“Is there anywhere . . . nice . . . on this planet?” Kibi asked from the command chair. “Somewhere we can relax?”
Sata began selecting charts. “The poles are a little cooler. No cities or people.”
“Make a simple flight plan, Sata, to somewhere . . . anywhere.”
The navigator soon passed the new flight plan to the pilot. “Your highest elevation is two thousand meters.”
Mati took a slow, deep breath, then shivered for a moment. “Boro, ion three. Going up to six thousand.”
Boro shook his head to clear the cobwebs before reaching for his console.
Ilika watched his crew deal with the lingering stress, and smiled to himself.
A few minutes later, with the yellow vapors much thinner at the south pole of the planet, Mati was able to use her visual display to lower the ship onto flat, rocky ground.
Rini selected atmospheric tests. “Sorry everyone, it’s cooler, but we still can’t breath it.”
Kibi turned around and looked at Ilika. “NOW will you take back command of your ship? Please? ”
Ilika smiled and nodded.
For the next hour, Kibi selected music and dreamily swayed in the space between her station and the galley, where Ilika worked. He often glanced at
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 50
his beautiful lover and smiled.
Both Boro and Rini were on their hands and knees, under their consoles, with cleaning supplies.
Eventually Ilika brought cups of cold, sweet tea to the table. Kibi sat down with him.
He looked into her dark eyes. “I’m glad you’re not . . . feeling any desire to open the hatch and run outside.”
She frowned. “In that hot, yellow air? Actually . . .” She looked around to see who was on the upper deck. “I’ve been watching Mati. I think getting us out of that trap made her feel better about her mistake, but she’s really looking forward to Satamia Star Station. My knee almost hurts in sympathy when I see the longing on her face.”
“It’s been a heavy burden for her.”
“And I think Sata felt some of her old fear today.”
“A bunch,” Sata said, stepping out of the toilet room, drying her hair. “But I could see how bad Mati felt about what happened.” The navigator sat down beside her captain and reached for a cup of tea.
“I was really proud of both of you,” Ilika said.
“Both of . . . who?” Mati asked, appearing in the lift with wet hair.
“You and Sata,” Kibi informed.
Ilika looked into the sparkling eyes of his handicapped pilot. “You were both great.”
“I knew if I didn’t get us out of there, I’d feel like . . . like a crippled slave!”
Everyone at the table laughed.
“Today you were able to work out your feelings by getting us out of that little trap,” Ilika said. “At times in the future, you won’t be able to do that.
You’ll just have to relax and let others help.”
“I know,” Mati said. “But it sure felt good to clean up my own mess!”
Boro and Rini both looked up from their cleaning work and smiled.
That evening, the five new crew members selected a video about ships in difficult situations, and how the crews overcame problems, and their own fears, to bring everyone safely home.
At first Ilika was surprised by their choice. Then he began to understand
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 51
as he watched from the back of the passenger area and saw them beaming with pride any time a situation was similar to one they had experienced. He also observed them paying close attention when the danger was completely new to them.
After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, the crew of the Manessa Kwi looked at their captain to know the next phase of their journey.
Ilika took the last swallow of his beverage, then pulled a knowledge pad close. “We’ve already explored Sonmatia Three . . .”
Everyone
chuckled.
“The journey from here to the fourth planet will be slow, with lots of time for lessons along the way.” He could see Mati frown slightly. “We will review a number of topics, bring Boro and Kibi up to speed on some mathematics, and study words and customs we’ll need at the star station.”
Mati’s frown changed to a grin.
“The next leg of our journey will mostly fall to Sata and Boro as navigator and engineer, although I want all of you to understand the basics after they work out the details.” He tapped at the knowledge pad, and a diagram appeared on the big screen.
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 52
“Here are the current positions of the inner planets. Our location and our destination happen to be almost perfectly lined up. You might think that’s a good thing. We’ll see. Sata and Boro, you know how to use Manessa’s orbit and transit simulation tools. Please calculate how much space thruster fuel we need for a direct route, orbit to orbit, no anti-mass, no ion drive.”
Boro thought for a moment. “Depends on how fast you want to go.”
“Start with minimum fuel usage.”
Boro nodded. He and Sata headed toward her station, knowledge pads in hand.
Ilika began cooking in the galley, and the other crew members relaxed at the table. At first the sounds from the bridge were all calm and friendly. They heard Manessa’s voice answering questions, and Sata or Boro chuckling with embarrassment.
As the first hour passed and the second began, the words and sounds from the front of the ship became more and more frustrated, sometimes almost angry. Kibi frowned as she fetched a game and sat down with Mati. Rini glanced at the bridge, didn’t see any blood, so he stepped into the galley to help Ilika.
