Almost an hour later, as they were attaching the empty propellant tank to the other six, Colt asked:
"How many times we practice this stunt in training?"
"This particular business?"
"Naw . . . just taking pieces apart and reassembling them."
Kinsman looked up from the bolt-tightening job he was doing. Colt was floating some forty meters away, up at the nose end of the fat propellant tank. He looked tiny next to the stack of huge eggs, each of them as big as a ten-room house. Sunlight glinted off them and the Earth slid by below, silent and serene.
The hardest part of the job was over: maneuvering the huge mass of the tank to the place where it was to be bolted to the others. Weightless though it may be, the tank still possessed mass, and in the frictionless vacuum of space, once a body starts in motion it keeps on going until something or somebody acts to stop it. The thrusters on their MMUs were pitifully inadequate to the task. The tank had its own thrust- ers installed at its nose and tail especially for this task.
"Well," Kinsman replied to Colt's question, "we did so much of this monkeywork in Huntsville and Houston that I thought they were training us to work in a garage."
"Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Then why's Howard so shaky about us doing this? You having any troubles?"
Kinsman shrugged inside his suit, and the motion made him drift slightly away from the strut he was working on. He 59 reached out and grabbed it to steady himself.
"I've spun myself around a couple of times/' he admit- ted. "But the tools work well, once you get used to them."
Colt's answer was a soft grunt. "The suit heats up," Kinsman went on. "I've had to stop work and let it cool down a couple of times."
"Try to keep in the shadows," answered Colt. "Stay out of the direct sun. Makes a big difference."
"Maybe Howard's worried about us being so far from the orbiter without tethers."
"Maybe." But Colt did not sound convinced. "How's your end going? I'm almost finished here." 'T got maybe another twenty minutes and I'll be through.
Three hours! This damned job don't take no three . . . Holy shit!"
Kinsman's whole body jerked at the urgency in Colt's voice. "What? What is it?"
"Lookit the orbiter!"
Turning so rapidly that he bounced the upper corner of his MMU against the tank. Kinsman peered out at the ship, some two hundred meters away from them.
"They've closed the payload bay doors. Why the hell would they do that?"
Colt jetted down the length of the tank, stopping himself neatly as an ice skater within arm's reach of Kinsman. "What on earth are they doing?" Kinsman wondered. Colt said, "Whatever it is, I don't like it." Suddenly a puff of white gas jetted from the orbiter's nose. The spacecraft dipped down and away from them. Another soundless gasp from the maneuvering thrusters back near the tail.
