It was Nicolai who suddenly yelled out the solution. 'Mir! Feed the leak! Feed the leak!' He shot out of the lab, headed toward the Russian end of the station.
Mir. Every one immediately knew what he was talking about. 1997. The collision with Mir's Spektra module. There had been a breach in the hull, and Mir had begun to leak its precious air into space. The Russians, with years more experience in manned space stations, were ready with their emergency response, feeding the leak. Pour extra oxygen into the module to raise the pressure.
Not only would it buy them time to work, it might narrow the pressure gradient enough so they could pull the hatch shut.
Nicolai came flying back into the lab with two oxygen tanks.
Frantically he opened the valves all the way. Even over the screaming sirens, they could hear the screech of air escaping from tanks. Nicolai tossed both tanks into Node 2. Feeding the leak. They were building air pressure on the other side of the hatch.
They were also pouring oxygen into a module with a live wire, thought Emma, remembering the sparks. It could trigger an explosion.
'Now!' Nicolai shouted. 'Try to close the hatch!' Luther and Griggs both grabbed the handle and pulled. They would never know if it was due to their combined desperation or if the oxygen tanks had succeeded in dropping the pressure gradient across that hatchway, but the hatch slowly began to swing shut.
Griggs locked it in place.
For a moment he and Luther simply hung limp in midair, both of them too exhausted to say a word. Then Griggs turned, his face bright with sweat in the flashing lights.
'Now let's shut off that fucking racket,' he said.
The Thinkpad was still floating where he'd left it in Node 1. Peering at the glowing screen, he rapidly tapped in a series of commands. To everyone's relief, the sirens stopped screaming. flashing red lights also stopped, leaving only a constant yellow glow on the caution-and-warning panels. At last they could communicate without shouting.
'Air pressure is back up to six hundred ninety and rising,' he said, and gave a laugh of relief. 'Looks like we're home free.'
'Why are we still at Class 3 caution?' asked Emma, pointing to the yellow light on the screen. A Class 3 caution meant one of three possibilities. Their backup guidance computer was down, one of their control motion gyros was inoperative, or they'd lost their S-band radio link to Mission Control.
Griggs tapped a few more keys. 'It's the S-band. We've lost it. Discovery must have hit our P-1 truss and taken out the radio. Looks like they also hit our port solar arrays. We've lost a photovoltaic module. That's why we're still in power down.'
'Houston must be going bonkers, wondering what's happening,' said Emma.
'And now they can't reach us. What about Discovery? What's happened to them?' Diana, already working the space-to-space radio, said, 'Discovery isn't responding. They may be out of UHF range.' Or they were all dead and couldn't respond.
'Can we get these lights back?' said Luther. 'Cross-strap primary power?' Griggs began to tap on the keyboard again. Part of the beauty of ISS's design lay in its redundancy. Each of its power channels were configured to supply electricity for specific loads, but channels could be rerouted -- 'cross-strapped' -- as needed.
Though they'd lost one photovoltaic module, they had three others to tap into.
Griggs said, 'I know this is a cliche, but let there be light.' He hit a computer key, and the module lights barely brightened. But was enough to navigate through hatchways. 'I've rerouted power. Nonessential payload functions are now off the grid.' He released a deep breath and looked at Nicolai. 'We need to contact Houston. It's your show, Nicolai.'
The Russian understood at once what he had to do. Moscow's Mission Control maintained its own separate communications link with the station. The collision should not have affected the end of ISS. Nicolai gave a terse nod. 'Let us hope Moscow has paid its electric bill.'
Jill Hewitt was gasping in pain, short little whimpers that punctuated every push of a new button on the control panel. Her head felt like a melon ripe to explode. Her field of vision had so narrowed that it seemed as if she were peering down a long black tunnel and the controls had receded almost beyond her reach. It took every ounce of concentration for her to focus on each switch she had to flip, on each button wavering beyond her finger. Now she struggled to make out the attitude-direction indicator, her vision blurring as the eight-ball display seemed to spin wildly in its casing.
I can't see it. I can't read pitch or yaw ...
'Discovery, you are at entry interface,' said Capcom. 'Body flap on auto.' Jill squinted at the panel and reached for the switch, but it seemed so far away ... 'Discovery?' Her trembling finger made contact. She switched to 'auto.'
'Confirm,' she whispered, and let her shoulders go slack. The computers were now in control, flying the ship. She did not trust herself on the stick. She did not even know how long she could remain conscious. Already the black tunnels were closing over her vision, swallowing the light. For the first time she could hear the sound rushing air across the hull, could feel her body being shoved back against her seat.
Capcom had gone silent. She was in communications blackout, the spacecraft hurtling against the atmosphere with such force it stripped the electrons from air molecules. That electromagnetic storm interrupted all radio waves, cut off all communication. For the next twelve minutes it was only her, and the ship, and the roaring air.
She had never felt so alone.
She felt the autopilot begin to steer into the first high bank, rolling the spacecraft on its side, slowing it down. She imagined glow of heat on the cockpit windows, could feel its warmth, like the sun radiating on her face.
She opened her eyes. And saw only darkness.
Where are the lights? she thought. Where is the glow on the window?
She blinked, again and again. Rubbed her eyes, as though to force them to see, to force her retinas to draw in light. She reached out toward the control panel. Unless she flipped the right switches, unless she deployed the air-data probes and lowered the landing gear, Houston could not land the ship. They could not get her alive. Her fingers brushed against a mind-numbing array of dials and buttons, and she gave a howl of despair.
She was blind.
At 4,093 feet above sea level, the air at White Sands Missile Proving Grounds was dry and thin. The landing strip traced across ancient dried-out seabed located in a desert valley formed between the Sacramento and Guadalupe mountain ranges to the east, and the San Andres Mountains to the west. The closest town was Alamogordo, New Mexico. The terrain was stark and arid, and only the hardiest of desert vegetation could survive.
The area had long served as a training base for fighter pilots. It had also seen other uses through the decades. During World War II, it was the site of a German prisoner of war camp. It was also location of the Trinity site, where the U.S. exploded its first bomb, assembled not far away in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Barbed wire and unmarked government buildings had sprouted up in this desert valley, their functions a mystery even to the base of nearby Alamogordo.
Through binoculars, Jack could see the landing strip shimmering with heat in the distance. Runway 16/34 was oriented just slightly off due north-south. It was fifteen thousand feet long three hundred feet wide -- large enough to accept the heaviest of jets, even in that rarefied air, which forces long landing and rolls.
Just west of the touchdown point, Jack and the medical team waited, along with a small convoy of NASA and United Space Alliance vehicles, for Discovery's arrival. They had stretchers, oxygen, defibrillators, and ACLS kits -- everything one could find in a modern ambulance, and more. For landings at Kennedy, there would be over one hundred fifty ground team members prepared to meet the orbiter. Here, on this desert strip, they had barely dozen, and eight of them were medical personnel.
Some of the ground crew were wearing self-contained atmospheric protective suits, to insulate them from
