“That should prevent any control commands,” came the voice over the radio.
“He just cut the radio antenna off the bottom,” Jupp informed Wahlquist.
“Now what’s he doing?” Wahlquist’s voice betrayed his fear and frustration.
“He’s got the torch on again. He’s holding it up to the bottom about eighteen inches from the center. I’ll be damned. He’s using the rotation as if the thing were on a lathe. Cutting a circle as slick as can be. I guess he’ll try to cut a hole and then get inside to disable it.”
“Wait a minute!” The pattern shifted, drifting. The torch went out.
“What is it!” shouted Wahlquist.
“Major!” came the curt command. “This thing is still alive. Must be an internal antenna. It’s changing its pitch. Get your craft the hell out of the way!”
Jupp hit a thruster and backed the shuttle away and down. When it was in his line of sight again he could see the rhythmic puffs from its thrusters and see that the laser portal had already been slightly tilted down toward him. He began a frenzied game with the control thrusters, monitoring the Cosmos and keeping the shuttle out of the rotating, sweeping aim of the laser. He was not too busy to marvel at the actions of the diminutive figure that hovered around the massive contraption.
He watched the figure maneuver to the perimeter of the base of the Cosmos. An arm snaked out.
“What’s he doing?” Jupp narrated to Wahlquist. “Slapping at it? My god, no! He grabbed it! He grabbed the nozzle of the thruster!” The figure was suddenly whipping around with the Cosmos, feet flung outward by the centrifugal force.
“He’s got a hand on it, but I don’t now if he can hold on. If he loses his grip and it slings him off, we may not get him back.” A burst of white exhaust came from the thruster. “Damn! There it goes again! Wow! He’s still got his grip! I guess the suit gives him enough protection from the peroxide jet.” Jupp watched intently. “Oh, oh,” he said. “They’ve slowed it down and it’s tilted toward us again. They’re still trying to draw a bead!”
Jupp concentrated on the controls again, moving the shuttle out of reach. When he could look again, Jupp saw that the Colonel had once more fired up the torch.
“He’s hanging onto the thruster with one hand and using the torch on the sidewall about a foot above the thruster. I don’t know how he’s holding on, but that should be thin skin he’s cutting there. Why’s he doing that? Yep, there it goes.”
A thin piece of the metal wall fell away leaving a hole about a foot across. The torch was released, dangling on its short cord.
“Now let’s see, he’s got a hole big enough for his hand. Yeah, he’s reaching inside. Those edges will be sharp. He better not rip his suit! Okay, he’s got a grip on something inside, a brace or something. He’s hauling himself up. He’s got a foot up, now the other. Oh, I see. He’s standing on the wing.”
“He’s standing?” inquired Wahlquist, perplexed. “What the hell do you mean?”
“Well, he’s got himself wrapped along the side with his head pointed in the direction of the rotation. That puts the flat surface of the wing under his feet, giving sort of an artificial gravity. There must still be quite a centrifugal force, but he’s got some support.
“I can only see him about once every, oh, about every twenty seconds now, the thing has slowed its rotation as it’s maneuvered here. From our vantage, he’s moving from left to right, clockwise if you look up from below. He’s got the torch back and is poking it into the thruster nozzle. Ah, yeah, that’ll fry the nozzle and the works inside. Now he’s doing the opposite nozzle of the pair. He’s cutting another hand hold. He’s near the bottom end of the cylinder. There’s another thruster at the top; he’s going for that.”
Jupp watched as the man held on with his left hand and reached over as far as he could with the torch in his right hand to cut another hole. There was an awkward moment as the torch was released, and the change of handholds was managed, right hand into the old hole, left into the new one. That maneuver was repeated again so that the figure was holding on only with his right hand and had moved to the left. After a brief fumble the torch was retrieved from where it spun outward at the end of its tether, and yet another hole was cut. Repeating this pattern, Newman made his laborious way along the side of the Cosmos, pausing a couple of times to direct the torch into small ports that could be easily reached. Whatever sensors had peered out from within were now blind. Electronic eyes in exchange for the human pair in the shuttle. Newman was almost at the other end, at the second pair of thrusters, when his cold voice came again.
