The Dragon and the Stars

by Derwin Mak

  “Uh oh, no wonder the spaceport has been so unlucky,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul asked.

  “The supply tower has X’s and jagged patterns on it.

  There’s also a pyramid on the top. All those intersecting straight lines are bad feng shui,” Kate said, citing the ancient theory of how the built environment affects fortune.

  “How interesting,” said Jonathan. “In a spaceport full of Chinese workers, the Irish girl is the first person to notice the feng shui.”

  It was late August, a time when the aurora borealis is visible. Paul showed Kate the northern lights. The aurora formed a moving green, red, and white backdrop to the Long March rocket.

  “The northern lights are formed by charged particles from the magnetosphere colliding with gases in the upper atmosphere. I’ll be flying into them,” said Paul.

  “Are they dangerous?” Kate asked.

  “No. I’ll pass through the aurora in a few seconds, so the electronic systems and I will not get a dangerous dose of radiation. In addition, the spaceship has radiation-hardened components.”

  Paul heard someone walking. He turned to see Ann Alaralok, Inuit historian, Mayor of Churchill, and a frequent visitor to the spaceport.

  After Paul introduced Kate to Alaralok, the mayor asked Kate, “Is this the first time you’ve seen the northern lights?”

  Kate smiled. “Yes. They’re so beautiful.”

  “I bet Paul told you their scientific explanation, but do you know the legends?” said Alaralok. “The Inuit say the lights are sky people playing ball.”

  The mayor continued. “And then there are the Cree. The Cree call the aurora ‘the dance of the spirits.’ The lights are the spirits of the dead.”

  At a videoconference with the consortium partners, Jonathan updated them on the status.

  “After the death of Danny Eastman, the police say they will no longer tolerate blockades and protests at the methane plant or the spaceport,” said Jonathan. “The environmentalists have ended their blockades, but they remain camped in tents in front of the methane plant.”

  Donald Ming, President of Stanley Aerospace, gave a bittersweet smile from Hong Kong. “That is good news, although I wish the police had intervened earlier. We could have avoided the death and the delays in construction.”

  “This is Canada,” Jonathan reminded him. “The police let protesters do whatever they want until someone dies.”

  From Montreal, Jane Holt, Vice-President of Space Tourism at Alouette Aviation, said, “Polar Bear’s flight will prove that we can provide a safe and effective space tourism product. But I’m having trouble selling tour packages before Paul goes into orbit.”

  “I’m ready for that anytime,” Paul said. “I flew Polar Bear’s sister plane in a suborbital flight from Mojave. No problems. I know how to handle that plane.”

  From the corner of the boardroom table, Kate smiled at Paul as she typed notes on her laptop.

  “The problem is acquiring the liquid methane fuel,” Jonathan reported. “The original staff returned to China after the third riot. They trained some local people to take over, but some of them quit after bullying from the protesters. I have convinced most of them to return, but I do not have the compressor supervisor.”

  “Oh?” said Holt. “Hasn’t Ray Cassidy returned to work?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “No. Cassidy still thinks the whole enterprise is not worth the trouble if it cost his friend’s life.”

  “Can you promote another person to take over Cassidy’s job?”

  “Maybe later, but not now. Cassidy has the most experience. I want someone like him on the job when we restart production.”

  “Please resolve the problem of the methane plant,” Ming urged. “The company has spent billions of dollars on the spaceport, and the board of directors is worried that we have launched only a few unmanned suborbital test flights. The spaceport has not earned a cent. If you do not launch within a month, the board will cut its losses and sell its shares of the consortium, if anyone is willing to buy them.”

  In Montreal, Jane Holt looked startled. “Without Stanley Aerospace, the spaceport won’t have enough capital. The rest of us can’t operate it without a large partner.”

  “The board does not want to keep throwing good money after bad,” said Ming. “I am sorry.”

  The conference ended. As the video screens turned blank, Paul saw Jonathan shrug his shoulders.

  “I may go home sooner than expected,” Jonathan said.

