Jurassic Pouch Part I: The Invaders
The rocket shuttle lifted into the air. Strapped into a passenger seat facing upwards, Jo could only see the darkness of the midnight sky, and the ghostly half reflection of Jo’s own face. That face showed a bad case of nerves. Jo smiled at the preposterous image, and Jo’s image smiled back. In it together.
The heads-up display showed the shuttle’s aft camera view, focused downward toward the flamy end of the shuttle’s rocket booster. A plume of incandescent exhaust streamed away to the camera view’s vanishing point.
The shuttle pitched and rolled. There was King Island, the Tasmanian coast, and Flinders Island.
The rocket accelerated upwards through the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere. The city lights of Melbourne appeared, clinging to the darkened shore of the Bass Strait.
The rocket’s acceleration slackened slightly as its main engines throttled back. Another voice chime sounded: “Max Q”.
Seconds later, with no announcement, the rocket’s acceleration reintensified.
After six minutes, the booster hot staged from the passenger stage, and turned back for Melbourne under automatic control. At the same time, the passenger shuttle’s engines ignited, and Jo was pressed back into the seat again.
Another minute passed, the shuttle’s engines cut out, and the ensuing silence was a noise unto itself. The spacecraft’s voice chimed. “Microgravity. Re-entry in three minutes.”
The distant horizon was glowing red, then orange. Voice chime: “Crossing the terminator. Sunrise in ten seconds.” The spacecraft’s camera stopped down as the Sun rose, a dazzling white, over the limb of the Earth.
The Southern Pacific Ocean now dominated Jo’s view of Earth, with no land in sight. The part of the world’s ocean furthest from human habitation.
Jo’s Texas contact, Captain MaryLiz Bender, had told Jo the rocket would pass over the part of the Pacific Ocean called the “Tomb of the Satellites”. Because of its remoteness from land, this was the safest place on all the Earth to dump space trash. I hope I don’t wind up there, Jo thought, as the endless expanse of ocean scrolled by.
It was an ocean planet, thought Jo. No islands, just water. There was a name for it. The antipode? That wasn’t it. Every place on earth has an antipode. But I’m not on earth. The cabin was pressurized but Jo still felt light in the head.
Another chime. “EDL. Weightlessness is ending. Prepare for gravity.” Real steel shutters shut over the shuttle’s viewport. Cold jets fired with an all-but-inaudible hiss. The shuttle changed its orientation.
The main display showed the horizon, a crosshair indicating the point towards which the shuttle was hurtling. What Jo thought to be first sight of land turned out to just be the haze of the thicker part of the atmosphere, seen edge-on. A storm front off the coast of Chile. Jo strained to catch sight of the Americas. There! (The computer locked focus.) North America?
Baja. Now North America proper. Arizona. New Mexico. A cold gas jet fired, and Jo’s view turned southward, towards Mexico. The EDL clock read -12:48. Thirteen minutes to go.
The spacecraft descended across the New Mexico / Texas border. Jo’s stomach growled.
Texas food had better be good.
Fusion the Horse paced south over the grasslands north of the Rio Grande. This close to the river’s estuary, on the Gulf of Mexico, there were squishy bits here and there, but Fusion knew exactly where they were. The horse threaded its way across the Texas marshes.
Fusion’s rider, MaryLiz Bender, the famous astronaut, inclined her head to the sky, as if on the lookout. That was fine. Fusion dreamed on, her head close to the ground. There was grass here, but what was Fusion dreaming about? It took the horse a minute to recollect. Yes, I was dreaming… thought Fusion.
Of Oats.
The sharp report of a sonic boom started the horse from reverie. Fusion looked up, blinked, and snorted.
In the sky above South Padre Island, a silver form descended from the southwest, the upper stage of a passenger rocket shuttle. Its stainless steel fusilage glinted in the late afternoon Texas sun. The shuttle was coming in hot. Not straight down, but at a steep angle which grew more vertical as the ship decelerated through the thicker part of the atmosphere. The bells of its engines glowed a dull orange, bearing the brunt of re-entry heating as the shuttle shed velocity, trading heat for speed.
Captain MaryLiz Bender flipped the horse’s reins. “Come on, Fusion, let’s go to the house!”
“The house” meant the stable. Fusion knew that there was an extra bag of oats in the stable, because today was Saturday, when the Rocket People came to help out in the paddock. The Rocket People always brought an extra bag. An extra bag of oats.
