Rocket Girls: The Last Planet

by Housuke Nojiri

  Together, the four of them waited.

  A little after nine o’clock, Mukai and Nasuda joined them, having finished work.

  When Mukai saw the crowd, he quickly went back, returning a few moments later with a large cooler in his arms.

  “I brought some sandwiches and cola from the cafeteria.”

  Everyone held out their hands in silence. No one wanted to talk. It was hard not to feel guilty, standing there waiting for her.

  Yukari turned to Matsuri. “So, jungle expert, what’s the best possible route she could’ve taken?”

  “Well, the easiest would have been to go straight north until she hit the ocean, then walk down the shore. That would get her out of the jungle more quickly.”

  “Right…”

  That had been Yukari’s plan when they sent her out. Once she reached the coast, she would just have to go east until she ran into the base, then follow the line of the fence to the front gate. Yukari turned to look down the fence, but it was lost in the darkness.

  “Did she have a flashlight with her?”

  “Yes, but batteries for only two hours. No spares,” Kinoshita said. “Even if she saved them for her last day, they’d be dead by now.”

  “Any moon tonight?”

  “Not until the early morning,” Matsuri said.

  “You could have at least waited until a full moon!” Yukari growled.

  “Now now, Yukari.” Nasuda had just begun to console her when Matsuri waved for them to be silent. “Hoi? I saw something flash.”

  “Where?”

  Everyone turned to look in the direction Matsuri was pointing.

  For a while they saw nothing. But then, several minutes later, all six of them gasped. Off in the jungle, a light twinkled. From the position, it was about half a kilometer away, moving down a slope.

  “Where is she, Matsuri?”

  “I think she was moving to the left. So she’s going for the main road, not the coast.”

  “Think she’ll make it?”

  “She’s about to head into a small valley. If she cuts straight across it, she’ll be fine, but if she tries to walk along it she’ll get into trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Swamp trouble.”

  Yukari swallowed. Just because they had spotted her didn’t mean she was going to make it. She kept watching the jungle, but the light was nowhere to be seen. Yukari had never considered herself to be particularly religious, but now she was praying with all her might.

  She glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock.

  “There it is again!”

  They spotted the light, this time much farther to the left than before.

  “She’s past the valley.”

  “Really?”

  “As long as she keeps walking straight, she’ll make it to the road.”

  “Thatta girl!” Yukari cupped her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and took a deep breath.

  “Don’t,” Kinoshita said quickly. “This is a test. She has to make it to the very end on her own.”

  Yukari blew out her lungful of air quietly and squinted into the darkness. The road went straight into the jungle before it curved. From just around the curve, she could see a yellow light flickering.

  “She made it, Yukari. She’s on the road.”

  Finally, they saw her emerge from between the trees. She was wobbling slightly, a makeshift torch in her right hand.

  Yukari could restrain herself no longer. “Akane! Hey! Over here!”

  Akane waved her torch in response.

  “You did it!” Yukari shouted again, doing a little dance. “You did it, Akane!”

  Now she could see the other girl’s orange coveralls. Akane’s feet dragged as she walked, but her progress was steady. Yukari ran up to the edge of where the paved road from the base ended and waited there like a relay runner waiting for her turn with the baton.

  When she got closer, Akane threw her torch down on the ground and practically collapsed into Yukari’s arms. Yukari patted her cheek, covered with scrapes and mud.

  “You did it, Akane. You really did it.”

  Steadying her shoulders, she helped Akane sit down. Beside them, Satsuki knelt and began a cursory examination.

  “Any injuries?”

  “No…I’m fine.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Good. No, great.”

  “You did a great job.”

  “The torch was a good idea,” Kinoshita said.

  “I found some resinous branches on the fig tree and gathered them before it got too dark.”

  “Well,” Nasuda said, extending his hand, “I think we’ve got our third astronaut.”

  Akane reached out to shake his hand, then suddenly jerked away. “I…” she began, “I met Matsuri in the jungle.” Akane explained what had happened and how she had found the fig trees.

  “Matsuri?” Nasuda turned to her. “What were you really up to out there? Did you mean to give her that hint?”

  Matsuri shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think about those difficult kinds of things. I just thought the swallows were really cool. I wanted Akane to see them too.”

  “Hmm. What do you think, Satsuki?”

  “I think that Matsuri could tell me she’d ridden a pink elephant and I’d believe her.” Satsuki chuckled.

  “Well then, there you have it.” Nasuda turned to Akane. “Congratulations, you passed.”

  “Th-thank you, sir!”

  “Training starts tomorrow,” Satsuki joined in. “If you’ve got what it takes to make it out there, I’m sure you can take a few extra G. Eight, maybe?”

  “Well, I…”

  “You’ll do your best,” Satsuki said with a wink.

  The training center gym, one week later.

  While the gym wasn’t strictly off-limits to men, they had to be careful when visiting. The gym was where the astronauts let it all hang out. Right now Yukari and Matsuri were in their space suits. The door opened. “Here she is!” a voice announced.

  It was chief chemical engineer Motoko Mihara, leading Akane behind her in a brand-new formfitting space suit.

