Glass Sky (6 page)

JIE HAD MISSED the daily bus to the space center, so Molari chartered a car, a welcome luxury in a country where only the political elite avoided mass transit. The departure lot was at the north end of Urumchi, a maze of warehouses and storage containers that lapped against the glass cliffs of downtown. About 100 vehicles of various shapes and sizes were charging in neat rows underneath a solar-sheeting roof. Jie’s omni pointed him to a double-seater. It already had one passenger, a Chinese woman in a thick red sweater. She was a decade older than him – late forties maybe – with the lean face of an athlete.

Jie settled in, and the car glided out of the parking lot. They accelerated down what would have been a freeway before self-driving cars made interchanges unnecessary. The city soon gave way to endless tilled fields where summer irrigation coaxed crops out of the desert. The woman straightened her seat and swiveled so that she was nearly facing Jie.

“Sally.” She spoke with a southern accent, Chengdu maybe, and used her English name.

‹Jie.›

‹Disk array, am I right?› said Sally. ‹I saw the UN Climate Summit coverage.›

Jie nodded.

‹I knew it!› said Sally. ‹I was on a beach in Vietnam yesterday for my annual dose of sunshine and massages, and the space center cancelled my vacation. Though,› she leaned forward as if she were about to confide a secret, ‹I figured out weeks ago that something was up. The space industry stock index rose 50%.›

‹Well, you probably know more than me,› said Jie. ‹They’ve given me some broad outlines, but I won’t get a full reveal until this evening. I guess there’s one more level of technical review before they bring me in.›

The car turned onto a single-lane road and began ascending. The farms vanished, and the land became barren, a wasteland of dry gravel broken only by high islands of eroded rock. Ribbons of whirling windmills snaked along the ridges. Sally dug into a pocket, and fished out a crumpled peanut bag covered in Vietnamese characters. ‹I design zero-gravity robotics,› she said, offering Jie the nuts. ‹What do you do?›

Jie gave her a rundown of his last 24 hours. ‹The disk array’s an incredible engineering challenge,› he said. ‹They’re desperate to cut the schedule, so I’m part of some plan B.› The car shook in a wind gust, pellets of snow skittering off the windows. Their rising elevation exposed a line of mountains, their fluted white ridges a stunning backdrop to the windsculpted patches of snow along the roadside.

‹Oh. Wow.› Jie snapped a photo through the window. ‹For my son.›

‹Beautiful, isn’t it?›

‹Incredible,› agreed Jie. ‹Between my work and Beijing’s dust storms, I don’t get outside much. It was full brownout when I left. In February, can you believe it? It’s getting worse.›

‹Maybe you can help change that,› said Sally.

They settled into an effortless conversation, wandering across topics as broad as the landscape. It had been a long time since Jie had talked to a stranger, but where his social skills were rusty Sally smoothed the gaps. Hours passed in minutes; they crested a long hill where the valley terminated in a gravel plain walled by mountains.

‹Welcome to the Xinjiang Space Center,› said Sally, pointing to the cluster of indistinct shapes in the distance. ‹It’s one of two facilities in the world that still has heavy-lift launch capabilities. But it’s been quiet. We had three launches last year. India had one. Nothing goes above low Earth orbit anymore. Just the odd scientific instrument.› Her voice took on a distinct bitterness. ‹Remember the moon base? Remember Ganymede? Our reach has gotten so much smaller.›

Ganymede? How old was I? Thirteen?
Jie’s whole class had watched the Verne lander touch down. Every morning he’d followed the nuclear probe’s progress, watching as it drilled through the kilometers of ice crusting the Jovian moon’s frozen sea. And then, just ten seconds after it had hit the water, the signal had been lost. A software bug. Or a civilization of hyper-intelligent jellyfish, if you believed the conspiracy theorists.

‹Did you work on Ganymede?› asked Jie in wonder.

