CHAPTER 27:
A Walk in the Dark
USSF Media Office @JBSpaceNews
Bat has rendezvoused with Percheron. MarsX logistics, NASA trajectory planning, and our own onboard Space Force pilot have succeeded in bringing two spacecraft together in the depths of space. Not since NASA’s own ‘Dr. Rendezvous,’ Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, wrote his dissertation on Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, has there been such a feat of physics, mathematics, and human ingenuity.
ChirpChat, October 2043
Percheron showed up in infrared, but was not visible to the eye or on comm. Its tracking beacon was silent and it was completely dark.
There should have been running lights. It seemed silly that a ship built to spend six months in the dark, not encountering any other crewed or uncrewed vehicles would need external lights, but NASA and Space Force had long insisted all space vessels needed to have both visible light and radio beacons in order to be detected against the background of space. At the very least, blinking lights in bright colors would be obvious against the backdrop of unblinking stars.
Nevertheless, Percheron was dark. He wasn’t surprised that there was no indication of drive or thruster activity, after all, except for incidental course corrections, the ship should be coasting for four more months. The alarming fact was that the running lights were turned off and the automatic beacon that couldn’t be turned off . . . was not functioning. What Glenn should be seeing was a brightly lit ring of rectangular modules rotating around a long, thin main hull with lights fore, aft and at the docking bays. The ship’s beacon should be announcing its presence and warning him off of any potential collision.
The thing is, not only were there no lights, but the habitat ring didn’t appear to be rotating. Astronauts traveling to Mars needed to maintain conditions equivalent to the Martian gravity of approximately one-third gee. On return to Earth, they needed to gradually build back up to one gee. Therefore, the personnel quarters on Percheron were in a rotating ring similar to wheeled space stations such as Clarke and O’Neill. There were also zero-gee (or low-gee during thrust) sections in the main hull—bridge, and some labs forward of the ring—and hydroponics, shuttle docking, cargo bays, fuel tankage and engines aft of the ring. Those sections might very well be lightly staffed at any given time during the journey, but the habitat ring would always be occupied. It should have been rotating and well-lit.
The upload from Earth included recognition and acknowledgment codes for Percheron. The programs were automatic. As soon as Bat arrived, the handshake should have been exchanged between the two ships. Soon after, the larger ship should have initiated procedures to allow docking. Earth-based Mission Control could take over, but the round-trip messaging time was fifteen minutes, remotely-operated docking would be an extremely slow and error-prone process.
No one had anticipated that Percheron would not respond to hails, and that even the automated handshake would be ineffective.
Well, Glenn and General Boatright had.
That was why Glenn was here.
As soon as Glenn reported that Percheron was not responding, he received a new upload from Richardson. It contained two parts, one to load into Bat’s computer for docking and navigational control, the second was for remote control of Percheron’s maneuvering thrusters. The latter program was almost sure to be a necessity, but it needed to be uploaded from the bridge of the larger ship.
Percheron was slowly spinning along its long axis. It wasn’t enough to create any semblance of gravity in the habitat ring, so he was uncertain why it was occurring. It might have been a “barbecue roll” commonly used by NASA in the past to dissipate radiative energy received from the Sun and prevent one side of the ship from overheating. Unfortunately, even if it had been initiated as a fail-safe, the ship was now in precession, making docking even more complicated.
Precession was spin plus additional rotation not perfectly in alignment with the spin axis. Instead of smoothly spinning, the two ends of the spin axis moved in slow circles, much the same as a toy top just starting to slow down. If that precession became extreme, the ship would wobble and become unstable.
When the Gemini space program first began to experiment with docking two spacecraft, they had to learn to deal with wobbles and rotation in more than one axis—like precession. Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott docked their Gemini 8 capsule with an Agena Target Vehicle on March 16, 1966, but soon had to abort their mission and separate the two vehicles because a maneuvering thruster stuck in the on condition, putting the docked spacecraft into a dangerous precession. Once separated, however, the tumble was fast enough to risk collision or the astronauts blacking out from excessive gee force.
Percheron’s precession was nowhere near that severe, but it did create dangerous conditions for docking. One contingency was to attach the two ships by a tether and “reel-in” the cargo module. Unfortunately, as long as one ship was rotating with respect to the other, the tether would wrap around one, bringing the two together at an uncontrolled speed. Moreover, that speed would increase as the distance between the two dropped, causing a crash and damage to one or both ships.
