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As with all good things, this is clearly no exception. Here we go with:
SEP-010, Chapter 19.
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham swam her way to the cockpit. She, along with Greg Williams and Sienna Morrison, were the only souls left aboard. Memories flooded her mind as she aimlessly floated. She remembered vividly seeing Enterprise pull away . . . seeing the faces of the people in the other ship. Brian. Anthony. Svetlana. Her mind lingered on the last mental image: Svetlana had held up her hand to the glass as she floated away . . . and in a fit of sudden, matching grief, she had held up her own hand to the glass.
Then, there was the matter of Sienna staying on-board. She remembered the vehemence she displayed; Sienna had come to space aboard Constitution, and she felt it was right for her to come back on the same ship. Jamie felt ambivalent at first . . . and then realized it was more the friendship and support she needed the most, that Sienna was prepared to give.
That brought her up to the present. Constitution's orbit was normalized for a prime interception of the Kennedy Space Center, and her apoapsis had been dropped to a more civilized, less eccentric two hundred miles. She'd been busy throwing switches, stowing loose articles, preparing Sienna for her own spot at the back of the cockpit.
Now, they were ready to come home.
She knew Greg Williams was as good a pilot and systems engineer as they came, and as she swam for the pilot's seat . . .
They collided.
They each shot their arms out to steady themselves as Sienna snickered behind them. Jamie shot Greg a quizzical look. He was heading for the pilot's chair. So was she.
"You're the mission commander," He said.
"You've got the seniority, and you've shot a re-entry before," Jamie countered.
"Brian trusts you can do this. So do I," Williams said evenly.
That threw Jamie for a loop. She wasn't intrinsically afraid to go through with bringing Constitution home; in fact, it's what she wanted to do all along.
"It's just . . ." She stammered as she fought to find the words. "I've been acting Mission Commander for several days. I'm a little leery of actually being one."
"You know what to do," Williams said firmly. "You're trained as a mission commander when you go through your pilot's training. You know every system on this ship, and how it works; just like we all do. The responsibility is secondary. You take that left seat, and you enjoy it."
Jamie's lips pursed in indecision, and she knew she was wasting time. She just . . . didn't want to let go of the fear of failure, and what it might cost the two other people who had doggedly elected to remain with her. She had to make a decision. Finally, she extended a fist with her left hand, and an open palm with her right hand. He did the same.
Rap! Rap! Rap! They beat their fists into their palms. Then, Greg Williams opened his fist into a flat palm; Jamie's fist remained tightly coiled.
He covered her fist with his own hand and grinned triumphantly. The Rock-Paper-Scissors game had decided.
"Alright," She growled as she settled herself into the commander's seat. Then she froze, turning her head Williams' way.
"Exactly what did Payton say your mission details were?" She asked, and he chuckled mirthlessly.
"All Foulkes wanted was for me to get this ship on the ground," Williams said with a poisonous grin. "He didn't exactly say how I should do it. He kinda left that part up to me. Well, you, really."
"I see," Jamie said with a grin of her own. "Alright then. Let's have that pre-deorbit burn checklist? I'd like to know what the hell I'm doing."
"Me too!" Sienna chirped.
"Shut up, you!" Jamie barked as she chuckled playfully. She took the checklist, and skimmed it with her eyes. The entries were all old hat to her, owing to the countless hours in simulation. The radiators would have to trap their freon into a closed cycle. The doors would have to come in. The ship would have to point in the right direction to fire her engines for her deorbit burn.
Then . . . the rest was elementary.
"So, Mission Commander," Williams said conversationally as he went over his own checklist, "how exactly do you plan on bringing Connie home?"
"We're going to go back to this planet the same way we left her," Jamie replied grimly. "At Mach twenty-five plus, with our tails on fire."
* * *
NASA T-38, Patrick Air Force Base, Runway 2.
"Pluto-27, winds calm. Cleared for takeoff without delay, runway two."
"Cleared for takeoff without delay, runway two, Pluto-27," Pilot Jim Myers replied as he advanced the throttles, and the twin turbojets spooled to life.
Ten minutes later, his course taking him north, he was now enjoyed the view at the Kennedy Space Center. The traffic, which stretched for miles across every causeway overlooking the Banana River, was something he had no desire to be embroiled in.
"Pluto-27 is in position," He transmitted.
* * *
Constitution.
"Constitution, take air data."
"Roger, take air data," Jamie Cunningham replied as she flipped the switch to extend the air data probes. The information dutifully displayed on her HUD, showing her altitude and airspeed. Constitution was less than thirty seconds from intercepting the crosswind leg of the heading alignment cylinder, and she noted with a grim sense of satisfaction that her own pilotage was up to the task.
She felt no fear now; she had just lived through a firestorm that ate over sixteen thousand miles per hour of relative speed away, and she eased Constitution into a gentle right bank as the diamond-shaped pipper began to move to the right.
"Constitution, you are on course."
