The Glass Lady (33 page)

“Good, Jack. I want to move you, Okay?”

Enright nodded weakly.

Parker floated upright. He turned and for a moment fumbled with the sunshade for the hatch window. After he secured it to the round porthole, he returned to the dozing copilot. Gently, Parker pushed at Enright's backpack near the floor. The copilot slowly floated off the mid-deck floor and his red eyelids grimaced in pain.

“Another few seconds, buddy. Follow me through.”

Enright nodded as the AC's pilot-talk sank into his parched brain.

“Endeavor, Endeavor. You're LOS by Kennedy. Bermuda still with you at 04 plus 52.”

Shuttle drifted under the Digital Autopilot's firm hand 180 miles southwest of Bermuda Island.

The AC gingerly nudged the upright Enright toward the triple-decker sleep berths. He gently wedged the EMU-suited flier into a standing position against the bunk frame. From inside the middle berth, Parker pulled a long nylon strap used to restrain sleeping crewmen. He secured the long belt across Enright's chestpack. Each end of the strap Parker cinched to a post on the berth frame.

“That'll hold ya, Jack.” Parker hovered close to Enright's face of oozing brown blisters.

“Don't wander off, Jack.”

Neither pilot touched the floor with his feet.

“Thanks, Skipper,” Enright whispered without opening his eyes.

The Colonel swallowed. “Jack: Do you know where you are?”

The AC watched Enright move his red eyes across the bright mid-deck of Endeavor.

“Frat house,” Enright whispered hoarsely. “Goin' to bring in Daisy . . . Little Daisy.” The copilot closed his watery eyes and a faint smile creased the comers of his swollen mouth.

“You got it, buddy,” Parker smiled as he floated to the narrow front end of the cabin. From one of the lockers, Parker pulled a wireless Snoopy communications helmet. He covered his head with the soft CCA and snapped the chin strap. He slowly somersaulted in mid-air as he flipped a power switch clipped to his mesh long johns.

“. . . in one minute. Try the malfunction protocol on the S-band antenna quadrants,” Parker's headphones crackled as he steadied himself with a fist upon a ceiling handhold.

“Ah, I'm with you, Flight, from the mid-deck. Say again, please. Sorry we've been busy up here.”

“Damn it, Will! We've held our breath down here for twenty minutes! We lost skin tracking on the PRC traffic at Goldstone. Soyuz has been in motion for ten minutes. And you guys have been out to lunch! We're LOS here in forty-five seconds by Bermuda. Next contact via Dakar in six minutes . . . What the hell is going on up there?”

The voice from Earth was shrill.

Clutching the mid-deck ceiling, Will Parker twisted with his stocking feet a yard above the floor. He looked between his mesh-covered legs toward Enright, strapped to the bunkbeds like Ulysses lashed to the mast.

“In 30 seconds, Colorado: LACE incinerated the Chinese ship. We took a reflected broadside from LACE's optics . . . Caught Jack in the face. He's alive but with second-degree flash burns to his face. Tending to him now. No apparent damage to the ship.”

The AC could not resist smiling at the technicians below doing backflips at their consoles over his little status report delivered casually with Parker's very best “so how's things” voice.

“Copy, Will. If you can still hear us, use Kit Five in the medical locker. Kit Five. With you by Dakar in six . . .”

Endeavor sped over the horizon leaving Bermuda behind. The ground call gave Parker a mental fix of Shuttle's position over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A moment's thought told him he was but an hour and three-quarters from their near-miss of the South Atlantic Anomaly on Revolution Five.

“Ground says to doctor you from Kit Five, buddy.”

The copilot nodded although he appeared to sleep.

“Glad we have a horse doctor on board,” Enright mumbled.

Parker flew headfirst and upside down to the forward storage lockers where he righted himself. From a locker drawer, he pulled a case labeled KIT FIVE: BURNS (THERMAL). He left behind kits labeled BURNS (CHEMICAL) and BURNS (ELECTRICAL).

A shuttle crew's years of training is equivalent to earning an Emergency Medical Technician certification. The AC knew the contents of Kit Five and what to do with it. As he swam toward Enright, he floated through a shaft of brilliant daylight raining down through the ceiling access hole from where the flightdeck above was filled with sunshine. Endeavor approached sunset six minutes and two time zones away.

