The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  Outside, freon refrigerant carried Endeavor’s body heat from the cabin and equipment water circulation lines to the freon lines, where the refrigerant flowed through the radiators latched to the open bay doors. There, the freon bled the heat into space. The heat from freon coolant Loop One is carried to the two radiators on the portside bay door behind the command pilot. Loop Two flows into the twin radiators on the starboard side behind the copilot’s empty seat.

  “Good news, Endeavor. You’re going over the edge here. Expect to contact Indian Ocean Ship in fourteen minutes. Next sunset in three minutes . . .”

  The ground’s voice broke up into static as the silent Soyuz, the slowly rolling LACE, and the upside-down Endeavor, crossed the Prime Meridian of Greenwich for Shuttle’s second time at MET 01 Hours and 59 Minutes aloft. No ground station would be within earshot of Shuttle until the ship reached the Indian Ocean in a quarter of an hour.

  “Only three minutes of daylight left, Jack. Let’s set up our attitude-hold while we can still see the target.”

  “Want me to do it, Will?” Enright radioed from the rear station. Shuttle can be flown from either the forward seat or from the center of the rear crew station.

  “I might as well fly her . . . Important to keep busy at my age.” The seated, tall flier smiled.

  “Glad I didn’t say that,” Enright chuckled over the intercom.

  “Okay,” the AC said to himself. “We’ll ask Mother to hold us with the payload bay facing the target. Mode select on the autopilot in LVLH with reference X-POP and minus Y.”

  Working the eighteen pushbuttons on the digital autopilot control panel by his right thigh and the black keys of his computer keyboard, the AC ordered the computers to yaw the ship sideways until Endeavor rode with her body perpendicular to their orbital path with the open bay facing LACE. In the Local Vertical-Local Horizontal reference matrix, Mother chose the best combination of Shuttle’s 19 Z-axis, RCS thrusters which control the ship’s roll and pitch rotation, to crank Endeavor over on her side until the open bay faced LACE. When Mother stopped the ship’s slow twist, Shuttle floated on her side with the open bay door behind the command pilot pointing toward dusky Africa. The open door behind Enright’s empty right seat pointed skyward. Over Africa, the ship’s nose faced north as Endeavor coasted lying on her left side.

  “Maneuver complete, Jack, with one minute of daylight to spare. I can see the target out the top of my center window. You got her back there?”

  Enright floated 5 feet behind his empty seat. He raised his helmeted face to the starboard, overhead window. The large portal faced west along their track already flown. The white sun hung just above the western horizon with excruciating brightness.

  “Nothin’ but sun out here, Skipper. I’ll have her after sunset in twilight.”

  Crossing the border between Nigeria and Niger, just north of Kano, Nigeria, 2 hours and 2 minutes aloft, Shuttle flew into twilight as the sun fell rapidly toward the western horizon. At Endeavor’s speed of 300 miles per minute, the sun set quickly with its explosion of bright colors all along the hazy blue band of the Earth’s film of air.

  “Got her now,” Enright called as the sun slipped below the planet’s far corner. The final moments of twilight bathed the black, shining sides of LACE in orange flame. And then it was night. Only the steady white glow of the running lights on Soyuz could be seen on LACE’s far side.

  Suddenly and silently, a pair of piercing arc lights illuminated on Soyuz in the darkness absolute. The two white beacons fell brightly upon LACE now clearly visible. Without air to scatter the light, no beam corridors reached between Soyuz and the fully illuminated, gently rolling LACE.

  “A little help from Brother Ivan, Skipper.”

  “Seems so, Jack.”

  As Endeavor on her side sped into the shadow of her second African night, the rear crew station was bright with its interior lights and with the six floodlights in the payload bay filling the two large windows at eye level on the rear bulkhead wall.

  “Let’s crank up the CCTV for power up of the RMS, Jack. How you feelin’ back there, buddy?”

  Enright assumed the astronauts’ crouched position behind the seated command pilot. With his feet secured to the flightdeck floor’s boot restraints, Enright stood with his knees well bent. His arms within his bulky suit floated before his face. Above his head, outside the twin ceiling windows, LACE rolled slowly, bathed in the light from the open payload bay and in the arc lights from Soyuz flying in tight formation without a word.

