“Did you do that, Ilika?” Rini asked after touching several symbols, none of which worked.
“Of course he did,” Kibi said with a slightly irritated voice. “I’m in command. He can’t resist the temptation when I’m in command.”
“So . . . what are we doing?” Mati asked with concern. “I don’t have visual, flight plan, projection . . . anything.”
Sata tapped at her console, searching for any navigation functions that still worked. “The calculations were right on. The freeloading pass doesn’t need any more course adjustments.”
“Yeah,” Boro added, “we should sail right through and pop out the other side. This is probably just practice at trusting Manessa.”
Several faces turned to look at their captain, but his lips remained sealed and his kindly expression told them nothing.
“I think you’re right, Boro,” Sata said. “Nothing works at my station, but nothing needs to work. Ilika even encouraged us to double and triple-check the approach. It was perfect.”
Kibi wore a frown, and her mouth shifted from side to side.
“The freeloading pass begins in about two minutes,” Mati said, “and is going to happen unless we do something to stop it.”
Kibi turned to Rini. “What do you think?”
With nothing on his console working, he swiveled around. “I don’t know.
I’m willing to try it.”
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 83
Kibi nodded, then turned back to the front. “Mati?”
“Um . . . I’m uneasy, but I think Rini has good instincts. We do need to trust Manessa, and after that last adjustment, our altitude should be exactly fifty kilometers. The highest mountain is only twenty-one kilometers, and it’s not on our flight path.”
Kibi’s face scrunched with worry as the other four crew members all looked at her. “Manessa?”
“Ilika asked me not to . . .”
“Okay,
okay.”
“One minute,” Mati said.
“I think we should do it,” Boro said softly.
Sata nodded. “Me too.”
Rini
nodded.
Mati squinted for a moment, then nodded also.
Kibi took two more deep breaths, then opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out. A moment later she frowned again. “No.
Every bone is my body is screaming at me.” She turned and looked at Ilika.
“If you want this ship to do that freeloading pass blind, you’ll have to take back command, or put someone else in this chair. I can’t. I won’t.”
Ilika smiled slightly. “You’re still in command.”
With her heart pounding, Kibi turned back around. “Mati, get us out of here!”
Mati wasted no time turning to her console and raising her flight control.
“Boro, I need anti-mass and ion drive seven.”
Boro swallowed once, then moved his fingers on his control board.
“Warming up.”
“Where’s the moon?” Mati demanded with a tinge of fear in her voice.
Rini tapped at his console frantically for a moment, then threw up his hands. “It wasn’t near our entry or exit flight path . . . but I don’t remember where . . .”
“We’ll go a different way,” the pilot declared, saw that her engines were green, and pulled her flight control back and slightly to the right.
Seconds before the beginning of the freeloading pass, the Manessa Kwi suddenly gained altitude and streaked away to the north, out of the flat plane
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 84
of the solar system where most of the planets and moons moved in their slow, steady orbits.
“Kibi made the right call,” Ilika said. His hands were the only ones not shaking as he held his mug of tea. “And I’m very proud of her for trusting her instincts and not giving in to the will of the majority.”
Four faces around the table were riddled with guilt. “We’re sorry, Kibi,”
Sata said.
Ilika continued. “There’s no need to be sorry, Sata. Kibi asked for your honest opinions, and you gave them. That was the right thing to do, for Kibi, and for the rest of you. The commander needs honest opinions and uncensored options. Then, when she makes a decision, she needs skilled, coordinated action. You all did great. I have no complaints.”
Everyone breathed easier as they sipped their tea.
“Very good call, Mati,” Ilika went on, “taking the ship out of the plane of the solar system to avoid any chance of hitting the moon.”
“Flying blind was the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” the pilot responded.
“Fighting off a timber wolf sounds easier — at least I can see it. All I could do was remember how the ship was angled the last time we had visual, and hope it was still the same!”
After a moment of silence, Boro worked up his courage. “So . . . doing a freeloading pass without sensors is . . . not a good idea?”
“Flying blind, with the slightest possibility of hitting anything within a light-minute, is way too dangerous.”
Boro
swallowed.
“There could be other ships,” Ilika pointed out, “or artificial satellites, like around Sonmatia Two. But the biggest danger on a freeloading pass is the planet itself. This was on my list to teach you, but teaching is always better with an example.”
“We’ll remember!” Rini said with wide eyes while nodding.
After sensors were restored, Sata created a new flight plan. Mati looped the ship back to the final approach, then let Boro shut down the anti-mass and ion drives. Kibi had them check the course twice before they began the
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 85
freeloading pass.
They watched the planet race by beneath them, trying to spot more places they knew. Rini thought he recognized the tallest mountain, but couldn’t be sure. Mere minutes later, they were released from the planet’s grip and flew off into space toward Sonmatia Four.
Sata looked sad for a few minutes, but none of the others gave it a second thought.
Deep Learning Notes
Kibi was a strongly intuitive person. Intuition isn’t a perfect way of gathering information, but in this case, the usual methods were not available. Kibi also made important decisions with her heart, which is also far from perfect, but is sometimes necessary. Her mind, and her fellow crew members, were telling her one thing, and her “gut” was telling her something else. It was her nature to listen to her “gut.”
Another important thing to notice is that the essential problem was physical: a small ship coming very close to a planet at high speed. Voting is a human social process. Even if everyone in the entire universe voted the same way, including Kibi and Ilika, the outcome of the vote could still be wrong.
Most of the planets and moons in our solar system (the only solar system we know much about) travel in orbits very close to a single flat “plane” called the
“ecliptic.” This causes our moon to sometimes come between us and the sun (an “eclipse”). The equator of the sun (which rotates just as most planets do) is also on the ecliptic.
A light-minute, you may recall, is about 18 million km or 11 million miles.
Why was Sata (but not the other crew members) sad after the freeloading pass?