Earth Bound (28 page)

The launch itself came and went uneventfully on a Friday morning. ASD’s first two-man crew—Greg Henkins and Mitch Dunsford—exited the Earth without problem. They were supposed to establish their orbit and then slowly tweak it in order to meet with the dummy capsule ASD had sent up the day before.

The astronauts had sixteen hours of orbiting to do before the rendezvous. Then they’d line up and dock, with the computers on board handling most of the fine maneuvering. If this was successful, ASD planned to launch two separate manned capsules and have them dock later this year—a project Maynard was salivating over. The jerks.

Once the launch was finished, Charlie had little to do but pace and check in with the various sensors and life support computers.

After she’d done that for a bit, she went into the simulation laboratory to take another look. She was going to provide proper oversight, even if no one else was.

“How is everything operating?” she asked Dave.

“After they replaced those fuses in the control room”—that had been a tense ten minutes—“everything seems to be going fine.”

“And the data we’re getting from Maynard?”

“They’re saying everything is on track.” Dave shrugged at her, apologetic and guilty.

Charlie could have chewed tin foil. It was one thing for Maynard to have been awarded this contract, but Stan and Hal would be insufferable if all her concerns for seven months had been for naught. They’d never see that even if everything worked perfectly, her questions were still valid. They’d take it all as confirmation to move ahead with everything they had planned. Hell, they’d probably give half of what ASD was doing now to various private companies, leaving nothing, not even oversight, for them.

She didn’t allow herself even to sigh. “All right. You let me know if there’s anything that looks off.”

She went back to her office and ate half a ham sandwich she’d packed that morning. Since she anticipated being in the office until late, maybe all night, she’d brought some food in a pail like a damn construction worker.

She was still eating angrily when Beverly stuck in her head in.

“Have a minute?” she asked.

“Of course.” Charlie gestured at the other chair in her office; Beverly didn’t sit down.

Beverly set one piece of graphing paper on Charlie’s desk, followed by another.

Charlie picked up the first one. “What are these?”

“The actual versus projected orbits for the manned capsule and the unmanned capsule.”

“I thought Maynard was handling this.”

Beverly’s mouth pinched into a hard line. She drew a breath before answering. “They are. But I saw the data coming through from the ground radar and the satellites, and it wasn’t within our parameters. So I… took some initiative.”

The tone in the room was changing, going crackly and sharp. Something was about to go very wrong—or it already had. Charlie looked back down at the numbers.

“The manned capsule appears to be fine,” she said, tapping her finger against Beverly’s numbers. “The angle of inclination is only off by a few degrees.” It was a fairly minor problem that could be corrected easily by the pilot—as long they let Henkins and Dunsford know soon.

Charlie glanced back up at Beverly, who shook her head firmly. “No, that’s not the one I’m concerned about.”

What was it, then? Charlie picked up the other paper to look at the numbers for the unmanned one. Beverly had performed three sets of calculations: the projection, one set from yesterday, and one set from today.

“Wait, it’s… it’s moving,” Charlie said. “The unmanned capsule is supposed to be geostationary, but it’s drifting.”

“Yes.”

Charlie set the papers down and fisted her hands on her desk. The mission was predicated on the idea of one moving object docking with one that was staying in place. All the computers, all the programming, was designed to do that.

But now the astronauts probably weren’t going to be able to find the unmanned capsule, let alone dock with it.

“Fuck,” Charlie huffed out.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes,” Beverly said. She sounded incredibly calm, but she’d had a little time to digest this information.

For her part, Charlie had started to shake.

Beverly went on, “If this isn’t corrected—”

“The mission is going to fail. And Maynard? Do they know?”

“They’re not running a manual calculation because they believe the data the onboard computer is spitting out. And it says the position of the unmanned capsule is fine.”

Charlie wanted to curse some more. She also wanted to crow. She’d been right all along, but it couldn’t matter any less at the moment.

She snapped to her feet and shoved the rest of her lunch back into her pail. “I need you and Dot on this right now. Nothing else you’re doing is this important.” Charlie started out of her office with Beverly on her heels.

She stuck her head into the lab. “Dave, give Beverly whatever data she needs.” She turned back to Beverly. “Confirm that you’re right, six ways to Sunday if you can. This is going to be hard for a lot of people to hear, especially because they didn’t notice it first. I need you to be absolutely sure. And we have to begin to think about how to correct the orbit of the manned capsule, because it’s going to have to meet something that’s on the move—and they’re not prepared for that.”

Beverly’s face was set. She didn’t look frightened or nervous, only focused. “You’ve got it. Where are you going?”

“To call in the cavalry.”

Charlie wasn’t sure if she was going to find him in Mission Control or elsewhere. Since she would prefer to have this first part of the conversation without an audience, she started in his office.

“He in?” she asked Peg.

“Yes.”

She gave one perfunctory knock and swung the door open.

Parsons was at his desk, a cup of coffee in one hand and a pen in the other. A pile of fresh printouts sat in front of him, and he didn’t look up from the data as she entered.

This was where it had started, the day he’d hired her. Or maybe the night that she’d propositioned him. Lord, she could still feel the smile he’d given her, as the meaning of her words had dawned on him. She’d never seen a man so pleased.

But now wasn’t the time for silly recollections.

“Yes?” he grunted.

She went ahead and spit it out. “The unmanned capsule is moving.”

Parsons’s head snapped up and for the first time in months, he looked right at her. His brown eyes were so focused, she nearly took a step back.

