Gravity

6

Cape Canaveral

Through the open window of his rental car, Jack inhaled the humid air of Merritt Island and smelled the jungle odors of damp soil and vegetation. The gateway to Kennedy Space Center was a surprisingly rural road slashing through orange groves, past ramshackle doughnut stands and weed-filled junkyards littered with discarded missile parts. Daylight was fading, and up ahead he saw the taillights of hundreds of cars, slowed to a crawl. Traffic was backing up, and soon his car would be trapped in the conga line of tourists searching for parking spots from which to view the morning launch.

There was no point trying to work his way through this mess. Nor did he see the point of trying to make it through the Port Canaveral gate. At this hour, the astronauts were asleep, anyway. He had arrived too late to say good-bye.

He pulled out of traffic, turned the car around, and headed back to Highway AIA. The road to Cocoa Beach.

Since the era of Alan Shepard and the original Mercury seven, Cocoa Beach had been party central for the astronauts, a slightly seedy strip of hotels and bars and T-shirt shops stretching along a spit of land trapped between the Banana River to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Jack knew the strip well, from the Tokyo Steak House to the Moon Shot Bar. Once he had jogged the same beach where John Glenn used to run. Only two years ago, he had stood on Jetty Park and gazed across the Banana River at launchpad 39A. At his shuttle, the bird that was supposed to take him into space. The memories were still clouded by pain. He remembered a long run on a sweltering afternoon. The sudden, excruciating stab in his flank, an agony so terrible he was brought to his knees. And then, through a haze of narcotics, the somber face of his flight surgeon gazing down at him in the ER, telling him the bad news. A kidney stone.

He’d been scrubbed from the mission.

Even worse, his future in spaceflight was in doubt. A history of kidney stones was one of the few conditions that could permanently ground an astronaut. Microgravity caused physiologic shifts in body fluids, resulting in dehydration. It also caused bones to leach out calcium. Together, these factors raised the risk of new kidney stones while in space—a risk NASA did not want to take. Though still in the astronaut corps, Jack had effectively been grounded. He had hung on for another year, hoping for a new flight assignment, but his name never again came up. He’d been reduced to an astronaut ghost, condemned to wander the halls of JSC forever in search of a mission.

Fast-forward to the present. Here he was, back in Canaveral, no longer an astronaut but just another tourist cruising down AlA, hungry and grumpy, with nowhere to go. Every hotel within forty miles was booked solid, and he was tired of driving.

He turned into the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel and headed for the bar.

The place had been spiffed up considerably since the last time he had been here. New carpet, new barstools, ferns hanging from the ceiling. It used to be a slightly shabby hangout, a tired old Hilton on a tired old tourist strip. There were no four-star hotels on Cocoa Beach. This was as close as you came to luxury digs.

He ordered a scotch and water and focused on the TV above the bar. It was tuned to the official NASA channel, and the shuttle Atlantis was on the screen, aglow with floodlights, ghostly vapor rising around it. Emma’s ride into space. He stared at the image, thinking of the miles of wiring inside that hull, the countless switches and data buses, the screws and joints and O-rings. Millions of things that could go wrong. It was a wonder that so little did go wrong, that men, imperfect as they were, could design and build a craft of such reliability that seven people are willing to strap themselves inside. Please let this launch be one of the perfect ones, he thought. A launch where everyone has done their job right, and not a screw is loose. It has to be perfect because my Emma will be aboard.

A woman sat down on the barstool beside him and said, ‘I wonder what they’re thinking now.’

He turned to look at her, his interest momentarily captured by a glimpse of thigh. She was a sleek and sunny blonde, with one of those blandly perfect faces whose features one forgets within an hour of parting. ‘What who’s thinking?’ he asked.

‘The astronauts. I wonder if they’re thinking, “Oh, shit, what’d I get myself into?”’

He shrugged and took a sip of scotch. ‘They’re not thinking anything right now. They’re all asleep.’

‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep.’

‘Their circadian rhythm’s completely readjusted. They probably went to bed two hours ago.’

