Skyfall

24

GET 12:06

The nuclear engine countdown was almost finished when word of the disaster reached Prometheus, relayed from Mission Control. Flax had not mentioned the fate of the core booster until all of the facts were in, until the complete extent of the catastrophe was known. Then he had talked to Nadya, telling her what had happened in exact detail. She had called Patrick and Ely back from the nuclear engine control compartment so she could speak to them in person at the same time. When Major Gagarin, the first man ever to fly in space, had been in a plane crash his voice had been like hers. His engine had failed but he had stayed with his plane and flown it into the ground in order to miss the school and the houses below. His voice was calm and emotionless up until the instant of the crash. Nadya had been trained the same way.

They did not want to believe it, they had to believe it, but it still seemed so impossible.

“It couldn't have happened,” Ely said. “It just couldn't.”

“It did,” Patrick said, his quiet words cutting through the shocked silence. “It happened. But there's nothing we can do about it. It is just a fact we are going to have to live with. I don't know who's to blame — if anyone is to blame. It won't be easy but we are just going to have to put it out of our minds while we get on with the work here. Nadya, stay with the radio and give us reports of any developments. Ely and I are going to start the engine.” His eyes went to the GET readout and the others looked as well. “12:42. We're running out of time. We've less than twelve hours to build up speed and get out of this rotten orbit. If we don't the same thing could happen to us. And we would make a far bigger hole when we hit.”

In silence he pushed into the tube and back to the engine compartment, with Ely right behind him.

“I'll contact Mission Control,” Nadya said, shoving off from the couch towards the opening to the flight cabin. Her eyes were red, from fatigue not from tears, and her motions were slow.

“You should take a rest,” Coretta said. “Speaking as your doctor.”

“I know, thank you, but not right now. There is too much to do right now. It is checklist time for the air scrubbers to be examined. The fuel cells as well.”

“Can I help?”

“No. This is a particular job that either I or Patrick must do.” Then she was gone.

“It is always that way,” Gregor said. “Nothing for us to do — just wait. You are a physician, you have your work, but I am only a fifth wheel. I do nothing.” His face had sunk back into Slavic melancholy.

“You get gloomy too quickly,” Coretta said, moving over to him. “This trip has not been one of joy unrelieved, admittedly, but it's not that bad. Enjoy being a passenger while it lasts. When we get into orbit you're the only person who counts, the one this whole trip is about. The pilots are just cab drivers, and I'm here to make sure you don't get sniffles. As I remember this thing is called the Prometheus Project and it's supposed to put some kind of solar generator in orbit. And, with the Colonel gone, it looks to me like you're the only one who can do that.”

He wrung his large hands. “It will be difficult without Vladimir,” he said.

“Gregor, you are just going to have to snap out of this.” She was totally professional now. Opening the medical cabinet she took out a small tube of pills. On her way back to the couch she grabbed up a squeeze bottle of water as well.

“Take these,” she said, holding out two white capsules. “Wash them down with water, and I'll give you two more in six hours.”

“What are they?” he asked suspiciously.

“The pharmaceutical industry's answer to the rigors of the age of technology. Tranks. Tranquilizers. They file the thin edge of hysteria off life.”

“I do not take medicines, thank you. They are not needed.”

“Don't be afraid of these pills, Gregor. They are to help, not hurt.” She saw the signs of strain around his eyes and lips. “I feel in the need of a little tension-relieving myself.” She put the pills in her mouth, showed them to him on her tongue, then swallowed them with a mouthful of water. And took two more from the vial.

“Your turn now. No arguments.”

This time he took them without protest and she sighed with relief.

Ely, in the nuclear engine control station below, felt no relief at all. In fact, even in the controlled environment of the ship he was sweating. From tension, not from physical effort. The checkout was almost done, the preparation for starting up the nuclear engines almost finished.

“Ready to go, “he said.

“Begin,” Patrick said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Negative. We're in the green so far. This engine is complex — but theoretically simple. The uranium dust is trapped in a vortex of neon inside the light bulbs. The quartz tubes with this mix are surrounded by hydrogen, mixed with some tungsten so it won't be too transparent to the heat. Hydrogen moderates the U-235 plasma which heats up to twenty-three thousand degrees Kelvin which really warms up the rest of the hydrogen and sends it blasting out of the reaction chamber. So we move to the last step in the start-up, power to the turbopumps in the secondary hydrogen closed loop….”

