The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  So Enright commanded Mother to consult her warm black boxes to sort out the most fuel-efficient course to be flown toward LACE.

  Working his computer keyboard, Enright ordered Mother to prepare to use her RCS jets to maneuver closer to LACE in such a way that Endeavor and LACE would assume tandem orbits.

  “Stand-by for maneuvering, Skipper.”

  “You got the helm, Number One. Okay down here. Don’t bend nothin’.”

  Mother winked her READY light and Enright depressed the illuminated EXEC key on his little keyboard.

  Instantly, Mother popped a battery of Endeavor’s small Reaction Control System thrusters. Enright did not know which RCS jets were triggered. The two heavy OMS rockets in the tail are used only for more massive maneuvers.

  Slowly, Shuttle closed in on LACE as Enright watched his Range and Range-Rate displays on the forward television screens. Through his tinted sunshades, he watched as LACE approached the upside-down starship. As the range-to-go ticked down from 40 to 10 meters, Mother fired combinations of her 38 primary RCS thrusters and her 6 tiny vernier thrusters.

  Ten meters from LACE, Mother brought Endeavor to a stop. Using his square-handled translational hand controller in his left hand, Enright pushed the ship a few feet closer by eyeball. Mother still flew the jets with him. Using the rotational hand controller between his knees in his right hand, he kept Shuttle on an even keel, belly up in the piercing sunshine. Though the pilot handflew both control sticks, Mother rode shotgun over his shoulder.

  “All stop,” Enright sang out over the intercom.

  “Then shorten sail, Jack, and bring her into the wind.” Four minutes past Guam and four hundred miles west of Wake Island, the AC was full of GET IT UP—GET IT DONE—GET IT DOWN.

  “Done, Will. Eight meters and sitting pretty.”

  The copilot returned the helm to the Digital Autopilot with computer instructions to roll Shuttle a quarter turn until she flew with one wing straight up and the open payload bay facing LACE 25 feet away. The 100-ton ship rolled automatically and stopped dead on station, frozen one-fourth way through a snap-roll.

  With Endeavor’s starboard wing pointing upward, the space radiators took direct sunlight as the sun moved swiftly across the sky where each orbital day is only 90 minutes long, half of it in darkness and half in unrelenting sunshine. Enright increased the flow of freon coolant through the two radiator loops to carry the extra heat upon the sunlit bay doors.

  Outside, Soyuz executed her own movement to the far side of LACE. With less fuel on board than Shuttle, the 7-ton Soyuz moved slowly. The Soviet ship approached LACE to put LACE between itself and Endeavor. When aligned, the three vessels would freefall eternally like three cars on the same train: Endeavor leading toward the forever receding eastern horizon, LACE tumbling slowly behind, and Soyuz following as flagman in close pursuit.

  “Soyuz in motion, Will.”

  “Wish I had a real window in here, Jack.” The outer hatch of the airlock leading into the payload bay has only a four-inch window.

  “Soon, Skip.”

  “Endeavor: Hawaii for one minute at 06 plus 02. Status?”

  Six hundred nautical miles northwest of Honolulu and 720 miles east of Midway Island, Shuttle brushed the northern limits of the range of Hawaii’s antenna. Although the last revolution carried Endeavor directly over Honolulu, during the intervening 90 minutes the planet had turned on her daily axis 1,552 statute miles to eastward. The Earth’s spin had carried the Hawaiian Islands with it out from under Shuttle’s ground track.

  “With you, Hawaii. We’re in position 8 meters out. Attitude in X-POP with Y in LV. I’m ready to go aft to power up the RMS. AC be downstairs bangin’ on the door.”

  “Copy, Jack. Understand X-body-axis perpendicular to orbital path; Y-axis in local vertical. Go to unstow the RMS. Will is cleared to depress the airlock for egress after contact via GDX. Keep the AC inside till radio contact by Goldstone in 5 minutes. Data drop out at . . .”

  “We’re LOS Hawaii, Will. I’m going aft now. You have a fat Go to depress the can.”

  “Super, Number One! Startin’ to smell like my laundry bag down here. Ready to walk!”

  Parker, floating upside down, cranked the airlock relief valve down from 10 to 6 pounds per square inch. He would reduce the pressure by 2-pound increments every few minutes and hold it there long enough to check his EMU suit for its pressure integrity.

