The roar of the crowd could be heard even at a distance as he was escorted out of the building towards the massive shuttle, standing on its rear end and pointing towards the skies. Someone at NASA, either a frustrated pilot or a civilian bureaucrats, had leaked the fact that military pilots were flying the shuttle mission and the media had drawn the correct conclusion. The protesters carried signs imploring the pilots not to fly weapons into outer space, or prepare for war with the aliens, believing that there would be a peaceful solution to the crisis. Some of them were just plain dumb, accusing NASA of having been in contact with the aliens for years, or even having kidnapped Elvis and a thousand other missing people. At least one protester was under the impression that the moon landings had been faked; his sign demanded that NASA admit to the massive hoax. He, at least, was amusing. The remainder of the protesters were just…stupid. Did they really believe that NASA would abort the launch just to please them?
He paused under the gantry to stare up at the shuttle. Atlantis was massive, larger than many civilian airliners and merely looking at the shuttle shocked many people into silence. It was a wonderful craft, despite its limitations, but it never went anywhere. The shuttles went to orbit, bussed people to the International Space Station or launched a handful of satellites into orbit, and then landed at the runway, only a few miles away. It never went to the Moon, or Mars, or any other brave new world. That, Philip suspected, was what had killed NASA. It simply didn’t do anything that attracted the public’s imagination.
Philip, like all of the shuttle pilots, was a big space buff. If the human race had developed space the way they should have developed space – the way the aliens had definitely developed space – it would have solved so many of the Earth’s problems. There were billions of tons of raw materials floating around the sun, waiting to be picked up and used to build space habitats in orbit. The energy crisis could be averted by developing space-based sources of energy, mainly collecting solar power and beaming it down to the Earth. Pollution could be cut back sharply with factories and other industries moved into space…the list went on and on, yet NASA didn’t even try to do more than create useless visual images that were somehow never translated into reality. There were all kinds of theories, but Philip suspected the truth. NASA was simply too big to handle something as important as space.
His co-pilot was waiting for him at the bottom of the elevator. Felicity Hogan was younger than him by seven years, a former navy pilot who had transferred to NASA when the Ares or Orion looked as if they were going to be flying in a few years. She was dark-skinned and attractive enough to serve as a centrefold in a pornographic magazine, although she’d once told him that she’d sooner show them photographs of space. She’d been briefed on the mission and had volunteered without hesitation. Like him, she’d flown JSF aircraft from aircraft carriers, even if she’d never been tested in serious combat. That might be about to change.
They rode up to the shuttle’s cockpit in silence and patiently endured the ground crew’s endless series of tests, before they were allowed to enter the shuttle and take their seats. The crew fussed around them while others performed a final series of checks on the shuttle itself, looking for problems that could impede their mission. NASA, after two embarrassing disasters, had imposed a zero-tolerance program for any faults; if there were a single problem, the mission would be scrubbed until the fault was found, corrected, and then reported in triplicate. Philip had lost count of how many pilots had been poised in the cockpit, waiting for their first launch, and then discovered that there was a tiny fault and the mission had been cancelled. Some of them had never flown either. He smiled to himself. A number of former astronauts had been summoned to Washington to face Congress and the Special Enquiry into NASA’s failure and perhaps retribution would be at hand.
“This is Launch Control,” his radio buzzed. “All systems check out A-OK. I repeat, A-OK. Launch in ten minutes and counting.”
Philip let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. With so many people at NASA adamantly opposed to launching weapons into space on a Space Shuttle, it hadn’t been beyond possibility that one of them would have committed an act of minor sabotage. They would probably never have been caught – so many things could go wrong so easily – even though Philip would have torn the ground crews apart to find the culprit. They would never even have known if there was a real culprit or if it had been a genuine accident. A single screw loose could have forced the cancellation of the mission until well after the alien mothership arrived in orbit.
“Thank you, Control,” he said, exchanging a glance with Felicity. She winked back at him. There were only two of them on the flight – the shuttle normally carried a full crew – and they had a moment of privacy. “It’s too late to turn back now.”
Felicity gave him a sharp look. “I volunteered for this, sir,” she said. “I know the risks.”
Philip looked at the countdown. “They don’t,” he muttered. The early stages of the shuttle’s launch were all automatic. NASA had never developed the Shuttle-C concept, but in his view they needn’t have bothered. The shuttle pilots were barely needed until the craft reached orbit. “They don’t know anything at all.”
***
Armed Marines secured the perimeter around the base and the shuttle’s launch site, Abigail saw, as she shifted around to gain a better perspective. The Marines were polite, but very firm. No one was going to be allowed through to see the shuttle at close-range, unless they wanted to spend the rest of the day in jail. NASA’s security team and officers from the Florida Highway Patrol had been rousting protesters all day, including a team that had planned to sneak inside the launch site and stuff cardboard up the ship’s thrusters. It was the kind of idea that would only appeal to someone who didn’t know much about the shuttle – Abigail suspected that the shuttle’s engines would fire and simply burn the cardboard away – but it hardly mattered. The seven protesters had been cuffed, arrested, and escorted away in a pair of black vans. The remainder were standing in front of the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex and the surrounding complex, shouting their heads off.
