Zero-G (5 page)

He moved slowly, working the articulated manipulator arm and its six “joints.”

Sweat dotted his forehead and his heart felt encased in concrete.

“Dear God, what went wrong?”

“Say again,
Atlantis
.”

“Sorry, Rick, but I wasn't talking to you.”

“Understood, Tuck. There have been a lot of those conversations
down here.”
A pause.
“PDRS shows manipulator
arm activity.”

Not far from where Rick sat in MCC, the Payload Deploy Retrieval Systems monitor recorded and relayed everything Tuck did.

With hands on the controls, Tuck closed his eyes and forced his breathing to slow. A familiar sensation oozed through him: detachment — a common emotional state for those who routinely faced dangerous situations. He had learned it in pilot's school; his father had learned it in the fire department.

The thought of his father calmed him. The distance between them might be great, but Tuck could still see the old man: gray hair, wrinkles forged in the furnace of life, and eyes that still danced.

Tuck opened his eyes, gazed out the aft view windows, then turned his eyes to the video monitors at the right. He had already selected two of the six available cameras to help him guide the massive arm back into the payload compartment.

One of the questions Tuck had answered a dozen times in his many talks to students dealt with zero gravity. Truth is, he would explain, there is no such thing as zero gravity. There is always some measure of the force, even in what appears to be empty space. What astronauts experienced was microgravity — gravity at such a low level that its force is difficult to experience.

The companion myth dealt with weightlessness. Many assumed that a weightless environment made something massless, and that was dangerous thinking. The arm that Tuck manipulated weighed nearly half a ton. Without appreciable gravity, it could be moved easily and extended in a way that couldn't be done on Earth. However, it still possessed its mass, and if Tuck were to lose control and bring the robotic arm in too quickly, he could seriously damage
Atlantis
and possibly kill everyone on board — those who were still alive.

Having reminded himself of those facts, Tuck began the retrieval and stowage procedure. His eyes moved from aft window to video monitors to the instrument panel with its switches and digital display of yaw, pitch, and more. He moved with caution, doing a two-person job by himself.

As the arm retracted, Vinny's lifeless body wiggled in a macabre dance, its inertia resisting the movement of the mechanical device. His arms moved up and down and his torso twisted at the waist. The unnatural motion reminded Tuck of the time Vinny, well lubricated with Italian wine, tried to teach his fellow astronauts the Macarena. That had been at Jess's birthday party. The memory stung.

The white space suit was Vinny's cocoon. It protected him against the 500-degree shifts in temperature that anything in space experiences. In direct sun, the suit fended off 250-degree heat; in shade, it shielded him from 250 degrees below zero.

Odd, Tuck thought, that Vinny died not from the many threats outside his suit, but likely from something he wore on his neck.

Foot by foot, then inch by inch, Tuck brought the arm in until it settled in its latches. Engineers had not designed the RMS arm to be docked with something attached to its distal end. Tuck had to twist the platform on which Vinny's feet were attached ninety degrees to the resting arm. It tore at Tuck to do so. He felt like he was securing a stray piece of equipment rather than one of his crew. The thought of Vinny riding through reentry in the payload compartment threatened to shred Tuck's mind. He had no idea what it might do to Vinny.

Tuck closed the payload doors.

FOUR

T
uck finished putting on the gloves of his orange launch/entry suit, or LES. The LES was a vital safety element, designed to pressurize should the cabin suddenly lose pressure during liftoff or reentry. It also served as an anti-G suit, a contraption that helped crew face the increase in g-forces endured during the trip back to Earth. If all went well, they would experience only two Gs, but for crews who had spent several days in microgravity, two Gs could be a lot. Unfortunately, Tuck could not dress his unconscious crewmembers in the suits.

Tuck had done all that had been asked of him. He had secured everything that needed securing, checked on Jess and Russ again, checked the five-point harness system that held the crew to their seats, and done something never done before. For a complete autoland, Tuck had to string a cable from avionics on middeck to the flight deck. That data cable allowed control of items such as the air-data probes and the landing gear —work the crew would normally handle.

