Captain Billy Chunk: Cold Bay or Bust!

Cheese and Crackers! What is that Captain Billy Chunk up to now? Well, suspend your disbelief and grab a steaming cuppa of Folger's, light up a Camel no filter & enjoy this tangled mess of a yarn.....

Captain Billy Chunk: Cold Bay or Bust!

Chapter One: Mouth of the Rat

Magnus was cold. Magnus was old. He had been cold since birth, there in the shadow of his big brother Wernher. He had been cold at Peenemunde with the chill North Wind blowing off the Baltic Sea watching his big brother's firework show. Now, 86 years old, he was in Florida and cold.

A warm Florida was part of the deal. A cold Florida was not part of deal. Operation Paperclip came with a lifetime guarantee many decades ago. Perhaps, mused Magnus, it was his lifetime running out that put the kibosh on the deal.

Magnus's downward spiral of health had changed his place of residence. From a comfortable bungalow in balmy Coral Gables to the now chilly Room 224 at the optimistically named Restorative Care Center nursing home in Boca Raton. It seemed the Fountain of Youth title was previously claimed by the town of St. Augustine. Magnus held suspect both entities reputed powers of recuperation at the same dubious level.

A southbound spiral of frigid air had also decided to change it residence. From the icy Arctic to tropical Florida. For the past week it been chilling things down. However, most irksome to Magnus about this cold spell lay beyond the walls of Room 224.

The cold presented a different problem that niggled at Magnus's rocket scientist's brain. Space Shuttle Crusader was scheduled for launch at Cape Canaveral tomorrow morning. The anomalous frigid weather would be an unintentional overnight Cold Soak Test for the vehicle, surmised Magnus. From his experience the cold would present minimal problems for the liquid fuel main engines. The fatal flaw would be the cold playing havoc with the solid fuel boosters.

In his judgement the boosters were no better than a penny ante firework that you lit with a match. Cheap horsepower with a high price. There was no way to shut them down if a problem arose. It seems a case of more bang for your buck, emphasis on bang! Magnus resolved that it was up him to scrub the launch.

The plan of action that was fomenting in his mind required the latest intel. Magnus got out of his hospital bed in Room 224, donned bathrobe and slippers and made his way down hall into the Television Room. He knew at this hour it would be populated with the usual harpies watching their "Show"!

With a purposeful grimace Magnus strode into the TV Room. He approach the Sony Trintron Color TV. He twisted the knob and changed the channel from their "Show" to the afternoon news program out of Boca Raton. A terrible sound of much wailing and gnashing of teeth arose from the elderly female audience just trying to watch their Soap Operas. Magnus turned to face them and barked a few short phrases in guttural German that silenced any and all opposition to his impromptu choice of this matinee.

The news broadcast confirmed his doubts about the judgement of NASA Management. The Space Transportation System Crusader scheduled launch for 0800 HRS tomorrow was a GO! Magnus headed back to Room 224 now even more determined to put a stop to the launch.

Transportation would be vital to get to launch facility at Cape Canaveral in time. Perhaps a cab ride was in order. Then in an instant, Magnus saw the solution. At a standstill up the hallway was the young, a little too tall, could've used a few pounds Pharmaceutical Courier. He made the daily Unit Dose System delivery. However, at the moment he was leaning on his hand truck and chatting up the receptionist. She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes.

"Pharmacy Boy! A moment of your time perchance?" Magnus spoke tersely in a sotto voce tone and asked, "Do you like rockets?"

Pharmacy Boy paused his conversation. He then swiveled his head as if looking for eavesdroppers or enemy spies. He then replied in a matching conspiratorial tone, "Yeah man! Who don't?"

At the 4 pm Nurses Shift Change Meeting there was a note regarding the patient in Room 224. Magnus Von Braun, Age 86, pancreatic cancer, appeared agitated and caused some mischief in the TV room earlier. A 10mg Diazepam would be given in his apple sauce at the Dinner Meal and maybe a 30mg Dalmane for good measure. They all concurred that this should and would take the wind out of his sails.

Room 224 had two beds. Magnus confided in his room mate Shlomo about his plans to halt the launch. Shlomo told Magnus that you're meshugana but he would be happy to help.

"All this science, I don't understand, but it's not so very often we can do such a thing nice to like save a real spaceship and it's peoples. Buck Rogers would be proud! Not to mention that Flash Gordon chappie!" said Shlomo. He told Magnus that he was most welcomed to the $89 shekels and a bottle of Brompton's Cocktail in his nightstand. He should take these along just in case the need arose. Semper Paratus and all that.

Magnus gave Shlomo most his sincere thanks. He told Shlomo that tonight he could have his ration of apple sauce at dinner.

Magnus spent a cold and restless night in Room 224. Shlomo had zonked out immediately after his apple sauce desert and was sawing logs all night. A little before Soul's Midnight, 3am, Magnus arose. He dressed in his tweed suit and cap. In his pocket was $89, the bottle Brompton's, and an ancient artifact of his, an outdated NASA ID badge. He slipped out of his room and walked on down the hall. He made his way past the laundry to the rear Service Door that led to the dumpsters and staff parking for the Restorative Care Center.

