Orbit

Chapter 18

“Here’s our problem, General.”

On one of the huge screens an amazing furball of moving blue dots is gyrating, the dots orbiting the planet they’re almost obscuring. General Risen has seen this many times, the 3-D depiction representing the orbiting garbage dump of space junk whirling around the Earth. But now a single object begins to blink red, and the senior master sergeant controlling the display adds a circle around it and then drops out all but it.

“How long until impact,” Risen asks, “…and are we absolutely sure?”

“Six hours, twenty-four minutes, sir, and the answer is yes, it’ll be a high probability of a conjunction—a direct hit. There’s a kind of football-shaped zone of probable flight path around it, but… it looks potentially fatal to me.”

“How large is the object? Any estimate?”

“General, we’re sure this is one of the shroud halves off a 1986 Soviet Proton rocket. That means more than a hundred pounds.”

He leans forward, scanning the waiting, worried faces of the six men in front of him as they sit in the middle of the main Cheyenne Mountain war room. As commander, he’s rolled his staff car through the vaultlike blast door and climbed into the six-story, spring-mounted building too many times to count, but each time there’s been a crisis or an alert, a special quiet tension fills the place like nowhere else. That biologic electricity now crackles unseen among them as they wait for their commander to assess what their computers discovered less than an hour ago.

The call to his predawn bedroom brought him running.

“Did ASA use Space Command’s clearance procedures for this orbital insertion? In other words, that piece of junk has been up there one helluva long time and we’ve been tracking it. How come they used this precise orbit and we’re only now seeing the conflict?”

“Their orbital flight plan terminated yesterday, sir. They weren’t supposed to be where they are.”

Chris Risen drops his head and grimaces, the know-all senior commander caught in a simple but embarrassing mistake.

“And that dumb question, guys, was just my daily reminder that I’m a carbon-based unit and thus imperfect, stars or not.”

“Easy mistake, sir.”

“We’ve talked to ASA?”

“Yes, General, we’ve already alerted ASA’s Mission Control, but… they have no contact and can’t do anything to alter the spacecraft’s course.”

He nods, aware of the consternation NORAD’s call will have caused in Mojave.

“Sir,” the duty controller, a colonel, adds, “I’m stating the obvious, but the collision won’t be survivable.”

“Understood.”

“And, sir… worse is the fact that we calculate literally thousands of individual debris orbits will result, quite a few of them becoming elliptical and threatening other altitudes. A broken-up shroud would present far less hazard than the rain of fragments from a shattered spacecraft.”

Chris meets the colonel’s eyes for just a moment, getting the message. There are a few top-secret defensive abilities that are known to only a tiny handful of NORAD senior officers, officially denied capabilities that are never to be spoken of in the presence of uncleared individuals. Not even the highly trained control room personnel.

Risen gets to his feet, ever mindful of the delicate balance between approachable leader and the strong, impeccable commander. “All right. Carry on. I’ve got some calls to make.”

He makes his way to one of the glassed-in booths at the rear of the control room and picks up a tie-line maintained twenty-four hours a day by a crack team of specialists, a line that can reach the President almost anywhere at any moment. It is a capability approached with great care and some fear. Lifting the handset bypasses the chain of command, and if the reason isn’t as rock solid as the mountain around them, careers can be ended.

Even that of a four-star general.

A voice most of the nation instantly recognizes comes on the other end. It’s just past 7 A.M. in Washington, and Chris assumes the President is already away from the family quarters, but the sound of rustling bedcovers, a momentary comment from the First Lady, and a deep, sleepy voice betray the assumption.

“Yes?”

“Mr. President, General Risen at NORAD. My apologies, sir, but we have a situation in accordance with your directive yesterday on the private spacecraft.”

“Good morning, Chris. I’m just being lazy getting up. What’s up?”

His explanation is crisp and clear, and there’s a long pause from the other end before the commander in chief sighs.

“What do you recommend? And we are on a secure line, right?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. President, with the considerable damage this will do to orbital safety and the tremendous increase in debris… not to mention the loss of life… I recommend we use Longbow.”

“Really? Won’t our buddies across both ponds see what we’re doing?”

“Sir, we have to assume they will. The Russians, Chinese, French, and perhaps the European Space Agency will probably be watching. The National Reconnaissance Office is the better one to answer that.”

“But you think it’s about time they knew our capabilities anyway, right? I mean, it’s been thirty years and five presidents since we made a show of it.”

“Sir, you’re asking me a policy question I’m not qualified to answer.”

“Yeah, Chris, you’re right. That’s unfair of me. Look, I’m glad you brought this straight to me. I know it’s tough to jump the chain even in your position, but I need that direct contact. I realize this was a judgment call and not out of the Defcon procedures.”

“Thank you, sir. I thought it was justified, because of your statements yesterday on television.”

“You say we have six hours left?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s barely any time. Okay. I’ve got some tough questions to ask an array of people.”

“We’ll be here, sir.”

“By the way, I’m told the astronaut up there is a friend of yours.”

How on earth does he know that? Chris wonders, a flash of caution rocketing through his head about the source of the information and whether it was passed to the President honestly or with malicious intent. Was someone in the Pentagon waiting in the weeds for him?

“Yes, sir,” he answers. “Bill Campbell was a NASA astronaut and a fellow Air Force pilot and a friend. But I…”

“That’s what makes us a great nation, Chris. Not that we know everyone, but that we’re sufficiently family to care. That isn’t an object up there, it’s two of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Gotta go. Hang in there, General. You are appreciated.”

