The limp Russian floated on his back in his deflated white pressure suit inches off the floor. Parker steered the Major’s legs from inside the airlock.
After Karpov’s heavy boots cleared the hatchway, the AC floated headfirst from the airlock. Halfway out and wearing only his soaked, liquid coolant drawers, Parker rolled over. When his long johns and socks were through the hatch, he floated into a kneeling position beside the reposing Russian. The AC lifted his face toward Enright’s grossly swollen head. The copilot hovered dopy-eyed in mid-air beside the airlock. Enright blinked lazily at his captain. He hardly recognized the tall pilot’s face.
Like Moses when he descended from the sacred mountain with his hair newly white, Parker had aged visibly while outside.
“Afternoon, Jacob,” the AC smiled feebly. He held his long arms close to his wet chest to ease the pain in his shoulders.
“We make quite a pair,” the burned copilot said wistfully as he fought to navigate back from the warm, soft edge of dizziness.
“Don’t call us ‘the icemen’ fer nothin’, Jack.” Parker licked beads of perspiration from his upper lip. His face was moist, gray, and weathered like a retired cowboy.
The Russian moaned beside the AC.
“O2, Jack.”
Enright shook the haze from his brain. He found an oxygen mask from the mid-deck’s portable oxygen system.
Parker took the yellow airlines-type mask which hissed softly and he pressed its soft cup agaist Karpov’s face.
As the kneeling, floating AC held the mask to Karpov’s face, Enright rolled forward until his stocking feet touched the mid-deck ceiling. He carried a long cable which was plugged into a ceiling audio panel. With his hands working under Parker’s chin, he disconnected the Colonel’s intercom cable which stretched into the airlock. The copilot gently pressed the cable he held into the soft CCA headset worn by the Colonel. When the plug snapped into the jack near the AC’s throat, Parker was again part of Shuttle’s black boxes.
In Parker’s arms, Alexi Karpov stirred and pushed the oxygen mask from his face.
“Easy, Alexi,” Parker smiled. A weak exclamation in Russian mumbled from the Major’s lips.
“English, Alexi.”
“We are alive?” The Soviet pilot blinked his eyes where he floated close to the floor.
“Yes, my friend. And you are our prisoner,” the AC grinned, cracking deep fissures in his tight face.
Major Karpov tried to sit up.
“Take your time, Alexi. You’re in Endeavor. We’ll be giving you a ride home.”
The Russian nodded as he collected his wits. His gloved hand rested on Parker’s shoulder.
“Soyuz?” Enright called over Parker’s head.
“Here.”
“Alexi is coming around. Looks fine. You copy, Doctor?”
“Yes. Thank you! Very good news. Tell the Major it is very lonesome over here.”
“Will do, Uri… Soyuz says he misses you, Major.”
The Russian aboard Shuttle sat up without weight. He braced against Parker’s arm as the Colonel gripped a handrail on the outside of the airlock.
“You have room for one more?” the Russian asked as he floated upright.
“Got a ticket?” the AC replied as he stiffly straightened his legs beside the airlock.
“You take American Express?” Karpov smiled weakly.
“You’re on, Alexi,” the tallest of the three airmen laughed.
Floating in the bright mid-deck, Karpov unzipped his pressure suit and he squeezed through the opened chest area. As he hovered above the floor of the mid-deck, Parker regarded his Russia-red long johns.
“Just as I expected, Major.”
“Yours are blue, yes?” Karpov grinned.
“You betcha,” the AC drawled.
Swimming to the forward lockers, the AC found a set of orange beta cloth coveralls for the Russian. Both Americans steadied the stocky Soviet flier as he floated upside down and pulled the lightweight intravehicular constantwear garment over his body. As he zipped up the front, he patted the American flag sewn upon the sleeve.
“I could lose my pension for wearing this!”
“Who has a pension?” Enright chuckled. The thin, masked copilot handed a communications headset to Karpov, who pulled it over his head and adjusted two, lip microphones.
“How are we on time, Jack?” The command pilot of Endeavor felt much better as the lethal gas bubbles in his joints went back into solution in Shuttle’s pressurized cabin.
“About seven and a half hours by now. Gonna be real tight on the Anomaly transit, Skipper.” Enright still felt woozy and his face felt ready to explode. But having Parker home was medicine.
“Yeh.” The AC stood by the round sidehatch window full of daylight in the cabin wall. “You go topside with the Major. I’ll stop in the biffy first. And, Jack, don’t forget your pressure pants. ’Kay?”
“Sure. This way, Alexi.”
The Americans, in their mesh woolies, and Karpov, in his flightsuit, pulled their communications plugs from the ceiling jacks. Karpov floated behind Enright up through the ceiling hole to the flightdeck.
When they flew through the ceiling, the AC floated on his side to his sleep berth. He rooted inside behind the privacy curtain for a crumpled paper sack. With the little bag in his hand, he backed carefully into the tiny stall. As he closed the latrine curtain, he rubbed his right knee, which bulged like a softball inside his mesh liquid coolant garment.
At 07 hours 34 minutes, Shuttle Mission Elapsed Time, Endeavor, Soyuz, and LACE hurtled northeastward across the Pacific. Although two revolutions earlier they had flown directly over the Hawaiian Islands, they now were 1,200 statute miles northwest of Hawaii and 500 miles beyond the radio range of the Hawaii antennae. Hawaii could not contact the ship this pass.
Alexi Karpov stood with his stocking feet ten inches above the flightdeck floor beside Enright. The copilot was curled into a ball in mid-air as he climbed into his inflatable pants. After donning his air trousers but before he plugged in the air line, Enright flew to the rear station. There, he directed the RMS arm to flex. He pointed the arm’s built-in camera toward LACE which hovered motionless beyond the open payload bay.
Cosmonaut Karpov blinked at the flightdeck filled with instrumentation. He had been inside Houston’s shuttle simulator during a Glasnost tour. And he was rated to fly the Soviet Buran space shuttle on its massive Energia booster rocket. But he had never seen a working shuttle — American or Russian. The great ship was alive with blinking lights, humming fans, the clutter of business, and the blinding daylight filling the flightdeck’s ten windows.
“She’s something, huh?” Enright called as he eased into the forward left seat. He gestured to Karpov to take the right, copilot’s seat.
“Something,” the Russian said with awe. He buckled into the right seat, where he tucked his hands behind the shoulder harness crossing his chest. He feared that his floating arms might touch the switches which wrapped around his corner.
At Karpov’s left, Enright pulled the air hose from beneath the seat. He plugged the line into his rubber pants which inflated tightly from his ankles to his waist. This done, his left hand worked the side panel, where he activated the cabin pressure controls. He raised the air pressure from the pre-EVA level of 10 pounds to normal flight pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch. The two seated airmen forced themselves to yawn to clear their ears as cabin pressure slowly increased. The command pilot did likewise below, where he rubbed his throbbing leg, newly inoculated with horse medication.
As Parker floated upward to the ceiling access hole, the pain in his joints had abated, leaving in its place a dull ache throughout his body. To the AC, whose head rose through the access hole behind Enright, his long body felt like the morning after of his long-gone rodeo days.