Out of Orbit (36 page)

·   ·   ·

After the burn, the astronaut trio settled a little more deeply into their seats, having pushed through the first real force that had been applied to their bodies since their liftoff in the shuttle. It was exhilarating, but it was also a shock to their systems, like jumping into a cold ocean after having spent a long afternoon lying on the beach.

“Everything okay over there, Don?” Bowersox asked in English.

“Yeah,” Pettit said, trying to find the right words to describe the sensation. “That was a nice kick in the pants, you know?”

“It feels like an afterburner lighting, doesn’t it?” Bowersox said, recalling their times in jets, a feeling that for him, at least, was like a green flag, a signal that he was about to enjoy some action.

“Yes, that’s a good description of it,” Pettit said. “It feels like an afterburner …”

Pettit was suddenly distracted by the luggage sitting on his lap. He wanted to do something with it before things really started getting heavy. “So it looks like we have about five minutes,” he said, referring to the countdown until
razdolina
—the forceful separation of the orbital and propulsion modules. Soon, there would only be their little bell.

“I have a whole bunch of stuff which I’ll shove up underneath a cosmonaut panel—”

“What do you have?” Bowersox asked.

“I’ve got
neshtatny,”
Pettit said, using the Russian word for a few of the books he held, detailing what to do in an emergency.

“Oh, you’ve got your
neshtatny
and Nikolai’s
neshtatny,”
Bowersox said, looking across at his weighed-down friend.

“Yeah, and I’ve got a reference book,” Pettit said, holding up a thick
Soyuz
manual.

“Do you want to give them to me?” Bowersox asked.

“I’ll find a place for them,” Pettit said, a little proudly. He knew that he was the third member of a three-man crew, the closest thing to ballast among the breathing things on board. But he didn’t want to be a burden, and he didn’t want to be carried.

Just then, it started to look as though all three of them would have to be more independent than they might have thought. While Bowersox and Pettit were talking, Budarin was running into some problems with the radio. It was cutting in and out, and whenever it happened to be in, it was next to useless. Budarin and the ground filled the clear patches by asking each other again and again whether they were getting through.

“Can you hear us?”

“Yes, can you hear us?”

“Yes, can you …”

At last, the communication lines opened wide enough for Russian ground control to ask how the trip was going.

“Everything is good,” Budarin replied. “Everything is calm.”

In English, Bowersox and Pettit began thinking through the rest of their return: what happened when, what happened next. After the orbital and propulsion modules were jettisoned, what was left of their ship would rock back and forth all the while it dropped toward earth, quickly at first, but slowed by friction. A drogue parachute would open. A much larger parachute would open after sixteen pyrotechnic bolts exploded, and their capsule would float down more gingerly. The heat shield at the bottom of their capsule and the outer pane of their windows would strip away. Their seats would cock into a more upright position. A second before impact, just a meter from earth’s hard surface, six small rockets would fire to soften their landing. And finally, a thump. The rescue teams waiting for them would spring into action, opening the capsule’s hatch, lifting Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit free of their cradles, and ferrying them onto a military helicopter. It would fly them to a plane idling on a runway at Astana, Kazakhstan, which would, in turn, fly them to Star City, where their wives would be waiting for them.

No matter how often they ran through the stages of their flight, the last one always involved hugs.

“Ken?” Budarin said, interrupting.

“Da?”

“We’ve done half our task,” Budarin said in Russian. “Now we’re really going to have some
fun.
”

Budarin spoke the last word in English. In a telling linguistic void, there was no Russian equivalent, and both Budarin’s sentiment and his expression of it made Bowersox laugh.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Budarin said, smiling in return.

The ground cut in. “For six minutes, you’ll have a communications break from us, but it doesn’t mean you should be silent.”

“You’ll hear us moving around,” Budarin said, “trying to squeeze into our seats. Our legs are cramping.” Looking across at his crewmates, he said, “Make sure your visors are closed.”

Until then, they could have kept their helmet visors open, hoping to stave off their feelings of being buried alive. The time for them to close up tight had come.

