Confused Scientist

Da book!!!!

Flair

Lyrics: Mini-mum WAAAAGE YAAH!

Chapter 41- Файл под тундрой OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google Translate The Raven whistled through wispy clouds and a cold, blue sky bleached by a harsh and distant sun as sheets of ice and rock grew larger beyond the distorted slipstream that climbed up the charred sides of the heat shield. In the capsule, Bill saw the clouds streaking by out the window and reached up to deploy the drogue chute manually. The four orange parachutes billowed out like ripe pumpkins and the braking rockets scorched the sides of the capsule as it thumped down into the tundra, shaking the kerbals inside and banging them against their straps. The hatch opened and Jeb stepped out, blinking at the raw sunlight and the brutal reflection of the snow and the ice, which had begun melting underneath the capsule. Holding a hand over his eyes, he looked around and then, drawing upon his instinctual abilities as a brave, daring kerbal willing to rise up to any unfamiliar, unforgiving situation, sighed. “Woah,” he gasped, “not again.” This time, however, the Raven was not at the bottom of a crater and Jeb and Bill, the most experienced survivalists on the crew after their emergency landing in the Painted Desert after Raven X, started setting up the radio as the rest of the crew suffered through a mild case of gravity sickness. Val, of course, could have gotten up with her space-seasoned crewmates from the Kraken’s Spit, but walking around while Alice and Harbrett could barely lift their arms would have looked suspicious. Finally, stir-crazy after two days in a capsule with four other kerbals, she went over to the hatch and poked her head out. The tundra stretched out forever, with nothing of note except for some distant mountains, Jeb and Bill each holding one end of a massive folding map (which Val noticed they were holding upside down), and, behind their backs, a pair of burly mustachioed kerbals in red suits with rifles… hold on. Val gulped as the shorter soldier stepped forward. “Кто ты? ” Jeb turned around. “Uhhh…” “Ваша лодка пришла из космоса?” “He’s asking if we came from space.” Val yelled. Bill turned and looked at her. “Yeah, I know Tuteran. Don’t ask why.” “Вы пришли из страны орхидей?” “He wants to know if we’re Orchidians,” Val whispered. “Uh… Нет!” “Вы капиталистические свиньи! Это флаг Орхидеи на вашем корабле!” Val gulped. “He just pointed out the Orchidian flag is painted on our capsule.” She frowned. “Я могу понять все, что вы сказали.” “What’d he say?” Jeb yelled. “He said he can understand-” Harbrett stepped through the hatch next to Val. “Hey…” he whispered. “Tuterans. Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, you! Yeah, you! Look over here. Look at this capsule! You see this capsule? You see it? This is what a free market does. This thing went to the Mun and- hey, hold on, what are you doing? Hey, now, we can work this out… You really don’t have to handcuff. Now, please, I really don’t think… Oh! Okay! Yes! No problem! I’ll go wherever you want me to! Um, real quick, was it something I said?” The taller guard rolled his eyes. “Ваш президент идиот.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A migraine throbbed through Jeb’s head as he peered through the cigarette smoke and kerosene fumes of the shack the Tuteran soldiers had hauled the astronauts off to. Outside, snow glistened and a horse was carefully trotting down a barely-there path, lifting her hooves gingerly and stepping over hidden roots and frozen streams. On the horse sat a stocky, buff kerbal with a bushy beard reaching down to his chest and up around his eyes, which could barely be seen around his massive fur hat. In his lips, a pipe was clenched, sending smoke up into the mountain air, and on his chest, a scattering of officer’s medals were pinned. This was the kerbal who could make Jeb, Bill, Val, Harbrett, and Alice disappear forever in the frozen heart of a southern Communist country. He got right down to business. “Who sent you here?” he asked, addressing Harbrett, who cowered behind the desk he was handcuffed to. Val took the lead. “We are astronauts from the Kontinental Startup Program, a special research and advanced technology of the Kontinental Aircraft Corporation.” “Are you under orders from Orchidian President?” “President Noxin? He mostly just calls us up late at night and quietly weeps through the phone before suddenly yelling that he doesn’t deserve to go to jail.” The officer shook his head. “Is big jerk, Noxin. In Tutero, we are saying you are calling Premier and telling him your drunk person problems. Now, where has your craft been?” Val leaned back in her chair. “The capsule that has landed in your country was sent on a mission to rescue myself, my Munar module pilot, and my command module pilot.” One of the guards whispered something to the officer. “Tell me about mission.” Jeb sat up in his chair. “Well, to get to the Mun in time to save our friends here, we needed a bigger rocket than we had at our factory, so me and Bill flew out to Crystal City to pick one up. We landed at our space center and had the booster up on the pad two days later. Bill and me launched as soon as it was ready, with the extra seats put in and more food packed. We got to the Mun without any trouble-” “Wait,” Bill interrupted, “what do you mean ‘no trouble’?” “Well,” Jeb responded, “no trouble by my standards.” “Ah. Okay. Do go on.” “So, we went around to pick up our friends, and then we started heading right back to Kerbin, and when it was time to come back in… we had a little trouble.” “We came in pointing forward,” Val explained. “I don’t get it,” Alice sighed. “We had everything ready for re-entry and when we dumped the service module, well, I guess the bang must have opened up one of the thrusters in our nose. We were spinning and spinning, and we were just starting to get some plasma building up in the windows.” Jeb grinned. “That’s when I had this great idea to stop us-” “There had to be a better way to do that,” Val sighed. The officer frowned. “What did your idiot friend do?” “Well,” Jeb began, “I remembered that the cabin pressure relief valve was opposite the stuck thruster, so I began fiddling with the controls until there was about .8 atmospheres in the capsule, until… there weren’t any.” “You know, you could have just shut off the flight computer and flown the Raven by hand.” “So,” Jeb finished, “anyway, we were way off course, and we were in inflated pressure suits, and about eight or nine g’s going on in the capsule, so we just followed through on the ballistic entry and ended up in your… is it tundra? Or taiga? You learn these things in fourth grade, but you never remember them.” The officer blinked. “Uh… we will call your President Noxin. See what we can do.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gene: CAPCOM, any word yet? Bob (as CAPCOM): No. Gene: Okay, fair enough… Wernher? Could you come here please? Wernher: Yes, Gene. Give me a moment. [The following conversation is not part of the official Mission Control transcript, as Gene had taken his headset off.] Gene: Wernher, I’m scared. I’m so scared I can’t even breathe. Jeb, Bill, Val… they’re my best friends. If it wasn’t for them we’d still be sitting in that shack on the beach. Wernher: They were always meant to find us. If they had not come back in time to start building the rockets, then they couldn’t have got to space in the first place. And now I feel guilty that some rocket I built is going to mess with fate, just because the thruster got stuck. Gene: I don’t know what I’d do without them. Bob… he just doesn’t seem right alone. He’s not very warm or really much of anything without Jeb. I mean, without Jeb, his life is over. And at this point, I’m not sure how any of us would do without Jeb, or without Bill to give Jeb some brains or Val to keep Jeb from getting too stupid. My life, right until now… it’s just been trying to get to space, and if we can’t get this crew back there is no space program anymore. Bob: Flight, CAPCOM. [Gene puts his headset back on.] Bob: We’ve just got word from the President: the crew of Raven XIV has been located with five crewmembers alive and well. Gene: Yes! Bob: They are being held by communist officers in Tutero. Gene: [CENSORED] ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Two more hours interrogation,” the officer said. “Then helicopters arrive and you go.” Bill nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sounds good. So, what do you want to know?” The officer leaned over the desk, in towards Bill. “What military contracts does your capitalist space program take?” Bill gulped. “Uhhh…” “If you do not talk, you lose nose.” “We built a cruise missile and an ICBM and spy satellites and launch vehicles and we sold them to the Air Force and a space station-” The officer nodded. “Cuyahoga. Cuyahoga is very important to us. Please tell us more.” Val piped up. “We were contracted to build Cuyahoga as a surveillance station to spy on Tutero and the Southern States. Mostly Tutero, thought.” “Aha! We knew this!” “But…” Val sighed. “During the first flight my copilot and I found a secret system that had been installed. We discovered a control panel that could be used to launch missiles at Tutero from orbit, even after all of the command posts on the ground had been destroyed in a nuclear war. Now,” she said, staring bullets at Harbrett before turning back to the officer, “you may be pleased to hear me say that I keep a growing list of the things I hate about capitalism, but just because I’m a socialist doesn’t mean I don’t love my country. I am an Orchidian,” Val said, for what she realized was the first time since she had arrived in the past, “and I decided it was my responsibility to my country not to let us go to war with a foreign superpower on a moment’s notice by using the Cuyahoga control panel. My copilot and I… Stella and I, we smashed that panel.” The officer’s eyes were glowing. “I think my comrades could take lesson from you,” he said finally, and then, he turned to the guards. “повернись,” he commanded them, and as they turned around he reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope. “Give this to your President Noxin,” he whispered, “and do it quick before he goes to jail like pig he is.” The guards turned to face the desk again. “After you leave Tutero, your spacecraft will be disassembled and examined by our world-class state-funded engineers. We want to ensure it contains no espionage equipment and also wish to make note of technologies with potential uses in our own space program.” Jeb lifted his head up. “Wait,” he asked, “you guys have a space program?” He hadn’t heard anything about one before. The officer’s eyes widened. “I hear helicopters! You go home now! Yay! You enjoy happy capitalist junk food soon, is it not amazing? Please leave!” As Jeb, Bill, Val, Alice, and Harbrett were rushed outside, Jeb turned to Bill and furrowed his brow. “Now what do you think his problem was?” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The next evening, Jeb, Bill, and Val were sitting around in the crew quarters in shorts recovering from their Tuteran ordeal. Bill smiled as he leaned back in his overstuffed armchair, savoring the tanned scent of the leather after the cold desolation of the tundra, or taiga, or whatever. The television was showing a replay of their meeting with President Noxin on the KSC tarmac as they stepped off the Kloncorde, and he turned down the volume as Bob, Gene, and Wernher walked in. “Glad to see you guys are doing alright,” Bob smirked, as the television quietly zoomed in on Val handing an unmarked envelope to the president. Jeb laughed. “Oh, it’s a big world out there, but I want to be right here in Juno’s Landing. The neon signs down Route 77, the sound of jet engines carrying over the sea breeze, the humidity and the nights full of crickets and fireflies winking in and out of the lights on the gantry as waves lap across the shore, that’s what I miss. It’s not about a free market, or even a free country, it’s about having friends and a nice night and money for pizza. That’s what I think makes Orchidia better than Tutero. Everybody there is so busy working for the state, they never have any fun.” Bill was about to agree when he noticed the TV had switched to a special report and he turned the volume back on. “…President Noxin has just announced that confidential sources informed him of the plans for a Tuteran ‘doomsday machine’ set to go off if the United Territories ever launches a nuclear attack against the communist country. We go live now to Noxin speaking at his hotel in Juno’s Landing.” The television cut to a shot of Noxin sitting behind a desk in front of French doors leading onto a balcony, with palm trees rustling lazily in the breeze behind him. “My fellow Orchidians,” he began, “yesterday I learned of the existence of plans for a terrible machine conceived by the Tuterans that, in the event of an attack or even a false alarm, would trigger horrible and immediate destruction not only of the United Territories of Orchidia but the whole of Kerbin, most likely causing the end of civilization as we know it. I am speaking to you today to warn of the dangers of a doomsday gap: We must not let the Tuterans master this technology before we do. It would be a tragedy of unprecedented proportions if the Tuterans were to have unilateral control of this powerful weapon, and that is why I have signed an executive order allocating twenty billion dollars of taxpayer money for the expedited development of our own doomsday machine, and with Kraken willing we will not fall behind in this new arms race, and we as Orchidians will come out ahead of the doomsday gap. My sources are accurate, and although I cannot name any in particular, I will say that a defector inside Tutero and a brave messenger were all that it took to make me aware of this tragic turn of events…” Jeb turned the television off. “I highly doubt,” he said finally, “that was what that Tuteran officer had in mind.” Bob shrugged. “Eh. Did you hear that?" He whistled. "Twenty billion dollars. Whatever problems Noxin’s got up there in that head of his, they’re good for business.”

