The Glass Lady

by Douglas Savage

  “Almost there, Flight. How’s our time?”

  “Looks like . . . ah, 24 minutes to SAA transit.”

  “ ’Kay. Thanks.”

  Nestled in the rear quarter of the payload bay, the boxy Payload Assist Module rocket, the PAM, was locked in its cradle. Built by McDonnell-Douglas, the three-ton PAM was packed with 5,325 pounds of solid propellant in its single Thiokol Star-48, rocket engine. The PAM booster first performed on the Shuttle Columbia in November 1982. One PAM was then attached to the Satellite Business Machine SBS-3 satellite, and one to the Telesat Canada Anik-C bird. Each PAM flawlessly launched its satellite from the Shuttle Five bay.

  With his eyes glued to the television monitor at his right shoulder, Parker handflew the end effector the last six inches to the PAM grapple probe. A squeeze to the trigger on the pistol grip in his right hand closed the wire snare of the end effector unit around the spike sticking up from the PAM.

  “Rigidize,” the AC called.

  “Copy, Will . . . Jack: Configure AOS by MLX.”

  “With you, Canaveral. Sounds much better.”

  “Believe it, Jack. We have good CCTV modulation from the arm camera.”

  At 07 hours 53 minutes, Shuttle spoke with the Space Command in Colorado through the Kennedy Space Center as the ship crossed Mexico’s east coast over Tamaulipas for the Gulf of Mexico.

  “With you for five, Endeavor. We would like to have PAM ejection before we lose you here. Backroom advises your PDP data dump was very dirty during the Anomaly proximity pass last rev. You plowed through knee-high flux for a good two minutes. Garbage everywhere, guys. Let’s get the PAM deployed and you out of there.”

  “Tryin’, Flight,” the AC grumbled as sweat beaded on his face. In zero-G, perspiration sticks and it does not run.

  The remote arm’s EEU held tightly to the PAM probe atop the five-foot-high, three-foot-wide rocket pod. Working the arm’s panel, Parker configured its electronics to its arm-loaded logic. When Mother was told by the AC that a three-ton mass was dangling from her 50-foot-long remote arm, she adjusted the arm’s gears within the joint motors to bear the burden.

  At 07 hours 55 minutes, Shuttle led LACE and the Soyuz-TM across the Yucatan Peninsula leaving the Gulf behind.

  “Load secure, Jack. Ready to cut loose.”

  “Whenever, Will.”

  “Okay . . . PAM latches arm; RMS logic loaded; eject program running; READY light on . . . And the PAM is free.”

  The PAM did not move to the command pilot’s eye 14 yards away. But the arm twitched as the end effector lifted the heavy package an inch out of its mooring cradle. The remote manipulator arm automatically stopped at its first programmed Pause Point.

  “We see PAM free, Will,” the ground confirmed. “With you another 2.”

  Eight minutes from San Diego, Endeavor flew over Belize, British Honduras.

  “Running in Manual Augmented. Movin’ her out.”

  Slowly, making only two inches per second, the loaded arm lifted the PAM unit upward as seen by Parker at the rear window of the flightdeck. Since Shuttle still flew on her left side to keep the bay’s reflective blankets toward LACE, to Uri Ruslanovich in Soyuz the arm appeared to pull the PAM sideways, parallel to the hazy, late-afternoon horizon. Endeavor crossed Honduras in twenty seconds.

  “Endeavor: At 07 hours 56 minutes, you’re LOS in 90 seconds. Shuttle then out of radio contact for 39 minutes. Sunset at 08 plus 01 in 3 minutes. SAA transit in 18 minutes . . . Jack, watch your coolant loop temps. You’re yellow-lined both loops. As soon as possible after your evasive maneuver, shoot an IMU alignment. Then configure headsdown, PTC, for the duration. After we lose you here, you’re AOS by Botswana for a one-minute status report at 08 plus 26 after SAA transit. And we show your downlink breaking up already . . . Godspeed . . .”

  “RMS in motion, Flight,” Parker called as he and Mother lifted the PAM higher. “You there?”

  The pilot’s headset was full of static two minutes before their eighth hour in the fretful sky. South America and the black starless sky of daytime filled the flightdeck’s ten windows.

  Outside, the low sun two minutes from plunging over the western edge of the world highlighed the lush green highlands of Columbia.

  “We’re on our own, Will,” Enright said quietly over the intercom. “Our show here on out.”

