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Adustments

Brad moved carefully into the spherical car, making sure his consumables kit and its umbilical were clear. He glanced at the display on his wrist pad, and tilted it up to the elevator control panel. The destination information transferred automatically.

He took hold of the stanchion as the doors closed. It was awkward moving about in a spacesuit, and he knew that if he sat down, he might well need assistance in rising again. No need for an embarrassing, bonehead stunt at this point.

Brad was very pleased with his progress. At fourteen, he was already considered an able pilot. The other crews and training he had joined were of a similar nature. Enthusiasm and skill, and common sense enough to avoid getting yourself killed were what they were looking for, and his age didn’t seem to be a barrier to some very mature responsibility.

The doors opened again. For a moment, Brad stood still, looking strangely at the upside-down appearance of the shuttle.

Then he stepped forward gingerly onto the expanded metal surface of the “ceiling.”

The shuttle was currently docked on the outer surface of the Thrust Ring. Since the docking portal was on the belly of the craft, that meant it was hanging with its command cabin facing outward. In other words, upside-down.

That was why he was here. The current project involved relocating the shuttles, most of them, from the Thrust Ring to the Flying Castle, so that it could journey down to Mars. On the trip up from Earth’s surface, the Castle had been carefully nestled in the middle of the Thrust Ring, while the shuttle/thrusters had been firing from the exterior surface.

It would have been a simple matter to release the shuttle, fly it to the castle enclosure, and dock there. Well, maybe not so simple. The Castle was rotating around the Thrust Ring, and that would be quite a challenge to an inexperienced pilot.

Besides, it would waste precious, irreplaceable reaction mass.

So, instead, they were going to go through a slow, tedious process, treating the magnificent shuttle as if it were a piece of cargo, and carrying it hand over hand to the new docking station on the Flying Castle. No thrust gases expended, just a little electricity, which they had in plenty, and time, which they did not have in plenty.

Brad reached the command chair, and rotated it around from its rest position in order to enter it. He attached his kit to the rack, making sure all the connections had mated, and then turned carefully, keeping his umbilical out of trouble, and sat down. He fastened the harness restraints just as he had done in simulation a hundred times, and smiled, which he had not always done.

He linked up to the command video information, checking the views across the belly of the craft, and activated the intercom.

“Roller-crane, this is Shuttle TR-107, I am energizing the exterior marker lights now.”

“Shuttle TR-107, we see your lights. We are moving to connect to you.”

Brad scanned the rest of his control panel. All reaction tanks were filled, auxiliary power was at one hundred percent, and the locking clamps were secure. Connections through to the Thrust Ring, and the other habitats, were still being maintained.

He looked at main power, and frowned. He didn’t like the idea of cold engines, just on general principles. He had tried to argue the point, cautiously, but he had been persuaded to accept this format anyway.

They had nearly two hundred shuttles to move, and it would have been asking for trouble to be firing up their Gas-Cooled Nuclear Reactors needlessly. No one knew how many times they could be brought online, and scrammed again, without reducing their efficiency.

He felt honored to be acting as emergency pilot anyway. If something went drastically wrong, and the shuttle broke away into empty space, it would be his job to bring it back, and to land it safely. He smiled again.

Glancing at the control board, which remained clear, Brad decided to make himself comfortable. He activated the proper suit control program, reached out with his right arm, and saw a miniature arm reach out in mimicry, inside his helmet! Slowly, adjusting for the difference in scale, he brought the hand up and scratched his nose. Then he reached over and grabbed one of the nutrition lozenges from the dispencer tube, and popped it into his mouth.

To his gloved hand, it felt like a large bun, but it was no larger than a piece of candy. There were about a thousand of the lozenges in a spring-tensioned tube running around the inside of the helmet. With these, and the sipping tube on the other side, he could easily and comfortably work for hours. Still, he also knew the danger of over-indulgence. He put the miniature arm away, and turned off the control for it.

