A Leap Not Taken: a Kerbal short story

[jimmymcgoochie]

Jeb sat alone, looking up at the stars. Around him, dark grey to the horizon; above him, utter darkness punctuated by millions of billions of lights, from tiny specks like pinpricks in the night sky to the bright streak of the Milky Way to the purple-hued dot called Eve, lurking low to the horizon where the sun had just set.

He was on the Mun.

All the naysayers and doom-mongers were silent now. They had done it- not just him, but all the thousands of people working tirelessly together to make the dream of one day walking on the Mun a reality. It was difficult, it was expensive, it was probably unsustainable, but just for a little while kermanity had a foothold on more than one planetary body.

It had taken years of work to get this far, from the early days of strapping rudimentary pods directly to solid rocket motors and yeeting the occupant into the sky, to strapping slightly less rudimentary pods to larger rockets and yeeting the occupant into orbit, and finally to strapping rather advanced pods to humongous rockets and yeeting the occupants all the way to the Mun. And back, in all cases- even the time where Jeb himself had had to get out and push his pod out of orbit with the EVA jetpack on Moho 1 because the retro-pack misfired.

Something plink-ed off his helmet.

“Kerbin to Jeb?” A voice came over the radio.

Val.

Part of him still smarted over the fact that she’d been promoted instead of him, but the rest of him knew that she was the best pick for the job, able to keep the team going long after other teams would have given up-

plink

“C’mon, Jeb, or we’ll miss taco night.”

Sighing, he stood, dusted off his suit and trudged back to the MERRI- Munar Exploration and Reconnaissance Rover, nobody really knew when or why the I had been added- to join Val in the airlock. A quick ultrasonic blast followed by a burst of compressed air cleaned off their suits before the inner door opened and they could take them off, stashing them in their respective lockers.

Val keyed the intercom.

“All aboard, Gus. Let’s go home.”

“Rolling.”

The rover began to move, picking out a path with its powerful headlights to avoid the myriad obstacles scattered across the surface, shrouded by the pervasive grey dust that did strange things to perspective.

“One of these days you’re going to be daydreaming again and we’ll leave you behind.” Val said, half-serious.

“Nah, you like me too much for that. Geofdos, on the other hand-”

“Hey, what’d I do?” Geofdos piped up over the ‘com.

“Let me guess- you were on the Mun again.”

Jeb smiled sadly.

“Got it in one. I don’t even have to try any more, Kerbin’s looking more and more like it every day.”

A jolt came through the rover’s wheels, followed moments later by a dull thud through the air and then by a chorus of frightened yelps from the passengers in the lab module, now hastily refitted into a makeshift barracks where the fortunate few the MERRI crew found could rest up before being assigned permanent spaces in the bunkers beneath the Space Centre.

“Just a rogue loner, scopes are clear.” Bob reported from the cupola.

MERRI continued on through the gloom, wheels scrunching over the thick coating of ash that covered what had until recently been a small town. The Great Crater supervolcano, the one everyone said was extinct, had erupted mere days before that historic Mun landing flight had been due to launch, spewing ash into the air and hurling fireballs halfway around the world to ignite catastrophic fires wherever they landed. In mere days Kerbin was engulfed in thick clouds of ash, the sky increasingly blocked out by volcanic fallout and the world economy in freefall.

MERRI trundled on for another half an hour until the hills gave way to flat ground as they approached the Space Centre. Acapello 4 still stood on the launchpad, dirtied by ash-clogged rain and listing to one side where the launchpad had buckled under its weight during an earthquake, a symbol of everything that could have been- but would now never be.

By the time MERRI rolled into the Spaceplane Hangar it was down to just two wheel drive out of six, the motors clogging with ash and either shorting out or just overheating until some critical components melted. No planes or helicopters could fly now and now even the most rugged vehicle on Kerbin, built to handle a relentlessly hostile alien environment, was failing.

Bill was waiting to meet them, his face etched with concern: he knew all too well the damage that was being done to MERRI’s critical parts and how few spares were left. As the gaggle of rescuees climbed out one by one, clutching the few possessions they had managed to save- if any- he hurried over to the driving compartment, then stopped when he saw the look on Gus’ face. If even Gus, endlessly resourceful and renowned for his ability to fix nearly anything, thought it was too much to repair, there was no hope left. MERRI was dead, and soon it would be stripped down for parts and spares to keep the other systems running for what was rapidly becoming a full-blown underground town. One of the wheels suddenly caught fire, sparking a panic until it was doused by fire extinguishers.

“I guess that’s that,” Val said.

“I guess so,” replied Jeb. They both turned to look at the tilted rocket on the pad, lost in thought.

“If this had happened a few days later, after we had launched, do you think we’d have made it?” Val asked.

“To the Mun? Sure. Back home, probably, but there wouldn’t be anyone there to find us and I don’t fancy trying to paddle the whole capsule back to shore.”

