Gene nodded. “SURGEON, how much beauty sleep will he need?”
JW answered. “My best guess is about four hours, FLIGHT.”
EECOM piped in immediately. “We can wait that long.”
Gene decided. “Sounds good. CAPCOM, plan to wake Lieutenant Esdale at”—he glanced at the digital timer at the front of the room—“thirty-seven hours mission elapsed time.”
“Houston, 18, with a problem.”
Well, that’s not what I want to hear. Kaz set down his coffee next to the console ashtray. He deliberately made his voice calm to respond. As CAPCOM, he knew that the way he said things affected the psychology of both the crew on orbit and the team in Mission Control; being aware of his tone was especially important considering the parallel murder investigation. “Problems are what we’re here for—go ahead, Michael.”
“Hey, Kaz. Chad and I have both noticed that Luke’s spacesuit is bulging. Looks like maybe his body is decomposing and the gas pressure is building up in there. We’re not sure where the pressure relief valve is in the cosmonaut’s spacesuit, but we sure don’t want it burping nasty gases into Bulldog.”
“Copy, agreed, checking.”
Chad caught Michael’s eye. “How about we ask Princess here to show us where the suit vents its overpressure?”
Michael nodded. “How good’s your sign language?”
Svetlana, dozing on the right side of the cockpit, felt someone shaking her. Opening her eyes, she saw the commander pointing at the other astronaut disappearing into the tunnel to the lunar lander. He waved his hand for her to follow.
Shto? She followed the feet into the tunnel.
Michael had floated up against Bulldog’s ceiling next to Luke’s body, and Chad moved to his designated position on the left, where he’d fly it. Svetlana took the open position on the right and looked at them questioningly.
Mikhail was speaking, moving his hands around her Yastreb spacesuit. She could see that the suit had ballooned. The astronaut suddenly opened his fingers and made a sharp hissing sound, and then raised his shoulders with a questioning look on his face. He was pointing at the oxygen and comm connections on the suit’s front. She found all the English words distracting. What does he mean?
The other astronaut frowned disapprovingly. He impatiently repeated the bursting motion with his hand, and made a harsh “Pssssss” sound that he tailed off.
Ah. She got it. Floating up next to the suit, she pointed to two fist-sized protruding round knobs over the left rib cage, and mimed a twisting motion with her hand. She then reached up to the helmet and touched a gray butterfly valve under the left ear. She mimicked pinching and turning it, and made the same hissing noise the astronauts had made.
Michael looked closely where she’d pointed. “I think the two chest valves are pressure regulators. They’ve got some Russian writing on them, and arrows to show direction of turn.” He switched his inspection to the helmet. “This looks like a simple purge valve.”
Chad had been silently sounding out the Cyrillic writing on the two chest valves. One said “Unscrew all the way for flight” and the other said “Screw in all the way.” He spoke as if he was making an educated guess. “I bet one’s for overpressure, and the other’s for underpressure.” There were no labels on the helmet valve. He pointed at it. “That one looks like just a manual open/close.”
Michael nodded. “Makes sense.”
Both men pondered the information.
“But what do we do if the stink inside starts coming out of one of these?” Michael shook his head. “Even after death we have to deal with Luke’s farting.”
Chad ignored the humor. He had an idea. “We’ve got the small tap line here in Bulldog we can put on the egress hatch pressure valve. We could wrap it tight with tape directly to this helmet valve, and crack them both open very slightly to suck the extra pressure out to vacuum.”
Michael evaluated. “Yeah, that should work.” He smiled. “It’ll put us in the running for the duct tape hall of fame.”
Chad donned the LM headset and pushed Transmit.
“Houston, we think we have a solution.” He described what the cosmonaut had shown them, and his plan.
Kaz replied, “Roger, Bulldog, sounds like it might well work. Let us think about it.”
Gene Kranz spoke. “EECOM, I want you to use the interpreter and get on the horn ASAP with whoever the suit specialists are in Moscow. Make sure we’re understanding the valve function properly and get their input into the crew’s manual vent idea.”