“What you know, you can tell us over the comm. You’ve never been in free fall have you?”
Braun shook his head.
“Seriously, if we have trouble you’ll likely be contributing to it by flailing around in the weightless environment.”
As they finished eating, they discussed safety precautions they could take during the manned flight.
Zeke and Chuck slept in the plane that night so they could be in a pure oxygen environment in case of decompression. A couple of hours later, when they landed in Amelia, even Zeke admitted that everything had gone perfectly. Well, he didn’t say “perfectly,” he said, “OK,” but everything had gone exactly as planned.
The two astronauts and all four mechanics spent a couple of hours going over the modified Lear Jet again. Phil followed Chuck around, trying to learn but actually so excited he could hardly pay attention. The thought, I’m going up into space! kept ricocheting through his mind.
They loaded a rocket nozzle for the Station’s Crew Return Vehicle and some more supplies and strapped them securely into place. Finally they all got in and put on their emergency suits. Braun watched while Phil practiced reaching back to grab the slightly dome shaped transparent cover for the suit and sealing it.
The mechanics were still working on something so Phil heard the other Lear Jet land. Braun leaned up into the cockpit to tell the two astronauts it’d be a little longer. Apparently, a few more supplies had been delivered for the Space Station along with another passenger.
Zeke exploded, “This is not a joyride!” Phil heard him bitching.
Braun spoke quietly but Phil heard snatches, “…our CEO… deserves a ride…”
Phil rolled his eyes, picturing a pompous businessman with not a clue about space, horning in on what Phil thought of as “his trip.”
Phil’s nerves jittered and he wondered if he should go back to the head and empty his bladder one more time. Then he heard the chatter of the mechanics and the door of the jet was being closed back behind him. Braun went back, apparently to help the CEO into his emergency suit and Phil wondered if he should offer to help. After all the guy was probably clueless and would need baby sitting for every little thing.
Phil wasn’t contributing much otherwise, at least he could baby-sit. Before he actually unbuckled he heard them coming up the aisle so he settled back and tried again to relax. Someone leaned down next to him. He had started to turn when he heard Ell’s voice! “Hi Phil,” it whispered in his ear.
He leaned back wide eyed to see her grinning down at him. She winked, “I’m all googly eyed already…”
Epilogue
Dave Slager closed his eyes in satisfaction as he bit into his “fruit-urrito.” Taste sensations exploded across his palate and he grinned to himself. It had been his idea to have Jose roll peanut butter, chunks of banana, grapes, blueberries and blackberries all into a tortilla. He loved fruit-urritos and the other astronauts had begun ordering them as well. As he took a second bite, his AI said, “You have a call from Ms. Ell Donsaii.”
He chewed quickly and swallowed. “Yes?”
Ell’s bubbly voice came over his earphones, “Dr. Slager, sorry, Dave! We have a CRV nozzle to deliver! We should be there in about an hour and a half.”
“Really! That’s great! We’ll be expecting you.”
After they signed off, he turned back to his fruit-urrito with relish.
Eighty-five minutes later he watched as D5R’s modified Lear Jet approached on little jets from its thrusters.
Anya Stolchya manned the robotic Canadarm to grab Amelia and bring her adaptor to the airlock, though Slager suspected the precision control of the AI flying Amelia with all those attitude thrusters could have done it without the arm. Once they had a good seal and pressurized the airlock Slager opened the lock door and asked Ell to open Amelia’s side of the airlock. As it had before, air gusted from the sea level pressure in the Station’s lock into Amelia where the pressure was about the same as 8,000 feet. The pressure held. Slager said, “OK, Ell go ahead and close the door and we’ll put someone in the lock to start the unloading.”
He heard her grunt, then say, “Wait until we put some stuff in the lock for you.”
A box slowly sailed into the lock, followed by another one. Startled, Slager realized this mission was manned!
One by one the boxes kept coming until the lock was moderately full. Then a slender, reddish blond girl squirmed into the lock amongst the boxes and said, “OK, close the lock and bring up the pressure.”
A couple of minutes later a few boxes sailed into the Station followed by Donsaii still yawning to crack her ears from the air pressure change. Slager reached out to catch her expecting her to flail like most people do when they first try to do things in zero gravity. He was astonished to see her sail to a stanchion and grab on without difficulty, then she launched herself to him and grabbed on, giving him a big hug. “Hi, good to finally meet you in person!” she said, grinning from ear to ear.
“Wow!” Slager said, astonished to realize that the girl was just as beautiful as she looked on screen and wasn’t wearing any makeup. “You’re handling yourself very well for someone experiencing free fall for the first time.”
“Hah!” She laughed, “Am not! I spent 20 minutes barfing when we first went weightless.” She grinned and raised an eyebrow, “Sure glad I brought my toothbrush! But I feel fine now, probably because my stomach and ninety percent of my intestines are emm-teeeee!” Suddenly, she looked over his shoulder and launched herself off of him saying, “Mr. Taussan! Dr. Stolchya!” Slager turned to see her hugging both of them at the same time, they looking somewhat taken aback, but pleased nonetheless. “We can take you back down home if you guys want! I know you’ve been here longer than your missions specified.” By the time Slager had cycled the locks to let in more cargo and a couple more people Ell’d enthusiastically met and hugged everyone in the ISS.
Then she opened a Styrofoam container and started passing out small bottles of wine and lemonade with nipples on their tops. “Let’s have a toast!” she exclaimed, holding her lemonade out at arms length. “To a new era in space travel.”
“Hear, hear.”
***
Kristen Donsaii’s AI spoke in her ear. “Breaking news on CNN references Ell Donsaii.”
