Chapter 2
I woke slowly to the smell of best ISO-approved 100 decaffeinated pseudo-coffee, and a feeling of total disorientation. This wasn't my bed - in fact this wasn't a bed at all. This was the sofa in the rec room, and I'd only shut my eyes for a minute, intending to head back to my room. Clearly something had gone wrong; morning light was streaming through the windows and the clock read almost eight o'clock.
Eight o'clock? We were due to launch at ten! I jumped to my feet, ready to remonstrate with whoever was around for a) letting me sleep now, and b) leaving me asleep in here last night, when I belatedly realised that Jason was fast asleep alongside me and Tony just stirring on the other sofa. Don was making coffee, apparently without a care in the world, but was still wearing the clothes he'd had on last night. We'd all dropped off where we sat, then.
Don saw me, signed quiet and beckoned me over. I rejected his offer of coffee with a frown and hissed, "We launch in two hours!"
"So? You have something other than wind yourself up you need to do? Let them sleep. They've got a hard day ahead."
He did have a point there - Jason and Tony were the two most on trial today. I dug in the cupboard for decaf teabags, which I found marginally more palatable than the coffee, dropped one into a mug and was pouring boiling water onto it when I suddenly changed my mind. I didn't want breakfast. Not even tea.
Don saw me stop, put his hand over mine, and forced me to finish pouring. "Have two mouthfuls, if you can't face it. But have something."
"Like you ever get sick. If nerves did this to you, you wouldn't want any either."
Don looked into the distance. "When I was waiting to hear back from the first journal I submitted to, I couldn't eat for a week. I was convinced they'd somehow figure out it was written by a fifteen-year-old, I'd be publicly humiliated and I'd never be able to publish anything ever. Mum was so worried she took me to the doctor. I couldn't tell either of them what was wrong, but he presumed it was school problems and told me that no matter how nauseous I felt I needed to eat something. It does work. You'll feel lousy later if you don't have anything inside you, especially if it's a rough launch."
He'd been put through everything any flight school, civilian or military, could think of to throw at him. He'd know. I sat down and sipped at tea which tasted of dishwater, as both Tony and Jason yawned and sat up.
"Morning, sleepyheads," Don called cheerfully. "Coffee?"
"Please." Tony stretched. "I can't believe we slept here all night. I never even stirred."
"Me neither. I'm glad, though. I don't do well on no sleep." Jason pulled a face at the cup his second held out to him. "Not sure I want any breakfast."
"I told Princess, I'll tell you. Have something. Tiny, tell him I'm right."
Tony extracted head and shoulders from the cupboard where he was hunting cereal. "He's right. I can even show you the old NASA research on it if you want."
"They wrote a paper on whether you should eat before launch?"
"They sure did. And you should."
Jason sighed. "You win. Provided there's something halfway edible in there."
We all made some attempt at breakfast in the end, although Jason remained reluctant and I was having problems even swallowing. One major advantage of the exploration role ISO had planned for us was that takeoff was designed not to require huge amounts of preparation - we'd get no help with pre-flight on our return from who-knows-where. We'd set everything up the previous evening, just leaving the technicians to finish refuelling. Apart from our final pre-flight checks, there was nothing we needed to do this morning. The cumbersome suiting-up procedures of the pre-jump era were gone, for us at least, replaced by a single word. It did make life easier, but right now we would all have welcomed an hour's worth of tedious, essential activity. It seemed forever until our bracelets pinged.
"G-Force, we're ready for you in the Phoenix," came Anderson's voice.
Jason raised his bracelet. "We're on our way." He looked around. "This is it, team. Birdstyle time."
We all jumped to our feet. There was no reason for us to transmute together, but what had started as an exercise in coordination had gone beyond habit to be somewhat of a ritual. Jason looked from face to face. "Next time we do this, we'll be on Mars." He raised his left arm and we all followed in the gesture that had become second nature to us. "Transmute!"
The usual sight-defying flash and, as far as I was concerned, time for my other persona. The one who was confident, precise, reliable and experienced. It's amazing how well just believing you have those characteristics can work. Older and taller, it didn't work so well for.
"I still say swans should be white." Don was back on that old tease - he seemed to feel my birdstyle should be bright enough to provide interior lighting for the Phoenix all on its own, not to mention a magnet for every scrap of dirt on every planet we'd be visiting. I disagreed. I liked my dusky pink and purple just fine, and I'd had months of practice at finding appropriate ripostes.
