Apryl Searson met me at the ramp, her pixie blond hair, and thin, short dress fluttering in the tropical breeze. She took my arm and walked me to the Launch Loop International (LLI) Howland headquarters building where she had already prepared an appropriate place to greet me properly. By now, these trysts were legendary in SWIC, but none of the guys begrudged me my good fortune. Actually, the pickings were sufficiently slim and the schedule so tight, that they really had no chance.

  At the end of the tarmac, LLI’s two Chinooks waited with cargo bays open, twin rotors seemingly wilting in the hot tropical sun. Senior Chief Baxter and his six guys unloaded the six pallets with help from Lt. Brook and the other flyers and then loaded two into the Chinooks. They all accompanied the first two pallets to Baker. And then returned for two more, and then for the remaining two.

  I spent a few minutes with Sam Davidson, the local LLI Director, bringing him up to date on what we were doing. He had been following our activities closely, and probably was as anxious as the rest of us for the success of this next step. Now that the Atlantic Launch Loop was in operation, Slingshot had a bit less pressure on its 24/7 schedule of throwing people and cargo into space. No matter how you cut it though, Sam was launching 2,000 metric tons of cargo and eighty personnel capsules into space every day.

  “Where is all that stuff going, Sam?” I asked as I stood to leave.

  “Out there,” Sam said with a grin gesturing toward the ceiling and slapped my back, something that was becoming a ritual. “Good luck, Tiger! Like I’ve told you each time we meet like this, I’m glad it’s you, and not me.”

  This time around, Apryl accompanied me to Baker Island in the last Chinook. Senior Chief Baxter joined us. Even with the pallet, the three of us had plenty of room. The rest of the guys had crowded around the pallet in the other Chinook.

  “Nice to see you, Miss Apryl,” Baxter said, his eyes twinkling.

  “And you, Senior Chief,” Apryl said, kissing his cheek as he blushed crimson. Apryl giggled, kissed him again, and snuggled back beside me.

  After we landed at Baker, Apryl and I, accompanied by the other five flyers, took the five-minute trip in a personnel capsule up to Amelia Earhart Skyport. Meanwhile, under Senior Chief Baxter’s supervision, the articulating boom crane loader hoisted the pallets over the rail where a crew member attached each to a launch dolly. The process had become pretty routine, but the Senior Chief never let his attention wander during the loading.

  AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT—PRELAUNCH

  At Amelia Earhart Skyport, our capsule tilted to horizontal, sealed against the skyport lock, and the door opened inward. Apryl and I stepped into the reception area, followed by my guys. The capsule closed behind us, and the lock sealed. Apryl took a seat against the outer wall, and I addressed my team.

  “You’ve all done this before, but individually. Anything happens like it did with Cappy or me, you got more to think of than yourself. We’re back to being a team, a fighting team—even though this is just a drill.” I got a chuckle from the five in front of me. “Know your position in the formation at all times. If a teammate gets into trouble and you can help, do so! But don’t risk everyone in the process. Remember, with this exercise we’re showing the mucky-mucks that SWIC is a viable insertion tool, perhaps the best we’ve ever developed.”

  “Hooyah!” Chief Slade responded, joined by the rest, me included, “Hooyah!”

  “Okay, guys, suit up!” Slade ordered, and a minute or so later, the first pallet arrived.

  With skytower traffic stopped, all the guys except me hustled through the personnel lock. They removed the fairing and stowed it, and then they prepped the pallet with its Gryphon payload, swinging the wingsuit pod cover to vertical on its hinges like a clamshell. Slade examined every part of the pallet and wingsuit. He was quick but efficient, mindful of the queued-up freight pallets and passenger capsules waiting down at Baker Socket. As he finished, he signaled Lt. Roger Brook to do his final system check. Rog, as we called him, had looked over Slade’s shoulder through his entire system check, so he was certain that everything was ready, but he still went through the list just to make sure.

  Rog stepped up on his Gryphon, backed against the carapace cover, and one of the guys secured his legs and torso and lowered him into the wingsuit.

