“TURN THE VOLUME up! Louder!” someone shouted on the other side of the cafeteria.
Yukari, Matsuri, and Akane put down their lunches and looked up. Every eye in the cafeteria was glued to the large television screen on the wall. Someone had changed the channel from the usual Japanese broadcast to CNN.
“Wonder what it is? Maybe they’re showing something about us?”
“Hoi! Let’s go check it out.”
The three stood and walked over closer to the screen.
They were showing a live feed, apparently from the space shuttle. The picture was being taken from the rear observation window on the upper deck, showing two astronauts in the middle of the payload bay, working on some device.
Someone turned the volume up and they could hear an anchorwoman’s voice, saying, “…into the third day. The part seems to have gotten wedged inside a crevice in the Orpheus probe too deep to be easily removed. They’ve tried shaking it and using a gripping extension hand, but so far they’ve had no luck in retrieving the wayward part.”
“Yikes! They’re still working on that thing?” Yukari said. A man in coveralls in front of her turned.
“They just might need you up there, Yukari.”
“Nah!”
“You never know.”
“Apparently, it will be impossible to retrieve the part without dismantling the engine array on the probe, and this will be impossible to do while in orbit.”
“The director is already moving on this,” the man said. “They’ve got a booster under assembly in the VAB. Just making preparations at this point, but still.”
“You mean the SSA is going to go up there?” Akane asked.
“Why not?” the man asked. “One of you could slide your whole body in there and fish it out, no problem.”
Akane returned her gaze to the television. “I don’t know. It looks pretty tight.”
For the last month, Akane had been training in the training center’s pool.
She would get into her space suit, strap on a backpack, and attach the appropriate amount of ballast to make the experience of floating in water as close to being weightless as possible. While submerged, they had her putting together mock-up satellites and taking them apart.
“The shuttle will only be up for another three days. NASA has said they will do everything they can while there’s still time remaining. However, in the worst-case scenario, they’ll be obligated to bring the Orpheus probe back down to the ground with them.”
“That’ll be the end of that project,” the man in the overalls said.
“Couldn’t they just fix it and relaunch?” Akane asked.
The man shook his head. “Hardly. The shuttle schedule is booked solid for the next ten years. That probe was sitting in a warehouse for ten years before it even got to go up the first time. There’s no guarantee it’ll be serviceable when its time comes around again.”
“That sounds like a waste.”
“Sounds like business as usual in space development to me. Me, I work on support booster shielding. It takes about four months to finish those. Four months to make, and they throw them away after two minutes into launch.”
“I had no idea,” Akane said, looking down.
“Hey, I don’t mind,” the man said. “At least they serve their purpose. Those one-shot-only modules can’t be fully tested, so you really have to know your stuff in order to make them. Not that you should worry. I know my stuff.”
One of the man’s friends came by and told him to stop bragging.
Akane nodded, thinking to herself.
The girls met back at their seats and resumed lunch. Yukari was eating a whitefish meuniere, Matsuri an omelette, and Akane had chosen a marinated octopus dish. For starch, each of them had rice. Though there were some local islanders on staff, the majority of people in the cafeteria were Japanese, and the food was hardly different from what they got back home.
“You eat like a bird, Akane. Don’t you get hungry?” Yukari asked.
“Well, to tell the truth I would like a little more, but I only have three hours until you know what…”
“Oh, right.”
“You-know-what” was centrifuge training. Akane’s studies and operational training were both going perfectly smoothly. The only hiccup: lack of high-G resilience.
“How’s that going? Getting used to it?”
“Not really. I can only last five seconds or so at 8 G.”
“Five seconds? That’s plenty. That’s all you have to take during the real thing.”
“But on a real liftoff you have vibration too, so Satsuki says I need extra tolerance to get through—”
“You do get rattled around a fair bit.”
“That, and the high G on reentry lasts a lot longer.” Akane sighed.
“Don’t worry so much. You’ve got another five months before your first flight. You’ll get used to it in time.”
“Just sleep on it tonight. I’ll get you up!” Matsuri said cheerfully.
Yukari rolled her eyes. “That’s very nice of you, Matsuri, but do you mind wiping your mouth with a napkin or something? You’re covered in ketchup.”
“Oh, I’ll get it later.”
“No, wipe right when it gets on you. That’s called being civilized.”
“Civilized people sure have it tough.”
“Yes, we like it that way.”
“Hoi.”
“That reminds me,” Akane said suddenly. “You say hoi a lot, Matsuri, but what does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything at all,” Yukari declared.
“Really?” Akane asked.
“Either that or it means everything.”
Akane looked confused.
“You explain it, Matsuri!”
“Hoi?”
“Do you have any idea what we’re talking about?”
“Hoi.”
“There. See what she did?” Yukari fumed. “That’s the way it always is with her. That’s the way it is with everyone down here in the South Pacific. You don’t have to have a sensible conversation because you don’t need to actually communicate information to survive. All you need are a few coconut trees and you’re golden.”
Akane shook her head and chuckled. She was about to tear apart Yukari’s theory when a blaring announcement from the PA system cut her off.
“All astronauts to the briefing room immediately. I repeat, all astronauts to the briefing room immediately.”