Chapter 4
Back in my new office, I paused at the high-bay window and noticed the rear hatch to the Griffin simulator raised and open. The place was even busier than it had been. Terry was out there, waiting next to the air-stairs leading up, smiling at me and pointing upward.
In the high-bay, I stopped alongside him and waited as two technicians came down. “Did you find what you were looking for outside?” he asked.
“Yes. I didn’t find what I was looking for.”
He stared with a half smile and nodded to the techs as they passed. “It’s cold and dark on the flight deck. They don’t dare bring up full power until they’ve finished analyzing each system’s power usage. They don’t want to crash any optical drives by having console circuit breakers trip from overload,” he said.
“Lead the way.”
We marched up the steps and ducked into the cabin. Overhead strip lights were on, but nothing else. The first sight of that darkened flight deck filled me with such passion I consciously had to hide it. The layout was standard, but the controls much more futuristic than I had ever seen.
Terry sensed my awe. “Who the hell could do all this?” he asked.
There was a short vestibule of cables and electronics just inside the entrance, not part of the real Griffin. Ignoring Terry, I stepped past and lowered my head into the flight deck as far as I could. The pilot seat on the left had three large dark screens in front of it. The copilot’s on the right was the same. The leftmost screen would be spacecraft orientation, speed, and distance measuring along with the many other indicators needed for control. The middle screen would be navigation, flight management computer data, and flight director status. The right screen was for the SSCAS, Spacecraft Systems Crew Alert System showing fuels, electrical systems, physical configuration, environmental control and a myriad of other things needing monitoring from time to time.
Those layouts were as expected, but the rest was mind-blowing. The console that ran between the seats had a variety of thrust levers, some familiar, some not. Forward of the thrust levers was the standard set of flight management computers, one for each pilot, but they were larger and had some keys I did not recognize. There were fuel feed controls, air braking controls, trim, and others items mixed in that were new. The communications system at the end of the console looked overly simplified. Above our heads where I expected to find fire control, environmental, fuel distribution, and general systems controls, there was a collection of a dozen or more dark touch screens that ran from one end of the flight deck to the other and a second row above them.
An engineering station sat behind each pilot seat consisting almost entirely of dozens of display screens. Eventually I noticed the windshields, front, overhead, and forward in the floor. Frosty white displays that would simulate our window views. They followed the lines of the ship and narrowed down to points forward in long, reaching triangles.
“Want me to go get some smelling salts?” joked Terry. “You might need them because if you think this is awesome, wait until you get the tour of the habitat area simulator in the east hanger.”
I wanted to sit in the left pilot’s seat in the worse way, but there was no real reason to. The cabin was cold and dark, the windscreens misty white. I would only have been checking the seat. The climb in would have betrayed any attempt to hide my exhilaration.
“Okay, let’s have it, then.” With sheer willpower, I forced myself to turn away.
He led me back down the hanger hallway, past my office, and opened the silver double doors to the east hanger. This high-bay was almost as expansive as the last, but with a lower, thirty-foot ceiling. Once again, techs were busy coming and going, wearing hairnets and white coveralls.
The Griffin habitat module was a large ellipse on its side. There was no exterior spacecraft modeling. Except for various cables and electronic interfaces, it was a bare brown shell created to contain simulated living space and the systems intended to support it, including some of the propulsion service areas. A short span of portable steps near the front led up. We waited for two technicians to clear the stairs and then entered into a shiny, metallic airlock.
“This forward airlock is actually secondary, Adrian. Its main use is for docking and backup for EVA’s. When it’s sealed for EVAs, it isolates the flight deck, so the rear airlock is the primary. The door we just entered through is a pressure hatch on the real Griffin, and there’s one here in the ceiling as well. You can dock in either configuration. There are eight Bell Standard spacesuits. Two against that wall, two against this one, four more in the rear airlock. Do you like the Bell Standards, Adrian?”
“To be honest, I and a friend by the name of Perk owe our lives to Bell Flight suits. I wouldn’t use anything else if I didn’t have to.”
“Perk? You’re not talking about Perk Murphy, are you?”
“You know Perk?”
“No, but there’s this big rumor out there that he got into a firefight with aliens on an EVA in open space and came out on top. You couldn’t be referring to that, could you?” He stared at me wide-eyed.
“Are these the K-version of the EVA suit, or the base model?”
“The rumor was that Perk Murphy was hit in the chest with some kind of plasma weapon, and barely made it back.”
“Damn it all. It was a fair question. K-version or base model?”
Terry searched my eyes in earnest. I tried to avoid his gaze. His stare widened even more. “Oh my God, it’s true and you were there!” He paused, speechless. He swallowed and continued to gawk. Finally, he answered. “K-version. On this project they’ve brought in only the best.” He put aside the distraction and moved out of the airlock and into the living area.
