by Linn Schwab
Robin walked to the auxiliaries console. A loose gadget rested on the console’s surface. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the object.
“That’s a headset. It contains an earpiece and a small microphone. Your auxiliaries, systems, and communications controllers will all be wearing one of those.”
“What’s this one do?” Robin asked, placing her finger on a rotary dial.
“That,” Jenny said, “is your surveillance scope. It’s a camera mounted on top of the ship. Look at this screen up here,” she said, pointing to one of the overhead monitors. At the moment, it showed only a view of outer space. “If I turn this dial, I can pan the camera around to any angle I want.” She turned the dial and the image on the screen began to scroll. “You can also raise it up to thirty meters high. It’s mounted on some kind of telescoping extension.”
“Kind of like a periscope,” Robin observed.
“Yeah, I guess it kind of is.”
“Wouldn’t it be great,” Robin mused, “if you could take this ship under water. Look out through the windows, and see fish and other things swimming around.”
Jenny chuckled. “Not exactly what this ship was designed for.”
“Think it would still run underwater?”
“I don’t see why not. Unfortunately, you could never land a ship like this on Valhalla. It just doesn’t have that kind of capability. It would plummet through the atmosphere like a giant rock.”
Robin sighed. “It was just a thought. Even though I’m stuck up here in outer space, I can still hear the ocean calling to me.”
“It’s a nice thought,” Jenny said. “We all have to have something to hope for, right?”
Robin looked into Jenny’s eyes. “What do you hope for, Jenny?” she asked, showing a deep sense of curiosity.
Jenny took a breath and collected her thoughts. “Not to lose any more friends,” she answered, gazing out through the forward windows. “That’s what I hope for. That’s what I want more than anything.”
Virginia slid her card key into the shuttle’s ignition, then checked her safety restraints again. “Are you ready?” she asked, glancing to her right. Trembling a little and full of anticipation, Caroline looked over from the copilot’s seat and flashed Virginia a nervous smile.
“Don’t worry,” Virginia tried to reassure her, “this is far easier than you would ever have imagined. It won’t be exactly like flying a destroyer, but the controls are actually quite similar. Now watch carefully. First I’m going to make sure the shuttle’s brakes and moorings are secure. They are. Next, I’m going to make sure that all of our doors and hatches are sealed. They are. Okay, now it’s safe for us to fire up the engines.” She looked expectantly at Caroline.
“Me?” Caroline said in surprise.
“Go ahead, light ‘em up. You remember the procedure, don’t you?”
Caroline swallowed and reached for the copilot’s yoke. She pushed the throttle lever forward until she had a reading of: .005
With her right hand, she reached for the engine ignitors, then glanced at Virginia for confirmation. After receiving the go–ahead nod from Virginia, she flipped the ignitor switches and the engines flared to life.
A broad smile swept across Caroline’s face when she felt the vibrations from the shuttle’s engines. “Wow,” she murmured under her breath as she got a sense of the power that was at her disposal. Even with the throttle set at minimum idle, it felt as if the shuttle could barely be restrained.
Virginia grinned in amusement, observing her reaction. “Now you understand,” she said, “why it’s important to check your moorings first. If they weren’t activated when you fired up the engines, you might have pushed us right through the hangar wall.”
Caroline looked out through the window and winced, envisioning the devastation a runaway shuttle might have caused. Not only could the shuttle and hangar be damaged, but so too could many of the station’s fighter planes, tucked up so neatly against the outer walls. Just the thought of it was enough to make her hands begin to shake. “Umm…” she said, glancing helplessly at Virginia.
“Don’t worry,” she said, grasping the pilot’s controls. “I’ll take it from here. At least until we’re safely out the door. Pay close attention, though. Try to learn as much as you can. You can never be sure when you might be called on to do something like this.”
