* * * * *
Clinging carefully to the handholds that had been specially provided
on the outside of _Nelly Bly_, I clambered through the hatch and hung
in the darkness, looking down at South America. The world was turning
visibly under me, although I knew that in fact we were skimming
rapidly about three thousand miles over its surface. I got myself
lined up nice and straight with the bird and did my first bit of
non-thinking. I pushed off good and proper with my feet, the way you'd
dive into a swimming pool. It was a fool stunt for my first act. I was
doing a good five or six feet a second. You may not think that is very
fast, but before I could gulp twice I had zipped past that bird and
was headed for Buenos Aires.
I know I screamed. That was the first time I realized I really was
falling. Earth looked awfully close, and seemed to be rushing up to
meet me.
My orientation was all wrong for stopping. By diving head first I had
neither my back nor my belly rocket lined up to stop me.
My training failed completely. I tried to squirm straight, and by
proper swinging of my arms out to full length, and kicking the same
way with my feet, I got turned around to where my belly was facing the
floodlight on _Nelly Bly_. That's not how I was supposed to do it.
The glider had disappeared--all I could see was the floodlight. It was
still by far the brightest thing in the sky, but if I drifted much
longer, I would have to use radio direction-finding to get back. I
triggered the motor on my back and felt its gentle push against my
spine.
"Sid!" I called.
"Roger, Mike!"
"Light the tip lights. I've got to get a fix on my velocity. I went
way past and I'm trying to get back."
Two new stars winked into being, on either side of the floodlight.
This had been some bright guy's idea, and it was paying off. I kept
watching the apparent distance between them shrink as I continued my
trip toward Earth. Memory and a little calculating told me that my
acceleration of three inches per second per second would take twenty
seconds of blast to slow me to a stop. I counted them off, aloud:
"Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three," as I had been
taught to measure seconds. When I got to Mississippi twenty my visual
measurement said I was about stationary with regard to _Nelly Bly_.
I used a little more blast and let a couple minutes go by while I
drifted closer to the Telstar. I started squirming again, until I
remembered to use the deflection plate they had given me to hold in my
belly blast, and that got me lined up. But finally I was within
touching distance of the bird, which was rotating with a certain slow
majesty on its long axis.
The leisurely spin was there to make sure one side didn't face the sun
too long and heat up. My plan called for stopping the bird's spin so
that I could get reasonable solar heating of the part I was working
on. The trouble was there was nothing to grab as the satellite turned.
But we had worked on that part, too, and I went into my act of backing
off the right distance, accelerating with my back rocket until I
drifted close by the bird at its translational speed. I got one end of
my sticky webbing stuck to it by pressure and decelerated so that the
bird turned under me while I paid off the web. In a moment I had it
girdled, and snapped the nifty sort of buckle they had made for me.
Then drawing the webbing tight was no trouble, and I was spinning with
the bird. My added weight slowed its spin down some.
* * * * *
Next came the trick of getting some special equipment loose from my
right leg. This was a little rocket canister which had just enough
poof, the slide-rule boys had said, to stop the rotation of the bird.
I fastened the canister to the webbing, pushed softly with one finger
to get me a few feet away, and drifted while waiting for the delayed
fuse to fire the antispin rocket. It lanced out a flame for a few
seconds, and sputtered dead. The bird hung virtually motionless
beneath me--or above me--or beside me--or whatever you want to call
it when there is no up or down.
Our light was dimming as we passed the terminator and pulled over
Earth's dark side. The sun was still visible, however, although soon
to be eclipsed by Earth. I jetted softly back to the bird and lit my
helmet light. I had to find the right face of the twelve-sided thing
so that I could open the right gate. The markings were there. They
were just hard to read from inside a helmet. Then the sun was
eclipsed, and my headlamp gave me the kind of light I was used to
working with. The sector I wanted was on the satellite's dark side. I
had to clamp on to the girdle and jet quite a while to turn it halfway
round, and then decelerate just as long to bring it to a stop. I
fooled around several minutes getting the sector to face where the sun
would soon rise.
My earphone spoke.
"Mike!"
"Roger, Sid. What's up."
"Take it easy on your steering fuel. You're getting low."
"Roger."
I had to wait for the sun before I could start work. When it came up,
heating seemed quick. First a test with a thermocouple showed that
Telstar's surface was warming nicely and would soon support the
pressure-sensitive mat I was going to stick to some of her solar
generators. When the 'couple said Telstar had reached zero centigrade,
I pulled the mat loose from where it was stuck to my left leg and
plastered it above the gate I was going to open. I say above, because
it was closer to one pole--the "North" pole of the satellite--than the
gate.
It was time to go to work on my first screw. And there I got my next
lesson. It was a real big screw, as they go, a 4-40 flat head machine
screw with a length of about three-quarters of an inch. I would have
to give it thirty turns to back it out. I never gave it the first
turn. The head snapped off as soon as I applied a few inch-pounds of
torque.
Yes, the surface had heated up nicely, but the shank of the screw was
about two hundred below zero centigrade, and far brittler than glass.