A muscle on his cheek was twitching as I stared at him. “What did you see?" I asked.
“I don’t know," he replied slowly. “A lot of things that don’t add up. Basically, I’d say you’re alienated from people. You’re very adept with things, objects. You’re competent, and you take responsibility for yourself. But you shy away from situations that force you into contact with people. You deliberately bug people, if there’s no other way you can escape them. You get snotty, very unlike your real self. I mean, like showing off. You’re no show-off. Why the exhibition when we docked up here?’ ’
“You really want to know?’’
“Yes.”
“You didn’t see it, did you?’’
“No; I was ahead of you.’’
“I panicked, Bix. I lost my sense of up and down, and I knew, when I started out of my seat, that I was falling head first. I panicked—tried to make a grab for something.
“I got lucky. I swapped head for toe. It was pure accident. Then I got myself under control, my training took over, and I was O.K. That snot, Edwards, thought I was putting on a big show to impress him. What could I do?" I shook my head. “Am I supposed to explain myself to every chowderhead who gets the wrong idea about me?”
“You know," Bix said with a bitterly admiring tone, “you really have all the answers.’’
“Coming from you,” I said, “that’s a laugh.”
The first time I went out with Lee Hoffman.
He was a big, burly guy, and older than most of the crewmen I’d met. I found out he’d been a helicopter pilot down on Earth when he’d opted for NASA training. He was an old man, almost thirty-five. He had a ready smile, and a big, thick paw.
“You’re the new space-hopper, are you? Good deal, kid. You’ll like it or you’ll hate it. This is the shakedown run. Then you’ll be on your own.”
The system had already been explained to me. Space Control down at Houston had plots on a lot of our debris; we had radar watch for whatever else could be found. Everything went through Houston computer-complex, and then was tight-beamed up to our own computers. Courses were calculated for whatever we happened to be in close proximity to, and fed into the onboard space-tug computer. We rode out and picked the junk up. It was simple—supposedly.
“Don’t let anybody fool you, kid,” Hoffman told me. “It’s a lot more than a free ride. Lots of little problems come up. You’ll see. We stay busy.”
We were suited up and in the Station’s core. Hoffman pulled himself easily up to the North Port.
“First thing to check,” he said, pointing to a control box and dials. “Air. Make sure the cycle is through. If in doubt, run it through again.” He demonstrated. He pushed a button. A red light came on and immediately winked off again. The opposite port of the air lock was closed. There was air in the lock. The dials said as much.
He spun a wheel on the port, and swung it open.
His helmet was still back on his shoulders. He pulled it forward and locked it into place, motioning to me to do the same. I did, and his voice sounded in my earphones, somehow much closer and more personal. “O.K., now we’re on the air. They’re monitoring us down in Control—right, Ben?”
Another voice chuckled, and said, “Check, Lee. Stay out of trouble.”
“Now,” Hoffman went on, “you’re wondering why I bothered with this while we’re still in breathable air. Good reason: Once you’re not, it’s too late. But mainly, it’s a good habit never to forget being fully suited before going through this port.”
“Has anyone ever, umm, forgotten?” I wondered out loud.
“Yup. I recall a cadet who was up here a couple years ago. He was on the same job you are. He came in here, dogged the port, readied his tug, and decompressed, all without his helmet. Not a pretty sight. After that, we made it a point to have everyone check out before entering the lock.”
He turned and pushed through, grabbing onto something on the other side as he did. Immediately his body flew up and around, to the left.
“There’re handgrabs as soon as you come through,” he told me. “Get a hold on one soon’s you can, to lose your spin.”
I’d almost forgotten. The lock did not turn with the Station. Once I was through, he had the light on top his helmet on, and the bright light cut cleanly through the dark lock. I turned my own on, and—still holding tight with one hand—swung around.
The lock was large—a huge drum that served as far more than just an air lock. It was also the garage for the space tugs. These were the strange objects I’d seen in the gloom when I’d first docked. They were open frameworks of structural girders, designed solely for use in airless space. Up in front on each was an open console board and the hand controls. Immediately behind it was a single seat, just a flat bench, actually, without a back. The rest of the tug was fuel cells and batteries, fuel tanks and rocket engines. It had three big engines, and a number of smaller, maneuvering thrusters around the periphery. That was it. The tugs looked like desiccated skeletons, awkward and impossible to use. But I knew they were extremely efficient units.
Hoffman closed the port, and showed me how to fuel the tanks of one of the tugs.
Then he led me over to one side, and hauled out two AMU backpacks.
The Astronaut Maneuvering Unit is straight out of Buck Rogers. What it is, is a special rocket unit that straps to a man’s back, and turns him into a personal space vehicle. It looks like a big, square box, with two small arms that fold out alongside you like the armrests of a chair. These contain the controls. The thing has its own air supply, fuel, tiny rocket thrusters, batteries, and running lights. It’s a real delight. I wouldn’t want to wear one anywhere where I weighed more than 1/50th G.
Lee helped me struggle into mine, and showed me how to connect the reserve air tanks to my suit’s tanks. Then he slung his own on, in half the time, and thumbed the button that cycled the air out.
