John just shook his head. “What does she do, anyway?”
“She’s a barista.”
John’s eyes brightened. “You should’ve said! She’s in!”
Ernie Blackman mopped the sweat from his forehead and leaned back into his hands for a moment. He yawned and forced his tired limbs to stretch. The past four days had been insane. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever felt so beat – or when he’d last been so happy. Two beautiful, shiny silver boosters packed with solid propellant lay on the transporter racks. Now, they just needed to get them to the launch site some seven hundred kilometers to the south, along roads that were little more than graded dirt tracks in places.
“Alright,” he said, turning to his small group of fellow engineers. “Let’s get them on the way. Then I reckon we should head back to Haven for some of Heidi’s beer.”
His workmates cheered and clapped Heidi on the back. She stood there, sweaty and covered in grime, but just as happy as the rest of them.
There had been no time to do any proper planning, so five days ago they’d sat down and split their team in three parts. Team one would start on fabricating the internal fuel tanks for the shuttle, a no-brainer in terms of decision making. They already had the specifications, so they could start straight away. Team two worked on booster design, and the rest of them spent half of one precious day planning and thinking about how everything would fit together.
The planners soon realized they wouldn’t get the job done unless they worked around the clock, so that’s what they did. Volunteers came up from Haven to act as gofers, and the engineers worked as many hours per day as they could stay awake. Five days of the most intense effort any of them had ever experienced followed.
Now they stood back and bathed in the warm glow of a shared job done well, as they watched their handiwork make its way south. With nothing to do for the next twenty-four hours, the prospect of a beer and sleep had them all smiling.
Ernie had watched with contentment as the past few days bound them together into a cohesive group. David’s dream of a unified Haven was happening before his eyes, at least among the engineers, who shared a common love of building and fixing things.
Well – most of the engineers. Heinrich Schick had worked as hard as any of them, but continued to stand off, along with a couple of others. From what he could tell, they formed a core of ten or twenty malcontents. None of them caused any overt trouble, at least not yet, but they didn’t seem happy about Edward’s murder, or that the old management had resumed control.
He would keep an eye on them.
The little unnamed asteroid didn’t have to travel far before Tau Ceti’s solar wind began to tickle the ice that coated its rocky core. Molecule by molecule, the ice sublimed into the stellar void. It changed the mass of the asteroid only by the merest hint of a percentage, but it provided just enough vapor to form a diffuse coma. In a small part of the night sky where once there had been only darkness, now the faintest glow appeared in the black of space.
“I don’t care! I want to know where she is and I want to know now!” Simon’s face reddened and a scowl formed on his rugged face.
Veronika sighed. She liked Simon and had no wish to be the object of his anger.
“We’ve been through this already. She’s not been well, so I sent her away for some rest and relaxation, to recuperate.”
“So why haven’t I heard from her?”
Veronika crossed her arms over her chest.
“Unless … she doesn’t want to talk to me.” Simon’s expression changed in a flash from angry to puppy-dog sad.
Veronika sighed again. “No, no, it’s not that.”
Simon’s head lifted. “It isn’t?”
Bozhe moi. Never have I seen a case so bad. “No, she is exhausted. I prescribed for her complete rest, no contact. So I sent her away with some good books and a bottle of wine. Be patient.”
Simon narrowed his eyes. “Sent her away where?”
“Away. Away where people can’t find her, that’s the point.”
Simon’s brow furrowed, and Veronika could see that he wouldn’t let this go. But he nodded, frowning his displeasure.
“How much longer will this recuperation take?”
Veronika glanced at the clock on her surgery wall. “Oh, I’d say about three weeks.”
Simon shook his head. Nothing short of seeing Sabine would make him happy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chuck Swanson stepped into the airlock of the plain-looking building they had erected close to the launch site for the rescue attempt, Tracey Howells and Gena Sanchez on his heels.
They’d been hard at work most of the day and faced the prospect of a double shift before they could snatch a few hours of sleep.
The red light next to the inner door turned green and a chime sounded after the lock flushed Serendipity’s carbon dioxide-rich air with fresh oxygenated air from the interior.
Chuck removed his mask with a sigh. “Not that I don’t appreciate how good these things are,” he said, waving the lightweight mask, “but I still don’t like having the thing clamped to my face for hours on end.”
Tracey sniffed. “Yeah, after a while they don’t smell too good.”
Chuck yanked the door open. “Yeah, and –” He stopped and sniffed, then sniffed again. “Do you –?”
Tracey and Gena inhaled and then they all spoke at the same time: “Coffee!”
Fatigue forgotten, they trooped into the cafeteria to find someone new standing behind the counter. An interesting-looking machine was making a distinctive sound that brought back happy memories laced with sheer astonishment.
“Sabine?” Tracey asked, her eyes wide. “Is that you?”
She directed her question to a woman wearing a blue baseball cap from beneath which peeped a golden fuzz of new hair. She had a smooth, unblemished face and, contrary to normal Haven fashion, wore jeans and a long-sleeved top.
The woman smiled. “Of course.”
