"That's what I was coming to tell you. We have about forty minutes of sucking pure O2 to do," I said.
"Yeah, don't want to get the bends."
"But before we get to that . . ." I looked around and made sure we were alone. "Can we talk for a second?" I asked. I felt in my pocket to make sure the reason for this conversation was still there.
"Sure, what's on your mind? We're about eight and half -minutes ahead of schedule. We've got time to burn." She looked at her wristwatch.
I floated up close to her. "Well, uh. You see, uh. It is like this-"
"Spit it out, Anson. We only have a few minutes." Colonel Ames said.
"Boy! You can sure spoil a mood. Anyway, I was just thinking that we have been seeing a lot of each other over the last couple of years and all. And that I have really enjoyed it." She seemed to soften slightly.
"I have also," is all Tabitha said.
"Uh, I mean, I like your daughter a lot. And your parents," I stalled.
"They like you too," she added.
"Well . . ." I began again, "Uh . . ." Major Donald stuck his head through the hatch into the flight deck.
"You guys ready for your EVA? You ought to be on oxygen by now." Tabitha snapped to attention as if she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. I had to wait. The time would come. Maybe later. Maybe later! Damnit-all-to-hell!
"Yeah Ray. Take over the checklists here. Anson and I are going to suit up." We left for the aft section of the Shuttle.
"So, what were you saying, Anson?" She asked.
"Never mind. I'll tell you later. Besides, we have stuff to do."
Twenty minutes later we were in our Liquid Cooling-and-Ventilation Garments (LCVG) and had been on the oxygen masks for a while. The LCVGs are basically just white Spandex long johns with tubing running throughout them. Water flows through the tubes to keep the body cool. The water is handled by the Primary Life-Support System or PLSS. The PLSS pumps the coolant around the body and also accomplishes any air handling. The PLSS can handle up to a million joules of heat per hour. You have to be working really hard to generate that kind of heat. As an example, I like to tell students that if a postage stamp is burned only about 200 joules of heat is released. So, the PLSS is fairly robust. The major portion of the PLSS is housed in the backpack unit and interfaces to the LCVG through ductwork and ventilation tubes in the suit. Tabitha and I helped each other with the various parts of our suits.
The Hard Upper Torso (HUT) and the Space Suit Assembly portions of the suits were snapped in place and we began running diagnostics. Finally, we managed to completely suit ourselves into the Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs). I still prefer to call them spacesuits or environment suits. But when in Rome!
We did our final checklists for the EMU communications systems and then made our way into the airlock. The airlock of the Shuttle is just big enough for two fully suited astronauts to fit inside. The two D-shaped doors were closed and the pressure hatches were ready to be cycled. Tabitha and I did one last visual check of our suits. This being my second EVA, it was all old hat to me. The hatch for the outer exit has six interconnected latches with a gearbox and an actuator system. I looked through the polycarbonate plastic window in the hatch as Tabitha checked the actuators and then the pressure gauges on each side of the two pressure-equalization valves. Both the inner and outer hatches were sealed.
"Okay, Ray, I'm going to cycle the pressure." Tabitha announced.
Depressurization of the airlock started. I could hear a slight hissing at first and then nothing. I checked my suit pressure one last time. Everything was A-okay at about four pounds per square inch.
"The pressure gauge shows zero. I'm going to open the hatch." Tabitha called out each step by the book. She grabbed the latch mechanism and the dual pressure seals let loose without a sound. I didn't even feel it through my EMU. I could see the payload bay through the hatchway.
"Entering the payload bay."
"Roger that," someone from Houston responded.
"Houston, this is Clemons. I am following the colonel into the bay."
"Go for EVA, Anson! HOSC online here!" Jim had just come back online down in Huntsville. The warp probe components, soon to be call sign Zephram, was more than ready out in the payload bay.
Several minutes of preparation and disconnecting and connecting things followed next. Rayford piloted the Remote Manipulator Arm from inside the Shuttle so that the end of the Arm seemed to hover ever present above—or was that below?—us. Final disconnect process had been checked through for the cylindrical warp field system and for one of the ECCs.
"Houston, we're ready to detach the containment system for the probe and ECC number one." Tabitha started to work with her powered ratchet and removed a set of bolts. Once, just for fun, I held the ratchet on a bolt and turned it on while my feet weren't planted to anything. I slowly began to spin about the bolt axis in a clockwise fashion. Tabitha wasn't amused.
"Quit clowning around, Anson!"
"Hey, I paid for this ride. I'm going to get some fun out of it!" I joked.
She still wasn't amused. Getting back to business I tethered both of us to the ECC as Rayford powered the Remote Manipulator Arm over to us. I worried with catching the Arm and attaching it to the ECC while Tabitha danced around like a busy bee in prime honey season connecting this, undoing that, and fiddling with the other thing.
"That's good there, Ray. Houston, I have the Remote Manipulator Arm Platform connected and Tabitha and I are go for an egress from the payload bay." I waited for a reply from Tabitha, Rayford, Houston and Huntsville, in any order.
"Roger that, Anson." Rayford said.
"Houston here. Go for ECC egress," Houston confirmed.
"Hunstville here. Roger that. Go for ECC egress," Jim replied.
"Tabitha, are all the ECC egress connectors locked?" Jim's voice came over the UHF.
"Roger that. Connector cables linked and we are go."
Both of us were extremely busy. I really would've liked to have been able to stop and take in the incredible view, but we had to make sure that each of the three ECCs went through the same egress process and then were connected, via special thin-walled telescopic titanium connector tubes about ten centimeters in diameter each and ultra-strong polymer support cables about five millimeters in diameter each, before letting them float out into space away from the shuttle. Also, the main fuselage and spacecraft bus housing, the central cylinder, would then have to be guided by the Arm, Tabitha on one side, and me on the other making minor course corrections. We had to thread the central cylinder through the three ECCs like a needle and thread. Once the ECCs were in place, they looked like large ice cubes supported by toothpicks. The toothpicks were in turn stuck into a large cylinder (an analogously scaled object would be a toilet paper roll) about its circumference at one-hundred-twenty-degree intervals. They were also closer to one end of the cylinder than the other.
Being an astronaut nowadays is more like construction work than the glory of flying high-tech spacecraft. Tabitha and I had been turning bolts and making electrical connections for the better part of three hours. It was time for a scheduled break.
Tethered to the probe, Tabitha and I watched as the Arm disconnected from us and folded back toward the payload bay. An incomplete Zephram, Tabitha, and myself simply floated there above the shuttle, Newton's Laws still being in effect.
"Rayford, you drive that thing like a pro," I teased as he locked onto the final component of the probe, the ACS Fuel Supply and Science Instrument Suite Sphere. Tabitha and I watched and panted trying to catch our breath in the thin atmosphere of our EVA suits. Rayford manipulated the Arm right into the sweet spot of the universal connector on the probe component. The tank grabbed back at the arm and was connected. The internal circuitry kicked in and blew the circuit breakers for the other connectors around the tank. In a matter of seconds the tank was free from the Shuttle other than at the connection with the Arm.