The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  “Latches open.”

  “Copy, Will. Slowly now.”

  “Ah huh.”

  Working his hand controller in his right glove, the AC made certain his body was parallel to LACE. With an instantaneous press forward on the left translational controller, and a quick jerk back on it, he closed to within a foot of LACE and stopped. With a push up on the THC in his left hand, he slowly ascended LACE’s body like a steeple jack. A press down with his left hand tweaked upward-firing jets behind his head. He stopped with the grapple fixture’s jaws six inches from a thin, projecting ledge, a metal seam, which girded the 13-foot circumference of LACE’s center like a belt.

  “All stop.” Parker’s voice was subdued, almost reverent, as his words entered the flightdeck ten yards behind his back.

  “Copy.” Enright held his breath.

  From Earth, the stars overhead move slowly westward one-quarter degree of arc every minute. The faint southern stars above Parker moved sixteen times faster.

  The AC was perfectly motionless beside the towering LACE which revolved very slowly before his face. He floated transfixed by the awesome, black, and utterly silent machine. Although it was night all around him, Parker’s backside was in the daylight glow from the payload bay and his side was brilliantly illuminated by Soyuz’s floodlights only twenty yards away. The Soviet ship hung motionless beside Shuttle.

  For a long moment, Parker watched LACE turn slowly from left to right. He watched the titanium rivets on the midline seam come out of the darkness at his left. The tiny heads entered the artificial light, passed into the shadow between Parker and LACE, and very slowly moved over LACE’s edge back into the darkness beyond Parker’s right side. Each rivet head, the size of a dime, rose into the light from the left and set in darkness on his right. They were a tiny, silent solar system of cold metal one foot from the pilot who breathed bottled oxygen smelling faintly of sweat, urine, and rubber fittings. Parker did not blink his weary, hollow eyes as he watched the rivets move hypnotically like the white lines on a highway beneath headlights deadheaded from nowhere to nowhere.

  “You awake, Will?”

  “Sure,” the AC whispered.

  With a press forward on the THC grip, Parker moved toward LACE until he felt the flying grapple fixture touch the target’s hull. He looked down his nose over the inner helmet’s neckring to see the fixture’s jaws open on either side of the protruding ledge. With a touch to the lever atop the grapple unit secured to his chest, the stainless-steel clamps closed without sound upon LACE’s middle. Instantly, the panels and rivets before the AC’s face stopped their transit. The white-suited pilot became part of LACE, and with it, he turned slowly to his right.

  “Endeavor: Colorado by Botswana at 06 plus 51. We see the AC going for a ride.”

  The ground called from the darkness where in Africa it was nine minutes before midnight. Shuttle flew over the sea 100 miles southwest of Cape Town, South Africa. Since Shuttle’s last revolution 90 minutes earlier, the entire African landmass had moved eastward out from under Endeavor’s path and no landfall would be made.

  “Only way to travel,” the Colonel radioed as he revolved with LACE latched to his chest. He slowly approached the edge where he would roll out of the artificial light for his own private sunset of sorts behind LACE’s shadow.

  “Copy that, Will. Any observations during your SAA proximity pass?”

  “The AC reported quite a bit of ion wake activity when we were close. Hope the PDP registered something.”

  “Understand, Jack. You can dump the plasma data by 0I loop over the States.”

  Colorado would review the recorded plasma data when Shuttle’s operational instrumentation radioed the memorized information to the ground.

  “Rog.”

  Shuttle was directly below a brilliant full moon which moved westward across the sky well north of Endeavor’s extreme southern latitude.

  “We would like to see the target stabilized as soon as you can, Will. Only with you another 90 seconds.”

  “I was just startin’ to enjoy the ride, Flight. About to drop in another quarter.”

  “Believe you. But please get to it.” The ground sounded impatient.

  As the ground spoke from the darkness, Parker rolled behind LACE and out of view from either Enright’s overhead window or the television screen beside Enright.

  In the icy darkness behind LACE, the revolving flier could feel his aloneness. LACE’s body blocked his view of both Soyuz and Endeavor. His left hand pushed the translational thruster handle and he held it in firing position. Four cold gas jets on the right side of the manned maneuvering unit squirted continuously against the direction of LACE’s rotation.

  “Firing!” the AC called. A shoulder and then a mirrored, gold visor emerged very slowly from behind LACE.

