ChaserGrey wrote:Fuck, if you'd asked I would have said BARIS didn't *have* two errors in its database that didn't kill the whole crew.
The Zenobians are damned lucky the BARIS programmers weren't more sadistic, too - the same failure mode in Liftoff dictates a 50% penalty to the shuttle's safety factor
Of course, in Liftoff, you
could research all the way back up to where you were before failures...
Office of the Underdirector
Teddy Space Center
The Cape
"Stupid goddamn Boing. Filching my engineers to work on their damned supersonic airliner. I've never seen a bigger boondoggle in my life..." U.M. Engineer's head was buried in his hands. "Is there any coffee left?"
Mira didn't say a word as she passed him another steaming mug. "I guess they figure they don't need to stick around with the Hermes in such good shape, especially after proving it with the first moon flight - but Grummang won't be happy to have to do most of the systems integration between their lander and the shuttle themselves. It's going to cost us time, and that's going to cost us money. At this stage they'll probably need until '75 to get it fully operational - which, I should tell you, is practically a miracle. I was the one who drafted a lot of the planning documents for this LOR lander all the way back in '61 - the contractor was supposed to have seven years to develop the damn thing. Grummang's going to do it in half that time... Has it really been twelve years?"
He sat in silence for a few moments before the window burst inwards in a shower of glass and the whole building shook; Engineer jumped to his feet and stuck his head out; a flight of what looked like FU-4s were out to sea and climbing fast. Another crash of noise turned into a draining howl as another four darts blew past at an altitude that must have just skimmed the Administration Building. Then a building thunder rolled through - straight-winged, twin-engined - B-57 STRAYAs in loose formation.
Engines straining; trailing thin black smoke. As the sound of the jets died, U.M. Engineer turned around and saw that his secretary had gone.
"What the hell is going on?" If there was any danger, the sirens outside ought to be going. Shouldn't they? But another blast of sound from a third supersonic flight of fighters suggested that whatever was going on, it wasn't a routine training flight out of MacDillpickle.
Trentson burst into the office then, with that stupid rifle he'd gone so crazy over in his hands. "Sir, please come with me. It may not be safe here."
"I'll say," Engineer said, "Damn trainee pilots breaking all our windows..."
"I'm serious, sir. We should go now."
Engineer came up from a tiny shelter in the basement two hours later, after Trentson had led him down there and closed the door on him, against his protests. Stepping back into his office, he saw that his window had been boarded up - again, and just after he'd finally decided to take the boards down. Atwater was sitting with his feet up on Mira's desk, smoking what looked to be his sixth cigarette, if his count of the butts in the ashtray was accurate.
Engineer could have sworn that he'd heard a voice in there before he came in. He mentioned that to Atwater, who said, "Just listening to the radio, boss, waiting for you to come back. Leisurely lunch, was it?"
He started to say "No, it was..." then "...yeah, I guess it took longer than I thought. Any news?"
"Trickson's talking on the Hill about the Chilly issue and the threat to world democracy that their cybernetic commienism is, but no big news on space. The Committee is still talking about our budget for next year - they don't have a firm number yet, but they seem to be impressed by that circumlunar flight and want us to press on. There's still a lot of other factors though, so things might still swing the other way."
"And what's your news from Grummang?"
"Pretty much what you heard over the phone - the integration's going to be a bitch that they'll miss the help of the Boing engineers on. It'll cost us some time, but they don't think it should really delay the program. One nice bit was the Eastern shuttle coming back down from LaGrauiad to Washingtoff National; that Boing 727 is light-years better than the Electra I flew on going up. I won't miss the propellor planes, when they finally go. I wonder, actually, if we could get one of those Convair 990s for use as a passenger transport for us; with all the traveling MASA personnel have to do..."
Atwater had left at four, three hours later, and so Engineer had sat in his office staring at the wall, wondering if it was time yet to pull out the scotch. At Scotch Thirty Mira finally returned, finding Engineer staring at the bottle with the last of Atwater's cigarettes trailing from the corner of his mouth.
She put a binder that looked to be about a million pages thick on his desk, walked out, sat at her desk, and promptly fell asleep with her head resting on her arms.
Engineer looked at first page of the enormous binder, and quietly left the office with it, trying not to disturb his secretary. Her ears twitched as he walked past her, but she didn't move; so he carefully closed the door. Trentson was outside, who he sent to gather a few of the top engineers still at MASA, who he trusted most, and to order a truly prodigious quantity of Chinese food.
The engineers in the conference room were hours into the technical discussions about the upcoming lunar orbital and the mechanics of submodulated polytonic cross-frequency shortwave radio transmissions when Engineer thought that he had noticed something unusual when he'd left his office.
Maybe he was mixing that up with the suspiciously white guy who had delivered the Chinese food fifteen minutes after the meeting had started.
It was coming up on Scotch Plus Three Thirty and Engineer was stone-cold sober. Something didn't feel right.
Something
never felt right. But for the moment, MASA would go on. On to the Moon, eventually. There was enough money now, mostly. Only if nothing went wrong.
Which was quite a lot to hope for. Jeebus. Could they beat the Zenobians? Only by a hair, if t'were to be done at all. And t'were best done quickly. In a few months another of the mighty Saturns would shatter the sky. This time he would make sure to be at the Cape, to see it go up himself...
Dr. U.M. Engineer's MASA Plan, Fall 1973
Notes: Damn. This is going to be close - unless one of us has a catastrophic failure.
Budget: 41 MB
Hardware Purchase:
1x Saturn V (18 MB)
1x Kicker-B (6 MB)
Remaining Budget: 17 MB
Research and Development:
5x teams on Eagle (10 MB)
Remaining Budget: 7 MB
Astronaut Management:
None at this time.
Mission Scheduling:
PAD A: Unmanned Docking Test
PAD B: Manned Docking (Orbit) EVA Duration D - Prime Crew IV / Backup Crew I
PAD C: Lunar Probe Flyby
Mission Go/No-Go Status:
PAD A: Lunar Orbital is GO!
Unnamed MASA Engineer had a bad dream; he asked Mira the next morning, "Are our shuttles vulnerable to possession by space ghosts?"
"No," she said, "They're well warded against anything like that," she said, with the most perfect straight face that Engineer had ever seen.
He burst out laughing, and after a moment his secretary broke into a grin as well. Somehow he was feeling all right today; he didn't even want a drink yet, and it was already eleven in the morning. He wondered how good times were, over in Zenobia. Somehow, they didn't feel like enemies sometimes...
