Siege of Lightning

CHAPTER TWELVE EVA

Inside the airlock between mid-deck and the payload bay, Kessler helped Jones into his Extravehicular Mobility Unit, a self-contained life-support system and anthropomorphic pressure garment that provided not only thermal protection to the astronaut during extravehicular activities, but also protection against micro-meteoroids. Usually astronauts put these suits on without assistance in free space, but Kessler figured Jones could use the help during his first time suiting up in a weightless condition. Three main parts made up the suit — the liner, the pressure vessel, and the life-support system.

Jones didn’t need Kessler’s help to get into the suit liner, similar in appearance to long underwear. The liner was made of stretchable nylon fabric laced with over three hundred feet of plastic tubing to circulate cooling water around Jones’s body.

Jones took a final breath of one-hundred-percent-pure oxygen from a plastic mask. The one-hour pre-breathing procedure prior to EVA was necessary because the normal atmosphere inside the orbiter consisted of seventy-nine percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen at a pressure of 17.4 pounds per square inch, the same as sea level. Jones’s pressure suit, for ease of movement, operated at a reduced pressure of only four PSI with one hundred percent oxygen. Pre-breathing removed all of the nitrogen from Jones’s bloodstream, preventing bubbles of nitrogen from forming and expanding in his blood when his suit’s pressure dropped to four PSI. The nitrogen bubbles could cause nausea, cramps, and sever pain in the joints.

Kessler held on to the legs of the lower torso section of the pressure vessel. Jones dropped into it feet first, guiding his legs into the legs of the multilayered garment that protected the lower half of his body. The outer shell of the garment was made of tough Ortho fabric — a blend of Teflon, woven Nomex, and Kevlar Rip Stop — that served as an abrasion and tear-resistant cover as well as the primary micro-meteoroid shield. The other layers were alternating Aluminized Mylar Film and Dacron Scrim that insulated the wearer from the extreme temperatures of outer space.

Jones held on to the metallic locking ring of the lower torso section of the EMU suit while Kessler grabbed the upper torso section from the rack behind him.

“Ready?”

“You bet.”

Kessler lowered it over Jones almost like a T-shirt. Jones put his arms through the holes until it floated over his shoulders.

“Damn! This is great. One hell of a lot easier than down where the buffalo roam.”

Kessler smiled. Donning this 250-pound beast of a suit on Earth was a formidable task, yet in the weightlessness of space it became simple. Kessler locked the pants and upper torso with the metallic ring connector.

“How does it feel?”

“Awesome.” Jones moved around the air lock and checked the flexibility.

Kessler put on Jones’s gloves and connected them to the arms of the upper torso section. Jones moved his fingers.

“Will do.”

“All right. Turn around. Got to hook you up to the PLSS.” Kessler removed the Primary Life Support System, the backpack unit used to provide oxygen, pressurization, and ventilation to the pressure vessel, from a rack on the air lock wall.

Kessler strapped the PLSS on Jones’s back and then connected a few tubes to the suit. He moved to Jones’s front.

“Time for your Snoopy cap. Stand still.” Kessler put a skullcap on Jones’s head. It held a microphone and earpiece that Jones would use for communication. “And this is in case you get a little thirsty.” He inserted a small in-suit drinking bag filled with water. It had a drinking tube with a suction-actuated valve.

“Thanks, but to tell you the truth, I kinda prefer Jack Daniels.”

“You mean to tell me that you’re nervous?”

“Not really, but right now I think I’d give up my left nut for a cigarette.”

“Sorry, pal. Being here does come with some sacrifices.”

“All right, let’s crank this puppy up.”

Kessler attached the PLSS’s display panel and control unit to the front of Jones’s suit and activated the system. Cool water began to circulate around his body through the plastic tubes of the suit liner. At the same time the system began to spew oxygen for breathing and attempted to pressurize the suit.

He reached for Jones’s helmet, a rigid, one-piece hemisphere made of ultraviolet polycarbonate plastic. He locked the helmet in place, and also the gloves. Now hermetic, the suit quickly pressurized to four PSI, equivalent to roughly 34,000 feet in altitude. One of the major challenges during the design of the shuttle space suit was to make it flexible enough to allow EVA activities without extreme physical exertion. NASA had answered that challenge by stitching tucks in the shoulder, elbow, wrist, knee, and ankle areas.. This allowed Jones’s joints to flex without excessive muscle fatigue.

Kessler elevated the pressure inside Jones’s EMU to eight PSI and shut off the oxygen supply. He waited sixty seconds before reading the digital display on Jones’s chest-mounted control module, and verified that the suit’s pressure had not dropped by more than 0.2 PSI, the maximum allowable rate of leakage of a shuttle EMU. Satisfied, Kessler turned the oxygen supply back on and brought the suit’s pressure back up to air-lock pressure. He checked his watch.

