Uranus’s blue-grey bulk.
She was glad. She didn’t want to see the Free Home right now. She just wanted to get through the next two years.
“Port Oberon to Pasadena . Thirty seconds to release.”
“Thanks Oberon.” Yerusha chided herself for daydreaming. She had a job to do and starboard Watch Commander who didn’t seem as though he was a great believer in second chances for Freers.
Doesn’t matter , she reminded herself. For now, you are Pasadena.
Yerusha rested her hands on her boards. The flat keys glowed with the designations she had written across them, including the OVERRIDE key. That one would cancel out all the programs she had labored over for the past two days and would let her command the engines directly if anything unpredicted happened on course to the jump point.
The ship had been slow to learn her writing and short-hand because there was no AI running the internal systems. Al Shei was obviously almost as paranoid about humanity’s progeny as Lipinski was. Yerusha shook her head. With attitudes like that surrounding her, it was going to be a long run, that much was sure.
The Pasadena slid out from under the module rings and the gleaming panels that the view screens showed came to a halt. Out of the window, she saw the silver-white curve of the station and just a glimpse of the ghostly globe of Oberon.
“Three to release, Pasadena ,” said the Port voice. “Two…one…release.”
The trolley opened its clamps and Yerusha watched Port Oberon and the stark, white moon fall away from the Pasadena .
She knew that the relative motion was the ship’s. Pasadena was falling away from the station, from Oberon and from the sun. Without any acceleration pressure to tell her otherwise, though, her mind believed what her eyes saw. As the minutes ticked by, Port Oberon dropped back, becoming an elaborate silver mobile surrounded by moth like ships that darted between the spindly arms of cranes and the bloated hulls of the fuel tanks. All of them hung against the backdrop of Oberon’s white and black speckled surface. The moon itself was nothing but a cardboard circle suspended in the limitless black pool that made up the universe.
“ Pasadena this is Port Oberon we have you at a eight clicks at five minutes, fourteen seconds. Hour 15:24:16. Mark.”
“Marked, Oberon.” Yerusha checked the clock at her station automatically. The clock showed both the length-of-flight time and time of day. The Pasadena ’s flight clocks had to be in synch with each other as well as with the outside, but not just for timing torch bursts for sub-light navigation. Navigation past light speed was impossible. To change direction, they would have to drop down to sub-light, change the ship’s flight angle and jump again. The trick was, if they made a mistake in their calculations, they might not know which system they were making their correcting jump from, and it might take days to work out where they were, much less where they were headed, if they were able to do it at all. Ships did disappear for want of good timing.
“In sync, Pilot?” came Schyler’s voice from her right hand. The bridge was laid out so that all the vital stations were on one side of the drop-shaft. The other side held the back-up boards, the conference station and the virtual reality simulator. During her shifts, Yerusha would don the VR gear and run through flight simulations, looking for ways to cut down the run time and fuel consumption, as well as bringing herself up to spec on just what the ship she was flying could and could not do. If an emergency course change were called for, Schyler could put on the gear and run through the programs she fed in from her chair, using full-blown simulations of Pasadena .
“In sync and on line, Watch,” Yerusha replied in her best doing-my-job voice. From Schyler’s station he could call up a display of exactly what she saw, but safety and approved protocol called for a direct check.
To Yerusha’s
She was glad. She didn’t want to see the Free Home right now. She just wanted to get through the next two years.
“Port Oberon to Pasadena . Thirty seconds to release.”
“Thanks Oberon.” Yerusha chided herself for daydreaming. She had a job to do and starboard Watch Commander who didn’t seem as though he was a great believer in second chances for Freers.
Doesn’t matter , she reminded herself. For now, you are Pasadena.
Yerusha rested her hands on her boards. The flat keys glowed with the designations she had written across them, including the OVERRIDE key. That one would cancel out all the programs she had labored over for the past two days and would let her command the engines directly if anything unpredicted happened on course to the jump point.
The ship had been slow to learn her writing and short-hand because there was no AI running the internal systems. Al Shei was obviously almost as paranoid about humanity’s progeny as Lipinski was. Yerusha shook her head. With attitudes like that surrounding her, it was going to be a long run, that much was sure.
The Pasadena slid out from under the module rings and the gleaming panels that the view screens showed came to a halt. Out of the window, she saw the silver-white curve of the station and just a glimpse of the ghostly globe of Oberon.
“Three to release, Pasadena ,” said the Port voice. “Two…one…release.”
The trolley opened its clamps and Yerusha watched Port Oberon and the stark, white moon fall away from the Pasadena .
She knew that the relative motion was the ship’s. Pasadena was falling away from the station, from Oberon and from the sun. Without any acceleration pressure to tell her otherwise, though, her mind believed what her eyes saw. As the minutes ticked by, Port Oberon dropped back, becoming an elaborate silver mobile surrounded by moth like ships that darted between the spindly arms of cranes and the bloated hulls of the fuel tanks. All of them hung against the backdrop of Oberon’s white and black speckled surface. The moon itself was nothing but a cardboard circle suspended in the limitless black pool that made up the universe.
“ Pasadena this is Port Oberon we have you at a eight clicks at five minutes, fourteen seconds. Hour 15:24:16. Mark.”
“Marked, Oberon.” Yerusha checked the clock at her station automatically. The clock showed both the length-of-flight time and time of day. The Pasadena ’s flight clocks had to be in synch with each other as well as with the outside, but not just for timing torch bursts for sub-light navigation. Navigation past light speed was impossible. To change direction, they would have to drop down to sub-light, change the ship’s flight angle and jump again. The trick was, if they made a mistake in their calculations, they might not know which system they were making their correcting jump from, and it might take days to work out where they were, much less where they were headed, if they were able to do it at all. Ships did disappear for want of good timing.
“In sync, Pilot?” came Schyler’s voice from her right hand. The bridge was laid out so that all the vital stations were on one side of the drop-shaft. The other side held the back-up boards, the conference station and the virtual reality simulator. During her shifts, Yerusha would don the VR gear and run through flight simulations, looking for ways to cut down the run time and fuel consumption, as well as bringing herself up to spec on just what the ship she was flying could and could not do. If an emergency course change were called for, Schyler could put on the gear and run through the programs she fed in from her chair, using full-blown simulations of Pasadena .
“In sync and on line, Watch,” Yerusha replied in her best doing-my-job voice. From Schyler’s station he could call up a display of exactly what she saw, but safety and approved protocol called for a direct check.
To Yerusha’s
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