Voyage (43 page)

Something had fouled up. But at first the cause wasn’t clear; all Donnelly got was a rash of symptoms, monitored by his controllers.

‘We got more than a problem.’ That was EECOM, in charge of electrical and environmental systems: life support in Apollo-N. He was shouting. ‘I got CSM EPS high density. Listen up, you guys. Fuel Cell 1 and 2 pressure has gone away.’ Controller jargon, for
fallen to zero
. ‘And I’m losing oxygen tank 1 pressure, and temperature.’

Natalie York was talking to the crew. ‘This is Houston. Repeat that, please.’

‘… We’ve got a problem,’ Jones said over the air-to-ground. ‘The NERVA is out, and we’re seeing a Main Bus A undervolt.’

‘Roger. Main Bus A. Stand by, Apollo-N; we’re looking at it.’

Now Guidance said, ‘We’ve had a hardware restart. We don’t know what it was.’

A hardware restart meant some unusual event had caused the
computer to shut itself down and reboot. Donnelly called for confirmation from another controller.

The crew kept reporting their Bus A undervolt.

The electrical power for Apollo-N came from three fuel cells in the Service Module. The current from the cells flowed through the A and B Buses, conduits which fed the rest of the spacecraft’s components. An undervolt alarm meant the spacecraft was losing its electrical power.

Donnelly tried to get confirmation of the problem from EECOM. ‘You see a Bus undervolt, EECOM?’

‘… Negative, Flight.’

But EECOM had hesitated.

He knows more than he’s telling me. He’s still trying to figure it through
. What the hell was happening here? The mission seemed to be falling apart before his eyes.

Donnelly pressed EECOM again; he needed more data. ‘The crew are still reporting the undervolt, EECOM.’

‘Okay, Flight. I got some instrumentation problems. Let me add them up.’

Instrumentation problems.
EECOM sees the undervolt, all right. But he doesn’t believe what the instruments are telling him. He’s looking at a lot of ratty data; he thinks some kind of major telemetry failure is underway. He wants to be sure before he reports it to me
.

Donnelly said, ‘I assume you’ve called in your backup EECOM to see if we can get more intelligence applied here.’

‘We have him here.’

‘Roger.’

Now INCO, the instrumentation and communications controller, called in. ‘Flight, INCO. The high-gain antenna has switched to high beam.’

What in hell did that mean?
‘INCO, can you confirm the time when that change occurred?’ If he could, it might be a clue in pinning down what was happening …

Before INCO could reply there was another call. ‘Flight, Guidance. We have attitude changes.’

‘What do you mean, attitude changes?’

‘The RCS valves appear to be closed. They should be open.’

Reaction control problems. Antenna problems. Problems with the oxygen tanks, and the fuel cells
.

He’d never seen a systems signature like this before, not in any of the sims he’d gone through. But then, even after twelve years of
flights, Apollo-Saturn was still an experimental system. You’d test-fly an airplane far more times than any spacecraft had ever flown, before declaring it operational.

So what was hitting him? It
could
be instrumentation problems, flaky readouts, as EECOM seemed to suspect. Or it could be that the Service Module had blown out, knocking the whole stack sideways. Or something else might have blown, and damaged the Service Module.

INCO’s timing came in. His antenna problems dated from a few seconds after they’d lit the NERVA.

For the first time in several seconds Donnelly glanced at the trajectory plot board. The spacecraft was diverging, markedly, from the path it should have followed, had the NERVA been burning smoothly.

The S-NB looked to have shut down.

‘Guidance, you want to confirm that deviation?’

‘Rog, Flight.’ Guidance was the ground navigator. Guidance must be looking at multiple problems too, as the spacecraft drifted from its trajectory, and tumbled away from its intended attitude.

‘Booster, you got anything to report?’

Mike Conlig did not reply. Donnelly could see how he was hunched over his console. ‘Booster?’

York said, ‘The crew is reporting a smell of ozone, inside their helmets.’

‘Flight, this is Surgeon. I have a contrary indication.’ The flight doctor on this flight was a crop-headed Oklahoman sitting in the row in front of Donnelly, with the systems guys, at the left-hand end next to Natalie York. He was wearing a button badge which read FUCK IRAN. His voice was taut, urgent.

