Astrotwins — Project Blastoff (15 page)

Suddenly, he felt very far away.

“Greenwood Control,
Crazy 8
. Do you read? The view is really beautiful from up here. I can see the East Coast of the United States south to Georgia, I think.”

No answer.

“Greenwood Control?”

No answer.

So that was it. T-plus-10 minutes and he was out of radio range. NASA astronauts had a network of communication centers all over the world, so they were almost never without company and support, not to mention that there was radar monitoring of every move. Project Blastoff did not have such luxuries. Scott was traveling east and for the next hour or so—till he reached the West Coast of the United States—he was really on his own.

Scott knew he was traveling at around 17,500 miles per hour, that daylight would last about forty minutes, and that night would last the same. Watching the Atlantic rush by below him, he thought about being an object in motion, a satellite in orbit around Earth.

According to Newton's first law, an object in motion stays in motion unless something else interferes. In this case two things interfered. One was atmosphere. It was thin at that altitude but still present. The other was gravity, pulling the spacecraft back toward Earth. Orbit is the balancing act between the satellite's straight-line momentum and gravity's pull.

Scott thought of Astronaut Bill Anders's response to a kindergartner who asked which astronaut was driving
Apollo 8
, the first NASA mission to orbit the moon.
Anders had said that none of the astronauts was driving. Mr. Isaac Newton was.

Having studied an atlas, Scott recognized the west coast of Africa when it appeared below him, with sand dunes and dust storms on the desert and everywhere clouds of all sizes, shapes, and colors. A few moments later he saw a sight very familiar from geography—Italy's boot-shaped peninsula jutting into the blue Mediterranean Sea.

Most beautiful of all was sunset over the Indian Ocean, right on schedule at T-plus-43 minutes. Glowing with blue-white intensity, the nearest star dropped Earthward, creating a brilliant display of orange, red, purple, and blue stripes fading into black space. Above, the sky shone with white dots, the steadily burning stars.

Scott had known to expect the stars' steady gaze. It's only interference from Earth's atmosphere that makes them twinkle, and he was above that interference now. The transformation of something familiar—starlight—into something strange made Scott feel even more alone.

How would he ever be able to describe it?

Meanwhile, the radio was quiet but the capsule was not. There was the faint, steady
shhh
of air flowing in the environmental control system, the clicking of the gyros as they moved in the IMU, and the occasional
ssss
of the hydrogen peroxide–powered nozzles on the thrusters outside, firing intermittently to keep the capsule steady.

Reaction engines, Scott thought, and said another silent thanks to Mr. Newton.

It could be there's only so much grandeur a kid can take in. Over the Pacific, Scott decided to do a little flying on his own. This required toggling the manual panel switch to on and taking the control stick in his right hand. Aligning the horizon display on the periscope with Earth's horizon, he tugged and twisted the stick to move the capsule up, down, right, left, and sideways, listening to the sound of the little thrusters firing outside.

He had done a decent job of imitating them during the sims with Mark in their bedroom, he decided.

Scott knew he wouldn't knock himself out of orbit. Instead, he was changing
Crazy 8
's attitude—spinning, twisting, and pivoting it within the bounds of its trajectory. The Mercury astronauts had had their troubles keeping their capsules' attitudes on target, but so far
Crazy 8
had done fine.

The shortest night of Scott's life was soon over. If the stars of deep space had been eerie, sunlit Earth seemed alive and inviting. Space travel, Scott thought, was thrilling—but looking Earthward, he felt the emotional pull of home like the physical pull of gravity.

For comfort, he opened the faceplate on his helmet, reached out, and awkwardly, with his gloved right hand, grabbed a handful of the cookie dust and brought it to his mouth. Delicious—but he wished he had milk to go with it.

Scott checked the clock. It was T-plus-65 minutes—already time to implement the re-entry checklist, which began: Check your seat belt.

