“You need me for anything, Benny?”
“Nope. Go sleep or something. Hey, Snake Eyes, you get a chance to do something this trip?”
“No. Got close, but got called off at the last second.”
“Shit. That’s what this goddamned job does for you.”
Not his job and not McKenna’s job. This job. It was all one effort, every task melded into the singular task, and most of the forty-nine people who were aboard Themis regularly felt like they were part of a team, as Shalbot did. And like anyone in any large organization McKenna had ever known, Shalbot was instantly prepared to complain about the job. He would also be instantly ready to defend it. He was part of an elite team.
Shalbot activated his PDU — Portable Diagnostics Unit — and began the sequence that would test every electronic circuit aboard the MakoShark for operation within specified tolerances. One malfunctioning integrated circuit board, or one diode overheated too many times, could turn success into catastrophe, and the MakoSharks’ electronics were tested each time they arrived on Themis.
McKenna launched himself off Delta Blue and sailed through the doorway to grab a handhold and deflect his flight downward along a wide corridor. All “up” aboard the satellite was toward the center of the hub, and all “down” was away from it.
The side of the hub opposite the hangar/storage half was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians darted along the corridors with purpose, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas. He passed the maintenance office, waving at Mitchell as he went by, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. Technically, it was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.
It was a large space, fitted on all walls — there was no true ceiling or floor — with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. In the center of the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard Themis who did not regularly return to the earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.
At the end of the corridor bisecting the hub, McKenna came to the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub. Gripping a grab bar for an instant, he deflected his direction and pushed off again.
At irregular intervals along this corridor were self-sealing round doors that led into the spokes. Currently, there were sixteen spokes, though the corridor also had an additional eight doors, locked and painted red, to accommodate the addition of eight more spokes. On opposite sides of the hub, there were also airlocks allowing passage outside the satellite for repair and maintenance.
Four of the modules at the end of their spokes were residential, containing sixteen individual sleeping quarters, recreation/dining spaces, kitchens, and personal hygiene stations. The personnel complement was divided into separate dormitory areas primarily for safety, rather than for social or organizational reasons. If there was an accidental blowout in one of the residential modules, three-fourths of the personnel complement would still be intact. Explaining that cut-and-dried safety consideration to temporary residents like a physicist or biologist brought an ashy shade to their faces.
Other spokes led to the nuclear power plant, the laboratories, the production plants, and the command section. Primary electronics, ventilation, and power were located in the hub, feeding the spokes, so that the loss of any spoke would not cripple the ship. The exception to that rule was the nuclear plant, but backup batteries and solar power sources would still be available for a limited time. The “hot” side of the hub, exposed to the sun, mounted a massive solar array.
McKenna arrived at Spoke One and tapped the large green button mounted on the bulkhead. The automatic door wheezed, rotated two inches to free itself from the locking tangs, then swung open on its massive hinge. The hinge was mounted solidly to the bulkhead, and two bars from the top and bottom of the hinge met in a “V” at the center of the round door, allowing the door to pivot around an axle at the point of the “V”. Decompression in any compartment automatically closed every door on the station.
Once he had clearance, McKenna pushed himself through the opening, pressing the red button on the other side. The door closed behind him, and he pulled himself along the spoke. It was twelve feet in diameter and double walled. Between the walls ran the ventilation ducting, electrical conduits, heating and cooling coils, and thick insulation. Since the satellite did not rotate, there was a hot side and a cold — night — side. The variation in temperature from one side to the other was several hundred degrees, and one computer alone was kept busy cooling and heating the satellite’s skin in order to keep the interior livable.
Access panels were irregularly spaced along the spoke’s forty-foot length. Spoke One was the longest of the spokes. The design of the station allowed for unexpected expansion, as well as for oversized modules at the end of a spoke. Including the largest modules and the spokes, Themis currently had a 470-foot diameter, the equivalent of more than one-and-a-half football fields. To those approaching the station from space, it was a speck in a vast emptiness. To first-time visitors aboard, it was an amazingly complex and huge city.
The interior of Spoke One was lit with three flush-mounted lamps, and there were no windows.
Windows were in short supply on Themis. There was one large round port in each of the four dining rooms and two in the command module. None of the portholes in the dining rooms could observe the hangar side of the hub. If visiting scientists from Air Force-client companies were aboard, they would never see any of the MakoShark arrivals or departures.
On the outer end of the spoke, McKenna negotiated an automatic door in order to reach the command spaces.
The module was forty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, divided into a number of compartments. As commander of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, McKenna rated an office here, if it could be called an office. It was a four-by-four-by-seven-foot cubicle in which he could strap himself to one padded wall and operate his “desk.” The desk was a computer and communications console with three cathode ray tubes recessed into the desk top. It allowed him visual access to three documents simultaneously, or if he split the screens, to six documents. Additionally, he could tap into any of the radar or video monitoring systems.
Except for the console, the cubicle’s arrangement wasn’t much different from his sleeping quarters, and McKenna frequently slept there.
The commander of Themis, Brig. Gen. James Overton, the deputy commander, Col. Milt Avery, and Amy Pearson had similar cubicles. A much larger compartment was utilized by one of the three communications/radar operators on board. Other compartments were designed for storage or contained computer and electronic gear, safety equipment, and emergency environmental suits.
McKenna pushed himself down the short corridor past the smaller cubicles and into the main control room. On the outboard end of the module, the command center was twenty feet deep by almost the full diameter of forty feet. The dominant feature was the centered four-foot, round port providing a view of the earth. At the moment, the focus was on the Mediterranean Sea. The earth seemed to glow, radiating her greens, blues, and tans. The cloud cover was particularly white this morning. It had a rose tint to it.
The command center was a functional place, without much thought given to aesthetics. Conduit and ducting was flattened against the bulkheads, snaking around consoles and black boxes. There weren’t any seats available, though there were a number of Velcro tethers spotted around to keep people operating consoles from floating away from the job.