Rocket Girls: The Last Planet Read Free Page A

faded.
    “ Rambutan , this is Space Lab. Our telemetry’s stopped. Is something wrong?”
    “Oh, uh, well, I just ran into the panel. Maybe I accidentally turned the switch off with my nose—”
    “ Rambutan , this is Solomon. Our monitors are showing a brief OMS burn. What’s going on up there?”
    “Well, the sequencer just started up and—”
    “Yukari,” Matsuri whispered, “we’re losing altitude.”
    “Could you read off the switch positions on panel one—”
    “Wait. You stopped the burn manually—”
    “This is Space Lab again. Once we have a signal can you resume your check of the QD—”
    “That partial burn is problematic. Better prep for a crash landing—”
    “Yukari! We’re losing altitude fast!”
    “Will you all just shut up for one second!” Yukari wailed. “I told them it was too much to do experiments and pilot this thing at the same time!”
    Yukari had a laundry list of things she wanted to check with base, but their altitude had already fallen below 130 kilometers and the capsule was beginning to bump atmosphere. When the vivid orange plasma of reentry covered the windows, their radio would cease to function.
    Yukari pushed all thoughts of the goldfish from her head and strapped herself in. Their angle of reentry was good. They’d make it into the atmosphere at least. But where would they land? Last estimates had put them somewhere between Northeast China, the Sea of Japan, the Japanese islands, and the North Pacific...
    “Hope we don’t land in North Korea,” Yukari muttered, gritting her teeth against the rising gravity.
    They were past 4 G now. It was becoming difficult to speak.
    Six G. Yukari’s body weighed six times more than it did at sea level, six times more than her bones and muscles were used to. The capsule vibrated like a saltshaker in the hands of an impatient child.
    Yukari wondered for what seemed like the one-hundredth time why it always shook so much. She felt her body sinking into the seat until she felt like a human pancake, and she knew that the worst was yet to come.

[ACT 3]
     
    ON A CONSOLE at the Ministry of Transportation Aircraft Traffic Control Center in Tokorozawa, a red light flashed.
    “Chief! I got something here!”
    The air controller in charge of Japan’s central and northwest region stood up from his chair. “ID unknown...maybe a bad transmitter? It’s going over the sea near Noto Penninsula at...Mach 11!”
    The chief leaned over to look at the oval radar screen. A point of light was crossing it, headed straight for the Tokyo region at an incredible speed.
    “No vessel name or identifying number? What’s its altitude? Any secondary surveillance radar reading?”
    “I’m not getting any response from the air-traffic control transponder. Nothing on audio, either. Think it’s an American test flight? Didn’t they have something called the Aurora—”
    “What would a test flight be doing in our airspace? The SFD moving on this? Any word from Komatsu?”
    “Haven’t been able to get through to them.”
    “That better not be a North Korean missile.”
    “At that velocity we’ll find out pretty damn soon if it is.”
    “The unidentified craft is over here now—in the West Kanto sector,” the controller sitting at the station next to them called out. “It’s heading for Tokyo, correct that, for Atsugi.”
    “Keep trying to contact Komatsu. Send all local flights for Narita and Haneda to Nagoya and Sendai. International flights can go to Osaka.”
    “Aircraft of unidentified nationality, this is Tokyo Control. Respond. Aircraft of unidentified nationality, respond immediately.”
    “The Komatsu airbase just scrambled its F-15s,” the central Japan controller announced.
    “Good luck catching that thing. Its speed is off the charts.”
    “Actually, it’s decelerating. It’s at Mach 3.2 now.”
    “Already? What is that thing?”
    Just then, an unfamiliar voice came in on an emergency frequency.
    “Uh...Mayday, Mayday.