“HEEEEY, EVERYBODY! It’s me, from Fujimi TV, Keiko-on-the-beat, your favorite reporter-on-the-street! Don’t touch that remote!
“We’ve come all the way to the Solomon Space Center here in the South Pacific on the trail of everyone’s favorite astronauts, Yukari Morita and Matsuri! And what hotties—er, astronauts they are!
“I know what you’re thinking: ‘South Pacific? That’s like right next door compared to space,’ but believe me, it’s a lot tougher getting here than getting up there. We’re talking trains, planes, boats…three days in all! Our crew is pooped, but we’re not going to let that get between us and the story.
“And let’s not forget that Yukari came here all by herself during her sophomore-year summer vacation! Pretty impressive. And chasing after her long-lost father? It doesn’t tug on the heart strings any more than that, folks.
“That’s right, she was searching for her father, but she found so much more here at the Solomon Space Center. You might even call it destiny.
“It takes a lot to make an astronaut, and this little girl—who, by the way, dropped out of, oh, only the most famous girls’ school in Yokohama, Nellis Academy, to devote her life to space—is no exception. Incredible!
“And then there’s Yukari’s half sister and backup crew, Matsuri. Raised among the local Taliho as one of their own, she’s a budding shaman and an astronaut. Not every day you meet one of those!
“This is the fourth installment of our special report on these girls, and we’ve got something really special for you today. That’s right, a broadcast live from space! Yukari, you read me? I just love saying that! Oh, Yukaaaaari?”
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The fingernails-on-chalkboard reportage hopped through three land-based transmitters and two satellites and returned, bringing back a picture of...empty space.
“Huh? Are we live?” said a disembodied voice from off-camera. The picture swooped until its wide-angle lens showed the sea. Nothing but sea from the bottom of the screen to the arc of the horizon near the middle.
The camera tilted, and a girl in a white, skintight space suit appeared from the bottom of the screen. She was floating in space, a maneuvering gun in her right hand and a lifeline gripped tightly in the other.
The orbiter drifted into view by her feet. One of the hatches was open, revealing part of the pilot’s seat assembly inside.
“Hello, Earth. This is the spaceship Rambutan, Captain Yukari Morita reporting.”
Behind her visor, Yukari’s eyes were wide open. She had something like a smirk on her face. “I’d like to introduce my copilot—”
Another hatch opened, and Matsuri Morita called out, “Hoi! It’s me, Matsuri!” She waved, an exuberant grin on her tanned face. When Matsuri waved, it was a full-body affair. She shook like a dog wagging its tail.
Yukari gave a short blast with her gun to straighten herself to the plane of the picture. “The camera you’re seeing me through is attached to a utility arm on the nose of the craft. What you see at the bottom—that is, toward my feet—is Rambutan’s hull. If you could see the whole thing, you’d notice it has an oval shape and is about the size of a sedan. It only seats two, so right now we’re at maximum capacity. And, er...”
Yukari twisted, looking around behind her. “Right now we’re approaching northwestern Africa, er…about three hundred kilometers over the Canary Islands. You can see the Straits of Gibraltar coming up. A little farther and we’ll be able to see the Pyrenees and the Sahara at about the same time. Then we’ll be over the Mediterranean and Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia—I’m pretty sure there is at least one war going on down there right now.”
“But not to worry!” Matsuri chimed in. “Director Kinoshita says we’re totally out of Scud and Patriot missile range!”
Yukari grinned. “That’s right! Let me put it in perspective for you: if we were flying as high as, say, eye-level, a Scud would have a hard time getting even as high as my knees.”
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What the hell are they babbling about? Nasuda frowned where he stood in the center guestroom. A single pane of glass divided him from the main floor of the control center. Just stick to the program, ladies. If they said anything about the surface, it should be the usual “From up here, there are no national boundaries.” Period.
✦ ✦ ✦
“There are some people who compare our rockets to missiles, but frankly, we’ve got ballistic missiles whipped in terms of altitude and speed, so good luck hitting us...” Yukari’s voice trailed off as common sense finally caught up with her. “Let’s get back to the ship and see how those goldfish are doing, shall we? One moment—”
Yukari went inside and the camera switched to an internal monitor.
