The Glass Lady (13 page)

“Sure, Chief. Fill 'er up.”

“Will do, Colonel. My boys have been hanging by their feet for 48 hours inside there, refitting the payload bay for you. She'll be achin' to fly come mornin'. The PAM is already on board.”

“For sure, Chief,” Enright smiled. “Right and tight.”

“In the bank, Jack,” the chief waved as he crawled into the ship's open, round hatch.

“So what do you think, Skipper?” Enright inquired as the pad elevator creaked toward the ground. The refurbished Pad 39-A had been used for the manned Apollo moon flights.

“Shell rise to it. We're goin' to do it, Jack,” the Colonel drawled with cheery resolve.

“Right and tight, Skipper.”

In the Kennedy Space Center van which carried the new prime crew to the Cape's three-mile runway built for shuttle landings, the two fliers were joined by the Launch Vehicle Test Conductor.

“I half thought we couldn't pull this one off, you know.”

“And now, Rob?”

“We're going to do it,” Robert Meckler said with resolution. “Four days of rewriting the text book, and we're really going to do it. Even I'm amazed. What do you boys call her, the Glass Lady? Your bird is some lady. We gutted her innards in two days and ran a full plugs-out, dry countdown yesterday. All she did was purr along without a whimper.”

“All you got to do is talk sweetly to her iron heart, buddy,” the Colonel said warmly. Sitting by the window, his tired face was revived with red life by the brilliant and warm Florida sunshine.

“What about you two? You both look tired. You've got a real workload up there tomorrow—and with the Russians right beside you breathing down your necks.”

“Oh, we're up for it,” Enright bubbled. “It's just the night before the big game. Team is bound to look antsy. We're ready. Ready and then some. Aye, Skipper?”

“You betcha, Number One.” The tall man soaking in the afternoon sunshine meant it. The clear sky, the clean salty air, the pad crew doing double-duty, the firing room tension before going Up There again, all were cathartic for Will Parker. In the humid air full of Go, the command pilot felt reborn, ready to be about doing a pilot's business. The gray-eyed colonel with the sun in his weathered face was the young airman framed on his livingroom wall. He could feel the hairs on the back of his furrowed neck. “Right and tight, Jack.”

“LACE won't be any picnic, Will. Hear about last night?”

“What about, Rob?” the Colonel asked the white sun.

“Picked off one of our earth resources, imaging satellites about two o'clock this morning,” the engineer recited grimly.

The two pilots beside him said nothing. The purple sky was too full of Can-Do for talk.

“Everything out and dirty,” Colonel Parker called from the left seat of the Cape's Gulfstream jet. The sleek corporate aircraft is the shuttle approach and landing trainer. Heavily modified for generating shuttlelike landings, the Gulfstream had a shuttle instrument panel in front of the command pilot's left seat. Wing flaps and slats provided so much drag that the jet comes in for landing with her nose 20 degrees below the horizon, the aerobatic approach angle of the returning shuttle. The approach glide path is seven times steeper than for an unmodified jet.

With wheels down and locked, with everything but the crew's laundry hanging down from the wings, and with her two jets generating 91 percent
reverse
thrust, the Gulfstream's descent was unnervingly steep and rapid.

“Looks good, Aircraft Commander.”

“Roger, Flight,” the Colonel drawled as he manipulated the Shuttle control stick between his knees. “CSS real crisp.”

“Copy positive control stick steering.”

“MLS centered, Flight.”

“Copy you tracking inbound, front course, on the microwave landing system. Cross wind off your left, Will. Altimeter 30 point 01; wind 240 at 07.”

“Rog, Flight. A perfect winter's day.”

With Jack Enright watching the earth rise quickly from his jump seat between and behind the shoulders of Parker and their NASA instructor pilot, the command pilot slightly dropped his left wingtip into the wind to compensate for the wind blowing him to the right of the approaching runway's centerline. In his final descent, to simulate the handling of a 100-ton and engineless shuttle, the jet trainer plummeted 1,000 feet every three seconds.

“Little bit 'o slip is holdin' right on, Flight.”

“Roger, NASA 356. Go out of 2,000.”

“Okay . . . Preflare out of 1750, Flight.”

