Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) (16 page)

In spite of Malcolm being as brave as one man could be, there was definite relief in his voice when he stated, “Now starting the departure maneuver.”

John Gilly approached Stephanie.  “Professor, the President is on the line.  He’d like to speak to Pilot Officer Malcolm.”

“Let me talk to him instead,” she replied.

In a moment she had another familiar voice in her ear.  “Professor Kinsella, I’d like to talk to Pilot Officer Malcolm and at least one of those brave folks he’s rescued.”

“Mr. President, it’s not possible.  I’m not even talking to him.  He’s departing the target asteroid and now has to rendezvous with the vehicles waiting for him.  This is a critical maneuver, sir.  But the fact remains that he won’t hear anything you say to him for an hour and a half, and any reply he makes won’t be here for another hour and a half after that.”

The President chuckled.  “So, I guess that would be a 'no'.  How about after they link up?”

“Sir, those three vehicles are more than a billion miles from Earth.  There is a measurable chance that something will fail between now and when they are safely down at Kennedy.  If I were you, sir, I’d announce that the people were loaded aboard the escape vehicle and that vehicle will rendezvous with the other ships within the hour.  Ask for people’s hopes and prayers to go with these folks, sir.”  And ignore the fact that the actual rendezvous had taken place a half hour before the President started talking to her, and they wouldn’t know the results of that for yet another hour.  Einstein was cruel, that way.  “We’ll keep you posted on events, sir.”

“Do you think the risk is high, Professor?”

“Sir, check with NASA.  Their private nightmare was a shuttle to land safely, and then have a hypergolic leak into the cabin, killing the crew.  There’s a reason the first vehicles to reach the shuttle were ‘sniffer’ trucks and the very next thing was crew egress.  These people won’t be safe, sir, until the bird is sitting still on the runway and the medics have them in the hospital.”

“I’ll defer to your judgment.  What do you think the odds are at this point?”

“Much better than they were, sir.  My original guess was one chance in ten to getting at least one survivor off the asteroid.  Now, I think there’s a chance in ten they all can reach Earth orbit.”

“My, aren’t you a ray of sunshine!”

“No, sir.  I’m a pragmatist who isn’t going to count her boobies before they’re hatched.”

“I’m afraid the reference eludes me.”

“James Thurber, sir, an under-appreciated writer these days.  A piece called ‘There’s a Unicorn in the Garden.’”

“Well, carry on.  You’ll keep me updated?”

“Well, sir, your liaison will, I’m sure.”

He chuckled and cut the line.

Stephanie turned back to the console.  Captain Gilly spoke quietly, just to her.  “One of these days, Professor, you’re going to push the man’s buttons one too many times.”

“For someone who is supposed to be politically astute, who is surrounded by people who are nominally supposed to be very politically astute, he wanted something that was bone-headed and dumb.  And would have made him look really bad if it had gotten out.”

John Gilly sighed.  “Yes.  But does your vocabulary extend to please and thank you?  Or, ‘Sir, may I suggest...’”

“No.”

The mission clock continued to run.

At rendezvous minus eleven minutes and forty-two seconds, the person monitoring the rescue vehicle’s telemetry broke in on the occasional comments on the communications channel.  “Temperature warning, main cabin!  Pressure warning...” the man’s voice stopped.  “Telemetry link has dropped from Rescue One!”

There was nothing, not anything, any of them could do except curse.  And there was a lot of cursing.

The speakers crackled.  “This is Rescue Four.  We had the camera on Rescue One, but I was looking away when the event occurred.  Right now, all I can see is a huge cloud of out-gassing atmosphere.”  The pilot paused, clearly taking his time to think.  “If Rescue One was still under acceleration, they’d have emerged from the gas cloud.  They haven’t, so I don’t think they have fans.”

There was a pause of nearly a minute.  “Mission Control, Rescue Four again.  I can see a light now, coming from the lower quadrant of the gas.  Yes!  I’ll be damned!  He’s on fire!  How can you be on fire in a vacuum?”  There was a voice in the background and the pilot came back.  “My copilot says it’s most likely the oxygen from the life support systems passing over something flammable.  Wait!”

There was another significant pause.