“Thirty minutes to go.”

“Yep,” Jones responded as he began the final pre-breathing session before the pressure in his suit would be permanently lowered to four PSI.

Kessler grabbed the plastic oxygen mask that Jones had used and also began to breathe pure oxygen, conforming to NASA’s regulations requiring a backup astronaut to be ready for EVA in case of an emergency. Because Kessler had been too busy running dozens of diagnostic algorithms to determine the extent of the shuttle’s damage, he had failed to follow the pre-breathing rule, and now he tried to at least partially comply with it.

A half hour later Kessler removed his oxygen mask and slowly lowered the pressure of Jones’s EMU to four PSI before securing the visor assembly over Jones’s helmet. The visor provided protection against heat, light, and impact. Finally, Kessler strapped a TV camera just above the visor, positioning it along the same line as Jones’s own line of vision.

“You’re ready.”

“But you’re not. You better get your unprotected little ass back inside the crew module. I’m ready to get out there.”

“Listen. Be careful with that MMU,” Kessler said, referring to the Manned Maneuvering Unit, the fifteen-million-dollar jet-propelled backpack system designed to provide completely untethered transport for an astronaut during EVA. “It’s supposed to be much more sensitive than the one we practiced with at the WET-F pool. In there at lease we had water resistance. Up here there’s nothing to counter our movements except for the jets and-”

“Blah, blah, blah. You worry too much. Now how about you letting me go around the ship and find out what kind of shape we’re really in.”

Kessler pounded lightly on Jones’s shoulder. “Careful, this is the real thing, man. Later.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Kessler shook his head and went through the D-shaped opening and into the mid-deck compartment, closed the aluminum-alloy hatch, and locked it in place. He pushed himself up through one of the openings connecting the flight deck to the mid-deck compartment, floated into the flight deck, and stood in front of the aft control panel.

He brought his left hand down to the bottom left section of panel 13L and flipped the switch to deploy the Ku-band antenna system. The servomotors of the seven-foot-long antenna, gimbal-mounted on the starboard side of the payload bay, responded to Kessler’s command by deploying the antenna until it formed a sixty-seven-degree angle with the orbiter’s longitudinal axis, while turning the three-foot-wide parabolic dish at the end of the graphite-epoxy structure toward the closest TDRSS satellite in geosynchronous orbit.

Kessler nodded as he saw the Ku antenna’s talkback indicator light confirming deployment. Lightning now had Ku-band communications capability with Houston through the TDRSS-White Sands Ground Terminal link. The Ku-band system could handle much higher quantities of audio, video, and telemetry data than the S-band system.

Kessler reached the UHF-mode control knob on Overhead Panel 06. He turned the knob to the EVA setting and flipped one of three UHF switches above the knob to select a frequency of 259.7 Mhz, linking Jones, Lightning, and Houston for audio communications.

“How are you doing, CJ?”

“All systems appear nominal. Getting ready for EVA.”

“Hold on. Let’s check your video signal.”

“Camera’s on,” responded Jones.

Kessler moved over to an array of switches and talk-back lights controlling Lightning’s five payload bay cameras and the two cameras mounted on the Remote Manipulator Arm. He turned on the keel/EVA switch, disabling all video inputs except for the one coming from Jones’s camera. Kessler glanced at the two black-and-white TV monitors on the adjacent panel. The ten-by-seven-inch monitors were arranged one over the other. Kessler activated the top one.

“I’m receiving a good clear image from Jones’s camera, Houston. Do you see it?”

“Roger, Lightning. The image is crystal clear.”

“Copy, Houston. Go easy, CJ. Remember to stay clipped to something until you reach an MMU.”

“Relax, Mike.”

“Lightning, Houston here. Listen to Kessler, Jones. Go extremely easy, particularly because it’s your first spacewalk.”

“Ah, roger. Well, here I go… Oh, man! This is terrific. What a feeling!”

“Now, close the hatch behind you and be careful,” Kessler said. “Go directly to the MMU and strap yourself in.” Kessler watched Jones through the aft view windows. Jones gracefully floated toward one of two Manned Maneuvering Units, briefly inspecting it before backing himself against it.

“Strapping in… there! all right, let’s turn this puppy on.”

Kessler watched Jones reach with his left hand for the on/off switch located on the MMU’s right-hand side, over Jones’s shoulder. He saw the indicator lights come on. The MMU appeared to be in working condition.

“All systems nominal,” Jones noted. “Will check the engine section first and then the underside.”

“Roger,” responded Hunter from Mission Control in Houston. “Copy for initial check of the SSMEs followed by a visual of the OMS pods and the underside.”

Kessler shifted his gaze to the black-and-white screen monitor.

“Ready for EVA.”

“Go for it, CJ.”

