As the pilots walked in pressure suits down the hallway of the crew quarters, the hall was lined with two dozen female technicians, engineers, and secretaries. The women were pleasingly flattered by tight red, white and blue T-shirts enscribed “GET IT UP — GET IT DONE — GET IT DOWN.”
“We’re a hit, Skipper!” Enright laughed, saluting the melonosity along the corridor.
“Let’s play this town again, Jack,” the Colonel replied through his white helmet’s open visor.
The chief suit technician led the two joyful airmen into a small conference room. Inside, they left the launch morning bustle outside the closed door.
The pilots stood slightly stooped by the awkward weight of their pressure suits. They faced two suit technicians and one dower-faced Colonel. Shuttle crews had not worn pressure suits for launch since Shuttle Four in July 1982. The destruction of Challenger changed all that confidence in the shirt-sleeves, “operational” shuttle. Beginning with Shuttle 26 when flights resumed, all crews now wear the heavy blue pressure suits for the launch and return to Earth. Parker and Enright wore the bulkier suits worn during Shuttle’s first flights in 1981 and 1982. If LACE punctured Endeavor’s glass-covered haul, these pilots would have some protection against suffocation in the lethal vacuum of space. Parker and Enright wore the U.S. Navy orange pressure suits worn by the first four shuttle crews when the Shuttle Columbia had been fitted with emergency ejection seats. These were not the white, massive, extravehicular activity suits used for spacewalks. The EVA suits were already stored inside Endeavor.
“Will. Jack,” the lead suit man smiled.
“Colonel,” Enright greeted.
“I have new faceplate visors for you both,” the Colonel said as he carefully removed two flat bundles from his briefcase.
The two pilots glanced sideways at each other.
“Oh?”
“They’re new but thoroughly tested, Will. Made by Hughes Radar Systems Group for the Navy. They’re designed to reflect laser light. The visors should protect your eyes in the vicinity of LACE on-orbit. We’ll replace your sunshade visors with these. We’ve already put one on Jack’s EVA suit in the ship.”
The new helmet visors were phosphate glass coated with special dye for absorbing laser beams before they can penetrate a pilot’s eyes. Until the dye loses its effectiveness after three weeks’ exposure to air, the visors would be 18 times stronger than normal sunglasses for eye protection.
Before the pilots could respond, the man in blue was fiddling with the neckring of Colonel Parker’s helmet. In an instant, the officer had lifted Parker’s white helmet from his head. Another technician helped Enright doff his helmet. An Air Force man pulled two, nickel-size circular patches from his pocket.
“Gonna blindfold us?” Parker asked with a grin.
“Not quite. These patches are soaked with a new drug for motion sickness. All past shuttle crews have experienced Day One motion sickness when they started moving around the cabin too soon after launch. These patches are made by Ciba and are laced with Transderm-V Scopalamine. Your skin will absorb the medication for at least two days from the patch. You should be able to get out of the seats fairly quickly. Here.”
The officer unwrapped one of the patches and laid its adhesive side to the back of Parker’s ear. The suit technician took the second patch and stuck it behind Enright’s ear.
Next, the DOD man and his colleagues in white coveralls began working on the two white helmets. They worked to disconnect the helmets’ normal sun visors attached above the clear faceplate atop each helmet. The sun visors on each helmet were removed and anti-laser visors protected within a blue cloth wrap were snapped into place on each helmet.
“There you go,” the Colonel from the Department of Defense smiled as he took a step backward to admire his work. “Just what everyone is wearing these days.”
“Or should be,” Enright grinned. Only his partner shared his chuckle.
“We thank you,” Parker said as he eased his head into the helmet. Each pilot twist-locked his helmet to his suit’s neckring.
“Do good work, boys,” the Defense Department man said firmly.
“The best, Colonel,” the pilot in command replied with words full of Can-Do.
Returning to the crowded hallway, the new prime crew pressed toward the brilliant sunshine at the hall’s double doors. With a turn to the group in the hallway and a wave from each flier, the two airmen climbed the steps into the transfer van for the ride to the base of Pad 39-A. Only Enright noticed Colonel Parker grimace as he lifted his right leg to the steps.
Parker and Enright were silent in the van as it rode the causeway from the crew quarters. Their faces were happy in the warm sunshine bursting through the van’s tinted windows. The milk-truck van was full of Go. As they drove toward their ship, Colonel Parker thought about his dawn, pre-flight medical examination. Silently, he smiled into the morning sunshine.
“You know you can’t fly with that leg, Will.” The physician from the Aeromedical Certification Branch looked angry. “How the hell could you keep that leg to yourself for a month without telling us?”
“I know, Mike, I’m sorry. But I knew you would pull my ticket.”
“Consider it pulled, Will.” Michael Gottwalt looked sadly at his old friend in the examination room of the Cape’s crew quarters at daybreak. “You simply cannot go with that leg. I’ll inform the Flight Director.”
“Mike, you owe me. Just one. Damn, we’ve known each other since Genesis. In 20 years, you’ve seen places on me my wife never saw. I’m asking you for one final mission. Two days up there won’t kill me. I’ve been hopped up on antibiotics for the last week. Swelling is down. And I can live with the pain… Please.”
Dr. Gottwalt stuffed his hands into the pockets of his white coat, well rumpled and coffee stained. He looked intently at his patient and his friend.
“We just about go back, you and me, to wooden wings and iron men, Will.” Michael Gottwalt smiled. “We came onboard together with Gemini in ’62. We grew up together here… Tell me about the fever, Wifi.”
“None for two days, maybe three.”
“You’re a tough old cowboy, Will Parker.” The physician with the good face smiled at his friend. “You always did aim high.”
“Perhaps.” The tall flier hopped down from the examination table. He pulled on his fishnet woolies worn under the heavy orange pressure suit. “Well, Mike?”
“I suppose they’ll jerk both our tickets… I’ll sign you off… But I tell you this: You damn well better come home in one piece, you and Jack.” The physician did not smile.
“Haven’t bent one yet, Mike. I have a supply of medication already stashed in Endeavor. We’ll be fine.”
The physician only nodded. He watched his old friend open the heavy door to the hallway. With one foot outside the narrow examination room, Will Parker looked back over his shoulder.
“It’s funny, Mike, looking back. I guess I have aimed high. But you know, in all the years, I can still remember the highest ambition of them alclass="underline" All I ever really wanted from this life was to walk Kathy Turner home from high school. Even once.” The tall command pilot smiled with a gentle, faraway look in his gray pilot’s eyes.
“Did you ever do it, Willie?”
“Nope… Never got the nerve to ask. Be seeing you, Mike.”
The physician stood quietly and for a long time he studied the closed door through which his friend had passed with the slightest limp.
Along the beach, people waited in the humid morning sun to celebrate Endeavor’s launch.
When the little caravan of NASA vehicles stopped at Pad 39-A, Parker and Enright emerged into the sun. Each pilot carried a portable air conditioner plumbed into his cumbersome suit.