“He’s tumbling!  I just got a glimpse of the bird!  The fire’s out, now, I think.  There’s quite a gas cloud, but it’s beginning to disperse.  I got a glimpse of the spacecraft.  They are tumbling on several axes, but not terribly fast.  Wait another one.”

The wait seemed to stretch out towards infinity.  When he spoke again the pilot’s voice was dull.  “The main cabin’s split open, about half the length of the vehicle.  There’s visible smoke and flame damage apparent on the outside of the vehicle.  One wing is badly damaged by fire as well — evidently the fuel and the oxygen met, at least for a time.”

There was a very short pause.  “Negative contact with spacecraft.  I say again, negative contact with the spacecraft.

“My copilot is working on the videotape we shot.  We’ll have to take down the voice link, but we can send you a couple minutes of tape here shortly.  I’ll use the time to evaluate options.”

Five minutes later they saw a picture of the spacecraft, looking pretty much like the Gulfstream V that it had started out as.  Then, without warning, it was shrouded in an expanding cloud of fog.  As an event, it was pretty unspectacular, as whatever was happening was totally obscured by the gas cloud that had escaped the spaceship.

There was a break, then the picture started up again, this time showing a flash of light that was too orange to be anything other than fire.  A few seconds later, the spacecraft emerged from the cloud.  There were indrawn gasps at the extent of the damage.

At the end, the camera swung around, and was clearly stopped down, before it settled on a distant point of very bright light.

“I want that film cleaned up,” Stephanie said levelly, “and then I want frame by frame stills.  Yesterday!”  People started working it, glad for something, however trivial, to do.  “And, those of you who’ve studied the record, go back and look at the pictures of the damage to Apollo 13.  It isn’t over until the fat lady sings!”

“Rescue Four,” the distant pilot reported again.  “As you can see, it’s a slow tumble.  On my own authority, I’m going to match the tumble and try to get closer.  I will not come into contact with the vehicle without good reason.”

He continued, “There seem to be two axes of rotation, an end-over-end component and something that appears to be a flat spin.  I don’t think there is any significant risk to matching vectors.  At the end of the video, we put the camera on the sun.  It’s the brightest star in the sky and looks like an arc-welder a hundred meters away.  Nonetheless, that way’s home.  I promise, Mission Control, I’m not forgetting that.”

There was a lot of technical talk, as Rescue Four undocked from the other spacecraft, then flew close to Rescue One.

“I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” the pilot of Rescue Four said, during the approach.  “But someone is signaling us with Morse code from Rescue One’s command deck using a flashlight.  It’s really too bad that none of us know Morse code.”

Two hours later, it was, to all intents and purposes, wrapped up.  Everyone in the main compartment of Rescue One had died.  The assistant manager of the habitat had managed to secure the hatch between the cabin and the passenger area after an explosion had occurred in the passenger area.  The command deck had lost pressure, but they’d both been in vacuum suits and the heat and smoke had been kept out of the command deck.

The pilot of Rescue Four was laconic.  “We have no idea what caused the explosion.  Even so, we closed with the vehicle and took off Pilot Officer Malcolm and Assistant Manager Kelly.  On my own authority, I’m leaving the bodies here, although only about half of them remained in the cabin.  We’ve got a reading on the orbital elements.  I consider the risk too great to attempt to bring them aboard.”

Stephanie knew that the mission liaison had already told the President about what had happened.  So, she was a little surprised to find John Gilly calling her into the main conference room for a private chat with the President.

“Professor, I realize that a lot of people are going to be going over the entire mission with a fine tooth comb.  Do you have any early guesses?” the President asked her.

“Back in the Apollo days, they had a fire on the launch pad, in one of the early Apollo capsules.  In those days they ran pure oxygen, at a pressure that matched the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.  They were running at a couple PSI, pure oxygen.”

“Yes, sir.  An electrical fire broke out, and it flashed because of all the fuel and oxidizer... the capsule wiring supplying the fuel.  In this case I’m not sure what burned, sir, because the views we have of the cabin show melted aluminum, not vaporized aluminum.  It was hot, too hot for humans to survive, but not hot enough to vaporize aluminum — so call it less than a thousand degrees.”

“Who is going to get the blame?” the President asked bluntly.

