The second stage was spent and it separated, bound to be space junk in orbit for a while then re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. The third stage was the capsule. Its three engines fired. Gravity wasn’t a problem anymore, but there was still g-force. Graham whooped, either pleased to have lived through liftoff or delighted to be in space.
The capsule adjusted its attitude and accelerated, heading for the plane of the orbit of the Aphelial spacecraft. In about an hour and twenty minutes, the computer would take them past and above the spacecraft, it would slow the capsule down, allowing the spacecraft to catch up, and it would put them within meters of their target: a feature satellite images seemed to indicate was a hatch with a docking (mooring?) mechanism around it.
Eighty minutes of awkward small talk later, the Aphelial spacecraft loomed in the cockpit window. The capsule was slowing down, and the Aphelial craft eased toward them. The spacecraft looked menacing: gray, hard, aggressive angles. Flat and sleek. Symmetrical, two modules on top that resembled bat ears. Two very big engines sticking out its rear. Conn had seen plenty of satellite pictures. It was about the size of the spacecraft Conn and Yongpo had been on before, though that was hard to gauge as they approached.
She saw the docking mechanism before long, and took over control from the computer. Dyna-Tech had modernized to the point where rendezvous and docking were accomplished by computer instead of by hand, but the computer wouldn’t know what it was looking at here on the side of the alien vessel. Conn didn’t know, either, but she could use her judgment to react as information became available.
The mechanism was red, scored and smudged from use, and involved what Conn could only think of as two six-pronged claws, one open wide to receive a docking spacecraft’s nose, the other curled and ready to open and clamp down once the nose was secure. At least, that’s how Conn hoped it worked—it looked like what would happen if an engineer set out to make a docking mechanism that worked that way.
As they approached, the front claw constricted, giving Conn a more precise target—or else preventing them from docking. Conn breathed a sigh of relief when the constriction halted. She nosed her way toward the smaller opening. After long minutes of manipulating a joystick and a slider, and now and then swiping a screen or toggling a switch, she heard the capsule meet the claw with a loud clang. Just after that there was another clang as the back claw took hold.
Conn hoped there were no prongs impeding their hatch. She had tried to line it up as best she could with the Aphelial hatch, but there was still vacuum between the two. While she and Yongpo discussed how they were going to bridge the gap and get the Aphelials to open the hatch for them, they heard a series of sounds, thunk-thunk-thunk, just outside the hatch. Their angle was terrible, but looking out one side window it looked like a tunnel had been strung from the Aphelial hatch to theirs.
They had a decision to make: keep the capsule pressurized, or depressurize it? If whichever one they chose was different from the tunnel, the decision could be fatal.
“That tunnel we ripped through to get back to the Cai Fang,” Yongpo said. “It wasn’t pressurized.”
They knew too that the Aphelials had eliminated the need for airlocks, with some kind of force field over their hatches keeping the pressure in and the vacuum out. In that case, they shouldn’t need a pressurized route to or from their own hatch.
And if the Hope was depressurized and the outside pressurized, it would make the door difficult enough to open that they could stop and re-pressurize.
Conn had them put on their breathing bubbles and activate their T-fields. She made Graham secure himself to something immobile. She depressurized the capsule.
She unlocked the hatch. She turned the wheel that would unlatch the door. She pushed.
No resistance—the tunnel was vacuum. Yongpo gave Conn a thumbs up, and she opened the hatch all the way.
They scrabbled to the opposite end of the tunnel, Graham with more difficulty than the other two. Should they knock? Instead, Conn tried the latch on the hatch. It opened easily.
“Watch your step,” Conn mimed. She crossed the threshold, over the invisible barrier keeping the vacuum of space out of the spacecraft, and was gathered in by the artificial gravity. She stumbled. She turned and helped Yongpo down, and they both helped Graham.