  “Gotcha now, Will.”

  “Still thrusting.”

  “Not much visible reduction in your roll rate, Will. Watch your consumables.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Will: Colorado here reporting your roll rate is down from one point one to point seven degree per minute. You’re braking well in rate. Continue thrusting. You’re Go from here at 06 plus 52. One hour 36 minutes on your PLSS. Losing you momentarily. We remind you that your next 28 minutes will be out of ground contact.”

  “We’ll stay on the job anyway, Flight.”

  “Hope so, Jack. Configure . . .

  As Shuttle lost the network over water, she rounded Port Elizabeth on Africa’s southern tip. The ship began an 8,500 statute mile run without radio contact over the Indian Ocean. This revolution, Shuttle would miss the west coast of Australia by 1,100 miles since that continent had moved eastward with Africa out from under Endeavor’s path.

  Enright watched Parker for the 2½ minutes he was in view until he disappeared behind LACE for the second time. During that period, Endeavor covered a thousand miles and passed the southernmost point of her orbital path 2,622 statute miles south of the Equator.

  Enright continued to monitor the temperatures and the voltages within the remote arm’s six servo power amplifiers which held the plasma sniffer pointed toward LACE. The PDP was recording LACE’s radiation signature for later relay to the ground.

  “Still thrusting,” the AC called as he rolled back into the bay lighting and into the view out Enright’s overhead window.

  “Okay, Will. At 07 hours even. You are definitely slowing down out there. About one more circuit should do it. Pace it to stop with the grapple fixture facing me if you can.”

  “No sweat . . . You with me, Soyuz?” Parker glanced to his side. His gold faceplate shone brilliantly in the arc light from the Soviet craft.

  “Watching closely, Colonel. Estimate one-tenth degree per minute in roll rate now.”

  “Thank you . . . Still thrusting, Jack.”

  At 07 hours 02 minutes, Endeavor cruised over the dark Indian Ocean on her northeast course 3,500 miles west of Australia.

  LACE rolled ever slower. Parker attached to its midline required two minutes to come around the corner. In the artificial daylight cast by the lighted bay, he reached the halfway point of his slow roll.

  At 07 hours 04 minutes, Endeavor rode the black sky into 2 a.m. local time, one day ahead of Cape Canaveral where it was 5 p.m. on a cool and clear day.

  “All stop,” Parker called with his back toward Shuttle. “Damn, that burned a lot of gas, Jack.”

  “What are your N2 reserves?”

  “Maybe a thousand pounds psi.”

  “Should get you home, Will.”

  “Hope so.”

  As the AC floated latched to the perfectly motionless LACE, a stabbing pain in his right knee reminded him of his hotly throbbing leg. He closed his eyes in the light between his helmet and LACE which came from Soyuz to his left.

  “Sunup in 5, Skipper,” Enright noted at 07 hours 06 minutes, MET. Endeavor had already logged 117,540 statute miles across the sky.

  “Comin’ home,
” the AC called with his back to Shuttle. His gloved right hand pulled the release ring on the side of the grapple fixture clinging to himself and to LACE. At the same instant, his left hand pulled back on the THC handle. His small thrusters shot forward, one by each ear and one beside each of his bent knees. He waited to push off from LACE leaving only the flying grapple fixture attached to the target.

  “Damn.”

  “Say again, Skipper?”

  “Said no joy on the disconnect . . . Stand by.”

  Enright’s bare right hand fine-tuned the zoom lens on the remote arm’s elbow camera. Parker’s backside and MMU filled the closed circuit television screen.

  “Once more, Jack.”

  This time, as the AC pulled the release mechanism ring, his left hand pushed hard against LACE’s black and frigid side.

  Instantly, pain pierced Parker’s left elbow and left shoulder. The pain felt like acute tennis elbow, only his shoulder felt the same way. He remained a white fixture upon LACE. When he tried to close his left fist upon LACE, his fingers only trembled. When he tried to open the grapple fixture’s jaws which held LACE, they also failed to budge.

  “Ah, Jack . . . I’m still attached out here. Negative separation at either end of the grapple unit . . . And I think I may be startin’ to saturate a little . . . Crap.”

  Parker slowly lowered his sore left arm to the MMU armrest. He had to use his right hand to wrap his left fingers around the THC handle. He breathed hard. Each warm breath activated the lip microphones which filled Endeavor with his distress.

