The Glass Lady (38 page)

Parker did not speak directly with the ground. Instead, his MMU radio signal was absorbed by Shuttle which multiplexed his voice to Earth over Endeavor's antennae.

“Endeavor, you are Go to affix the grapple fixture to the target. Slow and easy, William. We remind you that your Anomaly proximity pass begins in 6 minutes at 06 plus 47 and lasts one minute. We will look for your postproximity status report by Botswana 3 minutes later. Losing you . . .”

“Okay, Flight. I'm right and tight out here. Movin' out to the target.”

“Copy, Will. Watch your relative rates. At 06 plus 42, data dropout . . .”

“Guess we're on our own again, Skip.” Enright felt throbbing in his face as he craned his neck upward to Parker fifteen feet above the flightdeck ceiling. He also felt slightly lightheaded either from the burn-induced fluid imbalance in his body, or from acclimation to weightlessness. The latter process usually requires two days, five for sure.

Shuttle flew on her side 1,035 statute miles south of Ascension Island in darkness. Below, exactly midway between Sao Paulo, Brazil, to the west and Windhoek, Botswana, to the east, each 2,000 miles from Endeavor, the brass clocks on unseen ships upon the black sea read 2043 local zone time on a clear December night. Below, it was summer.

“See you in motion, Will.”

Parker's left hand directed the MMU's tiny, cold jets to push the flier toward his target. Through his overhead window, Enright watched the white-suited figure move away slowly. Although no ground station was within radio range, the pilot in the cabin steered the RMS elbow camera to keep it upon Parker. The television would be ready when the network made contact from Africa in seven minutes and 2,000 miles.

Within ten feet of LACE, Parker jetted to a stop. He still floated on his side with the black water to his left. To his right, the bright star Acamar shone dryly in the southern constellation Eridanus. The corner of the southern sky above Endeavor had few bright stars. The bright star Achernar in Hydrus hung in the south. And Canopus, the heavens' second brightest star, glowed brilliantly halfway between the horizon and the sky overhead to the southeast. In the sparsely starlit sky of the South Atlantic, most other stars were washed out by the brilliant full moon.

Parker and Endeavor were both on their sides relative to the ground. But in the arc light from Soyuz, LACE hung vertically with its long, narrow body perpendicular to the sea. LACE's base pointed toward the center of the Earth in the satellite's “gravity gradient” stabilization. Because LACE was ten feet long, the planet's gravity tugged on LACE's Earth-facing bottom with a force infinitesimally stronger than the gravitational attraction exerted upon LACE's top end, ten feet farther from the center of the Earth. As result of this minuscule difference in gravity, the target had become stabilized by gravity's weak grip with the close end down and the far end up. LACE slowly rolled about its long axis, an imaginary line joining the two narrow ends of the 5-ton satellite.

Parker's right hand on the MMU armrest fiddled with the rotational hand controller. Combinations of jets on opposite sides of the MMU fired to push the pilot's feet out from under him until his helmet pointed skyward and his boots pointed seaward. The AC arrested his rotation when his backside faced Endeavor. From Enright's overhead window where Shuttle rode sideways among the few stars, Parker appeared to float upon his back twenty feet above the flightdeck. Only the MMU was illuminated from below by the lighted payload bay. LACE spun slowly, close to Parker in the light from Soyuz at Parker's side.

“What kind of flying you call that, Skipper?” Enright could only see Parker's back in the overhead window and only his side in the television from the RMS arm deployed at Parker's left.

“As Saint John put it, Jack, this is lighter than air.' ”

The Colonel quoted a comment from space made years earlier when the Mercury spacecraft Friendship-7 had carried John Glenn into orbit in February 1962.

“Makes sense, Will.”

“Okay, I'm two meters out now. Eyeball to eyeball with the target . . . How's the timeline?”

Parker looked small as he hovered motionless beside LACE twice his height and twice his breadth. The target was upright relative to the horizon as was Parker two arm-lengths away.

“Ah . . . Comin' up on 06 plus 47, Skipper. I guess we're there.” Enright's mouth was dry.

The three ships with Parker inside their tight triangular formation now skirted within 80 nautical miles of the magnetically volatile South Atlantic Anomaly.