  Barred from the methane plant and the spaceport, Dr. Hackbart led his followers to the post office, where the Chinese spaceport workers received parcels of food and gifts from home. The protesters chanted demands for the Chinese to return to China. The protesters lunged at the workers, and fighting broke out.

  This time, the protesters fled when they heard the police car siren. Nobody got killed, but one of the Chinese vowed to quit and return to the Wenchang Spaceport in China.

  After the fight, Paul and Kate went to the post office to send a toy polar bear to Kate’s niece. The broken windows startled them.

  The postmaster, Justin Gallant, straightened a poster of the Louis Riel postage stamp. Riel was the Métis leader who founded Manitoba and led two failed rebellions against the Canadian government in the nineteenth century.

  The frame around the poster was broken. “At least they didn’t damage the poster,” he said. “I would be very annoyed if they had. I’m descended from one of Riel’s brothers.”

  The post office lobby had a soapstone sculpture of Sedna, the Inuit goddess of marine animals. Hackbart had pulled the sculpture off its pedestal and hurled it to the floor several times. A small piece had broken off, and the larger piece was covered with dents and scratches.

  Ann Alaralok picked up the sculpture. “How could they do this?” she cried. “Those hooligans have no respect for native culture! We should tear down their tents and send them back home!”

  “The mayor’s very angry,” Kate whispered. “Aside from being an image of an Inuit goddess, is that carving important for another reason?”

  Paul replied, “Ten years ago, the town council commissioned the statue to honor Aboriginal fishermen. That’s when they had a fishing industry.”

  “It’s as if the goddess had abandoned them,” Kate commented softly.

  She went to the mayor and took the sculpture. Sedna looked like a mermaid, but the tail had broken off.

  “It’s the bad feng shui at the spaceport. This town could use some positive qi,” Kate said, referring to the energy flow of living beings.

  Two Chinese lions arrived at the spaceport. Made of fiberglass, they were the type that guarded palace gates, though these were only a meter tall.

  “What are they doing here?” Paul asked.

  Jonathan replied, “Ming sent them from Hong Kong. When you fly, he wants the two lions in the passenger seats. After you come back, we will send them back to Ming.”

  “This is his encouragement for us to launch soon.”

  “The Minister of National Heritage will be visiting Hong Kong. Ming wants to give the lions to him as souvenirs of the first manned flight of a new Chinese spaceship.”

  The Minister was obviously the Minister of National Heritage of China, not of Canada.

  Paul grinned. “There’s a whole collectors’ trade in things that flew aboard spaceships: flags, badges, medals, uniforms, mail, and even baseballs. Now the Communist Party wants space-flown fiberglass lions.”

  “Ming wants our first space tourists to be Chinese, so that is why the lions are joining you,” Jonathan joked. “Everything about this flight will be Chinese. The Minister of National Heritage wants it that way.”

  “Except that I and half the mission crew are Canadian citizens, and the vehicle will have a Transport Canada registration.”

  “And how do I explain that the spaceship Polar Bear is named after a Chinese animal?” Jonathan mused.

  The mood in
town was shifting. With Danny Eastman’s death and the recent fight at the post office, people wondered whether the spaceport was worth the trouble. Would they always suffer scorn and violence if the spaceport opened for business?

  “There are only forty people, all from out of town, who are protesting and causing trouble,” MayorAlaralok argued at a town council meeting. “The spaceport has all the required environmental programs for recycling, waste management, and carbon emission control.”

  Dr. Edward Hackbart stood up in the visitor gallery. “That’s what they say now, but you can’t trust these foreign businessmen. In any case, they’re already spoiling the natural beauty you have here.”

  “The fish, beluga whales, and polar bears are gone,” Alaralok said. “No fishing, no ecotourism. What will you have us do?”

  “You can get government assistance,” Hackbart suggested.

  Alaralok scowled. “Can’t you southern white people ever think of anything else than giving us welfare?”

  “Clean the dirt out of your ears!” Hackbart yelled. “I never used the word ‘welfare’! I said, ‘government assistance’ ...”