‘No, I mean, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. I’d be lying awake thinking up ways to get out of it.’

He laughed. ‘I guarantee you, if they’re awake, it’s because they can’t wait to climb on board that baby and blast off.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re with the program, aren’t you?’

‘Was. Astronaut corps.’

‘Not now?’

He lifted the drink to his lips, felt the ice cubes clink sharply against his teeth. ‘I retired.’ Setting down his empty glass, he rose to his feet and saw disappointment flash in the woman’s eyes. He allowed himself a moment’s consideration of how the rest of the evening could go were he to stay and continue the conversation. Pleasant company. The promise of more to follow.

Instead he paid his bar tab and walked out of the Hilton.

At midnight, standing on the beach at Jetty Park, he gazed across the water toward pad 39B. I’m here, he thought. Even if you don’t know it, I’m with you.

He sat down on the sand and waited for dawn.

July 24

Houston

‘There’s a high-pressure system over the Gulf, which is expected to keep skies clear over Cape Canaveral, so RTLS landing is a go. Edwards Air Force Base is seeing intermittent clouds, but that’s expected to clear by launch. TAL site in Zaragoza, Spain, is still current and forecast go. TAL site in Morón, Spain, is also current and go. Ben Guerir, Morocco, is experiencing high winds and sandstorms, and at this time is not a viable TAL site.’

The first weather briefing of the day, broadcast simultaneously to Cape Canaveral, brought satisfactory news, and Flight Director Carpenter was happy. The launch was still a go. The poor landing conditions at Ben Guerir airport was only a minor concern, since the two alternate transatlantic-abort landing sites in Spain were clear. It was all backups within backups, anyway; the sites would be needed only in case of a major malfunction.

He glanced around at the rest of the ascent team to see if there were any new concerns. The nervous tension in the Flight Control Room was palpable and mounting, as it always was prior to a launch, and that was good. The day they weren’t tense was the day they made mistakes. Carpenter wanted his people on edge, with all synapses snapping a level of alertness that, at midnight, required an extra dose of adrenaline.

Carpenter’s nerves were as taut as everyone else’s, despite the fact that the countdown was right on schedule. The inspection team at Kennedy had finished their checks. The flight dynamics team had reconfirmed the launch time to the second. In the meantime, a far-flung cast of thousands was watching the same countdown clock.

At Cape Canaveral, where the shuttle was poised for launch, the same tension would be building in the firing room of the Launch Control Center, where a parallel team sat at their consoles, preparing for liftoff. As soon as the solid rocket boosters ignited, Houston’s Mission Control would take over. Though thousands of miles apart, the two control rooms in Houston and Canaveral were so closely interconnected by communications they might as well have been located in the same building.

In Huntsville, Alabama, at Marshall Space Flight Center, research teams were waiting for their experiments to be launched.

One hundred sixty miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral, Navy ships waited at sea to recover the solid rocket boosters, which would separate from the shuttle after burnout.

At contingency landing sites and tracking stations around the world, from NORAD in Colorado to the international airfield at Banjul, Gambia, men and women watched the clock.

And at this moment, seven people are preparing to place their lives in our hands.

Carpenter could see the astronauts now on closed-circuit TV as they were helped into their orange launch-and-entry suits. The images were live from Florida, but without audio. Carpenter found himself pausing for a moment to study their faces. Though none of them revealed a trace of fear, he knew it had to be there, beneath their beaming expressions. The racing pulse, the zing of nervousness. They knew the risks, and they had to be scared. Seeing them on the screen was a sobering reminder to ground personnel that seven human beings were counting on them to do their jobs right.

Carpenter tore his gaze from the video monitor and focused his attention back on his team of flight controllers, seated at the sixteen consoles. Though he knew each member of the team by name, he addressed them by their missioncommand positions, their titles reduced to the shorthand call signs that was NASA-speak. The guidance officer was nicknamed GDO. The spacecraft communicator was Capcom. The propulsion systems engineer was Prop. The trajectory officer was Traj. Flight surgeon was shortened to Surgeon. And Carpenter went by the call sign of Flight.

