Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Rating: everyone
Tags: Science Fiction, Queen Chrysalis, Adventure, Minotaur, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Cherry Berry, Changelings
Length: 334274

The space race is on, and Chrysalis is determined to win it. With an earth pony test pilot and a hive full of brave-but-dim changelings, can she be the first pony on the moon? Inspired by Kerbal Space Program.

Now available in print format, thanks to our Kickstarter supporters!

It turns out that the magical land of Equestria is not a flat plane covered by a bowl of stars after all. This is big news to Queen Chrysalis. If the moon is actually a place, then she can travel there, claim its magical energies, and finally get revenge on Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, and everypony else.

Of course, there are problems. One problem is that everypony else is also rushing to get into space. Another problem is that Chrysalis really has no idea how to do it. Fortunately a certain earth pony with a taste for cherries is willing to help... provided she gets to fly the ship, and provided Chrysalis keeps the space program honest and open and legal.

Together, Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, and a horde of brave-but-dumb changelings will make world history... or, more likely, they'll make a lot of really big explosions.

Inspired by Kerbal Space Program. Current cover art by Jason Meador aka texasuberalles.

TVTropes page here! Thanks to GymQuirk for making it!

Old cover art (and Changeling flag) here:

http://nishi199.deviantart.com/art/Changeling-Swarm-Flag-413227759

1-21-2017 Included in The Goodfic Bin's High Quality Fics! Thanks! Review here: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/206510/the-goodfic-bin/thread/173558/submissions-folder-decision-thread-v2#comment/5750494

[img]http://s13.postimg.org/5a2dthj87/Giz_Vyc0.png[/img]

Published 2016-05-02 20:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-07-21 05:16:15 UTC

Chapter 3: Mission 0 - Surplus Parts Randomly Stitched Together

Somehow, some way, at some point in the past that Chrysalis couldn’t recall, a changeling had brought back a large blackboard from its infiltration mission. For years it had been used in the chamber where hatchlings learned the basics of being a changeling(18). Now the room had been taken over by Cherry Berry and Occupant, who had gathered a handful of changelings who Chrysalis, for various reasons, considered the best possible candidates for flight crew.(19)

(18) The alphabet was helpfully presented above the chalkboard. “A is for Abduct.” “B is for Bewitch.” “C is for Camouflage.” “D is for Deception, Disguise, Distraction, Diversion, Dissembling, Disinformation, Dispossession, and Dodge.” And so on.

(19) This included Dragonfly and Lucky Cricket. It definitely did not include Skip Town, although Chrysalis was sorely tempted to add him in the hopes that his flight would be strictly one-way.

Occupant held a piece of chalk in his magic while Cherry Berry talked. “Your Majesty,” she began, “what is the single most important thing about building a rocket?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Chrysalis asked. “The engines. How fast it can go.”

“Write ‘engines,’ please,” Cherry said. While Occupant scratched the word on the board, she continued, “I’m sorry, but that’s completely wrong. Practically everything is more important than the engines. Any other guesses?”

Chrysalis’s normally green eyes momentarily glowed red. “You dare tell the queen of the changelings that she is wrong?” she growled.

The pink earth pony didn’t even flinch. “This isn’t politics, Your Majesty,” she said. “If we make a mistake in planning, some pony or changeling dies. Don’t let your pride get you killed.”

That cooled Chrysalis off. Careful, she thought. She’s right. The planning must be perfect. I must hold my temper and think clearly. But a pony…! “You’re quite right,” she said at last. “You may continue. Do any of you have guesses, my subjects?”

A hole-riddled hoof rose. “Control, Lead Pilot Berry,” said a changeling with somewhat longer than normal wings. “All the speed in the world is no good if you can’t control it.”

“A good guess, Dragonfly,” Cherry Berry replied, “but also wrong. Write it down, Occupant. Control is more important than speed, but it’s still not the most important thing.”

The changeling next to Dragonfly raised his hoof. “Paint job?” he asked.

Occupant, having just finished writing “control” above “engine,” began writing again.

“No, don’t write that one, Occupant,” Cherry Berry groaned. “Why do you say ‘paint job,’ Mr. Cricket?”

“Because we need a really cool paint job, so when the ponies and everybody see our spaceship, they’ll say, ‘Wow, those changelings sure made a really cool spaceship!’”

“And it’s got to be red,” Dragonfly added. “Everypony knows red wagons go faster, so it’s got to be the same for rockets.”

All the other changelings, including Chrysalis, nodded agreement.

“No,” Cherry Berry said. “We can test red rockets and see if they fly faster, but that’s actually less important than the engines. No, the answer I was fishing for was- write this down, Occupant- survivability.” She tapped the chalkboard with a hoof. “The other things don’t make a darn if the pilot doesn’t come out of it alive.”

The changelings’ eyes widened, and slowly they nodded agreement. Occupant carefully wrote the word above the others, in larger letters, and then underlined it for good measure.

“The last round of scientific studies from Ponyville and Griffonstone confirm that, as a general rule, our atmosphere thins out as you go higher,” Cherry Berry continued. “Twilight Sparkle theorizes that at a certain height it fades out completely, leaving only the vacuum of space. That means the cabin of our rocket must be airtight and temperature-controlled to keep the occupants from suffocating or cooking or freezing.”

Occupant obediently began a second list of words with AIR and CLIMATE.

“We don’t know yet how long it will take to fly to the moon,” the earth pony continued. “Even changelings need a little food and water. Ponies like myself need a lot more- and we can’t assume I’m going to be the only pony flying in these things. So we need food and water, and as much as we can fit while keeping the weight of the craft to a minimum.”

“Weight?” Chrysalis asked. “What’s weight got to do with it?”

“I don’t have the math in hand to show you,” Cherry Berry said, “but as a general rule for flying machines, the heavier it is the slower it goes. With rockets that’s even more important, because there won’t be any air to hold up wings to keep the thing flying. Every pound of weight is a bit of fuel we have to burn to get the rocket in the air. Too much weight, and either the rocket never flies at all or else it runs out of fuel too soon and crashes.”

“I see,” Chrysalis nodded. “That guard who kept you in the pod still hasn’t shed enough weight to fly, you know.”

“Moving on,” Cherry sighed. “Next we need a pressure suit. Our astronauts need the suit as a backup system if something puts a hole in the cabin. The suit will also be useful when we need to go outside the cabin during flight.”

“Outside the cabin?” Occupant gasped. “I knew an infiltrator who was posing as a unicorn who had to bail out of an airship to escape capture. He fell like a rock until he remembered to undo his disguise.”

“Write down ‘pressure suit,’ please,” Cherry grumbled. “And yes, outside the cabin. Especially when we land on the moon. Nobody knows if the moon has any air to speak of, not even Princess Luna. We have to assume it hasn’t. If you want to breathe on the moon, you need a space suit. Clear?”

The others nodded.

“And finally,” Cherry continued, “add, ‘landing,’ Occupant. Rockets go very, very fast. And if a rocket is going very, very fast when it hits the ground…” She tapered off, not wanting to say the obvious.

Fortunately Lucky Cricket had no such qualms. “Then whoever’s in the rocket is going to have a very bad day,” he said.

“Yes. Exactly,” Cherry Berry nodded. “Let’s remember that phrase, ‘have a bad day,’ and contemplate just how serious a bad day is when talking about rockets.”

Occupant paused for a second, then wrote in the upper right corner of the chalkboard, “Don’t have a bad day.”

“So, that’s your job,” Cherry Berry finished, nodding to the cluster of changelings. “I want you to imagine your queen in a bulky pressure suit, blown up kind of like a balloon, with a big helmet on. Then build a capsule just large enough for her to sit inside and get in and out, which will keep her alive, hold food and water, and land gently enough for her to walk away. Leave a bit of room for controls and electronics and things, but otherwise make it as small and lightweight as you can.”

“We won’t let you down,” Dragonfly said.

While the other changelings nodded, Chrysalis said, “I trust you don’t intend for me to join the construction crew?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Cherry Berry said. “I need you and your purse to come shopping with me. We need to buy some scientists.”

“Buy scientists?” Chrysalis asked.

“Right. I know enough to know what I don’t know. I don’t know how to build a rocket motor, and I really don’t know how to build pilot controls for a rocket motor. I’m hoping we can buy out the entire minotaur space program- if we can get Warner von Brawn we’ll get his control package too, and what I saw of it was really sweet. But we MUST get Goddard the Griffon, and fast, if we want to get a jump on Twilight Sparkle.”

“Who is this Goddard, anyway?”

“Goddard is the pioneer in rocket technology,” Cherry Berry said. “He’s been advocating for piloted rockets for longer than I’ve been alive, but nopony was interested. Ponies mocked him. Even now only a handful of scientists are paying any attention to him. But if we wait until the griffons get their heads out of their plots, or worse if Twilight Sparkle finds his monographs in her research, we’ll be permanently behind in the race for the moon. We need Goddard and his engines, and we need them both yesterday.”

“Well, it’s going to take a few days regardless,” Chrysalis said. “My subjects, you are dismissed to your tasks. Miss Berry and I have a shopping trip to plan.”

From the Manehattan Times:

Elusive socialite Cool Drink, amateur aviator Cherry Berry and solicitors for the reclusive Gwyneth the Griffon met in Manehattan yesterday to formalize a resolution in conflicting claims between the Changeling Hive of the Badlands and the two noted real estate investors.

Although details of the deal were not made public, it was announced that Cool Drink and Gwyneth would become significant minority investors in Changeling Space Program, Queen Chrysalis’s effort to rehabilitate her species’ reputation through competition in the space race. Towards this end both Cool Drink and Gwyneth pledged to do their utmost to support the CSP through their connections in high society…

“All right,” the very elderly, frail-looking griffon grumbled once Cherry Berry and Chrysalis were inside the door of his ramshackle hut in Griffonstone(20), “now you’re in my house, what do you want?”

“Well, er, Dr. Goddard,” Cherry Berry said, “we’ve come to ask you to be the chief rocket engine designer for the Changeling Space Program.”

(20) This had been no small accomplishment. The only way Goddard the Griffon could have been more of a recluse would have been for him to be as nonexistent as Gwyneth. Fortunately, using Gwyneth’s identity, Chrysalis was able to get several notables in griffon society to write letters of introduction... in exchange for certain favors, the nature of which she did not reveal to the sweet, innocent Cherry Berry. Especially as some of them were not so much favors as withheld blackmail… In any case, even with the letters in hoof it had taken half an hour for the old buzzard to admit the two ponies, even though they had been able to see and hear each other clearly through the gaping hole in his eyrie’s wall.

Large, bulging bird’s eyes stared balefully at the less-than-welcome visitors. “Who put you up to this?” he asked. “It wasn’t funny the last thirty-nine times!”

“This isn’t a prank, Dr. Goddard.”

“Says you. Nobody calls me ‘doctor’ except people wanting to pull my wing!” The griffon limped around his living room, in full rant. “Thirty years I’ve experimented with liquid fueled rocketry! Wrote the book on the subject! Proved every single physicist wrong all the way back to Falling Apple! And do I get respect? Do I get recognition? Do I get government grants and tenure at a major college? No, of course not! What I get is, ‘There goes that dotty Goddard the Griffon, don’t talk to him!’ ‘Study hard and keep your mind out of foolishness, hatchlings, or you’ll end up like old Goddard there.’ ‘Hi there Goddard, nice day for a flight to the stars, say hi to the aliens for us!’ Not a bit of respect, not a bit of gratitude, just mockery and laughter and foolish pranks and-“

"DO YOU WANT THE RECOGNITION YOU DESERVE OR NOT?” Chrysalis had promised to be quiet and let the pony handle the negotiations, but enough was enough. She had to endure whinging of this kind when in disguise; she would not tolerate it while revealed in her true majestic form.

The bellow had the effect of stopping Goddard’s complaints for a moment. But only a moment. “Want it? Of course I want it!” he snapped. “But who’s going to give it to me?”

“I am,” Chrysalis said. “I don’t have a college for you, but I do have paying work. You would be giving orders. Anyone who disrespected you would answer to me. And you would get credit for every successful flight.” She glared with murderous intent at the old bird-lion-thing and added, “But only if you STOP WHINING!”

“Ohh.” Goddard’s tone changed completely. “Well, now someone’s finally come along to give me the credit I deserve, is it? Well, I don’t know. I’ve got a good retirement here, after all. Why should I spend my old age a thousand miles from home working hard, hm?”

“Because-“ Cherry Berry began, but Chrysalis silenced her with a hoof. She recognized this tone of voice, and she knew how to deal with it.

“Besides,” Goddard continued, strolling around his living room in a more casual fashion than before, “I’m expecting a call from the griffon space project any time now. Can’t do it without me, you know-“

A bag full of bits clanked to the floor at Goddard’s feet.

“-first loyalty is to the motherland, after all-“

A second bag joined the first. The drawstrings loosened on impact, allowing a few golden coins to spill on the floor.

“-and of course the expense of moving so far at my time of life-“

A third bag joined the other two.

Goddard barely paused for a breath before, in an entirely different tone of voice, he said, “Per month.”

Chrysalis glanced at Cherry Berry. “Is he really worth it?” she asked.

“Do you want to be on the first flight to the moon,” Cherry asked back, “or the second?”

A fourth bag joined the first three. “Be at the train station in Appleoosa no later than three days from now,” she said. “You’ll find a brand new barn in town. The sign will say ‘Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs.’ There’s already an office with your name on the door. You’ll be doing the hiring, firing and supervision. I want a production schedule for rocket engines in two weeks and the first engines two weeks after that. If you can do that, then you’ll get this much a month, and it’ll be a bargain.”

Neither Cherry nor Chrysalis would have thought the elderly gryphon could move so fast or lift that many bits. Goddard had cleared the floor of the bags and spillage and was out the door in a heartbeat, making a beeline for the one structurally sound building in Griffonstone, the town bank.

“Was that a yes?” Cherry Berry asked.

“It had better-“

Before Chrysalis could continue, the old bird shouted from the street, “WHAT ARE YOU TWO STILL DOING IN MY HOUSE? DON’T YOU KNOW I’VE GOT TO PACK?”

“-never mind,” Chrysalis finished. “I’m sure we’ve got him. But I have agents still in disguise here in Griffonstone. They’ll make sure he leaves, and he’ll be followed all the way to Appleoosa.” She frowned. “I still don’t see why we don’t just build the rockets at the hive. It’d be much more secure.”

“We need the railway to bring metal to the workshop,” Cherry Berry said. “The less we have to cart to the hive, the better. In fact, we may want to move the launch site elsewhere anyway. The hive is just too far from everything to be convenient. We need either rail or water transport for the rockets. The Badlands isn’t going to have either anytime soon.”

“Mmm,” Chrysalis said, not really agreeing. Old habits died hard, and secrecy was a good habit for changelings anyway. “Anyway, let’s go see this von Brawn meathead.”

“You’re how much in debt?” Chrysalis gaped. The numbers on the ledger in front of her were almost entirely red, and the bottom one had too many digits for her liking.

“It cannot be helped,” Warner von Brawn moaned, the three other minotaurs who made up the minotaur space program nodding in agreement. “We could only self-fund our work so far. We had to borrow deeply to build our prototypes, and of course there is no point in controls without rockets, so we built a number of solid-fuel rockets to test them. Of course it took many experiments to find the optimum fuel for those rockets-“

“Long story short,” Chrysalis said, “you blew all the dough before you had anything that would fly.”

von Brawn nodded. “We were still working on an automated guidance system. We are very good with electronics, you know. The best miniaturized audio systems are built here in the Minotaur Islands. We were making excellent design progress with systems using Bullean logic circuits.”

One of the other minotaurs, who had been introduced as George Bull, nodded solemnly.

“With another month or two of research we could develop a fully independent probe, controllable from the ground,” von Brawn continued “We have already developed communications systems for that purpose- magical technology, you see, a combination of scrying and telepresence spells, enchanted on amulets which-“

“You can talk to the rocket?” Chrysalis asked eagerly.

“Not in the manner of, talk to a pilot, no,” von Brawn said. “But Alexander Popoff of the Yakyakistan space program is working on that and expects to have a working system soon. But what we have… we call it telepresence. The enchantment lets the controllers at home see the craft as from outside thanks to a scrying illusion.”

Chrysalis perked up. “Illusion?” she asked. “That might be the first thing I understood about what you’re saying, aside from your being flat broke.”

“We were also working on a second illusion,” von Brawn said, “which would allow us to track craft in flight and plot their course. The difficulty lay in finding a system that could calculate conic sections such as ellipses and parabolas.”

“And now I’m lost again,” Chrysalis admitted.

“All forms of motion in space can be described as a cross-section of a cone,” von Braun said. “What kind of curve it is depends on circumstances.”

“Why? Couldn’t we just point the rocket at the moon and fly straight there?”

“Everything travels in curves in rocket flight, Your Majesty,” Cherry Berry said. “I can’t do the math, but I understand the theory enough to know that.”

“Indeed,” von Brawn nodded. “Just as Coriolis effect shapes the winds that pegasi use to control the weather, so does the motion of Equus, the moon, the sun and the planets shape the paths of things in space. And sometimes we can use this to our advantage. Allow me to illustrate.” He picked up a small ball that had been sitting in the window of the minotaurs’ cluttered workshop. “Watch what happens when I drop this ball.” He did, and it fell to the floor, bouncing twice.

“All right, it fell,” Chrysalis said.

“As all things do,” von Brawn agreed. “Gravity pulls everything towards everything else. Large objects like planets pull harder than small objects like balls, so the ball appears to fall towards the planet. But what happens if I throw it?”

“It still falls,” Chrysalis said. “It might take a little more time to fall, but-“

“Actually, no,” von Brawn said. “Watch again.” He picked up the ball in his fingers and carefully tossed it forward. Cherry Berry noticed that he had put no rising motion into the throw, so the ball began falling immediately. It landed several feet away. “See that the ball, when tossed at low velocity, falls to the ground at about the same rate. Acceleration caused by gravity is a universal constant, or so physicists believe. Of course pegasi and griffons, and I assume changelings, counter this by magic, which allows them to hover.”

“Okay, fine,” Chrysalis said. “But surely if you throw the ball really hard, it will fall slower?”

“Not at all!” von Brawn said. “Imagine that we use a cannon instead. I use a pinch of powder, the ball just barely leaves the barrel and drops. I use a scoop of powder, the ball travels a couple hundred meters. I use a two-pound cartridge, the ball travels half a mile. But if Equus were flat as the ancients thought, and if we kept the barrel level for all firings, then no matter how little or much powder we used to fire it, the balls would always take the same time to hit the ground.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“The point is that Equus is not flat,” von Brawn said, smiling. “It is round. Spherical, as far as we can tell. So it is more like throwing a ball over a hill; if the ball’s momentum carries it over the crest of the hill, it will hit the ground later than a ball tossed only to the top of the hill, right?”

Chrysalis nodded.

“So the secret of space flight, I believe,” von Brawn said, “is to throw the ball so hard that the curve it makes when falling matches the curve of the ground beneath it. The ball keeps falling, and falling, but never fast enough to reach the ground, because the ground always curves away from it. That is what mathematicians call an orbit, and a ship in orbit is more than halfway to anywhere else.” His smile broadened as he added, “Twilight Sparkle’s remarkable thesis presumes that this is how the planets circle our sun. Some calamity in Equus’s past caused our own world to operate differently, requiring magical intervention to maintain-“

Chrysalis rubbed her head. “Okay, I’ve heard enough.” She turned to Cherry Berry. “These people know everything in the world except how to stay within a budget. And they know how to fix the biggest worry I had- communications with the ground. Do you think you can keep them under control?”

“Shoot, no,” Cherry Berry said. “But I’ll put them under Goddard and let him control the purse-strings. If a Griffonstone griffon can’t stop unwanted spending, nopony can.”

“Agreed.” Chrysalis turned to the minotaurs, smiling her own smile. “Gentlebulls,” she said, “do you have any moral objections to being employed by the Changeling Space Agency? Say, for modest wages and the relief of all your outstanding debts?”

“Your Majesty,” von Brawn said, “I don’t care who pays the bills, as long as I get to launch rockets into space. If you can make that happen, I’ll do anything you like- and I’m sure my colleagues agree.”

“Then it’s settled,” Chrysalis nodded. She looked again at the ledger, blanching a bit. The debts would eat up a substantial chunk of the mountain of bits in her throne room. “I suppose I can cover this with our paperclip budget,” she said lightly. “It’s worth it to get a jump on Celestia.”

From the Royal Archives of Canterlot Historical Section, letters exchanged by Twilight Sparkle and Celestia:

Dear Celestia,

I just heard the news! Chrysalis actually hired both Goddard the Griffon and Warner von Brawn! I’m sorry! It’s my fault for not thinking of it myself! I’ve been using both Goddard’s and von Brawn’s papers to develop my own spaceship designs, but I never believed I could actually hire them away from their own space programs! And I never even dreamed Chrysalis of all ponies could get ANYONE to work for her voluntarily!

Do you think Chrysalis is controlling their minds? She can do that, you know. Remember the wedding! If so, isn’t it our responsibility to rescue these notable scientists? All Equestria could be at stake!

Your former student,
Twilight Sparkle

Dearest Twilight,

I don’t think you have any cause to fear for either Goddard or von Brawn. I spoke with von Brawn today while he was changing trains in Canterlot. His head was quite clear, and I detected no mind-altering spells on him. I presume the same is true with Goddard, although I had no opportunity to speak with him.

Please do not blame yourself for not securing their services. You are a most capable student and scientist in your own right, and I am sure you will find a solution to all the problems of spaceflight. The spacesuit designs you and Rarity have produced are most impressive, and your solution of the food stores problem is elegant.

As for Chrysalis, I believe it is more important to give her every chance to prove that her noble intentions are genuine. Even if they are false now, they may become a habit hard for her to break. Any opportunity for lasting peace between pony and changeling should be taken. I suggest you propose an exchange of technology, your suits and life support systems for their engine and guidance systems. Both programs will be stronger for the exchange, especially since, according to your previous letters, the engine system has been your single greatest sticking point. Not that I will tell Chrysalis that!

Regardless of your decision, I trust that you will always do your best and will make Equestria proud. There is no pony I trust more with Equestria’s space program than you.

Yours truly,
Celestia

“Welcome back, Your Majesty!” Occupant called, waving to Chrysalis. “My, but you got a LOT of mail this time! And Ms. Cherry Berry too!” He lifted up a large sack in both forehooves and, wobbling on his hind legs, half-flew, half-walked towards the returned queen.

Cherry Berry smiled. “I’ll let you catch up on the correspondence, Your Majesty,” she said. “I want to see how the crew’s come with the test capsule.”

“Er, yes, you- wait, get back here!” Chrysalis spun on her heels, only to discover that even flightless earth ponies have a respectable turn of speed when it comes to avoiding paperwork.

“I even got something really important!” Occupant said. “I didn’t even know the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society knew I was working for the space program!”

Chrysalis turned her attention back to the changeling she privately considered among the least important in her entire hive(21). “They don’t,” she said bluntly. “But they sent a letter addressed to ‘Occupant, Box 1, the Badlands’?”

(21) If she actually thought it through, Chrysalis would probably have ranked Occupant behind Plectrum, the quartermaster who spent one day per week dusting off all the weapons her warriors never actually used, but slightly ahead of Carapace/Heavy Frosting the cook, whose skills were hardly used in the hive and whose chef-sized ego had cost him seven, count them, SEVEN infiltration missions in the past year. In short, not absolutely expendable, but definitely non-vital.

“Occupant, care of Changeling Space Program, Box 1, the Badlands, to be precise,” Occupant said proudly. “They asked me permission to send a representative here to observe our progress and to certify any spaceflight records we may set.” Swaggering a little bit on his hooves, he added, “I exercised my executive privilege in your absence and said yes. The representative should be in Appleoosa tomorrow.”

Chrysalis’s mouth opened wide as she prepared to inform Occupant in no uncertain terms which bug in the hive had all the executive privilege… only for her brain to catch up with the words just before they could escape and cram them right back down her throat. Do you really want to deal with all that paperwork? she asked. He loves the mail. Let him fool with it. Let him SUFFOCATE under it. He’ll probably die happy. “You… you…” It took a lot of effort to wrestle the forthcoming sentence where she wanted it to go, especially since it still wanted to go to a place with red-hot brands, pincers, and a rack. “You… you have done very well in this, Occupant. However, it would be better if you could delay the most important such decisions until I am available to confirm them. We might not be prepared to receive guests by tomorrow.”

“Really?” Occupant said. “But we’ve got tons of empty pods in the dungeons-“

“I mean,” Chrysalis said, still riding a bucking bronco of syntax, “the kind of guests who get to go home afterwards. Without a stay in the pods.”

“Ooooooooh,” Occupant said, nodding sagely. “The special kind of guests.”

“Yes,” Chrysalis said, “I’m so glad you understand.” The words had been subdued, but not yet tamed. They had gone sulky in her throat, and it took a couple of deep breaths to goad them out into the open. “That’s going to be important if you’re going to be our mission planner.”

“Really?” Occupant didn’t jump for joy and dance around like an idiot as Chrysalis had expected. “What would I need to do as a mission planner?”

“Your main job,” Chrysalis said, “will be to represent the space program to the outside world. You’re going to read all my mail in the future and show me only the really important bits- the things which are personal, legal notices, things of that nature.”

“I understand,” Occupant said soberly.

“You’re also going to learn all you can about the prizes being offered for achievements in spaceflight. Not just the Canterlot star-gazers’ prizes, but anything anypony is offering,” Chrysalis said. “But don’t make any commitments until Cherry Berry and myself look at them, understand? I might not want to commit us to certain things, and Cherry Berry will need to make sure whether or not we even CAN do those things. Or should. Understood?”

“Certainly,” Occupant nodded. “It sounds like a lot of work. A lot more than just sitting in the doorway making sure nobody sneaks down our entrance.”

“What can I say?” Chrysalis smirked. “You volunteered for it. That’s one of the consequences of exercising ‘executive privilege.’” Chrysalis bared her fangs in a manner that resembled a smile only by the strictest dictionary sense. “And there are a lot more consequences if you screw up. Clear?”

Occupant backed away from his ruler. “C-c-clear.”

“Clear WHAT?”

“C-c-c-c-clear, Your M-Majesty!”

“That’s better.” Chrysalis pointed at the bag, which Occupant was still half-holding, half-leaning-against. “Have you read any of what’s in that?”

Occupant recovered enough from his intimidation to look faintly offended. “Of course not, Your Majesty!” he insisted. “The post is a proud and sacred trust! It would be wrong for me to read mail addressed to another changeling, and especially mail addressed to you!”

“What about a pony?” Chrysalis asked.

“I don’t know,” Occupant said. “I’d think it would be kind of hard to write on a pony, and who knows how many stamps it would-“

Chrysalis sighed loudly enough to clue Occupant to shut his trap. For one brief, fleeting moment, she thought to herself, a glimpse of unexpected competence, and then it’s gone again. “I meant, what about reading mail addressed to a pony?” she asked.

“Oh, that,” Occupant shrugged. “In that case, it would only be wrong if we got caught.” He paused. “Except for Derpy, because Derpy is a friend to the hive. But I read Double Face’s newspapers a lot, and he never noticed.”

Chrysalis rubbed the base of her horn. It didn’t help the headache at all.(22) “Never mind,” she said. “From now on you read all my mail and forward me only the important things, the things I need to read myself and the things I need to make decisions on or respond to myself.” She gestured at the bag again. “Is there anything in there you know fits that category without your reading it?”

(22) One of the benefits of being an absolute ruler with power of life and death over one’s subjects is, one is not required to listen to their opinions or views on anything. Chrysalis took advantage of this quite a bit, because prolonged conversations with her subjects, like this one, always made her brain hurt and left her depressed.

“Not sure, Your Majesty,” Occupant thought. “I think probably the letter from Twilight Sparkle qualifies, but it’s possible-“

“Twilight Sparkle?!”

“-er, it’s possible she’s just writing to brag,” Occupant said. “And there’s some thick legal envelopes for Gwyneth and Cool Drink, so those-“

“Take them to Beancounter and tell her to file those,” Chrysalis snapped. “I’ve seen them already, it’s copies of the contracts transferring all our land holdings into the space program’s hands! Now give me that letter from-“

A voice shrieked, echoing from mesa to gully, canyon to mountaintop: “IT’S A BUCKING CARDBOARD BOX, YOU FOALS!”

Chrysalis sighed. Apparently Occupant had singlehoofedly used up the entire competence ration for the hive today. “Bring that letter with you and read it on the way,” she said. “Let’s see what our test pilot is upset about.”

Changelings are pony size or slightly larger, with sharp fins and ridges only vaguely resembling pony features, glowing pupilless eyes, and two enormous pointed(23) fangs. In their natural form they tend to speak with a raspy voice when they don’t simply make animalistic hisses to intimidate their victims. They can secrete a range of useful but disgusting forms of goo. They can fly, hover, and use their horns for a range of offensive magic in addition to their shapeshifting talent. To a normal pony they are, at least on first sight, terrifying.

(23) Or, in Occupant’s case, broad, flat and rounded. His fangs made him look about as menacing as a plush toy spider on Nightmare Night. It still embarrassed him.

When Chrysalis found a half dozen changelings, including two of her greatest warriors, cowered into a corner against the mesa wall, being shouted down by a pink, delicate-looking earth pony, she was bemused at the total reversal of the natural order of things. You know, she thought, I actually hate to put things right. I think I’d kill for some popcorn right this second.

And the best part is, I don’t think she’s using the same curse word twice. Chrysalis’s eyebrow rose at one particularly vile one. I didn’t even think anypony in central Equestria knew that one. I only know it because of that time I infiltrated a zebra tribe…

Ah well. All fun must come to an end. “Miss Berry,” she said calmly, “might I ask what my changelings have done, that has you ready to tear them limb from limb?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Cherry Berry said. “Nothing much. They just spent the almost two weeks we were gone building their idea of a space capsule.”

“Well, we thought it was a good one,” Lucky Cricket muttered before Dragonfly knocked him on top of his head to shut him up.

“Oh, it’s good,” Cherry said, the sudden light tone of her voice holding an edge so sharp that, the changelings knew, you’d never feel it until your head fell off your neck. “It’s good all right. It has only one teensy, weensy little flaw. It’s sitting right over there,” she said, pointing to the large open area the changelings had used for their fireworks experiments. “Try and see if you can guess what it is.”

Chrysalis looked. Someone had set a large refrigerator box, reinforced with duck tape, on top of one of the bits of scorched earth. The box had been helpfully embellished by marker with little drawings and labels: Hatch goes here, and, Rungs for climbing in/out, and, Windows? A large piece of fabric and quite a lot of changeling-made rope(24) lay on top of the box, sort of drooping over the corners.

(24) Even most changelings wish they didn’t know how changeling rope is made. Please don’t ask. All you need to know is, it’s very strong and durable.

“I think,” she said, carefully hiding her amusement at playing straight mare, or good cop, whichever, “I think, just possibly, it might be the fact that it’s a cardboard box?”

“OF COURSE IT’S A CARDBOARD BOX!” Cherry Berry shrieked. “These idiots think we can go to space in a, a, a…” Cherry Berry, in the presence of someone who was royalty, her boss, and capable of doing horrible things to her if insulted, was struggling to edit her language. “In THAT!” she shouted, jabbing her hoof at the offending object.

“Hey, it works!” Lucky replied. “It holds air, it’s got pony food for a week, it’s even got a roll of toilet paper! But Dragonfly said a proper toilet would be too heavy, so there’s only a bucket.”

Cherry Berry returned her attention, and her temper, to the construction crew.

“Not helping,” Dragonfly muttered, “not helping at all, Lucky.”

As amusing as this was, Chrysalis decided it was time the pony was put on the defensive. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought you wanted to go into space more than anything else. Why should it matter if you go to space in a cardboard box?”

For just a moment Cherry Berry turned her anger on Chrysalis, but the changeling queen had faced down Celestia herself and won. Noting the lack of a flinch, Cherry Berry brought herself under control. “You’re almost right, Your Majesty,” she said. “I do want to go up. I want it very, very badly. But there is one thing,” she added, pointing to the alleged spaceship again, “one thing I want more than to fly to the moon in that.”

“And that is?”

“To get BACK ALIVE from flying to the moon!” Cherry Berry snapped. “And consider, please, that you are the number two pilot in the program! Which means these idiots thought it would be just fine if YOU flew in that, too!”

Ah. In her amusement Chrysalis had overlooked that point. Once taken onboard, it made the whole affair quite a lot less amusing. “Very well,” she said. “But in my changelings’ defense, none of them is an engineer or metalworker, and we have little metal to work with here in any case. They did the best they could, I’m sure.”

“We sure did!” Lucky Cricket said. “We even made a parachute! That way, if the rocket runs out of fuel, it can just drop down nice and gentle, see?”

"We?" Dragonfly muttered, unable to stop herself. "I made that all by myself, thank you!"

“And it’s not like you could have done better,” Chrysalis pointed out. “You’re not an engineer or a metalworker, either.”

Cherry Berry had calmed down. “Fair enough,” she said. “But that’s going to change. All of us, and any changeling who’s ever had any time posing as a builder of any kind- we’re all going to get a crash course in building spaceships. We’re going to have Dr. Goddard and Dr. von Brawn teach us on the job in Appleoosa. And this time not only are we going to build a proper test ship,” she said, “but we’re going to know how every single part in it works. Because we’re going to trust our lives to it, understand?” She pointed yet again at the box. “Would any of you trust your lives to that?”

Chrysalis groaned, knowing what the answer would be.

“Yes!” Lucky Cricket said. All the other changelings except Dragonfly nodded eagerly.

“Would you, now?” Cherry Berry said. “Well, I think you need to see exactly what that means.” She turned to Chrysalis. “It’ll be another few days before the ship with von Brawn’s stock of test engines arrives in Baltimare, right?”

“Don’t remind me,” Chrysalis grumbled. The minotaurs had bench-tested over a dozen solid fuels before committing in an insanely big way to production. To their credit, they’d economized by using old giant trash containers, big round reinforced drums with lids, to build the things. To their debt, they’d made over a hundred of the things. And launched… precisely… zero. Chrysalis and Cherry Berry, along with Warner von Brawn, had brought three back with them by fast(25) transport, while the other minotaurs traveled with the rest of their “Flea-class solid rocket boosters,” as they called them.

Fast, and very expensive. Each engine required its own four-pegasus cart flying back from the Minotaur Isles, plus flatbed train cars on the Friendship Express. Chrysalis had screamed, threatened, haggled, pleaded… and, helpless against the threat of princessly retaliation if she went too far, paid in full.

“But we have the three we brought ahead with us for study and testing,” Cherry Berry said. “Well, these geniuses are going to fly to Appleoosa right now, pick up one, and bring it back here at once. And tomorrow we’re going to do an uncrewed test launch of that death trap,” she continued, snorting at the cardboard box, “and we’re all going to see exactly why YOU DO NOT BUILD THAT!!”

“Quite sensible, I’d say,” Chrysalis agreed. “I look forward to the fireworks show.” She turned to Occupant. “You were on the crew as well, or should have been.”

Occupant shrugged. “I didn’t have any better ideas,” he admitted. “And besides, for all I know, it might actually work.” He waved the letter from Twilight Sparkle, which he’d been reading all the time Cherry Berry had vented at the others. “But all things considered, you really, really need to read this.”

“Why?” Chrysalis asked. “What’s in it?”

“Twilight Sparkle wants to trade,” Occupant said. “If I’m reading this right, we have the controls for a ship, and she has the air, water and spacesuits we’ll need inside the ship. If we trade,” he said, crossing his hooves to demonstrate, “then each of us will have all the guts we need for a working ship. And all we’ll need will be a body.”

“Trade? With Twilight Sparkle??” The word NEVER roared at the back of her throat, demanding release. Who did that jumped-up pony peasant think she was?

And the more calculating part of Chrysalis’s mind replied, She’s the pony who’s about to solve half your technical problems for you. Maybe.

“I… yes, you’re right,” she said. “I need to read that letter. And think.” She thought the answer would end up being yes, to be honest, but she didn’t want to admit it.

And in any case, considering what was likely to happen with that cardboard box and one of the brain-bulls’ money sinks, she didn’t want the princess around to gloat at the upcoming humiliation. It’s bad enough, she sighed, that the pony from Canterlot who signs prize checks will probably be here before we’re ready to launch…

The pony’s name was Ad Astra. Her planet-and-star cutie mark fairly floated on her teal-coated flank. Mauve eyes peered out over little square glasses with a no-nonsense attitude. Her dark mane, shot through with gray, was done up in a bun above and behind her horn. Despite the heat of a desert afternoon, she wore a cardigan sweater and showed no signs of discomfort.

Considering that the unicorn was surrounded by practically the entire changeling hive on top of a mesa overlooking the launch site, the no-nonsense attitude and the lack of discomfort confused Chrysalis no end. “Miss Astra,” she asked gently, “were you present during our invasion of Canterlot?”

“Indeed I was,” Ad Astra replied calmly. “Four of your changelings- that one, that one, that one and that one,” she said, pointing with absolute confidence at four faces in the crowd even Chrysalis would have had trouble telling apart, “captured me and were about to stuff me into a cocoon when Princess Cadence and Shining Armor’s spell knocked them away.”

“I… see,” Chrysalis muttered. “And you’re not trembling in fright from the memory?”

“Oh, no,” Ad Astra said. “They were only fulfilling biological imperatives, you know. Changelings must steal love to survive, and ponies respond by swatting them with the magic of true love. It’s all part of nature. Perfectly normal.”

I’m not entirely sure what normal is for ponies, Chrysalis thought to herself, but you aren’t it. “You seem more comfortable with, er, our alternate method of survival than most ponies,” she managed to say.

“My doctoral thesis was on hypothetical development of alien creatures in various environments,” Ad Astra said. “I have been revising my theories ever since. I have a copy of my most recent monograph, with illustrations, if you’d like to see it.” She levitated a sheaf of papers bound with brass brads from her saddlebags and offered it to Chrysalis. Through the calm, businesslike exterior bled a tiny note of enthusiasm. “I was hoping to show it to Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“You may get the chance later,” Chrysalis said, “but today’s test was strictly for internal observation. It hadn’t been scheduled when you were invited.” She flipped through several pages of very tiny text chock full of very long words… and almost dropped the monograph when she hit the first illustration. “WHAT in or out of Equestria is THAT?”

Ad Astra glanced at the page. “Ah, yes. One of my hypothetical intelligent species on a world where creatures of radial symmetry outcompeted the early ancestors of our own bilateral symmetry line.” She pointed a hoof at the figure. “As you see, the design presumes a very wet environment and adaptation for amphibious life. Although true radial symmetry would be lost in favor of binocular vision for depth perception, the splay of the supporting limbs in combination with the larger manipulating limbs clearly shows the ancestry.”

“But- but all those tentacles- around its mouth-“ Chrysalis gasped. “And the scars- oh my sweet Faust, the scars!”

“Radials and even cephalopods in our own oceans can regenerate missing limbs,” Ad Astra said. “And sharks continually replace their own teeth during their long, violent lives. I presumed a similar mechanism, where the species’s continued regeneration of feeding organs would require continual struggle and combat to make room for fresh growth. The species would, as a result, have an appallingly violent nature, possibly subverted through ritual within their own ranks.” The pony said all this with barely a change in tone to her voice. And Chrysalis could faintly sense… admiration?

A pony whose mind can think up nightmares like this, Chrysalis, thought, isn’t going to be afraid of anything my changelings can do. She probably thinks we’re cuddly. “I see,” she said at last. “I think it might be beyond my education, but I’m sure Twilight Sparkle will appreciate it more.” She smiled and enjoyed a brief moment of pure malice as she added, “In fact, I insist that you show it to her at your first opportunity.”

“Thank you for the kind words,” Ad Astra said, accepting the monograph back and restoring it to her saddlebag.

“In any case,” Chrysalis said, “shall we get down to business?” She gestured to Occupant, who sat next to the two of them with a clipboard and pen in his magic.

“Indeed, Your Majesty,” Ad Astra nodded, pulling out more papers from a different saddlebag. “Various benefactors approached the Royal Astronomical Society and asked for us to oversee and adjudicate prizes and awards for each space program as it passes certain benchmarks.” She pulled out four particular documents from the bundle and levitated them to Chrysalis and Occupant. “We also offer limited-time contracts giving space programs exclusive opportunity to achieve certain goals. This is being done to encourage private enterprise to offer their own contracts, making spaceflight a profitable commercial endeavor.”

“I see,” Chrysalis said. She looked at one of the contracts. “What does this mean- ‘successfully collect science data from Equus’?”

“Ah,” Ad Astra nodded. “The conditions of that contract require that the program successfully demonstrate a device that can collect scientific data in space. The results gained on the ground may then be compared with results in flight in various conditions.” She shook her head just a bit as she added, “Unfortunately, the space programs are all focused more on flight systems than scientific data.”

“Oooooh, oh!” Occupant suddenly began hopping on his hooves, his wings fluttering with excitement. “This one! We accept this one right now!” He levitated one of the contracts back to Ad Astra, who glanced at it and nodded.

“First spacecraft launch,” Ad Astra nodded. “A sensible decision. Do you think this test will also escape the atmosphere or achieve orbit?”

“Wait a minute,” Chrysalis said. “This is only an unpiloted test with a dummy control capsule. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count-“

An earsplitting screech rose from the desert surface, echoing around the area. Chrysalis looked down at the rocket, sitting on its exhaust bell, cardboard capsule glued to its top, parachute carefully placed atop that. A changeling soared above the rocket, flapping its wings so they scraped against one another, while on the ground Cherry Berry bolted for the hive entrance with astonishing speed. “Ah, they’ve set the timer,” Chrysalis said over the screech. “That’s Fiddlewing giving the warning siren.”

“WHAT?”

“I SAID IT’S ABOUT TO LAUNCH!”

In the crowd of thousands and thousands of changelings, a large number of cameras were raised to the ready.

Inside the cardboard space capsule, a wind-up alarm clock ticked down the last few seconds to the alarm setting. The bell rang. The winding key turned, pulling at a string. The string was attached to a tiny chock of wood which prevented a ball-peen hammer from falling on a big, red, candy-like button(26).

(26) Chrysalis had taken one look at it and immediately sent a messenger to the minotaurs ordering them to replace the button with anything else at all. She knew her changelings too well.

The wood worked its way loose, and the hammer fell.

A roar louder than a thousand-hydra operatic chorus rang across the Badlands, making Fiddlewing’s shriek sound like a whisper. Almost instantly the squat metal cylinder left the ground, rising on a plume of fire and smoke. The parachute, which had never been secured, slid off the top of the cardboard box, trailing along beneath the rapidly accelerating rocket.

The parachute canopy fell into the rocket blast, and immediately billowed open under the air pressure. An instant later the cardboard box crumpled like an accordion, flattening itself on the top of the booster.

Despite the parachute dragging beneath it, the rocket continued to climb, straight and true, above the eye level of the crowd on the mesa(27). This continued until the rocket reached a height approximately six hundred meters in the air, at which point the parachute opened fully, yanking the rocket hard from its vertical trajectory.

(27) Who were busy half-blinding one another with flash bulbs, trying to catch the Great Historic Moment So I Can Tell My Hatchlings I Was There That Day.

For the following fifteen seconds the crowd was treated to an acrobatics show the Wonderbolts would have been hard-pressed to top. The rocket tumbled and spun, whirled and bucked, always in a perfect pas de deux with the parachute. Smoke billowed every which way, eventually concealing the rocket in a dirty gray cloud.

And then the roaring stopped. The cameras went still. The changeling crowd grew silent.

Slowly, majestically, the rocket drifted down and out of its own smoke cloud. Above it the crumpled and battered cardboard box rose, holding together more due to glue and duck tape than the remaining strength of the cardboard. Finally, above all, the parachute appeared, evidently undamaged by its trial by fire.

The changeling swarm roared, hissed, and cheered as the test rocket floated down about forty feet to one side of its launch point, the bell burying itself a couple feet into the Badlands sandstone as it landed. The moment the parachute was no longer under tension, something went clank, and the fabric went flying, tumbling downwind in the gentle breeze left behind after the launch.

A moment later, panting for breath, Cherry Berry pulled herself over the lip of the mesa and stumbled over to Chrysalis, Occupant, Ad Astra, and the changeling astronaut corps. “There!” she said at last. “I hope now you see how dangerous that capsule design was! Now do any of you still want to fly in it?”

Half a dozen changeling limbs rose in the air immediately.

“Me next!’

“I call dibs on next!”

“You can’t call dibs! I already called dibs!”

“Well, I call double backsies dibs! So there!”

“I call shotgun!”

“Aw, maaaaan…”

“Did you see?” Dragonfly looked as much smug as excited. “My parachute design worked perfectly! It held up under tremendous pressure and it detached when no longer needed so as not to entangle the ship!”

“Really?” Chrysalis asked. “Why didn’t it open up all the way immediately, then?”

“I wove little breakaway threads into the folds,” Dragonfly said. “I didn’t want the ship to slow down all at once. It’d be just as bad as hitting a brick wall if you did that! But slowing down the chute opening makes it easier on the passenger!”

“You know, that really was a good idea,” Cherry Berry said. “And I agree, the parachute was well constructed. No pony-made ‘chute could withstand that kind of abuse without damage.”

Chrysalis smiled. “Maybe we could sell the thing to the ponies, then. It would make good leverage with Sparkle when we meet.”

“Ah, speaking of money, Your Majesty?” Ad Astra levitated a small piece of paper up at Chrysalis’s face. “Congratulations on both achieving your first milestones and completing your first mission contract.”

“How’s this again?” Chrysalis took the paper in her hooves. It was a check, made out to Changeling Space Program, for a substantial sum of bits- not nearly as much as she’d spent on the minotaurs, but considerably more than the single rocket booster had cost.

“You fulfilled the contract for Equestria’s first space launch,” Ad Astra said. “You also set the first flight records for speed and altitude-“

“Wait wait WAIT!” Cherry Berry was in Ad Astra’s face at once. “You can’t tell ponies about this! This wasn’t a space launch! This was a test! A goof! A catastrophe! An embarrassment to pilots and flyers around the world! It wasn’t even piloted! It was completely uncontrolled! It was-“

“It was more than anypony else has done yet,” Ad Astra interrupted coolly. “And for the purposes of advancing the goal of space flight, that’s all that matters.”

“Not quite,” Chrysalis disagreed. “The check matters quite a bit. For which I thank you. Occupant, do you still have those other contracts?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Occupant said. “I recommend we accept the scientific data one- that’s easy- and the orbital one, for the challenge.”

“What are you two talking about?” Cherry Berry asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Chrysalis said. “Why not all three, Occupant?”

“Well, I’m mission planner, right?” Occupant said. “But it’s just me in my hole in the wall by the hive entrance. I don’t think I can keep track of all the things we need to make these happen and add anything else.”

“This is probably wise,” Ad Astra agreed. “And I thank you all for this opportunity. Once word gets out that a contract has been completed successfully, I think you’ll find other contracts shall be offered to you in short order. Whether or not you accept them, of course, is up to you.” She bowed, saying, “If I may be excused, Your Majesty?” Without waiting for dismissal, she backed away and departed, picking her way calmly through the swarm of dancing, cheering, gossiping, celebrating changelings.

Chrysalis watched her leave for a few moments before turning to the space program staff. “Occupant, I need a message sent to Ponyville immediately,” she said. “Please tell Twilight Sparkle that we wish to meet at Cherry’s Rocket Parts to discuss the technology swap she discussed. Tomorrow if at all possible. Write it down, then give it to Dragonfly. Dragonfly, straight there, put it in the princess’s hooves yourself, get acknowledgement and if possible a reply, then straight back, best speed.”

The others stared at her.

“What are you foals staring at me for?” Chrysalis snapped. “Don’t you know we’ve got a spaceship to build? Time’s wasting!”

MISSION 0 REPORT

Mission summary: Test flight characteristics of Mk. 0 Command Pod, RT-5 “Flea” Solid Fuel Booster, and the Mk. 16 Parachute.
Pilot: Unmanned, no probe control system (dummy flight)

Flight duration: 2 minutes, 27 seconds
Maximum speed achieved: 205 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 907 meters

Contracts fulfilled: 1

Conclusions from flight: The Flea burns steadily and straight provided the vessel is balanced properly. Lack of throttle control needs to be addressed. Mk 16 Parachute appears capable of withstanding any stress in subsonic flight and temperatures of over five hundred degrees for brief periods of time. Mk. 0 control pod is completely unsuitable for pony or changeling life and requires significant strengthening prior to future launches.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Author's Note

Well, this one just kept growing and growing and growing, so instead of the no-rocket ground test of the first proper capsule (the Mk. 1), I decided to upgrade the unmanned test flight to the official Mission Zero.

Up until the very recent release of KSP 1.1, this was how everyone's first mission went. The early tutorials showed us how to build this rocket, its most bare-bones flyable ship, but it never mentioned staging. Thus, in construction, the system defaults into triggering both the rocket and the parachute simultaneously. The first time I did it I ended wondering, "How did I even survive that?" By the third time I was wondering, "Why is it DOING that?" Only on the sixth attempt did I even see the parachute in the exhaust, and it took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to split the two tasks into different stages.

So, naturally, it HAD to find its way into this story.

KSP won't ignite the engines of a ship (at least, not in its bare-bones, no-mods form) without either a pilot or a probe computer on the rocket. For the mission play-through I put a non-pilot Kerbal in the seat, launched the rocket, and set back to watch the show.

Next chapter: Twilight Sparkle explains why you can have infinite air and water, but not infinite rocket fuel; and Cherry Berry learns firsthoof how important it is to keep the pointy end aimed at the sky.

Interlude: Badflank = Yes

Chrysalis stared at the same page of the report she'd been trying to read for half an hour and thought: Why am I doing this?

Of course she knew why she was doing it, but it still surprised her why she was even trying to do this particular thing- just because that pony said so. Why did Cherry Berry insist on giving her reports in triplicate about every little thing? Who cared how things got done? Just get them done, and never mind the details, not when the moon was waiting to be claimed!

She shook her head to clear it, and her attention fled the written page to fixate on the pony responsible. Why had she thrown herself into the arms of an insane pony anyway? A wingless, flightless earth pony who flew balloons, ornithopters and even an aeroplane- that was cracked enough as it was. But Cherry Berry had been insane enough to walk right up to a changeling hive and announce herself as Chrysalis’s newest employee. Absolute madness.

Of course, it said nothing about Chrysalis’s own mental state that she’d eventually hired that pony, a fact she carefully stepped around in her own head.

And now that pony was actually giving orders- lecturing her subjects, lecturing her, on flight safety and mass production and science and math and all sorts of things. She had conscripted whichever of her subjects showed signs of having two brain cells to rub together, taking them to Appleoosa to work on the new factory or to get rushed lessons in things like welding and metalworking.

At one point Chrysalis had actually asked out loud, “Who do you think you are, pony?”

And that pony had answered, “I’m the one who’s going to get you on the moon first, remember?”

That was another strike against that pony: nobody was allowed to have the last word in an argument except Chrysalis, and yet somehow Cherry had managed it.

And now here she was, Chrysalis, tyrant of the Badlands Hive, future ruler of Equestria and whatever else she felt like taking, etc. etc., reading reports and technical documents because a lowly earth pony- a PINK earth pony, of all things- had told her she needed to know these things.

Something, she thought, has suddenly gone very wrong with my life, and as soon as I figure out what it is, I’ll-

“Announcing,” one of the guards to the Hive’s throne room shouted, “Commander Pharynx of the Hive Guard!”

Chrysalis failed not to cringe.

There were days that Chrysalis loved Pharynx better than any of her other subjects, and not just because he was one of her offspring. (In fact, it would be better to say despite the fact that he was one of her offspring; most of the others fell into a range between disappointing and rage-inducing.) There was no changeling more protective of the hive, and thus no changeling who worked harder to protect the hive against outside threats. Pharynx was absolutely reliable and dependable.

The problem was, you could rely and depend on him to find threats to the hive even when none existed. Pharynx couldn’t tell the difference between realistic threats and purely imaginary threats, and if there was a day without the former, his obsessive mind would create more of the latter. On those days Chrysalis found herself hoping some pony would capture him, put him in a cage, and take him to a zoo somewhere far, far away from the hive, and in particular from her.

About one time out of ten Pharynx was dead accurate about some new threat or some necessary precaution, so she couldn’t just make herself unavailable… but if she had to endure another rant about mutant monkeys in rubber suits who rode giant tatzlwurms out of the desert into battle, she was going to scream, royal dignity be bucked.

“What is it, Pharynx?” she asked as soon as her commander of the hive defense forces entered. “I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. The summit with Twilight Sparkle is coming up shortly, and I need to be prepared.” She waggled the report before her in her magic as proof.

“My Queen, I strongly advise you not to go,” Pharynx said. “Or if you must go, put that spy in a pod so she can’t report to her rulers for the duration.”

“This again?” Chrysalis sighed. “We’ve been through this, Pharynx. She’s personal friends with Twilight Sparkle, never mind all her little friends too. They’ll expect to see her, and they know her well enough that an infiltrator won’t be able to substitute. And besides, she knows nothing that we aren’t telling the world anyway.”

“With the utmost respect, my queen,” Pharynx pressed on, “that is not the case. Just an hour ago I caught her wandering through the pod stores. She can now lead an army of ponies straight into the heart of the Hive to rescue their fellows.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Pharynx, we had better not have any ponies in the stores anymore.” She’d ordered them cleared shortly after announcing the Changeling Space Program, to make sure Celestia couldn’t use some imprisoned pony as an excuse to shut her down.

“But we will have again someday,” Pharynx insisted. “And that’s not all! I caught her half an hour later in the larva crèche! Why, she could be doing all sorts of things to our future generations!”

“Her office is inside the nursery,” Chrysalis said, swallowing the words you paranoid idiot for the moment. “How do you propose she get there without going through the crèche?”

“And then twenty minutes ago I caught her interrogating my guards!!” Pharynx shouted with a savage hiss. “They could be telling her all sorts of things like battle formations or unit strength, or-“

“Are you suggesting,” Chrysalis interrupted, “that you have not sufficiently trained my guards?”

“They weren’t trained to resist someone wielding royal authority!” Pharynx insisted. “Your Majesty, I request you restrain this pony at once, for the good of the Hive! Who knows what she’s already leaked to the-“

“THERE YOU ARE!”

The shout of rage matched the determined stomp of pony hooves, the glare of violet-gray eyes, and the firm set of jaw Cherry Berry carried into the throne room. After a few moments of babbling about how she couldn’t do that, the guard settled for hurriedly shouting, “Presenting Chief Pilot Cherry B-“

Cherry shouted over the guard. “Where are my workers, Pharynx? I found out this morning you ordered half my work force back here! You’ve set us back two days with your little stunt!”

Pharynx stood considerably taller than Cherry, and even by changeling standards he looked fierce, with large gleaming fangs, sawblade fins, and chitin that would be blacker than black if not for the red of his neck-ruff and the purple of his eyes and wings. When he lunged forward, she flinched back from pure instinct. “You think you can undermine our defenses?” he hissed back. “Well, I’m on to you! I retrieved my guards from your grip, and before long I’ll have all the proof I need to see you put in a pod until you’re old and drained!”

Cherry Berry’s flinch faded long before Pharynx finished talking. The instant he drew back, she lunged into his face, and it was his turn to flinch. “Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah!” she snapped. “All I know is, you’re getting in the way of us getting a functional rocket off the ground! And between working out a training regimen, overseeing vocational training, and helping Dr. Goddard with organizing the new factory, I do NOT have the TIME to come down here every day to bring back my workers!”

“They are not-“

“And another thing!” Cherry Berry began walking forward, her eyes locked on Pharynx’s. To Chrysalis’s wonder, Pharynx backpedaled, slowly cringing onto his hindquarters as Cherry forced her way forward. “What’s the idea of messing with my biplane? Every time I come down here I have to get some changeling to recharge the battery! And last time I was here someone removed the wheels!”

“These are practical security measures-“

“A-HA! So it WAS you!!” Cherry’s muzzle pressed against Pharynx’s, who found himself backed up against the cave wall with nowhere to go. “Well, mister, I’ll put up with being stuck in a pod of goo for two weeks, but let me tell you something right now, NOBODY MESSES WITH MY FLIGHT GEAR!” Cherry shoved forward again, pinning Pharynx up against the wall even tighter. “Nothing gets me madder than when some pony messes with my flight gear! And do you WANT to see me angry?”

“But-“

“Have you SEEN what happens to people when I GET angry?”

“But-“

“Because if this happens AGAIN, I’m not going to bring it to her,” Cherry said, pointing a hoof at Chrysalis. “I’m going to bring it straight to you, and then…” Cherry reared up, using her forelegs to lift Pharynx off the floor and almost up to the curved ceiling at the edge of the throne room. “And then we’re going to have a VERY SERIOUS TALK,” she finished. “Understand me?”

“Yes,” Pharynx choked out.

“YES, WHAT?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Right!” Cherry dropped Pharynx and stepped away, returning to all fours as Pharynx collapsed to the floor. “Now you’re going to round up all the workers you stole from me, plus ten more so I can get this project back on schedule, and you’re going to explain to them why you were mistaken! Aren’t you?”

Pharynx cast one desperate, pleading glance at Chrysalis, who merely allowed the smirk she’d been wearing the whole time to grow a little broader. Defeated, he mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Cherry Berry said. “And this time don’t pass off your rejects on me. What’s wrong with you people anyway? It’s like I have to watch each of you every second of the day to make sure some new disaster doesn’t pop up! I swear half of you wouldn’t have the sense to pour lemonade in a glass if the instructions were printed under the bottom of the pitcher!”

“But I didn’t-“

“Did I ask for an argument? MOVE, mister!”

Pharynx moved.

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, pony?”

Cherry watched Pharynx’s retreat with a snort, absently stamping the ground with a forehoof. “No, I think I’ve got it handled,” she said. “How are you doing with the technical reports?”

Chrysalis lifted the next folder on the stack in her magic. “Child’s play for a queen,” she bragged. “Did you expect otherwise?”

“After the last two weeks?” Cherry replied. “Don’t ask. How can such scary, dangerous people like changelings be so… so DUMB?” On that note she turned and departed, not in retreat, ears and tail high.

Chrysalis watched her go. Oh yes, she thought. That’s why I hired her.

She might be a silly, stupid, insane pony… but the pony understands.

And it's so much fun when she makes my fiercest warriors lose their goo.

From then on, in Chrysalis’s mind, Cherry Berry became not that pony, but the pony.

Author's Note

I'm not entirely sure this chapter really adds to the story- or, rather, I worry that it might add too much, making more explicit the process of Chrysalis coming to respect Cherry Berry. But, at the same time, it's an idea that's floated in my head for months, so when the Changeling Space Program Print Edition Kickstarter gave me an excuse to reopen the subject... well, here we are.

This is also a bit unfair to Pharynx, who wasn't quite this paranoid in the cartoon. (On the other hand, we only really see him in one episode...)

But Pharynx does realize something: although he's taller than Cherry Berry, she's more massive (barring transformation into his murder-bug mode) and, as an earth pony, a lot stronger. Add to that the authority Chrysalis has given her, and backing down is just common sense- though he'd think of it as "awaiting a better opportunity".

And this early on in the program, Cherry is getting a close-up look at what untrained, inexperienced changelings can be like. Pouring certain substances out of a boot-shaped container with instructions written on the heel would be beyond them- "Why would anyone put instructions there? Nobody would ever see them!"

And if you're inclined to feel sorry for a megalomania, think that these reports are the first tiny snowflakes of the immense iceberg of paperwork looming in Chrysalis's future. Going legit has definite drawbacks...

(Oh- the chapter title comes from code in game saves for Kerbal Space Program. There is a flag for kerbals called "BadS" which can be set to "yes" or "no". It has no game effect except to control facial expressions, and only Jebediah and Valentina have it naturally set to "yes". And, on all subjects aviation-related, so does Cherry Berry.)

Chapter 4: Missions 1 and 2: Trashcan Full of Boom

Excerpt from the Appleoosa Territorial Booster:

EXTRA! PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPARKLE TO HOLD TOP LEVEL SUMMIT WITH QUEEN CHRYSALIS IN APPLEOOSA!

Issues of Grave Import to be Addressed

Sherriff Silver Star Calls for Calm

PONYVILLE- Sources from the inner circle of advisors to Princess Twilight Sparkle have informed us that the Princess will arrive on the morning train to enter into negotiations with the infamous queen of the changelings, Chrysalis.

While Appleoosa has suffered in recent weeks from repeat and open visits by Chrysalis’s subjects, heretofore edicts from Canterlot have instructed our civic government to treat them as any peaceful visitor to our young but vibrant community. As a result, our settlers have grown rapidly more unsettled as the prospect of a quiet changeling invasion becomes more real.

While our mayor has pledged to bring to the princess’s attention the danger to Princess Celestia’s loyal subjects, Sheriff Silver Star has asked the people to remain calm and extend our renowned Appleoosan hospitality even to such creatures as the changelings. We at the Booster can only hope that Princess Twilight Sparkle’s negotiations will finally keep the changelings out of our fair city. Civilization in this wilderness can only come with a changeling-free environment.

The crowd of Appleoosans stood watching the tiny, dusty train station in Appleoosa with undisguised hatred. The enemy herself, Queen Chrysalis, had taken in recent weeks to coming to and from the town as if she owned the place. Now she stood there, alone and unguarded on the train platform, awaiting the arrival of the Friendship Express.

Silver Star swished his mustache nervously. He wanted nothing more than a nice, peaceful life, and so long as the changelings who had come and gone through his town made no trouble, well he had no trouble with them. The same couldn’t be said of his fellow townspeople, though. And the looks they were giving the lone changeling on the platform worried him.

“That train had better not be late,” he muttered to himself.

“What train is that, Sheriff?”

Silver Star turned to look behind him, then relaxed as the tall, slender, elegant mare strolled up to him. “Oh, good morning, Ms. Cool Drink,” he said. “How’s Dodge treating you these days?(28) What brings you into town?”

(28) When in Appleoosa, Cool Drink was from a homestead near Dodge Junction. When in Dodge, Cool Drink had a spread near Appleoosa. She’d used the identity for over four years, and so far as she knew, nopony in either town had compared notes with anypony from the other. It only reinforced her low opinion of pony gullibility.

“Why, Miss Berry’s new enterprise,” Cool Drink drawled, gesturing casually towards the tall, brand-new warehouse next to the tracks. “It seems that the only way I can make a profit of my Badlands investments is to accept a portion of the changelings’ enterprises.” She shook her head in disappointment. “Really, what’s this country coming to?”

“Nothing bad, I hope,” Silver Star replied. “Princess Twilight Sparkle is supposed to be here any minute for a meeting with Chrysalis herself. That’s her on the platform.”

“Really?” Cool Drink replied. “You know, I’ve dealt with her through my lawyers, but I’ve never set eyes on her in person. Perhaps I should go introduce myself.”

“Ma’am, if it’s all the same to you, I’d as soon you didn’t,” Silver Star replied. “The townspeople been kinda nervous for weeks now about th’ truce with th’ changelings. And right now if they saw a lovely filly like yourself talkin’ with any changeling, never mind th’ queen of ‘em all, I don’t wanna think about what they might do.”

“I understand, Sheriff,” Cool Drink nodded. “Maybe I’ll meet her another time. Meantime, I’m supposed to meet an old griffon and four minotaurs. Do you know if they’re here?”

“That old buzzard Goddard hasn’t come out of that barn since he got here,” Silver Star said, jerking his hoof at “Cherry’s Rocket Parts.” “Dr. von Brawn arrived a few days ago, and his friends got in on the afternoon train. I saw them walk over there from the saloon this mornin’.”

“Thank you ever so much,” Cool Drink said.

“Aw, it ain’t nothin’, Miss-“ A train whistle squealed up the line. “Aw, hay! There’s the Princess’s train! Pardon me, Miss Cool Drink, but I have to perform my duties.”

“Quite all right, Sheriff,” Cool Drink replied. “And thank you for doing such an evenhanded job. It must be very difficult right now.”

“Thank you, it is,” Silver Star said simply. “Excuse me.” With a last duck of his head he trotted to the station, one hoof holding his white hat on his head.

Cool Drink watched, keeping her distance, as the sheriff joined the mayor near- but not too near- to Queen Chrysalis on the train platform. The train’s brakes squealed, the car couplings rattled and banged, and the train gradually came to a stop with the last passenger car directly facing the platform. As soon as the train stopped, the boxcars towards the front of the train were opened, and workers began shifting bundles of sheet metal and piping from the cars into the open doors of Cherry’s warehouse.

The passenger cars opened, and two of Celestia’s royal guards stepped out, flanking the doorway. A moment later Twilight Sparkle stepped out, followed by a pink earth pony with poofy pink hair and a yellow pegasus with long pink hair that threatened to cover her face.

“Greetings, Princess Twilight Sparkle,” Chrysalis said, nodding her head to the purple alicorn as one equal to another.

“Welcome to Equestria, Queen Chrysalis,” Twilight Sparkle replied, her voice a bit deep and hoarse. “I’m glad to see you visit us peacefully for a change.”

“Indeed, it is a novelty, isn’t it?” Chrysalis said, smiling.

“Ah, welcome, Princess Twilight,” the mayor said, cutting off Chrysalis and bowing and scraping at Twilight’s hooves. “Thank y’all SO much for choosin’ our lovely town for this important international summit-“

“Please, Mr. Mayor,” Twilight said, “I’ve got a cold and my voice is going out. If the queen and I could just go someplace private so we can talk quickly?”

“No rush,” Chrysalis purred. “We have so very much that needs negotiation.”

Cool Drink watched with bemusement as queen and princess were carefully steered towards the town hall with its recently rebuilt clock tower. She noted, idly, the orange earth pony with the cowboy hat organizing the unloading of the cargo from the train. She particularly noticed a purple-maned white unicorn carrying a large trunk in her magic while, behind her, two ponies in coveralls and caps followed her into the warehouse. Nodding to herself, she walked most casually across Appleoosa’s sole street to the warehouse, opening the door and shutting it behind her.

The instant the door cut off all sight by the outside world, green flame bathed the statuesque unicorn mare. When the flame died it left behind Queen Chrysalis, who chuckled quietly to herself, satisfied by a well executed stratagem.

The door at the other end of the hallway opened, and the white unicorn and the two ponies in coveralls stepped in. In moments the coveralls and caps lay on the floor, and a light blue pegasus and lavender alicorn stretched their wings. “Don’t get used to me saying this,” Twilight Sparkle said, “but thank you, Queen Chrysalis. You were right, and I was wrong. This time.”

“You’re quite welcome, of course,” Chrysalis replied. She’d anticipated that news of their conference would leak, and that petty politicians and anxious ponies would hijack the Princess of (ha!) Friendship, preventing any work from getting done on space things. And quite frankly Chrysalis wouldn’t have spoken a word to Twilight Sparkle willingly on any other subject, at least not until the little princess was helplessly encased in gel and had exhausted all variants of, “You’ll never get away with this!”

(ha!) This is not a footnote marker, and shame on you for following it anyway.

So, while she entered town disguised as Cool Drink (an identity which was no business of Twilight Sparkle’s), she’d sent Dragonfly ahead to pose as herself. Having used the most intelligent space-program changeling already, she’d had to deploy her third most intelligent space-program changeling, Lucky Cricket, to briefly take the role of Twilight Sparkle.(29)

(29) Occupant, the second most intelligent non-royal changeling in the space program, was disqualified on the grounds that at least a few ponies would have had a double-take moment upon seeing a profoundly buck-toothed Twilight Sparkle.

As if reading her own momentary reflections on a plan well come together, the rainbow-maned pegasus grumbled, “Yeah, about that. What’s the idea of sending a male changeling to imitate Twilight?”

“A changeling can imitate either gender flawlessly, at least physically so,” Chrysalis said. “Unfortunately, I had no changeling who could imitate the princess’s voice at all, or hold up her end of a prolonged technical conversation. So I chose a changeling who is good at improvising, who plays sick well, and above all is extremely lucky.” She shrugged and added, “I knew it would work so long as the time exposed to outsiders was reduced to the absolute minimum.”

“So what happens now?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

“In about half an hour the changeling replacing you collapses of illness,” Chrysalis said. “We’ve replaced Doctor Sawbones McColt for the day- a temporary measure, and he will be set free by sunset.(30) Our imposter will certify the princess as suffering from a twenty-four hour flu, insist on quarantine in the saloon for the rest of the day, and cover while our imposters disappear. Tomorrow morning we reappear in public, have the negotiations neither one of us want to, only agree on more negotiations another time, and part ways.” Chrysalis smiled, not realizing the smile was halfway to genuine and non-threatening. “Which leaves us all day today to exchange knowledge and work out the glitches in our respective systems, without interruptions or side-tracks.”

(30) A lie, but not for the usual reason. The fact was that there had never been a pony named Sawbones McColt. Keratin had been a holdover from Chrysalis’s mother’s rule, and it had suited both queen and subject fine to put distance between one another. “Bones” had become a doctor first in the hills near Smoky Mountain, then briefly in Ponyville, and finally in Appleoosa, being one of the town’s founders. Chrysalis still gave him orders on occasion, but she’d left him completely out of the Canterlot invasion, not knowing which side he’d take. He still kept the hive’s secrets, and for this operation that was all that mattered.

(31) All true, and in Chrysalis’s opinion lamentably so. True, avoiding both Canterlot and Ponyville had been the right tactical decisions in the wake of the invasion, but Chrysalis regretted not even making the attempt to get a changeling into the guard.

(32) Labelled, from front to rear of the hallway: Reception (the secretary’s desk, and waiting area, basically), CEO Cherry Berry, Chief of Research Warner von Brawn, Chief of Operations Dr. Goddard T. Griffon. (That last notable slept in his office and used the worker sanitary facilities for showering- all the more reason to keep visitors out of any of the individual offices.)

“A likely story,” the white unicorn protested. “And what’s to stop you from vanishing with all of us and returning to your hive with three valuable hostages?”

Chrysalis affected a look of shock. “Me do such a sneaky, underhanded thing?” she asked. “Why, I would never do such a thing like that! I’ve turned over a new leaf, after all.”

Alicorn and unicorn glared at her. The pegasus snorted derisively.

“And if you don’t believe that,” Chrysalis continued, “you have three friends who, at my own suggestion I might add, are never setting foot inside any building where they know changelings are present, all of whom know exactly where you are. As do your two royal guards, who I have had no opportunity to subvert or replace.”(31) Chrysalis frowned and added, “And such a thing would thus be instantly known and result in immediate war with Celestia and Luna, a war I am in no condition to fight at the moment.”

“Yeah, I’ll buy that last one,” the blue pegasus replied. “So where are the other eggheads?”

“In the conference room.” Chrysalis pointed to the only door on the side of the hallway away from the railroad tracks. Four doors lined the other side of the hallway, leading to smaller offices.(32)

Inside the conference room, seated at a large table and surrounded by chalkboards and corkboards half-covered with papers, sat Cherry Berry, Goddard, and the four members of the former minotaur space effort. Introductions were given all around, and after a couple minutes of Twilight Sparkle in full fangirl mode over Goddard and von Brawn(33), the group settled down to thrash out the day’s agenda.

(33) Which embarrassed von Brawn quite a bit, but satisfied Goddard to a T. The elderly griffon, delighted at his first honest flattery in ages, warmed to the princess at once, and to Chrysalis’s private amazement remained (mostly) pleasant and positive to everyone for the entire day. Looking back, she found herself grateful to frightening levels that Cherry Berry had insisted on recruiting the old buzzard as the top priority.

(34) Chrysalis hadn’t told the scientists about the Princess Shuffle plan, and the ponies assumed she had, so no questions were raised about what duties Dragonfly had. Not that she thought she couldn’t calm the scientists if they’d objected, but better to keep them in ignorance if possible and avoid the objections.

Chrysalis put off Twilight Sparkle’s suggestion that the changeling program lead with its technology in the morning, with the pony program exchanging its discoveries after the lunch break, by pointing out that one of the important changelings was not present. Dragonfly, in addition to being the number three pilot-designate, was the changeling program’s materials specialist, and thus the issues associated with that, mainly pressure suits and ship survivability systems, would have to wait until her duties were complete.(34)

This took the conversation to spaceship design. Cherry Berry admitted that the changelings were lacking in that department, their first control pod having failed miserably in their first rocket launch. von Brawn disagreed, pointing out that they had gained just as much data from the failure as they would have from a success. When Twilight Sparkle called it silly to perform a test you knew would fail, Chrysalis pulled out the still uncashed check from the Royal Astronomical Society and spent a minute or so mocking the “second place” space program.

Once Cherry Berry and Goddard got things back on track, conversation turned to engines. von Brawn provided the data from the first test launch and pointed out that, although further refinement of the delivery system would make the solid-fuel rocket a reliable booster, the existing engines didn’t have sufficient thrust or control to reach space safely, let alone return. Goddard then showed a model of his throttle-capable prototype engine and the chemical composition of his fuel-and-oxidizer system. “I have also developed a single-chemical fuel,” he said, “but it’s far less efficient for thrust. It might be more suitable for fine maneuvering thrusters, and I’m working on designs for that, but for main thrust the two-chemical system is the way to go.”

Twilight Sparkle brought forward her own paperwork. “I’ve been working on a propulsion system that converts mana directly into thrust,” she said. “Unfortunately, although I get positive thrusts in bench tests, it’s nowhere near sufficient to lift even the smallest rocket off the ground. I haven’t given up on development, though.”

Chrysalis and Goddard almost fought over Twilight’s paperwork, and eventually the two ended up looking over each other’s shoulders. The three of them, with occasional input from von Brawn and one of his associates, discussed Twilight’s proposed magic thruster for about half an hour(35). At the end, Cherry Berry, who had barely followed the gist of the conversation, said, “What’s the charge limit on this thruster?”

(35) Twilight Sparkle spent more time translating rocket-into-layman for Chrysalis and magic-into-layman for Goddard than she did actually explaining her creation. The other ponies in the room, of course, remained completely lost the entire time. Rainbow Dash was snoring in her chair after the first ninety seconds.

“By itself, about five thaums,” Twilight said. “But if a thruster is close enough to an Equestrian- any of us- then our natural magic will gradually recharge the system.” She sighed. “Unfortunately you pretty much have to be wearing it to get the recharge effect. So any ship using the system would have a limited supply.”

“So what you’ve invented here, Twilight,” Cherry Berry said, “is the engine for a pony maneuvering system in free-fall, I think.” She walked over to a chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk in her teeth, and sketched out a rough picture of a pony with a fishbowl helmet wearing a backpack. “The astronaut wears the backpack when outside the vehicle,” she said after dropping the chalk. “With training it would make the astronaut in their spacesuit a very small spacecraft in its own right.”

Twilight’s magic picked up the chalk and refined Cherry’s sketch slightly. “That’s an interesting idea,” she said. “It would certainly be better than the tether system I was considering. A pony could get tangled in the rope.”

“Yeah, I kept telling you that every time you suggested it!” Rainbow Dash said. She hadn’t bothered looking at the paperwork, but she found Cherry’s sketch very interesting. “I like this a lot better,” she pointed out, “but it means we’ll have to teach the pilots how to fly all over again.”

“I think we’re coming to realize that we have to train up from scratch anyway,” Cherry said. Rainbow Dash shot her a nakedly hostile glare, then settled back into her chair, apparently to return to her daydreaming.

“It is still an intriguing concept,” von Brawn rumbled. “It is unfortunate that it cannot be recharged from the natural aether. The single largest stumbling block to interplanetary exploration, as I see it, is the extreme limitation of how many resources we can put into the spacecraft for each launch. Each mission must be completed with only what is on the ship at the start, and the more that is put on the ship, the less able it is to fly.”

“I think I’ve stumbled on a way to help with that.” Twilight Sparkle brought out a second sheaf of papers from her saddlebag. “I also did a little experimenting based on Dr. Goddard’s monographs. Unfortunately, since we’re focusing on developing a fully reusable vehicle, my calculations showed that we couldn’t store more fuel for more than a very brief and probably terminal flight using our current design. But then I tried combining the mana engine research with the fuel systems. My idea was to allow the engines to summon fuel directly from a tank back at base.”

Two crystals, one small gemstone and a much larger crystal shard, joined Twilight’s second monograph at the table. Chrysalis’s attention was riveted to the runes and etheric lines carefully engraved within both crystals. “This… this is most interesting,” she said at length. “The larger crystal not only teleports the material in a closed beam to the smaller, but it provides the mana to operate both. Have any tests been done to determine the system’s maximum range?”

“No appreciable difficulty from Los Pegasus to Manehattan,” Twilight shrugged. “That’s as far as I’ve been able to test, but across a continent isn’t bad.”

“Most intriguing indeed,” von Brawn said. “This solves all our scarcity issues.”

“No it doesn’t,” Twilight said. “My first test was with simple water. That worked perfectly. My second test was with an alcohol-based test fuel.”

“I remember that one,” Rainbow Dash chuckled. “That was cool. Not often you see a flame that blue.”

“Further tests revealed that the teleportation matrix disrupts carbon bonds,” Twilight said. “Er… violently. And not just rocket fuel. Pinkie Pie tried using it to send cupcakes into the rocket.”

“That wasn’t so cool,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “We all had to help clean what looked and smelled like puke out of our test ship.”

“The problem must be fixable,” Chrysalis muttered. “Have you tried a polarizing filter in the transmission wavelength matrix? That might inhibit any destabilizing factors in mid-transmission.”

“We’re still working on it,” Twilight said. “But that’s not the important thing for today. The important thing is, this,” she pointed to the crystals, “works just fine for water and oxygen.”

“So?” Chrysalis asked.

“So?” Cherry Berry asked. “Remember the most important thing about a rocket?”

“Yes. Survivability.”

“And this,” Cherry Berry said, pointing herself at the crystals, “solves three very big problems we have with survivability. Air, water and food.”

“Now you’ve lost me,” Twilight protested. “Where does food come into this?”

“Dehydrated food plus hot water equals a meal,” Cherry said. "And dehydrated food weighs maybe a tenth as much as regular rations and can be stored in much smaller space, without refrigeration.” She shrugged and added, “We won’t like the taste or texture, but with this we can breathe, drink and eat for maybe months at a time from the contents of a tiny space capsule.”

This excited all the scientists, who immediately adjourned to the chalkboards to sketch out calculations and rough designs for implementing the system. Rarity tried to butt in here and there, attempting to add fashionable flourishes to the stick-drawings tucked between columns of equations, with little success. Chrysalis, whose scientific knowledge was strictly limited to magic, was left alone to closely study the crystals(36).

(36) The more she studied them, the more intrigued she became. She thought of the Dumb Idea file cabinets back in the hive, and without even trying she could think of twenty-six ideas which this one device would move out of the the Really Stupid category and into Potentially Usable. Not that it would perfect any of them, but oh, the possibilities… and that trusting, naive Twilight Sparkle probably didn’t see any of them…

Cherry Berry was completely failing to get a word in edgewise with the boffins when she felt a hoof on her shoulder. She looked back to see Rainbow Dash’s furious face. “How could you?” the pegasus asked.

“How could I what?” Cherry Berry asked.

“You know what!” Rainbow Dash walked around Cherry, cutting her off from where Goddard and von Brawn were fighting over a piece of chalk. “You turned your back on Equestria and went off to join the enemy!”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Chrysalis said calmly, still closely examining the enchanted crystals.

“I did not join the enemy!” Cherry Berry insisted. “I applied for a job with a neutral power, thank you very much!” When Rainbow Dash snorted at this, she added, “A job, I might point out, I was turned down for by my own friends, who I asked FIRST!”

“Yeah, and I know you were disappointed by that,” Rainbow Dash said. “But I can’t believe I taught you as much as any earth pony can ever know about flying just so you could take it all to those evil changelings!”

“I’m sitting right here,” Chrysalis reminded the two ponies.

“Well, you certainly didn’t teach me all that stuff just so I could haul a cart around an airfield all day!” Cherry Berry retorted. “I hauled carts, babysat foals and fillies, picked up garbage, and did all sorts of things for years just so I could fly, and then you and Twilight expect me to keep hauling carts and picking up garbage with no hope of flying?”

Rainbow Dash looked a little uncomfortable. “Look, I understand how much you want to fly-“

“I really doubt that, Ms. Best Young Flyer!” Cherry Berry snapped.

“But you could have gone to the Crystal Empire-“

“I did.”

“Or to the griffons-“

“I did.”

“Or to, I don’t know, ANYPONY,” Rainbow Dash insisted, pushing through Cherry Berry’s objections, “before you signed on to work for this double-crossing love-sucking monster!” She jabbed a hoof at Chrysalis, who only now looked up from her study of the crystals.

“Well,” the queen said lightly, “I know one pony who’s not going to be asked to be a bridesmaid at my next wedding.” Setting the crystals on the table, she raised her voice slightly. “Sparkle? I think we should adjourn for lunch. We could send our test pilots out to pick up food.” She smiled at the two ponies and added, “It will give them time to catch up on old times, I’m sure.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Twilight agreed. “Hopefully we can get Dragonfly in here while we’re eating.”

Rainbow Dash let Cherry Berry go for the moment, focusing her entire attention on Chrysalis. “Just remember,” she said, “I’m watching you. From the skies.”

“That’s nice,” Chrysalis replied. “Just remember to keep looking up. And follow the trail of smoke,” she added, raising her voice to catch Rainbow Dash as she walked out the door.

Twilight looked at von Brawn. “I’m very sorry about that,” she said. “I’ll speak to Dash later about her behavior.”

von Brawn shrugged. “Politics,” he said flatly. “I don’t concern myself with it. So long as my rockets go up, who cares? Not my department.”

After lunch, with the arrival of Dragonfly, discussion turned first to her parachute design, which even Rainbow Dash admitted was impressive, especially considering the fabric base for the thing resembled a patchwork quilt rather than a single, smooth sheet. Rarity, taken by the substances used to reinforce the canopy and to make the ropes, swiftly turned the conversation to spacesuits, bringing out her designs and pointing out where Dragonfly’s materials would assist in keeping the suit both airtight and puncture-resistant. Cherry Berry and Rainbow Dash joined the conversation, pointing out potential issues with comfort and range of movement and keeping both makers on task.

While the spacesuit discussion took over one end of the conference room, Twilight and the boffins took over the other end, discussing the minotaurs’ tracking and guidance systems. For once Chrysalis held up her end of the conversation when it came to the magical illusion displays, pointing out potential glitches and apparent motion with the telepresence illusion’s point of view and suggesting refinements to how the system displayed trajectories and orbits. Twilight Sparkle pointed out the decay rate of magical detection, proposing that special tracking stations be built to make it easier to find the desired objects and follow them accurately at long distances. Even Goddard couldn’t follow the new logic-based math used by the minotaurs, limiting himself to a soft snarky comment about how fitting it was that a cloven-hoofed creature could only count to two.(37)

(37) Though Twilight Sparkle was picking up concepts towards the end of the discussion, and asked George Bull to send her his monograph on logical expression.

Eventually the two groups reunited for the final item of discussion, von Brawn’s proposed control system. First von Brawn demonstrated his “reaction wheel,” a modified gyroscope which would transform electricity into rotation and thus, with care and patience, allow a ship to rotate through all three axes. “Of course,” he said, “inertia is still an issue. Reaction wheels are effective according to the ratio of their size to the mass and length of the ship overall. For atmospheric flight some control surfaces will still be desirable, at least for now.”

The test model was nothing more than the reaction wheel system itself, mounted on gimbals. Using only the small flashlight batteries of the device and a handheld remote control, von Brawn demonstrated his ability to turn the assembly left, right, three hundred sixty degrees around, and even upside down, holding the device in place against gravity for half a minute before powering down the wheel and allowing the gimbals to flop back down.

“No magic,” Twilight Sparkle said, awed.

“No wings, no flapping,” Rainbow Dash added, equally impressed.

“No thrust of any kind involved,” Cherry Berry agreed.

From this signal success von Brawn advanced to the center of what he called the “pilot interface.” At the center of the various gauges lay a large blue ball. “This is an advancement over the artificial horizon used by airships and the most advanced experimental aeroplanes,” von Brawn said. “Since a spaceship goes where there is no horizon, this ball is designed for full spherical rotation without gimbal restriction.”

He flicked a switch, and a strange symbol, a circle with three lines sticking out at right angles to one another, appeared on it. “We can also project markers showing references for the ship’s motion. This one is the prograde marker- in short, it shows the direction the ship’s actually moving in at the moment. At least during launch you want to keep this marker in the blue zone and out of the brown. That means the pointy end of the rocket is aimed at the sky.”

“Really?” Chrysalis asked. “What does it mean if you have that marker in the brown?”

von Brawn paused before replying, “It means your ship is pointed down. At the ground. Or, at least, towards whatever mass you’re orbiting.”

“And when your rocket is pointed down,” Cherry Berry said, a note of warning in her voice, “it means you are having a very Bad Day.”

“And will not be going to space today,” Dragonfly finished.(38)

(38) Chrysalis enjoyed being queen of the hive and had no interest in naming a successor and training her for the sudden yet inevitable betrayal and overthrow. But after witnessing Dragonfly be competent on a regular basis, she was beginning to wonder if she had any royal jelly stored away somewhere…

Chrysalis took the point, settled back in her chair, and resolved herself to attentive silence.

von Brawn demonstrated the other features of the system- the digital velocity display, the gauge for speed of ascent and descent, the throttle control and indicator, the automatic systems staging list- “Literally changeable on the fly if the pilot discovers she needs a particular system activated sooner than later,” he pointed out- and, finally, a small black box he referred to as the Stability Assist System. “It’s not quite a true autopilot,” he said. “Its purpose is to gradually damp out motion outside the ship’s current trajectory to keep it going straight. Unfortunately, it’s very stupid, so it has a tendency to overcorrect, oscillate, and burn a lot of electric charge in the process. Pilots will need to be trained to use it as an assistant, not a substitute.”

Finally, once it was clear that von Brawn and his friends had completed their demonstration, Chrysalis said, “And this is what you spent all that time and money crafting?”

“Goodness, no!” von Brawn said. “We really had this all knocked out within a week. Except for the SAS, this is mostly existing technology applied in a novel way. No, our main efforts were devoted to creating a fully autonomous automated pilot. Since the four of us,” he gestured at his almost identically large, muscular and heavy brethren, “are simply too large to be pilots, and we couldn’t find a goat willing to fly on our behalf.”

“And we are making progress on that front,” George Bull added. “Much more slowly with our current funding and priority restrictions, though.” He shot a look of resentment at Dr. Goddard, who pretended not to notice.

“That’s amazing!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed. “This is a simple yet efficient-“

“Oh, wait, no,” von Brawn said, waving off the praise. “This is only the piloting system. There will still be a host of switches and controls unique to each spacecraft. Please don’t refer to any spacecraft control system as simple. There’s no such thing, not for such a dangerous enterprise.”

“And speaking of enterprises,” Chrysalis purred, “why don’t the rest of you go find some dinner?(39) The princess and I have some negotiations to conclude, since we’ll be too busy with meaningless drivel tomorrow to take care of it then.” As the others began to file out the door, Chrysalis added, “No, Miss Dash, you should remain. How else can you keep your eyes on me?”

(39) Chrysalis wasn’t in the least hungry, herself. Between the ponies, the griffon and the minotaurs, and the love of flying, the love of science, and the love of making things, she’d been snacking all through the meetings. If this kept up, she thought, she’d end up like that guard, Neighing Mantis, who had hogged Cherry Berry’s flying-cherries dream all to herself for a solid week. (The guard commander told her Mantis would be able to resume guard duties after another week of crash dieting.)

The negotiations were brief and, surprisingly to at least one side, entirely in good faith.

Assembled parachutes with protective covers and an electric deployment system, plus raw changeling materials, in exchange for pressure suits. Rarity would take measurements for Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Chrysalis before the ponies returned to Ponyville. This was settled quickly, as both sides required the other side’s aid to make these systems work.

von Brawn’s control systems in exchange for Twilight Sparkle’s ether thrusters and air-water supply crystals. Again, settled quickly, because each side thought the other’s innovative system was equally ground-breaking.

When it came to engines and space vessels, however, negotiations dragged out and eventually broke down. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t willing to give up on her idea of a fully-functioning magic-powered spaceship. Chrysalis, for her part, didn’t want to adopt the pony ship design sight unseen.

On the final point, each side exchanging pilots in order to standardize astronaut training, there simply wasn’t enough trust between the sides to do anything more than mention the idea and “take it under consideration.”

After dinner, in the darkness of night, Twilight and Chrysalis replaced their imposters, and the next day they played out their scripted public negotiations… up to a point. As the ponies of Appleoosa gathered to see the princess off (regretfully) and bid farewell to the queen (forever, they hoped), Twilight Sparkle went distinctly off-script.

“We have many reasons to distrust the changelings,” Twilight Sparkle said, “especially after the battle in Canterlot. But as my teacher Princess Celestia reminded me, everypony deserves a second chance to make up for past mistakes. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, as has she. And yet our friends forgave us, because that’s what ponies do.

“So when I hear ponies saying bad things about the changelings, when they’re trying to work with ponies and make up for their past misdeeds, I’m really disappointed,” she continued. “They tried to conquer Equestria, and we won’t forget that anytime soon. But we must also remember that we are ponies. We believe in friendship and harmony… and forgiveness. Each of you have made mistakes. Each of you will make mistakes in the future. And if you want to be given the chance to fix those mistakes, you have to be willing to give the same chance to other ponies… even changelings.”

Twilight Sparkle’s eyes swept the crowd, whose anger had begun to give way to shame. “So I don’t want to hear any more ‘throw out the changeling’ talk,” she concluded. “No more talk about traitors to ponykind. If the changelings betray their word we will deal with that then- but not before.” She stomped a hoof on the train platform and shouted, “So start acting like ponies for a change! And give them a chance!” With that the princess turned and walked into the train, followed by her two guards(40) and the rest of her friends… except for one.

The yellow pegasus with the long pink hair- Fluttershy, Chrysalis recalled the name- stopped just before boarding the train to whisper(41), “I had to talk her into that last part,” she said. “Twilight still hasn’t forgiven you for what you did to her, or what you did to Princess Cadence. But she’s willing to try anyway. She’s giving you a second chance, just like she did with Discord and Starlight Glimmer.” Then the shy, retiring pegasus locked eyes with the ruthless changeling queen, and for an eternal moment two gentle eyes pierced to the bottom of Chrysalis’s ragged, perforated soul.

“Don’t blow it,” the Stare whispered.

When Chrysalis recovered, the train doors had shut and the Friendship Express’s whistle was blowing. As she stumbled back from the departing train, she almost bumped into Sheriff Silver Star, who held a hoof out to her. “Good evenin’, Your Queenieness,” he drawled. “In th’ spirit of Princess Twilight’s words, I’d be right honored if you’d join me for dinner at th’ saloon.”

“Er… certainly,” Chrysalis answered, still off-balance. For the first time in, well, ever, she felt a tiny sliver of guilt, and the emotion was foreign to her except as a liquorice-like taint on the love of married ponies she’d seduced.

“I’ll see you at eight, then,” the sheriff said. In a lower voice he added, “I’m looking forward to talking with you about a mare named Cool Drink. I have a cousin in Dodge, you see, who wrote me asking how Cool Drink was doing on her Appleoosan ranch. Seein’ as you do business with her of late, I figured you’d be best placed to answer a few questions.”

A shiver went down Chrysalis’s spine. Drat, she thought. Where can I steal a small but respectable farm house from… overnight?

Footnotes:

(40) Who Chrysalis still hadn’t replaced with infiltrators, darn it. And she had tried the previous night. Unfortunately Twilight Sparkle seemed to have found the only two royal guards in Celestia’s service who were immune to the temptations of pie. They’d accepted her gift, boxed it up, and had it put aboard the train for the ride home. By which time, worse luck, the fast-decaying, untrackable sleeping draught baked into the pie would have broken down into nothing more than a faint aftertaste of grape. Curses, foiled again.

(41) Actually Fluttershy was speaking in her normal voice, but that’s softer than most other ponies’ whispers anyway.

Before Chrysalis’s date with the sheriff, she called Cherry Berry, von Brawn, and Goddard into a final, private meeting. “I want your opinions on what we accomplished,” she said to open the meeting. “Now.”

“The good news,” Cherry Berry said, “is once we get the parts exchanged, we have everything we need for a control pod… except the pod itself.”

“Warner and I have a rough design already,” Goddard replied. “We need to measure Chrys- er, Your Majesty- in her pressure suit, but with a crash program and enough hands, we can go from scratch to a training pod in seventy-two hours.”

“And we can assemble a training simulator tomorrow,” von Brawn added, “as soon as you tell us where to put it. We can use the test equipment for that.”

“Better to do as much training as possible in the actual ship,” Cherry Berry insisted. “Anyway, the bad news is, once we trade components, the Equestria program will be directly even with us. And although you two gentlemen are rocket geniuses,” she nodded at Goddard and von Brawn, “Twilight Sparkle is an everything-genius, and she’s got at least three other geniuses working for her. All respect, Your Majesty,” she shrugged at Chrysalis, “but you’re not a genius, and neither am I. So we’re going to be on the back hoof if we don’t move faster than her.”

“Heh. That won’t be hard,” Goddard said.

“What’s that mean?” Chrysalis asked.

“That princess is a sweet girl,” Goddard said. “Intelligent, respectful. I like her. But she’s got her heart set on starting out with the perfect space ship. And her idea is years away from being workable. I doubt it will ever be workable. There’s one big flaw…” The griffon trailed off, leaning back in his chair and almost closing his eyes in thought.

“What?” Chrysalis asked. “What flaw?”

Slowly Goddard shook his head. “No,” he said, “I had better save that for now. I might be wrong. I need to do some tests, and I need data from at least one proper Flea launch to be certain.” He grunted and added, “And besides, I have to focus on my liquid-fuels work. I’m still working on a modular fuel tank system that not even a changeling can muck up.”

“Ouch. Good luck,” Cherry Berry said with feeling.(42)

“But I will say,” Goddard added with a twinkle in his eagle eye, “that if my idea is right, then we might be in a position to make a major jump ahead of Twilight Sparkle’s effort. As for the yaks, the Crystal Empire, the griffons, the whoever else, that I can’t tell you.”

“Can we rely on that?” Chrysalis asked.

“Absolutely not,” Goddard said. “That’s why I’m not saying why I think that. Until I know more, I figure we have to assume that the princess’s obsession with perfection is our only advantage. She wants the best? Then we get ahead of her by accepting Good Enough.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Cherry Berry said sternly, “in this case ‘good enough’ means ‘live healthy pilot at the end of the flight.”

“Agreed,” Chrysalis nodded. “Tomorrow we bring the rest of the space program staff here and focus on building the first test ship. And Cherry Berry will supervise,” she added with a grin, “since, after all, she’s going to be the first pony inside it.”

Footnote:

(42) Chrysalis would have been sorely tempted to do something painful to the pink earth pony for that remark, if she hadn’t agreed with it one hundred percent. She knew better than anypony how nearly impossible it was to changeling-proof anything.

Cherry Berry stormed into the tiny cubbyhole at the changeling hive’s entrance where Occupant had established his office. The little hole, once stuffed with junk mail of all kinds, had been cleared out and was now stuffed with letters to and from news media, purchase orders and receipts, reports, memos, and correspondence of every kind. “WHAT,” the pony shouted, pulling a piece of paper out of a saddlebag and shaking it in Occupant’s face, “WHAT is THIS?”

“Mission One’s specs and procedures list,” Occupant said simply. “I had it printed in Equestrian. Do you not read Equestrian? I think I can translate it into-“

“I can read it just fine,” Cherry Berry insisted. “Especially the part where it says Mission Pilot Queen Chrysalis!” She shook the paper again until her hoof came free and it fluttered to the floor. “The deal is, she flies NOTHING until I’ve flown it first! That’s not just my vanity, that’s for HER SAFETY, darn it!”

“But Mission One isn’t going to be a flight,” Occupant said. “Read the whole procedures list. There’s no launch.”

Cherry Berry’s eyes widened. She flipped the paper on the floor over and read it carefully. Sure enough, the test was listed as capsule-only, no engine. “Why?” she said at last.

Occupant shape-shifted into a griffon form(43) and held up the talons of one hand. “We have a contract to ground-test scientific equipment,” he said, counting off one talon. “We need to make sure someling as large as our queen can fit comfortably in the ship, get in and out of the hatch, and walk around in the suit while it’s inflated.” A second talon ticked down. “And if any of that goes wrong, we don’t want a live rocket under the capsule when it does, or else someling might have a Bad Day.” He ticked off the third and final talon.

Cherry Berry considered this. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you. You’ve really thought about this.”

“I know!” Occupant exclaimed, dropping the griffon disguise with a flash of green fire. “And it was SO HARD!” He reached over behind one huge stack of paperwork and pulled up a large canister with rounded ends. “I even took the time to design the scientific equipment myself!”

Cherry Berry awkwardly accepted the large canister, which was almost as large as she was. She set it on the floor, looking it over. Noticing a latch and lid along one side, she opened it with a hoof and looked inside.

“Occupant,” she said carefully, “this is a can that some changeling has been very sick into.”

“It’s goo!” Occupant insisted. “It’s very versatile! It has many unique scientific traits!”

Cherry looked in the container again, and wished she hadn’t. “Like what?”

“Er….. it’s green!” Occupant said.

“And?”

“Um… it’s gooey!”

“Aaaand?”

“And it’s the only thing we could get,” Occupant admitted. “I’m just a bug that likes to read, not a rocket scientist. That’s what I could make two of to put on the capsule for tomorrow. We can at least observe it, see what it does in different places, and figure out what that means about those different places, right? That should be good enough to complete the contract and move on.”

Cherry Berry grunted. “Fine,” she said. “I just hope Chrysalis appreciates the honor.”

Footnote:

(43) The author dares you to imagine a griffon beak with buck teeth and not laugh out loud.

Chrysalis didn’t appreciate it at all.

Step zero: be packed like hay-hash in a can into her brand-new suit, activate the air systems, and then be stuffed even more into the one-mare capsule. The thing looked a bit like a metal gumdrop, or a bell minus the handle. The two “mystery goo” pods on either side of the hatch(44) made the thing look like some kind of weird Everfree Forest mouse-monster-thing. Then, once this was done, ride along helplessly as the capsule was carefully transported by a changeling crew to the launch pad.

All this trouble, she grumbled, for a ship which isn’t going anywhere.

The capsule settled onto the ground, and the pod’s mission clock started running.

Step one: record crew report of current conditions. Fine.

Chrysalis keyed on the cockpit recorder. Unfortunately the thing could hold only one report at a time, and although it was just possible to swap recording crystals, it was extremely difficult, and effectively impossible while sitting in the pilot’s chair. “Er… Changeling Space Program Mission One, pilot officer Chrysalis recording,” she said awkwardly. Faust, I sound stupid, she thought, but this is for history, so I can’t buck this up! “The capsule is… well… actually a lot roomier inside than I’d expected,” she said. “All switches are within hoof’s reach. The pilot’s seat and spacesuit backpack are digging into my wings a bit, but not uncomfortably so.

“Loading into the hatch was awkward but doable,” she continued. “In a minute I’m going to climb out of the hatch, perform what Doctor von Brawn calls an ‘extra vehicular activity,’ which I don’t understand because it’s not like we have an extra vehicle, but I guess it’s a scientist thing.” Oh drat, I forgot I was recording. I can’t erase it without starting over, so let’s go on. But drat!! “I can see blue skies through the hatch window… that’s about all I can see. It’s a little disappointing, especially since it’s not at all pointed in the direction this thing would be going if I were actually flying. I guess we’ll be entirely dependent on the instruments to keep this thing going where we want it to.

“And… and… that’s all I can think of, really,” Chrysalis said. “Everything inside the capsule seems to be working fine, I’ve got power and air pressure and, well, everything’s good. So… yeah. CSP Mission One, Chrysalis signing off.” She cut off the recorder. I sound like such an idiot, she thought. Maybe I could erase it and do it over anyway?

Do you really think it’d go any better?

No.

Right. Onward.

Step two: Observe Mystery Goo canister 1. If it malfunctions, observe backup canister.

Chrysalis flipped the switch. The canister opened, and a camera took a picture of the contents, showing it to Chrysalis within the capsule.

Hm. It’s goo. Next?

Step three: E.V.A. Go outside, take a walk, take a report, get back into the capsule.

Chrysalis opened the hatch and climbed out, clinging first to the inside and then to the outside of the hatch as it closed behind her. Once the latch shut with a surprisingly hard thud, she carefully stepped down the two rungs to the launchpad surface, let go, and dropped to all four hooves.

“Suit recorder system test, CSP Mission One, Chrysalis.” She looked around, walking as fast as the suit would allow her(45). “Look,” she said, “I don’t really think a spacesuit was necessary to get here, was it? I can see the hive entrance from here, for goodness’s sake! Chrysalis out.” The earpiece in her suit beeped the tone for a successful recording.

Fine, she thought, now to get back into the pod.

As she stepped up to the hatch, she suddenly thought: You know, I could swap out the recording crystals and record a new report. Nopony would know, right?

Hanging half-in, half-out of the hatch was a little precarious, but it let her grab the recording data and slot a fresh crystal into place.

Once back in the seat, she keyed on the recorder. “Changeling Space Program Mission One, pilot officer Chrysalis… er… um…”

Her mind went completely blank.

“I… er… oh, buck it,” she said, and killed the recording.

MISSION 1 REPORT

Mission summary: Test function of Capsule Mk. 1, standard pressure suit, Mystery Goo container
Pilot: Queen Chrysalis

Flight duration: 2 minutes, 27 seconds
Maximum speed achieved: 0 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 0 meters

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: first scientific experiment, first EVA test

Conclusions from flight: We’ve got a ship, we’ve got science, we’ve got a spacesuit. Let’s launch this filly and see what happens!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Footnotes:

(44) Occupant had heard that balance was important. Actually, what he’d heard was that a balanced diet was important, so he ended up being absolutely right for a really stupid reason, but the being right bit still counted.

(45) Which wasn't very. To put it bluntly, Chrysalis waddled. She swayed back and forth like a sailor who'd drunk all the grog on the ship just before the hurricane hit. The suit simply wouldn't let her keep her legs close to each other, much less allow her the slow, graceful stride she'd spent years cultivating. And the worst part was, on her orders, no fewer than five of her changelings were photographing the whole thing.

“There!” Chrysalis gasped as she finally got her helmet off. “The capsule works. We know the parachute and the rocket work. Let’s put them all together and just go, already!”

Cherry Berry shook her head. “A week from now,” she said, “and not sooner. We need to train on the controls. I don’t know what I’m doing behind that stick, and neither do you or Dragonfly yet. So we all three spend the next week in simulations in and out of that pod, under Dr. von Brawn’s supervision, until we have the controls down pat. And the terminology. And as much as we can cram into a week.”

“But that Sparkle-“

“Twilight Sparkle is doing the exact same thing with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy,” Cherry Berry said. “And probably a lot more of it. A week is cutting a lot of corners, believe me. We ought to be doing a lot of tests to make sure we’re even fit to fly.”

Chrysalis checked the urge to continue arguing. Remember, she thought, this is possibly the one being on all Equus that wants to do this more than you do. And she says wait. “Is that the deal?” she asked.

“That’s the deal,” Cherry Berry said. “We have to do at least this.”

“One week,” Chrysalis grumbled. “And then you take the glory.”

“Look on the bright side,” Cherry Berry said. “If I so much as get a sniffle, it’ll be you instead. No pony rides up unless they’re perfectly healthy.”

Chrysalis contemplated various ways she could infect her chief test pilot with ponypox over the coming seven days. Not that she would do it… but it was so very, very tempting.

A week passed, half utter boredom in classrooms, half total frustration in the simulator and in capsule tests.

And then, almost before she realized it, Cherry Berry felt the rocket underneath her back settle onto the surface of the launchpad, and the flutter of wings as the changelings who had levitated the rocket into place evacuated.

I am so not ready, Cherry Berry thought to herself, but I’m going to do this anyway.

The mission was simple: get the rocket into the air, test its maneuverability by steering it as close to due east downrange as possible, pop the parachute as soon as safe, and land the beast. Check one mystery goo canister while under thrust, the other after landing.

Underneath her was as simple a rocket as could be imagined; a single Flea booster, like the hilariously terrifying first launch. Above her, on the nose of the capsule, the parachute system. If the electronic release system didn’t work… very bad day.

It’ll work.

Between her hooves, the flight stick. Around her, a host of switches, mostly dead for lack of systems to connect them to on this flight. The navigation ball, dubbed the “8-ball” by Goddard in a moment of humor, showed all blue, pointing straight up.

OK. Time to do this.

Cherry Berry engaged the stability system, set throttle to full(46), and triggered the first stage- the booster.

Almighty Faust Herself put Her world-carving hoof on Cherry Berry’s chest and tried Her best to push the earth pony pilot clear through the seat.

Cherry Berry struggled to reach the controls. Must… activate… mystery goo… She just managed to reach the switch, triggering the canister open. She couldn’t rest; the rocket was still going straight up. Push… over… east! The reaction wheels whined, and despite the rocket roaring like an angry centaur the little craft pushed right over, thrusting first thirty degrees east, then forty-five, then fifty.

And then, scarcely ten seconds after liftoff, the rocket burned out. The pod still shook and bucked under intense air strain. Cherry glanced at the speed readout…

Over five hundred meters a second!

Twice as fast as a sonic rainboom!

And the ship is still going up!

Even as she thought these things, the ship steadied in its flight. The speed dropped off rapidly in the air; without thrust or magic the rocket couldn’t remain supersonic. With a boom the little rocket dropped back below the sound barrier, having left (sadly) no trail of magic behind it. But it was still going up…

The light for the parachute went green. According to mission specs, which she had insisted on during a conversation with Occupant, she was supposed to test the parachute as soon as possible. But… I want to see how high and far this bird will go, she thought.

She watched the altimeter climb. Thirty-seven hundred meters. Four thousand. Forty-five hundred. Five thousand and slowing. Fifty-three hundred and creeping. Fifty-five hundred, and the counter seemed to strain for every last digit.

Five-five-two-zero for about half a second… and then the numbers began rolling back, much quicker than they’d rolled forwards. The rocket was still going over a hundred sixty meters per second, and that number was beginning to climb again.

Can’t risk possibly going supersonic again on descent. Don’t know enough about the flight dynamics yet.

Parachute… NOW.

The chute deployed, and Cherry Berry felt the sudden jerk as the ship immediately slowed from one sixty-some meters per second to one twenty-some meters per second. Dragonfly and Goddard had adjusted the parachute to only partially open until the ship dropped below a thousand meters, but that was fine. So long as speed held below two hundred, she was safe as houses in the pod.

She had been aloft scarcely more than a minute.

Oh wait! she thought. Recording! I have to make the crew recording! “CSP Mission Two, chief pilot Cherry Berry recording,” she said. “I have just released the parachute after a very, er, educational first flight. I recommend that we put limiters on the solid rockets in the future to moderate burn and to reduce the acceleration forces on passengers. The readouts registered a maximum of seven times normal gravity during ascent. Prolonged exposure to that level of acceleration could lead to blackouts and loss of control, so that problem seriously needs be addressed.

“I can see some mesas outside my cabin window now… I’m afraid I’ve lost track of the hive, so I really don’t know what’s under me…”

Oh shoot. I really DON’T know what’s under me. I could be coming down on uneven ground, which would leave me rolling down the slope, possibly breaking up…

And if I am, I am. Can’t do anything about it now. Something else that needs to be addressed, though.

“Anyway, Dr. von Brawn’s control system works perfectly. Symbols for prograde and retrograde vector lit up as designed, and-“

For a moment Faust’s mighty hoof gave Cherry Berry another gentle caress.

“I… the parachute’s just finished opening,” Cherry Berry gasped as the ship decelerated to a leisurely seven meters per second(47). “Four hundred seventy meters and descending. Chute shows all green, so that’s a successful test. I’m about to be busy with landing and closeout procedures, so this is Cherry Berry, Changeling Space Program Mission Two, signing off.”

Twenty seconds after Cherry switched off the recorder, the still-hot bell of the rocket booster hit the top of a thankfully flat, mostly smooth mesa. The parachute fell slack, detached automatically, and drifted off to the ground. Cherry Berry triggered the second mystery goo canister, took its report, and then lay back in the pilots chair and breathed her first deep, deep breath of relief.

I think… I think we can actually do this.

Something banged on the side of the capsule. A changeling (48)peered in through the hatch’s window, smiled, and waved.

MISSION 2 REPORT

Mission summary: Test control systems and parachute system in flight; gather data from flight
Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 3 minutes, 10 seconds
Maximum speed achieved: 540 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 5520 meters
Distance downrange at landing: 5.7 kilometers

Contracts fulfilled: 0
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: That… was… educational…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Footnotes:

(46) Not that it mattered; the solid fuel had only one throttle setting, and that was Go.

(47) Still fast enough to potentially injure a pony, but the pilot seat in the capsule was specifically designed to absorb landings of anywhere up to ten meters per second. Beyond that, von Brawn had said, no promises at all except, probably, pain.

(48) Lucky Cricket. All the non-pilot Changeling Space Program changelings had drawn straws to cover the eight compass points for ship retrieval, just in case the control systems went wrong. Lucky had drawn due east.

Author's Note

The bulk of this chapter, of course, was devoted to the last major things I wanted to explain away from Kerbal Space Program. Squad, the company who made KSP, doesn't simulate life support requirements because they felt it would be annoying without being fun- and the game is plenty hard enough already. For similar reasons a glitch that effectively allows kerbals infinite propellant for EVAs (if you return to the ship every so often for refills, that is) has been left in because the game is more fun that way.

In the long term, in a world where magic is strong enough that pegasi can tow apparently ordinary ground carts into the air and HOVER with them remaining level, Twilight Sparkle's idea of an infinite magic-powered engine would definitely be the way to go. Star Wars type ships would be right at home if you just say that the ships run on magic. KSP's base install doesn't allow for that, though. Fuel scarcity is one of the key points of the game- as it should be, since the object is to provide a semi-realistic rocket simulator accessible to armchair enthusiasts. So my explanation for infinite air also had to preclude infinite fuel, to say nothing of any possibility of just teleporting ponies across the stars willy-nilly. Ponies and people, remember, are ALSO made up of carbon compounds...

But for purposes of the story, spoiler alert: Twilight's going to be buying rocket parts from Cherry Berry hoof over fist, so to speak. The Magic Rocket Ship is going to be the Equestrian Space Agency's millstone, keeping them just one step behind the changelings... at least until and unless the game's mission contracts cough something up that requires me to say otherwise.

And Rainbow Dash is required by brony law or something to be mad at disloyal ponies, so the scene with Cherry Berry. It was fun writing in Chrysalis's reactions there, I admit.
For my playthroughs, Cherry Berry is Jebediah, and Chrysalis is Valentina. Dragonfly hasn't got a kerbal equivalent yet, because she's strictly backup for the moment.

Obviously, since KSP's mission control is on the beach on the equator, Mission 2 had a splashdown, not a touchdown. I decided not to attempt an EVA for that reason... and also for the fact that the ship was floating upright rather than on its side, and I didn't want to risk losing Jebediah/Cherry on the very first actual flight!

Oh, and Applejack remains best background pony.

Next time, Chrysalis demands her turn riding the trashcan, and the Changeling Space Program moves to a more suitable site for, well, pretty much everything...

Chapter 5: Mission 3: Keep the Pointy End Aimed at the Sky

“We need to move the launch site,” Cherry Berry said, leaning over the conference table.

The other people in the meeting room at Cherry's Rocket Parts all erupted in protest, trying to shout over one another, except for Warner von Brawn, who sat in his oversized chair with his usual equanimity.

Cherry had called a meeting of the senior leaders of the Changeling Space Program- Chrysalis, flight manager Occupant, and scientists Goddard the Griffon and the aforementioned von Brawn- almost as soon as she’d been released from her space capsule. She’d spent the night before the meeting at the rocket design warehouse in Appleoosa, talking in great detail with von Brawn about the next day’s meeting. Thus, he hadn’t been surprised or shocked by the topic of the meeting.(48)

The other three hadn’t had a clue, and they all resented it.

“I am not going to move the site away from my hive!” Chrysalis shouted.

“I just talked the pony post into a third delivery per week!” Occupant wailed. “I don’t want to fill out fifty thousand change of address forms!”

“I can’t pull up stakes now!” Goddard shouted. “I’m right on the brink of a major breakthrough!”

These cogent points, of course, drowned each other out and ended up as a mass of noise until Cherry Berry began beating the conference table with her hoof. When the others finally shut up rather than try to shout over an earth pony hitting a heavy wood tabletop, she said, “I didn’t say I want to move the launch site, I said we NEED to!”

“We certainly do not,” Chrysalis snapped. “We’re miles and miles away from any pony. No neighbors, no obstacles, nothing but clear skies. And besides,” she added, “I need to remain as close to the hive as possible so I can rule my changelings properly.”

“And do you know how hard it was to even get mail service to the hive in the first place?” Occupant snarled. “I’ve fought like a manticore to get more deliveries out our way! And you want me to undo all that effort?”

“And I don’t have time to pack everything up, move somewhere, and start all over from scratch!” Goddard snapped. “I’m just a couple of glitches away from being able to put a stackable fuel tank into production!”

“You’re all wrong,” Cherry Berry replied. After a lot of shouting and hoof-banging, she continued, “You think you have good reasons, but I have better ones! And I’ll explain them if you sit down and LISTEN!”

Slowly, sullenly, the changelings and griffon did so. The minotaur, still completely calm, had never left his chair in the first place.

“Right,” Cherry Berry said. “Now, first things first: the Flea motor doesn’t have the power to get us into space. My flight speed topped out around twice the speed of sound at engine burnout. That isn’t even close to the speed we need to achieve orbit, never mind get to the moon. We need bigger rockets with bigger engines.”

“So we’ll get some,” Chrysalis shrugged.

“It’s over two hundred miles between Appleoosa and the hive!” Cherry Berry replied. “It took four changelings each for the space capsule and each Flea booster to levitate them back to the hive! And we’re going to need bigger engines, bigger fuel tanks, and lots more of them, before we even get out of atmosphere! We need someplace easier to get to if we’re going to build a moon rocket. End of story.”

“Couldn’t we just build our own railroad line?” Chrysalis asked.

“No. We can’t afford it.” Cherry Berry pulled rolls of blueprints out of a saddlebag and spread them out across the conference table. “What we already need to build is expensive enough.”

Chrysalis took one look at the blueprints and went as pale as a changeling can without shifting(49). “What is all this?” she asked. “This looks like you want us to build another hive! Above ground, this time!”

“There may be that many ponies in it before we’re through,” Cherry Berry said, “but no, this is all for the space program.” She pointed to a big rectangular building on the roughly sketched layout of the plans. “A vehicle assembly building, tall enough to assemble a rocket with enough thrust to get in orbit, then to the moon.” She pointed to a cluster of buildings. “Astronaut training facility, including dormitory space.” Another cluster of buildings. “Research and development. This one is low priority, since most of its functions can be run from here.” Another large rectangular building with a runway beside it. “Aeroplane construction hangar and runway. Also low priority, since we’re leaving that entire line of research to Twilight Sparkle and the griffons, but it’ll be useful for me to get around, and visiting pegasi might want to use it.”

She pointed to two tiny buildings near the runway. “Administration offices and mission control,” Cherry Berry said. “Small but absolutely necessary. I’m sure Occupant is tired of working out of a closet, and I’m sure you will want a proper throne room on-site.”

Finally, she tapped two small spots on the right edge of the chart. “And the two most important things; a tracking station so we can maintain communications with what we launch, and the reinforced launch pad, at least two miles away from anything else. That way, if something falls off the rocket, or if it explodes on the pad, nothing else gets damaged.”

“How much does all that cost?” Chrysalis asked.

Cherry pulled a small sheet of paper from the stack of designs. “Buildings above the line are must-have soonest,” she said. “Below the line is low priority.”

Chrysalis looked at the numbers and did a bit of math. “WHAT??” she gasped. “If we build it all- that’s more money than we have! Just your high-priority stuff will clean us out!”

“Actually I think there will be a small margin for operating costs,” Cherry Berry said. "Anyway, we can get more."

“Well, I’m not paying it!” Chrysalis shouted. “There was a time when a changeling could get anything she wanted with some other pony’s money! And you’re asking me to sink everything the hive has into this? We’ll just dig more rooms out of the hive! That’s cheap!”

“No, you won’t.”

Those words came out of the most unexpected mouth in the room. Goddard the Griffon had elevated penny-pinching into art since starting work in the Appleoosa workshop. He continued, “Sure, expanding the base at your hive is cheap now. But there's cheap, and then there's cheap now, expensive later. We’re building barely controlled bombs here.” He pointed to the launchpad on the designs. “If something fails on my current fuel tank design- say, in a stack of four tanks on the rocket- it will be the biggest explosion in Equestria since Tirek’s battle with Twilight Sparkle. On bare desert ground it would leave a crater maybe a dozen meters deep. Anything within a hoofball field’s length would be completely destroyed.”

Goddard looked at the queen and asked, “Do you really want to keep that right next to your front door? Shoot, do you want it being assembled in your kitchen??” He settled back in his chair and added, "Eventually I'll probably move to the new base, when we outgrow this workshop. But you've already outgrown your base, Your Majesty. The launchpad needs to move, for your own safety."

“Which raises another point to consider.” Warner von Brawn leaned forward in his chair. “Cherry Berry’s flight landed only a few kilometers from its launch point, in empty desert. Even then she was in danger, because she couldn’t control where she landed. If she’d hit the side of that mesa instead of the top, Dragonfly would have found herself suddenly promoted to front-line pilot.

“We need a location where there’s nothing downrange of the launchpad except water. We can splash down into water at slightly higher velocities than on land. And as it is, the Flea design is on the very limits of landing tolerances. If we make it any heavier, we risk detonating the residual unburned vapors in the tank, with probable loss of pilot.”

“But she’s sitting right there!” Chrysalis protested. “She came down nice and safe! What’s the problem?”

“A better way to put it,” von Brawn rumbled, “is that we all got away with it. We might not be so lucky in the future. We need a new rocket design, and soon, but more than that we need a more suitable place to launch from.”

“A place far away from anything irreplaceable,” Goddard said.

“Someplace where we can ship in the rocket parts for assembly,” Cherry Berry continued.

“As close to the equator as we can find secure property,” von Brawn added, “to take advantage of Equus’ rotation during launch.”(50)

“Someplace where it’s easier to talk with the outside world,” Occupant added.

Chrysalis glared at her subject. “Et tu… Pedipalp?” she asked.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Occupant said. “I don’t think we should move for the sake of moving. But if moving really makes my work easier, then yes, we should move.”

“Well, we’re NOT!” Chrysalis insisted. “We’ll just make do with smaller rockets! Rockets we can safely assemble and launch at home! We don’t need to make them that much bigger, do we?”

The looks Cherry Berry, Goddard and von Brawn gave the queen weren’t angry. If anything, they were a bit pitying. Chrysalis would have preferred anger.

“My launch got up to five hundred forty meters per second,” Cherry Berry said. “To achieve an orbit of any kind we’re going to need to go six times that fast.”

“Which means a bigger rocket,” von Brawn said.

“A heavier rocket,” added Goddard, “which needs more fuel.”

“Which makes it heavier,” Cherry Berry added, “so it goes slower. And so on. No, Your Majesty, we’re a long way from even orbit, never mind the moon. We’re going to need very big rockets to get there. And it’ll be a lot more expensive, and dangerous, launching them from your hive than it would be to just build from scratch.”

“You’re wrong,” Chrysalis insisted, crouching in her chair. “The rocket’s just inefficient. You can make one that goes faster on less fuel.”

“Eventually, sure,” Goddard said. “But not by that much, and not anytime soon.”

“Or we could wait for Twilight Sparkle,” Cherry Berry said, “and her magic-powered spaceship. I’m sure she’d-“

“Do not complete that sentence,” Chrysalis snarled.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said. “Then here’s the facts. You’re queen of the changelings. If you say no, we can’t force you to move. But you’re also a test pilot. You’re training to be an astronaut. Are you willing to put your life in the same danger mine was in?”

“Of course I am!” Chrysalis insisted. “And I’m going to! As soon as the space capsule’s ready and back on an engine, I’m going up in it!”

“Um,” Occupant muttered, “not the way it is, you’re not, Your Majesty.”

Chrysalis’s eyes turned red. Green light flickered up and down her horn.

Occupant cringed, ducking under his chair. “No, please listen!” he insisted. “We’ve got contracts to leave atmosphere and orbit the planet! Those are our current goals! And our current rocket isn’t going to get anywhere near to either one!”

“THEN FIND ME SOME NEW GOALS!” Chrysalis bellowed. “You want money? Find contracts that I can fulfill using our existing rocket! If you can show me that we’ll get our money back,” she added, sweeping the plans for the new space center off the table with one hoof, “then I’ll build this Tartarus-forsaken dream of yours!” She leaned forward, staring not at Occupant but at Cherry Berry. “But if I don’t fly, neither does anypony else. Clear?”

“I’ll need some money,” whimpered Occupant from under his chair.

Chrysalis hissed(51), her fangs bared as she seldom allowed herself to do.

“Your Majesty, I don’t care!” Occupant shouted back. “I’m only one changeling! You gave me this job but you don’t know what all is in it! I'm not just reading your mail for you! I have to send letters and telegrams to all sorts of ponies! I have to try to figure out what we can and can’t do based only on what I’m told! I have to keep track of you and the other pilots, I have to know where the parts are for the next rocket, I have to make sure all the conditions for our contracts are planned for, I have to run down the mission plans, I have to oversee the training because you and Cherry can’t do it because you’re the ones being trained and there's so much I don't know and don't understand and I am only one changeling!” Sticky, slimy tears were running from the trembling changeling’s eyes. “I need a proper office! I need telegraph service! I need some assistants! I need help and it is going to cost money to get it! I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is!”

As the others watched, Chrysalis’s expression softened. Her eyes ceased glowing, returning to their normal green. Finally she slipped out of her chair, pulled Occupant out from under his, and…

… The three non-changelings’ jaws all dropped. Even von Brawn’s.

The sight of the ruthless queen of the changelings hugging one of her own, stroking its fins and whispering, “I’m sorry,” to it, was one none of the three would have imagined was even possible in the entire universe of all things.

“The last time someling did this in front of you…” Occupant gasped, trying not to sob.

“That changeling was faking it,” Chrysalis said. “He should have known better than to try to fool one of his own kind about emotions. You’re not faking it. You were telling the truth. You wanted the best for me, not for yourself.” She sighed. “And I’m sorry.”

Once Occupant had mostly stopped trembling, Chrysalis stood up. “I launch in six days’ time,” she said. “Cash whatever checks are outstanding from the Astronomical Society and spend it on whatever Occupant needs.” She bent back down to the changeling still seated on its haunches on the floor. “And you will find me at least one contract that will get us money for my flight, won’t you?”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant said.

And on that excruciatingly melodramatic note the meeting broke up.(52)

“I’ve never seen her so angry,” von Brawn murmured to Cherry Berry after the queen departed.

“Me either,” Cherry said. “She usually looks so… so suave and calm and collected. I’ve never seen her throw a tantrum like that.”

“I don’t understand it, either,” von Brawn said. “By her own admission, she could just get the money, fair means or foul. And we’d likely never know which it was.”

“Maybe there’s another reason,” Cherry Berry shrugged. “Either way, I need to get her back in training. What we had before my flight wasn’t nearly enough.” She paused, then looked at the minotaur. “Do you know any way to simulate six times Equus gravity without, you know, actually launching a rocket?” she asked.

von Brawn considered this. “Actually,” he said, “I think I might.”

Footnotes:

(48) And wouldn’t have been even if he’d been brought in cold. True, what Cherry wanted would be safer and more efficient, but he was perfectly happy anywhere where he and his friends could design rockets and get them launched. He’d been just canny and realistic enough not to tell anyone that, if pushed, he would have paid for permission to work with the CSP. Instead, he and his three colleagues got a pouch of bits each week and a reasonable but not infinite supply of materials to use for their experiments.

(49) Which isn’t very, to be honest. Chitin changes color only reluctantly.

(50) The homeworld of the ponies, changelings, griffons, minotaurs, dragons, yaks, etc. etc. etc. etc., had, millennia before, suffered some catastrophe lost to history. As a result, its rotation was constantly slowing, and the moon’s orbit constantly decaying, at a rate no pony could explain. Each day Celestia and Luna adjusted these motions to put them back where they belonged, more or less. The whole system was explained, in extreme detail and with words that existed almost nowhere else in the common language, in Twilight Sparkle’s thesis. However, Equus still rotated on its axis enough to give any rocket going in the same direction as the rotation a substantial head start on orbital velocity.

(51) The hiss was actually an ancient and traditional Changeling battle cry. It translates something like this: Prepare to meet the god of your choice. If you do not currently have a god, you have less than five seconds to make your final selection.

(52) Appleoosa’s sole plumber was called in later that afternoon to unclog the warehouse’s bathroom sink. The stuff in changeling tears and snot sets very quickly and very, very hard, but Occupant had to clean up somewhere…

“What’s this,” Chrysalis asked, “a carnival ride?”

“This, Your Majesty, is a centrifuge,” von Brawn said. “Normally it’s used in laboratories or in heavy industry to separate parts of mixtures. But in this case,” he said, pointing to the launch chair and control stick attached to the long arm of the thing, “it should give you the sensation of what Miss Berry experienced during her launch.”

“Is that all?” Chrysalis asked. She reached up a hoof and pushed the boom. It moved smoothly, but she could feel the heavy counterweight on the other side of the axle resisting. “I just go round and round for a few seconds and that’s it?”

“After a fashion,” von Brawn admitted. “We have a large number of your changelings observing from above us. At a signal from Miss Berry they will use their magic to set the centrifuge rotating. A gauge will show them how fast you are going, and if my calculations are correct,” he added modestly, “at a certain speed you will experience six times the force of gravity on your body. At which point you will use the stick,” he pointed to the controls, “to perform the maneuvers you practiced in the simulator last week as Miss Berry’s backup pilot.”

“Sounds simple,” Chrysalis said. “Just let me suit up.”

“A word of caution,” von Brawn said. “Once we start, we aren’t stopping until the exercise is done or unless you become unconscious. If this were a real launch, then your shouting at us wouldn’t do any good. Best you become accustomed to this here and now.”

“Please,” Chrysalis chuckled. “I’m not a little hatchling that needs to run to queen-mommy when something goes wrong.”

After Cherry Berry gave the order to start the centrifuge, she watched the exercise with interest, letting Occupant keep an eye on the tachometer.

At first Chrysalis looked confident.

Then she looked uncomfortable.

Then she looked frightened.

Then she looked terrified.

And then the shouting started.

“Abort! Abort! I SAID STOP THIS THING! YOUR QUEEN COMMANDS YOU STOP AT ONCE!”

And:

“STOP! STOP IT! MAKE IT STOP!”

And:

“THAT’S ENOUGH! I GET THE IDEA! NOW STOP THIS STUPID THING!!”

And:

“STOP THIS RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR I’LL TEAR IT APART MYSELF!”

“Are we up to speed yet?” Cherry asked quietly between Chrysalis’s demands.

“Not even close,” Occupant replied.

“Keep cranking it up, then,” Cherry said.

Before much longer Chrysalis no longer had the free breath to shout. The pressure of the centrifuge’s acceleration was pressing it out of her, crushing her bug body inside her unsealed pressure suit.

The marked point on the tachometer was reached, and Occupant flipped a switch to activate Chrysalis’s controls and begin the simulation.

And, to Cherry Berry’s surprise, Chrysalis performed the simulation without a hitch. With the final maneuver complete, she let her arms flop back in the acceleration chair.

“Cut acceleration,” Cherry Berry said. “Don’t slow her down, just let it spin to a stop on its own.”

The changelings cut off their magic, and the centrifuge began to slow, releasing its pressure on its occupant, allowing her to slump to one side in the chair. Eventually the rotation was slow enough that a feeble trickle of magic from Chrysalis’s horn braked it to a complete stop. Limply, weakly, one hoof rose up and hit the quick-release switch on the flight harness, allowing the queen to flop out of the chair and onto the floor below.

And then Cherry Berry learned that what happens when a changeling is very, very sick looks quite different than the contents of Occupant’s mystery-goo devices.

Chrysalis was still standing over her vomit when Cherry Berry entered the centrifuge chamber. “I hope you enjoyed the show,” the queen hissed, most of the venom in her voice sapped by exhaustion.

Cherry Berry, in her own pressure suit, didn’t respond. Instead she hoisted herself up into the centrifuge’s chair, fastened the flight harness, and reached down to check the simulator controls.

“What are you doing?” Chrysalis asked.

“Preparing for my centrifuge run,” Cherry Berry replied. “This is training, remember? And I’m your backup for this flight. Whatever you do, I do.”

And this way, Cherry Berry thought, since you’re not doing it alone, you won’t be humiliated. Much.(53)

“Yet more evidence that ponies are fools,” Chrysalis moaned. “I’m going to talk to von Brawn. He needs to find some way to make the rocket burn slower, darn it.” She wobbled towards the door, adding “That was too fast for anything.”

Footnote:

(53) Cherry Berry, true to her promise to fly everything first, had tested the centrifuge before Chrysalis had even been told it existed. But more training never hurt.

“I’ve got some contracts!” Occupant said, waving a wad of papers from one hoof as he fluttered into the throne room. “Paying contracts! For money!”

“Well, it certainly took you long enough.” Chrysalis was already in her spacesuit, reading her correspondence before the morning’s simulator tests. “What have you got?”

“It turns out Twilight Sparkle wants more data on the Flea booster,” Occupant said. “She also wants data on our parachute in flight. She’s actually paying us to use them one more time and record specific data!”

Chrysalis smirked. “She’s paying us to advance our own program,” she chortled softly. “How delightful!”

“And there’s one other contract,” Occupant said. “Several mining companies, and a couple of research teams, have asked us to fly over places that pegasi won’t go. I think I’ve found one such site close to the hive, close enough for the Flea to maybe fly by the site before popping the parachute. I think.”

“Fine,” Chrysalis said flatly. “And how much money will this net us?”

Occupant shifted uncomfortably in midair. “If we succeed at everything,” he said, “just about enough to cover my expanded office and build its replacement at the new site.” He cringed, backpedaling in the air. “I’m sorry, but it was the best I could do.”

“If it’s more money than we’re going to spend on the flight,” Chrysalis said, “that’s all I asked of you.” Without another word she walked past the mission controller, leaving the little bucktoothed changeling to stare after her.

“Well,” Occupant said, looking around the small, mostly dark chamber of the hive used for monitoring the rocket flight, “are we ready for launch?”

“I wish we could hear her,” Cherry Berry said, staring up at the illusion of Chrysalis’s grim face, an icon inset in a larger view of the little rocket on the hive’s launchpad.

“My countryman Marked Knee is in the Crystal Empire now, talking with the yak space program,” von Brawn said. “I think he’ll return with good news from Popoff. Of course he’s exchanging our control system for whatever he gets, but it should be a fair trade.”

Occupant’s pupilless eyes widened. “You went behind the queen’s back?” he gasped.

“Given her mood swings of late,” von Brawn replied slowly, “I thought it wiser to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Probably a smart move,” Cherry Berry said. “Okay, switch the ship to battery power.”

“Roger,” Occupant said, hitting a switch on his console. “Pad clear, go for launch,” he said, and his words were amplified from speakers embedded into the mesa above the hive entrance.

The mission was simple: fly mostly south instead of east for as long as possible, record a crew capsule observation of the target site, and land safely. The hive would capture the information needed from the rocket motor and the parachute.

And now, with the capsule controls gone live, that mission was entirely in the queen’s hooves.

Chrysalis reached up to trigger the rocket ignition.

Nothing happened.

Annoyed, she hit the switch again.

The rocket remained on the pad.

“Oh, this isn’t good,” Occupant murmured, echoing the thoughts of everyone else in the hive’s makeshift control center.

“It must be interference from the testing equipment for the Flea,” von Brawn rumbled. “I think we can still start the motor through that equipment. We’re still go.”

Lucky Cricket burst into the room. “Wow, it’s a good thing I double-checked the rocket!” he said. “Do you know the staging was set up to do that thing with the parachute again? Wouldn’t the queen have been mad if that had happened!”

Cherry Berry couldn’t help gasping at the thought. “Well, you fixed it, right?” she asked.

“Of course I did!” Lucky Cricket said. “Personally I suspect sabotage. Do you know somebody also tried to plug up the rocket exhaust? Wouldn’t have got far if that had been left there!”

Now it was von Brawn’s turn to gasp. “Don’t tell me you removed it!” he bellowed(54).

“You bet I did!” Lucky grinned.

“That was the thrust restrictor I installed myself!” von Brawn protested. “It was meant to slow the acceleration of the ship and help the queen keep it under control!”

Meanwhile, in the viewscreen, Chrysalis had found a couple of other switches, turning them off and back on. Satisfied, smiling grimly, she hit the ignition switch again.

The rocket leaped off the pad like a scalded diamond dog, immediately wobbling back and forth in flight.

“Dear Faust!” von Brawn gasped, checking the projection of the ship’s navigation ball. “She’s forgotten to turn on the stabilization system!”

Chrysalis frantically dove the rocket forward, overcorrecting by a mile. The nose of the capsule, for two vital seconds, pointed downwards. On the navball, the open-barred circle showing the direction of travel drifted out of the blue and into the brown.

The occupants of the control room held their breaths, some watching the rocket, others watching Chrysalis’s blatantly terrified face.

To the relief of all, Chrysalis pulled the rocket out of its shallow dive and onto a southern heading at forty-five degrees pitch, belatedly activating the stabilizers as she did so. The prograde marker lurched firmly back into the blue.

Six seconds had elapsed since launch. Six more seconds later, the Flea engine burned out.

“Maximum velocity five thirty-seven,” von Brawn read from the indicators, switching to map mode on the projectors for a moment. “Estimated apoapsis of trajectory approximately thirty-seven hundred meters. The trajectory looks good for the target zone.”

“She needs to pop the chute while still above two thousand meters for Princess Sparkle’s test,” Occupant said. “It’ll be close.”

The members of the space program watch the projections, helpless, as the silent Chrysalis calmed herself, visibly pulling herself together. She noticed a flashing light above her head. “Target zone entered,” von Brawn said. “Altitude twenty-five hundred and falling.”

Chrysalis jiggled the stick, rolling the craft long enough to see the ground overhead(55). She quickly switched on the flight recorder and said some things very, very rapidly.

“Twenty-two hundred,” von Brawn said.

Chrysalis finished whatever she was saying, shut off the record, and slapped her hoof hard on the switch for the parachute.

“Parachute open at two thousand seventy-four meters,” von Brawn said with relief. “Telemetry shows test equipment onboard has recorded the data the princess requested.”

Silently, filled more with relief than exultation, the occupants of the control room watched the illusion of the spaceship slowly descending on its parachute, of Chrysalis as she visibly realized, for the first time, that the harrowing flight was over.

Three or four changelings in the room took out cameras and took pictures of what would likely be the only time in their lives they’d see their absolute ruler with a wide-eyed goofy grin on her face(56).

As the parachute opened fully, pulling the nose of the capsule up and the window away from the outside world, the goofy smile vanished. Chrysalis squirmed in her seat, trying to see anything out the window aside from desert skies, obviously failing.

Cherry Berry watched as the queen’s hoof reached up and above the controls for the lever that would open the hatch. The queen even leaned up against the flight harness. Then she flinched, gingerly settling herself back into the flight chair and letting her hoof return to the armrests.

“What was that about?” Occupant asked.

“She was going to bail out,” Cherry Berry said. “And she remembered just in time that her wings are bound inside her pressure suit. She can’t fly. If she jumped, she’d kill herself.”

“What? She can’t do that!” Occupant gasped. “I haven’t got my nice new office yet!”

A low chuckle echoed from von Brawn. “Priorities,” he muttered.

The capsule settled down into an arroyo, catching just enough of the bank to flop onto its side and settle flat in the dry river bed.

To make it perfect, the capsule hatch was facing down. It would open just far enough for Chrysalis to extend a pressure suit covered hoof out of the gap and wave it feebly.

Fortunately for all concerned, the recovery changelings were too relieved at their queen’s survival to laugh.

MISSION 3 REPORT

Mission summary: Run specific tests of Flea booster, M16 parachute; fly over and report on possible Badlands mining site 7 km. south of the changeling hive.
Pilot: Chrysalis

Flight duration: 2 minutes, 20 seconds
Maximum speed achieved: 537 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 3715 meters
Distance downrange at landing: 9.3 kilometers

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: We have proved three things. First, there are few things more dangerous than well-meaning changelings(57). Second, that we can turn a solid profit on rocket flights. Third, that our Queen is, despite a launch glitch and unforeseen circumstances, able to complete a mission under adverse conditions… without losing her lunch.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Footnotes:

(54) It was, Cherry Berry thought, only the second time she’d ever heard him raise his voice about anything… and she couldn’t remember when the first time was.

(55) This time her chitin did a much better job at going white than when she’d looked at the space center construction budget. She didn’t need Dragonfly or anyling else to tell her that when you looked up at ground you were probably having a Bad Day.

(56) To their intense disappointment, none of the pictures developed properly. Several days after Chrysalis’s first flight, several anonymous suggestions appeared on Occupant’s desk asking for the mission control projectors to be adjusted to allow permanent records to be taken. For history and glory, of course.

(57) Given a choice between changelings who intended to do you serious harm and changelings intent on doing something for your own good, your odds of survival were very much better with the bad changelings.

Cherry Berry met Chrysalis at the entrance to the hive. The queen, helmet removed, was obviously wobbly on her hooves and, equally obviously, pretending she wasn’t.

“So,” Cherry Berry said, “now you’ve piloted a flying machine. What do you think?”

“Next time I’ll outfly you,” the queen said simply. She walked past, muttering as she went, “Tomorrow we’ll look for a site for your space center.”

“Really?” Cherry Berry trotted to catch up to the queen. Though Chrysalis was moving slowly, she wasn’t stopping for anything. “Just like that? No more excuses? No more resistance?”

“Shut up, pony,” Chrysalis said, not so much a snap or a growl as a moan. “I’ve had a trying day.”

“A week ago you weren’t going to move for anypony,” Cherry pressed. “Did being in the capsule yourself change your mind?”

“I only break my promises with my victims,” Chrysalis muttered. “I am a bug of my word to my changelings. Leave it at that.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Cherry said, stepping in front of the queen and forcing her to stop. “Why didn’t you want to move? Are you pregnant? Another batch of changelings on the way?”

Chrysalis stared at the pink pony. She tried a laugh, but the sound just barely made it out of her throat, unrecognizable. “No, I am not pregnant,” she said. “If you must know, I didn’t want Twilight Sparkle looking over my shoulder every moment.”

Cherry blinked. “How’s that?”

“You must have read the newspaper article,” Chrysalis said, having just enough energy to sound a little confused.

“Nope. What article? What newspaper?”

“The Manehattan Times dated the day before your launch- we got it in that day’s mail- announced that Twilight Sparkle was going to build a spaceport on South Cape on Horseshoe Bay. They’re going to name her base Cape Friendship.” She sighed. “The article gave most of the same reasons you had for moving- no innocents under the flight path, easier landing and recovery, rail lines to Baltimare and shipping right up to the pad.” The queen slumped forward on her forehooves. “And I just can’t bear the idea of having my own base close enough to Sparkle’s that they could watch me all the time. I like having it here. It's safe here. It's secret here. There’s absolutely nothing a changeling hates more than knowing it’s being watched.”

“Oh,” Cherry Berry said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She leaned forward-

“Hug me and die, pony,” the queen hissed. Apparently she still had a reserve of energy after her adrenalin crash after all.

“Fine, fine,” Cherry Berry shrugged, backing away.

“And just so you know,” the queen continued, “pity tastes like cold unsweetened cereal that’s been left so long in the milk it’s gone soggy and disgusting.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Cherry Berry said.

The next day, in the hive throne room, Chrysalis, Occupant, Cherry Berry and Double Face(58) pored over maps and deeds, going through the properties possessed by the hive in all its various false fronts and looking for a suitable base site.

A property on Stallion Island, across the bay from Manehattan, was surrounded by houses and apartment buildings, and in any case it was too far north. A site on a tall mountain in the Griffon territories with a flat peak was considered, then rejected as being too dangerous to the pilots in case of premature rocket shutdown. Chrysalis herself had pointed out a property on Horseshoe Bay- on the northern cape, not the southern- but it turned out to be only a couple of acres, far too small for any useful base.

And then came two adjacent and partially entangled properties, absorbing most of a tidal fen at the extreme southeastern edge of Celestia’s realm. The grassy, wet flatland blended into the forested Hayseed Swamps to the northwest, while across a broad tidal inlet rose the thicker forests of the Forbidden Jungles. The property held nothing but an abandoned hayfield about three miles square, connected to a small village in the Swamps by a road running along the only really firm ground anywhere nearby.

“I think this is it,” Cherry Berry said. “There’s enough solid land to build everything- just barely- and the inlet can be dredged for ships to deliver rocket parts.”

“I recognize that place,” Double Face said. “The Royal Guard used it for training one year. Full combat exercises.”(59)

“This village here,” Chrysalis said, pointing to the map. “They’ve left the name off the map. Do you remember it?”

“Sure,” Double Face said. “Not much there, but the food isn’t bad. Place is called Horseton.”

Footnotes:

(58) Who, despite less-than-subtle hints from Chrysalis, had not left. His shackles had been removed, he'd received his Royal Guard severance pay of two weeks dated from receipt of his one and only coded “all safe” message, and free transport to Appleoosa had been offered, and offered again each day. The only reason Chrysalis hadn’t propelled the freeloader bodily out the hive door was that Carapace the cook had taken the pony to heart as “the only one around except maybe Cherry Berry who appreciates my art.”

(59) In case there was doubt in anybody’s mind, the swamp won. The Guard took over fifty percent casualties in three days before training was called off.

Author's Note

Well, that was relatively quick.

Yes, I went for the cheap drama. I wasn't expecting to, but the needs of story and playthrough meant I had to upgrade Mission Control in KSP so I could take more than two mission contracts at a time. Thus Occupant had his moment in the crosshairs of Chrysalis's temper, and his breakdown gets her to back down just enough. All because I wanted more contract slots.

There's an animation on YouTube of kerbals using a centrifuge, just as the early astronauts did (and, I presume, modern ones still do). It's not part of the game, but quite frankly I wanted to give Chrysalis a bit of a hard time. This was definitely her chapter for that.

The game fly-through was a bit glitchy. I don't know why, but the normal staging process wouldn't let me activate the engines the usual way. I had to right-click the engine for a manual start, which meant the first time my hand wasn't on the steering controls. The second time I forgot to put the stabilizers on, had the brief dipty-do mentioned in the story above, and then leveled off at far too shallow an angle. I never got above two thousand meters, and thus didn't complete the parachute test contract. The third attempt I got everything right and completed all three contracts on the single flight.

There is an official map of Equestria. The first version was given out as a promotional freebie by Hasbro. As of season 5 an expanded version, which includes Starlight's Village, Griffonstone, the Forbidden Jungles where Ahuizotl lurks, Yakyakistan, etc., is in the first few pages of the book Art of Equestria, which I carry in my day job as a convention vendor. (Prance, Germaney, Saddle Arabia, and Mareitania aren't marked anywhere on the map. The Badlands is named, but not the changeling hive specifically.)

I bring the map up to mention; although there are vague similarities to North America, there's neither a Gulf of Mexico nor a Florida peninsula. The southern cape of Horseshoe Bay is a proper peninsula, but the bay is more an analogue of Chesapeake Bay, with Baltimare near its northernmost edge. Nor, incidentally, is there a Horseton marked as such on the map... but the Hayseed Swamps is where cajun ponies eat apple pies delivered past a certain chimaera. And I grew up here in Southeast Texas and have visited the Johnston Space Center several times, the first time as a little kid back when civilians could still mostly wander the campus at will. (Today you're restricted to the theme park trolley.) It is damp, and the center was built on muddy, marshy land very close to Galveston/Trinity Bay. I figure the edge of the Hayseed Swamps is a good enough fit.

And of course this means, if I screw up in a playthrough in a non-fatal way (I will not kill off the two main characters, live with it), I will have no shame in using the line, "Horseton, we have a problem."

Chapter 6: Missions 4 and 5: Pieces Found Rattling About

“I’m bored,” Chrysalis grumbled.

Construction of the new changeling space center near Horseton rushed ahead, with a mixture of skilled workers (mostly ponies from Manehattan) and unskilled and apprentice labor (changelings, mostly but not entirely in disguise)(60) working round the clock at overtime pay to get the most vital facilities built- the launch pad, the vehicle assembly building, the astronaut center, and the tracking station. Mission Control and the administration building, for the moment, were prefab buildings on skids, shipped whole from Baltimare. The end of the old farm road leading to the site had been widened and flattened just enough that Cherry Berry’s aeroplane could take off and land(61), and the hangar was nothing more than a staked-off area of land marked for eventual construction.

Unfortunately, it had rushed ahead for three weeks, and the VAB- basically a giant metal barn with immense doors and a large adjacent storage area and workshop- wouldn’t be even minimally operational for another five weeks(62). The launch pad was ready- it was nothing more than a heavily compacted and smoothed gravel mound, really, capable of withstanding (according to the engineers) up to eighteen tons of total weight before subsidence became an issue.(63) Everything else was, well, skeletal.

As a consequence, while Occupant had departed the hive to begin rerouting all official space program correspondence to the new site(64), the rest of the Changeling Space Program was split between the hive and Appleoosa, working on various tasks. Chrysalis had taken the opportunity to catch up on hive administration, including maintaining the network of infiltrators which were still the main source of concentrated love to feed the hive.

That, plus the ongoing astronaut training, had kept her fully occupied for about a week. After that, the queen had time on her hooves, most of which she used to annoy (65) Cherry Berry. Cherry, being CEO of the “Cherry’s Rocket Parts” false-front company in Appleoosa, chief of the space program, and overall supervisor of the space center construction program, didn’t have enough hours in the day(66). In fact, she was beginning to learn what it had been like for Chrysalis dealing with Double Face’s attempts at conversation for months and months.

“We need a mission,” Chrysalis said, while Cherry Berry was busy looking over paperwork. “Twilight Sparkle has had a mission. She’s catching up to us.”

This was true. The launch of the Equestrian Space Agency’s first flight had only made Chrysalis even more annoying. Rainbow Dash had flown a rocket built almost entirely from CSP components, with the addition of a small version of Twilight Sparkle’s experimental magic rocket thruster. The ship had only exceeded the altitude and speed records set by Cherry Berry’s flight by small amounts… but that had been enough to give the princess and her friends bragging rights while also giving Chrysalis a major flea in her tail.

“We’ll jump ahead when the new space center comes online,” Cherry Berry muttered. “Until then there’s no point wasting resources on useless flights.”

“It won’t be a useless flight,” Chrysalis insisted. “We need more contracts. We’re running short on money.”

That wasn’t strictly true, since a substantial sum now resided in various banks in the names of the Changeling Space Program and Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs.(67) But the giant pile of bits which had taken up a large portion of the hive’s throne room had shrunk to a small, scattered pool, only rarely supplemented by the results of a returning infiltrator’s petty theft. The changelings, who normally spent little or nothing, were now spending money like water.

“We’ll have enough of a reserve to resume launches once we can use all the new components Goddard and von Brawn are building now,” Cherry said, for the eighth time that week. “But those all require the VAB to put together. And there’s no point making any more little Flea jumps. That’s why we’re selling the surplus Flea motors to any other space program that wants them, like Twilight Sparkle.”

And they were beginning to buy. Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire had taken her own Flea flight, as had Leonid the yak, Gordo the griffon, and Fireball(68) the dragon. Only Cadance had taken as smooth a flight as Chrysalis’s nail-biter, but all were preparing for a second go… and all continued work on their own ship designs, even if they were buying internal components from the Appleoosa workshop.

“There must still be ways to use the Flea,” Chrysalis said. “We can launch those without the big barn, right? And the new launchpad is fully usable. Why do we have to limit ourselves to one engine? Can’t we use two?”

“No, we can’t,” Cherry Berry grumbled. “Because we’d have to mount the lower engine right on the bell of the upper engine, because we’ve got no other way to do it just now. And if we do that, the whole rocket weighs more than our parachute system can accommodate, which means no matter how well it flies it can’t land safely.”

“Well, add another parachute,” Chrysalis said.

“We can’t. The parachute has to go on top of the rocket. And a rocket only has one top.”

“Really?” One of the more important work invoices levitated out of Cherry Berry’s reach. Chrysalis took it, plus a quill pen and inkwell, and began sketching out a rocket design. “From where I sit,” she said smugly, “this rocket can have three tops.”

Cherry Berry, grumbling to herself, left the rest of her paperwork and walked over to Chrysalis’s throne. Swiping the invoice out of the air, she looked at the design.

“Three engines,” Cherry Berry said. “Two new engines strapped onto the original. And parachute pods on the capsule and on each outboard engine.”

“Yet another example of the same flawless genius that lets me continue ruling this hive,” Chrysalis remarked smugly.

Cherry Berry looked again at the disturbing squared-off tops of the Flea’s cylindrical casings, at how the parachute pods sketched on each were far, far larger than the one on the capsule. “This looks dangerous as Tartarus,” she said.

“Have von Brawn put those thrust limiters on all the engines,” Chrysalis said. “And this time make sure noling takes them off.”

Cherry Berry looked at Chrysalis. “If we do this,” she said at last, “I test this design first. And you only get a flight in it with my approval. Clear?”

“That is our standard agreement,” Chrysalis nodded.

Cherry Berry sighed. “Right. If it’ll shut you up. I’ll talk with von Brawn and make sure it can be done without blowing up on the pad. Then I’ll ask Occupant for whatever contracts he thinks we can complete with the new design. If I’m lucky I’ll be back here in two days for a week of mission sims with you as my backup.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Chrysalis purred.

Footnotes:

(60) Which fooled none of the Manehattanites. They knew, of course, that every green worker nopony knew was a changeling, and that you were only really safe with the ponies you knew personally. Which amused the changeling known as Gandy Dancer, who had taken the identity of a railroad worker turned high-iron pony who, tragically, had managed to overestimate his balancing skills. That had been several years before, and thanks to a bit of luck, fudging with hospital records, and feigning amnesia to the late pony’s friends and family, nopony had caught on that there might be a reason the earth pony who had taken one fall had no fear of a second fall- well, a reason beside Gandy’s joke, “Might be because I don’t remember the first one.”

(61) And, according to Cherry Berry, only barely. Anything heavier or faster than her biplane, she said, hadn’t a prayer. She’d been sorely tempted to declare it fit only for her helicopter, but the helicopter didn’t have enough airspeed for her commuting needs.

(62) The actual work could have been done in three weeks with clear weather, but the regional weather manager declared that her schedule would go forward, spaceships or no spaceships, or else they could enjoy a nice little hurricane from all the backed-up rain and wind a few weeks down the road. The engineers said the buildings could withstand any hurricane… but they didn’t say that to Eye Wall, for fear she would take it as a challenge.

(63) On the other hand, they were very keen to point out that this was still land in a swamp on the ocean shore they were dealing with, and that they were absolutely unwilling to guarantee eighteen tons plus one milligram.

(64) Leaving Chrysalis to order Double Face to fetch the hive’s mail. At least the unwanted horse guest could be useful for something, small as it was.

(65) Not to say “bug”.

(66) And, too frequently, not enough magic charge in her aeroplane’s engine. Getting a changeling or unicorn to refill the mana batteries was a chore that often left her stranded someplace a day or more, leaving all the more to catch up with when she got to her next stop on the Hive-Appleoosa-Horseton circuit.

(67) The “odd jobs” part of the front company’s name brought in more bits than expected. Appleoosa, being a frontier town on the grow, had a chronic labor shortage. The Appleoosan ponies still disliked the changelings, but they were willing to hire them for day labor… and the changelings, for their general deficiency of independent thought, were among the most dedicated workers in all Equestria. As a result Goddard the Griffon now complained about his own labor shortage, with so many workers out on day-jobs for their growing repeat-customer base.

(68) Alas, all too aptly named, since he had nosed over straight off the pad, plowed Mission XL-1 into a sheer rock face, and detonated the rocket booster in a spectacular ball of fire and smoke. Being a dragon, he survived. Being a small, young dragon, he did not survive uninjured. Being a dragon of any size who’d just failed at something, he survived very, very unhappy.

The command pod had one minor new addition; the telepresence illusion now carried sound, and sound could be transmitted along the magic link in the other direction. The link couldn’t send recordings or take them, though, so the radio system being adapted from Yakyakistan’s boffin Alexander Popoff’s designs would eventually be necessary.

But for now Chrysalis could sit in the portable building which was the Horseton Space Center’s mission control room, wear a minotaur-made headset and microphone, and be the one pony in the room allowed to speak directly with the spacecraft(69). “Final systems check in progress,” she said. “Stand by for go/no go on launch.”

“CSP Mission Four standing by,” Cherry Berry said, voice flat, calm and professional.

Chrysalis suppressed the urge to hiss. The pony is doing the right thing, she thought to herself. You want servants who stay calm and professional in difficult situations. Stop being so angry.

The problem was, Chrysalis was only partly angry at Cherry Berry. Mostly she was jealous of the pony and angry at herself.

On her first flight, Cherry Berry had remained cool and confident, smiling most of the short flight (except for the brutal acceleration at the start). Which was good and proper.

Chrysalis… had not.

She knew she had not.

And although she also knew no changeling would ever talk about it to her face, she also knew every single changeling in the hive knew she’d been afraid, frantic, even at one point panicked.

Oh, she’d pulled it together. She’d finished the mission, achieving all tasks on the list. But she’d showed weakness.

The day you show weakness to your subjects, her mother had said, is the day the end of your rule begins. Just as when I show weakness, you will begin your plans to overthrow me, my daughter. That is the way it is, and the way it should be, for the good of the hive.

And it had been true, every bit of it. And although Chrysalis had no royal daughter among her hive at present, the moment of weakness crippled her.

She had to redeem herself. She had to get back in that ship and show everyone, changeling, pony, minotaur, griffon, whatever, that she had the right stuff to be a pilot, just like the stupid, optimistic pink earth pony.

She’d heard one of von Brawn’s fellow minotaur scientists refer to Cherry Berry as “the steel-eyed missile mare.” Chrysalis wanted, needed, to prove that she also was a steel-eyed missile mare. Otherwise she’d always be remembered as the cowardly queen stupid enough to almost jump out of a perfectly good capsule.

Meanwhile Occupant, rushing around the cramped little room from desk to desk, checked with his staff and von Brawn to make sure everything was ready to fly.

“Engines?”

von Brawn. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Tracking?”

George Bull. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Recovery?”

Lucky Cricket. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Weather?”

Crawley, the changeling liaison with the Hayseed Swamp regional pegasus weather office. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Parachutes?”

Dragonfly. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Capsule communications… Your Majesty?”

“Go, already,” Chrysalis grumbled.

“Final review of mission tasks.”

“Mission Four, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis said, forcing her voice to a calm, matter-of-fact, not-totally-impatient-to-get-this-over-with tone. “Verify checklist of flight tasks.”

“Test stability and performance of new rocket design,” Cherry Berry repeated. “Visual inspection and reports on Nerd’s Reef just offshore and open sea coordinates JJ1-512. Check Mystery Goo containers in-flight and after splashdown.”

“Roger, Mission Four, checklist verified,” Chrysalis said. “Verify switchover to internal capsule power and control.”

Another of Occupant’s assistants flicked a switch at his desk.

“Confirmed on battery power,” Cherry Berry said. “All systems green.”

“Roger, Mission Four, stand by.” Chrysalis muted her microphone and said, “All go for flight.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Occupant said.

There was a long, frozen silence.

“Occupant,” Chrysalis hissed, “in this room you are the one in charge. Not me. You have to give the final order for launch.”

“Oh!” Occupant gasped, stumbling on his hooves. “Um… okay! Er… how do I do that?”

Chrysalis sighed. “’Capsule communicator, signal go for launch.’”

“Yeah. Do that. Um, please, Your Majesty.”

Chrysalis shook her head, took a moment to make sure her voice was steady, and said, “Mission Four, you are go for launch. Activate first stage when ready.”

“Mission Four confirms go for launch,” Cherry Berry said. She reached up and pushed the switch to ignite the three solid rocket engines.

Chrysalis watched with envy as, at a slower rate than prior launches, the rocket lifted off the pad. Although these engines had been modified to burn slower and longer by von Brawn’s boffins, the acceleration meter on the navigation ball still indicated four times normal gravity. Despite that, Cherry Berry’s face barely changed, still wearing that confident, happy smile(70).

“Ship is somewhat resistant to reaction wheel guidance,” Cherry Berry said carefully. A light came on over her head. “Telemetry shows entering airspace above first target zone.” She hit another switch. “Nerd’s Reef appears to be a large mudbank,” she said quickly, “vaguely shaped like a unicorn reading a book. I see a couple of schools of fish swarming here and there in the shallow water. Resources appear negligible. I’m going to leave the recorder on for the next site. Coming up on engine cutoff.”

Chrysalis looked at the fuel readout on the telepresence illusion; sure enough, the bars were shrinking to nothing.

“Gravity pressure seems to be easing,” Cherry Berry said. “I wonder if the engines are losing thrust as- OOF!”

For a couple of seconds Cherry Berry’s expression changed to surprise and pain. Chrysalis noted that the acceleration meter, which had drifted down to two times gravity, jumped up to a whopping eight gravities for about three seconds and then, slowly, drifted back down below five.

“Ow… I’m all right,” Cherry Berry said over the illusion. “As soon as thrust ceased, the ship decelerated hard. Really hard. Like I plowed through a brick wall. I’m not going to make it to the second zone. Airspeed is dropping like a brick, and I will be too in just a moment. I’m going to pop the first mystery goo can now. I’ll hold off activating the parachutes as long as possible, in case I’m wrong about falling short of the final target zone.”

Chrysalis forced herself to stop grinding her fangs together. The pony had just had a very rude surprise, probably a fright, and her voice was level except for the slight grunt as she forced the air in and out of her lungs to speak.

“Beginning descent,” Cherry Berry continued, breathing easier. “Airspeed below one hundred meters per second. It’s almost like I already popped the chutes. The drag on this design must be immense from those flat-topped boosters. Airspeed’s back over one hundred again. Dropping below two thousand meters. Retrograde marker’s almost on top of the nav ball. Popping chutes now. Sorry, Flight, but no joy on the second survey.”

Chrysalis forced herself to reply, “Mission control confirms negative on target zone. Recovery team en route.”

A minute later the rocket splashed down peacefully in the ocean.

“Performance is actually poorer across the board than with a single engine,” von Brawn rumbled from his desk. “Longer burn time and greater power were more than offset by air resistance. This deserves more study.”

“How long until my turn in it?” Chrysalis asked.

von Brawn looked at the changeling queen. “Your turn?” he asked incredulously.

MISSION 4 REPORT

Mission summary: Test flight dynamics of multiple-Flea configuration; fly over and observe underwater formations near new launch site; collect scientific data
Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 2 minutes 49 seconds
Maximum speed achieved: 409 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 4018 m
Distance downrange at landing: 7.6 km

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Who is this paying us so much to do things a pegasus with a camera could do better? Anyway, we didn’t fly far enough to get both contracts. This design has flight characteristics slightly worse than the average brick. Until we either figure out how to streamline the boosters or get rid of them completely, this ship configuration is a lost cause.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: MINIMALLY SUCCESSFUL

Footnotes:

(69) Cherry Berry had insisted on this as standard procedure the day von Brawn had revealed the upgrade. She’d had one too many leadership meetings within the space program, and one too many shouting matches, not to insist on clear, simple communications between mission control and the ship. That meant one voice each way, and only one voice each way. Whatever Mission Control had to say, it would be said by the backup pilot for whoever was on the pad. Occupant had backed her up on it, mostly to make sure it wouldn’t be him on the mike instead.

(70) Considerably stretched out by acceleration forces, but still recognizable.

“No,” Cherry Berry said.

“This is a violation of our agreement,” Chrysalis insisted. “You fly it, then I fly it. That was the deal.”

“No,” Cherry Berry said, a little more firmly. She was working her way out of her spacesuit. Outside, the recovery team was carefully levitating the still-dripping spaceship back to earth next to the under-construction VAB, where the capsule would be reconditioned and all other reusable parts dismantled and put into storage until needed.

“We still have to fulfill that loose contract,” Chrysalis continued. “It looks bad if we don’t finish what we start.”

“Absolutely no!” Cherry Berry snapped, eyes wide, teeth bared in a pose that would do a changeling warrior proud(71). “Eight gees, Chrysalis! When you have a sudden deceleration that powerful without the aid of parachutes it means that something is horribly wrong, do you understand? I didn’t successfully fly that ship. I got away with it. Next time I might not be so lucky. I’m not approving any more flights for that deathtrap design until we understand why it’s doing that. No. More. Flea. Flights. Period.”

“But-“

“And because I want you to continue breathing, with all your legs unbroken(72), I will not change my mind on this. The. Answer. Is. No.”

Chrysalis fell silent. This was not going how she had expected. For one thing, the expendable lackey of an absolute monarch had just said No, expecting she could make it stick…

… well, except the pony was not so much expendable as irreplaceable, and she almost certainly could make it stick. But even that was awful enough.

“As soon as I can get away,” Cherry Berry continued, kicking her last hind leg out of her suit, “I’m going north to Cape Friendship. Twilight needs to know the danger of the design. She might even have a way of finding out what makes it do that.”

“Oh-“ Chrysalis practically had to bite her lip. Oh reeeeally? was a thing you said when you wanted your enemy to know you didn’t believe them, or that you were up to something. “Fine,” she completed flatly, very carefully slumping forward in a royal sulk(73).

“Look,” Cherry said in exasperation, “why don’t you go visit Goddard? I know he’s finally got the new engines and fuel tanks in production. He won’t show them to me because we can’t use them yet, but you sign his paycheck. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

“Maybe I will.” Careful, just the right amount of whine, Slump back on your haunches like you’re punishing the world with your butt. Bad world, how dare you disappoint me. Is she buying it? Oh yes. Swallowed hook, line and sinker.

I’m going to fly, pony. I can’t afford to get rid of you, but you certainly can’t afford to get rid of me.

And if I can’t get permission, even in my own space program, then I’ll settle for forgiveness.

Footnotes:

(71) And which, once, had scared six changelings gooless, although to be fair half of that fear came from the berserker battle cry, “IT’S A CARDBOARD BOX!”

(72) This phrase, coincidentally, was one of the sweetest endearments in changeling culture, right up there with “I probably won’t throw you to the mob if we’re discovered,” or, “I’d hate to chuck you in a pod just to get the promotion- I’d still do it, but I’d feel terrible afterwards.” The simple “I love you” never caught on in changeling circles, mainly because although changelings can sense each others’ love, they can’t eat it.

(73) A pose taught her by her mother, many years before. It had been a hard lesson; Chrysalis as a larva had been a cheerful and optimistic child, and it had taken a lot of years ruling the hive herself to learn the disappointment needed for a truly regal bout of self-pity.

“Occupant! How’s my favorite underling in the whole wide world?”(74) Chrysalis strolled into the converted closet Occupant used for a private office in the mission control shack. “You know, this really will not do,” she continued, trying to find some way to bring her hindquarters into the room so she could shut the door. Unfortunately Occupant’s desk, mostly buried under snow drifts of paperwork, blocked her way. “You need a proper office. You need a proper mission control, really. And all this,” she said, gesturing to the paperwork. “Don’t we have changelings in the administration building to take care of this now?”

“Er, um, I still have to look it all over myself,” Occupant said. “Remember, my first task is still deciding what you do or don’t need to see. As you ordered, my queen.”

“Well, we really must do better for you, my dear,” Chrysalis purred. “I never dreamed you would be this good at these tasks, back when you were a mere door guard.”

“Er, I kind of still am a door guard,” Occupant said. “If someone wants to get to you, at least when it comes to the space program, they have to get past me.”

“And I appreciate that, really I do,” Chrysalis said. “I appreciate it so much that I really want to speed up construction of your permanent administration and mission control buildings.” She sighed dramatically. “It’s such a pity we haven’t the ready cash.”

“Er, well, yes,” Occupant said. “In fact we might have to give back the advance plus a penalty on the survey contract if we have any delays on VAB construction.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, my queen. I shouldn’t have accepted that contract in the first place, except I thought we could get a rocket that far.”

“I think we still can,” Chrysalis said. “It’s just a matter of tweaking what we have. Cherry was so close on this last flight…”

“Hm… not very,” Occupant said uncertainly.(75)

“Oh yes, quite close,” Chrysalis added. “And I think I can come up- hello?” In her efforts to squeeze into the room, Chrysalis’s forehoof had come to rest on Occupant's desk, triggering a minor avalanche of documents. One such had the big red and green logo for Cherry’s Rocket Parts… and a format that looked like… a contract. “What’s this?”