  Topside, Enright was already on station on the portside corner of the rear flightdeck. Through his wet gauze which covered his painfully swollen face, he scanned the Toronto-built controls for the remote manipulator system arm reposing on the portside sill of the payload bay. He braced his stocking feet in the floor restraints. Behind where he stood in his sweaty, liquid coolant garment, Enright’s anti-gravity pants stood empty with the disconnected air hose coiled limply about the floating legs. The air line was to reach to Enright’s position. It did not.

  Although the flier at the rear of the flightdeck had inserted sunshades on the two overhead windows and on the two windows in the aft bulkhead before his face, the copilot could not squeeze his helmet over his swollen face. He floated before the open bay without his laser-proof faceplate. By leaning toward the aft window, he could see LACE close to the bay. By raising his face to the ceiling window overhead, he could see the sun reflecting fiercely from the solar cells of Soyuz.

  “RMS ready for you, Will.”

  “Okay, Jack. Down to four pounds in here.”

  Enright’s communications headgear still floated on his shoulders. The headset was plugged into the wall jacks for the radios to maintain air-to-air contact with Parker when he went outside. Radio communications were essential. The EMU suit with Parker inside would fly free of Shuttle without being tethered to a safety and intercom umbilical line.

  “Down to 2 point 5 pounds, Jack. No leaks in the EMU. Got your air pants on upstairs?”

  Enright looked over his cloth mesh shoulder to where his deflated britches floated in a lump.

  “Sure, Skip. Just like the doctor ordered.” As he spoke, Enright sipped from the plastic jug parked in mid-air beside his left arm.

  “Good, Jack. Takin’ it down to one here.”

  “ ’Kay.”

  Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE sped eastward 480 nautical miles west of San Franciso. The terrible afternoon sun was nearly overhead.

  “Endeavor: California by Goldstone with you at 06 plus 08.”

  “Howdy, Colorado. RMS is powered up. AC down to 1 pound in the airlock. We’re set up here.”

  “Understand, Jack. Your digitals look fine. Will is Go for EVA.”

  “With pleasure.” Enright’s voice energized the ship’s intercom. “Clear for EVA, Skipper.”

  “Super! PLSS time now 51 minutes . . . Down to zero point five psi . . . Point 3 . . . Point 1 . . . Apparently holding there.”

  “Okay, Will. Stand by . . . Flight: AC is down to one-tenth pound. That alright to crack the hatch?”

  “Endeavor: Backroom says Go for egress.”

  “Thanks . . . You’re Go, William. Take your time. I gotcha covered from here.” Enright sounded anxious and serious as his partner prepared to do the job for which Enright had trained for months. Both pilots had trained for going outside into the bay to close the payload bay doors should they fail. But Enright had logged most of the simulated EVA time as the space-walker.

  “On my way.” Parker’s voice brimmed with Go.

  “Soyuz, radio check,” the Colorado Springs bunker called through the California antenna dish.

  “Soyuz is with you. Keeping clear but ready if needed.”

  “Thank you, Major,” the ground called. “We are remoting your transmissions to your center at Kaliningrad.”

  “Thank you, Colorado,” a Russian voice replied. “Hello, Natalia!”

  “And Hello, Natalia, from the good ship Endeavor! You got modulation?” Enright asked as he powered up the RMS arm. He had raised the arm’s shoulder joint
enough to free the arm’s wrist nearly sixty feet from Enright’s bandaged face. With the wrist and the end effector unit cranked toward the forward flightdeck, the wrist television camera was aimed at the sealed hatch of the airlock forty feet from the end effector. The outer hatch of the middeck airlock was at the base of the aft bulkhead eight feet under Enright.

  “Good picture, Jack. We see Bulkhead 576 clearly. Don’t change the zoom any.”

  “Understand, Flight.” Enright watched the closed-circuit television, CCTV, monitor by his right shoulder.

  The bay’s floodlights were brightly illuminated to fill in any shadows caused by Endeavor’s body although the sun burned with excruciating glare from above and south of the vertical starboard wing. The mid-winter sun was well below the celestial equator even at noon.

