Project Rescue

by Mark Kelly

  “Right,” Mark said. He was sorry he wasn’t getting a more friendly reception, but he decided to give the stranded cosmonaut a break. After all, Ilya Ilyushin had been in space by himself for weeks, besides which he had probably expected to die.

  Anybody would be grouchy.

  “So, Major,” Mark asked courteously, “what seems to be the trouble?”

  Before Major Ilyushin could answer, Mark heard something unexpected—a bark. Was there a dog on board? Till now, he had forgotten about the animals reported in the news.

  Major Ilyushin scowled and moved to the far side of the module where a set of three plastic boxes was suspended for brackets. They looked like pet carriers. “Tishe, Richard Nixon! Tishe!” Major Ilyushin snapped.

  Richard Nixon? What does the former president have to do with anything? Mark wondered.

  “Shall I let him out?” Major Ilyushin asked. “I suspect he will enjoy an opportunity to meet with a new and unfamiliar person.”

  Wait a second.

  Was Richard Nixon a dog?

  Mark knew a lot of people in the United States considered the disgraced president to be a criminal, but Mark had never thought of him as a dog before. “Uh, so why did you name him Richard Nixon?”

  Major Ilyushin shrugged. “Russian humor. It is hard to explain.” He raised the wire door at the end of the box. Out of it shot a blur of spotted energy whose pink tongue sent perfect spheres of dog slobber caroming everywhere.

  The dog was small and sturdy with a short, spotted coat and floppy ears. Mark was impressed with how comfortable he seemed in weightlessness, just like Major Ilyushin himself. Soon he was licking Mark’s nose and spinning as if he wanted his belly scratched. Mark tried to oblige, unintentionally sending the dog ping-ponging in the other direction.

  This didn’t seem to bother Richard Nixon any. He just pushed off the floor—or maybe it was the ceiling—and tumbled back for more.

  “There are rodents as well,” Major Ilyushin said. “Mice and cavies—what do you call them in the U.S.A.?”

  “Cavities? What?” Mark was confused, but then he heard another animal noise, this one a combination burble, squeak, and chirp. “Oh! Guinea pigs!” He remembered the sound from his second-grade classroom. “So that’s what you’ve got in the other two pet carriers.”

  “Pet? No, no, nyet pet!” said Major Ilyushin. “These animals are for only experimental purposes.”

  Mark remembered what his dad had said: germ warfare! But, somersaulting around the space station, Richard Nixon looked plenty healthy. And anyway, there was no time to worry about germs or warfare, either. He and Major Ilyushin had to get down to business. Daylight was fast running out.

  Moscow and Greenwood were in agreement. It would be best for Major Ilyushin to go home in the Russian transport ship, the Soyuz, if that was possible. So the first thing to do was isolate the problem with the Salyut station and then, if possible, fix it.

  Of course, the Crazy 9 team knew a whole bunch of Soviet scientists and engineers had already tried to do this, but their previous success had given them confidence. It was a funny thing, but sometimes inexperience enabled you to see something everybody else had missed. It was worth a try.

  Now Major Ilyushin explained the problem: “The Soyuz spacecraft in which I came to the space station is now hard-docked to it. The first step in the undocking procedure is to release the main docking latches. To do so, I throw this switch.” He indicated a silver tab on an elongated black instrument panel similar to the ones in Crazy 9. Beside it, a red warning light glowed. Major Ilyushin moved the switch back and forth. No matter what he did, the red light continued to glow. “You see? The switch does nothing.”

  “How about this?” Mark said. “Can you release the latches manually?”

  Major Ilyushin frowned, causing his two eyebrows to become one. “If I could do that, would I still be here?”

  Mark nodded. “Yeah, good point.”

  “I believe,” Major Ilyushin continued, “that one of the electrical circuits has, what do you say in English—shorted out? The engineers on the ground have told me that even if we could locate the problem precisely, the only way to make a repair would be to slice the metal skin of the space station. This is impossible without a blowtorch, which I could not use anyway for obvious reasons.”

  Mark knew what those reasons were, too. In the pressurized environment of the space station, the spark from a blow torch would cause an explosive fire.

