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SEP-010, Chapter 15.
Constitution.
Five seconds.
The timer ticked down passionlessly . . . mercilessly . . . mechanically. Five seconds existed between then and now, and for all of the thirty two years Jamie Cunningham had been alive in the universe, she could now remember scarcely too few years. Barbie and her plastic pink Camaro in her bedroom. Her parents fighting down the hall. Their divorce. Her first kiss. High school, and all of its turbulence of her freshman year. The horrible crash and the gut-rending loss of her best friend.
Four seconds.
College. Algebra. Geometry. Physics. Calculus. Psychology. Engineering. The University. NASA. The Saturn V rocket on display at the Johnson Space Center. Training. More training. Riding the 'vomit comet.' Simulator time. Centrifuge training.
Seeing Constitution for the first time . . . up close . . . in person. Climbing the stairs to the white room behind Greg Williams; in front of Tessa Stapleton . . . heart pounding the whole time.
Releasing the VARIS satellite. Feeling the thud of the explosive bolts rippling through the hull of Constitution.
Jet training. Flying the T-38. More training. God, what a lot of training! Press conferences. Interviews. Speeches. Symposiums. Launch day. The engine abort. The liftoff. Orbital insertion. Trans-lunar injection. Landing on the moon. Walking on the moon. Re-launch, and Trans-Earth injection.
The debris.
Seeing the Earth again -- that bright, amazingly blue sphere of life, now almost menacingly large in her windows.
The next thing that had to happen -- it just had to happen -- was six hydrogen-oxygen breathing engines roaring to life behind her. Flawlessly. Perfectly. The reputation of Pratt and Whitney / Rocketdyne -- hell, their lives depended on what was about to happen . . .
Three seconds.
. . . from now. The engines had been in for a rough flight this time. Burn. Cold soak. Burn. Cold soak. Burn. Cold soak. Could she remember how many times the main engines had fired for this mission? Did it really matter?
Two seconds.
Of course it mattered. An engine firing was really nothing more than a controlled explosion -- only, the idea was to generate the explosion and direct it safely out the back of the vessel. She knew what had to happen, thanks to Kepler's Law and her own general knowledge of physics: In order to arrest her launch back into deep space, she had to burn the engines for an insanely long amount of time, according to her loose calculations aided by the concrete figures from the flight computer and FIDO's own calculations on the ground. The computer knew more precisely what had to happen, of course . . . only there wasn't enough fuel to see it properly happen.
Running out of fuel was the other concern. Constitution would be pushing almost two g of acceleration by the time the liquid hydrogen and its oxidant supply was to be expended. Jamie was in a constant state of free-fall for many days . . . and had spent too many of those days in an on-again, off-again morose state of inactivity. Sure, she took her exercise schedule seriously, and had found the weight of her EVA suit and the oxygen tanks on her back to be not overly demanding . . . but this was a time-critical . . . really critical maneuver she was about to execute. Could she reach the controls to manually shut the engines off in time?
One second.
She reflected on the last several hours. Her blossoming friendship with Sienna Morrison -- rocky at first, of course . . . but maturing, nonetheless. Svetlana Zaytseva, and her stodgy, wooden, almost solider-like attitude. She'd gotten through that woman's bristly shields more than once in the few short days they knew each other. Anthony Downs . . . whom for most of the mission had little more to say than "Raaallphhhhh!" . . . and then there was Brian Adkinson. The flight guru. The man who missed his calling: flying on the Space Shuttle. The consumate nerd. And the man who, in his infinite wisdom (and sudden, disturbing physical sickness casting a pall of unreliability on his command) put his care, and the care of everyone else, in her hands.
She still didn't know if she could do it . . .
. . . but as the last second ticked into rapidly dwindling tenths of a second, she knew it didn't matter.
She clenched down on her teeth as she felt the acceleration come.
The only sound she heard was a subtle ramping up of the ventilation fans. The hull shivered subtly. A stylus shushed along the control panel to her right as it liberated itself, and smacked the cockpit's aft wall. Her left multifunction display, set to monitor the main propulsion system, dutifully recorded the rapid increase in sensor temperature and pressure readings throughout the main propulsion system. The engine bay frame sensors recorded the tensile stresses on the supporting members holding the engines to the hull. And . . . damn it, it was strong . . . so did the g forces mounting on her skeleton as Constitution lanced forward in reverse.