Bowersox, however, was occupied by other things. After he had switched off that display, it had occurred to him how easy it might have been for him to hit the wrong button—all of these small plastic squares lined up like bricks, tight against the next, and each of them looking, more or less, exactly like the others.

“You know, there’s a good chance you might hit the wrong button,” he said to Budarin.

“There’s a chance,” Budarin said. “I know what you mean. But don’t worry. Everything’s okay.” He squinted at the instrument panel. “Check your visors, guys.”

They did.

“Visors are closed,” Budarin told the ground. “Separation program is on. Separation in fifty seconds … in thirty seconds … in five … four … three … two … one!”

For Pettit, the next second was the longest of the flight. If the explosive bolts that held the orbital and propulsion modules in
place didn’t work, Expedition Six were done for. Their heat shield would remain covered, useless, and the added drag would prevent them from dropping ass-first. Instead, they would helicopter into oblivion, their hull punctured, invaded by fire, and burned, like
Columbia
, from the inside out.

At last, there was the telltale sound of detonation, like machine-gun fire.

“Separation!” Budarin shouted. “We have separation! Everything works!”

The ground was silent to their drama. “Can you hear us?” Budarin asked. “Can you hear us?”

Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit didn’t know it at the time, but these were among the last words they would hear from the ground: “Keep an eye on your internal pressure, guys.”

“Can you hear us?” Budarin asked.

There was no reply.

·   ·   ·

Micki Pettit had arrived in Moscow the day before with her twin boys. Annie Bowersox had also made the trip. Now, lying awake in bed, staring at their Star City cottage ceilings, they tried to sleep, but they were both kept awake by the thrill that morning would bring. They had made plans to wake up early and head to TsUP to watch from their front-row seats the return of their husbands. They couldn’t wait. They felt like those giddy girls in Times Square who had welcomed the sailors home.

Only the slightest ill feeling clung to them. Nikolai Budarin’s wife, Marina, had announced that she would not be there, because for a cosmonaut, it was considered the worst kind of luck for his wife to wait for him with open arms. If she did, it was almost certain that she would never close them around her husband again.

Micki and Annie told themselves it was just more Russian hocus-pocus, more silly superstition. So much had gone wrong already. They were due for a change of luck. Having made it through a heart-stopping beginning and an interminable middle, they were
owed an uplifting end. They were owed their champagne moment, a tickertape finish.

In her bags, Micki had even packed a pillbox hat.

·   ·   ·

“Look at that fire,” Bowersox said.

He and Pettit each saw the lost modules roll out past their windows and begin burning up. They were glad for not having been in them. But they didn’t know there was still reason for concern. They didn’t know that were everything in order, they wouldn’t have been able to see what they saw. They didn’t know that one of the small rockets assigned to keep their capsule stable had fired less than a second too late.

And then their own windows filled with plasma and fire.

“There’s so much fire,” Bowersox said, filled with wonder.

“Yes,” Budarin replied, sounding distracted. He knew that some fire was normal, a product of the heat generated by reentry, the capsule trailing it like a meteor’s tail. But even for Budarin, the fire seemed brighter than normal, more intense. It might have been his imagination, but the temperature inside
Soyuz
also seemed as though it was on the rise. Sweat started to run into his eyes. Blinking it back and turning his head to sneak a peek through one of the windows, he said, almost to himself, “Yes, we are on fire pretty good.”

Bowersox and Pettit both marveled at the glow. But in his concern, Budarin had grown deaf to their awe. He was scanning the instruments and gauges, one by one, trying to find something, anything, that wasn’t right. Suddenly, his eyes grew wide when one of his monitors flashed in front of him, and a telltale light—called, ominously, the BS light—blinked on.

Bowersox saw it, too. Uh-oh, he thought.

Holy fucking shit was more like it.

The computers had announced that whether Expedition Six liked it or not,
Soyuz
was about to be pushed into a steep, ballistic descent. Instead of the usual semi-gentle fall into gravity’s embrace, they were primed to enter an accelerated, lung-crunching dive into
elementary physics. There was no longer time for grace. For whatever reason, the hardware wanted them home, as soon as possible. It was as though the three men had been loaded into that shotgun of theirs and fired straight into the earth.