  As the council meeting degenerated into shouting, Paul wondered if he would ever fly. The spaceport had used up its supply of methane on the test launches. The plant was ready to compress more methane gas into liquid, but the inexperienced staff needed a skilled supervisor to guide them. One supervisor had fled back to China, and the other had retired to his home.

  It wasn’t only his hopes that were dying. The hopes of many townspeople were dying too. They had worked hard to build the spaceport only to see it turn idle, like past promises from outsiders.

  Paul left the town council meeting and walked to Ray Cassidy’s house.

  “Hey, Paul, come in.” Ray Cassidy said as he opened the door. Despite quitting the spaceport, Ray was still friendly with its staff.

  “Thanks for letting me in,” said Paul. “I’ve seen you many times, but this is my first time in your house.”

  Ray asked, “Can I get you anything? A beer? A coffee?”

  “Thanks for offering. I’ll have a beer,” Paul replied.

  “Coming up,” said Ray as he went to the kitchen.

  Paul looked at the living room. On the wall was a family tree showing Ray’s descent from an English fur trader who came to Hudson Bay in the nineteenth century.

  There was also a photo of Ray and another man. They were in their twenties and standing in the flat, grassy prairie of southern Manitoba. Far in the background was a natural gas processing plant. It was a large plant from before the invention of the Shanghai process.

  “That’s me and Danny thirty years ago,” said Ray as he gave the beer to Paul. “We grew up here but went south to work for Manitoba Hydro.”

  “When did you come back?” Paul asked.

  “Danny got homesick and returned after five years and got married,” said Ray. “I got married too but stayed in the south. I visited Churchill frequently, though. After my wife died, I retired and came back five years ago.”

  Paul looked at other photos of Ray and Danny and their families over the years. “You guys kept in touch for decades, didn’t you?”

  “We sure did.” Ray picked up a model rocket. “Danny visited Baikonur Cosmodrome and gave me this toy from there. He was fascinated by spaceships because he worked at Iceberg Rocket Base when he came back.”

  “Ah, Iceberg. I’ve heard of that company,” Paul said. Before Stanley Aerospace, there were several failed attempts to create a commercial spaceport on the ruins of the old research rocket launch site. Iceberg Rocket Base was one of them.

  “Look at this,” Ray said, pointing at a shoebox full of postcards and envelopes.

  He pulled out a postcard showing an old space shuttle. “Danny sent this to me from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. I collect stamps, so he sent me a traditional postcard, not an e-card.”

  “I didn’t know he was so interested in space travel,” Paul remarked.

  “Oh, he was,” said Ray. “He was thrilled by the idea of launching spaceships from here. That’s why he came out of retirement to work at the methane plant. He even got me to work there too.”

  “Which brings me to the reason I’m visiting,” said Paul. “You’re our most experienced plant worker. You know the Shanghai process. You helped us start up the plant. I know you were planning to retire again after we found a successor, but we can’t find and train one before the time we have to launch.”

  Ray shook his head. “Like I told Jonathan, it was fun at first, but after Danny died, I wondered if it was worth it. Was it really worth his death?”

  “Danny wanted spaceships to launch from Churchill,” Paul said. “Can you do it for him, at least for my flight?”

  “No, not anymore,” said Ray, smiling weakly. “Thirty years ago, I would’ve fought back, I would’ve defied those protesters, but now I’m too old for it. It’s become hand-to-hand combat.”

  Unsure of what to say, Paul glanced at the computer on Paul’s desk. The monitor showed the electronic version of The Journal of Aerophilately. An image of a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane danced on its cover.

  “What’s aerophilately?” Paul asked.

  “It’s the study of airmail, a specialized area of stamp collecting or philately,” Ray replied. “I’ve been collecting stamps since childhood.”

  “Oh.” Paul pointed at the shoebox. “May I look at your envelopes?”

  “Sure. Sit down at the table. By the way, an envelope that has gone through the mail is a called a cover. The decorative illustration on the cover is called a cachet.”

