April 4: A Different Perspective

by Mackey Chandler

  "It'll be nice to have some air conditioning."

  "That and heat and a big still for fresh water and no need to skimp for lights and cooking, or high end electronics. The sort of a boat that can entertain some very wealthy guests and charge premium rates," Lin said, smiling.

  * * *

  "We're going to set the shuttle down after supper. You want to come see if it blows up like a bomb?" Jeff invited. "Heather came back for it and Dave and his foreman will be there."

  "Wouldn't miss it for anything. Is there room for Gunny?"

  "Sure, we may all have to breathe out to get the door closed, but bring him along."

  * * *

  Mr. Gilroy was a retired aerospace engineer who held a number of patents and still owned a respectable interest in a Luxemburg corporation which built aerospace components. He had retired to the French habitat and recently transferred to Home. He occasionally consulted with Dave's and other ship fabricating shops, but from the stock reports of his company, he very likely didn't need the income to survive.

  He was waiting for Frank to get through fitting his current customer and take his measurements to order some shirts and the sort of loose canvas working man's pants he'd grown fond of as a young man working in eastern Europe. He had no idea where to buy them now. He couldn't find an online source that wasn't a variation on western jeans. His last two pairs were worn well past the point of soft and comfortable and into ragged and ready for the trash. Still, one could serve as a model for the tailor, if he could buy some real canvas.

  Lindsy served him tea and sat quietly, because he hadn't been chatty the last time he came in. She was learning to tell quickly what people wanted. But he was watching her sketch intently.

  This week's drawing included a pleated skirt. Something she had never seen yet on Home, but Cindy wanted it. The male model was wearing an unstructured linen jacket with no pockets and a thin unnotched lapel. They were standing in the corridor looking at one of her drawings in the shop window. They were seen from the shop side of the window, avoiding a succession of smaller versions of the same picture and besides, it showed their fronts this way. The new electronics store across the corridor got a free plug too. Getting just enough reflection to hint that the glass was there was challenging.

  "If I were to bring you a photo of a breakwater, running out to a light in a harbor. Could you do a drawing of me standing leaning on the hand rail?"

  "Sure, you want me to draw you leaning forward on your elbows, or back to it?"

  "Forward and seen from the front quarter, with the breakwater running away to the right, just like it is in the photo."

  "Just you or do you want other people in it?"

  "If I gave you another photo of me with a lady, do you suppose you could do us side by side?" his voice caught funny and Lin looked at him surprised.

  "This was a special time and I'm afraid we didn't take many pictures back then. We took a trip there the autumn before she died. I'm fortunate to have the one I'd show you as a model."

  "This is somebody special to you?" Lindsy asked. She wasn't totally oblivious.

  "Very. We were going to get married, but she was taken from me before that happened."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. I'd be happy to do that for you."

  "What is your commission?"

  "I'd be happy to do it as a favor and thank you for your trust." Lindsy said. She could feel herself tearing up at the story. Her brother might mock her, but she couldn't charge him.

  "No, I'm not poor and you deserve to have your skills properly acknowledged. I'd insist on paying you," he said, but kindly.

  "Then look at it when I'm done and gift me whatever you feel compelled to offer."

  "That's fine," he agreed. "I keep copies on my pad. I'll transfer them right now."

  * * *

  Jeff and Heather, April and Gunny Mac, Happy and Jeff's hired man Louis, Dave and his foreman all crammed into Jeff's offices. There was tension and excitement and the strong odor of brewing coffee in the air. Everyone was settled in for a long session. The repaired Happy Lewis was in polar orbit as the observation platform and relay, because it still carried high definition cameras and booms to separate them for an artificial aperture. Jed Allison was mission commander, although not piloting.

  "We will lose sight of Dionysus' Chariot briefly during its braking and descent. But the Happy will catch up and come across the horizon before it touches down. Unless there is some problem, we intend to let it land on automatic. It has a simple millimeter radar that can survey the landing area from about a kilometer in altitude and steer away from any large boulders or highly sloped areas," Dave explained to everybody.

