Starfire (6 page)

“I could've done without that last bit of detail, Boomer,” the conscious passenger said wryly.

“Sorry, sir, but that's what we have to be ready for,” Boomer said. He was astonished that the passenger didn't seem to be having one bit of difficulty breathing against the G-forces, which were now exceeding two Gs and steadily increasing as they accelerated—his voice sounded as normal as back on Earth. “Battle Mountain may adjust his oxygen levels to keep him asleep until the medics are standing by.”

“My home base won't like that,” the passenger pointed out.

“It's for his own good, believe me, sir,” Boomer said. “Okay, everybody, we're approaching Mach three and fifty thousand feet, and the ‘leopards' are beginning to transform from turbofan engines to supersonic combustion ramjets, or scramjets. We call this ‘spiking,' because a spike in each engine will move forward and divert the supersonic air around the turbine fans and into ducts where the air is compressed and mixed with jet fuel and then ignited. Because there are no spinning parts in a scramjet as there are in a turbofan engine, the maximum speed we can attain goes to around fifteen times the speed of sound, or about ten thousand miles an hour. The scramjets will kick in shortly. We'll inert the fuel in the fuel tanks with helium to avoid having unspent gas in the fuel tanks. Stay ahead of the Gs.”

This time, Boomer did hear some grunts and deep breaths over the intercom as moments later the engines went completely into scramjet mode and the Midnight spaceplane accelerated rapidly. “Passing Mach five . . . Mach six,” Boomer announced. “Everything looks good. How are you doing back there, sir?”

“Fine . . . fine, Boomer,” the passenger replied, but now it was obvious that he was fighting the G-forces, clenching his stomach and leg muscles and pressurizing a lungful of air in his chest, which was supposed to slow blood flowing to the lower parts of his body and help keep it in his chest and brain to help him stay conscious. The passenger looked over at his companion. His seat had automatically reclined to about forty-five degrees, which helped his blood stay in his head since he couldn't perform the G-crunches while unconscious. “How . . . how much . . . longer?”

“I hate to break it to you, sir, but we haven't even gotten to the fun part yet,” Boomer said. “The scramjets will give us the maximum velocity and altitude while still using atmospheric oxygen for fuel combustion. We want to conserve our BOHM oxidizer as long as possible. But around sixty miles' altitude—three hundred and sixty thousand feet—the air will get too thin to run the scramjets, and we'll switch to pure rocket mode. You'll feel . . . a little push then. It won't last long, but it'll be . . . noticeable. Stand by, sir. Another ninety seconds.” A few moments later, Boomer reported: “ ‘Leopards' spiking . . . spiking complete, scramjets report full shutdown and secure. Stand by for rocket transition, crew . . . back me up on the temp and turbopump pressure gauges, Gonzo . . . standing up the power,
now . . .
good ignition, rockets throttling up to sixty-five percent, fuel flows in the green, throttles coming up . . .” The passenger thought he was ready for it, but the breath left his lungs with a sharp
BAARK!
at that moment . . . “Good primary ignition, nominal turbopump pressures, all temps in the green, stand by for one hundred percent power, here we go . . . ready . . . ready . . . now.”

It hit like a car crash. The passenger felt his body crushed backward into his seat—thankfully the computer-controlled seat was anticipating it, simultaneously reclining, cushioning, and bracing his body weight against the sudden force. The nose of the Midnight felt as if it was aimed straight up, but that feeling lasted only a few moments, and soon he had no idea of up or down, left or right, forward or backward. For a moment he wished he was unconscious like his companion, unaware of all these strange, alien forces battering his body.

“One-six . . . one-seven . . . one-eight,” Boomer announced. The passenger was not quite sure what any of that meant. “Passing four-zero . . . five-zero . . . six-zero . . .”

“Are . . . we . . . doing . . . okay, Boomer?” the passenger asked, trying with all his might to suppress the growing darkness in his vision that indicated the beginning of unconsciousness. He pretended he was a bodybuilder, flexing every muscle in his body, hoping to force enough blood into his head to keep from dropping off.

