5
Denver
The operations center was as Ryan remembered: a high tech amphitheater filled with semicircular rows of computer workstations, all facing a bank of wall-sized monitors that showed the company’s route system and the airspace around their launch and reentry corridors. The graphics were filled with little blue triangles, each representing a Clipper in flight.
He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the low light. No matter what time of day it was, it always looked like the dead of night in here. The indirect lighting had a subtle psychological effect, which helped tamp down the noise that always threatened to erupt. People tended to keep quiet when it felt like they might wake somebody up.
The weather overlays always drew his attention: a deep low pressure system had settled over the northeast United States and was wreaking havoc on most of their routes. An outsider would have barely detected the heightened activity, but the swell of background noise and movement told the real story: phones ringing incessantly, supervisors pacing behind rows of flight controllers, a dispatcher gesturing wildly across the room seeking some unseen person’s attention. A few had the haggard look of a midnight crew that should have been long gone by now. He waved at Charlie Grant over by the fleet manager’s station, who nodded in recognition while rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He noticed a few key desks were empty; no doubt he’d find their occupants at the next stop.
He slipped into the EOC and quietly dropped his bag by the door, barely noticed by the controllers and engineers hunched over consoles or huddled in small groups. Penny looked up from a chart table and met him with a tired smile and warm embrace. “Welcome to the party,” she said. “How’s the family?”
“Marcy’s worried sick and Marshall begged to come with me. We have firm orders to find Simon and bring everybody home.”
“I’ll make sure Art knows his former cabin safety instructor is still keeping our feet to the fire.” Her smile turned apologetic. “I haven’t seen either of you in forever. Hate that we have to meet like this.”
“You’re the chief pilot, lady. Maybe you should spend more time out there flying the line. I keep waiting for you to come down to the Cape for a check ride.”
“I put you in charge down there precisely because I’m scared to death of flying with you,” she said with her customary punch on the arm. “Come on, let’s get you briefed in.”
The chart table was a large touchscreen framed in ordinary laminate desktop, ostensibly to keep harried controllers from spilling coffee or marking it up with notes. Audrey was leaning against it, idly turning her glasses in one hand as she scrolled through a plot of the Earth-Moon system. When he’d learned of the influence she’d wielded behind the scenes at NASA when he’d been stranded in orbit aboard the Austral Clipper, it immediately put her at the top of his list of favorite flight controllers. And right now, she looked exhausted.
“Hey Aud,” Ryan said, giving her shoulders a quick rub. “I hear you’re getting transmissions?”
“We were,” she sighed, “up until a few hours ago. Haven’t heard squat since. Not even carrier wave static.”
“Any chance whoever it is might just be getting some sleep?”
“That’s what we’re hoping.”
“Were they coming in a reliable pattern before that? Anything other than a distress code?”
Audrey shook her head.
“I’m not used to uncertainty from you.”
That at least got a grin out of her, probably her first of the day. “Something’s not adding up, either the weights or their final delta-v. It’s possible that whatever we heard from is roughly half of Big Al’s mass.”
“You’re kidding?” He shook his head. Of course she wasn’t. “So you think they had to detach?”
“That’s our operating theory for now,” Penny cut in. She laid a diagram of the spacecraft over the chart projection, pointing out the control cabin and rocket stage docked to the big inflatable passenger module. Each sported pairs of long solar panels. “Remember, the flight module is able to maneuver independently. The hab doesn’t go anywhere that we don’t drag it.”
Ryan’s eyes grew wide. “So you think half the ship may be somewhere out of comm range?” he asked, shuddering to think about what somewhere could mean.
“Given what we know? Not much else makes sense. If there was a problem with the hab while they were on the far side, they would’ve evacuated everyone into the control cabin. If necessary they’d have ditched the hab and started burning for home.”
“But all of the primary comm gear is in the control cabin.” Ryan scratched at his head, mussing an already unruly tangle of black hair. “So we ought to have heard from them.”
“That’s why we think the problem was with the flight module, so they bugged out to the hab.”