  “Time to go,” I said to Apryl, who was snuggled against me on the same couch we used before my first LEO drop. The Milky Way, that multi-colored diamond-studded bracelet spanning the sky, was as awesome as ever, taking my breath away as I untangled myself from Apryl.

  Apryl kissed me passionately. “Be safe, Tiger…I worry about you.”

  Of course, we had no idea what lay before me.

  I suited up quickly. Our lightweight suits incorporated high-pressure oxygen bottles, electronic carbon-dioxide scrubbers, and TBH jet boots that slipped over the suit feet and calves.

  I stepped through the personnel lock onto the dock just as Rog’s pallet disappeared around the bend to receive kick thruster and launch dolly. The second pallet arrived, followed almost immediately by a personnel capsule carrying Baxter and his crew. They disembarked into the Skyport lounge where they suited up and joined us on the dock as Chief Slade’s pallet queued up at the end of the dock. We had room for three pallets in queue before we had to launch the first. We generally knew the sequence, but Mother would coordinate the entire operation, based upon the time of the first launch, the times of each subsequent inspection and launch, and when each pallet was released to its specific HTO. The biggest potential variable was how long it took to inspect each pallet, load the flyer, and put him in the queue.

  We had practiced the sequence often enough back in Coronado so that we actually worked like an oiled machine. I say we, but that’s not quite fair. It was the guys under Senior Chief Baxter’s watchful eye who pulled it off. Even though I commanded SWIC-3, up there, right then, I was just an observant passenger.

  Petty Officer First Class Francisco Rodriguez—Jerico for some unknown reason—conducted his inspection and was snugged into his Gryphon. His pallet joined the queue.

  Next up, Petty Officer First Class Ronald Caplan. Cappy, as the guys called him, had already experienced one mishap during LEO drops. From his perspective, this drop had to be perfect. His inspection lasted somewhat longer than the others, but that was fine—no one begrudged him the extra time. Baxter looked at me even though it wasn’t necessary. Up here, he was in charge. I nodded, and he signaled to launch Rog down the rail, making room for Cappy’s pallet.

  Petty Officer Second Class Peter Farwall was next, and I followed Pete. Like Cappy, I inspected my pallet and Gryphon with extra care. I certainly didn’t want any problems this time.

  I stepped onto the pallet, backed up against the pod cover, and allowed the crew to strap me in; the process almost felt normal. Then the crew swung down the pod cover and me, sealed the edges all around, pressurized it, and checked for leaks. The gantry moved me to the end of the queue while Pete received his kick thruster and launch dolly.

  AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT—LAUNCH

  “Control, this is Tiger—comm check,” I said as I felt the kick thruster attach.

  “Loud and clear, Tiger,” Master Chief Boldt responded. “Just like old times.” As always, his calm voice was reassuring.

  “Mother, state your status,” Boldt ordered.

  “Rog, Slade, Jerico, Cappy, and Pete are down the rail. Rog and Slade are in HTO. Standing by to launch Tiger. You,” she added as an afterthought. Mother’s voice was business-like but still had a soothing, contralto tone.

  “Ready when you are,” Boldt said.

  I felt the gantry lower my pallet to the rail. I was snug as a caterpillar inside my Gryphon cocoon. It felt warm and comfortable.

  “On my count,” Master Chief Boldt said. “Five, four, three, two, one…Launch!”

  SLINGSHOT RAIL

  As I surged forward, I reminded myself that this was my sixth time down the rail. Staying relaxed, even in tough circumstances, has always come easy to me. By now, this was a piece of cake, except my right buttock started to itch. My arms were free to move inside the Gryphon wings, but try as hard as I might, I couldn’t reach the itch. I finally moved my rump up against the carapace cover and wiggled. Getting that itch was blessed relief.

  Exactly four minutes and ten seconds after launch, Mother rotated my pallet 30° to the left. Thirty-three seconds later and 1,328 klicks down the rail from Amelia Earhart Skyport, Mother released my pallet from the rail and initiated a two-minute-fifteen-second kick thruster burn. At the end of that time, the magnetic iris sliced through the kick thruster’s solid fuel stack, cutting off the burn. The pallet with me in my Gryphon headed on a path away from the Earth at almost 8 km/s that passed 290 klicks to the north and 19 klicks above Fred Noonan Skyport, and that would intersect the 160 klick orbit on the other side of the Earth at the same point and same time the other five converged. When the acceleration ceased, I relaxed into freefall, fondly remembering Apryl’s ministrations in the LLI Admin Building on Howland Island and her Skyport-kiss just before I suited up.