"Copy," Jamie said. She checked her HUD. They were at forty eight thousand feet, about to overfly the Kennedy Space Center from the west. She watched the Atlantic Ocean give way to land in front of her, and she snuck a look off her right shoulder at Missile Row as they passed overhead.
"Constitution, on at the one-eighty."
"Copy," Jamie repeated. Constitution began to shimmy through the air as she passed through sparse stratiform, and she felt the turbulence play with the wings of her space plane.
Her space plane. She flexed the fingers on her hand in control of the yoke; it reassured her that she had ultimate control of her fate just now. The weather was good; the sun was shining, the sky was a deep, sapphire blue above her, and she saw Titusville and the causeway bridges starting to come into of her right view.
Man, that's a lot of cars out there! She thought to herself as she saw the sunlight glint off of hundreds -- no, hundreds of thousands of cars, camera lenses, and other reflective objects, all trained on her.
"Constitution, on at the ninety. Report runway in sight. Caution, traffic one o'clock low, one thousand feet, seven miles; T-38. Report them in sight."
Jamie looked. She could clearly see the NASA Parkway and the runway in front of her, appearing like a rod of silver against the brilliant green of the trees and grasslands below her. And, like a dot of silver-white about a thousand feet to the left of the runway centerline, she saw the other aircraft.
"Houston, Constitution. Runway in sight; traffic in sight." Jamie announced.
"Roger, Constitution."
She eased Constitution down into her terminal dive, keeping the diamond pipper and her velocity indicator centered on the Banana River. She could already see the VASI lights shimmering on the ground; the row of four lights were illuminated half and half; red and white. This was good.
"Ten thousand feet, Jamie," Greg Williams announced.
"Constitution, winds three two four at six; cloud ceilings at seven thousand eight hundred."
"Copy," Jamie nodded. An almost pure headwind would help things along; at least she wouldn’t have to be fighting much of a crosswind on the way down, and she might be able to squeeze a little extra lift to drag out of the airframe for the flare-to-landing.
"Five thousand at four twenty," Williams announced. Jamie could hear the thicker air blasting louder against the windows now, amidst the sound of the hydraulic pumps working the control surfaces behind her.
"Four thousand at three ninety two."
"Three thousand at three sixty seven."
She felt the ground rushing up . . . along with that, a strange giddiness overcame her, and her incipient smile became a full-blown, toothy grin. A shadow of herself would have been overcome by fear at the prospect of heading for the ground at such a ridiculously high rate of speed, piloting such a ridiculously expensive machine, but she found it . . . exhilarating.
"Two thousand at three fifty-seven; begin pre-flare!" Williams barked as the diamond-shape pipper on her HUD became replaced by an aircraft icon climbing up a vertical pole. She eased back-pressure into the control yoke, and watched her velocity vector come up in response.
"Arm the gear," She prompted.
"One thousand at three thirty seven. Gear’s armed; got a light."
"Alright, that's a good one, let's roll the gear out," She said.
"Seven hundred at three thirty two; gear’s coming down."
Jamie grunted in reply as she heard the hydraulic motor for the nose gear whine quietly underneath her. She saw the three square-shaped gear icons flash on her HUD. The ground moved impossibly quickly underneath her as she took one last mental breath. They were now five hundred feet above the ground; she held Constitution fast in her flare attitude. Their landing gear was extending, and it was now only a matter of seconds before touchdown. Then, she could relax. Then, she --
The master warning alarm buzzed.
Jamie froze, and her eyelids snapped open. The first thing her brain registered was two green gear indicators on the HUD, and one red gear indicator as Greg Williams stabbed his master alarm button, silencing the alarm.
She swallowed as she stared as long as she dared to at her HUD. It couldn't be. It just couldn't . . .
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!" Jamie barked.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center.
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!"
Flight Director Matthew Payton's head jerked upright, and his eyes widened.
Damaged landing gear, he suddenly found himself with the wherewithal to think. Didn't think about that at 'go' time, did you?
* * *
NASA T-38.
Pilot Jim Myers edged his T-38 closer to Constitution. He'd just finished grinning at the greyish-white cloud of lunar dust that had blown from all three of the landing gear doors when they popped open as the orbiter roared by him. He knew the minutes at the post-landing debriefing would be rife with details; he could only imagine the rooster-storm spawned by Jamie Cunningham pretty much literally taking a piece of the moon with her and depositing it onto the wildlife preserve in front of the runway.
He wondered briefly if the Environmental Protection Agency was about to get themselves involved. That . . . having two government agencies at each others' throats, would --
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!"
He heard her voice blare in his ears, and he swore under his breath. His aircraft was now trailing Constitution by two hundred feet, at a seventy-five foot distance from the left wingtip, at an even altitude. He was already riding as close as he dared to Constitution's wake vortex. Now he gritted his teeth as he slammed the throttle levers to the stopper, and his T-38 lanced forward.
As he approached, he kept his eyes peeled on three things: The ground underneath him, the undercarriage of the space plane in front of him, and his own indicated airspeed. Too fast, and he'd rip the aircraft apart if he stumbled into a vortex created by that massive ship. Too slow, and he'd have too little energy to deal with the same kind of airplane-killing windshear that had already downed too many commercial flights.
