Free Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 by Sky Masters (v1.1) Page B

Masters’ launch control officer, Helen Kaddiri, announced. Kaddiri was the
chief of Masters’ operations staff and the senior launch- control officer, in
charge of monitoring all flight systems throughout each mission. In her early
forties, exotically attractive, she’d been bom and raised in Calcutta . She and her parents immigrated to the United States when she was twelve and she changed her
name from Helenika to Helen. She was a completely career-minded scientist who
sometimes found it very frustrating working for someone like Jon Masters.
                She regarded Masters warily with her
dark, beautiful, almond-shaped eyes as he studied the command console. Masters
was so relaxed and laid-back that all the uptight techno-types he worked with,
especially those developing new space technologies, got really rankled—herself
included. Maybe it was because Masters seemed to treat everyone and everything
the same ... like work was one big beach party.
                The government officials they dealt
with almost always shuddered when working with Masters. Even socializing with
him was a strain. Kaddiri thought that every time they got a new government
contract was a matter of luck. If it weren’t for his genius . . .
                “Fourteen minutes to launch window
one,” she said.
                “Thanks, Helen,” Jon replied. He
pushed his baseball cap up higher on his forehead, which made him look even
younger—like “Beaver” Cleaver. “Let’s get Roosevelt-One in position and ready.”
                Kaddiri grimaced at another of
Masters’ quirks—he named his boosters, not just numbered them. He usually named
them after American presidents or Hollywood actors or actresses. Helen thought that if Jon had a dog, he would probably
number it instead.
                Jon swung his headset microphone to
his lips: “Crew, Roosevelt-1 is moving stage center. Stand by.”
                The interior of Masters’ converted
DC-10 was arranged much like the firing mechanism of a rifle. Like a cartridge
magazine, the two boosters were stored side by side in the forward section of
the one-hundred-twenty-feet-long, thirty- foot-wide cargo bay, which afforded
plenty of room to move around the fifty-feet-long, four-foot-diameter rockets
and their stabilizers. Forward of the storage area was the control center, with
all of the booster monitoring and control systems, and forward of the control
room was a pressure hatch which led to the flight deck—for safety’s sake, the
flight deck was sealed from the cargo section so any pressurization
malfunctions in the cargo end would not prevent the flight crew from safely
recovering the plane.
                The back fifty feet of the cargo
hold was occupied by a large cylindrical chamber resembling the breech end of a
shotgun, composed of heavy steel and aluminum with numerous thick Plexiglas
viewports all around it. The boosters would roll down a track in the center of
the cargo hold into the chamber, and the chamber would be sealed from the rest
of the aircraft. Just prior to launch, the chamber would be depressurized
before opening the “bomb-bay” doors. With this system, the entire cargo section
of the aircraft did not have to be depressurized before launch. Floodlights and
high-speed video cameras inside the launch chamber and outside the DC-10 launch
plane were ready to photograph the entire launch sequence.
                With two of Kaddiri’s assistants
with flashlights watching on either side, the first forty-three-thousand-pound
space booster began rolling on its tracks toward the center of the cabin. The
crew, especially the cockpit crew of two pilots and engineer, had to be
notified whenever one of these behemoth rockets was being moved. Whenever they
moved a rocket, the flight engineer had to begin transferring fuel to the side
where the booster was moved to keep the launch