It was real, then. Not just flaky instrumentation. And the Russians orbited a goddamn Vietnamese in Salyut this year. The press will crucify us.
Because of the two simultaneous missions in progress Bert Seger had been away from the office for three days, and he was taking a chance to work through his mail. He’d only been at it for a few minutes when he got a call on the squawk box, the line that linked up the senior staff in Building 2.
There had been some kind of problem with the Apollo-N flight, and Seger had better get on over to the MOCR.
Angrily, Seger folded up his mail. With the NERVA, it was one damn thing after another.
The voltage needle on Bus A sank past the bottom of its scale. More warning lights came on.
Dana checked the Service Module’s fuel cell 1, which was supposed to feed Bus A. It was dead. His gloved fingers clumsy with the switches, Dana began to reconnect the Command Module’s systems from Bus A onto Bus B.
Another red light came on. Bus B was losing voltage as well. He checked fuel cell 3, the feed for Bus B; it was dead, too.
Jesus. We’ve lost the Service Module. It’s Apollo 13 over again.
He made his report, trying to keep his voice level. Mary would be listening, probably the kids. “Okay, Houston, I tried to reset, and fuel cells 1 and 3 are both showing gray flags. I’ve gotten zip on the flows.”
“Acknowledged, Apollo-N. EECOM has copied.”
Earth, beautiful, unperturbed, drifted past the windows.
The spacecraft and booster had been set rotating by that mysterious bang. Dana knew the ship’s attitude control systems should have been trying to steady their slow tumble, but there was no sign of any correction.
“Chuck, I think the Service Module’s RCS must be out.”
“Rog,” Jones said. “Houston, we don’t have reaction control, either from the Service Module or from S-NB.”
If the Service Module had blown, it was the end of the mission. But still, the crew ought to be able to get home, from this low Earth orbit.
As the spacecraft rolled, a cloud of ice crystals, sparkling, dispersing, drifted past the window to his right. It seemed to be venting from somewhere in the stack. It was quite beautiful, coalescing above the shining face of Earth.
More alarms lit up, as the problems multiplied and spread.
Donnelly had Surgeon feeding radiation dosimeter readings into his ear on the closed loop.
EECOM said, “Flight, I want to throw a battery on Bus A and Bus B until we psyche out the anomalies. We’re confirming undervolts.”
Donnelly tried to shut out Surgeon’s voice so he could figure out EECOM’s suggestion.
EECOM wanted to run the Command Module off battery power. It was a reasonable short-term suggestion. But, looking ahead, the Command Module’s batteries would have to be conserved to allow the crew to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. “What about limiting that to a single Bus, rather than both?”
“Hold on that, Flight.” EECOM would be conferring with his team of experts in the back rooms.
It was obvious from multiple indications, not least the crew’s report, that the NERVA had indeed shut itself down after only a few seconds of the planned burn. “Booster, you have anything you want to say to me?”
Conlig didn’t reply. The guy seemed to have frozen out.
“The crew’s health is going to be severely impacted,” Surgeon said on the closed loop. “Though they probably don’t know it yet. In fact, Flight, you can’t expect them to function normally for much beyond a few more minutes.”
Guidance came on line. “The bird’s attitude is still changing. They’ve got to stop it. We’re heading for gimbal lock.”
“I hear you, Guidance.”
Gimbal lock meant the spacecraft was tumbling beyond the tolerance of the inertial guidance system. The platform could be reset by eye again. But if Donnelly was forced to go for an emergency reentry, he needed alignment control immediately.
Somehow, though, he felt that alignment loss, even a gimbal lock, was the least of the spacecraft’s problems just then.
“Houston, Apollo-N.” It was Jim Dana; to Natalie York, Jim’s voice sounded thin, frail, but controlled. “We’re seeing some kind of gas, venting from the stack.”
York’s skin prickled with a sudden chill.
“Rog, Apollo-N,” she said. “Can you tell if it’s coming from the S-NB tank, or the Service Module?”
“We can’t tell. Both, possibly.”
She’d been following the controllers’ terse dialogue. The controllers were still working to the assumption that there was some kind of instrumentation or telemetry problem to explain the multiple anomalies.
But if the ship was venting gas, that couldn’t be it. The problem couldn’t be just instrumentation or an electrical screwup. And besides, she could see that Surgeon, next to her, had switched onto a closed loop.
Something, some violent and destructive event, had happened to Apollo-N, up there in low Earth orbit, to a spacecraft with a nuclear pile attached to its tail.
She glanced across at Mike. He was still hunched over his console and whispering into his headset. Why doesn’t he say something to Flight?
She became aware that her right hand was clutching the thin metal maintenance handle of her console; her hand was closed into a fist, painfully.
Her throat was dry, and she had to force herself to swallow before she could speak again.
Ben’s up there. What in hell is going on?
Gregory Dana, in the Viewing Room, could see the spacecraft icon drifting from its programmed trajectory on the big plot board, and he could follow enough of the controllers’ terse exchanges to figure out that something catastrophic had happened to Jim’s ship.
The Viewing Room was steadily filling up — as was the MOCR amphitheater itself — as off-duty personnel came hurrying in, responding to the deepening atmosphere of crisis.
Dana was joined at the window by one of the astronaut corps, Ralph Gershon, whom Dana had met a couple of times through Jim.
Gershon stared out at the frantic huddles in the MOCR and snorted contempt. “Jesus. Look at them huddling up. They always go through the same thing. What happened? Where are we? What are we going to do about it? They’re so damned slow, and restricted in the way they think. And meanwhile the bird drifts around the sky, broken-winged.”
Broken-winged.
The problems must be with the nuclear engine. Everything, every anomaly, had flowed from that moment.
They have to get the crew away from that damn booster. Dana couldn’t understand why that hadn’t been done already.
He glanced around. He couldn’t tell if any of this was being broadcast on the public networks. What if Mary, and Jake and Maria, were seeing this on TV? What about Sylvia?
Silently, his lips moving, Gregory Dana began to pray.
The NERVA has blown. That’s got to be it.
Jim Dana, lying in his couch, thought he could feel the tingle of radioactive particles within his body. It was a thin wind, working its way into his bones. His face and chest felt as if they were on fire. He felt a burning sensation and a tightness about his temples, and his eyelids were smarting, as if they had been doused with acid.
With every breath, he must be filling his lungs with radionuclides.
His throat hurt, and he began to cough.
Wednesday, December 3, 1980
The Executives Group were about to take dinner at the International Club on Nineteenth Street. Vice President-elect Bush attended, along with members of the Senate and House who held key positions on the Space and Appropriations Committees; they were standing around with drinks in their hands.