Jones slowly propelled himself to the aft section of the orbiter. Kessler noticed he was going unusually slow. Good. CJ’s being cautious.

He reached the tail section and went around it, panning the camera on Lightning’s main engines.

“Damn! You guys seeing this?”

Kessler held his breath for a moment as he realized just how close they had come to total destruction. Number-one SSME was destroyed, along with most of the exhaust section, including the protective tiles around it. The orbiter looked like it had come with only two SSMEs and the two smaller OMS engines above.

“Houston, are you there?” asked Jones.

“Ah, roger. We’re still here.”

“Any comments?”

“Not yet. Could you pan in closer?”

Kessler saw Jones disappear behind Lightning. He shifted his gaze back to the screen. The camera panned in on the area where number-one SSME had been. Now there was only a mangled mess of pipes and loose cables.

“That’s as close as I can get.”

“Hold position.”

“Hot damn, Houston! Looks like one of the turbopumps was blown to hell.”

“Yes, we can see that. Can you tell if it was the liquid hydrogen or the liquid oxygen turbopump?”

“I can’t remember which is the smaller of the two, but the one blown here’s the larger one. The other pump’s in one piece.”

“That’s the liquid hydrogen pump.”

“Well, the pumps are pretty delicate pieces of equipment. I guess a failure was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Kessler frowned. Jones was correct.

“Houston, Lightning here. You guys have any ideas?” Kessler asked.

“Lightning, we’ve just pulled out the maintenance records of the SSME, and it shows that all three engines successfully fire-tested for a full one thousand seconds each prior to installation on the orbiter. The report from the twenty-second Flight Readiness Firing last week shows nothing out of the ordinary. Based on the way the engine blew, our only guess at this point is that perhaps the turbopump somehow overheated, or maybe the blades simply came apart under the stress. Again, those are guesses. We won’t know for sure what caused it until we perform a thorough inspection.”

Kessler exhaled.

“Jones, please pan onto the left OMS engine next.”

Kessler saw the image moving over to the left Orbital Maneuvering System engine. It looked nominal.

“Can’t see anything wrong here.”

“Pan closer.”

Jones placed himself between the OMS exhaust and the vertical fin. “Sorry, boys, but there’s no apparent damage here.”

Kessler got to within inches of the screen. It looked normal. The thermal tiles surrounding the OMS engine appeared intact.

“Well, Houston?” asked Jones.

“We’ll have to continue running diagnostics. Give us a look underneath.”

“All right… oh, shit!”

Kessler watched the image on the screen rotating. Something had gone wrong. “CJ, what’s your situation? CJ?”

“Oh, man. Can’t control this thing!”

Kessler did not have a visual on Jones since he was behind Lightning. He could only see the image on the screen, which showed Lightning rotating along its center line and moving farther away, apparently out of control. Kessler finally saw him, above the tail and spinning along all three axes.

“Close your eyes. Relax!”

“Don’t fucking tell me to relax, man! This thing’s got a mind of its own. My hands aren’t even on the damned controls and the jets are firing like crazy. What in the hell’s going on?”

“Jones, Houston here. Shut the MME down. Shut it down!”

Kessler saw what he feared he would see. Jones, still spinning, was coming straight back toward Lightning. Jesus! He’s gonna crash against the orbiter!

“CJ! Shut it off! God, please, shut it off!”

“Dammit! I’m trying, I’m trying!”

Kessler watched Jones’s left hand striking the section of the MMU above his right shoulder in a desperate attempt to throw the switch off before he disappeared from Kessler’s field of view. Kessler shifted his gaze toward the screen. The image of the left OMS nozzle grew larger and larger.

“Oh, God. Nooo!” Jones screamed.

The screen went blank.

“CJ? CJ? CJ! Oh, Sweet Jesus!”

“Lightning, what’s going on? Our screen just went blank. Do you have a visual on Jones?”

“He just crashed into the left OMS engine nozzle. The MMU’s still active. He’s spinning and moving away from the orbiter!” Kessler watched jones continue to rotate in all directions as he began to move away from Lightning again.

“Fucking MMU!” Kessler removed his headset, dove for the mid-crew compartment, pressurized the airlock, and floated inside it. He moved quickly, closing the interior hatch, stripping in seconds, and donning the suit liner. He reached for the lower torso section of the pressure suit and pulled it up to his waist. He then dove into the upper section and joined it to the lower section with the connecting ring.

“Lightning? What’s going on? What’s the status of Jones? Is he moving?”

Kessler, his senses clouded by the sudden rush of adrenaline, barely heard Hunter’s voice coming through the speakers. Every second counted. Every damned second. He’d let Jones down years before in Iraq. Kessler was determined not to do it again. As mission commander, Kessler was responsible for the spacecraft and its crew. Jones was his crew.

Kessler backed himself into the PLSS backpack unit and strapped it on, also securing the control and display unit on his chest. Gloves, gloves… He scanned the shelf to his left.