He spied the left undercarriage underneath the wing as it slowly (much too slowly, in his opinion) extended fully. And it did extend fully. He couldn't tell at this range whether the gear was down and locked, but it looked like it was extended fully. His finger reached around the yoke for the radio transmit trigger--
-- when a sudden, strong air pocket dropped the basement out from under him and his aircraft.
He slammed the control stick into the snap-roll, snarled a quick epithet, and stabbed his foot into the rudder pedal to try to counteract the lift disparity. He had less than seconds to pull out of this, and Constitution was no longer his problem. He reached for the eject handle with one hand; the other still working the control yoke.
The throttle remained firewalled.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham had less than seconds to make a decision.
Her frantic call went unanswered, and she was less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway's displaced threshold, and her energy was bleeding fast. She could already see her vector indicator start to drop. It was time to be a Mission Commander.
"That's an abort," She snapped as she reached for the main propulsion system manual throttles. Her heart was already pounding within her chest; her veins flowed with unbridled adrenaline, and sweat developed stubbornly on her forehead as she realized she was out of time.
She was sure both her airborne escort and everyone at the Mission Control Center were now either in a state of complete apoplexy, or running around uselessly like so many headless chickens. One thing she did know, was that Constitution (much like herself and her charges) would not likely survive a wheel's-up landing unscathed.
She lanced the throttles to the firewall.
The master warning buzzer pealed, and her eyes snapped to the caution and warning display.
L ENG and R ENG were illuminated.
She had no other choice.
"Houston, we're going in!" She said coldly . . . a lot calmer than she dared feel as Constitution passed over the displaced threshold.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center.
"Houston, we're going in!"
Flight Director Matthew Payton stopped mid-sentence, and his eyes, already dilated fully, snapped to the television set in front of him.
Disaster was coming like a fast-moving train wreck right in front of him, and he realized with all the frantic thought he could muster that there was nothing he could do about it.
"Flight, Propulsion, we have a fire in the engine bay."
At least, as he heard the new news that stunned everyone around that particular controller, he knew there was nothing he could do about what was happening in the air.
"G.C., Flight. Make sure Kennedy has their trucks rolling on the double," He said softly.
"Already on it, Flight," The reply came grimly.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham only distantly heard Greg Williams' staccato proclamation.
He made his own decision, throwing the six switches that sent signals to the pyrotechnic charges that detonated check valves inside the engine bay, showering all six of her main propulsion engines in a rapidly expanding, oxygen-choking foam of fire retardant slurry. At the same time, the line pressures in all of the fuel and oxidizer flows to the same engines were immediately cut off and vented out the sides of the ship, away from the areas of highest heat retention.
This was the same fire-retardant slurry that, like sugar in a car's gas tank, would thoroughly wreck those expensive engines and put them out of service for a very long time.
It was better than dying instantly in a massive, exploding conflaguration, and simultaneously being responsible for the first crater put into the Shuttle Landing Facility's massive runway ever.
Her attention was on other matters, besides making craters in runways.
She held the nose high as Constitution passed over the runway threshold. Her numbers told her the story: The bottom of the landing gear tires were inches above the runway surface, and her vertical rates were thready, but holding at horizon-level. Her indicated airspeed was two hundred seventy five knots and dropping rapidly.
This is it, she thought to herself as Constitution began to vibrate around her.
Convective vortices began to develop as the ship's massive wing's angle of attack began to outpace their forward velocities, and air began to roil turbulently over the wingtips. The principle of lift was quickly becoming a foregone conclusion, and --
A new buzzer pealed into the cockpit, and the word "STALL" flashed on her HUD, just as a new sensation -- a slight jolt from below -- knocked itself into reality.
Whoop-whoop. Pull up.
The mechanical voice snarled at her, but she didn't hear it.
"Touchdown!" Greg Williams shouted, just as the master warning buzzer pealed again.
She saw him reach for the manual spoiler deploy arm and throw it forward as she eased up on the control yoke, reaching at the same time for her own master warning light to shut the buzzer up.
There was no more time to consider caution and warning lights. Constitution settled down on the runway, and she felt her rudder pedals sink to the floor.
"No!" She barked. "No wheel brakes, Greg! Get that APU offline, now!"
The rudder pedals immediately snapped back upright, and she snapped a look at him. He nodded back to her in understanding.
If the landing gear array was compromised, and it appeared that it was holding well enough at the moment, she didn't want to stress the port-side gear any more than it already was.
That, and there was the fire in the engine bay that hadn't killed them yet. The six auxiliary power units were located in the engine bay, and while they were functioning properly, they still generated heat and used fuels to run.
Better to take care of anything in there that could go boom, even if that meant losing all hydraulics (and, in an ancillary fashion, control of the ship) in the process.
Besides, Constitution was zipping along the first third of the runway's length, she was tracking evenly down the runway's centerline without a yaw drift, and her airspeed was dropping at a respectable rate.
