The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  Squinting into the COAS sight at eye level, Enright found the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo about 40 degrees above the horizon to Shuttle’s northeast. Into the computer keyboard at his right knee, Enright tapped in Star Number 26. Moving Shuttle’s nose with his control stick to search the sky to the northwest, Enright found brilliant Sirius about 60 degrees above the planet’s black horizon where the faint stars stopped. Enright plugged in Star Number 18.

  Mother digested the star sights automatically made by the two star-trackers in the ship’s nose. Her mass memory unit, which had memorized the sky, compared the star-trackers’ sight reduction to Enright’s eyeball observations. Mother resolved her sights at the speed of light by mental haversine functions. Satisfied that she knew her bearings and that she knew which way was up, Mother adjusted her three inertial measurement units for precession error. Mother worked with her Reference Stable Member Matrix.

  “IMU aligned, Will. REFSMAT nailed down.”

  Parker swam from the aft payload specialist station toward the forward cockpit. He stopped to float at the center, knee-high console between Enright and Karpov.

  As the AC reached the back of Enright’s left seat, the copilot was already rolling Endeavor onto her back to protect the radiators latched to the open bay doors from sunrise seven minutes away.

  The AC scanned the third green television near Karpov. A video ground track displayed the bug-shaped shuttle over the southern Indian Ocean 700 nautical miles southeast of the great island of Madagascar. Radio contact was still 18 minutes away. On the television, their next network station was a circle one inch across with Okinawa at its center. At the bottom of the screen, numerics read REV 6 and MET:00:08:34:21.

  “Next daylight landing window, Jack?” Shuttle can land only at fields equipped with microwave landing systems for instrument approaches. Such facilities with critically needed support vehicles are located only at Cape Canaveral, Edwards in California, White Sands in New Mexico, Hawaii, Okinawa, and the military field in Rota, Spain.

  Enright tapped his small computer keyboard.

  Immediately, the television displayed a new ground track two revolutions in the future.

  “Okinawa at Kadena field, Skipper, during Rev Eight. Deorbit burn at 09 hours 55 minutes during Rev Seven. That’s an hour and 20 minutes from now. Wheels on at 10 hours 46 minutes. That’s 9:46 a.m. local time. Plenty of daylight. Gonna be tight on the time-line. But no sweat.”

  Parker furrowed his sweating, pale brow. They had thundered into a purple winter sky a very long eight and a half hours ago. They had gotten it up. They had gotten it done. But not without cost. One Russian had been vaporized and Endeavor had been hurt badly, perhaps fatally.

  “Let’s go home, Number One.”

  “I’ll work up the digitals, Will.”

  “Good. We’ll run a look-see at the APU’s and the right OMS. Guess it’s about time to try a single-OMS re-entry anyway.”

  “Seems so, Skip.”

  “Yeh . . . While you’re pullin’ the checklists, I’ll fetch Alexi’s seat. You about ready to hang on the feedbag, Jack?”

  “Starved, Will . . . You be stayin’ for dinner, Major?”

  The depressed Russian smiled weakly.

  “Three for dinner, Skipper. Window seats, if you can do it.”

  “Done.”

  Parker descended headfirst through the floor hole behind Enright’s back.

  It pained Parker to think of food so soon after a brother had smothered. But both he and Enright knew the imperative of taking in liquids prior to the physiological stresses of re-entry. Beginning with the tenth shuttle flight, Mission 41-B in February 1984, “fluid loading” was part of the Shuttle re-entry routine during which orbiting crews forced themselves to consume fluids 90 minutes before coming home. The “fluid loading” now known as “Hypersomatic Fluid Countermeasures” was a project of the medics who hoped to increase human adaption to spaceflight. So the command pilot went below decks to satisfy the flight surgeons; but he felt the awkwardness of planning a weightless wake topside.

  As the AC somersaulted into the mid-deck below, Shuttle stopped her slow roll. With his feet close to the floor, the AC stood with his head pointing seaward as Shuttle flew upside down 20 degrees south of the Equator at 08 hours 40 minutes aloft.