Near the end of the second hour, with the aroma of sweet biscuits filling the ship, those at the table became aware that no sound whatsoever was coming from the navigator’s station. They looked and saw Boro and Sata standing side by side, holding hands and gazing at the display screen.
A few minutes later the navigator and engineer appeared at the table, looking happy but humble. Rini came out of the galley with a plate of sweet biscuits, and Ilika followed with cups of tea.
“I’m sure Ilika knew this was going to happen,” Boro said with a half-suppressed grin.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Boro,” the captain said, hiding his expression behind his cup.
“How did you put it, Sata?”
“There’s no such thing as a straight line in space.”
Ilika smiled. “Share with us what you learned.”
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Sata touched some keys on her knowledge pad. “Um, big screen, Kibi?”
The steward reached over to her console.
“Thanks.”
“First,” Boro began, “Manessa reminded us that when we got free of this planet’s gravity, it would be a little farther along in it’s orbit of the sun. Okay, we could see that.”
Sata nodded. “Then we tried to calculate flight path and time to that place where the fourth planet was supposed to be, and Manessa kept asking us why we would use that place as a navigation point.”
Boro stepped in. “Manessa finally realized what was wrong when we said we wanted to go into orbit there. If a deep-space response ship could laugh, Manessa would have laughed.”
Kibi chuckled, and everyone else was grinning.
Sata picked up the story. “Then Manessa explained that by the time we got there, the fourth planet wouldn’t be there any more. In fact, by the time we could catch up with it, it would be almost a quarter of the way around the sun!”
“That means . . .” Rini started to say.
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 54
Sata put a finger to her lips.
“As Rini guessed,” Boro continued, “that means that from here to the fourth planet, with minimum fuel burn, would take about half a year.”
Mati turned white. “Half a year!”
“Don’t worry,” Ilika jumped in. “We won’t be using that plan. It was just for learning purposes.”
The pilot struggled to regain her composure.
“So . . .” Sata began again, “we learned that in space everything is always moving, nothing is as simple as we’d like it to be, and there’s no such thing as a straight line.”
“The funniest thing of all,” Boro added, “is that Sonmatia Two will get to that part of the solar system way faster than we would!”
Ilika smiled and reached for a knowledge pad. “Well done, both of you, and thank you for sharing all your insights. Now let’s see if we can whittle down that transit time. It just so happens that we have something handy that’s a lot better than thruster fuel. We have a planet that’s going our way.”
Sata looked puzzled. “But if we just stayed on Sonmatia Two, we’d still have a big gap between the two orbits.”
“I’m not thinking of this planet,” Ilika replied. “I’m thinking of Sonmatia Three, your birthplace.”
Expressions around the table varied from Rini’s joy at anything that might be proposed, to Mati’s dread at the slightest delay. No one, however, showed any sign of understanding what their captain could possibly be talking about.
Ilika sent another diagram to the big screen over the steward’s station.
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“If a ship, at speed S, swings around a planet orbiting the sun at speed P, the ship will add twice the speed of the planet to its own.”
Boro sat with his mouth open. “Uh . . . that could really help.”
Ilika nodded. “It’s called planetary freeloading. All civilizations, who survive long enough to get into space, use it to get around their solar systems.
By the way, how much fuel did your first plan use?”
Boro grabbed his knowledge pad. “Twelve point three kilograms, and that includes slowing down to enter orbit at Sonmatia Four.”
“Use the same amount. With planetary freeloading off the third planet, you’ll get a lot more speed.”
Boro grinned at Sata, then they both drained their tea and headed for the bridge.
When Kibi saw that Mati and Rini were happily engrossed in a game, and Ilika was tending something in the galley, she wandered down to the lower deck.
After tossing some dirty clothes into the laundry machine, she stood gazing around at all the cabinets in the utility room, each one labeled with its contents. She smiled, remembering the first time she had stared at the strange writing, the language of Nebador, unable to read a word.
Now she could read the language quite well, was familiar with the contents of most of the cabinets, and responsible for them all. She opened several and saw things that would need restocking at Satamia Star Station.
Another cabinet caught her eye, Sample and Display Containers. Inside, she found the sample containers they had already used, lined with the same material as Manessa’s hull and able to hold just about anything without harm to the sample or crew. She smiled, seeing that Ilika had already placed the stardust grains, and the rock from the daylight side, in a clear display container. Suddenly her eyes lit up with a memory, and she dashed to her cabin.
Deep in her old canvas pack, not used since the day Buna, Misa, Neti, Toli, and Tera walked down the trail and out of her life, she found what she remembered, a pine cone from the world of her birth, almost completely intact.