As she heard the tearing-linen sound of a T-38's twin turbojets blasting away above her, she nodded to herself as she saw the aircraft rolling to circle around her, and her eyes tracked back to dead ahead. There'd be no chance of Constitution going off the end of the runway.
"Sixty knots," Williams said, and Jamie paused to consider her frantic heart rate, and how quiet the cockpit had just become. Sure, she could hear the sound of the air circulation fans and her own breathing . . . for that matter, the lack of sound and what she could hear sounded just as much like a sigh of relief from the ship itself, as the sigh of relief wanting desperately to come from her own mouth.
She watched her speed indicators fall as she heard sirens in the distance; the distant growl of diesel motors revving up, and vehicles approaching. The first vehicle was a large fire truck with a massive boom on the top, followed by an ambulance, and then the ground support crew and their small convoy of vehicles.
"You gonna call it?" Williams said.
Jamie cocked her head at him questioningly.
"Wheel stop, Jamie. You gonna call it?"
"Uhh, yeah. Houston, Constitution. We have wheel stop."
She finally looked at the caution and warning indicator.
"Way to go, Jamie!"
"That was magnificent! Great job, and a spectacular landing to end the--"
She heard several voices patter on the radio, and she let them talk their relief out as she felt the strange sensation of gravity register in her brain. As she studied the caution and warning lights, she felt like she'd been lying in a full bathtub that was just drained of its water. She felt leaden . . . listless . . . and she discovered she had no more than an ounce of urgency as she read each of the illuminated lights.
"Okay, Houston, we've got some caution and warning lights to read off to you," She transmitted.
"Go ahead, Jamie." CAPCOM sounded relieved, she observed. Maybe it was her cool tone of voice; maybe it was the telemetry Mission Control was receiving that told the story. She cleared her throat.
"Okay. We've got left engine fail, right engine fail, left main landing gear is failed and barber-poled . . . we killed the APU's at touchdown so we've got no hydraulic power at the moment. We've got a left wing fault indicator again. Engine bay temperature is three hundred degrees and falling; we had Greg expend the fire bottles before we touched down."
"Copy all, Jamie. Hold off on opening the cabin relief valves. Keep your suits and helmets on, and keep your suit O2 flow on. Stay in your seats. Ground control says there are toxic fumes in the air around the ship at the moment, and they are busy foaming the undercarriage and assessing the possibility of any explosion hazards before you can disembark."
"Copy that, Houston," Jamie said softly.
She rested her head against the back of her helmet, taking in the feel of the spacecraft at the moment. She could hear the sounds of the work crews around the ship, scuttling around the runway, spraying the back of the vessel with water and firefighting chemicals, hooking up evacuation and temperature management lines.
As all of this carried about around her, she laid in her seat, staring up at the sky. The bright, blue sky above her, with brilliant white clouds in a slow precession above her. The moon. The tiny grey-white orb above her, in a near-full phase.
She felt a hand pat her right arm, and she looked over at Greg Williams.
"Good job," He said feelingly. "That was . . ."
She smiled at him disarmingly. "Those who say it's impossible, shouldn't interrupt the people doing it."
He cocked his head, giving her a half-smile. "Where did you hear that?"
"It's on one of my fridge magnets back in Houston," She said.
"How many--"
"I have . . . about thirty of them," Jamie replied.
"Any favorites?" Williams asked.
"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and realize you haven't fallen asleep yet," She recited, and he chuckled.
"Constitution, Houston . . . just an FYI, we are reading you loud and clear."
Jamie paused . . . and checked her comms panel, just as Greg Williams checked his. He flipped the rotator switch, just as she did, cycling out her audio loop from VOX to PTT.
"Oops," She said with a grin.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center.
Flight Director Matthew Payton sat, emotionally exhausted, cradling his head in his hands as his flight controllers went busily about their work.
Constitution was home . . . safely on the ground again, after one hell of a mission. He felt drained . . . but happy with the outcome of the last few perilous seconds of flight. True, the ship was damaged, possibly beyond easy repair, but like any true sailor's ship, she had brought her charges home, and that's what mattered the most to him.
He felt a hand on his left shoulder and looked up, at Director of Flight Operations, Edward Foulkes. He nodded, and Foulkes smiled at him.
He froze. Edward Foulkes actually smiled at him.
He smiled back, taking in the unspoken support from his boss as he stood up, and his mouth twitched as a wave of euphoria washed over him. He was proud. Proud of his astronauts. Proud of the ship. And especially proud of his flight controllers, and what they did in the last month to help bring this mission about, and save it when things seemed too dire to continue.
He was working with the best people he knew, and he wanted desperately to let them see his approval. His support.
"Alright, listen up, flight controllers," He said. "Cigars will be passed out at the end of our shift. Well done, people."
His controllers paused to turn around, taking a look at him, and he nodded to each of them.
"I'm proud of y'all. Let's have a round of applause," He said.
* * *
SEP-010, Chapter 19.
