by Laer Carroll
Phil said, "It looks like an office building. If it was streamlined."
Jane smiled at him. "Or a brick. That's what one commentator said about it. Like a flying brick."
The spaceship stood on eight twenty-foot tall legs with disk-shaped feet so that there was a shadowed area under it. That brought the top to a little over a hundred feet. It was two hundred feet wide but that was less evident as it was positioned with its three-hundred-foot length running from left to right.
"A big sucker. Hard to believe it can fly."
"No streamlining needed in space. And not that much in air. It will ascend starting at a few hundred miles an hour and gradually speed up as it rises higher and the air gets thinner."
"You should know. You designed it."
She turned her head away from him to look at Prototype One. It was the first time she'd see it with her own eyes, though she'd seen it hundreds of times by video at its many stages of growth from skeleton to applying paint to its skin. This was done by a process that merged the paint with the skin, like a stain which soaked deep into wood.
Most of the surface was bright white. Around it at one-third and two-thirds height was a band of sky blue. Between the bands and directly behind the platform there was a huge blue circle with a white star superimposed over it. Three short stripes on each side made something like a pair of wings. They were colored blue-over-red-over-blue.
Proto One was beautiful. Though she acknowledged she was prejudiced.
"No windows," her friend said.
"What? Oh, there are some but they're shielded except in emergencies. We will see out via video cameras. Hundreds of them, actually. Many of them incorporated in optical telescopes. We'll also see by radar."
Also by Robot's esoteric "vision" system. Once inside the craft innocuous electronics systems throughout Proto 1 would extend its vision to many thousands of miles of distance.
"Will I ever get to fly in it?"
"This afternoon I'll take it up for a short hop to Boeing's Huntington Beach main site. They've cleared out a space for me to land. It'll remain there for workers to install a few finishing touches."
"I'll meet you there. I'll need the address."
"Oh, no. Your car will come on board Proto and we'll drive home from the site."
"It can carry a car?"
"I designed it to carry many tons of cargo. Most will go in standard containers easy to stow and secure. But the robot handlers are very smart and can handle odd items. Especially since they'll be supervised by a human cargo master."
The morning was beginning to warm up under the clear blue sky. Phil took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his seat. He was wearing a short-sleeved open-throat open-weave sweater.
Jane in her flight suit was comfortable, partly because it was designed for hot weather. Partly it was because her genetically engineered body could handle much wider temperature ranges than the bodies of unmodified humans.
They talked about his latest projects until dignitaries began to arrive and mount the platform. That was Jane's cue to join them. She'd barely sat down when a tall blond woman approached the podium and began to speak.
"Welcome to all of you, workers, journalists, interested members of the public. I'm Lisa Thoreau, president of the West Coast manufacturing group. Today we're here to give you a look at the very latest addition to the far traveling spacecraft which are spreading the reach of the human race to all parts of our solar system.
"It looks impressive because of its size, the equivalent of a nine-story office building. Indeed there are nine stories to this vehicle. This includes a huge cargo area. This will help carry all sorts of cargo even out to the fringes of the solar system. This will include people visiting or settling on the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids.
"It is also the first of the deep-space vehicles which can take off from and land on the Earth. Including parts of the Earth with extreme weather conditions. It can also land on the Moon and Mars.
"Now I want to turn matters over to the head designer of Prototype One, Major Jane Kuznetsov. Jane."
She turned toward the line of chairs behind her and began to clap. Audience members began to clap too as Jane stood and came to the podium.
She was not an impressive sight. Less than average height, slender, shoulder length blond hair, dressed in a blue flight suit. But Phil in the audience felt an almost physical magnetic pull toward that slight figure which he attributed to the fact that he loved her. He could not know that an advanced race had designed his friend to be a charismatic leader. The way she moved and gestured and smiled had been calculated by great artists and canny social scientists.
"Thank you, President Thoreau," Jane said when the applause abated a bit. The audience quickly silenced.
"It's true that I supplied the initial broad design. But at least a hundred thousand people made that design come true. Hard-working, bright, creative people all over the world. I'm just the most visible one of that army of people. Any glory attached to Prototype One is shared by us all.
"Before I turn this meeting back to President Thoreau, I want to make an announcement. Congress by a special act has christened P1 the United States Spaceship Constellation, named after one of the first six frigates of the Continental United States Navy. I'll skip breaking a bottle of champagne over a bow. For one thing, where the heck is the bow? And for another, why waste ambrosia?"
She turned and made a sweeping two-armed gesture at the towering vessel behind her.
"Ladies and Gentleman, the USSS CONSTELLATION!"
<>
A few brief speeches by dignitaries later the audience was let to board Constellation. One pathway was a wide drop-down stairway in the middle of the ship. The other was a broad cargo ramp. At both of them security guards vetted everyone by studying their badges and their faces. This included the "interested members of the public" who'd had to sign up ahead of time.
Jane was one of several people who acted as tour guide. Her first group contained the most senior of the dignitaries and workers. Nearly a dozen TV journalists trailed by a camera operator jockeyed politely but firmly to get good shots.