"Yeah, Don. And hawks should be what - black and silver?"
"Want to watch that, Don," grinned Tony. "The Raiders might just sue you."
Already at the door, Jason turned. "Anyone else coming to Mars, then?" As we followed him out, he asked, "What raiders, anyway?"
The two Americans looked at each other and shook their heads in mock despair. "Jason, how can you have lived in this country for eighteen months and not have heard of the Raiders?" Don managed as we made our way to the elevator.
"I discriminate in what I listen to?"
"I've heard that stuff you call sports commentary. The answer is…no."
They continued to argue as the elevator dropped like a stone. Tony and I simply listened in amusement. This was how we functioned best. G-Force, at full potential, totally ready for our first full test flight. Then the doors opened, and as one we stopped to admire the Phoenix in all its glory.
She wasn't beautiful in the traditional sense. The lines weren't what you would call classical, but were the best compromise the designers could make between something capable of atmospheric flight while still a shape compatible with a jump-field. For three of us, she flew in the same sense that even a brick with big enough engines would fly. For Tony, she was a real plane. For all of us, she was the ship that would carry us to the stars.
It was ironic, given that we'd spent yesterday afternoon trying to cut a few seconds from our pre-flight checks, that they'd allocated us half an hour for them this morning. It did help to be without time pressure, though, especially given how tense I was after our last simulation.
Jason's "sound off" was so completely relaxed it could have come from any one of yesterday's training runs. Don's "G-2" wasn't - it started several notes higher than his normal voice, but he clamped down on it with some speed.
I waited for my checks to complete with a desperate determination. I would fix anything which came up with an error this time. I had twenty minutes before the end of our launch window. I could completely rewire at least one failed circuit in that time. Maybe two…
…and I scanned the board to see a full set of green lights.
My "G-3" was, I hoped, calm and professional, but even I could hear the relief in it. Tony followed with "G-4" shortly afterwards, and we were done.
Jason simply looked up at the main viewscreen and said, "Control, we're ready for launch."
Anderson looked sideways, off our screen to one of his junior controllers. "Open sea doors."
This was usually the point where we were treated to last minute words of wisdom and a diatribe on not repeating the mistakes of the previous launch. This time, however, even Anderson sounded nervous as he cleared his throat. "G-Force, you have a go. Good luck and take care. Internal comms off."
The main viewscreen fizzed briefly before settling to the forward view of water foaming in through the slowly widening gap between the sea doors. Nice, safe, non-inflammable, constant temperature seawater - a much safer medium to launch from than Earth atmosphere, or so we'd been told.
The whine of the engines increased, building to full power, as the water level rose. It was above the camera lens now, and the screen filled with bubbles until the level rose sufficiently for the deeper water to clear the image again. I sat and listened to confirmations coming in over the radio that our flight path was clear, all water craft miles away, no unforeseen weather problems, wind speeds at various altitudes, and every other piece of information we might conceivably need.
I didn't need to know any of it right now, but Anderson's comm-tech had figured out long ago how nervous I got right before launch and had taken it upon herself to give me something to listen to. Karen had been my room-mate in the original selection camp. She was older than me, more competent than me - and physiologically unsuited to jump-flight, even with the implant she used to operate the jump-comm. She got a highly prestigious college scholarship sponsored by ISO Communications, and a job in the control room. I got to join G-Force. To her credit, she'd stayed my friend despite her disappointment. I was glad to have her on the other end of the jump-comm today.
The engines reached the top of their pitch, a whine so intense it always made my teeth ache. In front of me, I saw Don complete the docking clamp disconnection sequence, and Tony smoothly ease the Phoenix out, dead central between the doors, still on manoeuvring thrusters only.
"G-4, launch when ready," Jason said calmly alongside me, and Tony finally allowed the huge power of the engines to do its job, accelerating us towards the surface. Gradually initially, then more and more until the Phoenix broke the surface at full throttle. Instantly the vents opened, the nose came up, and the launch engines fired with a kick that pushed me back into my seat, very glad I wasn't the one responsible for keeping us on course while fighting six g. It was hard to see, hard to breathe, near impossible to move, and it went on and on, way beyond the duration of any of our previous test flights.
