The Eons-Lost Orphan

by Laer Carroll

  He stood up to shake their hands and congratulate them once again.

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  There were some jobs to do to allow the space jet demonstrator to function in the nearest equivalent on Earth of space at near-orbit levels, a vacuum chamber at Arnold AFB which had one of the largest flight test facilities in the world, with a variety of vacuum test chambers. There were more jobs to do to connect their test equipment outside a vacuum chamber to the equipment inside the chamber.

  Jane watched as Antiope and the rest of her crew did those jobs. At the end she merged with Robot to double check her crew's efforts. She found several problems but none which could not be fixed.

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  On Monday as the demonstrator was being packed up Jane flew to Arnold, checked into the base, and was assigned a tiny room in the VOQ. The next morning she spent several hours with the engineers and technicians who would assist her crew the following day. That night she met with her crew in the VOQ.

  Technically neither she nor they qualified as they were cadets, not yet commissioned officers. However the housing authorities reasoned they were effectively warrant officers. WOs were typically high-ranking technical specialists, and she and they qualified.

  Wednesday afternoon they began the tests. These were the same ones they'd done the week before, with lots of small steps which took almost three hours.

  As they neared the end of the tests the control room began to fill up. By the final hour-long test at top power level the room was crowded.

  The head of the test facility showed up near the end of the hour, Col. Mark Kane. With him was the Executive Director, a civilian.

  "How's it going, Cadet?" the Colonel asked.

  "Just like when we did it at atmosphere ground level last week, Sir. But just like last week we found the jet is more powerful than we expected. The strain gauge is pushing 170% and--"

  She jumped forward and fisted the big red mushroom-shaped emergency shut-off button. All of the Academy test crew sat back in their chairs and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Seeing some emergency avoided the Executive Director asked what had happened.

  "Good news, actually, Sir. Our strain gauge was rated at 175% and we were near its limit. This means-- May I be excused?"

  "Of course," said the Colonel. "But when you're done you, and your crew, come to my office."

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  It was an hour later that the cadets entered the conference room off to the side of the Commander's office. Minutes later the Commander, the Executive Director, and some of their technical staff entered. Jane called Attention and the Commander told them to be at ease.

  "So, Cadet Kuznetsov, explain what you're found and what the quick end to the test meant."

  "First I have to tell you that this briefing must be Top Secret. Those are the orders we've received just an hour ago. Does everyone here qualify?"

  "They do."

  "Good. For those of you not previously told about the test, it's of a radically new jet engine. Which will work in space and use for a working medium space itself. Or at least virtual particles 'realized'--made temporarily real--by a telemagnetic field.

  "That alone is a secret. What the tests revealed is that the space jet's efficiency increases as the size of the telemag inducer increases, up to a limit, where the efficiency increase levels off and making the inductor larger has no effect.

  "There is a similar effect as the power fed to the inductor is ramped up. Efficiency increase exponentially till it reaches a limit and levels off.

  "It was a possibility I'd suspected but now we know it's true."

  "So that means," one of the technical staff said, "is we can made big ships which go really fast."

  "An apt way to put it, Sir."

  The Colonel said, "So what's next on your agenda? Will we see you here again?"

  "Next is lots and lots of making bigger jets and testing them. After that-- We deliver the results and people above our pay grade decide what to do."

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  What that was Jane was never to know, exactly. But she was sure it meant that new spacecraft would be designed using the space drive.

  And maybe someday she would get to fly on one. Or even fly one herself.

  Chapter 20 - USAF Academy - Summer 3

  On Wednesday of the last full week of May, the week before Memorial Day, Jane graduated from her third year as an Air Force Academy cadet. Her parents and Natalia attended the ceremony and met her afterward just outside football stadium where the ceremony had been held.

  Malena rushed ahead of the others to hug Jane, knocking awry her billed hat with its plate-sized top, and said how proud she was of Jane. Alex and Natalia seconded the notion and they had a four-way group hug. They left to come back to the front of her barracks with a taxi already waiting.

  Jane said Goodbye to a lot of her friends, then went back to her room to get her duffel bag, already packed, and to change to civilian clothing which she'd earlier laid out atop her bed, now stripped of bedding.

  Soon she and her family were on the way to the Colorado Springs Airport. There they boarded the private jet Jane had reserved. She'd finally decided to spend some of her many millions of dollars on herself.

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  A week later she boarded a cousin of the private jet and flew the hundred miles or so north of Pasadena to Edwards Air Force Base. There the aircraft was allowed to land on the base itself. Here Jane was a VIP.

  When she walked down the aircraft steps a steward was already taking her luggage, three medium-sized suitcases, out to an SUV a couple of dozen feet away. On the near side big red letters claimed that it was the property of NASA.

  Two officials stepped forward to shake her hand as she approached the vehicle. They welcomed her to Edwards and introduced themselves.

  The grey-haired older woman was Dr. Vera McIntosh. She was clad in a khaki skirt with low-heeled brown shoes and a light blue short-sleeved blouse. She was the head of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

  The stout black man in a business suit was Dr. Stanley Carter, the Assistant Director. He motioned toward the opened back passenger door nearest them and said, "Let's get you out of the heat."

