Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 28

“I have completely covered the upper portion of the ship’s hull and found no other holes,” Hui radioed to Stetson. “I am not sure where those other bullets went, but they did not penetrate the hull on the upper half.”

“That’s good news,” Bill replied. He had worked his way around the bottom half of the Orion twice and had found only the one major hole that he had already patched from the inside. “Something on the inside must’ve stopped the bullets, then. One of them likely being Dr. Xu’s leg.”

“Yes, you are most likely correct on that one,” Hui agreed. “I can work my way down to you and offer a hand.”

The damage assessment done, Hui offered once again to stay outside and help, but Bill patted the kit attached to his side and smiled.

“You go on and get back inside. I can handle this.” He motioned for her to go back into the Orion so they could close the main hatch.

“Very well, Captain.” She complied reluctantly, as far as he could tell.

Stetson watched as she made her way back to and then through the hatch. Once Tony had assured him that she was safely back inside and that the hatch was closed, he was ready to begin making the repair.

Outside and on the bottom of the Orion he studied the hole in the heat shield. Bill found the damage just below the handholds he’d used on the previous EVA, and he was now in a position to repair the damaged heat shield. Looking momentarily out into space, he could see the beautiful blue planet that was the Earth looming ahead of them. Stetson thought of his wife and children back home worrying about him, and he felt guilty. He was sure they now knew about the shooting, and he didn’t like the fact that in addition to all the fears that were normal when an astronaut went into space, they would now have to worry about a crazy person shooting him.

Pulling himself back to the present, he continued moving around the periphery of the hole on the bottom of the Orion. The damage from the bullet was obvious. In the otherwise perfectly smooth dark gray surface of the heat shield was a jagged hole at least three inches in diameter. He hoped the patch kit worked as planned.

“Houston, I see the damage. Can you see it with the suit camera?”

“Bill, we see it. It looks nasty from here. Can you repair it?”

“I think so. But it will use up the kit.”

“Understood. Our engineers here agree.”

“Stetson out.”

Bill then used a clip to fasten his tether to an anchor point close to where he needed to make the repair so that he would not waste valuable time inadvertently floating away.

In the Orion, the air pressure was restored. Chow maneuvered through the cabin and toward the primary control panel, noting that there were still far too many orange alerts.

“Interesting.” Hui popped her faceshield up and scanned the control panels. “Dr. Chow, what do all the orange indicators mean?”

“Well, uh, hmm…” Chow wasn’t one hundred percent certain himself, so he took a closer look. “Those are systems the computer has flagged as being not quite right or in need of monitoring by the crew. They would be red if there was a serious malfunction. Orange just means that they need checking and monitoring. Personally, I like green.”

“Green is a nice color.” Hui smiled.

Chow began checking each system just as he had been trained while Hui watched the video feed from Stetson’s spacesuit as he repaired the damage caused by the bullet piercing the ship’s heat shield. Chow occasionally glanced up from his work to note Stetson’s progress as well.

Repairing the damage took Stetson a little over an hour. It wasn’t as simple as taking a caulking gun and squirting goop into the hole and letting it dry. Back in the space shuttle days, it was discovered that leaving a “bump” on the surface of the heat shield that protruded more than three millimeters above the surface could cause extreme frictional forces that would rip the patch right off or cause it to superheat and therefore burn off. The heat shield on the Orion was a bit more forgiving, as it was a reentry capsule and not a flying surface, but the models had shown that large bumps on the surface would increase the heating and might be detrimental to the patch materials. In other words, rough patch jobs could be bad. Bill did his best to be meticulous about the process, but it wasn’t easy in an EVA suit with those bulky gloves. On more than three occasions during the patching process, he cursed the spacesuit designers and muttered that mankind would never make it to Mars if they didn’t invent a better suit.

“Tony, this is Bill.” Stetson’s voice came over the ship-to-ship radio channel.

“Bill, this is Tony. Go ahead.”

