The departure had been noisy. Not many young boys, or girls, for that matter, have enough self-discipline, even in church, not to run to a window when a shrieking rocket plane takes off from the local airport, nor are they likely to return to their pews when they notice the rocket is their favorite speedboat. By the time of the big climb, pretty much the whole valley was watching. We beat a hasty retreat back to the farm to track the data. Jake hid down in the cellar with his computer, tracking the flight, while we fended off the curious neighbors who were pouring down the driveway. We held nothing back. They were too dumbfounded to know if they were thrilled, angry, or terrified. Unfortunately, in the process, we couldn’t keep track of the flight.
The reporters from the local newspaper and radio station arrived, and I got pushed into the role of impromptu Public Affairs Officer, explaining what had happened and making sure they had everyone’s names spelled right. Patti scurried inside to make copies of our video, which we passed out to their considerable delight.
The commotion was building rapidly when Jake slipped out on the porch, his face ashen, and pulled me inside. “Tom, take David and get back out to the Cessna. We’ve got a problem.”
“Jeezus,” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. “What happened?” “We reached apogee, 900 kilometers as planned, and the engine failed. No circularization burn. It’s coming back down.”
“Is he all right?”
Jake nodded. “So far. Since the flight profile started with a big climb, and was nice and high, he’ll make a full orbit. We think just a wee bit more, in fact, thanks to aerodynamics. Course, his trajectory will be over the Pacific due to Earth’s rotation, but he can do a reentry surfing maneuver to bring him back near here. He’s going to try to land at Seattle. Best emergency facilities around, and he can ditch it in the water if it’s a miss.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I commented. “You want me to chase inbound in case something goes wrong, then?”
“Right. Here’s the frequency he’ll try to reach you on.”
“How long will he be in radio blackout?” I asked, remembering the problems NASA had.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Jake answered. “Dervish don’t streak back like some burnt-up space junk, it flies back, light as a feather and cool as a cucumber. OK, maybe cool as a baked potato. I’ll keep you updated, same frequency. You act as a relay if we need it.”
I saluted, grabbed my flight kit, and was out the door.
Ten minutes later, we were airborne. I contacted Jake. “Any news from the Good Ship Dervish?”
“Seattle is fogged in. He’ll try diverting to Spokane.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Should be OK, unless something goes wrong. If it does, there ’s no water to ditch in.”
“Roger that.”
“Can you position yourself near Republic? He’ll pass over there at around twenty, maybe thirty thousand feet.”
“Wilco.”
We flew toward the designated point, climbing to 12,000 feet, about as high as the Cessna or I was really comfortable. David scanned the sky, searching for Dervish, and wished we were in the bubble-canopied Glasair, instead of the high-winged 182.
“Doesn’t matter so much if we see him pass over,” I noted. “You probably wouldn’t see something that small with no contrail at 30,000 feet anyway. If we’re looking for him on the ground, this is a superior search plane.”
Just then Dr. Gore’s voice came over the radio. “Cessna 2 Golf Sierra, this is 214 Papa Whiskey, over.”
“Four Papa Whiskey, 2 Golf Sierra copies, loud and clear, over.”
“Got a problem here, fuel dump system isn’t operating. Feels like maybe the cable has seized up. Spokane says we can’t land, and I don’t blame them.”
“What’s your alternate?” I asked, anxiously.
“No alternate, and since I’ve already diverted, I can ’t reach open water.”
“What about a lake?” There were several fair-sized ones about.
“Too many boaters, especially on a Sunday. My best bet is to bail out and let it crash in the woods.”
The thought horrified me. Dervish had no ejection system, just a hatch. “What about a dry lake bed?”
“Rained last Wednesday. I’d crack up in the mud. Same if I tried to land in the desert. This thing is like a Styrofoam cup full of rocket fuel, and it needs a smooth landing area. Gotta go now. I’m turning on my ELT. See you on the ground; 214 Papa Whiskey out.”
“Four Papa Whiskey, 2 Golf Sierra, over?” I tried several times, with no response. “Mission base, 2 Golf Sierra, did you copy that?”
“We copied. Your ball, 2 Golf Sierra. Track him.”
I habitually leave my second radio on 121.5, the aircraft emergency frequency, and just then I began to pick up a dew-dew-dew alarm signal from an ELT. “That’s him, David. Sounds like he’s not too far away. Hang on.”
I put the plane in a steep left turn, noted the heading as the signal dropped out, and straightened out.
“OK, David, we’re over Havilah. Got it on the chart?”
“Got it.”
“OK, now draw a line 135, no, make that 150 degrees from there.”
“Like this?”
“Yeah. Go ahead and start scanning for him. You know the color of his parachute?”
David nodded, turning his attention to the sky. “It’s a purple and gold balloot. Very distinctive.”
I headed west the short distance to Ellisford to take another bearing for triangulation, and put the plane into another brisk turn. “OK, that’s 175 degrees.” I looked at the line David put on the chart. “Crap, something’s wrong, they don’t converge.”
We took another bearing from the same point. This time we got two hundred and ten degrees. “Damn! That’s a moving target. Westbound and fast. Jeezus, I hope he didn’t get hung up trying to bail out.”
“I think the signal is getting weaker,” David observed.
“I think you’re right. I’m taking us west. Keep your eyes peeled. He may have aimed it for the National Forest.”
A few minutes later, the ELT signal disappeared suddenly, in mid-bleep. David pointed, open-mouthed. I saw it too. About fifty miles southwest of us, a large, orange fireball erupted from the side of a mountain.
We reached the site about fifteen minutes later, and circled over it in absolute silence. Dervish had hit on the rubble near the base of a small cliff on the east slope of a crescent-shaped mountain. Fragments of the lightweight aeroshell had been thrown from the shallow crater, and were readily identifiable. There was no sign of a chute.
“Two Golf Sierra, Mission Base, do you have him yet?”
“Mission Base, 2 Golf Sierra, Dervish is down, four eight degrees, ten minutes, niner seconds north; one two zero degrees, seventeen minutes, ten seconds west. The ELT was apparently with it.”
There was an uneasy silence from the other end, then a subdued enquiry. “Any sign of a survivor?”
I tried to remember some of the polite ways of delivering bad news over an open radio channel. “Hair, teeth and eyeballs all over the place,” is rough on any family members listening in. I’d heard a medical technician use “no vital signs” once, after a plane had hit sixty degrees nose-down at three hundred knots.
“Survival unlikely,” I replied.
We touched down at the airport and pushed through the throng of reporters with no comment, taking David’s car back to the farm. The scene was a zoo, but not as bad as it would be soon, when the caravan of satellite news trucks we had seen coming up highway 97 arrived. With some doing, we made it into the house, just in time to hear a loud pop. I jumped. Then I recognized sounds of glee amidst the turmoil.