Chapter 1: Space Flight

“Captain Healey, it’s time for you and Captain Nelson to prepare the LEOES.”

Roger Healey was on the verge of snapping back an answer when he caught sight of Tony Nelson, a half-smile on his face and a slight shake to his head. He bit back his stinging answer and politely said, “Thank you, Doctor Porter. We’ll get right on that.” He left unsaid, “Of course it is, you micromanaging twit! What? You think we can’t read our watches?”

Tony glanced over at his best friend and fellow astronaut and grinned, his face turned away so that Porter couldn’t see them. He shoved off from the bulkhead and floated to the hatchway and slipped through it to the lower deck. Roger was right behind him. “Just keep your mouth shut,” he said, his hand over his headset microphone. “She’s the price we pay for the luxurious life we get to lead.”

“Luxurious? We are spending six weeks up here living in a room the size of a crowded bus with seven people who can’t bathe and have to pee into a tube under a wacked out lezzy control freak who hates our guts,” commented Roger, his hand also over his mike.

“Good point. I hear Southwest is hiring,” replied Tony.

“Then again, it’s not that bad, is it?” Both astronauts considered flying commercial airliners only one step above selling used cars.

“No, it’s not that bad.”

The space flight symbolized everything the two men considered wrong with NASA. The renowned space agency, which had gotten men to the moon, had badly lost its way since the last of the Apollo missions. Now reduced to delivery flights on a commercial rocket to the International Space Station, the agency’s personnel were split into two camps, pilots and scientists.

The original astronauts, through Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, had almost exclusively been pilots, military pilots, since the skills and hours needed at that level of training were almost exclusively seen in the military. Even the civilians like Neil Armstrong had been government test pilots. Every last one had been a ‘hot stick’ with the ‘right stuff.’

Since then, starting with the last of the Apollo missions, going through Skylab, and now into the Space Station, scientists had joined the ranks of astronauts. Usually brilliant polymaths with multiple degrees and genius level IQs, they tended to view the military pilot types as mere drivers and workers, even when the pilots had multiple advanced degrees of their own.

Doctor Emily Porter, Mission Commander, exemplified this to the Nth degree. With doctorates from Princeton, MIT, and Stanford, and political connections high in Congress, the openly gay astronaut considered anybody in the military a reactionary butcher, which endeared her to the military types to no end. The only reason she allowed them on ‘her’ mission was because she needed a driver.

Tony and Roger tried to ignore her because their other option was Southwest Airlines. Neither could conceive of giving up on flying. Both men had grown up watching the early missions on television and the movies and had dreamed of becoming astronauts, going to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, jet training, squadron duty, and combat patrols over the Gulf, just to get a shot at astronaut training. The fact that it wasn’t quite what was advertised didn’t overly bother them. They were astronauts!

“Captain Nelson, you need to prepare the LEOES while Captain Healey prepares the Test Simulator,” ordered Dr. Porter over their headset.

Sometimes it became too much even for Tony. “So, they cancelled the rumba lessons for the afternoon?” They could hear the chuckles from the other crewmembers, many of whom found Porter as much of a twit as they did.

“Captain, prepare the LEOES and Test Simulator,” she repeated, her voice much harder.

“Right. I’ll get the lifeboat ready, and Roger will get George ready.”

“Use NASA terminology, Captain.”

Roger and Tony shook their heads in amusement. Emily Porter was the only person on the station and practically the only person in NASA who used that terminology. “Yes, Doctor,” he said. He pulled off his headset, and Roger did the same. Now they could talk, quietly, without her hearing them.

The most important part of the current mission, after the ferry job to the space station was over, was about to begin. While the other scientists performed crystal growth and life science experiments, Tony and Roger prepared the LEOES, the Low Earth Orbit Escape System, the ‘lifeboat,’ for its first operational test. Designed in response to concerns about the safety of the space station and worries about escaping from it in an emergency, LEOES offered an emergency means for individuals to get back to Earth from outer space.

A combination of cutting-edge technologies, the lifeboat looked like nothing more than an overgrown dildo. An elongated empty tube, the entire device was coated with the latest generation of heat shielding. At the base was a powerful retro rocket, at the top, several parachutes. In the middle rode the escaping astronauts. It was sized for one astronaut in a full space suit or two very friendly astronauts without suits. The interior was austere in the extreme. It had been designed with utter simplicity in mind; the design team had bragged, “It can be operated no matter how many degrees you have.” The theory was that it could hit ground from anywhere in low earth orbit within an hour of being launched. It had only a couple hours oxygen. There were no seats, only a pair of parachute harnesses hanging from the ceiling that you put yourself into. No water. No bathroom. No controls, just a dim light and some LED readouts.

