Norman emerged from the air lock. He was a big man with a crew cut. Had they been standing on the ground, Yukari would have only come up to his chest.
Though he had taken off his helmet and backpack, he was still in his bulky space suit. The five spread out to the floor and the ceiling to make room in the suddenly crowded middeck.
“Sorry we started without you. Good work out there,” the captain said to him.
“I didn’t do anything. They’re the ones you should thank,” Norman said gruffly.
Seen from this close, his space suit looked incredibly unwieldy. The chest was like a barrel wrapped in cloth. His arms and legs were tubes, completely obliterating the human form beneath.
“You look like a sumo wrestler,” Yukari said, earning a smoldering look from Norman.
“If I had a suit like yours, I’d be able to keep up with you up there.”
“Maybe, though you’re so big as it is I doubt you would have been able to get inside that truss.”
There was silence in the middeck.
The captain cleared his throat. “So, you two, want to check out the cockpit?”
“Oh yes, that’d be great!” Akane said eagerly.
“Why not,” Yukari said with obvious disinterest. “Just the thing—technology older than I am. It’ll be like being in a museum.”
Akane glared at her, but Yukari pretended not to notice.
The captain led them through a hole in the ceiling onto the upper deck. Though photographs and video made it look larger, in reality, the cockpit was small—roughly the size of a truck cabin with a sleeper behind the seats.
“As you can see, everything but the floors and ceilings are covered with instrumentation. Everything up front is the flight controls—it’s pretty much the same as a commercial airliner. The right side is for mission operations and the left is for payload operations. In the back we’ve got the RMA control and the docking controls.”
“It’s a two-seater,” Akane noted.
“That’s right. The only people that actually have to sit up here are the pilots when the shuttle is in flight mode. See the footrests? You can adjust the height on those, so even someone your size could fit snugly.”
“That was a smart design.”
“We have to consider the range of people that come up on the space shuttle. Different sizes, different races, different religions. We’re set up to take them all.”
“Unlike the SSA, you mean,” Yukari said.
“Yukari!” Akane was visibly angry now. She spoke Japanese. “Why are you saying things like that? What did these guys ever do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“So why the attitude?”
“It’s just in my nature to rebel in front of an authority like NASA.”
Akane blinked. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to be emphasizing goodwill and international relations up here in space?”
“Man, you really are a grade-A student! You talk like a textbook sometimes, Akane. We’re leaving here in just a little bit anyway. Who cares if you get along with these people?”
The captain watched them, a look of concern on his face. Akane didn’t think he understood Japanese, but their tone of voice was probably information enough for him to make some assumptions about what they were saying.
“Well, I think it’s important to be nice to other people. It’s an opportunity to make friends—you never know how the people you meet might help you in the future,” Akane said quietly.
“You don’t say.”
“Opportunity only knocks once, Yukari.”
“It’s only opportunity if they’re worthwhile people. Meeting some bum probably isn’t going to get you very far.”
“Just think, I met you, and now I’m up here.”
“Oh, so that’s where you’re going with this?”
Akane nodded. “Remember when you told me to get on the helicopter? I was terrified. But I just did it. I had the feeling like that was the start of something.” She smiled a little. “I think I’ve gotten better at meeting people since then. And being nice to them. Especially when I think of what possibilities might lie in store for me.”
“Well, I call that being a goody-two-shoes.”
“I’m fine with being a goody-two-shoes,” Akane said with a guileless smile.
Yukari looked off into space and sighed. Why do I always get the insanely optimistic ones for partners?
“Fine. So I should go apologize to Norman, is that what you want?”
Akane nodded cheerfully.
Yukari excused herself and went back down to the middeck. There she found Luis and Gordon eating Snickers bars.
“Did Norman go somewhere?”
“He’s pre-breathing in the air lock,” Luis told her.
“He’s going out again?”
“Yep. He has to put on the new valve that you brought with you.”
“Pre-breathing takes about two hours, right?”
“That’s right.”
Wait, he didn’t come back in here just for our welcoming party, did he?
“Did you have something to talk to him about? You can get him on the intercom.”
“No…no, that’s all right.”