There!

He snapped the gloves into the ring locks and put on the skull cap and communications gear. He activated the backpack unit and before he read the displays, he reached for the helmet and lowered it into place. He locked it and eyed the display on his chest. The backpack system was nominal. Kessler lowered the visor assembly over his helmet.

“Lightning, Houston here. Please acknowledge. Lightning? Lightning? Dammit, Michael. Answer me!”

“I’m here, Chief,” he responded through his voice-activated headset. “I’m going after him.”

“Not yet. You haven’t fully pre-breathed yet.”

“I know, Chief, but I don’t have a choice. He’s getting away!”

“Then be very careful. Try to relax as much as possible. Don’t breathe any faster than you have to or you might throw up inside your suit.”

“Roger.” He depressurized the airlock, pushed the exterior hatch open, and floated into the payload bay.

Kessler quickly forced his mind to overcome the spatial disorientation so typical for first-time spacewalkers. For a brief moment it seemed that the hundreds of hours he had spent training in the 1.3-million-gallon Neutral Buoyancy Simulator tank at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Johnson Space Center’s WET-F pool had been insufficient. Well, almost insufficient, he admitted, as his senses finally adjusted to the orbiter’s upside-down flight profile. A large portion of the South American continent appeared to hang overhead as Kessler looked up through the gold-coated visor of his space suit and past the opened doors of the payload bay.

Kessler shifted his gaze to the left, above the orbiter’s vertical fin tip. He narrowed his eyes and inhaled deeply as his heartbeat increased.

“Don’t get nervous, Michael. Take your time breathing that oxygen. Let your body adjust slowly. Hold it in as much as possible and exhale slowly,” said Hunter.

“Trying, Chief. Starting EVA,” Kessler said over the radio as he took a shallow breath and held it in. He briefly inspected the second MMU on the right side of the payload bay, checking for nominal propellant and battery levels before backing himself into it. He strapped himself in and threw the power switch located over his right shoulder. The MMU’s flashing locator lights came on. Before placing his hands on the thruster controls, Kessler went through the brief checklist he had committed to memory. Satisfied that all was in operating condition, he skillfully fired the MMU’s thruster jets for one second. The twin tanks in the back of the MMU provided compressed nitrogen gas to the thrusters, which puffed out the gas in one direction and pushed him gently in the other. Kessler reached the rear section of the payload bay and affixed a “Stinger” to the arms of the MMU. The Stinger was a device designed to latch on to broken satellites. With that, Kessler headed out of the payload bay into free space. He activated the TV camera for the benefit of Houston.

Kessler used the hand control to move away from the payload bay. He looked around him but didn’t see Jones. Puzzled, he propelled himself roughly two hundred feet above and to the right of the orbiter. Still no sign of him. He piloted the MMU to within a hundred or so feet below Lightning. There! A white figure. Still rotating out of control. Kessler applied a three-second burst on the thrusters. Compressed nitrogen propelled him beneath Lightning into a sea of darkness. The missing tiles on Lightning’s underside distracted him momentarily, but his logical mind quickly put things into perspective. First get to Jones, then worry about the missing tiles.

He released the MMU’s controls and continued moving in the same direction. Jones’s limp figure grew progressively larger. Kessler knew he was moving much farther away from Lightning than he should, but all of that was secondary. Who knew what kind of injury Jones had suffered in his collision with the orbiter? Jones appeared to be unconscious, since he didn’t move his arms or legs.

Kessler approached within ten feet of Jones and slowed down, trying to achieve a similar translational velocity. He did so as he came to within five feet of him. Kessler noticed that Jones’s MMU seemed dead, the compressed nitrogen supply probably exhausted. No obvious damage to the EMU suit. Still pressurized. Visor intact, so no damage to the helmet underneath. Kessler breathed easier. Hope filled him.

Kessler fired the reverse thrusters for one second and reduced his speed. Additional lateral thrusts allowed him to align the Stinger with the back of Jones’s MMU.

Slowly, almost painstakingly, Kessler approached his rotating friend.

“Two feet and closing… one foot… contact, oh shit!” Kessler managed to place the Stinger’s latching mechanism in contact with Jones’s MMU, but he lacked enough force to snap the latch. His approach had been too slow. The Stinger and Jones’s MMU momentarily transferred their respective translational and rotational energies and then separated. Kessler’s forward motion caused Jones to wobble. In turn, Jones’s rotating motion caused Kessler to rotate clockwise. In an instant, the Earth, space, orbiter, and Jones flashed through his field of view, changing positions as he tumbled away unpredictably on all three axes.

Kessler felt dizzy and disoriented. He tried to concentrate and remember the hours he’d spent in the multiaxis simulators. His hands fumbled for the MMU’s controls, but spatial disorientation quickly set in, making it harder for Kessler’s confused brain to decide in which direction to reach for the hand controls of the propulsion unit. His breathing increased. He tried to control his rising nausea.

