Orbital Maneuvers (16 page)

“Thanks!  What a refreshing taste of Mother Earth,” Susan said, as she finished the last tomato.  “If only Jerry could supply us with this type of surprise more often.  Where is he now, Paul?”

“We left him in the Kibo module.  He said he had to think about some things.  I told him to come on up for the burn, but I guess he still feels it’s not the thing to do.”

“As long as he stays out of trouble, that’s fine,” Susan said.  “We were just about ready to give you a call.  We have about two minutes before the burn.”

Looking over Ivan’s shoulder, Alexander asked, “You have not had a problem programming the computers for the engine firing?”

“No, everything has gone by the book and without any problems.  It is about time something should go our way,” Ivan said, while continuing through the last few items on his checklist.  “Alright, Commander, everything is green and ready to go at your command.”

“Thanks, Ivan.  Let’s fire in forty-five seconds.  That will start us at ten minutes after the hour.  A nice even time.”

“Copy that.  Burn in…thirty seconds.” Ivan opened the intercom to announce the countdown.  He did not want Jerry to be caught unaware when the engines fired.  “Burn in…five…four…three…two…one…ignition!”

Everyone was braced for the station slipping out from under them by hanging onto the handholds, using the foot holds, or just grabbing onto the nearest rack that had hand rails.  The sudden lack of a jolt was just as surprising to all as it would have been if the station had reacted to the engines firing.

“What’s going on?” Susan asked Ivan, as they both frantically scanned the displays.

“Did the engines fire?” Nicholas asked. “If they did, they are sure smooth.”

“No, the engines did not fire at all!” Ivan said.

“Do you think Jerry had anything to do with it?” Susan asked, looking from Paul to Ivan.

Paul shook his head, “I don’t think Jerry would do that…even if he could, or knew how.”

“I think you should get Jerry up here, and we can talk to him about that,” Ivan said between punching commands into the computer to trace the failure. 

He shook his head, “This does not make sense.  Everything shows that the engines should have fired.  There is no error code, no failure report showing.”

Paul was headed toward the hatch to retrieve Jerry when the intercom came alive with a hiss of static, a different type of hiss than when an internal message was transmitted.  This was coming from down below, from Earth.

“Commander Corin,” the unmistakable, deep annoying baritone of Captain Mikhailovich from Korolev Control boomed over the intercom.  “Commander Corin, do you copy me?”

“Oh, Christ!  What does he want?” Susan growled as she grabbed the microphone to respond.  “This is Commander Corin, I copy you Korolev Control.” She figured she could irritate the good Captain a bit by not acknowledging him directly.

“Commander, you were given orders not to move the station, were you not?” The Captain’s voice oozed from the speakers.

“I was not given an order not to move the station.  You said that you did not have the authority to give me permission to move the station.” Susan thought she might have him there, although she knew he would not give in so easily.

“Commander, you are playing with words.  I told you that you can not change the station’s altitude until you have permission from my superior.  The station will not move until that time.” Captain Mikhailovich’s voice maintained its composure, indicating in no uncertain terms that he felt he had the upper hand in this matter.

“Captain, what are you saying?” Susan was beginning to get the picture that the Captain was behind their aborted reboost effort.

“That bastard!  He planted a lockout command in the station’s computer that prevented us from executing the burn!” Ivan shouted, much to everyone’s surprise.  Ivan tended to remain very level in everything he did, so to hear such an outburst from him was quite unusual.  Susan quickly shut off the microphone.

“Oh, so it wasn’t just pure coincidence that the good Captain called us at this time?” Susan said to Ivan, who nodded his head in agreement.  “Do you think we can override whatever he did?”

From the speakers Captain Mikhailovich intruded, “Commander, I did not hear your last response.  Do you copy?”

Ivan ignored the Captain’s intrusion and answered Susan, “I am not sure.  It may take some time, but we may be able to do it before he gets his permission to remove the command.”

“Excuse me, Ivan,” Alexander interrupted, “but if they placed such a command in the computer before, do you think that it would be wise to not allow them to do any more damage?”

Susan looked at Alexander, not following his line of reasoning.  “What do you mean?”

“Alexander is right,” Ivan said, turning to Susan.  “We had better shut down the comm system completely, so they have no contact with the station or we may be chasing our behinds trying to find their lockout command, or anything else they may upload into the system.”

“Yes, it makes sense. Okay, what do we have to do to shut down the receivers they would use to access the station?”

“Commander Corin, do you copy?  This is Korolev Control.  Do you copy, Space Station?” Captain Mikhailovich’s persistence was becoming annoying.

“Susan, do you think you ought to put the good Captain at ease? asked Paul.  “If we hang on too long here, he may think we are up to…what we are up to.”

“Yes, you’re right.  Okay” Susan cleared her throat and took a deep breath.  She wanted to put the Captain off the trail, but not tip him off. 

Susan switched on the microphone.  “Korolev Control, this is Commander Corin.  I am sorry; we had a slight problem here.  Everything is under control.”

“Commander,” the Captain responded with obvious annoyance, “is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything is under control.  We will sit tight here, Captain, and wait for your authorization.  Do you copy?”

“…I copy, Commander.  This is a change from before.  Are you sure everything is okay?” The skepticism in his voice was evident.

Susan started to break out in a sweat.  She had to be careful, she thought, the Captain may be an idiot, but he was not a fool.  “Captain, as I said, we have everything under control here.  We decided that it is better for all concerned to wait.  There is no need to rush this now.  It will also give us some time to take care of some routine maintenance on the station that was left unattended when the last crew left.  It’s pretty messy up here.”

