The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  The copilot nodded although he appeared to sleep.

  “Glad we have a horse doctor on board,” Enright mumbled.

  Parker flew headfirst and upside down to the forward storage lockers where he righted himself. From a locker drawer, he pulled a case labeled KIT FIVE: BURNS (THERMAL). He left behind kits labeled BURNS (CHEMICAL) and BURNS (ELECTRICAL).

  A shuttle crew’s years of training is equivalent to earning an Emergency Medical Technician certification. The AC knew the contents of Kit Five and what to do with it. As he swam toward Enright, he floated through a shaft of brilliant daylight raining down through the ceiling access hole from where the flightdeck above was filled with sunshine. Endeavor approached sunset six minutes and two time zones away.

  Parker flew slowly toward his partner strapped upright to the berths. He aimed his stocking feet at Enright’s sides just above the thick waist of the massive EMU suit.

  The AC wrapped his legs around Enright’s middle. Parker’s calves closed lightly around the PLSS backpack. The command pilot floated with his mesh-covered chest touching Enright’s chestpack. Enright opened his eyes when he felt the AC’s breath upon his fluid-filled face.

  “Little desperate, Skipper?” Enright smiled lamely.

  “Grown particular, buddy?”

  “Nah.”

  Straddling Enright’s waist with his legs, the AC parked Kit Five by his shoulder. It remained motionless in the air at eye level.

  Parker opened the small container from which he pulled pre-soaked towelettes which were orange with Green Soap antiseptic solution.

  “Yell if this hurts, Jack.”

  “Not to worry, Will.”

  Gently, Parker washed the round and blistered face with the towel. Enright showed no discomfort.

  After carefully dabbing at Enright with the soapy towel, Parker dropped the rag in the air where it hung motionless halfway to the ceiling. He opened another towelette soaked in isotonic saline solution. With this and two more, he rinsed the orange soap from Enright’s edema-swollen cheeks.

  After wadding the discarded rags into a ball, the AC carefully opened a gauze bag affair which resembled fine cheesecloth. It was soaked with penicillin cream.

  “Close your eyes, Jack.”

  Parker slowly slipped the gauze mask over Enright’s red face. It covered his head completely to his neck. The AC adjusted the eye, nose, and mouth holes on the antibiotic-soaked mask to fit Enright’s features.

  “Okay, Jack.”

  Enright opened his watery eyes and he peered at Parker’s close face from inside his penicillin-drenched mask.

  “Knew a stewardess I had to do this for,” Enright whispered. “Only I made her wear the paper bag.”

  “I’ll bet, Number One.”

  Enright wheezed a weak chuckle.

  “Bottoms up, buddy,” Parker said as he inserted into Enright’s puffy lips a plastic straw from a squeeze bottle. The AC carefully pressed the soft container to force into the copilot’s mouth an electrolyte solution of sweetened saltwater and sodium lactate. He timed each squeeze to Enright’s labored swallows until the jug was empty.

  “Still with me, Jack?” Parker released his leg-hold and floated back from Enright.

  “Don’t know who else would have you,” Enright smiled behind his wet mask.

  The AC unlocked Enright’s waistring and he tugged at the EMU trousers. To keep from being drawn back to Enright when he pulled, Parker braced his feet against the frame of the sleep berths.

  When Enright’s heavy pants came off, Parker directed them into one of the bunks.

  “Feel better?”

  Enright nodded. For half an hour, he had been without coolant water flowing through his liquid coolant garment which was damp with sweat.

  “This will help, Jack,” the AC said as he forced a long needle into Enright’s thigh. He steered the hypo between the coolant tubes and through the mesh drawers. He discharged 50 milligrams of meperidine for pain. A second hypodermic entered into the side of Enright’s other thigh where Parker fired 100,000 units of aqueous penicillin-G. Enright moaned slightly.

  “That’s it, Jack.”

  Parker floated away from Enright who was still strapped to the berth where he hung in half a space suit.

  “Hope so, Will. I’m fresh out of legs.”

  “Oh? I can still roll you over, you know.”

  “Haven’t been at sea that long, have you?” Enright managed to grin inside his damp mask.

  “Not quite yet,” Parker smiled as he stuffed the used towels and the empty syringes into Kit Five. He shoved the kit into a berth.

