It's the last day to do a third off-week post, so of course, it's more Space Guys! This will already contradict both numbers and specs I posted before, but I'm not bothering to change anything here. This is actually going through about all I have except notes and vignettes. As usual, a table of contents is at the end.
A day later, the time arrived for the launch of the Janus. Alek was called back to the Pegasus cockpit to assist, which earned Jason an invitation to accompany her. By apparent happenstance, the other two seats were occupied by women, Dr. Cahill and Tanya Plotnikov. Also present were Captain Raeder and a journalist named Lin, both seated in an observation lounge at the rear of the cockpit. Jason was vaguely unsettled to hear the women making small talk. It was Tanya who spoke first. “How is Harry?” she asked.
“He is doing fine,”
Cahill answered. “He’s still teaching. We’ve been talking about early
retirement.”
“And Jonathan? I heard he
graduated.” The tone of their voices was already giving Jason a picture of two
villains from Jax’s comic books discussing their mutually exclusive plans for
world domination.
“Yes, he’s going to
Stanford now,” Cahill answered. That jarred Jason. “How is Pyotor?”
“We are separated,” Tanya said. “It’s been a little while now. We haven’t told many people. We stay in touch. He has a post in Astana...”
As the chilly banter
continued, the captain spoke to the reporter, a woman from Edo. “Our mission
projections call for us to exit Mars orbit at 36,000 kilometers per hour, twice
our holding orbital velocity,” he said. A flatpanel screen showed a widening
spiral outward from Mars, through the treacherous orbits of its moons. “That
will be assisted by drop tanks and several boosters that will be left for
orbital retrieval. Once we pass Phobos, we will activate our secondary hydrogen
thrusters. That will push the ship past Deimos at 42,000 kph, a little under 10%
of our intended mission velocity. Of course, we will need to miss Phobos.”
“Of course,” Alek said. “Hitting a moon would be bad. Even little one like Phobos.”
“Yeah, Phobos always makes me nervous,” Jason said. Turning his head, he could see the moon emerging from behind Mars. In mere hours, it would circle back around the planet. He looked back to a news feed in progress. It mostly consisted of views of the ship from outside. It was by now almost covered in fuel tanks. On top of that, a number of boosters had been attached, each 45 meters long, to the ends of the pylons where the shuttles docked, to the tail, to the outside of the now-stationary life support ring, and even to the wings of the Pegasus.
The journalist turned to
him. “Jason Freeman,” she said. “You’re one of the boys from Mars, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. He added defensively, “I’m 23.”
She turned her camera
toward Alek. “And this is Aleksandra Kapek. Is it true the two of you were just
married?”
“No,” Alek said. “We knew
each other before, then we got back together. I tell him, I’m waiting for him
to put a ring on it.”
Jason’s face flushed, and he turned his head away. Before the journalist could ask another question, the first of many reports came from engineering. “The fusion reactor is online,” the chief engineer Potts reported. “All turbines are at 80%, 95, 100.”
Moxon arrived in person
to give his report. “The life support ring is fully evacuated,” he said. “I did
a last check for any unsecured possessions. If any of you left something I
missed, you’re cleaning it up.”
They heard next from old Yuri, stationed in an even tinier control room beneath the 10 meter dish at the front of the fuselage. “The directional array is locked with Olympus Mons,” he said. “We have a full telemetry feed. We’re also getting something extra, a feed of a news cast in progress.” Sure enough, one of the screens showed another pretty reporter in zero gravity, narrating alternating shots of the Janus from various manned and unmanned observation craft. The view shifted to the rear of the ship.
Finally, Alek spoke up. “The plasma thrusters are fully charged,” she said. She took Jason’s hand. “Bringing the hydrogen thrusters online. Starting launch sequence… let’s say, oh, 2 out of 4 primary thrusters per nacelle, AX factor at 25/75, plus 1st-stage particulate boosters…”
The cameras showed the engine nacelles flaring to life. They looked like the dots of a set of dice all turned on one edge, shining a vibrant blue-white. The boosters in the tail also flared to life, a brighter orange color like open flame. From outside, it was dramatic. From inside, it felt like little more than a mild jolt, albeit accompanied by the returning gravity. “AX, is that argon/ xenon?” the reporter asked, clearly a question for viewers rather than herself.
