“Nothing yet, Jack. We hope to get a skin track via Yarradee station in fifteen. Could you see any staging activities from whatever it was?”
“Negative on that,” the second in command answered.
“Copy, Jack. We’d like you to begin your EVA activities when you can. You can grab a bite first if you want. This rev, we lose you by Botswana in two minutes. You’re with Australia twelve minutes later. LOS Australia by Yarradee after eight minutes of contact. Sunrise 04 minutes later at 04 plus 12 MET. From LOS Yarradee to Hawaii acquisition is twenty minutes. Stateside contact is for twenty minutes. We’d like to have Jack close to going outside over the States… Got all that?”
“Sure,” the AC said casually. He took no notes.
“And when you go downstairs with Jack, Will, we remind you to do your first CO2 absorber insertion.”
“Got it, Flight.”
“Roger, AC. Don’t forget to plug in downstairs.”
“You betcha, Colorado. Leavin’ you for a minute here.”
Both pilots slid their seats back along their floor tracks. After opening their visors to breathe cabin air, they pulled their biomedical and radio plugs, and unlocked their belly air hoses. The two hoses in front of each seat floated upward like snakes.
Parker eased himself feetfirst into the hole behind his seat. Enright floated helmet first down the access hole behind his own seat.
In the floodlighted mid-deck, Parker’s boots hovered above the floor in the 2,625 cubic-foot compartment. Enright did a zero gravity handstand with his feet braced upon the ceiling which was 7 feet above the floor in the 16-foot long mid-deck.
“You’re upside down, buddy,” Enright grinned through his open faceplate.
“One of us is, Jack.”
Enright cartwheeled in the air until his boots against the floor stopped his flip.
“Show off,” the taller pilot laughed.
“Was nothing really,” Enright smiled, feeling his new wings.
As Endeavor, Soyuz and LACE coasted over the nighttime terrain of southern Africa, the two shuttle pilots floated below deck. Enright reached into one of the many equipment lockers covering the forward bulkhead from floor to ceiling. He retrieved two lightweight headsets. These were wireless communications carrier assemblies, CCA’s, which enable intercom and air-to-ground communications without the necessity of plugging into cabin jacks.
Each flier placed his headset upon his bare head. In the mid-deck, they could remove their sweaty helmets since there were none of the flightdeck’s ten windows vulnerable to laser emissions. In Endeavor’s mid-deck, the only winrdow is the circular, 11½ inch wide, triple-pane window in the side entry-exit hatch. With each of the inside and center panes 1/2-inch thick, and with the outside pane 3/10-inch thick, and with the mirrored, reflective sunshade still in place on the inside porthole, the hatch window was secure from LACE.
“Howdy, pard,” the AC said, testing his headset.
“Gotcha, Will. You hear us, Flight?” Enright called, pressing his wireless unit’s Push-To-Talk switch dangling at his chest.
“Five by five, Endeavor,” the two headset earphones crackled. “With you another one and a half minutes.”
Shuttle led Soyuz and LACE across Mozambique’s eastern coastline for the black open ocean.
The AC slowly somersaulted until he was doing a handstand in the center of the mid-deck. He pulled up a hand-crank seated in the floor which opened a small door in the floor. The open bay in the floor houses a rack for holding beer-can size canisters. The small cans hold lithium hydroxide pellets through which stale cabin air is circulated. The pellets remove carbon dioxide from the air exhaled by the crewmen. Activated charcoal, finer than talcum powder, in the same cans removes odors from the cabin air.
The upside-down airman took the mission’s first two canisters from Enright standing rightside-up. The AC inserted the twin CO2 absorbers into the floor bin’s empty rack. After seating the canisters, Parker pushed the bay closed and returned its latch handle into the small well in the floor.
“CO2 absorbers inserted, Flight,” Enright radioed as Parker tumbled rightside-up. The two fresh cans would be good for twelve hours. They would keep the cabin air’s concentration of waste carbon dioxide from exceeding 0.147 pounds per square inch partial pressure.
“LOS Botswana momentarily, Endeavor. At 03 plus 48. See you in twelve minutes. This is…”
Static followed by silence filled the CCA headsets as Africa fell quickly below the western horizon behind Shuttle.
“How about a burger, Jack?” the AC offered.
“Think my stomach is still a rev behind the rest of me. Maybe some soup.”
“Pull up a stool, Number One. I’ll build a fire.”
Enright smiled rather listlessly. He floated across the compartment to the space between the biffy stall and the man-size, wall-mounted galley. Between the latrine door and the galley unit is the side hatch. Enright wedged his space-suited body into the corner cranny by the latrine. His back rested against the stall door and his boots touched the shaving mirror on the side of the galley facility. As he rested, his weightless arms within his deflated pressure suit floated out in front of his body. Enright’s orange arms looked like those of a sleepwalker. He rested as the mission commander hovered before the narrow galley which is secured to the mid-deck’s portside wall.
The galley contains an oven, which in 90 minutes can cook pre-packaged hot meals for seven crew members. Parker pulled two plastic envelopes of freeze-dried soup from the forward bulkhead’s lockers. From the galley, the AC pulled out a thin hose and nozzle which squirted hot water into each plastic bag.
The command pilot sent a soup bag floating over to Enright wedged into his corner.
As the two pilots kneaded their soup bags to moisten the dried contents, Endeavor coasted in the night sky above the South Atlantic’s Isle Amsterdam at Shuttle’s southernmost point of her orbital track, 38 degrees south latitude, about 3565 statute miles from the South Pole. Upstairs on the flightdeck, the mission clocks ticked past the fourth hour of the voyage.
“Endeavor, Endeavor,” each headset crackled. “Colorado with you by Yarradee at 04 hours.”
“Gotcha, Australia,” the AC called through a mouthful of soup, which he sucked from a straw.
Parker floated motionless four feet off the floor. He levitated in mid-air like a magician’s assistant with his helmetless head touching the side of the airlock at the center of the mid-deck’s rear bulkhead.
“How’s things in the basement, Will?”
Flat on his back in the air, the AC squeezed the last of his beefy soup into his mouth.
“Real cozy, Colorado. Just finishin’ some soup. How’s things in the mountains?”
“Looking good, AC. We’re waiting for radar lock-up on whatever your Angola traffic may be. Nothing yet, but we’re listening. After your break, we would like you to charge the PLSS packs.”
“Roger,” the AC called as he shoved his body toward the floor by pushing his ungloved hand against the mid-deck ceiling. Enright watched from his corner.
Hovering upside down, the long AC hung like a bat with his face close to the floor. The Colonel’s burly left hand held a handhold at the base of the airlock.
The cylinder-shaped airlock takes up a full third of the back wall of the mid-deck. Standing 83 inches high, the airlock is 63 inches wide on the inside. At the floor end of the airlock is a D-shaped hatch three feet across.
Grasping the handrail near the floor with one hand, Parker cranked the airlock hatch handle with his free hand. The hatch snapped open with a pop as the hatch seal released excess air pressure and swung open on its side hinges. Parker eased his inverted, floating body out of the way as the thick hatch opened outward into the mid-deck cabin.