The Glass Lady (29 page)

With his right hand, Enright felt for the commode's control panel beside his right knee. Squeezing out of the narrow stall, he was momentarily unnerved by the presence of his empty suit, which still hovered at attention beside the latrine. Cabin air currents had raised the suit's empty right sleeve up past the round neckring. The headless suit appeared to salute the skivvy-clad airman.

Enright tumbled slowly as he wrestled with the suit to climb back into the rubbery cocoon. After he closed the long belly zipper, he fetched his helmet from the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. The inside cheekpads of the helmet felt coldly wet with perspiration where it covered the pilot's face.

Enright adjusted his helmet as he rose through the ceiling hole to the upstairs flightdeck. He floated up behind Parker. Floating over the center forward console, Enright carefully eased into his right seat beside the command pilot. After pulling his lap belt across his middle, Enright plugged into his communications jacks and his two air hoses.

“Feel better, buddy?” the AC drawled.

“Much. Thanks.” Behind his closed faceplate, a revived Enright grinned. “I'm an evil man, Skipper,” Enright said with mock gravity in his voice.

“Thought about little Sally riding the million-dollar, house-outback, aye, Number One?”

For an instant, Enright looked with surprise at his captain. Both pilots laughed out loud over the voice-activated intercom.

The square face of the mission timer before their faces ticked past 03 hours, 40 minutes. While Enright had been below, Parker had rolled Endeavor and had pitched her nose toward the Earth. They flew upside down over the dark coastline of Angola. The faint lights of the capital city of Luanda marked the sea's edge far below in the darkness.

They flew heads down four minutes before contact with Endeavor's next ground station.

The two airmen still chuckled at their private humor. The laughter stopped when the darkness below erupted into a momentary flash of intensely white light just east of Luanda.

“With you, Endeavor, by Botswana, at 03 plus 44. How do you read?”

“Gotcha, Colorado. We're just sittin' and catchin' our breath up here. For a while there, young Jack looked like he got rode hard and put away wet. But we're both right and tight now.”

The AC's bouncy voice reflected his newly acquired space legs. To his weightless body and his anesthetized leg, Endeavor was growing roomier and homier even in the narrow forward flightdeck. Enright's rooky wings also felt more like flying as Shuttle cruised over sleeping Zimbabwe. Far below in the darkness, the clocks on the walls read 8:45 as the two pilots flew on their left sides above Africa.

“Super, Will.”

“And we had a real display of pyrotechnics five minutes back over Angola.” The AC's ungloved hand worked the mike button floating close to his chest and his two hose fittings. Mother and the autopilot held trim with Shuttle flying on her port side with her nose pointing northward toward the Equator 1,200 nautical miles away in the darkness.

“Backroom would like some details, Endeavor. Only with you on this station for another four minutes.”

Parker did not reach for the floating Push-To-Talk switch when he saw Enright reach for his.

“Right seat here. Looked like daylight down there just for a few seconds. After the initial burst of light, we followed a brilliant contrail for a good minute. Lost it when Soyuz crossed the field of view behind us. No mistaking a missile, Flight. Be under us somewhere. Eastern trajectory for sure. You got anything from your eyes in the sky?”

“Nothing yet, Jack. We hope to get a skin track via Yarradee station in fifteen. Could you see any staging activities from whatever it was?”

“Negative on that,” the second in command answered.

“Copy, Jack. We'd like you to begin your EVA activities when you can. You can grab a bite first if you want. This rev, we lose you by Botswana in two minutes. You're with Australia twelve minutes later. LOS Australia by Yarradee after eight minutes of contact. Sunrise 04 minutes later at 04 plus 12 MET. From LOS Yarradee to Hawaii acquisition is twenty minutes. Stateside contact is for twenty minutes. We'd like to have Jack close to going outside over the States . . . Got all that?”

“Sure,” the AC said casually. He took no notes.

“And when you go downstairs with Jack, Will, we remind you to do your first CO
₂
absorber insertion.”

“Got it, Flight.”

“Roger, AC. Don't forget to plug in downstairs.”

“You betcha, Colorado. Leavin' you for a minute here.”

