CHAPTER ONE
19 miles above the Western Coast of Africa
March 22, 5:45 P.M., Central Daylight Time
“So, Senator?” Colonel Timothy Malo said. “What are you going to tell the press when you land? It’s got to be something for the ages.”
“Why?” Senator Yvonne Malo replied. “I’m not even the oldest politician who has gone into space.”
“True, but John Glenn is not the sitting chair of the Subcommittee on Space and Science. You are. C’mon. Your astutest critic wants to know.”
Senator Yvonne Malo smiled. She had no idea—had not even thought about it. Strapped to her couch, forming a circle with her three crewmates, the woman looked up through the large window over her head. The gold tint of her helmet’s face mask killed the glare from inside the spacecraft so that all she saw were stars and blackness.
The three days of talking to the scientists, of watching them dry-run equipment, of conducting Senate business from low Earth orbit—that was a first—and of learning to eat, sleep, and use the toilet in zero-gravity, all that had been big and preoccupying.
“You’ve got about thirty seconds until I’ve got to return the mike,” her husband pressed.
“Okay, Colonel. I’ll tell those pudknockers that space flight is like sex,” the outspoken Arizonan replied. “You can take the classes, you can watch the videos, you can use your imagination. But nothing can prepare you for the reality. What do you think?”
Her husband laughed. “Can I take that as a compliment?”
“You most certainly may.”
“Bless ya, girl. That’s as good a sign-off as I can think of. I’ll let CAPCOM know that our PTC has ended.”
“I love you, too, and I’ll see you within an hour.”
The line went cold for a few seconds as her partner of forty years terminated the private-time communication. It was a chat allowed each astronaut before the fiery and dangerous reentry. The next voice the sixty-three-year-old heard was the capsule communicator letting them know that their automated deorbit burn was just two minutes, thirty seconds away.
Senator Malo settled back into the couch of the Phoenix One. The seat was comprised of two sections connected by a flexible joint, assisting blood flow and decreasing the gravitational forces of leaving and returning to the Earth. Its recliner was not so much comfortable as reassuring, holding her space-suited-self snug and plugged in to all communications, air, and the electronic heads-up display. She kept that turned off since the readouts were foreign to the onetime rodeo rider and obstructed her view of space.
She thought about what she had told her husband. It was no exaggeration. The maiden voyage of NASA’s new research ship had been a powerful, emotional experience. It was incalculably larger-than-life, from the ferocious thrust of liftoff, through the rattling climb when she feared her bones as well as the rocket would come apart, to the sudden onset of weightlessness. Below the crew section was the science module that was designed to conduct experiments for which the International Space Station was not equipped—or that the Department of Defense did not wish to share with the international community.
“Heatshield alignment in progress,” she heard Commander Dick Siegel say. He was in the seat directly to her left in an array she jokingly referred to as “our pie chart.”
“Azimuth nominal,” CAPCOM answered.
The spacecraft system was fully automated, the exchange simply confirming that both crew and command center were reading the same data.
“Deorbit burn in two minutes—mark,” Commander Siegel said.
“Roger that,” CAPCOM replied.
It was a surreal moment for the senator, weightless and waiting. With nothing tangible happening and the universe sprawled before her, time did not seem to exist. Except for memory, it was like being a fetus—
And then everything but the stars went away. For a moment, Senator Malo wondered if one of the crewmembers had pushed something by accident. But there was no activity that she could hear or see.
“Commander?” she said into the ominously silent darkness.
Copyright © 2023 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S&R Literary, Inc