Operation was equally simple. Climb inside, close the hatch, push the big red button. You had 30 seconds to get into the harness, then it would automatically launch. It didn’t matter where over the planet you were; the latest generation GPS seeker technology would steer the lifeboat towards land. Even over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there were enough islands that the lifeboat could steer itself towards something. The entire affair was completely automated in case the astronaut was injured or incapacitated. Once inside, he just had to close the door and go.

Once landed, several hatches on the body would blow, allowing quick escape. Several compartments built into the subdeck could open and contained a day’s worth of food and water. An entire Air Force rescue kit was loaded, including a radio. It was estimated that rescue anywhere in the world could arrive within twenty-four hours.

Today’s experiment was the first test of the system from orbit. At present the station was just approaching Africa. Tony and Roger would prepare the lifeboat and load ‘George’, the test simulator mannequin, on board. Then, somewhere over Hawaii, everyone would cross their fingers and launch the lifeboat by remote control. George would supposedly descend with pinpoint accuracy to a cornfield in Iowa. There was considerable betting going on about the degree of accuracy to be attained by the latest generation of ICBM warheads, which formed the basis for the landing technology. Roger and Tony wondered whether it would hit Iowa at all, considering the whole thing was built to government specs. They considered the far side of the Sargasso Sea an equally likely bet. Other likely landing spots included the top of the Empire State Building, a hog farm waste basin, and a nuclear waste cooling tank. Bets were being taken.

Both Tony and Roger were assigned to the lifeboat project. Test models had been dropped from B-52 test aircraft, both empty and with mannequins aboard. Both astronauts had even ridden in a drop, separately. If today’s experiment was a success, the odds were excellent that one of them would suit up in about six months and ride a real lifeboat home from orbit as the final test. At that point, a small group of them would be positioned aboard the space station for emergency use, ‘Man-Rated’ as the phrase went.

Tony grabbed the wireless headset and opened the hatch leading to the interior of the lifeboat. The lifeboat itself was arranged in a rack mounted outside the crew compartment and accessed through a spare docking portal. There was little preparation to be done, a quick inspection, strapping the test mannequin into the harness, getting out and closing up, and running a few electronics diagnostics. There was a checklist covering each item, and everything was locked out of operation. Tony would climb inside the lifeboat and pull the harness from its storage against the bulkhead, and then turn and close the hatch behind him, as per the checklist. He would set up the harness, review the lighting and instrumentation, and then reopen the hatch and exit. Only then would they load George into the harness and do it for real.

He pulled the harness from the Velcro tie holding it to the bulkhead and tugged on it with one hand, the other braced against the ceiling of the lifeboat. “Harness secure.”

“Check. Harness secure,” repeated Roger from the interior of the station.

“Preparing to close hatch. Closing hatch now.” Tony grabbed the latching handle on the sliding hatch and pulled it shut, then twisted it, engaging the lock. What happened next was not on the checklist. A rumble shook the lifeboat and several lights flashed across the LED displays, then suddenly there was a CHOOF of compressed gas being released and Tony was pushed towards the floor of the lifeboat slowly.

On board the station, Roger felt the same vibration, though subdued by the station’s much greater mass, and as his head whirled towards the window in the hatch, he saw a puff of condensation on the other side of the thick glass followed by a white blur. He looked through another window to see the lifeboat pushing away from the space station. It had launched! “Tony? Planning on going anywhere?” This was not good; there was no way to retrieve the lifeboat and his best friend wasn’t wearing a space suit. He couldn’t EVA back on board.

“Roger, did you push any buttons that you shouldn’t have?” responded the voice on the other end of the connection.

“Captain Healey, what’s going on?” demanded the Mission Commander.

“We have a problem here, Doctor.” Roger flipped a switch and took her out of the circuit. “What happened, Tony?”

“Roger, I swear to Christ, I just latched the hatch. It launched itself. The launch button still has the safety tag in it!” Suddenly, the lifeboat shuddered as attitude adjustment jets lit off in microbursts. “Roger, I think this thing is going to land!”