P.S.S. Stardust

Chapter Five

© 2012 Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Chasing down the Tin Can, once known as the international Space Station or Freedom Station, proved to be a long and boring task. Even the experience of being in space turned repetitious as Houston Control kept asking the same questions over and over. Until Team B had crewed the Tin Can there had not been a woman under the age of thirty-two and that had been Sally Ride. Now there were a total of twenty-four teenagers in space and well, the NASA doctors had so many questions, tests and experiments they wanted done that finally Gilda simply turned off the radio.

“We are not lab rats” she had explained, actually the questions and other things had become much too personal for Gilda’s taste, her reaction had been to simply shut up the nosey adults. If they wanted to know such things then NASA should send their own teenagers into space. For the rest of their flight Gilda only turned on the radio long enough to talk to Tin Can control, checking that their approach was on schedule.

Sandra, the Captain of their backup crew relayed a few messages from NASA about radio protocol during the first contact, then stopped after Gilda none too gently explained what ‘medical tests’ the Doctors at Houston were requesting. “They did the same thing with us” Sandra admitted. “We pretty much did the same thing to them, those perverted old men.” After that the two girls started chatting about more important things, their favorite television stars and their instructors.

When QUEENSRYCHE finally docked with TIN CAN it was rather anti-climactic. Though Gilda and Elizabeth sat ready to take over at any second the ships computer easily handled docking, then it was the long wait for pressures to equalize while Gilda and her crew stared out the few viewports that showed STARDUST. She was an impressive space craft, drifting five hundred meters from the station. Based upon a 1950's Space Station model the ship had a long tail that led nearly three hundred meters away from its donut shaped body. That tail held the ion engines as well as the three reactors that powered them, along with supplying power for the ship herself. At the moment STARDUST had her solar sail wings and communications arrays folded in, they would be extended after leaving Earth, once the ship was past Lunar orbit. Until then she floated in orbit, her final loading being done by the six international astronauts that were currently aboard TIN CAN.

After deploying her arrays STARDUST would begin spinning, the resulting centrifugal force giving the ships outer ring an effective false gravity half that of Earths. Enough to fool the crews bodies so that they did not lose muscle or bone mass. As the ships water tanks were on the outer part of the ships ring they preformed three extra duties, if the ship were hit by something moving fast enough to puncture the multiple skins the water would help stop it along with freezing as it entered space, thus plugging the hole until it could be repaired. Pumps moved water around under computer control to counter balance the crews movements, keeping the ship in balance and the water helped act as a radiation shield. Along with a complex electromagnetic grid mounted on the ships outer skin. All technologies already tested on the TIN CAN.

All this the young women talked about among themselves as they studied the ship that they would pre-launch test, but never fly in. Two weeks in space, three careful test runs with the last being live up to engine start. Then they would say good-bye to STARDUST and return home to Earth. To Earth and their waiting families, their great experiment over. Team B would remain upon the station until NASA selected a crew and sent them up to take over the now qualified ship, launching off to Mars and maybe beyond. Depending on if NASA could both get the budget for said crew from Congress and had the guts to go further than Mars.

“I’d kill to be on that ship when it leaves” the Hawaiian born rabbit Betty Palakiko announced. “Even as a Joy Girl.”

“You might kill” the Chinese-American mink De Xu agreed, but you would never let someone you didn’t love touch you that way.”

Betty blushed, the dark red color easily visible though her thin summer coat of fur. “I don’t know de, I might. For a trip like that, I might.” From there the conversations went downhill so fast that the when Yolanda from Team B opened the lock she was greeted by gales of laughter.