Authors: Douglas Savage
“Entry logic loaded, Skip.”
The 6-inch-square glass instrument in front of each pilot's chest would display side-to-side trajectory errors during descent.
“And my side, Jack: Entry roll mode select lever-locked yaw/jet rudder.”
“Yaw/jet rudder, Will.”
The clock above the center windows on the cabin ceiling showed 09 hours 30 minutes and the event timer above Parker's right knee ticked down past 25 minutes to de-orbit ignition.
“Won't see that again for a while, Will.” Enright blinked through his moist mask toward his right.
“Guess not, Jacob.”
Outside, to the southwest, the sun flattened against a dazzling orange horizon. The inverted ocean below was already black as Endeavor carried her three wards into Shuttle's seventh sunset in 9½ hours. A thin red band stretched above the brighter orange band for the full length of the slightly curved, upside-down horizon. With a rapid change from orange to bright purple, the red flat sun winked out leaving the starship in her last frigid night in orbit.
“I got her,” the AC called as he pushed the illuminated CSS pushbutton on the glareshield overhanging the forward instrument panels. He energized Control Stick Steering to powerup the rotational hand controller between his thighs. The pilot in command wanted to feel his ship live in his hands. He twitched the control stick. Mother instantly chose the best combination of RCS thrusters in her nose and ruined tail to roll the starship rightside up for one final star sight in darkness. A cold, alabaster-white moon hung low in the northeast sky above the dark horizon as Endeavor executed her slow, wobbly wingover in the eternal silence.
Three minutes after sunset, Shuttle headed south across the Equator for her last transit of the Southern Hemisphere and her last summertime aloft. Directly below, the darkness swallowed the Galapagos Islands 600 nautical miles west of Ecuador.
“Ready on the Auxiliary Power Unitsâwhat's left of 'em.”
“Ready APU Two and Three, Skipper.”
“Okay, Jack. Let's do 'em both together. We're gettin' short here . . . Your side, Panel Right-2: Controller power lever-locked on.”
“Two and Three, on and on.”
“Fuel tank valves, lever-locked open.”
“APU, Two and Three, open and open.”
“Ready.”
“Two and Three, barber-polled ready to start, Skip.”
“Speed select . . . Let's go with high on Two and normal on Three.”
“Two high; Number Three normal speed.”
“Hit it, Jack.”
“Number Two APU, Ignition! RPM and exhaust gas temp okay.”
“Number Three, Jack?”
“Number Three APU, Ignition! . . . Nothing, Will. Going to override-start . . . And Three is running. RPM and EGT are Go.”
“Super, Jack. Hydraulics circulation pump, Two and Three, on.”
“On and on . . . Pressures green.”
“Main hydraulic pump pressures, lever-locked normal.” “Two and Three, normal and normal, Will.”
“APU auto shutdown, enable.”
“Automatic shutdown, enable Two and Three.”
“APU Number Two: Fuel pump valve coolant, Loops A and B, auto.”
“Valves A and B, automatic . . . At least we can steer her.”
The Auxiliary Power Units are essential to move Shuttle's wing surfaces for airplane-steering in the lower atmosphere.
“Star-trackers running, Jack. P-52 running.”
Mother and her two sensors scanned the dark southern sky.
“Make it a good one, Skipper.”
The AC moved the control stick between his legs to shift Endeavor's nose to the northwest. Peering into the COAS periscope tube, he found the bright star Altair in the constellation Aquila 15 degrees above the black horizon on a magnetic bearing of 280 degrees True.
“Star Number 51, mark!”
Enright entered Altair into the computer at 09 hours 36 minutes, MET, over Peru.
Since the COAS cannot swing across the sky on its own as can the automatic star-trackers in Shuttle's nose, Parker turned the ship heads up to the southwest. High in the sky, almost overhead at 60 degrees high, he found the bright star Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus at a compass bearing of 220 degrees True. High Fomalhaut with faint Al Na-ir in Grus constellation 20 degres lower and Peacock in the constellation Pavo 15 degrees closer to the southern horizon formed a three-star line from Shuttle to the South.
“Fomalhaut, mark!”
Enright tapped Star Number 56 into the computers.
“One more for good measure, Skipper.”
