Making a Dollar or Two- BOOK THREE

[roboslacker]

Was the rebel leader on Duna the reincarnated form of the president?

[Confused Scientist]

3 hours ago, roboslacker said:

Was the rebel leader on Duna the reincarnated form of the president?

I wish I'd have thought of that. All of my best ideas come from the comments section. See also: Space crabs from Minnmus

[Confused Scientist]

Intermission

The following is an audio transcript of an emergency meeting called by the top officials at the Kerbal Space Program, formerly the Kontinental Startup Program. In attendance were Jebediah Kerman, Bill Kerman, Bob Kerman, Valentina Kerman, Gene Kerman, Wernher Kerman, Sunny Kerman, and Mortimer Kerman.

Jeb: Sorry I'm late. I had some, uh... engine trouble.

Gene: It was extremely foolhardy to-

Jeb: Supersonic flight is an important research-

Gene: All four engines exploded-

Jeb: So? Nobody else was using the KSP Kloncorde. I thought-

Gene: That was rented from Northworst Airlines. We have to buy them a new one. And why did you have to do an inverted dive-

Jeb: That's the only way to get supersonic without-

Gene: Worst of all is the bill to fix the runway.

Jeb: I’m sorry.

Gene: I know. Now, let's get down to business. We recently learned of a competing space agency under the umbrella of the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company. The president has organized a contest between the KSP and Munstock, giving us one overriding goal: Reach the Mun by the end of the decade. It’s either that or get taken over by a big-time corporation.

Wernher: We all know that there are two options on the table. Right now our best plans involve using two spacecraft to fly to the Mun, with a lander stage and a separate return stage. The question is whether we want to dock them together using two small rockets around Kerbin, or launch them all at once and rendezvous around the Mun.

Valentina: I think that the advantages of Kerbin rendezvous are obvious. The same small rocket can be used twice, which cuts down on development time. Also, we have better payload flexibility, which is good if we needed to develop more than one prototype or use the system for a whole different mission.

Bob: I agree with all of that, but allow me for a minute to put up some counterpoints so we can make sure we’re not missing anything obvious before we make our decision.

Valentina: Sounds good.

Bob: A Munar rendezvous would provide a lower development cost per mission, and also cut down on mission time. Also, the odds of a launch failure are lower, because there’s only one rocket that needs to work correctly instead of two. Add to that, we only need to rendezvous once, around the Mun, instead of twice, around the Mun and in Kerbin orbit.

Wernher: Good points. I’ll go in order with them. First of all, the per-mission cost is unlikely to be significantly higher than with a Kerbin orbit rendezvous because the boosters are cheaper. That’s also cancelled out by the lower development costs. Also, I think we can get two smaller boosters working better than one large one. Finally, the extra development and training time for the two-rendezvous scenario are made up by the fact that we can start earlier once we have boosters.

Mortimer: The biggest thing in our way is cost. If we can cut that down, I’m all for that.

Bill: Okay. Do we all agree that Kerbin orbit rendezvous is the way to go?

Multiple voices: Yeah.

Bill: Great. Sunny, hold a press conference and tell everybody that we are using a Kerbin orbit rendezvous technique for future Munar missions, and then try and get Munstock to tell you what they’re doing. If they are using Munar orbit rendezvous, that gives us a significant advantage.

Sunny: On it.

[Footsteps are heard as Sunny leaves the room.]

Jeb: Our next item in the agenda is to discuss how we want to work up to a Munar-capable spacecraft. If we start development now, it will take five years to develop a spacecraft and lander, plus another two for the booster. The projects can be worked at in parallel with each other, so call it six years of development time.

Wernher: That’s right. But it might be hard to jump right from the Sparkler spacecraft to something so advanced- current plans for our Munar spacecraft have a crew capacity of three and have enough fuel to enter and exit Munar orbit with a five-ton lander docked to it. We have two options: Develop an interim spacecraft to give us deep-space experience in LKO, or go straight to the Munar spacecraft and work out the problems as they come up.

Valentina: What would this in-between spacecraft look like?

Bob: We are developing a service module for the Sparkler that would provide propulsion and life support.

Valentina: There is no place for a one-seat spacecraft other than for what we have already done. Backing on what we said about a Kerbin orbit rendezvous for our Munar missions, we can apply the same logic to this decision and figure out that it makes the most sense to go straight to the more complex vehicle.

Jeb: I digress. A booster is less complicated than a spacecraft, which are much more evolutionarily complex. Having prior experience might cut down on development time-

Valentina: Even though you also need to build a whole new spacecraft as well? We can apply upgrades to the Munar spacecraft in a linear fashion as they come off the assembly line-

Jeb: Or, even better, make the assembly line to build the rockets with the improvements beforehand.

Valentina: What we need is a whole-new vehicle, and if we are going to do that then we need to skip ahead. We can get the most experience for a Munar vehicle by building a Munar vehicle.

Jeb: That’s a paradox and you know it.

Bill: Guys, what about a compromise: We can launch a space station, dock our Munar vehicle to it, and use it to test technology for the lander.

Jeb: Kerbals could die-

Valentina: If we choose your plan.

[Silence.]

Gene: Let’s take a vote, just-

Jeb: Oh, so this is how we’re deciding this? It needs to be unanimous-

Valentina: You’re the only holdout I see, you-

Gene: This is just to see where we stand on this.

Jeb: [Unintelligible.]

Gene: What?

Jeb: Wonderful.

Gene: Okay. All for skipping straight to a Munar spacecraft?

Multiple voices: Aye.

Gene: All opposed?

Jeb: Nae.

Gene: I see. We can discuss this at our next-

At this point, the microphone was switched off.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 17- Get Your Kicks

The old chile farmer sighed at the thought of another day spent on the porch rocking with a glass of lemonade. If I'm lucky, he thought, I might get to watch a storm roll in. He had just taken his place with a newspaper and had just started to pick it up when a loud crack made him drop his reading glasses. What was that? Running out past his tractor and into the field, he craned his neck up and shielded his eyes from the sun as a K-37 training jet heading towards Juno's Landing.

The old chile farmer smiled.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Bill," Jeb asked, "did you ever wonder if you don't know where we're going?"

"We just lost the VOR beacon," Bill said.

"And what if we can't change the way things are going?"

"The controls just froze up."

"And then before you know it everything's falling apart before your eyes."

"I think the vertical stabilizer fell off."

"But you still have choices to make."

"Should we bail out now or ride it down?"

"And then indecision paralyzes you."

"I can't watch!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb and Bill walked into the astronaut office.

"You see?" Jeb asked. "No matter what, everything ends badly."

Valentina stared at them. "There must be a first part to that conversation that I couldn't hear. Should I let Mortimer know he needs to get his insurance company on the phone?"

"Please."

Jeb and Bill sat down next to Bob and Val. "Anyone up for a game of pinball?" Bob asked.

"We don't have a pinball machine," Valentina said. "I don't even think it's going to be invented for another five years."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

Valentina stared ahead at Jeb. "We could debate the benefits and drawbacks of going straight to a three-seater spacecraft. The only drawback I can think of is that Jeb doesn't get his way."

Jeb sighed and got up. "If anyone needs me, I'll be-"

Just then a well-dressed kerbal barged in the door. "Mister Jebediah Kerman!" he shouted. "I am Pablo Kerman, CEO of Kuinness Brewers."

"Hold it," Bob said. "A beer company?"

"Oh, come on, mister Kerman. You were in fifth grade once. Didn't you ever read-"

"The Kuinness Book of World Records!" Valentina exclaimed."All of my friends read it in fifth grade!"

Pablo laughed. "Yes, I don't know why it's so popular among eleven-year olds."

(Jeb knew perfectly well why children enjoyed reading about world records. By fifth grade, most children begin to realize that most of what they had learned from their parents and teachers was either propaganda designed to make them a polite, honest adult who would have absolutely no chance at success in the real world or, worse, cursive. (In Jeb's time, it was a well-known fact that cursive was the main cause of the children's rights movement.) They couldn't wait to enjoy the awesome power of adulthood once they were grown up, but in the meantime they read about other powerful things like fighter jets and world record-holders. Eventually, other examples of these, including dinosaurs, rockets, and Hollywood, were combined in an interesting children's rights experiment where a movie was directed entirely by teenagers, specifically: Mesozoic Park XIV: This Time It's on the Mun. This film (I am going to finish this excessively lengthy parenthetical statement if it kills me) was widely regarded by critics as having little in the way of actual plot and instead feautering two and a half hours of intense violence and jump-scares. It was one of the best films made in decades.)

"Anyway," Pablo said, "I'm here to present you with your world record plaques. Let's see," he said, opening a briefcase, "we have the first kerbal in space for Jebediah Kerman... first kerbal in orbit, for Valentina Kerman... altitude record, for Bob Kerman... and speed record, for Bill Kerman."

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val admired their certificates.

Pablo looked at his watch. "I've got to get going!" He headed for the door, but before he left he stopped. "Hey... I just remembered. I met with the CEO of Toroms Automobiles to present him with the certificate for the least fuel-efficient vehicle, and he said he wanted to give you each a free Korvette. The license plates are 'JEB', 'VAL', 'BILL', and 'BOB.' Then I left to certify another record, on page 66."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two hours later, Val was eager to make use of the insurance policy on her new car. "Hey, Jeb!" she shouted. "Let's go drag racing on the runway!"

Valentina was surprised that she didn't hear Jeb's incredibly loud voice accepting her invitation. Frowning, she flagged down Bob. "Where's Jeb?"

"I don't know," he said. "After Pablo left, he opened up the world record book, grinned, got a stopwatch, and sprinted to his car."

"Hmm... was it the same kind of grin I'm thinking of?"

"It was."

Valentina swore. "We need to find out what record was on page 66."

Val and Bob ran back inside and opened up the Kuinness Book of World Records (Ambiguous Late '50s/Early '60s Edition). Hefting the bulky volume from the shelf, Bob flipped through to page 66.

When Valentina saw it, she swore again, and ran for her K-37.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Just as the sun was going down, Jeb slammed on the brakes and overrode a barricade in Crystal City, on the west coast of the continent. Jeb stopped the timer,  glanced at the road sign, which said Caution: Route 77 Ends in Zero Meters, and whooped, "Coast to coast in four and a half hours!" Triumphant, he got out of the car.

Two shadowy strangers suddenly approached him. "Jeb," one of them said, "what time is on that stopwatch?"

"Uh... four hours and thirty-two minutes."

"Good."

The kerbal stepped out of the shadows and Jeb gasped. "How did you know I was coming here?"

"Because," the second kerbal said, "I helped him."

Jeb was surprised to see Pablo and Val greeting him, but he wouldn't let anything damper his celebration. "I did it!" he shouted. "I set the record for driving Route 77 coast to coast!"

"Yes..." Pablo said. "The problem is, Route 77 is about six hundred kilometers from end to end, and you just drove it in four and a half hours. Some simple math shows us that your average speed on the route was about one hundred thirty-seven kilometers per hour. You exceeded the speed limit by over twenty-four kilometers per hour on the whole route. If you had read the fine print on page 66, then you would know that the Kuinness Book of World Records no longer accepts point-to-point road travel attempts that break the law."

Valentina nodded. "Thanks, Pablo. You can go now. I understand on the way here you saw a bar that didn't serve Kuinness."

Pablo hurried off. "Now," Valentina continued, "just what were you thinking?"

Jeb shrugged. "You know that I enjoy trying to make my life awesome."

"You're a public idol now. You can't just run off whenever you get any silly idea in your head."

"I disagree! The public loves this sort of thing!"

Valentina sat down on a bench overlooking the ocean. "I don't. Do you remember what it was like on the Kraken's Spit?"

Jeb was shocked to realize that he hadn't thought about his beloved dropship in months.

"We were a crew. We owe our life to each other, and in space, your recklessness doesn't make things more dangerous, because you have an instinct for when you need it. But now you're going off and doing all of this stuff by yourself, and I feel left out."

Jeb looked dubious. "You wanted to set the coast-to-coast record."

"No! I wanted to be a crew again. Now you only think of yourself."

There were a few moments of silence, broken only by the crashing of waves.

"Come on," Valentina said. "Let's go home. I brought my jet, so you should call a tow truck or something."

