“SAY AGAIN, HOUSTON? I didn’t copy.” Norman Randolph had heard Houston loud and clear. He just didn’t like what they were telling him.
“We’re showing a problem with one of Orpheus’s attitude control thrusters. Two sensors are coming up red.”
“You expect me to fix that up here? We’re not exactly packing spare parts for the probe.”
“We can’t deploy until we get this cleared up.”
“Roger that, Houston,” Norman grumbled into the comm. This was one fight he wouldn’t be winning. “What am I in for?”
In a NASA-issue space suit, no one can see you shrug. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now, but if he made too much of a fuss, he might lose his chance to ever launch again.
It had taken five years for him to make it on a flight after he had been added to the space shuttle crew. The average lifetime total flights for a NASA astronaut was a paltry three. If you didn’t want that to be a hard limit, you had to be very patient and pick your battles.
“I’m moving you, Norman. You ready?”
That was Gordon Krenic, radioing him from the cabin. Norman’s feet were fixed to the tip of the Remote Manipulation Arm that unfolded like an insect leg from the shuttle’s cargo bay. Gordon controlled the arm from inside the cabin.
“Go for it.”
The arm lifted Norman’s body three meters upward where it stopped with a light quiver from the inertia. He was farther away from the floor of the payload bay now, able to see both wings of the shuttle and beyond that, the blue arc of the earth.
The unmanned probe known as Orpheus was right in front of him. The upper-stage engine that would send the probe all the way to Pluto was positioned on the underside relative to his position. Together, the probe and engine extended from the center of the payload bay, like a giant cannon pointing toward space. The scale was impressive.
Norman knew that this large-scale probe would most likely be the last of its kind.
With each passing year, the probes had been getting smaller and smaller, lifted into space by small, unmanned rockets. Using the shuttle to bring the probe into low orbit, manually extending all the antennas, and doing a careful systems check all took too much time and manpower—these costs would kill such projects.
The Orpheus Project had started back when people still viewed the shuttle through rose-colored glasses. It was only a short while after the shuttle began operation that its lack of cost-effectiveness really came to the surface, but it was the explosion of the Challenger in ’86 that changed everything. The flight schedule was cut in half, and safety became a top priority. The Orpheus Project was put on ice for years.
✦ ✦ ✦
With guidance from Houston, Norman began the task of removing the gold-colored thermal blanket covering the surface of the probe. On the ground, this would have been no more difficult than ripping open an envelope, but up here it was next to impossible. He had to exert a pressure of at least thirty kilograms just to grab something with his stiff space suit gloves, and he could feel absolutely nothing through the thick fabric. That, and the arm he was standing on wobbled like a fishing pole.
Finally he got the blanket off, revealing the duralumin structure beneath.
Norman fished an Allen wrench out of his pocket and set about tightening the screws, keeping his left hand hovering over them so he wouldn’t lose anything to space.
Removing the eight screws took all of forty minutes.
Once the panel was open, he could see tubes for hydrogen underneath. Next to them was the control valve assembly. In all, it was about the size of a portable radio. Norman took one look at the nest of wires and tubing connected to the control valve and sighed. They want me to remove that?
“Ever build a ship in a bottle?” he muttered to no one in particular. “That’s what this feels like.”
“Pull it off, and you’ll be a hero,” said a voice over his radio from inside the shuttle. This was the captain, Wayne Berkheimer.
It was true. Fixing a problem while in orbit was an astronaut’s chance to shine. When people back home heard the news, it reminded them of the need for manned missions.
It took Norman three hours to remove the valve assembly. With his left hand, he hugged it tightly to his chest. Now all he needed to do was bring it back inside the shuttle where they could take a close look at it.
“It’s done,” Norman said, relieved. “Bring me back to the air lock, Gordon.”
“Well,” Gordon said over the radio, “you’ll be coming back up here again for sure.”
The remote manipulating arm began to move.
“Wait!” Norman barked, “not that way!”
He could hear Gordon swearing under his breath over the radio. The arm holding Norman in place was about to collide with one of the antennas protruding from the probe. The inertia of the arm was such that it was hard to stop quickly. Norman ducked, hoping to avoid the antenna entirely. It took all of his strength to move in his bulky suit, and in his rush, he forgot to pay attention to what he was holding in his left hand.
As the antenna swooshed soundlessly over his head, the valve assembly drifted from his fingers, spinning through space toward the probe’s engine.
The valve hit one of the exterior panels and ricocheted off into a gap between the main body of the probe and the engine.
“Dammit!”
“Sorry about that, Norman. You okay?”
“I’m fine, but I lost the valve assembly. I think it’s lodged inside the connector between the probe and the engine.”
“Roger that. What do you want me to do?”
“Bring me a little closer to the probe again. About three feet.”
“Okay. I’ll try not to mess this one up.”
Once he was close enough, Norman peered at the connector. The connector was like a deep, wedge-shaped groove in the side of the probe, fifty centimeters wide and about three meters in diameter. The engine was designed to detach once the probe was on its interplanetary trajectory. There was a ring of shaped explosives for this purpose connected to the probe by a complex truss, making the area around the connector look like a jungle gym.
Norman shone in his light and spotted the valve assembly wedged inside the crevice.
“Found it…I think I might be able to reach.” Norman stuck his hand down into the groove but was unable to reach it. In the space suit, his arm was about three times bulkier than it was in normal clothes, and he couldn’t get his joints to bend around the frame.
When he finally did reach the valve assembly, he only succeeded in brushing it with the tips of his fingers, which knocked it farther into the wedge—a fatal mistake.
“Godamnit! Now it’s wedged in next to the tank!”
“Think you’ll be able to get it out soon?” the captain asked.
“No, definitely not soon. Maybe not at all.”
“Right. Then come back to the shuttle for now. I’m sure we’ll think of some other way to go after it.”