“Roger.” He depressurized the airlock, pushed the exterior hatch open, and floated into the payload bay.
Kessler quickly forced his mind to overcome the spatial disorientation so typical for first-time spacewalkers. For a brief moment it seemed that the hundreds of hours he had spent training in the 1.3-million-gallon Neutral Buoyancy Simulator tank at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Johnson Space Center’s WET-F pool had been insufficient. Well, almost insufficient, he admitted, as his senses finally adjusted to the orbiter’s upside-down flight profile. A large portion of the South American continent appeared to hang overhead as Kessler looked up through the gold-coated visor of his space suit and past the opened doors of the payload bay.
Kessler shifted his gaze to the left, above the orbiter’s vertical fin tip. He narrowed his eyes and inhaled deeply as his heartbeat increased.
“Don’t get nervous, Michael. Take your time breathing that oxygen. Let your body adjust slowly. Hold it in as much as possible and exhale slowly,” said Hunter.
“Trying, Chief. Starting EVA,” Kessler said over the radio as he took a shallow breath and held it in. He briefly inspected the second MMU on the right side of the payload bay, checking for nominal propellant and battery levels before backing himself into it. He strapped himself in and threw the power switch located over his right shoulder. The MMU’s flashing locator lights came on. Before placing his hands on the thruster controls, Kessler went through the brief checklist he had committed to memory. Satisfied that all was in operating condition, he skillfully fired the MMU’s thruster jets for one second. The twin tanks in the back of the MMU provided compressed nitrogen gas to the thrusters, which puffed out the gas in one direction and pushed him gently in the other. Kessler reached the rear section of the payload bay and affixed a “Stinger” to the arms of the MMU. The Stinger was a device designed to latch on to broken satellites. With that, Kessler headed out of the payload bay into free space. He activated the TV camera for the benefit of Houston.
Kessler used the hand control to move away from the payload bay. He looked around him but didn’t see Jones. Puzzled, he propelled himself roughly two hundred feet above and to the right of the orbiter. Still no sign of him. He piloted the MMU to within a hundred or so feet below Lightning. There! A white figure. Still rotating out of control. Kessler applied a three-second burst on the thrusters. Compressed nitrogen propelled him beneath Lightning into a sea of darkness. The missing tiles on Lightning’s underside distracted him momentarily, but his logical mind quickly put things into perspective. First get to Jones, then worry about the missing tiles.
He released the MMU’s controls and continued moving in the same direction. Jones’s limp figure grew progressively larger. Kessler knew he was moving much farther away from Lightning than he should, but all of that was secondary. Who knew what kind of injury Jones had suffered in his collision with the orbiter? Jones appeared to be unconscious, since he didn’t move his arms or legs.
Kessler approached within ten feet of Jones and slowed down, trying to achieve a similar translational velocity. He did so as he came to within five feet of him. Kessler noticed that Jones’s MMU seemed dead, the compressed nitrogen supply probably exhausted. No obvious damage to the EMU suit. Still pressurized. Visor intact, so no damage to the helmet underneath. Kessler breathed easier. Hope filled him.
Kessler fired the reverse thrusters for one second and reduced his speed. Additional lateral thrusts allowed him to align the Stinger with the back of Jones’s MMU.
Slowly, almost painstakingly, Kessler approached his rotating friend.
“Two feet and closing… one foot… contact, oh shit!” Kessler managed to place the Stinger’s latching mechanism in contact with Jones’s MMU, but he lacked enough force to snap the latch. His approach had been too slow. The Stinger and Jones’s MMU momentarily transferred their respective translational and rotational energies and then separated. Kessler’s forward motion caused Jones to wobble. In turn, Jones’s rotating motion caused Kessler to rotate clockwise. In an instant, the Earth, space, orbiter, and Jones flashed through his field of view, changing positions as he tumbled away unpredictably on all three axes.
Kessler felt dizzy and disoriented. He tried to concentrate and remember the hours he’d spent in the multiaxis simulators. His hands fumbled for the MMU’s controls, but spatial disorientation quickly set in, making it harder for Kessler’s confused brain to decide in which direction to reach for the hand controls of the propulsion unit. His breathing increased. He tried to control his rising nausea.
“Close your eyes! Close them and hold your breath. Remember your training,” Kessler heard Hunter say over the radio, but he began to panic. The orbiter seemed to float farther and farther away.
“Dammit, Michael! I gave you a direct order. Close your eyes and relax. You have plenty of compressed nitrogen to make it back from miles away. Breathe slowly, hold it for several seconds, and let it out slow. Concentrate!”
Hunter’s voice was reassuring. Although designed to be used within three hundred feet of the orbiter, the MMU could get back from farther away than that. As mixed images of Earth and space flickered in front of his eyes, Kessler managed to draw strength from his strict NASA training and forced his eyes to do something his natural instincts refused to let them do: He closed them. In a flash it all went away, as if someone had abruptly dropped a heavy gate in front of him, isolating him from the sudden madness that had engulfed him. Peace. His eyes stopped registering motion; his brain regained control; his body relaxed. Kessler’s breathing steadied.
“Eyes closed.”
“Good, Michael,” said Hunter. “Now listen carefully. I’ve got you in plain view from one of Lightning’s payload bay cameras. You’re rotating clockwise about once every ten seconds. Counter with a two-second lateral thrust.”
Kessler almost opened his eyes to reach for the controls but caught himself. Instead, he felt his way down the MMU’s arms, placed his hands on the controls, and fired the right-side jets. One-thousand-one… one-thousand-two. He released the trigger.
“Good, Michael. Now, you’re also rotating backward at a slower rate… hmmm, about once per minute. A one-second forward thrust should do.”
“Roger,” Kessler responded as his confidence began to build up again. He complied with Hunter’s order and fired the jet. “All right, now what?”
“Open your eyes.”
Kessler did so. “Jesus!” was all he could say when he realized how much he had drifted away in such a little time. Lightning appeared to be a small white object no larger than a couple of inches in length. Jones floated roughly fifty feet away, rotating faster than before.
Kessler decided to take a different approach. He released the Stinger from the MMU’s arms and then approached Jones. He stopped when he estimated he was five feet away from his rotating friend. Kessler removed the ten-foot-long webbed line hanging from the side of his MMU. It had tether clips on both ends. He clipped one end to the side of his own MMU and carefully tried to snag the other end to anything on Jones’s space suit or MMU. He got within three feet. Jones’s rotation turned him clockwise about once every five seconds. Kessler reached for the center of Jones’s suit, the point of zero rotation, and managed to clip the end of one of the straps securing Jones to the MMU.