Chapter Three Operation: Rescue Orpheus

CHAPTER THREE

OPERATION:
RESCUE ORPHEUS

[ACT 1]

“SAY AGAIN, HOUSTON? I didn’t copy.” Norman Randolph had heard Houston loud and clear. He just didn’t like what they were telling him.

“We’re showing a problem with one of Orpheus’s attitude control thrusters. Two sensors are coming up red.”

“You expect me to fix that up here? We’re not exactly packing spare parts for the probe.”

“We can’t deploy until we get this cleared up.”

“Roger that, Houston,” Norman grumbled into the comm. This was one fight he wouldn’t be winning. “What am I in for?”

In a NASA-issue space suit, no one can see you shrug. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now, but if he made too much of a fuss, he might lose his chance to ever launch again.

It had taken five years for him to make it on a flight after he had been added to the space shuttle crew. The average lifetime total flights for a NASA astronaut was a paltry three. If you didn’t want that to be a hard limit, you had to be very patient and pick your battles.

“I’m moving you, Norman. You ready?”

That was Gordon Krenic, radioing him from the cabin. Norman’s feet were fixed to the tip of the Remote Manipulation Arm that unfolded like an insect leg from the shuttle’s cargo bay. Gordon controlled the arm from inside the cabin.

“Go for it.”

The arm lifted Norman’s body three meters upward where it stopped with a light quiver from the inertia. He was farther away from the floor of the payload bay now, able to see both wings of the shuttle and beyond that, the blue arc of the earth.

The unmanned probe known as Orpheus was right in front of him. The upper-stage engine that would send the probe all the way to Pluto was positioned on the underside relative to his position. Together, the probe and engine extended from the center of the payload bay, like a giant cannon pointing toward space. The scale was impressive.

Norman knew that this large-scale probe would most likely be the last of its kind.

With each passing year, the probes had been getting smaller and smaller, lifted into space by small, unmanned rockets. Using the shuttle to bring the probe into low orbit, manually extending all the antennas, and doing a careful systems check all took too much time and manpower—these costs would kill such projects.

The Orpheus Project had started back when people still viewed the shuttle through rose-colored glasses. It was only a short while after the shuttle began operation that its lack of cost-effectiveness really came to the surface, but it was the explosion of the Challenger in ’86 that changed everything. The flight schedule was cut in half, and safety became a top priority. The Orpheus Project was put on ice for years.

With guidance from Houston, Norman began the task of removing the gold-colored thermal blanket covering the surface of the probe. On the ground, this would have been no more difficult than ripping open an envelope, but up here it was next to impossible. He had to exert a pressure of at least thirty kilograms just to grab something with his stiff space suit gloves, and he could feel absolutely nothing through the thick fabric. That, and the arm he was standing on wobbled like a fishing pole.

Finally he got the blanket off, revealing the duralumin structure beneath.

Norman fished an Allen wrench out of his pocket and set about tightening the screws, keeping his left hand hovering over them so he wouldn’t lose anything to space.

Removing the eight screws took all of forty minutes.

Once the panel was open, he could see tubes for hydrogen underneath. Next to them was the control valve assembly. In all, it was about the size of a portable radio. Norman took one look at the nest of wires and tubing connected to the control valve and sighed. They want me to remove that?

“Ever build a ship in a bottle?” he muttered to no one in particular. “That’s what this feels like.”

“Pull it off, and you’ll be a hero,” said a voice over his radio from inside the shuttle. This was the captain, Wayne Berkheimer.

It was true. Fixing a problem while in orbit was an astronaut’s chance to shine. When people back home heard the news, it reminded them of the need for manned missions.

It took Norman three hours to remove the valve assembly. With his left hand, he hugged it tightly to his chest. Now all he needed to do was bring it back inside the shuttle where they could take a close look at it.

“It’s done,” Norman said, relieved. “Bring me back to the air lock, Gordon.”

“Well,” Gordon said over the radio, “you’ll be coming back up here again for sure.”

The remote manipulating arm began to move.

“Wait!” Norman barked, “not that way!”

He could hear Gordon swearing under his breath over the radio. The arm holding Norman in place was about to collide with one of the antennas protruding from the probe. The inertia of the arm was such that it was hard to stop quickly. Norman ducked, hoping to avoid the antenna entirely. It took all of his strength to move in his bulky suit, and in his rush, he forgot to pay attention to what he was holding in his left hand.

As the antenna swooshed soundlessly over his head, the valve assembly drifted from his fingers, spinning through space toward the probe’s engine.

The valve hit one of the exterior panels and ricocheted off into a gap between the main body of the probe and the engine.

“Dammit!”

“Sorry about that, Norman. You okay?”

“I’m fine, but I lost the valve assembly. I think it’s lodged inside the connector between the probe and the engine.”

“Roger that. What do you want me to do?”

“Bring me a little closer to the probe again. About three feet.”

“Okay. I’ll try not to mess this one up.”

Once he was close enough, Norman peered at the connector. The connector was like a deep, wedge-shaped groove in the side of the probe, fifty centimeters wide and about three meters in diameter. The engine was designed to detach once the probe was on its interplanetary trajectory. There was a ring of shaped explosives for this purpose connected to the probe by a complex truss, making the area around the connector look like a jungle gym.

Norman shone in his light and spotted the valve assembly wedged inside the crevice.

“Found it…I think I might be able to reach.” Norman stuck his hand down into the groove but was unable to reach it. In the space suit, his arm was about three times bulkier than it was in normal clothes, and he couldn’t get his joints to bend around the frame.

When he finally did reach the valve assembly, he only succeeded in brushing it with the tips of his fingers, which knocked it farther into the wedge—a fatal mistake.

“Godamnit! Now it’s wedged in next to the tank!”

“Think you’ll be able to get it out soon?” the captain asked.

“No, definitely not soon. Maybe not at all.”

“Right. Then come back to the shuttle for now. I’m sure we’ll think of some other way to go after it.”

[ACT 2]

“TURN THE VOLUME up! Louder!” someone shouted on the other side of the cafeteria.

Yukari, Matsuri, and Akane put down their lunches and looked up. Every eye in the cafeteria was glued to the large television screen on the wall. Someone had changed the channel from the usual Japanese broadcast to CNN.

“Wonder what it is? Maybe they’re showing something about us?”

“Hoi! Let’s go check it out.”

The three stood and walked over closer to the screen.

They were showing a live feed, apparently from the space shuttle. The picture was being taken from the rear observation window on the upper deck, showing two astronauts in the middle of the payload bay, working on some device.

Someone turned the volume up and they could hear an anchorwoman’s voice, saying, “…into the third day. The part seems to have gotten wedged inside a crevice in the Orpheus probe too deep to be easily removed. They’ve tried shaking it and using a gripping extension hand, but so far they’ve had no luck in retrieving the wayward part.”

“Yikes! They’re still working on that thing?” Yukari said. A man in coveralls in front of her turned.

“They just might need you up there, Yukari.”

“Nah!”

“You never know.”

“Apparently, it will be impossible to retrieve the part without dismantling the engine array on the probe, and this will be impossible to do while in orbit.”

“The director is already moving on this,” the man said. “They’ve got a booster under assembly in the VAB. Just making preparations at this point, but still.”

“You mean the SSA is going to go up there?” Akane asked.

“Why not?” the man asked. “One of you could slide your whole body in there and fish it out, no problem.”

Akane returned her gaze to the television. “I don’t know. It looks pretty tight.”

For the last month, Akane had been training in the training center’s pool.

She would get into her space suit, strap on a backpack, and attach the appropriate amount of ballast to make the experience of floating in water as close to being weightless as possible. While submerged, they had her putting together mock-up satellites and taking them apart.

“The shuttle will only be up for another three days. NASA has said they will do everything they can while there’s still time remaining. However, in the worst-case scenario, they’ll be obligated to bring the Orpheus probe back down to the ground with them.”

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

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

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

“That sounds like a waste.”

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

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

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

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

Akane nodded, thinking to herself.

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

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

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

“Oh, right.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You do get rattled around a fair bit.”

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I’ll get it later.”

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

“Civilized people sure have it tough.”

“Yes, we like it that way.”

“Hoi.”

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

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

“Really?” Akane asked.

“Either that or it means everything.”

Akane looked confused.

“You explain it, Matsuri!”

“Hoi?”

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

“Hoi.”

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

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

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

[ACT 3]

THEY ARRIVED AT the briefing room to find Nasuda, Kinoshita, and Satsuki already there, waiting for them. When they were seated at the round table, Nasuda spoke.

“Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but we’ve been called upon to participate in an emergency mission. We’re launching tomorrow at 10:34 AM sharp. We’ll be using the orbiter Mangosteen. Yukari will be captain, and Akane will be MS. Matsuri, you’ll be backup here with the ground crew.”

The room was silent.

“You said mission specialist Akane?” Akane said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

“That’s right.”

Her mouth hung open. “You mean I’m going up? Already?”

Nasuda nodded deeply. “That’s correct. I know it’s a lot earlier than we had originally scheduled, but, well, congratulations.”

“But why—”

“Allow me to explain the mission first.”

“Is this about the Orpheus?” Yukari asked.

“That’s correct. We’re going to help them launch that unlucky Pluto-bound probe. They’re flying in a replacement for the part that got damaged to us now. It should get here tomorrow morning. You’ll bring the part up to the shuttle and retrieve the broken part that’s gotten wedged inside the probe engine block. That’s your mission.” Nasuda stared at each of the girls in turn. “We’re going to fix NASA’s mistake and show them how good we are at extravehicular activity. I hardly need to say that this is our big chance.”

“And we’ll get to show off our new recruit to NASA at the same time.”

“Exactly. I want them to know that we have an MS at the SSA too. Akane, you’ll be performing the EVA to retrieve the jammed part.”

“But I can’t do that!” Akane practically shouted. “I was supposed to train for six months! I’ve only had one!”

“The training program is intended to prepare you for solo flight. You’ll have Yukari with you.”

“I’ll just get in the way!”

Nasuda frowned. He knew it was a bold move to go with the new recruit, but he wasn’t ready to give up on this one just yet.

Yukari glanced at Satsuki. She must’ve been against this. Her face says it all.

“Well, I don’t want to create trouble before we’ve even launched,” Nasuda said. “I’ll take your feelings under advisement. If you don’t feel you’re ready to fly, I’ll swap you out for Matsuri. How do you feel about that, Yukari?”

Yukari could sense Akane’s worried gaze on her.

“You think Akane isn’t up to the job?” Nasuda asked again.

“She is,” Yukari said crisply. “No problem.”

“Yu-Yukari!” Akane stammered. Yukari cut her off.

“I said no problem. You’ll be fine.”

“But I can’t go into space tomorrow, I’m not—”

“You can! I’ll be with you!”

“But…”

“Don’t you want to go to space?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you can’t pass up a single chance. The SSA won’t be here forever. Blink and it might blow away. If we have even one major accident the whole thing’s getting shut down. That’s why if you get a chance to go, you better take it.”

Akane’s eyes rolled up into her head as she let Yukari’s words sink in.

Yukari could be just as pushy as Nasuda in her own way.

One look at Akane was enough to tell how fast the girl’s mind was racing. She sat there, thinking it over for a full sixteen seconds. “I’ll go,” she said at last.

“All right!” Yukari and Nasuda said at the same time.

That’s a load off my shoulders, Yukari thought. Fly just this once, Akane. Fly, and then you get to choose what comes next.

“I’m amazed NASA came to you with this,” Yukari said to Director Nasuda. “They wouldn’t even let us get near their precious station.”

“Who said anything about them coming to us? We went to them. And we gave them insanely good terms. They only pay up if we’re successful.”

Yukari sighed. “I should have guessed.” Not that it was a surprise to anyone by this point, but it was becoming increasingly clear just how much of the SSA was run by this one man’s ambition.

“So we’re going up there without any specific training, then?”

“No, you’ll train. Starting right now,” Kinoshita said.

“How? We going to take the Gulfstream to Houston and get back in time for lunch?”

“That would be ideal, but we haven’t got that kind of time. We’re going to use a CG simulation to give you an idea of the conditions you will probably be facing up there.”

“What?” Yukari said. “Computer graphics?”

“Think of it as a puzzle game. We’ve got all the data we need from NASA. You’ve got to get a good night’s sleep tonight, so you’d better start training now.”

[ACT 4]

THE SPACE SHUTTLE Atlantis was high in the sky over the Indian Ocean, getting ready for its fifty-seventh night since launch. By the ship clock it was noon. The shuttle crew had gathered in the middeck for lunch.

They were injecting hot water into bags of freeze-dried soup, which they then drank through straws, squeezing the bags to get out every last drop. The mood was sour. They were used to space food by now, but after four days of fruitless effort, who could blame them for wanting a real meal.

“So these girls are really coming tomorrow?” Norman asked. “Doesn’t it usually take a whole day just to orchestrate a rendezvous?”

“We’re going to do an immediate transfer after they’ve made their first orbit,” the captain replied calmly. He was an ex-test pilot, and there was very little that ever ruffled his feathers. “I don’t know what magic tricks they’re using, but their orbital entry paths are frighteningly precise.”

“So they come up here and then wriggle around inside that probe?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” pilot Luis Kreeger said. “I saw them on TV and I’m pretty sure they were using special effects. I mean, come on, a sixteen-year-old girl? What is this, some kind of anime?”

“What’s ‘anime’?”

“Japanese animation. There’s always these little girls doing stuff. I’ll loan you a tape when we get back.”

“Well, we’d best get ready all the same,” the captain said.

“Get ready for what?”

“Get ready for what will happen if these ‘little girls’ pull it off.”

