The Next Continent

by Issui Ogawa

  “I want you to bear it. Whatever it takes.” Ryuichi stopped and looked up. Under a winter sky showing a few patches of blue, they could see the cape at Ozaki. “I’ve got to go. Four years ago it was only a dream. Even a year ago I never thought it would happen. But now—there it is.” Ryuichi pointed at the Eve launch vehicle nestled alongside its service tower. Eve’s unusual shape—its bulging upper stage atop a flask-shaped aerodynamic body—had earned it the nickname “the Mushroom.” Forty-one meters in length and 148 tons fully loaded, it was 80 percent as long as the H-IIA with only half the weight, yet it could send ten tons to the moon, five times more than its predecessor.

  The “mushroom cap” contained TGT’s Apple 3 manned spacecraft, developed jointly with a consortium of Japanese companies including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, NEC, and JAL. The capsule itself, a first for Japan, weighed two and a half tons fully loaded and could carry a pilot and five passengers into space. Improvements in capsule material and ablation shielding allowed it to carry five passengers, rather than the four originally planned. The trip to the moon would be made with the capsule joined to a two-ton habitat module roughly two and a half meters in diameter, a 5.1-ton landing module, an 8.3-ton return module, and two tons of supplies. The total payload was twenty tons and required two Eve rockets. Smaller than the Adam launch vehicle, Eve had been developed specifically for this purpose. Its smaller payload was offset by the high reliability required to carry humans into space. But reliability was only a matter of degree, as Reika knew well.

  “Apple 1 crashed, you know. The parafoil wouldn’t deploy.”

  “It was a mess. Too bad. We got it into orbit, but the East China Sea was as close as it got on the way back.”

  “And you’d still go?”

  “Apple 2 made it. Ichiro was fine.”

  “You are not a macaque!” Reika looked up at him with anger smoldering in her eyes. “If I lose you…If we lose you…”

  “The parafoil’s been redesigned.” Ryuichi held her tight, but his tone was casual. “And Eve’s reliability is 98.5 percent. That’s 5 percent better than Adam. So we lose two out of a hundred. But the capsule has an advanced escape booster to take it out of harm’s way. I’m not going to get killed.”

  “You can’t bet your life on a few numbers!”

  “Come on. If I can’t prove that the rocket’s safe, who’s going to do it for me?” Ryuichi’s look softened, and he smiled. “Japan has never flown a manned spacecraft. No paying passenger who knows anything about space development would agree to go under the circumstances. It’s time for me to step up to the plate and bet everything I have. If I come back alive, we’ll hit the jackpot.”

  “Look at what you’re risking.”

  “Look at the odds. If they weren’t in my favor, I wouldn’t be doing this. Odds of 98.5 percent isn’t even a gamble. It’s a sure thing. Stop worrying.”

  “I’ll worry if I want to.” Reika buried her face in Ryuichi’s broad chest. “I know it’s what you love, but I’m so afraid of your recklessness. When you had that fire, I thought my heart was going to stop.”

  “We’ve done detailed analyses of all the accidents we’ve had. That’s why I’m confident. I know it’s going to be fine.”

  “Why?” Reika raised her tear-streaked face. “Why do you personally have to go up? You don’t want to build a base, like Gotoba. You’re not tired of Earth like Tae. You have so much left to accomplish here. Why are you so obsessed with going into space?”

  “I don’t know.” Ryuichi relaxed, as if a weight had been taken off his mind. “I just do. I want to face the vacuum of space. The cosmic rays. I want to tumble in zero gravity. I want to go into the cold, cruel black where there isn’t even a microbe. That’s what makes it worth going. Because it’s cold and cruel.”

  “But that sounds so crazy. You’re smarter than that.”

  “So I’m crazy. No, I guess I’m not. Humans are the only life-form that has gone into deep space. Our intelligence got us there. It’s got to be intelligent behavior for a species to enlarge its habitat. I’m a life-form, a human. I’m also a man. I want to extend our habitat—to the moon, to Mars. To the stars if I can.”

