The Krone Experiment (10 page)

He saw that he would not be able to get
through the hole. The bracework for the laser mount obscured the
way. He shuffled his feet aside and cut another U extending to the
left of the first. As the next piece fell away, he felt his perch
shudder. To his right, he could see the cloud emerge from one of
the undamaged thrusters. The Cosmos was maneuvering again! He
watched as the rotation carried him around. Yes! They had tilted
down slightly toward the shuttle. He had to get inside!

Two heavy braces blocked the new hole. One
ran along the side and provided his handhold in the smaller hole
above. The bars resisted, but the torch did its work.

He replaced the torch in its clamp and
reached inside the freshly cut hole, seeking and grasping one of
the bars supporting the laser. Then he released the grip of his
left hand and withdrew it from the upper hole. As he did, the
Colonel’s hand came loose as well. The head bumped his and the hand
slapped against his faceplate, a farewell pat, as the remains swung
off into space. The sudden movement jolted Jupp again and he froze
motionless for a long moment until he felt the thrusters shift the
Cosmos once more.

Rapidly, he crouched and snaked his left hand
in for a grip. He pulled himself inward. God, it was dark! He
needed the lamp, but could not release a grip to get it. He pulled
again and inched inward but then stopped. Now what giant solid hand
blocked his further movement?

The backpack. It was caught on the severed
brace. He might cut a hole big enough for it, but there was
probably no room in the confined innards of the satellite. Cool
daring descended on him. He had come too far. He adjusted his
position until his grip with his left hand was as firm as possible.
He transferred the torch and a lamp to fasteners on his suit. Then
he began to release the straps and catches with his right hand,
working awkwardly but methodically at a job meant for more than two
hands. The partially freed backpack swung out tugging on the
straps, fighting release. At last he had it. He held onto the final
strap for one moment and then let go without a backward glance to
see the mechanism spin off to join the severed body in
eternity.

He twisted slowly one way then the other,
testing for freedom, finding a contortion that allowed motion. He
grasped for new handholds and worked his way in headfirst.

Finally! He could feel his feet clear the
opening and planted them on the bracework surrounding the hole
through which he had entered. He stood, the centrifugal force at
last a friend, feet on the wall of the huge cylinder, head toward
the center. He found the lamp and flicked it on. The laser loomed
alongside him, a huge enclosed box. There was room to maneuver, if
just barely, a technician’s access space. Elsewhere, equipment,
snaking cables, wires, and pipes packed the interior of the
satellite.

Now what, Mister brave guy commando? a
cynical voice asked. You going to destroy this thing with karate
chops?

He felt the satellite shift again, and
through the frame around him could sense the flow of peroxide to
the jets. Peroxide. The tanks must be somewhere. Could he puncture
one with the torch and put the jets out of commission without
blowing himself up? He scanned around and could not identify the
tanks. They could be anywhere; why wasn’t he briefed for this?

Power! If he killed the power, he would stop
both radio commands from the ground and the laser. He played the
lamp again and located a cable the thickness of his arm coming from
the rear of the laser. That had to be the main power supply. He
followed the cable around the hull to the point where it
disappeared into the bulkhead that had been behind him as he faced
the laser.

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.

He maneuvered the shuttle until it was
beneath the Cosmos once more, craning to see through the window
over his head to position the boom. When he was satisfied, he moved
to the boom controls at the rear of the flight deck. He released a
catch and watched the life-saving mirror drift off to join the
other detritus of their mission. Then he raised the boom until it
was just beneath the Cosmos. He flipped the switch that set the
rotatable stanchion on the end of the boom spinning and with it the
payload interface claw. Monitoring the picture from the camera that
spun with the claw, he adjusted the speed until the image of the
bottom of the Cosmos was fixed, the claw rotating at exactly the
same speed. He then closed the gap to the Cosmos and thrust the
claw up into the open wound where the bottom antenna had been. He
could feel the shuttle rock as the spinning claw sought a purchase
on the satellite and transmitted small torques through the
stationary boom. He could see the claw span a frame member and he
locked it on.

Now for the tedious part. He had to slowly
decrease the speed of the claw. Too fast and he could snap the boom
or the brace in the Cosmos with equally disastrous results if the
spinning satellite should collide with the main span of the boom.
As he decelerated the tremendous angular inertia of the Cosmos, it
was transferred to the shuttle, setting it spinning. Jupp called
orders to Wahlquist who operated the thrusters to remove the
spin.

An hour later the Cosmos and the shuttle were
one in motion. Jupp slowly lowered the boom until the Cosmos was
just out of the bay, the jury rigged wings that had abetted his
entry blocking the final nesting. With some reluctance he floated
back down through the hatch, passed through the airlock, and stared
once again at the hulking satellite. He anchored a tether to his
suit, pulled a torch from the rack and affixed it to his belt.

He started on the structure with which he had
first collided. His skin crawled to see the gaping hole of the
laser port, and its smaller, ragged companion where he had found
his first grisly hand-hold. He was too fatigued to do more than a
butcher job, but it still required fifteen minutes to sever the
blunt structure and shove it off into space. He continued around,
doing two more in three-quarters of an hour. He was bone tired. He
floated back to the deck of the bay and scanned the remains. He was
sure he could position the thing to one side of the bay so that the
final wing would fit. God help them if it bounced around during
re-entry. He hung up the torch, detached the tether and slipped
back through the airlock.