“Close your eyes! Close them and hold your breath. Remember your training,” Kessler heard Hunter say over the radio, but he began to panic. The orbiter seemed to float farther and farther away.

“Dammit, Michael! I gave you a direct order. Close your eyes and relax. You have plenty of compressed nitrogen to make it back from miles away. Breathe slowly, hold it for several seconds, and let it out slow. Concentrate!”

Hunter’s voice was reassuring. Although designed to be used within three hundred feet of the orbiter, the MMU could get back from farther away than that. As mixed images of Earth and space flickered in front of his eyes, Kessler managed to draw strength from his strict NASA training and forced his eyes to do something his natural instincts refused to let them do: He closed them. In a flash it all went away, as if someone had abruptly dropped a heavy gate in front of him, isolating him from the sudden madness that had engulfed him. Peace. His eyes stopped registering motion; his brain regained control; his body relaxed. Kessler’s breathing steadied.

“Eyes closed.”

“Good, Michael,” said Hunter. “Now listen carefully. I’ve got you in plain view from one of Lightning’s payload bay cameras. You’re rotating clockwise about once every ten seconds. Counter with a two-second lateral thrust.”

Kessler almost opened his eyes to reach for the controls but caught himself. Instead, he felt his way down the MMU’s arms, placed his hands on the controls, and fired the right-side jets. One-thousand-one… one-thousand-two. He released the trigger.

“Good, Michael. Now, you’re also rotating backward at a slower rate… hmmm, about once per minute. A one-second forward thrust should do.”

“Roger,” Kessler responded as his confidence began to build up again. He complied with Hunter’s order and fired the jet. “All right, now what?”

“Open your eyes.”

Kessler did so. “Jesus!” was all he could say when he realized how much he had drifted away in such a little time. Lightning appeared to be a small white object no larger than a couple of inches in length. Jones floated roughly fifty feet away, rotating faster than before.

Kessler decided to take a different approach. He released the Stinger from the MMU’s arms and then approached Jones. He stopped when he estimated he was five feet away from his rotating friend. Kessler removed the ten-foot-long webbed line hanging from the side of his MMU. It had tether clips on both ends. He clipped one end to the side of his own MMU and carefully tried to snag the other end to anything on Jones’s space suit or MMU. He got within three feet. Jones’s rotation turned him clockwise about once every five seconds. Kessler reached for the center of Jones’s suit, the point of zero rotation, and managed to clip the end of one of the straps securing Jones to the MMU.

He slowly turned around and started to haul Jones back toward Lightning. The webbed line neutralized Jones’s rotational movement.

Kessler eyed Lightning. He estimated they were at least a thousand feet away, over three times the recommended distance for MMU EVA work, but Kessler knew that was just a precautionary specification. In actuality, as long as compressed nitrogen remained in his tanks, the MMU could take him as far away as he pleased.

He opted for a four-second thrust. The first second would put tension on the line and give him a hard tug, the other three seconds would be to compensate for Jones’s mass and to propel them both toward the orbiter.

With both hands on the controls, Kessler thrust himself forward. As expected, the tug came and jerked him back, but he kept his hands on the hand controls, commanding the MMU to give him more forward motion. Slowly, it happened. Kessler began to drag Jones back to the orbiter.

A few minutes later they got to within one hundred feet. Kessler knew slowing down would be trickier than accelerating. The moment he slowed down, Jones would close the ten-foot gap and either crash against him or fly by him and pull him along. Without slowing down, Kessler glanced at the aft section of Lightning’s empty payload bay. He estimated his velocity at no more than two or three feet per second.

Kessler directed thrusters to propel him and his “cargo” toward the payload bay. He waited. Fifty feet separated them from the bay. Forty feet. Kessler readied himself to perform a maneuver he’d never done before. Thirty feet… twenty-five… now!

He slowed down a little. The webbed line lost its tension as Jones continued moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Kessler jetted himself upward, barely missing Jones, who flew past him a few feet below. He waited for the tug. It came. Hard. Jones pulled him toward the payload bay. Ten feet. Kessler fired the thrusters and managed to slow Jones and himself down to less than a half foot per second. Jones softly impacted the inside wall of Lightning’s aft payload bay. Kessler managed to stop a few feet from him.

Almost home. Kessler unstrapped Jones’s MMU and secured it to the side of the cargo bay.

With Jones’s bulky MMU out of the way, Kessler placed Jones in between the arms of his own and gently jetted toward the front, toward the still-open hatch that led to the air lock. They reached it in less than twenty seconds.

Kessler quickly unstrapped himself, temporarily secured the MMU, and dragged Jones into the air lock.

