Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
-- Thomas Huxley
"I heartily suggest that you stand up and cheer."
Sherry Cooper pushed upward with the gun at Lt. Rollins's back. The lieutenant rose and clapped his hands along with the others in launch control. He applauded slowly, ironically.
Strobes flashed on the cameras of the handful of reporters present. Videocams focused in on her and she flashed a victory sign. Thom Brodsky stepped over to the range safety station to verify that the abort switch had been inactivated at the moment of Aurora's safe insertion into orbit. To destroy the ship now would require a lengthy series of commands by several layers of management.
"Captain Fortney!" Rollins shouted.
Sherry secreted the pistol in her waistband holster.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, Mrs. Cooper interfered with my duties as range safety officer during the ascent phase."
Fortney gazed at Cooper, then at Rollins. "The ship made it into orbit safely, despite the confusion about an abort. What did she do?"
Rollins looked at the cameras, his mind racing to consider all the consequences of his outburst. He might ruin Freespace if he could have her arrested for carrying a gun onto military property. On the other hand, she would have plenty of opportunities to explain why she felt she needed to restrain his actions.
"Well, Mr. Rollins?"
"She... Sir, she told me that the abort command was in error because it was... on the wrong channel."
"Isn't that what happened?" Col. Lundy spoke up and looked about the room. "There wasn't any problem, was there? We can go over the TM and intercom transcripts, but from what I saw, Lt. Rollins correctly avoided an abort in the absence of any clear and present danger of the rocket straying from its flight path. I think the entire launch crew deserves an attaboy for a job well-done." He gave them all a thumbs up, most pointedly to Rollins, followed by a knowing one to Cooper.
"Look at that!"
Davy Crockett struggled to keep his coonskin cap on. It floated above his head, rotating like the hat of a cartoon character caught by surprise. The finger of his other hand tapped at the screen displaying tracking data provided by a French lookdown-radar satellite. "Poubelle's made it up here with his X-15! And Freespace with their Starblazer, Grant Enterprises with an entire ready-to-go space wheel! Where do y'all have to go to get a little privacy?"
"We did pretty well a little while ago," Bernadette said with a lascivious smile.
Sam raised his hands in defeat. "I tell you, there goes the neighborhood. You move to the great outdoors and the next thing you know they're throwing up condos in your backyard."
"Guys," Bernadette said quietly, looking at the life support screen. "We've been up here longer than we planned to be." She turned a gimlet eye toward Crockett. "And burned up too much oxygen."
"I wasn't the only one breathing heavily," Davy said, pulling a cheroot from his jacket to perform zero-g tricks, such as attempting to balance his floppy hat on the end of the cigar with the other end resting against his fingertip.
"Well," Friedman said in a particularly persnickety tone. "If leadfoot over here hadn't altered our line of apsides, I wouldn't have to be running a new calculation--"
"And have you calculated," Bernadette asked, "exactly where we plan to set down?"
Crockett cleared his throat, pocketed the cheroot, and pulled his coonskin cap tightly down to his ears. The tail continued to sway, sometimes sticking up like a polecat's about to spray. "I admit we didn't give it much thought. We obviously can't return to the warehouse. Carla said it's ruined."
Bernadette nodded. "I suggest we aim for something wide and flat. Like the California desert."
"Even wider and flatter," Sam said. "How about Kansas?"
"No." Crockett gazed at his two crewmates. "Listen -- we've got to make maximum use of the publicity machine we have here. Landing in the boonies is pointless. We want as many people as possible to see us and thrill to the landing the way they would an old-fashioned barnstormer."
"Oh, no," Friedman moaned. "Don't say what you're going to say!"
Crockett grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Yep. Central Park. Just before rush hour, so everyone leaving work can come and see."
"That's crazy!" Sam shouted, his glasses flying from his head. "Do you know what precision that would take?"
"Do you know that's how much faith I have in you? Besides" -- Davy patted his friend's arm -- "this spacecopter can land with pinpoint accuracy, even hover if it has to."
"I don't care where we land," Bernadette said, "as long as we do it within the next orbit. Have you two been holding it in the way I have?"
Guilty looks abounded. "I guess," Sam said, "the adult diaper idea sucked, huh?"
Bernadette nodded. "Royally."