  "And if there is a problem, what then?" Gunny asked.

  "There could be a couple tenths of a second delay, going through the Happy and relay satellites, so we don't want to land it by remote manual control. We'd have it abort the landing and lift it back into orbit. We'll try again, or do it somewhere we can remote control it real time, if it can't land itself."

  Jeff spoke up. "We don't have a good enough set of controls for remote handling yet. We'll make up a set that closely duplicate the actual controls in the shuttle, but for now we'd have to use game controllers. That's fine for training simulators, but not remote control. The orbit to orbit simulators are too different and I don't want to risk my shuttle to generic game junk. If it craps out we don't get a do over. I want that stuff built to serious specs."

  "Who decides on the abort?" Happy wondered.

  "The landing software can declare it has no solution and give up, or Jed being closer with less lag can act, or I can decide to abort it from here, as a last resort," Jeff added. "Grab coffee if you like, there are sandwiches in the refrigerator too if anyone wants. We will be doing an initial burn to polar orbit in about six minutes."

  Everybody was seated and comfortable, there were a couple low conversations that cut off when the speaker came on. "Earth Control, this is the armed merchant Happy Lewis out of Home. We are performing a burn to polar orbit. Transmitting the elements to you now."

  "Happy Lewis, your maneuver does not interfere with any other traffic. We are obligated to advise you that you will be repeatedly entering the Siberian special interest zone. They advise all traffic that using downward looking targeting radar, or separation of any object from your vessel can result in being fired upon with no warning. This is a notice from a sovereign and is only repeated, not issued, by Earth Control."

  "Understood Earth Control, given the ridiculous prices of nuclear missiles, I don't blame them for failing to provide a warning shot. This will not inconvenience us."

  Earth Control seemed immune to humor and failed to acknowledge that at all. "Happy Lewis, your orbital path approximates the drone freighter Dionysus' Chariot, running about twenty minutes ahead of you. Are you controlling that vehicle?"

  "Negative, Earth Control. We are observing that drone, but it is in testing and running autonomously. We have the ability to command destroy it, if it should become a hazard to navigation."

  "That's good to know Happy Lewis, it's very unusual to see a private drone in polar orbit. Usually they are government surveillance platforms and then they are usually lower."

  Earth Control had certainly gone from all business to chatty suddenly. Were they trolling for information? and for whom? "We're the ones with the cameras," Jed Allison acknowledged. There were plenty of people they would be overflying who could see they had booms out on each side. Not much else those could be. So it was hardly a secret revealed. "It's always nice to have pix of where you have been to show the kids back home," he quipped.

  "Indeed, thank you Happy Lewis, Earth Control out."

  The display showed the orbital changes. Nothing would happen for a bit so several people used the restroom and Gunny and April grabbed a sandwich. People were texting their work or checking the news. That all quieted down as the Dionysus' Chariot came up on its de-orbit burn.

  "Thirty seconds," Je
d reminded them from the Happy. Another minute went by silently. "We have a good burn and cut-off. The throat should be sealed with a disk now, the arm remaining until there is air pressure on it. She has flipped and oriented for aerobraking successfully."

  Dionysus' Chariot was a meteor across the south Atlantic sky. A handful of ships might see her and not know if it was a natural object or manmade.

  "Telemetry indicates stable attitude and skin temperatures in hypersonic flight," Jed noted aloud what they could also see in the data feed.

  "Happy Lewis, we lost radar tracking on your drone. Have you lost the vessel?"

  "Negative Earth Control, this is an expected maneuver."

  "We need to be aware of traffic descending below sixty thousand meters for interference with civilian air traffic, including high altitude drones and aerostats that can fly higher than manned aircraft."

  "Earth Control, Dionysus' Chariot will not descend into controlled airspace until it is south of sixty degrees south. We checked to see there are no scheduled supply flights for any of the Antarctic stations for the next three days, she will set down briefly in a remote uninhabited area and lift again as a test of her landing systems."

