“Yes, Hui?”
“I’m concerned about our oxygen and carbon-dioxide levels.” Hui frowned slightly.
“I know. Tony and Houston are running the numbers right now. CO2 shouldn’t be a problem, though, because we’ve got plenty of extra lithium-hydride scrubber canisters.” Bill pushed over to a bin, turned and pulled the locking mechanism, and slid it out to show Hui a stash of scrubber filters. “See?”
“Good. What about oxygen?”
“Don’t know. We should know soon enough.” Bill finished off his juice with a final squeeze and then kicked back over to his station. “Tony?”
“You’d better talk to Houston, Bill.”
“Alright.” Bill buckled himself in so he wouldn’t be floating around. He had always found he could concentrate on what he was doing better that way. Then he put his headset back on. “Houston, this is Mercy I. Any word on our status and burn calculations?”
“Uh, roger that, Mercy I.” There was a brief pause. “Bill, we are optimizing the burn for the Orion as well as calculations for the Dreamscape. Your rendezvous is critical. It looks like Orion will have enough oxygen to sustain you until Dreamscape can get there, but just barely. You’re going to have to drop to a third of an atmosphere to maximize your O2.”
“Just under five pounds per square inch shouldn’t be a problem, Houston, right? After all, that’s what we do for an hour or more before a long-term EVA.” Bill wasn’t too concerned. He had spent hours at four and half pounds per square inch atmospheric pressure during some of the EVAs he’d done on the ISS. And there were people who climbed Mount Everest and spent many days at a comparable pressure or less. They’d be weak and light-headed, but they’d be alive. Some people responded poorly to the low pressure after a while and had blood form in their lungs, but astronauts would be weeded out if they showed any such symptoms. Bill hoped the Chinese picked their crew as stringently.
“Roger that, Mercy I. All of you should be able to handle the low pressure, but it will likely be uncomfortable for you.”
“We’ll make do, Houston. We’ll make do. Now, how about those burn calculations, over?” Bill was ready to do something. Anything.
“Roger that, Houston. Thanks for the numbers.” Paul Gesling had been on an open channel through Space Excursions’ mission control and NASA’s mission control since he had reached low Earth orbit. NASA had finally figured out exactly where the Orion space capsule had ended up and had worked out a complex series of burns for the Orion and Dreamscape to perform. Paul worked as cooperatively with the NASA engineers as he could.
“Thanks to you, Dreamscape. Let’s hope this works so we can bring our people home,” Houston responded. “Now, do you have any further questions before you initiate the burn, over?”
“Negative, Houston. We’ve got it under control.” Paul double-checked the computer screens to make certain the data for the burns had been entered correctly. Mission control had repeated it several times as he entered it, reread it, and then checked it again. NASA was nothing if not thorough. Paul almost took their cautiousness as a sign that they didn’t trust him. But he did his best to put those types of thoughts out of his head. They didn’t help anybody, and those poor folks in that space capsule stranded in orbit, the wrong orbit, needed all the help they could get.
“Roger that, Dreamscape. We’re here if you need us,” Houston replied.
“Control, could you get Gary on the line?” Paul addressed Space Excursions’ own mission-control team, which consisted of two to four people depending on the time of day and the day of the week. He had them switch over to their own private and encrypted channel.
“Roger that, Paul. Give us a minute,” they responded. A few minutes later, Gary was on the line.
“What’s up, Paul?” Childers asked. Paul could see his face on the videocam screen.
“We are almost go for this burn, Gary. It just dawned on me that we’ve never tried the airlock docking mechanism out before. We’ve never done an EVA from Dreamscape. And we’ve never actually docked with the International Space Station yet,” Paul said. His voice had more concern in it than usual.
“Do you have any reason to believe it will not function properly, Paul?” Childers raised an eyebrow, looking almost annoyed. “We shouldn’t have led these people on if we don’t think we can do this.”
“No, no. I’m just saying. We’ve never done this type of thing before. When it works flawlessly, we should have some camera footage of it for future customers to see.” Paul smiled at his boss.
“Now, that’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit I’ve been wanting to hear from you! Great idea. You think you can figure out how to set up the internal and external cams to give us decent shots?”
“Once I make this burn I’ll have about two days with nothing else to do. I’ll figure it out. Uh, don’t take this wrong. I want to save these people with all my heart. But it just dawned on me that nobody was paying us for this flight, and it is going to eat into our budget.” Paul had other test flights in mind that this rescue mission would remove from the schedule. Dreamscape had a very tight and very fixed budget. Rescue missions hadn’t been figured into it.
“Don’t worry about the business end right now, Paul. Just do your thing up there. That will be worth billions in the long run,” Gary assured him.
“Right. When we’ve got more time in a few hours, we could talk more on the subject.” The burn countdown clock turned yellow, showing five minutes and counting. “Getting close. Better let you go and get NASA back on.”
“Understood. And Paul…” Gary paused and smiled. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Chapter 35
“Thanks.” Dr. Xu took the water bottle from Tony and took a long draw from it.
“You’re welcome. How’s the leg feeling?” Tony looked at the bandaged area around the taikonaut’s tibia. It had been a day and a half since they had done their last orbit-correction burn and would be another day more before they could dock with the Dreamscape. There appeared to be no more leaks, bursting pipes, randomly firing thrusters, or sticky solar panels, so they had all taken off their suits. As far as Tony was concerned, doing so might help him save Xu’s leg.
“It hurts, but not as badly as it did yesterday,” he told Tony.
“Well, I’m going to redo this dressing and put you in a boot,” Tony explained. Xu nodded in understanding. “In America, we have these big football players break a leg completely into two pieces, get some surgery and wear one of these boots, and then they’ll be playing again by the end of the season.”
“I’ve seen the same, Tony.” Xu smiled. “I fear that I’ve lost a lot of bone material there. It will in the least make the bone shorter on that side.”
“I’ve seen that fixed, too.” Tony swabbed an antibacterial wipe over the wound and then filled it with triple antibiotic ointment before he rewrapped it. He noticed that Xu took a big whiff through his nose, as if trying to smell it. “Dr. Xu, I can assure you that there is no infection. You are not going to lose your leg to thrombosis or Clostridium perfringens. The antibiotic injections we’ve been giving you have worked just fine.”
“Thank you, Tony. This all is…” Xu paused nervously. “Unsettling to me.”
“As well it should be! It ain’t everyday that a man gets his leg nearly blown off by a forty five caliber pistol round.” Tony gripped his shoulder and nodded to the man. “You’re doing great. Don’t worry.”