Flight Of The Old Dog

THE SPACE SHUTTLE, ATLANTIS

They were in business again.

Navy Commander Richard Seedeck prepared his spacesuit for his upcoming EVA, extravehicular activity-his space walk. The forty-two-year-old veteran astronaut, now on his second Shuttle mission, was having the time of his life.

Seedeck had just returned from Atlantis' flight deck, where he had been pre-breathing pure oxygen for the past hour. He was now in the airlock, smoothly but quickly putting on his equipment. Jerrod Bates, a civilian defense contractor on board Atlantis as an expert advisor and engineer, watched Seedeck put on his suit, marveling at the speed with which he dressed.

It always took Bates twice as long to accomplish the same task.

There was nothing like being in space, Seedeck thought, and nothing like being on board the Space Shuttle. No one on board was a passenger-everyone was a crewman, a necessity. Each was busy seventeen hours a day.

And there were fewer "mice and monkey" research flights, too. Like this one. This one was top secret all the way, all heavy-duty military hardware. Even the usual press speculation about the payload was nonexistent-or it had been effectively quashed.

"What are you smiling about, Commander?" Bates finally asked.

"I'm smiling at how good this feels, Bates," Seedeck said, talking through the clear plastic facemask he was wearing. He finished donning the lower torso part of his spacesuit and unbuckled the upper part from a holder in the airlock. Bates reached out to hold the bulky suit for Seedeck to climb into, but that was unnecessary-Seedeck merely let go and weightlessness held the suit exactly where Seedeck had left it.

"I've been doing that for four days now," Bates said through his faceplate. "I forget-nothing falls up here."

"I still do it sometimes," Seedeck admitted. "But I've learned to use it. "And he did-Seedeck had his helmet, gloves, his "Snoopy's hat" communication headset and his POS, his portable oxygen system, all floating around the airlock within easy reach.

In one fluid motion, Seedeck held his breath, removed his POS face mask, and slipped into the upper torso part of his suit. If Seedeck started breathing cabin air, he would reintroduce deadly nitrogen into his bloodstream and risk dysbar ism, nitrogen narcosis, the "bends"-Bates had also been pre breathing oxygen for the same reason.

Still holding his breath, he attached several umbilicals from the huge life support backpack to his suit and connected the two halves of his suit together, nodding as both he and Bates heard a distinct series of clicks as the unions and interlinks joined.

Stu Bates couldn't believe the brush-cut veteran he was watching. It had been well over two minutes, and Seedeck was still holding his breath and still acting like a kid in a candy store.

Seedeck locked on both gloves, put on his "Snoopy's hat' communications headset, locked his helmet in lace, and watched the pressure gauge on his chest indicators as the suit pressure gradually increased to 28 kilopascals. When the suit was pressurized and Seedeck had double-checked that there were no leaks, he finally released his breath with a whoosh.

"I don't believe it," Bates said as he put on a mid-deck cabin headset to talk to Seedeck. "You went nearly six minutes without breathing.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is after pre-breathing oxygen for an hour," Seedeck asked. "Besides, I've done this once or twice before.

Check my backpack, please?"

"Sure," Bates said, and double-checked the connections and gauges on Seedeck's suit and gave him a thumbs-up. "It's goo d.

"Thanks. Clear the airlock. Admiral, this is Seedeck.

Preparing to depressurize airlock."

"Copy, Dick," the Atlantis' mission commander, Admiral Ben Woods, replied. "Clear any time. "Woods repeated the to Mission Control in Houston five hundred nautical message miles below them.ed the Seedeck turned to the airlock control panel and moved "AIRLOCK DEPRESS SWITCH" to 5, then to 0, and waited for air to be released outside. Three minutes later, Seedeck was exiting the airlock.

