Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

“I did what was required,” Givens said. “I fulfilled my training. Finished third in my class.”

Walt couldn’t help it. He lost it. “That’s right! You completed your training… to be a goddamn gamer! You sit on your ass in a comfortable chair, cold Coke at your side, in a pilot cubicle on a base somewhere, and you play with your keyboard and joystick. I’ve gone over your records, Captain Givens. You’ve been shot down eleven times in your career… without getting a fingernail broken. Because it was your platforms that were hit, not you.”

Givens replied but Walt talked right over him “Neil and Buzz and Mike, they were real pilots, damn it. What was once called old stick and rudder men. If the systems failed, if the computers got backed up with too much data flow, they still had the instinct, the training, the capabilities to complete the mission, a quarter million miles from home. But now we have you… and we have to plan for the G factor. Gamers.”

Walt looked at the angry Givens, and his angrier co-pilot, O’Halloran, and he said, “You’re both skilled, capable, and good at what you do. Which isn’t being a pilot for a Moon mission.”

Givens said, “Well, we’re the best the Company has, and if they want new footprints on the Moon, they’re going to have to give us more realistic sims, and more realistic procedures.”

He left the office, followed by his LM pilot. They didn’t close the door behind them.

Walt looked to Oscar, whose cane was trembling in his shaking hands Walt felt so weary. “Well, that’s that. If those two get their way, the cost of going back is going to increase a lot… as well as the risk… one computer foul-up, one burnt chip, one programming hiccup, and they’ll drive their landing craft right into the regolith.”

But Oscar was somewhere else.

“Oh… that sim… brought back so many memories…” He smiled and another line of drool started down his face. “You young pup, you know your history don’t you… about the real pilots we had back then… and that was key…getting the right folks in place to take care of that X factor.”

Oscar coughed and wheezed, softly this time, not as harsh. “I remembered being here, in this very same building… watching the landing… seeing it succeed… and some of us… we were so proud… this was our first step… we had the heavy lift rockets… we had the infrastructure… soon… in just a couple of more decades… we’d be on Mars… we’d have a base on the Moon… oh, yes, we didn’t have the amazing technology of today… but we had the men and the women… but we didn’t have the political will… we didn’t have the grit…”

He took another, rattling breath. “Fifty years apart… you and me… and the others… fifty years apart, and that dream… what’s that they say? A dream deferred is a dream that dies?”

Walt wiped at his face, stood up and went to the wheelchair. “I thought today would be a celebration, to show you what we could do again, with the old sims, the old equipment,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “I’m sorry. We failed you.”

Oscar grabbed his wrist, with a surprisingly strong grip for an old man, lowered him down so his whisper could be heard.

“No, son, we failed you.”

The room was quiet again, except for the hiss of static and the sound of urgent, inaudible voices coming from the old NASA speaker.

Then Walt stepped around and in front of the old man, and then squatted down.

“Oscar?”

“Yeah?”

There was something in those old eyes, inquiring and skeptical but… hopeful?

Walt grabbed the man’s right hand and said, “We failed you today. But I’ll be goddamned if me or anybody else in the Center is giving up either. We’re going back. There’s been detours and setbacks—like today—but damn it to hell, we’re going back, and we’re going back to stay. Just you see.”

Oscar smiled. “I should live so long.”

“You better.”

"Woetjans!" Bosun’s Mate Runcie shouted as he came out the forward dorsal hatch of the battleship Renown . "Where the bloody hell is—oh! There you are, Woetjans. We got a new midshipman here, McKinnon. I want you to teach him the ropes."

Ellie Woetjans was within an hour of the end of her watch, but she wasn’t surprised that Runcie had just put her on a task that’d take her three hours to do right. The bosun’s mate didn’t like her, maybe because he knew that despite his rank and experience, Able Spacer Woetjans could’ve done Runcie’s job better than he could.

Woetjans stepped down onto the hull. She’d been inspecting the running rigging of Dorsal A while the antenna was extended here in Harbor Three on Cinnabar. She eyed her new charge without enthusiasm.

Mckinnon braced to attention as she looked at him, but he met her eyes squarely instead of keeping them straight ahead. He was five nine or so and probably 21—the usual age for graduation from the Academy. Though he wasn’t overweight, Woetjans thought he looked a bit soft.

Anyway, physical fitness was a good place to start. She opened one of the equipment lockers set around the base of the antenna and said, "Okay, kid. Pick a pair of gauntlets and lets see how quick you can skin up to the masthead."

"Yes, ma’am," Mckinnon said. He squatted to review the selection of rigging gloves in the locker, then picked a medium pair. Dorsal A had two sets of ratlines, aft and starboard. The kid put his hand on the aft set, but Woetjans said, "Take the others. I’m going up these to watch you."

The Mckinnon nodded, then started up the starboard lines, using his hands for balance but climbing with his legs. The rigging was woven beryllium monocrystal. Though strong and tough, individual strands frayed and broke. The gauntlets protected the kid’s hands, but if his arms or legs brushed a break standing proud, it would lay him open.

Woetjans could see that Mckinnon was being careful about how he moved. That was common sense, but this was a test of how he performed under stress. If she’d read the kid as a different sort of person, she’s have reached over and whacked him on the ass with a length of cable, but there was another way to deal with the likes of Mckinnon. Woetjans started climbing at speed.

Ellie Woetjans was six feet six and even stronger than she looked. She swung onto the inside of the shrouds so that she didn’t brush them, doing all the work with her arms. She’d reached the platform at the first antenna joint before Mckinnon knew what was happening.

There was a chance that the kid would try to do the same thing himself—and inevitably fall. Twenty feet to the steel hull would break bones, probably; but it wouldn’t kill him, probably. Woetjans was teaching him a lesson, after all.

Mckinnon hesitated a moment—Woetjans looked down past her dangling boots—but he stayed on the outside of the lines. His speed picked up considerably, though, which is what Woetjans had intended. She waited at the masthead, a hundred and thirty feet above the hull and waited for the kid to reach her.

Mckinnon’s face was red, and Woetjans could see tags of torn fabric hanging off the new utilities he’d put on for his first day on his first ship. He got onto the little platform and met Woetjans' eyes squarely, though he had to tilt his face up to do it.

"What next, ma’am?" Mckinnon said. He managed to control his breathing, but he couldn’t do anything about the rasp in his voice.

"Now we go back down," Woetjans said, grinning. "Go ahead—I’ll catch you up."

Mckinnon started down, feeling for the ratlines with his boots. He wasn’t good at it because he didn’t have enough experience to know where the line was. The spacing of the ratlines was always the same, no matter how big or small the vessel.