The collision between slush hydrogen and oxygen occurred as advertized in the pre-burn chambers of each of the six engines, and the reaction was swiftly being carried out and away from the ship. The fuel acted as both a propellant and a coolant in the lines, and each of the myriad of displays and indicators settled into the green arcs of normal operation as the six thrusters burned violently into space.
She allowed herself the luxury of opening up her windpipe for more air.
* * *
Enterprise.
"Los Angeles to Orlando in forty-five minutes; that's gotta be a new record. Wahoo!" Pilot Tamara Ciotti crooned as she closed the fuel feed valves going to the SCRAM array. Enterprise was now coasting at one hundred thousand feet above the surface of southern Alabama, angled southeast to pass over the Gulf of Mexico in another minute. She could see the jeweled blue of the Gulf already on the horizon, starting to mingle freely with the green forests and grasslands of the Deep South below her.
Her multifunction displays agreed on the same thing: Enterprise had punched up to an average of Mach 3 on her suborbital hop from Edwards Air Force Base to the Kennedy Space Center; they'd even pressed to Mach 5 for about ten of those forty-five minutes before backing down over New Mexico, and she was thoroughly impressed with the largest vehicle she'd ever flown in her life so far. Charlie Davis and Greg Williams, sharing the cockpit with her, were also in complete agreement: The fuel usage getting up past ten thousand feet was minimal, and they'd used only barely half of her total capacity in SCRAM fuel getting to the Cape. An air of excitement was tangibly present in the cockpit, and she shared a smile with each of them before returning to her instruments.
She knew that NASA was watching this flight very closely: On the return of the Space Shuttle whenever it landed at Edwards, the proceedings were followed by a crane lift onto a Boeing 747 for a long, cross-country trip; she and Charlie Davis had just proven what the experts had been saying for a while now: the Shuttle-Derived Orbiter could conceivably make the trip by itself, and for a fraction of the cost of running a 747-Shuttle stack for days.
This assertion was now reality.
Enterprise settled gradually into a slow descent as it passed over the blue water below her, and Tamara closed the clamshell doors protecting the SCRAMjet array. She noted the sudden increase in the lift to drag ratio projected by the flight computer, and she called up the final displays Charlie would need.
As the mission commander, he would have the controls from HAC intercept to final approach, while Tamara would manage the TAEM phase and keep her hands on the main propulsion system's thrust levers if they needed to do a go-around. No landing in the Space Exploration Program had ever been aborted, even though they had the capability to; too many lessons learned during STS had been heeded and applied: Chiefly, how to land a large spaceplane at a landing spot the relative size of a postage stamp from a starting point in orbit.
"Enterprise, set HAC for runway 15."
"Roger, set HAC for Runway 15," Tamara replied.
"And also, just a F-Y-I. Authorities in southwestern Arizona and southeastern California have been in contact with us, regarding our itinerary today."
Tamara arched an eyebrow. "How is that, Houston?"
"Apparently several residents of the Mojave valley reported hearing explosions an hour ago. They obviously didn't get the message we'd be flying today."
Charlie Davis chuckled, and Greg Williams set a gloved hand on his flight helmet -- the next best thing to a facepalm. It was enough to break the tension.
"Alright, we have three hundred miles to the HAC intercept," Davis reported. "Everything is looking good. We're going to run into some aerobraking on the way down."
"I'm ready," Tamara snarled.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham made it.
Her hand was on the manual throttles, and as she watched her dwindling fuel supply, her eyes were also on her orbital projection map. The apoapsis values were falling rapidly: Constitution was accelerating at 1.95 g and mounting rapidly as the spaceplane expelled her weight in fuel out the back. Now it was just a matter of timing the cutoff of the engines to coincide with the pre-planned fuel weight she wanted to keep: About five percent of the total capacity.
That mark was seconds from now, and she struggled to shift herself properly in her seat so that she could do what she had to do.
"Five seconds," She heard Adkinson bark.
"Four. . . three . . . two . . . one . . ."
With a herculean effort, she clenched her fingers down on the throttle and gave it a jerk backwards.
The g forces immediately subsided, and she felt blood rush forward through her brain as the action ceased. Her heart pounded through her chest, assaulting her ears in a thrumming cadence, and she glanced at the numbers.
"Cutoff!" Adkinson said sharply, and she reminded herself to breathe.
