About as productive as blaming God!he thinks, his mind still ricocheting off a dozen possible solutions, each one of which evaporates into little more than wishful thinking.
And suddenly there is nothing left but reality, and it feels like a black hole in his soul, sucking everything that remains of him into another dimension. He sees movement in one of the side windows and looks, realizing the image is his, startled by the mirrorlike reflection of the fear in his eyes.
And the guilt! The overwhelming, crushing guilt that he’s done exactly what Sharon tried to prevent. He’s killed his children’s father, her husband. He’s walked stupidly into the abyss.
He feels tears again cascading on his face and he buries his head in his hands, eyes closed, body shaking, wishing, praying, begging for deliverance as the silent, anguished cry of “No!” fills his mind. He rocks back and forth in agony until he’s stunned enough and tired enough to escape into the blessed release of a numbed sleep.
Chapter 13
On any normal day the sight of Richard DiFazio walking into ASA’s maintenance office would be routine, but his sudden bursting through Mark Burgess’s office door just now catches everyone by surprise. The director of maintenance turns with a shocked expression as the CEO motions him to a corner office and pulls the door closed behind them.
“We have no choice, Mark. You’ve got to get Ventureready to fly by tomorrow, day after tomorrow at the latest.”
The veteran maintenance chief is shaking his head. “Didn’t I make it clear enough on the phone? Richard, the landing gear is damaged and the wing spar is cracked. We could easily lose her and anyone aboard if we tried to fly. Going up and especially coming down.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Well, hell, I don’t know! All I can be sure of is that she’s dangerously weakened.”
“Percentages, dammit!”
“I don’t know, okay? Maybe a fifty percent chance. Maybe better.”
“Fifty or better of surviving?”
“Yes. Or a fifty percent chance of the wing falling off. No one’s going to be stupid enough to fly her like that.”
“I already have two volunteers.”
“Richard, she can’t fly.”
“This isn’t FAA rules. She’s experimental. This is a cutting-edge space program.”
“The hell it is! This is supposed to be a space linewith high reliability, and it hasbeen up to now. Dammit, Richard, we’ve talked about this very contingency.”
“Yeah, but it was just theoretical then. This is real.”
“She can’t fly, Richard.”
“Bullshit. If I have to, I’ll fire your ass and find someone to get her ready.”
He regrets the words as soon as he’s said them. He knows he’s gone too far, but the frustration is driving him to play the “Damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead” card.
Mark Burgess, however, is too experienced and principled to be bullied like some green lieutenant. His arms are crossed, his jaw set, his head shaking slowly. “Go ahead. Violate everything you promised.”
“What did I promise?”
“To never, ever attempt to overrule my department’s judgment on flight readiness. We’velearned the lessons of Challengerand Columbiaeven if you haven’t.”
Richard sighs. He’s cornered, and the defeated slump of his shoulders uncrosses Burgess’s arms.
“Look, Richard, I want this as much as you, but I can’t let you compound a disaster. We lose Ventureand Intrepid, we lose the company, at least for a long time. No spacecraft, no spaceflights.”
“How bad is she, really? Venture, I mean.”
“You mean is there any hope of a fast repair?”
Richard nods.
“These are composite materials, laminated sheets with glue. But we’re already reexamining our conclusions. I’ve a team crawling all over her right now.”
“Good.”
“Keep in mind this is not a metal bird. I can’t just rivet a doubler in place like we could with aluminum.”
“Try, Mark. For God’s sake, try something.”
“I’m not planning to just sit here drinking lattes. But you have to accept that the chances she could be ready to fly this week are near zero.”
“Then Bill’s chances are the same.”
“You don’t know that. So he missed a deorbit burn. He may make it on the next one.”
“And if he doesn’t, he has enough air for the two of them for maybe…”
“Three days, tops. Yeah, I know. We build the scrubbers, remember?”
The two of them stare at each other in pain before Richard DiFazio flails the air with his right hand and turns to the door.
“I’m sorry, Mark. Do your best.”
“We will. We are,” Mark says to the back of the departing chairman.
Her instincts are on high alert as the aerospace reporter for the Washington Postpunches off the latest call from ASA, her headset relieving the need to juggle a receiver as she sits at her desk. The questions ASA are sidestepping are key, and she’s traveled the arc from passing interest in a rumor of trouble to being convinced that the occupants of ASA’s private spacecraft are in danger. She’s already wasted a volley of calls on bad numbers and uncooperative “sources,” and now, she decides, it’s time for a minute of deep-think. The story—whatever the story really is—will break any second on cable networks or online services, or even on the AP wires. Someoneis about to scoop her if she doesn’t get this figured out right now.
So what do I have? Two people aboard that craft, a stable orbit, no telemetry, and no communication. Could she be lying to me about the stable orbit? Could it already have burned up or something?
No, she decides. Ross is a pro, in the game for the long haul. She wouldn’t cite NASA as a source unless it was a valid claim. NASA saw them with a very long lens still in orbit.
But what’s really wrong? Is communications loss the extent of it, like she wants me to think?
There’s something scratching at the back of her mind and the veteran reporter twirls a pencil and looks around the newsroom to let her thoughts coalesce. Her eyes sweep past a large clock, doing visual busywork and taking in the quiet intensity of the other reporters working away on a planet full of stories.
And all she’s got is suspicion and a ticking clock.
Her patience at an end, she snaps back, wondering if she’s dredged up any answers.
Clock. Timeline. When did they launch?
She dives back into the Internet and checks the launch time listed on ASA’s Web site, looking for the planned length of the flight and finding nothing. She Googles and selects a hit from one of the first such flights nearly a year ago, paging down through endless verbiage until the right phrase catches her eyes.
“Each flight is planned for four orbits of approximately ninety minutes each,” DiFazio said. “That’s enough time to not only get a lifelong feel for zero gravity, but to drink in the most spectacular view anyone will ever see in his or her life. We deorbit at the end of the fourth circuit after six hours.”
Six hours.
She checks her note on the time they dropped the spacecraft from the mothership.