Strangely, though, I began to feel better as the acceleration continued and I realised I was coping with it. It wasn't as bad as the centrifuge. I wasn't going to pass out. I just needed to carry on enduring until we hit orbit.
Finally I became aware that the shriek of the engines was diminishing, the Phoenix was gradually levelling off, and the g-forces were reducing. I could breathe more easily, move my arms, raise my head. I opened my eyes, and found the world was once more in focus. In front of me, Tony sagged back into his chair as Don took over to complete our transfer from high-g launch to weightless orbit. The acceleration continued to diminish, became negligible, and as the engines wound down to idle, fell away to nothing. Time to get to work.
"Control, we have zero g. Launch phase complete."
"Confirm that, Phoenix. Numbers look good from down here. Full systems check, please."
"You heard the man." Jason was sitting forward, running his checks on the jump-drive yet again.
Don glanced sideways at his fellow pilot. "Give Tiny a minute, Jason. That was tough. I still think we should have automated it more."
"Once we start going other places, it'll have to be manual." Tony stretched his arms and flexed his hands until they clicked audibly. "May as well start as we mean to go on. I'm OK now."
We all worked at our consoles in silence for a couple of minutes at the somewhat different set of checks recommended to make sure nothing had been affected by launch. Everything was in order, and I reported to Control that we were ready for the next phase.
"Visual check of the cargo hold first, please," came back from Anderson in Control.
"Oh, great," Jason muttered. "Hoop of the week time. Kate, humour him."
I undid the seatbelts with a grim determination not to get this wrong, kicked off from the back of my seat and met the rear door rather harder than I'd intended. There was ironic applause from the front row, but Jason hadn't even turned to watch, apparently engrossed in something on his screen. The pilots got my best sickly-sweet smile before I headed down the short passage to the cargo hold. 'Hold' was a courtesy term for what was little more than a large room, but when stacked as it was now it held a surprising amount. Much more than Tring's tiny single-seater could carry. The Mars base researchers were in for a treat of fresh food tonight, not to mention luxury items which could never have been justified before. I'd supervised the loading and packing, and I knew what was in every single crate. As expected for anything packed and strapped down with that much care, it was exactly as it had been left the previous evening. We'd taken no risk of having cargo fly around loose during launch.
I turned back, hand over hand down the rail running along the passage. This weightlessness was fun. I only wished we had more time to experiment, but the jump-engine test was the important thing today. There would be other chances to practise in free-fall.
I closed the flight deck door behind me, careful not to let go, and viewed my next move with more trepidation. There was no large back wall to stop me this time; I could either admit defeat and work my way round the side wall, or launch myself across the flight deck with sufficient accuracy to hit the back of my chair. Fail and end up in Don's lap. Oh, what the hell - it was only embarrassment. Don would never let me live it down in any case if I didn't try. Lining up with exaggerated care, I launched myself in a straight line, caught the back of my chair with both hands, flipped over the top and landed perfectly in my seat. Grinning like an idiot, I turned to see what my commander thought of my prowess, and the smile died on my face.
Jason was still staring at his screen, his face sheet-white, with a look of fixed concentration. Beads of sweat were just starting to form on his forehead. Right now, he didn't look fit to command anything.
"Call in the cargo hold check, Princess." Don must have watched my performance and noted his commander's misery. Quite what Jason had been worried about seemed obvious now.
"Control, cargo hold's secure. We're ready to go on." There was at least some acceleration involved in breaking orbit and heading to the jump-point. I didn't have any personal experience of motion-sickness, but I was pretty sure sitting here wasn't going to help Jason any. I could tell Control, but I didn't dare risk what Anderson might do if told his star jump-pilot was space-sick. More to the point, I didn't dare risk what Jason might do if Anderson abandoned something which mattered to him this much. There was at least a chance that Anderson would decide Jason wasn't up to making the jump, Don wasn't ready, and abort. In my opinion, that should be Jason's decision, not Control's, and I didn't want to be responsible for taking it away from him. So, when Anderson asked how the crew were feeling before clearing us to break orbit, I told him we were fine.
Don gave me the thumbs-up from his seat, took another quick look at his commander's greenish face and spoke quietly to Tony. The engine note began to rise again, Tony announced that we were breaking orbit, and a vague semblance of gravity pushed us back gently into our seats.
"So," said Don conversationally, "are you going to radio Mars base and tell them we're on our way?"
