Read Orbital Maneuvers for Free Online Page B

thank you for flying Jerry’s space arm!”
    “You keep that up and I am going to cash in my ticket!” Jill quipped.
    Susan helped Jill step into the footrest.  She then attached a safety strap from Jill to the arm and double-checked her tether.  While she was securing Jill’s safety strap, Susan realized that her hands were shaking and she was breathing rapidly.  Again she felt the gnawing pain in her stomach.  Susan tried to focus on Jill and cursed under her breath as sweat from her forehead migrated to her eyes.  She quickly looked out of the payload bay and scanned the velvety blackness of space, but saw nothing.
    “Susan, is everything all right?” Jill asked with a bit of concern in her voice, “Did I drop something?”
    “No…Everything’s okay.  Just taking in the view,” Susan replied, trying to collect herself.  Come on, keep your head in the game , she reprimanded herself.
    “Come on you two, we have a train to catch.  Let us get that satellite back into orbit.” Ivan’s voice came over the intercom and put Susan a bit at ease.
    “We’re all set here, I think.  Jill, you ready?”
    “All set. Any time, Jerry.”
    “Hang on, Jill, I am going to raise the arm now.”
    Susan stepped back as Jill and SCIEXSAT were slowly raised out of the bay.  As Susan watched Jill leave the bay, she was feeling more and more uneasy.  If she could have hidden someplace, she would have gladly done so.  The harder Susan tried to concentrate on Jill and the task at hand, the more the image of the black beast surging out of the deep clouded her thoughts. She found herself pressing up against the bulkhead of the payload bay, grabbing the insulation that covered it and cowering in the corner.  She watched Jill, high above the bay, as if through a fog.  Only faintly did she hear the conversation Jill was having with Mission Control.
    “Roger that.  I am going to trip the trigger.”
    Susan’s heart was beating faster and louder. She couldn’t hear the pumps and motors in her suit any longer.  Her breathing was coming in short gasps.  She knew it was coming…it was almost here…she could feel it… she couldn’t swim away…it was too late!
    “Ivannnnnn…!” Susan heard herself scream as she pulled herself further into the corner of the payload bay, trying to crouch down to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.  Her mind was racing and the next half second unwrapped itself in hideous slow motion.  Susan watched in terror as high above the payload bay the leading edge of the monster—jagged, black, tortured and cratered—made its appearance.  Racing silently by, it kept coming.  It grew darker in the payload bay as the asteroid passed between the shuttle and Earth, blotting out the light reflected from the planet.  The asteroid was slowly rotating, as it had for eons.  This rotation, combined with the jagged shape of the asteroid, gave the illusion that the monster was beginning to reach out toward the shuttle, stretching out a fin or arm, to catch whatever was there.  Susan crouched lower in the cargo bay, straining the joints in her suit until they groaned under the stress. The appendage grew closer and closer until the very tip of it grazed the top of the shuttle sending a deadly cloud of shattered tiles toward the back of the payload bay.  The spray of ceramic shrapnel shredded the insulation on the back and sidewall of the bay and the jacket on the shuttle arm. The shower of debris in turn shattered tiles that covered the shuttle’s engine pods and rudder.  Several larger pieces of debris punched holes through the rudder.
    Susan flinched as a piece of tile grazed her visor.  She wanted to scream, to warn Jill to look out, but was frozen with fear.  Little did she realize that this was happening so fast that it was over before she could utter her first word.
    The behemoth continued its rotation and the fin reached out and snatched Jill away.  Jill was focused on the