“The Code doesn’t specify—”
“The witness will address the Tribunal.”
“Yes, sir. The Code can’t possibly project every on-board situation. Impossible. If it could, the crew would have only to memorize it and there’d be no need for a commander.”
“Your Honor, the prosecution objects to such facetious remarks!”
“The witness will provide an answer to the prosecutor’s question, brief and to the point.”
“Yes, Your Honor. In my judgment, no, the CO could have waived such a decision. He was there, he sized up the situation; if he kept quiet, it meant he was abiding by Article 22 of Deck Operations, relying on his pilot’s discretion.”
“Your Honors, not Article 22, but Article 26, which deals with the waiving of command in dangerous situations, is relevant here.”
“Your Honors, the situation aboard the
“The witness, Your Honors, is being deliberately uncooperative; instead of helping to ascertain the truth, he is trying,
“Your Honors, surely the prosecutor can’t double as an expert witness.”
“The witness is out of order. The relevance of Article 22 versus Article 26 will await a separate ruling. The witness will describe the next sequence of events.”
“Calder never said a word to the CO, but I saw him look his way several times. Meanwhile, the probe’s thrust stabilized, making it easier to control the ship. Calder now decided to move away from the ring, but when he didn’t ask me to plot our return flight, I figured he meant to complete the mission. But as soon as we crossed the Roche limit, at approximately 1600 hours, he signaled maximum
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he shifted to maximum thrust, then blasted full power astern, then full ahead. A three-ton probe at full acceleration weighs about twenty times that. It should have popped out of that bay like a pea from a pod. With a leeway of sixteen thousand kilometers, Calder repeated the maneuver, twice, but with the same results. The bursts only increased the angle of deflection. Probably due to the sudden boost in acceleration, the satellite, now more jammed than ever, changed position, so that its exhaust fumes were deflected against the partially open hatch and escaped into space. The blasts were as wicked as they were risky: it was now a safe bet that if the probe ever jettisoned, it would take a fair amount of the hull along with it. So it looked like either a repair job out on the hull, or a tow back to Base.”
“Didn’t Calder try to shut off the probe’s engine?”
“Couldn’t, sir—the steering cable was disconnected. There was still radio control, but the probe sat in the very mouth of the launcher, screened by the bay’s metal housing. We’d been on the outbound leg for roughly a minute, and I thought: He’s decided to abort after all. He maneuvered around for a ‘star fix’—you know, aiming the ship’s nose at a star and then alternating thrust to see if the star remains fixed on the screen. It didn’t check out, naturally; our flight characteristics had changed, and Calder tried to juggle the numerical values. By trial and error, he found the right thrust level, which straightened the deflection; then he reversed course.”
“Was the witness aware at that time of Calder’s real intent?”
“Yes—I mean, I had a hunch he was still planning to launch the third probe. We went back down the ecliptic, away from the sun. Calder’s stick work was flawless. You’d have never guessed he was piloting a ship with a sort of extra, built-in, side engine. When he asked me to compute the course corrections, flight trajectory, and steering impulses for a third launch, that cinched it.”
“Did the witness comply?”
“No, sir. I told him I couldn’t, not before reprogramming. I requested more flight data—I didn’t know from what altitude he wanted to inject the last satellite—but he didn’t answer. Maybe his request was his way of telling the commander what he was up to.”
“He could have told the commander outright.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe he didn’t want anyone to think he was stuck and needed help. Or he just wanted to prove himself by showing up his navigator—meaning me. But the CO didn’t bat an eye, and Calder kept right on course. That’s when it started to look hairy.”
“Will the witness be more precise?”
“Touch and go, sir.”
“Your Honors will note that the witness has just confirmed what he was reluctant to admit earlier—namely, that the commander, consciously, with premeditation, decided not to intervene, as it was his duty to do, thereby exposing the ship and its crew to inordinate risks.”
“Not so, Your Honors!”
“Kindly refrain from arguing with the prosecution, and confine your testimony to the actual chain of events. Why did you deem it a risky operation only after Calder had reversed course?”
“Maybe I expressed myself badly. It’s like this: in such circumstances, the pilot should have consulted with his commander. I certainly would have, especially since the original program was no longer operant. I thought that Calder, seeing as the CO was giving him a free hand, would chance an insertion, keeping a safe distance from the ring. The distance made a successful launch iffy, but it was still possible—and safe. At low velocity, he did in fact request a course projection for the satellite, allowing for a lead of one to two thousand kilometers. I wanted to help him, so I started plotting; it turned out that the tolerance was more or less equal to the width of the Cassini Division. This meant there was a fifty-fifty chance that the probe, instead of being injected into the proper orbit, would be pulled inside, toward the planet, or outside, smack up against the ring. I worked out the results for him— for lack of anything better to do.”
“Did your commander read the data?”
“He must have; the display was centrally located, right above our consoles. We were cruising at low thrust, and I had the feeling Calder was in trouble. If he backed out now, it would mean he had miscalculated, that his intuition had failed him. Up until he reversed course, he could have argued it wasn’t worth the risk. But, then, he’d already shown he could control the ship, despite the changed flight characteristics, and his subsequent moves made it clear he was going ahead with the maneuver. We were gaining on the ring—to give us a better shot at it, I thought at the time, in which case he should have already been braking, not boosting the thrust. Only then did it dawn on me that he might be up to something else. In a flash, everyone was clued in.”
“You mean the crew realized the gravity of the situation?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Someone behind me, sitting astern, said, ‘It’s been sweet.’”
“Who said that?”
“I don’t know. The nucleonics engineer, maybe, or the radio-electronics engineer. I wasn’t paying attention. It all happened so fast. Calder signaled maximum g-load, throttled, and kept on a collision course with the ring. It was clear he wanted to thread the Cassini and plop the third probe along the way.”
“‘Plop’ it?”
“Pilot’s lingo, sir. The probe is dropped the way a bird on the wing plops an egg… But the CO countermanded him.”
“The CO did? He actually countermanded him?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Objection. The witness is manipulating the facts. The commander could not have revoked any order.”
“Correction. The CO
“I object, Your Honor. The witness is insinuating that Calder, willfully and with malice aforethought, tried to prevent the commander from issuing an order.”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
“The witness is out of order. Objection sustained. The witness’s words beginning with ‘…as if Calder wanted