It was a sight he would never get used to-the mindboggling sight of the Earth spinning above him, the colors, the detail, the sheer size and spectacular beauty of Planet Earth five hundred miles away. Atlantis was "parked" right over the North Pole, and Seedeck could see the entire Northern Hemisphere-the continents of North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as the North Arctic region and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Clouds swirled around the globe like g Ising strokes of a painter's brush, occasionally knotting and pu the Shuttle's normal as a storm brewed below. Because of his upside-down orientation, Earth would actually be his "sky" during the entire E.V.A. Seedeck closed and locked the airlock hatch, clipped a safety line onto a bracket near the hatch and began working his way hand-over-hand along the steel handholds to where Atlantis' three MMUs, manned maneuvering units, were attached inside the forward bulkhead of the cargo bay. He He inspected one of the bulky, contoured devices, then uncapped it from its mounting harness.

Miming around so his backpack was against the MMU, Seedeck guided himself back against it. He felt his way back with his knees and sides until he heard four distant clicks as the MMU locked itself in place on his backpack.

"MMU in place, Atlantis."copy.

With his safety line still attached, Seedeck made a few test hruster shots then unclipped his safety line from the MMU's tether and moved himself out of the MMU's holder. Pushing gently, he propelled himself away from Atlantis' cargo bay and out into space.

"Clear cargo bay, Atlantis. Beginning MMU tests."

Seedeck knew that Admiral Woods, who would be watching him from one of the eight cameras installed in the cargo bay and remote manipulator arm, was choking down a protest, but Seedeck had an urge he couldn't ignore and this was his time.

A normal MMU maneuverability test consisted of short distances, short-duration movements, all with a safety tether connected. He was supposed to go up a few feet, stop, do a few side-to-side turns and try some mild pitch-ups, all within a few feet of the airlock hatch and manipulator arm in case of trouble.

Not Seedeck. With his safety line disconnected, Seedeck nudged his thruster controls and Performed several loops, barrel rolls, full twists, and lazy-eight maneuvers several meters above the open cargo bay doors.

"MMU maneuvering tests complete, he finally reported as he expertly righted himself above Atlantis'

cargo bay.

"Very Pretty, " Woods asked. "Too bad NASA isn't broadcasting Your Performance in Prime time."

Seedeck didn't care There was only one word to describe this feeling-ecstasy Without a tether line, he was another planetary body in the solar system, orbiting the Sun just like the planets, asteroids, comets, and other satellites around him.

He was subject to the same laws, the same divine guiding force as they were.

Seedeck floated, for a few moments before bringing his thoughts back to the business at hand. He spotted his objective immediately "Inventory in sight, Atlantis. Beginning translation."

They weren't allowed to call it anything but on an open radio channel.

The Atlantis had be "the inventory" six hundred meters away from the huge object, en Parked about e the closest the — it would be a short translation, w re allowed to approach it Y jargon for space-walk, over to it. Seedeck opened a bin in the center of the right side of the cargo bay and extracted the end of the steel cable from its reel mounted on the cargo bay walls, attached the cable to a ring on the left side of his MMU, then maneuvered back into open space and headed for the object floating in the distance.

It was the first time Seedeck had seen it, except of course for photographs and mock-ups. It was a huge steel square, resembling some sort of massive POP-art decoration suspended in space. Each side of the square was a hundred-foot-long, fifteen-foot-square tube. One large rectangular radar antenna, two thousand square feet in area, was mounted on each of two Opposite sides of the square, pointing earthward. Mounted on transmission dish antennas, one Pointing earthward, the Other one Of the other two sides of the square were two smaller data r pointing spaceward. On the remaining side was an eighteeninch diameter cylinder twelve feet long with a large glass eye at one end, also pointing to Earth. Enclosed within heavily armored containers on the four sides of the square were fuel cells, rocket fuel tanks, fuel lines, and other connectors and control units running throughout the steel frame.

Mounted in the center of the square was a huge cylinder, seventy feet in diameter and thirty feet long, armored and covered in shiny aluminum-Atlantis had to move its position now and then to keep the brilliant reflection of the sun from MP ruining its cameras. The spaceward end was closed, but the earthward side had a removable armor cover that revealed five shining, polished walls inside, all empty.

fifteen-foot-diameter tubes, earthlight reflecting around the This was Ice Fortress.

n all the articles, presentations, and drawings, it looked like a Rube Goldberg tinker-toy contraption, but out here in position it looked awesome and as mean as hell. The two large radar antennas, Seedeck knew, were target-tracking radars searching for sea- or land-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. The smaller dish antennas were data-link antennas, one for transmitting steering signals from the platform, the other for receiving target tracking data from surveillance satellites at higher orbits around earth. The large cylinder with the glass eye was an infrared detector and tracker designed to search and follow the exhaust of an I.C.B.M in the boost phase.

