Chapter Two Of Figs and Swallows

CHAPTER TWO

OF FIGS AND SWALLOWS

[ACT 1]

IF YOU LOOK at a globe, just to the east of New Guinea and south of the red line of the equator lies a small chain of islands stretching from the northwest to the southeast: the Solomon Islands.

Most Japanese knew them for Guadalcanal, where lots of the heavy fighting took place during the war in the Pacific. These islands first appeared in Western history books in the sixteenth century when Spaniards discovered them, but oceanic peoples had been living there since at least one thousand BCE.

Most tourists visiting the islands were Japanese come to see the old battlegrounds, but in recent years their numbers had dwindled. It wasn’t until four years ago that new ties were formed between Japan and the Solomon Islands with the construction of the Solomon Space Association on Maltide, a small island ringed with coral reefs and covered in jungle.

The SSA existed entirely on the funding of the OECF, Japan’s Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund. The association’s founder was one Isao Nasuda, a relatively unknown space enthusiast at the time. How he had managed to lobby his way into a position of such power was still something of a mystery.

“As part of our overseas development aid, we need to provide the Solomon Islands with broadcast education and a complete communications network,” he had argued. “And the best way to do that is with communication satellites.

“Building dams and bridges is all very well and good, but if we build them and don’t provide for their upkeep properly, we get burned by the critics. Maintaining a communications satellite network is no different, and it costs a hefty amount of money.”

Everything up to this point in Nasuda’s argument was pretty standard fare. It was the next part that upped the ante.

“In order to pull this off at the lowest possible price point, we need to deploy a manned spaceflight support network.”

Nasuda was nothing if not self-serving.

Anyone with the least bit of experience in space development would have seen through his ploy in a moment. What he was suggesting was akin to building a factory in order to fix a flat tire on a bicycle. However, thanks to the uninformed officials hearing his case, the program had passed with no objections. Of course, what Nasuda really wanted was to realize low-cost manned spaceflight in order to seize a piece of the growing pie that was the global space industry.

Due to a general lack of media interest in foreign aid efforts, construction on the base had begun without the slightest reaction from taxpayers. Development of an entirely proprietary manned spaceflight system was soon under way. Everything was going swimmingly until plans stalled during the testing phase of their large-scale booster rocket. Nasuda had just received official notice that he had six months left to realize manned flight or the entire thing would be scrapped. That was right about the time Yukari Morita visited the island.

With a single, lightweight pilot like her in the orbiter, they might just be able to get away with the small-scale rockets they had already developed. Finding the similarly built Matsuri for a backup crew had just been icing on the cake.

In the end, they were able to send someone into space before their deadline, and the SSA survived. Not only that, but they were able to realize such a dramatic cost improvement that Nasuda’s lie had transformed into a truth of sorts overnight. They had realized his vision of a manned space-repair service. Now the eyes of the world were on the SSA.

It was after this that they rolled out the MOB2 series of multiple-seat orbiters. However, they were still obliged to use the smallest astronauts possible. By reducing the weight of a crewmember by a single kilogram, they could shave all of seventy from the total weight of the rockets. By limiting crew height to 155 cm, they could reduce the weight of the orbiter alone by a whole seven hundred kilograms.

Which is how the future of the SSA came to rely on short, female pilots. Of which at present, they had only two. Two pilots to NASA’s five hundred…

Five days after the orbiter’s emergency splashdown in Yokohama.

The top staff were gathered in the meeting room on the third floor of the main SSA building for a roundup of the last mission.

“…Luckily, the soy sauce and vinegar compound did little damage to the cockpit controls. All of the electronic components are shielded, of course, to resist the effects of a small amount of moisture,” chief engineer Hiroyuki Mukai reported. “As long as nothing seeps in through the outer hull.”

“What about the momentary loss of power due to water damage? Is that something we should work on improving?” Kazuya Kinoshita asked. Kinoshita was the number two man at the SSA.

“I doubt there’s any need. After splashdown, it doesn’t really matter what breaks.”

“Well, as long as the fuel cells don’t explode.”

“Which is why they jettison them before splashdown.”

“But Yukari likes hanging on to them,” Kinoshita noted. “Fuel cells make for a lot more power once you’re on the ground. You can operate the air conditioning and use the radio without worrying about your batteries.”

“Well, we’ll just have to train her not to expect those luxuries.”

“That’s a possibility,” Asahikawa noted. She was the chief medical officer in charge of every aspect of the astronauts’ daily lives. “But there are limits. Actually, the problem with Yukari is she’s been trained so well, she’s starting to look for shortcuts to everything.”

The room filled with laughter.

“Who would’ve thought that following fashions and studying for school tests would prepare someone so well for a career as an astronaut? Memorizing an orbiter manual is nothing to a homework-hardened schoolgirl,” Nasuda said.

“Let’s not underestimate Matsuri, either. Recall that she was somehow able to smuggle an entire durian into that capsule.”

“How did she do that, anyway? We checked that capsule completely before liftoff,” Mukai asked. He had been responsible for the prelaunch check.

“Apparently, she used a sort of hypnosis. By placing the inspection crew under a kind of trance, she made them unable to physically see the durian.”

“Excuse me? Is that even possible?”

“I can’t see any other way that she could have pulled it off. The Taliho tribe claims to have been doing this sort of thing for thousands of years, after all.”

Satsuki had already debriefed the inspection crew. She had even tried hypnosis on them herself to get to the bottom of what had happened just before the rocket took off—but no clear answers were forthcoming.

“But wait,” Mukai cut in. “If they can do that, why don’t the Taliho all go off and make a killing robbing banks?”

“Let’s just be grateful that they seem to have wisdom in equal amounts to their power. Mind you, I’m going to keep Matsuri confined to quarters until we’re ready to strap her in next time.”

“What happens if she hypnotizes the guards at her door?”

Satsuki frowned.

“We just have to trust them, both of them,” Nasuda said. “Thankfully, the durian did no real damage, and Yukari jettisoned the fuel cells as she was supposed to. If you don’t mind, I’d like to discuss the malfunction in the sequencer next.”

“Malfunction? You make it sound like there was something wrong with the electronics.” Mukai snorted. “What happened was, Yukari left the protective cover on the activation switch open while she was dealing with the goldfish, and she accidentally bumped the switch. Yukari says so herself, and that account fits the telemetry records.”

“So it was operator error.”

“Not that I blame her. Everything happened with incredibly bad timing,” Kinoshita said. “What Yukari is saying is that we can’t have one person doing two jobs up there. Well, I suppose it’s two people doing two jobs, but both of them are supposed to be checking the other’s operations, so when you add an experiment to their list of duties, it’s too much. They get confused.”

“So they need a third person?” Nasuda crossed his arms.

Everyone in the room was aware that on the U.S. space shuttle, duties were divided between mission specialists and payload specialists.

“How is development going on the three-person orbiter?”

“As smoothly as could be wished for. All we’re basically doing is cramming another seat into the MOB2 transport locker space.”

“The trick is finding a mission specialist with the same dimensions as Yukari and Matsuri.”

“No kidding. Whoever it is, they’ll have to cram into a space barely fifty centimeters across.”

[ACT 2]

“YOU KNOW WHAT we really need here? A disco.”

It was lunch break. Yukari and Matsuri were sitting in the shade of a palm tree along the beach, sipping coconut milk.

“Hoi? What’s a disco?”

“It’s a place for young people to get together and dance and drink and stuff like that.”

“Sounds like a sing-sing.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s where everyone sings and dances, and men choose good women. The women decorate themselves and shake their hips and busts to attract the men. Oh, it’s lots of fun.”

“Erm…I guess that sounds similar,” Yukari agreed, a vivid image rising in her mind of tribal people in a circle, beating on drums. “My point is, if we’re going to try to get another high school girl out on this island, we need a disco, at least. You saw what it was like in Yokohama, right? There are boutiques and accessory shops and fast food and all kinds of stuff like that. Here, there’s, well, this!”

Yukari gestured across the scene in front of them.

Palm trees. White sand. Coral reefs. The South Pacific.

“Sure, it’s beautiful when you first get here, but the ‘ooh’ factor only lasts a couple days. No one is going to stay here long if there isn’t a real potential for sustained fun, you know what I mean?”

“But you’re here, Yukari.”

“I don’t have anyplace to go home to.”

“Hoi?”

“I got kicked out of school, remember?”

“Oh.” Matsuri made a sort of confused half smile. She reached down and pulled something resembling a rockfish, baked whole, from beside their little campfire. “Perfectly done!” she declared.

“Yeah.”

Matsuri took a bite of the fish and passed it to Yukari.

It didn’t taste bad once you got used to it, but boy did she miss the pizza back in Yokohama. Yukari checked the Omega Speedmaster on her left wrist. Lunch break would be over soon. “Guess we should be heading back.”