She was experienced by now at publicity functions like this one and made sure she addressed a camera directly several times as well as each dignitary.
By lunch time she had done nine tours and dropped out of the roster to have lunch with a few of the engineers with whom she'd interacted most on the project. Phil came with her. Earlier he'd joined one of the tours then just wandered throughout the unlocked part of the ship. He was able to do this because Jane had ensured that his badge had a high priority radio ID chip in it.
By two the tours were over. Jane made her goodbyes and supervised Phil in driving his car up the cargo ramp. She then made sure it was secured among the several big cargo containers already locked in place.
<>
"Long Beach Airport Traffic Control, this is experimental Boeing vessel newly christened USSS Constellation. Pilot Major Jane Kuznetsov. Please acknowledge and confirm previously filed flight plan."
"So that big lumbering bastard is actually flying today? Yes, Major Kuznetsov. Your plan is still current. Wait five, please."
"They don't mean exactly five," she said to Phil. "It's just an expression."
He was sitting in the executive officer's seat to her right on the control room. Her own seat was the central of three on a slightly raised dais looking out over a crescent of empty seats and workstations before her. On the wall in front of the crescent and her was a huge vision screen.
He was looking with great interest at the screen. It was a perfect illusion of a very clear window.
Outside they could see a vast sweep of concrete empty of anything except a long runway. On it a commercial passenger jet was touching down on the runway. A few more aircraft could be seen in the air in the distance.
Jane consulted a section of the screen which for now was devoted to dozens of cameras underneath the two-hundred-foot wide by three-
hundred-foot long shadow of the spaceship. No one was about. Security people had ushered them away. Anyone left she told to vacate the area by loudspeakers underneath the building.
"USSS Constellation, you are go for liftoff. Proceed, please."
"Thank you, Long Beach Airport Traffic Control. Constellation in the air--now."
Jane merged with Robot and "Connie." A few thousand milliseconds was enough time to double-check both the spacecraft and its surroundings for safety. Then SHE dropped back to being merely human.
She manipulated the touch-screen built into the work surface in front of her. Connie, already on idle power, went to full power of the four anti-matter plants in widely separated parts of the spacecraft. A huge bank of floater engines on its bottom lifted it ten more feet above its disc-shaped feet. The legs slid up into the body of the craft and merged with the body.
"We're in the air," she said to Phil.
Further actions by the numerous aerospace jets lifted the craft a hundred feet, two hundred then three hundred feet. Ponderously it pivoted on its center till one end of the three hundred foot long "flying brick" pointed south and west toward Boeing's Huntington Beach plant. Faster and faster it flew, going higher and higher.
<>
Three weeks later Jane and several Boeing engineers took USSS Constellation into orbit near the World Space Station.
A full month of testing everything over and over again certified that it was ready for its maiden voyage: a shakedown cruise.
Jane congratulated the engineers who'd overseen the month-long tests. Then she saw them off the ship. She alone would undertake this first test, a decision much argued against. General Willoughby had reluctantly agreed only after Jane had privately told her she would resign if not allowed to do this. She and she alone would risk her life on this final task.
Alone Jane backed into a spacesuit cradle on one wall and divested herself of her mechanical spacesuit. The air in the ship was cool but not cold and bore only the tiniest traces of odors coming from the ship's manufacture.
She activated Robot's super-advanced force-field spacesuit and floated throughout Constellation using the propulsors of the spacesuit, traveling in a spiral from the lowest of nine floors to the "top" floor where the control room was situated. There she sat in the captain's command chair and had her nearly invisible suit lock onto the seat bottom.
She merged with Robot and Constellation and flowed throughout HER body, exercising all HER parts. When SHE felt perfectly comfortable SHE stretched HER consciousness beyond HER huge massive body. SHE "felt" and "heard" the solar wind against the "skin" of HER force-field shields, the sleeting of invisibly small micrometeorites against it. SHE turned HER senses outward, to the WSS and beyond, to all of space out to the synchronous satellites
SHE spoke in HER radio voice to the WSS traffic control and got permission to move away and toward the Moon. Given permission SHE slowly and then more surely began a trip around the Moon.
After the loop around the Moon SHE flew at one gravity acceleration the 932,000 miles inward toward the Sun to visit the Sun-Earth L1 point where numerous satellites orbited in that quasi-stable Lagrange point.
After looping around SE-L1 SHE pulled out all the stops and accelerated back to Earth at 20 gravities of acceleration and deceleration. SHE did this still in cyborg state and very carefully monitoring every aspect of HER biological and mechanical bodies and their functioning.
For the last half hour of HER return SHE slowly turned off the artificial anti-gravity and experienced that enormous acceleration with HER biological body.
This was what SHE was built for. It was heavenly being able to stand and walk in a regime that would have instantly killed an ordinary human being.
SHE almost regretted having to return to an ordinary human existence in the final part of the shakedown cruise.