A spike of fear shot through her and Kristen turned to look at her mother, sitting beside her on the pew at First United Methodist Church. Her mother was turning anxiously to look at her as well. Doubtless, she’d gotten the same information from her own AI. She looked the other way and saw Miles looking concerned as well. They all stood and worked their way out of the pew and from there down the outer aisle and out of the church.
Looking up at her HUD Kristen said, “Play it for me.”
The familiar face of one of the CNN anchors filled the screen, saying. “Breaking news. After weeks of intense speculation, NASA today announced that the last minute supplies that saved the lives of the dying astronauts on the International Space Station were delivered by a little known North Carolina company called ‘D5Research.’ This company has virtually no presence on the web so we can tell you little about them other than what NASA has told us. Apparently, D5R’s CEO is none other than Ell Donsaii, whom many of you will remember to be the girl who shocked the world with her gymnastic performances a few years ago. NASA Director James Epaulding is about to commence a joint press conference on the new technology that allowed the rescue to be undertaken.”
Gram sighed and seated herself on a bench, “Why couldn’t the girl have told us this was gonna happen?!”
Kristen and Miles sat beside Gram, “Probably didn’t think it was a big enough deal to mention.” Kristen said exasperatedly.
Kristen looked back up at her HUD. Her AI, recognizing that she was focused back on her HUD, resumed the video. The screen split in two with a somber man in a suit on one side and Kristen’s grinning daughter Ell on the other. A little subtitle identified each of them. The man wa
s Epaulding. He launched into a long winded speech, thanking D5R and its investors and researchers for applying themselves, their resources and their new technology unstintingly to the rescue of the multinational crew of the International Space Station. “The world is in your debt.” he said.
As the church service ended people started filtering out of the building. Instead of heading to their cars as usual, most of them stopped to look up at their own HUDs.
Epaulding continued, “The second purpose of this press conference is to make the world aware of the technology which made this possible. This technology is based on a new math devised by Ms. Ell Donsaii, the young lady you see in the other half of your screen.” For a moment the video zoomed in on Ell. There was something funny about her? Epaulding continued, “As you can see from the way Ms. Donsaii’s hair is floating around, she is currently aboard the International Space Station and therefore weightless. She and some of her D5R team flew up there last night in D5R’s second manned mission.” Ell waved and tossed an obviously weightless apple slowly across the screen. “To continue, this math explains many of the bizarre quantum phenomena that have long puzzled scientists. Apparently, there are ties between ‘entangled’ particles through bridges crossing a ‘fifth dimension.’ This connection is responsible for the phenomena that Einstein referred to as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Ms. Donsaii’s paper which explained this new math led to the technology behind the ‘PGR chips’ many of you are already using in your communications devices. D5R was founded to explore other possibilities resulting from this fifth dimension. I won’t explain the technical details but their discoveries have allowed them to build small rockets capable of flying to the Space Station to deliver supplies. Such rockets also have other, even more astonishing capabilities.”
The screen blanked, then showed a black upper half and a grey lower half. “Here you see video from a two foot long rocket called “Armstrong.” This video was taken when Armstrong landed last week at “Tranquility Base” on the moon. Tranquility Base is the location where Armstrong’s namesake Neil became the first man to step onto the moon in 1969.” The descent stage of Apollo 11 came into view. The picture panned around the site and she said, “Unfortunately, you can see that Buzz Aldrin was correct when he said that he thought that our flag blew over when they took off.”
The screen blacked and then cleared showing a number of pebbles on a black background. “Here you seen a number of ‘moon rocks’ that Armstrong returned from the moon. These are the first moon rocks returned to Earth since the 1970s.”
The screen blacked again, then opened to show a lumpy mass in the middle. “This next video shows Near Earth approaching asteroid, 2021 MG12, during the approach of “Buzz,” another small rocket from D5R. The video jumped closer, then closer, then showed what were apparently the tail fins of the rocket gradually reach and touch down on it. Again the screen blacked and then showed some different lumps on a black background. Our preliminary analysis of specimens returned from this asteroid confirm that it is metallic with high levels of platinum and tantalum in addition to the usual iron and nickel. Those metals would make the space mining of this asteroid a very rewarding endeavor.”
The screen showed Epaulding’s face again. “Finally, if you’ll watch with me a moment, another small rocket named ‘Collins’ is currently landing at the Martian South Pole.”
After the landing had screened, the broadcast returned to the CNN anchor. He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our world has just been irrevocably changed…”
The End
Hope you liked the book!
If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.
Try the next in the series, Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)
Author’s Afterword
This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically possible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Then you ask, what if something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.
“Rocket!” asks, what if wormholes were possible, connecting one location in our space-time continuum to another? This isn’t a new idea in science fiction. Many, many novels have explored this possibility, but almost all have considered the “what if we could travel from one location to another instantaneously” question. Instead “Rocket” asks, “what if we could only make little wormholes, not ones big enough to step through to a new location? Would they still have an impact?”
In short, yes they would! “Rocket” explores some of the impact such small wormholes could have and the next story will continue that exploration.
Some of you may have been interested in the energy that needs to be injected when porting things up to orbit. This is to avoid the possibility that a port could become a “perpetual motion machine.” If you could port water from the bottom of a hill to the top without any energy cost, then you could let it run through a hydroelectric turbine on the way back down and generate electricity for free!
One reader has expressed concern that a port that got loose in the vacuum of space could eventually suck all the air away from our planet and become a “planet killer.” Such a port would have to be beyond an Earth orbiting location or the air would eventually fall back to Earth. But, if you did have a port that far out, by my best calculations it would take more than 10,000,000,000 years for all of Earth’s atmosphere (a HUGE volume) to leak out through a 5cm port.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Elene Trull and Nora Dahners, each of whom significantly improved this story.
Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) Page 21
