Chapter Text
Hazel adjusted her slipstick and looked back at the numbers on the page. Meade chewed her lip and tried not to fidget. Hazel didn’t like to be interrupted while she was checking figures.
“The course looks good,” Hazel said, finally, and Meade felt a rush of relief. “I might have gone a little closer on Ganymede approach; you can save fuel using their gravity. But we’ll use your numbers this time.”
“Really?” Meade said. “We can use yours, if it’s more efficient.”
Hazel shook her head. “If you’re conning this boat, you use your own course. Besides, the close approach is trickier.”
Roger Stone floated into the cabin. “How’s it look, Hazel?” he asked.
“Here’s the course, Cap’n,” she said, offering Meade’s figures. Meade wasn’t as worried this time; if Hazel had checked them, there was almost no chance that her father would find fault. Hazel pushed off to head down to the engines.
Sure enough, after a moment, he nodded. “That matches my figures,” he said. “Alright- feed ‘em in.”
Meade hooked herself into the co-pilot’s chair and pulled the straps around her. That done, she started entering her numbers into the ballistics computer. Roger Stone hooked into the pilot’s chair and double-checked it from his station. They were using their close approach to Ganymede to correct the small course deviations from their primary burn around Ceres; it was a simpler problem than the initial approach had been, but a misplaced digit could still send them careening off into the vast emptiness of space.
“All correct, Captain?” Meade asked, formally.
“All correct,” Roger Stone told her. “Go ahead and start.”
“Okay,” she said, as much for herself as for her father. She reached for the intercom. “All hands to stations for maneuvers,” she announced. She looked over at her father, who nodded. She reached for the radio and carefully opened a channel. “Ganymede Control, this is the Rolling Stone,” she said. “Sending final course data on three-alpha-foxtrot-two.”
There was a long silence, and then the radio crackled. “Rolling Stone, this is Ganymede Control. All received and logged. Proceed with caution. Not that you’ll need it, Stone,” the operator added, “You’re the only boat blasting for Titan this approach. Just try not to hit us and you’ll be fine.”
Meade smiled. “We’ll do our best,” she promised. “Rolling Stone out.”
“Ganymede Control out,” the voice answered. “Have fun on Titan.”
It was a similar maneuver to the one they’d pulled when they swung around Earth, blasting for Mars. It was the same basic concept, anyway- using Ganymede to slingshot them in the right direction, on Saturn-ward. Ganymede’s gravity field was much weaker than Earth’s, of course (though a bit over twice as strong as good old Luna), so it was a simpler calculation, and a much less touchy blast.
She switched over to ship intercom again. “All stations report,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could make it. “Power room?”
“Hot to trot,” Hazel said. Meade could hear her smile, and it made her feel a little better. Hazel would never have compromised the safety of her family; if she said Meade was ready, then she was ready. Right?
“Passengers?”
“Lowell and I are fine, Meade.” Her mother’s voice was calm, too. Of course, her mother’s voice was always calm.
“Captain?” she continued. “Check-off complete. The boards are green; five minutes.”
“Controls are yours, co-pilot,” Roger Stone told her, nodding. “Power room, unlock and prepare for blast.” He switched off the intercom. “Are you ready for this, Meade?” he asked.
She swallowed. “Yes, Daddy,” she said.
“Captain!” he corrected, and switched the microphone back on. “Blast in twenty seconds.”
Meade realized that she was sweating. She checked her boards again, checked the scope, checked her straps.
“Ten seconds-”
If the computer didn’t blast at the right time- if her numbers had been been wrong- Meade tried to keep her hand steady on the button and her eye on the scope.
“All hands brace for acceleration in five seconds-”
Roger Stone’s hand hovered over the blast button at his station, and Meade knew that Hazel’s would be doing the same down in the power room. It was their own tell-me-three-times redundancy. Her numbers had been triple-checked, and Ganymede Control had approved them, too. The star shapes in the scope were clear and steady.
She stabbed the button as the acceleration slammed her back into the couch. She counted seconds and reached for the cutoff- but the computer performed perfectly. With a cry of Brennschluss! from the power room, the blast ended.
She tried not to be frantic as she checked the scope, comparing the star shapes and readings with her expected numbers. In the background, Roger Stone ordered the power room secured and locked. “In the groove,” she said, with relief. She handed over her readings for him to check.
Roger Stone looked over his daughter’s results. “Well done,” he said.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Meade said. Her head felt a little light, and not just because of the return of weightlessness after the burn.
Her father smiled at her, a little wry. “It’s that way for me, too, you know,” he told her. “Every time.”
She swallowed. “It’s exciting,” she said. “But scary.”
Roger Stone nodded. “You just have to let that worry make you careful. There’s no such thing as a routine burn, not even for a twenty-year pilot.”
Meade nodded solemnly. “Yes, Captain Daddy, sir,” she said. But she meant it.