egress manoeuvre, and if that last APU goes down that won’t be possible.’
Egress. He meant, abandon the orbiter.
Fahy suddenly felt faint, and her senses seemed to be fading out; she grabbed onto the edge of her workstation, as if holding onto reality.
Egress. The crux of history. On this moment, on her decision now, she sensed, pivoted her own life, the destiny of the mission, maybe the future of the space program.
‘You’re sure about that, Fido?’
‘Flight, get them out of there.’
At bottom, Fahy did not want to become the first Flight Director to lose an orbiter since 51-L, Challenger. But she knew Fido was right.
Hope died.
‘Marcus. You may instruct the crew.’
Emerging from the blindness of the blackout, Columbia was now able to use external sensors to confirm its state vector, its map of its position and trajectory.
To Benacerraf, now that the alarms had stopped sounding off, Lamb and Angel seemed tense but calm. Suddenly, it was like the sims once more.
… But now the capcom was saying: ‘Columbia, Houston. We, ah, we recommend you prepare for egress. Emergency egress.’
Angel stared at Lamb.
‘Say again, Marcus.’
‘Recommend you prepare for egress. The status of your APUs –’
Lamb said, ‘We’re bringing this bird home yet, Marcus.’
‘Tom, I’m instructed to remind you that an orbiter ditching is not survivable.’
‘And landing on the Moon without a fucking radar is not survivable either, and we did that,’ Lamb said. ‘Ninety thousand feet. Speed brake back to sixty-five per cent.’
‘Copy,’ Angel said.
‘Tom,’ the capcom said, ‘you must make a decision at sixty thousand. A decision on the egress. We’ve little confidence in that last power unit holding out through the landing. Tom? Do you copy that?’
The deceleration mounted; Benacerraf was forced forward, against the straps of her harness.
‘God damn it,’ Lamb growled. ‘Yeah, I copy, Marcus. But we ain’t at sixty thou yet. Fourth roll reversal.’
For the last time, Columbia banked over. When the orbiter straightened up, Benacerraf could see Columbia was flying over the town of Bakersfield, the bleak landmark at the fringe of the Mojave.
Almost home, Benacerraf thought. They were flying through the atmosphere of Earth. Egress – abandoning the orbiter now – seemed absurd.
But the ground was approaching awfully quickly. And they were miles off track.
Lamb checked his altitude. ‘Sixty thousand feet. God damn it all to hell. Bill, Paula, get down to the mid deck.’
‘Tom –’
‘Move it, Bill! You’ve got ninety seconds. I’ll configure the computer mode for egress, then follow you out. Do it, guys.’
Angel stared at Lamb for maybe five seconds. Then he unclipped his harness and stood up, shakily.
Benacerraf, her heart pounding, unfastened her lap belt. She had to lift her harness back over her head, and disconnect her oxygen tube from her thigh, and unhook the hose bringing her cooling water. She stood up, cautiously. She started to hunt for the egress cue card.
Now the decision was made – now that Lamb, up there in the hot seat, had actually concurred – Fahy began to feel a little calmer.
On the open loop, she said, ‘All right, everybody. Let’s keep things nice and tight, now. This is STS-143, not 51-L. And we’re still Black Gold Flight, remember. In a couple of minutes we should have our crew out of there. Let’s follow the book, and bring those guys home. Capcom, you want to start Tom on his checklist?’
White said, ‘Rog, Flight.’
‘Guidance, DPS, let’s get that bail-out software mode loaded and running in the GPCs.’
‘Affirm, Flight.’
‘Fido, get a good hack on the trajectory. I want no mistakes during the egress …’
As Columbia went subsonic, it hit Mach buffeting. The orbiter shuddered, like a car going over a gravel road, as the airflow over its wings adjusted.
Leading the way, Benacerraf clambered through the narrow interdeck opening on the left of the cabin. Her legs felt shaky, microgravity-attenuated, but they held her up, despite the rattling of the orbiter.
She scrambled down the ladder to the mid deck area. The four mission specialists – Chandran, de Wilde, Gamble and Reeve – were sitting in their orange pressure suits, strapped into their fold-away metal and canvas seats. They looked at her through their big bubble visors. There was only fear in their faces, none of the forced banter she’d endured on the flight deck.
Phil Gamble – an orbiter systems specialist, tall, slim, bald – had thrown up, Benacerraf saw; the vomit had splashed against the lower half of his visor, and was pooled inside his helmet, at his neck.
The mid deck – brightly lit by fluorescent floods behind translucent ceiling panels – had been roomy living quarters during the flight. Now, with the return of gravity, it seemed cramped, awkward, crowded out by the airlock and the big avionics bays at the back, full of metal angles and places to bang her knees. She felt an odd stab of nostalgia, for the days she had spent safely cocooned here, on orbit.
‘Egress,’ she said briskly. ‘Chandran, you’re the jump master.’
Sanjai Chandran was sitting in the leftmost forward seat, in front of the big bulge of the airlock. He was around fifty but looked older; his lined face and grey moustache peered out at her, full of concern. He tried to smile. ‘Yeah. But I didn’t sign up for this.’
‘Who the hell did? Come on, Sanjai –’
Chandran released his restraints. He reached down to the floor, lifted a cover and pulled a T-handle. Benacerraf heard a sharp pyrotechnic crack; a valve had blown to equalize air pressure. Then Chandran hauled on another T-handle set in the floor. More pyros exploded around the hinge of the big circular wall hatch. The noise was violent, startling, and for an instant the mid deck was filled with dense smoke. But then three small thrusters blew, pushing the severed hatch out and away from the orbiter.
The hatchway became a hole, through which Benacerraf could see the sky. Wind noise forced its way into the crew compartment, drowning any other sound. The opened hatchway was like a wound, cut into the side of the cosy den of the mid deck.
Suddenly, Benacerraf’s heart was racing. It was as if, cocooned in the warm, gentle comfort of the orbiter, she’d not