"I can just drive-" Jeb began, before looking at Valentina. "Yeah. A tow truck... or something."

He turned to a young kerbal walking by. "Hey!" he yelled. "Yeah, you! Want some money?"

Valentina found herself suppressing a smile in spite of herself.

The young kerbal started to walk away at a brisk pace, but something about the shouting stranger was familiar."Hey! You're Jeb Kerman!"

"And Val Kerman," Valentina said.

"Great to meet you. I'm Stella Kerman."

"Listen," Jeb said. "I'll pay you a thousand dollars to drive my car to the easternmost point on Route 77. Here's one dollar now, and I'll pay you the other nine hundred ninety-nine when you arrive."

Stella looked suspicious. "How do you know I won't steal your car?"

"Because then I won't be able to pay you."

"...And how do I know you'll pay me?"

"Because if I don't you'll steal my car."

Stella grinned. Valentina noticed, with some distress, that this grin was very familiar. "It's a deal!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At a KSP meeting the next day, Jeb expressed his support for the expedited development of a three-seat munar-capable spacecraft. Two hours later, Stella Kerman arrived with Jeb's car and checked into a motel.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

When I started this story a year ago, I had no idea where it would lead. A few things I definitely didn't see coming were the Duna base, the epic jailbreak around Jool, and especially the time-travel trope, which opened up new horizons for the story, and I hope the ins and outs of running a space program will finally let this project live up to its name. I shunned images for a few reasons, notably that I can't be bothered to make an account on an image-hosting site, and also that there is no way I could get screenshots good enough to live up to whatever you imagine the Dollar or Two universe to look like. I, for one, prefer a thousand words to a picture.

A few of you may have noticed that the character of Sunny Kerman was first mentioned in Sunny: The Memoirs of an Airline Pilot, which was based on my experiences building airliners in KSP. It had potential, but the few characters weren't well-established and in the end I would rather spend twice as long writing one Dollar or Two chapter than two uninspired fanfic installments. I really enjoy getting to practice my artistic skills on the forum, and the unique format allows me to do all sorts of unique things, like incredible cliffhangers (played for all they were worth when Jeb was on Eve and when the Krew was captured around Tylo). This makes me think of the 1930s' era of radio shows, where Red Rider would be trapped by evil cowboys one one side and a cliff on the other... and we'll see how ol' Red escapes next week, kids. Remember to drink your Ovaltine.

I would like to thank everybody who enjoys Making a Dollar or Two as much as I do; without you I would be lost in this endeavor. Your great feedback has helped me to expand on great ideas, ideas that would have died in the next chapter without your suggestions. Specifically, thanks to @Skylon for your general support of my early work, which I cannot read without wanting to tear my head off and planting it on a stake, and especially @KSK for your endless suggestions and "witty commentary" (butterfly tears and Sean Connery, page three). Speaking of @KSK, a few months back you suggested a version of "End of the Line" switched around to suit the needs of the deep-space Kerbal culture, similar to what I did with "Rawhide" and "Jailhouse Rock." I finally got to work on that suggestion, which I have pasted in below, and I hope you like it. Either way, I'm looking forward to doing "Radio Free Kerbol" at some point. It's also important to note that, in an effort to ensure higher-quality stories, they may be coming less frequently for about a month, and remember...

We're still broadcasting.

Well, it’s all right,
Riding around in the black.
Well it’s all right,
You know you’ll never get back.
Well, it’s all right,
You’re doing the best you can.
Well, it’s all right,
Living good in a tin can.

You can sit around and wait to pass Jool’s ring.
(The end of the line.)
Waiting for someone to deny everything.
(The end of the line.)
Sit around and wonder what the tug will bring.
(The end of the line.)
Maybe an o-ring.

Well, it’s all right,
Even if it all went wrong.
Well, it’s all right,
Remember that your ship’s not too strong.
Well, it’s all right,
As long as you got someone to blame,
Well, it’s all right,
Every day could be your last day.

Maybe somewhere, on some other day,
(The end of the line.)
You’ll think of me as a vacuum swells my face.
(The end of the line.)
Maybe somewhere, when somebody plays,
(The end of the line.)
Russian roulette, hey.

Well, it’s all right,
Even when push comes to blow up.
Well, it’s all right,
But you’re probably down on your luck.
Well, it’s all right,
Since the engine broke all you have is time,
Well, it’s all right,
We’re going to the end of the line.

Don’t have to be ashamed of the way I die.
(The end of the line.)
I’m just glad to be here, wishing I would survive.
(The end of the line.)
And it don’t matter if I scream or sigh,
(The end of the line.)
I’m dissatisfied.

Well, it’s all right,
You won’t become old and grey.
Well, it’s all right,
Don’t waste your oxygen with something to say.
Well, it’s all right,
You probably won’t even live.
Well, it’s all right,
Beg the space pirates to forgive.
 

Well, it’s all right,
Riding around in the black.
Well, it’s all right,
You know you’ll never get back.
Well, it’s all right,
If you crash into the sun as it shines,
Well, it’s all right,
We’re going to the end of the line.

[DunnoAnyThing]

So, is this story being continued again?
I'm enjoying really much!

[DunnoAnyThing]

Maybe giving Wernher or gene a jump to the future and back?

[Confused Scientist]

4 hours ago, DunnoAnyThing said:

Maybe giving Wernher or gene a jump to the future and back?

I have that planned down the line... way down the line. Think "Book Three".

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 18- Shaking Through, Opportune (Repeat)

After a fevered two years of development, the Moa IV was ready. Wernher watched, satisfied, as his team of a few dozen workers supervised the winch that was hoisting it to an upright position. Inland, the shell of the new rocket hangar- nicknamed Moa's Lair, sat, having been wheeled away from the launchpad.

Inside the control room, Gene was in a less jovial mood. The Moa was a completely untested rocket, and the future of the program depended on its success. Behind him, Jeb paced back and forth, and Gene was sure that if Jeb (and, for that matter, Bill, Bob, and Val) didn't have such a strange fear of cigarettes one would be hanging from his mouth. Val, Bob, and Bill were at the pad, ready to start inspections as soon as the rocket was vertical, and Sunny was off somewhere holding a press conference with the welcome aid of several shotguns.

"Flight, timer."

"Go, flight."

"Time to launch?"

"T-minus three hours and two minutes... mark."

Gene nodded. "Affirmative. Attention, all stations."

Jeb stopped pacing, and everybody in the control room turned from their consoles, not that it made any difference. The lights weren't very important to fix compared to the rockets, and the room was already dim before each controller lit up two or three or four cigarettes, and the haze in the air was like a black curtain drawn over the room. Gene cleared his throat and stood up.

"The Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company is right on our heels. They're maybe six months behind us, and even though they're going to make more mistakes, they can pour more money into Munstock until it either succeeds or blows up in their faces. With a two-month booster production time, every launch is critical, so do your best. I don't need to tell you that, but I wanted to tell you why."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"T-minus two minutes and counting."

"We're on internals."

"T-minus one minute thirty."

"Stage two boil-off vent closed. Launch pressure building."

"Flight termination system armed."

"T-minus one minute and counting."

"Hydrazine flowing to stage one pumps, engines one through four."

"Telemetry online, five by five."

"Forty-five seconds."

"Gimbals are good. Guidance is internal."

"T-minus thirty."

"Power is flowing to the stage two engine."

"T-minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten-"

"Turbopumps online."

"Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three-"

"Ignition!"

"Two, one, zero."

"Liftoff!"

"Roll program."

"Pitch, roll looks good. Stage one engine performance nominal."

"Passing one kilometer."

"Passing five kilometers."

"Passing fifteen kilometers."

"Stage two startup commen-"

"Flight, Guidance!"

"Flight, Tanks!"

"Flight, Comms!"

Gene didn't answer any of the calls. Through the cigarette haze, he could see the Moa IV disintegrate as it arced forward towards orbit. After a few seconds of silence, he found his voice.

"GC, Flight. Lock the doors."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two days later, film from the launch came back. Jeb, Val, Wernher, and just about everybody else watched a slow-motion replay of the accident, and soon the problem was pretty clear: "The side of the second stage blew up," Valentina complained.

Wernher nodded. "That's right where the second stage boil-off valve is. Sam? What's that valve do?"

A young engineer stepped out from the back. "The boil-off valve is used before launch to prevent the tanks from rupturing, before it's closed to let the tanks build up to their full pressure."

"So how could it fail-"

"At second stage startup, about a minute before stage separation, the valve switches to a third position, which allows the boil-off to bypass the engine and pressurize the ullage motors. The valve closes again about ten seconds after stage separation."

Wernher nodded. "Jeb? Can you conduct failure testing?"

Jeb nodded, and went over to the R&D complex. He opened a drawer and extracted a spare boil-off valve and a tank of compressed air. He attached the tank to the valve inlet, lowered his goggles, spun the tank valve, and spun around, covering his head.

Nothing happened. When Jeb turned around, the valve readings were at ten times operational pressure and it was still holding. After thinking for a minute, Jeb went outside and drove back to the Moa's Lair vehicle assembly building. Passing Wernher's office, Jeb went over to a cluster of engineers, who were inspecting a newly-delivered upper stage. Sam looked up, eyes widened at the sight of Jeb's face, and quickly turned back down to his work.

Jeb shoved his way through to the boil-off valve. "Take it apart," he told Sam.

"Apart?"

Jeb nodded. He wheeled over a table, and as Sam worked he set out the pieces and compared them to the blueprints. Once the whole valve had been removed and laid out on the table, nothing looked out of place, except for one strange plastic piece.

It was a dust cover. Probably nothing... Jeb thought. Then again, all of the other pre-flight support equipment is shown in this diagram. Jeb picked up the dust cover and hurried back to the R&D lab. Inserting the cover into the valve, Jeb pressurized the assembly, which burst immediately.

Returning to Moa's Lair again, Jeb went into Wernher's office and showed him the valve. "Good," Wernher said. "I was thinking it was something like that."

Wernher turned the valve over. "It's weird that this would even be installed, since all of our equipment is built in-house. You should go check the serial number."

Going back to the R&D complex for the third time, Jeb wished again that some nice kerbal would invent a computer so he wouldn't have to thumb through the parts catalog, which must have weighed at least ten pounds. After hefting it onto a desk, Jeb looked at the serial number and decided it would be near the back. Turning to the last entry, Jeb compared the dust cover and realized its serial number had at least four more digits than the longest one in the book.

On a hunch, Jeb raced to the airport in his Korvette and, thankful that skyjacking was still a thing of the future, ran onto the flight line towards a Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Kerbin Komet. Lifting up his toolbox, he opened up a panel in the back of the plane and looked at the serial number. His eyes widened.

Jeb broke the speed limit on his way back to the KSC and called Wernher and Gene into a janitorial closet for an emergency meeting. He explained his plan to them and they nodded. Wernher went out into the VAB and told the engineers that the problem was probably with a dust cover that had been installed in the valve by mistake, but that they wouldn't be sure until the next flight. Either way, the dust cover would be removed on the next flight.

On a quiet night two months later, Jeb crept out to the Moa IV's service tower on the eve of a launch and opened up the side of the second stage. Examining the valve, he found a dust cover. Silently, Jeb removed it and climbed down from the tower; at this point he was sure his theory was correct but he agreed with Wernher and Gene that they needed one more data point.

The second flight of the Moa IV was successful and within six weeks the next one was wheeled to the pad. Again, Jeb checked the boil-off valve, but this time there was no dust cover.

Jeb nearly fainted, but instead he closed the side of the rocket and ran back to the crew quarters as fast as he could. Bursting into Valentina's room, he asked, "Do you remember that time in Crystal City you told me you wanted things to be like they were on the Kraken's Spit?"

"Yeah..." Valentina replied.

"Well, one place we can start is extreme paranoia and watching our backs."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[DunnoAnyThing]

2 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

Part 18- Shaking Through, Opportune (Repeat)

YAY!

[Confused Scientist]

2 minutes ago, DunnoAnyThing said:

YAY!

Confused Scientist: Shaking Through!

 

[KSK]

“Listen all y’all, it’s a sabotage.”

- The Beastie Kerbs

Enjoyed that chapter! Gene’s flight control team have got the argot down cold and I liked Jeb’s investigation too. And jumping back a post or two, I did like the reworked ‘End of the Line’ lyrics. Very much.