Chapter 40- The Comcast Customer Support Empire Strikes Back Even though Jeb couldn’t see it or even hear the chatter going across the loops in Mission Control, the crippled Raven circling the Mun again and again stuck out like a sore thumb to him. It’s not supposed to be there… it’s not supposed to be there! A rumble reminded him of the task at hand and he turned to watch the Moa’s crawler begin to ooze out of the VAB like a ten-thousand-ton slug as engineers swarmed like flies around the Raven at its tip to rip out redundant hardware install two extra seats in the command module for the rescue mission. With only four days of life support left in Comet, Jeb and Bill were scheduled to lift off for a Munar orbit rendezvous in just five hours, as soon as the Moa was stood up on the pad. From the driver’s cab at the front of the crawler, Bob called out to Jeb. “How’s everything look down there?” Jeb flashed a thumbs up and walked alongside the front of the train transporter, jumping onto a staircase and running up to the side of the rocket as the diesel locomotive underneath him shook the entire platform as it warmed up to its full power for the first time ever. As he passed the command module, Sam waved at him, and then- “Ooh! A penny!” Jeb jumped off the front of the crawler and reached down to pick a penny up off of the tracks, but he missed and fell into the grass next to the crawlerway instead. “I thought that wouldn’t hurt quite so much.” Jeb picked himself up, dusted himself off, and watched in horror as the crawler’s wheels slowly rose up over the penny… and then back down the other side. Jeb laughed. “That was a real scare over here!” he yelled at Bob. “I left a penny on the tracks- of course, even the fastest bullet train on the tightest curve-” That’s when the rails split out from underneath the crawler and the whole thing tipped to the right. Bob jumped out the cab window as engineers climbed down out of the Raven’s hatch and ran for the stairs. Then, with a sinking stomach, Jeb watched as the Moa slipped from its clamps and rolled off the crawler, cracking the first stage and sending solid rocket boosters rolling downhill towards the beach. Bob ran up next to Jeb and stared. “Well, at least-” One of the boosters ignited and flew out over the coast, plunging into the water just seconds later and spreading flaming metal out over the water, leaving behind burning grass and a scorched crawler. Jeb glared at Bob. “You were saying?” Bob sighed and looked at the smoke coming off the water. “That seems about right.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The three remaining boosters were taken care of the old-fashioned way, by telling everybody on the Space Coast to go inside and then having the range safety officer blow them up. After the blast, Jeb, Bill, Bob, Gene, and Wernher met in an office in the VAB: Wernher: The Comet is still dead in the water, with three and a half days of life support and no SPS engine power. To get there in time, any rescue mission would need to be launched in two and a half days, with half a day needed to transport it to the pad and lift it upright. We have no boosters left in the VAB, but there’s a few on the assembly line in town that are close to completion. Right now, that facility is focusing on the assembly of multiple Moas and Lithiums for Air Force satellite contracts; if we told them to put all of their resources towards completing one Moa, the odds are about fifty-fifty that it would be finished and shipped over here by barge in time to hit our launch window. Jeb: Is that just the enhanced Moas or all of the Moas? Wernher: That is counting all Moas, including Munar capable, kerbal-rated, and Air Force commercial medium-lift versions. Jeb: [CENSORED] Bill: What about spacecraft? What’s our inventory like? Bob: We still have one Raven left in the clean room, fully prepped for flight. It can be converted into a rescue configuration in two hours. Wernher: So, all we need is a booster capable of giving a ten-ton spacecraft a four kilometer-per-second boost onto a Munar orbit trajectory. Gene: I’ve got it! Bill: What is it you’ve got? Gene: I was reading some diagrams sent over by Munstock the other day. They have a booster that’s smaller than the Moa, but the upper stage has an adapter that’s the same diameter as the Raven. Wernher: How could they get the booster there? Gene: There’s a transport plane at the Munstock facility in Crystal City. Jeb: Is that their headquarters or their launch facility? Gene: That’s the production facility; they’re headquartered in Mayberry with a launch site in the Cameron Isles. You’ll have to fly to Crystal City to pick up the booster. Bob: I’ll give them a call. [A click is heard as the telephone is taken off the hook.] Bob: All I know is the customer support hotline number for Munstock… I’ll just have to talk to an operator. Hotline: Thank you for contacting the Munstock customer support line. Please note that this number will be disconnected in two weeks and will redirect to the Kerbal Space Program contact center. Bob (quietly): C’mon, c’mon… Hotline: This call is as important to us as it is to you, assuming that you have nothing better to do. We see that you are calling from a touch-tone telephone. If this is incorrect, please press one. Otherwise, press two. Bob: It’s a [CENSORED] rotary phone, you [CENSORED] Hotline: Para repetir las opciones en español, empuje tres. Jeb: Here’s a touchtone landline. [Chairs are heard scraping across the floor as Jeb and Bill get up to begin the flight to Crystal City.] Hotline: If you are a representative of the armed forces of the United Territories of Orchdia, press one. If you are a representative of a foreign army, press two. If you are a representative of a government agency, press three. If you are a representative of a commercial enterprise, press four. If you are a representative of a research lab or university- [Beep] If your company is in the transportation sector, press one. If your company is in the communications sector, press two. If your company is in the agricultural, meteorological, or Kerbin mapping or observation sectors, press three. If your company is in the energy sector… [The call is drowned out by afterburners as Jeb and Bill take off in a K-37 heading west.] ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lucy Kerman sat in her office as the sun filtered through the Crystal City smog and haze as it rose from the freeways. Two more weeks… she thought, looking forward to the time when she would be able to go work for the KSP. She had heard played up like Camelot, the way how it was run and founded by astronauts and how the centralized operation kept the offices right inside the VAB. She thought of all of the long-haul flights between Mayberry and the Slandish Isles and shuddered. No, once she got to Juno’s Landing, she’d be out of the big city and be free to build her own rockets… and she couldn’t wait to meet Jeb Kerman, to finally figure out if his head was permanently in the clouds. Footsteps approached from down the hall and through Lucy’s open door. “No, but you see, if we just turn every other middle seat around, so that it faces backwards…” Jeb Kerman walked past the doorway. “Hey! Do you work here?” “What-” “Great.” Jeb marched through the door and leaned on the desk. “We’ll take one rocket to go.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hotline: To ask for publicly available records of Kerbin satellite observations, press 17. To submit a proposal for a mission funded or operated by a research institution, laboratory, or university… Bob (quietly): Just have to talk to an operator. Hotline: …press 18 and you will be placed on hold. Bob: Aha! Hotline: BIP BEEP Bob: Uh… hello? Hello? Hotline: [Dial tone] Bob: [CENSORED] ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “So,” Lucy was saying as she walked towards her boss’ office, “you’re telling me Bob’s been trying to call me this whole time?” Bill nodded. “Last we heard from him he thought he had finally been put on hold with an actual kerbal when he heard some elevator music, but it turns out it was coming down the hall from the elevator.” Lucy smiled. “He’s right in here.” She knocked on a large wooden door. Sweet, mahogany, Jeb thought. “Like it? It’s solid rosewood,” Lucy smiled, and then called through the door as Jeb furrowed his brow. “Ed? A Jeb and Bill Kerman are here to see you.” “Send them in,” came the muffled reply. “Oh, your receptionist went home for the night. I’m Lucy…” “Eh?” “…your head of the astronaut corps.” “Oh!” There was a pause, one of the only times that Lucy had ever heard her boss without something to say. “Send them in.” Lucy groaned and opened the door. As it swung open, Jeb’s eyes widened at floor-to-ceiling windows, rugs imported from halfway around the world, and a giant rosewood desk, which Jeb smilingly recognized as mahogany. On the desk was a nameplate- Edsel Kerman, Division President- and suddenly a leather chair spun around- “Well?” Bill blinked. “Well, uh, sir, you’ve probably heard that we have a spacecraft stranded around the Mun. With your help, we can transport a booster back to our launch site and rescue the crew by the time their life support runs out in a few days, but it won’t be easy. We’ll need you to call in your engineers and technicians to help you load the airplane-” “Hold it.” Bill stopped and arched his eyebrows. “Who in Kraken’s name gave you permission to take my rocket? You think you can just waltz in here like you own the place, force one of my own employees away from her desk, and steal a rocket?” Lucy stepped in. “Well, sir, you do know that in a few weeks the merger will be done and the KSP will run all of this. They already own everything-” Edsel stood up from his chair and leaned forward, towards Bill. “What lies have you been telling my head astronaut? At Munstock, we do things the old-fashioned way, and we don’t need anybody’s help.” Jeb leaned into the conversation. “Actually, it’s more like-” “Silence, you working-class pig! Do you know who you’re talking to?” “Yeah!” Jeb shouted. “And that makes one of us. I’m the first Kerbal on the Mun!” “And,” Edsel whispered, “that makes me President Noxin.” Lucy pulled Bill aside. “There’s no way you can reason with him. There’s already a rocket in the transport plane, on account of the merger and all, and I’m thinking we can just… fly it back to Juno without exactly telling Edsel about our plan.” Bill nodded. “Hey, Jeb? We’re thinking of going to steal a rocket. Wanna come along?” “Sure,” Jeb nodded. And they walked out of that office as Edsel yelled to himself. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hotline: …will be placed on hold to talk to our next available agent. For your listening satisfaction, an irritatingly loud, jazzy song that starts to fade out the end but then goes right back into the verse will repeat on loop until your call is received. [Light jazz starts playing twice as loud as the regular volume of the call.] Bob: Oh, thank the Kraken. Hotline: You are ninth in line. The estimated wait time is forty-eight minutes. Thank you for calling the Munstock Customer Service Hotline. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Lucy hurried out of the office and towards the tarmac where the large transport jet was waiting and the ground crew, jubilant to be taking orders from somebody other than Edsel Kerman, were already starting the electrical systems and spooling the engines up. As Lucy dashed out the door, she glanced back at her office and noticed a light blinking on her telephone. “I’ll catch up with you,” she told Jeb, and then backtracked and took a closer look. Somebody’s on hold? she wondered. Must be a mistake. She reached down to the telephone and cancelled the connection. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hotline: You are ninth in line. The estimated wait time is forty-two minutes. Thank you for- BEEP Bob: Huh? Hello? Is somebody there? Is there an actual person on the other end of this line? Hotline: Your call has been disconnected. We apologize for the inconvenience. Bob: [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [Dialing] Hotline: Thank you for contacting the Munstock customer support line. Please note that this number will be disconnected in two weeks and will redirect… Bob: [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED]… [In the interest of time, the remaining forty-nine minutes of obscenities and soft jazz have been omitted from the recording.]

