Keys

Chapter 4

Three months later….

Cent

I was strapped into my bunk of the good ship Protagonist in my modified spacesuit, upside down facing the floor and the face of our pilot, Estavan Leocadio Espino, which had long been reduced to Steve by my father and I. The official language of the project was English, thank goodness. I can speak French and German, and was working on Spanish, and Mom and Dad have always stressed the importance of multilingualism for obvious reasons… but it's not where my best talents lie.

We were set up on a Launchpad ELA 2 in the French Guiana Space Centre 42klicks from the main control center. The pad itself had been decommissioned in 2003 and the service tower actually demolished with explosives, but for all 30 feet by 20 feet of Protagonist we didn't need a tower, or an APU, or the thousand other things that most launches need to be successful. We did have a corner of the control center set up for us, manned mostly with those that Jules' rigid screening process had passed, but there were three positions that he considered essential that had to be manned by existing control personnel. Our little band of explorers had only expanded to 52 people thus far, mostly in assembly and security. We knew we would have to expand further later on, but our security concerns were SO exhausting.

Well for most people. Dad or I showed up dead center in the warehouse the project was using every day at 8 am for the morning organizational meeting and generally stayed for around 10 hours. In that time, we sat for tests, met with engineers, or did some transporting of vital components from vendors. It was boring and exciting at the same time. Jules' wonderful skills allowed everyone to cross-pollinate ideas at a dead run, and the money we spent was miniscule compared to an actual spacecraft launch. Jules tucked half of it into his budget and Dad supplied the rest. After the first flight, Jules had plans to present to the ESA board. We didn't think there would be any funding issues after that.

We had to give up one of Joes' dreams right away, darn it. He had been so excited to set up at L5, but Jules put his foot down immediately. The L5 society from last century had big dreams about setting up habitats there, but every recent discovery about solar and cosmic ray radiation meant we had to keep an orbit like the International Space Station, within the protective magnetic belts of Earth. None of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points were safe for long term use.

Testing had also changed how I thought I would be pulling the capsule. I had thought that I was going to be upright like Superman, diving into the sky. It turned out that was a great way to get a migraine. The engineers had adapted it such that I was going to fall into the sky backwards, with all the surface area of my back, legs and arms lending thrust to the Protagonist (they let me name it, squee!). It took a lot of practice to imagine thrusting into the sky like that, but Dad and I set to it, and we could both keep it up for hours, if need be.

One of the best serendipity moments was when Dad discovered he could combine his constant-flow water trick with my impulse vectors. I made him walk me through it right away and it meant that there would be a much smoother ride, not as hard on me and Steve. No headaches from micro-concussions, hopefully.

I was so disappointed that Joe couldn't go on the launch. It was our dream together, and me starting without him just felt crappy. We consoled ourselves that he would be the third in space using our 'drive'. He had been in training alongside the other ESA specialists that Jules had recruited, learning how to work in space conditions and assemble all the junk that we were going to bring up there.

So Steve and I waited in the capsule, checking over everything on our checklist. We made sure of our most important item, the box I had taken to calling the Guide Dog. It was a small 3D screen that swung around to right in front of my face that had a large dot that floated around in it. Steve would have control of it from his position with all the real navigation and communication equipment he needed; stripped down to as little weight as possible. After this flight, weight was no longer much of a consideration, but we had to get into orbit first.

Jules and the control team were in position. The existing staff had been told that this was an exciting experiment in quantum tunneling, which is why a decommissioned pad was being used. They had been told that there was a possibility that the test craft could launch, but it was remote. I was hoping like hell everything was going to go according to plan. There was an emergency evac plan depending on the instant release of mine and Steve's straps and some fast jumping. I prayed that they wouldn't be used.

Dad and Mom both were in the control room. Dad was there ostensibly as a consultant, and stood next to Jules most of the time. I knew Mom had been jumped there before and was in disguise as a secure observer. Mom was our hole card for the entire endeavor. After hours, Dad and I would jump Mom to any site we were working to make sure she had a jump site for it. We had learned the hard way how important it was to have one of us free to rescue us if things went wrong.

Dad had a private line to my ear, and had been giving me a running commentary on events in the control center. He broke that off and said, "It looks like Jules is about ready, sweetheart. He says that we'll start the countdown in three minutes. You ready?"

"I am SO ready. Let's light this candle!" We both laughed. We had watched 'The Right Stuff' the night before and loved it. There would be no candle-lighting this time though. I imagined how it would look to an outside observer and laughed harder.

When listening to a launch count from the outside, it sounds so slow… not like it is from within! I was looking at the Dog, biting my lip and each number seemed to come faster and faster. "Three, Two, One… Ignition!" We had agreed on that terminology, even though there wasn't going to be any fire. Tradition.