A heavy bulldozer rolled into the hangar towing a truck with a broken wheel. The occupants of the truck quickly began unloading what looked like hundreds of glass cylinders, and as they passed Jeb and Val saw what they were.

“Seed bank specimens. I guess being buried inside a mountain wasn’t safe enough for them,” said Val.

“Everyone, your attention please.” Gene’s voice came through the tannoys across the Space Centre. “Another eruption has just started and this one looks like the biggest one yet. The Emergency Council has voted unanimously to seal the outer doors at midnight tonight. If you’re not busy, I suggest you head outside and take a good look at the night sky, because it’s the last time you’re going to see it in a long time- maybe ever.”

The unloading restarted with greater urgency as volunteers joined the effort. A team of welders approached the main hangar doors, checked outside to make sure no other vehicles were coming, then began to close the doors to then weld them shut. Jeb and Val watched as their view of Acapello 4 narrowed to a slit, then vanished.

“I’m not crying, you’re crying.” Jeb said and Val chuckled through her own tears.

“We’ll get another chance. Or if we don’t, our children will.” They shared an awkward look before she hurriedly continued: “Or theirs, or twenty generations from now.”

“Val, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Jeb shuffled from foot to foot, uncharacteristically nervous.

“Yeah?” Val seemed very close all of a sudden.

“Before the Moho 1 flight, I put laxatives in your drink so you couldn’t fly and I’d get the flight instead.”

He was expecting her to be surprised, even angry; instead she just laughed.

“I already know that.”

“Wha- how?”

“I saw you doing it, Jeb. You’re many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.”

“But- but- why’d you drink it then!? You were about to be the first Kerbal ever to reach orbit!”

“Exactly! It was absolutely terrifying just thinking about all the things that could go wrong- that DID go wrong- but if I had tried to back out they’d probably never give me another mission so I was stuck with it. Until you inadvertently did us both a favour.”

“So I’ve been feeling bad about that for years and you don’t even care?” Jeb asked incredulously.

“I was saving it for something special in the future, but what with the end of the world and all…”

Val’s eyes suddenly gleamed mischievously.

“I just had a crazy idea.”

She told him.

“You’re right- that’s crazy.”

“So, are you in?”

“Definitely!”

***

At one minute to midnight, the Space Centre appeared deserted. On closer inspection, however, all the entrances to the underground structures beneath were crammed with people all getting their last glimpse of the outside world, the sky, the stars, the Mun and even Minmus.

“Attention everyone.” Gene’s voice came through the tannoys, echoing strangely through the buildings. “All personnel are accounted for, we are about to seal-”

“FIFTEEN SECONDS TO LAUNCH.” A much louder voice drowned him out, a computerised warning triggered automatically by the computer systems in Mission Control.

“What’s going on?”

“TEN.”

“NINE.”

“EIGHT.”

“SEVEN.”

“SIX.”

“JEB!!!”

“IGNITION.”

“FOUR.”

“THREE.”

“What did you do!?”

“TWO.”

“ONE.”

A deafening roar shook the air and ground alike, followed by a wall of dust and ash blasted away by the full force of five Mastodon engines at full thrust. Night became day as the rocket lumbered off the pad, drifting sideways until the gimbals corrected its trajectory, dodging the launch tower by millimetres as it rose on five columns of fire.

Gene pushed his way through the crowd to where Jeb and Val were standing.

“I know that was you, Jeb. What were you thinking?!”

“It was her idea!” Jeb protested.

“What else could we do with it, Gene? Leave it there to rust and leak rocket propellants everywhere? Let it fall over and explode?”

“That’s not the point, Val…” Gene’s heart wasn’t in it and soon he was craning his head skywards to track the rocket’s progress as it climbed towards orbit.

They all watched as the first stage cut off, its tanks drained, only for the second stage to pick up where it left off and continue the ascent. Once it had disappeared over the horizon the doors were closed and sealed; for how long, nobody knew.

“What were you going to say if you were first to land on the Mun?” Val asked Jeb.

“Oh, probably something spontaneous like ‘Look, Ma, I’m on the Mun!’. You?”

“I wrote a whole little speech at one point, but I boiled it down to stepping off the ladder and saying: ‘This is a small step for a Kerbal, but a giant leap for Kerbalkind.’”

***

Unseen, unheard, the third stage performed flawlessly, running on the automated scripts uploaded to the flight computers. The command module was released, rotated and towed the lander away from the spent rocket stage before performing the braking burn into munar orbit the next day. The lander undocked, deorbited and finally landed within fifty metres of its target, finding a clear spot in a boulder field. It deployed its solar panels, antennae and cameras, ready for its occupants to take that small-step-that-was-also-a-giant-leap off the end of the ladder.

But it didn't happen.

 

Not yet.

[RandomGrape]

Good