Rocket Girls: The Last Planet

by Housuke Nojiri

  “You look like a sumo wrestler,” Yukari said, earning a smoldering look from Norman.

  “If I had a suit like yours, I’d be able to keep up with you up there.”

  “Maybe, though you’re so big as it is I doubt you would have been able to get inside that truss.”

  There was silence in the middeck.

  The captain cleared his throat. “So, you two, want to check out the cockpit?”

  “Oh yes, that’d be great!” Akane said eagerly.

  “Why not,” Yukari said with obvious disinterest. “Just the thing—technology older than I am. It’ll be like being in a museum.”

  Akane glared at her, but Yukari pretended not to notice.

  The captain led them through a hole in the ceiling onto the upper deck. Though photographs and video made it look larger, in reality, the cockpit was small—roughly the size of a truck cabin with a sleeper behind the seats.

  “As you can see, everything but the floors and ceilings are covered with instrumentation. Everything up front is the flight controls—it’s pretty much the same as a commercial airliner. The right side is for mission operations and the left is for payload operations. In the back we’ve got the RMA control and the docking controls.”

  “It’s a two-seater,” Akane noted.

  “That’s right. The only people that actually have to sit up here are the pilots when the shuttle is in flight mode. See the footrests? You can adjust the height on those, so even someone your size could fit snugly.”

  “That was a smart design.”

  “We have to consider the range of people that come up on the space shuttle. Different sizes, different races, different religions. We’re set up to take them all.”

  “Unlike the SSA, you mean,” Yukari said.

  “Yukari!” Akane was visibly angry now. She spoke Japanese. “Why are you saying things like that? What did these guys ever do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So why the attitude?”

  “It’s just in my nature to rebel in front of an authority like NASA.”

  Akane blinked. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to be emphasizing goodwill and international relations up here in space?”

  “Man, you really are a grade-A student! You talk like a textbook sometimes, Akane. We’re leaving here in just a little bit anyway. Who cares if you get along with these people?”

  The captain watched them, a look of concern on his face. Akane didn’t think he understood Japanese, but their tone of voice was probably information enough for him to make some assumptions about what they were saying.

  “Well, I think it’s important to be nice to other people. It’s an opportunity to make friends—you never know how the people you meet might help you in the future,” Akane said quietly.

  “You don’t say.”

  “Opportunity only knocks once, Yukari.”

  “It’s only opportunity if they’re worthwhile people. Meeting some bum probably isn’t going to get you very far.”

  “Just think, I met you, and now I’m up here.”

  “Oh, so that’s where you’re going with this?”

  Akane nodded. “Remember when you told me to get on the helicopter? I was terrified. But I just did it. I had the feeling like that was the start of something.” She smiled a little. “I think I’ve gotten better at meeting people since then. And being nice to them. Especially when I think of what possibilities might lie in store for me.”

  “Well, I call that being a goody-two-shoes.”

  “I’m fine with being a goody-two-shoes,” Akane said with a guileless smile.

  Yukari looked off into space and sighed. Why do I always get the insanely optimistic ones for partners?

  “Fine. So I should go apologize to Norman, is that what you want?”

  Akane nodded cheerfully.

  Yukari excused herself and went back down to the middeck. There she found Luis and Gordon eating Snickers bars.

  “Did Norman go somewhere?”

  “He’s pre-breathing in the air lock,” Luis told her.

  “He’s going out again?”

  “Yep. He has to put on the new valve that you brought with you.”

  “Pre-breathing takes about two hours, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Wait, he didn’t come back in here just for our welcoming party, did he?

  “Did you have something to talk to him about? You can get him on the intercom.”

  “No…no, that’s all right.”

  I’m sure he came back to replenish the oxygen and his backup. That has to be it.

  “So, Yukari,” Luis said, “want to exchange souvenirs? We do with the Russians whenever they dock. Here, here’s mine.”

  Luis pulled a cloth emblem out of his pocket. It was a special badge for the Orpheus Mission.

  “Wow, that’s nice. But I don’t have anything like that to give you.”

  “Oh, doesn’t have to be anything special. A notebook or a pen, anything.”

  “I might have a pen.” Yukari rummaged in her waist pouch and found a Fischer ballpoint pen. “Here. It even has the Solomon Space Association logo on it. How’s this?”

  “Ooh! That’s great!” The pilot seemed genuinely happy.

  Just then, the captain called down. “Think you can come up here, Yukari? Dr. O’Reilly wants to talk to you.”

  “O’Reilly?” Yukari asked as she made her way to the upper deck.

  “Chief designer on the Orpheus Project. He wants to thank you personally.”

  Now this is a person worth meeting, Yukari thought. Yukari and Akane held on to the backrest of the pilot seats in the cockpit and positioned themselves facing the intercom.

  “You did all the work. I’ll leave this one up to you,” Yukari said to Akane.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aren’t you the goody-two-shoes who likes meeting people? Especially scientists?”

  Akane nodded and pressed the talk button. “This is Akane Miura on Atlantis. Hello, Dr. O’Reilly.”