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham swam her way to the cockpit. She, along with Greg Williams and Sienna Morrison, were the only souls left aboard. Memories flooded her mind as she aimlessly floated. She remembered vividly seeing Enterprise pull away . . . seeing the faces of the people in the other ship. Brian. Anthony. Svetlana. Her mind lingered on the last mental image: Svetlana had held up her hand to the glass as she floated away . . . and in a fit of sudden, matching grief, she had held up her own hand to the glass.
Then, there was the matter of Sienna staying on-board. She remembered the vehemence she displayed; Sienna had come to space aboard Constitution, and she felt it was right for her to come back on the same ship. Jamie felt ambivalent at first . . . and then realized it was more the friendship and support she needed the most, that Sienna was prepared to give.
That brought her up to the present. Constitution's orbit was normalized for a prime interception of the Kennedy Space Center, and her apoapsis had been dropped to a more civilized, less eccentric two hundred miles. She'd been busy throwing switches, stowing loose articles, preparing Sienna for her own spot at the back of the cockpit.
Now, they were ready to come home.
She knew Greg Williams was as good a pilot and systems engineer as they came, and as she swam for the pilot's seat . . .
They collided.
They each shot their arms out to steady themselves as Sienna snickered behind them. Jamie shot Greg a quizzical look. He was heading for the pilot's chair. So was she.
"You're the mission commander," He said.
"You've got the seniority, and you've shot a re-entry before," Jamie countered.
"Brian trusts you can do this. So do I," Williams said evenly.
That threw Jamie for a loop. She wasn't intrinsically afraid to go through with bringing Constitution home; in fact, it's what she wanted to do all along.
"It's just . . ." She stammered as she fought to find the words. "I've been acting Mission Commander for several days. I'm a little leery of actually being one."
"You know what to do," Williams said firmly. "You're trained as a mission commander when you go through your pilot's training. You know every system on this ship, and how it works; just like we all do. The responsibility is secondary. You take that left seat, and you enjoy it."
Jamie's lips pursed in indecision, and she knew she was wasting time. She just . . . didn't want to let go of the fear of failure, and what it might cost the two other people who had doggedly elected to remain with her. She had to make a decision. Finally, she extended a fist with her left hand, and an open palm with her right hand. He did the same.
Rap! Rap! Rap! They beat their fists into their palms. Then, Greg Williams opened his fist into a flat palm; Jamie's fist remained tightly coiled.
He covered her fist with his own hand and grinned triumphantly. The Rock-Paper-Scissors game had decided.
"Alright," She growled as she settled herself into the commander's seat. Then she froze, turning her head Williams' way.
"Exactly what did Payton say your mission details were?" She asked, and he chuckled mirthlessly.
"All Foulkes wanted was for me to get this ship on the ground," Williams said with a poisonous grin. "He didn't exactly say how I should do it. He kinda left that part up to me. Well, you, really."
"I see," Jamie said with a grin of her own. "Alright then. Let's have that pre-deorbit burn checklist? I'd like to know what the hell I'm doing."
"Me too!" Sienna chirped.
"Shut up, you!" Jamie barked as she chuckled playfully. She took the checklist, and skimmed it with her eyes. The entries were all old hat to her, owing to the countless hours in simulation. The radiators would have to trap their freon into a closed cycle. The doors would have to come in. The ship would have to point in the right direction to fire her engines for her deorbit burn.
Then . . . the rest was elementary.
"So, Mission Commander," Williams said conversationally as he went over his own checklist, "how exactly do you plan on bringing Connie home?"
"We're going to go back to this planet the same way we left her," Jamie replied grimly. "At Mach twenty-five plus, with our tails on fire."
* * *
NASA T-38, Patrick Air Force Base, Runway 2.
"Pluto-27, winds calm. Cleared for takeoff without delay, runway two."
"Cleared for takeoff without delay, runway two, Pluto-27," Pilot Jim Myers replied as he advanced the throttles, and the twin turbojets spooled to life.
Ten minutes later, his course taking him north, he was now enjoyed the view at the Kennedy Space Center. The traffic, which stretched for miles across every causeway overlooking the Banana River, was something he had no desire to be embroiled in.
"Pluto-27 is in position," He transmitted.
* * *
Constitution.
"Constitution, take air data."
"Roger, take air data," Jamie Cunningham replied as she flipped the switch to extend the air data probes. The information dutifully displayed on her HUD, showing her altitude and airspeed. Constitution was less than thirty seconds from intercepting the crosswind leg of the heading alignment cylinder, and she noted with a grim sense of satisfaction that her own pilotage was up to the task.
She felt no fear now; she had just lived through a firestorm that ate over sixteen thousand miles per hour of relative speed away, and she eased Constitution into a gentle right bank as the diamond-shaped pipper began to move to the right.
"Constitution, you are on course."
"Copy," Jamie said. She checked her HUD. They were at forty eight thousand feet, about to overfly the Kennedy Space Center from the west. She watched the Atlantic Ocean give way to land in front of her, and she snuck a look off her right shoulder at Missile Row as they passed overhead.
