“What are you going to name her?” the twins asked. “Can we name her?!”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” Catie said. “I was thinking of the Flying Dutchman.”
“The ghost ship?!” the twins asked.
“Yes, with the jumpdrive, she’ll be like a ghost, showing up suddenly.”
“I like it,” Liz said.
“Okay, then the Flying Dutchman it is,” Catie said.
“I really like that rec space you put in,” Scotty said. “But it seems a bit of overkill for a two- or three-week trip.”
“First, you have to remember it’s a round trip,” Catie said. “And second, you’re assuming a high acceleration profile. When this ship is loaded, it’s going to be hard to accelerate it much over one-G, so you’re talking at least a six-week or even a ten-week trip.”
“You can’t be serious,” Liz said.
“Depends on how much mass you’re moving.”
“Boo, hiss,” Liz said, knowing she was going to be the one piloting that mission.
“Hey, you might be able to pull off a two- or three-G profile; we probably won’t be shipping that much mass out.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re going to be stuck in Delphi City while I’m stuck flying a long mission to Artemis,” Liz said.
“I wish I could trade places with you.”
“Can we come?” the twins asked.
“I think that’s going to be a little too long for your mom. Three weeks out and three weeks back.”
“I guess that is a little long,” the twins said. Clearly they were disappointed at being excluded from the momentous event.
“Let’s get this show on the road. Everyone, get to the Lynx, and we’ll fly over,” Liz ordered.
“How come she’s in charge?” the twins asked.
“I think it might have something to do with that six-week trip to Artemis,” Catie said. “And that after a five-week trip to Mangkatar, plus unloading and loading.”
“Yuck!”
“Shh!”
The test flight went as planned. The Flying Dutchman, with its oversized jumpdrives, didn’t have any trouble maintaining a six-G profile. The thrusters, with the aid of the gravity drives, allowed them to spin her around on her axis.
“She’s good,” Liz said. “Not that an eight-hundred-meter ship can be very agile, but she’ll squeeze in where we need her. We can even manage to fit her up to the docking ring, as you’ll see in about thirty minutes.”
Liz carefully maneuvered The Flying Dutchman up to the docking ring. “See, smooth as silk,” she bragged.
“But we didn’t make a jump!” the twins complained.
“That would be a minimum of three weeks,” Catie said. “We have to decelerate to zero at the fringe if we’re running a test. Besides, we’re not putting people on her for the first jump. ADI’s going to fly her.”
“ADI gets to do everything!”
“Except do flips in microgravity,” ADI said.
◆ ◆ ◆
On Sunday night, when Catie arrived back at the Academy, she had a message on her Comm. The Academy message center only worked for cadets while they were on the Academy grounds. Checking her messages, she saw that her English Professor had finished grading their essays on For Whom the Bell Tolls.
“A B!” Catie yelled to herself. How could she possibly have gotten a B on the paper? She’d read the book, detailed everything. “A B?!”
She immediately set up an appointment to talk to the instructor. On Monday at 1500, she reported to the instructor’s office to ask what she had done wrong. She’d suffered the entire day wondering what was wrong.
“Cadet MacGregor, what can I do for you?” her English instructor asked.
“Sir, I would like to understand my grade better,” Catie said.
“Oh yes, your paper on Ernest Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. What do you need to know? And I’m just an English professor, you don’t have to call me sir.”
“Your only comment is, ‘What did you think of the book?,’ Professor,” Catie said. “I don’t understand.”
“You did an excellent job highlighting Hemmingway’s use of metaphors, his language style, and his historical accuracy. But . . . let me ask you this, what was your favorite passage in the book?”
Catie was shocked by the question, “My favorite passage?”
“Yes, what was your favorite passage in the book?”
Catie starting flipping through the book and her paper in her head, trying to identify a significant passage.
“Don’t bother. The fact that it was not in the forefront of your mind makes my point. You read the book; by the look of it, you memorized it. But you didn’t really read it. Did you even enjoy it?”
“It was a good book.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. Did you enjoy it?”
“I just read it,” Catie said.
“If you want a better grade, you have to do more than just read the assignments. You need to let them affect you; impact you emotionally. You need to open yourself up to what it’s trying to say. This book is not some pulp fiction that you just consume. It is a work of art, you have to let it into your soul; otherwise, you might as well just read the CliffsNotes on the book.”
“I see,” Catie said. “Thank you, Professor.”
Catie left his office still wondering what she had done wrong. She decided she would reread the book like it was a play and she was going to be one of the actors in it. Maybe that would help her understand what the professor wanted.
Chapter 20Artemis
Marc took a page from Liz’s book and released a Lynx and crew as they passed the asteroid belt. They were ordered to send three asteroids under grav-drive to Artemis, a methane one, and two iron asteroids. They were then to start lobbing ice asteroids toward the planet, as many as they could in two weeks. Then they could join the team on the planet. Another team would be positioned to catch the ice asteroids and drop them into the planet’s atmosphere or put them into orbit for later use.
◆ ◆ ◆
The first thing they had done on reaching the planet was erect some temporary barracks on the surface. Marc had stayed on the Sakira during that time, out of the way of the construction crew.
