Free The Glass Lady by Douglas Savage

here?” Joseph Vazzo rubbed his tired eyes. “Our crime here is nothing less than space piracy . . .”
    â€œPiracy, Mr. Secretary?”
    â€œComplete with the black flag, as far as our space treaty with the Russians is concerned, Admiral.”
    â€œEarly for a swim, isn’t it, Jack?”
    The brawny technician smiled at Jacob Enright, who was raising his fish-bowl helmet to his head. The clock above them on the wall read 7 a.m., Houston time.
    â€œYou know that the Colonel and I work the swing shift, Chief,” Enright grinned.
    â€œFrom the poop I hear upstairs, I’d say your night-shift days are about over. What say?” The big man fiddled with a hose connection on Enright’s bulky white pressure suit.
    â€œThink so?”
    â€œPoop has it you ’n’ Colonel are flying, and soon. Somethin’ hush-hush.” The smiling deck-crew chief spoke toward Parker, who stood in his faded flightsuit beside Enright. “You boys must know someone .”
    â€œReckon so,” the Colonel drawled.
    With his helmet secured to his full suit, Jacob Enright balanced on the wire basket at the side of the Johnson Center’s neutral buoyancy pool. Submerged 40 feet deep in the 1.3-million-gallon pool, a full-size mockup of an open Shuttle payload bay shimmered. Both Enright and Parker felt an eerie twinge reminding them of Monday’s simulated landing which ended in the drink, at least on paper.
    Strapped to Enright’s back was a full-size model of the Martin Marietta Manned Maneuvering Unit, the MMU.
    Ordinarily, shuttle crews train in watery, simulated weightlessness in the pool at the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville. But there was no time to fly from Houston to Alabama.
    â€œTell you boys another thing,” the technician said as he gave Enright a cheery thumbs-up. “That ain’t no Intelsat down there, either.”
    The engineer regarded the cylindrical black hulk which floated 10 yards to the side and slightly above the sunken payload bay’s sill, near where the open bay door would be in space.
    Neither pilot replied.
    â€œBasement, please, ladies’ intimate apparel.” The voice crackling from the wall-mounted loudspeaker belonged to the space-suited Enright, who perched ankle-deep in water upon the grating of the steel elevator at poolside.
    The lift groaned and descended into the clear water. Enright’s helmet just cut the surface as a Navy safety diver below the surface reached up for the weights fastened to the ankles of Enright’s bulky EVA suit. Two divers on either side of Enright steered him from the submerged lift toward the Shuttle payload bay. With one diver holding each of Enright’s legs, they guided his feet into the foot restraints bolted to the bay’s floor.
    â€œDon’t make a wish,” Enright’s voice laughed over the wall speaker as each diver held one of his legs.
    Behind the neckring of the suit, a few bubbles percolated upward from the MMU’s air supply. Quickly, the bubbles stopped. As in space, the cumbersome manned maneuvering unit on the pilot’s back did not vent his breath overboard.
    With weights precisely positioned about his ankles, thighs, wrists, and lower back, Enright’s air-filled space suit was perfectly balanced in the water. He was, in fact, weightless, as he would be 130 nautical miles into the airless sky.
    With his feet wedged into the foot restraints, Enright let his body float backward until he was nearly horizontal in the open bay. His heavily gloved hands floated before his helmet. The two safety divers floated at his elbows. Behind them, two NASA utility divers straddled each ledge of the 15-foot-wide shuttle bay.
    â€œOkay, Chief. All set down here.” Enright peered over his neckring at the dials and controls strapped to his small chestpack. As with the helmet he would wear in space during extravehicular activity, the bottom portion of his