"Constitution, on at the one-eighty."
"Copy," Jamie repeated. Constitution began to shimmy through the air as she passed through sparse stratiform, and she felt the turbulence play with the wings of her space plane.
Her space plane. She flexed the fingers on her hand in control of the yoke; it reassured her that she had ultimate control of her fate just now. The weather was good; the sun was shining, the sky was a deep, sapphire blue above her, and she saw Titusville and the causeway bridges starting to come into of her right view.
Man, that's a lot of cars out there! She thought to herself as she saw the sunlight glint off of hundreds -- no, hundreds of thousands of cars, camera lenses, and other reflective objects, all trained on her.
"Constitution, on at the ninety. Report runway in sight. Caution, traffic one o'clock low, one thousand feet, seven miles; T-38. Report them in sight."
Jamie looked. She could clearly see the NASA Parkway and the runway in front of her, appearing like a rod of silver against the brilliant green of the trees and grasslands below her. And, like a dot of silver-white about a thousand feet to the left of the runway centerline, she saw the other aircraft.
"Houston, Constitution. Runway in sight; traffic in sight." Jamie announced.
"Roger, Constitution."
She eased Constitution down into her terminal dive, keeping the diamond pipper and her velocity indicator centered on the Banana River. She could already see the VASI lights shimmering on the ground; the row of four lights were illuminated half and half; red and white. This was good.
"Ten thousand feet, Jamie," Greg Williams announced.
"Constitution, winds three two four at six; cloud ceilings at seven thousand eight hundred."
"Copy," Jamie nodded. An almost pure headwind would help things along; at least she wouldn’t have to be fighting much of a crosswind on the way down, and she might be able to squeeze a little extra lift to drag out of the airframe for the flare-to-landing.
"Five thousand at four twenty," Williams announced. Jamie could hear the thicker air blasting louder against the windows now, amidst the sound of the hydraulic pumps working the control surfaces behind her.
"Four thousand at three ninety two."
"Three thousand at three sixty seven."
She felt the ground rushing up . . . along with that, a strange giddiness overcame her, and her incipient smile became a full-blown, toothy grin. A shadow of herself would have been overcome by fear at the prospect of heading for the ground at such a ridiculously high rate of speed, piloting such a ridiculously expensive machine, but she found it . . . exhilarating.
"Two thousand at three fifty-seven; begin pre-flare!" Williams barked as the diamond-shape pipper on her HUD became replaced by an aircraft icon climbing up a vertical pole. She eased back-pressure into the control yoke, and watched her velocity vector come up in response.
"Arm the gear," She prompted.
"One thousand at three thirty seven. Gear’s armed; got a light."
"Alright, that's a good one, let's roll the gear out," She said.
"Seven hundred at three thirty two; gear’s coming down."
Jamie grunted in reply as she heard the hydraulic motor for the nose gear whine quietly underneath her. She saw the three square-shaped gear icons flash on her HUD. The ground moved impossibly quickly underneath her as she took one last mental breath. They were now five hundred feet above the ground; she held Constitution fast in her flare attitude. Their landing gear was extending, and it was now only a matter of seconds before touchdown. Then, she could relax. Then, she --
The master warning alarm buzzed.
Jamie froze, and her eyelids snapped open. The first thing her brain registered was two green gear indicators on the HUD, and one red gear indicator as Greg Williams stabbed his master alarm button, silencing the alarm.
She swallowed as she stared as long as she dared to at her HUD. It couldn't be. It just couldn't . . .
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!" Jamie barked.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center.
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!"
Flight Director Matthew Payton's head jerked upright, and his eyes widened.
Damaged landing gear, he suddenly found himself with the wherewithal to think. Didn't think about that at 'go' time, did you?
* * *
NASA T-38.
Pilot Jim Myers edged his T-38 closer to Constitution. He'd just finished grinning at the greyish-white cloud of lunar dust that had blown from all three of the landing gear doors when they popped open as the orbiter roared by him. He knew the minutes at the post-landing debriefing would be rife with details; he could only imagine the rooster-storm spawned by Jamie Cunningham pretty much literally taking a piece of the moon with her and depositing it onto the wildlife preserve in front of the runway.
He wondered briefly if the Environmental Protection Agency was about to get themselves involved. That . . . having two government agencies at each others' throats, would --
"Houston, two green; one red, port side!"
He heard her voice blare in his ears, and he swore under his breath. His aircraft was now trailing Constitution by two hundred feet, at a seventy-five foot distance from the left wingtip, at an even altitude. He was already riding as close as he dared to Constitution's wake vortex. Now he gritted his teeth as he slammed the throttle levers to the stopper, and his T-38 lanced forward.
As he approached, he kept his eyes peeled on three things: The ground underneath him, the undercarriage of the space plane in front of him, and his own indicated airspeed. Too fast, and he'd rip the aircraft apart if he stumbled into a vortex created by that massive ship. Too slow, and he'd have too little energy to deal with the same kind of airplane-killing windshear that had already downed too many commercial flights.
