About thirty people were there already. As Helen got closer, she noticed that they seemed unusually quiet. Many were standing, huddling closer to the monitor instead of watching the sky.
"What's going on?"
"Chinook is in trouble," A.J. answered grimly.
Chinook was the orbital craft Joe had gone up in. "Oh, no. What's wrong?"
"Not sure yet. They were getting funny responses from the hydraulics, and then she went into reentry blackout. We should've heard something by now, but . . ."
"Jesus." Helen knew what that meant. The likelihood was that Chinook had disintegrated on its way down. Joe would have known maybe a few moments of panic, and then . . .
"There she is!"
Helen's head snapped up. High in the distance was a pinpoint of white. It moved slowly and started growing as she watched.
"Still no communications from Chinook," one of the controllers said over the PA. "Craft is still roughly in descent path in apparently controlled glide. Not on optimal approach."
"Mother of God," A.J. muttered, staring at something only his VRD could show him. "Chinook is on fire!"
A moment later, A.J. tied in his enhanced feed from the multiple cameras along the glide path to the publicly visible screen that Helen and the others were watching. Instead of just a tiny dot of an approaching object, Chinook was an ominous daylight comet; a dot with a contrail of white, gray and black smoke, and tiny, grim flashes of flame-orange.
"We have a signal!"
A hiss of static on the PA was suddenly broken with a distorted but mostly comprehensible voice. "—trol, this is Chinook. We are in an emergency descent. Systems mal—"
A roar of interference obscured the signal. Then: "—arginally functional. Landing gear will not deploy. Re*buzzz* foam and emergency crews. Calling on suit radio. Do you copy?"
Helen recognized the voice as that of Major Bruce Irwin, the Chinook's pilot. His Australian accent was unmistakable.
"Roger, Chinook, we copy. What is your fuel status, over?"
"Tried to dump remaining fuel, no go. Still have *frrrz* percent remaining. Fire hazard definite. Suspect exterior fire."
"Confirming exterior fire. Repeat, presence of fire visually confirmed. Can you land?"
Major Irwin's voice held a note of dry humor. "Control, I am positive we can land. Not sure if it will be a good landing, though. Must concentrate on that part. Chinook out."
"How the hell could he even joke about making a good landing? Obviously he won't." That came from Jackie Secord, standing on A.J.'s other side. Her hands were clenched tight to the back of the chair near her.
"He has to," Ken Hathaway said quietly. "The oldest and clearest definition of a good landing is one you can walk away from. And if he doesn't manage that with this . . ."
Chinook was much more clearly visible, streaming black smoke as it wobbled in towards the landing site. It was obvious that the craft was reacting sluggishly to controls, recovering from a tilt with an aching and frightening slowness.
"Come on, come on. . . " A.J. muttered. "You're almost there. Come on, almost there . . ."
Chinook was shedding velocity as well as altitude—that much, at least, was as everyone wanted it. The rumbling boom of its earlier transsonic passage echoed faintly across the desert.
"Chinook now three miles downrange, speed two-fifty-two and dropping—"
"Oh, shit."
Something had finally come loose on the nose. Debris showered up and over, black smoke streaming across the cockpit. The damage spread as though pushed by the winds, and suddenly the cockpit seemed to disintegrate. Inky smoke spewed into the air and Chinook heeled slowly over, executing a dreamlike cartwheeling pirouette in the sky before thundering down to impact on its side, ironically directly in the center of the runway. The orbiter bounced up, spinning and shedding fragments of wing and tail everywhere, and the spectators dove for cover.
Chinook's second landfall was squarely on the tail section, and with a whooshing roar it ignited in an orange-red-black fireball. Something had sheared through the fuel cells. Now nothing but a moving holocaust, the remains of Chinook seared their way down another several hundred yards of runway before shuddering to a flaming halt. Emergency vehicles, already scrambled, skidded to a halt around the wreckage and began trying to extinguish the blaze.
A.J.'s head was bowed, as was Jackie's. Helen tore her gaze from the blazing wreckage that had been bringing Joe Buckley home just moments before. As if she might find understanding and solace, somehow, she traced the trajectory of Chinook back along the trail of smoke.