now!”
“But he’s injured!”
“We can’t help him! We’ve got a job to do. And precious little time to do it in. Another shot like that and we’re all fried. Help me with that pack. That’s an order!”
Jupp unbuckled and pushed out of his seat with his left hand, keeping a grip on a handle in the armrest on his right so that he pivoted, floating toward his copilot. He steadied himself by grabbing the armrest on the other chair and stared into Wahlquist’s sightless eyes.
“Larry,” he said firmly into his helmet’s radio, “you’ll be in shock, take a pill and sit quietly. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Jupp gripped his friend’s padded shoulder with gloved hand and then worked his way to the rear of the cabin using convenient holds in the deck. He dropped down through the hatch in the floor that led from the flight deck to the mid-deck. Newman was already disappearing into the airlock that gave access to the cargo bay. Jupp waited for him to clear the airlock then passed through himself. Newman worked his feet into special braces in the deck that would hold him as they fitted the pack, then he twisted sideways to reach the extra-vehicular activity packs fastened to the bulkhead. He unbuckled one pack and lifted it from the rack, passing it around behind him. Jupp moved in and adjusted the pack into the special braces at the rear of the man’s suit and fastened the clamps. Over his headphone he could hear Wahlquist reporting his condition to mission control.
“Okay, Major,” the Colonel growled when he was satisfied. “There’ll be some changes in the plans. Their rotating craft complicates my work, but gives us an advantage. You get back into the cabin. The laser fires out the side, in the plane of rotation. As soon as you can make out the orientation, you move us to just below it. That way they can’t take a shot at the shuttle without changing the plane of rotation. That’s harder for them to do than shooting at a target anywhere in the plane of rotation, so you’ll be out of the line of fire, and I’ll be able to go straight up out of the bay. You got that, Major?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got it,” Jupp replied, striving to contain his resentment at taking orders on the ship he piloted.
“Okay. You holler when you’re in position. I’ll go in along the rotation axis; anywhere else, I’d get swatted away like a fly. I’ll have to go without the umbilical. It’d get twisted like a spring as soon as I latched on.”
“Without the umbilical?” Jupp’s voice betrayed his shock. “If you lose your grip, get flung off, you’re gone!”
“I know my job, Major. If I lose my grip, we’re all gone.”
Jupp looked at the stern face, barely visible behind the darkened faceplate, and then yanked himself into the airlock. He floated up through the hatch to the flight deck and worked his way to the seat and buckled in. A glance at the clock showed that four minutes had passed since the blast that had blinded Wahlquist. Perhaps twenty more until the laser recharged.
Jupp took a few seconds to orient himself and then let out an exasperated sigh. All he could see out the window was the back of the mirror. He had to move it, but the controls for the boom to which the mirror was attached were twelve feet away at the rear of the flight deck. You weren’t supposed to have to fly and handle the boom all by yourself, he thought.
Wahlquist sensed his presence and reached out an arm, grabbing Jupp for reassurance.
“What’s happening?”
“I’ve got to move the mirror and then do a little flying. With them spinning we can duck down under and hide from the laser.”
“Listen, I’m okay now,” Wahlquist said. “Talking with control calmed me down. I’ve got a good feel for that boom, and you can fly better if you’re not jumpin’ up and down. Why don’t you tell me what you want done with the mirror, and I’ll handle that part?”
It made sense; the mirror only had to be lifted out of the line of sight.
“Okay, buddy. You’ve got it.”
Jupp unbuckled Wahlquist and floated him around the passenger seat and over the open hatch in the floor to the control panel at the rear of the flight deck. The rear facing windows that opened to the cargo bay were now an unnecessary luxury for his friend, Jupp mused as he planted Wahlquist’s feet on the anchoring velcro pads.
“Can you get your hands on those controls?”
Jupp watched as Wahlquist felt around the control console in front of him. He fought the instinct to grab the sightless hands and guide them to the controls. Wahlquist found the recess after only a long moment and settled his hands around the reassuring familiarity of the controls. Jupp regained his seat.
“All right,” he said, “lift the boom straight up ninety degrees.”
He watched as the mirror lifted methodically from his line of sight. They were still upside down and as the view from the windows was cleared he could see the spectacular spread of Earth out the tops of the windows.
“Okay, that’s good,” he said when the boom was overhead, pointed directly at the Earth below. Straight out the nose was the blackness of space.
A clutch of panic seized him. Where was the Cosmos? It was supposed to be right there! Had the computers screwed up? Could they find it before it unleashed another hellish blast? He forced himself to think calmly. He triggered a thruster and put the shuttle into a slow roll. They had done ninety degrees when, thank god, there it was, out the corner of the window about three hundred yards away, a little above them. He continued the roll until they were “right side up” and the Cosmos was in clear view out the window.
“Now what,” demanded Wahlquist.
“I’ve got the Cosmos in sight. We’re about a hundred yards below it and a few hundred yards away. We’re at twelve o’clock now,” Jupp twisted around to smile toward his sightless colleague, “right side up, if that makes you feel any better.”
Wahlquist appreciated the black humor. “Right,” he replied with heavy cynicism. “Blind and weightless, it makes a shitload of difference to me.”
“I’m going in.” Jupp eased the thrusters again and the shuttle drifted forward. As he flew, he narrated to keep Wahlquist at ease.
“It’s much like the sketches they showed us. Impressive looking brute. Big cylinder, just the upper end of the SS-18 booster. What did they say? Four meters in diameter, ten meters long? That looks about right. There’s a booster rocket nozzle on one end, some sort of antennae on the other. That’s the end pointed Earthward now. It’s got these four weird stubby wings. They stick out about two meters, and run the length of the cylinder, equally spaced around the circumference. I guess they’re what we’re supposed to lop off to get the thing in the cargo bay. The whole thing is rotating once about every, oh, ten seconds. I can make out thruster nozzles. There are four pairs of them at each end, midway between the wings. Each of the pair points in opposite directions along the circumference of the hull. There are a number of small ports and one big one, maybe a meter across, halfway along the cylinder between two of the wings.”
Jupp was silent for a moment, watching the dark maw swing across his field of view. “I guess that must be the laser.”
When Jupp saw the Cosmos disappear above the cockpit window, he hit reverse thrust and stopped, hovering just beneath it. He spoke into the microphone.
“Colonel, there it is. Good luck.”
“I’m sorry, Major.” The voice was ice. “I can’t see it. You’ve got the mirror in the way.”
“Christ!” thought Jupp. “Larry, can you move that boom on toward the tail?”
Wahlquist had not released his grip on the controls. Jupp strained to look through the overhead cockpit windows.
“Good, that’s it,” he said crisply when the boom was pointed at a forty-five degree angle toward the tail. He leaned over and worked the controls of the camera on the boom until he could see the Cosmos clearly on the monitor. They were drifting just slightly. He brushed a thruster to give a small opposing acceleration. Eleven minutes since the last shot from Cosmos.
A small figure appeared on the monitor, heading slowly but directly toward the antenna on the lower spin axis. A white plume shot briefly from the top of the backpack, then a shorter blast. The figure hovered next to the projecting antenna just below the spinning base of the Cosmos. An arm reached back and unsnapped a tool from the side of the pack. In a moment a torch flared brightly and was applied to the base of the antenna. The antenna fell free and drifted off.