Alek shook her head. “Nobody have no xenon,” she said with uncharacteristically blunt inflection. “There was no enough, anywhere. 100 cubic meters would cost more than a kilogram of gold, if demand were the same. The X is really for, who knows what is it?”
“Yes,” said the captain. “Unfortunately, we could not obtain the projected supply of xenon. Dr. Capek is right, it is quite rare for a gas. It was necessary to augment the supply with other inert gases, mainly krypton. We hope to obtain more when we refuel at Jupiter…”
“Then how does argon compare?” the reporter asked.
“Everything is better
than argon,” Alek said. “Argon is kaka. But it is cheap kaka, plus Mars has maybe
even more of it than Gaia. Activating 2nd-sequence boosters. Going
to 4 out of 4 thrusters per nacelle, adjusting AX to 35/65…”
“It’s her pre-programmed
sequence, you know,” Tanya said to Jason. “She’s just talking.”
“Yes, of course he knows that,” Alek said. “But it’s fun, no?”
The boosters on the life-support ring ignited. Simultaneously, two more dots flared to life on each nacelle. The force became a steady push. Spent boosters began to fall away. The news feed showed that the flotilla of observation craft were either being left behind or overshooting the ship. Jason looked at the sensors and frowned. “We have to get the observation craft back, or one of them is going to go up our tail pipe,” he said. Even as he spoke, a feed from one observation satellite was cut off as it was wiped out by a collision with a booster. The others pulled back of their own accord.
“Are we slower than the
satellites?” the reporter asked, evidently confused.
“You are thinking wrong,” Alek said. “Speed does not matter in space. In space, you have to go faster than any person on Gaia ever has or ever will just to keep from falling down nearest gravity well. Space travel is about acceleration. When it come to that, Janus is, how you say, clonker. Americans talk about cars that go 0 to 60 in 6 seconds. If we started standing still with primary thrusters only, we would go 0 to 60 in 600 seconds. But a car does not mass 20 thousand tons, and it does not carry 5 times its weight in fuel. Give us a few hours, we would be coming up behind them again by the time they saw us go.”
“It’s Hercules and the Hind,”
Jason said. The others looked at him in confusion. “It’s an old myth. See,
Hercules was sent to capture a magic deer called the Golden Hind. But it turned
out that every time he was about to catch it, it went just half the distance there
was between them in the first place. So he got closer and closer, until it was
just a hand’s breadth away, but he still couldn’t catch it… What, don’t they
still tell stories about Hercules on Gaia?”
Moxon frowned. “That’s
not how the story of the Golden Hind goes,” he said. “It’s Achilles and the
Tortoise. It’s from Zeno. It wasn’t really a myth, it’s a puzzle.”
Alek patted Jason’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I like the way Martians tell stories. Here comes Phobos…”
Up ahead, Phobos drifted ominously toward the center of the canopy. The low-orbiting moon seemed directly ahead, but Alek’s screen showed that they would miss it by over 100 kilometers. Its orbit was fast enough that it was sliding off-center. As they passed, there was a sensation of banking. In fact, the close approach was just enough to turn them a few crucial degrees. “Bringing secondary thrusters online, AX holding at 40/60…” One more dot appeared in the center of each nacelle. A single light flared at the rear of each of the living modules. The moon passed and then receded. The news feed showed a distance shot from a ground-based camera as the ship went by. Alek pulled Jason in for a kiss. “Now for the fun part… firing 3rd-stage boosters and hydrogen thrusters.”
The feed from Phobos showed the flash as the thrusters in the tail ignited. The boosters on either side of the Pegasus ignited with a thrumming that shook the fuselage. For Jason, it felt like having a barbell resting on his chest. The burn went on for 5 minutes, 10, then 15. By then, the force was lessening. “Levelling off to AX 60/40,” Alek said. Beside her, Tanya was drumming her fingers in boredom.
