Space Station Down, page 18
ISS U.S. LAB, ROBOTIC ARM CONTROLS
Kimberly floated out of the JPM as quietly as she could, taking care not to bang the hatch against the vestibule siding. She glided through the cool, fresh air that spilled into the Japanese module, relieving the stuffiness that had grown in there since the power had been cut.
Once in Node 2 she changed her direction by grabbing the hatchway’s inner handrail, changing her linear momentum to angular. She couldn’t see any sign of the terrorists while she flew down the module’s axis. She prayed they were still in Central Post. If they’ve spotted the incoming Dragon, she reasoned, maybe they’ll think it’s a regularly scheduled unmanned commercial resupply vessel. She hoped so.
In a few seconds she was through Node 2, and as she entered the U.S. lab she once again changed her momentum and headed straight for the robotic arm controls. She pulled the Rooster sauce from her pocket with her right hand. Reaching out with her left, she grabbed the control panel and spun around, stopping herself in front of the panel’s screen.
Her heart was thumping hard from the exertion and the adrenaline roaring through her system. She consciously slowed her breathing as she positioned the screen to give her a view of anyone approaching from Node 1 while she started working the controls. No sign of the terrorists; she’d made it without being detected, she thought.
Kimberly ensured that MCC had powered up the arm, while the outside camera showed the Dragon capsule, floating motionless just a few yards in front of Node 2’s zenith berthing port. The Dragon’s velocity was so precisely matched to the station’s that it appeared to be hanging in space, not moving as it waited to be pulled in for berthing. She knew it was actually hurtling through space at exactly the same 17,500 miles an hour as the ISS, but the absence of relative motion gave the illusion that it was suspended stationary just outside the station.
Since the capsule was not moving relative to the ISS, in effect it was hidden in plain sight. Now for the tough part, Kimberly said to herself. She knew that it was one thing for the Dragon to have approached the ISS without being detected by the terrorists, but the instant she started moving the robotic arm they would be alarmed and alerted.
A series of numbers ran across the bottom of the screen and a green light began blinking. The software checks were complete. She drew in a breath and slowly, slowly moved the controls, not bothering to go through the normal safety and checkout procedures to test the arm’s response.
She kept glancing at the hatch leading from Node 2 to the U.S. lab, expecting the terrorists to appear at any second. But she saw no motion, heard no sound from outside the module.
On the screen the long, hinged robotic arm slowly unfolded and stretched out toward the waiting Dragon. It looked as if a giant skeletal hand was reaching out to grasp the snub-nosed metal vessel, extending inch by inch toward it.
Its slow motion started to grate on Kimberly’s nerves. Part of her forced her movements to be methodical, precise, calculated; but another part screamed inside her head to hurry and quickly pull the damned thing into the docking port! She felt her cheeks flushing, the tension escalating as the arm slowly crept toward the capsule, like an arthritic old man.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flicker of something just inside Node 1, near the hatch.
The blood thundered in her ears. Should I continue working the damned arm or get ready for an attack? Taking her eyes off the screen, she peered toward the hatch. Nothing moving. Had one of the terrorists merely gone to the zero-gee toilet in Node 3 again, or were they systematically checking all the modules before moving to the JPM to see if she had left her sanctuary?
She turned her attention back to the robotic arm. It was almost there, mere centimeters until contact. Slowly she opened the robot’s metal hand—three snare wires, arranged in a triangle that closed like an iris diaphragm around the capsule’s grapple pin—wanting to make certain that she could firmly grasp the Dragon. Only seconds away, she’d have the vessel safely under control and start pulling it to the Node 2 zenith berth.…
She flinched as she spotted Farid entering the U.S. lab. He floated above her, traveling slowly down the axis of the module. If she’d kept still he might have missed her entirely.
But his eyes widened with disbelief and he opened his mouth, obviously shocked at seeing her in the module. He started to shout as Kimberly whirled and flicked open the top of the bottle of caustic Rooster sauce.
