Shattered Legacy (28 page)

“Roger, Control.
Naiad
out.”

Schwartz canceled the computer commands and looked over at the Commander. “They sound a little touchy down there.”

McManus did not smile back. He glanced up at the photograph of his family tucked into the corner of the upper console. He changed his mind about wanting to stay in space.

Now he wanted to get home, as soon as possible.

***

In the Control Tower, Noah Gettleman brooded at his terminal, hand cupped under his jaw, staring at the wall monitor readouts. Jack Kroft stood beside him, and for the first time since the start of the mission, a shadow of worry crossed the administrator's face.

“What’s the problem?” Kroft asked.

“We have two engine temperature sensors that are off-scale high,” Gettleman replied softly. An engine cowl must have cracked, just as he had predicted. He leaned over the railing, directing his voice to the communication station tech below. “We need to see those engines. Get a satellite to shoot a picture of the
Naiad
.”

The young woman looked up from her station with a puzzled expression. “Sir, we don't own any satellites.”

“Right.” Sometimes Gettleman forgot just how little he had to work with. Though the government had tracked shuttles with satellite cameras following the
Columbia
breakup, the government did not extend that courtesy to private companies…yet. “Get me in contact with Tom Blodget. He's the current director of NASA. He owes me a favor.”

“What are you hoping to accomplish?” Kroft asked. “I doubt you'll be able to see much, especially not a crack in the -”

“I hope I don't see
anything
.” Gettleman reached past Kroft to pick up his headset. “
Naiad
, this is Control. We're going to ask you to power down your OMS, over.”

“Roger that, Control. Any particular reason? Over.”

Kroft made a cutting motion across his throat.

“Not at this time,” Gettleman replied. “Control out.”

“Our transmissions are being picked up by every media network on the planet,” Kroft explained when the communication ended. “Let’s not get everyone excited.”

“NASA on line two,” someone called out.

Gettleman lunged for his desk. In his hurry to pick up his telephone, he practically shoved Kroft out of the way. He snatched up the receiver. “Tom? Yeah, it’s Noah. Yes. Listen, Tom, I have a huge favor to ask...”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Merrick did not know what her old associate hoped to accomplish at the Thomas Dorian Space Center, but she needed to find out. Lanton had become too much of a loose cannon. His meddling was now more than irritating. It was dangerous.

She parked her rented car near the Administration Building. She turned off the motor and watched though her rear-view mirror as Lanton made his way up the concrete walkway toward the main entrance. He was dressed in regular clothes – white shirt and dark slacks. He did not appear to have any disguise other than wrap-around sunglasses and a baseball cap. Good enough, she figured, to keep him from being easily identified by security cameras.

Merrick stepped out of her vehicle and was immediately assaulted with blast of hot desert air. She was also wearing sunglasses, along with a white baseball cap and overalls emblazoned with the logo of a local telecommunications company. A leather tool belt around her waist completed the look. Her hair, now light brown in color, was pulled back in a simple ponytail.

She yanked her tool kit from the passenger seat and started following Lanton. She picked up her pace as they neared the building, hoping she could stop him before he reached the doors.

As she was about to call out his name, her cell phone rang. She cursed at the bad luck, hoping that the noise did not give her away. Lanton was about twenty feet ahead and had not yet noticed her.

She slowed her pace, fumbled to pull the phone from her pocket with her free hand, and pressed it to her ear. “Yes?” she snapped.

“Hi, Jennifer? This is April from the Woodcrest Real Estate office. I just wanted to make sure you plan to fax over your financial paperwork this afternoon so we can arrange for the closing on the property.”

“Can I get back to you?” Merrick asked, again picking up her pace, her eyes never leaving Lanton’s back. “I'm kind of in the middle of something right now.”

“Sure. Do you have my number?”

“Yes. I'll call you back.”

She disconnected and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She cursed again as she watched Lanton pass through the glass doors. She did not want to follow him inside, but if she wanted to get to him, she would have to. That was why she had taken the precaution of wearing the fake uniform.