“Did you notice the two techs coming out had their shoes wrapped in antistatic bags? You see this strange looking white carpet and padding on the floor and walls? It’s photosynthetic! This entire interior is photosynthetic! You can set it to display anything you want. You can be in the middle of Sherwood Forest, or out in the middle of the ocean! The entire module is covered in cushioned, carpet-like material for protection from weightless flight, but it’s all really a big video display. The sleeper compartments are the same”
The airlock wall on my left had a fake pressure door to the flight deck. On my right, the chamber opened to the striking expanse of living environment. Everything was off-white and new. The width of the cabin was an extraordinary fifteen feet. Two oval viewing windows on either side peered out into the hanger. There was a padded, elliptical table, with eight padded seats around it to my right. Three other seats with smaller dedicated tables were distributed apart from it. Beyond the community area, an open kitchen with duplicate food processors on either side cast metallic reflections of the seating area.
Terry strolled among the seats. “Have you noticed the little depressions in the floors under the furniture? All this stuff unfolds and telescopes down into the floor. The room can be set up with no furniture at all with the press of a button. You can have a wide-open weightless environment if you want to. Take off and landing seating is in the wall. You tap a button and four seats deploy. All of these seats are A.I. The crew flight apparel has metallic fiber woven into the legs and torso. If a seat detects that kind of signature, it becomes magnetic and continuously adjusts to provide just the right amount of gentle restraint so you can remain seated in a weightless environment but still move around in your seat. I’ve never seen anything like it, have you?”
He did not wait for an answer. He went back to the galley area. “Double and triple redundancy on everything, and it’s not all dehydrated crap either. But, look back here,” he pointed through a five-foot doorway that led to the back. “These are the sleeper cells.”
They were three-foot high, horizontal cubicles built against the wall, one low and one high. Two on the left and two on the right. They were roughly seven feet long, and five feet deep, covered in the same white photo-syn material.
“So you climb in and shut yourself up in one
of these and you can switch on any video or still image you like. You can be lying in the grass in a field somewhere, or at home in your bedroom. There’s also a feed to the outside cameras, so you can project that against the wall and it’s like a big window looking outside. You get one foot of storage space in the ceiling above you. The entertainment display is super-A.I. They call it 5-D. If you’re watching a film on a display you can reach out and touch one of the 3-D characters and that character will respond to you and the A.I. changes the story line to compensate.”
“There’s a relief tube in every cubicle. You do not have to get up to do that. And, forgive me for mentioning it, but it’s designed to accommodate sex, if you know what I mean.” Terry smirked, coughed uncomfortably, and moved on, passing by the first four private cubicles. “Twin zero-G toilets and showers separate the next four sleeper cubicles. And right through here, just beyond the back four sleepers, brings us to the gym. Dual everything on either side. Two people can work out in here at the same time. The next compartment is the Science and Med lab, and beyond it the aft airlock. There’s a bulkhead door on the far wall of the airlock that opens to the service module. The first non-habitat cell is the expendable storage, O2, water, all that stuff. That turns into a hatchway which becomes crawl space until you get to the propulsion systems. Then it weaves you all around as you move farther aft, and it’s crowded as hell in there. I’m sure you’ll be climbing around back there to familiarize yourself as you get time.”
I nodded appropriate awe. We worked our way back to the main living area. Terry stopped at the front airlock, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “So, as your TD, we’re going to be having some very serious private discussions about your personnel and their performance, as well as the performance of ship systems.”
“You got that right.”
“I see something going on here. The design of this spacecraft is pretty suggestive, don’t you think?”
I tried a seat at the elliptical table. Terry followed.
“What’s on your mind, TD?”
“They’ve pulled out all the stops on this spacecraft. Obviously, there’s stuff in here not from Earth, or at least not from human technology. I have never seen the agency go this far, this fast for any single mission. This spacecraft has been refit with a blank check. So what I’m seeing here is not just an absolute determination that the mission be successful. I’m seeing more than that.”
“I don’t think I follow.”
“Stress. I believe that this spacecraft was designed to protect the crew as best as possible through a stressful environment, or stressful circumstances. That’s why all the luxury. This ship is going somewhere that’s going to be either very dangerous, very difficult, or both.”
“Have you seen a course plan for the actual mission?”
“I’ve seen the basic block diagram for it, with attachments, and that’s another thing. There’s to be star charts we don’t have yet. Somebody’s helping out with that, if you know what I mean. And, the nadir trajectory. You get farther from Earth than anyone’s ever been and you hit this patch of space called the void. The best I could make of it, not being a physicist, is that it’s an area of space that contains less than nothing, whatever that means. And, it’s big. You’ll be in it for quite a while. Apparently, you will not be able to see any stars, or anything else. You have to cross that, and it’s so far away there will be nothing good enough to reach you. It will be a deep crossing you’ll have to make on your own; no communications, no visual navigation. Did you know about that?”
“I’m glad you’re here, Terry. And, you’re right. We’ll be having many more private talks like this. I want to know every misgiving you have, no matter how small.”
He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “Well, I just hope that someday I get to know what this is all about.”
Chapter 5