The 30-ton jet leveled off as her nose came up toward the hazy Florida horizon. In her empty passenger cabin, two large Sperry 1819-B and Rolm 1666 computers drove the airplane to feel exactly like the deadstick shuttle in the pilot's hands.

“Two degrees up bubble at 900 feet.”

“Looking good, Gulfstream.”

To compensate for the wind blowing from his left, Colonel Parker first eased the left main wheel onto the concrete. Rolling down the runway on one wheel, the pilot kept the white centerline fixed beneath his seat.

With a squeal, the right landing gear kissed the ground with the nose wheel following three seconds later. Pilots would call it a “greaser.”

“Do that with Endeavor, Will,” the ground radioed.

“You got it, buddy,” the tall airman laughed.

“Gulfstream NASA 356 cleared for take-off. Maintain runway heading. No delay on the active.”

Before he had used up 8,000 feet of concrete, the pilot's large right hand eased twin throttles forward. Without stopping his rollout, the AC pointed the glistening jet into the clear blue sky.

“And we have wings!” the Colonel called happily. Will Parker was home.

“The Russians went up ninety minutes ago, ten minutes before midnight, Washington time. Our people are in contact with Soviet controllers at the Kalinin Control Center near Moscow. To our surprise, they went from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on the Aral Sea.”

“But, Admiral, how can they possibly shoot a rendezvous with LACE and Shuttle from there . . .”

“That was our first impression, Colonel. The Baikonur site sets them up for their usual Soyuz-T orbital inclination of around 51 degrees. LACE, as everyone here knows, is at a more equatorial inclination of 38 degrees. The power and maneuvering impulse required for a thirteen degree orbital plane change is huge—roughly 5,760 feet per second delta-V. It is beyond our capability to execute an orbital plane change of a side-step of 780 nautical miles. Soyuz alone could never do it . . .”

“How do they plan to do it?”

“They have done it, Colonel. They shot a monster burn during their first crossing of the Equator.”

“Energia? My God,” the tired Colonel argued.

“That would be our best guess from what we know. The only way they could have done such a massive orbital plane change to get close to LACE would be launching Soyuz atop Energia. They must have kept Soyuz attached to the booster and relit it for the maneuver. There is simply no way Soyuz could have done it alone. Must have left off the strap-on boosters and just flown with the Energia core vehicle. Its first manned launch until they fly their Shuttle Buran manned.”

Energia stands 197 feet high and is the world's largest rocket. The size of America's long-gone Saturn-V moon rocket, Energia was designed to launch the Soviet space shuttles. Energia's 5.4 million pounds of thrust can put 110 tons into Earth orbit or send 32 tons to the Moon or 28 tons off to Mars or Venus. Like most Russian boosters, including the normal Soyuz rocket, Energia is modular with strap-on, liquid-fueled booster rockets for heavier payloads. Its first test flight occurred in May of 1987 and its second flight in November of 1988 launched the Russian shuttle Buran on its unmanned, maiden voyage.

“So, Admiral. They really can get to LACE?”

“With bells on, Colonel.”

“Have Parker and Enright been briefed on the Soyuz launch?”

“No, Joe. They went to bed two hours ago at the Cape.”

“Cleanne? Hope I didn't wake you.”

“Real fine, both of us. Just tucked Jack in for the third time. It's real comfortable up here. Can see Shuttle from here under her arc lights . . . Breathtaking! Like chains of white light holding her down. She is aching to fly, and the light holds her tail in the sand. A sight to remember!”

“Oh, he'll be awake again in an hour. Like trying to put the children to bed the night before the fair.”

“Better, thanks. The pain isn't so bad now. More like numbness on the inside of my calf, from my knee to my ankle. But swelling's down. Been shootin' up real reg'lar, as ordered. Those damn penicillin cartridges really bite.”

“Okay. Saw Emily before we flew down here. Seems more like last week. You'll check in on her? Thanks . . . We had a really good day today. They've started the chilldown of the external tank already. They'll top it off about four o'clock this morning.”

“C.C.?”