The crew exchanged glances. They were all men, and all winners in that desperate race to get to space. None of them were accustomed to losing, ever.

After a long while, Norman said, “I’m fine with that. Better than everything falling through and then having to go face Dr. O’Reilly.” No one said anything, so Norman continued. “You know, he wouldn’t blame us either. ‘You did well, Norm. You’ll get another chance.’”

Norman squeezed the last drops out of his bag of chicken soup and pushed it into the trash dispenser with a loud thunk.

“Dammit,” Norman spat. “I don’t want another chance. I want this one!”

[ACT 5]

SATSUKI’S MORNING CALL woke the three astronauts up the next morning at five o’clock sharp.

After Akane had been formally accepted by the association, she had moved into the dormitory on base together with the other two girls. They were each given their own private room on the second floor, with Yukari’s room in the corner, then Matsuri’s, then Akane’s.

“Hoi! Yukari! Wakey-wakey!” Matsuri shouted from the hallway outside Yukari’s door. Matsuri was always the first one to get up, so it was her job to make sure the other two weren’t still snoozing.

When Yukari finally walked out into the hall, she found Akane there as well.

“Morning. You get any sleep, Akane?”

“Strangely enough, I slept like a baby.”

“Wow. I always took you for the jittery type.”

“I think I was probably pretty exhausted.”

Yukari had gone right to sleep after the training ended, but even still it meant she had only gotten four hours. It was nowhere near enough. They left the dormitory and made for the cafeteria, squinting their eyes against the morning sun.

“Oh, now I get why it’s so quiet,” Yukari said. “No press.”

The mission had been decided so suddenly there hadn’t been any time for the press to get down to the island.

“Is there usually quite a lot?”

“Usually we can’t even go eat breakfast before they make us hold a little press conference right here in front of the dormitory.”

“They’ll probably be landing pretty soon. The director loves his publicity,” Matsuri said.

They went into the cafeteria and sat down at the counter without picking up trays.

“I’ll take the special,” Yukari said, waving to one of the cooks.

“Coming right up.”

The clerk handed her a tray with toast, an egg, and coconut milk. It was a specially prepared, completely hygienic meal for astronauts. Yukari normally would have liked a little more to eat, but overeating before a launch was never a good idea.

“Good luck up there,” Bishop said.

“Thanks.”

“And good luck on your first flight, Akane.”

Akane beamed. “Thank you!”

After they had eaten, the three of them went down for an examination at the training center. Satsuki took their temperatures, blood pressure, heart rate, and urine samples. She was moving fast, recording everything methodically in her notebooks.

“That’s a clean bill of health for all three of you. You can go down to the control center now, Matsuri. You other two stay.”

Satsuki made a phone call to the director’s office. “Yukari and Akane are both good to go.”

The next part was the worst. Satsuki had to give both girls an enema, injecting cold water from below to clean out their large intestines. This saved them from having to do a “number two” anytime soon.

Then they put on the space suits and did their hair.

“You and Matsuri have such long hair—doesn’t it get in the way?” Akane asked.

“Actually,” Yukari told her, “it makes it easier to wrap up that way.”

Yukari split her hair into two braids, fixed them with hairbands, and applied a little hairspray. “Not that short hair is bad, either. As long as it doesn’t get tangled in the adapter ring, it’s fine.”

“I see.”

“Let’s take a look at you!” Yukari turned to the other girl, helped her straighten her hair, and cut a few stray strands. “I love your hair, Akane. It’s so light. Not heavy and matted like mine.”

“I usually don’t put anything in it at all.”

“Well, if you don’t now, you’ll look like the Bride of Frankenstein when we get up there. Close your eyes.” Yukari carefully applied hairspray to Akane’s hair.

Then both of the girls put on their helmets, checked the seals, and they were ready. They were just about to walk out of the room when Akane stopped. “Um, actually, can you wait just one moment?”

“Sure.”

Akane quickly called home. Her parents already knew about the flight, but she hadn’t been able to talk to them herself, she’d been so busy since the night before.

“Miura speaking.”

It was her brother, four years younger than she.

“Hideto? It’s me.”

“Akane! Your timing sucks.”

“Huh?”

“Mom and Dad just went to the shrine. They’re going to pray for you.”

“Oh…right.”

“Are you going to be on TV? It’s your first flight, right?”

“No. The press won’t make it here in time.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad’ll be back soon. Can you call again?”

“I don’t think so. I’m heading out to the launch pad right now. Can you just tell them that I’ll call when I’m back?”

“Sure thing.”

“All right, thanks, Hideto. School going okay?”

“You know me. I got the right stuff. Oh wait, no, that was you.”

Akane laughed. “Okay, well I’m going.”

“Yup! Catch you la—”

She set down the receiver and quickly left the room.

Satsuki led the two astronauts down to the front of the training center, where both a cameraman from public relations and Nasuda waited. Nasuda squinted at them, sizing them up.

“Yukari, you’re in charge of taking stock of the situation and making the calls up there. I want you to show them how we work.”

“I’m on it.”

“Akane. I know this is sudden, and you probably have some reservations, but I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you could handle it. This is your first flight. Have fun.”

“Will do!”

“Right.” Nasuda’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “Now go show NASA what we’re made of.”

Yukari smiled, getting into the spirit of things for the first time.

Satsuki, Yukari, and Akane piled into the security vehicle and took off for the launch pad. They could see their destination for the entire journey down the two-kilometer stretch of road. The pad stood forty meters high, including the weather observatory station on top. The rocket, primed with liquid oxygen, was giving off white steam.

It was twenty-seven meters from the base to the tip of the rocket. Twenty meters of that was the LS-6 main booster. Two smaller solid-fuel boosters, used to get the rocket off the ground, were attached to either side of the main. If a rocket applied only as much force as it weighed, then it would just spend fuel without going anywhere. The solid boosters were there to push the rocket quickly up to the point where the atmosphere thinned out. Once the solid boosters separated, the main booster took over. The main booster burn was long and controlled, aiming more for conservation of velocity than brute thrust.

At that point, the crew would already be sixty kilometers up and flying nearly parallel to the ground, with very little air resistance, meaning they required little thrust to keep going. The most important thing was to use a minimum amount of fuel in the most efficient way possible to continue climbing.

The booster was aided in this by the fact that as it used fuel, the booster got lighter, adding to its acceleration. By the time they were out of fuel, they would be pushing back into their seats under 8 G of pressure—the fastest point in the launch sequence. That moment would be Akane’s first real test.

They got out of the Humvee off to one side of the launch pad. There they stood for a moment, looking up at the rocket towering over them. The three of them got into the elevator. The air had been perfectly calm at ground level, but twenty meters up, there was a light breeze. A thin walkway extended from the elevator door to the orbiter.

“How do you feel?” Satsuki asked.

“Right as rain.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay then. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

“Here goes!”

Together, Yukari and Akane crossed the boarding bridge. They opened the orbiter hatch and sat down inside, bodies facing upward toward the sky, Yukari on the left and Akane on the right. The seats had been molded to each of their bodies, making for perfect fits.

They attached cables to the connectors on their space suits and fastened eight-point harnesses to their shoulders, chests, waists, and knees. Now the only things they could move were their heads and arms.

Yukari scanned the control panel, reviewed all of the key switches, then flipped the master power switch.

Air conditioning on. Cabin lights on.

When the hatch closed, cutting off their view of the outside, it was like they had taken their first step into space. The two girls’ eyes met.

“This is it.”

“Yep.”

Her voice was quiet, but Yukari could tell that Akane was ready to go. The other girl took a deep breath, set her jaw, and turned her gaze to the instrument panel.

“Whew, it’s the same,” she whispered. Then more loudly, “It’s all the same as in the procedure simulation.”

“Yep. The acceleration feels just like the centrifuge, the view’s the same, and all the communications are the same. If you want to know what’s different—”

“I’ll find out when we start moving?”

“That’s right. Gives you something to look forward to.”

Yukari flipped on the communicator switch. “Solomon Mission Control? This is Mangosteen. You read me?”

“Hoi, Yukari! Loud and clear!” Matsuri’s voice came over their speakers. Contact with base was, as a rule, handled by the backup astronaut. Since they went through the same training they knew best how the other astronauts thought, which made communication easier.

As flamboyant as she could sometimes be, Matsuri did her job well, and Yukari had great faith in her. She had to be exceptionally intelligent as well, considering that she went from living among her tribe to manning a solo space flight in the space of three months.

The event clock showed T minus one hour fifty-four minutes.

Ballpoint pen in hand, Yukari began to read off her pre-launch checklist.

“One, pyrotechnics safety switch.”

Akane checked and responded, “Locked.”

“Two, attitude control handle.”

“Locked.”

“Three, abort handle.”

“Locked.”

And so on down the list. It was rumored that the entire purpose of the checklist was to keep the astronauts from getting bored, but Yukari always made sure to follow it to the letter.

It was always better to check for yourself instead of trusting someone else. Though the number of things one could check inside the cockpit was limited, if you did all you could, then you could at least sign off on that portion of the checklist. After that, you waited for fate to decide—at least that was how Yukari liked to think about it. It helped control the fear.

Even though this was Yukari’s fifth launch, she still felt that familiar fear gnawing at her stomach. Just three meters beneath them were explosives equal in power to a tactical nuke, enough to accelerate them up to Mach 26 in the space of several minutes. Two girls who couldn’t even legally drive scooters would be accelerating faster than a military fighter pilot. Of course it was frightening.

Yukari occasionally looked up to check on how Akane was doing. The other girl was marking off each item as she read aloud carefully.

Thatta girl.

Of course, in a sense, Akane had it easy. Every SSA rocket previous to Yukari’s first flight had exploded moments after launch.

T minus thirty-five minutes. A large clanging sound rang from outside the orbiter. Akane sat up straight in her seat, pricking up her ears. “What was that?”

“The movable tower just disengaged. It means we’re on schedule.”

“Oh, right. It caught me off-guard.”

“That’s one thing the simulator lacks: the sounds.” Yukari began to explain all the noises Akane would hear while on the ship. “The high-pitched buzzing sound is the electrical inverter. The light sloshing sound is the liquid oxygen tank. The low temperature system makes a dong sound every once in a while, but that’s normal too. And the sound from the ventilation is just a fan.”

Akane nodded, taking it all in.

“Just before we take off they’ll repressurize the liquid oxygen tank. The noise is a little shocking. Sounds like things ripping apart, so get ready for it.”

“You’re very observant, aren’t you, Yukari,” Akane said, looking up at the other girl with respect in her eyes.

“That has nothing to do with it. You’ll hear everything yourself whether you want to or not.”

T minus fifteen minutes.

The countdown was proceeding apace. Pretty soon that ripping sound Yukari had warned Akane about filled the cabin.

“LOX tank, pressure normal.”

“All systems are looking good, Yukari. How are you doing, Akane?”

“I’m doing great, Matsuri. A little excited, maybe.”

“That’s the way to be! Keep a bright heart, and the evil spirits won’t want to have anything to do with you.”

“I’ll remember that, thanks.”

T minus five minutes. In five minutes, they’d be shooting into space. Nearly every device in the cockpit was active and whirring now, the various sounds blending into one steady hum. The two girls lowered the airtight visors on their helmets and talked over their intercoms. The time for chitchat was over.

“Flight control data, check.”

“Control data, check.”

“Clock operation, check.”

“Clock is functional.”

“APU standby switch, on.”

“APU standby switch, on.”

T minus three minutes.

“Access arm stowed. Begin filling launch pad—intercom volume, plus two.”

“Intercom volume, plus two.”

This was to prepare for the roar of liftoff. They could hear water splashing like a waterfall down onto the launchpad.

“Looks like we’re really going. Usually if we make it this far, we’re set,” Yukari explained.

Akane only nodded in reply.

“Oxygen release valve closed. Liftoff pressure.”

“Mangosteen, all systems are functional.”

T minus sixty seconds.

“Switch to internal electrical power. Orbiter voltage, check.”

“Voltage is normal.”

T minus twenty seconds.

“Solid boosters, APU start.”

“APU start. I can hear them.”

T minus fourteen seconds.

“All systems go! Get ready!”

“Yukari, Akane, we have a green light for takeoff. T minus ten, nine, eight, seven—main booster ignition—four, three, two—solid boosters ignition.”

The entire orbiter shook as the shock wave from the solid boosters made the craft vibrate like a drum. The anchoring bolts on the launch pad flew off, and the rocket was free.

Akane felt her body sink into her chair.

“Launch site clear—Mangosteen is airborne,” Matsuri announced as though she were giving the weather.

Yukari made her first report. “This is Mangosteen. We’re climbing steadily. Akane, we’re on our way.”

“Uh-huh,” Akane managed in a hoarse whisper.

Outside their window was only sky.

Their speed climbed violently. With only a tenth of the space shuttle’s weight, SSA rockets took off like ballistic missiles.

Inside the cockpit, the vibrations grew steadily worse. Though from space the earth’s atmosphere looked paper-thin, this was where rockets had to pass their first hurdle—the struggle against air resistance. Just before and after the point of maximum dynamic pressure—the point called “max Q”—the rocket shook like it was being pelted with hail. That came around T plus sixty seconds, at an altitude just below ten thousand meters.

“Yukari, Akane? Get ready for max Q.”

“A-all systems operational,” Yukari said through clenched teeth. “You h-hanging in there, Akane?”

“Y-yeah.”

“The G’s pretty bad but the sh-shaking’s going to stop soon.”

“O-okay.”

After about a minute, the vibrations died down.

“Through max Q. All systems operational.”

“Great stuff!”

