Orbit

Chapter 38

The Russian rescue mission and the administrator of NASA go into motion at the same moment. In Russia the Soyuz spacecraft clears the Baikonaur launch pad while in the Beltway Geoff Shear is already speaking to the White House aide he’s had holding for ten minutes.

“Okay. Put him on. Quickly.”

Less than a minute goes by before the President picks up to hear that the Russians are underway.

“I urge you to let me scrub our launch, Mr. President. It’s unnecessary now.”

“How much time on our countdown, Geoff?”

“Coming up on eleven minutes, sir. We just came off the hold.”

“Geoff, I want our guys to do the job. You know that.”

“Yes, sir, but…”

“And I’ll take the heat for the additional funds, but this is the sort of mission the shuttle was supposed to be able to do. Even if we have to compete with a parking lot full of spacecraft up there I want Kip on our shuttle. And that way the poor guy doesn’t have to ride to the space station first and spend, what, ten days before coming back? I mean, he could be injured.”

“He’s not injured, sir. He’s mentioned nothing about being injured.”

“Well, psychologically he needs to come home.”

“Yes, but, Mr. President, we’ve pushed everybody down there very hard to accomplish this emergency mission so we can comply with your directives, and frankly there have been all sorts of technical problems, and even though we’ve gotten past most of them…”

“When?”

“Today. During the countdown. And in the previous few days. We’re hanging it out.”

“Are you telling me the launch is unsafe?”

A contemplative silence lasts a moment too long.

“Geoff, are you saying on the record this is too dangerous? You have good reason to believe that?”

“I… don’t know for a fact that there’s any inordinate danger, more than usual, but whenever you push hard like this, things can go wrong.”

“What’s gone wrong?”

“Just a lot of computer problems and glitches and low readings. The countdown has been threatened over and over again. But it tells me…”

“But you can’t say definitively that you’re violating any safety parameters?”

“No.”

“Very well, then. We launch, Geoff. And that’s that. Get our guys up there and get Kip Dawson down safely. Clear enough?”

“Very well, Mr. President. Keep your fingers crossed.”

Geoff hangs up and sits for less than a minute, weighing the dangers of triggering what he considers his own “nuclear” option—his last chance to keep the shuttle grounded. It’s a no-brainer, he figures, and suddenly he’s pulling his cell phone from his pocket and punching up the screen to send a coded, numeric text message:

He checks the TV monitor on his desk. Less than ten minutes. The display loses one minute before his phone beeps and the return message appears with a simple “OK.”

Dorothy Sheehan stares at the cell phone display in disbelief, wondering if the number she’s been given as a code matches what she’s seeing.

She quickly checks a secure page in her PDA and feels a shiver when the number matches.

It’s the same!

If Shear had asked her to have a cyanide capsule embedded in a tooth against capture she wouldn’t be more surprised. The launch will be safely scrubbed, but she’ll be almost instantly traceable as the saboteur.

There’s no way she can use the computer in the office she’s been assigned, and there’s no time left to return to the vacant office and computer she was using. She snatches up her small briefcase and races to the door, confirming the hall is clear before entering and walking quickly to the far end of the corridor.

Why didn’t I prepare for this? she thinks, knowing the answer. What she’s already embedded can have no direct safety impact on the shuttle or the crew, but what Geoff Shear has just ordered could lead to a major computer shutdown just before liftoff. For the first time in days she feels her confidence ebbing away. Real fright is taking its place. This is her space program, too. It’s one thing to influence the scrubbing of a launch, and another entirely to do so at the very last second when the readings could confuse the launch crew.

The thought of just walking away and reporting there wasn’t time crosses her mind, but her deal with Shear depends on success. She knows him well. And Shear is the one charged with making the tough strategic decisions. She’s merely the operative, like carrying out the Company’s orders years ago. If she fails him on purpose, she’s second-guessing policy, as well as screwing up her own future. Besides, what he’s decided to do is keep everyone safely on the ground, and that can’t be bad.

Dorothy ducks into a stairwell, her heartbeat accelerating as she tries to think of a computer terminal she could reach in time that would leave no traces of her presence. Putting the commands into the master computer through the Internet is impossible. The NASA firewall is impenetrable. She has to use a computer connected to the main network and from inside. Shear thinks she’s preloaded everything and she should have. Dammit! She really should have!

God, that was arrogant to think I wouldn’t need it!

She glances at her watch. Just over seven minutes remain, and if she can’t insert it before T minus three, it’ll be too dangerous, both for the shuttle and for her.

Okay, think! If I use any office computer, they’ll have it traced in an hour, since I was in the same building and Griggs already knows my mission. I can’t get in from outside, and there’s no time to… wait a minute!