I’m sure he came back to replenish the oxygen and his backup. That has to be it.
“So, Yukari,” Luis said, “want to exchange souvenirs? We do with the Russians whenever they dock. Here, here’s mine.”
Luis pulled a cloth emblem out of his pocket. It was a special badge for the Orpheus Mission.
“Wow, that’s nice. But I don’t have anything like that to give you.”
“Oh, doesn’t have to be anything special. A notebook or a pen, anything.”
“I might have a pen.” Yukari rummaged in her waist pouch and found a Fischer ballpoint pen. “Here. It even has the Solomon Space Association logo on it. How’s this?”
“Ooh! That’s great!” The pilot seemed genuinely happy.
Just then, the captain called down. “Think you can come up here, Yukari? Dr. O’Reilly wants to talk to you.”
“O’Reilly?” Yukari asked as she made her way to the upper deck.
“Chief designer on the Orpheus Project. He wants to thank you personally.”
Now this is a person worth meeting, Yukari thought. Yukari and Akane held on to the backrest of the pilot seats in the cockpit and positioned themselves facing the intercom.
“You did all the work. I’ll leave this one up to you,” Yukari said to Akane.
“Are you sure?”
“Aren’t you the goody-two-shoes who likes meeting people? Especially scientists?”
Akane nodded and pressed the talk button. “This is Akane Miura on Atlantis. Hello, Dr. O’Reilly.”
“Ah, you’re the one who took off her backpack and retrieved that valve?”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” His voice wavered, making the end of his words a mess of static. “I’m afraid I can’t express just how grateful I am to you.”
Akane cleared her throat. “I think I understand, Doctor. I heard that the Orpheus probe had been put in storage for a whole decade. Is that true?”
“Yes, the project officially started over twenty-two years ago now.”
Akane swallowed. “That’s an awfully long time.”
“Pluto isn’t as exciting as the other planets, you see. I don’t know how many times our budget got cut. And then, after the Challenger explosion—”
“I see.”
“We needed a powerful liquid fuel engine for the Orpheus’s prolusion system—Pluto is a long way off, as you know. After the Challenger accident, it became more difficult to carry that kind of fuel up in the shuttle. Safety regulations and all. Of course I understand but… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bore you.”
“Not at all, Doctor. I find it fascinating,” Akane said.
“Well, it’s only been recently that Pluto has garnered more attention. Being small and frozen, it’s not as exciting as the other planets, you see. In fact, there are some who consider it a Kuiper belt object and not a planet at all. Yet if it is this, then surely it is a representative of the belt, and therefore worthy of study.”
“The Kuiper belt… That’s where comets come from, right?” Yukari asked.
“One of the places, yes!”
The Kuiper belt formed a great ring of innumerable celestial objects just outside of Pluto’s orbit, all too distant and small to see from Earth, even with a decent telescope. Most of them just sat out there frozen in space for an eternity, but when something happened to kick one out of orbit, it would plummet toward the sun, becoming a beautiful streaming-tailed comet.
Though some comets came from even farther afield, those with a relatively frequent orbit were usually thought to have originated in the Kuiper belt, where Pluto stood as lord of the gates.
“So Pluto’s like the big boss of the comets.”
“That’s what I want to find out. Even Voyager missed Pluto on its survey of the outer planets. It’s the last large object in the solar system that hasn’t been studied from relatively up close. If Orpheus makes it there, it will be the first probe to observe Pluto from space local to it. I’m sure we’ll see some astronomy textbooks rewritten.”
“When is it scheduled to arrive?”
“Oh, the trip will take twelve years. It takes even light a good four hours to cover the distance, after all. How old will you be then?” the professor asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Splendid. I’m jealous. Until recently, I had given up hope that I would ever see a close-up image of Pluto in my lifetime. But now I’ve made up my mind,” he said with rising cheer. “As of today, I’m giving up doughnuts and cigarettes! This is all thanks to you, you know,” he added. “Thank you ever so much.”
“You’re welcome, and I hope I can see those pictures with you someday.”
The transmission was over, but Akane remained facing the speaker, tears welling weightlessly in the corners of her eyes.