While Gesling was focused on the vehicle, the passengers were taking note that the Earth now appeared to be rather small, with noticeable curvature. The “ah ha!” moment came first to Maquita Singer, and she couldn’t help but voice her observation, “It’s a planet after all. Where are the borders? It’s just one planet. This is truly amazing!” Her comment elicited a grunt from Thibodeau and a nod from Dr. Graves.
“It’s called the overview effect,” Bridget Wells commented knowingly. “Since the sixties, many astronauts independently made the same observation once they got up here. There’ve been books written about it—I read them all doing research for the last television series I was writing for.”
Another grunt came from Thibodeau.
Gesling and all the passengers felt the hard slap of the first stage separating. The scramjet first stage had done its job and propelled the Dreamscape to twelve times the speed of sound. It was now time for it to fly back to the landing site for refurbishment and repair.
A fraction of a second later, the upper-stage rocket motor ignited, once again pushing everyone back sharply into their seats. The rocket continued accelerating the Dreamscape as it left the last remnants of Earth’s atmosphere and entered interplanetary space.
The passengers, now astronauts, stared out their windows at the spherical blue Earth beneath them. The thin haze that was the atmosphere enveloped the globe, and sunlight glinted off the now-useless wings on the right side of Dreamscape. Above them was pure darkness until their eyes grew accustomed to it and they were then able to see the stars.
Gesling saw all this, and more. But he didn’t have time to appreciate the beauty and grandeur. He had a job to do. So far there were no warning lights, and all systems appeared to be working as designed. A few minutes into the checklist, the onboard Global Positioning System locked on to four satellites, the inertial-navigation unit spun up, and the exterior star trackers started mapping their orientation. The amalgam of the three systems input data into the ship’s computer, which in turn calculated Dreamscape’s exact orbital position and orientation with respect to the Earth and space.
“GPS acquired,” Gesling said. “Computer: nav-lock to depot.” He didn’t often use the computer’s voice-recognition program, but in this case he made an exception. A few moments later, projected on the heads-up display as if written by a ghostly unseen companion, the trajectory the computer plotted between his current location and the nearly co-orbital refueling station appeared before him. Relieved, Gesling spoke to his ground controllers. “I’ve got the trajectory to the depot plotted and am about to engage. We’re right where we’re supposed to be, and we should rendezvous in less than three orbits.”
“Roger that, Dreamscape.”
“Control, we’re ready for OOB in forty-five.”
“Roger that, Dreamscape. Clock shows OOB on schedule.”
“Warning, prepare for orbital orientation burn.” The Bitchin’ Betty’s voice chimed throughout the little spacecraft. “In three, two, one.”
The thrusters fired, rolling and pitching the ship over to the upside-down-and-backward flight configuration. The ship jostled a bit and then settled down as the thrusters halted the ship in just the right position so that the occupants could get a really good view of the Earth from their side and overhead windows.
Only then did Gesling have time to check on his passengers’ physical status. He glanced to his side at the cabin view screen and pretty much saw what he expected. Thibodeau had opened his visor and was puking his guts out into the low-pressure barf bag attached to his seat. The low-airflow suction attached to the bottom of the bag kept the liquid from floating around the cabin as the system pulled it into the onboard sewage tank.
Maquita Singer and Sharik Mbanta were both green at the gills, and hearing Thibodeau lose his lunch was about to send them over the edge also. Space sickness was very common, and almost everyone going into space experienced it. There was no good reason for one person to get sick and another not. It just happened. Gesling was pleased that Thibodeau was among those afflicted.
Bridget Wells and the stuffy Dr. Graves were unaffected. They glanced somewhat nervously at their stricken colleagues and then promptly looked back out the windows.
Gesling assessed the urgency of the situation and decided that it wasn’t too bad. Their training had prepared them for space sickness, and it appeared that they had paid attention to that lesson.
“Matt, Sharik, and Maquita, I would recommend you do your best to reset your inner ear with the exercise we trained on. If you need meds, let me know.” Paul did his job. He looked at the five-sectioned monitor reporting on each of the crew members. Those who were sick began shaking their heads madly, to reset the balance system in their inner ears. Astronauts had learned that trick from watching cats fall out of trees—or at least that was the story Paul had heard. “We’re going around the horn. If you can make it, I want a verbal and a thumbs-up.”
“Matt?”
“Uhm, good, gulp,” he groaned from around the barf bag and gave a thumbs-up.
“Maquita?”
“Good.” She gave a thumbs-up and seemed to be locking her jaws to keep from being sick again.
“Sharik?”
“A-OK,” he got out before having to cover with the barf bag again. He did manage a thumbs-up.
“Bridget?”
“A-OK, Paul.” Paul smiled as she gave her thumbs-up. The woman was a trooper.
“John?”
“A-OK, Paul.”
“Alright, good. Bridget, you can start bringing the telescope online at your leisure,” Paul told the occupant of seat 2B. After all, running the telescope was her job.
“Roger that, Paul. Bringing the ISR package online.” Paul could see the icon for the system turn from red to green and could tell that it was being handled.
A few hours later, Thibodeau was still recovering while Wells and Graves were busily eating a snack and looking at the really awesome imagery coming through the telescope system as well as looking out the windows. Singer and Mbanta were drinking and playing with their water. Without gravity, any spilled water formed nearly perfect spheres and floated like little planets around those who were attempting to drink. Any of the foods or liquids not captured by the crew would hopefully be filtered and captured with the air-handling system. Drops of water or foodstuff might prove a problem if they were to seep into some of the ship’s critical circuitry, but the ship was designed with sealed components to prevent just that from happening.
One by one the crew unstrapped and began bouncing around the cabin from wall to wall, chasing food globules and generally enjoying their weightlessness. For the most part the nausea had subsided—for the most part. Thibodeau still looked a little pale around the edges. To Gesling and the ground crew, who were watching the antics in the passenger cabin on closed-circuit television, they looked like a bunch of kids on the playground. But Paul had to admit that he had done the exact same thing on his first mission into microgravity. In fact, as far as he could tell, all the astronauts throughout history had done similar antics.
Paul believed they were all thoroughly enjoying their ride and was planning to remark to Childers that their customers were definitely getting their money’s worth and the trip to the Moon hadn’t yet even begun.