  “So far so good, Will. My face really feels full though. Maybe just a tad of lightheadedness. But I’m fine for sure. Tryin’ not to move my head too much.”

  “Super, Jack,” the intercom crackled over the small African nation of Cameroon which slept in pitch darkness. “Be right with you.”

  Up front, Parker extricated himself from the hoses and cables rising from beneath his seat and from between his long legs. He raised the anti-laser visor on his helmet and the faceplate under it so he could breathe the cool, dry air of the flightdeck. Heaving his long legs from under the forward instrument panel, the AC floated out of his seat and over the center console. As he straightened his legs for the first time in three hours, a searing pain squeezed his right leg below the knee. Enright saw the tall flier’s grimace.

  Hovering with his legs flexed in mid-air, Parker floated between the two open hatchways in the floor behind the front seats. The desire to cartwheel back to Enright seized the tall pilot and he grinned broadly.

  Enright instantly read his captain’s deeply lined pilot’s face.

  “You wouldn’t let me, Skipper!” Enright shouted with a laugh through his open faceplate. The Colonel heard him and he floated slowly toward Enright in the rear.

  The command pilot stopped his flight at the Mission Specialist station on the starboard side of the rear flightdeck. He locked his boots into the floor restraints before he knelt to pick up two of the jerry-rigged air hoses which he twist-locked into the belly valves of his orange pressure suit. He plugged into the biomedical jack and intercom jack on Panel Aft-11 at the left lower level of the side wall’s displays. He looked up to the overhead window full of night and the illuminated LACE between Shuttle and Soyuz. Ahead of Parker at eye level, the lighted payload bay looked like daylight. On Panel Aft-13, at knee level, the AC flipped the microphone power switch and he turned the audio knob to its PTT/VOX position which activated the push-to-talk switch for air-ground communication and set the inner-ship intercom to voice-activation.

  “Got me, Jack?”

  “Loud and clear,” Enright radioed from the Payload Specialist station at Parker’s right side. The two pilots lowered and sealed their laser-proof faceplates.

  “Let’s do it, Number One,” the AC called as Endeavor flew upon her side across the Equator 2 hours, 7 minutes out. They flew 130 nautical miles above the black Congo River in Zaire, Central Africa.

  Parker crouched to his left to reach the knee level Panel Aft Right-15 on the rear starboard wall behind the copilot’s empty seat. The two hoses leading to his suit and the two communications and biomedical cables tangled in Parker’s long legs.

  “Lots of snakes back here, Jack!”

  “Don’t feed ’em, Skipper.”

  “Not me . . . Okay, Panel Aft Right-15, circuit breakers: Main DC bus A, aft bay television camera pan-tilt, and camera heaters, and pan-tilt heater, and control unit, all closed. Main bus B, forward bay TV: Camera pan-tilt, closed; camera heater, closed; pan-tilt heater, closed; and control unit and monitor, closed. Portside RMS television: Pan-tilt, heater, and pan-tilt heater, all closed. And, Main bus C, all three breakers, EVA television, closed . . . Do it, Jack.”

  Standing against the resistance of the legs of his stiff suit, the tall man winced as pain wracked his right calf.

  “Say somethin’, Will?”

  “Nah . . .”

  Both fliers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out the rear window before each of the
ir faces. Enright floated at Parker’s right side.

  At the center of the chest-high, rearmost instrument arrays the aft rotational hand controller protruded from the wall like a fist-size pistol grip. With it, either pilot could command Endeavor’s RCS thrusters to change Shuttle’s attitude as she coasted belly-forward, one-wing-down. Parker could work the aft RHC with his right hand, Enright with his left. Just to the right of the aft attitude control stick, fifteen toggle switches and twenty-seven lighted pushbuttons controlled the television cameras mounted inside the payload bay. Enright worked the TV controls with his ungloved left hand. At the aft flightdeck’s portside corner, by Enright’s right shoulder, two television screens came to life as the copilot activated Endeavor’s closed-circuit television.

  “CCTV alive, Will.”

  “They told you the service would teach you a trade, Number One!” the tall flier chuckled at Enright’s left. Both men looked into the open bay through the window before each face.