Bat was small compared to Percheron, so it would certainly be the one whipped along like a ball on the end of a string. Another possible solution would be to use Bat’s drive to pull the roll out of Percheron, or even to separate Bat’s cargo pod from the drive section, tether all three components together and somehow use counterbalancing weights to control the spin.
The chances of any of those solutions going out of control were simply too high to risk. Glenn would need to cross over to Percheron and take control.
The engineers had planned for this as well. The ballast foam dissolved with a catalyst and a high-frequency vibration pulse. Fortunately, the suit and vacuum in the ballast compartment kept him from hearing the ultrasonic burst as headache-inducing sound. With internal bulkheads separating the cockpit from vacuum-sensitive cargo, all he had to do was dissolve the foam, open the hatch, and step out. The MILES suit’s propulsion system could take him on multiple trips between Bat and Percheron.
He would head for the open cargo bay with its blown hatch where he would eventually dock Bat’s cargo pod, sealing it in place of the missing outer cover. There were personnel hatches and smaller cargo entrances, but none of those could handle the girth of the MILES suit.
Glenn had been on extravehicular activity many times before, but he’d rarely made solo spacewalks. He’d practiced all of the necessary maneuvers—under supervision—at O’Neill Station, but now he would have to do it on his own, more than two hundred million kilometers from Earth. If he knew the status of the personnel inside the ship, he might have been able to arrange a spotter. He could use a tether between ships for security, but it had to be detached before he entered the cargo bay, lest it become fouled on the rotating Percheron.
This was his challenge. He needed to do it himself, without a net, without a safety rope . . . and without hesitation.
Just get out there and do it, he told himself.
The cargo bay had an airlock on the inside, though more to serve as a precaution against accidental decompression of the bay than for working access into the ship. For one thing, it was smaller than his MILES suit; he would have to exit the suit and be exposed to vacuum for a brief time. There were three entry points large enough to accommodate the MILES: the two shuttle docking ports—one of which was unoccupied, since its shuttle was still at Mars; and the secondary cargo bay. Unfortunately, entering any of those places presumed personnel on the inside of Percheron operating controls associated with docking or cargo transfer.
Given that there was still no response to his comms, the best option was still the cargo bay. It was just a walk in the dark, plus a walk in the vacuum.
Fortunately, Glenn and his “handlers” had prepared a backup plan for loss of pressure during a long flight from Earth. Inside the MILES suit he wore a skintight garment with what were euphemistically referred to as “hygiene attachments.” It was similar to a pilot’s gee-suit, which maintained positive pressure throughout acceleration to assist in fluid balance and to prevent blood pooling. It would be sufficient to maintain his body’s internal pressure against vacuum for a short period of time. He only needed about a minute outside of the MILES to enter the airlock. With the skinsuit maintaining internal pressure, he just needed a helmet and air supply. He attached a mating collar to his suit, then sealed a tight-fitting helmet to the collar. The helmet attached to a small portable air supply, replicating his comms, his heads-up displays, and providing access to a small stock of water and nutrients. It was effectively a second space suit that he wore within the MILES. It would not protect him from full exposure to open space—for one thing, it had no insulation, and he would get cold very quickly—but it would be enough to make the transfer.
Theoretically.
Glenn maneuvered the MILES across the gap between Bat and Percheron. As much as he wanted to stop and admire the view of unfiltered stars, he figured there would be plenty of time for that once he completed his job. He had to accelerate slightly to catch up with the cargo bay as the ship rotation caused it to disappear around the curvature of the hull.
He hit the interior wall of the cargo bay with a jolt. There were no warning lights in his heads-up display, so he likely hadn’t damaged anything on the MILES. It was a plain bulkhead, so it was unlikely that he damaged anything on Percheron, either.
Oh well. Any landing you can walk away from, he thought to himself, and I definitely plan to walk away from this one.
He switched on the magnetic soles of the MILES, and commanded the suit to walk toward the airlock door. He needed to get as close as possible, yet still leave maneuvering space. He set his miniaturized spacecraft to stand by, and prepared to open the hatch in the belly of the suit, but not before making one last check to ensure that the control panel next to the airlock was functional. It showed one red and one green light, indicating that it was powered and registering air on the inside and vacuum on the outside.
