“I’m good. I think Nina should have this. It’s what she wants to do when she’s older and this would be the perfect thing to move her plan along in that direction.”

  Sandy told me he’d talk to Henry about it and to hold off saying anything to my folks until Henry made a decision about whether Nina was acceptable to him or not. The next night, Sandy called me into his office and said, “I talked with Henry and your proposal threw him for a loop. You are a known quantity so he’d rather stick with you, yet if you’re vouching for Nina then he’s willing to consider it. In the meantime, he suggested both you and Nina start your pilot training. However it works out, he’d like to see both of you complete the training. That way, if he does decide on you at least Nina gets a certification out of the deal. Either way, she gets pushed a little more towards her goal, so you don’t have to feel bad if it’s you flying off to Earth in the end.”

  Henry’s decision to put off deciding surprised me for a moment. I had been all set to hear Sandy tell me I wasn’t going and now I might still be going. But now, Nina was going to get a leg up on her plan either way so I felt pretty good about it. I was actually happy that I was going to get to learn to fly the CLT30 again even, or maybe especially, if I didn’t do the commercial. I said, “Thanks, Sandy and please tell Henry thank you for me, also. No matter how this works out, I really appreciate what he’s done.”

  Sandy chuckled and said, “So, uh, are you going to go take care of that work you left unfinished now?”

  “What work, I’ve got the machines all cleaned up and the next run all loaded?”

  “I was talking about telling your parents and telling Nina. Her folks would probably like to know, too .”

  “Yeah, I guess I have some talking to do.”

  “Don’t forget that all of you are going to have to go through the return protocols. You can’t put that off until Henry makes his final decision. There’s just not enough time.”

  I’d forgotten about the protocols. The human body is very adaptable and in the seventy eight years, humans had been going to space, they’d learned a thing or two about the effects of lower than Earth normal gravity on the human body. Between the cocktail of pills we took every morning, and a minimum of exercise that was strictly enforced, the Moon with its lower gravity wasn’t a bad place to live. Living there for a while and then going back to Earth was a whole different thing. The protocols were set up to prepare a body that had gotten used to lunar gravity to be ready for a return to full Earth gravity. You could go back without going through the protocols, but it wasn’t an experience you were going to enjoy. Without the protocols, returning to Earth for a month was just a dangerous pipe dream.

  Two days later, Nina and I were reporting to Wyatt Saner at Denali’s CLT30 flight school. We had to come every day after supper for two hours and then come in on Saturday and Sunday for six hours. Sandy adjusted my work schedule to accommodate the CLT30 school. I don’t know if Nina just cut the hours she was studying or was just doing with less sleep. Either way, both of us were thrilled to be there, at least that’s how it started out.

  IT'S ONLY AN ENGINE FAILURE.

  The CLT30 shuddered and strained as I fought to keep it level and rising. The cliff face on the left side of the CLT30 loomed closer as the collision avoidance warning started blaring. I barely got the yaw under control when a fourth Prometheus IV engine failed and we suddenly pitched over and impacted right below the top of the cliff. The contact point with the cliff acted as a pivot point and we rolled inverted as the momentum and thrust from the remaining engines pushed the CLT30’s mass around the pivot. Once we were inverted, gravity assisted the engines in driving the CLT30 into the base of the cliff where the nose of the CLT30, along with the command deck I was in, crushed into the passenger compartment. When the fuel tanks ruptured, there was a brief, fiery explosion as the fuel and oxidizer ignited. I was dead. Again. The lights came back on and I slowly unstrapped and made my way out of the simulator’s command deck.

  There was nothing about the training I had to take that reminded me of the walk in the park that Henry Chang seemed to think this would be. When Nina and I had shown up for the first day of training, we were met by the guy in charge of the training facility, Wyatt Saner. Mr. Saner had his orders from Henry Chang. We were to be trained as CLT30 pilots for an actual flight to Earth and back. Mr. Saner took a pretty dim view of my original certification and an even dimmer view of the idea of either me or Nina flying a CLT30 at our young age of sixteen. He made it clear that he felt this was a dangerous stunt. One that he felt it was his duty to stop in its tracks. Unfortunately for Nina and myself, he couldn’t tell Henry no. In place of disobeying Henry, he chose to make things so hard that Nina and I would quit.

