“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.”
“The minute I know more, I'll let you know,” Landon said.
“Harry, last thing: can we bring the shuttle down on autopilot?”
“Hell, we can bring a seven-forty-seven down that way. The question is, will we want to?”
Landon's next call went to the range safety officer, who had already been apprised of the emergency. Landon explained as much as he could, then added that the original duration of this mission had been eight days.
“Clearly that's not the case anymore,” he said. “It's not a question of if but when we bring her down.”
“And once she's in range?” the RSO asked quietly.
“Then we'll see.”
Landon continued down the list, which included calls to General Richardson and Anthony Price. In addition to being the air force chief of staff, Richardson was also codirector of the Space Security Division, which was responsible for identifying and monitoring everything that was either approaching earth or in orbit around it. As head of the National Security Agency, Price was on the list because the shuttle sometimes flew classified missions sponsored by the NSA.
Every time he finished a call, Landon looked around, hoping that one of his people would have some news for him. He recognized this as the gesture of a desperate man; under the circumstances, any conversation he might have been having would have been interrupted if contact with the shuttle had been reestablished.
For the next two hours, Landon continued to work the phones. He was grateful that at least for now, he didn't have to deal with the media. Many in NASA resented the fact that shuttle flights were now considered so mundane that coverage was not warranted. During the ill-fated Challenger launch, CNN had been the sole network providing live feed. Today, only NASA cameras had recorded Discovery's liftoff.
“Landon, circuit four!”
Landon didn't even bother to see who was speaking. He found the channel and heard a faint voice through the crackle of static.
“Mission control, this is Discovery. Do you copy?”
Dylan Reed was still in the Spacelab, in his protective EMU, his boots in the floor restraints that kept him positioned in front of the auxiliary communications panel. The several hours of deliberate incommunicado seemed like an eternity to him. He'd turned off the radio so that he wouldn't have to listen to the desperate voices floating from mission control. Now, to proceed with the next phase of the operation, he had reestablished contact.
“Mission control, this is Discovery. Do you read?”
“Discovery, this is the mission director. What is your status?”
“Harry, is that you?”
“Dylan?”
“It's me. Thank God, Harry! I didn't think I'd ever hear another human voice.”
“Dylan, what happened up there?”
“I don't know. I'm in the lab. One of the EMUs was showing default. I climbed in to check it out. Then I heard… Jesus, Harry, it sounded like they were being strangled. And the commo gear was down?”
“Dylan, hang on, okay? Try to stay calm. Is there anyone else in the lab?”
“No.”
“And you've had no communication with the rest of the crew?”
“No. Harry, listen. What ??”
“We don't know, Dylan. That's the long and the short of it. We got a garbled message out of Wallace but he couldn't tell us what happened. It had to be something fast and extremely lethal. We're thinking a bug got loose. Do you have anything like that on board?”
Actually what I have is a shuttle that's one big hot zone.
But what he said was: “Christ, Harry! What are you talking about? Look at the manifest. The worst we're carrying is Legionnaires' and that's still in the biofreezer.”
“Dylan, you have to do this,” Landon said in a measured tone. “You have to go back into the orbiter and see… and tell us what you see.”
“Harry!”
“Dylan, we have to know.”
“What if they're all dead, Harry? What am I supposed to do for them?”
“Nothing, son. There's nothing you can do. But we're going to bring you home. No one leaves their post until you're back on the ground, safe and sound.”
Landon was about to add “I promise,” but the words couldn't make it past his lips.
“All right, Harry. I'll go check out the orbiter. I want to keep the commo link open.”
“We need you to check the video feed. We have no picture.”
That's because I fixed the cameras.
“Roger that. Leaving the lab now.”
The bulky space suit made his movements awkward, but slowly Reed floated through the connecting tunnel, taking care not to snag any part of his suit. Even the slightest tear would be fatal.
The sight in the mid-deck made him gag. Stone, Karol, and Carter had been reduced to bloated corpses covered in sores, floating freely or snagged to pieces of equipment by an arm or a leg. Trying not to look, Reed maneuvered his way around them to the ladder. Up in the flight deck, he found Wallace strapped to the commander's chair.