“Major, are you out of the line of fire?”
“Yes, sir—”
“Then make sure your eyes are goddamned covered!”
The laser! Jupp had not been watching the clock in his fascination with the laborious climb up the face of the Cosmos. He barely had time to throw his arms up over his faceplate. The laser port was between the protuberance Newman stood on and the one that followed in the sense of rotation. The timing was immaculate. The laser flared as the rotation swept it in the direction of the shuttle, the vast surge of energy passing several hundred feet above the shuttle. Jupp slowly lowered his arms and looked at the clock. About twenty-four minutes between shots, just as before. The remaining thrusters flared on the Cosmos, and it slowed and slewed again, a little erratically Jupp thought, the effect of the destroyed thruster pair. Hurriedly, Jupp eased the shuttle into a new safe position.
“Everything all right?” Wahlquist wanted to know.
“Yeah,” replied Jupp, “we were out of the line of fire, but I shouldn’t have lost track of the time. He’s torched the upper pair of thrusters. Now he’s leaning over and cutting a hole in the top edge of the wing projection. Another one in the hull just above the wing. Oh, man! He’s using those holds to lower himself down toward the next wing, dropping back against the rotation from our point of view. It’s not working! The centrifugal force throws him out. It’s a little too far; he ca’’t get a foot straight down!
“He’s hauled himself back up and is lying prone on the wing, reaching way down to cut another hole in the hull.”
Jupp was silent for a few moments.
“It’s a foothold! He’s hanging down again and has a foot in that new hole. He’s down; he’s got a foot on the other wing. He’s got a hand in the foothold, both feet down. He made it! Damnation! That clown is good!”
Newman applied the torch to the thruster pair near him and then began to cut holds and work his way toward the pair of thrusters to his right at the bottom end of the long cylinder. Midway along he came to the large ominous port that housed the laser. It spanned the distance from his belt to his throat as he paused before it and reached for the torch.
The satellite had rotated the port away from them and Jupp felt more than saw a brief glow. Over the radio they heard what might have been the start of a scream, but the lungs that were attempting to drive it vanished, and the sound came out a choked sigh.
Jupp watched in horror as the satellite rotated, now in seemingly infinitely slow motion. Before the laser port came into view he saw the legs, thrown off by the centrifugal force. Legs, ending at the waist of the suit, twisting slowly off into oblivion, followed by a piece of the backpack with the torch still dangling from it. The next stubby wing swept by and he could see the remaining ghastly tableau. The left hand was still wedged into one of the freshly cut hand holds. The arm led to shoulders, another arm, the head above, but nothing below, the torso blasted cleanly away. The truncated assemblage, flung centrifugally out from the side of the satellite, rotated slowly out of view.
Jupp felt an intense nauseous sweat break out on his forehead and sweep down through his body. He breathed deeply to keep his stomach. Finally he realized Wahlquist was screaming at him.
“Ed! Ed! For god’s sake what happened?! Ed? Answer me!”
“The laser,” he finally croaked. “It went off when he was right in front of it. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean went off? It couldn’t have been time.
“No. No, you’re right,” Jupp looked at the clock. “It could only have been about twelve minutes.” He lay back in his seat. “Maybe it was triggered prematurely somehow. A trip device, some signal from the ground. Not full power, but enough to kill a man. I don’t know. But it sure happened. God!” he exclaimed as the laser port and the remains of its victim swung into view again.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” exploded Wahlquist, near hysteria.
Jupp thought for a moment, his head spinning, rationality almost out of grasp. Then order settled in, years of training asserting its influence.
“Larry! Listen to me!” He spoke sternly, commanding his copilot to calm down. “We can’t go down.”
