Orbital Maneuvers (42 page)

Nicholas switched the display back to the standard readout and was pleased to see that the temperature had dropped a few degrees.  “Comrades, the cabin temperature is dropping!  Maybe we have seen the worst.”

Everyone was beginning to choke on the smoke that lingered in the cabin.  The computers monitoring the CRV’s systems had detected the smoke coming from the inside layers of the exposed outer skin that was beginning to char from the intense heat.  The fire suppression system activated, cooling the interior side of the ship’s skin, thus preventing it from bursting into flames that, in turn, reduced the amount of smoke generated.  The computers then began a process to flush the crew compartment with fresh air from the reserve tanks.  Paul caught a whiff of cool, fresh air and felt a rush of renewed hope.  He turned his head from side-to-side, searching out the gentle breeze that was pulling him out of the haze the toxic smoke had drawn him into. 

“Do you smell that?” Paul shouted, almost giddy with relief.

“Smoke is all I smell,” Alexander replied in a hoarse voice.

“No!  Fresh air!  I can smell it coming in through the vents.”

Nicholas twisted to look over his shoulder at Paul.  “Yes, I can smell it, too!” he said.  “The control system must be monitoring the air and is trying to purge the smoke.”

Alexander propped himself up on his elbows and smiled, “No…yes!  Now I can smell it!  I did not think air could smell so sweet!”

As if to agree with Alexander’s observation, Ivan let out a small groan and coughed as his eyes fluttered open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Comrade,” Alexander shouted as he reached over to Ivan and stroked his hair.  “Quiet, everything is okay.  Try not to move.”

Paul stretched to see Ivan, but the seat restraints held him down.  “How does he look?”

“He is…how do you say, pale?  Not much color in his skin.  But his eyes are open and they look okay.”

“Ivan,” Paul called out softly.  “Can you hear me?  How are you feeling?”

Ivan slowly turned his head toward Paul, his eyes staring blankly at the wall. “I can hear you…oh, my head!” Ivan managed to say in a hoarse whisper.

“What’s the matter with your head?  How does your head feel?” Paul asked, afraid to hear an answer that might indicate a more severe injury than he had suspected.

“It hurts…and…I can not see very well…everything is blurry”

“Ivan, you banged your head very hard, it is no wonder it hurts.” Alexander offered.  “Close your eyes and lie back.  We will be on the ground soon.”

Ivan followed Alexander’s recommendation and laid his head back on the seat.  Although it his head still hurt, lying down with his eyes closed reduced the dizziness he was feeling.  But, his condition was aggravated by the way the CRV bounced and rocked as it flew through the turbulent air.  He tried to remember what had happened, but his memory was as blurry as his vision.  He could not remember why he was here, or for that matter, where here was. 

Ivan tried to focus on the people around him.  He recognized Alexander’s and Paul’s voices and when Nicholas spoke, his image flashed through Ivan’s mind.  All this brought him some comfort and he relaxed a bit.  Yet, he felt there was something more that he should be aware of but could not retrieve it from the foggy depths of his memory, something that caused him to feel very uneasy with his situation. 

He was beginning to get very frustrated with this breach in his memory and tried to focus on the sounds he heard around him: the roar coming from the CRV cutting through the ever-thickening atmosphere, an occasional electronic beep from some piece of equipment in the cabin with him, and the more startling “pop”, as the CRV tried to maintain its direction and attitude by firing its thrusters, which was always accompanied with a jolt, as the ship reacted to the steering forces.  All of these audio stimuli seemed familiar to Ivan, yet he found a concrete image of his environment and situation elusive.  He continued listening with his eyes closed.

“How is Jerry doing?” Alexander asked Paul, breaking the silence in the cabin.

Paul twisted to get a better view of Jerry as he answered.  “He still seems totally out, but the bleeding has stopped from his nose, at least externally.”