  The training course that Commander Davies had me study the year before was supplemented heavily with additional information about each of the CLT30’s subsystems. Most of the information was way beyond what a standard pilot would need. It was almost like Mr. Saner had decided to train us as test pilots instead. We had to attend what he called ground school for three weeks before we were allowed anywhere near a simulator. There were a lot more tests than I remembered from the original course and we had to pass all of the tests. Failure to pass a test meant completely restarting a module and retaking all of the associated tests. I was pretty fed up by the end of the first week and almost quit. What stopped me was Nina. She knew what an opportunity this was for her and she was working her butt off. She was handling the flight school homework and her normal load of high school work. I think she gave up sleeping to get it all done. If I quit, there was the possibility that Henry would just pull the plug on the whole deal. I couldn’t let her down like that.

  I was half way down the hallway leading from the simulator room when the other simulator door opened and out stepped Nina. I could tell from the look on her face that she had failed her own nightmare scenario. I said, “Hey.”

  She gave me a brief smile and said, “Hey, yourself. So how did he kill you this time?”

  “He gave me an overloaded CLT30 launching from a pad hemmed in by cliffs. As soon as I left the pad, the main computers all failed and he blew one of the engine arrays. The asymmetric thrust caused by the missing engines compelled us to yaw off the pad and closer to a cliff. I had to kill the opposite array to get the yaw under control, but that left me short on thrust to overcome how heavy the CLT30 was. I almost made it to the top of the cliff when he blew a fourth engine and that sent me into the cliff. Boom.”

  “Why didn’t you set it back down when he blew the array?”

  “The asymmetric thrust pulled us off the pad before I could get the opposite array shut down. With the computers all down, the programmed automatic responses didn’t kick in. A normal CLT30 would have automatically shut down the opposing array and then set the CLT30 back down on the pad.”

  We walked along in silence for a bit and then I asked, “So how did he kill you tonight?”

  “Oh, I’m not dead yet, there’s plenty of life support to last me, the crew, and the passengers at least another week. But we are beyond all hope. He rigged it so that when we launched, all the engines went to full thrust and stayed there until we ran out of fuel.” We achieved lunar escape velocity, but aren’t quite going fast enough to escape the solar system. Nobody can help us.”

  “So are you still glad I dragged you into this? It seems like an awfully big hassle just to get a cheap ride to Earth.”

  “I’m having the time of my life. This is so much fun. Well, maybe not the dying every day thing. Otherwise, I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me. Don’t worry about Saner, either. I’m going to get a handle on one of his little joy rides eventually. Can you imagine the look on his face when I don’t die. That’ll probably give him indigestion for at least a week.”

  Nina’s attitude rubbed off on me and I felt better the rest of the evening. I’d probably die again the next day, however, it was nice working with Nina. She had been my girlfriend the year before. Part of me was relieved when we broke up and I didn’t want to go back to her being my girlfriend. Working with her as a friend, however, felt pretty good.

  JUNKYARD DOG

  JD watched his team move the final lifting actuator into place and secure it to the elevator. They could take a break now and watch as the space port’s first ship elevator was run through its paces a week ahead of schedule. That week’s advance in the schedule meant a big bonus for the team and the grins he was getting from the guys was proof enough that he’d done well. He’d carefully put his group together. Men who thought like he did, that he could trust. It was good that they were getting rewarded for them trusting him in turn.

  The only guys without smiles on their faces were Joe’s team. They had actually done most of the work that put the elevator project ahead of schedule. By rights, they should have earned the bonus for themselves, if only it hadn’t been for that string of unfortunate accidents that had resulted in JD’s team having to step up and take their place. Accidents that JD knew were no accidents. The smart make their own luck and JD and his guys had carefully seen to theirs.

