I'm masochistically sticking to a regular schedule for this week. Here's the inevitable Space Guys installment, this time with a table of contents at the end. I also included a pic of the de-modified Moonship. By the way, it's pretty much certain that any tech specs I spelled out before are going to change.
All told, a month passed between Jason’s arrival on the Janus and the beginning of the voyage. When Alek did not demand his presence in her lab, he mostly spent time among the pilots, and she regularly came to join him. Usually, she would curl up in his lap and write or draw in her notebooks in silence while he touched her, usually stroking her hair or her legs. He had long since learned to continue what he was doing, no matter how the others stared. The one and only time he had stopped, she had gone on drawing a few moments before she said, “More, please.” Mercifully, no one had laughed, but several had excused themselves.
In the meantime, he and Jax did get to know the pilots. Their commander and instructor was an officer from the Federation named Yuri, officially one of the core crew. Of the pilots, four were from Mars besides Jax and himself. Of them, one was a moreno from the Union named Jackie, another was a woman of his acquaintance named Sandra, and the other two were a man and a woman from the Federation, the former named Vasily and the latter named Anastasia. Many assumed the sharp-tongued woman was involved with her male counterpart, though Jason suspected she favored old Yuri. For her part, she was scornful of him and the other Union pilots, except perhaps Jackie. “You are here because the ‘Mericans need a handsome farmboy for their propaganda,” she had told him at their first meeting. “I see your scores. You are not bad, but I had to beat a dozen who were better.” A couple days later, Alek had risen from her usual place and slapped her in the face without provocation, warning or any further comment, and she said little to Jason after that.
He got what he counted as his big break when he was chosen to fly the payloader Pegasus on a run to a base on Deimos. He had expected to make the flight with the charming Lieutenant Harrison, the most senior pilot and for all intents and purposes the chief of the pilots. His first surprise had come as he approached the airlock that joined the payloader to the fuselage of the Janus. The Federation officer Tanya standing there, along with an officer and eight troopers from the military contingent aboard the ship. They had been as reclusive as anyone could be in the long but confined space. Now, they wore breathers with masks that hid their faces. “What is this about?” he asked warily.
“I’m Lieutenant Heinzman,” the officer said. They had in fact met before. “This is Sgt. Lazarevic of the UN Airborne Crisis Response Corps… the stratotroopers.” One of the masked warriors nodded, silently but politely. “Your mission has been modified. You will be carrying these troops with you, as an exercise to familiarize them with the vessel and equipment. You are to provide any assistance requested, and not to interfere with their exercises. Any questions?” Jason shook his head.
Tanya took over. “These are troopers from the Federation and its outlying satellites,” she said. “They are all highly experienced, but most of them were reassigned from separate units. We needed to give them an opportunity to integrate with each other. So, Boat Ride protocol.” That got a nod and a hint of a smile from Jason. “Just fly straight, mostly. I’ll be coming along to handle things in back. The rest will fall into place.”
He boarded the craft, to emerge in the main cabin. It was in itself the size of a multipurpose aircraft, with a standard configuration that included up to 24 seats, space for two all-terrain rovers plus ample cargo, and sleeping quarters for 3. He knew that a much larger hold lay beneath it. He paused at the sight of Alek’s largest robot hooked up in one of the cargo bays. He shrugged it off and kept walking through the seating area, arrayed in the main as a narrow aisle with a line of single seats on the left and rows of two on the other. He descended a short stair to the cockpit and took the pilot’s seat. He took no notice of footsteps coming up a second stairway from the main hold, until a voice said, “Hey, Farm Boy.” He started in his chair as if jolted with a prod. Of course, it was Alek.
“Hi, Alek,” he said. “Are
you, ah, helping with the cargo?”
“You could say that,” she
said. She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m going to help you fly. Didn’t I tell
you I’m a pilot?”
“Of course,” he said. She
hadn’t, but he was long past being surprised. “I, ah, thought Harrison was
going to be copilot.”
“He’s coming, of course,” Alek said. She had not yet sat down. “Just as communications officer. Darling man, isn’t he? Thing is, actually… You are my copilot. Won’t that be fun?” He rose, and she took the pilot’s chair.
