He needed to get his mind off Russell Cramer.
He decided to visit the observatory. The log showed that the Deep Space Study’s instrument pod was due to be recalibrated. Normally, he dispatched the astronomy payload specialist to perform this menial task. But today he would go himself. And he would take Lorraine along with him. Otherwise, what was the point?
Lorraine accepted the offer. A little warily, Jaeckle thought, but at least she accepted. Somebody still likes me.
They met at the main airlock just after the dinner hour. The space suits were stored in lockers lining the connecting tunnel.
“I think a size Small will be best for you,” said Jaeckle, floating along the row of lockers until he reached the end. Lorraine noticed that he picked out a Small for himself, too.
“Why do they have to call them EMUs?” she complained, pointing to the letters stenciled on each locker door.
Taking her question literally, Jaeckle replied, “Government jargon,” with a small sniff of distaste. “It sounds more official to say extravehicular mobility unit.”
“I mean, why can’t they just call them space suits, like everybody else?”
Pulling one of the empty suit torsos from its locker, Jaeckle repeated, “Government jargon,” as if that explained everything.
The suits looked like haunted sets of armor, arms floating out slightly, as if occupied by a headless, handless ghost. The helmets bobbed loosely on short tethers attached to the shelf at the top of each locker. They towed the bulky gear to the airlock and sealed themselves inside.
Helping Lorraine to slip an oxygen mask over her chestnut hair, Jaeckle said, “We’ll have to prebreathe pure oxygen for one hour.”
Lorraine nodded. She said nothing, and Jaeckle did not see the look in her eyes that said, I know about the prebreathing requirements. I’m the station’s medical officer, after all.
Neither of them was very adept at donning a space suit. Pulling on the legs was easy enough, although Lorraine had to wiggle her feet furiously to worm them into the attached boots. Then came the struggle of working her arms into the sleeves of the hard upper torso; it was like trying to pull on a sweatshirt made of armor plate. And it kept bobbing away from her. She finally had to ask Jaeckle to hold it still for her. When at last she popped her head through the neck ring Lorraine felt as if she had been underwater for half an hour. By the time they were safely buttoned in, with the life-support backpacks connected and all the seals and couplings checked out, the prebreathe was almost complete.
Jaeckle cycled the airlock. The pumps clattered for a few minutes, then Lorraine could no longer hear them. The hatch slid back to reveal utter darkness. Jaeckle stepped to the rim of the hatch, his suit looking gray and bulky in the dim lights of the airlock. He turned and extended a gloved hand to Lorraine. The glove was ridged with the metal “bones” of its force amplifier and knobbed with their tiny servomotors, like mechanical knuckles.
She took his hand and stepped out into black emptiness.
The station was on the night side of the Earth, but flying quickly toward another dawn. Lorraine had gone EVA only twice, and always on the day side. The scene—or lack of a scene—stretching below her was scary, chilling. She had gazed down upon the night side of the Earth from the observation blister. It was deep black with occasional flashes of lightning and the dim web-like patterns created by lights from larger cities. But viewing night from the protective bubble of the blister was nothing like experiencing it outside the station.
She was floating in emptiness, surrounded by the blackest black she ever had seen. Were it not for the sound of her own breathing within the bubble helmet, she would have been very close to total sensory deprivation.
“We’ll wait until we’re back in the light.” Jaeckle’s voice in her earphones startled her. “If we miss the observatory in the dark, the next stop is the moon.” He chuckled at his little joke. Lorraine shivered.
Dawn was coming up quickly. Jaeckle and Lorraine backed themselves into manned maneuvering units mounted along the outer skin of the connecting tunnel. Lorraine felt the connector latches click into place on her space suit as she gripped the controls set into the MMU’s armrests. Then, without needing instructions from Jaeckle, she pressed the control stud that unlocked the MMU from its mount. The astronauts called the MMUs “flying armchairs.” But they were chairs with no seat and no legs.
The dawn broke swiftly, a breathtaking spectacle of colors rimming the Earth’s curved horizon. Lorraine could not help but gasp with delighted awe as she watched the world below her come into the light, deep blue oceans and radiant swirls of white clouds, sparkling and fresh and gloriously beautiful.
With Jaeckle in the lead they jetted off, looping out a safe distance around the module raft and directing themselves toward the observatory at the zenith of the station’s skeleton. Jaeckle chattered in her ear, using his lecturer’s skill to highlight some of the more interesting stars and constellations.
Lorraine oohed and aahed, even though she could not see much of the stars through her tinted helmet visor. But flying an MMU was pure excitement. It was like a magic broomstick, a flying carpet from fabled Baghdad. The realization that she—Lorraine Renoir, the little girl from Quebec City who had dreamed of becoming an aerospace physician—was accompanying the great Kurt Jaeckle to the observatory only added to the thrill.
They parked the MMUs at the attachment points near the observatory’s airlock and pulled themselves inside. As they waited for the airlock to repressurize, Jaeckle explained the scientific reason for the visit.
“The project administers an astronomical study of deep space. There’s a pod of instruments here aimed directly at Polaris, the North Star. Due to effects such as thermal expansion, the pod occasionally becomes misaligned. So we inspect it periodically and, if necessary, realign it manually.”
A green light on the control panel indicated that the air pressure in the airlock had reached a safe level. Jaeckle twisted his helmet off and took a deep breath of air. Suddenly he started to shake, and for a horrifying second Lorraine thought he had been stricken by a seizure. Then she understood: he was trying to struggle out of his suit.
“Things are cramped inside,” he said by way of explanation. “You’d better take your suit off, too.”
Lorraine soon saw that he was telling the truth. Although the observatory itself was the approximate size and shape of an old Apollo command module, it was so crammed with instruments that the interior was barely as large as a sleep compartment. It was dimly lit, like a photographer’s darkroom, with most of the light coming from illuminated dials and readouts. Lorraine drifted slowly along one wall, her eyes drinking in the Christmas-tree colors of the instruments.
“Where’s the telescope?” she asked. Jaeckle did not answer. When she turned she saw that he was staring at her. He had shed his flight suit and wore nothing but briefs.
“Here,” he said, pointing at his crotch, where something was telescoping indeed.
My God, Lorraine thought, he’s like a twelve-year-old. She was not quite surprised, but she felt somewhat cheated. Too bad you didn’t stay in your space suit, she berated herself. Too late.
Lance Muncie shot a jet of water to the back of his throat, closed his mouth, and swallowed. The water tasted like warm plastic from his having clutched the thin polystyrene bottle in his hand for the entire shift. He had tried letting the bottle float free in the cool air as he watched Russell Cramer between pages of a paperback thriller he had borrowed from a Trikon scientist. But the bottle kept drifting into the dull silver expanse of the rumpus room. Lance found this tendency to be the most annoying aspect of micro-gee. Objects did not remain where you put them, unless you bungeed them, or Velcroed them, or corralled them in a compartment.