“It is all nominal,” Ivy said, but the last word was drowned out by a digital voice making an announcement over the arklet’s rudimentary PA system: “Bolo Coupling Operation entering its terminal phase. Prepare for acceleration.” And then in classic NASA style it counted down: “Five, four, three, two, one, grapple initiated.”
At “one” the test pattern on the screen disappeared in shadow, for it was too close now for the camera to even see it. The Paws of Arklet 2 and Arklet 3 slapped together, like runners exchanging a high five as they passed each other going opposite ways. Strange whiny noises propagated down the arm into the hard shell of the arklet.
“Grappling achieved,” said the voice.
Dinah’s ears finally identified the whiny noise as the sound of cable unwinding from a spool. She felt a lurch in her stomach as the arklet did a half somersault, reversing its direction so that it was pointed back at its bolo partner.
As she knew, having studied this maneuver for weeks, the two arklets were now joined together by a cable. They had flown right past each other, but the tension in that cable had spun them around so that they were pointing toward each other again—she verified this with a glance out the window, which gave her a view of the nose of Arklet 3 slowly receding as it “backed away” from them. The spool of cable mounted next to its docking port was in motion, unwinding as the two craft gained distance from each other. In the exact center, the cables of Arklets 2 and 3 were clasped together by a coupling device that could be remotely disengaged whenever they made the decision to go their separate ways.
“Congratulations, Bolo One,” said the engineer down in Houston. “The first autonomously driven coupling of two spacecraft to create a rotating system for production of Earth-normal simulated gravity.”
Earth swung past beneath the other half of Bolo One and Dinah felt the awareness of her own throat that would culminate, five minutes from now, in vomiting. The two arklets were already swinging slowly around each other, producing a small amount of simulated gravity—even less than what they experienced in the Banana. But the MAP system wasn’t satisfied with that. Once the two arklets were far enough apart not to take damage from each other’s thruster exhaust, the system initiated a longer burn that, in combination with the slow unreeling of the cables, put their inner ears through some disturbing changes. The sound of the cable reels changed as automatic brakes engaged to slow their unwinding and avoid a damaging jerk at the end. Then there was silence for a few moments, and then another thruster burn—longer, and directed laterally, to speed up the bolo’s rotational velocity.
“Holy shit” was the only thing that Dinah could say for the first minute or two.
They were experiencing one gee—Earth-normal gravity—for the first time in over a year.
Markus, who’d only been in orbit for a few days, sounded great. To judge from what they were hearing in their headsets, he had unstrapped from his pilot’s couch and was clambering all over Arklet 3 as if it were the Daubenhorn.
Ivy and Dinah couldn’t move for several minutes, and Dinah seriously entertained the possibility that she was dying.
“Can you pass out while you’re lying down?” she finally asked.
“Remain in your positions,” a voice from Houston was saying, dimly, distantly, as if shouting at them through a bullhorn from four hundred kilometers below. “It is a long fall to the bottom of that arklet.”
A long fall. Dinah had ceased to even think in terms of up and down. The concept of falling had become meaningless to her. When you were in orbit, you were always falling. But you never hit anything. She risked turning her head to look at the grate “below,” and that was the trigger that forced her to reach for her barf bag.
DAY 333
Doob had known for a while that he was not the easiest guy to be related to. During his last ten weeks on Earth, however, he sometimes feared he was pushing his family’s patience beyond human limits with his lust for camping.