Oats.
Fusion could see the shuttle falling, too, nearing the horizon under the clear blue Texas sky.
An extra bag of oats. In. the. stable. Fusion lit for home.
Horse and human arrived at the paddock gate just as the shuttle pitched tail-downwards, relit its primary drive, and landed.
The oats were good. Fusion licked the bottom of the extra bag clean, grateful to the Rocket People’s inability to count without the help of second order partial differential equations.
MaryLiz opened the gate to the farrier stall and knocked on the cedar gatepost.
Frances, the ranch’s large animal veterinarian, was installing a new power outlet.
“Hey Frances, Jo just landed.”
“I heard the boom. I hope their work Visa works out, it’s a long flight back to Australia.”
“It used to be. Um, Frances, you said I could borrow the Camry? To pick up Jo?”
“I did say that you could borrow my Camry.”
“Come on, Jo’s from out of town. You’ll like ‘em. Keys, please.”
“Use the tarp in the trunk when you load all the gear.”
“I will. Keys?”
“They’re under the seat.”
“Thanks!” MaryLiz opened the gate and headed for the driveway.
Frances shouted after Bender. “Hey, Cap, I forgot to tell you. We’re down three bags of oats!”
Boca Chica Spaceport was lavish for the community it served. Built as a plaything of a vanished generation of rocket entrepreneurs, its short General Aviation runway was only active during the morning and evening, ferrying commuters and tourists from San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso. Rocket shuttles were few. At this hour, the Arrivals parking lot was completely empty. MaryLiz parked the Camry, and sliding glass doors, dusty on the outside, allowed her entry to the terminal.
Bender chuckled inwardly. I should have printed a placard to hold up at the gate: PROF JO STAPLEDON.
And then, there was Jo, already debarked and walking towards MaryLiz, with a smile of recognition.
Which meant Jo had been waved through United States Customs in no more than five minutes. Odd.
“Dr Stapledon! I’m MaryLiz!” The two clasped hands.
“Please, call me Jo, I’m not long on ceremony.” Stapledon’s Australian accent sounded wonderful. MaryLiz wondered how her own partly affected Texas twang sounded to Aussie ears.
“OK, Jo. Great, thank you so much for coming. Let’s hit Baggage Claim and head to the Ranch.”
The scientist and the astronaut loaded up a robot autocart with the considerable pile of cargo that had accompanied Jo through the upper atmosphere. The sliding doors opened and Jo inhaled the first breath of Texas air. The faint bouquet of petrochemicals reminded Jo of hot and sour soup.
The autocart followed Jo and MaryLiz through the parking lot with an occasional beeping peace-cry. The sun was sunk low in the western sky. “I left Melbourne at two AM….” said Jo.
MaryLiz was no stranger to ‘rocket lag’. “It is 9 AM yesterday here. You’ve just gained seventeen hours. Are you hungry?”
Jo was direct. “Yes. They told me not to eat before I flew, and I couldn’t spare the launch mass of a sandwich.”
“OK, Food options. There’s SustainaMart, in Sustainaville, on South Padre. But If you can hold out fifteen minutes till we get to the ranch, home cooked breakfast awaits.”
“I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.” Jo fell silent: the scientist was looking out the window at the scrub brush and grassland scrolling by. The Rio Grande Valley. Why here?
Bender broke the silence. “Any thoughts so far on our ‘situation’?” MaryLiz raised her index fingers from the steering wheel to make air quotes around the word.
“After dinner talk. I want to see Frances’ presentation first.”
“Yes, of course.” MaryLiz glanced towards the back seat of the car. A dense mist of Texas humidity condensed around some of Jo’s bags. “You’re packing some fancy kit. Medical placard, bio-seal, passive cryo, liquid N2. Someone’s taking our little discovery seriously.”
“Yes, all that and a bag of crisps.”
“The active cryo, I hadn’t seen one of the newer ones. They let you keep it running while it was in flight?”
Jo’s poker face cracked for a split second. “UNESCO priority payload. They gave me all I asked for, and a bit more for rainy days. I was surprised at the snappy response: your site isn’t on the World Heritage Site list….”
“Thank goodness for small mysteries,” said MaryLiz. “I’m anxious to see if you can help us solve ours.”
Jo glanced at the center dashboard of the vintage economy car.
“Hey, do you actually have cassette tapes for this thing?”