Perigee Read Free

deeply, not uttering a word as CapCom’s futile calls echoed throughout the room.

2
     
    Above Newfoundland
     
    “You may want to see this, Mr. Hammond,” the flight attendant said grimly as she handed over a touch-screen pad.
    Arthur Hammond pushed his breakfast away and gave the young woman a quizzical look as he took the offered tablet. It was linked to the Gulfstream jet’s wireless network and paused on a garish “Breaking News” headline.
    He started the video where his flight attendant had left it, past the ready-made melodramatic soundtrack and graphics (which she knew he detested) to get straight to the facts of Orion 1 .
    Rather, it at least got to those facts that were patently obvious.
    Art Hammond had been in aerospace long enough to know that most reporting about it was utter baloney, accidents especially so. Driven by each network’s burning need to scoop the others, the rapid-fire news cycle uniformly ignored the tedious investigative work that would follow for months afterward.
    But there was no mistaking the long-range video he saw from Canaveral. Though blurry, there was Orion , its exhaust plume tracing a slender arc across the sky.
    Whoa , he thought with a whistle. They finally made that pig fly? The reporter was babbling away in the background; Hammond reached for the mute button then thought better of it. This network at least had a halfway-competent space reporter, so he might as well listen. He turned up the volume as the video continued.
    “NASA Public Affairs has not released any further statements. But we have been able to piece together a rough sequence of events from the live feed from Mission Control. One engine experienced a precautionary shutdown,” the man’s voice said as they promptly cut away from the tracking video to a hastily-rendered animation of the pump system.
    Hammond cursed under his breath. “I know what the damned thing looks like!” he blurted before catching himself. Turning, he gave the flight attendant a sheepish look.
    Settle down, Art. They didn’t make this special for you, he reminded himself.
    To his relief, the news feed returned to a clearer video of Orion in close-up: “Shutdown occurred before the strap-on boosters cut off,” he explained. “At about two minutes,” he continued, “a shower of sparks appeared around the main engines, apparently some kind of debris. Then, we see...just watch.”
    At that second, the grainy video flashed white as the rocket exploded. A glowing mass tumbled ahead of the inferno. It had to be the crew capsule. Hammond audibly sucked in his breath at the cascade of glowing debris.
    “Holy God,” he whispered, closing his eyes and unconsciously bowing his head. “Rest their souls.”
    After a moment he opened his eyes to find his fists were clenched, almost to the point of being white-knuckled. His company had been involved in an earlier project called “commercial crew” before NASA had cannibalized all their funding to prop up Orion . He now felt the same sickening realization as the controllers in Houston: this was the end of the American space program. They’d spent too much money over too many years on a vehicle that could barely meet its expectations. And now it was resting with its crew at the bottom of the Atlantic.
    Congress certainly wouldn’t keep this boondoggle going, he thought. What a fix they’ve gotten us into, begging the Russians for rides on Soyuz .
    What was that old saying, he wondered—the Chinese symbol for “crisis” also means “opportunity”?
    That was it, then. He stood, smoothed down his tie and slacks, and headed forward to the cockpit. Nodding towards the cabin attendant, he rapped briskly on the door and stepped inside. It was his airplane, after all.
    “Tom?”
    A lean man with salt-and-pepper hair pulled himself out of the left seat and stood in the small space behind it.
    “Yes sir?”
    “You know what happened, right?”
    The pilot sighed. “Afraid so. There was lots