II
Mission Control at Johnson Space Center was located in building #30, one of a hundred or so buildings that comprised the sixteen-hundred-acre Houston site. Most of the JSC installation consisted of administrative space and laboratories, with only a few core facilities actually dedicated to astronaut training and mission operations. As a senior NASA official once remarked, “NASA could put the giant fifty-story Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on the moon if it wanted to, but there were no rocket engines made that could lift the paperwork required for the project.”
Building #30 was a sprawling structure surrounded by grass, walks and a few trees. Large picture windows in the outer offices looked out over a flat, hazy vista that stretched eastward toward Galveston Bay, and southward toward League City and the Highway 45 expressway. Structures and trees cast sharp, contrasting shadows in the glaring, afternoon sun of a Texas summer day.
Inside, the chief of Mission Control was in the midst of receiving an unsettling piece of information. Big and craggy-visaged, Joe Dykes sat with customary ease behind the wide, executive desk in his fourth-floor office, his back to the expanse of plate-glass window that looked out on the courtyard, the horizon and the cloudless blue vault of the sky. Cool-white fluorescent lighting lent a supporting ambiance to the gray carpet and white walls which were intermittently demarcated by beige metal furniture, potted plants and framed commemorative plaques. It was a pleasant, air-conditioned haven from the sweltering outdoor heat.
Across the oak-grain expanse of his desk, with its neatly organized stacks of paper, Dykes regarded Mark Miller, the Flight Operations Chief from Mission Control, with a quizzical expression. Both men were dressed in shirt sleeves and ties, and looked a bit lost sitting in Dykes’ spacious, but spartanly furnished office.
“What do you mean, lost it?” asked Dykes.
“Exactly that. Two term packages were placed in orbit; now one is there, and the other has vanished. We rechecked the record tapes from the shuttle. Insertion acceleration moments are within a couple of gram-seconds of one another. Unless one got hit by a piece of orbital debris, it ought to be there.”
“Think that could have happened?”
“I don’t know what to think. If it got hit by something, it should be spinning on an erratic path, or at least have left bits and pieces that would be easy to find. So far, not a thing. We haven’t given up. We’re still scanning the orbital track, but I thought you ought to know, just in case the customer calls up and wants to know what’s going on.”
“Whose was it, do you know?”
“No. No names on my paperwork, just the package numbers, vectors, insertion times, etc. We’re just trying to do our routine confirmation of deployed payload. Found the first one right away, right where it’s supposed to be, but we’ve been looking for the other one for twenty hours now. Nothing. Not even gas.” Miller rose to go. “I don’t know what else to tell you at the moment, Joe. I’ll let you know if it turns up.”
“I’d appreciate it, Mark. Thanks!”
“Sure thing,” said Miller as he turned and left through the open doorway.
Dykes picked up the phone. “Denise, get me Bobbie-Jo Hendricks in Customer Relations, please.” A moment later, “BJ, I may have a problem. We lofted two term packages last week, mission twenty-eight, Columbia. One has gone missing. Can you find out whose they were, and points of contact with phone numbers? Yeah, as soon as possible. Thanks!”
An hour later, Dykes sat mystified. He had learned that the missing experiment was officially listed by Kennedy as a pyrolytic metals experiment from the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University. However, Mission Control hadn’t communicated with Stanford, as they ordinarily would have, in order to notify them when insertion was completed and transfer of responsibility had taken place. The reason for the glitch was that there was no mention of the experiment in Houston’s flight operations plan. In fact, it turned out that Stanford’s package hadn’t flown on Columbia, and according to the university, was scheduled aboard Atlantis, slated to launch the following day.
The packing crew at Kennedy had a manifest which indicated they had loaded the Stanford module aboard Columbia, but the Kennedy Payload Inspector, whose signature was on the manifest, said that he had inspected only one term experiment for the Columbia mission, a module belonging to Argonne National Laboratory, and denied having signed a manifest for the Stanford package. He was aware of the module from Stanford, confirmed that it was scheduled for Atlantis, and that it was presently being inspected.
###
The following day, Dykes spoke with Charles Castor from Customer Relations, who had been investigating the incident.
“If it’s an alloying experiment, why is it a term package,” asked Dykes. “Don’t they want the finished melt back for study?”