The cockpit had three seats plus a communications station, which replicated another in the cabin. The canopy was huge yet elegant, making it very possible to look straight into space without seeing the instruments or the payloader itself. What no one seemed to have calculated was that most of the time, there was nothing to see in space but space. At the moment, the main thing he could see was a shuttle pod was moored to the nose of the payloader. He had to swivel his seat and twist his neck to see a sliver of Mars. By the time he confirmed that, Harrison had joined them. The Papuan Aisi took the comm station. Alek addressed him in Javanese as he entered. He looked at her with a frown. “Talk to me in English, please,” he said. “Even Javans don’t like speaking Javanese.”
Alek smiled and began
going through the startup. “A quick delivery run will be nice, won’t it?” she
said to Jason.
“What do you mean?” he
said. “Phobos is the short run. This is Deimos; it’s a 6-hour run each way. Did
you not see that?”
“Look, I want to be with
you,” she said. “You want to spend time with me, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Jason answered. Somehow, he knew Aisi was rolling his eyes.
They reached Deimos 5 and
a half hours later, a little ahead of schedule. More time went into matching
speeds with the moon. By then, Jason and Alek were laughing as they talked.
Harrison freely added to the conversation, and Aisi got in a word now and then.
“You work well together,” the lieutenant said as they made their approach. “You
don’t really know until you try. That’s the real reason they have
non-fraternization policies. Couples can perform better together than anyone,
but it can make things a lot worse as soon as they have trouble. There was a
time early on when they let men and women fly in rotation. There was a man and
a woman who made the 4-day run to Luna. They got married when they touched
down. But when they got back to Gaia, they filed for divorce immediately. There
was a story that he had a black eye. After that, they pulled women out of the
line.”
“Why didn’t they keep the
women and pull the men?” Alek mused.
“Who says they didn’t consider it?” Harrison said. “What it came down to was, there were more men than women.”
As they made their
approach, Sergeant Lazarevic came to the cockpit. It turned out that the
commander’s first name was Nadia. She had removed her mask, though the uniform
still gave her figure an androgynous look. “Are we going to land on the moon?”
she asked.
“There’s really no reason
not to,” Jason said. “The gravity is so low, taking off again doesn’t use any
less fuel than catching a package in orbit.”
“We would like to try a
simulated suborbital launch,” the Sergeant said. “A shuttle pod with four
troops will launch and descend to the surface. Lt. Harrison will pilot it. You
would circle again and land at a spot they have secured. Can that be done
safely?”
“In theory, yes,” Jason answered. “We’re still matching velocity. It’s not as fast as Phobos, but it’s still tricky. If something as big as Pegasus came down too hard on a moon as small as Deimos, the impact force could knock the moon right out of orbit. It’s the Pyramus and Thisbe problem.”
Jason was puzzled to see
Alek look confused. “At the UN Academy, we use myths to explain astronautical
problems,” Jason said. “Pyramus and Thisbe is the story about two lovers
separated by a wall. It was in Shakespeare.” That got a nod from Alek. “So, there’s
a man and w woman on either side of a wall, right? They can talk to each other
through the wall, they can see each other where there’s a hole, but they can’t
get through the wall. Only here, the wall isn’t a barrier, but differential
velocities. The man and woman could be going the same speed, but still in
opposite directions. They can circle each other at the same distance, they
could get closer and closer, but they still can’t touch…”
“Because they would go splat,” Alek finished. “But maybe it is worth it, no?” She gave a very disconcerting laugh, then patted Jason’s hand. “You are romantic after all.”
Lazarevic strapped herself in an auxiliary seat and gave an order in Russian. A light showed that the air locks were sealed. The comm chatter recorded an assortment of howls, curses and groans as the shuttle launched. By the time they touched down, the Pegasus had circled the moon again. Harrison waved a pair of hand lamps to direct their flight path. They came down in a crater, a few hundred meters away from the cluster of life-support pods that was the base. There was a fearsome jolt and a long slide. The troopers came to meet them, driving a surface rover that looked like a bubble on tracks.
“The troopers will load the payload,” Harrison told them. “It will take a little while. In the meantime, you can visit the base.” He pointed in the direction of the base. It looked much like the Janus, except its pieces had clearly been cobbled together from sources of different ages and purposes. Jason looked at Alek.
“What is this?” he asked.
“What is it, really?”
“It is a surprise,” she
said innocently.
They made their way to
the base. When they reached the air lock, the outer door cycled from inside.
Jason took off his helmet as they waited for the inner door to open. He froze
at the sight of the figure waiting on the other side. “Dad,” he said. The other
man spread his arms wide as they embraced.
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