Don’t jinx us, Yukari thought. She checked the altimeter. They were already over thirty kilometers up, flying at an angle of forty-five degrees with their heads pointing toward the ground. You didn’t feel like you were upside down, though. You just saw the earth above you.

“You can see the ocean out the window now.”

“Hey, you’re right. It’s so blue.”

“Still hanging in there?”

“So far.”

T plus 140 seconds. They were at an altitude of sixty-eight kilometers now. With a ringing thud, the solid boosters separated and fell away.

“SRB separation lamps on.”

“Hnnk.” Akane grunted. The Gs climbed rapidly immediately after the solid boosters dropped.

Matsuri’s voice came over the transceiver again. “Solid booster separation went great.”

Stop saying that, you’ll jinx us!

“Akane, this next part is the toughest.”

She must have heard her grunt over the radio.

“I-I know,” Akane managed to squeeze out the words. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly.

“Matsuri,” Yukari cut in, “don’t talk to her for a bit.”

“Hoi! My bad!”

The emergency escape rocket attached to the tip of the orbiter fell away.

T plus 260 seconds. They were now at an altitude of 170 kilometers.

The pressure climbed to over 4 G. Yukari felt her limbs pressing down into her chair. Now all she could do was look at the instrument panels and wait. She wasn’t even obligated to report.

4.5 G… 5 G… 6 G… 7 G…

“Just a little more.”

They hit 8 G and then, like that, they were floating.

“Main booster burn finished.”

There was a crisp sound as the main booster separated. On the booster, small retro-rockets fired to pull it farther away from the orbiter.

“MB separation light.”

“Main booster separated. Nice job, you two!”

“Yeah. Mangosteen’s systems are all operational. Uh—signing off for a second.”

Yukari switched her transmitter from ALWAYS ON TO PUSH TO TALK. Once she was sure they couldn’t hear her on the ground, she said, “Akane! We made it!”

No answer.

Yukari undid her harness and looked over at Akane’s helmet.

Sleeping like an angel.

Figures…

She opened Akane’s visor and patted her on the cheek.

“Akane. Akane, wake up.”

“Huh…Yukari?” Her eyes fluttered open.

“Rise and shine, Akane. You’re in space.”

She stuck her hands out in front of her face. They floated. Akane’s face lifted and she looked out the window. “The ocean! And clouds…look, the edges are rainbow colored—that must be a storm! Wow…”

She was like a child riding a train for the first time.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“This is amazing, Yukari. It is beautiful. The earth is beautiful!” Akane’s eyes shone.

“Did I tell you or what!” Yukari beamed. I’m so glad you came, Akane. To the SSA, and on this mission.

Up here, Nellis Academy felt very far away indeed. She might have cursed the place once, but that had been enough.

“The most amazing part is when you do a spacewalk. But let’s contact mission control, shall we?”

“Oh, right.”

“Careful, whatever you say will stay in the log, so you don’t have to mention that you fainted. Not that you’ll be able to hide the medical monitor record.”

“Oh…” Akane frowned. “So I did faint.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You were still in training, after all. So, give your first report.”

“Right.” Akane nodded and pressed the talk button. “Solomon Mission Control, can you read me? This is Akane on the Mangosteen.”

“Hoi, Akane! How is it up there?”

“I saw a rainbow. It was gorgeous!”

“That’s great. Lucky you!”

“Thanks, Matsuri. And thank everyone on the base for me.”

Yukari cut in. “All right, we’re preparing to adjust our orbit. Signing off.”

“Hoi, we’ll send you our program as soon as it’s ready.”

This was the moment of truth—the first of several, actually. Yukari carefully began a check on every system. Getting into space didn’t mean you could just float around, doing nothing. The space shuttle and Mangosteen had to orbit the earth at a speed of over seven kilometers a second or they would fall back down to Earth. Mangosteen was currently in orbit at an altitude of two hundred kilometers—a full hundred kilometers below the space shuttle.

Picture a drawing of two concentric circles. The small circle is Mangosteen’s orbit, the large circle is the space shuttle’s. Now, draw an ellipsis connecting the six o’clock position on the small circle with the twelve o’clock position on the larger circle. What they had to do next was take that elliptical route from their current six o’clock position to the shuttle’s twelve o’clock position, ascending the hundred-kilometer gap as they completed a half orbit of the earth.

In order to increase the altitude of their orbits, they would have to put on speed. This meant firing their thrusters just the right amount at the six o’clock position. It also meant firing their thrusters again when they reached the shuttle’s twelve o’clock position, because if they didn’t, they would descend on their new elliptical orbit.

The trick was to put on just enough speed to match that of the shuttle. Of course, the shuttle needed to be there at that exact time too, or the two spacecraft would never meet.

A successful rendezvous depended on two accurate thrusts at exactly the right time, landing position, speed, and direction with fantastic precision. The technology involved was an entire magnitude more complex than that required just to get into space. Miss the timing just once, and they would fall back to Earth. Yukari didn’t care so much about the SSA’s reputation, but she didn’t want to look like a fool. Particularly because of the attention she got and the rumors that she was window dressing and all the tough work was being done by computers.

“It’s my own bad luck for looking so good.”

“What was that?” Akane asked.

“Nothing. You mind checking the antenna system? I’ve got the engine.”

“Right.”

The heat resistant shields on the rear of the orbiter were open, allowing the nozzles for the OMS engine they used to adjust their course while in orbit to stick out. For fuel, they used mono-methyl hydrazine and nitric quadroxide. Helium gas was used to keep pressure on the fuels and push them together when the time came.

All that was required for thrust was for the two fuels to touch, making for very accurate operation. In the end, the entire engine was controlled by a series of valves. Yukari liked to think of this job as resembling that of operating a waterworks.

A small parabolic antenna was attached to the bottom of the ship, pointing toward a TDRS, one of NASA’s stationary communications satellites. By tapping into the satellite communications network, they could stay in touch with the ground no matter where they were in their orbit.

“I have confirmed a data link with the TDRS.”

“Great. That should get us through to the guys on the shuttle.”

“I should think so. Want to say anything to them?”

“Let’s talk after we’re on our elliptical orbit. I don’t want to show off only to stick our feet in our mouths.”

Akane chuckled nervously. “Good point.”

[ACT 6]

“THERE—THAT’S THEM! It really only took them two hours after takeoff to get here,” Luis remarked. He was looking through an observation window in the ceiling with binoculars. “Their orbiter looks exactly like that old Gemini module. Japan’s made some progress.”

“It might look the same, but that orbiter’s designed to be reused even after reentry,” the captain said. “It can lose a heatshield tile and still have no problem when it hits the ocean. Don’t take them lightly. They’re using next-gen technology compared to us.” He called to Norman who was waiting in the air lock. “Mangosteen is three klicks below us. You finish your breathing?”

“I’m ready to go whenever.”

“Well don’t until they grab hold of our RMA. You don’t want to take a blast from a thruster.”

“I know, I know.”

Just then, a childlike voice came in over the transmitter. It was a girl, speaking English with a Japanese accent.

“Space shuttle Atlantis, this is SSA orbiter Mangosteen. We have visual contact with your ship, over.”

“Mangosteen, this is Atlantis. We read you loud and clear. Make your approach whenever you’re ready.”

“Roger. We should be finished with our rendezvous sequence in four minutes.”

When they finished their apogee thrust, the two ships were in stable orbit a kilometer apart from each other.

“Sequence complete. Looks like I was only about a hundred meters or so off.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Don’t congratulate me until I nail this docking procedure.”

Yukari switched the RCS to manual mode and lowered their nose slightly. Now they could see the shuttle in their forward porthole. The shuttle was flying in a sideways orbit, its nose pointed straight toward Earth. Above the wings, the payload bay doors were open, the silver heat exchange panels glittering in the sunlight. Yukari spotted what must’ve been the Orpheus lodged between them.

Akane gave a little squeal despite herself. “Wow! What a beautiful ship.”

“Yeah, and that’s a whole kilometer away. It’s pretty big.” Yukari pressed the button on her maneuvering joystick. She felt a sensation like her seat pushing her from behind. “Mission control, this is Mangosteen. I’m beginning docking under manual control.”

“Hoi, Mangosteen. Roger. NASA was worried you might hit them with some hydrazine. Show them how good you are, Yukari.”

“Let’s not forget that they’re the ones who messed up here.”

“I’ll be sure to remind Kinoshita of that. Okay, I’m switching you to a shared channel. No more Japanese.”

“Roger.”

Akane switched the channel on their transmitter. “Atlantis, this is Mangosteen. We are three hundred meters away and approaching.”

“Roger, Mangosteen. Can you see our RMA?”

“Very well, thanks.”

The remote manipulation arm was extended out straight from near the nose of the shuttle like the mast on a sailing ship.

The Mangosteen had its own smaller RMA. They would use theirs to grab the tip of the shuttle’s arm, pass down a rope, and they’d be docked.

“See how they extended their RMA all the way out? They don’t trust us.”

“I was wondering if that’s what it meant.”

“They don’t want us blasting their precious shuttle with our thrusters. Either that, or they’re afraid I’m going to run into them. Wimps.”

“Well, as long as you’re sure we can pull this off.”

“What, now you don’t trust me, either?”

Akane shook her head. “I’m the one who’s going to be operating our RMA while you pilot.”

“No problem, Akane. The real RMA’s just like the simulator. You stretch it out and grab when the moment comes. Don’t think about it too much, just do it.”

“Stretch it out and grab,” Akane repeated to herself. “Okay.”

They were almost on top of the shuttle now. Yukari fired several short blasts, bringing their orbiter into position close to the tip of the shuttle’s RMA and stopping it there.

“Nice job, Mangosteen. We won’t have to do anything at this rate.”

That would be the shuttle’s RMA operator. He would have been standing by to chase after them with his arm if they had missed.

“Thanks,” Yukari replied. “Time to shake hands.”

Akane grabbed the RMA joystick with her right hand. Her left hand rested on the mode selector. The folded arm inside their nose cone extended, reaching forward. In all, Mangosteen’s arm was only 2.4 meters long—far shorter than the shuttle’s fifteen-meter arm, but more agile for it.

The two fingers on the arm approached their target, a flat panel attached to the shuttle’s RMA.

“That’s right, a little more.”

Because their orbiter was so small, just moving the RMA had the effect of moving their ship slightly in the opposite direction. Akane, however, was giving a textbook performance, keeping the arm motion lateral so that any reverse momentum would pass directly through the orbiter’s center of gravity to avoid producing spin.

“Think I should grab it now?”

“Go for it!”

She pressed the button, and the metal fingers closed precisely on their target.

“I did it!” Akane pressed the button down further. “And…it’s locked on.”

“Great stuff! Atlantis, we have your RMA. We’re preparing to exit the orbiter.”

“Excellent work. I’ll admit, we didn’t expect it to go this smoothly.”

There are benefits to being small and agile, Yukari thought.

The two girls removed their harnesses and put on the backpacks stored in the backs of their seats. The backpacks—each only the size of a daypack—contained a small life-support system and transmitter. After attaching cables to their suits, they were ready.

Yukari spent an extra moment carefully rechecking all of Akane’s gear.

“This is another one of those moments of truth. Be relaxed, but cautious; quick, but not rushed.”

“Okay.”

“Also, there’ll be plenty of time for gazing at Earth later so don’t do it now. Once you’re outside, orient yourself to the shuttle. Think of us as being above the shuttle, like a pennant flying on a flagpole. Once you’re outside, try not to spin around if you can avoid it. It’s very easy to get disoriented.”

“Okay.”

The two attached Kevlar fiber lifelines and lowered their airtight visors on their helmets.

“Com test.”

“Loud and clear.”

Yukari ejected the air from the orbiter and opened the hatch. “Here we go.”

“Right behind you.”

Over on the space shuttle, the entire crew was pressed up to the rear observation window.

“Look, they’re coming out already!”

“I don’t believe it! It’s only been ten minutes since they finished docking.”

They all knew the schedule, but hearing about it and seeing it actually happen were two different things. Whenever a spacewalk was required on the shuttle, it took at least two hours just to get ready. Because NASA space suits maintained a low pressure, the astronauts had to breathe pure oxygen for a considerable length of time to remove the nitrogen in their bloodstreams in preparation for their new environment.

The first astronaut came out of the Mangosteen and made her way around the nose. Pulling a rope from the pouch at her waist, she threaded it through the RMA, firmly anchoring it to their ship in a matter of moments.

“Did you see that rope work? She just tied a sheep-shank in space!”

“Never mind that,” Luis said. “Check out those space suits! They look like Eva over there—”

“Ava Gardner?”

“No. I’ll loan you the anime when we get back.”

The second astronaut emerged. This one moved more slowly than the first, carefully making her way along the hull.

Both astronauts made their way to the shuttle’s RMA and came halfway down. Holding on to the arm with one hand, the first astronaut faced the shuttle. “Hello, Atlantis. Can you see us?”

“See you? We can’t take our eyes off you. You look like angels up there.”

“I’m the one with my left hand raised—Captain Yukari Morita.”

“Welcome to Atlantis, Yukari. I’m Captain Wayne Berkheimer.”

“Nice to meet you, Captain.”

“Call me Wayne. Who’s that next to you?”

“Er…this is mission specialist Akane Miura. Hello.”

“Nice to meet you, Akane.”

“You can tell us apart by the stripes on our space suits. Mine are pink, and Akane’s are blue.”

“Roger that, you both look great.”

“We’re going to begin retrieval, if that’s all right.”

“Hold on, we’re sending someone out. Norman, can you go show the angels what they need to know?”

“Roger. I’m heading out the air lock now.”

By the time Norman made it outside, the two girls were already on the Orpheus’s upper-stage engine. They had attached their lifelines from the Mangosteen to the bottom of the RMA in favor of a single lifeline strung between them.

