He understands. The twin tail booms are in the up position for reentry, yet the left one is not locked, and the increasing pressure of the airflow is trying to force it down. If that happens, he’ll start spinning and speeding up until either the gyroscopic forces or the overheating kills him.

Kip pulls the other checklist to his lap from its storage slot and pages through, amazed that he isn’t frantic. He flips to the section covering major emergencies and locates the one labeled “Strut Up-latch Unsafe Warning during Reentry.” The first step is to verify the hydraulic pump is still on, and he looks at the appropriate part of the panel.

The switch is on. But the pressure is zero, indicating the pump has failed.

Ever so slowly, as he looks at the horizon, Intrepidbegins to rotate to the left.

There is a manual procedure, Kip sees, listed in the text, and at first it confuses him. Apparently a cable of some sort can be pulled to secure the up-latch, but the g-forces have already begun to build, and, as the gyration to the left begins to become noticeable, the reentry deceleration force is progressively raising the weight of the arm he has to use to open a panel he’s never seen beneath his left leg.

The fact that in less than a minute he’ll be pinned to the command seat by upward of five g’s registers, and Kip snaps off his seat belt and shoulder harness and dives forward, his hand scrambling around the lower left kick panel, finding several different recessed latches. He struggles to peer over the edge of the seat and read the verbiage on each of them, holding on to the checklist with his right hand. Constant control of the sidestick is unnecessary during this phase, he was told, and he hopes he’s remembered that correctly. The aerodynamic forces are now gripping Intrepid,and the flipped-up twin booms of the tail are the only thing keeping the space plane correctly aligned.

And clearly, the left boom is starting to retract under the air load.

The first panel yields nothing but switches and circuit breakers, but the second is the right one, and Kip finds the left boom T-handle and grabs it just as Bill Campbell’s body tears loose from the Velcro and tumbles forward, slamming into the panel and jamming the little access door partially closed with Kip’s hand still inside.

He feels a flash of pain, along with a burst of unpleasant odor, as the mass of plastic covering Bill’s remains pins his arm, the loads now exceeding two g’s. Kip releases the checklist from his right hand and struggles to shove the body back away from his trapped left hand. There is only one pull possible, and if the boom isn’t in the completely extended position the moment he pulls, he’ll close the locking jaws on nothing.

His fingers close on the checklist.

“Ensure aerodynamic control automatic engagement has occurred.”

There is a light somewhere on the screen. No, not a light, a lighted message. His eyes are blurry, his body straining forward against two and a half g’s now, but he finally sees the words.

Okay. Engaged.

“Pull nose up momentarily to twenty degrees nose high, then pull T-handle.”

Oh, Jesus! Simultaneously, then.

He understands what has to happen. Intrepidis now spinning at several revolutions per minute to the left, and it will get worse as he pulls nose up. But with nose up, the boom should be slammed into the up-locks, and if he pulls on the T-handle at exactly the right moment…

There is no time to think about it and Kip stays hunched over in the seat and unrestrained as he grabs the stick and pulls it back, feeling an amazing increase in g-forces as the belly of the space plane becomes perpendicular to the relative airflow, slowing him. The spin to the left becomes a blur, and he’s having to pull almost to the stops to get twenty degrees nose high.

Now!

His entire body is protesting at the elephant of force that’s just jumped on his back, crunching him down as he hears the boom clang into position. He yanks hard on the T-handle, pulling it out to the stop before the sickening feeling of a broken cable registers in his head. Intrepidhas transitioned back to slightly nose down again, and he realizes the T-handle has come completely out with no resistance on the line.

Oh no!

Something on the forward panel has changed, though, and as he strains to look, the warning light is gone. Somewhere on the left is supposed to be a locked indication, but he feels himself about to pass out, his vision reducing to a tunnel ahead of him as he leans forward against what feels like five g’s, and finally spots it.

Locked! God, I did it!

Kip forces his torso back into the reclined command chair and fumbles for the seat and shoulder harnesses, the very act of getting back in clearing his vision.

One hundred ninety thousand feet,he reads. When his eyes have cleared, he realizes the left spinning is slowly stopping, the world outside slowing from a blur back to identifiable landscape, the curvature of the Earth still pronounced, but the horizon showing a distinct atmospheric glow.

The indicated airspeed is climbing through a hundred and ten knots now, the downward true through-the-airspace velocity slowing toward the speed of sound. His entire body is hurting from the fight with the g-forces and he has to remind himself to look back at the checklist. The procedure is only half complete. If the hydraulic system can’t lock a wayward tail boom, it can’t unlock it and move it downward, either, and with the tail in the flipped-up position, Intrepidis uncontrollable.

The g-forces are slowly diminishing with his speed as he once again concentrates on the checklist items, wondering what other T-handles he’ll have to find.

He’s missed a section, Kip realizes. He never checked to find the circuit breaker for the hydraulic pump, and apparently there’s a backup pump as well.

Once more he leans forward, remembering the slightly higher kick panel compartment with the circuit breakers before recalling the panel of breakers overhead. His head hurts but he forces himself to focus on the placards next to each breaker until he locates one that has, indeed, popped out.

Primary Tail Boom Hydraulic Pump. That’s it!

He pushes the small round button-type breaker in, feeling the click and hearing the tiny mosquitolike whine once more as the forward panel shows the pressure rising.

Thank God!he thinks, realizing he’s solved the problem perhaps too soon. The tail shouldn’t be reconfigured until sixty thousand feet and Intrepidis only coming through a hundred and fifty thousand.

But he’s steady at last, facing generally south, and he thinks he can make out the Rio Grande River as it defines the Texas-Mexico border around El Paso, somewhere to the southwest.

Which means I’m coming down in southeastern New Mexico.

The computer map is still not showing and he attacks that problem now in frustration, searching for the right button before the map suddenly swims into view on the lower screen, his position clearly indicated over the moving map of New Mexico.

One hundred two thousand.

As soon as the tail is realigned he’ll be a flyable glider with only one chance at landing. He can glide miles in any direction then, but where should he go?

Somewhere on the panel he knows there’s a switch or a button that’s supposed to project potential landing sites, but he can’t tell where it is.

He strains to look outside, but he’s still too high to make out a strip of concrete a mile or two long.