After their last-minute physical and suiting-up the crew walked to the loading dock on top of the spaceplane. America was still in her loading hangar, sitting on top of the huge sled, with the sled's hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines on either side. They took a long escalator ride to the top of the loading dock, walked across a catwalk to the top entry-docking entry batch and then rode a moving ladder down to America's airlock on the flight deck.
In spite of America's huge size, the flight deck was no larger than a shuttle upper deck. They moved through the large airlock chamber and into the flight deck area. The galley, waste-control-system facilities and storage lockers were on the left. The right side of the cabin held numerous storage lockers for space suits and EVA equipment. Forward of the airlock were two permanently mounted seats with space beside each seat for another temporary jump seat. The HTS seats were hydraulically dampened, heavily padded seats that would help the occupant to better withstand the high "g"-forces.
Forward of the passenger seats was a small area with auxiliary controls and circuit-breaker panels, and forward of that was the cockpit. The entire flight deck forward of the airlock was a huge, life-support capsule. In an emergency the flight deck would explosively cut itself free of the spaceplane, rocket away from the stricken craft and parachute to earth under a two-hundred-foot-wingspan delta-wing parasail.
Under strict Master Mission Computer ("Mimic") control, preflight preparations in the cockpit were already well under way by the time the crew had boarded, so Ann and her fellow crewmembers had little else to do but strap in and monitor the computer's progress. A wall of four large computer monitors on the front instrument panel explained each preflight step being performed. As a sort of token gesture to the humans, the computer would pause after each step and ask if the humans wanted to proceed. The reply was always 1, "yes"; the computer would proceed anyway if no reply had been given within five seconds. After only thirty minutes of computer-actuated switching and lightning-fast electronic commands and replies, America was ready for launch. "Falcon Control, this is America," Colonel Hampton radioed. "Mimic reports prelaunch checklist complete. Acknowledge. "
"America, we confirm. Checklist complete. Be advised, launch sled fuel-pressurization complete."
"Roger. Awaiting final clearance."
"Stand by, America."
The last radio exchange puzzled Ann: it was an unusual amount of human intervention for a normal hypersonic spaceplane launch. Usually any clearances required for launch were obtained by Mimic enquiries to various other computers around the facility. Humans were not ordinarily consulted.
Ann turned to Marty and keyed her interphone switch. "Is there something wrong? I don't recall this step in the simulator rides."
Marty hesitated before replying: "I'm sure with all the brass observing this flight, someone just hit the pause button somewhere to give the brass time to get caught up. Mimic can move pretty fast."
The wait lasted for some five minutes, then a sudden voice on the radio announced: "America, this is Falcon Launch Control. Ignition sequence interrupt. Launch abort. Launch abort."
Ann had her harness buckles, oxygen hoses, "g"-suit hoses and communication cords off in five seconds. Marty followed suit and immediately got to his feet. "Remember, get a good tight grip on that safety belt on the rescue tower," Marty was saying. "It'll jerk you pretty hard when it pulls you away from the—"
They heard the sound of the upper airlock hatch being wrenched open. "Someone's out there," Marty said, not quite believing. "How? They just called the abort… They both hurried across to see who could possibly have made it on top of the spaceplane only five seconds after the abort was called.
In reply the huge curved airlock door swung open and a tall figure stepped through. Ann's eyes showed stunned recognition, but before either Ann or Marty could speak, the figure addressed them: "No time for explanations now," Jason Saint-Michael said straight-faced and moved quickly past them toward the cockpit.
Ann merely stared at the back of the cockpit seats for several moments, then turned around to see two launch technicians dropping through the open hatch. She moved to the cockpit as Horvath slid past her and Hampton began strapping into the right seat.
"Jason, you're all right…? You're going to fly?"
"Looks like it."
"But you told me your plan was disapproved…"
"It comes down to good old-fashioned arm-twisting. More later," he said as he strapped into the left-side commander's seat. "Get ready for launch; we can't delay too long or we'll lose the optimal launch window. We've only got ninety minutes to pull that damned casket thing out of the cargo bay and put a fuel tank on board — a full fuel tank this time."
She squelched her questions and went back to her seat. Schultz and Horvath were helping the technicians assemble a spare crew seat beside the two permanent ones. Marty motioned Horvath into his permanent seat. Horvath accepted and began strapping himself into the seat beside Ann while Marty began securing himself onto the flimsy-looking tubular seat they had just assembled.
"You're going to fly in that?" Ann asked.
"You bet," Marty said. He gave his best swashbuckling grin. "Only rookies need anti-'g' seats."
"But what about the mission to retrieve the bodies…"
"Looks like it's a different mission now," Marty said. "They sure cut it close, though. It's dangerous as hell to interrupt a launch countdown after the rocket fuel tanks have been pressurized. A few more minutes and it would've been too late without a week-long abort. He jabbed a thumb aft. "If I know General Saint-Michael, he's organized the world's fastest cargo switch in history. One of those fuel tanks can hold five thousand pounds of liquid oxygen and ten thousand pounds of liquid hydrogen — more than enough to refuel Silver Tower's depleted fuel cells. The PAM boosters? They'll make great boosters for Armstrong Station."
"So we're really going to do it… we're reactivating Armstrong Station…"
Marshal Alesander Govorov was on a late afternoon tour of Glowing Star, the Soviet spaceflight center in south-central Russia. He had shunned his military escort, although his staff car with armed driver was following along a few dozen meters behind. In the growing dusk, wandering around his Elektron launch facility — now, by Stavka decree, unquestionably his — he preferred solitude as he observed his workers scurrying around the launch pads.
He looked ahead and saw his dream standing before him, illuminated by banks of spotlights on tall towers: three SL-16 Krypkei rockets, service gantrys and umbilicals in place, ready for launch. On top of each booster was an Elektron spaceplane, gleaming in the Space Defense Command colors of silver and red.
Each spaceplane, he knew, was armed with ten Scimitar hypervelocity missiles, now for the first time being massproduced in the Leningrad Malitanskaya-Krovya exotic weapons factories. They had proved their worth in combat with stunning results. He also had three top Soviet cosmonauts, hand-picked and personally trained, on twenty-four-hour alert at the Space Defense launch center.
His newly formed combat unit, the first of its kind, was the talk of the Soviet military, but despite — or perhaps because of — the unit's success much effort was being expended in instituting refinements and improvements. Changes had already been proposed, for example, in Govorov's simple but effective hypervelocity missile-weapon design. Undoubtedly the changes would end up complicating things, requiring more cosmonaut intervention before launch, but that, Govorov thought, would be considered a reasonable price to pay.