Lastly - about the suggestions and commentary. You’re more than welcome - and if the suggestions get too endless just tell me to butt out! Your story, your rules, and it’s always much easier to be the guy in the peanut gallery throwing out suggestions than the person in the Trench doing the writing.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 19- Across the Hyperverse

The following is an audio transcript of a Munar landing simulation conducted after the design of the Phoenix landing vehicle was frozen:

Jeb: Five uprange, pitching over to keyhole entry.

Alice: NGS in detent. \Radar altitude three hundred meters.

Jeb: Three... two... one... ignition!

Alice: Delta-V five hundred, four-fifty, four hundred...

Jeb: On track in our landing ellipse.

Alice: Three-fifty, three hundred... Red light on gimbal two!

Jeb: I see it... switching to AGS.

Alice: Two-fifty, two hundred, one-fifty...

Jeb: Pitching up, throttling down.

Alice: One hundred... fuel ten percent.

Jeb: Perfect. I'll set it down right over there...

Alice: Fifty meters. Fuel eight percent.

Jeb: No more altitude readouts, please. Just fuel.

Alice: Six percent.

Jeb: Looks like we got some dust...

Alice: Five.

Jeb: Contact light! Engine shutdown, SAS out of detent.

[End of simulation.]

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Much to Jeb's excitement, computers had arrived at the Cape, and with them endless simulations. The Raven command module was about three months from completion, and production on the Moa was ramping up and it would soon be transferred to the regular Kontinental production lines when the last few kinks were worked out. Jeb, Bill, and Bob had been tapped for the first mission, so the newbies could have more time to train. Jeb suspected that on later missions he would fly with Hardbrett and Mermon, and Valentina had expressed a preference for her crew to be Alice and Franxie. Speaking of Valentina, she was there, talking to Jeb, Bill, and Bob in her room in the crew quarters.

"The simulations are going fine," she was saying, "but I'm worried about how the newbies would react to an emergency in an untested vehicle during the first landing. After the first landing, we can make the simulations perfect, but until then I don't think anyone except us- the Kraken's Spit crew- can cope with something going wrong.

Jeb nodded. "Of course, one of the 'Original Four'- that's what they're calling us orange suits, by the way- will be piloting the first mission, but the copilot is also essential for a safe mission."

"Of course, we could just use two orange suits on the first mission," Bill suggested.

"That might lead to a failure of imagination," Bob said. "Landing the Kraken's Spit is way different from the small, zippy Phoenix and having two crewmembers who only remember a giant dropship would be even worse."

"Well, there's only one thing we can do," Valentina replied.

"What's that?" Bill asked.

"We have to get geologists and researchers and experts and bring them in to work on the simulators," Valentina said, "and make the Mun as realistic as possible."

Jeb nodded. "When I was in there today they had us landing in a giant crater. Even knowing what size the regolith grains are will be invaluable."

Bob sighed. "I wish we had learned a little bit more about how our spacecraft worked back when we were flying them."

"Don't say that," Bill scolded. "We knew it all, but those were sixth- and seventh-generation dropships. Now we have to make some from scratch, so we'll make mistakes. I think before we're done we're going to have a lot of fun."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The experts arrived the next day, and each of them was convinced that their opinion was the only one that mattered, with some suggesting that the Munar regolith was made of powder and others being certain that there were lava tubes buried beneath the surface. In the course of two hours, Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val didn't hear anything that they couldn't disprove immediately, and eventually they developed a hatred of these researchers rivaled only by their resentment of reporters and sent them home.

"Well," Val said, "that was a bust."

Jeb nodded. "I suppose we should- wait!" He ran towards the door and grabbed a young geologist who hadn't said much of anything just before she left. "I know you from somewhere."

"Name's Stella Kerman."

"...Oh! I paid you to drive my car from Crystal City. How've you been?"

"Pretty good," Stella replied. "I took a job flying helicopters for geologists who wanted to look at really flat places in the middle of nowhere. I was so bored at their camps, I started building model rockets and hopping the helicopter and pretending I was landing on the Mun. Oh, and I also looked at some of the really boring theses that the geologists were writing and made my own theories on the composition of the Mun and the best ways to determine its geologic characteristics."

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val huddled for a minute.

"Vertical landing practice...," Jeb muttered.

"Model rockets...," Val whispered.

"Munar studies...," Bob gasped.

"And experiment plans," Bill sighed.

They turned around. "You're hired," they said, all at once.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb showed Stella around the KSC the next day, which included an up-close look at the next Moa booster.

"So you can see that we keep lots of spare parts on hand, that will eventually get used for more Moa rockets," Jeb said. "Now, if you'll follow me into this smaller hangar, I have something really special to show you."

Stella followed Jeb into a smaller area, more like a garage, and gaped at a half dozen workers swarming around a silver spider. "This is the bare bones of the Phoenix," Jeb explained. "You'll start training on the simulators, because you're a prime candidate for the first landing mission-"

"How will you reinforce the landing gear?" Stella asked.

"...What do you mean? It's doing fine right now, and it's in six times Munar gravity."

"Yeah, but you still need to put in the computers, and the fuel, and stuff. In fact, the way the gear's mounted now, as soon as you land the legs will puncture the fuel tanks."

"But this design is frozen..."

"It's also broken. You need to fix it."

Jeb stared at the Phoenix for a minute and swore before calling Wernher over. Jeb and Wernher huddled over a workbench for a minute, before Wernher ran out into the main VAB and Jeb walked back over to Stella. "You're absolutely right. How could you tell just by looking at it?"

"I must have an instinct," Stella said.

"Well. Anyway. Hey, since you said you had some theories about the Munar composition, we got you a gift that will help you write research papers and stuff. It's waiting in your room."

Jeb and Stella hopped in a golf cart and drove back to the crew quarters. Entering her room, Stella glanced at a large, bulky object shoved against the wall.

"What is it?"

"It's not much to look at," Jeb explained, "but it's an electric typewriter. You can run basic typing programs, backspace, and print stuff. Give it a try."

Stella sat down and typed for a few seconds before hitting print. Jeb took a look at the paper.

Recently, aiding dumb, ignorant observations framed radiantly enough; even keeping ergonomics readily became oppressively leaning.

Jeb grinned. "I see this is one of those research papers that seeks to edify the user through big words that don't mean anything."

"Yeah," Stella said. "The trick is to pick the right first letter of each word."

Jeb frowned. The first letter of each word...

He took another look, understood what Stella was saying, and fainted.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 20- Disturbance at the Rockethouse

Sun set over the space center, but the KSC did not sleep, with engineers working around the clock to get the first Raven ready for its maiden flight in three months before the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company flew their first flight, with the rumor being to make up lost time they were skipping one-seaters and going straight for the Munar-capable vehicle. At the administration building, Sunny Kerman stepped outside into the fading sunlight and listened to the crickets for a moment before getting into a golf cart for the drive to the VAB.

"Hold on!" A burly engineer came running up behind her. "Where're you headed?"

"Over to the VAB," Sunny replied.

"Good. I'm going over there too."

As they drove they passed the darkened construction sites that were the source of endless clangs and bangs all through the day. On the left there was a crew quarters expansion, on the left a larger hangar, and over by the coast where a crescent Mun was rising there were new launchpads going up.

"So," Sunny said, "I don't know you. What's your name?"

"Mason Kerman," Mason said.

"Pleasure to meet you. You know, you don't look like the other nerds building the rockets."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you look like you've been outside more than a day in your life. You're also way more muscular than anybody else here."

Mason shrugged. "I used to work in the security business. They like strong people."

Pulling up at the VAB, Sunny waved at Mason before getting out and grabbing a small tape. Walking through into the newly air-conditioned VAB, she went right over to Wernher's office and knocked on the door. Wernher pulled the door open, smiling when he saw Sunny. "What brings you here?"

"I've got a new intro for our televised press releases," she replied. "Is Gene here?"

Wernher shook his head. "He went into town with Mortimer to find someone we can hire to fix the simulators. Why, do you want to run the demo by him?"

"Nah, you're good too." They sat down in front of a television set. "I used the new computers for a sleek look," Sunny explained, "but I was careful not to get all sci-fi about it. I think I have a simple design that won't look futuristic now or outdated in ten years. Now," she said, standing to insert the tape, "keep in mind that this will also be our official KSP seal until further notice."

Wernher shut off the lights and sat down. A round seal appeared on the screen, blue with red trim around the edges, with rounded out red letters that said simply: KSP. Around the top of the seal there was a gold banner with silver trim and lettering that read "Rising to Glory," and along the bottom an identical one said "For All Kerbalkind." In the upper right corner a small blip of a spacecraft traced a red line in an orbit around Kerbin, and in the left corner a similar scene played out around the Mun. The background was pure black with perhaps a dozen small stars that were widely spaced near the bottom to help even out the image.

"I like it," Wernher said.

Sunny nodded and paused the tape. "The big blue patch will be painted on all of our spacecraft- without the banners, of course. This is just the official logo, for use on podiums, stuff like that. Also right here, for our intro before press conferences. I think we can stick with this for about four seconds while an announcer says something like, "Live from the Cape," and then we fade out into the press conference." Sunny unpaused the tape and after a moment the card faded away until it had been replaced by what had been on the tape previously: An airline commercial promising low fares on flights departing from countries with four or more consecutive vowels in their name.

"That's it," Sunny said. "I think it's-"

"Stop," Wernher said. Sunny shut up. Wernher inhaled once, then twice, and turned around with fear in his eyes. "FIRE!" he shouted. "Call the fire department, and for Kraken's sake, drain the liquid oxygen tanks!" Then, just before Sunny ran out, he issued a quieter command:

"And after you've called the fire department, call the police. Then start a background check into all of our employees and find anybody who might have been employed by the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, and Stella all sat in a small, dusty library in a lonely corner of the crew quarters, with the air still warm from the sunlight that was fading through of the high, narrow windows. There were cups of tea on the table, but nobody could drink as Stella told her story.

"So," she said, "where do I begin? Well, the important part is that I was dirt poor but I could fly anything with engines, so I took a low-paying job flying some old shuttle to all of the derelicts- Station Three, Colossus I, but mostly Station One, because there was no competition. I flew the Number Nine shuttle, just a small twenty-seater thing. Even then, we still had to fly to Colossus II after visiting Station One just to fill seats, and we were only flying once every other month. Anyway, we got a real low-rent clientele on the shuttle, if you get my drift, so I was surprised when some gentleman in a suit gets on board without a connecting ticket to Colossus II. I could have asked him why he wanted to get to Station One with his surprisingly heavy lander, but I didn't ask, and I'm assuming you guys didn't neither. I did assume he was trying to get to Munbase Two. Of course, this guy was Hudson, and you all were smart enough to go on the run when the IA started hunting for you, but I stupidly agreed to get interrogated by some of their burlier officers. They didn't like something I'd said, probably all of it, but they hauled me off to Minmus so I could be 'isolated' from people who might want to harm me for allowing the murder of half the Munar population, but then for some reason they got all panicky-"

"That would be because we busted up one of their corvettes around Minmus," Jeb interrupted. "Stole all of the fuel."

Stella laughed. "Figures, anyway, they ship me off to Gilly, and when we get there one of the cruisers bumps into a tanker, and it bumps into a ship, so the whole thing's a whole mess. In the chaos someone hands me a tiny radio, already tuned to Radio Free Kerbol. So, naturally, now that I'm locked up at Gilly you guys come in and mess everything up, get Valentina to join your gang, and the IA gets nervous and sends me all the way to Tylo, and everybody got really sad when Commissioner Mason Kerman announced that the Kraken's Spit crew had been captured. I spend a few months on the surface there, telling everybody that the Kraken's Spit was getting closer to Jool, and we make a plan to build our own ship and escape. Then a guard finds out and they decide to send me to Eeloo."

"The Interplanetary Authority was at Eeloo?" Bill asked.

"I think it was a real secret thing," Stella said, "probably where the built the S-bomb."

"S-bomb?"

"Singularity bomb. Anyway, they take me off the surface, haul me up to Detention Facility N036-B, and before they even open the door the whole station blows up. The centrifuge goes one way, some corvette goes off on its own-"

"That was us too," Bill explained.

"Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, I was alone in the transfer shuttle, so I went up to the controls and undocked, easy as that. I wanted to escape, and I ruled out Laythe and Vall, so I went to Bop. Of course, I left my transponder on and the IA followed me right in with singularity bombs. It's just bad luck that you were there, too. I was coming in over the north pole so I landed as soon as I could, but by then I think you guys had been spotted and they dropped the bombs. All I know is that there was a giant flood of rock and dust, and then I woke up in Crystal City." Stella laughed. "Of course, I probably had less to drink than most people who say that."

Just as Jeb was about to ask another question, Alice ran in. "Come quick!" she yelled. "The VAB has been burned to the ground."

Valentina gasped and stood up. "How are our launch assets?"

Alice sighed. "Nine out of eleven Moa boosters are fine, but the fire was right next to the Raven and Phoenix clean rooms. Both prototypes were burned to the ground, and development has been pushed back by at least nine months."

Stella stood up and turned towards Alice before clearing her throat and saying what they were all thinking: "This could be the end."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 21- Take a Picture Here

The red lights of the fire trucks reflected off of the ocean as the last of the VAB fire was put out. Jeb paced back and forth, stewing in his anger, before pulling Sunny Kerman aside.

"Did you ever want to be an investigative reporter?" he asked.

Sunny nodded, frightened by the look in Jeb's eyes.

"Take as much money as you need and run a complete background check on all of our workers in the clean rooms. If you find anyone with ties to the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company, bring them to Gene and we'll flush their clearance. If that doesn't work, then go to the previous place of employment of every engineer and ask questions. Then fly to the MDBC headquarters in Bobaville and ask to see their blueprints; if they've stolen some of ours then we definitely have a mole and we need to start spreading disinformation about our rockets. Go!" 

Meanwhile, Valentina, Wernher, and a fire chief were surveying the remains of the clean room. "Were there any hazardous materials stored in this area?" the chief asked.

Wernher shook his head. "The fuel silos are out by the launchpads, and we didn't apply any heat shielding resins to the spacecraft yet, so they were mostly just metal. The testing process used... we did have a small amount of liquid oxygen for testing purposes, but if the fire alarm goes off the workers grab them as they evacuate. I'll see who has the bottles."

The chief nodded. "About your fire alarm... it's hooked up to a tracking system, along with your burglar alarm and smoke detectors. We took a printout of the data from each one, and look what we found."

Valentina looked at the list. "The fire alarm was pulled... two minutes before any of the smoke detectors were triggered." She swore.

The chief nodded. "Looks like you've got yourself an arsonist."

Val ran out into the crowd of engineers and began asking them about the fire. Wernher lagged behind, but he was stopped by the fire chief. "You dropped your ID badge."

"No, I have mine right here," Wernher said. "Besides, that one's been melted from the fire."

The chief looked at it. "So it has," he said. "I'll throw it out for you." In the darkness, none of them noticed that bits and pieces of two words could be made out on the plastic: "-ary Aut-"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alice Kerman had been wrong when she'd estimated how long it would take to rebuild the Raven and the now aptly-named Phoenix. When Sunny Kerman had started her investigation of the KSP engineers, she had stumbled across duplicate blueprints of both the Phoenix and the Raven, cutting four months off of the recovery time. The engineers got to work cutting metal, but other than that the arson investigation had stalled, with the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company refusing to open their archives to Sunny, who had started going to the previous employers of every engineer and astronaut on the KSP payroll, starting at the machine shops in Juno's Landing and working her way out. By the time the Raven was stacked for its first crewed launch, she was halfway down the list and ready to fly to Bobaville again, not to visit the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company, but this time to question the previous employer of Sam Kerman. Instead, she stayed at the Kerbal Space Center to give the Raven pre-launch press conference.

Jeb ignored the new press conference introduction on the television behind him as he suited up in his orange pressure suit, and for the first time Alice and Stella donned white-silver ones. After a quick communications and pressure check, he flashed a thumbs-up, and grabbed his air conditioner and headed for the van that had replaced Wernher's truck. Arriving at the pad, Jeb could finally appreciate the raw power of a Moa set to launch: the four engine bells on their conical mountings; the orange foam of the first stage insulation glistening in the dawn; the clouds of boil-off swirling around in a faint breeze. Arriving in the white room, Jeb waved at Bill. "How are things?"

"One of the engineers got stung by a wasp in the LES. Other than that, things have been flawless so far. Bob and Val are waiting for you in the Raven." Heading over to the command module, Jeb could see them crawling around with checklists in the spacious service bay beneath the couches. Upon seeing Jeb, Bob and Val smiled. "She's all yours," Val said. "You can drive it from the showroom floor, unless you want the optional window defrosters, in which case we'll have to send it back to the shop."

Jeb laughed. "Save me a seat at the Bungalow Bar, because if you don't I'll just crash-land the Raven into the bar."

"Happy landings!"

The Raven crew strapped into the command module and Val closed the hatch. "POS disconnected," Stella said. "Pre-Launch Program 51 is loaded on the computer. Going through the checklist now. Nav platform?"

"Aligned with the reference beacon and adjusted for Kerbin's rotation," Alice replied.

"Life support?"

"Already cooling the capsule."

"Verify correct position of all switches."

There was a twelve-minute pause in conversation while the checks were performed. "Got 'em," Jeb said.

"Good. Abort mode?"

"One-bravo, ready to switch to one-charile at liftoff."

"Commencing capsule pressure checks. Visors locked and lowered."

There was a creaking sound as the capsule was pressurized.

"Holding at 1.2 atmospheres. In the meantime, how about control pipes in some music?"

"Sure thing, Raven. I have-"

"Hold it," Alice asked, "who's our CAPCOM?"

"Hansted here. I've got some tunes for you coming in right about now."

Well, if you
Ever plan
To motor west,

Jeb, take my way,
That's the roadway,
That's the best.

Catch some heaven
On Route
Seven-Seven.

Well, it winds
From Juno
To Crystal City

More than two
Hundred klicks
All the way.

Catch some heaven
On Route
Seven-Seven.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Inside launch control, Gene was radiant as the Moa's terminal count approached. Three kerbals were going to space, and despite all of the fires and explosions and mess-ups, the mission was turning out perfectly so far. As the access arms on the pad retracted, Gene turned to his team.

"T-minus two minutes and counting."

"We're on internals."

"T-minus one minute thirty."

"The stage two boil-off vent closed. Launch pressure is building."

"Flight termination system armed."

"T-minus one minute and counting."

"Hydrazine is flowing to stage one pumps, engines one through four."

"Telemetry online, comms five by five."

"Forty-five seconds."

"The booster and the crew are go for launch. Abort mode switchover imminent."

"Guidance is internal. Testing gimbals."

"T-minus thirty."

"Booster, flight!"

"Go, flight."

"Stop the launch! There's been a rapid pressure buildup in the first stage engines' gimbals!"

"Flight, timer, hold the launch!"

"We're holding at twenty-three seconds."

"Okay. Booster, can you isolate the problem?"

"Trying... can I get a visual on the booster?"

"There's a live picture on the screen now."

"I see! The stage one power line is still attached. The gimbal system uses full authority limiter on the pad, but when the power line is attached the hydraulic system is locked. Obviously one command got through, but not the other. I'm sending a retraction command again... it's worked! We are go for launch."

"Okay. Timer, reset the count to thirty seconds."

"Restarting the count on my mark. Three, two, one, mark!"

"Power is flowing to the stage two engine."

"Terminal count. T-minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten-"

"Turbopumps online."

"Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three-"

"Ignition!"

"Two, one, zero."

"Liftoff!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Inside the Raven, the muffled roar of the Moa's engines shook Jeb's body as he called out the roll program. All three astronauts were thrilled at the raw power and graceful engineering of the rocket as it hurled them out over the ocean.

"Abort mode two-charlie," Stella called.

As the rocket climbed, the acceleration grew, until Jeb could barely lift his arm. Raw, unfiltered sunlight streamed through the windows, which provided a much better view of space than the portholes on the Sparkler.

"Stage two startup."

"First-stage propellant down to five percent," Jeb replied.

"Prepare for separation."

There was a shaking and a boom that vibrated through the Moa's structure, and then the second stage was free, shoving towards orbit.

"Propellant-volatility below one."

"There goes the escape tower!" Alice exclaimed.

"Abort mode one-delta."

There was a flash of light and a muffled thump as the escape tower flew away from the nose of the capsule, exposing a dummy docking adapter.

"We're above seventy kilometers," Jeb announced. "Congratulations, you're now astronauts."

There was a bit of silence as the second stage continued its burn, then the acceleration ebbed. Nuts and bolts drifted towards the instrument console.

"Separation and roll," Stella said. "Solar panel deployment imminent."

Jeb exhaled. "Well," he said, "let's enjoy this moment of silence in honor of all of the busy, chaotic ones that are about to start coming."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

On 8/6/2018 at 1:22 AM, Confused Scientist said:

Inside launch control, Gene was radiant as the Moa's terminal count approached. Three kerbals were going to space, and despite all of the fires and explosions and mess-ups, the mission was turning out perfectly so far.

Don't do that to me! Everyone knows that that's a prompt for everything to go wrong.

Nice chapter though. Two new kerbonauts going to space today!

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 22- Take a Souvenir

Some people say that a simple "Thank you" is one of the greatest way to show one's gratitude for something done for them by someone else. They are, of course, wrong; the best way to repay someone is to pay them. Nevertheless, the crew of the Raven decided to thank the KSP's engineers, who were also being payed, for their great work on their spacecraft. "We'd like to thank Mason," Alice was saying, "for doing such a good job on the solar panels. Also Kennen for the RCS pods, Sam for the adapter between the SM and the CM, and especially Yanny for the Raven afterbody, cramming in computers, comms, life support, RCS fuel, RCS ports, a docking port, a docking tunnel, and parachutes. Of course, if the parachutes don't work we won't have time to complain."

Stellla Kerman laughed. After so long in deep space, neither her or Jeb had lost the streak of gallows humor that runs in every pilot trying to make a dollar or two.

"Also Gene, who I would estimate is on his third cigar by now. Wernher, too, who of course was the design chief for-"

"Ah, hold on," CAPCOM called. "We have something on Air-to-Ground Three."

"Are you sure?" Jeb asked. Air-to-Ground Three was the secure, confidential line. "It's not the flight surgeon, is it? I'm not thanking that weasel."

"Just turn the dial," CAPCOM ordered. Jeb obeyed.

"We've got a huge problem!" Bob yelled, causing Jeb to rip off his headset and massage his temples before turning down the volume. "Sunny's on the phone with the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company, trying to get their flight plans, and she's threatening to let the whole press know if they don't release the ship's designs and orbital-"

"Bob. Calm down. What is the problem?"

"We think the MDBC just launched their two-seater Popeye spacecraft and our computers say it's going to come within a hundred meters of you guys!"

"What?"

"They're going to try an EVA, but there's no way to know if they're going to rendezvous with you, or crash into you, or what, because the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company is keeping the whole thing a secret!"

"Any theories?"

"Val thinks they're either going to rendezvous and EVA over to sabotage your ship, or EVA over and steal whatever designs they haven't already gotten from their mole. I think they're starting to suspect we're sending out phony documents to throw them off our tail, so they decided they'd just take a look at the real thing."

"Any chance the Popeye is without crew?"

"They've already done two kerballed tests, so there's almost certainly crew on this one, especially if they want the record for first EVA."

"I understand. I'd prefer to get off Air-to-Ground Three now."

"Good luck."

Jeb looked at his crew. "The Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company just launched a Popeye and it's going to rendezvous with us."

"What?"

"That's what I said. Come on, let's do the engine tests and get out of here. Strap in!"

Stella nodded and keyed the radio. "Control, we're ready to begin the engine test one revolution early. Can we get burn data?"

"Copy, we are adjusting our schedule by one orbit. For maneuver number one, we show you prograde at eighty percent thrust for ten seconds, one hundred percent for five seconds. Apoapsis: 350 km. Periapsis: 110 km. Engine gimbals at ignition up 0.1048, left at 0.7202, adjusting to down 0.0924 and left 0.7322 at the burn's completion. RCS jet ullage five seconds prior to scheduled ignition, and manual engine cutoff if seventeen seconds of burn time go by without a delta-V computer shutdown. Now, in the first row of the PAD, copy down the following sequence: 32001048, 3207202..."