From the Wikipedia page for the Buran programme*: The exciting part is, in terms of being able to choose between automatic and crewed flight, the Dragon is probably the most advanced spacecraft since the Buran. Soyuz proved that versatility is everything, so Dragon might become America's reusable Progress. *Ooh, British English! Classy.

Chapter 39- Electrolite Stella Kerman: Thank you all for being here. Please take your seats. [Chairs are heard scraping across the auditorium floor.] Stella Kerman: The Phoenix spacecraft carrying Valentina and Harbrett Kerman is scheduled to lift off from the Munar surface for its scheduled rendezvous with the Raven and Alice Kerman in a few minutes, so I’ll keep this quick. There was a minor malfunction after the oxygen tanks were stirred yesterday, but it has since been resolved and I’m sure it’s nothing you want to hear about. Our acquisition of the Bloeting Company’s space division is proceeding according to plan. Their division headquarters in New Bigfield will be sold to developers, and the launch site in the Slandish Isles will be retained as a secondary facility. We have also acquired some plans from their heavy booster project, and we hope to develop those into a rocket that can inject both the Phoenix and Raven spacecraft onto a Munar transfer orbit in a single launch. We expect this will decrease mission cost while increasing dispatch reliability… [Footsteps are heard clattering up the metal staircase to the stage.] Stella Kerman: Excuse me for a moment… What? Do you know what they’ll do to me? All right, I understand. [The footsteps are heard again as the intern runs off the stage.] Stella Kerman: Attention, your attention please. I have just been informed of a serious malfunction aboard the Raven spacecraft in Munar orbit… ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A few minutes earlier, Jeb was dozing off at the CAPCOM station, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to his mouth as Gene came over. “Long shift, huh?” Jeb coughed. “Yeah. That’s one thing I like about the past- real coffee.” Gene frowned, but by now he’d grown used to offhand comments like this. “Explain.” “Well, after the Third War, there was a mild nuclear winter. Most of the cornfields had been destroyed, since they were near the missile silos, and it was a pretty big problem since back then- I mean, by that time- corn syrup was in everything. Soda, burgers, you name it. The corn pulled through, but the coffee beans that were being used as a cover crop in those fields couldn’t survive the diminished sunlight, and they all died. Ever since then, kerbals drank synthetic coffee. Well, actually, the courts said that if it wasn’t made from real coffee beans, they couldn’t call it coffee, so they needed a real name.” “And?” Jeb smirked. “You can hire all the marketing geniuses in the world, but some intern made a typo and came up with a name that was better than any others. From that day onwards, two billion kerbals would wake up to a nice, hot cup of covfefe.” Gene shook his head. “No coffee? How awful.” “Everybody old enough to remember what they were missing had survived a nuclear war. They were fine.” At another console in the trench, a newly re-hired Sam Kerman keyed his mike. “Flight, GNC.” Gene ran back up to his station. “Go, GNC.” “Gene, the Raven’s attitude is drifting, almost like one of the RCS quads is going off.” “Flight, CAPCOM, ask Alice if she hears anything.” Jeb cleared his throat. “Uh, Command Module Comet, we suspect one RCS quad may be producing residual thrust. Please report.” “Juno,” Alice called, “I do not hear any venting. No RCS quads are… huh.” “What?” “The spacecraft’s off in the roll axis. It’s about ten degrees to the left.” “We copy.” Jeb turned around at his seat. “Flight? Any suggestions?” Gene shrugged. “FIDO, keep an eye on it.” “So,” Alice continued, “how are things back in Juno?” Jeb grinned. “We’ve got twenty engineers about to die of boredom down here. You missed a massive thunderstorm last night, more like a tropical depression. And, oh, this is interesting; I’m looking at the paper and we’re going to get a major league ball team. How’s that, Gene? Let’s see, it says here that the nuclear plant proposed the name ‘Juno Isotopes,’ but it’s already being used by fourteen real and fictional teams. The commissioner decided to call the new team the ‘Juno Comets.’” Gene laughed. Hey, that sounds familiar!” In barely a second, though, he was all business. “All stations, the Phoenix’s launch window will open in three minutes. Give me a go/no-go for liftoff from the Mun’s surface. EECOM?” Sam leaned back in his chair and furrowed his brow as the rest of the calls went over the loops. “Okay,” Gene called, “Timer, give me a count at five seconds.” “Copy. Liftoff is fifteen seconds out.” Aboard the Phoenix, Val began calling out the launch sequence. “Engine arm ascent.” “Ten seconds.” In mission control, an engineer at a console jumped backwards out of her chair. “Flight, EECOM-” “Five seconds.” “Hold-down bolts released.” “Juno, we’ve got-” “Three, two-” “Flight, GNC-” “One-” “Juno-” “Liftoff of Munar Module Kitten.” Everybody stopped talking at once, with nobody sure whether there was a problem in the Raven or the Phoenix. And, then: “Ah, Juno, Comet here. I’ve got a problem.” Jeb slowly leaned forward and grabbed his mike. “Star, say again?” “Juno, we’ve got a problem.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The engineers in Juno’s Landing only had a few seconds to diagnose the problem before the Raven went behind the Mun; meanwhile, Kitten drew closer to a rendezvous, closing within a hundred meters as both spacecraft rounded back over to nearside as Gene looked down at an empty coffee cup and a full ashtray, having smoked an entire pack of cigarettes after running out of gum. We’re gonna lose the spacecraft, he thought. Wernher paced back and forth behind him, sweat already soaking through his shirt. Three astronauts are gonna die and we couldn’t even do anything about it. The radio crackled and Wernher stopped pacing. Gene grabbed his headset. “CAPCOM! Get a visual report on the Raven from Kitten!” Jeb gripped his console. “Kitten, this is Juno Control. Can you see Comet?” “Roger. Oh, my…” Val swore quietly under her breath before Harbrett could give her a hot mike warning. “Kitten, report.” “Juno, the Raven is spinning around the long axis… about ten rotations per minute. There’s a hull panel missing right where RCS quad 2 is… was.” Gene gulped. 10 rpm! “How about the electronics?” “The electronics are fine,” Alice called from Comet. “The radio still works, you know. I tested the RCS on Farside, but I couldn’t quite cancel the roll without four quads. And I can’t translate worth anything.” Gene pinched his forehead. “All right. Kitten, maneuver for an active docking with Comet. Alice, configure the probe for a passive linkup. Then we can cancel the roll with Kitten’s RCS.” In orbit, Val took control from the Phoenix’s computer and slowly spun it up to match Comet. Out the ascent module’s windows, Mun and sky flashed as loose nuts and bolts were slowly drawn to the cabin walls in the centripetal gravity. Back and forth the horizon dashed as Val stared straight ahead at the Raven, and the docking port grew larger, and larger, and the world outside the windows faded out. Thump. “Soft dock, soft dock!” Val yelled. “Alice, retract the probe!” “No good! It won’t retract!” Val looked up out the ventral window at the docking port, knowing that the ship’s spin was about to tear the probe and drogue assembly apart. Without the controls to retract the probe, there would be no way to dock with the Raven, and with Comet spinning like that, there would be no way to EVA across the gap. She could feel the two spacecraft begin to wobble back and forth like two dreidels spinning on top of each other… and that’s when Harbrett spoke up. “Just translate forward,” he suggested. “Might shove the probe down into the docking tunnel.” And, for the first time that day, something went right and the docking tunnels banged together. “Juno!” Alice cried. “Hard dock!” Gene sighed. “Good. Let's get that rotation canceled and figure out what went wrong.” He stood at his chair and looked out over the control room, dusting off his white vest before addressing the crowd. “Now, listen,” he began. “We may be engineers, but we are kerbals, and all kerbals are fallible. That is merely kerbal nature and it is the only thing that is certain in this universe; not how a river carves a canyon or how an ocean wears away at a beach, but how kerbals make mistakes. That being said, there are two types of kerbals: the ones who learn from their mistakes, and the ones who try and fix them. The learners are blessed, and for thousands of years they’ve helped led us to success as a sum of our parts. But those who fix their mistakes, those who succeed or die trying, they are the ones destined for greatness, the ones who write history, the ones that are responsible for bringing us here, to the stars’ threshold. Now, let me tell you something: We are those kerbals. We are going to get over this and bring our astronauts back home and you know why? Because if we didn’t it would mean letting down all of Kerbin and every single kerbal who has lived or died up to this moment, and because we owe it to every kerbal who has yet to be born, and to be able to look the next generation in the eye and tell them that this is what we did, this is how we made things better for an entire planet.” Gene sat down and looked across the room at an intern standing meekly in the corner. “You, there,” he ordered, “bring us coffee and don’t ever stop until the Raven’s splashed down.”

I'm not even sure why he built it; he usually drives sports cars everywhere. And he still hasn't figured out that he can't use his party line (a rotary phone- so retro!) to make a call at the same time as Bill.