  The mid-deck galley can cook up to seven meals simultaneously. But that requires 90 minutes. So from the pantry Parker pulled three containers of peaches and three plastic pouches of freeze-dried tea. The fruit was packed in small tins irradiated for sterilization and in thick syrup to keep the sliced peaches from floating away when the tin was opened. The AC floated to the galley by the round window in the side egress hatch. He inserted the hot-water nozzle into each plastic container. The hot water revived the dehydrated tea. From a large forward locker, he also retrieved a portable flightseat and a set of anti-gravity, balloon trousers. With his hands full, Parker rose through the ceiling hole and emerged behind Enright.

  “Three Beef Wellingtons with a hearty but vaguely tempestuous Burgundy.” Although still in pain at his right leg from his ankle to his groin, the Colonel felt invigorated by the prospect of soon getting down to doing a pilot’s business. He struggled to ease the cabin tension.

  Enright was busy working with Mother’s four primary computers in her Maintenance Loop mode of operation.

  “Hi, Skipper. Right OMS looks stable. Helium and propellant pressures and quantities in the green. We may yellow-line on quantities with a single-OMS deorbit maneuver. Right RCS could get tight, too. And Auxiliary Power Units One and Two seem okay. Three is shot.”

  “Okay, Jack. Have some chow.”

  Parker handed a tin of peaches and the hot squeeze jug of tea to Alexi Karpov. Beyond Karpov’s right seat, the world remained dark over the Indian Ocean.

  “Thank you, Colonel. In my country, we drink it out of a glass with a sugar cube held between our teeth.”

  “This must be your first drive-in?” The AC smiled.

  As Parker hovered at the center console, he handed Enright two fruit tins and two teas.

  “Hold mine, Jack, while I set up Alexi’s seat.”

  “Sure. But hurry before I gobble yours, too.”

  The command pilot rolled over and flew down to the floor behind Karpov. He stopped beneath the starboard overhead window in the rear. After unfolding the collapsible jumpseat, he inserted its four short legs into a floor track. The portable flightseat sits 14¼ inches from the floor and its backrest can be moved back ten degrees from vertical for comfort. The flightdeck has room for two rear seats behind the forward seats. Six more can be installed below in the mid-deck for space rescue operations or for flights when the European Spacelab is carried in the payload bay as was first done in Columbia on Shuttle Nine in December 1983. With the new seat erected aft, Parker sat down behind Karpov and buckled in.

  “Ready, Jack.”

  Enright looked over his right shoulder as he aimed the sealed fruit tin at his captain. The AC caught the sailing tin with a hand between his knees.

  “Low and inside, Number One.”

  Parker caught the tea container with his outstretched left hand.

  “Outside. I’ll take my base.”

  As Endeavor flew at five miles per second into the forty-first minute of her eighth hour aloft, the white sun exploded into Enright’s portside window which faced east as Shuttle cruised upside down over the ocean 1,600 miles south of the southern tip of India.

  Enright stopped sucking the plastic tube in the tea. He inserted the tinted, transparent sunshades on the frames of his forward window and two side windows. His fruit and tea floated motionlessly over the center console while he worked. Karpov pulled three sunshades from beneath his right seat and snapped them on his center and two starboard window frames.

  “We have—had—these in Soyuz, too.”

  The two Americans said nothing.

  Below, overhead as seen from the headsdown ship, the sea remained nig
ht as the white sun rose swiftly taking the stars with it.

  Parker floated out of his rear seat toward the forward cockpit four feet away. The seated pilots handed him their empty containers. Stuffing the trash into a small bag, the AC went down the floor hatch to the mid-deck.

  Below decks, the AC floated to the forward lockers where he put the garbage and then to the sleep berths along the starboard wall. His bunk looked inviting to his weary boJy and to his brain fogged by horse medication which no longer worked.

  Parker leaned into the top bunk and his mesh-covered legs floated well off the floor behind him. He tightened the bunk straps around his reposing orange ascent suit. He did likewise to Enright’s pressure suit worn during launch. From there, he floated to the nearby airlock against the mid-deck’s aft Bulkhead No. 576. With a slow flip, Parker turned upside down such that his stocking feet were close to the ceiling, 6 feet 8 inches high. With his face near the floor, he pushed the inside hatch of the airlock closed. With one hand on a hand rail, his other hand cranked the hatch seal tightly closed. The hatch inside the airlock leading into the payload bay was already locked.

  Still upside down, the command pilot surveyed each corner of the mid-deck: Storage lockers closed, galley switches off, ascent suits and helmets secured, biffy door and privacy curtains closed.