"Constitution, Houston. We copy your engine cutoff. New orbit projected at two-five-zero miles by one thousand three hundred five-zero nautical miles. Inclination is five-one point six degrees. Congratulations up there, and we're all glad this maneuver worked out."
"Thank you, Houston," Jamie said -- in a voice a lot calmer than she felt. Her mind whirled through what just happened, and as she checked her instrumentation one more time -- and saw the temperature and pressure readings fall slowly -- she realized it was time to move onto the next step; just like Brian had told her to.
She cast a sidelong glance at him, and he grinned back at her.
"Alright. Step two," She said.
"Constitution, Houston."
"Go ahead, Houston," Jamie prompted.
"This sounds like a good time for some good news," CAPCOM said. "We're putting the audio loop from the Red Room to you, now, while you're working on your post-burn activities. You can listen in on Channel set 2."
"Thank you again, Houston," Jamie said as she gave Adkinson a curious glance. She dialed in the standby radio stack to the correct frequency, and tapped the audio in.
* * *
Enterprise.
"Enterprise, take air data."
"Roger, take air data," Charlie Davis replied as he flipped the switch to extend the air probes. The information dutifully displayed on his HUD, showing his altitude and air speed. Enterprise was less than thirty seconds from intercepting the upwind leg of the heading alignment cylinder; an imaginary circle drawn on a map to guide the vehicle down to landing, and he noted with satisfaction the easy skill Tamara Ciotti was showing as she guided Enterprise along.
The brief deceleration from a hundred thousand feet up, and Mach 3 down to subsonic velocity was exciting. A twenty-degree nose-down attitude was adopted, and it didn't take long for the nose of the vehicle to heat up considerably. They were well within the safety margins, of course, and as Davis took a second to look over his left shoulder at the green, city-studded mass of Central Florida below him, he knew they had carried out their ferrying flight perfectly so far.
"Alright, Charlie. We're intercepting the HAC; your controls," Tamara said.
"My controls," Davis agreed as he took the yoke. He saw the diamond-shaped 'pipper' in front of him begin to move to his left.
"Enterprise, on at the two-seventy."
He watched land give way to ocean in front of him, and his mind stayed glued to the task at hand: keeping the pipper aligned perfectly with the orientation mark on his hud.
"Enterprise, on at the one-eighty."
He watched the ocean retreat to land in front of him. He could pick out the City of Jacksonville in front of him. They were at thirty thousand feet, and Enterprise was moving slowly. He half-expected the vehicle to stall on him, but his HUD told him the airspeed was still a constant; still above margins.
"Enterprise, on at the ninety. Report runway in sight."
He snapped a look off his left shoulder. He could see the Vehicle Assembly Building; a tiny affair poking through the light haze. He could see the amber and white of the VASI lights at the end of the runway, and as he rolled Enterprise back level, he noted with satisfaction that his localization was spot-on.
"Houston, I have the runway in sight," He reported.
"Enterprise, winds calm at present."
"Roger that," He said.
"Ten thousand feet," Tamara reported as he angled the nose down further; slightly steep at the aiming point.
"Five thousand at four-thirty," Tamara said as Davis guided the ship in. The sound of the air striking the windows intermingled with the sound of hydraulic pumps.
"Four thousand at four hundred."
"Three thousand at three seventy five."
Enterprise dropped like a rock, and Davis fought a growing sense of trepidation as he eased the nose back up, over the VASI. The lights were still white over amber, which was a good sign.
"Two thousand at three fifty. Begin pre-flare."
He took the cue and eased Enterprise's nose up further to arrest the sink rate. He watched the vector cross-hair come up in response, resting on the displaced threshold at the end of the runway.
"One thousand at three thirty. Gear armed; got a light."
"Five hundred feet at three hundred; gear's coming down."
Davis heard the hydraulic motors for the nose gear whine underneath him, and he concentrated on the next task ahead of him: Placing Enterprise on the runway in front of him without pancaking it. It was a brand-new spacecraft, after all.
"Four hundred feet at two ninety . . . three hundred at two seventy . . . gear's down!" He heard Tamara exclaim as the gear 'thunk'ed into place.
"Two hundred at two fifty . . . one hundred at two thirty five . . . fifty at two ten . . . thirty at two zero five . . . ten at two hundred . . . five at one ninety-five . . . touchdown!"
"Speedbrakes active!" He called out as he flipped the switch, as Enterprise sped noisily along the runway.
"Welcome to the Cape," He heard over the radio.