He closed the hatch and repressurized the compartment. Kessler unlocked his gloves and removed his visor and helmet, letting them float inside the compartment as he unstrapped the backpack and display unit. He unlocked the joining ring, kicked off the lower torso pressure suit, and twisted his way out of the upper torso section. Now he wore only the liquid cooling and vent garment.

He removed Jones’s gloves and helmet, and powered down the backpack unit. Jones’s eyes were closed. Kessler put a finger to Jones’s nose. He was breathing. Kessler noticed a cut on Jones’s forehead. He must have hit the inside of his helmet on impact and knocked himself out.

He finished undressing Jones and spotted bruises on his ribs. Damn! Broken ribs. Kessler frowned, but was not surprised. Jones had crashed against the orbiter at great speed. He was lucky just to be alive. Kessler put on the comfortable blue, one-piece cotton flight suit and then carefully dressed Jones. He pushed the inside hatch open and gently dragged Jones to the mid-deck compartment, closing the hatch behind them.

“Houston, Lightning here. Do you copy?”

“What’s your situation, Michael? How’s Jones?”

“He’s got a head wound and I think some broken ribs. His breathing’s steady and his pulse is strong. I’m going to strap him in and keep him still.”

“Copy, Lightning. Careful with the broken ribs. Could puncture a lung.”

“Roger that. Also, I noticed several black tiles missing on the underside. They must have shaken loose during the explosion. That’s bad news.”

“Exactly how many tiles are we talking about?”

“Uh, I guess about a dozen.”

“We’ll have to check if your tile repair kit can handle that much exposed area.”

Kessler shrugged. Somehow that answer didn’t surprise him. NASA had been putting less and less emphasis on tile repair kits since the early days of the shuttle, when tiles were falling off left and right during tests due to poor adhesives. Since then, better compounds had been developed that greatly improved the reliability of the thermal shield to the point that not one single shuttle mission had had the need to repair or replace tiles in space. For that reason, Kessler doubted that the epoxy foam that came with Lightning’s tile repair kit would be enough to fill a dozen holes, most of which were six inches square by five inches deep.

“Say, Michael, when was the last time you slept more than a few hours?”

“The day before the launch.”

“Get some rest. We’ll wake you in a few hours.”

“Roger, Houston.”

Kessler reached for the orbiter medical system. The three-part medical kit, designed to handle simple illness or injuries, had some medications to stabilize severely injured crew members. He cleaned Jones’s head wound and bandaged it. That was the easy part. The ribs were different. He played cautiously and decided to leave them alone for now. As long as Jones didn’t move much, the broken ribs shouldn’t affect his lungs.

Kessler brought Jones to one of three horizontal rigid sleep stations and unzipped the sleeping bag attached to the padded board. The station was over six feet long and thirty inches wide. Kessler easily guided Jones into it and zipped it up. In weightlessness the sleeping bag would hold Jones against the padded board with enough pressure to create the illusion of sleeping on a comfortable bed. Kessler wanted to do more for his friend, but was afraid that in doing so he could cause more harm than good.

“Sweet dreams, CJ.”

Kessler crawled onto another horizontal station and tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. Too many questions preyed on his mind. Too many things had gone wrong. First the number-one SSME had blown up, then the OMS engines had malfunctioned, and now a faulty MMU. He exhaled. Inspection of the SSME and OMS engines would have to wait until they returned to Earth, but the MMU…

Kessler bolted out of bed, floated inside the air lock, and donned a space suit. He closed the internal hatch, depressurized the chamber, and opened the external hatch. He had left Jones’s MMU tied to the side wall on the other side of the payload bay. Kessler gently pushed himself in that direction without regard for a safety clip until he reached the MMU. He then clipped one end of a woven line hanging from his suit to the side wall.

The nitrogen jets of the MMU had somehow remained open, sending Jones tumbling out of control. Kessler was only partially familiar with the MMU design, but he had an engineering degree and felt somewhat confident enough to open the rear panel door where the nitrogen tanks for the jet thrusters were located. He pulled back a square panel and exposed a section of the tanks along with an array of wires coming from the hand controls. The wires were connected to mini-valves that controlled the flow of nitrogen through a number of tubes coming out of the tanks.

That made sense, Kessler decided. Each tube went to a specific jet. The opening and closing of a valve was in reality what controlled the flow of compressed nitrogen to a jet. The wires went through a translation circuit that converted the hand-control commands into valve commands, which in turn regulated the flow of nitrogen to a particular jet. The conversion was needed because the joystick-type hand controls provided digital pulses which then needed to be amplified and converted into an electric current capable of driving the small valves. The design was simple but reliable. Then again, Kessler thought, the reliability of the system was not any better than the reliability of the individual components.