The countdown came out of the scheduled T-minus-three-hours hold. The mission was still a go.

Carpenter stuck his hand in his pocket and gave his shamrock key ring a jingle. It was his private good-luck ritual. Even engineers have their superstitions.

Let nothing go wrong, he thought. Not on my watch.

Cape Canaveral

The Astrovan ride from the O and C building to launchpad 39B took fifteen minutes. It was a strangely silent ride, none of the crew saying much. Just a half hour before, while suiting up, they had been joking and laughing in that sharp and electric tone that comes when one’s nerves are raw with excitement. The tension had been building since the moment they had been awakened at two-thirty for the traditional steak and eggs breakfast. Through the weather briefing, the suiting up, the prelaunch ritual of dealing out playing cards for the best poker hand, they had all been a little too noisy and cheerful, all engines roaring with confidence.

Now they’d fallen silent.

The van came to a stop. Chenoweth, the rookie, seated beside Emma, muttered, ‘I never thought diaper rash would be one of the job hazards.’

She had to laugh. They were all wearing Depend adult diapers under their bulky flight suits; it would be a long three hours until liftoff.

With help from the launchpad technicians, Emma stepped out of the van. For a moment she paused on the pad, gazing up in wonder at the thirty-story shuttle, ablaze with spotlights. The last time she’d visited the pad, five days ago, the only sounds she’d heard were the sea wind and the birds. Now the spacecraft itself had come to life, rumbling and smoking like a waking dragon, as volatile propellants boiled inside the fuel tank.

They rode the elevator up to Level 195 and stepped onto the grated catwalk. It was still night, but the sky was washed out by the pad lights, and she could barely get a glimpse of the stars overhead. The blackness of space was waiting.

In the sterile white room, technicians in lint-free ‘bunny’ suits helped the crew, one by one, through the hatch and into the orbiter. The commander and pilot were seated first. Emma, assigned to mid-deck, was the last to be assisted. She settled back into her padded seat, buckles secured, helmet in place, and gave a thumbs-up.

The hatch swung shut, closing the crew off from the outside.

Emma could hear her own heartbeat. Even through the air-to-ground voice checks chattering over her comm unit, through the gurgles and groans of the awakening shuttle, the thud of her own heart came through in a steady drumbeat. As a middeck passenger, she had little to do in the next two hours but sit and think; the preflight checks would be conducted by the flight-deck crew. She had no view of the outside, nothing to stare at except the stowage area and food pantry.

Outside, dawn would soon light the sky, and pelicans would skim the surf at Playalinda Beach.

She took a deep breath and settled back to wait.

Jack sat on the beach and watched the sun come up.

He was not alone in Jetty Park. The sightseers had been gathering since before midnight, the arriving cars forming an endless line of headlights creeping along the Bee Line Expressway, some peeling north toward Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, the others continuing across the Banana River to the city of Cape Canaveral. The viewing would be good from either location. The crowd around him was in a holiday mood, with beach towels and picnic baskets. He heard laughter and loud radios and the bawling of sleepy children. Surrounded by that swirl of celebrants, he was a silent presence, a man alone with his thoughts and fears.

As the sun cleared the horizon, he stared north, toward the launchpad. She would be aboard Atlantis now, strapped in and waiting. Excited and happy and a little afraid.

He heard a child say, ‘That’s a bad man, Mommy,’ and he turned to look at the girl. They gazed at each other for a moment, a tiny blond princess locking eyes with an unshaven and very disheveled man. The mother snatched the girl into her arms and quickly moved to a safer spot on the beach.

Jack gave a wry shake of his head and once again turned his gaze northward. Toward Emma.

Houston

The Flight Control Room had turned deceptively quiet. It was twenty minutes till launch—time to confirm it was still a go. All the back-room controllers had completed their systems checks, and now the front room was ready to be polled.

