As they rose, Moore rotated the engine nacelles to angle the thrust aft, and the shuttle picked up horizontal velocity to the east, out over the ocean, using the planet’s rotational velocity to decrease the speed to orbit.
The sky grew darker and darker blue as they continued to rise. At thirty-five thousand feet, MacKay began feeding oxygen to the engines as well as fuel, maintaining the thrust they needed to attain orbit.
“Nothing to it,” Moore said. “Just like flying an office building, with the glide characteristics of a brick.”
MacKay laughed as he continued to watch his engine performance.
Karl Huenemann took a trip out to the warehouse they had built on the grounds of the Arcadia City Shuttleport to see the hyperspace probe.
The project manager walked him out into the main room, which was a hundred fifty feet wide and a two hundred feet long. The probe dominated the space.
The probe was sized to, and actually constructed from, eight standard containers. Forty-eight feet wide, twenty-four feet tall, and eighty feet long, it was the same size as the two-high stack of passenger containers that had brought the colonists to Arcadia a hundred and seventeen years before. That made it the correct size for the standard-design space-capable large cargo shuttle.
Even at that, it had been a trick to get everything into that sized package. There were four large rockets on the rear side, attitude thrusters on the front corners, all the fuel for those, the smallest nuclear power plant in the colony’s design libraries, and the hyperspace field generator itself. Add to that the control computer, the environmental equipment for the computer compartment, and the sensors and cameras needed for data gathering, and it was all a tight fit.
For all that, it looked simply like a large box cobbled together from eight cargo containers. There was an inset camera ‘turret’ on the side Huenemann could see. There were access hatches at random places on the surface, the doors of which were all open and dogged back for now. Inside the hatches, he could see a maze of piping and wiring.
It all looked right to Huenemann. It was a prototype. A first-off. This is how engineering looked before the designers got a hold of something and gussied it all up.
He walked around the rear of the device, past the rocket engines. Beyond it in the warehouse, he could now see the second unit under construction. That was as it should be as well. It was always cheaper to build two of something together than to build the second one later, separately. And you almost always needed two. Best to build two right off.
Huenemann wasn’t a bad engineer, after all. In fact, he was a very good one. He just had the wrong feel for this project, which led him to the wrong judgment.
The problem was that Huenemann also had the political clout to enforce his wrong judgment, and he wasn’t shy about wielding it.
“What’s our status?” Huenemann asked, continuing to look around.
“We’re good, sir,” said the project manager, Mikhail Borovsky. “We’re on schedule with getting the probe ready.”
“And the launch vehicle?”
“The crew’s been up to orbit several times. They’ve been increasing the cargo load. Their last trip they carried up the same size and weight of cargo as the probe. They still have to work up the distance, but they’re on track, sir.”
“Excellent. Have we done a power-up test of the probe yet?”
“No, sir. That’s coming up later this week. Then we’ll test the computer system, the cameras and sensors, and the engine controls.”
“How are you going to test the engine controls?”
“The probe is on wheels, sir. We’ll pull it outside and test the thrusters. Then we’ll anchor the probe and do a test burn.”
“Full power?”
“Yes, sir, but just for a few seconds. Long enough to stabilize the fuel flow and get some confirming measurements.”
“So what are we looking at for our launch date?”
We’re still on track for June first, sir.”
“Excellent.”
Huenemann turned toward his project manager.
“You’ve done a tremendous job. I’m very happy with your progress and keeping to the schedule.”
“Thank you, sir. The whole team has been pulling hard.”
“Well, pass on my regards to everyone. Great work.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
That night Karl Huenemann had dinner with Gerard Laporte, the majority whip for Prime Minister Robert Milbank’s party in the Lower House, usually just called the House. It was his job to make sure his party members voted for legislation important to Milbank’s priorities and party platform.
The two men had been friends a long time. Huenemann had been Laporte’s science adviser in his first run for the House, and had served on Laporte’s staff his first term. That had been a long time ago. Since then, Laporte had been influential in getting Huenemann his later positions in the government, just as Huenemann was Laporte’s go-to guy for the technical back-up on major pieces of legislation.
In the Arcadia government, one hand washed the other, and Laporte and Huenemann had been ‘washing hands’ for each other for decades.
“Karl, It’s good to see you,” Laporte said when he came into the restaurant in downtown Arcadia City and saw Huenemann.
“And you, Gerard. It’s been too long.”
“Agreed, agreed. Let’s get a table.”
Once seated, and dinner ordered, the conversation began in earnest.
“So how’s the project going?” Laporte asked.
“Good, Gerard. Very good, actually. I was just out to the site today to inspect progress. We’re on track for a launch June first.”
“Excellent. Things are going well, then.”
“Yes. I mean, there’s always issues, but you deal with them as they come up.”
“Anything I should know about?”
Huenemann made a show of considering the question, although this was the reason