“Very well, Commander.  I will be in touch soon.  Korolev Control out.”

Susan shut off the microphone, then wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead. “Damn!  That was too uncomfortable!”

“Well, he sounded convinced at the end,” Paul reassured her.

Ivan had already begun entering commands into the console he was working at while Susan was engaging Captain Mikhailovich.  Realizing that the more people that were searching for this, the quicker they may find it, he called over his shoulder to Paul.

“Paul, pull up anything you can on the comm systems.  We need to look for a central power source for the receivers or a way to shut down the computer that controls the data flow from the receivers.  Alexander and Nicholas, get to those other consoles and do the same.”

“I will try, but I know nothing about the station, let alone the computer system,” Nicholas muttered, as he floated to the nearest console and began to study the display.

Without breaking his stride, still running through the menus and sub-menus on his display, Ivan responded to Nicholas’ concerns.  “It is set up in a very logical fashion and everything is controlled through the touch-sensitive display.  You can execute searches for information using common language inquiries and then narrow your search from there.  Usually the display will show you a collection of objects from which you select your choice.  From that point on, you will see more text with the objects to pinpoint your search.  Simple!”

“Yes, but you speak English better than we do,” Alexander chided. 

“Oh, and for those who don’t read English, press the configuration button on your display and you can pick from Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and, of course, Russian!”

“Ahh, somebody put some thought into this,” Nicholas chuckled, “I wonder if they were Russian?”

“I don’t care if they were Vulcan!” Paul said.  I just wish they had designed the electronic systems interface for someone who did not have a master’s degree in electronics!  I’ve found schematics, but they are mostly useless to me.  Maybe one of you can make heads-or-tails out of this.”

Ivan and Susan converged on Paul’s console and looked at the data showing on his display.  Ivan reached over Paul’s shoulder, entered a few commands and the display flashed through several screens, all distinctly different, and with much less detail than the schematic Paul had found.  “At this level, they probably assumed that you would have technical support from the ground to walk you through this.  Actually, if you had a system failure, you would have probably replaced a module before getting to this level…” Ivan paused, smacked his forehead with his free hand and exclaimed, “Damn, I should have thought about this before!”

“What?” Susan asked, staring at Ivan with intense curiosity at his outburst.  He rushed back to his console.

“I should have thought about this at the beginning!  We can use the repair manuals and troubleshooting guides to find this information!”

“What good would that do us?  Nothing is broken,” Susan said, moving to get a better view over Ivan’s shoulder.  Paul, Alexander and Nicholas jockeyed for position around Ivan as well.  Zero-g had its advantages in this case; no one had to stand on tiptoes to get a clear view.  All just floated at whatever angle was necessary to see the display.

“You are right, nothing is broken.  But, if something were broken, we would use the troubleshooting guides to step us through the repair process.”

Paul and the cosmonauts picked up on Ivan’s thought process a bit more quickly than Susan did.  Within a few moments, they all were as excited as Ivan was as he brought up the repair manual on the display.

“Okay.  We should be able to go to the communications section from here,” Ivan touched the display on the icon that resembled a radio transmitter.  The screen immediately switched to display the title:
COMMUNICATIONS
.  Below this heading, the screen showed two branches titled:
TRANSMITTER ----- RECEIVER
.

“If we take the receiver branch, that should bring us to where we want to be.  Good!” Ivan said.  “So our problem is that we have a bad receiver that does not receive anything.” He scrolled the display down through a list of problems that a group of engineers, who wrote the software, thought could possibly occur.  He passed by links:
CORRUPT DATA
and
INTERMITTANT RECEPTION
.

He continued on until he got to a link that read:
NO VOICE/DATA RECEIVED
.

“This looks like it may be the one.” He pressed the icon and the display flashed a multicolored flow chart that showed red branches for power, blue branches for computer control and data processing, and yellow branches for receiver electronics and antennae status.

Susan studied the display, but saw no obvious way to disconnect the comm system.  “Which is the best way to shut it down?” She asked.

“I am not sure,” Ivan replied. “I think we should check the power branch first.  That may be the most direct way to shut it off.”

“Don’t forget the backup systems,” Paul recommended.

“Yes, this is a many-headed beast, to be sure,” Ivan commented, as he studied the display before making his next selection.  “There are two main communication systems for the command and control of the station.  These are two S-band systems, and they are totally independent of each other.  You can see how the power line splits to each system. There is also the KU-band system, which was supposed to be upgraded to also allow command and control functionality.  We should shut them all off to make sure that they don’t have a back door to the station.”

“Do they have a common connection that we can disconnect?” Alexander asked.

“I am not sure.  I do not think they would have intentionally created a weakness by making any vital link common to all subsystems.  We may have to make three separate breaks in the power system.  I can not yet tell if we can do it from inside the station or if we must do an EVA.”

“By the looks of what’s on the display, I think they are all isolated on separate remote power controllers,” Susan said, tracing the red lines to each communication subsystem.  “Unless we take the main solar array off-line we won’t be able to shut them all down at once.”

“Don’t forget the battery backups on the entire station.  You may shut off the arrays, but then the batteries will take over,” Paul added.

“Damn, you’re right.  I never thought that I would regret having multiple backup systems!” Susan selected one of the subsystems and the display changed to a schematic showing the major assemblies for that subsystem and how they were interconnected.  She was beginning to think that the station was too well designed with too much redundancy for their plan to work.  Susan advanced the display down one more level.  As she traced the power supply line through the subassemblies, she saw a section that showed the location of the remote power controller.