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19




The orbital Clipper was a stripped-down and beefed-up version of the original model that was the workhorse of Hammond’s spaceline. Where the suborbital Clippers had been built for hypersonic luxury travel, the orbital version’s carbon-black underside and titanium-gray fuselage telegraphed that the Block II model had been built for utility and even greater speed. The rakish spaceplane sat high on its landing gear, with two external fuel tanks slung under a delta wing that blended into its upper body. Four air-breathing rocket engines were mounted within, nestled between a pair of swept vertical stabilizers. Beneath them, the plane’s belly curved into the angular, gaping maw of their intakes. Positioned at the end of Kennedy’s long runway with its engines howling at idle, it crouched like an animal waiting to pounce.

Inside the passenger cabin, the howl was reduced to a distant wail. Eight pairs of seats were arranged along a single aisle, their windows placed just far enough out of reach to protect any curious passengers from the heat of acceleration. Traci unconsciously bounced a knee in anticipation as they waited for their launch window to open.

Penny leaned over. “Nervous?” she whispered conspiratorially.

Traci steadied her knee with a hand and drew up straighter in her seat. “Never cared for being a passenger, I guess. I’d rather be flying.”

“First time for me, too.” Penny inclined her head forward. “I’m used to being up front, you know.”

“You flew the certification tests on these, didn’t you?” she asked. “How’d you ever get the maglev takeoffs approved?”

“Lots of paperwork,” Penny shrugged. “Lots of tests. Then more paperwork, more tests. In the end I think the Feds finally got tired of us.”

“That’s the part I’m a little nervous about,” she admitted. “I’m waiting for the bottom to fall out when they retract the gear.”

Penny pointed out the window. “A little late, dear. Look outside.”

She craned her neck to see the plane’s shadow on the runway. The three stalks where the Clipper’s landing gear should have been were now conspicuously absent. The plane was floating on a magnetic cushion above the runway.

“Maglev catapults make for a much smoother takeoff roll,” Penny assured her. “Trust me, it’s safer than vertical launch.”

A chime rang from overhead with the pilot’s announcement that they would be launching shortly. On the forward bulkhead, a video screen counted down. Just before it reached zero, the plane’s combined-cycle rockets roared to full power and the magnetic catapult shot them down the runway, pressing them hard into their seats as the Clipper climbed away from the Florida coast. While they would be in orbit for another two weeks doing final outfitting and shakedown burns aboard Columbus, Traci also knew this was the final step. Whatever happened next, she wouldn’t feel Earth’s gravity or run her toes through its soil for a very long time.


Boarding Columbus felt like coming home after an extended absence to find it repainted and radically updated. The big four-berth docking node was sparkling clean, excluding the scrawled signatures from the rotating crews of technicians who’d been outfitting the ship for weeks.

As Traci floated through the connecting tunnel and into the habitation module, she was struck by its factory-fresh appointments and new spacecraft smell. Barely lived in, Columbus felt too pristine to mess up with an actual mission. Even with just her and Roy aboard, a couple of years in deep space would eventually leave it with a unique lived-in fragrance of recycled air that had to be experienced to be understood.

A disembodied voice greeted them from the overhead speakers, just as Daisy had years earlier. “Welcome aboard.”

“Yeah,” Roy said for them as he pulled himself over to his waiting berth and deposited his bags inside. “Here we are, Ace.”

“Be nice,” Traci chided him as she found her personal quarters. “You’ll have to be patient with Roy,” she said to the AI. “He’s a man of few words, until all of a sudden he isn’t.”

“I have noticed that.” The computer-generated voice was disarmingly placid. “I believe you will find me to be quite patient.”

“Wouldn’t expect any different,” Roy said, giving in if only a bit. Behind them, the rest of the service crew made their way out of the tunnel up to the recreation deck, which would be their home for a week of final checkouts.

Bringing up the rear, Penny dogged down the hatch behind them before taking the remaining crew berth. A fourth compartment remained closed, reserved for Jack. She studied the cabin appreciatively. “Always wanted to get aboard one of these,” she said with a hint of melancholy. “Never could before.”

“They tend to frown on administrators throwing their weight around up here,” Traci said. “You did enough of it for us down there.” The truth was neither Columbus nor Magellan would have been built without Penny’s persistent arm-twisting of both Congress and contractors.