  Reika began to sob. “I just don’t understand that, no matter how often I hear you say it.” She looked up again and kissed him. He grinned playfully.

  “Astronauts have their own wisdom about this kind of disagreement. There’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

  “What is it?”

  “‘You make the custard, I’ll fire the engine.’”

  “What?”

  “Apollo 13. Frank Bormann said that to his wife just before a dangerous retrorocket maneuver on the far side of the moon. At least I think he did. My memory might be a little hazy there.”

  Ryuichi held her close and whispered, “I’m a man. I don’t expect you to understand me completely. It’s impossible. But I’m not abandoning you. Wait for me. I’ll be back. If you do, I’ll have a little bit more to live for.”

  “A little bit? That’s not enough. I want you to think about me every minute.”

  “I will. From liftoff to touchdown.”

  They quietly embraced. Reika’s wearcom beeped. She stepped away from Ryuichi and answered.

  “This is Reika.”

  “It’s Tae. Can I talk to you?”

  “I’m outside. I’ll go back to the office “No, I’ll come to you. I’m close by.”

  She ended the call. “Let’s get our shoes on,” said Ryuichi. Reika leaned against him as she dried her legs with his handkerchief.

  “She’s amazing. Scary, sometimes,” said Ryuichi quietly. “She pretends not to know about us, but she obviously does.” Reika blushed.

  “I remember the look in her eyes when she heard about the rocket.” He helped Reika put on her shoes. “It wasn’t the look of some teenager discovering the wonders of spaceflight. It wasn’t the look someone interested in astronomy or physics would have either. I should know. We get a lot of them at TGT.”

  “So how did she look?”

  “Clear-eyed and looking off into deep space. Not the look of an astronaut—they’re always facing toward Earth. This was different, like she wanted to leave the solar system. Frankly, she might be better suited to what I’m trying to do than I am.”

  “Don’t say that. She’s a very gentle person.”

  “I know. But that look seems to come from a place of hopelessness. She’s always so distant.”

  Ryuichi looked up to see a black-coated figure walking gracefully toward them across the sand, as if floating. He spoke quietly. “Aomine is the ops supervisor. They’re close, I hear. I hope he can stand up to her.”

  “Stand up to her?” said Reika. “It’s not as if they’re on opposite sides. Sohya has a good heart. He’s a little like you.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t do if they got involved. Don’t you agree?”

  “Who can say?” Tae was getting closer, and Reika stopped talking.

  Tae was in her usual monochrome mode: white beret, black coat, white skirt, and black tights. It might have been her preference in any case, but as her public profile had grown, she was becoming more conscious of style. She was known affectionately in the media as the “Oriental moon princess.” Figures resembling her were a hot item in overseas toy stores, especially in the United States and the UK, and Tae had done nothing to stop it.

  She walked up to them and said evenly, “Are you finished with your walk?” They nodded. “Then let’s head back. You won’t be able to go tomorrow if you catch a cold, Ryuichi. And I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  Tae and Reika were on Tanegashima to watch the launch. Tomorrow, Eve I would carry Apple 3 into space, and Ryuichi would be a passenger. This would have been almost unthinkable for previous manned space missions. Astronauts normally had to undergo quarantine and training for several weeks before their flight. But the Apple spacecraft was designed to carry untrained passengers.
The fact that Ryuichi could take a walk on the beach the day before liftoff was a testament to Apple’s tourist-friendly design.

  They set off on the walk back to TGT’s offices, Tae leading the way. Ryuichi said, “I think I should apologize. Reika and I have been keeping things a secret.”

  “No need to apologize. What you do is your business.” Tae’s reply seemed to indicate that she was already aware of the relationship.

  “I see,” said Ryuichi, intimidated. He hardly felt guilty, but he did feel uncomfortable taking time away from work to be with Reika.

  “What was it you wanted to talk to us about, Tae?” asked Reika, looking to change the subject. But Tae was silent for some time before she answered.

  “NASA just held a press conference at JPL. They announced that they’re going to build a ‘moon city’ on the lunar surface. It’s 9:00 pm in Pasadena. They held the press conference late in the evening to coincide with the landing of their first probe.”

