Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (46 page)

           
“Just be
ready in case Ann needs help.”

           
“Rog.”

           
“Ken,
you’ll follow me into the station,” he told Horvath. “The environmental and
electrical controls are easier to work than a shuttle is, so you shouldn’t have
too much problem figuring them out. We’ll try to get solar power on, followed
by fuel-cell power. If you can find and patch up any holes in the command module,
it’ll make our work easier. Otherwise we’ll just try to reactivate the
station’s attitude and environmental system.... Jon, you take care of
America
and try to help anyone out that needs help. The PAM installation has priority.
After that, refueling and repairs. Keep us advised of any messages from Falcon
Control until we get communications going on
Silver
Tower
.”

           
“Right.”

           
Thirty
minutes later, they had moved to within a few hundred yards of
Silver
Tower
.

           
For a few
long moments the sight of the station in the distance dampened everyone’s
enthusiasm.... The damage was worse than any of them had imagined.

           
The
station’s spin had decreased in velocity but it was gyrating on at least three
or four different axis at once, like some sort of unearthly multilegged monster
with dozens of different appendages reaching out to grab the spaceplane and
devour it. Ionization from frequent scrapes with earth’s upper atmosphere had
created a multicolored, undulating aura of energy around the station. Parts of
the central open-lattice keel glowed like hot embers, and clouds of debris and
frozen water, gases, and fuel hovered everywhere. Several large panels from the
SBR arrays and solar collectors were missing or damaged.

           
Hampton
looked uneasily at Saint-Michael. “Do you think it’s safe to approach the
station with all that junk and sparking out there?”

           
“No. But
we’ve got to do it.”

           
“Sir,
wait.”
Hampton
turned in his seat
to face Saint-Michael. “The ‘ifs’ are really starting to pile up here. We’ll be
driving right into the middle of all that debris and heat ionization. Then
we’ve got to try to match the moves the station is making.... One mistake and
we’ve got another dead ship.”

           
“You knew
the risks, Jon. We all did....”

           
Hampton
paused, considered. Finally he shrugged and said, “Okay, General. We’ll do it
your way. Let’s stick our noses into that beehive.”

           
Saint-Michael
nodded, wrapped a hand around the manual control stick.

           
“Here we
go....”

           
He had
applied forward thrust for exactly two-point-one seconds when a terrific
bang
shook
America
from bow to stem. He glanced toward
Hampton
as they checked the computer monitors for damage indications.

           
“Pretty big
bees,”
Hampton
said.

           
Saint-Michael,
ignoring him, took a tighter grip on the control stick and nudged it forward
into the swirling mass ahead.

           
America
provided no visibility out the cockpit windows except for the commander and
pilot, so the others were spared seeing the source of the explosions, rumbles
and flashes of light and heat that threatened to tear their ship apart during
the final docking with
Silver
Tower
.

           
The cargo
bay temperature had risen to the danger zone when they moved only two hundred
yards closer to the crippled station. “Cargo bay overtemp warning,”
Hampton
reported.

           
Saint-Michael
promptly overrode the preprogrammed command— which had been to jettison the
fuel tank—and chose “EMERGENCY COOLANT SHUNT” instead, opening a manifold from
the scramjet intake coolant system that allowed supercooled hydrogen to flow
from
America's
fuel tanks through to
the radiators. It was a risky choice— the tiniest leak in the radiators would
have allowed the hydrogen to be ignited by the superheated ionized particles
streaming past the space- plane from the station—but there was no explosion and
the temperature moved away from the danger zone.

           
Saint-Michael’s
fingers moved over the control buttons on the stick, switching between
translate—straight-line—and rotate thrusts.
Because it took
less time to rotate in one direction than it did to reverse directions,
America
literally corkscrewed its way toward the docking port.
They
had been forced to hit smaller pieces of debris to avoid impact with larger
ones. Debris breaking off or exploding from the station didn’t always “fall” or
disappear: it seemed to hang around the station in a dangerous orbit of its
own.

           
After nearly thirty minutes
America
was hovering a mere ten feet from the docking adapter, held in
place by the spaceplane’s intricate station-keeping computers.
But ten
feet was still ten feet too much. “We can’t go any further,
General
,”
Colonel Hampton said. “We’ve got the station-keeping routine running as precise
as the system allows.”

           
Horvath
spoke up. “I’ll go to the docking module and—”

           
“No. I’ll
go,” Saint-Michael said.

           
“I’d advise
against it, General,”
Hampton
said.
“Your dysbarism.
...”

           
“I’ve got
to do it sooner or later, Jon, and I’m the best qualified to check out the station.
I’ve been prebreathing oxygen for the whole flight so I should be okay. You’ve
got the ship.” Saint-Michael waited until
Hampton
had adjusted his manual controls and situated himself, then unstrapped and
floated back toward the airlock.

           
Ann reached
out and stopped him. “If you feel... if you get in any trouble, get back.”

           
He nodded,
moved past her.

           
It took him
five minutes to get into a spacesuit and backpack. Ann prepared to suit up
after he exited the airlock, was watching him through the observation port on
the chamber door as he began to depressurize the airlock. Suddenly, just as he
moved the AIRLOCK DEPRESS switch from position five to zero, he quickly punched
it back to five.