Chuck’s eyes also grew wide, but he focused his attention on the espresso machine. In his engineer’s mind, the items of interest were (1) the coffee, (2) the machine, and (3) Oh, Sabine’s got a new haircut.
“Is that … what is that you’ve got there?” he asked.
“The coffee? Or the machine?”
“The coffee,” Gena and Tracey chorused.
“Oh, that.” She smiled. “Well, this is a personal favorite of mine – a Columbian mountain blend. It’s probably the last of this available in the galaxy.”
“Where – how –?” Chuck asked.
Sabine smiled. “I filled my luggage with coffee beans. I didn’t know if there’d be any here.”
“Awesome!” Chuck said. “What about the machine? Where did that come from?”
“John made it.”
“Ah.” Chuck ran a hand over it. “Not fabricated, either. Impressive.”
Tracey and Gena looked at each other, then turned to Sabine.
“OK, spill it!”
“What?” she protested.
“You know,” said Gena.
Sabine colored. “I needed a change, is all.”
Chuck looked up. “What? What changed?”
Tracey sighed, and reached over to grab a cup of coffee, thrusting it into Chuck’s hand. “Here, go over there and talk to the other men. We’ve got things to discuss.” She lowered her head a little and gave him the look. “Girl things.”
Chuck held the cup up to his nose and inhaled. “Ahhhhh.”
“Mmmm, yes, good. Now go,” Tracey said, turning him around and giving him a little push in the back. “Go!”
Chuck shuffled off, clutching his little treasure.
Tracey turned back to Sabine. “Right, now spill it!”
They had three of the craft they called “skimmers”, for want of a better word. These were part car and part airplane. The cabin held six people plus cargo, a capacity similar to that of a family car back on Earth. Two short wings and a tail lent
the craft an airplane-like look, and four swiveling electric jets gave the craft vertical takeoff, hovering, and landing ability. High-density batteries set under the cabin floor provided enough power for four or five hours of flight, depending on how much vertical hovering the pilot did.
John, David, Elizabeth, and Heidi sat in one of these skimmers, heading south past New Canaveral to the site John had picked to launch their rescue attempt. Only a little broken cloud marred an otherwise fine day. Below them, tussocky grass covered the ground, with a few low pines here and there struggling to gain a foothold. Most of the continent now had some sort of plant life, although coverage varied widely. In some parts of the planet, lush jungles grew like weeds in the high carbon dioxide atmosphere. They thrived in the lowland areas near water where the soil was soft and silty. Other places, such as the elevated area now beneath them, had poor, thin soil that would take generations to develop into something in which plants would flourish.
“There!” John said, pointing straight ahead as they swept back toward the coast. Ahead of them a long, thin expanse of concrete ran down a gentle slope toward a sheer drop to the sea below. A cluster of small building perched at the top of the slope on a concrete apron, together with two large fuel tanks and their shuttle.
David craned forward, frowning. Something about the shuttle didn’t look right. As they drew nearer, he could make out more detail, and saw that it now sported two new appendages – long, silvery cylinders attached to the fuselage above the wings.
“That’s how we get to orbit,” John said, seeing David’s expression. “What they used to call SRBs, or solid rocket boosters. They pack a hell of a punch.”
David continued to look at the shuttle, doubt tickling the back of his mind. It looked … makeshift, unwieldy.
“We didn’t have time to make it pretty,” John said, as if reading his thoughts. “But it’ll do the job.”
David sure hoped so.
John brought the skimmer down to a hover next to the shuttle and landed with a gentle bump. They climbed out, David’s and Elizabeth’s attention on the shuttle. They walked over, examining it with interest sharpened by the knowledge that their lives depended on it.
John and Heidi trailed behind, as they’d seen it already. A stiff breeze blowing in from the sea brought a tang of salt.
David finished a circuit of the shuttle and stopped, staring hard at the rearmost mounting bracket for the right-hand SRB. “How does it separate?”
John stepped up, looking apologetic. “It doesn’t.”
David gave him a sharp look. “We can reenter with these bolted on?”
John shook his head. “No way. They won’t survive reentry. Apart from being unshielded, the strain would rip the shuttle apart. The plan is, we’ll boost with them all the way to orbit, then remove them by hand.”
David looked again, and saw each bracket had four large bolts holding the SRB in place.
“It’s not ideal,” John said, “but with only a week for the whole project, there was only time for the most basic of modifications. If it wasn’t for Heidi and the others, we wouldn’t even have this.”
David nodded. “It’s OK, I’m not complaining. If I could give you more time, I would.”
They both reflected for a moment on Vasily, Joyce, Viktor, and Natalia. The Inspiration would be incinerated if they didn’t launch within the next two days.
“What about the airstrip?” Elizabeth asked.
“That’s the easy part,” John said. “We brought a few mining robots over and they did the work in a few days. The shuttle mods took most of the time.”
Elizabeth nodded and shivered. For someone used to the tropical climate of Haven, the breeze whipping the surrounding tussock seemed cold.
“So what now?” she asked.
“We’ve got two days to prepare,” David answered. “John and Heidi have more fabricating to do, as we’ll need pressure suits. You and I, we’re going to practice.”
