Rocket Girls: The Last Planet (17 page)

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.”

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.”

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.”

“
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 O
₂
and H
₂
.

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.