Perigee Read Free Page A

of chatter on the air-to-air channel, so Gander center sent a blast message out to all operators with the story. Shut down the gossip, at least.” Regardless of any connections to the space program, the pilot community was a close-knit one. If something happened to one of their comrades, they all wanted to know about it. And absent hard facts, they would gossip like schoolgirls.
    Hammond gave him the tablet. “Have a look”.
    Tom Gentry’s jaw tensed as he watched the news. Finished, he handed the video over for his copilot to see. “Guess that’s it then,” he said.
    “I sure as hell think so…no way they come back from this,” Hammond sighed. “You know anybody on that mission?” Gentry had once been a NASA research pilot and had many friends who’d moved on to Houston.
    “Wyatt, the mission commander. He and his wife were friends from Dryden.”
    Hammond frowned. “I understand. I’m sorry, Tom.”
    Both men stood in silence, each sorting out his feelings. After a few minutes, Hammond absentmindedly brushed a hand across his scalp and thumbed his suspenders. He fished the Gulfstream-650 pilot’s handbook from a nearby cubbyhole and began idly flipping through it.
    “You’re thinking about something else,” the pilot observed with a sideways glance as he checked his watch. “Still going to London, right?” he asked, mentally calculating the fuel they’d need if his boss turned them back home to Denver.
    Hammond looked up with fiery eyes, his demeanor infused with new purpose. “Damn straight we are. And I need you to get the Farnborough propulsion lab on the Satcom channel. Give Malcolm our ETA and then let me talk to him. We’ve got work to do.”
    “Work?” asked Gentry, wondering which components Hammond Aerospace may have contributed to Orion . None, so far as he knew. And the struggling airline his boss had just rescued from bankruptcy certainly had no connection.
    “You heard me, Tom. Work. Lots of it. It’s time we blew the dust off a few ideas.”
    Hammond took a long look around his airplane. The G-650 was headed across the North Atlantic at Mach .92; over ninety percent of the speed of sound. As the supersonic Concorde had ended service years ago, this was now the fastest passenger jet in the world. It’s time for that to change, he thought.
    Slapping the Gulfstream manual into his pilot’s hands, Hammond fixed him with a determined stare. “How’d you like to fly something really fast?”

3
     
    Above the South Pacific
Six Years Later
     
    “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain. We’ve turned on the Fasten Seatbelts sign which means we need you to prepare for initial descent. It’ll be a little bumpy on the way down, so please take your seats as soon as possible and buckle up tight.”
    Tom Gentry placed the cabin interphone into its cradle and cinched down his shoulder straps. With a gentle tap on the controls, he rolled the plane back right-side up. They had been flying inverted—upside-down—for the past twenty minutes, much to their passengers’ delight.
    “All set, skipper,” his copilot reported. “Boost pumps and igniters on standby.”
    “Thanks Ryan,” he said and lightly placed a hand on the throttle levers. “Cabin secure?”
    As if anticipating his question, a chime sounded overhead: the flight attendant’s signal that everyone was safely strapped in. “Right on time,” Ryan Hunter confirmed as he checked the display. “Marcy’s nothing if not efficient.”
    “Yeah, but you’re biased.”
    “Won’t argue that. I’m a pushover.”
    A quick glance through the heads-up projection in Tom’s forward windshield confirmed their pitch angle. Their nose was rock-steady relative to the horizon ahead; a brilliant blue arc slashing across black sky. The altitude counter along one side of his display had just changed units from nautical miles to feet, now steadily ticking down from 400,000. A similar counter on the opposite side displayed their speed,