  “William?” Enright spoke as calmly as his painful lips and cottony mouth would permit.

  “Gimme a minute, Jack.”

  “Okay, Will. No rush. Got five hours left in your PLSS.”

  Like a weary stockman resting against a fencepost at day’s end, the AC gently laid his outer faceplate upon LACE’s freezing side. Had the pilot laid bare skin against the motionless satellite, he would have been burned crisp by the terrible cold of space without sun.

  Cold sweat beaded upon Parker’s upper lip and upon his forehead below his soft Snoopy helmet which held his earphones and twin microphones. The pain in his left arm crept downward into his left knee and ankle. The sensation was the prickly pain of a limb awakening after having gone to sleep. His left foot felt full of gout.

  William McKinley Parker was paralyzed.

  In the glare of the lights from Soyuz, the Colonel floated in the nighttime sky, alone. At 07 hours 09 minutes, over Parker’s left shoulder toward the west, the solitary faint star Puppis-ro sped westward directly above Shuttle. The few stars in the southern sky’s constellations Puppis and Vela, directly overhead, were obscured by the white moon which glowed as coldly as statuary marble. The brilliant moon was above and north of Endeavor.

  In Parker’s joints, from his toes to the cervical joints of his sweating neck, microscopic bubbles of nitrogen gas surfaced in his blood. Throughout his body, his circulation carried a fine frothy head which exerted exquisite pain against capillary walls.

  The Bends.

  The nightmare of fliers and deep-water divers tightened its grip on the pilot. Parker would have cried were he not afraid of the pain in his temporo-mandibular joints in his gaunt face in front of his ears. His anguish confirmed that his pre-breathing of pure oxygen in the airlock had failed to purge his body of nitrogen before he ventured outside.

  Except for his massive EMU suit, Will Parker was naked ten yards from home and 149 statute miles from his mother the Earth. The weakening pilot longed to reassure his partner who waited anxiously in Shuttle.

  “Help me, Jacob.”

  Parker did not feel his blue lips move. But inside his bubble helmet he recognized his own voice.

  Enright’s swollen eyes blinked moistly behind his gauze mask.

  “Dr. Ruslanovich!”

  “We are listening, Yakov. Major Karpov is already in our orbital module relieving cabin pressure. I am now closing to three meters.”

  The Soviet pilot flew his ship from the center section, the re-entry module of Soyuz.

  “Understand, Soyuz . . . Hang on, Will.” Enright’s transmission was followed by labored breathing coming from outside over the radio. “Soyuz in motion to your left, Will.”

  Soyuz eased closer to LACE. The 7-ton ship required a minute to stop ten feet from Parker bolted to LACE’s flanks. The Russians’ arc lights filled the American’s mirror faceplate. Parker could feel its radiant heat upon his face.

  Soyuz is bulbous and her long rendezvous antennae give a look of metallic clutter, akin to a spacefaring oil rig. She is three modules bolted end to end. Her maneuvering rockets—small compared to Shuttle—and her stores and tankage are in the 9-foot wide afterbody. Attached to this service module is the 3-ton, funnel-shaped, re-entry module. In this center module, the crew of either two or three cosmonauts rides into orbit and home again. This compartment houses the flight controls and instrumentation. It is cramped, spartanly appointed, and all business. And attached to this is the forward, spherical, orbital module which is the on-orbit workbench and experiment station. Only the middle, re-entry module returns to Earth.

  The Soyuz-TM is the final generation of the vehicle which through over 40 flights and 25 years aloft is the work horse of Soviet manned spaceflight. She had come a long way since the first manned Soyuz flight killed Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on April 24, 1967.

  If to the naked eye Soyuz appears boxy and primitive beside Shuttle, which is fourteen times heavier, she remains the object of her crews’ affection and of her American competitors’ respect. Like sitting an aged B-17 Flying Fortress beside a supersonic B-1 bomber: one may shine with sensual sleekness, but one exudes a heritage which brings a fine mist to pilots’ eyes. Like the old bomber with a generation of oil stains blackening her weathered cowlings, Soyuz is a proven ship of the line with a proud past which could be trusted. Enright did.

  “Brother Ivan on station, Will.”