Releasing the brakes and moorings, Virginia allowed the shuttle to roll forward. “Watch how I steer,” she suggested. “The flight controls are very sensitive. You don’t need to turn them very far at all.” She guided the shuttle into the traffic lane and turned it to face the airlock at one end of the hangar. “Only enter an airlock if its status light is blue,” she explained. “We use the colors red and blue to direct traffic flow. If an airlock’s status light is red, that means it isn’t safe to enter.”
“Okay,” Caroline said, “so blue means safe, then. Like the color of Valhalla.”
“Exactly. Now, before we can exit, we’ll have to signal the control room. Go ahead and press the ‘Lock Prompt’ button. That’ll inform the controllers we’re ready to leave the station. If they approve our request, they’ll open the inner doors for us.”
Caroline pressed the indicated button, then looked at the airlock doors again. Seconds later, a blue strobe light started flashing and the lock’s inner doors began to slide open.
“Always wait till the doors stop moving,” Virginia cautioned. “When the blue light stops flashing, the doors are fully opened. If they malfunction or get jammed only partially open, the light will keep flashing to warn you not to enter.”
The doors stopped moving and the blue light turned solid. “Here we go,” Virginia said. She eased the shuttle forward into the airlock. “Watch the display under the airlock’s camera. It’ll show you when the rear of your ship has cleared the inner doors.” She glanced at the monitor and brought the shuttle to a halt. “Now,” she said, “press the ‘Lock Prompt’ button again to inform the controllers we’re all the way in. They’ll close the inner doors behind us and siphon the atmosphere out of the airlock. Directly in front of us is a gauge showing atmospheric pressure. When the indicator reads zero, we can open the outer doors.” She directed Caroline’s attention to another button on her console. The label on this one read: OPEN EXT LOCK DOORS.
Caroline watched the pressure gauge drop to zero, then looked at Virginia again for confirmation.
“Go ahead,” Virginia instructed.
Caroline pushed down on the button. The outer doors began to slide open, leaving the shuttle exposed to outer space.
“There’s the transit platform,” Virginia indicated, pointing straight ahead through the forward windows. Caroline peered out between the lock doors. There appeared to be a short extension of the floor stretching out beyond the station’s outer walls. “We’ll just roll forward,” Virginia said, setting the shuttle into motion again, “and stay level until we roll right off the edge.”
Caroline flinched and grasped the edges of her seat.
“It’s alright,” Virginia assured her. “We’re not going to fall anywhere. We’ll just keep floating straight ahead.”
Keeping her eyes glued to the end of the platform, Caroline watched until it passed out of sight, struggling to keep her nerves in check.
“There,” Virginia said, releasing the controls. “We’re out. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
Feeling herself still trembling a little, Caroline took a deep breath and tried to relax. “Wow,” she whispered as she looked at the stars. She could still feel the engines rumbling, but everything appeared to be standing still. “Are we stopped?” she asked, leaning closer to the window.
“Stopped as compared to what?”
Caroline shook her head. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Virginia said, “‘stopped’ doesn’t have a lot of meaning in space. There aren’t any fixed points in the universe, so there’s no way to determine if you’re actually stopped
. Instead, we have what is called ‘station–keeping,’ or ‘hovering,’ which can be measured against any object you choose. For example, if we were to stop a certain distance from Volaris and maintain that distance for any length of time, that would be station–keeping in relation to Volaris. But it doesn’t have the same meaning as ‘stopped.’”
Caroline took a deep breath and sighed in frustration. “I hate space,” she said, glaring out at the stars. “Its only reason for existing is to make me confused.”
Virginia smiled and leaned back in her seat. “Let’s fly around a little to get you accustomed to maneuvering. Grab your controls and start moving us forward. I want to show you how the stabilizer works.”
Caroline grasped the controls in her hands and applied a little forward pressure to the throttle. “Good,” Virginia said, “now turn to the left.” The shuttle performed a gentle left turn. “You see? The shuttle goes wherever you point it. The stabilizer does all of the difficult work, making all the necessary thruster adjustments. But, if I turn the stabilizer off…”
Virginia reached forward and flipped a few switches, and the shuttle began drifting out of control. Caroline gasped and fought to make corrections, but only succeeded in making things worse. Within seconds, the shuttle was beyond her control, spinning and tumbling end over end.