  “Reckon so, Number One.”

  15

  Nicaragua below was already dark although Endeavor flew in daylight into her eighth hour aloft.

  Through his rear and overhead windows, Parker saw the end effector swing the heavy payload assist module to within two feet of LACE.

  LACE’s glass sides with thousands of blue-black solar cells glowed brilliantly where the sun burned very low in the west. Fist-size globules of melted silicon and glass cluttered LACE’s sides. Hundreds of electricity-generating cells had melted from the intense sunshine. Until Parker had arrested LACE’s slow rotation, the satellite’s constant rolling had protected the delicate cells from prolonged exposure to the blistering sun of airless, cloudless space. With LACE at a standstill, the vicious sun broiled her fragile flanks during the daylight half of every 90-minute, orbital “day.”

  With an explosion of now familiar orange-and-red bands along the western horizon, the sun flattened, gave one burst of crimson protest, and conceded to the frigid night.

  Shuttle was engulfed in freezing blackness at 08 hours 01 minute, MET. The floodlights brilliantly illuminated the payload bay and bathed LACE in coldly white glare.

  In the artificial daylight, Parker could see LACE’s seams and titanium rivets where the view was not obscured by the PAM canister which hung from the flexed remote arm.

  “You should see this view, Jack!”

  The Aircraft Commander studied LACE. To his surprise, tiny craters were opening silently all along the satellite’s body. During its pass without spinning for passive thermal control through 45 minutes of merciless daylight, hundreds of half-dollar-size blisters had risen upon LACE’s skin of thin solar cells. Now in the sudden, atom-stopping cold of nighttime space, the little glass blisters were imploding—exploding inward. Silently, ragged holes opened over LACE’s entire body. Her once sleekly black and shining skin erupted into silicon acne.

  “Whatcha got, Will?”

  “LACE’s skin is popping all over the place. The solar arrays must have blistered after spindown. Looks like she’s being machine-gunned.”

  “Let’s hope not . . . Thirteen minutes to the Anomaly, Skip.”

  At 08 hours 03 minutes, Shuttle crossed the Equator southbound into summer over Rio Negro in northern Brazil.

  Forward, Enright in his balloon pants felt much recovered. He sipped a fresh jug of electrolyte solution. He watched the coolant temperatures decrease in the radiator loops, and he adjusted the freon flow within them to avoid overcooling the delicate plumbing.

  Over nighttime Brazil, Parker steered the PAM to within one foot of LACE. As Shuttle flew on her left side with her flat black belly facing southeast, Parker faced northwest through his rear and overhead windows aft. The PAM canister with LACE almost touching was just below the vertical horizon. Out the rear window, Shuttle’s vertical tail was parallel to the horizon, seen very faintly against the dayglow of South America. The weightless AC had the feeling of lying on his side. He was. In the western sky behind LACE, the satellite moved swiftly across the six-star group of the constellation Corona Borealis visible on the far northern side of the Equator. The bright star Nunki in Sagittarius was directly above Endeavor. To the AC’s weary mind, the death ship outside, with her pitted and ragged skin, looked sadly forlorn and beaten against the icy backdrop of black Brazil, black sky, and faint stars.

  “Ten minutes to transit, Will.”

  “Okay. Goin’ in . . . Easy now . . . Easy, babe.”

  Running the remote arm in fully manual mode, Parker used both bare hands to lay the heavy PAM alongside LACE.

  On the side of the boxy PAM, a
grapple fixture protruded. The arm’s end effector unit held the PAM at a right angle from the mechanical arm. The PAM appeared to dangle by its narrow end from the end effector’s snares.

  The arm gently touched the side of the PAM to the side of the weathered LACE. The AC saw an instantaneous blue spark erupt behind the PAM unit.

  “Damn!” Parker whispered.

  “What’s up, Skipper?”

  “A static discharge. No apparent activity by the target . . . I don’t need these little surprises, Jack.”

  “Yeh . . . Niner minutes.”

  Shuttle was ten degrees south of the Equator still over Brazil in darkness at 08 hours 07 minutes, MET. They were four minutes and 1,200 miles from the sea.

  “Radio check, Endeavor,” a Russian voice crackled.

  “With you, Doctor,” Enright called as he worked the coolant controls. “The Colonel has made contact with the target.”

  “Yes. I saw the spark. Soyuz standing by.”