Pharmacy Boy was a stand up guy thought a grateful Magnus. Faithfully waiting in the Employee Parking Lot was a Volkswagen Beetle with it's motor idling and headlights off as to not draw any undue attention. However this tactic was defeated by the car's bright yellow color and a large illuminated plastic mortar and pestle mounted on the roof plus door emblems of a pharmacopoeia theme. Magnus for a moment thought about the pedigree of this German "Peoples Car". This particular choice of vehicle seemed the Universe tacitly approved his mission. .

They drove through the dawn's early light and arrived at the Main Security Gate of Cape Canaveral. The young security guard on duty looked on with bemusement at the VW and spoke.

"Jeez Louise, what do we have here? You gotta be kidding me! Let's see some ID pronto! "

Magnus presented his vintage NASA ID card and the guard smirked,

"What box of Cracker Jacks did you get this outta of !?!"

Just then, the young guard felt a tremendous pinching pain in his left shoulder and heard the voice of his older supervisor whisper into his ear from behind,

" They're both Okay. Give him back his ID."

Then the older guard spoke up in a loud and respectful voice directly to the passenger.

" Willkommen zuruck in NASA, Herr Doktor Von Braun! "

" Danke, Wachbataillon Schmidt" replied Magnus.

Access allowed, the Volkswagen drove onto the facility.

The young guard whined while rubbing his shoulder,

"Cheese & crackers, Smitty!! That really hurt my shoulder! Jeez Louise! Did you know those jokers? Who heck was that?"

The older guard replied wistfully,

"Son, that was a real live ghost.....".

Under the guise of a nostalgic and perhaps a maudlin photo op, Magnus had wangled with NASA Management to grant him a very short visit with the crew of the Space Shuttle Crusader. He met with seven crew members in the cafeteria while they were scarfing down their traditional preflight breakfast. Magnus felt like a irrelevant old man as he pitched his spiel to an indifferent audience. The crew didn't skip a bite. They had more interest in their steak and eggs than his portentous words.

Chapter Two: Silbervogel

The Space Shuttle Crusader launched on schedule at Zero Hour 8 am on very cold Floridian morning. Puffs of exhaled vapor filled the chilly air along with the oohs and ahhs from the crowd in outdoor reviewing grandstands. It was a seemingly perfect liftoff. Magnus knew better as he watched from the VIP section of the grandstands. He thought about those chilled solid fuel boosters as scaled up bottle rockets. Both would achieve the same explosive result. One by accident and the other by design.

Magnus looked at the cheering crowd then at his wristwatch. Well, he thought, who doesn't enjoy a fireworks display ? Magnus didn't bother to look skyward as the sound of oohs and ahhs transitioned into screams and shrieking. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the brown glass bottle.

"Show's over!" said Magnus to no one in particular.

Suddenly the roar of the crowd changed dramatically. It began with a singular, "HOORAY FOR CAPTAIN BILLY!!!". It was now cheering as if a last second touchdown had just now won the championship game for the home team. Magnus slipped the bottle back into his coat pocket.

Magnus looked up into the clear and chilly morning Florida sky. He saw the exhaust plume of the launch had terminated in a angry white cloud from the explosion. From out this mayhem emerged the Space Shuttle Crusader.

Flying away in the morning , Hallelujah, to some celestial shore! It was on a northwesterly heading. It's tail feathers may have been singed, thought Magnus, but as the morning sun glinted off the Crusader it looked like a silver bird.

The Space Shuttle Crusader on climb out was putting on a spectacular show for the appreciative audience below. But behind the scenes things were falling apart

"Skipper, we gotta sick bird! This thing is lighting up like a pinball machine! Main Tank pressures are spiking!", stating the obvious was Copilot Danny Todd of the Space Shuttle Crusader. " Cheese and Crackers! Now the port booster nozzle gimbal is just about limited out!"

( "At NASA. no matter how dire the situation, bad language was never used! You can check the tapes." I actually heard Fred Hayes of the Apollo 13 crew say this with a professional sense of pride! B.B.)

"Rog' That.." Captain Billy Chunk laconically acknowledge from the Pilot In Command left hand seat. Outwardly, cold as ice. Inwardly, his mind was racing. That old man at breakfast was right! Like his own personal Elijah foreshadowing the Pequod's, aka Crusader's demise. His prediction was eerily correct to the exact detail and sequence of the major malfunction that was unfolding aboard the Crusader.

Degradation of flight systems had begun at 60 seconds into liftoff as foretold. Captain Billy Chunk still had time. He had heeded the warnings of the old man just enough to earlier disable the First and Second Safeties to the explosive bolts. Activated, they would shear away the mounts that connected the Crusader to the external fuel tank and the boosters and away from danger.... In theory, that is.

"Hang on Kiddo!" announced Captain Billy and he toggled the EB's switch . There was subdued explosion and then the noise of the main engines diminished.

"Looks like we got us a clean SEP-O-RATION, there Old Danny Boy!" Captain Billy calmly reported with a combination of relief and disbelief.