“Virginia!” Caroline screamed in terror.
“Take your hands off the controls,” Virginia told her. She switched the stabilizer back on. The thrusters fired automatically, correcting the shuttle’s erratic movements. Virginia looked at Caroline and waited for her to calm down a little. “Without the stabilizer system,” she explained, “flying a ship this way would be impossible. There are just too many factors to compensate for. Every little movement would require a separate thruster adjustment.”
Caroline sighed and leaned back in her seat, holding her hands up to cover her face. “I don’t feel very good,” she said. “Can you make the shuttle stop spinning now?”
FIREFLIES 025
On the day Major Richards cleared Mindy to resume fitness training, Kelli decided it was time to begin working with her. Teaching her the basics of communications would be simple enough. Confronting her fear would be the tricky part. She had a plan of action in mind for this, but first she needed to find out if her suspicion was correct.
“Have you been studying the protocol?” Kelli asked, leading Mindy into an elevator.
“I think I have that part down,” Mindy said.
“Good. So it’s just a matter of showing you how to operate the equipment.” The elevator carried them to the control room corridor. “You haven’t been up here yet, have you?”
“No,” Mindy answered. “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed.”
The corridor led them out through an opening at the center of the control room’s inner wall. The room’s outer wall mimicked the curved shape of Volaris, and consisted almost entirely of reinforced windows. Below the windows was a continuous bank of consoles — enough to accommodate a dozen controllers. At the moment, only two controllers were seated at the consoles, monitoring activities throughout the station. Suspended from the ceiling above the windows were several large display monitors. The center of the room was open and empty, with plenty of space to move around in.
“Let’s take a closer look at one of the consoles,” Kelli suggested, ushering Mindy toward the outer wall. “The console on a destroyer is very similar to these. You’re going to have two microphones to work with. One of them mounted on a stalk on the console, and another one on the headset you’ll be wearing.”
A few paces before they arrived at the console, Mindy abruptly stopped moving forward. “Is there something wrong?” Kelli asked.
“No,” Mindy insisted, but it was clear to Kelli that she was very tense. Her suspicion seemed to be confirmed. Mindy was clearly unnerved by the windows. Now she could go forward with the rest of her plan. If she could just manage to trick Mindy into it.
“Alright,” Kelli said. “Well, there’s not much more I need to show you here, really. Just a few buttons and switches. There is something else I’d like to show you, though. Would you come with me down to the hangar?”
Mindy nodded and followed her out of the room.
“Wow,” Mindy whispered in awe as she gawked at the rows of fighters in the hangar. Virginia was right, she told herself. They do kind of look like birds! She noticed one plane that appeared to be partially disassembled, sitting by itself out away from the wall. Beside it was a large, oblong container, held aloft by the sturdy prongs of a forklift.
“Oh,” Kelli said when she saw the deconstructed plane. “It looks like Suzanne’s finally getting her new engine. She’ll be happy to hear that.”
“Which one is your plane, Kelli?” Mindy asked, eager to get a closer look at one.
“Right over here,” she said, leading the way.
Mindy read the name on the side of the plane, painted in bold lettering just below the cockpit. KELLI SORENSON it proudly proclaimed, as if showing off her name for all the universe to see.
“This is my baby,” Kelli said, deftly scrambling up the side of her fighter. She hoisted herself into the cockpit then beckoned to Mindy to climb up as well.
Mindy cautiously grasped the rungs in her hands, testing them to make certain their hold was solid. They appeared to be constructed in such a way that they could fold into the fuselage when the plane was in flight. It was a little more challenging than climbing the station’s ladders, but she managed to make it all the way to the top. Kelli then helped her climb into the cockpit and instructed her to sit in her lap. She slipped her key into the ignition slot and invited Mindy to flip the power switch.