  Jane guessed he was more concerned than she was about the 90 degree heat since he was wearing a suit and tie. She on the other hand was wearing light blue jeans, dark blue tennis shoes with a white Nike swoosh, and a light blue tee shirt.

  Carter said, "I presume you had a good flight, Ms. Kuznetsov."

  "Yes, I did. Thank you. What schedule do you have planned for me?"

  The Director said, "I thought we'd go by my house, leave your luggage, and have an early lunch at the Armstrong cafeteria. We can introduce you to some of our people. Then this afternoon we can tour some of our facilities."

  The cafeteria was quite nice. It had an air-conditioned covered interior patio with a water fountain in the center. There were several small dining rooms on one side of the large dining room. They met in one where she met over a dozen people, none of whose names she bothered to remember.

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  The three specific facilities she was led to all featured some of her telemag technology: floaters, the air jet, and the space jet. Then at 4:00 the three of them walked to an auditorium and went to seats in the middle of the front row of seats. There the Director left Jane and the Assistant Director to stand at a podium up short steps onto the stage.

  "I see you're all here," she said to the audience of about a hundred with several more standing near the doorway to the auditorium.

  "We'll begin. Today we have with us the creator of the telemagnetic induction technology those of us in this auditorium are working on: Ms. Jane Kuznetsov."

  She began clapping and the audience joined in.

  Jane stood up and turned around. She put a hand over her heart and gave a modest bow. Then she continued to stand and waited till the applause died down, when she spoke up loudly enough for most of the audience to hear her.

  "Thank you. A few
words. The person you should be most grateful to is my father, Dr. Alexander Kuznetsov. He came up with the theory behind all these inventions. They themselves are fairly simple once you understand the theory.

  "While I'm here I want you to call me Jane or Cadet, as I happen to have the honor of being a fourth-year cadet at the US Air Force Academy. I will not answer otherwise. If you get all formal we'll not be able to have the free discourse we need if you're to get any useful insights I might have. Agreed?"

  There were a few mumbled Agreeds.

  "That was fucking pitiful, as my Marine friends would say. AGREED?"

  This time the response was loud enough to satisfy Jane. She turned around and sat down.

  "Well," said the Director dryly. "That was educational."

  After laughter she continued.

  "We'll have Ms.--JANE for two weeks. In that time she's agreed to consult with anyone and everyone on your projects. Please ask her anything, even silly questions. Often the silliest questions can lead to serious results.

  "Now, Jane, we have over a dozen separate projects involving telemagnetic technology. You'll have a chance to see and give advice on all of them. But this is our dream project, one we'll turn to after all the others have made substantial progress. Because most of those will feed into this one.

  "It is the single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane. It should be able to travel as far out as the lower limit of the inner Van Allen radiation belt. That's around 1000 kilometers, or a little over 600 miles.

  "It uses all three of the Kuznetsov propulsion devices as you see here."

  She started a video. It showed a pointy-nose aircraft with very swept-back wings with big air inlets at the wing roots. Its tail had a V-shape. It had retractable wheels but traveled near the ground on a floater "cushion" and took off from that cushion.

  Once in the air it flew by sucking in air and expelling it as conventional jets did. However as the altitude increased and the air pressure decreased the space jet effect would become stronger. At 40,000 feet or about eight miles it could be turned on. At 100,000 feet or almost twenty miles the air jet was contributing almost no propulsion and could be shut off.

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  During her first week at the NASA research center Jane was measured for a space suit. It was made up and she tried it on. There were a few minor problems of fit which were corrected. Then she was given a course in its use.

  Midmorning on the Monday of her third week there she was driven out to the Mojave Space Port, an extension of Edwards. It was one of seven in the world, the only other US spaceport being in Texas.

  There she joined a group of about a dozen other people making the weekly flight to the World Space Station. They like she were wearing a spacesuit. Theirs were light commercial models, hers the only NASA model with full "outdoors" capability. They were mostly millionaires on vacation or business.

  A stewardess in a white spacesuit had them sit in two rows of ten seats. She said, "Welcome to Global Space Lines. I need to give you a briefing on what to expect in our upcoming flight."

  She went on to describe their onboard seating in two rows "just like these." They would first stow their helmet in the rear of the seat in front of them "for quick access in the unlikely case of emergencies." They would plug their suits into the breathing hose on the side of the seat which would provide "onboard air in case of emergency till it was time to switch to the portable air in their backpacks." She briefly described the flight ahead which would have two parts, the first-stage or mother-ship part, then the second-stage daughter-ship part.

  "Now, before we proceed, we'll have a break to let those go to the bathroom who didn't before. No one? Please, I need a few minutes to go myself. SOMEBODY join me!"

  Three passengers got up to follow the stewardess, making jokes as they went.

  It was a quarter hour before they walked outside for a hundred-foot trip under a green canopy on a green carpet covering the concrete surface of the spaceport. At the end of it an elevator took them up about forty feet to the daughter-ship slung under the mother-ship. It was big. The mother-ship was huge, much of it a flying wing.