  LEO

  By now this was old hat. I was in an elliptical HTO with perigee at 80 klicks and apogee at 160 klicks—just like the other five times. The one big difference, however, is that when I reached apogee on the opposite side of the Earth, the rest of my team would be clustered together waiting for me—at least that was the plan.

  Time to determine the status and get things organized. “Control, this is Tiger…status of rendezvous,” I requested.

  “Rog and Slade are at the assembly point,” Mother answered. “Jerico is approaching, arrival in twelve minutes. Cappy is eighteen minutes out, Pete is twenty-five minutes out, and you are thirty-nine minutes out.”

  Do you have any idea how long thirty-nine minutes can be? I remembered sitting on a small stool in my mother’s kitchen as a four-year-old watching the wall clock. My mother had said that we would leave when the big hand reached twelve. Those forty minutes took forever, but these thirty-nine minutes took even longer. And to complicate the matter, that itch came back. At least, this time, I knew how to fix it. The upside of this wait was that I had time to admire the Earth below.

  On each set of LEO drops, we had set ourselves on different orbital paths, landing twice in the US, once in Africa, once in Australia, and one water-landing near the Soloman Islands in the South Pacific. This time we were following our original orbit fairly closely, planning on landing together in the Amargosa Valley, 145 klicks northwest of Vegas.

  As I climbed higher along my HTO, while I played tag with my itch, I had a grand view of the Earth below, but I no longer felt compelled to give Control a blow-by-blow show-and-tell. Baja was covered with clouds, but I knew it was below because Mother had superimposed a map over my heads-up display. Amazingly, Laguna de Myrán, half-way between the Pacific and Atlantic in central Mexico was filled with water for the first time in years. A swirling tropical storm system off New Orleans made me happy that was not my destination. For a change, the Atlantic was about as empty of cloud cover as it ever gets, giving me a grand view of horizon-to-horizon ocean blue until I ran into the terminator about half-way across. I crossed the African coast just south of Mauritania heading toward Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, already a shining diamond on the nighttime horizon.

  As I approached Lagos below me, my heads-up display showed my five companions up ahead and above waiting patiently for my arrival.

  “Squad, this is Tiger. I’m on approach, five minutes out.”

  “Tiger, this is Rog…we see you in heads-up. You’re not yet physically visible. Are your red-green flashers on?”

  “They are,” I answered, and then I was able to pick out their five sets of flashers against the stars. “I have visible on you,” I said.

  “I will park you fifty meters below the formation,” Mother interrupted. “Stand by for circularizing burn.”

  Mother ignited the kick thruster for a few seconds—thank goodness nothing went wrong this time. I rubbed my buttock against the carapace cover as I checked my heads-up. The five team members were arrayed above me in a triangular formation with the point missing. That was my slot. Twelve meters separated each pallet horizontally, and three meters vertically. Slade and Jerico filled row two above and behind point, and Cappy, Rog, and Pete made up row three above and behind row two.

  Using my maneuvering jets, I brought my pallet to the point position ahead of and three meters below Slade and Jerico. I could have let Mother do this, but I thought it was a great opportunity to show off a bit. We were ready to go.

  LEO—SQUAD DROP

  “Mother, update status,” I ordered.

  “Fifty-two minutes until squad drop,” she answered.

  “Control, this is Tiger. I’m going to do the one-eighty now while we’re hanging loose.”

  “Roger that, Tiger. Let Mother handle it.”

  And she did. Synchronously, Mother rotated all six pallets with their gyros. I watched the eerie dance on my heads-up. If I hadn’t known better, I would have taken it for a video game.

  “Everybody good?” I asked casually, knowing that my guys were focused—perhaps too much since we were still forty-five minutes to the drop.

  “Rog good!”

  “Slade okay!”

  “Jerico A-OK, Boss!”

