The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (heaven official's blessing novel english .txt) 📗

orbit. Suppose the radar were to report an obstacle... some possible space debris. Then, of course I would have to take evasive action.”

“But it’s all being recorded.”

“Well, there are sometimes radar echoes that are not quite attributable. It’s the pilot’s responsibility to react to them. If I judge whatever is causing those echoes to be a danger, that applies. Course corrections take time, so I have to be able to work with incomplete data sometimes. Better safe than sorry—that applies here a hundred and ten percent.”

“One hundred percent. Please don’t say one hundred and ten. I can’t take that. I’m a math teacher.”

Francesca laughed. “You really are crazy. Here I am offering to save the world, and you’re holding on to ten percentage points.”

“Sorry. Will you help me anyway?”

“Of course. I like your craziness. It’s worth the risk to me. You don’t have to get out of the VSS Astra on the way to fix your beacon, do you?”

“No. It’s enough for me to get close enough to it to reset the deorbiting device.”

“This is done by radio?”

“Exactly.”

“How close do we have to get?”

“As close as we can. I will compress the commands so that a few seconds will be enough.”

“Good. Then we need a separate radio. The on-board radio records everything, and that could fall into the hands of someone who has no business knowing about this.”

“Crap. Where am I going to get a radio by tomorrow morning?”

“You let me worry about that. I need two things from you: the target’s orbit, and the signals to be sent.”

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out the USB stick onto which he’d recorded the data while he was on the plane. “Here,” he said.

“Oh, so quickly—you’re prepared.” Francesca took the stick from him. “What’s all on here?”

“A command sequence to disable the DEO, and a new signal to broadcast the beacon.”

“A new signal?”

“I told you that the transmissions coming from the other stars could be translated as poems.”

“I didn’t fully understand that.”

“Okay—not important. But, considering that, I don’t think our solar system should give out a boring signal. That’s why I encoded a poem into the data structures.”

“How romantic.”

Hmm... No one ever, in all his life, had called him romantic. But in this case, Francesca was right.

April 3, 2026 – VSS Astra

When Peter looked out the right window, he saw an airplane a few meters away. If he leaned to the other side, he noticed a white fuselage with portholes like those of the VSS Astra there, too. What he saw was the double hull of the mother ship, the VMS Eve. It was a catamaran of the skies, and where a marine catamaran’s sail would rise into the air, the space glider in which they would fly into space hung from an ingenious structure.

Virgin Galactic had been using this principle to turn tourists into astronauts for some time now. At first, they’d only surpassed the 100-kilometer line, where space officially began. But the market had changed. Today’s customers wanted to circumnavigate the Earth at least once. That required more time and a more powerful spacecraft. The VSS Astra was the first of its kind, but the operator was already having two sister ships built.

“Sorry, it’s time for me to get on with launch preparations,” Francesca said.

She leaned forward in her pilot seat so that Peter could no longer see past her out the left window, and pressed buttons, turned switches, and tapped on the screen. Her movements were purposeful. She never hesitated while performing a perfectly rehearsed choreography. Francesca looked as if she had mastered it all before her first flight. She must be a born pilot. Who could know, maybe she’d be famous one day? He imagined her being the first person to explore an icy moon of Jupiter.

He was fortunate that he got to watch her work directly. She’d given him the seat on her right. It was designed like a second pilot’s seat and was initially intended for a co-pilot. For cost reasons, the company had since dispensed with that role. The space shuttles were so reliable, and the flights so short, that a co-pilot would be even more bored than the pilots, who were probably already under-challenged as it was.

There had been no discussion about space allocation. Unlike the passenger seats, there was no additional porthole in the roof. Peter had a good view to the front during takeoff, but he couldn’t see the sky. That was why none of the others envied him being allowed to sit in front.

“Dear future astronauts,” Francesca addressed the passengers, “we will be launching shortly. Please make sure you have strapped yourselves in.”

Peter adjusted the straps that stretched over his shoulders and hips. So far, this was the only difference from flying in an airplane. That was why he didn’t feel any excitement at the moment, only the growing hope of being able to fulfill his task.

The hull of the VSS Astra jerked, and they moved backward. It was surprisingly quiet. Minimal vibrations indicated the four engines of the mother ship were already running.

Peter turned around. The other passengers sat in two rows behind him. The three bachelorettes were talking across the center aisle, and the husband and wife were holding hands. The male couple had been seated one in front of the other. The one behind had a hand stretched forward onto his partner’s shoulder. The older of the two men traveling alone had his hands folded in his lap, his eyes closed. He seemed to be praying.

The cabin was surprisingly spacious, probably due to the generously-distributed windows and the mirrored rear panel. From the outside, the space glider hardly looked bigger than a Cessna. Peter noticed more seats than side portholes, probably due to the subsequent addition of four seats to the VSS Astra. The hull design had been probably adopted from the older sister ships.

“Take off in ten seconds,” Francesca said.

Oh! He hadn’t realized they were going so fast already.