Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (11 page)

           
It was some
two hours later when Ann peered out the forward windscreens into the gray-black
void, but all she could see were a few stars too bright to be obscured by the
brilliance of earth. “Colonel Sontag, you must have X-ray vision if you can see
that station out there.”

           
“It’s still
very faint,” he said, “but it’s there. Mostly it looks like another star.”

           
She shook
her head. “I’m going back to the aft console.” The pilots nodded and continued
scanning their instruments.

           
Marty
Schultz had deployed the shuttle’s remote manipulator arm and had scanned space
for a few minutes with the arm’s closed-circuit camera at high magnification,
but it wasn’t until
Enterprise
was ten miles away from the station that he spotted it.

           
“It looks
like a toy, like a Tinker Toy, from here,” Ann said.

           
“When they
first launched it they treated it like one,” Schultz told her. “People, some
people, called it a boondoggle, big waste of money that could better be spent
carpeting the Pentagon hallways. A lot of us were afraid it would end up like
Skylab—a blaze in the sky and a crash to earth.”

           
Kevin
Baker, still trying to get his balance in this world of microgravity,
maneuvered beside Page and Schultz at the aft crew station, saying, “I remember
that too well, and the argument over who owned the space station. The
U.S.
taxpayer spent billions launching it and a conglomerate of scientists, some of
them not even from the
U.S.
,
managed to put a clamp on any military research aboard it. You would have
thought the station was a broken-down tenement building the way they talked
about it. The Silver Sausage... the space
suppository...
remember
?”

           
Ann nodded,
straining for a better view of the station. “But this Brigadier General
Saint-Michael apparently did a good job changing people’s minds.”

           
“That he
did,” Schultz said, “and everyone’s taken the station very seriously since.
That toy, Ann, weighs in at about five hundred
tons.
What you see is the product of twenty shuttle sorties over
four years, plus another dozen unmanned supply rockets. Thirty billion dollars
worth. The world’s most expensive condo, you might say....”

           
As
Enterprise
drew
closer to the station more details could be seen, and on the screen Ann pointed
to a tiny dot just below the station.

           
“Is that
your Thor system?” Ann asked Baker.

           
“Sure is,
ten nonnuclear interceptor rockets, a laser decoy discriminator and a radar
detector and tracker. The Thor is our first antiballistic missile defense
system in thirty years. Simple, lost cost,
and
effective—if I do say so myself....”

           
Attention
was soon diverted to the TV screen, filling with the image of the station, and
the crew was ordered back to their seats for docking. Schultz stowed the camera
and remote manipulator arm back into its cradle in the cargo bay and shut down
the aft console. “Crew ready for docking,” he reported.

           
Within a
mile of the station the digital autopilot had reduced
Enterprise
's
forward speed to one thousand feet
per minute. A thin laser beam from the space station lanced out toward
Enterprise
,
toward the two sensors on the forward
and rear ends of the cargo bay. The forward sensor was a large lens that
focused the laser alignment beam onto the aft sensor. The digital autopilot
would make tiny corrections to the shuttle’s course whenever the laser beam
drifted off the aft sensor, in this way aligning
Enterprise
with
the docking tunnel on
Silver
Tower
.

           
With
near-magical precision the computers controlling the
Enterprise
's
reaction-control system thrusters positioned
the docking adapter in the cargo bay within a few feet of
Silver
Tower
’s docking tunnel, which was
then maneuvered over the adapter, and the two docking rings locked and sealed
into place. Next an open-latticework support beam was extended and locked into
cleats in
Enterprise
's
cargo bay. The support beam
strengthened the union between the two spacecraft, effectively making them one
unit. Finally the connecting tunnel between the docking module and
Enterprise
's
docking adapter was pressurized to two
atmospheres and checked.

           
“Adapter
leak check is good, Armstrong,” Colonel Sontag reported to the docking officers
on
Silver
Tower
.
“Docking complete.
Over.”

           
“Checked
over here,
Enterprise
from the docking officer aboard
Silver
Tower
. “Welcome aboard. You’re
clear for crew transfer.”

           
“Roger.
Thanks.” On interphone Sontag announced, “Docking complete, crew. End of the
line.” Ann, Baker and Schultz sent up congratulations to
Enterprise
's
commander and pilot, but Colonel Will
waved them off.

           
“The
autopilot did most of it, and frankly it was a lousy job. I could’ve gotten us
right on the mark.” Will then directed shutdown of most of
Enterprise
's
systems and began preparation for
transfer to the station, with Sontag and the rest of the crew moving downstairs
to the transfer area on the middeck.

           
Colonel
Will pressurized the airlock and air space, and he and Sontag checked the
pressure readouts. “Sixteen p.s.i. in both areas,” Will said, undogged the
first hatch leading to the airlock, then rechecked a second pressure gauge for
the airlock itself. Satisfied, he opened the heavy steel door to the airlock.

           
“See you,”
he said, checked a POS mask and rebreather in the airlock and strapped on the
face mask. Sontag closed the airlock chamber door and sealed it tight, and Will
checked the pressurization gauge leading from the airlock to the transfer
tunnel, then undogged the upper airlock hatch. There was a slight hiss of
equalizing air but no sign of leaks or damage.

           
“Welcome
aboard, Colonel Will,” a voice said above him. Will looked up through the
transfer tunnel to see a youngish Space Command airman smiling down at him.

           
Will
unstrapped his face mask and glared at the technician. “You’re supposed to wait
until I open my airlock hatch, John.”

