Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) (26 page)

Zeke shook his head sadly, “It rarely is my friend, it rarely is.”

One of the ubiquitous vans showed up and took them to the airfield where a Lear Jet waited. They were welcomed aboard by one of the pilots who, when questioned said, “I’m supposed to take you to the Bahamas.” I don’t know much more than that and I’m not sure I’m even supposed to tell you that much. The three of them rode in comfort in a cabin with seating for nine. They raided a well-stocked pantry, taking a few drinks to the pilots who finally confessed that they were going to a private island in the Bahamas that had its own airfield. At that point they reached a dead end on either the knowledge of the pilots, or what they were willing to tell.

Phil leaned back and waved his Coke expansively. “The Bahamas! Can’t be all bad.”

Zeke morosely shook his head. “Such naiveté.”

At sunset they landed on a small island and were shown to rooms in a large whitewashed mansion by a staff of very polite native Bahamians. They were offered a dinner of locally caught snapper and eagerly agreed. While they drank High Rock Lager on a huge patio and waited for their food another jet landed. It appeared to be another Lear Jet but the engines had a bizarrely high pitch.

Silence settled and the sound of the surf below the porch took over. Phil tried again, “A beer, the Bahamas, someone cooking fish. Can’t be all bad.” He looked at Zeke out of the corner of his eye.

Zeke looked pleasantly relaxed. Nonetheless, he said morosely, “Just wait for the other shoe to drop.”

Chuck snorted. “Give it up Zabrisk. Potter here has a deep suspicion of things that go well and feels that the only antidote is moaning about how bad the future will be. He’d be complaining if you hung him with a new rope.”

Phil leaned back in his chair, “Well,
I’m
happy.”

Zeke moaned piteously.

A waiter brought out their fish and was followed by a slender man with a crew cut carrying a plate for himself. He said, “Hey, you guys must be the astronauts. I’m Robert Braun.” He pointed to another man behind him, “This is Gene Mort, my assistant. And those guys,” He pointed to a group of four behind Gene, “are our aircraft mechanics, ‘Joe,’ ‘Manny,’ ‘Meg,’ and ‘Dennis.’”

The mechanics waved and sat at another table, Braun sat with the astronauts and leaned forward, “Do you guys know what you’re doing here yet?”

The three slowly shook their heads.

Braun grinned and rubbed his hands together, “We’re going to fly up to the International Space Station Saturday!”

“What?” Chuck exclaimed.

Zeke moaned but said nothing.

Phil’s hair stood on end. Did Braun work for the company that had rescued the Space Station?!

While they ate, Braun gleefully told them that he did indeed work for the company that had “rescued” the Station. However, he explained that they had done it with a small, AI piloted, rocket.

To their wide-eyed consternation, he explained what “ports” were and how they allowed a small rocket to fly all the way to orbit. “But we haven’t flown a manned flight yet.” Braun said, “You guys are here to help us figure out if we’re ready to do so.”

Apparently, in the morning they were to inspect a new spacecraft and evaluate it during an unmanned flight to orbit. They were to use their aeronautical and space experience to determine whether they felt it was safe enough for a “manned flight.”

Phil said, “Why am I here? I just started training.”

Braun stared at him. “Really?”

Phil nodded.

“Sorry, I have no idea.” He shrugged, “My understanding was that we were getting experienced pilot-astronauts.”

After a sleepless night, the astronauts were horrified to find that the craft being sent into orbit was a modified Lear Jet! Chuck and Zeke began listing all the reasons why that was a terrible idea and would never work. Braun met each objection with a well-reasoned explanation. Chuck rapped the wing, “Without ceramic tiles it’ll burn up on re-entry!”

Braun looked at him in exasperation. “Have you been listening? It’s already re-entered four times! With essentially unlimited fuel, we simply retrorocket until it gets down to where it’s just beginning to engage the atmosphere. Then we point the nose up so that the rocket’s thrust maintains that altitude while continuing to reduce speed until it’s moving slowly enough to tolerate the airspeed.
Then
we lower the nose and let it ‘fly’ into the atmosphere!”

Zeke grunted, “The tires are going to fail in vacuum.”