  The stewardess led them through the procedure she'd earlier described, then went to the rear to seat herself beside the second flight attendant.

  Takeoff took place almost immediately. Like any passenger plane it taxied to a runway takeoff point. Unlike them the view to the outside was a video screen to each side of the vehicle rather than a glass porthole.

  There was no wait at the takeoff point. The space pilot briefly announced, "We're rolling, folks" and they did so. Quickly they were in the air.

  After the mother-ship leveled off a huge view screen at the front of the passenger cabin came on showing the land below and the sky above. For a few seconds they tore through a white cloud then they were in perfectly clear blue sky, already darkening toward the blackness of space.

  Twenty minutes later there was a brief surge as the daughter-ship powered on its rocket engine and sped ahead of the mother-ship. Ten minutes of thrust and the engines shut off. They were weightless.

  Jane merged with Robot to become Jane+Robot. SHE was home.

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  For the rest of the flight SHE remained a cyborg eavesdropping on the spaceplane ready to take control in case of a poor response to an emergency. SHE also gloried in the vacuum around the plane and into infinity in all directions, filled with the quiet nanosecond surfacing of unreal space particles into reality and re-submergence of them back into unreality.

  HER senses basked in all the real forces all about them: weak radiation, cosmic rays, zipping microscopic meteorites, fleeting neutrinos, and more.

  Then the space station came in sight. SHE dropped back into her warm self.

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  At first the World Space Station was just a dot of light on the big wall screen in front of her and the other passengers. Slowly it grew until she could see the basic structure: a large can with a flower-like hat made of dark solar panels. The whole was always oriented so that the hat always pointed at the sun.

  On opposite sides two distant smaller cans were connected to the middle can by two long pipes.

  The larger can was working space. The two cans were living space.

  The middle can grew in size until it eclipsed everything else. A slit appeared in it to widen into a rectangle of yellow light with a smaller rectangle of black space on its far side. The spaceplane slid slowly into it and came a complete halt. There was a bump so slight Jane wasn't even sure she'd felt it.

  The black rectangle slid shut into a slit and then into an unbroken wall. Unseen behind them the doorway through which they'd arrived closed too. They were docked, completely enclosed.

  The two stewardesses were amongst them saying they should put on their helmets, then switch from the spaceplane's emergency air to their personal air.

  Soon the door opened to the rear of the cabin and people began to float out, pulling themselves along with the help of numerous red handholds.

  Jane waited till all the other passengers were gone then asked one of the stewardesses if she could pay her respects to the pilot.

  She smiled. "Not my job to say No. I'll leave that to him."

  Jane knocked on the side of the opening into the cockpit. The pilot turned his head toward Jane and she recognized him.

  "Clark! The last time we met you were teaching at Laughlin!"

  "Jane. I was good at flying fighters but I realized not very good at teaching. Hey, Cochran."

  He knocked lightly on the space-suited shoulder of the pilot in the right seat.

  "Say Hello to the hottest pilot I ever met."

  The man said, "Hello, hottest pilot. Pleased to meet you. Sorry I can't talk. Got to finish up this report."

  Then he turned back to his pilot console.

  "Me too, Jane. Look us up some evening. We'll be here for two more days.

  "Word of warnings. If this is your first time in zero gravity, take matters slow and easy till yo
u are acclimated."

  "I'll do that. Thanks."

  She used seat backs to turn herself toward the exit and then, after a glance showed she was no longer being watched, launched herself down the aisle with all the grace of a bird in the air. At the doorway two modest taps on surfaces curved her path into the tunnel which led into the body of the space station.

  Inside she was faced with a hallway further into the station and a cross hallway which led to her left and right--left and right according to the orientation which made it seem as if "down" was a floor.

  In free-fall one could turn "upside-down" and treat the floor like a ceiling and the ceiling like a floor. Most people kept to the default orientation to give the illusion of an up and a down.

  Jane took the right path and a dozen yards later a left path deeper into the station. She ended up at a doorway with a pressure door slid open. If the station decompressed the door would automatically slide shut.

  She knocked on the doorway and, bade to enter, did so.

  The man behind the desk stood to shake hands with Jane and told her to sit. This was another convention. In free-fall standing was as comfortable as sitting.

  She sat in one of three chairs clamped to the putative floor, flipping down modest restraints on the chair which pressed lightly down on her thighs.

  "How was your flight up here, Ms. Kuznetsov? I believe it was your first trip to orbit."

  "I loved it. Global Space Lines really has their act together."

  "Glad to hear it. Now, your request for this summer's Academy Learning Experience was vague about what you wanted to learn."

  "Everything about all your subsystems and how they fit together."

  He chuckled. "A big subject. Some people have spent years on Environmental alone."

  "True. I mis-spoke. A little about each subsystem and more about how they fit into an integrated whole."

  "We can handle that. We'll hand you over to each subsystem leader to brief you then put you to work putting theory into practice."

  "Being a gofer, in other words. I've found that IS a good way to learn. As long as the leader doesn't treat the gofer as just another errand boy. Or girl."