Back to the Moon-ARC (37 page)

“What the hell is that?” Tony shouted.

“I don’t know, but there’s nothing we can do about it! Just hang in and pray!” Bill shouted.

“Fifteen gees!” Tony shouted over the jarring, rattling, screeching, and roaring.

The ship rocked back and forth so hard that Bill was worried the injured and otherwise incapacitated crew members might not be faring so well. The air inside the cabin had reached one atmosphere, so the sound of the ship being buffeted was getting extremely loud. It sounded like he had stuck his head inside a jet engine while it was at full throttle. Bill managed to glance at Tony and could see that his body had gone limp.
 

“Tony!” Bill had the notion that he would tap at the console in front of him and check Tony’s vital signs, but that would require him to raise his arm—and he couldn’t. It weighed more than two hundred pounds at the moment. “Everybody hang on back there! Come on, baby! Hold together! We’re gonna make it!”
 

Bill’s vision started to tunnel in, and he grunted and fought against blacking out. He fought like a world-champion boxer tied up in the twelfth round. In the end he went down swinging, but he lost the fight.

Chapter 31

“Go, baby, go!” was once again all that Paul Gesling could utter as he alternated looking out the window at the landscape of Earth receding below him and the LCD display that showed the status of
Dreamscape
’s onboard systems. All the systems were reading in the green, and the ship was cruising past Mach 2—twice the speed of sound—at the moment. He held the flight-control stick gently with his left hand and went through a continuous ballet of tapping the control screen with his right.

It had only been a little more than a week since the
Dreamscape
was rushed through refurbishment, refueled, and rolled out on the runway in Nevada before they had restarted the countdown for the launch. It all seemed rather quick to Paul, but Gary Childers had given him the last say. Had Paul said “no-go,” then Gary would have abided by that decision. At least that is what Paul liked to believe.

Just less than two weeks ago, the little ship had flown a crew of space tourists around the Moon and done so flawlessly. In fact, they had done more than just fly around the Moon on the most expensive and dangerous vacation ever. They had also acted as a search-and-rescue mission. They had detected Chinese taikonauts stranded on the Moon and had been instrumental in saving their lives. It was clear that the Chinese government had had no intention of telling the public of the stranded taikonauts and had
Dreamscape
’s crew not found them, the world might have never known they were ever there. But they did find them, and that was the first step. NASA did the hardest part of going to the Moon and getting them. But Paul was in the process of flying the
Dreamscape
back into space to help bring them home. The final part. It was fitting in Paul’s mind that the rescue started with the
Dreamscape
and would likely end with it. Of course, they had yet to run any of this by NASA or the Chinese, but drowning sailors will swim to the nearest lifeboat. Besides, once the
Dreamscape
made it to the right orbital altitude, it would take a day or more to crank the inclination to the same angle as the space station. After you added another a day or so to chase it down, it just made sense to get into space as soon as possible.

“Control, we’re go for scramjet separation.” Paul could talk through the procedures in his sleep by this point, but he wasn’t about to give it a try. He kept his focus on the job at hand.
 

“Roger that, Paul. Go for first-stage sep.” Then the stage-separation icon flashed and the Bitchin’ Betty chimed at him.

“Prepare for stage separation in five, four, three, two, one.”
 

Paul felt his pulse quicken in anticipation of the stage separation as he waited for the five explosions that would soon sever the bolts holding the two parts of
Dreamscape
together. This portion of the flight always scared the living daylights out of him. But he also knew that the technology for such accurate pyrotechnic timing was well understood. It always amazed him how it never sounded like five explosions at all. It simply went bang, and that was that.
 

Bang!

“We’ve got good separation,” he radioed to control.

“Copy that,
Dreamscape
. Scramjet separation is complete.”

“Now preparing for main-engine ignition in twenty seconds.” Gesling was nearing the point at which the powerful main rocket engines would fire, giving him the final acceleration needed to attain the seventeen thousand miles per hour required for orbit. Escape velocity was just that one stage away. Orbital altitude and velocity were one main rocket burn away.