One look at Occupant’s face, especially the discomfited twist to his buck fangs, told Chrysalis all she wanted to know. This was one of the documents Occupant had decided she needed to not see.

She read it. It made for interesting, if brief, reading, particularly the substantial amount of bits being offered for what looked like a trivial task.

“Cherry Berry is actually paying us for something?” she asked Occupant.

“Er… you see…” Each word came out of Occupant’s voice like they were being winched out of deep mud. “We set up the front company so we could have a workshop in Appleoosa and sell surplus parts, yes? Well, Miss Berry decided this was a way to transfer funds back into the space program directly… if we really needed it, that is.” He gestured to the form. “Dr. Goddard found the form and wrote out the contract. We were busy with Mission Four at the time, so Miss Berry hasn’t seen it yet.”

“But,” Chrysalis pointed out, “Goddard’s in charge of the workshop budget, isn’t he? He can sign off on things like this. In fact, he did.”

“Er… I expect Cherry Berry would want to un-sign-off on it,” he said. “But Dr. Goddard really wants to know what happens to the engine in a water landing.” His wings twitched uncomfortably. “I was holding it until she had time to look at it.”

“Well, as it happens,” Chrysalis said, “she’s just left for a conference with our rival space agencies. Which leaves me, as the queen, back in charge, yes?”

“Er… um…” Fealty and responsibility were at war within the little bucktoothed changeling.

“And look on the bright side,” Chrysalis added, “this, plus the money from that survey contract, will be enough to hire more workers to get started on the new mission control.”

“But,” Occupant’s conscience said, in a final appeal to authority, “I’m pretty sure Cherry Berry needs to sign off on this!”

Chrysalis saw the quill and inkwell rising out of the papers like a tree through a heavy snowdrift. “She’s not here now, is she?” she asked. “I am. And I’m still the queen, yes?”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant sighed, defeated.

“Then let’s do it,” Chrysalis said, signing the contract. “Today if possible.”

Footnotes:

(74) This was less of a lie than it used to be. Chrysalis honestly did appreciate Occupant’s absolute loyalty- which she was about to trade on shamelessly. More important, she approved of Occupant’s diligence, enthusiasm, and (a rare trait among her subjects) a vague recognition of the limits of his own competence. He had taken on responsibility surprisingly well, and Chrysalis was about to complement his performance by completely abusing it.

(75) That was another quality Chrysalis appreciated- that Occupant told her what she needed to hear rather than what she wanted to hear. Of course, she only appreciated it after the fact; at the time it usually made her furious.

“… and once I could breathe properly again I’d lost most of my forward momentum and began dropping back down,” Cherry Berry told Twilight Sparkle. “If our centrifuge can take it, I’m going to begin deceleration training to see if we can do some sort of exercise to prevent injury or blackouts the next time it happens.”

“I have to say,” Twilight Sparkle said, “I’m not a bit surprised. Didn’t you run this design through a wind tunnel?”

“Do I look like a pegasus?” Cherry Berry asked. “I know the Wonderbolts use them for training and examinations, but I’ve never seen one.”

“I built a mechanical one here for our project,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Your capsule tests out okay with your parachute pod on it, but a lot worse with it off. And your Flea booster by itself is horrible- it wants to turn on its side at high aerodynamic buffering.”

“I’d love to see it,” Cherry Berry remarked. “It sounds like an indispensable piece of equipment for our own program.”

“I’d be glad to show you!” Twilight replied. “After all, this is about saving pony lives!” After a very long hesitation, she added in a most uncertain tone of voice, “And… changeling lives too, I guess.”

As they walked, Cherry Berry gave a long look at Twilight’s magic rocket ship. The hull, at least, had been finished for engine tests.

Dr. Goddard would have mocked it contemptuously. Dr. von Brawn would have questioned its suitability in quiet but firm tones. Chrysalis would have laughed at pony weakness. But to a pony’s eyes, the big pink vehicle with the big pointy nose and three enormous curled fins was simply perfect, right down to the broad hatch in the side and the row of heart-shaped windows.

In the top of her head, Cherry Berry knew the design was impractical. The rest of her, though, loved it to bits and wanted a ride in it.

The thing would seat seven according to Twilight Sparkle, with three-quarters of the interior used for passenger and cargo space. So far, sadly, the closest it had come to flight was a test on scales, where the vertical take-off thrusters had only been enough to negate one-quarter of the ship’s weight.

Still, Cherry thought wistfully, I bet it does great in a wind tunnel.

We have got to get those new engines. Fast.

“This is the engine Goddard wants tested?” Chrysalis asked Warner von Brawn, who had lingered overnight at the new base before returning to Appleoosa by boat and then train.

Chrysalis had expected to find another big drum with a bell on bottom in the VAB’s storage room, like the Flea. This thing had the bell, but it had no drum- just a bunch of fancy plumbing and electric motors. Chrysalis had a vague idea what about half of the things were for, but since Goddard had been closed-beaked about his work until it was ready, she hadn’t seen the final product.

One thing for certain; her first plan of just hooking two Fleas on the sides of the “Swivel” liquid fuel motor had just tasted the rainbow(76).

“Sometimes I don’t know what my colleague is thinking,” von Brawn said. “At the least he could have provided one fuel tank and a little fuel. But no. He sent us just the motor and no way to actually fire it.”

“Can’t we just put a Flea on top of it?” Chrysalis asked.

“Fuel mismatch. The Flea motor would destroy the Swivel.”

Chrysalis shrugged. “Can you put a shell or something around it?” she asked. “Something we could hook four Fleas to.”

von Brawn shook his head. “You’re talking about a fairing,” he said. “In theory we could, but with the materials we have on hand, we’d need something to anchor the bottom seam of the fairing to. Otherwise the whole thing would crumple under the force of the engines.”

Chrysalis noticed the remaining on-hand stockpile of a dozen Flea motors(77). “Is the capsule reconditioned?” she asked.

“Yes,” von Brawn said. “We were actually going to put it in storage.”

Concentrating her magic, Chrysalis carefully lifted one Flea after another. Once five engines formed an X on the storage room floor, she pointed to it. “We secure those together,” she said, “put the Swivel on top of that, and the capsule on top of that. Parachutes on the capsule and the four outrigger engines.”

von Brawn looked contemplatively at the design. “Interesting theory,” he said.

“That was more an order than a theory, Doctor,” Chrysalis said.

von Brawn’s look grew much less contemplative and more appalled. “You’re not going to fly such a beast!” he gasped. “We saw the problems with only three Fleas! With five-“

“We won’t run all five at once,” Chrysalis said. “We run two first for a slow acceleration to altitude, then the remaining three once I’m up in thinner air. If we keep it slow enough, the ship should avoid the worst of the turbulence, right?”

“In… theory…” von Brawn’s voice drawled out in deep thought.

“And it’ll be fascinating to see how it works, won’t it?” Chrysalis asked.

“Yesssss,” von Brawn nodded. “Yes, it could be made to work, in theory.”

“Then let’s get it done,” Chrysalis said. “The sooner we get this test in, the sooner Goddard gets his results and the sooner we get to retire the Fleas.”

As von Brawn began giving orders to the changelings in the storeroom, Chrysalis rushed out to get into her pressure suit. The best thing about that, she thought, is I never had to use mind control once. von Brawn did it to himself.

Which is the best form of mind control.

Footnotes:

(76) A recent slang phrase among monsters, criminals, and in general those who might expect to be opposed by Equestria’s most famous heroes. It replaced the older “blown to Tartarus.”

(77) Despite aggressive salesmanship, over fifty more remained in a warehouse on the outskirts of Baltimare. If the citizens of Baltimare had known better what that warehouse held, they likely would have ordered the warehouse condemned.

The late afternoon sun shone on the laminated wings of Cherry Berry’s biplane as it approached the makeshift Horseton Space Center airstrip. The tour of Twilight’s scientific research facility, including and especially its wind tunnel, had been inspiring. There was so much the changeling program needed to be doing that they weren’t. She couldn’t wait to tell Dr. von Brawn and Dr. Goddard all about it… except she had to, because she had to finish up the wrap-up from Mission Four before she could return to Appleoosa.

She banked for final approach, leveled off… and noticed something to her left.

There was a thing on the launchpad.

She didn’t know which startled her more- the fact that there was anything at all on a lauchpad that should definitely have been empty, or the thing itself. It looked like somepony had tried to make a throwing dart out of Flea motors.

Oh Faust. Somepony DID do just that. And I know who. The changeling ground crew clearing the pad at maximum speed confirms it.

Despite her rapidly growing anxiety, Cherry Berry set down the aeroplane with her usual care, because some things you simply didn’t rush if you wanted to stay out of hospitals. The moment she bounced to a stop on the runway and had the brakes engaged and engine off, she bounded out of the cockpit and galloped for mission control.

Sure enough, there was Occupant going down the last go-no-go checklist with his assistants. She shot the ugliest look at him she could manage, then gave another one to von Brawn, who watched the illusion projector with interest. There was the thing on the pad; there was the nav-ball, the altimeter, the staging list, and there was Chrysalis, neutral-faced, calm, checking her controls in the most ostentatiously professional manner Cherry Berry’s red-tinted imagination could conjure.

Occupant cringed, but didn’t stop. “Capsule communications, final review of mission tasks.”

Cherry Berry glared at Dragonfly, who should have been monitoring consumables and parachutes. She reached up a hoof. Dragonfly sheepishly levitated the headset off her head. “She is our queen,” she said quietly.

“Not blaming you,” Cherry Berry said shortly, keying on the mike. “Mission… Five, Horseton. Verify checklist of flight tasks.” Calm. Professional. You did not shout during flight prep. You did nothing to unsettle the mental state of the pilot. Flying a machine was something you did with caution and respect. Anger, fear, panic- they killed as surely as a dead engine or a broken wing. And if you felt those things, you did not let it show, because those emotions multiplied in a group until they ran like a wildfire out of control.

Chrysalis was good, the professional, not-about-to-buck-a-changeling-upside-the-head part of Cherry Berry’s mind said to the rest of it. Not a flinch when she recognized my voice. “Mission tasks; test phased burn of multiple rockets; complete unfinished survey of offshore target zone; perform test on Swivel liquid fuel engine when submerged.”

A piece of paper hung in front of Cherry Berry’s eyes, held there by changeling magic- Dragonfly’s to be exact. “Er… roger, Mission Five. Checklist verified. Verify switchover to internal power.”

“Mission Five confirms switchover to internal power. All systems go. Standing by.” Calm, smooth, completely in control.

“Mission Five, Horseton…” Cherry Berry paused. The way we have this set up, she thought, I can’t actually order a mission scrub. The launch button is on Chrysalis’s end, not mine. And whatever I do now sets a precedent… so what do I do?

“Standing by, Horseton.” Not even a sliver of sneer or derision in that voice. Flat, professional… Cherry was beginning to hate those adjectives.

“I have to strongly recommend scrubbing mission on grounds of crew safety concerns,” Cherry Berry said. “Mission Five is a completely untested configuration with characteristics close to a discarded design. Wind tunnel tests done this afternoon at Cape Friendship-” there, that ought to get a rise out of her, Cherry thought- “-verify that at any speeds close to the sonic barrier air resistance renders a bare-topped Flea highly inefficient and almost uncontrollable. Please respond, over.”

“Horseton, Mission Five,” Chrysalis replied. “This flight was my decision and under my authority. The responsibility lies with me. It is my estimation that this flight can be conducted safely and successfully, and that your concerns have been accounted for.”

Cherry Berry shot a look at von Brawn, who shrugged. Big help, doctor.

So… decision time. I can confront Chrysalis now, force one or the other of us to back down. And that probably ends the space program. Or I can back down and probably let Chrysalis kill herself. Which would definitely end the space program and possibly the changeling race.

All eyes in the mission control now stared at the pink earth pony, aeroplane flight helmet still on her head, goggles down.

“Roger, Mission Five,” Cherry said. “You… you are all go for flight. Activate first stage when ready.”

“Mission Five copies go for launch,” Chrysalis remarked. “Stand by.”

And now, for just a moment, the beings in mission control could see Chrysalis’s control waver, as she took several deep breaths, slow, in and out, preparing herself for the launch.

“Thank you,” Occupant murmured to Cherry Berry. “But I thought you were going to scrub the launch the moment you came in the door.”

“I can’t stop her now,” Cherry said. “If I tried it’d wreck the program. We’re still such a long way away from our goal… and besides,” she added, “if it was her in this chair and me in that chair, I’d want to launch too, and forget the danger at this point.” She shook her head. "I hope I'd have more sense than-"

And then the engines fired- or, at least, two of them. The ugly thing rose off the pad on two plumes of smoke, rising at a much slower rate than previous launches. More weight, Cherry thought, and reduced thrust. Side effect; only a little over two gravities at launch.

The rocket nosed over to a forty-five degree angle of ascent, carefully trimming the flight for the target zone Mission Four had missed. Chrysalis’s handling of the ship was a bit awkward, and the ship tried to dip closer to the horizon, but the changeling queen fought it back to the desired angle…

… but not, Cherry noted, the desired trajectory.

“Prograde vector is too shallow,” von Brawn rumbled. “Reducing thrust to keep the flight subsonic-“

At sixteen hundred meters altitude the first two Flea motors burned out. With barely a pause Chrysalis triggered the remaining three engines, and the flying dart leaped forward…

… and down.

“Too much thrust,” von Brawn said. “She’s approaching the sonic barrier. She needs to pull up.”

The projected illusion also included readouts for amount of pitch, yaw and roll being used by the ship’s controls. Cherry looked and noticed, to her growing horror, that both pitch and yaw were maxed out. Chrysalis was holding down the controls as hard as she could, trying to get the rocket’s nose up… and failing. In fact, on the projection, Cherry could clearly see the nose creeping downwards.

The prograde marker had drifted almost to the blue-brown dividing line on the nav-ball.

“Mission Five, Horseton,” Cherry said, forcing herself to keep her voice level while speaking quickly. “Drag is pulling your nose down. Can you abort?”

“Negative, Horseton.” Chrysalis actually sounded a little bored. That had to be acting. “I am maintaining attitude. No need for abort.”

And, Cherry Berry belatedly thought, no way to abort in any case. The parachutes would be ripped apart if triggered too close to the speed of sound, and the engines couldn’t be shut off.

And then, mercifully, the engines did shut off, burning out at a bit over twenty-three hundred meters altitude. And, just like Cherry Berry’s flight, Chrysalis’s ugly dart hit the sonic wall and, without further thrust, got shoved back, losing half its speed in about two seconds.

In those two seconds the ship climbed about four more meters… and then nosed down even more, falling very quickly for the ocean below, capsule first.

“Five, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said, “parachutes show green, deploy parachutes.”

Chrysalis, staring intently at something on her own controls, did not respond.

“Sixteen hundred and falling,” von Brawn rumbled. “She has to open at one thousand or…”

The seconds ticked by, as Chrysalis’s hoof reached forward out of frame of the illusion, reaching for the parachute release, hesitating…

… and at nine hundred meters, finally pressing the switch.

Five parachutes released. Seconds stretched as the ship continued to fall, the parachutes slowly pulling the ship back upright, catching the breeze, and then finally, finally opening completely at two hundred seventy meters elevation. By two hundred forty the speed of descent, which had reached one hundred fifty meters per second, had dropped to a most leisurely five and a half.

“Horseton, Mission Five,” Chrysalis said calmly. “No joy on survey zone. Close but not close enough. Standing by for splashdown and Swivel test.”

Cherry Berry switched off her mike. “Will it float?” she asked.

“Five empty boosters? Of course it’ll float,” von Brawn said casually. “You know, this flight has given me all sorts of ideas for new systems…” He had a pencil in one mighty minotaur hand and paper in the other, scribbling notes at a fantastic pace.

On the illusion, the rocket splashed down, released all its parachutes, and promptly rolled onto its side in the water.

“You said it would float!” Cherry gasped.

“I never said it would stand up,” von Brawn replied, not looking up from his notes.

“Splashdown,” Chrysalis reported from the screen. “Executing test of the Swivel rocket system.” Even as the capsule end of the spacecraft began to dip below the surface of the water, sparks flew from the long casing that linked pod with engines. The sparks ceased as the spaceship completed its turn-turtle in the water.

On the projection, Chrysalis looked out with half-lidded eyes, apparently bored by her mane hanging towards the top of her helmet. “Test sequence completed,” Chrysalis reported. “Closing out Mission Five in stable condition, no leaks in pod, awaiting recovery.” And now, finally, a tiny bit of emotion crept into her voice; annoyance. “No rush.”

MISSION 5 REPORT

Mission summary: Fly over and observe underwater formations near new launch site (leftover from previous mission); observe characteristics of new “Swivel” liquid engine when submerged.
Pilot: Chrysalis

Flight duration: 1 min. 55 sec.
Maximum speed achieved: 319 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 2384 m
Distance downrange at landing: 10.5 km

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: New land distance record

Conclusions from flight: If anything has demonstrated the uselessness and danger of the Flea as a main propulsion system, this is it. We weren’t even close to our target drop zone. The only part of this flight that worked well, aside from the pilot not dying, was the Swivel engine function test. No more flights until we get better engines!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: FAILURE

The recovery team had had to call for reinforcements from the base, very nearly all the changelings on site. Eventually, with an effort that left them exhausted after the twenty-one kilometer round trip, the Thing sat on dry land beside the VAB’s storage wing, and Chrysalis stood next to it, helmet off, demonstrating her calmness and control for all to see.

Cherry Berry was doing her best as she came out of the mission control shack, but every changeling could feel the rage boiling off of her even if, outwardly, she schooled her face to mild annoyance, her walk to a slow, casual pace. She waited until she was close enough for polite conversation to speak. “Changelings and gentlemares,” she said, “might Queen Chrysalis and I have a moment of privacy?”

The changelings, tuned in like no other species on Equus to empathic senses, heard this as: Clear out or I will tear your heads off. They all complied without argument.

Once out of earshot of the others, Cherry said, “Fine. You got your way. You got your flight. You burned five Fleas we could have sold. And you almost killed yourself four times over,” Cherry Berry drew a line in the dirt. “Engine overheating could have caused an explosion, since your design left little room for the central engine to lose excess heat.”

A second line next to the first. “Your angle of flight left you dangerously low at final burnout, leaving you in danger of hitting the water while under power or before the parachutes could deploy.”

A third line joined the other two. “You waited too long to open the parachutes, risking their not opening in time to slow you for splashdown.”

A fourth line finished the group. “And finally, the parachute configuration could have entangled, collapsing the chutes, leaving you to fall to the water below.”

Cherry Berry, putting her hoof back down, glared up at Chrysalis. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I say,” Chrysalis said, unflappable in victory, “that I broke a new land distance record. The ten-kilometer benchmark means we can expect a check from the Royal Astronomical Society in the near future.” A tiny smile crept onto her face as she added, “And if I’d had ten seconds more thrust, I could have pulled that nose up.”

Having said her piece, she walked past Cherry Berry. “I’m going to the admin building to undress,” she said without looking back. “I’d prefer to be alone for that.”

Cherry Berry couldn’t hold in her anger. “RRRGH!” she growled. “Is this about proving you’re a pilot? Is that it? Well, you’re a pilot!” She stamped a hoof in impotent rage. “You’re a bucking pilot! Now quit trying to prove it!”

Chrysalis paused in her walk. “Damn straight I am,” she said. And then she resumed her walk, calm, cool, collected, opening the admin building door with her magic, stepping into the portable building, and closing it behind her.

Only alone among the deserted desks, with the door locked, did she allow herself to slowly flop over onto her side.

A few seconds later she curled up into a fetal ball as the shakes began.

The doorknob rattled. A moment later a key slid into the knob, unlocked the door, and opened it. “Your Majesty,” Occupant said, “I brought you the after-mission report forms-“

Chrysalis raised her head from the floor and gave a savage hiss.

“Celestia- no, Luna- Faust- I mean I’ll come back later!” The door slammed shut, and the rapid hum of frantically beating changeling wings rapidly diminished to silence.

With a flicker of green magic Chrysalis locked the door again and returned to her long overdue attack of nerves.

Author's Note

Ah, professionalism versus pride, or Chryssy demonstrating she can be just as much of a dunderhead as her subjects sometimes.

At first this whole chapters was going to be about what the other space programs were doing. Then I got bored and decided, "No, I want to fly missions, dammit." So, since unlike in KSP building things actually requires time, more missions for this chapter meant at least one more round with the Flea engine. And I tried my best with multiple engines, only to prove that Nosecones Are Important.

(There used to be a thing called Destructive Staging; stack a bunch of solid boosters on top of one another, and light them off, one at a time. As the next higher booster burns, it overheats and blows up the one below it. However, in update 1.1 KP dialed back heat effects a lot- more on that in future chapters- with the result that Flea #2 will require three-quarters of its burn to build up enough heat to pop Flea #1. That route was closed to me, doubly so since even Chrysalis would think twice about deliberately blowing up parts of her own ship.)

I flew the missions first, before I began any writing except in my head. I flew Mission 4 in a separate save file first, to make sure the thing would be controllable at all, before the actual runthrough. Mission 5 ran first off in the main CSM game file, without a hitch... but.

By request of several of you, I wanted to put screen caps into the story as the ships get away from the universal first rocket design of KSP. Problem: it's difficult to both fly the mission and pick the right time to hit the "print screen" key on the keyboard. And then I have to pause the game to go into a graphics program, paste the screen cap, and save the file. Which means errors creep into the flying and the screen-capping both.

It took five iterations of Mission 5 to get the shots I wanted. Three of those five flights would have resulted in a dead pilot. Once I activated the second set of rockets, the ship wanted nothing more than to go swimming, which meant the survivability of the flight depended entirely on how much altitude I'd gained with the first two engines.

I could play Stupid Rocket Tricks, I suppose, but the CSP wouldn't at this point. Chrysalis got her redemption (and her nightmare fuel). Cherry wants the Flea liquidated.

And next chapter, she gets her wish. von Brawn's new brainstorms bear fruit, as does Goddard's secret plan. And changelings encounter cute little fuel tanks... surely nothing bad can come of this.

Side note: I only was able to write this fast because of downtime from my work selling things at conventions. That downtime is over; I have a convention this weekend, and then at least three in a row beginning Memorial Day weekend, and then more over the summer. That means my writing speed on this project is going to slow way down- especially since I have other creative tasks that need doing.

So please be patient; more will be forthcoming, if for no other reason than I want to play KSP and don't want to do it without advancing this story...

Chapter 7: Missions 6, 7 and 8: Exemplary Geniuses Making a Big Mess

Warner von Brawn, Cherry Berry and Chrysalis sat in a row in the press-VIP balcony overlooking Cape Friendship’s mission control room, each thinking the same thing: I covet my neighbor’s Mission Control building.

Compared to the plush pony digs, the Changeling Space Program’s mission control facility was a shack- literally a portable shack on skids. True to her promise, Chrysalis had released funds for construction on the Changeling Space Program’s new permanent mission control ahead of schedule, but it wouldn’t be finished for at least a month. Even when it was finally finished, it wouldn’t be nearly as nice as the warm, comfortable, well-lit control room with its large visitor’s gallery.(78) Instead of desks thrown together at random, there were neat rows of workstations, each pony having their own personal illusion projection tweaked to focus on their particular jobs.(79)

The working environment likewise made all three CSP leaders present- Cherry Berry, Chrysalis, Warner von Brawn- jealous. Unlike the sometimes fractious, more often professional-acquaintances-nothing-more attitude at CSP, the ponies of the Equestria Space Agency were all friends, and mostly very close friends. Necessity had forced the ponies to adopt a system somewhat similar to CSP’s, but the goodwill all around made many of the particulars very different indeed.

Compared to this, the current working relationship at CSP seemed…

Fraught.

It was an unusual, seldom-used word that never meant anything good, but Cherry Berry thought it fit the mood in the Changeling Space Program after Chrysalis’s almost disastrous flight.

She couldn’t figure out what the mood was fraught with. Anything fraught had to be fraught with something. You couldn’t just be fraught. Maybe you could be fraught with fraughtedness, but Cherry didn’t think that was it.

After the event, opinion of Queen Chrysalis’s flight split into two camps. The non-changelings thought it had been a reckless fit of vanity, and that was all. The changelings, on the other hand, couldn’t stop chittering about how brave and calm their queen was in the face of almost certain death. The fact that she’d put herself in a position of almost certain death didn’t bother them at all. That was a changeling’s life. That was a queen changeling’s job description, in fact.

But if Chrysalis noticed that her subjects regarded her with a little more affection and loyalty, she didn’t show it. In fact, for a couple of weeks after that flight, she didn’t show much of anything. She stayed in the same professional-pilot mode all the time. To Cherry’s mind that wasn’t healthy. Pilots needed to be able to relax.

Cherry Berry had originally intended to discipline her rebellious boss by assigning extra simulations and training. That fell apart when Chrysalis beat her to it, demanding more training and more intense simulations. For two weeks thereafter the queen threw herself into the work of becoming an astronaut like she’d never done before. Her demands for drop training of the space capsule, more time in the centrifuge, and other physical challenges pushed what even Cherry, flight obsessed as she was, considered the limits of sanity.

Finally, after noticing the holes in Chrysalis’s legs growing larger from lack of feeding, Cherry Berry used the upcoming transfer of training equipment from the hive to the space center as an excuse to declare a moratorium on all training. She then browbeat the queen into going out and doing whatever she needed to do to feed herself back up to training weight. Chrysalis disappeared for a week, during which reclusive wealthy socialite Cool Drink appeared in Las Pegasus and provided the tabloid press with enough material for weeks of supermarket reading.

And then Chrysalis turned up at the new space center in Horseton, personally supervising the assembly of the simulators, checking off the final stages of construction on the vehicle assembly building and tracking centers, and working off whatever weight she’d managed to gain from the shallow love of Las Pegasus’s elite.

She’d even begun actually studying the chemistry behind the rocket engines. That shocked Cherry worse than anything else. Chrysalis hated the scientific details of the space program. Learning from a book bored her to tears. (That is, any book that didn't have Daring Do or a mare with her blouse half ripped off on the cover.)

And then, just when Cherry was seriously beginning to worry about a royal nervous breakdown, the invitation from Twilight Sparkle to the Equestrian Space Agency’s next launch arrived. That took everypony’s mind off the previous flight and Chrysalis’s mental state, to Cherry Berry’s intense relief.

Now, in the comfort of the padded chair with a pegasus-eye view of the upcoming launch, she pulled a small basket of cherries out of her saddlebag and settled back to enjoy the show. I’ve had a tense month, she thought. Now I am going to relax, and no temperamental changeling queen is going to ruin it for me.

Meanwhile, next to her, the changeling queen in question sat stoically on her chair and tried to pretend she wasn’t jealous of the currently absent pony princess and her friends.

“Dash, you all right in there?” Applejack served as both mission planner and capsule communicator, although the ponies had not yet seen the need for strict control of the communications channel through the telepresence spell between pilot and ground.(80)

“Yeah, of course I’m all right,” Rainbow Dash said from the cockpit. “Are we ready to light this thing yet?”

“Hold on there,” Applejack said. “We’re waitin’ on confirmation of th’ retrieval team bein’ in position.”

“Well, tell ‘em to hurry up!” Dash replied. “I’m ready to be awesome!”

Good-natured laughter rang around the mission control room, of a kind which never happened at CSP.

A pony sat down next to Chrysalis. The changeling queen glanced over to see Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and head of the ESA, letting out a sigh of relief. “I finally got the press set up on the roof,” she said. “You’d think an hour doing nothing but taking photos of the two of us would be enough.”

“Pony world problems,” Chrysalis muttered.(81)

“By the way,” Twilight murmured, “thank you for recommending me to Ad Astra.” She gestured to the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society observer, who had taken a seat in the back row of the mission control workstations. “I found her counterfactual scenarios interesting.” After a pause she continued, voice unchanged, “I would have found them more interesting without the illustrations.”

“Once seen, never forgotten,” Chrysalis agreed.

“Luna is beginning to complain,” Twilight added, her tone taking just the slightest measure of accusation, “about all the magical cockroach monsters she’s had to remove from my nightmares.”

“So, what are your contracts for this mission?” Chrysalis asked innocently.

“Hm? Oh, no contracts,” Twilight said. “This is a purely experimental flight. We’re reproducing CSP’s Mission Four with hemispherical nose cones added to the outboard Flea engines.” Now her voice oozed smugness. “A development made possible by the wind tunnel in our expanded research and development department, headed by my student Starlight Glimmer.”

“I’m sure Dr. von Brawn’s assistants-“

“Partners,” von Brawn rumbled, not sounding particularly offended.

“-and my changelings will enjoy seeing it on the tour,” Chrysalis continued. “But toys aren’t everything, my dear.” Chrysalis had expected a game of one-upsmareship with the princess, and she had come with a full arsenal. “We’ve just finished construction on our tracking station and our vehicle assembly building, so in the next week or two we’ll begin test launches of several new engine systems. Doctor, the briefing materials?”

Von Brawn reached into Cherry Berry’s saddlebags(82) and pulled out a small binder, which he offered to the princess. Twilight took it with her magic, opened it, and flipped past the abstract to the illustrations. “Two liquid fuel systems?” she asked.

“Goddard the Griffon’s first fruits,” Chrysalis replied. “His ‘Reliant’ design is his first full-size production engine. The ‘Swivel’ has a bit less thrust and weighs more, but it can be steered, providing for greater maneuverability in flight.”

Twilight turned a page. “And these must be the fuel tanks?”

“Two different sizes depending on your needs,” Chrysalis agreed. “All perfectly interlocking for simple assembly, using a fuel-oxidant dual-liquid propellant.”(83)

“This is fascinating!” Twilight Sparkle gasped. “If these numbers are correct, even the less powerful of these two engines produces more thrust than the Flea!”

“The Flea,” von Brawn rumbled, “was never meant to be anything more than a disposable(84) engine to be used only for brief flight tests. Dr. Goddard’s engines can be provided with as much or as little fuel as one wishes and can be throttled up or down- their speed and fuel consumption controlled, as is impossible with solid fuel motors.”

“Fascinating,” Twilight Sparkle repeated.

“We’re also working on larger solid rockets to use as boosters,” von Brawn said, “much like the two outboard engines on your current launch. One is already in production, and another-“

“Shh!” Cherry Berry spoke up, nudging the changeling queen on one side and the minotaur on the other. “Soarin’ just flew in! The Wonderbolts must finally be in position.” She tossed her empty carton of cherries and pulled another carton out of her saddlebag. “Looks like we’re about to have a show!”

“And I suppose my subjects are going to miss it,” Chrysalis muttered.

“I’m sure they’re enjoying their tour with Fluttershy,” Twilight Sparkle remarked coldly.

Footnotes:

(78) For one thing, the CSP mission control didn’t have a visitor’s gallery at all. It took Cherry Berry hours to convince Chrysalis that she needed someplace to put VIPs, Twilight Sparkle for example, when they returned the visits CSP personnel had taken to shamelessly spy on the other space programs.

(79) CSP used a jumble of tables and desks, all sharing the single huge telepresence display, and mainly working with paper and pencil. Occupant in particular was complaining about the effect pencil shavings had on his stomach.

(80) Although loud simultaneous shouting arguments were not unknown among ponies, they were nothing like as common as among changelings, never mind the multi-species CSP. In the absence of a queen to tell them to cut it out, changeling arguments could last all day, mutate from one dispute to another, and totally switch arguing positions in the process. This common experience gives changelings in general a profound insight into the value of peace and quiet.

(81) Despite the program’s achievements, the Equestrian press had chosen not to pay a visit to either the hive or the still-under-construction Horseton Space Center… except for the Manehattan Weekly Supermarket Snoop, whose reporter had been stuck in a pod and mailed back to Manehattan labeled RETURN TO SENDER, DELIVERY REFUSED. The writer, once released by her editor, had written an article about her visit entitled SEVEN SURE-FIRE WAYS TO MAKE YOURSELF UNAPPETIZING TO CHANGELINGS.

(82) He had to dig under several baskets of cherries to get to them. Cherry intended to do absolutely nothing except watch the flight, and she had come prepared with her favorite snack.

(83) Chrysalis had memorized the terms in training. She'd only learned what they actually meant in the previous week or so. Still, she could rattle the words off on command, and that was what counted now.

(84) Chrysalis reflected, not for the first time, how difficult it was proving to dispose of the vast number of engines the minotaurs had built before she bought them out. Another couple of months might do it, at current sales and consumption rates. And the engines which had come home were being reconditioned and refueled for reuse or resale, so more than likely they’d never run out.

The Equestrian Space Agency had been shocked, not to say appalled, when they received Changeling Space Program’s RSVP for one hundred and fourteen guest passes. The number of non-changeling members of the CSA was well known, so very elementary math showed the vast majority of the passes would be for changelings.

But ESA had announced the flight, and they couldn't say no now. CSP’s construction workers were due a couple of days off, partly due to the highest-priority buildings having been completed, partly due to the three solid days of rain that Eye Wall had insisted on bringing to the Muck Lake(85) area. Given the combination of factors, Chrysalis had decided to give the changelings working at the space center a break, chartering a barge to carry every single employee north to Baltimare. They arrived in the evening, giving the citizens of the fair city on the bay a night they would never forget.

The world had seen changeling infiltration, changeling subversion and changeling invasion, but ponies simply didn’t know how to deal with changeling tourists.(86) In the battle which followed many a roll of film was shot, many restaurants and theaters were conquered, and the casualty list filled the floors of the harbor’s watering holes.

Baltimare survived the night with only a couple of minor legal entanglements(87), and the next morning all of the changelings arrived at Cape Friendship, a considerable majority of them wearing I HEART BALTIMARE shirts or caps,(88) all with fresh rolls of film in their cameras. In their wake came dozens of reporter ponies plus a newsgriffon, some following up on “Changeling Gras”, some having heard of the meeting between Queen Chrysalis and Princess Twilight Sparkle, and some just showing up for the launch without having heard of the one hundred and fourteen surplus visitors.

Chrysalis and Twilight, wanting to be able to speak to one another on business at some point during the day, sent most of the changelings, plus three minotaurs, on a tour of the ESA facility led by backup pilot Fluttershy(89). The tour had been most successful, from mission control to Astronaut Village to the vast recovery-airship hangar to the tracking station.

And then came the research and development facilities, which Fluttershy had expected would be the most uninteresting to the changelings. The three minotaurs, having their own labs, only asked a few questions which Fluttershy couldn’t answer before observing in silence. The changelings, however, poked and prodded at almost everything, asking question after question until Fluttershy was ready to scream.

It was Dragonfly who first noticed The Thing.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a large glass-walled chamber with a large control panel in front.

“Oh, that’s our wind tunnel,” Fluttershy said. “Using those controls we create strong winds that create the conditions of high-speed flight. By using models of our ships and smoke streams, we can see how air currents affect our spaceships and adjust our designs to make them more aerodynamic.”

One changeling raised its hoof. “What’s aerodynamic?” he asked.

“Able to fly better,” Fluttershy said.

Stinger Charlie nudged Dragonfly. “I’m more aerodynamic than you,” he said.

“You know you’re not,” Dragonfly snapped.

“Am too,” Stinger Charlie said.

“Which one of us is a pilot,” Dragonfly hissed, “and which one is ground crew and recovery team?”

“Which one of us,” Stinger Charlie snapped back, “is a pilot who’s never flown a rocket yet?”

Dragonfly’s eyes narrowed. “Right, that’s it,” she said. “I’ll show you who’s more aerodynamic. Miss Fluttershy, how do you work this thing?”

“Er,” Fluttershy mumbled in a very definite way. “I, um, don’t think we should play with the wind tunnel… if you don’t mind…”

“Actually,” one of the minotaurs, George Cowley, interrupted, “I should be extremely interested to see this machine in action. Would it do any harm to changelings?”

“Well, not at relatively low speeds,” Fluttershy admitted, “so long as the wind strength never goes higher than terminal velocity.”

“Ah, yes,” Cowley nodded sagely. “A wind stronger than the air pressure of terminal velocity would slam the changeling into a wall, wouldn’t it? Very well,” he said, looking at the controls, “I see no reason why we could not give it a try.”

“Um… I don’t know about this…” Fluttershy muttered, shifting uncomfortably on her hooves.

Footnotes:

(85) The name the villagers of Horseton gave the tidal inlet that ran next to the rapidly arising space center.

(86) And thanks to paychecks from Chrysalis and a bit of generosity from casino part-owner Lucky Cricket, the changeling tourists had come bearing money and an inclination to spend it. This made the mental adjustment in pony merchants’ minds considerably smoother than it might have been otherwise, particularly when it was discovered that your average changeling has much less spending discipline than your average pony.

(87) Chrysalis was not amused by the changelings who claimed their capture of a newlywed couple was merely for sport. Even less amused was Twilight Sparkle, who explained with more patience than was probably justified that Equestrian laws on kidnapping did not include exceptions for “catch and release.”

(88) One very fast-moving souvenir vendor had managed to get I CHANGELING BALTIMARE in print in time for some of the CSP workers to snag that as well. Dragonfly wore I HEART on a cap and I CHANGELING on a shirt. However, the vendor ended up selling a lot more of his new design to Baltimare natives than to any changelings.

(89) Who told them they would only get to visit the gift shop if they were very, very good for the rest of the tour.

“… and we have splashdown! Splashdown at nine point nine kilometers downrange!”

The ponies in mission control cheered and danced around as if they’d all drawn the winning number in a Los Pegasus lottery. Chrysalis snorted. “Unprofessional,” she muttered.

“Oh, lighten up,” Cherry Berry grinned. “We’re ponies. We do things like that.”

“Don’t remind me.” Chrysalis turned her attention to Twilight Sparkle, who was scribbling like mad on a notepad. The pencil held in her magic danced down one page (flip) and up the other (flip).

“Hey, guys!” Rainbow Dash’s voice called over the illusion. “Capsule’s secure here. Ya wanna tell me how I did?”

“Max’mum velocity five ought seven meters a’second,” Big MacIntosh replied. “Altitude topped out at fifty-one hundred forty-two meters.”

“Hey, yeah!” Rainbow Dash laughed. “And almost ten kilometers downrange! That makes me twenty percent better than Cherry Berry!”

“Rainbow Dash, don’t you be like that!” Applejack replied. “Stick to yer own knittin’ an’ don’t mind what other ponies are doin’!”

Up in the visitor’s balcony Chrysalis leaned over to mutter to Cherry Berry, “Doesn’t that upset you? Her, gloating over her victory?”

“Our race is to the moon,” Cherry Berry said, not bothering to mutter. “We’re going to take back the lead as soon as these new engines come into play.”

Chrysalis noticed Twilight Sparkle’s scribbling accelerate slightly, but said nothing.

Back on the illusion, Rainbow Dash said, “Hey, Spitfire’s hooking up the lift cable now. Gotta go, see you back at base in fifteen!” Almost as soon as she spoke, the illusion flickered and died as the capsule shut down.

“Why don’t we go congratulate Rainbow Dash?” Cherry Berry asked. “That flight was almost perfect!”

Chrysalis shrugged and nodded agreement(90).

“For my part,” von Brawn said, “I shall investigate the vehicle assembly building. I might pick up more inspiration for new rocket designs.”

“Very well, Doctor.” Twilight’s smile as she turned her attention to the other two guests seemed, to Chrysalis’s eyes, a little forced. “Shall we go to the yard?” she asked, gesturing to the door with one hoof.

Of course Fluttershy chose that moment to barge into the door, screaming, “Twilight! Twilight!” before stopping and freezing at all the faces turned her way. “Er… um… I… have a minor… a teensy weensy little issue with the… er… thingy,” she whispered, trailing off to nothing under Chrysalis’s gaze.

The changeling queen sighed. “Have my subjects done something foolish again?” she asked.

“Oh, no!” Fluttershy denied. Then, “Well, maybe. Yes. But just a little.”

“Because of course they did,” Chrysalis grumbled.(91) “Your Highness, would you like me to accompany you?”

“I’m sure this is nothing that can’t be straightened out,” Twilight Sparkle said, her smile containing a definite grit-teeth component. “You and Cherry Berry go say hello to Rainbow Dash, and I’ll straighten this out myself.”

As Chrysalis and Cherry Berry watched Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle leave, Cherry asked, “Why didn’t Twilight want you with her? Doesn’t she need you to give orders to the others?”

“If she has any good sense,” Chrysalis muttered, “she senses a trap. She thinks she can handle a hundred changelings, but not if I’m in the fight myself.” She shrugged. “Bad Idea #717; False Peace Negotiations Kidnapping. I could make it work up until the point I had Sparkle in a pod, but that leaves three very angry alicorns unaccounted for. A tactically deficient(92) position, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Cherry Berry considered this, then shrugged. “So long as you think she can handle it,” Cherry said. “Let’s go see the capsule retrieval.”

Footnotes:

(90) Chrysalis didn’t feel like breaking her Professional Pilot façade. Also, whining, “Do I haaave to?” is not a thing a powerful changeling queen does, as her late mother had reminded her time and time again.

(91) Not every changeling can be a successful infiltrator, and CSP’s staff were mainly drawn from those who weren’t, but even so Chrysalis believed that being out in the open caused her subjects to lose the little discretion they ever had. Yet another reason, she believed, that secrecy was better for changelingkind, at least until she succeeded in her conquest of the ponies.

(92) “tactically deficient,” adj. Describing a position you’ve put yourself in by choice, from which there is no possible happy outcome. Synonyms: “doomed,” “totally bucked,” and “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The first thing Twilight noticed was the lone changeling sitting at a table with a stack of books. The changeling was reading, with every sign of enjoyment, Elementary Principles of Non-Magical Physics. As Fluttershy and Twilight stared, the changeling slowly turned a page, oblivious to their presence.

This was remarkable only partly for the inherent discontinuity of a changeling reading books(93). What made the tableau truly compelling was how the changeling, lost in a young readers’ textbook, completely ignored the commotion in the room next door.

The roaring wind noises and the happy chittering and laughter of changelings required quite a lot of ignoring.

Fluttershy led Twilight into the wind tunnel chamber. Most of the changelings were standing in single file, eagerly waiting their own turn in the chamber. Cowley the minotaur had found out how to switch the tunnel from horizontal to vertical blow and had generated a massive updraft, inside which about a dozen changelings tumbled, hovered, and roughhorsed with obvious glee. A group of changelings assisted those exiting the chamber, some of whom were a bit motion-sick as they readjusted to the outside. Dragonfly, Stinger Charlie, and a few of the strongest flyers among the changelings had taken printouts of their own time in the chamber and were comparing notes, each defending particular qualities of their bodies which made their particular flying styles better.

And then there was the one responsible changeling in the room, Occupant, who far from stopping the madness was quite cheerfully metering the line, letting one changeling into the wind tunnel as another tumbled out.(94)

“I tried to tell them to stop,” Fluttershy whimpered. “I asked most politely. But they were having so much fun, and… well…”

“I understand,” Twilight said, walking over to the responsible changeling(95), intent on bringing the shenanigans to an end. Scientific equipment was not meant to be used as a toy, no matter how good it was at keeping lots of changelings out of more serious trouble.

And just as Occupant noticed her, his ear-fins drooping sadly, something in the back of Twilight Sparkle’s brain made her pause.

She shifted her right wing, where she held the briefing binder on upcoming CSP rocket technology, with its wonderful rockets and things and stuff that all required testing.

And then Twilight Sparkle had an Idea.

An awful idea.

Twilight Sparkle had a WONDERFUL awful idea.

“Aww,” Occupant moaned, “I kind of expected Uncle Pointy would make a lousy scout.”

The changeling at the front of the line sighed, “Does this mean we don’t get to visit the gift shop?”

“Actually,” Twilight Sparkle drawled, choosing her words carefully, “I just came to remind you that the gift shop will be closing soon, so you need to get over there to get your souvenirs.”

“YAAAAAAY!” Dozens of changelings flocked next to a startled Fluttershy.

“Now, Fluttershy will take everypony to the gift shop,” Twilight continued, “while I talk with Mr. Occupant about maybe… just maybe… getting you all a wind tunnel of your own?”

“YAAAAAAY!!!”

With cheering and shouting and laughter the crowd of changelings gradually exited the wind tunnel room, with Cowley shutting down the wind tunnel and shooing out the last few lingering changelings. Trailing along behind, holding a book in one hoof while carrying the others in his magic, Uncle Pointy the changeling scout followed.

“Do you really mean it?” Occupant asked. “A wind tunnel of our very own?”

“Sure!” Twilight Sparkle said, smiling in a most friendly fashion. “All you have to do is perform a few special tests…”

Footnotes:

(93) This is unfair to changelings, most of whom are literate and many of whom enjoy the occasional good book. Just because they are magical monsters dedicated to world conquest and draining emotions out of victims does not mean they are all mindless, uncultured brutes. Their love of professional pegasus wrestling should not be held against them, as they follow the sport “only for the story.”

(94) Occupant has been the test changeling, had taken a good long turn while Cowley learned the controls, and was content to keep things orderly so that everyling could have a turn in the Fun Machine.

(95) Twilight was SO grateful for Occupant’s buck teeth. She didn’t want to admit that all changelings looked the same to her. Yes, they tried to conquer Canterlot, ruin her brother’s wedding, and kill her friends, but that didn’t excuse a pony being speciesist.

“…so the secret,” Rainbow Dash said, thoroughly enjoying the attention of the press and particularly of Chrysalis and Cherry Berry, “is not to try to make any hard turns. You have to think ahead in rocket flight and make only little, careful adjustments. If you try to make a hard turn when you’re going that fast you’re only going to lose control. Little adjustments, that’s the key.”

“I’ve noticed the exact same thing,” Cherry Berry agreed. “But it’s not just about little adjustments. You have to get it in your head that you can’t make hard turns in a rocket. It’s all about carried momentum. You can’t make a tight turn without slowing down, and if you do slow down you’ve wasted the fuel you used to get that fast.”

Rainbow Dash spared a half-second glare for Cherry Berry before continuing, “That’s right. You really have to think ahead if you want to fly a rocket.”

Twilight Sparkle walked up to the group of reporters surrounding the pilots. Occupant trailed along behind, looking considerably worried. “Thanks for coming, everypony,” she said, “but I’m afraid we need Dashie for her mission debriefing, and we need to get to work reconditioning the rocket, so it’s time for you all to go.”

This announcement was greeted with the usual grumbling by the press corps, which always wants a few minutes longer for a celebrity to hopefully say something embarrassing.

“But before you go, I have an announcement,” Twilight Sparkle continued. “I’ve been speaking with Mr. Occupant, the changeling who plans the missions for the Changeling Space Program, and he’s agreed to launch a special test rocket for ESA a week from tomorrow!”

“WHAT??”

Every eye turned to Chrysalis. Two dozen pencils hovered or waggled at the ready over blank notebook pages.

The changeling queen, political survival sense kicking into high gear, continued with barely a pause, “Your Highness, we had intended to wait for the regional weather schedule to be confirmed before making the announcement! We don’t want to inconvenience the busy, hardworking weatherponies, after all!”

“Oh, you’re totally right!” Twilight Sparkle replied. “I’ll have to talk it over with the pony in charge there and adjust the schedule to make sure launch day is clear.”

“Er… we’ll want two days clear, actually,” Chrysalis improvised. Eye Wall would grudgingly agree to a one-day change in schedule, but surely never two, the stubborn, overbearing… “You never know when a technical glitch can tie things up for hours.”

“Oh, I agree!” Twilight Sparkle nodded. “I’m sure it’ll be no trouble. I’ll take care of it personally.”

Chrysalis glared at Occupant, who wouldn’t return her gaze. “Then I shall see you in eight days,” she said, accepting defeat. “Meanwhile, my staff must return to Baltimare for the evening. We have to take ship back to our space center early in the morning, after all.”

“Actually-“

Chrysalis plowed forward over Twilight Sparkle’s objections. “I’m sure you’ve arranged for the merchants of Baltimare to show us more of their world-renowned hospitality,” she said, “which of course we shall return to those ponies joining us at the special launch. Surely Mr. Occupant reminded you of that during your… negotiations?”

Occupant looked like he wanted to bury himself. At that moment Chrysalis would have been delighted to help with the digging.

“Er… sure he did!” Twilight replied. Chrysalis noticed the alicorn beginning to sweat, holding her smile in place by force of will.

Suffer, pony, Chrysalis thought. You’re much less experienced at this kind of negotiation than I am. You only win this round because you got to someone even less experienced who I can’t publicly undermine.

But when I get you in private, Occupant…

“Excuse me.” Cherry Berry spoke up, breaking the tense tableau. “But as the pony who will fly this special launch, I need to take Occupant aside and discuss the mission goals and procedures.” The earth pony, Chrysalis noted, had an advantage; as a pilot with serious business ahead, rather than a political figure, she didn’t have to keep smiling. And she wasn’t even trying to.

In fact, Chrysalis thought, based on that glare she might actually be angrier with my little changeling than I am. I might need to go along and protect him…

… at least to make sure there are enough pieces of him left for me to have my own turn at him.

“You agreed to WHAT?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Occupant bowed deeply before Cherry Berry(96). “I didn’t have a choice!”

“You didn’t have the authority!” Cherry Berry growled. “You do NOT get to accept missions without Chrysalis or myself signing off on it first!”

“I know, I know!” Occupant whimpered. “But if I said no, I’d have to tell the others that I said no to them getting a brand new Fun Machine!”

“What,” Chrysalis asked archly, “is a ‘fun machine’?”

Bit by bit Occupant managed to explain the wind tunnel and the changeling shenanigans involved. By the time he was done, Chrysalis had almost come around to his side. True, he shouldn’t have signed the contract, but he didn’t have the stature of a queen to ignore the strong desires of the hive.

Indeed, she noted as Fluttershy led the souvenir-laden(97) changeling tour towards them, even a queen defies the wishes of the hive at her own peril. Which is why I insisted on the second night in Baltimare, and why I don’t expect a copper back of all those bits I doled out as mad-money.

And the wishes of the hive were blatantly clear, since at least a quarter of the hundred-odd changelings were singing a happy little song: “We’re gonna get a fun machine, we’re gonna get a fun machine…”

“How expensive is a wind tunnel,” Chrysalis asked, “if you paid cash instead of trade?”

“Very expensive,” Cherry Berry replied. “I’ve never heard of one outside of Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or the Wonderbolts training camp before.”

“Oh,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Wonderful.”

Footnotes:

(96) Technically this was lese majeste, bowing to a common pony in the presence of his rightful queen, but Chrysalis was willing to let it slide. For one thing, she had put Cherry Berry in overall charge of the program. For another… she didn’t want to be on the wrong end of that glare herself. The gentle, happy-go-lucky pony could be terrifying when someone got between her and cherries, or between her and a safe flight.

(97) When Filthy Rich saw the sales totals from his licensed gift shop for the day, he would be delighted. Most notably, Uncle Pointy had quietly purchased one of each book on the gift shop shelves, including the newly released “Daring Do and the Crystal Comet,” written by Reserve Pilot A. K. Yearling, ESA.

Looking back, all involved were grateful that none of them had uttered the words, “How hard can it be?” The answer, as it turned out when they examined the contracts, was, “very.”

The main contract was subdivided into three separate contracts with a codicil. The separate contracts, in more or less order, were: (1) Fly a parachute up to between 4,000 and 7,000 meters, at a speed between 130 and 210 meters per second; (2) Fly a Flea booster up, holding between 460 and 540 meters per second between 12,000 and 18,000 meters; and (3) fire one of the new Hammer boosters at 16,000 meters at a minimum starting velocity of 440 meters per second. The codicil required that all three tests be performed on the same rocket, on a certain date, said rocket also to include both a Reliant and a Swivel liquid-fuel engine. The individual contracts were still valid after the date, but if any of the tests failed, or if the changelings simply didn’t launch, Twilight Sparkle would have the right to reclaim the wind tunnel plus a very substantial penalty payment.

Chrysalis and Occupant both did the math, and then they called George Bull in to check their sums. Looking at the final sum, Chrysalis said, “This could break us, you know.”

“I’m trying not to think about that,” Cherry Berry said, looking at the same numbers. “This is like a win-win for Twilight, if you think she’s evil enough to want to bankrupt us.”

“She might be,” Chrysalis said, “but she’s not competent enough. I think she just saw a way to get us to do a test flight for her, and she got carried away with herself.”

“Going three times as high as we’ve ever gone before is a bit more than just carried away!” Cherry Berry said.

“Depends on whether the buzzard’s new engines perform as advertised,” Chrysalis replied.

And if failing the flight didn’t break the Changeling Hive, the rush to get some minimum level of hospitality in place for the press and pony dignitaries might. Horseton’s hotel rooms were confined to the upper story of the general store(98). The space program was still working out of the temporary shack. There was no gift shop or anything even remotely resembling entertainment for visitors. All these things had to be remedied in less than a week.

Fortunately for them, as Chrysalis pointed out, the changelings had a major advantage: overwhelming free labor. Three hundred more changelings were temporarily transferred from the hive to join the now semi-skilled construction changelings on-site.(99) Top priority was given to expanding and finishing the new mission control building, with the temporary building to be converted into the new gift shop. Second priority would go to getting the astronaut training center far enough along to allow ponies to use it as a temporary hotel. Workers and building materials were pulled off the research center, the administration building, and the hangar.

Reserve funds were tapped to buy additional building materials, which arrived on the same barges that brought a new capsule, six Hammers, three Reliants, three Swivels, and a couple dozen fuel tanks, plus one other development that Goddard and von Brawn had been cooking up together… which, Goddard explained at a meeting after he arrived at the space center, might be enough by itself to achieve the mission goals.

“What is it?” Chrysalis asked, looking at the picture of a metal ring taped to the chalkboard in the astronaut facility’s briefing room.

“This is a decoupler,” von Brawn said. “Goddard has tested the concept and found it sound, and I contracted some friends back home in the mining business to manufacture them.”

“Great. What’s a decoupler?” Chrysalis asked.

“It’s an explosive charge,” Goddard answered simply, “that separates part of the rocket from the rest of it, allowing the pilot to dump useless weight and thus fly higher and faster.”

“But there isn’t any useless weight on a rocket,” Cherry Berry said. “We make sure of that.”

“Do we?” Goddard asked. For once the old griffon seemed to smile, just a little. “Do you remember Chrysalis’s most recent flight? We staged the engines separately, trying to extend the flight time.”

“Which worked,” Chrysalis said, “even if little else did.”

“But your rocket still had to haul two burned-out engines,” Goddard said. “You could have saved about a ton of weight if you could have dropped those pods before lighting the other engines.”

“Making the rocket lighter,” Cherry Berry nodded, “which would make the thrust more efficient. Yes, I can see it.”

“And what happens to the parts that drop?” Chrysalis asked.

“What happens when anything gets dropped? It falls,” Goddard said, the smile vanishing under the influence of a Stupid Question. “And presumably goes splash or boom depending on what’s beneath it.”

“You can’t do that!” Cherry and Chrysalis said in the same breath.

“What if it drops on someone?” Cherry asked.

“How can we reuse or resell it if it breaks into a million pieces?” Chrysalis asked.

“Better them than you,” Goddard snapped, “to both of you! Once a rocket burns out, it’s useless! We can’t refuel them on the fly, they weigh down the craft and slow it down- why not get rid of it?”

“Because it costs money, that’s why!” Chrysalis shouted back.

“I know it does!” Goddard returned glare for glare. “But I’ve done the math, and that’s just what you’ll have to spend to get into space! Besides, there’s a hard limit to what we can bring down under parachutes anyway!”

“That’s what you think!” Chrysalis replied. “Dragonfly designed a new parachute that we can stick on the sides of things! Now we can put all the parachutes in the world on a ship-“

“And all that unnecessary weight slows us down!” Goddard snapped. “Detaching the used fuel tanks and engines is the only way we can reduce our fuel consumption and gain delta-V.”

“What’s delta-V?” Chrysalis asked.

Goddard looked at Cherry Berry. “Didn’t you teach this in your astronaut training?”

Cherry shrugged. “Calculating delta-V requires calculus,” she said. “I just barely got to algebra in school.”

Goddard sighed the universal sigh of all scientists being forced to explain things to the innumerate. “Delta-V is a mathematics term,” he said. “Delta being the fourth letter of the ancient minotauran alphabet, symbolizing change, and v for velocity. Two symbols.”

“Leave it to scientists,” Chrysalis grumbled, “to make up a new word for speed.”

“Acceleration,” Goddard corrected her automatically. He grabbed a piece of chalk in his talons and sketched out some equations on the chalkboard. “Since neither of you knows calculus(100), I’ll avoid differentials. But you probably know that the heavier something is, and the faster it’s going, the harder it hits, right?” He pointed to the first equation:

F = m a

“Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. Right?”

“Of course,” Chrysalis acknowledged.

“But we can tweak this equation to define acceleration,” Goddard continued, pointing to the second equation:

a=\frac{F}{m}

“Acceleration equals force divided by mass. Do I need to explain how I got here?”

“We had this much in Cherry’s pilot training,” Chrysalis said. “We also had these line drawings to show how thrusts in X and Y direction added up to going in direction Z.”

“Unfortunately that’s as far as I could go,” Cherry admitted. “I was focusing on vocabulary and theory more than math anyway.”

“I’ll keep it simple,” Goddard grumbled. “So what happens when, for example, we apply a force of ten to a mass of five. Acceleration equals two, right?” The third equation:

2 = 10 / 5.

“I see it, yes.”

“But what if we apply the same force to something with a mass of only two?” Goddard rubbed out the first number and replaced the third, leaving:

? = 10 / 2

“Ten divided by two is five,” Chrysalis said.

“Which is a lot more than two,” Goddard finished. “This is why your acceleration goes slightly up the longer your rocket burns; as you use up fuel the ship becomes a little lighter, so you get more acceleration out of your force.” He began sketching out a long equation. “This will be a long one,” he muttered as he sketched, “and bear in mind I’m simplifying down enough for that idiot Occupant to understand, never mind a queen. The actual result requires enough math that von Brawn’s crew invented a machine to do it for them.” Under his breath he grumbled, “And they always beg for more money to build a better one, Faust help us.”

“The cost of advancing technology,” von Brawn said, unruffled by Goddard’s complaint.

The final result was actually two equations:

a = \frac{f_1}{m_1} + \frac{f_2}{m_2} + \frac{f_3}{m_3}

? = \frac{18}{9} + \frac{18}{9} + \frac{9}{9}

“Now,” Goddard said, “let’s ignore the aerodynamic problems of your last flight. Five Fleas on your rocket, yes? So let’s say you launch burning two, then burning two more, and then burning the final one last. All the motors stay attached. That means the mass is constant for all three burns. Do you see it?”

“You’re not accounting for the fuel burning up and lightening the ship,” Chrysalis pointed out.

“I told you I’m simplifying,” Goddard snapped. “The chalkboard’s only so big. Anyway, we do the math and get…” He sketched out under the second equation:

2 + 2 + 1 = 5

“A total acceleration of five.”

“Five whats?”

“Just five. Simplifying.” Goddard paused to clear chalk out of his claw. “But,” he continued, using his tail to brush away the last line of math, “what if you dropped two engines each time you hit burnout? And say that two engines equals one-third of the ship’s starting mass.”

He rubbed out the nines in the second equation and rewrote it:

? = \frac{18}{9} + \frac{18}{6} + \frac{9}{3}

“At each stage after the first,” Goddard pointed out, “the ship is lighter, so the same force produces much more acceleration.”

He completed the math:

2 + 3 + 3 = 8

“Instead of five, we now have eight,” Goddard said. “A sixty percent improvement in acceleration. Imagine your last ship going sixty percent faster, higher, farther.”

Chrysalis’s face went a bit pale. “I’d rather not,” she said.

Goddard chuckled. “Fair enough. But do you see my point? More flight for less fuel. And that,” he pointed one final time to the griffon-scratches on the chalkboard, “is what the decouplers can do for us.” He smiled slightly once more as he added, “To tell the truth, I’m expecting gains of a lot more than sixty percent.”

“It’s an expensive sixty percent if we can’t recover the parts,” Chrysalis said.

“How much are you willing to spend for the moon?” Cherry asked pointedly.

“The question is,” Chrysalis said, standing up and bringing the meeting to an end, “will I spend everything and not get to the moon because my subjects fell in love with a glorified ceiling fan?”

Footnotes:

(98) All three of them. It was easy to pick out the general store in Horseton. It was the only building in the village with more than one floor.

(99) The newcomers were told about the Fun Machine, shown photos taken during the tour of Cape Friendship, and plied with descriptions of how wonderful it was to play on the wind, effortless, weightless, with no danger of going splat. The newcomers were quickly won over to the cause, and as the work hours grew long and tempers short, the motto, “Do it for the Fun Machine,” put everyling back on track.

(100) The author had differentials very briefly his last semester in high school, barely got through the lesson, and has completely forgotten how to work them since. Furthermore, he doesn’t feel like working out how to present differential equations in a text format like this one, so he is grateful to Goddard for dumbing it down enough to demonstrate the principle while yielding no actual useful numbers for flight.

Work went forward. Cherry Berry and Chrysalis tried to squeeze flight training in between interruptions for one reason after another. Blueprints needed correction. Goods for the gift shop needed purchasing(101). The carpet for the astronaut quarters spontaneously combusted on the docks. One thing after another called Cherry, Chrysalis or both away from simulations, woke them up from sleep, postponed meals.

And then there was the rocket design.

“We only need to bring the Fleas up to altitude for Princess Twilight Sparkle’s test,” von Brawn said in his briefing. “Nothing in her brief says they can’t be fired before then, so we’ll light them up for initial thrust along with the first stage engine. That will be a Swivel for extra control. The first stage should be enough at least to get enough momentum to carry the ship to altitude for the parachute check.”

Von Brawn pointed to a sketch of the proposed design. “We decouple the first stage once its fuel is exhausted and ignite the second stage, also a Swivel, which should carry the ship up to altitude for the Flea and Hammer tests. Once the Hammers light, the ship will be under tremendous acceleration, probably with reduced control as we’ve experienced in the past. For that reason I’ve added fins to the first and second stages to keep the ship going straight.

“Once the Hammers burn out,” von Brawn continued, “we decouple and ignite the Reliant final stage, which will have just enough fuel to lengthen and flatten our trajectory. At the end of this burn the ship should be very high and fast in the atmosphere, bringing into play an issue we’ve not addressed before… atmospheric friction.” Von Brawn tapped the base of the capsule. “Thanks to the changelings working for us in Appleoosa, we’ve developed a special ablative material which gradually cooks off under heat, keeping whatever’s behind it relatively cool. We’ve built shields coated with this material, and one such will be on the base of the capsule, to be uncovered by the final decoupler.”

Von Brawn addressed the other CSP leaders gravely. “All of this presumes a perfectly nominal flight,” he said. “This test flight pushes the very limits of theoretical possibility of our new technology, if it does not exceed them altogether. I cannot stress enough that any pilot error or malfunction will lead to failure of one or more of our mission goals.”

In the moment of silence that followed, Chrysalis put a hoof on Cherry Berry’s back. “Well, it’s a good thing we have the single best pilot in any space program on Equus,” she said boldly. “If anypony can do it, Cherry Berry can!”

“Sure,” Cherry Berry agreed, her voice cracking as she said it. “No pressure.”

The rocket’s final design set, the orders were given to the rocket assembly crew, and everyone moved on to the next emergency of the moment. No further thought was given to the rocket; von Brawn, Goddard, Occupant, Cherry Berry and Chrysalis all found themselves busy all hours of the day and night.

Thus, on the day before the launch, when a royal barge carrying three large white objects, obviously rocket components, pulled up to the space center’s dock, already frayed nerves frayed just a little bit more. The barge belonged to Twilight Sparkle, who had arrived unannounced, practically unescorted, and a full day early.

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry had agreed on a script for the meeting, for when the reporters were present. The script went roughly thus: Welcome, Princess Twilight Sparkle, to Horseton Space Center. Two months ago this was swampland used only for growing hay and fishing. Today we are well on the way to having the finest state-of-the-art space center on the planet. We are most pleased to show you our facilities under construction and offer you the hospitality of our newly finished astronaut training center. Would you like to see our gift shop?

The combination of short sleep, shorter nerves, and Twilight’s unannounced arrival did not so much throw out the script as use it to line the cage underneath some pony’s pet salamander.(102)

What actually happened was, before Twilight could do more than begin her own greeting, Cherry Berry pointed a hoof at the barge’s cargo and shouted in a voice full of barely controlled rage, “WHAT are THOSE?”

“Oh, those are my newest development!” Twilight half-jumped, half-glided back onto the barge, using her magic to lift and turn one of the big white drums. Doors opened, revealing a host of thingamabobs and doohickeys. “I call it the Science Jr.! It’s a remarkable advancement on your ingenious mystery goo! It performs several materials experiments at once, automatically, and then keeps them secure for return to surface!”

“Brilliant,” Cherry Berry snapped. “We’ll take some. Talk with Occupant about the details. But why did you bring three? You didn’t need three to show us.”

“Well, the thing is,” Twilight Sparkle said, grinning eagerly and apparently with no recognition of just how angry Cherry Berry was, “since you’re already launching a rocket for me tomorrow, I was thinking we could just add these to it. You know, get more done at the same time.”

“No,” Cherry Berry said. It wasn’t a growl, but it carried the same tone of concentrated back-off that an ursa minor (or even major) might have at its disposal.

Chrysalis took two careful steps away from her lead test pilot and silently prayed the barge had no cardboard boxes on board.

“Why not?” Twilight asked. “It’ll save time, and they’re lightweight- only a quarter-ton each- it’ll just need a bit more-“

“I SAID NO!!!” Without the advantage of wings the earth pony was suddenly up in the princess’s face, prodding a hoof into her chest. “I’m already going to risk my life in an overloaded rocket full of components never before tested in flight! We’re already running the ragged edge of disaster to meet your contract! We don’t even know if it’s possible for ANYPONY to achieve your demands! You’re in a position to kill this entire program if anything goes wrong tomorrow! And you come in here asking us to PUT MORE THINGS ON THE ROCKET? To make it even heavier? More complicated? More DANGEROUS??”

Green light surrounded Cherry Berry as Chrysalis pulled her lead pilot off of Twilight before things grew any worse. “Please forgive Cherry,” the changeling queen said smoothly. “We’ve been short of sleep lately, making sure everything’s ready for your test tomorrow.”

“But…” Twilight had lost her manic eagerness. It had fled from the raw fury of Cherry’s rant, leaving behind only hurt and bewilderment. “But it’s not like that at all,” she said. “I never meant to… I just wanted-“

“And I’m sure you’ll get what you wanted tomorrow,” Chrysalis finished. “But I think Cherry needs a meal, rest, and quiet. After all, she has a big day tomorrow.”

Cherry Berry, still held aloft in Chrysalis’s magic, said nothing, continuing to glare at the purple princess with fire in her eyes and righteous umbrage in her heart.

“Er… yes,” Twilight Sparkle said at last. “I suppose you’re all under a lot of pressure. I should have considered that. My apologies.” She gestured a wing to the three Science Jr's. “I’ll have the captain sail these back.”

“No, we’ll take them,” Chrysalis agreed. “We’ll put them to good use. But not on the next flight. We already have a full mission profile for that one.” Setting Cherry Berry down behind her she gestured towards the complex and said, as if the script had come off as planned, “Would you like to see our gift shop?”

Footnotes:

(101) Chrysalis had to reject a group of changelings who volunteered to be sold as “Life Size Cuddly Changeling Plushies- Scare the Monster in Your Closet Away with Brave Astro-Changelings!” That was in the File Cabinets of Stupid, #86: The Hoof That Rocks the Cradle, Variant 3.

(102) By which we do not mean newt. We mean that the paper the speech was written on would in short order be a mixture of ashes and much filthier substances, beyond all reconstitution into anything useful. Salamanders, unlike lazy unicorns, do not enjoy crossword puzzles.

The night before launch, the leaders of CSP and Twilight Sparkle were all sound asleep in the just-barely-finished astronaut quarters. The reporters, ESA observers, and others would arrive early in the morning, with launch scheduled for roughly midday. The paint was still drying inside the new Mission Control building, Occupant’s office still unfinished, the VIP balcony seats borrowed from every front porch in Horseton.(103) The only building finished in the research complex now housed the brand-new wind tunnel, which had arrived on the same barge as Twilight Sparkle and her three flying labs.(104)

With the big day in the morning, the entire space center was asleep, except for the rocket assembly crew, who had run into a major problem.

“How much does it weigh again?”

“Twenty-one tons,”

“Shoot.” Lucky Cricket paced the floor of the VAB, looking up at the many rocket components being held in place by over thirty changelings and their magic. Thirty more changelings, all trained and by now practiced in rocket assembly, waited for the word to be given before fixing the pieces in place. “We’re overweight. Badly overweight. Three tons over the maximum capacity of the launchpad.”

“But the brain-bull says we need all of it!” said Plastron, the changeling who had been put in charge of Health and Safety(105).

“Well, the launch pad won’t hold all of it!” Lucky Cricket insisted. “How can we lighten this thing?” He looked at the mission checklist. “Let’s begin with the final stage. That’s just to show we had the engine, really. It has so little fuel to begin with. Let’s cut that in half- only half-fill the tanks.”

“That doesn’t save us much,” Plastron noted.

“Right, right. We need everything in the other liquid tanks,” Lucky Cricket mumbled. “And we need the Fleas for extra thrust at the start. But the Hammers are only there for testing. Once they’re lit, the mission-critical tasks are over, and who cares where we go then?” He looked at the two big solid fuel boosters hovering overhead. “How much fuel can we remove from those without calling in von Brawn?”

“About a quarter, I think,” Plastron said. “That’s if they’re packed the same way a Flea is.”

“Right. Do it.”

The parts were lowered, the lifting changelings were given a break, and an hour was spent very carefully removing and storing solid rocket fuel.

“How much now?” Lucky Cricket asked, once the pieces were all lifted back into place.

“Still over by about half a ton,” Plastron said.

“Darn.” Lucky Cricket wasn’t an officer. He was First Alternate Pilot, which meant he had a little of the training, but no simulations, and certainly no hope of being on a flight unless something really horrible happened(106). Normally he wouldn’t even have a clipboard on his hoof; von Brawn or Cherry Berry would be holding it, giving the orders, making the decisions.

But they were all sound asleep, dead to the world, with the CSP’s most important launch to date the next day. None of them were available, not even Dragonfly, who was tasked with escorting the reporters.

Circumstances had conspired to leave Lucky Cricket in charge, which meant he had to make a decision. Something had to go, but what?

He looked at the mission checklist again. “What are those round things?” he asked. “There’s nothing in the mission about those round things.”

The four half-sphere things, two each sitting atop the Hammers and Fleas, floated up slightly, each controlled by only one changeling. “They’re hollow,” one of them said. “Dunno what they are. I think they’re just there to make the ship look pretty.”

Lucky Cricket looked at the top of one, with the sky-blue circle around the tiny white cone in the center. “Do they do anything at all?” he asked.

“They’re just hollow metal spheres,” the lifter changeling replied.

“If they don’t do anything and they take up weight,” Lucky Cricket said, “lose ‘em.”

The spheres were floated over to a corner and set down. The Hammers and Fleas floated in air, their flat tops starkly naked.

“How much now?”

“Seventeen point nine five tons,” Plastron replied.

“Thank Faust,” Lucky sighed. “At least this way we keep the fins.”

Footnotes:

(103) The ponies of Horseton believe that the occasional splinter builds character and that having one leg slightly shorter than the others just makes a chair more fun. At least, that’s what they say whenever the subject comes up of replacing the rickety, half-rotten thing on the porch with a new chair.

(104) The portable building formerly used for mission control had been converted into a combination gift shop and snack bar, run with an iron hoof by Heavy Frosting. Prominent among the T-shirt and ball cap racks was the legend, “I RODE THE FUN MACHINE AT CSP HORSETON SPACE CENTER.” Meanwhile, a speedboat was rushing through the night from Manehattan with a supply of helmets and padded jumpsuits to allow ponies to experience the glory of free-fall in air conditioned comfort.

(105) Which is to say, he was considered just responsible enough to be in charge of something, but far too incompetent to be in charge of anything important, at least by changeling standards. Thus, although he was an officer by title, he was not actually in charge in the VAB on this particular night or any other.

(106) Consider how lucky Mr. Cricket has been in the past, and then consider how significant it is that, heretofore, the horrible thing which would put him on the pilot roster has not yet happened. Obviously whatever spirit of fortune looked after this particular changeling had taken one look at a rocket, said, “Not MY boy,” and saw to the continuing good health of the regular pilots.

Morning came.

A full night’s rest had improved Cherry Berry’s mood, but only so much. Her apology to Twilight Sparkle was mumbling and sullen, though Twilight gladly accepted it and waved off any offense for the previous day’s rant. She managed to put on enough of a smile to pose in her pressure suit for the dozens of photographers and reporters who flocked in from Horseton or by boat after breakfast. The smile fled when she greeted Rainbow Dash at the docks, along with the rest of the core Equestrian space program leadership. For whatever reason Dash was still holding a grudge over Cherry Berry’s defection, and the earth pony hadn’t the energy to try to warm her up.

Photographs went on interminably, dragging well through the morning. It eventually took a score of changeling guards looking quietly menacing to get the reporters off to their special perch for the launch, allowing the royalty and the pilots to move to the VAB.

It was a short walk past the storage warehouse into the main assembly floor, but it stopped cold as soon as Chrysalis, leading the way, froze in the doorway.

“Hey, move over,” Cherry Berry grumbled, trying to push past. “I’ve got a ship to fly.” When the queen didn’t move, she put both forehooves on the queen’s rump and shoved. The queen said nothing, allowing herself to be pushed out of the way.

Then Cherry Berry saw what Chrysalis had seen, and she froze for a moment too.

The rocket rose from the VAB floor, precariously balanced on the bell of its first stage rocket like a minotaur muscle builder with size two hooves. The assembly crew, Lucky Cricket in the lead, stood by the rocket, ready to magically lift it and carry it the two miles out to the launchpad.

The vital aerodynamic nosecones were, as a Canterlot noble might say, conspicuous in their absence.

Recovering from her shock, Cherry Berry stomped across the building floor to Lucky Cricket. “Where are my aerodynamic nosecones?” she demanded.

“The what?” Lucky Cricket asked.

“I think she means the round things,” one of the other changelings said.

“Yes, the round things,” Cherry Berry acknowledged. “What did you do with them?”

“We put them back in storage,” Lucky Cricket said.

Cherry Berry’s purple-gray eyes turned red for a moment. She closed them, took several deep breaths, and continued, “And why did you do that, please?”

“The rocket was too heavy,” Lucky said. “Too much weight for the pad. We had to trim everything that wasn’t mission critical.” He gestured to the assembled rocket awaiting its pilot. “As it is, this rocket just barely comes in under the line.”

Cherry Berry’s rage faded, replaced by an all too familiar sensation. With few exceptions, panicky fear is a familiar thing among ponies, and although Cherry thought she had learned to control it, it was grabbing at her throat as she considered all the very, very bad things about this situation.

Hooves rang across the floor behind her. “Are you all right?” Chrysalis asked.

“There’s no way this rocket will make it,” Cherry Berry whispered.

“I know,” Chrysalis whispered back.

“We can’t spare time to redesign it from scratch,”

“I know that, too.”

“We’re bucked.”

“I know.”

“Think of something.”

“I’m trying!” Chrysalis’s whisper had become a hiss. “You’re the smart one, you think of something!”

“My job is flying these ships.” Cherry Berry’s reply would have done a changeling proud. “Being sneaky and underhanded is your department!”

“Are you ponies nuts?” Rainbow Dash had pushed past Twilight Sparkle to fly up to the rocket for her own inspection. Now she dropped down to the others. “You can’t let her fly this!” she shouted at Chrysalis. “It’s murder!” She turned her gaze to Cherry Berry. “It’s suicide!”

Inside Cherry Berry, pride roared up from her soul, smothered her fear, and drove it back to the shadows to whimper impotently. “Watch me,” she said. “Put me in, boys.”

“Wait,” Chrysalis said, as the changelings began to lift Cherry from the ground. The lift paused, leaving Cherry on her back, neck turned to face the changeling queen eye to eye. “Remember this, pony,” she said bluntly. “Don’t mess this up. You are not allowed to mess this up. Nopony wants a Bad Day.”

Cherry Berry, in full Professional Calm Pilot mode, nodded her head, then waved her hoof. The changelings lifted her up to the capsule, opening the hatch, sliding her in, securing the hatch tightly behind her.

“Wait, Chrysalis,” Twilight Sparkle protested, finally joining the others on the floor, “let her go! I’ll give you the wind tunnel free! You don’t have to do this!”

“On the contrary, princess,” Chrysalis hissed. “We do have to do this. You made sure this launch was announced to the world. You arranged it so that my own changelings won’t let me back down. Every pony and changeling outside this building expects a launch today. And if we don’t launch your tests, we will lose all credibility as a space program.” She stomped a hoof, adding, “Even if we try and fail, we’ll be better off than if we gave up completely!”

The queen’s green eyes looked more reptilian and unforgiving than Twilight could ever remember seeing them, as they pinned her in place. “I want you to remember this,” Chrysalis continued, “the next time you have the clever idea to try to maneuver someone else into doing something. And also remember this.” She leaned forward, horn almost touching horn, to hiss, “I already have ample reason to want revenge on you, Sparkle. If this flight costs me my top pilot, I will merely add it to the list!”

And then Chrysalis walked past Twilight, heading back towards the door. “Smiles, everyone!” she called out, sounding cheerful. “It’s a beautiful day for a launch!”

Behind her she could just hear two ponies talking.

“Are you gonna let her push you around like that?”

“I really didn’t mean for this to happen, Dash… I just hope nothing bad happens…”

For the first time in forever, Cherry Berry didn’t want to fly.

“Mission Six, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed through Cherry Berry’s helmet. “Final systems check in progress,” she said. “Stand by for go/no go on launch.”

“Mission Six standing by,” Cherry Berry said. Yeah, she added mentally, standing by. Lying on my back on top of ten separate bombs welded together in a unit which is going to do its best to kill me.

Thanks a lot, Twilight Sparkle. If I live to see you again I’m going to remind you how the road to Tartarus is paved with good intentions.

I’m riding in a ship with the same or worse aerodynamics as Mission Five with at least four times the total thrust. If something goes wrong I’ll be going fast enough to leave a crater in the ocean. If seaponies exist, they’ll be impressed by the boom.

“Mission Six, Horseton,” Chrysalis said again, breaking Cherry Berry’s morbid thoughts. “Verify checklist of flight tasks.”

Cherry Berry glanced at the chart clamped to one wall of the capsule. “Maintain velocity between one-thirty and two-ten em pee ess between four thousand and seven thousand meters altitude for parachute systems check,” she said. “Hold velocity between four hundred sixty and five hundred sixty em pee ess beginning at twelve thousand meters for Flea systems check. Test-fire Hammer booster engines at sixteen thousand meters. Evaluate efficiency and usefulness of Swivel and Reliant liquid engines. Visual inspection and reports on open sea coordinates JJ1-512, third attempt.”

Oh, and also, don’t die. That one’s important too.

“Roger, Mission Six, checklist verified,” Chrysalis said. “Verify switchover to internal capsule power and control.”

The capsule’s internal lights came on. The navigation ball lit up, the prograde and retrograde markers dancing for a moment on the ball’s surface before vanishing. The reaction wheels beneath her spun to life with a quiet whirr. “Confirmed on battery power,” Cherry Berry said. “All systems green.”

“Roger, Mission Six, stand by.”

Cherry Berry forced herself to breathe through her nose, even smiling a little bit. It’s okay, she thought. I am a top pilot. No matter how compromised this thing is, I can bring it home. If all else fails I can abort- the decouplers will let me cut the capsule away and abandon the rest of the rocket. But I’m not going to do that, because even if there’s no way in the world I can meet all the mission goals, I will still fly and land this better than anypony else could even dream of.

“Mission Six.” Chrysalis’s voice seemed to burst with confidence. “You are go for launch. Activate first stage when ready, and sweet flying.”

“Mission Six confirms go for launch,” Cherry Berry said. She knew the confidence was totally faked, but hearing it made her feel better.

She checked the staging list one more time. She set throttle to fifty percent, activated the SAS, took the flight stick under one hoof, and hit the launch switch with the other.

With the two Fleas and the Swivel firing, the rocket should have leaped off the pad. It didn’t. Cherry Berry felt the acceleration, but she’d felt more gees in her biplane in a tight turn. A glance at the speed readout above the nav ball confirmed her fears; the ship was struggling to reach a hundred meters per second in the time that previous Flea flights hit two hundred. She throttled the rocket’s liquid engine up to maximum, which helped only a little.

And all the time, as she nosed the rocket down slowly and carefully eastwards, the ship fought her. The Swivel helped, but the fins seemed to be fighting one another, producing a small roll that made steering even more difficult. The rocket shuddered as it pushed through one hundred fifty meters per second, engines roaring.

And then the Fleas burned out, exhausted, and Cherry Berry felt herself jerk forward just a bit in her harness. Aerodynamics were marginally worse this time, since none of the four solid fuel boosters even had parachutes to make a mini-nosecone. Speed fell off from one-sixty to one-twenty meters per second, where it held despite the Swivel’s being maxed out.

When the first stage’s fuel ran out, the ship had only gained fourteen hundred meters of altitude. Cherry Berry immediately hit the staging switch, feeling the soft kick of the decoupler as it severed the bolts holding the bottom fuel tank on. Immediately the slow roll stopped as the two sets of fins stopped fighting one another. She waited for the green light to indicate the second stage engine was clear of its faring, and as soon as it winked on, she triggered it, igniting another Swivel with twice as much fuel as the first.

“Second stage active,” she said, the first words she’d been able to spare since launch. “Swivel engines are responsive to both pilot and SAS controls. Impossible to judge acceleration due to aerodynamic and mission constraints.” She glanced down at the speed readout; it was climbing again, passing one-eighty slowly but inexorably.

If this mission wasn’t bucked up from the word go I’d ride this out at full throttle, she thought, but I need to hold down the speed. She slowly throttled down to about two-thirds power, which held the ship at just over two hundred meters per second. As the ship crawled upwards past three thousand meters, as the fuel readouts for the second stage shrank visibly, rapidly, like a shortcake in the presence of Pinkie Pie, she thought to herself, Of course, this thing might not even make four thousand meters in the first place.

The rocket shuddered, bucked and swayed, and Cherry did her best to hold it at sixty degrees attitude, bearing ninety degrees east. Slowly, gradually, it crawled to thirty-eight, thirty-nine… four thousand meters. As soon as the digit 4 ticked over on the altimeter, Cherry hit the switch for Twilight Sparkle’s systems test(107). When it flashed green, she said, “Parachute test successful; throttling up full burn.”

Once she did so, she glanced at the fuel remaining. Only a sliver remained on the gauge.

“Report no joy on Hammer and Flea tests,” she said, “repeat Hammer and Flea tests are scrubbed. No way I can achieve target altitudes on fuel remaining.” She reached a hoof to the staging switch, holding it above the button as she added, “Preparing to ignite Hammer boosters to extend flight to target survey zone.”

A moment later the second stage burned out. Immediately, without the control provided by the Swivel’s thrust, the ship’s nose began to dip and the craft to slow.

“Roger, Mission Six,” Chrysalis replied. “Copy no go on booster tests, go for extended flight.”

When Cherry activated the boosters, the ride became really interesting.

Under the thrust of the two heavy boosters the ship accelerated hard straight into the sound barrier. The turbulence pulled the rocket’s nose down like a millstone, and Cherry’s efforts with the stick didn’t quite counter the force. The ship shook, bucked, and began rolling again, worse than the cheap coin-operated chariot machine Cherry had seen as a little child on a visit to Fillydelphia.

Only this time there wasn’t a loving aunt standing by with another nickel.

And then, while she was wrestling with the stick to try to keep the ship going in only one direction, ANY one direction, the amber light flashed indicating entry of the target zone. She spared a sliver of attention to hit the switch for the flight recorder, look out the window, and say, “Target zone JJ1-512 appears to be deep, featureless water, somewhat muddy. No apparent features visible at this time. Estimated resources negligible.” She punched the switch again, noticed the ship was now well into a shallow dive, and turned her full attention to regaining control.

And then, mere seconds after completing her survey recording, to her blessed relief, the Hammers burned out. The ship immediately decelerated hard, almost five gravities pulling Cherry Berry forward in her harness. She hit the staging button, releasing the dead-weight, non-aerodynamic second stage with all its attached boosters, and immediately the deceleration eased. She was still going well over two hundred sixty meters per second. Good.

Still losing altitude, though. Bad.

I have maybe half a minute to save this thing. Nose up. Good. Reaction wheels very efficient with only the Reliant and its little tank. Attitude ninety by sixty. All right. Third stage ignite!

The moment the final liquid-fuel engine lit, the remaining spacecraft did a complete backflip. For half a second Cherry Berry was in an uncontrolled tumble. In another second she countered it, then realized to her horror that the nav-ball showed her pointed directly at the retrograde marker. The rocket was slowing her down, and hard.

And then, before she could correct the mistake, the fuel ran out, far too early. There should have been at least ten seconds at full throttle. Instead, maybe five, and all absolutely wasted.

Okay, Cherry thought, take stock of the situation. No fuel. No more engines. Air speed sixty-two meters per second, beginning to climb as I fall. Altitude thirty-four hundred meters, dropping slowly.

You know, I’m going to get away with this one.

“Horseton, this is Mission Six,” Cherry Berry said, relaxing for the first time. “Reliant proved uncontrollable in low altitude without fins. On the other hand, I believe the total weight of this craft is now less than that of Mission One, so I’m going to try to bring this engine back intact. Triggering parachute now.”

She hit the manual parachute deploy switch, felt the parachute begin pulling up on the nose of the capsule, and relaxed in her seat.

I’m alive, she thought. I’m alive, I managed to complete one of Twilight’s mission contracts, and I’m going to live to try this again.

And I WILL try this again, because I want a chance to do it properly, darn it.

MISSION 6 REPORT

Mission summary: SURVIVE; test performance of prototype in-line decoupler systems; attempt visual survey of target area (holdover from prior missions); in-flight specific tests of “Hammer” booster, “Reliant” and “Swivel” liquid fuel rockets, “Flea” as booster, and M16 parachute

Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 2 min. 30 sec.
Maximum speed achieved: 383 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 4385 m
Distance downrange at landing: 18 km

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: New land distance record (insufficient for benchmark)

Conclusions from flight: We got too ambitious, but I think I know where we went wrong. We’re doing this again, properly this time- and with nosecones for the boosters.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: MARGINAL FAILURE

Footnote:

(107) The command pod manufactured and sold by Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, Inc. had a number of electric switches which could be assigned to mission-specific devices and tests. For this one, Cherry had specified that the switch designated for the parachute systems test be the one farthest away from the actual parachute release switch.

“Tracking records splashdown at eighteen kilometers downrange from launch,” von Brawn said from his station.

“Longest surface distance of any launch to date,” Ad Astra noted, “but not sufficient for a benchmark award.”

As the projected illusion showed the parachute drifting away from the capsule and engine bobbing on the ocean’s surface, the ponies from ESA and the press cheered and stomped their hooves. None of the changelings on the floor joined them, nor did von Brawn. All of them were silently aware that something had been screwed up badly, and as a consequence they had narrowly avoided a Bad Day for the third straight flight.

“Awesome! Way to hold her, Cherry Berry!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

“I must say,” Rarity added, “poor show, whoever designed that rocket. Not only was it horribly lopsided, and not in an avant-garde manner I might add, but it put that poor pony in horrible danger!” She turned to Twilight Sparkle, whose face had gone slightly green from the launch and had only become more so as the flight continued. “Don’t you agree, Twilight darling?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” the princess said in a voice more suited to Fluttershy.

Chrysalis, taking off her headset, decided this was the time to act. She’d had just enough time to figure out how to remedy the inevitable failure(108), and the plan had come together not long after Cherry’s parachute opened.

“Good work, my faithful subjects, Dr. von Brawn, Dr. Goddard,” she said. “Remember, please that every launch that fulfills at least one mission goal and lands safely is a success. We’re still in the infancy of rocket flight, after all. And on that note, Princess Twilight Sparkle, ponies of the Equestria Space Agency, and our most honored guests from the press,” she added, raising her voice, “I invite you to our gift shop, where the notable chef Heavy Frosting has prepared refreshments. Unfortunately your guide Dragonfly will not be able to join you,” she continued, her speech beginning to take on elements of the Royal Canterlot Voice, “as we have to prepare her for the second launch of the day.”

Consternation erupted from the gallery.

“Yes, I know,” Chrysalis replied, “you weren’t notified of the second launch. It was quite unexpected even to us. But when Princess Twilight Sparkle brought us three examples of the latest untested scientific device from her own labs, we decided the opportunity to test them, before the press, before all the peoples of Equestria if you will, was too good to pass up.” She smiled the most winning smile any changeling could muster(109) and added, “Which, incidentally, will also be Dragonfly’s very first flight as a pilot. It’s an event very important to all of us.”

The consternation changed to the usual melee of reporters shouting questions over one another. That suited Chrysalis fine, as she had no intention of answering any.

“Doctor von Brawn, if you could see fit to escort the Princess and her party to the gift shop for our late lunch? Doctor Goddard, Occupant, Dragonfly, please join me in the astronaut center at once.” With that Chrysalis walked out of the mission control center, never looking back, confident that she would be obeyed in all things.

Faust, I hope this works, she thought to herself.

Five minutes later, alone in the astronaut complex, Chrysalis, Goddard, Occupant and Dragonfly huddled. “All right,” Chrysalis said, “we need a rocket that can fly all three of those grade-school science projects and land safely. We need to not use anything that we’d need to rebuild the rocket we just launched, because we’re going to try again first thing in the morning on that. And we need any money-making contracts we can accept right now, because any further failure and this program is sunk, and likely the hive with it.” She looked at all three of the others. “So unless you’re looking forward to a life selling pencils from a tin cup on the Canterlot streets, let’s make this happen. We have maybe an hour to plan, and we have to launch before sunset.”

“Wait a minute,” Goddard grumbled. “We’ve never done two flights in one day. We’ve never even considered it. What’s the rush?”

“We’re stalling for time!” Chrysalis snapped. “I want to hold the princess and the press here overnight, to give us enough time for a second try at her contract. Fixing the problems with the Mission Six rocket will take time, so we need some other launch. It’s the only thing that will keep them from going home as soon as they’ve eaten.”

Goddard nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that,” he said. “And with the second capsule we could maybe do it. But we’ve only got one Swivel and two Reliants left. We can’t replicate Mission Six exactly.”

“The redesign will be von Brawn’s job,” Chrysalis said. “His and Cherry Berry’s, when the recovery team gets back with her. Your job is Mission Seven. One capsule with parachute, all three Science Jr. pods with sufficient parachutes to bring them down safely, and engines enough to get them off the pad, just offshore into the water, and down.”

“Grm,” Goddard grunted. “Sounds like the Fleas get one more outing as a main engine after all. We still have over a dozen of them on-site.”

“We also have the Terrier,” Occupant spoke up for the first time. “You put in a paid request for a splashdown test.”

Chrysalis’s ear-fins perked up. “A contract?” she asked. “Can Cherry’s Rocket Parts afford the payoff right now? Because we might really need it.”

“We can take it off what the program owes us for the Swivels and Reliants,” Goddard replied. “You haven’t written that check yet.”

“You’d better hope I’m in a position to do so after tomorrow,” Chrysalis noted. “Fine. So we use that engine?”

Goddard snorted. “Not a chance!” he barked. “I designed that engine to be a slow-burn, high-efficiency orbital transfer engine. On the ground it won’t even lift its own weight!”

“But we can still test it,” Chrysalis said. “How many decouplers do we still have?”

“Seven,” Goddard replied. “With more already on the way from the minotaur islands, including lateral decouplers that’ll let us dump boosters without losing the main stage.”

“Good. We only need one.” Chrysalis walked to a chalkboard and, using chalk held in her magic, sketched out a design very similar to her Mission Five ship. “Five Fleas fire simultaneously at launch,” she said. “The weight of the Terrier and the Science Jr's. will offset thrust enough to keep the thing controllable enough.” She looked at Dragonfly. “You’ve missed a lot of simulator time, I know,” she said, “but your mission is very simple. All you have to do get the rocket over water and high enough to pop the chutes. That’s it. You can do it.”

Dragonfly, who was still in shock from the news that she was going to fly, nodded.

“Occupant,” Chrysalis continued, “is there anything else- anything simple and doable that doesn’t require more rockets- that we can do to earn money?”

Occupant nodded. “The mining company that made the decouplers also sent these sort of clamp things,” he said. “They suggested that we could use them to hold the rocket upright and in place prior to launch. They want us to test them to see if they unclamp properly.”

“Good. Make it happen.” Chrysalis looked around. “Doctor, go to the VAB and get that rocket built. Fast. With ALL the parachutes. Occupant, get those contracts signed and telegraphed now. Dragonfly, let’s get you suited up. I need to get back to our guests as soon as possible.”

Footnotes:

(108) Presuming Cherry Berry and the capsule returned in one piece each, that is. Nothing Chrysalis could think of could redeem a truly Bad Day.

(109) It was an improvement over Wicked Laugh Smile and Pleasure at Your Pain Smile, but no changeling, not even Chrysalis, would so much as win Miss Congeniality in their natural form. Not without bribing or threatening the judges, anyway.

Well-fed but still bewildered ponies (and griffon) returned to Mission Control, where the changeling crew was caught between finishing reports on Mission Six and beginning fresh worksheets for the unexpected Mission Seven. They were joined a few minutes later by Chrysalis, who brought Dragonfly in wearing her pressure suit and helmet. “Gentleponies of the press,” the queen said smoothly, “before the launch we wanted to give you the opportunity to meet Dragonfly. In the late invasion, you may be interested to know, she was one of my leading warriors, successfully subduing a number of Royal Guard pegasi while fulfilling her duty to the hive which is both her country and her family.”

This speech won no admirers with the ponies, many of whom either lived in or had relatives in Canterlot, but they wrote down the information in their notepads anyway.

“Dragonfly is extremely brave and loyal, and more important, she is intelligent,” Chrysalis continued. “In addition to her training as a pilot(110), Dragonfly is our chief materials researcher. She personally designed the parachute systems which are currently used by almost all the space programs of Equus. She is a bug of many talents, and I am proud to have her as one of my hive.”

This accolade won a bit more approval than the war-hero bit, and Chrysalis could feel the greater enthusiasm in the pencil strokes she heard.

“Now please bear in mind that twenty-four hours ago Dragonfly didn’t know she was going to fly today,” Chrysalis said, neatly bypassing the fact that the same was true for one hour ago. “But we’re giving her a short, simple flight to give her experience, and we have full confidence that her training, intelligence and skill will bring nothing but success. Now, while you’re asking her your questions, I need to go check on preparations for launch.” Ducking her head in respect to the press, and making sure to note that said press were between Twilight Sparkle and the exits, she left Dragonfly to the nonexistent mercies of journalism and stepped back outside.

This, as it turned out, was perfect timing. Cherry Berry’s capsule had just returned, and the pink earth pony had already climbed out of the hatch and doffed her helmet. “That,” she said bitterly, “was every bit as bad as I expected and almost as bad as I feared.” Shaking out her yellow mane, she added, “Where do we stand?”

“I’m avoiding Twilight Sparkle,” Chrysalis said. “So long as she never gets me alone and away from the press, she can’t call in the failure penalty. Not that I expect her to, but she could still cancel the contract without fault, and that would be almost as bad. The plan is to keep the press busy with a second launch so they have to sleep over tonight. That gives us time to recondition the capsule,” she said, pointing at the still-damp ship Cherry had just emerged from, “and put together a second attempt to launch at dawn, before the reporters can leave.”

“With the nosecones,” Cherry Berry said.

“With the nosecones,” Chrysalis agreed. “And with a substantially different design. My reasoning is, we made a good faith effort to meet the conditions of the contract with your launch. If we can actually complete the mission goals on the follow-up, in front of witnesses, we look like winners instead of losers, and the program survives to fly another day.”

“That sounds… a lot less sneaky than I was expecting, to be honest,” Cherry Berry admitted. “I thought you would either mind-control somepony or else just write off the program as a failed plan and go back to plotting conquest.”

Chrysalis shook her head. “I thought about that weeks ago, pony. It can’t be done. Changelings are in the open now. By Faust, both Celestia and Cadence have my home address! More and more of my infiltrators are revealing themselves, because they feel there’s nothing to fear anymore.” She stamped her hoof, continuing, “If this program collapses, the hive will have to evacuate our home and vanish even more completely than before- with no resources in reserve- or else dissolve and become totally dependent on whatever charity you ponies will spare us. All our assets are now tied up in this effort.” She stared at Cherry Berry, transmitting as much sheer determination as she could into the pony’s non-changeling senses. “For us it is literally the moon or bust now.”

Cherry Berry gave Chrysalis a flat stare back. “Forgive me if I don’t take you wholly at your word,” she said dryly.

Chrysalis’s mouth turned up at the corner. “You might actually be learning something, pony,” she said quietly. “Anyway, I need you to get in conference with von Brawn as soon as you can. Goddard will take his position in Mission Control. The two of you have to get to work on the re-do rocket the instant we get Mission Seven on the pad.”

“Roger,” Cherry Berry nodded. “But first I’m going to get out of this suit.” She walked away, adding, “And if I get any chance at all, I want a word with Rarity. The bathroom features in this stupid suit are totally insufficient!”

Footnote:

(110) More often instead of her training as a pilot. Dragonfly had been a backup, and her work with Goddard the Griffon on materials studies and applications, especially her parachutes, often took priority. Also, she was one of the few changelings Chrysalis could trust not to mess everything up if left unsupervised, which made her indispensable as a supervisor when none of the top leaders could spare time.

Dragonfly sat in the brand-new capsule, breathing deep sighs of relief. She was well away from those reporters with their horrible prying questions and their staring eyes. Now she was stuck in a full-body suit without wingholes, strapped inside a metal box on top of several devices which, if anything went wrong, could explode and turn her body into the finest ash on the wind in an instant. If everything went right, they could just send her hurtling into the water or soil fast enough to make her into a changeling waffle(111).

So, perfectly safe.

“Mission Seven, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed through her helmet, the calm, soothing sound of the queen making her even more relaxed. “Verify list of mission goals.”

Oh, right, those. Dragonfly felt a little nervous about them. In every mission up until now the mission goals had been carefully printed on a checklist in bold ink and clamped on a special mount in the capsule. This time the list was hastily scribbled in pencil, hard to read, and taped next to the capsule window.

Still, she could read them, and she could definitely use the reminder. “Control test of first Science Jr. on pad,” she said. “Test release of TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer. Launch. Activate second Science Jr. pod in flight. Splashdown. Activate third Science Jr. pod in the water. Perform systems test on Terrier liquid fuel motor while submerged.”

“Roger, Mission Seven,” Chrysalis replied. “Stand by for go-no go on launch.”

“Mission Seven copies, standing by,” Dragonfly replied, settling back and putting her suit-covered hoof on the flight stick. She’d handled the stick in simulations, if all too seldom. She’d put in a couple of runs in the centrifuge. She knew prograde from retrograde. And yet, sitting in the seat, she wasn’t quite sure that she knew enough to do it right.

But she knew she certainly wanted to try.

“Mission Seven, Horseton; activate first science module.”

Dragonfly skimmed the control panel; that would be one of the multiple-use switches, so… ah, there it was, with “SJ1” on a piece of masking tape to label it. She pushed the button, watching the light turn green. “Science Jr. One activated, experiments complete,” she said.

“Roger, Seven, Horseton confirms. Release launch stability clamps.”

One of the multi-purpose switches had been labeled CLAMPS. Dragonfly hit the switch, felt a soft thump through the rocket, heard the two swing arms fall away from the rocket and bounce on their towers. “Clamps released.”

“Roger, Mission Seven,” Chrysalis repeated. “You are go for launch, repeat go for launch. Fire first stage when-“

Dragonfly didn’t wait for her queen to finish. She was going to fly NOW.

Five Flea engines kicked in simultaneously. There hadn’t been time to fit thrust restrictors on the engines, and Dragonfly thrilled at the sensation of being crushed back in her seat by sheer acceleration. The mass of the rest of the ship, even the uncapped flat tops of the engines, wasn’t slowing the ship down at all against that much thrust.

Her left forehoof reached for the second Science Jr. switch while her right hoof tried to steer the rapidly accelerating ship. She did neither very well, but after a couple of misses she managed to activate the second experiment. “Science Jr. Two activated,” she said, shouting to get her words out of her heavy, heavy chest. “Attempting pitch to-“

The rocket gave a shudder as it broke through the sound barrier, mere seconds after liftoff. The ship pushed back against her, pointing straight up despite her effort to correct it. “Negative on pitch,” she said. “Ship not responding to control.”

“Horseton copies,” Chrysalis replied. “Keep trying. You should regain control after engine burnout.”

A few seconds later, the engines did just that, and Dragonfly found herself pushed almost out of her seat by deceleration, as hard or even harder than she’d been crushed by acceleration. “Burnout,” she reported unnecessarily. “I guess the ride’s over, huh?”

“Decouple!” Chrysalis said, her voice taking an ounce of urgency for the first time. “Dump the Fleas, they’re slowing you down!”

“Oh, right!” The decoupler hadn’t been in any training she’d had. She hit the staging switch, and she felt the kick of the explosive charge. And the deceleration slowed only slightly. In her seconds of hesitation, her air speed had dropped from over five hundred meters per second to a little over one hundred… and as she watched, it dropped below that. In a few seconds she’d be coming back down.

“Activate second stage, Seven,” Chrysalis continued. “Set throttle to half power and thrust attitude forty-five by ninety.”

“Okay… I mean, copy, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. She set throttle, pointed the ship with the reaction wheels, and lit the engine…

… and felt nothing.

But the ship had stopped decelerating, holding at eighty-six meters per second. “Horseton, Mission Seven,” she said. “Full control restored. Any-“

Even at almost six thousand meters altitude she could hear the soft boom of the first stage hitting the ground.

“Just keep her steady for a minute, Seven,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re doing well. Your trajectory is moving out over water. All is go.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Mission Seven copies all go.” She sat back, watching as the altimeter crawled up a few more meters and then slowly, gradually, began counting back down again. This part wasn’t difficult. In fact it was kind of boring. She had more interesting flights than this on her own wings, crossing the Badlands between the hive and Appleoosa.

“All right, Seven, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “Cut throttle. We still want fuel in the tank for the splashdown test.”

Dragonfly checked the gauge; half the tank left. “Roger, Horseton,” she said, throttling down, “throttle set to zero.”

“Horseton confirms throttle back,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re over deep water now; you are go to deploy parachutes.”

Dragonfly was reluctant. She could feel the ship descending faster, and she liked the fluttery feeling it gave her barrel. On the other hand, she knew better than anyling what might happen if she waited too long. After all, she oversaw the construction of all five parachutes on the craft herself. “Deploying parachutes,” she said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

Five canopies rippled up from the ship, pulling and yanking it back and forth in a hard rocking motion. Then, as the canopies opened fully, the ship braked hard one last time, slowing from over a hundred meters per second down to only four and a bit.

“Well, that was fun,” Dragonfly said to herself.

“We can all hear you down here, Seven,” Chrysalis chided her.

Dragonfly didn’t care. She lay back, legs limp, and lolled.

I’m bored again, she thought. We need something to do for the boring bits.

I wonder if I can get some snacks in the ship next time?

The light of the setting sun flickered back and forth past the parachute ropes, through the window and into the capsule.

MISSION 7 REPORT

Mission summary: Collect science from Science Jr. on pad, in flight, and in water; test TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer on pad; test radial parachutes; test Terrier motor in water

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration: 4 min. 46 sec.
Maximum speed achieved: 514 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved: 6447 m
Distance downrange at landing: 5.7 km

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: That could have gone better, but we knew the design was bad going in. It did what we needed to do, and Dragonfly got experience which will serve her well in future flights. On the other hand, we’re going to need to repair the launch pad after this…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL (for once)

Footnote:

(111) Because pancakes don’t have holes.

“How’s it coming?”

Chrysalis walked over to where Cherry Berry stood on the floor of the VAB, watching the changlings bringing in components for the rocket which would be Mission Eight.

“Well enough,” Cherry Berry admitted. “von Brawn and I think we’ve figured out how to- HEY YOU!” The pink pony galloped across the floor, to where a changeling had been merrily rolling a T-100 fuel tank like a foal rolling an old barrel hoop. “What do you think you’re doing?? Fuel tanks are not toys!”

“But, Ms. Berry!” the changeling whined, “it’s perfectly safe! They hardly ever explode!”

“HARDLY ever?!?”

The changeling pointed far up one wall of the VAB. Some changelings had, evidently, mounted a giant basketball hoop. The backboard was severely scorched and cracked almost in half.

“You… have you... you have… no, I don’t want to know,” Cherry Berry said, shaking her head. “This is delicate equipment. You treat it with respect. Our lives could depend on it, understand?” she snapped, staring right into the changeling’s glowing teal eyes.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Now take this back to storage and get a new one. And CARRY it. No rolling!”

“Awww,” the changeling whined. “That’s boring. And it takes so much work!”

“Have you never heard of a CART?” Cherry Berry snapped. “Get to it!”

The changeling trudged off with his burden, while Cherry Berry walked back over to Chrysalis. “They’re like children, I swear it,” she muttered. “They need watching every minute, and they have all the self-preservation instincts of a head of lettuce in a Manehattan all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Said the pony who walked up to a changeling hive and demanded to be let in,” Chrysalis replied.

“That was different. What about you? Do we still have a contract?”

“Well, I’ve successfully avoided Twilight Sparkle-“

Violet light flashed above them, and a profoundly annoyed voice shouted, “THERE you are!”

“-until now,” Chrysalis said. “I kept her busy as long as I could.”

“You certainly did!” Twilight Sparkle grumbled, hovering overhead on spread wings. “Your changeling chef feeding us and pressing me to take thirds(112), that second launch you obviously threw together at the last minute, the interviews, having Dr. Goddard bury me in data, dinner, more thirds- I had to wait until my friends were in their quarters for the night before I could get away!”

“I could have knocked you out and put you in a pod for the duration,” Chrysalis replied coolly. “How do you like the reformed me? Isn’t this nicer?”

Twilight growled with frustration, letting herself settle to the floor. “None of it would have been necessary if you’d just let me talk to you for five minutes!” she said. “I’m calling off the contract. The wind tunnel is yours. No penalties, no payments, and no ponies or changelings maybe riding to fiery deaths for a stupid experiment. You win, all right?”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. She didn’t really know how to respond to that. Yes, this was a victory, no mistake about that. Here and now she could probably make that detestable meddling pony grovel at her hooves, and she’d still have the moral high ground. But… but… but…

“As much as I would love to accept your offer,” she finally said, “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“What? Why not?” Twilight asked.

“Do you remember what I said earlier, just before Mission Six launched?” Chrysalis said. “You put me in a position where I had to accept your contract. You thought it was a sweet win-win; you get your test data, or else I get egg on my face, yes? But you didn’t think through the consequences of your actions. You didn’t realize just how close to the edge your challenge took my space program. And, above all, you underestimated just how important our reputation is to us.”

“What reputation?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “You’re changelings.”

“Twilight, that’s the whole problem,” Cherry Berry butted in. “The Changeling Space Program is an enormously expensive exercise in public relations. When we started, changelings had a reputation as evil sneaky monsters.”

“Which we are,” Chrysalis admitted casually.

“Not helping. Anyway, by demonstrating their bravery and ingenuity, the changelings hope to gain respect and acceptance among ponies, right? But you gave this program a challenge that we weren’t ready to meet. And you did it in such a public way that we couldn’t shrug it off.” Cherry pointed towards the hallway to the front doors and said, “When those reporters go home in the morning, do you know what the headline will be on every story?”

“No, what?” Twilight asked.

“Changelings Fail Princess’s Challenge will be one,” Cherry Berry continued. “With an editorial, probably titled, Changeling Dreams Swatted Down By Reality.”

“Too positive a spin, pony,” Chrysalis added. “Try, Is CSP a Front for Changeling Infiltration? Or even better, CSP a Fraud- Rockets Going Nowhere. Or, best of all, They’re Not Just Monsters, They’re Incompetent Monsters.”

“Instead of respect, the changelings will get scorn and derision,” Cherry Berry continued. “Instead of love, they get contempt. They can’t eat contempt. Even if you gave us a million bits in the morning so we could buy all the rocket stuff we ever wanted, our program couldn’t recover from that kind of press.” She frowned sadly. “Chrysalis would have to find some other way to feed her people, and I’d be out of a job.”

“And although my children are backstabbing, sneaky, evil monsters,” Chrysalis said, “we have our pride. That’s why we’re building that.” Chrysalis pointed to the rocket components coming together on the VAB floor. “Mission Eight launches as soon as we can get those reporters up in the morning. This time with the nosecones.”

“Why?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

“As I said, pride,” Chrysalis said. “We accepted a challenge. We intend to accomplish it. And we want to be seen accomplishing it. Without charity from a pony princess who feels sorry for us because we couldn’t do what she asked of us.”

“Oh,” Twilight said in a small voice. Her ears drooped, and she stared at her hooves.

Oh Faust, Chrysalis thought, I’m actually feeling sorry for the accursed meddler. She looks like me when mother thwarted my first coup attempt. Not that I will admit it to anypony.

Cherry Berry put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Twilight, it’s okay,” she said. “This is our choice. We know you didn’t really mean to put us in danger.”

Really? My dear pony pilot, it was you who said this might all be a plot to destroy us.

“But from now on,” Cherry Berry said, “no more clever tricks, okay? No more playing on the changelings’ whims, or using the press as a club. If you want us to perform an experiment for you, ask, and we’ll see if it’s safe enough for us to try.”

“Yes,” Chrysalis said. “Leave the clever stratagems to Celestia. She’s much better at it than you are.”

Cherry Berry ignored the interruption. “And we’ll deal honestly with you in return.” She glanced up and said, much less gently than before, “WON’T we, Chrysalis?”

Chrysalis couldn’t meet either pony’s gaze, but she did choke out the word, “Yes.” It tasted filthy.

“Now go get some sleep,” Cherry Berry said. “We want you rested for our launch in the morning, and you’ll have to be up before dawn.”

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to stop?” Twilight asked. “You don’t even have a launch pad right now! Those Fleas crashing down on it wrecked the place!”

“We’re fixing that,” Cherry Berry reassured her. “I won’t say tomorrow's launch won’t be dangerous. All powered flight is dangerous, especially rockets. But tomorrow’s launch will be a managed risk. We’re not going to push it again like we did today.”

“If you say so,” Twilight said. “But please be careful.” She looked as if she might say something more, and then she walked away, wings furled, looking sad and thoughtful.

“There goes a pony who deserves a rough night’s sleep,” Chrysalis murmured once she thought the princess was out of earshot.

“Oh, be gracious for once,” Cherry Berry chided. “She did let us off the hook for everything except the press.”

“The press,” Chrysalis added angrily, “and self-respect.” She pointed at the rocket parts. “Will that be ready in time?”

“Just,” Cherry Berry sighed. “One of us will have to stay up and make sure it gets done right, though.” She shuffled her hooves. “Which brings up a point. Our agreement says I fly all new designs first, right?”

“And?”

“And, last time you decided you wanted a turn even when I said it was too dangerous.” Cherry Berry continued to fidget. “And we really can’t afford another scene like that tomorrow, in front of the press. So… do you want to fly this mission?”

Chrysalis looked around the room. Cherry Berry hadn’t noticed, but although the changelings around them were working, most of them had their eyes, and no doubt their ears, glued to them. She stepped as close to the pony as she could and whispered, “I wish you hadn’t asked me that.”

“Why?” Cherry Berry asked aloud.

“Shh.” Chrysalis continued to whisper. “Pride is why, pony. If you had said nothing I would have honored our agreement without a word and let you fly tomorrow. But now that you’ve asked,” she sighed, “I have to accept. If I didn’t, I’d be admitting I was weak.” She locked eyes with Cherry Berry and added, “And weakness in a changeling is fatal.”

How much am I willing to tell this pony? Chrysalis wondered. Do I tell her that after my last flight the idea of getting back into that capsule terrifies the fear pellets right out of me? That I’ve been training like a madmare because I want to stop being afraid, because I know eventually I have to get back in there and perform just as well as she does?

Would she even understand? She’s a pony, and she’s obsessed with flying. She’s never worried that a pony army would find her home and wipe them out. She’s never seen what happens when two hives meet, or when it’s time for an old queen to yield to new blood. To her this is a dream, a fantasy come true. To me it’s a means to an end, that one day everypony will fear us, instead of us fearing everypony.

But… she’s the only creature I could trust. Not Dragonfly. Certainly not Sparkle or any of her ponies. But she’s been in that little box too, and she knows what it feels like to be moments from what we call a Bad Day because we don't want to say "certain death". Who else could I speak to, who knows what I’m talking about, who wouldn’t use it for their own advantage?

Maybe I’ll tell her someday. But not now, and definitely not here.

“So I’ll be flying tomorrow,” Chrysalis said loudly. “Go find Occupant. I signed off on a couple more aerial surveys just in case we ended up still on the hook for that penalty payment. I’ll watch things here while you two work out the mission plan. Then get back here so I can get some sleep.” The queen smiled her small, almost honest smile. “I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

Far overhead, two changelings perched on the VAB’s winch rails. “The queen’s getting soft,” the first one said.

“Shut up,” the second one said, cuffing the first lightly across the horn. “The queen just got us the Fun Machine. The queen’s going to fly the mission tomorrow. And the queen’s gonna walk on the moon.” He looked back down at the floor, adding, “If that’s soft, then I like soft. Soft is comfy.”

Footnote:

(112) To be honest, this wasn’t difficult.

In the twilight before dawn, the Mission Eight rocket settled onto what was left of the launch pad.

The changelings had removed the wreckage of the experimental launch clamps and the fallen Flea boosters, all of which was smashed beyond any reuse. This left several pits and holes in the launch pad’s surface, which was smoothed out and packed down as well as could be managed by a crew of tired changelings in the dark. Despite that effort, it took three lifts and drops before the assembly crew found a remaining patch of pad surface level enough to hold the rocket without it tipping over. Therefore the entire crew would remain on-site until Fiddlewing gave the final all-clear signal, because who knew?

This would be the last flight on the current launch pad, win or lose. They needed a stronger pad, one which could absorb stronger thrust, hold more weight, stand up better to things dropping from the sky. That would take weeks, again. All the more reason to make this launch count.

The new design was four-tenths of a ton lighter than Mission Six had been. Although there was only one Hammer now, replacing the second stage, there were three Fleas instead of two, all of which now wore the rounded nosecones. All the fuel tanks were full to the limit. The first stage liquid rocket was a Reliant, a quarter-ton lighter than the Swivel. On paper, the ship should fly better and farther than Mission Six by far… but on paper, before the changelings had got their hooves on it, Mission Six shouldn’t have been the clusterbuck it turned out to be.

Cherry Berry accepted her third cup of coffee from Occupant. Neither of them had slept all night. Projected on the wall in front of them was Mission Eight, its trajectory map, its gauges, and a view of Chrysalis, who appeared to read the new Daring Do book(113) with no concern. Around them the mission control staff were dragging themselves to their positions, obviously short of sleep and very, very confused.

The confusion increased once the press corps was escorted in. “Mission Eight, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said into her headset, “smile and wave to the press, please.”

Cherry had expected to enjoy seeing the queen flinch, toss her book anywhere out of sight of the illusion, and put on a smiling confident face. Instead Chrysalis looked up, gave the illusion an if-I-must look, and carefully tucked the book into netting next to the flight seat. “Good morning, Equestria,” the queen said. “I’m sorry to have awakened you so early, but I felt a nice early morning flight would get all our blood pumping.”

There were one or two chuckles, but nothing more. The press had been awakened an hour before with no explanation, chivvied to a full-service breakfast, plied with extra coffee and tea, and then herded politely but firmly to mission control. Half of them looked rumpled, and four of them wore I RODE THE FUN MACHINE shirts.(114)

“Roger, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry replied. “I’m sure we could all use the excitement this early in the morning. Let’s jump ahead in procedure and verify the mission goals checklist.”

“Mission Eight copies, Horseton,” Chrysalis agreed. “Aerial observation of target zone alpha. Hold velocity between four hundred sixty and five hundred sixty em pee ess beginning at twelve thousand meters for Flea systems check. Test-fire Hammer booster engines at sixteen thousand meters. Evaluate efficiency and usefulness of nosecones. Aerial observation of target zone beta. Get a nice suntan on the beach in Maneaco.”

This last item drew a few more chuckles. “Eight, I’m fairly sure that last item’s not on the checklist,” Cherry Berry drawled.

“It isn’t? Wait a moment, I know there’s a pencil here somewhere…” Chrysalis made a pantomime of reaching around the capsule for a mislaid pencil, raising more laughter.

“Mission Eight, Horseton copies mission checklist, with addendum,” Cherry Berry said. “Stand by for go-no go check.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied, “Mission Eight standing by.”

Cherry Berry removed her headset, resting her forehooves on her workstation and turning to address the press, who had been joined by Twilight Sparkle’s friends. “I’m sorry we woke you up this early,” she said, “but we didn’t want to let you leave without giving Twilight Sparkle’s mission one more try. Even when the Changeling Space Program fails the first time, we keep trying until we succeed.” She nodded to Twilight Sparkle, whose face retained the worry from the previous day. “And we want all of Equestria to know we don’t give up.”

The changelings around her cheered their agreement. von Brawn, who looked just as alert and calm as ever, merely nodded his approval.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said, turning to Occupant. “Flight manager, I yield you the floor.”

Occupant yawned, showing off his embarrassing buck fangs (115). “Right,” he said. “Um, Lucky, this one’s going to be a long flight, and we don’t know how long. Recovery team needs to stand by for orders, right?”

“Copy, Flight,” Lucky Cricket nodded.

“Dr. von Brawn, rocket status?”

“Solid fuel stable, liquid fuel and oxidizer tanks full and stable,” von Brawn replied.

“Crawley, weather schedule?”

Crawley checked his paperwork. “Eye Wall agreed to clear skies through midday in case of launch postponement,” he said. “Clouds building towards evening with scheduled light showers overnight through tomorrow. Thirty percent chance of feral storms blowing up on the evening sea breeze.” He checked a few devices on the wall and added, “Currently fair skies, sixty-seven degrees Marenheit, negligible wind.” As he spoke, light shone through the windows in the top of the mission control room, and the illusory rocket on the wall brightened. Celestia had just raised the sun(116). “Make that sunny and sixty-seven degrees. All conditions go for launch.”

Occupant nodded satisfaction. “Parachute?”

“Packed it myself,” Dragonfly said. “Switches and release charges checked out.”

“Right. Anyling have issues to bring up?” Occupant asked.

Up in the gallery, Twilight Sparkle began to raise her hoof, then reluctantly put it down again.

“Okay, then. Final go or no go. Engines?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Tracking?”

George Bull looked up from his tracking computer. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Recovery?”

“Standing by, Flight Manager.”

“Weather?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Parachutes?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Capsule communications?”

“Go, Flight,” Cherry Berry noted.

“Verify switchover to internal power.”

As Stinger Charlie activated the rocket’s electrical system, Cherry Berry said, “Mission Eight, Horseton, verify internal capsule power.”

“Confirmed on battery power,” Chrysalis said. “Controls active. All systems green.”

“Roger, Mission Eight, stand by.”

Occupant nodded. “Three launches in less than twenty-four hours,” he said. “Whatever else happens, that’s an accomplishment, everyone. Cap-com, report Mission Eight is go for launch.”

“Roger, Flight. Mission Eight, you are go for launch, repeat you are go for launch. Activate first stage when ready.”

“Mission Eight confirms go for launch,” Chrysalis said. All eyes in the mission control watched as she took a deep breath, set her jaw, and reached down for the staging button.

The first stage and the three Flea boosters roared to life, and slowly, almost majestically, Mission Eight lifted off the launch pad.

“Mission Eight aloft and the clock is running,” Chrysalis reported. “Attempting maneuver for target zone alpha.” On the projection the ponies and changelings in Mission Control could see the rocket begin to tilt, rapidly building up speed as it rose higher and higher.

And then… the tilt stopped. Cherry Berry looked down at the projected navigation ball… which was doing odd things. Instead of tilting south-by-southwest as required for the first aerial survey, the ship was… sliding sideways a bit in trajectory.

“Ship controls are sluggish,” Chrysalis reported. “I think the reaction wheels are just overwhelmed by the mass of the ship and current velocity.” A few moments later she added, “I’m beginning to get a bit of roll here. It increases the more I try to push for the horizon. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and hold the ship steady. I think we’ll make the first target zone, but probable scrub on the second one.”

“Roger, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry said. “Horseton copies.” She switched off her mike. “Doctor, answers?”

“Top-heavy ship, fins not perfectly aligned, or not enough of them,” von Brawn said. "It should handle better if she gets above the thickest part of the atmosphere.”

At that point the Fleas burned out, and Cherry Berry watched as Chrysalis pushed the throttle to full. The first stage continued to burn, and slowly, slowly, the rocket’s speed continued to rise, accelerating past three hundred meters per second as the rocket passed eight thousand meters altitude.

“Eight, Horseton,” Cherry said, switching her mike back on. “I just want to let you know you’re currently flying higher than any known living creature has ever done before.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied calmly. “Are you monitoring my airspeed?”

“We sure are, Eight,” Cherry replied. Three hundred forty now at ten thousand meters.

“It’s going to be close,” Chrysalis said, “but I’m watching my fuel consumption, and it looks like I’m going to be a little bit short of minimum speed for the Hammer test at first stage cutoff.”

Cherry Berry shot glances to Occupant, von Brawn, and Bull, all of whom nodded. “We concur,” Cherry said reluctantly. “Hold off on second stage ignition until sixteen thousand anyway. The test might still come off.”

“Mission Eight copies second stage activation at sixteen thousand,” Chrysalis replied. A moment later she added, “By the way, I found that pencil.”

This raised a bit of laughter, if nervous laughter. Cherry Berry smiled, and continued to smile as Chrysalis entered the first target zone and recorded her survey of, apparently, more open water. One contract complete, she thought. Even with one failed, this flight is running smoother than any we’ve had yet.

Please let it keep up.

Just as Chrysalis finished recording her report, the Reliant first stage cut off. “First stage cutoff at fourteen point six kilometers,” the queen said. “Velocity reading four hundred thirty and falling slowly. First stage jettisoned. Preparing for second stage ignition and adjusting attitude for target zone beta.” On the illusion, the rocket turned ever so slowly. “Controls still sluggish,” she said. “Probably won’t finish the turn before sixteen thousand.”

“Horseton copies, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry replied. “No joy on target beta. Focus on maintaining control.”

“Fifteen-five,” Chrysalis reported. “Second stage ignition… mark!” She hit the staging button again, and as smoke billowed into the thin air below the rocket on the projection, the speed indicator on the nav-ball climbed rapidly. “Report red light on both Hammer and Flea tests, repeat no joy on either Hammer or Flea.”

“Horseton copies, Mission Eight, stand by,” Cherry Berry said. She cut off her mike and said, “I know for a fact we were within parameters for the Flea test! Below eighteen thousand, faster than four-sixty! What gives?”

Up in the gallery, Twilight Sparkle slapped her head. “Stupid!” she shouted. “I'm so stupid! The spell I used for the test assumes a Flea has a full fuel load! It won’t recognize a used booster as a Flea! I should have told you!”

Cherry Berry joined much of the press corps in groaning. She turned on her mike and said, “Mission Eight, Horseton; seems we voided the Flea test by actually using the Flea. It needed to come up unburned, over.”

“Now she tells us,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Second stage burnout at nine hundred thirty meters per second. Jettisoning second stage…” Under her voice, but still audible for the rest of the room, she added, “… for all the good it did us…”

“Cheer up, Eight,” Cherry Berry said, “you still get to enjoy your vacation in Maneaco.”

This time nopony laughed.

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “Adjusting attitude. I’m going to use the third stage to lengthen my trajectory. I’ve been burning pretty close to vertical and need more deceleration time.”

“Roger, Eight, Horseton copies.” Cherry Berry switched off the microphone as she saw both von Brawn and Bull shaking their heads frantically. von Brawn had lost his cool, Cherry noted; very bad sign. “What’s wrong, guys?”

“Tell her not to do it!” Bulls shouted. “She needs that fuel for active braking! She hasn’t got enough-“

“Look at the map!” von Brawn interrupted, pointing to the projection of the trajectory plot. Cherry Berry had never really given it a thought, since up until now the flights had all been short and close to home. The blue line this time, however, wasn’t short. It was very, very tall, and bent almost like a hairpin, going almost straight up and straight down.

And as she watched, the hairpin gradually spread out… but at the same time, the peak of the bend rose higher.

“Stop her! NOW!” von Brawn said.

Cherry Berry switch the mike back on. “Mission Eight, this is Horseton-“

“Stand by, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. A moment later, she added, “Third stage cutoff. All done. Does that get me to Maneaco today?”

von Brawn made a grit-toothed face, obviously wanting to scream, obviously unwilling to do so in Mission Control in public. He merely pointed again at the top of the trajectory arc, where a number glowed next to the apoapsis marker.

“Negative on Maneaco, Eight,” Cherry Berry drawled, realizing for the first time what the number meant. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to settle for outer space.”

On the projection, Chrysalis blinked, eyes going wide. “Horseton, Eight; I didn’t copy that last, could you repeat?”

“Our trajectory shows your ship reaching maximum altitude outside of atmosphere,” Cherry Berry said. “In a couple of minutes you’re going to be the first changeling in outer space.”

“Oh.” Chrysalis looked around the cabin, noticing a pencil floating, without magic, in front of her helmet. “Could you verify that, please, Horseton? I feel like I’m falling.”

“Zero gravity,” von Brawn rumbled, back in control of himself. “Free fall. We need a conference, Flight, could you have her stand by?”

Occupant nodded, and Cherry said, “You’re still going up, Eight. Enjoy the ride and stand by; we’ll have a couple of tasks for you in a moment.”

“Roger, Horseton, Mission Eight copies standing by.”

On the projector, the bell of the third-stage Reliant engine slowly cooled, red fading to black, as the little spaceship soared towards a soot-black sky.

Cherry Berry cut the mike, removed her headset, and trotted down to the bottom of the control room floor, where von Brawn and Bull stood in which the changelings had begun to call “the bullpen.”(117) Occupant joined them a moment later. Ignoring the photos from the press gallery, Cherry asked, “All right, where do we stand?”

Bull pointed to the trajectory chart. “This isn’t exactly where she’ll come down,” he said, “but it’s close. We need to get recovery en route immediately, and we need to contact both pegasus and griffon weather control teams and make sure those skies stay clear. If she comes down safely, we don’t want the capsule sunk by a storm.”

“Yes, sir,” Occupant said, fluttering back up to his own station to give the orders.

“The problem is, she might not come down safely,” von Brawn said. “We should have planned for this, and we didn’t. She needed to reduce her speed, pointing the craft down instead of up for her trajectory adjustment burn. As it stands, her trajectory is flatter, but not flat enough. For the final ten thousand meters she'll be close to vertical, and she’s almost four hundred meters per second faster than she should be.”

“Agreed,” Bull replied. “Reaching space is a nice milestone, but only if the pilot comes back alive. She’s returning very steep. The only good news is, she’s coming in above water. For a ground landing, I wouldn’t give tuppence for her chances.”

“Right,” Cherry Berry said. “What can we do to make it better?”

“Not much,” von Brawn admitted. “Bringing back the third stage is out. We need the capsule as light as possible. The lighter it is, the faster the atmosphere will slow it down. Then we need her to get the craft on retrograde attitude and keep it there. Thankfully we put the ablative shield on for Mission Six and didn’t remove it in the reconditioning process. We’re going to need it now.”

“Anything else?” Cherry Berry asked.

von Brawn shook his head. “Ask Twilight Sparkle if she could teleport our pilot out, maybe? No, Miss Berry,” he sighed, “at this point it’s entirely in Queen Chrysalis’s hooves.”

Footnotes:

(113) Chrysalis later said the book was the worst Daring Do adventure ever, with the crystal aliens turning out to be agents of Dr. Caballeron being “the biggest cop-out ever” and the lack of an actual space flight to a comet being “blatant false advertising.” She did approve of the two death traps in the story, though, calling them “ingenious, I wish I’d thought of them.” She admitted, when asked, that the parts about rockets were sound enough, but not all that interesting.

(114) Three of them actually had, including the griffon, and it would feature prominently in her writeup of events, enhancing a small but steady tourist trade for CSP. The fourth pony, a photographer for the Manehattan Times, had bought the shirt solely because he hadn’t brought a change of clothes and didn’t want to look like, for example, the little kid from Ponyville’s Free Foal Press. The honor of Equestria’s leading newspaper was at stake, after all.

(115) And because the press has no shame, three cameras went off at that precise moment, and his photo was part of the special supplemental section that later ran in the Canterlot Herald, the Manehattan Times, and the Crystal Empire Post-Dispatch. Reader reaction split between “how dare this paper frighten young fillies” and “how incredibly cute, I never knew changelings could be that adorable.”

(116) Technically it was the planet that moved and not the sun, but it was still an impressive feat of magic, and habits of thought die hard. Celestia likely would continue to “raise the sun” for centuries to come, and anypony who tried to correct this would be justly accused of nitpicking.

(117) If the front row of the mission control desks had been run by changelings, it might have been called the Pit or the Hole, but the two minotaurs dominated it both physically and intellectually, so no other name seemed fitting.

“Wow,” Chrysalis muttered. “Horseton, Eight; I just want to report that the controls are really responsive without any rocket attached. Too responsive. Much twitchier than in any simulations we’ve done. I just want to point that out, over.”

“Horseton copies, Eight,” Cherry Berry’s voice replied calmly. “Do your best. Aps in thirty seconds, over.”

“Mission Eight copies.” Chrysalis tweaked the roll slightly, bringing Equus into view of the little hatch window. A window not much bigger than my hoof, she thought, and I can see everything from Manehattan down to Scorchero in it, and halfway to the Everfree Forest.

She let the craft continue to roll, and the planet fell away, replaced by black sky, and as the window fell into shadow away from the sun, a host of stars.

“I have to say it’s beautiful up here,” she said aloud. “Really beautiful. I can pick out Luna’s little stars separate from the planets and distant stars. The Milky Way… I’ve never seen it this clearly before, not even in the Badlands. And the stars are solid. They don’t sparkle. They just shine in all the colors of the rainbow.”

The craft rotated, bringing the night side of Equus into view. “I’m looking at western Equestria now,” Chrysalis said. “The atmosphere makes a kind of rainbow with the colors of sunset. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve been around a good long while.”

Chrysalis stared out the little window, ignoring the pencil floating loose around the cabin. “It’s just so amazing up here,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe it except in terms of emotions. Everything up here tastes of joy and laughter.” She chuckled to herself. “I’m fifty miles and more above the closest pony, and up here I feel surrounded by joy and laughter. Someone tell Rarity that we need to let out the pressure suits. Changelings up here are going to get fat.”

“Eight, Horseton,” Cherry Berry replied, “she hears you and says she’ll make you an appointment when you get back. For now, though, you’re past apoapsis, and we need to get you on retrograde attitude for atmospheric reentry.”

Chrysalis sighed. “Copy, Horseton,” she said. “I hope I get to spend more time up here. Unexpected snacking aside, it’s truly beautiful. And so relaxing.”

“Can’t wait to get up there myself,” Cherry Berry admitted.

Chrysalis adjusted herself back in her flight seat and took the flight stick in her hooves. It took a bit of rocking back and forth; even with the lightest touch, the ship moved past the retrograde marker on the nav-ball. Finally she got the retrograde marker almost centered. “Attitude full retrograde,” she said. “Look out, Equus, I’m coming home butt first.”

A choked sound echoed through Chrysalis’s headset. Finally Cherry Berry’s voice managed, “Mission Eight, we can all hear everything you’re saying.”

For a moment Chrysalis flushed with embarrassment. Then decades of training and practice kicked in. “I’m a queen,” she said simply. “I can say whatever I want. Let princesses be dignified.” Pause. “Booger.”

Giggles echoed through her helmet. Gotcha, she thought.

She glanced down at her controls, noticing her speed. “I’m picking up a bit of speed,” she said. “I must really be dropping. Twelve hundred meters per second and rising.”

“Copy, Eight,” Cherry Berry said. “According to tracking you maxed out at thirteen hundred sixty going up; you’ll go at least that fast coming back down.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied. “I’m feeling a little bumping now; I must be back in atmosphere.” The sensation in the cockpit wasn’t exactly bumping, so much as the faintest of nudges, as forces formerly absent were returning.

“Affirmative, Eight,” Cherry said. “Maintain retrograde attitude and stand by.”

Chrysalis lay back, hooves on the flight stick, eyes on the nav ball, making the lightest of touches now and then. For a minute or two nothing much happened, except that the faint nudges began to build towards a vibration, nothing like as ferocious as liftoff, but vastly removed from the tranquility of moments before.

A flicker of redness rushed past the window. “Horseton, Eight,” she said.

“Go ahead, Eight,” Cherry Berry answered.

“I’m seeing… little streamers of red light,” Chrysalis reported. “Or is that flame?”

“Roger, Eight, and yes it is flame,” Cherry repeated. “The air is thick enough, and you’re going fast enough, to heat up the atmosphere around you. The ablator shield should prevent the heat from building up in your ship, over.”

“Mission Eight copies,” Chrysalis replied calmly. She didn’t remember the bit about coming down surrounded by a fireball being covered in either training or classes. But then, nopony had planned on Mission Eight making it to space, even for a few minutes.

The flames increased rapidly, a roar beginning to fill the cabin. “Gravity’s coming back…” Chrysalis grunted as the ship began to decelerate. “Just a touch, but it’s there. Speed thirteen twelve at twenty-two thousand meters.”

“Horseton copies,” Cherry said.

The sensation of weight increased little by little as flames roared past the capsule. “Speed twelve seventy-five at nineteen thousand meters,” she said.

“Horseton copies.”

A moment later Chrysalis said, “Speed twelve-ten at sixteen thousand, Horseton is there something you should be telling- oof!” The capsule had just shoved her hard in the back, and was still shoving hard.

“Mission Eight, Horseton, we didn’t copy that last,” Cherry Berry said.

“Just started… slowing down… really fast,” Chrysalis groaned. “Two gees. Unexpected. Dropping below ten thousand, still well over nine hundred.”

“Wait until parachutes green-light before deploying,” Cherry Berry warned.

“Mission Eight copies, deploy parachutes only on green light,” Chrysalis replied. “Gees easing up… three hundred fifty at five thousand meters altitude.” The flames were long gone, and the black of space was replaced by clear blue skies outside the window. “Three hundred at four thousand meters… two ninety… two eighty… two seventy.”

The parachute switch lights turned from red to yellow, and Chrysalis’s left hoof hovered over them. “Standing by…” At two hundred sixty-two meters per second the switch went green, and her hoof stabbed forward. “Parachutes deployed!” she shouted triumphantly.

About a quarter mile off Nuzzle Island in the Marehamas, what looked like a slightly scorched gray gumdrop drifted down under a parachute, splashing into the water. A mother and daughter, ponies vacationing from Baltimare(118), watched with interest as the parachute collapsed atop it, then drifted away on the water.

To their surprise, a door opened on the side of the gumdrop. Something in an orange suit crawled out, hugging the side as it closed the hatch behind it. One hoof slipped, and the thing slid into the water, splashing frantically for a few seconds, then calming down as it realized that it wasn’t actually sinking.

Green magic enveloped the metal gumdrop. Very, very slowly the thing rose into the air, then began floating towards the beach, led by the strange thing in the orange suit. Mare and filly watched with growing curiosity and concern as the thing in the suit swam, then touched bottom, then walked through the low surf, rising up from the water like a creature out of a bad movie.(119)

The metal pod set down on the beach, and the magic shifted from it to the helmet, twisting it, unlocking it, removing it. The thing inside took a deep breath of salt air and shook out its lank green mane.

“Stay back, Checkers,” the mother said, putting herself between her daughter and the monster. “I’ll protect you.”

“Peace, peace!” the monster said, raising a hoof still encased in the damp orange suit. “I’m a friend! A friend! I come from Equestria! Where’s the nearest telegraph office?”

The filly peeked out from between her mother’s legs. “Ma’am, did you come from outer space?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Queen Chrysalis said, smiling triumphantly, “I did!!”

Footnotes:

(118) Having made a small fortune in just two days from the changeling tourist invasion, the family had taken a Marehaman vacation to soothe their nerves. They had money to spare, and it was the off-season. At the moment Daddy was off by the cabana bar getting himself quite profoundly soothed. Mommy was not looking forward to dragging his unconscious flank back to the hotel again that evening.

(119) Specifically, Teenage Cavehorse, directed by Bit I. Gottem, 989 CR. Why there was a monster with a spacesuit helmet atop a gorilla-suit body in a movie about cavehorses was never explained. Not many cared. When you went to a theater showing a movie with a title like that, watching the film was the last thing on the agenda.

MISSION 8 REPORT

Mission summary: Test flight dynamics of booster aerodynamic nosecones; fulfill outstanding contracts for Flea and Hammer booster tests; survey two target zones while in flight

Pilot: Chrysalis

Flight duration: 25 min. 14 sec.
Maximum speed achieved: 1361 m/s (ascent), 1374 (descent)
Maximum altitude achieved: Trans-atmospheric
Distance downrange at landing: 302.3 km

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: all altitude milestones cleared, fastest velocity, reached space, returned safely from space

Conclusions from flight: SPACE! SPACE! SPACE! OH MY CELESTIA SPACE SPACE SPACE!!!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: A MOST SUCCESSFUL FAILURE

The telepresence illusion had failed a few seconds after splashdown, but that had been enough. Everyone in the Mission Control room was cheering and celebrating, even the changelings. Professionalism was thrown to the four winds. The only quiet pony in the room was Ad Astra, but that was because she was busy writing out checks, a couple of which would be extremely large.

Changeling Space Program: first in space.

That would be the next day’s headline, and every pony, changeling, griffon and minotaur in the room knew it. It was even made official when Twilight Sparkle descended from the gallery to shake Cherry Berry’s hoof. In a voice loud enough to carry she said, “I see the Equestria Space Agency has a lot of catching up to do!” As she shook hooves, she added, “Under the circumstances, you’ve more than earned that wind tunnel. ESA considers the contract fulfilled in full!”

“I’m honored, Princess,” Cherry Berry replied, also pitching her voice to carry, “but we’re going to fulfill your remaining priorities anyway! And then- next stop orbit! Because the Changeling Space Program doesn’t give up until it succeeds!”

Two figures took opportunity of the tumult to absent themselves. They bore press passes in their bright, snazzy straw hats, but had anyone checked those passes there would have been awkward questions asked. Like, for example, why the two unicorns hadn’t been with the press group the day before, why weren’t the ponies carrying a camera or pencil and notepad, and who published the Weekly Midnight Star anyway, and where?

“Well, dear brother of mine,” said one to the other, “I found this diversion most educational indeed.”

“As did I, my eloquent sibling,” said the other to the one. “And what I found most educational is, I do not believe these ponies are alive to the possibilities of that spell.”

“Indeed my cup runneth over with ideas for its use,” the first said to the second, his mustache swishing.

“As does mine,” the second said to the first. “Now all we have to do is lay hooves on a chart of the spell matrix.”

“A simple matter, no doubt easily attained,” the first said, “and then a few minor modifications will set us well on our way!”

“Veritably, my dear brother!” The second chuckled, adding, “Let us be thankful for the institution of free scientific exchange!”

“Yes indeed!” the first laughed. “Let us go set some information free… and then sell it dearly!”

The two ponies laughed merrily, if maliciously, and took a brisk, jaunty walk in the direction of the administrative offices.

Author's Note

Dear God, but this one turned out to be a monster. I probably should have broken it up, but I didn't want to break up one overall theme. I should have cut some things, but I loved bits like Goddard explaining the logic of decoupling stages too much to give them the axe.

But what really buggered things up was a simple mistake in my play-through.

The original writing prompt was: "What happens when you get too ambitious with flight-test contracts?"

Unfortunately, I hadn't bought the science package which includes both lateral decouplers and nosecones. I -had- done so on the backup game play, and I took the contracts before I realized my error. I flew Mission Six doing the best with what I had on hand, which, yes, included a dirt launchpad that could only hold eighteen tons maximum.

There are four screen caps for Mission 6. It took seven tries to get those four pics. The first attempt was played through to get the final result and stats... and it was one of the two tries, out of the seven, which did not result in pilot death. (I reverted to pad before anything actually crashed, but impending failure is usually obvious in KSP.) Obviously Cherry Berry is both very lucky and very skilled to wring the maximum performance out of that design.

Well, with two out of three missions failed, I needed more science so I could get those nosecones. Hence Mission Seven, which only took three passes for the screencaps you see. All three would have been successful- I had designed the ship to do as little as possible while getting maximum science out of the Science Jr. For story purposes I recruited a third pilot, so I could give Dragonfly time in the chair.

Nosecones acquired, I redesigned for Mission 8... and came just barely short of parameters for the Hammer test, as in the story. And, as in the story, I thought I could cheat the game by carrying a used Flea to altitude. No soap.

I absolutely did not expect to reach space on that launch. That changed the ending of the chapter entirely, giving it a more triumphant spin than I'd expected. Instead of just barely getting out of their mess, CSP ends up flying high despite technical failure.

So I jotted down some notes and began writing, here and there, over the course of the past week. In the process I put Twilight Sparkle in the position to be taught a Valuable Friendship Lesson, although I kind of wish I'd found a way for her to defend herself better.

"Uncle Pointy" is a reference to a thing on deviantArt; search for "Changeling Scout" and enjoy the stupid sillies.

Chrysalis's landing is meant to echo Yuri Gagarin's landing, with almost direct quotes. I'd originally intended to quote Alan Shepherd, but Shepherd turns out to have been one of the least poetic astronauts ever. He was all business and almost zero imagination. Even John Glenn was better. Gagarin, bless his memory, was an idealist.

Next chapter, we find out what two mercantile-minded unicorns can do with a certain spell; CSP PR kicks into high gear; and the team clears out the remaining contracts in preparation for their big push to orbit of Equus!

EDIT: Oh, one more thing; this is the last chapter where I'm including distance, altitude and speed in the mission reports. The thing is, KSP's fictional solar system is scaled down here and there to make it more playable. The home planet, Kerbin, is precisely one-tenth Earth's diameter, but with the same gravitational pull, more or less. This means orbits are slower and lower in KSP (with atmosphere topping out at 70 km and low orbit velocity about 2350 m/s- or in other words, half and one-third that of Earth's respectively). So from here on out I'll have to play a bit fast and loose with actual numbers to make a KSP playthrough fit a more Earthlike world.

(And no, I'm not going to download the Real Solar System mod. I have enough computer for -one- installation. One. And I am not a masochist.)

Chapter 8: Mission 9: Semi-Reliable Performance

Every paper in the world ran the story over the following week.

Changelings First in Space.

The exact nature of the headline and article varied depending on the paper. The Canterlot Herald, for example, focused on the dangers of allowing changeling superiority in the space race. On the other end of the spectrum, the Manehattan Times soberly reflected on the strong governing hoof of Chrysalis over her subjects(120). The Foal Free Press of Ponyville went farther than anyone in favor of the changelings, mostly because the grade school student writing the article had only two positive adjectives in his vocabulary, “cool” and “yummy”.(121)

The Crystal Empire Post-Dispatch reported the bare facts plus an interview with Twilight Sparkle, and that was all. The Griffondale Penny-Press didn’t even include the interview, though it did mention that the changelings were accepting contracts for space-related enterprises, which might be a profitable enterprise in the future. The tabloids of the minotaur islands practically presented the whole affair as a minotaur program which just happened, for no particular reason, to be piloted by a changeling queen(122).

The dragons didn’t publish newspapers, but even they began to gossip about the launch.

And as the gossip and news and discussion spread and circulated, it eventually got back to the changelings by one channel or another. There were still thousands of infiltrators in deep cover across Equestria, of course, rotating in and out, bringing love back to the hive and to the workers at the space center. They also brought the latest word, and the word was…

… not that bad, actually.

On the one hand, most ponies still feared changelings. On the other hand, a growing number were giving them respect. And a few, here and there, were actually showing approval.

But only a few. Chrysalis looked at the reports and decided it would take a lot more than a glorified elevator ride for her species to live down its past. On the other hand, she reasoned, by the time she did enough for that to even be a possibility, she’d have the Moon and enough power to conquer the world, so why worry about it?

One thing the news had done; every single space program still running, even the griffons and dragons, now wanted the new rocket engines being turned out in Appleoosa. The yak space program had sent a forty yak strong trade delegation to the Crystal Empire to order rocket parts and haul them back home.

Cherry Berry spent two weeks at Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, letting her duties at the space center lapse, helping Goddard the Griffin organize the manufacture of engine after engine after engine, plus the fuel tanks. This didn’t hurt matters much, since the construction crews which had been juggled to prepare for the Big Launch Day had now been thrown into building a new launch pad, designed by Warner von Brawn, which could hold ten times the weight and withstand ten times the thrust of the original dirt-and-gravel mound. The process, which required a lot of engineering, welding and steel, was due to take weeks, even working day and night with the aid of unicorn lights.

Chrysalis was kept busy by the construction, by the need to go back to the hive for a few days to catch up on royal business, and by the occasional interview requested by journalists from around the world. Despite that, she spared a little time to set a few guidelines for the next flight:

No more flying ground surveys. They’d complete the one still on contract, and that was all.

The next rocket would focus on finally clearing out the old missions. No missions would be accepted unless they could be accomplished along the way on the same flight with no additional weight.

Once all the old, unfinished contracts were settled, the space program would design a rocket specifically for an orbit attempt, and no contracts would be accepted that interfered with achieving orbit.

That was the plan, and she repeated these guidelines in her interviews, making it clear that although CSP was currently not flying, it was not idle, either.

Other space programs were flying, however. Twilight Sparkle’s Equestrian Space Agency flew a Swivel-propelled rocket into the upper atmosphere piloted by Rainbow Dash. That one had nearly ended in a Bad Day. Twilight, still convinced that keeping the rocket whole was the way to go, had tried the same all-the-parachutes approach Chrysalis had suggested when she first encountered the concept of decouplers. The rocket came down nose-first on a thankfully shallow trajectory, but the nosecone parachute failed due to heat and the other parachutes came close to doing likewise. Once Rainbow Dash had splashed down safely the core Ponyville group had a long, private discussion, which resulted in a large order for decouplers being sent to Old Minotaur Bombs and Mining.

In the week that followed, Princess Cadence became the second being from Equus to leave atmosphere and return safely, splashing down, ironically enough, not far offshore from Horseton.(123) Two days later Gordon the Griffon became the third, just barely getting out of atmosphere but tracking a long, shallow trajectory that brought him down in the ocean south of Saddle Arabia, a quarter of the planet away. The Prench and the dragons each launched their second flights, Yakyakistan had a misfire that never got off the ground, and a group of diamond dogs, after two months of trying, finally got a Flea-hopper into the air and down again safely.

The bad news was, the Changeling Space Program was barely ahead in the space race, if it was ahead at all. The good news was, two-thirds of the components being used by the other space programs either included parts designed by CSP or were wholly manufactured by CSP and its front companies.

Between this and the checks cashed from contractors and from the Royal Canterlot Astronomical Society, far from tottering on the brink of insolvency as it had seemed weeks before, CSP was actually flush with cash.

And then, three weeks after Chrysalis’s space flight, something new entered the world, which drowned out, at least for the moment, all thoughts of the space race…

Footnotes:

(120) A point the Baltimare Sun mocked, pointing out and exaggerating the “riotous conduct” of the changelings who had recently visited. This despite the fact that, after the Times, the Sun had the broadest coverage of the flight and, more often than not, viewed the effort favorably.

(121) And although a changeling would have no problem describing a pony as yummy, most ponies would not appreciate it being applied the other way, Snails notwithstanding.

(122) Which is not totally inaccurate.

(123) She understandably declined the offer of recovery services from CSP, waiting for a team from Cape Friendship to come get her and her capsule.

Time passed, as it does.

The launch pad was completed. A flight was flown. The press oohed and aahed, though only half a dozen newspapers sent reporters to witness Mission Nine, also known as Mission Mop-Up among the press.

But three others were present- two unicorns and a hired pegasus- and it was these three ponies who, throughout their stay at Horseton Space Center, held the near-total attention of the space program’s officers.

And now, a week after the launch, all work was called off remaining construction(124), all training ceased, and over two hundred changelings, ponies, and this and that gathered in the lounge of the astronaut complex, in front of a large box with a slightly curved crystal window in the front.(125)

“Is everyling here?” Occupant asked, fluttering around the room, wings buzzing like a chainsaw. “It’s going to start any minute!”

Chrysalis, with a front row seat as was due a queen, said, “If they miss out, they miss out.” With a flicker of magic from her horn she switched the device on and adjust the knob marked CHANNEL to number 2.(126)

A slow hissing noise built up from the grille underneath the window, which began to glow with an eerie light. The light resolved itself, bit by bit, into a picture, and the hiss into words.

Chrysalis groaned as she saw a graytone picture was of a unicorn smiling far too broadly, holding up a bottle of something. “Why,” she asked the world, “is it always an advertisement?”

“… and those mares out there love a stallion whose mouth has the minty-crisp ting of Flim-Flam!” The unicorn stallion smiled even more broadly, if such a thing were possible, as he held the bottle as close to the camera as possible. “So order today! Supplies are limited! Don’t miss out on Flim-Flam Brand Oral Hygiene Elixir!”

Where the image of the unicorn had been in black and white, the title card listing the address to send off to which followed was in brilliant color. There was nothing wrong with the spell that powered the device, or which powered the broadcast it received. The moving pictures were black and white because the ponies running the broadcast had been too cheap to buy a color moving picture camera. (127)

Chrysalis heard a few pencils being put to paper. “When I decide a changeling needs mouthwash, I will buy some,” she said, putting a strong tone of warning into her words. “For the rest of you the answer is no.”

“Awwww.” The scribbling stopped.

The commercial card was pulled away, replaced by the view of a desk with the twin brother of the pony who’d been in the mouthwash ad. Fluffing out his mustache with a breath, the unicorn crowed, “Here’s a preview of the Seven O’Clock Report, brought to you by FF Television, the world’s first and only legitimate television broadcaster!”

The quiet sound of a film projector began under Flam’s speech, and an image of Manehattan Courthouse appeared on the wall to one side of Flam’s desk. “Leading our news, FF Television continues to appeal the unjust revocation of its patent on television!”

The image of Manehattan Courthouse switched to a moving picture of Twilight Sparkle, obviously furious. “I still want to know who gave that spell to those two!” she snapped, before the picture froze on a most uncomplimentary frame of a face twisted in either rage or indigestion. “Twilight Sparkle, who has been a princess of Equestria for only a bit more than a year and who obviously is inexperienced with legal matters, pleaded the case for the government at Manehattan Courthouse today. Given her conduct when interviewed by reporters, we can expect our appeal to the high court in Canterlot to be completely successful.”

Warner von Brawn, loafing in a large chair suited to a massive minotaur of middle age, said, “Do you think they’re going to win?”

“Not a chance,” Cherry Berry said through a mouthful of cherries. Chrysalis wished the pony would either not talk with her mouth full, or else sit farther away. “Celestia paid off their patent. They’d have a fortune if they accepted. The way they’re going, they’ll lose the whole amount on legal costs trying to restore their monopoly.”

Meanwhile, Flam had kept on with other news items, mostly with a strong Flim-Flam spin which either made the brothers look good or tied in to products offered by mail in their advertisements. “… the thief entered through the second-story window, which sadly was not secured by a Flim-Flam Patent Pane Protection Product. Also later tonight, the sports scores, the weather schedule for all Equestria, and the latest science on how beet juice and pressed cabbage stimulates muscle development!

“And now tonight’s schedule! After the Seven O’Clock Report, we have a double feature movie! A tragic tale of parental neglect written and directed by Wooden Head, I Accuse My Sire and Dam, followed by the classic sci-fi comedy, Pod Ponies! But for now, it’s six o’clock and time for this week’s edition of Look At It!”

There was a brief clatter as one reel of film was hurriedly swapped for another, and then the picture focused on the black-and-white projection.

Throughout the lounge changelings shushed each other. The shushing grew louder and more hostile, partly because the “shhh” sound in Equestrian means “back off right now” in old Changeling.

“Silence,” Chrysalis snapped, and the changelings froze, settled down, and turned to the television just as the exciting tinkly piano music began to play.

Footnotes:

(124) The administration building, which included a throne room with a telepresence link straight back to the hive, was nearing completion. There was now a hangar for Cherry Berry’s plane, though construction on a larger airship hangar was still in process. The research and development complex was just finished, and bit by bit Goddard the Griffon and von Brawn’s minotaur associates were shifting the research and experiment functions of Cherry’s Rocket Parts from Appleoosa to Horseton. Finally, plans were being drawn up for a larger tracking center and a much expanded vehicle assembly building (VAB). At the rate things were going, some of the non-changeling construction workers were considering buying or building homes in the area in anticipation of that golden dream of contractors, a project which is never fully complete.

(125) Within a week of its first release, her changelings had demanded one. Chrysalis had resisted, first because of the expense, second because she had quite a few notions of what the thing would do to the minds of her subjects, many of which turned out in the end to be absolutely correct. This hesitation had put her in the right place when the competitors to the first device came out, offering (among other things) a bigger screen and knobs that actually did things. When she gave in she bought two, and ONLY two- one for the hive and one for the space center- but she bought the biggest and best models she could find.

(126) In any house with a unicorn or other magic user, the remote control, if it was ever invented at all, would gather dust on a shelf.

(127) When you consider that, as with all photography in Equestria, the process was entirely magical rather than chemical, and thus color was barely any different from black-and-white in technological terms, this means Flim and Flam had been very, very cheap indeed. Also, a bit stupid.

A Proud FF Feature

Look At It!

A Weekly In-Depth Examination of the Coming Trends Changing Your World!
Episode 3: the Changeling Space Program

Behold the south shore of Muck Lake, where the writ of Equestrian law ends, and where the Forbidden Jungles still hold tribes of uncivilized ponies and unspeakable monsters. This land of tropical terror represents the past of ponykind- superstitious, quarrelsome, and simple.

And now having seen the past, let us look at- the future!

This gleaming complex on the shores of the Griffon Ocean is Horseton Space Center, named for the nearest pony village which recognizes the rule of the Royal Alicorn Sisters. This is the future- where creatures of all races come together to advance the boundaries of learning for us! Here ponies, griffons, minotaurs and other races dream of new worlds, new discoveries and new challenges.

And here one race dreams an even more ambitious dream- a dream, after centuries of hatred and fear, of acceptance.

For Horseton Space Center is the home of the Changeling Space Program.

T -48 hours until Mission 9 Launch

The annoying thing about being a changeling queen is that you almost never get to enjoy a leisurely breakfast by yourself.

Oh, you can have whatever food you like, whenever you want it, if that’s your thing. Never mind that your system uses practically none of it unless you need to create some particular fluid, web, or casing. You can taste pony food all you like, enjoy it if you like the taste, and then discreetly spit it up and throw it away. For a changeling that’s not breakfast, that’s posing.

A meal for a changeling means concentrated love energy, and the changeling queen is responsible for storing and redistributing love gathered by her subjects, ensuring none go hungry and that the warriors and workers are strong enough to fulfill their tasks. One side effect is, although the rest of the time the queen is absolute ruler, at mealtimes she’s little more than a lunchlady to a particularly quarrelsome group of children.

Chrysalis was leaving the almost-finished administration building after distributing large doses of love brought back from the hive in the Badlands to the changelings at the space center, generally thanking Whatever that changelings could go for weeks without a feed, when she noticed the paddle-wheeled barge working its way up the Muck Lake inlet.

Cherry Berry had come out of the astronaut complex to check on her; she was due to launch Mission Nine at noon two days later, and both earth pony and changeling queen needed to be in the simulators to prepare. They hadn’t had a successful Flea test in simulations yet, and as mission backup and capsule communicator Chrysalis had to be there for every test, half in the capsule, half on the observer station. “Morning, Your Majesty,” she said. “What’s that, more rocket parts?”

Chrysalis put a hoof over her eyes to shield them from the morning sun. “Occupant’s schedule doesn’t mention a shipment,” she said. “Besides, Goddard and von Brawn are here, so who’s left in Appleoosa to ship anything to us?”

After flagging down a passing changeling and sending her to fetch Occupant, Chrysalis and Cherry trotted over to the docks. The closer the barge came, the gaudier it looked, brass and glass and brightly colored paint, as if the whole were a seagoing theater bent on attracting the attention and custom of… who, exactly?

Then, as the barge’s large paddlewheels backed water to bring the craft to a stop by the docks, the wind picked up just enough for the flag on the ship’s stubby mast to flap open, revealing a bright red-and-white FF logo.

“Well, pony, looks like we have been honored,” Chrysalis muttered.

“How do you figure?” Cherry Berry replied.

“The list of people who are bigger deceivers than any changeling is a short one,” Chrysalis said. “This ship belongs to two ponies near the top of that list.” After a moment’s thought she added, “That is, if they bought it legitimately, which I doubt.”

Cherry grunted noncommittally, not really reacting until the barge’s owners exited the pilot house atop the big square superstructure. Unicorn magic deftly cast out ropes, tied them to the pilings, tugged them fast. More magic levitated a gangplank out from a covered walkway to connect ship and pier. The two unicorns, dressed in their snappy blue-striped vests and straw boaters, trotted down the gangplank, followed by a sullen-looking, bulge-eyed gray pegasus carrying a large, beaten-up movie camera.

Upon reaching the shore, the two unicorns stopped, stood side by side, and bowed in unison, bending one foreleg sideways as they bent their heads. “Greetings, Your Majesty Queen Chrysalis!” said the one without a mustache.

“And a good morning to you, oh famous test pilot Cherry Berry!” said the one with.

“We are-“

“Flim and Flam, yes, we know,” Chrysalis interrupted. “You boys seem to have done well for yourselves, even after losing your monopoly.” She cocked her head slightly, pretending to think. “Six days from hitting the market to having your patent bought out from under you? And two days after that before four competing device makers and six competing broadcasters burst out of the woodwork? Even considering the fickle and gullible nature of ponies, that must be a record for scam gone sour, wouldn’t you say?”

Truth be told, Chrysalis’s feelings about the brothers before her ran multiple directions. She’d found out after the fact that the two had been around for her space flight, which was when she guessed they got their hooves on the telepresence illusion spell. That meant they’d stolen from her, and that was unacceptable. However, they’d produced a very ingenious device indeed, one with massive potential for use and abuse. This intrigued her. (128) Finally, their very existence, never mind their brazen effrontery at every stage of their current scheme, annoyed Twilight Sparkle enough that she lost her cool, repeatedly, in public. That sort of amusement bought a lot of forgiveness in Chrysalis’s books. Any pony the purple princess detested couldn’t be all bad.

Once she had taken certain actions in secret for her own advantage, Chrysalis greeted her visitors with a more or less open mind. After all, if all else failed, there were empty pods back in the Badlands, and these were two ponies the Princesses wouldn’t ask any questions about… well, at least not for a good long while.(129)

As it happened, her snide remarks hadn’t thrown them off their sales pitch for an instant. “The unsubstantiated rumors of our fiscal downfall are gravely exaggerated, Your Highness!” Flim said.

“Indeed, even if all goes against us in the courts, this is but a minor setback!” Flam added.

“Because although we have competition, we remain the first!” Flim said.

“We are the inventors!” said Flam.

“The innovators!”

“The explorers!”

“The leaders at the dawn of a brand new medium!”

The two ponies paused. Flam cleared his throat and tapped his hoof meaningfully.

“Right, boss,” the bulge-eyed pegasus grumbled, flying up to the ship and settling in at an organ perched on top of the superstructure. As the music began, the unicorn brothers sang:

My Queen, your reputation’s shot and your popularity is down
You want to make a change, but you need a way to get the word around
We know you can’t bear the idea that it’s beyond all repair
So allow us to adjust your image by putting you on the air

Why, you’ve got opportunity
At this space facility
He’s Flim-
-he’s Flam
We’re the world-famous Flim-Flam Brothers
Traveling broadcasters nonpareil

“Oh, not again,” Cherry Berry sighed, slowing the brothers down not at all.

You’re in a bind, and that’s the reason why, you see
Nopony else in the whole world will give you such a chance to make your case on T.V.
It’s a new world with tons of viewers with wide-open ears and eyes unblinking
That’s viewers that you can sway over to your way of thinking

You’ve got opportunity
At this space facility
He’s Flim-
-he’s Flam
We’re the world-famous Flim-Flam Brothers
Traveling broadcasters nonpareil

Flim stepped forward and gestured a hoof at the barge, on top of which the pegasus resolutely pounded out the old fashioned march tempo.

I suppose by now you’re wondering about our fashionable sailing vessel
- Our means of cruising ‘cross the ocean
- And I suppose by now you’re wondering where’s our studio?
- Anypony knows you need a stage and set to have a show
- Well, my brother and I had ideas nopony else could
Inspirations and inventions nopony else would
And that’s INNOVATION
Ma’am, it’s the one and only, the biggest and the best,
Unique!
-Tres chic!
- First-class
- Unsurpassed
F. F. Television’s Super Sailing Studio 6000!

Chrysalis took over the chorus, while a few flubbed notes from the organ took the song into a disturbing minor key:

And that’s why you’ve brought opportunity
To this space facility
We know who you are
You’re the infamous Flim-Flam Brothers
Shady hucksters nonpareil

Now before I buy your drivel
Just want to show my brain’s not shriveled
Now here’s the way it is, unless I miss my guess
You’ve got a ton of competition
So you’ve come here on a mission
‘Cause if you give the nation a sensation you might just squeeze out of your mess

Flim replied, as Fish Eye corrected his errors and the music shifted back into the cheerful major key:

Well, you make an excellent point, Your Highness, I say you make an excellent point
Our viewers are great sophisticates who we really don’t want to disappoint

And Flam added:

It’s a win-win situation, at least from our point of view
So whaddaya say, C.S.P.?
Care to take your message to the world
And let us film a documentary of you?

And the two unicorns joined in for one more chorus:

Accept this opportunity
At this space facility!
He’s Flim-
He’s Flam-
We’re the world-famous Flim Flam Brothers
Travelling broadcasters nonpareil!

And with a last clumsy flourish from the organ, the song ended, to the cheers of the crowd of changelings (plus a few construction ponies) who had gathered round as the song progressed.

Chrysalis turned to face the impromptu audience. “Don’t you all have non-pod related things you need to be doing?” she hissed.

The audience dispersed, precipitately.

“So, what do you say, Your Highness?” Flam asked. “I guarantee you none of the donkey-come-lately broadcasters will give you so much as a sixty-second ad spot. We’re going to make you the feature for an entire hour!”

“Less commercial breaks,” Flim added softly.

“And although we no longer have the market to ourselves, for a week we did,” Flam added.

“Eight thousand Truly Terrific Television 1000’s in pony homes,” Flim added. “And we’re still selling more, along with the optional TTT Tuner box additional!”

“You’re clearing the old units out at one-fifth your original asking price,” Chrysalis said. “Which is still three-quarters the price of the smallest competing tunable set. And a lot of your early buyers have sold or junked their old sets in favor of your competitors’ product.”

“How exactly are you so knowledgeable about our newly founded industry?” Flam asked.

“I went shopping a few days ago,” Chrysalis said. “My subjects insisted on trying out your idiot box-“

“Shame, shame!” both brothers chided.

“- and once there was a selection of units I could no longer put them off.”

“I say, you haven’t made your purchase yet, have you?” Flam asked.

“Next week our TTT 2000 and TTTT 3000 will hit the shelves,” Flim said.

“What’s the extra T for?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Tremendous!” Flim grinned.

“Instead of an enclosed screen, the TTTT 3000 projects on a wall!” Flam added.

“Of course you have to turn out the lights in the room to get the full effect,” Flim continued.

“But with that minor drawback, the TTTT 3000 will have the largest screen resolution of any television on the market!”

“Sadly, I have already made my purchases,” Chrysalis admitted. “But to get back to business.” She walked up to them, allowing her eyes and horn to glow. “You are aware, of course, that I could bend your minds to do my bidding. And given your history of, to be polite, questionable salesmanship tactics,” she added, “there aren’t that many ponies who would weep.”

“It took me a week to get your Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 sales pitch out of my head,” Cherry Berry said. “Longer to get the taste of that horrible cider out of my mouth. Compared to that,” she added, pointing at Chrysalis, “her mind control is honest.”