Yukari slipped a light jacket on over her swimsuit and pressed the button on her transceiver. “Hi there, security? Pick up, please.”

“Roger. We’re on our way.”

A short while later, a Humvee appeared down the beach. Using base security as a taxi service was one of the perks of being an astronaut.

With the entire future of the SSA resting on their shoulders, Yukari and Matsuri could get away with quite a bit. As long as they had a reasonable excuse, they could take chopper rides to the Chinatown on the other side of the island and use the private Gulfstream jet to go shopping in Australia. If they tried to pull a stunt like that as public officials in Japan, there would have been a firestorm of criticism, but here where the media rarely trod, there was no one to watch them.

The people on base called it “Solomon sickness”: a feeling that grew with time spent on the islands that it was okay to do whatever you liked as long as you could get away with it. It was a pretty pleasant condition, as sicknesses went.

The Humvee drove past the launch platform and onto the two-kilometer-long road that went straight from the launching pad to the vehicle assembly building.

The white, crushed-coral pavement shimmered in the heat. Palm trees stood to either side of the road, like some ritzy boulevard in an exotic city—but here there was no one else but them.

The CB radio on the dashboard squawked.

“Car 5, Car 5, what’s your current position?”

“Just passed the VAB, over.”

“Mind stopping by the front gate? We’ve got a visitor there who won’t budge.”

“Roger that.”

The driver returned his radio mic back to the dashboard and said to Yukari, “Sounds like we’re going to take a little detour if that’s all right.”

“Sure. What’s this ‘visitor who won’t budge’ all about?”

“Probably a local taro-root salesman. They’re pretty persistent.”

“You think?”

Up ahead, a red-and-white striped crossing bar came into view. Off to the right of the road stood a small guard post and a stand of the broad-leaved tropical trees that grew all over the island.

Yukari spotted two people in the shade of the trees.

One, standing, was clearly a security guard, and the other—probably the visitor—was sitting on the ground. She wore a skirt, and her head hung slumped down between pale white shoulders. A wide-brimmed hat covered her face from view.

The Humvee stopped and the guard walked over to them. “It’s a girl. Just arrived here by taxi. Seems like she got a little carsick—that is, the driver tells me that by the time she arrived at the port in Sanchago, she was already half-dead with motion sickness. I doubt the ride here made it any better.”

When civilians visited the island, they had to take a rusty old ferry that left once every three days from Guadalcanal. Once they arrived, they had to take the sole taxi on the island over the mountains along twenty kilometers of dirt road. Anyone who wasn’t riding in a Humvee or other vehicle made for off-roading was in for a nightmarish trip in the “taxi,” which in this case was a makeshift collection of scrapped Datsun parts that might as well have had a bumper sticker reading AUTOMOBILE INSPECTION? WHAT’S THAT?

The security guard jumped out of the Humvee and knelt in front of the girl. Her hat shifted and she looked up, revealing her face.

Yukari practically leapt out of the car. “Akane! What in the name—”

Akane Miura’s eyes swam up to Yukari. “Well,” she croaked, “I’m here.”

“I can see you’re here! But why?”

“I thought…I thought I might become an astronaut.”

“For real? But what about school?”

“I dropped out. There’s no going back,” she said, her head slumping forward again.

[ACT 3]

AFRAID THAT ASAHIKAWA would start endurance tests on the girl if they took her to the infirmary, Yukari decided instead to take Akane to her own room in the dormitory. Once Akane had lain down on the bed and drunk some water, the color returned to her cheeks and she seemed to recover a bit.

“You still alive?” Yukari asked.

“Mostly.” Akane slowly sat up.

Yukari and Matsuri brought chairs up to the bedside and joined her. Yukari offered her some coconut milk with tapioca, but Akane didn’t seem interested.

Her stomach’s still turning somersaults.

“I have to admit, this is a complete surprise.”

“I’m sorry. I thought that if I called, you might tell me not to come.”

“No need to apologize. I’m really happy you’re here.”

“Really?” Akane said.

“Really. You’re the first person I actually invited, you know.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” A smile like a spring sunbeam spread across Akane’s face.

“You really dropped out of school?”

“Yeah.”

Akane began to relate the tale of how the principal and the guidance counselor had chewed her out. At first, Yukari had just sighed inwardly, but as Akane went on, she felt her anger growing.

“They just kept repeating that it’s against the rules to leave school while class is in session. I couldn’t believe they didn’t seem to care at all about the goldfish.”

“Man, what’s with that guy? He’s always like that!”

“Here I was saving the goldfish and making a contribution to science, and they treated me like I was some kind of delinquent.” Akane was getting angry too. “Teachers shouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, he should be the one getting kicked out!”

“So I let him have it.”

“All right! You go girl!”

“I told him I would leave school for a while to see what I might be able to learn in the outside world.”

The wind dropped out of Yukari’s sails.

“I’ve never lost my temper before then,” Akane said, still excited. “I think I even surprised myself.”

That was an awfully rational thing for someone losing their temper to say, Yukari thought, but what she said was, “Didn’t your parents object?”

“Oh, they were totally against it.” Akane stuck out her tongue. (Yukari: Ha! Cute!) “So I went on a hunger strike for three days in my room, and finally my father said he would ‘give me a year to figure things out.’ They agreed to just pretend I’d gotten sick or something.”

“Whatever works.”

“Well, I’m not sure what’s going to happen a year from now. I’m not sure what I’ll learn, either.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you can get an extension,” Matsuri said, joining the conversation. “Yukari was only going to be here for half a year at first, you know.”

“Hey!” Yukari frowned.

“Of course,” Akane said, “I don’t know if they’ll hire me yet or not.”

“Both of us will vouch for you!” Yukari said, grinning. “They’ll take you for sure.”

“I’m not very tough…”

“Leave that to us!” Yukari grabbed Akane by the hands. “We’re not going to let you fail, got it? I’m taking you to space, promise!”

“Yukari…” Tears shone in Akane’s eyes. “Thank you.”

“You can thank me after liftoff.”

Akane nodded. “So, this seems kind of funny to ask now, but how do I apply to become an astronaut?”

“There’s no real set procedure. I guess talking to the director would be the quickest route. Can you walk?”

“I think so…” Akane stood, a little shaky, and stepped away from the bed.

Yukari picked up an intercom and punched in the number for the director’s office. “It’s Yukari. We have an applicant here. Right…the genius girl who saved the goldfish. Okay.” She set down the receiver. “They’ll see you at once.”

Akane nodded and gulped.

Nasuda’s office was about as far away, décor-wise, as you could get from the principal’s office at Nellis Academy. There wasn’t a single bit of adornment in the place. It was all steel desks piled with documents, a dry-erase board, bookshelves, and an old coffee maker with some chipped cups for guests. With the exception of the large photo of a rocket hanging on the wall, it could have been an office in any small company.

A man and a woman sat at the desk across from the door.

The man was in his sixties, bald save for a small patch of hair at the very top of his head and intensely black eyebrows. A wild light in his eyes shone through round, silver-rimmed glasses.

The woman was no older than thirty. She had rich black hair and wore a lab coat over a tight miniskirt. Red high heels stuck out from beneath the desk, a spot of color in the otherwise drab office.

The aging boss and his trophy secretary, Yukari thought. As if.

Nasuda spoke first. “Thanks for coming. I’m Nasuda, the director here. My associate is our chief medical examiner, Satsuki Asahikawa. She’s in charge of astronaut training and health maintenance.”

“Akane Miura,” Akane introduced herself, bowing so low her hair fell down over the top of her head. “I’ve come to apply for the position of astronaut.”

“We’ve heard about you from Yukari. Sounds like you did quite well for those goldfish.”

“It was nothing,” she began, then hastily added, “that is, I think that if I became an astronaut, I could make myself very useful in a variety of situations.”

“I see.” Nasuda glanced over at Satsuki.

She leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear. “Thirty-six kilos.”

“Measurements?”

“Height, 153 centimeters. Her measurements are seventy-four, fifty-two, seventy-five.”

“No complaints here, then.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m worried about her stamina.”

“Right.”

It was a remarkable talent of Satsuki’s that she could glance at a person and immediately gauge their weight, size, and general level of fitness.

“Miss Miura, thank you for coming all this way,” Nasuda said, turning back to their applicant. “I’m sure you’re tired from your trip, so we’ll begin the examinations tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Satsuki will be taking care of you while you’re here. Our medical examination can be a little hard at times, but hang in there. We’ll put you up at the guesthouse. Don’t get excited, it’s just a room, and pretty plain at that. That okay?”

“That will be fine.” She turned to Satsuki. “I look forward to working with you, ma’am.”

“Likewise, Akane,” Satsuki replied, a mischievous smile on her lips.

I guess it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be, Yukari thought. For her and Matsuri getting a job had been as simple as walking in the building. Now she was starting to worry. I really hope they take her.

