Chad watched his entry monitoring panel, the large black arrow showing roll angle, the small digital readouts showing g and distance to go. He ran his thumb down the checklist and warned, “Here it comes!”
The sudden onslaught of force was vicious. In just 15 seconds the g slammed from zero to seven times their normal weight, pinning their heads hard back inside their helmets, forcing their arms down onto their chests, crushing them into their seats.
Svetlana could feel the skin of her face being pulled backwards, the strained tautness across her cheeks, her eyes watering to try to fight the brutality.
Michael gasped. “Hhhard to breathe!” he grunted. Pulling oxygen into his lungs felt like weight-lifting; he had to deliberately force his chest to expand, pushing his ribs forward.
Yet as soon as it was there it was gone, backing off to just 3 g as the capsule pulled out of its initial steep dive, settling into a shallower angle, racing and falling through the air. Chad knew the profile. “A couple minutes here, then we’ll peak again.”
They were on their own. The communications failure they’d had after launch had returned as soon as they’d jettisoned the lower Service Module, as expected. And even if the radios had been working, the glowing plasma field was blocking the antennas.
Pursuit was a fireball, plummeting earthward with the first step complete, now rolling precisely in readiness for the second g-spike.
Ever since the Apollo craft’s launch day, the Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin communications relay ship had been steaming northwards across the Pacific to be in position to observe splashdown. She was now just over the horizon from the USS New Orleans, her huge twin tracking antennas pointed along the expected entry trajectory. As the capsule emerged from the heavy g-load, still 170,000 feet up and racing towards the waiting ships, the Gagarin’s systems found it and locked on.
The antenna operator said, “We have it, Captain. Exactly on track.”
The Captain nodded and pointed at his communications officer. “Let them know.” The lieutenant typed rapidly, and the coded message left the ship, relaying up through distant satellites and back down on the other side of the world to TsUp in Moscow. There, the flight director waved for Chelomei’s attention and pointed to his screen.
Chelomei read the text and nodded. Pa paryadkeh. So far, so good.
A hundred miles to the northeast of the Gagarin, Kaz was on the bridge of the New Orleans, standing beside Al Shepard and the attaché, Stepanov. He checked his watch and glanced at the timings in his notebook, providing a running commentary for Captain Carius. “They’re six hundred miles out now, sir, with the second g-spike to go, expecting drogue chute opening in just under six minutes.”
Carius nodded. “And how long until splashdown?”
“The drogue will pull out the three main parachutes, and then they’ll be under those for another five minutes, so into the water in about ten minutes.” With no radio communication, Kaz was just guessing, using predicted times. The New Orleans would receive the capsule’s homing beacon as soon as the deploying parachutes triggered it. Then they’d know for sure.
Carius turned to his executive officer. “XO, what’s 501’s status?”
“She cleared the deck ten minutes ago with our team and the NASA doc on board, and is on station.” The XO pointed forward and left of the bow, where the white of the Sea King helicopter was just visible above the blue horizon. Carius raised his binoculars and could make out the large 501 painted on her tail.
“The helo crew’s reporting pretty choppy seas, Boss, five-foot swells.”
Shepard gave a low whistle. “That’s worse than it was for my crew, Bob. More like what they saw on Apollo 12.” He grimaced. “Poor suckers’re gonna puke.”
Bob Carius smiled. “That’s what you get when you fly Air Force astronauts, Admiral.”
The Captain had one more question. “XO, we seeing anyone else in the area?”
The XO deliberately didn’t look at Stepanov, who’d been listening, stone-faced. “We’ve got the Soviet comm relay ship, the Gagarin, just over a hundred miles out along the entry track. Normal enough, and to be expected with a cosmonaut on board this time.” He didn’t mention what the captain already knew: they’d deployed several sonobuoys but had heard no sounds of any submarine activity. No sub had ever shadowed a previous splashdown, but the New Orleans was an anti-sub ship, and the XO was just being thorough.
Carius smiled. “So apart from maybe needing some sick bags, I think the good ship New Orleans is ready to pipe aboard three new crewmembers.”