“I’ll take that as a compliment, Boomer,” the man said. “How long before takeoff?”
“The primary window opens in about thirty minutes,” Boomer replied. “We’ll finish the pretakeoff checks, and then I’ll have you come up to the cockpit and take the right seat for takeoff. Colonel Faulkner will be in the jump seat between us. We’ll have you go back to your seat here before we go hypersonic, but once we’re in orbit you can go back up into the right seat if you wish.”
“I’m perfectly happy to stay here, Boomer.”
“I want you to get the full effect of what you’re about to experience, and the cockpit is the best place for that, sir,” Boomer said. “But the G-forces are pretty strong as we go hypersonic, and the jump seat isn’t stressed for hypersonic flight. But when you unbuckle to come back up to the cockpit, sir, that will be a moment you’ll never forget.”
“We’ve been hooked up to oxygen for an awfully long time, Boomer,” the passenger asked. “A few hours at least. Will we have to stay on oxygen on the station?”
“No, sir,” Boomer replied. “Station’s atmospheric pressure is a little lower than sea-level pressure on Earth or the cabin pressure on the spaceplane—you’ll feel as if you’re at about eight thousand feet, similar to cabin pressure on an airliner. Breathing pure oxygen will help purge inert gases out of your system so gas bubbles won’t lodge in your blood vessels, muscles, your brain, or joints.”
“The ‘bends’? Like scuba and deep-sea divers can get?”
“Exactly, sir,” Boomer said. “Once we’re on station you can take it off. For those of us who do space walks, we go back to prebreathing for a few hours because the suits have an even lower pressure. Sometimes we even sleep in an airlock sealed up with pure oxygen to make sure we get a good nitrogen flush.”
Takeoff was indeed thirty minutes later, and soon they were flying north over western Idaho. “Mach one, sir,” Boomer radioed back on intercom. “First time going supersonic?”
“Yes,” the passenger said. “I didn’t feel anything abnormal.”
“How about Mach two?”
“We just went twice the speed of sound? That quickly?”
“Yes, sir,” Boomer said, the excitement obvious in his voice. “I like to loosen up the ‘leopards’ at the beginning of every mission—I don’t want to find out at Mach ten or Mach fifteen that there might be a problem.”
“?‘Leopards’?”
“My nickname for the hybrid turbofan-scramjet-rocket Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System engines, sir,” Boomer explained.
“Your invention, I believe?”
“I was the lead engineer for a very large team of Air Force engineers and scientists,” Boomer said. “We were like little kids in a candy store, I swear to God, even when the shit hit the fan—we treated a huge ‘leopards’ explosion as if we tossed a firecracker into the girls’ lav in high school. But yes, my team developed the ‘leopards.’ One engine, three different jobs. You’ll see.”
Boomer slowed the Midnight spaceplane down to midsubsonic speed and turned south over Nevada a short time later, and Jessica Faulkner came back to help the passenger into the mission commander’s seat on the right side of the cockpit, get strapped in, and plug her suit’s umbilical cord into a receptacle, and then she unfolded a small seat between the two cockpit seats and secured herself. “How do you hear me, sir?” Faulkner asked.
“Loud and clear, Jessica,” the passenger replied.
“So that was the ‘first stage’ of our three-stage push into orbit, sir,” Boomer explained over the intercom. “We’re at thirty-five thousand feet, in the troposphere. Eighty percent of Earth’s atmosphere is below us, which makes it easier to accelerate when it’s time to go into orbit. But our tanker has regular air-breathing turbofan engines, and he’s pretty heavy with all our fuel and oxidizer, so we have to stay fairly low. We’ll rendezvous in about fifteen minutes.”
As promised, the modified Boeing 767 airliner emblazoned with the words SKY MASTERS AEROSPACE INC on the sides came into view, and Boomer maneuvered the Midnight spaceplane in position behind the tail and flipped a switch to open the slipway doors overhead. “Masters Seven-Six, Midnight Zero-One, precontact position, ready, ‘bomb’ first, please,” Boomer announced on the tactical frequency.
“Roger, Midnight, Seven-Six has you stabilized precontact, we’re ready with ‘bomb,’ cleared into contact position, Seven-Six ready,” a computerized female voice replied.
“Remarkable—two airplanes traveling over three hundred miles an hour, flying just a few feet away from one another,” the passenger in the mission commander’s seat remarked.
“Wanna know what’s even more remarkable, sir?” Boomer asked. “That tanker is unmanned.”