[ACT 4]

THE ASTRONAUT TRAINING center was a three-story building off to one side of the main complex.

There Akane spent the entire following day. It was not long into her medical exam that Akane realized just how powerful Satsuki Asahikawa was—at least here, in her own domain.

She measured Akane’s height, her weight, her chest size, her inseam, gripping power, eyesight, ability to distinguish colors, hearing, lung capacity—so far, nothing was all that different from a standard health exam, if a bit more rushed.

Then Satsuki stripped her down to her underwear, put a respiration mask on her mouth, placed electrodes all over her body, and put her on an ergometer, which was something like an exercise bicycle. She ran out of breath after ten minutes. After thirty minutes, she felt dizzy and slumped over the handlebars.

“What’s wrong?” Satsuki asked, a look of despair on her face. “Giving up so soon?”

Akane swallowed. “N-no, of course not. I’m…I’m fine.”

“Really? You’re really fine?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You’re really really sure you’re fine?”

“Yes, I’m perfectly fine!” Akane forced a smile.

“That’s what I like to hear!” Satsuki narrowed her eyes. “Next up is the decompression chamber, I think.”

Practically skipping with excitement, Satsuki led Akane into another room.

This room was shaped like a cylindrical tube, with just enough space for a person to walk in a circle. The walls were made of thick stainless steel.

“In here we can adjust the air pressure however we want in order to test your adaptability. I’ll have you sit down, and I’ll leave the room, but you can talk to me on the intercom there. If you feel like you can’t take it anymore, just tell me. You’ll also have a deadman’s switch—but remember, stick it out as long as you can or you won’t have much hope of becoming an astronaut.”

The deadman’s switch was held in the right hand. She was supposed to press down the button and keep it down. Were she to lose consciousness, her thumb would lift off the switch and alert the controller, and the pressure would normalize.

Akane went into the chamber and sat down on the lone chair.

“You’re all set. Good luck!”

“Thanks.”

Behind her, the heavy steel hatch shut with a thunk. There was a small round porthole through which Akane could watch Satsuki at the controls.

She’s enjoying this.

Akane recollected what Yukari and Matsuri had told her about the chief medical examiner the night before.

“Keep a close eye on Satsuki,” Yukari warned her. “She can be vicious.”

Matsuri nodded emphatically.

“I did a lot of training for track, and Matsuri grew up here in the jungle, so we both made it through, but it wasn’t easy.”

“How so?” Akane asked.

“Oh, I must have lost consciousness five or six times total.”

Akane was confused. “Wait, but it’s a medical examination, right?”

“In theory.”

“What is it really then?”

“Human experimentation. She wants to see just how much we can take.”

Akane sighed.

“As soon as Satsuki sees you can take whatever she’s dishing out, she escalates.”

“What exactly are we talking about here?”

Yukari went through the various trials in explicit, grueling detail.

Akane felt the blood drain from her face. “Is there like a minimum required performance on each test? A score you have to get or you fail?”

“That’s what she won’t tell you. Not even if you ask.”

“Then how am I supposed to prepare?” Akane was starting to panic. She had a great deal of confidence when it came to written tests, but she had never taken a test where she didn’t even know how she was being scored. Let alone a test you had to pass with your body, not your mind.

“There is a psychological aspect to it too, right, Matsuri?”

“That’s right. When Satsuki puts you through the rounds, it’s like she’s wearing a mask.”

“A mask…?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Matsuri said, unconvincingly. “Just tell the truth. She’ll know if you’re lying.”

Akane sighed again.

“Right,” Yukari agreed. “Better to just focus on how you’re doing and not pay attention to Satsuki at all.”

“All right…”

“Not much else we can do, really,” Yukari admitted.

“Nope, there isn’t,” Matsuri said.

“Well, I’ll try my best.”

Akane heard a thrumming sound, like a vacuum pump whirring to life.

Her ears had begun to hurt.

She swallowed and felt her ears pop.

Calm down. Calm down.

“How do you feel?”

“All right.”

So far this isn’t half as bad as I thought it was going to be from the way they were talking last night, Akane thought.

Satsuki’s face wasn’t a mask. In fact, she seemed genuinely happy for Akane’s progress. She wondered what it meant.

“Air pressure, as you know, is inversely proportional to altitude. Just now, you went up to two thousand meters above sea level. I’m going to bring you back down to the surface, and next we’re going to go up to five thousand.”

“All right.”

Air pressure returned, and then the decompression started again.

Akane kept up, though she had to pop her ears several times.

“Some people forget to pop and their ears bleed. Just remember to keep popping them and you’ll be all right,” Yukari had warned her.

“Question: what is the altitude of Mt. Ararat?”

“Um…5,165 meters?”

“You are a grade-A student. Well, you’re standing on the peak now. How do you feel?”

Akane had developed a headache a short while earlier. She could feel the pain increasing with each passing moment.

“Um…I’m okay.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m doing fine.”

“You’re not pushing it? You’re really absolutely fine?”

“I’m absolutely positively doing great.”

“Then let’s take you up to Annapurna. Or do you want to pass?”

Yukari would have taken that as a direct challenge, no doubt. But Akane saw it differently. She didn’t want to let Satsuki down.

“I’m ready.”

The sound of the pump grew louder.

How high was Annapurna again? Eight-thousand-something meters?

Her head throbbed with pain, and she could feel her thoughts begin to drift. Her breathing was ragged. It seemed to take forever until she heard Satsuki over the intercom announce in a singsong voice, “You made it! Welcome to Annapurna! One more question: which integer has a square root closest in value to the base of the natural logarithm?”

Huh…what? A math question? The base of the natural logarithm?

Uh, what was base e again? 2.71828…

If the root of 8 is 2.82…and 7 is…uh…7 is…

Akane tried to focus her thoughts through her splitting headache, but she still couldn’t come up with the root of seven.

Wait, if I square e, then take the root of the right side of the equation…

Seven…7…7…49!

“S…seven. It’s seven.”

“Impressive. Ready to come down again?”

The sound of the pump quieted and the air pressure began to return.

“The terminal velocity of an orbiter during reentry is two hundred kilometers per second. If you ever wanted to know what would happen if you lost pressure on reentry, you’re experiencing it now. High mountain climbers don’t have it nearly this rough.”

She popped her ears again. By now she couldn’t tell whether the pain was coming from her ears or her headache, so she kept popping them as quickly as she could, just in case. When the air pressure returned to surface levels, the hatch opened.

Akane’s head still throbbed. Shaky on her feet, she stepped out, when a wave of nausea came over her and she had to drop to a crouch.

Two red-enamel high heels came into her tear-blurred field of vision. “Oh? What’s wrong? Giving up?”

She looked up to see that now-familiar look of despair in Satsuki’s eyes. Had she failed the test already? Had she not lived up to expectations?

“N-no, I’m fine.”

“Really now? Are you sure? You look pale.”

“No, really. I’m okay.”

“Are you really, really okay?”

“Yes. Perfectly. Great.” Akane summoned the last of her strength and managed a half smile.

“That a girl!” Satsuki grinned. “Next up, how about a little centrifuge?”

Satsuki giggled.

[ACT 5]

“YUKARI? OH, YUKARI? You with me?”

Yukari shook her head. She’d been daydreaming. “Sorry, Chief.”

She was standing in the orbiter clean room in a corner of the VAB.

“If you don’t fully understand what we’ve changed, it’ll come back to bite you up there,” chief engineer Mukai explained. “As you know, we try to get the most out of our crew, since we’re spending all this money to get you up there. There is not a lot of redundancy in your onboard systems. If a main panel goes down and the backup stops, you’ll have to fix it yourself on the spot.”

“I know that.”

“You worried about something? You seem distracted.”

“Well, maybe. A little.”

“Yukari’s afraid Akane won’t pass the examination,” Matsuri explained.

“Satsuki running that?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Mukai started nodding to himself. “Of course, of course. That explains that.”

“Explains what?”

“I’ve been having dips in power here at the factory since this morning. I was wondering what was going on.”

“You mean like power shortages?”

“Yeah, like something on base was using a lot of power all at once—something outside of the VAB.”

“Like what?”

“Probably Satsuki’s centrifuge. Running that thing at full power uses up as much wattage as a small city.”

“Running it at full power?”

Terrifying memories of her own time in the centrifuge rose in Yukari’s mind. The centrifuge was like a giant merry-go-round for one, except you didn’t ride on a horse, you rode inside an airtight box. The box could be positioned in any way, meaning that the person inside was subjected to centrifugal force from every direction.

Yukari had been run through the device soon after agreeing to become an astronaut. On her first run, a full 9 G pressing on her chest had squeezed the breath out of her and she had fainted. And Satsuki gave it to you easy from the front. You could take a lot more G from the top.