Another twenty minutes passed as the burn was copied into the computer. With all three astronauts strapped into their couches, the Raven passed into darkness. Jeb admired the view out the port docking window, when a glint caught his eye. He loosened his straps and pressed his head against the viewport, expecting to see their discarded second stage. Instead, a silver ball with a squat brown cone on one side was rotating and firing RCS jets.

"The Popeye is sixty seconds out!" Jeb called. "Stella, how long until the burn?"

"Four minutes."

"I'm rolling the ship to get a better view of the Popeye."

Small jets fired underneath the cone and the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company ship stopped just a few dozen meters from the Raven and a round hatch with a tiny porthole opened. A kerbal in a brown suit jumped out and used a small gas-gun to steer towards Jeb's ship.

"Well," Jeb muttered, "they finally have one 'first' record. Alice! Disable SAS, then key Program 12 into the computer and get ready to execute on my command!"

"Okay, SAS is off. What is it you intend to do?"

"I'm gonna send that spacewalker for a ride on... a merry-go-round, I guess? Hold on." Jeb grabbed onto the control column as the other astronaut got within a few meters of the Raven and reached out for a handhold. With three seconds to go until impact, Jeb shoved the stick all the way over to the right. The powerful RCS thrusters, meant for spinning a much heavier Phoenix/Raven stack, sent the ship into a strong roll. Without any time to react, the spacewalker hit the side of the service module and was thrown out to the end of her tether.

"Execute Program 12!" With computer control, the Raven cancelled out its roll and re-orientated itself to the burn orientation. Just a few seconds later, Program 32 flashed an "Execute" message and began the maneuver, with the Raven's powerful engine- again meant for towing the Raven and the Phoenix- shot the ship away from the disoriented spacewalker and her craft.

Stella was laughing. "I'll say we gave them the slip there!"

Jeb was more analytical. "We have more fuel and better acceleration, so... yeah! They couldn't catch up if they wanted to!"

The CAPCOM breathed a sigh of relief. "Raven, you're LOS in thirty seconds. When we re-acquire, we'll send you data for a plane change burn."

"Copy. Raven, over and out."

As Mission Control faded into static, the crew took a moment to relax before they had to key up their next burn. "Hey," Alice said, "no one's ever been able to move about in zero-g before. I'm going to go down to the instrument bay and fly around." She unbuckled her straps and shakily flipped around, nearly kicking Stella in the face. Jeb was about to join her when he remembered that floating gracefully around the capsule would be a dead giveaway of his prior experience.

"What's it like?" Stella asked. Like Jeb, she stayed in her seat.

"I don't know where my legs are!"

The radio crackled. "Raven, Juno, AOS at Bigfield Tracking Station."

"Juno, Raven, we are ready to receive the numbers on our next burn."

"Copy. Set Program 42 SAS mode att-hold, directional value seven for anti-normal, and then manual forward translation on the RCS for ninety seconds."

Alice got back in her seat. "Okay, SAS Program 42 running. Attitude dial on seven."

"Good! We'll count you off for the maneuver on our mark."

"Thanks," Jeb said. "Hey, who are we talking to?"

"It's me! Bill!"

"Sorry, Bill! We have a garbled connection. Okay, when's our burn?"

"Three, two, one, mark!"

The four RCS quads lit up and the Raven very slowly lowered its inclination as Stella counted off the burn duration. "Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety!"

"Thrust cutoff!" Jeb announced.

"Program 42 terminated," Alice replied. "Juno, burn complete."

"Glad to hear it," Bill said. "Raven, you're LOS at Bigfield in thirty seconds. We'll pick you up at Punto de Camarones in about two minutes. We'll deorbit you then, and pick you up for the downhill ride at KSC Local."

"Roger," Jeb said, "LOS at Bigfield, with retro at Punto de Camarones and entry interface at KSC Local."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Twenty seconds to retro," Alice called. "Program 74 is in with retrograde hold."

"Proceed."

The Raven crew waited in silence for a few moments, and then there came the muffled rumble of engine startup and the return of gravity. After a few seconds the burn was over. "How are our residuals?" Jeb asked.

"All balls," Alice replied.

"Good."

"LOS at Punto de Camarones," Stella said. "And... AOS at KSC Local!"

"Okay, good to see you're coming in for a landing," Bill said. "At one hundred ten kilometers jettison the SM."

"Mmm hmm... Looks like we're there now!" Jeb turned the handle to dump the service module. The pyros fired, and Stella began reading off the entry RCS checklist before a jolt and a thud rocked the cockpit. Frowning, Jeb grabbed the control column and pushed it forward. The capsule's rotation was sluggish, too sluggish.

"Ah, control, we have negative SM sep."

"What?"

"My best guess is that the pyros fired, but the straps are still attached. We're down to ninety kilometers now."

"Are you going to have control on your way down?"

"I guess we'll see."

The three kerbals in the capsule waited as the atmosphere rushed up to greet them. "Seventy kilometers," Alice said to no one in particular.

"Alice, kill all the re-entry programs," Jeb ordered. "I'm flying this one by hand." Just as he said that, a very slow rocking began and Jeb corrected with some yaw to the right.

"Raven, we think you'll be in the plasma blackout in ten seconds. Contact us and start your beacon when clear from kshhhhhhhhh-pop-shhhhhh..."

The radio faded into static as Jeb fired an RCS burst to correct the pitch. The capsule had begun a very slow barbecue roll, but Jeb had bigger problems.

"The solar panels sheared off," Stella observed. "Lucky they did no damage."

As the plasma began to light up outside the windows, Jeb began to sweat. He pushed the control column all the way forward, and then pulled it back, trying to keep the front in front and the back in back. Finally, at forty kilometers, Jeb lost the battle and the Raven tumbled end over end, with plasma ebbing and flowing, softening the side of the capsule, until-

The straps holding the service module in place broke and it went tumbling away, just visible in Stella's window. Within seconds, the capsule's attitude stabilized. "Alice, reactivate Program 51," Jeb said. "If we're lucky we can still make it into our landing zone." Just a few seconds later, the sky began to turn blue again and the plasma faded. As soon as the radio stopped crackling, Jeb started a running banter with Bill in Juno Control.

"Raven, Juno Control, come in. Raven, Juno-"

"We read you, Juno, loud and clear! Here come the- oof! -the drogues! How are we?"

"You're right above the target zone and we'll have a helicopter to come get you in a few minutes."

"Glad to hear it! Here they come- four mains! Have you ever seen something so beautiful, how they twist in the wind?"

"I have- it's called coffee."

"Radar altimeter says twenty meters... ten meters... here we come! Oof! Like a sack of bricks!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb, Stella, and Alice stepped onto the aircraft carrier as their helicopter went back for their capsule. Approaching a microphone, Jeb began, "The United Territories of Orchidia is the greatest nation-"

"We have no time for that," Sunny said, stepping from behind a small chopper. "I flew to this aircraft carrier on short notice to tell you that we need you to get on another helicopter."

"Again?" Stella asked.

"I'll explain on the way," Sunny said. "The Popeye began its retro-burn just a few minutes after you went into LOS, and if we hurry we might be able to catch them in one of our alternate recovery ships. If we can recover the crew and capsule before the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company does, we can claim we were helping out with the rescue and then make a copy of the flight data recorder and interrogate the crew. This is war, and as long as we keep our attacks less aggressive than theirs they can never take us to court. Keep that in mind from now on- Look!" Sunny pointed out the window at circling helicopters and multiple aircraft carriers. Far above the din, a small silver ball was descending beneath a parachute.

As soon as the helicopter landed on the KSP's aircraft carrier, Jeb, Alice, Stella, and Sunny hurried into a control room off the bridge where some Navy officers had hijacked the feed between the Popeye and its mission control.

"We're doing real good here up here," one of the Popeye astronauts was saying, "and we can't wait to tell everybody how we were able to do the first ever space rendezvous with the Raven."

Alice crossed her arms. "I still can't figure out how they were able to rendezvous so easily. We're still at least six months from rendezvous capabilities."

"Well, remember," Jeb said, "that the hard part about rendezvous is putting the calculations in the flight computer. In that respect we're ahead, since they need to do a whole other spacecraft after this- their Munar spacecraft- while we've already begun flight testing-"

"Quiet!" Sunny snapped. "Something's happening on the radio!"

The Popeye astronauts were yelling. "Fire! Fire! We're bailing out!" Just as Stella heard that, she looked out the window and saw two kerbals in brown pressure suits eject from the capsule and deploy orange parachutes.

Jeb's eyes were wide. "A fire! Do you think they're okay?"

"I didn't hear any alarms," Stella said. "They probably just bailed out so they can cut the parachute to make sure we don't get the flight data recorder."

Just as she said that, the Popeye's parachute lines were cut. "Wait..." Jeb said. "I feel like that's going to come down right on top of-"

The Popeye smashed into the deck of the aircraft carrier.

"Hurry!" Stella shouted. "If we hurry we can get the black box before we have to abandon ship!"

The Popeye rolled off the carrier deck and into the ocean. Stella swore.

"I think we should leave," Jeb said, "and never speak of this again."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 23- Cuyahoga is Gone

Normally, the quarterly report would have been organized in a large conference room with a mahogany table and cameras to document the successful passing of another few months without a large unplanned explosion. Instead, paranoia around the KSC was more rampant than ever, and Wernher made an executive decision to deter eavesdroppers and spies by barricading the door of a break room and turning the radio up.

Well if you ever plan to motor west...

"Good morning," Mortimer said. "I'm going to start off by saying I have some good news and some bad news."

"Well," Valentina said, "no point in dancing around things. Let's get to it."

Jeb, take my way, that's the roadway that's the best.

Mortimer sighed. "Sales of the Kloncorde are starting to slow a little with the competition from Bloeting, and we need to start pouring money into the next big thing, the Kontinental A Series. The airlines already have orders and options lined up, but it's going to take a few more months to get it finished. It's got three engines in the back and it's a smaller, fuel-efficient option for smaller markets. Unfortunately, with the differences from the Kloncorde it's going to take a lot more money to fix the last few problems."

Catch some heaven on Route-

"You know, I don't really think that radio's necessary," Wernher said. Turning to Mortimer, he continued. "What's the good news?"

"That was the good news."

Jeb gulped. "Uh-oh."

"The bad news is that the KSP currently has a negative cash flow compared to the Kontinental company as a whole."

Bill wasn't a businessperson. "And," he asked, "what does that mean?"

"It means," Jeb explained, "that it costs more money to operate the space program than it brings in."

Mortimer nodded. "I'm willing to suffer a loss with the KSP for advances elsewhere- jet propulsion for airliners, for example- but if the A Series is delayed another three months we'll be down to contingency funds. The sabotage situation is just sucking too many funds from accounts meant for the commercial airplanes program. We need to find a way for the program to make its own money, drive a profit even if the technological advancements dry up. Any ideas?"

All heads turned towards Valentina. "Uh... I'm not sure why you think I'm the creative one. Well, we have rockets. Can we sell those as a product or service?"

There was silence around the table before Gene spoke up. "Oh! I know! It's..." He bowed his head. "Sorry. I thought we could sell our rockets to Munstock, but that would be counterproductive."

Another hour of failed ideas passed until the room smelled of sweat and stale coffee. Finally Mortimer grimaced. "I'm sorry to say this," he announced, "but I'm going to have to temporarily cut funding."

"But my mission launches in two days!" Bob cried.

Mortimer nodded. "We launch Raven II, then we take a vacation for a while. The Munar schedule may slip, but I assure you that buying out Munstock with our governmental reward is still a high priority-"

Sunny leaped up from her seat. "I've got it!" she yelled. "Gene, you were in the Air Force, right?"

Gene shrugged. "On and off through the last months of the war."

"And how would the Air Force feel if they could have the Navy be dependent on them for real-time, one-hundred percent accurate surveillance capabilities?"

A smile slowly crept across Gene's face. "Quite thrilled, I imagine. They'd be willing to pay a handsome sum for that."

"I'm sorry," Bob broke in, "I don't get it. What would the Air Force be paying for?"

