William Seigler - Books and Stories

Sometimes the road to self discovery runs a bit too close to uncomfortable truths.

Drawing coming soon.

REENTRY

by

William C. Seigler

The pod – Standardized Escape and Rescue Vehicle - began to kiss the errant ions that passed for atmosphere at this altitude when you hit it at seventeen thousand miles per hour.  Paul Crew could taste the bile and the fear in the back of his throat.  The smell of the air in his pressure suit had taken on a peculiarly human funk.

His partner, company president Li, argued against the idea all along.  But the marketing firm they retained confirmed Paul’s gut feeling.  Having a man on board would make this flight so much a media event that the company could hardly afford not to have a man on board.

Sun and Crew Astronics, LLC had no pilots.  Paul flew the aging company plane.  He had seen his chance, his one chance to fulfill a lifelong ambition.  Since he was ten years old he had wanted one thing more than anything else.  Paul wanted to fly in space.

Three years earlier two cosmonauts and one astronaut had died in a marooned Soyuz spacecraft.  The international community responded by calling for a standard rescue vehicle.  Now the International Orbital Rescue Program had made it possible for Paul to fly.

Glancing at the g-meter he knew it had begun.  “Baikonur, this is SERV 1, over,” Paul said into the lip mike.  The signal was relayed through the TRDS system to Baikonur, Houston, and to the company’s pavilion at the Paris Air Show.  He was supposed to keep talking until the ions built up around his screaming hot reentry vehicle and communication was impossible.  This heightened the dramatic appeal.

“SERV 1, this is Baikonur. Go ahead.”

I’m beginning reentry.  All systems nominal, over.”

“Roger, everything looks within prescribed parameters from here.  Recovery is stand . . . “   Communications were cut off.  He was alone now, surrounded by a white hot ion cloud.

His pulse quickened.  Would Connie be gone by now?  She had said she’d leave if he made this flight.  She had wanted to go for a long time.  He could see that now.  Every time he talked about doing something she didn’t like, she threatened to leave.  Only this time his desire to go outweighed his fear of abandonment.  Some people used love like a straight razor.  They threatened to withhold it until someone fell in line.  It wasn’t his fault that his father had not married his mother and split when she started to show.  Why hate your only kid over it?

Wasn’t her fault.  She did the best she could.  Long hours working on your feet made it hard to come home and play mommy.  And to few men wanted a woman with baggage.

Paul had grown up equating a woman’s acceptance with security.  He moved the curser and clicked off the voice-activated com.  If he burned, he didn’t want to take the chance of anyone’s hearing him scream.

This project came into existence on a napkin over breakfast.  Astronics had just lost a bid for the automatic control subsystem on the SERV.  Why not build a reentry vehicle in house?  There were enough experienced engineers out of work.  It should be possible to build a small prototype and fly it.

But the big boys had the market cornered.  Their prototypes would be full sized.  The press made Astronics’ pending toy SERV look like a joke.  “At least the astronauts could send back their action figures  before they died,” chided the editorials.  You could hear the laughter in their voices when very young bottle blond reporters interviewed Li.  Then Paul suggested the big idea of making it a manned flight.  Just make the prototype big enough for one man.  Put everything on the line.  So he went.  It all sounded so great in his air conditioned office.  Then it started.  He awoke one morning at four a.m. in a cold sweat.

“I could get killed.”  It was hard to imagine the world without him in it.  What sickened him was the thought of his body lying there rotting in the ground.  If he burned up on reentry, at least there wouldn’t be anything left to bury.  He had tried to keep the bravado up in public.

After he’d told Connie what he planned to do, she announced that if he did, she’d leave.  She thought herself the strong independent type.  One day Paul had come home during a thunderstorm and found her under the kitchen table clutching her cat to her breast.

As the day approached for his flight to Russia to train for the mission, his fear grew as well as her threats.  He found himself thinking of Skip Ziegler blowing up in his X-2 and all the other rocket men who died violently.  All his life he had been taught to be afraid.  He had trouble sleeping and concentrating while in training.

*    *    *

The pod began to yaw to the right.  This was it.  The computer was supposed to keep it lined up.  He was going to burn on reentry.

“Switch on.”  He turned on the switch enabling the right hand controller.  He had practiced using the simplified video display.  It was designed so that even someone who was not a trained astronaut or cosmonaut could keep the vehicle lined up if necessary.  Now something was wrong.  He had always been afraid of doing something wrong.  Now it might cost him his life.  He took the controller.  “Move it left, he said aloud.”  The software will figure out how to control the SERV.

“Don’t think.  Just keep it lined up.  Come on!”  Don’t try to think of which way it’s turning.  Don’t worry how it should be while traveling backwards.  Don’t make it hard.  Isha said his six year old could line it up on his laptop.  Keep the crosshairs in the center of the circle.  “Fly to the circle.”

Sweat started to sting his eyes making it hard to see what he was doing.  The tiny symbol moved back where it belonged on the screen.  As soon as he let go to of the stick, it slid to the right.  A nozzle must be stuck open.  The cold of space, the heat of reentry, or the vibration during liftoff had moved some tiny component out of place.

Do something his mind screamed!  He moved the thumb controller to System A and double clicked.  Its bright image dimmed and he switched to System B.  Nothing happened.  He hit it again an again.  The force of deceleration pushed him harder into the seat.

He forced his left hand over to the circuit breaker panel and pulled A.  Lights dimmed in the craft.  He lifted the red cover and jammed override and System B came online.  The pod quickly righted itself.  Sweat beaded on his face and ran back to be soaked up by the tight fitting cloth cap, containing his headset, he wore under the pressure suit helmet.

I got to talk to Isha about his software.  “I might even kick his . . .”

“. . .  is mission control, over.”

“What!”  He looked out the window.  The fire was gone.  The sky was a dark blue through the tiny porthole. 

“Now it the chute opens.”  He plunged toward the Earth at supersonic speed.  He waited.  He could deploy the drogue, but he needed to test the automatic systems.  Sara had supervised packing the chutes, and she didn’t give a damn if the company president was on the packing crew.  This was her bailiwick and it was going to be done by the numbers, her numbers.  “Come on Sally girl, don’t let me down.”

He waited some more.  Microseconds turned to hours.  Look at the screen.  Everything is happening on time.  “Baikonur, this is SERV 1, you copy?”  Nothing.  He glanced at the mike icon.  It was dark.  Click on it dummy.

The drogue deployed and he felt a mild buffet when it grabbed atmosphere.  The parafoil deployed, and he was yanked back into the one-size-fits-all self adjusting couch.  Now he could land this thing just like the paraglider it had become. 

It didn’t matter that he was still lying on his back; the computer screen made it look like he was sitting up and flying normally.  They had talked about rigging the pod to be turned so that he was facing forward - too much complication; something else to go wrong.  The software could handle it.

He’d done it.  He had come through the fire.  He made no mistakes.  Now the world would have to notice Astronics.  “The little company that could,” the papers would say the next day.  Contracts would be worth billions, but that didn’t matter.

No one lives forever. Fear had always haunted his mind.  He knew that his day would come, and when it did he would be ready for it.

“Baikonur, the parafoil is out and the ship is responding nicely.  Everything is going to be okay.”

          THE END