Satsuki hadn’t given her any warning when she was going to change the direction, either, until Yukari felt like a rag doll in a dryer. Her internal organs bounced around like pinballs inside her, and she lost count of the times she fainted only to wake up covered in her own vomit. Once the pressure had been so bad, Yukari had felt her shoulder nearly dislocate. Depending on the speed at which the device rotated, the G could be pushed up to a limit of thirty times normal Earth gravity. This meant that a body weighing forty kilograms would feel thirty times heavier. At weights like that, most people died in a very short amount of time.

And now Satsuki was whipping poor Akane around at full power?

Yukari’s face went pale. “Mukai, sorry, but can I take a quick break?”

“But—” Mukai began, then he sighed. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her when she was like this. Mukai was younger than most of the other scientists on base and not as good at resisting the whims of their astronauts.

“Fine. See you soon.”

Yukari dashed out of the clean room, jumped out of her coveralls, and ran for the training center. She could hear motors spinning as soon as she stepped inside.

The centrifuge was in the basement.

Yukari ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Throwing open the door to the centrifuge control room, she barged in, shouting, “Stop the machine! You can’t throw her on full power! She’ll die!”

“Huh?” Satsuki was standing with the back of her white lab coat to the door. She turned around. “Oh, no one’s in the centrifuge. I hadn’t used it for a while, so I was just warming it up.”

“What…?” Yukari gave a deep sigh, but she wasn’t done quite yet. “Where’s Akane?”

“I’m giving her a break. She should be here any moment now.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Far better than I expected, actually.”

“Really?” Yukari found herself smiling.

“Yes. In fact, all she has to clear is the centrifuge and I think we have a winner.”

Yukari’s smile faded. “How many G are you going to put her through?”

“I won’t know until I start, now will I. That’s why we have this test, you know.”

“As I recall, you ran me until I passed out several times. Including taking me from nothing to 9 G right off the bat. How fast are you taking her?”

“Like I said, I won’t know until we begin.”

“Admit it! You just like torturing us with your machines!”

Satsuki lifted an eyebrow. “What’s gotten under your collar?”

“I’m just saying, the orbiter seats two now so it only goes up to 8 G instead of ten like it used to. Why take her farther than she needs to?”

“The specifications of that rocket and the aptitude tests are two different things. If I don’t know for certain how much this girl can take, I won’t know how suited she is for the job, and I won’t be able to create an appropriate training schedule for her.”

“Well that may be so, but…” Yukari’s objection trailed off.

“Yukari. I know I might not look it sometimes, but I am a medical doctor. And yes, I might come off a little crazy, but I promise I’ll stop at the last possible moment.”

“That’s what I’m talking about! Why do you have to go up to the last possible moment?”

Just then, Akane walked in, wearing a gym shirt. Her face looked gaunt, and her feet were dragging.

“Yukari? What are you doing here?”

“I was negotiating. I’m trying to save you from this torture.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, really. I’m doing the best I can. I want to pass this test.”

“That’s all well and good, but you just wait until she starts taunting you. There’s no telling what she’ll have you doing. Human experimentation, that’s what this is!”

Satsuki rolled her eyes. “Must you always say that?”

“Eight G, tops!” Yukari glared at her. “As your primary astronaut I’m giving you my expert opinion. Take her up to 8 G from the front, and no higher!”

“Only 8 G?”

“You heard me. That’s plenty with our current booster!” She glared at Satsuki again for effect.

Satsuki frowned and glared back at the shorter Yukari, but it was Satsuki who broke away first.

“Fine. But don’t get the idea that everything you say goes here.” Satsuki turned a dial on her console and the centrifuge spun down. “Maybe you could help Akane into the cage?”

Yukari nodded quietly. “Let’s go, Akane. Can you walk?”

“Sure…”

Yukari lent the other girl her shoulder and together they left the control room. Down a short staircase, they entered a room shaped like an elliptical pool, with the centrifuge at its center. The centrifuge had a central column and a long arm, at the end of which hung the cage. Yukari opened the cage door and helped Akane inside. She tightened a four-point harness around Akane’s chest and then strapped her in at the waist and legs.

“It might be a little tight, but trust me, you’ll prefer it that way.”

“Okay.”

Yukari checked all the fastenings carefully. A simple slip from your chair at high G could mean broken bones.

“See those buttons on the panel in front of you? Some of them will light up, and you’ll be instructed to press them.”

“Okay.”

“Over 4 G and it gets hard just to raise your arm, but as long as you remember to breathe with your stomach, you shouldn’t faint.”

“Okay.”

“Good luck. You know, Satsuki said you were doing really well.”

“I am? Really?”

“Yeah. She said if you pass this, you’ve made it.”

“I won’t let you down, Yukari.”

“I know you won’t. I’ll be watching from the control room, okay?”

Yukari shut the cage door and went back upstairs.

Satsuki was talking to Akane over the intercom. “Akane? Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Did Yukari tell you about the buttons?”

“I’m supposed to press the ones that light up, right?”

“That’s right. We’re going to be testing your judgment and physical capacity at heavier gravities. Here goes.”

Satsuki began flipping switches, murmuring to herself, “Rotation floor clear, activating motors…”

The centrifuge began to spin.

Satsuki glanced down at the reading on the console. “Two G. How do you feel?”

“O…okay.”

Yukari glanced at the doctor’s face. Satsuki was expressionless. Her manicured fingers slowly clicked the dial controlling rotation speed.

“Three G. Is something wrong? You’re a little slow on the buttons.”

“Ah…suh…sorry.” Akane’s voice over the intercom sounded pained.

Yukari clenched her fists. Hang in there, Akane. Even an accelerating sports car will give you 3 G. The rocket will give you eight. Come on, please be able to take 8 G.

“Four G. We are approaching realistic levels now. How do you feel?”

No answer.

“Akane? What’s wrong?”

Akane didn’t respond.

Come on, Akane! Answer!

“Maybe the intercom’s malfunctioning.” Satsuki pressed the stop button. As soon as the centrifuge had wound down, Yukari and Satsuki ran down to the cage.

Satsuki lifted the latch and looked inside. The two stared at each other in silence. Akane was out cold.

She hadn’t even made it past 4 G.

[ACT 6]

“IT’S OKAY, YOU don’t have to apologize so much.”

“I’m so sorry…”

Akane was lying in bed, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. She hugged a teddy bear tight to her chest. It was one of the few things she had brought with her from Japan.

Yukari and Matsuri sat next to the bed like visitors in a hospital ward.

“There’s no way they’re going to take me. I fainted at 4 G! I’m done.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get better with training—”

“But there won’t be any training if they don’t accept me. You made it to 9 G, didn’t you, Yukari?”

“Well yeah, but—”

“What about you, Matsuri?”

“Hoi! My first time I made it to 17 G.”

Akane turned to face the wall.

“Don’t worry, Matsuri’s kind of a special case,” Yukari explained. “She’s like a female Tarzan or something. You could shoot her in the head and she wouldn’t even die.”

“Yukari?” Akane whispered.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t want to go on a mission with someone who faints during takeoff, do you?”

“Well, I…” There was a pause. “I don’t mind! Not a bit. There’s nothing to do during takeoff anyway—the first time I was up there all by myself. Besides, I could just wake you up once we were in orbit. No problem.”

“You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better,” Akane said quietly.

Yukari was starting to get frustrated. “Matsuri! Can’t you cast a spell or something to raise her spirits?”

“She needs to sleep,” Matsuri said simply. “Have a good rest, Akane. You’re exhausted, so it should come easy.”

“Yeah…”

“Okay. I guess that’s it for tonight, then.” Yukari stood, feeling slightly relieved. “Good night.”

“Good night…”

[ACT 7]

“THERE ARE NO issues with her physique or sensory organs. Personality wise, she’s very warm and takes instruction well, and has a great sense of responsibility. She is quite intelligent to boot and can focus under stress. She’s also stronger than I expected. The only problem is her lack of any high-G resilience.” Satsuki Asahikawa was giving her report at the director’s meeting the following day.

“So she can’t take the gravity? Is that an automatic fail?” Nasuda asked, getting right to the point.

“She passed out the moment I took her up to four. With that low a resilience, she couldn’t even ride a roller coaster.”

“What? Only 4 G?”

“Too bad. Her scholastic ability is off the charts,” Kinoshita said, relating his impressions from the interview. “Actually, rather than scholastic ability I should say her general comprehension. I presented her with several trick questions and she was very good at cutting through the chaff and getting right to the point. She’s able to see the true nature of the problem at hand, understand it, and act on it.”

“Yes, but 4 G?” Satsuki raised her hands. “Our astronauts are subjected to at least 8 G during liftoff and reentry. If she’s fainting at a mere four, she simply won’t be able to perform her duties as a member of the flight crew.”

“Can’t something be done about that in training?”