Norman headed over to Orpheus, though by the time he had walked the seven- or eight-meter distance, one of the girls was already going inside the engine structure.

“Hey, wait up. You Akane?”

Akane pulled her head out of the truss around the engine, looking. She jerked visibly when she saw him.

“Something wrong?”

“Sorry. I just didn’t expect you to be so big.”

“What, me? Don’t worry, I don’t bite. I’m heading over there.”

Norman slowly crawled up the upper-stage engine cover. Yukari stuck out her hand, reeling him in.

“Thanks.”

Compared to these two, I’m like one of those walking cartoon characters at Disneyland, Norman thought.

The two other astronauts looked frighteningly small and thin to the American. Their waists were barely bigger around than one of his arms in the space suit. And while he looked like the Michelin man, they were shapely. You didn’t expect to see curves like that in the payload bay of a space shuttle flying at three hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth.

Their golden reflective visors were up, so he could see their faces—like dolls, he thought.

“The valve assembly is inside there. See the gap on the engine side in the center of the ring?”

“So it’s in there just behind the helium tank, right?” Akane asked.

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“I’m a quick study.”

“All right, well, be careful. Every single tank in there is dangerous.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Shall we get started, Akane?” Yukari asked. “Let’s go in and check things out first. Take it easy. It’s more tangled in there than it was in the CG simulation.”

“Right.”

Akane was getting used to extravehicular activity by now. In the skintight space suit she wore, it was hardly any more difficult than scuba diving. But Yukari was right. Compared to the training video they had seen, the real engine structure had all kinds of small protrusions here and there. This wouldn’t be easy.

Akane slid inside the truss.

“A little more to the left, Akane.”

“Got it.”

“That’s right. Keep going.”

“My head is close to the center now. I’m going to try swiveling.” A few moments later, Akane reported that she’d found the valve assembly. “It’s about another meter in there—huh?”

“What is it? I can’t see very well.”

“My backpack’s hung up on something.”

“Careful, Akane. Take it easy. Don’t move too quickly.”

“Okay…I’m going to try swiveling again.”

“Any luck?”

“Ack. It’s another fifty centimeters or so.”

“Don’t push it. Let’s try a different approach,” Norman offered.

“Akane, come out for now.”

“I’m coming.” Akane pushed herself out feet first. Norman could see beads of sweat on her face.

“There’s something sticking out halfway in, about the size of a fist. I keep getting hung up on that.”

“Would a tool work?” Norman asked. “We have a probe about the same size as a back scratcher.”

“No, a straight probe won’t work. There are too many twists.”

“Hmm.”

“Wait, I know how I can do it,” Akane said suddenly. “I’ll take off my backpack.”

“What?” Norman gasped. “Did you just say you’re going to take off your backpack?”

“No, Akane, I’ll do it,” Yukari said.

“You can’t take your backpack off! That’s like instant death!”

“No it’s not,” Yukari said. “Our backpacks have quick disconnect valves on them. You can remove them in a vacuum and not lose any air.”

“But the air inside your helmet won’t last more than a minute!”

“That’s nothing for a skin diver. I’ll be in and out in a flash.”

“But what if you got caught on something—”

“Don’t worry. I can do this. Akane, you guide me from here.”

“No, Yukari, please. Let me do it.”

“Akane—”

“Really, I’m confident I can do it.”

“We won’t be able to communicate. You won’t have your transmitter.”

“I’ll increase my oxygen and saturate before I go in. I should be good for three minutes. If I don’t come out before then, haul me out with a lifeline.”

Yukari stared at Akane’s face through her visor.

Those eyes—like still water. She can do this. “Okay. Go for it.”

“Whoa, Captain, you hearing this? I don’t think we can let them—”

Wayne cut off Norman’s protest. “Yukari, I’m not sure what SSA safety standards are like, but the danger of this operation is unprecedented. Are you sure you can just let her go in there?”

“Actually, at the SSA, we switch backpacks outside the ship all the time. If you just think of this as an extension of that, it’s really no big deal.”

“But we have to consider the possibility that she’ll take more time than we expect—”

“It’s no more dangerous than skin diving, Captain. Do they not allow skin diving in America?”

There was a long pause before the captain responded.

“Fine, we’ll just have to trust that you know what you’re doing.”

Yukari nodded and Akane turned to crank up the oxygen levels on her life support. She began taking rapid breaths.

“Don’t take too much, you’ll get high.”

“I know.”

Akane deftly removed her backpack and attached a light to her wrist.

Yukari touched her helmet to Akane’s and spoke. “What day is it?”

“Thursday, on the Solomon Islands.”

“Great. Be careful in there.”

“Will do.”

With a twist like a mermaid breaking through the water, Akane disappeared back into the truss. Yukari started the chronograph on her wrist. She looked up to find Norman staring at her. He said nothing. They both waited, breathlessly.

When the needle on her chronograph had gone around twice, she saw something moving inside the truss.

A white glove emerged—holding the valve assembly.

“She made it!”

Yukari reached out and grabbed the assembly. Handing it to Norman, she quickly reached back and grabbed Akane’s hand. Akane slid smoothly out and hurriedly reattached her backpack. Yukari could hear her rapid breaths once she had the electrical cable reattached.

“Are you okay?”

“It was a lot—” she took a heaving breath, “—it was a lot easier than the first time.”

“Ha ha!” Yukari cheered and gave Akane a big hug. “A complete success! That’s my grade-A student!”

Akane laughed. “I’m just glad I’m not getting in the way.”

“We can’t even bring a change of clothes on the orbiter. Why would we waste all that space on something that just got in the way?”

“Good point!”

The girls were rattling on in Japanese when Captain Berkheimer cut in.

“Arigato—sorry, that’s all the Japanese I know.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, not at all. You’ve really helped us out. It’s not much, but would you like to join us on the middeck for a welcoming party? I’ve already gotten permission from Solomon.”

They weren’t initially scheduled to visit the shuttle at all, to avoid interfering with their mission.

“We’d love to join you,” Yukari said without a moment’s hesitation.

[ACT 7]

THEY PASSED THROUGH a circular air lock and arrived on the middeck. There was a line of white lockers in front of them, three sleeping berths on the right with a small galley on the side. On the left was a toilet and access hatch for the decks above and below.

In the remaining space, three men waited in T-shirts and shorts.

Yukari and Akane took off their helmets and held them at their sides.

A cheer went up. They always got this reaction when they took off their helmets in front of men—something about it was particularly enchanting, apparently, though Yukari had never figured out exactly what.

“Welcome to shuttle Atlantis,” the captain said, extending his hand. He was in his early fifties, with a long face and rough whiskers on his chin. Yukari would have taken him for a British gentleman on his day off, but seeing as how he was a shuttle captain, he was most likely a former U.S. military test pilot or of similar stock.

“Excellent work out there,” he said. “You did in five minutes what we couldn’t do in five days. My hat’s off to you.”

“Not at all,” Yukari said pleasantly, “but I will say I was impressed by my mission specialist’s work. Allow me to introduce our new rookie at SSA, Akane Miura.”

“No, really, it was nothing,” Akane blurted as she shook each of the men’s hands in turn.

Next it was the shuttle crew’s turn to introduce themselves.

The pilot, Luis, was thirty-seven years old, ex-Air Force. Something about his eyebrows made him look a bit like the actor Koji Ishizaka, and one of the first things he asked them was which anime was the most popular right now in Japan.

Akane had no idea, and when Yukari suggested Chimaera Ball Z off-the-cuff, he informed her that it had already been canceled.

Gordon, the shuttle MS, was thirty-one years old, an aerospace engineer for an airline company who’d switched over to NASA. He was a handsome fellow with blond hair and an anxious look in his eye, despite his relief that the valve assembly had been retrieved. It was his mishap with the RMA that had lost it in the first place.

The two girls were offered juice in tubes, biscuits, and freeze-dried ice cream. A couple of the men offered them gum and chocolate out of their personal lockers. Nothing up here was particularly tasty, but the variety was welcome.

Norman emerged from the air lock. He was a big man with a crew cut. Had they been standing on the ground, Yukari would have only come up to his chest.

Though he had taken off his helmet and backpack, he was still in his bulky space suit. The five spread out to the floor and the ceiling to make room in the suddenly crowded middeck.

“Sorry we started without you. Good work out there,” the captain said to him.

“I didn’t do anything. They’re the ones you should thank,” Norman said gruffly.

Seen from this close, his space suit looked incredibly unwieldy. The chest was like a barrel wrapped in cloth. His arms and legs were tubes, completely obliterating the human form beneath.

“You look like a sumo wrestler,” Yukari said, earning a smoldering look from Norman.

“If I had a suit like yours, I’d be able to keep up with you up there.”

“Maybe, though you’re so big as it is I doubt you would have been able to get inside that truss.”

There was silence in the middeck.

The captain cleared his throat. “So, you two, want to check out the cockpit?”

“Oh yes, that’d be great!” Akane said eagerly.

“Why not,” Yukari said with obvious disinterest. “Just the thing—technology older than I am. It’ll be like being in a museum.”

Akane glared at her, but Yukari pretended not to notice.

The captain led them through a hole in the ceiling onto the upper deck. Though photographs and video made it look larger, in reality, the cockpit was small—roughly the size of a truck cabin with a sleeper behind the seats.

“As you can see, everything but the floors and ceilings are covered with instrumentation. Everything up front is the flight controls—it’s pretty much the same as a commercial airliner. The right side is for mission operations and the left is for payload operations. In the back we’ve got the RMA control and the docking controls.”

“It’s a two-seater,” Akane noted.

“That’s right. The only people that actually have to sit up here are the pilots when the shuttle is in flight mode. See the footrests? You can adjust the height on those, so even someone your size could fit snugly.”

“That was a smart design.”

“We have to consider the range of people that come up on the space shuttle. Different sizes, different races, different religions. We’re set up to take them all.”

“Unlike the SSA, you mean,” Yukari said.

“Yukari!” Akane was visibly angry now. She spoke Japanese. “Why are you saying things like that? What did these guys ever do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“So why the attitude?”

“It’s just in my nature to rebel in front of an authority like NASA.”

Akane blinked. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to be emphasizing goodwill and international relations up here in space?”

“Man, you really are a grade-A student! You talk like a textbook sometimes, Akane. We’re leaving here in just a little bit anyway. Who cares if you get along with these people?”

The captain watched them, a look of concern on his face. Akane didn’t think he understood Japanese, but their tone of voice was probably information enough for him to make some assumptions about what they were saying.

“Well, I think it’s important to be nice to other people. It’s an opportunity to make friends—you never know how the people you meet might help you in the future,” Akane said quietly.

“You don’t say.”

“Opportunity only knocks once, Yukari.”

“It’s only opportunity if they’re worthwhile people. Meeting some bum probably isn’t going to get you very far.”

“Just think, I met you, and now I’m up here.”

“Oh, so that’s where you’re going with this?”

Akane nodded. “Remember when you told me to get on the helicopter? I was terrified. But I just did it. I had the feeling like that was the start of something.” She smiled a little. “I think I’ve gotten better at meeting people since then. And being nice to them. Especially when I think of what possibilities might lie in store for me.”

“Well, I call that being a goody-two-shoes.”

“I’m fine with being a goody-two-shoes,” Akane said with a guileless smile.

Yukari looked off into space and sighed. Why do I always get the insanely optimistic ones for partners?

“Fine. So I should go apologize to Norman, is that what you want?”

Akane nodded cheerfully.

Yukari excused herself and went back down to the middeck. There she found Luis and Gordon eating Snickers bars.

“Did Norman go somewhere?”

“He’s pre-breathing in the air lock,” Luis told her.

“He’s going out again?”

“Yep. He has to put on the new valve that you brought with you.”

“Pre-breathing takes about two hours, right?”

“That’s right.”

Wait, he didn’t come back in here just for our welcoming party, did he?

“Did you have something to talk to him about? You can get him on the intercom.”

“No…no, that’s all right.”

I’m sure he came back to replenish the oxygen and his backup. That has to be it.

“So, Yukari,” Luis said, “want to exchange souvenirs? We do with the Russians whenever they dock. Here, here’s mine.”

Luis pulled a cloth emblem out of his pocket. It was a special badge for the Orpheus Mission.

“Wow, that’s nice. But I don’t have anything like that to give you.”

“Oh, doesn’t have to be anything special. A notebook or a pen, anything.”

“I might have a pen.” Yukari rummaged in her waist pouch and found a Fischer ballpoint pen. “Here. It even has the Solomon Space Association logo on it. How’s this?”

“Ooh! That’s great!” The pilot seemed genuinely happy.

Just then, the captain called down. “Think you can come up here, Yukari? Dr. O’Reilly wants to talk to you.”

“O’Reilly?” Yukari asked as she made her way to the upper deck.

“Chief designer on the Orpheus Project. He wants to thank you personally.”

Now this is a person worth meeting, Yukari thought. Yukari and Akane held on to the backrest of the pilot seats in the cockpit and positioned themselves facing the intercom.

“You did all the work. I’ll leave this one up to you,” Yukari said to Akane.

“Are you sure?”

“Aren’t you the goody-two-shoes who likes meeting people? Especially scientists?”

Akane nodded and pressed the talk button. “This is Akane Miura on Atlantis. Hello, Dr. O’Reilly.”

“Ah, you’re the one who took off her backpack and retrieved that valve?”

“That’s right.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” His voice wavered, making the end of his words a mess of static. “I’m afraid I can’t express just how grateful I am to you.”

Akane cleared her throat. “I think I understand, Doctor. I heard that the Orpheus probe had been put in storage for a whole decade. Is that true?”

