The Colonel closed his perspiring eyelids and he forced his arms down to his sides. Wincing with effort, he worked to send his mind downward. His disciplined brain plunged through space, through the night without air, to an unseen and faraway rail fence white in morning sunshine and to air heavy with the smell of fresh cut Timothy hay. Parker’s nostrils flared as he sniffed new grass tasting wetter and sweeter than his first love.
Slowly, the beast retreated, gaining speed as Parker backed away. His heart descended from his throat as his white, wet hands relaxed their death-grip on the waistring of his suit. He opened his eyes, which immediately burned with sweat.
“I’m ready to go outside, Jack.”
The strange urgency in the Colonel’s voice distracted Enright from sunrise, which comes furiously in orbit. Endeavor plunged into daylight like a train erupting from a mountain tunnel at noon. Shuttle, upside down in broad daylight over the King Leopold Mountains of northern Australia, flew over ridges still in darkness. Endeavor would fly in harsh daylight over an Earth still in nighttime for five more minutes. So high did she fly.
“Understand, Skip. Hang loose a while longer. We’re in daylight now at 05 plus 42. LOS Yarradee a moment ago.”
“Hangin’, buddy. Hangin’.” The AC was anxiously calm in the can which had shrunk visibly in upon him.
Enright continued his fuel cell checks and Parker labored to levitate his mind elsewhere for the 2½ minutes required to overfly north central Australia toward the sea. At 05 hours 45 minutes out, Shuttle left Australia behind for the fourth time. In broad daylight, the ocean below was still dark as the starship crossed the 250-mile wide Arafura Sea between Australia and the island of New Guinea in 50 seconds.
Over New Guinea, Enright saw the lush green island become illuminated by morning twilight. The island’s tropical rain forests, 420 nautical miles wide, were crossed in daylight in 90 seconds. Enright, flying upside down, watched the land recede over the upper sill of his inverted window. Five minutes after losing contact with Australia’s antenna, Endeavor left New Guinea in her wake as she made for blue water stretching unbroken for 7,200 statute miles and 24 flying minutes toward San Francisco.
“Skipper: At 05 plus 49, we’re into Rev Five,” Enright called by intercom as Endeavor crossed the Equator for the eighth time over the Admiralty Islands in the brilliant Coral Sea.
“Endeavor: Configure AOS by Guam station. With you four minutes.”
“With you, Flight,” Enright acknowledged 900 miles south of Guam.
“Five-by, Jack. Your vitals are Go. We would like the AC outside by California acquisition in 19 minutes.”
“Okay, Colorado.”
“Also want to remind you that after your Atlantic Ocean transit and after you lose Botswana station at 06 hours 53 minutes, you will be out of ground contact for half an hour… Sunset this pass in 41 minutes at 06 plus 32. Sunrise follows at 07 plus 11.”
“Got it, thanks,” Enright said with fatigue in his voice as he scanned his own Crew Activity Plan text secured to a small cranny on the center console at his left.
“How do you feel, Jack?” the ground asked gently.
“Oh, okay. A bit tight in my face. Dry mouth, too. Takin’ both the water and the sodium solution PRN-PO.”
“Copy, Jack. Must be a nurse in your sordid past some-where… Soyuz on the phone?”
“Listening, Colorado,” a thick Russian accent crackled.
“Roger, Major. We remind you to watch your attitude thruster plumes when we go outside.”
“We understand. We use only cold gas jets during the Colonel’s work outside.”
“Excellent, Alexi. Thank you.”
Endeavor cruised upside down over the Caroline Islands.
“After we lose you, Jack, you are cleared to maneuver to the target and to power up the RMS. Rockwell people say your air line for the pressure pants should reach from the portable O2 to the aft station, if you don’t do any backflips.”
“ ’Kay. No danger of any aerobatics just now,” the copilot at the helm replied with his dry mouth. Behind his clammy face mask, his blistered face was sore.
“Losing you, Endeavor. Back with you in nine by Hawaii. Good…”
Shuttle went over Guam’s horizon above the Truk Islands at 05 hours 53 minutes, MET.
Enright completed his evaluation of the ship’s triple electrical lines. After disconnecting his biomedical and communications cables, he unbuckled his lap and shoulder belts. Slowly, he floated out of his seat. Tucking his legs toward his chest, Enright drifted over the center console. With a gentle push off the ceiling, he guided his body into the left seat, the captain’s position on every flying machine since the days of white scarves and goggles and iron men on wooden wings. He plugged his cables into their wall jacks on the left side of the cockpit.
“With you from the left seat, Skip.”
“So how does it fit, buddy?” the AC drawled over the intercom.
“Too big,” the thin copilot replied seriously.
“Not to worry, Jacob. I know for a fact they come in 37 short.”
“Hope so, Will.”
Although both forward stations have a rotational hand controller for changing Shuttle’s position in-place, only the left seat has a translational hand controller, THC, for changing Shuttle’s orbit.
Any orbit for any spacecraft is an ironclad rail in the black sky. Although Shuttle, Soyuz, and LACE flew only fifty yards apart, each cruised in its own private, orbital energy state as peculiarly unique as a fingerprint. For Endeavor to move only one foot closer to her target requires a complex change of Shuttle’s delicate orbit. Otherwise, the starship would simply veer off on a new trajectory leaving LACE and Soyuz behind.
Enright could not merely point Endeavor toward LACE and fire his RCS engines to push his ship toward LACE. Even the slightest maneuver requires meticulous budgeting of fuel and kinetic energy within the balance of the laws of orbital mechanics.
A perfectly horizontal burst from Shuttle’s engines would not propel her in a horizontal direction. Orbital physics is more demanding. Instead, a forward thrust in the direction of the orbital track (called the Velocity Vector) would send the ship not forward and faster, but upward into a slower orbit. And a horizontal thrust backward against the direction of the orbital path would send Endeavor not backward and slower, but downward into a lower, faster orbit. The higher the orbit, the slower the speed.
So Enright commanded Mother to consult her warm black boxes to sort out the most fuel-efficient course to be flown toward LACE.
Working his computer keyboard, Enright ordered Mother to prepare to use her RCS jets to maneuver closer to LACE in such a way that Endeavor and LACE would assume tandem orbits.
“Stand-by for maneuvering, Skipper.”
“You got the helm, Number One. Okay down here. Don’t bend nothin’.”
Mother winked her READY light and Enright depressed the illuminated EXEC key on his little keyboard.
Instantly, Mother popped a battery of Endeavor’s small Reaction Control System thrusters. Enright did not know which RCS jets were triggered. The two heavy OMS rockets in the tail are used only for more massive maneuvers.
Slowly, Shuttle closed in on LACE as Enright watched his Range and Range-Rate displays on the forward television screens. Through his tinted sunshades, he watched as LACE approached the upside-down starship. As the range-to-go ticked down from 40 to 10 meters, Mother fired combinations of her 38 primary RCS thrusters and her 6 tiny vernier thrusters.