Station Breaker

13 Bailout

"Are you ready, David?" asks the voice on the speakerphone.

"Define, "ready" for me. What are my other options?"

"There are no other options. We'll probably lose contact when you get to ground. You need to find Wallman and bring him the chip."

"Yeah, about that. How?"

"I'll tell you when it's time to know."

"What if I lose this phone?"

"Don't lose it."

"Yeah, but let's assume for a moment I do. Then what?"

There's a very long pause that's disconcerting. Among all the planning for dramatic reentry burns and take-offs, my unseen friend forgot to account for the most basic situation — what happens if we lose contact?

Besides what happens on the ground — assuming I make it there in one living piece — there's the question of the next several minutes. I'm not getting any telemetry from Nashville. This is flying blind at its worst.

In the olden days, when a space capsule returned to Earth, it lost communication with Earth for several minutes because all the ionized air from the heat shield formed a kind of Faraday cage blocking radio signals. Reentry had to be carefully planned in advance and it was the pilot's job to make sure everything was on course.

Since the Space Shuttle had such a large surface area, there was actually a gap in the ionized bubble above it where they could send and receive communications via satellite, get telemetry and carry on conversations all the way down.

For smaller craft, like the Unicorn and the Soyuz, this problem persisted until the development of a laser-based system. It doesn't allow for huge data streams, but it's enough to get by. Having another set of eyes tell you everything looks fine is rather reassuring.

In the simulator you train for all kinds of situations, including having no support from ground control.

Theoretically, the Unicorn and Alicorn, the rocket that launches the Unicorn into orbit, can run entirely by themselves. If one second after liftoff a lightning strike took out mission control, the automatic systems would take the Unicorn to orbit and the Alicorn's two stages would either land on the pad if there was an okay to proceed signal, or dump themselves in the ocean.

So, yeah, I don't have to have anybody on Earth in order to land, but it would be kind of nice.

"David, we will lose contact during reentry. But I'm confident you'll know how to handle this. Put your parachute on now before reentry begins. Things will get bumpy."

I reluctantly slide the harness over me. The straps are wide enough to go over my suit. Peterson, or whoever packed her bag put a little more thought into this than the voice on the phone.

To make this work, I'm going to have to have my hand on the stick as I watch the altimeter and squeeze the throttle at the right moment, tilting the craft at an angle.

So I don't drop the side hatch on a schoolyard filled with children, I'll have to blow it right when I'm over the bay — a bay I don't even know the name of.

"Okay, I have your contact point. Once you land, go to the train station by the Maracanã football stadium. Someone will meet you there."

"Did you just decide this now?"

"We're trying to adjust to the situation."

"What if there's a problem?" Bennet taught me to always have a backup.

"Hold on… okay, if we lose contact on the ground look for more information from this Twitter handle…"

A text message pops up saying "@CapricornZero."

"Seriously? I'm trusting my life to someone who just decided to create a Twitter account based on an OJ Simpson movie?"

"Focus on reentry, David. That's all you need to worry about now. Once you make it to the station, everything will be fine."

I'm not sure if I like the totality of "fine." But there's no point in arguing that point right now. I'm about to dip down into the atmosphere and experience some severe turbulence.

If I hit it wrong, I can bounce back up and miss my intended landing zone, so I keep a careful eye on the display panel.

It starts to shimmy, then begins to jostle the craft like a speedboat crashing through waves — if the waves were hitting your hull at 17,000 miles an hour.

Below me, the heat shield is starting to absorb all that energy. I pray that the Russians didn't poke a hole in the surface. One tiny gap is all it takes and the whole ship is lost.

While the new Pica-Z material is self-healing and can fill in gaps created by micrometeorite strikes, I'm not sure if it has been tested for mad Russian lasers yet. I'll have to ask the iCosmos engineers if they really thought of every contingency…

The first part of reentry feels like an airplane trying to slow down after a landing — pressing me into my seat as my body's inertia pushes against the spaceship which is now being slowed down by the thin air it's slamming into.

Outside the window I can see the coronal glow of the ionized air. Technically speaking, the air is so hot the electrons leap out of their orbits and fly around like some kind of electric swinger party. Which means basically, I'm a giant neon sign right now.

Now is a good time to close my helmet in the event of a hull puncture that could instantly incinerate me.

I leave the phone next to my ear, although I haven't heard anything from my helper.

Whatever system he was using to communicate with me, ain't going to work during this period. So if I want to mutiny and choose my own path, now is the time.

I scan the options on my control panel and contemplate it.

I could still adjust my reentry and bring myself down somewhere where I speak the language.

It's crunch time, David. Yes, he probably saved me from the Russians, but that doesn't mean he's my pal.

While I trust he doesn't want me to die before getting to the ground, he seems very adamant that I don't link back up with iCosmos or US authorities. And that, my friend, is a tiny bit suspicious.

You have seconds to decide if you're going to say "Olá" or whatever the Brazilian-Portuguese version of hello is supposed to be, or try to land on US soil and pray the kill-sats are imaginary and the Russian ground teams don't reach you in time.

Screw it. Let's see if the senhoras are wearing their string bikinis this time of year.

If I don't die, it'll give me something to think about when I'm in Federal prison or locked up in some Siberian gulag.