I stared at him. "Radio? Mars is at conjunction right now. There's a sun in the way, in case you hadn't noticed. I could send it down the jump-comm, but they'd be none too pleased if it took them an hour to decode. And they don't have anyone who could reply, anyway. Were you actually at that briefing yesterday?"
"Sun in the way? I thought that was opposition."
Now he really had lost it. That was the sort of schoolboy mistake Don - any of us - didn't make. Only as he turned again and I saw the calculation in his eyes did I finally realise what he was doing.
The one thing I did remember about motion-sickness was that distraction works. The best way to avoid car-sickness is to drive the car yourself. It's when you have nothing else to think about that it gets you. Conversely, distracting someone who's already symptomatic is liable to result in them throwing up all over you. Don had to be attempting to provide Jason with the first sort of distraction by talking nonsense to me instead.
It worked, too. From my left came a familiar amused chuckle. "G-2, you better be joking, or I take back that offer of letting you play jump-pilot on the way home."
"I'm joking." Don swung out of his chair and, under the low gravity of our acceleration, ended up leaning against the front of Jason's console. "Answer me honestly, are you going to be okay?"
"I think so. We only go inertial two minutes before jump, right? I was fine for longer than that after we made orbit."
I glanced across at him. There was some colour other than green in his face, but he looked far from comfortable. "You don't look fine now."
"I'm not. I'm functioning. Leave it." He paused. "Thanks for covering for me."
Don snorted. "Being told he who can do no wrong's about to throw up all over the flight deck? Anderson would have had kittens."
Jason shuddered. "I'm still not feeling too great - can we stay away from the imagery for now?"
"Sorry, Commander. I'll save it for later." Don got his feet under him, reached up to the back of his chair and swung himself back to his co-pilot's console. As an afterthought he looked back. "That was one neat zero-g trick you missed from Princess, by the way."
"I'll catch it on the tape later." He scanned the rest of us, working perfectly happily. "Everyone else feels fine?"
"Sorry, Jase," Tony put in. "You drew the short straw for once."
"I should have guessed. I did guess, after zero-g training in that damn plane. I didn't expect it to be this bad, though."
"It's only short bursts in the plane. Some people are fine until they've been weightless for several minutes." Tony checked his instruments. "In case anyone's interested, it's ten minutes to the jump-coordinates."
Ten minutes to jump-coordinates. Until we would vanish in a wall of flame and shortly reappear a few million miles away, just a few minutes from Mars. We'd been told that Mars being at conjunction at the moment made the jump-equations less complicated. Mere mortals like me still couldn't solve them, of course - that took a brilliant intuitive mathematician like Jason. He got some slightly simpler impossible maths, the rest of us got to face the fact that as far as we were concerned we were about to fly right through the sun. Jump-space might not work that way, but it was still a deeply scary concept, one which I'd carefully avoided thinking about. Now, there was no escaping it.
"Two minutes to jump-coordinates. Going inertial."
Jason took a deep breath. "Kate, start the full data dump. Don, keep an eye on the stats, yell if you see anything weird. I'd rather a false alarm than we ignore something significant."
Don just nodded sharply, as both his screen and Jason's filled with the astonishing mass of data which had to be sorted and analyzed to determine the precise form of the jump-equations unique to this moment and place. Our computer could do that just fine. It couldn't solve the equations themselves in anything under twenty minutes.
"Don?"
"Zero on the weird quotient."
"Looks OK to me, too." How Jason was keeping his voice steady I'd never know. "Going for jump in five." He didn't continue the countdown out loud, far too busy refining his solutions, tuning the jump-engine, making sure everything was as perfect as it could possibly be. "Stand by…jump!"
He pulled the control all the way back, the jump-drive screamed into life, and the world dissolved into red flame. We'd been warned about the desperate, burning pain of every breath, and it had been no exaggeration. They hadn't mentioned the dragging exhaustion, the overwhelming desire to stop fighting and pass out. The pressure behind the eyes and the slow onset of tension in every muscle. I knew the implants had to be compensating for the physical reactions, and had a sudden, stark vision of what jump would be like without them.
The shrill note of the jump-drive cut out so suddenly the silence hurt. The physical symptoms receded more slowly. I'd yet to manage to sit up or open my eyes when I heard Jason's "sound off."
"G-2." That was close to a groan from Don.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. At my second attempt, I managed "G-3", sounding even worse than Don had.