In a calm voice, Carpenter went down the list, requesting verbal confirmation from each frontroom controller.

‘Fido?’ asked Carpenter.

‘Fido is go,’ said the flight dynamics officer.

‘Guido?’

‘Guidance is go.’

‘Surgeon?’

‘Surgeon is go.’

‘DPS?’

‘Data Processing is go.’

When Carpenter had polled them all and received affirmatives from all, he gave a brisk nod to the room.

‘Houston, are you go?’ asked the launch director in Cape Canaveral.

‘Mission Control is go,’ affirmed Carpenter.

The launch director’s traditional message to the shuttle crew was heard by everyone at Houston’s Mission Control.

‘Atlantis, you are a go. From all of us at the Cape, good luck and Godspeed.’

‘Launch Control, this is Atlantis,’ they heard Commander Vance respond. ‘Thanks for gettin’ this bird ready to fly.’

Cape Canaveral

Emma closed and locked her visor and turned on her oxygen supply. Two minutes till liftoff. Cocooned and isolated in her suit, she had nothing to do but count the seconds. She felt the shudder of the main engines gimballing into launch position.

T minus thirty seconds. The electrical link to ground control was now severed, and the onboard computers took control.

Her heart accelerated, the adrenaline roaring through her veins. As she listened to the countdown, she knew, second by second, what to expect, could see in her mind’s eye the sequence of events that were now playing out.

At T minus eight seconds, thousands of gallons of water were dumped beneath the launchpad to suppress the roar of the engines.

At T minus five, the onboard computers opened the valves to allow liquid oxygen and hydrogen to travel into the main engines.

She felt the shuttle jerk sideways as the three main engines ignited, the spacecraft straining against the bolts that still harnessed it to the launchpad.

Four. Three. Two…The point of no return.

She held her breath, hands gripped tight, as the solid rocket boosters ignited. The turbulence was bone-shaking, the roar so painfully loud she could not hear communications through her headset. She had to clamp her jaw shut to stop her teeth from slamming together. Now she felt the shuttle roll into its planned arc over the Atlantic, and her body was shoved back against the seat by the acceleration to three g’s. Her limbs were so heavy she could barely move them, the vibrations so violent it seemed the orbiter would surely fly apart into pieces. They were at Max Q, the peak of turbulence, and Commander Vance announced he was throttling back the main engines. In less than a minute, he would throttle up again to full thrust.

As the seconds ticked by, as the helmet rattled around her head, and the force of liftoff pressed like an unyielding hand against her chest, she felt a fresh lick of apprehension. This was the point during launch when Challenger had exploded.

Emma closed her eyes and remembered the simulation with Hazel two weeks ago. They were now approaching the point where everything in the sim had started to go wrong, where they’d been forced into an RTLS abort, and then Kittredge had lost control of the orbiter. This was a critical moment in the launch, and there was nothing she could do but lie back and hope that real life was more forgiving than a simulation.

Over the headset she heard Vance say, ‘Control, this is Atlantis. Throttling up.’

‘Roger, Atlantis. Throttle up.’

Jack stood with his gaze cast skyward, his heart in his throat, as the shuttle lifted into the sky. He heard the crackling of the solid rocket boosters as they spewed out twin fountains of fire. The trail of exhaust climbed higher, sketched by the glinting pinpoint of the shuttle. All around him, the crowd burst out in applause. A perfect launch, they all thought. But Jack knew there were too many things that could still go wrong.

Suddenly he was frantic that he’d lost track of the seconds. How much time had elapsed? Had they passed through Max Q? He shielded his eyes against the morning sunlight, straining to see Atlantis, but able to make out only the plume of exhaust.

Already the crowd had started to drift back to their cars.

He remained frozen, waiting in dread. He saw no terrible explosion. No black smoke. No nightmare.

Atlantis had safely escaped the earth and was now hurtling through space.

He felt tears trickle down his cheeks, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. He let them fall as he continued to gaze at the sky, at the dissipating trail of smoke that marked his wife’s ascent into the heavens.