Satsuki shook her head. “It’s not just that she has to stay conscious at 8 G. She has to be able to assess her situation, make split-second decisions, and take action at 8 G. If we are only talking about a consciousness threshold, I’d want her to stay awake up to at least 10 G.”

Nasuda groaned. “Let me just confirm, you’re saying there is zero probability that she would be able to perform in a real-life situation?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say zero,” Satsuki admitted with a frown.

“Yukari has told us several times, and we know this ourselves, that they need a division of labor while in orbit. Our lack of that is one big reason we haven’t been able to get the thumbs-up from NASA. And there’s something else.” Nasuda reached into his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper. He showed it to everyone at the table.

It was a printout of a photograph showing five girls, blondes and brunettes, standing in a row, smiling.

“This was up on the CNES homepage as of yesterday. Turns out a subsidiary of Arianespace in France has started a project called the ‘Ariane Courier.’ They’re not ready for commercial flights, but the plan is for them to put small astronauts in a small orbiter and provide services like satellite repair.”

“They’re totally copying us!” Mukai said, aghast.

“We knew we’d have some competition. I just didn’t imagine they would pop up so quickly. They’re going to be using an Ariane 4 rocket modified to carry people.”

“What about space suits? Do they have skintight suits yet?”

“We don’t think so. I’m guessing what they’re wearing in that picture are just leotards. They’re attractive though, aren’t they, Kinoshita.”

“Sadly, yes. Though our own girls are nothing to sneeze at.”

Kinoshita was a man of encyclopedic knowledge in many fields, one of them being the media market for attractive girls. And this, of course, was a cornerstone of the SSA’s business strategy.

While previous astronauts had served as flag carriers for their nation’s pride, they were now often used as PR tools for getting taxpayers behind a project. An operation like the SSA depended heavily on goodwill toward Yukari and Matsuri for their continued funding. Their appeal to the folks back home was the only thing between the SSA and a firestorm over the massive amounts of taxpayer money disappearing into their project.

“However, going up against five girls in the prime of their youth—that’s tough competition.”

“Absolutely. Looks aside, the biggest problem here is that there are already five of them,” Nasuda said. “Really, we should have a main team and a backup team by now. If we’re running with a two-person orbiter, we need at least four astronauts. If we’ve got a three-seater, I’d want at least six. And all we have is two. No wonder NASA doesn’t trust us. If one of our astronauts caught a cold, our launch would be delayed.”

“So you want numbers over quality, is that it?” Satsuki asked.

“Honestly, yes. I mean, even in the worst-case scenario, if Akane did pass out, one of the others could wake her up, couldn’t they?”

“Well I’m against it! Even if we do have a three-seat orbiter, the majority of our launches will be with only two astronauts. If we’re forced to rely on a sole astronaut during the most critical moments of takeoff and reentry because the other one is out cold, NASA will never trust us.”

“Not if they don’t know about it.”

“Director!”

“Now now, Doctor—”

“Even if we disregard the issue of trust, we’re talking about safety!” Satsuki slammed the table with her fists. “Imagine what would happen if those girls died? That is what I’m talking about when I say ‘safety,’ sir!”

The room was silent. After a few moments passed, Mukai spoke. “Satsuki, I think that goes without saying—”

“Apparently it doesn’t.”

“No. Everyone here knows that lives are on the line. But if we were to require one hundred percent safety before a launch, we’d never get off the ground. What we’re all trying our very hardest to do here is to find an appropriate compromise between safety on one hand and the economic realities of the space industry on the other.”

Satsuki turned to Mukai. “So you think that it’s all right if one of them faints during liftoff?”

“I’m not saying that. But there are over two thousand sensors and a multitasking computer checking for abnormalities every millisecond of takeoff, as well as a fully automatic mechanism to separate the orbiter from the rest of the rocket. We can also remotely control much of the rocket from ground-based systems. Only when all of this fails is pilot action required.”

“And yet it seems that every time we launch, our astronauts are surviving only by the skin of their teeth.”

“Let me put it another way. If something truly catastrophic were to happen, like if the booster were to explode, then no number of safety measures and no amount of pilot skill would help them one bit. If we’re going to let worry about that paralyze us, we need to scrap the program entirely. As an engineer, the only way I can sleep at night is because I know that we are doing everything we can here, on the ground, to prevent a worst-case scenario. We’ve had small difficulties with every launch, it’s true, but no big accidents as of yet, right?”

Satsuki pondered the young technician’s words.

“All right. I’m sorry for bringing up death. It just seemed like the elephant in the room. I understand what you’re saying, but as the person ultimately responsible for the human factor in this equation, I cannot condone hiring Akane. My decision is final.”

“What if we thought about it like this,” Kinoshita offered. “It’s true that the greatest risk on a flight comes with the launch and the reentry, but this only accounts for two percent of total flight time. And there’s plenty of danger while in orbit.”

“Your point?”

“Well, when I think about our easily excitable Yukari and our utterly unpredictable Matsuri, I can’t help but think that a girl like Akane is the perfect complement to them. I think we could safely say that having her on board would dramatically improve safety for at least ninety-eight percent of the mission.”

“So you want to hire her too?”

Kinoshita chuckled wryly. “This is outside my area of expertise as a physicist, but it’s my impression that this girl makes up for in intellect what she lacks in physical strength. Here’s my suggestion: we let her do a make-up test, except this time, we test her overall aptitude. Then we decide. How about it?”

“What exactly do you mean by an overall aptitude test?”

“Well…”

Kinoshita briefly explained what he was thinking.

“You’re going to do that to her?” Satsuki was aghast.

“Yes. Completely solo. No support.”

“She won’t make it. Yukari was in pretty good shape, but who knows what would have happened to her if she hadn’t run into Matsuri?”

“Well, we won’t know that until we try, will we? If she passes, will you give her the okay, Satsuki?”

“I suppose I could take it under consideration.”

“How about you, Director?”

“I suppose we could give it a shot.” Then, Nasuda added, “Of course, it’s going to be tricky to ensure she’s completely without support.”

[ACT 8]

“KNOCK KNOCK! GOOD morning, Akane!”

“Hoi, Akane! Wake-up time!”

For the past two days, Yukari and Matsuri had come each morning to Akane’s room to take her to breakfast. She was always ready to go when they got there—except for today.

“Hoi? I don’t think she’s here.”

“Akane? We’re coming in.”

Yukari turned the knob. It wasn’t locked.

The room was completely empty. No suitcase, no jacket hanging on the wall, and no books on the desk. The bed showed no signs of having been slept in.

Yukari quickly ran back to the hallway and checked the number on the door. Room 201. This was the place.

The two girls went downstairs to the concierge. “Did Akane move to a different room?”

“Who? Miss Miura? Oh, you hadn’t heard? She left yesterday.”

“What do you mean ‘left’?”

“I was told she was going back to Japan so she wouldn’t be needing her room after yesterday.”

“What? You mean she left without telling us?”

“That’s odd. Didn’t you three get along well? I wonder why she would have done that.”

The concierge here made up for having no work to do by being nosy. Yukari left without another word. She went straight for the training center. Up the stairs, she found the door with the plate reading SPACE BIOLOGY LAB and went in without knocking.

Satsuki Asahikawa was inside, sitting in front of a tray with some toast and tomato juice on it, reading a trade magazine of some sort.

“Satsuki?”

“Yukari! Good morning.”

“Is it true that Akane went back to Japan?”

“What? You didn’t know? Yes, she went home yesterday.”

“You mean, she failed the test.”

Satsuki set down her magazine and shifted in her chair. “Unfortunately, yes. You were there, were you not? Someone who faints at 4 G just can’t be an astronaut.”

“But she could have gotten better with training!”

“Don’t look at me like that. The testing is used to determine aptitude—the scope of a person’s abilities at the present moment. Not in some hypothetical future.”

“That may be, but she came all this way, she even quit school, and we just send her home?”

“Believe me, I didn’t want to do it. But the job requires more than just dedication and enthusiasm,” Satsuki said. “This is really the best for her, and for you and Matsuri. Please understand.”

Yukari knew that laying this on Satsuki would get her nowhere, but it was still hard to accept. “Why did she leave without saying a word?”

“She was probably too embarrassed.”

“Why?”

“Because you were the one who recommended her. In a sense, she failed you.”

“She did nothing of the sort!” Yukari shouted. “I was the one who dragged her here! I was the one who told her she’d be hired in an instant, no problem. And she believed me. That’s why she came. It’s not her fault at all. It’s mine!”

A fleck of spittle shot from Yukari’s mouth and landed in Satsuki’s glass of tomato juice, sending ripples across the surface. Satsuki held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I get it.”

“It was my fault.” Yukari’s voice sounded strained.

“I understand.”

“I thought she could help out. I thought she was a good fit. That’s why I invited her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that approach. Nothing at all,” Satsuki said.

“And she was fine in the helicopter. She didn’t get sick or faint.”

“People get carsick for any number of reasons.”