“We're in . . . in the green, sir,” Boomer replied. For the first time in this entire damned flight, the passenger thought, he could detect a hint of pressure or strain in Hunter Noble's voice. His tone was still measured, still succinct and even official, but there was definitely a worried edge to it, signifying even to a newbie space voyager that the worst was yet to come.

Crap, the passenger thought, if Hunter Noble—probably America's most oft-traveled astronaut, with dozens of missions and thousands of orbits to his credit—is having trouble, what chance do
I
have? I'm getting so tired, he thought, trying to fight the damned G-forces. I'll be okay if I just relax and let the blood flow out of my brain, right? It won't hurt me. The pressure is starting to make me a little nauseous, and for God's sake I don't want to barf in my helmet. I'll just relax, relax . . .

Then, moments later, to his complete surprise the pressure ceased, as if the turnscrews on the vise that had been pressing on his entire body simply disappeared after just a few minutes. Then he heard the surprising, completely unsuspected question: “You doing okay this splendid morning back there, sir?”

The passenger was somehow able to reply with a curt and completely casual, “It's morning, Dr. Noble?”

“It's morning somewhere, sir,” Boomer said. “We have a new morning every ninety minutes on station.”

“How are we doing? Are we doing okay? Did we make it?”

“Check out your detail, sir,” Boomer said. The passenger looked over and saw the man's arms floating about six inches above his still-unconscious, reclined body, as if he were sleeping while floating on his back in the ocean.

“We're . . . we're weightless now?”

“Technically, the acceleration of gravity toward Earth is equal to our forward velocity, so we're in effect falling but never hitting the ground. We are hurtling toward the Earth, but Earth keeps on moving out of the way before we hit it, so the net effect feels like weightlessness,” Boomer said.

“Say what?”

Boomer grinned. “Sorry,” he said. “I like saying that to Puddys. Yes, sir, we're weightless.”

“Thank you.”

“We're currently cruising past Mach twenty-five and climbing through one hundred twenty-eight miles' altitude up to our final altitude of two hundred and ten miles,” Boomer went on. “Course corrections are nominal. When we stop coasting at orbital speed, we should be within ten miles of Armstrong at matching speed, altitude, and azimuth. It looks very cool, sir, very cool. Welcome to outer space. You are officially an American astronaut.”

A few moments later Jessica Faulkner drifted back to the passenger cabin, her eyes still alluring behind the closed visor of her space-suit helmet. The passenger had seen plenty of astronauts floating in zero-G on television and movies, but it was as if this was the first time he had seen it in person—it was simply, utterly unreal. He noticed her movements were gentle and deliberate, as if everything she touched or was about to touch were fragile. She didn't seem to grasp anything, but she used a few fingers to lightly touch the bulkheads, ceiling, or deck to maneuver herself around.

Faulkner checked on Spellman first, checking a small electronic panel on the front of his space suit that displayed conditions in the suit and the wearer's vital signs. “He looks okay, and his suit is secure,” she reported. “As long as his gyros don't tumble when he wakes up, I think he'll be fine.” She drifted over to the first passenger and gave him a very pretty smile. “Welcome to orbit, sir. How do you feel?”

“It was pretty rough when the rockets kicked in—I thought I was going to pass out,” he replied with a weak smile. “But I'm doing all right now.”

“Good. Let's get you unbuckled, and then you can join Boomer in the cockpit for the approach. He might even let you dock it.”

“
Dock the spaceplane?
To the space station?
Me?
I can't fly! I haven't hardly driven a
car
in almost eight years!”

Faulkner was unstrapping the passenger from his seat, using tabs of Velcro to keep the webbing from floating around in front of them. “Do you play video games, sir?” she asked.

“Sometimes. With my son.”

“It's just a video game—the controls are almost identical to game controllers that have been around for years,” she said. “In fact, the guy who designed them, Jon Masters, probably did that on purpose—he was a video-game nut. Besides, Boomer is a good instructor.

