When Enterprise had been refurbished and activated as an interim replacement for the shuttle Challenger, Marty had set a new challenge for himself. Every waking moment had been spent preparing to fly aboard her, and since then he had flown Enterprise more than any other person.
Now he saw Enterprise a few hundred yards away through his bubble space helmet, and the sight tore at his guts. He saw the initial impact point of the Russian hypervelocity missile, saw the remains of the terrible explosion and fire in the lower decks, saw the devastation in the RCS, the nose reaction-control system pod. The shuttle's docking adapter and airlock were wide open, like the open spout of a dead pilot whale washed up on a beach. Her remote manipulator arm was sloppily sticking out of the open cargo bay, its grappler claws extended like fingers of a hand reaching for help.
Well, he was here to help. "Beginning translation," he said. "Roger," Colonel Hampton said from America. Marty nudged his MMU thruster-control and slid toward the shuttle. "Damn it, damage is worse than I thought," Marty said as he approached the shuttle.
Hampton glanced nervously at the inertial altimeter. "Marty, we're only a few miles above the atmosphere entry point. Then won't be much time. Can you fly that thing without a forward RCS pod?"
"She'll fly just fine. It'll be hard to dock her — maybe impossible — but if she's got power and fuel she'll be all right." He had to sound as though he believed it. For his own sake as well as the others.
He glided over to the cargo bay, unclipped the MMU and stowed it in a restraining harness on the forward bulkhead, then glided over to the docking adapter on the airlock and slipped inside. The sight of the middeck made him recoil. "I… I'm in the middeck, America. Everything's wiped out. There may be nothing salvageable." He paused for a minute longer, then, looking away from the unidentifiable hunks of debris remaining on the crew seats, announced, "Moving to the flight deck."
"Roger."
A few moments later Marty was in the commander's seat and surveying the instruments. "It looks good, America. Still have battery power on. I'm going to try to repower the fuel cells."
He examined the electrical distribution panel on the pilot's side of the cockpit. The switches were arranged on the panel with lines and arrows to show the relationship between the various circuits and power controls, but he knew them all by heart. As long as the cells weren't damaged, Marty told himself, they should be working. "Oxygen and hydrogen manifolds one, two and three open," he recited as he flipped switches. "DC battery power tied to essential bus. Tank heaters on… "
He continued his litany of system checks, identifying faulty connections and making the necessary repairs. Finally the main instrument panel lights came on. "We've got it, America," Marty said excitedly. "Enterprise is alive." His enthusiasm peaking, he finished reactivating Enterprise's fuel cells, then moved back to the left-side commander's seat. "C'mon, lady," Marty said, patting the digital autopilot panel. "I know you're alive. Now we need to get back into the game."
The computer-monitor in front of him was blank except for a tiny blinking rectangle no bigger than the size of a kernel of corn — but that tiny dot was the ballgame. Enterprise's brain, the GPC, was alive and awake — the problem was it had forgotten it was a General Purpose Computer. He had to perform an IPL, an initial program load, the series of commands that would tell the computer that it was a computer.
He did it quickly, entering a series of digital commands that told the computer where in its permanent memory it could find a program that would initiate the computer's speedy education. After each lesson the computer would perform a final exam, writing another program for itself in volatile memory that it would use to move to the next lesson. Marty coaxed each step into the process with commands that would periodically quiz the GPC on its progress. On the ground prior to launch these complicated steps were usually performed by ground personnel so that when the crew arrived on the shuttle they found a perfectly running fully educated GPC. Marty was one of the few who had taken the time to watch this procedure from the beginning.
"How's it going, Marty?"
"We're up to high school."
"Say again."
"We're doing fine, just fine."
Thirty long minutes later the computer screen was filled with messages telling of malfunctions, environmental problems, shortages of supplies. But to Marty it all meant Enterprise was thinking once again. He entered one final code into the GPC and grabbed the flight-control stick. "America. Enterprise is ready to maneuver."
"Roger. Moving clear." Hampton commanded America's computer to move away from Enterprise on a heading back toward the station. "Well clear."
"Here we go." Marty double-checked his switch positions and nudged the stick forward.
Nothing. "C'mon, baby." He nudged the stick a bit more. Still no reaction. "Enterprise, any luck?"
"Stand by." Marty cleared the in-flight maneuvering code from the GPC and reentered it. This time the GPC refused to accept the code. He sat back in his seat, scanned the panel. "Last chance," he said to the instrument panel. He checked the RCS fuel-pressure gauges, power supplies, circuit breakers, bypass circuit — all nominal. "We don't have much time, Enterprise. Get her started or abandon her."
"One more minute." He cleared the GPC flight code once again. "This is it, you contrary s.o.b. If you don't go, I leave you to fry on your way down." He reentered flight code two-oh-two and the computer screen blanked. "The GPCs not accepting the maneuvering code," Marty radioed to Hampton. "Then let's get the hell out of here. Hull temperatures are increasing. If you wait much longer… "
"On my way, " Marty said. He was about to leave the commander's seat when a sudden thought stopped him. He sat down and cleared the in-flight maneuvering code, punched in the code to erase the IPL and the mass memory areas. He was eliminating all the shuttle's schooling.
Suddenly the code came back as "202," the in-flight maneuvering code. "A perverse lady… Reverse psychology, works every time—"
"Say again, Enterprise?"
Marty sat back in the commander's seat and took a firm grip on the control stick. "I say, lead on, America. Enterprise is right and ready to go."
Marty Schultz, along with Ken Horvath, hovered over yet another piece of free-floating SBR console, grabbed it and secured it back in place with another piece of tape. "Attention on the station," Saint-Michael announced over interphone. "Target-area horizon crossing in one minute. Stand by. This station is on red alert."
Horvath nudged Schultz, looking around the command module. Almost every panel and console in the entire module-ceiling as well as wall mounts had been removed during the past five days and only about half of them had been put back in their original places. The rest were either floating, attached or semi-attached to some other piece of equipment somewhere else in the module. Bundles of wiring of all descriptions crisscrossed the module in all directions: it was easier for the crewmembers to float around the wires than to try to route the wiring behind the ever-changing landscape of electronic components. Pieces of equipment borrowed from other modules — computers and monitors from the recreation module, wiring from Enterprise, tubing and insulation from the cargo module, test components and, in many spots, entire console sections from the scientific module — added to the seemingly random piles of equipment scattered throughout the command module. But the mountains of gadgets only partially concealed the huge silicone patches on the module walls, the areas of scorching where fires had broken out, and the occasionally flashing environmental warning lights (the warning horns had been deactivated long ago; they went off all the time but everyone watched the warning lights anyway).