Like a giant scab, the plate finally peeled away from the orange skin of the external tank — slowly at first, then as the leverage increased, the adhesive yielded so quickly that Classen nearly dropped the limpet device as it fell into his hand. Carefully, he brought it around the edge of the superstructure and clutched it to his chest, then scrambled to his feet and flew back down the catwalk, where he smashed the control lever into the retract position.
The firing room crew watched the catwalk superstructure start moving away from the external tank.
"Pad systems!" screamed the launch director, forgetting his headset. "Tell me when we've got enough clearance from the H-two catwalk for lift-off!"
The pad systems engineer checked his board. "We've got it now!" Then added, "Oxygen vent hood is starting to retract!"
The launch director pulled his thumb away from the abort button. His body was shaking. "Okay," he announced. "Okay, we're go for launch!" Then he gulped and almost cried. "Get out of there, Jacob," he implored. "Get the hell out of there."
The H-two catwalk had moved back several meters when Classen heard a creaking sound. He looked above him and his blood went cold. The metallic hood that covered the liquid oxygen vent was retracting, too. That meant he had maybe a minute to ignition. He looked back down the catwalk to the hydrogen vent coupling, and when he figured the catwalk had enough clearance, he released the lever. Ignoring the elevator, he sprinted to the far side of the gantry.
Classen knew there was only one way out now. He fled to the hanging baskets of the emergency exit system, and like an Olympic driver he dove headfirst into one of the steel mesh baskets, clutching the bomb in one hand and slapping the release bar with the other. Immediately the basket began hurtling toward the arresting crash net.
The emergency exit system was a simple device, designed to put a lot of distance between the astronauts and a shuttle accident (say, a fuel spill) in a hurry. It consisted of several wire mesh baskets, which hung from steel cables on sets of rollers. The cables sloped at a severe angle from the eighth level of the gantry structure to a landing zone on the ground alongside a blast bunker. The harrowing slide down the cable took less than thirty seconds, and during that time the basket traveled 1,200 horizontal feet and dropped 147 vertical feet. This rate of descent meant the astronaut went from zero to a top speed of nearly 50 miles per hour during the slide — but that was the easy part. The hard part was going from 50 mph to a complete stop in 1.2 seconds when the basket crashed into the arresting net at the bottom of the cable.
However, Classen didn't have time to ponder the exact physics of the situation. All that registered in his brain at the moment was that he was upside down in a steel basket, plummeting down at a high rate of speed, with a powerful explosive beside his head. With great difficulty he righted himself, and in the process he lost his hard hat and started the basket swinging from side to side. He fumbled with the plate. He'd never thrown a discus before. What a time to try! Clumsily he grabbed the disk and curled his fingers around the edge, then, holding on to the side of the swinging basket, he summoned up all of his strength and heaved the plate into the darkness.
For Classen, the basket's crash into the nylon arresting net was nothing but a blur, but he seemed to remember hearing a distinct whump! and catching the image of a starburst flash, just before his bare head bashed against the basket's forewall. For a few moments he remained on the floor of the still-vibrating vessel, too stunned to move. Finally, like a weak kitten, the pad manager climbed up and over the rim of the steel basket, only to have the wind knocked out of him as he fell to the ground with a dull thud. With his last ounce of strength he forced himself to stand, and like a zombie he limped the final few steps to the sheltering bunker.
What was left of Jacob Classen pushed through the door and fell into the concrete cutout, just as the earth began shaking violently beneath him and a deafening roar rumbled over his spent body. He covered his ears with his hands, then curled up into a ball and pressed his knees on top of his hands.
"Stop that noise!" he pleaded. "Stop it!"
The twang! reverberated through the flight deck as the orbiter lurched forward on its brackets.
' 'Three greens on main engines!'' shouted Townsend over the thundering roar.
The solid boosters fired.
"SRBs are green, too!"
The three astronauts felt the vibrations from the 6.5 million pounds of thrust erupting below them, then watched as the klieg lights slowly passed by the cockpit windows.
The Constellation had started her ascent.
Heitmann, Townsend, and Watkins had been totally unaware of the drama unfolding so near them. The H-two catwalk was on the opposite side of the external tank, and after the Cap Com had recovered from the shock of the episode, he saw no point in alarming the flight crew. There wasn't a blessed thing they could've done about it anyway.
"You are go for roll, Constellation," radioed the Cap Com. "Roger," replied Heitmann. "Starting roll maneuver now." Although his hand rested on the hand controller, it was the shutde's computers that ordered the engines to "gimbal" and roll the spacecraft into its standard heads-down position. But instead of arcing over the Adantic, the Constellation thundered on a trajectory into the southern night sky.
Seymour Woltman was the night wire editor for the Miami bureau of the Associated Press. He was pudgy, dark-haired, middle-aged, divorced, and his career had pretty much pla-teaued — or, rather, regressed.
Woltman had been a good reporter for the Herald once. A helluva reporter. Then a helluva editor. Then a hard-drinking editor. Then it was just hard drinking. Before his career started on a downward slide, he'd been an assistant managing editor at the Herald. Now he was a night wire editor.
But Woltman was determined to bounce back. He'd finally gotten a handle on his drinking, and through an old friend he'd lined up an interview for the metro editor's job at the Atlanta Constitution. After he'd gotten off work from the bureau at 2:00 a.m. that morning he'd gone home and packed, then headed out north on the Florida Hirnpike toward Atlanta. He figured he'd visit with his old buddy over the weekend, then face the job interview on Monday.
But Woltman had neglected to gas up his car before leaving Miami, so as the fuel gauge neared empty he left the turnpike to hunt for a gas station in the tiny town of Yeehaw Junction. Luckily, the small community — which was about sixty miles south of Cape Canaveral — had an all-night self-service stadon.
He'd just gotten out of his car to plug the gas nozzle into the tank when he saw — no, he perceived its presence. The darkness around him seemed to take on a slightly yellowish tint, as if someone had turned on a row of distant streetlights. But in Yee-haw Junction there were no distant streetlights. He looked up, and the sight he beheld caused him to stagger. It was an orange torch, traveling across the heavens. He stood there — mesmerized and stupefied by the image — until a thunderclap boom! made him jump two feet in the air. The Constellation had just cracked the sound barrier.