John Nance - Orbit

And suddenly they are airborne, the washboard bouncing and yawing gone, the craft swaying gently on its attach points as the ground drops away below.

A new series of thunks and lurches course through the spacecraft. Kip dares a glance over his right shoulder in time to see the immense right main landing gear retracting toward Intrepid ’s hindquarters. Logic dictates that the main landing gear will clear Intrepid as it retracts, but for a second he mentally braces for impact, surprised as the gear thuds into place somewhere behind them, and the gear doors close.

The pilots are reducing the engine power now as he’s been taught they will, setting up for a forty-minute climb to altitude, and Bill Campbell turns around to check on his passenger again.

“Still with me?”

“You bet.”

“Okay, not much to do for the next half hour now as we gain altitude. But once we’re dropped, things are going to happen fast and heavy.”

Kip nods and gives him a thumbs-up, but Bill continues.

“Let me go over the sequence again for when we get there, okay?”

“Sure,” Kip responds, wanting instead to watch the desert drop away from his window.

“ Deliverance will stabilize our flight level four-three-zero—forty-three thousand feet—and turn onto the launch heading. We’ll do our final checks, get final clearance from Mission Control, and Deliverance will light her booster rockets and pull up to a twenty-two-degree climb angle, trading airspeed and power for altitude. She’ll push over at flight level six-one-zero as the rockets burn out, and she’ll hold there for just long enough to drop us. You saw those guys get aboard in pressure suits, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That’s because we can’t pressurize a huge 1011 safely enough to guarantee they won’t have their bodies exposed to blood-boiling pressure altitudes, so we solve it by making them very uncomfortable. As we taught you in class, we don’t need to wear space suits here inside Intrepid since this capsule is triple-redundant and self-sealing.”

“But you’ve got yours aboard, right?”

“Well, sure. It’s all compressed flat and stored, just in case some impossible event might present the need for me to float around outside and repair something. But don’t worry, it’s aboard. Checking it is part of my preflight routine.”

“Good.”

An unexpected shuddering rattles the spacecraft—and presumably the airplane carrying it—and they’re shoved sideways for a few seconds. Routine , Kip tells himself, but Bill hesitates, his eyes darting to his panel as he gets quiet for a few seconds.

“What was that?” Kip asks.

“Don’t know. Upper air turbulence, or CAT 1, I suspect. Clear air turbulence. Whatever it was, no worries.”

“Okay.”

“Where was I? Oh yeah. We’ll confirm our clearance as we’re dropping away, light our motor, confirm forward vertical clearance from Deliverance, and we’re off.”

“Hey, Bill,” Kip ventures, feeling serious.

“Yeah?”

“Is it really routine for you? This sequence?”

He can see the astronaut/pilot start to repeat the company line but stop himself, the curtain of professionalism parting for just a second as a large smile covers the man’s face and his eyes flick away to the windows.

“It’s Christmas morning every time, Kip. My dream comes true every launch.”

Kip is nodding even after Bill turns his attention back to the forward panel.

“I’m glad to hear that. I don’t think I’d want to fly with someone who wasn’t as excited as I am.”

The half hour evaporates and Kip hears Bill once again running through a checklist, Intrepid ’s altimeter steady on forty-three thousand feet. The same basic countdown he listened to from Cape Canaveral on so many launches winds down in his ear.

“Kip, the mothership’s rocket motors never quite fire at the same moment, so there will be a sideways lurch for just a second, and then she’ll steady out.”

Kip nods, too overwhelmed with the sensations and the impending drop to find his voice.

“Two, one, ignition.”

The outboard rocket-assist motor mounted under the left wing of the 1011 lights first and they yaw amazingly to the right as the opposite one kicks in, as advertised.

The pilot’s voice from the 1011’s flight deck is utterly unemotional.

“Thrust nominal, commencing pitch-up and countdown.”

More numbers counting backward. More lighted numerals and readouts changing on the complicated liquid crystal displays in front of Bill Campbell. Kip struggles to keep his eyes on what he knows is the altimeter, one of the few he can read. It shows them now climbing through fifty thousand feet. He thinks the attitude indicator is showing a pitch-up of twenty-two degrees, but it feels like forty or more. Intrepid is shaking back and forth sideways and being pulled ahead and he wonders if there’s any way the real launch will feel as startling.

“Release minus two minutes, mark.”

There are a host of voices in his ears making sure everyone and everything is coordinated and ready, and their calm is almost unnerving. He thinks if the whole thing blew apart like space shuttle Challenger and the radios remained, Bill and his compatriots would probably keep the same tone of voice as they narrated down to the desert floor.

“Ah, Roger, Mojave we have unscheduled dual wing separation and unauthorized main aircraft body disintegration, with estimated time to extinction on impact T minus one minute, ten seconds, on my mark.”

“Roger, Intrepid, we copy the end of life as you know it.”

He shakes himself free of the maudlin thought, although for some reason it does seem amusing. There are thirty seconds left and the big aircraft holding them close is pushing its nose down to level now as it slows, the altitude topping out at sixty-one thousand feet where the 1011 was never designed to be.

Kip knows about the tiny window of time to launch. If something hiccups, they have no more than twelve seconds to figure it out and fix it before scrubbing the launch and letting the 1011 pilots fly the mothership back to the low forty-thousand-foot range.

He almost misses it, the call is so routine. The drop clearance—his clearance to fly to space—is issued from Mission Control below, the count now less than ten seconds. Kip finds himself mouthing the descending numbers.

“Hang on, old buddy,” Bill says. “It’s about to get interesting.”

“Three, two, one, release.”

Kip thinks he’s feeling time dilate. Nothing seems to be happening.

Wait, nothing is happening! Time is slowing for real now, and he waits, expecting to feel any microsecond the sensation of being dropped toward the desert below. But they’re still attached!

He looks at Bill for confirmation that he hasn’t missed it all, but the astronaut is busy triggering his transmitter.

“We have negative release, Deliverance . Select prime backup and confirm.”

“Shit!” Is the singular response from above, as another voice intones “Eight seconds in the window.”

“Primary backup selected, counting two, one, release.”

Something shoves them around, or so Kip thinks, but they’re still merely a mechanical appendage of the 1011.

“Selecting secondary,” one of the pilots above says, the slightest trace of stress in his voice.

“Three seconds to abort,” another intones.

“Pressurizing.”

“Two, one, release, dammit!”

This time the whole world changes. Whooshing sounds of a pneumatic backup system force the jaws of the four primary hooks open in slightly staggered fashion. Intrepid ’s nose drops first as the forward hooks release, followed by an uneven release of the rear two. In an instant Kip’s stomach has declared itself in freefall. His fingers dig a deathgrip into the armrests of his seat as he watches Campbell’s right hand holding the primary ignition control.