Chrysalis paused, glancing at her earth pony test pilot. “Thank you, I think,” she said. “But this is moot, since I really have no need to do so. The fact is,” she said, smiling and showing off her fangs and pointed teeth, “you need me vastly more than I need you. Your competitors are bidding up the lousy old movies you’ve been airing, and they’re getting money from advertising sales, which you don’t because you only advertise your own products.”

“Actually, day before yesterday we did begin accepting outside advertisements,” Flim noted. “We rather had to. You see, that is our broadcast studio there,” he said, pointing to the barge. “And while it’s away from the docks at Manehattan, we can’t process orders for our products, so we needed something to finance this trip and keep broadcasting in the interim.”

“I stand corrected,” Chrysalis replied. “This doesn’t alter the fact that your income is shrinking rapidly along with your market share. You want something so controversial and attention-grabbing that it will help salvage your own reputations, regardless of what it does to mine.”

“We prefer the term sensational,” Flim replied firmly.

Chrysalis nodded. “Here are my terms,” she said. “You stay throughout the flight in two days. I then view your final edit to make sure it’s not, shall we say, counterproductive to my wishes.”

“She means no slam piece on the space program,” Cherry Berry added.

“Also you don’t use the program or my subjects to sell your trinkets,” Chrysalis continued. “You then go back to Manehattan or wherever and air the piece as I saw it here. If it doesn’t match, I have ways of making my displeasure felt.” She narrowed her eyes and added, “Not all my subjects are out in the open, even yet. Do I need to say more?”

“Message received, Your Highness!” Flam nodded, barely breaking a sweat… but breaking a sweat all the same.

“And we get half the advertising space,” Chrysalis added. “Free.”

The salesponies’ jaws dropped. “WHAT?” they both shouted.

“You heard me. Half the ads. Five out of nine, not counting the top-of-the-hour material.” As the unicorns struggled for words, she added, “That’s the deal. Your options are to take it,” and she gestured at their ship, “or take off. Any attempt to dicker or suggest a third option, and my demand becomes all the ads.”

For thirty seconds Chrysalis thoroughly enjoyed the sight of the two confidence ponies suffering in silence, unable to confer, unable to admit just how bad their position was (130), and yet unwilling to accept the offer as presented. Something had to break, but the breaking process was entertaining enough that Chrysalis wished she had her own camera to record it all.

Of course, the break came in the direction she expected. “You strike a very hard deal, Your Majesty,” Flam said reluctantly.

“But we accept your terms in all particulars,” Flim said.

“Provided,” Flam continued, “that we get your full cooperation on everything else.”

“Consistent, of course, with safety and the requirements of your agency,” Flim concluded.

“But of course,” Chrysalis smiled. “If you would come this way, I’ll introduce you to our flight manager and mission planner, Occupant. He’ll be your guide and liaison to the rest of the program.” She gestured to the changeling hovering respectfully behind her, who had taken to wearing a bright white vest in an (unsuccessful) attempt to distract from his buck fangs.

“We will need to interview you on camera later,” Flim put in.

“But of course,” Chrysalis purred. “I insist upon it.”

Footnotes:

(128) Also, it had inspired her, and Twilight Sparkle as well, to seek other applications for their spell besides scrying on a spaceship. The first application was being worked into the administration building- a telepresence link between the space center, the hive, and the Appleoosa workshop. Twilight Sparkle’s assistant, Starlight Glimmer, was working on a spell that could be networked with thousands of others. Since Flim and Flam’s device had already taken the name ‘television,’ Twilight Sparkle wanted to use the name ‘teleconference,’ but Chrysalis liked von Brawn’s term better, ‘telephone.’

(129) And it wasn’t like these two would be dry holes like Double Face. Considering how eagerly they sought money by fair means or foul, they at least loved that. Love for each other, she sensed, would be a distant second place.

(130) It was bad enough that the ponies had decided a few days away from Manehattan would be good for their health, at least until the advertising checks cleared the bank. But then, they had built their studio on a magic-propelled barge for the same reason that, in other worlds, a certain breed of used car salesman has their office in a trailer hitched to a truck whose engine is always running…

This is CSP Mission Control, the room where a dozen scientists and workers do their best to ensure a safe flight for the mission of the day. It’s empty now, but soon it’ll be busy and crowded as the CSP prepares for its ninth mission.

CSP Mission Eight was the first non-magical transport of a creature from Equus beyond the atmosphere into outer space. Since then two other vessels have made brief trips into the great unknown, but before CSP can regain its lead in the space race, it is determined to clear all prior obligations. We spoke with CSP mission planner and flight director Occupant to get more information.

I’m sorry, but I’m a little embarrassed. My fangs, you see.

That’s quite all right, just go ahead.

Well, the thing is, the mission objectives Twilight Sparkle gave us were sort of, um a challenge. We were being asked, demanded really, to do things noling else-

Sorry, noling?

No one. To do things no one else had ever done before. And, well, we changelings do lie quite a lot- we have to, really- but we don’t back down from a challenge. Particularly not from Princess Twilight Sparkle, whose own Equestrian Space Agency has all the advantages we lacked- the knowledge base of Canterlot’s universities, first pick of existing technology, the full cooperation and funding of the Equestrian government.

Are you jealous of the ESA, then?

A bit, yeah. But mostly because they have respect and support. Changelings never get that. As long as we can remember, we’ve had to take everything we have. I guess that’s what Mission Nine is really about. Taking the respect we’re due.

Do you want Equestria to fear changelings, then?

No! No! All I want is that Equestrians stop treating us like horrible mindless monsters! You ponies already have so much, with your trains and skyscrapers and Album of the Month Clubs and princesses who raise the sun and moon and everything! Why can’t you at least leave us changelings some self-respect?

That’s fair enough. Anything else you’d like to tell our audience?

Um, yeah. This is kind of important.

Yes?

If you order the Priceless Memories collectible figurines from the Unicorn Mint, be sure to pay extra for special courier service. Your postal ponies are very nice and friendly, but they don’t seem to understand the word ‘fragile.’ (131)

T -47 hours until Mission 9 Launch

“OK, Mr. Flim, Mr. Flam,” Occupant said, holding up a map of the complex. “For your safety and our security these are your no-go areas. First and foremost,” he said, pointing to the area around the launchpad, “you are not to go anywhere in this area, between the VAB and the ocean, from noon tomorrow until after the launch the next day.” He then pointed to the VAB. “If you want to film inside the VAB main assembly room, you must be escorted so you don’t interfere with the workers assembling the rocket. The rest of the VAB is storage and off-limits. We insist on these restrictions for our safety and yours.”

“Oh, most understandable, wouldn’t you agree?” Flim asked.

“Beyond all question, oh brother of mine,” Flam nodded.

“Mission Control and the residential portion of the astronaut quarters are free-access,” Occupant continued. “The training area is restricted-access while training and simulations are ongoing, but we’ll arrange for an escort if you want to film some of that.”

“Sounds a most capital idea,” Flim nodded.

“The research complex and the gift shop are of course fully open,” Occupant continued, “and you will be offered a ride in the Fun Machine if you so desire. Administration, the airship and aeroplane hangars, and the runway are off limits due to ongoing construction, but since we’re not using any of that yet that shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Quite understood,” Flam agreed.

“And finally,” Occupant finished, “your pegasus… I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Fish Eye,” growled the pegasus in a deep, gravelly voice.

“Yes, Mr. Fish Eye. It is vitally important that you remain on the ground on the day of the launch. The sound and force of the engines at launch is tremendous, and it can cause sudden drafts that can send flyers out of control. We’re used to it, but we changelings are a bit more durable than ponies.” Occupant looked seriously worried. “And we really don’t want a guest being injured.”

“S’allright,” Fish Eye agreed.

“Actually, if we could backtrack for just a moment if you would,” Flam said, “I’m quite intrigued about the idea of filming your astronauts during training. Could you tell us more about it?”

Occupant double-checked a clipboard lying atop one of the piles of paperwork on his desk. “Well, everything’s simulations today,” he said. “We use the actual capsule for our simulations, you see, and tomorrow the capsule will go to the VAB for final rocket assembly. And no training happens the day before the launch, except for the final flight physical.”(132) Occupant shrugged and added, “So I’m afraid you won’t see any of our other training equipment in use.”

“Not to worry, my good man… er, bug,” Flim reassured Occupant. “I think during the lunch break- there is a lunch break from training, yes?- we get some shots of the equipment, especially the capsule- and then…”

Footnotes:

(131) Over two hundred changelings watching the show in the astronaut lounge looked, as one bug, at Occupant. “Well, it is kind of important,” he insisted.

(132) At CSP the pre-flight physical boils down to a questionnaire: “Any limbs broken?” “Hit your head in the last twenty-four hours?” “How many hooves am I holding up?” “Got a sore throat or sniffles?” “Tummy and guts behaving?” “That’s good enough. Have a good flight tomorrow, Your Highness.”

The centrifuge, which simulates the forces of acceleration and deceleration during takeoff and landing.

The Crazy Chair, which trains pilots to correct spins in flight.

Treadmills, chinup bar, weight machines, to ensure the astronauts maintain their fitness for flight.

And then there’s this. This isn’t just a machine meant to simulate the capsule. This is the actual capsule itself. CSP uses the capsule to simulate actual flight conditions, putting their pilots through Tartarus on the ground so that, if it happens in the sky, they’ll be ready.

This particular capsule is a Cherry’s Rocket Parts Mk. 1 Capsule, production number 11. Capsule 1 flew as Missions One through Six, refurbished each time, and was retired after its historic flight to space in Mission Eight. The same model capsule is bought and used by the Equestrian Space Agency, the Crystal Empire Spaceflight Project, Griffonstone Space Exploration, and the Diamond Dog Project Stardust. Saddle Arabia and the Prancy-Germaney joint space program have orders in. The Yakyakistan and Dragonlands projects are building their own capsules. This, then, is the workhorse for spaceflight around the world- literally.

Taking a look inside the capsule, you’ll see it’s actually a bit roomier than you’d expect. Two ponies could technically squeeze inside, but the capsule is designed to allow one pony or changeling in a spacesuit total freedom of movement. The flat flight bench is designed to absorb the same force on landing as an earth pony jumping off a four-story building without injuring the pilot. Behind it, in those cabinets, are dehydrated stores for more than thirty days in space. No flight to date has lasted more than half an hour, but the designers are planning ahead to trips to the Moon and beyond.

Many of the pushbutton switches you see on the control panel are variable-function. They do different things depending on what things are attached to the current mission’s rocket. Both the pilot and the backup pilot have to memorize these functions fresh with each new mission. Pushing the wrong switch at the wrong time can change a successful mission into a disaster.

To find out what motivates someone to do all the work required to fly in this capsule, we interviewed CSP’s third-tier pilot, Dragonfly.

I’m sorry to ask, but is it Mr. or Ms. Dragonfly?

That depends on who’s dinner.

Beg pardon?

Sorry, little changeling joke. In my natural form, I’m female.

How did you get selected as a pilot for CSP?

Well, before our queen decided to work towards a trip to the moon-

Which is your program’s ultimate goal, I take it?

That’s right. Before then I was the most skilled flyer in the hive, and one of the most elite warriors. I was in the invasion of Canterlot, you know.

That’s truly fascinating. Did you like being a warrior?

Well… I like the flying. I mean, I really, really like the flying. I wasn’t part of the legion that fought the Elements of Harmony, which was disappointing, ‘cause I’d like to go against Rainbow Dash in a race- not an open-sky race, though. And, well, sure, it’s always fun when your hive’s enemies go down. But seeing your own buddies get thrashed? That’s not fun at all. In fact it’s a lot more un-fun than winning is fun.

I like what I’m doing now a lot better than being a warrior. I’m helping unlock the potential of changeling goo for all sorts of things!

Could you show us some examples?

Not with that camera running, no! Believe me, your viewers don’t wanna see! But to get back to my point, I built the parachute systems every space program uses for landing. I helped create the material that keeps every pressure suit airtight and impact-resistant. And I’m working on all sorts of other stuff. Knowing I did that- that I can do that- that’s a lot more satisfying than just biting, kicking or zapping some stupid pony who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And you’re doing all this and training as a pilot too?

Yeah, it’s a lot of work. I don’t get as much training as the other two. I’m a better pilot than my Queen, at least in simulations, but she’s got better judgment. She’s smarter, and I’m just all about the go, right? And Cherry Berry is obsessed with flying. She loves it. She puts everything into it, and that makes her a much better pilot than either the Queen or myself.

So, what’s going on now?

We’re about to run a simulation of the upcoming mission. My Queen is in the capsule now, and in a moment we’re going to simulate the launch. Along the way we might include a couple of problems she’ll have to solve.

And if the simulations today succeed, then the actual flight will be a success?

No, no! We’re hoping the pilots fail the simulation. That way we can find out why it failed, fix it, and when it comes up in a future flight, we don’t fail then.

That sounds remarkably like the Bridleway tradition that a bad rehearsal makes a good opening night.

Well, yeah, maybe, except if your stage is moving faster than a mile a second, flubbing a line or stepping on some chorus pony’s hoof is the least of your worries, believe me.

One final question. You’re not doing any simulations today, right?

Nope. I cross the ocean to the Griffon Lands tonight leading the advance recovery party.

Let’s say Chrysalis and Cherry Berry both broke a leg and couldn’t fly. Would you feel ready to step into their horseshoes and fly the mission?

Put it this way. If I didn’t feel ready, I sure wouldn’t admit it!

A brave and loyal pilot. But is Dragonfly’s attitude shared by her fellow pilots? We’ll find out after these messages.

And now a special message from Bridleway Bridal Wares.

“Good evening. This is Something Blue of Bridleway Bridal Wares. Recently many of you accused my husband Bell Ringer of being a changeling to feed off love at weddings. This is absolutely untrue. Bell Ringer was born an earth pony in Canterlot, graduated from high school there, and apprenticed under Beau Brummule here in Manehattan. He is definitely not a changeling.”

*flash*

“But I am. My real name is Lacewing, and I’ve made all your bridal dresses by hoof for seven years. I’ve been able to keep myself fed and send love home to my family in the hive thanks to you, without injuring or influencing you in any way.

“Now if our customers insist that I leave, I will, but I ask this one thing: please stop attacking my husband. He’s done nothing wrong, and as Manehattan’s best wedding planner he deserves better than to be attacked by ponies who are afraid of ponies like me.

“But I hope our customers will continue to support us. After all, now you know I have just as much reason to make you wedding the happiest day ever as you do. So, when you think love, please continue to think of Bridleway Bridal Wares.”(133)

T -43 hours until Mission 9 Launch

“Buck, buck, BUCK!” Chrysalis slammed the hatch open on the cockpit, throwing herself out as the pair of changelings who had been levitating it lowered it to the floor. “Someone want to tell me what went wrong that time? I didn’t even get out of second stage before I had to abort!”

“Center of mass issues again,” Warner von Brawn rumbled. “You keep trying to pitch over too far too soon. Center of mass and center of thrust come too far out of alignment, and the ship goes into a gradual dive that you don’t have enough steering power to recover from.”

“Think of George Bull,” Cherry Berry added. “He’s always doing sums on a clipboard, but he always rushes around the halls, right? So imagine he trips on his hooves. He tips forward, but by the time he notices he’s falling he’s already halfway over, too late to correct his balance.” She used one forelimb to mime the act of falling on one’s face.

Chrysalis growled. “Tell me we’re working on that,” she said. “We need to be able to turn lateral as soon as possible. The more we go straight up, the more we risk a ballistic trajectory like mine. We barely got away with that!”(134)

“We’re working on it,” von Brawn said. “Goddard has experiments going back in Appleoosa, and he’ll be going back to that once this flight is in the books.”

“Well… good.” Chrysalis looked around the room. “Those idiotic hucksters aren’t filming in here now, are they?”

“They were in here earlier,” Cherry Berry reported. “They shot an interview with Dragonfly while you were running your second sim. You know, the one that went smoothly.”

“Except for the Flea test,” Chrysalis grumbled. “We keep getting so close…” Shaking her head, she added, “Are you coming down here for your run?”

“No, you’d better have another go,” Cherry Berry said. “Your abort came too early for us to spring the new problem on you.”

One corner of Chrysalis’s mouth twitched up. “You intrigue me,” she said. “By all means, surprise me.”

Footnote:

(133) Chrysalis had scripted this one to be filmed as soon as Flim and Flam returned to Manehattan. She loved every moment of it. The knife-twisting pathos was made sweeter by the fact that every single word in the thing was absolutely true. Guilt wasn’t very tasty, but it was nourishing, and darn if it wasn’t fun to watch.

(134) The realization that one has come seconds away from being splattered into a million pieces across the ocean will convert almost anyone, even a callous changeling queen, into an advocate for flight safety, at least in the short term. Chrysalis had now experienced that sensation twice, and she didn’t like the odds the third time around.

The day before launch day is a day of rest for the pilots of the Changeling Space Program, but for everypony else activity kicks into high gear. The mission planner looks for any last-minute contracts which can be performed without changing the rocket or the primary mission. The recovery teams spread out across the globe, hoping to anticipate the landing zone of the rocket. The launch teams inspect the launch area, making sure it’s clear of debris and ready to withstand the tremendous forces required to lift more than twenty tons of rocket into the air.

And here, in the Vehicle Assembly Building, the workers are busiest of all. Under the supervision of former Minotaur Rocket Society president Warner von Brawn, the changelings carefully inspect each component(135) before placing it on the assembly floor. Here, through a careful combination of magic and construction equipment, the components are assembled into a working rocket and secured together so that they will only come apart when the pilot wants them to.

You see below the noted rocket scientists Goddard the Griffon of Griffonstone and the aforementioned Dr. von Brawn, hard at work. We interviewed them together earlier in the day.

Thank you for giving us your time.

Think nothing of it.

To start with, I’d like to know how the two of you became interested in rockets. They were, of course, a staple of wild fantasy stories before Twilight Sparkle’s thesis on the nature of the solar system.

Indeed they were! And from my childhood I read and devoured those stories, longing for the day when, like my noble minotaur ancestors, I could journey and explore new lands! But instead of sailing the Middle Ocean, I dreamed of sailing between the stars! So I fell in with like-minded members of my people to explore and research whatever science lay behind the fantasy. Unfortunately that science was shockingly thin, and we had to build on what little there was. During our researches by far the most notable name was that of Goddard the Griffon.

Balderdash! Nobody paid any attention to my papers but you and a handful of scribes, and you know it.

It was a small field, I admit, but you were its undisputed leader. For my part, you still are.

Indeed. How did you get started, Dr. Goddard?

*grunt* Well, I was always a weak flyer. Airships were the new and coming thing when I was a chick, but even then I could see they were just too slow. I wanted to go fast. And then I went to a pony town, Rainbow Falls I think- yes, I was there for the trade days, I remember now- and I saw my first fireworks show. And I was hooked. I’m lucky I couldn’t afford to buy fireworks at the time, or else I’d have tried strapping about a hundred to a chair and lofted myself to the next world. And I don’t mean the moon!

*chuckle*

We’re glad you didn’t, Doctor.

Anyway, I managed to get into college, and I majored in chemistry. I quickly figured out that fireworks weren’t any good. Black powder is too heavy and inefficient. I wanted something with a bit more kick. So I began considering liquid fuels, which could be controlled, which would be lighter and more uniform, you see? Powder is a mixture of different chemicals, but I learned there are a lot of individual chemical compounds which will burn if you just look at ‘em the wrong way.

But I didn’t abandon fireworks. I studied the physics behind ‘em, extrapolated on Neighton’s laws of motion, and created ways of calculating trajectories for ‘em. I created words for all sorts of things nopony ever thought of-

Using old minotauran, for which I thank you.

The language of ancient science, obvious. Anyway, I was able to put it all together- the math, the physics, the chemistry- into my doctoral thesis, which earned me my degree. Unfortunately it came fifty years too soon, and I quickly found myself unemployable, a laughingstock among my kind and among academics.

It’s cruel to be mocked by your peers, we know.

It sure is! But that was my life, until Chrysalis and Cherry Berry came calling.

On that note, Doctor von Brawn, you had a space agency until you were bought out by the CSP. And Doctor Goddard, you were hired even before then by Queen Chrysalis. Would it be fair to say that you are the true brains behind the Changeling Space Program?

*joint laughter*

Are you kidding?

Ahem. We may provide the scientific knowledge, but Chrysalis could have eventually found that herself. We are grateful for the opportunity, but we are not indispensable.

Right. If you want the mare with the brains, that’s Cherry Berry.

The earth pony whose education ended with primary school?

Try, the earth pony who’s spent most of her adult life dreaming of flying and working to make it happen, kid. She’s not a scientist, but when it comes to flying, she studies and learns and works. And then she turns around and makes sure others work, too.

It’s my understanding that it was Cherry’s idea to hire us. And furthermore, without Cherry Berry, this program likely would never have got where it is now.

But give Chrysalis credit; she’s smart enough to listen when others who know more than she does are talking.

Usually.

Usually? Could you give some examples?

Well, there was that argument last week about whether or not we should buy a tel-

~~*abrupt cut to commercial*~~(136)

“Scot Free Key’s(137) charter boat service of Baltimare offers you a new way to escape the everyday: a cruise to the Changeling Space Center!

“Come see where the leading space program in the world advances the bounds of rocket science every day! Tour our astronaut training center, our vehicle assembly building, and our research facility!

“Your excursion includes a shopping trip to scenic rural Horseton, where local artisans and natives from the nearby Forbidden Jungles trade their unique wares!

“And every ticket includes a free five minutes in the Fun Machine!

“Ask about the CSP Charter, available exclusively from Scot Free Key! Find him in Baltimare’s Inner Harbor, office above the Two Black Birds Pub and Inn.

“Scot Free Key: Oh say, will you see!”

T -20 hours until Mission 9 Launch

Occupant spread the copies of the mission checklist apart with his hoof, offering them to the others at the meeting. “Twilight Sparkle wanted data on the first launch of the Thumper solid fuel booster,” he said, “so I added that contract. Miss Berry won’t have to do anything extra, but we still get paid. I also took on a contract to scan the ablative shield during re-entry at orbital speeds, just in case. And I’m quietly letting all further offers for flying surveys of Equus expire, at least anything that requires in-atmosphere flying. This one,” he tapped the item on one copy of the list, “is it.”

“Very good,” Chrysalis nodded.

“This is a pretty full mission as it is,” Occupant continued. “The Thumpers. The Flea. The Hammer. The survey site. And if conditions are right, the heat shield. I really didn’t want to add anything else. I only added the heat shield test because we’ll almost certainly hit the test conditions during our first return from orbit, if we don’t do it on this flight.”

“I wish to point out,” von Brawn added, “that our estimates of the power of the new rocket systems have been extremely conservative thus far. It’s just barely possible that Mission Nine will have enough thrust to achieve a very low orbit. I trust Miss Berry will be eager to attempt it.”

“You better believe it,” Cherry Berry nodded.

“But not at the expense of the mission,” Chrysalis insisted. “The whole point of Mission Nine is to clear our agenda and give us a free hoof for a proper orbital mission. The checklist comes first.” She tapped the list with a hoof, adding, “That said, the capsule will be prepared for orbital flight, correct?”

“Just like in the simulations,” von Brawn nodded.

“Good.” Chrysalis gave the mission checklist one final look. “I think we’ve covered everything except our guests. How are they doing?”

“They seem nice enough,” Occupant said. “I remember what you said about not letting them sell me anything, but they haven’t tried. The only thing that annoys me is, they use the telegraph an awful lot. I’ve had messages that couldn’t get through because Mr. Flim and Mr. Flam want to know what’s happening in Manehattan and Canterlot four times a day.”

“Let them use it as much as they want,” Chrysalis shrugged. “They need the info for their news broadcasts. They’ll be gone day after tomorrow. And now that the hive has a telegraph- who’s running it?”

“My assistant Clickbug, my Queen,” Occupant said.

Chrysalis groaned. “You mean the one who never washes? Who’s always gossiping about this and that?”

“She sends at fifty words a minute, my Queen,” Occupant said.

“Well, we can use the new device in the administration building to contact her, and she can get messages in and out from there, if the ponies get too annoying.”

“Where are they, anyway?” Cherry Berry asked. “I promised them I’d do my interview for their show after this meeting.”

“Misusing the wind tunnel,” Goddard growled, “where else? They’re filming a bunch of off-duty changelings having fun in free fall.”

“By my orders,” Chrysalis said pointedly. “Playful changelings on film will look like harmless changelings. Our reputation will be bolstered.” She smiled a bit as she added, “And so will our tourist income. I understand Sparkle still refuses to let visitors ride in her wind tunnel.”

“That’ll change soon,” Cherry said. “The Wonderbolts are setting up their own wind tunnel- they call it the Fly Box- at the Rainbow Falls training camp. And if the Wonderbolts say it’s a proper use of the wind tunnel…”

“Then let us get all the publicity we can for the Fun Machine first,” Chrysalis finished. “And on that note, let’s go get your interview over with.”

Footnotes:

(135) Sample inspection questions: “Did you play basketball with this piece?” “Did you play football with it?” “Yes, Hosstralian rule football counts.” “Did you, in fact, play any sports with it whatever?” “Are you lying?” “You know I’ve got your name written down here, so if that part blows up Chrysalis will come straight to you, right?” “Well, all right, it looks good enough, put it on there. No, there. And the other way up.”

(136) When asked, during the viewing in the astronaut lounge, why that part of the interview had been left in, Chrysalis said, “von Brawn could have said a lot more embarrassing things. Instead he embarrassed Flim and Flam. So he gets to live this week.”

(137) Scot Free Key was of course a changeling in deep cover for quite some time now, having learned that romantic charter cruises were an easy way to soak up excess love energy while, at the same time, providing an emergency escape route for any changeling who had to leave the central east Equestrian coast in a hurry.

Doctor von Brawn and Doctor Goddard are technically not employed by the Changeling Space Agency. They’re employed by Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, Inc., a corporation founded by various pony and griffon financiers and run by test pilot Cherry Berry to supply the space program with its rockets.

Although all the rocket components are manufactured in the frontier town of Appleoosa with mainly changeling labor, research and development of new rocket systems has moved here, to the research and development department of Horseton Space Center. Here construction workers are building new labs to house devices to test new designs and create new spells and technologies for the program to use. The television you’re watching right now came out of that research.

So did this. This is technically a Canterlot Weather Factory wind tunnel, used for flight training and weather education. It’s also useful for designing rocket ships to fly through the air. But the changelings here call it the Fun Machine, and they love to romp and play in it. When you’re inside, you experience what a parachute jumper or hang glider feels as they cut through the air. The ride is over all too soon, but everypony gets a fair turn at Horseton Space Center.

On a more serious note, Mission Nine will use a new solid-fuel booster, designed here at Horseton, for the first segment of launch. Cherry Berry explained to us the advantages and disadvantages of solid fuel boosters.

Solid fuel rockets are simpler than liquid fuel rockets. There are no valves, no fuel tanks, no directional thrust. Once you ignite the fuel, it burns until it’s exhausted, and whatever rate it’s configured to burn at is locked in. That’s why the first stage of Mission 9 also has a Swivel liquid-fuel engine; it will act as a rudder to keep the ship under control with all that thrust.

The solid fuel rockets sound a little dangerous.

Well, there’s a reason the launchpad is so far from the VAB. It’s not because we want to give fifty changelings a magical workout! You have to remember that all rocket flight is basically a controlled explosion with a tin can on top. If something happens and you lose control, then a lot of people could have a really bad day.

But you’re willing to climb into that tin can.

Yep. That’s right. I’ve flown balloons, helicopters, aeroplanes and now rockets. One of these days I’ll get around to airships. If it’s a flying machine, I want to be in it, preferably at the controls.

And the danger doesn’t bother you?

Mm, bother’s the wrong word. I know the danger’s there. If it’s too dangerous, I won’t go, end of story. But once I’ve worked to make sure I know where the danger is and what to do about it, then no, it doesn’t bother me anymore.

Let’s change the subject for a moment. I’ve heard some talk that without you, there wouldn’t be a changeling space program. Why-

Well, that’s just not true! I didn’t tell Chrysalis to start a space program! Chrysalis announced her program first. I went and asked her for a job. It took two weeks for me to get it, too.

But you’re basically in charge. You make all the big decisions.

Not all of them. Chrysalis lets me run things, but she’s the queen, and don’t ever forget it. If she wants something, she gets it.

But you’re the pony who provides the vision.

Only if you think the space program’s vision is rockets in the air.

It isn’t?

No. There are two visions. One is of changelings becoming a part of Equestrian society, becoming accepted, able to get the love they eat openly and freely instead of stealing it. The second vision is ponies and changelings and whoever on the Moon, and on the other planets, exploring it together. I didn’t come up with those. Chrysalis did. If you’re looking for the indispensable mare? Try the queen.

And what’s your vision, then? What’s your ultimate goal?

I’m living it now. Me, flying higher and faster than any other pony in the world. It’s always been my dream to fly, and I got a lot of ribbing about that when I told other ponies. People would joke that I was a pegasus in the wrong body. But when you’re in the sky, in a balloon or rocket or whatever, the laughter goes away, and all you’re left with is freedom and movement. And it’s beautiful.

Well, I can’t think of any better way to end this interview than that. Thanks very much, Miss Berry, and good luck tomorrow on your launch.

Thanks!

Look at it will be right back after this:

“Hi! I’m Cherry Berry! I founded Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs for two reasons; so I could fly into outer space, and so changelings could have the chance to show that they’re good, hard workers just like me!

“Got a field that needs harvesting? Got rocks that need clearing away? Or any job that can use untrained labor? Why not try a changeling? Changelings learn quickly and work hard, and with a little supervision you’ll find your job done before you know it!

“Now a lot of ponies find changelings scary. I certainly did, the first time I met one! But all the changelings who work at Cherry’s are eager for a chance to prove that they can be trusted to do an honest day’s work. Don’t you think they deserve that chance?

“So stop on by Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs with your labor needs, and we’ll schedule you for a changeling worker or a whole crew! Now open at our main factory in Appleoosa and new labor shops in Baltimare and Canterlot!”(138)

“Notice: workers recruited from Cherry’s will not act as strikebreakers or to undercut prevailing wages. An honest day’s work by an honest changeling deserves an honest day’s pay. Cherry’s is also hiring ponies, griffons and other races and is an equal opportunity employer.

“Cherry’s: because all races deserve the chance to earn an honest living.”

Footnote:

(138) The Canterlot location had been opened by Royal Command. In fact, Celestia had picked out a storefront location directly across from the main gate to the palace grounds, in a spot which could be viewed from Celestia’s tower balcony. She’d even paid for an express train for a hundred and twenty changelings from Appleoosa to the capital. Chrysalis didn’t know what the princess’s scheme was, but she knew there was one.

Early morning. Less than an hour remains before liftoff. The changeling ground crew carefully levitate the rocket, weighing more than twenty-five tons, out to the launchpad. The pilot, Cherry Berry, is already inside the capsule, preparing for liftoff. This represents the climax of weeks of effort, large amounts of money spent, the most careful work done, all for a flight that will probably be over in less than an hour.

If everything goes perfectly, Cherry Berry may end the day as the first earth pony in space and the fourth being from Equus total to escape the atmosphere. The first in space, of course, was Queen Chrysalis, and we managed to squeeze in one last interview before launch.

Thank you for your indulgence, Your Majesty.

You’re welcome. You know, you sound a lot different when you’re interviewing somepony?

Our viewers expect a calm and impersonal interviewer, Your Majesty. The attention should be on you, not us.

Oh, that’s fine. But I wanted to say I like it. I like it a lot better than when you’re trying to sell something. You actually sound like there’s a pony there instead of a sales pitch. (139)

Er… your time is doubtless limited, Your Majesty, so I’ll be to the point. You were first in space, if you don’t count the millennia of Nightmare Moon’s imprisonment. Could you tell us what it was like?

No, I don’t think I could.

Er… if you don’t want to-

No, I mean that literally. The few minutes I spent above the world, before I had to worry about re-entry, were indescribable. I had the sense of being surrounded by joy and laughter, and it seemed like everything outside my ship was put there just so the universe could show off. Everything said to me, “You know, this universe, this life, here and now, is truly wonderful.” But I suspect the experience will be different for every pony who makes the trip.

Is it worth the danger of a rocket launch?

Well, yes. It’s even worth the danger of landing, and that’s a lot worse, believe me.

Let’s turn for a moment to the agency as a whole. The outside world believes that, without scientists like Warner von Brawn and Goddard the Griffon, there would be no Changeling Space Program. The scientists, when we interviewed them, said that without Cherry Berry there would be no CSP. When we asked her, she called you the indispensable mare. Who do you think is the true reason for CSP’s success?

Isn’t it obvious? Of course I’m indispensable. And Cherry Berry is indispensable. And so are Goddard, and von Brawn, and George Bull and George Cowley and Occupant and Dragonfly and Lucky Cricket and any number of others. And we also owe a lot to Twilight Sparkle and Alexander Popoff of Yakyakistan and any number of others.

Exploring space is a team effort, gentleponies. Each rocket is based on discoveries from every speaking race in the world. Our rockets begin as ore mined and refined by earth ponies and diamond dogs, built into capsules and fuel tanks and engines by changelings, ponies, griffons and minotaurs, transported by train and ship, assembled, fueled- there are hundreds of beings involved in every launch.

This program isn’t about any one pony. It’s about opportunity for everypony. This is about changelings like Occupant and Dragonfly discovering things about themselves, creativity and responsibility, that nopony suspected in them, not even themselves. It’s about an earth pony proving she can fly just as well as a pegasus. It’s about a griffon and a group of minotaurs realizing lifelong dreams. We’re discovering Equus while we’re discovering space flight.

My personal dream is to be the first to set hoof on the surface of the moon. But when I do that I’ll be doing it for every living being in our world.(140) And where I go, where Rainbow Dash and Gordon the Griffon and Princess Cadence and Cherry Berry and Fireball and all the other pilots of our world’s space programs go, one day everypony will follow.

A most noble dream, and thank you.

Footnotes:

(139) “Oh, they wanted that done over so badly,” Chrysalis told the others watching the show. “But they only brought so much film, and I told them it had to be in the final edit anyway. I bet they make sure the right to final edit gets in all their documentary contracts from now on.”

(140) A sentence said in perfect honesty, yet which almost everyone listening would take to mean something quite different from what the speaker intended.

Zero Hour for Launch of Mission 9

Fish Eye had a very simple philosophy: everything and everyone sucked.

Being a pegasus with bulging wall-eyes sucked.

Being continually asked if he was any relation(141) to a certain destructive mailmare sucked.

Being continually on the job hunt because of the reputation of said mailmare sucked.

Taking work as a camerapony for a pair of unicorns who neither knew nor cared anything about film work, that really sucked.

Having to work with a camera dug out of the trash behind a Los Pegasus film studio, which only worked due to his own special tender care, sucked mightily.

And standing on the roof of the VAB, the tallest structure in the space center, and pointing said camera at the rocket about to launch, zoom lens working overtime to bring the rocket fully into view, while being careful to keep the morning sun out of direct shot, sucked rocks. Obviously the mission control room was where he should be, filming the crew hard at work, using the fancy-schmancy spell to film the rocket. The spell never had to worry about zoom lenses.

But no. His bosses thought filming the actual launch, even from this long distance, would be more dramatic when televised. He was to go to mission control once the rocket was too far away to film.

The least they could do was actually tell him when the rocket was going to launch. Instead he was sitting here, running film, hoping like Tartarus he wouldn’t be midway through putting a fresh reel in when they actually lit their stupid expensive firework.

If he’d wanted to spend all day out in the sun, he’d never have left the fishing village he grew up in.

An ear-splitting shriek of noise rent the air, and Fish Eye zoomed back out to catch the group of changelings flying like mad for the safety of the space center. One last changeling hovered directly above the rocket for a moment, and then that one changeling was also bugging out, easily catching up to the others before the noise ceased.

Finally, Fish Eye thought, some action. He stopped the camera and swiftly swapped a fresh roll of film in. In less than a minute he had it back at work, zooming back in to the rocket, adjusting focus carefully.

And then light and smoke erupted from the base of the rocket, and slowly, gracefully, soundlessly, it began to rise from the massive metal launchpad. With a firm hoof, like the professional he was, Fish Eye panned upwards, tracking the gradual ascent, keeping the rocket perfectly in center frame.

Then the roar of the rockets reached the VAB, and Fish Eye had to fight to keep his hoof steady. Nopony warned me about that! he thought furiously. Despite the hammer-blow of sound he kept the camera trained on the rocket as it started to bank away from him, away from the space center, out to sea.

And in less than thirty seconds, the zoom lens maxed out. The rocket faded to a tiny dot. The slow, graceful ascent, Fish Eye realized, had been an illusion; that huge tin can had been moving, really moving, and it was still speeding up.

Huh. That’s somethin’.

The moment of wonder passed, and Fisheye grabbed the tripod, not bothering to turn the camera off. He had to fly down to his jackass(142) employers while there were still any dramatic shots worth taking.

Bet they don’t even use any of this stuff in the final edit.(143)

Footnotes:

(141) No.

(142) The use of “jackass” as an insult is of course degrading to donkeys everywhere. We apologize for the jacks and jennies who are offended by Fish Eye’s crude and insensitive language. However, we felt that changing the term would not reflect the attitudes of the persons in our drama, and therefore we left it in. Please remember the historic context of the period, i. e. five minutes ago, as you continue reading our story, and don’t judge by our more modern, sensitive age of today.

(143) Although “Look At It Ep. 3: Changeling Space Program” would lose the nod for Best Documentary to news items from later in the year, Fish Eye’s tracking shot of Mission 9 would win him the first Mulitzer Prize for Best Photojournalism, Television Division. Flim never let Flam forget it was his idea, that the shot would be more compelling without any voiceover, which deprived the brothers of a chance to share the award and its substantial cash prize.

Mission Control during a launch is a literal hive of activity. Only the professionalism of the crew and carefully crafted procedure keeps it from becoming total chaos.

Thumper burnout at ten thousand! Speed four ten and falling! Throttling to full!

Roger, Nine, Horseton reads go at full throttle.

Verified both decouplers fired, successful booster separation, both boosters fallen away clean.

She’s too heavy, Flight! Too much fuel remaining in the first stage! We should have had her throttle up earlier!

Four-twenty at twelve thousand! We need four-sixty before fifteen thousand!

Are we going to make it?

Not quite.

OK, let’s focus on the Hammer. Cap-com, tell her to fire Hammer at eighteen thousand or five hundred.

Roger, Flight. Nine, Horseton; you are to destage and ignite Hammer at either five hundred or eighteen thousand.

Nine copies second stage at five hundred or eighteen thousand.

Four-forty at fifteen thousand! No joy on Flea test!

*groan*

Four-seventy at sixteen thousand!

Horseton, Nine. Throttle to zero. Destaging. Second stage green. Igniting second stage.

Horseton copies, Nine.

Green light on Hammer test! Hammer reads ignition at four sixty-six at eighteen point two kilometers!

Well, that went right at least.

Horseton, Nine; banking down to thirty by ninety in preparation for area survey.

Horseton copies, Nine. We show go for area survey.

Roger, Horseton. Recording: It’s difficult to make out anything clearly at ten miles altitude, but the wave motion through the target zone seems to suggest a large object under the surface, possibly a seamount, splitting the prevailing currents. There’s a discolored patch in an eddy which might be a trash field; need to get somepony to clean that up. No other features discernible. End recording. Coming up on Hammer burn-out.

Flight, tracking.

Go ahead, I’m listening.

Trajectory’s a bit shallow. Remind Nine she needs to thrust up if she’s to get out of atmosphere.

I’m pretty sure she already knows, Dr. Bull.

Hammer burnout. Destaging. Third stage green. Igniting Flea.

Roger, Nine, Horseton copies Flea ignition.

I’m beginning to pick up some atmospheric heating. Looks like I’m at too shallow an angle.

Horseton confirms, Nine. Tracking recommends thrusting at higher attitude.

I’m working on it, Horseton, but it’ll have to wait- Flea burnout. Destaging.

Roger, Nine, and hold on fourth stage ignition, please.

Tracking, what do we do?

She might as well fire now. Tell her to make it steep, say sixty or higher. She’s going to have to burn most of the last stage just to get out of atmosphere, and every second is lost momentum.

Anybody else have something to add? No? Okay, do it.

Nine, Horseton, you are go for fourth stage burn, recommend vector sixty by ninety.

Roger, Horseton. Throttle to zero. Fourth stage activated. Throttling up slow, pitching to sixty by ninety. Throttle full. Tell the bullpen I want a cut-off when my trajectory goes trans-atmospheric. I want to save every drop of fuel I can for orbit.

Horseton copies, will do. – Well, gentlemen, you heard her?

We need to develop some way of sending that info up to her nav-ball. I think I see a way we could code the tracking computer’s projection to-

Now, please, we’re still on the mission clock!

Sorry. Projected apoapsis rising… rising…

For the first time in minutes the room goes quiet. There is nothing left to do but wait and see if Cherry Berry will become the fourth in space.

… and now! Cutoff now!

Nine, Horseton-

Throttle zero!

And with that the launch is over. Cherry Berry will leave the atmosphere and briefly enter outer space. In the process she has successfully completed three out of four mission tasks. Now the only questions remaining: will she achieve orbit, and will she return safely to Equus? The rest of Mission Nine when we return.

Five minutes after launch of Mission 9

Cherry Berry rested in her harness, ignoring the loose nut floating back and forth across the capsule, and stewed. Anypony else, anypony at all, would have been thrilled at the prospect of going to space. Not Cherry; she was livid, absolutely angry at herself.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! I dumped the first stage with a quarter tank of fuel left! I pitched over too hard on the second stage and lost a ton of delta-V to the air! Now I’ve got maybe a quarter-tank left in the last stage to achieve orbit and get back down! With all the mistakes I made, that’s not enough! I should have had orbit this mission, and I blew it!!

“Nine, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, her calm, level voice calling Cherry’s mind back to business.

“Copy, Horseton,” she replied.

“You’re coming up on apoapsis. The bullpen says orbit burn is borderline at best for success, but you’re welcome to try.”

“Nine copies, Horseton, go for orbital burn on your mark.”

“The bullpen also wants me to warn you,” Chrysalis said, her voice just a little less level… did she sound worried? “You are not, repeat not, to use all your fuel on this burn. Getting an orbit does no good if you can’t break back out of it.”

“Understood, Horseton,” Cherry said. “Will one-quarter of what I have remaining be enough reserve if I do make orbit?”

After a pause Chrysalis said, “Affirmative, Nine. If you get an orbit at all, pretty much anything should be enough to get you back in atmosphere.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry sighed. “That lines up with what I’ve been thinking. I’m regretting that we had to dump the first stage with fuel remaining.” She bit her lip before allowing herself to continue. The press was watching, especially Flim and Flam. She couldn’t admit pilot error in public, no matter how true it might be.

“Orbit isn’t on the checklist, Nine,” Chrysalis replied, all business. “Ten seconds to aps. This is just gravy if it happens at all.”

“Nine copies,” Cherry Berry grumbled. “Throttling up to fifteen percent.”

Cherry had been so busy condemning herself for her errors that she hadn’t really noticed free-fall until it was gone. Even the gentle, faint pressure of acceleration from the fourth stage pushed Cherry into her seat, brought the loose nut to rest somewhere behind her helmet. The engine murmured where its brothers had roared in her ears during launch.

And yet, even with the feeble trickle of thrust from the engine, the speed readout on her instruments rattled higher and higher, racing from number to number. The ship was light enough, and far enough above the atmosphere, that fifteen percent thrust, a fraction of a single gravity, accelerated her faster than the three engines firing at launch combined.

But would it be fast enough? The levels of fuel and oxidizer in the tanks dwindled as the speed rose. Did she have enough to keep the ship out of atmosphere, to make the circuit around the planet without landing?

Her eyes flickered back and forth between the fuel readout and the speed readout. More speed. More fuel. More speed. More fuel.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

Eight percent fuel and oxidant remaining. Seven percent. Six percent.

Come on, Chrysalis, SAY something!

Five percent. No more. “Throttle to zero,” she said aloud as she shut off the engine.

“Nine, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “We copy throttle at zero and report no joy on orbit burn. Tracking still shows you on course for a surface landing somewhere in the southern Stalliongrad steppes, possibly Ibexistan.”

Cherry Berry stopped herself from saying something that Princess Celestia would not approve of(144) over the comms. “Horseton, please tell Dr. Bull that I want a switch added to the controls that lets me turn off the outgoing comms. Privacy would be nice.”

“Definitely a good idea, Nine,” Chrysalis agreed. “Tracking says thirty seconds to atmosphere.”

“Already?” Cherry Berry sighed. “I just got here! I’m going to use the remaining fuel to extend my flight.” She slammed the throttle to full, and the engines kicked her in the back for about three seconds, then fell silent. “Did that do anything?” she asked.

There was a long silence.

“Horseton, this is Mission Nine, please respond,” Cherry said.

“Nine, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “You are re-entering atmosphere now. We have more news in a moment, please stand by.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry Berry replied. “I’m going to destage and reorient to retrograde for re-entry.”

“Horseton copies, go for destaging,” Chrysalis said.

Cherry Berry activated the last decoupler, felt the kick as the explosives separated the fourth and final stage from the capsule. With gentle care she flipped the capsule around so the heat shield would face forward in flight. And that done, she thought, all I have to do is hold the reticule on the retrograde marker and everything should be fine.

I certainly can’t be coming in too steep.

“Nine, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice called. “That very last burn you did resulted in a trajectory which, for a moment, looked like an orbit. Periapsis of twenty-two point five kilometers. But the bullpen says air resistance will slow you down enough that you’ll probably come down long before then, almost exactly on the other side of the planet from the space center. Over.”

Cherry Berry digested this news. It gave her indigestion. “How much more thrust did I need for orbit?” she asked.

“About five more seconds at full throttle on your last stage,” Chrysalis said.

Five seconds. Five measly, fleeting, tiny little seconds of thrust.

“The bullpen also wants to remind you that if you’d had that extra five seconds and spent them now, you’d be stuck up there,” Chrysalis added. “So cheer up, relax and enjoy the ride back down. Next time you go up there won’t be any business to distract you from an orbital flight.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. Come to think of it… on the one hoof, Cherry Berry didn’t want to be stuck in this little capsule forever. On the other hoof, leaving this world by, well, having left this world had a certain appeal. Everypony said it was best to pass on while doing the thing you loved. Of course, Cherry Berry had usually imagined herself drowning in a vat of cherries as big as Mount Canter, but…

“In other news,” Chrysalis continued, “you’re right in the zone for the heat shield test once you get down into the stratosphere. In the meantime, you’re on a very shallow return trajectory, so you are go to release harness for a few minutes of IVA.”

Cherry Berry blinked. “IVA? I didn’t copy that, Horseton?”

“We mean, get out of your seat and have a little fun,” Chrysalis said. “You’re still in free-fall, so enjoy zero-g while it lasts.”

“Eh, copy, Horseton,” Cherry said. She shrugged, released the harness clips, and allowed herself to float off of her seat.

Whoa.

Oh.

Oh my.

Footnote:

(144) Actually Celestia had no problem with strong language. Unfortunately, her worshipful subjects had a deep and intractable problem with the idea that the eternal princess full of wisdom and serenity might occasionally feel the need to say, “Shoot! Darn it to heck!”

On the big screen above CSP Mission Control is the illusion of the Mission Nine capsule. Of over twenty-five tons of rocket, only this capsule, weighing less than one and a half tons even with its pilot, remains. There are no more engines, no more fuel tanks, nothing but the gyroscopes which let the ship roll itself over, the heat shield to protect it from the heat of re-entry, and the skill of CSP’s best pilot.

For a while the capsule skips along the upper atmosphere, maintaining its momentum. During this time the pilot has a brief moment to relax and observe her surroundings.

I think I’m passing over Zebrica now. The grasslands seem so lush from up here, and the snows of Kiliponjaro, or I guess that’s that big mountain, anyway it’s really incredible.

It’s so amazing up here, Horseton. I’ve always wanted to fly like a pegasus, but now I feel like I am a pegasus, hovering on my own magic. Part of me wants to open the hatch and go outside, throw away the only thing between me and absolute freedom. Of course that part’s a big fat idiot, and I’m staying right here.

Thanks, Nine, I think every person in the room just stopped holding their breath.

There’s the Middle Ocean below me now. I can’t really make out the buildings on the islands from this high up, or I’d wave at Dr. von Brawn’s house.

Copy, Nine. We’re picking up a bit of plasma outside the capsule now, so it’s time to end IVA and strap back into your seat.

Nine copies, Horseton, strapping in. Back on retrograde.

According to Doctor von Brawn, re-entry is the most dangerous portion of the journey for CSP’s spacecraft. The capsule has to slow down from miles per second to the speed of a farm wagon using nothing but air friction. Any error in piloting at this stage will mean the loss of the ship and the death of the pilot.

Mission Control watches in silence as the fireball builds around the capsule. The air can’t get out of the way of the ship fast enough, and so it is compressed in front of the heat shield until it self-ignites, becoming a turbulent plasma that licks at the craft and streams behind it.

None of this disturbs Cherry Berry. She completes the final mission task, the scan of the heat shield in mid-flight, almost in passing. She shows little discomfort as the thickening air begins to slow her down, the rapid deceleration pushing against her ship at as much as five times the gravity on Equus’ surface.

And then, after an eternity of fire, the ship begins to cool. The flames fade away as the air continues to slow the capsule down. The worst is over. The flight will end with a safe parachute landing.

And what a flight it has been. The ship launched in the bright morning light of southeastern Equestria. It ends in the gathering twilight of the empty grasslands of the high Stalliongrad steppes, the mountains of Ibexistan visible in the distance. The rocket has gone from sunrise to sunset in about half an hour.

The capsule drops below the speed of sound, and with a flick of a hoof the parachute opens. The canopy doesn’t fully open immediately, allowing it to gradually slow the capsule without bringing it to a sudden and destructive halt. When it does open there is one last hard jerk as the pod, which flew ten thousand miles in half an hour, slows to the pace of a casually trotting pony.

And yet there is time for one bit of contemplation.

I can see a planet out the window. I don’t know which one. Bucephalous? Sleipnir? Chiron?

We’ll get back to you on that, Nine.

Well, whichever it is, it’s another place we need to go. It’s like that planet is looking at me, telling me, I’m waiting for you. I’m waiting for a visit. It’s been so long and there’s so much for you to see here. Come and visit.

And we’re going to go. It’s going to be a huge challenge, something that makes the Moon look like a picnic gallop, but sooner or later we’re going to get there.

And I can’t wait to make the trip.

One final observation about Mission Nine after the following messages.

MISSION 9 REPORT

Mission summary: Test Thumper solid rocket boosters; fulfill outstanding contracts for Flea and Hammer booster tests; survey target zones while in flight, second attempt; if conditions are right, run test of ablative heat shield during descent (36K-24K).

Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 40 min. 10 sec.

Contracts fulfilled: 4
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Frustrating! We came so close to a perfect flight, if not for the stupid, stupid Flea! But this time we just barely missed orbit, so we know we CAN do it the next time we try. But first… curse those Fleas!!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: MOSTLY SUCCESSFUL

A tall, slender unicorn stood on a bare stage in front of a camera, flanked by a couple of changelings, three earth ponies, a pegasus, and a griffon.(145)

“Good evening, my name is Cool Drink. Like many of you, I am an investor in the Changeling Space Program, which is already beginning to pay dividends both scientifically and financially.

“In fact I’m so pleased with my investment that I’m investing in another enterprise involving changelings. With the new medium of television opening new avenues for acting and filmmaking, there is a new demand for new actors, new directors, and new stories.

“That’s why several of my colleagues and I are founding Honeybee Studios. We intend to offer shows such as our documentary of the early days of Equestria, Founding Fillies; exciting tales of cowponies and bandits and buffalo in Dodge Junction Tales; and a comedy about two changeling roommates trying to keep their cover in Manehattan, The Neighbors Upstairs.

“The studio will hire employees of all races, including changelings, whose disguise abilities make them especially talented for acting. Honeybee Studios is already preparing pilot films to offer to the various television stations.

“We hope you will enjoy Honeybee Studios’ original programming and support efforts like it to bring all Equestria’s races together in harmony.”

Cool Drink vanished from the screen, replaced by Flam, hatless, mane parted impeccably. “Only a short time has passed since the Changeling invasion of Canterlot,” he began in the deep, solemn voice he’d used through most of the documentary.

Half the changelings booed, drowning out the next few words.

“SILENCE!” Chrysalis shouted. “We are WATCHING this!”

As the grumpy changelings settled down, Flam’s voice came back into hearing. “… many ponies will never forgive them, either for their aggression or their parasitic nature.

“But it is important to remember that the changelings did not choose their fate. They live among us because they need us to survive. They steal love because they do not believe anypony will give it freely. They try to conquer us because they live in fear of us.

“But with the coming of the space race the changelings have found a door not slammed in their faces. Now they are pouring through that door, not as invaders, but as workers and guests, invited by fate and opportunity to earn what they could not take.

“The results stand on the edge of the Hayseed Swamps as the Changeling Space Agency.

“The changelings, and the other people who stand beside them, are obviously capable of great good as well as great evil. Equestria has faced other threats in the past, including the griffons, the dragons, the buffalo. In every case Equestrian friendship has prevailed, and not Equestrian might. And we are all the richer for it.

“We do not know if the changelings’ claims of peace are true or false, but it is this pony’s belief that we owe them the chance to prove they are real. Indeed, as this pony knows from experience, everyone deserves a chance to turn over a new leaf.

“Thank you, and goodnight.”

A list of credits began to roll over the shot of a darkening studio, and Chrysalis switched the television off. “All right, everyone,” she said, “That’s all for tonight!”

“Awwwwww!” moaned the changelings and ponies who’d wanted to watch I Accuse My Sire and Dam.

“Out! Out! No more brain rot for you!” Chrysalis clopped her hooves, and gradually the crowd began to thin.

“You know,” Cherry Berry said, “I’m surprised at how even-hooved they were. With just a few words they could have destroyed us.”

“And don’t think they didn’t know it,” Chrysalis replied. “What you saw wasn’t even-hooved. That was a highly skilled and slightly dishonest sales pitch for changelings in general. Exactly as I ordered.” Chrysalis shuddered. “Those two will never be more dangerous in their lives than they are today. With that idiot box they could make almost anypony think anything.”

“But you got what you wanted out of it,” Cherry insisted. “After this a lot more ponies will be willing to accept changelings. It’ll make our job a lot easier.”

Oh, yes, Chrysalis thought, nodding but not responding aloud to Cherry’s thought. It will make it very much easier to conquer them all, once I get my hooves on the moon.

After all, it’s not like ponies will really let changelings live among them in peace. A few would, but most of them are just too flighty, too timid, too afraid. Eventually they’ll herd up and throw us out again, if we don’t do it to them first.

But in the meantime, I’ll take all the détente I can get.

Footnote:

(145) Shot only two days before, this commercial had triggered a shouting match between Chrysalis and the Flim-Flam brothers. The unicorns didn’t know Chrysalis and Cool Drink were one and the same pony, and they resented her using one of her contractually obligated commercial slots for what they saw as a competitor. Chrysalis pointed out, forcefully, that all they had to do was put in the top bid for all the shows the new studio would produce, and then there wouldn’t be any question of competition. This, of course, they probably wouldn’t do even if they could.

After the argument was ended by Because I Say So Or Else, Chrysalis decided not to destroy their enterprise completely, despite her personal feelings of the moment. She estimated it would be wasted effort. The two would either destroy themselves or get tired of the steady work and sell out within the year- the latter guess, as it happened, eventually proving correct.

Aside from Cool Drink, the ponies who stood in silence next to the changelings were all actual ponies, Bridleway actors who were open-minded to spending a few minutes on a stage with two changelings. The two changelings, on the other hand, were not actors or infiltrators, but warriors who were in Manehattan as a ceremonial bodyguard for Chrysalis. In fact they were atrociously bad liars and actors even by pony standards, let alone for changelings, which is why Cool Drink did all the talking in the shot.

Author's Note

Now that I'm home...

The flight came off more or less as described. I forgot to get one shot of ascent stage and repeated the launch for that, but otherwise it was all one go. The flight's ending in particular was entirely unplanned and unplannable. I don't know what the single star/planet was in-game, but it felt so damn right that I knew I had to include it in the story.

In particular I'm not happy with how the first portion of the flight ended up. I wanted to try to portray the barely-controlled chaos and urgency of an early space flight with zero visual cues, since I was using that format for all the documentary material. I don't feel like it worked, but I can't think of anything better that wouldn't re-hash things already done earlier in the story.

The whole point of Flim and Flam's role in the story is to explore one almost certain consequence of making KSP mechanics part of Equestria. So you've got a spell that lets you transmit an image in realtime of another thing across immense distances? That's the -patent definition- of television, and it would be a revelation in a world which, to the best of our knowledge, doesn't even have radio. (I'm not even certain about the telegraph, except that Pinkie had the whole "singing telegram" thing in Party of One, which has to come from SOMEWHERE.)

It's worth remembering that Flim and Flam's cutie mark talent is salesmanship. They're so good that Cherry Berry almost forgets that they're doing a pro-changeling sales job throughout the documentary. If they were even a little less dishonest and short-sighted, they would probably put Filthy Rich out of business in a decade. As it is, they are doomed to always be their own undoing, despite their undoubted talent as inventors, public speakers, and (in the short term) businessmen.

Look at It! is vaguely inspired by See It Now and similar news broadcast shows of the early days of television, right down to the deadpan, no-nonsense narration. I'm just sad I didn't find a use for Edward R. Burro. This entire chapter is also inspired by one episode of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, the one focusing on a (fictional) documentary crew covering Apollo 8.

Fish Eye is partly inspired by "fish-eye lens", partly because kerbals have big bulgy white eyes which often seem to be staring at two things at once, like Derpy Hooves or Marty Feldman. It's ironic that he's a camerapony, and a fairly professional one too.

Off-camera Twilight and crew narrowly avoid a Bad Day. I'm not currently planning to run this through KSP, because I'm pretty sure any flight in the game which burns up the nosecone parachute system will also burn up the capsule, making the flight unsurvivable. For ongoing plot purposes Twilight gets both a setback and a wake-up slap to the face regarding her preconceptions. This keeps her a little bit behind the changelings but still in a position to make up the gap, if I want to go that direction.

I took the movies for Flim Flam's post-news double feature from I Accuse My Parents (which I misremembered as an Ed Wood flick) and Pod People, both featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sadly Flim and Flam show the Equestrian versions of the pics without a janitor and robots to help you through the pain.

FF Television is Channel 2, but unlike in our world Equestria television does have a Channel One for government information and emergency broadcasting.

The interview format was inspired by The Bridge, a Godzilla/MLP crossover with each major character having their own color font for speech. I won't be repeating the experiment anytime soon.

The Crazy Chair is more or less one of those things you sometimes see at flea markets and carnivals, where three independently rotating rings rotate in all axes of space. The idea is to use the controls to null out each spin one at a time, despite your disorientation, and thus regain control of the "craft." (And your stomach.)

For those who didn't get the meaning of the ending, Chrysalis is playing the public-relations game hot and heavy, partly to maintain her pretense that CSP is a way of bringing changelings into society peacefully, partly to prevent the ponies from meddling in her schemes until it's too late. She basically coerced Flim and Flam to give CSP a very positive spin, which she reinforced by the ads she ran. (I wrote out four of five she contracted for; there wasn't room in the narrative for the fifth.)

If you haven't figured it out, I'm making the minotaur culture out of whole cloth. In canon we only ever see one, Iron Will. In retrospect I regret not giving the minotaur space scientists (one of whom hasn't even been named yet- I've named 'em only as I've needed them) an entourage of goat assistants.

I named Goddard the Griffon after Robert Goddard, the pioneer of rocket science who experimented with liquid-fuel rocketry out of his own pocket and was universally derided for bothering with the subject at all. He died during World War II and was only recognized in his native country (the US) for his work after the war... when it was revealed that the V-1 and V-2 weapons designed by Werner von Braun and the German rocket program were based primarily on his work and that of an early Russian scientist whose work was equally disrespected. Goddard pursued his designs for the same reasons I give the griffon here: liquid fuels were more controllable and more powerful than solid rocket fuels like gunpowder. Goddard didn't go on to create all the terms for spaceflight, but I wanted the griffon to be the complete visionary rather than drag in even more obscure figures from human rocket science's infancy.

Two Black Birds Inn: an oriole and a raven.

The actual reason for Cherry's Rocket Parts is the existence in KSP of a company that makes rocket parts (usually the smallest and crappiest options) named "Jebediah's Rocket Parts & Junkyard." It is strongly implied that Jebediah is the lead rocket pilot kerman in KSP because he pays the bills. In-story, it's a front company intended to obscure the mostly-stolen money spent on CSP in its early days, which has taken on a sort of life of its own.

In KSP the launch pad is a lot closer to the complex than two miles, but for realism I stretched the distance. It takes sound ten seconds to travel two miles. Hence the delay between Fish Eye seeing the launch and the sound of liftoff hitting him in the barrel.

Once I got midway through writing up the flight I decided I had to know something, so I re-flew the flight in sandbox mode with an identical rocket and no goals other than achieving orbit. It did so easily, with half the fuel tank of the last stage remaining once orbit was achieved. It was a combination of restricting the big Thumper solid fuel boosters, pitching way over to reduce climb and keep within altitude brackets for the Hammer test, and the dumping of the first stage with a lot of fuel remaining which spoiled it in Cherry's case.

Kerbal and Equestria look nothing alike except that they're both vaguely Earthlike worlds. And I know Russia (Stalliongrad) comes nowhere close to the equator, but the mission landed on grasslands near mountains, and you just don't get that clime combination on the equator on Earth. So I fudged it a bit.

Reentry took FOREVER, and according to the G-meter a lot of it was still in free-fall, even within atmosphere. I used the documentary to elide over that, even though I still clench on re-entry because it's always tough as hell to do manually, even with stability assist.

I may have referred to Mars in a past chapter. I need to go back and edit that out. Bucephalus (Alexander the Great's horse) is meant to be Mars, Sleipnir (Odin's steed) Jupiter, and Chiron (the centaur who founded medicine and gave up immortality for the sake of humanity) Saturn. I still want horsey-type names for Mercury and Venus, though.

And, finally, Chrysalis isn't totally wrong at the end. There will always be ponies who hate and fear changelings, just as there are people who hate and fear groups substantially different from themselves on Earth- blacks, gays, Muslims, Hispanics, to give examples of hated groups in America. And there is always the danger that such people will gain enough political power to determine public policy, with horrible consequences. The problem is that fear breeds fear, and hate breeds hate, and Chrysalis is just as prejudiced and hateful towards ponies as she thinks they are to her. Hence the fact that she always addresses Cherry Berry as "pony." We'll see how this develops as the story continues...

Next time, which likely won't be for a couple weeks at least: CSP's orbital shot comes with excess, and opinionated, baggage.

Interlude: Mission 10: Unfinished Business

Dragonfly wiggled the throttle, wondering if she could somehow set it to one hundred and five percent. The ship, even stripped down as it was at liftoff, wasn’t rising off the ground nearly fast enough to suit her, and her sole mission goal required all the speed she could get, as soon as she could get it.

Of course, if Cherry Berry hadn’t been on the other side of Equus after her flight, Chrysalis would have been in the seat. Or maybe not; this was a minor mission, just clearing up the last contract before their first serious, coordinated attempt at orbit. The queen might not want to sully her hooves with an unimportant flight. Give it to the backup pilot. It gives her something to do.

Granted, any flight was a good flight, but Dragonfly wanted more of a rush. Yes, the rocket had started to accelerate faster, but it wasn’t really shoving her back in the seat. The ride was too gentle. It was, well, kind of boring.

“Ten, Horseton,” Chrysalis said over the communications link, “pitch over ten degrees east.”

“Ten copies pitch ten degrees east.” Dragonfly pushed the stick to the right, watched the markers on the ball shift, and re-centered it again.

“Ten, Horseton.” Chrysalis’s voice had a touch of exasperation in it. “That was south, not east. Remember where the north line is on the ball.”

“Oops. Sorry.” Yeah, sorry, but not much. Who cared? This ship was going up and coming down, not really going anywhere.

Sure enough, Chrysalis confirmed, “It doesn’t matter much, Ten. It just means the flight will be a little shorter, that’s all. Coming up on target speed.”

Really? Dragonfly looked, and sure enough, the acceleration had picked up a bit more. The ride was so smooth compared to her first flight that it almost wasn’t flying at all. “I see it, Horseton. Throttling back to hold at five-forty.” There, the upper end of the speed required for the test- and just in time, too, as the ship crossed twelve thousand meters. Immediately a light winked yellow, then green. “Flea test reads successful, repeat green light on Flea test.”

“Horseton copies good Flea test,” Chrysalis said, adding not quite softly enough for the microphone not to catch it, “and about time.”

Dragonfly looked at her gauges. She still had more than a quarter of the fuel remaining for the Swivel, plus the Flea itself, whose thrust had been metered almost to nothing to make it suitable for deceleration and return.

You know what? There’s nothing else on the list. I’m going to do what I want.

“Throttling back up to full,” she announced, doing so and noting with satisfaction that with most of its fuel gone the Swivel was doing a decent bit of pushing now.

“Ten, Horseton; what are you doing?” Chrysalis asked.

“You and Cherry got to go to space,” Dragonfly said. “It’s my turn, and I think I’ve got the fuel.”

“Ten, we don’t have mission planning for a space trajectory,” Chrysalis said. “You get down here right now.”

“Don’t worry about me, my queen!” Dragonfly said cheerfully. “I’ll be all right!” She looked out the window and saw streamers of hot compressed atmosphere rushing past the nose of the capsule. “But maybe I’d better slow down just a little, and pause before I light up the Flea. Getting a bit warm in here.”

“You do that, Ten,” Chrysalis said. “And stand by while I talk with the boffins and make sure we can get you back.”

The final trajectory was very similar to the one Chrysalis had flown, but lower and shallower. Dragonfly got about three minutes above atmosphere, and she enjoyed every moment of them.

“Ten, Horseton, get back in your seat,” Chrysalis ordered. “Young lady, I said get back in your seat!”

“Whee! This is fun!” There wasn’t much extra space in the capsule, but in free-fall it turned out to be a lot more than the designers had originally expected. “This is even better than the wind tunnel! Who cares about the wind tunnel? This is the real Fun Machine!” She did cartwheels, somersaults, barrel rolls, even the backstroke. She bounced from one side of the capsule to the other, heedless of the voice in her ears.

“Dragonfly, you just re-entered atmosphere,” Chrysalis said sternly. “Get back in your seat and buckle up right this minute, or there won’t be anything left of you for me to punish later! I mean it!”

Dragonfly paused in her cavorting, noticed the altimeter, and sighed. “I guess you’re right,” she said, carefully easing herself back into the chair and snapping the harness buckle together. “But it’s just so much fun up here! You know how it is!”

“Yes, I do,” Chrysalis said. “I also remember how the ride back down was. Now get on your retrograde, switch the SAS back on, and stay alert.”

“Yes, my- I mean, copy, Horseton,” Dragonfly responded. After performing the requested maneuver, she added, “You know, the reaction wheels work really well with the Flea on the capsule. Makes ship balance almost perfect.”

“The what?” Pause. “Ten, Horseton; haven’t you decoupled that Flea engine yet?”

“I don’t want to,” Dragonfly said. “I think I can bring it home.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Chrysalis said with the kind of feeling no changeling could truly fake. “Leaving aside the fact that you’ll hit the ocean like a brick with it on, I hope after this mission never to see a Flea again so long as I should live. Get rid of it. Over.”

“But I really think I can do it.”

The speed of the ship, which had gradually increased even as flames began to lick around the sides of the capsule, was now beyond the fastest speed recorded on Chrysalis’s descent and still accelerating. “This is a command from your flight controller, the bull who designed your rocket, and your Queen all together,” Chrysalis said. “Dump. That. Engine. Now. Do you copy, Mission Ten?”

Dragonfly sighed. “Ten copies,” she said. “Besides, the air’s making steering it a bit squirrely anyway.” She hit the staging button, letting the Flea tumble before her for a few moments.

And then, to her horror, she saw it square in the middle of her hatch window, flying by close enough for her to count the rivets on the rocket casing. “OH MY F-“

And then it was gone, behind her, having missed the capsule by less than two meters.

“Um… Horseton? This is Mission Ten,” Dragonfly said weakly. “For future reference, ditching a stage directly in front of you is a bad idea. As in potential Bad Day stupid. Something, um, to remember.”

“So long as we all learn something from this, Ten,” Chrysalis said dryly.

But ditching the engine had accomplished its goal. Without the weight, and with the broad, rounded heat shield pointed directly into the wind of the thickening atmosphere, the ship began to slow. Gradually Dragonfly felt herself gain weight… and more weight… and then a whole lot of weight. “Three gees of deceleration… four gees… five gees…” Even uncomfortable as it was, Dragonfly grinned. This was what rocket flights should be like! The feeling of hard acceleration, hard deceleration, weightlessness in between! The blackness closing in at the edges of her vision, well, that was bonus!

And then, all too soon, it was over, as the ship passed below six hundred meters per second, the gravity load lessened, and the sea began coming up very, very, very fast. But, Dragonfly grinned, not fast enough. Too bad, oh Pale Horse, you aren’t getting me today. At two hundred eighty meters per second, at thirty-five hundred meters altitude, she hit the parachute switch, lying back as she heard the ropes slither out and the canopy deploy.

“Chutes deployed at thirty-five hundred,” she announced. “See? That was a whole five hundred meters higher than yours, my- er, Horseton! I really could have brought that Flea back! Plenty of room to spare!”

On the other end of the communication, Queen Chrysalis groaned, removed her headset, and slumped forward on the capsule communicator workstation.

The tragic thing, she thought, is that Dragonfly is one of my most level-headed and responsible changelings…

MISSION 10 REPORT

Mission summary: Test that cursed Flea!

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration: 8 min. 28 sec.

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: This is why only Cherry and I should be allowed to fly.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: A BIT TOO SUCCESSFUL, ACTUALLY

Author's Note

I actually wrote this before beginning work on chapter 8. I'm not going to have chapter 8 finished in time before I leave for the next convention, so here's this tidbit.

Yes, there are a couple of spoilers: Cherry Berry makes it into space in chapter 8, and her flight wasn't 100% successful, leaving Dragonfly to mop up the loose end.

So, a quick little thing, no pictures, no footnotes this time.

Chapter 8 is currently well over 10,000 words, and I've not quite got to writing up the flight of Mission 9 yet. Mission 9, by the way, has eleven pics associated with it; I might or might not use them all.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter 9: Mission 11: Throw Yourself at the Ground and Miss

Elytron resented being left in charge of the hive while Queen Chrysalis spent most of her time at the new space center hundreds of miles away. Not that he cared much about rockets or space or things like that. He just hated getting stuck with the most routine, boring chores and the most idiotic workers. Chrysalis wanted only the smartest changelings working at the space center, which meant every time some project required more workers, the average IQ of the changelings back in the Badlands dropped by a measurable amount.

What galled him most was the fact that Chrysalis had asked him to recommend the most intelligent warriors to serve as security in Horseton. She had not asked him to bring them with him. She had not asked for him to recommend other intelligent warriors beside himself. She had merely accepted his recommendations and took them away with her to her new shiny home in the swamp.

Elytron might not have been terribly bright, but he knew when he was being slighted.

Unfortunately he didn’t know what he could do about it, so Elytron received the mostly boring reports from infiltrators coming in, saw to the distribution of love reserves, trained the warriors, and went through the routine day after day after day. It wasn’t tedious; Elytron thrived on routine. He just hated the idea that his holy queen thought he wasn’t any good for anything else other than that.

One particular day Elytron sat through yet another infiltrator’s all-too-detailed report about how she’d turned some pony family’s life into something straight out of a bad agony novel(146). He longed for something different, anything different, just so he would have a chance to demonstrate that he could be smart enough for the glory work at the space center(147).

And something different did come up, or rather down- specifically, Clickbug, who had taken over the post as guard at the hive entrance- replacing the buck-fanged drone Elytron had thought the most useless changeling in the hive(148). “Commander!” she shouted, bursting into the throne room and interrupting yet another retelling of the travails of Some Ponies Or Other and how that fed the hive. “We just got an urgent telegram from Appleoosa!”

“So what?” Elytron grumbled. “Pass it on to the queen like you always do.”

“No, sir,” Clickbug insisted, “it’s for us here! They’re telling us to expect a couple of ponies! They’re on their way here in a sky-chariot!”

“Ponies??” Elytron shouted. First that mail-pony visiting once a week. Then that crazy pink-and-yellow pony with the flying contraption, who stayed. And now two. Four, if you counted the pegasi who would be pulling the sky-chariot. It wasn’t an invasion yet, but Elytron could see a trend. He didn’t like it one bit. “What are they coming here for?”

“The Appleoosan station didn’t say,” Clickbug said. “The message was, ‘Be prepared to welcome two visiting unicorns, stop. Arriving by sky-chariot from Appleoosa today, stop.’ And that’s all.”

“How in the name of Celestia’s royal cake repository(149) are we supposed to prepare for something we know nothing about?” Elytron shouted.

“Don’t ask me, sir!” Clickbug whimpered. “I only take down the messages and pass them along!”

“Well-“ Elytron was prepared to tell Clickbug to pass this message along to Queen Chrysalis for orders when it sank in. This was a New Thing. Something non-routine, something unexpected, and above all something that would give Elytron a chance to demonstrate his good sense and sharp thinking to the queen.

He didn’t think I can do this. He thought, I will take care of this. I’ll take care of everything.

“Well, get back to your post,” he finally told Clickbug. “I’ll have a message for the queen after I’ve interr… I mean once I speak with these ponies.”

There were guards to reposition, armor to be polished, and pods to be prepared for possible new occupants, and it all had to be done at once. Fortunately Elytron knew exactly how to make that happen.

But the order that gave him the most pleasure was the one which dismissed all the waiting infiltrators to quit pestering him and go give their stupid reports to one another. For giving him something more important to do than listen to all those boring stories, Elytron thought, he could almost thank these pony scum.(150)

Of course, the first thirty seconds of seeing these particular examples of pony scum drove all thought of thanks entirely out of Elytron’s mind.

For one thing, the sky-chariot was drawn not by the two pegasi as per standard, nor the team of four that the enormous pile of luggage would have justified, but by a single pony- the grey cross-eyed mailmare who visited twice a week, Wossername. Despite her obvious exhaustion, the unicorn couple in the chariot lifted not one hoof to help as the pegasus unharnessed herself, opened a side-door to let them leave the chariot, and then began hauling one trunk and suitcase after another off the tailgate of the chariot onto the rocky desert floor.

“My word, Jet dear,” the female of the pair whined, “what an ugly location this is. Do you really think that parvenu princess can be trusted?”

“Be strong, darling,” the male said. He kept his nose stuck upwards, making it obvious that his pince-nez were there for the sole purpose of helping him look down his muzzle at the world. “Not everypony is cultured enough to be part of the Canterlot elite. We must set an example to the lesser ponies.”

Elytron, who had been standing alone at the entrance to the hive, in full shiny purple armor, kept his jaw firmly shut only through decades of discipline.

“There,” the gray Pegasus gasped, the last bag offloaded. “That’s everything, Mr. and Mrs. Set.”

“Please!” The female unicorn tossed her nose into the air even higher than her husband’s, making her bouffant mane bob. “I kept my own name when we married, thank you!”

“And I would never have asked otherwise, my dear,” the male unicorn said, comforting his wife. He reached into the breast pocket of his polo shirt and pulled out a few bits, which he tossed at the pegasus’s hooves. “Job well done, miss. No need to wait for us; we’ll telegraph Appleoosa when we’re ready to depart.”

Elytron had little firsthand knowledge of the world outside the changeling guard and prided himself on that ignorance. Still, he thought that the hoofful of bits seemed a piddling gratuity for even a normal chartered sky-chariot. For the work the two unicorns had put the pegasus to, it was a petty insult.

The wall-eyed pegasus pushed the bits together in the dirt, then left them next to the chariot and trudged over to where Elytron stood. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring the mail this trip, sir,” she said. “Do you have anything going outbound?”

“You there, doorpony!” The male unicorn waved a hoof imperiously at him. “Hurry up and take our bags. We have urgent business with your queen!”

Changelings have a reputation for being callous towards their main food source, and Elytron was the extreme case which reinforces a bad reputation. Pity was not within his emotional range, not even for a fellow changeling. Hate, on the other hand, was an old, true friend. After his brief exposure to those two unicorns, he was inclined to support anyling and anypony against them- even the annoying, semi-competent mailmare.

“Have Clickbug take you down to the kitchen,” he said. “Carapace is working at the space center, but he had a couple of apprentices who should be able to make some of that gunk you like.”(151)

“Thank you, sir,” the mailpony said solemnly, walking slowly down into the entrance to the hive.

Only after the mailpony’s flanks were lost in the dim light of the cave did Elytron turn his attention, ever so slowly, back to the ever-more-unwelcome visitors. “I am Elytron, commander of the warriors of Queen Chrysalis’s hive and acting regent during her absence. What business do you have here?” he said coolly.

“Please fetch a bellhop to take our things,” the unicorn said. “We need to see your queen at the earliest possible moment!”

“Or failing that,” the female added, “this earth pony, what’s-her-name, Cherry Berry.”

Elytron wanted to stop and count to one hundred(152), but the ponies required an answer. “Queen Chrysalis and Chief Pilot Cherry Berry are both at Horseton Space Center,” he said carefully.

“A likely story!” the male unicorn snorted. “We already contacted the space center. We were told the queen was not available there, and that any contract proposals would have to wait until after their next launch!”

“Which, I might add,” the female said, “they haven’t scheduled yet!”

“But we’re determined to see the queen no matter what!”

“We wish to hire the services of your space program.” The female waggled a hoof in distaste as she added, “Without all that tedious paperwork your minion asked us to fill out.”

Elytron paused for a moment to consider options. The obvious right thing to do was to send these self-important annoyances on their way. He knew it was the right thing because it was second place on his list of things he wanted to do with them. The first option- sticking them in the pods until someone asked about them- ran counter to standing orders, worse luck.

But if he did either, he’d be giving up on his big opportunity to show Queen Chrysalis he was smart enough to be on the space center roster. Also, the two would probably demand that exhausted pegasus haul them and all their things back to Appleoosa. Though he barely cared about that, he did care just enough to admit it was a factor.

“I am afraid,” Elytron said at last, “that Queen Chrysalis may not be available for some time. In the meantime, as acting regent, I have the authority to listen to your proposal. If it is pleasing I shall lay it before the queen at the earliest opportunity.”

“Isn’t this typical?” the female unicorn asked. “Even here in the forsaken Badlands you can’t escape the middlemare.”

“You can’t expect better of these barbarous ponies,” the male said.

Through the intensifying red haze Elytron had a brief memory of an old, old lesson back when he had been just a larva. “Ponies panic easily,” the teacher had told the class, “but they don’t stay panicked long. A dangerous thing that doesn’t hurt them for a week becomes normal. A dangerous thing that doesn’t hurt them for a month becomes the way things have always been. Ponies always fear what they can’t see, but they think they’re born to rule over everything they CAN see. That is why we cannot rely on fear to keep the hive safe.”(153)

Two years ago, he thought, glaring at the unicorns, you were running down the streets of Canterlot screaming. Now you’re thoughtlessly insulting me to my face. Proof, as if we needed it, that coming out of hiding was a mi… er… not one of the queen’s better decisions.

Elytron was running alternate scenarios of reintroducing these ponies to the fear of changelings through his limited imagination when something very bright and shiny yanked his attention back to the real world. The male pony had opened the smallest trunk… which turned out to be full to slightly overflowing of bits.

Thousands of bits.

Tens of thousands of bits.

Not enough to restore the treasure mound in the throne room to its full glory after it had been mostly spent on Horseton, but enough to double, maybe even triple, what was there at the moment.

The pony was saying, “We are prepared to pay quite well to be the first ponies from Canterlot to travel through space.”

His wife added, “We’ve been to all the fashionable and trendy places around the world on the fastest airships and trains. And right now there’s nothing more fashionable and trendy than rocket ships.”

Elytron blinked. “Er… yes, ma’am,” he said on pure reflex. The fire of rage inside his head was being put out by the fireponies of Ladder Company Duty and the Ambition County Volunteer Fire Department. The queen always wants more money for space, he thought. Here is a LOT of money. It will probably buy a lot of space.

And when she finds out I’ve got her a lot more money for space, she will say, What a clever changeling you are, Elytron. I need clever changelings like you around me at all times. Pack your things and come to Horseton at once, as soon as you’ve picked some particularly stupid and worthless guard to take over your duties back at the hive. Because I can trust you to pick the right changeling, because you are very smart and clever indeed.

So… how to get this money without any fuss or bother? Elytron straightened up. The old traditional methods, he decided, are the best. “It will take some time to bring Queen Chrysalis here to meet you,” he said at last. “In the meantime, allow me to bring you to our special VIP cell- er, deluxe spa and resort caverns,” he corrected himself. “After a tour of our most scenic caves and natural wonders(154), you shall be ensconced in a luxurious sleeping chamber where you can while away the time experiencing only the most delightful and nutrit- um, pleasant dreams in absolute comfort.”

The unicorns balked, to Elytron’s total lack of surprise. “Of course we can’t stay in a place which hasn’t been rated by Four Doors!” the male said, ignoring the utter illogic of packing like an army going to war while not being willing to actually remain at the destination.

“If we stayed in an ordinary residence,” the female insisted, “we’d be laughed out of our clubs! The elite of Canterlot would shun us for…” She shuddered delicately, gasping out the words, “… slumming it.”

“You’ll be staying in the very same chamber chief astromare Cherry Berry uses when she’s visiting us,” Elytron said without blinking. Which was almost true; it would be the same chamber Cherry Berry spent her first two weeks in, mostly asleep and putting off enough love and happiness to turn a trim changeling guard eggplant-shaped. “And you’ll be served the same food,” he added in sudden inspiration, “eaten by Equestrian Games athletes when they visit us.” Not quite a lie; precisely one Games athlete visited the hive, and she was downstairs right now being fed. She’d also qualified for the Cloudsdale Best Young Fliers competition a couple years back, but Elytron doubted Canterlot unicorns would care. For that matter, he didn’t care. He only knew it because of the five or six times Occupant had gushed about his one friend in the world, back in the days before rockets.

The almost-facts brightened the unicorns’ attitudes immediately. “Well then,” the male said, “if such celebrities endorse your hospitality, then we simply MUST try it for ourselves!”

“The same bed as the bravest mare in Equestria!” the female said. “Wait until I tell Brown Snooty about this!”

“I shall order some of my guardlings to bring your… possessions,” Elytron said. “Once you’ve had the tour and settled in, I shall contact the queen and let her know of your proposal. For now, if you would care to follow me, Mr. and Mrs….?”

The male held a hoof to his polo shirt. “I am Jet Set,” he said, “owner of Canterlot Airways. This is my wife, Upper Crust of the Canterlot Crusts.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Upper Crust smiled.

“Quite,” Elytron said, drawing on his deepest reserves of discipline. Half an hour of tour to get them to lower their guard, two quick nips to the back of the neck from the guards, and they’re in the pod and out of my chitin. I can put up with them for that long. “Right this way, sir, ma’am,” he said, gesturing them into the hive.

Gesturing the flies into the parlor.

Footnotes:

(146) Several of which were being adapted to the new medium of television, sponsored by various manufacturers of soap and cleaning products, but Elytron had avoided being contaminated by the foul device. He let changelings watch it now and then as a reward, or withheld the privilege as punishment, but he never watched himself if he could at all help it. The cruddy novels, however, were unavoidable, given the queen’s unfortunate addiction prior to the space program. You couldn’t toss a larva into any hole in the hive without the little twerp landing on three of the things.

(147) The "glory work" consisted of sitting in security booths, checking paperwork for ponies going in and out of the complex, and taking an occasional trot or flutter around the place to make sure nopony was stealing the buildings. Any guard with ideas or curiosity tended to get promoted out of the job, which contributed to the steady bleeding of the cream of Elytron’s corps. If Elytron ever got out to Muck Lake, he would be sorely disappointed.

(148) Which proved to Elytron’s satisfaction, if no one else’s, that things could always get worse.

(149) This refers not to any room in the palace at Canterlot or any government agency, but to a certain portion of alicorn anatomy.

(150) The resulting discussion and direct comparison of techniques and experiments became a regular practice among the infiltrators, whose efficiency went up 20% within the month and even higher as time went on. Elytron might have been commended had he done this on purpose; instead he got a quiet black mark in Chrysalis’s mental ledger for shirking his assigned duties.

(151) And yea, though it was but a plain vanilla muffin baked by a casual cook rather than a master chef, Derpy still got her muffin, and it was good. And for some ponies that’s all it takes to call it a happy ending.

(152) This is not quite the truth. The truth is, Elytron wanted to count to a hundred to prevent himself from doing what he really wanted to do with these two obnoxious unicorns.

(153) Actually the teacher had said, “That is why we can’t rely on fear to keep the hive fed.” Elytron, like almost everybody of any species, heard and remembered mostly what he wanted to.

(154) This wasn’t really a lie. There were some quite extraordinary caves which the hive had left mostly untouched, except for windows to let in sunlight in certain caves and extra glowing crystals or luminescent goo in others to enhance the natural beauty. Although Elytron was just as immune to beauty as he was to pity, he at least knew he ought to find such things beautiful. Thus he visited them on an irregular basis and knew the most efficient path to lead the ponies through on their tour. The third most popular such beauty site, as it happened, lay right next to the currently underpopulated feeding pods, which were about to get two new guests.

Cherry Berry banked her biplane and began her final approach to the rough-paved runway at Horseton Space Center. The visit back to Ponyville hadn’t been as relaxing as she’d hoped, what with half the town holding a parade in her honor and the other half giving her the cold shoulder for being a “changeling collaborator.” She’d spent three days on vacation, and the only times she’d actually relaxed aside from sleep came in the cockpit of her airplane.

She’d been shocked to notice the leaves on the trees beginning to change color. When she’d left Ponyville to find some space program willing to take on an earth pony pilot, Winter Wrap-Up had just finished. Half a year and more had gone by filled with one thing after another, with construction and design and testing and brief, exciting (terrifying) rocket flights. Now here it was, only a couple of weeks until Nightmare Night, and then the Running of the Leaves, and then Winter Ramp-Up and Hearth’s Warming.

There was a thought; she needed to get Warner von Brawn and Goddard the Griffon together to discuss the effect of cold weather on the rockets. Horseton would never have much in the way of snowfall, but there would be nights when it got vaguely close to freezing, and Cherry Berry knew that kind of weather would damage magic engines and any liquid-cooled motors.

On the other hoof, Baltimare and the entire Horseshoe Bay got considerably colder in winter than the Hayseed Swamps, so if cold weather made no-go conditions for flight, then the Equestria Space Agency would be slowed down, too. Which suited Cherry Berry just fine. Twilight Sparkle had announced a launch for ten days from now. Chrysalis had responded by announcing Mission Eleven's launch scheduled for eight days from now. It was crystal clear that whichever rocket actually launched first would put the first mare in orbit of Equus.

Which, darn it, is going to be ME, she thought.

Cherry was pondering the benefits of a little white lie to encourage Twilight into an excess of caution about cold-weather launches when the ear-splitting shriek from somewhere on the ground blasted into her and through the plane.

In retrospect, the shriek itself didn’t really shake the plane; it only felt that way because Cherry Berry’s hoof jiggled the flight stick when the loud cry of outrage ripped through her. She barely had presence of mind to abort her landing and bank hard to port as practically every changeling in the space center took flight, rushing straight away from the administration building in all directions- including directly across the runway, because of COURSE they would.

As she brought the plane around for another approach, a number of changelings fell into formation, generally behind her. A couple actually formed up beside her, including Dragonfly. “What was that?” Cherry shouted over the wind of flight.

“The queen’s really upset!” Dragonfly shouted back. “When she’s this upset, even dumb changelings know to make themselves scarce!”

Cherry Berry checked her mirrors, glanced at the skies around her, and said, “And swarming around my plane counts as scarce?”

“It’s fine!” Dragonfly shouted. “So long as you’re between her and us!”

Cherry Berry had heard stories about the Prench Foreign Legion and its generals’ favorite tactic, Operation Equine Shield(155). “You mean, so long as mine is the head she bites off!”

“Exactly!” Dragonfly nodded, grinning a very befanged grin.

Grumbling, Cherry Berry shook her head, finished her turn, and managed to get the plane on the runway without striking or running over anypony.

Once on the ground and out of her plane, Cherry Berry became the focus of attention. The changelings who had fled in terror of their queen were regathering, mostly hiding behind her plane or various buildings. The construction ponies(156) faced her on the other side, all shouting questions about the scream, what it meant, and whether or not they could claim overtime for the work stoppage. Marked Knee and a couple of his goat assistants ran up from the research and development buildings, followed by Double Face and a handful of unfortunate earth pony tourists who had been in the Fun Machine enjoying freefall indoors when the alarm went up.

Cherry Berry didn’t bother to answer questions. She plowed through the ponies in front of her and ignored them as they filed in behind her, mingling with the changelings that leap-frogged from cover to cover. Before long she had every living being in the space center, or so it seemed, following her like a cult following its prophet through the wilderness, murmuring in quiet respect.

Cherry Berry was relieved that the inarticulate screams and exclamations still coming from the administration building were of only normal volume, and not the Princess-Luna-In-a-Temper level of loud the first shriek had been. Half the windows, including all of them around Chrysalis’s office cum throne room, had been blown out. Occupant, trembling, stood guard by the main doors, all the regular guards having joined the crowd of trembling bugs in Cherry’s wake.

“What’s going on?” Cherry Berry asked.

Occupant began, “Well-“

“BU DEE BI DIP DIP DAH!”

“-we just got a call on the tele-whatzis from-“

“RIDDIE RI DIP DOOP DER DARR!”

“-from the Hive, and it seems-“

“I CAN’T CRIPPIN RIP RAZZIN FRAZZ LUFFA WUFFLE DAH!”

“-to have upset Her Majesty beyond the-“

“WHADDA DUM-DUM DIDDLE DER WHIPPLE WHICK WHEE!”

“-beyond the ability to speak,” Occupant finished between Chrysalis’s nonsensical rantings.

“What did-“ Cherry tried to ask.

“BY ALL GUM DIM SUFFA FRAGGLE RACKIN FRACKIN DRRRRM!”

“Dunno!” Occupant said quickly. “I left the room!”

“IMA RIDDLE RIP NIDDLE!”

“Well, I’m-“ Cherry timed her words to fall into Chrysalis’s pauses for breath. “-going to find out.” Pause, gibberish. “You stay here-“ Pause, gibberish. “-and keep everypony-“ Pause, gibberish. “-out. She-“ Pause, gibberish. “-probably won’t hurt me.”

Occupant saluted smartly(157) as Cherry Berry stepped past him.

Cherry Berry opened the door, knocking only after she’d had a look inside. Aside from the windows, nothing seemed broken except the crystal array that had once been the telepresence communications device. Chrysalis had apparently run out of even nonsense words and had settled for banging her head on her desktop.

For a moment Cherry considered calm words and soothing tones. Then she remembered who she was dealing with, and she decided to go for blunt talk instead. “So, what happened?” she asked.

Chrysalis stopped in mid-headthump, finally noticing the presence of the blonde-maned pink pony. She took a deep breath, but this time actual words came out. “HE DUMPED THE BITS OUT ONTO THE PILE!” she shouted.

“Context please?” Cherry Berry asked.

“HE DUMPED THE BUCKING BITS ONTO THE TREASURE PILE!” Chrysalis shouted even louder. “HE DIDN’T EVEN THINK TO COUNT THEM!”

“And that’s bad,” Cherry stated as a fact.

“YES, IT’S BAD!” Chrysalis propped herself upright and glared at Cherry. “IT MEANS WE CAN’T REFUND THEIR MONEY!”

Out of the multitude of questions, Cherry chose the simplest. “Whose money?”

“THOSE BUCKING CANTERLOT SNOBS WHO WANT TO TAKE A JOYRIDE INTO SPACE!”

“Oh.” Cherry Berry flopped back onto her rump, having instantly recognized the significance of joyride into space and can’t refund their money.

“I think you’d better tell me… no, don’t tell me,” she said after she suppressed her own urge to scream nonsense words(158) and bang her head into solid objects. “Go do whatever relaxes you while I get some changelings to rush Goddard and von Brawn back here from Appleoosa. It sounds like we’ve got a mission-critical emergency on our hooves thanks to… that idiot.”

She didn’t know yet who that idiot was, but if some changeling at the hive had taken a bunch of money from rich ponies who wanted to buy a ticket to ride the rocket, then no matter the circumstances, they deserved the name idiot. And possibly much worse.

No tourist ponies were going to take the first orbital mission away from her.

Footnotes:

(155) Operation Equine Shield: have the foreign ponies defend the indefensible fort and slow down the enemy while the generals, their staffs, and their toadies save their own skins. If the fort holds out long enough for Prench reinforcements to come and relieve it, this is a bonus… but by no means a requirement.

(156) The last element of the flight hangar, the tall air traffic control tower, was almost complete. An expanded astronaut training center, with the rigging required to practice using Twilight Sparkle’s new EMU (Equine Maneuvering Unit) spacesuit thruster backpack, was about midway to completion. Work had begun on an expanded tracking center, not only to track and communicate with spaceships even on the other side of the globe but to add new computers designed by the minotaurs which could actually plan maneuvers rather than just chart trajectories. Next on the agenda after that was an expansion of the vehicle assembly building (VAB). The joke in Horseton was that only princesses would live to see the day the space center was actually finished.

(157) Secure in the knowledge that absolutely noling wanted to get past him. Only intense loyalty, a profound sense of duty, and a desire to get the queen to sign off on the purchase of a certain collectible set of salt and pepper shakers kept him there at all.

(158) Actually Cherry wouldn't have used many nonsense words, as such. As she'd demonstrated before, when sufficiently provoked she retained her language skills. Indeed, her vocabulary expanded under stress... and got much, much bluer..

Travel by sky-chariots drawn by pegasi was safe, but often tiring, for non-flyers like minotaurs and elderly griffons.

Travel by airborne freight carts pulled by changelings untrained for the task, in a tearing hurry, was… much more tiring.

As Chrysalis related the full story of Elytron’s folly, Cherry Berry noticed Goddard’s feathers were more rumpled than usual. Von Brawn’s apparent calm rose less from his imperturbability and more from the adrenalin crash after hours of gripping the rails of the flying cart in stark terror. The other three at the table- Chrysalis, Occupant, and herself- hadn’t had to travel any distance, but each showed varying levels of stress and fatigue from the situation that Elytron had dumped on their backs.

“I don’t see the problem,” Occupant said once Chrysalis finished. “Why don’t we just keep the money and the ponies both?”

“Because that would be wrong,” Cherry Berry replied firmly.

“Because that would be stupid,” Chrysalis corrected her. She put on a wide-eyed innocent look and sang a song of sarcastic acting: “Why, hello there, Princess Celestia! Why yes, we do have two of your ponies here from Canterlot, you know, your capital city that we tried to conquer and enslave? They showed up with a bunch of money, and they were a little bit annoying, so we’re keeping both them and the money. You don’t mind, do you? Oh, you’re coming with your army to turn the hive into a mile-deep crater? That’s nice! Looking forward to the nice chat! I’ll bring the tea and crumpets! Ta-ta!”

Occupant slumped. “You beat Celestia before,” he replied sullenly.

“Tell me, my dear servant,” Chrysalis said smoothly, “do you happen to have another exceptionally powerful yet gullible unicorn who is so lovestruck he could feed you and a hundred of your siblings for a month straight on a single day’s supply? No? Let me know when you find one, and maybe I’ll consider a rematch with the mare who moves the sun.”

“Just saying it’s an option,” Occupant muttered.

“So let me get this straight,” Goddard said slowly. “Your chief guard took the money of two ponies who said it was to pay for a flight into space. He then put it in the general pool without counting it. In the meantime, the two ponies are on ice, fully expecting a rocket ride when they wake up.”

“Elytron was so very proud of the fact that he never actually promised them a space flight,” Chrysalis growled. “When I get my hooves on that fossilized brain-dead-“

“Any court of law you care to name,” Goddard continued, “even a griffon court- especially a griffon court, come to that- will call acceptance of payment as acceptance of contract.” His feathers ruffled a little bit more, and he ran his talons through them, trying to smooth them down. “And since he was technically your regent at the time, they can argue and win the point that he had authority to make such a contract.”

“But we can’t do it!” Chrysalis shouted. “Even if we wanted to, we can’t cram three ponies into one capsule! And we wouldn’t do it for Mission Eleven anyway! We agreed on this- nothing but orbit! Nothing that risks orbit!” She threw up her hooves and finished, “But that means we’re in breach of contract! We can’t refund the money because we don’t know how much it is! And Canterlot ponies LOVE to sue! And Canterlot ponies would ESPECIALLY love to sue into the GROUND the species that tried to CONQUER THEIR CITY!”

Goddard nodded. “Sure looks that way,” he agreed.

“Then we’re bucked,” Cherry Berry moaned.

Chrysalis, Cherry, Goddard and Occupant all slumped in their seats. von Brawn, who had been slumped all this time, straightened up.

“Why?” he asked quietly.

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “Have you been asleep, doctor?” she asked pointedly.

“No.” von Brawn straightened up a bit more, still looking travel-worn but no longer completely out of it. “Why are we in breach of contract? Did these ponies ever specify that it had to be the very next rocket? Did they, in fact, set a deadline at all?”

“No,” Chrysalis breathed. “Or he didn’t mention one, anyway. The idiot.”

“Find out,” von Brawn insisted. “Be absolutely sure. But I’m willing to bet they didn’t, from Mr. Elytron’s story as you tell it. And if they didn’t, that means we can launch their flight on our own timetable, not theirs. In which case Mission Eleven is not directly in jeopardy.”

Long, soft sighs of relief echoed through the conference room. A weight lifted from the shoulders of pony, changeling, and griffon.

“We’ll still have to figure out some way of getting them up and down,” Goddard pointed out. “And we can’t leave them in a cocoon indefinitely.”

“We shouldn’t have them in a cocoon at all,” Cherry Berry remarked pointedly.

“What truly galls me,” Chrysalis muttered, “is that Elytron thought he was being clever and imaginative. He used those words at least three times in his report.”

Cherry Berry ignored the queen. “Can we just build a bigger capsule?” she asked. “I know the yaks are working on one. And we were going to need one ourselves, eventually.”

Goddard shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but it’d weigh a lot more, and it’d require an entirely new series of rocket motors and fuel tanks sized to match. I suppose we could stick it on top of our existing rockets and get a launch, but I’m worried about drag issues if we try that. We need wind tunnel and simulator tests on that.”

“Probably easier to just build a separate crew module,” von Brawn rumbled. “We might even be able to re-use cabin gear from personal airships. I know some Canterlot unicorns have the things. Expensive as Tartarus, though.”

Goddard nodded. “That would be simpler in the short term,” he said. “But then the question is, can we bring it back safely from orbit?” He rose from his chair and went to the chalkboard, sketching out two spaceships- one a simple capsule plus heat shield, the other a capsule, heat shield and a canister in between. “The ablative heat shield protects the capsule from atmospheric heating during reentry,” he said, pointing to the first sketch. “But the longer a ship is, the more likely parts of it will stick out beyond the protection of the shockwave and thus be exposed to plasma, either directly or dragged in behind the ship. Too much exposure, too much heat… and boom.” He slapped the chalk against the second sketch hard enough to break the chalk.

“And that’s a phenomenon we don’t know well enough to trust the simulator,” von Brawn rumbled. “The only way to find out if we can do it is to fly it.”

Instantly Chrysalis and Cherry Berry looked at one another. “Obviously,” Cherry said in a firm voice to make it clear that it ought to be obvious even if it wasn’t, “we don’t do this flight test with the paying passengers.”

“Indeed not,” von Brawn agreed. “Not if we want repeat customers, anyway.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Chrysalis murmured.

“No,” Cherry Berry said firmly.

“I know, Celestia wouldn’t approve,” Chrysalis acknowledged testily. “Just let me enjoy my daydream, why don’t you? If you’d met more rich Canterlot snobs, you’d understand.”(159)

“Anyway,” Cherry Berry pressed on, “that means a test flight before the paid flight. And we can’t put off the paying customers for very long.”

“It looks like Mission Eleven is affected after all.” Goddard modified his second sketch. “Obviously we won’t have our passenger cabin ready in a week, but we should be able to put something of about the right size and weight together to test the flight dynamics.”

“We’ve got a Science Jr. in from Twilight Sparkle,” von Brawn rumbled. “If it were a capsule, it might just fit two ponies inside.”

Goddard shook his head. “For tourists? No, no,” he said. “A bit longer, I think. Maybe if we add a service bay.” He smiled and added, “We’d want to do that anyway. The service bay is heavier and more heat and crash resistant. And we can put some goo cans in it and get extra science data from orbit.”

“What happened,” Chrysalis asked sharply, “to ‘nothing that gets in the way of orbit’?”

“Your chief guard happened,” Goddard replied just as sharply. “So we have to adapt. A heavier ship, but a more direct flight path.”

“We’ll be using the Terrier for the final-stage engine,” von Brawn added. “That’s a ton lighter than the Swivel, which means we can double the last-stage fuel load. We’ll also get rid of all the solid fuel except for the two Thumper boosters on the first stage. With no distracting mission tasks, that means more delta-V and a straighter vector. I think the margin is solid.”

“Do we get orbit that way?” Cherry Berry pressed.

“I’ll have to verify the numbers,” von Brawn replied, “but I’m confident.”

“Of course I’ll be flying it,” Chrysalis put in.

Cherry Berry blinked.

Occupant, Von Brawn, and Goddard all leaned their chairs back from the table.

“This is an untested design,” Cherry finally managed to say. “Mission Eleven will be going faster and coming down heavier than anything we’ve flown yet. Unproven and high-risk. That means I fly it.”

“It’s not substantially different than Mission Nine except for the payload,” Chrysalis said. “And the capsule will only be, what? Half a ton heavier? Less?”

“That’s still twenty-five percent heavier,” Cherry replied. “And the Terrier isn’t flight-tested, your underwater test notwithstanding. Unproven. My flight.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Chrysalis insisted. “My flight.”

“You’re lying,” Cherry Berry remarked.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “How can you tell, pony?”

“Have you ever noticed Occupant?” Cherry replied. “When we’re arguing his ear-fins perk up until you start lying. Then they droop.”

Chrysalis shot a nasty look at her subject, who hung his head, drooping ears and all, in embarrassment.

“You know this flight isn’t safe,” Cherry Berry continued. “And I know I’ve heard you say at least once, ‘I wish we could have a flight where the phrase got away with it didn’t apply.’” The pilot pony glared at the queen and asked, “So how come?”

“Because I'm the queen and I said so,” Chrysalis grumbled. “So… my flight.”

“You got to be first in space,” Cherry Berry said. “You’re going to be the first mare on the moon. Let somepony else get first in something in space. First orbit is mine. My flight.”

“My flight.”

“My flight!”

“Mine!”

“MINE!”

“Perhaps,” von Brawn said, shoving the word between the two bickering pilots, “we should go to training and see how that plays out.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry pushed away from the conference table, walking out the door side by side, snarling, “My flight,” at each other as they left.

“So,” Goddard said, getting out of his seat, “Lunchmeat here and I need to go start designing our luxury passenger can. I’m sure you won’t have any problem running training for the mission all by yourself, Occupant my boy.”(160)

Occupant groaned and held his head in his hooves.

Footnotes:

(159) Rarity (who loved visiting Canterlot) and Twilight Sparkle (who grew up there) would have argued forcefully against this stereotype. Celestia, who had spent most of the previous thousand years in the city, would have maintained a dignified silence. Luna would have subscribed to Chrysalis’s newsletter on the subject, if not for the minor enemy-of-my-little-ponies thing.

(160) When Goddard the Griffon was cheerful, it usually meant you were being dumped in the garbage wagon instead of him.

Simulator training for a mission had a protocol.

Under normal circumstances the lead pilot for a mission would run the simulator until she died three times or had a successful flight, at which point the backup pilot would get the simulator for one session, pass or fail.(161) Whichever pilot wasn’t in the capsule would act as cap-com during the sim, while Occupant and either von Brawn or George Bull oversaw the simulation and selected various flight scenarios, or “problems”, for the pilots to solve. Under normal conditions this protocol worked well.

Unfortunately the system hadn’t been designed for a situation in which the two lead pilots were competing for the flight. Usually the mission assignment was settled before simulations began. To make things worse, von Brawn, Bull, and the other minotaurs were either in Appleoosa with Goddard the Griffon and Dragonfly or rushing around Equestria, all trying to solve the problem of adding two passengers to a rocket system designed for a single-occupancy capsule.

This left Occupant alone in the simulators with Chrysalis and Cherry Berry, each of whom had decided to appear professional while undermining the other’s simulations. The pilots had had three turns each thus far on the day, with the results being zero orbits, two mid-launch aborts, three burn-up-on-reentries, and one successful landing from space.

Chrysalis crawled out of the capsule following the sixth simulation (burn up), snarling, “All right, I killed myself that time. I was hoping to shallow out my descent angle by inclining the capsule.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself into her more-professional-and-piloty-than-you mode. “So what else do we need to cover?”

Cherry Berry’s mouth turned up just enough to imply a smile while being able to deny that she was, in fact, smiling. “You had two problems in that scenario,” she said. “One was the mechanical fault which caused the solid fuel boosters to fall in and destroy the first stage once decoupled. You handled that well and should still have had orbit with the remaining delta-V on board.”

“And the other thing?”

“Pilot and cap-com error, technically. The verification of staging sequence checklist was never called for.” The not-quite-a-smile on Cherry’s face grew slightly less deniable. “The third stage engine ignition and the re-entry decoupler were on the same command line, due to an error by VAB crew, and it wasn’t caught. So when you hit the staging button to finish orbital burn, you instead dumped the whole stage and all its fuel, leaving you only the capsule and service assembly.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Chrysalis replied, each syllable falling with a thud on Occupant’s ears. “Well, let that be a lesson to us all,” she emphasized the last word as she stared directly at Cherry Berry, “not to become complacent with our safety checks, hmm?”

Occupant wanted to bury his head in the sand. He couldn’t tell what this was- a competition to see who was the better pilot, who was the better at cheating the simulator, or who was going to lose her temper first. Whatever it was, it wasn’t training.

“Oh, quite so,” Cherry Berry nodded. “But I thought you could use the reminder. I certainly had a wake-up call when my parachute deployed in orbit!”

“It could happen to anyone,” Chrysalis agreed. “Just like it did with me when my heat shield detached. Well, your turn for the can. Fly carefully, now!”

“Believe me,” Cherry replied, “I will.”

Occupant probably couldn’t have handled a shouting match, but he definitely couldn’t take this teeth-clenched fake pleasantry. Occupant could feel the anger and rivalry in the air. He knew Chrysalis could too, and he knew she was acting so that Cherry Berry would get the idea even if she couldn’t actually sense the emotions directly. And Cherry, knowing all this, was acting just the same as Chrysalis, as if the queen couldn’t sense the mood.

In short, the two mares were not just getting on one another’s nerves; they were stamping on those nerves with deliberate malice. That made it worst of all.

“I’m going to take a break,” he said, fluttering up from the simulation computer and over to the door. “I need some fresh air.”

The two pilots looked at one another. Their little contest, thus far, had ended in a draw, with the innocent bystander being the first one to crack. “Well,” Chrysalis said, “no point in your getting back in without him. Shall we go out?”

Before Cherry could reply, Occupant shouted, “My Queen! Miss Berry! Come quick, you need to see this!”

Footnote:

(161) On those days when Dragonfly wasn’t stuck in Appleoosa or in the R&D labs at the space center, she might get one session in the simulator when the other two pilots were done. For Mission Ten she’d got the simulator all to herself for one day. Lucky Cricket, technically fourth on the pilot list, had seen the inside of the simulator only twice, and Occupant, technically fifth on the list, was too busy helping run the simulations to fly one himself.

The canoes didn’t range as far as the eye could see, but they stretched quite a long way up and down Muck Lake. Cherry Berry counted thirty-one of them, each filled with what looked like earth ponies, although at that distance Cherry couldn’t tell whether or not there were any unicorns among them. A mere handful of pegasi guarded the sky above the line of canoes, hovering, watching.

“Close to four hundred ponies,” Chrysalis said, matching Cherry Berry’s estimate. “Probably all warriors. I have about a hundred dedicated warriors of my own on-site, and about as many more changelings I could trust to fight alongside them.” She waved a hoof at the native flotilla, dismissing it. “They’re no danger to us.”

“If that’s all of them,” Cherry replied. “They could be hiding a lot more ponies back in the jungle.”

“They could, but they aren’t,” Chrysalis replied, shaking her head. “For one thing, the swamps and jungles for twenty miles south of here are completely uninhabited except by a few monsters. We checked when we decided to build here. They came at least that far, and if they brought this many warriors that far, they wouldn’t hide them. They’d either show them all, or hide them all and attack without warning at night.” Chrysalis frowned a little at this thought. “A night attack might actually pose a danger. We’d still win, but we’d lose a lot of ‘lings and probably take a lot of damage to the facility.”

Cherry Berry tried to follow the logic, and couldn’t. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would they bring all those ponies here if not to attack us?”

“I can think of a number of reasons,” Chrysalis said, “at least if it were me giving the orders to them. But this looks like a show of force to me.”

“What?” Cherry Berry shook her head. “Why would anypony bring an army to show they could fight us, without fighting us?”

Chrysalis blinked. “This coming from the pony who managed to negotiate herself from prisoner clear up to head of my most important scheme? You really don’t see it?” Shaking her head at the innocence of ponies, she continued, “They obviously want something from us and don’t think we’re going to say-“

The education of Cherry Berry got cut short by a distant booming sound. Both mares focused their attention back on the canoes. A new vessel, a massive double-hulled ship with a sail and a deck connecting the two hulls, pushed its way through the tall grass on the southern shore and through the line of native boats.

Boom. The large ship was past the line and moving forward.

Boom. Boom. The rowers in the outrigger picked up speed.

Boom boom Boom boom Boom boom Boom…

As the outrigger sped across the water, traces of white foam rising from the double prows, something rose from the deck, sitting up on its haunches. A proud face, white framed by orange and black stripes, looked back across the water at the two mares.

“Tiger,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Mascot?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Definitely not. Trouble,” Chrysalis grunted.

As the ship drew closer, the source of the booms became clear; an immense drum on the rear of the ship. Smaller drums flanked the big bass, ponies setting up a rapid syncopated rhythm over the regular, resonant beat of the master drum. Cherry Berry’s heart raced in time to the higher-pitched drums. Everything inside her wanted to bolt and run at the sight and sound of this single vessel and its thirty or so occupants, even more than from the rest of the flotilla that waited behind them.

“Calm yourself,” Chrysalis muttered from the corner of her mouth. “Everyling is watching us. Don’t look,” she added, just barely stopping Cherry before she could turn and look at the crowd she could now hear murmuring behind the two of them. “Keep telling yourself, we are strong. We are powerful. We could sink every little boat they have without losing a single warrior. We are in control. They are coming to us. They fear us more than we fear them.”

“Is that true?” Cherry asked.

“Probably not,” Chrysalis admitted. “Now shut up.”

“Gee, thanks,” Cherry grumbled, and stood in silence as the catamaran approached. As it came close to shore, the bass drum gave a final roll, then ceased. The native ponies withdrew their paddles, and the boat coasted the rest of the way to the dock, turning just enough to bring it alongside the quay. Two ponies jumped out and wrapped ropes made of jungle vines around the pilings. Two more carefully lowered a gangplank from the boat’s deck to the dock, then kowtowed deeply as a pony with a large stone headdress stepped down the gangplank.

“Greetings from Tecnochtitlan,” the headdress-pony rumbled, deep voice speaking Equestrian with barely an accent. A few gray streaks ran through an otherwise ebony black mane, while a tiny bit of black beard dangled from the very bottom of his chin. “You may call me Calendar Wheel. I bring you the orders of our dread master, who is offended by your arrogance in profaning his sacred sky with your chariots of smoke.”

“And who is your master?” Chrysalis interrupted.

“You are not fit to hear his holy name,” Calendar Wheel replied solemnly. “All you need to know is that he demands your service in exchange for his forbearance.”

Cherry looked at Chrysalis. “How’s that again?”

“He said, do it or else,” Chrysalis replied. “So, what is it we’re supposed to do?”

“My master demands the use of your chariot of smoke,” Calendar Wheel said. “But to ensure that the vessel is worthy of his divine glory, he wishes to send an emissary ahead of him. You will take this emissary with you into the sky, and he will return and report to our master.”

“Wait a minute.” Cherry Berry set a hoof down quietly but firmly. “What you’re saying is, you want us to take a passenger into space. Or else w-“

“We accept,” Chrysalis interrupted, using one hole-riddled hoof to shove Cherry Berry back behind her.

“The emissary must fly and return within the moon,” Calendar Wheel insisted.

“Not a problem,” Chrysalis said. “As it happens, in a couple of days Miss Berry here,” she gestured at the irate pink pony next to her, “will pilot a test flight to verify our ability to carry passengers into space. Once this is accomplished, I will personally pilot the ship that carries your emissary into the skies.”

"You what? I what?" Cherry protested, only to get another shove backwards from Chrysalis.

Calendar Wheel nodded once. His little beard wiggled, marring the otherwise perfect solemnity of the moment. “This is acceptable to my master,” he said.

Chrysalis pointed to the tiger glaring at her from the deck of the catamaran. "Is that our passenger, then?"

Calendar Wheel shook his head. "No," he said. "The servant of our master only observes."

"Then you? Or who?" Cherry Berry asked.

"My master has chosen another," the Technochitlan pony said, his resonant voice betraying neither relief nor envy. "He is not as fluent as I in your language, but he can understand well enough. He is intelligent. He is loyal."

"I em expendable," a whiny voice muttered from behind the Technochitlan chief. The newcomer had obviously taken all of Calendar Wheel’s native accent in addition to his own, and possibly two or three other ponies from the areas south of Mexicolt. He stepped reluctantly around his chief, a skinny figure of a stallion, light-coated and dark-maned, wide eyes begging the world to not do frightening things to their owner.

"This," Calendar Wheel announced, "is the pony we send to the stars."

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry looked the unprepossessing pony up and down. "What's his name?" Chrysalis asked.

"My name?" the pathetic pony asked. "Hobble Jimenez."

“We shall treat him like a prince,” Chrysalis said.

“Got a particular prince in mind?” Cherry said, a ton of warning lading down her voice.

“Better still,” Chrysalis said, ignoring her lead pilot, “we shall treat him like a celebrity. We shall give him the best training, the best equipment, the best care we can provide. He shall be honored as the most important person in the facility, short of myself of course.”

Hope risked a furtive, timid appearance on Hobble’s face.

“Please don’t,” Calendar Wheel groaned. “Give him his daily bowl of gruel, ignore his whimpering, and stick him in your smoke chariot when you go.”

“And bring him back safely,” Cherry Berry added.

“Oh, yes,” said Calendar Wheel, “I suppose the master will have to have him back, after all.”

Hope fled Hobble’s face as Worry and Fear resumed their accustomed positions there.

“We can do that,” Chrysalis nodded. “We’ll stuff him into a can on launch day, send him screaming around the world so high there’s no air, bring him back in a ball of the hottest flame, dunk him in the ocean, and return him to you just barely fit to tell the tale.”

Hobble’s limp body hit the dock planks with a thump.

“Ignore him,” Calendar Wheel said, “he just does that sometimes. We leave him in your care. We shall return for him in a moon… one way or another.”

As Calendar Wheel walked back up the gangplank to the deck of the catamaran, Cherry Berry waved over one of the changelings hovering nearby. “A bucket of water,” she said, pointing a hoof at the fainted Hobble Jimenez.

One soaking later, the scrawny native pony was more or less back on his feet, looking no more bedraggled and miserable than before(162). “Misser Wheel! Misser Wheel!” he shouted as the catamaran cast off from the pier.

“Yes, Jimenez?” the chief asked wearily. “Do you have a last request?”

"Oh, don' put it like that," Hobble moaned.

Calendar Wheel shook his head, shaking the heavy stone headdress in his mane. "Can I do something for you?"

“Tha's better. Jes, jou can do something for me,” Hobble said, raising his big, mournful eyes to Calendar Wheel’s. “Please don’ let them do this to me.”

The tribal pony snorted, turned his back on the pier, and gestured to the rowers. The drumbeats struck up again, and ponies rowed to the beat, driving the ship back across Muck Lake and to the long line of canoes.

Chrysalis caught sight of Occupant, who stood not too far behind her and Cherry Berry. “Take our honored guest to the astronaut quarters,” she said. “Give him a good room. Clean him up. Get him measured for a spacesuit. Talk with Heavy Frosting about a special diet.”

“At once, my queen!” Occupant saluted, fluttering over to Hobble and gently guiding the very frightened pony towards the astronaut facility.

As the crowd of observers broke up, Cherry Berry leaned over to Chrysalis and whispered, “What’s got into you? Why did you say yes? Why did you just give up Mission Eleven for him? Since when do you give way that quickly?”

Chrysalis smiled an evil, smug little smile. “Since I got a mission I can fly that doesn’t involve putting up with spoiled, whiny Canterlot snobs.” The smile grew a little wider as she added, barely audibly, “And especially doesn’t require flying a mission where half the ship is made of cardboard and good wishes.”

With that the changeling queen sauntered off the dock past Cherry Berry, adding, “Enjoy your mission, pony. It’s all yours.”

“What? Wait a minute!” Cherry Berry ran around Chrysalis and blocked her path. “You're not making any sense! What are you talking about?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Figure it out, pony,” she said. “We now have two tourist missions to fly, not one. That means I can take the flight with this Jimenez pony and leave you to play taxi driver for those rich unicorns. Which means I no longer need to take Mission Eleven. It’s all yours, and welcome to it.”

The logic, such as it was, finally sank in. “So you’re saying,” Cherry said carefully, “that you didn't want Mission Eleven for yourself? You only wanted Mission Eleven because you think we have to take turns flying?”

“Um…?” Now it was Chrysalis’s turn to look confused. “But…”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Cherry Berry said, “that I could just fly both missions? That you could wait until the tourists were taken care of before taking your next flight?”

Chrysalis didn’t say anything for about half a minute. When she did speak, it was somewhat contrite. “I just committed us all to a second tourist flight, for no money, because I was stupid,” she said. “Didn’t I, pony?”

“Do you think we can back out?” Cherry asked. “Those canoes are still out there.”

“Not without a major battle,” Chrysalis said. “Maybe if I’d said no at the start, but definitely not now.” The changeling queen frowned deeply and added, “Especially not after I sold it that strongly.”

“So.”

“So.”

Pink earth pony and black bug-pony stared at each other.

“I think it’s time we got back into the simulator.”

“Yes.”

Footnote:
(162) The only way Hobble would have looked more bedraggled and miserable would have required a swarm of very hungry carnivorous parasprites, and even then they likely would have been put off their feed by his usual appearance.

“SRB separation.”

“SRB separation confirmed. Looking good.”

Yeah, Cherry Berry thought. Too good.

Both Cherry and Chrysalis had thought that, with the decision made as to who would fly Mission Eleven, the simulator shenanigans would stop. Instead things had gotten worse. Cherry Berry had gotten herself killed time and again- burned up on reentry, stranded in orbit, rocket breakup on ascent, and even, on one particular simulator run, dropping the fully fueled rocket on the pad after a flight of four whole inches after mistakenly decoupling the SRBs. She’d not only killed herself that time, but about half the space center; the computers claimed that the SRBs, fully loaded and unguided, had spun and corkscrewed right into the VAB and mission control buildings, utterly destroying them.
For sanity’s sake simulations were cancelled the day before launch, and Cherry had spent the whole day in her balloon. No plane, no simulators, just a magically controlled hot-air balloon. Just Cherry, the skies, and her thoughts.

It hadn’t helped.

“First stage burnout, jettisoning. Igniting second stage.”

“Second stage ignition confirmed.”

Cherry Berry aimed the rocket a bit more towards the horizon, flattening out the trajectory. The ship responded perfectly, doing only what she wanted, nothing more. There was no tumble, no drift, no pogoing, no shimmy, nothing. The new, larger fuel tanks held together like a dream, providing the steady flow of fuel and oxidizer the engine needed.

Go wrong, Cherry Berry thought. This is too good. This is too easy. Something must go wrong. I’ll even take a light bulb burning out in one of the controls, but please, something glitch!

Nothing did. The gentle giant’s hand pressing against her back lifted her up into the black skies, higher, faster, farther, without so much as a hiccup.

“Eleven, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice rang through her earphones. “Ten seconds to MECO, mark.”

Main Engine Cut-Off; saving half of the second stage’s fuel to circularize orbit. The call meant that her ship’s apogee now extended just beyond atmosphere, according to von Brawn and his bullpen. This mission was going to aim for the lowest stable orbit, the dead minimum required to say they’d done it and collect payment from the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Roger, Horseton, awaiting mark.” Cherry Berry raised her hoof and held it over the cut-off switch.

“Three. Two. One. Mark.”

Cherry’s hoof came down before Chrysalis finished pronouncing the terminal k. “MECO.”

“Horseton confirms MECO,” Chrysalis replied. “This might be the smoothest flight we’ve ever had, Eleven. Keep up the good work.”

Cherry squirmed in the flight chair. No, no, she didn’t want smooth. Smooth coming up meant something was going to go wrong while in orbit, or while transitioning to the higher orbit required for the second contract of the flight- the decoupler test.

And if not there… then on the way down.

Mission Eleven’s construction had been based on coming as close as they could, using existing parts, to the volume required for a two-pony passenger pod. At the top, of course, was the control capsule, tried and proven, where Cherry Berry flew the ship. At the bottom of the landing stage, just above the ablative heat shield, was a robust cargo bay, built in Appleoosa to Goddard the Griffon’s dyspeptic demands. Heat tests showed it twice as durable as the command capsule itself.

But in between the cargo bay and the capsule was an Equestrian Space Agency Science Jr. Twilight Sparkle’s inspired materials-experiment setup was far and away the least heat-resistant part of the ship. A test(163) showed that the Science Jr.’s bay doors didn’t provide a total thermal seal, allowing heat and flames to penetrate the pod and destroy it.

Putting the Science Jr. on the bottom of the stack, with the heat shield attached, would have protected it from almost all the heat. Unfortunately the Science Jr. was also lightweight- too much so. When that configuration was tested in miniature in the Fun Machine, the whole ship wanted to flip over and come down nose-first, heavy capsule leading light, wind-tossed base. So, instead, the heavier cargo bay with two mystery goo pods was at the bottom, to lower the center of mass and make it easier to keep the craft stable… and leaving the Science Jr. in a position where, just possibly, the re-entry fireball could cook it to a crisp.

And if that happened… Bad Day.

It had happened in simulators four times. Each time, the ship had broken up, the parts tumbling through the atmosphere, exploding, and falling to Equus as a fine rain of tiny parts and ash.

Those same simulators, when allowed to pilot the ship themselves with no pony or changeling at the controls, said the ship could be landed safely, without even triggering the heat alarms. It could be done… in theory.

The problem was, as had been pointed out in the planning meetings, theory was all they had to go on. The simulators were only as good as Goddard and von Brawn’s guesswork. The Science Jr. might stay cool through reentry even with a ham-hoofed(164) pony at the controls… or it might go boom no matter how perfectly the pilot did her job.

Cherry Berry was literally flying into a complete unknown… with her self-confidence completely shot by all the bad simulator runs. She knew that. She knew the simulators weren’t the real thing, she knew it was all in her head… but knowing didn’t get it out of her head.

Flying isn’t fun anymore, Cherry Berry thought. In her head, a quiet, weepy voice added, I want to go home.

“Eleven, Horseton,” Chrysalis called up from hundreds of miles below and behind her. “We’re coming up on atmospheric interface, so how about we get the ship’s attitude trimmed and prepare for orbital insertion burn?”

How about we get the pilot’s attitude trimmed? Cherry thought. “Eleven copies,” she said, nosing the rocket down until the nav ball’s pointer hovered just above the artificial horizon, in line with the prograde trajectory marker. “Ready for orbital insertion.”

“Go for orbital insertion burn at your discretion,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re currently forty seconds from projected apoapsis, so you might want to get on with it.”

“Main engine ignition,” Cherry replied, reactivating the second stage and setting it to full throttle. The giant’s hand gripped the ship again, pushing the rocket into Cherry’s back and up into the stars.

“Confirm main engine start,” Chrysalis said. “Everything showing green here, Eleven. Looks like we’ll need a little bit of the third stage to get a clean orbit, though.”

Cherry Berry nodded to herself. That was the way it always played out in the simulators… well, when the simulations had even got this far. A quick glance at the fuel levels in the second stage and the velocity readout confirmed it. “Eleven copies, Horseton,” she said.

Thirty-two seconds later the second stage engine burned out, and Cherry smoothly decoupled the empty stage and ignited the final engine. Unlike the Swivel’s firm thrust, the Terrier barely nudged Cherry’s back… but it did nudge it, gradually but very efficiently boosting the rocket higher and faster.

But…

“Horseton, Eleven,” Cherry Berry said. “I notice this engine isn’t as efficient as the simulators made it out to be, over.”

“Yeah, we’re seeing that too,” Chrysalis’s voice responded. “It’s not a big difference, but… well, we’ll see. Coming up on orbit now. Throttle back to twenty-five percent and stand by for MECO.”

This time MECO would mean a stable orbit, entirely above atmosphere. Again Cherry’s hoof hovered over the engine cutoff switch. “Throttle to twenty-five and standing by, Horseton,” she said.

“Steady… steady… and MECO!”

Cherry Berry’s hoof came down. “Engine shutdown!”

“Shutdown confirmed,” Chrysalis said. “Periapse reading at just above atmospheric interface. Congratulations, Eleven; you are officially the first pony in orbit around Equus. The press wants to know how it feels?”

How does it feel? I want nothing more right now than to get down, and I’m not sure I can survive coming down, and everything is going so very right that I’m scared witless and it’s taking everything I have to not look like I’m panicking in front of Celestia knows who’s watching…

“It’s an interesting sensation,” she said, which was both truth and huge horking lie. “The thought that I could stay up here pretty much indefinitely… or at least until the snacks run out…” Pause for laughter down on the ground, good, get a chance to think of something else to say. “And, of course, the sensation of free-fall, which all ponies dream of as kids when they sleep. It feels like fulfilling my fondest dreams(165) of flight, just like a pegasus. I’m so very lucky, as an earth pony, to be able to experience this.”

There. That was enough whinnying for posterity. “But now it’s time to get back to work. Opening cargo bay doors and activating first mystery goo pod.”

“Horseton copies. We show cargo bay open, pod activated, all green.”

“Activating Science Jr. package.”

“Horseton copies. We show Science Jr. bay doors open.”

“All right.” Cherry Berry took a couple of deep breaths, looking at her displays. “I’m showing about sixty percent left in the third stage, Horseton. Where does that put us on our flight plan?”

The original flight plan had been, after verifying orbit and the first round of science gathering, to boost the ship up to an elliptical orbit with apoapsis high above the planet, open the second mystery goo pod, decelerate to drop the periapsis into the stratosphere, test the decoupler (if possible without decoupling), come down, burn the rest of the fuel in the upper atmosphere to decelerate, and then decouple (if she hadn't done so already). That had relied on the fuel tank being above seventy-five percent, though. The difference between simulated performance and actual performance was not insignificant.

“Yeah, Eleven,” Chrysalis drawled, “we’re looking at that now. Flight director suggests that we might not want to risk the higher re-entry speed in any case this mission.” She didn't say why more speed was undesirable. Cherry knew, and the press didn't need to.

An idea struck Cherry Berry. She took a moment to look it over. It would let her get straight to the part of the flight that scared her the most and get it over with, one way or another. It would keep her from looking like a coward. It would even look like another way of one-upping the other space programs. She couldn’t see any down side…

… well, aside from the possibility of being rendered into a ball of flame and soot twenty miles above the ground, but that would be there regardless.

“Horseton, Eleven,” she said.

“Go, Eleven.”

“Have you got confirmation of my having achieved orbit? Written down? Check signed?”

“We only have the verbal confirmation,” Chrysalis replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking, what if I made precisely one loop around the planet? As in, I re-enter now, and drop the capsule back down on the space center?”

“Er… stand by, Eleven.”

The channel went silent, and Cherry Berry leaned back and tried to relax and enjoy outer space. It still didn’t work. She wanted to be doing things, anything, to take her mind off the fact that, compared to both ends, the middle of her spacecraft was made of papier-mache. Give me something to do and I’m fine, but don’t just leave me up here!

After a couple of minutes Chrysalis came back on the audio channel. “Eleven, Horseton,” she said, “we’ve got written confirmation that you are in orbit and that the contracts and prizes are due us. Ad Astra says that early re-entry will not void that status.”

“Roger, Horseton.”

“As to the other thing,” Chrysalis said, “the bullpen say they can’t project an accurate landing point because the computer can’t predict atmospheric deceleration. They’ll make their best guess and get back with you for a scheduled burn in a few minutes. Once we have that, you’ll be go for reentry.”

“Copy that, Horseton.”

“Incidentally,” Chrysalis added, “where on the space center did you plan on parking your cart?”

“I was thinking next to the cafeteria,” Cherry Berry said. “You didn’t put any cherries in the snacks bin.” A blatant lie- every changeling in Chrysalis’s hive by now knew about the lead pilot’s favorite food, and packed accordingly- but it made a good joke for the press.

“You’ll do anything for a cherry, won’t you?” Cherry could hear Chrysalis smirking over the headset.

“Obviously,” Cherry replied. “After all, I’m working for you.”

“Touche,” Chrysalis chuckled. “Stand by for reentry procedures.”

And just like that, Cherry Berry thought, we pretend we’re not scared.

And Rarity never has fixed the bathroom arrangements in these spacesuits yet…

Footnotes:

(163) An expensive test, because it destroyed the Science Jr. A fun test, because it involved a flamethrower. An annoying test, because afterwards a full score of changelings had to be forcibly prevented from using the flamethrower for a new game they’d invented called Dragon Tag. It had taken threats of violence from Chrysalis to get the idea across that Horseton Space Center was not, nor would it ever be, It.

(164) Although ponies eat very little meat of any sort, they know what ham is. However, in this case “ham-hoofed” refers not to the butcher’s cut, but to the portion of the anatomy hams are attached to. To put it more plainly, the phrase implies that the pony driving, building, swinging the tool, etc. could not possibly be more clumsy if they just sat on the thing they were working with. There is, of course, a second meaning to the pony version of the phrase, but it is not fit for such a fine, upstanding, educational story such as this one.

(165) Technically Cherry Berry’s fondest dream was having a cherry tree in her backyard which flowered and gave fruit every day of the year, producing a new fruit every time she picked one, with no pits. But this was even less the time or the place than usual for that one.

Mission Eleven reentered atmosphere in the first light of dawn over the lands of the Qi Lin.

The second mystery goo pod had been activated in the uppermost reaches of Equus’ atmosphere, and then all bay doors had been closed. The final stage had been jettisoned long since, with more than half its fuel unspent, left to burn up and tumble down a bit behind the descent stage. Now Cherry Berry’s life rested in her four hooves, the heat shield, the heat resistance of the rest of the craft, and one solitary parachute at nearly its maximum rated load.

Do or die, Cherry thought. Literally.

This reentry was slightly steeper than her first, extremely shallow return from outer space. On Mission Nine she’d coasted along in the upper atmosphere for almost half the world’s circumference. This time, if all went well, she would come down in a bit less than that, crossing the Unexplored Lands and the Ocean of Storms before passing south of Las Pegasus, over the San Palomino Mountains, Macintosh Hills, and the eastern massif of the Badlands, and landing somewhere near the space center- in the Hayseed Swamps or in the ocean.

Then she’d had little enough to do; the capsule had practically flown itself. This time, with the longer structure and narrower safety zone, she’d have her hooves full.

Deep breaths. I don’t care who’s watching me on the big screen in Mission Control. I need to focus now.

The capsule began to vibrate and shiver slightly. Streamers of plasma raced past the little window over Cherry’s head. Outside, she knew, the fireball was beginning, as the thin air compressed until it could compress no more, heated to fantastic temperatures, then got pushed out of the way by the shock wave of the descending spacecraft. Bits of the material of the heat shield ablated, as it was designed to do, melting and vaporizing and carrying away heat as it joined the rush of air blasting past the ship.

Tweak. Nudge. Tiny movements. Keep the ship behind the heat shield. Watch the estimated rate of ablation on the readout.

Requests for updates from mission control. Report. Keep voice calm and steady. Keep eyes on the readouts. Drifting off retrograde attitude- tweak, push, get the ship back behind the heat shield. There. Good.

Ship beginning to decelerate. Good. Dropping into the upper stratosphere. Now the really dangerous part begins. Things get much hotter, much faster, from here on.

Warning buzzer. Flashing red light. Report it. “Reading heat alarm, external capsule section.” Wait, what? Not the Science Jr.? The capsule is reading excess heat? “Rotating capsule forty-five degrees.” That might get the overheated part of the hull out of the plasma flow. Or not.

“Horseton copies, Eleven, keep us posted.”

Tweak. Roll ship. Nudge. Center vector back on the retrograde marker.

The alarm went silent. Good. “Heat alarm deactivated. All systems green.”

“Horseton confirms all systems green. Good job. Keep it up.”

Tweak. Nudge. Midway through the stratosphere now. Everything outside the window is red. Don’t look. Keep eyes on the readouts. Heat alarm again. Capsule again, different part. “Heat alarm, external capsule. Rolling to compensate.” Roll ship. Alarm goes off. Good.

“Horseton confirms. Everything looking good. Your trajectory is looking very good for the space center, by the way. Computer currently shows you overshooting by about five hundred kilometers, but that’ll change as you slow down.”

“Thanks, Horseton. Heat alarm, external capsule. Rolling ship.” Roll again. Nudge. Tweak. Alarm goes quiet. Getting difficult to hold her behind the shield now. Ship is shaking a lot. Beginning to feel gravity return in a serious way.

“Looking good, Eleven.”

Tropopause. The air thickens up very quickly. Heat shield cooking away at a rate of one percent every ten seconds. Speed beginning to drop seriously now. Gravity has noticed me and is upset. Two heat alarms. “Heat alarm, external capsule and external science module. Rolling ship.” Roll, recenter. Please go away. You did it three times before, alarms, now please, please-

“Alarms deactivated. Two gees and rising. Speed sixteen hundred and falling fast.”

“You could have phrased that better, Eleven,” Chrysalis’s voice teased. “The press is listening.”

“Yes, but I’m not a queen. I’m not allowed to say booger.”

“And don’t you forget it, Eleven. We show the fireball dissipating.”

Cherry Berry’s higher mental functions fully reasserted themselves. She rolled the ship so she could see the ground through the window. The eastern end of the San Palominos, with the green lands of central Mexicolt to the south. A quick glance at altitude, speed and angle of descent, and some mental guesswork, told her she was going a bit too fast.

With the heat shield showing an ablation rate of zero on the gauges, Cherry Berry turned the ship sideways, perpendicular to her trajectory. It was like hitting a wall. The gee meter hit a bit over five times the force of gravity… and then dropped off, as the ship finished the turn, coming round nose first in its descent.

This would be nice if I had wings, Cherry Berry thought. As it is, no. She tried to pull the ship back around. Nothing doing. Aerodynamics were in full control, and the electrically powered reaction wheels spun to maximum deflection only to get the nose about forty degrees off straight-ahead, no more.

And then, as she rolled the ship again, a glimpse.

“Horseton, Eleven,” she said. “I can see the space center! I see the islands off the south cape of Muck Lake. I think I can pick out the VAB building.”

“That’s good news, Eleven,” Chrysalis said. “We can’t see you yet. Our plot now shows you falling into the Hayseed Swamps a bit short of us, though.”

“Oh.” Yeah. The faffing around trying to turn the ship after her braking maneuver had cost her forward momentum. Not that she hadn’t needed to shed some, but… “I’ve got the ship’s nose forward,” she said. “I’m going to try to get a little bit of lift, stretch out the flight as long as I can. I should get pretty close.”

“Don’t risk the ship over it, Eleven,” Chrysalis replied. “You’ve already done very well getting this close. We show your speed three-ninety meters per second at nine kilometers altitude.”

“Confirmed, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “I’ll pop the chute at four thousand meters or when my trajectory goes vertical.”

“Good enough, Eleven. Welcome home.”

I’m not home yet, Cherry thought, but her heart disagreed. She’d come through the fireball on a ship with kindling and straw in the middle, and she was still alive. In fact, the science module had barely presented an issue.

That was something to discuss with the scientists later. For now, this minute, she was alive, and flying- well, falling, but falling in a guided way. She had a little control left before she released the parachute, and she used it, holding the nosecone up just a little, trying to balance between generating lift and losing speed.

It was, of course, a losing battle, but Cherry fought it to the end. Every three seconds meant a kilometer closer to the space center, ten seconds a kilometer closer to the ground. Then, four seconds per kilometer closer, eight seconds per kilometer down. The ship slowed, her control lessened, her airspace shrank. She fought, nudged and begged for lift, until finally, at fifty-two hundred meters elevation, her trajectory crossed the forty-five degree threshold from vertical to horizontal. She nosed forward briefly for the last bit of forward momentum she could squeeze out of the ship…

… and then, as promised, at four thousand meters she pulled the ship vertical and popped the chute.

“Chute deployed,” she said. “That’s all I could get. How close am I?”

“You’re coming down in a hay-pasture about midway between Horseton and the space center,” Chrysalis said. “We have retrieval changelings on the way now. Excellent work, Eleven.”

The chute deployed fully, giving Cherry one last hard pull as she slowed down, and then there was nothing left for her to do but drift down and think.

I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.

The retrieval team found the craft in the hayfield as expected, tipped on its side. The landing had been gentle, but the freshly mown field was just uneven and boggy enough that the ship had landed a little off-center and continued that way until it was flat on the grass stubble.

One thing, one final thing, had gone wrong after all; the ship had fallen hatch-down, trapping Cherry inside.

On the other hoof, Lucky Cricket(166) observed as he motioned the rest of the retrieval team to descend, it showed off the CSP’s banner quite well lying like this.

Now if only Miss Berry could get out and plant a proper flag…

MISSION 11 REPORT

Mission summary: Achieve orbit; collect scientific data from upper atmosphere; test stack decoupler in orbit; test flight and reentry dynamics of Science Jr. in preparation for future passenger flight

Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 96 min. 24 sec.

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: Orbit

Conclusions from flight: Heat is an issue, but we can manage it.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Footnote:

(166) Dragonfly, at that moment, was in Saddle Arabia with the main retrieval team. Not knowing when or where Cherry would come down, she’d been stationed on the other side of the world, just in case. This left Lucky Cricket, who normally would have had that job, back at base and ready to assemble a scratch retrieval crew on zero notice, which he did.

Author's Note

Wow. This took much, much longer to get done than I expected. It's been a busy summer.

First and foremost, a reminder: I have a Patreon. Donors so far have been kind enough to say, "Write what you want," so what little time and energy I've had to spare has focused on this project. However, I've had requests for certain non-pony things, so it might be a while before another CSP chapter comes out. Of course, if you want to change that... https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Anyway, on to the writing.

One of the stall-points was the fact that I couldn't remember if I'd given the chief changeling guard a name. Possibly I did back at the beginning, in one of the drafts that got eaten by a power outage. But now he's Elytron, and he's a thick-headed guard promoted beyond his competency.

Chrysalis' rant is all me. If I'm seriously upset and in a situation where profanity isn't an option (especially the golf course) that's how I talk. It's funny as hell when it's not me.

Jet Set and Upper Crust were always going to be the first pony tourists. For VIP flights, however, my first choice was going to be (believe it or not) Princess Luna. And then I was reminded of Bill Dana and Jose Jimenez, an act which was regrettable and forgettable for its racial stereotype... except for Jose's time as the most reluctant astronaut ever, which shows Jose less as a Hispanic immigrant stereotype and more as an intelligent, imaginative man in a job that he hates. It would have been better without the ethnic razzing, but it still deserves to be remembered and, yes loved. But ONLY the astronaut bits.

So... Hobble Jimenez, a less-than-willing servant of... well, of a being A. K. Yearling knows all too well. Who, in addition to feline lieutenants, has whole tribes of native ponies at his beck and call.

Cherry Berry is a big dose of Mary Sue; it's kind of unavoidable when you need an Indispensable Competent Person in a cast of screwballs. However, the big difference between her and the standard Mary Sue is, there is actual good reason for other characters to like, admire, respect, and obey her. That said, I thought it was time to show that she's not perfect.

Chrysalis might have been stupid about "You take X mission, so I MUST take Mission X+1", but if Hobble hadn't happened along and she'd taken Cherry's suggested solution, Chryssy would go four missions without flying (#9, #11 and the tourist mission flown by Cherry, #10 by Dragonfly). So she might have something there after all.

Reentry heat issues in 1.1 (now 1.3) of KSP still have me baffled. I did not have tons of failures in simulation; I tested the design once in sandbox with a Level Five pilot, then ran it once in the CSP game in progress, and it worked as you see it in the story. Cherry opts for an early re-entry because, to be blunt, I got antsy when I was flying the mission in-game. My whole focus was: will this kill the pilot? Will the game let me revert to start after orbit? I was impatient to get to the important bit (reentry) and so rushed things, and all of that anxiety went into the writeup you've just read.

I'm planning an interlude showing a vital part of Equestrian Space Agency Flight Six, which takes place two days after Mission Eleven and (spoiler alert) puts Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash into the lead in the space race. They do something special, and something which is vital for the next full chapter, which will focus on training three tourists to be spam-in-a-can while Chrysalis and Cherry Berry do the actual important sciency astronauty things.

Interlude: ESA Flight Six

Flames rushed around the nosecone of the rapidly descending rocket ship, filling the solitary porthole with red and orange light. Gravity hauled down hard on the pilot’s body, pulling hard enough to make the straps holding her to the acceleration couch creak alarmingly. Loud claxons filled the capsule interior with noise, almost enough to drown out the chaotic shouting in her ears.

“Pull up, Dash, pull up!”

“Fire yer rockets, Dash, maybe you can steer-“

“No! Dash is going too fast already, any more speed and-“

“Thirty thousand and falling! Speed over one thousand meters per second! That’s faster than anything on the way up!”

The pilot managed to make herself heard. “Controls not responding! The stick’s dead! I repeat, I have no control over the craft!”

“Twenty-five thousand and falling!”

The ship gave a little lurch.

“Rainbow Dash, your main parachute’s just blown up!”

“Computer estimates thirty seconds to impact!”

“Twilight, can’t you teleport her outta there?”

“I wish I could, but she’s too far away and moving too fast and there’s not room in the capsule for both-“

“Twenty thousand and falling! Heat warnings on radial parachutes one, three, two and four!”

The pilot wanted the voices to stop. They were all her friends, and they were all frightened and panicking, and she wanted to make it stop and she couldn’t. She couldn’t even talk anymore; the forces on the ship pulled her so hard against the straps that they were digging in even through her pressure suit. She could barely breathe, and a blackness at the edge of her vision she normally only noticed when maneuvering at rainboom speeds was creeping forward bit by bit.

And despite all this, she had enough presence of mind to think:

Relighting the engine is no-go. I can’t slow myself down like that, and speed is what’s going to kill me, not angle of descent. It’s too late to flip the ship over anyway.

Air gets a lot thicker from fifteen thousand feet on down, and I’ll slow down in a hurry. I might slow down enough to break out of the slipstream and pull the nose up to slow down more. Once I get below three hundred meters per second I can fire the remaining parachutes, all ten of ‘em, and if they don’t work I’m dead anyway.

If I were flying by myself I could survive a direct impact of four hundred meters per second. I’ve done it before. The pressure cone of my sonic rainboom provides a good shock absorber, thank you pegasus magic. But it’s too late to bail out now.

So, keep pulling the nose up, keep the hoof on the parachute release, and don’t black out. That’s all I can do.

“Peak speed twelve-twenty-two meters per second! Now below eight hundred meters per second!”

“Altitude ten thousand and falling! Fifteen seconds to impact!”

“Dash, you have to hit the parachutes at a thousand meters, even if they red-light! Can you hear me-“

“Seven hundred meters at six thousand altitude!”

“Ten seconds!”

“Dashie, please say something!”

“Five hundred meters at four thousand altitude!”

“Rainbow Dash!”

“RAINBOW DASH!”

“DASH, WAKE UP!!”

Rainbow Dash blinked, shook her head, and took a deep, shuddering breath. She was in the capsule of a rocket, but not that capsule, not that rocket, and not about to plow into the Griffon Sea. That had been weeks ago… and about two thirds of all the nights since.

“Baltimare, this is Six,” she said. “Receiving you. What’s up?”

“Six, we want you to try out some of the in-flight rations and record a report about eating in space,” the voice of Applejack drawled through the headphones of Dash’s flight suit. “Once that’s done, we want you to suit back up in preparation for the main mission task. All right?”

“Suits me fine, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied. “What’s to eat?”

“Dunno,” Applejack replied. “Pinkie made all the rations, but she’s not here.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sighing, Rainbow Dash unbuckled herself from the flight seat, swung the back down, and opened one of the storage compartments for a dehydrated meal. Earlier she’d tested the brand-new bathroom modifications to the otherwise standard Cherry’s Rocket Parts capsule she was in, and reported her less than satisfaction. Among other things, the lingering smell was… unappetizing.

Rainbow Dash found the dehydrated food supplies and drew out a foil packet with an extra wrapper taped to the side. The stick-on label said, in Pinkie’s hoofwriting, Alfalfa curry with rice and chocolate chowpatty with icing. And in smaller print: Sorry it’s not a cupcake, but Twilight says no crumbs in the spacecraft! – P. P.

Eh, whatever.

Dash unwrapped the flatbread (which wasn’t dehydrated), used the attached tube to add icing (trickier than expected in free-fall, but doable), and ate it first. She then attached the entrée packet to the magic water spigot and let the teleported hot water do its thing while she thought about how crazy things had been since the last time she’d been in a rocket.

Equestria Space Agency’s Flight Five had ended with Dash triggering the remaining parachutes on the ship three seconds before she would have hit the ocean at just under the speed of sound. The sudden deceleration knocked her unconscious instantly, and she’d spent the following week in the hospital recovering from a fractured collarbone and two cracked ribs. Fortunately pegasi heal fast, allowing her to get back to her busy schedule of training with the Wonderbolts, saving Equestria from monsters and unfriendly ponies, and oh yeah, her sideline as courageous rocket jock pony.

Except it hadn’t been as easy for the others as it had been for Rainbow Dash. All she had to deal with was the nightmares. Princess Luna prevented them from going beyond replays of memory, and she had offered to get rid of them completely, but Rainbow Dash wanted the reminder of just how serious this rocket pilot thing really was. The other ponies, on the other hand, had all had it much, much worse.

She and the girls had never been able to devote their full attention to the space program. Fluttershy had her animals, and Pinkie Pie had work and party planning, and neither one liked the horrible scare Flight Five had put into them. They were out, done, period, end of discussion. Applejack and Rarity were still willing to help, but both had business responsibilities heavier than Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. With fall coming on, the harvest at Sweet Apple Acres and the fall fashion season pulled both of them away for days at a time. All four of those ponies walked around in a state of depression, feeling guilty at not being there for Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, feeling afraid that the next close call would be more than a close call, feeling distracted and upset and, as Pinkie put it, anti-smile.

And Twilight Sparkle…

… well, let’s be honest, the egghead had cracked. The evening of the flight, and the day after, she’d been just functional enough to explain to the press that setbacks were only setbacks and that getting the pilot back alive was the important thing. And then, once the reporters had all gone home, she’d returned to Ponyville, gone to her bedroom in the crystal castle, and quietly folded in on herself for a week and a half.

Starlight Glimmer and Spike managed to drag her out of bed every day to come to the hospital to visit Rainbow Dash, and Dash, being glad of the company, hadn’t noticed just how much of a basket case her friend was at the time or how short the visits were. After she’d been cleared for release and limited Wonderbolts workouts, Dash had spent a few days catching up on her non-astromare life, cleaning her home, helping Tank choose a spot for his coming hibernation, and of course giving interviews and fan appearances, because hey, you didn't let your supporters down, right?

On the sixteenth day after Flight Five she visited Twilight Sparkle… and saw just how bad things were.

Rainbow Dash, being the take-charge mare she knew she was, dragged Twilight out of her book fort and into her lab, stuck her in front of a chalkboard, and told her to get back to work being a rocket scientist. That was the thing: if you crash, get back up and do it again. You didn’t let the fear rule you. You faced down the fear.

And she understood exactly what the fear was. Dash hadn’t really been afraid during the almost-crash- she'd been too busy and distracted to be afraid - but when she woke in the hospital she’d been horrified to realize just how close she’d come. Hence the flashback nightmares, which thank Faust hadn’t happened while she was awake. But she’d come that close to meeting her maker several times before. And she’d always got back up and tried it again, and again, until she got it right. Until she got over the fear.

Of course, in order to get over this particular fear, Rainbow Dash needed a new rocket, which meant getting her genius buddy out of her nervous breakdown. This had taken much of another two weeks, during which time the whole thing with Flim and Flam had cropped up. Twilight had overreacted, and Celestia had tried to step in to fix everything, and gradually Twilight had pulled herself together by using outrage at the television scam to overcome fear of failure and fear of loss of a friend.

Dash, Spike and Starlight Glimmer had worked out a routine; the day's news about Flim and Flam’s attempts to regain their television patent was kept from Twilight until she showed signs of funk during a space-related discussion. Then assistant or student would bring in the news, Twilight would get angry, and after a few minutes she would be centered and on top of things again.

Fluttershy said this wasn’t healthy, but Dash didn’t care. All she cared about was, it worked. The more Twilight was functional, the more functional she became. By the time the Flim-Flams aired their newsreel about CSP Mission Nine, Twilight Sparkle was out of her anxiety paralysis, kicking flank and taking names- or maybe kicking chalk and taking numbers, or however geeks do it.

But in the meantime, with Twilight still shell-shocked and the other girls unmotivated, Rainbow Dash became the driving force of the Equestrian space effort. Her top priority: going through every single aspect of Flight Five and finding absolutely everything that went wrong.

She began the investigation with the obvious point; Pilot Error. She’d nosed over too far trying to get a horizontal trajectory and, instead, had kept herself too low. On the other hand, according to Twilight, that had ended up being a good thing in a way. Dash had shut down the engine with ten percent fuel remaining when the first heat warnings and plasma streamers appeared during ascent. If she’d burned all the fuel, she’d probably have still been supersonic when the ship reached the ocean, and the parachutes would have failed.

Of course she should have flipped the ship immediately, thirty-five miles above the ground, instead of hanging on too long hoping for a second burn. That was inexcusable, but it revealed another problem: there was nopony in any position to make the final call on the ground. ESA’s informal buddy system had all the flaws of rule-by-consensus, and during a flight you needed clear, rapid decision-making- something consensus usually didn’t do. Somepony had to be In Charge, and it was obvious that Twilight Sparkle was going to be that pony, what with the alicorn princess thing, the Element of Magic thing, and oh yes the Smarter Than Everypony Else Combined Thing.

Rainbow Dash was fine with that. She still had confidence in herself, but each nighttime repeat of the flight was a reminder that she needed somepony to put on the brakes when she went too far. For that job she trusted nopony more than Twilight Sparkle.

This led into another point- comm discipline. Rainbow Dash, with extreme reluctance, had asked the changelings for a recording of CSP Mission Six's comms from the capsule point of view. She’d then played the recording against a recording of ESA Flight Five for the others. The differences couldn’t be plainer. The ESA recording was confused, distracting, worse than useless. The CSP recording, though it had its fear, was simple, to the point, clear, and above all calm.

Rainbow Dash then asked which recording they’d rather be stuck in a closet listening to while trying to thread an electrically charged needle. Nopony answered; the point was made, and ESA adopted CSP’s flight communications protocols for all future flights.

Other ideas got kicked around. Dash’s explanation of the dire and pressing need for the pressure suits to be redesigned for removal and re-donning in flight and to cope with, er, bathroom accidents during launch and descent left the other ponies blushing, laughing, or both. Starlight Glimmer proposed various methods of in-flight rescue and retrieval of pilots in case of disaster, and that got discussed for most of an afternoon.

Finally Twilight Sparkle brought up the thing that had caused her mental collapse: rocket design. Flight Five's configuration had been her idea, her attempt to show that she was smarter than Queen Chrysalis. The flight attempted to be a single-stage-to-space, one hundred percent retrievable rocket, and that extra weight had dragged the rocket down faster than it went up, with almost disastrous consequences. Flight Five had proved beyond all doubt that, if such a thing was ever going to work, the technology wasn’t there yet.

It took days to get Twilight to work past blaming herself for the mission failure and to focus on planning the next mission.

And the next mission, at this point, was obvious: orbit.

Cherry Berry, flying for Chrysalis and her brood, had come within a donkey’s spit of making orbit. The next time she or Chrysalis went up, they’d fix that shortcoming. Of course, the next time anypony at all used anything similar to the Mission Nine rocket design, they would make orbit if they wanted to. That, Applejack had argued, could be them, if they were quick about it.

Rainbow Dash had vetoed that. Copying Mission Nine would be just that- copying, following, like a little sister mimicking a big sister. Everypony knew Cherry Berry should have had the honor of first in orbit except for her mission requirements holding her back. The ESA would get no credit for first orbit if they did it the CSP way, but they would get a lot of disrespect for being copycats.

Of course, whatever rocket they used would end up being very close to CSP Mission Nine anyway. They didn't have time to make a new design. The Equestrian Space Agency was, by unavoidable necessity, a part-time thing. Twilight Sparkle and her friends remained Equestria’s last line of defense against monster attack and its first line of defense against friendship problems. Each of them, even Spike, had things in their life that needed doing that had nothing to do with spaceflight. Everything they’d accomplished had been done, to be blunt, in their spare time. Otherwise, Dash knew for a fact, they’d have left the changelings in their dust.

And by mid-fall the ESA would basically shut down for the winter. There was too much for each of them to do back home. Nightmare Night, the Running of the Leaves and Winter Ramp-Up, the last harvests, and all sorts of community responsibilities were calling them back to Ponyville. Time was short for getting any new mission off the ground before the end of the year- and they couldn't spare any time to make an orbit-capable ship that wasn't basically CSP-9 with the Royal Sisters flag painted on the side.

So, said Dash at the planning meeting, since they were stuck using the changeling's rocket design, they needed something else they could do once they got into orbit to prove they had jumped ahead in the space race- something nopony else could do without ESA’s help.

Also, said Twilight, the ESA program needed time to integrate new safety measures. They also needed a new backup pilot, since Fluttershy (who’d never been interested in actually flying) was all the way out now. Spitfire and A. K. Yearling, both listed as reserve backup pilots, were too busy in their normal lives to put in the training a backup pilot needed. And, finally, Twilight insisted there would be no flights until they had some way, any way, of rescuing a pilot in flight, or stranded in orbit, or whatever.

That was when Starlight Glimmer had the idea.

And now, two days after Cherry Berry had achieved precisely one lap of the planet, and several hours into a much longer flight than the changelings had dared, that idea was about to be put into action.

Rainbow Dash made some offhand comments about the food (spicy but good, a bit mushy though, and who cares about crumbs?), disposed of the wrappers, and worked her way back into the new-design pressure suit. Rarity’s redesign was much easier to get into and out of than the original, but the bathroom arrangements while it was on were, as Rarity herself admitted, undignified. Dash had a better word: gross.

The new design had an extra feature- a totally redesigned backpack, with the life support systems miniaturized to make room for the thing that would put the ESA firmly in the lead in the race to the moon.

“Baltimare, this is Six,” Rainbow Dash said, twisting her helmet into place. “Suit on, performing pressure checks now.”

“Baltimare copies,” Applejack said. “You are go for EVA at your discretion.”

“Roger that, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied. The HUD projected on the inside of her helmet, including a tiny duplicate of the magic nav-ball used for steering the rocket, reported green lights on suit pressure. No air lost, all systems go. Technically she could survive for days in the suit, thanks to the water supply available from a straw at her cheek, so long as she could stand the smell and feel of her own poop. Not that Dash intended to make that endurance test if she had any choice at all.

Besides, the pressure suit bound her wings to her sides, and a pegasus who can’t move her wings is a supremely uncomfortable pegasus. Now that she could get into and out of the pressure suit as she pleased, she intended to stay out of it whenever she could get away with it.

Unfortunately, she thought as she hit the switch to reverse the magical air supply and empty the cabin of air, this isn’t one of those times.

“Baltimare, this is Six.”

“Go ahead, Six.”

“Cabin pressure is at zero. I’m going out for a walk. I may be a little while.”

“Copy, Six.”

There was, in case of dire emergency, a single lever which could be used to permanently and thoroughly open the hatch. If you wanted to close the hatch again afterwards, you had to use a separate, rather complicated system. At first Rainbow Dash had hated it, but she’d come to understand the logic; this door was not one you wanted to take any chance whatever of just coming open by itself.

The tricky bit was getting the hatch closed behind her without falling off. There were four hoofrails on the exterior of the capsule; two rungs below the hatch and one on either side of it. Aside from those, there wasn’t any place to hold onto the ship, and those four rails were none too large, especially when you had to hold on with hooves wrapped in a pressure suit. To make things even better, the physics of free-fall meant that Rainbow Dash’s body and limbs wanted to keep going in whatever direction she’d moved them last, taking the rest of her with them. To her it felt a bit like the rocket was actively trying to shake her off, even though the engine was shut down and nothing was moving but herself.

Eventually she got the hatch closed, got a grip on the capsule exterior with all four limbs, and waited until her body was motionless in relation to the ship. Only then did she say, “Baltimare, I’m outside the capsule now, ready to step off the welcome mat.”

“Copy, Six,” Applejack replied. “You’re go to release the craft in your own time.”

Now came the one truly scary part, the one thing Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer hadn’t been able to think their way around. Experiments with a backup tether had ended with first Rainbow Dash and then Princess Cadance (the new backup pilot after the official merger of ESA and the Crystal Empire space program) tangled in a cat’s cradle in the training bay. If the thrusters on the new, redesigned space suit backpack failed to activate, or if they misfired in any way, Dash would probably have to hope that, someday, somehow, she and the capsule drifted close enough together again to grab it.

Rainbow Dash released one foreleg from its grip and turned to look back at the world below her. She was over the ocean, of course. A horrible little voice in the back of her mind said: How’d you like to plummet into that in a ball of fire, this time without a rocket or parachutes?

No. You work through the fear. You don’t let it control you.

Rainbow Dash straightened her body, made sure it was still, and then slowly, carefully, released her grip on the capsule.

Her body drifted very, very slowly away. She could still reach with her hooves for a hold if she absolutely needed to, but in about ten seconds that wouldn’t be true anymore.

“Activating thruster pack,” Rainbow Dash said. This required moving her elbows into a certain position and holding it for a full second, which commanded the backpack to extend two controls on long armrests. The stick under her left hoof would provide lateral, forward and backward thrust; the one under her right hoof would control thrust up and down and left and right yaw. Each of the thrusters gave a quick burst of test-fire, then a couple more bursts to bring her back stationary in relationship with the capsule.

“Thruster check all green,” Rainbow Dash reported. “I’m going to back away from the ship now.” She pulled back slightly on the left joystick, and thrusters pushed her away from the craft. She released her pressure, and the thrusters cut off. She nudged forward for a moment, and the capsule almost, but not quite, stopped falling away from her. “Hey, this is pretty neat,” she said. “It’s almost like really flying!”

“Six, Baltimare,” Applejack said calmly. “We’re watching you down here on the big screen, and it all looks good. Twilight wants you to move one hundred meters away from the craft, stop, and then return to the hatch. Y’got that?”

“Affirmative, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said. “Copy one hundred meters away and return to hatch.” She looked at the ship. She was already about ten meters out and drifting very slowly further… but that drift was towards the planet. She wasn’t happy with that direction. Instead she kicked the left joystick to her right and held it for a bit, flying sideways down the stubby length of the orbiter and past the final stage engine. Satisfied, she released the thruster and let momentum do the work for about a minute or so.

“Okay, Six, that’s good,” Applejack finally said. “Now get on back.”

Rainbow Dash pushed the left joystick to the left for what she guessed was about as long as she’d held it right, cancelling out her momentum. Unfortunately her helmet’s peripheral vision, limited as it was, wouldn’t let her see the rocket anymore. She used the right stick to roll left, then nulled the roll as her heads-up display added a little pink square around the orbiter… which was farther away than she’d expected.

Eh, no big, she thought. I’ve still got massive amounts of charge in the mana battery. Facing the orbiter, she thrust forward for a bit, holding the thrust quite a bit longer for the return trip.

A bit too long, as it happened.

“Six, we’re showin’ you at five meters per second relative velocity,” Applejack said, her drawl speeding up with urgency. “Please slow ‘er down a bit.”

Dash’s hoof was already on the control and counterthrusting, but not soon enough. Fortunately, or not depending on your point of view, she hadn’t been precisely aimed at the orbiter. Very close, but not precisely.

Still going more than a meter per second in relation to the spaceship, Rainbow Dash’s left rear hoof clipped the edge of the fuel tank, sending her spinning plot over teakettle. The thruster systems, sensing the release of the controls and the motion of the pilot’s arms, retracted and shut down, allowing her to tumble and spin freely. “WHOOOOOA! NOT COOL!”

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight Sparkle’s voice shouted over the comm link. “Are you all right? Suit integrity and systems check!”

“Wha? Who?” Rainbow Dash pulled her mind from the universe tumbling around her and focused on the little lights in the heads-up display. “Twilight, we talked about comm discipline, remember? Let Applejack do the-“

“SUIT SYSTEMS CHECK!”

Rainbow Dash reached a hoof up to rub her ringing ears, then groaned when it bumped the side of her helmet. “Right, right,” she said. “All readouts show green, air pressure good. No leaks, nothing broken, not even my hoof.” She returned her focus to the outside world and added, “I’m in one heck of a tumble, though, and I’ve lost sight of the ship. Gimme a minute to fix that.”

A moment later she had the thrusters activated again, and their automatic startup routine quickly stopped her tumble and stabilized her. She was still drifting, but at least now she had an orientation. “Okay, roll stopped,” she said. “Attempting to reacquire spaceship.”

“Use the targeting function,” Twilight said. “Your suit has a new map display. Activate it and it should show the ship. Just like in training.”

“You mean, the same training where we practiced comm discipline, Baltimare?” Dash replied.

“Will you… urgh! Yes, Six, that training!”

Rainbow Dash smiled inside her space suit. Angry Twilight was much better than worried freakout Twilight or depressed guilt-tripping Twilight. Angry Twilight could get things done, and Twilight seldom stayed angry for long. Using the HUD controls required deactivating the thrusters for a moment, but so long as she didn’t thrash around she would remain stable. She reached to her chest, opened the lid of the control box, and activated the map HUD, selected the icon for the orbiter, and set it as her target.

A pink ring appeared on the nav-ball, towards the left lower edge of the visible half, As Rainbow Dash reactivated the thrusters and reoriented herself, the pink ring moved gradually to the center of the ball, overlaying a retrograde marker. The velocity readout, instead of showing orbital speed, now showed a velocity of 0.9 meters per second relative to target.

Rainbow Dash’s smile vanished as she looked at the ship. “Baltimare, can you see the ship now?” she said. “When I clipped the ship going past I set it to tumbling slowly. Getting in is going to be a pain.” The tumble wasn’t very fast, but it didn't need to be. Now she’d have to grab onto a moving object and hold on long enough to get the hatch open…

… a tricky proposition when your species doesn’t have any digits at all on their limbs, doubly so when those limbs are wrapped in a heavily padded, pressurized suit.

“We see it,” Twilight said, belatedly adding, “Six.” Deep breath. “We’re going to have to be careful about keeping relative speed slow when near the spacecraft. For now, though, don’t worry about anything else except getting back into the ship.”

“Six copies, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said. She reactivated the thrusters, moving forward gingerly, reversing thrust as she approached the ship. She found herself drifting left, counterthrusted, and discovered herself rushing right three times as fast. She counterthrusted yet again, but couldn’t get the drift precisely stopped. Thrust, counterthrust, counter-counterthrust, and still drifting.

And now, drifting down as well. She thrusted up, then right again, then left, then right, then down. None of the maneuvers added up to holding still.

“Baltimare, Six,” Rainbow Dash growls, “this is just stupid! I can’t null out my drift! These controls aren’t precise enough!” She found herself getting too close to the wrong side of the ship as it slowly tumbled, and she thrust away, backing off. This caused a strong drift left, and she overcorrected right, sending her in front of the ship and up. Two more overcorrections later she was moving away from the ship at close to a meter per second.