She tries the next three office doors, finding the third unlocked, and races to the most isolated computer terminal she can find. She brings out the laptop in her bag and starts it spinning up while she pulls on surgical gloves before making the entries in the office computer.

And within a minute she’s in, a connection established from inside to out through her laptop’s air modem.

So, I opened my own gate to the castle from inside.

The program she needs to load is a complicated string of computer language and she checks the connection, moving through the office computer’s now-breached firewall to the main NASA network, looping it around through a server to confuse where it came from.

Four minutes to go. That should be enough.

The code has to replicate over the course of at least a minute before inserting itself in the master program as a basic program patch. She takes a deep breath and hits the load button, then immediately shuts down the connection and races from the room, relieved to find the hallway empty. She returns to her assigned office and almost dives for her own office computer keyboard to type in a mundane search request, a routine act that will bear a date and time stamp and help prove that she was nowhere else when some “hacker” loaded the illicit code.

"Yes!"

The report from Griggs Hopewell is accompanied by a broad grin as he lowers the receiver and turns to the launch director, the report from his computer team still ringing victoriously in his ears. “Caught her red-handed monkeying with the program, and my guys stopped the program patch she tried to install.”

Cully Jones is nodding appreciatively but his eyes are on the countdown clock now ticking under two minutes while he presses his headset closer to his ear and motions Griggs to silence. “What? Which one?”

Cully leans into his screen as he triggers a series of entries before answering the reporting engineer somewhere in the room.

“Shit! I see it. Has it been steady up to now?”

Griggs punches into the same net and struggles his headset back on in time to hear the remainder of the response.

“…no problem I can see before, but it’s suddenly climbing into overpressure. The book says we’ve got a thirty-degree tolerance and we’re approaching it.”

“Go raw data and recheck it.”

“I can’t. This one doesn’t go through the same processor.”

“The readout is hardwired or telemetry?”

“That’s telemetry, Cully. Fifty psi to go and still climbing. I have a corresponding temperature rise and a pressure warning on the relief valve.”

Griggs flips through one of the manuals as fast as he can, conscious of the count reaching T minus one minute. A complicated wiring and transmission diagram opens before him and he goes directly to the circuit controlling the dangerous readings they’re discussing before turning to Jones.

“Cully, the readings go through a computer processor. Not the same one, but equally vulnerable.”

The auxiliary power units are already online and consuming the shuttle’s hydrazine fuel supplies, and there are mere moments left before the launch is committed. Although Jones’s voice is steady and controlled, the pressure he’s feeling is excruciating.

“I thought your guys stopped the interference?”

“They did,” Griggs says. “But something from before must have slipped through. Or this is a phantom.”

“We don’t know that. We can’t assume that. I’m going to have to call a hold.”

“Yes, we do know that!” Griggs’s voice is rising in intensity. They’re out of time for this argument, but the launch window is too small for a hold. “Cully, it’s through the same basic switching equipment and equally vulnerable and this happens just suddenly? I don’t think so.”

T minus fifty-eight seconds is flashing on the screen. Everyone in the room is aware that once the countdown reaches thirty seconds the debate is over. The launch can’t be stopped. Cully Jones has all but frozen in position, his eyes on the distant screen at the front of the room, his mind racing before triggering his interphone.

“Systems, what’s your recommendation?” he asks.

“It’s out of limits. No fly.”

Griggs leans farther toward Cully, knowing he’s mere seconds from a decision, outraged that somehow Geoff Shear is about to succeed.

“I vote for go. This is a phantom problem, Cully.”

“Hold the count,” Cully orders.

“No, goddammit!”

Jones is turning now, his eyes flashing anger. “Two words, Griggs. Challenger, and Columbia. We stay conservative. You object?”

Griggs stares into the resolve in Jones’s face and shakes his head.

“No. No objection.”

Cully triggers the interphone channel. “The count is holding at T minus forty-two seconds. We have thirty seconds to decide to scrub or resume the countdown. Systems, where are we?”

Griggs can see the man stand and turn from his console two rows away, his face reflecting genuine fear.

“Pressure is out of limits, temperature approaching out of limits, and I have a report from the gantry shelter of heavy venting. We need to get the crew out, now! This is real!”

“Then we’re scrubbed!” Cully barks.

Launch control explodes into action as the practiced team at the pad begins moving toward an emergency extraction of the two crew members while Cully Jones begins running through the checklist to purge the dangerously overpressurized tank before the contents can explode.

Griggs Hopewell sits quietly, watching and listening and slightly stunned.

My God, this one was real, and I led myself into the assumption that Sheehan did it.

If they had launched with a true overpressure, the remains of the shuttle and the two astronauts would probably be raining back on the launch pad right now.