Nemesis (41 page)

“Yes sir. I talk to my teddy bear.”

Merryweather put the press release back in his briefcase.
He glanced down at the chalets and villas of the NASA executives over which they were flying. The familiar outline of the Johnson Space Center, a sixteen-hundred-acre sprawl, appeared ahead. Merryweather tapped the pilot’s shoulder and indicated a spot near the warehouses at the edge of the site: he wanted to walk. The helicopter sank over warehouses and test facilities, flew low over the astronaut isolation HQ, and settled gently down on to a field at the edge of the site.

Merryweather collected his badge and shook hands with a young, plump man. “Hi George. It’s gusty out there, prevailing west-nor’west, humidity eighty per cent. Cloud ceiling moderate.”

“Am I glad to see you, sir. I’m going nuts. Come along to the Weather Room.”

A bank of familiar terminals faced Merryweather. He went straight to one of them, and looked at a set of black lines covering a map of North America. Over Canada, the USA and Mexico the lines seemed to meander aimlessly. Further out they wandered over Cuba and the islands of the West Indies. But just outside Mexico, they formed into tight, concentric circles.

“Ho hum. Anything from GOES or the DMSPs?”

“Over here.”

For the next forty minutes Merryweather immersed himself in a complex mass of data from geostationary satellites, polar orbiters, radars from Cocoa Beach to Melbourne, sixty-foot towers scattered around the launch pad, buoys in the heaving seas up to 160 miles from Cape Canaveral, balloons at 100,000 feet in the stratosphere and lightning detection systems at over thirty sites around the Cape. Telephone exchanges with the USAF 45th Space Wing Commander and the Weather Team at Canaveral confirmed what Merryweather clearly saw: the weather pattern was unstable and deteriorating.

Two sets of weather criteria have to be satisfied before a Shuttle launch is permitted. The weather has to be right for
launch, and it has to be right for landing. The launch criteria need only the observed weather at the moment of launch; but the end-of-mission criteria require a forecast. Merryweather concurred with his worried colleague: neither set of conditions was satisfied.

Merryweather entered the third-floor Flight Control Room, the one used for Department of Defense payloads. The Flight Director was sitting on the bench with his back to a console, in conversation with the CAPCOM, Gus Malloy, a former astronaut.

“Jim, heard you’d turned up. Good to see you.” The FD’s expression did not match his words of welcome.

Without preliminaries, Merryweather leapt into the attack. “Joe, what’s going on here? They tell me you’re overriding your Weather Team. The landing criteria will not be satisfied. You need a cloud ceiling more than eight thousand feet and you’ll have six. You need visibility five miles and you’ll have four. You know crosswinds have to be less than twenty-five knots and you’ll have forty. There’s an even chance of strong turbulence at the point of landing, and I couldn’t rule out a thunderstorm in forty-eight hours. You want to fly your Shuttle back through anvil cirrus? Maybe in a thunderstorm?”

“Jim, at the worst, we can put down in Morocco instead of Edwards. You guys are all the same. You know the standard weather parameters are conservative. We’re just giving a little flexibility.”

“A little? There’s a storm heading in from the Gulf. I practically guarantee precipitation at Kennedy within the next four hours. You’ll be gusting well over the thirty-four-knot peak. The damn thing could hit the gantry on the way up.”

“Jim, you’re retired, remember?”

“You’ll never get this through the poll.”

If only I could explain
, the FD thought. But he simply
shrugged and said, “We’ve taken an executive decision. And the final decision to launch or scrub is mine.”

“I have no official status here but I want it noted that I concur with your SMG. The Flight Rules are not satisfied, neither LCC nor RTLS criteria. And the downrange weather advisory gives seas in excess of five: there are twenty-foot waves out there, Joe. Launch Frontiersman in this and I’ll personally crucify you at the congressional inquiry.”

“So noted. We’re tanking up now and we GO in four hours and twenty minutes.”

“If I recall the routine, the astronauts are due a weather briefing in fifteen minutes. They’ll refuse to fly.”

“You’ll see.”