“That was about half our liquid hydrogen reserves, by the way,” the Federation officer said. “Also 25% of our xenon, or whatever they filled the X tanks with. And we’re still only going about 10% of our optimum velocity, including what we already had parked in orbit.”
“What happens now?” the
reporter asked.
“We continue at flank acceleration for 8 days,” Raeder said. “When we reach 40% of optimum mission velocity, we will hold until we reach Jupiter, about 6 months into the trip. It’s really the fastest we can go and still receive logistical support from other ships. Once we pass the Jovian system, however, that will be moot. We will not pass within range of Titan Base until our return trip. Beyond the Saturnian system, there will be no other ships nor any base they could operate from. After we refuel, we will accelerate to optimum velocity for the remainder of the mission, which will be 14 months including deceleration time.”
“We’re in for the long
haul,” Alek said. She squeezed Jason’s hand. “But we’ll be together, no?”
“You bet,” he said.
In the aftermath, the crew and complement moved into the spindly forward fuselage, referred to as the Mission Fuselage. The main quarters was a cluster of hexagonal modules that had been the domain of the pilots. Here, the central spindle joined with two on either side, joined by disorienting junctions that went to modules above and below before proceeding to the main shuttle bays. On the lower port section, the pilots held a riotous celebration. Raeder was there, leading the Malays and Tanaka the Edonian in a folk song. He was clearly turning a blind eye to Anastasia, who perched with Jackie and Vasily on either arm. Two American officers, Yates and Smith, sang mutually hostile arrangements of Dixie and the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Cahill was doing pirouettes in the near-freefall, while Donald demonstrated a pinball cabinet he had modified with magnets to simulate gravity.
In the midst of it, Jason stretched out on a bunk/ couch with Alek in his lap, his back held against a bulkhead by the ship’s miniscule G-forces. As often happened in private and public, her request to “make love” amounted to caressing her while she scribbled away in her notebook. When Vasily tried to make a joke of it, she said without looking up, “Oh, he is very good. I do math much better when he is making love to me.”
It was Jax who ventured
to ask, “What do you do with the pencil?”
She paused at that.
“Once, I stab him,” she said. “He was very, very good that time. He even
finish before we went to Dr. Cahill. Since then, I keep between my teeth.” She
proudly and happily held up the pencil, showing a number of teeth marks.
The others looked to
Cahill, by then seated with Jax. “It would be confidential,” she said, “but
yes, it happened.”
Suddenly, Alek called out excitedly, “Oh, here is Mehmet! Come, over here!” She waved to a new arrival, a usually reserved officer from Iran who had entered with Tanya. While she talked with or leastways at him, Jason made his way to Harrison. “Listen,” he said after a few pleasantries, “what do you know about them?” He pointed to Dr. Cahill and then to Tanya.
Harrison smiled and nodded. “Well, there’s not a lot to say about Lana,” he said. “Leastways, not much anyone really knows that she wouldn’t tell you herself. She has a husband back on Gaia, and a son, not much younger than you. There was talk whether her man was the marrying kind, or the kind who would give her a son the regular way. Nobody really knows anything.”
He looked to Tanya, who was already scowling at Cahill. It was not Harrison but Moxon who spoke, seemingly materialized already smiling. “Now, that is a good story,” he said. “Tell him, Harry, you always do it well.” Harrison just smiled as the officer took a seat. Jason had seen the same reaction from Alek, and moderated his feelings about the man accordingly. It made him think of a film he had seen of a lion walking through a herd of elephants. It was as if whatever darkness he sensed in Moxon could not touch what was good and bright in them, so he was content to dwell among them.
Harrison nodded. “So, by
age 25, she had done a tour with the Navy,” he said. “She still had time to get
doctorates in mathematics and linguistics… the perfect credentials for a
codebreaker. She was a crack shot, too. She was headed straight for the top.
