Ten meters from LACE, Mother brought Endeavor to a stop. Using his square-handled translational hand controller in his left hand, Enright pushed the ship a few feet closer by eyeball. Mother still flew the jets with him. Using the rotational hand controller between his knees in his right hand, he kept Shuttle on an even keel, belly up in the piercing sunshine. Though the pilot handflew both control sticks, Mother rode shotgun over his shoulder.
“All stop,” Enright sang out over the intercom.
“Then shorten sail, Jack, and bring her into the wind.” Four minutes past Guam and four hundred miles west of Wake Island, the AC was full of GET IT UP — GET IT DONE — GET IT DOWN.
“Done, Will. Eight meters and sitting pretty.”
The copilot returned the helm to the Digital Autopilot with computer instructions to roll Shuttle a quarter turn until she flew with one wing straight up and the open payload bay facing LACE 25 feet away. The 100-ton ship rolled automatically and stopped dead on station, frozen one-fourth way through a snap-roll.
With Endeavor’s starboard wing pointing upward, the space radiators took direct sunlight as the sun moved swiftly across the sky where each orbital day is only 90 minutes long, half of it in darkness and half in unrelenting sunshine. Enright increased the flow of freon coolant through the two radiator loops to carry the extra heat upon the sunlit bay doors.
Outside, Soyuz executed her own movement to the far side of LACE. With less fuel on board than Shuttle, the 7-ton Soyuz moved slowly. The Soviet ship approached LACE to put LACE between itself and Endeavor. When aligned, the three vessels would freefall eternally like three cars on the same train: Endeavor leading toward the forever receding eastern horizon, LACE tumbling slowly behind, and Soyuz following as flagman in close pursuit.
“Soyuz in motion, Will.”
“Wish I had a real window in here, Jack.” The outer hatch of the airlock leading into the payload bay has only a four-inch window.
“Soon, Skip.”
“Endeavor: Hawaii for one minute at 06 plus 02. Status?”
Six hundred nautical miles northwest of Honolulu and 720 miles east of Midway Island, Shuttle brushed the northern limits of the range of Hawaii’s antenna. Although the last revolution carried Endeavor directly over Honolulu, during the intervening 90 minutes the planet had turned on her daily axis 1,552 statute miles to eastward. The Earth’s spin had carried the Hawaiian Islands with it out from under Shuttle’s ground track.
“With you, Hawaii. We’re in position 8 meters out. Attitude in X-POP with Y in LV. I’m ready to go aft to power up the RMS. AC be downstairs bangin’ on the door.”
“Copy, Jack. Understand X-body-axis perpendicular to orbital path; Y-axis in local vertical. Go to unstow the RMS. Will is cleared to depress the airlock for egress after contact via GDX. Keep the AC inside till radio contact by Goldstone in 5 minutes. Data drop out at…”
“We’re LOS Hawaii, Will. I’m going aft now. You have a fat Go to depress the can.”
“Super, Number One! Startin’ to smell like my laundry bag down here. Ready to walk!”
Parker, floating upside down, cranked the airlock relief valve down from 10 to 6 pounds per square inch. He would reduce the pressure by 2-pound increments every few minutes and hold it there long enough to check his EMU suit for its pressure integrity.
Topside, Enright was already on station on the portside corner of the rear flightdeck. Through his wet gauze which covered his painfully swollen face, he scanned the Toronto-built controls for the remote manipulator system arm reposing on the portside sill of the payload bay. He braced his stocking feet in the floor restraints. Behind where he stood in his sweaty, liquid coolant garment, Enright’s anti-gravity pants stood empty with the disconnected air hose coiled limply about the floating legs. The air line was to reach to Enright’s position. It did not.
Although the flier at the rear of the flightdeck had inserted sunshades on the two overhead windows and on the two windows in the aft bulkhead before his face, the copilot could not squeeze his helmet over his swollen face. He floated before the open bay without his laser-proof faceplate. By leaning toward the aft window, he could see LACE close to the bay. By raising his face to the ceiling window overhead, he could see the sun reflecting fiercely from the solar cells of Soyuz.
“RMS ready for you, Will.”
“Okay, Jack. Down to four pounds in here.”
Enright’s communications headgear still floated on his shoulders. The headset was plugged into the wall jacks for the radios to maintain air-to-air contact with Parker when he went outside. Radio communications were essential. The EMU suit with Parker inside would fly free of Shuttle without being tethered to a safety and intercom umbilical line.
“Down to 2 point 5 pounds, Jack. No leaks in the EMU. Got your air pants on upstairs?”
Enright looked over his cloth mesh shoulder to where his deflated britches floated in a lump.
“Sure, Skip. Just like the doctor ordered.” As he spoke, Enright sipped from the plastic jug parked in mid-air beside his left arm.
“Good, Jack. Takin’ it down to one here.”
“ ’Kay.”
Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE sped eastward 480 nautical miles west of San Franciso. The terrible afternoon sun was nearly overhead.
“Endeavor: California by Goldstone with you at 06 plus 08.”
“Howdy, Colorado. RMS is powered up. AC down to 1 pound in the airlock. We’re set up here.”
“Understand, Jack. Your digitals look fine. Will is Go for EVA.”
“With pleasure.” Enright’s voice energized the ship’s intercom. “Clear for EVA, Skipper.”
“Super! PLSS time now 51 minutes… Down to zero point five psi… Point 3… Point 1… Apparently holding there.”
“Okay, Will. Stand by… Flight: AC is down to one-tenth pound. That alright to crack the hatch?”
“Endeavor: Backroom says Go for egress.”
“Thanks… You’re Go, William. Take your time. I gotcha covered from here.” Enright sounded anxious and serious as his partner prepared to do the job for which Enright had trained for months. Both pilots had trained for going outside into the bay to close the payload bay doors should they fail. But Enright had logged most of the simulated EVA time as the space-walker.
“On my way.” Parker’s voice brimmed with Go.
“Soyuz, radio check,” the Colorado Springs bunker called through the California antenna dish.
“Soyuz is with you. Keeping clear but ready if needed.”
“Thank you, Major,” the ground called. “We are remoting your transmissions to your center at Kaliningrad.”
“Thank you, Colorado,” a Russian voice replied. “Hello, Natalia!”
“And Hello, Natalia, from the good ship Endeavor! You got modulation?” Enright asked as he powered up the RMS arm. He had raised the arm’s shoulder joint enough to free the arm’s wrist nearly sixty feet from Enright’s bandaged face. With the wrist and the end effector unit cranked toward the forward flightdeck, the wrist television camera was aimed at the sealed hatch of the airlock forty feet from the end effector. The outer hatch of the middeck airlock was at the base of the aft bulkhead eight feet under Enright.
“Good picture, Jack. We see Bulkhead 576 clearly. Don’t change the zoom any.”
“Understand, Flight.” Enright watched the closed-circuit television, CCTV, monitor by his right shoulder.
The bay’s floodlights were brightly illuminated to fill in any shadows caused by Endeavor’s body although the sun burned with excruciating glare from above and south of the vertical starboard wing. The mid-winter sun was well below the celestial equator even at noon.