“… in one minute. Try the malfunction protocol on the S-band antenna quadrants,” Parker’s headphones crackled as he steadied himself with a fist upon a ceiling handhold.
“Ah, I’m with you, Flight, from the mid-deck. Say again, please. Sorry we’ve been busy up here.”
“Damn it, Will! We’ve held our breath down here for twenty minutes! We lost skin tracking on the PRC traffic at Goldstone. Soyuz has been in motion for ten minutes. And you guys have been out to lunch! We’re LOS here in forty-five seconds by Bermuda. Next contact via Dakar in six minutes… What the hell is going on up there?”
The voice from Earth was shrill.
Clutching the mid-deck ceiling, Will Parker twisted with his stocking feet a yard above the floor. He looked between his mesh-covered legs toward Enright, strapped to the bunkbeds like Ulysses lashed to the mast.
“In 30 seconds, Colorado: LACE incinerated the Chinese ship. We took a reflected broadside from LACE’s optics… Caught Jack in the face. He’s alive but with second-degree flash burns to his face. Tending to him now. No apparent damage to the ship.”
The AC could not resist smiling at the technicians below doing backflips at their consoles over his little status report delivered casually with Parker’s very best “so how’s things” voice.
“Copy, Will. If you can still hear us, use Kit Five in the medical locker. Kit Five. With you by Dakar in six…”
Endeavor sped over the horizon leaving Bermuda behind. The ground call gave Parker a mental fix of Shuttle’s position over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A moment’s thought told him he was but an hour and three-quarters from their near-miss of the South Atlantic Anomaly on Revolution Five.
“Ground says to doctor you from Kit Five, buddy.”
The copilot nodded although he appeared to sleep.
“Glad we have a horse doctor on board,” Enright mumbled.
Parker flew headfirst and upside down to the forward storage lockers where he righted himself. From a locker drawer, he pulled a case labeled KIT FIVE: BURNS (THERMAL). He left behind kits labeled BURNS (CHEMICAL) and BURNS (ELECTRICAL).
A shuttle crew’s years of training is equivalent to earning an Emergency Medical Technician certification. The AC knew the contents of Kit Five and what to do with it. As he swam toward Enright, he floated through a shaft of brilliant daylight raining down through the ceiling access hole from where the flightdeck above was filled with sunshine. Endeavor approached sunset six minutes and two time zones away.
Parker flew slowly toward his partner strapped upright to the berths. He aimed his stocking feet at Enright’s sides just above the thick waist of the massive EMU suit.
The AC wrapped his legs around Enright’s middle. Parker’s calves closed lightly around the PLSS backpack. The command pilot floated with his mesh-covered chest touching Enright’s chestpack. Enright opened his eyes when he felt the AC’s breath upon his fluid-filled face.
“Little desperate, Skipper?” Enright smiled lamely.
“Grown particular, buddy?”
“Nah.”
Straddling Enright’s waist with his legs, the AC parked Kit Five by his shoulder. It remained motionless in the air at eye level.
Parker opened the small container from which he pulled pre-soaked towelettes which were orange with Green Soap antiseptic solution.
“Yell if this hurts, Jack.”
“Not to worry, Will.”
Gently, Parker washed the round and blistered face with the towel. Enright showed no discomfort.
After carefully dabbing at Enright with the soapy towel, Parker dropped the rag in the air where it hung motionless halfway to the ceiling. He opened another towelette soaked in isotonic saline solution. With this and two more, he rinsed the orange soap from Enright’s edema-swollen cheeks.
After wadding the discarded rags into a ball, the AC carefully opened a gauze bag affair which resembled fine cheesecloth. It was soaked with penicillin cream.
“Close your eyes, Jack.”
Parker slowly slipped the gauze mask over Enright’s red face. It covered his head completely to his neck. The AC adjusted the eye, nose, and mouth holes on the antibiotic-soaked mask to fit Enright’s features.
“Okay, Jack.”
Enright opened his watery eyes and he peered at Parker’s close face from inside his penicillin-drenched mask.
“Knew a stewardess I had to do this for,” Enright whispered. “Only I made her wear the paper bag.”
“I’ll bet, Number One.”
Enright wheezed a weak chuckle.
“Bottoms up, buddy,” Parker said as he inserted into Enright’s puffy lips a plastic straw from a squeeze bottle. The AC carefully pressed the soft container to force into the copilot’s mouth an electrolyte solution of sweetened saltwater and sodium lactate. He timed each squeeze to Enright’s labored swallows until the jug was empty.
“Still with me, Jack?” Parker released his leg-hold and floated back from Enright.
“Don’t know who else would have you,” Enright smiled behind his wet mask.
The AC unlocked Enright’s waistring and he tugged at the EMU trousers. To keep from being drawn back to Enright when he pulled, Parker braced his feet against the frame of the sleep berths.
When Enright’s heavy pants came off, Parker directed them into one of the bunks.
“Feel better?”
Enright nodded. For half an hour, he had been without coolant water flowing through his liquid coolant garment which was damp with sweat.
“This will help, Jack,” the AC said as he forced a long needle into Enright’s thigh. He steered the hypo between the coolant tubes and through the mesh drawers. He discharged 50 milligrams of meperidine for pain. A second hypodermic entered into the side of Enright’s other thigh where Parker fired 100,000 units of aqueous penicillin-G. Enright moaned slightly.
“That’s it, Jack.”
Parker floated away from Enright who was still strapped to the berth where he hung in half a space suit.
“Hope so, Will. I’m fresh out of legs.”
“Oh? I can still roll you over, you know.”
“Haven’t been at sea that long, have you?” Enright managed to grin inside his damp mask.
“Not quite yet,” Parker smiled as he stuffed the used towels and the empty syringes into Kit Five. He shoved the kit into a berth.
“Okay, Jack. Let’s get the upper torso off. Can you help?”
Enright said nothing as he raised his heavily suited arms over his face and its new cheesecloth skin.
With a firm tug, Parker pulled Enright out the bottom waistring of the upper torso. The copilot floated in his liquid coolant garment from which floated water tubes and biomedical sensor cables.
“Feels much better,” Enright sighed.
Parker directed one of Enright’s bare hands to a ceiling handrail. With his eyes closed, the copilot closed his fingers around the handhold.
Parker coasted away toward the forward lockers. He fetched a set of baggy trousers from the forward lockers. These he pulled over the legs of Enright’s long woolies. Shoulder straps from these pants held them in place upon the groggy flier.
The AC was worried about losing his shipmate to incipient shock. So he had dressed Enright in anti-G pants which looked like fisherman’s waders.
During re-entry when Shuttle’s return to Earth subjects the crew to deceleration forces of three times the normal force of gravity, all crewmen wear the rubberized, anti-G trousers. The pants have inflatable air bladders in the legs. Air pressure within the tightly inflated pants keeps re-entry’s G load from causing the pooling of fluid in the crewman’s legs. This loss of upper-body fluid could cause fainting during the critical approach to landing after prolonged weightlessness and its associated degeneration of blood vessels. The same inflatable pants would keep Enright’s upper body from losing precious fluid as his burned face leaked plasma protein from damaged cell membranes.