Moonfall

3.

Antonia Mabry, Mission Control 4:11 A.M.

Unlike the moonbuses and ferries, whose power plants were either on or off, and operated with a constant power flow, the space planes and the Lowell were capable of modulating thrust. Feinberg, during the crush of the previous thirty-six hours, had sat with NASA engineers, reducing the mission objectives to a set of operational requirements. The requirements had been incorporated into a plan and passed on to a team of specialists to write a set of instructions. The instructions had been loaded into computers on board both the Mabry and the Kordeshev, to provide a backup against the possibility of an accident decapitating the project.

The program would be self-correcting, would monitor results from the seven drive ships through an array of sensors mounted on all three ferries, and would make adjustments as conditions warranted. One of the uncertainties that the planners faced, perhaps the one they perceived as most hazardous, was the possibility of a glitch in the software, which there had been no time to test.

It was this bug factor that was uppermost in Feinberg's thoughts. He was watching Mabry's radio operator, who'd set up shop in the passenger cabin (which had been appropriated for Mission Control) to expedite communications. He was talking not only with the other ships, but with the Orbital Lab, which was monitoring the operation for the rest of the scientific community.

Wes Feinberg had never doubted his own abilities. He'd left Massachusetts for Atlanta with his usual cool demeanor. His colleagues had wished him luck and openly admired his composure under what they perceived as enormous pressure. He'd reassured them everything was under control. But he'd no sooner lifted into the cool skies of New England before he'd begun to feel his first doubts. His teeth had been literally chattering during the conference at Hartsfield. He should have brought something to calm himself, but he didn't use tranquilizers, hadn't taken one since his father's funeral thirty years before. So he never thought of resorting to medication, and if using medication occurred to him now, he shrugged it away as an open display of weakness.

He tried to keep focused on the operation, to remember who he was, and why people had so much confidence in him. He'd gone over his own numbers time and again, like a man who keeps going back to make sure he's locked his front door. The problem was that, despite the surveys and analyses, he couldn't be sure of everything. He'd estimated, for example, the object's mass. He'd gauged the distribution of that mass. The tumble introduced a factor that, if not chaotic, could nevertheless only have been pinned down precisely by a reasonably extensive series of observations rather than the brief period for imaging they'd had. All in all, his calculations involved too many assumptions to allow any real degree of comfort.

Mabry was a hundred kilometers from the Possum, where it could more easily measure the movement of the object against marker stars. If they did not get the desired results, if the rock didn't accelerate according to plan, or did not change its attitude as required, Feinberg would have to make seat-of-the-pants adjustments. And that, he realized somberly, would be beyond almost anyone's capabilities. Maybe even his. Percival Lowell Flight Deck. 4:12 A.M.

Unlike the SSTO pilots, who had to conserve fuel, Rachel had seen no reason to shut down her power plant. She sat at the controls, with the president of the United States in the right-hand seat, looking straight ahead at the foreshortened landscape, the landscape that ran a hundred meters or so and curled up into a ridge that resembled an approaching wave. She was not comfortable. All her training, all her instincts, honed over a lifetime with high-performance vehicles, told her that when the computer in Orly Carpenter's ferry put the pedal to the floor, the Lowell was going to roar out of Jonathan Porter's cables, rip her belly apart on the rocks, and slam into the ridge.

"Two minutes," said the voice from Mabry.

Lee Cochran was seated behind the president, trying to look relaxed. Keith Morley was in back somewhere. They were all wearing p-suits.

"Rachel, you okay?" asked Charlie.

That was an embarrassment. Here she was, sitting beside a politician, for God's sake, and he was cooler than she was. She wondered if he was aware what would happen if Jonathan's collection of pegs and wires didn't work. "Sure," she said.

He tugged at his harness, trying to get comfortable in the p-suit, which was simply too bulky. That he was a big man himself did not help conditions. "Answer a question for me," he said. "If this whole operation's being handled by computer from the ferry, why are we even here? The pilots, I mean?"

"We're backups," she said. "In case something goes wrong. Anyhow, I doubt they had time to write the programs for a completely automated operation. This is a little bit rushed."

"One minute."

"Okay," she said. "Get ready. Here we go." SSTO Arlington Flight Deck. 4:13 A.M.

The engines rumbled reassuringly.

A week ago George had been looking forward to an evening with Annie Blink, a bright, magnetic blond, a lady with an absurd name who said yes her name was a problem and she had every intention of changing it eventually but she was being careful because she didn't want to go through the rest of her life with another funny name and people trying to hold back grins when she introduced herself. And to tell the truth, George, Culver sounds suspect.

He'd broken through that evening and taken her to bed, the first time. The only time. The night had been full of laughter and passion and he'd decided Annie was the one for him. The future had looked pretty good last Tuesday.

"Thirty seconds."

He looked back at Mary and Curt. They were checking each other's suits.

He listened to his own breathing. Inside the helmet, he felt isolated, alone. Lights were moving above; it was one of the ferries; and there was another set of lights, on the surface, to starboard. That was the Russian-based unit. Moscow. A third spacecraft, Tokyo, was far forward on the Plain. Atlanta, London, Berlin, and the Lowell, were in the Back Country.

Mary, who wasn't much given to emotional displays, reached over unexpectedly and squeezed his wrist. He could barely feel the gesture through the suit. He glanced at her and saw that her lips were moving.

Yeah. If there'd ever been a moment for divine intervention, this was it. Antonia Mabry, Mission Control. 4:14 A.M.

"Zero."

Feinberg pushed the button. London and Tokyo, the forward vessels on the Plain and in the Back Country, went to full thrust.

Simultaneously Carpenter activated the simulation. The main screen acquired an image of how the Possum should react; and an overlay in red depicted what was actually happening. So long as there was no divergence between white and red graphics, they would be okay.

The tension in the compartment was so great that Feinberg actually felt faint. The space had become claustrophobic, and he would have done almost anything to get normal gravity. His stomach pressed on his heart.

He'd found it difficult to eat since leaving Atlanta. All his anatomical systems seemed to be in disarray. He wished he'd insisted on staying at the AstroLab, where he'd have been more effective because he wouldn't have been constantly ill.

The program brought in the other engines, went to full thrust here, quarter thrust there. It played the seven power plants like a symphony.

At zero plus one minute the tumble began to slow. The Possum edged toward stability.

Feinberg had placed Lowell at the rear of the Possum to take full advantage of its nuclear capability. There it would run throughout the operation at full power, acting as a kind of outboard motor.

The phone, surprisingly, did not ring. Carpenter had thought Haskell would be on it constantly, demanding updates throughout the operation, wasting his time. But it remained silent.