  He looked out across the cavern that had been dug to house the space port and couldn’t help but get a kick out of what he was seeing. It was a space port, something right out of science fiction and he and his team were here building it. Not to mention getting paid a lot of money to do it. Better than all of that, they were in on the ground floor where there were all sorts of opportunities to make yourself rich. You just had to have the right frame of mind to get things done and seize the opportunity when you saw it.

  JD knew a thing or two about opportunities. Lessons learned from a hard master. His uncle had taken him in when his mother disappeared. Mom had always been pretty hit or miss when it came to parenting. The man who fathered him was long gone from his mother’s life by the time JD was old enough to notice. Then one day, Mom just disappeared. Child Welfare had eventually picked him up and deposited him with his only living relative.

  Outwardly, his uncle did the right thing. He took in his homeless nephew and to all appearances gave him a safe place to live and the strong guidance of a father figure. His uncle owned a salvage yard off of Highway 50 out on the plains East of Pueblo. It was one of the largest in the state and provided well for them as evidenced by the modest, but nice home located not too far from the junkyard’s entrance.

  The truth of his situation was somewhat different. His uncle was very careful to maintain a certain image. An honest businessman, a caring uncle. He did nothing that would attract the wrong kind of attention. The salvage yard actually made a nice legal profit with great care being taken, that no stolen or illegal goods passed through the public gates. It was the same with him. His uncle made sure he was well fed, went for regular checkups to the dentist and doctor, and always went to school. No excuses. No one had any reason to suspect the other side of his uncle’s life.

  The truth was his uncle always had a deal going on the side. Carefully concealed from public view with the shelter provided by the large plot of land the junk yard covered. Drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, if you could make money at it, his uncle had a finger in it. Jack, the name he was born with, was just more camouflage for his uncle’s hidden life. Away from the public eye, Jack was just another one of the junkyard dogs that roamed the property. Just like the dogs, if he got bit and died from one of the rattlers that frequently wandered in off of the surrounding plains, so be it, his uncle wouldn’t care. In those early days, Jack found the snakes were the least of the dangers he had to worry about.

  Life with his uncle started out as a struggle, but it was one that he eventually profited from. He paid attention to his uncle and over the years rose to become his uncle’s right hand man. He also learned to live two lives. The visible one where he was a good student and athlete, and the hidden one where he profited from other people’s troubles. His good grades in school led him to college and an engineering degree led him to a firm doing special projects for the government. That eventually led him to the Moon where he was legally making great money on an interesting job. But old habits die hard and the opportunities to make more money were all around him. All it took was the right attitude.

  DEATH AND SANER'S FALL

  “That Paul guy is so irritating.”

  I looked up from the garden omelet I was devouring for breakfast and gave Myra my full attention. That’s what friends are supposed to do. I’d heard nothing but “Paul this and Paul that” for the last three days. I really just wanted to chow down on the omelet, but Myra was showing a disturbing tendency to relapse back into whacking me if I didn’t pay attention. My shoulder was already sore enough. I asked, “So, what has Paul done this time?” Paul was one of the ten new kids who had joined our class at the beginning of the school year. With the Peary expansion in full swing, the local population was growing and so was the school. My mom had recently hired Paul to work at the Farm and somehow, he had managed to find a way to irritate Myra every time their work brought them together.

  “He wouldn’t listen—”

  Nina skidded to a stop next to our table looking really worn out and had a slightly crazy look in her eye. She interrupted Myra by asking, “Bryce, did they cover the Background Supervisor in the original certification course?”

  I couldn’t resist the temptation and said, “They only talked a little about the BS in the first course, but there’s plenty of BS to go around in the course we’re taking.” I was really proud of myself until Myra whacked me on the shoulder and Nina gave me one of those glares that would normally melt steel. Even Kat got in on the action by briefly hissing at me. I straightened up and said, “They briefly covered the Background Supervisor in the first course. Its job is to monitor the three flight control computers as a redundant backup. The computers each exchange a heartbeat signal and status token on a regular basis. I think it’s every ten micro seconds. Anyway, between the heartbeat and status, the computers each keep an eye on their adjacent computers and if there is a problem they can either reboot or shutdown the problem computer depending on what status they are getting. In the rare event that there is a problem with all three, the Background Supervisor can step in to correct things. Hey, do you think that’s what Saner’s using to hose us over?”