  Working the CCTV controls with his left hand, Enright called upon each bay camera to make a close survey of the open bay. For six minutes while Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE, sped over two thousand miles of southeast Africa, Enright steered the moveable zoom lens of the television cameras until a complete and careful scan of the entire bay was performed. The wall-to-wall reflective anti-laser blankets were meticulously examined. Two hours and eleven minutes aloft, Shuttle crossed Tanzania just east of Lake Nyasa lost below in the inky darkness.

  Enright powered up the television camera mounted on the wrist joint and on the elbow joint of the 50-foot long, 900-pound, three-segment, remote manipulator system arm. The arm still cradled on the port sill of the open bay in front of Enright’s window would be a critical element of Enright’s forthcoming trek outside.

  “Endeavor, Endeavor,” the earphones crackled. “Configure AOS via IOS at 02 hours 13 minutes . . . Colorado Springs is now controlling.”

  During Shuttle’s pass across sleeping Africa, NASA controllers in Houston had handed off Shuttle control to the Air Force Space Command’s new Consolidated Space Operations Facility in the Rocky Mountains from which satelite missions are monitored. The sophisticated equipment there allowed the facility to manage Endeavor’s voice communications, television broadcasts out the windows, and telemetry beacons.

  “Copy, Flight,” Parker called as he pushed his microphone button dangling from the cable locked to his chest. “How you mountain men doin’ down there?”

  Endeavor and the Air Force center communicated through the Indian Ocean Ship of the NASA network as Shuttle shot across the Mozambique Channel off southeast Africa between mainland Africa and the island of Madagascar. As Shuttle made for the large island just coming over the eastern horizon, the ship traveled ten times faster than a 150-grain bullet leaving the muzzle of a .30-06 rifle.

  “Real fine down here, Will. We see your temps all looking in the green. We would like you to go from Power One to Power Two on your encryptor without delay, please.”

  The command pilot threw a toggle switch on Panel Aft-3 with his left hand at waist level. The ship’s encryptor coded Endeavor’s operational instrumentation telemetry beacon before the data beamed Earthward.

  “That looks much cleaner, Endeavor. We’re going to be with you only two minutes by IOS this pass. After we lose you here, your next network contact will be Australia in eleven minutes. How’s the CCTV test?”

  “About done,” Enright called as he depressed his push-to-talk mike button. “Bay looks real clean. Blankets all secure. The RMS cameras, wrist and elbow, are functioning. The wrist camera is a bit grainy but should be usable.”

  “Copy, Jack. Before you go over the edge, give us a hack on RMS power-up. And we want you to begin cabin-depress routine when able.”

  “Just gettin’ to the RMS qualification runs, Colorado. Should be well into the manipulator test by Australia. And we copy on the delta-P.”

  The earphones crackled high above sleeping Madagascar two and one-fourth hours into the mission.

  “Colorado?” the AC called into the darkness.

  “Guess they’re out chasin’ mountain women, Skipper.”

  “Can’t blame ’em.”

  “I’m about ready for RMS power-up, Skip.”

  “ ’Kay. Let me cruise up front to pop the cabin vents while you’re breakin’ out the RMS checklist. Holler if you have any ear trouble when I bleed the pressure.”

  “ ’Kay . . . And no handstands,” Enright called over his left shoulder as the AC disconnected his hoses and cables.

  Free of the beta cloth-covered air hoses, the AC shoved off from the aft station. He floated with his arms and legs parallel to the floor. He swam to his left seat forward.

  “ ‘It’s a bird, it’s a plane . . .’ ” the horizontal floating pilot called through his open faceplate. Enright could not hear his captain’s pleasure.

  The AC floated sideways into his seat. He did not connect his lap belt but held his position with his right hand upon the glareshield overhanging the forward instrument panel.

  “Got me, Jack?” the AC called after plugging in his communication cable.

  “Five by, Skip.”

  Parker’s body did not touch his seat as his left hand rested upon a triangular instrument array beneath his left forearm.

  “Okay, Jack . . . Cabin relief enable . . . Now!” As the AC flipped and held down two spring-loaded toggle switches, air hissed out of the flightdeck. The AC felt his ears pop and he swallowed to equalize the pressure inside his head. As he depressed the two switches, the Colonel watched the fourth from the left of eleven vertical meters set into the ceiling just above the center windows. The meter’s vertical tape slowly moved beside its fixed pointer. As he read the cabin pressure gauge, air pressure in the flightdeck dropped from its normal 15 pounds down to 10.2 pounds per square inch.

