Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (7 page)

"Look at this…" Crash overheard Charlie say as Mitch walked up.

Mitchell stood conversing with the worker for a few moments, then turned and waved. "Crash, come take a look."

Crash sauntered over. "Whatcha got, Mitch?"

"This is strange, Crash. Here's the airlock assembly," Mitchell gestured to the reconstructed debris before them. "It was in an external, payload bay configuration. It's busted up some, yeah, but we've got it reassembled…"

"Not quite, Mitch. You're missin' a hatch," Crash pointed out.

"That's the strange part, Crash. It's the INNER hatch that's missing." Mitchell stood with a puzzled frown on his face, staring at the hardware.

"Really? That IS interesting…" Crash mused, and moved closer to examine the airlock. "Hmm… Can I take a look?"

"Sure, go ahead. You're here to investigate, so investigate to your heart's content. C'mon, Charlie, I want you to see about reassembling…" The two men walked away, and left Crash to check out the airlock assembly.

This really is weird
, Crash thought as he crouched down and examined the debris.
I wouldn't have thought the inner hatch would be the one to go missing. I'd assume that the inner hatch would be more likely to stay with the craft, but the outer hatch might get lost when the payload bay doors came off as the shuttle disintegrated
. He ran delicate rubber-gloved fingertips over the inner hinge joint.
What the hell?! Wait a minute…
He bent his head low, then knelt, and studied the area where the missing hinge would have been. He produced a jeweler's loupe from a pocket, and studied the joint.

"Hey, Mitch!" Crash turned and flagged the Materials Lab chief, who broke off his conversation and came back to Crash's side.

"Whatcha need, Crash?" Mitchell asked immediately.

"Can we take this section over to the Lab and look at it a little closer?"

"Sure. Let's check it out of the computer records and walk across the street…"

* * * *

"Oohhh, shit," Mitch murmured as he scanned the hinge surface under the microscope. "Damn. Good catch, Crash."

"What do you see?" Crash demanded.

Mitchell raised his head and looked straight into Crash's eyes with a foreboding gaze. "The inner airlock hatch wasn't lost, it was removed. This hinge was cut."

"I thought it looked awful damn smooth for a break," Crash admitted, irked. "How can you tell for sure?"

"Look," Mitchell said, moving to one side and gesturing to the microscope. Crash bent and looked through the stereo eyepieces. "See those striations? Those are cut marks from a diamond tipped blade."

Crash looked up at Mitch, casting about for logical, normal explanations. "Then maybe the hatch will come in later; it may have been too unwieldy to handle all in one piece…"

Mitchell looked at the independent investigator grimly. "You know as well as I do that's not proper procedure, Crash. And it's not possible anyway. The ablation marks and burn scoring overlay the cut striations. This cut was made before re-entry."

Crash stared at the lab chief blankly. "Aw, hell. That means…"

Mitchell nodded, troubled. "It means somebody was hacking the Orbiter into pieces just before re-entry."

* * * *

"All right, my flight's set up for noon," Crash told Guy Mitchell shortly thereafter. "I've got just enough time to get back to the hotel, pack everything, check out, and get to the airport."

"Good. I'll run a few more tests on this, and email you the results later today. This is major, Crash."

"I know, Mitch. I'm goin' straight back to JSC as soon as I get off the plane."

"Got your laptop?"

"That's a roger. I'll plug in and download your report as soon as I can find a port."

"Good luck, Crash… Godspeed," Mitch said in an odd tone, glancing about in apprehension.

Crash was in a rush, however, and missed both Mitchell's tone and his look. "See ya, Mitch."

* * * *

On the smooth flight back to Houston, Crash broke out his laptop and pored over the payload controller logs, scrutinizing every little detail. For the most part, he found them fairly straightforward, but with the occasional amusing entry, usually dry "space humor" or accounts of minor flubs on the communications loops.

The Operations Controller log was a bit different, however. The log was chock full of notations, even in the margins, especially during TSS operations and retrieval. Then he encountered an odd entry.

Position Mission Elapsed Time Event

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OC 09/10:23:08 Meteor viewed on D/L vid; below Orbiter altitude. No ionization trail observed. Exo skim? SSL interested.

Wow
, Crash thought, fascinated.
The video down link caught a meteor! And beneath the Shuttle, too. That's damn rare. No wonder the Space Sciences Lab was interested. Odd that there'd be no sign of friction though. Anything big enough to see on the monitors would have to be causing some friction, even at those altitudes, and that means an ion trail. So that's kinda weird. Pretty cool, though.

The nonstop flight wore on, and Crash plodded through the logs, finding nothing more of any real interest. The flight attendant came by, informing him that landing was imminent, so he shut down and stowed his laptop under the seat.
Shit,
he thought, annoyed.
Nothing so far.

* * * *

When Crash checked his cell phone messages upon arrival at Houston's Hobby Airport, he found a voice mail waiting from Gayle Tippett, who was both the STS-281 flight surgeon, and his girlfriend.

"Crash, it's Gayle. I know you've been busy, but… Come by my office as soon as you can, honey. We've… we've got Jet, Crash."

Crash headed straight for the parking lot, threw the luggage into his waiting truck and pointed it toward NASA Road 1.

* * * *

"Hey, ‘Doc,'" Crash's pet greeting for his flame was decidedly subdued as he entered the flight surgeon's office. "Got your message, Gayle. I just got off the plane from Huntsville, so I came straight here."

"Yeah, I got your message you were out of town on the investigation, so I didn't worry. I just thought you might… want the opportunity to say goodbye." The petite strawberry blonde looked at him, compassion in her eyes.