I started adding thrust lightly, straight up, to settle my body into the couch above me. At that light thrust, I began to add that constant touch, to get my mind in the groove and used to overlapping jumps, a quarter second or less from each other. Once that had set in, I started adding 20 feet per second increases until an amber light turned on the side of the Dog. We had lifted off!

The most dangerous moment of any space flight is that second of lift off. Since rockets got all of their thrust from the bottom, it took exquisite control to keep it all balanced. Because I was lifting the capsule above the center of gravity, we didn't have nearly as much anticipated trouble, just like a front wheel drive car, but I added another 40 feet per second right after liftoff to be sure. The Dog was still showing a straight up line, so I started to really apply myself.

Davy and Millie

Davy was incredibly nervous and trying not to show it. There had been an explosion of activity in the control center when the screen had shown the completely silent rise of the Protagonist, with a constant stream of oaths in French from the three non-project controllers at the sight. From where he stood, the capsule had slowly risen shortly after the countdown, then rapidly ascended like a balloon. It was like magic. He looked back at Millie, wearing her red wig and a dark hat, and saw that she had removed the sunglasses and was crying, staring at the main view screen. She looked at him, and he shook crossed fingers and arms at her.

Jules was standing up and yelling triumphantly, shaking his fists overhead like a prizefighter. One of the controllers yelled something about minor instability, and he waved him back to his screen, assuring the man that is was to be expected. There was a projected track on the large overhead screen, and to Davy's untrained eye the dot representing his daughter looked to be accelerating just below it.

Cent

I was focused intently, trying to keep the thrust as centered and steady as I could. Steve had stopped me at about 120 miles an hour, but that was just the impulse that my body experienced, I didn't know how fast it was pushing the capsule. The dot in the Dog moved slowly in one direction, then another, and I followed it with my eyes and will. There were three windows in the capsule, and I could see with my peripheral vision that the quality of the sunlight had changed slowly, gotten more glaring. Steve was in my ear saying, "Ok, Cent, you're doing great. Should be another half hour to parking orbit." I nodded, forgetting that he couldn't see me, stuck in that weird kind of floating feeling when using the constant reflex trick.

Honestly, the only problem we had was when we were straying too close to some kind of logged space junk. Steve guided me to pass behind it and it was gone. He had me back off to 50 feet per second as we entered our planned orbit, then I got the shutoff sign on the Dog.

I closed my eyes and just floated then. It wasn't absolute; Steve was in contact with Ground control and making minor course corrections with the small attitude jets on the sides of the craft. But damn, it was fine! I had no problems with queasy tummy (I shouldn't, not with all the Dramamine they had me take) and couldn't wait to get the rest of my family out here!

Have I forgotten something? How about the paintjob of the good ship Protagonist! On one wall there was a huge number 1 in a circle surrounded with sparkles and rainbows. The other side had the name of the ship in a beautiful font, and there were woodland scenes everywhere else. The paint scheme was duplicated on the outside. This, along with the memory of the sandalwood incense that had burned here made this a great jump site to remember. If jumping from orbit worked at all.

Steve confirmed nominal orbit insertion and we unlatched from our couches. After some great sightseeing, he confirmed our air pressure in the capsule and the suits, and I put my arms around him for the Nairobi jump.

One of the hardest things to adjust for the engineers of the project was sudden changes in pressure for the suits we were using. The atmosphere at sea level is 14.7 psi, and to go suddenly from that to vacuum would make any standard space suit explode. I wouldn't like that, being inside one. The scheme we had come up with was to either jump from vacuum to vacuum or as close to suit pressure as possible. Suits used to spacewalk at the ISS used 4.7 psi, but that required up to ten hours to prepare for in a separate chamber to avoid high altitude bends.

The jump suits were tanks. They were intended to keep the high oxygen psi inside up to 11, and were hard as hell to maneuver in. They looked more like robots than spacesuits, and it was a miracle that they had been made at all. We were intended to jump to and from like atmospheres in them, and a closely guarded warehouse in Nairobi had been set up, the altitude of that city registering about 12.2 psi. Jules had arraigned that warehouse for now because of the city elevation and access to the sea for shipping, for things that were too big for Dad or I to jump. It would change in the future when we were advanced enough in our planning to pressurize the planned station to one standard atmosphere.

We got the OK from ground control and jumped.

The warehouse facility seemed ultra-bright next to the low lights of the capsule, and the suits popped loudly when we appeared. I let Steve go and we both sat back heavily on the special couches. It was then that I unashamedly used my ability and jumped straight out of the suit to the floor beside me, standing in my sock feet and Under Armour. I grinned at Steve as the techies swarmed around him, slowly removing the suit.

I hugged him when he was clear, and he said softly, "You did it. Mierda! WE did it!" I shook my head slowly, still grinning, and said, "Step one. Lots to go"