Parker steered Shuttle's nose toward the northeast. He squinted into the COAS sighting-mirror as Capella in Auriga slowly crossed the COAS crosshairs 10 degrees above the horizon and 40 degrees east of north. Capella was faint below and left of the brilliant moon.
“Number 12, mark!”
“Got it, Will. Let Mother chew on that.”
Mother reduced her own star sights from the two startrackers and Parker's sights. While she worked, the AC removed the COAS tube from the ceiling brackets and stowed the little sextant away.
“IMU aligned all balls. Well, Jack. Mother knows where we are anyway.”
Over nighttime Bolivia, Endeavor was commanded to roll over until she was flat on her back for the OMS burn only 15 minutes away. The ignition of the single OMS rocket from the ship's crippled tail feathers was all that stood between Endeavor and home.
“They are now in darkness over the mountains around Sucre, Bolivia. Revolution seven. Retro fire in 14 minutes.”
The big man raised an eyebrow as he scanned the wall plot board beyond the glass greenhouse suspended above the floor. A tiny bug followed a curved line across the video projection of the Earth's middle latitudes 40 degrees above and below the Equator. Above the large screen, one clock displayed 00:41 GREENWICH, another, 19:41 EASTERN STANDARD, and the third digital clock read 00:09:41 MISSION ELAPSED TIME.
Four tired men in open, rumpled collars were at table with large, grim Admiral Michael Thomas Hauch.
An afternoon nap had revived the sailor who looked less worn than the men around him. By the vault door to the basement bunker, two young Marines stood rigidly like pillars of salt.
Admiral Hauch was elegant in his dress blues which carried seven inches of ribbons and gold wings upon his heart. He only broke out his blues for audiences with the Chiefs or with the Old Man himself.
The Admiral rose and walked to the glass wall of their chill cage. His spit-shined shoes glowed five feet above the concrete floor under the floor of clear glass. Standing erect by the glass wall, the Admiral gripped one huge fist in the other behind his back which faced the men behind him. As he gazed at the wall charts, he cut every inch the image of the flag ship commander upon his high quarterdeck.
“Well, Doctor. Your impressions now?”
“Admiral.” The little man with the squirrel face fumbled with a stack of green computer paper as he addressed the Admiral's ample backside. The technocrat perspired under the ceiling lights.
“We've run a full re-entry simulation. Assuming an operational right OMS pod with its RCS capabilities, Endeavor can shoot a successful re-entry profile. They will experience lateral trim imbalance flying with only half their aft RCS capacity, but they should still be within the attitude dead-band limits of the flight control loops. Endeavor will have to fire the one remaining, OMS engine for a full five minutes to do the work of two normal engines. Our real concern is the tile loss on the aft fuselage.”
“Fatal?”
“Don't think so, Admiral. We may lose some structural integrity from soak-back heating, maybe even one of the two, surviving auxiliary power units. But I vote for survival.”
The standing Admiral sighed audibly.
“We build them pretty tight, Doctor.”
“Yes. And you have two of your best pilots up there.”
“My best. I know.”
“Any word from Moscow, Admiral?”
“Yes, Colonel.” The big man did not turn to face the table. “It's Sleep Tight.”
“But they have their own man in there.”
“Yes they do, Major. But LACE was and is to be a totally . . . antiseptic operation. With extreme prejudice if necessary.”
“If I may: I cannot believe that the Kremlin would advocate such a senseless waste.”
“I agree, Commander.” The old fatigue crept into the Admiral's deep voice. “They have their âupstairs' and we have ours. I imagine the Kremlin knows as little about this operation as our own government. Even the President has not been briefed on all these little details.”
“Admiral, I cannot support assassination.”
The tall sailor turned to glare coldly and wearily at the small assembly.
“None of you were invited here to vote! The votes are all in. You are here to help your country out of her worst embarrassment since the Bay of Pigs in '61 . . . Doctor, will your Programmed Test Input Seven do the job?”
“Absolutely. With the left aft RCS pod disabled, the shuttle has lost one-third of her total Reaction Control System impulse for precision attitude control. The key here is attitude rates: She will be slow in attitude changes. The PDPU maneuver of PTI-7, that's push-down pull-up, will crack her spine . . . just like that.”
The Admiral winced as the little man snapped his fingers.