Stephanie restrained her anger.  “I think the blame goes straight to our ignorance of the varied environments we face in space.  Odds are, Pilot Officer Lambert saw something; something that if he were alive to tell us, would explain the events.  But he’s dead, and I’m certain he was professional enough that he would have reported at once, if he saw something he recognized as a hazard.  Mr. President, a lion snuck up behind those people and killed them.”

“You’re saying that there’s no one to blame?”

“Sir, probably in few months or maybe less, we’ll know exactly what the problem was.  Odds are, someone else will get killed learning it.”

One of the technicians walked into the room and placed a piece of paper in front of Stephanie and hastily left.

She picked it up and read it before handing it to John.

“You still with us, Professor?” the President asked.

“Sir, you will recall that these folks went to the Fore Trojans.  Partly that was because there’s another party at the Aft Trojans.”

“The habitat run by two teenagers?”

“That’s the one, sir.  Those teenagers heard about this, and they have sent a reasonable explanation based on their own experience.  It will take a while to confirm it, however.”

“You do what you have to do, to confirm it.  I don’t want to hear about it now.  I want you and Captain Gilly on a fast jet back to DC.  I’ll have the Air Force whip up something for you.  The two of you get to Hickam AFB, ASAP.  I will talk to you here in Washington, day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephanie told him.

“Aye, aye, sir,” John Gilly added.

Stephanie and John had a long time to talk on the flight to DC.

Chapter 8 — Help is Still Coming

John Gilly proffered his pass to the gate guard at the entrance to the White House parking lot.  He was sure the man recognized him, just as he was positive the guard didn’t recognize John’s passenger.

“Ma’am, may I see your ID?” the guard asked politely.

Stephanie Kinsella had the pieces of plastic ready and handed them over.  The guard looked at her hard for a few seconds and then checked his list.  Both of their names were on it for today, so he stepped back and saluted.  He was merely the first of many layers of security.

John pulled forward, headed for the visitor’s area of the parking lot.  He glanced at Stephanie, aware of her anger.  “It’s nothing, Stephanie.”

“Nothing?  What, you couldn’t see the disbelief in the man’s eyes?  I look like I’m twenty-something.  You look like a salty naval captain.  And I outrank you?  That’s obscene.”

“Those are the facts of life, Stephanie.  Besides, you have no right to complain — you go out of your way to stay out of the limelight.”

“John, you’ve been in the Navy longer than I’ve been alive.  It’s not right,” Stephanie said, ignoring his last comment.

“Maybe not, but that’s the way it is.  And you’re not in the Navy, anyway, and neither am I, these days.  Hush, don’t make a fuss.”

“Oh, you know me and titles.  I’m a sucker for them.  I won’t make a fuss.”

John Gilly snorted in derision.  Sure, of course!  Not!

They got out of his car and walked towards the White House.

“Do you have any idea why he wants to see us, Stephanie?” he said, mentioning a subject they’d avoided up until then.

“John, he didn’t consult me, as you’ll recall.  He didn’t consult you.  He just told us to come.”

“Stephanie, I know a waffle when I hear it.  Do you want me to ask again?”

“Guess what, John?  All those recommendations on your part about involving the Navy in the management of the Space Service are going to come home to roost.”

John reached out and touched her shoulder.  “I’m sorry about what happened, Stephanie.  It was just one of those things.”

She glanced at him, but kept walking.  “I’m sorry about the twenty-eight civilians and one Space Service pilot that died as well, John.  My crews go up knowing the risks; the Space Service was operating some of my ships... at least ships that used to be mine.  Those people were brave but ignorant, and that ignorance got a lot of brave people killed — even if they weren’t much smarter.”

He looked at her.  “And is that why you agreed to come today?”

“You bet, John.  And, as we said before, it wasn’t as if we were given a choice about coming.”

“I don’t think he’s going to listen to you; you’re kind of a broken record.  Both of us are.”

“On the other hand, we didn’t invite ourselves.  When was the last time you talked to him?”

John Gilly shut up.  Stephanie was right.  Neither of them had asked for this meeting and it had been months since he’d seen the President.

The Ad Astra project was ticking along like clockwork, a mind-boggling two months ahead of schedule — and a quarter billion dollars under budget.  People in government were in a state of shock and denial; half of them were still convinced that it would fail spectacularly at the last minute.

