“Sondra!” Brad exclaimed. “We’re going to rendezvous with you! Hang on!”
There was silence for a long time, and Brad’s mouth was quickly turning dry. Then they heard in the tiniest of voices: “Brad?”
“Sondra, don’t worry,” Brad said. “We’ll be there as fast as we can!”
“Brad? I . . . I’m sorry. I . . .”
“Sondra!” Brad cried out. “Hang on! We’ll rescue you! Hang on!” But as they watched the crippled space station spin away, they knew it would not be possible to try a rescue.
BLACK ROCK DESERT
NORTH OF RENO, NEVADA
ONE WEEK LATER
Defying federal orders, thousands of vehicles of every description were parked at the edge of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada at the terminus of Highway 447 to witness something that no one believed they would ever see in their lifetimes. The Black Rock Desert was the home of the world-famous Burning Man Festival, where thousands of artists, adventurers, and counterculture free spirits gathered every summer to celebrate freedom and life . . . but this would be a day on the playa that would represent death.
“I guess it is returning home,” Brad McLanahan said. He was seated in a lawn chair on the roof of a rented RV. Beside him on one side was Jodie Cavendish, on the other was Boomer Noble, and behind them, clearly separating himself from the others, was Kim Jung-bae. They had just concluded a series of press interviews with the dozens of news agencies that had come out to witness this incredible event, but now they had broken away from the reporters several minutes before the appointed time so they could be by themselves.
Jodie turned to Jung-bae and put a hand on his leg. “It’s okay, Jerry,” she said. Jung-bae lowered his head. He had been weeping ever since they had arrived on the playa and had refused to talk with anyone. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault,” Jung-bae said. “I am responsible for this.” And for the millionth time since the test firing, he said, “I am so sorry, guys. I am so sorry.”
Brad reflected back on the events over the past week. After realizing they could not rescue the persons trapped in the Midnight spaceplane, he and Boomer had returned to the area where the three lifeboats had been jettisoned before the Russian S-500S missiles had hit the station. Boomer had exited the cockpit, suited up, gone into the cargo bay, and jettisoned the last few remaining pieces of cargo. With Brad at the controls of the Shadow spaceplane, he had maneuvered them to each of the lifeboats, and Boomer reeled them into the cargo bay. After hooking up oxygen, power, and communications cables, they made a transfer-orbit burn and entered the International Space Station’s orbit.
It took almost two days, but they finally rendezvoused with the ISS. Sky Masters had flown up two station technicians on commercial spacecraft to power up the station and bring supplies, and they used the robot arms to attach the lifeboats to docking ports. All of Armstrong’s crewmembers had to spend a night in an airlock pressurized with pure oxygen to ward off nitrogen narcosis, but afterward they were all deemed fit to fly, and they returned to Earth the next day.
Brad’s smartphone beeped a warning. “It’s time,” he said.
They watched and waited. Before long they could see what looked like a star grow brighter and brighter in the cloudless Nevada sky. It grew brighter and brighter, and everyone parked on the playa thought they could actually feel heat from the object . . . and then suddenly there was a tremendous earsplitting sound, like a thousand cannons going off all at once. Car windshields cracked, and cars rocked on their wheels—Brad thought he was going to be jostled right off the roof of the RV.
The star turned into a spectacular ball of fire that grew and grew, trailing fire behind it for a hundred miles, until the ball started to break apart. Seconds later there was another tremendous explosion, and twenty miles to the north the spectators saw a massive ball of fire at least five miles in diameter, followed by a rapidly growing mushroom cloud of fire, sand, and debris. They saw a huge wall of sand and smoke thousands of feet high rushing toward them, but just as they were thinking they should retreat inside their vehicles, the wall began to dissipate, and it thankfully disappeared long before it reached them.
“So long, Silver Tower,” Boomer said. Jung-bae was openly and loudly sobbing behind them, crying in sheer anguish at the thought of his friend Casey Huggins in that maelstrom. “It was nice flying with you, old buddy.”
SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT
THE NEXT EVENING