Sabledrake Magazine
May, 2003
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Good Landing
Copyright © 2003 by Royce Day
Dick brushed at the folds of his blue flight suit, checking for non-existent lint. The creases were so straight that they might have been ironed with a steamroller. The pin at his breast reflected the morning sun brightly.
As he examined himself, he wondered if he shouldn’t have put his Air Force uniform on instead. But no, his flight suit was more a part of himself, like the olive drab g-suit he wore when he flew T-38’s, than any formal uniform. Better to wear something familiar and comfortable today of all days.
When he reached the end of the runway, Virgil was already there, slumped down in a lawn chair, dressed in his usual khaki pants and golf shirt, which was as close to a uniform that he’d tolerate nowadays. A small cooler sat beside him, and four empty beer cans were scattered at his feet.
“Where’s Vladimir?” Dick asked.
Virgil looked up at him and scowled. “Over there, with the families,” he said, jerking his thumb down the flight line. The handsome Russian was mingling with several men and women in their sixties and older, the traditional gifts of bread and cheese under his arm. Most of the older folk were milling around anxiously, looking up expectantly into the clear, cloudless blue sky.
“See it yet?”
“Nah,” Virgil answered. He finished off his beer and chucked away the can. “You in a hurry?”
“No, just wondering.” Dick glanced up at the sky himself, but of course it was still too early to see anything. No, there she was, a tiny white speck glinting in the distance, almost lost in the sunlight.
We have acquired contact. Mission Control reports that the crew is go for touchdown in T minus five minutes, thirty seconds, the announcer’s voice reported. A calm, steady, anonymous voice that would have probably reported Armageddon by simply noting that the Four Horsemen had been spotted in the vicinity of Meggido.
“Piece of shit.”
“What?” Dick glanced down at Virgil, who was sitting a little straighter in his lawn chair, staring up at the sky now, the frown deepening on his face.
“It’s a goddamned piece of shit,” Virgil repeated. He tore off the pull tab from his beer and sipped. “Only a goddamned committee would think it’s a good idea to glue a brickyard to a glider, and then hang it off the world’s biggest drop tank. Never mind slapping two giant Roman candles on either of the thing.”
Dick shrugged. He’d heard this rant before. “You won’t get any argument from me,” he replied.
“Now the Dyna-Soar Program, that would have worked. We could have scaled up the technology, figured it all out, instead of just putting together that flying compromise.”
“It did the job,” Dick pointed out.
“Half a fucking billion dollars per launch. ‘Reusable’ my ass,” Virgil muttered, but he wasn’t addressing Dick anymore. “Might as well have shot gold bricks out of a cannon…”
Mission control reports the shuttle has completed the final S-Turn to bleed off velocity, and is now centered on the runway.
He could see the shuttle clearly now, her nose still pointing down as she continued her controlled plunge towards the ground. Double delta wings supported a boxy, unlovely fuselage, covered in black and gray tiles and white thermal protective fabric. No, the space shuttle was never going to win any beauty contests. She’d always be a truck, not a sports car. Or maybe that had been the problem from the start, having to build a cargo carrier that moved like a Ferrari to get out of the confining atmosphere of Earth.
Preflare.
The shuttle’s nose tilted skyward, slowing her rate of descent as the landing gear doors unfolded and the landing gear dropped down and locked into place. Dick could still remember his first landing in the shuttle, the control stick sweaty in his hand as they fell towards the runway, guided by radar telemetry towards a landing that had to be perfect, for there never were second chances outside the simulator.
“Come on,” he heard Virgil mutter beside him. The older man was looking up at the shuttle as intently as Dick, trying to by force of will it seemed to bring the shuttle in smoothly. “Come down easy, you monster.”
The shuttle’s rear wheels touched the concrete runway, smoking momentarily as they suddenly spun up form zero to over two hundred and thirty miles an hour. The nose gear came down to earth a moment later, and the drag chute popped loose and flew open, a bright orange circle that seemed to form a halo behind the shuttle as the great bird slowly braked to a halt.
The stairs appeared to allow the crew to disembark, and they came down with some trepidation as the crowd of family approached to greet them, in complete disregard of normal procedure. It hardly mattered. The small cluster of orange space suits disappeared into the larger crowd, who were hugging and kissing and saying a hundred variations of “Welcome home.”
“You going to talk to them?” Dick asked. Virgil had stood up now, looking uncertain for the first time today.
“No,” the older man answered. He shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe later. You?”
“Later,” Dick agreed. “Let their families give them the briefing.”
“Yeah.” Virgil crumpled his last can, then folded up his lawn and grabbed the cooler. He gave the shuttle, now sitting alone on the runway, a baleful look. “Piece of shit,” he muttered again, then walked away.
Dick stood there for a long time, until the crew and their families had left along with the smiling Vladimir, and Virgil had disappeared in the distance. A crosswind was blowing across the runway, passing over the now abandoned shuttle, which sat silent. Dick walked up to it, and patted its gray nose.
“Not your fault,” he said. The shuttle did not answer of course. It had no language, beyond the displays of its readouts and the occasional warning alarm. Nevertheless, Dick almost imagined an apologetic sigh coming from it, probably from the wind playing across the control surfaces.
“We saw the telemetry,” Dick continued, one hand still on the nose. “You did everything you could do to correct your descent. You tried. It’s just that some things you can’t compensate for.”
Another wind blown sigh.
“The damage was done before you ever reached orbit,” he went on. “You gave them sixteen more days that they might not have had. Sixteen days to see the Earth from orbit, sixteen days of being that much closer to the stars. You didn’t fail.”
The shuttle did not answer this time. But Dick imagined, with the imagination that the Creator had given man to have the impetus to fly beyond the sky, that she understood him, and forgave herself.
“Go fly,” he said to her. “Go join your sister.”
The runway and blue sky disappeared, and the shuttle folded her gear neatly back into place as they both floated in the blackness of infinity. Then Columbia flew away, engines flaring, to join formation with her sister, Challenger and a handful of tiny capsules that waited for her.
Flying through Creation, to the stars, forever.