“Use the navball!” Twilight insisted. “Prograde and retrograde markers! Start by matching velocity with the ship, then keep centered on the target until you get close! Just like training!”

In training Rainbow Dash had had the orientation of the training bay with its complicated cables and counterweights. Things were well-lit, plenty of landmarks, distances easy to judge by eye. She’d barely paid any attention to the navball. Up here in space, even in the sunlight, everything was shaded dark as night- literally- on the side away from the sun. Things reflected oddly. There was nothing up here except herself and the ship. The skills she used by instinct were nearly useless up here.

Learn fast, Crash, she thought to herself. A lot of little fillies are going to be disappointed if the next Wonderbolts show has to fly missing-mare formation.

It took a minute of careful work to bring her relative velocity back to zero, some seventy meters from the ship. This time she watched the navball more than she did the ship, thrusting this way and that even when it made little sense, moving the prograde circle-T into the center of the pink ring. She moved forwards at a leisurely three-tenths of a meter relative speed, cautious and patient. Easy, she told herself. Still plenty of juice for the thrusters. All the time in the world. Take it easy, think it through, do it right.

By and by the ship drew closer. She brought her velocity back to zero some ten meters ahead of the center of mass, just far enough to be well clear of the tumbling ship. Okay, she thought, solutions?

I could let the nose of the ship bump me. Inertia should stop its tumble, and I could use the thrusters to recover.

No. I got lucky once. Rainbow Dash is pretty hard to break, but the suit is another thing. And if it breaks, no more Rainbow Dash. No playing bumper cars with the spacesuit.

But maybe I could get next to the ship near the center, gradually slide up, and use my thrusters to push the ship until it stop tumbling?

No. I’d have to push the ship with my body. I can’t rely on my rear hooves perfectly lining up with thrust, and if I push with all hooves the thrusters automatically shut down. That’s bumper cars again. Think of something else.

When I got out the hatch was pointed at Equus. It was facing sideways, not on top or bottom. If I get on that side of the ship, I should be able to see it clearly, and I might be able to grab the rungs as they pass by on a tumble.

That’s a plan.

“I’m moving around to the side of the ship,” Dash said. “I’m going to get as close as I can, zero out relative to the ship, and make a grab for the hatch egress rungs.”

“Baltimare copies, Six,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Please be careful.”

“Trust me,” Rainbow Dash said, letting a bit of the old brag into her voice. “I’d never leave you hanging.” Yeah, she added to herself, but what about leaving myself hanging?

With careful, light taps of the controls, Rainbow Dash slid around the port side of the tumbling rocket, used the thrusters to pivot so that she faced that side, and then very, very carefully bounced back and forth on horizontal and vertical thrust until she had only a slight, slight drift left and down. This done, she gave the slightest goose of the thrusters forward, drifting towards the ship’s fuel tank. As she approached, the tank was replaced by empty space, and then by the capsule.

And, praise be to Celestia, the blessed rungs.

Rainbow Dash released the thruster controls, reached forward, missed the rung on the left side of the hatch as it passed, hooked her left forehoof under the right rung, wrapped her right forehoof around it and held on for dear life.

For a couple of moments everything, absolutely everything, seemed to spin.

Then one of Dash’s flailing rear hooves found one of the steps. She shoved the hoof in as deep as she could, braced herself, and swiftly stretched her left forehoof across the hatch to grab the other rung.

“I caught it!”

A loud sigh of relief echoed through Dash’s headset. “Good work, Rainbow Dash,” she said. “Re-enter the ship in your own time. Don’t take any risks. Once you’re inside the rest of the day is free time, and we’ll begin re-entry at 1000 hours tomorrow morning Baltimare time.”

“Really?” Rainbow Dash asked. “So if my time is mine, does that mean I can do another EVA later? This was kinda fun, but I need more practice to get it right.”

A moment later something made a loud popping sound in Rainbow Dash’s ears. “Ow! Baltimare, this is Mission Six, comms check.”

After a few moments Applejack’s voice replied, “Six, I think we’d all appreciate it if you just stayed in the capsule for the rest of the flight. And when Twilight comes to, I’m sure she’ll agree.”

“What?”

“It’s not nice to give ponies a scare like that, y’know,” Applejack added. “’Specially when they’ve been high-strung for a really long time.”

“AJ, what happened?”

“Our fearless flight director’s eyes just sorta rolled up inta her head round about th’ time you said th’ words ‘more practice’,” Applejack continued. “She’s out cold on the floor right now. Spike’s gone to get some water to bring her round.”

“Oh. Um. Sorry,” Rainbow Dash chuckled nervously. “My bad. I’ll just get back in the capsule now, okay?”

“Y’all do that,” Applejack said.

The process of opening the capsule hatch from the outside in space was almost as complicated as the process of opening it from within. With the need to hold on with three limbs while the ship tumbled, it became even more complicated.

But Rainbow Dash now had a little extra motivation. Twilight, after all.

Oh, yeah, and getting down alive from orbit, but that was tomorrow. Right now friends were more important.

Author's Note

When I first got Kerbal Space Program, there was no tutorial at all for spacewalking, and the docking tutorial was, er, less than useful. One of the good things the 1.1 update did was improve both tremendously. The first time I played career mode in KSP, I ground to a halt because I lost a spacewalker I was trying to rescue. I set the game aside for a couple months, then came back to it and looked elsewhere for hints on How to Do It. (I'm probably the only KSP player whose gameplay improved thanks to tips from RoninPawn...)

The original intent of the designers was that the spacesuits would have a limited supply of fuel (which they do) which could be refilled from a limited supply of RCS "monopropellant" fuel. In the earliest testing they decided, out of frustration no doubt, that it would be better for gameplay purposes to just give the kerbals infinite free refills of their spacesuit thrusters without draining the fuel needed for ship thrusters. (Which, by the way, you don't unlock until way, way up the tech tree. I landed on Mun and Minmus with no RCS at all, nor docking ports; my moon landing craft had all the fuel required for full return home, complete with heat shield for reentry. I've still never actually hard-docked one ship to another.)

One of the side effects of this is, if you really, really screw up, you can cheat by actually getting out and pushing your ship home.

Yes. Seriously. Get out and push. It's only a tiny, tiny thrust, but it's a tiny, tiny, no-fuel-expended thrust.

If you're very careful and if you have a ship design with something that will hold your Buck Rogers Kerbal in place, you can make up to about two meters per second difference in your orbital velocity per spacewalk. However, the ship will only maintain its attitude- stay pointed in whatever direction it was when you got out- if you leave a pilot inside or if you have a space probe core doing your flying. Otherwise the SAS system will automatically disengage, and any push that isn't dead perfectly centered will cause the ship to roll or tumble on some axis or other. So, you can push, but it's long, difficult, and incredibly boring...

... yes, I've done it. And one time when I sent the kerbal out to push some more the game glitched, sending kerbal and ship screaming apart from one another for no apparent reason. I was able to recover and fly the kerbal back to the ship, but it certainly gave me a scare. Think of it as what might happen if you go on a spacewalk without depressurizing the cabin first...

The kerbals on missions never, ever, NEVER take their helmets off, never mind the rest of their suits. This is not workable for storytelling purposes. "Bathroom functions" have been a top priority for NASA and other real-life space flight programs ever since it took flight controllers an hour to decide that Alan Shepard might as well go in his Mercury pressure suit. Since then every astronaut, believe it or not, wears super-high-tech diapers on launch and during spacewalks. (Most notoriously, one astronaut wore her special safety pants to drive from Houston to Florida so she could confront her cheating husband. That was the end of her career, her husband's, and the other woman's. But that's nothing to do with this story.)

To the best of my knowledge no space program has ever attempted a spacewalk without a second crewman remaining in the ship. On the ISS spacewalkers routinely use clips and tethers to hold themselves in place, releasing them when they need to move from one place to another. MMUs were tested during the Shuttle program, but it's much safer to have something holding you to the machine that's going to get you home alive. Anyone who's watched the climactic sequence of "The Martian" can see the logic in this.

Finally, on the story: Rainbow Dash was shaken up a lot more than she's admitting to herself, but she's dead right about Twilight having it worse. Twilight feels responsible for all her friends, and in her mind she very nearly got one killed. They're working through it together, but that's going to leave lingering effects...

... which the next full chapter, which will cover two or three missions depending on how dedicated the changelings are to testing out the new space suits and scientific gear. Oh, and flags. Definitely flags. And somewhere in that Hobble Jimenez and two snooty unicorns get more space than they expected...

Chapter 10: Missions 12, 13 and 14: Take Plenty of Photographs

Jet Set groaned as the tranquilizing effects of changeling pod goo faded. He’d been dreaming of that time in Maneaco, when he and Upper Crust had taken a sailboat out into the bay and, on a whim, decided that they’d rather have dinner in St. Cropez’. It was one of his fondest memories: the smell of the salty spray in the wind, the delightful Prench haute cuisine, the way everypony’s eyes had been glued to their ship as it glided into port under his expert guidance(167). The dream had faded, but based on the pounding in his head, the withdrawal symptoms hadn’t.

Neither had the remaining pod goo, bits of which clung to Jet Set’s clothes, mane and fur in irritating places. He tried to brush a bit of it off his ascot, and it came right off the silk without a stain. Unfortunately it remained stuck to his hoof, resisting all attempts to fling it away.

“Owww…” Jet Set noticed for the first time his wife lying next to him on the floor. “Darling, please call room service and have them send up some aspirin,” she said, holding her badly-mussed mane in both hooves. “I have such a horrible headache.”

“The pain and nausea will go away in a few minutes,” a strange voice said.

The two Canterlot ponies looked up, for a limited value of “up”, at a changeling guard. At least, presumably it was a guard, and a senior one as well. It wore a small skull-cap helmet and wore simple plate armor along its back. However, the fact that this particular changeling was actually fat- something neither unicorn thought was even possible- gave both serious cause to doubt their assumption.

“I’m Neighing Mantis,” the guard said, giving her proper name. In fact, for about half a year now the hive hadn’t called her anything other than Eggplant due to her recent weight gain. Even after weeks of forced dieting and even more thoroughly forced extraction of stored love, she remained well above the weight she’d been when assigned to guard the cocoon holding a certain blonde-maned pink pony for a week.(168) “I’m here to assist you in settling in as honorary astromare trainees at Horseton Space Center.”

“Horseton?” Jet Set sat up properly, noting for the first time that he wasn’t underground. The large room was definitely of pony construction, or at least pony design- square corners, brightly lit, and (aside from bits of goo and cocoon bits) sparkling clean. The couches, chairs and tables all screamed ultra-modern design. There was even (wonder of wonders) a large television set standing along one wall. This was far and away from the creepy, ill-lit caverns of the changeling hive.

“Yes, sir,” Eggplant gestured to a hallway, where a group of changelings were wheeling in the Canterlot couple’s luggage on little dollies. “You’ve been treated to over a week in our comfortable hibernation cocoons awaiting the pleasure of our queen. Now that Mission Eleven is complete, we’re ready to offer you our best hospitality and to explain our plans for your upcoming rocket launch.”

“Capital,” Jet Set replied. “Do I take it that the queen is finally available for an appointment?”

“Er… almost,” Eggplant replied. “It would be best if I escorted you to the showers, then allowed you to select new clothes in the comfort of your quarters, and then, once you were fully presentable-“

“I appreciate the courtesy,” Jet Set said in a tone he thought was generous, “but under the circumstances I think it’s best that we see her right away.”

Eggplant sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little while longer in any case, sir,” she said. “And since you have to wait, you might as well wait with clean fur and clothes, yes?”

“But (oh my head) why can’t we see her now?” Upper Crust whined. “We’ve paid good money for this-“

“The queen is currently unavoidably detained,” Eggplant interrupted hurriedly. “She regrets the delay and will see you very soon now, but… well… something came up while we were flying here from the hive…”

Footnote:

(167) Amazingly enough, Jet Set’s recollections are factually accurate, and not in any ironic way. Jet Set was a competent navigator and a better than average sailor, especially when you consider he was born and raised almost as far from any salt water as it is possible to get in Equestria. It just shows it actually is possible for someone to be an arrogant twit and not be a complete incompetent as well. It just isn’t the way you should bet.

(168) Eggplant hadn’t found either of her recent guests nearly as nutritious as Cherry Berry. The test pilot’s obsession was richer than concentrated sugar, and the casual, shallow interests and affections of the Canterlot elite were bread and water by comparison. Still, they were each much better than Double Face, who loved absolutely nothing, not even himself much.

The leadership of, as of two days prior, the officially second-place space program in the world sat around the conference table looking glumly at one another.

“Are you sure there’s no way out of this?” Chrysalis asked.

“Every space program is going to have at least one representative there,” Cherry Berry said. “Even the yaks are sending Alexander Popoff and their lead astronaut Prince Fauntleroy. It would look really, really bad if we didn’t go.”

“And it’s not like Princess Twilight Sparkle is wrong,” Warner von Brawn added, shrugging his immense shoulders. The minotaur leaned back in his chair(169) and added, “Standardized EVA and rescue training will be invaluable for all space projects, including our own.”

“Plus Rarity will be providing all attendees with spacesuits on the new model,” Cherry added. “Which requires fittings. We might as well get them done now as later.”

“Spacesuits, by Faust!” Chrysalis groaned, slapping a hoof to her forehead. “I forgot! Our three unwanted guests are going to need them, too!” The others nodded. Obviously Jet Set, Upper Crust, and the jungle pony Hobble Jimenez had never been measured for pressure suits.

“So, we take them along, too?” Cherry asked.

“And give those snobs the idea of demanding a refund and taking their business elsewhere?” Chrysalis asked. “Because if we take them for a week’s training at someone else’s space center, the first thing they’ll think is, why aren’t the people we paid for this doing the work? And remember, we can’t refund their money, because we don’t know how much it was in the first place!”

“So we don’t take ‘em,” Goddard the Griffon said testily. “We have someone take their measurements here and have Miss Rarity bring the finished product after the training is over. Non-issue.” The old griffon sat back in his own chair, folded his talons across his chest, and said, “But who does go? And who stays to babysit?”

“Dr. Goddard and I should not be on either list,” von Brawn interjected. “We’ve secured blueprints for the passenger cabin of a personal high-speed airship, and we think we’ve made design adjustments that will convert the design into a basic passenger cabin.”

“It’s a kludge,” Goddard grunted, “but what isn’t, around here? But both Warner and I need to supervise the construction in Appleoosa and the transport to the space center. If we leave as soon as this meeting is done, and nothing goes wrong, we can have a prototype here for a landing test in about a week.”

“Landing test?” Chrysalis asked.

“Landing test. We don’t know how this thing will hold up to impact, and the simplest way to find out is to drop it on land. And the best way to drop it is to fly it.”

“Unfortunately,” von Brawn added, “George Bull and Marked Knee’s automated guidance system isn’t quite ready yet. So it will have to be a piloted atmospheric flight, possibly using a Flea-“

“NOT IT,” Cherry Berry and Chrysalis said in one breath.

Unperturbed, von Brawn continued, “Piloted by Dragonfly, then. Presuming success, we shall then build one or two new passenger cabins for our guests and give them their flights.”

Chrysalis turned to Occupant. “Speaking of that, are there any contracts to help pay for all of this?”

Occupant shook his head sadly. “Nopony’s offering money for anything except ground surveys,” he said. “It’s really bizarre. One’s even offering us seven thousand bits if we land a ship directly on the Appleoosan clock tower!”(170)

“Well, you know what to do with those,” Chrysalis sighed. “Tell your assistant to let us know if something new pops up.”

“Yes, my- wait, what?” Occupant blinked confusion. “My assistant? What about me?”

“You’re going with us,” Chrysalis said. “You’re on the flight roster. That means you get a space suit, and that means you’re going to Baltimare to train with the rest of us.”

“I’m on the bottom of the flight roster!” Occupant shouted. “I have so much that needs doing here! Take Lucky Cricket-“

“Thank you, I am,” Chrysalis replied dryly. “And you too. All five of us, which should probably make us the largest contingent of astromares at the meeting.”

“Showing off,” Cherry Berry chuckled.

“And why shouldn’t we?” Chrysalis said. “No other space program has three pilots with space experience and five with experience in supersonic flight.”

“Lucky Cricket and Occupant didn’t fly faster than sound,” Cherry insisted. “Flying implies some measure of control. They were thrown.”

“So?” Occupant asked before Chrysalis could. “I still have the experience!”

“See?” Chrysalis asked, gesturing to Occupant.

“I don’t remember a bit of it,” Occupant continued, “but I have experience!”

Cherry Berry threw up her hooves. “Fine, fine,” she said. “We send everypony. But who does that leave to keep our guests busy while we’re gone?” She slammed her hooves on the table as emphasis as she added, “Or didn’t you notice that your plans take absolutely everypony with an ounce of authority away from the space center at once?”

“I have an idea about that…” Chrysalis said, smiling her #3 smile (I Have a Cunning Scheme).

Footnotes:

(169) von Brawn hadn’t broken a chair yet, but the creaking and snapping that came from each chair as he lounged in it made it seem inevitable. Various members of the space program regularly placed bets on whether a chair would fail with him on it, or whether a chair once sat in by him would fail the moment someone else sat in it. The most prominent such gambler was Goddard, who by all accounts was cleaning up on his bets.

(170) Based on the short but eventful history of Appleoosa, many unbiased observers concluded that someone or something really didn’t want the frontier town to have a clock tower. There had been the buffalo stampede, the out-of-control tornado, and the senile old knight-errant Don Rosinante. (To be honest, the last attacker only knocked a couple of bricks out of one corner before his donkey squire Hotay persuaded him that the “giant” had reformed and posed no further threat to pony or beast, but he was still part of the trend.)

Not too much later, in the largest room of the administration building (with the hasty addition of a throne), Queen Chrysalis and the rest of the CSP leadership, plus a few additional people, faced the two recently arrived Canterlot unicorns and Hobble Jimenez, who after six days of Heavy Frosting’s cooking was a little less scrawny but no less terrified. “Allow me to formally welcome all three of you to Horseton Space Center,” she said. “You will be glad to know that within three weeks all three of you will get to experience the wonders of space flight.”

“I should only hope so,” Jet Set sneered, “after what we paid-“

“Mr. Jet Set and Mrs. Upper Crust,” Chrysalis said, talking over the stallion’s mutters, “are noteworthy socialites and businessponies from Canterlot. Mr. Hobble Jimenez has been sent here by…” Chrysalis paused a moment to choose the right words before continuing, “…by his government to observe our space program first-hand and report his experiences. Together the three of you will become the first ever space tourists.”

Leaning forward on her throne, Chrysalis continued, “But before we give you your flights we have to be certain that you are physically and mentally prepared. Rocket launches are tough on the body, and without the same knowledge we astromares constantly study, you won’t have a full appreciation of what you’re experiencing.” Inspiration struck, and she added, “By way of comparison, consider what a tour of the Prench wine country would be like for a neophyte who’s never drunk anything more than plain grape juice.”

Sure enough, the metaphor hit its mark. Both Canterlot ponies recoiled in shock. “Such a waste!” Jet set exclaimed.

“Just so,” Chrysalis agreed(171). “And we feel that you wouldn’t get your money’s worth if we sent you up without at least a portion of that vital knowledge. After all, you paid enough for it.”

“’Ow much would i' cos’ for me to stay home?” Hobble asked, but he was ignored.

“So to make good the lack,” Chrysalis said, gesturing to three minotaurs standing in a row to her left, “for the next week we will leave you in the capable hooves of three of our leading scientists. The eldest, George Cowley, is a leader in aeronautical theory. He will oversee your flight training and simulations.”

“I thought I recognized him!” Jet Set exclaimed. “There’s a picture back home of you shaking hands with my father! Your work made commercial airship travel possible!”

Cowley, whose shaggy eyebrows had gone the same gray as his muzzle, waved away the acclaim. “A side matter, nothing more,” he said. “Heavier-than-air flight was always my true calling. Before long progress on that front will make airships obsolete except as a luxury experience.”

“Ahem. Moving on,” Chrysalis said, pointing to the middle-aged minotaur, somewhat more slight of build than von Brawn but still of minotaurine proportions, “George Bull is our chief mathematician and designer of the computers that calculate and predict our courses. He’s currently working on a fully automated system for artificial satellites and robot probes. He will oversee your education in spaceflight theory and terminology.”

“Enchante’,” George Bull said, bowing deeply.

Upper Crust giggled. “You speak Prench?”

“I speak seven languages, including ancient Equine and Minotauran,” George Bull said. “And I hope, over the course of our time together, to have you speaking fluent Astronaut.”

“Isn’t it ‘astromare’?” Jet Set asked.

“Either will do,” George Bull admitted, “but I prefer the term we created. It comes from two old Minotauran roots, meaning, ‘star mariner.’”

“And finally, we have the youngest member of our science team,” Chrysalis said, pointing to the third minotaur. This one was the skinniest of all four members of the original minotaur space program, but he was also the tallest and the most energetic. The stereotypical minotauran ebullience(172) von Brawn and the two Georges lacked, the fourth had in surplus. “Marked Knee is our electronics expert and is currently engaged in a joint project with the Yakyakistan space program to develop better communications and tracking systems for all our spacecraft. He will oversee your physical fitness and training.”

“To say nothing of your nutrition!!” Marked Knee shouted, grinning. “I’ve always said that a great mind must run on equally great fuel, but you need hard work to build up the proper appetite!! Starting tomorrow we’ll begin with a brisk run to Horseton and back- only thirty kilometers or so-“

“Ten miles each way,” Cherry Berry, who’d watched with amusement the whole time, translated.

“-and after that we should be ready for a nice light breakfast before the real workout begins!!” Marked Knee finished.

“Ah, pardon my presumption, Dr. Knee,” Jet Set said, “but we ponies have four legs,” he gestured at himself and the other two, “and you have only two. And yours are quite short at that.”

“Indeed!! My legs are indeed quite remarkably compact!! Well observed, sir!!” Marked Knee smiled without any hint of offense.

“My point is, if we are to go for a run… well,” Jet Set shuffled on his hooves, for once not wanting to give offense, even by accident. “Are you certain it’ll be fair, sir?”

“Perhaps not, sir!! The only way to know is to see firsthand!! But I think tomorrow morning one of us will be quite surprised!!” Still smiling the innocent, friendly, mildly deranged smile, he added, “Possibly even three of us!!”

“I don’ like surprises,” Jimenez moaned. “I never get the good kind.”

“In any event, I leave you in the care of these gentlebulls,” Chrysalis said, cutting short any more pointless chatter. “In addition to their training, over the next week you will be given full medical examinations by a pony specialist from Canterlot(173), measured for custom flight and pressure suits, and trained in the safety procedures we use at the Changeling Space Program. In eight days’ time we shall reconvene to watch the first short-range test flight of the passenger component which will carry you beyond the sky.”

Hobble Jimenez gave a heartfelt moan.

“Quit your whining,” Chrysalis said, welcoming tone gone for the moment. “You’re not going up on that flight.”

“Oh,” Jimenez said, straightening up a little. “Tha’s OK, then.”

“But I promise you fine stallions and mare,” Chrysalis said, returning to her friendly formal tone, “that three weeks from today we shall launch two flights, one carrying Mr. Jimenez, the other carrying Mr. Set and Mrs. Crust. Which should return you all to your homes in time for that honored and memorable Equestrian tradition…” Chrysalis paused, face going blank. “Um… er…” After a couple more moments of fumbling, she leaned over and hissed, “Hey, pony, what’s that stupid holiday thing you wanted to go back to Ponyville for?”

“The Running of the Leaves?” Cherry Berry asked dully, facehooving as she did so.

“The Running of the Leaves,” Chrysalis repeated as if she’d not even paused in her speech. “So, for the next three weeks, you are not merely our guests, but our colleagues. We look forward to working with you until, at the end, we can include you in the honorable fellowship of astromares.”

Eggplant, who had stood discreetly behind the three tourists, spoke up at this point. “Chef Frosting will be serving dinner in an hour. If you would like to freshen up beforehand?” With careful, polite, but inexorable persuasion, the rotund guard had the ponies out of the room and on their way back to the astronaut quarters in moments.

Once they had gone, Chrysalis left the throne, walking over to the minotaurs. “If you can actually teach those three anything at all, that’s fine,” she said, “but whatever else you do, keep them busy. Fill their days. Nightmare Night is in a few days, so that’ll be a useful distraction. Call in a couple of Dragonfly’s parachute workers and set them to work on costumes for our guests. But the important thing is, I don’t want them to have any opportunity or energy to start demanding they see me, or the pony, or anybody else.” She looked right at Marked Knee and added, “And I especially don’t want them to have a reason to demand to see me. Understood?”

“It couldn’t be clearer!!” Marked Knee shouted.

Chrysalis paused for a moment, looking down at the lanky minotaur’s legs. “You have an almost pony-like name,” she said at last.

“It’s a pun, ma’am!!” Marked Knee explained. “My parents wanted to name me after great-grandfather Markus! But my family christens babies based on their most obvious physical trait!!”(174)

“But your knees are perfectly ordinary,” Chrysalis noted, as indeed they were- solid black from shorts to hooves. “I don’t see a mark at all!”

“It was in pencil, ma’am!”

Chrysalis gave the minotaur a long look, decided that further pursuit of the conversation would be fruitless, and said, “Dr. Bull, you’re in charge of the space program until we get back. We want a short-range test rocket for the new compartment to land on solid ground within a hundred kilometers of the base. And don’t let the tourists burn anything down until... I mean, even after I get back.”

Footnotes:

(171) Thankfully nopony brought up the fact that Chrysalis herself practically never ate or drank except to maintain a cover identity, and therefore had no palate at all. To cover this lack she had established a routine in her Cool Drink identity; at large public events, take a sip of whatever potable was being served at the soiree’ in question, spit it out, and angrily demand that the staff “take this swill away and bring out the good stuff.” Without fail something that tasted exactly the same to her but had a different label would be rushed out, and she would take a sip, and indicate her silent, begrudging acceptance that the inferior product was probably the best the plebes could procure. Thus far no butler or maitre d’hotel had dared to call her bluff by bringing out the kind of wine that comes in a box, and thus Cool Drink had a reputation, if not as a connoisseur, then as an aficionado of fine wines and liquors.

(172) No apologies.

(173) Chrysalis had briefly considered using a changeling infiltrator and decided against it. For this she wanted to be certain, and it would be worth the massive amount of money it would cost to get a Saddle Row doctor out of Canterlot and down to the space center. Besides, the snobs would probably recognize Dr. Gingerbread House, whose reputation for horrible bedside manner was only surpassed for his reputation as a medical genius. Chrysalis had chosen him not for his skills, but because he was the easiest Canterlot physician to blackmail. One way or the other, he’d come.

(174) Were this one of the author’s less enlightened works, we would go into chapter and verse on the potential for abuse such a tradition would have. However, since this is a land of adorable pastel-colored ponies who solve difficult emotional conundrums in half an hour, we shall allow the readers to exercise their own imagination. Yes, you. Just try and stop yourself from thinking of things.

What with one thing and another, a week passed.

One thing:

“Oh, perk up, my friends!!” Marked Knee said cheerfully, jogging in a circle around the three staggering ponies. “It’s only another two miles back to the center!”

“How—how—how—“ Jet Set tried to swallow, but his dry mouth refused to cooperate. “How are you DOING this?”

“We have four legs to your two,” Upper Crust whined along with her husband. “How can you run us into the ground?”

“Ah, but you see!!” Marked Knee paused and looked down at the ponies, eager to educate. “Motion studies and chemical analysis has found that a bipedal stance, when compared to a quadrupedal stance in a creature of similar mass, is seventy-five percent more energy efficient!!(175) Which means you have to work four times as hard as I do for the same result!!”

“I want…” Upper Crust gasped for breath. “I want… to check… that math!”

“I already check de math,” Hobble Jimenez gasped. “Eet adds up to one worn-out pony.”

“Check it again,” Jet Set moaned. “I make it two worn-out ponies.”

“Three,” Upper Crust agreed.

An expression of contrition elbowed its way, awkwardly, onto Marked Knee’s face. “Possibly I have not thought this through sufficiently!! Sorry!!”

Hobble, without further comment, flopped forward into the dust. A moment later the Canterlot unicorns, equally silently, joined him.

Another thing:

“Upon attempting ingress or egress from the vehicle,” Cowley said, his voice almost a monotone, “an astronaut must first apply the tetro-hydraulic double dynamo reboostable booster, then activate the decompression activator, and finally engage the anti-magnetic ensconcing system.”

“And then you’re really up there!” Jet Set said eagerly.

“No,” Hobble muttered matter-of-factly, “tha’ jus’ opens the door.”

Three heads turned towards the native pony.

“Whas’ the matter?” Hobble asked. “I leesten. I pay attention, I learn t’ings. I’d learn a lot more if alla you din’ have such fonny accen’s.”

Yet another thing:

“Orbits are usually elliptical,” Bull said, describing the circle sketched around a picture of the planet on the chalkboard. “If you remember your school geometry, ellipses have two focal points. In an orbit, the body being orbited is one of the focal points. The closer the ship is to the body being orbited, the faster it must go to stay in orbit. The farther away the ship is, the slower it moves to remain in orbit.” Bull sketched a few lines on the diagram, creating a couple of slices of orbit on opposite sides of the planet. “Because of this, if you take the distance a ship in orbit travels in a certain period of time in two different parts of the orbit-“ he pointed to the two separate slices- “though the distance in the orbit is different, the area carved out in these triangles is exactly the same!”

“So what kind of orbit is the best orbit?” Jet Set asked.

“It depends on what you’re doing with it,” Bull said. He sketched two more circles around the planet, one almost circular, one very egg-shaped. “For staying in place or observing the planet, you want as close to a circular orbit as possible. That keeps your orbital speed nice and steady,” he said, pointing to the circular orbit. “But if you want to go someplace else, like the moon, then you need an orbit like this, a transfer orbit.” He drew half of a third circle, the curve rising away from the planet but never returning. “And a high enough transfer orbit will escape our world’s gravity altogether. Which, if we go to Bucephalous or other planets, will be how we do it.”

“Do you believe there’s life on Bucephalous, then, Dr. Bull?” Upper Crust asked.

The minotaur smiled. “Maybe if we get there on a Saturday night,” he said. “Myself, I’d bring a book.”

A thing of another kind:

Dr. Gingerbread House glared as only he could glare. The object of his glare paid no attention, writhing and moaning in dramatic, even melodramatic, fashion on the examination table.

“Oh, Mr. Doctor!” Hobble Jimenez moaned. “I em in such a bad condition! It hurts it here!” He pressed a hoof to his left shoulder and groaned. “An’ it hurts it here!” He poked his stomach with the same hoof and moaned louder. “An’ it really hurts it all through here!” He poked his flank with the hoof and moaned his loudest moan yet.

“Right,” Gingerbread House snapped. “Sit up and face the wall so I can examine your back.”

“Hokay,” Hobble said, sitting on the table facing the wall, his hind legs dangling over the edge, his forelegs steadying him on either side.

House stood upright, folded his forelegs, and said, “Does it hurt when I touch you here?”

“Oooooooh!”

Not moving a muscle(176), House said, “How about here?”

“OoooOOOOoooh!!”

Still motionless, House said, “And down here?”

Hobble jumped off his rump like he’d been goosed. “Ohhh, OOOOOH, oooooogh,” he wailed piteously.

Dr. House looked at Marked Knee, who had remained silent throughout the examination, apparently out of embarrassment. “Chronic asymptomatic hypochondria, probably stress-induced,” he said. “I prescribe half a salt lick.”

Hobble swirled around and down, off the table and onto his hooves so fast Marked Knee checked the pony’s forehead for a horn. “Really?” the native asked.

“Not for you,” House growled. “For me.” He reached a hoof into the pocket of his lab coat, pulled out a little white cube of salt, and popped it into his mouth, crunching it loudly. “For you I prescribe acting lessons. Do I have to waste any more time with this clown?”

As Marked Knee silently opened the door and gestured the doctor out, Hobble called after them, “Wait, Doctor! I’m also got the dizzy spells! Whoooa… the room ees spinning! Everyt’ing ees getting dark! Doctor? Doctor?” After an obvious lack of any response, he shouted, “Leas’ jou coul’ gimme some of that salt, too!” After a moment’s consideration he added, “Or some cider. I wouldn’ min' some cider…”

A not quite unrelated thing:

George Cowley sat at a drafting table in the R&D main building, all by himself, and sketched.

For months Cowley had been thinking about how to land a vehicle on the moon’s surface and raise it up again. For almost his entire lifetime he’d focused his mind on the riddles of heavier-than-air, magic-free flight. Now his mind was turned to flight in an environment without air. Space, as had been proven in flight, was an airless void. Nopony knew, not even Luna, if the moon had any air, but it was safer to presume it didn’t and plan accordingly. That made flight on the moon a true challenge- a question of thrust, momentum and control, control, control.

And upper most in Cowley’s mind was the practical concern: How can we test this without potentially stranding the pilot on the moon?

At this point, technically, he was supposed to be designing a rocket for a short-range atmospheric flight, the primary goal being to drop the new passenger cabin onto solid ground to see if it would hold up under a normal landing. But, of course, every mission, even an unimportant test flight like this one, needed secondary goals. The more results the program could wring out of each flight, the sooner they would land a ship on the moon- and that, after all, was what it was all about.

Cowley pushed aside his simple, straightforward single-stack design and pulled a new piece of paper to him. At the core he placed the capsule, passenger compartment and parachute. Terrier engines won’t produce enough lift in atmosphere to raise this stack, he thought, but if I put one Swivel under this stack the center of mass will be too high on landing- the ship will tip over. In pencil he sketched three fuel tanks and Swivel engines in a triangle around the core ship.

Yes, he thought, and add a second parachute for the extra mass, just in case. This will make a workable test bed for moon landings, with enough power to operate on Equus. I still need to ask Goddard what the maximum impact velocity is-

The lab door slammed open. “No masquerade ball!” Jet Set cried, tossing his carefully-tailored ragged straw hat onto the floor. “Not even a charming rustic carnival! Just a bunch of hillbillies getting drunk and telling horrible stories!”

“And their liquor,” Upper Crust sighed, shuddering in horror at the memory, “has no bouquet at all. I wouldn’t use it to sterilize a wound!” She straightened her gingham dress fastidiously.

Cowley looked up from his sketches and stared at the ponies. “My goodness,” he said, “did none of you enjoy Nightmare Night?”

Marked Knee crowded the doorway behind the Canterlot unicorns. “Mr. Jimenez certainly did!!” he shouted. “Until the ghost stories began, after which I suspect his enjoyment somewhat declined!!” As the younger minotaur entered, Cowley noticed the litter he was dragging behind him, upon which the skinny earth pony, wearing a Buck Ranger style spacesuit, lay frozen in a state of catatonia, clutching a large bag of Nightmare Night candy to his barrel.

“Oh, dear,” Cowley said, quite forgetting his drafting table. “Shall we go see what tidbits Heavy Frosting has in his pantry to soothe an evening of disappointments?”

“Capital idea!!” Marked Knee said.

“We would have had some candy,” Jet Set added, “but every time we try to take it away from him, he clutches it tighter.”

Yet another thing, possibly not unrelated:

“A trajectory which leaves the atmosphere, but comes back down to the surface, is called suborbital,” George Bull said, sketching the line on the chalkboard. “A full orbit goes all the way around the planet without touching the surface. We don’t count it as a proper orbit unless it stays outside the atmosphere for its entire track.”

“Why not?” Upper Crust asked.

“Air resistance,” Bull replied. “It slows you down. If you don’t have fuel to burn to recover your speed, you eventually fall back to the ground. But if you stay out of the atmosphere, you could potentially keep going around the planet forever.”

“Forever?” Hobble asked. “Never come back?”

“Potentially,” Bull said. “But once you ran out of food that wouldn’t be fun, so we’ll be sure to bring you back long before then.”

“Why no' save the troubles,” Hobble said pointedly, “an’ not sen’ me up at all?”

“Anyway,” Bull continued, ignoring Hobble’s remark, “the two really important parts of an orbit are the apoapsis and periapsis.” Using the chalk to indicate points on the circle, “The apoapsis is the point highest from the planet, and the periapsis is the point closest to the planet.”

“Poppyapsis, berryapsis,” Upper Crust said, dismissing the words with a hoof. “How can you keep track of which is which?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Bull said, stepping away from the chalkboard, his hooves clicking merrily on the tile floor as he chanted:

When you’re flying in an orbit
When into space you’re hurled
You need to know your position
In relation to the world

The point of periapsis
Is when you’re closest to the ground
Opposite your apoapsis
As the world you go around

So you don’t get them confused
Here’s a handy trick I know
So you’ll know your altitude
As around the world you go!

Bull paused, then said in a slower chant:

Api is uppy
And peri is not.
Api is uppy
And peri is not.

When you’re at your apoapsis
You’re as uppy as you go
When you’re at your periapsis
Then you’re very, very low- why?

The three ponies answered in chorus:

Because api is uppy and peri is not!

“Good!” Bull cheered, and then continued:

Now when you want to change your orbit
You have to make an engine burn
But how can we tell the pilot
Which direction she should turn?
Space doesn’t have an up or down.
No north, south, east or west,
So we need some new directions-

Hobble raised his hoof and asked:

Will this be on th' tes'?

“Yes!” Bull insisted, and plunged on:

Going forward we call prograde
Making progress like a pro
The other way is retrograde
‘Cause looking backwards makes you slow
Radial runs from the center
Pointing up and out
Antiradial points inward

Jet Set chimed in:

As if there were any doubt!

Bull nodded, continuing:

The other two directions
North and south from the equator
Are normal and antinormal
(Though we might change that later)

BUT!

Bull stopped the chant and added in normal tones, “It’s important to remember that radial, antiradial, normal and antinormal are determined by the orbit- so if the orbit isn’t the same as the equator, then normal isn’t quite the same as north.”

“So tha’s why jou use th' funny names instead?” Hobble asked.

“Right! It’s all about accuracy and eliminating confusion!” Bull stretched, took a deep breath and chanted again:

SO-
Api is uppy
And peri is not!

The ponies replied:

Api is uppy
And peri is not!

Bull:

A pro goes forward
And retro looks back.

Ponies:

A pro goes forward
And retro looks back!

Bull:

Radial goes out
Like a spoke upon a wheel
It’s normal to go north
And anti’s the other deal.

Ponies:

Radial goes out
Like a spoke upon a wheel
It’s normal to go north-

Upper Crust:

You can’t tell me this is real!

Bull:

Those are all the words you need
Now let’s use them all to make
A story of the space flight
That the three of you will take!

Hobble began:

When th' rocke' launches
Over my sincere obyection
Th' ship accelerates
Inna radial direction!

Bull nodded:

But anything that goes straight up
Would come right straight back down
So we take a prograde angle
To make our flight path round!

Jet Set:

Each bit of rocket thrust makes
Our apoapsis rise
Until the peak of our trajectory
Gets up beyond the skies!

Upper Crust

If from our pre-planned orbit
The flight should deviate
We fire normal or antinormal
To find the proper place!

Bull:

But keep mostly on the prograde
Till periapsis does appear
And keep flying until that point is
Above the atmosphere

And then you’ll be in orbit
Flying round and round and round-

Hobble raised his hoof:

Tha’s all very well an’ good, sir,
But then how do we come down?

George Bull paused the chant, took a moment to consider the question carefully, and then said with feeling, “Carefully.” He then resumed the chant:

The heavier a rocket is
The more fuel it takes to fly
But fuel has weight, so we can’t take
A limitless supply

For slowing down we drag the ship
Through the upper air
So here’s how we can get you down
With a bit of care

We use the last bit of our fuel
To slow our orbit down
Which lowers periapsis
A bit closer to the ground

The ship drops into atmosphere
Air friction builds up heat
But the heat shield keeps you safe
So you don’t fry like griffon meat

The air pushes against the ship
And gradually slows it down
Until the parachute deploys
And floats you to the ground!

“See? Simple!” George Bull smiled. “And your pilots have each done this multiple times, so there’s no need to worry. Shall we finish the flight?”

Hobble sighed and chanted:

Api is uppy
An’ peri is not
But if jour peri’s in the airy
Then jour gonna get it hot

Jet Set continued:

So point the ship to retro
Get the shield in front of you

Upper Crust, dubiously:

Because flying backwards to the ground
Is the safest thing to do?

Jet Set overrode his wife’s doubt:

Watch the parachute come open
See it shape into a dome

Bull:

Then you’ll be as safe as houses!

Hobble:

I only wish I coul' go home!

Bull:

Now you’ll know what the pilot’s saying
But in case you have forgot
Api is uppy
And peri-

The three ponies answered in conclusion:

-is NOT!

“And that,” Bull said, setting the chalk down, “concludes the lesson.”

Footnotes:

(175) Studies in at least one universe which, sadly, lacks pastel-colored, friendship-obsessed ponies strongly suggests that this is true. If true it would explain how a species of almost naked monkeys, with no claws, tiny teeth and soft, thin skin became the apex predator of the entire planet. Why it should be true in the ponies’ world, on the other hand, should probably just be written off as, “because magic.”

(176) Except his jaw. Nopony had ever successfully stilled Dr. House’s jaw, even on the several occasions some offended or annoyed patient had done something violent enough to require it to be wired shut.

At the end of the week the conference room was full once more. Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Occupant (177) had returned from Baltimare; von Brawn and Goddard had returned from Appleoosa with the prototype passenger module; and Bull and Cowley, having remained at the space center, gave their report on the tourists’ activities first.

“So,” Cowley concluded, “they’re all physically fit for flight, and without sticking them in simulators, we’ve made them as ready as we can for the mental side of things.”

“Excellent,” Chrysalis replied. “Good job. We’ll be around to keep them occupied from now until their flights.”

“Doctor Goddard, Doctor von Brawn,” Cherry Berry asked, “what have we got prepared for a passenger compartment?”

“The airship design worked better than expected, after a few minor tweaks,” von Brawn said. “We’ve reinforced the fuselage against impact and heat effects as strongly as we can.”

“The capsule’s more likely to fail than the passenger compartment,” Goddard added. “The prototype’s on a barge from Baltimare now and should arrive tomorrow, which lets us test-fly it day after tomorrow.”

“Sounds good!” Cherry Berry chirped, smiling broadly. “Have we got a rocket design ready for that test?”

George Cowley slid a piece of paper across the conference table to the three astromares. “This is what I was thinking of,” he said. “The same vehicle could be used both for the passenger compartment test and to attempt a soft landing under power, as we will need to do for a lunar landing.”

Cherry Berry’s smile vanished. She took a good look at the design drawing, one hoof tracing the three independent liquid-fuel rockets attached by trusses to the combined capsule and passenger compartment. “What is this?” she asked quietly.

“My next ride!” Dragonfly chirped, even more cheerful than Cherry had been moments before.

“Think again,” Chrysalis growled. “If it scares Wondermare here, then nobody goes up in it.”

“It scares me, all right,” Cherry said. “Doctor, do you actually propose that the pilot land using Swivel engines as landing gear? Because if I’m reading this right, the passenger compartment doesn’t actually touch the ground.”

“Well, yes,” the elderly minotaur admitted. “My proposed flight plan is, a first landing under power, then a hard burn second launch to gain sufficient altitude for a parachute descent. The engines would be jettisoned after burnout, of course.”

Cherry Berry looked around the table. “Do we even know the impact tolerance for the Swivel engine system?” she asked.

“Be right back,” Occupant said, sliding out of his chair and trotting out the door.

“Where’s he going?” Chrysalis asked.

“Probably to look it up,” Goddard grumbled. “Celestia knows I don’t remember. We know it can survive a splashdown at five and a half meters per second from Mission Five, but I can’t remember any more precise number.”

“Is it stronger than a capsule?” Cherry asked.

“Ha! Of course not!” Goddard made vague twisty-turny motions in the air with his talons. “The Swivel’s full of delicate plumbing and gimbals. They’d shear apart long before you’d put a dent in the tin cans you fly around in!”

“And in shearing apart,” von Brawn rumbled, “they would almost certainly release and ignite unburned fuel, leading to an explosion. Not, I fear, one of your better inspirations, Lord Cowley.”

“But it solves a problem we’re going to have to address soon,” Cowley insisted. “We need some means of practical training for a moon landing somewhere closer than the moon.”

“Not yet, we don’t,” Chrysalis insisted. “Right now we have one successful orbital flight in the bag. One. We still have a lot of work to do in orbit around Equus before we attempt the moon.”

“And this rig is lethally unsafe,” Cherry added. “The pilot would be relying entirely on main engine thrust and reaction wheels at low altitude, in atmosphere, under full gravity conditions. We might- MIGHT- make it work on the Moon. Without fine controls, no way it doesn’t kill somepony here on the ground.”

“Somepony might get killed if somepony is a pony,” Dragonfly insisted. “I’m a changeling. We’re tough! I could put that rocket down on a bit and give you change.”

“NO,” Cherry Berry and Chrysalis said in perfect unison.

Dragonfly wilted in her chair. “Awww,” she pouted.

After a long glare at the third-tier pilot, Cherry turned her attention to George Cowley. “Doctor, one problem at a time,” she said. “We just want a rocket with only enough delta-V for a low atmospheric flight to the nearest solid, empty flat land. And then we’re going to drop the can and see-“

Everyone at the table stiffened as they heard the faint but unmistakable sound of an explosion through the administration building walls.

“What was that?” Cherry asked.

“A rupture of the liquid fuel storage tanks?” von Brawn guessed, rising from his chair.

“An accident in Marked Knee’s lab?” George Bull suggested. “He’s been working hard on his new electronic calculating engine.”

“Electronics explode?” Chrysalis asked.

“This is a rocket flight center,” Goddard grumbled, rising to an arthritic hover over the table. “EVERYTHING explodes.”

Before anyone could get out the door to investigate, it opened to let Occupant back in. “The Swivel suffers catastrophic structural failure at seven point two meters per second,” he said. “Six point eight seems to be okay, though.”

A long pregnant silence ensued, followed by the collective sound of eight people inhaling and preparing to deliver a blistering rant. Chrysalis, having been less surprised than the others, beat the others to it by a split-second, asking, “Are you telling me you just dropped a perfectly good engine to see if it would explode?”

“Of course!” Occupant nodded. “Out on the launch pad, of course. Safety first! Lucky Cricket wanted to save effort by just doing it in the VAB, but I wouldn’t let him.”

“And what,” Chrysalis asked, “possessed you to think that was in any way a good idea??”

Occupant shrugged. “No other way of finding out, is there?”

This observation had the effect of silencing the queen, and therefore the entire room.

For about ten seconds.

Then Dragonfly said, “So, seven meters per second? That’s well within our parachute descent speeds! I could handle that-“

“I said NO,” Chrysalis said, and that ended the discussion.

Footnote:

(177) And also Lucky Cricket, but he wasn’t high enough on the totem pole to attend this meeting. He was in the worker quarters telling his fellow changelings about Cape Friendship’s EVA training setup, or as he called it, The Not As Much Fun As the Fun Machine But Still Kind of Neat Machine.

The freshly erected grandstands stood next to the VAB, empty except for three ponies and one changeling queen. Off in the distance a stubby little rocket sat on the launchpad. Jet Set and Upper Crust looked at it through binoculars, while Hobble Jimenez, poor earth pony from south of the border that he was, settled for holding a hoof over his eyes and squinting.

“The rockets you will fly in,” Chrysalis said, “will be much larger. This one isn’t going anywhere near space today. If all goes well it will fly to the western edge of the Hayseed Swamps, where the Badlands begin, and parachute to the ground for a landing test of the new passenger compartment.”

“Why's tha' big tin can on top of the pointy bit?” Hobble asked.

“That’s science equipment,” Chrysalis said. “We couldn’t find a paying contract for today’s flight, so we’re going to use it to collect data on the landing zone to compare with readings we’ve taken here at the space center. Since this is a short flight, the extra weight and blunt top shouldn’t affect things too much.”(178)

“Which part is the passenger compartment?” Upper Crust asked.

“The part with the large windows, I think, darling,” Jet Set said. “In fact, those appear to be the same windows they use in Duchess-class personal airships. Perfect for taking pictures through.”

“Precisely our idea,” Chrysalis said. “If you wish, we can have extra film ordered in for your cameras.”

Before the conversation could continue, the piercing wail of Fiddlewing’s warning rang across the space center. The changeling ground crew streaked away from the rocket, soaring over the heads of the four on the grandstands. As the horrible sound ceased and the last hovering changeling fled, Chrysalis said, “Any minute now. Mission Control is going through the final checklist before launch.”

“How long will that take?” Upper Crust asked.

“I just said,” Chrysalis said, having to work extra hard to keep a sneer or a whine out of her voice(179), “any minute now.”

“So, no time for somepony to fetch us some pop-“

Smoke appeared from the bottom of the distant rocket. Slowly it rose off the launchpad, flames flashing from the bottom of the stack, gaining speed with every moment. The unicorns watched with wonder, while Hobble lowered his head and put it under his crossed forelegs.

“I say,” Jet Set asked, “isn’t it rather quiet for a-“

Now it was his turn to be interrupted, as the sound of the rocket motor, having taken ten seconds to cover the two miles between the pad and the grandstands, pounced on the ponies and, for quite some time, drowned out all possible speech. This didn’t stop the Canterlot couple from trying, as they shouted and pointed and gawked at the rocket as it turned in the air, flying directly overhead at a height of about a mile and soaring eastwards out of sight.

“Well,” Chrysalis said once the slowly fading sound of the rocket dropped low enough for ordinary conversation to be heard, “that’s what a rocket launch looks like. Now let’s go to the astromare quarters and listen to the rest of the flight.” This was a deliberate redirection on the queen’s part; having seen just how chaotic Mission Control could be even under flight protocols, she didn’t want her tourists getting an eyeful of that.

Listening to the communications between Dragonfly and cap-comm Cherry Berry would be bad enough…

Footnotes:

(178) Besides, Dragonfly had been a bit sullen about what promised to be an unexciting flight. Putting a Science Jr. on top of the rocket stack, and thus giving the ship the aerodynamic profile of a brick covered in cane syrup, had cheered her up considerably. Which made Chrysalis nervous.

(179) Long experience helped keep Chrysalis from telling the Canterlot ponies precisely what she thought of them, but it required a constant effort. Sometimes more so than others, as for example when one of the unicorns asked a stupid question… and they tended to all be stupid, in Chrysalis’s estimation.

“Throttle back to forty percent thrust,” Dragonfly said, keeping one hoof firmly on the flight stick as the rocket bucked and shuddered in the heavy air. “Airspeed holding steady at two hundred forty-five meters per second, trajectory holding at two-seventy by sixty-five. Estimated fuel at twenty-five percent.”

Mission 12 flew like a flaming brick, but that suited Dragonfly fine. She liked flying a brick. Keeping a brick pointed where you wanted it to go was a challenge.

“Copy, Twelve,” Cherry Berry’s voice echoed in Dragonfly’s helmet. “Could you angle up a little bit? Your trajectory is looking short.”

“Twelve copies,” Dragonfly said, pulling the stick a little to the left. She hadn’t bothered rolling the ship, so she was more or less lying on her side in the harness straps of her flight couch, The rocket thrust was barely above one gee, not pushing her back in her seat enough to counter natural gravity.

“The bullpen asks that you not decouple the engine for a while,” Cherry Berry added. “The extra mass and inertia will counter air resistance and keep you going longer.”

“Twelve copies,” Dragonfly said, and then added, “Coming up on engine burnout.” A few seconds later she was yanked forward in her straps as the thrust of the engines was replaced by the push of air that didn’t want to get out of the way. Fortunately it wasn’t as hard a shove as in previous missions. The flight had been kept subsonic for that exact reason.

Now Dragonfly rolled the ship just enough to let her see out the porthole. This was the tricky bit; she had to get to an open space, over the swamps and forest, that she could drop the ship into. And she had to spot it well ahead of time; by the time she decoupled the engines and popped the parachutes, anything underneath would be several miles behind her.

She glanced at her altimeter. “Altitude five kilometers and almost steady,” she reported. “I’m pretty much at the peak of my trajectory.”

“Noted, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said in a very uncertain-sounding tone.

“Horseton,” Dragonfly asked, “is there something wrong?”

“Affirmative, Twelve,” Cherry replied. “We’re not certain you’re going to make it across the Hayseed Swamps. We know you’re not going to come anywhere near the Badlands. The extra drag of the scientific equipment slowed you down a lot more than we’d anticipated.”

“So this flight is going to be an even shorter hop than we planned?”

“Afraid so, Twelve.” Dragonfly could almost taste(180) Cherry Berry’s anxiety. “You should probably be looking for a safe landing zone really, really hard.”

“Pffft. Easy!” Dragonfly said, tweaking the flight stick a little. “I could park this thing between two hay carts!”

“Please don’t,” Cherry Berry groaned.

Dragonfly turned her attention to the ground below. Most of what she saw blurring past was swamp and trees- no good, no good at all. Thankfully she was holding most of her momentum and altitude, but that wouldn’t last long- and in the meantime it was making it really hard to see what she was doing. Even two and half miles below, the ground was moving past very quickly. Too quickly.

“Preparing to decouple engine,” Dragonfly said, pulling the stick a bit to the left again. She couldn’t go full vertical- she’d stop cold if she did that- but she had to angle the ship to keep the engines from slamming into her from behind once they were detached.

“Horseton copies,” Cherry Berry said.

Dragonfly hit the staging button. “Engines decoupled,” she said, noting that the jolt had slowed her descent just a tad. She nosed the ship back down, reducing her drag as much as she could.

“We see the engine stage falling away behind you,” Cherry said. “Mission Twelve altitude thirty-eight hundred meters and falling.”

Dragonfly didn’t bother acknowledging. The ground was changing below her. The trees were growing taller and straighter, the foliage changing to a brighter green. She was actually seeing grass between the branches, or at least she presumed it was grass and not mud and brambles by the color.

And then the trees opened up, and Dragonfly saw clear ground- well, mostly clear- beneath her. She pitched the ship up to look ahead, and saw low rolling hills, mostly open grassland, and the very distant red-and-black lines of the outer ridges of the Badlands.

“I’m above some grasslands now,” Dragonfly said. “Looks good for a landing zone. Deploying parachutes!” Her hoof slapped down on the staging button, and the capsule rocked as three parachute covers released.

The ship slowed, but not quickly enough for Dragonfly’s taste. Maybe we ought to develop special parachutes, she thought, parachutes made to slow down enough so that the main parachutes can be deployed. I need to talk with Goddard about that, and maybe that old minotaur too.

The parachutes pulled the capsule up, taking Dragonfly’s view of the ground away and replacing it with blue sky. “Parachutes deployed,” Dragonfly said. “Everything looking good.”

“We agree, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said. “Standing by for full deployment.”

Dragonfly slumped back in her spacesuit. The fun part was over. Now the capsule was, one way or the other, at the mercy of three pieces of fabric, all of which she’d designed herself, all of which she’d supervised the assembly and packing of back in Appleoosa. If they all failed, the rest of the flight, and her life, would be exciting but short, and she’d have nothing she could do about it. If all three worked, or two out of three, or possibly even only one, she’d hit the ground fairly hard but not painfully so- and, again, nothing she did could change that.

Maybe, she thought, I should get Cherry Berry to give me lessons in flying that loud kite of hers. I never saw the point of it before, since anything it can do a pegasus or changeling can do better, but being able to steer a machine from takeoff to landing would be so much more fun than this…

The parachutes opened fully, and for a couple of seconds Dragonfly’s eyes bulged out as gravity pulled her back into her seat with fourteen times its normal force. The velocity readout on her console plummeted from one hundred fifty meters per second down to a staid, leisurely eight… seven… six point four… five point five meters per second.

Five and a half meters per second.

Twelve miles an hour.

I get bumped in the hallways harder than twelve miles an hour!

“Horseton,” she said, not bothering to disguise her disgust, “all three parachutes show green. Descent speed five point five meters per second. Altitude seven hundred sixty-four meters.”

“Horseton confirms, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said.

“Five point five isn’t going to give us a valid impact test, Horseton.”

“Data is data, Twelve.”

“Well, we can get better data,” Dragonfly said, holding a hoof over the emergency release switches for the parachutes. “Detaching main parachute.”

“NO!!” Cherry Berry shouted, just as over forty miles away Dragonfly’s hoof came down on the switch.

For about three seconds after that, things became very interesting indeed inside the capsule. (181)

Footnotes:

(180) Only in the metaphorical sense. The changeling ability to sense emotions is very powerful magic, but not powerful enough to reach for miles and miles, except where Princess Cadance and/or the Crystal Heart are concerned. A changeling can close its eyes and point with perfect accuracy in the direction of the Crystal Empire from as much as two hundred miles away.

(181) For those who want to know what constitutes interesting in this context, it is best summed up as, “oh buck, oh buck, I’m going to die.”

Chrysalis’s mane stood on end. Her perforated wings spread in alarm. She leaned forward towards the comm relay speaker, ignoring the customary thud of Hobble Jimenez fainting. Only iron determination not to show weakness in front of the tourists stopped her from shouting at the speakers… and if either Cherry Berry or Dragonfly could have heard her without a microphone, she might have done so anyway.

Cherry Berry’s voice- normally confident, cheerful, calm- now carried the ragged edge of terror. “Mission Twelve, comms check.” Pause. “Mission Twelve, this is Mission Control Horseton, please respond.”

“Horseton, Twelve,” Dragonfly’s voice replied grudgingly. “Descent speed now five point eight meters per second. I should have cut the lateral parachutes instead.”

A significant pause followed.

“Twelve, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said, her voice not so much calmed as walking with extreme trepidation around the brink of a deep conversational chasm. “We show your ship’s attitude as stable two, repeat stable two.”

“Twelve confirms, Horseton.” Dragonfly’s annoyed tone didn’t budge an inch.

Cherry Berry’s voice, having run out of options, jumped off the cliff. “Dragonfly, you’re upside down and about to hit the ground nose-first in another five hundred thirty-five meters. You do realize this, right?”

“Relax, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “My reaction wheels are fully functional. I should be able to swing the ship upright and use the wheels to maintain stable one attitude until landing.”

“Shouldn’t you get on that, then?” The pink pony, in free-fall down the abyss of conversation failure, was making rapid progress from frightened to annoyed.

“In a moment, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Doing this will suck down battery power like a heartbroken pony in a salt saloon. If I do it too soon I’ll run out of power, flip over again, and miss the impact test completely.”

“Four hundred fifty meters, Twelve.”

“All right, all right,” Dragonfly said. “Executing attitude correction.”

For several seconds the comm channel remained silent. "What's all that about?" Upper Crust asked.

"Dragonfly cut her main parachute," Chrysalis said. "The two remaining parachutes are mounted on the ship's sides. The ship is a little top-heavy, so without the main parachute it flipped over. Now Dragonfly's using the reaction wheels-"

“Twelve, Horseton,” Cherry Berry’s voice called out, “we show you at stable one and holding.”

“Affirmative, Horseton,” Dragonfly’s voice replied. “Battery drain is pretty steep, as expected, but I think it’ll just last until I hit ground. Three hundred fifty meters, by the way.”

“Horseton confirms,” Cherry said.

“You know, this is more fun, landing this way,” Dragonfly’s voice said. “I’m actually getting to do something. This is more interesting. More exciting.”

“Exciting is not a word we really want to hear on this end, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said sternly.

“Yeah, I know,” Dragonfly grumbled.

As Chrysalis settled back on her haunches again, Upper Crust asked, “Miss Dragonfly isn’t going to be flying our trip, is she?”

“Of course not,” Chrysalis said. “You’re getting the boring one instead.”

“I like boring,” Upper Crust said quickly. “I really like boring. Boring is fashionable this season, isn’t it, dear?”

“Very true, my dear,” Jet Set said. “Boredom looks good on a pony. Myself,” he said with feeling, “I wouldn’t be caught dead without it.”

Mission Twelve hit the ground butt-first at twelve-and-loose-change miles per hour. The ground being slightly uneven, the ship wobbled and teetered slightly before settling back more or less upright. The lateral-mounted parachutes automatically detached and blew away on the breeze.

“Mission Twelve landed and stable one,” Dragonfly reported. “SAS system shutdown with twelve percent battery charge remaining. Science Jr. package and goo canisters deployed.”

“Horseton confirms, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said. “Recovery team will be at your site in about half an hour. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Negative, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “I think I’ll go out for a walk.”

“You what?”

“Horseton, your comms discipline is strangely lacking today,” Dragonfly drawled.

“Did we copy you correctly, you intend to go EVA, is that correct Twelve?”

“Affirmative, Horseton.”

“Twelve, there’s no ladder on the passenger compartment,” Cherry Berry said. “We haven’t figured out yet how to do that without compromising the pressure vessel.”

“I know that, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “I’m on the design committee, remember? I spend three times as many days at Appleoosa as you do.”

“And how were you planning on getting back into the ship?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Horseton,” Dragonfly said sarcastically. “It’s not like I have wings or anything under this spacesuit- oh wait, I do have wings! How about that? I never noticed before!”

“We’d still rather you stayed put, Twelve.”

“Look, I have one experiment to perform not listed on the mission checklist,” Dragonfly insisted.

“Do tell.” Cherry Berry’s voice could have frozen cider in July.

“You ponies,” Dragonfly said, “when you climb a mountain or sail to a new island or things like that, you plant a flag. It’s a thing you do when you explore or adventure, right?”

“Some of us do that,” Cherry Berry admitted reluctantly.

“Well, I made a flag,” Dragonfly said. “It's got a folding base and an extendable rod that should keep the flag out even in space. And I want to use it.”

“Fine, Twelve,” Cherry Berry said. “Just be careful not to knock over the ship as you get out, all right? We don’t want to invalidate our impact data after all this.”

“Hey,” Dragonfly said confidently, “it’s me.”

MISSION 12 REPORT

Mission summary: Test flight and landing properties of new passenger compartment; pick up scientific data

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration: 6 min. 2 sec.

Contracts fulfilled: 0
Milestones: First flag planted

Conclusions from flight: Dragonfly needs a refresher course in caution.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: MEH

Jet Set poked his head through the opened hatchway of the prototype passenger pod. “You must be joking,” he said bluntly. “You can’t be intending to send us to space in this!”

Chrysalis poked her head through the hatch above Jet Set’s. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “Everything looks undamaged. The cabinets didn’t even open up.”

“The interior design is all wrong!” Jet Set insisted. He pointed to the padded drawers and cabinets that lined every surface except the deck and windows. “None of these are labeled! We need to be able to find things quickly- or to keep away from things we’re not meant to open! Labels. On. Everything. This is a basic passenger safety feature! It shouldn’t be difficult!”

“Er… this is a prototype?” Chrysalis said uncertainly.

“And the seats!” Jet Set snapped, jabbing a hoof at the two comfortable, padded swivel chairs bolted to the deck. “You got these out of my company’s warehouses, I’m certain of it! These are the Executive Cushies we use for our personal airship line!”

“We bought them open and above board!” Chrysalis insisted. “We thought you’d want to be comfortable-“

“They don’t lock into place!” Jet Set said. “The fastest airships don’t get above forty knots! The instant your rocket moves or turns or does anything the passengers are going to spin like tops!” To demonstrate his point the unicorn swiped a seat with his hoof, sending it spinning like a gramophone turntable with an overwound spring. “We need secure seats, with straps, or else we’re going to be lining the walls of this can!”

“Look!” Chrysalis shouted, her patience for being ranted at exhausted. “This is the first time we’ve had more than one pony up in a ship! Do you think you can do better?”

“I know I can do better!” Jet Set said. “Let me talk to your designers- I know they began with my engineers’ designs, I can see the similarities. There are half a dozen other improvements we can make, and I can give orders to my Canterlot shipyards to have the improved cabins delivered within the week!”

And, exactly seven days later, two improved passenger cabins were indeed offloaded from barges at the Muck Lake quays. In the meantime, the crews trained. Hobble Jimenez learned the true terror of the centrifuge, while both Jet Set and Upper Crust enjoyed the experience. The tables were reversed in the Fun Machine, where a relaxed Hobble pointed out to the two disconcerted unicorns that free fall wasn’t what killed you: “It’s the stop at th’ end ‘at does it.” The tourists observed, and even participated a little in, the flight simulations.

And then came the day before launch…

“Okay, here’s the bad news,” Occupant said, using his magic to pass around copies of the mission plans for every pony at the final briefing- himself, Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, Dragonfly, von Brawn, Goddard, and by courtesy the three tourists. “Aside from our passengers and the outstanding decoupler test, I wasn’t able to find any additional contracts for either mission. Nothing’s available except those survey missions that just won’t go away.”

“Who keeps offering those?” Cherry Berry groaned. “I could do them in my biplane! What nutty pony would think you need a rocket for those?”

“I keep ignoring them, but they won’t go away,” Occupant said.

“Then start sending them away,” Chrysalis said. “Contact them personally and tell them the answer is no. No more in-flight surveys of Equus. Now or ever. Period.”

Occupant slumped. “That’ll make some ponies mad,” he said. “It might make it harder to get any contract at all.”

“A survey contract doesn’t count as a contract!” Chrysalis said. “Put out the word that we’re going to be a lot more choosy in contracts from now on. We’re only taking on jobs that get us closer to our goal of a moon landing. That tone of exclusivity will make us more attractive for the jobs we actually want.”

“You know,” Jet Set said wholly uninvited, “that’s a good point. The concept that one’s services are only available to the right ponies tends to drive up demand rather than drive it down, in my experience.”

Chrysalis took a deep breath(182) and asked, “What’s the good news, then?”

Occupant brought in a pair of very large cameras with a chest-harness. “The griffons have developed a camera they think will work in a total vacuum,” he said. “It was surprisingly easy to buy a couple of them along with the film they need.”

Goddard chuckled. “You don’t know my people well,” he said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be surprised at anything they’d agree to sell.”

Occupant shrugged. “Anyway, I figure we can sell the pictures to the newspapers and magazines, maybe make a calendar or art book or something for ourselves.” He held up one of the mission plan sheets, which had a crude drawing of Equus with two rings around it at right angles to one another. “Mission Thirteen goes into an elliptical orbit with a high apoapsis, takes photos of all of Equus, and completes the decoupler test. Mission Fourteen goes into a polar orbit, which will let it take pictures of various parts of the planet more closely. Mr. Jimenez goes on Mission Thirteen, since he only needs to go up and down; Mr. Set and Mrs. Crust go on Mission Fourteen, where they can see all the same places and take their own photos.”

“Wait a moment,” Upper Crust said. “We don’t have cameras like that.”

“You won’t need them,” Occupant said. “My queen and Miss Berry will use these cameras while spacewalking.”

“Spacewalking?” Jet Set asked.

“They’ll spend some time outside the ship,” Occupant said. “Taking pictures and recording observations of what they see.”

“Ou’side th’ ship?” Hobble gasped. “Jou mean, as in, not steering it?”

“I beg your pardon!” Jet Set shouted.

The hubbub rapidly became a roar as seven different people talked and shouted over one another until, with a thunderous slam of palm onto table, Warner von Brawn restored silence. “My friends,” he said, “once you’re in orbit there is no steering, no flying, no action required. You will continue going the direction you’re going until you do something to change that. It’s not like pulling a cart or flying an airship. An unpiloted spaceship in a stable orbit simply cannot crash. Can NOT, ladies and gentlemen.”

The calm but firm voice of the minotaur scientist calmed the room somewhat.

“And to make sure that ‘do something’ doesn’t happen by accident,” Goddard continued, “we’re going to lock the hatch between the passenger compartment and the command capsule. The passengers will not be able to access any, repeat ANY, flight controls during the mission. That should sharply reduce the chance of an unfortunate accident.”

“Besides,” Cherry Berry said, “you’re going to have the comfy seats. We pilots basically lie down on a big metal bench. You get upholstery.”

“One more thing,” Occupant said. “Because of the unusual orbits, there’s no way we can expect to land either mission anywhere close to the space center. That means, when we land, we’ll have to make arrangements for travel back to your homes. That could be from halfway around the world, which is why we’ll be sending out five recovery teams to speed up the process.

“That means we need you to pack all your belongings except for one spare set of clothing each, so we can ship it back to your homes.” Occupant waved a mission plan again. “We can’t afford the weight or space on the ship to pack any more personal items than that and your cameras, wallets, and jewelry.”

Hobble shrugged. “I come here wi' nothin’,” he said. “I can go back wi’ nothin’. So long as I go back.”

“Of course we will check said luggage for hitchhikers before launch,” Chrysalis said, giving a pointed glance at the scrawny earth pony.

“Jou can’ blame a pony for trying,” Hobble shrugged again.

Footnote:

(182) Not that she needed the air, but to prevent her from giving the preemptory order for the unicorn to be silent. She counted the hours until the flight was over and she would never have to lay eyes on these Tartarus-damned ponies ever again.

The Vehicle Assembly Building had never been so busy before. The rocket design for Mission Thirteen had been a tweak from Mission Eleven- adding a third Thumper solid fuel booster and a bit more fuel in the second stage for the extra delta-V required for a higher orbit. This made it the largest, heaviest, most complex rocket the Changeling Space Program had ever assembled yet.

And, since Mission Fourteen’s rocket was identical and would be launched as soon as Mission Thirteen achieved orbit, two rockets were being assembled at once.

Four ponies and one changeling in spacesuits, helmet visors open, stood and watched as dozens of changelings and ponies wrangled rocket parts using a combination of magic, winches, and jigs. Fuel lines were connected and sealed. Tanks were carefully welded together. Decouplers were carefully leveled and bolted into place. Giant solid rocket boosters, one after another, were carted in one at a time and carefully connected.

And then two capsules, already attached to the passenger cabin expansions, were levitated onto the assembly building floor, set down in front of the astromares, their passengers, and their ground crew. “Mission Thirteen is on the right,” Lucky Cricket, supervising the assembly team, pointed to the capsule as two other changelings rolled a ladder up to its hatch. “Mr. Jimenez first, followed by Her Majesty Queen Pilot Chrysalis.” He pointed to the other and said, “Mission Fourteen is the other one. Mrs. Crust first, then Mr. Set, and finally Chief Pilot Cherry Berry.”

“Couldn’t we wait until the whole rocket is assembled?” Jet Set asked. “Why not have a boarding gantry on the launch pad, where we could board just before launch?”

Before either Chrysalis or Cherry Berry could provide a safe answer, Lucky Cricket chimed in, “Because we’d have to build a new one every time, and that gets expensive. The blast from a rocket launch is very destructive, and on some launches spent boosters fall on the space center grounds instead of in the ocean. That’s why the launchpad is two miles away from the rest of the space center. This is safer for everypony.”

There was a soft double clunk as Chrysalis’s and Cherry Berry’s jaws hit the bottom of their helmets in unison.

“I see,” Jet Set said, unruffled. “Put that way, it makes perfect sense, so long as the rocket doesn’t fall on its way to the pad.”

“No danger of that,” Lucky Cricket said firmly. “We’ll be using three teams of fifty changelings(183) each in shifts to carry the assembled rocket to the pad. Forty could do it, but changing teams allows us to rest and recover. With that redundancy you’re safer than in your own airships, trust me.”

Jet Set smiled and nodded, fully satisfied, as did his wife. Even Hobble looked a little bit calmed… or, at least, his trembling grew a little less obvious. “So,” he says at last, “the one onna righ’, tha’s mine, jes?”

“That’s right.”

“Good. Please fe’ch me some paint anna small brush.”

Lucky Cricket looked at Chrysalis, who shrugged and nodded. One of the ground crew brought out a can of red paint and the kind of brush used for detail work.

“'At’ll do nice,” Hobble said, putting the brush into the paint and carrying both to the top of the boarding ladder. There, on the front of the hatch, brush in his teeth, he carefully painted a series of bizarre, vaguely square designs, each looking like some jungle animal in horrible torment.

“What is that?” Jet Set asked, disgusted.

“Eees th’ language of my peoples,” Hobble said around the paintbrush.

“What does it say, then?”

“Eet say thees,” Hobble grunted, adding in much smaller Equestrian letters below the blocks of Mexicolt symbols: Do not be afraid. The beings inside are ponies and will not hurt you.

“There,” Hobble said, putting the brush back in the paint and carrying both back down the ladder. “I feel a bit better now.”

“Then are you ready to actually get in the thing?” Chrysalis asked.

“Do I have to?” Hobble whined.

In response Chrysalis used her magic to open the hatch, pick up Hobble, and stuff him inside.

“Jou coulda jus’ said yes,” Hobble’s voice echoed from inside the capsule.

“Make sure he gets to his proper chair and gets strapped in,” Chrysalis ordered, nodding two of the ground crew changelings up the boarding ladder. After a moment she looked at Lucky Cricket and added, “And paint the Equestrian part of that on the other ship. In fact, paint it on all our capsules from now on.”

“Yes, my queen!” Lucky Cricket said, picking up the paint can and brush and fluttering over to the Mission Fourteen capsule.

This taken care of, Chrysalis followed the ground crew up the boarding ladder.

Footnote:

(183) There were some unicorns in each team as well, borrowed from the construction crews at double pay for the day. They could levitate things even better than changelings, and since all construction halted on launch days it was only efficient to make use of them.

Two weeks before, the grandstands had been empty except for Chrysalis and the three space tourists. On this bright morning an observer might well have thought those four the only ponies in Equestria not in the stands, talking, laughing, gaping at anything and everything. Ships and barges filled Muck Lake, as lighters ferried passengers to the quay. Pegasi and griffons circled the buildings looking for a place to perch, while every wagon and carriage in Horseton ferried well-to-do ponies from the balloons and airships landing in a hastily cleared rice field.

Vendors walked or hovered up and down the stands, Horseton hillbilly ponies hawking hot snack food on an unusually brisk late autumn morning for the Hayseed Swamps while changelings under Heavy Frosting’s supervision sold so-called “space food”(184)

Of the now seven companies broadcasting on the newfangled television sets, four had cameras live on the scene. Flim and Flam's barge sat offshore in the bay outside Muck Lake's mouth, while three other stations had erected temporary transmission towers behind Mission Control. A special press box had been erected on the roof of the VAB to allow cameraponies and presenters a direct and almost private look at the launchpad.

The world had come to watch the first paying customers(185) launched into space.

"And it looks like they've set the rocket down on the pad," Gerry Goodmane, the elegantly-coiffed star of the "Voice of Equestria" network, told his viewers. "Mission Thirteen is set to fly higher than any previous space mission, fifty thousand kilometers above the world's surface. The pilot, Chrysalis queen of the changelings, will then leave the craft for a spacewalk, while the passenger, Mr. Hobble Jimenez of the tribes of Nickeragua, will remain secure in the capsule."

Goodmane looked beside him at the elderly pony standing beside him. "Dr. Inexplorata, will Mr. Jimenez take the controls while Queen Chrysalis is outside the craft?"

"I rather doubt it," Ad Inexplorata said. "First because it is doubtful Mr. Jimenez has been trained enough to qualify as a pilot, and second because it won't be necessary. Once in orbit a ship will continue on its course unless something changes. So Mr. Jimenez won't be needed to keep the ship steady, but if he hit the wrong button, that might change."

"So," Goodmane said, "no time behind the stick for Hobble Jimenez?"

"Unlikely," Inexplorata said.

"What about during re-entry?" Goodmane said. "Would Jimenez take the stick then?"

"Certainly not," Inexplorata said. "It is barely possible that in three weeks' time Mr. Jimenez could be trusted to toy around a little bit while safely in orbit, but I doubt it. But re-entry is the most dangerous part of the mission. The ship must remain behind the heat shield at all times, and with an elongated craft like Mission Thirteen that requires precision flying. There is no way Queen Chrysalis would trust anyone but herself with that task."

"Of course, the one pony she might trust to do such a thing, CSP chief pilot Cherry Berry, is currently in the Mission Fourteen rocket in the building underneath our hooves," Goodmane said. "Remind our viewers of her mission, please, Doctor."

"Well, as I understand it," Inexplorata said grumpily(186), "Mission Fourteen will attempt a circumpolar orbit, a feat never before accomplished and only attempted by the Crystal Empire and Yakyakistan space programs due to their high latitude."

"The Crystal Empire's space program, of course, having just been merged with the Equestrian Space Agency," Goodmane interrupted.

"Well, yes," Inexplorata grunted, barely holding his temper. "If successful Mission Fourteen will offer passengers Jet Set and Upper Crust unprecedented views of the entire planet. The danger, however, is that the ship won't have enough velocity to achieve a polar orbit."

"And why is that?" Goodmane asked.

"As everyone who read Princess Twilight Sparkle's thesis knows," Inexplorata said, "although Equus's rotation requires Princess Celestia to keep it from coming to a halt, it does rotate at several hundred miles per hour. That means anything lifting off its surface is also going more or less eastward at considerable speed. All the successful orbital missions until now have launched due east to take advantage of this, because it saves fuel.

"But a circumpolar orbit goes directly north and south, which means the ship must not only burn enough fuel to achieve orbit without that initial boost, it must burn even more fuel to cancel out its eastern momentum. So a ship orbiting the poles uses a lot more fuel than a ship orbiting the equator."

"Do you think the rockets being used today will have enough fuel for these missions, Doctor?"

"Well, I-"

The changelings and unicorns who had carried the massive Mission Thirteen rocket to the pad two miles distant scattered. A moment later the sound of Fiddlewing's piercing wing-rubbing reached the press on top of the VAB, interrupting and drowning out Dr. Inexplorata's response.(187)

As soon as the horrible shriek ended, Goodmane said, "I'm sorry, Dr. Inexplorata, but that's the signal for launch. We'll listen to the mission control's final checklist while we wait for the launch."

The camerapony for Voice of Equestria shifted its view to the launchpad, and the pony controlling the sound equipment nodded to Goodmane and Inexplorata. "All right, we can talk for a little bit," Goodmane said quietly.

"I thought we were going to listen to the mission control," Inexplorata complained.

"We couldn’t get a speaker up here, only a set of earphones," Goodmane shrugged. "But we have another camerapony and microphone in the press gallery at Mission Control, and Wiggle T. Plug there," he gestured to the pony at a bank of controls that looked like a cross between a sound board and a gemologist’s worktable, "is patching the sound into the broadcast over our view of the rocket."

"Oh." Inexplorata turned around to face the rocket. "So, how long does it take them to go through the checklist?"

Goodmane paused in tying a hairnet over his carefully brushed hair. "Not very long at all," he said. "You should probably brace yourself. The first time I was here I could hear the boom inside the Mission Control building."

A few seconds later, Dr. Inexplorata found out exactly what Goodmane meant.

Once the initial blast of wind had subsided and the ear-shattering noise of the launch had abated enough for any other sound to be heard, Dr. Inexplorata looked at Goodmane. The hairnet hadn’t helped at all. In fact, half of it had been pulled off, and the other half had bits of hair sprouting through the mesh like patches of grass a lawnmower had missed.

Goodmane immediately noticed the expression on Inexplorata’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it the mane? Someone give me a mirror, quick!” Without waiting for anyone else to do it, he plunged into the makeup kit kept discreetly below the view of the camera and hauled out a large hoof-mirror. One look at his reflection raised his voice two and a half octaves. “YE GADS!” he squeaked. “Brushies, brushies, quick quick quick!”

“Gerry,” the camera-pony said, “I won’t be able to keep the rocket in focus much longer. We need some face time.”

“We’ll go to the mission control camera!” Gerry grumbled, scrambling for various mane-care implements.

“No can do,” Wiggle T. Plug said. “We need a live shot of the next rocket coming out of the building.” As soon as he said the words, the roof of the VAB began to shake. “We need face time in thirty seconds, Gerry.”

“Okay! Okay! Okay.” Gerry took a couple of quick but deep breaths, letting his voice drop back down to its normal mellifluous tones. “Go to the Mission Control camera for a few seconds, focus the camera on the doc here, then bring picture and sound back here. Camera is either on the doctor or a rocket until I say otherwise. Got it?” As he gave orders, both hooves worked feverishly to gradually restore his manestyle.

“Yessir,” the camera-pony nodded, rolling his eyes at the pony working the broadcast controls. “Need to cut away pretty much now, guys.”

“Internal view of Mission Control in three, two…” A switch went click. “Refocus on Dr. Inexplorata… stand by, mikes will go live when I wave my hoof…” There was a tense few seconds as the rumbling of the VAB vehicle doors ceased and Wiggle’s hoof held in the air, while he listened to something on his headset(188). Then the hoof came down and, simultaneously, another switch went click.

Goodmane, still working his hair over with both hooves and four different implements, spoke instantly, as smoothly as if he were casually sipping a cup of tea. “Well, Dr. Inexplorata, that was certainly an impressive sight, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly was, Gerry,” Inexplorata said automatically. His stunned look was taken by thousands of television viewers as a result of the rocket launch. In reality his eyes were boggling behind his glasses at the sight the viewers would never see: an earth pony, without the benefit of any magic, juggling a mirror, two brushes, a comb, a pair of scissors, a jar of hair gel and a can of aerosol hair spray, putting all of them to good effect and still not being satisfied with the results.

Wiggle and the camera pony didn’t bat an eye. They’d seen this before. They were professionals. They were veterans. They’d been working for VoE two entire months. That was a century in television-years.

And as the crew of Voice of Equestria shuffled video and audio and babbled meaningless drivel to cover their biggest star’s bad hair day, fifty changelings and unicorns began carefully, cautiously carrying the Mission Fourteen rocket out of the VAB on its slow, careful two-mile trip to the launchpad.

Footnotes:

(184) Which bore no resemblance whatever to the food actually being sent up into space. The rations in the capsule, despite Heavy Frosting’s best efforts, remained either paste in tubes or rehydrated slop that could be eaten through a straw. To make matters worse, something about zero-gravity reduced pony sensitivity to flavors, so even halfway-decent paste/slop on the ground became either bland or outright disgusting in space. After much discussion it had been decided to just tell the passengers up front that the meals were still in development and that they should probably have a filling breakfast before launch.

(185) Had they known Hobble Jimenez would do almost anything to avoid being launched into space, things might have been different. For one thing, there would have been some lively bidding by the wealthier ponies present to buy his flight seat from him.

(186) Dr. Ad Inexplorata was a professor at Celestia University, Manehattan, and a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. He'd never so much as exchanged a single word with anyone at the Horseton Space Center before Voice of Equestria had hired him to be Goodmane's on-camera expert interviewee during the launch. His knowledge of CSP mission goals and intentions began and ended with a single-page flyer handed out by one of Occupant's assistants to all press members at dawn that morning. Goodmane had seen the same sheet and knew everything Inexplorata did on that subject, and Inexplorata wished he'd shut up about it and ask more interesting questions about space. He, quite literally, wasn't getting paid enough for this.

(187) Which was fortunate for him, because he hadn't a clue. A professor from Celestia University, Manehattan, couldn't just say, "Well, that big sucker looks big enough to me." That would be unscientific.

(188) Goodmane could have had a set of earphones too, but he’d refused to have anything that might damage his hairdo in the least way.

"Boosters and first stage away," Chrysalis said, allowing herself a little sigh of relief as she said it. "And the flight is much smoother already. Why do the boosters keep putting me in a roll?" She didn't notice the pout in her voice as she added, "Solid rockets always behave for the pony."

“Stage separation and second stage ignition confirmed,” Dragonfly said over the comms. “It looked like you were having a little fun there for a minute, Thirteen.”

“Horseton, I could lecture you for a week on the joys of boredom,” Chrysalis grunted, easing the rocket’s nose further down as the acceleration really started to kick in. “In fact I seem to recall I did lecture you for a week on boredom.”

“How’s the passenger?” Dragonfly asked. “I bet he isn’t bored, is he?”

Chrysalis paused for a moment, forcing herself to listen to the noises she’d been ignoring practically since liftoff. “Do you remember, Horseton,” she said as she tuned the noises back out again, “whose idea it was to put a container of hard cider in the passenger compartment to keep the passenger calm?”

“I believe,” Dragonfly drawled, “that was a Royal Command, Thirteen. By your direct order.”

“I was afraid of that,” Chrysalis groaned. “Well, it was a bad idea. The passenger, by the sound of things, is on his third-” Her ears twitched as a new sound came through her helmet, followed by resumption of more than the same. “Correction, fourth air sickness bag. I thought we only packed two of the things, anyway.”

“Thirteen,” Dragonfly said, “the bullpen wants confirmation. Did you say the passenger is somehow managing to vomit while under two point four gees of acceleration?”

“Affirmative, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “And when he’s not puking he’s whimpering.”

There was a prolonged pause. “Thirteen,” Dragonfly said slowly, “we just thought you’d like to know that we can hear the press corps laughing through the glass of the VIP gallery. And I can see Princess Twilight Sparkle holding her head in her wings.”

“Heh,” Chrysalis chuckled. “She’s probably jealous we beat her to another milestone. First barf in space.”(189)

“That might just be possible, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said slowly. “Your apoapsis has broken out of atmosphere, so we’d like you to shift your burn down to ninety by ninety and then terminate ascent burn, please.”

“Copy attitude ninety by ninety and then MECO, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, throttling back the rocket, using a little thrust to put the nose more or less on the horizon, and then cutting thrust completely. In a few seconds the rocket’s interior went from two and a half times normal gravity to zero. “MECO,” she reported. “Attitude holding steady on target.”

“Horseton confirms, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said. “Stand by for orbital insertion burn in approximately two minutes, thirty seconds.”

“Standing by, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. She paused as she noticed that, in addition to the roar of the engines being gone, so was the sound of equine regurgitation(190). “Mr. Jimenez?” she asked. “Is everything all right back there?” For several seconds there was no response. “Mr. Jimenez, could you say something?”

“Somet’ing,” a most miserable voice said in jagged rusty-razor tones of bitterness.

“Are you feeling better now?” Chrysalis asked. “Everything A-OK?”

“No,” Hobble Jimenez groaned, “everyt’eeng’s still B-A-D. An’ it’s ‘bout to get W-O-R-S.”

“Really? How?” Chrysalis asked. “We did show you the bathroom facilities, right?”

“Ees like dis,” Hobble said, “my stomach wants to throw up some more… but it can’ figure out which way up is!”

Chrysalis sighed. “There’s a pouch with seltzer tablets inside the small compartment on the table,” she said. “You can use the cold-water tap to fill it after I finish the orbital burn.”

“‘At’s okay,” Hobble said. “It can wait. I don’ think my tummy wants any more visitors jus’ now.”

“Anyway, stay in your seat for now,” Chrysalis said. “I’m going to turn the engines back on again in a bit.” Or don’t, she didn’t say out loud. Don’t and see if I care.

… all right, I care. I care that CSP will get a bad reputation for carelessness, and I care that your native friends might get annoyed and decide to attack the space center, but I don’t care about you in particular.

No, even that’s a lie. I really care about the minute I can hand you back to that chief of yours and I won’t ever have to listen to your whiny voice ever again. That I care about a lot.

I wonder if the chief will mind how many pieces-

“Thirteen, Horseton.”

“Go ahead, Horseton,” Chrysalis said automatically, her grumpy fantasies instantly forgotten.

“Thirty seconds until burn. This will take all remaining fuel in second stage and a tiny fraction of third stage, we estimate. We ask full burn until second stage is empty, then twenty percent burn on third stage until mark.”

“Thirteen copies full burn to burnout second stage, twenty percent burn on third stage until mark,” Chrysalis replied.

“Ten seconds to burn,” Dragonfly said.

“Brace yourself, Mr. Jimenez,” Chrysalis called back, “there’s going to be a little bump.”

“Four. Three. Two. One.”

Chrysalis re-ignited the second stage at full throttle, and gravity returned to the interior of the rocket with a vengeance. Almost a second later she heard a truly heroic retching sound, followed by the splat of something hitting the passenger compartment hatch. Impressive, she thought. I wonder if we could use Mr. Jimenez’s gut as a launch engine?

The stage burned through its remaining fuel as the velocity readout on Chrysalis’s console ticked ever higher. The retching, after that one last effort, had thankfully ceased, and for about a minute the ship rushed forwards in near-silence. Then the fuel and oxidizer tanks went dry, the engine burned out, and the ship was in free-fall again.

The thump of the decoupler releasing the second stage echoed through the ship, loud in comparison to the otherwise silent ship. “What was that?” Hobble gasped in terror.

“Hold on, Mr. Jimenez,” Chrysalis said, “one more bump!” She activated the third stage, waiting a moment to be sure the motor had ignited properly before throttling it back to one-fifth power. The second stage would re-enter the outer atmosphere and, over the course of about twenty or so orbits, slow down until it eventually broke up and burned up into nothing… or so Chrysalis understood it, for what little she cared, as long as the bits weren’t landing in her mane. Her attention was on her earphones, waiting for the word to shut down engines.

Finally Dragonfly’s voice came through, saying, “Five seconds, three, two- cutoff!”

Chrysalis’s suited hoof slapped the shutdown switch, and the ship was once more in free-fall. “MECO,” she said again.

“MECO confirmed, Thirteen,” Dragonfly agreed. “We show you in an almost perfect circular orbit, inclination zero point two percent off the equator. Good flying, my queen.”

Chrysalis snorted. “No kissing up while on the clock, Horseton,” she said.

“Understood, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said, obviously unchastened. “I have to focus on Mission Fourteen launch now, so please turn your microphone off except for emergency.”

“Copy that, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, “Mission Thirteen running silent and awaiting word of a successful launch for Mission Fourteen.” With that she hit the newly installed switch that disabled the outgoing sound on the telepresence spell that allowed Mission Control to see and hear the mission in flight.

“You can relax now, Mr. Jimenez,” Chrysalis said. “The exciting part’s over for now.”

“I’m no’ gonna relax until I can feel the leaves under my hooves,” Hobble said firmly.

“What’s the matter?” Chrysalis asked, both exasperated and slightly amused. “We got you up safely. Don’t you have faith we’ll get you back down to earth too?”

“Oh, I have faith jou’ll gets me down to earth,” Hobble said. “Jus’ how deep into the earth, that I don’ have faith in.”

Footnotes:

(189) As dubious as such a first would be, Mission Thirteen wasn’t it. Gordon the Griffon, on his first suborbital space flight, had lost his lunch moments after entering free-fall. The griffons, lamentably, had not packed any air sickness bags for his flight, with the result that Rarity had been able to sell the griffons a brand-new spacesuit and helmet to replace the one Gordon had, well, soiled beyond reclamation. Since Gordon was the griffons’ only pilot, this had delayed the space program by weeks… and convincing Gordon to get back into the capsule took even longer. Thus far, however, the griffons (and Rarity) had kept the incident absolutely secret.

(190) Pedants from other worlds will insist that equines have a digestive tract that absolutely prevents any possibility of expelling the contents of the stomach via the mouth. Whatever might or might not be true about the equines or any other ungulate mammals on their own planet, the ponies of Equus can pay tribute to the porcelain god with the best of them.

“Good heavens! What was that?”

Mission Fourteen’s rocket had just given the passenger compartment a loud kick in the rear, practically the instant the overwhelming roar of the three solid fuel boosters and the single liquid-fueled steering engine had burned out. In the moment of relative quiet the explosive decoupling had startled Upper Crust, who sat in the rear seat and could only see the back of her husband’s chair.

A second thump, this one more sustained, shoved the two passengers firmly in the back as the second stage engines kicked in. The engine roar was much quieter than the deafening blast of liftoff, low enough for Jet Set to reply without shouting very much, “Just staging, my dear. I don’t really think they made it clear how rough the ride was going to be.”

“Indeed not.” Upper Crust strained against double her natural weight and turned her microphone on. “Miss Berry,” she said, “perchance could you watch the bumps a bit, dear?”

“My sweet, perhaps now’s not a good time to bother the pilot, hm?” Jet Set shouted as gently as possible.

“Fourteen copies three-thirty by forty, stand by Horseton,” Cherry Berry’s voice replied. “Sorry, Mrs. Crust, but-”

“I keep telling you,” Upper Crust interrupted, “Mrs. Crust is my mother. Ms. Crust, please.”

“I’m sorry, but a rough ride is what a space flight is all about,” Cherry Berry continued. “It’s kind of more important that I keep the pointy end aimed at the sky right now and make sure nothing breaks.”

“But surely, dear, you could-”

“Stand by, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said, and then, “I’m sorry, but I really am quite busy right now and I need to be able to listen to what Mission Control is telling me. There’ll be lots of time to talk once this ship’s in orbit. Please be patient.”

“Quite so,” Jet Set agreed, having turned his own microphone on. “Do turn your microphone off, dearest, it’ll be all right.”

With an annoyed snort Upper Crust did so, and Jet Set followed suit a moment later. “As much as we paid for this flight,” she said, “a moment of courteous attention seems the least she could do.” She gestured to the interior of the passenger cabin, adding, “Especially the extra money you spent in building this.”

The interior of the passenger compartment was now indistinguishable from the interior of a businesspony’s exclusive airship cabin, right down to the floor and the ceiling lights. Cushioned overhead compartments ran along either side of the walkway, and larger compartments ran along one side of the compartment opposite the two passenger seats. Only the seats themselves had been changed, with a much stronger deck mounting that could be locked into place or allowed to swivel up to one hundred eighty degrees with the simple pull or push of a lever. Of course they were locked in place now, during ascent, as the rocket picked up more and more acceleration, and thus more and more inertial forces shoved the passengers backwards, with every pound of fuel burned and blasted out the rocket bell.

The redesign had even included discreet pouches to insert labels into for each and every compartment, just as Jet Set had demanded. Unfortunately the changeling ground crew had been left to label them themselves, and most of the overhead bins had labels like: Things. Stuff. Items. Objects. Important Things. Not So Important Things. Refuse. Rubbish. Trash. And, the one that both amused and annoyed Jet Set the most, Objects d’Art.(191)

Fortunately there were a few usefully labeled compartments. The table between the two seats had several small compartments with labels like AIR SICK, FIRST AID, NAPKINS, HOT WATER, COLD WATER (these concealed two spigots connected by magic to water supplies on the ground- a duplicate of the system that supplied air to every space capsule Equus had launched to date) and UTENSILS(192). The largest compartment, the one next to the hatch leading into the command capsule, was labeled SNACKS, and presumably it held the flight rations for the voyage.

But labels aside, Jet Set was proud of the elegant yet utilitarian design, tasteful white and steel trim from bow to stern, with four rounded windows(193), two to a side, to allow passengers a view of the world outside and, mostly, below. The initial cabin design was his company’s, the hull modifications designed by Warner von Brawn and Goddard the Griffon notwithstanding. He thought it only right and proper that all future production of the component return to the shipyard whence it came.

But further development…

“About that dear,” Jet Set replied to his wife’s complaint, “I expect to make back every penny of it one way or another. We shan’t be the last tourists in space, for one thing.” He gathered his breath- the weight on his body, and the fact that he was on his back at all, made it difficult to breath properly- and added, “And for another, I’ve got some ideas that the research lab at that space facility would be perfectly suited to test.”

“What kind of ideas, darling?” Upper Crust asked.

“You know our pilot has her own aeroplane?” Jet Set asked. “We built the controls for it- royal commission, a favor called in I understand. There are maybe a dozen other aeroplanes here and there across Equestria. They’re a novelty for ponies who want to fly like pegasi, but with more development the commercial potential is-”

“Oh look, dearest!” Upper Crust said, stretching a trembling hoof out the window. “It’s the moon! Do you remember the last time we saw the moon during the daytime?”

“Yes, dear,” Jet Set sighed, letting his thoughts on jet or rocket propelled aeroplanes fall aside. “As I recall, giant vines tried to devour most of central Equestria.”

“But this time it’s just that we’re higher than the moonset!” Upper Crust said. “Do you remember the lesson on the solar system Dr. Bull gave us? Princess Luna only gives the moon enough of a boost twice a day to move it past the horizon. But now we can see over the horizon, and there it is!”

Jet Set looked for himself. He had to admit it was a very impressive sight, both beautiful and viscerally disturbing. The moon and the sun just weren’t supposed to be visible at the same time. It went against every law of nature he’d grown up believing in. And yet… not only could he see the moon, but the sky above them was darkening almost to black, and he almost fancied he could make out a planet shining somewhere off there…

“Miss Berry?” Upper Crust had turned her microphone on again. “We can see the moon outside, just above the horizon! Can you see it? Lovely, isn’t it?”

When Cherry Berry responded, even Jet Set, who acted deliberately obtuse to plebian modes of politeness because a Society pony of Canterlot needed to keep up appearances, could hear the pink pilot’s teeth practically grinding. “I’m afraid my windows aren’t turned to the western horizon just now,” she said. “And I really don’t have time to look out them at the moment. The view is even better once we get out of the atmosphere. Please be patient and hold on to your observations until I can better appreciate them.”

Without turning his own mike back on, Jet Set said, “Microphone, dear. Politely.”

Upper Crust managed a half-hearted, “Very well, do carry on,” before switching off her mike again.

Footnote:

(191) He’d peeked into it before he was strapped into his seat. It was empty.

(192) Plastic spoons for eating rehydrated meals out of pouches- a new experiment for Missions Thirteen and Fourteen. Nothing on the ship required a fork to eat. The only knife on the ship was in the tool box tucked beneath Cherry Berry’s crash bench, and she had no intention of letting the tourists know it existed unless unavoidable.

(193) Round portholes had been the tradition in sailing ships for about a century and for airships since the beginning, at least along the lateral line of ships. In sailing ships this adaptation had been to strengthen the hull against flexing between waves. The adoption on airships was initially because the first airships were basically boats with a magically inflated balloon on top, but as the technology progressed it had been discovered that the same stresses on oceangoing ship hulls existed on hulls slicing through stiff winds or storms. Jet Set had had a long discussion with George Cowley about the tiny, trapezoidal windows of the Cherry’s Rocket Parts capsules, which yet remained to be settled.

“Passengers, please brace for acceleration in five… four… three… two… one!”

Cherry Berry ignited the second stage engine for the beginning of the orbital insertion burn. Three g’s of force shoved her back in her seat again, and guessing from the muffled complaints of her two passengers they felt it just as hard. “Burning three fifty-five mark ninety,” she said. “Fuel in stage at thirty percent and dropping.”

“Confirmed, Fourteen,” Dragonfly replied. “You could just burn prograde, you know. You’re close enough to a polar trajectory that you’re not going to miss anything.”

“I still show my prograde vector as nine degrees off course, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “I’m going to bring that in. I ought to have brought that in on the initial burn.”

“Fourteen, you’re fine,” Dragonfly groaned. “Just get that bird into a parking orbit.”

Cherry Berry didn’t listen. She wasn’t going to settle for “almost” a polar orbit. One fine day soon “almost” wouldn’t work. It was bad enough that landing their ships was pretty much like a blind unicorn playing darts. She wasn’t going to accept sloppiness on the ascent. Sloppiness could kill.

“Ten percent fuel,” Dragonfly reported.

“Roger ten percent,” Cherry Berry. “Mr. Set, Ms. Crust, I’m about to destage. There will be a few bumps, so sit tight.”

Thankfully, this time it was Jet Set and not Upper Crust who responded. “Very good, Miss Berry. We’re ready. Carry on.”

“Coming up on second stage burnout…” Almost the instant she said the word burnout, it happened. With a jerk the ship went from three g’s full throttle to free-fall. Two taps of the main staging button later, the empty stage was dropped and the third stage ignited, its smaller engine pushing forward at a much more modest 0.7 g.

“Third stage ignition,” Cherry reported. “Burning three fifty-five mark ninety.”

“We confirm third stage ignition, Fourteen,” Dragonfly replied dutifully. “You’re only a couple degrees off the mark, you-”

“Excuse me, Miss Berry?” Upper Crust interrupted, loud enough to drown out Dragonfly’s raspy voice.(194) “It’s ever so much lighter now. Is it all right if we unbuckle these straps? They really do chafe.”

“PLEASE don’t do that,” Cherry Berry gasped. “Getting out of your seat now would be like falling flat on your back. You could be seriously injured. Please remain in your seat until orbital maneuvering is completed.”

“Fourteen, Thirteen,” a very smug voice broke into the channel. “Just wanted to say, at this point in time, here and now, that I Told You So.”

“Thirteen, please keep the channel clear,” Cherry Berry growled. “Horseton, have I got orbit yet?”

“Yes, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said. “In fact, we’d be glad if you shut down the engine any time now.”

“Stand by, Horseton.” Cherry Berry skewed the ship hard to port, thrusting due westward. Slowly the prograde marker on the nav-ball crawled the last degree to perfect true north. “Shutdown!” she said, cutting the throttle to zero and using the reaction wheels to reorient the ship along its prograde axis.

“Horseton confirms MECO,” Dragonfly said, relief obvious in her voice. “Fourteen, you’re currently at periapse with an orbital eccentricity of about thirty thousand kilometers.”

“Thirty thousand??” Cherry Berry grumbled. “Shoot! I know I can get a circular orbit! What’s my correction burn?”

“Negative, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said. “We show you at forty-five percent in your final fuel tank. The bullpen wants that fuel to stay there unless absolutely necessary.”

“But I can get this right!” Cherry Berry said. “With as much delta-V as this ship had, there’s no excuse-”

“Horseton, Thirteen,” Chrysalis’s still-smug voice cut in. “Am I go for transfer orbit burn?”

“Stand by, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said. “Fourteen, we currently have you in a good polar orbit, and we have Thirteen in a more or less equatorial orbit. Two ships in orbit at once. That’s a first. Accept it and go forward with the mission checklist.”

Cherry Berry slumped in her spacesuit. “Fourteen copies,” she said sullenly. “Preparing for EVA.”

“Horseton copies Fourteen preparing for EVA,” Dragonfly replied. “Thirteen, your transfer burn is twenty-seven seconds at full throttle on your prograde at your discretion.”

“Horseton, Fourteen,” Cherry Berry said, “just a reminder to the bullpen, we really need those trajectory maps and information up here in the capsule.”

“Acknowledged, Fourteen,” Dragonfly replied. “But believe me, we can see it on the screen here, and it’s beautiful.”

“I’ll bet,” Cherry Berry said. “Fourteen running silent pending EVA.”

“Captain Berry,” Jet Set’s voice cut into the channel, “I presume we may remove the straps now?”

Cherry Berry took a deep, calming breath. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You’ll still want the straps if you wish to sit at your meal. The main entree for both of you is at the front of the food compartment. Do you remember the training for how to make them ready for eating?”

“Certainly, Captain,” Jet Set said agreeably. “Thank you, that will be all.”

Cherry Berry rolled her eyes in silence at this, and then rolled them again when she heard Upper Crust, also on the channel, ask, “Darling, aren’t you a bit too personal with the pilot? After all, she is a mere Ponyville pony.”

“Dear, you don’t understand,” Jet Set said. “I sailed once with a champion racing yacht captain- this was before I met you, of course.”

“She was a looker, wasn’t she?” Upper Crust asked, in what Cherry Berry presumed was a playful tone.

“Not a patch on you. Anyway, after a practice run I congratulated her on her skill, and she nearly bit my head off. She pointed out seven different errors she’d spotted that I’d been oblivious to- all her own. I’d made several myself, but she didn’t mention those until after she’d calmed down. She demanded perfection of herself. That kind of drive was what made her a champion. And I see that same drive in Miss Berry. I’d be proud to have her as one of my airship captains.”

“Darling, you know the unicorns who use our airship service would panic if they saw an earth pony at the controls.”

“True, true.” Cherry Berry thought Jet Set sounded honestly regretful. “But possibly that will change. And besides,” he added, “it’s not like a slow, stodgy airship can compete with outer space, is it?”

Cherry Berry released her straps and floated up to the little porthole. Below lay the planet Equus; the ship was flying well above Trottingham with the mountainous terrain of Rainbow Falls coming up beyond that. She could see the oranges and reds and greens of the forests and meadows below, while off to starboard lay the towers of Manehattan and the rolling blue oceans.

No, she thought, nothing can compete with this.

She decided not to let the tourists know their microphones were still on.

Footnote:

(194) It had been decided that, since it was vital for the pilot to be able to hear both Mission Control and the passengers, that the controls for the telepresence spell would be set by default so that the pilot’s headset would carry both channels at the same time, but Mission Control and the passengers, to avoid confusion, couldn’t hear each other. The passengers had been instructed in the importance of comms discipline, but Upper Crust apparently hadn’t taken the idea on board of not being able to speak whenever she wanted.

Behind Chrysalis, something went thump.

“Owwwww!” Hobble Jimenez had left his microphone on as well. “Jou coul’ have warn me jou were gonna do that!”

“Oops. Sorry.”

“Dat don’ soun' too sincere,” Jimenez grumbled.

“Quit whining,” Chrysalis replied. “It’ll be over in another twenty-four seconds.”

“Twenny-four?” Jimenez asked. “Din’ jou say twenny-seven? Like twenny secon’s ago?”

“I’m using half thrust,” Chrysalis said. “Makes it easier for me to get a precision burn. Like… this!”

The engines cut off. A few seconds later, the unsecured load behind Chrysalis thumped against the forward end of the passenger compartment and complained, “Owwwww again!”

“More complaining?” Chrysalis asked. “Are you going to keep this up for the whole flight?”

“Depends,” Jimenez replied. “We got any cough drops on dis rocket?”

“You know,” Chrysalis said, “if you don’t like the driving, you can walk home. It’s a bit more than five thousand kilometers straight down.”

For about three seconds, silence.

“Five t’ousan’ kilometers.”

“Correct.”

“Straight down.”

“Indeed.”

“I’ll be good.”

“Thank you.”

Chrysalis had just released her seat straps when Hobble added, “So, when can we eat? I’m kinda hungry…”

If we ever do this again, Chrysalis fumed silently, the pony or Dragonfly gets to drive. I am not putting up with this again…

The tourists had their meals, which they reported as being distinctly more flavorful than most Canterlot restaurants but far below Prench cuisine standards(195). Chrysalis was firmly in her highly eccentric orbit which would take her up to the altitude required for the decoupler test contract.

And Cherry Berry was outside the hatch of the capsule, clinging on to the rails and steps with all four hooves, preparing herself. The EVA backpack had passed its checklist. She’d trained with every active and several inactive astronauts at Cape Friendship for a week, learning to use it. Now all she had to do was… well… do it.

Unfortunately every earth pony instinct that had ever failed to tell her, in the past, that all four hooves belonged on dirt now screamed at her to keep all four hooves on metal.

“Horseton, Fourteen,” Cherry Berry said. “I’m releasing the craft now.” Yeah. Saying that committed her. She had to do it, didn’t she?
Forehooves unwrapped from the rails. Rear hooves slid out of the boarding steps. The ship drifted slowly, slowly, slowly away.

“Activating thruster pack.” Cherry Berry put her forelegs in the proper position, and the control arms sprang forward to meet her hooves. The thrusters automatically fired for testing, then counter-fired to stabilize her again. “Thruster pack all green. I have control.”

“Horseton confirms thruster pack green,” Dragonfly said, “You are go for EVA maneuvers. Don’t forget about the camera.”

Cherry Berry looked down through the bowl of her helmet at the camera fastened to the front of her spacesuit. “Roger, Horseton,” she said. “See you after I take my stroll.”

The joysticks under either forehoof felt perfectly responsive to Cherry’s touch. A slight touch brought her right back to the hatch; a second touch backed her off again. A few more touches bumped her left, then right, then up, then down, all with perfect control.

Gradually the fear of falling faded away. Something in the back of Cherry Berry’s mind said: The ship is staying put. The planet is staying put. I’m not falling.

I’m not falling.

I’m FLYING.

The stress and tension of flying the rocket up and into orbit fell away, taking with it the fear and leaving behind sheer joy. With a series of giggles and cheers of delight Cherry Berry jetted herself around and around the stubby form of the orbiter, making laps with short, efficient burst of thruster propellant. She turned somersaults, pirouettes, and cartwheels. She pulled off about a hundred meters, aimed herself carefully, and buzzed the ship at a relative velocity of thirty meters per second. It wasn’t quite the same as flying like a pegasus, but it was the next best thing. In fact, it was better than the best dreams she’d ever had about flying(196).

“Thruster propellant level sixty percent,” Dragonfly’s voice cut in.

That sobered Cherry up a little, but only a little. After acknowledging the message and bringing herself back to rest relative to the ship, she turned herself to face the planet below.

Yes, she thought to herself, this is why I do it all. This is why I put up with Chrysalis. This is why I run myself ragged between Appleoosa and Horseton and who knows where else. This is why I’ve seen my friends less than seven days in the last eight moons. It was for this.

I’d forgotten. But I’ll never forget again. Not after this.

But even with this epiphany, even filled to overflowing with the sheer joy of flying without a machine(197), she had work to do. She took a few photos of the landscape below her (the lands east of the Crystal Empire, from the looks of it), then keyed on her space suit’s recorder and said, “Survey report, space above the Northern Mountains. It’s always incredible just how small everything is from up here. We ponies have such a small, comfortable existence, and seeing how it fits into the rest of creation makes me even more grateful for the cozy lives we all lead back at home…”

Joy and professionalism wrestled with one another, and Joy quickly put Professionalism in a submission hold and forced it to tap out. “But I’m even more grateful that I’m FLYING!! WHEE! I really can’t say strongly enough how FREE I feel up here! I’m floating about ten meters from my ship, and with a touch of my thruster I can go kilometers in any direction and then come back! It’s everything I’ve ever wanted since I was a little filly too small to understand that I wouldn’t get wings when I was older. Well, now I’m older, and I’ve got wings made of hot and cold running SCIENCE!”

Just as she was about to switch the recording off, Cherry remembered what a survey was actually meant to do. “Oh, and by the way, the Northern Mountains have rocks and snow and stuff. Really rocky. And snowy. And stuffy.” There. Duty completed and recording logged, she turned her attention back to the ship.

Through the windows Cherry saw Jet Set and Upper Crust still playing with their food(198). Struck by a whim, she gently brought herself up to the windows, releasing the controls and using her hooves to stop her momentum. She carefully tapped on the window, got their attention, and waved.

Then she took a photo of their shocked, terrified expressions though the glass(199).

Footnotes:

(195) This mild praise surprised Cherry Berry, who had no experience with the overpriced flavorless offerings that far too many Canterlot restaurants had, until recently, passed off as high-class dining. The fact that Jet Set and Upper Crust found the effects of zero gravity on their mostly-liquid food more interesting than its flavor didn’t surprise Cherry Berry at all, which is why the food locker contained duplicate meals and an abundance of napkins.

(196) Except that there weren’t any cherries around. She’d have to go back inside the ship to have her cherries.

(197) Yes, the thruster pack and space suit were machines, but to Cherry’s mind, only very little ones.

(198) In free-fall it’s more difficult to NOT play with your food. Play is, after all, a form of learning, and in orbit you have to learn how to do all sorts of things all over again. However, few astronauts in any world have ever improvised a ping-pong game using spoons and an uneaten dumpling.

(199) Sadly, due to reflection of the sun’s glare off the extra-thick glass, it didn’t come out. The tourists’ photos from inside the ship, for the most part, ended up much better.

While Mission Thirteen made its long climb up to the high point of its orbit, Mission Fourteen sped around and around the poles, with Cherry Berry popping out to spacewalk, take photos, and record observations(200), popping in just long enough to recharge the mana batteries in the thruster pack, then popping right back out again. While she was having fun in and out of her own ship, Chrysalis sat inside hers while Hobble Jimenez ate three whole meals and, to her great relief, kept them down this time.

Finally, near the apex of her orbit, the examination of the decoupler completed and the report filed for the contract, Chrysalis took her own steps into the vacuum, less because of her mission tasks than out of a desperate need to escape the intermittent whining of her sole passenger.

I know they’re ponies, she thought as she released the ship and activated her own thrusters, but they live outside of Equestria. Maybe Celestia won’t mind if I conquer them just a little bit? They brought it on themselves, for sticking me with the one pony in the whole world that makes the most grumpy donkey look cheerful.

But not Pinkie Pie cheerful. No donkey could ever be Pinkie Pie cheerful.

And yet, she thought as she allowed herself to drift slowly away from the ship, headset turned off completely, so long as I can’t hear him, I don’t mind.

Chrysalis had the most peculiar feelings when she was in space with nothing much to do. She didn’t think ponies had those specific feelings. Ponies couldn’t sense love, compassion, welcome, all the delicious sugary warming emotions, except coming from themselves. For all her skill, Cherry Berry would never experience space flight the same way Chrysalis did.

For all the hostility of the environment around her, for all that removing her helmet would mean an instant of agony followed by an infinite number of instants of being dead… to Chrysalis it still felt like the entire cosmos, all the stars and planets, the Milky Way and the comets and, and, and, and the everything… was hugging her.

Hugging her, and saying, Welcome home.(201)

Appropriately, she looked down at Equus on its night side, with a thin sunlit ring almost encircling the huge black mass. Lights sparkled here and there in the darkness- the cities of the eastern hemisphere, a few thunderstorms here and there, and one feral typhoon out in the Hindian Ocean. She took several photos, thinking to herself, Yes. This is exactly right. A thin skin of light concealing bottomless darkness. Why shouldn’t I conquer it all? Could I make it any worse?

The universe didn’t answer. It just hugged her and loved her, unconditionally, unthinkingly.

For several minutes Chrysalis just floated above the world, content to savor the peaceful experience. That peace was broken by the sun breaking the horizon, drowning out the little lights on the dark side of the planet and making Chrysalis squint even through her tinted helmet visor. Sighing, she took a few more photos of the orbital sunrise, then switched her comms back on. “Horseton, Thirteen,” she said. “I’ve got some good photos, and I’m returning to the spacecraft now.”

“Horseton copies termination of EVA,” Dragonfly said. “Be careful getting back in. We don’t want you to do a Dash, now do we?”

“If by we you mean you and your fellow subjects,” Chrysalis said dryly, “no, you really don’t.” She’d drifted some fifty meters away from the ship, but it was child’s play to line herself up with the ship and thrust. Gradually she drifted back in, forty meters, thirty meters, twenty. The hatch was a little out of her line, so she tapped the thrusters a bit to port. That sent her drifting slightly up and over the ship, so she corrected with a brief burst down. Then the ship seemed to be approaching a little too fast for comfort, so she made another correction.

And another, and another, and another. Each correction required another correction, and Chrysalis couldn’t quite recover the nice straight vector she’d begun with. Her flight path kept wobbling, wobbling, wobbling, and she couldn’t make it stop.

The universe wasn’t hugging her anymore. The universe had turned its attention elsewhere, leaving her to choke down a rising sense of panic as, in her view, the ship kept bouncing back, forth, up, down, anyplace except dead in front of her.

But then there was the hatch right in front of her, and Chrysalis released the thruster controls and reached out for it with her forehooves.

One hoof grabbed a rail. The other three didn’t.

The universe did a somersault around the changeling queen.

Panic took over. Hooves scrabbled, and when coherent thought resumed, Chrysalis was clinging with desperate strength by her forehooves to the very tops of the two rungs that ran on either side of the hatch. The rump of her suit was seated, rather infirmly, on the protective covering of the main parachute.

Chrysalis took deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down, barely noticing the fleeting sensation that the universe had paused in whatever it was doing to give her an empathic pat on the head for encouragement before returning to its errands.

Ha, she thought. Chrysalis 472, Certain Death still 0. Suck it, Pale Horse.

Negotiating the hatch was, as ever, an awkward business, and even more so in free-fall, but Chrysalis managed it. After repressurizing the command capsule, she raised the visor of her suit and said, “Horseton, Thirteen; back in the capsule and awaiting instructions.”

“Copy, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said. “We show your remaining fuel in stage at approximately seventy percent. Could you verify that?”

Chrysalis checked the readout. “Sixty-eight point two percent, Horseton. Why?”

“Well, the bullpen just pointed out that you only used about fifteen percent of your tank for your current orbit,” Dragonfly replied. “That means fifteen percent will put you back in a low circular orbit. So we’d like you to prepare for a burn at periapsis. That way you’ll be able to choose your own landing zone and come in a lot slower.”

“Sounds good to me, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “I’ll pass on the word to our passenger.”

“Copy, Thirteen.”

“Mr. Jimenez!” Chrysalis shouted.

“Jou called?” the whiny voice replied.

“Let’s talk about our return to the ground.”

“Oh, yes, LET’S.” For a brief moment the whining tone, and indeed the accent as thick as cold molasses, was cut away by the sharp edge of raw anger. The moment passed almost instantly, as Hobble said in a more reasonable tone, “At’s my favori’ subjec'.”

“In a couple of hours we’re going to burn the engine to lower our orbit,” Chrysalis said. “That won’t be our re-entry burn. It’ll just slow us down a bit, so we won’t hit the atmosphere so hard.”

“Oh, don’ say hit,” Jimenez moaned.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll go down more slowly and carefully. Doesn’t that sound like a good thing?”

“When jou put i’ like that,” Jimenez replied, “soun’s real good. I’m all for it. The slower the better, I say.”

Thinking of previous flights, Chrysalis shut off her microphone and said, “You and me both, pony.”

Footnotes:

(200) About half of which were babble on the general theme of, “I’m FLYING! WOO-HOO!” Only, more verbose.

(201) The closest thing she’d ever experienced to it was in those bizarre dreams she had of the pink fluffy thing. Of course, she told absolutely no one about those dreams. Let her changelings have their Fun Machine; she was keeping the Fun Cave in her dreams entirely to herself.

Five hours had passed since the launch of Mission Fourteen. Mission Thirteen had just finished a perfect orbital transfer burn, putting it in a tight low orbit in preparation for re-entry. Cherry Berry was lounging against the inside of the capsule eating some cherries while, thanks to a bit of jiggery-pokery with the comms spell, the press back in Horseton was discussing the flight with Jet Set and Upper Crust.(202)

“I got the feeling,” Jet Set was saying, “that Princess Twilight Sparkle and the ESA didn’t… well, there was a strong feeling that this flight shouldn’t take place. And that’s understandable. This is the first space tourist flight, the first truly private flight, you see. And I admit I didn’t really understand just how dangerous an adventure this could be until after our training for this flight. I can easily understand why Princess Twilight didn’t want to take the risk.

“But right now, looking out the window, I can see the blackness of space. I can see Equus. I can see the curvature of Equus. And the sight is just spectacular. I don’t think I can ever replicate the feeling I have right now. And it’s well worth every bit I paid for the adventure.”

“Myself,” Upper Crust added, “I had no idea how comfortable space would be. I think, if more ponies know what I know, there would be a huge demand for private space flights.”

A tinny voice echoed over the comms, “What does it feel like, knowing that you’re the first space tourists?”

Jet Set laughed. “Who cares about that?” he asked. "I just wanted to go. I thought it'd be chic. And I’m glad I did. The fact I was able to makes me one of the luckiest ponies in the world. Correction,” he added, looking back at his wife, “makes us two of the luckiest ponies in the world.”

“And I think that’ll do it, folks,” Cherry Berry heard Occupant’s voice, also tinny, on the channel. “We’re going to have to discuss the rest of our flights with the pilots now, so if you could all return to the press gallery? Thanks!”

Cherry Berry worked a few switches to restore the comms to their normal settings. “Horseton, Fourteen, comms check,” she said.

“Fourteen, Horseton,” Dragonfly said, much more clearly than the reporters’ voices had been. “We hear you just fine. How about you?”

“Sounds good to me,” Cherry said. “I could stay up here as long as there was food, but my passengers have plans for next week.”

“Horseton, Thirteen,” Chrysalis chimed in from her ship. “I’ve got a passenger who needs to be taken home, too. Let’s talk landing.”

“Roger, Thirteen, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said. “Thirteen, our best guess at bringing you down back at the space center requires a burn about forty minutes from now. Fourteen, we think that if we have you make re-entry burn now, that’ll bring you down somewhere near Haywaii.”

“Haywaii?” Cherry Berry gasped. “How near Haywaii?”

The shrug could be heard in Dragonfly’s voice. “George Bull is telling me the trajectory plotting system isn’t reliable in atmosphere. It can’t predict air resistance, and they’re still trying to figure that out. All I can say is, Haywaii’s the closest land to where you’d end up.”

“Understood, stand by,” Cherry said. “Well, Mr. Set, Ms. Crust, how does a Haywaii landing sound to you? Give or take a thousand miles, that is.”

“Haywaii would actually be rather convenient,” Jet Set said. “My airship line runs flights to and from Haywaii by way of Los Pegasus. It’d be a nice, short trip home.”

“Sounds good enough to me. No promises, though,” Cherry Berry added conscientiously. “Any landing zone we’ve hit in the past has been more luck than skill. All I can promise is a water landing.”

“Thank you for letting us know,” Jet Set said. “Will the food and water arrangements hold out if we end up on some unmapped desert island?”

“For a week, easy,” Cherry Berry replied. “For fresh water, indefinitely.”

“Then please proceed, captain.”

“Roger.” Cherry Berry settled back into her crash seat, strapped herself in, and said, “This is CSP Mission Fourteen. Passengers please strap in. Ten seconds to re-entry burn.”

“Horseton copies, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said. “Have fun!”

“Thirteen copies, Fourteen,” Chrysalis added. “We’ll be watching from up here. More or less.”

While the replies had been coming in, Cherry Berry had been reorienting the ship for its deorbit burn. “Burn in four, three, two, one!” She ignited the engine and brought the throttle up to fifty percent thrust. “Horseton, awaiting your mark for MECO,” she said.

Two seconds later Dragonfly’s voice shouted, “MECO!”

Cherry Berry killed the engine. “We have MECO,” she said. “Preparing to jettison engines for re-entry.”

“Horseton copies decoupling engines, confirms MECO,” Dragonfly said. “For what it’s worth, the trajectory plot shows a periapsis of twenty-five kilometers over a point a couple hundred miles west of the westernmost Haywaiian island.”

“Understood, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “Passengers, brace for staging.” She brought the ship around ninety degrees to the vertical, the engines pointing at the planet below. A moment later she hit the staging button, and with a thump the last engine and fuel tank, mostly but not entirely depleted, fell away and vanished. This done, Cherry put the ship back on its backwards-facing attitude using the reaction wheels, laid back, and said, “Okay, folks, you have about ten minutes left if you want one last snack before re-entry. Don’t bother heating it up. It’s going to be a warm ride down.”

Footnote:

(202) The possibility of in-flight interviews with the paying space tourists had been mooted at leadership meetings days before launch and kept open pending an assessment of the mood of the Canterlot ponies mid-flight. They never even considered allowing the press to interview Hobble Jimenez. He was certain to say too much for anypony’s comfort.

Underneath the expanded capsule of Mission Fourteen, the snow and ice of the southern polar cap gleamed in the late-year sun. Around the capsule itself, on the other hand, flames already flickered around the ship as the upper atmosphere, unable to move out of the way of the speeding craft, simply got hammered into submission.

Cherry Berry focused on the navigation ball, keeping the ship absolutely centered on the retrograde marker, the three-barbed circle sitting just above the horizon. Behind her she could hear the sound of camera shutters clicking through the hatch to the passenger cabin. Jet Set and Upper Crust, even strapped in as they were, had refused to stow the cameras, and instead were taking a last few pictures out the windows.

She hadn’t objected. She didn’t have time. Almost from the moment the capsule had touched the top of the atmosphere it had begun to wiggle, twisting and turning in inexplicable ways. At first the motion had been small and slow, requiring only a couple of corrections each minute. Now they required almost constant monitoring, hooves on the flight stick, nudging and twitching the cantankerous craft this way and that.

And this is only the first bit of shock plasma, she thought to herself. We haven’t got anywhere near the thick air yet.

“I say, captain?” Jet Set asked. “Could you roll ship just a bit? I just caught a glimpse of the moon near the horizon, and it’d be interesting to photograph it through the lights outside.”

“Kind of busy now, sir,” Cherry Berry ground out. “I can’t even see the moon from this-” She cut her speech off short as, compelled by the conversation to look out one of the tiny windows in the capsule, she saw something glitter where there absolutely, positively should not have been anything.

It was too small to be the moon.

It was in the wrong place to be the jettisoned third stage.

It was too big- just barely too big- to be a planet.

And although she couldn’t really see it as anything more than a bright bit of light, it had a distinctly… lumpy… look to it.

“Horseton, Fourteen,” she ground out, returning her attention to keeping the ship tucked behind the heat shield at its base. “There’s an unidentified object in the sky to port of my trajectory. I'm certain it's not the third stage. Could you have someone investigate that, please?”

Two voices overlapped in Cherry Berry’s headphones: Dragonfly asking, “Can you get a picture of it, Fourteen?”; and Upper Crust saying, “I see it!” A couple of seconds later Cherry Berry heard several shutter clicks through the hatch.

“The tourists might have some shots,” Cherry answered. “My hooves are full right now- whoa!” The ship chose that moment to begin to roll, in the process sliding slightly out of retrograde. For a moment, before Cherry Berry brought the ship back on course, the heat alarm rang out. “Heat alarm, capsule,” she reported. “Alarm off.”

“Horseton copies heat alarm,” Dragonfly said. “What’s wrong?”

“The ship’s wiggling unpredictably,” Cherry Berry said. “Can’t spare attention to talk about it right now. We’ll discuss it-” The heat alarm went off again. “Heat alarm, capsule,” she said over the noise. “Rolling ship to compensate.” Ninety degrees of roll later, the alarm went out.

For about fifteen seconds.

“Heat alarm, capsule,” Cherry grunted. “Rolling ship.”

“Captain, is everything all right?” Upper Crust asked.

“Darling, please shush,” Jet Set said.

“We know how to deal with this,” Cherry Berry replied. “Don’t worry.”

“See?” Jet Set asked. “Calm and collected. She’s got everything under-”

The alarm sounded again.

“Heat alarm, capsule. Rolling ship.” Cherry Berry ground her teeth, rolled the ship, coaxed it back on retrograde.

The alarm went silent, then blared five seconds later. Roll, pitch, alarm off.

Alarm on. Roll, pitch, alarm off.

The force of deceleration began to kick in. The sounds of cameras clicking ceased.

Another heat alarm. “Heat alarm, capsule. Rolling ship.” Cherry Berry rolled the ship again.

This time, instead of just rolling, the ship yawed. The building roar of hot air from outside became the scream of an angry primal god. The heat alarm doubled in intensity.

“Fourteen, Horseton, we read critical heat alarm, capsule and passenger compartment,” Dragonfly warned. “Please advise.”

Cherry didn’t respond. Her universe contracted itself to the navball. Ignore the glow coming through the windows. Ignore the klaxon that’s become a constant single note. Get the ship back on retrograde.

The ship yawed back, too far, passing the marker on the navball. Now the primal god hammered at the other side of the ship. A new alarm rang: the ship’s outer hull was beginning to deform from heat.

No! Cherry thought to herself. Back on course! Carefully!

The ship rocked back again, a little off center, then back on the beam with a last gentle adjustment. The hull alarm died, and a few moments later the heat alarm went from the critical buzz to the warning intermittent buzz. Cherry rolled the ship again, more carefully this time, and that went away as well.

For seven seconds.

“Heat alarm, capsule. Rolling ship.”

The ship rolled. The alarm went out.

This time it stayed out.

The flames around the ship faded and died. Twice the force of gravity now pushed on Cherry’s back. They weren’t totally out of danger, but the worst was over. Assuming the parachutes hadn’t been damaged by the rough ride down- and all three still showed amber ready-but-don’t-do-it lights- they would probably land safely.

“Fourteen, Horseton, comms check.”

“Fourteen here,” Cherry said. “I had a busy couple of minutes, but I’m fine now. How do you read?”

“Well, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said slowly, “the bullpen really didn’t like that maneuver you pulled. You’re way low and way off course.”

“How far off course?” Cherry asked.

“Our best plot now puts you down closer to Hosstralia than Haywaii,” Dragonfly said. “Way south and west of your planned course, and at least ten kilometers lower than you should be. We’re sending telegraphs to every country in the area, but you might have a long wait for a pickup.”

“Fourteen copies,” Cherry Berry said, very slowly. “Thirteen, do you copy?”

“I’m listening,” Chrysalis’s voice replied.

“Okay, everypony,” Cherry Berry said. “My best guess, without seeing the trajectory plots- and I now insist we get something in these capsules that lets the pilot see those, darn it- I fired too hard on my re-entry burn and came in too low. Thirteen needs a higher trajectory for her re-entry. Everyone copy?”

“We copy, Fourteen,” Dragonfly said.

“Thirteen copies,” Chrysalis added.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said. “Looks like I got away with this one… but now I have to explain to my passengers how their day in space just became a prolonged sea cruise.”

“Wave hello to Cherry Berry, Jimenez!” Chrysalis called back to her passenger. “She’s somewhere there below us!”

Only a muffled whimper came back from the passenger cabin(203).

“Suit yourself,” Chrysalis said, returning her full attention to flying the capsule. “Horseton, Thirteen. I don’t know what the pony was talking about. This flight down has been the smoothest one yet. I’m not feeling any wiggling or unexpected movement in the ship at all.”

“We copy, Thirteen,” Dragonfly said.

“I may be in the water, but I can still hear you,” Cherry Berry’s voice chimed in.

“Can you see me?” Chrysalis asked. “Just look up for the ball of fire that flies better than you do.”

“Har de har har,” Cherry Berry replied. “No, Thirteen, negative on visual; I don’t know where to look, and even if I did I’m not going to waste battery power on the reaction wheels to roll the ship.”

“Thirteen is well downrange of Fourteen’s location by now anyway,” Dragonfly commented. “But if we’re being chatty on the air, I’m jealous of your flight, Fourteen. That sounded like fun.”

Choked spluttery sounds of impotent horse rage echoed over the channel.

Chrysalis allowed herself a couple of deliberate laughs before saying, “In all honesty, this configuration does take some watching, but it’s no great matter for a skilled pilot. Why, I’m almost through descent and I’ve not had a single heat alarm.”

Braaaap, braaap, braaap, braap.

“Grrrr. Heat alarm, cockpit. Rolling to compensate,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Ha HA!” Cherry Berry called triumphantly over the comm.

“Oh, hush, you,” Chrysalis said. “It was only one-”

Braaaap, braaap, braaap, braap.

“Heat alarm, cockpit, rolling. Alarm off. Now as I was-”

Braaaap, braaap, braaap, braap.

“Oh, COME ON!!”

The heat alarm rang four more times in quick succession, then a fifth time after a pause, and then ceased. “Shock heating is easing up,” Chrysalis grumbled again. “Horseton, give me an update on my landing zone?”

“Er....” The trailing mutter was followed by a significant silent pause.

“Horseton, this is your queen speaking,” Chrysalis growled. “Not to be too blunt, but I am running out of up to fall down from. Where am I landing?”

“I’m afraid you’re off course, too,” Dragonfly said. “You’re landing well southwest of the space center- maybe a couple hundred miles from us. It’ll be after dark local time before we can get a recovery team to you.”

“Southwest?” Chrysalis asked. “West I can understand, but how did I turn right on a ballistic re-entry trajectory?”

“And when you get that question answered,” Cherry Berry added from thousands of miles behind Chrysalis, “you can explain it to me, too.”

“I’ve got four minotaurs shrugging at me, Thirteen,” Dragonfly's voice replied. “For now, just do your best. Try to pop your chutes before you hit the mountains.”

Chrysalis rolled the capsule, looked out the porthole, and hissed something very vile in Old Changeling(204). She recognized those mountains all right. She’d seen the other side of them quite frequently… on the southern horizon from the hive. She was coming down in the very heart of the Forbidden Jungle itself- a place which was no real threat for a hive full of changelings, but which could make life all too interesting for a lone changeling, even a queen.

Oh, and there was also the minor detail that the ship, dangling from three parachutes, would have to come down through dense forests. That could never possibly go wrong, now could it?

“Good news, Jimenez!” she shouted. “We’re going to be landing in your home town, looks like!”

“Really?” There was the faint sound of movement from the rear compartment, followed by the most heartrending whimper Chrysalis had ever heard in her life(205).

“I’m just saying,” the queen continued, rolling the ship and hoping to spot anything ahead of her that looked like a viable landing zone, “I might need to crash at your place overnight, that’s all.”

What had been the most heartrending whimper Chrysalis had ever heard yielded the title it held for only six seconds to a new world champion.

“You try to lighten the mood,” Chrysalis muttered, and then decided she was out of time. At thirty-eight hundred meters altitude she triggered the parachutes.

Footnotes:

(203) At the first flicker of plasma visible through the windows Hobble Jimenez had leaned his head back in his chair and closed his eyes tight. Of course, Chrysalis had no way of knowing this, and she wouldn’t have cared anyway.

(204) “You offspring of contemptible food!” is the precise translation. The more colloquial translation, into Earth English at least, might be, "Son of a mare!" Or, possibly, some other female mammal.

(205) Hobble had opened his eyes, looked out the window at the trees, realized the window in question was aimed straight down, and clamped his eyes hard shut again. Again, Chrysalis didn’t know and wouldn’t have cared.

The tribe of the Nickeragua ponies were not completely ignorant of the outside world. There was trade and commerce, of a small but consistent sort, via the port town on the west coast run by the Acapolo ponies and via the occasional explorer. News reached them also from tribes closer to the shores of the Griffon Sea to the east. And, of course, there was their God-king and ruler, He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, He of the Five Hands, the Master of the Great Cats. But he was seldom around, and practically never in a chatty mood, so he didn’t really count as a news source.

The tribal ponies knew what tin cans looked like. They knew what umbrellas looked like. They’d taken a number of each off of explorers and tourists under various circumstances(206).

They didn’t know what descending space capsules looked like, and so they gaped skywards at what appeared to be a gigantic tin can under three umbrellas floating deceptively slowly to the ground, right onto the center of the village.

The ponies cleared the square as the can, as far as they could tell, fell from the heavens, striking the packed dirt of the village square with a hard thud. Latches clicked on the big metal thing, and the umbrella-things went flat and flopped onto the ground around it.

There were holy-rock symbols painted on the upper part of the ship- a bit burned, as if by a great flame, but still legible enough. Underneath was a smaller line of words in the tongue of civilization. Those few of the tribe who could read either read them.

Do not be afraid. The beings inside are ponies and will not hurt you.

The warriors gathered around, spears and bows in hoof, ready to strike. The high priest himself, Calendar Wheel, emerged from the village temple and walked up to view the giant can from the sky. He too read the words, in both languages.

The conical part at the top of the can opened. Queen Chrysalis, her helmet removed, stuck her head out and looked around the half-frightened, half-hostile crowd of ponies. From one of the glass circles in the side of the can, an all too familiar face peered out in dread.

Calendar Wheel shook his head. “Is it not as the ancients have said?” he asked. “Truly, you cannot believe everything you read.”

MISSIONS 13/14 REPORT

Mission summary: Transport three tourists to space and return them safely; conduct EVAs in orbit; photograph and study Equus from low and high orbit; complete decoupler test

Pilots: (13) Queen Chrysalis, (14) Cherry Berry

Flight duration: (13) 6 hrs. 17 min.; (14) 5 hrs. 31 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: First CSP EVAs, first time with multiple flights in progress simultaneously

Conclusions from flight: Everything was perfectly successful except our aim. All mission goals completed- time for a nice long vacation.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL, IF SOMEWHAT INACCURATE

Footnotes:

(206) To be fair, none of the Mexicolt tribes actually harmed their occasional Equestrian visitors, except for the occasional inconvenient hero or thief(207). As High Priest Calendar Wheel himself put it, “We give them a scare and a thrill, we take what we want, and we send them back. They tell the others what happens, and then the others want to see for themselves, and they come loaded down with more useful things. Civilization might be insane, but it’s a gift that keeps on giving.”

(207) The same word is used for both in the Mexicolt dialects.

Occupant sat at his desk, piled high with paperwork. Paperwork was hard, but it was satisfying. Reading words on paper, writing words on paper, made him feel important. He’d even made a point of never completing all the paperwork for a day, because something inside him said that a clean desk wasn’t an accomplishment; it was a sign that its owner couldn’t be trusted to do anything more. A pile of paper on a desk meant that ‘lings wanted and trusted the desk’s owner to do anything and everything.

It wasn’t a rational idea, but it made him happy, so he didn’t question it.

On this day Occupant was practically alone in the mission control building, and indeed the whole space center. With winter coming, even the mild winters of the Hayseed Swamps, there would be no rocket launches until springtime. Most (but not all) of the construction ponies were taking vacation for Winter Ramp-Up and Hearth’s Warming. Most of the changelings were taking out pocket money from the hive’s budget for their own tourist trips, enjoying a begrudging-tolerance the likes of which no changeling could remember. The Fun Machine, which normally required two minotaurs to clear of changelings and tourists long enough to do actual wind tunnel tests, was enjoying down time and overdue maintenance.

Even the leaders of the space program were absent. Chrysalis had been rescued from what indeed was Hobble Jimenez’s home village, along with her camera and its film, the night of the landing(208), after which she returned to the hive to catch up on backlogged royal duties(209). Three days later Cherry Berry, Jet Set and Upper Crust arrived in Canterlot after being rescued about a hundred miles south of Port Maresby and taking steamship and airship flights halfway around the globe to return home. Cherry Berry had gone straight to Ponyville(210) after that, sending word that she’d be staying there right through the holiday before spending New Year’s Eve with family in Dodge Junction.

So it was just Occupant, the guards, a small remaining crew of construction workers, tour guides, and maintenance workers, and Marked Knee, who claimed to be on the verge of breakthrough and refused to leave his work even though the other three minotaurs had taken ship for home days before.

Occupant didn’t mind. The mail, telegrams, and even new-fangled telephone messages continued to come in. He had his work, he had his importance, and he had his mail-order catalogs, complete with a substantial bonus from the queen herself. He was content…

… except for the pile of mission contracts on offer, which he was going through one by one. More than half of them were for aerial survey missions. A couple were for combination aerial survey and landing missions, which after the last couple of flights was laughable. Most of the remainder were contracts to test various pieces of rocket equipment, either their own or other experimental designs, under conditions so impossible that even Occupant recognized the fact without consulting any of the scientists.

The Changeling Space Program was currently without contracts. Although money had been coming in from various sources, they definitely didn’t have enough to just fly indefinitely. More money needed to come in for future flights, and none of the contracts on Occupant’s desk was in any way acceptable. Occupant foresaw major problems in the near future if he didn’t find something, anything, to change this.

There was one contract for two more tourists- a couple of Manehattan society ponies- but Occupant was holding that as a last resort. The first experience with space tourists had been exhausting enough; noling was ready for a second tourist flight so soon after the first. He’d have to be certain, absolutely certain, there was nothing else that would bring in money before he presented that contract to his queen.

The door to Occupant’s office slammed open. A cool autumn breeze, so unusual for normally-roasting-and-humid Horseton, blasted in and scattered papers off Occupant’s desk. “SUCCESS!!!” the creature who’d opened the door shouted. “It passes every test with flying colors!! At last the great work of the Minotaur Rocket Project is ready for flight!!”

Occupant tried to grab at papers while he looked at the figure in the door. “Doctor Knee, what are you talking about?” he asked.

“My Shotputnik!!” Marked Knee said enthusiastically, stepping inside the cluttered office and not bothering to shut the door behind him(211). “I have finally perfected a computer core capable of accepting commands from the surface and executing them in flight!! We can now fly a rocket without a pilot!! So many of our testing problems are now solved!!”

Occupant, having not many months before experienced supersonic flight without the benefit of a craft(212), didn’t see the advantage of this. “That’s nice, Dr. Knee,” he said noncommittally. “Could you close the door, please?”

“But don’t you see?!” Marked Knee asked, kicking the door shut behind him with one hoof. “With Shotputnik we can send up untested rockets without risking pilots!! We can learn whether or not a ship has the ability to return without potentially stranding people in space!!” Glancing around the floor, the tall minotaur snatched up a contract sheet and pressed it at Occupant’s face. “How else can we attempt a contract such as this one with our current rocket systems?”

Occupant pulled his head back far enough to look at the contract. It wasn’t an aerial survey. It wasn’t an equipment test. It was…

It was…

It was exactly the sort of thing Queen Chrysalis would love.

“Dr. Knee,” he said quietly, using his magic to take the contract from the minotaur’s hand, “I think we need to send a message to the queen and to Miss Berry. Right now.”

Footnotes:

(208) The Mission Thirteen spacecraft had to be left behind, as the tribal ponies insisted the “smoke chariot” be kept for their mysterious master to examine. It would turn up at the space center five weeks later, tied up in a giant Hearth's Warming ribbon and bow. Six months after that, Daring Do and the Captured Cosmonaut would make its hardcover debut on bookstore shelves throughout Equestria.

(209) And to give Elytron a tongue-lashing he would never forget. That was the single most important bit of royal duty, in fact.

(210) Three days early for the Running of the Leaves.

(211) Not that he’d shut the first two doors he’d opened behind him either, hence the cold breeze now blowing through most of the office portion of the mission control building.

(212) Or a parachute. Or a helmet. Or a safe landing zone.

Author's Note

First, if you haven't seen the artwork blog post yet, go do that.

http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/698009/commissioned-art-and-live-write-session

Wow. I should have known, but this really turned out to be a monster. I probably should have broken this up, but I wanted to get the tourists out of the way.

I actually attempted the tripod vertical-powered-landing ship in a sandbox run. It blew up good... and that's the ONLY thing it did good. VTOL on Kerbin without RCS thrusters is nearly impossible.

Mission 12, in game, was more about getting a little bit more science than anything else. Likewise, the real purpose of the EVAs in Missions 13 and 14 was to get science- you get different science for high orbit than for low orbit, and in low orbit you get fresh science depending on which biome you're passing over at the time- polar icecaps, grasslands, highlands, mountains, deserts, shores, and of course water. At the end I was completely contract-free and had enough science to get the tech that includes, most vitally, SOLAR PANELS. Since electricity is an expendable thing in KSP, solar panels are vital for anything that goes farther than Kerbin orbit or maybe a Mun flyby.

Getting Mission 14 down was very nearly a disaster. At one point the heat warning bars on the ship were almost totally maxed out, as the ship tried to wriggle any way except behind its heat shield. Fortunately they cooled very quickly once I corrected the ship's attitude, but it was far too close. By comparison Mission 13 was a cakewalk. I don't know why, except that I brought 14 down much steeper than usual, and after seeing how close things came I brought 13 in at a substantially shallower re-entry. That doesn't explain 14's twitchiness at high altitude, though; 13 and 14 are identical ships and ought to perform identically. They didn't. No idea why.

I freely lifted dialog from the original Jose Jimenez comedy bits for this chapter. Seriously, find ALL of them- "The Astronaut Parts 1 and 2," "Jose Jimenez in Space," and "Jose Jimenez: the Press Conference." Bill Dana's character is today regrettable in most respects, but as an astronaut he really shines. It's easy to see why the Mercury 7 loved the material and used it themselves during rough moments in the program.

Likewise, Jet Set and Upper Crust's bit of interview-in-space is mostly quotes from Dennis Tito, our world's first space tourist, who visited the ISS in 2001.

"Do not be afraid. The beings inside are ponies and will not hurt you." - This comes from an urban legend that, after the first couple of cosmonauts flew and landed, they insisted a message be painted on future Russian spacecraft to reassure the rural peasants that Martians weren't invading. For a funny take on this: http://satwcomic.com/space-attack

Hobble Jimenez is done with space. Jet Set and Upper Crust might, or might not, be seen again, but their main role in this story is also over. In this chapter I particularly wanted to show that Jet Set, although a Canterlot snob, is not a blind one; that Upper Crust is more thoughtless than actually condescending; and that all three of the tourists, Jimenez included, are smarter than they at first appear. I also wanted to give the non-Warner minotaurs a moment to show their own personalities... which meant I had to actually GIVE them some. They're still a bit flat, but at least they're more than shadows for their ever-confident leader.

I've put a few Chekhov's Guns in this story, but I may or may not fire all of them. That'll depend on what the game gives me to work with. We'll see how things go.

Next full chapter: Missions R1 and R2, with Princess Luna, Pinkie Pie, and a lot of literal back-seat rocket driving.

And remember, if you like this and want me to spend more time on bringing it out faster, Patreon me! http://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Chapter 11: Missions R1 and R2: Another Unplanned Ignition

You’re invited to a

Hearth’s Warming Feast

Hearth’s Warming Eve
after the pageant
Castle of Friendship, Ponyville

Music - Games – Presents
Everypony Welcome

Pinkie Pie almost, but not quite, lost herself in all the celebrations and planning leading up to Hearth’s Warming Eve.

Pinkie knew that most ponies thought of her as a crazy, simple-minded but sweet pony. She didn’t mind. After all, she knew she was sweet, and she’d be the first to admit she was a bit cray-cray in the neigh-neigh. But simple-minded? Nope. Pinkie looked simple because she focused her attention, as much as she could manage to do so, on the simplest possible things- things like baking and parties and making friends with absolutely everypony.

But how could she explain just how marvelously, miraculously complicated those simple things could be? How could she describe to even her closest friends how she could practically see the connections between every pony in Ponyville? How could she explain how all the bits of a perfect party kept dancing around in her head, rearranging themselves, with every breath she took? And how could she even begin to talk about how she figured things out without realizing it, just because some part of her mind had worked it out carefully step by step while she was engrossed in hanging up streamers or spreading frosting on a cupcake?

When she’d been a little filly on the rock farm everything had been simple, because there wasn’t anything except the farm, her parents, her sisters, and Granny Pie. Then the big rainbow had come and literally blown her mind, and the more she saw of the world, the bigger the explosions in her own head became. Her idle brain was the grandest fireworks show imaginable, and only she could actually imagine it.

And if that hadn’t been enough, there was also her Pinkie Sense, transforming things she couldn’t explain into twitches and wobbles and buzzes and spasms in her body.

Pinkie’s problem wasn’t that she had a short attention span. It’s that she experienced a lot more of the world than the five senses known to normal ponies could convey. Most of that began and ended in her head (or tail, or mane, or knees, or eyelids, or whichever Pinkie Sense was going off). There was so very, very, very much going on, and any or all of it might be important, so it took a lot of exhausting, focused concentration to shut it all out and keep track of only one thing.

But she’d had a lot of practice at doing that, and as the first snows were delivered from Cloudsdale she threw her mind completely into Hearth’s Warming planning and, simultaneously, making sure that nopony in Ponyville with a birthday too close to Hearth’s Warming missed out on their very own birthday party.

She very, very nearly shut out that one little inner voice among the cacophony of her skull that kept whispering: Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

Bits and pieces of her mind argued back and forth with that one little voice, bits and pieces that weren’t involved in choosing which party crackers to stock for whose birthday, whether to have figgy pudding or pumpkin pie for the Hearth’s Warming feast at Sugarcube Corner, and looking both ways before crossing the street. Slowly, over the course of days, fragments of subconscious mental dialogue accreted into something coherent, more or less like this:

I abandoned my friends.

What else could you do? We can’t go back there again.

I wasn’t there when Rainbow Dash needed me most.

We saw our friend falling to her death and we couldn’t do anything about it. We felt the twitchy-tail and the doozie at the same time and it wouldn’t stop and we knew, we KNEW Dashie was-

We knew and we RAN.

Dashie said it was all right. We’ve done lots of stuff together since then! And Twilight said we don’t have to work on the space project if we don’t want to.

It shouldn’t even be a question. We-

Wait a minute. This is me talking to myself, right? So shouldn’t it be I instead of we?

I don’t know. Talking to myself is so confusing!

And then, a week and a half before Hearth’s Warming itself, Pinkie Pie found herself out of things to occupy her mind. Both the day’s parties had been partied. Button Mash’s favorite video game had been repaired and upgraded. All the Hearth’s Warming presents were wrapped, the tree decorated, the halls decked, and one particular hall un-decked. (Mr. Cake didn’t care that the deck was cedar with galvanized nails, he wanted his hallway back.)

And all the accumulated bits and pieces of fear, guilt and rationalization slammed down on her mind at once, leaving her frozen in place, staring at the inside of her head.

I ran away from my friends.

But I couldn’t DO anything! It was all going wrong and I couldn’t help at all!

Then DO something to help!

And suddenly, like a shaft of sunlight in Celestia’s dawn, that one brilliant idea cleared away the fog inside Pinkie Pie’s mind. Yeah, she thought. I’ll do something big! Not just cooking space meals- I’ll do something that’ll make sure nopony is ever in the kind of danger Rainbow Dash faced ever again!

The little inner voice stopped repeating its one-word mantra and replied instead, That’s the way! Make it up to them!

Only one thing, little inner voice...

What is it, Big Rest of My Mind?

How do I do that?

Don’t ask me. I just do guilt trips. I’ll have to figure it out for myself.

Don’t you mean that… wow, you’re right, this IS confusing!

Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.

Hi there! Who am I, New Inner Voice?

I’m just some subdivision of my subconscious mind. I’ll just sit back observing things until something passes by that gives me the idea, and then I’ll tap me on the shoulder and let me know what it is. So you just go back to what you were doing, me.

Wow! Thanks, me!

That settled, Pinkie Pie went to bake some cupcakes, on the principle that you can never have too many cupcakes. She didn’t have a plan yet, much less The Plan, but she knew that The Plan was coming, and that it would make everything all right… so long as she didn’t rush it.

Bad things happened when she rushed plans.

The honor of your presence is requested at the Hearth’s Warming Gala
Boilerplate Hall, Canterlot
Hearth’s Warming Eve, 7:30 PM until midnight

With music by the Royal Canterlot Chamber Quartet
fine wines and hors d’oeuvres provided by Fancy Pants

Formal attire requested

Please RSVP your regrets or your acceptance plus one guest

For the nineteenth time that day, Chrysalis wished for three or four Occupants(213) to help her with the paperwork.

One of the advantages of secrecy had been a relative lack of paperwork. All reports were given orally, in person, at an infrequent rate. Paperwork involving her own cover identities in the outside world took all of about five minutes per mail delivery- possibly an hour if there was a legal contract involved. Infiltrator drones were strongly discouraged from creating paper trails unless their cover identity was both permanent and strong. Even in those cases, they were expected not to bother the queen with it.

What a difference a year of publicity made. About a quarter of her infiltrators now worked in the open, and they all created paperwork- requests for birth certificates(214), credit checks, loan guarantees, criminal background checks(215), employment and rental references(216)… it went on and on. In addition, criminal and civil complaints about her subjects who kept up the old tactics while out in the open kept rolling in. That meant reading through warrants and depositions and deciding whether or not the changeling in question was worth bailing out.(217)

But this pile of paperwork was a mere life raft compared to the grand three-masted schooner which was the hive’s diplomatic and public relations paperwork. Celestia sent at least one letter to the hive every day, and Chrysalis’ delegate to the ongoing negotiations for peace and amnesty between ponies and changelings sent two or three. Lesser pony officials made their own daily contributions to the pile. There were diplomatic insults, compliments(218), requests for anything from missing-persons information to extradition to cultural exchanges to personal appearances, and so on and so forth. And then, on top of that, was the inevitable daily-or-more press release.

The once-per-week mail delivery was a thing of the past. The changeling hive now had its own postal bureau, with its own stamps(219). (That had taken a ton of paperwork to set up, including reciprocity agreements with the Equestrian Post.) Each day two teams of two changelings each hauled mail by air cart between Appleoosa and the Badlands. Based on their complaints of aching wings, before long it would be four teams.

Much of this paperwork got forwarded to Horseton Space Center, but not all, and what didn’t get forwarded piled up. Furthermore, after Elytron’s attempt at showing initiative, Chrysalis didn’t dare delegate any of the backlog to anyone else.

So Chrysalis buckled down to work, as much as she resented being forced to do it. While Cherry Berry, the rocket boffins, and indeed most of her own subjects were enjoying a winter solstice holiday, she found herself trying to write coherent responses to letters while paying attention to whatever drone was giving its after-action report after one mission or another(220). Only her queenly superiority enabled her to perform such an exacting mental task.

“My queen?”

“Oh, are you done? Right, then please convey Our regrets to Baronne Social Climber, and use the Sandwich Slices cover identity to pay the fine for petty theft but not the one for public relations coup, but my schedule is full at Fillydelphia.”

“Er…” The infiltrator shifted on her hooves. “My Queen, are you all right?”

“Of course I’m…” Chrysalis trailed off mid-rant as her brain caught up to her mouth. She looked at the scroll she’d been writing on, read the nonsense about an invitation to a high-class part-time grocery job in suburban Fillydelphia’s jail, and crumpled up the scroll in disgust. “Starting over,” she grumbled. “Did you get caught?”

“No, my Queen.”

“Did you blow your cover?”

“No, my Queen.”

“Did you bring back concentrated love for the reserves?”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“Fine. Good job. Store the love and go get some more. Next!”

Chrysalis had just begun on a replacement response to the Canterlot society ball invitation, while carefully ignoring the boring report of the next infiltrator, when the throne room’s telepresence spell activated, popping up an image of Occupant. “My Queen! My Queen! Wait till you hear this!”

A bit of Chrysalis’s mane sprang up out of place(221). “What do you want?” she asked the image projected on the throne room wall.

“It’s great news!” Occupant insisted. “We’ve just got this great new contract that-“

“Will it wait until after the new year?” Chrysalis asked, with a strong tone of it had better hiding behind her words like a disgruntled yak hiding behind a broom.

“Well, it could,” Occupant admitted, “but it doesn’t have to! You see-“

“Tell me,” Chrysalis asked, “do you have a calendar on the wall in your office?”

“Yes, my queen. It’s the one with the adorable kittens speaking broken Equestrian.” Occupant’s image gave the queen a confused look. “Is that important?”

“What page is it on?”

“The last page, my queen, you know that.”

“Yes. I do. I was wondering if you forgot.”

The menace in Chrysalis's voice, no longer even bothering with a pretense of hiding, would have warned an average changeling to back off. Occupant, unfortunately for him, was in the grips of his enthusiasm, and he missed it completely. “No, my queen!” he said. “I have to keep track of what day it is very carefully, so I put the right date on all the paperwork, just like I did with this new-“

“So you are, in fact, aware,” Chrysalis interrupted icily, “that the space program is on vacation until after the new year, correct?”

“Yes, my queen, but that’s what-“

“And the space center is not currently burning down?” Chrysalis asked(222). “Nothing exploded? No tidal wave? No monster attack? No invasion of seaponies? Ground hasn’t opened up and swallowed the VAB, has it?”(223)

“Er… no.” Occupant hadn’t gotten the hint yet, but he'd almost figured out something might be wrong. “What has that got-“

“So everything is running just fine?”

“Yes, but-“

“THEN GET BACK TO YOUR WORK AND DON’T BOTHER ME UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!” Chrysalis roared, sending paperwork flying and servants scurrying for cover. “I am on vacation, which means I’m working too hard to be bothered with your brainstorms! Understand?”

“Yes’m!” Occupant gasped, saluting with one forehoof, then the other, then both at once, and finally cutting the connection.

“Honestly,” Chrysalis grumbled, levitating the paperwork back into its stacks, “whatever it is, it can wait until I get back.” She lifted up the letter she’d been writing and re-read it until she had her superior mind back on track.

By the time she finished writing her bread-and-butter note to Social Climber, she’d entirely forgotten about Occupant’s interruption.

Footnotes:

(213) A year before- one short, ephemeral year- if someling had told Chrysalis she would ever want more than one of the simple-minded mail-order addict, she would have ordered them cocooned until some smart pony invented a cure for deranged changelings.

(214) Prior to the space program the changeling hive had never bothered with birth certificates or any record of the sort. Chrysalis had fought like a tiger against them, and when she finally gave in she hired a pony to do them for her. In three months she’d gone through four ponies. The first had fled in terror after one day on the job. The second resigned after three weeks due to claustrophobia. The third had stumbled into the brood pit, thought the larvae absolutely adorable, and became the hive’s new preschool teacher. The fourth one had lasted forty days thus far. Chrysalis could just about tolerate her, except for her unfortunate bad habit of insisting on knowing the “sire” and “dam” for each and every certificate…

(215) Chrysalis at least had a form letter for this one: “The changeling drone (insert name here) has never, in a lifetime of faithful service to the hive, been caught breaking the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom of Equestria or any municipality therein, save for incidents covered under the laws of war.” It seemed to work; at least, no pony had ever sent a follow-up inquiry.

(216) Chrysalis couldn’t decide which was more stupid; the changeling who listed her name as a character reference, or the pony who followed up on it, read Chrysalis’s response, and then hired the changeling anyway.

(217) One particular drone fell firmly in the “not” category. Parasol was an excellent infiltrator, mimic and harvester… and also a clinical kleptomaniac. She stole things without realizing she’d even picked them up- never big or important things, but small things that appeared, for the moment, to be abandoned or unwanted. This habit eventually blew her cover sky-high. After four trips through the justice system and dozens of complaints, it became standard Trottingham police procedure, any time some item worth less than five hundred bits went missing, to find Parasol and shake her until it (inevitably) fell out. Some wit at the local jail had hung a sign from one barred window reading RESERVED FOR PARASOL- which wasn’t far from the truth, since she spent a week in, then two to three days out, then a week back in. Two parts of this arrangement confirmed Chrysalis in her belief that all ponies were either hopelessly naive or outright insane: first, that Parasol was still allowed to live in Trottingham; second, that Parasol seemed to be harvesting more love inside the jail than out of it.

(218) The best diplomats, of course, write in sentences that work both ways.

(219) Occupant technically headed the changeling post office, and it was his idea to issue more than one kind of stamp. The newly-drafted hive flag was the default letter-mail stamp design, but Occupant also sold a larger denomination stamp with Chrysalis’s likeness, a limited edition stamp for every achievement the Changeling Space Program did first, and a slightly less limited but still collectible series of stamps featuring the sun, moon, and various planets of Equus’s solar system. Chrysalis had withheld release of the Battle of the Canterlot Wedding stamp; she wanted to save it for whatever moment it would annoy Celestia the most.

(220) For those wondering why Chrysalis didn’t demand written reports instead of spoken ones, bear in mind two details. First, the changeling education system is limited and tightly focused on matters of survival. Second, there is a word for written records of actions which range from the clandestine to the outright felonious: “evidence.”

(221) Chrysalis, taking pride in her appearance, worked hard to ensure that her mane had the perfect greasy coating to cling together like Velcro and hang heavier than steeple-bell ropes. Having a bit of her hair stand up at this particular moment was not a mere indication of stress; it was a significant violation of the laws of physics.

(222) Because, no matter how much you want someone to ring off, it pays to be certain about such things.

(223) It pays to be especially certain where changelings are concerned.

Y’ALL COME
Appleoosa’s 3rd Annual
HEARTH’S WARMING HOOTENANNY

Music! Dancing! Games! Gifts!

EVERYPONY WELCOME
(even changelings, but no funny business)

Occupant and Marked Knee stood in the throne room of the space center’s administration building, staring up at the magically-projected image of an empty office.

“How long can it take to find one old griffon?” Occupant asked.

“Dr. Goddard is surprisingly spry for his age!!” Marked Knee noted. “Possibly he is spreading his wings above Appleoosa as we speak!!”

Before Occupant could express his doubts, a faint voice came out of the projection, faintly at first but rapidly growing in volume. “… and one more thing, you tell those idiots, fifty percent, you got it? Not one bit more than fifty percent! The clamps aren’t built to hold the thing at any higher setting! Got it? Good, go tell them that!” The owner of the voice, Goddard himself, stepped into sight of the spell and glared back at the two in the administration room. “What?” he asked without the least hint of cordiality.

“Dr. Goddard!!” Marked Knee bellowed. “I trust you are having a good time in Appleoosa??”

“Oh yes, loads,” Goddard snarled, slathering every word with sarcasm. “Just me and a bunch of know-nothings who keep blowing up my experiments every time I turn my back. Which makes it even MORE fun to be interrupted in the middle of a test on a heavy-lift rocket motor. Three miles out of town, because the ponies here, NOT being idiots, don’t want a live rocket test right next to their precious clock tower!”

“Good to hear!!” Marked Knee said. “We’re having fun as well!! In fact, we want you to come back to-“

“Come back??” Goddard snapped. “What for, some stupid Hearth’s Warming party? I could attend one of those here if I wanted!” The old griffon threw his talons in the air and shouted, “For this you drag me away from vital work for the space program, leaving an experiment in progress in the claws of some of the most-“

A dull rumbling sound echoed over the magical projection, causing Goddard to stop in mid-rant. A moment later the rumble became a loud explosion. “They went to full throttle!” he gasped. “Those idiots went to full throttle! Wait until I get my claws on them!”

“Er, Dr. Goddard,” Occupant said meekly, “we’re sorry about your test, but-“

“You!” Goddard roared. “You idiots just go do whatever you want, but by Godfrey’s golden tea-tray, LEAVE ME ALONE!”

The connection to Appleoosa went.

“I believe we caught the good doctor at a bad time!!” Marked Knee said.

“He wouldn’t even hear us out,” Occupant noted.

“Perhaps we should call him back in an hour or two!!”

“Er… no,” Occupant said, “I think that would be a very bad idea.”

EQUESTRIAN UNION TELEGRAM

From: Horseton Space Center (HAY-CSP)
To: Cherry Berry c/o Golden Harvest (EVR-PVL)

BREAKTHRU IN ROCKET TECHNOLOGY STOP OPPORTUNITY FOR MAJOR ADVANCE STOP REQUEST YOU RETURN HSC AT ONCE
SGN OCCUPANT EOM

EQUESTRIAN UNION TELEGRAM

From: Cherry Berry (EVR-PVL)
To: Horseton Space Center (HAY-CSP)

OPEN DICTIONARY READ DEFINITION VACATION STOP SEE YOU THREE WEEKS AFTER NEW YEAR AND NOT BEFORE STOP HAPPY HEARTHSWARMING

SGN CHERRY BERRY EOM

Marked Knee took the telegram printout from Occupant, who lay half-sprawled across a dining table in the astronaut quarters. “This is disappointing,” the minotaur said in an uncommonly subdued tone.

“Any hope of a message to your friends?” Occupant asked without much hope.

“They’ll still be on their ship at least another two days,” Marked Knee said. “Even if we sent a messenger by air it would be over a week before they could return.”

“It’s such a shame!” Occupant moaned. “We’ve got your remote control system-“

“Shotputnik,” Marked Knee corrected him.

“-and we’ve got enough rocket parts in stock to put a big rocket on the pad,” Occupant continued. “At least as big as Thirteen and Fourteen were. But noling wants to listen.”

“With a lighter payload, we should be able to fly past the moon,” Marked Knee sighed. “If only we could get either Miss Berry or your queen to sign off on it.”

“I could do it myself,” Occupant sighed. “I’d get into big trouble for doing it, but I sign everything around here anyway, so what’s one more thing? But I can’t fly it and run the launch both. I don’t think I could fly it, period.”

“I could probably put together the rocket,” Marked Knee murmured uncertainly, “but I’d need to watch the readouts and tracking to test the system. I couldn’t either fly the rocket or oversee the launch.”

“So we need a pilot,” Occupant groaned. “We also need permission, but we don’t have that either, and if we had that we’d also have a pilot.”

“A knotty situation!!” Marked Knee agreed, a bit of his gusto returning. “Will the contract wait until springtime??”

“Possibly, but that’s not the problem,” Occupant said. “This is a Royal Astronomical Society contract. If we accept the contract, they’ll make a public announcement, and we’ll be committed, and we’ll look bad if we wait to the deadline to launch. If we wait, some other program might pick it up just to say they tried.”

“What other program- pardon me!!” Marked Knee’s attention switched to the pair of changelings who had just entered the room, levitating together a large black cabinet with a rose-colored pony painted on the side. “Where are you going with that??”

“And what is it?” Occupant asked, lifting his head from the table.

“It’s a video game,” one of the changelings said. “There are a couple of others in the recreation room.”

“This one’s been out a couple years,” the other changeling said. “I was an infiltrator when it first came out, not long before the invasion. A lot of ponies were talking about Pink Mare. They said it was the hottest thing since Saltlick.”(224) The changeling shrugged and added, “I never saw the appeal, myself.”

Marked Knee snorted. “Video games,” he rumbled contemptuously. “A waste!! A travesty of the potential of electronics!! No, not even electronics- it uses a magic array!! Only the logic structure is the same!!”

“Logic schmogic,” the first changeling porter said indifferently. “All I know is, Dragonfly bought it and asked us to bring it in here and plug it in.”

“Dragonfly??” Marked Knee asked, jumping to his hooves.

“Yeah, she’s the only one who plays these,” the other changeling said. “She owns two of the other three games in the rec room- Changeling Invaders and Gorgge.”

“She doesn’t own that Saltlick cabinet?” the first changeling asked.

“Nah. Carapace bought that one for the tourists. And of course they never touched it.”

“Figures. Well, let’s get this plugged in.”

“Wait!!” Marked Knee bounded over to the porters. “I meant to ask, where is Dragonfly??”

“She said she was going to Manehattan,” Occupant said.

“Well, she’s back,” the first changeling porter said. “Told us she was looking for you.”

“Now do you mind, guys?” the second changeling asked. “This ain’t a rocket, but it’s not light, either.”

“Sorry,” Occupant shrugged, waving the workers on.

“This is excellent news!!” Marked Knee cheered.

“How’s that?” Occupant asked, not having really paid much attention to the conversation.

“We have a pilot!!” Marked Knee cheered again(225).

“Oh,” Occupant said. “Do you mean Dragonfly.”