“But that has its own radios…so why wouldn’t they just use them?” He stared at the blueprints, struggling to visualize what might be left. He slowly traced a finger down the diagram. “The S-band antenna’s right here, mounted to the tank support truss.”
“Correct,” Penny said, “and all the conduits run through the docking node. Makes it easier to fix things when they break.”
“So whoever’s left behind just hot-wired the antennas from the airlock?”
“Wouldn’t be that hard to do,” Audrey said, “at least for someone who understood the systems.”
“That narrows down which end of the ship we’re looking for, and who we’re looking for,” he thought aloud. There had to be at least one crewmember in there. “So when does the search team need to be wheels up?”
“Three days,” Penny said. “Launch window’s tighter than a…well, let’s just say we’re gonna be in a hurry.”
Ryan didn’t want to sow doubts, but he had to ask. “Will that even get you there in time to do any good?” He assumed Penny would be flying the other Cycler.
“No way to know,” she said. “Primary food and water storage is all in the hab. There’s emergency stores in the docking node that could possibly be stretched out for a week or so, but eventually they’ll run out.”
Been there, done that. Ryan’s mind wandered to whoever might be up there and what they must be going through right now. Which was worse: to be stranded as your home planet slipped past just a hundred miles outside your window, or to have it a quarter-million miles away and hopelessly beyond reach?
“Okay then,” he finally said. “We turn and burn. Cape ops can strip the standby bird of everything it doesn’t need and start fitting it with extra propellant tanks for Gus. I’ll work out the mission plan with Charlie, just tell me what you need to take up there.”
Penny’s eyes bored into him. “You, for starters.”
. . .
Hammond might have otherwise been startled when the heavy door to his office swung open suddenly; maybe it was slow reaction times from fatigue. He looked up slowly from his desk in a practiced display of icy “son, did you just screw up” irritation. Charlie Grant had been working in the opposite corner and rose up to meet them when they both recognized Ed Bentley, the Federal Aviation Administration’s chief inspector assigned to Polaris. Normally even-tempered and agreeable for being in such a nitpicky job, he looked uncharacteristically sheepish. Before Hammond could even think to ask, the answer became obvious.
A husky man sporting a clean-shaven head and dressed in a government-plain navy blue suit barged past Ed, sweeping around to make a beeline for Hammond as his flustered secretary rushed up behind them. “The gentleman wouldn’t wait,” she said apologetically, heaping a particularly caustic emphasis on gentleman.
The man threw a disinterested glance at them, then flipped open a black ID case from his breast pocket and flashed his badge. “Special Agent Kruger, Department of Homeland Security,” he said gruffly.
Hammond waved his secretary out. “It’s all right,” he told her while keeping a wary eye on their visitor. “Everyone’s a little high strung right now.” If this Agent Kruger of Homeland Security sympathized with them at all, it didn’t register. The guy looked like he probably spent his spare time clubbing baby seals.
“Hello Charlie,” Bentley said, hoping to break the ice. Grant acknowledged him with a curt nod as he regarded this new visitor with obvious concern. Ed appeared relieved to not be the one on the receiving end of his gimlet eye.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Hammond asked cautiously, returning the badge and gesturing them toward two empty chairs.
Grant was less accommodating, being in no mood for small talk with strangers. “Ed must have briefed you on our situation already. We have a lot of work to do and not much time to do it, Mister Kruger. I’m not sure why DHS would have any interest in a private search-and-rescue operation.”
“And you are?”
“Charlie Grant. Director of Operations.”
“We understand completely, Mr. Grant,” Kruger said, telegraphing that he wasn’t the only interested party inside the government. “Considering the unique nature of your enterprise, Homeland Security thought it wise to look into this matter.”
“We deal with unique problems all the time,” he said. “It’s kind of our thing. What we don’t have are eyeballs on our spacecraft. Perhaps you can help us out?”
Kruger arched an eyebrow at him. “You’ve located it?”
