Eric Flint - Boundary

A drive and a late lunch sounded like a good idea. If he were back at Ares he could've grabbed Joe to go with him, but things weren't quite that casual here at NASA. Most people were busy right now, anyway. He headed to the parking lot and was soon driving down the commercial strip in the nearby town, looking for something appropriate.

Not fast food, thanks very much, A.J. said to himself as the neon and brighter lights of said establishments tried to beckon to him. I need real food to keep me going tonight. Well, real food and then a sack of doughnuts and coffee. Ah, there we go, a steakhouse!

Getting a table in midafternoon was easy; the place was almost empty. He checked the menu, ordered, and then sat there in the quiet, waiting.

A.J. hated eating alone. After chewing on the problem for a moment, he pulled out his phone and dialed a still-familiar number.

The tanned face that materialized in his VRD vision was streaked with sweat and dirt, and the golden hair pulled back but escaping in tangled disarray.

Damn, but she looks good.

"What's up, Doc?"

"A.J.!" Helen Sutter's smile was brilliant against her honey-dark tan. Then she frowned in mock annoyance. "And will you stop greeting me like Bugs Bunny?"

"Better, ah say, girl, better than Foghorn Leghorn!" A.J. retorted in his best drawling bellow.

That got a laugh. "True enough. Well, as you can see, I'm in the middle of a dig right now. What's up with you, almost-Doc?"

"I'm in a restaurant completely alone, and wanted to see if I could at least have virtual company. I thought you might be able to indulge me. Time for a call?"

"Oh, I suppose I could take a little break. But if you're in an even vaguely respectable place, I sure hope you're not using a projector. I'll bring down the tone of the place. Badly."

"Purely for my eyes only. But even just like you are, you'd bring the tone of any place way up."

"That's why I put up with your antics-you know how to flatter a woman."

"Flattery? Never. I just tell the pure and honest truth. The secret is knowing that women like you never believe that they really are gorgeous."

Helen studied him for a moment, her head cocked a little. The expression on her face was a bit disconcerting to A.J. A sort of distant amusement combined with… something else, that he wasn't sure about.

He was reminded, not for the first time, that badinage with a very intelligent woman twelve years older than he was could be a chancy proposition.

Abruptly, Helen changed the subject. "So what's up with your work now?"

"The Faeries get to fly in a few hours. Pirate just succeeded in the aerobraking maneuver to get her into a closely matching orbit to Phobos."

"That's great, A.J.! I'll bet you're excited."

"Yeah. Yeah, actually, I am."

Helen's head was still cocked, subtly inviting an elaboration.

He was rather surprised to find he meant it. After being taken off the flight crew, he'd spent weeks working simply because he hadn't had much else to do and he didn't know how to just slack off. He was out of practice, having been working like a demon since he was fifteen. "You know, I really am!"

Helen's smile flashed again, this one warmer and with a touch of sympathy. "I'm glad. I could tell you weren't doing well at all for a while there, even though we only talk occasionally. Your e-mails just didn't have the usual A.J. edge."

"You mean bad puns and stupid humor."

"That too," she said, chuckling. "But really, you have a voice all your own. And as annoying as you can sometimes be, it's a signature that comes across even in a typed note. When I don't see something that says 'look, I've got something really cool to tell you' in the note, and instead get something that just reads like a thank-you note, I know something's wrong."

"Well, have no fear, Milady Bonedigger. A.J. the Great, Imperator of Imaging, Sovereign of Sensors, Dictator of Detection, has returned!"

Plates rattled. "And my lunch has arrived. I would share some of it, but somehow I don't think it'll work out."

She looked wistfully at the table. "You are a cruel man, to call a woman who's working here in a hot desert and then taunt her with real food and drink when all she has"-she held up a small wrapped object-"is a granola bar and a canteen of warm water."

"True, true. But it's an artistic kind of cruelty. I'll make it up to you, whenever you're back from digging. You name the place, I'll pay the check. Joe and Jackie could even join us, if you time it right."

"I'd love to see them again. I know they've been busy in their training, though."

"Don't worry about it. They can get enough time off to drop in and see an old friend, I guarantee you." A.J. started in on the salad. "If this really bothers you, I can cut off. I mostly needed company while I was waiting with nothing much to do."

"It doesn't really bother me. But I probably should get back to work."

"No problem. Thanks for taking the time. Now, and before."

"Anytime. Later, A.J. Let me know how everything goes!"

"I will."

The image of the paleontologist vanished, and A.J. dug in. Now that he realized how excited he was, he was impatient to get back. There were things to do, and he was the one to do them!

Eric Flint Ryk E. Spoor

Boundary

Release of ISM units completed successfully. All units showing on the green."

"That's the way to do it," A.J. said triumphantly. "Okay, time to get to real work."

A.J. checked the release pattern and observed that the Faeries were in proper station-keeping mode with respect to each other. Pirate was already moving away to a safe distance preparatory to making its final deorbit burn.

That was fine with A.J.. He knew what he was going to do with the Faeries, but he wanted to tweak all the instructions to reflect exactly the situation around Mars. The release had occurred just one hundred and sixty thousand meters from Phobos-a bit less than a hundred miles.

The Faeries were equipped with electric or, as A.J. preferred to call them, "ion" drive systems. They were low in actual thrust-the optimized designs on the Faeries would, at full power, shove the sensor platforms forward with an acceleration of all of one-fiftieth of a gravity. But the ion drives made up for it with specific impulse ratings that were beyond even the wildest fantasies of nuclear rocket enthusiasts, measured not in hundreds but in thousands of seconds. That made it possible for objects like the Faeries, which were small enough that A.J. could have picked them up and carried them, to hold sufficient reaction mass to travel significant distances and stop at their destinations. It was critical to give them that ability, since the availability of high-thrust drives such as compressed gas, rockets, or similar approaches was tremendously limited on small probes.

As everything was on the green, A.J. was going to have one of the Faeries-Ariel-run ahead of the pack, trying to reach Phobos at maximum speed, while the others would take much more leisurely approaches. This would be a test of the Faeries' navigation skills, the precision of his programming and the engineering departments' design work, and of the efficiency and precision of the drive system. At that distance

…

Close enough for minimal orbital mechanics to take part, 1/2at^2, we get… um… a little over twenty-one minutes, full acceleration for 10.66 minutes and a smidge, flip and decel for same amount of time.

The other Faeries-Titania, Tinkerbell, Sugarplum, and Rane-would follow at a more sedate pace, getting to their stations around Phobos in a few hours. He worked the precise numbers and course data carefully, then transmitted the orders to the Faerie Fleet.

"Well, in a while we'll start seeing some action," he said, leaning back and glancing around. "Say, about an hour. Though if you'll watch Titania and Rane's transmissions, you'll get to see the Pirate do its burn and start true deorbit. They'll try to hold the image as long as possible, another test we programmed in them before we started. That will demonstrate how well they can track. Tink's doing some GPR on Phobos before approach, while Sugarplum will be seeing if I can get good returns from Mars with the same equipment. Probably not, but it's worth a try."