“Once again! It’s been to space and landed
four
times. The tires have spun fiber and
are
vacuum tolerant.
But
, we use ports to lower the pressure in them after take off and re-inflate them before landing. We’re still planning to change them before the manned flight though.”

Eventually convinced that it might be possible,
if
all this “port” stuff actually worked, the astronauts inspected the modified Lear Jet. They had the mechanics open and close panels and answer questions. While they were doing that the other Lear Jet took off and turned back towards the States.

Late morning they launched “Amelia” again, watching her turn west and climb at an astonishing rate that had Zeke shaking his head. Then they trooped back inside to watch the screens at the control station as the sky went from blue to black and the curve of the Earth became apparent. When Amelia reached an altitude of 200 miles, the instruments showed the cabin was still pressurized. In fact it maintained the 8,000 ft altitude pressure using only about 10% of the ports that had been installed to pressurize the cabin and compensate for leaks. It did it without the blowers being activated at all. All the equipment on board apparently still functioned. Zeke sat down at the duplicate controls and undertook some maneuvers—rolls, accelerations, end over end flips and decelerations. Then he morosely got up and let Chuck fly it some. Eventually, they had the AI turn it for home and trooped in for a late lunch.

Phil took a nap to make up for his lost sleep the night before and when he got up saw Zeke out going over Amelia with the mechanics again. Phil went for a swim. When he got back up to the airfield, many panels were still off Amelia and Zeke had his head up inside the underbody of the plane. From behind him Chuck said, “Zeke may piss and moan, but there isn’t anyone that’s more careful or more thorough. If he says it’s safe to fly—it’ll be safe to fly.”

That evening as they sat down to dinner, Braun said, “So what do you think guys? Is it safe for us to take it up tomorrow?”

Chuck and Phil both looked to Zeke who sat frowning at his paella. Finally he shrugged, “I guess so.”

Braun exploded, “You guess! Did you find anything wrong, or not?!”

Chuck laid a hand on Braun’s arm, “Dr. Braun, ‘I guess,’ is as good as it will ever get from the chronically gloomy Major Potter.” He patted Braun’s wrist, “Take what you can get.”

“Well then, are we ready to take her up for a manned flight tomorrow morning?”

Zeke shook his head, “Chuck and I’ll take it up alone the first time.”

Braun said, “I built it, I’ve got to go.”

Zeke rolled his eyes.

Chuck said, “It’s just crazy to risk a lot of people on the first manned flight. It’s also poor planning to take passengers on a test flight. If something goes wrong, Zeke and I will be worrying about our
passengers
, not how to handle the bird.” He looked back and forth at the others.  “How about this. What you really want is to get up to the ISS tomorrow night, right?”

Braun shrugged, then nodded.

“OK, in the morning we take it up to 65 miles, ‘the edge of space.’ We do it in an oxygen atmosphere and pre-breathe O2 before we go so that if there is a decompression we won’t get the bends. If something happens, we can get down quickly and we’ll be prepared for it. We come back and land, if everything went smoothly, we go up in the afternoon with you guys.”

Braun said, “I should go too. In an emergency bag if you want, but I know Amelia’s systems better than anyone, if you’re in trouble, you’ll need me.”

“What you know, you can tell us over the comm. You’ve never been in free fall have you?”

Braun shook his head.

“Seriously, if we have trouble you’ll likely be contributing to it by flailing around in the weightless environment.”

As they finished eating, they discussed safety precautions they could take during the manned flight.

Zeke and Chuck slept in the plane that night so they could be in a pure oxygen environment in case of decompression. A couple of hours later, when they landed in Amelia, even Zeke admitted that everything had gone perfectly. Well, he didn’t say “perfectly,” he said, “OK,” but everything had gone exactly as planned.

The two astronauts and all four mechanics spent a couple of hours going over the modified Lear Jet
again
. Phil followed Chuck around, trying to learn but actually so excited he could hardly pay attention. The thought,
I’m going up into space!
kept ricocheting through his mind.

They loaded a rocket nozzle for the Station’s Crew Return Vehicle and some more supplies and strapped them securely into place. Finally they all got in and put on their emergency suits. Braun watched while Phil practiced reaching back to grab the slightly dome shaped transparent cover for the suit and sealing it.

