Chapter 5: Test Flight
Marshall examined the schedules of work within the depot itself. There were several engine re-fits in progress and two completed, a re-tuning job, and a full ship service for a captain who appeared to be in no hurry at all to have his job completed. That in itself Marshall considered unusual because most captains wanted their ships turned round in the shortest time possible, on the basis that 'time was money'. Ensconced in the more up-market of the two hotels, the unhurried captain had, however, demonstrated a more than adequate ability to pay. Marshall was therefore happy to go along with his relaxed style, until any sort of problem arose.
Turning to perusing his employee rotas, Marshall noted with a smile that Lucy had booked a day off, and his smile continued as he remembered the warmth and suppleness of her body and the open gaze of her eyes. The depot had three ships in for repair and one to look over with a view its owner trading it in.
On the screen relaying the scene from the landing field camera, Marshall saw Judith strolling across the concrete apron with her spacesuit over one arm and her tablet in the crook of the other. Judith tapped at her tablet screen, and second later the bird scarers mounted around the periphery of the field were fired in concert. A few lazy crows rose, startled, from their perches in the trees to the east of the field. A flock of smaller birds swooped up from the bushes lining the fence. They formed a wheeling cloud, undulating in closely coordinated waves, like shoals of fish, as they flew over the farmer's fields in the direction of the ruined city to find safer feeding grounds.
Judith gave the ship, which was perched on the launch ramp, a final walk round before heading for the lift to the cargo pilot's hatch. The launch ramp was set at thirty degrees to the horizontal. It was made from a criss-cross pattern of steel girders and resting on it was a rocket powered sled cradling the ship. The sled was fuelled and ready to assist the ship in attaining sufficient velocity to break out of Cymbeline's gravity well. It was further accelerated by magnetic induction motors, the coils on which were so large and drew so much current that in moving the most massive ships they had been known to sometimes amp out the whole facility.
At the sound of the Field Clear signal, all the technical staff working in the depot would power down their equipment, leaving only Marshall's control centre running from its independent power sources. Unable to work for the duration of the launch, Junker's Moon employees took the opportunity for a tea or sandwich break as they watched from the view slits in the bunker wall between the facility and the landing field. It was no mistake that Judith timed her take-offs for a quarter to eleven in the morning and two thirty in the afternoon.
Judith waved to the lift driver as she climbed in and was whisked up to the entrance to the cabin on the end of an articulated tentacle. Once Judith was inside with the hatch shut, the lift driver retracted the arm and sped away. Five minutes afterwards, Marshall saw Judith's face on his centre screen, relayed from the captain's chair. A deep honk reverberated across the concrete pad, sounding the Field Clear alarm as a continuous blast. The power of the sound alone was sufficient to remove anyone from the circular landing area adjacent to the launch ramp. After five minutes, the klaxon changed to an intermittent count down.
Marshall touched an icon on his centre screen and a blurry video feed transmitted from the ship's control deck sprang up. The image of Judith's face bobbed around as she performed her pre-flight tests, reaching for touch screens and buttons in front and to the sides. Her heads-up display snapped into place and Marshall saw it in reverse, superimposed over her features. Judith glanced at Marshall and gave a thumbs-up plus a verbal confirmation that she was moving to the next stage.
'Test fire in thirty,' Judith said. As she pressed a button on her console a one second interval beep began to overlay the honking from the Field Clear siren.
Marshall dragged an icon from an inactive toolbox at the side of his screen to an active section overlaying the image of the field. Outside, in a space some metres back from the rear of the ship, a gigantic concrete slab shuddered momentarily, then grated and ground as it lifted on seven hydraulic rams. As the inner arms thrust forth from the outer sheaths, they glinted in the bright, yellow sunlight. They finally ceased their irresistible extension when the slab was in a position at right angles to the direction of thrust from the launch ramp and the ship's main rocket motors. The surface of the slab was scarred and pitted with blackened circles formed by thousands of rocket motors, bearing witness to the numbers of ships having departed in such a fashion as Marshall was to monitor in the coming minutes.
On Judith's 'zero', the covers on the rocket motors spiralled open and there was a loud 'pop' audible clear across the field. A second later there was a roar from the engines as hot blue flame stabbed forth. Marshall saw Judith angle the throttle controls, and the roar increased as a procession of Mach diamonds succeeded each other in the flame from the motors. Smoke and heat shimmers rose from the concrete slab, and the ship shuddered in its mountings atop the sled.
'All motors at optimal power,' Judith said, while backing the throttle off until the ship settled once more on its restraints.
Marshall checked the orbital scan and reported that it was clear. On a signal from Judith, he began the final count, synchronised to the intermittent honk of the Field Clear Klaxon.
A split second after 'zero', the rocket motors on the sled fired and the lights dimmed in the depot as the induction motors kicked in. Judith pushed the throttle forward and released the brakes on the sled. Immediately, the ship shot forward as if from a gun, travelling the two kilometres of the length of the ramp as if it was the ultimate in fair ground rides. It was released from the sled a moment before the induction motors were thrown into reverse to prevent the sled from tearing through the buffers at the far end of the ramp. By the time the sled had come to rest, the ship was a dot travelling in a steep upward arc away from the horizon.
Marshall switched in a robot telescope which followed the ship through clear skies into a shallow orbit.
'Stable orbital velocity achieved,' Judith reported. 'Suit sealed. I am leaving the flight deck to complete the pressure testing.'
Two hours later, a tiny ship the size of a taxi flew off the launch ramp, carrying the captain up to his ship. Marshall had verified his payment and Judith returned in the taxi about the same time the captain tore out of orbit and headed for the entrance to the hyperspace pipe. In a flash of violet light ten minutes later, his ship vanished from sight and reappeared almost at once inside the hyperspace pipe, together with its ID tag, on Marshall's near field scanner.