Yongpo shut the hatch behind them. They were in a corridor, much like the one they had used to escape on the previous Aphelial spacecraft. Two Aphelials had just passed, and didn’t turn back. Another approached from the same direction, and stopped short of the human contingent.
Conn took off her breathing bubble and said in Aphelial, “Take me to your leader.”
THIRTY-SIX
Administration
December 30, 2039
The Aphelial “administrative spacecraft” was a warship. The occupants wore the standard Aphelial getup, no uniforms or insignia that the humans could discern. And they had the same military bearing as every Aphelial Conn had ever met. But it was a Corporal So-and-so who took them to see a Colonel Vaanqtu. At least, Conn and Yongpo thought the ranks were equivalent to corporal and colonel. They hadn’t heard anyone use a rank on the previous spacecraft other than captain.
The spacecraft was as intimidating inside as out, with severe decor that featured nothing that wasn’t useful and lots of shades of gray. And they met Colonel Vaanqtu in a room where the walls and every available surface were covered with weapons.
That was interesting. Did the Aphelials trust them not to try to assassinate anybody or take hostages? Or would it be utterly futile?
“Colonel,” the corporal said. “Humans from Earth, sir.”
The colonel regarded his visitors. “They came here in a Pelorian vessel?”
“It appears to be their own, sir,” the corporal said.
This seemed to agitate the colonel. “Do they have the language?” he said.
“That one does,” the corporal said, indicating Conn.
“Why didn’t you do all three?”
“Sir. I—”
“He didn’t give me the language,” Conn said. “My colleague Luan Yongpo and I already had it. My other colleague, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, needs the upload.”
“How did you learn our language?”
“I would rather continue this discussion when the secretary can understand us,” Conn said. What she wanted to say was how she learned the language and she wanted to apologize for learning it and for wasting his time. Vaanqtu was as intimidating as his spacecraft.
Vaanqtu regarded Conn for a few moments. Conn recognized him then: he was one of the three Aphelials shown in the message. Not the one who spoke, nor the one who may have stifled a laugh. The other one. Vaanqtu took his time crossing the room, bearing down on Graham. Arriving, he seized Graham’s hand with some violence. After about twenty seconds of contact, Vaanqtu pulled away and stalked back to the other side of the room. Graham looked at Conn, and Conn nodded. She had had a language upload three times now. It felt weird.
“Corporal, remain here. You can escort our guests back to their spacecraft when we’re done. You three: don’t touch anything.”
What Conn wanted to say was please don’t destroy my planet we’ll do anything you say, but instead she introduced herself, Yongpo and Graham. Graham stepped forward.
“Colonel, I represent the people of the United States of America.” He gave a dull, thoroughly vetted speech about the virtues of peace and coexistence and diversity and how the US didn’t like the Pelorians either. Conn admired him for his courage and for delivering the speech so well. When she first learned Basalese, it confused her brain so much that she used one language when she meant to use another.
“How long have you two known our language?” the colonel said, ignoring Graham.
“About two and a half years,” Conn said.
“So you understood the message? With your verdict and punishment?”
“We understood the words, Colonel,” Graham s
aid. “We don’t understand the meaning.”
“I am not obligated by law to make you understand the meaning of the message,” Vaanqtu said.
“What did you mean by chemical?” Graham said, his voice taking on a higher pitch.
“I mean that we’re not going to turn the surface of your planet into glass with our weaponry.”
“Gaaahh!” Yongpo exclaimed. Conn’s first, fleeting thought was that Vaanqtu had punctuated his sentence with a Darth Vader-like Force-squeeze. Yongpo rocked on his heels and held his right hand up by the wrist.
“I told you not to touch anything,” Vaanqtu mumbled.
Yongpo tried to shake his limp hand back to life. It was unmarked in any way, but it was a pale white.
“You understood the message. Well, its words.” Vaanqtu may have rolled his eyes. Conn wasn’t sure. “My legal obligation has been fulfilled. Corporal, see them back to their spacecraft.”
