The Glass Lady (30 page)

“We hear you, Flight,” Enright replied. “Understand a hot target alright.”

“Losing you here, Jack, at 04 hours and 08 minutes. Sunup in 4 minutes. Begin Rev Four at 04 plus 20 plus 04. Next network contact by Hawaii in 18 minutes . . .”

The ground's voice from sleeping Australia trailed off as Endeavor led LACE and Soyuz across the arid Great Sandy Desert in the Western Territories of north-central Australia. Australia's Great Barrier Reef on the continent's eastern coastline of the Coral Sea lay 1,000 nautical miles and 3 flying minutes away. From Australia's coast, Shuttle would cross open water for 26 minutes and 7,800 nautical miles en route to California. Endeavor crossed a new time zone every 3 minutes and 45 seconds. But there was utterly no sense of motion within Endeavor's cozy climate of dry air smelling faintly of rubberized air ducts and sweat.

“Time to suit up,” Enright called to Parker as the tall airman emerged headfirst from the airlock. As the AC steadied himself beside Enright, Shuttle sped through the darkness over the Australian desert, where only lizards and scorpions hunted in the darkness 90 minutes before sunrise on earth. For Shuttle, sunup would come in three minutes.

During the next quarter hour out of earshot of ground stations, the Crew Activity Plan called for the pilots to pry their bodies from their cumbersome, five-layer ejection escape suits. Each orange suit weighed 24 pounds.

“You first, Jack.”

Four hours, ten minutes aloft, Endeavor flew over Australia's eastern coastline for the Coral Sea. As Shuttle crossed the shoreline, directly below lights twinkled faintly from the village of Ingham, Queensland, Australia.

Enright unzipped his heavy suit's belly. Behind him, Parker had braced himself against the airlock. As the AC grasped both of Enright's shoulders, the thin copilot forced his sweating head down through the suit's helmetless, circular neckring. With a grunt of effort, Enright forced his head and shoulders through the suit's open chest. As Parker behind him held the copilot's suit, Enright floated out of the garment. Pulling his weightless legs behind him, Enright moulted, shedding his orange rubberized skin. In his long johns, Enright did a somersault as he flew out of his suit, which Parker held in his large hands. Enright's long-sleeved drawers were moist with perspiration and the little cans of charcoal filters in the mid-deck floor labored against the cabin's scent of a locker room at halftime.

Enright felt like doing a zero-G cartwheel in his new freedom without the bulky suit to restrain his movement. The AC read the rooky's face.

“Can't fly with your feathers wet, buddy.”

Enright smiled.

Outside, at 04 hours and 12 minues MET, a new sun burst explosively over the eastern horizon a thousand miles away. The Earth below was still in darkness as the high starship entered daylight above the Louisiade Archipelago in the pre-dawn Coral Sea. A fiercely bright white ring seeped around the circumference of the mid-deck, hatch window's cover. The narrow band of daylight was brighter than the cabin's floodlights. Upstairs, daylight careened over the unshaded sills of the flightdeck's ten windows. Mother in her systems management mode felt the flightdeck warm to morning. She increased the flow of coolant water from the flightdeck's aluminum veins to the space radiators deployed on the open bay doors.

“Mornin', Skipper,” Enright said in his long woolies. The AC nodded cheerfully.

Enright took his empty suit and floated with it toward the narrow bunk beds nestled against Endeavor's starboard mid-deck wall. He pushed back the curtain hiding a narrow berth which resembled the sleep stations in a submarine torpedo room.

Enright stuffed his man-size suit into the top berth. From the same bunk he hauled out massive white trousers. He parked the bottom torso of his extravehicular mobility unit suit in mid-air. Then he secured his damp ascent suit into the berth where it reposed like a third crewman. Normally the bottom half of the EVA suit is stored in the airlock with the upper torso. There had not been time to put everything in its appointed corner before this flight. Four hours and fifteen minutes out, Endeavor flew in full daylight over the Solomon Islands of Guadalcanal and New Georgia. The tiny island of Bouganville lay 425 miles to the northwest, halfway to the hazy horizon. On the ground, it was morning twilight. On the three sleepy islands, the sun was half an hour from warming the silent fields of weathered crosses aligned in long, perfect rows. There in the sandy ground, fifty years earlier, Company B, 145th Infantry of Ohio's bloodied Thirty-seventh Division had left its youth forever behind, wrapped in green ponchos.

