Boomer slowly advanced the throttles. Brad forced himself to remain calm as he felt the acceleration and the G-forces starting to build. He saw the flight-director wings move upward, and he pulled back on the controller a little too hard, and the wings dropped down, meaning their nose was too high. “Nice and easy, Brad. She’s slippery. Light touches on the controls.” Brad relaxed his grip on the controller and gently guided the flight-director wings onto the pyramid. “There you go,” Boomer said. “Don’t anticipate. Nice easy inputs.”
The Mach numbers were clicking off very rapidly, and they transitioned from turbofan to scramjet mode faster than Brad could have imagined. “Sixty-two miles up, Brad and Casey—congratulations, you are American astronauts,” Boomer said. “How’s everybody doing?”
“Pretty . . . good,” Casey said, obviously straining through the G-forces. “How . . . much . . . longer?”
“A few more minutes, and then we’ll switch to rocket mode,” Boomer said. “The Gs will jump from three to four—a bit higher G-forces, but it won’t last as long.” He looked over at Brad, who hadn’t moved much at all during the boost. “You doing okay over there, mission commander?”
“I’m doing okay, Boomer.”
“You’re doing great. You got some competition up here, Gonzo.”
“I haven’t had a vacation in a while—Brad can take my shifts,” Gonzo said.
A few minutes later the scramjets fully spiked, and Boomer kicked the “leopards” into full rocket mode. He noticed a few more dips and swerves in the flight director, although Brad was still sitting straight and didn’t look like he was moving a muscle. “Doing okay, Brad?”
“I . . . I think so . . .”
“Walk in the park,” Boomer said. “Just don’t think about the fact that if you slip or skid more than two degrees, you can send us tumbling and skipping off the atmosphere for two thousand miles until we break up and crash to Earth in little fiery pieces.”
“Thanks . . . thanks, buddy,” Brad grunted.
“Took your mind off the Gs, I see,” Boomer said, “and your course has straightened out considerably.” And at that moment the “leopards” shut down and the G-forces stopped. “See? No problem, and we’re right on course. I’ll flip George on so you can take a minute to relax and breathe normally again.” For the first time in many hours, Brad took his hand off the controller and throttles. “It’ll take us about half an hour to coast up to station.”
Brad felt as if he’d just spent two hours getting beat up by Chris Wohl and his strike team in the gym. “Can we raise visors?” he asked.
Boomer checked the environmental readouts. “Yes, you can,” he said. “Cabin pressure in the green, clear to raise visors. We’ll let Brad rest up a minute—he’s had a good little workout, hand-flying a spaceplane from zero to Mach twenty-five. After a couple minutes, I’ll have him come back to the passenger module, and have Casey come up for docking. Nice and easy moving about the cabin, everyone.”
Brad raised his visor, then found his squeeze bottle of water and took a deep squirt, being careful to keep his lips sealed around the tube and to squirt the water deeply into his mouth so the throat muscles could carry it into his stomach—gravity would no longer do that for him. That helped settle his stomach, but only a little. He put the water bottle away, then said, “Okay, Casey, I’m ready.”
It took a lot of grunting, groaning, bumping, and helmet-knockers, but Brad finally managed to get out of his seat and over to the airlock. “Not bad for the first time, Brad,” Boomer said, “but President Phoenix was better.”
“Thanks again, buddy,” Brad said. The zero Gs felt really weird—he almost preferred the positive Gs, he thought, even the crushing ones. He opened the airlock door, stepped through, and closed the cockpit hatch. “Hatch secure,” he said.
“Checks up here,” Boomer acknowledged.
The passenger-module door swung open, and Casey was right on the other side, floating horizontally like an orange-clad fairy, a huge grin on her face. “Isn’t this wonderful, Brad?” she said. “Look at me! I feel like a cloud!”
“You look great, Casey,” Brad said. I wish I felt the same, he thought. He backed away from the hatch to let Casey pass and was rewarded with a crash against the bulkhead, a few pings off the deck and ceiling while he tried to steady himself, and yet another head-knocker.
“Nice, easy movements, Brad,” Gonzo told him. “Remember . . .”
“I know, I know: no gravity to stop me,” Brad said.
“Watch Casey and you’ll learn,” Gonzo said with a smile.
“See ya, Brad,” Casey said gaily. With barely perceptible touches along the bulkhead, she glided like a wraith into the airlock.
“Show-off,” Brad murmured as he helped close the airlock hatch. He couldn’t wait to get into his seat, fasten his safety belts and shoulder harness, and crank those straps down as hard as he could.
EIGHT
There are a lot of dark sides to success.
—ANITA RODDICK
PLESETSK COSMODROME
ARKHANGELSK OBLAST, NORTHWEST RUSSIAN FEDERATION
THAT SAME TIME