buckling her seat harness, he said, “We’ve got barely enough fuel to get to the higher orbit and make it back home. You sure you want to do this?”
“Ivan, this ship is not going back home. The payload bay door was damaged when the arm was ripped off and will not close. There’s no way we will survive reentry. If we pass through the stuff the asteroid kicked up, we won’t have to worry about anything.”
Ivan stared into Susan’s helmeted face for a moment, searching for a glimmer of hope, as their situation just grew a lot darker than he initially thought. He turned back to the control panel, “Burn in…two…one…ignition!” he said as he hit the switch to fire the engines. Everyone was pushed back into their seats or if they were standing, against the bulkheads as the shuttle accelerated beneath them.
The ship vibrated as the engines fired and Susan noticed that the vibrations were different from what she remembered. There were more harmonics being generated than before, which Susan attributed to the damage done by the collision with the asteroid. The more she thought about it the more she realized that there must be more structural damage than just the payload bay door. She scanned the instruments looking for any indication that the burn was stressing the shuttle more than it would tolerate. The vibrations were getting more prominent and Susan checked the time left on the burn, ten more seconds to go. “Hang on baby, just a few more seconds,” she whispered to herself. With two seconds to go an alarm rang out and Susan jumped. Ivan checked the computer display and calmly announced that the pressure leak had increased to a dangerous level. “Everyone stay on the O2 until further notice. We have exceeded the safety threshold on the cabin pressure.”
The engines finally shut down and there was an eerie silence in the shuttle. No one spoke but everyone listened for something unusual, something that did not belong on the shuttle after an engine firing. Susan finally broke the silence, “Paul, get back on the shortwave and see if you can get anything. Ivan, give Jerry a hand and see if you can pin down where that air leak is. I am going to—”
Susan did not finish as a burst of static shot from the comm system followed by a barely intelligible voice “…day…mayday…thi…ir station we are decl…ng an emergency…severely damaged…End…vor can you respond…Mayday, mayd…cy…” Ivan looked at Susan and saw that she was as startled as he was at the outburst from the radio. It was so broken up and laced with static that neither of them understood it initially; it was only after it was repeated in Russian that Ivan realized what they were hearing and who was sending. “MIR!” he shouted.
“MIR?” Susan’s eyes snapped wide open as she realized the implications of a message from MIR. “Oh, damn it! They must have flown right into the debris plume! They never had a chance! Ivan, see if you can get a link set up with MIR,” Susan commanded, as she started typing feverishly on her keyboard.
In the background Susan could hear Ivan sending out a message alternating between Russian and English but was too busy to listen to what he was saying. She was running a program that would show the position of the Soviet space station relative to their new orbit and give her information on the mechanics of a rendezvous with MIR. While the computer crunched the numbers, she thought about their situation. Even if they could get to MIR they could not get back to Earth. It would just delay the inevitable and they would all die from lack of oxygen long before the shuttle’s orbit decayed and it burned up in the atmosphere on reentry. They would all need help before too long, and there was no one else around to provide it.
As she stared at the computer display it suddenly produced a graphic showing the Earth, looking down from a point of view
“Ivan, this ship is not going back home. The payload bay door was damaged when the arm was ripped off and will not close. There’s no way we will survive reentry. If we pass through the stuff the asteroid kicked up, we won’t have to worry about anything.”
Ivan stared into Susan’s helmeted face for a moment, searching for a glimmer of hope, as their situation just grew a lot darker than he initially thought. He turned back to the control panel, “Burn in…two…one…ignition!” he said as he hit the switch to fire the engines. Everyone was pushed back into their seats or if they were standing, against the bulkheads as the shuttle accelerated beneath them.
The ship vibrated as the engines fired and Susan noticed that the vibrations were different from what she remembered. There were more harmonics being generated than before, which Susan attributed to the damage done by the collision with the asteroid. The more she thought about it the more she realized that there must be more structural damage than just the payload bay door. She scanned the instruments looking for any indication that the burn was stressing the shuttle more than it would tolerate. The vibrations were getting more prominent and Susan checked the time left on the burn, ten more seconds to go. “Hang on baby, just a few more seconds,” she whispered to herself. With two seconds to go an alarm rang out and Susan jumped. Ivan checked the computer display and calmly announced that the pressure leak had increased to a dangerous level. “Everyone stay on the O2 until further notice. We have exceeded the safety threshold on the cabin pressure.”
The engines finally shut down and there was an eerie silence in the shuttle. No one spoke but everyone listened for something unusual, something that did not belong on the shuttle after an engine firing. Susan finally broke the silence, “Paul, get back on the shortwave and see if you can get anything. Ivan, give Jerry a hand and see if you can pin down where that air leak is. I am going to—”
Susan did not finish as a burst of static shot from the comm system followed by a barely intelligible voice “…day…mayday…thi…ir station we are decl…ng an emergency…severely damaged…End…vor can you respond…Mayday, mayd…cy…” Ivan looked at Susan and saw that she was as startled as he was at the outburst from the radio. It was so broken up and laced with static that neither of them understood it initially; it was only after it was repeated in Russian that Ivan realized what they were hearing and who was sending. “MIR!” he shouted.
“MIR?” Susan’s eyes snapped wide open as she realized the implications of a message from MIR. “Oh, damn it! They must have flown right into the debris plume! They never had a chance! Ivan, see if you can get a link set up with MIR,” Susan commanded, as she started typing feverishly on her keyboard.
In the background Susan could hear Ivan sending out a message alternating between Russian and English but was too busy to listen to what he was saying. She was running a program that would show the position of the Soviet space station relative to their new orbit and give her information on the mechanics of a rendezvous with MIR. While the computer crunched the numbers, she thought about their situation. Even if they could get to MIR they could not get back to Earth. It would just delay the inevitable and they would all die from lack of oxygen long before the shuttle’s orbit decayed and it burned up in the atmosphere on reentry. They would all need help before too long, and there was no one else around to provide it.
As she stared at the computer display it suddenly produced a graphic showing the Earth, looking down from a point of view
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