With that confirmed, there was one more thing he needed to do. His bionic eye and ear were tied into a comm system, with electronics under the skin of his left ear. Not only could he receive comm signals silently through the bionics, they could also record and transmit what he saw and learned. He programmed the MILES to pick-up and relay those recordings back to Earth. Colonel Richardson had provided a comm address to send the data. He would very likely be called upon to justify his decisions and actions. This was his backup and permanent record—not to mention his defense or prosecution if it was ever needed.
He was ready. He opened the suit, stepped out, and immediately felt his skin temperature dropping. Vacuum was an insulator, without a source or sink for temperature, he shouldn’t have felt a thing. It must be sublimation of moisture caught in the weave of his skinsuit.
Glenn stepped over to the airlock and examined the control panel. He pressed the button to begin the cycle, removing the air from the inside, and releasing the outer door—but the indicators did not change. They still showed pressure on the other side of the door. The automated system appeared to be off-line. He activated the control again, and this time a new indicator showed a malfunction in the automated controls. Fortunately, there was a manual override behind the panel. Unfortunately, that meant heading back to the MILES and opening an external storage compartment to retrieve a pouch of tools.
Once he had the tools, he decided he’d better keep them with him. After all, if one system malfunctioned, others would also. He reached into the pouch to get a screwdriver, and almost dropped it due to numbness of his fingers. He transferred it to his left hand and used it to pry off the panel, revealing a crank handle and latch. He put the screwdriver back in the pouch, unfolded the handle and began to operate the hand pump. There was resistance, and he had difficulty keeping his footing—the MILES had magnetic soles, but the skinsuit was designed for interior use, and only had Velcro. He settled for bracing his feet on the motionless MILES, and using the augmented strength of his left arm to rotate the crank. He felt himself begin to sweat, which presented its own hazard, from moisture freezing on the surface of the skinsuit,
He needed to hurry.
The crank encountered more resistance, and he stopped to check the indicators. The interior of the airlock was now in vacuum, with only a simple latch to release the door. Once inside, he secured the door, opened the inside panel, and repeated the process to repressurize the chamber. This time it went faster, since he didn’t have to operate a pump; after the first partial turn, the valve opened and air rushed in. His ears popped; the interior of Percheron was at a higher pressure than he had maintained in the MILES. With pressure equalized once again, the inner door once again simply latched in place.
He opened the door and stepped onto Percheron.
During the outbound trip, Glenn had studied ship schematics and medical reports and thought about what he would do on arrival. Obviously the first thing to do was to get the cargo pod mated with the larger vessel to enable transfer of food, water, and medicines. That had been obvious, but what to do once inside? Yvette had ordered all personnel to self-isolate. Should he also remain completely isolated? If whatever was affecting the crew was airborne or in the food and water, he needed to prevent any chance of it affecting him. Frankly, none of those could affect him if he chose to remain sealed up in the MILES, eating and drinking only from stocks he had brought from Earth.
On the other hand, he needed a place to eat, sleep and clean up. He’d been in the MILES for a week with no bathing and no change of clothes. The hygiene connections worked flawlessly, but once in atmosphere, he would need to get out of the skinsuit and put on some real clothing. He also needed a bunk with more space than the inside of the MILES. The second Mars ground-to-orbit shuttle was still attached to the outside of Percheron or he could repressurize the cockpit of the Bat and rig a hammock once some of the cargo was offloaded. Either option would let him stay away from the crew for large portions of the day with an air supply that was filtered in case he had to reduce exposure to outside contaminants.
The skinsuit alone wouldn’t provide complete protection though, since it allowed limited diffusions of sweat and exchange of air molecules. He would still be exposed to anything in Percheron’s air. Which meant that since he would be exposed via his skin, he could open his helmet for brief moments as long as he turned up the oxygen feed to minimize exposure.
And that was a big mistake.
Glenn was pretty sure he stank after a week in Bat, but the first whiff of Percheron air suggested that no one was going to notice. He could smell waste overflow, organic rot, and possibly spoiled food, plus many unwashed bodies. It was a good thing he’d brought his own air. He closed the helmet, checked his oxygen supply, and even turned it up a bit to clear away the smell.
He had four hours of air before he would need to replenish. Hopefully that would be enough time to take care of his next task.