“I’ve done all I can do out here. According to my watch, we haven’t got that long before we have to jettison the Altair and start our aerocapture checklists and procedures. I’m on my way in.”

“Okay, Bill. I’ll get everybody faceshields down and buttoned up so we can depressurize and get you back inside.”

“Roger that. I’ll just hang out here until you give me the word.”

“Got it. Preparing to cycle the hatch.”

Turning away from the control panel, Chow motioned for Captain Hui to button up and help Bill.

He followed Hui to the hatch and showed her how to open it once the depressurization was complete. With his spacesuit donned, and confident that Hui could handle opening a hatch, Chow turned back to the command console and rapidly completed the checklist. He had just initiated the cabin depressurization when one of the many orange warning lights turned bright red. Chow noted the warning and touched the screen to bring up more information about the alarm. He didn’t like what he read.

He went back to the beginning of the depressurization sequence and began again—much more rapidly this time. The result was the same. The red warning light remained stubbornly lit, and the cabin did not depressurize.

Chow was beginning to sweat in his suit, and his heart rate began to rise. No, no, no, this can’t happen now! he thought to himself.

“Bill, this is Tony. We’ve got another problem.”

“Our luck, huh?” Stetson replied. “I was starting to wonder. I’ve been at the door for a few minutes waiting on you to open her up. What’s the problem?”

“I can’t open the door. I started the depressurization sequence, and then the status board lit up like a Christmas tree. I’ve been through it twice now, and all I can tell from the fault tree is that we can’t depressurize to let you in. I don’t know if the problem is mechanical or if it’s just a sensor somewhere.”

“How much time do we have before you have to separate from the lander?”

“A little more than an hour.”

“Well, that’s just great. I sure as hell don’t want to ride out an aerocapture from here.”

“Bill, unless we get this door open within the next thirty minutes or so, you won’t be able to come inside at all.”

Chow activated the voice link to mission control and brought them into the discussion, hoping against hope that one of the many NASA engineers would come up with something that would allow them to bring his friend inside before it was too late.

Chow ran through the entire procedure one more time with the same result—the red light would simply not go away.

“Houston, there has to be something else we can try,” Tony said and tried not to sound desperate.

“Okay, Mercy I. We’ve got another fix we want you to give a go.”

“Roger that, Houston. Let’s have it.” Tony had high hopes that the engineers back at NASA would figure this out. They always did.

“It looks like we’ve got several circuits interrupted, probably due to damaged systems, but, nonetheless, we aren’t going to trick the computers to depressurize the cabin. So, what we need to try is to cycle the inner docking hatch of the Orion. And then blow the Altair hatch out.”

“Can we do that with the Altair attached to the Orion?” Bill interjected.

“No, Bill, we can’t. So, we’ll have to attempt this when we jettison the Altair for the aerocapture maneuver. The timeline will be tight,” Houston responded.

“Hang in there, Bill. We’ll start prepping for this procedure.” Tony did his best to assure his commander, but he wasn’t all that confident himself.

“Tony,” Hui said vocally and not through the radio. “If the computer will not let us open the hatch because we’re not depressurized, then why will it let us undock the Altair?”

“The engineers down at Houston want us to give it a try. And, frankly, I’m not giving up on Bill without trying something.”

“Understood. Whatever I can do to help, just let me know.” Hui nodded sincerely at Tony, but he could see the concern, fear, and lack of optimism in her face.

“Bill, this is Tony. I’ve got to start the entry procedure checklists, and the engineers have a mile-long sequence of breaker flipping that I have to do before we undock.”

“Roger that, Tony. Do what needs to be done.” Stetson, not sounding at all like a man who had just been handed a death sentence, added, “Tony, one more thing I want you to understand.”

“What’s that, Bill?”

“No matter what happens out here, our first obligation is to get this crew and this ship safely home. Understood?”

“Understood.” Tony didn’t like the sound of that.

“Good. Get to it.”

“Yes, sir.”