Orbit

Chapter 26

ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, MAY 19, 7:02 A.M. PACIFIC

“Diana, exactly when did I lose control of this control room to you?”

Arleigh Kerr has his hands on his hips, but there’s no anger in his voice. Merely deep fatigue.

It’s just past 7 A.M. and only three of the control room staff are present, all watching the multiple television signals their public relations director has been assembling on the screen that covers the entire front of the room. Where normally an orbital map would compete with lists and graphs and a live shot or two at different times in a launch and return mission, TV morning shows are in progress, every one devoting their coverage to the phenomenon of a public transfixed by the journaling of a man about to die.

Kip has been “silent” for more than an hour, the live transmission still flashing the last words of the last sentence he wrote before, presumably, going to sleep.

Diana straightens up from one of the consoles and smiles an equally tired and tolerant smile at their flight director. “Am I interrupting any other work here, Arleigh?”

He pauses and shakes his head. “Naw. I guess I’m just pulling your chain. It’s just… with a bird still up there…”

“I know. It feels all wrong. Just like my complete inability to control even the smallest part of this story feels all wrong.”

“What are they yammering about?” Arleigh asks, gesturing irritably to the silent TV images, each of which has the now-stalled crawl of Kip’s writings across the bottom of each screen.

She punches up the audio from NBC and adjusts the volume, then punches it off again.

“I’m not a sociologist, Arleigh, but this is fascinating. I grew up in broadcasting, and I think you’re looking at the beginnings of a kind of phase two. Phase one was a passenger trapped in space and facing death, and they’re largely still on that phase. In phase two, the story becomes this unprecedented situation of his writing so freely without knowing the world is reading along with him.”

“And phase three?”

“If I’m right… and I’m just guessing… phase three will be when the story becomes what he’s saying. The substance of his thoughts and how they relate to all of us, not just the fact that he’s writing them.”

Arleigh is looking at her quizzically.

“What?”

“Diana, doesn’t this feel a little… sordid? You know… I mean I’m just a technical guy, but doesn’t the word voyeuristic come to mind?”

“A prying observer seeking the sordid or scandalous?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Doesn’t that more or less describe us as a people? Certainly the networks and cable companies think so, paying gazillions of dollars to be voyeurs. I mean, Arleigh, look at it. It’s everywhere! From that thoroughly idiotic ‘O. J. Low-Speed Chase’ that none of us could turn off, through that murderer’s trial before the world’s stupidest jury, through the plague of reality shows and the unbelievable things now broadcast on cable.”

“Not a good commentary on humanity, I agree.”

“And it’s not just us. We’ve taught the world to be voyeurs and they’ve gleefully joined us.”

Arleigh gestures to the multiple images. “But this just feels dirty, Diana.”

“I know this guy, Arleigh.”

“Personally?”

“We’ve talked. But I knew from the first moment I met Kip that his level of enthusiasm for what we do was very special. You should have seen his eyes light up when he was on Good Morning America, talking about how this was the dream of a lifetime. I’d already suggested that he’d be a great public relations icon for us when he got back.”

“I was getting the feeling you had a special concern.”

“I do feel protective of him, not that I can do anything.”

Arleigh smiles and cocks his head. “You’re not dating the customers are you, Diana?”

She feels her face redden. “Arleigh! That’s beneath you.”

“Sorry.” He has both hands up in apology and she nods, embarrassed that he’s identified exactly what she’d been thinking the night before, that Kip Dawson was a man she could get interested in.

Diana clears her throat, more like a short growl of terminated disgust.

“The point I was getting ready to make, Arleigh, is that one reason the public is already resonating with him is that he’s an average Joe, a good guy from Middle America, who knows for an absolute fact in his mind that he’s dead in a few more days.”

“That is incredible.”

“How would either of us feel? And how would we react? His thoughts are uncontaminated by hopes of rescue, contact with the ground, anything. So what we’re reading has a quality about it… and there’s a word I’m searching for…”

“Eloquence?”

She nods, tearing up slightly. “Yeah. Eloquence. That’s exactly it. Even if his writing isn’t brilliant, what he’s saying, how he’s dying, is eloquent. If that makes us voyeurs, dying along with him, then so be it.”

“You… don’t think he’s going to make it, then?” Arleigh asks, looking deathly pale, as if she’s got the key.

“Do you?” she asks, equally off balance. They stare at each other for a few seconds like microwave antennae transmitting volumes of unseen information for which no vocal narration is needed. There is hope of rescue, but their passenger doesn’t know it, and neither of them has enough faith that it can be done.

“Can you turn the sound back on?” Arleigh says, yanking them both away from the subject.

“Sure.”

She punches up NBC’s Today again, catching the host in mid-sentence.

“…excerpts we just showed you coming down from the private spacecraft Intrepid, many very personal stories have already been told, some with the names of friends and lovers he hasn’t seen since his teen years. In one passage, Dawson writes about his first love, a girl named Linda Hammel, wondering where she is now. This story is so deep and personal that we felt someone should search out people such as Linda, and amazingly we found her living right here in New York City. She was gracious enough to join us this morning to give us some insight into this remarkable man. Linda, good morning.”

Diana shakes her head and punches up Good Morning America just as the host comes on.

“In the broadcast business when there is what we call a breaking story, we refer to what we do as ‘continuing coverage,’ but this is an extraordinary story that plows new ground. So, while asking you to bear with us as we try to figure out the best way to report what is clearly an evolving story… and while it’s continuously writing itself across the bottom of your screen… we’re going to spend the next hour giving you as much background as we can on who Kip Dawson is, as a man, a husband, a father, a salesman, a friend. All this would normally seem invasive. But considering that most of us have eagerly been reading his words as they come down on a radio link to the Internet from orbit raises the question of whether we should have been doing so in the first place.

This morning we’ll talk again with Kip’s wife, Sharon, from her family home in the Houston area, but first we go to a gentleman who’s worked with Kip Dawson for many years in the pharmaceutical sales business, Dell Rogers, who joins us from our ABC affiliate in Phoenix.”

Diana kills the volume and brings up a succession of other network shows, each struggling to craft their own portrait of Kip, before switching the sound off again and gaining the attention of the three staffers sitting one tier in front of her.