THE ORBITAL CORRECTION went perfectly. Orpheus was only fifteen meters ahead of them now. The cylindrical shape of its upper-stage engine glittered against a backdrop of inky darkness.
They had already evacuated the air from the orbiter in preparation for Akane’s spacewalk. Akane strapped on a waist pouch to carry the tools she would need. This time, there would be no need to strip off her backpack and crawl inside anything. Both the safety tag and jumper wire were easily accessible by hand from the outside.
Yukari gave the engine a few more bursts, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible without wasting any fuel.
“Ten meters to Orpheus. Akane’s just opened the hatch.”
“Hoi. Good luck, you two.” Matsuri’s voice was flat.
“Here I go,” Akane said.
“Be careful.”
Akane opened up the hatch on the right side of the orbiter and poked her head outside.
Meanwhile, Yukari opened the hatch on the left to get a better view of the operation. Orpheus’s upper-stage engine hung in space directly in front of them.
Yukari checked the countdown on her watch.
Twenty-seven minutes into the rendezvous. So far, so good.
“Want me to lower the nose?”
“Yes, please—I’m off.”
Akane lightly kicked her seat and drifted outside. Her lifeline twisted and coiled behind her like a living thing. Within moments, she was grabbing onto the cover over Orpheus’s engine, working her way up to the upper lip.
Yukari glanced down at the diagram in her manual. “About fifty centimeters to your right. That’s it. Right there.”
“Yep.” Akane stuck her helmet over the edge and looked inside. “There it is. I’ve spotted the jumper wire. One end of it has come loose. It’s just floating there.”
“Be careful not to touch anything around it.”
“Roger that.”
Akane pulled a small pair of wire clippers from her waist pouch and stuck them inside. “I’ve cut the wire.”
Yukari breathed a sigh of relief.
“Next up is the safety tag…and it’s out.”
“You did it! That was quick!”
“Easier done than said, I guess,” Akane said, laughter in her voice.
“Houston, this is Mangosteen. Akane has just succeeded in removing the jumper wire and the safety tag.”
“Great job, Mangosteen! We’ve just confirmed it with our telemetry. Can you hear the commotion down here? I haven’t heard this much cheering in a long time.”
The signal was so weak they could barely hear the controller’s voice, let alone any cheering.
Akane followed her lifeline back to the orbiter. Yukari grabbed onto her ankle and began pulling her inside, when Akane stopped. She had just turned around for the first time.
“Wait! Just a second—”
“What?”
“It’s amazing, Yukari. Come look—”
Yukari wanted to close the hatch quickly before they got any higher, but something in Akane’s voice made her undo her harness and pull herself up to the hatch rim.
She stuck her torso out and turned to face the stern of the orbiter.
Yukari was stunned. She had never seen the earth like this.
They were over two thousand kilometers away now, as far away as if you took the entire Japanese archipelago and stood it on its end pointing straight up. From this height, the horizon formed a perfect circle.
Directly beneath them, the Amazon River snaked through a thick green canopy. To the north was Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Florida peninsula—she could even see as far as Washington D.C. and New York, hazy in the atmosphere.
To the south, she could see most of the South American continent, bordered by the vast expanses of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans—she could even see further south, to the point where the oceans met.
Cirrus clouds wove serpentine paths through the sky below, following the currents of the jet stream. A hurricane gathered strength toward the middle latitudes. Lightning flashed in the valleys formed by towering cumulonimbus clouds. Then she noticed the creeping hemisphere of night, coming in from the east.
“It’s evening in the Sahara right now,” Akane said. “That’s the sunset, right there. That line. That’s what it really means.”
“Yeah…” Yukari stared, lost in the view. Akane grabbed her wrist. She was facing Yukari now.
“Thank you.”
“Huh?”
“Thank you for bringing me up here. Thank you, Yukari.”
“Akane, you came here on your own—hey!” Yukari waved her hands. “No crying! Stop it!” She laughed. “Cry in your suit and you won’t be able to see a thing.”
“Ack, you’re right,” Akane said. “I forgot I can’t wipe my eyes with my helmet on.”
“Let’s go. We really need to get inside.”
“Yeah.”
The two girls made their way inside the orbiter and shut the hatch.
“Solomon, this is Mangosteen. We’re back inside. The earth is incredible from up here. So, time to go diving off Chile.”
“Hoi. Congratulations, you two.”
“Huh? What’s up, Matsuri? That’s the least cheerful-sounding congratulations I’ve ever heard.”
A few moments passed before Matsuri answered. “Yukari, Akane, I have something really important to tell you.”
“What?”
“I snuck in a rambutan fruit under your life raft. I want you both to eat it. It’ll help ward away evil spirits and bring good luck. Okay?”
“What? You smuggled fruit in here again?”
“You have to eat it, both of you. Promise?”
“Well, okay, but why are you telling us this on an open channel?”
“Please. It’ll keep you safe.”
For the first time, Yukari realized something wasn’t right. “Safe from what, Matsuri? Is something up?”
“I’ll tell you once you’re done eating.”
✦ ✦ ✦
THE CHEERING HADN’T lasted long in the mission control room at Johnson Space Center. They’d just received the update from Solomon. The two girls, barely sixteen years old, were going to die. The mood on the floor was one of despair.
So this is what you get when you take a risk, thought George. In the end, someone always pays.
Except not with the Apollo 13. The crew then had returned alive, miraculously. What George needed now was another miracle. Just then, a flash of inspiration shot across the back of George’s mind. He stood up and shouted, “What y’all need is some good old-fashioned optimism! This is just like coming back from the moon, people. We’ve been through this before, thirty years ago!”
The chief of flight dynamics in the seat in front of him looked back. “What are you going on about?”
“I’m talking about a double-dip reentry! You make the nose of the orbiter go up and down as she’s just entering the atmosphere to kill speed!”
When the Apollo spacecraft returned from the moon, they were going at a much faster speed than the shuttle. If they went straight in they’d burn up, so instead, they popped in and out of the atmosphere like a jumping dolphin, shaving off velocity with every bob.
“But how can Mangosteen control the orientation of its nose?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot, Randall! Capsules can generate lift, too—and if they change their attitude, they can change the amount of that lift. The Apollo did it with attitude control thrusters.”
“You’re right…wait—” A light came on in Randall’s eyes. “We’ve got Mangosteen’s data here. We just need to know her center of gravity and her front profile. I think I can use the data from the Apollo modules to figure it out from there.”
“Then get on it. Those girls saved our asses, now it’s our turn to save theirs!”
George contacted Solomon. “This is Houston. I’ve got a question. Is Mangosteen capable of adjusting its attitude during reentry?”
It was Kinoshita who answered. “Not through the usual means, no. Why?”
“If we can adjust her angle even slightly, we should be able to use a partial skip reentry to reduce the temperature levels. I’m calculating a flight path now.”
“Like Apollo, of course! Even that was never tried, but it should work.”
“Glad you studied our methods. But if they can’t control their attitude coming in, it’s not going to do us much good. Can you think of any way to pull this off?”
“Well, you can’t use the sequencer to fire the attitude thrusters during reentry, and we can’t use remote control. Manual control might do it—but at high G, that’s not going to be easy.”
“Where’s the control stick located?”
“Just in front of the right armrest.”
“Like a jet fighter, right. That just might be doable—it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“You get a hardened, strong fighter pilot up there, maybe…not that we have any other choice. Give me your results as soon as you have them. We’ll owe you a big one if this works.”
“We’re on it.” George turned to Randall. “How soon?”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Make it three.” He turned back to the phone. “Mr. Kinoshita? We’ll have it for you in five minutes.”