Orbital Maneuvers by R Davison Read Free Book Online

satellite and never knew what was coming. The shuttle arm on which Jill was standing was ripped from its mount on the shuttle bay wall leaving behind a jagged wound.  A cloud of fragments that had once made up the base of the arm floated in the bay.  The force of the collision, combined with the gravitational tug from the asteroid, started the shuttle tumbling out of control, pulling the nose upward toward the asteroid as well as causing the shuttle to rotate about its centerline.
    Miles of asteroid blazed by in a wink of an eye at almost a hundred thousand miles an hour and it took Jill along with it as it bore on toward its rendezvous with Earth.  Susan gasped as Jill disappeared before her eyes, and watched horrified as the beast literally punched a hole into the atmosphere. The air, being pushed aside by the asteroid, glowed red as it was compressed and superheated.  The asteroid itself began to glow as the superheated air started to heat its outer surface.  Soon it also began to tumble as its leading edge slowed faster than its trailing edge in the thickening atmosphere.  Susan watched the sight, unable to take her eyes off the asteroid until the shuttle’s own tumbling and spinning turned her view from the Earth to the darkness of space and back again, giving her glimpses of the disaster taking place.  The point of entry was quickly being taken out of view by the shuttle’s orbital motion.  The last thing Susan saw, or thought she saw, was the asteroid splitting into several pieces. 
     
    The asteroid fragmented into three large chunks, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, from the stress of its rapid deceleration in the denser, lower atmosphere, and they began to separate from each other.  Two pushed their way deeper into the atmosphere and on toward the Atlantic coastline of the United States.  The third piece, Gamma, flatter but larger than its siblings, lifted above the others and shot back into space like a stone skipping across the surface of a calm lake. 
     
     

IV
     
    “What the hell happened?” Ivan shouted over the noise of alarm bells and buzzers as he struggled to regain control of the shuttle.  Having been strapped into the pilot’s seat, he fared better than Jerry and Paul when the shuttle departed from its normal flight path.  They found themselves colliding with the nearest wall, ceiling or floor, as the shuttle turned without them because of the lack of gravity.  Jerry managed to pull himself back up to the arm station.  Paul was on the middeck, floating unconscious after a collision with the bulkhead.
    “Jesus!  What was that?  Ivan, what the hell is going on?  Did we have another thruster malfunction?” Jerry yelled.  As he pulled himself up and peered out of the viewport, Jerry knew it was more than a thruster malfunction. “Oh my God! She’s gone.  The whole goddamn arm is gone!  Susan!!  Jill!!  Do you copy?”
    “What do you mean the arm is gone,” Ivan called, still fighting to bring the shuttle’s wild tumbling under control.
    “The damn arm is gone!  Nothing’s left and I don’t see Jill or Susan…Susan!!  Jill!!  Can you hear me?” After a few moments of silence Jerry suddenly realized that they had not heard from Paul either.  He keyed the intercom, “Paul, do you copy?  Paul, are you all right, do you copy?” Jerry was hanging on as best as he could while the shuttle began to slowly respond to Ivan’s inputs on the steering thrusters.
    “Christ!” came Ivan’s only reply.  He had his hands full trying to stabilize the shuttle from its disorienting tumble. “Hang on, Jerry…I’ve almost got…this…under control.”
    Jerry could feel the shuttle slowing from its end-over-end tumble, and shortly thereafter its wild rotation was tamed.  He was glad Ivan was in the pilot’s seat, because if it were up to him, the shuttle would be doomed, he thought.
    “Susan, Jill, do you copy?  Can you hear me?” Jerry’s gaze drifted from the payload bay, to