  As the AC popped through the access hole, he flipped off the mid-deck lights on a ceiling panel. His mother raised him right.

  Topside, flying headsdown at 08 hours 47 minutes 39 seconds, Endeavor approached her first landfall in 11,000 miles over Sumatra, the 150-mile wide principal island of Indonesia. Early-morning daylight warmed the island which Shuttle crossed in half a minute.

  “Ascending node, Rev Seven, Skipper. Home stretch. Secure below?”

  “All set, Jack.”

  Endeavor in burning daylight sped over the South China Sea with Malasia out the inverted right window to the north and Borneo to the south.

  “Let’s get the doors, Number One.”

  “ ’Kay.”

  Parker floated to the aft station. Up front, Enright powered up the crackling UHF radios for a call to the network on Okinawa in five minutes. The island itself would not come under Shuttle for another eight minutes. After this pass, the next time they would see the island they would be parked there at the end of Runway 23, and its 12,000 feet of concrete.

  Parker floated to the aft Mission Specialist consoles on the starboard side wall behind Karpov. He plugged his headset into the wall jack.

  “Comm check.”

  “Gotcha, Will. Flash evaporators on-line.”

  Enright in the forward left seat worked the controls on Panel Left-1 near his left elbow. He powered up the evaporators to cool the ship’s two freon loops during the descent down to 140,000 feet on the re-entry. He also activated the warm-up plumbing and electronics for the two ammonia boilers which would cool the ship below 120,000 feet. The water spray boilers for cooling the two surviving Auxiliary Power Units in the damaged tail would be activated for re-entry shortly before the de-orbit OMS firing an hour away.

  Parker floated upright behind Karpov at aft panel Right-13.

  “Radiator latch control, System A to release. Radiator control to stow.” The AC scanned television screen Number Four at chest level. “Six radiator panels in motion, Jack.”

  “I can see it.” Enright watched his center television as green video graphics depicted the radiators on each bay side rising from the open doors.

  “Got ’em by eyeball.” The AC looked over his right shoulder to the aft wall windows. In the sunlit bay, he could see the radiators climbing over the bay walls. The units slowly rotated upward over the rim and then downward toward the inside walls of the payload bay. He could not see the bay doors below the sides of the bay.

  “Colorado, Endeavor by Kadena.” Enright called the ground as Endeavor crossed Manila. Her next landfall was 13,000 miles away over South America.

  Flying nose forward pointing northeast, Enright and Karpov had an upside-down Philippine Sea out the front windows. Beneath the inverted open bay, Parker could see a dazzling South China Sea through the overhead window above his face.

  “Endeavor: Colorado with you by Kadena at 08 plus 54 . . . What the hell is your situation up there? We’ve been holding our breath worldwide for 25 minutes down here!”

  “Enright here . . . We’re bent, but right and tight. AC been packin’ it up in the bay. We’re burning-in this rev. Alert Okinawa for company. We aligned the IMU’s 20 minutes ago. We’ll do a single engine de-orbit burn this rev. Port OMS and RCS stack are dead. TIG at 09 hours 55 minutes 12 seconds at about 38 degrees south by 007 degrees west. Wheels on the numbers at 10 plus 47 . . . Radiators now stowed. Evaps on-line and in the green. We don’t foresee much problem running the re-entry on the forward RCS and right-only RCS aft. Have the backroom run a sim on partial, aft-RCS stabilization. Figure we can go to control surface, aerodynamic steering a bit early on the descent.” The thin airman paused and he sighed so deeply that his breath activated the ship’s intercom. “And, Flight, Soyuz has been destroyed by the same laser burst which crippled us up here . . . Negative survivors. Please advise Kalinin Control Center. It has been such a very long day, Colorado.”

  “Understand, Jack. Get back to you on elevon evaluation. Try to do a complete data dump by California in 26. We’ll only have 3 minutes with you after California via Botswana at 10 plus 01. That means your brief California pass will be it for a pre-burn status call. At least Botswana and Indian Ocean Ship at 10 plus 13 will both be solid acquisitions before the comm blackout inbound. We would predict entry interface at 10 plus 17. Should be able to pass along reliable state vectors and approach trajectory data.”

  “Countin’ on it, Flight.”