  While Akane lacked the curves of the other two girls, she was very trim and the supporting nature of the suit’s fabric made her look great.

  “Hey hey hey! Not bad!”

  “You look great, Akane.”

  “You’ll have your share of fans in no time, Akane!”

  “What? Fans?” Akane’s face turned bright red and she held her hands over her chest and stomach.

  “Don’t hide yourself like that,” Yukari said. “It just makes you look like you’re being coy. You gotta walk like you mean it. You’ll get used to it soon.”

  “But it’s like…it’s like I’m naked,” Akane said quietly.

  Motoko chuckled behind her thick-rimmed glasses. “If so then I did my job right. It’s supposed to fit like a second skin, you know.”

  The space suits were Motoko’s pet project. With each revision the fabric and fittings felt better and better. Though they were easiest to wear while seated in the cockpit, their flexibility made them perfectly comfortable while standing and walking also.

  There was a knock at the door. “Can I come in?” It was Nasuda.

  He was wearing a suit. He stared at Akane for a moment then clapped his hands together. “All right, definitely astronaut material!”

  “Please…” Akane said, mortified.

  “Stop covering yourself up like that, it makes it worse,” Yukari said.

  “Not that they will in that suit, but if anyone ever doubts you’re an astronaut, you’ll always have this,” Nasuda said, offering a small booklet to Akane. “It’s your astronaut’s passport.”

  Inside the booklet was a laminated picture of her face, next to text reading ASTRONAUT AKANE MIURA. On the next page a message had been written in ten languages. Japanese was at the top. “The bearer of this document has been recognized by Japan and the Solomon Islands as an astronaut
, and the Solomon Space Association hereby requests all whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely and without hindrance and to afford the bearer all necessary assistance and protection.”

  “Hold on to this, and no matter where in the world you land, your human rights will be protected.”

  “Wow, astronauts really are like citizens of the world.”

  “It only helps if you happen to land where there are people, of course.”

  Yukari shook her head. “I’ll take the open sea to the Nellis Academy gardening club’s fishpond any day.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  OPERATION:

  RESCUE ORPHEUS

  [ACT 1]

  “SAY AGAIN, HOUSTON? I didn’t copy.” Norman Randolph had heard Houston loud and clear. He just didn’t like what they were telling him.

  “We’re showing a problem with one of Orpheus’s attitude control thrusters. Two sensors are coming up red.”

  “You expect me to fix that up here? We’re not exactly packing spare parts for the probe.”

  “We can’t deploy until we get this cleared up.”

  “Roger that, Houston,” Norman grumbled into the comm. This was one fight he wouldn’t be winning. “What am I in for?”

  In a NASA-issue space suit, no one can see you shrug. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now, but if he made too much of a fuss, he might lose his chance to ever launch again.

  It had taken five years for him to make it on a flight after he had been added to the space shuttle crew. The average lifetime total flights for a NASA astronaut was a paltry three. If you didn’t want that to be a hard limit, you had to be very patient and pick your battles.

  “I’m moving you, Norman. You ready?”

  That was Gordon Krenic, radioing him from the cabin. Norman’s feet were fixed to the tip of the Remote Manipulation Arm that unfolded like an insect leg from the shuttle’s cargo bay. Gordon controlled the arm from inside the cabin.

  “Go for it.”

  The arm lifted Norman’s body three meters upward where it stopped with a light quiver from the inertia. He was farther away from the floor of the payload bay now, able to see both wings of the shuttle and beyond that, the blue arc of the earth.

  The unmanned probe known as Orpheus was right in front of him. The upper-stage engine that would send the probe all the way to Pluto was positioned on the underside relative to his position. Together, the probe and engine extended from the center of the payload bay, like a giant cannon pointing toward space. The scale was impressive.

  Norman knew that this large-scale probe would most likely be the last of its kind.

  With each passing year, the probes had been getting smaller and smaller, lifted into space by small, unmanned rockets. Using the shuttle to bring the probe into low orbit, manually extending all the antennas, and doing a careful systems check all took too much time and manpower—these costs would kill such projects.

  The Orpheus Project had started back when people still viewed the shuttle through rose-colored glasses. It was only a short while after the shuttle began operation that its lack of cost-effectiveness really came to the surface, but it was the explosion of the Challenger in ’86 that changed everything. The flight schedule was cut in half, and safety became a top priority. The Orpheus Project was put on ice for years.

  With guidance from Houston, Norman began the task of removing the gold-colored thermal blanket covering the surface of the probe. On the ground, this would have been no more difficult than ripping open an envelope, but up here it was next to impossible. He had to exert a pressure of at least thirty kilograms just to grab something with his stiff space suit gloves, and he could feel absolutely nothing through the thick fabric. That, and the arm he was standing on wobbled like a fishing pole.

  Finally he got the blanket off, revealing the duralumin structure beneath.

  Norman fished an Allen wrench out of his pocket and set about tightening the screws, keeping his left hand hovering over them so he wouldn’t lose anything to space.

  Removing the eight screws took all of forty minutes.