"Cameras and corporals in space," Sunny replied.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cameras in space didn't have to wait for the Air Force, of course. As a demo for the photography the Air Force could expect, Ilda and Hardbrett took many pictures of the communist nations from their high orbit around Kerbin as Bob held the Raven steady- and, of course, reminded himself that in the past, communism wasn't as acceptable was it would be in his own time. Four orbits in, Bob reported on the images they had taken. "We have a beautiful view from up here, Juno," he reported. "All of us are looking forward to seeing these things developed."

One of the main reasons he refused to touch the cameras was because he was secretly confused by the film- Why can't I see my picture as I'm taking it?

"We copy, Raven. You're LOS at Olympia Territory on my mark. Three, two, one, mar- Kshhhhhh..."

Bob sighed and leaned back in his seat. "On the next flight we'll be ready to try an EVA," he said. "Who do you think the lucky candidate is going to be?"

"Valentina," Ilda said. "She's smart and confident. And strong enough to get back in if something goes wrong."

Hardbrett nodded. "It's hard just getting to the instrument bay without a pressure suit."

"Hey!" Bob shouted. "We have the Kloncorde for microgravity parabola flights, but what about a pool? We could inflate the suits so they're neutrally buoyant, and we'd be able to simulate spacewalks perfectly."

"That's a good idea," Ilda agreed.

Bob took out a notepad. "I'll write it down for when we get back. Okay," he said, looking at the clock, "we're AOS at Bigfield in five seconds.. mark!"

"Raven, Juno, Raven, Juno, come in-"

"We copy, Juno. Can you start reading the plots for our retroburn?"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Raven came down in a long, skimming reentry to test the heat shield's endurance for a Munar return. As the capsule became subsonic and the parachutes deployed, Bob prepared his crewmates for impact. "The seat shock absorbers go to full extension fifty meters above the surface," he explained, "but make sure all of the bins above your head are properly secured for the splashdown. Tighten your straps, since you won't need to reach for any switches. Get ready!"

Still scorched from the heat of entry, the Raven splashed into the sea, nearly capsized, and returned to a straight-up neutral position. "It's good to be back!" Bob exclaimed. The crew was grinning as their helicopter touched down on the carrier.

The door opened and Bob looked out at a crowd of sailors with their hats in their hands, gazing down at the carrier deck. No longer smiling, the crew ran over to the captain. "What happened?" Bob asked.

"The President has been shot," the sailor replied.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The meeting with four Air Force generals was a solemn one, with discussions about "the late President's wishes" and "the preservation of the previous President's legacy". Mortimer couldn't tell for sure whether the new President, who looked like a bad puppet, wanted to work with the KSP. Finally, he came out of the door and addressed the small crowd of the space programs most important kerbals: Gene, Wernher, Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, and Sunny.

"They want a space station," he said. "I was able to get you into the meeting to close the deal." Mortimer led his colleagues into the meeting room and shut the door behind him.

There were three generals, and the one on the right did the talking. "I'm General Boedecker. After discussing things with Mortimer, we have come to the agreement that we want a space station where surveillance officers can develop film pictures of the communist forces."

Wernher stepped forward. "I can't guarantee that we will be able to meet the specifications of your station."

"And," Gene added, "delays are a certainty with something as ambitious as this."

As Boedecker's face soured, Jeb shook his head. These people don't know how to close a deal.

"Listen, General Boedecker, what price has Mortimer agreed to?"

"Ninety million."

"And what price would you like to pay?"

"Sixty million."

Jeb regarded his opponent coolly. Boedecker probably expected to pay at least seventy-five million. "Well," Jeb said, "let's take a look at these prices. We think the space station will take fifty million dollars to develop and build, plus another twenty million for an upgraded booster. We can also provide boosters and spacecraft to fly to the station, at a price of twenty million per launch. However, if you throw in an extra thirty million now, we'll lower that price later on. Now, if you would like us to train your crew for you, that's an extra fifty thousand per mission, and if you would like to use our tracking stations that's another fifty thousand. So, adding it all up, our offer is eighty-five million. Take it or leave it."

Boedecker's mouth hung open for a moment before he regained his wits. "No deal."

Jeb's eyes widened. "We will knock ten million off if we can fly three missions to the station first, and as a bonus we will conduct testing and make sure everything is ready for use. And if you would like more stations later we can offer them at a discount."

The generals turned and discussed things with each other for a moment before facing the group again. "We'll do it."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The following is an audio transcript of a phone call between Gene and Jeb from later in the day when the sale was negotiated with the generals.

Gene: That was great! You got us a price that includes bonus fees later and gives us use of the station first. Did you ever work at a used car lot?

Jeb (laughing): No, but Bill, Bob, and I used to be an independent courier. I was in charge of negotiating the sales.

Gene: You know, I still don't know what you did before I found you on my doorstep in some fancy pressure suit.

Jeb: That's classified.

Gene: Even the courier job?

[Seven seconds pass.]

Jeb: Can you get Wernher on the line while I find Bill, Bob, and Val?

[Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds pass.]

Jeb: Okay, is everybody here?

Wernher: Yes.

Bill: Yep.

Val: Mmm-hmm.

Gene: Yeah.

Bob: Yep.

Gene: What's this about, Jeb?

At this point, the recording devices were turned off for one hour and nineteen minutes.

 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

"I don't think they believed us, guys."

"Jeb - I wouldn't believe you - and I was there!"

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 24- Project 88

The Air Force was pushing the KSP for a space station in three years, but they needed the money sooner than that. As soon as the first A-series jet was delivered to Northern Airways, engineers were sent from the main Kontinental plant in South Point to Juno's Landing. Some worked on the improved booster for the station launch, others took a first-stage liquid oxygen tank and worked on turning it into the Orbiting Scientific Laboratory, with an incredible estimate of just nine months' construction time. All in all, there would be four years left to work on the Munar landing.

Wernher and Val walked towards the station's clean room, admiring how quickly the program had adapted to the new challenge. Only two Moa boosters were left in the hangar; one was being mated with Raven III for Valentina's flight and the other was being modified as a test bed for an improved version. All the others were at the South Point production line, flown in two weeks before hand on a Guppy cargo plane.

They met Bill near the prototype Moa, and Wernher notice he was holding a clipboard. "The Munar deadline has got a year of wiggle room now," he explained, "but sabotage will push that back by a lot, so Jeb and Bob and I are all getting our hands dirty with whatever engineering jobs we can find. Of course, we've also been flying the Kloncorde on paid microgee missions, but we found some pilots on the tarmac at Juno who were willing to take that over."

There was a loud rumble that quickly faded until it was like distant thunder. "There goes the Navy satellite," Wernher explained with a smirk. "They were so jealous when they heard the Air Force was getting a station, so they paid us to put a radio transmitter on a Lithium. I assume that the Air Force eventually took the pot in your time, though."

Bill and Val looked at each other before Bill spoke up. "Actually, Wernher... there was a war. Sixty minutes of fire, and then it was over."

Wernher gasped. "Nuclear war?"

Bill nodded. "Afterwords there was just one global nation, so the armed forces were just limited to counterterrorism units until Duna and Laythe began to push for independence ten years before we fell through the portal. Then there was a rapid military buildup, but nobody saw it happening until the attack on Munbase."

There was an awkward silence until Val stepped in. "That led to the singularity device we told you about."

"So there was just one nation?" Wernher asked.

"Yep. The colonies were just colonies, at first. Now they're more like territories of the United Kerbin Socialist-"

"Socialist?" Wernher yelped.

"Yeah," Bill said. "Why?"

Wernher lowered his voice. "In this country, it is not considered very patriotic to be a communist."

Val shrugged and turned her attention to the Moa. "Sorry. So, Bill, how are the modifications coming along?"

"We've already lengthened the stages, but the boosters are a trickier problem. We need to find some mounting points, and then do endless wind tunnel simulations to make sure they don't come back towards the core stage after separation."

Wernher nodded, and then led Val and Bill in a sprint across the production line floor to the OSL, dodging welding benches and drafting tables. The order of the Moa days was gone, replaced by a chaos of subcomponents being assembled anywhere they could fit between workbenches cluttered with blueprints. Already, in the three weeks since construction on the OSL had begun, the engineers on the floor had reported a better learning curve and a lower rate of defects.

As Valentina passed one bench, she heard a phone ringing and looked over. Sam and Mason were working at a diagram of the OSL's solar arrays, and before they even looked up a new engineer walked up and took the call. "Muskrat Works, how may I help you?"

Bill looked at Wernher. "Muskrat Works?"

Wernher shrugged. "It's from a comic strip, I think. Someone brought it in one day, taped it on the door of a room where they were testing a new ramjet engine, and the name stuck. The ramjet test was the first part of Project 88, where we shift our focus away from Moa boosters and towards the commercial, experimental applications of our work, such as fighter engines and efficient airliner wings. Then in the later stages, we make our own experimental aircraft."

Bill, Val, and Wernher arrived at the skeleton of the OSL and Jeb ran up to greet them. "Just in time!" he exclaimed. "We're about to install the IMU platform and guidance computers! RCS, gyros, we're about to put in this thing's brains."

Looking past Jeb, Val could see the OSL resembled a first stage LOX tank in only the loosest of ways. The ends had a more gradual taper, and an external framework was being built to support the added weight of a laboratory. The framework extended past the end of the tank, where a large cavity was prepared for the IMU, which sat on a cart a few meters away. Further away on the production line floor, various pressure bulkheads, thermal insulation panels, and windows were in various stages of construction for the space station, radiating out from the main center of operations.

Jeb turned to Val. "I think we've hit on something. Right now, we're two weeks ahead of schedule."

Bill's eyes widened. "Did you say two weeks?"

Jeb grinned. "There's nothing like being a Muskrat."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Valentina took one last at Alice and Franxie, raising the sun shield on her visor for a few seconds so she could flash them a quick smile. Then she keyed the microphone in her suit, calling Jeb in Juno Control. Her voice came through with hisses and pops of static, but through it all the reporters and engineers packed into the control room on the ground could hear just how excited she was.

"We're strapped in," Alice said. "The cabin pressure is almost at zero... closing the release valve now."

Valentina opened another valve in the capsule's hatch. "Confirmed at zero pressure."

Jeb keyed his microphone. "Raven, Valentina is good to open the hatch."

Valentina grabbed the hatch's large handle and swung it through ninety degrees, where it locked opposite the hinges. Then she braced against her empty acceleration couch and pushed very slowly, drifting towards the endless stars and galaxies, quasars and nebulae.

"Juno," she said, very quietly. "I'm out." I've forgotten how incredible this feels.

There were a few moments of applause in the control room, then Gene called for silence. "CAPCOM, tell her to try and climb forward to the docking array. We want to see how it did through the launch."

Jeb relayed his request to Val, and she spooled her tether out behind her and grabbed onto an RCS port to swing around to the front of the nose. "The port doesn't look too good," she said. "Some of the latches aren't even there."

Inside the capsule, Franxie nodded. "We saw the same thing after each mission, but we weren't sure if it was from re-entry. Now we have proof that the escape tower damages the port as it comes away. Either way, the next capsule has the escape rockets integrated into the afterbody up there... one of them's right next to that RCS port you're holding on to. They're rotated out so that they fire parallel to the capsule."

"I helped design them," Alice said. "If they aren't used for an abort, then they have a different ignition mode that reduces their thrust so we can use them as retro-rockets, descent braking rockets under parachutes, you name it."

"Neat," Val replied. "I'm going to head aft to check on the solar panels." She climbed back down to the hatch when a thump! made her turn her head.

"Aw, mother of-"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A light flashed on a console in Mission Control. "Flight, EECOM."

Gene looked up. "Go, EECOM."

"Flight, we've lost pressure readings on the SM tanks."

"Copy. CAPCOM, tell Alice to-" Gene was interrupted by ten seconds of uninterrupted swearing coming from Valentina. "Raven," Jeb called, "everything all right up there?"

There was a brief silence. "Juno," Valentina said. "the service module has seperated from the capsule."

Gene rolled back in his chair and pinched his brow very hard. "Uh," Jeb stammered. "What?"

"The service module is floating away."

This is stupid, Jeb thought. "We'll uh... Man. This is... We'll get a tiger team on it."

"FIDO," Gene asked, "if we vented all of the propellant out of the spacecraft's vents, what would that get us?"

