Rocket Girls Read online

  Satsuki pointed at stacks of neatly folded clothing on the desk. “These are your training clothes. Shorts, T-shirts, jumpsuits, swimwear—the same things we’ve been using in your tests. You’ll also find towels, caps, shoes, tampons, maxis. There’s a locker in the dressing room—you can keep all this there. If you run low on anything, put in a requisition with the supply department.”

  “Okay.”

  “The rest is your textbooks, notebooks, calculator, and so forth.”

  “Got it.”

  “Well, let’s get started, shall we? Beginning tomorrow you’ll spend time in the pool and gym before breakfast. Part of your endurance training. Today you get to skip that. Let’s put you in the centrifuge to work on your G tolerance.”

  Satsuki escorted Yukari to a circular room in the basement of the training facility. In the middle of the room was an odd-looking piece of machinery with two arms—one short, one long. At the end of the long arm was a cage big enough to hold one person. The other arm ended in a large counterweight to ensure the entire device remained level while spinning.

  “This is the centrifuge. You might have seen something like it at an amusement park.”

  “I rode one at Toshimaen once.”

  “This is just an industrial version of the same thing. I’ll give you instructions over the intercom. Just do what I tell you and you’ll be fine.”

  “All right.”

  “Go on, hop in the cage. I believe the best way to learn is by doing. Don’t worry, I won’t push you too hard.”

  The cage loosely resembled the control room of a construction crane. Yukari opened the door and wriggled in. It was a tight fit. She sat facing the middle of the room, toward the centrifuge’s central axis. There was a small window directly in front of her and beneath it a panel with a row of switches. Cables snaked all around her.

  Satsuki reached in through the door and fastened Yukari into a sturdy four-point harness. She placed a headset on Yukari’s head and attached a series of sensor wires.

  “All set. Just sit tight.” Satsuki closed the door and walked out of the room.

  Light shone through the glass separating the control room. Satsuki appeared behind the glass. “Can you hear me?” Her voice crackled through the headphones.

  “Yeah.”

  “Straighten your back and place your arms on the armrests.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here we go. You’ll be at 2 G in three seconds.”

  Brrrrrm.

  Yukari felt a dull thud, and then the centrifuge began to move.

  “Whoa.”

  Every vehicle Yukari had ever ridden in had started slow and built up speed. This was different. The acceleration was instantaneous, like pushing a toy car across the room. It didn’t follow a curve, it was a straight line—and it was just getting warmed up.

  The spinning grew faster. Everything outside the window was a blur. The centrifuge began to creak, and her body sank deep into the seat.

  “Okay, 3 G…4 G…” Satsuki’s voice was mechanical.

  Yukari felt her stomach contorting. And not just her stomach. Her lungs, her intestines, her brain—it felt as though someone had put them in a vise.

  “Now 5 G…Any changes on the panel?”

  “Th-the second light from the right came on.”

  “Those are illuminated switches. I want you to push any of them that light up.”

  “Okay—huh?” She tried to lift her arm, but it remained glued to the armrest. It felt as though it were made of lead.

  At 5 G, Yukari’s body would weigh five times as much as normal. So if her arm weighed two kilograms, it felt like ten.

  “I can’t lift my arm.”

  “This is only 5 G. Just pretend you’re trying to lift a bucket of water.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Her hand trembled as she peeled it off the armrest, but she managed to press the button. The light went off.

  As it did, another went on.

  “Turn the lights off as quickly as you can.”

  “Ugh.”

  Straining under the effort, Yukari used both arms to press the button.

  “Good. Let’s see how you handle six.”

  The centrifuge whined.

  “Hey!”

  “You’re on a course to crash. If you don’t turn off all the lights within thirty seconds, the centrifuge will automatically accelerate by 1 G.”

  “Don’t I get a say in this?!”

  “Afraid not.”

  Three lights blinked on. It took all of Yukari’s strength to reach the first button. As she did, her arm shook as though it were cramping, and she pressed the adjacent button by mistake. It lit up.

  Brrrrrm.

  She barely managed to turn off a single light within the time limit. The centrifuge accelerated without mercy.

  Yukari’s bones ground against each other. She grimaced in pain.

  “Now 7 G.” Satsuki chuckled.

  Yukari’s face stretched. She sat powerless as the next thirty seconds expired.

  “Now 8 G.”

  Yukari was overcome by a terrible headache. Her vision began to dim, her heart raced, and her breath grew shallow.

  “Breathe with your stomach or you’ll suffocate.”

  She wanted to ask how, but the words wouldn’t come. Her ribs pressed against her back, crushing her lungs. She couldn’t even force air down her throat.

  Another thirty seconds passed.

  “And 9 G.” Satsuki giggled.

  A tunnel closed in around her vision. Her breathing was labored. Her heart was beating two hundred times per minute. A haze clouded her thoughts.

  The world went black.

  [ACT 5]

  YUKARI WOKE UP in her bed. Satsuki was with her, the woman’s back facing the bed. The last moments before Yukari had passed out came back to her.

  “You…”

  “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re alive, aren’t you?” Satsuki’s face was expressionless.

