"Ken Jenks - Vectors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jenks Ken)

Vectors
by Ken Jenks


Crew patches from every shuttle mission decorated the crowded conference room. The wall across from me held a static display of the manifests for all upcoming missions - all on hold now, pending the outcome here. A gavel looked out of place at the head of the oddly-shaped wooden table. The name tags at each seat were for the benefit of the visiting U.N. observer. We NASA folks all knew each other. Mine read "Victoria Griffith, M.T. (A.S.C.P), Ph.D. (I.E.), Astronaut." As if everyone didn't know that by now.

It wasn't a court martial, but it felt like it to me. The evidence had been presented -comm loop transcripts, space shuttle flight plans, space station "increment" timelines, telemetry, console logs, DNA analysis, and that ghastly autopsy report. The question of the day was: how did it happen, and can it happen again?

When the preliminary meeting mechanics were complete, the chairman asked me to tell the investigative committee what happened. I told the truth back then, but I left out some of my personal observations. Now, long after my retirement, I'll tell it all.
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"Is that a beer I see in that cooler?" I asked my fellow astronauts in the quarantine facility.

"Close," said Kathy, "As close to beer as James will let us have, this close to a launch." She inclined her blonde head toward James, the lanky, sandy-haired man wearing sunglasses indoors at night, who was reclining indolently in an over-stuffed lounge chair.

Shuttle commander James Shackelford waved a non-alcoholic can at me, "We can't have any hung-over Crawdads on the old Atlantis, now can we?"

I agreed, grabbing a cold one. I was damned proud to be a Crawdad. The Class of '02 had chosen a good mascot - not like the Spiders of '00, or the old Dogs or even the Maggots. At least I could tell my friends about the tradition without blushing.

James, Kathy and I were all wearing the crew's informal uniform - a "Pe-Te Cajun Bar B Que" shirt with jeans. James and Kathy had been on two previous missions together, along with Bear, who was nowhere to be seen.

Kathy waved her near-beer toward the kitchen. "Bear's in there fixing us a Cajun surprise."

"Yes, indeed," said a deep voice from the kitchen, "a delightful surprise!" Bear came into the room holding a large, steaming pot with two oven mitts. "A special Crawdaddy surprise!"

Calling in the other astronauts, we gathered around the table and shared our last meal on earth.
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Eight minutes after lift-off the space shuttle main engines cut off - weightlessness arrived. I distinctly remember a wavy strand of my short black hair floating inside my helmet. Unfastening straps, hoses and communication cables, we drifted out of our seats and started doffing our pressure suits. Bear and Kathy looked a little queasy and stiff-necked. They were minimizing their head movements - sure signs of early adaptation to microgravity. Despite my bad experiences on the Russian zero-gravity aircraft, I didn't feel any ill effects.

"Hey, Bear," said Kathy, "Get your Cajun butt up to the flight deck so we ladies can change in peace." Her blonde hair floated around her head in waves.

"Mais ouэ, Madame," said Bear, smiling thinly. "But hurry, please. I'm afraid my diaper needs changing." I wrinkled my nose at the smell. After Kathy shooed Bear off the middeck, we stowed the seats and changed out of our suits in what little privacy Atlantis offered. I was secretly pleased that I hadn't used the diaper in my suit, but now I needed to use the infamous shuttle potty. When the potty flushed, Bear called down from the flight deck, "I'm next!"

Bear was an old friend of mine. He was a Crawdad, too, and we'd been through training together. As astronauts, we had worked together on a medical experiment involving a new drug and exercise therapy to prevent bone loss during long-duration missions. The preliminary work using bed rest to simulate the physiologic effects of spaceflight was promising, but our animal studies were inconclusive. Bear and I had spent long hours working with the scientists and their human and animal subjects, and I was more than a little fond of him. I respected his strong marriage to Judith, his wife of eight years and mother of their four children, but I couldn't keep my heart from wondering how our friendship could have grown under different circumstances.

Later on flight day 1, James brought Atlantis to a smooth docking with the space station. The video link showed whole crew of Calypso waiting around the airlock. Commander Trent Miller was the first to greet us. Hamming it up for the NASA TV audience, Trent called down through the open hatch. "Welcome, Crawdads, to the International Space Station Calypso!"

James was careful not to obscure the video camera. "Hey, with all of you down here, who's flying this thing?"

"Houston's got the con."

I followed Kathy up through the airlock into Calypso. The station looked . . . odd. The colors were all subtly different from what I'd seen in simulators, VR, photos, and endless hours of video downlink. In the simulators, the floors were scuffed. Here, the yellow hand-rails were worn. Calypso was much louder than I expected.

Calypso had been through many names as its design evolved. From the nameless dual-keel design, to the ill-fated Freedom, then to the design incorporating Russian, European, Japanese and American elements which was briefly called Alpha, the station had changed over the many years since von Braun's dreams. The final name, after Jacque Cousteau's famous research vessel, had been suggested by school children. The name met all of the criteria - historically meaningful, understandable over bad communication loops, and unembarassing in all major languages. I thought it very fitting.

The moment I'd been longing for and dreading had arrived. There was Trent. When he saw me, he clasped his hands to his chest melodramatically. "Our savior! I've never needed a plumber so much in my life!"

"Oh, no," I said with a grin, "I'll leave the plumbing to you. I'm just here to identify your cooties."

Trent smiled. "With the way our life support system smells, you'll have plenty of cooties to play with." Our eyes met, but I wasn't sure what I saw in his. I wonder what showed in mine.