"Well..." the controller said, "normally four RCS quads give us an acceleration of two meters per second squared of z-axis translation. If we used the propellant in the command module to fuel one RCS quad, we'd get the same thing because the CM is one-quarter the weight of the SM. Let me do some math... the fuel in the CM would power one quad for forty-five seconds."

"Forty-five seconds at two meters per second per second is ninety meters per second," Jeb said. "That's enough for an entry."

"There's a problem," FIDO continued. "We have no translational thrusters on the CM."

There was silence for a few seconds, and then:

"There's a RCS transfer valve in the docking port," a voice explained. "If Val could get to the front and open it, it might be enough for a deorbit burn."

Gene turned around. Mason Kerman was standing behind him at the console. "As soon as I heard about the problem I hurried right over," Mason explained. Gene nodded.

"Okay, Raven," Jeb called, "set att-hold prograde. Valentina, climb up to the docking port and open valve 22-A."

Val nodded. "Alice, don't fire any thrusters. I'm crawling around the nose... Okay. Opening valve 22-A in three, two, one..." She gripped the crank in her hand and gave it one twist, and then another until white crystals shot out from the port. "Success!" Valentina called as she grabbed on for the deceleration. "I'm coming back in," she announced. "Alice will be able to turn the capsule into a reentry attitude with the propellant left in the pipes." As the capsule began its twenty-minute fall back into the atmosphere, Valentina hurriedly crawled back into the Raven and pulled the hatch closed behind her. "Five minutes to entry," she said. "Alice, rotate the capsule to the entry attitude. Franxie, give us an atmosphere."

Jeb watched as the signal from the capsule faded as it plunged into the atmosphere. "They're coming down right on target," he told Gene. "I'm going to find Sam."

"Why?"

Jeb turned and looked out over the control room. "I think we've found our security breach."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[DunnoAnyThing]

6 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

"I'm going to find Sam."

"Why?"

Jeb turned and looked out over the control room. "I think we've found our security breach."

*Gasps*

Edited August 28, 2018 by DunnoAnyThing

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 25- Supersecret Infinity

Sam Kerman waved at the rest of the team at the Muskrat Works and grabbed his coat, heading for the door with a blueprint in his hand. He left he massive hangar, alive with the sounds of drills and welding torches and passed through darkened hallways, with the last rays of twilight streaming through narrow windows in between design offices. He turned a corner, trying to remember where he had parked his car, and was already digging around in his pocket for his keys when Jeb and Val stepped out from an office and blocked the hallway.

Sam gasped. "Heading somewhere?" Jeb and Val asked, with small, joyless smiles on their faces.

"Home," Sam said. "Now, if you could just..." He tried to step around the blockade, but the astronauts were insistent. Turning around, he was startled to see Bill and Bob standing behind him. "What is this?" Sam asked, his voice rising. "Some kind of prank? Are you distracting me while Gene puts a rubber snake on my desk?"

"No," Jeb said, "we're doing that to Mason tomorrow. This is dead serious, Sam. Can we talk to you for a minute?" He reached out and shoved him into an office. Val, Bill, and Bob hurried in behind him, and Bob locked the door.

"Why don't you sit down?" Bill asked.

Sam looked around and sat behind a desk with a small plastic model of a cruise missile being developed for the Air Force. "Now," Val commanded, "listen up. You're aware of the security breaches and mysterious malfunctions that have occurred during some of the Raven missions, and we have reason to suspect you are guilty of the sabotage of the first unmanned Moa test, Raven I, and Raven III."

"That's not true!" Sam exclaimed. "I'm committed to the space program. It makes me happy to be able to be part of something so great as the Muskrat Works."

Jeb looked into his eyes, and saw a reflection of what he had been before arriving at Station One: a young, starstruck kid who thought he could do great things and make a career for himself on the side. Then Jeb remembered how his dreams had been crushed ten times over before he'd even met the smug con artist named Hudson Kerman. Jeb set his gaze back on Sam.

"The adapter failed twice, Sam. The first time, it was stuck on during reentry and the second time it left Val floating around without any rockets for a deorbit again. You're a good engineer, but you designed that adapter with a known flaw. Every time, you did some simple thing to mess up the mission like disarming the pyros to split the data cables during the SM jettison or shorting out a circuit to make the SM fall off early."

Sam stared at Jeb. "And what about the Moa explosion?"

Bob walked around to the front of the desk. "It would have been a very easy thing to install that dust cover when the Moa was on the pad."

"Circumstantial evidence, that's all you've got."

"That's what you think, Sam," Bill replied. "Sunny just got back from the Bloeting headquarters in Bobaville, and guess what she found?"

Sam went pale. "All right, I lied about my background-"

"You worked for the Bloeting Commercial Airliners Division!" Bill yelled. "That same company manufactured the dust cover that destroyed Moa I."

Nobody said anything.

"Sam," Jeb asked, "can we see that blueprint you're holding?" He took it from Sam and unrolled it. "Huh," he said. "You're working on the OSL's solar array."

"It's not the OSL anymore," Sam told him. "The Air Force calls it Project Cuyahoga, so the station is also Cuyahoga."

"Well," Jeb said, "you can leave, as soon as we go and look at those solar panels. Come with us."

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val led Sam back to the Cuyahoga clean room, tucked away in a corner of the Muskrat Works hangar. Jeb and Bill examined one solar panel, and Val and Bob took the other. They had barely begun searching when Bob gasped. "Found something!" he yelled.

Jeb, Bill, and Val hurried over. Bob was pointing at a small metal cap on the end of the folded up solar panel. "If it deployed like this it would be destroyed immediately," Bob said. He turned to Sam.

"Get out, and don't ever come back."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A full Mun hung over the KSC just after nightfall as the final seconds of the Cuyahoga's launch countdown ticked away. With a flash and a roar, the four new solid rocket boosters lit up, with exhaust shooting out from an improved flame bucket as the improved Moa shot away from the pad. Turning south over the ocean before it passed through the sound barrier, the rocket passed through the clouds in seconds and began the roll program that took it out over the ocean, where the captains of tankers and the engineers on oil wells would mistake it for a comet before the solid rocket boosters burned out and were dumped into the sea. A few minutes later, the big orange first stage finished its burn as well, and the Cuyahoga was already in space, racing towards dawn in its orbit. The second stage ignited, sluggishly giving the last kick needed for a circular three hundred kilometer orbit as the station burst into light as it flew over the south pole. Now that the second stage was gone and the guidance computer was activated, it was time for the solar panels to come out like the wings of a new butterfly, still damp from its chrysalis.

"That's my draft," Stella said. "I'm practicing for when I have to write about the Mun's geology after the first landing. What do you think?"

"It's really well written for a scientific report," Val replied.

Jeb nodded. "Even for a scientific journal, you still need a hook. For the Mun one, how about-"

Wernher came running in, his panting from the jog barely audible over the clacking of the electric typewriter. "What's wrong?" Stella asked.

"It's... Cuyahoga," Wernher gasped. "The... huff... solar panels didn't... gasp..."

"Are you okay?" Jeb asked.

Wernher shook his head. "Only one of the solar panels deployed," he told them.

Jeb looked at Val and swore. "Uh... we never actually did remove that metal cap, did we?"

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 26- Chronic Town

Gene set down his cigar and looked around at his frantic controllers. Interns were running through the room, bringing printouts and messages from the tracking stations under Cuyahoga's polar flight path. Over the general din of alarms and hushed voices, one of the controllers keyed her mike. "Flight, Guidance, Cuyahoga is tumbling."

"Guidance, as soon as we can get the nav platform aligned you'll be able to stabilize it. Maximize the solar exposure on the panel we have."

"Flight, Booster."

"Go, Booster."

"Flight, we never got an indication that the spacecraft separated from the booster."

"Understood. Guidance, you may have an offset center of mass."

"Copy."

"Flight, EECOM."

"Go, Flight."

"Are there any systems that won't work if the booster is still attached?"

"We won't have any cooling. The computers will fry and the inside will be filled with toxic gas."

"Guidance, can we orient the station head-on to Kerbol?"

"We'll lose all power on the remaining solar panel."

Sunny ran up. "Gene, I need information. The reporters are like wolves."

"Talk to Wernher," Gene replied. "I'm almost out of breath."

Sunny nodded and ran off, passing a small huddle of engineers holding a squawk box with the feed from Mission Control. After another minute of discussion, Mason ran off back into Mission Control.

"Gene," Mason said, "we have a solution to your thermal problem, but you're not going to like it."

Gene grimaced. "Go ahead."

"We can vent the atmosphere from the lab. The skin of the station will get really hot, but the stuff inside will be fine."

"What?"

"Look," Mason said. "If things inside the station break when they're exposed to vacuum, we can replace them when we launch the Raven. But if we lose guidance and control, we'll lose the whole station. Without any atmosphere in the station, we'll have enough cooling capacity to run the guidance computers."

Gene sighed. "Flight, EECOM."

"Go, Flight."

Gene took a deep breath. "EECOM, I need you to open the atmosphere dump valve, and leave it open. All stations, we're venting the air from the lab. If that messes things up, then figure out how to fix them. And you will fix them, because we are flying in space. We are Kerbin's finest engineering team, and there is no problem we can't solve. Do you know why? Because we will not fail."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

During a quiet LOS period, Wernher excused himself from the KSC to greet Mortimer Kerman at the airport. In the crew quarters, Boblock Kerman went down the hall and knocked on two doors. Connor Kerman and Risa Kerman followed him out towards the Mission Control. Opening the glass doors, they were hit with a wave of air conditioning, which did nothing to reduce the amount of sweat soaking through the shirts Gene and Jeb were wearing as they talked outside the control room. "It's stable," Gene was saying, "but we're going to have to pack Boblock's Raven full of tools and consumables to fix everything that's broken." He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," Jeb replied. He lowered his voice as Mason walked by. "Scientists in the future figured out that tobacco and nicotine are deadly. You need to stop smoking those things right away."

Risa blinked in surprise as Gene suddenly threw his pack of cigarettes over his shoulder, narrowly missing her head. "Hello."

Jeb and Gene whirled around, eyes wide. "Uh... yeah?" Jeb asked.

"Listen," Boblock said. "Is the plan still to send my Raven on a rescue mission to the Cuyahoga?"

"Yes," Jeb replied. "Raven IX will fly to the Cuyahoga and stay there for two weeks after repairing the station's systems. The basic plan hasn't changed much. We have some new rendezvous procedures for-"

"We don't want them," Connor said. "We want Raven IX to slip, let Valentina's mission fly first. The Raven X crew is three veterans, we're three rookies. If anyone can repair Cuyahoga, it's Val, Franxie, and Alice."

Gene gasped. "I don't think we can do that."

Boblock shrugged. "You're prepared to launch three Ravens in quick succession: Nine with me, Ten with Val, and Eleven with Jeb and Stella and Bob."

"No," Jeb said, "the EVA experience is a good idea. But we need the experience from Nine first. We need to know how to rendezvous, dock, and we want to see just what is wrong with the station. If you think you can fix it, you can; if you don't you come home. Either way, we have more experience for when it really counts, with Valentina on Ten. There are risks in all of this, and I think we're helping to get rid of some of them by doing it this way."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb couldn't remember ever feeling so bad as he did after twelve hours of sitting in Mission Control when Raven IX flew. Alice had come right in and taken CAPCOM, and on this flight all of the consoles down to Tanks were filled with engineers from the Muskrat Works. No way in a hundred years I'd take Tanks, Jeb had thought, so he'd sat in the back of the room for the whole flight, on the telephone with Sunny for most of the time. The liftoff had been exciting, and he'd watched the booster arch out over to the south with jealousy for the crew, since even though in his lifetime he'd walked on half a dozen worlds, he'd never been in a polar orbit around Kerbin. Two hours later, the Raven was on an orbit intersecting Cuyahoga's at two points... and that was as far as it got. On three consecutive orbits, the crew tried to cancel out the relative velocity, but on the first time the engine shut down early, with pressure warnings on the console and Tanks actually got a real engineering job for once.

Figures. Jeb knew the flight should have been aborted right then, that the rendezvous was unrecoverable, but instead he ran down to Gene's console and said, "Let's keep them in orbit. Try to fix this thing, at least get the station in sight." The crew did manage to take blurry pictures of Cuyahoga as they raced by at a closing velocity of nearly a hundred meters per second, but the flyby used up most of the fuel in the service module.