“Colonel,” Conn said, as Graham was about to say something. “We’ve come out here to your spacecraft, which is difficult, expensive, and dangerous for us to do.” Reminding him they weren’t really a threat to their Superiority could only help. “Can we appeal to your sense of fairness and decency? Can you please tell us how we’re going to be destroyed?”
“If it were up to me, I’d send you no message at all,” Vaanqtu said. “The law does not require me to be fair and decent. Leave my vessel.”
To his credit, Graham kept trying to engage the Aphelial colonel until he practically had to be dragged out of the room. Attracted by the commotion, two Aphelials jogged down the corridor toward them. Corporal So-and-so got them to back off.
“What happened?” Conn murmured to Yongpo.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said. “I touched one of the weapons. I don’t know why.”
“Can you move your fingers?”
“No,” Yongpo said. “I can’t feel my hand at all.”
The corporal had collected Graham, and he escorted the three back to the hatch.
# # #
Conn was back in the pilot’s chair, Yongpo again to her right. They both worried that the damage to Yongpo’s right hand was permanent. For now, it was in no shape for Yongpo to be able to pilot them through the atmosphere and into the ocean, in the event the computer let them down.
“Have you at least simulated this?” Graham asked Conn, obvious edge in his voice.
“Many times,” Conn said. It was true—they were just five years earlier and for a slightly different vehicle.
Conn had no idea how to get the claws to let go. On a hunch she goosed a pair of attitude jets. The capsule strained against the docking mechanism. The claws let go. Conn hissed “yes.” She used attitude jets to nudge them away from the Aphelial spacecraft.
“That was our drama for this flight, Mr. Secretary,” Yongpo said.
As the capsule sank into a lower orbit, two fighters showed themselves, one to port and one to starboard. Conn recognized the type of vehicle from the assault on the Pelorians. She had the ridiculous feeling that they had come to finish her off after her escape on the moon, but they merely escorted the capsule until they were some distance away from the Aphelial warship.
“That was fun,” Conn said, breathing again.
She decelerated and dropped them into a lower orbit. Now they waited. She would burn the engines for a much longer period of time to de-orbit them completely. That would happen when they were over India. The capsule would still be moving in the same direction at an almost unfathomable speed, and they would cross China, the Philippine Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and Mexico, dropping into the Gulf of Mexico. Softly, they hoped.
The descent angle had to be precise, to keep the capsule from skipping off the atmosphere like a stone on the surface of a pond or plunging to a fiery destruction. The computer did most of the work, keeping track of position, direction, speed, and height above sea level, and was to perform the complex dance that would get them home safely. At each turn, Conn would do the math herself as a sanity check. They checked the math down in Brownsville, too. Yongpo found it too awkward with only his left hand to work quickly, and he apologized. If he were in the pilot’s seat, Conn would have done the math for him.
Seventeen minutes before the arbitrary point at which the capsule would be considered to have “entered” the atmosphere, Conn pitched the spacecraft thirty-four degrees so the astronauts could do a horizon check. They crudely lined up the horizon with gradations in the rendezvous window to make sure the spacecraft’s position and attitude were roughly as expected.
“Horizon looks good,” Yongpo told Conn and Brownsville.
Some moments later, Conn said, “I’m frozen.”
“You’re what?” Yongpo and Brownsville both asked.
“The computer’s frozen. Attitude control.” The computer was supposed to pitch the spacecraft back that thirty-four degrees after the horizon check. It didn’t. Conn beat the screen with the meat of her fist. “I can’t get off this screen.”
“Stand by, Conn,” Brownsville said.
“We can’t stand by for long,” Conn said, irritated.
“Hope, Brownsville. Do you have an error message, Conn?”
“Nothing,” Conn said. “Screen is frozen.”
Moments passed.
“Conn, they want you to reboot.”
“Reboot the attitude control fifteen minutes before re-entry,” Conn deadpanned.