  Parker watched the PAM lie against LACE in the light thrown from the open bay. The elbow camera on the arm could not peer over the top of the PAM to where the two bodies touched. The AC commanded the arm to pull the PAM slowly along the side of LACE until the unseen grapple fixtures engaged, one on the payload assist module and one on LACE which had been left by Parker.

  The PAM climbed LACE’s midsection. Parker watched intently for the twitch in the long arm which would signal a hard latch of the grapple fixtures.

  “Damn it, Jacob. Nothin’.”

  “Again, Will. Eight minutes to SAA transit.”

  Parker pushed the PAM down LACE’s motionless side. At LACE’s mid-line ridge, the end effector stopped abruptly. An audio tone from the RMS arm’s Caution and Warning sensors rang in the AC’s headset as a yellow CHECK CRT light flashed on the Canadian instrument console. Parker consulted the CRT screen, where green letters flashed CHECK MCIU. The sudden inertial resistance from picking up LACE’s mass—unexpectedly to Mother—had triggered the alert alarm to check the arm’s computerized manipulator controller interface unit. Parker’s fingers on Mother’s keyboard reassured her that all was well and that her 100-million-dollar arm had not banged into a wall.

  “Hard latch, Jack!”

  The man-size PAM with a rocket nozzle at its base was firmly latched to LACE’s mid-line grapple fixture.

  “Super, Will! Let’s arm the thing and begin our pitchup . . . Soyuz? We’re positive rigidize on the target. You can back off at earliest opportunity.”

  “Soyuz in motion, Endeavor. Thank you.”

  Enright and Karpov up front, flying on their left sides, could not see Soyuz off Endeavor’s tail section. But Parker through his overhead windows could see the Soviet vessel behind Shuttle.

  In the moistly black sky over Brazil 20 degrees south of the Equator, Parker saw the orange flash of thrusters on Soyuz as she slowly backed away from Shuttle and LACE close to Endeavor’s open bay.

  “Rotating,” Parker called as he commanded the arm’s wrist joint to flex. The end effector slowly twisted to lay the upright, 10,000-pound LACE on her side.

  “Five minutes, Will. Feet wet,” Enright called. At 08 hours 11 minutes, Shuttle left Vitoria, Brazil, behind as Endeavor, with LACE in tow, and Soyuz sped past the coastline for the South Atlantic and 11,000 miles of open water.

  The remote arm gently laid LACE on her side. A full minute ticked by as the target with the PAM attached assumed a horizontal position with the PAM rocket nozzle pointed toward Shuttle’s tail. LACE’s ten-foot-long, blistered body was parallel to the open bay.

  “Ready for pitch program, Number One.”

  “Okay, Skip. Four minutes . . . Soyuz: Endeavor rotating. You clear?”

  “Clear!”

  Major Karpov in his coveralls watched Enright disengage the digital autopilot and energize the control stick steering.

  “CSS alive, Will.”

  Parker floated at his aft window. Outside, the moon was directly over Mali in central West Africa, halfway between England and the Equator. As Shuttle flew on her side with her nose pointed northeast, Enright and Karpov had the cold white moon in their center forward windows. It looked brilliant but small without air to magnify its face.

  Enright pulled back on his rotational hand controller. Mother chose the best thrusters in Shuttle’s twin tail pods. Parker saw orange plumes erupt upward in the darkness on each side of Endeavor’s tail fin.

  Shuttle pitched upward. Since she lay on her left side, her motion as seen from the sea was a flat, counterclockwise maneuver as her body’s longitudinal nose-to-tail axis remained horizontal.

  Enright stopped his rates when his green television told him that Shuttle’s tail pointed toward the direction of flight, southeastward. Endeavor moved backward toward the South Pole. This aimed the PAM motor against LACE’s orbital path. PAM’s rocket engine would thus brake LACE’s speed.

  When Shuttle stopped her maneuver, her nose faced South America far to the northwest.

  “Three minutes, Skip!” Enright sounded anxious. “Dump it!”

  “Pre-arm electrical bus armed.” The AC carefully read the PAM ignition checklist printed on the aft television screen. “Signal interface unit disabled.” He turned off the PAM electronics left in its bay cradle to prevent electrical interference. The AC sent his commands to PAM by radio when he tapped out coded instructions on the aft computer keyboard. His moist fingers moved slowly. He had to get it right the first time. “PAM guidance on.” PAM’s own liquid-fueled attitude thrusters would hold LACE’s horizontal position when Shuttle disconnected from the PAM.