* * *
Constitution.
Five seconds.
The timer ticked down passionlessly . . . mercilessly . . . mechanically. Five seconds existed between then and now, and for all of the thirty two years Jamie Cunningham had been alive in the universe, she could now remember scarcely too few years. Barbie and her plastic pink Camaro in her bedroom. Her parents fighting down the hall. Their divorce. Her first kiss. High school, and all of its turbulence of her freshman year. The horrible crash and the gut-rending loss of her best friend.
Four seconds.
College. Algebra. Geometry. Physics. Calculus. Psychology. Engineering. The University. NASA. The Saturn V rocket on display at the Johnson Space Center. Training. More training. Riding the 'vomit comet.' Simulator time. Centrifuge training.
Seeing Constitution for the first time . . . up close . . . in person. Climbing the stairs to the white room behind Greg Williams; in front of Tessa Stapleton . . . heart pounding the whole time.
Releasing the VARIS satellite. Feeling the thud of the explosive bolts rippling through the hull of Constitution.
Jet training. Flying the T-38. More training. God, what a lot of training! Press conferences. Interviews. Speeches. Symposiums. Launch day. The engine abort. The liftoff. Orbital insertion. Trans-lunar injection. Landing on the moon. Walking on the moon. Re-launch, and Trans-Earth injection.
The debris.
Seeing the Earth again -- that bright, amazingly blue sphere of life, now almost menacingly large in her windows.
The next thing that had to happen -- it just had to happen -- was six hydrogen-oxygen breathing engines roaring to life behind her. Flawlessly. Perfectly. The reputation of Pratt and Whitney / Rocketdyne -- hell, their lives depended on what was about to happen . . .
Three seconds.
. . . from now. The engines had been in for a rough flight this time. Burn. Cold soak. Burn. Cold soak. Burn. Cold soak. Could she remember how many times the main engines had fired for this mission? Did it really matter?
Two seconds.
Of course it mattered. An engine firing was really nothing more than a controlled explosion -- only, the idea was to generate the explosion and direct it safely out the back of the vessel. She knew what had to happen, thanks to Kepler's Law and her own general knowledge of physics: In order to arrest her launch back into deep space, she had to burn the engines for an insanely long amount of time, according to her loose calculations aided by the concrete figures from the flight computer and FIDO's own calculations on the ground. The computer knew more precisely what had to happen, of course . . . only there wasn't enough fuel to see it properly happen.
Running out of fuel was the other concern. Constitution would be pushing almost two g of acceleration by the time the liquid hydrogen and its oxidant supply was to be expended. Jamie was in a constant state of free-fall for many days . . . and had spent too many of those days in an on-again, off-again morose state of inactivity. Sure, she took her exercise schedule seriously, and had found the weight of her EVA suit and the oxygen tanks on her back to be not overly demanding . . . but this was a time-critical . . . really critical maneuver she was about to execute. Could she reach the controls to manually shut the engines off in time?
One second.
She reflected on the last several hours. Her blossoming friendship with Sienna Morrison -- rocky at first, of course . . . but maturing, nonetheless. Svetlana Zaytseva, and her stodgy, wooden, almost solider-like attitude. She'd gotten through that woman's bristly shields more than once in the few short days they knew each other. Anthony Downs . . . whom for most of the mission had little more to say than "Raaallphhhhh!" . . . and then there was Brian Adkinson. The flight guru. The man who missed his calling: flying on the Space Shuttle. The consumate nerd. And the man who, in his infinite wisdom (and sudden, disturbing physical sickness casting a pall of unreliability on his command) put his care, and the care of everyone else, in her hands.
She still didn't know if she could do it . . .
. . . but as the last second ticked into rapidly dwindling tenths of a second, she knew it didn't matter.
She clenched down on her teeth as she felt the acceleration come.
The only sound she heard was a subtle ramping up of the ventilation fans. The hull shivered subtly. A stylus shushed along the control panel to her right as it liberated itself, and smacked the cockpit's aft wall. Her left multifunction display, set to monitor the main propulsion system, dutifully recorded the rapid increase in sensor temperature and pressure readings throughout the main propulsion system. The engine bay frame sensors recorded the tensile stresses on the supporting members holding the engines to the hull. And . . . damn it, it was strong . . . so did the g forces mounting on her skeleton as Constitution lanced forward in reverse.