<>
Jane returned Constellation to Earth at Colorado Springs. Nearing the city she negotiated with the local airport air traffic control to land at Peterson Air Force Base. The base's northwest border had a long line of hangars for military craft and a wide strip of concrete in front of the hangars upon which the aircraft were parked. From that area the vehicles could roll onto the airport runways and take off.
Jane had reserved one end of the mile long strip for the spaceship. She dropped straight down onto it, activated the floater landing fields, and settled gently to Earth on Connie's eight legs. Then she collapsed the legs. From a top height of twenty feet they could lower the craft to a foot or less of height. Today she selected seven feet as she wanted ground crew to be able to easily inspect the bottom of the craft.
She exited by one of the elevators which could drop out of the body of the spacecraft and rest on the surface. She locked the elevator so that no one else could use it to enter Connie and walked to the carpool ride she'd ordered an hour earlier on final approach.
"Hi," she said to the driver sitting on the hood of the vehicle watching her approach. An older master sergeant whom she'd met before, he hopped down and went around to open the front passenger side door. He knew from past experience that she didn't like to sit in back.
After he'd slammed the door behind her and got in the driver's seat he asked where to. She said her office. It was mid-morning and she was sure she had a lot of paperwork waiting for her.
"Impressive sight," he said as he turned the vehicle toward the nearest access road into the base. "Coming straight down like that, that big-ass machine, like some office building swept along by a tornado."
"That's pretty much what it is, an office building and a big-ass warehouse."
"It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz movie, with its flying house. Impressive sight, coming straight down like a feather. And quiet. Almost scary."
Jane did indeed have a lot of paperwork and emails to deal with in her office. It took her all day to catch up.
The next day she complied with a request by the public relations office to visit them. They set up a time for a press tour of Constellation. The PR woman wanted to begin it with Connie coming straight down to a landing. The woman agreed with the car pool driver that this would be an impressive sight.
The event took up more than three hours from the time Connie landed at 9:00 in the morning. It was videoed by three national TV organizations as well as the local TV stations. The base commander gave a talk welcoming Jane and her spacecraft, she was interviewed several times, and the press got a guided tour of Connie by Jane and some temporary staff assigned to her.
That and more duties took up the rest of the week. On Friday Phil flew in and they spent the weekend together. They visited the Air Force Academy on Sunday.
That Monday she had a message waiting for her: come to General Willoughby's office at 10:00 wearing her dress uniform and all her decorations.
Arriving there she noticed that standing just inside the door was an Air Force photographer. She guessed she was going to receive some sort of award, probably having to do with Constellation.
The General stood as Jane approached. Jane saluted and had it returned, an unusual act when the General was alone. The woman did not want to waste time with formalities in informal situations.
"Hello, Major. Congratulations on your phenomenal work designing and deploying a new class of spaceship in such a short time. Such an achievement deserves a reward. You've been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Now if you'll join me behind the desk here..."
She gestured to a position to her right. As Jane walked around the desk the photographer, an older staff sergeant in the brown and grey camo work uniform, came forward and half raised the big camera he carried. He spoke to her.
"Congratulations, Colonel. Now if you'll move just a bit closer. That's right. Now angle your body...."
He directed them into a position facing forward toward the doorway behind him and at a slight angle to each other with about a foot of distance between them. This let the General shake Jane's hand with one hand while presenting her with a sma
ll white box with the other. It contained the silver stars of her new status.
At the same time the General spoke a few sentences of congratulations.
After that Colonel Liu joined them for another few shots of the two superiors pretending to replace Jane's gold major's stars from her shoulder tabs with the silver stars of a Lieutenant Colonel.
The photographer left, as did Liu after congratulating Jane and shaking her hand. The colonel did so graciously but without enthusiasm. She'd never been a fan of Jane.
"Sit, Colonel," said the General. She set an example by seating herself behind her desk. Jane sat in the middle of the three comfortable leather armchairs in front of the General's desk, sitting alertly upright.
"You may wonder," said Willoughby, "why you're being promoted three years before the end of the law's mandated time in grade. That's because an extraordinary situation has arisen which requires your unique talents.
"The last couple of years a team has been investigating Mars' geology, or areology, I suppose it's called. They've found an alien artifact and want additional personnel and resources."
She paused. Jane filled the gap with an "Interesting!"
"What you're to do is take command of the USSS Constellation. Assemble a crew. After they've shaken down add a science team and whatever resources would be useful, then proceed to Mars and investigate the situation."
"Will do, Ma'am." She stood because the General was standing up. She braced and gave her first salute as a Lieutenant Colonel. The General returned it, then sat down to take up the next item of her to-do list.
Jane did an about face and left.
<>
To assemble a crew Jane first submitted a request to the Air Force's Personnel Center for 13 officers, 21 non-commissioned officers, and 37 lower enlisted personnel in a carefully selected mix of specialties.
For two of those officers she made an extra effort to get what she wanted. One was a mess officer because Riku had said something that had stuck with her: near the top of the list of morale-building for a military unit was its food. Fighters would endure low pay and unpleasant surroundings and much more if their food was good.