Ivan’s eyes flickered open at the mention of Jerry’s name, and he blankly stared at the pale yellow ceiling searching for a face to match the name, but to no avail.  He quickly closed his eyes to fight off the dizziness that immediately resurfaced, but found himself fidgeting in his seat, as his level of anxiety rose with the mere mention of this new name and the nagging feeling that there was more going on here than he was remembering.  He silently recited Jerry’s name over and over in his mind, hoping to force a connection that would clear up his confusion.

Slowly, he began to see a face forming, as if it were coming through a thick fog: first just an outline, then, eyes and nose began to take shape.  The clearer the face became, the more agitated Ivan felt.  Finally, the image presented itself in crystal clarity, a man’s face, leering at Ivan, taunting him, as if he knew that Ivan was incapacitated and could not defend himself.  Ivan still did not understand the connection between Jerry and his elevated level of anxiety, all he knew was that he did not like this Jerry, and felt that he had done something very bad. 

Ivan closed his eyes tighter; trying to push this unwanted image from his mind, but it persisted and continued to taunt him with words that were spoken but inaudible.  Ivan could not rid himself of Jerry’s image, but managed to bring the images of Alexander, Nicholas and Paul to join him.  In Ivan’s tortured imagination, walking the tenuous line between conscious and unconscious, he now witnessed a standoff between Jerry and the three friends.  Jerry kept speaking silent words, but his face betrayed that his words were laced with malice.  The trio moved closer together as if to protect Ivan from Jerry’s attack, but Ivan now noticed a ghostly outline of someone behind his three friends. 

This apparition was immediately familiar, yet he could not place a name or face to it.  He tried to will the image into focus, but it just hovered outside the zone of clarity, as if it were in a different dimension of time and space.  Just as the image seemed to float across the barrier into Ivan’s mental universe, it crystallized for just an instant.  The face, the hair, the eyes were as Ivan now remembered.  “Susan,” he whispered aloud.  Immediately Jerry’s image rushed toward Susan, past the fading faces of Alexander, Nicholas and Paul.  Jerry pushed Susan back to the other side of the barrier.  Ivan yelled, “No!  Jerry, no!  Susan!” Ivan yelled

Alexander jumped at Ivan’s outburst and reached out to comfort him.  “Shhh, Ivan, it will be alright…” Ivan strained against the straps on his seat trying to reach Susan to pull her back.  He did not hear Alexander’s and Paul’s words of comfort.  All he could hear was Jerry’s maniacal laughter as he watched Susan’s image fade into the blackness.  Ivan thrashed about so much that Alexander was afraid he might injure himself against the seat restraints. 

Suddenly, Ivan opened his eyes wide and looked at Alexander.  “Susan?” he asked quietly. 

Alexander took a deep breath.  “My dear friend, Susan is still on the station,” he said to Ivan.  “We could not do anything to save her.” Ivan stared into Alexander’s eyes for a moment, and then without a word closed his eyes to concentrate on the throbbing pain in his head—which was much easier to cope with than the stabbing pain in his heart.

“Alpha Rescue, Alpha Rescue, this is Bird’s Eye, we have a contact.” The radio squawked with the voice from a radar operator aboard the AWACS aircraft.  “Contact bearing…two…five…five degrees, range, one…five…zero miles, angels eighty thousand.  Do you copy?”

“This is Alpha Rescue One.  We copy, Bird’s Eye,” Jazzy responded as they heard Alpha Rescue Two also confirm the message.  “They seem to be right on course,” she said.

The navigator’s voice popped in her headphones.  “I am not sure what the rate of descent is for the CRV, but they are dead on with that storm cell we just skirted around—if they continue on their present course.”

“Are you sure, Willie?” Andrew asked.

“Like I said, I am not sure what their rate of descent is.  They may pass underneath it, but they are headed right for it.”

“Jazzy, get a confirmation from Bird’s Eye on the CRV’s flight path and the location of the storm cell.  Also, get a confirmation on their transponder,” said Andrew.

“Right on it.”

A few moments later they heard the response from Bird’s Eye.  “Alpha Rescue One, we concur on the flight path and proximity of the severe weather.  CRV’s range is now one…zero…five miles, speed five hundred and fifty knots.  We will try to alert the CRV of the situation.  They are not broadcasting their designated transponder code.  We will advise of any changes.”