  Paul looked at the covers. Most commemorated new air mail routes, but some had cachets and stamps showing spaceships and astronauts. The space covers bore stamps and postmarks from space centers in the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, and French Guiana.

  “Wow, this one actually flew aboard a Shenzhou Gold,” Paul said, noticing the special postmark in Chinese: “Aboard Shenzhou Gold Mission 38”. The cachet showed the tàikōnaut crew standing in front of a Chinese flag.

  “Shenzhou Gold Mission 38 carried one thousand covers. Most of them went to Chinese collectors, but I got one,” said Ray, beaming with pride. “I’ve got the largest collection of space-flown covers in Manitoba.”

  “Ray, I’ve got an idea,” said Paul. “Here’s your incentive to create liquid methane for me ...”

  Paul went to Kate’s office. “How much of my discretionary expense account is left?” he asked.

  “Let me check,” she said, accessing the accounting records on her computer. “About five thousand dollars.”

  “Check the municipal website. How many people live in Churchill?”

  “About one thousand plus another two hundred who came to work at the spaceport. These totals don’t include the forty protesters in the tent city.”

  “Forget about them,” Paul said. “Can you do me a favor? Can you draw a picture of the Inuit goddess Sedna?”

  “Sure, I’ll do it. Just like the sculpture?”

  “Yes. Draw a picture of Sedna and get a printer to print it on the left side of one thousand and three hundred envelopes. Then buy a stamp for each envelope and have your secretaries put stamps on the envelopes.”

  He pulled out his pocket computer and typed a message on it. “I’m sending you some words that I want printed on the envelopes.”

  Kate looked puzzled. “What are you planning? Sending a letter to everyone in town?”

  “I’m going to create some positive qi, something to counteract the bad feng shui,” Paul said.

  Ray Cassidy returned to work the next day, and production of liquid methane restarted. So too did preparations for the flight.

  Jonathan convinced the police to arrest Hackbart and the protesters for illegally squatting on private property, the land in front of the methane plant. Danny Eastman’s death and the post office riot had finally exhausted the patience of the police. With the protesters gone, the cou
ntdown to launch began two weeks later.

  The Polar Bear had space for three people: one pilot and two passengers. Paul shook his head when he saw the fiberglass lions strapped into the passenger seats.

  He looked anxiously at his watch. Where were Kate and her secretaries? He hoped they would finish their job on time.

  At five hours before blastoff, Kate and two secretaries rode the supply tower’s elevator up to the platform leading to the Polar Bear. Kate ran to Paul and hugged him. Behind her, the secretaries pushed a cart carrying a large sack.

  “You’re not going to believe the stamp the postmaster sold us,” Kate said.

  One of the secretaries, a Métis woman, giggled.

  Kate smiled wryly, opened the sack, and pulled out a cover. It had a cachet showing Sedna and a postage stamp showing Louis Riel.

  “Oh, no, I wanted the Canadian flag stamp!” Paul said. “Louis Riel means nothing to the Minister of National Heritage of China.”

  They heard the elevator rise again. Ray Cassidy arrived on the platform and went to Paul.

  “You’ll be flying through the aurora borealis, won’t you?” Ray asked.

  “Yes, I will, but not for long,” Paul said.

  “Good. Can you take this postcard with you? The Cree say the spirits of the dead are in the aurora borealis. I think he would want to know about your flight.”

  Paul looked at the postcard. It showed an aerial view of Churchill Spaceport. On the message side, it was addressed to Danny Eastman. Its Louis Riel stamp was cancelled with the special Polar Bear postmark, the same as the one on the covers.

  Its handwritten message read:

  Danny, your dream has come true. A manned spaceship lifted off from Churchill and went into orbit today. See you later. Ray.

  “I can’t stop in space and deliver it,” Paul said.

  “No, that’s not what I want. Take it up with the rest of the mail,” said Ray. “Just being in the aurora will be close enough for him to read the postcard.”