The MMU had twenty-four separate jets. Twelve primary jets and twelve for backup. That meant twenty-four tubes coming out of the nitrogen tanks, controlled by twenty-four valves. The way Jones had gone out of control told Kessler that there had to be more than just one jet misfiring; otherwise Jones would have had plenty of working jets to counter a malfunctioning jet. Also, Jones’s nitrogen supply, designed to last for several hours in “normal” operation, had lasted but a minute. These two facts told Kessler that something had overridden the hand controls and commanded the valves to open and close at random, quickly depleting the load of compressed nitrogen in the MMU tanks. There was no other explanation. Either that or several valves had malfunctioned at the same time. Kessler could accept one or two valves going bad at once, but more than that? He couldn’t buy it. Something had overridden the hand controls.

Kessler shifted his gaze to a point to the right of the array of wires, where all the wires converged before going in a number of directions to their appropriate valves.

What the hell?

Kessler blinked twice and refocused his vision on what appeared to be a small timer attached to the circuitry that translated the digital pulses from the hand controls into the electric current that drove the valves.

A timer? Why? Then he understood, and the revelation sent chills through his body. The small timer, its tiny display showing 0:00:00, had two wires coming out of the front. The wires were connected so that they would short-circuit the translator circuitry of both the primary and the backup jets. That meant that the moment the timer went off, the translator circuitry got roasted and the valves received random electric surges.

Jesus Christ!

Kessler inhaled deeply, held it, and then slowly exhaled. He spoke into his voice-activated headset.

“Houston? Lightning.”

“Ah… Michael? You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“Houston, I’m afraid I’ve got pretty bad news for all of us, particularly for us two up here.”

“What’s that, Lightning?”

“Someone sabotaged Jones’s MMU.” Kessler closed the MMU back panel and secured it. He unclipped his safety line and gently pushed himself toward the front of the payload bay.

“What? Say again, Lightning.”

“Sabotage, Houston. I have found a tampering device in the translator circuit of Jones’s MMU. I’m in the process of checking mine.” He reached his MMU and quickly opened the back panel. His eyes now knew what to look for. Nothing. His MMU had not been tampered with, at least as far as the translator circuit was concerned. “Mine appears clean. Houston. I think it would be best if we head back down to Earth as soon as possible.”

“That’s our thinkning down here as well, Lightning, especially in light of what you just found out. We should have an answer on the missing tile situation within the next few hours. In the meantime get some rest. You’ll need it.”

“Roger, Houston.”

“Now, get some sleep. That’s an order. We’ll wake you up in five hours.”

Kessler considered that as he floated into the air lock. Sleep was about the furthest thing from his mind at the moment.

Vanderhoff threw the copy of The New York Times against the wall. His initial plan had failed. Lightning had somehow reached orbit, but although the press did not mention any problems, he knew the orbiter was wounded. It had to be. The main engine sabotage was fool proof. It had to work. NASA was doing a superb job of covering it up. Vanderhoff was also certain that the contingent sabotage of the OMS engines had left the orbiter almost stranded.

He got up from the leather couch and walked toward the windows behind his desk. He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

He stared at the Athena V rocket nearly ready for launch. That would be the final nail in NASA’s coffin.

He nodded as he visualized the headlines in the Times. Lightning, the failure of the decade, right behind the Endeavour disaster and the Hubble telescope. The entire world will finally realize, he reflected, that NASA just doesn’t have what it takes to prevent accidents from happening. No one will suspect sabotage as long as Lightning is destroyed. Vanderhoff felt certain that if NASA scientists ever got their hands on Lightning, they would discover the sabotage, but that, he decided as his lips curved upward, would not happen. Lightning would never make it back to Earth.

He turned around and stared at the Athena rocket once more. Nine hours, he reflected. Nine hours and it will all be over.

He frowned. There was still the issue of Higgins. The CIA official was in trouble. His phone call the night before had been distressful. The Head of Clandestine Services was after him, and Vanderhoff knew that if captured, Higgins could directly incriminate the network. The chain reaction that would follow such exposure would be devastating. A decade’s worth of planning and investing to position Europe as the world superpower by the end of the century would go astray the moment European leaders discovered such a conspiracy right under their noses. No, Higgins had become a liability — the reason Vanderhoff had made an additional phone call after he’d hung up with Higgins. It had to be done. Nothing personal, he thought. The EEC’s plans for the future of Europe in space came first.

Higgins walked toward the rendezvous point, where Vanderhoff’s people would be waiting to pull him out. A death would be staged. No one would look for a dead person. The idea had been Higgins’s and Vanderhoff had loved it. Clean, professional, safe. A body would be planted in Higgins’s place. A mutilated, charred body with no chance of physical identification. Higgins’s personal items would be with the body. Care would be taken in making sure no one could trace the body for dental records. Beyond that, Higgins had no special body markings that would lead anyone to believe the planted body wasn’t his.