“Ten seconds in,” Enright called. He had one gauze eyehole on Parker above and the other on the event timer ticking away on the panel in front of his chest.

With a start, Parker clearly saw from the corner of his eye that Endeavor's tail grew orange against the backdrop of black starless sky and moonlit sea. Even in the harsh glow from the payload bay, Shuttle's tail looked like a neon tube as it cleaved through isolated oxygen atoms.

“Twenty seconds inside, Will.”

“Jack, I'm lookin' at one orange tail! I can see it getting brighter even against the bay lights. The SAA must somehow affect the valence electrons of our ion wake . . . Hope that's all it stirs up.”

Enright copied the Colonel's parting remark.

“Forty inside. Stay put, Will.”

“I'm sittin' here.”

Both airmen glued their eyes upon LACE as they ended their close transit of the Anomaly zone. The target did not twitch. Over his left shoulder, Parker saw the eerie orange glow fade around Shuttle's tail fin.

“And . . . 3, 2, 1, sixty seconds. Made it.” Enright sighed audibly behind his moist mask.

“Kinda hairy, aye, Jacob?”

“Yeh. How's my tail now?”

“Dark as far as I can tell. No glow at all . . . Movin' in.”

“Easy, Will.” Enright guided the remote arm's camera in anticipation of radio contact 2½ minutes away.

Parker laid both gloved hands upon the grapple fixture attached to his chestpack which controlled his EMU suit. The fixture was the size of a hatbox. The pilot's heavily gloved fingers made out two clamps on the fixture's far side opposite the pilot's chest. Each clamp was open and felt to Parker's fingers like two hands joined in prayer but with open fingertips.

“Latches open.”

“Copy, Will. Slowly now.”

“Ah huh.”

Working his hand controller in his right glove, the AC made certain his body was parallel to LACE. With an instantaneous press forward on the left translational controller, and a quick jerk back on it, he closed to within a foot of LACE and stopped. With a push up on the THC in his left hand, he slowly ascended LACE's body like a steeple jack. A press down with his left hand tweaked upward-firing jets behind his head. He stopped with the grapple fixture's jaws six inches from a thin, projecting ledge, a metal seam, which girded the 13-foot circumference of LACE's center like a belt.

“All stop.” Parker's voice was subdued, almost reverent, as his words entered the flightdeck ten yards behind his back.

“Copy.” Enright held his breath.

From Earth, the stars overhead move slowly westward one-quarter degree of arc every minute. The faint southern stars above Parker moved sixteen times faster.

The AC was perfectly motionless beside the towering LACE which revolved very slowly before his face. He floated transfixed by the awesome, black, and utterly silent machine. Although it was night all around him, Parker's backside was in the daylight glow from the payload bay and his side was brilliantly illuminated by Soyuz's floodlights only twenty yards away. The Soviet ship hung motionless beside Shuttle.

For a long moment, Parker watched LACE turn slowly from left to right. He watched the titanium rivets on the midline seam come out of the darkness at his left. The tiny heads entered the artificial light, passed into the shadow between Parker and LACE, and very slowly moved over LACE's edge back into the darkness beyond Parker's right side. Each rivet head, the size of a dime, rose into the light from the left and set in darkness on his right. They were a tiny, silent solar system of cold metal one foot from the pilot who breathed bottled oxygen smelling faintly of sweat, urine, and rubber fittings. Parker did not blink his weary, hollow eyes as he watched the rivets move hypnotically like the white lines on a highway beneath headlights deadheaded from nowhere to nowhere.

“You awake, Will?”

“Sure,” the AC whispered.

With a press forward on the THC grip, Parker moved toward LACE until he felt the flying grapple fixture touch the target's hull. He looked down his nose over the inner helmet's neckring to see the fixture's jaws open on either side of the protruding ledge. With a touch to the lever atop the grapple unit secured to his chest, the stainless-steel clamps closed without sound upon LACE's middle. Instantly, the panels and rivets before the AC's face stopped their transit. The white-suited pilot became part of LACE, and with it, he turned slowly to his right.

“Endeavor: Colorado by Botswana at 06 plus 51. We see the AC going for a ride.”

The ground called from the darkness where in Africa it was nine minutes before midnight. Shuttle flew over the sea 100 miles southwest of Cape Town, South Africa. Since Shuttle's last revolution 90 minutes earlier, the entire African landmass had moved eastward out from under Endeavor's path and no landfall would be made.

