Гарри Гаррисон - Skyfall

“I can't hear you, Orbiter, right, okay now. Roger. External tank jettison.”

Engines still firing as the tank fell away to burn in the thin atmosphere. Still climbing, still aiming for orbit insertion. On the way.

“What's that?” Coretta shouted. “Something burning, outside the ports.”

But even as she spoke the shuddering began, hammering and vibrating.

“Atmosphere impact!” Patrick cried out. “Atmosphere---”

The television program director sat looking at his monitor screen and muttered to himself unhappily. What a choice, what a miserable choice. The Vance Cortwright picture was going out now, as well as his doom-laden voice. That was on monitor two. On one he had a picture of Mission Control, everyone busy as hell at the consoles as they had been for the last god-only-knows how many hours. Without voice, Flax had cut them out again. Forget them, the viewers had seen enough of that picture to use again right now. On three a studio with a science fiction author-space expert, ready to go again with explanations and little models and everything. The director had gotten a lot of mileage out of him, and there would be more to go, but not right now with things maybe breaking. Four was blank now, ready to roll any of the special films they had made. They had just used the Space Shuttle takeoff animation, but with the Shuttle Orbiter up there now that was finished. The director cut in on Cortwright's voice while he thought.

“. . dramatic events of the past hours drawing now to a conclusion. A conclusion still clouded with doubt as Orbiter reaches up into space, hurtling after Prometheus, rushing to catch up. Their engines are shut down now as the final calculations are made, calculations that cannot be off by as much as one-thousandth of one percent. For, at this moment, the two spacecraft are in different orbits, at different heights, moving at different speeds. When Orbiter fires her engines again they should lift her up for the final and dramatic meeting that everyone, all over the world, is waiting for. The gallant crew of Prometheus has worked hard, and some have died, to reach this moment in time and space. How unspeakably cruel it would be if victory, life itself, should be torn away from them at this last minute, for they are reaching the end of their painful journey at last. Approaching their last orbit…”

“Start rolling the Prometheus burning film,” the director said into his mike. As soon as the animated drawing of the ship came on he switched to it with Cortwright's voice over.

“… unbreathable at this altitude, as thin and rarefied as the inside of a light bulb. But at the tremendous speed of five miles a second, eighteen thousand miles an hour, that trace of air will be like a solid wall to Prometheus.” The model's nose began to glow and send off sparks. “Heat it up, burn it, eventually to.

Cortwright stopped talking, his eyes widened, and he pressed the miniature earphone harder against his head. When he spoke again he was excited, fatigue vanished.

“It's happened, my God it's happening at this very instant. Prometheus reported atmosphere impact and then their signal faded. We know that the heated, ionized atmosphere prevents communication, that is all it may be. Or the worst may be upon them at last, the fated moment we have all been dreading may be here. This may be the end. And if it is, we can only say that though these people may die, these brave astronauts, they have not died in vain. Because their efforts have kept this giant in the sky up there until now, until this moment when it is hurtling over the empty wastes of the Pacific Ocean. If it falls now no one below will be hurt, the tragedy of Cottenham New Town will not be repeated….”

“Great, really great,” the director chuckled to himself and rubbed his hands together. “They hit while we had the burning animation on. What really great timing!”

“I don't know” Flax said. “Honest to God I just do not know any thing yet.”

“I understand, Mr. Flax, and I do appreciate your position.” Dillwater could hear the exhaustion, the pain, in the man's voice and knew he could ask no more, push him no farther. “This line will be open and I will be standing by, we will all be standing by, waiting for whatever news you may have. We are all praying it will be good.”

Dillwater slowly hung up the receiver and looked at the circle of watching faces. “Nothing additional is known,” he said.

“They have to know!” President Bandin shouted. “Eight billion dollars worth of equipment and they don't have a clue? Can't they just look up, point a telescope?”

“They are doing everything technically possible. We will know what happens in a matter of minutes.”

Bannerman walked over to stare at the big plotting board, at the red circle that was Prometheus's location on last contact.

“They had better find out something pretty soon. If that thing burns now, it will just knock a hole in the ocean. But if it stays in orbit just a few minutes more it's going to come down right on top of Los Angeles.”

They could not speak. There were no words to convey their feelings as they realized this unthinkable — yet possible — greater tragedy.

“Nothing,” Cooke said. “Nothing yet.” He looked out at space, at the stars, unseeingly.

“They can't burn, not when we're this close,” Decosta said. He opened his belt and kicked up, floating away from his chair. “I'm getting into the pressure suit.”

“We don't know for certain or not if you are going to get a chance to use it.”

“Don't you think I know that?” His voice was bitter, angry. He opened the locker in the rear and hauled the suit out. “It's like knocking on wood. You do it even if you aren't superstitious. I am putting this thing on and I am going to use it, hear?”

“You tell them, tiger.” Cooke tried to be funny, to smile as he spoke, though he had never felt more depressed in his entire life. He pressed the microphone switch, “Orbiter to Mission Control. Have you heard….”

“Nothing,” Flax said. “Sorry Cooke, nothing at all yet. The program is still running and you're due for a burn in about twenty minutes.”

“Roger, Mission Control. Out.”

Flax was beyond all fatigue, beyond all caring. That it should end like this, now, so suddenly with salvation just beyond their grasp. He looked at the GET. Less than an hour from hook-up…

“Something on the wavelength.”

The voice from communication jerked them all about like puppets on a string, to stare at the wall speaker that hissed and roared with interference, to strain to hear if that was a voice behind the electronic waterfall. There were words, barely comprehensible words.

“… in… Control… this… is Prometheus…”

GET 33:34

“There's no more of it,” Coretta said. “The fire, the burning pieces, they're all gone.”

“Five minutes now, at least,” Patrick said. “We're through and into our last orbit.”

“What do you mean?” Coretta asked.

“We were at perigee, the closest part of our orbit to Earth, going past it and moving higher. That's when we hit, grazed the atmosphere. Any more than that and we'd have slowed and burned. Just touched lightly like a skipping stone on water, then away. Now we know almost to the minute how much time we have. At next perigee we go down. A little over an hour.” He fumbled in his darkness to find the mike switch, turned it on. “Mission Control this is Prometheus. I want to talk to Orbiter.”

“Roger, Patrick, Orbiter is listening. “

“How's your bird, Cookey?”

“A — OK and in the green all the way.”

“What's your ETA for hook-up?”

“Just about forty minutes.”