Chapter 31

General Stroganoff was unhappy.

How was he supposed to accomplish his mission when so little was known? He’d finally realized that Colonel Kotcheff was less of an imbecile than he’d thought. Not that he would ever mention his new-found respect to Kotcheff! Better to keep him anxious, on his toes. The man might actually have done as much as he could, considering the other imbecile he’d worked for! It was like punching a pillow, nothing was known other than that the damned Americans were flying something, perhaps an antigravity device. How else could the ship in the satellite photos float so close to the ground, no propeller, no jet, nothing?

Could it be ... was someone at Army headquarters doing the same thing to him, to General Stroganoff? Was this a plot to ruin him, send him into a situation tailor-made for failure? That divisional command assignment he’d coveted, someone else might have been mentioned! Someone with connections as good as his!

Damn them! Failure would ruin him, maybe see him shuttled off to a backwater posting somewhere in the Middle East! But perhaps it was not too late? After all, he had assets here, including people and an expanded budget. But how to use them? What would his superiors accept? Certainly not what he’d accomplished since arriving!

General Stroganoff wasn’t panicking, not yet; after all, he was a veteran of Army infighting. There must be something!

“Kotcheff! Get in here!”

The ship finally had a name, Farside.

Will found Chuck supervising installation of the second refueling probe, this one on the port wing. The probes, located at the very ends of the wings, were designed to connect to tanks on the designed-but-not-yet-built orbital refueling station. New shipboard pumps, located near the probes, would transfer the fuel from the station to the Farside’s tanks, which had pumps of their own to supply fuel and oxygen to the fuel cells.

The original idea of allowing the them to take ambient oxygen from the chamber in the ship’s aft compartment had required a number of redesigns when the cells were moved to the hull. The ship’s lines, originally sleek, now had lumpy external mounts that held the impellers and the fuel cells. There might be an aerodynamic fairing over them at some point, but so far there had been no time to fabricate one. For now, the task was to finish moving the generating and propulsion systems to the outer skin, install redesigned plumbing, then find out if the arrangement worked.

The Farside’s plumbing had evolved from something fairly simple into an extremely complicated arrangement. Joe and his team were convinced it would work, but Chuck had doubts enough that he wanted to make sure that no slight oversight would strand the ship in space. This was, after all, the only space-capable craft they had, and swapping a fuel tank for an oxygen tank had halved the Farside’s hydrogen storage.

Chuck discussed this with Will. “I don’t want to say anything to Joe, but I keep thinking that what started out as a simple craft now resembles the ships that blew up before they ever got to space. Or came apart on the way down. The shuttle was second or maybe third generation, it was always complicated, never really safe, and it showed. Four were built, they were thoroughly inspected and essentially rebuilt between missions, but even so, two of them blew up. Even a simple thing like a gasket can cause failure, and when it happens in space, it’s catastrophic. The refueling system is necessary, I agree, but we’ve added a whole lot of extra connections and gaskets to what started out as a relatively simple ship!”

“I’ve been thinking about that too, Chuck. That first flight to altitude, I know we’d tested the bird from tip to tail, but even so I was puckered until we got back. As for a rescue vehicle, it’s possible we could fly the Twin into low orbit if we had to. Keep the batteries fully charged until the turbogenerators flame out, maybe even add an oxygen bleed system to increase the altitude where that happens. The only thing that kicks the generators offline right now is lack of oxygen from the air, so the idea is that we burn atmospheric oxygen until there’s not enough, then supplement that from onboard tanks. Enriching the airflow might give us another ten thousand feet, maybe more. No one’s ever tried this, at least as far as I know. They didn’t need to, they always lost lift before they ran out of air for the engines. Our wings or airfoils won’t work either, but as long as we’ve got electric power we don’t really need them; the impellers substitute just fine.”

“No way you’re going to pressurize that cabin, Will! It was never designed for that, and a redesign would add too much weight. Adding a couple of extra battery packs is out too; you’re reaching the limit, where the extra charge you gain is offset by the impellers having to lug the extra weight. Diminishing returns, in other words.”

“I anticipated the problem with cabin pressure. I thought about reducing pressure to something the cabin can take, maybe a tenth of an atmosphere. The new door seals should tolerate that, and the maintenance crew has been over the cabin, plugging leaks. It’s essentially a sealed capsule, thin, but maybe good enough to keep us alive, with wings and aerodynamic controls attached. It won’t be quite as bad as working in the vacuum of space. If the pressure is high enough, the automatic systems won’t kick in. The gee tubes on the arms, legs, and the torso won’t inflate, so we’ll retain a lot more flexibility.”

“Maybe,” Chuck said skeptically. “In an emergency, it might be worth a try, but we don’t know how the plane would react if we exceeded, say, 100,000 feet. The service ceiling is less than half that, so we might end up with one of us stuck in space too.”

“I plan to try it tomorrow,” Will revealed, “a limited trial, not using the oxygen bleed system we talked about, but just take it to max altitude where the controls get mushy and see how it handles. I’ll be on battery after the turbos quit, so I’ll have impeller propulsion and attitude control if I need it. I expect it to spin, but I think that with the impellers online, it’s safe enough. Want to come along as copilot? There’ll be a lot to do, and I could use the help.”

“Sure, but my weight added to the plane’s gross will affect your numbers.”

“I won’t get final numbers,” Will admitted, “but I’ll at least get some idea of whether it’s feasible. I’ll also get a better idea of how long it takes to discharge the batteries. I won’t go below half charge, that’s enough to get us down if I can’t restart the turbogenerators after reentry.”

“When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a wakeup call when I’m ready. Get a good night’s sleep, remember to wear your pressure suit. We’ll be on suit internal pressure and heat until we get back to safe altitude. I’ll start bleeding off cabin pressure as soon as we pass 10,000 feet and watch for signs of a blowout all the way up. We’ll already be plugged into the cabin’s electricity and oxygen supply, so the suit’s emergency pack will remain fully charged in case something fails. Low bulk meal tonight, no bathrooms available for maybe as much as four hours after we take off. Cleaning the suits afterward ... nah. Better to be prepared.”

“See you tomorrow morning, Will. This sounds like fun!”

Chuck groaned and stretched. It seemed as if he’d only just gone to bed, but a glance at the digital clock mounted on the wall told him it was almost 8:00 am. Swinging out of bed, he walked into the bathroom.

Why hadn’t Will called him? Had he missed the call, maybe Will found someone else to fly with him? He picked up the intercom phone and pushed the ring button. While he waited for an answer, he looked at the other bed. It wasn’t occupied, so where was Mel? He would normally finish work before morning and be sleeping now.

Chuck laid down the phone, shocked. Will hadn’t flown after all, and Mel wouldn’t be sleeping in the bed again. He’d crashed during the night while flying the Bedstead.

Frenchy was waiting when Chuck walked in. “Grab a cup of coffee and we’ll talk.”

Subdued, Chuck nodded. He joined Will, and Lina at the table. “What do we know?”

“Mel’s gyros locked up, the computers crashed, and as near as we can tell the chute failed. The lines were twisted around each other when the riders found the wreckage, and Mel was still strapped in the seat. We think he came down from at least two hundred feet, maybe as much as a thousand, although he wasn’t supposed to go that high during this test. But the body was pretty mangled, which made me think he’d gone higher than intended, and he was killed instantly.”

“Damn! We talked about the high altitude tests, I intended to do them before I got tied up with the ship. I should have been flying the Bedstead!”