Orbital Decay (46 page)

The words of the Skycorp instructor who had taught Hooker’s class in the use of the rescue device came back to haunt him as he shrugged out of his life-support pack. “Frankly, fellas, if I had a choice between using this thing and freezing to death or suffocating in my spacesuit, I’d probably opt for the latter,” she had said candidly after her demonstration. “Your chances of getting out alive using this thing are about as much as surviving a ride down Niagara Falls in a barrel. Half of the dummies they used in tests either burned up or crash-landed at about 1,000 miles per hour. As far as I know, no one living has ever used it. It scares the hell out of even the Navy test pilots. If you’re stranded in LEO, do yourself a favor. Zip yourself into a rescue ball and wait it out. This is probably the dumbest, most dangerous thing built for spaceflight.”

Popeye tried not to think about it. He clamped off the air intake/outtake valves, removed the hoses from his suit, and quickly strapped to his stomach the little oxygen cylinder which contained about thirty minutes worth of air. It was more than enough to see him through, regardless of the outcome. When he had clamped on its hoses, he took a deep breath, then reached into the bag and pulled out the miniature rocket engine.

Rocky had apparently given her the message
,
because she appeared at the dock shortly before sundown. He was scrubbing the aft deck
,
down on his hands and knees with a stiff brush and a pail of soapy water
,
when he felt her presence. He didn’t hear her coming
,
but he knew she was there. Love is like that
;
you know when your mate is nearby. As he sat back on his haunches and looked up at Laura
,
who stood on the pier framed against the setting sun
,
he realized that the same could be said to be true about someone you’ve come to hate
….

The control mechanism with its built-in gyroscope fitted directly below his helmet, just above the rocket where it mounted on his chest. Working in haste now, he pulled the bag off the rest of the package and cast it aside. In the shimmer of his helmet lantern it floated at the edge of his vision like a formless, translucent ghost. Hefting the bundle, he slid his arms through the shoulder straps and tightened them, then fastened the belt and crotch straps. It fitted to his back like an oversized expedition backpack, with almost the same mass as an MMU.

Hooker looked around once at the darkened compartment, then focused his mind quickly again on what he had to do: get out of there. Get out because the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking…

“
Hi
,”
she said. Her voice would have been bright if it was not somehow numbed
,
the greeting casual if the tone not guarded.
“
What’s happening
,
sailor
?”

She was so beautiful
;
blue halter top
,
brown skin
,
brown hair
,
faded
jeans…
he could make out all that even with the bright
o
range sun behind her shining in his eyes
,
making him squint. She was so beautiful. I love you
,
he wanted to say
,
but he couldn’t. He was unable to see her face.
“
Nothing
,”
he said.
“
C’mon aboard
.”

Popeye pushed himself to the hatch and held on to its circular rim with both hands, lowering his back and pushing his shoulders forward, remembering Helen Myricki’s instructions from way back when. From here on out, timing had to be right. He waited until the module’s pitching motion brought the huge, shining rim of Earth into view. Then he pushed himself out into space.

Earth was much closer now. The module was quickly descending now, its drag increasing as it began contact with the uppermost reaches of the ionosphere. He kicked away from it gently, keeping his back turned against the planet, and watched as the fat cylinder—for the first time, he saw that it was painted with an American flag and U.S. Air Force wings—slowly fell away behind him, seemingly pushed away by his legs, although it was him, not the module, which had been pushed.

His breath was coming hard now, and his hands felt sloppy with sweat inside his gauntlets. He had an urge to pee, but he had disconnected the recirculation tubes to his crotch when he had taken off his life-support pack, so he couldn’t whizz into the cup because the urine might bottle up in his suit, potentially causing a short in his auxiliary power unit or, probably worse, seeping up through the neck rung into his helmet. He forgot the urge and stared hard at the register on his control unit, at the glowing digits and the tiny artificial horizon. This was the critical part, the gauging of the reentry path. Then he remembered the pack’s firing controls; how could have he missed that? Hooker reached with both hands, down to the back of his hips. His hands found the pack’s two arms, and he grasped them and pulled them level with his waist, locking them in place.

