The Chinese-made Scramjet orbital plane docked at ring seven on Tiangong Space Station.
Xavier Lake was first off the ship and floated his way through the various airlocks and corridors on his way to the central control module. There weren’t any elevators or drag handles on this station; visitors had to pull themselves around while trying not to collide with anyone coming from the opposite direction.
It took Lake a good ten minutes to find his way. He had been up here twice before but had had a guide on both of those occasions and hadn’t memorised the route.
Colonel Xiong Yu, the senior officer on the station, welcomed Lake into the control room with a bow and floated over with his hand outstretched. Lake, returning the bow, grabbed his hand.
The control room was, as with every room on this station, quite small, but designed for function rather than comfort. There were four other junior officers on duty, all strapped into seats in front of their relative control panels and screens.
‘Colonel, so good to see you again,’ said Lake.
‘Likewise, Mr Lake,’ said Xiong. ‘I trust your flight up was comfortable.’
‘It was. Thank you, Colonel. An exceptionally smooth transition as always,’ he said, smiling.
‘If you would like to follow me, Mr Lake, we can talk in my office – through here in the next module.’
Lake followed the colonel through an airlock into another module that seemed to contain nothing but computer hardware. The colonel turned left and keyed a password into a pad on the wall. A small hatch opened and they both floated through into a sphere five-metres in diameter. Lake looked around and was amazed to see the majority of the outer wall was made of thick Plexiglas. The view was spectacular.
He floated up to the glass and marvelled. It was like spacewalking without a suit and helmet.
Outside and to his left were rows of station modules and docking rings. He could see his recently-docked space plane sitting with two others and, below them, a huge construction area where he could see the flashes of welding torches and make out several space-suited figures busy with the building of the ore storage hoppers. The freighters from Vesta would one day fill these with valuable minerals. But best of all, straight out in front, was the Earth, slowly turning, big and blue and beautiful.
‘Can I say, Colonel, the view from your office window is outstanding.’
‘I call it my revenge window,’ said Xiong, floating over to Lake with his arms crossed and a sly smile on his face.
‘Revenge window?’
‘When I go back down to Jiuquan or Beijing, there are certain members of the party faithful who seem to enjoy finding fault with anything and everything I do. Not because anything is wrong, but just to remind me where I stand. So, I come in here now and again and wait for the People’s Republic to come around, I stick out my foot and pretend to stand on them, like bugs,’ said Xiong, looking back out at the view.
‘That’s my kind of thinking, Colonel. Excellent. Do you mind if I wait for the USA to come around? I’ve got a bit of bug stomping of my own to do,’ he said, laughing.
Xiong Yu joined in and they both chuckled away, staring out at the amazing view.
‘I nearly forgot. I have something for you,’ said Lake, slipping off his backpack and, after rummaging inside for a moment, presented Xiong with a two-litre bottle of a well-known brand of Chinese water.
‘Water?’ said Xiong, looking thoroughly underwhelmed.
‘The water bottle is just for show; I refilled it with something you might appreciate a little more. Your favourite, I seem to remember.’
Xiong unscrewed the top very carefully, took a sniff, a little sip and immediately capped it again. ‘How did you get this up here?’ he said with a big grin on his face. ‘Xi Feng Liquor – thank you, my friend. We shall share some of this a little later when there are less – how you English say – nosy parkers around.’
‘I like that plan. Talking of plans, how’s my ship coming along?’
‘Why don’t we go over and have a look?’
‘Excellent, show me the way and I can get out of this EVA suit too.’
Fifteen minutes later, Xiong and Lake emerged out of the airlock and into service hangar 2. They’d picked up a couple of jet packs on the way so they could navigate around the large space. Both men had used them many times. They zipped across the hangar and cruised around the space plane, inspecting the new additions to the ship. Lake paid particular attention to the new Ion drives, attitude thrusters and the large extension to the roof of the vehicle.
‘That’s something I haven’t seen before,’ said Xiong, pointing at the bulbous roof.
‘It’s a new, experimental scanning array,’ Lake lied. ‘Something I’m hoping will prove interesting to all the spacefaring nations.’
He quickly jetted down to the ship’s doorway and disappeared inside. As Xiong approached the door, Lake stuck his head back out.
‘I’m going to change out of this suit and have a meeting with my staff. I’ll come up to the control room later to find you. If you can get away, I’ll help you with your bottle of water,’ Lake said, and with a small wave, he disappeared again.
Inside the ship, Lake glanced over at a monitor, which showed the view of one of the many external cameras. He watched as Xiong, outside, stared at the ship’s door for a second and then up at the strange roof line of the ship, shrugged his shoulders and jetted back up to the airlock.
Back in the control room, Xiong floated over to his Executive Officer and Security Chief, Lang Xia.
‘Anything new on that ship?’ asked Xiong.
‘No, sir,’ said Lang. ‘We weren’t able to get near it because of that nosy South American, although the results of the photographs and scans we took of the equipment going into that strange bump came back from Beijing. They confirmed that it’s not a scanning array.’
‘Were they able to identify what it is?’
‘No.’
‘Lake’s up to something and I need to know what,’ said Xiong. ‘I don’t care how much he’s paying for the privilege. When he starts lying to me on my station, his business becomes very much my business. Tomorrow morning, when that ship goes out, scan it with everything. Don’t take your eyes off it for a second.’
‘No, sir.’
Lake changed out of his EVA suit in his cabin and into something a little less restricting and returned to the flight deck.
He sent the two engineers back to their cabins with instructions to stay on the station until the flight-testing had been concluded, then floated over to the flight controls and turned to study Herez.
‘Have the locals been paying much attention?’ he said.
‘At first they did. It was the Executive Officer, Lang. He was the nosiest, but he soon got bored when we told him nothing. They’ve got cameras all round this hangar, so I’m sure everything was photographed as it was installed and sent back to Earth for analysis.’
‘They won’t have a clue, but I’m sure they’ll be scanning us with everything they’ve got in the morning. I’d love to see their faces when the ship disappears.’
Lake pulled himself down into the pilot’s seat, brought the control systems online and asked for a full systems diagnostic. Very few people knew that Xavier Lake was, in fact, a very competent pilot. He test-flew all his own aircraft and, a few years ago, had paid to put himself through the rigorous orbital space-plane pilot training course with the Chinese.
The engineers had done well; he received a glowing screen full of green lights. The ship was ready to fly.
‘Are you up to speed with your responsibilities, Mr Herez?’
Herez sank down into the second seat and flicked on the scanning array screen.
‘I don’t know about up to speed but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing now,’ replied Herez. ‘I’ve spent two days reading the manuals and operating the systems in training mode. I think I know my way round most of it.’
‘We’ll give you a trial in the morning, then, and you can show me what you’ve learned,’ said Lake, powering down the ship. He floated out of his seat and headed for the main door.
‘Don’t wait up. Just be ready to make history at eight in the morning, station time,’ he said, as he slipped his gas pack back on and jetted out the door, looking forward to an evening drinking expensive rice wine with the Station Commander.