the kitchen throwing together an early lunch. “We’re going with Plan B. Gabe,
Sue, I need you to run into town and get mattresses – foam or air will probably
do – and sleeping bags for the MCC crew. Chrissie is going to bring everyone
back to spend the night here. We’ll man up when we think we’ve got a window
approaching, go with a short count and, six minutes later everything’s in the
air.”

“Holy shit,” said Abby.

“Don’t have much choice at this
point. Mother Nature doesn’t seem to want us to go to Mars, so we need to wait
for her to slip up and go when she’s not looking.” Jeff sighed deeply. “Let’s
make it happen.”

Jeff woke with a start. He rolled
over and glanced at the clock, a little past 2:00 a.m., and reached for the
ringing phone. “Yeah?”

“Boss, Chrissie. Canaveral is
looking at a weather window between six and seven this morning. They’re picking
up on a four-hour countdown right now. With the planned holds, that should give
us a launch time of around 6:25. I’m gonna raise the troops and man up.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be down in a
minute.”

The MCC was already buzzing with
activity as Jeff dropped into a seat in the back beside Gabe. “Good morning.”

“Is it morning yet?”

“Technically. Nice outfit. I’ll bet
no one at the Cape is wearing a bathrobe and slippers.”

Gabe grinned sheepishly. “I’ll go
up and change in a minute, I just wanted to see where we were.”

“And where’s that?”

“T minus three hours forty-seven
minutes and counting.”

“Dear god, can we please get this
launch off? I’m getting tired of looking at new gray hairs in the mirror every
morning.”

Gabe laughed gently and patted his
hand. “This is the day. I feel it.”

“Hope you’re right.”

For the next three and a half hours
Jeff sat fidgeting in the back of the MCC, following the countdown, Heidi’s PAO
commentary, and watching the Cape Canaveral weather radar displayed on one of
the screens up front. The countdown clock on the mission parameters screen now
read “T – 00:16:32.”

Susan leaned back and stretched and
rolled the kinks out of her neck. “You look like you’re about to have kittens.
Want another cup of coffee?”

Jeff shook his head. “No, I think
I’m adequately wired. Thanks anyway.”

PAO, “We are at T minus sixteen
minutes and counting. In twelve minutes, launch control at Cape Canaveral will
institute a planned ten-minute hold to fine-tune the on-time launch sequence.”

“I hate those planned holds,” Jeff
said. “I wish to God they’d just get on with it.”

Gabe patted Jeff’s shoulder. “Don’t
have an apoplexy. Nobody’s ever done this before, give ‘em a few minutes to get
it right.”

Jeff laughed. “Except for
sub-launched ICBMs, I don’t think anyone has ever even thought about trying
this before.”

“Well?”

Jeff turned to her and smiled.
“Well… at least I’m not jumping up and down, screaming.”

“That’s a good thing.”

PAO, “We are now in a planned
ten-minute hold at T minus four minutes on Mars One Bravo, T minus seven
minutes on Mars One Charlie and T minus ten minutes on Delta. Launch Operations
is making final adjustments to the guidance parameters, burn and staging times
on all three rockets to ensure matched orbits and intercept timing. Intercept
timing is particularly critical as the docking maneuvers – and there are two of
them – each take approximately three minutes, and there is only three minutes between
each launch. The vehicle RCS – Reaction Control System – can place each vehicle
in a holding pattern to accommodate some adjustment in docking timing. However,
each payload RCS has a limited amount of fuel and the closer the intercept and
docking times, the better.”