He told me to climb onto the seat of the tug he’d fueled.
“Where will you sit?" I asked. There was obviously room for only one on the seat.
“No problem. I’ll just hook on behind you,” he said. “Hook yourself in place.”
Feeling clumsy, I fastened the small seat hooks to the loops on the thighs of my suit. There were some additional hooks on the seat board, and Hoffman clipped several short extension belts to these, and secured himself.
The tug was stacked among the others, and I wondered how he was going to move it to the outer port.
“If you were handling this, how would you get us out the door?” he asked me.
“Well, I was wondering about that,” I confessed. “Since we’re already hooked on, I guess I’d use the maneuvering thrusters.”
“Right. First, however, we unlock the controls.” He leaned over me and flipped a sturdy-looking switch. “Then we unlock ourselves from the dock.” He threw another switch and a red light, which had winked on with the first switch, went off. Only green lights were on now.
“Hoffman to Control,” he said. “All set. Am I programmed?”
“Control,” said another voice, equally loud in my headphones. “Fully programmed and checked out. Everything’s Go.”
“O.K., kid. Take her on out,” Hoffman said.
Me?
The controls were simple. They were quite like the smaller controls on my backpack: a direction control for my left hand, and an attitude control for my right.
I glanced over at the exit port. The huge door was fully open. Through it, I could see stars. They were fantastically sharp and bright.
Gently, I squeezed my left hand.
A bright torch momentarily flared off to my right. Then we were swinging out, around, facing toward the port.
I squeezed again, more gently.
Another flare, to my left, and we were halted, poised, pointed directly for the open port.
“You’re doing fine,” Hoffman’s voice said, almost inside my head.
A forward nudge, this time.
And we were moving smoothly through the enclosed space of the air lock, out into the docking collar, and then—out into the vast enormity of free space!
Chapter 8
LET ME TELL you right now: This was it—this was the whole justification for my years of NASA training. They could cashier me out immediately, and I would not feel cheated. I’d known open space.
I was hanging over one of the most fantastic spectacles man will ever know. I felt like a trespasser. I felt as exhilarated as the first space-walker must have.
Below us, below the Station, half my view was filled by the globe of the Earth. We were hanging over it, and so close, so incredibly near, that weightless and “falling,” I felt a moment’s panicky thought that it could be only seconds before we would drop down into the planet’s atmosphere. It seemed to hold and draw us, magnetically, just as it drew my hypnotized gaze.
Over half the Earth was in shadow, a black velvet that did not mask occasional glimmerings, whether man-made or atmospheric, I could not tell. One side, however, still held a thick crescent of light: richly blue, a stirred custard of clouds like icing on a vast cake.
Beyond the rim.. .1 turned, and then my helmet no longer shielded me from the direct sight of the sun. Quickly the treated glass of my faceplate darkened, but not before I had spots before my eyes. I turned hastily away.
"Don’t ever look directly at the sun,” Hoffman said in my ear. “We have no atmospheric shielding up here; the ultraviolet is a lot more intense. It can leave permanent scars on your retinas.”
I mumbled my assent, and stared out at the stars, above the darkened rim of Earth.
They were a rich profusion, a tapestry of subtle colors. I saw what I’d never seen before but only heard about: stars that were all the colors of the spectrum—blue, yellow, red, orange, green. Very few were actually white.
For a long moment I felt alone—totally alone— hanging naked in space. Then I pulled my thoughts together. I tugged my suit a little against the hooks, and felt the hard seat beneath me. Bright sunlight caught the edges of the tug’s framework, throwing the girders into sharp relief. My arms and legs gleamed whitely in the sun; their shadows a dull silver that caught reflections.
Hoffman leaned over me and flipped another switch, cutting in the automatic control computer.
Instantly, small thrusters flared. We halted, pivoted, and half rolled to a new attitude. The Station was no longer at our backs, but above and to one side of us. Then the main rockets fired.
The acceleration was not great. It did not need to be. We were not pulling against gravity, and there was little inertia to be overcome. The rockets fired for perhaps twenty seconds, and were silent. The tug was vastly overpowered; it was designed as water-going tugs are: to handle loads many times greater than itself.
The next two hours Hoffman and I spent in quiet conversation, he telling me a little about his life on Earth, and how little it had meant to him, and giving me tips on how to handle the tug and about life aboard the Station in general. At one point, one of his observations on the mores of Station life drew chuckles from our monitor in Station Control, and Lee remarked, “Always remember, Paul, that life up here is a goldfish bowl. Everything you say when you’re suited up is going to be overheard and taped by your Control monitor at the very least. And, for all we know, there are ears pitched to hear us Earthside as well.”
“Really?” I asked. “I didn’t think we were using that much power.”
“You know those radio-telescopes they’ve got? Well, the stuff they pick up with those is pretty slight, compared with what we’re broadcasting. And there are amateurs, down there—some sort of radio hams, I suppose—who make it a hobby to build really fantastically sensitive listening devices.”
“What for?”