  “Roger that, Will. One more minute here . . . We copy the loss of Soyuz . . . And our deepest condolences to Major Karpov. Uri was one good man, a credit to we who fly . . . That comes from all America, Major.”

  Shuttle flew with Okinawa 300 nautical miles to the northwest. Although the island was only one-third of the distance to the horizon, Enright and Karpov could not find it in morning fog.

  “Endeavor: Kadena WX will be scattered clouds at 30,000 with wind out of 220 at 08 knots. Visibility 12 for the approach. Runway 23 is the active—12,000 feet with displaced threshold. At final approach, sun will be about 36 degrees high at bearing 153 degrees True.”

  “Okay, Flight . . . Ready on the doors, Jack. Radiators stowed and latched.”

  “All yours, Skip.”

  At the starboard wall instrument consoles, Parker energized Bay Mechanical Power, System One.

  “Doors lever-locked closed, Jack . . . In motion left and right.”

  “See it, Skip.”

  Slowly, silently, the motors lifted the great doors upward from the wings. With the inverted bay facing the dawn sea 900 miles east of Okinawa, Parker watched the two doors seal out the brilliant ocean beneath the sixty-foot-long chasm. Like huge white clamshells, the bay slowly closed over Parker’s right shoulder.

  “Two feet to go, Jack.”

  “Endeavor: Coming up on LOS by Kadena. With you by GDX at 09 plus 20 . . .”

  At one minute before Shuttle’s ninth hour aloft, Okinawa fell over the edge of radio range as the ship overflew the Bonin Islands. To Endeavor’s south, 150 miles away, a tiny green dot was visible in early-morning daylight out Enright’s inverted side window: Iwo Jima.

  The blue sea disappeared behind the overhead seam of the bay roof. With the bay floodlights burning brightly, it was still daylight inside the closed payload bay.

  “All green latches, Will.”

  “Okay, Jack. Takin’ my look-see.”

  Parker set up a small, telescopic theodelite much like a surveyor’s instrument. With it, the AC focused the optics through the rear window. Carefully, he conducted a slow, meticulous inspection of the bay ceiling seam. The instrument at the AC’s squinting eye scanned the length of the closed roof seam
one inch at a time.

  “Not a ripple, Number One. Bay seal is secured . . . Lights off.”

  Parker extinguished the six lights inside the bay. Outside the two rear windows, the payload bay was black and ready for the fiery plunge homeward.

  “Fifty minutes, Skipper.”

  The mission event timer at Enright’s eye level ticked down the time remaining to the de-orbit ignition of the one surviving OMS engine in the broken tail section.

  In the rear of the flightdeck, Parker floated from panel to panel where he powered down systems and rear lighting. When he had finished, he floated toward Karpov.

  “Time to play musical chairs, Major.”

  The Soviet pilot released his lap belt and floated over the center console. Like tandem swimmers, Parker and the Russian floated to the rear jumpseat.

  “For the re-entry G-load, Alexi.” The AC handed Karpov his rubber, inflatable pants which had been stowed under the jumpseat. The Russian in his American flightsuit hung upside down in the rear of the flightdeck. Parker held Karpov’s shoulders while the Major pulled on his anti-gravity pants. “Prevents grayout during the re-entry G spike which we take headsup. The inflated pants stop blood pooling in the lower body.”

  Wearing his balloon pants like fisherman’s waders, the Russian buckled into the jumpseat. Floating beside Karpov, Parker touched the large overhead window above the Major’s head.

  “Escape hatch, Alexi. If you pull here, the whole window frame opens inward like a trapdoor. If we get bent or wet, crack the window seals and punch out. We’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

  The sole surviving Russian nodded.

  “Enjoy the ride, my friend.” Will Parker’s gaunt and deeply lined face smiled. So did the Major.

  As the AC floated forward, Enright had already moved into his right seat. His anti-gravity pants covered his mesh drawers. Parker pulled his inflatable waders from under his seat. He pulled the pants over his own sweat-soaked woolies. He winced as the tight trousers squeezed over his grotesquely swollen right leg. Then he eased his long body over the center console and into the left front seat—the Captain’s Seat. The AC plugged in his communications cable for the soft headset. An air tube went from behind his seat to his rubber pants. Karpov behind Enright plugged his communications line into a wall jack as he plugged his pants into the Portable Oxygen System outlet behind Enright’s seat.