The Omega Command

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“Houston, this is Adventurer.”

“Come in, Adventurer.”

Astronaut Marjorie Rait tightened her grip on the joysticks that controlled the space shuttle’s mechanical robot arm. “Ready to begin satellite retrieval procedures again.”

“Roger, Marge. Here’s to sticky fingers.”

Rait smiled and pushed the right-hand joystick up and to the right, eyes locked on a small television monitor above her; its image was also broadcasted back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. This was the fourth time she had attempted to use the robot arm to bring in the rogue communications satellite for minor repairs; the previous three having failed due to a combination of mechanical breakdown and bad luck. Rait pressed her lips together as she watched her efforts on the screen — the steel arm extended slowly toward the satellite. Since the tragic loss of Challenger, failure had become a nonexistent term in the NASA vocabulary. Too many people were watching, waiting for something else to go wrong. Adventurer had been constructed with precisely that in mind, and its previous two missions had come off without a hitch.

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