  “Think about it. They didn’t talk about it much in the first course you took because it just sits there in the background waiting for a problem that’s probably never going to occur. All the focus is on the three flight computers. I went through our class material and it’s covered during the last week. There’s got to be a way to kill that bastard.”

  With that, Nina took off without even saying goodbye. I looked after her and was really hoping she was talking about killing off the Background Supervisor and not Mr. Saner. Not that I would miss Mr. Saner. I was getting very tired of dying in the simulator. With Nina gone, I turned back to Myra and said, “What were you saying about Paul?” Myra went on to tell me about the latest irritation she had suffered. She was filling me in on the gory details when our E-pads started warbling to let us know our class was about to begin. Saved by the bell.

  After school, work at Sandy’s, and dinner, I met up with Nina for the walk over to the training facility. She looked like she could use a nap, but there was a smile on her face and a look in her eyes like she was a cat about to chow down on a fat canary. I said, “So , did you get it figured out?”

  “I think it’s breaker E-11 on the upper side panel. That, and breakers A-1 through A-3 on the primary panel.”

  “A-1 through A-3 are for the flight computers. Killing the breakers will kill the computers. Isn’t that what we’re trying to avoid?”

  “What Saner has been doing is dumping us into situations that only the computers are fast enough to handle and then taking the computers away. I don’t think that’s easy for him to do. I mean, the simulator is a machine built to simulate a real CLT30 very exactingly. I know they built in ways to inject problems into the system, but for it to respond realistically, there are limits on what can be done. I’m betting he’s injecting a crosstalk issue into the three flight controller computers so that the Background Supervisor is forced to kill off two of the computers. Then he’s forcing the last computer to shut down somehow. I don’t think he’s actually modifying the simulator code, he’s just relying on the failures the simulator already provides.”

  “Okay, so you’re saying he’s probably using the Background Supervisor to fail the computers and keep them dead. Is that what E-11 is for?”

  “I think we can use E-11 to kill the Supervisor and prevent it from rebooting. We can use the other breakers to do the same thing to the flight computers. When you think he’s dorked with the computers to throw you under the bus, kill breakers E-11 and A-1 through A-3. Then bring A-1 back on and pray it comes up fast enough to get you out of trouble.”

  “What about the other two flight computers?”

  “Leave them off. If you boot them all up, you’ll lose some time as they sync up with each other. One computer by itself is faster to boot and can handle whatever is going on until you get things stabilized.”

  “So is doing that going to make a difference? I mean, he’s killing the computers to prevent them from getting us out of situations only the computers are fast enough to save us from. Hitting the breakers and rebooting is going to take longer than most of these situations do.”

  “There’s going to be a lot of situations where it’s going to be too late to help, but that’s not the same as all of the situations. Might as well go down swinging I think.”

  Later that night I was sitting in the simulator thinking about what Nina said and it almost killed me. I was ten seconds from a normal launch from the Peary Space Port when I stopped thinking about the breakers and started thinking about what was bothering me. There were the normal noises in the cockpit, but the ship didn’t sound right. Something was missing and I realized just in time that I wasn’t hearing the faint sound of the turbo pumps on the twelve Prometheus IV engines pre-chilling. Without the pre-chill, the super cooled hydrogen and oxygen would enter the pumps and cracks would form in the pump casings due to thermal stresses and shortly after that would be a big boom. I’d be dead, Again. Except this time I managed to abort the launch cycle with two seconds to spare. I hit the abort switch and nothing happened so I took a chance and quickly flipped breakers A-1 through A-3 to kill the flight computers. Then I killed the Background Supervisor with breaker E-11 just to make sure it didn’t somehow restart the flight computers. With all three computers dead, the countdown stopped in its tracks. The explosion would have been spectacular, however, now I was just in a dead bird on the ground and safe.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23