“Rog.”
Shuttle was directly below a brilliant full moon which moved westward across the sky well north of Endeavor’s extreme southern latitude.
“We would like to see the target stabilized as soon as you can, Will. Only with you another 90 seconds.”
“I was just startin’ to enjoy the ride, Flight. About to drop in another quarter.”
“Believe you. But please get to it.” The ground sounded impatient.
As the ground spoke from the darkness, Parker rolled behind LACE and out of view from either Enright’s overhead window or the television screen beside Enright.
In the icy darkness behind LACE, the revolving flier could feel his aloneness. LACE’s body blocked his view of both Soyuz and Endeavor. His left hand pushed the translational thruster handle and he held it in firing position. Four cold gas jets on the right side of the manned maneuvering unit squirted continuously against the direction of LACE’s rotation.
“Firing!” the AC called. A shoulder and then a mirrored, gold visor emerged very slowly from behind LACE.
“Gotcha now, Will.”
“Still thrusting.”
“Not much visible reduction in your roll rate, Will. Watch your consumables.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Wilclass="underline" Colorado here reporting your roll rate is down from one point one to point seven degree per minute. You’re braking well in rate. Continue thrusting. You’re Go from here at 06 plus 52. One hour 36 minutes on your PLSS. Losing you momentarily. We remind you that your next 28 minutes will be out of ground contact.”
“We’ll stay on the job anyway, Flight.”
“Hope so, Jack. Configure…
As Shuttle lost the network over water, she rounded Port Elizabeth on Africa’s southern tip. The ship began an 8,500 statute mile run without radio contact over the Indian Ocean. This revolution, Shuttle would miss the west coast of Australia by 1,100 miles since that continent had moved eastward with Africa out from under Endeavor’s path.
Enright watched Parker for the 2½ minutes he was in view until he disappeared behind LACE for the second time. During that period, Endeavor covered a thousand miles and passed the southernmost point of her orbital path 2,622 statute miles south of the Equator.
Enright continued to monitor the temperatures and the voltages within the remote arm’s six servo power amplifiers which held the plasma sniffer pointed toward LACE. The PDP was recording LACE’s radiation signature for later relay to the ground.
“Still thrusting,” the AC called as he rolled back into the bay lighting and into the view out Enright’s overhead window.
“Okay, Will. At 07 hours even. You are definitely slowing down out there. About one more circuit should do it. Pace it to stop with the grapple fixture facing me if you can.”
“No sweat… You with me, Soyuz?” Parker glanced to his side. His gold faceplate shone brilliantly in the arc light from the Soviet craft.
“Watching closely, Colonel. Estimate one-tenth degree per minute in roll rate now.”
“Thank you… Still thrusting, Jack.”
At 07 hours 02 minutes, Endeavor cruised over the dark Indian Ocean on her northeast course 3,500 miles west of Australia.
LACE rolled ever slower. Parker attached to its midline required two minutes to come around the corner. In the artificial daylight cast by the lighted bay, he reached the halfway point of his slow roll.
At 07 hours 04 minutes, Endeavor rode the black sky into 2 a.m. local time, one day ahead of Cape Canaveral where it was 5 p.m. on a cool and clear day.
“All stop,” Parker called with his back toward Shuttle. “Damn, that burned a lot of gas, Jack.”
“What are your N2 reserves?”
“Maybe a thousand pounds psi.”
“Should get you home, Will.”
“Hope so.”
As the AC floated latched to the perfectly motionless LACE, a stabbing pain in his right knee reminded him of his hotly throbbing leg. He closed his eyes in the light between his helmet and LACE which came from Soyuz to his left.
“Sunup in 5, Skipper,” Enright noted at 07 hours 06 minutes, MET. Endeavor had already logged 117,540 statute miles across the sky.
“Comin’ home,” the AC called with his back to Shuttle. His gloved right hand pulled the release ring on the side of the grapple fixture clinging to himself and to LACE. At the same instant, his left hand pulled back on the THC handle. His small thrusters shot forward, one by each ear and one beside each of his bent knees. He waited to push off from LACE leaving only the flying grapple fixture attached to the target.
“Damn.”
“Say again, Skipper?”
“Said no joy on the disconnect… Stand by.”
Enright’s bare right hand fine-tuned the zoom lens on the remote arm’s elbow camera. Parker’s backside and MMU filled the closed circuit television screen.
“Once more, Jack.”
This time, as the AC pulled the release mechanism ring, his left hand pushed hard against LACE’s black and frigid side.
Instantly, pain pierced Parker’s left elbow and left shoulder. The pain felt like acute tennis elbow, only his shoulder felt the same way. He remained a white fixture upon LACE. When he tried to close his left fist upon LACE, his fingers only trembled. When he tried to open the grapple fixture’s jaws which held LACE, they also failed to budge.
“Ah, Jack… I’m still attached out here. Negative separation at either end of the grapple unit… And I think I may be startin’ to saturate a little… Crap.”
Parker slowly lowered his sore left arm to the MMU armrest. He had to use his right hand to wrap his left fingers around the THC handle. He breathed hard. Each warm breath activated the lip microphones which filled Endeavor with his distress.
“William?” Enright spoke as calmly as his painful lips and cottony mouth would permit.
“Gimme a minute, Jack.”
“Okay, Will. No rush. Got five hours left in your PLSS.”
Like a weary stockman resting against a fencepost at day’s end, the AC gently laid his outer faceplate upon LACE’s freezing side. Had the pilot laid bare skin against the motionless satellite, he would have been burned crisp by the terrible cold of space without sun.
Cold sweat beaded upon Parker’s upper lip and upon his forehead below his soft Snoopy helmet which held his earphones and twin microphones. The pain in his left arm crept downward into his left knee and ankle. The sensation was the prickly pain of a limb awakening after having gone to sleep. His left foot felt full of gout.
William McKinley Parker was paralyzed.
In the glare of the lights from Soyuz, the Colonel floated in the nighttime sky, alone. At 07 hours 09 minutes, over Parker’s left shoulder toward the west, the solitary faint star Puppis-ro sped westward directly above Shuttle. The few stars in the southern sky’s constellations Puppis and Vela, directly overhead, were obscured by the white moon which glowed as coldly as statuary marble. The brilliant moon was above and north of Endeavor.
In Parker’s joints, from his toes to the cervical joints of his sweating neck, microscopic bubbles of nitrogen gas surfaced in his blood. Throughout his body, his circulation carried a fine frothy head which exerted exquisite pain against capillary walls.
The Bends.
The nightmare of fliers and deep-water divers tightened its grip on the pilot. Parker would have cried were he not afraid of the pain in his temporo-mandibular joints in his gaunt face in front of his ears. His anguish confirmed that his pre-breathing of pure oxygen in the airlock had failed to purge his body of nitrogen before he ventured outside.
Except for his massive EMU suit, Will Parker was naked ten yards from home and 149 statute miles from his mother the Earth. The weakening pilot longed to reassure his partner who waited anxiously in Shuttle.