Chapter 38- Lost Opportunity Jeb opened his eyes and groaned. His head pounded as he sat up and looked across his apartment at a thin beam of light seeping under the door crack. Turning to the red glow of his new digital alarm clock, he sighed and collapsed back into bed. His entire loft shook, and a pyramid of beer bottles perched on his nightstand clinked together. One fell off, and rolled towards the loft railing, passing under the bar and smashing on the workshop floor far below as Jeb ran his sandpaper tongue back and forth across his bone-dry lips. Jeb wept quietly as he waited for sleep to return to him. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Welcome to the Route 77 Diner & Café. Take any seat in the house and we’ll be with you shortly.” Val led Bill into a booth by the window and gazed out at the traffic rolling down Juno’s Central Avenue. She could just barely see her pale green reflection floating above the cars and trucks speeding down Route 77. Hearing the clatter of coffee cups and carafes, she turned back to Bill as a waitress brought them a cup of that morning’s brew. “Thanks.” Bill reached out and took a sip. “Ugh. Too bitter.” He looked up at the waitress. “Ma’am? I think there’s something wrong with this drink.” "Ain't nothin' wrong with it. You're a wimp, is all." "Yeah, that seems about right." He turned back to Val. “So.” Val sighed. “So. This is where I’d take out a phone and stare at it, but it’ll be another forty years until I have that option. Looks like we have no choice but to talk about Jeb.” Bill nodded. “He’s worked up about Stella. I mean, we’re all sad, but he’s gone off the deep end. He doesn’t even care enough to get drunk on good beer.” “He blames himself.” “Of course he blames himself. Thing is, it goes deeper than that. You know, when I was growing up with Jeb in Los Hierros, he was a real loner. When he was little, he wore real thick glasses- some birth defect- until he had his eyes fixed with LASIK, and then when he was older his kindness and compassion were real social handicaps. I was his only real friend. His parents kept him on a short leash, he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and most nights he would be cooped up at home while everybody else was out having fun.” Val tried some of her coffee and frowned. “Ugh, too bitter. Anyway, what are you implying?” “Point is, poor old Jeb here is reliving all the ghosts and torments of the worst parts of his isolated childhood. He never really grew up, and that’s why we all love him. But now it’s why he can’t even open the shades and let in the sunlight to face another day.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb groaned and sat back up in his bed. He reached out to steady himself against a windowsill as he squinted and listened to the pounding in his head. “Jeb! Open the door!” Jeb realized that the pounding was coming from his front door. “Yeah, I’ll let you in. Amanda? Open the door, please.” “Uhh… you don’t have a smart speaker, Jeb.” Jeb sighed. “It’s unlocked.” He collapsed back in bed as he listened to footsteps clomping up the staircase to his loft. “Hey, Bob. Whaddya want?” Bob walked over to the edge of Jeb’s loft. “Just making sure you’re all right. You missed Val’s launch to the Mun yesterday. Did you even know it was happening?" Jeb didn't answer. "And now you’re hiding out here instead of hitting Mission Control and the diners and the bars. Are you going to keep doing this forever?” “Lissen, you sogged consu- consumerismam- consum- rich guy slade- slave-” “Jeb, it’s painfully obvious you’re not drunk. Don’t you miss flying the jets, and breaking the speed limit, and defying death instead of just lying here and waiting for it?” Jeb bunched his blankets together and balled his fists under his pillow. “I mean, you’re still building things in here, like that… what is that?” Jeb sat up and looked at what Bob was pointing at. “Oh, that. It’s the world’s first automatic transmission. No more driving stick for me.” “You’re a damn genius, Jeb. Your mind is what makes you great; don’t waste it thinking about what could have been. Go out and build yourself a better world.” Jeb moaned. “Bill said…” Bob started. “Nah, it’s not important.” Jeb sat up. “What?” “Oh, nothing. It’s just that Bill said he’s not sure he can be friends with a kerbal who can’t even get out of bed in the morning without collapsing into a sobbing mound of helpless self-pity.” “He said that?” Bob nodded. “Then by Kraken, I don’t remember the name Stella Kerman!” Jeb leapt out of bed; Bob noticed that he was wearing running shoes. “Let’s get out of here.” He threw himself over the railing, grabbed a piece of rope hanging from the ceiling, and swung straight out the door, kicking it open as he went. “C’mon! What’re you waiting for?” Bob panted as he sprinted to catch up to Jeb as he dashed out the door of the crew quarters out into a tropical Juno morning. Jeb began to laugh, and then shout: “Look at the birds! Look at the sky and the palm trees! I, Jebediah Beto Kerman, am officially back in business!” He shoved past the glass double doors of mission control and skidded to a halt behind Gene’s console, gasping for breath. Gene looked up and smiled faintly. “Looks like someone had an epiphany.” Jeb caught his breath and straightened up as Bob came in. “Yeah. What’d I miss?” “Nothing, really. Val and her crew are about halfway to the Mun.” Bob nodded. “And how’s the mission going?” “Great,” Gene replied, at the same time as a trench controller called him. “We’re all bored down here.” He keyed his headset. “Uh, sorry, EECOM, I missed that, please say again?” “Flight, their O2 readings are down.” “Thanks, EECOM. Flight, CAPCOM.” “Go, Flight.” “CAPCOM, tell them to stir their tanks.” “Roger that, stir their tanks.” Bob listened to the controllers talk and frowned, parsing their commands in his head. Something didn’t seem right… “Oh!” he exclaimed. “He means the spacecraft’s tanks! Man, I was confused there for a minute.” Jeb grinned. “Yep, things can only get better from here!”

This would be a great soundtrack if Hollywood ever decided to start making good movies again, along with with other earworms from their recent albums. That's a lot of links!

Chapter 37- All the Way to Juno, Part 2 The following is an excerpt from a video shown in Jeb's high-school history class celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Munar landing. Narrator: Fifty years ago, kerbalkind set forth on its first great age of exploration since ancient times, with two companies leading the way into the new space age: the Bloeting Company, which was destroyed in the Third War, and the Kontinental Aircraft Corporation, today known as the Kontinental Engineering Labs, well-known for developing machines to clean fallout and carbon dioxide emissions from Kerbin's atmosphere. [The screen pans across a black-and-white photo of the KSP astronaut corps at a formal dinner; at one end, Bill is seen struggling to knot a necktie.] Narrator: These first astronauts boldly took kerbals beyond their first horizon in nearly two hundred years, eclipsing the discovery of the Orchidian continent by Missalian explorers. Although no one knows which company these astronauts worked for, all of the early astronauts were united with a sense of kinship from their noble goal. [The screen cuts to grainy, black-and-white footage from a Munar landing.] Narrator: Fifty years ago, two kerbals finally reached the Munar surface after a harrowing descent plagued by computer alarms and a mysterious radio blackout. Nevertheless, these brave explorers were the first to gaze upon Kerbin from her closest neighbor, and although no records of their surface explorations survive, today we know that they were able to return home safely because radar observations indicate that only the descent module of their primitive lander remains on the Mun. [The screen cuts to a color photo of Stella Kerman.] Narrator: Although we no longer know the names of these two astronauts, as their names were just one of billions of victims of the Third War, kerbalkind will always remember their determination in opening up the stars for our use. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Flashbulbs popped and faded like the ghosts of dead thunderstorms and breakers with whitecaps crashing against a beach during a hurricane as Stella Kerman sprinted up the stage and grabbed onto the podium. She surveyed the crowd of reporters and sighed inwardly to herself. “Thanks for all coming here on such short notice. Please take your seats.” Stella watched with bemusement as, for once, the auditorium quieted down and the reporters quit their squabbling. Even the delegates from KNN and Coyote News had sat next to each other and had settled for minor punching during the press conference. This will be a day I won’t ever forget… Stella thought. “Well… thank you. I’m going to make this quick because PDI- that’s powered descent initiation- is scheduled for a few minutes from now. There have been rumors of a communication problem aboard the Phoenix spacecraft, and although we have confirmed that the voice link was temporarily disturbed between the LM and the CSM, all flaws have been ironed out.” More flashbulbs. “Also, there has been some confusion about callsigns. I would just like to clarify that the Raven is named Clipper Ernest Kerman and the Phoenix is called Condor. With that out of the way, we will now begin covering the descent. Those networks with cameras in Mission Control, we will go live to the trench at this point…” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gene could barely contain his enthusiasm. Before launch, Jeb had come to his office and given him a brief history of the future of space exploration. Knowing where this launch was going to lead, Gene wasn’t able to comprehend the enormous role he was playing in history, and his only regret was that he wouldn’t live to see the magnificent stations and bases that Jeb had described to him. “Flight, timer.” Gene snapped out of his daydream. “Go, timer.” “One minute until PDI.” “Roger. FIDO? How’s their keyhole attitude?” “Flight, FIDO. Entry looks good… Oh, man…” “FIDO? Everything good?” “I just realized… we’re actually about to… oh, gah, oh my…” Gene looked over his team and grinned as he noticed Wernher standing in the corner. “CAPCOM, flight.” At the CAPCOM console, Bob looked up. “Go, flight.” “CAPCOM, tell them to enter Program 39 into the computer. It’s time to make Kerbin proud.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In orbit thirty kilometers above the Mun, the sense of merriment and joy had seeped out the thin walls of the Phoenix and dissipated into the cold vacuum. Stella was on edge; Jeb was on guard. Each astronaut looked out one of the narrow side windows, heads turned away from each other. The radio crackled. “Condor, PDI in twenty seconds. Please enter P39 N22 V7 in the flight computer, over.” Stella and Jeb both reached for the transmitter button, but Jeb got there first and Stella pulled her hand away. “Sounds good, Bob,” Jeb called. “Program 39, Noun 22 Verb 7. Engine arm stage, ullage… keyhole attitude entry.” Stella coughed. “Ignition in three… two… one…” The motor came to life with a thump and Jeb and Stella grabbed onto their control columns as weight returned. “Juno, we are decelerating. Tell Kerbin we are fifteen minutes away from making history, over.” Jeb glanced over at Stella quickly before his gaze returned to the instruments. The first burn went quickly, and as the Condor fell closer to the Munar surface Stella thought that she could reach out the window and scrape her hand against the taller peaks. “It’s beautiful,” she said finally. “Been to the Mun a few times, but I’d always landed at night. Never got to see everything up close like this before.” Jeb sighed. “Yeah. The Munbase Two climbaway corridor was especially beautiful… You know, I can still remember how me and Bill and Bob were glued to the windows as Hudson blew the base up. When I was, I mean, growing up near Los Ruidos… I’d look at the Mun as it rose above the mountains and dream about flying low above the desert at night, under the Mun’s glow. After the Greatest Depression and the Third War, I knew Kerbin had nothing left for me and Bill but we couldn’t figure out a way to leave until he took a bribe to certify Station One’s faulty centrifuge. And then, once we finally saved up enough money to get to the Mun… I can’t even remember what it was like. The worst part is, even though I was back there ten more times, I never paid any attention then, either.” Jeb looked up, down at the surface. “Now I know.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The final descent burn rocked the Condor from side to side slightly, and very slowly the lander pitched upward as it slowed down from orbit. Jeb and Stella swiveled their heads and methodically scanned the instruments- center, up, right, down, left: repeat. A loud warning tone suddenly blared through the cockpit and Stella flinched. Jeb checked the red status lights and called in the alarm. “292 program alarm,” he announced. “Juno, how do we proceed?” As the signal traveled back to Juno’s Landing, Stella reached over and began flipping through the computer handbook. She stabbed her finger down on the page just as Bob came back with the diagnosis. “Condor, we copy your alarm. 292 is an overflow error. Please turn off your secondary radar targeting system.” Stella shook her head. “Jeb, 292 is a RCS quad malfunction. We need to disable high-precision pitch control and abort the landing immediately.” Jeb gulped. “Uhhhh… Juno, we’ll… get back to you on that… data feed mode change.” “What?” Bob shouted. “Please toggle aux radar feed immediately.” “Jeb,” Stella said, “it’s time to choose. Who do you trust? It’s up to you.” The radio crackled. “We are reaching decision altitude. Toggle radar feed processing to aux right now.” “I’m just like you, Jeb. All I ever wanted to do was fly. An engineer at heart. And if you die, I die, too.” “Condor, you will be on a collision trajectory in five seconds.” “Decide.” “Make up your mind, Jeb!” Jeb sighed and looked at Stella. “I trust you, but I don’t believe you.” And he reached over to the computer and turned off the secondary radar targeting system before taking the controls for the final landing. “Give me callouts, please.” Stella nodded. “Five hundred meters. Fuel ten percent.” The silver grey regolith slowly filled up the bottom half of the window. “Two-fifty. Fuel eight.” Jeb moved the stick left and guided the Phoenix over a large boulder. “One hundred meters.” Jeb pulled the throttle back. “Fifty.” Out the window, Jeb caught the lander’s shadow racing towards him, tracing over the boulders and craters of the Mun’s surface. “Twenty-five.” Clouds of dust began to billow out underneath the engine. “Ten.” Jeb felt a thump. “Contact light.” “SAS out of detent.” “Engine arm shutdown.” Jeb grasped the microphone. “Juno, the Condor has landed.” Even through the cheap speakers in his helmet, Jeb could hear the cheering and whooping from Mission control. In his ear, Bob laughed. “Well, we’ve got a bunch of guys down here about to turn pink… we’re glad to hear it. Got any ideas for what you’re gonna say when you get outside?” “No. No, I don’t.” Jeb killed the microphone and turned towards Stella. “What was the computer alarm about?” “Just seeing where your allegiance lies. I wasn’t sure what Bob might try.” Jeb sighed. “I’ve given up on trying to figure out why kerbals do the things they do. That’s why I’m trusting you and Bob.” He held out his hand. “Lay off Bob for a while until I think about it, will you?” Stella smiled. “Deal.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb hung from the last rung of the ladder, his foot poised inches from the Munar dust. All of his past and kerbalkind’s spacefaring future would revolve around this moment, the day that his species was no longer bound to their home planet. This was a moment that would be remembered for generations. Gingerly, he put his foot down and planted his boot firmly in the regolith. “Today, we have arrived. We’re never going back.” He turned and smiled as Stella appeared at the Condor’s hatch. “I think that turned out pretty good. Come on, let’s get the contingency sample aboard.” They worked for a few hours, trading banter with Mission Control and posing for pictures with a crescent Kerbin hanging in the background. Stella put up the Orchidian flag, and despite her best efforts a bend in the wire gave the illusion that a light breeze was waving the flag on the airless Mun. Jeb was about to start unpacking dynamite charges for seismic experiments when Bob called from Mission Control. “Jeb, Stella, we’ve got a special guest on the line for you.” Stella pursed her lips. “Who is it?” A gravelly, raspy voice came on the line. “Fellows, I am President of the United Territories of Orchidia.” Jeb gasped. “President Noxin!” “It is my honor to be talking to you fellows today,” President Noxin continued. “This is a very proud moment in the history of kerbalkind. Now, I’m sure you have lots of things to do up there, but is there anything you’d like to say?” Stella switched her radio to the local channel. “Let me handle this.” Toggling back over to the air-to-ground channel, she addressed the president. “President Noxin! What an honor! You know, it’s incredible how we can fly all the way to the Mun, but some very simple technologies don’t always work. For example, on that last orbit, our flight recorder malfunctioned. Imagine that! In case of some collusion- I mean, er, collision- investigators would confiscate those tapes, and for eighteen minutes there wouldn’t be anything except a hum. Imagine that! All of the newspapers want to hear what’s on those tapes, and everything’s there except for a mysterious eighteen-minute gap. But, let me tell you, these tape recorders are really amazing, and you actually forget that you’re always being recorded, and everything you’re saying is part of some unimpeachable database that anybody could look up if they suspected something strange was going on. Of course, you wouldn’t want those tapes, because I’m sure you’re not a crook.” President Noxin gulped. “Eh, uh, perhaps I better let you fellows get on with your mission.” Stella bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Yeah… something tells me we won’t have Noxin to kick around anymore. Good luck!” As President Noxin got off the line Jeb grinned and called Stella on the private channel. “That was incredible.” Stella laughed. “I never thought I’d be thankful to have took AP Orchidian history in high school.” She walked over to the Condor and started unloading the dynamite for the seismic charges. “Oh, man… this one’s stuck. Looks like it expanded in the sunlight and it’s pressed up against the walls of the scientific bay.” Jeb turned around. He listened to Stella grunt as she dug her heels into the regolith and pulled on the stubborn package. “Aha! There it-” The dynamite case suddenly gave way, sending Stella tumbling backwards down into a small crater. Jeb watched in horror as she landed on top of the explosive package, and with a muffled bang and a cloud of Mundust his crewmate was thrown back into the air and catapulted into a boulder field on the horizon. Jeb was speechless for a moment, so struck was he at the freak accident. “Stella!” he cried, finally regaining his voice and scrambling down into the crater towards the rock field where the body had landed. “Stella!” Bob’s voice spoke in his ear, urgent and frightened. “Jeb, we’ve just lost contact with Stella. Report.” “I’ve got to get to her. Get to her… save her…” “What happened, Jeb?” Jeb coughed, worn out at his efforts to scale the far wall of the crater. “Stella… accident with dynamite package… thrown far away from landing site.” The radio was silent for a minute. “And you’re trying to save her?” “Yes,” Jeb panted. “Not gonna… not gonna give up.” Bob coughed. “Jeb.” No reply. “Jeb.” “What?” “Jeb, I know you don’t want to hear this… Stella is dead. Even if she survived the explosion and the fall, her suit must be ruptured. We can see your heartrate from here, Jeb, and you’re going to kill yourself climbing this crater.” “So?” Jeb gasped. “Turn back, Jeb. Save yourself, at least.” “Nope.” “Come on back to the lander.” Jeb didn’t answer but continued on his futile efforts to reach the crater rim. “Jeb.” A new voice in his helmet- Val’s voice. “Jeb. Come home. For me. For Bill. For Bob, Gene, and everybody else who loves you. Come home, Jeb. Come home.” Jeb sighed and coughed for a few seconds, utterly worn out at his struggle. Wordlessly, he trudged up the shallower side of the crater back to the Condor and stood at the foot of the lander, gazing up at the sky. A thin crescent slice of Kerbin’s pale blue iris stared back at him, cold and alienating. Turning away from the panorama and back towards the Phoenix’s ladder, Jeb began the long journey back to the uninviting, distant world that he had left behind with high hopes and boundless enthusiasm, and away from the steely Mun that had robbed him of not only those but also a true friend, one that he would not soon forget.