  “Two minutes, Skipper!”

  “PAM motor armed.” The command pilot had triggered the PAM’s internal firing mechanism. The braking rocket would ignite automatically in 180 seconds, ready or not.

  “Damn,” Enright sighed. “Puts us a minute long, Will.”

  The payload assist module engine would fire in three minutes, but LACE and Shuttle would enter the SAA zone in two.

  “Yeh, Jack . . . Okay to release our babies. Get ready to fly, Number One.”

  Enright had his left hand poised on the translational hand controller and his right hand gripped the attitude control stick between his thighs.

  The Crew Activity Plan had called for LACE and PAM to be freed at least half an hour before PAM ignited. That would give Endeavor ample time to back away from PAM before ignition. Now, PAM’s rocket would go in their faces, and go well within the South Atlantic Anomaly. At their velocity of 17,500 statute miles per hour, the mission time-line was an immovable object. LACE would be one minute and 300 miles inside the Anomaly when PAM’s rocket fired to drive LACE into the sea.

  Parker squeezed the pistol grip in his right hand to release the end effector’s hold upon PAM.

  The three snare wires did not move.

  A yellow PORT TEMP caution light on the RMS panel flashed as a warning tone wailed.

  “No joy, Jack!” Parker pumped the release trigger in his large right hand like a .44-40 at high noon.

  “One minute to transit, Will. Two minutes to PAM ignition.”

  Jacob Enright spoke very calmly. He could have been in the Singer Mission Simulator with a cup of cold coffee on the center console between himself and Alexi Karpov. The pilot’s reflexes inside the Russian inspired him to tighten his seat belt.

  “Damn,” the exhausted, sore Aircraft Commander sighed. He had not bent his metal in a flying machine for ten years. He hesitated with his tired face close to his rear window.

  “Forty-five seconds to transit, Skipper.”

  “Okay, okay!”

  Parker reached for Panel A-14 by his inflamed and throbbing right thigh.

  “RMS shoulder guillotine to jett!” the AC shouted.

  Explosive charges silently ignited in the remote arm’s shoulder mount, where the arm joined Shuttle’s portside sill under Parker’s nose. He saw the expensive elegant arm, still attached to the PAM, separate from Endeavor in a tiny cloud of
insulation scraps and severed wire bundles. The 100-million-dollar mechanical arm was space junk.

  “Hit it, Jack!”

  The open payload bay faced LACE with PAM and the crooked arm dangling from it.

  Enright’s left hand jerked the THC handle. Upward firing thrusters in Endeavor’s nose and tail pushed the starship back from LACE. The jets fired for ten seconds and stopped. Aft, Parker anxiously watched the amputated arm as it cleared the bay sill while Shuttle backed off ponderously.

  “Bay clear! Roll, Jacob!”

  “Clear, Soyuz!” Enright shouted as he backed blindly away from LACE.

  Above the forward windows, the event timer ticked down the seconds until Shuttle, Soyuz, LACE, and PAM pierced the invisible electromagnetic wall of the Anomaly in the middle of the South Atlantic.

  . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .

  Parker stared at the timer in front of his sweating face.

  . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Zero.

  Making five miles per second beneath the untwinkling stars, Endeavor entered the South Atlantic Anomaly, 2,000 miles east of Porto Alegre, Brazil, 30 degrees south of the Equator. The small television on the panel to Parker’s left ticked down through 55 seconds to PAM automatic ignition.

  Forward, the left of Enright’s three televisions showed the horizontal situation display blinking out the distance from Endeavor to LACE. The kinetic energy imparted to Shuttle by her momentary thruster firing carried the manned starship sideways away from LACE. The green numerics climbed slowly through 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters.

  “Roll initiated!” Enright called. He commanded Mother to choose her best reaction control system jets to roll Shuttle over until her black belly faced LACE and PAM’s rocket, now 40 meters away.

  Slowly, Endeavor’s wings rolled over in the eternally silent nighttime sky.

  Parker gritted his teeth at the slow roll rate Mother maintained to prevent snapping off the great, open doors of the empty payload bay.

  “Thirty seconds to ignition. Fifty meters,” Enright chanted as Shuttle flew momentarily upside down with her wings horizontal. The wingover continued slowly as the flightdeck rolled away from LACE.