Chris replaces the receiver with a smile. “You are appreciated,” is a signature tag line unique to this chief executive and grossly overreported by the media, but Chris knows the man means it. And despite the fact that his Air Force peers consider it an eye-roller and call it a “warm fuzzy,” the President’s appreciation is, well, appreciated.

And as he stands to go, Chris Risen gives himself just a few seconds to embrace that very human pat on the head from the most powerful office holder in the world.

Diana feels like rubbing her eyes, but with no time to find a mirror and assess or repair the effect a vigorous eye rub would have on her makeup, she stifles the urge, fussing with the microphone clipped to the collar of her blouse instead.

This is the eighth interview so far, she counts, and there will be dozens more since Richard’s refusal to do anymore himself. She gets into the zone mentally, summoning the vocal tone and the mental sharpness she’s going to need, like an actor with the flu taking the stage and forcing away the pain and the weakness for a few hours. The right tone, the right phrases, the right balance will be critical with each interview… not that she isn’t personally torn up and as scared as everyone else over what’s happening. But “torn up and scared” would be the wrong message. What the public must see is strength, control, concern, cautious optimism, and absolute realism. In the public mind, she is the company, and one misstep on camera could theoretically destroy it.

She only half listens to the correspondent as he begins his report next to her, and shifts her eyes to him only on the cue of the question.

“Ms. Ross, there’s been no radio contact of any sort, correct? How could that happen?”

“It’s not easy for that to happen. A whole host of radios had to have been knocked out, including several backups, but however it happened, we have lost all radio contact, both voice and telemetry. Yet we’re sure, through NASA’s help with their long-range cameras, that the spacecraft is still powered and pressurized, and that someone is at the controls.”

“Some one, versus both of them?”

“I’m not going to speculate beyond that. The spacecraft was obviously damaged. NASA, however, has seen solid evidence of sentient human control of the vehicle. But since we can’t talk to them, we don’t know what their status is. I’d like to add that I think it’s pretty remarkable that, regardless of the radio problem, they were apparently struck by a high speed object and yet the craft remains livable. That’s an accolade to the engineering.”

“But why haven’t they reentered and landed?”

“There could be a variety of reasons, not all of them bad. But again, we just do not know. What we are sure of is that all our carefully planned emergency procedures are in progress, and the entire space community is joining hands to help get them back safely.”

“You can’t fly another of your ships up there and rescue them?”

“We only have one other ship at this time, and that very operation is being considered as we speak, yes.”

“And how long do they have? How much air?”

“Four days at least. They are in no danger right now, but we wouldn’t want to see them stay up there more than a few more days.”

Something catches her eye off camera and Diana glances to her right, spotting Richard, who is peeking around the corner and gesturing to her to finish and follow.

“I hope you’ll excuse me, but I have to go attend to something. We’ll keep you briefed.”

The reporter turns to the camera as Diana unclips the microphone and hands it off, pushing past six other camera crews to hurry from the room.

Her CEO is waiting at the end of the hallway, his expression even more sallow than before, and she wonders how that’s possible.

“What?”

“In here.”

She follows him into an empty office and closes the door.

“Diana, they’ve stayed up there too long.”

“Excuse me, isn’t that a ‘Well, duh!’ statement?”

“No, no… I mean, our orbital debris clearance was only good for half a day. They were never supposed to be in that orbit this long.”

“Richard, you’re trying to tell me something. Stop dancing.”

He sinks into the nearest chair, defeated. “NORAD called. There’s a piece of an old Russian booster in a polar orbit that’s going to take them out inside three hours.”

"What?"

“They said it’s a dead-on collision—they called it a conjunction—from the side at seventeen thousand miles per hour. It won’t be survivable.”

It’s her turn to be staggered, and she leans on the edge of the desk to absorb the news.

“There’s nothing we can do?” she asks.

“Maybe if we could talk to them! Otherwise, they’ll never see it coming.”

“God!”

“I know it.”

“Well… do we have to tell the world? I’d recommend we sit on it for a while at least.”

“Okay.”

“And, Richard, there’s one other thing, though it’s going to make me sound even colder than before.”

“What’s that?”

“Which is better? A catastrophic collision we can’t control instantly ending it, or a spacecraft with two dead people in it circling for a half century?”

“Good God, Diana!”

“Sorry, but think about it. Not that we can do anything.”

He’s on his feet and she can tell it was the wrong thing to throw at him. His frustration and panic have been looking for a target and she just handed him one.

“Don’t you have any feelings at all?”

“Of course! But it’s my…”

“What the hell’s the matter with you? Damage control is one thing, but… but…”

“Richard! There are two guys up there I care about. I was trying to make you feel a little less panicked.”

“Two you care about? I mean, I know you know Bill…”

She’s blushing and can’t figure out why. There’s no love interest regarding Kip Dawson, but she remembers his big eyes lighting up and his little-boy enthusiasm and suddenly thinking about him being smashed to atoms after the terror he’s already been through is too much. She feels the tears before she realizes they’re falling, and she lets Richard gather her into his arms.

“I’m sorry!” she says, heartfelt.

“Me, too,” he answers. “I apologize.”

They part awkwardly and she searches for a Kleenex. “I’ve got cameras waiting. I’m not telling them this. And I still think you should be the one doing these interviews.”

“I can’t. And you’re doing wonderfully.”

She turns to the door and stops to look back.

“Richard, is it truly unavoidable?”

He nods sadly. “Unless we can talk to them or they light off the rocket or unless NORAD is wrong. There’s just nothing we can do.”

“I guess we can pray. I haven’t done a lot of that for a very long time.”