“I want you to listen real careful. Don't want you to say anything when I'm done. 'Kay? . . . Jack and I are going to do this thing. I really think so now. The Intelsat-6 repair is goin' to come off like clockwork. And we'll have Brother Ivan up there to hand us the screwdriver. But . . . Cleanne. You remember meeting my old flight instructor from home? Well, he has this place out East. By the sea . . . If we don't make it, if we bend our metal and they can get to us, I want my ashes laid upon the gray water up there. Upon the morning tide as it goes out. Please. I don't want my friends to think of me when they stand beside a hole in the ground, all cold and dark. I want my friends to think of me only when they feel the salt wind of the sea washing cool and clean over their faces. I want my flight instructor to take me there, and to let me go . . . He knows the way.”

“Don't, Cleanne. You promised.”

The tall flier sitting in the dark at the side of his bed laid the phone down gently. Jacob Enright on the far side of the little room did not stir.

Parker picked up the telephone again. He laid his long fingers upon the lighted buttons. But after a long sigh, he returned the receiver to its plastic cradle. The tiny lights went out.

For many minutes he sat in the darkness. He rubbed the heat from his sore leg.

In the stillness, he reached again for the telephone. His fingers moved slowly. Then he waited.

“Hello. It's me, Willie . . . Willie Parker.”

“I know. Sorry. I know it's late.”

“What can I tell you about hearing your voice again? Your sleepy voice . . . My God, how long has it been?”

“That long?”

“I have to hurry. Please. Tell me of your children. How old are they now?”

“You've had a third?”

“Tell me: Do they have your green eyes?”

“Oh, that's good. So very, very good.”

“I have to ask you. I have to know: After all these years, do you think . . . Do you think of me? Ever?”

The big man blinked hard.

“Thank you. I remember you . . . I remember you. Good night.”

The large hand laid the telephone down without a sound. He reached behind to open the curtains above his bed in the crew quarters.

Laying upon his back with his hands clasped behind his head, William McKinley Parker lay by the open window. A distant white light touched the deep lines carved into his pilot's face.

“Seems we've made our mark in the world, Number One,” Will Parker laughed through his open faceplate. Jacob Enright at his side clapped his thickly gloved hands together.

As the pilots walked in pressure suits down the hallway of the crew quarters, the hall was lined with two dozen female technicians, engineers, and secretaries. The women were pleasingly flattered by tight red, white and blue T-shirts enscribed “GET IT UP—GET IT DONE—GET IT DOWN.”

“We're a hit, Skipper!” Enright laughed, saluting the melonosity along the corridor.

“Let's play this town again, Jack,” the Colonel replied through his white helmet's open visor.

The chief suit technician led the two joyful airmen into a small conference room. Inside, they left the launch morning bustle outside the closed door.

The pilots stood slightly stooped by the awkward weight of their pressure suits. They faced two suit technicians and one dower-faced Colonel. Shuttle crews had not worn pressure suits for launch since Shuttle Four in July 1982. The destruction of Challenger changed all that confidence in the shirt-sleeves, “operational” shuttle. Beginning with Shuttle 26 when flights resumed, all crews now wear the heavy blue pressure suits for the launch and return to Earth. Parker and Enright wore the bulkier suits worn during Shuttle's first flights in 1981 and 1982. If LACE punctured Endeavor's glass-covered haul, these pilots would have some protection against suffocation in the lethal vacuum of space. Parker and Enright wore the U.S. Navy orange pressure suits worn by the first four shuttle crews when the Shuttle Columbia had been fitted with emergency ejection seats. These were not the white, massive, extravehicular activity suits used for spacewalks. The EVA suits were already stored inside Endeavor.

“Will. Jack,” the lead suit man smiled.

“Colonel,” Enright greeted.

“I have new faceplate visors for you both,” the Colonel said as he carefully removed two flat bundles from his briefcase.

The two pilots glanced sideways at each other.

“Oh?”

“They're new but thoroughly tested, Will. Made by Hughes Radar Systems Group for the Navy. They're designed to reflect laser light. The visors should protect your eyes in the vicinity of LACE on-orbit. We'll replace your sunshade visors with these. We've already put one on Jack's EVA suit in the ship.”

The new helmet visors were phosphate glass coated with special dye for absorbing laser beams before they can penetrate a pilot's eyes. Until the dye loses its effectiveness after three weeks' exposure to air, the visors would be 18 times stronger than normal sunglasses for eye protection.