While that would provide the detail of the NRO constellation we ended up using, it was a good reminder to the others in the room that civilian technology gap is almost negligible.
“Opening the hatch.”
I brace one hand on a rail and use the other to open the door to the CS. It swings open fairly easily, revealing the hollow sphere of the airlock.
“Entering the CS. Detaching the tether.”
I take the lifeline that connects me to the DarkStar and clamp it to the handle of the satellite, then shove my gear bag inside the chamber.
“Closing the hatch.”
I pull the door shut and give the handle a twist. I have a moment of panic at the thought that I could have just locked myself inside. That wouldn’t be a total loss. They’d have to let me use my lightsaber then…
“Hatch closed. Can you read me?”
“Perfectly, Mongoose. Please keep an eye on your radiation sensor.”
“Will do…” I freeze as I notice the green bars are more yellow. “It’s green and yellow.”
“That’s not good. Hold on. Talking to the doc.”
While I wait, I check the pressure gauge on the inner airlock dock. It’s at one atmosphere.
Back in the Gemini and Apollo days they’d get away with a lower pressure atmosphere by increasing the oxygen. While this saved on structural materials, it made for a very dangerous working environment that killed three US astronauts, one cosmonaut and almost ended the lives of several others.
Now the standard operating procedure in space is to keep any environment where people are going to be at one atmosphere with the standard mix of oxygen and nitrogen.
This is also common practice for unmanned equipment where you want your computer and other hardware working in an environment roughly equal to what you have on ground.
“Okay, David. You can proceed. But keep an eye on the readout. It’s probably going to get hotter in there. We recommend putting your visor down so you’re shielded.”
“Fair enough.” I swing the black shield into place and rely on the video projection from the camera mounted on my helmet. I’ve spent thousands of hours on Earth working like this in training, so it’s not a big deal.
“The satellite is pressurized. I’m going to vent canister one until I’m equalized.”
Because I don’t have access to the satellites airlock controls, I have to use the air I brought with me to fill this airlock so I don’t cause a decompression problem.
On a large station with lots of air space, it’s not a big deal if you gradually vent from the larger volume into the smaller. Here, where the airlock is probably ten percent the size of the satellite, that could cause a problem. Plus, it might have a safeguard that stops me.
I turn the handle and see a vapor cloud shoot out from the nozzle. After a few seconds I can hear the sound of the gas escaping when there’s enough atmosphere to conduct sound.
“Okay. I have one atmosphere. Opening the inner hatch.”
Nineteen
Interior
I flick on my helmet light and the interior of the CS is illuminated, revealing a chaotic mess of free-floating silver pouches, cables and densely packed machinery.
Although it’s only twenty feet from where I am to the front of the satellite, I can’t even see halfway into the chamber. It appears that some kind of container or cargo net ruptured.
“How’s the radiation?” asks Laney.
“Still yellow. A little more, but no orange.”
“Try to keep it under twenty minutes if you don’t want to grow another eye.”
“I thought we made progress with anti-radiation drugs?”
“Not that much.”
The satellite is divided into two halves with a mesh screen dividing them. The left side appears to be the equipment section filled with various machines. On the right is something of a passage that appears to go all the way to the nose section where the laser unit is housed.
I feel like I’m staring down the gullet of a mechanical great white shark that ate a junkyard.
“Heading into the CS. Are you getting video?”
“Yeah. Was this thing built by raccoons?” asks Laney.
“I think some kind of storage locker broke open.”
“Might have happened during the test fire. Things probably got very hot.”
I pull myself along on a railing, careful not to grab any cables that might be electrified.
There’s so much loose stuff in here; containers, more silver pouches, tools, I half expect to turn around and see Monster Matilda stalking me.
A package drifts by and the augmented display translates the label, “Shrimp Noodle Space Meal.”
“Sounds delicious,” says Laney.
“I guess the technicians decided to leave their lunch inside here.”
I reach my hand out to swat away some more silver pouches and my wrist gets tangled in a black netting.
“I think I found what snapped loose.”
I unwrap it from my arm and try to wedge it in between two metal boxes on the hull.
“Hey, Mongoose. Turn your head to the left. We want to take a look at something.”
I rotate around and glance through a partition in the mesh divider. On the opposite hull a spacesuit is fixed to the wall.
“That’s interesting. I guess they packed a backup in case they had to send someone to do a repair up here,” I reply.
“Should have sent a Roomba,” says Laney.
I close a panel door blocking the rest of the satellite and make my way towards the nose section.
A ring of sixteen cylinders surrounds a larger tube with hundreds of pipes going in an out of it.
“Russel says that’s it. How’s your radiation?”
“Getting more orange. Let’s make this a quick one.”
I take out my set of tools from my thigh pouch and start taking apart the housing as a technician back at Ops leads me through each step.
Working in micro-gravity is a challenge unto itself, being careful not to leave any evidence of tampering the Chinese can find later is another level of difficulty.
“Okay, I have the back plate off and I’m sliding out the tube section.”
I pull the bread box-sized unit towards me and open the inner compartment. Being extra, extra careful, I slide the rod from the tube filled with pumping emitters designed to excite the material into doing its magic thing.
Delicately, I reveal just enough of the Silver Glass to attach my pen-sized spectrometer. This is the device that can tell us precisely the chemical makeup of the material.
“Getting my reading now.”
The spectrometer flashes green.
“Okay, plugging the spectrometer into my wrist comm so you guys can read all the fancy numbers.”
The light on the back of my arm computer flashes blue as it sends the data back to Ops.
“Safe to reassemble?” I ask.
“Hold up, Mongoose. They’re still checking the data.”
“Okay. And I’m still a microwave burrito.”
“Mongoose, this is Onlooker. We need you to do an additional procedure.”
Ugh, that would be Kevin Flavor chiming in with his two cents.
“Go ahead, Onlooker.”
“We need you to replace the rod but affix a one centimeter piece of thermal tape to the underside.”
“You mean sabotage the device?”
There’s a long pause from back on Earth. To be honest, I suspected something like this was going to happen. Why just have me spy on the device if you can destroy it the next time they try to fire it up?
The thermal tape would provide enough of an imbalance in the laser chamber that it could cause the whole system melt down, ruining their space-laser — and probably set their program back months or years as they figure out what happened.