“Yes, the project officially started over twenty-two years ago now.”

Akane swallowed. “That’s an awfully long time.”

“Pluto isn’t as exciting as the other planets, you see. I don’t know how many times our budget got cut. And then, after the Challenger explosion—”

“I see.”

“We needed a powerful liquid fuel engine for the Orpheus’s prolusion system—Pluto is a long way off, as you know. After the Challenger accident, it became more difficult to carry that kind of fuel up in the shuttle. Safety regulations and all. Of course I understand but… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bore you.”

“Not at all, Doctor. I find it fascinating,” Akane said.

“Well, it’s only been recently that Pluto has garnered more attention. Being small and frozen, it’s not as exciting as the other planets, you see. In fact, there are some who consider it a Kuiper belt object and not a planet at all. Yet if it is this, then surely it is a representative of the belt, and therefore worthy of study.”

“The Kuiper belt… That’s where comets come from, right?” Yukari asked.

“One of the places, yes!”

The Kuiper belt formed a great ring of innumerable celestial objects just outside of Pluto’s orbit, all too distant and small to see from Earth, even with a decent telescope. Most of them just sat out there frozen in space for an eternity, but when something happened to kick one out of orbit, it would plummet toward the sun, becoming a beautiful streaming-tailed comet.

Though some comets came from even farther afield, those with a relatively frequent orbit were usually thought to have originated in the Kuiper belt, where Pluto stood as lord of the gates.

“So Pluto’s like the big boss of the comets.”

“That’s what I want to find out. Even Voyager missed Pluto on its survey of the outer planets. It’s the last large object in the solar system that hasn’t been studied from relatively up close. If Orpheus makes it there, it will be the first probe to observe Pluto from space local to it. I’m sure we’ll see some astronomy textbooks rewritten.”

“When is it scheduled to arrive?”

“Oh, the trip will take twelve years. It takes even light a good four hours to cover the distance, after all. How old will you be then?” the professor asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Splendid. I’m jealous. Until recently, I had given up hope that I would ever see a close-up image of Pluto in my lifetime. But now I’ve made up my mind,” he said with rising cheer. “As of today, I’m giving up doughnuts and cigarettes! This is all thanks to you, you know,” he added. “Thank you ever so much.”

“You’re welcome, and I hope I can see those pictures with you someday.”

The transmission was over, but Akane remained facing the speaker, tears welling weightlessly in the corners of her eyes.

[ACT 8]

THEY USUALLY WENT home immediately after their work was done, but now the girls had to wait until their orbit took them back to the ocean near the Solomon Islands. With the abruptness of their mission, there hadn’t been time to properly mobilize retrieval teams.

That would be another eleven hours, or another twenty-four if they wanted to avoid a splashdown at night. Now came the tough part: killing time. Since they were already there, Yukari and Akane decided to spend that time lounging in the shuttle. The two girls sat by the rear observation window, nibbling on freeze-dried strawberries and observing the progress toward the Orpheus launch.

Norman and Gordon were out there now in their space suits, fiddling with the engine and making adjustments.

“This is incredibly nerve-racking to watch. I mean, it takes them minutes just to pick up a new tool,” Yukari muttered.

“It’s not their fault.”

“I know that. It’s just, it’s hard to sit here and do nothing. I want to be out there helping them.”

“I’m not sure they’d appreciate that. Guys don’t like being helped.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Yukari said, but she understood well enough. This was their chance to reclaim their honor. Even she knew better than to take that away from them.

In truth, the NASA astronauts’ patience and stamina were astounding. Each trip outside lasted several hours, and while they had water and some candy inside their helmets to keep their energy up, they never took anything like a break. That, and just moving your arm in one of those space suits was like doing a rep with a heavy dumbbell in weight training.

I could never do what they’re doing, Yukari thought.

Disaster struck five hours after the girls’ arrival on the shuttle. They were on middeck at the time. The intercom monitoring the two astronauts’ conversation squawked with static.

“What the hell—”

“Get down!”

Akane and Yukari quickly made their way to the upper deck to find the captain and Luis glued to the rear observation window.

“You two okay?” the captain shouted into his intercom. Yukari peeked over his shoulder at the window and her mouth dropped open.

Orpheus and the upper-stage engine were gone.

The payload bay was entirely empty, save for Norman and Gordon who were drifting around just outside of it.

“We’re okay.” It was Norman. “I felt a little gas pressure, but life support’s all good. Just, we lost it. Godamnit! We lost it!”

“Try to calm down, Norman. I want you back in the ship. We’ll think of a way to deal with this.”

“What happened?” Yukari asked.

“The upper-stage engine fired. Luckily, no one was hurt.”

“What, it exploded?”

“No, it fired. Something caused it to start a thrust.”

A call came in from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Atlantis, this is Houston. We saw what happened. Do you have a report?”

“Houston, we have an accident. No injuries or life lost. I’m bringing our two men outside back into the shuttle. I’ll send more details once I’ve had a chance to talk with them.”

“The engine burn’s stopped,” Luis said. He was standing by the window, tracking Orpheus with a pair of binoculars. “It was a controlled burn, looks like—and it’s gone. I’ve lost visual contact.”

“Norman, you copy?” the captain asked.

“We can talk. We’re inside the air lock.”

“Did you check the tag? Can Orpheus be remotely controlled?”

“No remote control. The safety tag was still on.”

“Can you confirm, Gordon?”

“I saw the tag with my own eyes. We checked it before releasing the restraints on the probe.”

“Any idea how the engine could’ve fired?”

“You got me.”

“Houston, this is Atlantis. Something caused Orpheus’s engines to fire while the safety tag was still on. It was a controlled burn, lasting roughly three minutes. That’s all we know at present.”

“Roger. We’re checking Orpheus’s telemetry. We’ll let you know as soon as we find something.”

Yukari went back to middeck. She wanted to know what was going on, but now was not the time to interrupt. The air lock hatch opened and Norman came out. He closed the hatch behind him and found the intercom. “You’re clear to come in, Gordon.”

The nameplate on the left arm of the space suit was scorched black and half of his visor was clouded.

“Norman! Are you all right?” Yukari asked.

“I’m fine.”

His face dripped with sweat, and there was a hard look in his eyes. And something else too—anger. Norman began undoing his gear.

“Can I help with anything?” Yukari asked.

“Nothing I want your help with.”

“I’m okay with sweat, and urine.”

He glanced at her. “Then hold up the bottom half of my suit.”

Yukari got a grip on Norman’s legs while he began undoing the connector with the torso. The space suit split into two halves. He took off his liquid cooling garment until he was in his undershirt and MAG. The letters stood for Maximum Absorbency Garment—basically a glorified diaper astronauts wore during liftoff, landing, and extravehicular activities to absorb urine. The smell of sweat filled the deck.

“Are you injured? Any bruises?”

“I’m okay. The blast only hit me for a second,” Norman said as he slipped on his shipwear. “Any word on Orpheus?”

“The burn went for three minutes, and by then it was out of sight.”

“Three minutes?” Norman bit his lip.

“What does it mean?”

“A three-minute burn isn’t enough to break the probe from orbit, but it makes it very difficult—if not impossible—for the shuttle to retrieve it.”

“Can I ask another question?”

“What?”

“What’s the safety tag?”

“It’s a nonconductive strip that keeps the controller from accidentally activating the engine. Orpheus is wirelessly controllable, but we keep the tag on until it’s completely prepared for launch to avoid an accident. As long as the tag’s on there, nothing like this should ever have happened.”

“So you can’t remote control it and slow it down now?”

“Most likely not. You’d think if it was malfunctioning, we might have a chance, but that’s too much to hope for.” Norman turned to go to the upper deck.

“Norman—”

“Later.”

Yukari’s mouth snapped shut.

Akane came down the hatch as soon as Norman was through.

“Oh, no, Yukari! What do we do?” She had tears in her eyes again, like a dam ready to crack wide open.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s my fault. When I went into the engine space to retrieve the valve I must have broken something. That’s what happened! How will I ever face Dr. O’Reilly?”

“H-hey!” Akane pressed her face to Yukari’s chest and cried.

“Just hold on. Do you remember breaking anything?”

“No…but I’m sure I touched the truss in at least a few places. It was hard to avoid.”

“It’s not that easy to break an engine, Akane. You know they’re built to withstand quite a bit of heat and vibration.”

Akane nodded, sniffing.

“There’s still hope. Just try to stay calm. I want to see those ‘I can do anything’ eyes of yours, okay?”

Akane stopped crying.

“Or else I’ll have to take you off active duty.”

Akane hiccuped for a little while longer, then gave a nod.

An hour later, the captain called the entire crew to middeck.

“Let’s go over what we know. First of all, just so there’s no false hope, you should know that the situation is not looking good. The engine burn came when Orpheus was nearly ready for launch. It’s now fallen into a roughly three-thousand-kilometer-high elliptical orbit.

“That’s not all that different from its scheduled orbit, so if we could operate it remotely, it might be possible to refire the engine and send it on its way to Pluto. The fuel loss from the burn was still within tolerance levels.

“However, we’ve been unable to establish remote control over the probe from the ground. This is likely due to the safety tag still being attached.

“Furthermore, I’ve just heard from Houston about why this happened. While they can’t be certain until they actually see the probe, it seems likely that something happened during an unscheduled engine test before launch. Apparently, one of the technicians on the ground purposefully shorted the control circuits in order to fire the engines with the safety tag still on.

“Time is tight, they needed to do the test, and removing the safety tag requires a lot of paperwork. Furthermore, the technician has admitted he has no memory of removing the jumper he used to short the firing circuits.”

While the captain spoke, Yukari was watching Akane’s expression.

At first she looked relieved. But that relief soon shifted to quiet anger. The other crewmembers were making fists with their hands and cursing under their breaths.

“If we were able to rendezvous with Orpheus, the solution would be simple. All we’d have to do is remove the safety tag and the jumper wire from the circuit. However—” the captain paused to let his men prepare themselves for the bad news. “As I mentioned, the orbiter is on an elliptical orbit with an apogee of roughly three thousand kilometers. We don’t have enough fuel to accelerate Atlantis enough for a rendezvous with the probe. Not to mention the shuttle has an altitude limit of one thousand kilometers.”

“So we’re done here,” Luis said quietly with a shrug. “Let’s go home, have a few beers, and forget any of this ever happened.”

“That’s looking like the best course of action,” the captain admitted, shaking his head. “Incidentally—” He turned to Yukari. “What’s Mangosteen’s altitude limit?”

“Eight hundred kilometers.”

“As I thought.”

There was silence for a few moments.

No matter which craft they used, neither of them would be able to reach Orpheus. Though the probe would pass through the shuttle’s orbit at its closest point to Earth, there would be a speed differential of nearly 640 meters per second. Even if they could reach the same exact spot, without matching speeds there’d be no rendezvous.

Akane spoke. “So what happens to Orpheus?”

“It’s pretty low when it approaches the earth. Eventually it will bump up against the atmosphere, which will slow it down, and after several orbits it will plunge.”

“And what about after we return to Earth? Will there be no chance to save it after that?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Then, Captain,” Akane said, “I have a suggestion.”

The captain looked up at her.

“Neither of our ships on its own can catch Orpheus. But what if we combined the ships?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well, we could put Mangosteen inside Atlantis and accelerate as fast as the shuttle will go. Then we release Mangosteen and accelerate with her.”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s an addition problem,” Luis said, shaking his head. “One thousand plus eight hundred doesn’t equal three thousand.”

“Actually, it does,” Akane said. “What you’re saying would be true if the orbits were circular, but in order to match an elliptical orbit, we only need to accelerate half of the distance between us.”

“Wait, you’re right! We could hit an apogee of thirty-six hundred kilometers!”

“Correct. It helps if you think in terms of velocity instead of altitude.”

“But hold on,” the captain interjected. “We need fuel to adjust our orbital plane, but we also need fuel to get back home.”

“Actually, the orbital plane won’t change that much. And both of our ships can handle atmosphere. You won’t need much fuel to get back.”

“What’s Mangosteen’s mass?” Norman asked.

“Roughly two tons, including crew.”

“The shuttle weighs seventy thousand kilograms. That’s barely different than flying with an empty bay.”

“We’ll fit in the payload bay nicely too,” Yukari said. “Even at its widest point, our orbiter’s diameter is only three meters.”

“So we’ve established that theoretically, this is possible,” Gordon said, leaning forward. “As long as we got the rendezvous timing perfect.”

“It is possible. It’s totally possible!” Akane said.

“Now, hold on. Just hold on,” the captain said. “Loading a space shuttle with an unscheduled cargo and accelerating has never been attempted before. This isn’t some eighteen-wheeler we’re driving up here. If that orbiter were to, say, topple in the bay midflight we could be looking at a catastrophic explosion.

“Also, the shuttle needs an airport in order to land. If we change our course and have to make an emergency landing, we’ll be looking at a far worse disaster than just losing Orpheus. Not to mention that a height of three thousand kilometers hasn’t been attempted since the Apollo missions. There’s no telling what could happen up there.”

“And we’ll find out as much as we can! Call the Solomon base and the Johnson Space Center and have them plan the whole thing out!” Akane said, a mounting strength in her voice. “If you keep bringing up why we can’t succeed, it just means you aren’t up to doing it!”

The captain raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s like she says,” Yukari joined in. “We’re ready to go to three thousand kilometers or thirty thousand kilometers, whatever it takes. As long as you’re up to it.”

The captain shook his head, then got on the intercom for the space transmission network. “Houston and Solomon, this is Atlantis. Do you copy?”

“Atlantis, this is Houston, we hear you loud and clear.”