Re-entry was the most dangerous part of the trip. As
Crazy 8
descended, it would leave the near vacuum of space and hit the thickening atmosphere at high speed. The friction between air and spacecraft would create a heat pulse around the capsule with a temperature close to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, almost as hot as the sun.

Only the heat shield and the aeronautic design of the capsule protected him.

And if something was to go wrong?

He would be a crispy critter, and
Crazy 8
a meteor that flashed for an instant, then disappeared.

Approaching California, the automatic system went to work, moving
Crazy 8
to proper attitude and activating re-entry control. The three retrorockets fired one after the other, each slowing velocity by 500 feet per second. In his seat, Scott felt them like shoves from a ghostly hand.

These three burns were supposed to set him on a path for Greenwood Lake. If they succeeded, Barry and Howard—who had done the math and the programming—truly were geniuses.

Meanwhile, with every action of the electronic control, the appropriate indicator light flashed yellow, then
green, to say all was well.

And then—suddenly—all was not well. Instead of turning green, one of the yellow lights, the one for periscope operation, turned red.

Had the periscope failed to retract? Was it stuck? Was the door still open?

The light did not offer details. Scott peered down into the eyepiece and saw only gray. The door seemed to be closed. But if it was open even the merest crack, the superheated plasma created on re-entry would leak inside—destroying
Crazy 8
and Scott Kelly, too.

They had trained for this. They had trained for everything.

As a result, Scott knew exactly what to do. Calmly, he reached between his knees and grasped the periscope's manual control handle. Pumping it would override the electronic system.

Except . . . the handle was stuck, wouldn't budge a millimeter.

And the red light stayed lit.

“Greenwood Control,
Crazy 8
. Come in, Greenwood Control. I've got a problem. Over.”

There was a crackle in the speaker and then—what a wonderful sound—his brother's voice: “Go ahead,
Crazy 8
—and it's great to hear you!”

“Roger,” Scott said, “great to hear you, too, but listen.” Then he described the situation.

“
Crazy 8
.” Mark's voice was steady. “Stand by for instructions.”

How long? Scott thought. And the next few seconds were the longest of his life. Then came Mark's voice again. “
Crazy 8
, Greenwood Control. Did you say something about cookie crumbs?”

By this time, cookie crumbs were the furthest thing from Scott's mind, but he answered, “Uh, that's affirmative.”

In the background, Scott could hear an unfamiliar voice. Who was it? Then Mark's voice again. “
Crazy 8
, can you try something? Can you get down there and see if maybe there are crumbs in the mechanism?”

Scott's first thought was, No way. Unhook his harness? Climb around the spaceship? Flip upside down?
Now?

Scott's second thought was he didn't have a better idea. “Roger. I understand.”

Wasting no time, Scott unbuckled his harness, rolled himself into a ball, flipped over, and extended his hands. In the tight space he was brutally uncomfortable, and it didn't help that the capsule was starting to bounce.

Scott knew the exact location of the periscope door; he had installed it himself. Still, it was hard to find in the darkness created by his own shadow, and he felt for it blindly. Then he remembered the mini flashlights on the index fingers of each glove, put there so he could locate
switches at night. He twisted them to on and seconds later located the hinge.

Cookie crumbs!

A smear of them had settled in exactly the wrong place, literally gumming up the works. He reached, but the capsule chose that moment to jump; his helmet hit the underside of the control panel, twisting his neck—
ouch!
There was no time to worry about little things like his head or his neck, though. With every second,
Crazy 8
fell faster. He had to get himself buckled in—but he had to get the periscope door closed first.

Using his right glove for light, he stretched mightily toward the floor, barely managing to swipe the crumbs with his fingertips.

The crumbs floated toward him but slowly, already influenced by Earth's gravitational pull.

Had it worked? Had he cleared the hinge? All he could do was swipe once more, then flip back over, uncurl his torso, push against the seat, and buckle himself in. He was sweating and exhausted when for the second time he grabbed the periscope handle and pushed with all his might.