Matsuri could be seen sitting on the left as Yukari came drifting into the orbiter to take the seat on the right. Once both hatches were closed, Yukari’s hand reached down toward the bottom of the frame and she began to adjust something off-camera.
The two girls removed their helmets. Both of them had long hair, Yukari’s in braids on either side of her face and Matsuri’s in a ponytail down her back.
“There—now where were we,” Yukari said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “Right, the goldfish. They’re in this container-thingy...”
The inside of the orbiter was small, about the size of a pickup-truck cabin. Yukari bumped into the wall several times as she moved to a new position lying across Matsuri’s knees.
“Er, I know this isn’t exactly the graceful weightlessness of space that you might have been expecting, but as you can see, it’s rather cramped inside the orbiter—”
Yukari fiddled with a panel on the side of a shock-absorbing chair, molded to precisely fit the curve of Yukari’s spine. The back of the chair fell forward, revealing a storage rack filled with test equipment.
“This is the testing array for the goldfish. It’s very compact. The fish tank is on the upper level, here. There’s a monitoring and recording device in the middle, and the power and environmental support are near the bottom. Now for the fishies.”
Yukari pulled out the fish container and yanked the CCD camera from its Velcro anchor on the instrument panel to give the viewers a close-up. “This tank is only about the size of a lunchbox, but it holds twenty-four goldfish!” She looked at the fish. “They really pack you in like sardines—no offense, guys.” She looked back at the camera. “If we just left them in there, they’d run out of oxygen quickly, so we have to keep the water cycling. Can you make this out? They’re all swimming nicely. Right after takeoff, all the poor things could do was spin around, but they seem to have gotten used to the low-G environment.”
Yukari glanced down at her watch as she talked. Broadcast time was almost up.
“We’ll be bringing these fish back with us when we come home. Our planned landing zone is in the deep water off the Seychelles Islands. From there, they’ll travel by helicopter and plane until these guys are safely back at the Space Science Laboratory in Sagamihara. And...well, that’s it for our broadcast. So long!”
✦ ✦ ✦
The image of the two girls faded from the screen and the picture returned to the flight tracking chart. Nasuda glanced at the NASA bigwig next to him and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn’t been a total disaster. He wouldn’t have understood the girls’ Japanese, anyway. Overall, the sight of them up there actually doing things had probably been good PR.
“Well, Director Holden, what do you think?” Nasuda smiled. “As you can see, we are well past the testing stage with our manned flights here at the SSA.”
“Impressive,” Holden grunted, a sneer in his voice. “You pick two of the smallest girls you could find—small even for Japanese—and specially design the orbiter to cram them in. Very impressive.”
“That may be the impression our detractors would like you to have—”
Holden turned and glared at him. “Oh, it’s public knowledge, Director.”
“But what space vessel isn’t constructed with the utmost attention to reducing load? We are not in the freight transportation business. Our one and only objective is to get people into space at the absolute minimum cost. The cost of lifting that two-seat orbiter once is only two billion yen—one fifteenth of the cost to launch one of your space shuttles.”
Holden shrugged as if to indicate he already knew this.
“If the SSA were to participate in the construction of your planned space station,” Nasuda continued, “you’d realize a considerable reduction in both cost and time. You could use the leftover funds as you wished.”
“I’m not as concerned about cost as I am about risk,” the NASA director replied. “I’ll be frank. Your SSA has only been sending up manned flights for half a year now. Your astronauts are charming little angels, to be sure, but you’re asking for a great deal of courage if you want me to place the fate of the International Space Station in the hands of two teenagers.”
“I understand your trepidation, of course. That’s why I want you to take this opportunity to see just what we’re doing in space—to remove any misconceptions you might have.”
Holden frowned. “You doing another broadcast?”
“Only one more. While we’re preparing for that, I’ll show you around our manufacturing facility. I’m sure you’d like to see our solid fuel system. It’s not every fuel that can produce a relative thrust of three hundred twenty...”