Space Station Crisis: Star Challengers Book 2 (9 page)

Fifteen

Like a hovering drill sergeant, Captain Bronsky inspected his new charges. The Equipment Module looked empty without the large satellite inside it.

Dylan looked over at Tony, who seemed excited by the adventure. Despite his amazement, he had adjusted to the fantastic situation and was now determined to help solve the crisis. Dyl noticed that his sister was spending an awful lot of time with him.…

For his part, King devoted plenty of attention to Mira. Dyl wasn’t sure if King was trying to get more information about the mysterious girl, or if he had actually taken a liking to her. Dyl found Mira a bit too prickly for his taste, although he admitted that Song-Ye wasn’t the easiest person to get along with either. Fortunately, Song-Ye seemed more comfortable in weightlessness now.

“If I may have your attention, Cadets,” Bronsky said. “This will be a basic training mission so that you understand how to use one of our new spacesuits and how to maneuver outside in space. To assist us in flying over, retrieving, and repairing the Eye in the Sky, you must all be familiar with your suits as well as the Manned Maneuvering Units, or MMUs.”

“Cool,” Dyl said with a grin. “Spacewalk!”

“They’re called extravehicular activities,” Mira corrected him. “EVAs.”

Song-Ye gave the other girl a thumbs-up, which seemed to surprise and confuse Mira. Dyl recalled Song-Ye mentioning that in some cultures the sign was considered rude, and he stifled a chuckle.

The Russian captain leaned forward with an intent gaze to impress them with the importance of his lecture. “This is very different from walking on the lunar surface. If you let go out here, you keep going. It’s a long way to fall. You will orbit Earth for a long time before you eventually drop low enough to burn up in the atmosphere.” He smiled, showing big square teeth. “But you will run out of air well before you burn up like a human shooting star.”

“We’re ready to learn, sir,” said King.

“I’m in,” JJ confirmed.

“That’s the spirit, Cadets! Normally, all ISSC crewmembers would not need spacesuit training. It is a special skill. But with so many of our crew sick, and with the Eye in need of repair, it is best to be prepared.”

King nodded seriously. “An Eagle Scout is all about being prepared, although I never got a chance to earn a spacewalking merit badge.”

“These suits are large and reinforced,” Bronsky continued. “Donning them is similar to how you put on the moon suit. The main difference is the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which has controls and jets to let you move about at greater distances from the station. An MMU allows you and your suit to become a human-sized spacecraft.”

“A jetpack!” JJ said. “Let’s take it out for a spin.”

Knowing what had just happened with the attitude control thruster on the Eye in the Sky satellite, Dyl said,

“I’m not sure we should trust those little maneuvering jets. What if one gets stuck open? We could be flying off to Venus before we know it.”

Mira gave him a scathing look. “You would never have enough fuel to reach Venus.”

“It was a joke,” Dyl said.

“The cadet has a point,” Bronsky said. “That is why we must always—always—keep ourselves connected to the station hull with tethers, until we are ready for longer-range expeditions. Heading out to the satellite will be a major operation, but we will start small. Now cadets, suit up. When you are ready to go, we practice attaching a tether while wearing a spacesuit. After that, we will continue our instruction outside.”

Dressed in their bulky suits, they all floated together in the middle of the Equipment Module. Wearing his helmet, the jetpack MMU, and the insulating suit that felt like a sleeping bag with arms and legs, Dylan felt entirely self-contained and isolated. With the helmet radio turned on, though, the others could hear everything he said. So much for whispering jokes to Song-Ye, he thought. Even though he liked to make her laugh, on an open channel everyone on the station would hear his corny comments.

“There are many anchor points on the station,” Bronsky said. “Keep yourself securely clipped to one at all times. I’ve explained the basics of how to use your MMU thrusters, in case you get separated—but don’t get separated. If you go drifting out of control, you could knock our communications antennae out of alignment, damage the solar-power arrays, or, in general, make a mess of things.”

“We’ll be careful,” JJ assured him. “Now let’s jet.”

As usual, Dyl thought, his sister was impatient to try something new—especially if it involved flying.

“Not so quickly, Cadets,” Bronsky said. “On your sleeve, a monitor shows your heart rate, oxygen level, and the remaining air in your tanks. Breathe normally. We have plenty of air for a short test mission.”

Famous last words,
Dyl thought, but decided it was best not to crack a joke about that.

“Now, for basic maneuvering along the outside of the station. Each of you, pick a partner. Your suits have extending tethers, so clip yourselves together. After you anchor one end to the station, one person moves forward and clips the next tether ahead. Always remember, the first team member must not disconnect the anchor tether until the second team member has attached the other one.”

“Like a game of crack-the-whip,” Dyl said.

“No games, no cracking. This is serious business,” the Russian captain said.

Dyl’s suit was clipped to Song-Ye’s, and she had another long strand in front of her. He bent over and fumbled with his thick gloves to hook his tether to the equipment module wall. Safety first. After checking that each pair was safely connected, Bronsky decompressed the Equipment Module, draining the air into the other station modules, then opened the wide clamshell doors through which the satellite had been launched. Dyl stared out into open space. The starry emptiness seemed to go on forever. “This is awesome.”

“Cadets, you may now exit the station,” Bronsky said.

The first team members drifted out into space, making their way along the hull of the station, slowly crawling to where they would find a place to clip the next hook. When Song-Ye had anchored them to the outside, Dyl detached the tether inside the equipment module and pushed off, so that he soared out into space. He misjudged the necessary amount of force, though, and went to the end of the tether, pulling Song-Ye along with him until the strand grew tight. That turned out to be a bad idea as they slowly began to rebound.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I feel like a yo-yo.” Together, they fell onto the external hull of the equipment module, a little harder than they had planned.

