The MakoShark entered her orbit precisely on the required track. Maslov once again felt slightly awed by the power of the on-board computers. To not have them would make everything else impossible.
And he vowed to treat them right. As soon as they had completed the next four necessary flights, he would ground the MakoShark for a thorough examination of all of her systems. He knew that the maintenance program at New World Air Base had many shortcomings when it came to the MakoShark, but he would see that all that could be done was done.
“We have lost two more Wasps,” Nikitin said.
Maslov glanced at the armaments panel.
“They also have had too many reentries, Boris. In the future, we will change out missiles after two reentries.”
“It would be the best course, I think, Aleks. Perhaps the nose cones can be rebuilt.”
“I will jettison these.”
Maslov pressed the pads to eject the defective missiles and checked his remaining configuration. When they had taken the MakoShark, it had been equipped with a rotary launcher in the forward bay, but that had been dismounted and left behind because of the cargo.
It had also been equipped with two long pylons, capable of mounting two Phoenix or two Wasp II missiles each, as well as one of the accessory pods. The two short pylons could accommodate a single pod or four of the smaller Wasp II missiles. Because of the cargo weight requirements, he had elected to abandon the heavy Chain Gun pod and the reconnaissance pod. Since they no longer had Phoenix missiles available, which were much heavier anyway, they had taken off with twelve Wasp IIs. And now they were down to ten.
“What is our time to rendezvous, Boris?”
“One hour and thirty-seven minutes,” Nikitin replied. “In fourteen minutes, we need to use the rocket motors for a twelve-second adjustment burst.”
“Very well, I will allow myself a twelve-minute nap. Isn’t it amazing, Boris, how we must adapt to the technology?”
“It begins to rule our lives, yes.”
Before closing his eyes, Maslov checked in with Commodore and Commander. Both the land base and the space base reported no activity near them.
“One sweep, jefe?”
“One, Tiger.”
Munoz switched the radar to active, and McKenna watched as the scan made an agonizingly slow revolution. Two targets appeared.
“You hit me,” Haggar complained from her orbital position a mile away.
“Sorry, enamorada. Won’t happen again. I show one MakoShark and one foreign-import space station, well-used, Snake Eyes, all in matched velocity. The station is three-four miles below us.”
The MakoSharks had departed Themis fifty-two minutes before.
McKenna deployed the cargo bay doors.
“Decompressing, Tiger.”
He switched his oxy-nitro feed hose to the emergency bottle, then started the cockpit environmental pumps.
“Now that it’s come to this,” Munoz said, “I’ve decided I don’t want to split up.”
“Just a short business trip, dearie,” McKenna said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Problem is, compadre, you’re taking the car. How am I supposed to get around town?”
“There’ll be a bus along, Tiger, sure as hell.”
When the panel indicators told him that the cockpit atmosphere had been vacated, he opened the cockpit. Releasing his straps and communications cord, he clipped the snap fastener of a nylon line to the D-ring on his equipment belt, then pushed lightly on each side of the seat.
He rose slowly out of the cockpit, switching his microphone and earphones from the cockpit interface to the helmet’s internal radio. It had a range of less than five miles.
“Testing,” he said.
“Well-tested,” Munoz replied.
Using the coaming as a handhold, McKenna rolled out of the cockpit and aimed himself across the chine toward the leading edge of the wing. He had performed EVAs before, and he knew how enticing the view of the Earth could be, so he focused on the wing. He kept his movements slow and precise.
The wing approached, and McKenna raised the back of one gloved hand and deflected himself beneath it. His loose air bottle banged into his side, and he clutched it with his right hand.
He was headed outboard, toward the nacelle, but he managed to reach out for the nose of a Wasp II missile and stop his flight. He used the Wasp II as his launching pad toward the extended bay doors. His tethering line trailed after him.
The Earth below was a glowing ball that seemed to tug at him. He ignored it and grabbed the bay door, then shoved himself past the first bay, which contained the Wasp II launcher, and up into the aft bay.
“Snake Eyes?”
“Here, Tiger, donning my tuxedo.”
He first changed his air hose from the cylinder to the EVA backpack, then slipped the pack around to his back and strapped it on. The EVA gauges were on a short cable, and he pulled it over his shoulder and hooked it to the chest strap so that he could glance down and monitor his air and fuel levels. The EVA thruster controls were on another, longer cable with a bracelet-like anchor that he snapped to his right wrist.
He strapped the second EVA set to his chest. It was large and cumbersome, and it interfered with his arm movement, but he wasn’t about to leave it behind.
Benny Shalbot had taped the EVA packs in black also. He had used so much tape that there wasn’t a spool of it left on the station.
Unzipping the dozen Velcro strips holding it in place, McKenna freed the black equipment box from its position against the internal ribs. Earth-side, the box would have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Here, it was easily movable, but he had to be careful of its momentum and inertia. If he got it moving too fast, and he was between it and some other object, the weight wouldn’t matter. The inertia would still crush him.
Using a rib for leverage, McKenna pushed himself and the box downward. He drifted slowly, and as he cleared the bay doors and the nacelles, he unsnapped the tether from his D-ring.
Now, nothing connected him to the real world, and he immediately felt the loss. He had never gone extra-vehicular before without a tether.
It was almost disorienting. He swivelled the small control panel for the EVA thrusters underneath the tips of his fingers. Then, gripping the equipment box tightly against the EVA pack on his chest, he tested the maneuvering system by lightly tapping one of the six buttons under his fingertips.
Through the suit, he heard the soft whish of the thruster firing.
Almost imperceptibly, his downward velocity slowed.
He tapped several more times, and his body went parallel to the wing, then began to move out from under it, away from the MakoShark.
“Where’s my guidance counsellor?” he asked.
“Right here, compadre. I’m going active, to see what kind of reading I get off the equipment pack.”
McKenna continued to coast away from the space craft. He could turn his head enough to see the MakoShark. At a hundred yards, he could barely pick it out except for the patch of tape and the way it blotted out a section of stars.
“Semaphore says good luck, Snake Eyes.”
“Thank Semaphore mightily, Tiger, and give me a damned vector.”
“I read you well on the short scan,” Munoz said. “Let’s give it a little nose down. Or head down, if you prefer. Keep goin’. Good, hold there. Now, you want some more forward velocity.”
“Keep me under a ten-foot-per-second closure rate, Tiger. I want to arrive unannounced, not slam through the damned hull of the station.” McKenna hoped his taut nerves weren’t revealed in his communications.