Orbit

shuddering and bouncing of the little craft as it streaks straight up. He’s too frightened to be scared.

“Passing Mach 2, one hundred thousand feet.”

“Copy,” says the same voice on the ground.

Mach 2, Kip thinks. That’s… that’s about twelve hundred miles per hour!

He can feel his heart racing, almost pounding out of his chest, his head locked forward by the ground-school caution that if he turns his head to look out the window, he’ll never be able to turn it back.

But in his peripheral vision, he can already see the Earth’s curvature.

“My… God!” is all he can manage as he moves his eyes as far right as possible to take in the sight.

“So far,” Bill continues, “I’ve been flying the controls like an airplane, but now they get strange, and things almost reverse. When we get up higher, we’ll have only the reaction control jets to keep us pointed in the right direction. Okay, passing one hundred fifty thousand feet, and Mach 3.”

Kip knows that’s about as fast as they’re going to go before pitchover, before they’re so far above the denser air molecules of the atmosphere that increasing speed won’t cause frictional heating problems.

“Two hundred thousand feet, Mach 3.2,” Bill intones, adding a postscript. “That’s thirty-two nautical miles, Kip. We’re technically not in space yet.”

It sure looks like space to me, Kip thinks, keeping his eyes on the horizon as the g- forces decrease.

“Are we slowing?” he asks. They’ve already taught him the answer, but he can’t help it. The last thing he’s going to pretend to be up here is a seasoned professional blase about the details.

“Not yet,” Bill is saying. “We’ll start our throttle-back at sixty miles and reduce speed as we climb to two hundred miles, then do the pitchover and accelerate.”

“Got it.” He wants to yell, “Whee-oooh!” as loudly as possible, but it would be undignified and might startle the pilot. Not a good idea, he decides, to startle the pilot while flying an eggshell into space.

The Earth’s surface curves away like a huge ball now, even though they’re just passing the so-called threshold of space, around sixty-five miles. The steady force in his back begins to lessen as Bill pulls the throttle to half thrust, using the ship’s immense momentum in the absence of most air resistance to partially coast, partially thrust, up to the three-hundred-mile point.

Five minutes go by slowly, but on the other end of it Kip feels Bill pushing the craft over, using the control jets now, throttling up as soon as he hits the right attitude, the g-forces reasserting themselves as the nose continues to drop slowly in relation to the horizon.

“Now the speeds get really industrial strength,” Bill is saying. They pass through four thousand miles per hour, then six, then eight and ten, the actual digits familiar from training but incredibly difficult to accept. Faster than a speeding bullet. In fact, far faster.

Take us into orbit, Mr. Sulu!

The gravity he feels now isn’t gravity at all, but the acceleration of the engine as it thrusts Intrepid through the airless void toward seventeen thousand four hundred miles per hour. His mind replays every Star Trek clip he can recall of the Starship Enterprise streaking toward the speed of light. This feels like that looked.

“Stand by for a bit of a shock,” Bill calls.

“What? Is there a problem?” Kip’s reply is too sharp, too instantly concerned, and it triggers a laugh from Campbell.

“No, no. It’s just time to throw it into neutral.” He pulls the throttle back and cuts the rocket motor, the sudden disappearance of thrust and acceleration leaving Kip feeling like he’s falling again, but forward, this time. Bill Campbell hears the anticipated gasp.

“We’re weightless,” Bill announces. “And congratulations, man.” He’s reaching back now to shake Kip’s hand. “You have officially arrived on orbit above our planet.”

“We’re here?” Kip turns to stare out his side window before Bill can answer.

“We sure are. We’re almost welded up here in an orbit so stable it might not decay for forty or maybe as many as sixty years, give or take a few sunspots.”

Kip falls into awed silence, his hands still death-gripping the armrests, his stomach still confused about which way is up. At long last he lets himself breathe, a runner exhaling at the end of a long jog. Sixty years, he thinks, missing the reference to the sunspots.

“Magnificent.”

“Sorry?”

It takes a few seconds to find his voice, and Bill waits in a familiar indulgence.

“For this moment at least,” Kip says, “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”

Chapter 4

HEARING ROOM, SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE, HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 17, 8 A.M. PACIFIC/11 A.M. EASTERN

The administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration stares in abject disgust at the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, wondering if the inane slip in his last question is the result of a momentary distraction, or the pickling of too many brain cells from too many years of excessive drinking.

Geoff Shear loves being the head of NASA, but he hates like hell having to deal with the worst of the hypocrites on the Hill—senators and congressmen who convince the public that they support the space program while behind closed doors trying to emasculate it.

He scoots a bit closer to the microphone, letting the full force of the senator’s embarrassing mistake impress itself on the rest of the subcommittee and the media. The man is apparently unaware of what he’s said, and his staff seems equally confused.

“Senator,” Geoff begins, forcing a puzzled look on his face, “I’m sorry, but I may have missed something. I’m singularly unaware of any U.S. policy that supports funding the goal of eventual human colonization of Venus. If I’d known, I would have recommended against it—especially since the surface temperature on Venus is hot enough to melt lead.”

Good! he thinks. The senator looks befuddled as a horrified staff member rushes forward to whisper the right information in his ear. The aging liberal jerks his head around, wholly disbelieving, then grasps what he’s done to himself and that the NASA administrator has gleefully added to the embarrassment.

“I, ah, think you know very well, Mr. Shear, that I meant Mars, when I said Venus by mistake. I meant Mars. Of course we’re not going to go to Venus.”

“Only taking you at your word, Senator,” Geoff replies. “I thought I could do that safely.” Take that, you duplicitous SOB, Geoff thinks to himself as the senator mumbles a retort and returns to his staff’s list of questions. It’s the tiniest of paybacks for the senator’s leading a fight to all but scuttle NASA’s budget, but it feels good. No, it feels damn good, and he doesn’t need the windbag anyway. The senator is part of the disloyal minority now, his opposition to NASA programs essentially impotent.

Geoff all but sleepwalks through the remainder of the hearing, the thrust of the opposition’s efforts completely blunted. His budget figures are correct, and he is not, he tells them, going to stop turning to the media to complain about Congress every time it cuts down the space program.

The subcommittee’s Democrats and a few of the Republicans make it known that they are shocked and offended at the administrator’s defiant tone, but it’s obvious the media doesn’t care, and the opposition’s artificial outrage ends abruptly.

Geoff gathers his papers and stands confidently, knowing that the President approves of his pugnacious tactics. Even better is knowing that his methods are having the desired effect and putting unsupportive lawmakers in a corner.

“Eventually,” Geoff tells the two staff members who’ve shepherded him to the hearing, “those who vote no are going to have to do so in front of the same constituents who have listened to them praise every launch and every success NASA has ever had.”