[ACT 1]
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IN THE DARKENED cockpit, Yukari stared at the projection on the screen, a distorted image of the earth captured through the spacecraft’s fish-eye lens. Far below her, the shadow of dusk settled over the earth.
Arcs of giant clouds burned red along a front, their peaks casting long shadows behind them. A thin layer of clouds drifted below like delicate crepes. Beyond the borders of the clouds extended a vast expanse of indigo ocean. White dots peppered the water, but Yukari couldn’t be sure whether they were clouds or the caps of the waves.
“The water looks cold,” muttered Yukari. These were not the warm waters of the atolls she had grown accustomed to. In the course of the twenty-five minutes she had been traveling over the South Pacific, the color of the water beneath her had steadily changed.
“You have an altitude reading for us yet?” asked Kinoshita. He had asked Yukari to measure her altitude using an onboard visual navigation system.
Yukari snapped out of her reverie. “Getting to it now.” She aligned her scope with the curve of the horizon and read the measurements on the screen. It was a process one might have found on an ancient seafaring ship, only earth and sky were reversed. “Altitude 194 kilometers. Speed…7.8 kilometers per second.”
“Sounds like you’re in a stable orbit,” said Kinoshita, the relief plain in his voice. Since Tampopo had reached orbital velocity, at least they didn’t need to worry about her dropping out of the sky anytime soon.
“I’m approaching land now. South America, I think.”
“Let’s see if we can narrow that down. Check it against your map.”
Yukari turned to the map in her operations manual and compared it with the image on the screen. An intricate coastline rolled toward her. Tendrils of murky water snaked their way toward a shore tinged with reddish brown.
“Hmm. I think I’m at fifty-one degrees south latitude—Puerto Montt in Chile. Passing over it now, MET reads twenty-seven minutes, fourteen seconds.”
“Copy that. We’ll start working on a plan to get you back.”
“Have you figured out what went wrong yet? I’m dying to find out how I ended up in this whacked-out orbit.”
“We’re not sure yet,” answered Kinoshita. There was a one-second interval between transmission and reception now. “Even if there was a problem with the gyroscope, that doesn’t explain why our optical tracking lost you. As for why you’re off course—and where the energy to make up for the energy lost putting you in an inclined orbit came from—we don’t know. For now it’s best to accept the fact and move on.”
“Oh, I’ve accepted it.” Yukari pursed her lips but said nothing more. What more could she say? After all, she was the one who had insisted on launching. If the problem during the launch was still a mystery, she had no one to blame but herself.
As far as Yukari was concerned, the entire program was dangerous, wasteful, self-serving—in general, a blight on the Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, she would feel bad if it were canceled because of her. At least they had put someone in orbit before the Department of Economic Planning’s deadline expired. If Yukari could manage a safe splashdown, the base on the Solomons and the program would continue.
Since 70 percent of the earth was covered in water, the odds were on her side.
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The main screen in the control room displayed a Mercator projection of the earth overlaid with a plot of Tampopo’s orbit. In the next hour, it would pass over the Brazilian highlands and the Atlantic, North Africa and Europe, Moscow and China, and finally the Philippines.
“I don’t believe it—80 percent of this orbit takes her over land,” said Director Nasuda with a tired sigh.
“This pass is no good,” agreed Kinoshita. “The Philippines and New Guinea have too many islands, and after that we’re into the Gold Coast. One mistake and we’d bring her down on land.”
“And if our timing is off, she could end up below the fortieth parallel. She wouldn’t last long in water that cold.”
“Then we have to bring her down on her third orbit. Do a re-entry burn over Sri Lanka for a splashdown to the south of the Cocos Islands.”
Nasuda nodded. “It’s an Australian territory, so there should be a naval base. We can probably get them to assemble a recovery team.” Director Nasuda lifted a phone and started speaking to someone in English.
Kinoshita turned to Matsuri. “Tell Yukari we’re planning on bringing her back on the third orbit.”
“Hoi. Mission control to Tampopo. Yukari, we have a new reentry plan for you.”
“When and where?”
“On your third orbit, with reentry over Sri Lanka and splashdown near the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.”
“The Cocos Islands? Never heard of ’em.”
“It’s a nice place. When I was little, the whole village went there by canoe.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“The Taliho don’t pull legs.”
“All right, if you say so. Now what? I have three hours to kill.”
“Don’t worry, Yukari. We’re going to be busy checking systems and practicing your attitude maneuvers. And since your gyroscopes are unreliable, we’ll need you to make some navigational observations too.”
“Roger that.”
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[ACT 2]