“And you should’ve seen the look in her eyes when I invited her to go up with me.”

“Yukari—”

“I told her I wanted to show her the world from above. How beautiful it was.”

“Yukari,” Satsuki said, her voice gentle, “enough.” Satsuki stood and walked over to Yukari’s side. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the tears off her cheek.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Yukari said with a sniffle.

“It’s okay.” She tapped Yukari lightly on the shoulder. “Here, have a seat.”

Yukari sat down on a nearby bench.

“Look. She may have failed this time, but I think there’s a possibility for a second chance. She’s much more of a fighter than she seems at first.”

Yukari rubbed her eyes with both hands and cried a bit more.

Satsuki watched her quietly.

At length, Yukari spoke. “Satsuki?”

“Yes?”

“Could you give me Akane’s telephone number?”

“Her telephone number?”

“I want to call her and apologize.”

“But you don’t have anything to apologize for—”

“I don’t want her to think it’s her fault!”

“All right, all right.” Satsuki thought for a second, then said, “You know…I don’t think I ever asked for her phone number.”

“What? Didn’t she have to fill out any medical forms or anything?”

“That’s the thing—I was thinking of doing that when she got hired.”

“You don’t have her address?”

“Not even that.”

“I guess I could always dial information.”

“Look, Yukari. I’m sure she’s not home yet anyway. And maybe you want to wait a little while in any case. Give her a week at least.”

“Why?”

“You both have a lot on your mind right now. You should let things settle a bit first. Then talk.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Absolutely! That’s my opinion as a doctor.”

“Okay, then. That’s what I’ll do.”

Yukari nodded, blew her nose, and went back out the door, leaving Satsuki to breathe a deep sigh of relief.

[ACT 9]

SUNDAY, SIX DAYS later.

With SSA rockets going up monthly, both the ground crew and astronauts rarely had a moment to breathe, but today was a rare pause from work for everybody.

Matsuri was decked out from head to toe in tribal garb—a bit misleading, since that tribal garb comprised little more than a bikini, and a small one at that.

What she lacked in skin coverage, though, she made up for with tropical bling: necklaces, bracelets, anklets—she had the works. Most were made from local flora and fauna, such as palm fronds, rattan fibers, exquisite seashells, and the fangs of small animals, but here and there could be spotted a stray bolt or washer she had picked up on base, or strips of glittery fabric cut from a thermal blanket. Each piece played a role in the local brand of magic, but clearly there was some flexibility in the tradition when it came to materials.

Most Taliho dressed far more austerely, but Matsuri was special. She had been tapped to be the next shaman of the tribe. She strode out through the main gate, a spear in her right hand and a woven hemp satchel in her left.

“Hey there, Matsuri,” the guard called out to her. “Where are you headed?”

“To the northern jungle to gather irippe nuts. Might find a durian too, if I’m lucky.”

“I’m afraid the jungle is off-limits right now.”

“Hoi? The whole jungle? Why?”

“Security is doing live ammo training.”

“But it’s been nine years since we’ve been able to gather nuts in the north. I have to go now.”

“Sorry, but off-limits is off-limits.”

Matsuri frowned and walked over to the guard. She looked at him with her black eyes, like a cat’s. She looked through him.

The guard’s expression softened.

“Bullets won’t hit me,” Matsuri whispered.

“…Bullets won’t hit you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“…You’ll be fine.”

“Open the gates.”

“On it.”

The guard pressed the large red button and the striped bar across the road lifted.

Matsuri grinned and walked through.

The Solomon Space Center had been built on several square kilometers of flat land carved out of the jungle on the eastern edge of the island.

Through the gate, the unpaved road was quickly swallowed by jungle. To the southwest, the jungle rose, becoming the jagged ridgeline of the Shiribas Range.

The dangers of these tropical jungles, be it the blistering heat, fanged beasts and giant snakes, malaria, or cannibals, were often exaggerated to near mythical heights. In truth, it did get hot and steamy between the trees at times, but the ick-factor was really no different from what one might feel during the rainy season in Japan. There were hardly any large animals, and all cannibalism had been stamped out by missionaries years ago. Nor did healthy people who had been properly inoculated need to worry much about malaria.

Though there was a constant struggle between the plants of the forest for nutrients and sunlight, the front lines in that battle were in the canopy. Hardly anything of size grew on the dimly lit jungle floor. The main barrier to getting around for anyone who hadn’t grown up here was the thick tangle of low-lying broadleaf shrubs. Most of the shrubs sent out roots that popped up from the forest floor like shark fins, crisscrossing in all directions. The layered roots and vines, and fallen trees that lay like small mountains covered in moss, all served to restrict vision and slow travel by foot to a crawl.

Most of a traveler’s energy was spent clambering up and down the various obstacles. Without a clear view of one’s surroundings, it was impossible to avoid the natural barriers and barricades, and often inexperienced adventurers would find themselves at a dead end and forced to turn back. The experience could be so disheartening that, as the traveler’s exhaustion deepened, some gave up trying to find a route, and instead lay down and simply wasted away.

A short distance down the road, Matsuri made a right angle and stepped into the forest. She continued walking, weaving between the trees, her pace no slower than it had been on the open road. She walked like a cat, making not a sound, stirring not a leaf. It was almost as if she swam through the foliage, so at home did she seem there.

It was nearing noon when she reached her destination.

“Hoi!” she exclaimed in a reverent whisper. “Beautiful!”

An endless stream of small nuts fell from the canopy, twirling in the air as they made their way to the forest floor. When they crossed the path of the few sunbeams that penetrated the canopy, they glittered and sparkled in the air.

On the ground, the brownish winged nuts looked like badminton shuttlecocks. Matsuri knelt to pick some of them up. She removed and discarded the wings, leaving only the nut, which she placed in her satchel. The nuts lay strewn about everywhere. Matsuri barely had to move in order to keep gathering. The more nuts she picked up, the more came twirling down.

Irippe nuts were very rich in oil and one of Matsuri’s favorite foods. Yet they flowered so rarely—only once every several years, and sometimes not for decades—that if you weren’t careful, you might miss them altogether. The Taliho called these times when the irippe fell “nut years” because for various ecological reasons, it wasn’t just one or two trees that decided to bloom in a year, it was all of them in the area.

The last nut year had been when Matsuri was only seven, but she still hadn’t forgotten it. Even when the squirrel population boomed and they ate the lion’s share of the nuts, the rejoicing of the villagers had gone on largely unabated. Matsuri had kept a sharp eye out whenever their orbiter passed over the island, looking for those specks of light color—the blooming flowers—among the deep green of the canopy.

When Matsuri’s satchel was half full of nuts, she left the area.

The sun’s still high. Maybe I’ll go up the ridge a ways and look for some other fruit.

I might even find that durian.

She could practically taste the durian’s sweet-and-sour milk already. If she had any trouble finding it, the bats and orangutan trails would point her in the right direction, and the effort would be worth it. Durian were few and far between. They weren’t the only thing she was after, however. A nice jackfruit, or some figs, or the red fruit of the rambutan—any one of these would hit the spot. They were all delicious. Thoughts of culinary delights drifted through her head, and Matsuri’s pace quickened.

Occasionally, she would stop and look up a tree. When she found a fruit, she shimmied up and plucked it. Whenever branch conditions dictated that she couldn’t use both hands, she would knock the fruit off its branch and collect it from the ground. Several of them she ate on the spot.

Her bag was full, and Matsuri was about to head home when she detected something—a foreign smell in the jungle. She stopped.

Smells like…insect repellent.

Could it be someone from space? An anthropologist, perhaps? Someone in jungle development?

Matsuri’s nose twitched and she followed the trail of the scent.

She had only walked a short while when she spotted something orange in the underbrush.

Matsuri strode over. “Hoi? Akane. What are you doing here?”

Akane lay listless, wedged between two large root-fins. Her face, hands, and clothes were covered in sweat and grime. She was lying on a silvery survival blanket.

The orange color came from the coveralls she was wearing—a standard-issue SSA uniform for flight crew. She had on a survival vest, which was covered with pockets large and small and held up by suspenders.

Akane slowly turned in the direction of the voice. “Matsuri?” A look of surprise came into her vacant eyes. When she sat up, it was with a frailty that made her seem three times her age.

“Want something to eat? They’re yummy.”

“Yes!” Akane’s eyes went wide.

For the next ten seconds, she attacked Matsuri’s stash with a vengeance. Then she looked up. “Thank you, but I really shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not supposed to let anyone help me.”

“Hoi? Why not?”

“I’m doing solo survival training—except it’s more of a test than training.”

“Oh.” Matsuri nodded. Solo survival training was widely known as the most severe regimen used by the military—and by the SSA, as it happened. Personnel doing the training were given a limited amount of water, food, and gear and dropped off by helicopter in the middle of nowhere. Then they would have to navigate back to a designated place within a set amount of time, entirely on their own.