The Space Shuttle Crusader continued upwards and the cockpit crew swiftly checked flight systems and calculated their dilemma. Too much inertia had carried them too far away from the abort landing runways stateside and yet not enough inertia to achieve orbit.

It was then that the very last word the old man had said to Captain Billy came to mind. Silbervogel. Silver Bird. This referred to the project that the World War Two Germans had come up with to launch a rocket plane from Berlin and bomb New York City. To achieve this the rocket plane would bounce off the upper atmosphere like a flat stone skipping across a calm mill pond. This just might work thought Captain Billy.

"Give me a rough heading to Alaska if you would be so kind, Mister Danny!" spoke Captain Billy as he recalled an arcane fact.

"That an awful big state, Skipper. Any place in particular?" asked Danny.

"Cold Bay! I was there a lifetime time ago."

"You got it, Skipper"

"Oh, and by the way," said Captain Billy, "Better tell our passengers of our little unscheduled side excursion. They can buy the first round at this bar I know there.."

Chapter Three: I've seen the Elephant!

The map of Alaska sort of looks like the left profile of the head of an Elephant. The settlement of Cold Bay is located where the trunk joins the face. Cold Bay's claim to fame is a leftover relic of World War Two in the form of a 10,000 plus foot runway. It was considered briefly then delisted as an alternate Shuttle Emergency Landing Site for launches out of Vandenberg AFB that never occurred.

The vagaries of air travel has diminished it's usefulness over the years. Once in a blue moon Cold Bay is the go to place for aircraft in dire straits. It was just the prescription for a sick bird named the Crusader.

On the bay itself there is dock to pump off barges to supply aviation fuel to storage tanks. There are a couple war era hangars support buildings. Perhaps the most notable structure is the bar named with the double entendre; "THE WEATHERED INN".

Customers had always been few and far between at The Weathered Inn. Wally Chunk had been the barkeep for what seemed an eternity. He had seen the planes making fuel stops evolve from prop jobs to jets. There was steady trickle of crew from fishing boats that brought in just enough revenue to keep the lights on. Three or four scheduled flights a month, dependent on the weather, also helped with the bills. After all, it was a business.

It was a slow day again and Wally had completed all his chores. Outside, there was just light dusting of snow and calm winds. He was sitting at the bar sipping a Coke and puffing on Camel no filter. He was reading a Travis McGee novel for the umpteenth time.

A noise from outside caught his attention and he looked up from his book. It came from an aircraft approaching from the southeast. Wally could not classify it belonging to a prop job or jet. For a moment he felt he was losing his touch of identification of aircraft by ear. The distant chirp of tires contacting tarmac confirmed whatever breed of bird it was had touched down. Wally identified that noise. That was the sound of cash customers.

Wally put down his book and began his ritual to prepare the bar for business. He dropped a coin in the vintage Victrola and played old B24. The plaintive twang of Vern Gosdin gave the command to "Set'em Up Joe!" and Wally did as ordered. He took upside down chairs off the tables and set them up on the floor. He then loaded the coffee urn and fired it up. The smell of Folgers Red Can percolating soon filled the air. Wally turned up the thermostat and the overhead lights on. The red neon sign hanging in the triple pane weatherproof window lit up and proclaimed the Bar is OPEN!

The outside set of front doors to The Weathered Inn leads to a long hallway to a second set of doors to mitigate blustery weather from getting into the bar. Wally heard the squeak of the front doors open followed by the spring loaded banging of them shutting. He heard approaching voices coming down the hallway. Happy, boisterous voices of people wanting to celebrate life!

The loudest voice of all seemed very familiar to Wally. That would be impossible he reasoned. But he was dead certain that he recognized that distinctive voice even if he had lost his touch with aircraft. He impulsively yelled out, "Brother Billy!! Welcome home!"

Then in an instant the voices faded to silence. After a few minutes, Wally went to investigate. He opened the second set of doors and looked. The hallway was empty save for a few damp footprints. He ran down the hallway and out the front doors to a vacant and lonely runway located halfway to nowhere somewhere in Alaska. A shiver ran down his spine but it was not from the cold.

Epilogue : Back to Life, Back to Reality, Back to the Here and Now.......

At the 4pm Nurses Meeting the turn over notes said mentioned the old German chap in Room 224 had passed away sometime this morning. This wasn't noticed right away understandably so because the hullabaloo on TV about the spaceship going awry. Some things just seem to take care of themselves. Apple sauce sometimes has the habit of doing that.

In Room 224 Shlomo said his room mate seemed to dreaming like a sleeping dog chasing rabbits. A little after 8 o'clock he slipped his mortal coil peacefully. His last words were something muttered in German. Shlomo translated it for the nurse. Silver Bird.

The nurse smiled and thought what a pretty image. Silver Bird, like some sort of beautiful silver angel she imagined.

Silbervogel? What a scary image! The project name of the German World War Two intercontinental rocket plane. Silver Bird, more like some sort of angel of death the Von Braun brothers had imagined.

At Cape Canaveral the Space Shuttle Crusader exploded at 91 seconds into liftoff after the port Solid Rocket Booster O-Ring failed and ignited the main fuel tank . There were no survivors.