“Major? Will the crew run the PTI if they have doubts about it with partial RCS capacity?” The Admiral spoke slowly.
“That is their job . . . Of course they will run it, Admiral.”
“Then I shall relay the go ahead to the network feed.”
“Mike, you can't!”
“That is
my
job.”
The large man in his dress blues turned away. He looked up at the small video insect which crawled across eastern Brazil toward open sea and its local midnight darkness. Then the old dragon of the Tail Hook Club closed his tired eyes tightly.
“Nine minutes, Skipper.”
The mission clock ticked up past 09 hours 46 minutes. Endeavor flew upside-down and tailfirst through the night. Below, it was almost midnight. The starship left Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the coastline behind as she made for open water and Okinawa, now 15,400 statute miles away. There would be no more major landfalls until wheels-on, except for a brief glide over Southeast Asia.
“Feet wet.” Enright studied the television on his right side of the forward cockpit.
When Endeavor crossed the coast, she entered a 5,130-statute-mile stretch of the South Atlantic Anomaly. Now it did not matter. An ionic orange glow warmed Shuttle's inverted 26-foot-long tail which led the way southeast making 300 miles per minute. That made no difference to the crew, either.
“Entry attitude hold, set.” The Aircraft Commander read his checklist. “Ten degrees up bubble on the bow . . .Yaw right 007 degrees. Set.”
Shuttle's nose was lower than her tail section from the local horizontal as she flew backward. But since the crew was oriented headsdown, the nose appeared to them higher than the tail. The computers directed the nose to hold slightly off center. This side drift would help the single OMS engine deliver its 6,000 pounds of thrust in a thrust vector through the ship's center of gravity. The single right orbital maneuvering system rocket can also swing from side to side through an eight-degree arc to direct the line of fire.
“Looks fat on propellant, Will. Good news.”
Enright had run a check of the OMS propellant tanks in the single right pod in the tail. The OMS pod was loaded with propellant for 1,250 seconds of firing. Only 190 seconds worth of fuel and oxidizer were burned during the two firings of the OMS pod to insert Endeavor into orbit 9½ hours earlier. Very little had been consumed during the first-orbit rendezvous with LACE. Ordinarily, with both OMS engines firing to slow Shuttle for leaving orbit, the de-orbit bum lasts 150 seconds. With only one OMS pod to fire the 77-inch-high, 45-inch-wide Aerojet General rocket engine, the burn would take a full five minutes to jar Shuttle from her circular orbit 149 statute miles high.
“OMS prep, your side, Jack.”
Enright looked up through his bandages at the panels of switches and pushbuttons on the ceiling. The AC challenged and Enright readback.
“Overhead Panel-8: Helium pressure vapor insolation valve, Loop A, to General Purpose Computer.”
“Alpha to GPC.”
“Loop B to GPC.”
“Bravo to GPC.”
“Propellant tank isolation valve, Loop A, talk-back open.”
“Alpha, open.”
“Loop B, talk-back open.”
“Bravo, open.”
“Right OMS crossfeed, closed, Loop A.”
“Alpha, closed.”
“Right crossfeed, Loop B, closed.”
“Bravo, closed, Will.”
“Panel Overhead-16, engine valve, on.”
“On.”
“Engine lever-locked arm.” Parker checked the toggle switch on the center console by his right elbow.
The clocks reached 09 hours 50 minutes, MET, and the event timer ticked down through minus five minutes to OMS ignition.
Endeavor flew on her back, tailfirst, over the black water below and with the faint star Acamar in the southern constellation Eridanus above. In the west, 1,400 nautical miles away, Montevideo, Uruguay, slept away a summer night. Below, it was midnight, six days before Christmas.
“State vectors loaded,” the AC confirmed. “Major Mode 302 running and Mother likes it.”
On the center of three television screens, the plots were up for the de-orbit maneuver. At the base of the green screen, numerics counted down in tandem with the event timer near Parker's painful right knee.
“Jack: ADI to inertial mine and yours, ADI error and rates to medium. And DAP to auto.” The crew set their round attitude director indicators for the final plunge home.
“Four minutes, Alexi,” the AC called over his right shoulder.
The Soviet survivor nodded to the back of Enright's bandaged and blistered head. Then he tightened his lap and shoulder belts.