He spied the left undercarriage underneath the wing as it slowly (much too slowly, in his opinion) extended fully. And it did extend fully. He couldn't tell at this range whether the gear was down and locked, but it looked like it was extended fully. His finger reached around the yoke for the radio transmit trigger--
-- when a sudden, strong air pocket dropped the basement out from under him and his aircraft.
He slammed the control stick into the snap-roll, snarled a quick epithet, and stabbed his foot into the rudder pedal to try to counteract the lift disparity. He had less than seconds to pull out of this, and Constitution was no longer his problem. He reached for the eject handle with one hand; the other still working the control yoke.
The throttle remained firewalled.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham had less than seconds to make a decision.
Her frantic call went unanswered, and she was less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway's displaced threshold, and her energy was bleeding fast. She could already see her vector indicator start to drop. It was time to be a Mission Commander.
"That's an abort," She snapped as she reached for the main propulsion system manual throttles. Her heart was already pounding within her chest; her veins flowed with unbridled adrenaline, and sweat developed stubbornly on her forehead as she realized she was out of time.
She was sure both her airborne escort and everyone at the Mission Control Center were now either in a state of complete apoplexy, or running around uselessly like so many headless chickens. One thing she did know, was that Constitution (much like herself and her charges) would not likely survive a wheel's-up landing unscathed.
She lanced the throttles to the firewall.
The master warning buzzer pealed, and her eyes snapped to the caution and warning display.
L ENG and R ENG were illuminated.
She had no other choice.
"Houston, we're going in!" She said coldly . . . a lot calmer than she dared feel as Constitution passed over the displaced threshold.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center.
"Houston, we're going in!"
Flight Director Matthew Payton stopped mid-sentence, and his eyes, already dilated fully, snapped to the television set in front of him.
Disaster was coming like a fast-moving train wreck right in front of him, and he realized with all the frantic thought he could muster that there was nothing he could do about it.
"Flight, Propulsion, we have a fire in the engine bay."
At least, as he heard the new news that stunned everyone around that particular controller, he knew there was nothing he could do about what was happening in the air.
"G.C., Flight. Make sure Kennedy has their trucks rolling on the double," He said softly.
"Already on it, Flight," The reply came grimly.
* * *
Constitution.
Jamie Cunningham only distantly heard Greg Williams' staccato proclamation.
He made his own decision, throwing the six switches that sent signals to the pyrotechnic charges that detonated check valves inside the engine bay, showering all six of her main propulsion engines in a rapidly expanding, oxygen-choking foam of fire retardant slurry. At the same time, the line pressures in all of the fuel and oxidizer flows to the same engines were immediately cut off and vented out the sides of the ship, away from the areas of highest heat retention.
This was the same fire-retardant slurry that, like sugar in a car's gas tank, would thoroughly wreck those expensive engines and put them out of service for a very long time.
It was better than dying instantly in a massive, exploding conflaguration, and simultaneously being responsible for the first crater put into the Shuttle Landing Facility's massive runway ever.
Her attention was on other matters, besides making craters in runways.
She held the nose high as Constitution passed over the runway threshold. Her numbers told her the story: The bottom of the landing gear tires were inches above the runway surface, and her vertical rates were thready, but holding at horizon-level. Her indicated airspeed was two hundred seventy five knots and dropping rapidly.
This is it, she thought to herself as Constitution began to vibrate around her.
Convective vortices began to develop as the ship's massive wing's angle of attack began to outpace their forward velocities, and air began to roil turbulently over the wingtips. The principle of lift was quickly becoming a foregone conclusion, and --
A new buzzer pealed into the cockpit, and the word "STALL" flashed on her HUD, just as a new sensation -- a slight jolt from below -- knocked itself into reality.
Whoop-whoop. Pull up.
The mechanical voice snarled at her, but she didn't hear it.
"Touchdown!" Greg Williams shouted, just as the master warning buzzer pealed again.
She saw him reach for the manual spoiler deploy arm and throw it forward as she eased up on the control yoke, reaching at the same time for her own master warning light to shut the buzzer up.
There was no more time to consider caution and warning lights. Constitution settled down on the runway, and she felt her rudder pedals sink to the floor.
"No!" She barked. "No wheel brakes, Greg! Get that APU offline, now!"
The rudder pedals immediately snapped back upright, and she snapped a look at him. He nodded back to her in understanding.
If the landing gear array was compromised, and it appeared that it was holding well enough at the moment, she didn't want to stress the port-side gear any more than it already was.
That, and there was the fire in the engine bay that hadn't killed them yet. The six auxiliary power units were located in the engine bay, and while they were functioning properly, they still generated heat and used fuels to run.
Better to take care of anything in there that could go boom, even if that meant losing all hydraulics (and, in an ancillary fashion, control of the ship) in the process.
Besides, Constitution was zipping along the first third of the runway's length, she was tracking evenly down the runway's centerline without a yaw drift, and her airspeed was dropping at a respectable rate.