She relaxed as she found a place to watch without having to keep pushing others away. The lunatic fringe was out in force, screaming their protests from a safe distance, demanding that the mission be cancelled. Abigail couldn’t blame them for their feelings; ever since the news had broken that the shuttle would be carrying a military payload, the nation had been buzzing with rumours that it was a weapon intended to attack the aliens. The protesters were screaming and chanting, but she could detect a hard edge of fear under their words. The massive shuttle was puny compared to the alien mothership. It was little more than a joke in poor taste.
“Warning,” a voice proclaimed. “Shuttle launch in three minutes. I repeat, shuttle launch in three minutes.”
The protesters shouted and jeered longer, shoving at the Marines and Police Officers in front of them. It looked for a long moment as if a full-scale riot was going to break out, but somehow the Marines held their ground. Abigail glanced behind her and saw reinforcements – both police and military – arriving in a large convoy. Perhaps the protesters realised that the soldiers wouldn’t allow any of them to press through to the shuttle, although anyone stupid enough to be under the shuttle when it launched would deserve everything that happened to them. Abigail doubted that the investigators, afterwards, would find anything of them apart from a charred afterimage burned into the launch pad. The unlucky protesters would end up as candidates for the Darwin Award.
She studied the shuttle as the countdown ticked towards zero, once again awed by its massive size. It was larger than most airliners, or military aircraft, and it had an aura of restrained power, just waiting to burst out of its drives. It was fantastic…and yet, it was boring. The shuttle she was staring at was older than she was, reaching the end of its long career…and NASA was risking everything by keeping the remaining two shuttles in service. A third major shuttle ac
cident would be the end of NASA, if Congress didn’t pull the plug soon. The Special Enquiry was gaining steam.
The noise – a dull roar – struck her ears before she saw the smoke, flowing out of the shuttle’s rear end. She looked at the timer and saw that it was ticking down the last few seconds. The shuttle seemed to be shaking very slightly, just before a brilliant yellow-white glow appeared under the craft. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the massive craft seemed to start grasping for air, propelled forward – she could see now – by two external boosters, not its main thrusters. It seemed to be permanently on the verge of falling back to the ground and exploding – she couldn’t remember how long it took before a shuttle could no longer be landed safely during launch – yet it kept moving, staggering upwards towards space. The noise seemed to fade – or perhaps she was growing used to it – as the shuttle picked up speed, racing faster and faster as it rose towards the heavens.
The protesters were silent now, watching as the craft gained height. There was something undeniably majestic about the sight. Even the Marines and Police Officers were watching as the external boosters separated from the main craft – which was now propelled by its main thrusters – and fell back towards the ground. They’d land somewhere in the ocean and be picked up and reused. The shuttle was hardly a working SSTO – the dream of space enthusiasts for years – yet it could be reused, apart from the external tank. That would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
“Launch successful,” someone announced. The shuttle was now nothing more than a light in the sky. Abigail shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to follow it as it rose ever higher. She envied the pilots and their chance to go to space, even as she feared for their future. WNN had taken an official position of neutrality on the alien contact, but Abigail knew that if the military was launching an armed shuttle, they had a suspicion that trouble was coming. “Launch successful.”
“Good luck,” she whispered. She pulled her notepad out of her pocket and started to make notes, but her mind was elsewhere, following the shuttle. “God bless.”
The protesters were starting to disperse now and the cops let them go. A handful who had acted up badly and had been cuffed and left to sit on the ground were loaded into vans and taken away, although Abigail knew that they’d be out within a few hours. There had been violent protests all across America – all across the entire Western World – and while thousands had been arrested, they couldn’t all be charged. The police had settled for charging the ones who had committed violence and releasing the others with a stern warning. It hadn’t stopped them from being threatened with over a thousand lawsuits.
She shook her head as she picked herself up and headed towards the car park. WNN had allowed her to go in person to watch the shuttle launch, but she had been ordered to be in New York by tomorrow. The aliens were going to land in New York in two days and WNN intended to have a full crew on the ground, recording everything that happened. CNN, Fox and hundreds of television networks from around the globe would be competing for ratings – there would literally be nothing else on television. The entertainment channels had already announced that they intended to run nothing but repeats – all movies involving friendly alien contact. The irony wasn't lost on her.
Her cell phone buzzed as she left the complex, informing her that her apartment in New York had been prepared for her, a rather unsubtle way of telling her to get to the city quickly. She laughed, put the cell phone back in her pocket, and looked up towards where the shuttle had been. It was gone.