Endeavor cruised over the sea toward the Equator 1,500 miles of groundtrack to northward.

The heavy eight-layer trousers of Enright's EMU stood like half a man between the two floating pilots. Attached permanently to the thick legs of the half-suit were heavy boots. The section of EVA suit ended at its round waistring. The upper half of the suit hung with backpack attached upon the inside of the airlock.

Enright floated into the fetal position in mid-air as he climbed out of his long johns. He stood naked except for his jockey-shorts-style Urine Collection Device which covered his middle. The UCD shorts could collect and store a quart of urine.

Enright took his sweaty wet drawers, wadded them into a ball, and sent his laundry flying directly into a sleep berth.

“Just like home,” the AC grinned.

“That good bachelor life, Skipper,” Enright smiled.

While Enright was crawling airborne from his drawers, Parker had retrieved another set of long johns. These were Enright's liquid-cooling garment—one-piece mesh long johns of Spandex material. The garment was high-necked with feet attached. The 6½-pound union suit contained 300 feet of plastic tubes through which coolant water would be pumped by the EMU's PLSS backpack.

Enright unzipped the coolant garment from throat to crotch and he climbed into it in mid-air while Parker steadied his shoulders. The thin copilot zipped himself into the mesh underwear from which the plastic tubes dangled.

Five minutes and 1,500 miles from Guadalcanal, at 04 hours 20 minutes into the flight, Endeavor sped northeastward over the Equator to begin her Revolution Four over Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands of the South Pacific.

With his hands pushing against the mid-deck ceiling, the copilot forced his weightless body into the EMU's lower torso, which stood stiffly on the floor. Enright grabbed the trousers' waistring and he pulled the thick pants up to his hips. With the massive pants doubling the size of his lower body, the small pilot looked ready to go wading and fly fishing. To Parker, his crewmate looked like a rodeo clown.

“Next,” Enright said as he worked to steady his ponderous lower body.

“Right,” the AC said dryly.

The mission profile hastily drafted by the Johnson Space Center's flight operations directorate called for Parker to don his own liquid coolant garment. Although Enright would walk alone in space, Parker would be ready upstairs on the flightdeck to go outside if Enright got into trouble. Wearing his liquid coolant underwear, the AC could climb into his EMU suit in five minutes to go to Enright's rescue.

With Enright holding the tall colonel's shoulders, the AC crawled slowly and painfully from the open middle of his orange pressure suit. Enright floated, braced against the galley unit where he held the AC's empty ascent suit by its shoulders.

“Damn, Will,” Enright whispered.

The tall, lanky colonel floated with his long arms raised and touching the mid-deck ceiling. He said nothing as Enright squinted his space-puffy cheeks toward the AC's right leg. From ankle to knee, the AC's right calf was swollen to the size of his thigh. At the Colonel's right mid-thigh, a fist-size knot bulged against his long johns, stained brown with dried blood. The stain was the size of a silver dollar where a horse needle had pricked a surface vein.

“Our little secret, Number One,” the Colonel said softly.

“Skipper,” Enright began. He was checked in midthought by a blast of Parker's captain's-look. The AC's glare quickly melted away.

“Okay, Will.”

“Thanks, Jack. It doesn't bother me much. Really.” The tall pilot spoke firmly as his leg, thigh, and groin throbbed with new heat.

The AC floated stiffly to his berth below Enright's bunk. He dragged his orange pressure suit, which he tucked into his bunk after first pulling his liquid coolant garment from one of the mid-deck's 33 forward storage lockers.

The Colonel hung his coolant garment in mid-air as upon an invisible clothesline. Enright held Parker's arm as the tall colonel climbed out of his long woolies.

Enright said nothing as he frowned at Parker's naked purple right leg. The thickly engorged veins along the swollen calf and shin resembled a road map of Los Angeles, printed in blue on blue.

The Skipper had to tug hard to pull the 6-pound coolant garment onto his swollen leg. The AC grimaced and the deep pilot's lines upon his weary face creased from his eyes to his ears.

“I got you, Skipper,” Enright said quietly as his hands steadied Parker's shoulders.

The AC looked over his broad shoulder at his young, lean partner.

“I know that, Jack,” Parker said softly with assurance absolute.