It was a test of decision-making ability, stamina, survival skills, and psychological resilience in the noisy solitude of the jungle. The training was famous in the military for higher-than-normal rates of attrition due to mental instability and in some cases, death.

Yukari had undergone solo survival training herself. In her case, it had gone rather smoothly after she met Matsuri on her first day in the jungle. With Matsuri’s expert guidance, she’d had no trouble making it back home. As a test, it’d been a failure, but the SSA had already been committed to using Yukari before the test, and the addition of Matsuri to the team had been an added bonus.

“I had no idea you were even still on the island.”

“It was supposed to be a secret. They were afraid that if you knew, one of you would try to help me. I camped overnight in the security forces’ training area and trained for three days, then they brought me out here by helicopter.”

“Wait, so how many days have you been in the jungle?”

“This is my third day. But if I don’t make it home by midnight, I’ll fail.”

Akane lowered her eyes.

They had only given her a day’s worth of food. She’d received general survival skills training for tropical and subtropical regions, but they hadn’t taught her anything specific about the geography or edible flora of this particular island.

Akane had divided the food she was given into three portions, taking care not to eat too much on any day, but she was already at her limit with hunger. No matter how much she rested, once her strength failed it did not come back.

“We heard that you dropped out and went back to Japan.”

“That’s what they told you, huh.”

“Yukari was very upset. She still is. She wanted to apologize to you.”

“What? It was my choice to come here. Yukari has nothing to be sorry about!” Using the roots on either side as handholds, Akane staggered to her feet. She folded her blanket carefully and stashed it in her pack. Then she began to walk across the loamy soil, one step at a time.

“I have to get back…have to get back by midnight.”

“Hoi! Well, if you want a shortcut—”

“No! Don’t tell me!” Akane said sharply. “Don’t help me. If you help me, I won’t pass. Please.”

Matsuri saw the look in Akane’s eyes and fell silent. After a few moments she said, “You’ll be fine, Akane. The weather’s on your side today.”

“Thanks. I’m going to give it one last shot.”

Matsuri scanned their surroundings. Then she pointed up in the sky. “Look! Swallows! Ooh! Look at all of them!”

Akane followed the direction her fingers were pointing. Indeed, something was darting through the air beyond the dense foliage of the trees.

“Those are swallows?”

“Yep. They’re awful good at flying, those swallows.” Matsuri picked up her satchel and stood. “Hoi! I’m going to go gather some more fruit before I head back home.” She walked off into the jungle, disappearing within moments, leaving Akane to ponder what she had said.

If she’s going to gather more fruit, that means she’s probably not headed straight back to base…

Akane was sure the other girl had been trying to tell her something indirectly, but what?

She looked back up at the wheeling swallows.

For some reason, it was a relief to see their familiar sweptback wing shape again. Swallows were common near her home in Japan. When they had first dropped her off in the jungle two days before, Akane had stared wide-eyed at everything, amazed by the rich abundance of life. Her joy hadn’t lasted long.

Akane prided herself on having paid attention during biology class, but for whatever reason, she had never learned much about the tropics. If I’d only studied more, I might know what around here is edible…

Something brushed across the back corner of her mind. The wheeling swallows—swallows wheeled like that when they were catching insects to eat.

Which meant that there were insects up there. Probably a lot of them. Insects tended to swarm most immediately following eclosion—their emergence from a chrysalis, in other words.

Akane pricked up her ears. She could hear it now, a mass thrumming of wings. It was high-pitched. Flies? No, bees. They were most definitely small bees or wasps. She had read something about jungle wasps in a book about parasitic life-forms.

Akane wracked her brains for any shred of memory that might prove helpful.

Then it hit her: fig wasps!

Fig flowers bloomed internally—they were hard to see from the outside. For pollination, fig trees relied on wasps. Her biology teacher had called it a “masterpiece of symbiosis.”

Fig flowers had male flowers, female flowers, and a third kind where wasps laid their eggs. Two wasps would actually mate inside the fruit, in contact with a male flower. Then, with the pollen still attached, the female wasp would fly off in search of an appropriate flower in which to lay her eggs. Since the female flower of the same plant was not shaped well for egg-laying, the wasp would look for a different tree, and pollination was accomplished.

How did I not realize this before now?

She had heard the humming of wasp wings several times already during the last two days and avoided them, fearing a sting. But she had never put two and two together to realize that where there were fig wasps, there were figs!

Akane walked closer to where the swallows danced in the sky. It didn’t take her long to find a fig tree laden with fruit. She pulled off a fig and split it in half. It was perfectly ripe and full of juice. Akane crammed it in her mouth without even peeling off the skin, the sweet juice filling her mouth.

Her eyes watered with tears. She ate three of the figs, one right after the other. The fourth had a wasp inside it. After that, she was a little more careful in choosing her fruit. When she was satisfied, she stopped eating, afraid of a bellyache.

She picked off another ten good-looking figs and stashed them in her pack. The feeling of strength flowing back into her body was palpable. She checked her watch and found it was just after two o’clock.

I might just make it home. I’ve got another ten hours—four until sundown.

Matsuri must have walked from base, she reasoned. And if she can do it, so can I.

Then a troubling thought occurred to her. Had Matsuri helped her find the figs? All she had done was point out the swallows. It certainly hadn’t seemed like a hint at the time. But Matsuri might’ve meant it as one. She had known that where there were swallows, there were figs.

But I was the one who put it all together.

She decided that if she made it back before the deadline, she would tell them what had happened. Even if it disqualifies me, at least I’ll be honest, and that has to count for something.

Akane pulled out her compass and verified her course. She didn’t need a guide. Hints were everywhere if she just looked: the lay of the land, the vegetation, flocks of birds, flowing streams. She wouldn’t miss another clue. Not this close to victory.

[ACT 10]

YUKARI WAS ON break, but she didn’t much feel like doing anything, so instead of going out she lay on her bed in her room and read one of the books she’d bought in Yokohama. This one was titled Zionism and Islamic Society.

She heard the quick path of footsteps approaching and someone opened her door without knocking.

“Hoi! You won’t believe how much fruit I nabbed, Yukari! Let’s eat.”

Yukari groaned and set her book down next to her pillow. “Just no durian, please.”

“No problem! I’ve got nuts and rambutan and jackfruits and figs.”

Yukari frowned. “Hey! No dirty sacks on my bed!”

Matsuri moved her satchel onto the floor and sat crosslegged on a chair. “What will it be?”

“A fig, I guess.”

Matsuri handed her the fruit and Yukari began peeling it, a disinterested look on her face. Matsuri dug the flesh out of a rambutan with her army knife. The two ate their tropical meal in silence, tossing skins and seeds into a wastebasket and using tissues to wipe the juice from their lips. Only their hands and jaws moved.

Though Matsuri was customarily cheerful, she had never been a big talker. By comparison, Yukari hardly ever stopped talking, until now. She hadn’t been much in the mood for conversation since Akane had left.

After several minutes of eating in silence, Matsuri wiped her mouth with the back of one hand and said, “So I met Akane in the jungle.”

Yukari froze. “What did you say?”

“I said I met Akane in the jungle.”

Yukari jumped from her chair. “You met Akane?” she shouted, fig seeds spraying from her lips. “In the jungle! Here?”

“Where else?” Matsuri asked.

“Why? How? Where?”

“I already told you. In the jungle. She was doing solo survival training. She’s going to fail if she doesn’t make it back before midnight tonight.”

“Wait, but that means—” Yukari’s eyes swam as her brain worked overtime to process the new information. “That means Akane hasn’t failed! They lied to us!”

“Sounds like it. They probably lied so we wouldn’t help her.”

Yukari’s face flushed with rage. Why that weasel! She dashed for the door, then stopped and whirled around. “Where was she, exactly? Was she far?”

“She was in the hills about three klicks from the eastern edge of the runway. She seemed pretty pooped.”

Three kilometers was a long way in the jungle.

“She was tired? Well, what did you do? You helped her, right?”

“Nope. I left her there and went looking for more fruit.”

“You didn’t even show her the way back?”

“She asked me not to help her.”

“Of all the—!”

Yukari stormed out of the room in a rage, ranting under her breath as she went. I don’t care why she did it. I’m going to give that woman a piece of my mind! I don’t care if it was technically the right thing to do.

Yukari ran, first to the women’s dormitory in search of Satsuki Asahikawa, and when she wasn’t to be found there, on to the training center. She ran up the stairs and knocked on the door to the lab.

The door was locked, but no one was inside.

Yukari checked around the center until she was sure no one was there.

“If she comes walking up tomorrow like nothing’s happened—”

It was time for Plan B. She could go help her, but then again, Akane was one to play by the rules to a fault. Yukari wondered if there were any way she could lead Akane to the base without her even knowing it.

