Orbital Maneuvers by R Davison Read Free Book Online Page A

the control panel for the arm, searching for something to re-establish his sense of reality but only finding disbelief in the moment at hand.  No simulations had prepared him for this!  Slowly he emerged from the mental haze and confusion and realized that there was nothing he could do at the moment for Susan and Jill.  He made his way down to the middeck to look for Paul.
    As the shuttle tumbled, Susan found herself pinned against the bulkhead where she had cowered. Slowly she came out of the fog of the last moments and began to realize that there were real voices calling out to her: it was not a dream. She looked around the cargo bay through her damaged visor at the torn, tattered insulation and padding and noticed that the arm was no longer on the wall across from her and neither was Jill: just a stubby remnant of her tether slowly gyrated back and forth.  Her brain now replayed the events of the last thirty seconds in excruciating detail, and she found herself shaking uncontrollably. The sound of Ivan and Jerry’s voices brought some comfort to her and she finally found enough strength to reply to their calls.
    “I’m here,” Susan’s quavering voice came as a whisper.
    “Susan!  Are you all right” Ivan called out, “Is Jill okay?”
    “Ah, I’m okay.  Jill…” Susan’s voice trailed off as the reality of Jill’s demise sank in.
    “Susan, what about Jill?” Jerry asked.
    Susan tried to focus and pulled herself upright.  The scar the tile fragment left on her visor distorted her view of the bay, and combined with the fears of the moment, made her very sick to her stomach. “Ah…Jill’s gone…It took her.”
    “Oh, God,” she heard Jerry mutter, “What do you mean, ‘it took her’?  What took her?” he spoke louder, getting more impatient with not knowing what happened.
    Ivan cut in, “Susan, can you make it inside?  Are you injured?”
    “I think…ahh…I think I can get back in,” Susan was having trouble getting her body moving.  Slowly she began to feel the strength flow back into her arms and legs.
    “I will suit up and come out to help you,” Ivan said.
    “No, I think I can make it…just give me a minute.”
    “Jerry, can you see Paul,” Ivan asked.
    “Yes, I’m with him. He must have hit the wall when we tumbled and was out for a few minutes.  He might have a slight concussion, but he’s conscious now.  What’s our status, Ivan?”
    “We are showing an internal pressure drop, I think we are venting cabin air somewhere. We should get into our pressure suits until we can locate the leak.  The ship is finally stabilized and we have a number of other warning lights on systems that have been reset.  I think a lot of those are related to the damaged arm and the payload bay.”
    “Have you talked to Mission Control?” Jerry asked.
    “I had them on the line just before we started to spin and all I have now is static. I am not sure if the whole communications system is down, there are no alarms showing for it.”
    “Susan is on her way in,” Jerry said. “I’ll give her a hand and we’ll come up.”
     
    The people spending the day on the beaches of sunny Florida had no idea that their world was going to come to an end in a cataclysmic event the likes of which the world has not seen in sixty million years.  The warm breeze that blew in from the ocean mingled with the sounds of children playing in the crashing surf.  Beach-goers basked in the sun while they listened to their radios and MP3 players; strains of rock and roll intermingled with booming pulses of rap, accented with wisps of a violin concerto from another terry-toweled oasis on the beach.  People talked to each other, shouted and laughed while others read or just snoozed.  Those temporary beach dwellers who were more active or observant, and were not focusing on other distractions the beach provided, noticed a very bright spot of light in the east.  It rapidly split into three dots of light with one