“They’re coming in pretty hot.  They must have not deployed the parafoil, yet.  Right now we have a closure speed of about eight hundred knots.  It doesn’t sound good if they lost their transponder,” Jazzy said.

“Yes, I wonder if they’ve any damage from the reentry.  I guess we’re going to have to do a visual ID and with an eight hundred knot closure it’s going to be interesting,” Andrew said.

“In this junk, just getting a visual is going to be fun,” Jazzy said.  “I hope that the strobe light we were briefed about is working, or we are really going to have a time trying to find them.”

“Let’s hope it’s not by feel that we find them,” Andrew added.

“Amen to that,” Willie’s voice whispered in the intercom.

Nicholas was mindlessly staring at the computer screen, not really registering any of the information that was being displayed.  As his eyes wandered over to the camera view, he noticed that the display was dark. 
This is different
, he thought.  The display was flashing waves of rose and pink before.  Initially, he thought that the system was defective before he realized that the display was dark because they had passed through the ionization stage of the deorbit maneuver and were now in the lower atmosphere on the night side of the planet.  Of course it would be dark.  The lack of detail seemed to indicate that they were over, or in, a layer of clouds.  As he turned his gaze back to the computer display, he saw a message he had not seen before:

DROGUE CHUTE TO DEPLOY AT 25000 FEET
. 

Below this was a message showing the current altitude, which was rapidly decreasing as they were passing through twenty-nine thousand feet.

“We are about to deploy the drogue chute,” Nicholas announced.  “We are passing through twenty-eight thousand feet, deployment is at twenty-five thousand.”

“Sounds like we are getting close to the end of this amusement park ride,” Paul bemoaned.  His stomach was beginning to act up again.

“Oh, no!” Nicholas said with an ominous tone.

“What now?” Paul asked.  The trepidation in his voice was heavy.

“We have a transponder failure…and the backup, too,” Nicholas said.

“So just what does that mean for us?” Paul was hoping it would not mean a further delay in their landing.  He was not sure how much more he could take.

Alexander said, “The transponder is an identification device for the CRV.  It identifies us to the ground-tracking stations.  Without it, they may know that someone is out there, but not who we are.”

“So is that bad?”

“No, not necessarily.  They are expecting us and are probably already looking for us.  They will not confuse us with commercial traffic.  In fact, I would expect that any commercial traffic would be diverted from our projected landing corridor.”

Nicholas interrupted their conversation.  “We are going to pass through twenty-five thousand feet any moment now.” He watched with anticipation as the altimeter counted down and passed through the deployment altitude with no change in the CRV’s descent.  There was no thud, or jolt as the drogue chute deployed, only a new message flashing on the display:

VELOCITY TOO HIGH FOR DROGUE CHUTE DEPLOYMENT. 

Alpha Rescue One was heading right for the CRV, while Alpha Rescue Two was on the down-range leg moving away from the incoming craft.  The C130 lumbered above the densest layer of clouds, but there were still many smaller, bulky clouds, looking like exiled sheep shadowing the flock, searching for any opportunity to rejoin the group.  These exiles floated around and above the airplane obscuring the pilot’s forward view most of the time. 

Jazzy was getting frustrated trying to spot the strobe light on the CRV.  Her view was constantly being blocked by the lightening-illuminated scud clouds in their way.  Not to mention that the lightning was ruining her night vision.  She wasn’t even sure that the strobe light was working, which if it weren’t, would make her efforts futile.  Without the strobe it would be impossible to see the CRV.  The notion of finding the CRV by feel kept intruding on her thoughts, distracting her from her search pattern.  Giving in to her growing paranoia, she finally asked, “Willie, how far are we off the CRV’s reentry path?”

“Right now, we are about five miles to starboard of the reentry path, based on Bird’s Eye’s last update.  Why?”

“Just want to make sure that we are where we are supposed to be and not waltzing up the reentry chute to meet the CRV.”

Andrew laughed.  “What’s the matter, Jazzy?” he asked.  “Getting a bit spooked?”