She couldn’t stop puttering around the loft, flipping through some favorite books, unconsciously searching for a touch of him in his favorite part of their house. Fly-fishing rods and antique rifles adorned the walls, along with a few select pictures taken alongside his favorite aircraft over the years. She again found herself absent-mindedly gazing at the distant mountains when the phone startled her.
The late hour made her hesitate to answer despite being wide awake. Looking at the caller ID, she saw that it came from the company. It couldn’t be the employee-assistance team, she thought. Those people were trained counselors, brought out to console family members after an accident. They wouldn’t be calling this late, would they?
Unless it was something really bad…
She picked up the receiver with trepidation.
Please Lord, not yet. I’m not ready.
“Hello,” she said with forced composure.
“Elise? It’s Art Hammond.”
That relieved her…sort of. The really bad news would usually be delivered by a family friend.
Stop it
, she reprimanded herself.
If it was that bad, they’d be here in person. Right?
Maybe. She’d learned that the business world often didn’t share the same conviction as the military had shown in that regard. It all depended on who made the call.
“How are you doing?” He asked kindly. The line had been silent for too long.
“Sorry, Arthur…I’m fine. Just a little flustered. I was afraid you’d be somebody with, well, bad news.”
It was a relief to hear him laugh on the other line. “Not at all. But there’s a lot to tell you, so you might want to have a seat. Take notes, too, if that makes you feel better,” he said, knowing she would want to hear exactly what would be going on. The PR staff had badgered him to keep the details close, but he’d made it abundantly clear that wasn’t going to happen.
These are our people
, he’d said.
They deserve to know exactly what we’re doing with their families.
Still expecting the worst, she settled into Tom’s favorite worn leather chair and waited. “What’s going to happen?”
“We’re going to go get them.”
31
Moses Lake, Washington
Penny stretched and stifled a yawn as she clambered down the Gulfstream’s air stairs. She’d at least managed to steal a few hours of sleep in the crew lounge before they’d left Denver ninety minutes earlier. Sleeping on the plane was impossible, as she’d spent the trip talking through the mission plan with Will Gardner and Frank Kirby. A tense phone call with her husband back in Houston hadn’t made things any easier.
They hopped down the stairs behind her as ground crewmen in orange jumpsuits began unloading their gear from the plane’s cargo hold. It was a cool, crisp morning. Just beyond the Cascades, Moses Lake airfield sat at the edge of Washington’s eastern plains and was shielded from most of the incessant Pacific Northwest rain. Boeing had long found it to be an ideal flight test airfield, as did Hammond Aerospace.
Sunlight gleamed off the giant hangar, hiding the Block II Clipper in the shadows within. As they walked across the ramp towards it, their eyes adjusted to the light and the plane came in to view.
It had the same wedge shape and stubby wings, but with a smaller fuselage, the penalty for being able to reach orbit. This would only carry twelve passengers and much less cargo, but unlike older launch vehicles, almost all of it would return to fly again. Expendable fuel tanks bulged out from beneath the wings and almost seamlessly blended into the plane’s underside. Their polished aluminum skin shone brightly against the jet-black thermal protection surface. They would soon be coated in frost once they were filled with super-cold liquid oxygen. Atop the plane, just behind the fuselage, were two more bulges that housed the orbital Clipper’s powerful engines, two in each nacelle.
Lined up on a hydraulic lift beside it were cases holding enough pressure suits and oxygen tanks for everyone aboard 501 with the tether equipment they’d need to bring them out.
They would launch from here and accelerate straight to orbit, matching 501’s track and catching up to it over the next several hours.
“Amazing,” Frank said as he surveyed the area. “These test weenies actually know how to make things happen.”
“Let’s hope so,” Penny said, checking her watch. She was decidedly less skeptical than Kirby, though that wasn’t saying much. “Three hours until we have to be wheels-up. They have all the pre-launch checks done?”
“Done,” Will said, checking his tablet as he headed towards a far corner of the hangar. “They loaded a last-minute software update, so I’ll go make sure that made it into the launch check. You just worry about pre-flight and I’ll see you guys at suit-up.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Frank said, looking at Penny. “Let’s do that together. I want two sets of eyeballs on every inch of this bird.”
…
Denver
Charlie Grant sat on the edge of his chair and gingerly sipped at a cup of stale coffee. He grimaced at the bitter taste and spat it into a trash can.
“I’ll put a fresh pot on for us,” he heard from behind. It was Hammond.
“You don’t have to do that,” Grant said. “You’re the boss.”
Hammond waved him off with a laugh. “Not in this room, I’m not. This is the only show in town right now and you’re running it. If making coffee makes me useful, I’m doing it.”
“In that case make it straight, no sugar,” he said. “We’ve been a little preoccupied.”
“Haven’t we all,” Hammond grumbled. “Everything going as planned?”
“So far,” Grant said. “It’s all by the numbers. Not that we had a lot of time to finesse this.”
…
Moses Lake
“Clipper Zero One Heavy, taxi to the runway and hold. Maglev rails are activated.”
Penny answered their clearance and carefully steered them onto the runway’s centerline. Two amber bars on the control panel lit up once they sensed alignment with magnetic rails embedded in the runway, similar to those used for high-speed trains. The floor rumbled beneath them as the big engines rattled the plane, even at idle.
“You guys ready?” she asked.
“All systems go,” Will said with mock bravado. “A-okay. Whatever. I can never get used to this Jedi mind trick.”
“Sucking the gear up while we’re still on the runway used to mean I’d be looking for a new job,” Frank huffed in agreement. But if they were going to make this work, they would need all the velocity they could get.
