BOUNDARY(70)

What was . . .



"A.J.? A.J., Jackie, look!"



A white dot showed in the air. As they watched, the dot descended and grew.



"Parachutes spotted," crackled from the speakers. "Visual confirmation that it is the ejection pod from Chinook."



Helen and A.J. were already sprinting towards the likely landing area, somewhat to the right as carried by the wind. The emergency vehicles passed them, of course, and by the time they arrived the ejection pod had landed and Bruce and Joe were emerging from it.



A.J. bulled his way through the EMTs. "Joe! Joe!"



Joe grinned, painfully. "I tried to tell them it was a no-smoking flight, but nobody listens to me."





Chapter 23




Ken Hathaway's eyes widened a bit. "A radius of one hundred and forty-six meters—almost a thousand feet across?"



"Or more," Dr. Gupta said, nodding. "Half again as far across if we assume a rotation of once per minute. And farther across, much farther across, if we also wish to generate Earth gravity instead of merely something close to Martian."



The Air Force colonel scratched his head, looking doubtful. "A rotation of once every forty seconds or so still seems awfully slow. I'm sure we could spin up to considerably more than that and remain well within tensile safety limits. Look at what we can do with suspension bridges and all."



Gupta let Jackie field that one. "If it was just a matter of engineering, Ken, we could build it to be any size you want it to be. We could put you in what amounts to a washing machine or one of those carnival rotor things. But the problem is that a lot of people run into disorientation problems when they hit rotation over about two or three RPMs. For flights with small handpicked crews, you can ignore that problem to some extent. But our crew is much larger and is being selected for a much wider range of functions. Some of the members will be only marginally space-worthy."



"Tell me about it," Hathaway grunted, smiling rather crookedly. As an officer accustomed to the rigorous selection procedures of the military, he was still trying to get used to the much wider latitudes being applied to picking the Nike's crew. No one who suffered from really critical medical problems was being accepted, true. But Ken felt the definition of "critical" had been stretched to the breaking point. There was one member of the crew who was sixty-three years old, and another who was at least forty pounds overweight.



Both of them, however, were also universally considered to be among the world's half-dozen top specialists at deciphering languages—and they were the only two who were willing to make the trip. So, aboard the Nike they would go, when the time came, whether the ship's captain was happy about it or not.



Jackie continued her explanation. "Now, we're not taking anyone who's a complete groundhog—they're going to have to be able to take acceleration and no gravity and all that—but Dr. Wu is firmly of the opinion that if we don't use slower rotation for our artificial gravity we will have problems with a significant portion of the crew. On the bright side, he's also firmly of the opinion that one-third gravity will be sufficient to maintain bone mass and prevent the other problems associated with long-term null-g situations. Ten years ago, we wouldn't have been able to be sure, but he says the most recent experiments have been consistent and clear and he's comfortable with a one-third gravity setting."



"Okay, okay. I agree, there's a lot to be said for a big ship. We should be able to make her pretty roomy, which God knows we're going to want. Still, even if I stop her from spinning, that's a hell of a lever arm I'm trying to turn with. Wouldn't want to break it off."



Jackie laughed. "Don't worry. The supports are designed to take anything you'll be able to dish out, even with the engines we're giving you. Here, take a look at our first main design model of Nike."



The 3-D imaging view lit up and, suspended in space, a model of Earth's first interplanetary ship materialized.



"Thank God for modern design technology," Ken mused, staring at the image before him.



"No kidding. Without state-of-the-art automatic modeling and simulation testing and expert design packages, plus actual years of in-orbit construction experience, we'd need years to reach a workable design."



Ken knew the truth of that. Many people didn't realize how difficult it was to design a new machine of any type. In the days before computers offered Computer Aided Design/Computer Assisted Modeling packages, design was a matter of physical construction of prototypes, testing of configurations, and iterations of these processes that could take years.