  Over the sill of the downward facing portside wing, San Francisco Bay passed under scattered clouds at 06 hours 10½ minutes, Mission Elapsed Time. Just east of the city, Shuttle’s orbital path began to arc southeastward en route to the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Hatch swinging open,” Enright called as he saw the door open slowly on the television screen. From the rear, double-pane, 14-by-ll-inch window, Enright could not see the floor of the open bay closer than 29 feet behind the rear bulkhead. Nor could he see either of the bay doors well below the bay walls. Parker would be in the rear half of the 60-foot-long payload bay before Enright could see him out his aft window.

  The command pilot hung heads-down inside the airlock canister. Parker turned the outer hatch crank through a 440-degree arc which required thirty pounds of muscle pressure to break the seals. With 1/10 pound of air pressure inside the airlock, the 40-inch-wide hatch popped when the Colonel yanked it inward into the airlock. Parker faced upward as he floated on his back out of the floor-level hatch. He took great care not to snag his precious PLSS backpack on the bottom sill of the hatch. The thick backpack reached from his suit’s waistring to his helmet.

  “Like the miracle of birth, Jack,” Parker called as his boots followed his bulky EMU suit outside. Enright watched on the television monitor as the AC slowly floated to his feet and locked his boots into the restraints on the bay floor 13 feet below the lower sill of Enright’s bulkhead window.

  “In the foot restraints, Jack. I’ve closed the airlock hatch. Hope I remembered the key! . . . God, what a sensation, Jacob. This is really flying!”

  “. . . ‘Where never lark, or even eagle flew.’ ” Enright sighed the words from the pilots’ benediction: John Gillespie Magee’s air poem, “High Flight.” Magee had written the poem for his mother while the young American pilot flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the first months of World War Two. In his purple sky, he was killed in action.

  “Amen, Brother Jacob . . . You got me on PM downlink, Flight?”

  “Loud and clear, Will,” Colorado replied. “Your telemetry looks fine. Super FM modulation down here.”

  Ninety seconds east of San Francisco, Endeavor flew over Las Vegas.

  “Real dry down there,” the AC observed over Nevada.

  “Not much of a white Christmas,” the earphones crackled inside Parker’s two helmets.

  “Still seven days to go,” the AC called. “Maybe you’ll get some,” the tall flier added as he stood in the lethal vacuum of his black sky.

  “Radio check, Will. UHF through White Sands at 06 plus 14.”

  “Loud and clear, Flight. I’m in my golden slippers out here.” The flier referred to his foot restraints covered with gold foil to reflect sunlight. “Backin’ up into the MMU . . . Easy does it.”

  “A tad to your left, Will.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  With Enright spotting for him by the television monitor, the AC leaned backward into the wide nook of the Manned Maneuvering Unit from Martin Marietta. The MMU was mounted on the bay’s inside brackets close to the sealed airlock.

  The MMU was carried aloft in the bay secured to the bulkhead which separates the bay from Shuttle’s cabin. The MMU hung sideways on braces protruding from the bulkhead such that the front of the MMU faced the port side of the bay by the centerline. With Endeavor flying on her left side, Parker looked straight down 149 statute miles to the Earth.

  Parker carefully eased his wide PLSS backpack integrated into the upper torso of his suit into the MMU.

  The AC wedged his body backward into the MMU. Latches on the secured MMU engaged his PLSS backpack.

  “Contact . . . Latch and hard-latch.”

  “Copy, Skipper.”

  Endeavor traveled beneath the sun over Shamrock, Texas, 95 miles east of Amarillo at 06 hours 17 minutes.

  Parker reached down to his massively padded hips, where he grabbed each of the MMU’s arms. He pulled each armrest upward where they latched rigidly out in front of his sides. Each metallic arm draped in thermal insulation locked under the pilot’s arms. He rested his forearms atop each MMU arm as upon the arms of a chair.

  “Arms up and locked, Jack.”

  “I’m watching it, Will.”

  The AC was now part of the 4-foot-high, 300-pound manned maneuvering unit locked to his backside over the PLSS backpack.

  The spaceman perspired lightly inside his two helmets. He checked the MMU systems as Endeavor flew on her left side over Dallas at 06 hours 18 minutes, MET.

  “Colorado listening by MLX.”

  “Okay, Kennedy . . . I have MMU arms in place. Let’s see: Left nitrogen tank at 2-9-9-0 pounds pressure. Right N2 at 2,850 psi.” The nitrogen tanks, each pressurized with 1630 cubic inches of cold gas, fuel the MMU’s 24 thrusters. Each tiny jet shoots only 1½ pounds of cold thrust. “Battery in the green. Looks ready to fly, Jack.” The pilot had checked the MMU’s two silver-zinc batteries each holding a 16.8 volt charge.