That’s not what he said, Hammond thought. By the look on Charlie’s face, he’d caught that too. “We’ve picked up what sounds like an SOS. Their timing let us work out a rough orbital period.”
Kruger slid forward in his chair. “You’re certain?”
“As certain as we can be without better data or direct imagery,” he said, now more relaxed. It was always good to be the one holding the info with these types. He lifted a pair of thin glasses to his nose while flipping through a notebook. “Bear with me,” he said. “The more dependent we get on technology, the more I revert to pen and paper.” Not to mention that he’d had no time at all to put together anything more sophisticated. “Our flight director worked up the most likely variations and sure enough it started right about when she expected it to emerge from radio blackout. Based on our limited observations, we think there’s a possibility that a sizeable portion of the ship is gone.” He found the page he’d marked and handed the notebook to Kruger and Bentley.
Intrigued, Kruger paged through their notes while Bentley simply gazed at his shoes uncomfortably. “That’s…quite interesting,” he said haltingly. “In this case, I think we can convince the right people to get some imagery of this target.”
The turn of phrase made Hammond more uncomfortable than it probably should have, but he couldn’t ignore the chill that crept up his neck. Target?
“For pictures, of course,” Bentley explained.
Kruger glared at him. “We only want to help find your ship and eliminate any potential threats it may present. Isn’t that right, Ed?” Bentley nodded obediently and cleared his throat.
Interesting point of view, Hammond thought. Solicitous bureaucrats had a way of making him apprehensive, especially the ones with badges and guns. “And we just want to get our people back.”
“We understand,” Kruger said. He stiffly buttoned his suit jacket as he rose. “But to help you, we’re going to need access to some information. Starting with crew records and a complete manifest of passengers, cargo, and baggage.”
“I believe you’ll find that Ed here has all of that in his office right now,” Grant said with a nod towards the FAA man. It was something he had no doubt Kruger already knew.
Kruger continued as if he’d been invisible. “Plus the maintenance history, flight planning, telemetry records, and personnel files of every individual who could’ve touched it.”
Hammond whistled. “That’ll take some time.” And a warrant.
“We’ll also need dedicated, secure office space,” he continued without missing a beat. “I believe that’s customary for accident investigations?”
“It would be for an NTSB go-team, but this isn’t an accident,” Hammond objected. “It’s a search and rescue operation. Why are the Feds always in such a big damned hurry to assume the worst?”
Bentley finally intervened. “Arthur, their first thought was to set up a mobile command post in your parking lot.”
“Which Bentley here convinced me would be counterproductive. For now,” Kruger interrupted. “Let us know when we can set up shop, otherwise we’ll be in touch as soon as there’s anything worth contacting you about,” Kruger said. “We don’t wish to take up any more of your time.”
“You’ve certainly done quite enough for one day,” Grant said coolly. Kruger tipped his head in parting and left with Bentley shuffling behind.
Hammond perched on the edge of his desk, glowering at the still-open doorway. “What in the flaming hell was that all about?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. That goon sure acted like he had bigger things on his mind.”
“As he damned well should,” Hammond snorted. They didn’t have time for being caught up in some bureaucratic power play. “This isn’t exactly in their wheelhouse. Could be he was ordered here to keep a few well-connected big shots happy.” It was more speculation than an observation.
“I’d say that’s what he wants us to think,” Grant agreed, “but that’s a whopper of an info-dump he just demanded. And did you get a load of Ed? He’s rattled. I don’t think he made eye contact with us once.”
“That’s what has me worried.” They normally had as good of a relationship with the FAA as anyone could ask for. “This is plenty serious on its own. So why all the intrigue?”
Grant frowned and kicked at the floor as he considered that. Being swamped with the logistics of mounting a search mission had blinded him to anything else. “We’re looking at this from the wrong angle,” he said. “You said it yourself: this isn’t their thing. Maybe it’s time we got Posey involved?”
Hammond stared quietly out the window, idly turning over his phone in his hands as he considered Charlie’s suggestion. “It is,” he finally said, and tapped out a message to his security chief: PAX MANIFEST...START DIGGING.