The air inside was cooler, almost cold. Rows of plush padded couches sat against the tall tinted windows on either side of the main reception area. Large banners hung from the high ceiling, each showing a different view of the
Naiad
. The place was quiet and empty. The only sound was Merrick’s light footsteps on the tile. She walked the length of the room, her tool kit grasped tightly in her hand. She kept her sunglasses on.

She watched Lanton flash an identification card as he walked past the security desk. The uniformed guard gave him a cursory nod as he pushed through the turnstile.

Merrick casually followed without acknowledging the guard. She put her hands on the metal turnstile and pushed. It wouldn't move.

“Can I see some ID?” the guard asked. He glanced up from his magazine and looked at her expectantly.

“I'm sorry?”

“Identification, please.”

Merrick watched helplessly as Lanton turned the corner and disappeared. Then she looked back at the guard and broke into a friendly smile. “Where’s that other guy headed? I think I know him.”

“He’s an IT contractor. He’s headed down to the main data center.”

“Really?” Merrick said, lifting her eyebrows. “I’m here to fix the T3 circuits. I'm running late, though. The traffic getting into this place was a nightmare. It took me an hour just to get from the gates to the parking lot.”

The man’s expression did not change. “No one called ahead.”

“Well, maybe they didn’t expect me to come in through this entrance.”

The guard just looked at her.

Merrick glanced at the area beyond, knowing that it was now going to be almost impossible to track down Lanton. She jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of paper. She smacked it down on the center of the desk and began rubbing it flat. “Listen, you want the ticket number on this job? You want to talk to someone in the main office? They told me that this is a rush job, what with the spacecraft landing and all. You want to go call my bosses, go right ahead. I’ll wait. I got nothing but time…”

“No, that's all right.” The guard slapped a visitor’s badge and a clipboard on the countertop. “Just do what you have to do. Sign in here.”

She pulled a pen front her breast pocket and scribbled a false name on the sheet, being careful not to touch the paper. “So, where’s your main computer room?”

“Do you need access inside our data center?”

“If that’s where I’ll find the routers, yeah.”

The guard raised his arm to point, then lowered it and frowned. “Who was it that called you, again?”

“I don’t have a name,” Merrick snapped, glancing again at direction that Lanton had disappeared. This guard was wasting her time. Why was she getting the third degree, when Lanton had been able to just stroll inside?

“You’re going to need an escort downstairs. The data center is a secure area.” The guard picked up the phone. He dialed a number and said, “Yeah, there’s another tech here to do work in data center. Okay. Sure.” Then he hung up and said to Merrick, “That was the floor manager. She said she’d be right up to see you.”

Merrick reached up and adjusted her sunglasses. “Great,” she said, glancing around. “How long?”

“A few minutes.” The guard leaned back in his seat and grinned. “What, are you in a hurry or something?”

Merrick glanced up at the security camera mounted in the corner. She would track Lanton down eventually. Maybe she would catch up with him here, maybe not. Either way, there was no need to create a situation.

“No,” she said, giving the guard a smile. “No, there’s no hurry at all.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“That was fast,” Jack Kroft commented as he and Noah Gettleman entered the conference room. “Your friends must have serious juice. What did they use to get a look at the orbiter?”

“They wouldn't say,” Gettleman replied, meaning that his 'friends' had probably used a military spy satellite to examine the
Naiad
in space.

The conference room was dull, with gray carpeting that stretched from one end of the room to the other. Charts and schematics covered the corkboards on the walls. An engineer was seated at the computer workstation in the corner; three other engineers from the primary design team were seated around the table. They all looked anxious. They had been called into conference as soon as the
Naiad
reported engine trouble. As principle designers, they were the best to understand and recommend a course of action.

 “These images are seven minutes old,” Gettleman said without preamble. He strode over to the far wall. A ceiling-mounted projector flashed a large blue image beside him. Gettleman nodded to the engineer at the workstation.

