An Accidental Alliance (24 page)

     
“I don’t recall seeing you scheduled for this shift either,” Park shot back.

     
“It’s the in place to be,” Tina laughed in her contralto. The deep voice coming out of the slim pilot always surprised Park. Tina looked like she ought to have a relatively high voice and giggle a lot, but she was a serious person at heart and not at all prone to the giggles, even when drunk. “I take it you couldn’t sleep either?”

   
  
“I’m surprised more of us aren’t up,” Park chuckled.

     
“Paul and Velvet were here until a half hour ago,” Tina reported.

     
“Did they leave together?” Park asked. He was only kidding. The two had been getting on each other’s nerves since they had awakened.

     
“How did you guess?” Tina responded.

     
“Are you having me on?” Park asked accusingly.

     
“Not at all,” Tina replied. “It surprised the heck out of me too. Maybe there’s hope for world peace after all.”

     
“I wish them well,” Park shook his head, “but I won’t count on world peace even if we bring back the Miss America Contest.” Tina chuckled politely. “Any problems?”

     
“All systems appear to be functioning normally,” Tina replied, and then with uncharacteristic humor added, “We’re all going to die.”

     
“You want to live forever?” Park retorted.

     
“Or die trying,” Tina assured him. They grinned at each other. “I don’t suppose you brought coffee for two did you? The stuff here in mission control is six hours old and starting to evolve a new civilization of its own.”

     
“And it’s Mer coffee, not the stuff we brought with us,” Park added.

     
“I like the Mer stuff actually,” Tina replied. “Just as well, we don’t have much of the real thing left anyway.” Park reached over and took Tina’s cup and poured half of his mug’s worth into it. “Thanks,” Tina told him as she accepted it back.

     
“We don’t?” Park asked, referring to the coffee supply.

     
“We’ll be out in six months or less, I hear,” Tina told him. “I figured you were pulling rank to get it, in fact.”

     
“I don’t do that,” Park shook his head. “Someone must just like me. But I don’t mind Mer coffee either. It’s still burnt beans, it’s just different beans is all.”

     
“It’s a bit lower in caffeine,” Tina pointed out, “but that’s not really a bad thing, I think.”

     
“No, not really,” Park agreed. “It’s still got enough to get you going in the morning but with less chance of jitters. It will do. I just miss honey is all.” It was a repetition of his earlier conversation with Marisea, but with different results.

     
“Yeah,” Tina nodded, “but I’m not interested in the stuff the Atackack make. It puts me off bee honey too when you get right down to it. But you know there are some naturally produced syrups we could call honey.”

     
“Are there?” Park asked.

     
“Oh yes,” Tina replied. “There’s a thick, sweet liquid you can get from pressing the fruit of a certain tree the Mer grow up north. It’s got a strong flavor, sort of like date syrup and then there’s something similar to a pitcher plant, but larger, down around the end of the Zontisso River, that produces a clear sugar-based syrup from what I hear. Taodore was telling me about it the other day. He felt it may have been bred to produce that syrup intentionally somewhere in the distant past.”

     
“And all along the northern edge of the supercontinent there are still maple trees,” Park told her, “so we won’t be lacking for something to pour over our pancakes.”

     
“Oh, that reminds me. I should do something for breakfast,” Tina remembered.

     
Park looked at his watch. “I’ve arranged for meals to be brought in here all day,” he informed her, “but it will be another half hour or so before breakfast is served.”

     
“Oh,” Tina nodded. “It would take me longer than that to go home and make something. I can wait.”

     
There was a growing feeling of tension and anticipation in Mission Control as the morning passed. Conversations gradually shortened and eventually disappeared save for anything directly related to the impending launch. “I just want this over with,” Arn complained testily a half hour before the launch time. “I’d like to go back home. There’s too much work to do to take the whole day off.”

     
Of the entire colony, only Arn and Patty Zinco were still actually living in the original base installation. They had paired off fairly early on and Park knew that Patty would like to move into a real house, but Arn still felt the need to be within a few minutes of the Central Ops room so they had taken over an entire floor in the former residential levels and had the place made over to suit them. However, with the rocket housed in a silo directly attached to the base, the base was deemed too close to allow anyone to be there during the launch itself so Arn had been forced to order an evacuation despite all precautions.

     
“At least your home isn’t directly in the shadow of that giant firecracker,” Park told him. “No matter what happens, the base is likely to survive. If that bird does a belly flop just after clearing the silo, I might not even be able to find the foundation when the fire goes out.”

     
“You chose to live there,” Arn reminded him.

     
“And I’ll rebuild if I have to,” Park told him. “It’s got a nice view of the river and who knows? Someday Iris and I may find the time to put in a garden.”

     
“T minus thirty minutes and countdown is resumed,” Iris, the voice of Mission Control announced. Park looked around and spotted her on the other side of the room. He waved and she blew him a kiss in return.

     
“Why was it halted?” Arn asked nervously.

     
“That was planned,” Park explained. “We always meant to hold the count at thirty minutes for a ten minute systems check.”

     
“Why not just add ten minutes to the full count and check while the clock is running?” Arn asked.

     
“Because the ten minutes was an estimate,” Park told him. “It might have only taken five or may have run on another half an hour. It’s no big deal. The window will be open for three hours today. We have a lot of wiggle room. Look, Arn, there’s no need for you to be down here on the floor and someone ought to be up in the gallery making our guests feel welcome.”