“Hoi, Atlantis. Solomon here.”

“We need you to look into something for us. We have a possible way to rescue Orpheus. The idea’s from the SSA’s Miura, and it’s a bit…radical.”

[ACT 9]

BACK IN THE control center at the SSA, Nasuda listened attentively to Captain Berkheimer talk. When he was finished, Nasuda practically howled with delight. “She might have fainted, but Akane’s got what it takes! Have our communications group send Houston whatever information they need. Kinoshita, you divide up everything else that needs to be done.”

Kinoshita wasted no time. “I want the navigational team calculating an orbit. Go from the moment Mangosteen separates from the shuttle and try to predict as many variables as you can.

“I want the orbiter systems team figuring out how we can mount Mangosteen inside the shuttle. Whatever it is, it will have to be able to withstand three hundred kilograms at 0.1 G acceleration. Work up a chart of anchor points on our orbiter and any anchoring materials we might have and send it on to Houston. They’re calling the shots on this one, so whatever they need, they get.

“Medical team, I want you to do some modeling on Yukari and Akane’s life support systems. Remember they’ll be going to three thousand kilometers.

“One last thing, and this goes for all of you. We’re working in lockstep with Houston on this. I want you to share data and any ideas, no matter how far-fetched they might seem. Communication, work on setting up contact people from each team to facilitate this.”

The relationship between an orbiter and ground control is a bit like the relationship between the bridge and the deck on an old large-scale sea vessel. The lower deck was where all the crew worked, and the bridge backed them up. On the water, both were in the same boat, but as space on orbiters was limited, astronauts left the bridge back home. Though space jockeys didn’t like to acknowledge it, the real captain of a spaceflight was on the ground. Either way, constant contact and communication between the two was vital, especially during crises.

The response at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, was little different from that of Solomon Mission Control.

“That little girl up there is upping the ante in a big way on us,” mission director George Grant muttered. What got him most was not that it was a bad idea, but that the situation forced him to take it very seriously.

Once they acknowledged the possibility, however slim, that it might work, they couldn’t afford to not take it seriously. Grant himself was ready to do whatever was required to get Orpheus back under control.

The biggest hurdle they had to pass was safety regulations. Everything about this plan was going to push both crew and equipment to their theoretical limits. Just getting the shuttle by itself up to an altitude near two thousand kilometers would require using most of its remaining fuel. And then they had to factor in the strange, tropical cargo it would be carrying.

In order to calculate the amount of fuel required for the shuttle’s return, they would have to assume a worst-case scenario in which they were still carrying Mangosteen after a launch failure. Was saving an unmanned exploratory probe worth this kind of risk?

George’s mind went back to the Apollo 13 disaster.

It was already thirty years ago when it happened: the oxygen tank on a spacecraft bound for the moon exploded, and though they were short on fuel, electricity, and air, somehow they managed to get the astronauts back home safely.

At the time, George had been a twenty-year-old recent hire at NASA, but he still remembered going for sleepless days and nights hunched over his IBM 360 making and remaking orbital calculations. No one could’ve predicted what happened, but they had made it through by using what they had on hand to make the impossible possible.

George was proud to have been part of the effort to bring the Apollo 13 crew back home. That pride had kept him at NASA all these long years.

Well, let’s do what we can do.

As a senior engineer, George was quite adept at making rough calculations in his head.

Orpheus has an orbital frequency of one hour fifty-nine minutes.

Atlantis has an orbit of one hour thirty minutes.

It was roughly a ratio of 4:3. Once Atlantis had gone around four times and Orpheus three times, the two would meet. If somehow before that moment they could accelerate Mangosteen to 640 meters a second, they would be able to rendezvous with Orpheus. The acceleration would have to happen in two steps, with the separation of the orbiter from the shuttle between them. They couldn’t leave this one entirely to the nav computers; it was too complex.

Already an hour had passed since the accidental engine burn.

So, what, I only have five hours left to make this happen?

George picked up the phone and dialed the person in charge of mock-ups down at the training center. Previously, they had constructed life-sized models of Atlantis and Orpheus for use in prelaunch training.

“I need you guys to work on something right away. I’m going to be accelerating Atlantis with the SSA’s Mangosteen orbiter in her payload bay. You should be receiving specs on Mangosteen any moment now. The bad news is, you only have five hours—no, make that four and a half.”

“We’re on it.” The engineer on the other side of the line thought for a moment. “Might be able to use the platform we put in there for Orpheus.”

No waffling, no extraneous questions. I love working with professionals, George thought. For the first time in a long while, he felt genuine excitement stirring in his chest.

[ACT 10]

TWO HOURS LATER there was a general assembly of the crew on the middeck of Atlantis.

They had all clipped on intercom mics, getting ready for the next communication with ground control—the communication that would determine whether or not they were going to try to save Orpheus.

Norman and Gordon had already changed into their space suits and were pre-breathing to get ready for the next round of extravehicular operations if it came to that.

“Solomon and Houston have an early report for us,” the captain told them. “If we like the sound of what they’re saying, then we’ll go ahead with Akane’s plan. Let’s hear what Houston has to say first.”

“This is George Grant speaking,” the voice said over the intercom. “Mission director at Houston. I’d like to share our results with you. Though our flight safety committee expressed considerable concern, they concluded that we should go ahead with the operation. Speaking only of the shuttle’s safety, we predict no critical danger. They had one condition, however. They want the SSA astronauts to perform Mangosteen’s separation.”

Yukari responded immediately. “That was our intention from the start.”

“Thank you, Yukari. We’ll share what details we were able to work out by fax. Over and out.”

This was a surprising decision coming from the usually very conservative NASA. Yukari wasn’t sure what dealings had gone on behind the scenes, but it was clear that damage control was part of the equation. So far, the SSA had been showing NASA up, and they didn’t want to lose even more credibility by failing to reclaim their errant probe.

Yukari looked around at the faces of the shuttle crew. They looked determined, ready to do whatever they had to.

“Atlantis? This is Solomon.” It was Matsuri. “We looked into Akane’s plan as well.”

“Go ahead, Solomon.”

“Well, we don’t think it will be impossible to properly stage Mangosteen inside the shuttle and rendezvous with Orpheus. Your splashdown point will be off the coast of Chile. Our recovery team won’t be able to make it there in time, but the U.S. Navy have a cruiser nearby, and they’ve agreed to help. There’s just one problem.”

“What is it, Matsuri?” Yukari asked.

“Hoi, I’ll have our flight surgeon explain.”

Satsuki Asahikawa came on the intercom. “Listen up, you two. The problem is with radiation exposure. If you take Mangosteen up to Orpheus’s current orbit, you’ll be passing through the Van Allen belt close to the equator. There’s a lot of radiation focused there.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It’s not fatal, but it’s a lot more radiation than any X-ray technician would ever dream of subjecting you to. Compounding the problem is the fact that both you and Akane are of childbearing age.”

“So what’s the bottom line?”

“As your physician, I can’t allow you to stay up there for more than a single orbit.”

“So you mean we have to do the rendezvous and all our work on the orbiter and reentry in the space of two hours?”

“That’s right. If you can’t pull that off, I’m afraid we have to cancel the mission. The radiation is highest at just around three thousand kilometers. You’ll hit that halfway through your first orbit, so you’ll need to finish all your work outside the ship by then. Though the protection won’t be complete, you’ll be a lot better off inside the orbiter than outside.”

Yukari was silent.

“Personally, I wouldn’t recommend even doing a single full orbit. Discretion is definitely the better part of valor here. A brave astronaut is a dead astronaut. I’d like you both to consider what this risk means for you personally before deciding to go ahead with this.”

“Thanks, Solomon. Over and out.”

“Let me state for the record what I’d like to see,” the captain said as soon as the transmission ended. “I don’t like this plan. I’m grateful to both of you for your dedication and your passion, but I think you’ve done enough. Let’s call it off.”

“You’re right…” Yukari said, the fire gone from her eyes.

She felt like she could do what had to be done in the space of two hours. But even if she made no mistakes herself, there was no telling what might happen up there. If they messed up their return timing for some reason, they might end up passing through the Van Allen belt more than once.

If I could just do it by myself without putting Akane at risk too…

Yukari turned to Akane. “Let’s call this off. It’s just not worth it.”

Akane shook her head. “I appreciate what Satsuki said,” she said. “But I think she’s being too cautious. She’s exaggerating the danger. I know it.”

“I’m not too sure about that.”

“The Apollo missions went through the Van Allen belts both ways. And they were up for days on the moon, which has no magnetic field at all. They must have endured a lot of radiation. And they were fine.”

“But their equipment was designed for that, and let’s face it, they were all old guys.”

“We’re hardly any different. Sexual development stops around the age of sixteen.”

“Really…?”

Uh-oh. She’s going to out-brain me here.

Yukari changed tack. “Well how do you feel about this? Are you confident we can do it?”

“Huh?”

“We had, what was it, four hours of sleep, and we’ve been working for fifteen hours straight. Do you think we can make it through the next seven hours without making a single mistake? Because that’s what this is going to take.”

A moment’s hesitation passed over Akane’s face. “Well, I’ve stayed up all night preparing for tests before—”

“Taking a test and navigating a spacecraft are two different things. And we’ll need both of us working at full capacity in order to pull this off. If you made a mistake, it could mean both of our lives.”

Akane’s eyes fell, and Yukari immediately regretted her words.

“I’m sorry, I take that back. I was only thinking of myself—”

Akane nodded and thought. For a full minute neither of the girls said anything.

Then Akane looked away and started to talk. “I know it’s dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“And I know Orpheus is just a machine.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s more than that. It’s a dream…it’s science! And I think it’s worth risking my life for. I truly believe that,” Akane said, her emotion spilling forth. “Yukari. We need to save Orpheus!”

At that moment, the whole mood on the middeck changed.

It was like all six of them there had signed the same unseen contract by some unspoken agreement.

We’re not going home as failures. We can do this.

[ACT 11]

IN THE MANNED spacecraft design center located within the easternmost building on the Solomon base, a 3-D model of something resembling a bell was slowly rotating on a workstation screen.

The surface of the object was crisscrossed by a lattice-work of countless vectors, each square colored from white to red, purple, and blue. The object represented the orbiter Mangosteen, and the colors reflected surface temperatures at different points along a simulated reentry. A young technician was working the controls.

“Right, now increase impact speed by 640,” Mukai, sitting off to the side, directed. The technician included the figure and restarted his simulation.

Once again, the simulated spaceship began to heat up. A separate window on the monitor showed a graph of peak temperatures.

“One thousand three hundred seventy…one thousand four hundred sixty…one thousand four hundred fifty… There’s the peak.”

“Huh? That low? That won’t be a problem at all.”

“Not in the model, at least,” Mukai said.

Reentering the atmosphere from a height of three thousand kilometers was a first for an SSA orbiter. Falling from a greater height meant faster speeds. Greater speed meant more friction when the orbiter hit the atmosphere. Mukai had concerns that the orbiter wouldn’t be able to take the heat.

Rough calculations had already shown it could, but as long as there was time left, it was his duty to keep running the numbers.

A maximum temperature of 1460° was lower than he had expected. Reentry speed had increased by a whole 10 percent, but their temperature hadn’t climbed nearly as much.

It made him feel uneasy. “Try again with different parameters. Once they start on the rendezvous, we won’t be able to stop them.”

“Right.”

Just then, the phone rang. Another technician answered. “Chief, it’s the control center.”

Mukai picked up the phone. “Right,” he said then hung up. “Everyone, listen up. We just received word back from Atlantis. Operation: Rescue Orpheus is a go. We’ll be here for another six hours, so everybody give it all you’ve got!”

A cheer rose up in the room. At the same time, things were stirring at Johnson Space Center. George lit a cigar he kept for special occasions, stood up, and said, “All right, everybody! We’re sending those girls up to meet Orpheus! Stay sharp and let’s do this!”

[ACT 12]

“JUST GO TO sleep. Solomon will tell us everything we need to know.”

“I just don’t think you’ll be able to do all the tying and the untying in those bulky suits…”

“We can do rope work when we need to.”

The captain sent Yukari to her berth and closed the shade. “Sleep tight. I’ll wake you up an hour before we start,” he said from the other side.

Akane was nestled inside the berth below her. Though both of them resisted it at first, sleep came quickly.

In the payload bay, Norman and Gordon worked on securing Mangosteen. They had lowered the orbiter down to the floor of the bay, where they could use Kevlar fiber rope to attach it to the staging platform that had been installed to hold Orpheus.

Once the shuttle finished accelerating, they would have to release Mangosteen immediately. If they were late in cutting her loose, they would lose that much energy. Solomon had given them twenty seconds to pull the whole thing off.

In order to keep it tightly in place yet easily detachable, the brains at Johnson Space Center had settled on bow ties attached to three points. Instead of trying to make the ropes hold the orbiter in place during acceleration, they inserted a cushion between the orbiter and the platform beneath it to absorb the thrust. For the cushion they used an old Personal Rescue Enclosure—a large ball capable of holding a single astronaut in a fetal position for transport to a rescue shuttle—that was kept on the shuttle for unforeseen emergencies.

When they wanted to release Mangosteen, either Yukari or Akane would pull on those three ropes. Once they had undone the ties, they would jump in the orbiter and leave the shuttle behind.

“No, that’s not how you do it,” Norman said to Gordon. “Pass it through the loop from the bottom.”

“Right, right. It’s been a long time since Boy Scouts.”

“You should go yachting. You learn this stuff whether you want to or not.”

For maximum speed, they worked together, four hands helping to tie each knot.

“By the way,” Gordon said, “I think Yukari wanted to tell you something.”