As the ceiling lights dimmed, a high resolution, three-quarter, rear-view shot of the
Naiad
appeared on the wall. The craft appeared frozen above the blue and white sphere of the Earth. Sunlight sparkled off one wing.

The engineer at the workstation tapped a few keys and glanced up at Gettleman. “It's ready for manipulation.”

“All right,” Gettleman replied, taking a step back. “Zoom in on the port engine.”

The engineer pressed a few keys, and the image enlarged.

“More.”

The image changed again. There were too many shadows for a good view.

“Can you lighten it a bit?” Kroft asked, pushing back his seat to get a better view around Gettleman.

“Anything you want,” the engineer replied. He tapped a few keys and the image became lighter, in black and white.

Gettleman squinted and rubbed the back of his neck. “Reverse the image. Zoom in on the upper left quadrant.” He pointed. “There.”

“How’s that?”

“More. No, zoom in more.”

Now a photographic negative, the image enlarged again on the port side engine. They were looking right inside the main engine cowl.

Gettleman stared at the image, his mouth set in a grim line. “There it is.”

“A crack in the cowl?” Kroft asked. The rest of the design team broke into surprised murmurs.

“There’s a crack,” Gettleman replied grimly. “But it isn’t on the engine cowl.”

“Thank God.”

“It’s worse. The crack is in the main combustion chamber.”

“What?” Kroft leaned forward in his chair.

“Right there. See? There's a goddamned
chunk
missing from the chamber pod,” Gettleman said over the others, stabbing the image with his finger. “That's why we're getting those heat spikes. Residual exhaust is backwashing all over the engine’s manifolds and turbopumps.”

“Damn,” Kroft muttered. It was worse than any of them had feared. They could lose more than the engine - the whole orbiter was in danger.

Gettleman was furious. He looked around at the others. “Did you people hide problems with the combustion systems, too?”

Kroft threw Gettleman a sharp glare. “I won’t even dignify that with a response. Can we mount a rescue mission?”

“They're already in the atmosphere,” Gettleman replied, turning back to the image. “Their angle of decent is set, and their orbit will start to decay within a few hours. We can’t risk firing the main engines to put them back into higher orbit. Our new orbiter isn’t flight-ready yet. I'll have engineering look into the option, though. NASA will need at least forty-eight hours to prep any sort of rescue mission, which is too long.”

“Can we bring the
Naiad
in with only one engine?” Kroft asked.

Gettleman turned to the engineers. “Is that possible?”

The engineer seated at the far end of the table shrugged. “The orbiter uses both engines for a proper atmospheric insertion. We could try bringing her in on one engine, but it’s risky. She might go into an uncontrolled tumble.”

They all looked back at the wall and stared at the black and white projection, silently wondering how to work around that six-inch crack in the main combustion chamber, fire up the engines, and get their astronauts home safely.

Another engineer suggested, “How about half-thrust on the damaged engine?”

“Even at half-thrust, the crack could widen. Reduced power makes the engine useless for insertion.” Gettleman rubbed his chin as he stared at the image. “Maybe we can avoid using the engine altogether.”

“How can we do that?” asked Kroft.

“We could compensate for the lack of engine thrust by using the roll thrusters,” Gettleman said.

“Roll thruster engines can’t work as primaries.”

“Normally, they don’t. But couldn’t we remotely override the thrusters to take over for a primary engine? Then we can bring the orbiter down without using the damaged engine.”

The others thought about that for a moment and slowly nodded in agreement.

 “Sure,” said the engineer at the desk. “But what about the blackout period?” During reentry, the tremendous heat from atmospheric drag would strip electrons from the air around the orbiter, enveloping it in a sheath of ionized gasses that would block all radio communication. The blackout would last for several minutes.

“We can pre-program the orbiter computers before the blackout,” Gettleman explained, “and immediately resume direct control when communications return. There's a danger of the craft going out of control during the blackout, but if the flight crew is given the ability to manually override our instructions, then it should work.”

“I don’t want to put the astronauts in danger,” Kroft said.