  “You enjoyed that.”

  “You kept a cool head.” Satsuki wrote something on her clipboard.

  “Don’t try to change the subject. I heard you laughing.”

  “You were doing so well. The machine kept accelerating, but you didn’t pass out. I was happy for you.”

  “That’s not what it sounded like from where I was sitting.”

  “You must’ve misunderstood, that’s all.” Satsuki glanced at her watch. “Oh, look at that. It’s time for class. Don’t want to be late on your first day.”

  “Just let me rest a little first.”

  “No time.”

  Satsuki dragged her out of bed.

  When she reached the classroom, Kazuya Kinoshita was waiting for her. His silver-rimmed glasses sparkled.

  “You’re late,” he barked.

  “I blacked out.”

  “I don’t want excuses. An astronaut has to be able to manage her schedule. Next time you’re late, I’ll keep you for an extra three hours.”

  Yukari wondered where they found these people. How did someone so young—Kinoshita couldn’t have been much past forty—get to be such a hard-ass?

  “Now let’s try to make an astronaut out of you. Turn to page ninety-two in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I.”

  Yukari flipped to the page he’d asked her to. It was a monster of a book.

  “Orbital mechanics are governed by Kepler’s laws. Read them out loud.”

  “Let’s see…Kepler’s first law: The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Kepler’s second law: A line drawn between the sun and a planet will sweep out equal areas in equal periods of time. Kepler’s third law: The squares of the orbital periods of any two planets are proportional to the cubes of the semimajor axes of their orbits.”

  As she read, Kinoshita had written an equa
tion and several numbers on the board.

  “This is the equation for a planet’s orbit. Use these initial values and the gravitational constant to integrate the equation.”

  “Integrate?”

  “You don’t know integral calculus?” His voice had jumped an octave.

  “I don’t think we ever learned that.”

  “Let’s try this then.” Kinoshita wrote another equation on the board. “You must be able to calculate a binomial expansion.”

  This new formula looked more familiar. She just needed to plug in the values for the variables.

  “So, what’s the vector after one second?”

  “But those are eight-digit numbers.”

  “Use your calculator.”

  “Oh, right.” Yukari took out the calculator she’d been given that morning. She flipped on the switch, and froze. “Huh?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It doesn’t have an equals button.”

  “Of course it doesn’t!” He looked like he might burst a vein. “Haven’t you heard of reverse Polish notation?”

  Yukari brought her hand down on her desk with a bang. “Obviously not!”

  “Then I’m going to spend the next five minutes drilling it into your head. When I’m finished, you’ll never want to touch a normal calculator again.”

  “Tyrant!”

  “What did you call me?”

  The next two hours were a nightmare. Dejected and with a mountain of homework in her hands, Yukari walked out of the classroom.

  [ACT 6]

  THAT AFTERNOON YUKARI started survival training with Toshiyuki Kurosu, the chief of security. Kurosu took one look at her in T-shirt and shorts and thrust a pair of fatigues at her.

  “Change into this.”

  A short ride in a Humvee brought them to a firing range at the foot of the Shiriba Mountains. Dense tropical jungle surrounded them on all sides. There were sandbags everywhere, and the ground was crisscrossed with trenches just wide enough for one person. The entire range was fenced with barbed wire.

  Kurosu spoke to Yukari across the hood of the Humvee. “This is the SSC firing range. I intend to spend the next week teaching you how to survive in any environment the tropics can throw at you.” Kurosu squinted at her. “Tell me. What’s the key to survival?”

  “Hmm…”

  “Shoot before you are shot!” Kurosu shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Wha—?”

  “That is the only way you will survive! The enemy is everywhere. You must kill the enemy without hesitation. If you do not kill the enemy without hesitation, the enemy will kill you!”

  Yukari stared blankly at Kurosu. Another freak.

  He took a large pistol out of a duffel bag. “Forty-five caliber, Colt Government M1911A1. Your new best friend.” He held the gun out to Yukari. “Take it.”

  It felt heavy in her hands, a lifeless mass of metal.

  His hand reached into the duffel bag for more loot. “This is your gun belt. Wrap it around your waist. This is a magazine—seven rounds each. Always remember how many rounds you have left. Cleaning kit and tools—you gotta be able to strip and clean your weapon with your eyes closed in the middle of a firefight.”

  “Question.”

  “Proceed.”

  “I thought survival training would be more about pitching tents and scavenging for food.”

  “Can you kill the enemy with a tent?” Kurosu bellowed. “First order of business is survival. If you can kill a man, you can hunt an animal. Then we’ll worry about tents.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Hmph. If your brain won’t get it, your body will. Follow me.” Kurosu led Yukari to a corner of the range and showed her how to handle the gun he’d given her. Slap a fresh magazine in the bottom, pull back the slide, release the safety.

  “Squeeze the trigger, kill the enemy. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Show me.”

  Kurosu pressed a button on a nearby control panel, and a man-shaped target popped up in front of them.

  “Aim for the heart. Keep your feet apart, bend your back. Hold the grip with both hands.”

  Yukari followed each instruction precisely.