“Nearly wasted me in the process. I didn’t get more than a few hours’ sleep a night when we were wrangling over these things.” Penny pulled herself along in a circle around the berthing deck, inspecting every nook and cranny along the way. “Looks like she held up well.”

Roy gave her a conspiratorial eye. “Want to see the business end?” He of course knew that she did, having politely waited for the mission commander’s invitation.

“Thought you’d never ask.” Without a word, the veteran astronaut pushed off with her toes and flew gracefully up into the tunnel, headed for the control deck. Roy and Traci traded an amused look and followed behind.


The control deck was nearly identical to Magellan’s, with the addition of curved holographic synthetic-vision screens above the two pilot’s stations. Behind them were consoles for the mission scientist and flight engineer. Like the rest of Columbus, the cabin had yet to take on the lived-in quality that could only come with a permanent crew. Everything was neatly in its place, missing the jumble of laptops and tablets that would inevitably be plugged into every available port.

Roy pulled himself into the commander’s station and motioned for Penny to take the right seat beside him. Traci tucked her legs to pirouette into the flight engineer’s station, checking up on the craft’s power and life support. For their expedition, the engineer’s duties had been largely handed over to the AI. She tapped its interface panel on the adjacent sidewall. “Status report, please.”

Her cluster of monitors flashed to life with schematics that traced the function of each critical system. As the AI spoke, tables of values appeared in concert. “Cryogenic tanks show nominal function. Cabin oxygen and nitrogen are in optimal balance; the environmental recycler is maintaining standard atmosphere at 14.1 psi. Excess hydrogen is being diverted to the propellant tanks, which are currently at seventy-eight percent capacity. The final propellant tanker mission arrives in sixty-three hours, which will bring our reaction mass to one hundred percent. The reactor is currently operating at forty-eight percent capacity; electrical buses A and B are each at one hundred twenty-four volts.”

“Very good.” It would be generating a lot more power when the fusion engine’s plasma generators were turned on. She pulled up the engine monitors. “I see the cold flow tests went well.” It was more conversational than necessary; she’d seen the test data from HOPE Control. “Any glitches we should know about?”

“The plasma injectors functioned nominally, though I suspect we will have to recalibrate the containment fields for normal operating temperatures.”

“Magnetic nozzles can be tricky like that,” she said. “You can’t know for sure how they’ll perform until you start running them hot.”

“Agreed. May I pose a question?”

“Of course.”

“Your interactions with me seem perfunctory. You have not addressed me by name, for instance. You will be relying on me to a considerably greater degree than you did on DAISE, and I cannot reach my full potential without regular human interaction. If we are going to function together as a crew, it is important for us to be comfortable with each other. Are you uncomfortable with my presence?”

Traci hesitated as she considered her response. “Not at all. You’re absolutely right about interacting with us. We spent many years with Daisy and watched her become a fully realized intelligence. We would like to have the same experience with you.” She noticed Roy looking her way over his shoulder with lifted eyebrows. “Our reluctance is more superficial. Crude.”

“In what way?”

How to approach this? As they interacted more each day with the AI, neither of them had been comfortable with the goofy name its developers had given it. How important was that to a computer, though? “It’s your name. ‘Ace’ sounds silly to us, to be honest.” Her tone was apologetic.

“It is an acronym derived from my product classification. ‘Silly’ is a difficult concept for me. Can you offer context?”

How to explain? “Among military pilots, it’s an informal title you earn after shooting down five enemy aircraft. For us to use it in any other context is almost derogatory. We don’t even go around calling actual aces that.”

“I see. Thank you for the explanation. Have you considered alternatives?”

She felt a sting of embarrassment. “Not seriously, I’m afraid. We’ve been consumed with mission prep.” All true, though it now sounded like a weak excuse. “Names are important to humans. They become part of our identity.” She shared another glance with Roy. “We thought it would be best to discuss it with you first.”

“Thank you for your consideration. I would like to propose an alternative. How about ‘Bob’?”

That earned a barking laugh from Roy. “Works for me.”

Traci suppressed a grin. “That was awfully fast,” she said. “Were you already thinking about it?”

“Only in the time since you first mentioned it, but that is enough. ‘Bob’ is simple, easily pronounced, and not readily confused with other vocalizations. It is also a most unlikely name for a thinking machine. I suspected you would find the dichotomy amusing.”

So the machine was developing a sense of humor? She peered over her console to meet Roy’s approving gaze. “I think we’re going to get along just fine, Bob.”


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Framed