Parker flew slowly toward his partner strapped upright to the berths. He aimed his stocking feet at Enright's sides just above the thick waist of the massive EMU suit.

The AC wrapped his legs around Enright's middle. Parker's calves closed lightly around the PLSS backpack. The command pilot floated with his mesh-covered chest touching Enright's chestpack. Enright opened his eyes when he felt the AC's breath upon his fluid-filled face.

“Little desperate, Skipper?” Enright smiled lamely.

“Grown particular, buddy?”

“Nah.”

Straddling Enright's waist with his legs, the AC parked Kit Five by his shoulder. It remained motionless in the air at eye level.

Parker opened the small container from which he pulled pre-soaked towelettes which were orange with Green Soap antiseptic solution.

“Yell if this hurts, Jack.”

“Not to worry, Will.”

Gently, Parker washed the round and blistered face with the towel. Enright showed no discomfort.

After carefully dabbing at Enright with the soapy towel, Parker dropped the rag in the air where it hung motionless halfway to the ceiling. He opened another towelette soaked in isotonic saline solution. With this and two more, he rinsed the orange soap from Enright's edema-swollen cheeks.

After wadding the discarded rags into a ball, the AC carefully opened a gauze bag affair which resembled fine cheesecloth. It was soaked with penicillin cream.

“Close your eyes, Jack.”

Parker slowly slipped the gauze mask over Enright's red face. It covered his head completely to his neck. The AC adjusted the eye, nose, and mouth holes on the antibiotic-soaked mask to fit Enright's features.

“Okay, Jack.”

Enright opened his watery eyes and he peered at Parker's close face from inside his penicillin-drenched mask.

“Knew a stewardess I had to do this for,” Enright whispered. “Only I made
her
wear the paper bag.”

“I'll bet, Number One.”

Enright wheezed a weak chuckle.

“Bottoms up, buddy,” Parker said as he inserted into Enright's puffy lips a plastic straw from a squeeze bottle. The AC carefully pressed the soft container to force into the copilot's mouth an electrolyte solution of sweetened saltwater and sodium lactate. He timed each squeeze to Enright's labored swallows until the jug was empty.

“Still with me, Jack?” Parker released his leg-hold and floated back from Enright.

“Don't know who else would have you,” Enright smiled behind his wet mask.

The AC unlocked Enright's waistring and he tugged at the EMU trousers. To keep from being drawn back to Enright when he pulled, Parker braced his feet against the frame of the sleep berths.

When Enright's heavy pants came off, Parker directed them into one of the bunks.

“Feel better?”

Enright nodded. For half an hour, he had been without coolant water flowing through his liquid coolant garment which was damp with sweat.

“This will help, Jack,” the AC said as he forced a long needle into Enright's thigh. He steered the hypo between the coolant tubes and through the mesh drawers. He discharged 50 milligrams of meperidine for pain. A second hypodermic entered into the side of Enright's other thigh where Parker fired 100,000 units of aqueous penicillin-G. Enright moaned slightly.

“That's it, Jack.”

Parker floated away from Enright who was still strapped to the berth where he hung in half a space suit.

“Hope so, Will. I'm fresh out of legs.”

“Oh? I can still roll you over, you know.”

“Haven't been at sea that long, have you?” Enright managed to grin inside his damp mask.

“Not quite yet,” Parker smiled as he stuffed the used towels and the empty syringes into Kit Five. He shoved the kit into a berth.

“Okay, Jack. Let's get the upper torso off. Can you help?”

Enright said nothing as he raised his heavily suited arms over his face and its new cheesecloth skin.

With a firm tug, Parker pulled Enright out the bottom waistring of the upper torso. The copilot floated in his liquid coolant garment from which floated water tubes and biomedical sensor cables.

“Feels much better,” Enright sighed.

Parker directed one of Enright's bare hands to a ceiling handrail. With his eyes closed, the copilot closed his fingers around the handhold.

Parker coasted away toward the forward lockers. He fetched a set of baggy trousers from the forward lockers. These he pulled over the legs of Enright's long woolies. Shoulder straps from these pants held them in place upon the groggy flier.