  “Okay, Jack. Let’s get the upper torso off. Can you help?”

  Enright said nothing as he raised his heavily suited arms over his face and its new cheesecloth skin.

  With a firm tug, Parker pulled Enright out the bottom waistring of the upper torso. The copilot floated in his liquid coolant garment from which floated water tubes and biomedical sensor cables.

  “Feels much better,” Enright sighed.

  Parker directed one of Enright’s bare hands to a ceiling handrail. With his eyes closed, the copilot closed his fingers around the handhold.

  Parker coasted away toward the forward lockers. He fetched a set of baggy trousers from the forward lockers. These he pulled over the legs of Enright’s long woolies. Shoulder straps from these pants held them in place upon the groggy flier.

  The AC was worried about losing his shipmate to incipient shock. So he had dressed Enright in anti-G pants which looked like fisherman’s waders.

  During re-entry when Shuttle’s return to Earth subjects the crew to deceleration forces of three times the normal force of gravity, all crewmen wear the rubberized, anti-G trousers. The pants have inflatable air bladders in the legs. Air pressure within the tightly inflated pants keeps re-entry’s G load from causing the pooling of fluid in the crewman’s legs. This loss of upper-body fluid could cause fainting during the critical approach to landing after prolonged weightlessness and its associated degeneration of blood vessels. The same inflatable pants would keep Enright’s upper body from losing precious fluid as his burned face leaked plasma protein from damaged cell membranes.

  “Thirsty, Jack?”

  “No. Not yet, Skipper. I don’t feel shocky. Just tired. And like I have God’s gift to sunburns.”

  “I’ll say. Let’s get your legs blown up. Can you hang on here for a minute?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Parker could hear in Enright’s voice that he was coming around.

  “Don’t go ’way,” Parker called as he went topside through the ceiling access hole. He soared to the front of the flightdeck cockpit. There, he locked tinted sunshades over the six forward windows of the cabin. He would protect Enright from the sun. Although quickly setting, the sun shone hotly through the windows from low in the western sky. The cabin looked dusky with the shades over the windows. He did not bother to darken the two rear overhead windows or the two rear bulkhead windows facing the payload bay. These windows were already in shadows from Endeavor’s hull.

  “Okay to come aboard, Cap’n?”

  Parker cast a surprised look toward the floor hatch behind the copilot’s empty right seat.

  “Sure,” the AC replied with a faked, matter-of-fact voice.

  “About done sunning yourself and takin’ it easy, Jack?”

  Parker watched the cheesecloth head float up from below. Enright carried the squeeze bottle of salty, electrolyte soup.

  “Can’t party all the time, Skip.”

  “Reckon not, Jack.”

  Enright strapped himself into his right seat. He plugged his outer pants into the cabin’s portable oxygen system located on the back of each flightseat. The anti-G trousers slowly inflated to twice the size of Enright’s thin legs.

  The AC floated behind his own, empty seat. Looking over the center console, he studied his partner with the grossly swollen, masked face. The AC’s face betrayed his concern.r />
  “Now my legs look like yours, Will.” Jack Enright was back.

  “How you like it?” the AC smiled as he strapped into his left seat.

  “I’d really rather be in Philadelphia.”

  “Me, too, Number One.”

  Out the tinted front windows, LACE hovered to the left of Parker’s seat and Soyuz flew 50 yards off Enright’s right shoulder. All but a wisp of debris had disappeared from the vaporized Chinese spacecraft.

  “Down to just the three of us?” Enright asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Wonder how many pilots she carried?”

  “Don’t want to know, Jack . . . Drink some water.”

  Enright pulled a squeeze bottle from beneath his seat and he forced the drinking tube between his painful lips behind his moist gauze mask.

  “Endeavor: Configure AOS Dakar at 05 hours, 01 minute. Sunset momentarily. How’s Jack?”

  “Lookin’ like the creature from the black lagoon, Flight. But we’re both on station forward. Sunshade up on the windows forward.”

  “Real fine, Will. Do you have your visors on and locked?”

