The professionals at Marshall were well aware of the threat that had been broadcast by the terrorists to deorbit the ISS over New York City, so in addition to assisting Johnson Space Center and NASA Headquarters to brainstorm ways of regaining control of the station, all the pros avidly scanned the news reports for any iota of data that could help.
That is, all but one.
Old Joe Krantz, the point-of-contact at Marshall’s Payload Operations Center, the person in charge of archiving data, was widely regarded as an oddball. Balding, paunchy, just a few weeks away from retirement, he had a reputation for doing things his way and letting the chips fall where they may. Early in his career he had frequently been called onto the carpet to justify his nonconformist behaviors. He had walked away triumphantly so often that his superiors eventually gave up and admitted that Old Joe had a special talent for being right.
He decided to review the information that was still being transmitted from the station over an open data link. Strangely, there was only one experiment still transmitting files. Even more curious, the streams themselves seemed to be oddly modified, spiking the link’s intensity levels in a weird manner, as though they were being sent in a pattern. At first Joe suspected that the ISS transmitter was starting to conk out without anyone aboard to fix it.
But curiosity is a powerful force. Whatever the reason for the anomaly, he decided to at least check it out.
He accessed the last transmission and saw that the file descriptor was from an Air Force Academy experiment designed to accelerate crystal growth through the excitation of molecular resonances by irradiating the crystal with sub-terahertz radiation. He fully expected the files to be empty of any information, since the experiment should have long run its course. But when he pulled up the folder he found that it was full of data. Overflowing with data, in fact.
Joe frowned. That’s strange, he thought. The sensors generating the data should have stopped working; he also knew the ISS’s handheld 98 GHz radiation source should have run out of power if it had been left on continuously. And since no other communication had been received from the ISS since that crazy terrorist threat, why would this link still be transmitting data? And with modulated power intensities?
He scanned the file. The header said it was a compressed digital image, probably a picture of the crystal taken through a microscope. Okay, nothing unusual there. The station frequently compressed large files to cut back on bandwidth.
Clicking on the icon, he fully expected to see an innocuous picture of some boring type of crystal lattice structure, or something just as elementary. After all, the experiment had originated at an undergraduate military college, not some high-powered research university. He opened the photo on his high-resolution screen—
And fell backward in his chair, crashing onto the floor.
He picked himself up and stared at the screen.
Instead of a six-sided cubic structure, the screen showed a terse handwritten order. From astronaut Kimberly Hadid-Robinson.
She was directing NASA to contact the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and have them immediately voice-enable the JAXA Ka-band link in the JPM module, and to re-vector it through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay satellite network so she could communicate with the ground. She also ordered them to enable the two JPM cameras so they could have visual contact, and use the cameras as backup in case the voice link failed.
He felt a stabbing pain in his chest. His left arm ached and his breath gusted in short burning spasms.
But he didn’t have time for a heart attack. At least one astronaut on the ISS was still alive!
OLD EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scott Robinson parallel-processed while sitting rigidly behind his desk, looking through his first-floor window for the NASA Administrator to leave the White House and her meeting with the President.
Kimberly’s message had rocketed straight to NASA Headquarters. Administrator Patricia Simone assumed it would be hard to keep quiet, so she’d ordered the revelation to be tightly controlled.
Scott simultaneously cradled the old, black landline phone with his left shoulder while scrolling through his NASA-issued smartphone’s e-mail. He also tapped on the flight iPad on his desk, which contained the Dragon capsule’s emergency procedures. All while keeping an eye on the cable news channels, as he waited with mounting impatience for Simone to finish briefing the President about Kimberly and the rescue mission.
Beyond the door to this office Scott had been loaned, the NSC staff was in a frenzy of excitement. The furor out in those halls reminded Scott of video clips he’d seen of government agencies preparing to go to war, rather than just getting ready for another launch from Kennedy Space Center. But he knew that this wasn’t simply another mission to resupply the ISS. Kimberly was alive on the station! She’d barricaded herself from the terrorists in the JPM. The crisis had taken on a new urgency.
And now, instead of the accelerated launch having the goal of bringing back the bodies of the murdered crew members, it was a true rescue mission, rescue of both Kimberly and the space station itself. And because the mission had changed to storming the station—an inherent military operation requiring Title 10 authority to conduct Operations of War—the necessary approval had escalated from the Administrator of NASA to the President himself.
Scott assumed that Patricia Simone should have received the President’s go-ahead for launching the rescue mission by now, and he was more than ready to be on that flight to the ISS himself. As he reviewed the Dragon capsule’s emergency procedures, he mentally ran through the rationale for him to be manifested on the launch.
He was confident that he’d be chosen for the mission; the only question was whether Simone would agree to put him in command. With his T-38 jet still parked at Andrews Air Force Base, just fifteen miles away from this NSC office, he could be down at Cape Canaveral within a few hours, prepping for the flight.
Out of the corner of his eye, Scott caught a glimpse of movement on the street below. It was Patricia walking briskly next to a tall woman wearing sunglasses, a dark skirted suit, a small coiled wire in her ear: Simone’s Secret Service escort, bringing her back from the West Wing to the NSC offices.
Although still on hold with Kennedy Space Center, Scott slammed the landline phone onto its cradle and minimized the screens on both his smartphone and the iPad. On second thought, it wouldn’t hurt to have Simone see that he was already reviewing the Dragon’s emergency procedures: that just might tip the scales in favor of his being appointed to command. He realized that she normally wouldn’t inject herself into the selection procedures, and would defer to both George Abbey and the head astronaut for that decision, but this was an extraordinary situation and he knew it called for extraordinary measures.
And extraordinary people, such as himself.
Scott got to his feet and headed out the office door, walking briskly across the black limestone and white marble floor that had been inlayed in the 1870s. Turning a corner in the high-ceilinged corridor, he tapped down the steps and arrived at the entrance just as Simone stepped through the massive archway. The Secret Service agent stayed with her instead of returning to her White House post, which meant that Patricia was probably going to be escorted back to the President.
Simone’s face looked drawn. “Has JSC achieved communication with Kimberly?”