His voice cut off suddenly as a buzzer sounded and red lights appeared on the board before him. He threw switches quickly.

“Is that normal?” Patrick asked.

“No, that is not normal,” he answered, lips peeled back from his teeth in a most unhumorous grin. “We have had shutdown. Something is wrong.”

Their eyes moved to the GET clock at the same time.

13:03.

Now it was less than eleven hours before they were due to run out of room in space and have first contact with the sea of atmosphere waiting below.

“How wrong? What do you mean?” Patrick asked.

“I don't know yet.” Ely had programmed the computer to display an eight-color diagram of the relevant circuits and controls and was tracking through it. “There are five engines out there, but they function as a single unit and are far more interconnected than the chemical engines. We're having a malfunction in one of them. That's what I am trying to track down now. Let me alone, will you Patrick, I have to do this alone.”

“Right. I'll be in the flight cabin. Plug into the intercom when you need me.”

Patrick kicked up off into the lower compartment. He saw that Gregor was lying face down on his couch, really floating a few inches to it and held in place by the clips. Patrick started to speak but Coretta raised her finger to her lips and shushed him, then waved him to the far side of the compartment and went to join him.

“Gregor is sleeping,” she said in a whisper. “I don't want him disturbed. Emotionally he's not in very good condition. The fatigue and strain have been almost too much for him to handle. I gave him some sleeping pills, told him they were tranks. Had to take two myself to con him into it, but I managed to spit them out without swallowing them.”

“How bad is he?” Patrick asked, looking at the sleeping figure.

“I can't say. Back home I would give you a guess, but this is different. He must have been stable enough or the Soviets wouldn't have him on this project.”

“Don't bet on that. The report I saw said that he was the only microwave transmission authority fit enough to go on this flight. I have a feeling he was drafted.”

“If that's true it would explain a lot. He doesn't seem to have the right temperament or the right constitution for this kind of work. But he's going to be needed when we're in orbit. With the Colonel dead, Gregor is now our only authority on getting the generator working. So if I can get him to sleep, to relax now, he should be functional when we need him. Once he's doing that I don't think there'll be any problems.”

“Thanks, Coretta. You're right. Let me know if you need any help---”

“He doesn't like to take pills.”

“He can be ordered to. I'll take care of that.”

Patrick started for the flight cabin bat Coretta caught his sleeve and pulled him back.

“Just a minute. You're under doctor's orders too.”

“Pills?” he asked, looking grim.

“Food — and drink. And bring some up for Nadya when you go.”

“Of course, thanks. Hunger and thirst strike like lightning as soon as I think of it.”

He took the plastic meal bags and squeeze bottles from the locker before he went to join Nadya. He strapped down next to her and passed over her ration.

“Doctor's orders. Chow time,” he said.

“Thank you, I am thirsty.”

“Eats too.”

Patrick forced himself to finish most of the pulverized beef stew before calling Mission Control. “A little engine trouble,” he told Nadya as he sent out the call.

“No! Not more, it cannot be.” She was horrified, her hands-clasped against her breasts.

“I'm sorry,” he said, reaching out to take her hands in his. Her skin was cold. “I hope it's something small. Ely is checking it out now….”

“Prometheus, Mission Control here.”

“Hello, Flax, Patrick here. I am reporting an apparent malfunction with the fission engines. Checklist fine, but barrage of red lights when we tried to fire it up.”

There was the slightest delay before Flax spoke again. Fatigue and tension were just as bad on the ground. “Do you know the extent of the malfunction, Prometheus?”

“Negative. Dr. Bron is on that now. Are the fission engine team standing by in case we need them?”

“Absolutely, all here. They want to know if you will transfer engine housekeeping data dump?”

“Roger. I'll set it up.”

All the steps Ely had followed in starting up the nuclear engine had been recorded by the ship's computer. Patrick used his Commander's controls to retrieve the information. When he was satisfied he pressed the transmit button and all the details were radioed at high speed back to Mission Control on Earth. While he was doing this he was aware of the intercom bleeping and Nadya taking a call. She tapped his arm.

“Yes,” he said, turning towards her.

“It was Ely. He thinks he knows what has happened. I told him you were on to Mission Control so he's on his way up here.” Patrick nodded and turned on his microphone again.

“Mission Control, I have more information on the malfunction. Dr. Bron will report shortly. He appears to, have located the source of the malfunction.”

“You better believe I have,” Ely said, coming in. He saw the squeeze bottle of water in Nadya's hand and realized suddenly how dry his mouth was, how thirsty he had become without knowing it. “Can I have a swig of that? Thanks.” He drained half the bottle before sighing and passing it back.