“There,” Kelli said once the power was on. “Now there are lots of things I can show you. What shall we do first? Oh, I know! Press the canopy button.”
Mindy pushed the button and the canopy lowered into position.
“That was easy enough, wasn’t it?” Kelli said. “Why don’t we fire up the engines.”
“Really?” Mindy exclaimed, clearly excited.
Kelli pushed the throttle forward a little, then pointed to the ignitor switches. “Go ahead,” she insisted. “Switch them on.”
Mindy flipped the two switches with her thumb, and a powerful rumbling began coursing through the plane. She smiled and looked over her shoulder at Kelli, with a look of surprise and satisfaction on her face.
“Let’s taxi around the hangar a bit,” Kelli said, “to give you a feel for what that’s like.” She released the magnetic moorings and the fighter slowly began moving forward. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
Mindy shook her head. It seemed as if she was enjoying the experience.
Kelli steered into the traffic lane and approached the airlock at one end of the hangar. “I want to show you how the airlock operates,” she said, hopeful that Mindy wasn’t on to her yet. “Press the ‘Lock Prompt’ button to signal the controllers.”
Mindy seemed a little hesitant, but she did as Kelli asked and pressed the button. When the inner doors opened, Kelli guided her plane inside the airlock. Mindy suddenly began to squirm, suspicious now of Kelli’s intentions. When the inner doors slammed shut behind them, she started shaking uncontrollably.
“Come on now, Mindy,” Kelli tried to calm her. “You’re going to have to do this sooner or later. Let’s just get this over with, alright?” She pressed the EXT LOCK DOOR button. The outer doors slid wide open. Mindy immediately covered her eyes and began taking rapid, shallow breaths. “Here we go,” Kelli whispered to her. She applied gentle pressure to the throttle lever. Her plane eased out across the transit platform, leaving the safety of Volaris behind.
Kelli quietly checked her surroundings while attempting to get a fix on her position. Once she established Valhalla’s location, she gently rolled her fighter over so the planet appeared through the roof of her canopy. She then eased back on the throttle until the engines were barely murmuring. “It’s okay, Mi
ndy.” she said. “You can open your eyes now.”
Mindy was still trembling in fear. She forced herself to take a deep breath and performed a quick check of her sense of awareness. Does it feel like I’m falling? she asked herself. Does it feel like I’m spinning or tumbling? After a few seconds of intense concentration, she parted her fingers and peered out between them.
At first she saw only a view of outer space. The usual wall of blackness speckled with distant stars. But there was a glow emanating from somewhere above her, drawing her attention up toward Valhalla. She braced herself as soon as she recognized the planet and prepared for the inevitable panic attack. But after a few seconds of anxious quivering, a sense of calmness began to sink in — a realization that something was being revealed to her. A misconception was being unmasked. Kelli had cleverly reversed her perspective. How could she possibly fall to Valhalla when Valhalla was clearly located above her? Looking up at Valhalla from this position was like standing on the ground looking up at Brünnhilde — Valhalla’s glistening, silver hued moon.
Mindy felt herself starting to laugh, overwhelmed by a feeling of intense relief. At the same time, she also felt embarrassed that her fear had been so easily dispelled. I should have realized this myself, she thought. It should have been simple common sense.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Kelli remarked as she marveled at the radiant glow of Valhalla. “Doesn’t it make you feel proud to know you have a part in helping to protect it?”
Now that she was free of her immobilizing fear, Mindy found herself captivated by a subtle voice inside her head. She sensed that the voice held a message for her, but it wasn’t in a form she could comprehend. It almost seemed like the planet was communicating with her — not with words, but with feelings of emotional well–being. She relaxed and allowed those feelings to flow through her, mindful of the intoxicating effect they had on her. There’s some kind of strength here that I can turn to, she realized. Something I can access when there’s no hope for me. My own life should not be my greatest concern. There’s something much more important at stake here.