  “A city…” Ryuichi was at a loss. “That’s the first I’ve heard about it. There weren’t any rumors.”

  “I’m sure there weren’t,” said Tae. “I have a friend at Caltech. He was caught off guard too. They must’ve been keeping it under wraps till they could maximize the impact on our project.”

  “But how could they keep something so big a secret? A manned mission like that takes years of preparation,” said Ryuichi.

  “But they were prepared—for Mars.”

  Ryuichi and Reika were speechless. Tae was icy calm. “And they failed. Martian weather is very unstable. They discovered that a glide landing is much harder to pull off than they thought. Carrying enough fuel to land using retro-rockets would have added a huge amount to their costs. So Mars is beyond their reach, for the moment. But the moon is another story.”

  “Yes,” said Ryuichi. “It would be easy with the kind of launch capacity they assembled for the Mars mission.”

  “Right. And people pay more attention to a simple, successful mission than a difficult, failed one. NASA has always been driven by politics. This was the president’s decision. He doesn’t want Asians to overtake the U.S. in space.” Tae laughed cynically and said over her shoulder, “America plans to take their whole Mars exploration mission and convert it into a lunar settlement project. They’ll have some catching up to do, but Congress will probably approve any needed spending. They’ll have to cancel a lot of Mars research plans, but as usual they’ll justify it by saying they’re putting the will of the American people first. America still likes to dream of itself as number one.”

  “I hope you won’t let this discourage you,” said Reika, running up beside her. “A research base—whether they call it a city or not—is one thing, a wedding palace is quite another. This shouldn’t have any effect on Sixth Continent.” She put a hand on Tae’s shoulder. Tae stopped to look at her.

  “NASA’s probe landed in Eden Crater.”

  Reika froze, thunderstruck. Ryuichi felt dazed. This was a declaration of war, pure and simple. Then Reika realized Tae was trembling with laughter.

  “This is beautiful. They proved us right.” Her large eyes narrowed with glee. She was laughing from deep inside, without a trace of irony, truly happy. She threw her arms wide, as if about to take flight.

  “We’ll give them a special welcome. Assemble the multidozers! Hang Apple flags from the power cables! Have the bulk shooter throw up an arch of regolith. Give them a proper reception. But,” she said with a wink, “don’t let them beat us.”

  CHAPTER 5

  CONSTRUCTION AND EXPLOITATION RIGHTS TO THE LUNAR SURFACE

  [1]

  AFTER MORE THAN an hour wrestling with the control stick, Apple’s pilot released it and slumped, exhausted, onto his flight couch. He mopped the sweat from his face. Droplets of perspiration floated lazily across the capsule’s two-and-a-half-meter width.

  “It’s no use. She won’t budge.”

  “Hmm.” Ryuichi closed the flight checklist binder and glanced up at the external display. He should have been seeing a vast stretch of blue ocean and white clouds. Instead the view was blocked by a silver-blue panel. Nothing was visible.

  The spacecraft carrying Ryuichi and his pilot had been orbiting Earth for the past hour at an altitude of three hundred kilometers. The conical core capsule had life support for twenty-four hours in orbit, but since Eve was capable of carrying a larger payload, the cylindrical habitat module and the propulsion module with its fuel tank and solar array had been launched along with the capsule. The propulsion module—a stripped-down test version of the return module that would bring passengers back from the moon—had encountered a problem. One of its solar arrays had failed to deploy.

  The problem was neither malfunction nor human error. Just after reaching orbit, Apple had experienced a small shock, and the panel had refused to unfold. The external cameras and sensing systems indicated that something—probably a tiny fragment of space debris—had punched a five-millimeter hole into the end of the oblong solar array. The impact had evidently torqued the gimbal at the base of the array. Now it wouldn’t move, even after the pilot released the retaining pin. It was an unavoidable accident, not a design flaw. They were lucky the debris had missed the core module. Still, the collision had major consequences.

  Ryuichi looked over at the pilot and said calmly, “Life-support systems?”

