Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (Apollo Quartet) by Ian Sales Read Free Book Online Page B

Gold Medal from the president for it. Her lucky troll, Dammit, sat in the simulator during the training for this mission, but it’s not up here in orbit in the real spacecraft.
    The KH-4B spy satellite is in an orbit with a perigee of 95 miles and an apogee of 240 miles, and has already been boosted once before the atmosphere captured it and caused its orbit to decay. Apollo II’s mission is to fix a jammed spool on the intermediate roller assembly, the mechanism which feeds the film from the cameras to the film stacks in the recovery vehicles. Whatever the spy satellite has been photographing, it must be important to go to all this trouble, though now that the Moon is slipping out of reach perhaps Cobb should be grateful Apollo II has reason to be thrown into orbit.
    Once they’ve matched orbits with the satellite, Cobb needs to go EVA. All three are still in their spacesuits, so they attach gloves and helmets and switch the oxygen to the suit circuit. They each verify their helmets and visors are locked and adjusted, their O 2 connectors are locked, and their relief valves open.
    SUIT GAS DIVERTER pull to egress, says Miller, reading from the EVA checklist. SUIT CABIN RELIEF –SUIT CIRCUIT RELIEF to close, CABIN GAS RETURN open.
    Their suits are at 3.7 psi, they’ve depressurised the command module, and Steadman pulls down on the handle on the crew access hatch; and in eerie silence, there’s only the sound of her own breath in her helmet, Cobb watches the battens withdraw, the hatch pop its seal and swing open to reveal the luminous blue that is the Earth below.
    It’s beautiful, says Miller.
    Help me, B, says Cobb.
    She takes the rim of the hatch in either hand and pulls herself up and out and abruptly she’s no longer floating horizontally but standing upright, half in and half out of the command module’s hatch. The silvery bright cone that is the Apollo spacecraft stretches before her, her ghostly white reflection smeared across it. She turns about and she can see the curve of the Earth, and at the horizon the radiant band of atmosphere which girdles it. She can see clouds drifting across the face of the world and she thinks, I want to do this forever. She remembers her first EVA on Gemini 4 and her reluctance to return to the spacecraft, and she’s lost none of the awe she felt then, if anything it now seems even more focused, more spiritual, more affirming.
    She pushes herself from the command module and her umbilical slithers out after her. The KH-4B hangs in the sky some thirty feet away, a pale grey cylinder bright with reflected sunlight. It has ejected one recovery vehicle already and the bright gold mylar dome of the second now caps its length. Cobb takes her hand-held manoeuvring unit, her zip gun, and uses it to propel herself across the gap between the two spacecraft. She rolls over and sees one of her crew is now standing in Apollo II’s hatch, unidentifiable behind a gold visor.
    Is that you, B? Cobb asks.
    In the hatch? Yes.
    Cobb turns back to face her destination and she raises the zip gun and takes aim at it, and she thinks maybe it’s an affront to nature and to God to populate this place with tools which serve a military purpose. The space programme has never been military, for all that it was in a race with the enemy, the USSR; and now finally these ploughshares, these chariots of Apollo, are going to be bent into swords, even as the war below has finally stuttered to a long and drawn-out end.
    She’s moving too fast, the zip gun isn’t powerful enough to check her velocity. She puts up her hands, touches the KH-4B and slides down it, and her umbilical brings her to an abrupt halt and she swings about, banging both feet against the side of the satellite. She hangs there beside it and she knows her heart-rate is elevated, she’s feeling warm, the water circulating through her Liquid Cooling Garment isn’t cold enough to wick away the heat, and she feels as bent out of shape as the