“Roger that, Paul. Main burn in fifteen…ten…five, four, three, two, one.”

“We’ve got good burn on the main engine, and all systems are go.”
 

Never in the history of aerospace, or humanity for that matter, had a single spaceship flown an orbital mission, a month or so later flown around the Moon, and then just a few short days later flown back to orbit. The
Dreamscape
was truly being pushed to the limits of space-technology capabilities and reliabilities. Paul tried not to think about quality control, workmanship, parts and materials fatigue. After all,
Dreamscape
had been designed to fly with a rapid turnaround. Paul wasn’t quite sure if this was the
type
of rapid turnaround planned, especially while the rocket was fresh off its first mission and practically just out of the test-flight phase.

“Just fly the plane,” he told himself. The first and foremost thing all pilots trained themselves to do was to learn to fly the plane no matter what the instruments were saying or whatever else was going on around them. Fly the plane. He gripped the controls and swallowed the lump in his throat, forcing it back into his stomach. It amazed him that he still got that lump. He was now quite the space veteran. But flying in space on a screaming, highly volatile, explosive rocket engine was indeed scary. Paul had every right to be at least a little bit nervous. He also had every need to overcome that nervousness and do his job.
 

The first stage, then fully separated from the rocket-powered
Dreamscape,
began its glide back to the Nevada desert. Operated by onboard automatic pilot and with constant monitoring by engineers in the Space Excursions control room back at the launch site, the first stage was on target for a landing back at the location from which its voyage began. So far the
Dreamscape
was doing everything just right.
 

The acceleration from the main burn continuously pushed Paul back into the webbing that secured him to his seat. He could feel the skin on his cheekbones being pulled back toward his ears. He could hear his heartbeat and feel the kick to his abdomen as the
Dreamscape
’s engine engaged at a little over twenty thousand feet. The whine of the engines was only momentarily loud before the cabin’s active soundproofing kicked in and diminished it to something just short of a deafening dull roar. The sound may have diminished a bit, but the g-forces slamming Paul into the seat were far from over. At the moment he was feeling over five gravities and would endure it for a few moments more. Paul grunted against the crushing weight of his chest and forced himself to breathe through it.

He was on his way to orbit. Once he got there, he’d circularize his orbit and then crank his inclination up to match the International Space Station. Then he would chase the ISS until he docked with it. Upon docking with the space station, he’d offer the rescued astronauts a ride home. At least that was the plan with which he’d started.

Chapter 32

“
Mercy I,
this is mission control, copy?

“
Mercy I,
this is mission control, do you copy?

“Come on, guys, this is Houston, come in?”

Bill would have sworn he was having a bad dream. No, a nightmare would have been more like it. He’d been stranded outside a spaceship for hours, only to make it inside the thing just in time to go careening through the Earth’s atmosphere at over fifteen kilometers per second. The ship had shaken him to his bones. His teeth and jawbone ached from having clenched so tightly. Somewhere in there he had passed out. That had probably been for the best. He imagined that the ride may have even been worse after he’d passed out.

“Uh, roger…
ahem
…roger, Houston,” he said weakly. Bill shook his head and squinted his eyes as best he could in his suit. He reached up and tapped the control screen and brought up the ship diagnostics. Cabin pressure was good, so he popped his faceplate. Just doing that nearly exhausted him. He let his arms fall back down beside him, and they actually fell. He had a bit of a dizzy sensation also. “Uh-oh. That can’t be good.

“Houston, this is
Mercy I
, over.” Bill reached up and switched on the internal microphone. “Hey, anybody with me in here?”

“Zhi and myself are awake, Bill,” Hui answered. “Xu and Ming are alive but still out.”

“Tony?”

“Huh, what, hey?” Tony startled as he awoke.

“Easy, Tony.”

“Bill, I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” Tony said.

“Yeah, me, too. I think we’re spinning or tumbling. I’m trying to figure it out.” Bill carefully moved one hand and tapped the commands to bring up the flight-command suite. The digital direction gyroscopes, Global Positioning System, and attitude determination and control systems seemed to be all functional and online. The gyro was rolling counterclockwise. And that meant that the Orion was spinning like a top.

