by Taiyo Fujii
“Exactly. If they knew we were at Haneda now, there would be no doubt that our two engineers escaped abroad.”
“Sorry for being so slow on the uptake.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just stay focused on what we’re going to do next,” said Sekiguchi, scanning the lobby. “If we rush off to one of our domestic institutions like the NPSC or NSC, they might offer us protection from the North Korean operatives. But is that what we really want? A chain of interviews, reports, questioning? We’ll lose days to all that. That will mean leaving Kazumi and Akari unassisted in Seattle.”
Sekiguchi lifted his hand as if to grab something and then placed it on Kurosaki’s shoulder. “Kurosaki-san, listen. If we lay low at the Nippon Grand Hotel until tomorrow morning and then fly off to Turkey, we can enter a country in which not even NORAD or the CIA can move freely. And we can bring the man who came up with the space tether on to our team.”
Kurosaki felt Sekiguchi’s fingers bite into his shoulder. Clearly the man wasn’t playing around. “Sekiguchi, that hurts.”
“Oh … I’m very sorry,” said Sekiguchi, removing his hand and retreating a step. “Whether you join me or not, I’m going. If you’re going to stay, please get in a taxi now and go to the NSC in Kasumigaseki to ask for protection. I’ll arrange everything for you.”
With shaking hands, Sekiguchi lined up his lapels and stared at Kurosaki.
Kurosaki thought of Kazumi and Akari. They were heading to a foreign land to work with strangers on verifying their hypothesis while hidden operatives hunted them. Sekiguchi would be leaving, too, for Tehran. With faith in their as-yet-uncertain guess about the tethercraft, the three of them were plunging into deep water.
The pain lingering in Kurosaki’s shoulder gradually turned to numbness. But Kurosaki could sense that the heat transferred from Sekiguchi’s trembling hands had sparked some new feeling in his chest.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go back to the hotel. It would be great if we could head off to Narita by helicopter too.”
A flash of white peeked from between Sekiguchi’s thin lips as he smiled. “Don’t tease me with your jokes. We’ve got to cut costs, so we’re going by bus.”
Mon, 14 Dec 2020, 10:22 -0700 (2020-12-14T17:22 GMT)
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs
Major Sylvester Fernendez stretched out his long arm and pointed at some ugly orange clothes hanging in a locker. “Hey, Ricky! You really won’t wear this for me?”
Straddling a bench, Captain Ricky McGillis shrugged slightly in response, keeping the gesture small enough so as not to appear rude. When he had first heard the story from Fernendez’s subordinate, Sergeant Daryl Freeman, last weekend, he’d thought it was a joke. But this was the third time he had been asked.
“Just take it already! Don’t you think it’ll be cool to become a legendary test pilot?” Watching this exchange from where she stood in front of the lockers, Second Lieutenant Madu Abbot laughed. This Indian American woman might have been highly capable flying an F-22 Raptor, thought Ricky, but she simply didn’t understand the tact required of a pilot.
“Lieutenant Abbot. Can you please be quiet?” said Sylvester, and Madu shrugged, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She had been acting cheeky like this since the moment she had learned that Sylvester’s visit was not on official orders. She was an excellent pilot but didn’t understand how important personal bonds within the organization were when it came to an experiment in which life was on the line. In other words, she wasn’t exactly someone who inspired solidarity.
“Come on, Ricky!” Sylvester casually puffed out the right side of his chest. The silver wings of the emblem that indicated he was an air force pilot gleamed dully under the fluorescent lights. “I’m a pilot too. I understand better than anyone that a pressure suit gets in the way when you’re driving the Eagle, feeling its incredible power, but—”
“That’s not it at all, Major,” interrupted Ricky, looking flustered. “That suit was worn by the crew of a bomber, right? That’s no pilot suit!”
Sylvester’s eyes went wide and he said with a laugh, “Oh boy. You’ve got it all wrong. This uniform was used on the Streak Eagle.”