“It takes practice,” Bronsky said. “But don’t hit any of the equipment. Something the size of a person could cause significant damage.”

“As in, don’t be a klutz, Junior,” Song-Ye said.

Once they moved farther along the space-station complex, Dyl got his first chance to look at the overall structure from the outside. He decided the ISSC was like the framework of a skyscraper under construction. The smooth cylindrical modules were studded with portholes and antennae, diagnostic sensors, and stabilizer jets. The observatory bubble had numerous telescopes and collectors sticking out like insect eyes, as well as large rectangular films used for collecting cosmic rays and solar particles. The giant reflective fan blades of the solar power panels were most prominent, extending out from the main modules, oriented toward the sun.

JJ said, “It looks different from out here. So … majestic.”

“The Earth!” Tony cried. “JJ, look at the Earth!”

Below, the blue-green and brown planet looked like an immense whirlpool, frosted with clouds that drifted over the continents. It pulled Dylan’s attention like a magnet.

“And look above us,” his sister said in a dreamy voice. “Moon, sweet Moon.”

“Is there any concern that we might get hit by a piece of space debris while we’re out here, like the one that punctured Hab 1?” King asked.

“There is always a chance. We try to keep track of known debris, but space is never a completely safe place,” Bronsky said. “Also, these suits don’t protect you from exposure to radiation nearly as well as the modules do, so we limit the time allowed outside.”

The cadets moved along in pairs, clipping one end of the tethers and releasing the other, like mountain climbers attaching safety ropes to a cliffside. With Bronsky leading, they made their way slowly around the station complex, past the unused hatches on the node rooms that linked each module, getting themselves familiar with the process.

“We will practice these simple exercises first,” Bronsky said. Although every movement, every step, required care and concentration, Dyl found it far easier than walking with his crutches on Earth. “The Manned Maneuvering Units are complicated, and we normally don’t need them for an EVA, but we will require them when we travel out to the drifting satellite. It is the only way we can repair the Eye in the Sky.”

“Someone’s got to do it,” JJ said. “So it might as well be us.”

“No, Cadet. You are not ready, I’m afraid.” Bronsky’s voice was no-nonsense.

“Let’s practice a little more first,” Tony said.

The group proceeded to Central’s observation windows. Dyl insisted on looking inside, waving at Stationmaster Ansari and Pi, who didn’t notice them, apparently deep in consultation with CMC on Earth. The Sat team members, though still recovering in Medical, were busily working out a plan to retrieve and repair the wayward satellite.

Even though the ISSC framework was beneath him, providing an anchor point, Dyl felt awed by the immensity of the universe above him. So many stars and nebulae out there, so many planets, and probably many other intelligent races.

Some of which were enemies, like the Kylarn.

“I’m very … dizzy,” Song-Ye said over the suit radio. “Every direction I look, I feel like I’m falling.”

Before Dyl managed to connect his end, she fumbled with the connection of her anchor tether and scrabbled with her gloved hands, trying to catch hold of the station, but she came loose. As she flailed for something to hold onto, she only managed to knock herself farther away, while bumping a thin antenna loose as well. Song-Ye floated off, heading toward one of the big, mirrored panels of the solar-power collectors, while Dyl was still a hands breadth away from his own anchor point. So close … and yet he was unable to reach it! He tried to move, but Song-Ye continued to drift outward, and when her tether stretched taut, she yanked him along with her. They were both going to crash into the delicate solar collectors.

“We’re loose!” Dyl called into the suit radio. “A little help here?” He flew past Mira, who extended her arm in alarm to grab him, but missed.

If they struck the solar array, they would cause great damage, maybe even disrupt power to the station … and without enough power, the ISSC couldn’t run its experiments, its life-support, its communications. But if they
didn’t
hit the array, they would go drifting out to … nowhere!

“Use the MMU,” JJ called.

Close to panic, Dyl tried the controls of the Manned Maneuvering Unit. With a tiny puff of his suitpack thrusters, just as Bronsky had showed them, he halted their outward movement and yanked them in the opposite direction, so they began to drift back toward the ISSC—and away from the array.

“Excellent, Cadet Wren,” Bronsky said over the radio, sounding very tense. “You did exactly the right thing. No need for another burst. That should be enough.”

Dyl was drifting back toward the station, though he and Song-Ye were still reeling out of control, but in slow motion. Finally, a hand caught his and pulled him against the nearest module. It was Tony. Dyl clipped his tether back onto one of the anchor points, and with a light tug on Song-Ye’s tether rope, he brought her tumbling back toward him, and caught her before she could strike the hull hard.

“Piece of cake!” he said.

“Maybe
you
should have been a gymnast,” Tony said. They all started laughing with relief.

“This was an excellent first lesson, but perhaps we should call it a day,” Bronsky said. He sounded shaken by the close call. “I want to see how our colleagues have mapped out the satellite-repair mission, so we know the exact parameters.”

Stationmaster Ansari broke in over their suit radios. “Captain Bronsky, this is an alert. Get everyone into the station immediately. We’ve detected two Kylarn starfish ships heading our way—fast! They’ll arrive within minutes.”

Dyl turned frantically from side to side, looking through his faceplate. At first all he could see around him was an ocean of stars, countless bright pinpricks, the planet Earth below them—then two bright streaks racing toward the ISSC.
Alien ships.

He swallowed hard. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”

***