The radars could track warhead carriers, "busses," in the midphase or even individual reentering warheads as they plunged through the atmosphere, and it could even differentiate between decoy warheads and the real thing.

The large center cylinder was the "projectile" container, which housed the launch tubes for Ice Fortress' weapons. The entire station was armored in heat-resistant carbon-carbon steel, and smooth surfaces and critical components like the missile cylinder covers and fuel tanks were also covered in reflective aluminum film. Seedeck had heard rumors about all these strange additions to Ice Fortress, but that wasn't his concern.

Seedeck's job today was to make Ice Fortress operational for the first time.

The station was almost a military unit unto itself, Seedeck thought as he completed his inspection of Ice Fortress. The station received missile-launch detection information from orbiting surveillance satellites that would tell Ice Fortress where to look for the missiles.

The station could use either its radars or its heat-sensing infrared detectors to locate and track the rockets as they rose through the atmosphere. Ice Fortress would then launch its "projectiles" against I.C.B.Ms heading toward North America.

Projectiles. Weird name for Ice Fortress weapons, Seedeck thought.

Ice Fortress carried five X-ray laser satellites. The satellites consisted of a main reaction chamber and fifteen lead pulse rods encasing a zinc lasing wire surrounding it, like knitting needles in a bag Of yarn — The reaction chamber was, in essence, a twenty kiloton uranium bomb-roughly equal to the destructive power of the first atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, Ice Fortress sensors would track any attacking intercontinental ballistic missiles and eject the X-ray laser satellites toward them. When the satellite approached the missiles, Ice Fortress would detonate the nuclear warhead within the satellite.

The nuclear explosion would create a massive wave of X-rays that would be focused and concentrated through the Pulse rods. The X-ray energy would create an extremely powerful laser burst that would travel down the rods and out in all directions. Any object within a hundred miles of the satellite would be bombarded into oblivion in milliseconds.

The explosion, would, Of course, destroy the satellite, but the awesome power of the X-ray laser blast would decimate dozens, Perhaps hundreds, of I.C.B.Ms or warheads at on time-a very potent and, if nothing else, cost-effective device.

Seedeck knew a lot about the X-ray laser satellites that would be used with Ice Fortress-the Atlantis carried five of them in her cargo bay, and it would be Seedeck's job to load them into the launch cylinder on Ice Fortress.

Seedeck now attached the cable to the front of the central launch cylinder and turned back toward Atlantis. While Seedeck had been inspecting Ice Fortress, Bates had been putting on his own spacesuit and was just emerging from the airlock when Seedeck completed his inspection.

"Seedeck to Atlantis. The inventory appears OK.No damage. We'll be ready to proceed at any time."

"COPY," Woods replied.

"This is Bates. I copy. "Bates had moved into Atlantis, cargo bay and had begun to unlock the canisters containing the partially disassembled Ice Fortress satellites. His job would be to remove the mountains of packing material from the satellites, then reassemble the component parts. It would not and it would become an actual nuclear device until reassembly, not even be possible to arm it until it was installed in its launch tube on Ice Fortress.

Meanwhile, Seedeck had returned to Atlantis. He maneuvered over to the cable reel and activated its motor, tightening the cable. He double-checked the controls. To avoid breaking the cable, a friction clutch device would keep the cable tight during small shifts in distance or motion between Atlantis and Ice Fortress and an emergency disconnect button would open the pawl on Ice Fortress and release the cable. The release could be activated by Bates from the cargo bay, by Seedeck from Ice Fortress, or by Woods inside Atlantis. Seedeck then attached a plastic saddle onto the cable that rode along it on a Teflon track.

"Guide ready, Atlantis," Seedeck reported. He carefully maneuvered closer above Bates, who was putting the finishing touches on the first X-ray laser satellite. The satellite, its leadzinc rods folded along its sides, was well over ten feet in diameter and, at least on earth, weighed over a ton; Bates handled the massive object like a beachball.

