The Trouble with Telstar Read online

of the floodlight.This had been some bright guy's idea, and it was paying off. I keptwatching the apparent distance between them shrink as I continued mytrip toward Earth. Memory and a little calculating told me that myacceleration of three inches per second per second would take twentyseconds of blast to slow me to a stop. I counted them off, aloud:"Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three," as I had beentaught to measure seconds. When I got to Mississippi twenty my visualmeasurement said I was about stationary with regard to _Nelly Bly_.

  I used a little more blast and let a couple minutes go by while Idrifted closer to the Telstar. I started squirming again, until Iremembered to use the deflection plate they had given me to hold in mybelly blast, and that got me lined up. But finally I was withintouching distance of the bird, which was rotating with a certain slowmajesty on its long axis.

  The leisurely spin was there to make sure one side didn't face the suntoo long and heat up. My plan called for stopping the bird's spin sothat I could get reasonable solar heating of the part I was workingon. 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 backingoff the right distance, accelerating with my back rocket until Idrifted close by the bird at its translational speed. I got one end ofmy sticky webbing stuck to it by pressure and decelerated so that thebird turned under me while I paid off the web. In a moment I had itgirdled, and snapped the nifty sort of buckle they had made for me.Then drawing the webbing tight was no trouble, and I was spinning withthe bird. My added weight slowed its spin down some.

  * * * * *

  Next came the trick of getting some special equipment loose from myright leg. This was a little rocket canister which had just enoughpoof, the slide-rule boys had said, to stop the rotation of the bird.I fastened the canister to the webbing, pushed softly with one fingerto get me a few feet away, and drifted while waiting for the delayedfuse to fire the antispin rocket. It lanced out a flame for a fewseconds, and sputtered dead. The bird hung virtually motionlessbeneath me--or above me--or beside me--or whatever you want to callit when there is no up or down.

  Our light was dimming as we passed the terminator and pulled overEarth's dark side. The sun was still visible, however, although soonto be eclipsed by Earth. I jetted softly back to the bird and lit myhelmet light. I had to find the right face of the twelve-sided thingso that I could open the right gate. The markings were there. Theywere just hard to read from inside a helmet. Then the sun waseclipsed, and my headlamp gave me the kind of light I was used toworking with. The sector I wanted was on the satellite's dark side. Ihad to clamp on to the girdle and jet quite a while to turn it halfwayround, and then decelerate just as long to bring it to a stop. Ifooled around several minutes getting the sector to face where the sunwould 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 thatTelstar's surface was warming nicely and would soon support thepressure-sensitive mat I was going to stick to some of her solargenerators. When the 'couple said Telstar had reached zero centigrade,I pulled the mat loose from where it was stuck to my left leg andplastered it above the gate I was going to open. I say above, becauseit was closer to one pole--the "North" pole of the satellite--than thegate.

  It was time to go to work on my first screw. And there I got my nextlesson. It was a real big screw, as they go, a 4-40 flat head machinescrew with a length of about three-quarters of an inch. I would haveto give it thirty turns to back it out. I never gave it the firstturn. The head snapped off as soon as I applied a few inch-pounds oftorque.

  Yes, the surface had heated up nicely, but the shank of the screw wasabout two hundred below zero centigrade, and far brittler than glass.

  I cussed some and reported to Sid what had happened.

  "Have to drill it out," I said.

  My drill was a cutie. It was a modified dentists' drill, the kindthat's run by a little air turbine at about two hundred thousandr.p.m.'s. I really mean that. They turn like mad.

  I'd been taught to use it with care. When a dentist drills your teeth,he blows olive oil and water through the turbine, and the mixturecools the tooth--and the drill--while the cutting is going on. Wecouldn't afford any cloud of vapor--or the shorting out that ice wouldcause--so I had only the pressurized mixture of oxygen and helium inthe tanks on my back to run the drill. And that meant light andintermittent pressures on the number 43 wire gauge drill--the onethat's the right size to drill out a 4-40. It took me about fifteenminutes and I was down to my last number 43 drill bit when she brokefree.

  From then on I had to heat each screw before I went to work on it. Ihad something like a soldering iron that I could press against thescrew-head. Heat would flow through the highly conductive alloy andmake it less brittle. I flicked each screw I removed out into spaceand at last carefully hinged the gate wide open.

  The gate was the length of the sector--about two feet. It was fourinches wide and about an inch thick and had parts strung along it likekernels on an ear of corn.

  At this stage I readjusted the position of my webbing girdle until Icould clamp my head in position and begin the testing. It was slowwork. The first sad thing was to learn that the solenoid M1537 was asgood as new. When I put enough voltage across its terminals, theactuator clicked down through the core.

  I swore a blue streak.

  "What is it Mike?" Sid's voice came in my ear.

  "Trouble," I said. "What did we expect?"

  "Roger," he said in that toneless unexcited astronauts' voice. "Returnto ship, Mike."

  "Not now," I said. "I've just got the oyster opened."

  His voice cut like my drill-bit. "I ordered you to return to ship.Your air supply is about shot."

  "I haven't been out that long," I protested, not feeling too sureabout the lapse of time.

  "Your drill chewed it up pretty fast. Quit talking and start moving."

  I was thankful for the experience of moving in close to the bird. Thesame tricks worked much more smoothly as I used my deflection plate infront of my belly blast to turn me to face the floodlight, and thenfollowed up with a light shove or two in the spine to start medrifting toward _Nelly Bly_. There didn't seem any rush, and I driftedslowly over, using only a couple triggered bursts of deceleration toslow me down as I approached the open hatch.

  Inside we went through the drill. My ears popped a little as Sidunchucked my spent tanks, and popped again as the new ones came onwith a hiss.

  "Take it easy on that steering fuel, Mike," he said again. "You'regetting awfully low."

  "Sure," I said and let myself drift out the hatch. I had enough senseto twist so that my back jet wouldn't hit the ship. Then I took azig-zag course through the darkness to my bird, got oriented at theopen gate and went back to work. Before I could get started, myearphones spoke.

  "Mike, Cleary here."

  "Roger, Paul. What is it?"

  "Have you gotten to that solenoid yet?"

  "Yes."

  "What can you tell me?"

  "That you're a fathead. Now shut up. I'm busy."

  "Roger, Mike," Paul Cleary acknowledged quite meekly.

  So I started again, reaching with my leads from point to point. Aftera certain number of tests, I had the area isolated, but not the part.From here on it would have to be disassembly. Every tiny screw had tobe heated, then teased out with a jeweler's screwdriver. Some took mypatented ratchet extension. The big miracle was that I didn't breakanything.

  When I got to it, it was ridiculous. A small length of wire connectedone component to another. Space was lacking, and the wire was tightagainst the metal of the gate. Its insulation was one of thesespace-age wonders, a form of clear plastic that would remain ductileunder zero temperature and
pressure. Only it didn't. It had shrunk andcracked, and there was a simple short against the metal of the gate.There were so many forms of circuit-breakers and self-protectors inthe machine that the whole gate had been switched off as long as theshort was in existence. No wonder telemetry hadn't told us anything.

  As I prepared to fix the trouble, I switched on my radio and had Sidconnect me with the ground. "Canaveral Control," one of thoseemotionless voices said. He could afford to be. He was on the ground.

  "Get me Cleary," I ordered.

  "Cleary here, Mike. What have you found, boy?" He sure was anxiousabout that solenoid.

  "Not much, Paul. Just that Fred Stone is a fathead, too. Over and out,like they say." I switched off