His right thumb slid open a tiny compartment on the inside of the left armrest, and he gently pulled a thin cable from the armrest and fitted it into a socket on his chest control. A light on the readout below his face turned yellow. His right hand went to the chest control and flicked a tiny toggle switch. The light switched from yellow to green: the system was armed. Hooker’s eyes went back to the artificial horizon, watching as the dark cross’s X and Y axes slowly drifted toward a parallel with the Earth’s curve. Just a second closer, just a few more fractions of an inch…

Impulsively, he glanced back up at the black ceiling of space. His eyes ran back and forth, searching the darkness. He could make out a tiny fusion of bright red and white stars, irregularly spaced, near the edge of his visual horizon, and he guessed it was Freedom. But that wasn’t what he was searching for. It was crazy to become nostalgic at this point for a place he had always detested, but in spite of that he searched for a tiny ring of light. Where was Skycan?

With Virgin Bruce leading the way, Hamilton managed to crawl along a structural brace, down along the side of the airlock module to where the
Willy Ley
was docked. They were careful to keep the module between them and the adjacent command module, whose rectangular portholes overlooked the shuttle. The long, jointed Canadarm was gently lowering a payload canister marked with the Johnson & Johnson logo into the shuttle’s open cargo bay as Bruce and Jack pushed themselves off the station module and gently glided into the cargo bay.

An astronaut in a spacesuit bearing the Skycorp patch and a black name-patch reading
S.F. COFFEY
was in the bay, his boots hooked into foot restraints on the deck. He was in the process of attaching the leading end of the station’s orbital tether into a bolt inside the bay, and his mirrored faceplate swung around to face the two men as they alighted nearby. After quickly making sure that the tether cable was firmly anchored to the shuttle, he slipped his boots out of the restraints and pushed himself toward Jack, who was holding onto the bay’s side.

He touched his helmet to Hamilton’s and his voice vibrated through—barely. “
Mmmummarm mummum rarumrum mmma-murum rum
!” was what Hamilton heard.

“What?” Hamilton shouted back.

“
Whomm
!
Mamarum rum rum whap aharumra
!” the crewman said, and jabbed his finger toward the airlock at the forward end of the cargo bay leading into the
Willy Ley
’s crew compartment. “Oh, okay,” Hamilton said. “You want to take me to your rum rum.”

“
Whaharum
.” S.F. Coffey pushed off and drifted toward the airlock, pulling himself along on his tether. Jack and Bruce followed, avoiding the tether, which was suspended in the bay’s center like a straight, wrist-thick silver pylon leading up to its enclosed reel on the station. As they moved toward the airlock which Coffey was opening, Hamilton glanced up at the lighted porthole at the end of the command module, about thirty feet above and to the right of the shuttle bay. The crewman in the porthole—positioned at a right angle to the shuttle—seemed to be looking directly at them, although he was probably much more engrossed in maneuvering the Canadarm. No problem there; everyone wearing spacesuits looks alike.

After cycling through the airlock—a tight squeeze for all three of them—they emerged into
Willy Ley
’s middeck. S.F. Coffey took off his helmet at once and craned his head around to shout up the egress leading to the flight deck. “Babe! Two for tea!”

“First intelligible thing I’ve heard you say,” Hamilton said as he pulled off his own helmet.

“Sorry,” Coffey said with a grin. “It always works in the science fiction novels. I didn’t have your frequency.”

“Who are they?” Lisa Barnhart called down from the flight deck.

“Hey, Lisa!” he shouted back, overjoyed. “It’s your favorite spacesick case!”

“Hi, Jack!” she shouted. “That’s Steve. He’ll show you up when you’re ready.”

“‘Hi, Jack,’” Coffey rumbled as he started crawling out of his suit. “I couldn’t have phrased it better myself.”

“What do you mean?” Hamilton said as he unhooked his suit’s waist and began to clumsily work his chest and shoulders out of the suit’s top part.

“Meaning…” Coffey sighed. “Forget it. If you’ve got something to do with all the hell that’s broken loose here, I don’t want to know anything about it.”

It took a few minutes for the three of them to climb out of their suits and undergarments, stow them in lockers near the galley, and dress in baggy uniform trousers and polo shirts Coffey produced from another locker. Then Coffey led the way up the shaft in the middeck ceiling onto the flight deck. As he settled into the copilot’s seat, Lisa Barnhart looked around from her pilot’s station at Hamilton and smiled. “Welcome back,” she said.