“Yes!! The pilot is Dragonfly!!”

“Whose enthusiasm for flying is tied to how dangerous it is,” Occupant explained.

“So??” Marked Knee’s grin threatened to decapitate him. “She’ll be flying a ship with nobody in it!!”

Occupant’s eyes widened as his dark clouds rolled away and the brilliant light shone through. “She’ll be flying a ship with nobody in it!” he repeated, the enthusiasm building in his voice as his ears heard each word he was saying.

“Yes!!”

“I can sign the papers!”

“I can build the rocket!!”

“And she can fly it!”

“We have a mission!!”

“We have a mission!!!”

Dragonfly walked in on a changeling and a minotaur doing a celebration dance around the dining table(226). “Hey, guys,” she said casually. “Am I interrupting something? Because I want to talk to you about getting an orbital mission when we start up in the spring.” She looked at the two of them frozen in mid-dance and added, “But that could wait until you’re sane.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to wait that long,” Occupant said.

“Good,” Dragonfly said. “If I had to wait that long-“

“No!!” Marked Knee bellowed. “We mean you don’t have to wait until spring!”

Dragonfly blinked, then looked from Marked Knee to Occupant and back. “You two really are crazy,” she said.

“So what if we are?” Occupant asked.

Dragonfly considered, and answered, “If it gets me a flight, sign me up for a padded paddock. What’s the deal?”

Footnotes:

(224) The writer is not responsible for this one. A Saltlick arcade cabinet appears in “Hearts and Hooves Day” and “Slice of Life.” Your guess as to how a video game about a saltlick would work is as good as anyone else’s, especially the writer’s. If it wasn’t for how it was being used in “Slice of Life”, the writer would guess it was a pony version of “Tapper”.

(225) Oblivious that his statement was blatantly obvious and, also, that his audience was in turn oblivious to the fact being stated. This is as close as minotaurs ever come to Zen.

(226) For the historical record, it was the Hustle.

GET YOUR PHOTO WITH SANTA HOOVES

General Disarray’s General Store
On the Square in Horseton

Raffle to win
BRAND NEW RIVER FORD EXTENDED CAB HAYCART (1007 model year)

2 Second Prizes – a case of Genuine McIlwhinny’s Tabasco Sauce
10 Third Prizes – certificate for a free ride in HSC’s Fun Machine wind tunnel

Proceeds benefit First Solarist Church(227) Rebuilding Fund(228)

Drawing held at the Winter Ramp-Up Festival
The Saturday before Hearth’s Warming
On the grounds at Horseton Space Center

Marked Knee and Lucky Cricket walked through the main storage area of the Vehicle Assembly Building, looking over the various rocket components being stored in preparation for future launches. “We’ve got plenty of goo canisters,” Lucky Cricket said, pointing to a rack with half a dozen of the components in question sitting on it. “And we’ve also got a couple of Science Jr. units from the ESA. And we can get thermometers and barometers off the shelf in Baltimare.”

“Excellent!!” Marked Knee said, waving the clipboard he held in one immense hand. “With this being the first object made on Equus to fly past the Moon, it’s urgent that we place as many experiments on it as possible!! We must make the most of this opportunity!!”

Lucky Cricket looked at the minotaur scientist. “How much do you think the rocket can hold?”

“We’ll find a way!!” Marked Knee insisted. “After all, we only need to launch the probe to the moon!! Bringing it back is not necessary!!” He thumped his clipboard with his free hand and added, “I’m quite certain that the rocket stack we used for Mission Thirteen will be quite adequate!”

“Thirteen?” Lucky Cricket asked. “We used up all our Thumper booster rockets on Thirteen and Fourteen. So far Appleoosa’s only shipped us two replacements.”

“Two will be more than sufficient!” Marked Knee cheered. “After all, even with all the experiments, the probe will be much lighter than the crew compartments of Mission Thirteen!”

“If you say so,” Lucky Cricket said. “You’re the one who does the math.”

“In any case,” Marked Knee pressed on, “we can lose one booster assembly without any great difficulty!! So long as we have the rest of the components for the Mission Thirteen stack!!”

“Well… we don’t,” Lucky admitted. “We’re out of tailfins.”

“Tailfins??”

Lucky Cricket gestured to an empty spot against one wall of the crowded storage room. “The Queen cut some sort of deal with Jet Set’s company,” Lucky said. “We’re supposed to get a new kind of tailfin that rotates to steer the ship. But we were ordered to sell off the remaining old fins, and we did.”

“No fins,” Marked Knee rumbled absently. “Well… yes, I’m sure they’re superfluous!! The Shotputnik’s controls are more than capable of compensating!!”

Lucky Cricket nodded, giving the matter no further thought. After all, Marked Knee was one of the rocket scientists. He knew things ordinary drones like himself didn’t. If he said it was okay, then it was okay.

The capsule hatch opened to let Dragonfly out. “Wow,” she hissed, “that rocket is a lot more unstable than I remember it!”

“Sorry!!” Marked Knee shouted contritely. “I’m afraid Shotputnik isn’t yet advanced enough to handle both user input and SAS tasks!!”

“No problem,” Dragonfly grinned. “It’s a challenge. I love challenges. And this is like the biggest, best video game I’ve ever seen, you know?”

“It’s a little big to fit in a cabinet,” Occupant replied, rubbing his forehead with one hole-riddled hoof. He and Marked Knee were stretched to the limits running the simulator for Dragonfly. In fact, Occupant was performing not just his own duties but Warner von Brawn’s as well, since Marked Knee was too busy assessing Shotputnik’s performance in the sims to operate the simulation computer himself.

Something nagged at the back of Occupant’s mind. He wasn’t a very bright changeling, and he knew it. He knew he was missing something. He was probably missing a LOT of things. He juggled mission planning, simulation operations, launch planning, and communications with the wider world, and he couldn’t keep track of any of it. It was too much for an ordinary changeling, which meant (he admitted to himself) it was far, far too much for him.

But he couldn’t think of what, precisely, he’d overlooked. It wasn’t his job, but… well, it kind of was his job, in a way. He was, after all, responsible for everything going on at the space center while the queen and Miss Berry were gone. He’d signed the bottom of a lot of forms to make this all happen. If something went wrong, he would take the blame…

… and he knew, deep in his shell, that something was going wrong, but he just could not figure out what.

Maybe it was nothing. After all, Dr. Knee had no misgivings about the matter. If anything was wrong, he’d pick up on it in the simulations. That was what simulations were for- to catch mistakes and work them out before the actual launch, right? And anyway, Occupant was only a drone barely qualified to stand at a door and tell curious ponies to go away.

Yes, that was it. He must be wrong. And come the day of the launch, everything would go well and new contracts would come rolling in.

This was fine.

“Okay, I think I’m ready for another run,” Dragonfly said. “Are all the switches reset?”

“Oh, right!” Occupant said. “I’ll have that done in just a few minutes!” Without another thought to whatever was bothering him, he jumped down to the capsule and climbed in. It was the only time he ever boarded a capsule- to reset all the switches to launch position. He knew what they all did, even if he’d never use them himself.

He knew what everything did, especially the science equipment. He’d had to learn. His job required it, and so he worked hard, read everything, and learned things until his head hurt, which didn’t take long.

As he crawled onto the pilot’s bench, he heard the reaction wheels spinning. It took a moment for him to find the switch to deactivate them. No point in burning electric charge between simulations, of course.

Plastron looked at the final assembly instructions for the Shotputnik launch, or as it said at the top of the form, Mission R1.(229) “Hey, Lucky,” he called out, “this can’t be right.”

“What can’t be right?” Lucky Cricket asked, fluttering down from the already growing rocket stack. After a single glance at the instructions, he said, “Looks the way the brain-bull wrote it down to me.”

“Where’s the heat shield?” Plastron asked. “Where’s the parachute? When this thing comes back it’s going to shatter into a million pieces!”

“Dr. Knee didn’t put any on here,” Lucky Cricket said. “And noling’s riding in it, so I guess it doesn’t need to land in one piece.”

“C’mon, Lucky,” Plastron said, “you know how grumpy the queen gets about how much gear we throw away on each flight. When she finds out we’re getting nothing back-“

“But Dr. Knee’s instructions-“

“So ask him!” Plastron insisted.

“He’s busy giving final instructions to the radio relay teams,” Lucky Cricket replied. “They have to leave now in order to get to their places on time. And then there’s all the final prep work and assembly and, well, there just isn’t time, Plas.”

“Lucky,” Plastron replied, “the queen. The very angry queen!”

“All right, all right,” Lucky shrugged. “So we’ll put a heat shield on it. It won’t hurt anything, I’m sure.”

“Heat shield’s no good without a parachute, Lucky.”

Lucky groaned and pointed a hoof at the spherical Shotputnik, which sat in a corner of the main VAB chamber plugged into a wall socket. “Look at it, Plas,” Lucky said. “The M16 won’t fit on that stupid sphere. I checked- it just won’t attach.”

“What about one of the lateral parachutes?” Plastron asked. “They’re made to be mounted on curved surfaces.”

Lucky Cricket stared at Shotputnik for several seconds, considering this proposal. “It’ll look lopsided as heck,” he said. “That bothers the bulls for some reason.”

“But it’ll work,” Plastron said. “And so long as we get the machine back, who cares how it looks?”

Lucky Cricket shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “We can spare the part. Besides, what can it hurt?”

Footnotes:

(227) The Solarist Church is a religion founded in the century immediately after the banishment of Nightmare Moon, popular in rural and agricultural communities throughout Equestria. Its adherents revere and worship Princess Celestia as the daughter of the Creator (and treat Luna as a Satanic figure, recently redeemed by grace). The foundation of their religion is a book of scriptures, parables and moral guidelines was written by Celestia Herself (or so they claim) and therefore is the infallible, unchanging word of God. They ignore the fact that Celestia lower-case-h herself personally writes in the front of each copy of the book she comes across, “This is a work of fiction.” Although the church is a generally harmless way of strengthening community ties, there are exceptions. Celestia deals with the less tolerant and friendly church elders by summoning them to Canterlot to live in the palace with her for a month, which is usually enough to sweep away even the most persistent illusions of godhood.

(228) A disputed and apocryphal verse in the Book of Tally says, “And by these signs shall you know the chosen of Celestia; that they shall speak in tongues, that they shall heal the sick, and that neither flame nor poison nor snake venom shall harm them.” Based on what happened to the previous First Solarist Church of Horseton building, empirical evidence suggests at least one of these claims to be false.

(229) Marked Knee, when he found out the R was for “robot”, was appalled and offended that his masterwork was being compared to a creation for children’s stories. Occupant persuaded him that the mission number was on all the paperwork (because he’d put it there), and changing it now would just cause confusion.

CANTERLOT HERALD

EXTRA – SPECIAL EDITION – EXTRA

CHANGELINGS LAUNCHING ROBOT TO MOON
Lunar Fly-By to Test New “Shotputnik” Unmared Probe
Launch Scheduled During Horseton Hearth’s Warming Festival
“No Comment” Says Princess Luna

Pinkie Pie was delivering fresh cinnamon rolls to the pegasi delivering the first winter’s snow to Ponyville when Cherry Berry nearly ran her over in the street. “Whoa!” she said, deftly catching several flying rolls with the box and snagging the last one with her tail just before it could hit the muddy street. “Hi, Cherry Berry! What’s the rush?”

“Excuse me, Pinkie! No time to talk!” Cherry Berry paused only a second to make sure her fellow pink earth pony was unhurt before she galloped off. “I have to send a telegram right now!!”

“Anything I can do to help?” Pinkie called after the running pony.

“Tell the weather team to hold off on the snow!” Cherry shouted back. “I need the field clear for takeoff!”

Pinkie shook her head. Cherry Berry must be really upset- otherwise she’d remember that Sweet Apple Acres and all the other farmland south of town had been the first target for the snow teams. Nothing short of a snowplow was going to get a field clear now.

Something rustled at her hooves. “CHERRY, YOU DROPPED YOUR NEWSPAPER!” Pinkie shouted, but the pilot pony had already turned a corner and dashed out of sight. Shrugging, she slid the box of rolls onto her head, ate the one she’d caught with her tail, and browsed the newspaper headlines.

The doozie her Pinkie Sense dropped on her a moment later quite ruined the remaining rolls, dumping them on the ground. Pinkie didn’t notice. Her eyes remained glued to the lead article, particularly one paragraph:

Shotputnik, developed by the Minotaur Rocket Project team and its lead electronics expert Marked Knee, translates input from the ground into control of a spaceship via the use of radio waves, allowing the ship to fly without anypony inside. This action at a distance, insists Dr. Knee, is not spooky in any way whatever.

Hi, me! she thought. This is me! Remember?

Of course I remember! I said I was going to be thinking of something, right?

Yep-a-roonie! And I just thought of something! I just thought that this might be exactly the sort of thing I can do to help Twilight and Dashie!

You know, me, I was thinking the exact same thing!

Of course I was! I should get to Horseton as soon as possible!

I betcha!

But first I should go bake more cinnamon rolls for the weather team!

Oops. Yeah, I should do that. Thanks, me!

I’m welcome, me!

Pinkie Pie dropped the newspaper and dashed back to Sugarcube Corner, full of purpose and eighty-seven point five percent empty of cinnamon rolls.

Chrysalis slumped back into her throne as the lawyer and accountant(230) left the throne room, orders in hoof and claw. As yet the Changeling Space Program, despite operating (barely) within the borders of Equestria and accepting payments from Equestrian organizations, paid no taxes(231) to the Equestrian crown. Negotiations for a final peace treaty between the changeling hive and Equestria proceeded with the blistering speed of a molasses-coated glacier, but Chrysalis expected that in the end a lot of back taxes would be due, and she wanted to prepare for that day.

It had taken two hours to persuade both the lawyer and the accountant to actively avoid all means of reducing the final tax bill when it came. Chrysalis wanted to leave Celestia absolutely no excuse to crack down on the hive, not even tax evasion(232). The professionals had strongly objected on the grounds that reducing tax bills was their job and that deliberately failing to do so, in their eyes, constituted malpractice. It had taken a bit of blackmail, a bit of persuasion, and a healthy dose of What Am I Paying You For The Customer is Always Right to bring them around.

With their departure Chrysalis allowed herself a sigh of relief. The infiltrator reports had been triaged, with the most important or interesting reviewed and the rest given a cursory rubber-stamp response. The bushel baskets of paperwork and correspondence had been reduced to a single small-ish bucket. The work wasn’t finished, but the end was finally in sight. With a bit of luck, she might even get away for some of the Hearth’s Warming celebrations in Manehattan.

Just as the thought of tempting ponies into a night of delicious debauchery entered her mind, it got shoved right back out again by the appearance of a changeling she’d come to dread over the past week. “What is it, Clickbug?” she asked glumly. “More mail?”

“Er, no, my queen,” Clickbug said. “A reporter from the Manehattan Times seeks an audience.”

Chrysalis’s tiny, twisted heart sank. Dealing with the press meant a lot of double-talking and thinking two steps ahead of some truly weaselly minds. If you weren’t careful with each and every word, they’d print who-knew-what, making you look terrible in the process. And if you were truly inept, they might even print the truth, and that would be a disaster.(233)

But almost any blather was better than leaving a reporter to make something up from their assumptions. “All right,” she forced herself to say, “send her in.”

“Him, my queen,” Clickbug said, admitting a unicorn with a cheap but well-pressed suit. His nose, wrinkled in distaste as he passed by the unwashed gatekeeper, relaxed as he approached the throne.

“Good afternoon,” Chrysalis said. “And whose byline am I contributing to?”

“Brief Abstract,” the reporter said, “associate science editor with the Times. I came here to ask a few questions about tomorrow’s launch.”

If she hadn’t been warned that the visitor was a reporter, Chrysalis might have been incautious enough to blurt out, What launch? Forewarned, she kept up her cool, suave demeanor, despite the loud clanging warning bells ringing in her head. “You’re certainly welcome to ask,” she said. “But I should think the launch will speak more eloquently than any words.”

“Indeed so,” Abstract, said, levitating pencil and notepad with his magic and scribbling down the quote. “The first attempt to remotely control a spaceship? That definitely makes a statement. But there are some who suggest that it might be, shall we say, excessively ambitious.”

Chrysalis’s mind raced, scrambling for phrases which would say nothing while eliciting more drops of information from the reporter. “The moon is still up there,” she said. “It hasn’t gone away, and it’s not any easier to get to today than it was yesterday. What you call ambitious others might call long overdue. Can you blame a pony for not wishing to waste time?”

Pencil and notepad waggled in the reporter’s magic as he pressed on, “But going for it all in one shot? Attempting to send the very first robot space probe flying past the Moon itself? No suborbital or orbital test?”

“Why not prepare for the best case scenario?” Chrysalis replied. “If the rocket fails in atmosphere, or achieves orbit but is unable to go beyond, then another one can be sent up. But if the rocket succeeds at every step, why not be prepared to make the most of the success?” The words were spoken as lightly as she could manage, but she balanced each and every one of them before letting them go. In her head she raged: WHOSE launch? It surely can’t be ours… at least, it’s not supposed to be…

… it better not be…

“So you anticipate a fully successful flight tomorrow?”

“Only in that I approve of being prepared for success as much as being prepared for failure,” Chrysalis replied. “What I anticipate is a learning experience for everyone involved in space exploration, no matter the outcome of the launch.”

The scribbling paused to allow Brief Abstract to flip to the next page of his notebook. “But what if you learn that Shotputnik doesn’t work?”

What the buck is Shotputnik? “If the launch fails, we will learn at least one reason why Shotputnik didn’t work this time,” she corrected. “And the next launch will fix that, and possibly other things we discover. Eventually it will work- or else something better will be found. That is the nature of science- testing, improving, refining, and building from the experience of others.”

“So, you’re inviting other space programs to potentially gain from your failure tomorrow?”

Bingo.

We are apparently launching something called Shotputnik tomorrow. It’s a remote control rocket, and it’s going to attempt to reach the Moon.

And noling told me about this until now.

Heads. Will. Roll.

“I am inviting the world to see what the ingenuity of the Changeling Space Program can dream of,” Chrysalis replied. “We have had successes and failures before, and we don’t fear them. And if any other agency thinks it can surpass our development of unmared space probes(234), they are certainly welcome to launch their own- if they can!”

The scribbling accelerated. “Spiffing stuff!” Brief Abstract said. “Now if you could just-“

“I’m afraid I have to cut this audience short,” Chrysalis said, adding a counterfeit sigh of regret. “I still have a few more bits of internal hive business to conclude before I depart for Horseton. Clickbug!”

Occupant’s subordinate stepped forward. “Yes, my queen?”

“Please see to it that Mr. Abstract is taken by chariot to Appleoosa at once. If at all possible get him there in time to catch the last train north. It is a long way back, after all.”

“Actually, I have a hired chariot waiting topside,” Brief Abstract said. “But thank you for the offer.”

“No, I insist,” Chrysalis said. “Your pilot will be tired from his trip here.”

“Her,” Clickbug interrupted.

“Her trip,” Chrysalis said. “And we want to make sure that your story appears in tomorrow’s edition, after all. See to it, Clickbug. Good evening, Mr. Abstract.”

Abstract attempted a couple of other questions, but Chrysalis picked up one of the few remaining items in the bucket of unfinished work to examine. Eventually the reporter, being a Canterlot native of good upbringing, took the hint and allowed himself to be escorted out.

“Guard?”

“Here, my queen!” one of the sentries said, fluttering up to the throne. Chrysalis couldn’t remember the name; there were so many changelings, and so few distinguishing characteristics between them.(235)

“You are to quietly and discreetly- you know the meaning of those words, right?”

The guard nodded.

“Quietly and discreetly prepare for my transfer back to Horseton,” Chrysalis continued. “As soon as that chariot gets back from dropping the snoop in Appleoosa, I want a fresh team of changelings ready to take me there. I want my travel kit packed and ready to load within the hour. Quietly and discreetly, do you understand?”

The guard nodded, leaned up close to Chrysalis’s ear, and whispered, “Quietly and discreetly, my queen!” This done, he bolted out of the throne room, wings buzzing like a chainsaw.

Chrysalis groaned, rubbed her head, and hoped the travel bottle of aspirin wasn’t empty.

Footnotes:

(230) A griffon and a pony respectively, both from Manehattan. Their personal visit to the changeling hive had cost the hive some ten thousand bits. Geneva the Griffon had handled the affairs of the fictional Gwyneth for years, but as yet had no idea that Gwyneth and Chrysalis were one and the same. Carried Interest was a more recent hire, looking to make her name in the business by taking on high-profile, even notorious, clients… and nopony was more notorious than changelings.

(231) Aside from sales taxes, which were included in the prices of everything the program bought.

(232) That is, until it was too late for Celestia to do anything, after which point any future tax bills could go hang. But Chrysalis had learned from hard experience not to mistake Too Soon for Too Late, so she prepared for a long wait.

(233) Although the author does not share Chrysalis’s dim view of journalism in general, it should be noted here that the author worked briefly as a small-town newspaper journalist. He lost interest once he realized two things: first, that he was too considerate of the privacy of others to report anything meaningful; and second, that a lot of the material written for small-town papers is paid for by the people being written about, and thus about as informative or accurate as the average photo in an online personal ad.

(234) Chrysalis remembered having read the phrase in one of the many documents Cherry Berry and the boffins had tossed in front of her at one point or another. She remembered practically nothing else about it, but at this moment, talking to this pony, she was grateful for whatever motivation- fear, anger, boredom- had made her actually open up the folder and read the contents, for a change.

(235) The changeling in question, Leafcutter, had been in the front lines during the invasion of Canterlot giving what he thought was sterling service protecting the queen’s person after the shield had come down. If he’d realized that the queen didn’t even remember his own name, he’d have been heartbroken, but the possibility never entered his mind. Thus, everyling remained in a happy state of mutual ignorance.

Twilight Sparkle fluttered her wings, backspilling just enough to allow her to settle down onto the gravel of Horseton Space Center’s aeroplane runway. Above her dozens of pegasi and even a couple of griffons and a dragon circled around the field, while over on a tower next to Cherry Berry’s hangar a changeling in a bright yellow vest and hard hat waved two hoof-lights to guide the traffic pattern overhead(236).

Only part of the crowd could be blamed on the next day’s launch. The large hay field between the space center buildings and the eastern edge of the property, which normally sat empty except for a handful of cows, was now mostly full of carnival, with brightly lit fun-fair rides, midway games of various kinds, and all manner of unhealthy deep-fried snacks(237). Horseton’s annual Hearth’s Warming Fair this year was the biggest and best any of the locals could recall, and the influx of tourists on what would have been the last evening only made it better(238).

And rushing up from the crowd of hay-carts and wagons near the livestock judging(239) tent came a changeling and a minotaur rushing to meet their highest ranking VIP.

“Welcome, Your Highness!” Occupant called out cheerfully, trotting up the bank of the elevated roadway to meet Twilight. The towering Marked Knee was barely a step behind him, his short legs bounding up the slope without effort. “Good to see you! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning!”

“I have to fly back to Ponyville immediately after the launch,” Twilight said. “Hearth’s Warming Eve is the day after tomorrow, so I have to be ready for all my princessly duties. But I just couldn’t stay away from this!” The purple princess bounced on her hooves, wings twitching strong enough to turn the bounce into a slow float back to earth. “The first flight of an automated rocket! Think of the possibilities! We could send science experiments to distant planets and retrieve the data without risking a pony’s life!”

“Oh, but there are greater possibilities!!”Marked Knee noted. “Since the control system relies on modulated electromagnetic radiation rather than a magic array, the system is much more economical than technomantic devices like the new television or,” and he paused for a moment to express his full disgust at the next two words, “video games!!” Recovering his normal happy enthusiasm, he continued, “The applications beyond spaceflight boggle the mind!! Imagine this tangle,” he waved at the confused crowd of flyers in the late afternoon sky, “organized with the same kind of wired headsets used in concerts and theater today! Except without wires! Ponies communicating at a distance without wires or magic! We could bring concerts into the home! We might even replace television with an entirely electronic-“

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Twilight said, waving down the minotaur before he could explode with enthusiasm(240). “But let’s stick with space flight for now. You’re testing something unprecedented in the history of ponykind.” She shuffled her hooves a bit before mustering up the courage to ask, “Can I see it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Occupant said. “The assembly crew already has it in the VAB. It’s not safe to go in there right now, either for you or for Shotputnik.”

“Oh,” said Twilight, her heart sinking. “I had been hoping…”

“Yeah, me too!” a giant walking pile of assorted carnival goodies said.

Alicorn, changeling and minotaur jumped, startled by the new voice. Twilight Sparkle recovered first- after all, she knew that voice very well. “Pinkie? What are you doing here? I thought you said you couldn’t set hoof in a space center again!”

“No,” Pinkie Pie said patiently, poking her head out between a foot-long haydog and a wad of blue cotton candy. “I said I couldn’t set hoof at Cape Friendship ever again.” She shuddered a little at the name, but continued, “But here I’m just fine.”

Twilight gave Pinkie a deep look right in the eyes. Usually that was about as revealing as trying to read a book that was in another room… of another house… with the lights out.(241) But this time, for once, Twilight thought she saw something different in Pinkie’s usually innocent, oblivious nature… as if she was being happy and cheerful about being near a space launch center through an effort of will, rather than naturally.

And then Marked Knee broke the moment. “But you haven’t answered the question!!” he said. “What are you doing here??”

“Spying,” Pinkie Pie said matter-of-factly. “Funnel cake?” One of the cakes in the massive pile of snacks rose slightly and waggled itself in the direction of the minotaur.

Shaking his head, Marked Knee asked, “What kind of espionage strategy is it, when the spy walks up to the people in charge, announces herself as a spy, and offers up a fried pastry??”

Pinkie Pie paused for a moment’s thought. “Bribery?” she suggested.

Loud smacking and chomping sounds interrupted Marked Knee’s response. Occupant had accepted a chocolate-drizzled funnel cake and was noshing on it most industriously. “Hey, it works,” he said.(242)

Marked Knee took a deep breath. Somehow he’d found himself put in the role of Only Sane Mare, a role for which he was multiply unsuited.(243) “Normally a spy doesn’t tell the people she’s spying on-“

A lavender hoof reached up(244) and stilled the minotaur’s lips. “You should probably just stop there,” Twilight Sparkle said. “You were about to use the word ‘normal’ in connection with Pinkie Pie. That never ends well.” She smiled a little sheepishly as she settled back to all fours, adding, “I speak from experience.”

A loud growl drew attention back to Pinkie Pie, who looked both red-faced and cheerful. “Whoops!” she said. “Swishy-tail, blushy-face, tummy-rumble! That means we’re about to get a visit from someone who’s really angry and needs some comfort food!”

Almost on cue the sound of a magic-powered motor rose above the hubbub of the tourists and the fun fair. High overhead, Cherry Berry’s biplane circled around for a landing approach.

“Wow!” Pinkie Pie chirped. “I guess she found a clear field after all! But she’s cutting it close- I don’t think she’s qualified for night flying!”

Marked Knee looked nervously at Occupant and saw the little changeling looking right back. Both knew that Cherry Berry, normally of a sweet and timid disposition, got downright vicious on matters related to flight. “Maybe we should stay out of her way for a while,” Occupant suggested.

“Who, Cherry?” Pinkie Pie asked. “She’s only annoyed. THAT,” she added, gesturing to the west end of the runway, “is the pony who’s really angry!”

And there, just visible against the setting sun, flew Chrysalis’s personal air chariot, coming in for a landing behind four tired but determined-looking changelings in full armor. The sole passenger, even without armor, looked more intent on mayhem than the warriors pulling the chariot.

Marked Knee and Occupant looked at one another again. They had, up to this point, carefully not discussed what would happen when Chrysalis and/or Cherry Berry learned about the launch. Marked Knee himself had hoped that neither would take notice until the flight was a completed success. Now that the moment had come, neither minotaur nor changeling wanted to be the one to face the imminent dressing-down (245).

And then the Princess of Friendship offered them a way out. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “With that many ponies in the landing pattern, I’d be annoyed too.” She smiled as she added, “Actually, this gives me an opportunity to discuss some important business with her! I was afraid it would have to wait until springtime, but…”

The rest of Twilight Sparkle’s sentence went unheard by Marked Knee and Occupant. For the third time in thirty seconds the two locked eyes and saw in each other’s face a single thought; so long as the princess is around, we’re safe from retribution. All we have to do is stick as close to Twilight Sparkle as possible, as long as possible.

Without a word, the instant Twilight turned to face the runway and the approaching chariot, Occupant and Marked Knee took one subtle step closer to, and behind, the alicorn.

Chrysalis stepped off the chariot, gave the cluster of people one glance, and raised one eyebrow to show that she understood precisely what was going on. “Good evening, Princess,” she said smoothly. “I trust my loyal, faithful, and obedient…” and here she stressed each adjective as leadenly as possible without descending into outright sarcasm, “…staff have made you welcome.”

“Oh, I just got here myself,” Twilight Sparkle assured her, oblivious to the less than subtle message. “I really wasn’t expecting to run into you, but since you’re here-“

“Oh, please!” Chrysalis smiled most cordially(246). “This is Hearth’s Warming, or so I’m told! I have left the operations of Horseton Space Center in the hooves of my competent,” she said with a snarl, “and loyal,” adding even more snarl, “subordinates.” She gestured one perforated hoof in their direction (causing Occupant to flinch) and added, “If you have business to discuss, speak with them, not me.”

“Well, I did have a request to make,” Twilight admitted, “but-“

“Well, there you are, then!” Chrysalis crowed. “Take it up with Occupant, who of course has assumed total responsibility for everything that happens tomorrow. I am completely uninvolved.” Chrysalis ceased displaying her fangs long enough to give an honest, chilling glare at both Occupant and Marked Knee in turn as she added, “Of course, once the mission is complete I will have quite a number of questions for them.”

“Um.” The naked threat flustered Twilight, but after a moment’s thought she obviously decided to ignore it. “Well, in that case-“

“Hiya!” That moment’s thought had been all the time necessary for Pinkie Pie to break into the conversation. From within the immense pile of unhealthy festival food in her hooves she managed to produce a smallish rectangular box. “Happy Hearth’s Warming! I knew you’d need this!” She waggled the box vaguely in Chrysalis’s direction.

Momentarily jostled out of her anger, the queen lifted the box with her magic and flipped up the lid. Inside lay a small custom chocolate cookie with dark chocolate chips. Written on it, in chocolate icing, was the message: World’s Evillest Tyrant!

Chrysalis’s face took on a complex and completely unreadable expression. “Thank you,” she said quietly, “I’ll enjoy it later.”(247)

“THERE YOU ARE!”

Cherry Berry, aeronaut helmet and goggles still on her head, galloped down the embankment towards the group. “What the BUCK were you THINKING?” she shrieked. “When I get my hooves on you I’ll-“

“Hiya, Cherry!” Pinkie called out, having almost instantly placed herself between the enraged earth pony and the others. “Want a snack? I’m pretty sure I’ve got a cherry fried pie here somewhere!”

“Pinkie??” Cherry Berry skidded to a stop from shock. “You were in Ponyville at noon today! I flew straight here! How did you get here before me?”

“Weeeeeeeeell,” Pinkie Pie drawled, “I took the 1:15 train to Canterlot, then caught the 3:45 airship flight to Manehattan, but we were redirected to Rainbow Falls, so I took the 9:15 from there to Tall Tale, which got there just too late for me to catch the 7:48 to Dodge Junction, so instead I had to take the 6:05 to the Crystal Empire, made my connection on the 10:11 express to Trottingham, but then I didn’t have the money for the 4:14 red-eye to Baltimare, so I had to join a band of traveling minstrels, roaming the land and spreading joy wherever we went…”

Cherry Berry’s jaw had gone slack and her eyes had glazed over(248).

Twilight Sparkle nudged Occupant and said to Marked Knee, “I think this is the part where we leave.”

“But… but the timetable-“

Twilight nudged Marked Knee’s knee. “Just repeat to yourself, ‘I will not try to explain Pinkie Pie,” the princess said. “Now shall we go?”

Chrysalis, being no fool, was long gone.

“Y-yes, Princess,” Occupant said, breaking away from his own hypnosis. As the trio walked away from the chattering Pinkie and her victim, he added, “What kind of business did you want to discuss?”

“I’m working on a design for a heavy-lift mission,” Twilight said. “But I need to know how lateral decouplers will function at high speed in the upper atmosphere. I wasn’t planning a flight until at least spring, but-“

“Say no more!!” Marked Knee said. “We can dry-fire a decoupler on this mission!! We have more than enough delta-v to spare for our lightweight craft!!”

“Er… for a reasonable fee,” Occupant added. “Let’s go to my office and do the paperwork.”

Footnotes:

(236) Because a princess always gets top landing priority, even if it’s not your princess.

(237) And a handful of cows, two of whom had teamed up to make one particular bunco operator very unhappy. Cows get very little in the way of spending money, and they take serious exception to ponies who run rigged milk-bottle ball-toss games. For the record, they ruined her day not by smashing her booth but by stealthily interfering in the game so that every pony’s toss- every toss- knocked over all three of the normally immobile stone bottles. Cows do not like to cause a commotion, because no cow wants to be that horribly embarrassed one who started the stampede.

(238) The carnival ponies certainly didn’t object. Horseton was usually a small event, one last little showing for next to no expense before the operation shut down for winter. Having a crowd each day ten times the size of Horseton’s entire pre-CSP population meant huge piles of found money… except for the one crooked ball-toss pony, who left the weekend a broken mare in more than one respect.

(239) In Equestria local fairs are about more than fun, rides, food, and produce. Since most farm animals on Equus are intelligent, and a few (cows, for example) can actually speak, they are considered entitled to some due process of law. In the Livestock Judging the farm animals of an area air their grievances, reach settlements, and mete out justice for minor crimes. Meritorious conduct is also recognized with Good Show awards, with most fairs giving out an award for the most noble act by a farm animal in the previous year, Best Show.

(240) The phenomenon is not unknown among ponies. Some have even been known to explode twice.

(241) This isn’t the best analogy, since Twilight Sparkle had actually done this once or twice, at a huge expense of magical energy, but she’d never successfully read Pinkie Pie’s thoughts by looking at her. But for most ponies who aren’t supremely magical ponies and excruciatingly bibliophilic, it still holds up.

(242) There are those who say that chocolate is no substitute for love. Three out of five changelings say they are wrong.

(243) Leaving aside the obvious point, which is mainly an artifact of the ancient influence of matriarchal society on the Equestrian language, Marked Knee had never been in a position to explain why someone else’s view of the world was at odds with reality. Also, though he thought himself quite eminently sane just like any other minotaur, it never occurred to him that minotaurs, as a species, tend to be utterly bonkers in one fashion or another. His particular flavor of bonkers (athletic, over-enthusiastic, and technology-obsessed) just happened to dovetail with that of many if not most other minotaurs, not least his colleagues from what had been the Minotaur Rocket Project.

(244) With the aid of wings. Only Celestia and possibly Luna could stand on their hind legs to put a hoof on the muzzle of a minotaur of normal stature, and Marked Knee was tall for his species.

(245) Particularly in Occupant’s case, since he knew very well Chrysalis was not above carrying out said dressing-down literally. Since changelings were even less likely than ponies to wear clothing in the first place, this usually began with the removal of chitin and/or skin.

(246) Or possibly cardially, since despite her honey-sweet tone she looked ready to lunge for somepony’s jugular. But if the corners of the mouth are turned up and teeth are showing, by the dictionary it counts as a smile…

(247) On the one hoof, Chrysalis was one of those changelings who didn’t see the appeal of chocolate. In fact, she could barely stomach any tangible food at all, and the cookie represented about twice her stomach capacity. On the other hoof, she could smell the complex emotion of Willing-to-Forgive-Past-Wrongs-To-Be-Friends Pinkie had leaked all over the thing, which made her mouth water. And then there was the message, which even as an empty compliment touched something deep within her, giving her a moment’s hope that someone else really understood her…

(248) A very common symptom in ponies subjected to one of Pinkie’s explanations, particularly when the explanation raised many more questions than it answered.

Marked Knee stood alone in the front row of Mission Control’s workstations, the only bull in the bullpen, one of only a handful of creatures on the floor altogether, hoping his intense worry didn’t show.

Worry, and for that matter doubt, seldom troubled the young minotaur. Eventual success had always been a given. Granted, he often experienced frequent bouts of frustration as one difficulty after another arose on a certain project, but he always knew the final result would be total, unqualified success.

Not so now. For almost the first time in his life, Marked Knee had begun to see that failure outside the laboratory had more potential consequences than failure within it… and that, truth be told, the potential for failure was much more real than he wanted to admit.

Example: the press gallery crammed absolutely full of reporters and cameraponies, with government and foreign VIPs lining the front row of seats… including Cherry Berry, Chrysalis and Twilight Sparkle sitting side by side at the end closest to the gallery doors.

Second example: bleachers flanking the VAB, plus press galleries on top of the building, all full to capacity. Even the carnival barkers and ride operators from the fun-fair had shut down for the launch. All in all, several thousand ponies, griffons, changelings and otherwise were crowded on the inner grounds, plus a substantially larger number of ponies with carts parked on the grass to either side of the road halfway back to Horseton.

Third example: the rocket itself.

The vital symmetry of the rocket had been spoiled by the lateral parachute some changeling had slapped on one side of Shotputnik. The lateral decoupling had thoughtfully been applied to the opposite side, but at a lower level. Hidden under an in-line decoupler lay a heavy heat shield; Marked Knee hadn't asked for or approved either one. The vital stabilizing fins of Missions 13 and 14’s second stages were appallingly absent. This rocket would be an unstable beast, requiring expert control- and expert control it would not get.

Granted, even with the extra weight R1’s orbital package weighed only one-third that of Mission 13. Granted, reducing the solid fuel boosters from three to two had eliminated only a small portion of the rocket’s total delta-v. The changes nagged at him anyway. So much could go wrong, and if it did the entire world would see.

But he couldn’t back down now. Cancelling the flight would at best postpone it by months, and possibly kill Shotputnik altogether. It would also represent a major black mark for the Changeling Space Program and for space flight in general, making promises and then backing away from them. Eye Wall, the pegasus in charge of local weather, had kept the sky clear of the traditional Hearth’s Warming Eve snow(249) for the launch with more than her usual ill grace. She’d be impossible to work with if they cancelled now, after all her trouble.

And her anger would be nothing compared to the rage of Queen Chrysalis, the program’s benefactor.

So the countdown continued, as the rocket was given its final load of fuel, as Dragonfly sat in the cap-com position behind a small mock-up of the normal flight control system(250), as Occupant paced Mission Control’s back row in his pristine white flight-control vest, as the soft murmur of VIP chatter bled through the glass of the gallery.

“Fueling complete,” Lucky Cricket reported from his station, as the giant projection on the Mission Control wall showed the changeling ground crew disconnecting the last fuel lines. “Go for Shotputnik activation.”

“Activate Shotputnik,” Occupant replied.

Marked Knee flicked a switch on his console, nodding as the lights on the console began to flicker in Shotputnik’s standard start-up sequence. “Shotputnik activated,” he reported. “Reading successful initialization and link-up with ground control.”

Dragonfly worked the controls in front of her. On the screen, the thrust bell of the first-stage engine rocked slowly back and forth. “Shotputnik accepting commands,” she said. “Controls responsive. Uplink secure.”

“Test data transmission system,” Occupant ordered.

This was the first real moment of truth. If the radio system didn’t work, the launch would have to be scrubbed. A bit of Marked Knee actually hoped the radio would fail. The rest of him, of course, shouted down the minority opinion as being a disgrace to both minotaur innovation and minotaur pride.

“Receiving temperature and barometric data from the craft,” Dragonfly reported. “Radio transmission successful.”

Marked Knee noted a reading on his console. “Flight, Systems,” he called.

“Go, Systems,” Occupant replied.

“The transmission’s eating a lot more power than expected,” Marked Knee said. “Recommend limiting radio use to data transmission and relying solely on magic link for telemetry and operations.” This wasn’t a mission abort condition, quite. Any power eaten pre-launch would be recharged by the thermocouples in the first two rocket stages. But once those were gone, whatever battery power remained would have to sustain the probe for its entire trip to the moon. When that power ran out, Shotputnik R1 would shut down forever.

But that was later, and right now the ship would still fly. When the final go-no go call went around the room, Marked Knee gave his firm “Go!!” without hesitation.

Not without qualms, though.

“All right, we’re all go for launch,” Occupant said as the last confirmation was called out. “Restart countdown clock.”

“T minus thirty seconds and counting,” Marked Knee said, pushing a button.

A large countdown clock had been added to the grounds between the VAB and the launchpad, for the benefit of the witnesses. It had been frozen at thirty seconds between the final fueling and the go-no go confirmation. Now it resumed counting down, a bright white light flashing off and on above the numbers. Fiddlewing’s warning shriek echoed across the space center grounds as the skies were cleared of flyers by the changeling pad crew.

The seconds ticked down. Thousands of ponies and other talking creatures waited on the edge of their seats.

At zero Dragonfly hit the staging button on her console, igniting all three first-stage engines.

Mission R1 lifted, slowly and gracefully, into the sky atop a plume of flame and thunder.

Outside the VAB, and inside the VIP gallery in Mission Control, the watchers cheered.

In Mission Control itself, things began to go wrong almost immediately.

“Flight, Capcomm,” Dragonfly said within seconds of launch.

“Go, Capcomm.”

“I’ve got a lot less response from the ship than I should,” Dragonfly said. “It’s not behaving anything like the simulations!” After a moment’s pause and a grunt, she added, “Yaw maneuver for gravity turn is sluggish, and roll controls are absolutely unresponsive. Ship is beginning to roll and I can’t stop it!”

On the screen the rocket was, indeed, rotating on its axis as its nose very, very slowly angled vaguely eastwards.

“Systems, what can we do?” Occupant asked.

“Remember that we don’t have SAS or control wheels on the craft,” Marked Knee said, his voice subdued by rapid thought.

“No control wheels??” Dragonfly shouted, ignoring comms discipline. “You never told me this ship had no control wheels!”

“There wasn’t room in the Shotputnik casing for them,” Marked Knee said. “But that was covered in the simulations.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Dragonfly replied. “I had the whine of the test capsule’s wheels in my ears the entire time! They were running every simulation! I switched them on at the start every time because that’s what I always do and noling told me not to!”

Marked Knee saw it all in his mind in an instant. The simulation computer, and for that matter Shotputnik, had been receiving full data from the capsule, including the feedback from the reaction wheels. The simulation would have accepted the reaction wheel input and responded accordingly- as if the wheels were Shotputnik’s. It was a simple but obvious oversight.

And that oversight totally invalidated every single simulation flight. Instead of the several successful simulation flights, Dragonfly had false experience with a control system fundamentally different than she’d come to expect.

Twenty seconds in, Mission R1 was in deep, deep trouble- and Marked Knee, whose specialty was electronics and not control systems or aerodynamics or mathematics, had no idea what to do about it.

“Er- cease all angling attempts!!” he shouted. “Keep the ship on a steady trajectory! We can adjust once we’re out of atmosphere, but-“

“Solid fuel boosters exhausted,” Dragonfly interrupted. “Decoupling.”

The spent boosters fell away from the rocket, its liquid fuel center stage still firing.

And then the rocket nosed down, hard… and continued nosing down… and then flipped, tumbling in flight. (251)

“I’ve lost it!” Dragonfly shouted. “Shutting down engine!”

On the screen, the plume of flame from the first stage engine died. The ship continued tumbling.

“No response to controls!” Dragonfly added.

“The only control system the ship has is the rocket thrust vectoring!!” Marked Knee replied. “The only way you can stop the tumble is with the rocket!”

“But half the time the rocket nozzle’s pointed prograde!” Dragonfly protested. “We’ll lose velocity and crash!”

“The engine’s good for any number of ignitions!!” Marked Knee said. “Try only activating it when the rocket’s nose is pointed skywards!!”

“Okay!” Dragonfly turned her attention to the controls. “Staging!” she said, jettisoning the almost-spent first stage and activating the second stage.

The ship continued to tumble, losing speed rapidly as it continued up its trajectory. Dragonfly didn’t bother calling out engine-on or engine-off; activation and deactivation followed one another too quickly, the rocket tumbling end over end once every two seconds or so. For half a minute, the effort didn’t seem to be doing any good, as the rocket slowed to subsonic speeds, reached apoapsis well inside atmosphere, and began dropping.

And then, just as hope was almost lost, Dragonfly crowed a raspy cry of triumph as the tumble finally slowed. One final end-over-end, and then the ship stabilized, and Dragonfly pushed the throttle to full. “We have control!” she shouted. “It cost us half the second stage, but- grr!” Cheer vanished as the accelerating spacecraft began to sway and twitch on the screen, forcing Dragonfly to return her full attention to the controls.

“Dr. Knee, are we still go for the moon?” Occupant asked.

“I… I don’t know,” Marked Knee murmured. In a louder, but no longer ebullient, voice, he added, “Once we reach orbit I’ll have a better idea of where we stand.”

“If we get there,” Dragonfly grumbled. “I’ve still got that roll problem. It’s really screwing up my control. Darn ship wants to go every direction except straight!”

“We’re gaining altitude again,” Marked Knee said quietly. “We should still be good for the decoupler test.”

“Ugh!” Dragonfly struggled with the controls, just barely able to get the words, “Don’t jinx it!” through her fangs.

The warning, apparently, came too late. The rocket’s wayward wobbling became more intense, swinging back and forth around, but never on, the prograde vector, until little more than a minute after regaining control the ship resumed its uncontrolled cartwheel.

“Shoot!!” Dragonfly began pulsing the engine again, hooves racing across the controls as it staggered unsteadily higher into the thinning air. “Lost it again!”

“You got it under control before,” Occupant said, trying to reassure her.

“I don’t know HOW I got it under control before!” Dragonfly snapped. “It’s tumbling AND spinning and doing everything EXCEPT what I want it to!” Her hooves never stopped as she said this, except to wipe sweat from her carapace(252).

“Dr. Knee?” Occupant asked. “Is there anything else we can do?”

Words failed to come to the minotaur’s lips. Silently he shook his head. Unless a second miracle restored control of the ship, nothing could be done.

“Coming up on second stage burnout!” Dragonfly warned.

And that, Marked Knee knew, was the end of the mission. The third stage alone could not both achieve orbit and supply the thrust required to reach the moon. In fact, at the ship’s current velocity, he doubted the third stage could even get the probe to orbit.

About the only thing that might be salvaged from the launch was the decoupler test. They would achieve the altitude, and just possibly the required speed. If Dragonfly could just coax a little more velocity out of the almost uncontrollable craft…

“Second stage burnout!” Dragonfly shouted. “Staging!”

Her hoof came down on the staging button.

The lateral decoupler shot off the probe and into empty air, far below testing altitude.

“SHOOT!” Dragonfly shouted, hitting the staging button again. The second stage fell away and the third stage lit, but the damage had already been done.

The truncated rocket continued to tumble, and Dragonfly continued to pulse the engines, but Marked Knee no longer really perceived any of it. Slowly, gradually, he slumped into the chair he almost never used when he was on the mission control floor.

Shotputnik had failed. Utterly. Spectacularly.

And it was all his own fault.

Yes, Dragonfly had been at the controls. Yes, Occupant had signed all the paperwork and agreed to all his decisions. That didn’t matter. All the fundamental errors were his and his alone.

He’d failed to warn Dragonfly about the staging sequence, having forgotten that the mission plans had called for the decoupler check during second-stage burn. He’d failed to personally oversee the changelings who assembled the rocket. He’d failed to remember to deactivate the simulator’s reaction wheels to provide accurate simulations. He’d piled tasks on an untested, unproven, uncertain system without a second thought.

And above all, he’d pushed the project too hard and fast. He hadn’t waited for the right parts to be available. He’d overrated his abilities, his creation’s abilities. He’d been impatient, and he’d encouraged Occupant’s own impatience, and he’d pushed the program in the absence of its leaders far ahead of what they were prepared for.

All. His, Fault.

Marked Knee barely looked up from his own lap when the mission control doors slammed. “Lock the doors,” Cherry Berry’s authoritative voice called out. “Occupant, give me your headset.”

“But, Miss Berry-“

“Give. Me. Your. Headset.”

Occupant, wilting, levitated his microphone-earphone headset over to Cherry Berry, who adjusted it on her head with one hoof. “Attention all controllers, flight leader is now Cherry Berry,” she said. “Mares and gentleponies of the press, we are going to work to recover Mission R1 and find out what went wrong. For the time being we have no statement and will answer no questions. You are welcome to continue monitoring the remainder of the mission as you like, but access to the space center outside of mission control is limited to the welcome center and the carnival. Thank you for your cooperation.”

The soft murmuring from the visitor’s gallery grew louder, drawing Marked Knee’s attention to it. He noticed, looking through the glass, that Twilight Sparkle was still there, watching with a most sorrowful expression, but Chrysalis’s seat, like Cherry Berry’s, lay empty.

“All right, cut the gallery comms,” Cherry Berry said, taking off the headset and setting it on the console.

“Er…” Occupant moved to his own console and threw a switch. “All external speakers off,” he said. “That includes the speakers in the stands.”

“Ohhhh,” Cherry Berry groaned, rubbing the side of her head with one hoof. “So it’s not just the press who… never mind.” With a shake of her head she was all business again. “First order of business- where are we?”

“Just leaving atmosphere,” Marked Knee replied quietly. “We won’t be in space very long on our current trajectory.”

“Can we get control long enough to put the ship on retrograde?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Dragonfly growled, hooves still frantically working the remote controls. She had given up on cycling the engine on and off. It now burned constantly as the ship continued to tumble despite Dragonfly’s best efforts. “Thirty percent fuel remaining in third stage, by the way.”

“So, no,” Cherry Berry said. “Keep trying anyway. Dr. Knee, can the ship survive re-entry?”

“It was never intended to,” Marked Knee said. “The original craft design had the center of mass directly amidships. But someone in assembly added a heat shield and parachute without my authorization. It is just possible that the weight of the heat shield and the drag from the parachute cowling will cause the ship to turn itself retrograde during re-entry. That would put the heat shield in front, dealing with most of the re-entry heat.”

“And what happens if it doesn’t?” Cherry asked.

“The science experiments almost certainly burn up,” Marked Knee said. “The service module with the batteries might survive re-entry, but not impact. The parachute might survive. But no re-entry tests were ever done on Shotputnik itself. As I said, it was never intended to re-enter atmosphere.”

“Would it be more likely to survive if we keep the third stage on?”

“Less likely. We’ll be coming back very steeply. Extra mass makes it less likely that the ship will decelerate enough to deploy the parachute before impact. And more time spent decelerating also means longer exposure to atmospheric heating.”

“Burnout!” Dragonfly called out. On the telepresence screen, the ship tumbled, powerless, helpless.

“Jettison third stage,” Cherry Berry ordered.

Dragonfly hit the staging button, and on the projection two halves of spaceship tumbled away from one another. “Third stage separation,” Dragonfly said.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said. “We hauled those experiments up there, so I want them to be used. Save enough battery power to keep the ship powered long enough to give the order to open the parachute. Use the rest to transmit scientific data. Anything we can salvage from this flight, do it.”

This work distracted Marked Knee for a few minutes, observing the results from one experiment after another. The data duplicated that gained from previous missions- nothing new, nothing that would change simulations or ship design- but it helped keep the minotaur’s mind off his own failure for a little while.

By the time the doors on the Science Jr. module closed, the ship was well back into atmosphere, still tumbling, the first flickers of reentry plasma building up around the ship.

And then, with a confused waggle and then a rapid spinning wobble, the tumble ceased, and Mission R1 plunged into the atmosphere head-first.

“Is there anything else I can do?” Dragonfly asked. She’d taken her hooves away from the controls after switching the experiments and transmitter on and off.

“I don’t think opening the service bay doors would slow the ship enough to justify the danger,” Marked Knee murmured. “Dr. Cowley would know better than I.”

“So we wait,” Cherry Berry said, bringing all conversation in the half-empty control room to an end. For almost a minute they waited in silence, watching the screen as flames built up, as the air gradually thickened around the ship, as the probe's ignominious end approached…

… and then the erratic wobbling increased, then became a single convulsive backflip, ending with the ship descending heat shield first, still wobbling a bit but much more stable than before.

The half-dozen creatures in Mission Control almost unanimously let out a sigh of relief. Half a minute later they did it again as the ship’s velocity dropped below the danger zone, as the last flames of plasma winked out, leaving only the shimmering of a rapidly shrinking shock cone.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said. “Dragonfly, pop the chute the moment it’s safe to do so. Dr. Knee, where will it come down?”

Marked Knee activated the trajectory projection map. “Roughly one hundred and five kilometers east-northeast of here, in clear ocean.”

Cherry Berry blinked. “Only a hundred kilometers??” she asked. “It went up higher than that!”

“Not by much,” Marked Knee replied mournfully.

Cherry Berry took a couple of deep breaths. “All right,” she said. “Chrysalis is already sending chariots to haul von Brawn, Goddard and the others back here at top speed. Lucky Cricket, get a retrieval team moving now.” Her normally wide, innocent eyes glared with hostility at Occupant, then at Marked Knee, then at Dragonfly. “You three,” she said, “I will be taking your statements in my administration office individually once the ship is down. Tomorrow we will discuss responsibility, procedures, and how we go forward from here.”

The pink pony’s lips twitched a little bit, as if she had more to say, before she compressed them into a thin frown. With a final snort and toss of her head she turned and slammed open the room’s double doors, which shut and locked themselves with a loud clack.

Marked Knee, moaning, slumped forward and put his head in his massive hands, as behind him Shotputnik’s unauthorized parachute opened, silhouetted against the wan but cheerful Hearth’s Warming sun.

A cluster of reporters barged through the doors into the astronaut lounge. “I’ve been expecting a flop from the changelings for months now,” said one stallion wearing a bowtie, “and here it is at last.” The reporter barely glanced at the cruller hoofed over the counter to him, much less at the pink pony who had handed it to him. “Let’s see Chrysalis spin this one into a success!”

“Fifty-some miles,” agreed a camerapony, who accepted a plain bagel and a cup of coffee from the server. “I’ve seen kites that flew farther from home than this Shotputnik, and kites are a lot cheaper.”

“I always thought the whole robot idea was loony,” said another reporter, brown mane topped with a snazzy fedora that proudly held his press pass in its hatband. “Machines need a living pony’s hoof at the controls. It’s a fact of life, and no Shotputnik is ever going to change that.”

“Shotputnik!” a newsmare giggled, accepting a tray with a chef’s salad and soda crackers on it. “More like ‘Stayputnik.’ It didn’t want to go!”

This bit of wit, not all that funny to normal people, sent the group of reporters into over a minute of uproarious laughter(253). This gave the mare serving the food the opportunity to finish handing out snacks none of the reporters realized they hadn’t actually ordered before making herself scarce.

Pinkie Pie enjoyed working with Heavy Frosting. Granted, the chef was a bit of a grumpy perfectionist, but he quite obviously took great joy in his work. If nothing made him angrier than ponies meddling in his work, nothing made him happier than seeing(254) the pleasure of ponies eating his creations. And though Pinkie Pie was a pretty good baker, she always learned neat new things when around a master chef like Frosting.

It also gave her an excuse to stay where the computers were.

She hadn’t been able to charm her way to Shotputnik itself or into Mission Control to see the computers that operated it. Of course the design notes for the computers, and for Shotputnik, would be even better. But those were in two file cabinets in Research and Development Building 3 (255), locked tight, and up to now Pinkie Pie had decided breaking and entering for non-party reasons was really, really rude.

But that was before listening to the loudspeakers. That had been before hearing a bunch of bad news that reminded Pinkie of another bad flight several months before, giving her serious not-fun shivers. Pinkie would have gnawed her hooves, except that would have been most unhygienic in a food preparation area. Ick!

And now there were the reporters, who were laughing at the flight’s failure. As if the ponies- well, changelings, but you know- hadn’t worked hard trying to make it work! As if Shotputnik hadn’t had the potential to save a lot of pony lives and make space flight much safer!

Breaking into a filing cabinet might be really rude, but laughing at a failed launch was kicking a pony when they were down. It was super-duper rude. It was rudy-rude! It was rude to the rude power multiplied by pi!

So, logically, Pinkie could multiply the other side of the formula by Pie and still not be as rude as those mean reporters.

With this thought uppermost in the bubbly froth of her brain, Pinkie Pie went to thank Heavy Frosting and excuse herself… after borrowing a butter knife, a black body suit, a flashlight, and a can opener.

Because a pony’s gotta have the proper tools to do what a pony’s gotta do.

MISSION R1 REPORT

Mission summary: Test communications, flight control and other properties of Shotputnik; test of decoupler systems in upper atmosphere; first lunar fly-by

Pilot: Shotputnik (Dragonfly)

Flight duration: 16 min. 27 sec.
Contracts fulfilled: 0
Milestones: First uncrewed flight

Conclusions from flight: The roadapples finally hit the fan.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: CATASTROPHIC FAILURE

Footnotes:

(249) Pretty much the only snow Horseton ever got, barring a once-in-a-decade feral storm from the Macintosh Hills. Keeping snow clouds stable and productive that far south was a labor-intensive task, and Marked Knee’s request for clear flight conditions, with highly perishable snow clouds already on the way from Cloudsdale, meant a lot more work for the weather team than he ever understood.

(250) Because the full capsule used in simulations couldn’t fit through the mission control doors, and also because Occupant had pointed out how bad it would look to reporters if they had somehow crammed it in.

(251) In our world, almost any rocket, particularly a multi-ton rocket similar to R1, that spun end over end in atmosphere during hypersonic flight would tear itself apart from atmospheric stresses within seconds, if it didn’t break instantly. However, one of the benefits of building changeling-proof modular rocket components is that the resulting rockets are not merely changeling-proof but resistant to practically any other destructive force you care to name.

(252) Changeling sweat is rare, but not impossible.

(253) There is something about having a lame sense of humor that makes a person gravitate towards the media as a career. Those with a worse than average funny bone, of course, are given the job of writing clever headlines, but the true masters of the talent of anti-funny get entrusted with the sacred art of crafting crossword puzzle clues.

(254) And eating, too; after all, Heavy Frosting aka Carapace was still a changeling.

(255) One of the lesser aspects of Pinkie Sense was that odd, random bits of information Pinkie Pie had no way of knowing would spontaneously pop into her mind, usually but not always completely accurate. Of course, it only worked when Pinkie was making no effort whatever to acquire said information. Pinkie never told any of her friends about this, partly because investigating it might break the ability forever, but mostly because she knew it would give Twilight Sparkle a huge headache.

“You three do not know,” Queen Chrysalis drawled, “how lucky you all are.”

The Horseton Space Center’s throne room usually sat as it had been constructed, plain and undecorated; a large high-backed chair on a little dais with a narrow carpet, so purple it was almost black, leading up to it, and two CSP security changelings in friendly-looking light blue peaked caps. On this day, however, Chrysalis had done it up properly. Tattered-looking tapestries strung from one edge of the ceiling to the other, hanging down with deliberate menace. The two regular guards had been replaced by eight warriors in full battle armor. Even the queen herself had dressed up, adding a cape and pauldrons to her little knobbed crown.

The blonde-maned pink pony seated on the floor next to the dais clashed with everything else, despite Cherry Berry’s attempt to look authoritative by adding her fluffy-collared flight jacket(256). But the light lavender eyes had gone steel-gray with anger, making them a set with the rest of the décor. The friendly earth pony from Ponyville was gone, and the steely-eyed missile mare waited to stomp heavily upon whatever bits Chrysalis left intact.

And in front of them all, bowing or kneeling, were the three conspirators, Occupant, Marked Knee, and Dragonfly.

The dance was done, and now the piper presented his invoice.

“I have read the transcripts of the interviews conducted by Chief Pilot Cherry Berry,” Chrysalis said, not so much sitting up as flowing from a fully recumbent slump into an upright seated position- sort of melting in reverse. “I have also read the early editions from Manehattan and Baltimare, which I had flown to me by changelings more faithful than any of you.” Reaching behind her, the queen pulled out three newspapers and tossed them in front of the trio.

The Manehattan Times headline read: CHANGELING MOON SHOT MISSES BY 249,935 MILES.

The Manehattan Post, its tabloid cover a photo of the still-dripping probe hanging from underneath a trio of changelings in flight: ROBO NO-GO- CHRYSALIS’S BRAINCHILD FAILS TO LAUNCH.

And the Baltimare Sun, with its one-word headline: STAYPUTNIK!

“The last time I was humiliated this thoroughly it was by my enemies,” Chrysalis drawled, allowing the horror of the situation to sink in even deeper. “The last five times I was humiliated even half as much as this, the changelings responsible were made to suffer. And what I want to do to all three of you right now, for that alone,” she added, the drawl taking on a buzzsaw edge, “would make you envy the fate of those changelings. Oh, very much so.”

After allowing herself a moment to savor the threat, the queen took a deep breath and continued, “However, as I said, you three are extremely lucky.” A clipboard with a thick stack of paperwork on it clattered to the floor next to the newspapers. “For one thing, I need you three in order to clean up this mess in a hurry. That,” the queen said, pointing to the clipboard, “is the construction schedule for the VAB expansion. The work crews return immediately after New Year’s celebrations end, and while they work, we are grounded- for the entire winter and possibly longer.”

Chrysalis glared across the group before adding, “That means we have nine days, counting today, to launch a new moon fly-by mission. And this one MUST succeed. That means I can’t get rid of you- as much as I want to right now.”

Leaning back in her throne, Chrysalis continued, “You are also lucky to have a wise and crafty queen like myself. While you were flying and crashing your expensive pinwheel, I lined up contracts for the spring that will cover the costs of ‘Stayputnik,’ including tourist flights and a contract for an artificial satellite that will orbit Equus’s poles.”

Marked Knee didn’t correct the name.

Chrysalis turned her attention to Dragonfly. “That will be part of your punishment. You are from now on in charge of all tourists during their flight training. And since you demonstrated an interest in machinery, you, yourself, shall be training under Goddard the Griffon for a role as flight engineer.” Chrysalis glared and added, “In short, I intend your time behind the stick to be as short and unpleasant as possible henceforth. Your joyrides are over.”

“Thank you, oh merciful queen!” Dragonfly hissed, bowing and groveling again.

Chrysalis turned her attention to Marked Knee. “You are not one of my subjects, so I cannot exercise casual cruelty upon you…” She paused and considered. “Well, I could, I am a tyrant after all, but as enjoyable as it would be it would make more trouble than it’s worth. And you did try to put all the blame for this fiasco on yourself. A noble gesture, but wasted on me.”

Chrysalis drew herself up to her full seated height. “You are hereby demoted. You can no longer authorize anything or give orders to anyone in this program. All requests for materials and labor will have to go through Dr. von Brawn, who shall be your permanent supervisor. In particular you are banned from ever designing a rocket again. Furthermore, your salary shall be cut in half for the following year.

“And the next time you displease me in any way, your employment shall be terminated outright. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Queen Chrysalis,” Marked Knee replied meekly.

This left Occupant. “And you,” Chrysalis said, her voice rising gradually as she allowed a sliver of her true emotion to show. “I gave you authority, and you abused it. I gave you trust, and you betrayed it. Marked Knee may have talked you into it, but you are a changeling! You are supposed to deceive others! You’re not supposed to be the patsy!”

Occupant joined Dragonfly flat on the floor, groveling and trembling in fear.

“And you are the luckiest of all,” Chrysalis continued, “because I need you too badly to dispose of you as I want. I can’t even take your job away- noling else wants it.”

Occupant didn’t raise his head. He’d been in trouble with Chrysalis before, and he knew better than to get his hopes up prematurely.

“But that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything, oh no my dear Occupant.” Chrysalis stood from her throne and stepped down the dais, towering over the drone. “You are stripped of your power to unilaterally order missions. You can still accept contracts for missions already in planning, but no new missions may be scheduled except by consensus of the combined program leadership.” Chrysalis smiled a thin, humorless smile as she added, “That’s not your punishment. That’s just shutting the front door after the pony has fled out the back(257). I have something much worse in mind for you.”

She clapped her hooves again, and two guards entered the room. One carried a small but heavy hammer, of the kind used for fitting horseshoes(258). The other carried a milky sphere with an obvious seam around its equator.

“This,” Chrysalis said, “is your E-Z-Scry-Me Ball, Occupant. I ought to know- you thanked me for letting you buy it every day for over a month. You shake it and ask a yes-no question, and it gives an answer. Sometimes even an accurate one. It was, I believe, the very first thing you ever bought by mail order. The start, you might say, of your addiction.”

The guards set the cheap plastic ball and the hammer in front of Occupant, who raised his head and looked at the objects, obviously confused but still too scared to speak.

“I made some inquiries,” Chrysalis continued. “It seems this children’s toy is no longer in production. Not easily replaced. And, of course, it is the very first thing you ever bought. The heart of your collection. Your most prized possession.” She smiled a nasty, fang-baring smile as she finished, “And now, my loyal servant, to demonstrate your loyalty to me, you will smash it.”

Occupant’s eyes bulged even more so than usual. “NOOOO!” he shouted. “My queen, PLEEEEASE!”

“You circumvented my will,” Chrysalis continued coldly, no longer smiling. “You embarrassed me in front of the entire world. You cost this program tens of thousands of bits for a flight that accomplished nothing. You abused my trust and endangered our conquest of space in the process.” She jabbed a hoof at the plastic ball and snapped, “And now, if you ever want to return to my good graces, you will take that hammer and smash that toy until there is nothing left to mend.”

“My queen,” Occupant gasped, his normally raspy, nasal voice pinched even more by despair, “mercy, p-please-“

“Do it.”

The hammer floated into the air in a flickering field of green magic. It wobbled up and over the little plastic ball, twitching and flinching in Occupant’s unsteady magical grip. It jerked up and down as Occupant tried and failed to suppress his sobs, as thick glutinous tears rolled down the sides of his muzzle. The hammer swung once, twice, checking itself each time well short of the plastic. With each miss, Occupant’s sobs grew louder, as the changeling worked himself up to the horrible, horrible act he was about to-

“That’s enough, Chrysalis.”

Cherry Berry stood, walked over to the tormented changeling, and swatted the hammer out of the air. Occupant’s magic winked out as the hammer hit the floor and over to the wall with a quiet hiss. “Punishment is one thing,” the pink pony continued, “but you were enjoying that too much.”

“And why should I not, pony?” Chrysalis hissed back. “You know what he did!”

“And I know he won’t be any use to us if you make him go through with this,” Cherry Berry continued. “Plus it’s just plain mean. Choose something else.”

Everyone in the room watched Chrysalis’s eyes, expecting an explosion of rage. Instead the queen settled for a single affronted snort and a toss of her long, lank mane. “Very well,” she said. “Occupant, your personal stipend is suspended for six moons. Furthermore, you shall also begin flight training under George Cowley as an in-flight science specialist. Not George Bull, I mean the boring, dry-as-toast one. Henceforth half your workday will be devoted to Dr. Cowley’s tutelage. Do you understand?”

As it happened, he didn’t. As soon as he’d realized that his sentence had been commuted, Occupant had hugged his first treasure to himself, trembling and weeping with relief, utterly deaf to the world. Eventually Cherry Berry had to shake the buck-toothed bug to bring him back into the here and now so that Chrysalis could repeat her revised sentence.

That made things worse. Once he got the message, Occupant erupted with a long, rambling mixture of thanks and apologies and praise, all mashed together with blubbering and weeping that made the whole completely incomprehensible. Chrysalis gritted her fangs and waited for a pause. After about a minute it became apparent he wasn’t going to stop; in fact, he wasn’t even stopping for breath. At the ninety second mark he began to run out of air, and yet he continued babbling incoherently in a gasping, rattly croak, until he flopped forward on the floor again, still clutching the E-Z-Scry-Me and still, without air, trying to apolothank.

“BREATHE, you idiot!” Chrysalis shouted. Cherry Berry rapped him atop the head for emphasis.

Occupant stopped babbling, took an enormous gasping breath, and found his next words silenced by a timely pink hoof to the mouth.

“’Thank you my queen’ will suffice,” Chrysalis said.

“Ah! Thank you! Ah! My queen!” Occupant gasped once Cherry Berry removed her hoof.

“Now if I may continue?” Chrysalis swept the room with her gaze. “Dr. von Brawn is awaiting us with a preliminary report on his failure analysis of Mission R1. Once we leave this room, we shall never speak of this again. But I have neither forgotten…” Her serpentine gaze stabbed at Dragonfly, Occupant and Marked Knee. “… nor forgiven.” This said, she turned her head to face Cherry. “Do you have anything to add, pony?”

Cherry Berry took a deep breath. “I was going to rip your heads off-“

“If I’m not allowed to do it,” Chrysalis muttered, “neither are you.”

“Figure of speech!!” Cherry Berry protested.

“Not where I come from, pony.”

Cherry groaned with frustration at the unrepentant queen before pressing on. “I had a lot of things to say, but after what Chrysalis put Occupant through I don’t feel like it anymore.

“I’ll just say I am very angry, and very disappointed, in all of you. I’m angry that you put everything at risk. I’m angry that you pushed a flight before we were ready. The next time it happens there might not be any more flights after that. The next time it happens it might be one of us in the ship.” Cherry Berry waved her hoof around the room, indicating everyone. “So there can’t be a next time, understand?”

After a moment, she added, “That’s all I wanted to say- that I’m really disappointed, and you should be ashamed.”

Chrysalis, listening uncomfortably to this awkward ramble, slapped a hoof to her head. “One out of ten points for style, pony,” she muttered.

“Threats and emotional torture are your thing, not mine,” Cherry replied. “I’ll take Occupant to wash up. We’ll be in the board room in five minutes.” After noticing that Occupant’s drying tears had glued one of his hooves to his cheek, she corrected herself, “Ten minutes.”

Footnotes:

(256) Or she might have just been cold. It was snowing outside, after all.

(257) An exclusively changeling expression. Ponies would say, “shutting the barn door after the stampede is over.”

(258) Although no pony on Equus would ever tolerate nails being driven through their hooves, and thus designed their shoes to be slip-on, the shoes still required precision bending to fit the unique curve of each hoof. With work shoes this is not a gentle process.

“The one fact that jumps out from the data,” Warner von Brawn said, “is that Shotputnik itself performed flawlessly within the limitations of its design.”

The conference room resembled a gathering of giants clustered around oddly squared-off snow-covered mountains. The giants, of course, were von Brawn and his fellow minotaur scientists, Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, Occupant, Dragonfly, Goddard the Griffon, and Lucky Cricket(259). The mountains were a series of stacks of documents piled on the conference table- magically printed data from the launch, plus various other documents from every step of the planning and design for Mission R1, with foothills made of detailed dossiers for each member of the CSP leadership. A second mighty pile of paperwork rose from the floor, concealing an entire corner of the room.

“Shotputnik,” von Brawn continued, “had neither SAS capability nor reaction wheels. Although it had capacity to operate the new AV-R8 winglets from Canterlot Airship Works and Paper Products, none were installed. Thus, the only control it had came from vectoring thrust from the main engines, which according to telemetry it did flawlessly throughout the flight. Staging, parachute deployment, data transmission and experiment operation all worked without error or delay.”

Von Brawn nodded to George Cowley, who cleared his throat noisily and wheezed, “The contributing factors to mission failure came not from Shotputnik, but from the design of the rocket,” he said. “As mentioned, the ship had no controls except for vectored thrust. Unauthorized additions of a heat shield and parachute made the nose of the craft aerodynamically unstable, and that instability grew greater as the ship’s velocity increased, until the thrust could no longer counter the force of air.

“The first period of loss of control only ended when the ship lost sufficient velocity for thrust vectoring to overcome the aerodynamic instability,” Cowley continued, raising his wheezy voice over the sound of scribbling notes. “In three wind tunnel experiments we were unable to replicate that recovery. Possibly more testing will explain how recovery was possible, but we can safely conclude that, had a pilot been on board… how shall I put this?” the elderly minotaur trailed off.

George Bull chipped in, “To use the common terms in the program, any crew on board would have had a Bad Day. And they would not have gotten away with it.”

“Indeed,” Cowley nodded. “We shall have to take measures to prevent a return of such an unfortunate contingency.”

The sound of pencil scribbling became very loud for several long, thoughtful seconds.

“There is,” George Bull said, breaking the almost-silence, “one other factor which did not affect the outcome of the flight as it happened, but which would have guaranteed mission failure had the flight gone smoothly.” Bull gestured to the conference room chalkboard, which had a rough sketch of a translunar injection orbit- that is, a trajectory which took a ship out of Equus’ orbit towards the moon. “The ship had sufficient delta-v to reach the moon within about two days’ flight time,” he said. “However, given the minimum power requirements of Shotputnik and its control systems, the batteries provided in the ship’s design would have been exhausted less than halfway through the flight, assuming the generators in the first and second stages left the ship with full batteries at orbit.”

Shaking his head, he concluded, “Once Shotputnik reached lunar space, it would have been dead, unable to perform any experiments. Even assuming a perfect ascent to orbit, the mission was doomed from launch.”

Von Brawn nodded. “It is the preliminary conclusion of this investigation, subject to further study, that the primary cause of failure of Mission R1 was flawed rocket design. However, Shotputnik’s flaws were contributing factors and would have prevented mission success regardless. It is the recommendation of this board that Shotputnik requires a redesign to incorporate SAS technology, reaction wheels, and some electrical generation capacity, and that no further unmared missions be flown until these changes are made.”

Chrysalis turned her full gaze, at its most baleful, to Marked Knee. “Can you do that in five days?”

Marked Knee, his confidence utterly destroyed, couldn’t answer. Instead another voice- female and chipper- spoke up: “Easy-peasy!”

Every face in the room(260) turned to the pile of paperwork on the floor. As they stared, a pink hoof emerged from the depths and deposited another piece of paper on its peak.

Cherry Berry, who recognized the voice, put her face in her own pink hoof. “Did nopony ask,” she said, “whose papers those were?”

“They sure didn’t!” the voice from the papers said. “About half of ‘em are Dr. Knee’s and Dr. Bull’s. Well, it started out about half, but I’ve taken a lot of notes since then, so it might be more like a third now. By the way, could you get me some more blank paper? I’m kind of running low.”

Cherry’s hoof left her face and slapped the table. “Pinkie,” she said, addressing the occupant of the pile of notes, “what are you doing here??”

“Spying,” Marked Knee and Occupant said in chorus.

“Spying?” Chrysalis asked, smiling for the first time that day. “I knew there was a reason you were my favorite bridesmaid(261). And just how did you get here, Miss Pie?”

“Weeeeeell, it’s not really relevant,” said Pinkie, sticking her head out of the papers for the first time. “But since you ask, one day about a year after my sister Maud Pie was born, my mama told my dad she had this craving for pickled granite and ice cream, and Granny Pie said that could only mean-“

“Question withdrawn,” Chrysalis interrupted.

“Pinkie.” Cherry Berry did not pound the table or shout, mainly because as a longtime Ponyville resident she had built up a tolerance to Pinkie logic. Even so, all the changelings in the room, even Chrysalis, inched a little bit away from her as she spoke. “Today is Hearth’s Warming Eve. You’re supposed to be in Ponyville planning the celebrations!”

“Pffft!” Pinkie waved this away with a hoof. “I took care of all of that days ago! And if I was in Ponyville right now,” Pinkie Pie replied, picking up a stack of papers in her hooves and riffling through them(262), “then I couldn’t redesign your space probey-dobey!”

Jaws dropped around the room.

“Redesign?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Redesign?” Marked Knee asked, showing the first flickers of life for the first time since the previous day’s launch.

“Probey… dobey?” Chrysalis muttered.

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie pushed herself up and out of the paper pile with her forehooves, bouncing onto the floor and pronking over to the empty whiteboard. Taking a marker in her teeth, she set to work. Not a word was spoken(263) as Pinkie wrote and drew and scribbled, humming happily around the marker, until at last, the board completely full, she capped the marker and gestured to the board.

In the center, among many digressions, was a comparatively simple, short list.

NEW PROBE THAT CAN BOTH CONTROL SHIP AND RUN SAS

ELECTRICITY THAT WILL WORK IN SPACE

REACTION WHEELS TINY ENOUGH FOR PROBE BODY

Pinkie had sketched herself twice next to the first two items on the list. The third item had a picture of Marked Knee, right down to his pencil-thin mustache, next to it.

“I’ve pretty much got the first one done already,” Pinkie grinned, gesturing to the disorganized mountain of papers. “Of course it’d take ages to build it from scratch, but I figure we can just recycle some parts from an old Pink Mare machine!”

“Video… game…??” Marked Knee rumbled. He gave a loud, involuntary snort through his massive nostrils.

“Heeeey, wait a minute,” Dragonfly hissed, speaking for the first time in the meeting. “I just bought that game! And you can’t have it!”

“No problem!” Pinkie Pie smiled, waving a hoof. “I’ll just have the company ship you a brand-new one!”

“I’m not gonna have the money to replace it for at least six months!” Dragonfly insisted.

Pinkie giggled. “Who said anything about money?” she asked. “I can get it for free! I designed it, after all!”

“WHAT?!?” Marked Knee was on his hooves, arms spread, snorting rage. “You make VIDEO GAMES?? I am NOT going to allow some-“

“Dr. Knee,” Chrysalis said in the kind of soft, silky sound that a dagger makes slicing through fabric, “if you complete that sentence the consequences will be very final.”

Marked Knee froze.

“Marked, please be seated,” von Brawn rumbled. “We can wait until the new designs are evaluated.”

“But- but video game consoles operate on magical arrays!!” Marked Knee protested. “We can’t keep a magical array powered remotely!!”

“Oh, there’s ways around that!” Pinkie Pie shrugged. “My Nana Pie and Grampa Quartz invented most of ‘em! But we don’t need to!” She reached a hoof into the pile on the floor, rummaged a moment, and somehow came out with the exact piece of paper she wanted. “The magic array in Pink Mare only creates the images for the projection screen! All the thinky-bits are straight electronics based on Mom’s patented inlaid-silicon chips!” She smiled and added, “We grow the crystals right on the farm, you know!”

Marked Knee’s jaw dropped again. “Your mother is Cloudy Quartz??” he asked. “Daughter of Bell Quartz and Banana Pie?”

“Yep-a-roonie!” Pinkie nodded.

“Wait a minute, Pinkie,” Cherry Berry interrupted. “I thought your family was rock farmers.”

“We are!” Pinkie nodded. “But it all got started when Nana Pie got tired of winding Gramps’s alarm clock, because it would lose a half hour in a week! But she knew that quartz crystal will vibrate at a constant frequency when you put electricity through it, so-“

“She invented the piezoelectric circuit!!” Marked Knee said. “And her daughter invented the silicon printed circuit chip!”

“Eh, that was kind of an accident,” Pinkie Pie shrugged. “Mom mostly makes those for a snack when the neighbors come over to play dominoes. Nice and crunchy!” She licked her lips in fond memory and added, “It’s the copper inclusions that really make it!”

A series of glances went around the room, all of which said, without any words being exchanged, Do you want to know what any of that means? Because I don’t think I do.

“I mean, yeah we could make clocks from them,” Pinkie continued. “Nana got an honorary rocktorate for her paper on the theory. But you can make clocks out of potatoes, too, and you don’t exactly see people lining up to buy those! So when this pony started making video games like Buck(264) and said he thought Mom’s chips would work better than vacuum tubes, she sold him a bunch!” Nodding to herself, she added, “And a good thing too, because that woulda been a real tight winter, what with the granite glut that harvest-“

“This is the daughter of Cloudy Quartz!!” Marked Knee interrupted, grinning like a lunatic.

Chrysalis raised a hoof. “For those of us who don’t speak nerd,” she asked pointedly, “what is the significance of this? And what has it got to do with space ships?”

“A thousand pardons, Queen Chrysalis,” von Brawn rumbled. “But much like our own beloved Goddard,” and he nodded to the grumpy old griffon seated at one end of the table, “Miss Pie’s family’s scientific work is unknown except for a tiny circle of academics. The full potential of their discoveries has been ignored by the world at large.”

“Yes, I got that,” Chrysalis said dryly. “What does this mean for us?”

“It means that, short of securing the services of Cloudy Quartz herself,” von Brawn said, “Miss Pie here is the greatest expert on integrated circuitry available in all Equestria.”

“Nah,” Pinkie disagreed, shuffling two stacks of her notes together like a Los Pegasus dealer. “I never had the knack for baking silicon chips. I just played with ‘em a lot.”

“Played like video games?” Chrysalis asked.

“Well, not at first,” Pinkie admitted. “Mostly I played tiddlywinks with ‘em. But when Mom wrote me about the ponies who made Buck, I paid ‘em a little visit, and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I mean, it’s so easy, right?” she grinned. “IF-THEN, AND-OR-NOR, nothing to it! Anypony could do it!”

George Bull, who had invented the terminology Pinkie had just tossed off, tilted his head in confusion. “Not just anyone…” he muttered.

“So I made my first game! That didn’t do so well. It was called Personal Space Invader, and the players would try to move their pony as close as possible to other ponies, but if the pony got mad and told them to back off, they lost.” Pinkie Pie shrugged. “But nopony wanted to put bits into it, except for one machine at a taxi stand in Manehattan.”

“Hey, I dumped half my pay as a courier into that machine!” Dragonfly hissed. “It was like being a proper infiltrator instead of just a fancy messenger. I liked that game!”

“I never stationed you in Manehattan,” Chrysalis said.

“Eh, my cover identity sent me there a lot- er, my queen,” Dragonfly replied. “One of the bright spots of my life. Baltimare shippers wanted reports to and from Manehattan’s financial district. How do you think I got you so much dirt on-“

“MOVING ON,” Chrysalis said insistently, overriding Dragonfly’s imminent confession to, among other things, corporate espionage.

“Anyway, my second game was kinda-sorta OK,” Pinkie said. “That was Cutie MarQ, where you’d buck a ball like in Buck, but instead of trying to put the ball in a goal, you’d knock out bricks to reveal a cutie mark! And I also added some bumpers and lights and things like in pinball, because everypony likes pinball!”

“Ugh, that one was lame,” Dragonfly said.

Chrysalis shot the drone a shut-up glance and said, “I think we’re getting away from space ships, here.”

“So then I decided to make a game about me!” Pinkie grinned. “Eating all the candy in a maze and shooing off nasty party-poopers! And that was the game that paid for every party I’ve thrown for the last three years! Pink Mare!”

Now it was Dragonfly’s turn to get starry-eyed. “You really invented Pink Mare?” she asked. “Do you know I have the safe pattern memorized?”

“I hate that pattern.” Pinkie Pie frowned in memory. “The company made me put that in. I made the game so the party-poopers would learn from the player as the game went on, but nopony other than me could get past the third level that way. So they made me change it.”

“You created a computer,” George Bull said slowly, “that could learn. That could program itself.”

“Does this have something to do with spaceships?” Chrysalis asked pointedly.

Pinkie Pie shrugged. “It’s not that tough,” she said. “The party-poopers in the game can only turn or go in reverse. Not a lot of options to choose from. And the Pink Mare cabinets are really overpowered for the game- that’s why we’re debuting Pink Mare II: Pink Mac tomorrow! New mazes, new goodies, and a new party pooper!”

Dragonfly drooled. “Do you think we could-“

“SPACE SHIPS!!!” Chrysalis shrieked, pounding the table with her hooves. “What does any of this have to do with space ships??”

Warner von Brawn managed to speak before Pinkie could find a new tangent. “Apparently we have overlooked a source of talent in our computer experiments,” he said. “If Miss Pie is willing to cooperate, we should be able to upgrade Shotputnik-“

“Nah, throw that junk out,” Pinkie said, waving a hoof. “Keep the rocket-control interface, we’ll need that, but the Pink Mare hardware is lighter and more powerful. It’ll make a perfect brain for our probey-dobey!”

“Our?” Chrysalis asked.

Pinkie blinked. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot!” she said, scrambling to the conference room window and opening it. “C’mon in!” she shouted.

With obvious reluctance bordering on terror, a pale yellow pegasus fluttered in through the window, prodded by the lavender Princess of Friendship herself. A bit later, with much grunting and groaning, an elderly earth pony stallion in a white suit hauled himself through the window after them. “Why couldn’t we jus’ use th’ door?” he asked in the same thick accent used by Horseton (and, for that matter, Dodge Junction) residents.

Twilight Sparkle stepped forward. “Please pardon the intrusion, Queen Chrysalis,” she said. “I believe you know Fluttershy.” She gestured a purple wing to the pegasus in question, who was trying not to hyperventilate. “And this is Ben Fetlock, attorney at law. They’re here to negotiate the terms for the ESA-CSP joint robot probe enterprise-“

“Probey-dobey!” Pinkie Pie insisted.

One brief eyeroll later, Twilight continued, “Which, at least for now, we’ll call Probodyne.”

“PROBEY-DOBEY!”

Another eyeroll. “Probodobodyne. Our agencies will pool our assets- namely Marked Knee, George Bull, and Pinkie Pie- and improve the technology we saw demonstrated yesterday into something that can explore the depths of space in advance of ponies!”

Chrysalis turned a baleful eye at the old, stout stallion, who smiled most disarmingly back. “Lawyers,” she grumbled. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s-“

Fluttershy’s trembling switched off like a light bulb, and the one eye visible behind her somewhat frazzled mane locked dead on the changeling queen, pinning her as with a lance. “It’s what?” Fluttershy asked, the harmonics sending waves of guilt and fear up Chrysalis’s optic nerves and down her spine.

“Iiiiiiiit’s when people don’t listen very carefully to everything lawyers say,” Chrysalis continued in a much less confrontational tone. “After all, lawyers are here to smooth things out, aren’t they? Unfortunately ours are off for the holiday, but-“

“That’s all right,” Twilight said. “Mr. Fetlock is only here to arbitrate the negotiations. Fluttershy will be the chief spokespony for ESA.”

Mr. Fetlock nodded. "I'll send my bill to this Problebibblebabble whatchamacallit."

Chrysalis’s mood disimproved. “Fluttershy? Not you?” she asked Twilight.

“Oh, Twilight’s just my ride home!” Pinkie smiled, bouncing over to the princess. “I’ll be back day after Hearth’s Warming!”

“And a chariot will be here to pick up Fluttershy in about two hours,” Twilight Sparkle continued. “I look forward to the new year’s launch!”

With a flash of purple light princess and party pony poofed away, leaving Chrysalis to put her head in her hooves and groan at the injustice of life(265).

Footnotes:

(259) Who had evaded any punishment for his minor role in Mission R1, receiving only a lecture on following rocket design instructions- “The next time you think something’s wrong with a design, ASK first!”

(260) Except, of course, Pinkie’s.

(261) Technically Cadence’s bridesmaid, but since Chrysalis had been disguised as Cadence, it was the same thing so far as Chrysalis cared. Pinkie had been her favorite not for any sneaky traits, but because the pink pony had been among the most gullible of the group of ponies her plan had been specifically designed to break apart. But she wasn’t going to tell Pinkie Pie that.

(262) So she could watch her crayon-drawn animation of a pony turning cartwheels.

(263) Despite the multitude of questions, like for example, “What do the ingredients for ginger snaps have to do with spaceflight?” or, “Why is she sketching a picture of Chrysalis and Cherry Berry roasting marshmallows on the sun?” Nopony dared even think the more obvious one, “How does she get blue, pink and yellow out of a single black marker?”

(264) The pony version of Pong, in essence. At the time of the events in this story it was obsolete, with the old cabinets mostly junked to make room for the newest arcade game, E. T. the Extreme Terrapin. Of course, the old-school gamers scoffed at the idea that a video game about a racing turtle, even with a blue shell and spiky scales, would do anything other than blow up in the industry leader’s face.

(265) Chrysalis was all for injustice, but only when she was on the right end of it.

BLOOMINGMARE’S OF MANEHATTAN
RETURNS AND EXCHANGE

At this sign you are roughly
NINETY MINUTES
From the counter

SEASON’S GREETINGS &
HAPPY NEW YEAR

“The bad news is,” Goddard said bluntly, “we can’t reproduce Mission R1’s rocket.”

Hearth’s Warming had come and gone. Although the construction ponies would remain on vacation through the end of the year, the changeling members of CSP were trickling in, generally replete with love and cheer gained by fair means and foul. A number of them(266) brought with them little souvenirs and gifts for Queen Chrysalis, to the point that the administration building's throne room was being conquered by mounds of bric-a-brac.(267)

Returning workers, of course, meant the resumption of work… within limits.

“Appleoosa is fresh out of components for the Thumper solid-rocket booster,” Goddard continued. “We won’t have any more until at least two weeks into the new year. We still have some Fleas and Hammers, but they’re too inefficient to even consider putting on a moon launch.” The old griffon groaned and slumped back in his chair, stretching his wings out a little for balance. “And the only use for the next generation of heavy-lift rocket motors right now is for fireworks.”

Von Brawn rumbled his own noise of discontent. “Doctor, you’ve just told us that any rocket we can build with enough thrust to fly by the moon won’t be able to lift itself off the pad,” he said. “Unless we assemble liquid-fueled boosters.”

“We don’t have enough engines or fuel tanks for that,” Goddard grumbled. “We have two Reliants, one Swivel, and two Terriers remaining. Any combination of those that gets to the moon requires more fuel tanks than we can get here in time. And even if we had ‘em, I don’t think the configuration works for anything beyond orbit.”

“What can you get built between now and launch day?” Chrysalis asked.

“Nothing,” Goddard grumbled. “If I were in Appleoosa right now, with the skeleton crew we have there, maybe a Swivel and a couple of fuel tanks. I think we’ve got the parts on hand for that. But it’d take me the rest of today to get back, and then the things have to be shipped all around Celestia’s green earth to get here safely. And, of course, no new parts or materials will begin coming in until after the holidays end.”

“What about your training wheels?” George Cowley wheezed.

Chrysalis blinked. “Training wheels?” she asked. “What good are wheels on a rocket?”

Von Brawn chuckled. “An inside joke, Queen Chrysalis,” he rumbled. “The first experiments in maneuvering rockets for use in orbit. Smaller rocket motors that can be mounted radially, around the fuel tanks,” he explained, making a circle in the air with one finger. “We were considering using them as additional thrust for a second stage or for a lander vehicle.”

“I’ve got four of ‘em,” Goddard added. “I think they might add enough thrust to get the first stage up- I’ll have to do the math to be sure. The problem is, they feed off the same fuel tanks as the main engines, so we’ll have to add more fuel tanks to the first stage.” He leaned forward again, making curlicue scratch marks on the tabletop with one talon. “The rocket will be taller than anything we’ve sent up yet. It’s probably going to shimmy like a wet poodle, which means loss of efficiency and possible structural failure. And that’s if it doesn’t just tip over the instant we set it on the launchpad.”

“That means the probe goes on a diet,” von Brawn continued. “The mission requires the probe control system, electrical supply and batteries, communications, and a thermometer. Nothing else goes. No goo, no Science Jr. Definitely no parachute. This one flies, or this one crashes, period.”

“But will it work?” Chrysalis insisted.

Von Brawn and Goddard looked at one another for confirmation. “On paper, I think so,” von Brawn said. “But we can’t be certain.”

“I’ve already sent for a couple of those launch-brace things like we tested on Mission Seven,” Goddard said. “But they have to be shipped from the minotaur islands, so they probably won’t get here in time. Good news,” he added, not sounding at all cheerful about it, “is the first batch of Jet Set’s new fins, the AV-R8s, arrived on this morning’s barge from Baltimare. We should be more stable in atmosphere than ever, assuming we don’t shimmy the probe to death.”

“The last time we were this rushed,” Chrysalis grumbled, “it was for that kludge of a mission Sparkle set us up for.”

Cherry Berry, alone of the ponies at the table, smiled. “The last time we were this rushed,” she said, “you became the first pony in space.”

This wrung a little smile out of the changeling queen, but nothing more. “So we have a rocket,” she said. “Do we have a robot to stick on top of it?”

Marked Knee, in the course of only a few days, had gone from enthusiastic to morose to angry, and now he achieved yet another new state: bafflement.(268) “How should I know??” he asked. “I’ve dismantled that video game according to her instructions, but I can’t decipher her notes to go any farther!!” He held up one piece of paper and added, “Unless the probe runs on a recipe for tutti-frutti ice cream punch!!”

“And her programming for the probe is even worse,” George Bull complained. “It’s like she took my ideas and translated them into Ancient Yak! AND, OR, NOR and NOT- those I understand. But MAYBE? GUESS? KINDASORTA? You can’t build a logic tree from those!” He slapped another piece of paper and added, “And RND? What IS RND? Research and development? Read new document? Really nice donut? WHAT?”

“Welcome to Pinkie Logic,” Cherry Berry giggled. “Ponyville’s been living with it for over ten years now.”

“She’s supposed to return later tomorrow via express chariot,” George Bull said. “She sent a telegram saying she had to go pick up the electrical generation system and an expert on its operation.”

The expert wore an eye-bending bandanna over her orange corn-row braided mane. Sleepy, slightly bloodshot eyes gazed out from a lime-green face. “Like, did you know all the negative vibes your place has?” she said by way of introduction. “It’s like, y’know, all the concrete and junk, it’s totally shaking its hoof at Momma Nature.”

“This is Tree Hugger,” Pinkie Pie said. “She’s a friend of Fluttershy’s. These solar panels came off her house. She’s used them for all her power for years.”

“Like off the grid is the way to go, you know?” Tree Hugger agreed. “No pollution, no bad karma, just sticking it to the Mare.”

“Oh, Tartarus,” Chrysalis groaned. “Someling fetch me a fresh bottle of asprin.”

The minotaurs, in contrast to the patient Cherry Berry and the annoyed Chrysalis, inspected the two solar panels with every sign of interest. “And this device uses Back Corral’s photovoltaic effect?” von Brawn asked. “But I thought the gold-gadolinium material was both too expensive and inefficient. Less than two percent.”

“One of my family’s competitors, Fuller Earth, grows huge silicon crystals,” Pinkie Pie said. “Slice that really thin, add some conductors and a clear film on one side to let the light in, and there you go! More than ten percent efficiency!”

“But it’s still a very inefficient process, surely!!” Marked Knee commented.

“Like, ten percent of free is still free!” Tree Hugger said, her smile never fading. “So long as you can see Celestia’s sun, you have lights!”

“And besides, ESA is installing brand new panels on her house!” Pinkie Pie added. “So for her it really IS free!”

The two panels sat next to the sky chariot, a light but strong aluminum gridwork underlaying the thin, dark, reflective surface. “We mount these opposite to one another on the service bay that holds the probe body,” von Brawn decreed. “So long as we never run the battery completely down and keep one side or the other turned to the sun, we should be able to recharge indefinitely.”

“Well, let’s get these over to the VAB.” Cherry Berry looked around her, then asked, “Where’s Lucky Cricket?”

“I am one with the cosmos.”

Tree Hugger stepped aside, and Lucky more or less slumped to the ground. “Like I didn’t want to say anything,” she said, “but he’s really harshing my vibe, you know? Can we get like a little personal space here?”

“The colors sing to me!” Lucky Cricket raised one perforated hoof, slowly and unsteadily waving it back and forth. “The map of reality is printed on my frog!”

“Pony, remind me,” Chrysalis muttered in Cherry Berry’s ear, “to have a word with my subjects about not snacking on visitors to the space center.”

“Snacking?” Lucky lifted his head. “I could go for one of those fudge things Carapace makes. What’s he call them… um… brownies?”

Footnotes:

(266) By and large, the smarter ones. Chrysalis only wished they'd been smart enough to include receipts.

(267) Plus rather a lot of mud, as the Hearth’s Warming snow melted and the normal not-quite-tropical weather of Horseton reasserted itself. Shouting and threats had produced apologies and quite a bit of bowing and scraping, but it hadn’t increased use of the doormat.

(268) This is universally recognized as stage two of the Process of Pinkie Pie, the full sequence being Confusion, Bafflement, Denial, Bargaining and Acceptance.

George Cowley, who was the least suited to the current discussion of crafting instructions for calculating machines of the gathered scientists, leaned back in his chair and considered the nature of genius.

In his long lifetime Cowley had known only a handful of true geniuses- beings whose talent for lateral thinking and leaps of calculation or inspiration changed the nature of their chosen field. The one common feature they all shared was a tendency for eccentricity. The kind of mind that could change the world often had trouble changing its shirt.

Take Goddard the Griffon- definitely a genius, as his creation of the equations that made practical rocket flight possible and his insight into the use of liquid propellants showed. He was also a certifiable crab even by griffon standards, with a vile sense of humor that generally only surfaced with the misfortune of others. Short-tempered, gruff, socially inadequate, and when given the opportunity a workaholic. And, the old bird's secret shame, he was a baseball fanatic, an advocate of (of all teams) the hopeless Vanhoover Lumberjacks. At least the Griffonstone Falcons had been in the playoffs during Goddard's lifetime, but Vanhoover? Eccentric, oh yes indeed.

But if eccentricity was the measure of a genius, then Pinkie Pie might, in Cowley's opinion, qualify as the next step in pony evolution.

For two days thus far the minotaurs had enjoyed, more or less, a front-row seat to a display of genius at work(269). Pinkie Pie’s explanations consistently went faster than the astonished scientists could follow, took unexpected and far-reaching tangents, and often as not made no sense at all. In fact, von Brawn and his associates were often having to un-learn as fast as they were learning, once they figured out that some of Pinkie Pie's methods worked for her and no one else on Equus.

For one example: Marked Knee and George Bull had created a programming method called "top-down design." You began by stating the one big thing you wanted the program to do. You then broke that one big thing down into a series of steps, and then you broke each of those steps down into smaller steps, until you reached the simplest possible actions. Flow charts often got involved in the later stages. It was methodical, it was logical, and it worked.

Pinkie Pie used Bottom Up Design, or "the BUDdy System" as she called it. Somehow she was able to begin with all the little things a program needed to do and then, after the fact, build a framework for them all. This system worked fine for someone who had accurate information popping into her head from apparently nowhere, but for mere mortals it was simply unworkable. The tragic part of it all was the minotaurs, even Cowley, could see how much time and trouble could be saved by Pinkie's system... if only you knew at the very beginning everything you needed to get the job done. They'd learned the hard way how unlikely that was.

Ah, yes. And apparently Pinkie Pie had just come up with another Don't Try This at Home concept, judging by the consternation on all three of Cowley's colleagues. Silently he removed the earplugs he'd been using to shut out the unimportant babble- he'd been following progress by the chalkboards and whiteboards.

"- random number generator has no place in a precision computing machine!!" Marked Knee was insisting.

"Yes, it does!" Pinkie Pie insisted. "There's all sorts of uses for it- checking formulas, probability analysis-"

"An electrical circuit is either on or off!" George Bull insisted. "We have to structure our programming logic around that fact! We need rigid rules for action, not- not-!!"

Pinkie Pie held up her forehooves. "Lemme explain it like this," she said. "Suppose you have a computer baking bread."

"A what?" von Brawn asked.

"Just suppose," Pinkie insisted. "The computer runs the kitchen like this one will run a rocket. You can program the rocket with the proper recipe and cooking time, but sometimes the oven isn't working quite right, sometimes you get a bad batch of yeast, or maybe the milk has a little bit too much cream, but I like when that happens because the bread comes out extra crusty and makes the most splendiferous crunch when you toast it! Of course, it's also good for sandwiches, but-"

"The computer," von Brawn reminded Pinkie, just as Cowley was reaching for his earplugs again.

"What about the computer?" Pinkie blinked, then said, "Oh yeah!" before the bulls could remind her where the example was supposed to go. "Anyway, there are a lot of little things that can change from one loaf to the next, and if your computer just does the same thing every time, your bread won't be very good. So, say you tell the computer, 'There's a five percent chance that doing this now will make the bread bake better, try it and check results.' And those rules kick in when the computer sees something off with the loaf in the oven."

"I don't think that works, Miss Pie," George Bull said after a moment's thought. "Even if we grant the point that a rigid set of rules isn't always appropriate, your fuzzy method seems likely to produce more bad outcomes than good outcomes. Your five percent chance would work out well a lot less than five percent of the time."

"At first, yeah," Pinkie nodded. "But it comes good in the long run!"

"I still say this is absurd!!" Marked Knee insisted. "A computer should do what it's told based on data received, nothing else! It shouldn't be doing things because it rolls the dice and follows the numbers instead of reality!"

Pinkie Pie looked at Marked Knee. "But how can anypony learn anything," she asked, "if they can't try new and different things? If they can't make a choice of their own?"

Marked Knee opened his mouth... and closed it again. He sat down, lowering his eyes, obviously thinking hard about something. George Bull looked like he would say something, but after a moment he too joined his younger colleague in deep thought.

"I think this philosophical problem is going to have to wait for another day," von Brawn finally said. "Let's move to practical considerations. What would we use the RND command for?"

"Well, your stability system is pretty good," Pinkie Pie said. "Pretty good. It detects rotation in the ship and gradually cranks up pitch, roll and yaw until it maxes out, and cancels the rotation, right? But it overcorrects a lot, doesn't it? So I figured if the computer can guess how much force it needs to exactly counter the rotation, instead of just pushing until it doesn't feel the rotation anymore, it'll work better!"

Almost instantly George Bull and Marked Knee reached for the same piece of paper. After a bit of a faff fighting over it, they picked up pencils and set to work together on the same page, not speaking, just writing out lines of code, scratching them out, making notations, and filling up the page in no time.

As they reached for more paper, von Brawn cleared his throat. "As grateful as I am to Miss Pie for inspiring you two gentlebulls," he rumbled, "we have a few other things to iron out in this meeting. We still haven't finalized the reaction wheel designs."

"Did that last night!!" Marked Knee said, not looking up from his scribbling. "Assembled this morning!! Interface specs are here." He paused in writing long enough to slide another bit of paper over to von Brawn.

von Brawn picked up the document and looked it over, Pinkie Pie shamelessly leaning over his shoulder to see. "Are these proportions correct?" he said at last.

"Space and power constraints within the probe body limited my scope!!" Marked Knee said. "The torque will be much less than normal!! Maybe as little as one-fifth that of a capsule system!!" He slid a second paper across. "I also designed a much larger system that can be used on heavier rockets!! It would increase our control authority at the cost of higher energy demands!!"

von Brawn picked up the second design and considered it. "A good idea," he said at length. "But we don't have time before launch to test both. We'll focus on the self-contained full system."

Marked Knee nodded, his eyes never having left his work.

"Can I see?" Pinkie asked. Before von Brawn could agree, she picked up the reaction wheel designs and looked them over. "Why don't we just dump one of these wheels?" she asked. "There's only three ways you can turn, but you have four wheels and gimbals here. You could save a lot of power-"

"Gimbal lock," George Bull said, not glancing up.

"Huh?"

"One of the first problems we discovered when developing our navigation system," von Brawn explained, "is that if you get two of the reaction wheels coplanar with one another, they lock together- they continue rotating in the same plane. You lose control and navigation in that axis, which usually means you lose the ship."

"Oh, so it's like a spare tire!" Pinkie nodded wisely.

"It's much more than that," von Brawn explained. "We can use the fourth wheel to reset any of the other three, because the fourth wheel provides an independent frame of reference. So long as the other wheels are mechanically sound, we can recover from gimbal lock situations and still have four operational reaction wheels."

"So it's like having a tire patch kit instead!" Pinkie grinned. "I get it now!"

"What's a tire?" George Bull asked as he wrote.

"So, we have attitude control and SAS, in addition to basic rocket function," von Brawn said, preventing Pinkie Pie from going down yet another of the tangents the minotaurs had already learned to dread. "Now we just need to integrate them all into a single-"

"Working!" Not quite in unison, both Knee and Bull tapped the notes they were working on with their erasers. After a moment, they resumed their scribbling.

"Oh, is THAT what that is?" Pinkie Pie asked. "I wanna see!" Jumping onto the table, she walked over to the notes, turning her head sideways, then upside down, then through two complete rotations before her neck unwound in a spin that made Cowley, the armchair observer, dizzy just thinking about it. "That can't be right," she said, pointing to a line on the fourth page of scribbles. "Where'd this function call come from? I don't remember it from specs!"

Without speaking, both Bull and Knee slid the second page of scribbles over to her.

"Oh," Pinkie said, and then, "Wait a minute. If you do it this way you're setting yourself up for a recursive loop. See, if this reads zero but THIS reads negative, then-"

The third page of scribbles slid across to Pinkie's hooves.

"Oh. Yeah. That's brilliant! Wait, no. Um. That's no good either. Now it conflicts with this function over here. Lemme show you." Pinkie bent her head down for another pencil, then paused as she realized there wasn't room for her to mouth-write between the large, rapidly moving fists of the two minotaurs. "Um, guys, can we take this to the chalkboard?" she asked.

George Cowley nodded to himself and reinserted his earplugs. Things were going well, aside from arguments and distractions- much faster than the minotaurs normally proceeded. He took out his own notepad and paper and, as Knee, Bull and Pie shifted their design work to the blackboard and von Brawn watched in silence, he began copying things down.

He had the most important job; making sure that, whatever the team accomplished with Pinkie Pie's erratic aid, they would be able to do again when she went back home. After all, unlike Pinkie, they couldn't negotiate sweetheart deals with the fundamental physical laws of the universe.

But with enough teamwork, they might be able to sneak in a couple of loopholes.

Footnote:

(269) As with front row seats at performing marine animal shows, the wise and forewarned viewers brought their own rain slickers and umbrellas.

Wishing all in Equestria
A Magical New Year
Full of Happiness and Friendship

Celestia * Luna * Twilight Sparkle

Launch day dawned at last, chilly but well above freezing, bright and clear.

In the course of three days, bits from an arcade game, a shrunk-down reaction wheel system, and other parts from here and there came together into an eight-sided box about half the volume of Shotputnik- small enough to fit, along with the batteries, inside a standard storage bay. What’s more, thanks to George Cowley's strategic note-taking and even more strategic selective listening, they could do it again from scratch, without the aid of a cheerful but confusing and occasionally annoying mad genius.

While the minotaurs focused on the probe itself, Goddard tweaked the rocket design. After experiments with balancing the rocket on a single Reliant engine bell proved hopeless, Goddard ditched the main first stage engine entirely. The four smaller Mark 55 “Thud” engines balanced the weight well enough to keep the rocket upright, and on paper they had more than enough thrust to lift it, but the question remained: would they really?

At the final staff meeting before launch, Occupant suggested using the moon probe to fulfill the satellite contract as well. The company only wanted the satellite for a limited scan of Equus, after which it would be abandoned and therefore free to use for the moon flight. After quite a bit of discussion this was rejected; the satellite contract required a polar orbit, which required delta-v the rocket might not have to spare. Twilight Sparkle’s decoupler contract would be fulfilled, since that could be accomplished on a standard ascent, but apart from that Mission R2 would focus exclusively on a lunar fly-by, and if possible an orbit. The satellite contract would keep until spring.

With the flight checklist finalized, the rocket was assembled. Warner von Brawn oversaw the process himself, making certain there were no unauthorized additions, substitutions, or omissions.

In only a handful of days, two space programs had come together and worked around the clock to put together a space probe, partly to prove it could be done, partly to restore damaged pride and reputation, and partly because that's what friends do, even if they're not particularly friendly. Mission R1 had a skeleton crew with details falling through the cracks; R2 had double-checking and triple-checking, as missions were supposed to. Mission R1 had pushed the envelope too hard with untested parts and designs; although R2 had untested designs, it also had improvements from prior designs and, if not sufficient testing, at least some testing.

And now the completed rocket sat on the pad, ready for takeoff in front of hundreds of spectators, ready to demonstrate the difference, if any, between a slapdash, semi-secret effort and actual teamwork.

The grandstands weren’t as full as they had been for the Hearth’s Warming launch, as too many ponies had business the following day, but the press found itself hard-pressed to locate the gaps between the spectators. Of course, the press had other concerns, mainly finding every single excuse to refer back to the “Stayputnik” launch of a week prior.(270)

Not that the program leaders were concerned about the press now. The mission control floor that had been half-empty a week before now bustled with people. In addition to every member of the normal CSP mission control staff, including all four minotaurs and Goddard in the bullpen, the core members of the Equestria Space Agency had joined as onlookers and de facto assistants. Every station had at least two beings per console.

And in the back of the room, on cushions brought over from the astronaut quarters, sat the superfluous ponies for the launch: Chrysalis and Cherry Berry for CSP; and Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash for ESA.(271) After a few very brief pleasantries, conversation more or less died except for pre-launch routine. All of them sat on the edges of their seats or cushions, or else paced the floor, anxious to see if the revised ship would fly or flop.

The final pre-flight checklist went like clockwork, all controllers confirming Go status for launch. The rocket’s fuel tanks were topped off and the fuel lines detached. Fiddlewing’s piercing siren echoed across the complex, and inside Mission Control Occupant, his normal white vest replaced by one fronted with black horizontal stripes(272), said, “Activate probe.”

Marked Knee flicked the switch. His console lit up with numerous lights, far more than Shotputnik had required. “Probodobodyne activated!!” he reported.

“You don’t have to shout, silly,” Pinkie Pie chided him.

“Initialization complete,” Marked Knee continued a few moments later, chastened. “Link-up with ground control confirmed.”

“Probe accepting commands,” Dragonfly said, watching the new guidance fins rotate on the projection. “Controls responsive. Uplink secure.”

“Flight leader reports all go for launch,” Occupant said. “Resume countdown from launch minus thirty seconds.”

“T-minus thirty and counting,” a changeling said from the rear of the room.

The seconds ticked by in a silence broken only by very soft murmurings from a couple of television reporters in the gallery. The timekeeper spoke at twenty seconds, at fifteen. When he began counting aloud at ten seconds, his voice and the clicking of the countdown clock were the only sounds in the room.

At zero Dragonfly sent the ignition signal and throttled the rocket up to full.

Slowly, gradually, the rocket rose from the pad, the roar of the exhaust flames a subdued rumbled rather than the accustomed hammer-blow of sound.

“It’s sluggish,” Dragonfly said almost immediately. “Accelerating really slowly.”

“It’ll speed up once it burns some fuel,” Goddard replied. “Performing as expected.”

“Beginning gravity turn program,” Dragonfly said, adjusting her controls slightly.

“No, wait!” von Brawn shouted from the bullpen, too late.

On the screen the ship tilted slightly… and then began to wobble and shimmy, faster and faster, as it continued slowly rising from the space center.

“We weren’t going fast enough yet!” von Brawn continued. “The ship hasn’t got enough momentum to counter longitudinal rotation! The SAS is overworking to keep the ship from tumbling!”

“What do I do about it, then?” Dragonfly shouted.

“Nothing!” Pinkie Pie called out. “Probey-dobey can cope! Trust it!”

“Getting a warning code, Miss Pie,” Marked Knee said. “Error 1201.”

“Ignore it,” Pinkie replied. “1201 and 1202 are okay, so long as we don’t get a 1203. It just means the computer’s busy!”

“Anything I can do to help it?” Dragonfly insisted.

“Leave it alone!” Pinkie said confidently. “It can handle it if it’s left alone! See, it’s keeping on course!”

As, indeed, it was. Although the rocket continued to shimmy, its prograde vector remained within a circle centered on due east, ten degrees off vertical.

“At T plus thirty, air speed two hundred ninety meters per second at four kilometers altitude,” George Bull called out. “So long as the structure holds, we’re looking good.”

“She’ll hold,” Goddard replied. “We made those parts so strong even you idiots couldn’t break ‘em.”

“Twenty percent fuel remaining in first stage,” Dragonfly announced.

“Once we drop the first stage, the fins will be at the rear,” Goddard added. “That’ll stop the shimmy.”

A few seconds later the four Thuds burned out, and with a single button-push Dragonfly ordered the probe to drop the spent stage and ignite the second stage engine. As predicted, the now much shorter craft quit shimmying instantly, steadying on a trajectory a bit north of true east.

“All right, looks like we’re past the worst,” Dragonfly said. “I’m going to roll the ship and get the nose down to forty-five degrees.”

That proved tricky. The tiniest touch of hoof to controls, by the time the radio signal went through the probe computer and out to the new adjustable fins, turned into a massive roll. Hissing, Dragonfly twitched the craft back and forth several times, finally managing to the trajectory, if not the attitude, where she wanted it. “Fins are really twitchy,” she finally managed to say in Equestrian. “And reaction wheels are a bit sluggish.” After a pause she added, “Better than R1, though.”

“Nine hundred meters per second at thirty-three kilometers,” George Bull reported. “Stand by for decoupler test.”

“Throttling back for decoupler test,” Dragonfly acknowledged. This time, to preserve balance, the probe had not one but two lateral decouplers, one to either side of the ship. At forty-one thousand meters, both fired off without incident.

“Probodobodyne systems all nominal!!” Marked Knee shouted. “Batteries at full, radio connection solid!! It’s performing flawlessly!!”

Dragonfly and Occupant both hissed loudly, and Marked Knee flinched.(273)

“Don’t crow too soon,” Chrysalis translated from the back of the room.

“Yes,” Marked Knee agreed, subdued once more, “that’s probably a good idea.”

“Third stage ignition confirmed,” Dragonfly said, as on the wall the second stage with its large fins dropped rapidly away from the remaining ship.

“Solar panels recharging batteries,” Marked Knee murmured. “All is going-“

“Don’t crow too soon,” Chrysalis reminded him.

“Opening bay doors,” Dragonfly replied. “Thermometer working normally, readings coming through clearly.”

“Data transmission is draining power a bit faster than the solar panels generate it,” von Brawn observed. “We’ll have to be careful about that, especially on the night side of the planet.”

“Shutting it down,” Dragonfly repeated. “Does that correct things?”

Von Brawn watched the readouts over Marked Knee and Pinkie Pie’s shoulders. “It appears to,” he said at length.

“The relay stations we set up for Shotputnik are working fine!!” Marked Knee announced. “Transfer to the Germaney station was smooth, and Stalliongrad is standing by!!”

“Don’t crow-“

“I know, I know,” Marked Knee moaned, settling back into his chair.

“Three… two… one… MECO!”

“MECO!” Dragonfly replied, ordering Mission R2 to shut down its engine.

After a moment’s observation, von Brawn said, “Trajectory correction, two seconds prograde at twenty percent throttle.”

“Copy prograde twenty percent burn for two seconds,” Dragonfly said, making a couple of minor adjustments. “Burn in three, two, one, go… and MECO.”

“MECO confirmed,” von Brawn rumbled. “Trajectory shows good for lunar fly-by with a periapsis of forty-seven kilometers.”

“Showing fifty percent fuel remaining in third stage,” Dragonfly added.

“That’s more than enough for an orbital burn,” George Bull contributed.

Marked Knee shuffled his hooves, wrung his hands, and bit his lower lip, saying nothing.

“You may crow now, Dr. Knee,” Chrysalis shouted.

“YES!!!” Marked Knee leapt to his feet, throwing his fists in the air with a bellow that shook the press gallery glass. Pinkie Pie jumped up onto the console behind them and, standing on her hind hooves, joined the minotaur in a dance of celebration(274).

“You know,” Twilight Sparkle said, “this automated control system will save a lot of astromares’ lives.”

“Who cares?” Chrysalis waved away this minor concern. “We’re going to the moon!!”

Footnotes:

(270) Mostly because it took three or four attempts to figure out how to pronounce “Probodobodyne.”

(271) And Fluttershy. Nobody had expected Fluttershy to show up, but she had, and to everyone’s surprise she took a seat next to Dragonfly’s capcom/remote pilot station. Rainbow Dash had spent the first hour of preparations making sure the trembling, flinching ball of nerves was all right, but Fluttershy kept her eyes focused on the wall and the telepresence-spell projection of Mission R2’s rocket and control readouts. Meanwhile Applejack shadowed Occupant at the flight director's position, Starlight Glimmer joined Pinkie Pie, Goddard and the minotaurs in the bullpen, and Spike quietly kept coffee and snacks coming from Heavy Frosting's kitchen.

(272) Given to him by Chrysalis herself, after she had it made overnight by a Horseton dressmaker. It was meant as a reminder that he was, most literally, on probation.

(273) Along with more than half the ponies in the mission control building.

(274) This time it was the funky chicken, although Pinkie had to temporarily violate the law of gravity to execute the full step.

Forty-eight hours later, the telepresence projection showed the probe rapidly approaching a crater-marked sphere. The crowds outside didn’t return, but the press and the members of the Equestrian Space Agency had(275). If the room had been tense the day before, today the air crackled with the kind of anticipation a five-year-old foal or filly had for Hearth’s Warming.

“Estimated twenty minutes to lunar gravitational sphere of influence,” George Bull announced. Ad Astra, seated at the end of the bullpen, nodded her agreement; the point at which lunar gravity exerted more force than Equus gravity was the point at which the flight officially became a lunar fly-by, and thus fulfilled various Royal Astronomical Society contracts and prize conditions.

“This is so exciting!” Twilight Sparkle burbled, unable to contain herself. “The first object from Equestria to another world! It’s so amazing I can’t describe it!”

“Which hasn’t stopped you attempting to six times in the past hour,” Chrysalis muttered, but without any real rancor. Truth be told, she shared the purple princess’s excitement. Today a robot was going… and before much longer, where the robot went, she would follow.

And then, oh yes then, she would show everyp-

The projection flared with a brilliant flash of dark blue light.

When the image cleared, the probe was mostly in the same place… but the moon had gone.

Von Brawn’s deep bellow of, “WHAT THE-“ barely preceded the tidal wave of noise, as practically everyone in Mission Control jumped to their hooves.

“It’s not there!” George Bull said. “The moon’s not there! Somebody moved the moon!”

“They did what??” shouted Goddard the Griffon.

For about half a second the room went silent, before exploding into shouts of rage even louder than the astonishment of before. Marked Knee ripped his headset off his horned head and threw it underfoot, smashing it under his hooves. Dragonfly also ripped off her headset, flinging it on her console. Occupant just slumped forward and buried his head in his forelegs.

Chrysalis, who until half a minute before had been enjoying her seat on her cushion at the back of the room, burst to her feet, glaring at the princess seated beside her. “YOU,” she accused, pouring every ounce of rage she could into the syllable… and then hauling some of it back as she saw the shocked and betrayed expression on Twilight Sparkle’s face, felt the confusion wafting off of her. “You…. you had nothing to do with this, did you?” she said. “This was Celestia’s plan to humiliate us, wasn’t it?”

“No!” Twilight Sparkle shook her head. “Celestia told me herself she’s staying out of the space race! She wouldn’t cheat just to deny anypony an achievement!”

Chrysalis pondered this. No, it wasn’t Celestia’s kind of scheme, was it? Which meant…

“We’ve found the moon,” George Bull said. “It’s well behind its projected place in orbit. By the time the evening correction puts it back, Mission R2 will be well outside of lunar orbit. We’re not going to get the flyby, not even coming back down.”

“Luna,” Chrysalis growled. Had the dream princess figured out Chrysalis’s true plans? Or was she just jealous of other ponies playing with her baubles?

As if in answer, the mission control doors opened to reveal a bat-pony royal guard stallion flanked by two members of CSP security. “I bring a message,” the guard said, “for Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings.”

Stepping around Twilight Sparkle, Chrysalis stood in front of the intruder. “I am Chrysalis,” she said formally. “Deliver your message.”

“My mistress bids me declare that neither the Changeling Space Program, nor any other, shall be permitted near her moon without her consent,” the guard continued. “She also has a private message for Chrysalis personally.”

“Really.” Gesturing back to the doors, Chrysalis followed the guard and her changelings out into the hallway. The two changelings walked to either end of the hall to secure it from eavesdroppers, leaving her alone with the bat-pony. “What’s the rest of it?” she asked.

“Your Majesty,” the guard said, “Princess Luna sent me to make you an offer you can’t refuse…”

MISSION R2 REPORT

Mission summary: Test communications, flight control and other properties of Probodobodyne Mk. 2; test of decoupler systems in upper atmosphere; first lunar fly-by

Pilot: Probodobodyne Mk. 2 (Dragonfly)

Flight duration: (ongoing)
Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First uncrewed orbit, trans-lunar apoapsis

Conclusions from flight: Not. Our. Fault.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: A SUCCESS THAT FAILED TO SUCCEED

Footnote:

(275) Except for Fluttershy, who had seen what she wanted to see on launch day. She spent the day in bed with an ice pack on her head while her animals fed her daffodil soup and chamomile tea.

Author's Note

Well, this one turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected. Again.

Here's what those of you who have chipped in to my Patreon have mostly been funding. And if you haven't been chipping in, please consider it- it's been a rough year so far on the convention circuit. https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Mission R1 was deliberately crafted, by me, to fail. "Stayputnik" is the first robot probe unit available in Kerbal Space Program's tech tree. Most players skip over it for Probodobodyne, the next tech tree tier up, because it's not difficult to get the science required to unlock that tier in the vanilla installation. Stayputnik's lack of reaction wheels and SAS controls make it pretty much useless without RCS thrusters, and you have to go a long way up the tech tree before you can unlock those.

But I wanted to include it, specifically so I could show it failing.

Ironically, R1 could have succeeded had I added tailfins. I -did- refly the mission with tailfins in sandbox afterwards, and with some difficulty I achieved a lunar flyby. However, the base-level non-upgraded VAB limits the user to 30 parts in career mode, so the R1 that flew for this story couldn't have both the fins and all the science gear.

But the decision to have R1 and Stayputnik fail leads to the story problem: how do you get from Stayputnik to Probodobodyne very, very quickly?

That's where Pinkie Pie's involvement comes in.

We use the word "genius" as a synonym for "smart," but that's not how the word was originally used. "Genius" and "genesis" have the same Greek root; a genius is a person who brings new ideas into the world, new ways of thinking, new creations.

The two things we need to remember are: (1) you only have to be a genius once in your life to be a genius for the rest of your life; and (2) most true geniuses think so differently from everybody else that "eccentric" is only the start of it.

In canon Pinkie Pie is obviously a genius, so for story purposes I used her to bail out CSP and, at the same time, find a way to contribute to the ESA effort after her ESA Flight Five funk. The "Pink Mare" (Pac-Man) pun made, at least in my mind, the perfect explanation.

Blame the fans who complained about Pinkie Pie's departure from ESA and Skywriter's "Contraptionology" if the above explanation doesn't satisfy.

Of course, justifying this required a bit of research into how silicon integrated circuits (and another issue, photovoltaic cells). Interesting reading all the way around. The current generation of solar cells use phosphorus as a conductor, which I for one am very reluctant to hand to changelings, kerbalized or not.

R2, after the shimmy caused by Rocket Too Long and Skinny, went absolutely flawlessly. And boring. That's half the reason why that flight gets bare-bones description once it gets out of atmosphere. The other half is, after over six months of puttering along with this with my all-too-scarce free time and energy, I WANTED THIS CHAPTER TO END NOW, PLEASE. (A sentiment I suspect some readers will agree with by the time Mission R2 launches.)

Finally, this chapter allowed me to explore "go-fever" without putting any cast members on the line. And it also allowed me to give an in-story reminder that Chrysalis is Not A Nice Person. She loves her followers strictly on her own terms, and she's definitely not above tormenting them for her own satisfaction. Her only limits in this regard are utility; she's not going to screw herself over down the road for temporary sadistic thrills today. That's why she backed down so quickly when Cherry Berry finally intervenes. It's also why Marked Knee didn't get his walking papers; she wasn't willing to risk losing the other three minotaurs to solidarity.

Next time, a lot of missions are going to be resolved off-screen, so we can focus on the important bit: Luna's first-hand investigation of CSP, which will include her own VIP tourist flight...

... oh, by the way, spoiler alert. :raritywink:

REFERENCES (beyond the obvious): "GORGGE" is the pony version of Zaxxon, one of the earliest video games to attempt three-dimensional game play. E-Z Scry Me is the pony Magic 8-Ball (which was the first thing I ever sent off a mail order for, when I was eight). I regret using a "space invaders" reference two different ways, but having done both I couldn't give up either.

NOTE FOR EXPANDED SCENE: Pinkie Pie gives an outstandingly bad description of what was the first steps in the development of "fuzzy logic," or exploring the possibility that flexible responses could produce better results than the rigid rules computers had operated by. George Bull responds as critics of fuzzy logic did in the early days. Unfortunately, though I spent my childhood futzing happily with BASIC programming, PASCAL and a particularly bad TA killed my interest in programming, so I'm not up enough on the subject to simulate the discussion any more than this brief bit. I also wanted to include a bit about neural nets and emergent processes as part of the development of AI, but they just don't fit in this story, so that bit got the axe.

Chapter 12: Mission 20: Keep Her Alive (And Show Her a Good Time)

CSP-20 T minus 32 days

“Welcome to Horseton Space Center, home of the Changeling Space Program.”

Queen Chrysalis walked back and forth along the line of nine (oh buck what was I THINKING) tourists, freshly arrived to spend the last three weeks of winter south of the snow line training for their springtime launches. Eight ponies and one griffon. Two Manehattanites, two from Cloudsdale, three from Canterlot, and two from Rainbow Falls.

All within the bounds of basic fitness to fly at accelerations of up to four G’s and of a size to fit in the tourist compartment.

In one case, just barely.

“Over the next three weeks you will be trained and instructed as if you were a proper astromare,” the queen continued, not making eye contact with any of the tourists (and especially not one particular tourist). “You will be exercised, trained in our simulators, instructed by our experienced scientific staff, and prepared to derive the maximum enjoyment out of your orbital flights.”

Nine tourists. I don’t care how much money it was or how badly we needed it. I must have been insane.

“Thanks to your generous support of our program, the expansion of our Vehicle Assembly Building will be completed on schedule nine days from now,” Chrysalis continued. “On the second day after Winter Wrap-Up- that’s twelve days from now- you will get to watch as we use our new facilities to launch a global exploration satellite sponsored by the Canterlot Explorers’ Society.(276) Two days after that we’ll launch Mission Fifteen, a science flight into high orbit that will test Probodobodyne’s ability to interact with a crewed capsule.”(277)

George Bull and Marked Knee spent a week writing about a hundred pages of gobbledygook to handle the probe-cockpit interface. They sent it to that pink interloper in Ponyville to double-check it. She sent them back a copy of the old program with about twenty words added, and no other changes. I can still see their jaws swinging back and forth with no sound coming out as they double-checked it. I don’t know if I like her or want to kill her.

“After that launch four of you will enter final-week training, with simulations, briefings, and observation of the assembly of your rocket. Two of you will fly with me; the other two will fly with our program’s chief pilot, Cherry Berry.”

She’d wanted so badly to stick Dragonfly with all the tourist flights, but the new three-pony capsule wouldn’t be ready in time, and Goddard the Griffon’s reports on the heavy lift systems designed for it couldn’t be repeated in public. The tourists flights would re-use Mission Thirteen/Fourteen system of the one-mare capsule and the two-mare passenger compartment, aerodynamic instability and all. Every other member of the space program leadership, those traitors(278), insisted that Dragonfly couldn’t fly a tourist mission without either a proper large capsule or a solo orbital flight- which would happen over the queen’s cold dead body.

That meant she and the pony were stuck playing taxi pony for seven well-heeled ponies, one very important griffon…

… and her.

I must have been insane. Which pony psychiatrist could I kidnap who wouldn’t be missed?

“Four more of you will go up a week later,” Chrysalis continued. “And, in the final flight, which will launch as soon as a capsule is available, we have Princess Luna, who joined us as part of her investigation into the safety of space flight. We hope to satisfy all her concerns by the end of the coming month, so we can resume working on our ultimate goal- landing a mare on the moon.”

The eight paying tourists turned their eyes to the ninth, the one pony in the room taller than Chrysalis, the one who couldn’t quite meet anyone else’s eyes in return. Chrysalis could sense a bit of sympathy from a couple of the passengers and a lot of resentment from the other six.

This was, after all, the pony who had brought the space race to a screeching halt.

And, despite her own best efforts, Chrysalis’s mind kept orbiting around one simple, paranoid thought:

What does she know?

Footnotes:

(276) The Society’s vote to fund the satellite had been a narrow one. The losing faction argued that once Equus was completely mapped, there would no longer be unexplored lands, and thus the Society would lose its reason for existence. The winning faction argued, more persuasively than the other side, that it would make the Society look like a collection of useless old toffs if their arch-rivals in the Daring Do Fan Club beat them to it. This was a distinct possibility, as the DDFC had some members with inexplicably deep pockets…

(277) This was making a virtue out of necessity. Occupant had surprised everyone by soaring through the academic portion of his science training, mostly because he already knew most of the material as part of his job as flight manager. But the final stage of his training would require a flight, and noling trusted Occupant’s piloting skills less than Occupant himself. So the bulls would get fresh data, Occupant would train on servicing equipment in space, and Dragonfly would sit on the ground and be reminded of her ongoing punishment.

(278) Chrysalis’s delight at treason only applied when she wasn’t the one getting betrayed.

CSP-20 T minus 101 days

A flare of purple magic lit up the royal palace at Canterlot like a short-lived second sun. (279)

Twilight Sparkle swooped down to Luna’s private balcony, the place where she normally stood when she raised and lowered the moon. The door to the princess’s private chambers stood shut, but the first round of knocks from Twilight’s hoof threatened to knock it down. “LUNA, OPEN UP!” she shouted. “I know you were awake half an hour ago! I want some answers!”

“As do I.” Celestia, looking a bit annoyed, flapped her wings in place as she hovered, then gracefully lowered herself to the balcony floor. “You’re welcome any time, Twilight, but is it really necessary to make such a scene?”

“I made a scene? I made a scene?!?” Twilight hammered the door a second time. “LUNA! Come out and explain to your sister what you just did!”

“Perhaps you could explain it to me first?” Celestia asked patiently. “After all, Luna isn’t the one who just frightened four nobles into thinking we had a new Nightmare.”

“You weren’t watching television today, were you?” Twilight asked. “And nopony told you what happened in Horseton just now?” WHAM, WHAM, WHAM. “LUNA!!”

“No, and no,” Celestia replied. “I’ve kept my interest in space affairs quiet and my positions strictly neutral, you know that. I have the highest hopes for peace with the changelings if all works out.”

“Well, kiss your hopes good-bye!” Twilight growled. WHAM, WHAM, WHAM. “I’ll be surprised if we’re not at war with the changelings, the yaks, the griffons, the diamond dogs, and Outer Mulegonia by tomorrow!” WHAM, WHAM, WHAM. “Luna, come out and tell us why you stopped everypony’s space programs!”

“What?” Celestia gasped.

“I did not,” said a voice from behind the door. A moment later a window next to the door opened, and Luna, looking quite bleary, poked her head out. “The rockets can fly wherever they want. Except my moon.”

Celestia does most things with dignity, and her facehoof was a most dignified thing to behold, insofar as putting one’s own hoof over one’s face and hoping the stupidity will be gone when you remove it again can ever be made dignified. “Oh, dear sister,” she moaned. “What have you done?”

“She pulled the moon away from Mission R2!” Twilight accused the dark alicorn. “Just before the probe would have entered local moon space and won the award for first fly-by! And that’s not all!”

“Why, Luna?” Celestia groaned. “Our relations with the changelings are still quite delicate, as you well know.”

“Well, I had to stop them,” Luna insisted, no longer looking quite so certain of herself. “I had no idea what they might do up there.”

“Well, why didn’t you stop them BEFORE?” Twilight shouted.

“I didn’t think they were actually able to DO it before,” Luna replied. “I’ve been thinking about it for moons, and… well, time ran out, and I had to do something.”

“Oh, you did something all right,” Twilight snapped. “You shut down every space program on the planet!”

“Did not,” Luna insisted. “I only ordered that all of them keep away from the moon. I couldn’t single out the changelings, after all. It’s important that we act fairly and be seen to act fairly.” She nodded her head, as if that settled it, and added, “You taught me that, sister.”

Before Twilight could shout again, Celestia laid a calming hoof on the younger alicorn’s shoulder. “Sister,” she said quietly, “I wish you had discussed your plans with me before. I would have understood.”

“Would you?” Luna asked pointedly. “Could you?”

“But you chose the most inflammatory method I can think of, short of bucking Chrysalis in the head, to express your wishes,” Celestia continued.

“Do you know, she never asked me?” Luna said quietly.

Celestia blinked. “Er… what?”

“Chrysalis never asked me for permission to visit my moon,” Luna said. Looking at Twilight Sparkle, she added, “Neither did you. Nopony did. Everypony just assumed that I was fine with a free-for-all rush to MY moon.”

“Is that what this is all about??” Twilight shouted. “All right, I ask permission. And I’ll tell Chrysalis to ask permission. Everybody will ask permission-“

“No, that is not what this is all about!” Luna shouted back, finally roused to anger. “If it was just that I would have gone along with it all. I’ve tried throwing a snit-fit before. It didn’t work out.” Anger gave away to a sad smirk as she added, in a softer voice, “You were there for the end of that.”

“Oh,” Twilight said, much subdued. “Er, sorry. I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying.”

“Well, it did upset me, being ignored,” Luna said. “And I confess it was very satisfying to make certain that beepy-box missed its target. But that’s not why I did it.” Looking furtively back and forth, she leaned a bit further out the window and said softly, “I suspect Chrysalis.”

Celestia and Twilight both gave Luna identical flat looks. “Really,” Celestia said for the both of them.

“This is not a joke!” Luna insisted. “The changelings have to be plotting something! They have no earthly reason to want to go into space!” She looked Twilight in the eyes and said, “Can you tell me with a straight face that Chrysalis and her minions were suddenly overcome with a spirit of disinterested scientific curiosity?!”

“Luna,” Celestia said quietly, “of course Chrysalis is plotting something. Anyone with half a brain knows that. And we also know that such a plan, whatever its goal, will take quite some time. For almost a year she’s put all her hive’s resources into the effort- which means she’s not using those resources, for example, to sneak into our bedrooms in the middle of the night and kidnap us all.”

“And look what we’ve accomplished!” Twilight Sparkle said. “Equestrian technology is taking mighty leaps! New ideas, new science- we’ll have that long after we defeat Chrysalis’s scheme, whatever it is!”

“And those new ideas include the idea that changelings need not steal love,” Celestia added. “That they need not hide. That they need not fear or be feared. It’s not just technology that changes, Luna. The whole world is changing. And at the end of it, Chrysalis may find that her prize, whatever it is, isn’t worth giving up what she gained along the way.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Have you had another vision, sister?”

“Not of the kind you mean,” the sun princess said serenely. “But I have hope.”

“And I have a moon,” Luna said sulkily. “And I’m keeping it.”

Celestia took a deep breath. “If that is what you want, then I shall support you, sister,” she said at last. “But you know what you have unleashed.”

“You mean I might drop below last place in the Favorite Princess polls? Oh dear,” Luna mocked. “Our ponies still fear me, sister. Many resent me. I can endure it.”

“Your popularity is the least of it,” Celestia replied. “The longer the goal is kept out of reach, the less attractive it will be. Chrysalis might give up, or change her plans to something more direct.”

“Ponies will lose interest in space,” Twilight added. “We won’t be able to keep up the funding. And we’ll fall short of the stars.”

“That will not happen.” Luna raised her head, then winced as she hit the window frame just behind her horn. “Ow… It will not happen because, as I said, I have thought about this for a very long time. And I do not intend to keep the moon off-limits permanently.”

Twilight’s head jerked upwards. “You don’t?” she asked.

“I await the return of my messenger,” Luna said, “since the plan depends on Chrysalis agreeing to my terms. But between her investment in reaching the moon and the other… incentive… I have offered-“

“What incentive?” Twilight asked.

“I am confident,” Luna persisted, “that Chrysalis shall invite me to be one of her- what is the term? Space tourists?”

Celestia and Twilight Sparkle cast confused glances at one another. “Tourist?” Celestia asked.

“And while I am training for launch among the changelings, I shall be free to investigate their activities and intentions!” Luna said triumphantly.

Celestia groaned, her haunches flopping to the balcony floor. One elegant gold-clad hoof rose for a slightly less dignified facehoof, which turned into a prolonged rubbing of her temples. “I love you dearly,” Celestia sighed, “but there are ursa minors more subtle than you are.”

“Says the pony who could never find me when we played hide-and-seek,” Luna retorted.(280)

“I still want to know what other incentive you’re talking about!” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“When the time comes,” Luna said. “If I speak of it now, I risk betraying my promise to Chrysalis. And though changelings break promises all the time, I am not a changeling.”

Footnotes:

(279) Normally the prolonged chain of teleport spells required to cover the distance between Horseton and Canterlot would have totally exhausted even Twilight Sparkle. But righteous anger can carry a pony quite a distance before it drops them like a dirty blouse. It could have carried Twilight Sparkle into orbit, had she wanted to go there, and had she been wearing a spacesuit.

(280) In the ancient past when they were fillies together, Celestia had taken pity on her sister’s incredibly unconvincing efforts to hide behind saplings, to pretend to be statues, and to lurk in the one and only shadow in sight. Based on her conduct since being restored to sanity, Luna’s concepts of subterfuge hadn’t advanced much since childhood.

CSP-20 T minus 98 days

“I still think we should pod the nosey princess and replace her with a changeling,” Chrysalis grumbled.

“I said no,” Cherry Berry replied. “Five reasons. First, um, NO, second, because the first time the drone was called to adjust the moon everypony would know, third, because it’s wrong, fourth, because you know it wouldn’t work and you’re just being grumpy, and fifth, NO.”

“But it’s so tempting!!” Chrysalis insisted. “First she blackmails me into agreeing to her little deal, and then as part of the deal she puts herself totally in my power! Without even a single guard!”

“Yep,” Cherry agreed. “Sound like anypony else you know?”

Chrysalis ignored the remark, stopping at the door of the conference room to give her chief pilot a direct stare. “Haven’t you ever seen something you really wanted, in easy reach, but you couldn’t have it?”

“Nope. You don’t kidnap cherries,” Cherry Berry replied, stepping past the changeling queen and opening the door. The other members of CSP’s leadership were already seated: Occupant, Warner von Brawn, Goddard the Griffon, and Dragonfly. “Good morning, everypony!” she said cheerfully, to the quiet nods or soft grunts of the others.

Chrysalis followed behind, closing the door and taking her usual seat at the head of the table. “All right,” she said, “why are we having this meeting again? I thought we made the agenda for the tourist flights yesterday.”

“The issue is Mission R2,” said Warner von Brawn. “The vessel appears to be reaching its apoapsis. Our projected course shows it falling almost straight back and impacting with Equus.”

“And?” Chrysalis asked.

“It doesn’t have to,” von Brawn continued. “If we make a minor course correction now we can put the ship into a stable elongated orbit that will keep R2 in position for future use.”

“What’s the point?” Chrysalis asked. “We missed the moon. That’s it. Mission over, isn’t it?”

“The Probodobodyne hardware appears to be hardy enough to survive for quite some time in space,” von Brawn said. “So long as the probe doesn’t lose power or hit anything-“

“Like, say, a planet,” Goddard muttered.

“-it should be good for months, possibly years,” von Brawn finished. “And we consulted Miss Pie by telegram about the programming. She says a simple restart command will fix almost any program error we may encounter, and…” He pulled out a yellow piece of paper from his suit pocket and read aloud, “’You don’t need to worry about Probey-Dobey going haywire and destroying all Equestria unless you see weird robot ponies with Hosstrian accents trying to kill the ancestors of the future resistance.’ I’m choosing to treat that as a humorous way of saying there will be no problems.”(281)

“So we keep a probe that Luna won’t let anywhere near the moon,” Chrysalis grunted. “What does that get us?”

“A probe with almost half a tank of fuel?” Goddard pointed out. “Already in space? That we don’t have to launch? That we don’t have to pay for a second time?”

“And which will be in the neighborhood if Princess Luna changes her mind,” von Brawn added.

Chrysalis nodded. “All right. What will it require?”

“Very little,” von Brawn said. “The probe is so far from Equus that the tiniest thrust will radically change its trajectory in respect to the planet. We could even kick the probe into interplanetary space with a few seconds’ burn.”

“Then do it,” Chrysalis shrugged. “Keep the thing from crashing. If it’s that simple we don’t need to have a meeting about it.”

“There’s another option,” Goddard grumbled. “We have a contract to put a satellite into orbit around Equus. We could repurpose R2 for it, like we discussed before launch.”

“That would require at least two burns,” von Brawn said. “One of them quite lengthy, to put us in the contracted polar orbit. We would be back in the same problem we discussed before launch, only with less fuel to return to the moon with.”

“I see,” Chrysalis said. “What do you recommend?”

“Send R2 to polar orbit, collect the new contract, and make a new launch if the moon opens up again,” Goddard said. “That gets some money back out of R2, and we aren’t out the cost of a second launch.”

“I think we should keep R2 and make a new launch for the satellite,” von Brawn dissented. “We already have a probe that crosses the moon’s orbit. So long as we keep it that way our options are open. At the least it looks like we’re still trying.”

Chrysalis nodded. “Yes, we don’t want to look like we’re giving up. Especially not since public opinion seems to be turning in our favor.”

The others nodded. A number of newspapers had indeed cheered on Princess Luna for thwarting the changelings, but their opinion was definitely a minority. More newspapers, and all but two of the several television companies, had come down against Luna for, as the Manehattan Times put it, “prematurely closing the frontier in a fit of pique.” Luna’s claim that the ban was temporary- until, as she said in a press release, she could “see for myself the safety of space flight for all the ponies of Equestria”- hadn’t gained much traction.

“So let’s go with von Brawn’s option,” Chrysalis said. “Occupant, make a press release that says Mission R2 will keep ready for a second attempt at a moon fly-by once Luna lifts her temporary restrictions. Oh, and repeat that CSP will give our full cooperation to any investigation of space flight.” After a moment she added, “And do NOT leave out those last three words, understood?”

“Of-space-flight,” Occupant said, jotting it down on a notepad.

“Are you sure that’s wise, my queen?” Dragonfly asked. “We changelings are all honest and legal now, obviously…” She gestured not-so-subtly to the non-changelings in the room. “But, well, maybe we don’t want to stir up the past?”

“Relax,” Chrysalis smiled. “The Changeling Space Program has nothing to hide. And even if we did,” she said, not gesturing to the non-changelings in the room in any way, “Princess Luna knows nothing.”

Footnote:

(281) von Brawn thereby chose the method 99.2% of all those acquainted with Pinkie Pie used to maintain their own sanity, i. e. ignore anything they couldn’t understand or explain.

MISSION R2 EXTENDED REPORT

Mission summary: Adjust R2’s orbit to prevent satellite crash, take photos of ground site on Equus

Pilot: Probodobodyne OKTO (Dragonfly)
Flight duration: (ongoing)

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: A nudge. We gave it a nudge. Big deal.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

CSP-20 T minus 25 days

I know NOTHING, Luna thought, staring at the chalkboard with a total lack of comprehension.

Equations littered the chalkboard. Some were the kind of maths Starswirl had once tried to teach the two newly installed Princesses of Equestria in ancient days. (Celestia had learned quickly, but Luna struggled and eventually gave up completely, filling her note-scrolls with cute little sketches of spiders.) Others were some kind of strange drawings that Luna thought were chemistry, which Twilight Sparkle had told her was like alchemy but without any magic whatever. Preposterous thought!

Luna looked down at her desk, at the paper she’d been sketching on with the pencil held in her telekinetic grip. She’d managed a most adorable picture of a wolf spider, eight innocent eyes looking up in joy at the viewer.

Sighing, she neatly folded the paper, tucked it behind her tiara for safekeeping, and took out a fresh piece of notepaper. Not that it matters, she thought. They can’t flunk me out of my rocket ride, and I’ll have discovered Chrysalis’s secret scheme long before then anyway.

Part of Luna recognized that last thought as blind optimism, since her subtle, secret investigations were going nowhere on wings. Yes, she had the run of the space center- she even had permission to go into secret or dangerous areas the other tourists weren’t allowed into- but she never had the time. Between Marked Knee‘s exercise drills, George Bull’s maths and chemistry, George Cowley’s advanced aeronautical theory, and riding the training machines under Dragonfly’s supervision, Luna barely found time for her all-important afternoon nap. And then, of course, she still had to raise and lower the moon and guard the dreams of her little ponies all through the night.

Luna had sent for her special roasted coffee beans and a second coffee brewer from Canterlot. Only the unholy brew kept her awake from moonset through lunch…(282)

… and what do you know, just as she thought of lunch and bed, not quite in that order, bells rang across the complex.

“Ah, our time is up for today,” George Bull said. “Tomorrow we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of hydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide versus liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Bon appétit!”

As the other tourists filed out, Luna held back a moment. “Dr. Bull? May I ask a personal question?”

The minotaur smiled and said, “So long as it doesn’t keep me from my own lunch.”

“Why do you do this?” Luna asked. Simple question, to the point; she hadn’t time or energy for anything else.

“Hm.” George Bull gave the question several moments of serious thought. “Dr. von Brawn does it because rocket science is his life’s work- indeed, it’s his life,” he said. “And the rest of us from the Isles are also very enthusiastic about that, but we have our own reasons. Marked Knee wants electronics that can make technology available to the non-magical. Lord Cowley wanted to fly in his youth, and he’s still quite passionate about that. As for myself,” Bull said, smiling a little wryly, “I’m in it for the mathematics. For the logic, to be precise.” Taking a deep breath, he added, “I’ve always believed that everything is solvable, every secret of the universe, if we first understand the processes of the rational-“

“I do beg your pardon, Doctor,” Luna interrupted. “You could do all that elsewhere. Why are you doing it here, for Queen Chrysalis?”

“Aaaaah,” George Bull nodded. “Well, it seems a bit ungrateful if we were just to pull up stakes after, not to put too fine a point on it, she bailed us out of our own difficulties. Lord Cowley was on the point of mortgaging his manor, and the rest of us were quite without means of visible support, as they say.”

“And that’s it?” Luna asked. “For sale to the first bidder?”

“At least once bought, we stay bought,” Bull said with a chuckle. When he noticed Luna not smiling in response, he added, “Seriously, none of the four of us has any head for business. Von Brawn is good at working with people, but that’s all. Here we have a steady though limited research budget, a relatively free hand, and possibly the most stimulating possible environment for scientific advancement.” He smiled and added, “What more could we want? Besides dinner.”

Without waiting for any further questions, the minotaur bowed, closed his folder of lecture notes, and strode out of the astromare briefing room. “Er, thank you, Doctor!” Luna called out after him. In a softer voice she added, “You poor, deluded soul.”

The mess hall lay only a few doors down from the lecture hall, and only a couple of minutes later she had a nice hot bowl of soup, a watercress sandwich, and a cup of warm cocoa practically covered with mini-marshmallows(283). She was looking for a seat when she heard someone call, “Princess! Over here!” One of the other tourists, Billy Bobtail, was waving her to a seat with the other tourists.

The first couple of days, meals had been rather tense. Most of the changelings were angry at her- that was no surprise- and so were most of the tourists, as much as Luna wished otherwise. But Billy Bobtail and Rooster Tail (no relation) (284) had from the start tried to incorporate the princess into the group, and by the fourth day she was, if not forgiven at least tolerated by all.

“Thank you,” Luna said, taking the open stool. She levitated a spoon and took a sip of her soup. “Has anyone heard anything new about Garriott? He was asleep when I lowered the moon this morning.”

“The changeling medic said she wants him kept to bed one more day just to be safe.” Rooster Tail shuddered gently. “Her exact words were, ‘I never knew a pony that wasn’t the tastier for a few sweet dreams!’ Gave me the creeps!”

“Now, be fair,” said Stock Ticker, the Manehattan unicorn. “The missus and I tried out their pod clinic and spa when it first opened. Three days in and out, no monkeyshines, no impostors. And it was as sweet and relaxing as a pony could ask. Although they ought to work on something for the hangover afterwards.”

“Oh, really?” “Heavy” Damp Drizzle, a slightly overweight Cloudsdale pegasus, squinted at the unicorn. “And how can we tell you’re the genuine article, hm? Won’t catch me in any cocoon, no sir!”

“But apparently you,” chuckled Billy Bobtail, “have no problem being shot into space in a tin can on a giant bomb with a changeling holding your life in her hooves.”

“Well… well, that’s different!” Drizzle snapped. “At least the changeling will be in the can with me, hah! And what about you?”

“Yes, actually, I would like to know as well,” Luna interrupted before tempers rose any higher. “You all know I’m here investigating space flight.”

“Investigating the changelings, you mean,” Drizzle grunted. “You don’t exactly hide it under your hat.”

“I don’t have a hat,” Luna said, a little bit nonplussed. “But I’m curious to know why you are all here. You all paid Chrysalis quite a lot of money to be, er, shot into space in a tin can on a giant bomb, as you put it.”

“Well,” Drizzle grunted. “I… er… don’t nudge me!” he snapped when his wife elbowed him gently. “Well, I… to be honest I always enjoyed your sky, Princess.” He rushed the last words out as if evicting unwelcome guests.

“Really?” Luna asked.

“Honestly!” Drizzle nodded. “Before you returned I spent so many nights on a cloud high above Cloudsdale just looking at your face in the moon- didn’t know it was you, and now I see you in person it didn’t half do you just- ow!!”

“You don’t have to flirt, dear,” Mrs. Drizzle muttered.

“I was nine!!” Drizzle insisted before gathering his composure. “And all of the stars, the Milky Way on a really clear night… sometimes I imagined I could reach out and touch ‘em. And this is my chance to get a little bit closer to ‘em, so I took it.” He reached out and hugged his wife, who (a little to Luna’s surprise) leaned into the hug. “It’s something I can share with my wife. And you can just imagine how I felt when my former favorite princess,” he growled, “very nearly shut it all down.”

“Honey Dear and I just wanted to fly together,” said Fair Dues, the earth pony stallion nudging his pegasus spouse. “We’ve travelled in balloons and airships. Unfortunately nopony’s built a passenger aeroplane yet, though we’re working on a two-pony ornithopter in the garage. But when we came to the R1 launch, we met Queen Chrysalis and asked for a ride like Jet Set and Upper Crust got. And she was so delighted!”

“Oh, don’t I know it!” Stock Ticker agreed. “I’d already asked Princess Twilight Sparkle, but she insisted that space flight was too dangerous for tourists. Said what Chrysalis was doing was completely irresponsible!”

“Yeah!” Drizzle took a healthy bite of his own sandwich and continued talking as he chewed. “An’ who elshe y’gomma ash’? Griffoms’ome? Yakths? No-“ At another poke from his wife he swallowed, nearly choked, and finally managed to bark, “Will you please stop elbowing me in front of Princess Rocket-Blocker here??”

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Drizzle said, “just as soon as you quit acting like a boor in front of her.”

“So if you want to look down on the world as I do,” Stock Ticker continued, raising his voice to stop the bickering, “from as high as it is possible to get, then the CSP is really the only option.” He sighed and added, “Unfortunately the missus is terrified of heights. Do you know, we’re the only nobs in Manehattan with a deluxe luxury sub-basement apartment?”

This turned the conversation to a comparison of living-spaces, which allowed Luna to join in at the end with her story of how she sent Princess Platinum through the wildest ride of booby-traps and spinning walls and drop-chutes at the opening of the ancient castle in the Everfree Forest. This story actually won a couple of chuckles from the other ponies, bringing her closer (she hoped) to being fully accepted as one of the group.

After that, their meals more or less finished, the tourists parted ways, the others to various activities or study, Luna to her bed for the four or so hours’ sleep she could spare before the moon needed raising.

Perhaps I should have a word with Twilight Sparkle about tourism, she thought. I don’t wish to meddle with her project, but we may be allowing Chrysalis to hurt our relationship with our ponies by ceding her a monopoly on space tourism.

I wonder if she’ll be at the R3 launch next week? She might be too busy with her own satellite launches, but…

Footnotes:

(282) Lord Garriott de Gryphon, the sole non-pony among the tourists, accidentally drank a cup of Luna’s coffee the previous day. For the rest of that day he insisted on being called Lord Trottingham and that he would become the first griffon to perform a sonic rainboom. When Luna woke up to raise the moon, she found him in the infirmary, lying next to the two changelings who’d broken his fall. After this incident labels were added to the coffee pots: REGULAR, DECAF, and WAIVER REQUIRED.

(283) Before her exile Luna had enjoyed, whenever it was available, the sweet, gooey extract of the mallow root. The modern confections called “marshmallows” didn’t taste much like the old at all, but she wouldn’t have the old back for a million bits. Of course she only took them with her before-bed cocoa, so that she could continue teasing her sister about her well-rounded “personality” without being a hypocrite.

(284) Both Mr. Bobtail and Ms. Tail (no relation) worked in the food industry. Billy, an earth pony, began as a carter hauling produce up from the fields around Mt. Canter and, over the years, became the second-largest grocery distributor for Canterlot and a couple of outlying villages. Rooster Tail, a pegasus, sold a popular hot sauce that many Canterlot natives secretly carried in their saddlebags when visiting the notoriously bland upscale restaurants of the city. Both had been saved from anxiety dreams by Luna, and both shared her dim view of the capital’s unicorn aristocracy. Thus they were prepared, as almost none of the others were, to give the princess the benefit of the doubt.

MISSION R3 REPORT

Mission summary: Place artificial satellite in designated orbit

Pilot: Probodobodyne OKTO (Dragonfly)
Flight duration: (ongoing)

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: BOOOOOORING.
Additional conclusions from flight: Hooray for any launch and mission completion which Dragonfly finds boring.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

CSP-20 T minus 23 days

“Do you mind?” Dragonfly asked, setting a large pile of papers and folders down on a work table. “I’m very busy right now! I have R3 launching in three days and, assuming that goes well, Mission Fifteen two days after that! And tomorrow is Winter Wrap-Up, which means all you ponies are going to want a holiday, and I’m in charge of that too!”

Luna flinched. She’d expected the changeling to be hostile, but not this particular kind of hostile. The last time she, a princess with a dark reputation, had received this kind of reaction, it had been from a pony in the grip of a nightmare about working in a candy factory. The changeling was angry not because of anything Luna had done, but because she was being interrupted in the middle of her work.

“I’ll keep it brief,” Luna said quietly. “Why do you do this?”

Dragonfly’s big glowing eyes blinked. “Really?” she asked. “I’m a changeling drone. Why do you think I do ANYTHING?”

“Well, why do you?” Luna asked. “It’s not like you couldn’t just leave the hive any time you wanted. I’m told there are a number of changelings who have done just that.”

“Not me,” Dragonfly said firmly. “Listen, Princess. The queen has her rough spots, and she’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud sometimes, but her schemes kept us fed and mostly safe. We came that close,” and the changeling raised her forehooves and held them about half an inch apart, “to conquering your whole kingdom because of her brain. You may not like her, but we changelings think she’s pretty smart, all right?”

“I apologize-” Luna said.

“And another thing,” Dragonfly continued, not letting Luna speak, “even if Chrysalis was a bad queen, it’d take a lot before I abandoned my buddies! A changeling needs to be part of something!” She gestured one hoof in a broad circle, indicating more or less the entire space center around them. “The hive isn’t like one of your towns! This is a team! A family! And family doesn’t leave family!”

Luna bowed her head, remembering darker times when she’d tried to do away with her only relation.

“Now, if that’s all you wanted, I have simulations for Mission Fifteen in half an hour,” Dragonfly said, opening one of the file folders. “Every single sim we’ve run has failed to reach orbit, and we’re still trying to figure out why the thing acts like a ballerina once it gets past the sound barrier.”

“A bal… no, pardon me,” Luna said, abandoning mental visions of a hundred-meter-tall rocket in a tutu. “Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What do you want with the moon?”

“Me? Nothing,” Dragonfly said curtly. “I’d like to fly there, but I’m not planning on staying.”

“But what about-“ Luna’s question stopped at the sound of a very large engine revving up, followed by the tell-tale cackle of Queen Chrysalis. “What diabolical plot is being conceived?” she gasped.

“Hm?” Dragonfly perked an ear-fin up for a moment, then shrugged. “Sounds like Occupant’s getting a session in the centrifuge.”

The laughter grew louder, threatening to drown out the motor sound.

“And the queen hasn’t forgiven him for her first ride in it,” Dragonfly added, “never mind the Stayputnik incident.”

The motor began overpowering the maniacal laughter again, with a wooshing sound overlaying all the noise.

“Is Mr. Occupant in danger?” Luna asked, concerned.

“Of course not!” Dragonfly snapped. Then she thought about it, shrugged, and corrected herself, “Probably not, anyway.”

Luna trotted out the door and dashed across the hallway into the large training equipment chamber (285). As she entered, she heard Chrysalis shout, “Are you ready? It’s time for STAGING!” As she barged into the cylinder which held the centrifuge and its controls, she saw the queen at the control panel yanking down a lever, then shoving it back up again a moment later. “Ha-HA! How do you like THAT?”

“VVvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy ggoooooooooooodd, mmmmmmmmmyyyyyy Quuuuueeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnn,” a buzzy voice croaked from the rapidly spinning centrifuge. Blasts of air pulsed through the chamber with every spin of chair and counterweight.

“CHRYSALIS!” Luna roared, causing the changeling queen to jump halfway to the ceiling. “Release that poor creature at once!”

The queen dropped to the floor again and switched off the centrifuge engine before her brain had a chance to catch up with her fear reaction. Luna watched with bemusement as stark terror gave way to affronted rage on the queen’s face. “What do you think you are doing,” she roared back, “interfering with the operations of my space program??”

“I am putting an end to your torture of that poor subject of yours!” Luna replied, jabbing a hoof in the direction of the still-spinning centrifuge.

“Excuuuuse me?” Occupant called from the seat of the still spinning centrifuge. “I’mmmm pretty sure the ssssssession isn’t over yyyyyyet. I haven’t passssssed out yet.”

Luna’s anger gave way to confusion. “You make him ride in that thing until he passes out?” she asked. “And he WANTS to?”

“All of us have done the exact same thing,” Chrysalis grumbled. “I was the first to ride in that thing(286), as it happens, before we even moved to this swamp. It made me so sick I blew slime across half the floor.”

As the centrifuge’s spin slowed to a gradual halt, Occupant’s voice steadied. “We had changelings magically spinning it up at the hive,” he added helpfully. “Here we can use a magic motor. Much easier to control!”

“You’re going along with this?” Luna asked.

“I’m going to space!” Occupant answered. “But we need to be sure I’m fit to go to space first! And I need practice dealing with the forces of acceleration and deceleration.”

“And I need a socially acceptable way of inflicting punishment on a much-deserving subject,” Chrysalis said without shame. “At the very least I’m going to make this grub lose his goo.”

“What for?” Luna asked insistently.

“Lese majeste, if you insist on a formal charge.” Chrysalis’s hoof toyed with the main control lever again. “This idiot made a public fool of me with the whole Stayputnik thing, so I’m going to have satisfaction out of him one way or another!”

Luna walked past the queen, reaching up a hoof and halting what little spin the centrifuge had left. Looking at Occupant, apparently calm and happy in the pilot seat, she asked, “Why in all Equestria do you put up with this?”

“Because it beats being the door-guard on a door no pony ever wants to enter,” Occupant said simply. “For the first time in my life, I’m doing things that matter- for my queen, for the hive, for everyling!”

“But- but- but she tortures you for her pleasure!” Luna said, gesturing to the unrepentant queen.

Occupant shrugged. “Yes, she’s good at that,” he said. “But her hugs are even better!”

Luna fell flat onto her flanks. She turned her head to Chrysalis, who blushed brightly(287) and kept finding things to look at that were neither the alicorn nor the drone.

“I… er…” The princess of the night suddenly found her desire to learn what went on within the changeling hive much reduced.

Composing herself, Chrysalis said quietly, “Princess Luna, in the interests of peace between our peoples and the long-term welfare of my changelings I have promised you full and unconditional cooperation in your investigation.” She took a deep breath and continued, still in the same quiet tone, “And we trusted that you would use this cooperation, and the access that comes with it, discreetly and judiciously.”

“You want me to leave now,” Luna said flatly.

“I hear the coffee in the mess room is very good these days,” Chrysalis replied. “Might I suggest you try it?”

The instant the door shut behind Luna, a furious screech erupted from behind it. “YOU IDIOT!” Chrysalis shrieked. “Why do you SAY things like that??”

“But my queen, you did order us to-“

“Get ready to experience sudden deceleration!” Chrysalis shouted. “All three parachutes opening at once! It’s like slamming a carriage into a wall at twenty miles an hour!”

“Yay!”

Luna took the very, very many questions she had, opened up a mental hole into oblivion, and stuffed every last one down it.

Footnotes:

(285) She, like the other tourists, had had at least one ride in each device, but she was the only one who’d had only one ride. Her time in the centrifuge had been uneventful; for an alicorn of immense magical power, who had fought Tirek and Sombra and Discord and countless monsters, and who for quite some time had been a monster herself, seven g’s of force presented no real interest. On the other hoof, the three-axis spinny chair thing had entertained her so thoroughly that she’d put in an order to have one delivered to the palace in Canterlot.

(286) Not true, but Chrysalis didn’t know that.

(287) Still an accomplishment.

MISSION 15 REPORT

Mission summary: Train scientist in orbital flight and scientific equipment use

Pilot: Probodobodyne OKTO (Dragonfly)
Crew: Occupant (scientist)

Flight duration: 4 hrs. 51 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 0
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Dragonfly complains everyling gets orbit time except her.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

CSP-20 T minus 15 days

Two changeling guards, especially sharp in their blue uniform tunics and peaked uniform caps, stood on either side of the personnel doors leading into the Vehicle Assembly Building’s main chamber. In front of them, resting on the venture bells of their massive Thud solid rocket boosters, stood two rocket stacks under construction, some changelings holding parts in place with magic while others welded or bolted them together. And, on the floor, watching every step of the process, sat one midnight-blue pony princess.

“So,” the one on the left said to the one on the right, “has she asked you the question yet?”

“Which question is that?” the other one replied, not turning his head or moving anything other than his jaw.

“You know, THE question,” the first insisted. “Night princess’s been asking everyling that crosses her path the same thing.”

“Really?” Now the second guard did move his head, tilting it in confusion for just a second before resuming his proper stance. “Because I was on guard when she asked Goddard what hydrazine tasted like. And the words he used answering her, well, I’m pretty sure nobody, not even a pony, would need to be told twice.”

“I’ll bet,” the first guard said(288). “But that’s not the question.”

“Oh?” The second guard considered this. “I was also on guard when Luna talked to Eye Wall about the nitrogen tetraoxide fumes. Asked if she could borrow the red clouds to make a special sunset with her sister.”

“She did?”

“Yep. Eye Wall doesn’t know as many bad words as Goddard, but she makes up for it in repetition.”

“I’ll remember that,” the first guard said(289). “But the question I meant was, ‘Why do you do it?’”

“Oh, that one. No,” the second guard said, shaking his head briefly, “no, she hasn’t asked me.”

“Me either,” the first guard said. “I hear she even asked Uncle Pointy. The queen put him under Carapace, you know, running the gift shop.”

“What was his answer?”

“He said that he got to read all the books in the shop,” the first guard shrugged. “What more reason did he need?”

“That’s Pointy all right.”

“But Pointy’s a nobody,” the first guard said. “You and I, we’re really important changelings. Why, this place would be completely overrun if it weren’t for us.”

“Too true,” the second guard agreed.

“So why hasn’t the princess there asked us?”

“Hm.” The second guard gave this a bit of thought. “You know,” he said at length, “it might be that she sees how important our job is and doesn’t want to interrupt us.”

“You really think so?”

“Dunno, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

The first guard nodded for just a moment. “Yeah. I’d never have thought a pony would have that kind of smarts, though.”

“Well, she is a princess.” The second guard waved a perforated hoof at Luna, who continued to watch the rocket assembly with intense concentration. “They don’t give you that just because you have a horn and wings, right? Otherwise every changeling would be a princess.”

As if one body controlled both heads, the two guards glanced across the immense chamber at Plastron, who was doing nothing more than holding a clipboard and nodding to himself.

“Except Plastron,” the first guard said.

“Yeah,” the second guard agreed. “Even Occupant would get a tiara before Plastron.”

Upon the rock of mutual contempt for CSP’s health and safety officer the conversation ran aground, and the guards stood for a while in silence, watching the VAB to make sure nobody stole it(290). As the assembly crew began assembling the crew capsule stacks for what would be Missions Sixteen and Seventeen, the first guard asked, “So, if she asked, how would you answer?”

“Probably a bit more politely than Goddard or Eye Wall,” the second said.

“No, no. The other question, remember?”

“Oh. Well…” The second guard shuffled his hooves. “I kinda have a confession to make… I put in for a transfer to tour guide duty.”

“Really? Why?”

“Snacking.”

“I know you were around for the queen’s lecture about that.”

“I don’t need to eat anything except what the ponies give me directly,” the second guard replied primly. “I’ve been smelling the yummy gratitude for months now.”

“Yummy gratitude?” the first guard said, making a face.

“I can’t help it if everyling else has no taste.”(291) The second guard shrugged and added, “What about you?”

The first guard shrugged. “It gets me out of the hive,” he said. “Out and around other people. Do you know, I have a date for Hearts and Hooves Day next week?”

“Under what disguise?”