Both pilots slid their seats back along their floor tracks. After opening their visors to breathe cabin air, they pulled their biomedical and radio plugs, and unlocked their belly air hoses. The two hoses in front of each seat floated upward like snakes.

Parker eased himself feetfirst into the hole behind his seat. Enright floated helmet first down the access hole behind his own seat.

In the floodlighted mid-deck, Parker's boots hovered above the floor in the 2,625 cubic-foot compartment. Enright did a zero gravity handstand with his feet braced upon the ceiling which was 7 feet above the floor in the 16-foot long mid-deck.

“You're upside down, buddy,” Enright grinned through his open faceplate.

“One of us is, Jack.”

Enright cartwheeled in the air until his boots against the floor stopped his flip.

“Show off,” the taller pilot laughed.

“Was nothing really,” Enright smiled, feeling his new wings.

As Endeavor, Soyuz and LACE coasted over the nighttime terrain of southern Africa, the two shuttle pilots floated below deck. Enright reached into one of the many equipment lockers covering the forward bulkhead from floor to ceiling. He retrieved two lightweight headsets. These were wireless communications carrier assemblies, CCA's, which enable intercom and air-to-ground communications without the necessity of plugging into cabin jacks.

Each flier placed his headset upon his bare head. In the mid-deck, they could remove their sweaty helmets since there were none of the flightdeck's ten windows vulnerable to laser emissions. In Endeavor's mid-deck, the only winrdow is the circular, 11½ inch wide, triple-pane window in the side entry-exit hatch. With each of the inside and center panes 1/2-inch thick, and with the outside pane 3/10-inch thick, and with the mirrored, reflective sunshade still in place on the inside porthole, the hatch window was secure from LACE.

“Howdy, pard,” the AC said, testing his headset.

“Gotcha, Will. You hear us, Flight?” Enright called, pressing his wireless unit's Push-To-Talk switch dangling at his chest.

“Five by five, Endeavor,” the two headset earphones crackled. “With you another one and a half minutes.”

Shuttle led Soyuz and LACE across Mozambique's eastern coastline for the black open ocean.

The AC slowly somersaulted until he was doing a handstand in the center of the mid-deck. He pulled up a hand-crank seated in the floor which opened a small door in the floor. The open bay in the floor houses a rack for holding beer-can size canisters. The small cans hold lithium hydroxide pellets through which stale cabin air is circulated. The pellets remove carbon dioxide from the air exhaled by the crewmen. Activated charcoal, finer than talcum powder, in the same cans removes odors from the cabin air.

The upside-down airman took the mission's first two canisters from Enright standing rightside-up. The AC inserted the twin CO
₂
absorbers into the floor bin's empty rack. After seating the canisters, Parker pushed the bay closed and returned its latch handle into the small well in the floor.

“CO
₂
absorbers inserted, Flight,” Enright radioed as Parker tumbled rightside-up. The two fresh cans would be good for twelve hours. They would keep the cabin air's concentration of waste carbon dioxide from exceeding 0.147 pounds per square inch partial pressure.

“LOS Botswana momentarily, Endeavor. At 03 plus 48. See you in twelve minutes. This is . . .”

Static followed by silence filled the CCA headsets as Africa fell quickly below the western horizon behind Shuttle.

“How about a burger, Jack?” the AC offered.

“Think my stomach is still a rev behind the rest of me. Maybe some soup.”

“Pull up a stool, Number One. I'll build a fire.”

Enright smiled rather listlessly. He floated across the compartment to the space between the biffy stall and the man-size, wall-mounted galley. Between the latrine door and the galley unit is the side hatch. Enright wedged his space-suited body into the corner cranny by the latrine. His back rested against the stall door and his boots touched the shaving mirror on the side of the galley facility. As he rested, his weightless arms within his deflated pressure suit floated out in front of his body. Enright's orange arms looked like those of a sleepwalker. He rested as the mission commander hovered before the narrow galley which is secured to the mid-deck's portside wall.

The galley contains an oven, which in 90 minutes can cook pre-packaged hot meals for seven crew members. Parker pulled two plastic envelopes of freeze-dried soup from the forward bulkhead's lockers. From the galley, the AC pulled out a thin hose and nozzle which squirted hot water into each plastic bag.

