ON A CONSOLE at the Ministry of Transportation Aircraft Traffic Control Center in Tokorozawa, a red light flashed.
“Chief! I got something here!”
The air controller in charge of Japan’s central and northwest region stood up from his chair. “ID unknown...maybe a bad transmitter? It’s going over the sea near Noto Penninsula at...Mach 11!”
The chief leaned over to look at the oval radar screen. A point of light was crossing it, headed straight for the Tokyo region at an incredible speed.
“No vessel name or identifying number? What’s its altitude? Any secondary surveillance radar reading?”
“I’m not getting any response from the air-traffic control transponder. Nothing on audio, either. Think it’s an American test flight? Didn’t they have something called the Aurora—”
“What would a test flight be doing in our airspace? The SFD moving on this? Any word from Komatsu?”
“Haven’t been able to get through to them.”
“That better not be a North Korean missile.”
“At that velocity we’ll find out pretty damn soon if it is.”
“The unidentified craft is over here now—in the West Kanto sector,” the controller sitting at the station next to them called out. “It’s heading for Tokyo, correct that, for Atsugi.”
“Keep trying to contact Komatsu. Send all local flights for Narita and Haneda to Nagoya and Sendai. International flights can go to Osaka.”
“Aircraft of unidentified nationality, this is Tokyo Control. Respond. Aircraft of unidentified nationality, respond immediately.”
“The Komatsu airbase just scrambled its F-15s,” the central Japan controller announced.
“Good luck catching that thing. Its speed is off the charts.”
“Actually, it’s decelerating. It’s at Mach 3.2 now.”
“Already? What is that thing?”
Just then, an unfamiliar voice came in on an emergency frequency.
“Uh...Mayday, Mayday. This is the spaceship Rambutan. Can anyone read me?”
“Spaceship?”
“Think it’s some kind of prank?”
“Wait, what if it’s those high school girls—”
“That’s it. Answer them!”
“Rambutan, this is Tokyo Control. Give us your current altitude, rate of descent, and target destination.”
“Our current altitude’s 18.4 kilometers and we’re coming down at about...two hundred twenty meters per second.”
“Whaa—?” The flight controller gaped. “Eighteen point four kilometers, that’s about...sixty thousand feet, okay. And the velocity’s in meters per second, so, uh...”
Sweat beading on his forehead, the flight controller mashed the buttons on his calculator. Not only were the units totally different than the ones he was used to working with, but the numbers were higher by such a degree of magnitude his years of experience weren’t doing him a bit of good. “Er, Rambutan, what’s your splashdown target?”
“Our target was off the eastern coast of Africa, but we got the timing a bit wrong.”
“Okay...so you missed Africa, and that’s why you’re here in Japan?” The controller shook his head. “Where are you headed right now?”
“I’d tell you if I knew. We’re kind of in freefall here.”
“Freefall? Wait, so—what?” Tossing his headset to the desktop, the controller began furiously scratching his head. “Chief! What the heck am I supposed to do with a spaceship?”
“Give me that.” The chief grabbed the microphone. “Rambutan, you’ll be in Atsugi Base airspace momentarily. I can’t guarantee you won’t be knocked out of the sky by a land-to-air missile.”
“But Solomon should have contacted all the major airports and military bases!”
“We didn’t hear anything.”
“What about the other airports?”
“No idea. We are looking into it now.”
“That won’t be quick enough. Could you contact the U.S. military and the Japan Self-Defense Force for us?”
“Will do.” The chief turned to the flight controller for central and northern Japan. “Get word to the U.S. military and the SDF right now. I don’t care how you do it. Call every number you got.”
“Right away.”
“I’m not sure the Americans are going to like this much,” one of the other controllers said.
“I’m sure they’re already tracking her. And if they thought she was a missile, they’d have contacted us by now—or shot them down.”
“Rambutan to Tokyo Control, we are at nine kilometers. We just deployed our main parachute. Our position is a little to the west of Tokyo, I think. Our GPS map isn’t very detailed.”
The flight control chief glanced at his radar screen. They had slowed to eight knots per hour.
“Rambutan, you’re right over the city of Ayase, in Kanagawa Prefecture. I understand you can’t control your descent?”
“Affirmative. We’re dropping at about ten meters a second now. Hope we find some water to splashdown in.”
“I’m not sure you will. You might even hit Yokohama. Want us to send out a rescue crew?”
“Yokohama...”
The voice over the speaker stopped abruptly. There was a brief moment of silence before Yukari spoke. “Yes, please. In Japan, I’m guessing that would be the police’s jurisdiction?”
“I’m not sure we even have protocol for dealing with spacecraft, but I’ll let the Kanagawa police know you’re coming.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck, Rambutan. Tokyo Control out.”