***
It had been a year since Philip had flown in space, but it was something no one ever forgot. The absence of gravity suggested that people could be truly free in space, but the truth was that space was a realm where the iron laws of physics held total sway. A single mistimed burst from one of the thrusters could force them to abort their mission, or – if they ran out of fuel – they’d drift through space forever. He’d heard that some astronauts had seriously considered hijacking an orbiter and flying to the moon – it was theoretically possible – but no one had ever taken such a risk. It might delight the public, but NASA and his fellow astronauts would have crucified him. They already had to ask permission for almost everything they did in space. No one wanted to have to endure even more supervision from the ground.
He checked the shuttle’s guidance systems and allowed himself a sigh of relief as they slipped into the correct trajectory for gliding towards the ISS. The station floated in a stable orbit around the planet, allowing the shuttle to catch up with the station, match course and speed, and then dock without problems, but an error would be expensive to correct. It hadn’t escaped him that the alien craft seemed to operate without regard for the laws of physics and Atlantis was pretty much a sitting duck as far as they were concerned. He’d put on a brave face for General Dyson, yet…now, floating in space, he knew the immensity of what he’d agreed to try. The odds of success were minimal.
“Captain,” Felicity said suddenly. She was looking down at the Near-Orbit Monitoring System, a low-level radar system designed to watch for pieces of space junk that might harm the shuttle. Philip had been onboard a shuttle when a tiny piece of junk had starred the forward cockpit window and he’d nearly wet himself in shock. A tiny bit more force and the entire shuttle would have been wrecked. The return to Earth had been touch and go. “We’ve got company.”
She pointed out of the cockpit. “Look.”
Philip followed her gaze. Normally, despite the increasingly large amount of space junk orbiting the Earth, it was rare to see anything with the naked eye. A satellite – even the largest humans had built – was tiny compared to the planet below. Now…he could see a craft orbiting beside the shuttle, a craft that was clearly not of human origin. It was so close that he could make out details. It was a glowing almond, shimmering in space…
He recognised it. It was the same design as the craft that had crashed on Earth, nearly a month ago. He’d seen the images from the crash and read the reports from the study team, but none of them had conveyed the sheer impact of the craft. Just hanging in space, pacing the shuttle effortlessly, it was terrifyingly intimidating. It was in no one’s interest to start a war with the aliens.
Felicity’s voice seemed to echo oddly in his ears. “Sir…Philip…what the hell do we do?”
Philip considered the weapons that had been loaded onboard the shuttle, but knew that they would be useless. “Nothing,” he said, shortly. The alien craft was showing up clearly on radar. It wasn't even trying to hide. It could pace them all the way to the ISS, or…for all he knew, it could be in a galaxy far, far away in a split second. “We’re just going to ignore it and pretend it’s not there.”
Felicity snorted. “Easier said than done,” she said. “If they can build a ship like that, one that makes Atlantis look like a matchbox toy, what the hell do they want with Earth?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
New York, USA
Day 33
“Shadow Lead, we have a contact,” the AWACS said. “Do you copy?”
Captain Will Jacob glanced down at his HUD. It was a clear day, perfect flying weather for the two F-22 Raptors stationed in orbit around New York. All civilian air traffic for a hundred miles around the city had been grounded and a total air exclusion zone had been declared – in hopes of keeping out aircraft piloted by reporters intent on the scoop of the century – leaving only a handful of military aircraft in the sky. The live feed from the AWACS was shockingly clear. A new contact had entered the atmosphere and was flying down towards New York at Mach Four.
“We copy,” he said. “Shadow Lead, moving to intercept.”
The Raptor was the finest fighter jet in the world, outclassing its nearest American, European, Japanese and Russian rivals, but even it couldn’t maintain a speed of Mach Four. It wouldn’t have to, he saw; the alien craft was rapidly decelerating, showing a shocking disregard for the laws of physics. Bull sessions back at the base had gone over and over how the al
ien craft might be powered, but looking at the contact now, the best that Will could suggest was a form of reactionless drive. The alien craft seemed to have no difficulty in performing the impossible.
He tensed as the contact rocketed towards the pair of Raptors, still decelerating. There was no reason to expect trouble, but the two pilots knew that they were far too exposed out here, away from the hundreds of military jets orbiting on the far side of the exclusion zone. It would take precious minutes for help to arrive if they ran into trouble…and the ROE were strict. They were strict at the best of times, not always for the right reasons, but they’d been told in no uncertain terms that they were not to engage the alien craft, or even light it up with their onboard targeting systems, unless it gave clear proof of hostility. If the aliens had advanced lasers or other superweapons from science-fiction, the Raptor pilots wouldn’t even see the proof of hostility before it blew them out of the sky. The Dark Shadow pilots had been joking around, acting like Will Smith and other movie star pilots, but the joke wasn't so funny now. The aliens were powerful enough to make the entire USAF look primitive.
“I have a contact,” he said, as the alien craft blinked up on his HUD. It was glowing brightly in infrared, but was cooling rapidly, somehow dispersing the heat of re-entry. “Contact is now moving at Mach One and proceeding towards New York. There are no IFF signals” – not that he’d expected any – “or other signs of trouble.”
Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem Page 23