  “Ah, negative, Colorado. Jack couldn’t get into his with a crowbar. And I couldn’t hear him if I wore mine. So we’re a bit naked up here. Both of us still sweatin’ in the liquid coolant skivvies.” The AC spoke into the twin lip mikes of his CCA Snoopy hat.

  Outside, the sun was flattening upon the western horizon orange and hazy. With Shuttle rightside-up and her nose parked toward the northeast, the low sun shone into Parker’s leftmost forward window. The tinted shades cast a blue pall upon the cockpit. The Colonel’s right hand reached up to Panel Overhead-Six above the forward windows. He turned five knobs which dimmed the floodlights of the cockpit and brightened the red back-lights of the instrument meters and pushbuttons. In a minute, the sun was gone.

  “Pullin’ the sunshades now.”

  The crewmen removed the six window shades to reveal the moist black sky west of the African coast. Outside, Soyuz 100 meters away had trained her intensely white arc lights upon LACE 50 meters from Endeavor’s port side.

  “Ivan is illuminating the target again. Any air-to-ground from him yet?”

  “Negative, Will. Not a word.”

  Endeavor flew in pitch blackness halfway between Brazil and western Africa.

  “With you another 2 by Dakar, Endeavor. We’re not getting any bio from Jack. Check his plugs, please.”

  Before Parker could look sideways, the copilot pulled a cable from his coolant long johns and plugged it into a wall jack.

  “Got Jack’s vitals coming down now. Thank you.”

  Enright nodded. He could hear the ground over a wall speaker mounted in the upper right corner of the forward instrument panel.

  “Will: We’re looking at Jack’s bio harness digitals. His pulse and pressure look stable. Doc wants you to keep close watch on both when you’re out of ground contact. Pay close attention to his BP especially. If you see any sign of neurogenic shock, get an electrolyte IV into him immediately. We also recommend the anti-G pants for Jack for the rest of the mission.”

  “I’m ahead of you, Flight. Not to worry. Jack is doin’ fine.”

  “Good news, Endeavor. Doc is right here if you need any assistance.”

  In the right seat, Enright fumbled with a CCA headset. Carefully, he put the Snoopy headgear around his neck like a scarf. Snapping the chin strap in front of his throat, the CCA floated upon his shoulders without touching his gauze face. He positioned the microphones to rest near his swollen lips.

  “I’m with you, Flight,” Enright said with a dry mouth. He spoke as through a mouth full of cotton.

  “Super to hear your voice, Jack. Doc Gottwalt is at a Canaveral console listening if you need him. How goes it?”

  “Afternoon, Mike. I’m uncomfortable but okay. Real stuffy in my nose. Skipper shot me up with the good stuff and I’m feelin’ no pain. Could sell that on the street . . . Safer way to make a living.”

  “Copy that, Jack. But you wouldn’t get a room with such a view.”

  Enright looked through his wet and sticky eyeholes toward his right window. He saw the red-and-green running lights along the afterbody of Soyuz against a star field borrowed from a Christmas card.

  “Guess not, Flight.”

  “Endeavor: At 05 plus 05, you’re crossing the Equator. You are LOS Dakar and now AOS by Ascension Island.”

  “Roger, Flight.”

  Endeavor cruised southeastward 1,800 nautical miles west of Libreville, Gabon, on the west African coast. Missing the African mainland well beyond the eastern horizon, Shuttle would not make another landfall for 2,600 miles.

  “For your burn pad, Will: Your next deorbit burn opportunities are coming up fast at 05 plus 33 plus 21 for Edwards and 05 plus 42 plus 11 for Kennedy landing. Can you set up for getting down that quickly?”

  Parker glanced toward Enright at his right.

  “Jacob?”

  Enright raised his left hand. He gave an airman’s thumbs-up.

  “Ah, negative on that, Colorado . . . Ain’t quite got ’em all in the corral yet. Jack and I are not done here yet.” The voice of the Aircraft Commander was full of Go.

  “Will, backroom says no joy with Jack. We want you down this revolution.”

  The tall flier’s left hand gripped the glareshield overhanging the instrument panel. His free hand worked his microphone button.

  “Tell your backroom to . . .” Parker felt a hand lightly upon his right shoulder. “. . . to put their re-entry plots away till a little later.”

  “Hear you, Will. Understand. But Jack cannot possibly go outside.”