Moreover, the conservative blogs and some newspapers were starting to ask why other projects couldn’t be run in the same fashion, sending a cold wind sweeping through all of Washington’s K-Street lobbyists and defense contractors.

A few minutes later they were seated in the White House Map Room, with only the President’s Chief of Staff present.  The President breezed in a few minutes late.  “Admiral Kinsella, Captain Gilly.”  The President nodded to his Chief of Staff who got up and left, never having uttered a word.

“Whatever,” Stephanie told him.

“Sir!” John said, trying to sound like an eager beaver.

“In an hour we have a meeting with a large working group,” the President went on.  “They were tasked about doing something about the grim numbers of late.”

“Those numbers being that one of ten people who go into space die there?” Stephanie asked.  “My!  What a surprise!”

“No, I suspect it’s not a surprise,” the President replied.  “Still, a lot of those people are Americans; I’d like to bring down the number of deaths.  People are unhappy and the most recent incident served to crystallize opinion.”

“Give the Space Service over to the Navy,” Stephanie told him, her voice bitter.  “That and require proof of basic competence for everyone who goes outside the atmosphere.”

“And I would justify this to the Air Force how?” the President inquired.  “And as hard as that would be, it rather pales beside trying to require the Chinese or Russians to do anything.  Even the French and British would ignore me.”

“The same way you justify giving the ball to a second string quarterback after the starter loses the ball three times in three consecutive drives in the closing minutes of the first half.  ‘Sorry, but what you’re doing doesn’t work.  We’ll try giving the ball to someone else.’”

The President nodded.  “I have a question, Professor.  I’ve tried to get the answer from Captain Gilly, from a couple of admirals and a couple of Air Force generals.  You’ve spoken about institutional differences.  You have a knack of cutting through the junk.  Tell me what you’re talking about in a way I can understand, because right now, I don’t.”

“An Air Force aircraft commander prepares for missions that last hours; very few ever prepare for something longer.  Because of fuel and other constraints, they are going to need replenishment frequently.  If there is a malfunction of their aircraft, they can land almost at once, most places.  And, if the malfunction is serious enough, they land almost at once period.

“An aircraft commander is frequently the only crew member aboard his craft.  A lot of the remaining missions have two crewmen.  Few aircraft commanders are responsible for more than a dozen aircrew at a time.

“The captain of a naval ship is going to be at sea for weeks and months.  Frequently, if there is a serious malfunction, they can’t get help for hours and hours, and it could easily be days.  A submarine skipper and his crew could be trapped for weeks underwater.

“Navy ships, even the smallest, have crews that number a hundred or more.  Destroyers and cruisers have crews that number in the hundreds and aircraft carriers have crews that number in the thousands.

“All of these differences inform mission planning and execution.”

“It would seem to me,” the President mused, “that the difference is just in scale and time frame.”

“Sir, there’s a reason most modern warships, no matter what size, carry a doctor.  When was the last time an aircraft carried a doctor, unless it was a medivac flight?  And those doctors aren’t integral to the unit, but borrowed.”

“We have flight surgeons,” he told her.

“And they are not integral to the operational units — they are attached to a local hospital.  Even when your pilots deploy overseas, the doctors are attached to a hospital not to the squadron, much less an individual aircraft.

“The point is, sir, that naval officers have to prepare for contingencies that an aircraft commander would never have to worry about.  No aircraft commander carries a spare engine.  Or a staff dentist.  They don’t have to deal with pregnant crew members who’ve been on a cruise long enough to get past the first trimester.”

Captain Gilly spoke up, “Neither do our ships... the spare engine, anyway.  Dentists — yes, we have those on the larger ships and the smaller ships operating alone.  Pregnant women are transferred ashore as soon as their pregnancy is known.”

“Perhaps you don’t carry spare engines, but you carry a lot of spare parts, and even more importantly, crew expertise in fixing anything that’s broken and machine shops that can turn out parts in an emergency.  The ship’s commander, the ship’s officers, NCOs and crew are all aware of the dangers and work together to minimize those.  They exercise to deal with various contingencies, including damage control.  How many Air Force officers ever actually practice bailing out before they have to do it for real?”

“It’s too dangerous,” the President said.  “It’s the ultimate last ditch.”