‹Do I look that old?› laughed Sally, tapping him playfully on the arm. ‹I’m an astronaut. I was scheduled to do a rotation on the moon base. Before the accident.›

The car slowed. A gatehouse straddled the road, set inside a razor wire fence. Signs on the fence flashed ‹Lethal security measures in place› in alternating Chinese and English, but the guards who stepped out to meet them were smiling and relaxed, and let them in with only a per-functory check. The car wove through the space center’s scattered buildings and stopped outside three stories of brick and glass.

Jie climbed out, hunching against the frigid air, admiring the sunset hues on the wall of snowy mountains.
That huge structure in the distance must be the vertical assembly building. And the open space beyond is the launch area.
The sprawling industrial complex, set in this primal landscape, added to his sense of displacement.
A day ago I was in Beijing, trying to steal the cup. Hmmm…
I wonder if they’ve got a game center.

Sally heaved her duffle onto her shoulders. ‹Guest quarters are through there,› she gestured. ‹I’m in staff quarters next door.› She smiled. ‹Really nice to meet you, Jie. I hope I’ll see you around.› She started to walk away.

Too bad she doesn’t live in Beijing. Cute. And a rocket scientist even.

She turned, catching Jie staring at her. ‹Your meeting is tomorrow right?› Again, that smile. ‹What are you up to right now? Want to see a spacecraft?›

***

Jie dropped his bag on the bed and pulled back the curtains. The tiny second-floor room straddled an uneasy boundary between prison cell and hotel: old furnishings, bare walls, but a luxury view. An orange glow still backdropped the hulking mountains, though the sky was rapidly blackening into a shimmering tapestry of stars.

He hurried to the front doors, where Sally was waiting. She had changed into light blue construction coveralls. She handed Jie a hardhat.

‹Our lawyers
insist
that,› her voice became a singsong parody, ‹all visitors must attend a full day safety orientation before they enter the construction facilities. Ha! I’ll give you the short version. Don’t wander off without me. Don’t touch anything. If you hear alarms, follow me. And…› she lowered her voice, ‹don’t tell the lawyers.›

‹Yes sir.› Jie saluted. ‹I’m used to industrial facilities,› he added.
A stretch. My lab is more of a… lab.

They climbed into one of the white cars charging in the solar pods and Sally tapped her omni to the dash. Nothing happened. ‹Oh, you shameless egg!› She wiped the thumbprint reader and tried again. Still nothing. ‹Biometrics glitch,› she explained.

After a full reboot, she managed to start the car. She sent it squealing into reverse.
Dog testicles! She’s driving
it by hand! Did she even look behind us?
They raced down a broad concrete road into an area of flatroofed metal warehouses.

The car wandered alarmingly as Sally pointed at buildings. ‹There’s storage. The fuel refinery. Our electronics labs.› Bright lights snapped on as the car approached, casting a moving pool of illumination around them, as if somebody were shining a spotlight on them from space. They passed a rectangular structure several city blocks in length. ‹That’s where we build the first-stage engines.› Flickering shadows danced behind a row of high windows. Jie abandoned his attempt to figure out the seat belt, which wouldn’t come out more than a few centimeters no matter how hard he tugged.

‹That’s the vertical assembly building ahead of us,› said Sally, confirming Jie’s guess. ‹It’s where we put the launch stack together before rolling it out to the launch pad.› It rose before them, a towering skyscraper. By the time they skidded to a halt, he could see only a small fraction of its height.

They stepped into a night black beyond Jie’s experience. No neon highrises. No strobes. No fireworks, or lasers painting Coca Cola logos across the sky. A biting wind carried pale clouds across the crescent moon, giving the building’s towering walls an illusion of movement that only served to emphasize their height.

‹Awesome, isn’t it?› said Sally. ‹It still gives me shivers.›

Jie could only nod.