  The command pilot stroked his right leg, throbbing and swollen.

  “Jack won’t.”

  “Endeavor,” the ground began.

  “Stand-by one, Flight.” Enright called softly over the microphones floating beneath his wet chin.

  “Okay,” the black boxes crackled.

  “Skipper,” Enright began without pressing the mike button of the air/ground channel, “you’re not much better than me.” Colorado could not eavesdrop on the cockpit conversation.

  Parker looked glumly at his purple shin and knee, which he rubbed with long, hard strokes. Enright waited.

  “Endeavor,” the ground called. “One minute to . . .”

  “Hold short, Flight,” Enright insisted.

  “Will?” The copilot looked at his long captain.

  The big man in the left seat squinted his battered face out the left window toward LACE slowly rolling in the lights from ever-mute Soyuz. William McKinley Parker fogged the triple-pane window when he spoke softly but firmly.

  “One final moment of glory: A man is entitled to that.” The Aircraft Commander turned his haggard, pilot’s face to his partner. “Jacob?”

  The copilot furrowed his blistered brow within his cheesecloth mask.

  “Flight,” Enright radioed, “AC be going outside. I’ll take the con.”

  The two airmen floated against their lap belts as they waited for the Flight Director 8,000 miles away to poll his controllers.

  “We copy, Endeavor. You have a Go for EVA. Configure LOS Ascension Island at 05 plus 11. Botswana in 3 . . .”

  Ascension Island fell off the western edge of the world 900 miles behind the starship.

  “Can you handle the RMS, Jack?”

  “Got two good hands, Skipper.”

  Parker nodded. Then the AC pulled his plugs and released his lap and shoulder harness.

  “Stay put, Number One.”

  “Suit up alone?”

  “Doin’ it for years, Jack. Thanks.”

  Parker floated out of his seat and he touched Enright’s left shoulder as he passed. He descended headfirst down the access hole behind Enright’s right seat.

  The Colonel soared through the lighted mid-deck to the sleep berths. Holding his position with his legs pointed toward the ceiling, he reached into the berth for the leg pocket on his o
range ascent suit. He pulled a rumpled paper sack toward his face. From the bag, he retrieved a vile of phenylbutazone labeled “veterinary use only.” Pausing, he contemplated the forward lockers stocked with powerful painkillers.

  “Hell,” he mumbled as he flew toward the zero-gravity latrine. Three hundred milligrams of anti-inflammatory horse balm were fired through his mesh woolies below his right knee swollen to the size of his thigh.

  “In the can, Jack,” the AC radioed topside as he swam into the airlock chamber.

  “Take a magazine, Skipper.”

  Inside the lighted airlock, the upside-down pilot worked the airlock controls beside the yard-wide hatch. As he went through the ten-minute protocol for a solo suit-up, Endeavor cruised the nighttime South Atlantic toward Africa. He followed his checklists carefully: On Shuttle Five in November 1982, a spacewalk by two crewmen was canceled when a space suit failed inside the airlock. Someone somewhere down below had left a tiny but critical part out of an oxygen regulator in the suit. Parker steered his body through the waist ring of the EMU’s lower torso after removing it from its wall brackets. He winced as his right leg pressed into the pants. To his inflamed right leg, the suit’s tight padding and insulation layers felt like hard fingers kneading raw dough.

  Topside, Enright in the right front seat acknowledged Mission Control’s call through the Botswana tracking station. Inside the airlock, Parker floated in his 225-pound, extra-vehicular mobility unit suit. After he had sealed and double-locked the airlock hatch, he had unclipped his PLSS backpack from its wall brackets. The PLSS chugged on his back. His inner helmet was locked to his neckring. The portable oxygen system continued to purge the heavy EMU suit with pure oxygen to flush out cabin air. The POS hose connected Parker’s chestpack to the wall.

  “Skipper: Flight wants you to do some vigorous isometric exercises when you’re sealed to speed up your nitrogen withdraw time.” Parker’s soft Snoopy hat heard Enright but not the ground.

  The medics on the other side of the planet were concerned about Parker going outside without first pre-breathing oxygen for at least three hours to clean the nitrogen from his blood.

  “Understand, Jack. With maybe a handstand or two for good measure.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself, Will.”