  The AC cranked his stiffening neck to his left where Soyuz hung motionless against black sea and black sky. In the light from the payload bay, he could see frost sparkling on the service module of Soyuz’s afterbody.

  “Got ’em, Jack.” Parker’s voice was breathless.

  Enright felt obliged to keep the command pilot talking.

  “Looks like 3 or 4 meters, Skip.”

  “Ah, ah . . . Yeh, Jack. Maybe ten feet.”

  “He’s dumping cabin. Can you see his hatch on the orbital module forward?”

  “I’m awake, Jack. No need to walk the patient.” The AC’s voice was annoyed and very tired.

  “Sure, Skipper.”

  “Sorry, buddy . . . I hurt, but I’m on duty, ’kay?”

  “Copy, Will.”

  “Colonel? Karpov here. I am in hard suit. Cabin depress completed. Hatch in motion.”

  Enright trained the remote arm’s cameras on the Russian ship. In the glow from Shuttle’s bay, he saw in his television monitor that the Soyuz orbital hatch swung inward toward their cabin. Enright made a mental note: Perhaps an inward opening hatch was designed to prevent a seal rupture as had killed three cosmonauts in June 1971 when Soyuz Eleven became a deathtrap on the long ride back into the atmosphere.

  A large round helmet emerged from Soyuz’s open hatch on the side of the orbital module. In the glare from Shuttle’s bay lighting, Enright could read “CCCP” stenciled across the white helmet above a gold, mirrored visor.

  “Cavalry comin’, Will.”

  “See ’im, Jack.”

  “I am outside.” Thickly accented words filled Parker’s helmet with slow and labored English. The Russian’s transmission went to Endeavor which multiplexed the traffic out to Parker.

  At the end of a thick, tether umbilical secured to his space-suit middle, the Russian floated out of Soyuz at Shuttle Mission Elapsed Time 07 hours 11 minutes.

  As the boots of the Soviet flier cleared his hatch, the far eastern horizon behind Endeavor exploded with red and o
range. The horizon’s curvature glowed a deep purple as the white sun seared through the atmosphere close to the sea.

  Shuttle flying on her left side, Soyuz, LACE, Karpov and Parker outside, all plummeted over the horizon of the Indian Ocean into fierce daybreak. Below, the sea remained black for five more minutes. Overhead, the stars were erased in the black sky between the high moon and the low red sun.

  “I am coming, Colonel,” the Russian panted.

  “I’ll be here, Alexi,” Parker sighed into his fifth sunrise in seven hours.

  Cosmonaut Karpov’s umbilical tether was covered with a thermal-protection wrap of aluminized insulation. In the low sun, the Russian’s safety line glowed brilliantly.

  Alexi Karpov wore the Soviet’s new, Orlan-DMA space suit. But he was not strapped to the Russians’ new manned maneuvering unit. Their MMU, much like Will Parker’s rocket backpack, was first flown in space, manned in February 1990 on a spacewalk from the Mir space station. the MMU is too bulky to fit through the narrow, 1967-vintage hatch on the Soyuz-TM spacecraft. The Russian MMU remains a fixture inside the Kvant-2 research module which docked with Mir in 1989. The larger hatchway on the Kvant allows the MMU to be flown from Mir, but never from Soyuz.

  Karpov carried a hand-held airgun of stainless steel which glistened brightly in the sunshine above the sea still dark. The cosmonaut fired a burst of compressed gas which pushed him slowly toward LACE and Parker who rode it. The gas gun was similar to the handheld thruster carried by America’s first spacewalker, Astronaut Edward H. White on board Gemini Four in June 1965. Two years later, Astronaut White and two colleagues were incinerated on the Cape Canaveral launch pad. White, Virgil Grissom, and Roger Chaffee burned alive inside Apollo spacecraft No. 201 atop its Saturn 1-B rocket.

  “Halfway, Colonel.” Karpov dragged his wrist-thick tether toward LACE and Parker. His voice went by hardwire from his large white helmet over the umbilical to Soyuz where Russian black boxes converted the intercom to FM transmissions.

  “I see you, Alexi.” Parker’s voice was weakening.

  “Not long now, Will.” Enright gritted his teeth in his rear station of Endeavor’s flightdeck. Light-headedness tormented his ability to concentrate. He squinted through his gauze mask at the empty jug of electrolyte which floated near his left shoulder.