Oh, gosh—still stuck. Death by cookie crumbs? It would be just too stupid. With another mighty effort, he pushed again and made the handle move, pushed again and again till finally, at last, it seemed the mechanism
was free.

Scott turned his head—
ow
, his neck hurt—to look at the panel to his left.

Yes!

The light was green!

He buckled himself back in, every muscle in his body limp with relief. Then he spoke: “Greenwood Control?
Crazy 8
. Do you read?”

“Roger,
Crazy 8
. Go a—” And then static. For the four minutes of re-entry coinciding with maximum heat, the cloud of ionized particles outside the capsule cut off all radio contact. Effectively, Scott was now at the center of a fireball—and no one could hear him.

Through the window, Scott could see a bright orange glow punctuated by flashes as the plasma interacted with the spacecraft. He was scared. If he was wrong about the periscope door—or if any of a thousand other things had gone wrong—he would die. For him it would be over very fast.

But what about his family? Would his parents blame Mark? Would they blame Grandpa?

All in all, it would be a whole lot better to survive.

“Greenwood Control? Greenwood Control? This is
Crazy 8
. How do you receive? Over.”

No answer. No answer, and the seconds ticked by.

Then, at last: “Roger,
Crazy 8
. Loud and clear! How are you doing?”

“Oh, pretty good,” Scott said, “considering.”

True, the invisible gorilla was back—but hey, no problem.

Crazy 8
's descent continued. At 20,000 feet, the capsule began to sway, and the small parachute called a drogue deployed automatically to steady it. Then, at 10,000 feet, Scott saw the main chute open up and felt a jolt as it ballooned above him. For five glorious minutes, he floated toward the surface of Greenwood Lake—back where he'd begun only ninety minutes before.

It was 4:03.03 GMT when water splashed the capsule window and Scott sent his last transmission as an astronaut: “Greenwood Control,
Crazy 8
. I've landed, and fortunately this thing floats.”

In his brain, Scott knew he had only been out of this world for an hour and a half—not even as long as the running time of his favorite movie,
Jaws
. But still he couldn't bring himself to believe it. Everything had changed—from the way Grandpa's boat felt bobbing on the water to his view of the sky above, blue because of the refraction of sunlight on the atmosphere, not black the way it had been only a few minutes ago.

Scott would have thought this wasn't the homecoming he had imagined, except he realized that he hadn't imagined any homecoming at all. There had been no room in his mind for it. In fact, the normal milestones a kid looked forward to in the fall—things like the Giants and the Jets, Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation—he hadn't thought of at all. For months all that had mattered was overcoming
the technical problems of putting a kid into orbit.

Now, suddenly it became clear that there was life after orbiting the Earth, and that surprised him more than the sight onshore before him: a zillion flashing lights on what seemed like an equal number of police vehicles. A helicopter was circling overhead. And his grandfather, steering the powerboat toward shore, was saying something. He seemed to be excited. What was he talking about?

He was glad to see Scott in one piece—Scott got that much. There were tears in his eyes, Scott noticed. Scott had never seen his grandfather cry before.

“What's going on?” Scott said at last, interrupting his grandfather in midsentence. By this time, he had pulled off his helmet. Turning his head, he could see the
Crazy 8
capsule bobbing in the middle of the lake.

“That's what I've been trying to explain!” Grandpa Joe was too happy to be exasperated. “There's been a little problem. Steve Peluso snooped in Egg's project notebook, and—”

“That sneak!” Scott said.

“Well, some might argue that
that's
a case of the pot calling the kettle black,” Grandpa said.

“Point taken,” said Scott. “So then what happened?”

“He and his dad and the cops arrived right about the same time the capsule was disappearing into the wild
blue yonder.”

So that was the siren I heard, Scott thought, and the voices in the background of Mark's radio transmissions. He didn't tell me because he didn't want to distract me, and anyway, there was nothing I could do.