The AC was worried about losing his shipmate to incipient shock. So he had dressed Enright in anti-G pants which looked like fisherman's waders.

During re-entry when Shuttle's return to Earth subjects the crew to deceleration forces of three times the normal force of gravity, all crewmen wear the rubberized, anti-G trousers. The pants have inflatable air bladders in the legs. Air pressure within the tightly inflated pants keeps re-entry's G load from causing the pooling of fluid in the crewman's legs. This loss of upper-body fluid could cause fainting during the critical approach to landing after prolonged weightlessness and its associated degeneration of blood vessels. The same inflatable pants would keep Enright's upper body from losing precious fluid as his burned face leaked plasma protein from damaged cell membranes.

“Thirsty, Jack?”

“No. Not yet, Skipper. I don't feel shocky. Just tired. And like I have God's gift to sunburns.”

“I'll say. Let's get your legs blown up. Can you hang on here for a minute?”

“I'll be here.”

Parker could hear in Enright's voice that he was coming around.

“Don't go 'way,” Parker called as he went topside through the ceiling access hole. He soared to the front of the flightdeck cockpit. There, he locked tinted sunshades over the six forward windows of the cabin. He would protect Enright from the sun. Although quickly setting, the sun shone hotly through the windows from low in the western sky. The cabin looked dusky with the shades over the windows. He did not bother to darken the two rear overhead windows or the two rear bulkhead windows facing the payload bay. These windows were already in shadows from Endeavor's hull.

“Okay to come aboard, Cap'n?”

Parker cast a surprised look toward the floor hatch behind the copilot's empty right seat.

“Sure,” the AC replied with a faked, matter-of-fact voice.

“About done sunning yourself and takin' it easy, Jack?”

Parker watched the cheesecloth head float up from below. Enright carried the squeeze bottle of salty, electrolyte soup.

“Can't party all the time, Skip.”

“Reckon not, Jack.”

Enright strapped himself into his right seat. He plugged his outer pants into the cabin's portable oxygen system located on the back of each flightseat. The anti-G trousers slowly inflated to twice the size of Enright's thin legs.

The AC floated behind his own, empty seat. Looking over the center console, he studied his partner with the grossly swollen, masked face. The AC's face betrayed his concern.

“Now my legs look like yours, Will.” Jack Enright was back.

“How you like it?” the AC smiled as he strapped into his left seat.

“I'd
really
rather be in Philadelphia.”

“Me, too, Number One.”

Out the tinted front windows, LACE hovered to the left of Parker's seat and Soyuz flew 50 yards off Enright's right shoulder. All but a wisp of debris had disappeared from the vaporized Chinese spacecraft.

“Down to just the three of us?” Enright asked.

“Yep.”

“Wonder how many pilots she carried?”

“Don't want to know, Jack . . . Drink some water.”

Enright pulled a squeeze bottle from beneath his seat and he forced the drinking tube between his painful lips behind his moist gauze mask.

“Endeavor: Configure AOS Dakar at 05 hours, 01 minute. Sunset momentarily. How's Jack?”

“Lookin' like the creature from the black lagoon, Flight. But we're both on station forward. Sunshade up on the windows forward.”

“Real fine, Will. Do you have your visors on and locked?”

“Ah, negative, Colorado. Jack couldn't get into his with a crowbar. And I couldn't hear him if I wore mine. So we're a bit naked up here. Both of us still sweatin' in the liquid coolant skivvies.” The AC spoke into the twin lip mikes of his CCA Snoopy hat.

Outside, the sun was flattening upon the western horizon orange and hazy. With Shuttle rightside-up and her nose parked toward the northeast, the low sun shone into Parker's leftmost forward window. The tinted shades cast a blue pall upon the cockpit. The Colonel's right hand reached up to Panel Overhead-Six above the forward windows. He turned five knobs which dimmed the floodlights of the cockpit and brightened the red back-lights of the instrument meters and pushbuttons. In a minute, the sun was gone.

“Pullin' the sunshades now.”

The crewmen removed the six window shades to reveal the moist black sky west of the African coast. Outside, Soyuz 100 meters away had trained her intensely white arc lights upon LACE 50 meters from Endeavor's port side.

“Ivan is illuminating the target again. Any air-to-ground from him yet?”

“Negative, Will. Not a word.”