Tuck was now a passenger.

The only good news came with Jess and Russ. While they had showed no improvement, they had also showed no decline. For that, Tuck was thankful.

He felt the OMS fire and saw the indicators on his panel. The Orbital Maneuvering System consisted of a pair of six-thousand-pound thrusters at the aft end of the orbiter that provided the final boost into orbit. They also slowed
Atlantis
for de-orbit.
Atlantis
had already been flipped to the correct reentry attitude. As it turned, Tuck saw the Department of Defense satellite they had come to repair — the satellite Vinny had worked on. Tuck had no idea if Vinny had finished the work, and he didn't care. The Department of Defense could wait.

“Houston,
Atlantis
.”

“Go ahead,
Atlantis.”

“I see DOD 63 off our starboard side. How close have we been to that beast?” The surveillance satellite was the size of a bus. Tuck, in the midst of drug poisoning, had forgotten about the device.

“It was never a problem.”

“Houston, let's have an understanding. I want you to keep me fully apprised of all things. I don't want any of that John Glenn garbage.”

During John Glenn's
Mercury
mission, an instrument light at MCC indicated Glenn's heat shield had come loose. If true, Glenn would die on reentry. Mission Control kept the information from him. Something Glenn took exception to — loudly.

“It was never a problem, Tuck.”

Tuck looked at the satellite. A fender-bender collision with it would have meant disaster — greater disaster.

“Just so that we're clear, gentlemen.”

“OMS burn is good. Attitude is good.”

“Roger that, Houston.”

Tuck leaned his helmeted head back and gazed at the starry sky. There was little for him to do. Normally the intercom would be full of chatter from slightly nervous crew who waited to ride the meteor. No voices came over the headset.

The OMS burn had slowed
Atlantis
by only two hundred miles an hour. Not much compared to the Mach 25 she was traveling.

Soon the craft would dip into the atmosphere and begin its guided plunge to Earth.

“Four hundred thousand feet. Guidance looks good.”

Atlantis
was dropping into the atmosphere but was still more spacecraft than aircraft. The computers kept the forty-degree nose-up attitude, preventing Tuck from seeing anything but black space. Before him, a monitor showed the orbiter's descent.

“Rick, is my family there?”

“Roger that, Tuck. They're in the viewing area. They
can hear you.”

“Dad too?”

“Yup. He's a little put-out with you. Apparently you
promised to help him fix his truck.”

Tuck laughed. He doubted his father said anything like that, but he appreciated Rick's efforts to keep his spirits up.

“Understood, Houston. I'll try not to get dead.”

“You had better come back alive. You know what your
wife will do to me if you don't.”

A moan came over the headset. Tuck turned his head to see Jess raise a hand to her temple.

Another moan.

“Houston,
Atlantis
, I think Jess is coming to.”

A pause.
“Understood.”

“My head. What's wrong with my head?” Jess's words trickled out. She whimpered.

“Jess. Are you with me? Jess?”

“The pain. My head is splitting open.” She tilted her head back and opened her eyes. Blinked. Blinked again. “What . . . Oh, no. Oh, no.” She reached for the control stick.

Tuck shot an arm across the center panel and grabbed her shoulder. “Don't move, Jess. Don't touch anything. We're on autoland.”

“Autoland? But . . . My head . . . Can't think. My heart is trying to escape.”

“Just sit still. The pain goes away with time.”

“I don't understand.” She turned to him. Her eyes widened so much Tuck thought they'd fall from her head. She raised an arm and studied it for a moment, then returned her frightened gaze to Tuck. “Why are you in your LES? Where's mine?” She looked out the window, then at the monitors before her. “This isn't right. What's happening?”

“Jess, listen to me.”

She snapped her gaze over her shoulder. “Seat positions are wrong. We can't reenter with seats in on-orbit configuration.”

