CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One ∞ 2: A Captain's Journey

59 ∞ For the Sake of a Little Girl

With quick estimates of the station's diameter and thus radius, angular velocity of rim rotation and tangential speed, Gareth calculated the shuttle would be flung off the station cables at nearly six kilometers per second. The descent into the atmosphere would increase the shuttle's speed to Earth's until they matched. From there, it was all aeronautical flight to the port of landing.*

The shuttle pilot's voice came on again, reassuring the passengers that all checks had passed with flying colors and departure was imminent.

A small hand gripped Gareth's right hand. He gave it a squeeze as he leaned closer to Dara and whispered, "It's going to be fun, you watch."

Janine took hold of her other hand, and with a reassuring smile, leaned back into her seat as if nothing was wrong. Dara didn't look reassured, but she too leaned back, mimicking her mother.

The cabin speaker began the countdown from ten as Gareth visualized the shuttle being lowered out through the final airlock door. It now hung from the cables as the merry-go-round of Earth and the Universe spun around them. At the exact millisecond, the cable magnets released them, flinging them from the station like a yoyo whose string had broken. Gravity evaporated to zero-G-only their safety harnesses kept them in place.

Gareth squeezed Dara's hand as the engines fired. Thrust pushed hard, and they sank deeply into their seats.

Beside him, Harlin let out a "Wooohooo!" loud enough for everyone in the cabin and beyond to hear as the thrust climbed. The thrust leveled out after several minutes, and zero-G returned. The friendly pilot came over the air to inform everyone that they'd be entering atmosphere in seventeen minutes, to relax and enjoy the lack of gravity, but be courteous to others by not letting objects free to float around.

Gareth looked at Dara to find her quite at ease in the zero-G-she even gave him a smile. He patted her hand, then turned to Harlin in disconcertion. "Tell me you don't do that every time."

Cocking an eyebrow, Harlin smiled at him, shrugged his shoulders, then leaned forward to give Dara a wicked smile of mischief. The window shields opened to reveal Earth in all its green, blue, and white glory of dayside as Harlin leaned across Gareth's left armrest to mock whisper to Dara, "Atmospheric entry is fun too. It's like a really bumpy ride."

Gareth gave Harlin a fake scowl. "Are you going to make that horrible noise again?"

Harlin straightened himself with an exaggerated, indignant expression. "What are you talking about? That wasn't a horrible noise, was it, Dara? Did that sound like a howl or a screech? No, it didn't. That was a war cry-that's what it was. It's sad, Gareth, that you don't recognize the difference. It's the sound of victory."

Harlin had leaned forward again to include Dara, so Gareth turned to her as well. She had a sheepish smile on her face, but appeared to not want to answer.

"It was clearly a howl," Gareth said with the same indignant tone Harlin had used. "Go ahead, Dara, tell him how much it hurt your ears. I bet it hurt the ears of everyone in here."

Dara was fighting not to smile now, and Harlin took that as his cue to keep going.

"It was not a howl. It was fun! I bet Dara wishes she'd done it first. Okay, Dara, this is what we're going to do. When the shuttle enters the atmosphere, it gets noisy and bumpy. We sit quietly until we punch through, and when the engines fire up, we both let out our war cry! Okay?"

That was enough to get Dara chuckling, and it made Gareth feel good to see it. He continued with the farce. "Now, Dara, don't you let out that howl, because if you do, I will have to, too. You wouldn't do that to me, now would you? We're not wolves-let's not act like animals."