  "All Antarctic landing have to approved by the ATS under the Antarctic treaty. You can't just land on the continent without permission."

  "Actually, Home is neither a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty, nor has it acceded to it formally, so we are not bound by its provisions. However just to assure you, we neither intend to discharge any pollutants, nor will we collect any samples. We're simply going to set down and lift again. We'll disturb an area no bigger than one of the scientific teams would pitching a tent and for a shorter time."

  "I'm obligated to forward this to the proper authorities," Earth Control warned him.

  "I'm sure you are," Jed laughed. "It seems you have a hard time understanding, we don't acknowledge the same authorities. So, 'I'm going to tell' doesn't mean much to us."

  "If everybody just flew wherever they wanted it would be chaos and there would be accidents!"

  "We totally agree," Jed assured him. "That's why we call and tell you when we shift orbits and move station to station, that's reasonable, but we're landing in a remote area of high altitude desert, with no population or ecology to speak of. Nobody owns it. The signatories have all agreed to form a club and respect each other's pledge not to use the whole continent for any commercial purpose, etc, etc. But I have yet to read that they have agreed to exclude by force anyone not in their treaty. Do you mean to tell me nobody has intruded south of sixty degrees since 1959?"

  The Dionysus' Chariot dipped under the horizon ahead of the Happy. It was crossing the continent now at hypersonic velocity. It would be most of the way across, but still in the air, before the Happy caught up to line of sight again at orbital velocity.

  "There are cruise ships and over-flights, very tightly regulated for air pollution and fuel spill hazards and once a fellow flew his own plane in and didn't have fuel to get home. A crazy person in a single, piston engine plane. They refused to sell him any fuel and made him take the plane back on a supply ship," Earth Control rambled on, Jed ignoring him.

  The Happy came back over the horizon and established a link with Dionysus' Chariot again. "Everything on schedule, down to Mach 3 now, speed brakes out, tip up and engine start in three minutes." Jed told the crowd back on Home.

  "You have to get permission even to sail through the Southern Sea in a private boat," the Earth controller asserted, still talking.

  April wondered if Papa-san would ask permission to sail through? She doubted it.

  The tip up maneuver was critical. The shuttle did not have sufficient control surfaces to pitch up in an abrupt stall. To pull up in a climb would take them far higher than they wished, before it was actually vertical. So the attitude jets on the nose were extra large to help it rotate, in theory. The plasma engine would not start for the tail balancing decent until it was near five degrees from the vertical. Thrust vectoring would let it balance on its tail from there.

  "Here comes the rotation," Jed told them, drowning out something from Earth Control.

  "We have ignition," Jed told them. But they could see the bright spark of it in the video feed.

  "I'll be damned. It didn't blow up," Dave marveled from his seat.

  "Shuttle indicates it has a target area and everything is working fine. It should be on the ground in less than a minute," Jed continued his commentary.

  Everyone waited in tense, quiet anticipation.

  "All three jacks down and locked. Engine easing off thrust. Number two jack extending to level it up and we have shut down," Jed said, very satisfied.

  "That's the easier half of it," Jeff said, still tense. "That's a third of all the cash I had, sitting there. I really, really hope it lifts off OK."

  "If it started in flight, there's no reason it won't sitting on its tail," Dave assured him. "It's a simple robust mechanism and we tested it lots of cycles."

  "How long before it can take off again?" Gunny asked.

  "As soon as the throat temperature drops to two hundred degrees a little robotic arm will slap an aluminum disk over it. Then the drive chamber will be purged with argon and it will start pumping down. We have a vacuum canister that sucks about ninety percent of the argon out, then we have two small commercial vacuum pumps that will take it down to two-tenths torr, not a very good vacuum at all, but plenty low to start the plasma drive. Call it twelve minutes," Dave said. "We should be able to speed that up in the future."

  "When does the robotic arm withdraw?" April asked.