“No disguise!” The first guard tapped his chest proudly. “There’s a pony in Horseton that feeds me for who I am!”

“Anypony I know?”

“The trash collector.”

“The mare with four teeth and the knotted-up mane?”

“That’s her,” the first guard nodded. “We’re going for a sail on her garbage barge.”

“You always get all the luck,” the second guard grumbled.

Another several minutes of intense silent guarding followed. This time it was the second guard who broke the silence, asking, “Do you know if Luna’s asked the queen that question?”

“No clue,” the first guard said. “Not that it matters. Whatever answer the queen gave would be a lie too slick for the pony to figure out.”

“You don’t think she would tell the truth?”

“I’m pretty sure the queen wouldn’t tell US the truth,” the first guard insisted. “Why would she tell a nosey pony?”

“The queen hasn’t told us anything at all,” the second guard said. “I figured, if she had a lie, she’d have told it to us already.”

“Don’t be silly,” the first guard snapped. “The magic of lies is, they never run out.”

Footnotes:

(288) Accidents happen, and some things, like N2H4, can overcome even the resilience of changelings. The guards remembered in particular one fellow guard who had been too close to the fuel lines when they disconnected, getting a splash of the new fuel on his body. He’d had to be rushed back to the hive for changeling-specialized medical treatment and, eventually, a forced molt. Even after the molt his chitin was discolored in the exact pattern of the splash. Fortunately that had been the only such accident thus far, and it had made the changeling ground crew even more cautious around the truly deadly liquid-oxygen and liquid-hydrogen tanks and feed lines.

(289) Of the chemicals that Goddard the Griffon had found most efficient for liquid-fueled rocket flight, N2O4 was probably the least dangerous except for ethyl alcohol. That didn’t make it exactly safe- quite the contrary. Changelings had learned to track down and fix leaks quickly after several guards, who had been proud of their bright shiny nickel-plated security badges, had brought in horribly blackened badges for replacement after being caught in a plume of red smog. It hadn’t taken anybody long to wonder, if the fumes did that to a badge, what was it doing to their lungs?

(290) This was Equestria. There were precedents.

(291) Gratitude is to changelings much like Brussels sprouts are to practically everyone else; it can be eaten, it’s healthy and mildly nourishing, but in short order most changelings look for something, anything else to eat instead. The very mild gratitude tourists felt towards a good tour guide would be even closer, metaphorically speaking, to celery or possibly even parsley. But there’s always someone who likes what everybody else hates, whatever the species.

MISSION 16 REPORT

Mission summary: Take two tourists to orbit and return them safely

Pilot: Cherry Berry
Crew: Damp Drizzle, Misty Drizzle (tourists)
Flight duration: 4 hrs. 5 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Mr. Drizzle didn’t like the meal. The meal didn’t like Mrs. Drizzle.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

MISSION 17 REPORT

Mission summary: Take two tourists to orbit and return them safely

Pilot: Chrysalis
Crew: Billy Bobtail, Rooster Tail (tourists)

Flight duration: 7 hrs. 48 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: The passengers said in the survey they weren’t afraid of heights or closed spaces. Too bad we didn’t ask about heights AND closed spaces.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

CSP-20 T minus 9 days

Luna slumped at the breakfast table next to the four remaining tourists. “Why won’t anypony lie to me?” she asked, interrupting the discussion about how the first four tourists had had unhappy flights.(292)

Garriot the Griffon raised a feathery eyebrow. “That’s an unusual thing for a pony to say. Especially a pony princess.”

“I can smell a lie a mile away,” Luna moaned, not paying any attention to the comment. “I can use lies. Lies lead places. But how can I find out what Chrysalis is hiding if all I ever get is useless truth??”

“Maybe they’re not hiding anything at all,” Honey Dear said, taking a sip of her coffee.

Three other ponies and a griffon turned their full attention to her. Stock Ticker spoke for the group when he said, “You have to be joking.”

“They’re changelings, pet,” Fair Dues added. “Of course they’re hiding something!”

“No, hear me out,” Honey Dear said. “The other day- well, you know how Cherry Berry always makes her own bed? Keeps it nice and tidy? I thought maybe we all should be doing that, taking responsibility for ourselves. So I was making my bed when the changeling maid came in.”

Luna hadn’t questioned the bedmaking until now, and after her second day in Horseton she hadn’t given it any thought at all. She hadn’t made her own bed since before there were beds to be made. Usually, by the time she stumbled to her bunk for the handful of hours of sleep she could spare, she was in no condition to care how the bed looked or who had done what to it, and when she woke it was straight to work, raising the moon, bringing out her special little stars, and guarding the dreams of a nation. The idea of making one’s own bed intrigued her, and the identity of the changeling who did intrigued her even more. She leaned forward to listen better.

“Turns out the maid used to be a spy,” Honey Dear continued. “She worked at large hotels in Las Pegasus and Manehattan. Kidnapped a few notables here and there, she said. And she wasn’t shy at all about telling me about it.” The peach-colored pegasus tilted her head a bit in remembered confusion. “She said the past was the past and that the queen had told everypony to answer any questions honestly. When I said she probably didn’t mean me, she told me she didn’t care, because those days were over and changelings wouldn’t have to do things like that anymore.”

“My sister is rather certain the hives are still kidnapping ponies for brief periods,” Luna put in.

Honey Dear shrugged. “They always come back, don’t they? The maid said that before the truce they only kept ponies who wouldn’t be missed.”

“Like Double Face?” Garriot said, which produced a quick chuckle around the table. The ex-guardspony and current public relations worker had been a joke around the space center for months. Even Mr. Drizzle had agreed that permanent banishment to a changeling hive couldn’t happen to a more deserving pony(293).

“Anyway, one of the first things Chrysalis did when she announced the space program was to release and return all her prisoners,” Honey Dear continued. “The maid tells me there’s not a single pony held captive at the hive now, but the changelings are eating better than they’ve ever done before.”

“You know,” Stock Ticker said slowly, “you might well have a point. I always thought that Chrysalis’s words about a better life for changelings, earning love rather than stealing it, and so forth was just so much PR twaddle. We hear that sort of thing in Manehattan all the time. But if your maid was telling the truth…”

“The maid,” Luna cut in, “who by her own admission was an infiltrator and spy. And thus among the best actors and liars the hive has to offer.”

But as she said it, Luna squirmed a bit, because the story fit neatly, oh so neatly, in among dozens of identical stories she’d heard from every changeling she’d spoken to. Smart or stupid, sneaky or blatant, busy or idle, they all said more or less the same thing: things are better now, and we don’t want to go back to the old way. Some of them had more specific reasons- I do it for the hive, I do it for the queen, I do it for the goodies, I do it because I like it- but Luna hadn’t been able to sense a single ulterior motive. Not a lie, not an omission, nothing at all.

She’d even gone to extremes to present herself as a suicidal (or equicidal) idiot in order to smoke out plots against Equestria. She’d proposed, apparently from ignorance, one scenario after another in which rockets could be used as weapons, rocket fuel as secret poisons, the new artificial satellites as spy platforms or mind-control spell relays. The responses had ranged from nostalgia (“Wish we’d thought of that in the bad old days!”) to incredulousness (“Why would we blow up our food supply??”) to outrage (“What kind of monster would even THINK of that??”). She’d expected that last reaction from the ponies and griffons and minotaurs she interviewed… but she’d never expected changelings to react the same way.

And even the changelings who still saw ponies as nothing more than livestock- a majority of the staff, Luna thought, but she was no longer so sure- said it plainly and simply: This way works better. If it was still the bad old days, then those might be ideas, but why risk wasting food when you can have a limitless supply?

Apparently all Luna had accomplished, aside from making a foal of herself, was to give the changelings some very dangerous ideas if and when the truce broke down. It didn’t comfort her at all to know that Chrysalis and her followers worked hard to prevent any of those ideas from actually happening. She still didn’t know Chrysalis’s actual scheme, and-

“Myself, I’m having the tofu curry.”

“Isn’t that kind of risky after what happened to Mrs. Drizzle?”

“I just think she wasn’t used to spicy food. What about you, Princess?”

“Pardon?” The conversation had gone ahead without Luna- far, far ahead.

“Have you picked the menu for your flight yet?” Garriot asked.

“Er… I haven’t given it any thought,” Luna said. She’d been so focused on her investigations (and her normal duties, and her utterly insufficient sleep, and the lessons she more or less daydreamed her way through) that she had given not a single thought to the possibility that she might actually take her flight into space.

Now that possibility sank in, put down roots, and extended a broad canopy of leaves, each a tiny horrible little idea that added up to utter terror.

By my sister’s shining white flanks, she thought, I’m going to be shot into space in a tin can on a giant bomb. I’m going to ride a plume full of highly toxic chemicals into a weightless, airless void, from which I shall return in an unsteerable fireball at a speed of tens of thousands of miles an hour.

With a sadistic, vengeful, and possibly insane changeling queen controlling it all.

This is actually going to happen next week.

Luna’s head spun, and only by sheer willpower did she prevent herself from fainting. She couldn’t show weakness before her ponies, and even less in front of those stinking changelings. “If you will excuse me,” she said carefully, “I have many things to do today.”

Which she did, of course. Doubtless she did. If she could only think of them, or indeed anything else aside from Chrysalis’s malevolent grin and mad cackle as she flew the two of them to a fiery airborne demise.

I must find some way to avoid flying with Chrysalis, she thought, no matter the cost.

Footnotes:

(292) The general spoken consensus: Mr. Drizzle was a whiner, Mrs. Drizzle had the patience of a saint, and it didn’t matter how afraid Billy Bobtail and Rooster Tail were, anypony who tried to open a hatch into vacuum deserved a venomous bite on the neck to calm them down. The unspoken but unanimous consensus: Boy, I hope my flight isn’t as bad as either of those were.

(293) A sentiment Double Face firmly agreed with, but for different reasons. Chrysalis was still trying to figure out a way to get the useless load to leave without causing trouble with Celestia. Seven different attempts had been thwarted by Double Face’s own ingenuity, Celestia’s quiet bureaucratic machinations, or simple unforeseen circumstances.

MISSION 18 REPORT

Mission summary: Take two tourists to orbit and return them safely; test Thuds during ignition on pad; test heat shield on splashdown after flight

Pilot: Cherry Berry
Crew: Honey Dear (tourist), Fair Dues (tourist)
Flight duration: 4 hrs. 45 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Over half the planet is covered by water. How could we MISS WATER?? At least the passengers got to stay overnight in Los Pegasus. On the other hand, one particular casino owner is NOT happy with us…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL

MISSION 19 REPORT

Mission summary: Take two tourists to orbit and return them safely; test heat shield on splashdown after flight

Pilot: Chrysalis
Crew: Stock Ticker, Garriot the Griffon (tourists)
Flight duration: 4 hrs. 11 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: We missed the water again. Also, we owe Appleoosa a new clock tower.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL

CSP-20 T minus 00:00:02:00 and holding

Occupant stood at the flight controller’s console, back in his spotless white vest, looking more confident than he’d done since the Stayputnik fiasco… or, so far as Chrysalis could remember, since ever. Was it four routine, mostly uneventful missions? Was it experience from his own flight? Who knew? “Final go / no go for launch,” he said matter-of-factly. “Booster?”

Goddard the Griffon said, “Go, Flight.”

“Systems?”

Warner von Brawn said, “We are go.”

“Tracking?”

George Bull: “Go, Flight.”

“Recovery?”

Stinger Charlie: “Standing by, Flight Manager.”

“Landing systems?”

Dragonfly: “Go, Flight.”

“Weather?”

Crawley, with Eye Wall standing next to him glaring: “Go, Flight.”

“Capcomm?”

“Go, Flight,” Chrysalis said on cue. The telepresence spell worked just fine, and she could see both Cherry Berry’s and Luna’s faces in little frames within the lower right edge of the larger magical view of the rocket. She especially liked looking at Luna’s face, struggling not to show the rapidly building anxiety and confusion. It was almost as good as the princess’s face when she’d been told that Cherry Berry would be her pilot.

Of course Chrysalis never had any intention of flying Luna’s mission. If anything happened the ponies would call it an assassination attempt- never mind that it would be a murder-suicide. How stupid did the ponies think she was? She wanted Luna gone, immediately, and she wanted the restriction lifted on the moon, sooner. The only person who wanted to be in that ship less than Chrysalis was likely Luna herself.

For a month Chrysalis had been worried she’d let something slip- that Luna had spied on her dreams, or that some careless word would lead her to Chrysalis’s true plan. But she’d never given her true reason for founding the CSP to any other living creature, never written it down, never done anything incriminating. When ordered to tell the truth, her changelings and employees had obeyed in all innocence. A competent investigator would have found nothing. Princess Luna discovered even less.

Now it was over, it was gloriously over, and the anxious alicorn stuffed into the passenger pod under the capsule was a sight Chrysalis hoped to treasure for all eternity. You’re going for a ride, my little pony, she thought. Have fun! And don’t come back!

“All controllers, this is Flight,” Occupant said, “we are go for launch. Timekeeper, restart the countdown clock at T minus two minutes.”

“Countdown clock restarted.”

“Disconnect all fuel lines.”

“Ground crew disconnecting lines.”

“Switch to internal power.”

“Rocket on internal power!!” Marked Knee reported. “Solar cells recharging batteries at specifications!!”

“Capcomm, control test, please.”

“Twenty, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, “control test sequence.”

This consisted of a complicated waggle of the flight stick so that Mission Control could watch the first stage engine and the maneuvering fins flex in response. “Control test sequence complete,” von Brawn reported, “all functions normal.”

“T minus one minute.”

The high-pitched shriek of Fiddlewing’s wings rang over the telepresence spell and echoed through the walls of Mission Control. The ground crew changelings fled the area.

On the screen, Luna’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Cherry Berry responded, “Yes, Princess. That was just the all-clear warning. We’re about to launch.”

“T minus forty seconds.”

The princess grit her teeth, obviously nervous, looking around her for the exits. Too bad, Chrysalis thought. You want to know what we do here? You’re about to find out first-hoof.

On the screen, Luna raised a hoof and asked a question. “I’m sorry, Princess,” Cherry said, “but you’ll have to wait until we reach orbit.”

“T minus twenty seconds.”

Luna said something else, a bit more urgently.

“Launch in ten… nine… eight…”

Cherry Berry’s voice replied to her passenger, “If it’s that bad, your spacesuit’s designed to handle it. Excuse me.”

“Three… two… one…”

Chrysalis had to imagine the sound of an alicorn princess of Equestria shrieking like a little filly, but the sight of Luna’s face as the rocket left the ground was better than anything she could have imagined. And from the sound of clicking camera shutters from the press gallery, that face would be all over the front pages of newspapers across the continent come morning.

She wondered how many of them would dare to print what Luna was asking about just before ignition.

Cherry Berry watched the fuel gauge trickle down to nothing in the second stage. The ascent had gone totally by the numbers(294), and only a little of the third-stage fuel would be required to complete orbital insertion. There wouldn’t be enough left for a lunar fly-by, but she could do practically anything in close or even high orbit of Equus she wanted…

… or which her Very Important Princess desired.

“Brace yourself, Princess,” she called over the comms to Luna, “we’re coming up on another stage separation.”

No response. After the initial terrified shrieks, Luna had spoken only two words during the flight up, and those only in response to Cherry’s asking if she was all right. She hadn’t minded; after past experience with tourists, she was pleased to fly a mission with no distracting conversation or demands for service. But (she thought, as the second stage burned out, and as she hit the staging button to dump the empty stage and ignite the final engine) once they hit orbit that had to change. Luna had to have a good time on this flight, or else…

… well, she just had to have a good time. There was no or else. Killjoy was not an option.

“Confirm third stage activation,” she called down to the space center hundreds of miles behind and below. “Coming up on orbital circularization.”

“Roger third stage,” Chrysalis’s voice replied in her headphones. “Stand by for MECO.”

The displays had been upgraded somewhat since the first Flea-hop flights. Cherry could now see the projected orbit in a little screen to the right of the nav-ball, could find the projected periapsis as it rose out of the wire-mesh globe which was the computer’s idea of Equus. With a flicker of motion the markers for periapsis and apoapsis flipped, and just as Chrysalis said, “MECO!” Cherry Berry’s hoof came down on the throttle, cutting off the engines.

“MECO,” Cherry said. “Confirm main engine cut-off at five minutes forty-eight seconds.”

“Confirmed MECO,” Chrysalis replied, voice in full I-am-more-rocket-pony-than-you professional mode. “You are go for orbital operations. Orbit’s looking nice and stable.”

“Twenty copies,” Cherry Berry replied.

“Twenty copies of what?”

That was Princess Luna’s voice. Cherry Berry could hear both Mission Control and the passenger cabin, but the ground couldn’t hear Luna until and unless Cherry Berry hit a certain switch. Rather than hit that switch, she flicked another that turned off outgoing comms altogether, allowing the crew privacy for a moment. “It means I understand what Mission Control says,” she said. “It comes from telegraphs. After any telegraph message the pony at the receiving end has to report that he’s written down the message correctly. If the message is clear, she sends back, ‘copy,’ see? So I say, ‘Mission Twenty copies,’ because this ship is Mission Twenty.”

“But these headsets aren’t telegraphic,” Luna protested.

“No, but semaphore and telegraphy were the first non-magic long-distance communications systems,” Cherry said. “So as we create new telecommunications, by magic or electronics, the words and traditions stay with us.”

“If you say so,” Luna said uncertainly. “So… we appear to be in space now.”

“Er, yes,” Cherry Berry said uncertainly. “You’re welcome to unbuckle your belts and float around the cabin if you like.”

“I’d rather not,” Luna replied bluntly. “It feels like I’m in the dream world, but I have no control over anything.”

“Um, Princess?” The panic-now-avoid-the-rush-it’s-Ponyville-tradition part of Cherry Berry made a play for ascendancy, and she had to take a deep breath to keep the steely-eyed-missile-mare part of herself in charge. “Please don’t cast spells in the spacecraft. The hull isn’t rated for alicorn-strength magic.”

“I wasn’t… er… I mean, I copy,” Luna said, sounding much more timid than Cherry had expected. “I believe I shall just sit here and look out the windows.”

“Um… okay.” Cherry squirmed a little, then added, “Your in-flight meal is in the cabinet, and the utensils are in the table in front of you. Do you remember the training on how to prepare it?”

“Yes, thank you,” Luna said softly, “but I don’t think I’m hungry just yet.”

Cherry sighed under her breath, trying not to let Luna hear.(295) Even with the case of air sickness, meals had been a fun part of every tourist’s flight. Playing with food in free-fall never failed to turn the passengers into little foals and fillies. But if Luna didn’t want to play in space, didn’t want to try things…

… didn’t want to be here at all, so far as Cherry could tell…

… then this was going to be a bad flight.

And then, out the tiny window in the capsule hatch, Cherry spotted a glimpse of something. The moon. The ship was soaring around the curve of the world, and there tucked neatly behind the night side of the planet was the little shining gray disc.

Yes, Cherry thought, that’ll do nicely. “Make yourself at home, Princess,” she said. “I have a bit of routine to take care of with Mission Control, and then I think I’ll have something extra special for you.”

Footnotes:

(294) In the sense that the ascent to space had been completely uneventful. In the sense of being normal for a CSP flight, definitely not. Part of Cherry Berry, the Ponyville-bred part of her that could be triggered into blind panic by a bunny stampede, fully expected the usual near-disaster any second now, even after the previous tourist flights.

(295) She would have slumped on the flight couch, but slumping requires gravity.

Luna slumped forward as much as lack of gravity and surplus of seat belts would allow and stared listlessly out the window.

Now that she looked back on it, the flight up hadn’t really been all that bad. True, there were all sorts of dangers, as the members of the Changeling Space Program had drilled into her head, but Luna had faced dangerous things before. Indeed, she was a dangerous thing. The only truly frightening thing about the flight had been her powerlessness, her inability to do anything if something did go horribly wrong. She didn’t like not being in control; it reminded her too much of the worst parts of being the Nightmare.

But no, once you disregarded the inner demons, the flight had been merely unpleasant. She’d endured being stuffed into a space suit, then getting stuffed even more roughly through two hatchways barely large enough to admit her princessly proportions, being strapped into a chair in a chamber smaller than a private railway carriage, and finally getting crushed into the chair as if riding in a sky chariot pulled by a team of pegasi who had just taken a notion to chase a cyclone.

All in all, it could have been worse. At least nopony was asking her to smile for the entire trip(296).

But, now that she was up, she could think of little else except coming down again. She wasn’t really afraid of space, or of heights, or even the instant death that awaited her if she punched out one of the thick reinforced windows. She just… wasn’t interested. Ever since the day she earned her cutie mark she’d seen the sky as her canvas, the moon and the tiny moving stars as paints to bring out one work of beauty after another. Seeing it as a place… took the joy out of it for her.

Twilight, she thought, will be terribly disappointed in me, that after all this bother I still don’t share her enthusiasm.

But Twilight and her friends could go to space all they wanted. They could even go to the moon if they liked- it wasn’t as if they could do anything to it.

Chrysalis and her little creatures- engaging, personable creatures they might have turned out to be(297), but still the enemies of all ponykind and never forget it- another matter altogether. Luna wanted them nowhere near her moon or her stars or her anything. She’d spent a month trying to find a justification, any justification, for grounding their entire program, and she’d ended up with nothing that would hold weight. Certainly nothing that wouldn’t make her sister sigh and shake her head in that disappointed way that made Luna want to buck trees into splinters.

Oh, there were certainly dangers involved in space flight that Luna could use to stop it… but everything she’d found would apply just as much to Twilight’s efforts as to Chrysalis. If anything, the changelings, with their minotaur, griffon and pony members, acted more professional than Twilight’s staff- not that she would ever tell Twilight that, or anypony else. They had given her no cause- absolutely none- to yank the reins and stop the carriage in its tracks.

I don’t know how she’ll do it, she thought, staring out at the starry twilight sky of space without really seeing it, but somehow Chrysalis is going to conquer Equestria through space flight. And when she does, it will be my fault for not stopping her when I had the chance.

She’d never been able to question Chrysalis personally. Only once, once in the whole month, had Luna seen the changeling queen when she wasn’t busy training or administering her subjects. And that one occasion… that poor deluded changeling in the centrifuge… well, it hadn’t been the right time for questions then. And the right time had never come, and now she likely would never find the right time. For all the questions she’d asked, all the corners she’d nosed into and all the cracks she’d prodded, she’d never been able to ask the most important questions of the most important pony.

Celestia was right, she thought, sighing to herself. I have bungled this terribly. And all Equestria shall pay for my incompetence.

Something moved in front of her nose, and Luna blinked. No, it wasn’t in front of her nose- it was outside. The stars were moving outside the window. “Miss Berry,” she said, “is there something I should know?” No response. “Miss Berry? Is everything all right up there? Ah, over? Is that right, over?”

“Just a moment, princess!” Cherry Berry’s cheerful voice replied. “I wanted to show you something, now that we’re coming into the night side of the planet.”

“That’s not really necessary, my little pony,” Luna began.

“It’s no trouble, princess!” Cherry interrupted. “You should be able to see it now!”

And Luna did see it.

It was the moon. Her moon.

It’s small. It’s so very, very small. How could it be so small?

Because space is so very big, she realized. Up here absolutely everything is small.

This thought led to another, and another. “Cherry Berry?” she asked. “Is it possible to take this ship higher?”

“Why, of course, princess,” Cherry Berry replied. “Quite a lot higher, if you like.”

“I would like it, yes please,” Luna answered. “There’s something I want a better look at.”

“All right!” Cherry replied cheerfully. “I’m afraid we’ll have to wait a while to do it, though. If we want to go higher here, we have to make the burn on the day side of the planet. If I burned now we’d just mess up our orbit and not get any closer to the moon.”

“I understand,” Luna lied. “I can be patient.”

“You know,” Cherry Berry’s voice suggested unsubtly, “while we’re waiting for the right time to burn, you could have that meal you’ve been skipping. The meal you picked out, which Heavy Frosting made especially for you.”

Luna suppressed a snort. The head chef at CSP had never appeared to her as anything other than a grouchy-looking Trottingham pony, but she’d heard the other changelings talking about him. Half the time they called him Heavy Frosting, the other half Carapace. She hadn’t been fooled.(298) “I’m sure he did,” was all she actually said.

A sigh echoed through Luna’s headphones. “Princess Luna,” Cherry said, “I can’t eat until you eat(299), and there are cherries calling my name in the cabinet.”

“Oh.” Luna couldn’t slump, but she found she could scrunch herself down in her chair a bit. “I’m very sorry. Why don’t we both have lunch, then?”

“Royalty first.”

“As you wish.” Suppressing another sigh, Luna used her magic to open the food cabinet and float one of the in-flight meals towards her(300). She had to admit, she hadn’t been poisoned in a month of living at the space center, Mrs. Drizzle’s flight notwithstanding. She’d seldom tasted the food except for her cocoa, usually being too tired or preoccupied to know what went into her mouth, but nothing had ever bit her back.

The process of eating took about a minute to work out, but after that it was all business. For a pony who has spent centuries spending every night in the malleable realm of pony dreams, playing with mere weightlessness was… well… small potatoes.

Darn, she thought, I should have asked for potatoes. Mashed. With butter and cream. They’d be less messy to get out of a tube than this alfalfa...

Footnotes:

(296) Luna had completely forgotten about the telepresence spell and the fact that all the press of Equestria would be able to see her face every moment of the entire flight. It would take quite an hour of coaxing by Celestia to get her to leave her room again after she saw the front pages of the next day’s newspapers.

(297) Nice, personable, and highly skilled in psychological warfare. The changelings had labeled the food compartment FOOD, and there was a FIRST AID cabinet, an EMERGENCY cabinet, and even a SNACKS cabinet. However, half the cabinets were empty, and some wag among the changeling ground crew had labelled those as well: AIR, TURTLE TEETH, UNICORN FEATHERS, and in a more savage vein HOPES AND DREAMS, PROMISES, PONY GOODWILL, CHANGELING FUTURE, and GOOD FAITH. Luna was pretty sure Cherry Berry had no idea about the labels, and the princess was too embarrassed to bring up the subject.

(298) Carapace hadn’t been trying to fool Luna or anypony else. He’d never given a buck about keeping his cover identity ever since the first day he’d discovered that cave moss soup wasn’t the only thing a changeling could eat- an attitude which contributed heavily to his poor track record as an infiltrator. He used his preferred pony disguise around the tourists to create a more relaxing atmosphere; the food would taste better if they thought it was prepared and served by a pony instead of a changeling. For all he cared they could have called him John Jacob Jingleharness Schmitt, so long as they appreciated his art.

(299) A blatant lie born out of desperation; under no circumstances would Cherry let protocol stand between her and cherries when she was hungry. She’d simply had other things on her mind and, prompted by a grumbly tummy, decided to fib a bit in the hopes that guilt might succeed where cajolery hadn’t.

(300) Egg salad wrap with watercress, alfalfa sprouts vinagrette, and banana moon pie. The instant hot cocoa was the only disappointment; it tasted like dirty water, and it had no marshmallows, either modern or ancient.

“Twenty, Horseton.”

“Go ahead, Horseton,” Cherry replied to Chrysalis’s calm voice.

“Tracking shows you five minutes from apoapsis,” Chrysalis said. “At highest point you will be roughly twice as high above the surface of Equus as Mission Thirteen’s record.”

Cherry allowed herself a moment of pride, followed by a bit of perspective. That left the ship only a distance of about two planetary diameters up, in a decidedly egg-shaped orbit, with periapsis scraping the upper fringes of the atmosphere. “Twenty copies,” she said.

“If you want to re-enter on this orbit,” Chrysalis continued, “our best guess is a burn about twenty-five minutes after apoapsis will bring you down in the Griffon Sea about sunset local time. Extending the mission for another orbit would shift the landing site to the South Luna Sea in order to keep the landing zone in daylight.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “That decision will be up to the passenger.”

“Copy, Twenty.” A tiny bit of grumpiness crept into Chrysalis’s faux professional manner.

“Horseton, send me up the burn details for the Griffon Sea landing zone,” Cherry said. “I’ll see what our passenger wants. Over and out.” Cutting the outgoing channel, Cherry switched to the in-ship channel and said, “Princess, I’m steering the ship so you can look at the moon again. To be honest, it really doesn’t look any bigger to me. It’s still really far away.”

“Thank you, my little pony,” Luna replied, “but that wasn’t actually what I wanted to look at. I wanted to look at what’s out the other window.”

“Princess?” Cherry Berry cocked her head in confusion. “I’m sorry, but the night side of Equus is out the other window, isn’t it? It’s all dark. You can’t even see the whole thing. There’s a few towns with streetlights, some fires, a couple of thunderstorms, and a lot of black. Nothing else.”

“I think you’re mistaken, Cherry Berry,” Luna said gently. “For me everything else is there.”

Cherry Berry shook her head. The way the ship had been assembled, the passenger windows and the capsule windows didn’t line up. If either the tiny nose window or the slightly larger hatch window were turned to face the planet, the passenger compartment would face empty space. “I don’t understand,” she said at last.

“The ponies I protect are down there,” Luna replied. “The ponies and griffons and diamond dogs and yaks and deer and parrots and minotaurs and all the many other speaking people of Equus. I guard their dreams and do my best to defend them against unseen threats. A thousand years ago, in my bitterness and pride, I betrayed that responsibility.” Cherry’s headphones went silent for a few leaden seconds before Luna added, “I shall never allow that to happen again. Not if I can help it. That’s why I’m here at all. Not the moon.”

“Oh.” It was Cherry Berry’s turn to leave the channel silent for several very heavy moments. “We, um… we all thought you were just having a snit about the moon at first. And then we thought you just hated changelings.”

“To be fair, I do hate Chrysalis,” Luna said quietly. “And though many of the changelings I’ve met this past month are quite… engaging… they are still monsters. They still prey on my little ponies. Ponies like you, Cherry Berry.”

“Mmm, yeah,” Cherry Berry admitted. “But they’re trying to be better. They’re hoping they can be better. They want a fresh start like… um... “

Luna’s chuckle had a bit of an edge to it. “Like myself? Yes, I know,” she said. “Celestia and I do not see eye to eye on this subject, but I am the very last pony who should ever argue that a monster does not deserve a second chance. I owe all I have to mercy, even if I have such trouble in granting mercy to others.”

“I think you did an okay job,” Cherry replied. “You were always polite and respectful to the staff. Even the ones who aren’t… um… all that… reformed,” she finished awkwardly.

This time Luna’s chuckle was a bit more genuine. “I actually liked them the best of all,” she said. “I understood them. They were surprisingly honest and simple. I could understand a changeling talking about delicious pony love a lot more easily than a changeling who… well, for example, a changeling who talks about nothing except what’s in the latest mail-order catalogue.”

“You mean,” Cherry Berry asked, unable to keep a smile off her face, “changelings who are as different and confusing as, say, an earth pony obsessed with flying?”

“Perhaps.” A long pause, and then Luna asked what most of CSP’s changelings called That Question. “Why do you work with Chrysalis, Cherry Berry? I know why you began, but you must know Twilight would love to have you on her staff now. As would any of the other space programs. Is beating her to the moon so important to you?”

“Me? No!” Cherry Berry made a warding gesture with her hooves, only belatedly realizing that Luna couldn’t see it. “Um, beating Twilight to the moon is Chryssy’s thing, not mine.”

“Then why do you fly these rockets?” Luna pressed. “Is it for the stars? Or is it for the fame you get back home? Do you seek to prove the worth of earth ponies? Or changelings?”

Cherry didn’t need more than a moment’s thought. “I fly to fly,” she said simply. “The destination isn’t important. I take my balloon up, or my helicopter, or my aeroplane, and spend hours just drifting or soaring across the skies. Moments like this, right now,” she said, making yet another gesture Luna couldn’t see through the bulkhead, “feeling the freedom from the ground and everything like this… this is why I fly.”

“But you could do it for anypony,” Luna said. “Why Chrysalis?”

“Because Chrysalis was the first to believe that an earth pony could do it,” Cherry said. “Because even when my friends turned me away, an enemy was desperate enough to bet all the chips on a weirdo who knew other weirdoes.” After a chuckle, she added, “We weirdoes gotta stick together, y’know?”

The sigh that echoed back over Cherry’s headset mixed resignation with profound understanding. “Yes, we do,” Luna said. “But I still don’t understand why you trust Chrysalis.”

“I don’t trust Chrysalis,” Cherry replied quickly. “Not in that way, at least. I know she’s got some scheme planned somehow. And I know I’m a silly earth pony who’ll never see it coming when it comes. But,” she added, “I can trust her to do everything necessary to get up to the sudden and inevitable betrayal. And when she makes her move, I’ll be right beside her, in as good a position as anypony to stop it.” After a moment she added, “If it gets that far, that is. She might change her mind.”

“Really?” Cherry could hear Luna’s voice trying to lean through the earphones like an eager pony leaning over a dining table for the hot gossip. “Tell me about her, then. What makes you think she might change?”

“Well….” Cherry took a moment to compose her thoughts. “Well, you first look at Chrysalis, and you see an insincere manipulator or petty tyrant, right? And most of the time that’s what’s there. She’s really selfish. She sees everypony else as things, even her changelings- tools, possessions, enemies, food. That’s what everypony thinks of her, and they’re not wrong. But…”

Cherry tried to lean back against the flight couch and succeeded only in pushing her hips and back legs up into the control console. “The thing is, I’ve seen glimpses,” she said. “She’s a very lonely bug, I think. Lonely and afraid of so much. Afraid of ponies. Afraid of looking weak. Afraid of everything, really. She has this weird sort of love for her subjects, a kind of... possessive… thingy. Definitely not unconditional, and twisted by any pony standard, but she does love her subjects. So long as they remain hers, that is.”

“I don’t see much hope in that,” Luna replied.

“I see a lot of hope,” Cherry said firmly. “Chryssy wants to be the big bad boss bug, right? Because that way nopony can hurt her. That’s all she knows, right? But look at the past year.” She made another hoof gesture, not caring that only she could see. “Changelings are hated and feared less and less. Some ponies are beginning to treat them as heroes and celebrities- especially Chrysalis. Not that any pony in their right mind would pick her over you and Celestia to rule the land. But for the first time in her life she’s getting respect and even affection. She. Chrysalis the changeling. Not whichever pony she’s disguised as. And maybe… maybe that will change her.”

“You sound like my sister,” Luna muttered. “So you think she can be reformed? Like Discord? Like… myself?”

“Mmm… I’m saying it’s possible. She’s been really angry and afraid for a really long time. She might be a lost cause. But then again,” Cherry finished, “she might not.”

“And that’s why you fly for Chrysalis?”

“I told you, I fly to fly,” Cherry said. “If this was about giving Chrysalis a friendship lesson, no flying involved, I’d let Twilight and her friends handle it and gallop back to Ponyville tonight. But… well… I’ve come to like her a little, I guess.” Cherry thought back to a hundred little moments between the two of them and said, “She’s evil, manipulative, and a pain in the flank to work with a lot of the time… but she’s really fascinating to watch. And there are those moments when the not-totally-evil part of herself shows through for just a second. So I think I’ll stick with her a while longer. Not because I’m hers, because I’m not. But because… because I want to see.”

There followed a long, but not unpleasant, quiet time, as the spacecraft drifted through and past the highest point in its trajectory around the night-clad world below.

“You’ve given me much to think about,” Luna said at last. “And when I talk about this with my sister, no doubt she will smile her little smile and most definitely not tell me she was right all along.” This last part came out in a grumble, and Luna cleared her throat to remove it before continuing, “But after listening to you, I’ve decided that space flight is in good hooves.”

“Chrysalis’s excepted, of course?” Cherry put in.

“Of course,” Luna replied, amused. “But rest assured, within a day of my returning to Canterlot, I shall announce an end to the moratorium on flights to my moon. I shall, of course,” she added, “not promote tourist flights. The dangers aside, if I have that sort of money to spend I could vacation in much more comfortable surroundings.”

Cherry giggled. “Chrysalis won’t be bothered by that,” she said. “She’s regretted signing up any tourists, never mind all of you. She wants to get back to proper flying.”

“Really? Perhaps I should change my mind,” Luna said, even more amused. “But seriously, there is one other thing. Did Chrysalis tell you what the price of my flight was?”

“I don’t think so,” Cherry replied. “Just that we’d be allowed to go to the moon.”

“How would you like to go someplace else first?”

Cherry Berry blinked. “Um, Bucephalous is way further away than the moon,” she said. “And Twilight says that-”

“I meant,” Luna overrode the pilot’s words with a slight raise of her voice, “that I have brought one of my little stars much closer to Equus. As close as I dare bring it. You’ve seen it a couple of times. In fact,” she drawled in a speculative tone, “I believe you might be able to see it ahead of the ship now, a tiny shining thing just bigger than a dot.”

Cherry rolled the ship to put the hatch window ahead of them in flight, the tiny nosecone windows not allowing for a wide enough field of view to spot anything not directly in front of the ship. There, not far above Equus’s curved horizon, lay a brilliant star, much brighter and steadier than any of its neighbors. It seemed slightly… lumpy…

“I named that one Little Mouse when I was much younger,” Luna continued. “Or in ancient Equestrian, Minmus. It currently circles the world about three times as far away as the moon. It is a new world, if a tiny one.” After a brief dramatic pause, Luna added, “And as I promised Chrysalis, I am giving her space program- your space program- exclusive rights to the first landing upon it.”

Cherry’s breath caught in her throat. “Exclusive- first- landing-”

“My guard said Chrysalis accused me of wanting to delay her landing on my moon. That wasn’t my intent, but it certainly won’t sadden me. Nor Twilight, I suspect.”

“You know Twilight’s going to beg you for her own little star to land on?” Cherry said.

“She can visit Minmus after you’ve had your visit,” Luna replied. “One of my little stars is enough for science. And speaking of enough,” she added, unable to restrain a yawn, “I should like to return home now, please. As expeditiously as possible. I’ve been awake nearly twenty-four hours now.”

“I can arrange that,” Cherry Berry replied. “Deorbit burn in… about… fourteen minutes.”

Mission Twenty re-entered the atmosphere at a faster speed than any spacecraft before. Ponies saw the fireball from Tall Tale to Dodge Junction and beyond. The roar of re-entry within the ship, and the rattling and groaning of the ship’s fabric as Cherry Berry brought it down, were equally impressive.

Princess Luna slept through the whole thing. When the retrieval crew found the capsule off the southern griffon coast a bit after sunset, she was still sound asleep, dreaming dreams in which the knobs of Chrysalis’s crown had been replaced with hearts and, for some reason, she, Luna, and Nightmare Moon were all in the same bowling league.

When she related the dream two days later over Celestia’s breakfast, her big sister snorted milk through her nose.

MISSION 20 REPORT

Mission summary: Take a VIP to orbit and return her safely; test heat shield on splashdown after flight

Pilot: Cherry Berry
Crew: Luna (tourist)
Flight duration: 9 hrs. 37 min.

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: Something new is on the horizon. Literally.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: DEFINITELY SUCCESSFUL

Three days after the retrieval of Mission Twenty, the galleries of Mission Control were once more packed with reporters, cameraponies, and VIPs. The most prominent VIP of them all, however, stood on the floor of Mission Control. As much as she wanted to stay in Canterlot, Luna felt she had to witness the end of her misadventure in investigation.

On the giant projection on the front wall of Mission Control, the little robot space probe Mission R2, or as Pinkie Pie insisted on calling it, “Prototype Probey-dobey,” hung under a gigantic grey ball of rock, covered in craters. The probe had been in almost perfect position two days earlier for a minor orbital correction to fling it past the moon, and this time Luna had not moved the moon away. The flyby had already been confirmed, and the check from the Royal Astronomical society lay on the floor two feet to Luna’s right, under the hoof of Chrysalis herself.

But that wasn’t the end of the mission. Oh, no. The mission as planned included temperature scans of the surface as a bonus objective. With massive amounts of extra fuel and a trajectory going almost perfectly beneath the moon’s south pole, Mission R2 was going to attempt an orbit- the first ever orbit of an artificial satellite around an object other than Equus.

And the final orbit would hug Luna’s beloved moon like a saddle tightened to the last notch.

“Stand by for engine ignition,” Occupant said.

“Standing by,” Dragonfly hissed back, her hooves hovering over the remote control panel.

“Trajectory, give us the cue when ready.”

“Full throttle burn of forty-seven seconds,” replied George Bull, “in five… four… three… two… ONE!”

“Ignition!” Dragonfly shouted, setting throttle to full. Just over a second later the projection lit up as a thin plume of plasma erupted from the rear of Mission R2, slowing the tiny ship down.

“Trajectory projects closed orbit,” George Bull continued. "Initial orbit with periapsis of forty-two kilometers. Two additional burns required for a polar orbit of twenty-nine kilometers with eccentricity of one percent.”

Applause filled the control room as the burn ran to its scheduled completion. Under cover of the noise, Luna leaned over to Chrysalis and said, “If I could have found any reason to prevent this, I would have.”

“I know,” Chrysalis replied. “But you couldn’t. Because there isn’t one.”

“You have a sinister plan.”

“Thousands,” Chrysalis agreed. “And when I find one that is both sinister and not suicidal, you’ll find out first-hoof. Believe me.”

Luna nodded, as if the two were discussing the mission instead of baring teeth like diamond dogs disputing pack leadership. “I know you won’t tell me why you’re doing all this.”

“Read the newspapers,” Chrysalis said. “Watch the newsreels. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“I just want to tell you one thing,” Luna said quietly. “If anything happens to any of my ponies under your care, especially Cherry Berry, I will return this facility to the swamp whence it came.”

“I’d be a fool to let anything happen to my chief pilot,” Chrysalis hissed. “I intend to take very good care of my pony, I assure you.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “My pony?” she asked.

Chrysalis’s poise collapsed. She spluttered. She shuffled her forehooves. Finally, after swiping the check up and tucking it under a wing, she said, “Well! I believe it’s just about time for the press conference! So good having you with us, Princess! Have a speedy trip home!” This said, she retreated in somewhat less than good order, leaving Luna to ponder the meaning of a single adjective.

Cherry Berry walked up to her. “Are you going to join us?” she asked. “I’m sure the reporters would love to ask you questions.”

“Yes, I know,” Luna sighed. “The same ones all over again, beginning with, ‘How do you feel about flights to the moon?’” She shook her head. “No, I believe I shall disappear while everypony is looking at you.”

“Oh. Well, have a safe trip!” Cherry Berry smiled. “I’ll see you in Canterlot next week for Twilight’s big friendship festival!”

“I thought you’d be busy with your flight to my little Minmus,” Luna said.

“Nah,” Cherry said. “There’s too much work to do. All the other space programs are demanding rocket parts, and we’ve barely got enough for ourselves. We need to design a lander. We need to test a rocket that can make it to Minmus and back. We won’t be ready to go for weeks, maybe months. I can spare a day or two to go hear Songbird Seranade!”

“Well,” Luna said, smiling, “I suspect I shall be busy, but perhaps we shall meet at the festival.” She stood, stretched, and added, “After the month I’ve had, I believe I could use a nice, uneventful party.”

MISSION R2 EXTENDED REPORT

Mission summary: Lunar flyby, temperature scans

Pilot: Probodobodyne OKTO (Dragonfly)
Flight duration: About four moons and counting

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: First flyby of the moon, first orbit of the moon, first scientific data from the moon

Conclusions from flight: Well, it’s about time!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: DELAYED SUCCESS IS STILL SUCCESS

Author's Note

If I'd thought about it, I could have offered the tourist roles to Patreon donors. Unfortunately I didn't think of it until I'd already written their scenes, and having done I didn't want to do it all over. Sorry, everybody. (And sorry, transmission bill I badly need to pay for...)

Yes, Minmus. Minmus is the reason I had this detour with Luna.

When one of the readers first suggested Minmus, I said it probably wouldn't happen, because there's nothing in MLP that indicates Equestria has a second moon. But remember that Luna is referred to, multiple times, as crafting the night sky in some fashion. This can only happen in a Copernican-model universe if Equus has a cloud of highly reflective asteroids around it- little things that look enough like stars to be taken for stars. It occurred to me one day that Minmus, as it is in KSP, is a perfect candidate for such an object...

... and, of course, I wanted practice on Minmus before trying to land on the Moon. I used a sandbox game to test my planned end-of-story rocket and... mistakes were made.

So here we have Luna, and sadly she doesn't come off well here. She means well, but she's obviously not a people mare.

And if anything, hydrazine and hydrogen tetraoxide are if anything much more dangerous than I make them in the footnotes. A tiny bit of hydrazine will cause chemical burns through clothes; a small amount is lethal. Reason? The more reactive a substance is, the more energy it releases when it oxidizes. But anything with energy like that also reacts with practically anything else- including (especially) organic molecules like, oh, human skin and human blood and so on. And hydrogen tetraoxide in high concentrations will, to quote the movie Spacecamp, "dry-clean your lungs." LO2 and LH2 are dangerous because you have to get both really really cold to keep them liquid- as in instant-tissue-destruction-on-contact cold. About the only non-dangerous liquid rocket fuel used in mass production is ethyl alcohol- which was a problem for the Nazi V2 project, because the workers kept stealing rocket fuel to drink.

Believe it or not, the Nazis and Russians both experimented with fluorine compounds as rocket fuel. The problem with that is, fluorine is too reactive. You want rocket fuel that goes bang when you tell it to and not before. You definitely don't want rocket fuel that eats through the fuel tanks while you watch. (And if you're foolish enough to use fluorine-based rocket fuel, I hope you at least have the wisdom to watch from several miles' safe distance.)

There will be an interlude chapter about the most interesting bit of Mission 15. Yes, Occupant got to go to space, and he'll likely go again when the time is right.

The next full chapter will describe what happened over Chrysalis's cold petrified body. No, I'm not writing up the invasion of the Storm King's forces of Horseton. Suffice to say they did, and they won, and then... other things happened... and then, when the princesses of Equestria finally got round to de-rocking Chrysalis, Cherry Berry gets to tell her what she missed. But that'll be some time from now, as I have other things that need doing in the near term. Until then!

Interlude: CSP-15: The Wrong Stuff

“Occupant,” Chrysalis said, “let go of the hoof rails.”

And from hundreds of miles above the surface of Equus, Occupant replied: “No!”

Not “Yes,” and not even “Can I not?” or “No, my queen.” Just a thin, squeaky negative, coming from a bug too terrified to realize that, however afraid he might be at the moment, that would be nothing compared to what he’d endure once Chrysalis got her hooves on him.

From the flight director’s cupola Cherry Berry asked, “Still think this punishment of yours is worth it?”

Chrysalis muted the capcom microphone long enough to say, “Shut up.” After a deep breath she un-muted it again and said, “Fifteen, you are in a spacesuit. You have a thruster pack with batteries showing full. And you have four scientific experiments from which you need to collect data and samples and then reset the equipment. All of which you have trained for all winter. You are as safe as it is possible to be. Now let go of the rails and activate suit thrusters.”

“N-n-not gonna do it!”

“Occupant,” Chrysalis said, allowing a bit of her true feelings to show in her voice like an alligator surfacing in the swamp waters, “I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t done before. I’m ordering- let go of the darn ship!”

“Th-th-that’s different!” Occupant’s voice sounded just as terrified as before, but at least he was putting more of them together. “You’re the queen! You’re the smartest and bravest and sneakiest! I’m just a drone! And it’s scary out here!”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Chrysalis replied. “But disobedience will get you into trouble as deep as you currently are high. Do I make myself clear?”

“Do you know how tough it is to get out of the hatch without losing your grip on the spaceship?” Occupant asked in a single rush of breath. “I almost lost it! I don’t wanna fall!”

This time Chrysalis took two deep breaths, not that it helped. “Occupant,” she said quietly, “you are in orbit. In space. You can’t fall. There is no place to fall TO.”

“That’s not what Dr. Cowley said!” Occupant shot back. “He said orbit is free-fall! Everything’s falling all the time! So there’s EVERYPLACE to fall to, and none of them nice!”

Chrysalis muted the mic again. “Trajectory? Thank you so much for that.”

Down in the bullpen, the elderly minotaur in question flinched a little and shrugged helplessly.

Unmuting the mic, Chrysalis continued, “Well, Fifteen, are you telling me you want to go back in the ship, then?”

The comms channel remained silent for a little too long. When Occupant spoke, it was as slowly as his previous words had been rapid-fire, but not the least bit less afraid. “That would mean I’d have to reopen the hatch, right?”

“Do you know the teleport spell?”

“No, my queen.”

“Then yes, obviously you’d have to open the hatch.”

“Then I think I’d just like to stay right here,” Occupant said. On the giant projection screen overlooking CSP Mission Control, the little figure hugging the front of CSP-15’s capsule hugged it just a little tighter. “I really don’t think I can let go.”

“And how long do you intend to stay there?”

“Um.” Another long pause. “Would it work if I just rode back down out here?”

“Stand by, Fifteen.” With a swat of her forehoof Chrysalis turned the microphone off. With a flash of sickly green magic she yanked her headset off her head and threw it onto the console hard enough that it bounced. “Conference,” she ordered. “NOW.”

At least the press gallery was empty for this launch. They’d advertised CSP-15 as a simple training flight to familiarize Occupant with space and the scientific devices he’d be working with on missions. No great firsts, no milestones, nothing out of the ordinary. Thus, a few reporters had showed up for the launch, and then they’d been gently encouraged to go file their stories from Baltimare.

Of course, the reason why they’d discouraged the press so strongly didn’t make Chrysalis feel any better…

Occupant sat in the flight seat, flight stick between his forehooves, as the red lights indicating pre-simulation conditions shone all around him.

“All right, Occupant,” Cherry Berry said over the comms. “You’ve run simulations on us. You know how this works. We’re going to start out very simply. No clever tricks, no malfunctions. We just want you to get to orbit. You know how to read the nav-ball, right?”

“Yes, Miss Berry.”

“Okay. Begin simulation. Fifteen, Horseton; ignition at your discretion.”

Twenty seconds later the capsule hatch opened, and Cherry Berry’s annoyed head poked through it. “WHAT was THAT?” she asked.

“Well, I’m supposed to be going ten by ninety off the pad, right?” Occupant asked. “Well, I did that, but the ship kept dipping past ten, so I pulled up, and then it was tipping the other way, and then it turned north for some reason, and-“

“-and you plowed straight down into the roof of the VAB!” Cherry shouted. “I saw! We ALL saw! How could…” She clamped her jaw shut, snorting heavily for a few seconds until her facial fur became more pink than red. “Okay,” she said in a calmer tone of voice. “It was your first sim. Nobody flies well the first time. We’ll just learn from this and move on. Handle the stick gently next time. All right?”

“All right.”

Twenty-seven seconds after the second simulation began, the hatch opened again, and Cherry Berry stuck her head in again. “Occupant,” she asked softly. “how well do you think rockets fly going sideways?”

“They don’t,” Occupant said.

“Which is why, according to the simulation, your body parts are now scattered the entire length of the Horseton fishing jetty,” Cherry said. “Do you know what caused that?”

“Um… no?” Occupant asked. “I handled the stick gently like you said, but the rocket… well… it just didn’t want to go that way.”

“You tried to turn down the ball right off the pad,” Cherry said. “There wasn’t enough speed for aerodynamics to hold the rocket steady. When you tried to correct, you put the engines out of line with the upper part of the rocket and lost control.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Berry,” Occupant whimpered. “I thought I was waiting long enough.”

Cherry took another deep breath. “Let’s try again,” she said. “After all, the reason for simulations is so we buck up here on the ground and not in space right?”

“Right,” Occupant agreed with absolutely no confidence at all.

“So just remember: wait until the rocket’s got some speed, and then handle the stick real gently,” Cherry said, maintaining her calm, soft, comforting voice. “And we won’t make the same mistake again, will we?”

“No, ma’am,” Occupant said.

This time it took seventy-four seconds for Cherry Berry to stick her head back into the red-lit capsule. This time her voice was less calm and gentle. “Okay, what happened this time?” she asked. “Because even I don’t understand how we got THAT result!”

“Um…” Occupant looked down. “The computer readout says the rocket broke up at nine thousand meters.”

“I KNOW it broke up at nine thousand!” Cherry shrieked, losing her composure completely for a moment. After a deep breath she leaned farther into the capsule, looking down at Occupant where he lay strapped into the flight couch, and said, “What I want to know is… why?”

“Um, Miss Berry, right now you remind me a lot of my queen-“

“Don’t say that even as a joke!!”

Occupant hadn’t been joking. Without shapeshifting, he tried to make himself as small as possible in his spacesuit. “Sorry! Sorry! But I really don’t know why! I thought I was doing well this time, honest!”

Cherry Berry backed off, almost back out the hatch, and Occupant thought he heard her counting to ten under her breath. “You know?” she asked, back in Nice Sweet Gentle Pony mode. “You’ve just given me an idea. You don’t know what the right way looks like from the inside, do you?”

Occupant shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get a Probodobodyne in here, and Dragonfly. She’ll fly the sim from outside, and you’ll just be a passenger. Just watch the lights and the readouts and learn what a proper launch looks like. And we’ll go from there.”

Setting up the new rig took about an hour and a half.

The simulation which followed lasted eighty-three seconds.

This time the hatch didn’t open. Voices came over Occupant’s headset, though, and he heard every word of the conversation which followed with crystal clarity.

“What the hay was THAT?” That was Cherry, confused and frustrated.

“THAT was a butt-heavy ship trying to flip!” That was Dragonfly, also frustrated but not confused. “The two Science Jr.s and the cargo bay with the goo canisters inside make the top part of the ship really lightweight. The instant I try to push the envelope- whoop! The whole thing flips over and smashes itself to pieces!”

“Then don’t push the envelope! This isn’t a thrill-ride for you!”

“It’s not a thrill of any kind for me! And anyway, I wasn’t trying to push it! It just happened!”

“Well, it better not happen on the real flight! Think what would have happened to Occupant!”

Occupant imagined what would happen to him, falling through exploding debris without a parachute from ten kilometers up. He figured it wouldn’t be as pleasant as getting shield-bashed out of Canterlot had been. For one thing, there had been hundreds of kilometers of flight to take the edge off their trajectory before they hit the Badlands dirt. This time there would be more speed and less air.

Assuming he was in any condition to care about the landing after the rocket tore itself apart with him inside.

“So move over! We’re going to take turns at this until we get this right!”

“Okay, Cherry. But I kind of feel we’re forgetting something.”

It took seven more simulations, none of which lasted long enough to get to space, before either Cherry or Dragonfly remembered Occupant was still in the simulator capsule, by which point he had to be carried out on a stretcher, curled up into as small a twitchy ball of bug as his spacesuit would allow.

“The bulls put a scale model in the wind tunnel,” Cherry said. “And Dragonfly was right. The center of mass of the ship is way low. Anything more than the slightest bit of imbalanced air resistance on the nose, and the rocket tumbles and dies.”

“All right,” Chrysalis said. “What can we do about it, then?”

“Not a darn thing.” Cherry opened the door to the new spacewalk training room and let Chrysalis walk in ahead of her. “The whole point of the mission is to see if we can re-use those Science Jrs., and we need the spare for the high-altitude test if the reset doesn’t work. And any design we can build with two of those things stacked on each other is going to be tail-heavy.”

“Curse that Twilight Sparkle,” Chrysalis muttered. “Why couldn’t she make a heavy science lab?”

“Because heavy costs more fuel and is harder to fly?” Cherry Berry asked.

“I wasn’t asking you, pony.” Chrysalis shook her head. “So you say we’re stuck?”

“Yep,” Cherry agreed. “We’re not even going to try letting Occupant touch the controls anymore. Dragonfly’s going to spend every day in the sims this week learning how to launch this thing without a wreck. Aside from that, unless we can find some larger fins somewhere, there’s nothing to be done.”

“Of course,” Chrysalis groaned. “Remind me again why I’m doing this?”

“You wanted petty revenge and torture on one of your more loyal and reliable subjects,” Cherry replied instantly.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Oh, for- how is Little Mister Reliable anyway?” Chrysalis asked. “He only has one thing to train for now- the spacewalk. He must be getting good at that.”

“Dr. von Brawn says he’s improving,” Cherry said. “They should be running a simulation now…” She opened the door to the main training floor and, again, held it open for Chrysalis.

“Well, based on how he did in the Cape Friendship training, he couldn’t possibly get-“ Chrysalis’s voice cut off as she looked up at the spacewalk rigging, which simulated zero-gravity by a double gantry that suspended the trainee in the air on a series of tethers to allow for a full three dimensions of movement. Somehow, four moderately short tether cables had become snarled in the gantry booms, along with the cables that extended or contracted those booms, to form a gigantic metal spider web that spanned half the immense chamber.

Next to where Occupant hung, absolutely immobilized, the tangle of cables spelled out the words: SOME PIG!

Chrysalis stared for a long moment, then threw up her forehooves and shouted, “HOW?!?”

The conference in a meeting room beneath the VIP gallery hadn’t taken long, since its main purpose had been to allow Chrysalis to shout and rave for a moment before everyone else persuaded her that further threats wouldn’t make Occupant any more comfortable about a spacewalk, and that it might be a good idea to try again the next day.

That having been worked out, the controllers returned to the Mission Control floor. Without even looking up, Chrysalis returned to the capcom position, put on her headset, and reactivated the microphone. “Fifteen, Horseton,” she said, “I’ve been reminded that you had a lot of bad experiences in the simulator. But I want you to remember that we got you up safe and sound, and that you’ll be coming home with just the capsule, so you won’t need to worry about heat warnings or anything like that. All the worst stuff is behind you. So just go back into the capsule, relax, and we’ll try the spacewalk again tomorrow.”

“Oh, I already did that, my queen.”

Chrysalis’s head snapped up from her console. There on the wall high above she saw the projected illusion showing Occupant floating free in space next to the long cylinder of Mission Fifteen’s orbital stage. “You did what?” she asked.

“Well, I sneezed,” Occupant said. “By the way, the anti-fog material inside the helmet visor works really well with-“

“You sneezed??”

“Yes, my queen! And, well, when I sneezed my hooves went to my face, only I couldn’t cover my snout because of the helmet, and then I realized I’d let go of the ship. And, well, the ship wasn’t really going anywhere, so I decided I’d try out the thrusters, and they worked fine, and so I completed the spacewalk. All done.”

“All done.”

“Yes, ma’am! It was really easy! I have the samples in my belt right here!” On the screen, one forehoof patted the spacesuit’s waist. “And the new samples are in place ready for another test run.”

“Right. Stand by.” Chrysalis cut the mic again and asked, “How long were we in that conference room anyway??”

“Five, six minutes?” Cherry replied at once. “Just long enough for you to get over your snit fit.”

“Queens do NOT have snit fits! We have royal rages, and I’ll thank you to remember it!”

“I’ll try, capcom,” Cherry said. “In the meantime, maybe we should get Occupant back into the ship and prepare for the orbital adjustment burn?”

“I suppose,” Chrysalis said, rubbing her head. “But do you know the most annoying thing about this?”

“Tell us.”

“The fact that Occupant just succeeded,” Chrysalis said, pointing to the telepresence projection, “means that we could have done this with just one materials lab. Just one goo canister. Which means the ship wouldn’t have been imbalanced, and we wouldn’t have had all the trouble in the sims.”

Cherry shrugged. “But we couldn’t be sure,” she said. “Which is why we did all the sims.”

“Rrrrrgh.” Chrysalis keyed on her microphone again. “Fifteen, congratulations on a successful first spacewalk. Now please get back inside the ship so we can get to the second part of the mission.”

“Aw, can’t I stay out here a while longer?” Occupant asked. “It’s kind of fun flying on the thrusters. Not as fun as the Fun Machine, but-“

“Occupant,” Chrysalis said, using the very last tattered shred of her never-plentiful patience, “stop arguing with me!!”

“Yes, my queen!” Occupant said, wheedling gone. “Re-entering vehicle now!”

Fifteen seconds later, up on the screen, a spacesuited form bounced off the ship and tumbled backwards.

“It’s okay, Horseton!” Occupant said as he somersaulted through space. “I know what I did wrong! I’ll get it right next time!”

On the sixth attempt, he finally did.

Author's Note

It was complete. Now it's... more complete.

This chapter was written as a bonus for the Changeling Space Program Print Edition Kickstarter (running through August 1). Yesterday the project hit a stretch goal which meant this, and another bonus mini-chapter I have yet to write, not only appear in the book, they get posted here for everyone to read for free. (Which means only the illustrations will be exclusive to the book, sorry.)

This particular mini-chapter was supposed to be written back in 2017 or so, but something very big got in the way- The Maretian. And after that was done, I wanted to push ahead to completion on this story, and going back for a little side-mission (which I'd actually done to mine science and unlock a couple of parts) didn't appeal to me. But I had a paragraph of notes, and the flight appears in the CSP Retrospective video, so... here it is.

And yes, flying this mission took several attempts before I realized just how careful I needed to be going up. The thing about a large, lightweight upper stage is, it has less inertia to resist air pressures if the rocket gets too far out of its aerodynamic profile. Turn a little too hard, and the wind quite literally swats this rocket down. It was the perfect mission to give Occupant an extremely low opinion of his own piloting abilities (which, although they are very low, really weren't THAT low- he just had a nigh-unflyable craft to deal with).

The other bonus chapter will be similarly short- both because I'm going to write it in a single night, and because the book was already coming in at 740 pages BEFORE adding these.

Also, no footnotes, because I didn't want to renumber the ones already in the book. Though at the time I was writing, I was SORELY tempted...

Chapter 13: Mission 21: Somewhat Worse Than Average Accidents

“Keep pushing, Cadence.”

“I’m trying! Even if I would rather leave her like this!”

“A promise is a promise! A little harder! Luna, ten percent less!”

“This was so much easier with that stupid staff… there!!”

Chrysalis, queen of the changelings, blinked her eyes for the first time in over a month.

Under the bedsheets (wait, what was she doing in a bed?) she could feel little bits of obsidian flaking off her body as her limbs gradually relaxed from a stiff pose she hadn’t known she was holding. Her body gradually warmed as concentrated harmony magic poured through it. She glanced around her to see four alicorns- count ‘em, one two three four- carefully sending their magic into her, clearing away… something.

At first it felt warm and cozy, but after several seconds Chrysalis began to squirm as the spell wriggled its insidious way into corners of her soul she hadn’t ever intended anything, let alone a pony, to investigate. When the four princesses ceased the spell simultaneously, each gasping a bit from the effort of the sustained spell, Chrysalis gasped her own sigh of relief and relaxed even more limply into what she assumed was a hospital bed.

“That should do it,” Twilight Sparkle said, being the first of the alicorns to recover. “Chrysalis, how are you feeling?”

“A little confused.” Was that her own voice? Since when was she so soft? She cleared her throat and forced herself to speak up, “Why exactly am I in a hospital bed? And which hospital bed, exactly?”

“You’re in the infirmary at your own space center,” a more familiar voice spoke up. The four princesses parted to let Cherry Berry, who sported a fetching blue jumpsuit over her pink fur, pass through. Behind her, standing or hovering near the wall, were Goddard the Griffon, Warner von Brawn, Occupant and Lucky Cricket. “Lucky and his recovery team kept you safe during the invasion, and after the yetis withdrew they brought you here.”

“We had a kingdom to put to rights,” Celestia said gently. “The restoration of our magic undid the damage of the Storm King’s tornado, but there was still all the damage his fleet did-“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Chrysalis said, holding up one perforated hoof. “Back up a bit. What invasion? What Storm King?”

Twilight Sparkle raised her eyebrows. “What do you remember, exactly, before waking up here?”

Chrysalis considered lines like This is my space center, I’ll ask the questions, and then reconsidered them in the light of being surrounded by four alicorns, none of whom particularly liked her. She dropped her hoof, leaned back into her pillow, and looked up at the ceiling. “Well,” she said slowly, “the pony took her balloon off to Canterlot for your friendship festival… Goddard and von Brawn were in Appleoosa tinkering with some new rocket design or something… I was only sticking around to oversee delivery of replacement rocket parts after Mission Twenty, and I’d intended to go back to the hive for a few days once they were stored in the VAB…”

“And they’re still there, nice and safe!” Occupant chimed in before Cherry Berry raised a hoof to shush him.

“Yes, my changelings were carrying the newest capsule off the last barge when I saw this big, ugly airship coming up along the southern coast.” Chrysalis raised a hoof and made a slow swooping gesture, demonstrating how it had flown. “And right behind it was a second one just like it, both trailing huge clouds of smoke and lightning. Both of them black and beautiful, almost as if I’d designed them myself.” She smirked a bit as she added, “Of course I knew we were under attack as soon as I saw them.”

“Really,” Cadence drawled. “Because they couldn’t possibly be rich ponies with a taste for gothic fashion?”

“A single airship like that, possibly,” Chrysalis said. “But anybody who deliberately makes two of those things, and then sends both of them somewhere, wants to scare people.” She snorted. “Not a bad tactic if you know your enemy. If the enemy has weak discipline, they’ll hesitate or break outright. But a disciplined force, under good leadership, will know exactly what to attack on sight.” She smirked a self-satisfied smile as she added, “Obviously whoever sent them didn’t know me or my subjects. I knew my changelings could easily repulse two airships, no matter how large.”

“Er, my queen?” Occupant looked a little embarrassed. “I, um, it turned out it wasn’t two airships.”

“It was five,” Lucky Cricket added.

“Five?” Chrysalis said, leaning her head up. “I only remember two.”

“Well, you remember how you led us into battle against the first airship?” Lucky continued. “We forced that one down into the bay. It was a brilliant victory!”

“Yes, I remember that part,” Chrysalis nodded. “I saw the blimp going down, and I was shouting at you to form up for a second attack…” Her face screwed up in concentration. “Something hit me between the shoulders, just here-“ she leaned up and waved a hoof at her spine just below the neck- “and I thought it was some really heavy piece of debris. I tried to shake it off…” Her voice trailed into silence.

“It was a piece of misfortune malachite,” Twilight Sparkle said. “An extremely potent petrification spell. And you were hundreds of meters over the water when it took effect.”

“It came from the third airship,” Lucky Cricket said. “They were hiding in the smoke cloud from the first two ships. We saw you falling, Dragonfly and me, and we caught you before you hit the water. We carried you to the fire swamps to hide, and we didn’t look back.”

“The defense kinda broke up after that,” Occupant said. “I tried to rally some guards to hold the space center, but…”

“They didn’t take you prisoner, did they?” Chrysalis asked.

Occupant’s eyes widened. “No!” he shouted indignantly. “We hid. When their troops surrounded mission control, we knocked a couple of them out and copied them. In about ten minutes we’d replaced fifteen of them- me, Carapace, Plastron, some of the other old hooves.”

“Fifteen?” Chrysalis asked. “What happened to the other three hundred changelings I had here?”

“The rest either followed us into the swamp or fled back to the hive,” Lucky Cricket said softly. “And to be honest I’m still surprised even fifteen stayed. Without you leading us, we were no match for those airships.”

Chrysalis flopped back onto her pillow. On the one hoof, that was sort of a compliment to her leadership and tactical skills, she supposed. On the other hoof, a dozen changelings should have been enough per airship, with any kind of leadership.

And on the back hoof, she was frankly amazed that fourteen of her changelings had voluntarily followed Occupant’s leadership anywhere other than into the line for the Fun Machine.

“And this was all over a month ago?” she asked. “So spring is half over now?”

“That’s right,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And for us it’s been a very busy month. But I’m sure you’ll hear all about it from the others.”

“Yes, we do have to be going,” Celestia agreed. “We have some hard flying ahead if we’re to be in Manehattan for Dragonfly’s big parade.”

Chrysalis stiffened in her bed. A quick glance around revealed that yes, Dragonfly was not in the room. “Parade? Parade for what?”

“For her brilliant rescue of those stranded astronauts,” Celestia continued. “You must get Cherry to tell you about it. It was a marvelous achievement.”

“Dragonlord Ember’s going to personally escort her to the Dragonlands after this for their own celebration,” Luna added. “The yaks already held their own ceremony.”

“Dragons? Yaks?”

“Well, get plenty of rest,” Twilight Sparkle said, easing towards the door. “By tomorrow your post-petrification fatigue should be gone, and you’ll be back to normal!”

The alicorns walked out, followed by Goddard, von Brawn and the two drones. Cherry Berry was about to follow when Chrysalis reached out with her magic and grabbed the earth pony’s tail. “Not so fast, pony,” she hissed, dragging her chief pilot back rump-first to the side of her bed. “You’re not going anywhere until I get an explanation.”

“Um, well,” Cherry Berry flustered, “I was in Canterlot for the invasion and got captured with all the other ponies there, so I don’t-“

“Don’t try to deceive a deceiver,” Chrysalis warned, green fire flickering in her eyes. “You must have been here for whatever Dragonfly did, right?”

“Well…” Most ponies were terrible liars, and Cherry Berry worse than most. Chrysalis could read on the pink pony’s face three blatant fibs considered and rejected in the course of about five seconds before she gave up and settled for the truth. “Yes, I was. I was in charge of the whole flight.”

“Flight, is it?” Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “I think you had better tell me everything. Start at the part where you got back to the space center and go from there.”

“Don’t you think this should wait until you’ve rested?”

“Talk,” Chrysalis barked.

Cherry Berry talked.

The much-delayed Friendship Festival turned victory celebration had been a blast(301), but after over a week of terror and imprisonment Cherry Berry was more than ready to get back to work. She felt true gratitude to the changeling air controller standing on top of the makeshift flight tower who waved her balloon through the swirling pattern of changelings returning from hiding to Horseton Space Center, giving her priority landing clearance.

Occupant met her at the hangar. “Welcome back!” he shouted up before she’d even tethered the balloon. “We’ll have things back up and running in no time! Just give the orders!”

Cherry gave the tether ropes a final tug-check and motioned Occupant to walk with her to the admin building. “What happened here?” she asked. “Was anything damaged?”

“They came in and beat the queen,” Occupant said briefly. “Lucky Cricket and Dragonfly took her and escaped. Most of the others ran away, but a few of us stayed and disguised ourselves as guards to keep an eye on things. Most of the invaders left the next day, and the ones that stayed just sort of stood around. They locked the scientists and pony construction crew up, but they didn’t break or steal anything.”

“Good. What about Horseton?’

Occupant flinched. “They didn’t do so well,” he said. “The changelings Lucky and Dragonfly rallied in the swamps did their best to help(302), but keeping the queen safe was more important…”

Cherry Berry nodded. “I understand,” she said. “At least I can call Twilight Sparkle and tell her the space center is intact. The princesses can focus their time on helping Horseton recover.”

“Actually,” Occupant said, “we were hoping you could call Princess Twilight to help with our queen.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Cherry asked. “Where is she? I thought she was the one organizing all this.” She pointed to the literal swarm of changelings converging on the space center, returning to duty stations, bringing in fresh supplies.

“Um, no, that was me,” Occupant said quietly. “Come and see.”

The thing lay in a plush bed, a pile of soft pillows behind its head, covers drawn clear up to the slack-jawed chin.

All of this is ridiculous, Cherry thought. A statue doesn’t belong in a bed. It belongs on a pedestal in a garden or museum.

As statues of Chrysalis went, Cherry supposed it was a good one. The confusion on the changeling queen’s face was too ambiguous for a casual sculptor, who might have gone for wide-eyed non-comprehension instead of the more subtle expression. But the effect was spoiled by the blocky, cubical black crystals that popped up here and there, half-covering the obsidian statue.

Cherry supposed it was the difference between a life-like sculpture and a living sculpture.

“You’re telling me this is her?” she asked, pointing a hoof at the hospital bed.

“This is our queen,” Occupant insisted. “We’ve called in a zebra, but she says this isn’t a normal petrification, like what a cockatrice or a basilisk does. We need alicorn magic to cure her.”

For a brief moment Cherry seriously considered dumping the statue(303). She could have the space program all to herself, without having to worry about the inevitable day when Chrysalis revealed how she was going to use it all to conquer Equestria. That idea had given her more than one nightmare over the previous year, no matter what she’d said to Luna.

But the thought only lasted the moment. Whatever Chrysalis might do if the roles were reversed- and Cherry knew the changeling queen would take over anything in an instant given the opportunity to do so- Cherry wasn’t Chrysalis. Cherry had made a deal, and she was going to keep it. Chrysalis would get to walk on the moon.

And no, being tastefully arranged on a plinth in a lunar grotto didn’t count.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try to call Twilight Sparkle. You get everypony organized again. I need an inventory of the rocket parts available and other supplies. Get somepony from the construction crews to do an inventory of the construction materials for the R&D expansions- make sure the Storm King’s goons didn’t loot anything there. And send someone out to Appleoosa to check on Goddard and von Brawn. We need to get the rocket factory there back up and running.”

“Will do, my qu- I mean boss!”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. “Don’t call me boss,” she said. “I’m not your queen and I don’t want the job,” she said. “I fly things and that’s all, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Occupant said, saluting as he left.

Halfway between the astromare complex’s infirmary and the administration building, Cherry had to duck as one of the guard changelings, her uniform spattered with bits of swamp, almost tackled her from the sky. “Pardon me, Miss Berry!” the guard panted. “But the pony princess Twilight is on the telepresence, and she wants to talk to you!”

Cherry blinked. “But I was just on the way to call her,” she muttered.

The guard shrugged. “Maybe pony princess read minds? All I know is, she’s really upset.”

A short gallop later, Cherry saw on the screen that Twilight wasn’t upset. She was frantic. (304) “Cherry!” she shouted. “Thank Celestia you’re there! They won’t let me talk to Chrysalis! We’ve got a big emergency!”

“So do we!” Cherry Berry replied. “We need you here as soon as possible.”

“No, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “We need you here as soon as possible!”

“What are you talking about?”

“If we don’t get you in a rocket and into orbit in three days,” Twilight gasped, “three astronauts are doomed!”

Cherry blinked. “Three astronauts?”

“Doomed!!” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Cherry said, waving a hoof to slow Twilight down. “We didn’t have anypony in orbit this past week, and neither did you, right? So how did these astromares get there?”

“They’re not mares,” Twilight said. “It’s Gordo the Griffon from the Griffonstone Rocket Project, Fireball from the dragon program… and an astronaut from Yakyakistan. All of them launched at the same time three days ago, during the Storm King’s occupation of Canterlot. All of them were attempting a lunar fly-by.”

“But why on- no, not important,” Cherry said. “What went wrong?”

“Lots. The three rockets launched within an hour of each other. The griffons launched first and got an equatorial orbit with their first two stages. But they messed up their staging orders somehow, because when they tried to ignite the third stage, instead it decoupled the third stage. And the heat shield. And the parachute. Everything but the capsule.”

“What were they thinking?” Cherry demanded. “You always check your staging! And check it again, and again, and again! We keep it on a sticky-note in the cockpit for every launch: Check Your Staging!”

“Don’t ask me!” Twilight snapped. “I wouldn’t even have launched the rocket if it were me! But they did!” She waved her hooves wildly as she continued, “Anyway, Gordo’s rocket dropped everything it could drop at once, and one of the pieces of debris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It collided with the dragon rocket on its way up.”

“It what??” Cherry gasped. “You know what the odds are of a collision in space!”

“It happened!” Twilight insisted. “So Fireball lost his engines too, and he’s just as stuck as Gordo.”

“Okay, so what happened to Leonid?” Cherry asked. “More debris?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. The yaks had the worst trajectory for a moon shot, and they didn’t attempt a direct ascent. Their rocket ran out of fuel just getting to an equatorial orbit. But that’s not the worst of it.” Twilight took a deep, steadying breath. “The pilot’s not Leonid. It’s the other yak astronaut. Prince Fauntleroy. Rutherford’s little brother.”

Cherry rememebered the tiny (by yak standards) prince from EVA training at Cape Friendship. “The runt?” she asked. “Why did they send him up? Rutherford loves him like Pinkie loves sugar! He’d never sign off on sending him on a moon flight.”

“He didn’t give them the option,” Twilight reported. “I just spoke with Rutherford. He tells me his brother whacked Leonid on the head and took his place in the rocket. Said he was the better pilot.”

Cherry slowly flopped onto her flanks. “So, just to be clear,” she said, “you’re telling me there are currently three astronauts overhead right now, with no engines, no parachutes, and no way home.”

“And they’ve been up there for three days,” Twilight said. “They all have seven days of food, and of course my life support system will keep them in air and water, but what happens when the food runs out?”

Cherry Berry nodded her head. “I can imagine,” she said. “What have you got for rocket parts, then?”

“That’s another thing!” Twilight replied. “We need you to send us everything you have. We used up all our back stock of parts putting the communications satellites in orbit. We were going to order more after the friendship festival, but… well, anyway, we need more, right now!”

Cherry blinked. “You have nothing at all?” she asked.

“Well, there’s the experimental rocket ship,” Twilight said. “But it needs a lot of rocket boosters to get it into orbit! Of course, once in orbit its magic thrusters should be enough to get to and from each ship, and it has plenty of passenger space…”

“No,” Cherry said flatly. “It’s a beautiful ship, and it’s my favorite color, Twilight. But we can’t possibly put together enough boosters to get it to orbit. Not in three days. It’s just too heavy.” She thought for a moment, looking away from the telepresence projection so she wouldn’t have to see the fidgety, anxious alicorn princess. “No, we’ll have to do it from here. We still have some leftover parts, if the Storm King’s goons haven’t messed with ‘em. And you have princess work to do, fixing the kingdom and un-stonifying innocent ponies and stuff like that.”

“But-but- wait a minute,” Twilight stammered. “I thought everypony that got petrified by Tempest was restored when the Storm King was defeated.”

Cherry sighed. “Look, just get down here as soon as you can, please? We can begin making plans while I explain what our price is for this launch.”

“Price?” Twilight asked. “Three people are about to die in orbit, and you want to send us a bill??”

“I’ll explain when you get down here,” Cherry said, and cut the connection.

Footnotes:

(301) In the literal but fun sense. Not to be confused with the invasion, which had been a blast in the literal and absolutely no fun at all sense. The difference lies in how close you are to ground zero of the detonations.

(302) It’s hard to help defend people when they’re convinced you’re just another enemy attacking from the other side. A year of peaceful coexistence in Horseton hadn’t wiped away a much longer period of dread. But Lucky and Dragonfly did their best, rescuing a large number of the villagers and even wrecking one of the Storm King’s airships before the final armistice came down. A week can do more than a year to rebuild reputations, if it’s the right kind of week.

(303) Several of the changelings were also considering this. Thus far none of them were sure of having enough support to overcome Chrysalis’s loyalists, and therefore they bided their time. The hive needed a leader, after all, and if the current one was spending all her time as a paperweight… well, minds could change…

(304) When one lives in Ponyville for any length of time greater than a month, one learns the distinction. To a long-term Ponyville resident, the gradations of distress from mildly anxious to terrified beyond control of one’s bodily functions, and all the points between, are as clear as the different shades on the paint chips at the hardware store. Be prepared, as you are running for your life from this week’s disaster, to be lectured on the difference between “disturbed” and “perturbed”, should you pass that way.

Chrysalis shifted in her bedsheets and sipped a little water through her straw. “So, you made a deal,” she said. “The rescue mission, in exchange for my life. How did Twilight take it?”

“All things considered, pretty good,” Cherry replied. “She wanted to say she would have done it anyway, but I think the words kinda stuck in her throat.” She shrugged, adding, “Anyway, she said she needed the combined power of four alicorns to overcome the curse, and Cadance was going to be the harder sell. So I guess it was a good thing three space programs did stupid things right then.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “That almost sounds like something I would say, pony.”

“I know. It scares me a little.” Cherry Berry sighed.

“And how did those foolish space programs take it when they heard you were going to be the ones rescuing them?”

Cherry cringed. “Not well…”

“You put life of baby brother in hands of changelings?!?” Prince Rutherford looked one step, one very short step, away from saying his favorite five-letter begins-with-S word. (305)

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle began, looking at the yak, griffon, and dragon on the other side of the conference table, “if you’ll just let me explain-”

Cherry Berry, sitting next to Twilight, brought her hoof down on the conference table hard enough to drown out any further words. “The princesses,” she said firmly, “have a continent to rebuild after the Storm King’s rampage. Princess Twilight Sparkle delegated this vital task to the world’s most successful space program because she can’t be in two places at once! Why can’t you appreciate the time she’s sparing for you when there are whole cities still on fire?”(306)

This silenced Prince Rutherford, Dragonlord Ember, and Grampa Gruff. All three had the expressions of creatures with guilty consciences.

“Anyway,” Cherry continued, “what possessed the three of you to launch without a real plan or preparation like that? Especially while Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help?”

“It was because Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help!” Ember snapped. “This was our last shot. I may be Dragonlord, but I can only push so far before the other dragons just blow me off, scepter or not.”

“Gordo’s stupid hobby was bankrupting Griffonstone!” Gruff snapped.

“Weren’t griffons already broke?” Rutherford interrupted.

“DON’T INTERRUPT ME, you young whippersnapper!” The elderly griffon’s shout did what few other things could; it made the prince of the yaks cringe for just a moment. “As I was saying, there wasn’t any money left for rockets and wasn’t gonna be. So he wanted to go out big.”

Rutherford nodded. “Yakyakistan rich in tradition, rich in culture, rich in history and glory and pride,” he said. “In gold we… less rich.”

“Anyway, we figured… I guess we all figured,” Ember said, making the distinction between we dragons and we three space programs, “that the Storm King invasion would delay the ponies and the changelings enough to give any of us one last chance to take the lead in the space race. If we were the first to the moon, maybe that would give us a chance to keep things going.”

Cherry Berry heard Twilight Sparkle’s teeth begin to grind. “Are you telling me,” the purple princess said in a tone Cherry usually heard from Chrysalis’s mouth, “that when we were under the cloven hoof of the Storm King, seeking any possible way to free our people from his subjugation, that you-”

Cherry put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, breaking off the impending rant. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But the Storm King was going to come for everybody else next, after he had the princesses’ magic. Why weren’t you getting ready for war?”

Grampa Gruff snorted. “You kiddin’?” he snapped.

“It’s true the Storm King went through you ponies like a claw through gypsum,” Ember said.

“But you’re ponies,” Grampa added. “We knew something would happen-”

“-you hit dumb Storm King with mighty rainbow smashy magic-“ Rutherford said.

“-or recruit a band of unlikely heroes to save the day at the last minute-“ Ember continued.

“-or else that idiot Storm King would do something stupid like betray his chief lieutenant, allowing the ponies to snatch victory from the beak of defeat!” Grampa Gruff finished. “Like always happens!”

Ember and Rutherford nodded solemn agreement.

“What??” Twilight Sparkle wasn’t going to be silenced by a shake of the shoulder now. “We won by a miracle, and you were COUNTING on that? That’s absolutely stupid!!” (307)

“Where ponies concerned-“ Rutherford began.

“- the more stupid it sounds-“ said Ember.

“- the more likely it is to work,” Grampa finished.

“Remember avalanche?” Rutherford pointed out, waving a hoof as if surrounded by the snow-heavy peaks surrounding the land of the yaks.

“Remember the drake who tried to take a nap in Smoky Mountain?” Ember reminded Twilight..

“Remember baking soda?” Grampa muttered. “Who ever thought a powder would change a way of life?”

“Ponies do the stupid and impossible every day,” said Rutherford

“So this was our one and only chance-“ said Ember.

“-to do it before the ponies,” Grampa said.

“The ponies,” Cherry said coolly. “And what about the changelings?”

“Who cares about the changelings?” Grampa grumbled. “The changelings are crazy!”

Once more Ember and Rutherford nodded.

Cherry Berry felt a headache coming on, and she reached both hooves up to rub her temples. I don’t want this job, she thought. I just wanted to fly a rocket. But the sooner this is done, the sooner I get the evil mastermind back on her throne and go back to letting her handle roadapples like these…

Fortunately for the pink earth pony, Twilight Sparkle had regained control of her tongue and her temper. “Well, let’s leave aside arguments about who is crazy and who isn’t, after what happened,” she said. “Cherry Berry already has a plan to rescue your astronauts and-”

“Baby brother!” Rutherford wailed, bringing his hooves down on the conference table and breaking a chunk of it off in his moment of emotion.

“-bring them back safely,” Twilight finished.

I have a plan? Cherry thought. That’s nice- now how about someone tell me what my plan is? Right now all I know is we’re gonna do it.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ember asked. “I feel responsible for Fireball. I… well, I kinda blackmailed him into this.”

Grampa looked at the blue dragonling. “You mean Fireball didn’t want to go up?”

“He quit after his orbital flight,” Ember said. “Just like he quit after his first flight. But I said that if he didn’t go up on this flight, I would. Without training. That shut him up.” She looked down at her claws and added, “I guess that wasn’t such a hot idea, huh?”

“I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the diamond dogs didn’t manage a launch along with all of you,” Cherry Berry said into the silence that followed (308).

“In any case, you can leave everything in Cherry Berry’s hooves,” Twilight said. “In three days she’ll be on the way to rescue-”

“Four days,” Cherry said. “The first thing we do, we tell all the marooned astronauts to go on two-thirds rations.”

“What?” Rutherford had to stretch his forehooves a little to prop himself up on the broken edge of the table. “You starve baby brother??”

“You packed seven days of the pre-packaged rations into the capsule, right?” Cherry asked.

“Well… yes, yaks think so,” Rutherford admitted. “Whatever you send us. Yaks not make space food.”

“We just add gem sprinkles to mix in with the packs,” Ember said. “For proper nutrition, like Dad always told me.”

“If we’re paying for the capsules,” Gruff grumbled, “why should we blow money on new food packs when yours will do? It’s not like any griffon will pay money to eat that garbage on the ground!”(309)

“Okay,” Cherry said. “Those meals are calculated for a very active astronaut, doing a lot of things in the capsule. They’re heavy in calories. Two meals a day would be enough to live on, on the ground, even for a yak.”

“Yaks have mighty, mighty appetites,” Prince Rutherford said doubtfully.

“But by cutting out one meal a day, we buy the astronauts maybe two days,” Cherry said. “We can use one of those days to build the best rocket we can- one that can get everypony home. The other day is insurance in case we have trouble getting to them.”

“Trouble?” Grampa Gruff snorted again. “You just aim your firecracker at them and keep flying till you catch them! How hard can it be??”

Footnotes:

(305) Which is to say, not all that different from how any yak usually looks.

(306) This was a kind of lie… specifically, the blatant kind. No cities had been set on fire in the first place. Granted, there was other damage that, unlike Canterlot, hadn’t been automatically repaired by the power of Friendship/Love/Dreams/Whatever Celestia Did Besides Delegating To Twilight. But no fires, because the Storm King had gotten as far in the Evil Mastermind’s Handbook as, “Pillage before burning.” (310)

(307) Twilight Sparkle thinks she is a vastly better diplomat than she actually is. She has the handicap of being unable to not say what she’s thinking at the worst possible times.

(308) The dogs had precisely one Flea-powered flight to their name, but the promised Project Stardust was due to launch Any Week Now… and had been for months.

(309) Here, for once, Grampa Gruff seriously underestimated both the willingness of griffons to part with money for something more valuable (to them) than money, like for example a chance to live a little like their space-going heroes, and the willingness of other griffons to seek to make a profit on the first group of griffons. Fortunately for himself, Gordo hadn’t made that error, and he’d kept the food cabinets in the capsule locked until just before liftoff.

(310) Admittedly, this is the first page after the contents, dedication, and preface.

“How hard can it be?” Goddard the Griffon choked. “How hard can it be??”

Cherry and Twilight blinked at the elderly griffon on the telepresence screen, who looked fit to lay an egg. (Which, as he was a tom, would have been something to see.)

“What my colleague means,” Warner von Brawn, standing next to him, interjected before Goddard could overcome his shock, “is that achieving a rendezvous between two orbiting space objects requires careful planning and precision flight. It’s never been done before.”

“What’s so difficult about it?” Twilight asked. “You merely calculate the relative position and trajectories of the two objects, you calculate an orbital insertion burn that produces a close intercept, you plan a second burn that matches velocities between the two objects, and then you use small bursts of power to achieve a final rendezvous. It’s really quite simple!”

“Simple!” Goddard gasped, his feathers bristling, his hackles rising on his back.

“Not everypony can do calculus in their heads,” Cherry replied quietly.

“Princess,” von Brawn said carefully, “look at it from the point of view of an ordinary pony. Supposing you are an earth pony, on the ground, chasing another earth pony. You can’t fly or teleport. Assume the pony you’re chasing maintains a constant speed, what do you do to catch up?”

“Run faster, of course,” Twilight said.

“True. That’s common sense. That’s what any normal person in a normal situation would say.” von Brawn steepled his massive fingers and continued, “But orbital mechanics and common sense don’t operate in the same way. Suppose you are in a ship in orbit. You accelerate prograde, burning straight ahead. What happens?”

“Well, my apoapsis rises,” Twilight said. “The orbit gets higher, bigger, until I achieve escape velocity.”

“Correct,” von Brawn replied. “Now imagine you are in orbit, behind another ship. You burn straight ahead, trying to catch up, the way common sense dictates you catch up to someone else.” The minotaur’s cool blue eyes bored into the princess’s. “Which of you has the longer distance to travel to return to the starting point of your orbit after the burn- you, or the ship that has executed no burn?”

“Er… burning prograde enlarges the orbit… which means I’d have the longer distance to travel,” Twilight said.

“Which means?”

“That the ship that hasn’t made the burn, having the shorter orbit, will complete that orbit faster than the ship that executed the prograde burn,” Twilight said.

“In other words,” Goddard grumbled, “by going faster, you fall farther behind.”

“And this,” von Brawn agreed, “is the fundamental paradox of the mechanics of orbital rendezvous. The entire notion of catching up with your target must be thrown out the window. Instead you have to think of it in terms of achieving a point of intercept and then matching velocities with your target.”

“I think I get it,” Cherry said, feeling obligated to hold up some part of the egghead conversation. “Rather than try to catch the target, you want the target to catch you!”

Both Goddard and von Brawn worked their jaws for a moment, trying to think of a constructive response. Finally von Brawn said, “If it aids you to visualize the problem, so be it. But more properly, the question remains one of intercept: plotting a course that puts two ships in the same place at the same time, on vectors which can be adjusted to keep them in proximity using the minimum fuel possible.”

“Ideally, a direct ascent intercept could do the job,” Twilight said. “One burn from the surface to the target.”

“The first target,” Goddard muttered. “We have three to deal with, Faust help us.”

“Also, a direct ascent intercept would require a level of precision in both calculation and piloting no space program has yet come close to achieving,” von Brawn said. “And we would be doing it with leftover parts and experimental equipment.”

“But can you do it?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, assuredly we can do it,” von Brawn said. “Intercept and rendezvous is merely difficult, not impossible. It helps that we have complete tracking and communications with the stranded ships, courtesy of your satellite network.”

“The two big problems,” Goddard said, “are finding a way to get space for four astronauts into a single capsule, and then finding a way to get that capsule down again safely.”

“Weren’t you working on a three-person capsule?” Cherry asked. “Can’t we just launch that with a Probodobodyne core?”

Goddard shook his head. “Even if we had that capsule ready for flight- which it isn’t and won’t be this week- we haven’t got rocket engines of matching size. We’re still working out the bugs in the next generation of rocket motors.” (311)

“And besides,” Twilight said, “after Shotputnik I don’t think the other space programs will be happy about entrusting their people’s lives to a robot pilot.” She grimaced and added, “In fact, I think even suggesting it might trigger a war. Three wars.”

“The problem is not insoluble,” von Brawn insisted. “Goddard will stay here and complete what can be completed in two days. I will return to Horseton immediately and see what we have to work with. Then we may consult together and find the optimal configuration of resources to achieve the desired ends.”

“Well, okay,” Twilight said. “Remember, all Equestria- all Equus- is counting on you to bring those people home.”

“Relax,” Cherry Berry said confidently. “What space agency is more reliable than the Changeling Space Program?”

“You said that with a straight face?” Chrysalis asked, brushing a little bit of post-petrification sand out of her bedsheets.

“Barely,” Cherry admitted. “I still didn’t have any clue how I was going to make it all work. I’d have to organize the rocket design and assembly, train for the mission, fly the mission, and somehow oversee it from the ground- all while basically reorganizing your kingdom to keep things running while you were napping. I didn’t see how I could do it all.”

“And then Dragonfly came to you,” Chrysalis said.

“That’s right- hey!” Cherry said indignantly. “How do you know it was her idea?”

“I know her, and I know you,” the changeling queen said. “She’s a changeling, and you’re a pony. You’d never think of disobeying me without a very good reason, but a proper changeling thinks about disobedience all the time.”

“That’s… really weird,” Cherry said, her eyes crossing as she tried to figure out how that could even work.(312)

“That’s my children,” Chrysalis said.

“No, I really think that’s just you,” Cherry said.

“Just get on with the story,” Chrysalis grumbled. “You were just about to tell me how Dragonfly talked you into disobeying my express orders…”

Footnotes:

(311) In the Changeling Space Program, “getting the bugs out” is seldom a figure of speech. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little knowledge in a changeling’s head, plus a complicated piece of equipment, is a recipe for explosions.

(312) Of course it doesn’t work at all, except in Chrysalis’s head. But before judging, consider how many “this is stupid, but we do it because this is the way we’ve always done it” things there are in your society/culture/government.

Two hours, Cherry Berry thought. Twilight Sparkle’s been gone only two hours.

And they still keep coming.

“Excuse me, Mis Cherry Berry? Ma’am?”

Number forty-five, Cherry thought. “What is it now?” she asked the changeling who had blocked her path to the administration building.

“I need someone to approve the new guard duty roster.” A clipboard wrapped in sickly green-colored magic floated over to the earth pony, along with a pen.

“What?” Cherry asked. “First, I signed one of those less than an hour ago! Second, take it to Occupant! His whole job is signing things!”

“Standing orders from the queen,” the changeling said meekly. “Anything Occupant signs, she has to countersign. And…”

“Yeah, I got it.” Cherry Berry gripped the pen in her teeth, careful not to bite down hard enough to sever the fountain chamber and get a mouth full of ink. A few strokes later, she spat the pen back at the changeling, who didn’t bat an eye. “Now why didn’t the last roster last an hour?”

“Three guards just showed back up,” the changeling in front of her said. “One of them outranks Rhinohide, so his roster got thrown out, and-”

“Right,” Cherry sighed. “Go write up a special order and bring it back to me in two hours- and not sooner, got it? Special orders, any further guards returning to the center are to report to Occupant for special assignments, and the guard duty roster is not to change until the end of the week! Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The changeling saluted, took clipboard and pen, and left.

Cherry managed four steps before another changeling got in front of her. Number forty-six, she thought. Unlucky number fifty is going to get an education. “What?” she asked.

“Um… I’m sorry, ma’am…” This changeling was slightly taller than Cherry. It had fins that looked like sawblades. Its fangs dripped continuously. And yet it was cringing slightly away from her, for reasons Cherry couldn’t possibly understand. “I’m just r-returning from as-as-s-s-assignment, an-n-and I was t-t-told to-to s-s-see you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Cherry said. “Do you work here?”

“N-no, ma’am,” the fearsome changeling stuttered. “‘M-m-m-i’m an in-in-in-infilt-trator, ma’am.”

Cherry sighed. Each sigh was getting deeper than the last, partly because it wasn’t so much a sigh as the sound of her rage pressure release valve. “Don’t you have another changeling to report to?”

“Th-th-they sent me here.”

“Of course they did.” Cherry counted silently to ten, then said, “Listen… what’s your name anyway?”

“Girdler, ma’am,” the changeling said. “I take the place of d-d-dresser aides in M-m-manehattan stores and-”

“Stop. Stop right there, Girdler,” Cherry said. “Your queen and I have a deal. I work for her so long as she doesn’t do anything illegal or really immoral involving me. Are you about to tell me about illegal or immoral things you’ve done on your queen’s orders?”

The fearsome changeling paused to consider this. “Well,” it said, “what happened in the ch-changing booths wasn’t ex-ex-exactly ordered, n-not as s-such-”

“Yes or no?!”

Girdler thought a little more. “D-does mixing lace with p-pl-pleats count as im-m-m-moral?”

Cherry counted silently to eleven this time. “Go get some paper from Occupant,” she said. “Write up a report, put ‘Burn After Reading’ on the cover, and tell Occupant to give it to the queen when she wakes up. Then do whatever Occupant tells you to do after that. I do NOT want to know, understand? I don’t want to- wait, that’s a lie.” She looked at the changeling, who by all appearances ought to have been a top warrior. “How do you disguise yourself?”

A flash of green fire later, a petite, adorable cream-colored earth pony mare with blue eyes and gray mane blinked up shyly at Cherry. “C-c-can I interest you in our premiere l-l-line of s-saddles for that in-in-in-in-intimate m-moment-”

“NO!!” Cherry bellowed, rearing up to cross her forelegs at the transformed changeling. “I’m sorry I asked! Now go see Occupant like I said!” The shout sent Girdler scurrying in the direction of the mission control building.

She didn’t even get to take one step this time, because Girdler had given two other changelings the opportunity to intercept her. Forty-seven and forty-eight, Cherry thought. I think somepony is sending these changelings to me for some reason. (313)

“Miss Cherry, ma’am,” one changeling said, “Aphid here has a pony and won’t share.”

“Miss Cherry,” the other changeling, presumably Aphid said, “please explain to Styletto here that it is possible for a pony to be a voluntary food source, and at the same time, unwilling to be fed on by more than one changeling.”

Cherry wondered, idly, if the pain in her right temple was a blood vessel about to pop and relieve her of all this stupid stuff. “Aphid,” she said carefully, “is this pony on the grounds right now?”

“No, ma’am,” Aphid said. “After the invasion she went to Trottingham to make sure her parents were okay.”

Cherry looked at Styletto. “And you make this a problem… why?”

“Well… the pony’s gonna come back, right?” Styletto asked. “So why can’t we share? Sharing is the pony way, right?”

So is bucking smart-flanked changelings right in the chin, and although I don’t do that, it is becoming VERY tempting… “Have you considered… I can’t believe I’m asking this… have you considered getting your own pony? In a consensual, no disguises, no cocoons, no venom way?”

Styletto cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

“Try asking them,” Cherry said in a cutting, ironic tone that echoed Chrysalis almost perfectly.

“Oh.” Styletto cocked her head the other way, then looked at Cherry and said, “Ma’am, will you let me suck your-”

“NO!!!” Cherry roared. “Go find ANOTHER pony! And when you ask, don’t use the word ‘suck’!!” She turned her rage on Aphid, shouting, “And you go take a week off in Trottingham and quit bothering me!”

Two changelings saluted smartly, then bolted off in opposite directions. The path to the administration building finally, finally lay open.

Except for changeling number forty-nine. “Hey, bossmare. Can I talk to you for a minute?” Dragonfly asked, standing directly in Cherry Berry’s path.

Cherry let out a long, long sigh of relief, certain muscles finally relaxing. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about stuff,” she said. “As soon as Dr. von Brawn gets back, we’re going into conference on a rocket design for this mission.”

“This is more important.” Dragonfly pointed to a small, as yet untenanted office just down the R&D building hallway. “In private, please?”

Snorting- as if she didn’t have eighteen other jobs on her hooves!- Cherry allowed herself to be led into the office, which had become a large storage closet with a desk inconveniently placed in the middle of it. But there was space for two pony-like creatures to stand and a door that closed, and that was apparently what Dragonfly desired.(314) “All right, what?” Cherry asked the moment the door latch clicked.

“Let me fly the mission,” Dragonfly said, coming straight to the point.

Cherry gawked at the changeling. “I’m sorry, what??” she asked. “You want me to let you fly a mission with three other ponies’- people’s lives at stake?”

“Yes, exactly!” Dragonfly said. “Now I know you might have some problems-”

“Problems??” Cherry asked. “I’m not the one who has problems! The dragons aren’t happy about Twilight not leading the mission herself, you know! Nor the griffons! And especially not the yaks! If they find out a changeling is flying the mission, they’ll go roadapples all over us! And that will be peanuts, peanuts I tell you, compared to what Chrysalis will do when she finds out we disobeyed her direct and unambiguous orders to keep you grounded!”

Dragonfly sighed. “That’s why I’m asking you, now,” she said. “We both know that, given the queen’s wishes, I’d never see the inside of a capsule again. That might change, but when? But right now she’s out of circulation. This is probably my last chance to fly a rocket ever again, as a pilot. And I’ve never yet had an orbital flight. I want that before I move on to whatever else I do next.”

Cherry snorted again. “This isn’t about you,” she said quietly. “This is about three astronauts in very deep trouble. It’s going to take the best we have to get them down safely, and we only get one try at it. Are you gonna tell me, with a straight face- no, let me rephrase that. Can you say, without lying or misleading in any way, that you are the best pilot for the job?”

“The best available one? Yes,” Dragonfly said simply.

“I said no lies,” Cherry replied.

“It’s not a lie!” Dragonfly insisted. “Look, Rainbow Dash is off doing Elements-of-Harmony stuff. She’s not available. Ditto Cadance. No one else has more than two flights experience, and no one else has any familiarity with our space program and facilities. I’m the best candidate out of the astronauts from every service who are available. Plain, honest fact.”(315)

Cherry pondered this for a moment. “Okay, so Rainbow Dash is out,” she agreed. “But I am not out. Do you really think you’re a better pilot than me?”

“No,” Dragonfly admitted. “But I’m counting on two things to change your mind.”

“Really? Okay, what?”

“First....” Somehow Dragonfly contrived to turn featureless glowing bug eyes into the most soulful, doleful, heartbreaking puppy dog eyes Cherry had ever seen, without any actual shapeshifting or changeling magic. “Because if I never get an orbital mission I’ll be awful saaaaaad… and that’s a thing you ponies care about…”

Despite the last eight words of distilled cynicism, Cherry felt herself moved… but not dislodged. “And second?”

Sighing, Dragonfly dropped the poor-pitiable-me act and looked the senior pilot straight on. “Second, you may be a better pilot than me… but ask yourself if either Occupant or me is the better substitute hive queen.”

“What?!”

“How many changelings have bothered you about routine stuff today?” Dragonfly asked. “And how many of them came to you after Occupant told them to do something? Lots, and lots. I know- I’ve been watching and listening.” She took a step closer to the pony and whispered so that her already buzzy voice became almost indistinguishable from insect noises. “Right now the hive doesn’t have a leader. And a changeling hive must have a leader. A clear, undisputed, unquestioned leader. Without a leader we don’t get along. We really don’t.”

Cherry gave some thought to this. There were honest friendships among certain changelings, she knew. She also knew that every changeling thought ninety-nine percent of their fellow changelings were complete idiots (316) and held them in contempt. And, above all, she’d seen how, at least in the short term, changelings without orders to the contrary would follow practically anybody with a loud voice who looked like they knew what they were doing. “Good point,” she said. “But how’s that relevant?”

“It’s relevant because, right now, you are leading the changelings!” Dragonfly insisted. “At least the ones here at the space center. The main hive has a viceroy for now, although Elytron mostly gets obeyed only because he’s loud. Pharynx would be a much better pick if he wasn’t so paranoid…” Dragonfly shook her head. “Anyway, how much training do you think you’re gonna get done with hundreds, maybe thousands of changelings asking you things every minute?”

This gave Cherry another pause for thought. Up to now, she hadn’t thought there was any choice. She had to be the boss and the pilot and, yes, the queen pro tem, because if she didn’t three people would die in orbit. It all had to be done. But if Dragonfly… well, Dragonfly would certainly be able to put her full attention on the problem, no question of that…

… but when Chrysalis found out, there would be Tartarus to pay…

Sensing indecision, Dragonfly asked, “Would it help if I gave you the cute sad eyes again?”

Cherry snorted and pronounced a very filthy Zebrican word (317). “All right, you’re in,” she said. “But I still need you to sit in on the rocket design conference.”

“Woo-hoo!!” Dragonfly took flight, making rapid spins around the cluttered enclosed space of the office-turned-closet.

As bits of discarded equipment and junk fell here and there around her, Cherry Berry roared, “Get out of here before I change my mind!!”

“As you command, bossmare!”

“And don’t call me bossmare!”

Footnotes:

(313) They were. Leaving aside the various "dump Chrysalis in the bay and take over" plotters, there was a large faction, particularly among the space center changelings, who thought Cherry Berry had queen potential. And, after all, there were those old rumors about ponies being turned into changelings… you wouldn’t get stories like that if there wasn’t something to them, right? Never mind that none of the Cherry Berry promoters had a clue how you’d go about changing an earth pony into a changeling, never mind into a queen… they thought it was an option, so they were quietly testing Cherry to see how she would rise to the challenge. What rose, mostly, was Cherry’s blood pressure. Since this reminded the changelings of Chrysalis, this was counted as a point in Cherry's favor.

(314) It’s astonishing how many cultures fail to appreciate that privacy when working is good for everybody and not just for those with the most power and fewest duties.

(315) The phrase “plain honest fact”, coming out of a changeling’s mouth, almost universally fails the laugh test, even among other changelings.

(316) This estimate put them, according to certain outside observers, within one percent of accuracy.

(317) You don’t need to know the word. This is an uplifting, highly educational history of a critical moment in space history, and as such not a fit place for potty language. Take your bucking curiosity elsewhere.

“And that was all it took?” Chrysalis asked.

“Look, not all of us were born to be queens,” Cherry Berry replied. “And nopony made me princess of the universe. I just fly your ships. But somepony had to hold things together while you were napping, and Dragonfly was right. I couldn’t do that and fly that mission at the same time!”

“Did you try… no, I don’t suppose you could have threatened grievous bodily harm credibly,” Chrysalis mused. “And I don’t think uncertain retribution threefold would be taken all that seriously if you were-”

“Look, would you like to know about the mission or not?”

“Not particularly,” Chrysalis admitted. “Dragonfly went up and came back down without making any major blunders.” She paused, then added, “You did say she got a Manehattan tickertape parade, or something like that?”

“Getting one. Today. In about an hour, I think.” Cherry Berry looked at the clock on the infirmary room wall. “Yes, about that.”

“Then she didn’t screw up. That’s all I…” Chrysalis trailed off, considering. “Honored by the dragons?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Honored by the yaks?? The yaks, the most ungrateful species on the planet besides my own noble lineage?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I lied,” Chrysalis said, sitting up a little straighter in her bed. “Let’s have the rest of the story.”

“Okay, here’s the problem,” Cherry Berry said, looking at the beings gathered around the conference table- Dragonfly, von Brawn, Lucky Cricket, Plastron, and Occupant. “One pilot goes up. That pilot meets one, two, three orbiting vessels and retrieves their pilots. Four people come down. How can we build a vessel that will do that using what we can get here in two days’ time?”

“I can tell you one thing we cannot do,” von Brawn said at once. “Sticking two passenger compartments in-line behind a capsule is out. On re-entry such a craft will invert, come down nose-first, and kill all passengers. The aerodynamics and the relative weight of capsule and passenger cabins make that inevitable.”

“Maybe we could rehabilitate Capsule One,” Dragonfly suggested. “It looks nice as a historical exhibit at the entrance to the space center, but it’s still a perfectly good spaceship. That would give us four capsules, right?”

“A chain of four capsules would be even more aerodynamically unstable,” von Brawn said, shaking his head. “Re-entry in such a craft would be suicide.”

“Not if you send the capsules down one at a time,” Dragonfly said. “Make the command capsule the bottom one in the stack. Give it plenty of orbital maneuvering fuel. Each rescued astronaut gets in an empty capsule as far from the engine as possible. As each capsule is filled, the command pilot slows down the craft until it’s on a re-entry trajectory, then decouples the top capsule. The rescued pilot flies their own re-entry, while the rescue ship boosts back into a stable orbit before they hit atmosphere.”

“Hey, that might actually work,” Occupant said.

“Now I know it’s a bad idea,” Lucky Cricket muttered.

Von Brawn shook his head again. “No, I think not,” he said. “Such a plan adds more complications to an already complex flight plan. We’ll need several orbital adjustment burns as it is. Let’s not add more until we absolutely must.”

Dragonfly threw up her forehooves. “Well, then you tell me where we’re going to get passenger space for four!” she snapped. “Maybe two capsules and a passenger compartment?” She considered this. “No, the pilot would have to go EVA to let the last passenger in. There’s a risk of the ship going into a tumble. That’s bad.”

“I’d certainly say so,” Cherry Berry agreed in a drawl dry enough for Chrysalis.

“Well, there is one other thing,” Occupant said cautiously. “Jet Set sent us a prototype four-pony cabin- he calls it the ‘Hitchhiker’- just before the Storm King’s invasion. It was on the barge that the queen was waiting for.” His face wrinkled in doubt as he added, “But it’s sized to the diameter of our next-generation rocket systems, including the three-crew capsule. It’s way too big for our existing tanks or engines.”

“Can we bodge it to fit?” Cherry asked. “Make, I dunno, adapters or something?”

“Hmmmm… possibly,” von Brawn rumbled. “We have one prototype fuel tank of the same gauge, so that might be useful as an orbital stage fuel tank. But we’ll also need a heat shield of that diameter, and that we don’t have.”

“That’s easy-peasy to fix!” Dragonfly insisted. “Make that the top priority at Appleoosa and we’ll have a heat shield of the right size here in time for vehicle assembly, no problem!”

“And we have plenty of decouplers of that size,” Occupant said. “OMB sent us the new models weeks ago for testing.”

“True,” von Brawn said. “But it would still be a massive vessel to be sent up on a small rocket. We would need more booster rockets than we’ve ever used before. And extreme caution would be required during ascent to prevent such a slender rocket from snapping in half under the aerodynamic forces involved.”

“We only have two of the big SRB’s in stock at the moment, fueled and ready to go,” Plastron reported. “But we have plenty of T-400 fuel tanks and Swivel engines. We could build liquid rocket boosters.”

“Hm… yes,” von Brawn admitted. “Perhaps we could link the liquid boosters to the central stack so that the fuel tanks all acted as a single unit… no, better yet,” he continued, “have the boosters pump fuel into the central stack. All the Swivels could fire at launch to steer while the solid rockets fire, and then once the booster tanks were empty, they could be decoupled while the central motor continued to boost on a full tank.” He nodded to himself. “I suspect the ascent would be slow, especially early on, but considering the instability of the design, that is a feature and not a defect… hm…”

“But will it work?” Cherry asked, putting the stress on the central point.

“Hmmm… well, we can simulate it…” von Brawn said. “We would need the final design, properly weighted, for wind tunnel tests and for calculations in the sim-”

“You’ve got two hours,” Cherry said bluntly. “Two hours and five minutes from now I want Dragonfly in the simulator. If she can get the thing to orbit two times out of three, then that’s the plan.”

Three very busy days passed. More changelings came in to Horseton, both space program staff and infiltrators who didn’t want to deal with Elytron. Cherry Berry kept some as a guard for Chrysalis, put others to work mending the damage done to the space center during the invasion, and sent the bulk of the rest back to the Badlands with the admonition that no, she did not want to hear their reports, yes, they had to put up with the idiot viceroy, and the queen would be up, around, and disenpetrified very, very soon. (318)

There were other things that filled Cherry’s every waking moment. Reporters kept turning up, asking for interviews; after the second such interview running aground on a question about whether Cherry would take the opportunity to drop Chrysalis from a high place and see if she made more pieces than the Storm King, she banned freelancers from the space center. Round-the-clock manufacturing at Appleoosa had to be arranged for, followed by three special trains and a number of barges to get the new components to Horseton. Occupant had to be persuaded, almost on an hourly basis, that he did have permission to sign things again(319). Steel, cement, chemicals had to be ordered and paid for, mostly on credit(320).

And, three or four times each day, Cherry had to spend half an hour on the telepresence tracking down Twilight Sparkle to request some princessly cutting of red tape, each time some bureaucrat somewhere insisted that, no matter how urgent the need, procedures must be followed, even if it took three weeks to process the forms.(321)

By the third day Cherry was thinking at least once every ten minutes: how does Chrysalis manage all of this and train for spaceflight, too?(322)

But if she was worn ragged, so was Dragonfly, who spent the waking portions of two and a half days practically sealed into the simulator. The first two designs had proven lethally unstable and prone to breaking up (323) mid-launch, due to the long, spindly shape of the boosters and the immense size and weight of the orbital stage. Eventually Goddard had been called in to consult, and the result had been several struts tacked on to the design, with mounting points equipped with tiny explosive charges that would fire along with the appropriate stage decouplers.

This, plus every single control fin in storage, produced a ship that could just about make it to orbit. The rest of the simulations had been focused on making sure it did that, with as much fuel remaining in its immense final stage as possible. Sim after sim after sim, Dragonfly repeated the launch over and over until Cherry pulled the changeling pilot out of the sim capsule and forced her to go to bed.

And then time for sims ran out, and as the real, non-simulated ship took shape in the Vehicle Assembly Building, a worn-looking Cherry and Dragonfly joined von Brawn and George Cowley for the final mission briefing.

“Here are the three wrecked ships,” von Brawn said, pointing to a telepresence projection showing three cartoon capsules in a ring around Equus. “Fortunately for us, the ships are practically sharing a single orbit- a very low Equus orbit.” Pointing to each in turn, he said, “Fauntleroy- Gordon- and Fireball. Fauntleroy launched last, but he had so much trouble achieving an equatorial orbit that the other two ships almost caught up to his.”

“We intend to time tomorrow’s launch to intercept Fauntleroy’s craft directly,” Cowley said. “Ideally only a small correction burn will be required to make rendezvous. Once that is done and Fauntleroy is on board, Dragonfly will boost into a more elliptical orbit- but not too great of one.” Using a pointer, the elderly minotaur described an arc outside the orbit shared by the three wrecks. “We don’t want to go too fast or slow- the less difference between our craft’s speed and theirs, the less braking will be required to match speeds again.”

“So rather than go for a rendezvous in a single orbit, we will wait two, three, or four orbits- but not more than that- for the target to catch up with our ship,” von Brawn said. “Then we can make a final adjustment, get the rendezvous, and rescue Gordon. We repeat the process for the third target, and then we de-orbit and come home as close to the space center as possible.”

“But it must be a splashdown,” Cowley insisted wheezily. “The Hitchhiker component hasn’t been impact-tested, and we don’t know what the capsule and adapter on top of it will do to its durability. We’ll have five parachutes on the assembly, but the difference between water and land might be the difference between alive and dead. There must be no chance of a touchdown on land, understood?”

“No land,” Dragonfly muttered, yawning. “Got it. Right.”

“One other thing,” von Brawn said. “Even with the rationing, the stranded pilots will eat their last rations the day after tomorrow. We’re packing plenty more food on this ship just in case, but time is an issue. We can’t spend forever waiting for a perfect alignment on each rescue attempt. That’s why we’re sending up the huge tank of fuel in the first place, after all- to ensure there’s enough to get this done and done quickly. Ideally the flight should be over in twenty-four hours.”

“Sure,” Dragonfly grumbled. “No pressure at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Cherry said. “I’ll be on capcom for the whole mission, and you’ll have all of us down here talking you through everything. Just fire the engines when and where we tell you, and everything will be fine.”

“Just what everyone wanted,” Dragonfly said. “Carriage-seat drivers.”(324)

Footnotes:

(318) Cherry Berry didn’t know whether hearing someone describe criminal activities made you an accessory under the law, and she didn’t want to find out.

(319) Because, under Equestrian law, Cherry didn’t have power of attorney over the changeling hive’s business dealings outside the space program. As it turned out, Occupant was the only bug in Horseton who could sign anything more legally binding than a receipt, Chrysalis’s standing orders notwithstanding.

(320) One short year before, any changeling asking for credit would have been laughed out of town before it was brought back into town so it could be run out again on a rail. Times change.

(321) It’s probably for the best that Cherry Berry never learned how Chrysalis handled this problem as a matter of routine: (a) do what you want and let the pencil-pushers try to stop her if they dared; (b) if they dared, replace them with an infiltrator; (c) if impersonating them proves impractical, find a bit of quick blackmail to stop the problem; (d) if they’re too clean to blackmail, lawyer up, file bureaucratic counter-claims, and forge ahead while they’re drenched in paperwork. By Chryssy’s own standards, each step in the procedure represented an escalation in evil.

(322) As might be apparent by now, she didn’t. The benefits of being an evil changeling tyrant included the ability to scare away anyone who didn’t have legitimate business, the ability to delegate to underlings one didn’t much like, and the instinctual guile and malice to ensure that annoying obstacles ceased to annoy in short order. Had Chrysalis been given a detailed list of all Cherry’s difficulties during this period, she would have been wondered why the pink pony had wasted so much time on unimportant things when she could have had plenty of time for lounging on the throne, eating tiny bits of chocolate, and reading bad adventure novels.

(323) Or as von Brawn called it, “rapid unplanned disassembly.” Popular music aside, in rocket science breaking up is extremely easy to do.

(324) The ponies having never seen the need for automobiles beyond sports and entertainment, the concept of a “back seat driver” has not yet occurred to them. But the pony (usually a noble) sitting inside the carriage who continually complains about how the steerspony is handling the reins or how the pull team is running? That pony is familiar to practically every pony… and everyone who impersonates ponies. Don’t be that pony.

Dragonfly sat in the capsule the next day, running down pre-flight checklists as the countdown clock for this mission ticked down towards zero. She’d been there for over an hour since the rocket was cautiously carried out to the pad, wobbling under the efforts of almost a hundred changelings to carry it without breaking something. If something went wrong with the systems, they’d have to wait ninety minutes for Fauntleroy’s wreck to make another orbit before they could retry the launch.

While she automatically rattled off one system check after another over the comms to Mission Control, Dragonfly ran through what they’d learned in the simulation. Max Q (325) will kill this ship on a whim, she thought. A slow, almost vertical ascent through the dense lower atmosphere, then a very gradual turn down the ball as the air thins out. And keep burning all the way to space, because this fat-flanked piece of junk is so heavy that it needs every bit of delta-V I can squeeze out of her.

The checklist ran out. The pad crew detached the fuel lines. Dragonfly switched on the ship’s internal power, batteries recharging from two little solar panels mounted midway between the capsule and the Hitchhiker compartment. Seconds ticked by, called out in a calm, professional voice by the blonde-maned earth pony who, Dragonfly admitted to herself, probably should have been in the capsule instead.

But I had to have one more flight, she thought. One more dance with the Pale Mare. And orbit.

The seconds ran out, and on the count of zero Dragonfly hit the staging button, activating the two SRBs and the three Swivel liquid-fuel engines.

With a speed best described as deliberate, Mission Twenty-One lifted off the launchpad.

“What is this?” Dragonfly shouted, mike still live. “This is like riding in an elevator! Where are the G’s?”

“You’re going the same speed you did in the sims,” Cherry Berry replied. “It’s a heavy, underpowered ship. And we don’t want you going fast right now anyway.”

“Roger,” Dragonfly grunted. “Easing her over to ten by ninety. Some excitement this is.”

“I know three people listening in to this in orbit who are a lot excited,” Cherry replied. “Now focus on the job, okay?”

“Copy, Control,” Dragonfly said. “Holding her steady at ten by ninety, awaiting SRB burnout.”

The solid rocket boosters burned out just after the ship reached the speed of sound. Dragonfly decoupled them and looked at the altimeter; still too low to turn down the ball. “Control,” she said, “we’re burning a lot of fuel to be this low and slow.”

“We noticed,” Cherry’s voice came back. “You’ll have to use some of the final stage to get to orbit. And the fuel levels in the liquid-fuel boosters are dropping fast. Time to pitch down while you have the control authority of all three engines.”

“Copy.” Dragonfly began pitching over to the east… and found herself holding the stick hard over. “I’m not getting much of a rate on this turn,” she said. “Thing doesn’t want to go over, even with the fins.”

“Keep trying,” Cherry said.

“What else am I going to do?” the changeling pilot grumbled, watching her instruments as the nav-ball slowly, slowly rotated over past twenty, past thirty, to forty degrees off the vertical.

And then the boosters, having pumped their excess fuel and oxidizer over to the central stack, ran dry. For a moment, as Dragonfly hit the staging button to dump the dead weight, the ship actually slowed down. Then, for a few seconds, the rocket’s velocity held steady, before glacially accelerating once more.

"Control,” Dragonfly said, “are you sure this thing can make orbit?”

“What’s the matter?” Cherry fired back from the ground. “This flight too exciting for you?”

After that Dragonfly restricted her comments to altitude and speed checks. The altitude climbed respectably, the ship’s early vertical momentum carrying it out of Equus’s atmosphere. The ship picked up more and more speed, but not enough for her comfort. She kept pushing the stick over until, finally, the ship’s prograde vector touched the horizon line. “Attitude ninety by ninety,” she reported. “How long until apoapsis?”

“About two minutes,” Cherry’s voice responded. “Keep firing.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel, at her velocity. The central booster was about to go dry, and her velocity wasn’t even close to orbital yet. The sims, she thought, were hopelessly optimistic. “Stand by for first stage burnout and second stage ignition,” she reported.

“Control copies, Twenty-One,” Cherry said. “Ninety seconds to apoapsis. Welcome to space, by the way.”

“I noticed,” Dragonfly muttered. The noise of the main engine ceased. “Burnout, staging now,” she reported. With two slaps of the staging button the last of the boosters fell away from the lozenge-shaped ship and the small Terrier engine lit, not so much pushing the ship forward as nudging it.

Is the throttle set to full? Dragonfly thought.

Unfortunately, yes.

“Sixty seconds to apoapsis.”

“Come on, you big fat…” Dragonfly began easing the nose back up, trying to push the trajectory outwards. In an ideal universe, if you wanted to raise your periapsis, the most efficient point in the orbit to do so is at apoapsis. That point was coming up fast with orbit nowhere in sight… which meant it was time to prolong her stay at the apoapsis as long as possible. That meant thrusting more vertically, which would raise the apoapsis and at the same time push it a little farther into the future of her current trajectory.

“Thirty seconds to apoapsis.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working for beans this time. The ship didn’t have enough thrust. Given enough time, of course, the Terrier engine would achieve orbital velocity… but Dragonfly’s time was measured in altitude, and it was about-

“Apoapsis in five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

-to run out.

Dragonfly yanked the ship hard up, putting the craft at a forty-five degree angle to the horizon. The maneuver wasted fuel like a rich Manehattan kid wasted bits at the candy store, but it was that or scrub the mission. The top of the atmosphere awaited her only a short distance below, and once the ship fell back into the soup the Terrier wouldn’t be able to climb out again.

Faster!

Dragonfly reached over to key up the new trajectory map display, the newest feature of the control system. Her trajectory lit up on the little screen, showing the high point of her trajectory behind her.

Faster!!

The screen flickered as the computer recalculated the projection, and flicker by flicker the peak of the curve began to catch up with the ship. Meanwhile, the bottom of the arc expanded, leaving the dark circle of the projected planet, forming an almost-orbit.

FASTER!!!

Mission Twenty-One clawed its way slowly, wastefully, away from the border between air and space. It ceased falling and began rising once more, as the indicator marking apoapsis overlapped the ship.

Relieved, Dragonfly began nosing the ship back down, engine sputtering on as she completed the orbital burn. The moment the projection showed a periapsis above atmosphere, she said, “Main engine shutdown!” and pulled the throttle to zero.

“Mission Control copies shutdown,” Cherry said. “With the underperformance of the ship, we show you considerably behind the first target. Stand by for orbital correction burn instructions to match up your apoapsis with their periapsis. With your lower periapsis, you should catch back up to them in a few orbits.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel readout. One-third of the fuel in the big fat bucking heavy bucking useless fuel tank was gone already. “Standing by, control,” she answered glumly.

Well, she thought, the good news is, I’m in orbit. Yay me.

But will it do anyling else any good?

Footnote:

(325) Max Q is the point in a launch at which aerodynamic forces reach their peak. It’s not a fixed point; it varies according to launch speed and trajectory. Wherever it is, though, it is the place where physics lurks, waiting to pounce on ill-planned rocket launches. And considering how frequently the natives of Equus defy physical laws, that which lurks at the point of Max Q has a massive chip on its shoulder. Even Dragonfly walks (flies) softly there.

Fauntleroy sat in the passenger compartment which was all that remained of his spacecraft and pondered some fundamental truths of existence.

The first fundamental truth that had come to him, in almost a week of nothing to do except contemplate such matters, was he’d erred grossly in claiming himself a superior pilot to Leonid. Leonid would not have attempted a direct flight to the moon without an Equus orbit. Thus, he would not have gone far higher than standard orbit before discovering the trajectory was off. He would not have fiddled around seeking an equatorial orbit for a second attempt with the remaining fuel, because he would have known there would be no remaining fuel after the long burn required to get such an orbit.

And, since he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get in such a situation in the first place, Leonid would not have succumbed to the traditional yak rage and the even more traditional yak rampage. Smashing everything in sight, while momentarily relaxing, did one no good when everything in sight was required to keep you alive.

Fortunately he’d still been wearing his full space suit when the hull breach happened, and he’d been able to get behind the pilot’s flight couch and down into the passenger compartment, with the food and the backup life support, before the capsule more or less fell apart on him. And, even more fortunately, the passenger compartment contained the emergency reserve rations- one week’s worth- provided by the changelings with every capsule and passenger compartment they sold.

So he’d had time enough to come to terms with his inevitable demise… and then, when his demise became evitable, time enough to come to terms with that as well. Oh, he could still die up here, and if he lost his temper again he certainly would die up here. Yak culture, with its glories and follies alike, was such a hard thing to escape, lamentably. But there was a chance…

“Horseton, Twenty-one… we have zero relative velocity to target at six hundred thirty-eight meters. We have rendezvous, over.”

“We confirm, Twenty-one. We still want you to ease in as close as you can to make it easy for Fauntleroy to get to the ship. This will be his first spacewalk, after all.”

“No problem, boss. Didn’t I tell you I could do careful and delicate?”

“Don’t call me boss.”

And there was that chance now, close enough that his suit comms could pick up chatter directly from the rescue ship. Up until now his only communications had been through the pony communications satellite network. “Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” he said aloud. “Standing by for instructions on rescue.”

“We read you, Four,” the unmistakable voice of Cherry Berry called back. “Keep the channel clear until we’re ready for you. Twenty-one, go ahead for five meters per second towards the target.”

“Copy, Horseton.” That sounded like a changeling- probably their third-tier pilot, what was her name? Oh yes, Dragonfly. They’d met in EVA training at Cape Friendship. She was the one who was… what was the kirin phrase? Gung-ho, that was it. Excessively eager.

“Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” Fauntleroy said again. “I’m quite sure I could cover half a kilometer by suit thrusters. There’s no need-”

“Four, please keep the channel clear.” Cherry Berry’s voice had gone from light and friendly to hard steel, while somehow retaining its little squeak. Only a pony, Fauntleroy thought, could pull that off. “We are coming to you. Sit tight. Twenty-one, proceed.”

“Five hundred meters and closing.”

Fauntleroy’s life flashed before his eyes. It was very short, and most of it was books, smashing, and snow. He’d hoped for a little more before the end…

“One hundred meters and closing. Slowing to two meters per second… wait a minute.” The changeling voice went silent, and then came back filled with obvious consternation. “Yak Shot Four, is that a passenger capsule you’re in? What were you doing bringing up that dead weight for a one-person flight? What were you thinking?”

“As I understand it, the griffons and the dragons launched passenger compartments as a test to see if they could sell tourist flights around the moon,” Fauntleroy said. “But I think my compatriots threw this on the stack because we had it in the barn. No other reason, really, except using everything up in one last glorious flight.” Which, of course, was a foolish thing to have done, but it was also a very yak thing to do.

“Eh, makes sense,” the changeling pilot replied. “Fifty meters.”

And, evidently, also a very changeling thing to do, except the changelings had more sensible people to keep them in line. A most enviable condition, Fauntleroy thought.

“One meter per second,” Dragonfly called out. “Going to stop at about ten meters separation. I don’t want to bump into you by mistake.”

“I’d be most grateful if you didn’t, miss,” Fauntleroy replied politely. He’d put his spacesuit on as soon as he’d heard the first buzzing of Mission Twenty-One over the comms, and now he slipped his helmet over his radio headset and locked it into place. “Standing by.”

“And… there!” A ring of satisfaction. “Zero relative velocity at eight point eight meters! It’s a shame there’s no way for me to just grab on to your ship. I could probably just kiss that can with this ship, easy. And it’d make ship-to-ship transfer a lot easier if the two ships could, I dunno, connect somehow.”

“The bulls like your idea, Twenty-One,” Cherry replied over the comms. “Four, we’d like you to exit your craft in your own time. Once you’re free of your craft, we want you to use your thrusters to translate over to the rescue ship. There are handholds all over the ship, including ladders leading to the pressure doors of the passenger cabin. Do not, repeat, do not go for the capsule; there is no internal connection between the capsule and the passenger cabin. Copy that, Four?”

“Four copies,” Fauntleroy said, double-checking his suit life support, then reaching for a handle near the passenger cabin hatch. “Depressurizing cabin now.”

Air hissed out of the cabin, vented to space. The cabin backup life support shut down as the pressure inside the cabin dropped. When Fauntleroy couldn’t hear the hiss anymore, he said, “Cabin depressurized. I’m coming out now.”

He reached up and rotated the latch for the airtight door which, under happier circumstances, would have taken him through to the capsule. The instant the latch released, Fauntleroy discovered two things: first, that the air had not all left the compartment; second, he was indeed coming out now, much faster than expected.

The now-dead passenger compartment which was all that remained of Yak Shot Four tumbled slowly away behind him, while Fauntleroy tumbled swiftly forward, popped out like a cork from a pony popgun.

Well, he thought. This is exactly like the training, isn’t it? Take a deep breath. Resist the urge to smash things, because it will not help. Bring arms down and back to activate the suit thruster controls.

Twin armrests, each ending in a control joystick, popped out of the suit backpack and under Fauntleroy’s spacesuit-covered hooves.

Good. Activate controls. The inertial system will sense the spin and automatically stabilize me.

The system did so, firing thrusters in what seemed like a frantic, random series of bursts, then settling down as the tumbling stopped.

“I’m all right,” he reported. “It appears I was wrong about the cabin being fully depressurized.”

“Yeah, we got that,” Dragonfly’s voice said dryly. “Bossmare, we need to make a note of that- the passenger cabin needs indicators to show pressure level.”

“Roger, Twenty-one, and don’t call me bossmare,” the voice of Horseton Mission Control answered. “Four, can you see our ship?”

“Stand by…” Fauntleroy checked the navigation ball in his suit’s little cluster of readouts. “The ship appears to be right above my head.”

“Copy,” Dragonfly said, and a moment later she said, “I see Fauntleroy. Repeat, visual on Fauntleroy.”

Fauntleroy worked the controls, pivoting his suit to face upwards. “Visual on rescue ship,” he repeated. “I understand I am to go to the large hatch amidships?”

“Affirmative, Four,” Cherry replied. “Just take it easy and float on up.”

“Understood.” Fauntleroy touched the controls with un-yaklike gentleness. His suit glided forwards, up towards the massive bulk of the changeling rescue ship. Minor adjustments left, right, backwards, forwards, zeroed him in on his target- not the hatch itself, but the ladder rungs above it. “Ten meters… five meters… I’m reaching for a grip…”

It was just that easy. Spacesuit hooves hooked over rungs, thrusters shut down, and Fauntleroy swung himself upside down and, as it happened, almost on top of the hatch. Two rungs down, and he was on the hatch, its controls directly in front of him.

“Firm contact,” he reported. “I’m coming in, and thank you, CSP.”

And as the yak space program came to a close, its last pilot thought, Leonid might have done the rest of it better, but I bet he couldn’t have done this as smoothly. Not in a million winters.

“Horseton, this is Mission Twenty-One,” Dragonfly reported. “Two crew safe aboard, two to go. Let’s talk about that.”

“Good job, Dragonfly,” Cherry replied. “We’re working on the burn for the next rescue, and we’ll have that up to you in a bit.”

“Yeah, about that, bossmare.”

“I keep telling you not to call me that.”

“It took three orbits for me to catch up to Fauntleroy,” Dragonfly pressed on, as she reached over to the trajectory plotter and began hitting keys. “And I was only a little behind him. Now Gordon is way, way behind me in orbit. It took me five hours to rescue Fauntleroy- how long is it going to take to get to Gordo?”

“We’re working the problem-”

“What I’m saying, Control,” Dragonfly continued, “is that I’ve got a computer and an interface up here, too. And all I need to do is make a long burn to get a bigger orbit, right? Bigger orbit is slower orbit, right? So I’ll just do that now, and we can fine-tune it for the final intercept later.”

“If you’ll be patient, we can tell you exactly how long that burn needs to be,” Cherry said.

“Eh, whatever,” Dragonfly said. “We’ll make it work. Stand by for prograde burn… targeting Gordon’s wreckage… ship oriented for prograde burn… five, four, three, two, one!”

Dragonfly’s hooves worked the magic born partly from long practice with the simulators and partly from designing several of the controls herself, including the trajectory computer interface. She’d learned a lot in the past year, and especially in the past few months, from the bulls and Goddard and even that loony Pinkie Pie. It was amazing how easy it all was, once you had a not-quite-lack of hunger and people willing to explain, in words of three syllables or fewer, anything you asked about(326).

From what Dragonfly half-remembered from some lesson or other about geometry, the circumference of a circle was three and a bit times the diameter. If you wanted to enlarge the circumference by a certain amount, you enlarged the diameter by slightly less than one-third that amount, or something like that. She could do the math if she sat down and took a long time, but so long as she had plenty of fuel, she could fudge things and make corrections and do it fast and sloppy.

And, as she’d had drilled into her head the past three days, fast was the important thing.

So she watched the trajectory plot creep up in a higher arc above the low orbit of the space wrecks, noting the difference between apoapsis and periapsis growing… and noticing the fuel levels in that fat fuel tank barely dropping at all. The Terrier might be the weakest of the first generation liquid-fuel engines, but it also provided the most bang for the buck… and, after all, once you were in orbit, ninety percent of the job was done anyway, wasn’t it?

There. That seemed like about the right number.

“Shutdown,” Dragonfly called out. “Successful burn. Now let’s see what that gets us…”

“Dra… Twenty-one,” Cherry said, the exasperation beginning to show in her professional tone, “we show your first close intercept with Griffonstone Five… excuse me, Griffon ship Nickel… in three orbits. That’s assuming you conduct two correction burns which we’re putting together now.”

“Three orbits??” Dragonfly shouted. “That can’t be right!” She tapped out commands on the vector plotter… and, sure enough, there was no intercept market on the plot where she’d expected it to be, coming back around to her planned intercept point.

“It’s good enough,” Cherry said. “Gordon and Fireball still have food through tomorrow. We have the time for a careful intercept. Sit back and let us go through it step by step, all right?”

“But it should have been… I mean, I had it…”

“Dr. von Brawn says he’ll explain it to you once everyone’s on the ground, Twenty-one. Stand by for instructions on the first correction burn to line up the intercept point. That will be in thirty-seven minutes… mark.”

“Standing by for detailed instructions,” Dragonfly said grumpily.

Darnit, it should have worked...

Footnote:

(326) The example of Dragonfly demonstrates the possibility that changeling foolishness is not an inborn condition, but rather a result of poverty, cultural stasis, and extremely limited educational horizons. For the counterargument that even educated changelings can be prize idiots, see Occupant.

Dragonfly had to admit, though the slow and careful way was slow, it got the job done.

“Griffon ship Nickel, this is CSP Mission Twenty-One,” she called out. “Holding station at one point one kilometers and preparing for final approach. How’s it going, Gordo?”

“Hey, great to see ya, Dragonfly!” a cheerful, brash cry came over the comms. “Well, you know what I mean. I don’t have visual yet.”

“No problem,” Dragonfly said. “I’m tracking you just fine. Are you ready for some larger accommodations?”

“Well, I kinda like it here,” Gordo chuckled. “It’s private. Would you believe you’re the first person to come up and pester me since I got here?”

“Well, if you don’t want a ride home,” Dragonfly said teasingly, “I can go get Fireball, and you can wait for the next door-to-door rocket salesling to come by.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind having a look at your wares,” Gordo said. “Looking forward to the trip.”

“Twenty-One, Nickel, this is Mission Control, Horseton,” Cherry Berry broke in. “Before you two drift apart again, how about we get this rendezvous finished?”

“Well, hello there, Cherry Berry,” Gordo said. “And how’s Equestria’s second-best pilot doing today?”

“Ask Rainbow Dash that,” Cherry said. “Or who do you think is the best pilot?”

“You’re talking to him,” the griffon said smugly. “Who else could have got a stable orbit out of a rocket that was falling to pieces all the way up?”

“The way I understand… never mind,” Cherry Berry said, and Dragonfly could hear the ripping sound of the earth pony tearing herself away from the badinage to be professional again. “Twenty-one, you are go for close approach.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Going to ten meters per second towards target.”

Three minutes later, it was done, with CSP-21 floating a mere ten meters away from the can-shaped wreck of Griffonstone Rocket Project Ship Nickel. “There. Relative velocity at zero,” Dragonfly said. “Gordo, remember to make sure your ship is fully depressurized before you open the hatch. It’s important.”

“No worries, Twenty-one,” Gordon the Griffon said over the comms. “Depressurizing now.”

A short period of time passed.

“Okay, that seems to be it,” Gordon said. “I’m leaving the hatch now.”

“Wait a minute, Gordon,” Dragonfly said, anxiety rising in her barrel. “That’s not even as long as Faunt-”

“WHOO-HA!”

Dragonfly blinked. She looked up through the tiny windows of the capsule, seeing only blackness in both. “Gordon? Nickel, this is Twenty-one, what-”

WHANG.

Something hit the rescue ship hard enough to shake the interior. Dragonfly immediately used her magic to grab her helmet, which was floating loose in the capsule, and jam it over her head. A quick shove of the locking collar, a flip of the switch to activate the suit life support, and she was safe. “Fauntleroy, you okay back there?” she asked.

“I’m well,” the yak in the passenger compartment said over the comms. “And the pressure in this compartment appears to be holding steady, assuming the instruments here are correct.”

“Good.” Seems like some smart pony put the kind of gauges in the Hitchhiker compartment that ought to have been in the tourist pods. But then, the Hitchhiker had an exterior hatch, didn’t it? You had to have pressure sensors so the chamber could be cycled for astronauts going in and out. “Gordon? You all right out there? Talk to us!”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the griffon said. “I took one heck of a tumble, though. I guess the air wasn’t gone as far as I thought.”

“Something hit us right after you opened your hatch,” Dragonfly said. “Any idea what it was?”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that,” Gordon said. “Equal and opposite reaction thing. When I went flying, my ship went flying back the other direction. It kind of glanced off the side of your ship just above the engine. Doesn’t seem to be any external damage. At least, you still have an engine.”

“While you’re out there, could you take a closer look?” Dragonfly said.

“Will do,” Gordon said. “I’m looking at the impact point now, and I don’t even see a dent. Well, maybe a little one. I don’t think it struck at much more than two, maybe three meters per second. And it was only a glancing hit, really.”

“Gordon,” Dragonfly hissed, feeling quite justified in her anxiety, “this ship has to get the three of us down, plus Fireball if at all possible. Give it to me straight- is it broken or not?”

“Dragonfly, honey, I’m giving you the facts,” Gordon said. “No visible exterior damage to speak of. A little paint scraped, a dent about the size of my talons about two hooves above the weld joining the engine to this weird fuel tank you have.”

“Is the dent on the angled part?”

“Yeah, like I said, a couple hooves above the seam with the engine assembly.”

Dragonfly let out a long sigh of relief. The conical adapter made to mount the Terrier engine on the massive fuel tank was empty except for the fuel and oxidizer lines at its very center. So long as the seams held firm on both ends, a dent there damaged nothing. “Okay, thanks, Gordo. Come on inside and take a load off. Wait until Fauntleroy depressurizes the passenger compartment, though.”

“Don’t worry, Gordon,” Fauntleroy said. “I made the same mistake you did, and I won’t make it twice.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gordon said. “I’m drifting over to the ladder now. Just say when.”

Relaxing on the flight couch, Dragonfly reached up to remove her helmet. “Horseton, this is Twenty-one,” she said. “We had a little drama up here, but it’s all sorted out.”

Silence.

“Horseton, Twenty-one, comms check,” Dragonfly said.

More silence.

“Mission Control Horseton, this is CSP Mission Twenty-one,” Dragonfly said, her little black heart sinking as she spoke. “Communications check, please respond.”

Son of return of the silence.

Dragonfly hit the release on her straps, pushed herself out of her flight seat, and reached over to the small tool box mounted on the capsule wall next to the hatch. She dug out a ratchet, fitted the socket for the standard bolt used to hold together the consoles, and unscrewed the bolts holding down the access panel beneath the main control panel. Among other things, that was where the crystal that held the telepresence enchantment was kept. That crystal linked all the suits nearby to itself, and from there to Twilight Sparkle’s comm-sats and to the tracking stations at Horseton and Baltimare and at each of the other space programs’ home bases.

When she removed the cover, two bits of crystal floated up along with it. More fragments of crystal clung to the mounting point, which apparently had been just a little too close to the cover. Dragonfly reached out with a hoof, plucked the mount, and noted the unacceptably large range of play in what ought to have been a rigid, solid bracket.

“Horseton,” she said, knowing nobody could hear her, “we have a problem.”

“Twenty-one, Horseton, comms check,” Cherry Berry said, as all eyes in Mission Control looked her way.

“Cherry,” Occupant said from the flight director station, “you’ve tried for five minutes straight. We lost comms at the same time we lost telemetry.” The changeling pointed to the projector screen, which showed nothing except the orbital diagram showing the relative positions of the rescue ship, the three derelicts, and the satellites orbiting Equus. “We can’t hear them, and they probably can’t hear us.”

Cherry sighed. “Right, I know,” she said. “Do we know what happened?”

“Based on tracking data,” von Brawn said from the bullpen at the front of the control room, “it appears that the same problem occurred as with Fauntleroy’s craft. The loss of air propelled the ship into the rescue ship, where it impacted in some fashion. The two ships are now drifting apart at about one and a half meters per second.”

“The good news,” George Bull said, standing beside von Brawn, “is that tracking indicates Gordon stablized his own drift, maneuvered to the rescue ship, and boarded. That suggests our ship is still functional.”

“Won’t know for sure until it makes some sort of maneuver,” Goddard the Griffon added. “Worst comes to worst, the Hitchhiker has food for four people for seven days each. If we don’t see the ship move, we know to put together a second rescue mission. Or possibly a resupply run.”

“And where does that leave Fireball?” Cherry asked. She turned around and looked up at the VIP observation booth, where Dragonlord Ember sat next to Grampa Gruff, Prince Rutherford, and Princess Twilight Sparkle. All of them wore expressions ranging from dread to barely-checked rage.

“Fireball’s in Dragonfly’s hooves now,” Occupant said quietly. “Without comms, we’re out of it now.”

“Do we still have comms with Dragon XL-3?” Cherry asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Then let’s… no, let’s wait a little longer,” Cherry said. “If the ship can move, Dragonfly won’t wait around. She’ll try to rescue Fireball herself… as soon as possible.”

“Okay, I’m inside,” Gordon said over the comms. “What now?”

Dragonfly had spent a few minutes thinking that exact point over. Under the flight protocols laid down from practically the first flight, if a ship lost communications, it came down at once- as soon as it could land safely. She hadn’t tested the engines yet, but the reaction wheels worked fine, and the solar panels were recharging the batteries, and the parachutes showed as functional.

But if they came down now, Fireball was as good as gone. Not that she knew Fireball all that well- she’d only seen him at astronaut events and the EVA training, and he was always at the fringes of things, staying as far away as he could from everyone else, saying practically nothing. But in his place, she wouldn’t want her rescue ship to give up.

And more to the point, she didn’t want to give up. This was her mission. This was the last flight she’d begged Cherry for, the one she’d risked Chrysalis’s future wrath to get. And she wasn’t going to end it at only two-thirds successful.

“Now,” she said, “we go get Fireball. Strap in and prepare for acceleration.”

Losing the telepresence spell would make the job tough, but not impossible. Suit-to-suit comms worked for about two and a half kilometers even without a proper telepresence crystal linking them. Horseton could probably still talk to Fireball and keep him informed. And, as she’d pointed out to Cherry five hours and loose change before, the trajectory plotting system could be used by an astromare in the capsule- by Dragonfly, in other words- to plot her own course without referring to Mission Control.

And the first step, of course, was simple: repeat what she had done to make a rendezvous with Gordon. That meant a long acceleration burn to get a high orbit and allow Fireball’s capsule to catch up.

“How’s it coming back there?” she asked.

“Stand by, commander,” Fauntleroy’s voice said. “Gordon is strapping in now.”

“Excuse me?” Dragonfly asked. “What did you call me?”

“I said commander,” Fauntleroy answered, matter-of-factly. “This is your ship, after all. We are merely supernumeraries, under your authority. That makes you commander of the vessel and of the mission, does it not?”

Huh.

Dragonfly rolled the phrase Commander Dragonfly around her mind to see how it felt.

One third of her liked the sound of it.

The other two thirds cringed and said, My queen is going to go berserk.

“Okay, I’m in,” Gordo said. “Straps nice and tight. Ready for acceleration.”

“Okay, here we go.”

With a pressure much lighter than the sudden weight of responsibility bearing down on her mind, Dragonfly’s hoof pushed the throttle forwards, and the Terrier engine reignited and began boosting Mission Twenty-One higher once more.

“XL-3, this is Horseton Mission Control,” Cherry Berry said. “We’ve got some news for you, please respond.”

A growly voice came back over the magic comms network. “Lemme guess,” it said, “Celestia’s gotten bored with raising and lowering the sun. She’s decided to raise and lower the ground instead, so all I have to do is step outside the hatch and she’ll be waiting there with a medal and a box of rubies for me to snack on as I ride her home. Is that it?”

There was a long, awkward silence in the control room.(327)

“Nnnnnnnnooooooooo,” Cherry said carefully. “What I was going to say, Fireball, is Dragonfly is piloting a rescue ship to get you. She’s already picked up Fauntleroy and Gordon. But there’s a… contingency.”

This time the long, awkward silence echoed down from many miles above them. “When a pony starts using euphemisms that strong,” Fireball finally said, “it’s time to give them your full attention. I’m listening. What happened?”

“Put briefly, Gordon’s capsule and the rescue ship collided,” Cherry said. “Considering that the rescue ship just performed an orbital adjustment burn to refine its rendezvous with you- that’s coming up in twenty-three minutes, by the way- we’re assuming it’s fully functional.”

“But?”

After another long, awkward pause waiting to see if that one word was all Fireball was going to say, Cherry continued, “But the instant the two ships struck, we lost all contact with the rescue ship. Dragonfly is trying to rescue you all by herself. We can’t help.”

The long, awkward pause family reunion gave a big, silent hello to Uncle Ned and his family, who had just arrived from Vanhoover.

“Any chance I could just wait on the next ride home?” Fireball asked.

“No. Now listen,” Cherry said. “There’s a chance suit-to-suit comms will still work, which means you and Dragonfly can talk when you’re within two kilometers of each other. We can only talk to you while you’re in what’s left of your ship. Before you transfer to the ship, we want you to relay messages to and from the rescue ship, so we can get some idea of its condition. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fireball grumbled. “I’ll see if I can fit it in my busy travel OH WAIT. Looky here, an opening just turned up.”

Footnote:

(327) A frequent enough occurrence in Horseton’s Mission Control that it deserved its own place on the checklists.

Orbital maneuvers without the calm if squeaky voice of a pink earth pony in one’s ears proved trickier than Dragonfly had expected.

The burns she’d made trying to get and then refine an intercept with the dragon ship seemed to multiply like… like… something that had a lot of little somethings in a hurry. (328) A long burn to allow Fireball’s ship to catch up had, somehow, taken CSP-21 out of the right orbital plane. Correcting the orbital plane had taken the periapses of her ship and Fireball’s out of line. Attempts to realign those periapses had pushed apart the expected rendezvous. And so on, and so on, and so on.

The one good thing about all of this was, for all the burns she was making, she wasn’t using much fuel. The Terrier was efficient, but the truth was, it only took a few tens of meters per second in orbital velocity to make course corrections. The burns were brief- only a few seconds each, apart from the first. She’d still have half of the big tank left when she got close to Fireball.

Which, as it happened, was about to happen. According to the trajectory computer, the two ships had drawn within two and a half kilometers of one another, closing fast, with a closest separation of 1.3 kilometers.

“Dragon vessel XL-3, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-one,” Dragonfly said. “Do you copy, over?”

No response.

“Dragon vessel XL-3, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-one, do you copy, over?”

This time there was a voice, a gruff, growly, gravelly voice. “Yeah, I hear you,” it grunted. “Where are you?”

“About…” Dragonfly checked the distance-to-target readout. “Twenty-one hundred meters and closing. You ready for a little walk?”

“Just a sec, I got your friends in my other ear,” Fireball grumbled.

“My friends?” Dragonfly asked.

“Horseton Mission Control,” Fireball clarified. “I’ve been talking to them since they lost communications with you. They say you’re coming in too hot and need to match speeds with me. Right now.”

“Really?” Dragonfly looked at her readouts. Yes, her relative speed was a bit on the high side, but not that far off. “Are you sure that’s what they said?”

“They’re still saying it,” Fireball grumbled. “Shouting it, now.”

Assuming Fireball was listening to Cherry Berry, if she was shouting over the comms, that made it serious. “Okay, tell them I’m braking now.” Dragonfly flipped the rescue ship to full retrograde attitude and threw the throttle to full, braking the orbiting vessel as hard as she could.

Which, she recognized almost instantly, wasn’t hard enough. Not even close. She was going a couple hundred meters per second faster than Fireball’s wreck, but the efficient little Terrier was only slowing her at a couple of meters per second.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered. “Fireball, I think I screwed up.”

“Big surprise,” Fireball grumbled. “Lemme guess, no rescue this orbit.”

“I’ll fix it,” Dragonfly insisted as the rescue ship blew past closest approach. “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. In the meantime, tell the bossmare that my ship took a hit from Gordo’s pod. Hit the lower section adapter, remember that. The comms crystal mount was loose, and the jolt broke the crystal against the console interior. I can’t fix it, but everything else on the ship works. Got that?”

“Lower section adapter, got it,” Fireball said. “How long until you get back?”

“I’ll work it out!” Dragonfly said. “I’ll get back to you soon! Don’t worry! Sit tight!”

“Where am…” Fireball’s voice broke up and went silent as the two ships drew apart beyond the suit-to-suit communicators’ range.

Roadapples, Dragonfly thought as the engine continued to fire, as the relative velocity between the ship and its target crept lower and lower on the readout. By the time it bottomed out at five meters per second, the two ships were over five kilometers apart.

Roadapples, she thought again. Great steaming piles of roadapples. What now?

Now I work the problem. Just like in the sims. This is just another test.

The fact that I never once did this in the sims has nothing to do with it.

Dragonfly reached over to the trajectory computer and began punching numbers. After a couple of minutes, she had a solution: a burn that would bring the two ships back within about a kilometer of each other. The burn would have to take place in the shadow of Equus, out of the sunlight, as would the rendezvous, but that didn’t seem like a big problem. The suit navigation systems could pick up the target ship even in the dark.

She tried to tweak the numbers, to get the ships closer- and for certain she wouldn’t wait so long next time to match speeds. But whatever she did, one kilometer appeared to be as close as she could get. Well, that was close enough; she could make a more careful approach when the time came.

Nodding her head decisively, she oriented her ship for the new intercept burn. As the ship rotated, she caught a glimpse, just for a moment, of the sun setting behind the enormous curve of Equus.

Footnote:

(328) Dragonfly was in training to be a rocket scientist, of sorts. She was not now, nor would she ever be, a comparative biologist.

The first burn went smoothly. Only after it was complete, and Dragonfly saw the projected new orbit, did she realize it had gone smoothly to Tartarus.

The rescue ship and Fireball’s derelict would come within about a kilometer of each other- she’d got that much right. The problem came about fifteen minutes later, when her projected orbit dipped back into atmosphere- well into atmosphere, deep enough to force re-entry and landing. And even if, by some miracle, the air had zero effect on the craft, the orbit that climbed back out into space wouldn’t come within hundreds of kilometers of Fireball.

Obviously that wouldn’t do. She began working out a correction burn, as close to the intercept as- no. She’d been mistaken about her braking burn before. It would be better to postpone the intercept and just focus on staying in orbit. The sooner she made her correction burn, the better. It took about a minute to work out a decent correction which would get her an 800-meter intercept back on the day side of Equus and keep her ship up out of the soup.

She checked over the burn requirements- nothing huge, just a ten-second nudge to both raise the periapsis and lower the apoapsis- and began turning the ship.

Halfway through the turn, the reaction wheels powered down, and the computer screens went dark.

Dragonfly had the sudden sensation that a hole just like the ones in her hooves had opened up in her belly. Frantically she switched breakers off and on, wiggled the stick experimentally, even tried throttling up the engine. No response. Nothing.

Only then did she see, on the magic-powered readouts around the still-functional nav-ball, on the consumables readout: Battery power 0%.

Craaaaap.

Dragonfly tried to lean back on the flight couch to think(329). The closest approach to Fireball lay in the shadow of the planet, but she thought- thought- the ship would come back into the sun before she hit atmosphere. There might be time for a correction burn. But by that time the second intercept would be over… and after this mishap, she didn’t have any confidence that she could work out a third.

Also, she was getting tired. She’d been awake, except for a brief catnap, for about twenty hours. She knew just enough to know her judgment wasn’t at its peak(330). That would only get worse. And without updates on Fireball’s status, she couldn’t tell if it was safe to leave him another eight hours.

So… the question was… how much velocity could a space suit pack make up in ten minutes?

Footnotes:

(329) In free-fall it is very nearly impossible to slouch in a chair without straps to hold you into your slouch. If you flounce onto a flight couch, you will find yourself rebounding right back off it again, thanks to Newton’s laws of motion. Space psychologists have never found an adequate substitute for an easy chair in space.

(330) And she was intelligent enough- just- to admit that her judgment, even at its peak, wasn’t ideal. She might not have been the one who came up with the Mk. 0 cardboard-box capsule, but she’d gone along with it at the time...

“... this is CSP-21, do you read?”

Fireball twitched. He’d been about to go to sleep. In the forty minutes since he’d last heard the changeling’s voice, after passing on the message to Horseton, his comms had been left blissfully clear, giving him time to be bored again. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Ready for another try?”

“Shut up and listen,” Dragonfly said. “I’m going to be within a kilometer of you in about five minutes. In twenty minutes I’m going to be in the atmosphere. I have zero electricity and can’t turn or fire engines until we get back in sunlight, and that’s after closest approach. I have no idea if I’m gonna be able to get this close to you again. If you’re coming, now’s the time.”

Fireball got the picture first time. “Long distance spacewalk?” he asked. “Is that the deal?”

“That’s the deal,” Dragonfly agreed.

Another voice broke in: “XL-3, Horseton, what’s that about a long distance spacewalk?”

“What’s our relative velocity?” Fireball asked, ignoring the pony on the planet below.

“Thirty-nine meters per second and dropping,” Dragonfly said. “I don’t know where that will bottom out at. My computers are down except for the nav-ball.”

“Thirty-nine, huh? Can do.” Fireball suppressed a snort as he reached for his helmet. Based on training and the EVAs done by Cherry Berry, Chrysalis, and Rainbow Dash, the space suit thrusters could match thirty-nine meters per second with ease. If necessary they could probably match five times that much, if you didn’t worry about stupid things like safety margins.

Besides, his safety margin in this tin can was about used up. Fireball felt better about his space suit getting to another ship than hanging around in this one until a changeling found enough brain cells to get here again.

“Horseton, XL-3,” he said as he finished sealing his helmet on. “I’m going for a walk. Tell Ember I’ll see her on the ground.”

Ignoring the protests, ignoring the safety protocols, he pushed over to the passenger can’s latch, not bothering with depressurization, and just opened up the door. In an instant he was flying one direction and the remains of his former ship the other. That suited him fine; get the dead pod out of the way while he maneuvered.

It took only a moment for the dragon to stabilize himself. It took but another moment to find the rescue ship on the nav-ball and target it. According to the ball, it was growing closer pretty quickly, which suited Fireball just fine. He just had to make sure he was in its way as it came past.

In training Fireball had been anxious about learning how to fly EVAs. Once he’d picked up the trick, though, it was dead simple- much simpler than piloting a rocket launch, which had all sorts of potential for disaster. Up here in orbit there were only two dangers; drifting too low and ending up in atmosphere, and running out of power for the thrusters.

The batteries in the suit collected just enough magic power to run the comms and nav-ball; recharging could only happen with the system shut down, on board a ship. Maybe future suits would get better batteries, but for now there was a definite limit to thruster power, a limit you had to remember.

But you only needed thruster power to change direction and speed. You could coast forever. That was the trick. And at the speed CSP-21 was approaching, Fireball didn’t need to try to get there faster.

It was just so very, very simple. No worries at all.

Fireball fired one long burn to bring his course almost, but not quite, directly towards the rescue ship(331). Once he got within five hundred meters, he fired a second time, bringing his relative velocity down to ten meters per second. At two hundred meters he fired again, reducing relative speed to five meters per second; he followed this up with several short bursts of thruster to put him back on course.

By one hundred meters away he could make out the rescue ship. He slowed to two meters per second, not wanting to go kersplat against the hull like, many months before, he’d gone kersplat inside his capsule against the side of a mountain.(332) “Okay, I’m here,” Fireball said. “Tell me where to come in.”

“There’s ladders leading to the hatch on the fattest part of the ship,” Dragonfly said. “The sooner you get on board the better. I’m beginning to get sunlight on the solar panels again, but I can’t turn the ship to boost back to orbit until you’re inside.”

“Okay, I see them.” And Fireball did; now that he was close, they were pretty obvious. “I’ll be at the hatch in about thirty seconds.”

“Good. We’ve already depressurized the cabin, and Fauntleroy and Gordon are waiting inside.”

“Sounds like a party,” Fireball muttered.

“Sure is.”

“I hate parties.”

“Well, you didn’t have to RSVP, you know,” Dragonfly said.

“I hate burning up on re-entry a lot more,” Fireball said. “Stand by, I’m coming in.”

Two minutes later, as the drained electrical batteries of CSP-21 sucked up power from the solar panels, the ship turned with its tail pointed directly at the planet, fired its engines, and clawed away from the perils of an uncontrolled, unplanned re-entry.

Changeling, yak, griffon and dragon were safe, for the moment, and all together in a functional space craft.

Now: how to get home again?

Footnote:

(331) This is what is known as a “useful lie”. Fireball, in an absolute sense, was not flying directly towards Dragonfly’s ship. The two were orbiting (well, almost orbiting) Equus on a convergent course, moving in a direction almost directly behind where Fireball faced at this time. But from the limited frame of view of Fireball and his destination, he was moving towards it. It’s sort of like thinking that, when you’re in an upward bound elevator, you are standing still while the building is being lowered around you. The important thing is, Fireball was getting closer to safety, and he knew how to control his path to make sure he got there. Objective facts would only get in the way.

(332) Fireball didn’t pause to wonder how he allowed himself to be put into a position to risk his life, as he was doing at that moment, for a second time. First, woolgathering at this particular moment meant screwing up the spacewalk and dying- not an option. Second, he actually felt safer floating outside in his spacesuit than he’d felt at any point since Ember had informed him of Mission XL-3. Realization of just how bucked he might have been would only come later, after reflection (and a couple of news interviews).

“Three passengers on board, commander,” Fauntleroy reported. “Whither now?”

“Gimme a minute to think,” Dragonfly muttered back over the comms. “Have a snack while I’m doing that.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized she was hungry, too. Of course, all changelings lived in a state of perpetual hunger; it just differed in intensity, from “Well, maybe just a nibble,” up to ravening-mindless-monster levels. The problem was, that hunger was for love or other compatible emotions, not for the gunk ponies ate.

But there was a chocolate bar in the capsule’s food storage locker, which was the next best thing. Dragonfly nibbled on it while she considered her options.

Being out of communications with Horseton was, under the normal flight rules, a mission abort condition. Logically she ought to come down and come down right this minute.

But there were considerations. Back in Horseton it was currently after midnight. Dawn was hours away. She wanted to come down in daylight if at all possible, especially if she wanted to obey the warnings about avoiding touchdowns on land. Also, since she wasn’t one hundred percent certain that Horseton could track the rescue ship without the telepresence crystal to lock on to, she wanted the ship and its five parachutes to be visible even more than she wanted the surface she was landing on to be visible.

By the time she finished the chocolate, she’d come to a decision. “Okay, everybody,” she said, “I’ve been awake almost twenty-four hours, and it’s full dark back at the space center. I’m going to take a nap and wait a few orbits. Then I’m gonna pick a deorbit burn time, and then we’re going to see how small a splash we can make in the Celestia Sea.”

“Sounds good to us, commander,” Gordon replied. “Hope you don’t mind if we nap along with you?”

Dragonfly considered the two bulkheads and the unpressurized section of ship between the little capsule and the large Hitchhiker cabin. Yeah, I only wish you were here with me. I could snack a little, and I don’t mean chocolate. “No problem,” she said. “I want to rest at least four hours. That’s the earliest we can go home and expect to land in daylight.”

Sleeping in the capsule proved difficult. First, the air circulation fans made a good bit of noise. Second, the sun kept peeking in and out through the little windows as the ship rotated in the PTC(333) roll she’d put it in before sacking out. Third, she could lie down or curl up the way she wanted to because of the same laws of motion which kept separating herself and the flight couch. And, finally, the combination of the barbecue turn, the life support circulation, and the absence of her space suit (she’d taken it off to be more comfortable) meant that the temperature in the capsule lay just a tiny bit lower than comfortable for easy sleeping.

After two hours Dragonfly gave up the effort. There has to be a better way to do this, she thought. Maybe if we brought sleeping bags up here… yeah, and if we hung them from the walls, possibly… there would have to be straps, of course, to hold the bags wherever they were put, and maybe a couple more straps to hold us inside the bag when we toss or turn.

Dragonfly found a pencil and some blank pages from the flight manual and began to sketch.

Footnote:

(333) Passive Thermal Control, or “spit turn”, since the point of it was to “cook” the ship evenly on all sides, like a roast apple on a rotisserie. Both the capsule and the passenger compartment had independent cooling systems, but Dragonfly figured she’d rather be safe than sorry while she slept.

“Commander?” Fauntleroy called over the comms.

Dragonfly dozed, her fangs idly gnawing on the pencil in her mouth.

“Hey, Dragonfly, you awake?” That was Gordon, sounding a little concerned.

One of the changeling’s ear-fins twitched idly.

“YO, BUG! Are we coming down today or what??”

The roar of a dragon, even muffled by transmission over magical communicators, brought Dragonfly alert instantly. “Sorry!” she said. “I’m awake! Just a second!” As the pencil went spinning away to bounce off the breaker panel(334), she noticed the flight plan turned sketch pad, where the four views of the proposed sleeping bag design each had a happy, sleeping pony inside, and in the middle of the sketches sat a little stick-figure changeling with a bib, knife and fork.

Maybe, she thought, I won’t show the bossmare this sketch.

Four hours had become six and a bit thanks to Dragonfly’s second nap. By the time the ship hit atmosphere, she figured, the sun would be rising in Los Pegasus- more than enough of a daylight zone to bring the ship down. She brought up the trajectory computer…

… and paused. For all their genius, the buzzard and the bulls had never been able to teach any incarnation of their computers to predict deceleration from air resistance in their trajectories. Dragonfly would have to make her best guess as to where to burn to get a landing just offshore from the space center… and her guesses hadn’t been all that good so far this flight.

Well… when in doubt, err on the side of caution, or in this case, on the side of deep water. She could overshoot Horseton and land somewhere in hundreds of miles of ocean. But landing directly on Horseton, or worse yet west of it, meant the Hayseed Swamps, the San Palomino Hills and the mountains of the south Badlands, or possibly the southern jungles. So, overshoot it would be.

The burn was planned, and twenty minutes later, executed.

Its task concluded, the engine and its massive fuel tank, still over forty percent full, was jettisoned to burn up on its way down.

Everyone suited up and strapped in for the descent.

Minutes ticked by, as the ship slowly descended out of space and into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Footnote:

(334) Which had a big protective cover, currently closed. Goddard and von Brawn had figured out very early that it was vital, when dealing with changelings, to design certain switches that would only be toggled when it was intended that they should be toggled. ”Oops” is not a word one ever wants to hear in space flight.

The three passengers sat in their new-generation, supposedly more comfortable flight seats, scattered around the periphery of the large, open Hitchhiker cabin interior, as the ship twitched, rocked, and bucked across the skies of western Equestria.

“I confess I’m feeling a bit anxious!” Fauntleroy said over the sounds of groaning metal.

“So are we,” Fireball grumbled. “Why should we care?”

The little yak twitched. “You know what yaks do when we get anxious.”

Fireball thought about this, and then wondered just how thick the steel walls were around him(335). “Okay,” he admitted, “I care. But just a little.”

“Look, be cool about this,” Gordon said, trying and failing to ignore the shaking of the ship(336). “Dragonfly’s an experienced pilot. She’s got this. She’ll get us down.”