  “Ah, you’re the one who took off her backpack and retrieved that valve?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much!” His voice wavered, making the end of his words a mess of static. “I’m afraid I can’t express just how grateful I am to you.”

  Akane cleared her throat. “I think I understand, Doctor. I heard that the Orpheus probe had been put in storage for a whole decade. Is that true?”

  “Yes, the project officially started over twenty-two years ago now.”

  Akane swallowed. “That’s an awfully long time.”

  “Pluto isn’t as exciting as the other planets, you see. I don’t know how many times our budget got cut. And then, after the Challenger explosion—”

  “I see.”

  “We needed a powerful liquid fuel engine for the Orpheus’s prolusion system—Pluto is a long way off, as you know. After the Challenger accident, it became more difficult to carry that kind of fuel up in the shuttle. Safety regulations and all. Of course I understand but… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bore you.”

  “Not at all, Doctor. I find it fascinating,” Akane said.

  “Well, it’s only been recently that Pluto has garnered more attention. Being small and frozen, it’s not as exciting as the other planets, you see. In fact, there are some who consider it a Kuiper belt object and not a planet at all. Yet if it is this, then surely it is a representative of the belt, and therefore worthy of study.”

  “The Kuiper belt… That’s where comets come from, right?” Yukari asked.

  “One of the places, yes!”

  The Kuiper belt formed a great ring of innumerable celestial objects just outside of Pluto’s orbit, all too distant and small to see from Earth, even with a decent telescope. Most of them just sat out there frozen in space for an eternity, but when something happened to kick one out of orbit, it would plummet toward the sun, becoming a beautiful streaming-tailed comet.

  Tho
ugh some comets came from even farther afield, those with a relatively frequent orbit were usually thought to have originated in the Kuiper belt, where Pluto stood as lord of the gates.

  “So Pluto’s like the big boss of the comets.”

  “That’s what I want to find out. Even Voyager missed Pluto on its survey of the outer planets. It’s the last large object in the solar system that hasn’t been studied from relatively up close. If Orpheus makes it there, it will be the first probe to observe Pluto from space local to it. I’m sure we’ll see some astronomy textbooks rewritten.”

  “When is it scheduled to arrive?”

  “Oh, the trip will take twelve years. It takes even light a good four hours to cover the distance, after all. How old will you be then?” the professor asked.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Splendid. I’m jealous. Until recently, I had given up hope that I would ever see a close-up image of Pluto in my lifetime. But now I’ve made up my mind,” he said with rising cheer. “As of today, I’m giving up doughnuts and cigarettes! This is all thanks to you, you know,” he added. “Thank you ever so much.”

  “You’re welcome, and I hope I can see those pictures with you someday.”

  The transmission was over, but Akane remained facing the speaker, tears welling weightlessly in the corners of her eyes.

  [ACT 8]

  THEY USUALLY WENT home immediately after their work was done, but now the girls had to wait until their orbit took them back to the ocean near the Solomon Islands. With the abruptness of their mission, there hadn’t been time to properly mobilize retrieval teams.

  That would be another eleven hours, or another twenty-four if they wanted to avoid a splashdown at night. Now came the tough part: killing time. Since they were already there, Yukari and Akane decided to spend that time lounging in the shuttle. The two girls sat by the rear observation window, nibbling on freeze-dried strawberries and observing the progress toward the Orpheus launch.

  Norman and Gordon were out there now in their space suits, fiddling with the engine and making adjustments.

  “This is incredibly nerve-racking to watch. I mean, it takes them minutes just to pick up a new tool,” Yukari muttered.

  “It’s not their fault.”

  “I know that. It’s just, it’s hard to sit here and do nothing. I want to be out there helping them.”

  “I’m not sure they’d appreciate that. Guys don’t like being helped.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Yukari said, but she understood well enough. This was their chance to reclaim their honor. Even she knew better than to take that away from them.

  In truth, the NASA astronauts’ patience and stamina were astounding. Each trip outside lasted several hours, and while they had water and some candy inside their helmets to keep their energy up, they never took anything like a break. That, and just moving your arm in one of those space suits was like doing a rep with a heavy dumbbell in weight training.

  I could never do what they’re doing, Yukari thought.

  Disaster struck five hours after the girls’ arrival on the shuttle. They were on middeck at the time. The intercom monitoring the two astronauts’ conversation squawked with static.

  “What the hell—”

  “Get down!”

  Akane and Yukari quickly made their way to the upper deck to find the captain and Luis glued to the rear observation window.

  “You two okay?” the captain shouted into his intercom. Yukari peeked over his shoulder at the window and her mouth dropped open.

  Orpheus and the upper-stage engine were gone.

  The payload bay was entirely empty, save for Norman and Gordon who were drifting around just outside of it.

  “We’re okay.” It was Norman. “I felt a little gas pressure, but life support’s all good. Just, we lost it. Godamnit! We lost it!”

  “Try to calm down, Norman. I want you back in the ship. We’ll think of a way to deal with this.”

  “What happened?” Yukari asked.

  “The upper-stage engine fired. Luckily, no one was hurt.”

  “What, it exploded?”

  “No, it fired. Something caused it to start a thrust.”

