Behind the AC, Enright steered the heavy plasma diagnostics package at the end of the RMS arm. He directed the PDP toward its berth in the open bay.
Flying the arm in manual-augmented mode, Enright eased the PDP into its latches on the OSS pallet in the stern of the bay. When the RMS panel and the shoulder-high television monitor confirmed to Enright the security of the stowed package, Enright squeezed the pistol-grip trigger in his right hand. The arm’s end effector unit released the wire snares holding the PDP’s grapple probe. The EEU backed away from the berthed PDP canister.
“PDP secured, Skip.”
“Sweet music, Number One. Advise when you’ve put the arm to bed.”
Enright steered the arm’s joints until the arm was stretched out straight. He directed the arm toward the cradle and latches on the bay’s portside sill. Gently, the copilot aligned the arm with its three latch posts. All three latches grabbed and held the 900-pound arm.
“Manipulator secured; all latches rigidized, Will.” The small windows on the RMS console showed the end effector coordinates at X01195 inches, Z044.77 inches, and Y0108.0 inches from the datum zero point.
“Super, Jack. Catch your breath, buddy.”
“Right on that one,” Enright sighed into his voice-activated intercom. His face, new to zero-gravity, felt swollen and warm. His suit ventilation bathed his flushed face with the scents of rubber and sweat. “Mind if I stroll downstairs a minute, Will?”
“Take a magazine with you, Jack.”
“Just so it ain’t Aviation Week!” Enright sighed as he pulled his plugs and thick hoses from his hot suit. He opened his faceplate to breathe the flightdeck’s cool, dry air. Even the cabin’s sterile, bottled atmosphere smelled like morning by the sea after the stuffy suit’s humid breath.
Enright slowly flew without weight, head-first, down the floor hatchway behind the front seat where Parker floated against his lap belt.
In mid-air, Enright somersaulted to his feet beside the dark and curtained window in the wall hatch of Shuttle’s mid-deck basement. Holding his body steady with one hand on a wall handrail, he hit the row of light switches for the mid-deck compartment.
In darkness, after 03 hours and 36 minutes, Shuttle flew over the Equator southbound 200 miles northwest of and 130 nautical miles above the Pagula Islands.
Enright’s empty, bulky suit stood rigidly like a third crewman beside the sealed side hatch. Wearing only his white, long woolies, Enright backed into the cramped stall of the zero-gravity biffy. He strapped his seat belt to his waist and he eased his stocking feet into the foot restraints.
Powering up the electric biffy raised the sound of a cake mixer. At his crotch, ballast air sucked the copilot’s urine into the plastic cup between his bare thighs. The rush of air countered the weightlessness which would have sent yellow globules upward to the flightdeck were it not for the little cup’s air suction. Beneath the commode’s seat, Enright’s breakfast rode a rush of ballast air suction deep into the biffy. Under the seat, the knife blades of hinged slinger tines spun at 1,500 revolutions per minute. The flying blades are designed to shred solid waste and spread it as a gruel on the walls of the inner commode. To Enright, the space pot sounded like he rode a kitchen blender. Each crew member of Shuttle is officially allotted 0.12 kilograms (0.27 pound) of solid body waste per day. The sitting copilot wondered if he had just blown his daily quota. The noisy system of rushing air current and whirring blades tormented Enright’s throbbing head. But he retained sufficient energy to smile at the vision of his female astro colleagues riding the little cold cup between his naked legs.
With his right hand, Enright felt for the commode’s control panel beside his right knee. Squeezing out of the narrow stall, he was momentarily unnerved by the presence of his empty suit, which still hovered at attention beside the latrine. Cabin air currents had raised the suit’s empty right sleeve up past the round neckring. The headless suit appeared to salute the skivvy-clad airman.
Enright tumbled slowly as he wrestled with the suit to climb back into the rubbery cocoon. After he closed the long belly zipper, he fetched his helmet from the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. The inside cheekpads of the helmet felt coldly wet with perspiration where it covered the pilot’s face.
Enright adjusted his helmet as he rose through the ceiling hole to the upstairs flightdeck. He floated up behind Parker. Floating over the center forward console, Enright carefully eased into his right seat beside the command pilot. After pulling his lap belt across his middle, Enright plugged into his communications jacks and his two air hoses.
“Feel better, buddy?” the AC drawled.
“Much. Thanks.” Behind his closed faceplate, a revived Enright grinned. “I’m an evil man, Skipper,” Enright said with mock gravity in his voice.
“Thought about little Sally riding the million-dollar, house-outback, aye, Number One?”
For an instant, Enright looked with surprise at his captain. Both pilots laughed out loud over the voice-activated intercom.
The square face of the mission timer before their faces ticked past 03 hours, 40 minutes. While Enright had been below, Parker had rolled Endeavor and had pitched her nose toward the Earth. They flew upside down over the dark coastline of Angola. The faint lights of the capital city of Luanda marked the sea’s edge far below in the darkness.
They flew heads down four minutes before contact with Endeavor’s next ground station.
The two airmen still chuckled at their private humor. The laughter stopped when the darkness below erupted into a momentary flash of intensely white light just east of Luanda.
11
“With you, Endeavor, by Botswana, at 03 plus 44. How do you read?”
“Gotcha, Colorado. We’re just sittin’ and catchin’ our breath up here. For a while there, young Jack looked like he got rode hard and put away wet. But we’re both right and tight now.”
The AC’s bouncy voice reflected his newly acquired space legs. To his weightless body and his anesthetized leg, Endeavor was growing roomier and homier even in the narrow forward flightdeck. Enright’s rooky wings also felt more like flying as Shuttle cruised over sleeping Zimbabwe. Far below in the darkness, the clocks on the walls read 8:45 as the two pilots flew on their left sides above Africa.
“Super, Will.”
“And we had a real display of pyrotechnics five minutes back over Angola.” The AC’s ungloved hand worked the mike button floating close to his chest and his two hose fittings. Mother and the autopilot held trim with Shuttle flying on her port side with her nose pointing northward toward the Equator 1,200 nautical miles away in the darkness.
“Backroom would like some details, Endeavor. Only with you on this station for another four minutes.”
Parker did not reach for the floating Push-To-Talk switch when he saw Enright reach for his.
“Right seat here. Looked like daylight down there just for a few seconds. After the initial burst of light, we followed a brilliant contrail for a good minute. Lost it when Soyuz crossed the field of view behind us. No mistaking a missile, Flight. Be under us somewhere. Eastern trajectory for sure. You got anything from your eyes in the sky?”