She checked her watch. It was five o’clock. Hardly any time left to do anything.

She would just have to wait and trust in Akane’s ability. Even though she didn’t trust it at all.

What if she’s already here, just a little ways away? Yukari walked faster. The light outside was already an orange yellow. She made for the main gate, trailing a long shadow behind her. She told the guard she was just going out for a stroll and went through. Outside the base, Yukari stopped and held her breath. She was looking at the back of a white lab coat.

There you are.

Satsuki turned around, a look of surprise on her face. “Yukari? What are you doing outside at this time of day?”

“Just going for a little walk,” Yukari replied, a bit too quickly.

Satsuki wouldn’t know that her secret was out yet, and Yukari had nothing to gain by telling her. But what was she doing outside? Surely not waiting here for Akane’s return?

“Here to meet someone, Satsuki?”

“You might say that.”

“A guy?”

“Could be.”

“You’re not telling?”

“Do I have to?”

“No. Not really,” Yukari said.

The conversation died on the spot. The two stood, about five meters apart, both standing facing toward the jungle.

It wasn’t long before the sun brushed the ridgeline of the mountains to the west.

A hum rose from the forest as birds sang to one another, ascertaining the safety of their roosts. Far away, over the tops of the trees, Yukari saw something like a stream of black smoke.

“Bats,” she said.

“That’s what that is?” the doctor asked.

“They fly out of their caves in the evening like that. Matsuri told me.”

“They don’t attack people, do they?”

“Who knows?”

The last rays of light disappeared behind the tips of the trees.

“Yukari?”

“Yeah?”

“Look—”

“Yeah?”

They heard footsteps behind them. The two women turned. It was Kinoshita.

“Well, what do we have here?” he said bemusedly. He was dressed casually in a cotton shirt and loose-fitting slacks, but his hair was carefully combed back.

“Ooh! So you were waiting for Kinoshita?” Yukari teased.

Kinoshita and Satsuki exchanged quick glances.

“I’ll leave that to your imagination,” Kinoshita replied.

“I don’t want to be a third wheel…”

“Not at all.”

Kinoshita joined Satsuki by the big SOLOMON SPACE ASSOCIATION sign and the two stood there, showing no indications of going anywhere.

Because the sun set straight down in the tropics, it got dark very quickly. Yukari squinted, peering into the jungle, but she couldn’t see any movement at all. Already an hour had passed since she came through the gate. Satsuki had made no attempt to restart their earlier conversation, and standing around in silence was growing pretty boring.

Frustratingly enough, her anger had entirely disappeared. She was still upset that no one had trusted her, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she could have kept herself from interfering had she known. She could find absolutely no fault with them wanting Akane’s final test to be a fair one. By now, they had probably realized she was onto them, anyway. Still, if the cover story was that Kinoshita and Satsuki were having a dalliance, she didn’t want them to think she was being rude. Yukari was just about to say something when a fourth person came up behind them.

“Hoi, Yukari! Akane show up yet?”

With a few simple words, Matsuri turned the situation on its head.

Yukari looked up. Satsuki and Kinoshita were staring at the two of them in silence.

“Not yet.”

“Well, she’s still got six hours. She’ll be fine.”

“So you knew,” Kinoshita said. It wasn’t a question.

“Oh, I ran into her in the jungle today around lunchtime.”

Kinoshita and Satsuki both turned to look at the guard by the gate, then back at Yukari.

“We were hoping to avoid that. Sorry we had to lie.”

“It’s okay. And Matsuri didn’t help her,” Yukari explained. “Akane told her not to.”

“That so?”

“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but that’s what she said.”

“No, I believe you.”

“Look, I see what you’re doing, but isn’t it a little abrupt to throw a girl fresh off the boat from Japan into a solo survival scenario?”

“We spent a whole week getting ready. And we’ve been far kinder than we would be to the usual applicants. There aren’t any dangerous animals on the island, and she’s carrying a transceiver. She’ll have plenty of difficulties, but not so much danger.”

“What about the poisonous snakes and poisonous frogs?”

“We took what preventative measures we could. We taught her how to inject herself with penicillin if it came to that,” Satsuki said. “For what it’s worth, this test wasn’t my idea.”

“It was mine,” Kinoshita said. “Don’t take it out on her.”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” Yukari’s shoulders slumped. She regretted not getting a chance to chew Satsuki out, but now she was too concerned for Akane’s safety to worry much about that.

Kinoshita turned to Matsuri. “So, where was Akane when you found her?”

“About three klicks from the eastern edge of the runway.”

“And when did you see her?”

“A little after noontime.”

“I see. She’s making good progress, then.” Kinoshita walked over to the guardhouse and quickly returned.

A few moments later, a spotlight began sweeping across the sky. It came from behind the main complex and the training center—probably from the runway.

“Don’t think I’m giving her any special treatment. This level of illumination is standard. Just don’t ask me to set off the sirens.”

Thanking him was the furthest thing from Yukari’s mind, though she regretted not having thought of turning on the lights herself.

Together, the four of them waited.

A little after nine o’clock, Mukai and Nasuda joined them, having finished work.

When Mukai saw the crowd, he quickly went back, returning a few moments later with a large cooler in his arms.

“I brought some sandwiches and cola from the cafeteria.”

Everyone held out their hands in silence. No one wanted to talk. It was hard not to feel guilty, standing there waiting for her.

Yukari turned to Matsuri. “So, jungle expert, what’s the best possible route she could’ve taken?”

“Well, the easiest would have been to go straight north until she hit the ocean, then walk down the shore. That would get her out of the jungle more quickly.”

“Right…”

That had been Yukari’s plan when they sent her out. Once she reached the coast, she would just have to go east until she ran into the base, then follow the line of the fence to the front gate. Yukari turned to look down the fence, but it was lost in the darkness.

“Did she have a flashlight with her?”

“Yes, but batteries for only two hours. No spares,” Kinoshita said. “Even if she saved them for her last day, they’d be dead by now.”

“Any moon tonight?”

“Not until the early morning,” Matsuri said.

“You could have at least waited until a full moon!” Yukari growled.

“Now now, Yukari.” Nasuda had just begun to console her when Matsuri waved for them to be silent. “Hoi? I saw something flash.”

“Where?”

Everyone turned to look in the direction Matsuri was pointing.

For a while they saw nothing. But then, several minutes later, all six of them gasped. Off in the jungle, a light twinkled. From the position, it was about half a kilometer away, moving down a slope.

“Where is she, Matsuri?”

“I think she was moving to the left. So she’s going for the main road, not the coast.”

“Think she’ll make it?”

“She’s about to head into a small valley. If she cuts straight across it, she’ll be fine, but if she tries to walk along it she’ll get into trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Swamp trouble.”

Yukari swallowed. Just because they had spotted her didn’t mean she was going to make it. She kept watching the jungle, but the light was nowhere to be seen. Yukari had never considered herself to be particularly religious, but now she was praying with all her might.

She glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock.

“There it is again!”

They spotted the light, this time much farther to the left than before.

“She’s past the valley.”

“Really?”

“As long as she keeps walking straight, she’ll make it to the road.”

“Thatta girl!” Yukari cupped her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and took a deep breath.

“Don’t,” Kinoshita said quickly. “This is a test. She has to make it to the very end on her own.”

Yukari blew out her lungful of air quietly and squinted into the darkness. The road went straight into the jungle before it curved. From just around the curve, she could see a yellow light flickering.

“She made it, Yukari. She’s on the road.”

Finally, they saw her emerge from between the trees. She was wobbling slightly, a makeshift torch in her right hand.

Yukari could restrain herself no longer. “Akane! Hey! Over here!”

Akane waved her torch in response.

“You did it!” Yukari shouted again, doing a little dance. “You did it, Akane!”

Now she could see the other girl’s orange coveralls. Akane’s feet dragged as she walked, but her progress was steady. Yukari ran up to the edge of where the paved road from the base ended and waited there like a relay runner waiting for her turn with the baton.

When she got closer, Akane threw her torch down on the ground and practically collapsed into Yukari’s arms. Yukari patted her cheek, covered with scrapes and mud.

“You did it, Akane. You really did it.”

Steadying her shoulders, she helped Akane sit down. Beside them, Satsuki knelt and began a cursory examination.

“Any injuries?”

“No…I’m fine.”

“How do you feel?”

“Good. No, great.”

“You did a great job.”

“The torch was a good idea,” Kinoshita said.

“I found some resinous branches on the fig tree and gathered them before it got too dark.”

“Well,” Nasuda said, extending his hand, “I think we’ve got our third astronaut.”

Akane reached out to shake his hand, then suddenly jerked away. “I…” she began, “I met Matsuri in the jungle.” Akane explained what had happened and how she had found the fig trees.

“Matsuri?” Nasuda turned to her. “What were you really up to out there? Did you mean to give her that hint?”

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.”