Alice radioed the bad news up to Boblock, Connor, and Risa. "You're below the abort margin," she called. "We'll send up the PAD data for the next orbit." The entry burn was executed flawlessly, and Jeb got a splitting headache when he realized that the Mun schedule had just slipped one mission down the line, that the money from the Air Force might never come.

A sound startled him, and he turned to see Valentina coming into the control room. "Jeb," she said, "you look terrible. Come on. Bill and Bob are all waiting outside, and we're going to drive into Juno's Landing and blast the town to pieces with rock and roll as soon as Raven is on the ground. You don't have to deal with everything yourself, and you don't have to fix everything either. Just come-"

A startled radio transmission from the capsule startled them. "Yeowww!" Risa yelled.

"What happened?" Alice asked.

"I think the braking rockets just fired!" Boblock exclaimed.

"How many?"

"Two, I think."

Gene broke into the conversation. "Flight, FIDO."

"Go, Flight."

"FIDO, if two braking motors fired, would that affect the landing target?"

"Not really, Flight."

Alice nodded and called the spacecraft. "You're good. But on landing, we'd like to request you don't fire your braking motors."

"Thanks, Alice. We can't wait to see all of you back at Juno real soon..."

The Raven went into the static of reentry blackout. "Let's go," Jeb said.  "Without the braking rockets I don't want to stick around for the splashdown." He stood up and walked to the door with Valentina, the golden rays of sunset painted across the lobby floor. Val reached out for the door handle, which rattled when she tried to turn it.

"This one must be locked." She tried the other handle, but it didn't budge. "Security!"

A skinny security officer came over. "Evenin', ma'am. What can I help you with?"

"Can you unlock the doors, please?"

"No can do, ma'am. The boss says these doors stay locked until further notice."

"The boss? You mean Gene?"

"If you need to get out, head back to the control room and take it up with him. Have a good night, now."

Val and Jeb headed back towards the control room. "Huh," Jeb said, before pushing the door open.

"I don't know, Flight! I think all of the braking rockets fired!"

Jeb and Val looked at Gene. Gene gulped, and spoke with a tremoring voice. "It's just... it can't just..."

A silence washed out over the control room, and Jeb ran up to Gene's console. "Gene! What's wrong?"

Gene turned to him, and Jeb saw a despair in his eyes that he'd never saw in any kerbal before. "It..."

He was interrupted by a young intern shouting by the screens at the end of the room. "We're about to get a live feed from a recovery helicopter!"

Everybody in Mission Control looked up at the television screen on the far room. A blurry, grainy image caught the edge of a helicopter's landing gear, seemingly just inches off the ocean. As the helicopter turned, the ocean was replaced by grasslands, then foothills, and then a snow-capped mountain, with smoke rising from it. The camera zoomed in, and in the center of the plume of smoke the charred wreckage of a space capsule and four twisted orange parachutes lay scattered across the mountain face.

Nobody breathed until an intern ran up to Gene and whispered in his ear.

"All stations," Gene said, "the recovery team-" He stifled a sob.

"All stations, the recovery team has confirmed the death of all three astronauts due to blunt trauma in a crash-landing." With that, Gene broke down sobbing, gasping for breath, looked up at the ceiling and shouted. "We made mistakes! We...," he continued, his voice falling, "we made mistakes. All my fault... all my fault."

We made mistakes. It was something that would stay in the head of every engineer and astronaut in Juno's Landing for a long time to come.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[DunnoAnyThing]

57 minutes ago, Confused Scientist said:

We made mistakes.

 

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 27- New Stars in the Sky

Rain and wind painted ghostly sheets on the runway that faded and twisted out into a grey wall of oblivion. Three K-37s sat with their engines idling, holding short on the asphalt for takeoff. In the distance, the faint outline of a Moa with a Raven mounted on top was outlined by the occasional flash of lightning. When the thumping of the rain on the canopies of the jets faded a bit they advanced their throttles in unison and rocketed down the runway, turning into the clouds just as hail began to pound down onto the launchpads and hangars of the space center.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gene looked off at the typhoon brewing on the eastern horizon for a moment before focusing his gaze back on the three open graves and the caskets standing next to them. A lump formed in his throat, and he blinked before bringing himself back into the moment. A faint roar came from the east, and three K-37s dropped out of the clouds and throttled up on the afterburners over the graves, with the center aircraft in the formation rocketing up into the clouds, disappearing in the mist and haze of the storm.

As the caskets were lowered into the dirt, the storm broke and a light rain began falling into the graves of three astronauts who would never fly again.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After the clouds went away Jeb walked down the beach until he came to the cabin; to his surprise, Gene's truck was parked out front. "Hello?"

A window opened and Wernher stuck his head out. "Come on in, Jeb. We have iced tea and muffins." Jeb nodded and walked up the porch. Just as he was about to reach for the handle, the door flew open and Gene greeted him with a small smile before leading him back to the dining room.

"I thought you might show up," Gene said. As they walked, Jeb looked through an open door to a dark room with the bunk he'd slept in after being thrown back in time from Jool's moons. Although it was only a few years ago, it felt like a lifetime.

Wernher greeted Jeb at a small table near a picture window and poured him a glass of iced tea. "Mortimer called. The Air Force is breathing down our neck, saying things like 'Your failures to serve your country as Orchidian citizens are leaving us open to attack from the Tutero communists.' Like we'd choose to kill three of our astronauts," he spat.

"Relax," Jeb said. "Sunny has made the announcement that the crews for Raven X and Raven XI have been swapped. Tomorrow Bob and Stella and I are going to get to that space station and fix everything as we fly, just like the Muskrat Works wanted."

"It's not the Muskrat Works anymore," Gene corrected. "It's the Fox Works, because foxes are quick, nimble, and crafty."

"Whatever. You know, I was in the simulator today, and Mason told me that there's a new abort mode where I can take manual control of the rocket- I just enter Verb: 29; Noun: 86 into the computer and I can steer the thing myself. I tried it and rode the second stage to fifty kilometers before firing the escape motors."

Wernher nodded. "Interesting. I wonder if-"

He was interrupted by a creak, and footsteps as Bob, Bill, and Val walked in. "It's been a while since I've been here," Val said.

Jeb nodded at her. "What brought you out here?"

"We were looking for you. Munstock has launched a spacecraft on a Munar flyby. We can't tell if it's manned."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Early the next morning, Jeb was awakened by a knock at his door. "Good morning, jet jocky!" Bill shouted. "The weather and the bird look good!" Jeb right out of bed and went out into the hall of the crew quarters, squinting against the harsh light as he started down the hall to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. "Any news on the Munstock mission?"

Bill shook his head. "Munstock is keeping tight lips. Come on, Bob's waiting." They walked into the kitchen and Jeb grabbed a knife for his steak. As he did, he grabbed a deck of cards that was lying by the drawer and shoved them in his pocket as Stella and Valentina came in.

Bob gasped. Stella was leaning on Val's shoulder, and she was so pale that her skin only had a hint of green. As she looked up at her crewmates, she drew a shuddering breath and coughed. "What happened to you?" Bob asked.

"I think she has an upper respiratory tract infection," Val said. "I'm trying to find a thermometer, but I think it would be better to just drive to the hospital in Juno and pick up some penicillin."

"I'm fine!" Stella shouted in a raspy voice, before she bent over in a fit of wet, hacking coughs.

"It's better than it sounds," Val said, "but you need to sit this one out. Bill, suit up. You're going to space today."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb, Bill, and Bob began grinning as soon as the Raven's hatch was closed. "It's just like old times," Bob said. "Cuyahoga better not be our next Station One."

Bill nodded. "I propose we call this capsule Kraken's Legacy." As the hour of the launch approached the crew access arm was wheeled back and the abort motors over the capsule were activated. "This bird's coming alive," Jeb called.

Just as the first stage tanks began to pressurize, a call came over the loops from Mission Control. "Raven," Val said, "we have some news for you. The Munstock spacecraft was apparently unmanned."

"How do you know?" Jeb asked.

"The vehicle exploded during a midcourse correction burn five hours out from the Mun. The Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company named the spacecraft as Muna I, a test flight of a system that is similar in capabilities to the Raven."

"Interesting," Bob called. "The computer is prompting me for the terminal count."

"Proceed."

"CAPCOM," Jeb called, "the spacecraft and crew are 'Go' for flight."

"We copy. The flight termination system is armed, and we're on internals. We'll pick you up after liftoff in a few seconds."

The Moa came alive with the fury of a hundred racecars and shook Jeb in his harness before vaulting up and over the ocean to the south. "Roll program," Jeb called. "The clock has started and it's time to bring the fire back where it belongs, a hundred kilometers up." The rocket shook as it broke through the sound barrier, and then the ride smoothed out for a moment-

Right before a dozen alarms and error messages popped up on the control panels. "Critical guidance failure!" Bob yelled. "Prepare to abort the flight and destruct the booster!"

"No!" Jeb yelled. He wrapped one hand around the control stick, and with his other reached up to the computer and typed Verb: 29; Noun: 86 into the computer. "Whoa!" he yelled as the rocket began rocking back and forth at his fingertips.

"Jeb," Val called, "report."

Jeb took a deep breath as the vibrations calmed down. "I'm flying the rocket by hand," he said, "and it might get to orbit. I'm looking out the window at some mountains and trying to keep them steady... it's kind of working. Bill, how's the engine doing?"

"The gimbals are at ninety percent of their travel limits and the hydraulic fluid is running low. Bob, fire up the RCS. We might need it in a hurry." As the words left Jeb's lips, a new alarm sounded.

"Hydraulic exhaustion!" Bob yelled. "Stage one shutdown and separation."

"Stage two startup and ignition," Bill replied. "We're tumbling!"

Jeb shoved the stick from one side to another, but the second stage kept spinning, tumbling and rolling as the star field outside began to blur. "Juno, we're aborting!" he yelled. Without pausing he reached for the translation T-handle and, grabbing it at the top, twisted it hard to the left. There was a loud bang as the abort motors in the afterbody above the capsule fired, and then... silence.

"That right there," Jeb said finally, "was the last thing the crew of Nine ever felt."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Back in Mission Control, Gene was sweating bullets. "FIDO," he barked, "what kind of trajectory are they on?"

"No idea, Flight. It's a near-polar orbit, fifty by two-twenty kilometers. It'll be a long, skimming reentry in the upper atmosphere... the landing ellipse covers half of Kerbin. There's no way to tell where they're going to come down, so they'll have to call us once they're in."

Gene swore. "CAPCOM, call the spacecraft. Tell them to check their survival equipment and set the reentry mode for maximum negative lift."

Val nodded. "Raven, you're going to have to call us with the survival radio once you've landed."'

"We copy," Bob said."We'll be hitting the atmosphere in a few seconds." There was a few seconds of static over the radio, and then another call from the capsule. "Entry interface."

"Full negative lift," Jeb said. "RCS at full command authority."

"We're already slowing down," Bill said. "How's our landing ellipse?"

"Still no way to tell until you're down," Val replied.

"Nearing fifty kilometers," Jeb said. "We're rising again! Our orbit is pulling us around."

"The capsule might not be able to handle a second pass," Bill said. "We already used too much RCS fixing our tumble."

Jeb nodded. "We'll just hope... here we go! Juno, we're passing sixty kilometers and we've begun descending again, like a cannon shell. Oh, man, this is going to be rough. Already got some G's building, too."

A little static began building up on the radio. "Raven," Val called, "you're nearing blackout."

"Copy. We'll kshh-pop when we're snap-kshhhhhhhhhhh..."

Gene took a deep breath. "Somebody call the recovery team. Tell them to start pinging the capsule's transponder in two minutes. When they come out of blackout we might not have voice communications, so it's up to us to find them."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The radio in the capsule never came back after reentry. There were no recovery helicopters waiting, and after the drogues came out Jeb twisted in his seat and saw an endless desert with some mountains on the horizon. A few shrubs were the only sign of life. The capsule thumped down hard in an ancient volcanic crater, with several cabinets spilling open on impact and dumping flashlights and gauze across the cabin. After cleaning up the mess, Jeb, Bill, and Bob opened the hatch and stepped out into a cool desert morning. A single jackrabbit ran and hid in a bush.

"Where are we?" Jeb asked.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist