Launch on Need by Daniel Guiteras (small books to read txt) 📗

By the morning of flight day 31, Columbia’s LiOH supply would be exhausted, all 69 canisters fully saturated.

The cabin CO2 level would continue to climb with each exhaled breath until a lethal level brought the end.

One by one.

The rats in their cages, the astronauts now in theirs.

Central nervous system depression combined with anesthesia.

Death by asphyxiation.

Just like the rats.

Chapter 24

“HELLO?” Stangley answered with a whisper, trying to be polite to those around him, walking stooped-over until he reached the end of his aisle.

“John?” Claire asked after hearing only background sounds. Then she realized he was still in the press conference.

“Yes, I’m here,” he said, louder, as he cleared the last row of seats.

“John, I thought we could meet down at Lori Wilson Park for a picnic—the birds are out this time of year,” Claire offered in her caramel-smooth voice. It was an incredibly romantic place, their favorite place in Cocoa Beach, with an elevated boardwalk that wound down and through the hammock trees for more than a half-mile.

Stangley waited patiently; with Claire there was always more.

“I found some great cheeses and meats at the market.”

He smiled, “Ah, yeah that all sounds great Claire, we’re just finishing up here. What time were you thinking?” Stangley asked standing at the back of KSC’s press room with all the other reporters who couldn’t let a phone call go unanswered.

“Well,” Claire said, accenting all the right words, “if we meet by three, we can share a bottle of Richard Perry and have a light dinner, and we’ll still have time to catch a movie in town later tonight.”

She had such a way with him; her timing always seemed right. Somehow, she could see into his soul, anticipate his needs and see what he was missing. The sound of her voice energized him, activated what must have been sleeping circuits. She caused these periodic surges in him as if he were a battery that had been placed on a quick-charger.

He loved that she always called with plans, that she’d spent time thinking of them as a couple long before she mentioned a word to him. He loved the mental image of her out walking around downtown Cocoa Beach, shopping for their picnic, her oversized glove-soft leather bag slung from her shoulder, and the way she’d tilt her sunglasses down to peer into the various storefronts. Stangley had seen her do it so many times—selecting uncommon delicacies to keep it interesting, always finding ways to ramp up their relationship to new heights.

Claire was focused on living, always had been, even before the hostile takeover had started.

Stangley glanced at his watch, “Three will be fine.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” Claire added.

“Claire?”

“Yes, John?”

“This is why I love it when you come on these trips with me.”

“Why is that, John?” Claire replied, knowing she had him.

Stangley found himself fumbling. Twelve years of marriage, and still she could rouse him with just a few words—simple words that let him know her love.

“You’re an incredible woman, Claire.”

“Love you, too,” she said, and ended the call.

“In a few minutes… actually any minute now, we expect to hear from the president…”

Stangley thought he had heard a voice that sounded like Stephanie Lance from CNN. It sounded like a small fragment of reality, but the sound seemed to originate off in the distance.

Then he resumed his favorite dream of Claire, as if he’d been whisked from reality, lured like an addict by his chosen poison.

Stangley drove south from the Kennedy Space Center that day after attending a press conference for STS-81, a mission to dock Atlantis with the Russian Space Station Mir. It was January 1997, and the air was a perfect 71 degrees. He was back behind the wheel of the silver Buick Century rental car, 10 miles per hour over posted, windows down along highway A1A, music blasting, 22 minutes away from his beach park picnic with Claire.

“He will be speaking tonight from the Oval Office at the White House… our camera crews are in place—we will have live coverage for you…”

That reporter’s voice again, the heavy anchor of reality. Something about the president. President’s speech. Live coverage. Did I leave the TV on? Stangley wondered.

He fought desperately to stay with the dream.

Cool, coarse sand under his bare feet, and as he approached, Claire’s smile, blazing like the first rays of an August morning sun. Place settings for two, four different cheeses, barbecued shrimp, grilled chicken strips wrapped in Mozzarella and glazed with a hint of basil mayonnaise, summer sausage sliced diagonally, wine splashing their palettes in notes of blackberries, currant fruit, and a hint of espresso…

She was slipping away. His cinnamon-swirl blonde with the beautiful smile was slipping away. Stangley’s most treasured memory of her, overplayed as it was, was losing its fidelity.

Stangley’s eyes opened. Supine on his hotel bed, back in Cocoa Beach, alone.

“… He is expected to address not only the American people, but also the international community. He will also be reaching out to the people of India and Israel, in what has turned out to be an incredible story, really, of seven astronauts and their damaged spacecraft. We are told … all right I’m told that the president is ready…”

Stangley sat up.

“My fellow Americans, earlier today we learned the stunning news about our Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew. Just five days ago, Columbia blasted off from America’s spaceport at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She carried with her an international crew, seven brave astronauts who voluntarily left Earth for a 16-day science mission. They were poised to gain new knowledge about life on Earth and life in space from their orbiting laboratory. But now we know the lives of these seven astronauts are in peril.

“Approximately eighty-one seconds after Columbia lifted off from her launch pad, a large piece of insulating foam broke away from the shuttle’s external fuel tank and