Skyfall

One man had been calling for attention since the interview had begun and Minford could ignore him no longer. “Mr. Redditch,” he said.

The Newsweek correspondent was one of the senior men present, well known to all the reporters. They quieted, waiting for his questions, knowing he could speak for most of them.

“I appreciate your arguments, Dr. Flax,” Redditch said. “But aren't you referring to far smaller boosters than this one?”

“Possibly. But the scale isn't that great.”

“Isn't it?” There was frank unbelief in Redditch's voice. “This type of booster is bigger than any other, and Prometheus is many times bigger than the booster. Is that not correct?”

“Yes, but…”

“So forget the booster for the moment. What would happen if Prometheus itself slammed back to the Earth? Wouldn't it make one hell of a hole in the ground?”

“But Prometheus is not going to return to Earth.” Flax could feel the sweat trickling down inside his shirt. “It's already in orbit and will soon be firing its engine and going into higher orbit.”

“Isn't it in now what is called a decaying orbit? Is it not true that if the engine does not fire soon that the entire satellite itself could plummet back to Earth after contact with the atmosphere? Is it not true that this decaying orbit will not last more than eighteen hours more?”

Flax did not know what to say. Where had he gotten those figures? Someone had talked — they were NASA's own figures. What the hell could be done?

Dillwater saved his bacon. Cool and calm as always he coughed into the microphone and nodded in Redditch's direction.

“There has been too much loose talk today,” he said. “Unfounded speculation by a certain irresponsible minority. You gentlemen of the press are absolutely correct in your attitude, in your questions. You have heard these speculations and you wish to know about them. To determine the truth, if there is any truth, to lay to rest rootless and absurd speculations, dangerous speculation I might say, if that be the case. You are not gossip mongers, but representatives of a free press dedicated to telling the truth---”

“Well, could we have some?” Redditch said, unimpressed. “My question still stands. If, at the end of the sixteen-hour period, Prometheus hits the atmosphere — what is going to happen?”

“Nothing. Because Prometheus is not going to do that. As we are talking here the fusion engine is being tested and will soon be building up thrust. There have been difficulties and they have been surmounted. We are on our way.”

Oh, baby, you had better be right, Flax thought. You had better be very, very right. His fingers crept out, unseen by the newsmen, to the back of the podium, where he knocked, ever so lightly, on wood.

20

GET 05:39

“It looks like it belongs in a submarine,” Coretta said, looking down at the round hatch with a handwheel in its center that was set into the floor of the crew compartment.

“It serves the same function,” Patrick said, turning hard on the wheel. Ely had anchored himself and was holding Patrick's legs, giving him something he could thrust against. “Right now there's just space on the other side of this hatch. The crew compartment and flight deck of Prometheus are a single unit designed to be ejected in an emergency. We sort of shoot out sideways propelled by rockets. Since we didn't eject we can now hook up with NTECS, the Nuclear Tug Engine Control Station which is behind us. The engine room. I'm pulling up a retracted tube now that will seal against the other side here. There! Your turn, Ely. Use the wrench to take all the sealing nuts off.”

It was not easy work. In a few minutes Ely was muttering with exasperation. “Why the devil does it have to be dogged down so hard?” he said, wrestling the wrench to the next stud.

“You know why,” Patrick said, carefully putting the removed nut with the others in the plastic bag hanging from his belt. “There's hard vacuum out there. Any leak would evacuate the engine room and we'd have to operate in suits. But if the pressure readouts are fine we can do it in shirtsleeves — which is much easier.”

Ely fitted the jaws over the last nut and tripped the switch.

The flywheel spun and the nut came free. But he did not kill the motor quickly enough as he lifted the wrench off, so the nut was propelled violently across the compartment to clang loudly into a locker door. The thin metal dented and rebounded, slinging the steel nut back with a good deal of-its energy still remaining. It struck Nadya in the leg and she shouted with pain.

“Ely, you stupid…” Patrick broke off the shout and called to Coretta who was in the flight cabin above. “Coretta, down here at once!”

He shoved Ely aside rudely, in fact using the other man's shoulder to launch himself across the compartment. Nadya was floating in a small circle, holding her wounded calf in both hands as the blood seeped through the fabric. Patrick reached her, pulled her down towards the couch.

“It's not much,” she said. “I was just surprised at the suddenness…”

“Let's see it.”