Donnelly switched him onto a closed loop. ‘Go, Surgeon.’

‘Flight, I’m monitoring a surge of radiation flux through the spacecraft cabin. And some changes in the crew’s vital readings.’

Donnelly was thinking through York’s brief report.
They can smell ozone. Oxygen, ionized by radiation. Radiation from the NERVA. Jesus Christ almighty
.

It was real, then. Not just flaky instrumentation.
And the Russians orbited a goddamn Vietnamese in Salyut this year. The press will crucify us
.

Because of the two simultaneous missions in progress Bert Seger had been away from the office for three days, and he was taking a chance to work through his mail. He’d only been at it for a few
minutes when he got a call on the squawk box, the line that linked up the senior staff in Building 2.

There had been some kind of problem with the Apollo-N flight, and Seger had better get on over to the MOCR.

Angrily Seger folded up his mail. With the NERVA, it was one damn thing after another.

The voltage needle on Bus A sank past the bottom of its scale. More warning lights came on.

Dana checked the Service Module’s fuel cell 1, which was supposed to feed Bus A. It was dead. His gloved fingers clumsy with the switches, Dana began to reconnect the Command Module’s systems from Bus A onto Bus B.

Now another red light came on. Bus B was losing voltage as well. He checked fuel cell 3, the feed for Bus B; it was dead too.

Jesus. We’ve lost the Service Module. It’s Apollo 13 over again
.

He made his report, trying to keep his voice level. Mary would be listening, probably the kids. ‘Okay, Houston, I tried to reset, and fuel cells 1 and 3 are both showing gray flags. I’ve got zip on the flows.’

‘Acknowledged, Apollo-N. EECOM has copied.’

Earth, beautiful, unperturbed, drifted past the windows.

The spacecraft and booster had been set rotating by that mysterious bang. Dana knew the ship’s attitude control systems should have been trying to steady their slow tumble, but there was no sign of any correction.

‘Chuck, I think the Service Module’s RCS must be out.’

‘Rog,’ Jones said. ‘Houston, we don’t have reaction control, either from the Service Module or from S-NB.’

If the Service Module
had
blown, it was the end of the mission. But still, the crew ought to be able to get home, from this low Earth orbit.

As the spacecraft rolled, a cloud of ice crystals, sparkling, dispersing, drifted past the window to his right. It seemed to be venting from somewhere in the stack. It was quite beautiful, coalescing above the shining face of Earth.

More alarms lit up, as the problems multiplied and spread.

Donnelly had Surgeon feeding radiation dosimeter readings into his ear on the closed loop.

EECOM said, ‘Flight, I want to throw a battery on Bus A and Bus
B until we psyche out the anomalies. We’re confirming undervolts.’

Donnelly tried to shut out Surgeon’s voice so he could figure out EECOM’s suggestion.

EECOM wanted to run the Command Module off battery power. It was a reasonable short-term suggestion. But, looking ahead, the Command Module’s batteries would have to be conserved to allow the crew to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. ‘What about limiting that to a single Bus, rather than both?’

‘Hold on that, Flight.’ EECOM would now be conferring with his team of experts in the back rooms.

It was obvious from multiple indications, not least the crew’s report, that the NERVA had indeed shut itself down after only a few seconds of the planned burn. ‘Booster, you have anything you want to say to me?’

Conlig didn’t reply. The guy seemed to have frozen out.

‘The crew’s health is going to be severely impacted,’ Surgeon said on the closed loop. ‘Though they probably don’t know it yet. In fact, Flight, you can’t expect them to function normally for much beyond a few more minutes.’

Guidance came on line. ‘The bird’s attitude is still changing. They got to stop it. We’re heading for gimbal lock.’

‘I hear you, Guidance.’

Gimbal lock meant the spacecraft tumbling beyond the tolerance of the inertial guidance system. The platform could be reset by eye again. But if Donnelly was forced to go for an emergency reentry, he needed alignment control now.

Somehow, though, he felt that alignment loss, even a gimbal lock, was the least of the spacecraft’s problems right now.

‘Houston, Apollo-N.’ It was Jim Dana; to Natalie York, Jim’s voice sounded thin, frail, but controlled. ‘We’re seeing some kind of gas, venting from the stack.’

