side.
Lamb had got there first, and he ran a quick check of the MMU’s systems.
“You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Lamb held her arms. He turned her around, and she backed into the MMU. She felt latches clasp her suit’s backpack.
“Houston, EV2,” she said. “EMU latches closed.”
“Copy that.”
She pulled the MMU’s arms out around her. She closed her gloved hands around the controllers, which were simple hand-controllers on the end of the arms. A fiber-optic data cable plugged into her suit from the MMU.
Lamb released the tethers which still clipped her to the pay-load bay slide wires, and reached around her. “Captive latches released.”
“Copy.”
He shoved her gently in the back, and she floated away from the bulkhead. “Don’t even think about it,” he said calmly. “It’s just like the sims.”
… Suddenly she didn’t have hold of anything, and she was falling.
“Oh, shit.”
“We didn’t copy that, EV2,” the capcom said humorlessly.
Lamb ignored him. “Come on, Paula. Turn around.”
She had two big nitrogen-filled fuel tanks on her back now, and there were twenty-four small reaction control system nozzles. She grasped her right-hand controller, and pushed it left. There was a soft tone in her helmet as the thruster worked; she saw a faint sparkle of nitrogen crystals, to her right. In response to the thrust, she tipped a little to the left.
The controller was intuitive; moving it up or down made her pitch, her feet tipping up; left or right gave her a yaw, a sideways tilt. She twisted the handle, and made herself roll about an axis through her head to her feet.
The payload bay rotated around her.
“It’s heavy,” she said. “I can feel the unit’s inertia as I roll.”
“You mass more than seven hundred pounds, suit and all, Paula.”
She blipped the RCS thrusters again, and slowed her roll. She finished up facing Lamb, where he clung to the aft cabin bulkhead. She pushed her left-hand controller, which drove her forward and back. There was a gentle shove, and her drifting slowed.
The MMU seemed to be working well, but its scuffs and scorch marks showed its age. And things most definitely did not feel the same, up here, as in the tethered sims on the ground. When she started moving, she just kept on going, until she stopped herself. She was in a frictionless, three-dimensional environment, like a huge ice-rink, where Newton’s laws held sway in their bare simplicity.
No wonder the Station assembly had proceeded so slowly, she thought. We just aren’t evolved for this environment.
“Okay, Paula,” Lamb called. “You ready for your one small step?”
No, she thought.
“Let’s do it.”
“Houston, EV2 is preparing to leave the payload bay.”
“We copy, Tom.”
Benacerraf tipped herself up so she was facing Earth, with the orbiter behind her.
Earth, before her, was immense, overwhelming. The overall impression was of blue sea and white clouds, the white of an intensity that hurt her eyes. When she looked towards the horizon she could see the atmosphere, a thin blue shell around the planet.
She gave herself a single, firm thrust with the RCS. She felt a small, definite shove in the small of her back.
She rose out of the bay towards the face of Earth; she saw the big silvered doors to either side of her recede.
A tone sounded softly in her helmet, startling her.
“Oh-two alarm, EV2,” the capcom reported.
An oxygen leak. Holed fabric, maybe. “Houston, EV2. Should I come back? I—”
“Belay that, EV2,” Lamb said. “Paula, just take a couple of deep breaths. Relax. You’re safe and snug in there.”
She became aware of her breathing, which was shallow and rapid. Her suit monitors had misinterpreted her high oxygen consumption as a leak.
Deliberately, she slowed her breathing; she tried to unclench her muscles, to relax in the warm cocoon of the suit.
“Just look at the view, kid.”
She looked at the view.
She was flying up