           
“I was
right behind you, sir,” Airman John Montgomery told him. “Believe me, Colonel,
I’m not going to let myself get sucked into your cargo bay.”

           
“One day
that’s going to happen.” Will turned and unlocked the airlock hatch leading to
Enterprise
's
crew compartment. He wasn’t smiling.
“Clear for transfer, crew.”

           
One by one
the crew of
Enterprise
floated up and out of the airlock and into
Silver
Tower
’s spacious docking-control
module. Sontag, the last one leaving
Enterprise
,
latched and double-checked each hatch behind
himself
;
Enterprise
would now be sealed up and apart from the station.

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
It was a long thirty-foot journey
along the four-foot diameter transfer tunnel. The crew members were met at the
other end by technicians who helped them through and gave them sneakers with
stiff Velcro “hooks” on the soles.

           
A man with
gold braid on his lapel stepped forward. “Welcome to
Silver
Tower
. I’m Colonel Jim Walker,
vice-commander and deputy commander for operations around here.” He shook hands
with the newcomers, Ann and Baker. “I hope these pirates gave you a good ride.”

           
Walker
was another one of the so-called typical space-soldiers Ann had met in the
Space Command, which was responsible for all space- based
defense
.
He looked young for his
rank,
thin but not too tall,
with a nearly bald head. His manner and appearance suggested quiet
intelligence, not the old-fashioned domineering military presence—a scientist
or engineer instead of a soldier. Most of the members of Space Command, drawn
from the ranks of the military’s scientific elite, were like that. In college
they might have been labeled “computer weenies”—on
Silver
Tower
they were commanders,
leaders, innovators. To Ann he said, “I’m looking forward to working with you
on your project.”

           
“Thanks to you
I have a project to work on. I’ve heard it was you who applied the pressure to
finally get the Skybolt project approved.”

           
“Thanks,
but General Saint-Michael is the mover and shaker around here. He was the one
who set things going.”

           
“Is General
Saint-Michael—?”

           
“You’ll be
meeting him soon. He’s been occupied most of the day with repairs on our main
data-link transmitter.”

           
“I hope
it’s not serious,” Baker said.

           
“No, but it
needed the general’s direct attention. He’s like that. Nothing’s too big or too
small.” The deputy commander led Ann and Baker through the small docking module
and then through an overhead hatch. At first it seemed all the eight main
pressurized modules on
Silver
Tower
were the same small size as the docking-tunnel connector or at most a larger
version of the spartan working interior of the space shuttle. When Ann entered
the first module, she found out she was wrong.

           
It was
spacious and well lit. Two senior officers and four technicians hovered in
front of control panels, sipping coffee and exchanging reports. Green plants
and flowers—natural carbon-dioxide scrubbers—sat Velcroed to pedestals around
the module.

           
“This is
the command module,” Colonel Walker said as the group floated up through the
small connector into the module. “All communications, earth surveillance and
station operations are conducted here. The general’s work area is over there.”
General Saint-Michael’s work area, Ann noticed, was different from everyone
else’s in at least one respect—it had a chair. The men who served under the
general were expected to stand, anchored to the deck by their Velcro sneakers
or attached to variable-height work platforms. Fuzzy Velcro loops were
everywhere—on the ceilings, walls, floors, even on instrument panels.

           
Baker
pointed to the module’s “ceiling.” “Instrument panels on the ceiling, Colonel?
Why?”

           
Walker
turned to Baker. “Tell me, Mr. Baker—which is the ceiling? Is that the ceiling
...?”

           
Walker
detached himself from the Velcro “floor” and floated up to the ceiling,
hovering a foot above Ann’s head. He anchored his feet to Velcro footholds
molded into the “side” instrument panels. “Or is this the wall? In space, and
especially
on
Silver
Tower
, conventional up and down
don’t exist—they mean something else. If we create a module with five hundred
square feet of earth-conventional floor space, we can in effect triple that
amount by mounting some instrument panels on the ceiling. The cost of building
materials is cut by more than half. A few years ago we had a new technician on
board who got so confused about which way was up—literally—he got real sick.
This was back when
Silver
Tower
wasn’t any more than two tin cans. He’d gotten up a few hours earlier than
anyone else and was walking on the walls for two hours before realizing that
the floor was down there. We’ve now made a yellow-colored Velcro loop carpet
for the ‘floor’ to end the confusion. Anyway, we keep monitoring and auxiliary
controls up here. Someone using them keeps out of the way of people using the
conventional control panels and we double or triple our work space. It all
takes some getting used to but after a few days you’ll be swinging around the
cabin like you were born here.”

           
Walker
detached himself from the ceiling, floated back to the deck and motioned to a
group of two technicians and an officer manning a large.
multiscTeened
unit that looked like an air traffic controller's console.
'The
SBR.
space-based
radar, operators are there.
They scan preprogrammed areas of the
Soviet Union
and
other countries for any missile-launch activity as we fly over them. The radars
on
Silver
Tower
can detect and track any object larger than three thousand pounds at almost any
altitude—even on the ground or below the surface of the water. We also can tie
in with geosynchronous infrared satellites for missile-launch detection. Right
now the SBR is tied into Dr. Baker’s Thor missile garage tethered beneath the
station. Eventually we’ll be in direct control with and have control of
hundreds of Thor missile garages in earth orbit, directing the strategic
missile defense of the whole damn northern hemisphere.”