“Are you seriously asking us,” Fireball rumbled, “to be confident about our lives being in the hooves of a crazy changeling?”

“Urge to smash,” Fauntleroy said in a strained voice, “rising.”

“Look,” Gordon replied, his voice losing its faux-lighthearted tone. “There’s got to be a reason why the changelings can keep up with the ponies and we can’t. They’ve got something going for them, and I don’t think it’s just Cherry Berry, right? They have more flights. They made most of our equipment. They know what they’re doing, all right?”

Fireball snorted. “Well, that’s true enough,” he admitted. “If I knew what I was doing, I’d never have ended up in a rocket in the first place.”

“Urge to go back in time and smash my own face in,” Fauntleroy said with barely suppressed rage, “rising.”

Griffon and dragon looked at each other. “So,” Gordon said to Fireball, “read any good books lately?”

Meanwhile, up in the capsule, Dragonfly twitched the control stick in her hooves, this way and that, fighting to keep the large, lightweight passenger cabin from flipping around behind the small, heavy control capsule. Without the passenger cabin and the big heat shield beneath it, the whole ship would burn up. But it was a constant struggle, with the ship wig-wagging back and forth like a mad thing as it fell back to the ground enveloped in a globe of fire. All the while the sensation of weight crept back into Dragonfly’s life, bearing down on her as the rapidly thickening atmosphere forced the ship to slow down, threatening to cook or crush it entirely.

In short, Dragonfly was having the time of her life.

Yesssss! she hissed mentally as she continued to wrestle the controls. This was dancing with the Pale Horse! This was what she’d wanted, just once more! The thrill of being right on the very edge of complete disaster, and of pulling away again through the sheer power of one’s own awesomeness!(337) This was what being a rocket pilot was all about!

Alas, from her own point of view, it was over all too quickly. The wider profile of the vehicle, and its lighter weight per volume, allowed it to slow down much sooner than expected once she hit the thicker part of the atmosphere. This was all well and good, because Dragonfly had completely blown the placement of her re-entry burn, and had the ship been heavier and thus imbued with more inertia, it might have landed in the deserts of Zebrica or even Saddle Arabia. As it stood, one error more than cancelled out the other, dropping the ship well short of the Equestrian continent.

At ten thousand meters, with nothing but open ocean beneath her, Dragonfly hit the staging switch, releasing the five parachutes. The ship slowed even more, its plunge slowing to a more reasonable drop, and then to a gradual drift as the chutes opened fully at one thousand meters above the water.

Dragonfly lay back on the flight couch, sighing. Yes, she thought. I’m done now. If I never pilot another ship, I’m content. I made orbit. I rescued three people. And I’ve brought them home safely.

Maybe I should tell them that.

A flash of light outside caught the changeling’s attention, and she leaned up for a better look. There, circling the capsule and its array of parachutes, flew two alicorn princesses, the Day and the Night themselves having come to see the rescued astronauts home.

Dragonfly watched them fly around for a moment, then thought, Naaah, they can figure it out for themselves.

And slowly, gracefully, with surprisingly little splash, Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-One settled into the waves of the South Luna Sea.

Footnotes:

(335) Fireball was a dragon just out of adolescence, still small enough to fit in pony homes and pony spaceships. He couldn’t treat yaks with the same contempt a centuries-old mature dragon, as long or longer than a city block, could. The thing about yaks was, once a yak declared intent to smash, that yak would not be stopped until either the thing or the yak was smashed. Nobody with brains wanted to fight someone who literally did not know how to quit, scales and fire or not.

(336) Gordon held the unfortunate distinction of being the first pilot to lose his lunch in space. Now he was trying, through pure willpower, not to repeat, in multiple senses of the word.

(337) She’d read the line in an interview Rainbow Dash had given for some magazine or other. When the pegasus pony said it, it was stupid. But when Dragonfly said it about herself, in the privacy of her own head, it was simple, beautiful truth.

MISSION 21 REPORT

Mission summary: Rescue three stranded astronauts and bring them safely back to Equus

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration: 25 hours 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: First orbital rendezvous of two spaceships; first ship-to-ship transfer of crew

Conclusions from flight: Chrysalis is going to lose her goo when she hears we did this…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Chrysalis lay back and let her mattress hug her. It really was very nice and soft, except for the grit left over from her de-petrification. It made the assimilation of Cherry Berry’s long story, with all its digressions into defending Dragonfly’s performance, so much easier.

“So,” she said at last, “you’re saying you ordered the mission because rescuing those three idiots was the price of getting me un-rocked. Right?”

“What?” Cherry gasped. “No!! That’s only what I told Twilight! I would have done it anyway! Because it was the right thing to do!” The pink pony jabbed a hoof in the direction of the ceiling. “You’ve been up there! You know what it’s like! If you were up there, stranded, no way to come down again, wouldn’t you want someone to rescue you? If it were even remotely possible?”

With a snort, the pony reared up so she could cross her forelegs in disapproval. “And now you’ll say something about how we ponies are dumb enough to do it, and how you’re stronger than us because you wouldn’t.”

To her own mild surprise, Chrysalis hadn’t been about to say any such thing. She had, indeed, been up there, both at one with everything and, at the same time, horribly alone. She understood. But there wasn’t any point trying to persuade the pony of that, especially when she had a reputation to maintain. “That’s better,” she said. “I was wondering how much pony there was in you, since it sounds like you’ve been doing an excellent job as a changeling.”

The wide eyes, the spluttering fit, the gradual shift of the pony’s expression from shock into outrage, were everything Chrysalis could have asked for.

“In any case,” she continued, not letting Cherry recover enough to respond properly, “since you’ve kept order here so beautifully, I’m sure that imbecile Elytron has let the main hive collapse around his empty head. So you’ll have to go on pretending to be me for a week longer.”

“No.” Such a simple, yet heartfelt syllable. So desperate, so heartbroken. So delicious.

“Make that two weeks,” Chrysalis corrected herself. “I need to disappear for a little while and find myself some… nibbles.” Having stuck it to the pony in the way that would hurt the most, she moved rapidly on to business. “In the meantime, what’s our financial condition?”

The pony actually managed to smile- a genuine smile, one which made Chrysalis think she’d been too lenient with her petty emotional torture. “That depends on when we deposit these,” she said, pulling a handful of checks out of a saddlebag.

“What are those?”

Cherry passed each check over to Chrysalis to read, one at a time. “Reward for rescuing Fauntleroy. And Gordo. And Fireball. Prize for being the first space agency to achieve rendezvous. Prize for being the first space agency to conduct ship-to-ship crew transfer in space. And, finally, stipends for the first month’s wages for our three new astronauts. Because Leonid the yak, Gordo, and Fireball have all transferred to CSP.”

The last three checks were small. The other checks… not. Very not.

“I think, all put together,” Cherry continued, “this is enough money to pay for a robotic mission to Minmus and a piloted mission afterwards. Which will be our dress rehearsal for the moon.”

“I see.” I see you’re going to have the last laugh no matter what I do, pony. But tomorrow is another day. “Well, since you have matters well in hoof, arrange for a chariot back to the Hive for tomorrow morning for the two of us.”

Cherry blinked. “You and me?” she asked, confused.

“Of course not,” Chrysalis smiled. “Myself and the bed. Can’t you see I’m still a very sick person? I need my bed rest!”

And, after a brief moment to brush out a bit more of the grit from the sheets, she rolled over to get it.

Author's Note

Okay. It's been a while, hasn't it? You'd almost think I spent nine and a half months stranded on another planet...

... yeah, anyway. First things first- as I post this I've just committed to spending $3500 on yet another transmission for the WLP company van, so let me plug my Patreon and KoFi again.

Ko-Fi (direct money to my PayPal) --> https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet
Patreon (monthly pledges, and patrons can get sneak previews of my stuff- including frequent live-writing sessions via Google Docs) --> https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Second: remember, those of you coming in from The Maretian, this is Dragonfly and Fireball before they even got so far as to be picked for the mission that would introduce them to Mark Watney. They're not as mature as they are by the end of the sequel. Dragonfly is still only faintly acquainted with the concept of consequences, and Fireball is even more antisocial than when he turns up at the Hab with the other shipwreck victims.

Also, my first draft of the story showed the actual launches, interspliced with one another, of the three ships. I felt it clunked and clunked badly, so it got replaced, but I recycled some of the dialog for the conference with Cherry, Twilight, Ember, Grampa, and Rutherford.

Now, on to how the gameplay affected the story.

I'd originally intended to pick up only two rescue missions for this chapter, and then to use either the three-person capsule or the tourist package plus a second detachable capsule (which I've done in-game before) for the rescue. Unfortunately the three-person capsule proved too expensive in science points for me to get, leaving me the problem of how to get four people down. I ended up using my banked science points to buy the four-person Hitchhiker cabin (usually used only as a space station component)...

... and then discovered I didn't have the proper sized heat shield. I ended up having to science-farm the space center using a rocket-powered rover (not portrayed in the story because I couldn't possibly make sense of it outside the context of Kerbal).

In retrospect the giant fuel tank was a bad idea; a normal-sized T-200 would probably have done the job, and the lighter payload would have offset the need for extra fuel to achieve orbit. I tested the ship to make sure it could achieve orbit, then let the game sit for over six months before flying the mission, which went pretty much as I document in the story.

About half the time stranded astronauts orbiting Kerbin in the game will spawn in capsules, the other half in passenger pods. This time all three rescue targets were passenger pods. Maybe sometime in the future I'll get somebody to draw clip art I can paste into the screen caps, but for now the story had to excuse the passenger pods somehow. I did my best.

The thing is, when you EVA a stranded kerbal from one of these pods, the game gets a little kraken- that is, it tends to act like the pod is fully pressurized when you order the EVA, sending the kerbal flying off and the empty pod spinning away. I did, indeed, have the second pod bump into the rescue ship. However, Kerbal doesn't allow equipment breakage without mods, so in-game my communications with the ground did not die.

I made that bit up- the comms loss- because I screwed up royally during my third rescue attempt. I badly misjudged the relative speeds of the ship and pod, and I overestimated my braking ability, and I blew past my rendezvous. I then compounded the problem by firing engines to get a new intercept without planning it out properly using a maneuvering node... and discovered I'd put myself on a re-entry trajectory.

While on the dark side of Kerbin.

Just in time for battery power to die, because you need electricity for the reaction wheels to turn the ship, and Terriers don't have thermocouples.

Of course long tetherless spacewalks of the kind that would give NASA controllers heart palpitations are nothing in KSP, and Fireball's flight really was smoother than most for some reason. I was easily able to get Fireball to the rescue ship and inside, and then boost the ship back into a proper orbit so I could pick and choose my descent, before time ran out.

And, having almost screwed the pooch, I decided to put it all into the story, and to justify it by having Dragonfly cut off from the cooler, wiser heads on the ground. (Including Cherry, although her head certainly wasn't cooler while it was going on...)

As a general rule, my method of achieving rendezvous with a target is this:

(1) Get coplanar with the target's orbit.

(2) Adjust your orbit so your apoapsis or periapsis lines up with the target's apoapsis or periapsis at some point, as close as possible both in altitude and location in orbit.

(3) Boost whichever high-low point you didn't line up with the target well above or below the corresponding point in the target's orbit. Lower means you catch up from behind; higher means you drop back towards the target. DO NOT try to get it all in one orbit.

(4) Since you have lined up a point in your orbit with the target's orbit, you now know where your intercept point will ALWAYS be, every orbit. Watch the distance between ships every orbit, note trends, and adjust your orbit to close faster or slower with each orbit. Remember, in vanilla KSP you can take all the time in the world, because of infinite life support.

(5) When the intercept markers show an intercept within two kilometers, plan your matching-speed burn. With minor adjustments, you can bring your ship to a relative halt easily and then use the nav-ball markers to carefully reduce the separation between ships if you're going for hard docking or a pretty screen cap.

RCS thrusters are way up the tech tree (as of 1.3; the new build might have changed that), but if you are very careful and very, very patient, you can achieve docking on main engines alone... provided something is holding your target stable. (Also providing you have docking ports, which are also way up the tech tree.) The first time you bump an unpiloted target, if you are even slightly off on your docking attitude, you WILL cause the target to tumble away, making a second attempt practically impossible.

Finally, I chose not to ignore the movie's events for two reasons: I prefer to include all canon in my stories except where canon released after I begin causes a conflict; and because "over my petrified body" was the only way Chrysalis was ever going to let Dragonfly have a proper pilot mission again.

That's enough babble. Let's post this so I can begin planning the next chapter: Cherry Berry goes to Minmus!

Chapter 14: Mission R4: CEO and Chief Bottle Washer

Chrysalis graciously nodded her head to the air traffic control changeling who frantically waved his guide wands to stop all the flyers to give her top priority for landing. It was nice, when returning from a two-week sabbatical, to receive the recognition and respect one was due.

An hour later, she would look back on that moment of respect and hug it in her mind, because it was the last she got upon her return.

Her first stop, naturally, was the administration building to relieve Cherry Berry(338). There were changelings, scientists, and the inevitable construction ponies (339) passing by her almost every step across the grounds, giving her barely a polite “ma’am” or “my queen” as they scrambled on one errand after another. That didn’t bother her (340), eager as she was to see Cherry Berry greet her return with tasty, tasty gratitude, ready to collapse under the weight of all that unwanted responsibility.

But to her surprise, Cherry Berry wasn’t breaking under the strain. Chrysalis found her in the throne room / office, using the telepresence spell there to speak with Elytron back at the Hive. “I don’t care if you are short-hooved,” the pink pony was saying as the queen opened the door. “We need everypony we can get at Appleoosa making rocket parts. We’ve got two Minmus missions to build, and Twilight Sparkle just put in an order for a ton of boosters and fuel tanks! And you know there are business ponies headhunting our best trained changelings for their own businesses!”

Chrysalis hadn’t known that, herself. She’d thought Cherry Berry and Goddard were just expanding, expanding, and expanding the Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs business. She didn’t remember ever being told that her changelings were getting hired away from their duties to the hive for mere money.(341) It was one thing to have some misfits put in make-work jobs across Equestria as part of the “integration” cover story, but the really skilled drones should have stayed put, darn it!

Elytron obviously agreed. “So stop them!” the head warrior drone barked. “The hive can’t function with our best bugs all gallivanting off somewhere!”

“And what am I supposed to do about it?” Cherry asked. “It’s all part of your queen’s plans, remember? She wants you all to get along with ponies, and getting hired at high wages is part of that!”

Again, this was news to Chrysalis. How high are these wages, exactly? she wondered. And how much is my cut going to be?

“Now,” Cherry continued, not letting Elytron respond, “either you send me one hundred decent trainable changelings to Appleoosa by tomorrow, or I come down to the hive and pick your fifty best myself! And if you have problems with that, just ask yourself: what’s more important to your queen- getting to the moon, or guarding a cave under a mountain of dirt in a desert nopony wants to go anywhere near? Think about that while you’re picking out my new workers!”

Chrysalis waited until Cherry cut the connection before saying, “Well done, pony. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Cherry didn’t jump in fright or surprise. She didn’t wrap her forehooves around Chrysalis’s leg and fall into tears thanking her for returning. She just turned her glare to the queen, said, “You’re a day late,” and walked towards the door. “I assume you heard the conversation. I’ve got to get to Appleoosa and get production back up to speed. Goddard’s got his hooves- I mean his talons full with all the problems on the Skipper and Mainsail engines.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow as Cherry walked past. “Excuse me?” she asked. “Don’t you have anything else to say to me?”

Cherry paused. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. Did you have a good vacation?”

“Yes, quite restful,” Chrysalis said, and would have continued except for the pony’s immediate response.

“That’s nice,” Cherry said. “If you can catch Occupant, he’ll give you an update on where things stand. I’ve got to go. Try not to let things fall apart until I get back.”

And the pony was out the door and gone, leaving Chrysalis to stare after her, the pleasant imaginings and anticipation of the prior three days crumbling to dream dust.

It had been all so clear in her mind. She would return to Horseton, console Cherry after that pink pony broke under the strain of running everything herself, give a few snappy orders and put everyone back to work. Chrysalis hadn’t even considered the possibility- the cold reality, really- that a space program that had functioned well enough without her to rescue three stranded astronauts could survive two additional weeks without her.

Well, now she stared that reality in the face- or, rather, in the briefly-viewed pink flanks and yellow tail as the pony had dashed out the door. And she didn’t like how it looked, not one bit.

One of the cardinal rules of being a queen, as Chrysalis understood it, was making oneself appear absolutely indispensable. Let on that your job could be done just as easily by the drunken hobo pony who shouted random nonsense, and you opened the door for your replacement.

And now, after seven weeks of being sidelined (except for a week at the Hive undoing the five most stupid things Elytron had done in her absence), she found that not only had she revealed herself to be dispensable, but she’d lined up her own replacement in the process… and it wasn’t even a changeling.

Well, that wouldn’t do, not at all.

Chrysalis hadn’t noticed on the way in the absence of guards on the immediate entrance to her office / throne room. In fact, it took a moment to realize there had been only one guard on the main door to the administration building. That wasn’t good. The pony had either slipped up, or else she’d sent the changelings who were supposed to be there on other tasks. And even in the latter case it counted as a slip-up, because you NEVER sent away your last guard/flunky. You always kept one nearby you, so that other people knew you were important(342).

And right this moment, Chrysalis absolutely could not be seen as chasing Occupant down herself. That would be putting herself under his power. Recognizing his authority in Mission Control was one thing- that authority, after all, stemmed directly from herself, and everyling knew it. But outside the control room Occupant needed to be the one who came running when she called, and not the other way around- especially now, when she needed to re-establish her authority.

So, without an escort, without anything other than her own glorious presence, Chrysalis stepped into the hallway and then out the front door. “Guard?” she asked- no, no, bad sign, she thought. “Where are the other guards who should be stationed around this building?”

The guard, snazzy in his peaked cap and pony-style security guard blouse, saluted smartly. “I’m it, my queen,” he said. “We have multiple tour groups today being escorted, plus there’s the barges due to arrive from Baltimare and Manehattan today that need unloading.”

Had Chrysalis been anyone other than Chrysalis, she might have admitted that these considerations were fair. But she was Chrysalis, and moreover she was in a bad mood growing worse by the moment. “Change of plans,” she growled. “I want two guards on each door of this building plus four for my office, understood? And I want someone to go fetch Occupant from whatever he’s doing and get him over here right this moment. I’m due a status report on our next mission.”

“Understood, ma’am!” the drone said, saluting smartly yet again. But, aside from the salute, he didn’t move a muscle.

Chrysalis waited patiently for what she thought was a more than fair amount of time to give the guard the opportunity to follow orders without prompting(343). “And when were you planning on doing what I ordered you to?” she asked, in a tone that indicated just how shaky the ground was under that guard’s hooves.

“As soon as I’m relieved, ma’am!” the guard said. “Can’t leave my post!”

Chrysalis glared a little harder. “I just gave you a direct order,” she snarled.

“Yes, ma’am!” the drone said eagerly. “But if I left now, this building would be totally unguarded! I did that last week when we had that fire on the launch pad, and Miss Berry, well, you know the language she uses sometimes!”

Chrysalis drew herself up to her full height and a little extra, putting her fangs about a quarter-inch from the guard’s own muzzle. “And which of the two of us is the scarier,” she hissed. “A little pink earth pony… or me?”

“With respect, my queen,” the guard said, “it’s a choice between getting chewed out by you, or being chewed out by you AND Miss Berry. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it the paperwork for the guard roster and duty schedule is put on your desk the minute my relief-”

Chrysalis put a hoof on the guard’s muzzle. “Hold that thought,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Two minutes later, the queen of the changelings had verified that, yes indeed, the single storage cocoon she’d had hidden in a closet was still there and still in usable condition. The pony hadn’t thrown it away.

Two minutes after that, it had a new tenant, his nice peaked cap floating just above his head, the shininess of his security badge dulled by the translucent gel of the cocoon.

I’ll think of something suitable to do to him later, Chrysalis thought, as against her will she went wandering the space center in search of answers.

Footnotes:

(338) Who, Chrysalis expected, would be terribly relieved indeed. She’d been looking forward to that moment for the prior three days.

(339) Current top priority: new buildings for the research and development complex. Enhancements to the tracking station and the launch pad were also on the agenda, to be followed by a revamped air control tower with the newest in radios and magic rangefinding systems.

(340) Yet. In retrospect it bothered her a great deal.

(341) Chrysalis didn’t feel any better when she found out the word “mere” didn’t apply in the least to the amounts of money being waved at her subjects. But she did feel better once her still-loyal subjects reported to her on why, exactly, the ponies were paying so much. A certain number of them had decided to take advantage of the changeling lack of concern regarding legalities and moralities, and it didn’t take much after that to provide Chrysalis with a fresh new supply of blackmail for certain rich and influential “fine upstanding citizens”.

(342) The thought that Cherry Berry honestly didn’t care whether or not anyone else thought she was important was so alien to Chrysalis that even direct explanations of that fact didn’t register.

(343) Three point two seconds.

The four guard changelings dropped Occupant, none too gently, to the floor of Chrysalis’s office / throne room. “As you ordered, my queen,” the senior of the four rumbled. “With your permission, we’ll get back to our duties.”

“The four of you,” Chrysalis said, seated on her throne and doing her best to appear in control of things, “will remain here and wait on my pleasure. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the senior guard said, and all four saluted in the exact same way that the guard napping in the closet had. “And I’m sure nothing will happen to the supplies on the quay while they’re unguarded.”

“And I’m sure no tourists will get into Building 7,” another guard said. “Besides, probably nobody will be using the vacuum chamber or the cryogenics testing facility today.”

“And the cows who live just outside the fence promised they wouldn’t eat our grass anymore,” a third guard said. “So no need to patrol the perimeter, right?”

“And-”

Chrysalis hissed the fourth guard into silence, then added, “The next changeling who thinks of some other thing more important than serving his or her queen will think again if they know what’s good for them!” Glaring at Occupant, she asked, “And what were you doing that required my guards to drag you over here?”

“Er… negotiating a large contract with ESA to put a satellite in orbit of Minmus,” Occupant said quietly. “You know… to make the trip pay for itself. Especially since we need a satellite in orbit there anyway, as a relay point for radio transmissions to control Mission R4.”

“How large?” Chrysalis asked.

“Hm… about… carry the five… hmmm... “ Occupant counted on the holes in his hooves. “About sixty percent of the cost of the entire flight,” he finally said. “At least, that was Miss Sparkle’s offer when I was, um, summoned.”

“How many actual bits?”

Occupant told her.

Chrysalis’s eyes went wide. “That’s more than the original mission control shac- I mean building cost!” she gasped. “Just how big is this rocket?”

“Um, really big,” Occupant said. “I don’t remember all the stuff Doctor von Brawn and the other bulls told me, but it was something like, ‘We need to get to orbit, and then we need that much again to get out to Minmus, slow down for orbit there, and land. And then we need a bit more to get off Minmus and back home, if everything works. And then add a satellite on top of that.’ So, um, it’s pretty big.”

“Don’t remember?” Chrysalis asked. “You’re being trained as a space scientist, Occupant. You’re supposed to know all of this!”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant said meekly. “But, well, it gets complicated really quickly. What we’re doing is sending a probe-controlled lander- made up exactly like what the real thing would be, except Cherry won’t be inside it this time.”

“And why won’t she be inside it?” Chrysalis asked.

“Well… because we’re not sure any of it’s going to work,” Occupant said. “We were hoping the new generation rocket motors would be ready in time, but they’re not. Also, we’ve been experimenting on a sort of aerodynamic shell to go around the, um, the uneven, bumpy bits to reduce drag during liftoff. But we keep having failures with the release system. So we’re having to put together the Minmus mission with existing hardware… and… well, we’re not sure the existing hardware can do it.”

Chrysalis pressed for details, and bit by bit she got them.

Assuming the interrupted negotiations were still on after this debriefing, Mission R4 would have two genuine contracts- the satellite launch and a temperature survey of the landing site and certain points in orbit around Minmus. In addition to that, the mission aimed to be not just the first mission to fly by or orbit Minmus, but the first to land under control and return to Equus. The overall delta-V required for the trip worked out to be over one and a half times the amount required for a simple orbital mission.

But it wasn’t as simple as just throwing more boosters on the stack. Every drop of fuel you put on the lander had to be paid for with a massive amount more fuel in the first or second stages to get it to orbit. And since this launch had both the lander and the satellite- both loaded down with scientific equipment- that required even more fuel yet. And without the shell to make the satellite and lander aerodynamically smooth, the launch would go through fuel like a Manehattan rave party aficionado went through binkies. (344)

The end goal was to put a combined payload of nearly ten tons into Minmus orbit- that is, without touching any of the fuel in the lander. To put that in perspective, the largest orbiting vessel Chrysalis had piloted, the tourist special, came in just over four tons to Equus orbit, counting fuel and final-stage engine… and that stack was dangerously tall and wobbly during the first stage ascent. Mission R4 was putting more than twice as much weight a heck of a lot farther out than anything other than Mission R2 had ever gone. That meant its booster had to be, if Occupant’s numbers were right, four times as large as the tourist mission stack…

… which meant four times as expensive.

And building a ship that big pushed the limits of what existing rocket engines and fuel systems could accomplish. It wasn’t a question of just adding boosters anymore, like the mixed set that had lifted Dragonfly’s bloated rescue ship to orbit. On this mission, the boosters would have to have boosters. And the more you did that, as Occupant understood it, the more you ran into the law of diminishing returns(345). Atmospheric drag became more of an issue. Three smaller tanks weighed more, and had more drag, than one big tank.

The aerodynamic shell, or “fairing” as George Cowley had named it, had been intended to help with that, at least around the payload. Had it worked, the rocket design would have used the next-generation fuel tanks that had been tested on Dragonfly’s flight plus a ton of Thud supplemental engines. Unfortunately, without the fairing, that design had been so inefficient that they’d never been able to get the package to even a Minmus fly-by in simulations without burning through the lander’s fuel tanks.

So, while Goddard pushed like Tartarus to fix the final faults in the Skipper and Mainsail engines, the rest of the space program worked like mad to assemble what sounded to Chrysalis like the biggest kludge ever put together by changeling or pony(346). Hence, everyone running around like a frightened pony who’d just drunk four cups of strong coffee.

“All right, I get the basics,” Chrysalis said. “Have someone send me the details when you get a chance. And…”

She practically had to bite her tongue to avoid saying What can I do to help? Queens did not offer help like eager schoolfillies. Queens gave orders and made decisions.

But… all the decisions had already been made, hadn’t they? What was left for her to do?

“And… see to it that I get all the personnel reports that have no doubt been piling up in my absence,” Chrysalis finished, suppressing a sigh. “Now go conclude those negotiations. Since this one flight appears to be as expensive as every tourist flight we’ve flown combined, we might as well get some money back from it.”

Occupant saluted, turned around and walked out… followed by three of the four guards who had brought him. Only the senior guard remained, and even he kept looking back and forth between Occupant and Chrysalis, as if undecided about what to do.

This time Chrysalis did sigh. “Get them back here,” she said.

A moment later she had to add, “Not you, Occupant!”

Footnotes:

(344) Ravers who read this work will no doubt argue that wearing a binkie to a rave is “so last decade”. This is not the first time that Equestria is behind the times in comparison to other universes, and likely as not it won’t be the last. Just roll with it.

(345) This phrase was Chrysalis’s, not Occupant’s. Occupant referred to it as “not working as good as it should,” but Chrysalis was accustomed to situations where keeping up an infiltration guise for another week wouldn’t net the love it cost to maintain the transformation.

(346) Considering some of CSP’s prior flights, this was not a claim to be made lightly.

Chrysalis definitely wasn’t chasing after Warner von Brawn. No, ma’am. Definitely not. She was inspecting her domain, as any ruler had a right to, and the fact that she was inspecting that part of it overseen by CSP’s top minotaur boffin was just one of those little coincidences.

“Ah, good evening, doctor!” she said as she stepped into von Brawn’s office. The bull, looking slightly less than his normally unruffled self, sat at a drafting table, examining blueprints. “And how do things proceed in your world?”

“With caution,” von Brawn rumbled. “For some reason the simulator keeps insisting that this rocket design will pitch up and flip during launch. And it doesn’t seem to matter which way we orient it- it always turns in the same direction. I can’t explain it, but it could spell a very expensive disaster for the mission if I can’t fix it.”

“I see,” lied Chrysalis. “Well, since you have the blueprints in front of me, why not walk me through the design?”

“I may as well,” von Brawn groaned. “I’m not making any real progress, anyway.” He pulled up an overall chart of the rocket. Just as Chrysalis had suspected, the thing didn’t so much look like a stack as a pile of pointy sticks stood on end. “Here we have the total stack. The satellite is on the very top.” He pointed to the top of the tallest stick, which did look much like Missions R2 and R3. “Below that the lander, with its landing gear and return engine.” He pointed out the capsule, which sat atop a cluster of three tanks and engines that reminded Chrysalis a bit of Mission 4. “And everything else,” he said, pointing at the collection of fuel tanks, engines, solid rocket boosters, and fins below, “is more or less to get the satellite and lander into Minmus orbit.”

“That’s a lot of junk,” Chrysalis said, for lack of any more cogent contribution to the conversation.

“Indeed,” von Brawn said. “Here we have the first stage.” He circled the base of the ship. “Four Thumper solid-fuel boosters and three stacks of liquid fuel powering two Swivels and four Thud supplemental engines. We were going to add a Reliant under the central stack-” he pointed the very center of the tangled rocket parts- “-but it turns out we get better delta-V without it. We’ll be metering the solid fuel boosters so they and the liquid fuel engines burn out at the same time. The fuel tanks will be ducted together so that all the engines draw from all the fuel reservoirs equally.” He pointed to a tangle of ducts and pumps that Chrysalis couldn’t have untangled with a crochet hook.

“Then we go to the second stage. Three Swivel engines.” The minotaur tapped the three engines and their tall fuel stacks in the middle of the blueprint. “This stage also has ducting, but for a different purpose. The ducts here pump fuel and oxidizer out of the outer two stacks and into the central stack, so the central engine doesn’t touch its own fuel supply until the outer two stacks burn out.”

“What’s the point of that?” Chrysalis asked.

“Ideally the fuel in the outer stacks will be enough to achieve low orbit,” von Brawn said. “Once up, we dump the outer boosters, leaving only one Swivel with a full tank. We use that for the trans-Minmus injection burn, and if enough fuel remains, for the orbital capture burn as well.”

He reached a finger up to the lander and said, “Once in Minmus orbit, of course, we decouple the satellite. That leaves us just the lander.” Von Brawn circled the capsule and its three engines with a thick fingertip. “The outer two engines get us orbit, approach, and if all has gone well up to this point, landing. Throughout the time in Minmus local space, the scientific equipment on the lander will record information and store it here,” he tapped a square thing on the tip of the capsule where the main parachute ought to go, “for either return to Equus or radio transmission to our computers. We’d much rather have the equipment back, though. We get better quality data that way.

“Once we land and collect such data as we can, the lander activates its central engine.” von Brawn tapped the appropriate spot. “The spent landing engines and fuel tanks, along with nonessential scientific gear, are decoupled.” he continued, making little flicking motions with his fingers. “The remaining ship breaks Minmus orbit, falls back to Equus, ditches its engine, and re-enters. And only these components- the capsule and its immediate attachments, plus the cargo bay with the probe control unit inside- only this of all the stack returns home.” He sighed and added, “Assuming the whole mess doesn’t shred itself on launch.”

“Quite an encouraging statement, doctor,” Chrysalis said dryly.

“I should much prefer it if we could have used the new generation systems,” von Brawn said. “This is exactly what they’re designed to do. But until they stop exploding when set to full throttle, we just can’t use them… and we don’t have time to wait.”

“And why is that?” Chrysalis asked.

“Because Twilight Sparkle is moving forward with a crewed flight to the moon,” von Brawn said.

“WHAT???”

“Well, of course I knew about it,” Cherry Berry said from the telepresence projection. “One of the reasons we’re backed up here in Appleoosa is the huge order Twilight Sparkle put in for boosters. And for next-generation fuel tanks.”

“And you accepted those orders?” Chrysalis asked, outraged. The enemy was going to get ahead of them. She, Chrysalis, was going to be second to the moon, at best. And the pony in front of her(347) was working to make it possible!

“Well, yes,” Cherry Berry said. “The whole notion behind spinning off this factory into its own company kind of requires that we sell to anypony who has money. And yes, that includes Twilight Sparkle, who might I add is a personal friend of mine, even if she did reject me as a pilot.” The pink pony glared right back at Chrysalis. “So yes, I sold her a wagonload of rocket parts. Now ask me if I’m worried about that.”

“You ought to be,” Chrysalis growled. “Considering my opinion of subordinates who betray my trust, you ought to be very worried indeed.”

“Pfft.” Cherry Berry waved a hoof at this. “I’m not worried, because you shouldn’t be worried,” she said. “Remember when we had EVA training at Cape Friendship? Remember the big pink thing sitting out on the runway?”

Chrysalis gagged. “That pink monstrosity? I only wish I could forget it!” She blinked, then added, “Wait a moment. You mean she intends to take that to the moon?”

“Not at one shot,” Cherry said. “I don’t know if it can even make orbit, even with all the boosters Twilight can wrap around it. It’s a pretty thing, but it's gotta weigh at least fifty tons- five times what Dragonfly’s ship weighed. They’re not getting that to the moon any time soon.”

“How sure are you?”

“Pretty sure,” Cherry said. “Twilight’s given up on a pure magic-thruster approach. What she’s working on now is a reusable ship that can land like a pegasus- or like my biplane, to be more exact.” She made a swooping motion with her forehoof. “So she’s replaced the magic boosters with standard rocket engines and retooled our second-gen fuel tanks to supply fuel and oxidizer to those. That, plus a lot of smaller boosters- and I mean a LOT of boosters- will get it to orbit. There’s a little fuel for orbital maneuvers, but that’s all.”

“That’s all,” Chrysalis said flatly. “Didn’t one of the bulls tell me that orbit is halfway to anyplace else?”

“Yeah. But it’ll take as much lift as those boosters to get that fat, heavy ship out to the moon, down, up, and back again,” Cherry said. “And that’s assuming there’s a long, flat spot on the Moon for that thing to set down. It can’t do a vertical landing.” She shook her head. “No, Chrysalis, Twilight Sparkle is not going to beat you to the moon. We still have time to do it the right way- and the safe way.”

“You’d better be right, pony,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Look, I have more important things to worry about,” Cherry said. “I’ve got to get our boosters built, too. I have to shake some Science Jrs. out of Twilight. And once R4 launches, I begin training for the follow-up, which is going to have me in a capsule for fifteen days. Fifteen days in a can, Chrysalis. Fifteen days where the only cherries I get are freeze-dried. I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Fifteen days?” Chrysalis asked. “What do you mean, fifteen days?”

“Minmus is something like three times as far away from Equus as the moon,” Cherry said. “That was as close as Luna could bring it. It takes time to fly out that far, and more time to fly back, and if something goes wrong, I never come back. So yeah, compared to that, I don’t worry much about you, all right?”

Chrysalis snorted, but the pony had made her point. Even she couldn’t think of a more horrible fate than drifting off into the unknown, beyond rescue, never to return…

“So if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,” Cherry said, and, without asking leave, she cut the connection. The wall of Chrysalis’s office went blank.

Chrysalis considered doing something about it- calling her back to correct her gross lack of respect, sending a couple of guards to make that displeasure a little more plain, or just sending her a small basket of rotted cherries- but decided against it. She wasn’t angry about Cherry cutting her off, not half as much as she was angry that the pony was probably right on every point. Twilight Sparkle probably was wasting time and money on a fool’s errand- and putting more money in her pockets in the process. Cherry Berry really did have more important things to do than comfort her nerves, hard as that was to admit.

Everybody had important things to do… except the queen.

Footnote:

(347) - Technically the pony hundreds of miles away, but Chrysalis was looking her in the eyes through the power of technomancy, and she wasn’t inclined to be rational just that moment.

Two guards looked up at the top of the #2 liquid oxygen storage tank.

“I don’t care what you say,” one said to the other, “I’m not going to be the one to tell the queen she has to come down from there.”

“Well, someling has to,” the other guard said. “It’s not safe up there.”

They stood and stared as Chrysalis, reclined on a large folding lawn chair, turned the page of her current trashy novel. The late spring sun beat down on the space center, bringing temperatures the rest of Equestria would call "summer", and the area immediately around the oxygen tanks was the coolest outdoor space on the grounds(348). The queen wasn’t the first changeling or pony to seek comfort there, but she was the first the guards couldn’t shoo off.

“She doesn’t really seem like she’s having much fun,” the first guard said. Indeed, Chrysalis had flipped the same page back and forth four times already, and her casual reclining pose had shifted subtly five times in as many minutes. They couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but the rest of her body language looked really tense, at least by changeling standards.

“Doesn’t she have something to do?” the second guard said.

“Maybe she’s showing us queens don’t have to do things,” the first guard said. “One of those object lesson things.”

“You think?” the second guard asked. “I like it a lot better than the last time she tried to teach me a lesson.” He shook his head and added, “I don’t think this works quite as well as hauling a loaded pod around the mesa for a hundred circuits, though.”

“You two idiots realize I can hear every word you say, right?”

The guards looked back up. In the moment their attention had wavered, the queen had lowered her book, pulled her sunglasses down her muzzle, and glared down from the oxygen tank at them.

“Um, your maj- my- ma’am- um, Queen Chrysalis, ma’am,” the first guard said, “are you aware that the tank you’re lying on is full of oxygen kept at over three thousand pounds of pressure per square inch?”

“Really?” Chrysalis asked. “What’s that in Prance?”(349)

“Oh for…” The second guard tossed his snazzy peaked cap down onto the concrete. “My queen, I most respectfully request you come down from there at once!”

Chrysalis made a show of considering the request, make a soft tsk sound, and then said, “Oh, very well then. It is only proper for a queen to grant a reasonable request from her loyal and obedient subjects.”(350) She jumped off the tank and walked away, book and beach chair floating behind her in her magic.

Although she made a show of being nonchalant and unruffled, inside Chrysalis seethed. While it was quite true a queen labored only when the queen wished to labor, the fact was, right this moment, she wished to labor quite a bit… and couldn’t. The pony, curse her, had even caught up on the personnel report backlogs, the most boring chore the space center had to offer. (Elytron had achieved the same feat, but only by throwing out or failing to collect any and all reports due. Chrysalis suspected that would come back to bite her in the flank at some point.)

On the way back to the administration building she spotted Dragonfly galloping towards her. Dared she hope… was she, Chrysalis the almighty ruler of the changeling nation, needed? Had some emergency arisen which would allow her to demonstrate her superiority before her subjects?

“Well, hello there, Dragonfly,” Chrysalis said, and then trailed off… because Dragonfly wasn’t slowing down.

“Oh, hi, my queen,” Dragonfly said, almost casually. “Excuse me, gotta go use the telepresence and hit up Pinkie Pie for help. R4’s robot brain just slammed the ship into Minmus at about eighty meters per second in the sims, and I have no idea why! Marked Knee’s checking the circuitry, but I need help with the software. ‘Scuse me!”

“Wait a minute.” The phrase came out of her mouth not as the command it ought to have been, not even the polite suggestion it would have been coming from the pony. It was nothing more than a startled reaction to being blown off by, calculated disobedience aside, one of her more loyal subjects. To make matters worse, in order to keep talking to Dragonfly, Chrysalis had to walk- almost run- in pace with her towards the admin building. “Don’t you tell the robot probes what to do? I thought it was like a remote control or something!”

“Can’t do it this mission,” Dragonfly said, not breaking stride. “It takes light five seconds to get from Equus to Minmus. In five seconds anything can happen. So the probe has to be able to handle the landing all by itself. And that’s the single hardest thing about this whole mission!”

Chrysalis almost offered to help- almost. She only avoided the unforgivable gaffe because she had no clue, not one, what she could do to help. The bulls, Dragonfly, and that insane baker were the only people who knew how the insides of a robot brain actually worked. She certainly didn’t.

But she hadn’t the morale left to assert herself. Yes, she ought to demand proper respect due a queen. She ought to demand that Dragonfly ask permission to use her telepresence, which was in her throne room for her convenience and not so drones could go chatting with the enem… with their colleagues in other space programs. But all she said- all she felt like saying- was, “I see. Carry on, then.”

She stopped, and Dragonfly kept going.

I used to be a queen, Chrysalis thought. Buck it, I still am a queen.

There has got to be something useful I can do around here… something suitably royal, befitting my talents and training…

Footnotes:

(348) Liquid hydrogen is not kept stored long-term due to the intense energy cost of keeping it cold and compressed enough to remain liquid. There’s also the danger involved. Someone once said life will find a way; when it comes to tanks, hydrogen will find a way out. Thus, any H2 desired for rocket fuel would be cooled and compressed only a couple of days prior to a launch, not stored on an ongoing basis. Other fuels tended to be preferable, anyway.

(349) The pony equivalent of the metric system was an invention of the short-lived Republic of Prance, which rebelled against the rule of Princess Celestia in 789 CR under the battle cry, “Let Someone Else Eat Cake!” Celestia reponded with a shrug and gracious wishes good luck, raising no armies whatever to restore her rule (which was eventually restored under the face-saving guise of “Protector of the Fancy Republic” in 802 CR). As a result the Fancy ponies have long, romantic songs about the valiant civilian lack of armies of Prance and the battles gloriously not fought at Mustango and Hossterlitz. Nopony sings songs about making every measurement a multiple of ten of some other measurement, even though this affected the history of Equus quite a bit more than anything else the Prench did (or didn’t). The global scientific community uses Fancy measurements because the non-pony races refuse to use the royal system of Equestria and couldn’t agree on any of their own systems.

(350) The dangerous part of that statement, as both guards were painfully aware, was that the word “reasonable” was defined by the queen and the queen alone… and subject to re-definition without notice.

“Fifteen seconds to orbital adjustment burn.”

Chrysalis sat at the capcom position, hooves on the controls for Mission R2. Some pony astronomer had wanted observations from a different angle and had thrown a few thousand bits at CSP to shift R2 into a slightly different orbit using some of the fuel remaining in its tanks. The procedure would require two burns, both very minor. There was no press in the VIP deck, nobody in the grandstands outside. Mission Control was deserted except for Occupant, Chrysalis, and George Bull, the only three controllers who could be spared for such a minor activity.

“Standing by, flight,” Chrysalis replied, looking at the controls. It took a second and a half for orders from those controls to reach Mission R2. As Dragonfly had very nearly said, anything could happen in a signal lag…

… but it wouldn’t. This wasn’t a landing. Mission R2 was in a high orbit around the moon and was going to stay there, with only a minor tweak to its altitude and orbital inclination. The probe had already been oriented into position for the burn, and all Chrysalis had to do was throttle up to ten percent for six seconds, then shut down the motor. Things might go wrong, but very few of them would kill the probe. A correction burn would cure almost all of them.

“Burn in three, two, one…”

“Engine to ten percent,” Chrysalis reported obediently.

“Shutdown in three, two, one-”

“Shutdown.”

And a few seconds later George Bull reported, “Successful burn. Go for second burn as calculated in one hour and fifty-four minutes.”

“Wonderful,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Shall I go fetch a book while we wait?”

“Oh, there’s no need for you to wait around here, my queen!” Occupant said eagerly. “We know you must have so many very important things to be doing! I’ll send a messenger for you in ninety minutes, if that’s all right with you?”

So many very important things to do.

Bah. Even the reporters don’t have any questions for me right now.

“Yes, that will be fine,” she said aloud, taking off her superfluous headset.

She’d just got outside the Mission Control doors when Gordon the Griffon ran up to her. “Excuse me, Chrysalis,” he said, “but I was wondering if I could talk with you a bit.”

On the one hoof, part of Chrysalis was livid that this griffon- not merely a subordinate but a junior pilot- addressed her so casually. But on the other hoof, it was something to do. “Be my guest,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, it’s about Mission 22,” Gordon said. “Are we really sending Cherry up in just a capsule? Because I spent eight days in a passenger pod, with more than twice the internal space of the capsule, and I was feeling plenty cramped by the time that was done, lemme tell ya.”

“An… interesting point.” Chrysalis had put countless ponies and other creatures in enclosures smaller even than the capsule, but she’d never spent more than half a day in one. She’d never really considered issues of… elbow room. “Have you discussed this with Cherry Berry?”

Gordon shrugged. “The bossmare says, ‘We fly the mission with what we have.’ And that’s all she says.”

The part of Chrysalis that had been angry at Gordon’s casual approach flared up. Bossmare, is it? Well… well, yes, I gave the pony total control of the space agency, but… bossmare??

But the rest of her thought: This is an Important Thing. It might even be a Command Decision. Worth looking into. “Very well,” she said. “I know Cherry’s not looking forward to the experience.”

“Or you,” Gordon said. “You’re the backup pilot for Mission 22, after all.”

Well… um.

Come to think of it, Chrysalis couldn’t remember a day in the past fourteen months, the entire time she’d known that chirpy naive pest of a pink pony, when Cherry had been sick. Not one day. But it could happen… and you just couldn’t send an astronaut up on a fifteen day flight if she was sick, could you?

Which would mean she, Chrysalis, the taller, longer-limbed astromare, would be crammed into that capsule for fifteen days instead of Cherry.

The prospect appalled her.

“Let’s have a talk with our chief pilot,” she said, and led Gordon to the administration building.

“No way.”

Chrysalis and Gordon gaped at the pink pony. “Excuse me,” Chrysalis said quietly, “but when I said, ‘we’re using the passenger pod on the Minmus flight,’ I didn’t intend that as a suggestion.”

“No, I understood you,” Cherry said. “And I said: no way.” From the projection screen, she glared down at Chrysalis(351). “If we take the passenger capsule on Mission 22, we also have to put it on Mission R4, because the whole point of R4 is that it’s a dress rehearsal. If R4 works, we use the same hardware on Mission 22. And a passenger capsule adds too much weight and height to a mission that’s already got too many unknowns in it!”

“I refuse to possibly take your place and fly fifteen days in a ship so small that it practically counts as a piece of clothing!” Chrysalis snapped back.

“You know, we have extra pilots now,” Cherry said. “You don’t have to be my backup pilot anymore. You could assign Gordon, or Leonid, or Fireball.”

“Not it,” Gordon muttered. “So, so not it.”

“What you fly, I fly,” Chrysalis said. “That was the deal we made, remember?”

“Oh, don’t get up on your dignity at me!” Cherry snapped back. “You wanted to go to the moon. Not Minmus. By the time we go to the moon you’ll have a bigger capsule to fly in, with plenty of room. But adding a passenger cabin adds weight and reduces delta-V, and if I’m going to Minmus I want every bit of delta-V I can take with me. If it’s a choice between more fuel and a comfy cabin, I’ll bucking well be uncomfortable!” Cherry folded her forehooves and finished, “Because you recover from being uncomfortable a lot quicker than you recover from being lost in space!”

“Huh,” Gordon muttered. “She’s got a point there.”

Chrysalis ground her fangs in frustration. The pony wasn’t supposed to have a good point. She was supposed to argue and then back down in the face of her superior intelligence.

Buck it, she wasn’t supposed to be right!!

Thinking quickly, she came up with a new angle. “What about a low-orbit flight duration test?” she asked. “Push back the Minmus landing and make a new Mission 22 to see if someone can endure the capsule for twenty days. I’ll fly that- we can use a standard orbital package for that.”

Cherry shook her head. “I already thought of that,” she said. “To be valid, the flight needs a non-changeling pilot. Right now that means me, Fireball, Gordon-“

“Still not it,” the griffon muttered.

“-or Leonid,” Cherry finished. “You and Dragonfly would be out.”

“Why?” Chrysalis asked.

“Because you don’t eat actual food,” Cherry said. “The second most important test for such a flight would be whether the ship could hold the required rations, and whether the pilot could put up with them. You two would just gorge yourselves on love just before flight and live on water for the entire mission, proving nothing.”

“I’d prove I could spend three weeks in a shipping crate,” Chrysalis said.

“You could do that on the ground,” Cherry snapped. “All a flight would do is cost us a week of prep time and two to three weeks of flight time, during which we wouldn’t be going either to Minmus or the moon. Do you really want to give the Princess of Friendship and Being a Super-Genius a month of lead time?”

“You said we had plenty of time!”

“To do the necessary stuff to stay safe, yes!” Cherry snapped. “Putting somepony in a can and sticking them on a shelf for three weeks does not meet my definition of necessary!” The pony in the projection sighed. “Look, aren’t you supposed to be negotiating peace with Celestia or something? Why don’t you go do that until R4 launches? Because once R4 launches, you’re going to be just as busy as I am, just in case you really do have to spend fifteen days in the sardine can.” (352)

“In other words,” Chrysalis said, “you want me to quit taking it out on you and start taking it out on Sunbutt.”

“I didn’t say that,” Cherry said.

“Maybe not,” Gordon muttered, “but we heard you thinking it loud and clear.”

Footnotes:

(351) A situation Chrysalis would order fixed immediately after the call. She might not have anything worth doing at the moment in space flight, but she still had the royal authority to summon a technician, darn it.

(352) Canned sardines are a delicacy among certain pegasi, caught and packaged by coastal pony families. It’s very much an acquired taste, but it’s just common enough that “packed like sardines” is a phrase in Equestria just as it is in other worlds.

Somehow or other, in the many months since she’d declared her intention to go to the moon, Chrysalis had never gone to Canterlot in person… well, actually, there wasn’t any somehow about it. She’d avoided the pony capital, sending lawyers and diplomats in her place. She hadn’t wanted to come one step closer to the sun-pony she’d once just barely defeated in a direct magical clash.

But now here she was, not just in Canterlot but in a conference room of the royal palace itself, sitting next to the hive’s attorney of record and the smoothest-talking changeling she’d been able to find in the hive. “Okay,” she said, “give me the short version of where things currently stand, Trophallaxis.”(353)

“All right,” Trophallaxis said. “We’ve pretty much agreed on mutual amnesty for any attacks or injuries on ponies or changelings during the Canterlot invasion, right? Now, Celestia’s final goal is total assimilation of the hive into Equestria, with you demoted to a duchess. Obviously that’s out, so we’ve been pushing for interim agreements, and then- as per your orders- stalling on those as much as possible.”

“Which is a foolish tactic in my opinion,” Geneva the Griffon, sitting on the other side of Chrysalis from the changeling negotiator, put in. “I once more advise you that negotiations will proceed more smoothly, and with greater chances for success, after full diplomatic recognition by both sides and the appointment of ambassadors plenipotentiary.”

“Smoothness is overrated in negotiations,” Chrysalis replied. “Continue, Troph.”

“Right,” Trophallaxis said. “Anyway, we’re kind of operating under a preliminary agreement that’s preliminary to the preliminary agreement, if you follow. Canterlot’s officially blocking commerce to the hive until we agree to pay taxes, but that doesn’t hurt us because we run through shell companies and aliases- all technically legal.”

“Barely,” Geneva snorted. “And try to remember there’s a limit to what you can tell me under attorney-client privilege.”

“Yeah, she’s a barrel of laughs, isn’t she?” Trophallaxis chuckled. “Anyway, on the criminal front, Celestia’s offered universal amnesty for all crimes committed by the hive prior to the opening of negotiations last year, in exchange for inspections to make sure no new crimes are being committed.”

“Over my empty chitin!” Chrysalis said.

“Yeah, we figured,” Geneva said.

“So,” Chrysalis asked, “besides the cease-fire, what exactly have you agreed on?”

Geneva rapped her talons on the table. “This,” she said.

“The table?” Chrysalis asked.

“Celestia wanted a round tea-table,” grinned Trophallaxis. “We insisted that would demean the dignity of the proceedings.” With a proud smirk, he added, “We stretched that out for two whole months! Plus a week for the chairs!”

Chrysalis sat back in her own chair(354) and thought. Reliable old Pukey had followed her instructions to the letter… and now, now that she wanted some breakthrough she could take credit for, those instructions bit her in the abdomen. There wasn’t any groundwork for agreement on any point, because- by her own orders- her negotiators had stonewalled everything so thoroughly that the negotiations were, essentially, not even begun.

I can see only one possible gesture, she thought. And there’s no way Celestia will go for it. Even she’s not such an innocent, goody-two-shoes as that. But at least making the attempt will show me doing work for the hive, show me to be a leader.

And that’s all I actually want out of this charade, isn’t it?

“All right,” she said. “Troph, go tell the guard outside we’re ready to see Celestia.”

Fewer minutes than Chrysalis had expected later(355), Celestia and her personal assistant had taken their seats on the other side of the conference table, and after a few polite diplomatic nothings, Chrysalis took charge.

“My negotiators have kept me informed of progress,” she said, keeping her tone formal and diplomatic. “I am particularly intrigued by your offer of amnesty for my subjects. However, you surely know the conditions you offered are unacceptable.” She drew herself up as tall as she could in her chair, placing a forehoof on her chest in a very statesmarelike manner. “As sovereign of the changeling nation, I cannot accept investigators from a foreign power within my domain.

“But I have a counterproposal,” she continued, unable to suppress a little smile at her own cleverness. “Although there can of course be no question of accepting criminal liability for actions necessary to our survival, we are quite willing to offer such assistance as we may to repair any lives we may have damaged in our subterfuge. After all, it is in our interests to mend any loves we may have broken. A world with more love in it is a world where changelings will prosper.”

There. It sounds reasonable, at least from our point of view, and there’s absolutely no way-

“If you recognize that your actions have had consequences, then I have no choice but to accept.”

Chrysalis couldn’t stop her jaw from hitting the table, or making its best attempt at it.

Celestia smiled that little smile that Chrysalis always longed to wipe off her face, and then added those three words the changeling queen had used uncountable times before, to the terror of her subjects or victims: “On one condition…”

Every reporter in Canterlot, newspaper, television, and otherwise, seemed to be staring up at the changeling queen on the podium. Chrysalis tried not to let the flash bulbs dazzle her and kept her eyes focused on the disgusting words written for her on the paper before her.

“… I hereby offer, on behalf of myself and all my subjects, a full and heartfelt… uugh… apology… for the impostiture, kidnapping, and other forms of predation we have committed upon the ponies and other speaking races of Equestria.” There, the truly nauseating part was behind her now. “In the coming days, the Diarchy of Equestria and the Badlands Hive of Changelings shall establish a joint reconciliation bureau to examine the damage done and, where feasible, make such reparations as are possible at this late date.”(356)

The changeling queen took a deep breath to settle her stomach and concluded, “It is our hope that today’s preliminary agreement puts us one step closer to a final and lasting peace between ponies and changelings, and towards that day when all Equus’s speaking people live together in symbiosis and friendship.” There. Done. And she didn’t have to ever say it again. Hopefully. “And with that, I open the floor for questions.”

Camera shutters snapped and flash bulbs lit up the room as fifty reporters shouted for attention at once. One question managed to claw its way out of the ocean of noise: “Queen Chrysalis, how confident are you in the success of your upcoming Mission R4 to Minmus? Can a robot do what a pony can’t?”

By the last couple of words, the other reporters had gone silent, allowing Chrysalis to answer the question- the completely unexpected and unanticipated question. “Well,” she said, thinking swiftly as only a queen could do, “first, I object to the grounds of the last part of your question. Mission R4 is not a question of a robot doing what a pony can’t. On the contrary. Anything R4 does, a pony can do- and a pony will do.”

As pencils scribbled madly across notepads, and as television cameras ticked over, she continued, “Or changelings, or dragons or yaks or griffons or whoever. As you know. when Mission 22 launches, I will be Cherry Berry’s backup pilot. Should anything happen to her, Harmony forbid…” really, Harmony or whoever forbid, because I don’t want that flight- “…then I shall take her place and attempt the first crewed landing on Minmus. R4 is merely a test to ensure that whichever of us goes actually gets there.”

“Why go there in the first place?” another reporter shouted before any other pony could.

A question I asked the brain bulls and Cherry only about a hundred times. “Minmus is much smaller than the moon, which is our ultimate destination,” Chrysalis said. “Its gravity is much lower, which means landing and taking off again is much easier there than the moon. Going there gives us a safer place to test our procedures for landing on the moon, when the time comes. The main difficulty in the Minmus trip is its much longer duration. If we can get to and from Minmus safely, then we know we can do the same with the moon.”

“Isn’t this Minmus mission just a plot to do away with your greatest rival for control of your space program?”

Two thoughts scrambled to push their way out of Chrysalis’s mouth at once: one, of course, was, How stupid do you have to be to ask me that to my face? But the other reaction surprised her even as she stifled it: How DARE you accuse me of wanting to murder my best pilot? Between the confusion and the inner struggle, a third thought, far too honest to give reporters, slipped out: “Knowing who I am, don’t you think I have simpler and cheaper ways of disposing of rivals than that?”

Scribbling intensified.

Oops, Chrysalis thought.

Somehow she got through the rest of the press conference without another slip-up, not that it mattered. That one line would determine tomorrow’s headlines in all the tabloids and at least half the more reputable newspapers… and, of course, every single television news outlet.

But as she gave anodyne answers to questions, not one of which addressed the peace talks, she thought: Why in treachery’s name am I upset that someone might think I would do away with the pony? Of course I will, when the time is right. When the moon’s power is in my hooves and the princesses lie defeated before me. I’m sure even these foolish ponies realize that.

So why did I get angry?

Halfway back to Horseton, she gave up trying to figure it out.

Footnotes:

(353) Trophallaxis had been the changeling who went in to fix matters when an infiltrator’s cover went sour in a very big way. His ability to fast-talk ponies enough to persuade them to release a prisoner or agree to payment plans rivaled the infamous Flim and Flam. The only reason he hadn’t been snapped up for the space project was that, for all his intelligence, he was one of the laziest bugs in the hive. Even as a larva he’d turned his talents on fellow changelings to get out of one chore after another, including classes. Putting him in any position of responsibility beyond talking was a recipe for disaster, especially since the other bugs, who hated him except when they needed his help, called him “Pukey” behind his back.

(354) Which was, she had to admit, very comfortable.

(355) And a lot fewer minutes than Chrysalis would have made Celestia wait, were their positions reversed.

(356) This bureau would be a minor headache for Chrysalis for some time to come, although to her relief she was able to limit monetary and material payouts. Most of the bureau’s work consisted of finding the infiltrator who had disrupted particular pony families and helping them put those families back together. On at least two occasions, on the other hand, the bureau’s actions led to the divorce of pony couples when the pony who hadn’t been kidnapped insisted that, given the choice between imposter and the real thing, the changeling infiltrator had actually been the more considerate and loving spouse. Of course the vast majority of cases tended the other way, but the exceptions both confounded and amused Chrysalis anyway.

It towered over everything except the Vehicle Assembly Building, and even that mammoth structure had had difficulty containing it. In fact, it cost as much to build as the first VAB did- more, even. With the next tier of rocket engines still not quite ready to fly, the ship had been built out of all the older style parts necessary(357)- plus every piece of scientific equipment they could cram into the just-under-nine-tons destined for Minmus orbit.

It was the single largest spacecraft any rocket program on the planet had assembled yet… and even now, the rocket scientists of Changeling Space Program weren’t at all sure it was enough.

Chrysalis could tell her people were nervous. The occupants of CSP Mission Control’s bullpen checked and double-checked projected trajectories. Dragonfly, manning the remote controls at the capcom position, ran through the system tests with more alertness and care than Chrysalis could ever remember her demonstrating before. Occupant, wearing a shiny new white vest with a paisley print back, openly fidgeted as he went down the checklists.

All of them seemed edgy to the changeling queen, but she hoped her tour group of reporters and minor dignitaries didn’t notice. They didn’t seem to. The ponies and other creatures sharing the VIP gallery with her had their eyes glued to the telepresence screen showing the huge, overcomplicated spacecraft. Like the thousands of spectators in the grandstands outside, they had come to see a rocket launch- not to watch some changelings and minotaurs bumbling about in a large room full of desks.

The final go / no go calls were made.

Fiddlewing’s clear-out sound shrieked across the space center grounds.

Dragonfly moved her hooves, activating the probe computer, engaging its SAS module, and setting throttle on the liquid fuel engines to eighty percent.

Chatter in the VIP balcony went silent as the ponies and other dignitaries leaned forward in their seats, listening to the timekeeper count backwards slowly towards zero.

Zero came, and with it smoke, flame, and motion. A few seconds later sound joined these, thunder loud enough to shake the Mission Control building and rattle the grandstands outside- the sound of six liquid fuel rocket engines and four solid-fuel boosters igniting simultaneously for the first time in Equus’s space flight history.

Mission R4 took to the skies, slowly at first but with an inexorable acceleration.

Once the thunder of the initial launch faded, Chrysalis could hear the chatter of the mission control room relayed through the speakers into the little glass room.

“Having trouble holding attitude fifteen by eighty-three, Flight. Something’s producing a marked westwards rate.”

“I see it. Booster? Any comment?”

“Could be imbalance in the ship design or drag in the payload assembly. Without the fairings every little bump on the ship produces turbulence.”

“Two hundred ninety meters per second at thirty seconds. One point five gees.”

“Thirty seconds to max Q.”

“Flight, this ship is even more squirrelly than in the simulators. She’s fighting me every inch of the way up.”

“I see that, Capcom. Do your best. We really need it on prograde for staging.”

“Working on it, Flight. Wow, it’s fighting me.”

“Getting a slight shimmy in the first stage liquid boosters, Flight.”

“Okay. Anything we need to worry about?”

“Probably not. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

“Coming up on max Q. One point eight gees and climbing.”

And then, for the ears of the VIPs and press alone, a new voice cut over the mission control chatter- a deep, confident voice, that of a changeling Chrysalis had personally selected for this specific task.(358) “At one minute into launch, Mission R4 is on trajectory and schedule, approaching Max Q. Max Q is the point at which aerodynamic forces are greatest during launch. Shortly after Max Q the ship will stage, ignite its second stage engines, and go to full acceleration.”

The speakers switched back to the Mission Control headset circuit just in time for Dragonfly to say, “Okay, I’ve got her back inside the prograde circle, but I can’t hold her there!”

“Max Q. Coming up on first stage burnout.”

“Speed and trajectory within acceptable limits.”

The solid boosters and the liquid fuel engines burned out within a second of each other.

“Burnout! Staging now!”

On the screen, the lower quarter of the massive tangle of rockets appeared to drop off… and to collapse in on itself. A huge explosive cloud engulfed the lower part of the remaining rocket. Half the VIPs gasped with shock, Chrysalis possibly among them(359).

And then Mission R4 put the cloud behind it, three Swivel engines spewing white-hot plasma, the ship swaying back and forth for a moment before slowly, carefully, bending towards an easterly trajectory.

“Second stage shows three good engines, no fuel or oxidizer loss,” the voice of Warner von Brawn called from the bullpen. “All systems go for orbit!”

“What caused that?” Occupant asked.

“Drag from the main ship drew the loose stage components together,” von Brawn said. “Residual fuel in the tanks detonated. But nothing appears to have struck the second stage hard enough to penetrate the outer shell.”

“Flight, Capcom.”

“Go, Capcom.”

“The outer fuel tanks are burning a lot faster than I remember them going down in the sims,” Dragonfly said. “Did we mess up on programming somewhere?”

“No fuel or oxidizer leaks,” von Brawn reported.

“Tracking still shows us within parameters,” George Bull answered. “But the simulator does have an ongoing problem with optimistic fuel consumption rates.”

“We have more than enough to get to orbit and to Minmus’s sphere of influence,” von Brawn added. “But we may have to tap into the landing stage earlier than we anticipated.”

“Well, at least the ride’s smoothing out now,” Dragonfly said. “It isn’t trying to jump out of its prograde anymore.”

“Almost certainly aerodynamic issues with the design,” von Brawn said. “We’ll revisit that for Mission 22.”

“Ten seconds to SECO,” George Bull called out.

“Confirm, Trajectory,” Occupant said. “How are we on orbital insertion?”

“We’re going to need a large insertion burn,” Bull said. “Stand by… three, two, one, mark!”

“Shutdown!” Dragonfly called out, and then, “Throttling back up to ten percent for attitude correction.”

“Ninety by eighty-three if possible,” Bull replied.

As the sky behind Mission R4 on the projection screen faded to the black of space, the ship began slowly turning to a fully horizontal orientation.

“Full throttle for orbital insertion in one minute, ten seconds,” George Bull said. “And I do mean full throttle. We’re not going to get orbit on what’s left in the outboard tanks.”

“All right,” Occupant said. “But we will get orbit, right?”

“No problem,” Bull replied. “We’re still go for Minmus, never mind orbit.”

The smooth, deep voice took over the speakers in the VIP room again. “At four minutes into launch, Mission R4 is now coasting up and out of the atmosphere. Its engines will re-ignite shortly to complete a circular orbit in preparation for its Minmus insertion orbit burn. This gives Mission Control one last chance to evaluate all systems before committing to the trip from Equus to Minmus.”

One of the VIPs- some duchess or something out of Trottingham, Chrysalis thought- leaned over the seats and asked the queen, “Pardon me, but I rather thought you lot were already committed to going to Minmus.”

Fortunately, even if she hadn’t been in a position to make decisions, Chrysalis had had plenty of time to catch up on the decisions that had been made. “Of course we’re going to Minmus,” she said. “But how much we get to do there depends on how good our burn is. This is only the third time we’ve sent a craft beyond low Equus orbit. We want to be able to make plans or adjustments now, while we’re close to home and still have plenty of fuel, rather than be caught in Minmus local space with no fuel, no power, and no way to get our results back here to ground.”

“I see,” the duchess said. “It’s like stopping the carriage just out of town to check your luggage before you hit the highway for Canterlot!”

Chrysalis nodded and managed a smile, restraining the desire to compare, in exact detail, the uselessness of Canterlot’s unicorn nobility with the earth pony aristocracy of Trottingham. Microscopes would no doubt be required…

“Ignition!”

“Confirm main engine ignition,” von Brawn called out. “Twenty-eight percent remaining in outboard tanks.”

“That’s a bit low,” Dragonfly muttered. “Go faster, darn it!”

On the projection screen, Equus below it, Mission R4 burned and burned hard, speeding up to orbital velocity… or, at least, towards it. Long before any periapsis marker appeared on the trajectory projections, the outer two rocket engines flamed out, their tanks having been drained to keep the center tank filled until now.

“Outboard tanks empty,” Dragonfly called out. “Jettisoning tanks.”

The sound of a switch on Dragonfly’s console going click echoed through Mission Control. On the screen, nothing happened.

“Um… guys? I mean, Flight, Capcom?”

“Booster?”

“Glitch in staging sequence,” von Brawn said. “Try it again.”

Another click echoed through Mission Control, and this time on the screen the nozzles of the lander’s descent stage slid out of the now useless outer parts of the second stage like a foot coming out of a slipper. The still-live center stack of the second stage flew neatly through and out of the dead outer stacks, not so much as bumping the loose metal.

“Beautiful,” the reporter from the Canterlot Herald muttered to himself, seated two seats down from Chrysalis.

Fool, Chrysalis thought. We were supposed to have an orbit already. Now with just a single engine, it’s going to take forever to complete circularization. And dragging the empty stages? That was more wasted fuel. This could be trouble…

“Nosing up slightly to maintain apoapsis,” Dragonfly said. “Just a little. We lost a lot of efficiency somewhere up the line.”

“Okay, Capcom.”

“We lost a lot of efficiency,” George Bull reported. “And we’re losing more. Center stack at seventy percent.”

“We still have orbit on this stage,” von Brawn mumbled confidently.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly replied, “but what about after?”

Fuel burned away. The arc of Mission R4’s trajectory continued to widen on the projection, until finally- FINALLY- a periapsis marker appeared on the far side of the simulated planet.

“All right, throttle down and prepare for shutdown,” George Bull said.

“I know, I know,” Dragonfly grumbled, her hooves moving along the controls. “She’s holding well… steady… aaaaand shutdown!”

Mission Control went silent for a few seconds.

“Confirm shutdown,” von Brawn finally announced. “Twenty-seven percent remaining in main second stage. Orbital angle is seven point two degrees offset from the orbital angle of Minmus. Orbital correction burn calculations are underway.”

“Roger, Tracking,” Occupant said.

“Oh, boy,” Dragonfly said. “How much delta-V is that correction going to eat up?”

“It’s a rather large discrepancy,” von Brawn said. “Four, maybe five hundred meters per second?”

“Can we afford that and still have a Minmus landing?” Occupant asked.

The large blond minotaur grunted. “Possibly not,” he admitted.

“Then let’s go straight there,” Dragonfly said. “Look, there’s two points in the orbit where the orbital planes cross each other, right? So why don’t we hit Minmus at one of those points? How long do we have to wait until the next one?”

“It’s an idea,” George Bull said. “I’ll work on that.”

Footnotes:

(357) At least, the scientists hoped nothing more was necessary. The Mission R4 build had taken everything they could put on the pad. Adding any more boosters would take the jumbled bundle of rocket parts from the unwieldy to the downright unflyable. There just wasn’t anyplace left to put more delta-V.

(358) His name was Tymbal. He got the job because, although he knew next to nothing about space flight, he could read and write Equestrian fluently and possessed a naturally buzz-free voice. Smarter changelings had given him a script of things to say at certain points, plus a runner to bring freshly written script pages if and when the mission went off-script. Tymbal didn’t understand a word of it, but he sounded like he knew everything and that nothing could possibly go wrong, and that was what Chrysalis wanted and needed out of an announcer.

(359) But since no camera was pointed at her at the time, she would deny it afterwards.

“At nine minutes into the flight, Mission R4 is in a stable parking orbit. Mission controllers are currently verifying that all systems on the ship are ready for the outbound leg to Minmus and calculating the best time and duration of the engine burn which will send the ship out there. This is Changeling Space Program Mission Control.”

The VIPs began to shift on their seats, some hopping off completely. “Do you think there’s time for a snack before the next bit?” asked the mayor of Tall Tale.

“It might be best to hold off,” said the reporter for Solid Television, after a quick glance to make certain he wasn’t currently on-air. “Once the ship makes its next burn, that’s all the excitement for the day. It’s a long way out to Minmus.”

“Really?” the mayor’s wife, an earth pony with a live stolestoat draped over her shoulders(360), asked. “You mean we’re not going to see the landing today?”

“No,” said the reporter, who’d read the briefing materials provided by Occupant’s assistants. “Possibly a week from today. Seven days, at any rate.”

“Seven days?” the Tall Tale mare gasped. “We can’t wait around that long!”

“And I never intended that you should,” Chrysalis said, substituting a soothing, friendly tone for the growl she really wanted to throw at the bubblehead. “We don’t want to bore our guests, after all. But anyone who wants to return when we get to Minmus is quite welcome.” Especially that magic rat-scarf of yours. It’d be very welcome in one of Carapace’s cooking pots.

“Actually, I wanted to ask a question.” That would be Leaning Stanchion, the earth pony who owned almost all the train lines west of Smoky Mountain. He also had some interests in the railways linking Appleoosa to the rest of Equestria, which was why he’d been invited. “What was all that business with orbital planes and adjustments? I didn’t catch a word of that.”

Chrysalis had to set her jaw a moment to suppress the urge to grin with larval glee. Ah, good, I know this one, I know this one! (361) “Well, as we all know,” she said, “the sun and the moon move in the same path across our sky each day. That’s because the moon’s orbital path lines up with Equus’s orbital path around the sun. But Minmus, when Luna brought it closer, was above the plane of orbit. So when it began orbiting Equus, its orbit was sort of canted.” She tipped a fetlock to indicate the tilt.

“Now doubtless Luna could have put Minmus in line with the sun and moon- in what we call a coplanar orbit,” Chrysalis said. “But we think she left it as it is now as a sort of extra challenge.” She revealed a couple of extra teeth in her smile as she concluded, “The sort of challenge we changelings thrive on.”

“Well, all right,” said Stanchion, adjusting his top hat. “But why’s that a problem? Can’t you just go straight there?”

“It’s possible,” Chrysalis admitted. “But going into Equus orbit first gives us time to cope with the unexpected things that crop up in all space flights.” Like, for example, the fact that Dragonfly completely blew the attempt to achieve an orbit coplanar with Minmus, as she was supposed to do. “And right now our scientists are checking to see what our options are for a Minmus encounter without first adjusting R4’s orbit to match the inclination- that means the tilt- of Minmus’s orbit.”

“And how long will that take?” the wife of Tall Tale’s mayor asked. Her neck-rat yipped its own inquiry. “Shmumkins wants more popcorn, bless him.”

Shmumkins. And I thought ponies could not get dumber. “To calculate the burn, not too long. There are only two points on the orbits where it’s possible- the points where they cross. But it might be some time before we can-”

Chrysalis was about to say execute when the controller voice loop cut in to the VIP speakers. “Flight, trajectory.”

“Go, trajectory,” Occupant said.

In the VIP gallery, various rich and/or important ponies scrambled back into their seats.

“We have a burn for a direct shot at Minmus with no orbital inclination adjustment,” George Bull reported. “But it’ll take everything remaining in the second stage plus a healthy share of the two lander fuel tanks.”

“Okay,” Occupant said, shuffling his hooves on his work station. “Um... sorry, but I have to ask, is this burn less or more than what we’d have to do if the orbits were coplanar?”

“Almost exactly the same,” George Bull said. “Maybe twenty-five meters per second difference. As it happens, we’ll be catching Minmus almost precisely as its orbit lines up with the moon’s.”

“However,” von Brawn cut in quickly, “we need to execute that burn in the next nineteen minutes. We can’t wait for a second pass.”

“Okay. Whoa.” Occupant took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, begin work on that. We’ll need to speed up the system tests for the outbound trip.”

“And get some snacks up here to the gallery!” Chrysalis shouted down through the glass.

“Yes, my queen!” Occupant replied, turning round and saluting.

Smiling, Chrysalis leaned back in her seat. It was a petty thing, and it violated mission controller voice protocols... but at least she’d been able to give one order this mission...

Footnotes:

(360) She’d been feeding it little tidbits all day, to Chrysalis’s quiet disgust. The thing had two beady black eyes, a tiny black nose, a tiny mouth of jagged teeth (the only attractive part of it, to Chryssy’s mind) and, presumably, four legs hidden under its unbelievably shaggy white fur.

(361) Again, Chrysalis’s unwanted downtime had given her both time and incentive to catch up on homework. In addition to pestering the busy scientists and engineers, she’d read every report related to Mission R4 cover to cover in her search for a Command Decision.

“... three... two... one... ignition!”

On the telepresence projector, standing out under the shadow of the planet behind it, Mission R4’s last remaining second stage engine lit up in a brilliant glow of plasma. The ship, partly lit up by the light of the rocket plume, began moving out of its parking orbit, hopefully outbound for its rendezvous with Minmus.

The hope came from the beings gathered in Mission Control, whose eyes were generally locked on the readouts showing the fuel remaining in the second stage, as it dwindled away.

“Ten percent remaining,” von Brawn called out from his station.

“Burn forty percent completed,” Dragonfly reported a little while later.

“Five percent remaining.”

“Standing by to decouple and to ignite landing engines.”

Each phrase of the exchange came some twenty seconds apart, but not a whisper, not a sound of any kind came between them. Up in the VIP gallery, even Shmumkins had stopped begging for crunchy little things to eat. The controllers and the witnesses all waited, watched, and listened.

And then, with a final sputter, the engine burned out.

“Staging!” Dragonfly said. “Landing engines ignition!”

“Confirm ignition,” von Brawn reported.

On the projection, shorn of the long fuel tanks and engine of the second stage, the lander and satellite continued the burn, two of the lander’s three Terrier engines firing at full throttle.

“Burn seventy-five percent complete,” Dragonfly said, her hooves frozen on her console, holding the remote-controlled robot ship steady.

“Landing tanks twenty percent depleted,” von Brawn said. “Eighty percent remaining.”

The velocity readout on the projection ticked upwards, far too slowly for any of the people watching.

“Burn ninety percent complete,” Dragonfly said.

“Stand by for engine cutoff,” George Bull warned.

“Fuel at sixty percent,” von Brawn said.

“Three... two... one, shutdown!” George Bull said, the last two words run together as a single word.

One of Dragonfly’s hooves blurred. “Shutdown!”

The glow of the Terrier engines on the projection faded.

“Hold heading,” George Bull said. “Trajectory shows a bit wide. Dragonfly, give me a tiny minimum-power burst.”

“Cycling engines on minimum power, aye,” Dragonfly said, wiggling the throttle. On the projection, the tiniest glow came and went in the landing engines.

“Again.”

Dragonfly repeated the exercise.

“All right, that’s good,” George Bull said. “The computer now shows a Minmus encounter with a periapsis of one hundred thirty kilometers- right where we need to put the satellite.”

“All right, good job, everybody!” Occupant said, actually slapping his podium with a forehoof.

And in the back of the room, the changeling known as Tymbal accepted a piece of paper from one of Occupant’s runners, gave it a quick read-through, and then turned on his microphone. “At thirty-three minutes into flight, Mission R4 is now on course for a fly-by of Minmus seven days from now. This concludes scheduled launch activities for today at Horseton Space Center, and we thank you for joining us for today’s launch. This is the voice of CSP Mission Control speaking.”

After turning off his microphone, he added, “Golly. I’m the voice for the whole space program now?”

“If you’re smart you won’t let it go to your head,” Dragonfly replied. “Trust me on this.”

With the microphones off Chrysalis couldn’t hear this last exchange, especially not while she was chiding the guests out to the commissary, the gift shop, or (preferably) the boat on the docks waiting to take them back to Baltimare. But if she had heard it, she would have told Tymbal to listen to Dragonfly. He might be the new voice of the Changeling Space Program(362), but the brains still belonged to her and her alone.

Footnote:

(362) And the voice of a great many other things, as well. The television reporters passed on word to their bosses of the announcer with his deep voice. Their bosses had also begun experimenting with playing music and other things on personal electric-powered devices that received radio transmissions and turned them into sound. Tymbal didn’t know it yet, but a modestly profitable future awaited him in the voice-over business.

“It’s pitching up- get back- get back- horseapples!”

The nav-ball began spinning on the control panel, lights flickering on and off in the little capsule. Then, just before Chrysalis could get to stronger language than horseapples, the lights all turned off. When they came back, they lit up the steady, still glow of launch standby rather than launch-in-progress. “Sorry, my queen,” Occupant’s voice echoed in her earphones, “but the computer said the rocket just broke into pieces from the uncontrolled tumble. That’s a failed sim, sorry.”

Disgusted, Chrysalis smacked the buckle of her flight couch harness open, using her magic to hit the latches on the capsule hatch. Even before she finished crawling out of the capsule she shouted up at the control booth, “What was wrong with that one? I did everything right!”

Up on the balcony overlooking the simulation chamber stood Occupant, Dragonfly, von Brawn, and Cherry Berry. The pink pony spoke first, saying, “It’s a really tough design to control. We're still having that problem where the rocket just wants to turn west.”

“You told me that two failed sims ago!” Chrysalis snapped. “I know that! I’m compensating! Why isn’t it working?”

“Trust us, my queen,” Dragonfly said, “when we say it’s tough, it’s really tough.”

“Big help you are.” Chrysalis got to her hooves and stretched. “Well, I suppose it’s your turn again, pony.”

“Not enough time before lunch,” Cherry Berry said. “And we have a Mission R4 meeting after lunch. Tomorrow’s the encounter, after all.”

Six days had passed since R4's launch. Chrysalis had spent precisely none of them lounging on an oxygen tank or poking her muzzle into random corners of the space program looking for something to command. Rumors continued to come from Baltimare that Twilight Sparkle and her friends were training hard for an imminent launch of the pink abomination, or as they referred to it, Equestria’s first dedicated reusable spaceship, the Amicitas. Giving up weeks of time waiting on Mission R4, weeks they could use training for Mission 22, made no sense, so Cherry Berry trained… and since Cherry trained, so did her backup pilot.

To Chrysalis’s mind, she’d merely exchanged the annoyance of feeling useless with the annoyance of physical training, impossible flight simulations, and poking and prodding by a changeling healer who had heard the queen’s threats too many times to be terrified into obedience anymore. That, in addition to whatever bits of hive business couldn’t be shuffled back onto Occupant or Elytron, and the occasional bit of schmoozing important ponies she’d rather stuff into a pod and forget existed.(363) She’d gone from enforced idleness to enforced overwhelming work load.

But, of course, that was the way space missions tended to be, so she didn’t mind. Much.

But there were limits, and Chrysalis fancied a half-day off. “Aren’t we all here?” she asked. “Everyone who matters, anyway. Let’s have the meeting now and get it over with. What’s it about?”

Von Brawn shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “Our original plan was to decouple the communications satellite after the combined package had achieved orbit, to leave it plenty of fuel for orbital adjustments. But since the landing stage is short on fuel, I recommend decoupling the satellite. It has enough fuel by itself to brake for Minmus orbit independently of the lander. That means the lander will save delta-V on its own orbital burn.”

“Okay. Any reason why we shouldn’t?” Occupant asked the room.

“Only a shorter lifetime for the satellite,” von Brawn said. “I believe it has enough fuel for its contracted orbit, but there won’t be much left for future orbital adjustments.” He locked his massive fingers together and stretched, his arms flexing under the minotaur's suit jacket. “On the other hand, losing the satellite before orbital insertion will give us a better baseline to determine if there’s sufficient fuel in the lander for landing and relaunch.”

“Okay. When do you want to do it?”

“A few hours before closest Minmus approach,” von Brawn said. “We need some time to determine the timing of both vehicles’ orbital insertion burns and to make sure both craft can operate independently. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“I have a question,” Chrysalis spoke up. “Is there any point bringing in the press for this? Either for orbital insertion or for the decoupling?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” von Brawn rumbled. “The exciting part will be the landing, and even if all goes well that won’t happen until the day after tomorrow.”

“Fine by me. Then do what you like,” Chrysalis shrugged.

Occupant blinked, then looked at the others. “I think that was an order,” he said.

“Good. Anything else?” Chrysalis barely glanced at the others. “Good. Let’s go eat.”

Cherry Berry raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you eat in the cafeteria?” she asked.

Occupant had already tied on a bib, and he looked at Chrysalis in clear expectation. “I’m not fussy,” he said. “Here is fine.”

Footnote:

(363) Three days after Mission R4’s launch, she remembered about the guard she’d stuffed in a pod and left in the closet. After releasing him and feeding him enough to put him back on his hooves, she shipped him back to the Badlands for cave-digging duty. She didn’t notice when, several days later, he was shipped right back by Elytron to resume his duties of making sure nobody stole the VAB.

Occupant stood at his station in Mission Control, the mid-flight controllers at their stations, the press gallery empty. Cherry Berry and Chrysalis were absent, training under the supervision of George Cowley, leaving the others to the probably routine business of turning one spaceship into two.

Probably routine.

“All right. Capcom,” Occupant said, trying not to look nervous, “go for satellite separation.”

“Right. Stand by.” Dragonfly reached over to a separate series of switches set up next to the main controls, installed specifically to wake up and launch the satellite. Using the usual staging system, it had been decided, posed too much risk of accidental premature decoupling. “Activating satellite probe core,” she said.

The satellite was Marked Knee’s responsibility. From his station in the far corner of the bullpen, he called out, “Satellite is awake and responding!!”

“Throttles all zero,” Dragonfly confirmed. “Testing satellite fuel pumps.” Another switch went click under her hooves.

“Fuel pumps show green!!” Marked Knee replied.

“All right,” Dragonfly said. “Decoupling in three, two, one...”

On the projection, a puff of smoke blew up from the tip of the spacecraft and dissipated into the void. The collar of the decoupler remained on its mountings, while slowly, gradually, the satellite on the lander’s nose drifted away into space.

“Looks like a good separation,” von Brawn said cautiously. “Recommend setting lander to automatic and assuming direct control of the satellite.”

“Okay, do it,” Occupant replied.

This took a few minutes. The control systems for Probodobodyne cores had been built so that CSP Mission Control could only control or reprogram one probe at a time. For missions like this, one ship had to be set to basically do nothing except keep itself alive before the controllers could talk to the other one. To make sure this didn’t end up with orders going to the wrong ship, or possibly to both ships, there was a careful, step-by-step checklist: confirm the current on-board program, set the lander probe to automatic operations, send the wake-up code for the satellite, run various tests to make sure everything’s operating correctly, and begin active operations. All of this took place on a lightspeed time delay of almost ten seconds round-trip.

To everyone’s relief, every step ran smoothly down to the very end, when the satellite opened its relay antennas. Once that was confirmed, Dragonfly said, “Okay, we have a satellite and we have a lander. But we don’t have ‘em in orbit yet. What comes next?”

“The satellite will reach its Minmus closest approach about ten minutes before the lander,” von Brawn said. “Twilight Sparkle designated a high orbit for the satellite, so its orbital burn will be shorter, and there will be a long delay before the next orbital adjustment burn to put it in its proper place. In the interim, the lander will execute a longer burn, dropping it into a very low orbit around Minmus, from which we may plan our landing.”

“What happens if something goes wrong?” Occupant asked.

“Well,” George Bull said, “the satellite contract required us to approach Minmus from behind to get the correct orbital direction. That means we get a small acceleration from Minmus as we pass by, according to Dr. Goddard’s equations.” The nattily dressed bull looked around and added, “Since Dr. Goddard isn’t here today, I can safely tell you that we call it the Old Bird Effect after him.”

There were only one or two brief chuckles, and von Brawn quickly moved in to fill the silence. “In practical terms, this means that if either vehicle fails to burn at the appropriate time, they will be flung entirely out of Equus local space, entering into their own separate orbits around the sun. A different trajectory could have brought them back to us if they missed the burn, but with the satellite contract that wasn’t an option.”

“Okay. So we have to get this right.” Occupant took a deep breath. “How long until the burn?”

“About two hours,” George Bull said. “I’ll have the burn procedures finalized long before then, for both craft.”

When the numbers came back, they were... worrisome.

“Is this the least fuel required to do this?” Occupant asked, gaping at the numbers projected on the wall.

“Gravity and momentum don’t change for us mere mortals,” George Bull replied. “We burn that fuel, or we lose the craft.”

By the time the burn was complete, the two landing tanks would have only about twenty-five percent of their fuel remaining. After that remained only the single tank reserved for the return flight.

“Okay, change of plans,” Occupant said. “We settle for a circular orbit for the lander for now. Once we get that, we need to talk about our options.” He sighed and said, “It’s time to talk about losing either the landing or the return.”

Two orbital burns later, the senior leadership, including Cherry and Chrysalis, sat down at the conference table. “Okay,” Occupant said. “We have the satellite in orbit with about one-third of its tank remaining. That’s more than enough to get it in the correct orbit.” He held up a hoof-full of crisp, new checks. “In addition, the Royal Astronomical Society has given us milestone prizes for fly-by and orbit of Minmus. So the good news is, the mission is fully paid for.

“The bad news is, the contract we have for temperature scans of the surface and near-orbital spaces is scrubbed,” he continued. “The contract specifies particular locations. If we went into polar orbit, maybe we could get the scans, but we didn’t. That becomes Mission 22’s problem.”

“We weren’t optimistic about nailing the target landing site anyway,” von Brawn rumbled. “We still haven’t scouted it.”

“So what’s left,” Occupant continued, “is the landing, return home, and all the science experiments the ship can do while on or near Minmus.” He tapped a sketch of the lander on the whiteboard. “The outboard tanks are down to twenty-five percent,” he said. “We don’t know if that’s enough to land on unaided.”

“Probably not,” von Brawn said.

“And even if it were,” George Bull continued, “we’d have to burn some of it just to get close enough to attempt a landing.”

“The center tank is full,” Occupant said. “We could ignite that tank and use it as part of the descent. But we don’t know if what’s left would get us off Minmus and back to Equus.”

“Possibly,” von Brawn said. “Based on our orbital calculations, Minmus gravity is quite low- a fraction of the moon’s."

“So, from where I sit,” Occupant said(364), “here’s our options. The lander definitely has enough fuel to make a low-level pass around Minmus, break orbit, and get home safely. We don’t get the landing, but we do get a lot of research and, more important, our ship back.” He tapped the center fuel tank again. “Or we land, using the central engine and fuel tank, and risk not getting the ship back. Some of the experimental data can be sent by radio, but we’ll lose most of it.” He looked around the room and added, “If anyone has any other possible plans for the mission, I’d be glad to hear them.”

Cherry Berry raised a hoof. “What if we could land, take off, and get back to orbit, but not home?” she asked.

“If we get to orbit,” von Brawn rumbled, “then getting home requires but little more delta-V. It’s not impossible, but it’s an unlikely scenario. We shouldn’t even consider lifting off from Minmus unless we’re committing to a full trip home.”

Cherry leaned back in her chair, thinking hard. “All right, but suppose we did it anyway?” she insisted. “Mission 22 could pick up the data, right?”

“At a cost of extra delta-V for the rendezvous,” von Brawn said. “I advise against it, at least for the first mission. Better to stay on the surface, transmit the data, and accept the losses.”

Chrysalis tried not to choke. So far as she was concerned, there wasn’t any reason to go to that little iceball of Luna’s more than once. Whatever magic power you could wring out of it paled by comparison to the power of the moon. It was only worth the trouble because it gave the pony and the eggheads a trial run for the moon landing- not for any other reason. Out loud she said, “I agree. It’s an unnecessary mission risk if we can radio the science home.”

“Anybody else?” Occupant asked.

This, Chrysalis thought, could drag out forever. “Look,” she said testily, “this is my space program, isn’t it? And the primary goal of the mission is to test equipment for Cherry’s landing, correct?”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant answered immediately.

“So if we don’t even try to land,” Chrysalis continued, “then the primary mission fails and we have to send another robot out there and waste another three weeks. While Twilight Sparkle is getting ready to launch her giant pink asparagus up in Baltimare!” She shoved the briefing papers in front of her away with a hoof. “We do whatever we need to do to get that landing. And we do it by making conditions as close to Mission 22 as possible. That means lowering orbit without using an ounce of the landing rockets. Just the return stage.”

Von Brawn actually raised his eyebrows at this. “And what of liftoff after the landing?” he asked.

“Worry about that if we actually land!” Chrysalis snapped. “If we bring back the ship, well and good. If we radio back some scientific data to keep Twilight Sparkle and the Royal Astronomical Society happy, dandy. But we went there to land a ship. And that’s what we’re going to do!” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “Now go make it happen. This meeting is adjourned.”

“Um, my queen,” Occupant said, raising a trembling hoof, “technically I’m in-”

“I said adjourned!”

“Yes, my queen!” The trembling hoof zipped back down.

Chrysalis left the briefing room, a spring in her step. That’s the way to be a leader, she thought. Cut through the blather and make things happen.

Whatever would they do without me?

Footnote:

(364) While standing.

“Stand by for fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Standing by fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Flight, we are go for orbital adjustment.”

“Proceed.”

“Orbital adjustment burn in five... four... three... two... one.”

“Ignition.”

Radio signals went out from the large transmitter dishes rising from the flat ground of Horseton Space Center. In a fraction of a second they hit one of the ESA satellites in geostationary orbit, which recorded and retransmitted the signal in a focused beam towards Minmus. The newly placed communications satellite there, still not quite in its assigned orbit, picked up the signal four and a half seconds later and relayed them to the slightly larger craft skimming the surface of the little planetoid at a mere nineteen thousand kilometers.

Within half a second of the time designated as the optimal moment for the orbital adjustment burn, the lander’s central engine blazed to life, just as it had for the first orbital adjustment burn several hours before. For eight seconds the engine burned, slowing the craft gently to an orbit that at no point rose higher than seventeen kilometers from the surface, with a periapsis just below ten kilometers in altitude.

Then the engine shut down, its fuel pumps ceasing, the little glow of plasma winking out.

Five seconds before, and over a million kilometers away, Dragonfly said, “Shutdown! Burn completed!”

“Acknowledge shutdown...” For five seconds everyone watched the screen. The telepresence spell didn’t have the limitations of lightspeed as radio did, but experiments in controlling probes via telepresence hadn’t worked out well, at least not so far. Thus, it took five seconds to see the probe receive the shutdown order, to see the little Terrier engine cease burning. It took another five seconds for telemetry readouts to receive the probe’s radio-transmitted reply acknowledging the order.

“Orbital adjustment confirmed,” George Bull said at length. “Good burn, no adjustment required. We have a safe parking orbit above Minmus.”

Sighs of relief went around the room. “Okay,” Occupant said. “Dragonfly, run all the experiments for low orbit and transfer the data to the storage can.” The storage can was a new bit of equipment for when a mission didn’t have an astronaut on board; the probe could send data recordings in detail to the can, where recording media would hold much more data than either CSP or ESA knew how to transmit and receive over radio links.(365) Mission R4’s data storage unit already held the data from experiments taken on the way down from high Minmus orbit, and a few minutes later the same experiments were repeated, recorded, and sent to join the previous batch.

While this was done, no one mentioned the single most important fact from the two orbital adjustment burns: the central engine and its isolated fuel tank still held well over eighty-five percent of its fuel.

But once the science was done, someone needed to speak up, and eventually it dawned on Occupant that that someone had to be him. As flight director, he was the one, Chrysalis notwithstanding, who made the final call on all flight issues. And the fact that they had used very little fuel to get a close orbit at a surprisingly low velocity changed the situation. “Okay, um, Flight to all stations,” he said. “Um, given the, um, the lots of fuel still in the return stage, I want a go or no-go for reactivating the landing engines and going for landing.”

“Vehicle is go, Flight,” von Brawn said.

“Trajectory go,” added George Bull.

“Systems are all go!!” Marked Knee added.

“Capcom is go,” Dragonfly said.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Now I have another question. If we get a good landing, are we go or no-go for liftoff and return to Equus? Trajectory?”

“In light of the orbital adjustments and our low orbital velocity,” George Bull said, “I’d say we’re very go, provided we don’t slip up on the way down.”

“The algorithm we set for the probe should be able to deal with the terminal phase of the landing!!” Marked Knee said. “But if we can pick out a flat location, that would be for the best!!”

Occupant looked at the telepresence projection, which showed what looked like an enormous frozen lake behind and below the lander. “I think that won’t be a problem,” he said. “Anybody else?”

No takers.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Then we’ll go for landing and return tomorrow. Everybody make sure the craft is secure. Then check on the satellite and calculate the next orbital adjustment burn for that. We need to know the timing on that. I’ll talk with the queen so she can make the announcement.”

Footnote:

(365) Remember that radio, for Equestria, is still an incredibly new invention. Although audio recordings, speakers and microphones have been in common usage for a century, the possibilities of radio passed the ponies by until the advent of magic-powered television inspired certain musically inclined entrepreneurs to explore the potential of the electronic-only technology. Electronic television hasn’t even been conceived of yet, at least not at this point in our narrative.

The morning dawned with bustle and activity at Horseton Space Center, almost as much as if an actual launch were scheduled for the day. A dozen unicorns poured extra magic into the telepresence spell, sending immense copies of its images into the air in front of the spectator stands outside the VAB. Boats and ships crowded Muck Lake, despite the fact that none of them could get close enough to see the relay screens. And the VIP gallery had filled with the better class of VIP, most notably Celestia, Luna, and Twilight Sparkle. The press and their cameras had actually been exiled to untenanted stations on the Mission Control floor- with the strict understanding that they were to remain absolutely silent until operations were concluded.

And with Cherry Berry having chosen to take a seat on the Mission Control floor, Chrysalis found herself in the center of the VIP hubbub, with reporters asking her for quotes and for information(366), with Twilight Sparkle babbling away ninety to nothing about this or that scientific marvel, and with various lesser celebrities greeting her with politeness and gritted teeth(367).

Even Luna dropped a line of conversation Chrysalis’s way, at a point when Twilight Sparkle was too busy with quill and paper to keep up her babble. “I confess,” she said quietly, “I have never seen one of my stars like this before. I can feel it out there...” She reached a hoof up and batted at the air, as if reaching for the distant little world. “I can feel it, but I never envisioned it. It is... quite strange.”

“It’s quite the experience for me as well, princess,” Chrysalis said politely. The lumpy ice ball which Luna had named “the little mouse” centuries ago looked like nothing Chrysalis had imagined or could have imagined. The eggheads had claimed that its just-below-freezing temperatures were maintained by a very delicate balance between the sun’s rays and the extremely high reflectivity of the tiny moon’s surface. Twilight Sparkle said something about “albedo”, which Chrysalis had thought was that stupid party game where you had to walk on your hind legs, bent backwards, under a pole.(368)

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, had called it a scoop of mint ice cream in the hearing of two changelings, and now half the hive was asking whether the little moon was good to eat.

“I suppose it is,” Luna said quietly. “Today you have the entire land on a string. Every pony in Equestria must be wondering what you are doing this day.”

I’m laying the foundations for your downfall and removal, Chrysalis thought. Perhaps I shall banish you to Minmus once I have your moon under my power, and once Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Cadance, Discord, and whoever else are dealt with. “But of course,” she said aloud. “It’s only natural to be curious about the future. And that’s what this entire enterprise is about- exploring the future of all Equus.”

Luna shot Chrysalis a suspicious glance and went silent, which suited Chrysalis fine. Her little line had caught the attention of the four newspaper reporters who’d been permitted to retain their seats despite the demands by VIPs(369). She could hear their pencils scribbling away, and it gave her a little warm feeling in the frosty depths of her heart.

Unfortunately, Twilight Sparkle’s quill had stopped scribbling. “This is so amazing!” she cried out for about the forty-sixth time. “Who could have imagined, two years ago, that we would be able to send a machine to visit another world?”

“For my part, Twilight,” Celestia said, “I’m glad it’s only a machine in there. That’s a very risky journey for a pony to make.” Thus far, aside from greeting Chrysalis when they met that morning, Celestia hadn’t addressed a single word directly to her. She said quite a bit when Twilight’s jaw paused in its waggling, but Chrysalis couldn’t quite make up her mind if the sun princess’s little quips were directed at her, at her protege, or were really just honest expressions of her own feelings.(370)

“And yet,” the queen said, acting as if she and not Twilight had been the target of Celestia’s observation, “a pony shall make that journey quite soon, if all goes well today. Or possibly a changeling. Cherry Berry and I are both in training for that mission.”

That triggered a round of the same old questions, from the lesser VIPs and the reporters alike. Chrysalis smugly gave answers, many of which were less than fifty percent lie. Here and now she felt important again, as she ought to, being a queen.

Being the future absolute ruler of the world, she mentally corrected herself.

There was one niggling problem, though, one drop of spite in her delicious bowl of love: she didn’t feel like she’d earned this attention. Not on this mission. That hadn’t ever bothered her before- she’d taken credit for her subordinates’ actions many times before.(371) And the business with the peace negotiations and doubling down on the landing attempt had solidified her position as ruler of the changelings and head of this space program, thank you much. But it still bothered her... and she couldn’t understand why.

Of course, her mother had told her that no changeling was ever completely satisfied. Changelings weren’t silly, mindless little ponies, content with a tiny rut to guide their every hoofstep from cradle to grave. No matter how well-fed a changeling was, a changeling always wanted more... and a changeling queen more so than any of her subjects.

But this wasn’t that. This wasn’t hunger for more. This was... dissatisfaction, yes, but not the dissatisfaction of not having enough, not even the dissatisfaction of not wanting what one had. What kind it was, she just didn’t know... and not knowing spoiled all the enjoyment of this moment.

Fortunately, more enjoyable moments awaited. Already the countdown to the scheduled burn had dropped below one minute to go. The controllers on the floor tensed as the moment of truth came, as on the telepresence projection the little ship, the remainder of the colossus that had left Horseton eight days before, shone in the sunlight under an eternally dark sky.

A five second burn- five seconds, that was all- would put the ship on a suborbital trajectory terminating near the far end of a long lake near the equator. That would allow the entire length of the lake for a landing zone, in theory. The main obstacle to the plan- literally- was the over two thousand meter high bluff that overlooked the western end of the lake. If the craft came in on too shallow an angle… smash.

The timekeeper counted down to zero.

Dragonfly worked the controls, sending the command signals over a million kilometers away.

Five seconds later, right on time, the ship sparked to life, firing its engines almost invisibly, slowing down in its tight, lazy orbit.

Five and a bit seconds after that, the ship shut down.

And the gallery waited in silence, Chrysalis as tense as the others, for the word to come up from the bullpen. That word took entirely too long, and that itself told Chrysalis the burn had gone wrong.

“No joy on lake landing, Flight,” George Bull finally said. “The ship fired just a fraction too long. Trajectory shows us falling well short of the western end of the lake, on that large midlands region.”

“Copy, Trajectory,” Occupant said, all business. “What do you recommend?”

“If the ship had a pilot inside, manual corrections would be enough,” George Bull said. “Or if we had a larger delta-V margin. As it is, we have fifteen minutes to either abort or find an alternate landing site.”

“No,” Chrysalis whispered to herself, up in the VIP gallery. “We came to land, darn it.”

“Then let’s use the minutes.” Cherry Berry, according to protocol, had no role on the floor and no right to speak, but that didn’t stop her from taking charge. “We have fourteen minutes of safe coasting on inertia before we have to abort, and it’ll only take a tiny burn to get back into orbit. This is a full-scale simulation. Work the problem.”

Chrysalis growled. The pony was undoing in one little speech all the work she’d done to rebuild her image with the hive as its true leader. How dare that little pink-

“And remember,” the pink such-and-so concluded, “what Chrysalis ordered us to do. We didn’t go all the way to Minmus to turn tail and come back. We went to land. So let’s find a place we can land. That’s her orders.”

ooooooooh, that little pink menace was getting gooooood. She’d given herself a Chrysalis-shaped umbrella for her violation of protocols while, at the same time, backing up the queen’s authority and openly subordinating herself. She’d pushed to the edge and then pulled back at just the right time.

Ninety-nine percent of Chrysalis knew that it was accidental, that Cherry Berry didn’t want her job and didn’t care or even understand about power struggles and manipulating support within the hive. That Cherry Berry, even if she was the pony, was only a pony. But one percent doubt had kept Chrysalis in power for more years than she cared to think about.

You bear watching, my little test pilot.

Meanwhile the lander on the screen coasted onwards, gradually picking up speed as it descended at a very shallow angle towards the snowy hills of Minmus.

Footnotes:

(366) A little of which, by chance, she actually knew, and the rest of which she faked.

(367) When an equine grits teeth, you may be sure it is expert gritting being done.

(368) Equines from the planet Earth, for all their ingenuity in getting over, through, or around fences, are physically incapable of this feat, and even less capable of conceiving of the action as a form of sport. Even the natives of Equus tend to regard it as something best contemplated after about three mugs of really strong cider.

(369) If the dragon ambassador had been able to fit through the doors, those four reporters would have been out of luck. Fortunately for them, Ember had other matters to attend to, and the mighty elder dragon she’d given her VIP pass to for the event now perched on top of the VAB, crowding the television cameraponies and about a hundred pegasi and changelings to the very edges of the roof.

(370) The idea that the three categories might not be mutually exclusive, and that Celestia could be doing all three at once, remained forever beyond Chrysalis’s comprehension.

(371) The way she reasoned it was: since she had to pay the penalty for her subjects’ many, many, MANY acts of blind stupidity, incompetence, and well-meaning but disastrous enthusiasm, then she deserved the credit when they somehow failed to fail. That credit was bought and paid for, and therefore it was hers.

“We’re running out of time here.”

Mission R4 was still skimming above the surface of Minmus, its altitude steadily dropping all the while. Back on Equus, the mission controllers watched the screen and worried.

“Nothing but hills and valleys!” Dragonfly grumped. “Not a flat spot for ages!”

“We need to make a decision shortly,” von Brawn said. “In about two minutes,” he continued, using a control to adjust the angle of the telepresence spell’s view of the spacecraft, “the ship is going to plow into the side of that large bluff. We need a landing space now, please.”

“Huh...” Dragonfly’s voice trailed off for a moment in a contemplative tone. “The top of that bluff looks kinda flat.”

“But is it?” Occupant asked.

“It’s sure flatter than anything else we’ve flown over!” Dragonfly snapped. “And it’s a choice between that, the hills, or the valleys. And I’m not going to try to land a robot on a five-second delay on a hillside or in a valley!”

"Make sure to keep the nose above direct prograde as you decelerate," Cherry Berry said. "If you just kill your forward momentum you'll hit the ground before-"

“Fly up, fly up, yeah, I get that,” Dragonfly snapped. “I’ve only been flying ever since I pupated!” Her hooves flew across the controls. Five seconds later, the lander put its engines forward and down, firing not just to slow the ship’s forward momentum but also to stop it falling. “Flight, Capcom, request comms discipline be enforced,” she continued. “It’s tough enough not knowing what I’m doing until five seconds after I’ve done it. I don’t need kibbitzing!”

“I’m sorry,” Cherry Berry said contritely.

“Don’t be sorry, be quiet!”

“I’M SORRY!!”

“No more talk except for velocity and altitude call-outs,” Occupant said. “Trajectory, that’s you.”

“Copy, Flight,” said George Bull. “Thirty-one hundred meters above zero elevation and falling. Velocity at two hundred ninety meters per second and falling.”

“Flight, what’s the altitude of that bluff?” Dragonfly asked.

“Twenty-three hundred meters, approximately,” George Bull said.

“Right.” Dragonfly ordered the lander to angle its engines a bit more downwards. Five seconds later it did so, the engines firing more towards the surface.

“Three thousand meters above zero and steady,” George Bull said. “Velocity two hundred ten and falling.”

Satisfied, Dragonfly reduced the throttle on the controls. “C’mon, baby,” she muttered. “Gotta get over that last valley...”

The valley before the plateau formed an almost black pit below the spacecraft on the screens. The walls ran so steeply as to be next best thing to sheer. Even a soft landing anywhere near that hole would be disastrous for R4. The ship coasted on, thrusting just enough to gradually slow the ship and keep it at an altitude that would carry it above the top of the plateau.

“Thirty-one hundred meters above zero, slow climb,” George Bull said. “Velocity one hundred twenty-five and slowly falling.”

“Just a little farther...” Dragonfly’s hoof eased the throttle back another couple of notches.

Minmus’s surface crawled past below the ship on the projection screen, the dark shadows of the valley giving way to the bright, shiny plateau top.

“Twenty-nine hundred meters above zero and slow fall,” George Bull said. “Velocity ninety-five meters and falling. We are now over the target zone.”

“Good enough.” Dragonfly slapped the throttle open to full for a couple of seconds, then backed off almost to nothing, pushing the control flightstick forward and then re-centering it. “Go to activate landing program,” she said, carefully bringing her hooves completely off the controls.

“Landing program loaded!!” Marked Knee reported. “Setting listening mode! Landing program activation code sent!”

Mission Control went silent as Mission R4, up until now basically a remote-controlled device, took over its own flight operations for the first time.

The landing program that activated five seconds later in the Probodobodyne computer core of the lander was, in essence, as simple as could be imagined. It had to be- the computer had to land almost blind, and thus couldn’t make any real adjustments. It couldn’t even tell reliably where the ground was. The program told it to reduce speed to twenty meters per second, adjusting thrust to bring its prograde vector directly below itself, further reduce speed to a range between three and seven meters per second, and cut off the engines when it stopped descending. That was it.

The program wasted fuel. With hundreds of meters to fall, it would have been more efficient to just drop until a single full-thrust burn would bring its speed to zero just as it touched down. But the computer didn’t know where the ground was- didn’t even know ground existed. It could sense the input from the navigation system built into the capsule, and that was all it could sense. The long, slow descent threw fuel away by the wagonloads each second, but it gave the controllers five seconds and a million kilometers away the maximum opportunity to abort the landing if necessary.

“Descent three hundred forty-five by ninety-two,” George Bull said, calling out the coordinates on the nav-ball. “Descent eighteen meters per second.”

Dragonfly’s hooves, which had stayed off the controls for the switchover to internal control, went back to them now, just in case.

“Twenty-five hundred meters altitude,” George Bull said. “Attitude at stable one, repeat attitude at stable one. Decelerating to seven meters per second.”

In the VIP gallery, Chrysalis leaned forward along with all the others as, on the screen, the green-tinted snow began rising up towards the descending ship.

“Twenty-four hundred meters, velocity four point five meters per second.”

For a moment, the ship seemed to hop on the screen.

“Burnout on landing stages,” von Brawn announced. “Continuing on return stage engine. Fuel in return stage at seventy-one percent.”

“Twenty-three hundred meters, velocity three point nine meters per second.”

The building, the stands outside, even the ships in the bay, all went silent.

“Contact.”

The ship bounced, turned rapidly, and rocked back and forth.

“Contact. Engine off.”

The lander settled on its six legs... and began tipping over. The plateau, apparently, hadn’t been nearly as flat as it looked at first. Then, long after it seemed like the lander had passed the tipping point, it froze in mid-flop and reversed, righting itself almost, but not quite, to a vertical position.

“Six feet on the surface,” von Brawn said at last. “Ship is holding itself upright using reaction wheels at full power. We can’t stay long, but we have landed.”

There wasn’t any cheering. After a moment, there was polite applause from the VIP gallery and from the stands outside. But no cheering, especially not from the control room floor. The near disaster had turned anticipation into worry among the spectators, including Chrysalis, while below the controllers fought to keep their own worry subdued. The mission wasn’t down safely. In fact, if the batteries ran dry, the mission would fail immediately...

... and the reaction wheels which, through the power of torque, turned the ship even without the rockets firing, those reaction wheels were burning through electricity far faster than the two small solar panels could resupply it.

Success or failure hung in the balance of a space probe that wanted to fall over.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Dragonfly, get the experiments going and get them stored in the box.” He took a deep breath, then said, “Booster, can we get back to Equus with the fuel remaining?”

“We have to,” von Brawn said. “We absolutely can’t stay here. If the batteries go dry, we lose the probe. We have to launch before that happens.”

“How soon?”

“At current rate of consumption,” Marked Knee said in an uncommonly subdued tone for him, “seventeen minutes!”

“Whew. Okay,” Occupant said. “We have a little time, then. Booster, I need to know if the fuel on board is enough to at least get back into Minmus orbit.”

“Affirmative, Flight,” von Brawn said. “We can’t be certain until we drop the landing stages, but I believe we can make it back to Equus on what remains with a comfortable margin.”

“That’s good news,” Occupant said. “But we can make orbit and return the science data via radio transmission if absolutely necessary.”

“Affirmative,” von Brawn said. “But we can’t use the main transmitter for long streams on the surface, not as we are now. The batteries would drain to zero in almost nothing.”

“Right. Um.” Occupant thought a moment, then added, “We still have the temperature scan contract. We totally missed the landing site for the temperature scans, but we could still go for the aerial scans. Should we go for a polar orbit on launch?”

“Negative.” Von Brawn shook his head slowly. “We’ll be in better shape to fulfill that contract on Mission 22. With our current fuel levels, taking a polar orbit would require multiple burns to get a trajectory that brings us back to Equus. It puts return at risk. I recommend against.”

“Copy, Doctor,” Occupant said respectfully. “Capcom, we are NO STAY, repeat NO STAY on this landing. Prepare for immediate takeoff on equatorial trajectory once all data collection is complete and stored in the can.”

“Copy, Flight,” Dragonfly said. “Stand by. Temperature and barometic data already transferred. Just waiting on the imaging from the Science Jr. experiments.”

“I’m a little sad we couldn’t find room for goo cannisters on this flight,” Occupant muttered.

“We’ll have room for them next flight,” Dragonfly said. “What with not hauling a big heavy satellite along with us next time.”

“What do you mean ‘we’ and ‘us’?” Cherry Berry asked from the back row of the floor. “I’m the one who’ll be flying the next flight.”

“Data transfer complete,” Dragonfly reported. “Standing by for ascent burn.”

“Landing program cleared!!” Marked Knee called out. “Probe reports ready to receive!!”

“Go for ascent, Capcom,” Occupant said.

“Roger,” Dragonfly said. “Ignition.”

One. Two. Three. Four.

On five the lander on the telepresence screen lifted off, rising at an angle due to the uneven surface it had been sitting on.

“Decoupling landing stage!” Dragonfly said, slapping the staging button even as her other hoof wrestled with the control stick, ordering the probe to straighten up and come round to an easterly track.

The ship on the screen, after the usual five-second delay, split into three parts. The spent fuel tanks and engines, along with the landing legs, fell away, leaving only the central shaft of the much-reduced ship to fly up, straightening and then bowing towards the far horizon as it received its ongoing instructions from Horseton.

“Confirm staging,” von Brawn called out.

“Throttle to full!” Dragonfly said. “Let’s get this ship out of here and bring her home!”

Now the cheers, which had been withheld for the landing, erupted for the departure.

And much more quickly than it had descended, Mission R4(372) rose to the skies, leaving Minmus below it, burning for orbit... and then, after one loop around the lesser moon for course checks, burning again for home.

The celebrations moved out of the building and onto the grounds, into the village of Horseton, on board the ships in the harbor, and eventually clear back to Baltimare as the crowds dispersed...

... leaving four controllers- Occupant, Dragonfly, George Bull and Marked Knee- alone in Mission Control to complete the first of three tiny thruster burns which, over the course of as many days, would put R4’s comms satellite in the specific orbit requested by Twilight Sparkle.

Hardly anybody cared(373) about this last bit of business, and that was fine by the controllers. Their minds were already focused on Mission 22. They didn’t want any attention on this bit of minor orbital tweaking. They were busy with other things.

Besides, Mission R4 still had one final bit of important and dangerous work to do… return to the surface of Equus.

Footnote:

(372) Well, slightly less than half of it, anyway. The rest of it smashed itself to bits on Minmus’s surface.

(373) Except Twilight Sparkle, who actually made time to come to Horseton to witness the final burn... of three point seven meters per second, barely a hiccup for the satellite’s engines. But to her it was important. Even if it wasn’t her space program running the satellite, she regarded it as her satellite.

MISSION R4 REPORT

Mission summary: Fly by, orbit, and land on Minmus, collecting science data at all stages; insert communications / science satellite into orbit of Minmus; conduct temperature scans of specific regions on or near Minmus; return craft safely to Equus

Pilot: 2 X Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration: Ongoing

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First flyby, orbit, suborbital flight above, and landing on Minmus

Conclusions from flight: We found some things that worked and others that didn’t. We’re just about ready to send Cherry.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: INCONCLUSIVE

Author's Note

I originally intended to end this with R4's re-entry, but this chapter has been in a constant state of "mostly done, just editing" for weeks, and the re-entry paragraphs were so anticlimactic and underdeveloped I couldn't bear to keep them. The final fate of R4 will be the beginning of the chapter covering Mission 22.

Asparagus staging is a common thing in Kerbal Space Program- and, to a very limited extent, in real life rocket launches. The idea is, simply put, to dump fuel tanks when they're empty, the instant they're empty. The main drawback to asparagus staging in real life is that every additional booster, tank, engine, decoupler, fuel duct, fuel pump, etc. is another thing that could possibly malfunction... and the more of those you have, the closer the probability of a fatal malfunction comes to 100%. That's what did for the Soviet moon program- rockets that used over thirty smaller engines instead of a few large ones, practically guaranteeing that an engine would malfunction explosively and start a chain reaction that resulted, in one case, in the world's largest recorded non-atomic manmade explosion.

The "Old Bird Effect" is the Oberth effect. Stripped down to basic terms, it works like this: the gravity of a planet and the gravity of a spacecraft work on each other. When a spacecraft approaches a planet in one direction (behind it in its orbit, or on the outside track from the sun), the net result of this gravity pull is to transfer some momentum from the planet to the spacecraft. Approach the other way (in front of the planet or on the inside track of its orbit), and the planet slows you down.

Incidentally, Oberth effect is why the trajectory plot for our moon shots make a sort of figure eight. By approaching the moon at a point ahead of it in its orbit, less energy is required to slow down for orbital capture. There's also the side benefit- ah, but I'm saving that for Mission 22. Anyway, R4 did it the hard way because the satellite contract required a counterclockwise orbit.

Speaking of... flying this mission was MURDER. The rocket design you see here went through several revisions. I've used similar stacks to this for moon landings in past playthroughs of KSP. But this one, in KSP 1.6, seemed inclined to whip my ass.

The embarrassing thing is, the first five or six pics in this story were taken on what I intended to be a test flight... and during the flight I popped into the tracking center, forgetting that doing so would eliminate the opportunity to revert back to launch/VAB if another glitch popped up. But in the gameplay I had plenty of money available, so I just cancelled that flight without reverting...

... and came to regret it, as none of the TWELVE successive attempts to re-launch got to orbit. For whatever reason, I don't know why, the ship really did want to keep tipping westward, no matter how I turned it before or during launch. On the other hand, those failed launches nudged me to make a few adjustments to the ship to ensure that the first stage burned out more or less as a unit, making the ascent much more fuel-efficient.

This is the first mission I've flown using 1.6's new built-in delta-V calculations. They're deceptive as hell. And that's all I'll say about that for now.

Finally, the landing. From above, that bluff top looked flat... and on landing, it didn't look like that much of a slope. But every time I tried turning off SAS, the lander tried to flop over onto its side. I couldn't get it to actually rest on all six feet, and I don't know why. Given the circumstances, I treated it as a touch and go for the story, but I'd still like to know what was going wrong so it could be corrected for Mission 22... oh well.

Anyway, a few days ago I figured out that my monthly expenses (mostly debt service, thanks to the van, van repairs, and medical co-pays over the past year) were a LOT higher than my old budget. Hence, I'm starting a new updates-daily writing project to counter the decline in my Patreon (link: https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet ).

Details on the new project, whch begins posting March 1, here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/844653/stupid-sinus-infection-and-the-new-project-revealed

And please pledge to the Patreon, or give to my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet I need the writing to help reduce my debt and cover future medical bills (most important being work on my right shoulder, which has lost a good bit of my range of motion in the past year). I'm even thinking about backtracking and writing a Maretian follow-up focusing on the cave farm... but it's going to take some donations before I commit to that. I figured readers would prefer deciding what happens to the farm for themselves...

EDIT: Oh- and "bottle washer" refers to the lowest possible rung on the hierarchy chart of any scientific endeavor. It refers to a position that requires zero scientific acumen or actual responsibilities- as in, forget being the doctor, you're so far below the Igor that you need a telescope to see him. You clean up and fetch coffee, and you are to be regarded as slightly underqualified for even that. If a PhD in a research department refers to themselves as a "bottle-washer," they are indirectly praising the other people involved.

Chapter 15: Mission 22: We'd Be Happy With Any Data at All, Really

Seventeen days had passed since the immense, complex multi-stack Mission R4 had launched from Horseton and climbed into space through a massive ball of fire. Now the tiny remnant of that mission- the expanded capsule and the data container box- screamed through the upper atmosphere of Equus in another, totally different ball of fire.

That ball of fire happened to be on the other side of the planet from Equestria. That didn’t stop tens of thousands of space tourists flocking into Horseton anyway, eager to watch via telepresence the return(374) of the first spacecraft to touch, if briefly, the surface of another world.

And with the tourists and the self-important dignitaries(375) there also came the press, all of them demanding an exclusive interview with the pony due to go up in another couple of weeks. That annoyed the pony in question, who wanted nothing more than to get back into the simulators and practice for said launch... and wanted nothing less than to tell another woolly-headed reporter(376) for the ninety-second time her answer to the question, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll die out there in space?”(377)

Ironically, Cherry Berry discovered that the best way to be safe from any one reporter was to be in the largest group of them possible at once. Under normal circumstances the reporters would do anything in their power short of actionable assault to prevent their rivals from asking the great question that would deliver the all-important Scoop to the lucky questioner. But if that failed, Cherry could always pretend that the shouting from the reporters was too loud for her to make out any actual questions.

And, of course, if the crowd of reporters was stuffed into a balcony row above you and separated by a hoofrail, and further prevented from shouting questions at you by flight control rules, so much the better still.

Thus Cherry Berry stood at the back of Horseton Space Center’s mission control room, watching along with fifty reporters and cameraponies and thirty-one VIPs plus Queen Chrysalis while the controllers monitored the fiery descent of Mission R4.

“Steady on course for target periapsis altitude,” Warner von Brawn said from the bullpen. “No temperature alarms at this time.”

“How’s the apoapsis?” Occupant asked from his spot at the flight director’s station.

“Falling steadily,” von Brawn said. “Not as quickly as I’d prefer, though. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

The minotaurs had known when planning the mission that the Mission R4 capsule would return to Equus faster than any artificial object had ever traveled before- much faster than any prior capsule returning from space. The remaining fuel in the ascent tank after leaving Minmus hadn’t been enough for a fully powered deceleration into low Equus orbit, and so there had been no choice but to come straight down from Minmus. No abort, no second chances- nothing but a computer, a series of radio relays, a remote pilot, and an ablative heat shield stood between Mission R4 and destruction.

Knowing this in advance, the bulls had settled on a target altitude for descent, well within the atmosphere but nowhere near as deep as prior missions. If the trajectory ran too deep, the heating from atmospheric compression would overwhelm the ablative heat shield and destroy the probe. If the trajectory was too shallow, the ship would pass through the upper atmosphere and back out into space on a week-long orbit which might even hit the moon on its way back out. Indeed, if the angle of descent was really shallow, the ship would be bounced out by air resistance and sent flying on a totally unpredictable trajectory, possibly even out of Equus space entirely.

The bulls knew all of this, but they didn't really know where the altitude ought to be. They were guessing- they called it other things, but Cherry knew it was just guessing. Even after twenty-five launches, their collective understanding of the dynamics of the upper atmosphere qualified as next to nonexistent, as their consistent failure to accurately predict splashdown points of re-entering vehicles made clear. They'd even admit it themselves if pressed; this was one field of rocket science where Twilight Sparkle's operation outclassed CSP completely.

Cherry Berry watched every moment closely because, in a matter of weeks, the fireball in the sky would be her. If Mission R4 got it wrong, well, they lost a Probodobodyne and a capsule and most of the scientific data gathered from Minmus. But if Mission 22 missed its target coming home, Cherry Berry would be incinerated, crushed, or sent on a week-long round trip out beyond the moon’s orbit, with no food left in the ship. Any of those outcomes, of course, meant a Bad Day.

Cherry Berry did not intend to have a Bad Day, and the next step on her road to Not Bad Day Having was Mission R4’s safe landing and recovery. That meant the bulls had to guess right.

“Coming up on predicted periapsis,” old George Cowley called up. “Of course we’ll come a bit below that, since we still don’t have good enough data to predict atmospheric forces on trajectory. But it should have dropped a lot lower already.”

Cherry Berry looked at the velocity reading on the telepresence projection. Mission R4 had been in atmosphere, technically, for four minutes already. But even with air resistance slowing it down, the ship was still going much faster than the next fastest mission, the one she’d flown with Princess Luna as passenger.

“Descent rate just dropped below one hundred meters per second,” Cowley added. “Apoapsis five hundred thousand kilometers and falling.”

“That’s not fast enough,” Dragonfly muttered. “Ship stable on retrograde. Battery consumption zero point zero one percent per second.”

Cherry Berry nodded. That was actually better than it sounded, since the electrical flow readout couldn’t go below 0.01%. The system probably drew less power than even that. That gave the ship plenty of time either to land or to get around the nighttime side of Equus and back into the sun, where its solar panels could recharge the electrical batteries.

“Ship still descending at about fifty meters per second,” Cowley said. “Decelerating steadily.”

“No heat warnings,” von Brawn called out. “All systems nominal.”

“Periapsis!” Cowley wheezed. “Ship is now gaining altitude, repeat gaining altitude! Apoapsis prediction at three hundred ninety thousand kilometers and falling.”

A bit of muttering came out of the observation gallery. Cherry ignored it. The ship going back up wasn’t a failure, not yet. The ship’s velocity, and the resulting predicted apoapsis, that was the important factor. And so far, that sounded almost on schedule. Three hundred ninety thousand kilometers- two hundred fifty thousand miles- was roughly the distance to the moon, which meant, worst case scenario at this point, an orbit of less than six days. The important thing was, that was now the only Bad Day on the table. The ship obviously hadn’t skipped off the atmosphere. It wasn’t going to burn up either- not with the heat shield functioning as intended and the ship continuing to decelerate.

“Continuing very slow ascent,” Cowley said. “Ship continuing to slow. Predicted apoapsis below two hundred fifty thousand kilometers.”

On the telepresence screen the fireball and shock wave continued unabated, unchanged so far as the outside observer could tell. But the numbers next to the display told a different story. The ship flew only a little faster than an ordinary orbital flight now, and its speed continued to decay more and more. The display flicked over to the map readout; where the ship’s trajectory had once looked like a rubber band at maximum stretch, it now looked like a goose egg- shrinking down to a duck’s egg, and from there to a chicken egg.

“That bird’s coming down,” she said, and then jumped at the racket of camera shutters clicking and flash bulbs going poof. She didn’t know it yet, but That Bird’s Coming Down would be the headline of two of Equestria’s major newspapers... and, thanks to microphones in the gallery, a sound clip on absolutely every television newscast covering the event.

But if she didn’t know, she also didn’t care. Once she’d recovered herself, she walked over to the control room doors and left, not looking back. She’d seen the important part- important from the viewpoint of Mission 22, that is. She didn’t care about the parachutes opening or the actual final spot of splashdown(378). Mission R4 had survived and come down at the target altitude... and Mission 22, which would be virtually identical to R4 on reentry, would do the same.

So, that question was answered. Now Cherry needed to get back to work making sure Mission 22 got far enough in its flight to have that safe landing.

Footnotes:

(374) Or destruction. There is some cross-grained bit of most intelligent minds that, when watching a dangerous endeavor in progress, anticipates its failure as much as its success, if not more so. Or to put it another way: even if nobody wants a train wreck to happen, almost everybody wants to be there to see it when it happens.

(375) And a couple of actually important dignitaries, though their presence must be considered coincidence rather than by design.

(376) Since there are no sheep in the Equestrian press, this epithet, otherwise to be deplored, may be safely used.

(377) This is a question asked by reporters of astronauts in every universe that experiences a space race. The astronauts never give an honest answer, and the reporters don’t expect an honest answer, but they keep asking it. Possibly, if the Dumb Question Constant of the Multiverse were more closely studied, we would have a better understanding of how reality is structured than we do now.

(378) The South Luna Sea, well east of Hosstralia. Recovery teams had been stationed from Braylon all the way to Farthest Reaches southwest of the Forbidden Jungles, just in case. But the recovery ship had been stationed off the Adequate Barrier Reef, because Lucky Cricket had drawn that station out of a hat, and Chrysalis knew when to back a winner.

“Twilight Sparkle announced a launch date for their pink monster,” Chrysalis said.

Cherry didn’t look up from her work. Horseton’s Summer Sun Celebration festival had ended with the dawn; daylight this far south was too hot to allow for much in the way of festivities. And since the changelings were only interested in the holiday as a source of either food or souvenirs, it hadn’t taken much persuading on Cherry’s part to get the simulators up and running again. So, as she asked, “When?” she continued flipping switches back to their launch settings inside the test capsule.

“Two weeks from now,” Chrysalis said. “Four days after your launch. She said it would be a simple orbital mission to test the launch and landing systems.”

“How are they getting the ship up?” Click... click... click.

“The princess had this huge orange fuel tank built,” Chrysalis said. “I don’t know how she did it, but she actually managed to make that ship of hers even uglier to look at. Anyway, the fuel tank pumps fuel to the ship’s onboard engines. That, plus eight of our Thumper solid fuel boosters, are supposed to get that thing into orbit.”

“What do the bulls and Goddard think about it?” Click... click... click.

“I haven’t asked them yet. But if Miss Smarty Goody-Two-Shoes Twilight Sparkle thinks it’ll get to orbit, I suspect it’ll get there somehow or other.” Chrysalis frowned at that thought. “I don’t know why it is things always work out for you ponies, somehow or other.”

“The magic of Harmony,” Cherry muttered. Click. “You ought to give it a try.” Click, click, clack. “Done. Do you want the next session?”

“Some creatures strive for perfection, pony,” Chrysalis replied smugly. “But some of us were merely born that way. Take all the time you need.”

“Says the pony who isn’t going,” Cherry muttered.

“Pony?” Chrysalis asked. “Now what have I done to deserve such a terrible insult as that?”

“I don’t know,” Cherry replied. “Maybe you should ask your lawyer for the current list? Occupant, I’m ready on this end!”

“Not so fast, Occupant!” Chrysalis glared her subject into immobility, then poked her head into the capsule. “Don’t you have anything to say about the launch date?”

“Not really,” Cherry said. “Who’s going up?”

“Rainbow Dash and the pretty princess herself,” Chrysalis said. “Sparkle hasn’t even trained as an astronaut, and she’s going up! If she wants to be a tourist, she should buy a ticket!”

“I don’t think she’s going as a tourist,” Cherry said, strapping herself back into the test capsule’s flight couch. “I think she’s going as a last-resort escape system.”

Chrysalis froze. “Yessss,” she said quietly. “Rainbow Dash is too valuable to sacrifice on an untested ship... yes, I can just about see it... I wonder-”

“Don’t even think about sending a sabotage team to Cape Friendship,” Cherry said.

“And how will you ever know if I did, pony?”

“In order for it to work, you’ll have to send changelings from the space program. Changelings who know what to break and how. I know pretty much all of them, Chrysalis. And from me they keep no secrets.”(379)

“They would if I ordered them to.”

“They’d try to if you ordered them to.” Cherry gave the straps one good tightening yank and concluded, “Do you really think they’d succeed?”

Chrysalis grumbled, “I was just saying it was an idea,” and pulled her head out of the capsule.

The hatch shut with a slightly unnecessary bang.

Footnote:

(379) Cherry had been around the changelings at the space center long enough to figure out she didn’t actually need to question them about anything. When they thought they were among their own kind, changelings gossipped. Changelings didn’t chew the fat, they masticated the adipose tissue. And after more than a year of being not just a constant presence but a person of some authority within the program if not the actual hive, Cherry Berry had been mentally filed by the space program changelings as “one of us.” As a result, Cherry Berry had had a lot of practice in forgetting a lot of things she never wanted to know.

“Hey, look! It’s Cherry Berry!”

Cherry groaned. With the run-up to her launch, Horseton had flooded with space tourists, beyond the ability of the changelings to keep corralled in the guided tours.(380) She couldn’t walk between buildings in the space center anymore without at least two interruptions to sign autographs. But, since she thought of herself as a polite pony, she smiled, signed the autograph books, posed for the photos(381), and then politely excused herself.

But no sooner had she gotten free of one family than-

“Hey! Oooh! Excuse me! Excuse me!”

Two grown stallions galloped up to her. One was wearing the adult-sized Cherry Berry Brand Aviatrix Helmet (with Flight Goggles!) and a T-shirt saying I Rode the Fun Machine. The other stallion mainly wore a face that spoke eloquently of the depths of his embarrassment that he knew the first stallion.

“Excuse me, miss,” the stallion with the helmet said. “We’re looking for Cherry Berry! We heard she was here today! Could you tell us where she is?”

The other stallion groaned, reached up a forehoof, and slapped the first stallion in the back of the head.

“Owww!” The first stallion looked at the second. “What was that for?”

The second stallion stabbed a silent hoof at Cherry.

“Oooooooh,” the first stallion said. “You’re right.” Looking back at Cherry, he said, “I totally apologize. I forgot my manners. Would you please tell us where we may find Cherry Berry?”

Stallion Number Two groaned a little louder and administered a slightly harder wake-up tap to the back of Stallion Number One’s head.

“OWWW! Hey, I apologized!” Stallion Number One moaned. “Whaddya trying to do, mess up my helmet?”

Stallion Number Two gave Cherry a perfect See What I Have to Put Up With look, then reared up, lifted the cheap souvenir hat off his friend’s head, and plopped it on top of Cherry’s head.

Somewhere in Stallion Number One’s head, the penny dropped.(382) “Oooooooooh,” he said, “you mean she really is-”

“Just get your stupid autograph,” Number Two grumbled, “and leave the poor mare alone.” Then in a kinder voice he added to Cherry, “Sorry about this. Good luck on your mission.”

Cherry Berry smiled politely, signed the autograph, posed for the cheap disposable Breezie(TM) (383) camera, and tried to make progress once more towards her destination, the astronaut center kitchens where the mission meals were to be prepared.

She hadn’t got far before encountering something that looked like a changeling had got into a fight with a paint mixer and lost. In fact, as she looked more closely, paint was still dripping off the poor thing.

The colors weren’t bad, as colors went. The changeling had at least tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the turquoise of his mane-ridge, tail and wing-covers separate from the calming peach tone he’d chosen for his body in general. Had he had the foresight to apply the turquoise first and wait until it dried before attempting the peach, it might have worked. Instead, the colors were running together in rivulets that ran down the bug-pony’s body, defining every curve (Cherry was disturbed to notice) of his body and draining (even more disturbingly) into his leg-holes.

“Hi, Miss Cherry!” the changeling said cheerfully. “What do you think?”

“About what?” Cherry asked, hoping and praying against all expectation that she could avoid the obvious conversation to come.

“About the new me!” the changeling said, gesturing to himself. “Sclerite gave me the idea. She thinks the tourists will be less spooked and more likely to give us love if we look like ponies too!” He grinned ever wider, and Cherry squirmed as little runnels of paint dripped down his fangs and into his mouth. “I picked the colors myself! The blue stuff matches my eyes!”

“Um, they’re very nice colors,” Cherry said, the only polite and truthful thing she could say. “But, um, could I just ask you one teensy, weensy little question?”

“You wanna know where I got the paint?” the changeling asked. “Well, they’re having a sale at the general store in Horseton, so-”

“Nooooo,” Cherry said. “I was just wondering if you’d run this little idea by your queen first.”

“Nope! I wanted it to be a surprise!” The changeling actually looked proud. “I figure I might get a promotion out of this! Oh, and Sclerite too, just to be-”

Cherry’s restraint snapped. She grabbed the sticky changeling’s shoulders with her forehooves and shook hard enough to send paint drops flying. “ARE YOU SUICIDAL??” she asked.

“Hey! HEY!” The changeling managed to get loose from Cherry’s grip(384). “What do you mean by suicidal?” Confusion turned to worry. “You mean you think the queen won’t like it?”

No, Cherry thought, I mean she’ll think you stepped out of the nightmare she described to me once, in detail, and pound you into paste in a fit of panic. But I can’t tell you that, because I promised not to tell anypony else... “It’s always a bad idea to surprise Chrysalis,” she said instead. “You’ve known her longer than I have, you should know that.”

“You spend more time around her than I do,” the changeling pointed out.

“Well,” Cherry said, “for now, let’s go wash off that paint-”

“Shan’t,” the changeling said flatly. “I like my new look. It feels like this is who I am under the chitin. And besides, it matches the wings. Look!” The changeling opened his wings, which Cherry noticed didn’t have a single hole in them(385). And they glittered almost as much as Luna’s star-filled ethereal mane.

Cherry rolled her eyes. Maybe not suicidal, she thought, but suicidally stupid. “Look,” she said, “you’re a changeling. A shape-shifter. Why didn’t you just shape-shift into a pony, if you want ponies to be calm around you?”

“I’m tired of hiding who I am,” the changeling whined. “I mean yeah, the first time you go on an infiltration mission is really exciting, and there’s this thrill about fooling ponies and maybe getting caught...” He sighed and finished, “But it gets old, you know? And being scary isn’t as much fun as the queen makes it seem like.”

“Okay, fine,” Cherry said. “But you need to let Chrysalis know about your idea before you show her the new, the new... I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Lepid, Miss Cherry.”

“Lepid. Nice name.” Cherry took a deep breath. “Lepid, there will come a day before too long when anypony, or anyling, can show to the world who they really are, without fear. Within reason, I mean.” To be perfectly honest, she was quite happy with Chrysalis not showing the world who she really was. Fake Chrysalis was much nicer to be around, and Real Genuine Authentic Brutal and Possibly Genocidal Dictator Chrysalis... well, Cherry hoped that Chrysalis would be very afraid of showing her true self in public. “And if you want to live to see that nice and happy day, you’ll come with me right now to the infirmary so they can get that paint off of you before your queen sees it and murders you. I’m not fooling about this, Lepid.”

“You really think-”

“Without even pausing to think about it,” Cherry said. “And you know as well as I do she wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.”

“Awww... okay.” The defeated changeling hung his head. “I guess it’s just as well. My tummy’s been aching ever since this morning.”

Cherry watched more runny paint run into the changeling’s mouth as he talked. “Um,” she said, “did you make sure the paint you bought is non-toxic?”

The changeling looked at Cherry in confusion. “Would ponies really sell toxic paint?” he asked. "I mean, what would happen if somebody just happened to come by and take a bite of some pony's house?"

“Right,” Cherry sighed. She wasn’t getting to the kitchen until after lunch. “Come on. To the infirmary. You have a date with some paint remover... and a stomach pump.”

"It just seems irresponsible, is all I'm saying," Lepid muttered as Cherry began dragging him off.

Footnotes:

(380) The large numbers were helped along in no small part by the simple fact that most of Equestria had no idea just how hot Horseton really was in summertime. The owners of both Horseton’s brand-new hotels, the old tavern and inn in the original village, and the changelings who rented out the unoccupied astromare quarters for special guests had no inclination whatever to pass on this information... at least not until the nonrefundable charges were in the bank, in the safe, under the mattress, or buried in a mayonnaise jar out back midway between two cypress trees.

(381) Cherry still didn’t quite know how she felt about the cheap little fake aviator helmets with goggles the gift shop had begun selling to the foals and fillies who visited. Four times she’d marched into the shop to demand they be taken off the shelves as having nothing to do with actual space flight, and four times she’d been silenced by the young ponies eagerly trying them on and making woosh woosh flying noises. After the fourth time, when one of the fillies was a pegasus- trotting along the floor on her hind legs, spreading her forelegs like wings, and going whoosh whoosh along with the other kids- she’d given up. But she still wanted to say something every time she posed alongside a grown pony wearing the things...

(382) If you choose to imagine that the metaphorical penny inside Stallion One’s skull did not plunk so much as clang sonorously in the silence of the otherwise vast and empty space behind his eyes, the author will not try to convince you otherwise.

(383) Because Equus hasn’t got any brownies.(386)

(384) Hooves are not renowned for their gripping power, and the changeling was still covered with runny paint, so this wasn’t especially difficult.

(385) They did, on the other hoof, have quite a lot of paint splotches and streaks on them, even though the changeling’s elytra had scraped most of the loose paint off.

(386) So far as anypony knows, anyway. Not of the elfin variety. There are plenty of the baked-goods kind to be found.

“What do you mean, my menu is all wrong?” Heavy Frosting asked, a very dangerous tone to his voice.

“I mean, look,” Cherry said, pointing at item after item. “This doesn’t have any cherries in it. And neither does this, or this, or this!”

“That’s right,” Heavy Frosting said. “That’s because of a mysterious little thing I like to call ‘variety’. I’m putting together meals for twenty days. You’re going to be shut up in that capsule for at least fifteen. You’re going to need variety in your meals or you’re going to snap.”

“I need cherries in my meals or I’m going to snap,” Cherry insisted. “And don’t tell me you can’t get them. Cherries are in season in every orchard that grows them across Equestria!”

“But you’re going to get tired of eating nothing but cherries after two straight weeks!” Heavy Frosting insisted.

“I’m willing to risk that,” Cherry said. “Hasn’t happened yet, though.”

“I confess,” Rarity said, looking every bit as uncomfortable as Cherry Berry felt, “that I wish I could find some more... er... dignified way of doing this.”

The two of them stared at the newest edition of the spacesuit undergarment, which... well... left one critical thing to be desired. (387)

“And as inelegant as the solution is,” the white unicorn continued, “please bear in mind it is the best I can do while juggling the requirements involved. After all, the suit has to be chafe-proof, easily donned and removed in a tiny space, has to assist in temperature regulation-”

“Yes, I know all that,” Cherry said. “But it’s still a full-body diaper, isn’t it?”

“Well... there are inserts...” Rarity’s face curled up in a truly epic combination of disgust and regret. “Although the smell in the capsule will be... unfortunate... unless you find some way to discard-”

“Diapers.”

“And, of course, there is the toilet in your capsule seat,” Rarity continued.

“You mean the plastic resealable bag with germicide held under the seat?” Cherry asked. “Yes, I’m aware of it. I’m very aware of it. You could even say I’m outright fascinated by it, and wondering how the buck I’m going to-”

“Language, dear.”

“Sorry, Rarity.” Cherry pointed to the undergarment again. “But still. Diapers.”

“And sanitary wipes,” Rarity pointed out. “The lining of the undergarment is very easily wiped clean for-”

“Diapers!!”

Rarity gave up. “Yes, diapers,” she admitted. “I’m very sorry.”

“We shall endeavor to achieve an encounter which carries the craft over one of the poles,” von Brawn said, pointing to the design drawn on the whiteboard. “A polar orbit gives us the best chance for completing the temperature scan contract on this mission. The danger lies in this massif here.” He pointed at one of the images taken by Mission R4. “This rises almost seven thousand meters above the level of the ice plains. A low orbital pass as might be required for the temperature scans risks an impact. You’ll have to be aware of that at all times.”

Cherry gripped her pencil tighter in her teeth and made a note. “Uh-huh,” she grunted.

“Of course, if the burn goes poorly and a polar orbital insertion becomes unworkable,” von Brawn continued, “we shall simply launch into a polar orbit after landing. We would prefer not to do that, however, because it would complicate the return to Equus, requiring multiple burns to achieve atmospheric interface.”

Translated: it’d be a lot harder to get home. Cherry made another note.

“You’ll be provided with surface sample kits,” von Brawn went on. “Ideally you’ll land on one of the ice plains near the coastline, so we want surface samples from both of those points. More samples would be better, if it’s not too dangerous. We may even consider hopping the ship for this purpose, if you feel up to the challenge.”

Cherry let the pencil drop out of her teeth. “Sounds like my kind of fun,” she said.

Translated: it sounds absolutely suicidal, but it’s a kind of flying absolutely nopony else has done before. Therefore I am SO there.

“Wow, it really doesn’t take much thrust to stay up,” Cherry said from inside the simulator.

“I know, right?” Dragonfly commented from outside. “There’s next to no gravity there, apparently. I wouldn’t like to try to hover forever up there, but there’s a lot of leeway if things go wrong.”

“Like with Mission R4?” Cherry asked. “Two thousand and descending at forty meters per second.”

“I could have fixed that if it wasn’t for the time lag,” Dragonfly said. “Are you sure you’re gonna clear that ridge?”

“Hm? Oh, hang on...” Cherry tweaked the controls, and in the circuits of the simulation computer a phantom spacecraft tipped a bit more vertically for a few moments. “That should be enough.”

“Hm, yeah,” Dragonfly said, looking at the readouts. “But it pushed you beyond your landing zone. You’ll need to brake a bit more.”

“I’ll make it work,” Cherry said.

Outside the capsule, Dragonfly looked at Occupant, who shook his head and pushed a switch on the simulator’s master console.

Inside the capsule, the simulation entered the interesting bit.

Footnote:

(387) Technically two things: Number One and Number Two.

Outside, two miles west of her, tens of thousands of beings- ponies, changelings, dragons, griffons, minotaurs, and other creatures- had gathered in the heat of a Horseton summer afternoon to watch her launch. Outside technicians topped off her fuel tanks, performed the final checks on her ship- the fully charged batteries, the gimbals of the various engines, the landing gear of the landing stage, the scientific equipment, and the Probodobodyne core which could, in an emergency, take over for her. Outside reporters scribbled down quotes for newspapers, television faces blathered about the painfully obvious, and photographers used up enough film to make a couple of Applewood movies.

But inside the little capsule at the top of the enormous stack it was just Cherry, with a couple of tiny windows, a control panel full of switches and buttons and readouts, and Chrysalis’s voice in her earphones. She could hear the fans of her spacesuit as they cycled air in and out. She could feel the faint creaking of the ship, which reminded her with every little flutter of wind that the success or failure of her mission depended on whether or not a lot of changelings kept their minds on their welding and riveting despite all the many distractions changelings(388) were subject to.

The launch window for Minmus opened at sunset- meaning that launching earlier in the day would force Cherry to wait in orbit while Minmus trundled around Equus until her rocket and the little false-star were lined up for the planned course. There was some fudge factor afterwards, but launching as soon as the window opened gave you more time to fix problems if and when they cropped up. The days when CSP could just say “go” and launch a rocket were ending, and the days of precision launch timing and orderly countdowns had arrived to take their place.

Cherry wasn’t sure what she thought of that. On the one hoof, anything that increased her chances of still eating cherries when she was older than Granny Smith had her approval. But on the other hoof, part of the freedom of flying was the idea that you were free to fly whenever you wanted- just take off and go. She’d miss that, at least where it came to rockets.

The final two minutes of the countdown began, and Cherry got to work performing the final tests. She responded to each of Chrysalis’s call-outs for tests and readings. She heard Fiddlewing’s get-clear shriek at the one-minute mark, as the ground crew cleared out from the pad at top speed. She heard the pumps for the first stage engines, far below her, start up, churning, pressurizing the fuel lines in final preparation for launch.

She set the throttle to ninety-two percent. At that setting, held steady, the liquid rockets would burn out at the same time as the four solid fuel boosters. She activated SAS, shifted in her flight couch the tiny bit her straps would allow, and listened as the count trailed down from ten, to five, and then to one.

Her hoof struck the staging button exactly on zero.

In the first days of the program, a launch combined the heavy pressure of Faust’s own hoof with the vibration of a shake mixer. The vibration had remained, but not the absurd acceleration forces. Cherry felt only twice as heavy as normal as Mission 22’s altimeter began ticking up, as the engines struggled to lift the enormous mass of the spaceship into the air. This left her more than able to appreciate the ungodly noise of the engines behind her, only partially muffled by the same headphones that allowed Chrysalis at the capcom station to talk to her.

She reported her actions- tipping down fifteen degrees from vertical, aiming just above the due east line on the nav-ball, at ten seconds into flight. The ship responded smoothly despite the vibrations of the rockets, fully under her control, just as in every simulation. Of course, she thought to herself, the fun stuff begins with the second stage, doesn’t it?

By thirty seconds into the flight she was already flying faster than the speed of sound. The ship rammed its way through air that didn’t want to move aside, the resistance rising with the square of velocity- or was it the cube? Cherry could never remember- until, at a certain point, the ship would meet that magical point known as max-Q, where atmospheric density and velocity combined to exert the most stress the ship would ever encounter in the entire mission.

And by chance, or lax planning, or the simple hodgepodge design of Mission 22, max-Q came almost exactly at the moment Stage 1 burned out.

There had been options, of course: the bugs had finally been worked out of the next, larger generation of rocket engines, which were now in full production in Appleoosa. Mission 22 could have been flown with a single stack of engines and tanks instead of the bundle of explosive sticks Cherry was guiding into the skies. But that would have been an untested design, and Mission R4 had proven this design viable, with a few tweaks. Better to use a known and tested design than to risk the mission- than to risk Cherry’s life- on a new one.

At ninety-seven seconds into flight, right on time, the first stage burned out, liquid and solid fuel systems alike. Cherry held the ship’s nose steady, directly into the prograde circle on the nav-ball, and hit the staging button within half a second of burnout. The stage decouplers fired, and simultaneously the second stage engines lit, pushing the ship through max-Q and away from the disintegrating first stage, whose components tumbled, collided, and exploded well away from the still-rising ship.

Cautiously- very, very cautiously- Cherry began pushing down the ball again towards a more horizontal course. She still owed Dragonfly an apology: the second stage of this design wanted to tumble and spiral out of the sky at low altitude, no matter who was at the stick. It took a skilled pilot to make this design work, and after hundreds of hours in the simulator, and especially now as she felt the ship through her hooves, she’d realized Dragonfly was a pretty darn skilled pilot, after all.

Even now, even with design tweaks to better balance the ship and keep it from constantly tipping northwards during flight, the ship still wiggled in flight. Part of that was due to the ship being underpowered early in its flight; thirty seconds after staging the ship pulled only 1.5g of acceleration, though that was rising quickly as the ship burned through the fuel in its outer stacks. Without the same firm push of the first stage, the ship’s nose seemed to want to go north, south, up, down- anyplace except where Cherry wanted it to go. The SAS system kept things manageable, but Cherry didn’t want to think about what it would be like to try to fly the ship up without the stability assist.

And yet... despite her best efforts, the ship’s twitches added up to a gradual southern drift. The mission profile called for a trajectory a bit north of due east, to match Minmus’s orbital plane. She pushed the ship’s nose northward, well above the target, to correct, relaxing slightly as the ship’s wiggling diminished with the thinning air outside.

“Twenty-two, Horseton, stand by for SECO.”

Crud. That was too soon. SECO- Second-stage Engine Cut Off- at this point meant the ship’s apoapsis was at or near the target altitude for parking orbit, on a steeper than planned trajectory. Her course was still too southerly. That meant a fuel-expensive double correction on the orbital insertion burn, eating into the fuel safety margin. Granted, there ought to be plenty of fuel and to spare for the mission, but...

“SECO.”

Cherry shut down the throttle and called back, “Engine shutdown, we have SECO.”

“SECO confirmed, Twenty-two. Current apoapsis projected in two minutes thirty-seven seconds. Orbital insertion in two minutes mark.”

“Twenty-two copies, Horseton.”

Mission Twenty-Two coasted upwards through the wispy upper atmosphere, bound for space. Its sole occupant relaxed, considering the situation. There had been a goof-up, and it was minor. There was more than enough delta-V in the mission budget to correct it. The worst part of the flight was over, and the obligatory buck-up was behind her.

It looked like it would be a good flight.

Footnote:

(388) And, to be fair, ponies too. But particularly changelings.

Chrysalis pretended not to see the denizens of the bullpen going quietly nuts.

Cherry Berry- miss perfect pilot, miss can’t miss, miss steel-eyed missile mare- had screwed up. As they watched and waited, she was in the process of badly over-correcting her trajectory, tilting the final orbit well above what was desired for a shot at Minmus. It wasn’t a disaster- just something that required the minotaur eggheads to completely recalculate the burns for Minmus insertion now that the old plans were totally useless.

They’d asked her to tell the pony to stop the burn and readjust. Chrysalis had refused. She’d learned to tell the difference between the pony pretending to be calm and the pony actually relaxed. Right now she was in her happy place, and considering she’d be up in space for two weeks to come, Chrysalis wanted her kept in her happy place. If that meant burning a little unnecessary fuel, fine by her. Occupant had had the good sense not to try to override her. She’d let him be in charge just as long as he did what she wanted him to do, and he knew it.

Finally, she heard the pony’s squeaky voice: “Shutdown! Horseton, we have orbit, repeat we have orbit.”

Chrysalis double-checked the projection on the wall. “Orbit confirmed, Twenty-two,” she drawled. “Good work.” And, indeed, it was a very good orbit- even Chrysalis had to admit it. Apoapsis and periapsis were within a kilometer of one another- an almost perfectly circular orbit. The fact that it was eleven degrees more inclined than it ought to have been was, to be frank, a minor detail.

But now it was time to deliver the bad news, wrapped in as much sugar as she could manage... and a changeling queen knew how to ladle on the sugar when desired. “Unfortunately I’m afraid you’ve overshot the target orbital inclination a bit,” she continued. “But Trajectory tells me that actually works out to our advantage, since it makes a polar orbital insertion over Minmus much easier.”

She noticed George Bull’s head pop up from the huddle, staring at her with betrayal written all over his face. She switched off her microphone long enough to say, “Make it work!” before switching it back on and continuing, “We’ll have two burns calculated for you in a couple of minutes. Stand by, Twenty-two.”

“Copy, Horseton. Twenty-two standing by.”

Chrysalis switched the mike off again and said, “All right, geniuses. Make it happen.”

“Do you realize you’re asking us to rewrite the laws of motion- of physics itself- for your convenience?” George Bull asked. “Just so Miss Berry won’t feel bad?”

“That’s exactly what I’m asking,” Chrysalis replied coolly. “You get paid the big bucks to work miracles. Well, now it’s miracle time. Get cracking.”

“Well...” von Brawn rumbled from his station. “We’d have to go on this orbit- no parking orbit for final testing- but bringing down the orbital inclination will also get us extra velocity... we’ll have to use the same delta-V for the trans-Minmus injection, but... Dr. Bull, come here and check my calculations.”

The other minotaurs- George Bull, George Cowley, and Marked Knee- gathered around their leader. “It looks correct,” George Bull said cautiously.

“I shall test it immediately!!” Marked Knee said, jotting down some numbers and then rushing back to his trajectory calculation computer.

“Well?” Chrysalis asked.

“If this checks out,” von Brawn said, “the new intercept for Minmus will take a faster trajectory. We’ll have to burn a bit more juice to slow down, but it looks like we’ll shave a whole day or more off the outbound leg.”

“It eats most of the delta-V we saved from not having a satellite on board this trip,” George Bull grumbled. “The second landing is looking a bit iffy after this. We’ll have to see how the orbital insertion burn goes.”

“If we have the fuel to do it, let’s do it,” Chrysalis insisted. “One day less in space is one day sooner she comes home, right?” And, she thought to herself, one day sooner we drop this stupid side-issue and focus on the real job. One day closer to my hooves touching the moon.

“Um, yeah,” Occupant said quietly. “Sounds good to me, too. How soon can we have the burn procedure?”

“The first burn is straightforward,” von Brawn said. “We can send her that now. The second burn... we have twenty-eight minutes before that, and we want to use all of that double-checking it.”

“Fine-tuning, too,” George Bull said. “The closer the ship comes to Minmus the better. Less fuel used in lowering the orbit.”

“Okay,” Occupant said. “My queen-”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Chrysalis said testily. “Von Brawn, give me that burn info.”

The sun came up over the rim of Equus.

By now Horseton, below and behind her, lay in darkness, the princesses of sun and moon having done their jobs to keep Equus’s orbital system semi-stable. Below and ahead of her lay the Fillypine island chain. And above Cherry Berry lay the rest of creation, and in a few short minutes she would be headed for it.

“Okay, Twenty-Two, we’ve confirmed a good correction burn,” Chrysalis said. “We’re feeding your navball the target now for the trans-Minmus insertion burn. This one will require a burn to burnout of the central second stage, which should take two minutes thirteen seconds, followed by a full burn of the landing stage for thirty-one seconds.”

“Burn to empty on second stage, thirty-one seconds on landing stage,” Cherry repeated. She punched keys on the number pad, entering the times into the ship’s computer.(389)

“After that we’ll burn at minimum throttle to adjust trajectory to bring you as close to Minmus as possible,” Chrysalis continued. “That’ll mostly be due anti-normal, with a couple of antiradial bursts to keep the trajectory from drifting too far left or right.”

“Roger that, Horseton,” Cherry said. “How long until TMI?”

Chrysalis’s voice muttered softly over the connection, something about a year and a half ago.

“Say again, Horseton, I didn’t copy that,” Cherry said.

“Trans-Minmus injection burn in six minutes thirty seconds mark,” Chrysalis said, a bit more clearly.

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry said. She looked back out the window, as the ship passed over the terminator and the surface of Equus lit up in its blues and greens and browns and whites below her. Six minutes, she thought, until I kiss that goodbye.

“Twenty-Two, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice said again after a moment.

“Go ahead, Horseton,” Cherry replied.

“What’s it like up there? We still have a lot of people watching down here who’d like to hear about it.”

Cherry forced herself to smile. Her face, she knew, was being projected on the wall of Mission Control and on a series of giant screens around Horseton Space Center for those who came out to view the launch. They’d all know at once if she showed exactly how much she didn’t want to do public relations babbling with an important burn minutes away. “Well, it’s space,” she said, frantically thinking of anything to say- anything safe, that was. “It feels like I’m flying under my own power, floating without a care.” Her smile became a little more genuine as she added, “Makes me feel hungry.”

“You can have supper after the burn,” Chrysalis said. “How’s the ship performing?”

“Pretty good, with the lower stages mostly gone,” Cherry replied, not thinking anymore about putting on a show for the people below. “It’ll probably fly beautifully once I ditch the second stage. At least, I’m counting on it.”

After a pause, Chrysalis asked, “Did you bring a good book? You’re going to be up there for a while, you know.”

“Actually, I left some good books with you,” Cherry said. “If I brought books up, they’d take up space and cost me delta-V. But if you read to me, I can enjoy the books without having them up here, right?”

This time the pause before Chrysalis spoke became very significant. “I believe you forgot to brief us on that one, Twenty-two,” the changeling queen at capcom said in a quiet voice.

“Oops,” Cherry said. “Well, I’m sure you can find somepony to do it. Get Tymbal, he’s got a good voice. And it’s not like he can keep saying, ‘This is Mission Control Horseton’ for fifteen days.”

"I can too." Tymbal's voice, full of pout, echoed over the comms channel.

“We’ll take it under advisement, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Two minutes to TMI burn.”

“Copy, Horseton.” There. PR over, back to work. Cherry checked the target marker, lit up in dark blue on the light-blue navball, and carefully steered the ship on its reaction wheels until it appeared in the center of the ball. “Standing by for ignition call,” she said.

“Ninety seconds,” Chrysalis said, and then, “Sixty seconds,” and then, “Thirty seconds.” At fifteen seconds she began counting down, and when the queen said, “Ignition,” Cherry’s hoof was already on the throttle.

The sole remaining engine of the second stage (the other two having been dumped during orbital insertion when their tanks ran dry) came to life, and Cherry felt the rocket push against her back like the gentle guiding hoof of Faust. This is it, she thought. I’m really on my way.

Fifteen days of flying in space. Most of it just flying, with nothing to do.

If it wasn’t so dangerous, I’d call this the best vacation ever.

The rocket burned on and on and on, steadily accelerating the much reduced ship until, with a sputter, it died, out of fuel. One more explosive collar fired, and with a push of a button the two descent engines came to life, pushing the ship even faster towards the blackness of space. Equus slipped out of view of the little window above Cherry’s head, leaving only the sun and the stars.

And then, at precisely thirty-one seconds, Cherry shut down the engine. “Shutdown!” she reported.

“Good burn, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis reported. “We currently show you flying more or less over Minmus’s north pole at an altitude of one thousand kilometers a little more than five days from now.”

A few more tiny bursts of fuel brought that down from one thousand kilometers to a mere hundred kilometers. Then Cherry Berry deployed the landing gear, turned the ship so that a solar panel faced the sun directly, and relaxed.

Minmus or bust, she thought.

Footnote:

(389) Since the burn would be manual, the computer would have nothing to do with it beyond displaying a countdown clock to engine shutdown. Cherry only used the keypad because she still had her spacesuit helmet on, which meant she couldn’t grip a pencil in her teeth to write anything down.

On thousands of television screens across Equestria, the faces of mature-looking stallions and mares solemnly looked out at the viewers and read the news. Each of them had a short news item about Mission 22, so interchangeable that they might as well have read from the same script. The version watched in the astromare recreation room at Horseton Space Center went something like this:

“All systems are go for astronaut Cherry Berry as Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-Two continues speeding on its way towards the mysterious star known as Minmus. Mission planners expect a round trip of between fifteen and eighteen days, during which Cherry will spend virtually all her time in a space barely larger than the lower bunk of a foal’s bunk beds. With the orbital insertion burn four days away, Cherry has nothing to do except watch and wait. Leading Equestrian psychologists expressed concern that such monotonous conditions in such a cramped space could drive ponies mad. We shall watch and wait to see what happens.”

Chrysalis, remembering that television report, snorted into her microphone. She wasn’t worried about the pony going nuts. She was worried about going nuts herself. There were four astronauts taking turns in six-hour shifts at the capcom station- herself on the evening shift from six until midnight, Gordon the Griffon from midnight to six, Dragonfly from six to noon, and Fireball the dragon from noon to six. And yet, for whatever reason, Cherry Berry insisted that Chrysalis be the one to read from the book of the day.

“Centerton was one of the many small towns that dotted the northeastern plains of Equestria. It had a drugstore and a movie theater and a school, all of which were mentioned proudly on the sign next to the road that led into town. It also had a Cheap Clover, whose name was not on the sign, but he didn’t mind that.”

And for whatever reason, the pony had chosen what looked like a filly’s library of fifty-year-old tripe.(390)

Somehow Chrysalis got through the sickly-sweet story(391) and the one after that before Cherry Berry declared a meal break. “This food pack says ‘Market Garden Salad Vinagrette’. There isn’t a water nozzle on it, so I guess I eat it as is.”

“Bon appetit, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said, only partly successful at concealing her absolute disinterest.

The sounds of a food pack rustling echoed in the queen’s ears as, on the mission control screen, Cherry Berry stuffed her face into the pack. After a number of pleased sounds, she removed the pack to say, “Wow, this is good! A great mix of sweet and sour! Sweet cherries, sour shallots, lettuce and spinach, walnuts and bleu cheese! It’s really good!” She returned to her meal, pausing only a moment to add, “A bit heavy on the vinegar, though.”(392)

“I’ll pass that along,” Chrysalis lied.

“... and the Masked Matter-horn, the actual and genuine Masked Matter-horn, actually said, ‘OUCH!’”

“Hahahaha!” Cherry Berry giggled on the other end of the telepresence spell. “Who wouldn’t say ouch if they were dumped onto a barbed-wire fence?”

“Oh, I could make a list,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Feeling hungry yet, or do I need to finish the story?”

“Finish the story!” Cherry Berry said. “It’s nearly done anyway, right?”

Thankfully it was, with only two pages to go, without even a friendly skunk to relieve the sickly-sweetness of it all.

“Okay, lunch time!” Cherry declared.

“Lunch?” Chrysalis asked. “Isn’t it dinner? The sun’s down here, remember.”

“I know. But remember what the bulls said? My orbital insertion burn will be more or less right as the mission clock begins Day Six, right? So I’m trying to reset my sleep cycle so I get up about an hour or two before sunset your time, so I’ll have the full day to work with, alert and ready!”

“Lucky you, Twenty-two.” Chrysalis had to deal with the press and officials, plus the occasional hive emergency, during daylight hours. She was beginning to feel the effects of losing a couple hours of sleep each night. “So, since you’ll tell me even if I don’t ask, what’s the meal of the day?”

“Ooh! It’s kirin cooking! I didn’t know Heavy Frosting knew kirin recipies! Tofu and noodles with edamame and cherries! I’ll just add water and let this warm up...”

Note to myself, Chrysalis thought. Find out when Carapace ever met a kirin that talked, never mind a kirin chef. I know I declared the kirin off limits!(393)

“... the rain came down on the roof of the old cattle-car, but none of it came inside. The fillies gathered around one another, dry and safe, listening to the tapping of the raindrops on the old wood above.

“‘I have an idea,’ said Sassafras. ‘We don’t have to run any farther than this. We can live right here, in this cattle-car.’

“‘What?’ said Bendy. ‘We can’t live here! What if a train comes through? We’d be smashed to bits!’

“‘Did you see the tracks?’ said big sister Handy Honey. ‘They’re all covered with rust, and they end just past this car. And there’s weeds growing up between the ties. This is an abandoned track. Trains don’t come here anymore.’”

A sniffle came from the telepresence spell. “I always feel so sorry for the Cattle-car Fillies,” Cherry Berry said. “The first book is such a sweet and sad story. I’m glad it has a happy ending.”

“If you know how it ends,” Chrysalis asked, “why are you making me read this to you? Why don’t you get a book you haven’t read?”

“Well, because if I haven’t read it yet, how would I know if I liked it?” Cherry replied. “I know I like all those books. I grew up with those books! They’re old and dear friends to me!”

Chrysalis debated the merits of getting a book of matches and holding Cherry’s old and dear friends hostage until the pilot gave in and chose a book that didn’t give changelings diabetes.

“How about you take a break?” Cherry asked. “I’m kinda hungry, and it’s about time for my breakfast. Cherry and peach dumplings with cream gravy!”

“How many ways can you put cherries into meal packs anyway?” Chrysalis asked.

“Dunno,” Cherry said as she began rehydrating the meal pack. “But these two weeks we’re gonna find out how many ways Heavy Frosting uses.”

“Gee. How wonderful.” Chrysalis had burned out her ability to suppress her sarcasm. “I can hardly wait to learn.”

Footnotes:

(390) The Equestrian Educational Association wishes to remind the reader that the opinion held by Queen Chrysalis of such classic works as Centerton Tails of Cheap Clover, the Cattle-Car Fillies, and the collected works of Cleverly Clearly is that of an evil fiend who is a stranger to pony culture and who does not appreciate heartwarming, life-affirming classic educational reading. They ask that you not judge these works by the opinion of a tyrant, and moreover a tyrant addicted to smutty, written-by-the-dozens potboiler romance trash novels. So there.(394)

(391) Mostly by imagining an enormous variety of methods for revenge she could use on Cherry Berry once she was safely back on Equus. However, she did dog-ear the page in which Cheap Clover’s skunk friend gave both barrels to the prize thieves for later re-reading enjoyment, so it wasn’t a total waste of her time.

