Orbit

Chapter 15

It was inevitable, Diana thinks, and in some ways she’s surprised it took this long. It’s minutes past five P.M. western time and the sun is hanging low, Intrepid has been gone for almost ten hours.

The six flat-panel TV screens arrayed along the wall at the end of her desk are one-by-one posting their versions of a breaking news alert, adding file photos of ASA’s spacecraft, first on Fox News and now on MSNBC. She’s trying to keep up, toggling on the sound one by one to hear the same basic message: “A private spacecraft launched this morning has lost communication and may be in trouble.”

Two secretaries are handling the rising tide of media inquiries, and she’s staying out of contact to think and write a statement for Richard. She sees no easy or quick solution to this nightmare, and despite her concern for both Bill Campbell and Kip Dawson, her job is to play this situation with infinite grace.

The tie-line from Mission Control rings.

“Diana? Richard. You called?”

She briefs him on the approaching media storm, before adding the essence of the storm warning, “There are satellite trucks being scrambled right now in L.A., and I’m working on a statement, but I need about fifteen minutes. You are going to be our face, right?”

“No. I want you to be the face.”

“Not a good idea, Richard. You have the major skin in this game. They look at me as a flack.”

The sigh she hears from the other end worries her. He’s a good man and a good leader, but in the last six hours he’s been all but falling apart. This may be a major mistake.

“Whatever you think, Diana,” he says. “When do you want me over there?”

“Within the hour, if you can. Any changes?”

“No.” His reply is a bit too curt. She knows something new has happened. “Who got it first?” he adds.

“The story?”

“Yes. Who broke it?”

Strange he’d ask that.

“The Washington Post. They slammed it on their Web site twenty minutes ago and gave it to their partners, MSNBC and NBC, and it’s been mushrooming since then.”

“ABC and CBS?”

“They’ve called, too. I’m not returning calls for another hour, but the girls are handling it. Oh, Richard… someone did talk to Kip Dawson’s wife, right?”

“Arleigh was going to.”

“If he didn’t, she’ll find out the wrong way within minutes.”

“Hold on.” Within half a minute he’s back. “Yes, thank God, he did it.”

“Anything else I… need to know?”

More silence. Telling, pregnant silence, unbroken by an offered explanation, and she elects to sidestep it.

“Okay, you tell me whatever you think I need to know when I need to know it. Just don’t let me twist in the wind.”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“Are we going to get them back, Richard?”

She fears the answer to the question she’s blurted, but beneath the facade she’s struggling to maintain, she feels like a frightened little girl watching the twisting trails of a shattered Challenger against the blue of her mind’s eye.

“I don’t know, Diana. I do know we’re going to try everything.”

The chief of security leans into John Kent’s newly reoccupied office with a grin on his face and something in his hand, aware the chief astronaut is concentrating totally on the deluge of papers before him.

“Hey, John?”

Kent looks up, more curious than startled, and smiles. “Daniel. Missed the fireworks, did you?”

Daniel walks in, fanning the air with a small plastic security badge. “I was crushed I didn’t get to escort you out at gunpoint myself.”

“Yeah, right,” Kent laughs, recalling the hours the two of them have spent talking about security matters on one of the post-9/11 committees.

“But I’m happy to bring you back a new badge, freshly minted with zero limitations and even a nice, fresh clip.”

“Didn’t know you made house calls.”

“Oh, indeed. When one gets a call from the office of the President directing immediate reinstatement of even an Air Force guy, I hop to.” He lays the badge on the overburdened desk, his expression turning serious. “I heard what you’re working on. Can we do it? Launch that fast, I mean?”

Kent meets his eyes. “I don’t know, but the President says it’s a national priority to try, so… I’m working on it.”

“I’ll leave you alone, then.” He hesitates halfway to the door. “I knew Bill Campbell, too, you know.”

John is nodding, aware of the past tense. “Could be he’s still with us, Dan, and just hurt.”

“Could be.”

“But we’re going up regardless.”

“Yeah. You might call the alternative Shear madness.”

John shakes his head, a sworn enemy of puns. “Get out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door closes and John works back through a list just e-mailed in from the Cape. His clandestine effort has now become the twenty-four/seven focus of the entire Kennedy Space Center, and the orbiter is already on its way aboard the crawler-transporter from the vehicle assembly building to Pad 39B, the nearly fourteen million pounds of launcher and spacecraft moving at less than a mile per hour.

John stops for a second, placing the pencil he’s been using on the desk and sitting back to clear his head.

He doesn’t envy Bill Campbell’s current dilemma, whatever it is, but he’s watched the project in the Mojave with a certain longing for the last five years, knowing he’s in Houston nursing a dinosaur that doesn’t see the asteroid-sized meteor coming. To be able to just fly into space rather than blast and claw a sixteen-story building into orbit each time should have been the national focus for years. But here they are with only two ships left, both of them essentially flying museum pieces. It’s no wonder, he thinks, that all versions of Star Trek were so popular in the space community. For NASA, watching the possibilities of twenty-third century technology each week was the equivalent of a centurion of ancient Rome getting a look at M-16 rifles, F-15 fighters, and cruise missiles.

John leans back into the calculations. It will be mid-morning before the final assessment can be made on whether an early rescue launch is possible, and the decision will not be his.

And despite his hostility to Geoff Shear and his megalomaniacal tendencies, he shares the same nightmarish worry: Another shuttle loss from pressing safety limits is unthinkable.