The collision between slush hydrogen and oxygen occurred as advertized in the pre-burn chambers of each of the six engines, and the reaction was swiftly being carried out and away from the ship. The fuel acted as both a propellant and a coolant in the lines, and each of the myriad of displays and indicators settled into the green arcs of normal operation as the six thrusters burned violently into space.
She allowed herself the luxury of opening up her windpipe for more air.
* * *
Enterprise.
"Los Angeles to Orlando in forty-five minutes; that's gotta be a new record. Wahoo!" Pilot Tamara Ciotti crooned as she closed the fuel feed valves going to the SCRAM array. Enterprise was now coasting at one hundred thousand feet above the surface of southern Alabama, angled southeast to pass over the Gulf of Mexico in another minute. She could see the jeweled blue of the Gulf already on the horizon, starting to mingle freely with the green forests and grasslands of the Deep South below her.
Her multifunction displays agreed on the same thing: Enterprise had punched up to an average of Mach 3 on her suborbital hop from Edwards Air Force Base to the Kennedy Space Center; they'd even pressed to Mach 5 for about ten of those forty-five minutes before backing down over New Mexico, and she was thoroughly impressed with the largest vehicle she'd ever flown in her life so far. Charlie Davis and Greg Williams, sharing the cockpit with her, were also in complete agreement: The fuel usage getting up past ten thousand feet was minimal, and they'd used only barely half of her total capacity in SCRAM fuel getting to the Cape. An air of excitement was tangibly present in the cockpit, and she shared a smile with each of them before returning to her instruments.
She knew that NASA was watching this flight very closely: On the return of the Space Shuttle whenever it landed at Edwards, the proceedings were followed by a crane lift onto a Boeing 747 for a long, cross-country trip; she and Charlie Davis had just proven what the experts had been saying for a while now: the Shuttle-Derived Orbiter could conceivably make the trip by itself, and for a fraction of the cost of running a 747-Shuttle stack for days.
This assertion was now reality.
Enterprise settled gradually into a slow descent as it passed over the blue water below her, and Tamara closed the clamshell doors protecting the SCRAMjet array. She noted the sudden increase in the lift to drag ratio projected by the flight computer, and she called up the final displays Charlie would need.
As the mission commander, he would have the controls from HAC intercept to final approach, while Tamara would manage the TAEM phase and keep her hands on the main propulsion system's thrust levers if they needed to do a go-around. No landing in the Space Exploration Program had ever been aborted, even though they had the capability to; too many lessons learned during STS had been heeded and applied: Chiefly, how to land a large spaceplane at a landing spot the relative size of a postage stamp from a starting point in orbit.
"Enterprise, set HAC for runway 15."
"Roger, set HAC for Runway 15," Tamara replied.
"And also, just a F-Y-I. Authorities in southwestern Arizona and southeastern California have been in contact with us, regarding our itinerary today."
Tamara arched an eyebrow. "How is that, Houston?"
"Apparently several residents of the Mojave valley reported hearing explosions an hour ago. They obviously didn't get the message we'd be flying today."
Charlie Davis chuckled, and Greg Williams set a gloved hand on his flight helmet -- the next best thing to a facepalm. It was enough to break the tension.
"Alright, we have three hundred miles to the HAC intercept," Davis reported. "Everything is looking good. We're going to run into some aerobraking on the way down."
"I'm ready," Tamara snarled.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham made it.
Her hand was on the manual throttles, and as she watched her dwindling fuel supply, her eyes were also on her orbital projection map. The apoapsis values were falling rapidly: Constitution was accelerating at 1.95 g and mounting rapidly as the spaceplane expelled her weight in fuel out the back. Now it was just a matter of timing the cutoff of the engines to coincide with the pre-planned fuel weight she wanted to keep: About five percent of the total capacity.
That mark was seconds from now, and she struggled to shift herself properly in her seat so that she could do what she had to do.
"Five seconds," She heard Adkinson bark.
"Four. . . three . . . two . . . one . . ."
With a herculean effort, she clenched her fingers down on the throttle and gave it a jerk backwards.
The g forces immediately subsided, and she felt blood rush forward through her brain as the action ceased. Her heart pounded through her chest, assaulting her ears in a thrumming cadence, and she glanced at the numbers.
"Cutoff!" Adkinson said sharply, and she reminded herself to breathe.