"Ready," Bates said, and unhooked the remaining strap holding the huge satellite from its stowage cradle in the cargo bay. Using a hydraulic lift on the cradle, Bates raised the cradle a few inches, then suddenly stopped it. The satellite continued to float up out of the cargo bay and right into Seedeck's waiting arms.

Seedeck grabbed a handhold on the satellite and steered it easily toward the saddle. As if he had been doing this procedure all his life, he expertly clamped the cylindrical satellite onto the saddle and steadied it along the cable.

Although the satellite was weightless, Seedeck was careful not to forget that the thing still had two thousand pounds' worth of mass to corral-it was hard to get it to stop moving once it got going. He attached a safety line between the saddle and the satellite, and the satellite was secured.

"Heading toward the inventory with number one," Seedeck reported.

Despite himself, Bates had to chuckle at the sight.

Seedeck had maneuvered over the satellite and had sat down on top of it, as if he were sitting on a huge tom-tom drum. He was gripping the satellite with his boots and knees, riding atop five hundred pounds of high explosives and ninety-eight pounds of uranium. One tiny nudge on his right-hand MMU control, and he and the satellite slid along the two-thousand-foot-long cable toward Ice Fortress.

It turned out to be a very efficient way of getting the X-ray laser satellite to the platform. In two minutes, Seedeck and his mount eased their way toward Ice Fortress, carefully slowing to a stop with gradual spurts of the MMU's nitrogen-gas thrusters. As Woods and the crew of Atlantis watched through telephoto closed-circuit cameras, Seedeck jetted away from the satellite, maneuvered underneath it, unhooked the safety strap and latch, and slid the satellite away from the saddle.

Seedeck gave the saddle a push, and it skittered back down the cable to Atlantis.

Using a set of utility arms mounted on the MMU, Seedeck guided the satellite toward the open center launcher. With the ease acquired from several days practicing the maneuver in the huge NASA training pool in Texas, Seedeck guided the device straight into the launcher. Once the laser satellite was inserted a few feet into the tube, a pair of fingerlike clips latched onto the satellite and pulled it back into the tube. Seedeck waited until he felt a faint CLICK as the unobtrusive yet frightening device seated itself against the arming plate at the back of the tube.

"Atlantis, this is Seedeck. Confirm number one latched into position.

"Stand by," Woods told him. He relayed the request to Mission Control.

The answer came back a few moments later.

"Seedeck, this is Atlantis. Control confirms number one in position.

" "Roger, Atlantis. Returning to Orbiter."

It took Seedeck two minutes to return to Atlantis' cargo bay, where Bates had another satellite ready for him. The saddle had slid the two thousand feet all the way back to Atlantis with Seedeck's one little push.

"Seedeck is back in the bay, Admiral," Bates reported.

"Copy. Stand by. "Woods relayed to Houston that no one was near the Fortress.

A few minutes later Woods reported: "Control reports full connectivity.

The inventory is on-line. Good job, Rich. You're hustling out there.

Seedeck nodded as Bates gave him a thumbs-up. The Fortress was now operational. It was America's first strategic defense device, the first of the "Star Wars" weapons-and the first time nuclear weapons had been placed in orbit around the Earth.

"Forty-five minutes from start to finish each," Seedeck asked. "Should be done by dinnertime."

"It's my turn to cook," Admiral Woods asked. "Thermostabilized beef with barbecue sauce, rehydratable cauliflower with cheese, irradiated green beans with mushrooms. Yurn.

"I ordered the quarter-pounder with cheese, Admiral," Seedeck protested. Bates was smiling as he watched the navy commander maneuver the second X-ray laser satellite onto the saddle. Moments later, Seedeck was riding along the cable toward the menacing latticework square in the distance.

"That's the one thing I miss up here," Bates said as he turned back toward unpacking and reassembling the next satellite.

