Rodriquez knew the Intrepid'& systems as well as anyone. The hissing sound told him the purging fan had been turned on to siphon off the existing atmosphere in the crew compartment. The hissing, in itself, was not unusual, and a scientific instinct tried to tell him this had something to do with the fire; but another instinct, this one from his youth in the barrio, told him he could be in another kind of danger.
Once again he pounded on the hatch.
"Frank!… Berg!… Somebody answer!"
Nothing.
Rodriquez began to notice his breathing was more rapid. He floated to the oxygen indicator, and his eyes widened when he saw the needle resting on 12 % oxy… Then it started falling to 11 % oxy. There was no question in his mind now. Somebody was trying to kill him.
He thrust himself to the locker that held the portable oxygen system. He yanked out the mask, pressed it to his face, and flipped the switch — but no oxygen flowed to his nostrils. Because the tube wasn't transparent, he couldn't see that it was blocked with epoxy glue which had been injected by hypodermic needle. He discarded the mask and went to the second oxygen system, only to come to another dead end. His chest was heaving now. There was one more emergency oxygen system on this deck, but something told him it would be just like the others. He flew to the airlock and hit the pressurization switch to try to get some oxygen that way, but the red mnl ovr rde light was blinking and the air wouldn't flow. Rodriquez knew the override switches for the airlock and the cabin environmental system were all in the cockpit, and there wasn't anything he could do — except, maybe…
He grabbed the floating screwdriver and pushed himself to the bulkhead panel which sealed off the avionics bay. His chest was heaving like a quarter-miler's now. Frantically he pried loose each of the butterfly screws and unscrewed them from the panel. He was becoming a little giddy now, and light-headed. The last screw popped free. All the color was fading from his vision. Everything was black-and-white.
The panel came off. The room was spinning. His hand floated inside the bay and pulled on a drawer filled with circuit boards. It didn't budge. He yanked again. Images were dimming. The drawer pulled free. With his last conscious effort, Rodriquez grasped the butt of his screwdriver and brought it down as hard as he could on one of the brittle plastic circuit boards. It shattered, causing fragments to float out of the bay and into the cabin.
To his credit, Rodriquez had taken the only action which might have saved his life, and that was to break the circuit which controlled the purging fan and the manual override switch on the oxygen/nitrogen regulator. But his strategy didn't quite work as planned. The lack of oxygen in the cabin had blurred his vision, and instead of hitting the circuit board labeled oxy/nit, Rodriquez brought the butt of his screwdriver down on the board marked oms.
"What happened?" demanded Whittenberg.
Lamborghini nodded to the duty officer and said, "Play it back." The young captain punched a button on the digital recorder and they all relived the Intrepid's last transmission.
"We notified you immediately, sir," said Lamborghini. "This came in just seven minutes ago. CSOC has tried raising them on all four transponders and has gotten zip. Telemetry also ceased shortly after the transmission. Spyglass is at Andrews. If we scramble them now they can be in position for a flyby in about six hours."
With his jaw muscles flexing, Whittenberg nodded. Lamborghini grabbed the yellow phone and immediately started barking orders. That was one thing about his intel chief, Whittenberg thought. He answered your question before you asked it, then pointed the way.
When the colonel hung up, Whittenberg looked at his watch. It was not quite 8:00 a.m. "Assemble any of the staff who've already arrived. Then have McCormack from CSOC piped into the conference room on a secure line." The CinC didn't wait for an answer, but spun on his heel and left.
Eleven minutes later the conference room was filled.
"Okay, Colonel," ordered Whittenberg. "Bring everyone up to speed."
Lamborghini ran through a quick brief on the situation and took his seat.
"Did we miss anything, Chet?" Whittenberg queried the speaker-phone box.
"No, sir," replied Maj. Gen. Chester McCormack from CSOC. "That about covers it. We even tried to raise them from the SDI platform with no success."
"All right, gentlemen… and lady," said the CinC, to include Lydia Strand, Lamborghini's deputy. "That's where we are. Where do we go from here?"
No one spoke at once, and Whittenberg didn't rush. He knew it would take some time for them to absorb the problem. It was the deputy chief of staff for operations — the professorial General Fairchild — who spoke first. He was a brigadier who cut a strange-looking figure, for his bald head was in the shape of a light bulb, and it seemed a bit large for his thin body. His peculiar appearance was further amplified by the meerschaum pipe that always seemed to be hanging from his mouth. But when "Sir Isaac" talked, everyone listened. "Let's consider the options," he began, through a haze of pipe smoke. "First case, there was a fire on board that reached the liquid hydrogen or oxygen fuel cells and blew the orbiter apart. While this is possible, I feel the fire-suppression systems and the design of the craft make this unlikely."
No one challenged the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT.
"Besides," he continued, "Spyglass will soon tell us if this is so or not… Second case, the spacecraft is intact, but the crew are dead. In such case the orbiter and payload can be salvaged… Third case, the crew are alive but life-support systems are damaged and they are operating on emergency systems. If they cannot effect repairs — and being without ground communication, this will be difficult — they will be dead before any rescue effort could be mounted."
No one was comfortable with the detached way Sir Isaac sized things up.
"Fourth and final case," he concluded, "they are alive, life support is functioning, and they have only lost their communication, and possibly some other functions."
There was another lull.
"Chet," asked Whittenberg, "they were on auto controls for their final OMS burn, weren't they?"
The Commander of SPACECOM Flight Operations said, "Roger, General," through the speaker box. "They had fired their initial orbit insertion burn and were supposed to go through a systems check before their next lift burn. They were on auto."
"So if they're alive and the computer and OMS systems weren't damaged, they could still be programmed to fire the next burn?" asked the CinC.
"Mmmmm," McCormack hedged. "I suppose that's possible."
"How long till the next burn was scheduled?" queried Sir Isaac.
There was a pause, then the box spoke: "Eighteen minutes."
"Okay," said Whittenberg. "We wait eighteen minutes. If nothing happens, we start considering the more unattractive alternatives."
Iceberg watched carefully as the oxygen meter needle inched back up to twenty percent. He'd kept it at one hundred percent nitrogen in the crew compartment for twenty-five minutes, which was long enough to asphyxiate anyone several times over. Also, he knew Rodriquez wouldn't have procured any relief from the portable oxygen packs. He'd taken care of those before launch, right after the ground crew had certified them as being in great shape. The recollection caused him to smile at his own cleverness.