Castor was a slight, middle-aged man who had the natural ability to look comfortable in a suit. He resembled the rumpled college professors in Walt Disney films who always look at home wearing tweed jackets with elbow patches, a sort of born-to-it, casual look. He always seemed to go through a kind of physical ritual before he said something, as if talking somehow required a particular body position. Dykes thought that perhaps he just used the time to collect his thoughts.
Castor adjusted his glasses, crossed his legs, laced his hands together around his knee, adopted a serious mien, and responded, “The project description states that the hydrogen torch that fires the kiln, and the attendant outgassing from the metals, make it potentially unsafe to perform this particular experiment on board the shuttle. The design parameters for the experiment were all set up through NASA engineering. Because of that, the standard volume limit for experimental modules was extended to two cubic meters so that cameras, telemetry antennae, a spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a heavy testing machine for hardness, malleability and other final properties could be included. It has much larger gas bottles, and an attitude control system. It has a CO2 inventory for propellant, and a guidance system of sorts. Telemetry and transceiver frequencies have been cleared; everything is copacetic.
“Dr. Haas at Stanford is ticked off about all the questions. He says that all the preparations were done months ago, and whatever foul-up we have made, it has nothing to do with his package. He wants to know if his schedule is going to slip because of this.”
Dykes waved his hand dismissively, got up and paced the room. “Tell him no. Tell him that the package we launched was simply misidentified somehow, and that his experiment can go as scheduled. The big questions now are, what did we launch, and why can’t we identify whom it belongs to? It apparently fit the Stanford module dimensions closely enough that the packing crew loaded it without a bleep. All other scheduled payload has been inventoried and accounted for. Nothing is missing. Surely someone didn’t just package a couple of empty oil drums in a payload module, and risk losing a job for a practical joke. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t empty drums. It massed at four hundred and eight kilos.”
“Why didn’t they catch that? Isn’t that a lot for an experiment package?”
“Yes, but like I said, special clearance was obtained.”
Dykes’ face showed surprise, doubt. “You mean, the Stanford experiment weighs the same?”
“To the kilo.”
“Isn’t that just the weight shown on the manifest?”
“No, Joe, the packing crew weighs all payload before stowing it for launch. That is the mass the crew chief logged at the time the package was loaded.”
Dykes simply stared for a moment, then said, “A chill just went up my spine. It’s beginning to sound like this was a very deliberate, well-planned substitution. The odds of two random packages having exactly the same weight and dimensions are astronomical.” Dykes thought a moment. “I’m going to call Clarence Patterson.”
“Don’t you think we should investigate a little more before getting Headquarters in a tizzy? It could just be a simple mistake.”
Dykes stopped pacing and faced Castor. “How? Think about it, Charlie. How could it possibly be just a simple mistake?” Dykes ticked off points on his fingers. “A module the exact size and weight of a legitimate package gets substituted on a shuttle flight. The module has the correct number stenciled on it. It must have even had an inspection tag on it, now that I think about it, otherwise the packing crew wouldn’t have loaded it. The launch manifest lists the package for that flight, on that date, when the real module is not scheduled to go for another nine days. The mission manifest, which is a duplicate copy of the launch manifest, is generated by the same person at the same time, yet the copy Kennedy has is different from what we have. The real module wasn’t even in Inspection then, it was in the warehouse. The warehouse didn’t pull it, Inspection didn’t inspect it, no other package is missing and we can’t find it in orbit, but we sure as hell put something up there.”
Realization dawned in Castor’s eyes, and his face blanched, “You’re thinking some kind of terrorism, aren’t you? My God, Joe! What could it be?”
“Shoe-box nuke maybe, or some kind of bio-weapon. Either one could kill a couple of million people if placed just right. Maybe nothing more harmful than half a ton of propaganda leaflets. Lord, what a coup that would be for one of these lunatic outfits. I just can’t think of a practical reason for doing something like that from space, unless the main intent is to embarrass NASA and the U.S. government.”
Dykes picked up the phone. “I hope I’m wrong about all this, but I’m calling Patterson. Get all tracking stations busy trying to find that thing. Notify NORAD and the Air Force Space Command that we need their assistance in finding an experiment module that strayed off course. Give them dimensions, trajectory and last known coordinates. Do not tell anyone, there or here, what we have been talking about, okay? Not even your wife. If the media gets wind of this, the agency will be crucified, even if nothing bad ever comes of it.”