As they passed over the Indian Ocean, Sam issued the command to align and retro-fire the engines. The two minute burn set them irrevocably on the downward path toward the atmosphere. Less than half an hour later, the ship began to shudder. Helmets locked on, the three prepared for the most dangerous part of their adventure, which Carla downlinked and broadcast live on GSN and the network feeds.
"All right, Carla," Crockett transmitted. "We're biting air. Jettisoning the main fuel tanks... now."
Three explosive bolts detonated with startlingly loud bangs that pangged through the spaceship's hull. Through a rear-mounted fiberoptic video camera, the crew -- and GSN viewers -- watched the beer-can-shaped module separate with a puff of venting oxygen and kerosene. It began to tumble slowly away from the rear of the spacecopter, which now resembled an inverted cupcake with four popsicle sticks protruding from its wider end.
"Here's where it gets interesting," he said. "Now we'll rotate to an attitude only a tad higher than the Shuttle. We'll see if these student-built rotor blades stay on and don't embarrass us, or whether they burn off and... Whoa! A little pressure on our seats. Have they cleared Central Park yet?"
"Police have cordoned off the Great Lawn, but be warned they plan to bust you the moment you step out."
"I expect nothing less. How's Professor Gibbon?"
"I hear he got kicked out of the White House and retreated to Manhattan!"
"Then that makes our choice even tastier." A tremendous thump rattled the spacecraft. "Carla, we're about to begin ærobraking, so expect a possible loss of signal."
"Roger, Davy we'll stand by."
Something creaked, followed by a slowly increasing whir. Pressing his face against the viewing port, Crockett could see the outer few feet of the rotor tips as they began to rotate in the sparse air at ninety miles altitude.
The pressure on their seats increased as weightlessness was replaced by the more familiar sensation of weight; familiar, and just a bit unwelcome to some of them.
"We're ærobraking," Crockett broadcast to the world. "The blades are acting like the rotary wing on a gyroplane, imparting lift to slow our descent while providing drag for deceleration."
"Yeah!" Sam piped in, releasing nervous tension by babbling on about the rotorocket's unique features. "Our lifting re-entry keeps us up in the stratosphere longer, which reduces the heating rate and the maximum temperature on the ship. The blade's are heated on both sides, but that just increases the radiative area, and since they're rotating, the migrating stagnation point effect reduces the aver--"
"Sam!"
"What?"
"Shut up!" the other two cried in unison.
Davy regretted the end of the journey, though the demands of the moment prevented him from experiencing any emotion other than methodical attention to the myriad details involved in safely returning to Earth.
The suitcase-sized supercomputers borrowed from NYU performed the majority of the work during reentry. The crew, for the most part, nervously hoped for the best. Whereas the air friction during a normal spaceship re-entry would have enveloped them in a fireball of ionized plasma, Bodacious Bernadette decelerated at a prolonged and leisurely rate, descending almost invisibly across the North American afternoon sky, passing over Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Detroit to its appearance over Passaic.
Then came the tensest part of the landing sequence. Descending now in a steep glide ratio of 8:1, the ship headed toward Manhattan only a bit more ærodynamically than a thrown stone. Over North Bergen, at an altitude of two thousand feet, Davy took control and -- viewing the landing site via the aft-facing videocam, ignited the engines one last time to increase the rotor speed.
"We're hovering!" Bernadette shouted in amazement.
"We're on the mark," Sam noted. "Extend landing gear."
Using the GPS coordinates for Central Park and the guidance and navigation software, Davy piloted the ship at a descent rate of fifty feet per second, the four landing gear pads extended like spindly feet.
All around New York City, people stopped and stared at the flaming marvel descending into the heart their city. Construction workers a hundred stories high gazed in wonder at the blackened, fire-spewing pinwheel that dropped past them madly chopping air and continued downward into Central Park. The crowds surrounding the Great Lawn, kept at bay by riot cops and mounted police, heard the gentle hiss of the engines, the whir and throb of the rotor blades, and watched in awe. An immobile mass of spectators clogged the streets surrounding the park, especially between 81st and 86th Streets, rendering afternoon travel an exercise in futility. All eyes scanned the sky.
From the window of his Central Park West apartment, Barry Gibbon watched the landing with a respectful awe. Something stirred within him, an emotion suppressed for years. Just as quickly as it welled up inside, he squelched it, recalling with gnawing rage the incomprehensible, gloating creature his sister had become. What hideous madness transformed her into the metaphysical saboteur now lurking in his own home?