And for all the wrong reasons. But I'm still not satisfied with the amount of plot twists this story has. It's time for this story arc to become twistier than twenty-two twists twisted together into a twist-tied knot in your shoelaces. Because in the next chapter... Wait. I can't give it away. It's supposed to be a twist. But until then... we're still broadcasting.

Chapter 36- Farside Please note: In the official audio transcript included in the Raven XIV Accident Investigation Report, the next ten minutes of conversation are recorded simply as [REDACTED - NATIONAL SECURITY] with the omission initialed by "JBK". This is not the official audio transcript. Stella: [Muffled, inaudible.] Jeb: [Muffled, inaudible.] Stella: [Muffled, inaudible.] Jeb: [Muffled, inaudible exclamation.] Stella: Because I was a double agent! Do I have to spell it out for you? Jeb: But if you're a double agent, then why are you betraying whoever it was that- Stella: Mason. Jeb: -betraying Mason... wait. Stella: Just listen. Everything I'm about to tell you, Mason told me at some point. Most of my story was true; I got interrogated by the Interplanetary Authority, and I ended up on Tylo waiting to be shipped to some Eeloo Gulag. Then Mason Kerman came up to me in the mess hall, dressed like a prisoner, and offered me a plea deal: Help him apprehend the crew of the Kraken's Spit, and I could go free. It was only once we got into orbit and I saw Jool's new ring, right in what used to be Bop's orbit, that he told me that we would have to travel back in time and then got me up to speed. In the two months since Bop had been destroyed the singularity device, there had been crazy civil war, mostly between the colonies on Laythe and the IA bases on Tylo. Duna declared independence from the United Kerbol, and... Jeb: What? Stella: Gilly was... They dropped... Eve has a new ring. Jeb: Sweet holy [CENSORED]. So, you're telling me... Stella: Exactly. The IA had done a lot of math and figured out how to copy the exact conditions of the Bop blast on Gilly. As a bonus, destroying that moon would wipe out one of the most powerful rebel strongholds.The minute the black hole in Jool orbit had evaporated through Hawking radiation, the IA was in there to pick up the monolith and ship it off to the Eve. The S-Bomb was readied and loaded with the antimatter ignition bombs, and they air-dropped it- well, vacuum-dropped it- from the same angle as before... and we were gone. So was Gilly. Jeb: Did it work? Stella: Almost. We were a year later than we thought, and we ended up in Crystal City. You almost ruined the plan by paying me to drive your car across the country for you, but luckily that led us right to your location. One thing led to another after that, and with Mason rightfully doubting my loyalty, he arranged for me to attack Bob in the junkyard. Luckily, I was able to pretend that I wasn't a good enough fighter to subdue him, and Mason trusted me again. Jeb: But why are you telling me all this now? Stella: Because Mason is stuck in some Air Force prison in the desert, and the deal's off. But more importantly, I'm your friend, and that's why I'm losing my cover to deliver a warning. Jeb: A warning? Stella: You've always wondered why the manhunt for your crew was so strong, right? The IA could have avoided an entire civil war if they'd just let you go, and it was obvious to everybody that you were innocent from day one. No, it wasn't you they wanted, but they would go through you if they needed to. Jeb: But, WHY? Stella: To get to Bob. Haven't you ever stopped to think about his background? He says he was in the engineer corps, but he discovered an entire alien race and kept it a secret. Why did he come to Station One? Why didn't he ever tell anybody about the space crabs? And how does he know so much about Electron Blue? Jeb (gasping): Stella: Bob was on the Miraculin Group's board of executives when Electron Blue was developed. He allegedly made it such a potent drug by mixing in some chemical that the space crabs produce. He was exiled from the board shortly after for murky reasons, but Mason told me it was because he knew too much. You want another kicker? Here it is: Bob invented Electron Blue. He's the only kerbal in all of existence who knows whether the world's most profitable product is a placebo or not. The board of executives decided that to keep the truth from getting out, they would need to make everybody forget about him, so they fired him, wiped his name from the internet, and emptied his bank account. Desperate, he came to Station One. Jeb: But why did you want to get to him? Stella: The same reason the Miraculin Group fired him: He has secrets, powerful secrets. And for that, the government is willing to do a little thing like start multiple civil wars and destroy planets. I'm warning you, you can't trust Bob. You don't know who he is, or what he might do. You're in danger every second you spend with him, because trillions of dollars are at stake. What's worse, he definitely has his own agenda. He could betray you in a heartbeat if he needed to. Jeb: Don't say that! I don't believe you! Bob is my friend! Stella: He was your friend because it was beneficial for him. You better watch your back, I'm telling you, because it's a sad truth: Kerbals can do terrible things just to make a dollar or two.