“Only way to travel,” the Colonel radioed as he revolved with LACE latched to his chest. He slowly approached the edge where he would roll out of the artificial light for his own private sunset of sorts behind LACE's shadow.

“Copy that, Will. Any observations during your SAA proximity pass?”

“The AC reported quite a bit of ion wake activity when we were close. Hope the PDP registered something.”

“Understand, Jack. You can dump the plasma data by 0I loop over the States.”

Colorado would review the recorded plasma data when Shuttle's operational instrumentation radioed the memorized information to the ground.

“Rog.”

Shuttle was directly below a brilliant full moon which moved westward across the sky well north of Endeavor's extreme southern latitude.

“We would like to see the target stabilized as soon as you can, Will. Only with you another 90 seconds.”

“I was just startin' to enjoy the ride, Flight. About to drop in another quarter.”

“Believe you. But please get to it.” The ground sounded impatient.

As the ground spoke from the darkness, Parker rolled behind LACE and out of view from either Enright's overhead window or the television screen beside Enright.

In the icy darkness behind LACE, the revolving flier could feel his aloneness. LACE's body blocked his view of both Soyuz and Endeavor. His left hand pushed the translational thruster handle and he held it in firing position. Four cold gas jets on the right side of the manned maneuvering unit squirted continuously against the direction of LACE's rotation.

“Firing!” the AC called. A shoulder and then a mirrored, gold visor emerged very slowly from behind LACE.

“Gotcha now, Will.”

“Still thrusting.”

“Not much visible reduction in your roll rate, Will. Watch your consumables.”

“I'll be here.”

“Will: Colorado here reporting your roll rate is down from one point one to point seven degree per minute. You're braking well in rate. Continue thrusting. You're Go from here at 06 plus 52. One hour 36 minutes on your PLSS. Losing you momentarily. We remind you that your next 28 minutes will be out of ground contact.”

“We'll stay on the job anyway, Flight.”

“Hope so, Jack. Configure . . .

As Shuttle lost the network over water, she rounded Port Elizabeth on Africa's southern tip. The ship began an 8,500 statute mile run without radio contact over the Indian Ocean. This revolution, Shuttle would miss the west coast of Australia by 1,100 miles since that continent had moved eastward with Africa out from under Endeavor's path.

Enright watched Parker for the 2½ minutes he was in view until he disappeared behind LACE for the second time. During that period, Endeavor covered a thousand miles and passed the southernmost point of her orbital path 2,622 statute miles south of the Equator.

Enright continued to monitor the temperatures and the voltages within the remote arm's six servo power amplifiers which held the plasma sniffer pointed toward LACE. The PDP was recording LACE's radiation signature for later relay to the ground.

“Still thrusting,” the AC called as he rolled back into the bay lighting and into the view out Enright's overhead window.

“Okay, Will. At 07 hours even. You are definitely slowing down out there. About one more circuit should do it. Pace it to stop with the grapple fixture facing me if you can.”

“No sweat . . . You with me, Soyuz?” Parker glanced to his side. His gold faceplate shone brilliantly in the arc light from the Soviet craft.

“Watching closely, Colonel. Estimate one-tenth degree per minute in roll rate now.”

“Thank you . . . Still thrusting, Jack.”

At 07 hours 02 minutes, Endeavor cruised over the dark Indian Ocean on her northeast course 3,500 miles west of Australia.

LACE rolled ever slower. Parker attached to its midline required two minutes to come around the corner. In the artificial daylight cast by the lighted bay, he reached the halfway point of his slow roll.

At 07 hours 04 minutes, Endeavor rode the black sky into 2 a.m. local time, one day ahead of Cape Canaveral where it was 5 p.m. on a cool and clear day.

“All stop,” Parker called with his back toward Shuttle. “Damn, that burned a lot of gas, Jack.”

“What are your N
₂
reserves?”

“Maybe a thousand pounds psi.”

“Should get you home, Will.”

“Hope so.”

As the AC floated latched to the perfectly motionless LACE, a stabbing pain in his right knee reminded him of his hotly throbbing leg. He closed his eyes in the light between his helmet and LACE which came from Soyuz to his left.