Rocket Girls: The Last Planet (11 page)

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

“
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.”

“
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.”

“That’ll be the end of that project,” the man in the overalls said.

“Couldn’t they just fix it and relaunch?” Akane asked.

The man shook his head. “Hardly. The shuttle schedule is booked solid for the next ten years. That probe was sitting in a warehouse for ten years before it even got to go up the first time. There’s no guarantee it’ll be serviceable when its time comes around again.”

“That sounds like a waste.”

“Sounds like business as usual in space development to me. Me, I work on support booster shielding. It takes about four months to finish those. Four months to make, and they throw them away after two minutes into launch.”

“I had no idea,” Akane said, looking down.

“Hey, I don’t mind,” the man said. “At least they serve their purpose. Those one-shot-only modules can’t be fully tested, so you really have to know your stuff in order to make them. Not that you should worry. I know my stuff.”

One of the man’s friends came by and told him to stop bragging.

Akane nodded, thinking to herself.

The girls met back at their seats and resumed lunch. Yukari was eating a whitefish meuniere, Matsuri an omelette, and Akane had chosen a marinated octopus dish. For starch, each of them had rice. Though there were some local islanders on staff, the majority of people in the cafeteria were Japanese, and the food was hardly different from what they got back home.

“You eat like a bird, Akane. Don’t you get hungry?” Yukari asked.

“Well, to tell the truth I would like a little more, but I only have three hours until you know what…”

“Oh, right.”

“You-know-what” was centrifuge training. Akane’s studies and operational training were both going perfectly smoothly. The only hiccup: lack of high-G resilience.

“How’s that going? Getting used to it?”

“Not really. I can only last five seconds or so at 8 G.”

“Five seconds? That’s plenty. That’s all you have to take during the real thing.”

“But on a real liftoff you have vibration too, so Satsuki says I need extra tolerance to get through—”

“You do get rattled around a fair bit.”

“That, and the high G on reentry lasts a lot longer.” Akane sighed.

“Don’t worry so much. You’ve got another five months before your first flight. You’ll get used to it in time.”

“Just sleep on it tonight. I’ll get you up!” Matsuri said cheerfully.

Yukari rolled her eyes. “That’s very nice of you, Matsuri, but do you mind wiping your mouth with a napkin or something? You’re covered in ketchup.”

“Oh, I’ll get it later.”

“No, wipe right when it gets on you. That’s called being civilized.”

“Civilized people sure have it tough.”

“Yes, we like it that way.”

“
Hoi
.”

“That reminds me,” Akane said suddenly. “You say
hoi
a lot, Matsuri, but what does it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything at all,” Yukari declared.

“Really?” Akane asked.

“Either that or it means everything.”

Akane looked confused.

“You explain it, Matsuri!”

“
Hoi?
”

“Do you have any idea what we’re talking about?”

“
Hoi
.”

“There. See what she did?” Yukari fumed. “That’s the way it always is with her. That’s the way it is with everyone down here in the South Pacific. You don’t have to have a sensible conversation because you don’t need to actually communicate information to survive. All you need are a few coconut trees and you’re golden.”

Akane shook her head and chuckled. She was about to tear apart Yukari’s theory when a blaring announcement from the PA system cut her off.

“All astronauts to the briefing room immediately. I repeat, all astronauts to the briefing room immediately.”