Voyage

‘Go, you mother,’ Gershon shouted. ‘Shit hot!’ York could hear his voice shaking with the oscillation.

‘Ten thousand and Mach point five,’ Young said.

Mach point five. Less than thirty seconds into the mission, and I’m already hitting half the speed of sound.

John Young didn’t sound scared, or nervous. Just another day at the office, for him.

John had ridden around the Moon in Apollo 10, back in 1969; and if the later Apollos hadn’t been canned, he probably would have commanded a mission to the lunar surface.

In fact, if he hadn’t been so critical of NASA following Apollo-N, Young might have been sitting in here himself.

The vibration worsened. Her head rattled in her helmet, like a seed in a gourd. The whole cabin was shaking, and she couldn’t focus on the oscillating banks of instruments in front of her.

‘Mach point nine,’ Stone said. ‘Forty seconds. Mach one. Going through nineteen thousand.’

‘Ares, you are go at forty.’

Abruptly the ride smoothed out; it was like passing onto a smoother road surface. Even the engine noise was gone; they were moving so fast they were leaving their own sound behind.

‘Ares, you’re looking good.’

‘Rog,’ Stone said. ‘Okay, we’re throttling down.’

The engines cut down to ease the stack through max-q, the point when air density and the boosters’ velocity combined to exert maximum stress on the airframe.

‘You are go at throttle up.’

‘Roger. Go at throttle up.’

The pressure on York’s chest seemed to be growing; it was becoming more difficult to breathe, as her lungs labored against the thrust of the stack.

Stone said, Thirty-five thousand feet. Going through one point nine Mach. SRB combustion chamber pressure down to fifty pounds per square inch.’

‘Copy,’ John Young said from the ground. ‘You are go for SRB separation.’

‘Rog.’

She heard a faint, muffled bang; the cabin shuddered, rattling her against her restraints. Separation squibs had fired, pushing the exhausted solid boosters away from the main stack. She felt a dip in the thrust; but then the acceleration of the MS-IC’s central liquid boosters picked up again, and she was pressed back into her seat.

‘Roger on the sep,’ Young said.

‘Smooth as glass, John.’

The solid boosters would be falling away like matchsticks, dribbling smoke and flames. The strap-on solid boosters were the most visible enhancement of the VB over the core Saturn V design; with their help the VB was capable of carrying twice the payload of the V to Earth orbit.

‘Five thousand one hundred feet per second,’ Stone said. ‘Thirty-three miles down range.’

She glanced at the G-meter. Three times the force of gravity. It wasn’t comfortable, but she had endured a lot worse in the centrifuge.

Cool air played inside her helmet, bringing with it the smell of metal and plastic.

With the SRBs gone, the ride was a lot easier. Liquid motors were fundamentally smoother burners than solids. She could hear the mounting, steady roar of the MS-IC’s engines, the continuing purring of the Command Module’s equipment.

Everything was smooth, ticking, regular. Right now, inside the cosy little cabin, it was like being inside a huge sewing machine. Whir, purr. Save for the press of the acceleration it was unreal: as if this was, after all, just another sim.

‘Three minutes,’ Stone said. ‘Altitude forty-three miles, downrange seventy miles.’

‘Coming up on staging,’ Gershon said. ‘Stand by for the train wreck.’

Right on schedule the first stage engines shut down.

The acceleration vanished.

It was as if they were sitting in a catapult. She was thrown forward, toward the instrument panel, and slammed up against her restraints. The canvas straps hauled her back into her seat, and then she was shoved forward again.

The first stage engines had compressed the whole stack like an accordion; when the engines cut, the accordion just stretched out and rebounded. It was incredibly violent.

Just like a train wreck, in fact. Another thing they didn’t tell me about in the sims.

She heard the clatter of explosive bolts, blowing away the dying MS-IC. And now there were more bangs, thumps in her back transmitted through her couch: small ullage rockets, firing to settle the liquid oxygen and hydrogen in the huge second stage tanks.

Vibration returned as the second stage engines ignited, and she was shoved back into her seat.

There was a loud bang over her head, startling her, as if someone was hammering on the skin of the Command Module. Flame and smoke flared beyond her window.

‘Tower,’ Stone reported.

‘Roger, tower.’

The emergency escape rocket had blown itself away, taking the conical cap over the Command Module with it. Daylight, startlingly brilliant, streamed into the cabin, lapping over their orange pressure suits, dimming the instruments.

York peered through her window. There was a darkening blue sky above, a vivid bright segment of clouds and wrinkled ocean below.

Stone said dryly, ‘Ah, Houston, we advise the visual is go today.’

There was a lot of debris coming past York’s exposed window now, from the jettisoned escape tower and the MS-IC. It looked like confetti, floating away from the vehicle, turning and sparkling in the sun.

Young said: ‘Press for engine cutoff.’

‘Rog,’ Stone said. ‘Press to ECO.’

Whatever else happened now, Ares was to continue on, up to cutoff of the MS-II’s main engines. On to orbit.

‘Ares, you are go at five plus thirty, with ECO eight plus thirty-four.’

Ares had reached Mach 15, at an altitude of eighty miles. And still the engines burned; still they climbed upwards. Earth’s gravity well was deep.

‘Eight minutes. Ares, Houston, you are go at eight.’