Silence from the pilot's seat. I opened my eyes to see Tony slumped across his console.
"Don, get us oriented and moving. Kate, tell Control we did it. I'll see to Tony."
"Are we there?" I whispered.
"Look at the screen, Princess." Don was upright in his seat, activating his backups of Tony's controls at top speed.
It was big, red, and close. Mars. Just like the pictures. I sat there and stared. The northern polar ice cap, facing partly toward us. The giant mountain that had to be Olympus Mons, and below and to the right, the long dark tracing of Valles Marineris. Approximately mid-way between the two, and invisible from this distance, was our destination - ISO's Mars base. I hadn't taken the time to look at Earth from orbit, too busy with my job. Now I wished I had, and made a mental note to do so on the way home. Mars from up here was beautiful. Earth would surely be even more stunning.
As we started to accelerate gently, I dragged my mind back to my job and began to fire up the jump-comm. This really was a first - while it had been tested from orbit to the occluded side of Earth, ISO had never had a jump-communicator out this far before. I set everything up with the ease born of long practise and with some relief heard the rushing which distinguished an open connection. "Control, this is Phoenix, do you copy?"
"Loud and clear. Phoenix, what's your location?" Slightly crackly, slightly wavering. Certainly nothing I'd have any problems understanding, and far better than I'd feared. Not having to use the filtering software was a huge bonus.
I read out the coordinates blinking in the bottom corner of the main viewscreen, and waited for their response.
"Can we get a duration on that jump, Phoenix?"
I hadn't so much as thought about Tring's record, but now I glanced at the statistics on Jason's console, and permitted myself a broad grin before taking a breath to ensure my voice was completely neutral. "Duration of jump was forty-six seconds."
There was a gasp. "Say again, Phoenix."
"Forty-six seconds."
"Nice one, Jason," said Don. "You have any idea it was going to be that quick?"
Jason looked up from where he was hanging on to Tony's console, one hand on his pilot's shoulder. Tony still had his head down, but his eyes were open and he was moving. "Numbers looked good." He grinned broadly. "Tring's going to hate me. His record was more than three times that."
"Tring already hates you. You okay, Tiny?"
Tony had eased himself back into a sitting position. "Sure. If I was a medium rare steak. Man, that was horrible."
"I'll take it over free-fall any day." Jason jumped neatly down to his seat. "Kate, call Mars base, tell them to put the kettle on."
I adjusted to the Mars base default radio frequency. "Mars, this is Phoenix, do you copy?" Pause. Too long a pause. I tried again. Still nothing but static.
"No answer," I told Jason. "Checking for problems."
Circuit checks all passed normally. I could pick up my own transmissions, and there was an automated beacon beeping away on the first alternative frequency. So, not my transmitter or receiver. I went back to the jump-comm.
"Control, Mars does know we're coming, right?"
"Confirm that, Phoenix. They've known since before conjugation. And Tring jumped out to them yesterday in Skylark, so they've had confirmation."
No chance they simply weren't manning the radio for the three weeks when they couldn't receive radio signals from Earth, then. I settled to the tedious task of trying every alternate frequency in turn. All I got for my pains was either static or automated beacons. Time to be formal.
"Commander, Mars base is not responding on any of their standard channels."
"You mean our radio's dead?"
"No, I mean they're not transmitting. I've checked everything. I'm sure. All I'm getting from them is automated stuff."
Jason thought a moment. "It could be a test. In any case we'd keep going as we are. Keep trying them. And check Skylark, too."
I added Skylark's call frequency to the list, and continued to cycle through them. No change on any of them. Ten minutes of this, and Jason had had enough. He reached for the override control, and realising what he was about to do I hastily flicked all my switches back to default transmission.
"Mars base, this is Phoenix. Enough with the games. Respond now."
It didn't work. Nothing but the same useless static.
Jason returned the radio controls to me. "I bet this is Tring's idea. If he thinks this is funny, I'll throttle him."
"Didn't you just tell me he wasn't worth it?" Don half turned. "Forget it, Commander."
"He's right, Jason," Tony added.
"What is this - a democracy? Okay, focus, guys. They want to play emergency, let's oblige them. You need a full orbit, or can we go straight down?"
Tony looked at Don for confirmation, then nodded. "We can do it. If we adjust the entry angle by…"
"Don't give me details. Just do it. Kate, tell Control."