  Once the panel was open, he could see tubes for hydrogen underneath. Next to them was the control valve assembly. In all, it was about the size of a portable radio. Norman took one look at the nest of wires and tubing connected to the control valve and sighed. They want me to remove that?

  “Ever build a ship in a bottle?” he muttered to no one in particular. “That’s what this feels like.”

  “Pull it off, and you’ll be a hero,” said a voice over his radio from inside the shuttle. This was the captain, Wayne Berkheimer.

  It was true. Fixing a problem while in orbit was an astronaut’s chance to shine. When people back home heard the news, it reminded them of the need for manned missions.

  It took Norman three hours to remove the valve assembly. With his left hand, he hugged it tightly to his chest. Now all he needed to do was bring it back inside the shuttle where they could take a close look at it.

  “It’s done,” Norman said, relieved. “Bring me back to the air lock, Gordon.”

  “Well,” Gordon said over the radio, “you’ll be coming back up here again for sure.”

  The remote manipulating arm began to move.

  “Wait!” Norman barked, “not that way!”

  He could hear Gordon swearing under his breath over the radio. The arm holding Norman in place was about to collide with one of the antennas protruding from the probe. The inertia of the arm was such that it was hard to stop quickly. Norman ducked, hoping to avoid the antenna entirely. It took all of his strength to move in his bulky suit, and in his rush, he forgot to pay attention to what he was holding in his left hand.

  As the antenna swooshed soundlessly over his head, the valve assembly drifted from his fingers, spinning through space toward the probe’s engine.

  The valve hit one of the exterior panels and ricocheted off into a gap between the main body of the probe and the engine.

  “Dammit!”

  “Sorry about that, Norman. You okay?”

  “I’m fine, but I lost the valve assembly. I think it’s lodged inside the connector between the probe and the engine.”

  “Roger that. What do you want me to do?”

  “Bring me a little closer to the probe again. About three feet.”

  “Okay. I’ll try not to mess this one up.”

  Once he was close enough, Norman peered at the connector. The connector was like a deep, wedge-shaped groove in the side of the probe, fifty centimeters wide and about three meters in diameter. The engine was designed to detach once the probe was on its interplanetary trajectory. There was a ring of shaped explosives for this purpose connected to the probe by a complex truss, making the area around the connector look like a jungle gym.

  Norman shone in his light and spotted the valve assembly wedged inside the crevice.

  “Found it…I think I might be able to reach.” Norman stuck his hand down into the groove but was unable to reach it. In the space suit, his arm was about three times bulkier than it was in normal clothes, and he couldn’t get his joints to bend around the frame.

  When he finally did reach the valve assembly, he only succeeded in brushing it with the tips of his fingers, which knocked it farther into the wedge—a fatal mistake.

  “Godamnit! Now it’s wedged in next to the tank!”

  “Think you’ll be able to get it out soon?” the captain asked.

  “No, definitely not soon. Maybe not at all.”

  “Right. Then come back to the shuttle for now. I’m sure we’ll think of some other way to go after it.”

  [ACT 2]

  “TURN THE VOLUME up! Louder!” someone shouted on the other side of the cafeteria.

  Yukari, Matsuri, and Akane put down their lunches and looked up. Every eye in the cafeteria was glued to the large television screen on the wall. Someone had changed the channel from the usual Japanese broadcast to CNN.

  “Wonder what it is
? Maybe they’re showing something about us?”

  “Hoi! Let’s go check it out.”

  The three stood and walked over closer to the screen.

  They were showing a live feed, apparently from the space shuttle. The picture was being taken from the rear observation window on the upper deck, showing two astronauts in the middle of the payload bay, working on some device.

  Someone turned the volume up and they could hear an anchorwoman’s voice, saying, “…into the third day. The part seems to have gotten wedged inside a crevice in the Orpheus probe too deep to be easily removed. They’ve tried shaking it and using a gripping extension hand, but so far they’ve had no luck in retrieving the wayward part.”

  “Yikes! They’re still working on that thing?” Yukari said. A man in coveralls in front of her turned.

  “They just might need you up there, Yukari.”

  “Nah!”

  “You never know.”

  “Apparently, it will be impossible to retrieve the part without dismantling the engine array on the probe, and this will be impossible to do while in orbit.”

  “The director is already moving on this,” the man said. “They’ve got a booster under assembly in the VAB. Just making preparations at this point, but still.”

  “You mean the SSA is going to go up there?” Akane asked.

  “Why not?” the man asked. “One of you could slide your whole body in there and fish it out, no problem.”

  Akane returned her gaze to the television. “I don’t know. It looks pretty tight.”

  For the last month, Akane had been training in the training center’s pool.

  She would get into her space suit, strap on a backpack, and attach the appropriate amount of ballast to make the experience of floating in water as close to being weightless as possible. While submerged, they had her putting together mock-up satellites and taking them apart.

  “The shuttle will only be up for another three days. NASA has said they will do everything they can while there’s still time remaining. However, in the worst-case scenario, they’ll be obligated to bring the Orpheus probe back down to the ground with them.”