The command pilot sent a soup bag floating over to Enright wedged into his corner.

As the two pilots kneaded their soup bags to moisten the dried contents, Endeavor coasted in the night sky above the South Atlantic's Isle Amsterdam at Shuttle's southernmost point of her orbital track, 38 degrees south latitude, about 3565 statute miles from the South Pole. Upstairs on the flightdeck, the mission clocks ticked past the fourth hour of the voyage.

“Endeavor, Endeavor,” each headset crackled. “Colorado with you by Yarradee at 04 hours.”

“Gotcha, Australia,” the AC called through a mouthful of soup, which he sucked from a straw.

Parker floated motionless four feet off the floor. He levitated in mid-air like a magician's assistant with his helmetless head touching the side of the airlock at the center of the mid-deck's rear bulkhead.

“How's things in the basement, Will?”

Flat on his back in the air, the AC squeezed the last of his beefy soup into his mouth.

“Real cozy, Colorado. Just finishin' some soup. How's things in the mountains?”

“Looking good, AC. We're waiting for radar lock-up on whatever your Angola traffic may be. Nothing yet, but we're listening. After your break, we would like you to charge the PLSS packs.”

“Roger,” the AC called as he shoved his body toward the floor by pushing his ungloved hand against the mid-deck ceiling. Enright watched from his corner.

Hovering upside down, the long AC hung like a bat with his face close to the floor. The Colonel's burly left hand held a handhold at the base of the airlock.

The cylinder-shaped airlock takes up a full third of the back wall of the mid-deck. Standing 83 inches high, the airlock is 63 inches wide on the inside. At the floor end of the airlock is a D-shaped hatch three feet across.

Grasping the handrail near the floor with one hand, Parker cranked the airlock hatch handle with his free hand. The hatch snapped open with a pop as the hatch seal released excess air pressure and swung open on its side hinges. Parker eased his inverted, floating body out of the way as the thick hatch opened outward into the mid-deck cabin.

Feet first, the AC floated into the airlock hatch. Still upside down inside, he inserted his boots into the foot restraints on the airlock ceiling.

“AC's in the airlock, Flight,” Enright reported by his wireless headset.

“Copy, Jack. With you another three minutes.”

The dark airlock illuminated with harsh, white lights as the AC flipped a row of toggle switches located at his up-side-down eye-level by the open hatch.

In the five-foot-wide can, the tall command pilot easily somersaulted to put his head at the module's round ceiling. Only his boots were visible to Enright, who had floated to the open hatchway. The copilot floated on his side with his boots toward the mid-deck's access hatch on the portside wall.

Inside the airlock, the AC inspected the hoses, which ran from the airlock wall into two Portable Life-Support Systems, PLSS, backpacks which hung suspended upon the airlock's walls. Attached to each backpack was the top half of a thick white space suit.

“SCU's both secure, Jack.”

“You copy that, Flight?”

“We heard him, Jack. Service and Cooling Umbilicals secure.”

“I hear you from the can, Colorado,” the AC radioed from the wide airlock.

The SCU lines charge the breathing oxygen and coolant water tanks within each PLSS backpack, which is permanently built into the upper torso of Shuttle's space suit for going outside in orbit. Two such upper torsos hung on the airlock's inside walls. Each helmetless upper torso and attached PLSS pack was half of Shuttle's extra-vehicular mobility unit, or EMU.

Slowly somersaulting, the Colonel returned headsdown to the control panel by the open hatch of the airlock. The AC worked the controls which sent a flow of Shuttle oxygen and coolant water into the two PLSS backpacks.

“Fillin' them up, Jack.”

“ 'Kay, Will,” the floating copilot called into the open hatchway.

“One more minute with you, Endeavor.”

“Uh huh, Colorado,” Enright called.

“Backroom confirms a contact with your Angola sighting, Endeavor. NESS got an image of it through GOES-5. No doubt it was a missile, Endeavor.”

From 22,300 miles high, the Hughes Aircraft Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite monitored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Earth Satellite Service had blinked its glass eye at the right moment. In synchronous orbit, the satellite sits stationary in the sky as the Earth turns beneath it at precisely the same speed as the satellite's velocity across the sky.