The computer-synthesized voice that came through the Pentagon's "safe-line" sounded like Jason Saint-Michael, but General Stuart could tell immediately that a machine had answered. No matter. It was five o'clock in the morning in Colorado, seven A.M. in Washington. Give the man a rest.
When the voice was replaced by a beep, Stuart said, "Jason, Stuart here. I just left a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. The president and his cabinet were listening in on a video teleconference. Not the news you'd hoped for, I'm afraid. The secretary of defense is dead set against the station and he convinced the president to deny your request.
"I'm real sorry, Jason, but the decision is to give you a medical retirement. America will be piloted by Hampton. The crew will be responsible for salvaging bodies and boosting Skybolt into storage. That's it, Jason. Sorry…"
As he returned the receiver to its cradle, Martin Stuart admitted to himself that he had been hoping to get Saint-Michael's machine. He and Jason had knocked heads a fair amount over the years, but he'd always respected the young general, considered him a brilliant field commander. It would have given him no pleasure to tell Saint-Michael directly that Space Command no longer had use for his services. So he was a coward. In this case, he had no apologies. He just hoped Jason would come to accept it. But did he really believe there was a chance of that?
CHAPTER 33
This was no longer the world's most extraordinary flying vehicle, Ann thought, and they were no longer a crew of highly skilled astronauts and engineers: this magnificent spacecraft called America was nothing more than a glorified hearse, and they were the pallbearers, They were being sent to do a dirty job, with the whole world looking on.
Ann and Marty Schultz were observing the loading of America's cargo bay two days prior to launch. They stood on a steel arch over the massive spaceplane watching huge cranes and scores of workers maneuver supplies into the cargo bay. Ann's first glimpse of America had been so striking that, for a moment, she'd forgotten the reason for their voyage, forgotten the pain of knowing that Jason would not be joining her. "She's beautiful. Really beautiful," she had said when they'd climbed on top of the observation arch for the first time.
Schultz had first taken her on a walk-around inspection of the huge space vehicle. Unlike the husky, boxlike STS space shuttles, America was a sleek, rather ominous-looking craft. It was twice as large as the shuttles, closely resembling an oversized version of the Mach Three-plus U.S. Air Force SR-71 Blackbird military reconnaissance plane (the fastest aircraft in the world until America had come along), with its pointed hawknose bow sweeping gracefully out toward its broad, flat fuselage and impossibly thin edges.
The craft was built primarily of an exotic metal called rhenium, which was stronger and lighter than titanium and more heat resistant than reinforced carbon-carbon. The cockpit, crew cabin and cargo bay rose out of the top of the smooth black-and-gray rhenium body in a graceful hump, blending smoothly into the broad, flat tail. The sides of the fuselage flared out into short, thin wings that, a few minutes after launch, would swing into the body when their lift was no longer needed. Two short, rounded vertical stabilizers jutted out of the top of the fuselage near the tail, pointing in toward the spine. But most impressive about America was her three large engines: long, boxy devices slung under the fuselage with rows of dividers and chambers throughout. Ann had walked around to the front part of the engine and, out of habit and curiosity, looked into the engine inlet. To her surprise she could see right through the engines. She asked the obvious question: "Where the hell are the engines?"
"Those are the engines," Marty explained, welcoming the chance to lecture her on something he knew a good deal about. She understood and kept quiet. "Those are the scramjet engines — supersonic ramjets. Instead of using fan blades to compress air like ordinary aircraft jet engines, the scramjet uses what's called a Venturi — the internal shape of the engine itself — to compress air for ignition. The underside of the fuselage is an integral part of the engine, slowing and cooling the air before it enters the Venturi.
"A conventional turbofan or turboramjet engine is limited to around Mach three-point-five; it just can't suck more air. A simple ramjet engine is far more fuel efficient and can go as fast as Mach five or six — a lot of early military antiaircraft missiles were rocket-boosted ramjets. Ramjets, are limited by the metals used in their construction, which burn up or disintegrate at high speeds, But a scramjet is designed to use its hydrogen fuel as well as its composite construction to cool the inlets. That helps the internal parts withstand the hypersonic speeds over Mach five.
"Once the heat and disintegration problems were solved we were ready to race. There theoretically is no upper limit to a scramjet's speed, but Mach twenty-five is enough for our purposes: that's orbital speed." Marty pointed to the rail rack below the space planes. "Since a scramjet engine can't suck in air by itself, the spaceplane is shot down this track on a rocket sled to get enough air going through the engine for ignition. At about two hundred miles an hour the Venturi in the scramjets begin to work, and America lifts herself off the sled."
"But how do the engines work in space?" Ann asked. "There's no air up there."
"These engines are hybrids: they're true scramjets in the atmosphere but they convert to liquid-fueled rocket engines once there's no more air passing through the engine. America's primary fuel is hydrogen, with oxygen to burn it. As you know, oxygen is supplied in the atmosphere at lower altitudes. As America climbs and the air thins out, the front of the scramjet engine gradually louvers closed and oxygen is fed gradually into the engine from the ship's fuel tanks as needed. The scramjet becomes a true rocket engine at about seventy miles altitude. The spaceplane is really a big fuel tank: everything except the crew cabin, cargo bay and avionics bay is fuel storage.
"On return it's just the opposite: hydrogen and oxygen fuel are mixed in the engines until there's enough oxygen flowing through the Venturi from the atmosphere to sustain ignition. The scramjets can be used almost all the way to landing, so America can land at almost any long runway. Los Angeles International and San Francisco International are our designated alternate landing sites, but if necessary we can fly all the way across the country in one hour to find a more suitable one."
As Marty talked Ann couldn't help thinking about Saint-Michael. He had not been with her these past two days while she trained for hypersonic spaceplane duty at the Space Command HTS flight simulator at Little Rock, then went to Southern California for the launch. Although he didn't say so, she guessed that after seeing her off in Colorado Springs he'd flown to Washington to appeal the ruling that had grounded him. She doubted, though, that he'd be able to convince the Joint Chiefs to reactivate the station, and as each new hour passed and she failed to hear from him, the possibility of his getting his way seemed less likely.
She looked up to see America's cargo bay doors fully open, the silver radiator lining reflecting the blaze of hundreds of spotlights surrounding the craft. Even though the spaceplane was twice as large as her older, less sophisticated cousins, her cargo bay was the same small size. Indeed, dwarfed by the sheer size of the spaceplane, the cargo bay seemed to have been installed as an afterthought. One glance at its payload, though, brought the mission's grim reality into sharp focus.