Boomer noticed the passenger straightening his body and gripping the controller even firmer than before, and he put a hand on his left arm. “Wait, sir,” he said. “Wait. Just wait. Take a deep breath, then exhale slowly. Seriously. Take a deep breath, sir.” Boomer waited until he could hear the passenger take a deep breath then let it out. “Very good. The key to this maneuver is visualization. Visualize the approach before you even touch the controls. Visualize what the controls will do when you touch and activate them. Can you visualize what each control and input will do? If you can’t, don’t activate it. Positively determine long before you make a move that what you are about to contemplate doing is what you really want to do. Map it out in your mind before you hit any switch. Never be surprised by what happens when you press a switch. Expect that whatever happens when you press a switch is exactly what you intended to do; and if it’s not, identify immediately why it didn’t happen the way you wanted it, and fix it. But don’t overreact. All reactions and counterreactions should be deliberate, measured, and intentional. You should know why you are moving a thruster, not just where and how much. Let’s do it, sir.”
The passenger responded . . . by doing exactly nothing, which was in Boomer’s opinion the best thing to do. The Midnight was already coasting to a nearly perfect rendezvous, and the passenger was very much aware that the technology that had gotten him this far was probably far better than were his own meager powers to complete, so he wisely decided to let the automated maneuver complete its evolution, study what extra needed to be done—if anything—and then complete it, if he could.
Armstrong Space Station loomed closer and closer to the spaceplane Midnight, filling the tiny, narrow windscreen with its impressive bulk and obliterating all other visual inputs . . . except the important ones, which were the computer-generated images on the multifunction display in front of both the aircraft commander and passenger. The proper alignment with the dock on the space station was apparent—it was which controls to touch and adjust to correct the spaceplane’s movements that required some consideration.
“I can’t start the spaceplane’s lateral motion,” the passenger mumbled, the frustration evident in his voice. “I keep on hitting the switch, but nothing happens.”
“The correction you applied is in there—you just need to let it happen, sir,” Boomer said. His voice began to sound less military and more like a shaman or spiritual guide. “Nice, easy, gentle, smooth inputs. Remember: Even one little twitch of your thumb on the vernier controls generates hundreds of pounds of rocket thrust that alters the orbit of a spacecraft weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds, traveling at over twenty-five times the speed of sound hundreds of miles above Earth. Visualize the movement of the spacecraft, and visualize the corrective actions necessary to correct the flight path, then apply the necessary control inputs. Reacting without thinking is evil. Take command.”
The passenger took his hands off the controls, letting the controller float before him on its tether, and he closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When he opened them, he found that all of the inputs he had entered were indeed starting to register. “How about that?” he murmured. “I’m not a complete moron.”
“You’re doing great, sir,” Boomer said. “Remember there’s no atmosphere or roadway to create friction, and gravity would take several dozen orbits to take effect, so whatever corrections you put in have to be taken out. These readouts here tell you how much correction you applied and in what direction, which is how much you need to take out. Also remember how long it took for your inputs to apply, so that will give you an accurate gauge about when to take them out.”
The passenger was definitely in the zone now. With the controller in his lap, oriented the same way as the spaceplane itself, he barely touched the knobs with his fingertips. As they closed in on the bull’s-eye, the forward speed ever so slightly decreased, so by the time the crosshairs hit the bull’s-eye, forward speed had almost reached zero inches per second.
“Contact,” Boomer announced. The passenger’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and he let the controller float from his fingers. “Latches secure. The spaceplane is docked. Congratulations, sir.”
“Don’t do that to me again, would you mind, Dr. Noble?” the passenger asked, looking up and taking several relieved breaths of air, then releasing the hand controller as if it was a piece of radioactive weaponry. “All I could think about was crashing and all of us being stranded in orbit.”
Boomer held up another controller, identical to the first. “I had your back, sir,” he said with a smile. “But you did excellent—I didn’t touch anything. I didn’t tell you this, but we normally need at least zero-point-three feet per second forward speed to get the docking mechanism to latch—they latched for you with less than that.”
“That’s not going to relax my nerves any, Boomer.”