  At both ends of the flightdeck, the two crewmen cleared their ears by yawning and by swallowing as the cabin pressure bled down.

  The cabin relief maneuver was essential to Enright’s planned walk in space to attach the grapple fixture to LACE. The object of lowering cabin pressure by one-third was to protect Enright from the “bends” during his extravehicular activity, EVA, outside. Since the EVA suit would be pressurized with pure oxygen at only 4.3 pounds per square inch, nitrogen gas from the cabin air mixture would bubble out into Enright’s blood if he went from sea level pressure into the low pressure of the EVA space suit which was stowed in the mid-deck airlock. Such a bloodstream bubble in Enright’s brain or lungs would mean an agonizing and convulsing death in space. To avoid the normal Shuttle EVA preparation of pre-breathing pure oxygen for three hours before going outside, the lowering of the pressure in the cabin’s oxygen-nitrogen mixture for several hours would remove most of the nitrogen from Enright’s blood. Such was hoped. The Shuttle program had abandoned the cabin-pressure-reduction routine in 1982 as only marginally reliable. The program adopted the more reliable three hours of oxygen prebreathing before the EVA scheduled for Shuttle Five in November 1982. A whole day at the lower pressure was called for by the manual. That much time is required to wash most of the dissolved nitrogen from astronauts’ blood. Now, Parker and Enright did not have time to wait and to do things by the numbers.

  “Ten point two and holding,” the AC called as he tightly held his nose while blowing hard through sealed nostrils to clear his ears. He ordered Mother to hold that level of cabin pressure.

  “Okay back here, Will. Ready for RMS routine.”

  “Comin’ back, Jack.”

  Parker swam back to Enright’s side where he plugged into his hoses and cables.

  Two hours and twenty minutes out, Endeavor flew over the black sea toward Australia now six minutes and 2,000 miles away.

  Jacob Enright at the port side of the rear flightdeck had the inch-thick checklists for the RMS arm lashed to the aft instrument consoles. The pilots prepared to bring the remote manipulator system to life in preparation for capturi
ng LACE with the wire snare at the arm’s far end.

  Standing shoulder-to-shoulder and facing rearward, the fliers raced the clock to begin the manipulator tests before interruption by Mission Control in Colorado.

  The RMS built by Spar Aerospace in Toronto is a 100-million-dollar gift to the American space program from Canada. The exquisitely complex manipulator arm is the single piece of equipment in the billion-dollar starship which cost the American taxpayers nothing.

  Enright flexed his knees to reach Panel Aft-14 below his waist. He crouched to read the controls for an emergency jettison of the whole 50-foot-long arm into space.

  “RMS jettison pyros, lever-locked safe; jettison command lever-locked safe; retention latches jettison forward, lever-locked safe; midships latch, lever-locked safe; and, aft latch jettison, lever-locked safe . . . She’s not goin’ anyplace, Skipper.”

  “Let’s do it then, Jack.”

  “Roger,” Enright said over the voice-activated intercom behind his closed, laser-reflecting faceplate. The copilot worked the chest-high control panels: “At Panel-A8A2: Primary power on; command switch to deploy; RMS latches from latch to off to set release.”

  Two black-and-white television screens beside Enright’s right shoulder blinked “RMS released.” The 905-pound arm was free and resting upon its open triple-latch rests on the portside sill of the payload bay. “And heater switch to auto.”

  Inside the 15-inch-thick arm, 26 automatic heaters and thermostats came to life to keep the motors in the arm’s shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints no colder than 14 degrees Fahrenheit when Endeavor sped through nighttime’s cold of 250 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

  Enright laid his ungloved left hand upon Panel A8A1 at chest level. On the console’s lower left corner, a small, red and white maple-leaf Canadian flag flew 130 nautical miles over the southernmost reaches of the Indian Ocean.

  “Safing to auto,” Enright called as he went down his thick checklist. “Brakes lever-locked off. Shoulder brace, lever-locked release.” The launch phase, support strut secured to the arm’s shoulder joint detached from the RMS arm outside Enright’s rear window. “End effector switch to auto; end effector barber-poled derigidize, open, and capture snare extend.”