I’ve met people who knew her then. Two of them said it was her idea to meet her
opposite number.”
“Oh,” Jason said. “I think I’ve heard this… That was her?”
“Well, you’re ahead of
me, but I’d guess yes,” Harrison said. “She went to a lecture by the
Federation’s youngest analyst. He had credentials, he had experience, and he
was handsome. Of course, she looked pretty good herself.” Jason looked back at
Tanya. As he watched, she ran one hand through her hair and rested the other on
her hip. She still looked good. “They met after. He asked her out to dinner.
They started going steady. Nobody really cared, yet.”
Moxon nodded. “I met them back then,” he said. “The higher-ups thought she could turn him.”
“So, they got set to get married,” Harrison continued. “Maybe it was love, maybe he just knew how to push her buttons. Nobody was worried, yet. What they didn’t count on was, she had flipped for real. She started giving speeches in support of materialist socialism. She criticized Union leaders. She sent out letters with the names of scientists and academics who were working for military intelligence. Then she went to the Federation’s State network with a laundry list of the Union’s dirtiest secrets. That was when she defected, all the way. She brought them everything. Everything she had given us, everything she had learned about them, and everything else she had learned along the way. If we had been at war, she could have won it for the Federation single-handed.”
“Okay,” Jason said. “Then
how did she end up here? Sure, it’s prestigious, but it’s not a job that top
brass would jockey for.”
Harrison shrugged. “They gave her one promotion after another, for a while,” he said. “She preferred to stay close to her man. Ah, she also had five kids. That would have slowed her down. After a while, the promotions turned into desk jobs.”
Moxon smiled. “I’ll tell
you what really happened,” he said. “She never thought long-term. She gave her
new bosses everything up front. The thing was, we already knew what she knew.
More than that, we knew a lot more than she thought about her methods, not to
mention her weaknesses. She got herself to the top… but she had nowhere to go.”
“Yeah,” Harrison said.
“It was really worse than that. She burned all her bridges on the way out. Not
just with the Union, but with her colleagues, her friends and her family…”
“What it comes down to is, the Federation is all she has left,” Moxon said. “She’s the one person they know will stay loyal if push ever came to shove. It’s not that she wouldn’t betray them; she can’t.” Even as he spoke, he departed with a chuckle.
“Hey farmboy!” Anastasia called out. By then, she was playing on Donald’s machine. “I just set the high score!” Abruptly, she kissed Don on the lips.
Jason’s gaze was back on
Alek. “What about her?” he said. “All the times we’ve talked, she’s never said
anything about politics.”
Harrison smiled, his expression as innocent as Moxon’s was knowing. “I met her a while back,” he said. “I suppose you could say we’re old friends. What I can tell you is, people think she doesn’t talk politics because she doesn’t know what’s going on, or care. They’re wrong. She could tell you more than you would ever want to know… but she would rather have her math. Be glad for that. It’s why she’s as happy as she is. Be glad for it.”
He pointed back to Tanya. “People like her are the ones who care about politics,” he said. “Territory, wealth, armies, control. It always comes down to control. That’s where it got her. Do you think she’s happy with where it got her? But I’d wager she would still give up everything for her man. So if you have a good thing, hold on.”
That night, as much as it
could be called night, Alek openly slept in Jason’s bed for the first time,
though they were clothed in their outer garments and in full view of eight
others including Anastasia and the Malays. He continued to touch her long after
she was asleep, drawing the occasional half-intelligible murmur. When he
finally followed her into slumber, he dreamed of hiking the Hellas Rim, of
course with her. In the dream, they walked hand in bare, warm hand, which even
his dreaming self told him was preposterously impossible. When they reached the
top, they looked across the land. In the far, far distance, they saw a strange
obelisk, surely at least half a kilometer high, as tiny and slender as a needle
with distance. Alek pointed and started to say something. That was when he
awoke again, in dark near-weightlessness. He sighed and kissed the base of her
skull. Soon enough, he was asleep again.
In the darkness, Moxon smiled.
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