“Well, the Navy practices launching boats and rafts; the crewmen have individual floatation devices, and are taught how use those, and if all else fails, the Navy teaches their people to swim.  There is a whole array of options open to the crew as individuals and groups.  They are trained in those options and practice them regularly.

“Mr. President, the catastrophe in the Fore Trojans was because a poorly engineered vehicle was used in a rescue it was marginal for.  I knew that and let them go anyway.  Ten Space Service pilots volunteered and carried out the mission.  One of them died, plus twenty-eight civilians.

“Mr. President, there is nothing I can find at fault with what the pilot who was killed did.  Still, it is clear to me that his inexperience and lack of training may have played a role.

“That man, Mr. President, had never once been EVA in space.  Not ever.  He had never been EVA on an asteroid surface.  He had no idea that tracking in ‘dirt’ was dangerous.  I mean, we have dirt here, right?  It doesn’t mean anything, right?”

“I haven’t seen the final report.  That’s supposed to be coming in another month or so.”

“The ‘dirt’ at that distance from the sun was a mixture of finely-powdered rock dust, organics and frozen methane, Mr. President.  That’s what they were tracking in.  They got those people aboard, cranked up the heaters and the methane started evaporating.  Methane is an odorless, colorless gas... we use it for natural gas, but we add a little something to it so everyone can tell if there’s even a tiny leak.  They didn’t know what the crud they’d tracked in was doing.  At some point, there was a static spark, and the resulting explosion blew the passenger cabin open to space, and the resulting fire, however brief, killed everyone in the passenger cabin.

“One of those rescued survived because she was forward, talking to the command pilot.  She managed to get the cabin door shut between the command deck and the rest of the shuttle.  Pity about the twenty-five people who died in the explosion and subsequent compartment fire and decompression.”

“You’re saying that it was an avoidable accident,” the President told her.

“Exactly.

“Further, too many members of the Space Service are Air Force officers and they stick together, sir.  The few naval officers in the Space Force are getting the shaft when it comes to assignments and promotions.  Their morale is essentially gone and now they are refusing missions their Air Force CO’s are ordering them out on.  None of the members of the Space Service are receiving adequate training.”

“Captain Gilly?”

“She’s right, sir.  I’ve said this before and so has Admiral Kinsella.”

“But it was always in abstractions, when you were talking about institutional differences and all that twaddle.  I blame myself, because I thought you were talking about rank and organizational structures.”  He looked at them and sighed.

“You understand that the reason you’re here are those refusals to fly as much as anything else?  It’s been a long time since naval officers have essentially mutinied.”

“Mr. President, those men have big brass ones, never forget it.  I can get away refusing those rescues because I’m me and no one wants to make an issue of it.  There’s a reason people come to me first and the Space Service second.  This time I allowed the Space Service to buy and use my equipment,” Stephanie told him.

“We made a decent profit on that transaction,” Stephanie went on, “but you understand my shareholders’ concerns about the bad PR involved in profiting from so many deaths.”

“You’re the only stockholder,” the President replied sourly.

“Like I said, there was unanimous consent that it was a bad idea.  With only one remaining vehicle, we’ve decided to go out of the space rescue business.”

“Wonderful!  I’m getting a lot of flack for all the casualties.  I have to do something — preferably something dramatic.”

Stephanie looked at him steadily.  “Sir, people who go into space at this point of time are going to die in great numbers and frequently terribly.  It is impossible to put much of a dent in it.  About the only thing we can do is be more selective in the people we allow outside the atmosphere and the rescues we attempt.  It looks doubly bad when the firemen die in the rescue, as well as those they are there to ostensibly help.”

“That’s what you’ve done... refuse to go if it’s too dangerous.”

“There was a reason for that as I’ve explained.”

“The Air Force says they’re willing to take the risks.  Only volunteers fly.  They have said they would be willing to buy more vehicles from you, if you were to make them available.”

“Mr. President, I’m a lady.  I am going to resist the very real temptation I’m feeling right now to spit.  One year, eight months and twenty-two days ago we signed the deal for me to provide shuttle service to the ISS.  Five weeks later, to the day, the first shuttle reached low earth orbit, and a week later, it rendezvoused with the ISS.  I built six of those vehicles in the next weeks.