York’s skin prickled with a sudden chill.

‘Rog, Apollo-N,’ she said. ‘Can you tell if it’s coming from the S-NB tank, or the Service Module?’

‘We can’t tell. Both, possibly.’

She’d been following the controllers’ terse dialogue. The controllers were still working to the assumption that there was some kind of instrumentation or telemetry problem here, to explain the multiple anomalies.

But if the ship was venting gas, that couldn’t be it. The problem
couldn’t
be just instrumentation or an electrical screw-up. And
besides, she could see that Surgeon, next to her, had switched onto a closed loop.

Something, some violent and destructive event, had happened to Apollo-N, up there in low Earth orbit, to a spacecraft with a nuclear pile attached to its tail.

She glanced across at Mike. He was still hunched over his console and whispering into his headset.
Why doesn’t he say something to Flight?

She became aware that her right hand was clutching the thin metal maintenance handle of her console; her hand was closed into a fist, painfully.

Her throat was dry, and she had to force herself to swallow before she could speak again.

Ben’s up there. What in hell is going on?

Gregory Dana, in the Viewing Room, could see the spacecraft icon drifting from its programmed trajectory on the big plot board, and he could follow enough of the controllers’ terse exchanges to figure out that something catastrophic had happened to Jim’s ship.

Now the Viewing Room was steadily filling up – as was the MOCR amphitheater itself – as off-duty personnel came hurrying in, responding to the deepening atmosphere of crisis.

Dana was joined at the window by one of the astronaut corps, Ralph Gershon, whom Dana had met a couple of times through Jim.

Gershon stared out at the frantic huddles in the MOCR and snorted contempt. ‘Jesus. Look at them huddling up. They always go through the same thing.
What happened? Where are we? What are we going to do about it?
They’re so damned slow, and restricted in the way they think. And meanwhile the bird drifts around the sky, broken-winged.’

Broken-winged
.

The problems must be with the nuclear engine. Everything, every anomaly, had flowed from that moment.

They have to get the crew away from that damn booster
. Dana couldn’t understand why that hadn’t been done already.

He glanced around. He couldn’t tell if any of this was being broadcast on the public networks. What if Mary, and Jake and Maria, were seeing this on TV? What about Sylvia?

Silently, his lips moving, Gregory Dana began to pray.

The NERVA has blown. That’s got to be it
.

Jim Dana, lying in his couch, thought he could
feel
the tingle of radioactive particles within his body. It was a thin wind, working its way into his bones. His face and chest felt as if they were on fire. He felt a burning sensation and a tightness about his temples, and his eyelids were smarting, as if they had been doused with acid.

With every breath, he must be filling his lungs with radionuclides.

His throat hurt, and he began to cough.

The Executives Group were about to take dinner at the International Club on 19th Street. Vice President-elect Bush attended, along with members of the Senate and House who held key positions on the Space and Appropriations Committees; and now they were standing around with drinks in their hands.

Under the surface of talk and networking, Fred Michaels was running over the events of the day.

Michaels had inherited the idea of the Executives Group from his predecessors at NASA. The Group consisted of the space program’s top people: Michaels and his NASA senior managers, and the prime contractors’ senior executives, from Rockwell, Grumman, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, IBM. It was an elite club that Michaels liked to bring together four or five times a year.

Today had been a good day, he decided. The Executives Group session had gone well, and Bush’s closing address had been encouraging. Michaels had worried about losing outgoing veep Ted Kennedy, who, with his brother, continued to support the space program. Today, though, Bush seemed to be positioning himself as – if not an advocate – then at least as an ally.

Yes, a good day. But Michaels was tensed up, his big stomach growling. He always found it impossible to relax in the middle of a mission. Any one of a hundred thousand malfunctions could, he knew, spell the end of the flight, and maybe cost the lives of the crew, and conceivably put a bullet to the head of the whole Mars initiative – and, incidentally, Michaels’s own career. How the hell could anyone relax through that? And tonight there were not one but
two
American crews beyond the atmosphere, one floating around the Earth with a nuke on their tail, and the others bouncing off the Moon with those Russians. What a situation.