She thrust her arm at Farid and squeezed the plastic bottle as hard as she could. A stream of red liquid spurted from the nozzle, quickly breaking into a cloud of pulsing globules that hurtled toward the terrorist. Kimberly rotated her hand in a small circle and the onslaught of acidic liquid spewed out in a swirling, expanding cone.
Screaming, Farid arched his back and tried to duck out of the way. He started flailing his hands as if to wave off the engulfing red cloud. His torso began to rotate in midair. The Rooster sauce splashed against his hands and face, breaking into still-smaller globs of searing liquid that ricocheted randomly through the module, spinning away in every direction.
“Kugan, suka!” he roared, twirling, kicking, pulling his hands up to his face, trying to do anything to get away from the blinding, burning pain.
Kimberly coolly turned back to the control panel. The robotic arm was still hanging just over the Dragon. She ignored Farid’s anguished cries and slowly moved the controls to engage the vessel and start pulling it in. Now that she’d been discovered she knew that she’d have only a few more seconds until Bakhet would appear. Once she made contact she’d hurry the berthing process; it would take only scant moments until the Dragon was docked and the guys could take over. They would access the module and storm the station—
There. She started to close the arm when something else hurtled into the module. Bakhet. His eyes wild, he held the titanium prybar and headed straight for her.
Crap! She turned from the screen, pulling Shep’s knife out of her pocket as she ducked and kicked away, flying through the air.
Bakhet threw the prybar at her. It flew past her and hit the robotic arm’s control screen, which shattered, spewing pieces of debris around her as she moved from the carnage.
Farid kept yowling with pain, still tumbling weightlessly in the module until he smacked into the opposite side. Bakhet tried to stop his own momentum, but without any footing he smashed against the forward wall of the U.S. lab and bounced away from her.
Kimberly ducked away from them and, kicking out, shot toward the hatch back into Node 2 and the sanctuary of the JPM. She flew just under Bakhet, who reached out to grab her by the arm, yelling wildly. As she passed she swiveled and lashed out with Shep’s knife, slashing his arm.
He howled as globules of red spurted from his arm like a fire hose of blood spewing through the module. The two of them bounced against the insulation and the metal frame of the hatch as thousands of tiny spinning spheres of blood mixed with the Rooster sauce in a cloud of liquid asteroids.
Kimberly pulled loose of Bakhet’s grip and flew into Node 2, leaving the yelling cacophony behind her. Reaching the module’s far side, she used the inner handrail to change her direction and sailed into the darkened JPM. Once inside she turned, closed the hatch covers, and evacuated the air in the vestibule between the two modules, once again sealing both hatches with vacuum.
JAPANESE MODULE (JPM)
Only when the JPM’s air pressure tightly sealed the hatch with tons of force did Kimberly slow down to take a deep breath. She felt her heart rate start to slow, but the blood still pounded in her ears from the exertion.
Once again she’d escaped from harm by barricading herself in the module. But this time, instead of peering out the hatch into Node 2 and sneering at the terrorists she turned her focus to the large JPM windows at the far end of the module and craned her neck, trying to catch a view of the waiting Dragon.
She spotted the snub-nosed capsule, still floating just a few yards from the Node 2 berthing port. She felt a depressing pang of disappointment. The Dragon was so close, but also incredibly far away. The robotic arm was positioned just centimeters above the vessel, frozen in place, not moving.
If she’d had only another half minute, she thought. Only a few seconds. She could have brought the Dragon in and positioned it right at the Common Berthing Mechanism, allowing it access to the station. And if that had happened, she wouldn’t be staring at the rescue vessel from the darkened JPM: her fellow astronauts would have overpowered Farid and Bakhet, ending this insane nightmare. They’d have wrestled control of the ISS away from the terrorists, and perhaps even could have transferred some fuel through an EVA fuel-line connect from their capsule to the station’s tanks, so they could have re-boosted the ISS to a higher, safer altitude.
