Stenciled lettering caught his attention, just out of the reach of the lamp. He swung the light and froze. He dimly felt the involuntary release that flowed down the relief tube of his suit. He didn’t read Cyrillic, but there was no mistaking the purple and yellow international symbol for radioactivity. Of course, he thought, no solar panels, the thing has to be powered by a nuclear reactor, and no room nor need to shield it in space.
I’m a dead man. The words echoed in his mind as he swung to work. He started with the large cable from the laser, severing it with the torch. Sparks flew, arcing the gap he cut, but he felt no glory in the fireworks, only a grim determination. Then he methodically cut every other cable he could reach from his confined space that might carry electrical power. As he proceeded he could feel the cessation of certain hums and vibrations of which he had not been consciously aware. If it was killing him, he was killing it.
When he could find no more cables intact, he backed out of the hole very slowly so as not to catch his suit. When only his upper torso remained inside, he hooked an elbow around one of the laser braces so that he had a firm hold that would not tire his hands. The centrifugal force tugged his legs straight away from the satellite.
“Larry?”
“Oh, thank god!” Wahlquist’s relief came to Jupp as a palpable force over the intercom. “I wanted to call you but was afraid to spoil your concentration. Control is frantic. I cut them off from you too.”
“Sorry, it must have been rough on you just sitting. I think I’ve disabled it. I cut the power lines.”
“Control says it’s probably nuclear powered. Did you go inside?”
“Yeah, I had to, but only for a little while. I’m fine.”
An extended silence echoed with Wahlquist’s doubt. Then he spoke.
“Now what?”
“I sure want to get back home. How’d you like to play catcher?”
“How’s that?”
“I had to jettison the backpack to get inside. I want you to jockey the bird around where I can just jump into the bay. Can you do that?”
Jupp heard the forced bravado.
“If you can pitch it, I can catch it.”
“Great! Are you at the controls?”
“Yep. I’ve been feeling around; I’m into it. Talk to me.”
“You’re about forty-five degrees from my plane of rotation. This polecat was trying to get you in its sights again, by the way.”
“Thanks, podnuh.”
“Anytime. Let’s start simple. Give me a little port roll to get the plane of your wings perpendicular to my rotation. Not too much. Smidgen to the right. Wait’ll I go around to get another good look. Just a hair to the left. Okay, that looks pretty good. We’ll tune it up later. Now let’s see if we can get a parallel lateral shift to the right. You want to hit the front and the rear left thrusters by just the same amount. No. Too much nose! You’re moving but spinning. A little right nose! Now some right rear. Let me get my bearings, I can only see you once every twenty seconds. You’re still drifting. Give me just a light brush on the right. A little more. Okay, let me watch again for a minute.”
Jupp had realized throughout this exercise that they would never get a perfect alignment, with Wahlquist having no direct visual feedback. They might stop the spin of the shuttle, or the drift, but to get them both stabilized at once was asking too much. He could maximize his chances, but he was still going to have to hit a moving target from a merry-go-round. And he was the projectile.
He spent a few more minutes with Wahlquist until they seemed to have the drift minimized. The shuttle passed before his eyes once every twenty seconds, its open bay yawning a welcome to him. The craft hovered a little below him but had a slight upward drift. It was also in a slow clockwise spin from his perspective. He planned to push off from the Cosmos when he faced at right angles to the shuttle. His inertia from the spinning satellite would carry him sideways toward the bay. The problem was timing. Even if the shuttle were perfectly stationary, he could release too soon and be thrown past the tail; too late and he would sail helplessly past the nose. He could increase the target angle by bringing the shuttle in closer, but then there would be too great a chance of collision.
He waited until the shuttle was pointed with its long axis along his plane of rotation so that he had the best chance of landing in the bay. He worked his body around until his feet were under him. He crouched on the side of the Cosmos and held onto a brace with one hand behind him, like an ungainly swimmer about to begin a race. He waited a minute, three more revolutions, and then as he saw the tail of the shuttle come into view to his extreme left, he pushed off.
He immediately sensed his error, and the panic of falling gripped him again. He had concentrated so hard on timing his leap to the rotation that he had not paid enough attention to pushing straight off from the side of the satellite. He had pushed himself slightly upward, exactly the wrong thing to do with the shuttle a little below him. He felt as if the shuttle were drifting downward, even as he rocketed toward it, arms and legs flailing wildly in ungrippable space. He began to tumble, and as he caught occasional glimpses of the shuttle, he could see the edge of the bay drop below his inexorable path. He steeled himself to see the shuttle float by, his last connection to humanity fading in the vastness of space.
The blow nearly took his breath away, a surprising painful rap from his left shoulder blade to his right kidney. As he bounced back, he caught a twisting view of the bay rotating in his line of sight, and then a pole. He spread-eagled, reaching for his life. His left arm and leg hit it; he swung his right arm around, reaching, clawing, grabbing, hugging. And then he was still, legs tightly wrapped around the manipulating boom, his arms clasping it to his bosom. He closed his eyes and listened to the pounding of his heart, racing as never before. The sweat ran stinging rivulets into his eyes, clinched though they were. At last he opened them and looked around. The clamshell door. He had missed the cargo bay, but had collided with the edge of the extended door. He looked at the boom immediately before his eyes. Had it not been for the plastic barrier of his faceplate, he would have kissed it.
He tried to speak, choked, and then tried again.
“Larry?”
“You okay?”
“I’m home. Don’t go away; I’ll be right in.”
“Hot damn!”
Jupp shinnied his way carefully down the boom, and using handholds in the bay, made his way to the airlock. He rotated through and nearly collapsed with relief at being back within the confines of the familiar shuttle cabin. He drifted up through the hatch. Wahlquist was standing next to the pilot’s seat, waiting for him, his faceplate up, listening intently, compensating already for his lack of sight. Jupp floated to him and without thinking grasped him in a bearhug. Wahlquist was surprised for a moment, but then responded in kind and the two figures stood for a long moment locked in a cumbersome space-suited embrace.
Finally Jupp felt control return. He held Wahlquist off at arm’s length.
“Okay, buddy, we’ve got work to do. Let’s bag that bird and get out of here.”
He guided Wahlquist to the copilot’s seat and then settled into the comfortable familiarity of the pilot’s seat. He jockeyed the thrusters and loved every response of his craft. He loved his eye-hand coordination, and he loved the total absence of the terrible repellant artificial gravity that dwelt on the object out his window.