  Mark said, “Let me talk to our engineers about it,” and by “engineers,” he meant Lisa. “She, that is, they, might have an idea.”

  Major Ilyushin sighed and shook his head. “And are these engineers also children?”

  Mark said, “Some people might call her, that is, them, children. But they’re supersmart children, smarter than me even.”

  Major Ilyushin looked doubtful, and Mark thought maybe after all Egg would have made a better astronaut. She would be better at the meeting-new-people and promoting-world-peace part. He switched on the transmitter in his helmet, which he had left suspended conveniently beside his head. “Greenwood, this is Spaceman, come in, please.”

  Once the situation had been explained, Lisa was quick with a reply. “Is there an auxiliary power switch for the signal conditioning equipment—the SCE?”

  Major Ilyushin could hear Lisa’s amplified voice. “Ask her what she is talking about,” he said.

  “I heard him,” Lisa said, “and I don’t know how to say it in Russian. We could patch through to Barry’s interpreter, but that would take a while. I’m talking about the equipment that provides backup voltage to instrumentation points in the control and fuel cell systems. Can he, that is, can you, switch it to aux—to auxiliary?”

  “Ah,” Major Ilyushin nodded. “I now understand, and I know the system to which you refer, Engineer Lisa, but the Soviet engineers, in their surpassing wisdom, have built no redundancy into this system.”

  There was another pause before Lisa replied. Mark thought she must have been thinking. Was she out of ideas? “Okay, roger,” she said at last, “so then here’s another idea. Give the instrument panel a solid whack with your fist.”

  Major Ilyushin’s eyebrows did an unhappy dance, and Mark could tell the cosmonaut’s opinion of Lisa had fallen to a new low. “Is she—what is the word? Kidding around?” he asked.

  “I heard that, too,” Lisa said, “and no, I am dead serious. On the Apollo Fourteen LM, the lunar module, a stray piece of wire got into a switch and bounced around, interrupting the circuit intermittently.

  “Of course, they didn’t know that till later, they just knew that sometimes the signals the switch sent were all wrong. They almost had to abort the mission. Then one of the controllers had the smart idea of thwacking the panel by the switch—problem solved. Apparently the thwack dislodged the stray piece of wire.”

  Mark didn’t follow Lisa’s whole explanation, but he got the point. He should ball up his fist and hit the panel beside the switch. And, without waiting for Major Ilyushin’s permission, that is exactly what he did. Nothing happened for about a second, then, like magic, the red light turned first amber, then green, and a moment later, from deep inside the space station, came a thump, then the sound of a metal mechanism humming to life.

  “Lisa, you’re a genius!” Mark said, and—for the first time since Mark had removed his helmet—Major Ilyushin smiled. “I am going home!” he said.

  But his joy did not last long.

  When a moment later the cosmonaut turned his full attention to the instrument panel, he saw that a new red light was illuminated . . . and his face went pale.

  “Mark Kelly,” he said in a strained voice, “you and I—we are in imminent danger, mortal danger! There is no time to prepare the Soyuz or even to explain. Put on your helmet. We will leave immediately through the airlock.”

  What the heck?

  Mark didn’t know what Major Ilyushin had seen on the panel, what that new red light meant,
but the look on his face and the way he spoke made it obvious he was scared to death.

  Mark grabbed his helmet and prepared to abandon ship. At the same time, Richard Nixon tugged at the fingers of his glove. He was just like Nelson, Mark thought. He wanted to play!

  Major Ilyushin saw Mark’s face and must have read his thoughts. “We cannot afford to be sentimental about animals. We must save ourselves.”

  Mark took a deep breath. He was all in favor of saving himself. But then he looked into Richard Nixon’s trusting brown eyes . . . and he couldn’t leave him behind. And if he was going to grab the dog, well, he might as well take the guinea pigs and mice, too.

  “You go,” Mark said. “Crazy 9 is stationed right outside. Big American flag on the hull, you can’t miss it. My brother—that is, Commander Kelly—he knows you’re on your way. Tell him I’ll be over in a sec.”