“Good to hear your voice, Bill,” mission control replied. “We need to assess the ship and telemetry data. We show an induced roll?”

“Roger that, Houston. We’re rolling pretty darn quickly. My guess is we’re pulling about three gees.” Bill worked his hands out of the gloves and did his best to stow the gloves out of the way without getting sick on himself. Then he eased his left hand around the stick.

“Copy that,
Mercy I
. We show your rate of spin to be conducive to a three point two one gravity load.”

“Why hasn’t the automated attitude control and stabilization system kicked in?” Tony asked.

“Good question, Tony.” Bill tapped the screen. “Holy crap. Uh, Houston, I’m looking at the boards for the attitude control and stabilization system, and it is all orange and red across the board. I’ve got alarms on the ACS PROP, Main Guidance Processing, and a P&P Alert on RP. Any advice there?”

“Copy that,
Mercy I
. Hold one for that.”

Bill considered just taking the manual controls and trying to straighten out the ship. The problem with that would be that if they had suffered some damage during the aerocapture maneuver, or Tony’s target practice, then putting power to the thrusters could start a fire, cause an explosion, or do nothing. They could withstand the merry-go-round for another minute or two. But not much longer than that.

“Hey, didn’t something like this happen to Neil Armstrong?” Tony asked.

“Gemini 8. Neil and David Scott docked with the Agena target vehicle, and apparently the attitude-control systems for the Gemini capsule and the Agena kept firing, and they couldn’t seem to get them to stop. They ended up aborting the mission and using the Gemini capsule’s reentry thrusters to straighten them out, if I recall. But I think they were spinning head over heels, not round and round like we are.” Bill squinted his eyes. The roll rate was getting worse. Maybe it just felt worse.

“Okay
Mercy I
, we believe that the P & P alert is the key. The pressurants and pressurization algorithm is telling us that we’ve got either an ACS roll thruster stuck open or there is a leak in the propellant line that is rapidly venting. But since the thrust appears to be very stable and directional, our best guess is the thruster.”

“Uh, okay, Houston. What is our work-around?” Bill inched his hand closer to the manual-control switch.

“Bill, you need to see if you can reboot the ACS. The PROP team thinks that there might be a valve stuck open, and the reboot will close it.”

“Okay. Roger that. Start with the reboot sequence.”
 

“Roger that,
Mercy I
. Here we go. ACS SEQ 999GGH3…”

It took Stetson more than seven or eight very long minutes to type in the commands. During that time Tony Chow began retching and heaving into a barf bag as best he could manage. The Chinese crew members seemed to be handling the situation a little better.

“Alright, Houston, hitting reboot now.” Bill tapped in the final command code. When he did, everything went black. “Jesus!”

“What the…?” Tony forgot his barf bag when the lights flickered out.

“Houston, we’ve had a complete power failure here. All my boards are out.” Bill started tapping at reset switches and breakers, but nothing seemed to happen. For some reason, the communications system was still up.

“
Mercy I
, we’ve lost all feeds but the Ku-band links. No telemetry whatsoever is making it to us. We are looking into it.”

“Roger that, but we are still spinning up here.” Bill was beginning to think that the ship was about to come apart at the seams. They had comm-system power. That meant something. They needed the ACS back online if he was going to stop the spin.

“Bill, my screen is coming on!” Tony shouted.
 

“What does it say?” Bill tried his best to move his head in that direction, but the spin kept him from doing so.

“It’s a hard reset! I think the entire system shut down and is now starting to boot back up.” Tony reached up and tapped the enter key on the console, and his screen lit completely up and started loading the operating system. Then the lights flickered back on, and Bill could hear the carbon dioxide scrubber fans start up again.

“Houston, be advised that we’ve got systems coming back online.” Bill’s screen blinked back on and began loading the mix of drivers loaded onto it to command the spacecraft. “Any idea what just happened?”