“Jess. Settle down. You've been drugged. The whole crew has. We're on emergency autoland headed to White Sands. Everything is under control. Just sit back.”

“But my LES. No one but you is wearing an LES. Why, Tuck? Why only you?”

She teetered on hysteria, something foreign to Jess, who seldom showed any emotion beyond humor. The drugs in her system were playing havoc with her reason.

“Pull yourself together, Jess. That's an order.”

“Mach twenty-five point two and three hundred forty
thousand feet.”

Jess straightened, started to speak, then closed her mouth, jaw tensed like a clamp.

“Now listen. Our SAS patches were faulty. You've been out for hours. Me too. I came around a couple of hours ago. MCC decided on an emergency autoland. My reflexes made docking with ISS too risky.”

“I should be in an LES. That's procedure now. Ever since
Challenger
.”

“I know, Jess. I know. But you don't need an LES. Earlier crews didn't use them.”

“Gs, what about the Gs? I don't have my anti-G suit on.”

“We're on autoland, Jess. Remember that. Autoland. The autopilot will take us in as always, and Houston will take us the rest of the way. If you pass out, it's all right. I'm here, and MCC knows what it's doing.”

Tears ran from her eyes. “My head hurts so much.”

“I know. I thought mine was going to explode.”

“Patches?” She felt her neck. “Mine is gone.”

“I removed them.”

“The others? Are they still out?”

Tuck hesitated, then answered. “Yes. Still out. There'll be doctors at White Sands.”

“You know they only land you at White Sands if they expect you to break apart on the runway.”

“That's not true, Jess.”

“It is true.”

Tuck looked at the readouts. Maybe he could keep her mind engaged. “Mach twenty-four point eight . . . two hundred forty thousand feet.”

“We're heating up.” Jess looked through the overhead ports. “I can see the plasma ribbon.” She stared at it. “So pretty.”

As the air around
Atlantis
heated to extreme temperatures, superheat stripped ions from the air, creating slithering snakes of light. They flashed and flickered, bathing the flight deck with flashbulb bursts of light.

“Entering first bank.” Tuck kept his voice calm and low. The computers tilted the Shuttle into the first of several seventy-five-degree banking maneuvers meant to extend the distance the craft would fly before reaching the landing area in New Mexico.

Tuck's greatest desire was to take control of the craft, but to do so would mean disaster. Forty-five miles above the surface and speeds that most people couldn't fathom made human control impossible. The nose-up attitude prevented anyone from seeing a runway; that, and the runway waited several thousand miles away. Their lives were in the hands of silicon chips and wires, in accelerometers and computers.

“Mach twenty-two; two hundred twenty thousand feet. Pulling a half-G.”

“We see the same thing.”

“We're still with Rick?” Jess asked.

“I doubt dynamite would get him out of his chair. Heaven help anyone who tries to move him.”

“Dieter still Flight?”

“Same crew.”

“This all happened in one shift?”

“At least your brain is still working. I guess I'm no longer the smartest astronaut on board.”

“Were you ever?”

“Ah, that's the Jess I know and love.”

“Tuck?”

“Yes.”

“I can't see. I'm blind.”

Tuck's head snapped around. Jess looked straight ahead. “I thought you said you could see the plasma ribbon outside.”

She nodded. “Everything went black after that. My headache has decreased. You know what that means?”

“I said it would go away.”

“Not that fast, Commander. Something has given way in my head. I've popped an artery or something.”

“You don't know that.”

“I think the plasma lights may be the last thing I ever see.”

“Negative. The docs will fix you up.”

She moved her head from side to side. “I don't think so, Tuck. We're going to pull two Gs before we're wheels down. That can't be good for bleeding in the head.”

“You don't know that you're stroking.”

“Makes sense, Commander. Makes sense.”

Tuck thought he heard slurring. “Houston,
Atlantis
.”

“Go ahead,
Atlantis.”

“Jess is . . . Jess says she's blind.”

Several moments passed. “Atlantis.
Surgeon says
the medical folk at White Sands will be notified.”