John Nance - Orbit

His eyes follow the curvature of the forward panel to one side, where a small, three pound laptop computer nestles in a rack. He’d forgotten about that. A backup, Bill had explained, for the main computer and keyboard. That’s right! He’d completely forgotten. The thing is connected to the Internet and he’d been told, along with the others, that they would be able to e-mail their families from orbit if they wanted to take the time.

There were also supposed to be two phone calls for each passenger, though on this flight—as the only passenger—he’d been told to plan for four. One call to Houston for his three little girls and an angry wife, and a call to the Air Force Academy from a number his son would not know to ignore, were his choices.

But he’s already tried the built-in phone on the side console, and it’s dead. Surely the computer connection will be equally useless.

He unclips the laptop and opens it, surprised to find a garden-variety Dell which spins up just like millions of its counterparts below. He waits until the desktop screen is stable, checks to see if there’s a word processing program, and then clicks on the Internet explorer icon, not unsurprised when it comes up showing no connection.

He looks around, almost frantic to be doing something , but well aware there’s nothing more to be done until it’s time to fire the main engine to leave orbit.

His eyes fall on the laptop again, and he feels the urge to communicate, even if it’s only with a hard drive. His handwriting has always been just short of a scrawl, the keyboard his best means for written communication.

The little laptop is powered by Intrepid ’s circuits, not just its own battery, and there is a word processor program loaded, all of which means he can use it as a notepad. He positions the laptop in the middle of his lap and feels it promptly float up and away from him before he can start typing.

Never thought about that aspect of weightlessness.

He looks around, letting his brain work on the problem until the long strips of velcro straps in a side compartment come to mind. He rummages around and pulls out one long enough to cinch the laptop to his lap.

Feeling almost clever, he brings up the Word program and sits for a few seconds trying to figure out a message that’s suddenly appeared asking if he wants to authorize a continuous download feed.

Download what?

He shrugs, irritated at the interruption and aware it doesn’t make any difference anyway, since nothing he types will leave the hard drive.

Okay, so I click on the “yes” box and make it go away.

The dialogue box disappears and he opens a blank page and starts to type, stalling out almost immediately.

Log entry—middle of Orbit 2.

Log entry ? He chides himself. What am I, Captain Kirk?

Maybe a more personal approach.

I have less than twenty minutes before trying to turn the ship around.

Oh come on, Kip! How about a glimpse of humanity, for Chrissake?

I have less than twenty minutes before trying to turn the ship around, and I’m scared to death.

Yeah, that’s more like it. But I need some description if this is going to be for the kids.

The view outside is utterly amazing, and if I wasn’t so anxious to be sure I can get home, I’d want to stay as long as the oxygen lasts. It’s hard to describe, Jerrod, Julie, Carly, and Carrie, how deep black the background of space is and how magnificent the Earth is as it revolves below me… even though “below” right now is above. All those pictures we’ve watched from orbit, some live from the space shuttle, can’t really prepare you for what it’s like in person. Worth a lifetime! Of course, I’m going to make it back to tell you all this in person, but I thought you might like to “hear” about it in words as it’s happening. Your dad in space! What a concept, though in your lifetime, this may become routine.

He sits back and rereads, taking care to save the page before checking his watch and continuing. Five more minutes. But this feels good, and someday they’ll love it. Or maybe his grandkids will.

Arleigh Kerr stands at the end of the small table in the conference room of Mission Control, a freshly emptied bottle of water in his hand. His gaze is fixed on his boss as he clears his throat.

“Richard, I’m sorry to tell you, but we have no rescue capability. Venture is down for a month or more.”

"What?” DiFazio is almost out of his chair, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in a combination of pain and alarm. “A month ? When did you find that out?”

Arleigh’s sigh is heartfelt, his eyes on the papers at the edge of the table. There are only the two of them in the room, better for such bad news. He carefully places the empty plastic water bottle next to the papers, as if adjusting a family treasure, his eyes focused on the base of the bottle until he can’t dally any longer.

“I just got the word from our maintenance chief. The right wing spar is cracked in addition to the gear problem. If we try to fly her, we could lose her going up or coming down. Complete wing loss.” His eyes rise to meet DiFazio’s.

“Can’t we rush the repair?”

“You’re the composites expert, Richard. Not me. They’re telling me with cure times, the best they could do is ten days. Something about rebonding that spar.”

“Oh my God! Without Venture, we can’t even… we couldn’t even keep to our schedule if this…”

“I guess the only good news is that we’ve only got the one passenger.”

DiFazio is shaking his head in pain. “So what options, if any, do we have?”

“We can’t mount a rescue mission, we can’t communicate…”

Richard’s voice cuts him short.

“No! Don’t tell me what we can’t do, goddammit! Tell me what we can do.”

Arleigh’s retort is just as quick. “How about pray?”

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t have a lot of options, Richard. Christ, I’m not sure if we have any options. If we had our other spacecraft, yes, we could launch and try a rescue. But we don’t. And you know NASA isn’t going to help. Some other country? The Russians? The Europeans? The Japanese? I don’t know. I haven’t called them. But it would cost more money than our entire capitalization to buy a Soyuz launch from the Russians, for instance, even if they could get one together in time.”

Richard is watching him, subdued now, but hair-trigger restrained as Arleigh continues. “And that raises another major, honking question.”

“Which is?”

“Is anyone even alive up there?”

Richard looks staggered. Arleigh concludes he hasn’t considered this. “We… we don’t know?”

“We don’t know anything, except that the ship is still on orbit and appears to be pressurized, according to NASA’s analysis… or was it NORAD’s? But zero communication, zero telemetry, no indication that Intrepid is doing anything more than automatically holding its pitch and roll position, and… and, we’re just guessing.”

Richard is shaking his head, eyes on the floor. He takes a deep breath before looking up. “Sorry, Arleigh. I just wasn’t ready for this, I guess.”

“Hell, neither am I! No one’s ever taken even a major nonfatal hit up there before. Why us? Why now?”

“You know this could kill us. I don’t mean to discount those two lives, but this could put us out of business.”

Arleigh sits heavily, swiveling the chair around to face the glass wall. His words are to the wall.