  “Fire!”

  Bang!

  A massive jolt ran through Yukari’s arms and into her shoulders, shaking her from head to toe. She staggered backward.

  “Wrong! Do not close your eyes when discharging your weapon!”

  “Do you have anything…smaller?”

  “Your weapon must strike fear in the heart of the enemy. One more time. Like you mean it.”

  Bang!

  The recoil knocked her back again. The bullet hadn’t even grazed the target.

  “Hold the grip good and tight. Squeeze the trigger, real light. Now fire.”

  Bang!

  A hole appeared in the target’s stomach.

  “I hit it!”

  “Empty these.” Kurosu set six more magazines on the table. She fired all forty-nine rounds. When she finished, she couldn’t feel anything below her shoulder. But Kurosu was just getting started. He made her change her stance and fire off another forty-two before taking her to an obstacle course covered with track-and-field equipment.

  “You will scale that wall, crawl under that barbed wire, and dive into that trench.”

  Yukari sighed. It sounded like the first level of a video game.

  “You will also crouch the entire time because I will be standing here firing at you with a machine gun.” Kuroso hefted an M-60. “I will be firing live rounds. If you stand higher than you should, you will be in a world of hurt.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Scared? You should be. It costs a lot of money to train an astronaut,” he said. “I’m here to weed out the undesirables. Now suck it up and move!”

  “But that’s not fair.”

  “Not fair?”

  “You’ve got a machine gun, and all I have is this pistol. I won’t stand a chance.”

  “Well, well, well.” His face split into a grin. “You want to shoot back? Keep me honest?”

  “You said shoot or be shot. I want a machine gun too. Something small and light I can run with. One that shoots lots of bullets.”

  “Aren’t you full of surprises. I’ve got just the thing.” Kurosu reached back into his duffel bag and produced a small, angular machine gun. “This is an Ingram MAC-11. She’s compact and lightweight, but she still packs a punch.”

  “Perfect.”

  “She’ll dance when you fire her, so hold on good and tight to the silencer with your left hand.”

  “No problem. Now all I need are some bullets.”

  “Help yourself.”

  Their war games lasted the rest of the day. With bullets whizzing by overhead, Yukari realized it was a lot harder to be an astronaut than she had imagined. But she wasn’t going to give up yet.

  CHAPTER III

  GIRL OF THE JUNGLE

  [ACT 1]

  A FULL WEEK had passed since Yukari began training. Her body was bruised, her back ached, she had sprains in places she didn’t know she could sprain—she was a walking ball of pain. Physically and mentally Yukari was at the breaking point.

  Satsuki escorted her to the Fuel Processing Center. Motoko Mihara was waiting for her in the same room where they had taken a cast of her body the previous week.

  Motoko pointed proudly to a gleaming white space suit hanging from a rack. “Ta-da! Your skinsuit is finally ready.”

  Yukari glanced at the suit with disinterest.

  The material was ultrathin, a mere two millimeters thick, and it formed one continuous piece, like a wet suit. A double-layered fastening mechanism extended from the neck to the waist. The chest bore the SSA logo, and beneath it ASTRONAUT YUKARI MORITA was neatly printed in ten different languages—in the event she had to make an emergency landing in some remote part of the globe.

  “Out of those clothes—underwear, everything,” sa
id Motoko.

  Yukari stripped without protest. Taking off her clothes on command had become a nonevent. She had been poked and prodded by every instrument known to man. Privacy was not a luxury afforded astronauts.

  The space suit was precisely 3 percent smaller than Yukari but had some give. With her arms and legs inside, the material fit snugly against her body—a second skin, just as Satsuki had said. From the neck down, the only part of the suit that wasn’t skin-tight was a device to collect urine in the crotch that resembled an oversized maxi pad. For solid waste, you would just have to hold it.

  There were ports in the back that provided power to the heaters embedded in the material of the suit, as well as an array of sensors that monitored body temperature and power flow. A ring around the neck would fasten the helmet to the suit, but the helmet was still in production.

  “Try moving around. It might feel a little stiff.”

  “A bit.”

  “I designed it for optimal comfort while seated in the capsule, but I think it holds up well enough in general use.”

  “I guess—my chest could use some support though. You sure I can’t wear a bra?”

  “Out of the question. Your skin has to be in direct contact with the suit.” Motoko thought for a moment. “Maybe if you wore it outside the suit.”

  Yukari frowned.

  “I think it looks cute on you,” said Satsuki. “A science fiction heroine straight out of an anime.”

  “I’m curious to see how strong it is in practice, how long it can be continuously worn,” said Motoko. “It has a sturdy silicone rubber base, but if it gets scratched up too badly it might tear. Of course, in a vacuum, even if it does break, it won’t pop—no air inside.”

  Yukari was unimpressed.

  “Keeping you in it for two or three days should tell me what I need to know. If it gets too uncomfortable, take it off and give your skin some air.”

  “But try to avoid it,” added Satsuki. “This is a test, after all.”

  “A test? Now?”

  “A field test, yes. You’ll be camping out.”

  “But what about class? And endurance training?”

  “Those are on hold.”