As she heard the tearing-linen sound of a T-38's twin turbojets blasting away above her, she nodded to herself as she saw the aircraft rolling to circle around her, and her eyes tracked back to dead ahead. There'd be no chance of Constitution going off the end of the runway.
"Sixty knots," Williams said, and Jamie paused to consider her frantic heart rate, and how quiet the cockpit had just become. Sure, she could hear the sound of the air circulation fans and her own breathing . . . for that matter, the lack of sound and what she could hear sounded just as much like a sigh of relief from the ship itself, as the sigh of relief wanting desperately to come from her own mouth.
She watched her speed indicators fall as she heard sirens in the distance; the distant growl of diesel motors revving up, and vehicles approaching. The first vehicle was a large fire truck with a massive boom on the top, followed by an ambulance, and then the ground support crew and their small convoy of vehicles.
"You gonna call it?" Williams said.
Jamie cocked her head at him questioningly.
"Wheel stop, Jamie. You gonna call it?"
"Uhh, yeah. Houston, Constitution. We have wheel stop."
She finally looked at the caution and warning indicator.
"Way to go, Jamie!"
"That was magnificent! Great job, and a spectacular landing to end the--"
She heard several voices patter on the radio, and she let them talk their relief out as she felt the strange sensation of gravity register in her brain. As she studied the caution and warning lights, she felt like she'd been lying in a full bathtub that was just drained of its water. She felt leaden . . . listless . . . and she discovered she had no more than an ounce of urgency as she read each of the illuminated lights.
"Okay, Houston, we've got some caution and warning lights to read off to you," She transmitted.
"Go ahead, Jamie." CAPCOM sounded relieved, she observed. Maybe it was her cool tone of voice; maybe it was the telemetry Mission Control was receiving that told the story. She cleared her throat.
"Okay. We've got left engine fail, right engine fail, left main landing gear is failed and barber-poled . . . we killed the APU's at touchdown so we've got no hydraulic power at the moment. We've got a left wing fault indicator again. Engine bay temperature is three hundred degrees and falling; we had Greg expend the fire bottles before we touched down."
"Copy all, Jamie. Hold off on opening the cabin relief valves. Keep your suits and helmets on, and keep your suit O2 flow on. Stay in your seats. Ground control says there are toxic fumes in the air around the ship at the moment, and they are busy foaming the undercarriage and assessing the possibility of any explosion hazards before you can disembark."
"Copy that, Houston," Jamie said softly.
She rested her head against the back of her helmet, taking in the feel of the spacecraft at the moment. She could hear the sounds of the work crews around the ship, scuttling around the runway, spraying the back of the vessel with water and firefighting chemicals, hooking up evacuation and temperature management lines.
As all of this carried about around her, she laid in her seat, staring up at the sky. The bright, blue sky above her, with brilliant white clouds in a slow precession above her. The moon. The tiny grey-white orb above her, in a near-full phase.
She felt a hand pat her right arm, and she looked over at Greg Williams.
"Good job," He said feelingly. "That was . . ."
She smiled at him disarmingly. "Those who say it's impossible, shouldn't interrupt the people doing it."
He cocked his head, giving her a half-smile. "Where did you hear that?"
"It's on one of my fridge magnets back in Houston," She said.
"How many--"
"I have . . . about thirty of them," Jamie replied.
"Any favorites?" Williams asked.
"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and realize you haven't fallen asleep yet," She recited, and he chuckled.
"Constitution, Houston . . . just an FYI, we are reading you loud and clear."
Jamie paused . . . and checked her comms panel, just as Greg Williams checked his. He flipped the rotator switch, just as she did, cycling out her audio loop from VOX to PTT.
"Oops," She said with a grin.
* * *
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center.
Flight Director Matthew Payton sat, emotionally exhausted, cradling his head in his hands as his flight controllers went busily about their work.
Constitution was home . . . safely on the ground again, after one hell of a mission. He felt drained . . . but happy with the outcome of the last few perilous seconds of flight. True, the ship was damaged, possibly beyond easy repair, but like any true sailor's ship, she had brought her charges home, and that's what mattered the most to him.
He felt a hand on his left shoulder and looked up, at Director of Flight Operations, Edward Foulkes. He nodded, and Foulkes smiled at him.
He froze. Edward Foulkes actually smiled at him.
He smiled back, taking in the unspoken support from his boss as he stood up, and his mouth twitched as a wave of euphoria washed over him. He was proud. Proud of his astronauts. Proud of the ship. And especially proud of his flight controllers, and what they did in the last month to help bring this mission about, and save it when things seemed too dire to continue.
He was working with the best people he knew, and he wanted desperately to let them see his approval. His support.
"Alright, listen up, flight controllers," He said. "Cigars will be passed out at the end of our shift. Well done, people."
His controllers paused to turn around, taking a look at him, and he nodded to each of them.
"I'm proud of y'all. Let's have a round of applause," He said.
* * *
