show its good will by deactivating the Salyut Nineteen orbiting mirror spacecraft immediately We can wait no longer. 'He bowed his head, 'I am very sorry, we can trying to summon additional strength.
wait no longer.'
He then stood and quickly left the Security Council, with Gregory Adams following close behind.
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
