Maybe they were right. Pleiades had so far escaped the scrapyard fate of Discovery and Endeavor, or the embarrassing end that had befallen old Atlantis.
Privately, though, Teresa thought it a pity the old crate hadn’t been replaced long ago — not by another prissy model-three job, either, but by something newer, better. Pleiades wasn’t a true spaceship, after all. Only a bus. A local, at that.
And despite all the so-called romance of her profession, Teresa knew she was little more than a bus driver.
“Maneuver completed. Switching to hook-rendezvous program.”
“Yo,” Teresa acknowledged. She toggled the Ku band downlink. “MCC Colorado Springs, this is Pleiades. We’ve finished siphoning external tank residuals to recovery cells and jettisoned the ET. Circularization completed. Request update for approach to Ere—” Teresa stopped, recalling she was talking to Air Force. ” — for approach to Reagan Station.”
The controller’s tinny voice filled her earphones.
“Roger, Pleiades. Target range check, ninety-one kilometers… mark.”
“Yes?” Randall interrupted with a weak smirk. It was a stale joke, which, fortunately, control didn’t hear.
“Doppler twenty-one meters per second… mark. Tangential v, five point two mps… mark.”
Teresa did a quick scan. “Verified, control. We agree.”
“An’ thar she blows,” said Mark, peering through the overhead window. “Erehwon, right on schedule.”
“Ixnay, Mark. Open mike.”
Randall hand signed so-what indifference.
“Roger, Pleiades,” said the voice from Colorado Springs. “Switching you over to Reagan Station control. MCC out.”
“Reagan, shmeagan,” Mark muttered when the line was clear. “Call it peeper heaven.”
Teresa pretended not to hear. On the panel by her right knee she punched the prog button, then tapped 319 exec. “Rendezvous and retrieval program activated,” she said.
Between their consoles there appeared a holographic image of Pleiades itself — a squat dart, black on the bottom and white on top, her gaping cargo bay radiators exposed to the cooling darkness of space. Filling the greater part of the bay was a closed canister of powder blue. The peepers’ precious spy-stuff. Colonel Glenn Spivey’s treasure. And heaven help anyone who laid even a smudge on its wrapper.
Behind the cargo several white spheres held tons of supercold propellants, recovered from the towering external tank after it had fueled the shuttle through liftoff. Dumping the two-million-liter tank into the Indian Ocean had been their preoccupation early in orbital insertion — a routine waste that used to outrage Teresa, but that she no longer even thought about anymore. At least they were rescuing the residuals these days. All that leftover hydrogen and oxygen had countless uses in space.
While Mark talked to Erehwon control, Teresa caused the snare mechanism to rise from the rim of the cargo bay. The stubby arm — sturdier than the remote manipulator used for deploying cargos — extended a telescoping tip ending in an open hook.
“Erehwon confirms telemetry,” Mark told her. “Approach nominal.”
“We’ve got a few minutes then. I’ll go look in on the passengers.”
“Yeah, do that.” Of course Mark knew she had another reason for getting up. But this time he judiciously kept silent.
Unbuckling, then swiveling to use the seat back as a springboard, Teresa cast off toward the rear of the flight deck. Before automation, a mission specialist used to watch over the cargo from there. Now only a window remained.
Through it she surveyed the peepers’ package, and beyond, the cryocanisters. If the coming hook-snatch maneuver worked, they’d save half the hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide back there, as well — another valuable bonus to offload. Otherwise, most of the reserve would be used up matching orbits.
She brought her head near the chill window to peer at the snare arm, rising from the starboard platform. It was locked, just as the computer said. Just checking, Teresa thought, unrepentant of her need to verify in person.
She twisted and dove through a circular opening in the “floor.” Five Air Force officers in blue launch suits looked up as she swam into the spacious cabin known as middeck. Two of the passengers looked sick, averting their eyes as Teresa floated by. At least there were no windows here, so they were spared the added misery of horizon disorientation. A third of all first-timers had to adapt several days before their fluttering stomachs allowed them to appreciate scenery, anyway.
“That was a smooth launch, Captain,” the elder sickly one enunciated carefully. He wore two drug-release patches behind one ear, but still looked pretty shaky. Teresa knew the man from other flights, and he’d been ill on those too.
Must be pretty damned irreplaceable if they keep sending him up. As Mark Randall colorfully put it, guys like this never had to prove they had guts.
“Thank you,” she replied. “We aim to please. I just wanted to see how you all were doing and to say we’ll be meeting the Nearpoint snare in about twenty minutes. Station personnel will need an hour to offload cargo and salvaged residuals. Then it’ll be your turn to ride the elevator to Central.”
“That’s if you manage to hook the snare, Ms. Tikhana. What if you miss?”
This time it was the man seated forward on the left, a stocky fellow with eyes shaded by heavy brows, and bright colonel’s eagles on one shoulder. White sideburns offset his roughened skin — a patchy complexion that came from repeated treatments to slough off precancerous layers. Unlike Ra Boys or other groundside fetishists, Glenn Spivey hadn’t acquired his blotchy pigmentation on a beach. He had won the dubious badge of honor the same way Jason had — high over Uruguay, protected by just the fabric of his suit as he fought to save a top-secret experiment. But then, what were a dozen or so rads to a patriot?
They obviously hadn’t mattered to Jason. Or so her husband had implied from his recovery bed after his own encounter with the South Atlantic radiation zone.
“Hey look, hon. This doesn’t change our plans. There are sperm banks. Or when you’re ready, we can make some other arrangement. Some of our friends must have some damn high quality… Hey, babe, now what’s the matter?”
The infuriating density of the man! As if that had been foremost on her mind while he lay in a hospital with tubes in his arms! Later, the subject of children did contribute to the widening gulf between them. But at the time her only thought was, “Idiot, you might have died!”
With professional coolness, Teresa answered Colonel Spivey. “What if the station can’t hook Pleiades midpass? In that case we’ll do another burn to match orbits the old-fashioned way. That’ll take time though. And there’ll be no residual propellant to offload after docking.”
“Time and hydrazine.” Spivey pursed his lips. “Valuable commodities, Ms. Tikhana. Good luck.”
Twice since she had come down here, the colonel had glanced at his watch — as if nature’s laws could be hurried like junior officers, with a severe look. Teresa tried to be understanding, since it did take all kinds. If it weren’t for vigilant, paranoid spy-types like Spivey, always poking and peeping to see to it the provisions of the Rio Treaties were kept, would peace have lasted as long as it had? Ever since the Helvetian War?
“Safety first, Colonel. You wouldn’t want to see us wrapped in twenty kilometers of spectra-fiber tether material, would you?”