He was tired and worn out, but Seymour Woltman's brain cells came alive — really alive — for the first time in years. He'd covered a dozen space shots out of Cape Canaveral. He knew that NASA never launched its rockets south over populated areas. Never.
Until now.
Woltman didn't have to be a genius to figure out that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Horribly wrong. Catastroph-ically wrong. Maybe a damned rocket was out of control!
The orange torch could still be seen in the distance, but Woltman didn't wait. He jumped into his station wagon and tore out for Miami and the bureau office. He'd never put a flash message on the wire before. Now was his chance. This could be his ticket back to somewhere. Hot damn! For the first time in a long, long time he was on a story.
As his spacecraft passed over the western edge of Greenland, Julian Kapuscinski tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. He'd been riding a roller coaster of exasperation, nightmares, boredom, and tension for almost seventy-two hours. All of the emotional firepower that had been bottled up inside of him for over forty years was clawing to break out now. He'd envisioned the Intrepid's touchdown in Russia as an emotional catharsis for his soul, expunging all of the hurts and slights he'd endured for so many years. Endured at the hands of people inferior to himself. Iceberg, they called him. They all thought the call sign was so amusing. Kapuscinski didn't, and hijacking the Intrepid was his opportunity to even the score. For the hurt. For the death of his mother. For the betrayal of Felicia. But instead of exhilaration in completing the mission of a lifetime — literally, a lifetime — he was trapped inside a crippled vessel like a caged animal, and all he could do was wait… wait… and wait some more. Iceberg's emotional bottle remained corked.
So he floated there in the left seat of the cockpit, simply staring into space. The multitude of stars in the heavens failed to excite or inspire him. He only gazed morosely ahead.
From his upside-down vantage point above Greenland he could see the sun starting to creep over the horizon to his right, while the path in front of him and to the left remained cloaked in darkness. Without the polluted veil of the atmosphere to impair his vision, it was amazing how far he could see from his perch above the earth.
It was barely perceptible, but with his exceptional eyesight he saw it. There. Just above the curve of the black horizon, perhaps a couple of thousand miles away. It looked like nothing more than a tiny, tiny firefly in the far distance — but nonetheless, it was unmistakable.
The realization was like a cold slap that snapped Iceberg out of his semisleep. He emitted a little cry as he fearfully punched up the Intrepid's ground track on the NavComputer. It showed that his spacecraft was above Greenland, on a course that would take him directly over Florida.
"No!" he shrieked. "No! No! No! They would not do it!"
But "they" did.
In the distant void, Iceberg saw the Constellation rising to meet him.
The flash from the explosive bolts filled the windshield for a split second. The solid boosters had separated from the external tank and were now beginning their long tumble down to a parachute landing in the Caribbean Sea.
"CSOC, we have SRB separation," radioed Heitmann.
"Throttling main engines up to a hundred percent of rated power."
"Roger, Constellation. We copy SRB separation. You're looking good from here."
The solid booster separation had been delayed for forty-five seconds to ensure that the descending projectiles would clear the southern coast of Florida and touch down in the Caribbean.
"Launch detection, Comrade General!" barked Mission Commander Malyshev, holding the headphone to his right ear. "It is coming out of the Kennedy cosmodrome, bearing one-eight-seven degrees. I am punching up the ground track from the Aerospace Defense Warning Centre."
A stubby luminescent line appeared over eastern Florida on the giant Mercator map projection.
The General Secretary's swarthy face turned a pale white. He was stunned. "You were correct to take precautions, Vitali," he whispered softly. "The Americans are attempting a rescue."
Kostiashak's response was nothing but a nod, while his dark features remained somber. His KGB agent in Florida had failed to stop the Constellation. Now it was up to Pirdilenko to shoot it down. General Secretary Vorontsky, Kostiashak, and Popov were standing behind Mission Commander Malyshev, and seated beside him at a computer station was the spidery Pirdilenko, who was furiously tapping at a keyboard. All of a sudden he quit tapping and looked at the screen with a blank expression on his face. With a raspy voice, he said, "It appears we have a problem."
They were entering the final minute of main engine burn. The Constellation's computers had just throttled the three giant infernos back to 85 percent power in preparation for engine shutdown, when a red annunciator light started blinking and a bzzzzz! bzzzzz! bzzzzz! filled the cabin.
Townsend scanned the instruments. "Low pressure turbo-pump failure on number two oxidizer!"
"Feather two!" ordered Heitmann.
One of the pumps feeding liquid oxygen into the orbiter's center main engine had failed. For what reason, Townsend had no idea, but he quickly flipped the switches to shut down the liquid oxygen and hydrogen feed to the combustion chambers in engine number two. At the same time, Heitmann's muscular hands shoved the throttles forward on engines one and three, increasing their power output from 85 percent to 100 percent. This would help compensate for the loss of power on the center engine.
There was no danger that the Constellation would fail to reach orbit. The vehicle was already in the shallow dive maneuver to point the external tank back to the sea. The loss of the engine would affect their orbit insertion OMS burn, but that was all.
' 'CSOC, this is Constellation. We had to feather number two. Some kinda O-two turbopump problem. I've switched from auto to manual and have increased rated power to a hundred percent on one and three."
A few moments passed before Heitmann heard: "Roger, Constellation. We copy the shutdown. Any other problems? Over."
"Negative. Coming up to tank separation now. Pulling power back down to sixty-five percent." Heitmann pulled back on the throttles and watched the readout on the console fall to "65."
"Roger, Constellation," said the CSOC Cap Com. "You are go for main-engine shutdown."
Heitmann pulled the throttles down to zero and fired the explosive bolts for tank separation. Then with the hand controller he maneuvered the spacecraft clear of the empty orange vessel.
"CSOC, this is Constellation. Please advise on initial OMS bum. Quickly."
"Wait one, Constellation," came the reply, and a few more seconds ticked by before the Cap Com returned. "Navigation officer says do a manual OMS bum now with the same specifications as your programmed bum. Then do a manual insertion bum at forty-three minutes, fifty-eight seconds elapsed time.
You'll have to make a third correction burn to reach your rendezvous, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem. We'll run the numbers on it and advise you shortly. You're in the ball park as it is. By the way, Eagle One says nice move on the shutdown, guys. Over."