“Now, the secret to maneuvering around in free fall is remembering although you don't have the effects of gravity, you still have mass and acceleration, and those need to be counteracted very carefully, or else you'll end up pinging off the walls,” Faulkner said. “Remember that it's not the weightless feeling you feel floating in the ocean, where you can paddle to move about—here, every directional movement can be countered only by opposing the acceleration of mass with opposite and
equal
force.

“Once we're on station, we use Velcro shoes and patches on our clothes to help secure ourselves, but we don't have those yet, so you'll have to learn the hard way,” she went on. “Very easy, gentle movements. I like to just
think
about moving first. If you don't consciously think about a movement before you do it, you'll launch yourself into the ceiling when your major muscles get involved. If you just
think
about getting up, you'll involve more minor muscles. You'll have to overcome your mass to start moving, but remember that gravity isn't going to help you reverse directions. Try it.”

The passenger did as she suggested. Instead of using his legs and hands to push up off the seat, he merely thought about getting up, with light touches of a few fingers of one hand on a handhold or seat armrest . . . and to his surprise, he started to float gently off the seat. “Hey! It worked!” he exclaimed.

“Very good, sir,” Faulkner said. “Feel okay? The first time in zero-G upsets a lot of stomachs.”

“I'm fine, Jessica.”

“The balance organs in your ears will soon have no ‘up' or ‘down' direction and will start feeding your brain signals that won't correspond to anything you see or feel,” Faulkner explained. The passengers had been briefed on all this back home, but they had not undergone any other astronaut training such as simulated zero-G work underwater. “It'll be a little worse once you get to station. A little nausea is normal. Work through it.”

“I'm fine, Jessica,” the passenger repeated. His eyes were as wide as a young child's on Christmas morning. “My God, this feels incredible—and incredibly weird at the same time.”

“You're doing fine, sir. Now, what I'm going to do is step aside and let you maneuver yourself toward the cockpit. I could try to guide you into your seat, but if I'm not perfectly aligned and not applying the right amount and direction of force, I'll spin you out of control, so it's better if you can do it. Again, just
think
about moving. No hurry.”

Her suggestions worked. The passenger completely relaxed his body and faced the hatch connecting the cockpit with the passenger cabin, and barely touching anything, he started to drift toward the hatch, with Boomer watching his slow progress over his right shoulder, a pleased smile visible though the visor of his oxygen helmet. In no time, the passenger had floated right up to the cockpit hatch.

“You're a natural at this, sir,” Boomer said. “Now Gonzo will unhook your umbilical cord from the passenger seat and hand it up to me, and I'll plug it into the mission commander's seat receptacle. You need to gently hold on to the hatch while we get you hooked back on. Again, don't kick or push anything—gentle touches.” The passenger heard and felt the tiny puffs of conditioned air in his partial-pressure suit shut off, and soon the umbilical hose appeared. Boomer reached across the cockpit and plugged it in. “Hear me okay, sir? Feel the air-conditioning okay?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Good. Getting into the seat is the tricky part, because it's a kinda tight fit. The technique is to slowly, carefully, bend at the waist and lift your thighs toward your chest, like you're doing a stomach crunch. Gonzo and I will maneuver you over the center console and into your seat. Don't try to help us. Okay, go ahead.” The passenger did exactly as he was told, curling his body slightly, and with only a few unexpected bumps and swerves he was over the very wide center console and into the seat, and Faulkner fastened his lap and shoulder straps for him.

“Are you sure we didn't pass each other in the hallways at NASA astronaut training in Houston, sir?” Boomer asked, his smile visible through his oxygen helmet's visor. “I know veteran astronauts who get all hot, sweaty, and grumpy doing what you just did. Very good. Here's your reward for all that work.” And he motioned outside the cockpit . . .

. . . and for the first time, the passenger saw it: planet Earth spread out before him. Even through the relatively narrow cockpit windows, it was still marvelous to behold. “It's . . . it's incredible . . . beautiful . . . my God,” he breathed. “I've seen all the photos of Earth taken from space, but they just don't compare with seeing it myself. It's magnificent!”

“Worth all the hoops you had to jump through to get up here, sir?” Gonzo asked.