“For kicks, I guess. It gives them a jolt to eavesdrop on space operations. It’s as though they had a little piece of it for themselves. Some of them have been at it for a long time, monitoring the telemetering instruments on the unmanned jobs we sent up twenty-five, thirty years ago. What can I say? Who can explain anyone’s hobby?”
I saw it first, because I’d been watching more closely. It was a star—but a star that moved diagonally across the path of the other stars.
Then it was not a star. It was too close, too bright.
Our forward retros fired—a longer period, because these were smaller and less powerful—and still the bright object swelled before us.
It was tumbling, turning end for end in its perpetual orbit. It was a pencil like booster, thin, and marked with red letters on white.
“A military job,” Hoffman remarked. “Tough boogies. A polar orbit we have to pull it out of.”
I glanced at the control panel. The instruments showed we had a radar lock on the booster. The onboard computer fired side thrusters in short nudges, and suddenly we were alongside the long, cigar-shaped object.
“It’s your show,” Hoffman said. “I’m just here to watch.”
I pulled the safety cable out on its reel, and hooked it to me. Then I unhooked myself from the tug. I gave myself a tentative nudge, and felt the tug fall away from under me.
I reached out and grabbed a control arm, and my legs swung around until I was hanging upside down over the tug. “Don’t laugh," I said. “I’ll get the hang of it.’’
“I’m not laughing, Paul,*’ Hoffman said quietly.
I followed the handgrips back along the sides of the tug until I was amidships, over the heavy cable lockers.
It took some work, me being weightless and having to keep a firm grip on something solid with one hand, but I got the lockers open, and pulled out the cables. These too were on heavy reels, and I had to unlock them before the cables would roll out freely.
The tug was no more than ten feet from the derelict booster, but the booster was slowly turning head for toe all the time. I could see it wasn’t going to be a snap.
I pulled myself around until, both large cables hooked at my waist, I was crouching, with my feet firmly planted against the tug. Then I jumped.
I didn’t put much kick into it. I wasn’t trying to set a new broad-leap record. I pushed down slowly and - smoothly, and equally slowly and smoothly, I shoved off into space.
My push would start the tug moving away from me, but not as fast. Of the two bodies reacting against each other, mine had the lesser mass and inertia. It didn’t matter. I still had the cables.
I somersaulted before midpoint, so that I was heading feet first for the booster.
I missed. I’d thought I’d timed its tumbling action so that I’d touch near the center at just the right moment. Maybe it was the drag of the cables, but I’d miscalculated. I fell slowly past the booster not more than three feet above it.
“Use your backpack, Paul," came Hoffman’s calmly reassuring voice. “But mind you keep the cables free.’’
I twisted myself about again, reaching behind me as I did so for the control arms of the backpack.
Now in front of me, the booster gleamed almost blindingly in the sunlight. Three cables, two thick and one a light translucent Fibreglas, snaked back over it to the empty framework of the tug, beyond. Hoffman's suited figure gave me a wave.
The cables were still unreeling; I was still falling out, away from tug and booster. v
I snapped the control arms down beside me, and fitted my hands over the knobby controls at the ends.
I fired brief bursts to halt my own tumbling, and line myself up properly. Then another burst, that started me back over my path again. The cables turned and followed me back, describing a 180-degree turn behind me.
This time I made fast to the booster. I made my way to one end, and the universe reeling drunkenly about me, fastened my cables securely.
The rest was anticlimax. I followed my personal, lightweight cable back to the tug, and hooked myself into place. A touch to the proper controls locked the towing cable reels, and started their rewind.
The computer did the rest.
As the lines tightened, the booster, with its larger mass, tried to throw us into its tumbling path. The computer fired short blasts from the perimeter thrusters, and then the main rockets.
In short order we were heading back toward the Station, the now-quiescent booster clamped tightly to the tug.
“Very good." Hoffman said. “You did that in only twenty minutes; five minutes to spare.”
“Sir?”
“The Station’s not where we left it, you know. And we fell into a polar orbit to pick up the booster. We had five more minutes before the easy window closed, and we’d have been stuck with the hard one.”
“The hard one?”
“Tricky maneuvering—heavy g’s. A lot of trouble.”
“I wish I’d known.”
“I didn’t figure you needed any extra worries. Don’t sweat it; I was standing by.”
That sunk in after a while. Hoffman had been standing by, but I’d done the work. I’d done all the work. I glanced back over my shoulder: the huge cylinder of the booster was firmly in place, the cables drawing it snug against the cradle of the tug. A good piece of work. I felt moderately proud of myself.
When I got back, I headed for the mess hall. I was on a new schedule now, and I wouldn’t be seeing as much of my fellow cadets, but on the other hand, I’d be better integrated into the regular social life of the Station—or so Bix assured me.
"That’s what we’re up here for, you know, " he told me the night before. (“Night” is a fiction aboard the Station, but everyone follows. Actually, there are three shifts and eight-hour sleep periods are divided among them. But apparently the psychological effect of having a “night” and a “day” is important, so the lights dim from 9 P.M., Houston Space Time, till 5:30 A.M. We cadets were awarded the luxury of having our sleep period coincide with “night” time.) “We’re not supposed to be a little ghetto of greenies. We have to mix, become part of the crew.”
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