  Chapter 35

  * * *

  One thing soon became obvious about the rescue ball. It was designed for slow-motion rescue, lazy rescue—for all those times you were in no hurry with your rescue—certainly not for those times when a terrible, painful, and unknown thing was about to happen any second.

  Released from its zippered nylon case, the rescue ball popped open and expanded, becoming a sphere twice the size of a beach ball. It would be a tight fit for a human astronaut, but for one small dog, four mice, and three guinea pigs, it was plenty big.

  The setup was ridiculously complicated—Tab A, Tab B, twist this and tighten, push this probe into that latch until it clicked. Repeat.

  It seemed to take forever, but at last Mark had the oxygen tubing hooked up and the power on, and the sphere itself looked the way he hoped it was supposed to. Inside, there would be room for only a single pet carrier. The guinea pigs and the mice would have to share, but at least it wouldn’t be for long. The flight plan called for splashdown less than three hours from now.

  “You guys are okay together for a few minutes,” Mark said to the rodents. “No fighting.” Then, with the lightest possible touch, he pushed Richard Nixon in after. The dog didn’t mind a bit; in fact, he wagged his tail. Like any good astronaut or cosmonaut, he was always up for a small space or a new experience.

  Mark looked around the Salyut station once before closing the hatch on the airlock. The station looked ordinary. It was large, well lit, and comparatively welcoming. What could be so dangerous, anyway? Could it really be that bad? Maybe Major Ilyushin was exaggerating.

  Earth had spun once more into darkness by the time Mark exited into space, twisted the left-hand control on the AMU, and began the short trip to his own command module. The universe, previously a kaleidoscope, was now every shade of shadow, with his own Milky Way galaxy arcing around him like luminous smoke.

  Below, Earth was a dull and lifeless gray. Since the moon was not up, the only earthward light came from occasional lightning flashes in the storm clouds. Venus, in contrast, was lit like a lantern.

  After a while, Mark thought, a person would get used to moving around in space just like you get used to being in the water. Both Richard Nixon and Major Ilyushin, he had noticed, were a lot less awkward than he was.

  But would you ever get used to this view? It would be sad if you did, if this spectacle became routine rather than overwhelming and distracting. And speaking of distracting—bump, buh-bump—he had run into the hull of the command module with more force than he had intended—ouch.

  “Commander Kelly, come in, bro? Spaceman, here. I’m back.”

  Once Mark was inside, he was eager to tell his brother all about his adventure, but for some reason Scott did not want to hear it. “Strap in and stow the animals,” he said.

  “But—” Mark began.

  Major Ilyushin, who had taken his place on the middle seat, interrupted. “There is no time for warm reuniting between brothers.”

  “Move it, Mark!” Scott commanded, then, “Greenwood Lake? Crazy 9. We are getting out of here.”

  * * *

  Because there is no atmosphere either to fuel a fire or to carry a sound, explosions in space don’t last long, and they don’t make noise. So when a few minutes later the Salyut space station blew up, the explosion consisted of a single multihued and brilliant flash.

  “Don’t look!” Scott said, and Mark closed his eyes, but even through his lids, he felt painful pure white light. The lack of sound felt like a silent scream, all the more frightening because it was so strange. An instant later, a cloud of whizzing, broken, dangerous debris rat-a-tatted against the hull of Crazy 9.

  “Brace positions!” Scott shouted. “Stay clear of the windows!”

  Tense moments passed before Mark stole a look out the window. The debris swarm by now was moving harmlessly into the endless beyond.

  Had it been true? All that talk about the Soviet Union and space weapons? Had the Salyut been armed with bombs, nuclear bombs? Had he and his brother been exposed to deadly radiation in exchange for saving the cosmonaut’s life?

  When Mark could breathe again, he asked, “Wh-wh-what happened?” His heart was going a mile a minute. If the rescue ball had been any more complicated, if Richard Nixon had hesitated to go inside, if he had admired the view any longer—the blast would have been deadly.

  As it was, Scott and the flight control computer by now had maneuvered the command module to a lower orbit, and Crazy 9 was in one piece.

