About fifteen minutes had passed and Tabitha and I had caught as much of our breath as you can at about a third of atmospheric pressure. Although the PLSS pumps an oxygen rich environment into the suit, it's still like snow skiing, wrestling a bear, running a marathon, and attacking Mount Everest all at the same time. EVA astronauts had better be in shape. All that cardio kickboxing had paid off for me. All the extracurricular activities with Tabitha didn't hurt either.
"Until you've done it, you can't imagine it." Tabitha had told me that a thousand times about astronaut stuff. It turns out that she was right about this one. Actually, she was right about it all, but I didn't tell her that. She's cocky enough as it is.
I connected a cable to the major portion of Zephram and then thrusted my way over to the upcoming final component. The Arm had halted about two meters from us. I slowed my descent to the Tank and lightly touched down on it. I had lined up on the hook perfectly. I grabbed the handhold with one hand and snapped the carabineer on the hook with the other. This was a lot easier than working in the neutral buoyancy tank in Houston—you can move quicker. Some astronauts had told me that the difference would be hard to get used to. I couldn't understand why. It seemed more natural to me not to have the resistance from the water.
"Probe tank is secure. Release the Arm." I said over the UHF.
"That was good work, Doc!" Jim said over the comm.
"Thanks, Jim. Preparing cable engage and final component attach!" The motor on the other end of the cable started spinning. Tabitha ran the motor as she pulled the two parts of the spacecraft together, slowly pulling us together.
As Tabitha and I slowly maneuvered the two spacecraft parts together, the Shuttle began slowly pulling away from us. Neither of us were concerned since this was part of yet another NASA scheduled event. As we began connecting the components of the probe, we would need to power them up. The immense electromagnetic fields created by the probe would wreak havoc on the Shuttle's systems so it had to be backed off to at least a hundred or so meters from the probe. Once Zephram was completely constructed and brought online, Tabitha and I would use our SAFER MMUs (Simplified Aid for Extravehicular activity Rescue Manned Maneuvering Units) to fly back to a safe distance where the Shuttle could catch us. No problem!
I could see the Shuttle in my peripheral vision (what little of it you have in a spacesuit) drifting farther and farther away.
"Hey, that's my ride home," I joked.
"Well, you guys finish all your chores and then we'll think about giving you a lift," Rayford announced. At least he had a sense of humor.
I guided the Tank the last couple of feet with my SAFER MMU. The two components came together with a clank that I could feel through my suit. Tabitha quickly snapped some of the connection clamps that were closest to her. I began feeling around the tank, doing the same.
"This is Huntsville. We read that all components of the probe are connected," Jim reported.
Tabitha and I completed closing the clamps around the circumference of the connection between the cylinder and the tank. We finished face-to-face with each other. She raised her visor and winked at me.
"It's your show." She said quietly over the UHF.
"Roger that Jim!" I said into the mic. "Call sign Zephram is complete. We just need to give a few bolts up here a couple extra turns and then kickstart it off." I raised my visor and winked back at Tabitha. I could tell Jim was excited from the sound of his voice. I was equally thrilled. What am I saying? I was tickled shitless! If you're from the South, tickled shitless is about as good as it gets.
"Can't wait down here Ans-—" the communication blacked out.
I could see a bright light glare off Tabitha's visor and she winced as in reflex and tried to turn her head. Instinctively, I tried to turn and look over my shoulder. Then I realized that I was wearing a spacesuit and that isn't a move you can do very easily in a spacesuit. I started to request that Jim copy me on the last transmission, but instead Tabitha snapped her cable onto my belt and hit her thrusters full reverse, pulling me with her.
"What are you doing?!"
"Move, Anson!" she said as she dragged me with her. She said move so I hit my forward thrusters to go with her. Just after I kicked my thrusters toward her, Tabitha reversed thrusters and I flew into her, hard! We were now chest-to-chest. Our facemasks smacked together with a THWACK! I hugged her whether I meant to or not. Knowing that Tabitha knew what she was doing, whatever it was, I killed my thrusters, hoping not to counteract something she did. I also kept my mouth shut and just hung on for dear life hoping that she wouldn't kill us. She fired her thrusters again. This time we moved toward the probe. The probe was only a half a meter away and it didn't take long for her to sandwich me between her and one of the ECCs. Tabitha locked a safety cable onto the ECC and grabbed a handhold. I figured what's good for the goose is good for the gander and started to follow suit. In order to lock onto the ECC I would need to fire my thrusters and turn around. Tabitha realized what I was doing and bearhugged me, sandwiching me again.
"Don't move!" she cried.
"What the hell is going on?" I had to know! How could I help if I had no idea what was going on?
"The Shuttle exploded!" she screamed.
"What!?" I wasn't sure that I heard her right. Ignorance is bliss, I have always heard. It would've been nice in this case had I remained ignorant.
"Hold on!" Then Zephram started vibrating and I could feel through my suit millions of small impacts dinging into it. I just prayed that nothing came through the ECC and into my suit from behind! A large section of one of the payload bay doors flew by us about fifty meters to my left—Tabitha's right. There were like pieces passing below, above, and to the other side as well. A hard thud hit the warp spacecraft somewhere. I could feel it. Zephram was given a slight rotation by the impact of whatever it was that caused the thud.
Tabitha and I held on for the ride of a lifetime. I don't know about her, but I was scared to death. Earth rolled by underneath us. Then it was gone and then back again. We were spinning pretty fast. I prayed that no debris hit while we were facing the direction of the explosion. A cloud of tiny shiny debris zipped past us and made our rotation worse and more unstable. Then we were inside the blast wave and it was over—I thought. Whatever hit the probe must have hit the propellant or oxidizer tanks enough to cause a rupture, which let go just then. All at once the pressure vessel gave way, spewing pressurized gas out of the tank. This increased the rotation of the probe we were holding onto an all-out random three-dimensional uncontrolled spin. The centrifugal force slung us away from the probe too fast for me to hold on. Fortunately, Tabitha had the foresight to snap a carabineer and a cable onto her handhold. But the force was too great for her to keep her hold while the fuel was still spewing and accelerating the spin.
"Hang on, Anson!"
"Hang on to what?" I cried, not knowing if I should try to keep holding her, hold the cable, or try to grab at the vacuum. None of which seemed to help.
"Just keep breathing as normal as you can!"
My handhold on her slipped and I was flung away from her. The meter-long tether connecting us jerked taught. It felt like it cut me in half. The tether hung on my left leg somehow and caused me to be slung outward headfirst. I tried to unhook it, but the g-forces were too much for me to overcome. My head was on the outer end of the centrifugal force—my head felt like it would explode.