“Probably remembered something else she wanted to say about how crappy I look in my space suit.”

“That wasn’t the impression I got.”

“So what?” Norman snorted. “Let’s get this thing tighter,” he said, looking at the knot they were working on. “Don’t want it coming undone during acceleration.”

[ACT 13]

IT WAS AN hour before they began the rendezvous. The captain woke up Yukari and Akane. The girls used the vacuum toilet on the deck and wiped their faces and hands with a sponge. Then they put on their helmets and backpacks.

“How do you feel?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“I can’t believe I actually slept.”

“That’s good to hear.” The captain passed a sheaf of fax papers bound with a ring to Yukari. “This is the latest procedural manual. Put it in this bag and keep it with you.”

“Thanks.”

Luis came down from the upper deck to see them off. “You two are the best,” he said. “I hope we’ll get to meet someday when we’re back on the ground.”

“I guess it depends on how this goes.”

“It’ll go fine,” he said.

They shook hands, and Yukari and Akane went into the air lock. Outside, they found Norman and Gordon standing in front of Mangosteen, bathed in the glow from the giant blue arc of Earth toward the bow of the ship.

“Hi, Norman, Gordon,” Yukari called to them on their intercoms, and the two men raised their arms to signal everything was ready. Together, both of them circled Mangosteen, checking the fastenings.

“This is tied down pretty well,” Yukari said.

“All in a day’s work,” Norman replied.

“Okay, hand me the end of the rope.”

“You won’t be needing it.”

“What?”

“You won’t have time to pull the ropes, make sure the knots are undone, then get inside and close the hatch. Gordon and I will use knives to cut the lines instead.”

“But Houston said they’d only give the okay on the condition that we handled the separation!”

“Houston doesn’t need to know.”

“That means we’ll be accelerating the shuttle with both of you outside!”

“No worse than riding in a convertible. We’ll be fine.”

Yukari stared at the man’s face behind his visor. She might as well have been looking at a mask.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Yukari said, a smile playing on her lips. “I never knew NASA had such reckless pilots.”

“Yukari!” Akane scolded.

“If you do something it’s brave, but if we do the same thing, it’s reckless. Is that it?”

“Norman, I should tell you,” Akane said, “Yukari is completely incapable of directly expressing gratitude. Right, Yukari?”

“Right.”

“See?”

Someone—maybe Gordon—blew a kind of bemused snort into his mic.

“Well, I’d certainly like to hear a word of gratitude now and then,” Norman said. “The English word you’re looking for begins with a T.”

“Sorry, drawing a blank,” Yukari said. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I remember it. Let’s go, Akane.” Yukari moved to get into Mangosteen.

“I’m sorry. She’s got this attitude—but she’s really a good person inside,” Akane said before turning to leave. Somehow, despite being entirely weightless, she managed to bow to the two NASA astronauts.

“Since when did you become my wife?” Yukari asked as soon as the cockpit pressurized.

“You haven’t even apologized to him yet, Yukari! If you just thanked him, it would make that a lot easier, you know.”

“It wasn’t that I couldn’t say it. I just want to say it without everyone listening in on the conversation.”

“That just means you can’t say it.”

“What’s the big deal, anyway?”

“I just think that with such an important task ahead of us, it’s better to have none of these personal differences getting in the way.”

“Really? I focus much better when I’ve got a little fight in me.”

“Whatever works,” Akane said. Now was no time for an argument.

Yukari fixed the procedural manual on top of the instrument panel and flipped on the communication switch. “Atlantis, this is Mangosteen. We’re aboard. All systems are operational.”

“Roger that, Mangosteen.”

“Solomon, this is Mangosteen. Do you copy?”

“Hoi, Mangosteen. Loud and clear.”

Together, the two girls read through their manual.

The rendezvous procedure would begin as they were flying over Midway Island, with Orpheus trailing two hundred kilometers behind them. They would slow down and let Orpheus catch up. Then, like the next runner in a relay race, they would accelerate to the same speed to match Orpheus as it approached.

First, Atlantis would fire its orbital maneuvering system engine for six minutes on full thrust.

As soon as the burn finished, they would detach Mangosteen within twenty seconds and say farewell.

Then Mangosteen would fire its OMS engine for five minutes on full thrust.

This burn had to wait until they were clear of Atlantis, so Yukari would start the sequence by hand. The computer would take over after that.

Once both craft had finished their burns, eleven minutes would pass until Mangosteen and Orpheus were flying side-by-side far above the Hawaiian Islands.

Four minutes later, Solomon would remotely adjust Mangosteen’s orbit after pinpointing the locations one final time. If a fuel check at that point showed insufficient reserves, the mission would be scrubbed. Nineteen minutes total would have passed by the time the orbit adjustment was complete. Then Yukari would nudge the orbiter as close as possible to Orpheus while Akane went outside to remove the wire shorting out Orpheus’s engine control and pull the safety tag.

Ideally, all of this had to happen in the space of twenty minutes. At that point they would be over two thousand kilometers up, and the radiation would only get worse.

Forty minutes after the rendezvous procedure had begun, they would get back inside the orbiter in the sky over Brazil. Twenty minutes later, they would reach their apogee at an altitude of three thousand kilometers while passing over southern Africa.

Here, they would fire a short retrograde burn and leave orbit. Orpheus would remain above them, ready to fire its upper-stage engine as it passed over Indonesia and leave Earth’s gravitational pull altogether.

Around the same time, Mangosteen would reenter the atmosphere just east of Japan, doing a half orbit of the earth to splashdown off the coast of Chile. U.S. Navy helicopters would be waiting near the splashdown zone to shuttle the two of them back to a carrier.

“Wait a second—what’s this all about?” Yukari read out one of the warnings written in her manual. “‘While Akane is outside the craft, take Mangosteen to a safe distance.’”

“A precaution in case the engines fire. I guess they’d rather save one of us than none of us.”

“That is so not cool.”

“No, it’s okay. If it did fire, you wouldn’t have any fuel to chase after me anyway.” Akane giggled nervously. “Believe me—I’d be happy to go to Pluto.”

“Great. My copilot is a space kamikaze.”

“I think we all have to be, at least a little bit. I knew that when I applied for the job.”

She’s tougher than she seems, Yukari thought. Time to pull it together.

“Well, I’m not retreating to a safe distance, and that’s that,” Yukari said. “Keep your lifeline tied on. The second you think something might be going wrong, push away from Orpheus. Don’t let that propulsion exhaust get you.”

“But, Yukari—”

“That’s an order from your captain!”

Time marched relentlessly on. Houston was in charge of watching the clock and counting off the seconds.

“Orpheus is approaching two hundred thirty climbers behind you. Atlantis, you have fifty seconds until OMS burn.”

“All systems are ready,” Berkheimer confirmed from the shuttle.

“Atlantis, thirty seconds until OMS burn.”

“We’re ready to fire. Norman, Gordon, you two sitting down out there?”

“You bet we’re sitting.”

“Atlantis, start your sequence. Ignition in ten seconds…four…three…two…ignition.”

A jolt passed through the shuttle, and they felt a gentle weight pressing on their backs.

“Houston, this is Atlantis. We have a confirmed OMS burn.”

“This is Mangosteen. No unusual vibration in here.”

“Roger that. Orpheus is approaching the hundred-seventy-kilometer mark. Three minutes forty-five seconds until separation.”

The sound of the engines firing was barely audible through the ship vibrations, despite the fact that seven tons of force were being generated just a few meters away.

“Norman, Gordon, you still sitting down?”

“We’re both doing great.”

“Atlantis, Mangosteen. One minute until burn completion.”

I wonder what they’re up to?

Yukari took a look through the periscope, but something was in the way, and she couldn’t see the two NASA astronauts outside. If she said anything to them now, Atlantis and the entire space communications network would hear. But there was no guarantee that they would be able to communicate at all after separation.

Yukari bit her lip.

I waited too long, and now I missed my moment.

“Atlantis and Mangosteen. Twenty seconds until burn completion.”

“Houston, this is Mangosteen. We are ready to fire engines. All systems are go.” Yukari lifted the cover on the sequencer activation switch and held her finger over it.

“All crew prepare for weightlessness. I’ll count it down. Weightlessness in five…four…three…one…complete burn now, begin separation!”

“The lines are free,” Norman said almost immediately. “Atlantis, begin evasive maneuvers.”

In the periscope protruding from the bottom of the orbiter, Yukari saw the payload bay drop away into the distance. Then she saw the two wings, the engine housing, the nose—the entire shuttle—drifting away, becoming lost in the giant blue sphere of the earth.

“Separation complete. Mangosteen, begin!”

Yukari pressed the activation switch.

This time, the sound of the engine was a roar, the vibrations more intense.

That’s more like it.

“This is Mangosteen. Sequence started. OMS firing. Everything’s looking good.” Yukari kept her finger on the talk button. “Norman, Gordon, Luis, Captain Berkheimer, thank you all. And I’m sorry about earlier. You’re the bravest, coolest people I know. We’ll try not to let you down.”

Akane’s eyes opened wide.

Yukari stared at the instrument panel, muttering to herself. “I can’t believe I said it. Must be the adrenaline.”

[ACT 14]

A PHONE CALL came into the control center for Mukai.

“What? What? Just calm down. Tell me everything in order.”

Whoever was on the other end, they were panicking.

“What? The Cdb settings…three whole steps! What about max temperature? Sixteen hundred seventy degrees? Are you kidding me?” The color drained from Mukai’s face.

“What is it?” Kinoshita asked.

“Our atmospheric resistance coefficients were off—er, that is—”

“Bottom line, please.”

“If Mangosteen reenters the atmosphere at its currently predicted speed, it’s going to disintegrate.”

“For real?”

Every controller within earshot turned around.

“They ran it through simulations on three models—apparently the bad numbers in the constant database came from a copy/paste error. I’m sorry, this is my fault!”

“Hoi? Did someone say disintegration?” Matsuri asked.

“Say nothing to those two up there,” Kinoshita told her quickly.

“Hoi…”

“What do we do?” Mukai wailed, his mouth twisting. “They’re nearly entirely out of fuel—”

“The first thing we do,” Kinoshita said, “is calm down. They’re already in their orbit. We can’t change that now. We have to proceed with the mission as planned and use what time remains to figure out a way to get them back through the atmosphere safely. This is on us now.”

“We’ve already determined optimal reentry path, and it’s disastrous.”

“What’s going on? Something wrong?” Nasuda had noticed the commotion on the floor and come out of the observation room.

Kinoshita explained the situation, but Nasuda did not appear particularly moved. “I see,” was all he said. While outspoken when it was time to celebrate, Nasuda kept all other emotions in check. “What if we pulled them up a little, had them come in shallower.”

“That won’t work. They’d just bounce off the atmosphere and come back at an even steeper angle.”

“Any chance of stealing fuel from Orpheus? It’s using hydrazine too, isn’t it?”

“Well—”

“Impossible,” Kinoshita said. “The tank on Orpheus is semipermanently sealed due to the long distance it has to travel.”

Nasuda grunted and thought for a while before saying, “I don’t want them to know about this yet. Tell Houston everything. They’re going to have to beef up the recovery team.”

[ACT 15]

THE ORBITAL CORRECTION went perfectly. Orpheus was only fifteen meters ahead of them now. The cylindrical shape of its upper-stage engine glittered against a backdrop of inky darkness.

They had already evacuated the air from the orbiter in preparation for Akane’s spacewalk. Akane strapped on a waist pouch to carry the tools she would need. This time, there would be no need to strip off her backpack and crawl inside anything. Both the safety tag and jumper wire were easily accessible by hand from the outside.

Yukari gave the engine a few more bursts, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible without wasting any fuel.

“Ten meters to Orpheus. Akane’s just opened the hatch.”

“Hoi. Good luck, you two.” Matsuri’s voice was flat.

“Here I go,” Akane said.

“Be careful.”

Akane opened up the hatch on the right side of the orbiter and poked her head outside.

Meanwhile, Yukari opened the hatch on the left to get a better view of the operation. Orpheus’s upper-stage engine hung in space directly in front of them.

Yukari checked the countdown on her watch.

Twenty-seven minutes into the rendezvous. So far, so good.

“Want me to lower the nose?”

“Yes, please—I’m off.”

Akane lightly kicked her seat and drifted outside. Her lifeline twisted and coiled behind her like a living thing. Within moments, she was grabbing onto the cover over Orpheus’s engine, working her way up to the upper lip.

Yukari glanced down at the diagram in her manual. “About fifty centimeters to your right. That’s it. Right there.”

“Yep.” Akane stuck her helmet over the edge and looked inside. “There it is. I’ve spotted the jumper wire. One end of it has come loose. It’s just floating there.”

“Be careful not to touch anything around it.”

“Roger that.”

Akane pulled a small pair of wire clippers from her waist pouch and stuck them inside. “I’ve cut the wire.”

Yukari breathed a sigh of relief.

“Next up is the safety tag…and it’s out.”

“You did it! That was quick!”

“Easier done than said, I guess,” Akane said, laughter in her voice.

“Houston, this is Mangosteen. Akane has just succeeded in removing the jumper wire and the safety tag.”

“Great job, Mangosteen! We’ve just confirmed it with our telemetry. Can you hear the commotion down here? I haven’t heard this much cheering in a long time.”

The signal was so weak they could barely hear the controller’s voice, let alone any cheering.

Akane followed her lifeline back to the orbiter. Yukari grabbed onto her ankle and began pulling her inside, when Akane stopped. She had just turned around for the first time.

“Wait! Just a second—”

“What?”

“It’s amazing, Yukari. Come look—”

Yukari wanted to close the hatch quickly before they got any higher, but something in Akane’s voice made her undo her harness and pull herself up to the hatch rim.