‹Tour guide time,› she said. ‹The Long March 7 Heavy Lifter is an expendable launch system. It’s composed of five first stage engines, the central fuel tank, two solid fuel booster rockets, an Earth departure stage engine, and the payload assembly. All of it is manufactured here. A lot of the work is done by robots, but because it’s not mass production it’s still pretty labor intensive compared to something like a car. You booked the cheap tour, so we’ll skip straight to the assembled stack.›

She stopped at the safety station outside the huge front doors. They were cracked open on their rails, revealing a sliver of light stretching to heaven. Grinding power tools and shouting voices echoed from inside. Sally handed Jie a set of noise cancellers, and the world fell into eerie silence.

‹Ready?› she asked.

Jie followed her inside. ‹Wow.›

A cylindrical rocket towered on an enormous wheeled platform, nested in pipes and machinery. The primary-stage engines beneath the central fuel tank seemed like toes on an elephant’s leg, the technicians green-clad ants.

‹The full stack is 110 meters high,› said Sally, the noise-cancellers separating her voice from the din. ‹Equivalent to a thirty-story building.› She looked up, into endless scaffolding. ‹From here to the top of the fuel tank is the first stage. Stages let us shed mass as we climb. They also let us switch fuels at different altitudes. You can’t see it from here, but there’s another stage up above. We also add two solid fuel boosters just before launch to give a bit of extra kick for the first two minutes. You can’t imagine what it’s like! The atmosphere jerks you around like a rodeo bull. And the sound!›

Jie felt unsteady just thinking about it. ‹You… You’ve gone up…? In one of
these
?›

‹Just in simulation,› admitted Sally, smiling wistfully. ‹I was months away… when the lunar accident happened.›

‹So you ended up here?›

‹I couldn’t get space out of my blood,› said Sally. ‹A lot of us old astronauts are still around, where we can watch these beauties fly.› Sally turned as she spoke so that her words seemed to encompass not just the hangar, but the entire valley. ‹I climb into the mountains sometimes, before a launch. Watch from one of the ridges. You should see this thing, when it’s sitting out there on the launch pad, all ready to go, surrounded by this landscape. I hope you can experience it.›

A cart full of metal parts drove itself past them to the far freight elevator. ‹Cheng would love this,› said Jie. ‹Mind if I take pictures?›

‹
I
don’t,› said Sally. ‹Our lawyers, however, would erase your brain to serve their vengeful secrecy god. So I’m going to look over there for a moment. La di da.›

Jie snuck out his omni and snapped a few photos from waist level.
Unbelievable!
He worked with components so small that air molecules messed up production. And here they rode controlled explosions into space. He imagined Cheng’s face, grinning in the light of the rocket’s flame as it surged into the sky on pure, brute strength.
I’ve got to see a launch!

‹How are you with heights?› asked Sally.

Jie hesitated. ‹I’m fine with heights.›

Sally grinned and led him into a construction lift. The doors rattled shut and the wire cage began creeping up the rocket’s length, past level after level of scaffolding. After several minutes the lift stopped and the doors rattled open. Sally stepped onto the airy platform and leaned over the railing the way kids leaned over the fence at the petting zoo. Jie inched after her. He clutched the railing with both hands and risked a dizzying glance downwards.

‹We’re now at the top of the earth departure stage,› announced Sally. ‹The EDS is 30 meters tall and has one engine.›

‹So everything below this point is expendable?› asked Jie. Thirty stories of machinery stretched below them.

‹That’s true for low Earth orbit rockets,> said Sally.

Sally stepped forward, striding the gangplank as if it were at ground level.

‹This is the bit that makes it to space,› she said. ‹Payloads are mounted on those cargo supports, and then we drop a composite shroud overtop to protect against the atmosphere. The Long March 7’s payload area was designed to accommodate bulky cargo for the lunar base. We can deliver 100,000 kilograms to L1, where the disk array will be positioned.›

‹So you have to launch
3000
of these in the next five years?› Jie asked.