  “Cappy is fine!”

  “Pete too!”

  Ten minutes later we met the morning terminator as we passed south of Madagascar, its visible southern tip brown and dry, rising out of the deep blue ocean to the north.

  “Let’s drop down there and take us a vacation,” Jerico said. “Never been there…looks like an interesting place.”

  “Too late for this orbit,” Cappy quipped. “Gotta go around again and commence our drop over western Zimbabwe.”

  “Might not be welcome there,” Pete said. “I hear they don’t like people like us…”

  “Cut the chatter!” Chief Slade snapped.

  Seventeen minutes of empty Indian Ocean later, except for some streaky clouds that looked like they were trying to form a tropical storm, we crossed the Australian coast just south of Adelaide. I played tag with my itch for the entire three minutes we took to cross over New South Wales to the east coast just south of Brisbane. That left us about twenty minutes of South Pacific Islands and open ocean before we commenced our drop. Things seemed to be going pretty well. Snug in my Gryphon cacoon, I was feeling more confident with each passing island, each Pacific squall, and each wide open patch of Pacific blue.

  By the time we were five minutes out—that’s 2,500 klicks—I began to feel a bit of…I wouldn’t call it anxiety…more like intense anticipation. I wanted to get the show on the road, itch or no itch.

  “Standby,” Mother said at the one-minute mark.

  Based on her precise calculations, Mother actually commenced the retro-burn about ten seconds earlier than our plan called for, but I was confident. She knew what she was doing. Two minutes or so later—you’ll have to examine the log to get the exact number—Mother cut the kick thruster burn and rotated the pallets back, so we were pointed in our direction of travel.

  “Good luck and Godspeed!” Master Chief Boldt said as I felt the jolt of pallet separation and on my heads-up watched six expended pallets drop away to burn up in the atmosphere.

  “Forward velocity six-eight-hundred meters-per-second,” Mother told me. I knew she was also talking to the rest of my squad, and I trusted that she was doing whatever was necessary to keep us in formation. On my heads-up, I saw the individual Gryphons increasing their separation until we each were a hundred meters distant from the closest Gryphon.

  We were accelerating toward the ocean at 9.8 m/sec2 while heading toward the horizon at 6,800 m/sec. Mother had set a timer when she separated my pallet. Drop timer digits flashed at the right side of my display. At the three-minute mark, the California coast was fifty klicks below, and ten seconds later, we began to grab atmosphere. As things started to heat up, I checked our formation. We still held position. “Report!” I ordered.

  “Rog warmin’ up!”

  “Slade toasty!”

  “Jerico friggin’ hot, Boss!”

  “Cappy ditto!”

  “Pete too!”

  “Take us up, Mother,” I said. Okay thus far. I was feeling pretty good about it.

  Mother had already set our nozzles and wing torques to optimize our return to space. I felt weight return and then disappear as Mother cut the burn and announced, “Forward velocity five-zero-eight meters-per-second, net forward transfer nine-three-zero kilometers.”

  Given what we were doing, that was about as close to being on the button as possible.

  Mother reset the timer as our vertical motion slowed to zero, and then together we plunged back into the atmosphere, slowing down to about Mach 14 and eating up another 700 klicks before it got too hot to continue. By the time we dove into our third dip, we were down to Mach 5, and the guys were letting go Hooyahs as we whipped back out for the last time.

  “Stay focused!” I ordered. I really didn’t want something to go wrong this far into the exercise.

  The next drop put us at thirty-five klicks above and 150 klicks west of our drop zone at sixty m/sec. It took us a few minutes to work our way down to 8,000 meters above Death Valley. Our destination lay about 50 klicks due east in the Amargosa Valley

  We had made it. All that remained was landing and hitching a ride to Vegas. And that’s when all hell broke loose!

  DEATH VALLEY—BIRD STRIKE

  “What the fuck was that?” Jerico yelled, his Hispanic twang quite evident. Then I heard a loud crunch as my heads-up display went crazy.

  “Shit!” I yelped as my Gryphon commenced rolling hard to the right. Mother automatically torqued my wings to compensate but without much success. I activated my hypergolic rocket, but nothing happened.

 

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