What had amazed Higgins the most had been the fact that Vanderhoff would be able to pull it off on such short notice. Higgins had indeed underestimated the German’s resources. But it didn’t matter. In less than twenty-four hours he would be enjoying life in one of Vanderhoff’s South American estates surrounded by as many luxuries as he desired. That was the reward for putting his neck on the line for the EEC and Athena. The EEC leaders would take care of him.

He approached a worn-down, abandoned red-brick building located in one of the worst neighborhoods in Washington, the warehouse where Vanderhoff’s local contact had instructed him to go.

Wearing a gray jogging outfit and tennis shoes, Higgins walked through a large opening in the front, where a sliding gate once stood. He carried a briefcase with him containing the few personal items he couldn’t leave behind. He’d left all his bank accounts alone. With Vanderhoff, money would be unnecessary. Besides, that way no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. A simple disappearance and then a body found in one of the city’s worst areas. Higgins’s body. He had no family, no wife, no kids. A clean break, simple, elegant. He’d left nothing behind that he would miss, yet plenty would be waiting for him with Vanderhoff.

He squinted and stared at the single light bulb on the far right side of the dark and humid cavernous room. It illuminated a small table. He frowned and walked toward it. He carried no weapons — another request from Vanderhoff. Higgins understood his logic. Do nothing that would arouse suspicion.

Higgins spotted some barrels on the left side of the otherwise empty warehouse, which was probably used by the homeless for refuge during the winter months. He noticed a briefcase on the table.

Strange, he thought. He reached the edge of the table and looked in every direction. Nothing. He shifted his gaze back to the black leather briefcase and the note taped to the front of it. It said to check for instructions inside while a surveillance team made sure nobody was following him.

“Hmm…” He decided that Vanderhoff could be extremely careful when he wanted to be. He pressed the side levers on the front of the briefcase. Both latches snapped open at once. Higgins opened the briefcase.

His senses registered the loud explosion, accompanied by a split-second vision of fire. Then he could not see or hear anything, be he felt agonizing pain. He tried to move his arms and turn around but couldn’t. His legs buckled and he tried to put his arms out to stop the fall but they were no longer there. The heat intensified. Blissfully, he began to lose consciousness. An excruciating burning pain engulfed him as the flames consumed him.

Dizzy and tense, Pruett surrendered himself one again to the humiliating agony of nausea over the small aluminum toilet in the lavatory of the VIP transport plane.

“Oh, God,” he mumbled as his stomach forced nothing but bile up his throat. He didn’t try to resist, and let it all out. His eyes watered as the overwhelming odor nauseated him even more.

Cameron knocked on the door. “You okay, Tom?”

“Ah… yes… I’m fine… it happens all the… oh, shit!”

Cameron heard Pruett’s guttural noises and decided to leave him to his privacy. He walked back to his seat, next to Marie.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

“Looks like his stomach can’t handle airplane flights anymore. His ulcers are eating him alive.”

“Oh, God. How terrible. He should go see a doctor.”

Cameron smiled. “Not the Tom Pruett I used to know. He’d rather die than go see a doctor.”

Cameron heard the rest-room door opening. “You all right?” he asked Pruett.

“Fucking planes… pardon the language, Marie,” Pruett murmured as he eased into a seat a few rows ahead of them. The rest of the plane was empty. They were the only passengers.

Cameron shook his head and stared at Marie’s bloodshot eyes. “You better get some sleep while you can.”

She nodded, lifted the armrest in between them, leaned her head against his shoulder, and closed her eyes. A minute later, Cameron felt her breathing steadying. Marie. The only person that knew about his past, and to this moment Cameron still didn’t know what had compelled him to tell her. Maybe trying to ease my pain by bringing it out in the open? By sharing it with someone who would understand? Someone who seemed to care?

He simply stared at the clear sky as they flew over the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico, he thought. In spite of what most people said about their large neighbor to the south, Cameron had enjoyed his years there, certainly more than the years in Vietnam, in hell, everyone trapped in his own world, not knowing who to trust and struggling not to make any friendships.

It seemed that in Vietnam death hid behind every corner, behind every bush. American forces became good at handling the dead. All properly body-bagged and tagged for their silent return. So many of his friends returned home that way.

Cameron checked his watch. One more hour before they arrived at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, where a Special Forces team would be waiting for Pruett’s briefing.

Cameron sighed and continued gazing out at the blue sky as his thoughts drifted back to Marie, the beautiful stranger who had so abruptly come into his life and literally turned it upside down. He hadn’t felt so comfortable in someone else’s presence since Lan-Anh. There was definitely a chemistry between them. She understood the way he felt. That Claude Guilloux had been a lucky man indeed.

The thought faded away the moment Cameron closed his eyes. His past haunted him again. Marie’s face was replaced by the face of Skergan. The pleading eyes cut through his soul. Go, Cameron…