“… The one with the world record?” asked Ricky, and Sylvester glanced at him with a snort, as if to say, “This isn’t something a little whippersnapper like you would understand.” And Madu agreed completely. Any pilot who truly loved the Eagle would pump a fist with excitement the moment they heard the words Streak Eagle.
In February of 1975, a Streak Eagle, stripped bare of paint and gutted of weaponry, radars, fire control systems, and most other avionics, had reached an altitude of one hundred thousand feet in just 207 seconds, setting the world record at the time. The old-fashioned orange jumpsuit in the locker had in fact facilitated a historic achievement and deserved to be commemorated as prize memorabilia.
Sylvester stood up before the pressure suit, looked back, and said, “It’s been forty years since Captain Smith set his record, so most of the parts have been refitted.” Sylvester ran his bony finger over the components as he explained its history. The high-altitude pressure suit had been designed for the Streak Eagle. It had then been stored in the back of the warehouse, going ragged over the decades, but they had fixed it up. Though there was no time to redesign it, the rubber inner lining had been replaced with Gore-Tex, and the duralumin helmet had been data modeled with a 3-D scanner so that a mold could be 3-D printed and it could be remade in polycarbonate. As a result, the suit was lighter and more comfortable than the original.
“A transparent material was used for the helmet, so the view should be much better than with the original. Sounds like the ultimate Eagle experience to me, wouldn’t you say?”
As Ricky listened to this, an idea reared its head. “… The ASM-140 was launched over fifty thousand feet, right?” he said.
“That’s exactly right. You’ve really done your homework,” said Sylvester with a satisfied smile, as though self-assured that his invitation had been a success.
“Seventy thousand feet,” said Ricky. “We could try to send the launch to about that altitude, couldn’t we?”
Sylvester frowned.
I’m going to pull it off, thought Ricky. I’m going to show you all.
“Request permission to top the Eagle’s strategic altitude record,” said Ricky. “That should set a record for the F-15C with regular equipment. Does that sound acceptable, sir?”
Sylvester gave a conspiratorial grin. “That sounds fun.”
“I’m out of my depths here,” said Madu, who’d been listening quietly. She let down her hair and shook her head.
“Hey,” said Ricky. “Wanna do it together? You can set a record for the F-22 too.”
“Not my sort of thing,” said Abbot. “You go for it. I’ll be down here taking pictures of the ASM’s takeoff.”
“ ‘Takeoff’? This is a ‘blastoff,’ baby!”
Sylvester brushed Ricky’s shoulder as he passed between him and Madu. “Technically, we’re planning to call it a ‘launch,’ ” he said. “In my letter to NORAD, I’ll be sure to strongly emphasize your seventy thousand–feet request.”
“Thank you, sir.”
At the entrance to the locker room, Sylvester turned around as though he’d just remembered something.
“There was a message from Colonel Lintz,” he said. “Even fifty thousand feet is well into the stratosphere. That means you might be able to see the stars even during the day. Have a ball up there, Captain.”
“Understood.”
Ricky brought his fist and palm together and smiled at Madu. Ho yeah!
Mon, 14 Dec 19:42 2020, -0700 (2020-12-15T03:42 GMT)
Interstate 5, Seattle
When the car went over a hill coated pure white with snow, the bright red lines of tail lamps leaped into Kazumi�
��s view. Before he could mention the traffic jam, Freeman smoothly slowed the car. The lane to the left painted with white diamonds was open, but few cars were taking advantage, and Kazumi supposed it was reserved for something.
Earlier that evening, Freeman had come to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to pick up Kazumi and Akari. He was a short man with somewhat dark skin whose youthful face made Kazumi think he might be younger than him. But he held his back straight and carried out tasks efficiently, making Kazumi think of an organization with which he had little familiarity: the military.
Kazumi searched for the right words and at last squeezed out an English sentence. “It is a traffic jam,” he said.
“Yeah, this is terrible,” said Daryl, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers. “At this rate we won’t be there for about forty minutes.”