“Just keep telling yourself that’s how this thing was intended to fly,” Penny interjected. “We’re only limited by the speed of government,” she added caustically, then got back to business. The FAA was still balking at the idea of Polaris using this technique for passengers.
Just then, the amber bars flashed to green as departure control called back. “Polaris One heavy, maglev is active.”
“Copy that. We show good alignment,” she answered, and looked at Frank to confirm her own instruments. “You see two greens?”
“Green bars, positive lift. Squat switch disabled,” Frank said tensely. The squat switch sensed weight on the wheels and would ordinarily prevent what they were about to do. He kept one hand hovering over the gear handle while checking a status light on the overhead.
“All right then…gear up.”
“Hold on to your butts,” he said, unlocking the lever and slamming it up to the stops.
The plane settled briefly as its gear folded up into the wheel wells, and they halfway expected it to keep falling right onto the pavement. But it stopped quickly; after only a few feet they were safely hovering on a powerful magnetic cushion.
“What do you know? It worked,” Frank said with relief. It would take a generation of new pilots to make a no-gear takeoff seem like a perfectly rational thing to do.
“Always a nice surprise,” Penny said, and called back to the tower. “Departure, we are still here.”
“Glad to hear we don’t need to call out the tow trucks, Polaris. Launch window is activated. Cleared for takeoff at your discretion, proceed direct to launch corridor Bravo Three. Contact center as soon as you’re airborne with call sign Rescue One. Good luck.”
“Copy direct to Bravo Three. And thanks,” Penny said. Grant had already made arrangements to keep interaction with air traffic control to a minimum. Most of their communications would need to be with their own people in Denver.
“Final launch checks complete,” Frank said. “Denver reports they’re go.”
A countdown timer synchronized with the control center ticked down the seconds. Their launch window placed them almost directly beneath 501’s orbit, and was timed carefully to minimize the fuel they’d need to catch up with the crippled spaceplane. They would start rolling just before it was due to pass overhead, allowing them to catch up after only a few orbits. If this chance was missed, the next pass would be several hundred miles farther downrange.
“Target’s above the horizon,” Will said while checking its plot against the countdown clock. “Right on time.”
“Faceplates down,” Penny ordered, “and check your O2 fittings.” Each of them reached up to seal the helmets of the full pressure suits they wore. “Stand by, gentlemen.”
The plane shuddered against the magnetic field as she steadily spun the engines up and Will finished their countdown. “Five…four…three…two…”
The clock reached zero and Penny shoved the throttles forward. The big engines quickly came to full power as the magnetic rails shot them down the runway, slamming them against their seats.
“We have liftoff,” Will said as he sucked in his breath. Despite the jolting start, it was a remarkably smooth ride, having no wheels to bump along the runway.
“Way cleaner than a cat shot,” Frank admitted, thinking of the steam catapults the Navy still used for carrier launches. He closely watched their acceleration and engine condition as the critical decision points passed rapidly. “Rotate.”
They leapt from the runway as she pulled the control stick into her lap, trailing radiant exhaust and thunderous noise as they sped into the blue.
She thumbed the microphone button on her control stick. “Denver, Rescue One is airborne.”
32
Austral Clipper
Colin Magrath struggled to keep a blanket wrapped around him. It was definitely easier if he was strapped into a seat, but the folds still had an annoying tendency to float away at random, letting precious body heat escape.
And it was getting damned cold in here. Frost had begun to trace outlines around the windows; no doubt they would be fully covered soon. Without a scotch, the one bloody thing that kept them from going stir-crazy up here was the spectacular view. He’d planned to have a conversation with the captain about that. Perhaps he could be talked into keeping some power on…or at least unlock the liquor cabinet.
The cabin was mostly in shadow, lit only by the sunlight streaming in through those rapidly frosting windows. He’d not appreciated how the electronic tinting moderated the harsh light in vacuum, until those trained apes up front had turned the power off. In another half hour, they’d go dark again in night side. The glow from Magrath’s own tablet would be even more noticeable than it already was.
One system they’d had to keep turned on was communications. He’d been able to occasionally piggyback on their wireless and was now watching a live feed from one of his news outlets that had camped outside the Moses Lake airfield. His staff hovered behind him, likewise watching intently as their rescue ship climbed away. They were both surprisingly quiet, simply smiling and elbowing each other excitedly.
That overbearing but pretty brunette flight attendant came floating out of the forward section, near the cockpit. “We have some good news, finally,” she said. “The rescue Clipper is on its way.”
“So it would appear,” he replied. “Let’s hope they don’t cock this one up, too.”
…
Rescue One
Behind the pilots, Will Gardner’s seat was enveloped in a chaotic array of computer monitors and duplicate flight displays. The temporary flight test engineer’s station gave him a full picture of every system within the spaceplane, the aerodynamic forces acting on it, and a view of the pilot’s displays to compare against all of that information. Not being a pilot, he was ironically the busiest person in the cockpit.
“Max Q,” he reported as they passed through the plane’s zone of maximum dynamic pressure. Aerodynamic forces were at their strongest in the lower atmosphere when they became supersonic, and they suddenly felt the ride grow smoother as their shock waves were left behind. Until now, the engines were intentionally kept at something less than full power to manage the load.
“We’re go for throttle up,” Frank said. “Dispatch says boost corridor is clear sailing.”
“Go at throttle up,” Penny replied, a routine phrase that still caught in the throat of every astronaut since
Challenger
disintegrated at that very moment decades ago. They felt the engines push harder against them as she slid the throttle levers to the forward stops. Ahead, the sky was rapidly changing hue from blue to deep violet.