23. Belly-up #2
With some holding our hands for balance, others holding the slim metal hula-hoop-like waistband of our pants so they don’t fall down, the staff walks us over as a team to the two yellow pneumatic jib cranes where the tops of our EMUs are strapped.
“All right, up you go.” Ian braces one hand on the back of the platform where my suit is strapped, holding me under the armpit with the other.
“Easier said than done.” With his help, and a bunch of grunting, I squat down and duck walk in my gear until I’m under the opening of the upper half of my suit.
Considering these suits weigh over three hundred and fifty pounds, it isn’t like pulling on a sweater. In space the microgravity will make this easier, but here on Earth it takes a team and a hydraulic lift over forty-five minutes just to get two astronauts dressed.
By the time I can finally straighten my legs and push my head through the neck opening, I’m sweating.
“Good?” Ian asks, reaching in to make sure my tubes are lined up with the attachments running along the suit’s inner lining.
“Good.”
With a nod, Ian begins checking my quick-disconnects, the locks keeping my suit pressurized and air/watertight. A group of EVA support helping me and Bodie on the other side of the platform, soon we’re ready to roll. Or sink.
Whatever you want to call it.
I call it awesome.
Neutral buoyancy is how astronauts train for microgravity.
The crane will drop us under water, forty feet of it, where, with weighted plates and a team of four dive specialists, we’ll float around life-size mock-ups of the International Space Station, doing run-throughs for the spacewalks we’ll have in orbit.
It’s kinda like the real thing. But now, what with having logged so many EVA hours, I can easily feel the difference.
In space I float even while in my space suit.
Under the water, gravity presses down on my body in whichever position I’m floating.
Also, if I need to be “upside down” while working, I can only do that for so long in the pool before I get dizzy from blood rushing down to my brain. In space, that won’t happen.
And here at the NBL, we have to take into consideration drag time. Moving through the water takes more force and effort than floating in the immense vacuum of space.
But it’s the closest thing to microgravity that we have here on Earth, so we use it.
After Bodie and I are fully strapped onto the platform, back to back, I watch Ian jog over to the stairs leading to the control room above the pool.
We stay suspended until Ian’s in position at the EVA console.
Which only solidifies my guess that Jackie put him up to babysitting me, as he should’ve been in the control room this whole time.
This is his show, after all. Ian came up with the idea for this mission with Jackie back when NASA was still flying high from hotwiring the station.
I hear a click, and then Micha, the EVA task group lead, begins the comm checks. “Flight lead?”
“Go,” Ian says.
“EV1?”
“Go.” My lungs, now adjusted to the nitrox being pumped into the suit through my LCVG’s umbilical, take a deep, mind-clearing breath. Nitrox is a higher mixture of oxygen than humans normally breathe in everyday life. It helps reduce the risk of decompression sickness.
“EV2?”
“Go.” Bodie’s voice sounds in my helmet.
“Who does Number Two work for?” I tease in my best Austin Powers voice.
Laughter from the test director room.
Even over the comms I can hear Bodie’s long-suffering sigh. “Remind me how I didn’t strangle you last mission?”
“Please, you’d be so bored without me, Bode-man.”
His scoff is loud and clear over the comms. “If you say so, Starr.”
“All right, you two,” Micha breaks in, amused, “here we go.”
The hydraulic lifts kick in, and the vibrations shake my bones as the crane lifts, then swings us out over the pool.
“Descent start.”
It doesn’t take long. Soon the water line rises over my visor, and I’m fully submerged.
Time to go to work.
Two hours later and I’m in the zone.
“Heading starboard.”
“EV1, starboard movement.”
Pulling on my tether, currently attached to the truss mock-up of the ISS, I move forward, letting my forced weightlessness do a lot of the work.
If there is one thing they drive into our heads, it’s do not fight the suit.
You have to make do with the environment you’re in and take advantage of the forward propulsion weightlessness affords you; otherwise, you won’t last an hour in the suit — you’ll be too worn out from trying to hulk you and your three-hundred-pound suit around.
“EV2 in position.” Bodie hooks himself to the truss with a tether extending from his mini-work station, the metal harness attached to the front of our suits with slots, branches and clip-holes for all our tools.
Getting in place, I attach my own tether. My chest pinches. I take a deep breath, but it somehow feels inadequate.
“EV1, can?—”
“Say again?”
Silence. Not the “waiting for the right command” silence, but an eerie silence that lets me know my comm is out.
It’s cool. It happens. Happens in space too sometimes. But the pinch in my chest is getting deeper. Another breath that doesn’t quite fill my lungs.
Pulling on the tether, I rotate to face Bodie. He must’ve gotten a message from control, because he’s also angling toward me, as are the divers.
Breath. Pinch. Breath. Pinch. Tiny black dots blink across my vision.
Fuck.
I raise my arm and make a fist with my hand, signaling distress. In an instant, my dive team descends, one cutting my tether, another releasing the weighted plate from my feet, while a third grabs my umbilical and pulls. All the movements ripple the water, bubbles rushing by my visor.
In a matter of seconds, the pull in my back tells me the crane is lifting me out, but it feels like forever. The pinch in my chest and the black in my vision expands until… nothing.