Existential dread hit him square in the face. He no longer controlled the course of Man's steps to the stars. A multiplicity of feet now trod separate and divergent paths.
Barry Gibbon watched the flaming dervish descend into the center of the planet's most important city and saw a new paradigm for the æon. And -- realizing the power of its iconography -- trembled.
Davy and the others peered through their fogged helmets and scorched windows at the skyline of New York.
"World Trade Center!" Bernadette called out as the twin towers appeared at the bottom edge of her vision.
"Empire State Building!" Sam cried. "God, it's beautiful!"
"The Chrysler Building!"
"I think I saw Liberty!"
Davy's smile amid the buffeting of the engines suddenly faded. "We saw liberty up there. What we're coming back to, I can't predi--"
"Crossing Central Park West and Eighty-Second Street!"
A warning signal klaxoned in their ears. Two hundred feet over the great oval lawn just south of the huge reservoir, the computers could no longer rely on the accuracy of global positioning satellites. The piloting job fell totally into Crockett's firm grip.
With the aid of onboard radar, the computer, and the video image from a rear-facing camera, Crockett eased the spacecraft down toward the green.
"Fuel light," Sam said. "Forty seconds left."
"Easy," Davy muttered. "Easing down."
The hiss of the engines, reflected upward from the ground, grew louder through their helmets.
"Don't hit the Delacorte!" Sam yelled.
"Relax," Davy muttered. "Won't even singe it."
With languid grace, the spacecopter descended onto the northern focal point of the elliptical clearing. NYPD sharpshooters from the Central Park Precinct lined the rooftops of the Delacorte Theater and Belvedere Castle, gaping in astonishment at a vision more Hollywood than Manhattan: a spaceship landing in their urban park. The spinning blades made the ship look uncannily like a semi-transparent flying saucer spewing fire from its edge.
Crockett throttled up just enough to hover a few feet above the lawn, then let the vehicle set down. The gentle bump of landing caught the spacefarers by surprise. It not only meant their safe return and the end of one adventure, it marked the beginning of a new one.
"Contact light!" Crockett whooped with joy and threw a series of switches. "Engines shut down! Rotor brake on. Shut fuel and oxidizer valves. Vent APU gases. Electrical system shutdown. We made it!"
Bernadette unstrapped and slid over to hug him while Sam just let out a deep breath.
"Welcome home weary voyagers," Carla Pulaski said in their earphones. "I hear you'll be arrested shortly for illegal parking."
"Among other charges," Davy radioed back. He unstrapped and joined the others in a scramble for the exit.
"You first, Davy," Sam said. "You were the guiding light."
Crockett smiled. "And there might be police snipers out there."
Sam clapped him on the back. "You know me too well."
Davy Crockett took a moment after cycling the hatch to remove his helmet and slip into his buckskin jacket and coonskin hat. He sat on the edge of the hatch listening to the descending pitch of the blades thwapping against thick and steamy August New York air until the rotor slowed to a stop. Removing Ol' Betsy from its place of honor duct-taped to a support stanchion beside the hatch, he slid down the side of the soot-streaked spacecopter and jumped five feet to the ground to wave at the camera crews racing toward him in Jeeps and vans, well ahead of the police, fire department, and military .
"Stay where you are!" boomed a voice from the heavens. A police helicopter or three circled the park, accompanied by more than a dozen news choppers. "You're all under arrest!"
From the periphery of the park came the sound of immense crowds booing and rendering Bronx cheers. From his vantage in the middle of the vast green, Crockett watched the mass of onlookers press unrelentingly against the police lines until here and there breaks occurred, allowing rivulets of humanity into the park. Within moments, the rivers became a flood, then a tsunami of cheering, jubilant well-wishers.
Davy took a deep breath. "New York, New York -- I'd know that smell anywhere." He stared up at Bernadette and Sam. "Last one out locks up!" he shouted. "Remember, we're in Central Park!"
Laughing, Bernadette jumped from the hatch and into his waiting arms.
The crowd sprinted to reach the pair just a few seconds after a half-dozen cops tackled them. The civilians rent the two from police custody and tossed them upon their shoulders as if they had just won the pennant for the Mets. Friedman stared at the mass of onlookers below him, grinned, and swan-dived into the crowd, who caught him and body-surfed him around the spacecraft. A massive triumphal march, which the police could only impotently observe at a distance, wended its way toward Washington Square.