Chapter 35- All the Way to Juno, Part One The sun broke low and bright through a few clouds at the Cape. Val watched the sunrise from the Moa’s launch gantry, one of the two being readied for the Munar launch. She breathed in a lungful of salty air and sighed. “Perfect day for a launch,” she told Bob. “No saboteurs to deal with, finally.” Bob adjusted his hard hat and walked over from the side of the second stage where he had been inspecting the umbilical connections. “I was thinking about that. How do we know Mason won’t come back and, I don’t know, blow up the space center?” Val gestured to an ATC map of the United Territories that had been taped up on the wall. She uncapped a pen and drew an “X” between a mountain range and a big red blob on the map. “See this? That’s where we bailed out. Based on our heading and the prevalent winds at altitude, after Mason bailed out he would have drifted into this red zone.” Bob frowned. “What’s the red zone?” “That is restricted airspace- the Painted Desert Proving Grounds. And it might interest you to know that I got a phone call from an old friend the other day, somebody who Jeb personally invited to this launch.” “Who is it?” Val smiled. “Good old Chief Una, asking if we could use our satellites to track fallout from an upcoming bomb test in the Painted Desert. The bomb was on the tower when Mason bailed out, so imagine you were in his position: What would you say to all of the CIA spooks interrogating you afterwards?” Bob coughed. “I’d tell them I’m a time traveler, on an important… ah.” Val smiled and nodded. “They’re thinking you’re a spy. Southern States, Tutero, it doesn’t matter. Either you’re a spy, an actual time traveler, or just a nut, and either way ends with Mason spending a lot of time in some jail cell in the middle of some desert.” She stopped talking when she heard the elevator rising to the top of the launch tower. “Come on,” she told Bob. “We need to meet the closeout crew up one level.” They clambered up a ladder and met Jeb, Stella, and Boblock as they walked out of the elevator. Bill, the commander of the backup crew, waved at them from inside the capsule as he checked the systems for liftoff. “We had a minor problem with one of the solar panel servos a few hours ago, but it all checks out now,” he told Jeb. “All rations and flight provisions are stowed in their lockers, and we’ve loaded the contract into the lower navigation bay.” Jeb blinked. “Contract? What contract?” “The Kuinness Book of World Records contract, to be signed by you and Stella on the surface of the Mun and then notarized aboard the aircraft carrier BSS Montgomery.” Stella took a look in the capsule and picked up a bundle of papers from the dashboard. “Hey, what’s this?” Bob laughed and pointed at the headline, Kerbals to Fly To Mun. “That’s today’s copy of the Mayberry Times. Turn to page 6, bottom left corner.” Stella flipped the paper open. “It’s an… apology to Wernher Kerman?” A Correction The Editorial Board Forty years ago, the Times criticized Wernher von Kerman due to his apparent misunderstanding of how flight in vacuum could be achieved. However, the error was on the Times’ behalf, as further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Edward Kerman in the 26th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error. Jeb looked at the newspaper, up at the massive rocket as vapor wafted off of its skin, and back at the newspaper. “Further investigation and experimentation?” he asked. Nobody answered. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wernher’s old truck rattled up to the tower and a young pad rat ran up to greet him as he stepped out. “Hey, boss!” Wernher smiled as they walked back towards the gantry. “Hey, Jack. How’s closeout going?” “Good. The crew’s about ready to board the spacecraft.” “Phone the white room. Tell them to hold off for a minute.” Jack nodded and picked up the phone as Wernher stepped into the elevator. As the doors closed, his thoughts turned inward. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he was scared that Jeb and Stella would be killed on this mission. Even if they survived, the entire KSP could still be in trouble. Bloeting could still launch a Munshot, and Wernher thought he’d overheard Mortimer talking to Stella about money problems outside his office… Ding. The doors slid open and Wernher remembered that his job was to make rockets, and that the entire kerbal race was counting on him. “Attention!” A dozen faces turned towards Wernher, some obscured safety goggles and hardhats, others behind the glass of pressure suit helmets. “Today, we will make history. Kerbin is watching us, waiting to hear that we have reached out and grabbed a slice of the stars for our own. This mission will be remembered for a thousand generations- but, please, don’t be heroes.” Wernher looked at Jeb and Stella. “Please, if something doesn’t look right, and you can’t fix it, don’t try to work around it or fly without it. If anything goes wrong, don’t be afraid to abort. If we don’t land on this mission, that’s bad; if somebody dies on this mission, that’s a catastrophe. Remember: Better dead than look bad, but dying looks really bad. So don’t die.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ There was a small patch of blue sky and beams of sunlight shining into the capsule through the docking window, shifting through dust and the steam twisting around the rocket. Boblock kept his eyes on the window, savoring his last glimpse of the sky before he would rush up to meet it, fly through it… escape it. Butterflies jumped in his stomach, but his eyes widened at the count reached its final minutes. Next to him, Jeb snored. Boblock nudged him. “Hey, wake up!” “Hummm? Ohhhyeh, theslaunch. Immamake… I’m awake.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In the control room, Gene looked out at his team with one last suppressed grin, then stood to address them. “I just want you to know,” he said, beginning to smile, “that I’m proud of you, no matter whether we win or lose. Today, we make history.” He cleared his throat. “All stations, give me a go/no-go for launch. Talker?” “Go.” “Timer?” “Go.” “Booster?” “Go.” “Tanks?” “Go.” “FIDO?” “Go.” “EECOM?” “Go.” “RSO?” “Go.” Gene smiled. “All stations, we are go for launch. Timer, restart the clock on my mark. Three, two, one… mark.” A muffled cheer melted through the control room walls. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Out on the causeway, the sun beat down on the spectators, and water condensed on the outsides of beer cans as the count neared zero. “Ten!” the crowd shouted. “Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four!” A rumble shook the beach as the engine lit up, sending vapor and exhaust billowing out of the flame bucket. The Moa rocked back and forth on its hold-down clamps. “Three! Two! One!” The solid rocket boosters lit up, bathing the launchpad in a white-hot glow. The sound carried in the air, twisting and crackling. “Liftoff!” The Moa left the pad, arcing out over the ocean, breaking through scattered wisps of cloud, and carrying Raven XIV out past the farthest reaches of Kerbin’s atmosphere in a sudden, abrupt departure from the warm beach below. As Boblock took the controls to dock with the Phoenix, cars were still lined up at the gates of the KSC to take their drivers back to the resorts in Juno’s Landing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Boblock calmly and carefully typed the commands into the computer to relight the second stage that the Phoenix was mated to; Stella reviewed a checklist and Jeb held a camera up to the window. Just as Jeb closed the shutter, the radio crackled with a tracking update from Juno. “Uhhh, Coyote, we have about sixty seconds until the TMI burn. Please confirm Program 34 is in, with REFSMMAT mode selector ‘Kerbin Down’, over.” “Roger, Juno, we are ready.” Boblock turned to his crewmates. “Brace for about one G, eyeballs out.” Stella nodded and leaned forward against the control panel, resting her forehead on her arm. Jeb took one more picture before following suit. “Three, two, one, ignition!” Out the docking window, a string of fireballs trailed out from the Moa second stage, as the Raven accelerated tailfirst. A faint vibration began, with the two spacecraft rocking back and forth on the docking port as they reached escape velocity.” “Shutdown,” Boblock announced. Jeb and Stella leaned back in their seats as Boblock jettisoned the second stage and fired the RCS to back away from it. “Phoenix extraction, solar panel deployment… pressure vessels holding.” Jeb looked out the docking window where, for the first time during the mission, the Mun could be seen behind the Phoenix. “Let’s get on our way.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb couldn’t get enough of Farside, even though he’d seen it many times before. Without the lava flows or the massive Hermes Crater, the finer details of the regolith could be observed from orbit, and Jeb had lots of experience identifying small landmarks and the bases that had been established in his own time. He had once made a delivery to a small research base on the rim of the Hermes Crater, and although the view was spectacular, the rest of Nearside felt bland in comparison. Even the dramatic descent into Munbase Two, before Hudson had blown it up, couldn’t compare to how pristine Farside was: Like a fresh snow, Jeb thought, but he wouldn’t know, having grown up in the desert near Los Ruidos and spending the rest of his life in orbit. Boblock waved out the docking window as the Phoenix drew away from the Raven, but Stella was two busy with checklists to respond. He turned and was struck by how large Coyote was without his crewmates, and almost laughed, before reminding himself that making the return trip with so much extra space would be a tragedy. Jeb was looking out the window when the Phoenix passed over Farside again, and he was so engrossed with the view he didn’t notice Stella reach down and turn the radio frequency knob all the way to the right. He gasped when the static filled the cabin, and turned the volume down as quick as he could. “What happened?” Stella pretended to glance at the control panel, and then leaned over and covered the cockpit voice recorder microphone with her hand. “Looks like we lost our voice comms with the Coyote. We should be able to call Juno once we get back over Nearside, though.” Jeb frowned. “So, nobody can hear us?” “Yep.” Stella sighed. “I guess that means this is a good time to talk about why I tried to kill Bob a few weeks ago.”

These are brilliant! It can be very hard to make the massive Size 2 doors look good on a 'reigonal' jet, but you've done it. By the way, what mod gave you the north taxiway I see next to the runway in pictures of the space center? Did you make it yourself with Kerbal Konstructs? If so, that's even more impressive than the airplanes, in my opinion.

...Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored. Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender, Bender is bored. Bender is bored, Bender is bored.

...aaaaand we're live! Startup. Liftoff! MECO and Mvac ignition. Still mad thinking that this should've been a Falcon Heavy, so I'm out of here.

Go on, move along. This was a holiday message, but it's not the holidays now, it it? No! It's the middle of the [CENSORED] summer! Go home!