  The all-white MMU hugged Parker. Short wings jutted from the MMU at his back on either side of his face. A similar wing projected just ahead of each of the pilot’s bent knees.

  “Comin’ forward, Jack.”

  Parker flexed his legs to pull his body well forward. A wracking pain wrenched his right leg. Leaning forward, he moved closer to the portside sill of the open bay. Over the bay wall, he looked straight down 149 statute miles to a brilliantly clear New Orleans at 06 hours 20 minutes.

  “Stupendous view, Jack!”

  “From here too, Will.” Enright could see the ground out his aft, sunshaded window in front of his face. But he could not see his partner except by television relayed from the flexed remote arm.

  Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE made for open water en route to a momentary landfall over southern Florida one minute and 300 miles away.

  The AC pulled a release ring which silently freed the MMU from its retention brackets. It took even more leg strain for the tall airman to bend his body forward. Although the 300-pound MMU and the 225-pound EMU suit had no weight, their combined mass was ponderous. Parker’s throbbing right leg provided the metabolic energy for torqueing forward the backpack and suit combination, which weighed three times more than the pilot inside.

  The Colonel pressed his body forward until his small chestpack between the MMU armrests touched the grapple fixture latched to brackets in front of him. When the wedge-shaped fixture contacted his chest, Parker had to apply constant leg pressure to lean against the device long enough to close its latches by hand. He was panting from work and pain as he locked his body to the flying grapple fixture. The AC let the secured fixture hold his body bent forward while he rested. With sweat burning his eyes, he turned up the chestpack coolant controls. The flow of cool water increased through the 300 feet of tubing within his liquid coolant garment against his moist skin.

  Enright could hear Parker’s heavy breathing when the AC’s breath triggered his voice-activated helmet microphones.

  “Take five, Skipper.”

  “Sure, Jack,” the AC panted. One minute southeast of New Orleans, Endeavor crossed western Florida over St. Petersburg.

  The pilot outside rested against the grapple fixture as
the glass-covered starship crossed the Florida peninsula from St. Pete to Miami in forty-five seconds. Below, the Merritt Island antennae at Cape Canaveral listened to Parker’s telemetered pulse rate just this side of tachycardia.

  “Take your time, Will,” Colorado called through the Kennedy Space Center antenna.

  “He is, Flight,” Enright advised so his captain could catch his breath.

  “Just like Gemini, Flight,” Parker radioed over his backpack transmitter. “Everything in Zero-G outside takes a little longer.” Parker hoped the strained calm in his voice would pacify ground medics. With his wet eyes closed, he thought of Gemini Nine. Then, unexpected stress during a space-walk by Astronaut Eugene Cernan in June 1966 overtaxed the space suit’s coolant loops. His helmet faceplate fogged so badly that he had to come inside his cramped, two-man ship early.

  “No rush, Will,” the ground offered. “Give the coolant loop a break.”

  “My pleasure,” the slowly recovering pilot breathed.

  “We’re listening by Bermuda now at 06 plus 22, Endeavor.”

  “Hear you,” Enright acknowledged. They flew southeastward over open water toward the easternmost tip of South America 13 minutes and 3,900 flying-miles distant.

  “With you another 3 minutes by Bermuda, Endeavor.”

  “Okay,” Enright called from his aft station upstairs on the flightdeck.

  Over the Atlantic, very blue in the long sun angles of late afternoon, the three ships sped southeast.

  “Grapple fixture free,” Parker called as he stood upright in his foot restraints. He now carried 300 pounds on his back and 50 pounds upon his chest, all wrapped around his 225-pound suit. Although weightless, he felt like a piano mover at work.

  “Great, Will,” Bermuda radioed. “Hold short a moment . . . Jack: We want the PDP recorders running now.”

  “Done,” Enright said behind his moist and sticky facial bandages. He leaned to his left and threw a switch beneath the starboard rear window. He turned on instrumentation in the Plasma Diagnostics Package berthed in its pallet at the tail section of the bay. The PDP would record LACE’s electromagnetic wake and any leaks from the target’s gas-laser generator.