Matsuri’s eyes were glued to the periscope. The periscope tube ran through the middle of their instrument panel, down into the floor and through the hull, where it opened into a fish-eye lens.
“Whoa! Look at all the houses! I’ve never seen so many!”
“What about water? Can you see the ocean?”
“No. Oh, there it is. Pretty far off, though. Wow! What’s that big tower?”
“Landmark Tower, by Yokohama harbor, probably.”
“Aren’t you from Yokohama, Yukari?”
“Actually, yeah.”
Of all the places they could have crash-landed in the entire world, why Yokohama?
She hadn’t even set foot on Japanese soil in ten months—and now she was about to leave a shallow crater in it.
“Will you stop gawking out the window and help me prep for splashdown?”
“Hoi! Where are we?”
“I need to switch power from the fuel cells to the shielded batteries and purge O2 and H2.”
“Got it.”
“Voltage normal. Okay, next cut off life support and get some ventilation going.”
The air circulator for their life support system stopped and the smells of the greater Tokyo-Yokohama industrial area poured in through the vents.
Matsuri crinkled her nose. “Smells like the fuel factory on base.”
“Smells like home.”
They were only three hundred meters up now. Thirty seconds to the ground. Yukari took a look through the periscope.
No way are we making it to the ocean.
“Tokyo Control, this is Rambutan. We’re below one thousand feet. Looks like we’ll be crash-landing in the city.”
“Roger that, Rambutan. We’re tracking you on the high-res radar at Haneda. The police have a chopper en route. I think we’ve got you covered.”
“Thanks for the help.”
They’d be hitting the ground at ten meters per second—an impact they’d trained for. The problem was, what if they didn’t hit open ground? There could be anything down there. High-voltage electrical lines, factories with hazardous materials, an expressway...
Yukari wrested her gaze from the outside and read the altitude gauge.
Two hundred meters.
“Is it just me, or have we been here before?” Yukari muttered.
“Hoi?”
One hundred meters.
“I mean, one time out of two, we’re facing imminent death.”
Fifty meters.
“No problem, Yukari, we’ll be fine!”
Thirty meters.
“Today’s a good day to die,” Matsuri added.
“That’s not what I’d call fine, Matsuri!”
The two girls braced for impact.
Zakooooosh.
There was a brief jolt as they hit the surface of something, sank a short distance, and came to rest. A water landing, amazingly enough. The only window on the orbiter was in the overhead hatch. Yukari looked through it and saw only sky.
She took a deep breath. “We made it?”
“We sure did!”
“Looks like we hit water.”
“Looks like.”
“Well, follow procedure. Inflate floats and release the dye marker.”
The dye—an oily mixture that would float on the surface of the ocean—began spraying from the cone of the orbiter. A VHF/HF antenna extended at the same time as a buzzer began to sound in the cabin.
“System alert! Where is it?”
Yukari frantically scanned the instrumentation panel. There was a short in their preliminary power source. They were taking on water.
“Uh-oh, looks like we’ve sprung a leak!”
“Hoi? What do we do about that?”
Yukari looked down. Water was already beginning to puddle around her feet. “Nothing to do but evacuate. Get your survival kit on and let’s deploy that life raft! Quickly!”
“Hoi hoi!”
The girls slid out of their harnesses, opened the lockers at their feet, pulled out survival kits, and slung them around their waists. Matsuri twisted around in her seat and pulled out the life raft from its storage compartment.
Yukari’s hand went to a panel on the wall. She opened it, revealing a single, large red button. She put her finger on it. “Get ready, I’m blowing the hatch!”
A dry report, like a pistol shot, went off over their heads, and the hatch flew upwards, away from the orbiter.
The two girls crawled out onto the hull and removed their helmets. A strong, mid-spring sun shone down on them. There was a light breeze.
“Where are we...?”
The capsule’s dye marker had stained the water around it a fluorescent green, but the water only extended a few meters before it ended in a straight line of brick-colored tiles. Above the tiles stood a single sign that read: THE DRAGONFLIES THANK YOU FOR KEEPING OUR POND CLEAN! Beyond that were carefully cropped patches of lawn and neatly laid brick walkways. There was a greenhouse, a flower stand, and an aging nature observation post—the kind they put in school gardens for the science class to test water samples and the like.
Beyond that, she saw a concrete building, three stories high. Another building next to it was connected to the first by a covered walkway. Yukari turned around and saw more buildings on the other side. They were in a central courtyard surrounded by identical concrete buildings.
“I think we’re okay, Yukari. Look at all those people!”
Yukari scanned the buildings. Faces filled every window. They were all wearing the same clothes. They were all girls.
“I know where we are,” Yukari said. “I know where we are!”
“Hoi? Where’s that?”
“Nellis!”
“Who?”
“We’re at Nellis Girls Academy! We landed on my school!”