           
“Jason?”

           
He held up
a hand toward her but seemed to be shaking his head trying to clear his vision.

           
“Switch
back to PRESSURIZE,” she called to him.

           
“I’m all
right.” Saint-Michael slowly stood erect, shaking his head as if recovering
from a fall. “It’s gone...” He reached for the depressurization control again—

           
“No,” Marty
said quickly. “You can’t do it, General—”

           
“I’m all
right.” He waited a few moments, then switched the depressurization knob to
zero. A few minutes later he gave Ann and Marty a thumbs-up and undogged the
upper airlock hatch. Ann was repressurizing the airlock as soon as the general
had locked the hatch after exiting.

           
“Bad news,”
Saint-Michael said over his comm link. “The docking tunnel is unusable—the
whole docking module is about ready to break off the station. Everyone has to
EVA.”

           
Saint-Michael
scanned the spaceplane. The view of
America
against the chaos around the station
was quite a sight.... The gray-black spaceplane seemed to add a sense of power
and strength to the damaged station it hovered near. He could see tiny puffs of
gas escaping from the maneuvering jets on
America
's
nose and tail as the spaceplane
maintained its tenuous position beside the station.

           
The scene
looked normal if he concentrated on just the station and the spaceplane, but
when he tried to look at earth the view became chaos again.

           
With
America
in near-perfect synchronization with the station, there was no apparent
movement between them—but
earth
appeared to be spinning all around them, making one revolution over Saint-Mi-
chael’s head every minute. At first it was disorienting and he had to fight off
the “leans”—his eyes telling him he was standing still, his head and body
spinning and oscillating in reference to earth. It was like being on a crazy
roller coaster with one’s eyes closed.

           
“Be careful
when you step outside—the ride out here is a wild one. I don’t see any major
damage to
America
.
Ann, I’m going to start unstowing the
PAM boosters. I’ll attach one, you get the other.”

           
“Roger. I’m
a minute from EVA.”

           
Saint-Michael
made his way carefully along
America
's
spine toward the open cargo bay, his
attention continually drawn to the damage on the station. The most serious was
on the keel, especially the SBR antennas.

           
“The
Russians did a job on the SBR control-junction boxes,” he said. “It looks like
we’ll have to splice all of them but I can’t be sure at this distance. One or
two of the arrays might be intact.”

           
He
continued down to the cargo bay and maneuvered beside one of the PAM booster
engines, removed restraining pins on the cargo bay attach-points.

           
“Both PAMs
are unpinned.”

           
“Copy,
General,” Marty Schultz said. Saint-Michael looked up as
America
's
remote manipulator arm rose out of
its launch stowage cradle and the tiny closed-circuit TV camera aimed itself at
him.
“Ready to eject the aft PAM.”

           
The general
maneuvered back a few feet away from the booster. “Go.” With a puff of gas the
large booster slid out of its attachment sleeve and lifted slowly out of the
cargo bay. As it rose up before him Saint-Michael maneuvered himself up and
across to a reinforced mounting bracket on the side of the booster, then jetted
forward until he could grasp the booster. He pulled himself into the booster
and latched the front of his MMU to the bracket. His head was just above the
top of the booster.

 
         
“I’ve got the first PAM,” he said.
“Ann, I’m heading along the keel toward the spaceplanes’ nose to attach the
booster. You take yours toward
America
's
tail to the keel. Mount your PAM
perpendicular to
America
's
alignment to the keel; I’ll mount mine parallel to
America
.
Maybe we can stop the spinning at the
same time we boost the station away.”

           
“Copy.”

           
“General,
this is
Hampton
. We’re at
seventy-five miles altitude. Cargo bay temperature is back in the danger zone.”

           
“Go to EMER
on the radiator cooling system again.”

           
“I did. It
came down but it’s heading back up again. We’ve run out of time. I suggest we
jettison the fuel cell and pull out.”

           
“Forget
it.... Ann, where are you?”

           
He saw her
emerge from the upper airlock hatch before she could answer. “On my way.” He
passed her a few moments later as he headed out past
America
's
steeply angled cockpit windows, over
the pointed flat nose around the maneuvering jets, and down and along the
open-lattice keel.

           
“We’ve got
to hurry, Marty, we’re going to need you and Horvath out here. Now.”

           
“We’re both
in the airlock suiting up,” Marty told him. “Should be out in four minutes.”

           
It took Ann
and Saint-Michael ten minutes more to attach the boosters to the keel. Meanwhile
Schultz and Horvath had exited the airlock. Marty took the last MMU
—
America
carried only three—and helped Ann attach her booster to the keel. Horvath
without an MMU but using tethers and safety clips, made his way up through the
damaged docking tunnel and into
Silver
Tower
’s docking module.

           
“My booster
is secured,” Saint-Michael reported. “Ann?”

           
“Just one
minute more and—”

           
A gasp from Horvath.
He had come across the grisly scene
inside the docking module where seven of the dead space command crewmen lay. He
tried to blot it out, knew he never would. A few moments later he announced,
“General, I’m in the connecting tunnel. It’s depressurized, but the Skybolt
module is showing pressurized. And I can see lights on in the galley module and
in Skybolt. I see some damage, but it looks minor—”