As she watched through the small window, the Dragon slowly backed away from Node 2, leaving the station and the dangling robotic arm. It crept away slowly, only centimeters per second. But it was leaving the ISS, Kimberly knew.
She felt like a shipwrecked sailor, marooned on a desert island. With cannibals stalking after her.
Minutes dragged by as the Dragon pulled away, moving at a slight angle instead of heading straight back. Using the capsule’s small thrusters, the vessel started to circle slowly around the ISS, swinging in an arc that brought it around until it was directly in front of the JPM experimental hatch.
At first Kimberly thought the guys might somehow be planning to use the cramped airlock. But the 1.5-meter-diameter, two-meter-long chamber was big enough for only small experiments to be ejected from the pressurized volume of the JPM into the harsh environment of orbital space. Besides, the guys didn’t have any spacesuits with them.
Briefly she thought that they might try to rapidly decompress the air in their Dragon capsule and attempt to reach the JPM’s experimental airlock where she might be able to pull them in, one by one. But the airlock could only be opened from the inside control panel, and without wearing spacesuits they wouldn’t have a chance.
It was an insane idea. It would never work. How long could a human body survive in vacuum at more than 400 degrees below zero? Twenty or thirty seconds at most, before their eyeballs burst, their eardrums ruptured, their lungs exploded.
But these weren’t normal people in that Dragon trying to rescue her. They were astronauts, Navy SEALS, and Army Rangers in top-notch condition, supremely competent and incredibly confident—if not a touch crazy.
But no one could survive the passage from the Dragon to the small JPM hatch without a suit, even these guys, good as they were. That was the stuff of bad sci-fi movies, not the real world. She just hoped they weren’t so overconfident that they would try it anyway, and depend on her to pull them in.
She glanced at the second-generation spacesuit stored next to the hatch. It could barely fit in the airlock itself, and it wouldn’t be of any help to the guys anyway. There was no way to get it to them, and they’d have to open their own hatch to reach it. And even if they could access it, the suit needed a long, insulated hose to provide its air supply.
Kimberly felt a sense of relief as the Dragon glided past the JPM airlock and continued in a long arc around the station. It started to move out of her sight as it headed toward the station’s nadir, or Earth-facing side. It finally hit her that they may be trying to conduct a 360-degree inspection of the ISS. Or maybe they were approaching Node 2 from the nadir in an attempt to berth at the module’s nadir port.
But why would they do that? she wondered. She couldn’t access the robot arm, and since their ship was a resupply version of the Dragon it didn’t have the ability to approach any closer. So what are they trying to do?
She watched the capsule slowly move around the station until it passed beyond her sight. Now she couldn’t see the Dragon from the hatch or from any of the outside feeds. Kimberly could do nothing but wait, wondering what would happen next.
She decided that she had to go out of the JPM again, and this time make it a do-or-die effort.
It was obvious that the Dragon would never be able to berth without her help. And since the terrorists had destroyed the robotic arm’s controls in the U.S. lab, that left her only hope to dock the Dragon up to the arm’s primary controls in the Cupola. Could she get there? She had to somehow find something else in the JPM to overpower the terrorists and regain control of the robotic arm.
But how? What could she use?
Feeling more than a little desperate, she turned to rummage once again through the MO bags. In the darkened module she pulled aside the bungee-cord netting and groped through bag after bag, fumbling through the objects in them, squinting in the dim light filtering in through the hatch. I’ll have to jury-rig something, she thought, something deadly that will stop them cold, not just a half-assed contraption like the Rooster sauce. Digging through bag after bag, she felt her frustration mount.
The sun peeped over the curving horizon as Kimberly turned from the bungee-cord jail to the small experimental hatch. She spotted the Dragon, sunlight glinting off its curving flank. It was moving away from the station. They’ve probably hit bingo fuel, she realized. It grew smaller against the backdrop of the now-glowing Earth.