The prime firing room at the Kennedy Space Center has its own code of discipline. Conversation is limited to the business in hand: there is no place for idle chatter between the serious professionals who man it. No personal telephone calls are made except in an emergency. No reading material unrelated to the business in hand will be seen therein. The professionals do not wander about; each man (and they are nearly all men) remains at his assigned station, concentrating on the task in hand.

The vocabulary of the firing room is terse, technical and laden with acronyms. This clipped conversation is not used to exclude the uninitiated; rather, by stripping away non-essential verbiage, the language yields precision of speech and concept; and the vital outcome is that, in a complex, changing and highly technical environment, individuals understand each other perfectly. As a sub-set of the English language it serves its purpose even though, to the outsider, there is something faintly absurd about describing a lavatory as a waste management facility, or a stranded astronaut’s fate as an ongoing death situation.

Three hours before launch, entrance to the firing room is
restricted; movement within the room is minimized. Twenty minutes before launch, while the “ice team” are making a last check on the ice which builds around the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks, and the white room close-out crew help the astronauts into their little vehicle, the door of the firing room is locked. And fifteen minutes before launch, readiness polls are conducted amongst the Shuttle Launch team. These polls ensure collective responsibility, and protect the system against eccentric or arbitrary decisions by highly placed officials.

Launch Director
: Russ, on the weather, we have an update.

Spacecraft
: Shoot.

LD
: SMG confirm exceedence on the landing crosswinds at Edwards.

Spacecraft
: Badly?

LD
: Gusting up to forty knots, six over limit. You could always put down in Morocco. The main problem is Ailsa. She’s moving our way faster than predicted. Giving us a high gust situation now and 45WS tell us we’re close to violation of the weather LCCs. And it’s going to get worse. We either break out of hold now or abort.

Spacecraft
: Roger. We can feel the shaking in here. What gives with the MEC?

LD
: Our programmers are still on it.

Spacecraft
: What’s the time factor on the crosswind?

LD
: We have a Jimsphere up and your old pal Tony is now overhead in the T-38. SWO has issued a down-range weather advisory.

Spacecraft
: I copy. Look, Zeek, why don’t we just break out of hold and launch? Give us a mark at
T
minus five minutes and one minute prior to exit. JSC can play with the Mach attack angles and get a fresh load profile while we’re counting down.

LD
: Patience. JSC are polling now. Let’s wait for verification.
Spacecraft
: The guys in the spacesuits say yes.

LD
: Russ, you don’t even have a vote.

Spacecraft
: We can manual override on the tank separation.

Houston Flight
: NTD, this is Flight on channel 212.

LD
: Go ahead.

Houston Flight
: The KSC Management poll is in. Prime Launch Team report no violation of the LCC.

That was a lie
.

Engineering verifies no impediments to continuation of the count. MMT Chair verifies that continuation is approved by the senior managers. What is the KSC poll?

LD
: We agree with continuation and are loading up a new
I
-profile.

Spacecraft
: What’s happening on the tail computer?

LD
: Still trying, and we’ll initialize the IUS before we pick up the count.

Houston
: Launch Director, Operations Manager here on 212 circuit. LSEAT have made a final recommendation. We’re permitting some flexibility in the LCC wind criteria.

But they had just said the criteria were met. Someone was attempting the old CYA: Cover Your Ass
.

We confirm you are GO to continue the count.

The voices were as calm and controlled as ever. But to Merryweather, sitting aghast in the discretionary chair next to the Flight Director, the firing room had been hi-jacked by maniacs
.

LD
: Ah, copy. Thank you.

NTD
: The countdown clock will resume in two minutes on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.

NTD
: The countdown clock will resume in one minute on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.

NTD
: Stand by. Four, three, two, one, mark. Ground Launch Sequencer has been initiated.

Orbiter Test Conductor
: Commence purge sequence four.

OTC
: You have go for LOX ET pressurization.

OTC
: Flight crew, close and lock your visors. Initiate O
₂
flow.

OTC
:
T
minus one minute thirty seconds.

OTC
: Minus one minute.

OTC
: Go for auto sequence start.