Tubes for the coolant water of the EMU suit floated weightlessly about Parker's waist. Behind him, Enright floated awkwardly in his 90-pound britches of eight layers of urethane-coated nylon, Dacron, neoprene-coated nylon, and aluminized Mylar, all within an outer shell of Gortex and Nomex cloth.

The EMU suits are built in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. With the gloves, helmet, and upper torso hanging in the airlock, and the PLSS backpack attached, the whole EMU suit weighs 225 pounds. Each suit weighed more than either flier.

Twenty-four minutes into their fourth hour aloft, Endeavor flew 720 nautical miles east of the Marshall Islands.

“After you, Jack,” the AC smiled, gesturing toward the open airlock hatchway.

Enright held onto his waistring as he floated headfirst into the airlock hatch close to the floor. He stood up in the wide chamber. Outside, the AC donned his wireless headset to listen for Hawaii's call soon to come. Enright was bare-headed in the airlock.

The copilot examined the illuminated digital numerics on the small Display and Controls Module chestpack. The unit is affixed to the front of the hard upper torso of the two EMU suits hanging on the airlock's inside wall. The gauges told him that the PLSS backpack on each upper torso was fully charged: In each backpack, two main air tanks held 1.2 pounds of pure oxygen pressurized to 850 pounds per square inch. Two reserve tanks in each PLSS held another 2.6 pounds of oxygen at 6,000 pounds pressure. The tanks of coolant water held ten pounds of water which the PLSS pumps will feed through the tubes surrounding the airman's body within the liquid coolant garment. The battery in each PLSS read 17 volts. With the tanks fully charged, each suit could sustain its flier for seven hours with another half-hour of reserve emergency oxygen.

The EMU upper torso hung on the airlock wall. Enright raised his arms over his head. His arms entered the upper torso with his body following. He pressed his hands into the suit's arms as his head peeked through the open neckring. With his feet secured to floor restraints, the pilot lowered his arms against the resistance of the thick suit. His ungloved hands reached for the space where the EMU trousers touched the waistring of the upper torso secured to the wall. Moving his hands around his hips, Enright locked the waistrings together and his suit became his private, 225-pound spacecraft. From the wall bracket where Enright hung like a bat where the PLSS was bolted to the wall, the flier took a set of huge gloves which he snapped to the arms of the suit. He twisted each glove to the arm wrist clamp until the gloves locked to the arms. A small cloth ring stretched from the sleeve of Enright's coolant underwear to each of his thumbs to keep the sleeves of his drawers from riding up his arm.

“Ready to go into the bubble, Skipper,” Enright called through the open hatch of the airlock.

“Gotcha, buddy.”

Enright pulled a soft Snoopy flight helmet over his head. He snapped the neck strap under his chin and he adjusted the lip microphones under his nose.

“With me, Will?” Enright called after he activated the radio switch on the top of his small chestpack.

“Loud and clear,” the AC confirmed over his headset in the mid-deck.

Enright pulled a tube from the inside of the EMU suit up through the neckring. He positioned it near his cheek. The tube led from the pilot's face to the drinking-water bag inside the suit. He had already connected the PLSS backpack to the tubes of his liquid coolant garment against his skin.

The pilot carefully placed a clear polycarbonate plastic helmet over his head. The fish-bowl helmet is translucent all around. Enright placed the helmet atop his suit's neckring and he locked it in position.

With his helmet double-locked to the suit, he activated the oxygen purge adaptor by attaching a hose to the top of his chestpack. The unit sent a blast of pure oxygen surging through the airtight suit to flush out the cabin's nitrogen-rich air mixture. Nitrogen in the suit would have been inhaled by Enright and could pose a lethal danger of nitrogen bubbles forming in his blood after he went outside the ship.

“Helmet lock and lock-lock, Skipper.”

“Hear you, Jack.”

Enright pulled a handle sideways at the front base of his chestpack. Instantly, he felt a rush of cool, pure oxygen surge out of the helmet vent pad behind his head. The suit circulation sucked the oxygen from his face down toward his feet where it was drawn back into the PLSS backpack. The PLSS recovered the oxygen at a rate of six cubic feet per minute to remove from the air water vapor, odors, and the pilot's exhaled carbon dioxide. The removed moisture was pumped by the PLSS into backpack storage tanks for recirculation through the liquid coolant garment against the astronaut's body. As in farming, nothing was wasted.