Bates noticed the first light, a bright deep flash of orange that illuminated everything. It got brighter and brighter until it flooded out his eyesight, then turned to bright white. It was as if Seedeck had come back and pushed him in the side, rolling him over, or as if Seedeck had slid the saddle back along the cable and it had come back and hit him in the backpack. Bates sn't wearing an MMU, but he was secured to the forward bulkhead of Atlantis above the airlock hatch by his tether.

There was no sound, no trace of anything actually wrong. It felt… playful, in a way. It was easy to forget you were in space. The work was so easy, everything was so quiet. It felt playful Bates spun upside down and slammed against the left forward corner of the cargo bay. Some invisible hand held him pinned against the bulkhead. The only sound he heard was a hiss over his headset. He tried to blink away the stars that squeezed across his vision.

He opened his eyes. Seedeck and the second X-ray laser satellite were gone.

"Atlantis, this is Bates Nothing. Only a hiss. He found it hard to breathe. The pressure wasn't hurting him, only squeezing him tight-like a strong hug…

"Atlantis…?"

"Seedeck. Rich, answer. "It was Woods. The hiss had subsided, replaced by Admiral Woods on the command radio.

"Atlantis, this is Bates. What's wrong?What-?"

An even brighter flash of light, a massive globe of redorange light that seemed to dull even the brilliant glow of the Earth itself. Bates opened his eyes, and a cry forced itself to his lips.

A brilliant shaft of light a dozen feet in diameter appeared from nowhere. It was as if someone had drawn a thick line of light from Earth across to Ice Fortress. The silvery surface of Ice Fortress' armor seemed to take on the same weird redorange glow, then the beam of light disappeared.

A split-second later a terrific explosion erupted from the open end of the launch cylinder aboard Ice Fortress. A tongue of fire several yards long spit from the earthward side of the station. Sparks and arcs of electricity sputtered from one of the spindly sides, and Ice Fortress started a slow, lazy roll backward, sending showers of sparks and debris flying in all directions. Bates ducked as the cable connecting Atlantis to the space station snapped back and hit the forward bulkhead of the Al cargo bay Bates' voice was a scream. "Commander Seedeck. Oh, Bates heard Admiral Woods report. "We have lost Ice Fortress. Repeat, we have lost Ice Fortress. Bright orange light, then massive explosion.

One crewman missing.

" This is Bates. What's-T' "Bates, this is Admiral Woods. Where are you?You all right?"

Bates reached up with his left hand for one of the handholds on the forward bulkhead, found that the pressure was all but gone.

"I fell into the cargo bay. I'm okay-" Just then a sword of pain stabbed into his skull and he cried out into the open communications panel.

"Bates… T' Bates looked down. The lower part of his left leg was sticking out at a peculiar angle from his body.

"Oh God… I think I broke my leg.

"Can you make it to the airlock?"

"Admiral, this is Connors. I can suit up and-" God… " "Mission Control, this is Atlantis "Not if you haven't been pre-breathing," Woods told him.

"Everyone, make a fast station check, report any damage, then get on the cameras. Find Seedeck. Connors, Matsumo, get a POS and start pre-breathing. Bates, can you make it back to the airlock?" Bates grabbed the handhold. He expected a tough time hauling himself upright but suddenly found he had to keep from flinging himself up out of the cargo bay in his weightless condition. Slowly, he began to haul himself back toward the airlock hatch.

"Bates, what happened out there?"

"God, it looked like… like one of the damn projectiles laser satellites had numerous safety devices to prevent an detonated, " Bates said as he crawled for the airlock. The X-ray accidental nuclear detonation, but the reaction chamber needed a big explosion to start the atomic chain reaction, and those explosives had no safety devices.

Something, some massive burst of energy, had set off the five hundred pounds of high explosives in the satellite's reaction chamber.

Just as he safely reached the airlock, Bates looked back to Ice Fortress. It took him a moment to spot it again, several hundred yards from where it had been a few moments before.

It was lazily, almost playfully spinning away, its radars and antennas and electronic eyes and spindly arms flopping about as if it was waving goodbye. Occasionally a shower of sparks erupted from its surface.

And a trail of debris hovered in its wake, as if it were dropping crumbs on the trail to help find its way back…

Commander Richard Seedeck left nothing. Nothing was left of him.