Brad felt a faint vibration. He checked the exterior views. The roller-crane had attached to the front latchpoint, and was bringing a second cable to the same connection.

He checked the views of the hardpoints on the outer rear wings. More cables were easing their way to a connection. He would soon be on his way.

A few minutes later, Brad got confirmation that secure tension had been pulled on all cables. He released the docking clamps, and closed the mating valves on both sides of the multiple connections of air, reaction mass, and other supply conduits.

The elevator system automatically closed its vacuum tight security doors and isolated this destination in a safety lockout. Brad was now captaining his very first command!

Shortly the tension on the cables relaxed, and the shuttle gradually broke free of its moorings, moving inch by inch down from the turning Thrust Ring.

After a longer period, the roller-crane began moving along the periphery of the Thrust Ring. It’s cable arms had moved outward to clear any obstructions along the way, including other shuttles, and it was moving to position him directly above the Flying Castle.

Brad could look down through the canopy and the dome enclosure to see the thick walls of the castle courtyard, where he normally occupied one of the tiny cells for students and workers in the many industries of the Flying Castle. He felt as though he were passing over the world in a very close orbit.

The roller-crane reached a point where it could get him no closer to his destination, and it slowed to a stop. Brad waited.

Soon enough, more cables came along to take the hand-off.

This new crane was an enorrmous structure, called the splay-crane, with attachments to the arms reaching up to the center of rotation on the fore-direction side of the Thrust Ring, and on counterbalancing towers on the other side called the aft-davits. By balancing and varying the tension on these various points, the splay-crane could bring his shuttle to any point along the edge of the Flying Castle.

The two cranes exchanged their load carefully, making sure that one cable had taken up its load before the other released it. After all the new cables were secured, the old ones disengaged, and were drawn back up to the roller-crane, which moved off to retrieve another shuttle.

Brad was slowly lowered the enormous distance down to the periphery of the Flying Castle. More self-directed hausers came out to grab onto his ship, and gently turn it to the proper orientation so that it could be brought up against the exterior wall of the Flying Castle.

When he was in position on the stubby cylindrical tower that mated with the shuttle, he engaged the docking clamps, and opened the mating valves on both sides of the multiple connections. Observing the control panel indicators and finding nothing negative, he used the lower surface cameras to look for escaping gases. Everything was secure.

Brad signaled the waiting crews that he had successfully docked. They could see it already, but the protocol was to wait for confirmation.

Brad watched as the cables disengaged and moved off. His first flight! He chuckled. Then he glanced at the clock. Surprisingly, the whole procedure had taken nearly three hours! It had seemed like only fifteen minutes.

He disconnected from the seat, and moved cautiously along the catwalk to the side of the vessel, where he could climb down to the elevator. The shuttle was now oriented nose upward, and if he had known where to look, somewhere out there he might have been able to see a tiny speck called Mars.

Brad didn’t bother looking. He was busy making the arrangements, after a brief rest, to go out again. He was sure he would be able to ride at least one more shuttle into position today.

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(Note: My plan is to make the Flying Castle ready to go down to the surface of Mars. Since we rode up as part of an assemblage, we have to shift things around to do this properly.)

One of the difficulties is our dependance on artificial gravity.

We will have to begin our orbital entry thrust, and then bring the castle to its central location again, while Habitats A and B are brought to a bilateral symmetry.

Habitats A and B will continue rotating with the Thrust Ring, even as they circle Mars in a distant orbit.

Meanwhile, the Flying Castle will continue, under gentle thrust upward, directly down to the surface of Mars.

Among other things, we’ll need to replenish our reaction mass tanks by compressing the thin Martian atmosphere. The storage tanks in the Flying Castle are almost empty.

That will give us the ability to take off again from the surface of Mars, and also be able to return to Earth, if that is truly what we all want to do.

After all, now that we’re out here, “It’s a big Galaxy, Mister Scott!”