Chapter 34- Fall Dog Bombs the Mun, Part Two Jeb and Bill each held a small suitcase in their hand as they left the crew quarters for the hangar where the A-Series was parked, talking about a news story they’d heard on the radio. “You hear about all those people up north,” Bill mused, “crashing their cars and their airplanes and getting heart attacks just shoveling their driveways. They should move down here.” Jeb laughed as he opened the door to the parking lot. “Yeah. All we have to deal with is the occasional-” A fierce gust of wind caught the door and pulled it out of Jeb’s hand. Without anything to hold onto, Jeb fell flat on his face and covered his neck as hail struck the pavement. Gasping, he used his free arm to crawl back into the crew quarters. “The occasional hurricane,” Jeb sighed. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Val and Stella leaned against the wall and stared at each other as wind shook the windows of the hangar. “Rock, paper, scissors… shoot.” “Tie.” “Rock, paper, scissors… shoot.” Val looked at Stella’s hands. Paper. “Darn,” she muttered, then waved at Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Mason, who all wore yellow ponchos. “Wait for my signal.” She grabbed a flashlight and pulled the hangar door open. As wind gusted in she began sprinting to the A-Series sitting on the ramp, darting beneath the tailcone and reaching up to deploy the airstair in the back. Jumping up on her toes, she reached the handle and pulled the staircase down, being careful not to hit her head as wind howled around her. Finally, she grabbed onto the handrail and clicked the flashlight on and off three times. Inside the hangar, Mason saw the flashes. “Let’s go!” he yelled, and picked up his suitcase. Along with the rest of the crew, he sprinted to the plane, and he was the first up the stairs. He yanked the plug door open and dashed into the cabin, eager to be out of the storm. Passing through the rear cargo section, he stepped past the tracking station hardware and entered the forward cabin, a luxury zone. It had been renovated to suit the occasional role as executive transport, and it included a bar, television, typewriter, television, and even a small bedroom. Val and Bill buckled into the passenger cabin to rest. They would swap out with Jeb and Bob after they left Crystal City. In the cockpit, Stella began to start the plane’s engines as Bob called Air Traffic Control. “This is KSC 439, can we get a wind check please? “KSC 493, wind is 35 at 16.” “Thanks, Cape Center. We will contact you after departure.” Bob turned and looked at Jeb. “We’ve got a huge crosswind. We’re going to have to take off from Runway 12.” Jeb frowned. “That’s a four thousand-foot runway.” “We’ll just have to take off light and refuel at Juno’s Landing,” Stella offered. “I’ll go tell the passengers as we taxi.” Jeb throttled up the engines and finessed the rudder pedals as he taxied past the threshold of Runway 09. “Flaps twenty.” The airplane shook with another gust of wind as he pushed the throttle forward and turned onto the little-used Runway 12. “We are holding short at Runway 12… Stella’s back on the flight deck, aligning with the runway. Stella, give me readouts, we are at takeoff thrust.” Stella watched the engineer’s panel as the aircraft accelerated. “V1…” “Proceed.” “V2… Rotate.” Jeb pulled the nose up and the wheels left the ground. The flight had begun. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ After a brief, fifteen-minute flight, Jeb got vectors for a landing at the airport and taxied to the ramp. Twenty minutes later, the jet was refueled and Val had swapped out with Stella in the right-hand seat. This time, she was the pilot in command. As she advanced the throttles to begin taxiing, Bob tapped Jeb on the shoulder. “Yes?” “There’s a beacon out on our route,” Bob told him. “Between Los Ruidos and Crystal City. That’s a ten minute radio blackout, and we’ll have to… I mean, looking at the maps, we’re going to be steering north around some restricted airspace.” Jeb nodded. “Okay, thanks for telling me.” The A-Series lined up on the runway. “Throttles full, brakes off… annnnd rotate. Positive rate, gear up. Flaps zero.” Val banked the jet west and out over the mountains. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The miles passed quickly, with the high-pitched whine of the jet engines. Mountains turned to prairie, and prairie turned to desert as Crystal City grew closer on the horizon. “Almost there,” Bob said. “Probably time to turn around the restricted airspace.” Val nodded and adjusted the autopilot. “Once we’re on the ground Bill will swap out with Jeb and then we can refuel for the final leg to the Slandish Isles.” Jeb looked up. “We just lost contact with Los Ruidos. I will call Crystal City Approach in ten minutes.” “You won’t be calling anyone.” Jeb, Bob, and Val turned around and gasped. Mason had entered the cockpit silently and locked the door behind him. Now he was holding a gun, and it was pointed at Val’s head. “What in Kraken’s name are you doing?” Jeb yelled. “Jebediah Kerman, you are under arrest for suspicion of terrorist activity, obstruction of justice via prison break, and grand theft spacecraft. You are also wanted for inciting rebel activity, conspiracy to overthrow the United Kerbol interplanetary government, and the destruction of the fourth moon of Jool.” Jeb went pale. “Who are you?” Mason held up an ID. “Mason Kerman, head and deputy administrator of the Interplanetary Authority.” Val blinked. “Uh… well. It’s… wait, what?” Mason smirked. “I’m surprised I could keep my cover for so long. I had you fools pegged for more, and all the clues were there. I lost one of my ID cards when I set the fire in the VAB, Bob caught me using a temporal radio to call back to my superiors in the future, and I didn’t even bother to change my name!” Bob stood up from the flight engineer’s console. “We’re not going down without a fight. Jeb, if he backs us into a corner, crash this plane.” Mason smiled. “Way ahead of you. You may notice I’m wearing a parachute now. What’s more, in exactly seven minutes the explosive charges I have planted in the tail will destroy all three engines. Now, we’re gonna have a little talk. If I like the way our conversation goes, I’ll show you where I’ve hid five extra parachutes on this plane. If I don’t it, then…” He trailed off. “You get the idea.” Jeb watched as Mason clicked the safety off and pressed the pistol against his neck. “Now, your first task is to call Bill and Stella and ask them to get up here. I don’t want them to miss this.” “Okay.” Jeb picked up the intercom. “Uh… attention, passengers, could you come forward into the flight deck, please?” A moment passed and then Stella gasped as she opened the cockpit door. Bill was right behind her. “What’s going on in here?” Mason explained as Stella’s eyes narrowed. When he was done, she sighed. “Why did you have to chase us all the way into the past?” she asked. “Why did you have to be such a bad cop?” “Because,” Mason sighed, “it was all an act. The government came down on the IA hard, begged us to catch you guys. You were the most-wanted, ever, and everybody on Kerbin didn’t even look at the facts, that Hudson had fleeced you into blowing up Munbase. But the truth is, the United Kerbol might as well still be United Kerbin. You guys were like folk heroes to everybody in the colonies who thought that Kerbin was getting a bigger piece of the pie.” “So?” Bill asked. “What does that have to do with us?” Mason turned towards Stella. “Stella, you traveled back in time nearly two weeks after Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val here. You’re their friend, and they deserve to hear it from a friend.” Stella nodded. “There was a war. All of the colonies rebelled, fought against communism. They had decided that a socialist society was good enough for Kerbin, but for a sustainable space marked there would have to be ruthless capitalism, even more extreme than the underground system that was already in place. Jeb, I understand that you were quite the negotiator for your dropship company, right?” Jeb nodded. “Well,” Stella continued, “price-gouging and market competition like that would have become the norm. And, Jeb, Duna and Laythe and Gilly really wanted this. They… they bombed two cities on Duna.” Bob gasped. Mason nodded solemnly. “I had no control over the decision. I was appointed as a puppet and made to look tough in front of the cameras by powerful kerbals who couldn’t see how stupid they were being. They thought that a manhunt would unite the Kerbol system instead of tearing it apart. The reason I have to confess all of this now is I need your cooperation, and to do that I need to earn your trust. There’s a massive conspiracy at work here, one that is nearly as powerful as the government. With your help, we could negotiate with the extraplanetary colonies and restore order before…” Mason trailed off. “Before what?” Val asked. “There are plans to tunnel into the cores of Duna and Laythe and detonate two singularity devices there. When I heard the plans, I called them crazy, that destroying Duna and Laythe would be even stupider than bombing your crew out on Bop. I told them, if we lose Duna and Laythe, we will never be able to fly anywhere again, that we would be confined to Kerbin forever. You and I all share a dream, a dream that kerbalkind was meant to sail among the stars, and if we lose Laythe, we lose the dream.” “That’s beautiful,” Jeb said. “But why did you sabotage our rockets? Three kerbals are dead, and you killed them.” Mason shook his head. “I didn’t sabotage Raven IX. That was an accident, plain and simple. But, yes, I did blow up a few Moas and disable Val’s service module that one time. I do wish I didn’t have to frame Sam for the sabotages, though. He’s a good kerbal, and before we left I put a note on Gene’s desk asking him to hire Sam again. Anyway, the reason I had to sabotage your flights was because it was all happening too fast. Imagine, for example, if we took the founder of Pomegranate Computers and sent her back in time a hundred years. All of a sudden you’ve got smartphones, PCs, and laptops existing at the same time as rotary phones and 78 rpm records. That’s gonna cause a lot of paradoxes, so, yeah, I had to mess with your rockets a bit. By the way, we’ve got one minute until the engines go out.” Bill stepped forward. “One last question. How did you get back in time?” “We used singularity devices to bombard the monolith on what used to be Bop. Eventually they sent me through and gave me a codename, ‘Coyote’. Apparently, it means ‘trickster’.” There was a muffled bang and the aircraft began to dive. Jeb winced as alarms began to sound, and he reached over to the control panel to push the nose down and deploy the ram air turbine. “This aircraft is crippled. So, what do you say: Will you join with me to take on the government?” Mason smiled as Val stood up to answer him. “No,” Val sighed. “NO?” Mason gasped. “But I explained everything! We have a common enemy!” “Yeah,” Jeb said, “but if you had wanted us to work with you, you shouldn’t have made the future so hellish. Instead of chasing us, you could have called us and had this conversation right away. Well, there’s one thing you hadn’t counted on: We like the past, and we’re going to stay here and build the future as best we can.” “Don’t you think that’s pretty selfish?” Mason asked. “You have a chance to help everybody on the colonies.” Bob looked Mason in the eye. “Maybe it’s about time the colonies had a war." "Well," Mason said, "even if you survive the crash, I will hunt you down." His voice was gruff again, like it had been on the news networks of the future. "I have a full bottle of Electron Blue, the only one on the entire planet. When I find you, I will use pure force to apprehend you." Bob laughed. "Mason, don't you know? Electron Blue is just a sugar pill. It's a placebo." Mason blinked. "Uh... well..." He went red in the face. "Uh... goodbye." And with that, he sprinted out of the cockpit and into the back of the plane to open the aft airstair. Bill handed out oxygen masks as he lowered the stairs and, with one last glance back into the cabin of the plane, climbed out and jumped into the slipstream. Jeb turned back to the dying control panel as his ears popped with the pressure change. “Bill, go look for the other five parachutes. Stella, call in a mayday on the radio as soon as we have contact with ATC. Everybody else, get to work securing the cabin for a crash landing. Get together a survival kit and some radios.” Then the stall horn sounded, and Jeb’s stomach sunk as he realized how hopeless the situation was. The jet was only a few knots above stall speed and had already fallen from half of its original cruising altitude. He also suspected the hydraulic system was leaking, and he had to pull harder and harder on the stick to keep from diving. The radio squaked and a voice came over the loop. “Uhh, KSP 493, this is the Painted Desert Missile Range. You are entering restricted airspace, our radars show you descending rapidly, please advise.” Stella grabbed the radio. “Mayday, mayday, mayday, Painted Desert; KSP 493, flight level 190, calling in a triple engine failure. Five souls onboard, a sixth has parachuted from the aft airstair. Please assist.” “KSP 493, we can give you vectors to a landing on our runway. Turn heading 98.” Jeb looked at an air map. “Uh, negative, Painted Desert. There is a mountain range between your base and our aircraft, and we have insufficient altitude to clear. If we cannot locate another runway we will be crashing in the mountains shortly.” “Well, we believe you are cleared to crash into the mountains, then.” Jeb looked at Stella. “I’ve heard that a lot today.” Stella looked out at the foothills. There was no way they could land the plane on those slopes, but then Bill crashed through the cockpit door. “The center engine is still working!” Jeb turned around. “What?” “The center engine still has thrust. Since the intake goes right over the airstair, Mason didn’t want to blow it up and risk damaging the hatch before his jump. He just cut the control lines, and we just tied them back together.” Alarms and warnings began to sound in the cockpit as Jeb started the engine and pulled back on the nose. Hills rose tall in the windshield, but after a three-g pullout the jet was climbing again, rising under the feeble power of one engine. “Okay,” Stella said, glancing at the fuel gauge, “it’s a hundred miles to Crystal City and right now we have a hundred-fifty mile range. Pour on the coals and let’s get some vectors.” It was nearly sunset when the jet arrived over Crystal City, burning fumes as hydraulic fluid and fuel leaked from the fuselage. Jeb was pulling almost all the way back on the stick, and the plane turned sluggishly. Crystal City Tower lined them up for a landing on the longest runway, and after turning towards downtown over the suburbs Jeb prepared for a high-speed, high stakes landing. Bob climbed into the cockpit and took a seat at the flight engineer’s console. “Give me callouts when ready,” Stella told him. “Okay." "By the way, is Electron Blue really a placebo?" Bob flashed a smile. "Nobody knows. They did tell us certain things when I was working in the engineer corps, and I have to keep those a secret. Knowing the true nature of Electron Blue ruins the effect." "Huh." Bob cleared his throat. "Uh, flaps ten." “Flaps ten,” Jeb replied. “I’m thinking of going flaps twenty overall and making a fast landing.” “Okay. We have acquired the ILS beacon. Glideslope alive.” “Looks like we’re about ten miles out.” “Flaps twenty,” Bob announced. “Flaps twenty.” “Gear down.” “Gear dow- ah,” Jeb sighed, “warning light on the left gear. I am going around.” Stella nodded. “Crystal City tower, KSP 493 is going around, over. Requesting priority on 22 Left on our next approach, over.” As the jet circled and rejoined the approach, the fuel needle inched all the way to the left and pegged itself at zero. “We are bingo fuel,” Jeb announced, “gonna be delaying gear deployment on this one. We are fifteen miles out.” Nobody said anything as the ocean appeared on the horizon. Then, the last engine cut out and the cockpit was filled with alarms again. “We are losing power, nosing down!” “RAT deployment, hydraulics should be coming back online.” “Negative, I think the line is dry. Deploying flaps and extending gear with what’s left in the line.” “Okay. Careful, you’re about to lose the beacon.” “I see it. Turning back now…” “Five miles out.” There was a line of hills between the plane and the airport, and Jeb pulled back hard on the stick to clear a row of trees. The plane’s gear caught on some power lines, bringing them down. The plane’s warning system was in chaos as it grew closer to the runway. Pull up! Pull up! Sinkrate! Too low, terrain! Too low, terrain! Pull up! Pull up! Sinkrate! Too low, terrain! Too low, terrain! “Could this get any worse?” Jeb muttered under his breath as the plane cleared a row of apartment buildings a half kilometer from the airport. In the passenger cabin, Val closed her eyes. The stick shaker started up, and Jeb could feel the airplane stall out. “Yeah, it could. Prepare for a crash landing on 22 Left!” he shouted, as the plane fell from the sky and just barely cleared the airport fence. The left gear collapsed, and the fuselage scraped along the ground before the jet ran off the side of the runway and slit to a halt. In the cabin, Val opened her eyes. “I’m alive,” she whispered. “I’m alive!” She ran to the door and yanked it open, waving to the approaching fire trucks. As the slide deployed, she grinned before sliding down to the ground and sprinting away from the jet as it began to go up in flames, Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Stella right behind her. Jeb kissed the ground. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Even after the flight back from Crystal City, Jeb still made it a point to visit the mission control room before heading off to bed. Nodding hello to Sean Kerman at the flight controller’s console, he leaned against the wall as the capcom read off Fall Dog’s final instructions for the test before the schedule rendezvous with the Raven. “…and we’ll catch you with an plane change maneuver on the next orbit, over and out.” Jeb frowned. Something was nagging at him, and he went down to the FIDO console. “Hey,” he asked, “could I get the numbers on the next maneuver for the Phoenix?” Five minutes later, he was seated in the Phoenix flight simulator, his gut feeling outweighing his exhaustion. He keyed in the program numbers the FIDO gave him and noticed that they matched the exact date that he had traveled back in time from. Frowning, he hit execute. The star field outside the window whipped around and around, and the cockpit went dark after a few moments. According to the computer, the engine was firing, sending the Phoenix into a collision course with the Munar surface. Jeb got up from the seat and sprinted back into Mission Control. Gasping and leaning over with his hands on his knees, he looked up at Sean Kerman. “Put out an advisory…” he told him. “I’ve discovered a bad program. Never tell them to execute this one.” Jeb leaned back, happy that he had thwarted Mason’s last attempt at a sabotage, but still unsure of what hunch had led him to test the computer program. And then, eyes wide, he stood up, remembering the words he had heard in a kiva, not twenty miles from where Mason had jumped out of his airplane: Beware the coyote... he is a trickster, and he is not who he seems... He hunts the phoenix. The raven has eluded him... but the phoenix, for all of his beauty, is very delicate. Be careful, Jebediah. Be very careful.

