Brown, Dale - Independent 01 by Silver Tower (v1.1) Page A

twang it
meant—
                It felt as
if a freight train had just rumbled out of nowhere right beside her—from
near-quiet to ear-splitting sound—as the solid rocket boosters ignited. She
couldn’t help letting out a gasp as the solid rocket boosters, the SRBs,
exploded into action. In three seconds the thrust beneath her had been
multiplied by a factor of five; now the fury of over six million pounds of
thrust was alive, and Enterprise had not yet even left earth.
                Suddenly a
huge hand pressed against her chest, causing her to involuntarily expel air in
a grunt. Stars clouded her vision, but she could see the launch service tower
drop from view.
                Airborne.
                “ Enterprise , you have cleared the tower. Engines
look good.” Ann was surprised to see Will and Sontag reaching up to their
forward instrument panels; she tried to raise her hand against the “g” forces,
found they were light but building. Soon even lifting one hand took effort.
                “Control,
this is Enterprise . Main engines at
sixty-five percent. Over.”
                “Roger, Enterprise . Standing by for max Q.”
                Ann
clutched the armrests of her seat. Here came one of the most critical moments
of the launch—the moment when all of the dynamic pressures affecting the
shuttle were—
                “Max Q,
Control. Main engines one hundred percent.”
                “Roger,
people. Very pretty launch. Spectacular. Out.”
                That was
it? No earth-shaking rumble, no squashed face, no blasts of Vulcan heat? The
“g” forces were noticeable, but Ann had felt worse lots of times.
                “Coming up
on SRB burnout, Control.”
                The solid
rocket boosters burned out and were jettisoned precisely on schedule, under
computer control. Enterprise was now several hundred miles west of Mexico on its southern pole-to-pole trajectory. The SRB motor casings, each floating
to earth under three one- hundred-fifteen-foot-diameter parachutes, would be
retrieved over the Pacific Ocean .
                Enterprise 's ride was somewhat different from
other shuttle flights. First, Enterprise was following an eccentric
elliptical polar orbit instead of a circular equatorial orbit. And second, Enterprise was climbing
to an altitude of one thousand miles so that it could rendezvous with Silver Tower as it traveled in high orbit.
Because of fuel limitations, previous shuttle flights had been limited to a
maximum altitude of about seven hundred miles above earth.
                It was
several hours before Will finally announced: “Welcome to space, crew. OMS bum
is complete. We are in orbit.” Relief washed across everyone’s face.
                “We’re within a few miles of Silver Tower ’s orbit,” Sontag reported
over interphone. “We saved ourselves a few hundred pounds of fuel on that bum,
so we have a small safety margin. I’m estimating linkup with Silver Tower in two hours—it’s about
fifteen thousand miles ahead of us, but we’re gaining .. .. Marty, you’re clear to open the cargo bay doors. After that you’ll all be
cleared to unstrap to begin system checkouts. Kevin, check the middeck for any
damage or anything out of place.”
                Schultz and
Baker acknowledged Sontag’s call and began to unstrap. Ann looked on as
Schultz’s straps began to float around his vacated seat before he resecured
them.
                “Remember,”
Schultz said, “even though you’re weightless up here in orbit, your body still
has mass that you need to overcome, which means stopping yourself after you get
moving.”
                “So I
noticed,” Baker mumbled after he’d unstrapped and promptly collided head-first
with the ceiling.
                Schultz
watched as Baker