“Let me state for the record what I’d like to see,” the captain said as soon as the transmission ended. “I don’t like this plan. I’m grateful to both of you for your dedication and your passion, but I think you’ve done enough. Let’s call it off.”
“You’re right…” Yukari said, the fire gone from her eyes.
She felt like she could do what had to be done in the space of two hours. But even if she made no mistakes herself, there was no telling what might happen up there. If they messed up their return timing for some reason, they might end up passing through the Van Allen belt more than once.
If I could just do it by myself without putting Akane at risk too…
Yukari turned to Akane. “Let’s call this off. It’s just not worth it.”
Akane shook her head. “I appreciate what Satsuki said,” she said. “But I think she’s being too cautious. She’s exaggerating the danger. I know it.”
“I’m not too sure about that.”
“The Apollo missions went through the Van Allen belts both ways. And they were up for days on the moon, which has no magnetic field at all. They must have endured a lot of radiation. And they were fine.”
“But their equipment was designed for that, and let’s face it, they were all old guys.”
“We’re hardly any different. Sexual development stops around the age of sixteen.”
“Really…?”
Uh-oh. She’s going to out-brain me here.
Yukari changed tack. “Well how do you feel about this? Are you confident we can do it?”
“Huh?”
“We had, what was it, four hours of sleep, and we’ve been working for fifteen hours straight. Do you think we can make it through the next seven hours without making a single mistake? Because that’s what this is going to take.”
A moment’s hesitation passed over Akane’s face. “Well, I’ve stayed up all night preparing for tests before—”
“Taking a test and navigating a spacecraft are two different things. And we’ll need both of us working at full capacity in order to pull this off. If you made a mistake, it could mean both of our lives.”
Akane’s eyes fell, and Yukari immediately regretted her words.
“I’m sorry, I take that back. I was only thinking of myself—”
Akane nodded and thought. For a full minute neither of the girls said anything.
Then Akane looked away and started to talk. “I know it’s dangerous.”
“Yeah.”
“And I know Orpheus is just a machine.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s more than that. It’s a dream…it’s science! And I think it’s worth risking my life for. I truly believe that,” Akane said, her emotion spilling forth. “Yukari. We need to save Orpheus!”
At that moment, the whole mood on the middeck changed.
It was like all six of them there had signed the same unseen contract by some unspoken agreement.
We’re not going home as failures. We can do this.
✦ ✦ ✦
IN THE MANNED spacecraft design center located within the easternmost building on the Solomon base, a 3-D model of something resembling a bell was slowly rotating on a workstation screen.
The surface of the object was crisscrossed by a lattice-work of countless vectors, each square colored from white to red, purple, and blue. The object represented the orbiter Mangosteen, and the colors reflected surface temperatures at different points along a simulated reentry. A young technician was working the controls.
“Right, now increase impact speed by 640,” Mukai, sitting off to the side, directed. The technician included the figure and restarted his simulation.
Once again, the simulated spaceship began to heat up. A separate window on the monitor showed a graph of peak temperatures.
“One thousand three hundred seventy…one thousand four hundred sixty…one thousand four hundred fifty… There’s the peak.”
“Huh? That low? That won’t be a problem at all.”
“Not in the model, at least,” Mukai said.
Reentering the atmosphere from a height of three thousand kilometers was a first for an SSA orbiter. Falling from a greater height meant faster speeds. Greater speed meant more friction when the orbiter hit the atmosphere. Mukai had concerns that the orbiter wouldn’t be able to take the heat.
Rough calculations had already shown it could, but as long as there was time left, it was his duty to keep running the numbers.
A maximum temperature of 1460° was lower than he had expected. Reentry speed had increased by a whole 10 percent, but their temperature hadn’t climbed nearly as much.
It made him feel uneasy. “Try again with different parameters. Once they start on the rendezvous, we won’t be able to stop them.”
“Right.”
Just then, the phone rang. Another technician answered. “Chief, it’s the control center.”
Mukai picked up the phone. “Right,” he said then hung up. “Everyone, listen up. We just received word back from Atlantis. Operation: Rescue Orpheus is a go. We’ll be here for another six hours, so everybody give it all you’ve got!”
A cheer rose up in the room. At the same time, things were stirring at Johnson Space Center. George lit a cigar he kept for special occasions, stood up, and said, “All right, everybody! We’re sending those girls up to meet Orpheus! Stay sharp and let’s do this!”