OTC
: Fifteen seconds. Ten. Main engine start, three, two, one. Ignition.

The light, when it reached the dark-adapted eyes of the spectators, was painful in intensity. A blowtorch flame thrust down from the rockets in a kaleidoscope of shock waves and swept out from underground tunnels in a carnival of steam.

The thunder, when it reached them, bellowed out over the swamps, tore at sinews, shook ground and bones and flesh. Then the retaining clamps swung back and Frontiersman surged upwards.

It almost made it. A sudden squall of wind and rain, a freak thing, tilted the ship and swung it away from the tower. Rapidly, the onboard computers tried to compensate; the sudden angry roar would reach the onlookers twenty seconds later. But then the freak gust dropped at the very second the computers were compensating and the huge fuel valves were trying to respond. Frontiersman flung itself against the tower like a man pushing against a door which suddenly opens. It just touched. A collective
Aah!
went up from thousands of people braving the wind on the hoods and roofs of their cars. A loud
Bang!
, like a metal hatch being slammed shut, would reach them, but disaster was already plain to see.

The Shuttle began to spin. The flaming tail disappeared into the clouds half a mile above, but the direction was wrong. Seconds later the clouds lit up as if a giant flashbulb
had popped, and shock waves ripped overhead, with a deep
Thud!
which was more felt than heard. And then there was a luminous, spreading yellow ocean, and the heat on the face even at five miles, and the fragments of tank and booster raining out of the illuminated clouds, and crashing to the ground along with the debris was the hope, the only hope, of averting Nemesis.

Not that Merryweather, staring horrified at the sight on the giant screen in the Houston firing room, knew it. But the Chief Engineer knew it; and the Flight Director knew it; and a small group of powerful men, clustered grimly around a television in the Oval Office, knew it too.

It was a brief paragraph, tucked away in page two of
The Times
:

Cresak flies in and out

Mr. Arnold Cresak, President Grant’s National Security Adviser, flew into London this morning and had lunch with the Prime Minister. He flew back on a regular commercial flight in the afternoon. The meeting was concerned with mutual security matters of a routine nature.

Routine like a nuclear strike
, Webb thought, sipping his second tea of the morning.

Graham bustled importantly into the Hall carrying a pile of papers which Webb recognized as the new publicity drive forms from Central Office. He spotted Webb and adopted an “I want words with you” expression before joining the self-service breakfast queue.

Screw that
, Webb thought. He quickly folded away
The Times
, slipped out and made his way to the Common Room. A smokeless coal fire was glowing bright red and his favourite leather armchair was empty. He picked up
Icarus
from the coffee table, sat down with a sigh of pleasure and swore quietly when Arnold tapped him on the shoulder. Webb followed the janitor across the drizzling quadrangle to the Lodge.

“Sorry about the mess, Doctor,” Arnold said, clearing the
Sun
, the
Sporting Life
and a half-eaten slice of toast from a spindly wooden chair. Webb sat down and found himself facing a pouting nymph with enormous breasts. She was wearing only torn, thigh-length jeans and was straddling a giant spark plug. The calendar was two years old and it was too early in the morning for busty nymphs.

“About time,” the Astronomer Royal growled over the telephone. “The Houseman would like to know the right ascension of Praesepe. Another damned freebie for you, Mister Kahn.”

Webb had been dreading it for weeks; he felt himself going pale. He went smartly back to his flat and quickly stuffed clothes, toiletries, papers and false passport into his backpack. A casual eavesdropper would probably not know that a Houseman was a fellow of Christ Church College; nor that Praesepe, the Beehive, was a star cluster. He took down a perspex star globe from the top of a wardrobe, blew off the dust and found Praesepe: its right ascension—its longitude in the sky—was nine hours and thirty minutes. His watch read ten minutes past nine. That gave him twenty minutes to reach Christ Church College, presumably the main entrance at St. Aldates. Enough time for Webb, but not for the casual eavesdropper to work out the AR’s message even if it had been recognized as coded. The fact of speaking in code was itself disturbing information. As an afterthought, Webb grabbed his laptop computer on the way out.