Elizabeth cocked her head as she looked at the shuttle. “In a simulator?”
John grinned. “Nope. In that,” he said, pointing at the shuttle. “With a light fuel load we can take off and land, so you can practice a little before we go.”
“Oh.” It seemed Elizabeth was beginning to appreciate just what she’d signed up for. “When do we start?”
“No time like the present,” David said, looking at John. “How about right now?”
John grinned.
“I thought you might say that! Give us twenty minutes for a light fuel load and we’ll be set to go.”
David examined some new controls jury-rigged into place. He saw a rocker switch labeled ARM and a large red button protected by a clear plastic flip-up cover.
“That’s the SRB ignition?”
“Yep,” John replied. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it until it’s time. They’re all loaded and ready to go.”
David snatched his hand away. He didn’t need to be told twice.
“What’s our flight profile?”
John drew a breath. “It’s complicated,” he said. “We’re standing on the edge of what we can do. In fact, if the Inspiration wasn’t already almost kissing the atmosphere we wouldn’t get there at all.”
“And so?” David prompted.
“First we get in the air. We’re perched on the end of this cliff because the shuttle is too heavy to get off the ground with a full fuel load.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. Two large fuel tanks, one for liquid methane and one for liquid oxygen now occupied most of the shuttle cabin space.
“So the plan is, we point the jets backward and get as much speed up as possible rolling down the runway. As soon as we fall off the end, point the jets to fifty degrees. That’s almost enough to keep us flying but not quite, so the next thing we do is a thirty-second burn of the main engines, nose up forty-five degrees. That’ll get us to ten thousand meters and lose enough weight that the jets will carry us. Then we drain the batteries and pile on another ten thousand over the next thirty or forty minutes.”
He grinned. “Then for the fun part. We trigger the SRBs and point the nose almost straight up, then pitch over slowly once we get some altitude on. They’ll burn for two-and-a-half minutes and get us into space. Then all we do is fire up the mains for another four minutes and we’ll be there, bar maneuvering to dock.”
David stroked his chin. “The SRB burn – how do we control it?”
“We don’t. That’s why there’s only one switch, to turn them on. Once they start, we have to ride it out.”
“Thrust levels?”
“We’ll pull five g’s at peak.”
David’s eyes widened.
“I told you they had a hell of a punch.”
“Can the shuttle take that?” Elizabeth asked, her voice uncertain.
“Should do,” John answered. “There’ll be vibration, though. SRBs aren’t as smooth as liquid engines.”
David thought of drilling John for more information but then just shrugged. It didn’t matter; they had to go, no question. What will be, will be.
“OK, let’s try it,” he said instead. “Let’s see how it handles.”
“Be careful,” John warned. “It’ll be top-heavy and handle like a brick shithouse with wings.”
David laughed.
Elizabeth didn’t.
“It’s been a while,” he said. “This is kind of like a carrier launch.”
He reached for the throttle levers and pushed them forward. The jet turbines whined and the shuttle rolled down the runway.
“Hang on,” David said. The shuttle bumped as they gathered speed. Halfway down the runway David pulled back on his control stick and the shuttle took to the air. It wobbled a little but stabilized as it sped up.
David looked at John, a smile on his face. “As you said, like a brick shithouse.”
John laughed.
Elizabeth didn’t. She gripped the sides of her seat until her knuckles whitened.
They p
racticed for the rest of that day and the morning of the next, until David thought he understood the shuttle’s new handling characteristics as best as he could. Then they returned to Haven for final preparations and farewells.
Haven had lost a good part of its population. They’d commandeered all the skimmers and a cargo lifter and now staked out positions near the launch site. David wouldn’t let anyone get too close, but they all had a good view, many with picnic lunches they lifted their masks to snatch bites from.
The fully fueled shuttle now sat on the flight apron, steaming vapor from its fuel tank pressure-relief valves. A rind of frost lined the sides of the cabin from the intense cold of the liquid fuel it now contained.
David, Elizabeth, and John had strapped in, ready to launch. Elizabeth occupied the right-hand navigator’s seat, and John the new flight engineer’s seat in the aisle a little behind and between them. It made it awkward to climb into the cockpit, but allowed them to gain a few precious centimeters of extra space for the fuel tanks, which occupied most of the cabin. The small amount of cabin space remaining contained four lightweight pressure suits for their intended passengers, plus a bulky maneuvering harness that John had insisted they bring. It comprised fuel tanks about the size of two hiking packs, plus a small rocket motor, and straps and control panels. Designed to be worn by orbital assembly workers to help them move spaceship components around, David worried about the extra mass. One didn’t so much strap on the harness as dock with it – the thing massed as much as John, if not more. John insisted they needed it, though, as it might help with detaching the SRBs. “If I need to, I can get out and push us up,” he said, only half joking.
Time seemed to fly by as they waited for their launch window – the moment of truth – to arrive.
David reached for the radio. “Control, stand by.”
“Roger, Discoverer, standing by,” Heidi replied. She was acting as their deck crew and flight operations officer, and had just finished supervising their fueling and final exterior checks.
The Seasoning Page 23