  A call came in from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Atlantis, this is Houston. We saw what happened. Do you have a report?”

  “Houston, we have an accident. No injuries or life lost. I’m bringing our two men outside back into the shuttle. I’ll send more details once I’ve had a chance to talk with them.”

  “The engine burn’s stopped,” Luis said. He was standing by the window, tracking Orpheus with a pair of binoculars. “It was a controlled burn, looks like—and it’s gone. I’ve lost visual contact.”

  “Norman, you copy?” the captain asked.

  “We can talk. We’re inside the air lock.”

  “Did you check the tag? Can Orpheus be remotely controlled?”

  “No remote control. The safety tag was still on.”

  “Can you confirm, Gordon?”

  “I saw the tag with my own eyes. We checked it before releasing the restraints on the probe.”

  “Any idea how the engine could’ve fired?”

  “You got me.”

  “Houston, this is Atlantis. Something caused Orpheus’s engines to fire while the safety tag was still on. It was a controlled burn, lasting roughly three minutes. That’s all we know at present.”

  “Roger. We’re checking Orpheus’s telemetry. We’ll let you know as soon as we find something.”

  Yukari went back to middeck. She wanted to know what was going on, but now was not the time to interrupt. The air lock hatch opened and Norman came out. He closed the hatch behind him and found the intercom. “You’re clear to come in, Gordon.”

  The nameplate on the left arm of the space suit was scorched black and half of his visor was clouded.

  “Norman! Are you all right?” Yukari asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  His face dripped with sweat, and there was a hard look in his eyes. And something else too—anger. Norman began undoing his gear.

  “Can I help with anything?” Yukari asked.

  “Nothing I want your help with.”

  “I’m okay with sweat, and urine.”

  He glanced at her. “Then hold up the bottom half of my suit.”

  Yukari got a grip on Norman’s legs while he began undoing the connector with the torso. The space suit split into two halves. He took off his liquid cooling garment until he was in his undershirt and MAG. The letters stood for Maximum Absorbency Garment—basically a glorified diaper astronauts wore during liftoff, landing, and extravehicular activities to absorb urine. The smell of sweat filled the deck.

  “Are you injured? Any bruises?”

  “I’m okay. The blast only hit me for a second,” Norman said as he slipped on his shipwear. “Any word on Orpheus?”

  “The burn went for three minutes, and by then it was out of sight.”

  “Three minutes?” Norman bit his lip.

  “What does it mean?”

  “A three-minute burn isn’t enough to break the probe from orbit, but it makes it very difficult—if not impossible—for the shuttle to retrieve it.”

  “Can I ask another question?”

  “What?”

  “What’s the safety tag?”

  “It’s a nonconductive strip that keeps the controller from accidentally activating the engine. Orpheus is wirelessly controllable, but we keep the tag on until it’s completely prepared for launch to avoid an accident. As long as the tag’s on there, nothing like this should ever have happened.”

  “So you can’t remote control it and slow it down now?”

  “Most likely not. You’d think if it was malfunctioning, we might have a chance, but that’s too much to hope for.” Norman turned to go to the upper deck.

  “Norman—”

  “Later.”

  Yukari’s mouth snapped shut.

  Akane came down the hatch as
soon as Norman was through.

  “Oh, no, Yukari! What do we do?” She had tears in her eyes again, like a dam ready to crack wide open.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s my fault. When I went into the engine space to retrieve the valve I must have broken something. That’s what happened! How will I ever face Dr. O’Reilly?”

  “H-hey!” Akane pressed her face to Yukari’s chest and cried.

  “Just hold on. Do you remember breaking anything?”

  “No…but I’m sure I touched the truss in at least a few places. It was hard to avoid.”

  “It’s not that easy to break an engine, Akane. You know they’re built to withstand quite a bit of heat and vibration.”

  Akane nodded, sniffing.

  “There’s still hope. Just try to stay calm. I want to see those ‘I can do anything’ eyes of yours, okay?”

  Akane stopped crying.

  “Or else I’ll have to take you off active duty.”

  Akane hiccuped for a little while longer, then gave a nod.

  An hour later, the captain called the entire crew to middeck.

  “Let’s go over what we know. First of all, just so there’s no false hope, you should know that the situation is not looking good. The engine burn came when Orpheus was nearly ready for launch. It’s now fallen into a roughly three-thousand-kilometer-high elliptical orbit.

  “That’s not all that different from its scheduled orbit, so if we could operate it remotely, it might be possible to refire the engine and send it on its way to Pluto. The fuel loss from the burn was still within tolerance levels.

  “However, we’ve been unable to establish remote control over the probe from the ground. This is likely due to the safety tag still being attached.

  “Furthermore, I’ve just heard from Houston about why this happened. While they can’t be certain until they actually see the probe, it seems likely that something happened during an unscheduled engine test before launch. Apparently, one of the technicians on the ground purposefully shorted the control circuits in order to fire the engines with the safety tag still on.

  “Time is tight, they needed to do the test, and removing the safety tag requires a lot of paperwork. Furthermore, the technician has admitted he has no memory of removing the jumper he used to short the firing circuits.”