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With mounting strips from another cabinet, she soon had a dozen display containers attached to the wall of the lower deck, just below the large display screen where the crew sometimes watched videos. The first held the pine cone, the second their samples from Sonmatia One, and the rest were empty.
As she stepped into the lift to rejoin her friends, she wondered what the others would eventually contain.
“Amazing!” Boro said as he and Sata, glowing with pride, returned to the table less than an hour after going off to create a new flight plan using planetary freeloading. “I never would have guessed the best way to get somewhere was to go backwards.”
Sata touched some controls on the steward’s console and a new diagram appeared.
“Manessa says we should pass our planet at an altitude of fifty kilometers,”
the navigator explained. “That’s almost close enough to pick berries in the mountains!”
Ilika smiled and nodded. “The closer you go, the more speed you pick up, as long as you don’t get too much air friction.”
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 57
“Or run into the mountains!” Mati added with wide eyes.
Everyone laughed, some a little nervously.
“So . . .” Ilika began after glancing at his handicapped pilot, “how long?”
“Just thirty days!” Boro answered, looking back and forth from captain to pilot. “That’s . . . better . . . isn’t it?”
Ilika watched as Mati took a deep breath, then cracked a little smile.
“Yeah.”
“Actually, we can do another trick,” Ilika announced.
Mati’s eyes widened with curiosity.
“Sata, your twelve point three kilograms of thruster fuel included both departure from this planet and orbit entry at the destination, right?”
“Of course. And most of it went to slowing down at Sonmatia Four.”
“What would happen if you could use all of it for departure?”
“We
could
go
really fast! But how? Are you going to let us use anti-mass at the fourth planet?”
“No. But that planet has an atmosphere. What happens if you go into orbit within an atmosphere?”
Both Sata and Boro were silent for half a minute, but the others could almost see the gears turning. A smile began to grow on Boro’s face. “We’d . . .
slow down from the friction.”
“It’s called atmospheric braking,” Ilika explained. “Primitive space-faring civilizations rarely use it because it’s so hard to build ships that can take the heat. Manessa’s hull, as you know . . .”
“Can take just about anything!” Sata finished the thought.
Ilika smiled. “Manessa will show you how to calculate the braking orbits so you have just enough momentum left to get up to a stable orbit outside the atmosphere.”
Boro and Sata looked at each other, grabbed knowledge pads, and headed for the navigator’s station.
As Mati descended in the lift, crutch under her arm, she wondered how much less than thirty days the flight would take with atmospheric braking.
When she arrived alone on the lower deck, she reminded herself that even thirty, in base eight, was less than the thirty she used to know, a whole six
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days less.
She immediately spotted the new display containers on the wall under the large screen. Smiling, she gazed at the pine cone with fond memories, then entered her cabin.
After searching Buna’s old rucksack and adding two dried maple seeds to the first display container, she looked at the third container, still empty.
Suddenly a resolute expression came to her, and she hobbled toward the lift.
A delicious savory aroma was coming from the galley when Boro and Sata plopped down at the big table and looked at Mati. “Eleven days!” they both said at once.
Mati grinned with thankfulness.
Deep Learning Notes
All pilots and other flight crew members are trained to do their jobs under stress. The needs of the ship rarely wait for everyone to be rested with full bellies and empty bladders. Stressful situations usually pile up at certain times (take-off, navigation points, and landing) with long stretches of boredom in between. My airplane flight trainer liked to open all the doors and windows, and scream, during take-off.
Why was Mati pushing herself to be the best possible pilot she could be?
It is not literally true that there is no such thing as a straight line in space.
However, the presence of gravity masses (stars, planets, etc.) cause space to act as if it is “warped” by those gravity masses. (“Warped” means misshapen, and has nothing to do with Star Trek’s “warp drive.”) Therefore, a straight line would be nearly useless, and a space navigator would most often deal with ellipses and parabolas.
Genuine laughter and other emotional expressions require self-reflection, and Manessa does not have that ability because she is not sapient. Most people
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have noticed how irritating computers are that are programmed to simulate some kind of emotion.
Why are the planets in a solar system always moving?
Planetary freeloading is also sometimes called “gravity assist,” and has been used by our unmanned spacecraft several times. We barely made it to the Moon (1969-75) using thrust, and had to break the spacecrafts into six or seven parts to do it, leaving junk behind at every step. Thrust alone can get us no farther.
Why is “30” in base eight less than “30” in base ten?
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Chapter 10: Presence of Mind and Memory
“Rini owes me an orbital excursion,” Ilika said as they were finishing a tasty stew with a golden-brown biscuit crust.
Rini grinned. “I’m ready. I’ve been going over it in my head, remembering all the things I should have paid attention to . . . and didn’t.”
“Could you . . . um . . . do me a favor?” Mati asked with hesitation, looking at Rini.