The mechanics were still working on something so Phil heard the other Lear Jet land. Braun leaned up into the cockpit to tell the two astronauts it’d be a little longer. Apparently, a few more supplies had been delivered for the Space Station along with another passenger.

Zeke exploded, “This is
not
a joyride!” Phil heard him bitching.

Braun spoke quietly but Phil heard snatches, “…our CEO… deserves a ride…”

Phil rolled his eyes, picturing a pompous businessman with not a clue about space, horning in on what Phil thought of as “his trip.”

Phil’s nerves jittered and he wondered if he should go back to the head and empty his bladder one more time. Then he heard the chatter of the mechanics and the door of the jet was being closed back behind him. Braun went back, apparently to help the CEO into his emergency suit and Phil wondered if he should offer to help. After all the guy was probably clueless and would need baby sitting for every little thing.

Phil wasn’t contributing much otherwise, at least he could baby-sit. Before he actually unbuckled he heard them coming up the aisle so he settled back and tried again to relax. Someone leaned down next to him. He had started to turn when he heard Ell’s voice! “Hi Phil,” it whispered in his ear.

He leaned back wide eyed to see her grinning down at him. She winked, “I’m all googly eyed already…”

Epilogue

Dave Slager closed his eyes in satisfaction as he bit into his “fruit-urrito.” Taste sensations exploded across his palate and he grinned to himself. It had been his idea to have Jose roll peanut butter, chunks of banana, grapes, blueberries and blackberries all into a tortilla. He loved fruit-urritos and the other astronauts had begun ordering them as well. As he took a second bite, his AI said, “You have a call from Ms. Ell Donsaii.”

He chewed quickly and swallowed. “Yes?”

Ell’s bubbly voice came over his earphones, “Dr. Slager, sorry, Dave! We have a CRV nozzle to deliver! We should be there in about an hour and a half.”

“Really! That’s great! We’ll be expecting you.”

After they signed off, he turned back to his fruit-urrito with relish.

Eighty-five minutes later he watched as D5R’s modified Lear Jet approached on little jets from its thrusters.

Anya Stolchya manned the robotic Canadarm to grab Amelia and bring her adaptor to the airlock, though Slager suspected the precision control of the AI flying Amelia with all those attitude thrusters could have done it without the arm. Once they had a good seal and pressurized the airlock Slager opened the lock door and asked Ell to open Amelia’s side of the airlock. As it had before, air gusted from the sea level pressure in the Station’s lock into Amelia where the pressure was about the same as 8,000 feet. The pressure held. Slager said, “OK, Ell go ahead and close the door and we’ll put someone in the lock to start the unloading.”

He heard her grunt, then say, “Wait until we put some stuff in the lock for you.”

A box slowly sailed into the lock, followed by another one. Startled, Slager realized
this
mission was manned!

One by one the boxes kept coming until the lock was moderately full. Then a slender, reddish blond girl squirmed into the lock amongst the boxes and said, “OK, close the lock and bring up the pressure.”

A couple of minutes later a few boxes sailed into the Station followed by Donsaii still yawning to crack her ears from the air pressure change. Slager reached out to catch her expecting her to flail like most people do when they first try to do things in zero gravity. He was astonished to see her sail to a stanchion and grab on without difficulty, then she launched herself to him and grabbed on, giving him a big hug. “Hi, good to finally meet you in person!” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Wow!” Slager said, astonished to realize that the girl was
just
as beautiful as she looked on screen and wasn’t wearing
any
makeup. “You’re handling yourself very well for someone experiencing free fall for the first time.”

“Hah!” She laughed, “Am not! I spent 20 minutes barfing when we first went weightless.” She grinned and raised an eyebrow, “Sure glad I brought my toothbrush! But I feel fine now, probably because my stomach and
ninety percent of my intestines
are emm-teeeee!” Suddenly, she looked over his shoulder and launched herself off of him saying, “Mr. Taussan! Dr. Stolchya!” Slager turned to see her hugging both of them at the same time, they looking somewhat taken aback, but pleased nonetheless. “We can take you back down home if you guys want! I know you’ve been here longer than your missions specified.” By the time Slager had cycled the locks to let in more cargo and a couple more people Ell’d enthusiastically met and hugged everyone in the ISS.