“Got the target, range ten meters. Slight rotation, maybe a quarter revolution per minute. Moving out.”
Pushing his left hand forward upon the handle of the MMU’s translational hand controller, the pilot moved forward, slowly approaching the black, suspended canister.
Jacob Enright was dwarfed by the black drone rotating slowly in the water. Propelled by his water jets at his backside, Enright arrived at the floating target. He hovered beside the shuttle bay. At his waist level, a narrow ledge protruded around the circumference of the target, 10 feet long and 4 feet thick.
“Ready to snatch it, Chief.”
Four divers formed a safety ring around Enright and his slowly spinning target above and to the side of the sunken Shuttle.
“You got him, flightdeck?” the deck chief radioed.
Behind the shuttle windows, the diver eased his body sideways until he could look from the rear window across the payload bay. He saw Enright floating beside the target.
“Got ’im, Chief.” The diver’s voice was full of water as it came over the wall speaker by hydrophone.
“Go to make contact, Jack. Easy does it.”
Taking his right hand from the MMU’s arm, the pilot touched the boxy grapple fixture suspended from his chestpack. At the front of the unit, alligator jaws opened wide.
“Flying grapple fixture open, Chief. Movin’ on in.”
“Carefully, Jack.” As the chief spoke, Colonel Parker looked over the edge of the pool.
The pilot in the water pressed his left hand forward on the T-handle. Jets fired in the MMU and Enright edged toward the rotating seam around the midline of the target. The projecting ledge rotated between the grapple fixture’s open jaws.
With his left hand, the pilot touched the top of the grapple unit. The metallic jaws closed tightly around the lip of the target’s middle skirt. Instantly, Enright’s body rotated around with the revolving target.
“Hard contact, Chief.”
“You’re clear to null the rates, Jack.”
As the safety divers looked on, Enright pushed his left hand on the T-handle in the direction opposite the direction in which the target rotated. Four water jets on the side of the MMU thrusted continuously in the direction his body rotated. The jets fired against the movement of the slowly spinning target which rotated on its narrow end. Gradually, the target, with Enright riding its tall side, came to a stop under the influence of the steady-firing MMU jets.
“Stable one, Chief. All stop.”
“Roger, Jack. Flightdeck, clear for RMS.”
“Okay,” the voice gurgled behind the flightdeck’s rear windows. “Coming forward with the RMS, Jack.”
“Don’t bite me, buddy.”
From the right ledge of the open payload bay, as viewed from the aft-facing rear windows of the flightdeck, the boilerplate remote manipulator system arm lifted slowly from its cradle on the bay’s portside sill. The three-jointed, 50-foot-long arm slowly tracked toward the suspended pilot, who floated to the side and above the opposite starboard side of the payload bay. The arm’s far tip, the End Effector Unit, stopped on command beside Enright’s shoulder. The pilot hung motionlessly, still attached to the target by the grapple fixture locked to his chestpack.
“I’m eyeball to eyeball with the end effector.”
“Understand, Jack,” the watery voice called from the flightdeck thirty feet from Enright. “Got us, Chief?”
“With you. Clear to disengage, Jack. Watch the tail and OMS pod close behind you.”
Five feet behind Enright, the simulated Shuttle’s tail, 26 feet high, broke the surface of the water. On either side of the vertical tail fin, a bulbous orbital maneuvering system pod protruded from the rear of the Shuttle.
“ ’Kay. Comin’ free, Chief. Flightdeck?”
“With you, Jack.”
When the pilot touched the top of the grapple unit with his gloved hand, the unit separated from the brackets on Enright’s chestpack. With his left hand on the hand controller, the pilot slowly backed away from the grapple fixture attached to the target cylinder. Enright stopped three feet from the target with a burst from his MMU jets.
“Left just a tad,” Enright directed. The remote arm drifted between Enright and the target on command from the diver in the sunken flightdeck.
“Plus Y,” Enright called inside his suit as he spotted for the diver steering the RMS arm. The arm drifted on command over the starboard sill of the open bay.
“Okay. Minus Z, you’re high… Good. Right, right. Hold it! You got her now.”
“Thanks, Jack,” the voice gurgled.
The arm’s wire-snare jaws within the end effector yawned and encircled a spiked target probe jutting from the grapple fixture secured to the side of the target. The EEU snare closed like a camera iris around the grapple-fixture probe.
“Rigidize, Jack.” The diver on the flightdeck confirmed his contact with the suspended target.
“And we see it topside,” the chief called. “Come on up for lunch, Jack.”
“I’m ready, Chief.”
Jacob Enright flew the MMU’s water jets to the lift waiting beside the shuttle mockup.
“Topside, cabby,” Enright called from the lift. He raised an arm free from the MMU and waved to the half-dozen divers beneath him. “See you after lunch, guys.”
The divers waved back as the space suit cleared the surface.
“No sweat, Skipper,” Enright smiled at poolside as a suit technician lifted off his plastic bubble helmet. With the MMU fastened to the side of the lift, as it would be stored in space on an outside bracket in the shuttle bay, Enright disconnected his PLSS backpack from the MMU. He stepped forward off the lift and felt the ground beneath his feet for the first time in four hours.
“Just like the real thing, aye, Will?”
The Colonel smiled. He knew the real thing well enough.
“Could sure use a few burritos about now. How ’bout it, Skip?”
“No thanks, Number One. You go on and taco up. I have a little errand to run during lunch. Be back in ninety minutes.”
“Okay.”
Jack Enright walked slightly stooped under the suit’s weight, 75 pounds more than his own. He headed for the suitup room as the Colonel walked in the opposite direction out of the new pool area.
“Quite a break, Colonel,” a pretty secretary smiled cheerfully as Colonel Parker passed her in the long JSC hallway. He stopped and looked down at the youthful face.
“The crew assignment, I mean. And all in three days. It’s really something.” She shook her head.
The tall, tired pilot looked down into the clean face. Her bright cheeks made her appear very young indeed. Gently, the Colonel with the deeply lined pilot’s face touched the soft chin before him. The young woman blushed.
“Something indeed,” the long airman smiled warmly.
“Dr. Casey. Dr. Cleanne Casey. Please call the operator.”
William McKinley Parker stood in the spacious lobby of the huge hospital complex. He squinted toward the windows into the brilliant sunshine of a Texas winter afternoon. The tall pilot hid behind sunglasses and his officer’s dress coat.
“Operator. Yes, Dr. Casey. There’s a man here at the front desk for you. Says he’s from the Houston Health Department, Venereal Disease Division. Says he needs to get some names from you. I think he said of all your boyfriends… I’ll tell him.”
“Sir? Dr. Casey will be right down. You may have a seat.”
“Thank you kindly,” drawled the man in the long coat. He stood for five minutes looking into the harsh daylight outside.
“Thanks a lot, Will,” said a laughing voice at the Colonel’s back. He turned to the small, sandy-haired woman in white.
“Not to mention it, C.C.,” the tall man grinned.