He lowered his coffee and pen slowly to the desk. “Of course it’s moving. It’s spinning above the earth, over the rendezvous point, all of it orbiting at a rate of—”

“No, it’s
supposed
to stay in that single location as the capsule approaches it.” She demonstrated with her hands as she’d seen him do so many times in meetings. “The thing is, it’s not staying in place. It’s drifting. The computers are running the numbers again, but I think we’re in trouble.”

He swallowed, slowly. She could see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. His skin couldn’t seem to decide whether to go pale or to flush. His cheeks had gone splotchy, and she could almost see his pulse hammering in his hands.

“What do you need?” he asked after a pause.

“You should come with me to look at Beverly’s calculations. If you agree with my conclusion, you need to be there when I tell Hal. He’s not going to want to believe this is happening. If it comes from me, he’ll think it’s sour grapes. But we might be able to salvage this mission if we start now.”

His nod was the barest inclination of his head. His hands balled into fists as he pushed himself up from his chair.

“Tell me that there’s a backup for this,” she said. “You have a plan, right? Or Maynard does? Someone has been preparing for this, and you didn’t tell me about it.”

He pulled his jacket off the hat stand in the corner and shrugged it on. Evidently this moment required more formal attire.

“I wish I could,” he said after a beat. “But you? You’re my backup.”

She followed him down the hallway. His words were like a benediction, and she felt them everywhere. All the same, her stomach had gone to iron. There had to be a way to fix this. There had to be.

She had half a day to figure it out.

Charlie was right.

Parsons knew she would be—she was hardly ever wrong—but he wished she hadn’t been right about this. He slipped off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to clear the afterimage of the calculations spread across Charlie’s desk from behind his eyes.

“The target vehicle is definitely moving,” he got out, “and the Maynard computer onboard thinks it isn’t.”

“Yes,” Beverly said at his elbow. “There’s no other explanation for the numbers we’re seeing here.”

He slipped his glasses back on and braced his hands against the desk. “There are two options here. We call Gerhardt up to see if he can get the vehicle back into position.”

Charlie shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “The target vehicle only has so much fuel. There might not be enough to correct the orbit.” She shifted again. “Also, he might be... reluctant to help.”

“You mean he’ll take this as proof we should have been testing a direct launch all along?” Parsons lifted his eyebrows at her. She didn’t need to tiptoe around the politics with him.

“Well, yes.” Something more lurked behind her words.
And you hate him.

There wasn’t room here for that. Nor for the painful dredging his emotions had undergone when Charlie had appeared in his office.
 

As the months wore on, he found he could still work with her. Not easily—that wasn’t happening, not ever—but professionally. Yes, the world and his work seemed to be entirely repainted in gray, but life went on. The wounds healed.

But she’d burst into his office today, and it was as if the wound of her had been reopened with a knife. And suddenly everything had been spattered in bright, agonizing color once more.

 
She’d come straight to him. Parsons hoped it was because she knew he’d believe her, that he’d back her when no one else would. But most likely it was because she disliked Hal Reed more than she disliked Parsons now.

 
“If they can’t get the target back on track,” Beverly said, “what’s the second option?”

Parsons caught Charlie’s gaze and held it. “We reprogram the onboard computers from here.”

Her cheeks went to alabaster, the muscles around her mouth tensing. She gave a short, sharp nod.
 

He didn’t think he could have loved her more than just then, when he asked if she could do something that might be impossible—when he asked her for more—and she simply nodded.

His voice wouldn’t come for a moment, and then he said, “Good. Let’s inform Hal, then go meet with Jensen.” He turned to Beverly. “Can you keep tracking the target vehicle? I want to know immediately if its course becomes any more erratic.”

She nodded, gave Charlie an oddly significant look, then left.

A current ran across Parsons’s skin as Beverly shut the door behind her. He was alone with Charlie once more. He’d worked so hard to avoid such a thing these last few months, to shy from the ache of it—but there was no avoiding it now.

“Do you need me to come with you?” she asked, shuffling her notes and staring steadily at her desk.

“Yes.” He studied the top of her head. “We should go tell Hal.”

The silence stretched like a rubber band pulled to its limits, ready to come apart at any moment.

A knock came at the door.

Her head snapped up in surprise. “Yes?” she called.

Hal poked his head in. “What’s going on? Why is Beverly doing manual calculations of the target’s orbit?”

“Precisely the man I wanted to see,” Parsons said dryly. “We need to talk about Maynard.”

Hal rolled his eyes. “Not this again. Look, I understand—you never wanted to give the contract to them. You bring it up every time I see you. You’ve been against it from the moment I told you about it. Between you and
her
”—he gestured to Charlie—“I haven’t had a moment’s peace on this.”

Next to him, Parsons felt Charlie shift, canting toward him. So they’d been a united front all these months, without knowing it.
 

“Can you drop it now?” Hal finished.

“I can’t drop it,” he said. “Because the target is moving when it’s not supposed to be. And the computers your friends at Maynard put in think it isn’t.”

Hal made a face quite like one of Parsons’s fishes. “That… That can’t be.”

Parsons’s temper sparked. “It is.” He gestured to Charlie. “Show him.”

She spread the notes over her desk. “This is the data from the onboard computer.” She stabbed at several lines of coordinates. “It’s transmitting its position as geostationary, here, here, and here. But these coordinates from the tracking stations”—she pulled out several other printouts—“clearly demonstrate it’s moving. Both Beverly and I have run the numbers. The target isn’t where it ought to be. The rendezvous mission will fail. Unless we correct it.”

Hal was now as white as a fish’s belly. “But… They said they’d tested it and tested it. That there were backups of the backups.” His face twisted as he stared at Charlie. “You kept harping on it, that you didn’t think they were testing enough. That you didn’t trust them. How do I know this isn’t some ploy—”