As Kazumi stared at the rows of cars ahead, a silver passenger plane in position for takeoff flashed into view, and turning his head, he could see a runway stretching to the left.
“Sea-Tac is really spread out,” said Kazumi.
“Um, actually,” said Akari from the backseat, patting Kazumi’s headrest, “that’s Boeing Field. On Google it’s labeled King County International Airport.”
Akari’s English was far from fluent, but she spoke up without any hesitation, and Kazumi resolved to follow her example.
“That was King County? I see. It has an official airport name. Thank you, Akari.”
Kazumi looked into the backseat. Akari’s face was hidden by the brim of the Seattle Mariners cap that Sekiguchi had given her. She was just in the middle of inserting the SIM card she had bought at the airport into the Raspberry Pi resting on her lap. This reminded Kazumi of the SIMs he had in his wallet. Akari had bought them for him when they had arrived at the airport. Raising the eyebrows of the mobile counter staff by buying ten of them, she had given three to Kazumi and told him to change them every day. It seemed unlikely that the North Korean agents would be able to monitor their communications in America, but she wanted to reduce the risk, and Kazumi had no qualms with that.
Kazumi heard the sound of another jet firing up. The silver passenger plane was just lifting off.
“Is that a domestic flight?” asked Kazumi. “I can’t see any airline logos.”
Daryl glanced to the side and tapped the steering wheel as though satisfied with what he’d seen. “They just haven’t finished painting it,” he said. “The Boeing factory is doing the flight check and paint job before delivering it somewhere. That’s why it’s called Boeing Field. Is this the first time in America for you guys?”
“Yes, first time,” said Kazumi, and Akari said, “Me too.”
Kazumi smiled, feeling disappointed with himself. He couldn’t speak English fluently, so he found himself repeating whatever Daryl said. He felt like a parrot.
“While we’re investigating, I’ll show you around Seattle. I’ve heard the collections at the Museum of Flight in the back of the airport are just incredible. They even have a Concorde on display. I bet you’d really enjoy the orbiter simulator, Kazumi.”
“An orbiter … That is a space shuttle, right? Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” said Daryl and tapped the wheel again. The Boeing Field runways kept sending silver passenger planes into the air in a flurry of motion. Kazumi took another look at Daryl’s face and felt amazed that this man with whom he was chatting casually was a serviceman for NORAD, a military organization with a tradition of monitoring orbital objects for as long as forty years.
Here he was in America, the mecca of space development. As Kazumi took a deep breath to absorb the air of this exciting place he found himself in, he began to choke on the fragrance of a strong perfume.
“You okay?” asked Daryl. “Before we go to the hotel, I’d like to stop by a shopping center. We’ve still got to build an operations center for you two to perform your analysis, and I brought almost nothing with me from Seattle—oops!” Daryl smacked his forehead. “There’s three of us in the car. I forgot. That means we can use the car pool lane.” Pointing to the lane with the diamonds, Daryl checked behind them and turned into it with brisk motions. The powder snow that had been accumulating on the windshield puffed up.
“I’m always alone, so I forgot,” said Daryl. “It’s nice to be on a team for a change.”
“Nice to be working on a team,” said Kazumi, parroting what he had heard again. He tried to think of other words he might have used: colleague? friend? budd— He felt a smack on his headrest. Looking back, he saw Akari smiling at him with the brim of her cap pushed back by her Raspberry.
“A team! Nice!”
Pushing a shopping cart, Kazumi followed Daryl as he cut through the high-ceilinged lanes of the store. From a rack, Daryl took out six feet of aluminum, bent it to test its strength, and turned around. “It seems fine. Let’s use this for the girders. I want to get a dozen—can you help me?”
Apparently Daryl was planning to use the aluminum as the base for a grid of LCD monitors in front of their desks. The cart, which looked big enough for someone to stretch out and sleep in, was chock-full of things Daryl had picked out: power tools, bolts, VESA-compliant LCDs. Kazumi was getting tired of Daryl’s shopping style—he merely glanced at the packages before tossing them in, as though anything would do so long as it was compatible.