The guys had spent the best part of an hour trying to approach the ISS stealthily, and then trying to berth. All for naught. Kimberly watched her hopes drifting away from her.
She imagined the guys aboard the Dragon were deeply disappointed, but she also understood that there was nothing they could do. They were just as constrained by the laws of physics and the implacably hard facts of the situation as she herself was. The terrorists had the upper hand.
Things would have been different if it had been a manned Dragon capsule instead of a jury-rigged, unmanned supply version. A manned capsule was designed to be able to dock at one of the station’s numerous IDA, or International Docking Adapter ports on its own and wouldn’t need the robotic arm to pull it in.
Kimberly fought down an urge to cry. If only, she kept telling herself, if only. Those guys had volunteered to fly in the jury-rigged capsule. They’d flirted with incredible danger on the pad to launch in that ten-second window. Just a few years earlier a SpaceX launch pushed the envelope trying to make that window and exploded on launch. Those four astronauts could have met a fiery death on the pad.
And although Scott’s Boeing Starliner launch had been successful, he was in a different predicament than the four now returning to Earth: he’d be able to dock at the Node 3 IDA, but the International Docking Adapter didn’t have the ability to transfer fuel—she’d have to go EVA and connect a fuel transfer hose. Which meant somehow getting down to the Joint Airlock, donning an EVA suit, and exiting the station, all while keeping away from the terrorists.
Kimberly shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Scott won’t be here for several more hours, she knew. What she didn’t know was whether she’d be able to survive that long. She still had to leave the safety of the JPM, somehow overpower Farid and Bakhet, and go EVA to transfer Scott’s fuel.
If she failed, the station might not even survive for a few more days. And she would die with it.
As she watched the Dragon capsule dwindle from her sight, Kimberly felt anger simmering inside her, anger that she hadn’t been sharp enough, resourceful enough, to thwart the two terrorists.
What else could I have done? she asked herself. What can I do now? She knew she had to do something. She couldn’t roll over and play dead.
As she turned back in exasperation to the bungee-cord jail she felt a barely perceptible vibration shudder through the module. If the module still had power she probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. There. Again. The faintest movement of air, but not from the ventilating system coming back to life. Kimberly recognized that it was caused by the station’s minute deceleration.
The thrusters.
Farid and Bakhet had at last circumvented her lockout of the hypergolic propellants and regained control of the station’s thrusters.
She realized that the ISS was slowly rotating, revolving, so that it could start to deorbit once again. It would take ten minutes to turn 180 degrees.
She had only a few hours left to live.
CLAY CENTER OBSERVATORY, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
The eastern sky was just beginning to turn a pearly pink. Early morning was clear and crisp, perfect for observing, the first good viewing window in more than a week. A thin layer of clouds had blown away with the cold front that had passed two hours earlier, allowing Alicia O’Sullivan an opportunity to grab some footage of the International Space Station before full daylight hit.
The station would be in view for an unusually long period—five full minutes—over the greater Boston area. If the adaptive optics that allowed the telescope to cancel out the blurring effects of the atmosphere’s roiling motions was up and running, she’d be able to record some spectacular material.
Like everyone else, Alicia was curious about what had happened aboard the station. She’d seen the video of the Russian cosmonaut’s brutal death, heard rumors that there were no survivors on the ISS. NASA’s news blackout only fueled speculation, and although the Internet was wild with crazy conjectures, no one had actually seen recent pictures of the space station; at least, NASA and the rest of the government hadn’t released any new footage. Whatever NASA had, they were keeping it from the public. That was pretty evident from the lack of information given during NASA’s recent press briefing.
Since Alicia ran one of the most versatile telescopes in the world, she wanted to see the station for herself. So she downloaded the projected position of the ISS and loaded the software instructions to swing the observatory’s twenty-five-inch reflecting telescope to the spot where it should come up over the horizon. The station should reach a maximum height of 77 degrees. Just before the sun came up it would be the third brightest object in the Massachusetts sky: a great way for her to end her shift.
