Powersat

Baikonur, Kazakhstan

It was just after three A.M. when the van carrying Nikolayev, Williamson, and Bouchachi stopped at the base of the gantry tower. The three men clambered down stiffly from the van onto the steel flooring, each of them encased in a cumbersome, dull orange spacesuit, the visors of their fishbowl helmets open. A dozen technicians in quilted coats and leather hats with earflaps bustled around them. The big Proton rocket loomed above them all, illuminated glaringly by huge spotlights, icy white vapor wafting from its upper stage.

“The world’s most reliable rocket,” Nikolayev said cheerfully. “Safer than driving automobile.”

Williamson scowled at the Russian and his faked joviality. “Let’s get on with it, then,” he said, heading for the open cage of the elevator.

Bouchachi, shivering from the cold even inside the thick spacesuit, clumped glumly after him.

As the elevator creaked and groaned slowly upward, Nikolayev asked, “You know of red hands disease?”

Bouchachi’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

Nikolayev explained that in the old days of the Soviet Union, guest cosmonauts from communist nations were allowed to ride up to the Salyut space stations for short visits. When a Hungarian cosmonaut returned to the ground after a week in orbit, the medics were disturbed to find that his hands had turned red. They feared some strange space malady and wondered what to do about it.

“Finally, one of doctors asks Hungarian about his red hands,” Nikolayev went on. “Hungarian says, ‘Of course I have red hands. I am guest on Russian space station. Every time I went to touch anything in space station one of Russians slapped my hands.’”

Nikolayev laughed heartily, while Bouchachi managed a polite smile and Williamson frowned.

“I understand,” Bouchachi said as the elevator stopped at the uppermost level. “We are guests aboard your spacecraft. We are not to touch anything.”

“Or you get red hands,” Nikolayev warned, still laughing.

There were six more technicians waiting for them at the top level. The wind was howling up there, cutting icily. The sky was dark and full of stars. Williamson turned a full circle on the steel platform, searching for one particular star that should be bright and steady low on the horizon. The powersat. He couldn’t see it. Of course not, he realized. It’s on the other side of the world.

Two of the technicians touched his shoulders and nudged him toward the hatch of the Soyuz TMA spacecraft. Williamson had practiced this a hundred times in the simulators, but somehow this time was different. He stubbed his booted foot on the lip of the hatch and would have toppled to his knees if the technicians hadn’t been there to hold him up. They literally lifted him off his feet and shoved him through the hatch, boots first.

Inside, the spacecraft was as cramped as a sardine tin. Grumbling inwardly about how stiff his spacesuit felt, Williamson clambered over two of the couches that had been shoehorned in among all the equipment and controls, then slid awkwardly into the farthermost couch, banging his helmeted head on a protruding electronics box as he leaned back.

Nikolayev slipped in next to him, so close that their shoulders pressed against each other. “Is easier once we reach orbit,” the Russian said confidently. “In zero gravity this coffin gets bigger. You’ll see.”

Bouchachi clambered in hesitantly. He was still settling into his couch when the technicians closed the hatch and sealed it.

We’re in for it now, Williamson thought. No way out.

Nikolayev adjusted the pin microphone inside his helmet and began chattering with the controllers in Russian. After several minutes he said, “Down visors.” He slid the visor of his helmet down and it sealed with a click. Williamson and Bouchachi did the same.

“Now we wait,” Nikolayev said, his voice muffled by the closed helmets. His cheerful demeanor was gone. He looked totally serious to Williamson.

Got to piss, Williamson realized. There was a relief tube in the suit, but he wasn’t certain he was connected to it properly. The dour technicians, mostly Asians, who had helped them get into the spacesuits had paid little attention to the plumbing. Would it short out some electrical circuits if it leaks? Williamson wondered. He decided not to try it. I’ll wait. I can hold it.

He heard thumps and grinding noises. Pumps starting up? he wondered. Or something gone wrong. The tight, hot little metal sarcophagus started vibrating like a tuning fork.

“Ten more minutes,” Nikolayev said.

More bangs and groans. Metal expanding, Williamson told himself. Or contracting. He thought he heard the wind keening outside. A storm coming up?

“Five minutes,” said the Russian. “Everything automatic from here on.”

The big rocket was coming to life. Pumps gurgled, pipes shuddered, the lights on the instrument board six inches in front of their faces blinked several times, then steadied. Most of them were green, Williamson saw. A display screen lit up with a complex of grid lines and colored curves.

Nikolayev adjusted a dial below the display screen, but it didn’t seem to have any affect on the image.

Williamson and Bouchachi had radios in their suits, earphones built into their helmets. But Nikolayev had not bothered to patch them in to the circuit he was listening to.

The cosmonaut said something in rapid, fluent Russian. Then he broke into a big grin and nodded inside his transparent bubble of a helmet. “Da, da! Dah sveedahnyah!”

Once they lifted off, Williamson knew, there would be no more communications with Baikonur.

Something exploded. For a flash of an instant Williamson was certain that the rocket had blown up and they were about to be killed. Then an enormous invisible hand squeezed down on his chest so hard he could barely breathe. His arms were too heavy to lift off the seat rests. Pain and terror flaring through him, he managed to turn his head toward Nikolayev. The Russian’s face looked as if someone were flattening it out with an invisible pressing iron.

The noise and vibration were terrifying. Williamson couldn’t see Bouchachi, on the other side of the Russian. The pressure got worse and all of a sudden Williamson’s bladder let go. He heard a moan and wondered if it was his own tortured voice or Bouchachi’s.

And then it stopped.

It all just suddenly stopped. No noise, no vibration, no pressure. Williamson saw his arms floating up off the seat rests as if they had a will of their own. He turned his head to look at Nikolayev and a surge of dizziness made his eyes water. He felt as if he were going to upchuck.

“Zero gravity,” said Nikolayev happily. “In forty-five minutes we make rendezvous with transfer rocket.”

Williamson wondered if he could survive forty-five minutes without heaving up his guts into the fishbowl helmet.