In English, Bowersox gave Pettit the red alert. “Don, BS is lit up, and we don’t know why,” he said. Resorting to his typical understatement, he added, “It’s probably going to be a fairly aggressive entry.”

Budarin noticed that something was wrong with the capsule’s left side.

“I didn’t touch anything,” Bowersox said.

Pettit, unable to ignore the hint of anxiety that Bowersox had failed to stifle during his self-defense, began to worry out loud. “Why the BS?” he asked in Russian.

Perhaps because of the stress of the moment, Bowersox replied to him in kind. “We don’t know, Don,” he said, before switching over to English. “Tighten up your belts as much as you can.”

The three men began tugging on their restraints, trying to find safe places for all of the loose things that were about to turn into projectiles.

“We’ll make it, guys,” Budarin said.

“Kolai, you’re good,” Bowersox replied.

“Guys,” Budarin said, trying to stay focused on the instruments in front of him through a growing shake. “Hold on, guys, hold on.”

·   ·   ·

Sean O’Keefe’s alarm went off. He pulled himself out of bed and tried to shake out the cobwebs. He smoothed down his hair, pulled on a jacket, and headed back to TsUP.

Paul Pastorek joined him again in the gallery, as did Bill Readdy. Micki Pettit and Annie Bowersox had also arrived, looking excited and put together, what with Micki wearing her snappy hat. The two women took their seats near O’Keefe, and he turned to smile at them. Returning the smile, Micki and Annie leaned forward to get a better look down at the floor of technicians below.

Russian ground control was staid and beautiful, all marble
columns and heavy drapes. Everything looked calm, as peaceful as a library. And on those big screens at the front of the room, a series of almost cartoonish illustrations was being projected, explaining what was happening to their husbands and when. According to the cartoons, everything was going to plan.
Soyuz
had dropped into the atmosphere and made a smooth, on-target descent. Now its parachute was about to open, and after the capsule had bounced to a happy stop on a forgiving earth, what looked like Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound were ready to jump out of it. Perhaps they would have a picnic.

·   ·   ·

“Can you hear us?” Budarin repeated again and again. But still there was no response from the ground. Expedition Six were alone.

Budarin’s breathing grew harder. “Tighten up as much as you can,” he said through gritted teeth.

Bowersox licked his lips. Pettit closed his eyes.

Budarin had leveled his sights to a single gauge in front of him, the needle in it bouncing and rising slowly, recording the g-forces that had begun to sit on their chests like barbells.

“We’re at 2.0,” Budarin said, a little nervously, “2.3 … Hold on guys.”

“We’re holding on,” Bowersox said in Russian. And then, in English, he said to Don: “Take a deep breath while you can.”

The capsule had begun to spin. There was noise, snaps and rattles and groans, and vibration, each rising in pitch. Outside, the fire and plasma danced, coating their windows with ash. Alarm bells went off, if only in their minds.

“Don, how are you?” Budarin asked. “Speak so we can hear you.”

“Da,” Don said.

Budarin continued the count. “… 3.0 … 3.5 … 3.9 … Don, speak to me, say something to me.”

“Da,” Don said again, this time croaking it out.

Their spines compressed. Their ears rang. Pettit could feel sweat streaming back from his forehead and soaking his hair, as though he
were in a centrifuge. Bowersox fought to keep his tongue from slipping down his throat.

“… 4.0 … 4.35 … 4.44 …4.7 … oh, it’s pressing good.”

Already, nearly a thousand pounds sat on each of their chests, and things were only getting worse. With every second it grew harder and harder for them to breathe, their gasps already short and shallow. It took everything in Budarin for him to continue to talk.

“… 5.0 … 6.0 …”

They approached the g-force limits that the human body, if left in a vulnerable position, can survive for any length of time. After nearly six months in space, weightless and free, for this brave trio it felt like torture, as though some maniac wanted to see how far he could push them before they finally broke in half. Budarin continued to talk, but soon his audience had trouble listening. So much blood had been pushed to the backs of their brains that Bowersox and Pettit felt as though they had been sucker punched. Were they not already flat on their backs, they would have been knocked there.