Orbit

Chapter 44

Arleigh is losing it, Richard DeFazio thinks, but who can blame him? The telemetry all the way down has told of an excruciating series of near disasters—the wrong entry point, the wrong attitude, a near fatal problem with the tail boom, and just before the datastream dropped out completely, the unmistakable signature of a complete stall and a spacecraft dropping uncontrollably toward a spot in eastern New Mexico.

And then nothing.

Frantic calls to Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center produce a bit more information, along with confirmation that there was what appeared to be a precipitous drop toward the ground tracked by radar, but then Albuquerque watched what they thought was the same target fly west, toward Roswell, and disappear.

There are phones to both of Arleigh’s ears as he tries to get more information. With the world aware that Intrepid has somehow boosted out of orbit and is reentering with an untrained Kip Dawson at the controls, the guesswork on where the spacecraft will come down has launched scores of camera crews in airplanes and helicopters, some merely circling their home cities, waiting for word. The moment New Mexico seemed to be the end point, an airborne armada headed in from all points of the compass.

In the meantime, a worldwide television audience too large to measure has been watching long distance images of Intrepid descending, turning, configuring, reconfiguring… the shots ranging through handoffs from satellite-borne cameras to ground shots with amazing clarity until Intrepid dropped below thirty thousand feet and out of sight of the installation at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. With Kip’s fate hanging in the balance, billions are holding their collective breaths in the most widely watched global cliffhanger since Apollo 13.

Richard glances at Diana Ross, who has been progressively destroying pencils. He knows better than to ask what she thinks. She thinks what he thinks—that it will be a miracle if Kip survives.

But it’s already a miracle that he figured out how to guide Intrepid through reentry.

A secretary has appeared at their side noiselessly with word that a car is waiting to take them to Richard’s jet now fueled and waiting a quarter mile away. Diana almost pushes Richard over in her haste to get out the door, knowing that the flight will take nearly ninety minutes with no certainty how close they can land to the remains, she figures, of Intrepid, Kip Dawson, and Bill Campbell. All Richard knows for certain is the section of New Mexico into which Intrepid has disappeared, but the exact location of the crash should be known in an hour.

Somehow, Richard has already put a private jet on standby to fly Kip’s family in from the Houston area, just in case—something he has yet to tell the family.

The quiet is overwhelming. Somewhere behind the instrument panel, gyros are still spinning and cooling fans still running, but once he snaps the master switch off, the sound of his own breathing is startlingly loud.

Kip looks around at the plastic bag that contains Bill Campbell’s body.

“At least we got you home, Bill,” he says, as reverentially as he can. And just as quickly his need to be out of the tiny cabin overwhelms him, lest it suddenly bursts into flames. The need for air alone dictates panic.

Kip works to open the inner hatch, glancing at the brick building through the window. The walls of the old structure are deteriorating, the stucco un-patched and crumbling, the windows tilted crazily as if the building was melting slowly back into the desert along with the rest of what had to have been a World War II Army Air Corps field.

Intrepid’s inner door swings open easily and Kip pulls the equalization lever to make sure any remaining air pressure in the cabin is dumped before working the lock and swinging the outer door open. He’s still wearing Bill’s space suit, but now without the helmet, and the trip out through the open hatchway is quick. His feet land on a dusty slab of broken concrete, and he works to regain his balance, walking shakily to the edge of the slab and onto the sandy ground. His legs feel weak, strangers to gravity, and he sinks to his knees to scoop up some of the earth as if it will evaporate if he doesn’t touch it. He lets it run through his fingers. Incredible feelings of relief and deliverance course through his body like an electric current, but he feels removed slightly, as if it were all happening to someone else. He remains on his knees looking up in the sky and letting the unfiltered light fill his eyes as he takes a deep breath of the sweetest air he’s ever tasted. There is springtime in the flavor of it, oxygen-rich and redolent with life, even in the absence of greenery in the surrounding terrain. The stiff breeze that helped keep his relative landing speed down is still blowing out of the west and kicking up dust, but he gratefully breathes that in as well with a huge smile as he gets to his feet at last, aware of the approach of a vehicle somewhere behind.

He looks around as an old Ford pickup rumbles around the corner and squeals to a halt, its stocky occupant getting out carefully, as if approaching a suspected crime scene. Jeans and a flannel work shirt, Kip notes, wondering why he’s even aware of what the man’s wearing. The sight of another human is such a relief, it couldn’t possibly matter. The man waves as if embarrassed, a grin on his broad, squarish face as he gives the spacecraft a thorough looking over and walks close enough to offer his hand.

“Hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this,” Kip says, his voice sounding strange and unused.

The fellow is probably younger than he, Kip realizes, his face tanned and deeply creased as if he’s spent a lifetime on the open range. But there are laugh lines as well and the etched evidence of an easy smile.

“I saw you headin’ for the runway. Man, you were smokin’.”

“I know,” Kip says, shaking the man’s hand.

“What were you doing, two hundred knots on final?”

“Close. I didn’t see the runway until the last minute.”

“It’s kinda overgrown all right. Sometimes at dusk I can’t even find the damn thing. But you did good, man! Helluva landing.”

“Thanks.”

“You do know we don’t have any services here, right?”

“Sorry?”

“We don’t have any gas.”

Maybe it’s the sudden reapplication of one g to his body or a delayed reaction to the greatest stress he’s ever known, but Kip suddenly feels light-headed, as if whatever the man just said has been completely garbled on the way to his ears.

“This… runs on a different type of fuel,” Kip says, feeling idiotic.

“I’m just kidding you, Mr. Dawson.”

“You… know my name?”

“Hell, yes! Who doesn’t? I’m Jim Waters, by the way.”

Kip looks around at the ship, as if Intrepid might have disappeared. But no, it’s still there, looming behind him with the incongruity of a pink elephant in a parlor.

“I should have landed in Mojave, California,” he says.

“Yeah, I know. But the interesting thing is, you landed your spaceship pretty damn close to Roswell,” he chuckles. “That strike you as coincidental?”

The reference soars past. “I couldn’t make Roswell,” Kip replies, knowing he missed a point somehow. “I mean, I was just trying to find a runway.”

“Well, boy, howdy, I’m really tickled you’d pick my little duster runway. Although there was a time it was a big military field.”

“Where am I, exactly?”

The smile broadens as Jim looks down momentarily, taking his time with the best straight line he’s had in ages.

“Why, this is a planet called Earth, Kip.”

“No, no… I mean, obviously it’s Earth. Dumb question. And I know this is New Mexico, but where in New Mexico?”

“Oh, about forty-five years to the west of the tiny town of Gladiola.”

“I really need to use your phone, Jim, if you have one. You know, to let everyone know I made it down okay. They probably have no idea where I am or anything.”

Jim is shaking his head. “You can use my cell phone if you like, but I really don’t think it’s going to be necessary, Kip.”

“Why not?”

“Take a look.” Jim gestures to the northwest, toward Roswell and Albuquerque, and Kip follows his gaze to where something undulates on the horizon, the shape indistinct in the rising heat, coalescing quickly into several objects. A small air force of helicopters rises into view, racing toward them, as a fixed-wing business jet swoops in low from the north and passes over the field with a deafening roar at the same moment Jim’s cell phone starts ringing in his pocket.