     
Arn turned around to see where Prime Terius and his various ministers were seated, watching the proceedings and nodded. The gallery was only a few inches higher than the control floor and behind it was a large wall of reinforced glass so they could both watch the crew of Mission Control and the actual launch. The hill tops could be seen through the wall and the larger one covered the main installation of Van Winkle Base and the slightly shorter one was where the missile was.

     
The next half hour felt like it lasted a week. No one dared to speak except to make official reports about the rocket’s status, down range weather and confirmation that their world network of tracking stations were in ready status.

     
And then finally, “T minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, ignition, three, two, one… negative contact confirmed. We have lift-off!” Iris shouted loud enough to have been heard without the public address system.

     
There was a smattering of applause from the gallery until they realized no one in the control room was celebrating yet. Then a sound of dismay caused Park to spin around to see what had caused it. Through the large glass wall there were huge plumes of white steam and smoke billowing up into the air. There were half a dozen small plumes all around the base of the hill where excavators had carved out the ventilation tunnels, but the largest of all was coming straight up from the top of the second biggest hill looking for all the world like a volcanic eruption. The rockets were firing, but so far the missile had not cleared the top of the silo. The bird might be off the ground, but it wasn’t flying yet.

     
Almost painfully slowly, the nose of the long craft eased out of the hill top, still enshrouded by the violently spewing exhaust. It seemed to hover there forever in the man-made storm and then it slid upward gently with increasing speed. Up it went, leaving a giant contrail in its wake. Higher and higher until only the contrail remained in sight. Finally the men and women at their consoles began to celebrate. Loud cheers erupted from the floor, echoed by the spectators in the galley. One woman, Park couldn’t see who, let loose with a wild ululation that echoed through the large hall and startled the Mers, who had never heard anything like it.

     
As long as those first few seconds had seemed to last, the next few hours rushed by in unseemly haste. The rocket was sixty miles down range and twenty five miles up, and then almost immediately it was two hundred miles down range and sixty-five miles above sea level. Soon it was beyond the primary tracking antennae in Van Winkle Town, past the Atlantic Mountains and screaming over the river-filled jungles of what had once been South Africa. A moment later the trackers in the remnant of the Indian Ocean, that vast inland sea called “The Sink,” had picked it up as it made its way toward Asia and the Atackack territiories. They saw the primary stage splash into the Sink even as the rest of the craft raced onward and upward.

     
Then, just as suddenly, it was out over the Ocean and settled into a nearly circular orbit at three hundred and eighty kilometers above sea level and that’s where the tricky part began. Just before dinner, after the fourth complete orbit, the payload of the missile split into three parts and one of them was directed into an even higher orbit. Slightly less than thirty-one minutes later the second part started climbing and then a bit over half an hour later, the third’s booster turned on and all three began their long climb to their planned positions thirty-five thousand, eight hundred kilometers directly over the Equator.

     
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Park announced at the press conference some time later, “This morning at four forty-three, the third of our satellites successfully reached its position in geostationary orbit. So far, two of the satellites are functioning perfectly, but we’re only getting intermittent signals from the third. Sadly that third is the most important, being the one that is placed to service this installation and most of Western Pangaea.

     
“Even as I speak, we have a team working running diagnostics and attempting to ascertain the cause and amount of damage,” Park went on. “Once we know that, we can hopefully figure out how to repair it and put the satellite in service. Questions?”

     
A dozen Mer hands shot into the air. As of yet, there were no humans in the news media. Park was grateful for that. There were too few humans on Pangaea to waste on reporting the news in this first generation. They were all too busy making it. “Yes?” Park asked pointing at one Mer woman in the front row.

     
“Mister Holman,” she began. “What will you do if you are unable to bring the satellite into working order?”

     
It was a good question, Park had to admit. It was one that had Arn and Prime Terius arguing for the last half a day. It was also why they waited until late afternoon to break the news. Taodore had been to see Park three times so far about it as well. They had discussed this from the start, but now that the possibility was actually there, everyone felt the need to argue it over once again.

     
“That all depends on what our diagnostics tell us,” Park replied. “It is possible, the problem is merely that the solar panels that produce the necessary power to the satellite failed to deploy correctly. If they are still folded up, the device will only receive a fraction of the power it needs and would indeed act like it has been so far. To that end we are trying to determine if the unfolding mechanism is stuck. If so, repeated commands to fold and unfold may loosen it up.”

     
Park seriously doubted that would work. It had already been tried dozens of times with no discernable results,

     
“But what will you do if that doesn’t work?” she followed up.

     
Park responded, “There are other possibilities. The satellite may be spinning end over end. It is intended to rotate on its axis, of course, but with the solar cells oriented toward the sun. We’ve also been trying various minor attitude corrections, but not knowing where it started, it will take some time to find the right position.” Park knew that was pure nonsense. One of the first things they had checked was the attitude and spin. The satellite was fine in that respect. “There are many other possible solutions to try and our simulation team is devising still more.”

     
“Simulation team?” one of the men in the press corps asked out of turn.

     
Park smiled. Normally he might ignore a question that was asked before he called on the reporter who asked it, but he was hoping someone would pick up his queue. “Yes,” he smiled broadly. “It is standard operating procedure, or SOP, to work out all missions on a computer simulation before proceeding.” Was it? Park wasn’t sure about Mer space operations, but it had been the way it was done at Van Winkle Base. “We keep the simulation running during a mission for just such an eventuality. Now that this has happened, we are using the simulator to find various configurations and situations that would result in the sporadic data we are receiving from the satellite.” For the umpteenth time, Park wished they had named the satellites or assigned a project name to the launch. It would have made it easier to discuss now. Well, no help for that. He pushed on through the questions.