"Gayle… are you sure it's him?" Crash asked, in deep pain. "I… I just…"

"I know, Crash. But we have all seven bodies now, and the Houston medical examiner gave us positive IDs on all seven. You're in denial, Crash. Let him go, sweetheart," Gayle whispered, laying a tender hand on his forearm and squeezing. "Come on. Let's go tell Jet goodbye together."

* * * *

The Inyokern airport was little more than a long patch of asphalt with a building at the end of it that the locals and the airlines called a terminal, and a few hangars around the periphery. Planes sat strewn around the tarmac. Beyond the perimeter fence lay nothing but sagebrush, scrub, and burnt sienna desert; the El Paso and Sierra Nevada mountains rose in the near distance, stark and bleak and monotonous.

Lovely
, Blake thought sarcastically, as he stood at the top of the aircraft ladder.
Just bloody damn lovely. I'm so happy to be back in this godforsaken desert.

He schooled his face into indifference, an expression he'd learned to master in the last couple of years since signing up with Hotdog and his group, and descended the steps to the tarmac. A ground attendant brought the luggage from the hold, placing it on the asphalt beside the plane, and Blake spotted his case. Extending the handle and attaching his carry-on bag to the larger case's strap, he trundled and bumped across the cracked pavement and into the terminal building, dodging RJ, the airport cat, in the process.
There has to be a way…

"Dr. Blake?" a voice pierced his thoughts as he neared the front of the terminal.

"Yes?" Blake instinctively swung toward the sound.

"Lieutenant Washburn, sir," the young soldier snapped off a salute. "I'm here to take you to… China Lake Naval Station."

"Oh, er, right," Blake responded, turning and following the young man out a side entrance. Washburn casually threw Blake's luggage into the back of a waiting Humvee, then moved to the driver's side as Blake got into the front passenger seat.

Moments later, they were headed out of the airport, toward the naval air weapons station.

"Folks around here must be bloody brilliant," Blake remarked into the silence.

"How you figure?" the lieutenant asked, offhand, glad to make small talk.

"A naval station in the middle of a damn bleedin' desert? And they've never figured out…? Real smart blokes you fellows have livin' around here."

Washburn shot him a confused glance, and kept driving in silence, deciding that maybe small talk wasn't such a good idea after all.

Once through the base gate, Washburn continued for some little distance, then hung a right. Pavement gave way to gravel after a few miles, and soon they were making their way through bleak, parched brown desert, punctuated by the occasional striated butte.

Washburn swerved off road, navigating sand and desert scree, dodging sagebrush and tumbleweeds to traverse the area between two tall, tawny sandstone buttes. As they rounded a promontory, a dark hole yawned in the side of the butte, a hole visible from only one direction--the direction in which the Humvee came. Blake sighed, tested his seat belt, and took a firm grip on the "shit handle" installed over the passenger door.

Washburn scanned the area, then glanced at his watch, pausing for a few moments as the digital minute and second display ticked down to the correct time. "Right," he said then. "Hang on," as he floored the accelerator, aiming straight for the blackness of the cave.

Moments later, the Humvee was gone--and so was the cave.

* * * *

At the Harris County morgue, Gayle introduced Crash to the coroner. "Bob, this is Crash Murphy, Commander Jackson's old friend. Crash, Dr. Robert Harrison, the Harris County medical examiner."

The two men shook hands and murmured greetings.

"I understand you've got my pal here," Crash said quietly.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Mr. Murphy," the coroner answered in sympathy. "Would you… like to see the remains?"

Numb, Crash followed Dr. Harrison over to a drawer. The medical examiner pulled it open, exposing a black body bag labeled "Jackson, L." He unzipped it halfway and pulled the bag a few inches apart.

Crash looked down, blanched, and spun away. "Oh, God," he whispered fervently, fighting back a gag reflex. The alert coroner zipped the bag and slammed the drawer closed.

* * * *

Suddenly Crash was standing by the burning wreckage of an F-4 on the landing strip near the Demilitarized Zone, watching in horror as the screaming GIB fought his way clear of the flames and debris, flight suit ablaze. The runway crew doused the man with water and foam as fast as they could, but not in time to prevent severe burns over most of his frame. The stench of burnt meat filled the air as a blue haze rose from the GIB's body. Behind the GIB, Crash could see the pilot's corpse, still in the wreckage, blackening and shriveling in the fire. He turned away as his stomach lurched, and found himself vomiting violently on the edge of the landing strip.

* * * *

"Crash, are you going to be okay?" Gayle worried, slipping an arm around him. "I should've warned you…"

"No. I'm… I'm all right, Gayle. I just… didn't think. Somehow, I was… I was expecting to just… see Jet's face. It… brings back some old memories, too…"

"Nam?"

"Yeah…"

"Mr. Murphy, why don't you sit down over here for a minute?" a grave Dr. Harrison suggested in concern, leading them over to a chair across the room and easing the former flight controller into it. "Dr. Tippett, let's give him a moment alone to collect himself. If you'll step into my office for a second, I'll give you back the crew's medical records…" The two doctors moved off.

Aw, damn, Jet,
Crash thought, burying his head in his hands, desperate to blot out the horrible memory of what he'd just seen.
What happened to you, buddy? What did you have to go through, and why did it happen?

Gayle came back with a stack of folders and bent over him. "Crash? You okay?"

Crash raised his head, still pale. "Yeah. Ready to go?"

"Uh-huh. Take these and give me your keys." She handed him the stack of folders and held out her hand.

"Why?" Crash fished in his pocket, extracting the keys.

"I'm driving. You've had a bad shock. Just lean back and ride. It's not like I haven't driven your truck a few times before."

* * * *

On the way back to JSC, Crash idly thumbed through the blue manila file envelopes Gayle had handed him. Opening Jet's, he leafed through it absent-mindedly, then stopped all of a sudden and started over, taking more care this time. Flipped all the way through, and started over again.