“Yes, ma’am.”
JieMin and ChaoLi didn’t talk about the project over the weekend. Her rule about work on weekends was still in place, and he reminded her of it when she strayed in that direction.
On Saturday, they took the boys for a picnic in the park while the girls did schoolwork. The boys played nude in the park all afternoon, and when they got home, ChaoLi marched them all straight into the shower.
On Sunday, the whole family went to the beach. They wore lavalavas for the trip, as someone would always have to be out of the water to keep an eye on JieJun anyway. They could also keep an eye on everyone’s things while the others swam.
The four-year-old didn’t really have much interest in the water, but the beach was the world’s biggest sandbox, and he was in heaven.
On Monday, the engineers and technicians began work on the second probe. One thing right off was to open up the side of the last container on each side and work up a nacelle to give them the extra volume they needed.
The ordered equipment showed up Tuesday morning. They had optimized the plumbing of the upgraded cooling system to minimize the amount of other things they had to remove and reinstall, but it still took nearly three weeks to install the new system and then re-test everything they had done before.
That simply got them back to where things stood before they stopped work on the second probe when Milbank canceled the project. There was still another month of work to be done to complete the device.
Two months after she took over the project, ChaoLi held a critical status meeting. Of course, she had received status reports as they went along, but this was the critical meeting. Attending were JieMin, Huenemann, and Borovsky. As the project manager, it was Borovsky in the hot seat for this meeting.
“Where do we stand this week, gentlemen?”
“We are ready to perform engine tests, ma’am,” Borovsky said.
“Truly?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And everything has been tested to the same standards as the first probe? All the sub-systems?”
“Yes, ma’am, plus the additional tests on the new cooling system.”
“We are then ready for launch?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What about the shuttle pilots? Are they ready?”
“Yes, ma’am. They remain available for hire.”
“Have they kept in practice on this mission?”
“They haven’t run this flight profile in the last two and a half months, ma’am, but they’ll be all right.”
“I want two practice runs with dummy payload to the actual launch distance.”
“Well, that’s awfully expensive, ma’am. Operating that shuttle isn’t cheap, and they charge us by the engine-hours.”
“I understand, Mr. Borovsky. But to risk failure on a project this big over something like that is a false economy. Two clean practice runs. If they bugger one, we still do two more until we get two clean runs. In a row.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”
“Excellent. You may proceed with your engine tests, gentlemen.”
Once more, a hyperspace probe was out on the apron of the warehouse, technicians scurrying around it making final checks.
The same five pilings behind the new probe secured it from moving forward, with half a dozen chains from each piling to the frame of the craft. It was pointed away from the city and the manufacturing district, to the southwest.
A siren sounded.
“Clear the range. Five minutes until test.”
In the control room attached to the warehouse, the countdown was punctuated with queries and replies as they ran down their checklist.
Ultimately, they got to the end of the checklist and began the onboard computer running. They noted the computer’s actions as they occurred.
“Fuel pumps running.”
“Fuel pressure nominal.”
“Fuel flow initiated.”
“Computer is in final countdown. Ignition in three. Two. One. Ignition.”
Outside on the ramp, fuel and oxygen vapors began leaking from the rocket nozzles, then ignited with a Whoof! The fuel flow increased, and then the rocket nozzles focused, generating long, blue-white jets.
The probe strained at the chains holding it back, but the chains held. The thunder of the rockets reverberated out over the shuttleport and to the city beyond. For fifteen seconds the rockets thundered, then shut down abruptly.
The test was successful.
The second hyperspace probe was ready to go.
“Shuttle Z-1 to Arcadia Control.”
“Go ahead, Shuttle Z-1.”
“Shuttle Z-1 requesting landing clearance.”
“Shuttle Z-1 you are cleared to land on pad two-seven.”
“Shuttle Z-1 cleared to land on pad two-seven. Roger.”
The big shuttle was making its re-entry, holding back against the pull of gravity with a combination of lift and thrust from the engines. Even so, it was only minutes from the Arcadia City Shuttleport.
A hundred miles down went a lot faster than a hundred miles horizontally.
“Place engines under computer control,” Justin Moore said.
Gavin MacKay threw the switch on his panel and verified the change in his heads-up display.
“Confirm engines under computer control.”
The computer would now adjust the mixture and thrust to meet the pilot’s needs for the standard flight operation of landing the shuttle.
There was something ineffably different about the engines sound of a shuttle returning from space than an atmospheric shuttle. Maybe it was that the engines were that much more powerful, even if they weren’t being run flat out for the final approach. There was just something about it.
The large shuttle, with its underslung dummy payload, settled down toward the shuttleport. It lined up for shuttlepad two-seven, and its engines spooled up as it braked its descent. It settled down on the pad, and Gavin MacKay shut down the engines.
“Well, that was better,” Moore said.
“Yeah, that last one was kind of embarrassing.”
“Neither one of us caught it.”
“Yeah, I know,” MacKay said. “But we go away for two months and you gotta