  “I guess it’s a good thing I hurried,” he said weakly. Then, when neither Major Ilyushin nor Commander Kelly replied, he went on, “Uh . . . so what happened? What did you see on the control panel, Major I?”

  The “Major I” had just slipped out. It was so much easier to say than Major Ilyushin. Mark expected the cosmonaut to scold him for being disrespectful, but he didn’t. Instead, he explained.

  “It would seem that your entrance into the Salyut space station caused pressurization to drop below the threshold set by the automatic environmental system,” he said. “To compensate, the system pumped oxygen into the crew compartment—too much oxygen. Had I been monitoring continuously the panel, I would have seen that this was happening, and I could have vented some of the oxygen into space. But by the time I realized there was a problem, it was too late for that.

  Major I did not have to explain the risk further. In an overoxygenated atmosphere, the tiniest spark would cause a fire. Such fires in highly pressurized enclosed spaces had killed three American astronauts in 1967 and a cosmonaut in 1961. Only quick thinking and good luck had prevented a third such fire on the Soviet mission that included the first space walk in 1967.

  Since the Salyut space station’s electrical system had been working unreliably, the likelihood of a spark was high.

  Sky-high.

  The best explanation for what had just happened was that an oxygen-rich fire had ignited the remaining fuel on the Salyut Space Station . . . and caused it to explode. During the Crazy 8 mission, and this one too, the grown-ups had warned over and over, “Please don’t blow anything up.” Now it looked as if they had—and it wasn’t even their fault.

  * * *

  One thing about a space walk, it really makes you hungry.

  Luckily, Lisa had remembered the snacks.

  To avoid the dangers of crumbs interfering with equipment, Lisa had made them NASA-style and packed them in plastic sandwich bags.

  “Uh, what is this stuff?” Scott asked after sucking a sample through a drinking straw carefully inserted through a corner of the bag. They were somewhere over Africa, out of Greenwood Mission Control radio range, so there was no way to consult the chef.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, I’m starving.” Mark sucked a taste through his own straw and announced, “Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I think. All ground up and mixed with water. Tastes great to me. What do you think, Major I?”

  “Jelly I know, but not peanut butter. It is NOT good. We Russians do not eat peanut butter. I prefer borscht. Do you have borscht?”

  “Nyet borscht,” said Ma
rk, thinking Barry would be proud of him for speaking Russian. “Sorry.”

  Fortified by food, Mark worked up the courage to ask their guest whether there had been weapons on board the space station.

  “Nyet weapon.” Major I was so emphatic that both boys believed him. “You Americans are paranoid,” he added.

  “What about germ warfare?” Mark asked. “Is that what the mice and guinea pigs are testing?”

  “No, no, not that,” Major I said. “It is a simpler test to see about the long-term effects of life in space for biologic entities. You see, each one has a littermate back on Earth whose health has been monitored while he was in space. Now our Soviet scientists are going to compare one to the other to find out about the effects of space on their bodies.”

  “Hey, we’re littermates too—Scott and I, I mean,” said Mark. “Maybe someday NASA could do that with us.”

  Scott nodded. “Maybe,” he said, “provided anybody at NASA is still speaking to us after we get back. We kind of stole their rocket.”

  Chapter 36

  * * *

  Scott had already experienced the thrill ride of de-orbit and reentry on the Crazy 8 mission in the fall. The second time through, he enjoyed it more—even the part where Crazy 9 became the center of an ionic fireball, and all radio communications were blacked out. The only problem had occurred shortly after the de-orbit burn, when pummeling by the atmosphere caused the pet carrier containing the rodents to pop open, and all of a sudden guinea pigs and mice were bouncing and flying everywhere.

  Richard Nixon watched the flying rodent circus with interest, but he was too good a cosmonaut to bark. Fearing he might see his little buddies as potential doggie treats, Mark and Scott were glad he was safely strapped in. Meanwhile, Major I watched unhappily as Earth’s gravitational force kicked in and a guinea pig descended slowly into his lap.

  As they hurtled back to Earth like a big rock, Mark thought to himself again about the risk involved in going into space. They were nearly at the end of their mission, but still so many things needed to go right and in correct order and at the right time.