“Let’s crank up the CCTV for power up of the RMS, Jack. How you feelin’ back there, buddy?”
Enright assumed the astronauts’ crouched position behind the seated command pilot. With his feet secured to the flightdeck floor’s boot restraints, Enright stood with his knees well bent. His arms within his bulky suit floated before his face. Above his head, outside the twin ceiling windows, LACE rolled slowly, bathed in the light from the open payload bay and in the arc lights from Soyuz flying in tight formation without a word.
“So far so good, Will. My face really feels full though. Maybe just a tad of lightheadedness. But I’m fine for sure. Tryin’ not to move my head too much.”
“Super, Jack,” the intercom crackled over the small African nation of Cameroon which slept in pitch darkness. “Be right with you.”
Up front, Parker extricated himself from the hoses and cables rising from beneath his seat and from between his long legs. He raised the anti-laser visor on his helmet and the faceplate under it so he could breathe the cool, dry air of the flightdeck. Heaving his long legs from under the forward instrument panel, the AC floated out of his seat and over the center console. As he straightened his legs for the first time in three hours, a searing pain squeezed his right leg below the knee. Enright saw the tall flier’s grimace.
Hovering with his legs flexed in mid-air, Parker floated between the two open hatchways in the floor behind the front seats. The desire to cartwheel back to Enright seized the tall pilot and he grinned broadly.
Enright instantly read his captain’s deeply lined pilot’s face.
“You wouldn’t let me, Skipper!” Enright shouted with a laugh through his open faceplate. The Colonel heard him and he floated slowly toward Enright in the rear.
The command pilot stopped his flight at the Mission Specialist station on the starboard side of the rear flightdeck. He locked his boots into the floor restraints before he knelt to pick up two of the jerry-rigged air hoses which he twist-locked into the belly valves of his orange pressure suit. He plugged into the biomedical jack and intercom jack on Panel Aft-11 at the left lower level of the side wall’s displays. He looked up to the overhead window full of night and the illuminated LACE between Shuttle and Soyuz. Ahead of Parker at eye level, the lighted payload bay looked like daylight. On Panel Aft-13, at knee level, the AC flipped the microphone power switch and he turned the audio knob to its PTT/VOX position which activated the push-to-talk switch for air-ground communication and set the inner-ship intercom to voice-activation.
“Got me, Jack?”
“Loud and clear,” Enright radioed from the Payload Specialist station at Parker’s right side. The two pilots lowered and sealed their laser-proof faceplates.
“Let’s do it, Number One,” the AC called as Endeavor flew upon her side across the Equator 2 hours, 7 minutes out. They flew 130 nautical miles above the black Congo River in Zaire, Central Africa.
Parker crouched to his left to reach the knee level Panel Aft Right-15 on the rear starboard wall behind the copilot’s empty seat. The two hoses leading to his suit and the two communications and biomedical cables tangled in Parker’s long legs.
“Lots of snakes back here, Jack!”
“Don’t feed ’em, Skipper.”
“Not me… Okay, Panel Aft Right-15, circuit breakers: Main DC bus A, aft bay television camera pan-tilt, and camera heaters, and pan-tilt heater, and control unit, all closed. Main bus B, forward bay TV: Camera pan-tilt, closed; camera heater, closed; pan-tilt heater, closed; and control unit and monitor, closed. Portside RMS television: Pan-tilt, heater, and pan-tilt heater, all closed. And, Main bus C, all three breakers, EVA television, closed… Do it, Jack.”
Standing against the resistance of the legs of his stiff suit, the tall man winced as pain wracked his right calf.
“Say somethin’, Will?”
“Nah…”
Both fliers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out the rear window before each of their faces. Enright floated at Parker’s right side.
At the center of the chest-high, rearmost instrument arrays the aft rotational hand controller protruded from the wall like a fist-size pistol grip. With it, either pilot could command Endeavor’s RCS thrusters to change Shuttle’s attitude as she coasted belly-forward, one-wing-down. Parker could work the aft RHC with his right hand, Enright with his left. Just to the right of the aft attitude control stick, fifteen toggle switches and twenty-seven lighted pushbuttons controlled the television cameras mounted inside the payload bay. Enright worked the TV controls with his ungloved left hand. At the aft flightdeck’s portside corner, by Enright’s right shoulder, two television screens came to life as the copilot activated Endeavor’s closed-circuit television.
“CCTV alive, Will.”
“They told you the service would teach you a trade, Number One!” the tall flier chuckled at Enright’s left. Both men looked into the open bay through the window before each face.
Working the CCTV controls with his left hand, Enright called upon each bay camera to make a close survey of the open bay. For six minutes while Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE, sped over two thousand miles of southeast Africa, Enright steered the moveable zoom lens of the television cameras until a complete and careful scan of the entire bay was performed. The wall-to-wall reflective anti-laser blankets were meticulously examined. Two hours and eleven minutes aloft, Shuttle crossed Tanzania just east of Lake Nyasa lost below in the inky darkness.
Enright powered up the television camera mounted on the wrist joint and on the elbow joint of the 50-foot long, 900-pound, three-segment, remote manipulator system arm. The arm still cradled on the port sill of the open bay in front of Enright’s window would be a critical element of Enright’s forthcoming trek outside.
“Endeavor, Endeavor,” the earphones crackled. “Configure AOS via IOS at 02 hours 13 minutes… Colorado Springs is now controlling.”
During Shuttle’s pass across sleeping Africa, NASA controllers in Houston had handed off Shuttle control to the Air Force Space Command’s new Consolidated Space Operations Facility in the Rocky Mountains from which satelite missions are monitored. The sophisticated equipment there allowed the facility to manage Endeavor’s voice communications, television broadcasts out the windows, and telemetry beacons.
“Copy, Flight,” Parker called as he pushed his microphone button dangling from the cable locked to his chest. “How you mountain men doin’ down there?”
Endeavor and the Air Force center communicated through the Indian Ocean Ship of the NASA network as Shuttle shot across the Mozambique Channel off southeast Africa between mainland Africa and the island of Madagascar. As Shuttle made for the large island just coming over the eastern horizon, the ship traveled ten times faster than a 150-grain bullet leaving the muzzle of a .30–06 rifle.
“Real fine down here, Will. We see your temps all looking in the green. We would like you to go from Power One to Power Two on your encryptor without delay, please.”
The command pilot threw a toggle switch on Panel Aft-3 with his left hand at waist level. The ship’s encryptor coded Endeavor’s operational instrumentation telemetry beacon before the data beamed Earthward.
“That looks much cleaner, Endeavor. We’re going to be with you only two minutes by IOS this pass. After we lose you here, your next network contact will be Australia in eleven minutes. How’s the CCTV test?”
“About done,” Enright called as he depressed his push-to-talk mike button. “Bay looks real clean. Blankets all secure. The RMS cameras, wrist and elbow, are functioning. The wrist camera is a bit grainy but should be usable.”