“God, it’s nice to see you,” Jack said. He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead, and she gently pushed him back.

“No time for niceties,” she said. Lisa looked over at Virgin Bruce. “You’re the biker guy,” she said. “I can tell just from looking. And I can figure where your third man is.”

“What? Where is he!” Jack demanded.

“Well, I’m not sure, but I figure he has to have something to do with the module which just jettisoned itself.” She turned back to her flight station. “No time for any of that. Strap yourself into those seats there and keep quiet. We’ve got to get going without them realizing that you might be aboard. From what I’ve overheard, they still haven’t repressurized that access tunnel, and they figure you might be in the runaway module.” She peered over her shoulder at Hamilton. “I figured so, too, when I heard what happened, but I told Steve here to keep an eye peeled for you while he was out there.”

“What have you heard about Popeye?” Virgin Bruce demanded as he buckled himself into one of the passenger seats behind Barnhart and Coffey. “What’s going on with the Ear module?”

“Hush,” she said. “We’ve got to work quick. I’ve got to call Freedom Command. Steve…?”

“APU’s powered up and systems are go for OT deployment,” he murmured, his hands working on his own consoles. “Optimal reentry approach green at sixty-five seconds and counting.”

Lisa pressed a button on the console between her and Coffey. “Freedom Traffic, this is
Willy Ley
,” she intoned. “We’re go for OT deploy in sixty seconds, mark. Do you copy, over.”

She listened for a second. Then she quickly cast a worried look at Hamilton over her shoulder. “Trouble,” she said. “If I give the word, you two get middeck pronto and snuggle into the sleeping berths with the curtains closed.”

“Are they asking questions?” Coffey asked, and Lisa nodded her head quickly. “Great,” he murmured. He looked over his own shoulder at Hamilton and Virgin Bruce. “This was not my idea,” he said shortly. “If I didn’t love this woman, I would have left you…”

“Clam it, Steve,” Lisa said. “Ah, that’s a negatory, Traffic. We’ve got a short countdown…” She suddenly reached to the clipboard attached to the console above the yoke and flipped back a page, scanning the cargo manifest. “And we’ve got perishable pharmaceuticals aboard. I don’t see what this has to do with us, anyway. Deploy in forty-five seconds, do you copy?”

Hamilton could see her holding her breath. Then she said, “Roger, Traffic. Thank you.
Willy Ley
undocking on the count. Five, four, three, two, one…” She reached above her head and pulled down a red lever. A red light blinked on. “
Willy Ley
is loose. Countdown for tether deploy commencing. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”

Jack let out his held breath and looked over at Virgin Bruce. The beamjack—former beamjack now—looked back at him and grinned widely within his spade beard, then held out his left hand. Hamilton reached out his right hand and clumsily shook it. Then he turned his gaze to the line of portholes in front of Lisa and Steve. Through them he could see Freedom’s command module. The crewman who had been operating the manipulator arm was now seated before its long window, intent on the controls before him.

Lisa reached the end of her countdown, and Steve tugged another switch, firing the preprogrammed set of RCR’s which moved
Willy Ley
away from the space station. Without any perceptible sense of motion, Freedom Station rose up and away from the shuttle’s windows; there was no jolt as the shuttle was released from its docking adapter and began to lower itself on the station’s tether cable, letting Earth’s gravity pull it down the gravity well. At a distance of 40 miles and on a course already established by the shuttle’s onboard computers, the cable would release
Willy Ley
in the uppermost part of the atmosphere, there to begin its final reentry maneuvers. Since the computers had plotted it to the last second, the tether cable’s release would put the shuttle on an exact reentry and glide approach for the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Lisa Barnhart switched off her radio and looked back at Jack and Virgin Bruce. “Boys, you’re going home.” Her smile faded a little then. “So how did you talk that guy into pulling the crazy stunt he’s doing?”

He touched a switch on the unit’s control arm and felt a slight bump as dense pressurized foam spewed from its globular container into the pack, inflating the aerobrake/heat shield into its curving, oblate form.