“Anything,” the freckled boy said with sparkling eyes. “After accidentally marrying the wrong girl . . .”
Mati turned bright red, and everyone else grinned.
“Actually . . .” she began, trying to find her voice, “it really is an excursion I want, back near a certain building that I . . . sort of . . . bumped into.”
Ilika smiled with understanding. “Even though it’s not the vacuum of space there, you can use the same suit, Rini, and then we’ll go directly into orbit.”
When they reentered the dead city, Mati kept a sharp eye on all her visual displays, especially to the rear. She set the ship down lightly not far from the collapsed building that had entrapped them.
Rini stepped through the airlock with a sample container, kept an eye on the metal skeletons looming above, and only went a few meters before he found a little piece of corroded metal, a small shard of broken glass, and a chunk of flat, smooth building stone. He looked around one last time,
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thought he heard the groan of twisting metal, and quickly returned to the ship.
Mati had the Manessa Kwi above the ghostly towers even before Rini could cycle the airlock.
Once they arrived in high orbit, everyone went down to the lower deck to see the new display.
“I know it’s ugly stuff,” Mati said, pointing at the collection of metal, glass, and stone from the dead city, “but it’s part of our story, our new story, just us six, the crew of the Manessa Kwi.”
The others nodded, then disappeared into their cabins for a few minutes.
Soon the pine cone and maple seeds in the first container were joined by a feather, a small bone, a pretty rock, and a small dried mushroom.
Rini floated through the airless void high above Sonmatia Two. This time, he had a plan. He set his bracelet to chime every minute. At each chime, he went down his checklist — air, thruster fuel, location, orientation, health status, mission status. It only took a few seconds, leaving him plenty of time for work or sightseeing.
On this occasion, he had no work to do. Ilika wanted him to practice presence of mind when he was most tempted to drift into an altered state of consciousness.
In one direction the sun blazed in a velvety black sky. The cloudy yellow planet turned slowly beneath him, causing him to wonder for a moment why he wasn’t falling. Then he remembered that he was falling, just not straight down. He looked beyond the planet, and the stars seemed so close he could almost reach out and touch them.
Rini’s
minute-chime
sounded, and his mind reluctantly returned from the stars. He took a few seconds to go through his checklist. “Sata, I’m down to five-eighths fuel, so I’m starting back.”
“Great. I think Boro’s making tea, and Manessa says a good orbital departure window is in about an hour.”
Rini smiled and pointed himself back toward the little golden sphere orbiting not far away.
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Sata stayed at her station while Rini made his way back to the ship. She almost jumped when her communications display came to life with the image of the feathered navigator on the other ship. Sata smiled and touched a symbol.
“Hello, Sata, I noticed you were back in orbit, bok. Did you enjoy your visit to this sad little planet?”
“Hi, Drim-na. Well . . . we were in one of those old cities, and a building fell on us.”
“Bok! Everyone okay?”
“Yeah, our pilot Mati is really good, and she got us out.”
“Good. Our diplomats report that the people down here are looking at pictures of the planet we could relocate them to, bok, and are thinking about it.”
“We’re about to leave for Sonmatia Four, thrusters only.”
“That will be slow and boring, bok.”
“We have lots of things to study before we get to Satamia Star Station.”
“The Tirilana Kril will be back there in a few days, bok, so maybe I will see you, and show you my favorite eating place.”
Sata was silent for a moment. “That would be fun, Drim-na. You’re the first friend I’m making who’s not . . . on my ship. Rini’s coming in the airlock, so I should get ready.”
“Be well, Sata. Tirilana Kril closing, bok.”
“Um . . . Manessa Kwi closing.”
When the screen went dark, Sata turned around with a funny look on her face. “Ilika, what do Nebador birds eat?”
Deep Learning Notes
Why was Rini, in a space suit, able to hear the groan of twisting metal when he was out collecting souvenirs?
Rini is using a “personal checklist” that any pilot will recognize. One such
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 63
checklist on my piloting knee board spells “ENROUTE” and lists Environment, Navigation, Radio, Obstacles, Up/down altitude, Time, and Eyes scanning. For a while during the 20th century, people dreamed of having a flying machine of some kind in every garage. We have let go of that dream, as it does not appear we can ever make piloting in a three-dimensional space easy and safe enough for most people.
While doing his orbit excursion, if Rini was falling, but not “straight down,”
what direction was he falling?
Why would it be natural for Rini to watch his fuel level in “eighths”?
How is the “relocation” that Drrrim-na talked about different from most
“relocations” that have occurred in our history (such as when native Americans were “relocated” to reservations)?
By talking to another navigator who is a bird, and being offered to eat with that navigator at the star station, what prejudices might Sata be experiencing?