"Constitution, Houston. We copy your engine cutoff. New orbit projected at two-five-zero miles by one thousand three hundred five-zero nautical miles. Inclination is five-one point six degrees. Congratulations up there, and we're all glad this maneuver worked out."
"Thank you, Houston," Jamie said -- in a voice a lot calmer than she felt. Her mind whirled through what just happened, and as she checked her instrumentation one more time -- and saw the temperature and pressure readings fall slowly -- she realized it was time to move onto the next step; just like Brian had told her to.
She cast a sidelong glance at him, and he grinned back at her.
"Alright. Step two," She said.
"Constitution, Houston."
"Go ahead, Houston," Jamie prompted.
"This sounds like a good time for some good news," CAPCOM said. "We're putting the audio loop from the Red Room to you, now, while you're working on your post-burn activities. You can listen in on Channel set 2."
"Thank you again, Houston," Jamie said as she gave Adkinson a curious glance. She dialed in the standby radio stack to the correct frequency, and tapped the audio in.
* * *
Enterprise.
"Enterprise, take air data."
"Roger, take air data," Charlie Davis replied as he flipped the switch to extend the air probes. The information dutifully displayed on his HUD, showing his altitude and air speed. Enterprise was less than thirty seconds from intercepting the upwind leg of the heading alignment cylinder; an imaginary circle drawn on a map to guide the vehicle down to landing, and he noted with satisfaction the easy skill Tamara Ciotti was showing as she guided Enterprise along.
The brief deceleration from a hundred thousand feet up, and Mach 3 down to subsonic velocity was exciting. A twenty-degree nose-down attitude was adopted, and it didn't take long for the nose of the vehicle to heat up considerably. They were well within the safety margins, of course, and as Davis took a second to look over his left shoulder at the green, city-studded mass of Central Florida below him, he knew they had carried out their ferrying flight perfectly so far.
"Alright, Charlie. We're intercepting the HAC; your controls," Tamara said.
"My controls," Davis agreed as he took the yoke. He saw the diamond-shaped 'pipper' in front of him begin to move to his left.
"Enterprise, on at the two-seventy."
He watched land give way to ocean in front of him, and his mind stayed glued to the task at hand: keeping the pipper aligned perfectly with the orientation mark on his hud.
"Enterprise, on at the one-eighty."
He watched the ocean retreat to land in front of him. He could pick out the City of Jacksonville in front of him. They were at thirty thousand feet, and Enterprise was moving slowly. He half-expected the vehicle to stall on him, but his HUD told him the airspeed was still a constant; still above margins.
"Enterprise, on at the ninety. Report runway in sight."
He snapped a look off his left shoulder. He could see the Vehicle Assembly Building; a tiny affair poking through the light haze. He could see the amber and white of the VASI lights at the end of the runway, and as he rolled Enterprise back level, he noted with satisfaction that his localization was spot-on.
"Houston, I have the runway in sight," He reported.
"Enterprise, winds calm at present."
"Roger that," He said.
"Ten thousand feet," Tamara reported as he angled the nose down further; slightly steep at the aiming point.
"Five thousand at four-thirty," Tamara said as Davis guided the ship in. The sound of the air striking the windows intermingled with the sound of hydraulic pumps.
"Four thousand at four hundred."
"Three thousand at three seventy five."
Enterprise dropped like a rock, and Davis fought a growing sense of trepidation as he eased the nose back up, over the VASI. The lights were still white over amber, which was a good sign.
"Two thousand at three fifty. Begin pre-flare."
He took the cue and eased Enterprise's nose up further to arrest the sink rate. He watched the vector cross-hair come up in response, resting on the displaced threshold at the end of the runway.
"One thousand at three thirty. Gear armed; got a light."
"Five hundred feet at three hundred; gear's coming down."
Davis heard the hydraulic motors for the nose gear whine underneath him, and he concentrated on the next task ahead of him: Placing Enterprise on the runway in front of him without pancaking it. It was a brand-new spacecraft, after all.
"Four hundred feet at two ninety . . . three hundred at two seventy . . . gear's down!" He heard Tamara exclaim as the gear 'thunk'ed into place.
"Two hundred at two fifty . . . one hundred at two thirty five . . . fifty at two ten . . . thirty at two zero five . . . ten at two hundred . . . five at one ninety-five . . . touchdown!"
"Speedbrakes active!" He called out as he flipped the switch, as Enterprise sped noisily along the runway.
"Welcome to the Cape," He heard over the radio.
* * *
