Though the storm was now being categorized as a Category 5, the administrators at both facilities were mostly concerned with the financial hit the destruction of the sites’ landscaping would entail. Primary communications with the International Space Station had already been transferred to the back-up facility at Cape Canaveral despite Johnson maintaining its own electrical grid that was backed up deep underground.
Mission Control had been designed to withstand a lot. Few thought Eliza would fit into that category.
“How’re we looking up there?” Flight Director Chuck Bartiromo, one of four members of the flight control team still at the Mission Control Center at midnight, radioed up to the International Space Station on a line bounced through Canaveral.
“Can’t even see the Gulf, much less Galveston Bay,” came the voice of James Foster, a longtime friend of Bartiromo’s who was the ISS’s current science officer. “Thought we saw a piece of Anahuac, but not even that. Looks like the eye is going to cover everything from Port Arthur all the way down to Matagorda. You bring in your dogs?”
Bartiromo chuckled.
“Would you believe they’re up in Oklahoma with Susan and the girls? They’d been planning to be away this week for months..”
“Lucky break. Pretty sure my pool’s going to be a total loss. Hope the roof doesn’t leak.”
“Yeah, heard that. Want me to swing by tomorrow?”
“Could you?”
Bartiromo was about to reply in the affirmative when he heard the new FAO (flight activities director), a recent transfer from the air force named Simon, exhale in surprise.
“Are you going to elaborate?” Bartiromo asked after the man kept staring at his monitor.
“Something happened in Galveston,” Simon said. “We picked up a distress transmission from the tower at Scholes Airport. Either some kind of collapse or a crash. They’ve got casualties. Sounds like a lot of them.”
“Any specifics?”
“No, the transmission fuzzed out. It sounds like their relays are getting pounded anyway. Cell towers are down, phone lines, causeway’s fucked. Galveston’s cut off.”
Bartiromo nodded. If the causeway was damaged, he knew repairs were hours away, particularly as first responders started dealing with the storm as it moved north. By the time it got past La Marque and up to Texas City, Galveston would be back-burnered. When Eliza reached Houston, anyone still needing assistance down on the island might be out of luck.
Bartiromo was wondering if NASA had any resources he could divert to Galveston when the door to the MCC burst open. Two contractors hurried in, only to be caught up short when they recognized where they were.
Bartiromo suppressed a smile. He loved the effect the control room had on civilians. Somebody had once compared it to stepping onto the pitcher’s mound at Fenway or walking into the Oval Office. The flight director, who had the rare privilege of having done the latter, felt the comparison apt.
“You guys lost?”
“Um, no, sir. We’ve got a crew working on the tank. We were heading home when we got a frantic call. They said to find you, find emergency services, security, some major catastrophe or break. They were panicked.”
“At the tank?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bartiromo sighed.
The tank referred to the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, an underwater training lab where astronauts grew accustomed to working in a near-zero gravity environment. Bartiromo reached over to the phone and dialed the front office there. When there was no answer, he dialed the extension inside the tank room itself. As the room was notoriously loud, the ringer on that phone was all the way up. He’d been in there a couple of times when it had rung, making even the most steely-nerved astronaut jump out of his skin.
When no one answered, Bartiromo leaped to his feet and nodded to Simon.
“Have security and EMS meet me in the Buoyancy Lab.”
The flight director hurried out of the MCC with the two contractors in tow and made a bee line for the tank. Johnson Space Center was laid out like a college campus, so Bartiromo and the contractors had to exit the MCC building and brave the lacerating rain. The wind blew so hard it was akin to walking through an ice storm. Making it worse, the exterior lights flickered and then faltered. The emergency generators instantly kicked on, but the lights were all dimmed to half-power.
The group finally found their way to the tank building, aka the Sonny Carter Training Facility, and, upon entering, heard a loud alarm ringing out like a battleship’s klaxon.
“Oh, shit,” Bartiromo grimaced. An alarm meant some kind of physical breach.
He led the contractors down a short, dark corridor to the massive tank room at the center of the building. The lights here were at near-full brightness, showing off a space about the size and shape of an Olympic swimming arena, just without the bleachers or high dive boards. At the center of this was, technically speaking, the largest indoor pool on the planet. Only, instead of gazing into the clear blue water to the training mock-ups below (currently, a solar panel array off the International Space Station), it looked as if the pool had been filled with oil, the surface shimmering black.
“Crap, the roof must’ve gone,” Bartiromo cursed as he looked up. He radioed the security office. “Major leak at the Buoyancy Lab. We’re going to need some kind of patch.”
When no one responded, he cursed again.
“Didn’t you say you had a crew down here?”
“Four guys.”
“Where are they?”
The contractors looked around, their gazes finally settling on a couple of tool boxes on the far side of the pool. Everyone had the same terrible thought and peered into the black of the underwater lab.
“Is that oil?”
“Could be,” Bartiromo said. “Something off the hydraulics, something backed up out of the filters. Who knows?”
Somewhere, someone shut off the alarm and the lab was cast into an eerie silence. Bartiromo tried to determine if something was leaking down from the ceiling, but the stillness of the pool’s oily
