“All of us have, Alexi,” Enright offered.
Endeavor, alone, flew through the darkness 540 nautical miles south of Madagascar a thousand miles east of Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
“How long to sunup, Jack?”
Enright looked at his mission clock: Day 00: 08 Hours: 33 Minutes.
“Eight minutes, Skip.”
“We have to shoot an IMU alignment… We must carry on, Alexi.”
“Yes, Colonel. Fly your fine ship.”
“Rollin’, Skipper.”
Enright put Shuttle into a slow roll. She came about until her wings were level. Flying heads-up, Enright yawed the nose around laterally until Endeavor flew rightside-up with her nose pointing northward. The starboard wing pointed eastward along the direction of flight.
The two star-trackers under Enright’s left window searched the heavens for navigation stars. He laid his swollen, bandaged face close to the silver-dollar-size reflecting mirror at the base of the crew optical alignment sight. The COAS tube protruding from the cabin ceiling scanned the southern sky’s few conspicuous stars.
Squinting into the COAS sight at eye level, Enright found the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo about 40 degrees above the horizon to Shuttle’s northeast. Into the computer keyboard at his right knee, Enright tapped in Star Number 26. Moving Shuttle’s nose with his control stick to search the sky to the northwest, Enright found brilliant Sirius about 60 degrees above the planet’s black horizon where the faint stars stopped. Enright plugged in Star Number 18.
Mother digested the star sights automatically made by the two star-trackers in the ship’s nose. Her mass memory unit, which had memorized the sky, compared the star-trackers’ sight reduction to Enright’s eyeball observations. Mother resolved her sights at the speed of light by mental haversine functions. Satisfied that she knew her bearings and that she knew which way was up, Mother adjusted her three inertial measurement units for precession error. Mother worked with her Reference Stable Member Matrix.
“IMU aligned, Will. REFSMAT nailed down.”
Parker swam from the aft payload specialist station toward the forward cockpit. He stopped to float at the center, knee-high console between Enright and Karpov.
As the AC reached the back of Enright’s left seat, the copilot was already rolling Endeavor onto her back to protect the radiators latched to the open bay doors from sunrise seven minutes away.
The AC scanned the third green television near Karpov. A video ground track displayed the bug-shaped shuttle over the southern Indian Ocean 700 nautical miles southeast of the great island of Madagascar. Radio contact was still 18 minutes away. On the television, their next network station was a circle one inch across with Okinawa at its center. At the bottom of the screen, numerics read REV 6 and MET:00:08:34:21.
“Next daylight landing window, Jack?” Shuttle can land only at fields equipped with microwave landing systems for instrument approaches. Such facilities with critically needed support vehicles are located only at Cape Canaveral, Edwards in California, White Sands in New Mexico, Hawaii, Okinawa, and the military field in Rota, Spain.
Enright tapped his small computer keyboard.
Immediately, the television displayed a new ground track two revolutions in the future.
“Okinawa at Kadena field, Skipper, during Rev Eight. Deorbit burn at 09 hours 55 minutes during Rev Seven. That’s an hour and 20 minutes from now. Wheels on at 10 hours 46 minutes. That’s 9:46 a.m. local time. Plenty of daylight. Gonna be tight on the time-line. But no sweat.”
Parker furrowed his sweating, pale brow. They had thundered into a purple winter sky a very long eight and a half hours ago. They had gotten it up. They had gotten it done. But not without cost. One Russian had been vaporized and Endeavor had been hurt badly, perhaps fatally.
“Let’s go home, Number One.”
“I’ll work up the digitals, Will.”
“Good. We’ll run a look-see at the APU’s and the right OMS. Guess it’s about time to try a single-OMS re-entry anyway.”
“Seems so, Skip.”
“Yeh… While you’re pullin’ the checklists, I’ll fetch Alexi’s seat. You about ready to hang on the feedbag, Jack?”
“Starved, Will… You be stayin’ for dinner, Major?”
The depressed Russian smiled weakly.
“Three for dinner, Skipper. Window seats, if you can do it.”
“Done.”
Parker descended headfirst through the floor hole behind Enright’s back.
It pained Parker to think of food so soon after a brother had smothered. But both he and Enright knew the imperative of taking in liquids prior to the physiological stresses of re-entry. Beginning with the tenth shuttle flight, Mission 41-B in February 1984, “fluid loading” was part of the Shuttle re-entry routine during which orbiting crews forced themselves to consume fluids 90 minutes before coming home. The “fluid loading” now known as “Hypersomatic Fluid Countermeasures” was a project of the medics who hoped to increase human adaption to spaceflight. So the command pilot went below decks to satisfy the flight surgeons; but he felt the awkwardness of planning a weightless wake topside.
As the AC somersaulted into the mid-deck below, Shuttle stopped her slow roll. With his feet close to the floor, the AC stood with his head pointing seaward as Shuttle flew upside down 20 degrees south of the Equator at 08 hours 40 minutes aloft.
The mid-deck galley can cook up to seven meals simultaneously. But that requires 90 minutes. So from the pantry Parker pulled three containers of peaches and three plastic pouches of freeze-dried tea. The fruit was packed in small tins irradiated for sterilization and in thick syrup to keep the sliced peaches from floating away when the tin was opened. The AC floated to the galley by the round window in the side egress hatch. He inserted the hot-water nozzle into each plastic container. The hot water revived the dehydrated tea. From a large forward locker, he also retrieved a portable flightseat and a set of anti-gravity, balloon trousers. With his hands full, Parker rose through the ceiling hole and emerged behind Enright.
“Three Beef Wellingtons with a hearty but vaguely tempestuous Burgundy.” Although still in pain at his right leg from his ankle to his groin, the Colonel felt invigorated by the prospect of soon getting down to doing a pilot’s business. He struggled to ease the cabin tension.
Enright was busy working with Mother’s four primary computers in her Maintenance Loop mode of operation.
“Hi, Skipper. Right OMS looks stable. Helium and propellant pressures and quantities in the green. We may yellow-line on quantities with a single-OMS deorbit maneuver. Right RCS could get tight, too. And Auxiliary Power Units One and Two seem okay. Three is shot.”
“Okay, Jack. Have some chow.”
Parker handed a tin of peaches and the hot squeeze jug of tea to Alexi Karpov. Beyond Karpov’s right seat, the world remained dark over the Indian Ocean.
“Thank you, Colonel. In my country, we drink it out of a glass with a sugar cube held between our teeth.”
“This must be your first drive-in?” The AC smiled.
As Parker hovered at the center console, he handed Enright two fruit tins and two teas.
“Hold mine, Jack, while I set up Alexi’s seat.”
“Sure. But hurry before I gobble yours, too.”
The command pilot rolled over and flew down to the floor behind Karpov. He stopped beneath the starboard overhead window in the rear. After unfolding the collapsible jumpseat, he inserted its four short legs into a floor track. The portable flightseat sits 14¼ inches from the floor and its backrest can be moved back ten degrees from vertical for comfort. The flightdeck has room for two rear seats behind the forward seats. Six more can be installed below in the mid-deck for space rescue operations or for flights when the European Spacelab is carried in the payload bay as was first done in Columbia on Shuttle Nine in December 1983. With the new seat erected aft, Parker sat down behind Karpov and buckled in.