“Copy that, Conn, but yeah. Reboot.”
“What’s going on?” Graham wanted to know.
Conn pitched back thirty-four degrees first, then rebooted the attitude control computer.
“I have nothing but a blinking cursor,” she told them. “It’s not coming up.”
“We’ve got you down here, Conn. What we want you to do is to roll fourteen degrees, making your roll seventy-two degrees, yaw 214 degrees, and pitch 310.”
“Making roll seventy-two degrees,” Conn said. “Yaw 214, pitch 310.”
Conn was grateful she had backup in Brownsville. And that she had taken over the pilot’s chair from the one-handed Yongpo. Brownsville had Conn make the attitude adjustments the computer should have been making. Conn’s hands flew from lever to dial to screen, adjusting attitude as instructed. Peo Haskell, an astronaut as well as Dyna-Tech owner, had insisted that most controls on her spacecraft be tactile rather than taps and swipes on a flat screen. Since her death five years earlier, Dyna-Tech cockpits had modernized somewhat, but a lot of flying was still done by physically manipulating the controls.
Soon, communications would cease for three and a half minutes while superhot plasma erupted outside the vehicle and melted its ceramic heat-shield coating off. Brownsville gave her roll, yaw and pitch values in advance, to use during the comm blackout.
They passed the arbitrary “re-entry” point. They would really be in business when the drag of the atmosphere changed their velocity by 0.49 meters per second squared. That happened less than a minute later. Conn called out that the “0.05 g event” had occurred—they now felt one-twentieth of a g. She wasn’t sure if Brownsville heard her. Right about then communications blacked out. They were about 1,200 nautical miles from splashdown.
Soon enough they were feeling four g’s, and it was difficult to move and breathe normally. Outside the capsule windows was a spectacle, plasma roiling and burning. It was the scariest part of re-entry, other than the impact. “What would happen if there were a hole in the capsule that you didn’t know about?” Graham labored to ask them.
“We’d all die,” Yongpo said. Conn was concentrating.
“I ask because isn’t that what happened to Cole Heist on Mars?”
“Yes, and the space shuttle Columbia.” You’re not helping ease his mind, Conn thought.
They passed the “capture point,” where they could no longer skip off the atmosphere and were guaranteed to return to Earth, some two minutes later. “Say so long to space,” Conn told Graham.
Communications came back
, and Brownsville and Conn caught up. Out one window, they could barely see Mexico. They were dropping rear end first so most of their view was sky.
Five minutes after comm returned, the drogue parachutes deployed, the small “pilot” parachutes that would help deploy the main chutes. Conn told Brownsville they looked good. Not long after that the three main chutes opened up.
They dropped into the Gulf of Mexico with a shuddering impact. No one was the worse for wear. Nobody said anything, until Conn started to pant, like she was going to hyperventilate. Yongpo touched her shoulder but she shook her head. Moments later, she was breathing normally again.
“You did great, Conn,” Yongpo said.
Conn was pale. She smiled.
Graham was in rough shape himself. “I’m definitely too old for this,” he said. “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t think I want to go on that ride again.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mars
January - February, 2040
In January, a NASA super-pressure balloon twenty-three miles above the surface of the Earth made what if true would be a startling discovery: unprecedented levels of N2O, nitrous oxide, and NO, nitric oxide, in the stratosphere. Levels that seemed impossible.
Nitrous oxide occurs naturally, and when it interacts with O2 produces NO, which regulates stratospheric ozone. But the growing levels were unprecedented and impossible enough that under normal circumstances, the find would be treated as some kind of glitch. The balloon would be recalled, and another balloon would go up in its place to prove there weren’t really such problematic levels of N2O and NO. These were not normal circumstances. NASA was on high alert for any chemical changes to anything they observed. And the balloon reported that the N2O and NO kept building and building, levels increasing slowly, but in context alarmingly, each day.
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