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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
breathing!" she ordered me over the UHF.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax and breathe normally.
"Focus!" she yelled.
"Okay," I puffed. "I . . . am . . . okay." Just talking was tough. For a while
I thought I was seeing red, but that faded within a few moments.
Earth rolled by underneath us about every ten seconds or so. That was still
considerable rotation, or so I thought.
"Anson. My thrusters are out. You have to stop the probe's rotation or at
least slow it some more." I
was too confused and disoriented to ask questions right away. I followed
orders and fired my thrusters a few times. That stopped the probe's spin the
rest of the way. We were now facing Earth constantly.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"Don't know. How much air do you have?"
I checked my Display and Controls Module (DCM). I ran through a few
diagnostics on my suit.
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Tabitha was doing the same.
"I have three hours fifty-seven minutes. How about you?"
"Same," she said.
"What do we do? We're in space with no way to get home!"
"I ain't sure. First I think we should try communicating with someone.
Although they'll be out of range." She was right. We both tried and failed to
hail anybody. The UHF circuits on the suits only reach about ten kilometers or
so. The Shuttle that relayed our signal to ground stations was gone. Earth was
about three hundred kilometers below us and the ISS was about twelve thousand
kilometers on the other side of the Earth.
"We're so screwed. Oh man, we are so screwed
!"
"Anson, don't ever say that again! you hear me?" she scolded. "Think! There's
a way out of this. We just have to find it."
"You're right. I hope." I was still trying to shake off the massive headache
and the feeling of having been on that nasty roller coaster from a few minutes
before.
"I don't hope. I know. That is the only way to see it in your mind. You know
we will make it. Got it!"
That last was more of an order than a question so I didn't answer.
I could imagine Bob's face while he was yelling at 'Becca, "Never give up!"
That look of determination on his face was the same that I was seeing on
Tabitha now. I realized that by God they were right! I wasn't giving up no
matter how bad things got. Ever! I looked at Tabitha and realized that I
knew we were going to make it somehow. I had a whole new fire burning in me.
There was a way home.
I just had to find it.
Now you might think, what about those poor folks on the Shuttle that just got
destroyed? Where's the compassion for them? Weren't they your friends? I
remember a decade or so ago how I felt horrible and cried while watching all
those folks die when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed and I
didn't even know any of them. Well that was different I wasn't about to die
myself then. At this point my main concern was survival not compassion, anger,
remorse, or any other emotion. Tabitha and I
had all the time in the world to cry later if we survived. My guess is that
this is how soldiers must feel when they see their buddy beside them get blown
away. They must know that they have to complete their mission or die, too.
Then, later when they are safe, they cry. Tabitha is a soldier I was certain
that she was operating in pure survival mode. So, that was the only way that I
could think that I would think until this was over and we were safe at home
drinking a beer. Then I would cry for hours or days.
I touched the ring I'd tucked in my EMU in anticipation of popping the
question during the EVA.
"Tabitha, will you marry me?" I asked her.
"What!"
"Marry me! I said. "Marry me, Neil Anson Clemons."
"You are asking me now
? We don't have time for this." She was frantic and looking furious.
"Tabitha," I began calmly and slowly. "I know that we're going to make it. And
I want you to spend the rest of your life with me and I want to spend the rest
of my life with you. If we don't make it, and we
will, I would rather make it with my fiancée than my commander. Marry me!" I
pleaded.
Tabitha took a long pause and a deep breath, if you can do that in an EMU.
Then she nodded.
"Are you sure you aren't just asking me this because you're hysterical?"
"No! I was going to ask you earlier. I just never got the time. I have a ring
right here in my pocket! I
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haven't let it out of my sight since we launched."
"Are you serious?" she asked.
"Hell, yes, I'm serious!" I was hurt a little.
"I will," she said quietly.
"Yes! I wish I could kiss you." I laughed. I'm not sure if I was hysterical,
but I probably appeared to be.
After a few moments of silence, we set to work thinking about a plan to get us
home. Communicating with those bright boys dirtside at NASA was our first
priority.
We spent the next thirty minutes reconfiguring the datalink system for the
probe to accept the UHF
signals from the EMUs and then relay them over the digital data dump back to
the HOSC in Huntsville.
Had Al Rayburn and I not redesigned the spacecraft bus as a graphical
interface this wouldn't have been possible. Any off-the-shelf spacecraft bus
would've required actual rewiring that couldn't be done in an
EMU. The dexterity in the gloves just wouldn't allow that. However, Al and I
had the idea of making the entire spacecraft modular. Each wire connects to
the generic connection point on the spacecraft bus.
Then that connection can be allocated by the central computer system and some
solid-state and mechanical relays. All the wires are the same but each has a
different job as assigned by the computer. Al and I had taken the commercial
bus we bought and spent a good deal of effort reverse engineering and
reengineering it.
Tabitha and I finally reconfigured the data comm system to accept our UHF
signal as data in. Then we retransmitted that signal through the Traveling
Wave Tube Amplifier or "TWeeTA" system. The
TWeeTA was designed to handle more data than had ever been attempted with a
spacecraft. The warp field data would be vast when operational. Standard
communications systems just wouldn't have been able to handle the data rates
needed. So, Al, Jim, 'Becca, and I spent a good bit of time and money
designing a newer more updated system. This communications system works a lot
more like the Internet than a radio. That amount of data required a lot of
power amplification. A TWeeTA is the only way to go about that. Tabitha and I
used this to our advantage. Since the communications dish hadn't been deployed
yet, we planned to use the omnidirectional antenna. We pumped plenty of power
through the dipole so that the relay satellites could receive it with no
problem.
But there was a problem: the datalink was just that, a datalink. Nobody would
be expecting a voice signal over it. Jim would have to realize that the data
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