“It's not good, Patrick, not good at all. I'll check with the team in Mission Control and they can run it through their mock-up, but I'm pretty sure about what has happened. You know that the hearts of these nuclear engines are heavy quartz tubes — which is why they are called light bulb reactors. That quartz is good stuff and the way the engine is set up the tubes are immune to thermal shock. But the pogoing and the abortive separation of the core booster must have done something…”

“Physical shock?”

“Exactly. Quartz is just a fancy kind of glass. Something must have bashed around back there during separation because I think one of the tubes is broken.”

“But — can you replace it?”

Ely laughed, very bitterly. “Replace it? Even if I had a spare it would be impossible in space. That tube is broken and it is going to stay broken. Those engines will just not run.”

“Something can be done. Something must be done,” Patrick insisted.

“Like what?”

“Like we take a look at the motors and see just what happened, send a complete report back to Mission Control and have them see what can be worked out.”

“You're an optimistic bastard, you know that, Patrick.” After the intensity of his work something seemed to have gone out of Ely. He was hunched, seemed smaller.

“No, I'm not. Just doing the job I was trained for. There are programs that cover a lot of what ifs. Now we've got a problem here, but we need more data on it. You're going to space walk and assess the damage. That's what we need to know next. There's only one undamaged umbilical left. Use it. Let's suit up.”

“Whoa, not so fast. I've never space walked before, and I certainly hadn't planned to do it alone for the first time. You have the experience and could save a lot of time….”

“I'm not an atomic physicist. You are. You helped design the motor, as you've often told us, so you should know what's wrong just by looking at it.” He started towards the suit locker, then turned back as a sudden thought struck him. “You're not afraid of going out there, are you?”

Ely smiled. “Yes, if you want to know, I'm frightened shitless of being out there on the end of a rubber tube and a couple of wires. I'm frightened of this whole trip and everything about it. But I'm here anyway because I wouldn't miss it for the world. So let's get suited up before I change my mind.”

Patrick wasn't sure what to say. “I'm sorry I said that. Please understand, it wasn't personal---”

“It was personal as hell, my boy, but all is forgiven. This hasn't been much of a pleasure cruise, has it? And you've been awake and working for what? Two days now?” He glanced up at the GET clock. “13:57 and still counting. And the estimate was that we would run out of space at twenty four hundred. Ten hours left. Why doesn't someone ask Mission Control if they've any revisions on that original estimate? It would be nice to know.”

“Nadya, as soon as we're all suited up, talk to them about that. Tell them Dr. Bron is going to look at the motors and they want to listen and record everything he says, then get to work on the information as soon as it comes in. Our time is running out.”

There was not a second to be wasted now. As soon as the suits were sealed and the flight cabin evacuated, Patrick opened the hatch. His cabin walk-about umbilical stretched far enough to enable him to help Ely through and feed his umbilicals after him.

“Slowly,” he said. “The one thing you can't do is rush now.”

“Rush!” Ely laughed. “It's all I can do to move.”

“There are rings all the way along. Clip onto one before you release a handhold.”

“Right. Moving now. Faster than I thought, guess the experience inside the ship in free fall helps. Here's the base of the first motor, trumpet bell looks fine, I'm moving to the next-Christ, there it is!”

“What?” Flax's voice sounded loud in Ely's ears. “We read you well, Dr. Bron. What did you find?”

“The source of our trouble. I can see what happened now. The pogoing and that aborted separation we had with the core body booster. There was plenty of misaligned thrust then, knocking about. The shroud must have been shifted because it bashed into one of the motors. There are quartz fragments floating out of it and the thrust chamber is all askew and dented. I'm close to it now. Motor four. The others look okay. Going up it now to look into the trumpet. I can see now… my God.. it's a mess. A real mess. Broken tubes, quartz everywhere… must have a massive gas leakage.”

Ely looked down at the ravaged interior of the engine, then pulled back slowly and stared at the great globe of the Earth that half filled the sky. It was infinitely more impressive when viewed from space rather than through the port. Big and close, far too close. Mission Control was saying something but he was not listening to their words. Flax's voice broke off when Ely began talking.

“That engine is not going to fire, ever again. Do you read that, Mission Control? Unless you can come up with some way to bypass it so we can fire the other four engines we've had it. End of mission. End of Prometheus. So get cracking. We need some advice.”