“Will that fit in the car, all that?” asked Kazumi. The English that slipped from his mouth wasn’t yet natural, but as he walked around the massive Costco behind Daryl, he found the words beginning to come to his lips.
“Just barely, maybe,” said Daryl. “It should be all right.”
Kazumi retrieved the aluminum and glanced casually at the ceiling. Hanging there was an antenna that looked to be ten meters long. He guessed it must be used for ham radio.
“Americans really like to make everything themselves.”
The store that Daryl had brought them to was an enormous warehouse of a giant mall, completely unlike the Japanese electronics mass retailer he had vaguely imagined it would be. The variety of computer accessories was somewhat limited, but they were well stocked with items seen less in Japan of late, such as hard disks and wired mouses. In the automotive zone, they had everything from car bodies to engines to maintenance cranes. Then there were the DIY items: chainsaws, wooden logs, unit baths, household power generators … Amazingly, they even sold helicopter blades and nuclear shelters for domestic use.
“It’s surprising isn’t it? I felt the same way the first time I saw one of these stores too. There are lots of people in this country who live isolated from urban infrastructure like sewers and base stations for television or cell phones, and it seems like doing things for yourself is considered a virtue.”
“You were not born in America?”
Daryl let out a white-toothed laugh and said, “I’m from Indonesia. I came over here for school and then went straight into the air force. I wanted to get a green card and build up a career in the space industry.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Kazumi was reminded of what Kurosaki had said at the Nippon Grand Hotel about the engineers whose abilities weren’t recognized in America and so went over to China instead. But without any career, skills, or connections to rely on, Daryl had made the leap into America from Indonesia.
“I’d like to say that it doesn’t matter where you’re born …” said Daryl. “But I feel like the people who were raised here are just different somehow. It’s not like I’ve met all that many people, but I can tell we’re not the same.”
“Is it difficult to do space work? Back in your hometown.”
Daryl scrunched up his face, bringing his thick eyebrows together. The expression could have been one of regret or mirth.
“There is some work there,” he said. “When I was a child, I used to watch in awe every time we launched a rocket. When I saw one
of them shooting straight up into the sky dragging a tail of light, that was when I made my decision. I was going to space!”
Kazumi tried to remember what he knew about Indonesia. He seemed to recall there had been the Pameungpeuk spaceport on the island of Java, but after a few tests they had stopped carrying out any launches to speak of.
“You might even remember it, Kazumi,” said Daryl, and went on to explain that the rocket that inspired him was a sounding rocket. Used for meteorological observation, it hadn’t even reached fifty kilometers in altitude. “I can’t tell you how depressing it was when I learned that. Fifty kilometers is almost within arm’s reach. I mean, even a balloon can rise that high. How about you, Kazumi? Have you seen a rocket before?”
Kazumi shook his head. “The launch sites in Japan are on the southern edge,” he said, and then realized that he hadn’t really answered the question.
“That’s true of all countries in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Daryl. “You’re talking about the sites in Tanegashima and Uchinoura, right? Didn’t they send up an H-II Transfer Vehicle last month? A spaceship with 1 atm pressure that can also double as a manned vehicle. I think that’s pretty impressive. If we had anything like the space industry that you have in Japan on Java, I wouldn’t have had to become a soldier twice.”
Daryl raised two fingers as though giving the peace sign and laughed. He explained that his first time in the service was when he had been drafted for two years in Indonesia, one of several countries in Southeast Asia to revive conscription after rumors began to spread that China would make incursions into the Pacific.
“After my mandatory period was over, I came to America. But I didn’t have any connections here, so I decided to enter the military again.”
Daryl continued to toss bolts, screws, and various other items into the shopping cart as he spoke.
“Have you ever been in the military, Kazumi? I see your hair is long and you’ve got a slight slouch. If you’d served, you would’ve turned out like me. Worrying about your hair just becomes too much of a nuisance.”