Simultaneously, he flipped three switches putting the observatory, the only completely unshielded area within the satellite, on automatic, to record as much as it could of the progress of the solar flare with its incomplete equipment, while he and Jerry dove through the open air lock down the central well to the emergency shield room in the center of the hub.
It was a poor system, Perk thought, that hadn't devised sufficient shielding for the observatory so that they could watch this phenomenon more directly. "We'll have to work on that problem," he told himself and since his recommendations would carry much weight after this tour of duty, he could be sure that any such system that he could devise would be instrumented.
Major Steve Elbertson, caught in mid-run between the lab and Project Hot Rod, resisted the temptation to reverse the scuttlebug on the line and pull himself to a fast stop, as the flare warning from the observatory came to him over the emergency circuit of his suit, followed by Bessie's clipped official voice saying:
"A flare is in progress. Any personnel outside the ship should get in as rapidly as possible. Personnel in the rim have seven minutes in which to secure their posts and report to the flare-shield area in the hub. Spin deceleration will take effect in three minutes; and we are counting on my mark towards deceleration. Mark, three minutes."
The Security officer squeezed the trigger of the "bug" tighter in a vain effort to force it and himself forward at a higher speed.
The lesser shielding of the Hot Rod control room would not provide a sufficient safety factor even for the X rays that he knew were already around him; but he must supervise the security of the shutdown; and he could only be very thankful that he was already nearly there and would not have to make the entire round trip under emergency conditions.
The scuttlebug automatically reversed and began slowing for the end of its run—tripped by a block signal set in the ribbon cable. As it came to a stop at the end of the long anchor tube, Steve dismounted and kicked over the short remaining distance, which was spanned only by a slack cable to permit the inertial orientation servos of Hot Rod unhindered freedom to maintain their constant tracking of the solar disk.
Passing through the air lock of the control room, he reflected that his exposure would probably be sufficient to give a touch of nausea in the first half hour.
Inside Hot Rod control there was little excitement. The equipment was being turned off in the standard approved safety procedures necessary to turn control over to the laser communication beam which would put the project under Earth control at Thule Base, Greenland, until the emergency was over.