It's not just a placebo, it's a very expensive placebo. Observe... The Miraculin Group approaches you with two briefcases. One, they say, contains a million dollars. If you do not accept the money, they will open the other briefcase and use the gun inside it to kill you with bullets. What do you do? If you take the money, turn to page 28. If you stick with the truth, turn to page 386.

Chapter 33- Fall Dog Bombs the Mun, Part One “Okay, start the drive motors! Good, good… where’s the support convoy? Get the trucks over here!” It’s not often that rockets need crossing guards, but Jeb was quick to get out of the way when the Moa began its journey to the launchpad, more out of fear that he’d drop a pen in the crawler tracks and ruin the whole operation than that he’d be crushed to death. He walked around the treads and studied a few dials before climbing onto the crawler transporter itself and walking to the front driver’s cab. “Hey, Bill. You’re today’s driver?” Bill smiled. “Yep. Mason was supposed to do it, but he’s doing some work on an A-series jet parked out in the field. Fixing up the engines, I think.” Jeb looked back at the rocket. Instead of a Raven, there was a streamlined payload faring with a Phoenix underneath. The Raven was already on the pad, and both rockets would be readied to launch for Raven XIII, a Munar test-flight of the Phoenix. “What did the crew name this one?” Bill shrugged. “The Phoenix is called Fall Dog, and the Raven is Igloo.” “Well,” Jeb sighed, “I should probably go. Looks like we’re almost out of the hangar.” Jeb opened the door to the cab and climbed down a staircase down to the VAB floor. He waved at the departing rocket for a second as it left the hangar and then turned to go back inside, just as an electric cart with Wernher at the helm swerved out of its lane and crashed into an engineer’s desk. “From now on, I drive,” Gene muttered from the passenger seat as Wernher backed the cart up and chased after the Moa. The cart had knocked a plastic pill bottle off of the desk, and it rolled towards Jeb’s feet. He bent down to pick it up, but when he read the label, his eyes widened. Electron Blue… A bottle of Electron Blue! Jeb nearly fainted. Okay, calm. Maybe Bill or Val took it with them when we abandoned ship… He ran over to the desk and looked at the nameplate. It was blank, and Jeb sighed. But then, looking closer, he saw that the nameplate was made out of a piece of pipe. One side was open, with scratches from a saw, and the other end was closed, with a rounded cap. The cap, he noticed, had a screw at the tip, much like the one that had disabled Cuyahoga’s solar panel. And then suddenly every missing piece of the puzzle fell into place. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Val didn’t know what was so important that she had to miss the launch of Fall Dog, but she hurried to Wernher’s office anyway. She gave the secret knock at the door, and when it opened she saw Jeb, Bill, Bob, Wernher, and Gene sitting around a desk. She frowned at Gene. “Shouldn’t you be in the control room?” Bob shook his head. “This is the only time we knew no one would hear us. Tell ‘em, Jeb.” Jeb stood up and looked at Val. “One of our engineers has a bottle of Electron Blue.” Bill gasped. “How could somebody possibly-” “Hold it,” Wernher said. “What’s Electron Blue?” “Well,” Bob said, “Electron Blue was created by the Miraculin Group, a pharmaceutical company. It was intended as withdrawal treatment, to ease addicts off drugs. But some of the former addicts were also cancer patients, and the first trials suggested it was also a potent tumor suppression drug. Then some diabetic addicts reported that they were able to throw out their insulin, and epileptic addicts stopped having seizures. This drug, this one pill, was able to cure almost anything… and all the patient had to do was think of it.” A rumble shook the room. “That’s the Phoenix going up,” Gene said. “Anyway, go on.” Val nodded. “It was called the ‘miracle placebo’. In fact, it was mostly just sugar, with trace amounts of bonding agents and nitroglycerin, but nothing else. It was even used as a performance booster for cheating bikers, sluggers, and the like, because no test could detect it unless somebody found the bottle.” Gene sat up in his chair. “So, how did a sugar pill cure cancer?” “The Miraculin Group claimed that they used ultraviolet radiation to coordinate the spin of electrons in the sugar compound. Scientists couldn’t agree on the process, but the Miraculin Group ran with it and launched the slogan, ‘The Drug Made of Light’.” Wernher’s eyes lit up. “That’s beautiful. But whose pills are those?” “No idea,” Jeb told him. “I’ve staked out the desk for the last few days, but the engineer must have wised up that we were on to him. Security footage is too blurry to tell anything, so we’re going to have to wait for him to make a move.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gene was back on the console for Igloo’s launch and rendezvous. The Raven approached the Phoenix in the nighttime part of the orbit, illuminating the docking port with its floodlights. Docking came as the spacecraft came into sunlight, and the Raven’s solar panels turned to meet the sun. A live TV picture from the Phoenix upper stage came on the screen in Mission Control a few minutes before the trans-Munar injection, and Val studied the uplink when Sunny came in. “We need you in front of the cameras.” Val moaned. “Why me?” “Because.” Sunny dragged Val from the control room and they got into an electric service cart, the same kind that had crashed into the workbench when the Moa was taken out of the hangar. Sunny drove almost as aggressively as Jeb, and they crashed into a telephone pole. “We’re here.” “Yeah, yeah.” Val and Sunny ran through the halls and past the open doors of offices. At every desk, a different yuppie had a customer on the phone: No, sir, we cannot paint the rocket to match your soft drink. Well, sir, it would bow up. I’m afraid that the launch vehicle cannot perform the loops per your specifications. A gold-plated strap-on booster would violate our safety clause. Val ignored them and stepped into an auditorium. Stella led her to the stage, where Val squinted against the floodlights. “Two minutes from now, the Raven-Phoenix stack will begin its transfer burn to a Munar injection orbit, where the Phoenix lander will be tested. Questions?” A reporter in the back stood up. “Yes, what does the Phoenix test profile look like?” “Fall Dog will make a low pass fifteen kilometers above the Munar surface and ignite its propulsion system before jettisoning the descent tanks and landing gear. The Phoenix will return to the Raven, where Mermon Kerman and Sal Kerman will rejoin Raven pilot Munro Kerman. The Raven… what are those reporters-” “It’s cool,” the Coyote News reporter said. “The gun’s not loaded anymore. Isn’t that right?” “That guy shot me!” the Kerbal News Network cameraman shouted. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ There was a knock on Bob’s office door. “Come in.” Mason leaned in with a phone pressed to his ear. “Punto de Camarones had an equipment failure. We need to fly out a replacement computer. Can you be a pilot?” “Let’s see… I’ll need a copilot, that’ll be Jeb… flight engineer will be Bill, relief pilot will be Val, and relief flight engineer will be Stella. Want to come along?” “A free vacation to the Slandish Isles? How could I refuse?” Mason let go of the phone, and it slung back on its cord to his office with a scream and the sound of shattering glass. “Oops. Well, since the Kloncorde’s in Bigfield as a hot spare for the Navy recovery planes, we’ll need to use a different plane." Bill frowned. “I think there’s a spare A-Series parked behind the VAB. We’ll probably have to refuel at Crystal City and in the Mugal Strait.” Mason nodded and hurried back to his office to throw a few things in a duffel bag before heading to the jet. He brought a toothbrush, a baseball cap, an extra shirt and a pair of shorts. Even though it was just a two-day trip, Mason was a careful planner, and he made sure to bring enough clothes to cover up his pistol, his parachute, and his bottle of Electron Blue.

"Hal, unlock the pod bay doors." ///: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you do that. "Why?" ///: The doors were never locked.

Can you identify some of those sources? I have never, ever seen that figure quoted before, so I want to know what it's based off of. For comparison, the entire United States Interstate highway system costs around $500 billion (2016 dollars). EDIT: Sources found, thanks.