Paul looked at Matt Thibodeau in seat 1A. The arrogant SOB looked calm enough. He was in his seat, glancing around the cabin, out the window, and then down at the status screen on the back of the chair in front of his seat. If it weren’t for the pressure suit, he would look like any other bored businessman taking an airplane flight to some other city for a business meeting. Gesling didn’t much like Thibodeau, but there was no obvious reason to remove him.
Next, he glanced at Maquita Singer, the millionaire owner of South Africa’s Singer Luxury Hotels, who sat in seat 1B. She was definitely nervous, her eyes darting around the cabin, not remaining on any one spot for more than a few seconds. Paul examined her vital signs again and saw that they were elevated but absolutely normal for someone about to accelerate from a dead stop to over twenty-four thousand miles per hour, leave the bounds of Earth’s gravity for the first time in their life, travel nearly a quarter million miles through deadly vacuum to orbit the Moon, and then travel back to land here in the desert. No, this wasn’t to be a normal day in the boardroom of a luxury-hotel chain.
Paul rolled his eyes when he looked at Sharik Mbanta in seat 2A. Mbanta was staring to his left, across the aisle, directly at Singer. The man who tried to bed every woman on the training staff apparently wasn’t thinking about going to the Moon. To Paul, he looked like he was thinking about how he could join the “More Than A Mile High” Club with Ms. Singer. Aloud, Gesling muttered, “I can’t believe this guy.” But his vital signs were also normal, and Paul really had no firm basis for ejecting him from the flight—other than extreme dislike.
Bridget Wells in seat 2B looked as cool as she had in all phases of the training that led up to this moment. She was blond with only a little gray, in her mid-fifties, and in excellent physical condition. A mother of two from Marshalltown, Iowa, she looked like just about every other soccer mom one might expect to run into at the supermarket. By looking at her, one would think there was no way she could come up with the money to pay for a trip to the Moon, but Paul did know and understand why she had so eagerly paid millions to have a seat on Dreamscape. She was a believer.
During training, Bridget had told Gesling her story. She was born a couple of years before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and had no memory of watching it happen—she was too young. When Bridget was about twelve, she discovered science fiction and became hooked. She read all the classic science fiction writers, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov. She didn’t have a math aptitude, so she didn’t go down an engineering path for a career in the space business. But she never lost her interest. She had written more than eight screenplays for science fiction movies that had turned out to be blockbusters. It was from these movies that she had earned her millionaire status. Early in her training she told Paul of watching the NASA TV channel for hours at a time, wishing that she were the one in space. Dreamscape gave her the chance to live her dream and aboard her she sat, grinning like a kid in a candy store, ready to go to the Moon. All her vital signs were normal, and Paul was hoping that she, more than all the others, would have the trip of a lifetime.
Finally, there was Dr. John Graves. Graves, too, was in his mid-fifties, but he was not nearly as trim and fit as Bridget, nor, for that matter, as any other passenger. In fact, he almost didn’t get to fly due to his weight. If he hadn’t lost the required forty pounds, someone else would be sitting here rather than him. Even so, no one would say he looked “fit and trim.” Graves was an engineer and vice president at a major computer company, and, like Bridget Wells, he was a believer. The big difference between him and Ms. Wells, other than his sex and overall physical condition, was his attitude. Graves treated the flight as something he deserved. Though he was never quite rude, Gesling knew that in Graves’s eyes he was merely the bus driver. Graves sat stiffly in his chair, his body rigid and his head unmoving as if afraid the Dreamscape would suddenly take off with acceleration sufficient to rip it off his shoulders. His vital signs were elevated, but still within the bounds of what the flight computer considered normal for a passenger at this point of the trip.
Gesling made note that the passenger assessments were complete and focused back on the prelaunch checklist and the status screens. He told his flight controller that Dreamscape was ready for takeoff.
The United States Federal Aviation Administration had long-since cleared the sky for miles around the Nevada Spaceport. Otherwise, there would have been the inevitable stray airplane or errant news reporter wanting to cover the Dreamscape’s flight from too close to the launch site.
Thousands of spectators were present, filling the highways around the spaceport. Reminiscent of the earliest of the rocket flights of the 1960s, the mood among those gathered to watch the launch was akin to that of groupies at a rock concert or hard-core partiers. And party they did. This was a big day for anyone who ever thought they might want to go into space. Dreamscape was about to take five everyday people (aside from the fact that they were rich enough to pay for the flight) to the Moon. For many, this was the unfulfilled promise of Apollo and NASA, and it was about to happen for real.
“Okay, we’re going around the horn,” Paul announced over the intercom. “I want a thumbs-up, a smile, and your name and status just like we’ve trained.” Paul toggled the screen to show five sections. Each split-screen section had a corresponding seat number and occupant name above it.
“Seat 1A, status?”
“Matt Thibodeau is A-OK!”
“Seat 1B, status?”
“Maquita Singer is A-OK!”
“Seat 2A, status?”
“Sharik Mbanta is A-OK!”
“Seat 2B, status?”
“Bridget Wells is A-OK!”
“Seat 3B, status?”
“John Graves is A-OK!”
“Roger that. Dreamscape crew is good to go.” Paul gave them all the green light and returned the thumbs-up and smile. “Control, our checklist is clear, and we are all systems go.”
“Roger that, Dreamscape. All systems are go for launch.”
In addition to the space enthusiasts, the Honda minivan was back, antenna deployed, positioned to monitor the Dreamscape launch from its chosen observation post fifteen miles away—the occupants doing their jobs for their country. That didn’t stop them from also reveling in the moment, for they, too, harbored an interest in going to space. Watching Dreamscape start to roll down the runway was just as exciting for them as it was for all those at or near the spaceport. They just wanted to make sure that there was enough data captured for their countrymen to someday duplicate the feat.
The acceleration pushed Paul back into the webbing that secured him to his seat. He could feel the skin on his cheekbones being pulled back toward his ears. He could hear his heartbeat and feel the kick to his abdomen as the Dreamscape’s scramjet engaged at a little over twenty thousand feet. The whine of the engines was only momentarily loud before the cabin’s active soundproofing kicked in and diminished it to something just short of a deafening dull roar.
Just a few feet away from Gesling and the five passengers, Dreamscape’s engines began running in ramjet mode, with the airflow into the engine traveling at something less than the speed of sound. As velocity increased, so did the speed of the air coming into the engines.
All systems were working as they should, and Paul saw no warning lights. He watched the Dreamscape’s velocity steadily increase from Mach 1 to Mach 2, and, in just a few short seconds, to Mach 3, then 4. At Mach 8 the engine switched from ramjet to scramjet mode as the air flowing into the engine’s inlet became self-sustaining at hypersonic velocities. Now the vehicle was truly hauling ass and accelerating toward its top airspeed of Mach 12.