  "After the vacuum canister evacuates most of the drive chamber. Atmospheric pressure will hold the disk on the opening then. Assuming it retracted before the in air engine start-up. If it didn't it was vaporized," Dave explained cheerfully.

  "Thanks, I needed to hear that," Jeff complained.

  "Though I doubt that happened," Dave added.

  "Oh, good image!" April said excited. The cameras on the Happy Lewis showed a tiny dark obelisk poised in a wide stony area. There were shallow rolls in the gravel but no real ravines or boulders, just a few head sized stones widely scattered. You couldn't see any detail of the shuttle, but it was the only man-made shape on the plain.

  "We'll lose telemetry in another four and a half minutes," Jed predicted. Earth Control was still babbling about something. "Do you acknowledge Happy Lewis?"

  "I'm sorry I was involved with the drone. Acknowledge what, Earth Control?"

  "Do you agree not to land on Antarctica again?" the controller repeated.

  "Hell no. I might need to sit down there in an emergency. I'm not voluntarily giving up any rights. If you want us to join the Treaty Association make a formal request to the Home Assembly. They will probably tell you to go pound sand too," Jed predicted.

  That seemed to stun Earth Control into silence.

  "We'll be back in contact in about forty minutes," Jed told Earth Control. "Happy Lewis is ballistic, no maneuvers anticipated, com open on frequency, but no traffic for you, so out for now."

  That might be taken for a hint to shut up, but not quite that rudely.

  "I'm going to take a little walk in the corridor, to stretch my legs before we have to sit again," Gunny informed April.

  "Let me join you," April begged. "The guys in the Happy have more room today."

  "Is the shuttle Jeff's private vessel, or is it one of the things you three own as partners?" Gunny asked, out in the corridor.

  "I'm not sure. I haven't asked Jeff how it was built. I mean, which company paid for it and holds title. Heather and I never try to rein Jeff in much. He seems to have good instincts. We do more suggesting of new things, than shooting down his ideas, except in the rare case he tries to bite off too much.

  Gunny looked like he wanted to say something about that, but swallowed it.

  "It must be a joint venture," April decided after thinking about it. "He said it took a third of all his cash.
I don't think he has that much private money of his own right now. That's fine with me," she added quickly. "We've needed this for a long time."

  "So you probably own a third of it," Gunny asked again.

  "Yeah, but let me make sure. Why? Do you want to hire it? Even if it was Jeff's private ride, he's going to need to put it to work, profitably."

  "Yeah, but I was thinking security work and I'd feel more comfortable talking to you about that sort of business."

  "Time to go back," April said, stopping in the corridor. She didn't start back though, just planted herself hands on hips looking up at Gunny, who looked a little uneasy under her gaze, even from below. "Thank you, you big, rough, Shakespeare quoting man."

  "You are, uh, welcome. But for what?"

  "Because that told me you respect me," she said, satisfied and started back.

  When they got back, the plot showed less than ten minutes before the Happy came back into line of sight with the Dionysus' Chariot again. April got a refill on coffee, but Gunny claimed he was jittery enough, holding up a hand with a fake tremor. The shuttle would lift seconds after a new com link was established and rejoin the Happy in orbit. This time they would be much closer though, within sight of each other if all went well. There were no passengers and the drive was more efficient at higher thrust, so it would climb out at twenty Gs.

  The camera view was a rush of ocean, with occasional flashes of ice. Then there was land briefly, before it locked on the landing site and started zooming in. The image stabilized on a valley and the board showed a data link established. A bright pinpoint was suddenly visible in the distance, before they got close enough to see the actual black fuselage.

  "Earth Control, this is the Happy Lewis again. You should be getting a automated update from our drone relayed through us. It is going to lift back to join us in orbit. Are you receiving the intended orbital elements?"

  "Happy Lewis, we reject the requested orbital insertion. It was not approved by the ATS. All landings and take-offs have to be approved by the ATS. They indicate they wish your vessel to remain on site until they can dispatch a team to inspect for environmental damage and determine if it can be removed by other means." The shuttle drew a bright line climbing while he was still speaking.