She stuck her torso out and turned to face the stern of the orbiter.

Yukari was stunned. She had never seen the earth like this.

They were over two thousand kilometers away now, as far away as if you took the entire Japanese archipelago and stood it on its end pointing straight up. From this height, the horizon formed a perfect circle.

Directly beneath them, the Amazon River snaked through a thick green canopy. To the north was Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Florida peninsula—she could even see as far as Washington D.C. and New York, hazy in the atmosphere.

To the south, she could see most of the South American continent, bordered by the vast expanses of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans—she could even see further south, to the point where the oceans met.

Cirrus clouds wove serpentine paths through the sky below, following the currents of the jet stream. A hurricane gathered strength toward the middle latitudes. Lightning flashed in the valleys formed by towering cumulonimbus clouds. Then she noticed the creeping hemisphere of night, coming in from the east.

“It’s evening in the Sahara right now,” Akane said. “That’s the sunset, right there. That line. That’s what it really means.”

“Yeah…” Yukari stared, lost in the view. Akane grabbed her wrist. She was facing Yukari now.

“Thank you.”

“Huh?”

“Thank you for bringing me up here. Thank you, Yukari.”

“Akane, you came here on your own—hey!” Yukari waved her hands. “No crying! Stop it!” She laughed. “Cry in your suit and you won’t be able to see a thing.”

“Ack, you’re right,” Akane said. “I forgot I can’t wipe my eyes with my helmet on.”

“Let’s go. We really need to get inside.”

“Yeah.”

The two girls made their way inside the orbiter and shut the hatch.

“Solomon, this is Mangosteen. We’re back inside. The earth is incredible from up here. So, time to go diving off Chile.”

“Hoi. Congratulations, you two.”

“Huh? What’s up, Matsuri? That’s the least cheerful-sounding congratulations I’ve ever heard.”

A few moments passed before Matsuri answered. “Yukari, Akane, I have something really important to tell you.”

“What?”

“I snuck in a rambutan fruit under your life raft. I want you both to eat it. It’ll help ward away evil spirits and bring good luck. Okay?”

“What? You smuggled fruit in here again?”

“You have to eat it, both of you. Promise?”

“Well, okay, but why are you telling us this on an open channel?”

“Please. It’ll keep you safe.”

For the first time, Yukari realized something wasn’t right. “Safe from what, Matsuri? Is something up?”

“I’ll tell you once you’re done eating.”

[ACT 16]

THE CHEERING HADN’T lasted long in the mission control room at Johnson Space Center. They’d just received the update from Solomon. The two girls, barely sixteen years old, were going to die. The mood on the floor was one of despair.

So this is what you get when you take a risk, thought George. In the end, someone always pays.

Except not with the Apollo 13. The crew then had returned alive, miraculously. What George needed now was another miracle. Just then, a flash of inspiration shot across the back of George’s mind. He stood up and shouted, “What y’all need is some good old-fashioned optimism! This is just like coming back from the moon, people. We’ve been through this before, thirty years ago!”

The chief of flight dynamics in the seat in front of him looked back. “What are you going on about?”

“I’m talking about a double-dip reentry! You make the nose of the orbiter go up and down as she’s just entering the atmosphere to kill speed!”

When the Apollo spacecraft returned from the moon, they were going at a much faster speed than the shuttle. If they went straight in they’d burn up, so instead, they popped in and out of the atmosphere like a jumping dolphin, shaving off velocity with every bob.

“But how can Mangosteen control the orientation of its nose?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot, Randall! Capsules can generate lift, too—and if they change their attitude, they can change the amount of that lift. The Apollo did it with attitude control thrusters.”

“You’re right…wait—” A light came on in Randall’s eyes. “We’ve got Mangosteen’s data here. We just need to know her center of gravity and her front profile. I think I can use the data from the Apollo modules to figure it out from there.”

“Then get on it. Those girls saved our asses, now it’s our turn to save theirs!”

George contacted Solomon. “This is Houston. I’ve got a question. Is Mangosteen capable of adjusting its attitude during reentry?”

It was Kinoshita who answered. “Not through the usual means, no. Why?”

“If we can adjust her angle even slightly, we should be able to use a partial skip reentry to reduce the temperature levels. I’m calculating a flight path now.”

“Like Apollo, of course! Even that was never tried, but it should work.”

“Glad you studied our methods. But if they can’t control their attitude coming in, it’s not going to do us much good. Can you think of any way to pull this off?”

“Well, you can’t use the sequencer to fire the attitude thrusters during reentry, and we can’t use remote control. Manual control might do it—but at high G, that’s not going to be easy.”

“Where’s the control stick located?”

“Just in front of the right armrest.”

“Like a jet fighter, right. That just might be doable—it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“You get a hardened, strong fighter pilot up there, maybe…not that we have any other choice. Give me your results as soon as you have them. We’ll owe you a big one if this works.”

“We’re on it.” George turned to Randall. “How soon?”

“Give me five minutes.”

“Make it three.” He turned back to the phone. “Mr. Kinoshita? We’ll have it for you in five minutes.”

[ACT 17]

“WHAT? WHAT PROBLEM on reentry? Out with it, Matsuri!”

“Hoi hoi, Yukari, I will, it’s just I’m not totally sure what the problem is myself yet. Hang on a second. I’ll put Kinoshita on.”

“I need you both to stay calm and listen up,” Kinoshita told them as soon as he was on the mic. “Sorry to put this on you now, but if we allow you to proceed on your planned course, there’s a chance you could disintegrate on reentry.”

“What?” Akane yelped.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Curse me all you want, but save it for later. We made a mistake, basically, but there’s a way out of this. We’re going to have you adjust your attitude on reentry to avoid overheating.”

“Adjust during reentry? Uh, is that even possible?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to do it yourself, manually. Time to flex those arm muscles, Yukari.”

“Flex my…what? You want me to pilot this thing at 8 G?”

“Preferably you’ll be finished with your maneuvers before the Gs get that bad. Around 5 or 6 G.”

“That’s still asking a lot of a dainty little girl, Kinoshita.”

“All we have up there is dainty little girls, if I’m not mistaken. So one of you has to do this.”

“You have a point. So what do I do, exactly?”

“You’ll be bringing the nose of the orbiter up and down three times. The trick is in the timing and the angle. You’ll need to maintain the right angle for the right amount of time and know when to switch. NASA’s just sent us the numbers. There are twenty-four time/angle checkpoints for you to keep track of.”

“You’re going to read them off to me, right? There’s no way I can remember that many.”

“No, actually. Remember we can’t talk on the radio during reentry. You’ll have to write it down and stick it on your instrument panel.”

“Okay. Let me get some paper.” Yukari opened the procedure manual to the blank pages at the end. “Hey, Akane, can I borrow a pen? I gave mine to Luis.”

“What, you too?”

“No way. He got your pen?”

“Yeah…he said it would be a good souvenir.”

“Does that guy have a souvenir obsession or what? Tell me we have an extra pen somewhere.”

Akane shook her head. “You think they’d stow extras of anything in an SSA orbiter?”

“So what do we do? Carve it in something with a knife?”

“You’d never be able to read it with all the turbulence. It’s hard enough to see the instruments.”

“We could cut our fingers and write it in blood?”

“The numbers’d be too big. We don’t have enough paper. And we don’t have time for that anyway.”

“Kinoshita?” Yukari said. “You’re not going to believe this, but we have nothing to write with up here. Any ideas?”

“Well,” Akane cut in, “I could memorize them and read them off to you.”

“What, all those numbers?”

“It’s forty-eight numbers in all, right? That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m pretty good at remembering things.”

“You sure you can do that, Akane?”

“Just read them off to me slowly. I’ll do my best.”

“Right, here goes.” Kinoshita began reading off the list.

Akane closed her eyes and tapped her forehead with a finger once for every number. When he was finished, Akane read them back.

“Perfect! That’s incredible!” Kinoshita was practically cheering.

“Way to go, grade-A student!”

“Okay, now that that’s taken care of, proceed with your scheduled course—just be careful not to waste a drop of fuel. You’ve got twenty-one minutes left till reentry.”

Of course, had anyone thought it through, there was a serious flaw with this plan. With all the intelligent people on the ground and up in orbit, you’d think someone would have realized it, and yet mistakes like this happen all the time in spaceflight operations. Like a magician’s sleight of hand, it was right there in front of Kinoshita’s face and he never saw it coming.

Two hours had passed since the rendezvous began. Mangosteen made a full circuit before dropping from orbit fifteen hundred kilometers to the east of the Ogasawara Islands, out in the Pacific to the southwest of Tokyo.

Though the Gs were still relatively light, they could hear the sound of friction on the hull growing steadily louder.

“It’s starting, Akane.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, once again a whole lot happened, but in the end, it worked out. Right?”

“We did save Orpheus, at least.”

“Hey, we did a great job! Everyone did. I was impressed with you, Akane. You’re a full-fledged astronaut already.”

“Really? Th-thanks.” Akane’s cheeks blushed pink.

That’s my girl, Yukari thought proudly.

The vibrations increased and the light outside the window was tinged with orange. They were back in gravity now. One G…2 G… 3 G…

Yukari grabbed the control stick with her right hand, then placed her left hand over it.I can do this. If I use my other wrist to hold my hand up, I can maintain control.

“Akane, checkpoint one?”

No answer.

“Akane, checkpoint numbers please!”

Akane said nothing.

“Hey, Akane…no way!” Yukari could practically hear the blood drain from her face. Akane had lost consciousness the moment the G began to rise, just as she had on takeoff. “Yo! Akane! Don’t do this to me! Wake up, Akane! Wake up! What do I do? What angle? Hey! Heeey!”

Yukari couldn’t even lift her arm to nudge Akane by that point. She screamed. “Fine! I’ll just do it by instinct! Hey, as long as we’re alive, who cares where we land!”

All she could remember was that she had to raise the nose and lower it three times. She pulled up and instantly felt like she’d left the atmosphere, but the G picked right up again. When she felt like she might not be able to take any more, she changed the angle again, and the G dropped off. Akane still wasn’t waking up. The G began to climb again. Up, down, up, down. It was like a never-ending nightmare.

Yukari’s arms felt leaden with fatigue. She couldn’t feel anything in her fingers, and everything looked blurry.

Enough…I’ve done enough, right? That’s all I have to do…right? You can give me that medal now…I’m ready.

It’s all up to you now, Mangosteen. Just don’t forget to open that parachute.

Yukari gave up trying. Her hands let go of the control stick.

And she slept.

“…Unidentified aircraft, this is Tokyo Control. Please respond. Aircraft of unidentified origin flying over the Sea of Japan, respond immediately.”

Yukari’s eyes fluttered open.

Huh? What happened? Did we make it…?

All she could see through the porthole was blue sky.

“Aircraft of unidentified origin flying over the Sea of Japan, this is Tokyo Control. Please respond immediately.”

Tokyo Control? Did we make another half orbit during reentry?

“Uh, hey, Tokyo Control! This is the spacecraft Mangosteen. We read you.”

“Space…what!? You again? Yukari?”

“Er, yeah, it’s me. Sorry to bother you again like this.”

“What’s your current altitude, Mangosteen? And destination, if you even know.”

“We’re at twenty-two kilometers or so. Our splashdown target was in the South Pacific, but…”

“Roger that. We’ll play it just like last time.”

“I think that’s wise, yes.”

“We’ll give the police and the fire department and the coast guard and the Self-Defense Force the heads up.”

“Thanks for that. Any idea where it looks like we’re falling this time?”

“You’re on pretty much the same course you were on last time, actually. Heading for Kanagawa, maybe Tokyo Harbor or Sagami.”

“Again?”

“That’s how it looks from here.”

There was a jolt as the orbiter’s parachute opened.

“How could we possibly be landing in the same place?” Yukari wondered aloud. “Don’t tell me we’re going to hit Nellis again. That would be too much.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not happening. That curse was a one-time deal. I’m through with that.”

She switched from the fuel cells to the shielded batteries and purged O₂ and H₂.

Life support systems, off.

External ventilation activated.

She checked the periscope.

Yokohama.

With a tremendous woosh! of water, Mangosteen landed.

“Akane! Wake up! We’re here! I don’t know where here is, but we’re here!”

“Hunh…Yukari? What? We’re back? Did we land in water?”

“We did. I’m not entirely sure it’s the ocean, but we definitely hit water.”

“Wow.”

Is that all you have to say? Yukari thought as she undid her harness and opened the hatch. The first thing she saw was a small sign that read: THE DRAGONFLIES THANK YOU FOR KEEPING OUR POND CLEAN!

That’s it. Nothing will ever surprise me again. If some supernatural force is going through all this trouble to play an elaborate joke on me, I surrender. Why fight it?

“Akane?” Yukari closed the hatch. “If you’re sick of this whole astronaut thing, now’s your chance to go back to school.”

“No thanks.” Her cheeks were still blushing—lingering excitement from just before she had passed out. “I think I know where I need to be to learn. I need to be in space.”

It was a grade-A student sort of thing to say. She was ready to keep going, even though she had passed out both on takeoff and reentry.

“All students return to your classrooms immediately!”

The clamor outside was growing louder.

Not the principal again. Wait, what was it Matsuri said?

“You know someone else who would want to curse that school?”

Someone else…

Yukari’s eyes darted over to Akane.

“You didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?”

“You cursed Nellis Academy!”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I didn’t curse any—” Akane’s mouth clapped shut mid-sentence. A single bead of sweat formed on her forehead. “I don’t curse. I just don’t.”

“You sure about that?”

Yukari stared at the other girl. Akane just sat there, sweat rolling down her face.