'Go for EVA, Anson! HOSC online here!' Jim had just come back online down in Huntsville. The warp probe components, soon to be call sign Zephram, was more than ready out in the payload bay.
Several minutes of preparation and disconnecting and connecting things followed next. Rayford piloted the Remote Manipulator Arm from inside the Shuttle so that the end of the Arm seemed to hover ever present above— or was that below?—us. Final disconnect process had been checked through for the cylindrical warp field system and for one of the ECCs.
'Houston, we're ready to detach the containment system for the probe and ECC number one.' Tabitha started to work with her powered ratchet and removed a set of bolts. Once, just for fun, I held the ratchet on a bolt and turned it on while my feet weren't planted to anything. I slowly began to spin about the bolt axis in a clockwise fashion. Tabitha wasn't amused.
'Quit clowning around, Anson!'
'Hey, I paid for this ride. I'm going to get some fun out of it!' I joked.
She still wasn't amused. Getting back to business I tethered both of us to the ECC as Rayford powered the Remote Manipulator Arm over to us. I worried with catching the Arm and attaching it to the ECC while Tabitha danced around like a busy bee in prime honey season connecting this, undoing that, and fiddling with the other thing.
'That's good there, Ray. Houston, I have the Remote Manipulator Arm Platform connected and Tabitha and I are go for an egress from the payload bay.' I waited for a reply from Tabitha, Rayford, Houston and Huntsville, in any order.
'Roger that, Anson.' Rayford said.
'Houston here. Go for ECC egress,' Houston confirmed.
'Hunstville here. Roger that. Go for ECC egress,' Jim replied.
'Tabitha, are all the ECC egress connectors locked?' Jim's voice came over the UHF.
'Roger that. Connector cables linked and we are go.'
Both of us were extremely busy. I really would've liked to have been able to stop and take in the incredible view, but we had to make sure that each of the three ECCs went through the same egress process and then were connected, via special thin-walled telescopic titanium connector tubes about ten centimeters in diameter each and ultra-strong polymer support cables about five millimeters in diameter each, before letting them float out into space away from the shuttle. Also, the main fuselage and spacecraft bus housing, the central cylinder, would then have to be guided by the Arm, Tabitha on one side, and me on the other making minor course corrections. We had to thread the central cylinder through the three ECCs like a needle and thread. Once the ECCs were in place, they looked like large ice cubes supported by toothpicks. The toothpicks were in turn stuck into a large cylinder (an analogously scaled object would be a toilet paper roll) about its circumference at one-hundred-twenty-degree intervals. They were also closer to one end of the cylinder than the other.
Being an astronaut nowadays is more like construction work than the glory of flying high-tech spacecraft. Tabitha and I had been turning bolts and making electrical connections for the better part of three hours. It was time for a scheduled break.
Tethered to the probe, Tabitha and I watched as the Arm disconnected from us and folded back toward the payload bay. An incomplete Zephram, Tabitha, and myself simply floated there above the shuttle, Newton's Laws still being in effect.
'Rayford, you drive that thing like a pro,' I teased as he locked onto the final component of the probe, the ACS Fuel Supply and Science Instrument Suite Sphere. Tabitha and I watched and panted trying to catch our breath in the thin atmosphere of our EVA suits. Rayford manipulated the Arm right into the sweet spot of the universal connector on the probe component. The tank grabbed back at the arm and was connected. The internal circuitry kicked in and blew the circuit breakers for the other connectors around the tank. In a matter of seconds the tank was free from the Shuttle other than at the connection with the Arm.
About fifteen minutes had passed and Tabitha and I had caught as much of our breath as you can at about a third of atmospheric pressure. Although the PLSS pumps an oxygen rich environment into the suit, it's still like snow skiing, wrestling a bear, running a marathon, and attacking Mount Everest all at the same time. EVA astronauts had better be in shape. All that cardio kickboxing had paid off for me. All the extracurricular activities with Tabitha didn't hurt either.
'Until you've done it, you can't imagine it.' Tabitha had told me that a thousand times about astronaut stuff. It turns out that she was right about this one. Actually, she was right about it all, but I didn't tell her that. She's cocky enough as it is.
I connected a cable to the major portion of Zephram and then thrusted my way over to the upcoming final component. The Arm had halted about two meters from us. I slowed my descent to the Tank and lightly touched down on it. I had lined up on the hook perfectly. I grabbed the handhold with one hand and snapped the carabineer on the hook with the other. This was a lot easier than working in the neutral buoyancy tank in Houston—you can move quicker. Some astronauts had told me that the difference would be hard to get used to. I couldn't understand why. It seemed more natural to me not to have the resistance from the water.
'Probe tank is secure. Release the Arm.' I said over the UHF.
'That was good work, Doc!' Jim said over the comm.
'Thanks, Jim. Preparing cable engage and final component attach!' The motor on the other end of the cable started spinning. Tabitha ran the motor as she pulled the two parts of the spacecraft together, slowly pulling us together.
As Tabitha and I slowly maneuvered the two spacecraft parts together, the Shuttle began slowly pulling away from us. Neither of us were concerned since this was part of yet another NASA scheduled event. As we began connecting the components of the probe, we would need to power them up. The immense electromagnetic fields created by the probe would wreak havoc on the Shuttle's systems so it had to be backed off to at least a hundred or so meters from the probe. Once Zephram was completely constructed and brought online, Tabitha and I would use our SAFER MMUs (Simplified Aid for Extravehicular activity Rescue Manned Maneuvering Units) to fly back to a safe distance where the Shuttle could catch us. No problem!
I could see the Shuttle in my peripheral vision (what little of it you have in a spacesuit) drifting farther and farther away.
'Hey, that's my ride home,' I joked.
