minutes. And when he scanned his instruments, when he put it together, the data from his eight-ball and his CRT and his alpha-mach indicators told him that things weren’t too bad. He still had, in fact, enough energy and altitude for a feasible landing profile. Miles from the runway, maybe, but feasible, out on a dry lake somewhere.
He felt as if he’d spent half his life in front of these displays. Maybe he had, he thought. He felt at home here, in this busy, competent, glowing little cockpit.
Just a day at the office.
Lamb didn’t want to throw his life away. On the other hand, if Columbia was lost, that was the end of the space program, for sure.
Maybe it was time to rewrite the rule books, one last time.
He thought his way ahead, through the uncertainties of the next few minutes. He would have to manage his energy. He actually had to accelerate, to get to the ground with enough airspeed; by the time he got down to ten thousand feet he needed to have picked up to two hundred and ninety knots, plus or minus a few per cent.
He pitched Columbia’s nose down. His airspeed rose sharply.
‘Flight, Surgeon. I got six bail-outs. We lost one.’
‘… Six? Capcom –’
White said, ‘Columbia, Houston. What’s going on? You’re dropping out of fifteen thousand. Tom, you asshole, are you still on the flight deck?’
Fahy climbed away from her workstation and crossed to the capcom’s station. She plugged her headset into White’s loop. ‘Tom, this is Fahy. Get your ass out of there.’
‘You’re breaking up, Barbara. Anyway, since when has a Flight Director spoken direct on air-to-ground?’
There was a stir among the controllers.
A picture of the orbiter had come up on the big screen at the front of the FCR. It was hazy with distance and magnification. White contrails looped back from the wings’ trailing edges. And black smoke poured from the OMS engine pods.
Thirteen thousand feet.
Lamb looked down at the baked desert surface. It was flat, semi-infinite, like one huge runway. It was why Edwards had been sited out here in the first place.
Columbia flew over the straight black line of US 58.
This would make a hell of a tale to tell the boys over a couple of Baltics at Juanita’s, like the old days.
Fahy was still talking.
Patiently, he said, ‘If you’re going to be the capcom, give me my heading.’
‘Tom –’
‘Give me a heading, damn it.’
‘Uh, surface wind two zero zero. Seven knots. Set one zero niner niner. Tom –’
Now he was down to ten thousand feet, and that dip had earned him around three hundred knots extra velocity. Not so bad; he ought to be able to land within six or seven miles if he worked at it …
He got another master alarm. Main bus undervolt. That last power unit was giving out on him. But it wasn’t dead yet.
He punched the red button to kill the clamour.
There was no sound at the press stand, save the barking crackle of the PA’s air-to-ground loop.
The recovery convoy was racing off across the desert surface, towards the orbiter’s projected touchdown position, miles from the runway. They raised a dust cloud a thousand feet tall.
The orbiter was huge as it came in, impossibly ungainly. It was gliding down a steep entry path, as smooth as if it were mounted on invisible rails.
You could tell the bird was sick. Even Hadamard could see that, at a glance. There was some kind of black smoke billowing out of the fat engine pods at the orbiter’s tail. The pods themselves were badly charred and buckled. And there were yellow flames, actual flames, licking along the leading edge of that big tail fin. The public affairs officer said that was hydrazine, leaking out of ruptured power units over the orbiter’s hot surfaces.
But it wasn’t a disaster yet. In the distance Hadamard could see five billowing white parachutes, like thistledown, drifting down through the air.
Hadamard tried to think ahead. He was going to have trouble with that arrogant old asshole Tom Lamb, when he emerged from this, covered in fresh glory. He’d have to be kicked upstairs to somewhere he and his old Apollo-era buddies could be kept quiet, once the first PR burst was over …
Arrogant old asshole. Suddenly he pictured Tom Lamb sitting on the flight deck of that battered old orbiter, alone, struggling to bring his spacecraft home.
His calculation receded. Hadamard found he was holding his breath.
To increase his rate of descent, he pushed forward on his stick. The back end of the bird came up a little, and the attitude change increased his sink rate.
It was a steep descent: at seventeen degrees, five times as steep as the normal airliner approach, dropping three feet in every fifteen flown. He was pretty much hanging in the straps now, falling fast. He tried to keep his speed constant, by opening and closing the speed-brake with the throttle lever. He could feel the brake take hold, dragging at the air.
Way to his right, he could see where the runway had been painted on the bare desert surface, remote, useless. Beyond it was a group of drab, dun buildings: it was the Wherry housing area, where he’d once lived, when he’d flown F-104 chasers for the X-15s. But that had been in the middle of a different century, a hundred lifetimes ago.
Two thousand feet.
‘Beginning preflare.’ Using his hand controller and his speed-brake, he started to shallow his glideslope to two degrees.
Columbia responded, sluggishly, to the manoeuvre. But his speed was about right.
It was still possible. Even if the landing gear collapsed, even if the orbiter slid across half the Mojave on its belly. As long as he held her steady, through this final couple of thousand feet.
The baked desert surface fled beneath the prow of the orbiter, already shimmering with heat haze.
At a hundred and thirty-five feet, the orbiter bottomed out of its dip. He lifted the cover of the landing gear arming switch, and pressed it. At ninety feet, he pushed the switch.
He heard a clump beneath him, as the heavy gear dropped and locked into place.
‘Columbia, Houston. Gear down. We can see it, Tom.’
‘Gear down, rog. I’m going to take this damn thing right into the hangar, Marcus.’
‘Maybe we’ll dust it off a little first.’
Just a few more feet. Damn it, he could jump down from