  “Nominal.”

  “Communications?”

  “Fully functional.”

  “Can we make it back?”

  “No problem. Other than the array, all systems are go.”

  “What about the propulsion module test?”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question now,” said the pilot.

  “Then we’re screwed,” Ryuichi said with a sigh. “The media is going to be all over us. ‘Sixth Continent spacecraft encounters problems on maiden flight. Crew unable to cope.’”

  The pilot sighed and wearily rubbed his face. Ryuichi looked through the observation port above his head. Apple’s revolution had brought the shining blue planet into view. Earth slid past, replaced by the dark of space. At first there were only stars in sight, but then a white, delta-shaped spacecraft loomed starkly against the blackness.

  It was space shuttle Frontier. NASA had been operating this new generation of shuttles since 2018. The “supershuttle” had a smaller payload than its predecessors—ten tons—because the design had been optimized for manned flight. Frontier could carry a crew of nine, two more than the original shuttles.

  TGT had no experience with manned flight, and Apple 3’s launch timing and orbital path were calculated to bring it close to Frontier. In the event of a problem, Apple could request assistance. NASA had agreed but had an ulterior motive. The mission would give the Americans their first close look at this unknown spacecraft. Now Frontier hung suspended, a thousand meters ahead of them, observing.

  “We kill ourselves getting this far,” muttered Ryuichi, “and end up having to ask for help…” Scenes of the effort that had gotten them to this point flashed through his mind.

  To say TGT’s team had strained themselves over the past few months would have been putting it mildly. On top of his demanding responsibilities managing the company, Ryuichi had spent the last three months supervising the first launch crew’s training. During this interval his sleep time was cut in half. And in the hours before launch, he had experienced the greatest tension and fear he had ever known. He knew better than anyone that the risk of a catastrophic failure was not zero.

  Nonetheless, his efforts paled next to those of his staff. Failure was not an option for Eve’s debut. Two thousand specialists from TGT and its subcontractors—triple the number usually assigned to a launch—had assembled a month beforehand to carry out round-the-clock maintenance and system verification checks. Though TGT had of course not made it public, more than a hundred personnel had collapsed from mental and physical stress, a third of them in the forty-eight hours prior to launch. The atmosphere at
the space center the night before the launch was as tense as a military camp on the eve of battle.

  Eventually operations would become routine. But for this launch, everyone and everything went right to the wall. Sending humans into space and bringing them home safely demanded untold amounts of effort. The blood, sweat, and tears expended by his team allowed Ryuichi to face the prelaunch photo session with a smile. Despite his instinctive fears, he was convinced the mission would be a success. Now this…

  “We don’t have a choice then. Better radio those guys for help.” Ryuichi sounded despondent. “Call Frontier, ask them to approach and do a visual inspection of the array. We couldn’t shake or twist it loose, but maybe they can come up with something.”

  The pilot opened a channel to Frontier and outlined the situation. Ryuichi was close to giving up. Frontier was not going to help them with its payload bay robot arm or with anything else for that matter. NASA had already stated that it would maintain a minimum distance of five hundred meters from Apple. A collision could cause explosive decompression. Just managing a close approach would cut into Frontier’s precious time in orbit. NASA had agreed to help only as long as its own mission would face no additional risks. Consequently, Frontier’s response was completely unexpected.

  “Mr. Yaenami, they say they’re going to provide assistance,” said the pilot.

  “You’re kidding,” said Ryuichi. “What else can we do?”

  “Nothing. They’re going to EVA over to us.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Ryuichi was stunned. TGT was still working on space suit development. They were in no position to conduct extravehicular activity even if they had wanted to. He signaled the pilot for silence. “Frontier, this is Ryuichi Yaenami. Did Johnson Space Center approve your EVA?”

  “Apple 3, Frontier Commander Henderson. We’re proceeding with a scheduled AMPU operational test.”

  “Frontier, what is AMPU?” asked Ryuichi.

  “Advanced Manned Propulsion Unit. Tetherless EVA.”

  “So you have approval to approach?”