Karol and Wallace watched in horror as their shuttle mates rolled over, their arms and legs kicking out as though in seizure.
“Get up to the flight deck and seal yourself in!” Karol roared.
“But—”
“Do it!” As he shoved Wallace toward the ladder, a voice from mission control came over his headset.
“Discovery, do you have a problem?”
“Damn right we do!” Karol shouted. “Something’s tearing Carter and Stone apart—”
Karol’s body spasmed. “Oh, Jesus!” As he doubled over, a trail of blood swirled away from his eyes and nostrils. Somewhere far away he heard the urgent voice from mission control.
“Discovery, do you copy?”
A reply formed in his mind, but before he could get the words out, a red haze descended across his eyes.
__________
Working inside the air lock on the lower deck, Megan heard the cries and groans over her headset. She jabbed the transmit button on her EMU.
“Frank? Carter? Wallace?”
All she heard now was static. Her communications unit was malfunctioning.
Ignoring the wiring she’d been checking, Megan reached for the lever to open the air lock. To her horror, it refused to budge.
__________
In the Spacelab, Dylan Reed clutched a stopwatch in his gloved hand. The mutated variola was working with frightening speed. He knew that he should measure exactly how fast it was infecting and destroying the crew. Bauer had been adamant that human test subjects were the only way to gauge the lethal capacity of the new smallpox. It was also a way to get rid of any potential witnesses. But to do that would have meant looking at the stopwatch. Dylan Reed would have had to open his eyes, something he didn’t dare do because then he’d surely see the faces behind the screams.
__________
A world away, mission director Harry Landon was in a cubicle down the hall from mission control, catching up on some much-needed sleep. A twenty-year NASA veteran, ten of those years spent in the pressure cooker of the Cape, Landon had learned to rest whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was also able to wake up instantly, alert and ready.
Landon sensed the hand even before he felt it on his shoulder. Rolling over, he found himself gazing into the face of a young technician.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“There’s a problem onboard Discovery,” the tech replied nervously.
Landon swung off the cot, grabbed his glasses off a filing cabinet, and moved for the door. “Mechanical? Flight? What?”
“Human.”
Landon didn’t break stride as he called back over his shoulder. “What do you mean, `human’? ”
“It’s the crew,” the tech stammered. “Something’s wrong.”
Something was wrong— terribly so. Landon sensed it as soon as he entered mission control. All the techs were huddled over their consoles, talking urgently to Discovery. From the snatches he heard as he passed by, Landon realized that no one onboard the orbiter was responding.
Moving to his command post, he barked, “Get me visual!”
“We can’t, sir,” someone called back. “The video feed must be down on their end.”
“Then get me audio!”
Landon slipped on a headset and tried to keep his voice level. “Discovery, this is the mission director. Come in, please.” Static crackled against his eardrum. “Discovery, I say again, this is the mission director—”
“Mission control, this is Discovery.”
The strangled voice made Landon’s blood run cold. “Wallace, is that you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s going on up there, son?”
Landon had to wait out more static. When Wallace was back, he sounded as if he was choking.
“Wallace, what’s wrong?”
“Control… Control, do you read?”
“Wallace, just tell us—”
“We’re all dying….”
___________________
CHAPTER
TWENTY FOUR
___________________
During the shuttle’s pioneer years, in the early 1980s, procedures were set in place to deal with the inevitable mishap, malfunction, or tragedy. Enumerated in the so-called Black Book, they were first implemented in January 1986, after the disaster that took Challenger 51-L.
Harry Landon had been present in mission control that day. He still remembered the mission director’s expression of horror when the shuttle exploded seventy-three seconds after liftoff. Then he watched as the director, tears streaming down his face, reached for the Book and began making the necessary calls.
Landon’s fingers trembled as he fumbled for the key to unlock the drawer he’d prayed he would never have to open. The Book was a slender three-ring binder. Landon opened it to the first page, reached for the phone, then hesitated.
Getting to his feet, he plugged his headset into the intercom system that connected him to all the headsets used by the staff.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said somberly. “If I can have your attention… Thank you. You all heard the last communication from Discovery. If it’s accurate— and we don’t know that it is— then we are in the middle of a true catastrophe. The best thing we can do for our people up there is to follow procedures and be ready to respond to any request for assistance. Continue to monitor all aspects of the flight and of the shuttle’s condition. If there’s deviation or anything unusual— no matter how insignificant— I want to know about it. I want the data team to review all the tapes, every conversation, every transmission. Whatever happened up there happened quickly. But there had to be a trigger. I want to know what it was.”
Landon paused. “I know what you must be thinking, and going through. I know what I’m asking you to do is difficult. But we cannot lose hope that there may be survivors. That’s whom we’re working for. Whoever’s left, we want to bring them down safely. Nothing else matters.”
He looked around. “Thank you all.”
The silence that had settled over the room began to break up. Landon was relieved that the grim expressions were replaced by ones of resolve and determination. He had always believed that the people he worked with were the best; now they were proving him right.
Landon’s first call went to Rich Warfield, the president’s science adviser. A physicist by training, Warfield was familiar with the shuttle program. He immediately grasped the magnitude of the mishap.
“What can I tell the president, Harry?” he asked. “He’ll want the bottom line, no bullshit.”
“Okay,” Landon replied. “First, there has been no communication with Discovery since Wallace’s last transmission. In it, he indicated that the crew was dying or dead. I’ll have someone play you the actual tape in case the president wants to hear for himself.
“As for the shuttle, it appears stable. There’s been no change in flight path, speed, or trajectory. All onboard systems are green.”
“Give me your educated guess, Harry,” Warfield prompted.
“All air-supply readings are normal,” Landon replied. “That means no toxic contaminants. No smoke, no fire, no gases.”
“What about food poisoning?” Warfield suggested. “Could it be something as mundane as that?”
“The crew would have been having their first meal. But even if all the food were contaminated, I doubt that the poison could have spread so quickly— or virulently.”
“What about the payload?”
“This wasn’t a classified flight. The Spacelab had the usual menagerie of frogs, insects, and mice to be used for experiments…”
“But what, Harry?”
Landon double-checked the experiments’ schedule. “Megan Olson was slated to begin work on Legionnaires’ disease. That’s the only bug in the program. She never got started on it.”
“Could the bug have filtered out somehow?”
“Chances are ten thousand to one that it did. We have all sorts of sensors to detect a leak in the Biorack. But let’s say it did. Legionnaires’ doesn’t work that fast. Whatever killed the crew did so in a matter of minutes.”
For a moment there was silence.
“I know it’s not my area of expertise,” Warfield said finally. “But if you carve away the other possibilities, it still sounds to me like a bug got loose.”
“Off the record, I’m tempted to agree with you,” Landon replied. “But I wouldn’t go planting that idea in the president’s mind. Right now, we just don’t know.”
“The president will have questions,” Warfield said heavily. “I think you know what the first one will be.”
Landon closed his eyes. “This is the procedure, Rich. During launch, the range safety officer tracks the flight. His finger is never far from the destruct button. If anything goes wrong, well… You remember Challenger? After the external tank blew and the shuttle exploded, the solid rocket boosters kept going. The RSO brought them down.
“The shuttle has a destruct sequence that can be activated by us when it’s on its way down. At that point, it’s still far enough out that if we had to, we could blow it up without any danger to the population below.”
Landon paused. “Rich, when you tell him this, remind him that he’s the one who has to give that order.”
“All right, Harry. Let me pass along what we have so far. Don’t be surprised if he calls you direct.”