(392) Vinegar as an ingredient tends to enhance and amplify certain flavors in food. It’s a common sauce ingredient, most notably in that universal insult to chefs everywhere, ketchup. It’s also the base for Roamaine and vinagrette salad dressing. The chef, Heavy Frosting, overused it a bit because of prior space flights demonstrating that free-fall somehow numbs the taste buds, making it impossible to detect subtle flavoring. The salad dressing, in this case, was about as subtle as Pinkie Pie asking somepony’s date of birth.

(393) A meal of kirin emotions gives new and medically critical meaning to the word “heartburn”.

(394) The author of this work wishes to remind the reader that the opinion held by the Equestrian Educational Association of Queen Chrysalis’s reading habits is elitist and juvenile. This opinion is not made less elitist by the fact that it is more or less accurate.

“Fuel lines disconnect.”

“Confirm fuel lines disconnect.”

“Launch time T minus sixty seconds an’ countin’... mark. Begin control test sequence.”

Cherry Berry leaned back in her little capsule, wearing nothing but the headset from her spacesuit, and listened to the voices of Equestria Space Agency through the headphones. She’d asked for the launch of ESA Flight Eleven to be relayed up to her from the ground. Ever since the first time she’d seen Twilight Sparkle’s prototype spaceship, she’d wanted to see it fly. Now, of course, she was almost a million kilometers away, but thanks to the wonders of modern magic, she could at least listen.

“Control test sequence complete, all go.”

“Confirm all go, Eleven. Thirty seconds to launch.”

Cherry envisioned the ship in her mind, based on the model she’d seen of the proposed launch stack. The big, heavy resuable orbiter stood on its butt, its three main engines held off the surface of the launchpad by the eight Thumper solid fuel boosters attached to it. Clipped to its ventral surface stood a gigantic orange fuel tank, which weighed vastly more than the ship itself when full. The SRBs would burn for one hundred seconds, providing enough vertical thrust for a brief suborbital space flight even if the liquid fuel engines never fired. Those engines would be just strong enough for control authority during the solid rocket burn; after they burned out, they would fire for another seven minutes, give or take, until the giant tank was empty. After that the empty tank would be tossed away, and the orbiter would use maneuvering thrusters and a small reserve fuel supply in the ship to achieve orbit, de-orbit, and do a very little bit of steering on the way back down.

A perfect mission would end with the orbiter landing on Cape Friendship’s wide, well-paved runway- a targeted landing of the kind Changeling Space Program still couldn’t achieve(395). If they were off course, though, the ship carried a dozen of the new T-35 parachutes, big and strong enough to allow a splashdown or even possibly a land touchdown if necessary. Cherry thought the whole exercise excessively ambitious, but if Twilight Sparkle and her friends pulled it off, it would be a milestone right up there with Cherry’s current flight.

“Ten... nine... eight... seven... main engine start...”

Cherry spun a little forward, not really able to sit up properly in free-fall. Here it came...

“... four... three... two... clamps release... and liftoff!” Cherry’s hooves grabbed for the armrests of her flight couch as Applejack’s voice continued, “Liftoff of Amicitas on Equestria Space Agency Flight Eleven, an’ th’ clock is runnin’!”

“Roll program initiated,” Rainbow Dash reported. Cherry imagined the tapered-cigar ship and its cluster of boosters surrounding its giant fuel tank rising on a plume of smoke and flame over the shoreline of Horseshoe Bay, slowly tilting on its side and rolling over so the orbiter rested above the fuel tank.

“Confirm roll, Amicitas. We read you two kilometers up and three downrange.”

“Throttling back for max Q.”

“Confirm throttle at seventy-two percent.”

Cherry sat, or rather floated, and waited, intensely anxious.

“Mock One.”

“Cape confirms Mock One. Go at throttle up.”

“Amicitas copies go at throttle up.”

A new voice broke in: Cherry recognized Spike, Twilight’s little dragon helper. “ESA spaceship Amicitas is sixty seconds into its maiden flight, all systems running normally. In about thirty seconds the solid fuel boosters will burn out and separate, leaving the orbiter and its main fuel tank to continue burning for orbit.”

Applejack again: “Stand by for SRB separation.”

Rainbow Dash: “Roger, Cape... burnout... and separation!”

Applejack again: “Confirm separation. Nice an’ clean.”

“At two minutes into flight, Amicitas is thirty-three kilometers high and forty kilometers downrange, traveling at almost ten times the speed of sound,” Spike reported. “All three main engines are firing at full throttle, draining two and a half tons of fuel every second. When the burn is complete, Amicitas will be traveling about five miles every second. At this time the ship is beginning to nose down for orbital insertion. All systems are go, trajectory is optimal.”

“Two engines to orbit,” Applejack said.

“Copy two engines to orbit,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That call only means that, if the orbiter loses one of its engines now, a longer burn on the remaining two engines will be enough to get it into orbit,” Spike said quickly. “All three engines are still burning and will continue to burn until MECO in approximately another five minutes.”

Cherry relaxed. Things could still go wrong, but the things most likely to go wrong hadn’t. Amicitas hadn’t had to deal with a debris cloud of smashed boosters as R4 had done. The giant fuel tank hadn’t ruptured or leaked, and it didn’t seem likely that it would. The couplings, the control systems, the computers were all doing their jobs. She leaned back again as Spike’s voice lulled her almost to sleep(396).

She came almost awake again when she heard Applejack’s voice again. “One engine to orbit.”

“Copy one engine to orbit.”

“Estimate thirty seconds to MECO.”

MECO: main engine cut-off. That meant Amicitas would be in orbit, or just shy of it, since the plan was for the huge fuel tank to fall back into atmosphere and burn up.

“Standing by for MECO.”

Cherry listened carefully. She had no worries about the safety of her two Ponyville friends, not at this point. But she had something in mind, and she wanted to know the proper timing for it.

“MECO!”

“Confirm MECO, Amicitas. Go for fuel tank jettison.”

“Fuel tank jettison.”

“Confirm fuel tank jettison. Go for switch to internal tanks.”

“Switching main engines to internal tanks.”

“We read good switchover, Amicitas. Seventeen minutes, forty seconds to final orbital insertion burn. Twenty seconds on maneuvering thrusters only. No need, repeat, no need for main engines.”

“Oh, yeah! Out-standing!” Rainbow Dash couldn’t be calm and professional forever, of course.

“Thanks, everypony.” For the first time during the launch, Twilight Sparkle’s voice echoed over the connection. “We’ve just taken the next great step forward in space exploration.”

There. That was Cherry’s cue. “ESA-11, this is CSP-22,” she said.

“Er... go ahead, CSP-22,” Applejack said, a little cautiously.

Here goes. “On behalf of the ponies and other creatures of the Changeling Space Program,” she said, “CSP-22 offers our congratulations to the Equestrian Space Agency, and we wish Amicitas further success in the remainder of its current missions and all its missions to come. I only hope I get my own chance to ride in that ship someday.”

“Um... thanks, Cherry- I mean Twenty-Two,” Applejack said.

“Yes, thanks,” Twilight said. “And from Amicitas, we wish you luck tomorrow with your orbital insertion burn around Minmus.”

“Thanks very much, Amicitas,” Cherry said. “Good luck, and I’ll be listening to the rest of your flight. CSP-22 out.”

There was a brief burst of static on the magical audio signal, and then Chrysalis’s voice, dripping the special kind of aural honey she reserved for the moments she was furious but couldn’t show it openly, said, “Twenty-two, prepare for remedial training in comms discipline when you get home.”

“Horseton, I feel exactly as ashamed as I ought to,” Cherry replied. “In the meantime, how about my bedtime story?”

“We’re going to begin tonight with...” Chrysalis’s voice took on a tone of undisguised loathing. “The Cattle-Car Fillies and the Silo Mystery, Chapter Seven.”

Cherry smirked as she leaned back. To tell the truth, she’d outgrown the Cattle-Car fillies years and years before, but she still enjoyed the series and its four sweet, lovable, and courageous main characters (five if you counted the dog).

And she enjoyed how the books annoyed Chrysalis even more.

Footnotes:

(395) To be blunt, CSP had all it could do to land on the correct planet, never mind the correct land mass or body of water.

(396) Because of the sunset launch of CSP-22 and the sunrise launch of ESA-11, the launch was happening at the end of Cherry’s mission day, and it was almost bedtime from her perspective.

Back on Equus, while Cherry slept, Rainbow Dash successfully landed Amicitas again(397). The instant after the post-landing interview ended, every reporter and camerapony in the greater Baltimare area jumped onto every airship, sky chariot, and pegasus-towed cloud available and rushed south to Horseton.

Now Cherry was awake, suited up again, and ready for orbital maneuvers, fully aware that the eyes of the world were on her, and not metaphorically. Through the tiny nosecone window she glimpsed something large, shadowy, and lumpy- the dark side of Minmus.

She'd seen Minmus earlier. She’d gone on EVA before her rest period to take preliminary photos, to conduct certain experiments with the scientific equipment, and (to be honest) to get a little bit of elbow room. Being in a space suit floating in space was, in some small way, less claustrophobic than being out of the suit inside the Mark 1 capsule.

But then it had been tiny. Now it was...

... well, for a planet it was tiny, but for a thing she was flying towards it loomed like a shadowy corn puff the size of all Equestria(398).

This is real, she thought. I’m actually going to another world. It feels like I’ve left Equus altogether. That’s... really weird.

But she didn’t have time right that moment for self-contemplation. The initial orbital insertion burn was coming up in not that many minutes, and she needed to focus on stopping the ship.

“Horseton, Twenty-two,” Cherry called out. “Coming up on ten minutes to orbital burn. Preparing to adjust attitude for burn, over.”

“We copy, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied from a million kilometers away. “Go for attitude adjustment.”

Cherry smirked. “Oooh,” she growled, “I’m an evil queen and everything makes me grumpy. Grr. Grr. I’m mean and nasty and definitely don’t read trashy romance novels and I puke up any food except vanilla cupcakes. Grr, grr, grumble mumble.”

After barely a pause, Chrysalis’s voice drawled back, “Twenty-two, we show negative, repeat no joy on attitude adjustment. We read you as still being a geeky pink pony, negative on future world conquest and subjugation of the masses, over.” Not only was she not angry, but she sounded quite amused.

Darn. “Request permission for second attempt. I’m quite sure I could conquer some pukwudgies.”

“That’s a negative, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis drawled. “Our readings here show pukwudgies not at all impressed. Confidence of future attempts being successful is zero, repeat zero percent. By the way, burn in eight minutes, forty-five seconds mark.”

“Twenty-two copies negative on attitude adjustment,” Cherry said. “What did I do wrong?”

“You just weren’t born to it, Twenty-two. Not everyone is born to greatness like I am.”

Cherry snorted. “All right, fun over. Turning the ship now.”

“Horseton copies.”

For most of the trip out to Minmus Cherry had aimed the ship directly at the sun. This allowed the two solar panels, fitted on either side of the capsule, to both catch the light and keep the electric batteries topped off. Also, this kept the ship pointed more or less at Minmus... which meant, now, that a retrograde orbital insertion burn meant turning the ship’s nose away from both the sun and Minmus.

The obvious consequence of this hadn’t occurred to Cherry, or anyone else, until she completed the tumble-over on reaction wheels and steadied the ship again. “Maneuver complete, ready for burn,” she said... and then noticed the electrical charge readout ticking down. “Horseton, I’m showing zero charge on the solar panels. Am I reading this right, over?”

A pause- a more significant pause than the brief pause Chrysalis had used to decide on her reaction to Cherry’s teasing. “Um, yeah. That’s affirmative, Twenty-two,” the changeling queen’s voice said, each word coming out slowly. “We, um, we don’t think that’ll affect the ship making the burn.”

“Well, what’s causing it?” Cherry asked. “I’m not in Minmus’s shadow, am I?”

Another pause. “No, you’re in your own shadow,” Chrysalis said at length. “Von Brawn tells me that the landing stage is blocking all sunlight to the solar panels. You’ll need to flip the ship back over again once the burn is complete.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Cherry Berry grumbled. “Can’t we put those panels somewhere where the rest of the ship won’t be in the way? Tell somepony to get on that, will you?”

“We’ll see what we can do, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Five minutes to orbital burn.”

Cherry acknowledged the time stamp, checked the burn duration notes on her scratch pad, and waited.

Five minutes and one short burn later, the lander was in an orbit roughly one hundred kilometers above Minmus. Two burns after that, the orbit had dropped to an apoapsis of ten kilometers by a periapsis of nine point seven kilometers. The first burn roused cheers and celebration on Equus, but Cherry heard none of it. Instead she focused on her job, performing the genuinely more dangerous second and third burns with no real fanfare.

Then, with the ship parked as low as it was safe to go without a pilot constantly on the controls, the sciencing began.

Footnote:

(397) Almost perfectly. A little bit of thrust from the engines had been necessary to get the ship on line for the runway, but it got there as designed, wheels down and rolling on the first pass. The emergency parachutes remained undeployed.

(398) It was actually smaller than that, in diameter at least. In terms of surface area, though, it probably dwarfed the land region where Celestia’s rule held sway.

Day Six of Mission Twenty-two began with another cherry-laden meal(399), followed by an EVA for more science experiments. This all went by routine, and two hours after waking up Cherry was back in the ship and ready for the main part of the day’s activities: temperature scans.

The Royal Astronomical Society had commissioned CSP to perform temperature scans at various points near Minmus... and at one particular point on the surface, a highland region well away from the frozen lake beds where they’d intended to land. The procedure was risky, but at the moment the ship had enough fuel- in theory- for lots of orbital maneuvering, an attempt at landing with possible abort, and a second landing on the lakes. But the in-flight temperature scans had to be made and reported before landing, and those would take quite a lot of orbits...

... and, in a couple of cases, suborbital flights. Two of the five scans required altitudes lower than the highest point on Minmus’s surface, which meant as soon as the temperature scan was done Cherry would have to boost right back into a higher orbit to avoid a crash.

Cherry felt the sides of her mouth trying to touch her ears. She couldn’t stop grinning. I’m flying in the skies of a whole other world!! she thought to herself. I’m buzzing a planet!

Okay, not so much a planet. But it’s big and round, so it’s close enough!!

“OK, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis’s voice called out, “the second temperature scan is coming up on this orbit on the dark side of Minmus. We want you to skim the surface at fifty-one hundred meters altitude or less. Navigation data is being relayed to your nav-ball now.”

“Roger.” The first scan, a high-altitude scan, had been cleared not long after entering low orbit the previous day. “Calculating my burn now.”

After Dragonfly’s flight, Cherry had insisted on training in the use of the new on-board trajectory computer. After sim after sim wrestling with the tiny screen and the unintuitive controls, she’d been grateful for the practice, and never more so than now. On the screen she saw a little gray circle meant to be Minmus, a little glowing hoop which was her orbit, one bright pip for her current position, and a little circle indicating the target zone. That, plus a bunch of numbers which made sense to computers but not to her, was all she had to go with- that and gut instinct.(400)

Okay. So, I have to guess right about thrust and vector one-quarter of the planet away, then make any corrections while I’m in the shadow of the moon and can’t see anything, and hope I got it right, or else the last thing I’ll ever hear will be a cross between crunch and pop.

No pressure. Literally, if I buck this up.

“Horseton, this is Twenty-two,” she said. “Going manual for suborbital flight, repeat going for suborbital flight.”

“Horseton copies. Good luck, Twenty-two.”

Cherry turned the ship, clamped her eyes on the trajectory readout, and gave the ship three seconds of ten percent thrust. The trajectory dipped, and a new marker popped up showing a new periapsis not far beyond the target zone. Four point seven kilometers. And- yes- fully above the surface, at least on this orbit. Good.

“Okay, Horseton, burn complete, and my trajectory looks good,” Cherry said.

“We confirm, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “We’ll keep you posted.”

Cherry relaxed in her harness and watched her altimeter counting the meters down as the ship descended. The ship had two altimeters: the orbital one, which calculated from sea level(401), and the surface altimeter, in the form of a dial gauge that twitched up and down as the rolling, uneven surface of Minmus passed below.

That twitching gave her pause for thought. At the moment she flew above a hilly area like the hills that forced Mission R4 to leave after the briefest of touchdowns. Judging by the wild swings of the surface altimeter, some of those hills and valleys were radical enough that, here on the dark side of Minmus, she wouldn’t have any warning whatever if and when the ground reached up to swat her out of the sky.

Don’t think about that. The computer says you’re clear. Focus on the other altimeter.

So Cherry did, as it counted down, nice and steady: fifty-seven hundred meters, fifty-six hundred meters, fifty-five hundred meters, and so on. In what seemed like no time at all it dropped below fifty-one hundred meters, just as a yellow light came on on the controls.

“You’re entering the target zone now, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis called. “Check the thermometer.”

Cherry flipped the switch for the thermometer, then a second switch for the radio transmitter. “Sending readings now,” she said.

Ten seconds later, the amber light turned red.

“Um, no joy on the scan, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Cycle the switches and let’s try that again.”

“No joy?” Cherry stifled any further words, reached down, and turned the thermometer and transmitter off, then back on again. The light went back to yellow. “How about now?”

“Hmm... no, it still shows negative,” Chrysalis said. A moment later, the light on Cherry’s controls turned red again. “No time for a third attempt. Get back to safe orbit and we might come back to that one later in the flight.”

Cherry grit her teeth and said, “Copy, Horseton.” A brief burst of power directly radial- that is, up and away from the surface below- would keep her away from any hidden hills the computer might not know about. Then, once she was up again, she could make a proper maneuvering burn to regain a mostly-circular eight-kilometer orbit. Easy-peasy, no problem.

But...

As Cherry tilted the ship for the altitude-raising burn, she asked, “Horseton, I was at the right altitude and on the right spot. The thermometer and transmitter both work, right? So what’s wrong?”

“We don’t know, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “We got your signal just fine, but our computer rejected it. We’re working the problem now. For now, focus on the next temperature scan zone. It’s a high-altitude scan about three orbits from now on the light side of Minmus. That one should be simple.”

“Good.” Cherry finished putting the ship in place, goosed the engines for just a second, and then began working on a second burn in a few minutes to re-circularize her orbit. She hadn’t crashed. She’d flown the ship without incident. And that didn’t count, because she was leaving a mission goal behind her, unfinished, that she darn well ought to have had.

After the second burn, she decided to have lunch. It, of course, contained cherries.

Cherry Berry didn’t taste it.

Footnotes:

(399) Although the meal was very interesting to Cherry Berry and certain members of her family, it wasn’t interesting to anybody else. So we’re not telling you what it was, all right?(402)

(400) Needless to say, Cherry Berry knew better than to trust her gut instinct on this matter. It was the gut instinct of a naturally land-bound creature. It knew nothing of thrust-to-weight ratios, advanced calculus, or fuel consumption rates. Mostly it knew that it liked cherries and wanted some more, and while Cherry had no problem with that as such, it didn't help with calculating orbital burns.

(401) In the case of Minmus, from the surface of the frozen lakes.

(402) All right, all right. It was tart cherry oatmeal with walnuts. And yes, she loved it.

“... that’s affirmative, Twenty-two, we show green on the temperature scan, repeat green. Good work.”

Cherry Berry snorted as she hung in her flight couch straps. Somewhere below her was the daylight side of Minmus- not that she could see it, since neither of her tiny windows pointed towards the ground. Since her ship was coasting along well above the surface, with no danger of crash and no need for maneuver, all she’d had to do was ride along and wait until the computer told her she was flying through the target zone. Fresh-picked cherries required more effort than that test.

But at least she knew now that the test system worked.

“Okay, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis’s voice continued, “there’s one more in-flight temperature scan to go. It’s coming up on the dark side of Minmus this orbit. The target altitude is below forty-nine hundred meters. That’s below safety limits, so be careful. We’re uploading targeting info to your computer now.”

“Okay, Horseton,” Cherry replied, reaching forward to key the trajectory computer back on. There was the zone, slowly creeping towards her current orbital trajectory on Minmus’s night side, well down on the moonlet’s southern hemisphere. A quick burn right now would probably be the best choice to get the target altitude, she thought, and so a quick flip of the ship later she gave the landing engines a couple of short, soft bursts.

And then a couple more.

And then... Oops.

Cherry had miscalculated just a little. Yes, after the burn she now had a trajectory to come in below the ceiling for the requested temperature scan. The problem was, that same trajectory would bring her up close and personal with the floor, i. e. the frozen surface of Minmus, about three minutes later, not far from the south pole.

The Cherry Berry who lived in Ponyville took one look at the trajectory line, which came to a clear and broad break at a certain point on the line-drawn circle on the screen, and wanted to run and scream in total panic. But here and now, with flight controls at her hooftips and plenty of air(403) between her and the ground at the moment, the Cherry Berry who flew got the overriding vote. That Cherry stopped, and studied the trajectory, and thought.

Okay, so it’s a suborbital trajectory. That’s fine. Do I have time to do something about it after the temperature scan?

Three minutes, give or take. Yes, that’s plenty of time.

So, this is not really a problem, is it? Treat it just like the last low-altitude test. Nothing has changed.

“Twenty-two, Horseton,” Chrysalis called through Cherry’s headset. “We show you on a suborbital trajectory after that burn, over.”

“Affirmative, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “I’m on top of it.”

Significant pause. “We copy, Twenty-two,” the voice came at last. “Twelve minutes until target zone.”

“Roger, Horseton.”

And that, so far as Cherry was concerned, was that, aside from a moment of irritation that Chrysalis had called her attention to potential messy death a million miles from home just as she’d got the little screaming panicky voice in the back of her head muzzled.

Fortunately, she had ten minutes to suppress her Ponyville moment(404) and get her head together. She did this by doing a mental checklist of all the readouts: altitude from zero fifty-five hundred meters and falling, altitude from surface wobbling up and down like a drunken breezie, battery showing two hundred forty-four and dropping slowly, landing stage tanks at about forty-eight percent each, view outside the hatch pitch black. Trajectory map showing directly on course for a pass through the target area marked on the map. By the time she’d checked everything, her pulse rate had dropped, and the desire to run in circles and scream for someone to save her had mostly gone away.

And- she checked the map again- she still had nine minutes to lie back and remind herself that, since she was now suborbital, she was technically flying in an alien sky again.

The only flaw was- darn it!- she didn’t quite have enough time to dig out one of the cherry snack packs to celebrate.

Footnotes:

(403) Strictly in the metaphorical sense. Minmus had no atmosphere worth speaking of, and rolling down the window to enjoy the breeze would have been a most foolish thing to do at that point. But in the sense of, “Am I going to hit anything solid in the next five seconds?”, Cherry’s mental point was valid enough.

(404) “Ponyville moment” is Cherry Berry’s term for the urge towards mindless panic regardless of whether or not panic is either justified or helpful. The name derives from the fact that Cherry calls Ponyville home, and also from the fact that the citizens of Ponyville have had so much practice panicking at anything between Tirek’s invasion and a stampede of cute adorable bunnies that they have raised panic into a high art form. Indeed, in their secret heart of hearts, a good many Ponyville ponies secretly enjoy those moments when they can demonstrate their well-practiced craft, and those ponies consider the property destruction and risk of life a small price to pay in the name of Art.

“Twenty-two, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis said into the microphone. Midnight had come and gone, and there was a bed calling her name two buildings over(405). “That little burst of power has you good for one clean orbit.” Just barely; at one point the ship would clear a highland by only four hundred meters. “We recommend one more burn at apoapsis to raise orbit to a minimum of six thousand meters, and then free time for the remainder of your flight day.”

“Twenty-two copies.” On the telepresence screen, the helmeted face of Cherry Berry smiled, still wide awake and ready to fly. “Just give me a minute to recharge the batteries. I just crossed back into daylight.”

“Roger. Also, there’s one more high-altitude temperature scan which will happen after the overnight team comes on.” The overnight team consisted of old George Cowley in the bullpen, Gordon the Griffon at capcomm, and Dragonfly- Dragonfly, of all bugs!- as acting flight director. Not Chrysalis’s first choice, but it had been either her or Leonid the Yak, and Chrysalis would rather have dragged Carapace out of the kitchen and stuck him with the headset than put a yak in charge of not smashing things up. “You’ll get the target data on your computer before the handover.”

“Okay, Horseton,” Cherry said, her face frozen in concentration as she twitched the controls. “There, okay. I show apoapsis in fourteen minutes. Confirm?”

Chrysalis caught the tired nod from von Brawn. “We confirm, Twenty-two,” she said.

And then she noticed something else on the big telepresence screen- on the projection of the landing ship, floating above the surface, with the glittery snowy slopes of Minmus speeding along underneath it.

There was a tiny black dot keeping pace with the ship.

“Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said carefully, “please give us current altimeter from surface reading.”

“Altimeter from surface reading approximately four hundred forty meters,” Cherry said promptly. “You said that was safe, right?”

“Yeeeeeeessss,” Chrysalis said, not the sinister hissing yes she preferred but the uncertain, worried one she would have squelched if she wasn’t so tired. “It’s just that we can see your shadow below you. On the ground.”

“Really? Wish I could see it.” Cherry made a face in her little corner of the projection. “But I don’t think it’s worth flipping the ship over for it.”

“Well, just keep an eye on the altimeter until you make your next orbital burn, okay?” Chrysalis asked. “All of us down here will sleep better for it.”

“Aww. It’s nice to know you care, Your Highness.”

Chrysalis choked down the hisses and snarls that wanted to come out. “You-you- you just bring my ship back here in the designed number of pieces, understand?” she barked. “I don’t want to have to waste two weeks going up there to rescue you if you screw up!”

“I like you too, Horseton,” Cherry said. The projection showed a big, toothy grin on the wall.

Chrysalis wanted to throw a brick through it. A big brick.

Footnote:

(405) And also the newest masterwork from Ruffly Crinoline, Paperwork Passions, about an attractive young mare who lusted for a study certified public accountant while the humble but diligent Department of Wagon Vehicles worker attempted to prove his own love. Forty-pound triple-layer dresses were somehow involved, including the removal thereof. Chrysalis was looking forward to threatening with death the first changeling who caught her reading it.

Time passed. Mission Twenty-two made several more loops around the bedazzling pale sphere far, far above Equus. On Equus the sun was raised(406) and set(407).

And then the silence of space was broken by a squeaky voice: “Horseton, Twenty-two, comms check.”

“We read you, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied. “Good morning, and you’re go for a landing today. Stand by for some housekeeping details.”

“Good to hear, Horseton.” Cherry Berry fumbled around the cabin for the notepad and wax pencil. “Ready.”

Separated by a million kilometers, Chrysalis and Cherry exchanged a checklist’s worth of little chores- trash and waste disposal, ship maintenance checks, final procedures before the landing began. “And finally,” Chrysalis said, “if there’s fuel left in the landing stage, we want you to go for a second landing in different terrain. After the second landing, you come home. We’ve decided to send a robot for the temperature scan that got missed.”

“Did you figure out what went wrong with that?” Cherry asked.

“Transcription error,” Chrysalis said. “The mission specs, and the computer program provided, had the temperature scan down as above the target altitude. The protocols we wrote up for you, and for us here in mission control, listed it as below target altitude. It’ll take a couple of days for another try in your current orbit, and we don’t want to mess with that or leave you there that long. So we’ll send a robot. This is your third day up there. It’s going to be a longer trip back than you had going. We want you down as soon as possible, Twenty-two. Understood?”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry said. “Scrub on further in-flight temperature scans. What about the surface scan?”

“That’s still on. The landing site for the temperature scan comes up tomorrow morning our time- about dinner time on the mission clock. So we want to attempt that first.”

“Really? I thought the plan was to take the safe landing zone first, on the lake.”

“We changed our minds. We figure if you have to abort the first landing, there will still be fuel for a second one. If you abort the second one- or if you have to make a second pass at it- you might not have fuel to get home afterwards. So you’re going to the south polar highlands first.”

“Okay, Twenty-two copies.”

“I want- we want to make this clear, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said firmly. “If something goes wrong, even a little, you abort. We don’t want you to put the second landing at risk.”

“No problem, Horseton,” Cherry said. “I know what to do.”

A prolonged silence crossed between the worlds.

“Okay, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said at last. “You have free time until 1430 mission clock. At that point we go through the final descent checklist.” Pause. “Good luck, Twenty-two.”

“Roger, Horseton, and thanks.”

A little metal can connected to three bombs floated around a gigantic ball of ice, again and again, high above a distant blue planet the size of a hackberry.

Footnotes:

(406) Again, strictly from the perspective of ponies standing on the surface. What really happened was that an alicorn’s magic held the planet and everything on it and nudged its rotation a little bit. This required less magic than actually moving a class G0 star, but it still qualified as a major miracle. Other species thought the fact that ponies took this miracle for granted twice a day said all any other species ever needed to know about ponies.

(407) The same as above, except that whereas most ponies regard footnote #406 with reluctance and a mug of something caffeinated, most ponies greet this footnote with celebration and relief, and occasionally a nice garden wine.

At Mission Elapsed Time 158:42 on the capsule’s clock, Cherry Berry fired the engines- not a short burst like her prior orbital adjustments, but a long, full-throttle burn. Below her- almost, but not quite, directly below- lay the target landing zone, where the Royal Astronomical Society had requested surface readings for whatever reason. The highlands of Minmus rolled up and down- not with the suddenness of the areas immediately next to the frozen lakes, but a more gentle gradient that, Faust willing, would allow a relatively level landing.

In fact, Cherry noted as she looked out the hatch porthole at the surface below, the surface looked pretty flat from up here. Flat, and glittery, sparkling all sorts of colors here on the daylight side, colors that blurred together into the general aqua-gray that one saw from farther away.

But she could only look for a second- just long enough to verify that the terrain was safe for landing. Cherry committed her glance to memory, then turned her attention back to her instruments, which she would need for the rest of the landing. The ship would land in the same position it launched in, which meant Cherry would be lying on her back in the flight couch... in a position where she couldn’t possibly see the ground beneath her. That meant relying on three instruments: the speed indicator(408), the altimeter from surface, and the nav-ball and its indications of ship orientation, prograde and retrograde vectors, and angle of attack.

The speed indicator whirred down closer and closer to zero. The idea, in theory, was to bring the ship to a complete stop in relation to Minmus’s surface, currently fourteen hundred meters below. This would allow a vertical drop that would allow a controlled level landing, In practice, Cherry wanted to allow a little bit of drift, since she’d have to use the engines to slow the final part of the descent anyway. That last burn would let her kill any remaining lateral motion and, at the same time, keep Minmus’s weak gravity from hauling her down too quickly and smashing the spindly little landing legs(409).

“Horseton, Twenty-two,” she said, shutting down the engines and returning momentarily to free-fall, “deorbit burn complete, entering landing phase. Please confirm proper landing zone.”

“Stand by, Twenty-two.”

Cherry’s ears would have flipped backwards in annoyance if they hadn’t been covered by her spacesuit headset. “Horseton, be advised that gravity has something to say about my ability to ‘stand by.’ Am I in the right place, affirmative or negative?”

“Negative,” Chrysalis’s voice grumbled. “We’re trying to figure out why. Do the best you can with your on-board systems.”

“Negative??” Cherry checked the plot on her trajectory indicator. “Horseton, the map says I’m right on the money! How small is this zone I’m supposed to hit?”

“We’re working the problem, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Do what you can with your computer, but don’t risk the landing over it. If it feels unsafe, abort.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry grumbled back. “One thousand meters and descending, mark.” She looked closer at the trajectory plot. The screen was tiny, and it showed only thin and kind of wobbly lines and two markers practically on top of one another. But... maybe she was a little west of the zone? “Adjusting descent.” She tipped the ship a bit, fired the engines for a few seconds, noting her descent speed slowing even as her retrograde vector momentarily vanished from the top of the nav-ball. “Eight hundred meters and descending at twenty meters per second and accelerating. Descent stage fuel at thirty-seven percent.”

“We copy, Twenty-two.”

Cherry found the retrograde marker on the ball, reoriented the ship until it lined up with the top of the ball, and waited for a little while. The speed readout slowly ticked upwards, as the marker crawled very slowly up the nav-ball. Finally, at five hundred meters, Cherry kicked the engines back on, wiggling the ship a little to kill the lateral momentum again. “Horseton, if I’m not in the zone now, something’s way wrong. I’m committing to landing, and if it works, fine. If not, we’ll send a probe.”

“We don’t get it either,” Chrysalis admitted. “We show you as go for landing. Be sure to null out your lateral way before landing.”

“Roger.” Cherry kept the engines firing, just above their lowest setting, which gradually decelerated the ship. “Three hundred meters and falling at fifteen meters per second,” she reported.

“Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied, in a tone of voice that suggested that the speaker thought the listener had missed the previous statement, “we’re still showing a bit of lateral drift. A lot of lateral drift, in fact.”

“Throttling up,” Cherry said. “Two hundred meters and falling at eight meters per second. Retrograde vector’s on top of the ball, Horseton.”

A long silent pause, in which Cherry imagined she could hear echoes of voices other than Chrysalis’s over the comms channel. Then the changeling queen’s voice came through, sharp and clipped: “Confirm nav-ball set to surface mode, repeat confirm nav-ball set to surface! Over!”

Cherry checked her altitude- one hundred fourteen meters, three and a half meters per second descent speed- and then she saw it.

The speed indicator said: Orbital - 3.5 m/s.

The nav-ball and its built-in computer had different functions for orbital, surface flight, and target modes. Part of the checklist immediately prior to the descent burn had been to switch the ball to surface mode- but either she’d hit the wrong switch or, somehow, the computer had switched the nav-ball back on its own. (Which was entirely possible, since the system was built to auto-switch in Equus’s upper atmosphere, during launch and re-entry.)

Cherry hit the switch, and her eyes widened with shock as the speed indicator went from Orbital - 3.3 m/s to Surface - 23.8 m/s. At the same time, the retrograde marker flashed from the top of the ball to the far left-hand side of it.

Mission 22 wasn’t slowly dropping to the surface. It was skimming just barely above the surface- the surface Cherry couldn’t see beneath her- at over fifty miles an hour, as fast as the Friendship Express on the flat land between Ponyville and the base of Mt. Canter.(410) At this speed, if the ship so much as touched a rock sticking above ground level, it would rip itself to shreds in the resulting crash.

“Abort, abort, abort!” Cherry shouted, goosing the throttle to full for one second of direct vertical thrust. The retrograde marker vanished, and the prograde marker appeared not far from the top of the ball.

For a moment, part of Cherry prepared to go into full Ponyville Moment mode.

And then the pilot in her said: Okay, we were waved off the runway and we’re circling around. How can we stick the landing this time?

First thing first: kill that lateral motion. Now that the nav-ball and speed indicator were in the correct mode, this was a simple enough matter, and a little soft burn of the descent engines put the prograde marker at the top of the ball. A few moments later, it flickered off the ball, replaced by the retrograde marker. She was falling again.

Second: reconfirm safe landing zone. Cherry tipped the ship over again so she could see out the hatch window. Glittering green-gray snow filled the tiny porthole. She saw no shadows to speak of, no rocks, nothing that showed anything other than a safe landing area.

Third: the wheels go towards the ground. Or the legs, in this case. Having seen what she needed to see, Cherry righted the craft, ticking the engines back on to slow her second descent. The retrograde marker stayed on the point of the ball.

Fourth: report in. “Horseton, Twenty-two,” Cherry said, “I’ve evaluated the problem and taken corrective action. Fuel at twenty-two percent, altitude three hundred fifty meters and descending at five point four meters per second. Zero lateral way, repeat zero lateral way.”

“We confirm, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Are you sure you want to make a second attempt? We still have the fuel for a landing at the lakes.”

“But I’m here, now,” Cherry replied. “Three hundred meters and descending. It’ll only take a little more fuel to put the bird down.”

“All right, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied. “Just be careful. We’re seeing some steep hills on the horizon.”

“Looked flat from in here,” Cherry said.

“Just be careful.” Pause. “I want that ship back, you know.”

“Two hundred meters. Slowing down a little.”

Cherry kept glancing between the altimeter and the speed indicator. Coming down too slowly meant wasted fuel, but any landing faster than five meters per second risked breaking the landing legs. So she watched the fuel levels drop on the indicator, watched the altimeter sink below one hundred meters, then fifty meters.

“Twenty-two, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice broke into her concentration. “We’re seeing a bit of a slope beneath you.”

“Roger.” Cherry barely gave the information a thought. She had to concentrate on the speed, keeping the retrograde vector on top of the ball, dropping the ship between three and four meters per second, preparing to kill the engines when she felt the ship make contact.

Twenty... ten... five-

Contact.

The ship settled a bit forwards, and the sun flashed across the hatch window.

“Touchdown,” Cherry declared. “Engine shutdown.”

The engines shut off.

And then, very, very slowly, the tipping motion continued.

And continued.

And kept right on continuing.

Mission Twenty-two flopped onto its belly, rocking a little bit, and then settling to rest on the side of a very steep hill in the Minmus midlands.

Cherry, now seated upright instead of on her back, waited for all movement to stop completely. She made a quick check of the instruments, saw no indication of a hull breach or any significant damage to the engines, batteries or fuel tanks, and breathed a sigh of relief. The good news was, she still had a fully functional ship.

The bad news was, the ship was not only on its side, its nose now pointed downslope- a position rocket ships are generally not designed to launch from.

“Horseton, this is Mission Twenty-two,” Cherry said. “One pony, down safe. But I think we can skip the stay-no stay checklist...”

Footnotes:

(408) Calculated based on radio pings from the orbiting R4 communications relay satellite. The older version of the system had calculated speed from Horseton Space Center, but that was now five light-seconds away and, moreover, on the other side of Minmus, and thus not available. The computer instructions that allowed this to work were among George Bull’s most complex work yet, since they relied partly on continual radar of the surface and radio signals from a constantly moving object overhead. The system took over half of the capsule’s tiny computing machine’s runtime by itself, and most of the rest of its runtime now consisted of communicating this data with the trajectory calculation computer and the backup Probodobodyne autopilot in the compartment just beneath the capsule.

(409) And, more important, the rest of the ship as well, including its lone crewpony.

(410) Also (and this number was more relevant to Cherry at the moment) only a touch slower than the required takeoff speed for her biplane. Had she had wheels under her and some practical way of seeing where she was going, she wouldn’t have worried. The fact that she was landing on legs, blind, with only instruments to guide her, rendered the analogy worthless for purposes of not scattering her internal organs across another world in the upcoming five seconds, and so she stuck with the train comparison.

On Mission Control’s telepresence screen, a giant image of Cherry Berry planting the changeling flag on the surface of Minmus gave the VIPs and press in the gallery something to talk about and take photos of. Despite the crash (411) Cherry had been sent out to perform the various scientific experiments and the flag-planting ceremony because... well, why not? The ship and its equipment were there and working fine, and (by a stroke of luck) it had landed hatch side up, so there wasn’t any reason why that part of the mission shouldn’t go ahead.

The question now was, as the controllers huddling around the bullpen knew, whether or not there would be any mission after that.

The slope had been a lot steeper even than the control crew had thought when they saw it on the screen. Even so, based on their experience with Mission R4, the reaction wheels ought to have been enough to keep the ship, if not upright, at least standing. The tipping point (literally) came when two of the six landing legs- the two facing downslope, and thus taking almost all the weight of the ship- had retracted under the strain. The ship had tipped faster than the automatic systems could compensate, with the result that it now lay on the alien snow like a dead fish.

“So, they’re broken, then,” Chrysalis said, stating the fact.

“Not necessarily,” von Brawn rumbled. “Those two legs are retracted, but they’re not visibly broken. Nor do they read as broken on our telemetry.”

“Which might just mean our telemetry is broken, too,” Goddard the Griffon snapped.

“Well, we could ask Cherry to look and see if they look broken,” Occupant said. “I mean, they look fine from here, but maybe she’d see something up close? And if she doesn’t, then maybe that means they’re safe to use?”

“We’d have to re-extend them,” von Brawn said. “And that’s something I don’t recommend with tons of metal sitting on top of them.”

“All right,” Chrysalis said. She walked back to the capcom station in the back row of desks, levitated her headset back onto her head, and said, “Twenty-two, Horseton. Before you begin the flight tests on the suit thruster system, we’d like you to do a visual inspection of the two collapsed landing legs, over.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry said. “And while I’m on, for the record, the surface lighting here really fooled me. The snow crystals here reflect sunlight everywhere- scatter it. It’s really disorienting. That plus the low gravity fooled me into thinking this area was flat and level. It really isn’t. If I’d seen it from this angle, I’d never have attempted a landing.”

“We’re going to have to think about that for the moon landing,” Chrysalis replied. “The moon’s gravity is a good bit greater than Minmus’s. If something like this happened there, it wouldn’t be a soft flop-over.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too. We can’t send a robot lander here. The same thing will happen to it. We need to land something with wheels someplace safe, something that can drive itself up here. More work for Goddard and Dr. von Brawn.”

“One thing at a time, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Let’s get you down from there first.”

On the telepresence screen, Cherry wobbled and hopped her way back to the stricken ship. “I don’t see anything obviously wrong with this landing leg,” she said, stooping down so she could see under the port landing engine. “Can’t really tell for sure from this angle, but nothing seems to be actually bent or anything.”

After a look at the other side returned the same non-result, Chrysalis ordered Cherry to take her thruster systems for a flight, took off her headset, and returned to the huddle. “Well?” she asked. “Clear as mud, isn’t it?”

“Indeed so,” von Brawn said. “Even if the legs can be extended, we won’t know if they’ll hold weight unless we try them again. That means another landing.”

“Okay. What about another landing? Is there enough fuel left?”

“Barely,” Goddard said. “We’ll have to dip into the return stage supply. I’d say hang it and bring her home, except that we’ll have to go back again to get a successful landing. That is the whole point of this exercise- getting practice at landing something someplace without a parachute.”

“This assumes that we can launch from this position in the first place,” von Brawn said. “If our planned procedure fails, then we’re going to have to send a rescue mission, and we’ll have twelve days to get it there. Five days at most for assembly, testing and simulations.”

And that, Chrysalis knew, was cutting corners too much.(412) “The only way that works is if I fly it myself,” she said. “I’m the only one who’s had sim time on this flight besides the pony. Which means we’ll need a ship that seats two.”

von Brawn shrugged. “Add tourist cabin, subtract science equipment,” he said. “It’ll be a wash in terms of weight.”

“Nah,” Goddard said, shaking his head. “We’re finally getting the next generation engines off the production line, and we have the prototype three-crew capsule ready to fly. We build a new ship from scratch and throw away the plans for the bundle of sticks design.”

“But we don’t know how the new systems will perform in flight yet,” von Brawn protested. “Do we really want to have the testing flight be a rescue mission involving both our lead pilots?”

“Um, excuse me.” Occupant finally spoke up. “But shouldn’t we see if we can get Twenty-two flying again first? I think the plan’s a good one, based on what we saw with R4.” When Chrysalis turned her head to look at him, he added, “Of course, I could be wrong, my queen.”

“Occupant.”

“Yes, my queen?”

“You have my permission to quit being a total welcome mat for five minutes and be in charge of this room like you’re supposed to be,” Chrysalis said.

“Oh. Um... Well...” Occupant looked around the others, and then said, “Well, Miss Cherry’s done with everything except the thruster pack test. We might as well get her off the surface now. Besides, she’s been up for sixteen hours now. She’ll be getting tired, and she’ll have to land the ship again or commit to returning home before she can rest, unless we leave her there overnight.”

von Brawn shook his head. “Inadvisable,” he said. “The solar panels are only picking up a trickle of energy at this angle. If we wait overnight, the batteries will drain and she really will be stranded.”

“Okay, then,” Occupant said, sounding a little more decisive. “Let’s get Miss Cherry back in the ship and see about getting her in the air, okay?”

Footnote:

(411) Even if it’s a ludicrously slow crash, even if nothing actually breaks, if it ends with your vehicle in a position neither you nor its designers ever intended it should assume, it’s still a crash.

(412) Believe it or not, there are actually safety margins beyond which even the Changeling Space Program will not push... mostly, anyway.

“Okay,” Cherry said, strapping herself into the flight couch as the cabin repressurized, “I’m back in the capsule and strapping in. What’s the plan?”

After a moment of dead air, Chrysalis’s voice echoed in her headset. “You remember how R4 was able to stay upright despite never having all its feet on the ground?”

“Yeah,” Cherry said. “The reaction wheels. It would’ve fallen over if Dragonfly had turned off the stability assist.”

“Precisely. We want you to activate SAS and pull back on the stick. We think the reaction wheels on full spin will put enough torque on the ship to lift it upright in Minmus’s low gravity. If that doesn’t work, we want you to start the engines on lowest power and try to get the nose up on engine gimbal. If you get the ship up even a little bit, blast for space as soon as you think you can clear the ground. Copy that, Twenty-two?”

Cherry considered this for a moment. “Horseton, did the scientists suggest this plan?”

Chrysalis’s voice lost a good bit of its professional poise. “As a matter of fact, yes, they did, Twenty-two. What makes you think otherwise?”

“Because this plan ranks right up there with the lawn chair on the trash can full of fireworks,” Cherry replied without hesitation. “I mean, how happy would you be if you were sitting where I am now?”(413)

“Twenty-two, your options are this procedure or sitting tight where you are for twelve days while we throw together a rescue mission to come get you,” Chrysalis growled. “Which do you prefer? Over!”

Cherry Berry considered the options. Well... the ship barely bounced when it flopped over... and I didn’t see any damage when I was outside... but would that remain the case if I try to launch with the ship’s nose pointing downslope?

But... no, no buts. I still have a fully functional ship under me. If I didn’t at least try to get home under my own power, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

“Okay, let’s do this, then,” she finally said. “I’d have to unsuit to use a pencil, so let’s just use your checklist there, okay?”

“That’s better,” Chrysalis said, and then her voice was all calm, professional astromare again. “First, consumables status.”

“Descent stage tanks show eighteen percent full,” Cherry reported. “Return stage full and untouched. Batteries read two-twenty-four and falling at zero point zero two per second. Negligible flow from solar panels. Do you want a count of my food packs?”

“Negative. Next, order all landing gear to retract to stowed position, over.”

“Retract landing gear, roger.” Cherry reached up and flipped a switch. A soft clanking echoed through the capsule, and the ship shifted slightly as its center of balance altered. “Gear retracted.”

“Confirm gear retracted,” Chrysalis said. “Activate SAS and reaction wheels.”

Cherry flipped a couple more switches. Behind her the soft sound of the reaction wheels rose to life. “SAS engaged.”

“Confirm SAS setting to maintain attitude.”

“SAS to maintain attitude, confirm.”

“Do NOT, repeat, do NOT activate engines,” Chrysalis said, “but set throttle to three percent.”

“Throttle to three percent, roger.” Cherry adjusted the throttle carefully.

“All right,” Chrysalis said. “In your own time, you are to attempt to right the ship on reaction wheel power, or failing that on main engine power. If you get the ship upright, you are to throttle up and attempt liftoff. If you can’t get nose up with ten percent thrust, or if the ship slide on the ground faster than eight meters per second, you are to shutdown and await rescue. Copy?”

“Twenty-two copies attempt righting ship on reaction wheels, then on main engines. Shut down if no result at ten percent thrust or if ship slides on the ground at eight meters per second. Over.”

“Okay, Twenty-two, you are go for attempted liftoff.”

“Right,” Cherry muttered. She took a deep breath, then grit her teeth and pulled the control stick towards herself with both forehooves. Behind her the reaction wheels whined to life, the high-pitched down echoing through her suit helmet.

And, after the briefest hesitation, the light and shadow from the overhead sun began to shift. Through the tiny forward porthole she saw the surface of Minmus fall out of view. Slowly- with the kind of slowness Cherry associated with ponies trying to pick out produce in Ponyville’s farmer’s market(414), the ship was indeed righting itself.

She relaxed her grip on the stick to reach one hoof over to the throttle. That proved a minor mistake, as the nose, now well off the surface, stopped rising and began dropping again. She pulled back hard again, held her breath until the ship stopped falling and began rising again, and waited until it was about twenty degrees off the vertical. Then, as quickly as she could, she reset the throttle to fifteen percent and ignited the engines.

She felt the rumble of the engines through the ship, felt their force gently caress her back through the flight couch and spacesuit backpack. She watched the altimeter counting up, noticed the prograde marker appearing on the navball, let out her held breath as the airspeed indicator ratcheted up.

And then, after only a few seconds of thrust, she cut the engines and let the ship coast upward on a ballistic trajectory. “Twenty-two is flying,” she said. “Requesting orders. Where do I go next, over?”

“That depends, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied immediately. “We want you to redeploy the landing gear.”

“Okay.” So, she thought, the second landing isn’t off yet. Just as well I didn’t throttle up and head for home right off. She reached up, flipped the switch, and listened as the landing gear clanked open and then locked back into place. “Landing gear deployed, confirm.”

“Please confirm six green lights on landing gear.”

Cherry checked the indicators, then the flight computer. “Six green lights, no damage error messages, over,” she reported.

“We confirm, Twenty-two. Stand by.”

There followed a long pause, during which Cherry watched the airspeed drop and the altimeter’s rise slow. Minmus’s feeble gravity was catching up with her, and before long she’d have to fire the engines again. After what she thought was enough time(415) she said, “Horseton, Twenty-two, requesting trajectory guidance, over.”

“Stand by, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said shortly, and another few seconds passed. Then, finally, she said, “Twenty-two, come around to due north and fly overland to a frozen lake bed some two hundred kilometers away. You are go, repeat go, for second landing. We want you to land as close to the shoreline as you feel is safe, over.”

“Twenty-two copies, Horseton.” Cherry brought the ship’s nose around and down and then, careful to keep a bit of vertical angle in her trajectory, opened the throttle.

We got away with it.

If they ever make a statue of me once I get home, I want that carved in the pedestal.

Footnotes:

(413) This argument won no sympathy from Chrysalis, who believed (a) she never would have got herself in that predicament in the first place, (b) the question was irrelevant because she wasn’t there, and (c) if Cherry Berry wanted down from Minmus this was the only plan that might do it short of a rescue mission. The fact that (d) the very notion of doing herself what she’d just ordered Cherry to do sent a momentary shudder of raw terror down her spine meant absolutely nothing, really.

(414) Another pony might have mentioned glaciers, especially considering the location. But Cherry Berry had a peeve about picky ponies who wanted to select a single perfectly fresh cherry (or other, less worthy, fruit) and buy only that. Cherry herself loved almost all cherries equally, wasn’t all that picky, and had had to bite her lip many times to avoid hissing, “Grab and move,” or, “Get outta the line,” at the ponies in front of her.

(415) Only about sixteen actual seconds, according to the flight log, but the passage of time to a pony suspended in the nonexistent air over a desolate snowball a million kilometers from home, kept in that position only by momentum and happy thoughts, bears no resemblance to the passage of time recorded on a piece of paper.

“Descent stage at five percent,” Cherry Berry’s voice echoed through Mission Control. “Lateral speed at sixty meters per second and falling.”

“Twenty-two, remember,” Chrysalis said at a frantic wave from Goddard’s talon, “we want this landing to touch down at below three meters per second. Below three meters, do you copy?”

“Twenty-two copies. Landing stage burnout.” Short pause, and then Cherry continued, “Return engine activated. And shutdown. Lateral speed at five meters per second. Altitude fourteen hundred meters and fall... and descending.”

“A reminder, Twenty-two. You are to abort landing and enter orbit if fuel hits fifty percent in the return stage.” That took care of another frantic wave, this one from Marked Knee in the bullpen.

“I remember, Horseton,” Cherry’s voice replied. “That’s why I shut down the engine. The closer I am to hover thrust, the more I’m wasting fuel, right? If I wait until the last moment and then brake all at once, I use the least fuel possible. Isn’t that right?”

Chrysalis looked down in the bullpen and saw four minotaurs and a griffon each make a different gesture of helplessness. Yes, that’s true, but...! “The thing is...” Chrysalis stopped and made herself do it properly. “Twenty-two, please be advised that if you get it wrong, you’re committing suicide.”

Gasps erupted from the observation gallery. Drat. Shouldn’t have gone there, not in public. Some newspaper pony or, worse yet, television talking head just got a quote to use to attack CSP as too risky, too eager to risk a pony life for changeling glory. But... nothing to be done about that now.

“Then I better not get it wrong, huh? One thousand meters and descending.”

Chrysalis looked at the estimated air velocity. Weak though Minmus’s gravity was, any rate of acceleration, left unchecked, just kept on building up more and more speed. Mission 22 wasn’t dropping like a brick, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t a feather either. “You’re really picking up speed there, Twenty-two,” she said.

“I’m watching it,” Cherry replied. “Looks like five hundred meters is the sweet spot.”

Chrysalis looked at the bulls, who had gathered around their blinky-light calculating machine. None of them was looking at her now. None of them had a signal for her, not the slightest bit of guidance. Even Goddard had his beak in, rather than looking at her or Occupant.

And time for countervailing advice ran out, much quicker than Chrysalis liked.

“Throttle to full... ignition!”

Chrysalis watched the telepresence projection, holding her breath as the single remaining functional engine did its feeble best to bring the falling ship to a stop before the ice did. The airspeed indicator fell, numbers ticking down not remotely fast enough for the changeling queen’s liking. Despite her strongest silent orders for them to slow down faster, they ignored her supreme authority and ticked down on their own timetable.

And the altimeter ticked down... four hundred... three hundred... two hundred fifty... two hundred... one hundred seventy..

“Throttling back.”

At ninety meters the descent speed indicator hit three meters per second. Gingerly, cautiously, it drifted down to two point five, then ticked back up to three, then down to two point seven.

“Fifty meters.”

Chrysalis knew she should be talking, should be saying something, ought at least to be calling back information to the pony. But words wouldn’t come. After the first botched landing, after that ridiculous suicide burn, the power of speech had stepped out for coffee and cupcakes(416).

“Twenty meters.”

The airspeed indicator trickled down a little more, wavering between one point five and two meters per second. Then it dripped again as Cherry let it slow to one point two meters per second. The retrograde marker, dead on top of the navball on the telepresence projection, flickered in and out.

“Contact! Shutdown!”

On the projection screen the lander stood on a perfectly level plain of crystalline ice. All six feet stood firmly on the surface, with no sign of a wobble or collapse.

“SAS off. Backup systems off. Cockpit secure.”

Chrysalis slowly, carefully released her lungful of air, careful not to breathe into the headset microphone. “Twenty-two,” she said, cautiously testing her vocal cords, “we copy you down.”

“Affirmative, Horseton,” the pony’s voice squeaked back at her. “How about we go down that stay / no stay checklist this time?”

Chrysalis considered this a moment. “Well,” she finally said, “just because you asked.”

Footnote:

(416) Cupcakes were on the very, very short list of foods that Chrysalis ate willingly. One cupcake almost perfectly equaled the actual capacity of her stomach. Most cupcakes were baked with love and lusted after by ponies, especially juvenile ponies with their intense emotions, and thus provided nourishment on more than one level. And even if Chrysalis hadn’t liked them, she’d have learned to like them anyway, because ponies got intensely suspicious of any pony who, for any reason whatever, didn’t like cupcakes. Ponies would forgive kicking a dog(417) before they’d forgive snubbing a cupcake.

(417) Which Chrysalis had done, in various disguises, on multiple occasions. It just felt so satisfying to see the innocent betrayal on those canine faces...

Cherry zipped along above Minmus’s frozen surface at a brisk twenty meters per second, her shadow trailing after her some ten ponylengths below her. She hadn’t slept in twenty-two hours, but she didn’t feel even the slightest bit tired or drowsy- not with her heart fluttering in her chest and her smile threatening to unzip the top of her head from the rest of her body.

Spacewalking with the thruster pack in orbit was one thing. But this? Flying not that far above a solid ground with the same jetpack? Flying at a speed about as fast as the average pony could gallop? This was flying, the real and true thing, or as close as Cherry could ever expect to get.

If and when she got to the moon, she’d get to do this again. It’d be a bit more difficult- according to the boffins, the expected surface gravity on the moon would be a little more than three times the gravity here on Minmus. The suit thrusters could handle that, if she didn’t have a big lunch, but she’d be down-thrusting almost constantly to maintain altitude. Something to bear in mind when the time came for training and simulations on moon-walking.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect. She had to tap the downward-facing thrusters every two seconds or so for a burst to keep her more or less at altitude. Aside from that, she would coast forward indefinitely, there being no air to slow her down. Turning... well, she could apply lateral thrust to change her trajectory, but actually changing which direction she faced required a brief shutdown of manual control, which would mean she’d begin dropping out of the sky. She wouldn’t drop fast- not at first- but she was at that magic altitude where she wouldn’t have enough time to correct before hitting the ground at fifteen meters per second forward and maybe five or six meters per second down. She hadn’t done the math, but she could figure it wouldn’t be a fun experience.

Time to start slowing down, then, before she tested the limits of her suit's durability by whacking it with a moon.

Ahead of her the coastline of the frozen lake slid towards her, then underneath her. She’d reached her destination- a second source of material samples from Minmus’s surface, to be bagged and brought back to Equus for analysis. She’d already taken samples from around the ship, while she was running the last of the on-board experiments and transferring the data and samples from them into the capsule for the trip home.

“Okay,” she said aloud for the benefit of Mission Control back home, “I’m above the target area. Reversing thrust.” She popped the downward thrusters an extra hard burst, sending herself up and giving herself the time and altitude she needed to fire the forward thrusters and brake herself(418). The first braking burst brought her down to nine meters per second. A quick altitude-maintaining puff later, she braked again, slowing herself down to six meters per second. After another downward thrust, she braked hard, letting herself begin to fall as her trajectory on the suit’s mini-navball shifted to the vertical.

A couple more puffs later, she was more or less stationary. Satisfied, she let herself fall, keeping the drop below one and a half meters per second. Even so, it still felt like she’d jumped off a wall when she hit the ground, and the slope beneath her hind hooves almost caused her to flop over backwards.

One thing astromare training does, it gets you used to walking on hind hooves, she thought to herself. Since her mouth was sealed in her helmet(419), any interactions she had with the world outside her suit had to be done with her forehooves, which meant she couldn’t waste them by just standing around on them. It had taken a lot of practice(420) to learn how to open a bag, scoop a pristine surface sample into it, and seal the bag using only hooves clad inside spacesuit booties, but now, as Cherry took the samples in just a couple of minutes, it had been worth every hour of fumbling and flopping over back home.

“Okay, samples secured,” she said. “I’m getting ready to return to the ship now.”

With the bags secured to her belt, Cherry, still on her hind hooves, paused a moment to look back the way she’d come. A tiny, tiny fleck of metal in the distance was bracketed on the inside of her helmet, along with a second bracket for the flag she’d planted on site. Beneath both brackets read the distance: 1.2 kilometers.

The ship was almost on the horizon, and yet it stood not quite a mile away.

Huh. That’s kinda strange, Cherry thought, and filed the thought for later. She wasn’t sleepy at the moment, but she expected she’d be out like a light once she got on the flight couch for her sleep period. It had been a very long day, and she still had one bit of fancy flying to do.

She activated the suit thruster pack, sent herself up into the airless air, and fired hard for the ship. This time, with the confidence of experience and the urgency of an experienced pilot well into sleep deficit, she allowed her speed to get up to twenty-five meters per second. To compensate she drifted higher into the air (421) to give herself plenty of room to fall when she slammed on the brakes.

In a little more than a minute she did just that, having covered the return trip in less than a third the time she’d taken on her more cautious outbound hop. There was the ship ahead of her and below here, and there came the forward thrusters, pushing her back like an insistent bouncer at a Manehattan dance club. Slowed, she puffed herself back up to altitude, let herself drift closer to the ship, and then braked again. She drifted again, giving the down thrusters occasional bursts to take herself a little higher, as she drifted just past the ship.

Then she tweaked the controls to face backwards, and the automatic stability system took control of the thrusters to turn her whole suit around, letting her begin to drop in the process. It took a good three seconds before the system shut down and restored manual control, but that was fine by her; she still had plenty of space between her and the surface below...

... the surface she didn’t intend to touch again. There in front of her, and below, was the hatch, with its ladder made of giant staples sticking out below it. She let herself drop, tapping the control sticks to nudge the thrusters forward, then left, then a touch to the right, all the while letting herself drop at a very slow, careful, and semi-steady rate.

“Twenty-two, comms check,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed in her headset.

“Stand by,” she replied automatically. She couldn’t spare the attention now. What she was trying was tricky enough in orbit. In a hover above the surface, with the target totally stationary, there was even less margin for error. Right... down... level off... left... back off... too much back off, forward again... a little right... level off... easy... easy...

The rungs came within reach. Cherry stretched a hind hoof forward first, then grabbed with both forehooves as her hind hoof found purchase on the ladder. The thruster pack controls slid back and up into the suit backpack, and the thrusters shut down, and Cherry felt the meager weight provided by Minmus gravity on her limbs as she hung just below the ship’s hatch, a good five ponylengths above the surface.

She could have just jumped up from the surface- the ship had been designed with that expectation- but she had more fun this way.

But fun time was over. Time to go inside, stow the samples, repressurize the capsule, shuck her suit, and get some sleep before she headed for home.

After all, it had been a very, very long Mission Day 7.

Footnotes:

(418) Without breaking herself.

(419) And a good thing too, or else the phrase “scenery that takes your breath away” would have had a much more grim implication.

(420) And some very special and cleverly designed bags, designed by Twilight Sparkle specifically for the purpose.

(421) Not at all difficult. The suit thrusters didn’t throttle- they were either on or off. That made actual hovering or proper level altitude impossible- thus the occasional burst of thrust instead of steady firing. As Cherry discovered in her first surface test, the instinct to fire those thrusters the instant she started falling meant that she spent more time going up than coming down. Thus, the longer she flew, the higher she got, bit by bit, until she noticed the trend and forced herself to lose a little bit of altitude to compensate.

“Okay,” Chrysalis said, cuddling her third coffee cup of the morning close to her body as she leaned over the CAPCOM station in the pre-dawn hour at Horseton.(422) “Twenty-two, ready for final pre-launch checklist.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry’s voice replied. She’d got seven hours of sleep in and then had lectured the graveyard shift of controllers about the desirability of launching while the ship was still in sunlight. The main control team had been awakened(423), and gradually, groggily, procedures were getting run through. It was almost enough to make Twilight Sparkle’s maniacal obsession with checklists seem worthwhile.

“Engine status?”

“Fuel pumps show ready, throttle at zero, fuel at seventy-eight percent in return stage.”

“Battery status?”

“Full charge.”

“Landing stage decouplers?”

“Readouts show ready, pyros armed.”

“Atmosphere?”

“Thirteen point nine and steady. No leaks.”

“Flight suit?”

“On, sealed, activated, no leaks.”

“Straps?”

“Secure.”

“Controls?”

“Target computer aiming sixty by ninety. SAS active.”

“Samples and science data?”

“All samples and other impedimenta secured.”

“Reaction wheels?”

“Responsive.”

“Engine gimbal?”

“Green light on gimbal test.”

“Anypony need to go potty?”

A long moment of silence, followed by Cherry Berry’s annoyed voice. “That wasn’t funny.”

“That’s what you think,” Chrysalis gloated(424). “Stand by, Twenty-two.” She looked up at the flight controller’s station, waiting for the final go-no go call.

Occupant, lying limply over the podium, snored into the microphone.

Chrysalis carefully muted her own microphone, then bellowed, “OCCUPANT, WAKE UP YOU IDIOT!”

“Bwah!” Occupant leaned up, blinking, head turning this way and that. “She never got past me! Eyes weren’t closed for a second!”

“ARE WE GO FOR LAUNCH, YOU IMBECILE?”

“Oh. Oh? Oh. Are we doing that? Oh.” Occupant calmed down, rubbing more sleep out of his eyes, then looked around. “Guys, do we need to go down the list, or can we just say okay?”

There was a quiet chorus along the lines of “no problem, we’re go.”

“Good. My queen, tell Miss Berry she’s go for launch. Please.”

“Thank y- don’t put your head back down!!” Chrysalis barked as Occupant was on the point of going back to sleep. Shaking her head at the injustice of the world(425), she unmuted her microphone. “Twenty-two, you are go for orbit between ten kilometers and fifty kilometers. We’ll have instructions for your trans-Equus insertion burn once you secure from orbit. Launch in your own time, and safe flying.”

“Twenty-two copies, Horseton. Stand by.”

For several seconds, the ship projected on Mission Control’s wall did nothing. Then, with a suddenness that surprised Chrysalis, it leaped off the ground on a single, tiny, almost invisible flame.

“Jettisoning landing stage!”

The two outboard engines, fuel tanks empty, science equipment used and now useless, and landing legs no longer necessary, popped off the central engine and fell away from the accelerating ship.

“Fifty meters per second and throttling up,” Cherry reported. “Tilting down to sixty by ninety.”

Much lighter, clear of the surface, and pointed downrange, the stub left of Mission Twenty-two really began to pick up speed, the surface of Minmus spinning away in the projection to be replaced by the blackness of space.

“Flight, Trajectory.”

Occupant yawned. “Go, Trajectory,” he mumbled, reaching for his own cup of coffee.

“Flight, we’re working on a trajectory to get Cherry back as soon as possible,” George Bull said. “The lowest delta-V return would take Twenty-two about nine days to return. If Twenty-two’s fuel is sufficient-”

“Shutdown!” Cherry reported. “Apoapsis at seventeen thousand meters. Will complete orbital insertion in... eight minutes... mark.”

“Roger, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said.

“If Twenty-two’s fuel is sufficient,” George Bull resumed, “we want to put her on as close to a direct-abort trajectory as possible. We figure we can speed up her return trip by two days.”

“Wait a minute,” Chrysalis said. “Why does it take so long for her to come back?”

“Because we burned a lot of unnecessary delta-V to get her to Minmus quicker,” Bull replied. “And we had to shed a lot of it to get into Minmus orbit. If we’d got a better alignment on Minmus’s orbital plane, we could have saved fuel at the cost of a longer trip. But since we still have bonus fuel, after a fashion, we want to repeat it on the way back.”

“While leaving a small reserve for course corrections on the way back,” von Brawn said. “We want to be very careful how she re-enters the atmosphere.”

“Explain,” Chrysalis said, finishing her cup of coffee and then, after a moment, deciding not to throw the empty cup at Occupant’s nodding head.

“With the direct abort,” von Brawn said, “the Mission 22 capsule will hit Equus’s atmosphere going even faster than Mission R4. There’s a very real danger that too steep an angle will cause it to burn up or even crush before it reaches the ground. And too shallow an angle would cause it to just skip off and away on a new trajectory.” He swooped one massive hand across his body to demonstrate. “We want an altitude that is less deep than prior re-entries, but still deep enough to slow the ship enough to ensure a splashdown.”

“I think I got it,” Occupant said, yawning. “How high?”

“We aren’t sure,” von Brawn admitted. “Even with Lord Cowley’s best equations, our computers still don’t have a grasp on atmospheric effects on our ships and their trajectories. To be safe, we’re going to aim for ten kilometers higher than Mission R4’s orbital return.”

“That high?” Chrysalis asked.

“It’s still too deep in atmosphere for anything to remain in orbit,” von Brawn said.

“We’re betting it’ll be enough,” Bull added. “It’s certainly a steep enough angle to avoid a skip-off. Worst case, it takes a second orbit to complete aerobraking sufficient to land.”

“It still seems... a lot high to me,” Occupant said, yawning. “After all, R4 nearly didn’t come down. But you’re the scientists. You know better than I do. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll go with. Let’s get to work on the problem so we can send Miss Berry the procedure as quick as possible.”

“And somebody get us more coffee,” Chrysalis added.

Outside the building, Celestia’s sun chose that moment to leap above the horizon.

Footnotes:

(422) If a ling had told Chrysalis two years prior that she would not only learn to like coffee but come to regard it as an indispensable requirement for sustained life, she would have ordered that ling podded for the good of the hive. But that had been before the space race.

(423) In Chrysalis’s case, with great but insufficient caution. The second messenger who came to wake her had the intelligence to bring fresh coffee with him. The first messenger was paying the price for his lack of wisdom by spending some time in that pod Chrysalis kept in the throne room closet.

(424) She wouldn’t be gloating in about half an hour, when coffee cup number three caught up with numbers one and two and issued their joint demand for immediate egress.

(425) Two specific injustices at the moment: first, that she was saddled with subordinates like Occupant, and second, that Occupant represented someone in the top quarter of her hive if ranked by intelligence. It. Just. Was. Not. Fair.

Seven days passed, in various ways.

For example:

“... I just want to make the point: this is Mission Day Twelve, this is my thirty-fifth consecutive cherry-based meal in flight, and for everypony at home who keeps asking: still not sick of cherries. I am, however, VERY glad I dumped all the stored, er, potty, on the second landing site on Minmus. In fact, I might just take a spacewalk later and dump what’s built up since out into space. It’ll burn up on re-entry, nice and hygenic.”

The next day’s headline worldwide: HORSEAPPLES! SPACE PONY BOMBARDS EQUUS WITH POOP.

Another example:

“... I played along as long as I could stand it, Twenty-two, and I have had enough. I cannot stand to read or listen to one more word of the alleged literature you selected for this trip. Today’s audiobook will be Saddle For Less by Daring Decolletage.”

“By who, Horseton?”

“You heard me, Twenty-two.”

“I hope you cleared the press gallery, that’s all I’ll say about this.”

“Good. Chapter One. Golden Heart adjusted the neckline of her dress, flashing her chest at the stallions who walked by. The ruffles of her petticoats swished as she walked, giving bystanders the impression that a flash of her cutie mark, or something even more shocking, might happen at any moment. Some days she felt ashamed at how low she had sunk, but on other days, days like today, she felt like any corner- the next corner- might hold the stallion who would carry her away from Fillydelphia and all its broken dreams...”

“The Cattle-car Fillies wouldn’t end up like that, is all I’m saying.”

“How many ‘all I’m sayings’ do you have to say, Twenty-two?”

“How many pages in that Decolletage rag?”

“Grrr... But the next corner held nothing but a lampost, currently unoccupied. So she stopped there, leaning against it and putting a hoof on her hip, advertising to the world that, though the City of Sisterly Love might not have any true love left, it had something you could pretend was love, and you could rent it by the hour...”

“You really read this? I mean, for fun?”

“If you want cute puppy dogs and precocious children, next time take your library with you in the ship.”

And also:

“I’ve been thinking, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said.

“About getting back in the ship, I hope?” Chrysalis replied through the headset.

Cherry Berry gave the suit thruster controls a little nudge, turning to face the moon, a distant half-lit shape in the solid black of space. “About the first landing back on Minmus,” she said. “Also about Dragonfly’s experience on Mission Twenty-one.”

“What about them, Twenty-two?”

“Well,” Cherry drawled, giving her controls another nudge(426), “imagine if we had little thrusters like on this suit, but on the ship. It would make it a lot easier to get a precise rendezvous with another ship. It would have been a lot more certain than using the reaction wheels to get off the ground. And they’d be less dangerous than using the main engine for every single maneuver.”

“The bird and the bulls have already been working on that,” Chrysalis said. “Like I told you two days ago.”

“Oh.” Cherry sighed. “Sorry. I forgot. I just get so bored waiting to do something, you know?”

“You only remind us five or six times a day,” Chrysalis said. “The good news is, tomorrow is re-entry. You definitely won’t be bored then.”

“Guess not,” Cherry replied.

“By the way, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis added, “we just had a reporter here ask if your boredom includes cherries yet. Fourteen days of cherries, after all.”

That question again. “I’ve spent over twenty years eating cherries at every meal I could get them,” Cherry replied. “Tell the reporter if she’s waiting for me to get tired of Nature’s perfect food, she’s got a very long wait.”

In these ways and others the days passed, and then came Mission Day 15, and re-entry. The last trickle of fuel was burned in a final braking thrust, and then the final engine was decoupled, plunging by itself into the soup at a speed just barely short of Equus escape velocity. The capsule, with the service compartments that held the backup probe pilot and those experiments that couldn’t be stored in the capsule, followed after, quickly compressing the air before it into a gigantic shockwave of plasma.

Cherry, secure in her spacesuit and strapped tightly to the flight couch, watched the glow through the windows, grit her teeth at every shudder and rattle of the ship as it plowed through the highest layers of the atmosphere. The ship wasn’t going in very deep, but its path took it through the soup for almost a perfect half-circuit of the world before shooting back out into space. If the bulls’ calculations were correct, this would be enough to slow the ship down so that it would remain in atmosphere, complete the circuit, and come down almost on top of Horseton Space Center, where a specially trained nighttime recovery crew waited.

That was the story the bulls, through Chrysalis, told her... but as Cherry watched the velocity and altitude readouts on her controls, the instruments told her an entirely different one. As periapsis approached, the orbital velocity readout showed her speed far in excess of low-orbit velocity- and still going up.(427) Her projected periapsis should have dropped deeper into the atmosphere as she slowed down, but it had barely budged. Her apoapsis continued to drop like a brick- the air had some effect- but as she looked, it still seemed closer to the one-million-kilometer mark of Minmus’s orbit than to, well, zero.

And the most telling thing, at least to Cherry’s mind, lay in the altimeter’s rate-of-climb readout; it showed her descending at less than ten meters per second. I’m not getting much deeper, she thought. And that means I’m not getting much slower much faster.

But remember, Mission R4 hit periapsis, started going back up, and stayed in atmosphere.

Yeah. And I’m going a lot faster than R4, and my periapsis is a lot higher.

Cherry took another look at the instruments: orbital velocity still creeping up, rate of descent down to about five meters per second, ablator level estimated at above 90%.

This bird, Cherry thought, is not coming down.

And almost as she thought it, the rate of climb gauge slipped past the zero mark and back into positive territory. “Periapsis,” she called out automatically.

“Confirm periapsis,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed.

Now her orbital speed did begin dropping on the gauge, and at a reasonable fast clip- at least, if the number being whittled down hadn’t been so enormous. She brought up the trajectory computer and watched for a few moments as the projected apoapsis dropped below six hundred thousand kilometers. At this point, Cherry thought, R4’s projected apoapsis was less than half that.

“Horseton, Twenty-two,” she said aloud.

“Go, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied.

“I think it’s pretty obvious I’m going around for a second pass whether I like it or not,” Cherry continued. “What I’d like to know now is, why didn’t this work first try, and what can we do to get it right on the second try.”

The pause that followed went past significant, blew through Awkward Junction at speed, and went straight to Oh Buck Land. “Twenty-two, we’re going to have to get back to you on that,” Chrysalis said when she finally spoke. “In the meantime, the bullpen suggests that, once the plasma ball dissipates, you maneuver to turn the ship sideways to increase your air resistance while you’re still in the upper atmosphere.”

The shaking and rattling of her capsule had already diminished quite a bit, and the plasma flames on the other side of the hatch window didn’t seem quite so bright. “Copy, Horseton,” Cherry said. “But I do expect a full explanation once I’m out of the soup.”

“Roger, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied. “In the meantime, for today’s book reading, how do you feel about The Hamster and the Helicopter?”

Cherry blinked. That was her very favorite book by Cleverly Clearly, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from saying so on a live mike(428). Instead she said, “Run out of sock-and-saddle stories down there?”

“Eh,” Chrysalis drawled, putting on her most unconcerned voice(429), “you read one bodice-ripper, you’ve read them all. They’re all basically the same book anyway.”

Cherry filed a half-dozen comebacks and settled for, “If you say so, Horseton.”

After a bit of silence, during which the ship continued to climb and the plasma continued to fade, Chrysalis asked, “By the way, Twenty-two, have you decided what you’re going to have for breakfast?”

“Not really,” Cherry said. “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

Footnote:

(426) Just because. Cherry’s spacewalks had become a daily thing on the long descent to Equus, partly because she never got tired of the immediacy of flight, and partly because she was entirely tired of being in that tiny stinky capsule. She’d just tootle around within a kilometer or so of the ship until her thruster charge began getting low or Chrysalis began reminding her of the hazards of micrometeors, whichever came first.

(427) An orbiting body’s velocity varies from point to point in its orbit. A ship at apoapsis is travelling slower than at periapsis. As a ship rises from periapsis, gravity slows it down; as it drops from apoapsis, gravity speeds it up. This effect continues even if the periapsis is in atmosphere, with deceleration from air resistance subtracted from acceleration from gravity. In Cherry’s case, this subtraction problem ended with a positive number, meaning she wasn’t slowing down.

(428) A gesture which, thanks to reporters and the telepresence screen, was relayed all over the world. But since the reporters all thought it was due to a tricky moment of suborbital piloting, nobody paid it any attention except Chrysalis, who regarded it as a sight she’d longed to see for many moons... just not right this moment.

(429) Which unsettled Cherry a little more, because she knew after a year and a half that if Chrysalis sounded unconcerned but wasn’t actively gloating, the changeling queen was seriously worried.

Twenty-nine hours later, Mission 22 soared back out of Equus’s atmosphere into space, its projected apoapsis only a little lower than that of the previous day.

“Okay, solar cells pointed back into the sun,” Cherry reported, having had her ship sideways as long as she dared on the outbound leg of the aerobraking pass. “And now I’m gonna insist on some straight answers, guys. How many passes is it gonna take for me to actually come down?”

Pause. “The bulls say seven, maybe eight passes,” Chrysalis replied at length. “Five days.”

“Remind them I have four, repeat, four days of food left on board,” Cherry said. “Also, the computer estimates my heat shield is just under seventy percent ablator remaining. Does that match up with what you show?”

“That’s affirmative, Twenty-two.”

“I thought so. That means I used up a bit more ablator this pass. I’ll probably use even more every pass that comes. That means I’ll be down to bare metal long before seven or eight passes from now.”

“WHAT DO-“ The burst of honest rage and frustration rattled Cherry’s headset. Then, after a couple of loud breaths over the audio channel, Chrysalis began again, all professional once more. “We’ve been working the problem on this end, Twenty-two, and we don’t see any better option short of sending a rescue mission. And the problem with a rescue mission is that getting a rendezvous with you with your periapsis in atmosphere puts the rescue ship at risk. It’d be razor-tight.”

“Horseton, you’ve got a room full of geniuses down there,” Cherry said, allowing herself to sound about one-tenth as tart as she felt. “Are you honestly saying you can’t think of any way to get me down faster?”

“Twenty-two, you have no fuel and no engines remaining,” Chrysalis replied. “If you know a way to maneuver the ship without engines, kindly enlighten us.”

“I’ve got my suit thrusters,” Cherry said.

“Does your suit have a heat shield or a parachute?” Chrysalis asked. “Without both of those you’re not coming home, Twenty-two. That’s what the ship is for. So since you can’t exactly push it home, your suit thrusters aren’t much good right now.”

“Why not?” Cherry asked.

“Bwa-pfwuh... Twenty-two, last message not understood,” Chrysalis said, from the sound of things working hard to stifle another outburst of rage. “Please elaborate.”

“My suit thrusters recharge,” Cherry said. “And the ship has a backup probe core to hold it steady when I’m outside. And my apoapsis is still pretty high, which means even if I only get a few meters of delta-V, that’ll have a huge difference on my periapsis.” A minute before she hadn’t seriously thought it possible, but as she spoke every detail of the plan fell into place like it were the most obvious thing in the world(430). “So all I have to do is point the nose of the ship in the direction I want to thrust, get out, maneuver around to the heat shield, and push on the middle of it until you say to stop.”

“Twenty-two, that’s totally... er... stand by, Twenty-two.”

The channel went dead for almost a minute, during which Cherry considered which of her dwindling number of meals she should open next. If I had any sense, she thought, I’d skip another meal and save it while I waited for a rescue mission.

But I’m not in the same situation as Gordo, Fauntleroy or Fireball. I have no engines, but other than that my ship’s fully operational. And eventually I would come down, on my current orbit. I’d probably even live to see that. The problem is that I likely wouldn’t live to see the actual landing.

And as long as I can come down under my own power, that’s what I’m going to do.

“Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said at length, “the bulls calculate that using eighty percent of your pack’s thruster power on your next apoapsis, and another forty percent on the one following, will be enough to get your periapsis high enough for you to await rescue.”

“No, Horseton,” Cherry put in before Chrysalis could go any farther. “Tell them to calculate the other way. I still have a parachute and a functional heat shield. A rescue would be a waste of resources.”

Several heavy breaths in her earphones told her Chrysalis was now holding on to her temper by the tips of her fangs. “Twenty-two,” she said at last, “while that may be true, the bulls tell me that doing that will pretty much make it impossible for your to achieve orbit again after your next pass. If it doesn’t work...”

“I trust this ship,” Cherry said bluntly. “It got me to Minmus, off Minmus after falling over, and this far home. It’s survived two passes through the soup with no difficulty. And I’m bringing her down. This pass, Horseton.”

Pause. Then, of all things, a soft chuckle. “We read you, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “We’ll give you the word half an hour before your apoapsis. That’s about nine and a half hours from now, by the way.”

“I’ll be counting the seconds, Horseton,” Cherry said.

Footnote:

(430) Or, in this case, off of it.

The heat shield floated there in front of Cherry, half in the shadow of the remaining stub of her ship. She’d expected the scorching, the streaks of residue that wrapped around the edges and ran partway up the science service compartment. She hadn’t expected the bubbling, the lumps, the chunks.

The whole principle behind the heat shield lay in its substance boiling away under the intense heat and pressure of hypercompressed atmosphere. In the act of burning off, the ablator- one of a hundred and one useful substances which could be puked up by an inventive changeling- carried away the heat energy which otherwise would have been transferred to the metal hull of the ship, melting through it and leading to disaster. The ablator was applied in layer after layer to prevent cracks from forming and going straight through to the heat shield’s base, but those layers apparently didn’t burn off quite as evenly as everypony had thought.

But it was either push here, or push on the parachute housing, and of the two Cherry would much rather bump into this. There was a small chance that the capsule’s internal cooling system could keep up if something happened to the shield. There had been close calls before, when heat alarms had warned of hull temperatures close to the melting point of the metal, and the ships had come through. But mess up the parachute deployment system even a little...

... and it wouldn’t matter whether or not the ship survived the fireball.

So. Here she was, suddenly feeling very silly indeed. The ship- the capsule and add-ons, really- weighed about four tons. Her thruster pack had been rated to deal with a total load of about four hundred pounds, maximum. The idea that what she was about to do would have any meaningful effect- well, it felt like Celestia had offered to let her raise the sun one morning using nothing but a fishing pole.

But maybe if you set the hook in the right place, a fishing pole can do amazing things, she told herself.

She nudged her controls slightly. “I’m in place,” she said. “How long until apoapsis?”

“Less than a minute,” Chrysalis replied. “The bulls say to start the push in your own time.”

“Copy, Horseton. Proceeding.” Cherry took a deep breath, then nudged the controls forward.

Her spacesuit hadn’t been built for what she was about to do. She couldn’t use her forehooves to push, because she needed them on the controls for the thrusters to work at all. Using her rear hooves would throw her out of balance and likely send her spinning off the ship. That meant all the force of the thrusters would have to be transmitted through the control arms under her forelegs. They’d been built to be sturdy, yes, but they’d been built to be lightweight most of all. Nopony, not even Twilight Sparkle, had ever thought to test them pushed up against a wall at full burn.

So she let the suit drift gently forward, the control arm tips touching the unevenly burned surface of the heat shield. They bumped and bounced her backwards, forcing her to give the thrusters another forward burst. Then they made contact again, and before she rebounded again she pushed the forward thrust stick as hard forward as it would go.

And, as the suit rocked and bobbed against the rounded base of her ship, she kept her hoof pushed forwards, using her other hoof for tiny adjustments, using her own body weight within her spacesuit for more. She swung her rear hooves forward to stop the rocking on the arms- rocking would dig them in, make holes in the heat shield that might not be survivable. And, of course, any thrust off the direct line forward was wasted effort, wasted energy... and above all, wasted time.

Forward. Forward. Forward.

Come on, slow me down, darn it.

Slow me the buck DOWN.

Her spacewalks before, and her suit flight above the frozen lake on Minmus, had been mostly smooth and easy to control. This was anything but. The suit didn’t like what it was being made to do, and it tried to rock left and right, up and down, anything except staying still. If it hadn’t been for the Probodobodyne computer and the ship’s SAS keeping the ship steady as a rock, Cherry didn’t know whether she’d come down in Equestria or on Bucephalous.

More thrust. Still thrusting. All the thrust.

Is this working? I can’t tell. The suit doesn’t give me a periapsis readout, only a speed, and I don’t remember what the speed was when I-

“Shutdown, Twenty-two, shutdown!”

Cherry’s hoof lifted off the thruster control. She drifted back away from the ship, as the control arms automatically folded up back into the suit backpack. “Shutdown!” she called out. “What’s my status, Horseton?”

“Roughly speaking,” Chrysalis said, “you’re at the periapsis Mission R4 used on its return. We show you at forty-one percent energy remaining in suit thrusters, please confirm.”

Forty-one percent? Then I didn’t need a full burn? She checked her readouts and replied, “Affirmative, Horseton, four one percent.”

“Okay then, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Get back in the capsule, eat, and get some sleep. You have atmospheric interface in less than eight hours, and we want you rested for the ride home.”

On the telepresence projection, Mission Twenty-two soared outbound once more, containing one truly annoyed pink earth pony, at least if the clipped responses and minimal speech coming from her meant anything.

But whatever the pony was feeling, Chrysalis felt that much with a zero behind it. “Would somebody like to tell me,” she asked the room in general once her headset was turned off, “why it is I shouldn’t take that useless blinky-light thing in the corner and throw it into the nearest volcano? It’s only a few hundred miles away, by the way. No trouble for me at all, which is more than I can say for four scientists who can’t figure out how to calculate air resistance properly!!”

“We’re doing the best we can, Your Majesty,” von Brawn rumbled, unruffled. “We’re still learning about the upper atmosphere-”

“Kindly explain to me, then,” Chrysalis interrupted, “why Twilight Sparkle can predict air resistance accurately enough to bring a spacecraft in for a runway landing at her own space center, while we’re lucky to find the right OCEAN!”

“My queen-” Occupant began, then flinched as Chrysalis turned her glare on him.

“I am TALKING HERE!” the queen shouted.

“Um, actually you’re shouting, my queen,” Occupant said.

Chrysalis took a deep breath. “Thank you, Occupant, I stand corrected.” Another deep breath. “As I was saying... I AM SHOUTING HERE!!”

Occupant ducked behind the flight controller console, barely peeking over it. “Yes, ma’am,” he squeaked, “but I just want to point out that Miss Cherry almost came down this time, and in another hour or so she really will be coming down, and we need to be ready.” He allowed himself to rise a little higher and added, “And, well, technically, my queen, you did put me in charge, so, um... I need my capcom to get her mind back on the mission. Please. If you don’t mind, my queen.”

Chrysalis found herself caught between two incompatible desires. There was the desire to decapitate the insubordinate drone and suck its guts out(431). But, at the same time, there was the sudden desire to sing and dance around the room to celebrate the moment that a changeling demonstrated initiative, composure, and competence all at the same time, a thing which didn’t happen nearly often enough. (432)

As much fun as either option seemed, though, she’d have to pass on both. She took a deep breath, copied the in-out motion with her hoof she’d seen the Purple Princess of Neuroses do once or twice(433), and said, “Roger, Flight. And well stated.” She gave the bullpen another glance and added, “We will discuss this again later.”

That done, she nodded to Tymbal, the voice of Mission Control, who raised the shutters on the observers’ gallery again and reactivated the intercoms. The press was there- and so also, for the third day straight, were Twilight Sparkle and all her little rainbow-smitey friends, plus Starlight Glimmer and a couple of others Chrysalis wasn’t on name terms with.

Who is that one with the eyebrows and the terrible glasses?

Whatever. They didn’t hear my tantrum.

Probably.

Anyway, now to pretend we knew what we were doing all along. Again.

Someone put a piece of paper in front of Tymbal, and the deep-voiced changeling read it once more. “On Mission Day Eighteen, mission time 0130, 1942 hours Horseton local time, Mission Twenty-two has completed its third and final aerobraking maneuver. The capsule containing Changeling Space Program chief astromare Cherry Berry will reach an apoapsis of five hundred ten kilometers and re-enter Equus atmosphere less than an hour from now, with a current splashdown point estimated somewhere in the eastern Celestial Ocean. All ship systems are currently fully functional, and no difficulty is anticipated on final descent. This is the voice of Mission Control, Horseton.”

Sounds convincing, Chrysalis thought as she turned her headset back on and prepared to brief the pony on what was to come.

I only hope it’s true.

Footnotes:

(431) Oh, she’d spit them out immediately. Her tiny stomach capacity aside, Chrysalis found changeling guts repulsive to the taste.

(432) Chrysalis never considered that the rarity of the instance might be due in part to the non-zero frequency of changelings getting their heads cut off and their guts sucked out. That sort of thing tends to dampen initiative.

(433) If she’d known where Twilight Sparkle got that routine from, Chrysalis would never have even considered adopting that particular method of calming herself. She would even have seriously considered amputating the limb forever soiled from imitating Princess Perfecter-Than-Thou. She wouldn’t have actually done it... but she would have considered it for quite some time indeed.

For the fourth and quite definitely final time, Mission Twenty-two blazed across the night skies of Equus, headed for a landing somewhere, somehow.

The only question was: in how many pieces?

Cherry had had a whole hour to look at the computer’s estimate of the remaining ablator layer on the heat shield: twenty-eight percent. The previous pass through the atmosphere, which had bottomed out a good five kilometers higher than Mission R4’s lowest pass- stupid, stupid rocket geniuses!- had taken out forty percent of the total starting ablative layers. How much of that was due to the much deeper, hotter pass through atmosphere, and how much to damage caused by the push, neither she nor the boffins on the ground knew. They might never know.

If the heat shield plays out while I’m still at hypersonic speeds, I certainly won’t ever know.

But, of course, there wasn’t any alternative now. There was no question of a second get-out-and-push maneuver, not this close to Equus. And anyway, Cherry now suspected that the whole thread the bulls had followed had been a mistake. The trick wasn’t to come down slowly, it was to come down- and slow down- as quickly as possible, to limit the amount of time the heat shield was forced to do its work. And once she got back on the ground, she’d share that hard-won wisdom with the bulls.

Besides, Cherry still liked her odds. The ship still had control, thanks to the reaction wheels. She had mostly full batteries, thanks to the still-functional solar panels. And if the heat shield was thin, it was still working... and this time, she was coming in barely faster than an ordinary orbital flight would.

This time, she thought, the bird is coming down. Safely.

She watched the computer readouts as the ship rattled and shuddered around her, as the speed dropped, as the gee forces pushed her harder and harder into the flight couch. After two weeks of weightlessness and near-weightlessness, the feeling of three times normal gravity came as a rude surprise... and as the ship began to really dig into the atmosphere, that pressure began to increase.

The capsule shook like a washing machine. Plasma streaked by the tiny windows, as the computer estimate of ablator remaining ticked down, faster and faster. The vector readouts on the SAS system twitched back and forth, the most minute of adjustments, but far better than anything Cherry could have done by hoof. The ship stayed safe and secure within its shockwave cone, plunging into the middle atmosphere, turning speed into heat.

And then, less heat. And less. The pressure began to let up on Cherry. Below her, out of her vision, Horseton sped past, as watchers below caught the last flickers of plasma glowing around the ship before the vapor trail vanished among the clouds and stars of Luna’s nighttime skies.

But even now, Cherry didn’t relax. The worst was over. The computer estimated that a sliver of heat shield remained(434), unburned, despite all the abuse. She still had enough altitude and forward momentum to get her velocity down below the speed of sound. But the remaining two hundred and sixty meters per second or so of speed had to be countered by parachute... and that parachute had been on ice for two and a half weeks.

It was probably fine. R4’s parachute had been fine. But it wasn’t guaranteed.

Of course, if the parachute didn’t slow her down, the planet would slow her down but good about thirty seconds later, so it wasn’t like there was any point in worrying.

The air-speed velocity readout ticked down rapidly into the triple digits, then slowed as it dropped below five hundred meters per second. The parachute indicator light went amber at four hundred meters per second, but Cherry wasn’t in any hurry. Green would do.

At two hundred ninety meters per second the light went green, and Cherry hit the staging switch for the final time in the mission. She felt the jolt of the explosive hatch release, the shudder in the ship as first the drogue and then the main chute deployed, pulling hard back on the capsule even without fully opening just yet.

And then flame, as bright as the plasma from the re-entry fireball, flickered past the hatch window. Cherry found it a struggle to crane her head to look as, in the flickering light of its own nostrils, a large reptilian head peered back through the thick glass. Then it was gone again, and not a moment too soon, for about two seconds later, as the ship passed below one kilometer above sea level, the parachute’s choke cords released, and the canopy billowed open, slowing the capsule down in one final six-G jerk of deceleration.

And then, as the ship drifted down at a safe six point five meters per second, the head with its pilot-light nostrils reappeared. Something thumped against the side of the ship- two solid, slow whump, whumps.

“Twenty-two, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice came back. “We have word from Dragonlord Ember that her rescue team has sighted you and is in close escort. Our own retrieval team is thirty minutes out and closing.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry said. letting her spacesuit helmet fall back onto the flight couch. It was done. It was over. She could relax and let other ponies (or whatever) take it from here.

The ocean slammed into the bottom of Cherry’s capsule like a runaway wagon, but the capsule had been designed to withstand it. The little ship wobbled and rocked before settling into a float in the calm waters.

“Horseton, this is Mission Twenty-two reporting splashdown. Craft is stable one, repeat stable one.” Cherry Berry paused for a moment’s thought, then added, “Beginning spacecraft closeout at this time. Bearing souvenirs from Luna’s stars, and proving that ponykind can travel safely to other worlds, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-two, signing off.”

And that was it. She’d proven that a pony could go to a moon.

Now it was time to send a pony to THE moon.

MISSION 22 REPORT

Mission summary: Land on Minmus: conduct temperature scans on and near Minmus: gather surface samples and other scientific data from Minmus: return safely to Equus

Pilot: Cherry Berry (backup: Probodobodyne Mk. 2 probe core)

Flight duration: 17 days, 2 hours, 55 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 1

Milestones: First EVA on Minmus; first flag on Minmus

Conclusions from flight: There’s a little unfinished business, but it could have been worse. We’re ready now: time for the main event!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL ENOUGH

Footnote:

(434) The computer turned out to be optimistic. When the capsule of Mission 22 was recovered, the recovery team found the metal plate of the heat shield exposed in most places, with only the tiniest traces of ablative material remaining. Cherry Berry never asked why, the day she was released from the infirmary, sixteen changelings wearing those stupid fake aviator helmets lined up and gave her one of the snappiest salutes she’d ever seen. She figured it was because she’d just been to Minmus. But in truth the changelings showed their respect for a pony who’d come closer to a personal interview with the Pale Horse than even the most suicidally stupid drone in the hive and came out intact. Changelings admired that sort of unthinking courage; it was why they still followed Chrysalis.

Author's Note

First: tomorrow night (9-5-2019) at 8 PM I'm going to livestream some CSP on Twitch TV!

Here's the URL for the channel: https://www.twitch.tv/redneckgaijin

Now to the story:

Lepid appears courtesy of my top Patreon supporter. Thanks!

Boy, how many ways did I almost kill Jebediah/Cherry on this mission? Eyeballing the launch, I missed the launch angle so bad that I would wasted less fuel by just going straight east. The first landing really did appear to be on flatter land than it turned out to be; Minmus's surface is deceptive that way. I actually landed a little hard (5.6 m/s) and bounced on the first attempt, destroying all three engines in the process; luckily I'd quicksaved before beginning the landing run. The slow flop-over of the second landing I kept.

I seriously considered leaving her there for rescue, but I got lucky- the landing struts hadn't actually broken, and the reaction wheels had enough power- just- to right the ship without having to risk a launch scraping along the surface. The second landing, on the lake where any sensible person would land, was a doddle by comparison.

And then there was the return. I absolutely fucked up (no lesser word describes the error) my departure from Minmus, to the point that I actually had a Kerbin/Equus ESCAPE trajectory when I left. My attempts to get a return to Kerbin generated not fewer than SIX correction burns, because each burn resulted in another Minmus encounter that kicked me back out and undid a lot of the previous burn's effect. By the time I finally got a definite in-atmosphere periapsis, I was down to about ten percent fuel in the final stage.

And then I second-guessed myself and raised that periapsis, when I should have known better, because of the speed. After the second pass I quicksaved again and decided to ride it out... but eight passes later, with the heat shield pretty much cooked, I reverted to the quicksave and debated whether or not to Scott Manley the ship into a stable orbit and send a rescue mission... or push the ship into a lower periapsis and get the ship down.

The main reason I was considering the first option, by the way, was that I'd only packed one parachute on the trip, and I was not at all sure it could survive a touchdown on land. If something had gone wrong in that way, I would have gone to the quicksave again and done just that. But, as it happens, all ended well- no thanks to my distracted driving- and Mission 22 goes into the books as an almost complete success.

One final note: three chapters remain.

Chapter 16: ESA Flight 13: Die Hard Explorers

The meeting ought to have taken place in one of the offices at Cape Friendship. They'd gathered to discuss the space race, after all, and such a discussion belonged at a space center. And little things like whiteboards, ship models, and computers helped when making decisions about space launches, no doubt about that.

But getting everypony currently actively engaged in running the Equestria Space Agency in one place had been next to impossible for the past month, to the point that this meeting, this vital meeting about the future of ESA and its single most important mission, this meeting was being held over pancake breakfast in Twilight Sparkle's castle in Ponyville.

Applejack sat in her little crystal throne and sighed. Midsummer had come, and with it the first harvests. Two months from now would be cider season, two weeks during which she'd be absolutely nailed to Sweet Apple Acres(434). And on top of that there was Twilight's new School of Friendship, the foundations of which had just been laid two weeks before. With all the construction required, it'd take a year before the first students entered the doors... and Applejack was helping Twilight oversee the contractors and review blueprints practically every other day.

Nor was Applejack the only one with a full schedule. Rainbow Dash had Wonderbolts training and shows on a thrice-weekly basis.(435) Rarity had three boutiques to oversee and make fashions for on top of her space-suit sideline. Pinkie Pie... was Pinkie Pie. And Twilight Sparkle, in addition to overseeing the entire Equestrian Space Agency, was trying to get a new school off the ground while dealing with princess fan mail, missions given by the Cutie Map, and the occasional monster attack(436).

But now, finally, two days after the latest press conference from the Changeling Space Program, they'd managed to get together- the six of them (counting Fluttershy) plus Twilight's student Starlight Glimmer, Cape Friendship chief technomancer Moondancer, and a group of unicorns acting as advisors(437). Spike, ever the dutiful assistant, worked a slide projector as Twilight began the less syrup-focused part of the breakfast-slash-meeting.

"Changeling Space Program is three launches away from a moon landing," Twilight began, as Spike brought up a projection of a rough design diagram taken from the CSP press conference. "They've developed a three-mare capsule and a new generation of liquid-fuel engines capable of lifting much heavier loads than ever before. The first test launch of that system comes in thirteen days, when they launch a wheeled robot lander to Minmus to complete the science contract Cherry Berry wasn't able to finish on her flight."

"Yeah, we know all that, Twilight," Rainbow Dash interrupted. "It was in yesterday's paper, for crying out loud! The question is, what do we do about it?"

"Dash!" Twilight shouted back, offended. "I'm just getting this meeting started with the proper context for anypony who might have forgotten!"

"Yeah!" Pinkie Pie put in. "Besides, what if there were mysterious invisible people watching us who don't know what's going on because they weren't looking at us when we were reading the paper or attending the news conference because those parts weren't interesting? Don't you think the invisible people deserve to know what's going on?"

"Oh my," Fluttershy murmured. "Do you really think there are strange invisible ponies watching us right now?" She sank into her throne until her swish of pink mane barely rose above the armrests.

"Of course there aren't," Rainbow Dash insisted. "It's just Pinkie being Pinkie."

"If I may continue?" Twilight asked. "I've already got the slide show set up anyway. It'll just make things confused if I skip ahead."

Dash blew out a snort. "Fiiiiine," she whined.

Pinkie Pie turned her head towards the door, facing absolutely nopony, and said, "You're welcome!"

"We have one small advantage," Twilight Sparkle said, motioning to Spike for the next slide. A photo of Cherry Berry in a hospital bed filled the screen. "CSP's medical staff is keeping Cherry under observation. Eighteen days of weightlessness and confinement to a one-pony capsule left her in pretty bad shape, and it's going to take her time to recover. And CSP won't send up an untested crewed ship without her at the controls."

"Good for us," Applejack put in, "but not so good for Cherry. I sent her a get-well-soon card. I think everypony else oughta do th' same."

"I personally delivered a lovely floral arrangement," Rarity added. "She said it was delicious."

"Was it as good as my cherry-glaze cupcakes I brought her?" Pinkie Pie added.

"I'm sure," Twilight said sternly, "that we all made sure to wish her a speedy recovery already. Now if I may- what is it, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash cringed in her seat. "Nothing," she said weakly. "Just remind me I gotta stop by the post office after we get done here."

"Anyway- next slide, Spike- after they launch the probe to Minmus," Twilight Sparkle continued, "the next launch will be a shakedown of the three-mare capsule, with Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Leonid orbiting the moon but not touching down. If that mission succeeds, the next flight will be the landing, with Cherry, Chrysalis and one other crew to be named. Their current projection is for a landing about two weeks before Nightmare Night."

"That's still over two months away," Rainbow Dash said. "We could put together a stock-part lander, just big enough for one pony. Like what Cherry did, except smaller, because we wouldn't need the science stuff. Just a capsule, legs, and a small engine for landing and takeoff. We could do that in a month, easy."

"We're not going to do it that way," Twilight said bluntly. "First, because we're not sending anypony up in an untested lander. Second, because it would be a waste of a wonderful opportunity to collect scientific data from the moon's surface."

"And finally," Moondancer put in, "because none of us can believe what Cherry Berry got away with on Mission Twenty-two. Do you really want to fly a stack like that to the moon- a stack which we aren't sure can get you back from a much heavier world than Minmus?"

"Well, duh!" Rainbow Dash smirked. "I wouldn't make half the mistakes Cherry did on her flight. And she'd be the first to admit as much if she were here."

Twilight shrugged. "Anyway, we're not doing that. We are launching a ship to the moon on stock parts, but nopony's going to be inside it."

"Why not?"

"Because it's going to be a ship that can land on the moon, but can't return home to Equus."

Rainbow Dash's eyes tried to cross. "What? What good is a ship like that?"

"A whole lot of good," Twilight Sparkle said. "Next slide, Spike." With a click, the projection shifted to a squat bug-looking ship that looked like a couple of chestnut cans(438) with legs glued on. "Think of it like a sailing ship's boat going out to a beach. Instead of doing all the work to get a big ship in and out of shallow water, you just take only what you need to for the landing. No heat shield or parachutes, because the moon doesn't have any air. That means you need less fuel going down and coming up, which improves the odds of a successful landing and return."

"Big deal! So you get off the moon and end up stranded in space because you don't have a ship to bring you home!" Rainbow Dash insisted.

"But you will have a ship," Twilight said. "Next slide." The next projection showed a standard-looking rocket stack on one side and the launch configuration of Amicitas on the other. "We launch the landing ship empty, on probe controls. The ponies actually landing go up in Amicitas. Next slide."

The projection switched to what looked like a complex ring of metal, with little tags pointing out various parts. "We're adding a docking ring on each ship so the two can connect in orbit around the moon, allowing ponies to transfer from one to the other without an EVA. Next slide." The next picture showed the bug-can-thing, upside down, sitting on Amicitas's back. "Somepony stays in Amicitas in case things go wrong, while two ponies go down to the surface and then, if all goes well, come back up. They dock again, the lander gets dumped to crash into the moon, and everypony flies home nice and safe on Amicitas.”

"Huh." Rainbow Dash tapped her chin. "I was wondering how you planned to get Amicitas down and up, heavy as it is, without air. But Amicitas is barely capable of low orbit." She pointed a hoof at Twilight and continued, "You were there with me! Yeah, we had fuel in the tank when we got to orbit, but not nearly enough for a moon shot! How are we gonna get that big a ship all the way out to the moon and back?"

"Starlight?"

Starlight Glimmer stepped forward. "We've been running tests on the third generation mana batteries and fifth generation magic thruster systems," she said. "What we've got is a system that puts out about three and a half tons of thrust per engine."

"Three and a half tons?" Rainbow Dash's eyes tried to cross again. "But Amicitas weighs over fifty tons empty! Even with three engines, that won't get her off the ground!"

"No, it won't," Starlight agreed. "But the thing is, we can install an array of the new magic batteries inside Amicitas- bigger than the one we removed for Flight Eleven. With that array gathering ambient mana, each engine can produce three and a half tons of thrust... indefinitely."

"The ship, once in orbit, would have a top acceleration of about one point five meters per second per second," Moondancer added. "Yes, that's slow. Trans-lunar injection will require a very long, slow burn, or possibly two. But that's all right, because we can do it as long as we want. No fuel restrictions. As much delta-V as we want, provided we're patient."

"The moon lander will have conventional rockets," Twilight added. "Even lightened up, it'll be too heavy for the new engine system. Only chemical rockets provide enough thrust to counter lunar gravity. But we're almost there!"

"Hmmm." Rainbow Dash considered this. "Thing is," she said slowly, "Amicitas is big, heavy, and has a crew maximum of seven, right? But we don't really need more than three ponies, if your lander only holds two. Dibs on being one of those two, by the way."

"Of course," Twilight nodded.

"So what I'm wondering is, why use Amicitas at all?" Rainbow Dash asked. "It'll be a lot easier to send up a smaller, lighter ship, won't it? So we get Appleoosa to sell us one of their three-pony jobs, put your docking port on that, and use it instead!"

Twilight shook her head. "First, I already asked. The changelings aren't selling their second-generation rocket and crew systems yet," she said. "And second... I'm convinced that Amicitas is the future of space flight. Magic engines will one day send ships to Bucephalous and Chiron and all the other planets in our solar system- maybe even to other stars! Chemical rockets are a temporary stop-gap technology- and a dangerous one, too! I don't just want to beat Chrysalis to the moon. I want to prove that our way is the best way to do it!"

"Maybe you oughta think about which is more important," Applejack drawled, "proving your thesis right or keepin' Chrysalis's dirty hooves off the moon." Not that she expected to change Twilight's mind by pointing this out. She'd said as much before, after all, and here they were anyway.

"I think we can do both," Twilight said. "Look, we all know Chrysalis is plotting something, right? And whatever it is depends on her getting to the moon first, or else she wouldn't have gone to all this trouble! But what if it doesn't? What if Chrysalis wins by getting to the moon at all? No, we've got to win the space race in such a way that, whatever she does next, she gives up on the moon entirely. And that means-"

"I'm sorry, Twilight," Rarity said cautiously, "but I think you really ought to think about what does come next. I mean, I agree we should get to the moon first, obviously." The purple-maned unicorn sat forward on her throne and tapped a hoof on the map table. "But when that happens we're going to have a lot of unhappy changelings, out in the open, with nothing to do and no prospects for the future."

"Now, that's jus' not true," Applejack put in. "Cherry's done a crackerjack job o' findin' jobs for changelings. Why, we've even used a few out at th' farm now an' again. They make good hands if ya watch 'em close. An' then there's those new TV shows they're puttin' out. Granny Smith sure does love The Neighbors Upstairs, I tell ya that."

"And we've left space tourism and private satellite launches entirely to them," Twilight Sparkle continued. "If the changelings want to continue space flight, they'll still have plenty of opportunities."

"But wouldn't it be cruel to... well... crush their hopes and dreams?" Fluttershy murmured. "Maybe we have to beat them, but we don't have to... um... beat them... I guess?"

"Maybe we do have to," Rainbow Dash said. "We've gotten to know a few of the changelings over at CSP, right? I know I have. That Occupant, he's kinda stupid, yeah? But Dragonfly isn't nearly as dumb as she makes out to be. And they're both totally loyal to Chrysalis, which would be really cool if Chrysalis weren't totally evil and wicked! And if she says, 'No more Ms. Nice Bug,' the other changelings will fall right in behind her unless we totally shut her down cold!"

"But that's precisely what I'm concerned about, dear!" Rarity replied. "If we do, as you put it, shut her down cold, why wouldn't she return to her old ways? She'd have lost everything-"

Twilight rapped her hoof on the map table and kept pounding it until the discussion stopped. "You've given me a lot to think about, girls," she said once she had every pony's attention again. "But the fact is that, at least for now, the only multi-pony ship we have available is Amicitas. It'd take us months to design and build our own capsule like the one CSP is testing. That's time we don't have, especially since we have to build and test our lander already."

"That's our job," Lemon Hearts chipped in. "And we'll also be training Rainbow Dash and Spitfire how to fly it."

"We have most of the parts already," Moondancer added. "Assembly is already in progress back in Baltimare. We could be ready to launch the first lander in three weeks."

"But first we need to put our own communications relay satellite in orbit around the moon," Twilight Sparkle put in. "Just in case our relay system gets blocked by the moon's shadow. That's going to be Flight Twelve. How soon can that launch?"

"We have a satellite ready to go, and the chemical rocket to do it," Moondancer reported. "We could launch in five days, if we have the mission control crew available."

"I'll be there," Applejack said. She'd been flight controller for every flight so far, and she didn't see a reason to change that now. "Fluttershy, do you think you're up to bein' our SATCOM?"

"I-I-I'll try," Fluttershy said quietly. Then she took a deep breath, sat up in her throne, and said more firmly, "No. I'll do it. I'll be there."

"Okay then," Applejack said. "That's settled. What next? The landing?"

"Not without a test flight," Twilight said. "First, we see if Amicitas can make it to lunar orbit and back. Rainbow Dash and I will be the crew again, with Spitfire and Moondancer as backup. That'll be Flight Thirteen."

"Ooooh! Lucky thirteen!" Pinkie Pie grinned. "Because nothing bad ever happens with thirteen!"

"Flight Fourteen will be an unmanned landing and launch of a probe-core lander," Twilight said, ignoring Pinkie. "And if all goes well, Flight Fifteen will be the real thing."

"And we've got two whole months to make it happen?" Rainbow Dash grinned. "Easy-peasy. Chrysalis won't know what hit her."

Footnotes:

(434) So would Rainbow Dash, but for totally different reasons.

(435) As did Wonderbolts Captain Spitfire, who currently sat #2 on the pilot roster despite having not yet ridden a single rocket anyplace.

(436) The gathered Elements of Harmony were carefully not looking over in one alcove of the throne room, where a young sphinx sat in a pile of parchment carefully writing out I will not bother busy ponies with riddles and/or threats to devour them a thousand times. She'd had to start over once already when Twilight, still grumpy at being interrupted, had made her start over and do it in modern Equestrian instead of hieroglyphics.

(437) After the recent incident in which Starlight Glimmer had been sent by the Cutie Map to Canterlot to mend a breach between Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, she and the group of CSGU graduates had begun referring to themselves as the Legion of Substitute Twilights. Minuette had had to be talked down from commissioning a set of body suits as uniforms.

(438) About the same proportions as what would be cans of tuna in our world. Canned chestnuts were occasionally a light, crisp, crunchy snack for campers, but more usually an ingredient in stir-fry and salad recipes. Sadly, the canning process made them useless for roasting, which was the favorite pony way to enjoy them.

"... perfect equatorial orbit, one hundred fifty kilometers altitude, orbital deviation three percent," Fluttershy said with a long sigh of relief as she removed her hooves from the probe controls. ESA-12, the fourth Equestrian communications satellite, had just joined the changeling CSP-R2 in orbit around the moon.

"Confirmed stable orbit," Moondancer called from the trajectory console. "Satellite is generating power, stable, forty-five percent fuel remaining in tank."

"Good," Applejack said, "Go for test signal."

"Okey-doke!" Lemon Hearts said, tapping a few keys on the EECOM console in front of her. Three moments later, she said, "Test signal returns A-OK! No errors!"

"Well, all right," Applejack said, nodding to herself. "I reckon we got us a satellite!"

Up in Cape Friendship's mission control gallery, Twilight Sparkle shook hooves with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, then with each of the eight reporters who'd stuck around for the orbital insertion and single adjustment burn needed to put the new satellite in its planned orbit.

"So, beans are go(439), right?" Rainbow Dash asked from a seat at the back of the mission control floor, looking expectantly at Applejack.

The orange pony at the flight director station shook her head. "Beans are for launches, Dash," she said. "And they’re for mission crew, which you ain’t this time. Besides, you'll get all the beans and cornbread you want on th' campin' trip. Rarity and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are waitin' for us back in Ponyville!"

"Oh, yeah," Rainbow Dash said, slumping a bit at her console. "It's that time of year, isn't it?"

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "You didn't forget about the annual campin' trip ta Winsome Falls, did ya?" she asked.

"Well," Rainbow Dash pointed out, "We kinda had this satellite launch, and there's also training for Mission Thirteen to come..."

"Now, you know a promise is a promise," Applejack insisted. "And it won't be too much longer afore Scootaloo is a grown mare and on her own. Ya gotta make time for th' important things."

"I know," Rainbow Dash agreed. "And a promise is a promise. But..." She looked at the gallery, where Twilight, relieved from the hoof-shaking, was staring down at the ponies on the floor. "We're kinda on the clock here, right?"

"Will you relax?" Applejack said, stepping away from the flight director podium. "Th' changelin's don't launch their Minmus probe for another three days. It'll take a week after that ta get there. An' if somethin' goes wrong on it, they'll have to do it all over again. We can spare th' time ta have fun with our families, right?"

Dash smiled a little. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "But we'll just have to work harder when we get back."

"Psst," Rainbow Dash whispered. "You got any of that anti-itch cream left?"

"No," Applejack whispered back. "Ain't you over those flyder bites(440) yet? It's been a week!"

The two of them sat side by side in the crowded visitor gallery at Horseton Space Center's mission control, watching as Changeling Space Program's Mission R5 made its final descent to the surface of Minmus.

"I think a flyder hitched a ride back home in my backpack," Rainbow Dash hissed. "I'd swear I wake up every morning with fresh bites."

"Sssh!" Twilight Sparkle hissed. "Watch!"

The representatives of the Equestrian Space Agency settled into silence as, on CSP Mission Control's main screen, a half-wagon, half-rocket bearing a vague resemblance to a flyder(441) hovered on its own thrust just above the icy surface of Minmus, then shut down its engine and flopped forward onto its wide-sprawled wheels, where it bounced a couple times in the minimal gravity.

"I bet I could do that with Amicitas," Rainbow Dash whispered.

"Dash, be quiet!" Twilight whispered back. Then, ignoring her own order, she continued, "Amicitas weighs fifteen times as much, and the moon has four times the surface gravity. Don't you even think about it!"

"You sure sound like you've thought about it," Rainbow whispered back.

"I've done the math!" Twilight said, no longer whispering. "The nose gear would snap off like a dandelion stalk!"

"SSSSHHH!" half a dozen ponies hissed, bringing on a moment of silence...

... broken by a shout from the mission control floor: "Why didn't you fools test the thing on the GROUND??"

"We DID test it on the ground, my queen!"

On the screen, instead of rolling over the steep hills of the Minmus highlands, R6 hopped and bounced like a bull in a rodeo. Attempts to steer it merely resulted in the probe lifting one forward wheel or the other in what appeared to be an attempt to flip the whole thing over.

Shutters clicked on cameras from one end of the VIP gallery to the other. Pencils scrabbled across notepads with blazing speed.

"I think the changeling moon flight just got delayed," Rainbow Dash chuckled.

"SSSSSHHHH!!" every reporter and photographer in the gallery hissed.

An hour later, after much trial and error(442), CSP-R5 did complete its mission... but at the cost of massive embarrassment to the changelings.

And equally massive relief to the ponies of Equestria Space Agency.

MISSION R5 REPORT

Mission summary: Land on Minmus and collect scientific data and temperature scans

Pilot: Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration: 9 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First wheeled vehicle on another world

Conclusions from flight: “Good enough” is NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL, DESPITE ITSELF

Footnotes:

(439) Applejack had brought a pot of slow-cooked beans and some cornbread for lunch after the first ESA launch. The beans proved popular among the other Elements of Harmony, and Applejack was forced to bring a larger batch for the second launch. By the infamous ESA-05 launch demand had grown beyond Applejack's ability to haul pre-cooked beans from Ponyville to Baltimare, and thus neither beans nor cornbread were in Cape Friendship's commissary at the time of Rainbow Dash's Very Nearly Bad Day. A number of Cape Friendship workers blamed the bad flight on the absence of the "lucky beans", in addition to the other causes. Rainbow Dash had insisted that the recipe be given to the commissary cooks in preparation for ESA-06, and beans and cornbread had become an ESA tradition ever since.

(440) Flyders are a pest endemic to the forests of northwestern Equestria. Thought to be a leftover of the Days of Madness (the period of Discord's rule, ending with the discovery and first use of the Elements of Harmony by Celestia and Luna), flyders are omnivorous, highly aggressive, and immune to all forms of insect repellent. Only their lack of venom keeps them from breaking into the official Top Ten List of Nightmarish Creatures of Equestria.

(441) Not really. CSP-R5, with its four long spindly girder legs ending in wheels and its comparatively skinny central body, more resembled a water strider if anything. However, after their annual disaster of a camping trip, both Rainbow Dash and Applejack had flyders (metaphorically) on the brain, and after listening to stories from the trip Twilight Sparkle was halfway there as well.

(442) Light on the trial, very heavy on the error. It eventually proved easier to simply return the probe to the skies and fly cross-country to the target zone, then cover the last fifty meters by hopping, flopping and wobbling.

"Read all about it! Get your Ponyville Chronicle right here!"

"Ooh! I love reading about what's going on!" Pinkie Pie giggled, dropping a bit into the frog of the newsfoal's waiting hoof and taking one of the papers from the stack on the Ponyville train station platform. "It's always good to be a pony in the know, you know?"

"All I know is," Rainbow Dash said as she slumped on a bench, "we're FINALLY ready to begin sims on Flight Thirteen. And I've only got a week before I have to go practice for the Wonderbolts show in Tall Tale! When is that train gonna get here?"

"Aren't you the teensy eensy least bit interested in hearing all the good news in the paper?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"If you ask me," Applejack said, pulling her own luggage trunk up onto the platform, "Dash doesn't care what's in the paper if it isn't her own name."

"Hey, I have a healthy self-image, all right?" Rainbow Dash snapped. "Wasn't that train due ten minutes ago?"

"Huh," Pinkie Pie said. "New Shrubbery in Castle Garden. Isn't that interesting?"

"Whose castle?" Applejack asked. "I don't remember Twilight havin' any landscapin' done."

"Snoozeville," Dash said.

"How about this? The Neighbors Upstairs Second Series Announced."(443)

"Who has time for television?"

"Noodles Favorite Food of Whinnyapolis," Pinkie continued. "Author A. K. Yearling Announces Retirement. Changelings Go For Moon Rover on Friday."

"WHAT?" Rainbow Dash sat bolt upright and yanked the newspaper out of Pinkie's hooves. "Let me read that!"

"But Dashie!" Pinkie protested. "We already knew all about the new rover!"

"Not that, THIS!" Rainbow protested, poking her hoof into the middle of the newspaper. "It can't be true!"

"Well, I'm kinda surprised noodles won the vote too, to be honest," Pinkie shrugged. "But different foods for different dudes!"

"No! Not that! I mean... rrrgh!!" Rainbow Dash threw the newspaper back at Pinkie Pie before rushing up to the ticket counter and shouting, "Hey! Hey, you! I need to change my ticket! When's the next connection to Vanhoover?"

Applejack groaned. "So much for simulations," she muttered. "Pinkie, you better go with her. Try to keep her from breakin' her fool neck, all right?"

Pinkie Pie looked over the newspaper at Dashie. "Her neck doesn't look that stupid to me," she said. "Of course, I don't really know what a stupid neck looks like. Or a smart neck, either. How could you tell?" Blue eyes crossed in intense thought. "I'm pretty sure I know what a happy or a sad neck look like, though. Maybe happy necks are stupid, because you know what they say, 'Ignorance is bliss,' right? Or maybe not, because there was this time I didn't know Mrs. Cake had used up all the blue icing on a birthday cake just when my blueberry-raspberry cupcakes were ready, and when I went to get some and couldn't find any I wasn't blissful at-"

"Pinkie. Just go, will ya?"

The modified robot car, no longer looking like a long-legged insect, rolled effortlessly across the surface of the moon, steering first one way and then the other without mishap.

Pencils scribbled and cameras clicked just as furiously as they had two weeks before.

Applejack sat in her seat next to Twilight and watched in silence. Rainbow Dash hadn't come for this event: she and the other Wonderbolts were in training, practicing their show for Tall Tale.

It was getting harder and harder to get away from Sweet Apple Acres for these things. Summer was coming to an end, and cider season lay only a few weeks away, The contractors building Twilight's new school seemed to be coming up with new and inventive ways of delaying construction(444). Every gathering of Twilight's core group of friends came at a great struggle against the centrifugal force of individual interests and duties.

Applejack snuck a glance at the purple princess next to her. Rainbow Dash was the beating heart of ESA, the force that kept pushing forward, but Twilight Sparkle was the glue that held it together... and the strain showed on her face. Her cheek occasionally twitched. Blood vessels stood out in the whites of her eyes. About every third time she spoke in a conversation she went into babble mode, only cutting off her stream of thought with an obvious effort of will. Applejack had seen her in much worse shape... but that didn't make her current frame of mind good.

"Primary mission complete, Flight." That was the changeling at the controls of the probe- Dragonfly, that's right, that was her name. "Request permission to proceed with performance tests."

"Roger, capcom," Occupant said. "You are go for performance tests, beginning with speed run."

"Okay, flight. Let's see what's on the other side of that ridge. Rocket throttle to five percent."

Five percent of rocket throttle on the rover's four wheels was more than enough to goose it up to twenty-four meters per second in a few moments, at which point Dragonfly shut off the engine and kept the rover rolling on the electric motors in the wheels. The rover bounced along merrily on the uneven surface, moving much more steadily than its predecessor had on Minmus.

And then the rock appeared in its path.

"Oops!"

Whatever Dragonfly did with her controls took a second and a half to reach the rover, thanks to the difference between the instantaneous telepresence illusion projected on the wall and the speed-of-light radio controls she was using. By the time her order to steer away, hit the brakes, or whatever reached the probe, it was already tumbling end over end, one of its solar panels and its two front wheels sheared away. Other parts exploded or bounced away from the thing before what was left of it- one solar wing, the probe core housing, and the rocket's fuel tank and engine- came to a stop on the lunar surface.

"Oooookay," Occupant's voice barely cut through the scribbling, photo-taking, and film-shooting, "that's something we know not to do next time."

Applejack slumped in her seat, wondering if there would be a next time. Or if the changelings, having proved they could build a workable rover(445), would move on to their main goal again.

All things considered, it didn't seem safe to bet on the first possibility.

MISSION R6 REPORT

Mission summary: Test booster for moon landing; land on the moon and collect scientific data and temperature scans

Pilot: Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration: 4 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 0
Milestones: First controlled landing on the moon by a probe

Conclusions from flight: Lightspeed lag and driving sixty miles per hour on rock-strewn terrain just don’t mix.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: LESS SUCCESSFUL THAN IT COULD HAVE BEEN

Footnotes:

(443) Of the several television plays Chrysalis had invested in, The Neighbors Upstairs was by far the most popular. This came as a mild surprise to Chrysalis, since she'd honestly thought a show that presented changelings in natural form would have turned off ninety percent of pony viewers. However, since she was perfectly happy to admit she was wrong if it benefited her and if she didn't have to say it out loud, she'd given the go-ahead to a new series about a changeling in Haywaii who had adventures and solved mysteries. The article whose headline Pinkie Pie had just read also referred to this project by its title: Macula PC.(446)

(444) Many of which, though Applejack didn't know this, they had developed while working on Horseton Space Center. After over a year of near-constant construction and upgrades, work had tapered off there, and a lot of construction workers and contractors had shifted in groups to the new Ponyville project. They were discovering, to their great pleasure, that a lot of tricks which Queen Chrysalis had seen through instantly lasted for as long as a week before either Princess Twilight or Applejack put an end to them. This made them very happy workers, and in turn it made the merchants and landlords of Ponyville even happier.

(445) Build it, but alas, not drive it.

(446) Private Changeling.

"All right, Rainbow Dash," Starlight Glimmer's voice echoed over the comms, "we're all go for main engine test. Stand by for simulated liftoff."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow muttered irritably, and then louder, "Amicitas copies, standing by."

Not that she was actually sitting in Amicitas. The ship which would take her into space in eight days' time, and to the moon three days after that, currently rested in the VAB undergoing final flight refit. Rainbow Dash sat instead in the much smaller cockpit mockup room attached to the immense rocket engine testing center, situated in its own two-mile radius no-go zone well away from everything else at Cape Friendship.

On the other side of a double-layered reinforced wall stood reproductions of six engines- the three liquid-fueled main engines used in launch, and the three much smaller engines powered by the single, massive block of enchanted diamond behind them, all of which bolted to a gantry whose base extended down into the concrete foundations of the building itself.

A laypony, at first glance, would have thought the wall and the reinforced mount overkill on an absurd level. Rainbow Dash, having taken part in several of these tests(447), knew better. Hard experience had demonstrated the heavy engineering to be both necessary and adequate(448). For her own part, she would have preferred to conduct the exercise by radio from mission control, or from her own house back in Ponyville. But she also wanted to be able to hear the sounds the engines made when in operation, and this was the best way.

"We're going to start a simulated launch countdown from t minus twenty seconds," Starlight said. "Fuel and oxidizer pumps active."

Off a significant distance from Rainbow's simulated cockpit, and separated from the test building by a freestanding blast wall, giant refrigerated pressure tanks holding liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen began to creak and knock as internal mechanisms passed the dense fluids into pipes which, on the switch of a few valves, would feed them into the engine mechanisms, Rainbow couldn't hear it, but she'd seen them tested before, and the creaking never failed to worry her... not that she'd let anypony see it.

"Fifteen seconds."

The systems Amicitas used had grown too complicated for the old system of allowing the pilot to launch the rocket just whenever. The rocket engines had to be ignited and checked for thrust balance before releasing the clamps which held the giant imbalanced stack on the pad. Only after the ship left the ground would Rainbow Dash take control; until then, launch control on the ground ran the show by wire.

"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven."

Rainbow wiggled a little in her flight spacesuit, placing her forehooves on the mock flight yoke and throttle. Behind her she heard faint clanks as the valves opened, pumping high-pressure fuel and oxygen into the reaction chambers of the three main engines.

"Main engine start. Four."

The wooshing sound of fuel got drowned out almost instantly by a roar that still threatened to deafen Rainbow Dash, despite thick walls and her communications headset. Her cockpit shook with vibration transmitted through the test facility's walls.

"Three. Two. One. Zero. Liftoff!"

Under her hoof the throttle shifted itself forwards to full power, and the roar grew louder. The mission clock began ticking on the console of mocked-up controls.

"Twenty seconds! Throttle down to eighty percent for max Q."

"Copy eighty percent for max Q." This was the first actual thing Rainbow had to do. She pulled the throttle back a bit, just as she would in an actual flight about this point as the rising ship approached the sound barrier. Behind her, the roaring reduced slightly.

"Forty seconds," Starlight said. "Performance nominal..." The words, begun with certainty, trailed off towards the end. "Amicitas, read me mana battery power level."

Rainbow Dash glanced over the mockup controls for the readout. "Uh... mana battery at one hundred, repeat full charge."

"Huh. Guess we have a bad gauge here. Past max Q and go for throttle-up."

"Roger, go at throttle-up." Dash pushed the throttle forward again until it wouldn't move any farther.

Through the roaring there came a faint crunching sound, followed by a loud BANG. Instantly every light in the mockup capsule, including the interior illumination, went red.

"SHUTDOWN! ABORT, ABORT, ABORT!" Starlight's voice shouted over the comms. "Fire crews stand by! Do NOT enter the testing facility until ordered!"

The roaring ceased, replaced by the almost but not quite totally muffled sound of an ordinary fire.

"Fuel shutoff confirmed! Fire teams, go go go!"

Rainbow Dash sighed, slumping back in the mock flight couch and slapping open the latch of her flight harness with one hoof. "Control, Amicitas," she called. "Starlight, what the hay just happened?"

"I think it was your gauge that was faulty on the mana battery, Dash," Starlight said. "In here we were showing a rapid drop-off of power levels. Either the enchantment was faulty or the mana engines were sucking down more power than they should have. Either way, the battery was overdrawn and had a critical failure."

"In other words, it blew up," Dash said.

"In about a million tiny pieces," Starlight agreed glumly. "I guess diamond is just too brittle for this size of battery after all. It doesn't look like the engines are actually damaged, but we'll have to spend a couple days inspecting them to be sure."

"We haven't got a couple of days!" Rainbow Dash insisted. "Those engines need to be inside Amicitas five days from now so we can get the ship on the stack!"

"I know, I know," Starlight said. "But there's no point in launching until we know the battery works. And a fifty percent failure rate just isn't acceptable. I don't want to strand you in moon orbit."

Rainbow Dash sighed again. "All right, that's it. As soon as you give me the all-clear to get out of this thing, you and I are gonna go talk to Twilight about this."

Half an hour later Rainbow Dash kicked in the door of Twilight's office in the Cape Friendship administration building, shouting, "Twilight, we gotta talk about- huh?" She froze mid-rant(449) as she saw Twilight Sparkle, head bowed in utter depression between two immense stacks of paperwork. "Hey, Twilight, what's wrong?" She fluttered into the room, circling around Twilight's desk like a worried mother bird. "Did the changelings launch a sneak mission to the moon already?"

"No," Twilight said miserably. A quill slowly danced across the page in front of her, idly lifting itself over to the inkwell for a dip.

"Don't mind her," Spike said as he peeled himself off the wall behind the door Rainbow had slammed open. "She just got a letter from her parents. They won an airship cruise for the whole family, and she THINKS she can't go."

"But I CAN'T!" Twilight insisted, showing life at last. "There's the friendship school to work on! There's the map back at the castle, which could summon somepony at any time for a friendship mission! There's the administration of this space program! There's the tests of the magic rocket engines, the moon lander-"

"Um, about that," Starlight Glimmer said as she poked her head around Rainbow. Rainbow pushed her back with a quiet shushing noise.

"-and flight sims, and the cruise leaves dock in seven days! Launch day is in eight! I'd miss the launch!"

"I told her," Spike grumbled, "that's why we have backups."

"I'm not going to make Moondancer take my place just so I can have a fun vacation!" Twilight snapped.

Spike looked at Rainbow. "Make her go to the moon?" he asked. "Make her?"

"You know what I mean!" Twilight snapped. "I'm a princess! I have responsibilities! I can't just go around handing things off to other ponies!"

"You mean, like Celestia does?" Starlight asked, exchanging knowing nods with Spike.

"That's totally different!"

"All right, I've heard enough," Rainbow Dash said, dropping down directly in front of Twilight. "Look at yourself, Twily," she continued, waving a forehoof up and down at her friend. "You're working yourself to exhaustion and thinking yourself to a frazzle! You're in no shape to fly! You need rest!" She waved both her forehooves as she stated, "Everypony, this is the face of the pony most in need of a vacation in all Equestria!"

"I do NOT need a vacation!" Twilight insisted.

Rainbow Dash looked her in the eyes. "Twilight," she said, "somewhere in Equestria is the pony who loves lists of things more than anypony else except you."

"Harsh," muttered Spike.

"But not wrong," whispered Starlight.

"And somewhere among their fifty gazillion lists," Rainbow Dash continued, "they have a list labeled, 'Ponies Who Need a Vacation.' And just under the title, it says, 'Number One: Twilight Sparkle!'"(450)

"But... but I can't!" Twilight shrieked. "I know Moondancer's been doing her best, training as my backup, but if something goes wrong with the magic engines she can't fix them! And she's not strong enough to power them by herself!" She waved a hoof at Starlight Glimmer. "Starlight could, but she's not trained as an astromare yet! And there isn't anypony else, Dash!"

"That's all right," Dash said. "Because I'm flying alone."

"WHAT?"

"Well, I'm certainly not flying with you," Dash insisted. "Like I just said- you're not fit to fly. You're worn out, your mental state is a wreck, you haven't had the time to put in the training you really need... the way you are now, you'd be more of a hindrance than a help!"

"But-"

"And besides," Rainbow Dash pressed on, "we don't really need you, or Moondancer really, because we're not taking the magic engines up on this flight. We've had too many system failures on the ground, Twilight. They're not going to be flight-ready in time!"

"But if we use sapphire or amethyst instead of-"

"Not ready in time!" Rainbow repeated. "We still need weeks of tests! Without a single failure! Not weeks where we keep hoping for best two out of three! Yeah, the engines work great when they work, but when we're up around the moon we need to know, for certain, that when the throttle goes forward the battery isn't going to explode or the oscillation crystal isn't going to shatter or the thrust bell isn't going to crack and disintegrate. Will we know that in time, Twilight?"

Twilight hung her head. "No," she said quietly. "But the changelings are going to launch in three weeks. We have to launch on schedule."

"I know," Rainbow said. "So here's my plan. We take Amicitas to low orbit over Equus. We launch the moon lander, dock it there, and do those tests close to home. Then we launch another probe, a Mission Fifteen, with a huge tank of fuel to refill Amicitas's internal tanks. We put fuel and oxidizer refill ports inside the engine bay and put a couple of fuel hoses in the ship kit that I can use to link up with the probe's fuel tanks through the docking port. Then I go out to the moon, see how low I can orbit, take photos of landing sites, and come home. Pack extra food so I can make some aerobraking maneuvers to slow down before final re-entry. It's not as simple as the old mission plan, but it's a thing we can do reliably and safely. Right?"

"But Amicitas is the future," Twilight protested. "The magic thrusters will revolutionize space travel."

"Yeah, but not right now," Rainbow Dash said. "And what we can do in five days is remount the liquid fuel engines, and ONLY those engines, put extra fuel tanks in instead of the mana battery, and work out how to build and launch a refueling probe in about a week. And however important it is to show the world how wonderful Amicitas is," she finished, "it won't make a darn if Chrysalis gets to the moon before we do!"

"Well... but..." Twilight looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes. "Even so, I don't want you to go alone. Remember how rough the ride back into atmosphere was on Amicitas's first flight?"

Dash nodded. To the outside world, that re-entry had looked uneventful. In reality, Dash had wrestled the controls of the tail-heavy ship and fought like a mare on locoweed to keep the ship from tumbling out of control during aerobraking. "Yeah. So?"

"If it had gone wrong," Twilight said, "I could have saved you. Shield, teleport, I'd have managed it. If something goes wrong around the moon, and I'm not there..."

"Yeah, stop right there," Rainbow Dash said. "To tell the truth, I'd rather have you here on the ground. Because if something does go wrong, and I get stranded around the moon... who else could I trust to make sure somepony came to rescue me?"

"Princess Celestia..."

"Princess Celestia would try," Rainbow Dash agreed. "But Princess Twilight Sparkle would know how to do it. And she'd make it happen if she had to walk to the deepest pit in Tartarus and fight her way back out. And I know it." She smiled and added, "Because I know you'd never leave me hangin'."

Twilight shook her head. "That's right," she said. "And thank you for saying that. But I still want to go with you, Dash."

"Not the way you are now," Rainbow insisted. "It's time you took some time off. Moondancer will take care of space program stuff while you're gone."

"I can work on the friendship school," Starlight volunteered.

"And I can keep up the friendship log and answer your fan mail!" Spike added.

"And when I get back," Rainbow Dash said, "you'll be rested and relaxed, we'll know how Amicitas and the moon lander work, and we can finish training for the actual moon landing. Before the changelings can do it!"

"But... Rainbow Dash, Starlight, you're my friends," Twilight said. "And Spike, you're part of the family too. You ought to go on the cruise too! I can't just leave all of this work for you!"

"What's that?" Spike asked. "I can't hear you. Because you're on VACATION!"

Twilight turned to Starlight. "Starlight?"

Starlight looked at Spike. "You know, I could swear I just heard Twilight's voice," she said. "But that can't be, because she's ON VACATION!"

"I know, right?" Spike asked.

Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash, who hovered with her forelegs crossed. Sighing, she gave in. "I guess I could use some time off," she said. "And I can use the days before the cruise to sketch out the refueling ship and-"

"Aaaaap, aap aap aap!" Rainbow Dash scolded, reaching down and yanking Twilight out from behind her desk and into the air. "Vacation! Behind desk is not vacation! Drawing spaceship blueprints? Not vacation! VACATION is vacation! So VACATE!"

"All right, all right, I'm going!" Twilight said. "I'll fly straight to Ponyville and pack my suitcases! One for visiting my parents in Canterlot, and one for the cruise!"

"Sounds like a plan!" Rainbow said, allowing Twilight to descend back to the floor. "Have a good time!"

"Thanks, everypony," Twilight said. "And good luck with the launch. I'll be listening from the cruise." With that she turned and, with a spring in her step she hadn't had before, marched down the hall to the administration building lobby.

"WHEW!" Rainbow Dash sighed, slumping in midair. "I thought she'd never give in."

Spike held up a warning claw. "Wait for it," he said. He held up three fingers, then two, then one...

"CRUISES HAVE ACTIVITIES, RIGHT?" Twilight shouted from halfway down the hall. "GIMME SOME PAPER! I NEED TO MAKE A SCHEDULE!"

"There it is," Spike said, smiling smugly.

"Really?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"You've known her longer than I have," Starlight said. "But even I know that no power in the world will stop Twilight from organizing things."

Footnotes:

(447) Rainbow Dash only took part in those tests which were more involved than "turn it on, turn it off", a distinct minority of rocket engine tests. But even this limited experience had made a deep and lasting impression on Rainbow Dash... and, on two occasions for which she was present, a deep impression in the concrete and steel as well.

(448) Adequate, that is, so far. The thing about the word "adequate" as regards testing rockets and other explosive devices is that you can only truly learn if the word should have been "inadequate" the hard way. Oh, math could say this or that, but math didn't know everything.

(449) Totally blocking the doorway and preventing Starlight Glimmer from entering behind her. Not that Starlight minded that much, since it gave her a chance to catch her breath after her desperate gallop across miles of empty space center grounds attempting in vain to keep up with Equestria's fastest mare.

(450) Rainbow Dash didn't know it, but the hypothetical pony she was talking about was Princess Celestia, and she did indeed have a list of Ponies Who Need a Vacation. However, she put herself on top of that list, not Twilight. In fact, because Celestia knew more ponies than Rainbow Dash did and had a broader perspective on things, Twilight actually came in well down the list at #17, behind the royal palace pastry chef Velvet Fondant (#4), Raven Inkwell (#8), Tempest Shadow (penciled in at #12.5), and Pinkie Pie (#15).

"Forty meters at zero point four."

"Looking good, Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash's voice replied through the telepresence spell, as the target blip of ESA-14 crept cautiously towards Amicitas's dorsal docking port.

For Equestria Space Agency's Mission Thirteen, the previous four days had been as smooth as Sweet Apple Acres cider(451). Amicitas's launch would never become routine, as razor-edge as the range of successful flight profiles to orbit was for the ship, but the launch had come as close as possible, leaving slightly more fuel in place than Mission Eleven had landed with(452). Once there, Rainbow Dash had it easy, while Applejack and the other ponies on the ground had busted flank to get the Mission Fourteen stack assembled and on the pad.

Mission Fourteen, being so much lighter than the previous launch, had it even easier getting to orbit. The aeroshell fairing had protected the fragile moon lander exactly as designed, then peeled away on schedule with zero damage to the craft inside. Solar panels had extended, the little ship had powered up, and within half a day it took up station in orbit less than a hundred meters away from the much larger Amicitas.

Now Applejack watched Fluttershy at what would normally be the CAPCOM station, sweating and trembling as she operated the controls that guided ESA-14 slowly and cautiously towards its target. A pony focused on the image on the telepresence wall, looking at the steady, direct glide of the bug-like lander towards the winged tube of Amicitas, wouldn't have known that the soft, quiet, steady voice calling out a slowly reducing distance every few seconds belonged to a pony on the brink of nervous breakdown. But Applejack knew, and she worried.

"Twenty meters. Velocity steady."

"You got it, Fluttershy. Just like in the sims."

Applejack suspected that the only thing allowing Fluttershy to hold herself together was Rainbow Dash's confident voice responding to every callout. According to the communications protocols- protocols Dash herself had insisted on after Flight Five- she ought to order the chatter stopped. For that matter, Dash using Fluttershy's name instead of either Baltimare or Fourteen broke a flight rule. But some things were more important than rules, so Applejack remained silent while Dash provided extra struts for Fluttershy's confidence.

"Ten meters. On target. RCS off."

The lander's maneuvering thrusters- the Reaction Control System- shut down. The head of the lander coasted down on the screen, about to meet Amicitas's back. Two identical-looking rings, one on each ship, drew closer at the rate of about one hoof per second.

"Electromagnets on."

"Electromagnets on."

Inside the docking rings on each ship, electricity flowed to powerful magnets, amplifying their power. The two ships accelerated together on screen for a moment, and-

"Contact!" "Contact!"

-they met, the smaller ship wobbling around the point of contact for a moment or two.

"Soft capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash's voice called out. "Engaging clamps!"

Inside the ring, a series of small but sturdily-built hooks extended from one ring into the specially-made holes inside the other.

"Red... red... green light!"
The hooks turned sideways like twelve keys in twelve locks. Beneath them, servomotors whirred, pulling the connection tight.

"Hard capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash called out. "Baltimare, this is Amicitas: Chickadee(453)is home!"

Hooves stamped the floor throughout ESA Mission Control, including the press gallery(454). Applejack let the applause go on, stepping away from her station to walk over to the capcom seat, where Fluttershy had slumped back into the backrest, panting, eyes rolling with relief. She waved a hoof at Moondancer and Minuette, who walked over and gingerly lifted the prostrate pegasus out of the chair.

As the two unicorns carried Fluttershy away to recover from the strain, the new capcom pony came onto the circuit. "Excellent work, both of you."

"Is that you, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked. "You're back early! What happened to the cruise?"

Easing into the chair just vacated by Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle sighed. "Don't ask," she said. "Flight, capcom?"

"Oh, right," Applejack muttered. Quickly putting her own headset back on, she said, "Capcom is now Twilight Sparkle. Capcom, Thirteen is go for inspection of Chickadee, with simulated moon landing operations to begin 0900 tomorrow."

"I can hear you, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash chided. "Can we get a return to normal comms protocol now?"

Applejack nodded silently to Twilight Sparkle, who said, "That's affirmative, Thirteen. And once you're done with the post-docking checklist, we need to review mission protocols for the lander shake-down. We have to launch Flight Fifteen tomorrow and dock it with you the day after to stay on schedule."

"Roger that, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash said. "Just a second while I unseal the docking ports, and we can do the geek thing all you want."

"It's not the geek thing!" Twilight insisted. "It's being safe!"

"Tomayto, tomahto," Rainbow Dash repeated back.

Applejack, back at her station, relaxed. She almost felt right at home.

Footnotes:

(451) Which she'd insisted be included in flight rations for this mission, though the amount she'd actually gotten hadn't been nearly what she wanted. Applejack had replied that it was the very first pressings of the season, that Dash had gotten the jump on the line she'd always wanted, and it wasn't asking too much that the blue pegasus be a little bit more grateful.

(452) Which had proved vitally necessary on the first flight. Amicitas’s hull did provide some lift in atmosphere, but only at high speeds in low altitude did it produce enough for sustained flight, and even then only under power. Otherwise the thing “flew” like a pink brick, capable of maybe twenty seconds of almost level gliding if handled just right before the thing stalled out and fell. That meant, without at least a little fuel for the engines, Amicitas was going to hit the ground wherever momentum and atmospheric resistance dropped it, winglets or no winglets. On the first flight they’d overshot Cape Friendship and had to get on the power to make a U-turn and stay above the water long enough to reach the runway. There had still been a little fuel left afterwards, but carrying less landing fuel on future flights never once entered into either Rainbow Dash’s or Twilight Sparkle’s heads.

(453) The name was Fluttershy’s second choice. Her first suggestion, based on the way the lander looked with its solar arrays extended, had been Flyder. The only no votes for the name had been Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Rarity, but they had been LOUD no votes- so loud that even Chickadee was a pet name, and the flight was officially the nameless ESA-14.

(454) Which upset the cameraponies who were capturing the event for television, because the bouncing threw everything out of focus.

"Fourteen(455), you are go for ascent stage ignition!"

"Copy go for ascent."

Rainbow Dash stood at the controls of the lander, one hoof on the switch which would dump two-thirds of the little ship's mass to tumble away in orbit, eventually to decay and fall back into atmosphere in a brief ball of flame. It still seemed a waste; there was more than enough fuel still in the descent stage's tanks to bring it back to Amicitas intact. If it had been designed for in-flight refueling...

... but it hadn't. The descent stage was totally inaccessible from inside the lander's cockpit, which precluded any orbital refueling. And besides- as Twilight had pointed out- they wouldn't really know if the ascent stage worked until they tried it, which meant throwing away a working descent stage. And if, for whatever reason, the staging failed, then better to have a working descent stage that could get Dash back to safety, at least potentially.

All very logical, but Rainbow Dash still disliked the idea. Twilight, who had spent over a year working towards a single reusable multi-purpose spaceship, was going to land on the moon using a disposable ship, while Chrysalis, whose organization ran entirely on expensive, disposable, one-and-done rockets, were going to land on the moon in the same ship they went there in. There was something backwards to that, but Dash didn't have the egghead words to explain it.

"Ascent stage ignition in three, two, one." A beat after one her hoof hit the switch, and the lander bucked underneath her as the tiny ascent engine lit. The tiny dot of Amicitas, which had shrunk for the past hour as Dash performed maneuvers on the descent stage, began growing larger again as the lander slowed in orbit, dropping back down to the lower orbit it had begun in.

"We read successful decoupling and ignition of ascent engine," Twilight Sparkle's voice replied. "Set shutdown clock for ten seconds."

Rainbow Dash twisted a knob on the controls. "Shutdown clock set."

"Engage clock in four... three... two... one... mark!"

"Clock engaged!" Dash reported. She'd hit the button right as Twilight called the mark, and she watched as the clock counted down the seconds. The shaking and roaring ceased the moment the clock hit zero, leaving Dash in free-fall again, held in place by a forehoof on the controls and the clingy stuff on the boots of her rear hooves.

"Shutdown on time, Baltimare," Dash reported. "How's my time back to Amicitas?"

"We show Amicitas intercept in seventeen minutes at three point four meters per second relative," Twilight responded. "Well within RCS manual control parameters. Good work, Rainbow."

"Thanks, Twi." Dash shifted her rear hooves, testing the grip of the cling-strips. "The main engines throttle fine on the descent stage. Thrusters kick like Big Mac, though."

Pause. "Applejack wants to know how you know how hard her brother kicks, Fourteen."

"Ask Applejack how many of her trees I've been napping in when her brother is applebucking."

"That explains it... Applejack says it better explain it... anyway, any other observations you want to share, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash looked at the controls. "Some more advanced computers on the lander would be nice," she said. "And map and trajectory projection screens. This computer only holds one landing and one ascent profile, right? Every time I have to go manual, all I have to go by are half the instruments and the port-side window. For a shakedown it's okay, but for actual landing this ship absolutely needs two ponies unless you get some more computers in here."

"Pinkie Pie's doing the best with the electronics we have," Twilight replied. "The minotaurs at CSP are keeping their best designs to themselves. A computer that can do what you're talking about would just weigh too much for the lander."

Yeah, and if we weren't racing CSP to the moon, we could take our time and develop the good computers, Rainbow Dash thought. And get the magic thrusters working reliably on a scale larger than RCS. And figure out a way for Amicitasto land under its own power without an atmosphere. And a bunch of other stuff.

But, since all of that was stuff that couldn't be said on a hot mike, Dash just said, "Well, you asked. Aside from that it's a pretty good craft. Build another like it, and let's go to the moon!"

"Not until you get back," Twilight said. "We need photos to pick out a good landing zone."

"Right, right," Dash muttered. "Lemme know when I'm about to pass Amicitas, okay?"

“A little more than twelve minutes to go,” Twilight replied. “I’ll tell Spitfire to remind you. We’re going to swap out capcoms now so she can get started on launch prep for Flight Fifteen. Launch is a bit more than four hours away.”

“Okay, Twilight. Talk to you later.” Dash shifted position again, trying to work out the kink in her back (456), and leaned over for a moment to check the readouts on the copilot side of the lander. Everything seemed good to go.

Tomorrow I refuel. And then… next stop moon!

Footnotes:

(455) The orbiter, Amicitas, was Flight Thirteen. The lander, Chickadee, was Flight Fourteen. So long as Rainbow Dash was flying in the lander, her call sign was Fourteen, not Thirteen. This might or might not have had some influence on her desire to bring the lander back intact and keep using it.

(456) On most worlds equine life forms can only achieve bipedal stances for the briefest of moments. The ponies of Equus, with their extremely flexible and versatile joints, could do it for longer periods, even indefinitely with training and practice. But most ponies thought such a thing would get you a job with the Cirque du Celeste in Las Pegasus as a master contortionist- all the more so pegasi, who never had the problem of needing to stretch to get something off the top shelf.

Twilight Sparkle looked around Cape Friendship’s empty Vehicle Assembly Building, as the crawler (457) carried the Flight Fifteen stack out to the launchpad with the greatest of care. “What have we got left?” she asked.

“Not much,” Minuette said. “One Swivel and one Terrier- that’s it for engines, except for your test designs. Three or four of the smaller liquid fuel tanks. Oh, and half a dozen Flea boosters, and the Mark One capsule.” The pale blue unicorn shrugged. “To be honest, we couldn’t even have built the Fifteen stack without the parts left over from the Prance-Germane Joint Space Initiative.”(458)

“Well, make up a list of all the stuff we’ll need to do Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen over again,” Twilight said.

“Already done!” Minuette said. “Appleoosa says they’re still finishing up the boosters for the changeling dress rehearsal in eight days. They have back-stock for some of the parts, but they won’t be able even to begin building new parts until about a week from now. Call it three weeks from today until delivery.”

Twilight scuffed a hoof across the concrete floor. “And that’s if their moon shot doesn’t bump our order,” she muttered. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that vacation.”

Minuette shrugged. “That’s how it is, Twilight,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’ll bump the order. Cherry Berry told me they couldn’t even begin planning their final moon launch stack until they see how Mission Twenty-Three performs. It’ll take days after she gets back from her flight before they can begin construction.”

“And meanwhile Chrysalis will be…” Twilight shook her head. “No, I’m not going to worry about that right now. What good news do you have?”

“Well,” Minuette said, “we’ve successfully tested docking in the lab of two upgraded docking ports. We’ve included connections which will allow the docked ships to link up resources- electricity, fuel and oxidizer.” She grinned and spread her forehooves wide. “Just think of the possibilities! We can build giant super-ships in space to go to the other planets! Or we could have a research platform in orbit! No, wait- a hotel! A space hotel for those tourists Chrysalis keeps sending up!”

“Well, that’d give the changelings something to do,” Twilight said, smiling. “And it would make it easier on pilots. No fiddling with hoses like Rainbow Dash will have to do tomorrow.”

“And Starlight’s conducting the second stress test on the decentralized power array for the magic thrusters right now,” Minuette continued. “So far only one failure out of twenty batteries!”

“That’s excellent news!” Twilight said. “Now all we need to do is test the emergency circuit breakers!” She rubbed her chin with one hoof. “I need to think of a way to simulate a power failure cascade.”

“Oh, Starlight already did that,” Minuette said. “We’re building a rig where a lot of dummy batteries are hooked into the system along with the real ones. We just set up switches to flip from a good battery to a dummy, and repeat quickly-“

“Yes, that might work!” Twilight said, grinning. “And if the breakers scram, we’ll know the new system is ready to fly!”

“Now all we need,” Minuette said, “is one more changeling screw-up. Give us two more weeks, and the space race is ours!”

Footnotes:

(457) The changelings might be willing to throw as many workers at the problem of carrying a rocket to the pad as necessary, but Twilight refused to put up with such a wasteful and dangerous system. Two unicorns were sufficient to operate the enormous track-driven platform that carted the rockets out to Cape Friendship’s pad at a safe, sedate 1.5 kilometers per hour, with much less danger that a rash of sneezing or hiccups could destroy hundreds of thousands of bits worth of spacecraft in an instant.

(458) The Fancy and Germane ponies, seeing the writing on the wall, had merged their efforts with ESA’s six weeks prior. With that merger, the only space programs remaining were the ESA and Changeling Space Program… and the diamond dogs’ Project Stardust, or so they claimed.

“How’s it going, Dash?” Twilight’s voice rang through Rainbow Dash’s headphones. “You’re running behind schedule.”

Dash wrapped one forehoof over a long, ribbed length of flexible pipe. “Have you ever tried,” she growled, “wrestling two heavy insulated hoses in free-fall?”

“Um, yes,” Twilight replied. “In simulations. I was with you, remember?”

“Guiding hoses from one point to another while hanging from a gantry rig on the ground is NOT the same thing!” Dash replied. “In free-fall these stupid things take on a life of their own! First I had to clear the hoses out of the engine bay so I could reach the intake sockets. Then I had to straighten them out enough so I could get the ends hooked in to the refueler sockets on the other side of the docking port, right?”

“Oh, Rainbow, why did you do that?” Twilight asked. “You know the procedure-“

“Because they were closer to the docking port that to the engine bay hatch.” Dash grunted as she yanked a coil of the recalcitrant hose in the direction she wanted. “But the hose wants to stay curled back up, right? Except for the parts that want to stay straight!” She grunted louder as a couple of coils of hose flipped to encircle her.

“We trained for it as a two-pony job, Dash.” Twilight Sparkle wasn’t even trying to keep that annoying lecturing tone out of her voice. It was one of the very few things about her friend that really drove Rainbow Dash up the wall. “But you said you didn’t need a second pony on this flight.”

“All right, I needed a second pony for this part! Happy now?!” Dash pushed up and out of the encircling coils, found a hoof-hold on one of the storage cabinets in Amicitas’s midships section, and brought herself to a halt. By lucky chance more than design, both the loose ends of hose now floated close enough to the hatch leading to the engine bay that Dash could stretch them the rest of the way while keeping a hoof on the hatch frame for stability. “Hold on, I almost got it!”

It turned out not to be quite that simple, but after a few more minutes she had the oxidizer hose’s connector ring into its matching socket. “There!” she shouted in triumph, slamming down the locking collar to seal the hose in place. A green light over the nozzle changed to yellow. “Oxidizer at amber light, repeat oxidizer tank ready for pumping!”

“Stand by, Dash,” Twilight said. “We don’t want to pump until you’re clear. Cryonic fluids are dangerous even through insulation.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “I wasn’t saying to start pumping right this very second!” She shifted her position in the hatchway, hooked the tip of a hoof under the collar of the fuel line, and drew it to her position. A soft kick brought it up to her eye-level, where she grabbed it in both forehooves, twisted it so the mouth of the hose faced the filler socket, and released it long enough for one forehoof to resume its hold on the hatch frame. The other forehoof slid the hose end into the socket…

… where it clinked, and bounced back.

“What the hay?” Rainbow Dash asked out loud.

“Something wrong, Thirteen?” Twilight called over the comms.

“Nah, nothin’ important,” Dash replied offhandedly. “Hose just doesn’t wanna go in, that’s all.” Bracing her rear hooves against the hatch frame, she grabbed the hose with both hooves again and slammed the hose onto its socket. On the third try it finally seated properly. The green light for the fuel turned red, showing a bad seal, but after a couple of less-than-gentle twists of the locking collar it turned orange, matching its twin on the oxidizer intake.

“Fuel light is amber, repeat amber,” Rainbow Dash said. “Go for fuel and oxidizer transfer once I clear the midships.”

“Thirteen, we’d like you to suit up first,” Twilight said. “We got a brief red light on the fuel intake seal down here. We want you to watch and make sure there’s not a leak.”

“I’m pretty sure it was just the hose being balky,” Rainbow Dash said. “Got a good seal now. But all right, I’m suiting up now.”

In an emergency the space suits designed jointly by Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Dragonfly could be donned without the cooling garment undersuit in less than ninety seconds. This wasn’t an emergency, so Dash shucked her flight jumpsuit, shimmied into the skin-tight(459) spacesuit undergarment, and then carefully went through the checklist of spacesuit sealing and testing.

Thus, Rainbow Dash didn’t bother stifling her groan when, after over ten minutes of careful bother in zero-gravity, the ten minutes of high-pressure transfer of fuel and oxidizer went without a hitch or even a hint of a leak. “There!” she cried out as the lights went from yellow back to green. “Just a stubborn hose, like I told you!”

“Better safe than sorry, Thirteen,” Twilight said. “That said, we’re going to watch the fuel system for a little while just to make sure.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dash said, already reaching up to counter-rotate the locking collars to release the hoses and restore the auto-safe tank seals.

For a brief moment the light flickered red again as the hose unclamped from the fuel intake, but it almost instantly went green again, and it stayed green as Rainbow Dash removed the hose.

Rainbow Dash gave it no further thought, especially not after she spent another half hour wrestling with the hoses before, fed up with the whole business, she left them to float free in the midships compartment, not bothering to store them back in the engine bay.

Two hours later the main engines re-lit, and after a two minute and thirty second burn, Amicitas was firmly set on its trans-lunar orbit trajectory.

Throughout the burn, not a single indicator on the entire fuel system showed anything but green.

Footnote:

(459) Skin-tight except in the hindquarters, where they were embarrassingly loose… and padded. The thought of what that padding was there to do inspired almost all non-changeling astronauts to spend the absolute minimum time necessary wearing a spacesuit undergarment.

“Ten seconds to shutdown, Thirteen.”

“Amicitas copies.”

On the far side of the moon from Equus, a pointy bit of metal pushed a plume of plasma ahead of itself, decelerating, allowing itself to be captured in the grip of the moon’s gravity well. The sole occupant of that metal shell watched the controls, watched the readouts, hoof resting atop the throttle controls, ready to cut power from its current fifty percent to zero on cue.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One!”

“Shutdown!”

Rainbow Dash’s hoof lifted off the throttle, now resting in its cutoff position, as the roar of Amicitas’s engines died into a series of rapidly fading knocks and metallic creaks. Something flickered for just an instant among the lights and dials, but when Dash’s eyes scanned them again, everything showed normal. Everything that should be green was green; every gauge that had a normal range had the needle square in its center.

“Thirteen, we show Amicitas in an orbit of twenty-six by twenty-four kilometers,” Twilight Sparkle’s voice said in a softer voice than the countdown. “We read fuel and oxidizer at thirty-seven percent each. You are go for orbital operations around the moon!”

“All right!” Rainbow Dash grinned. “Let that Ad Astra cut us one of those Royal Astronomical Society checks for a change!” She grinned as she added, “And if she’s listening, the name is spelled R-A-I-N-B-O-W-“

“Focus, Thirteen!” Twilight Sparkle snapped. “Besides, that money goes to fund the satellite network. You know that!”

“Can’t blame a pony for trying,” Dash replied.

“And since when were you in it for the money anyway?”

“I’m not in it for the money!” Dash protested. “I’m in it for the adventure!” In a softer voice she admitted, “Though I have got my eye on a custom embroidered patch for my flight jacket…”

A particularly exasperated horse noise hissed over the telepresence comms channel.

“But getting back to the mission,” Rainbow Dash said, “I’m looking at the Mission Day Ten and Eleven checklist. For the rest of today I just take standard photos of the surface along the moon’s equator on the Equus side. Tomorrow morning I descend to ten kilometers and take photos in the same zone. Then, if fuel permits, I go suborbital and then burn back to orbit to test Amicitas’s fuel consumption for the emergency landing scenario. I burn for home first thing on Day Twelve and have my first aerobraking pass late at night on Day Fourteen, with a Day Fifteen landing at Cape Friendship. Anything else I missed?”

“No, Thirteen, that covers the main action points,” Twilight Sparkle agreed.

“All right, then!” Dash said. “I’m gonna have a sip of cider with my lunch meal, then! And thank Applejack again, will you?”

“I’ll send a telegram. Last word from Ponyville was, this is Sweet Apple Acres’ best cider season ever.” Applejack hadn’t been able to put off returning home to help with the harvest and pressing any longer, and Moondancer had taken over for her as lead flight director.

“I’ll bet! If it’s all like the first pressing!” Rainbow Dash said. “And tell her to save me a barrel. I’ll pay for it out of my share of that milestone prize check!”

“RAINBOW DASH!!”

“Comms discipline, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied primly.

Many more exasperated horse noises resulted.

“Okay, Thirteen,” Twilight Sparkle said, after glancing over at Flight Director Moondancer for confirmation, “we show you at thirty-four percent fuel remaining. You are go for suborbital flight at seven kilometers altitude, with an abort level of twenty-seven percent fuel. Repeat, go for suborbital flight, abort at twenty-seven percent.”

“Amicitas copies, Baltimare.”

Joking and silliness time was over. This was the final test of the mission: determining how effective Amicitas might be on a moon landing approach, in case something happened to make the lander unusable or if the lander required a rescue. Rainbow Dash would have to watch fuel levels and altitude constantly, giving regular call-outs all the while. And the danger of a malfunction- which would result in Amicitas crashing onto the surface at near-orbital velocities- made this maneuver the third most dangerous part of the entire mission.(460)

“Baltimare, Amicitas,” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. On the telepresence projection, her face under the headset showed serious, even grim. “Coming up on periapsis now. Adjusting attitude for suborbital trajectory insertion.”

On the screen, the projection of Amicitas above the moon’s surface pivoted end over end, settling down with the three main engine bells pointing ahead of it.

“Roger, Thirteen, looking good,” Twilight called out. “Initiate burn in your own time.”

“Amicitas copies.” On the screen, Twilight noticed her taking a couple of deep breaths. The pegasus’s jaw set even more firmly. “Initiating burn in three, two, one, mark!”

Plasma plumes lit up in front of the engine bells on Mission Control’s projection.

“Twenty-five percent throttle… raising to thirty percent… holding at thirty percent,” Rainbow Dash called out. “Apoapsis at twenty kilometers… fifteen… thirty-three percent fuel…”

“Trajectory looks good, Flight,” Lemon Hearts said.

“Apo-peri flip,” Rainbow Dash announced as what had been the apoapsis on the orbital projection descended below Amicitas’s current altitude on the other side of the moon. “And… negative periapsis! Amicitas is now suborbital at nine point eight kilometers and descending! Thirty-one percent fuel remaining!”

“We see it, Thirteen,” Twilight said. “Good work.”

“Baltimare, if I had just a little more fuel, I could land this thing,” Rainbow Dash continued. “I know I could! Or if we had the magic thrusters up here! Maybe if they were, oh, twenty percent more efficient, I could land on the tail and level off on maneuvering thrusters! I know it, Twilight!”

“Another time, Dash,” Twilight replied. “We show you thirty percent fuel at nine point five kilometers. Velocity check?”

“Stand by… velocity at-“ Rainbow Dash’s eyes flickered on the screen. “Baltimare, I may have a problem,” she said. “Aborting maneuver, returning to orbit.”

“Flight, EECOM,” Minuette called from her station. “I’m showing red light on fuel pressure, and fuel levels are dropping faster than oxidizer.”

“What?” Twilight shouted. “Rainbow- Thirteen, we’re reading loss of pressure in main engine fuel system!”

“Yeah, I see it too,” Rainbow said. On the screen, Amicitas had almost finished flipping back over, the exhaust plumes a little larger than before. “Ask if there’s any chance of me doing a direct trans-Equus burn from here.”

Twilight looked at Lemon Hearts.

“What? I don’t know!” Lemon Hearts shouted without being asked. “I don’t see how! She’s in totally the wrong part of her orbit for a one-burn-to-Equus! It’ll take me time to feed the numbers into the computer and figure something out!”

“From where I sit,” Minuette added, “she doesn’t have the time. Fuel level twenty-three percent and dropping.”

“And she’s still suborbital!” Lemon Hearts finished.

“Shoot!” Twilight cursed. “Thirteen, Baltimare, negative on return to Equus. Just get an orbit back and shut down engines.”

“Negative, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash shot back angrily. “You designed this thing! You know I can’t re-light the engines without pressure in the fuel system! I burn now, or I’m stuck up here!”

“I know, but the trajectory just isn’t there!” Twilight answered back. “If we’re going to get you down, we need to save fuel if we can! Go to full power and burn back to orbit now, then shut down and we’ll work the problem!”

“Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash growled, “I am at full power!” For the first time the determined look in her eyes began to show hints of fear.

“Loss of fuel pressure is affecting performance,” Minuette said. “It’s dropping off like a- whoa!”

In the inset of the telepresence screen that showed Rainbow Dash’s face, the lighting went red.

“Main life support just scrammed!” Minuette continued. “Combustibles in the return air flow! Fuel is leaking inside the spacecraft!”

“Shoot!!” Twilight said again. “The pressure seal must have failed in the refueling system. Thirteen, seal off the bridge and suit up immediately! Fuel inside the spacecraft!”

“Negative,” Dash replied, her face going iron again. “Not enough time. SAS on prograde.” She hit a switch, then slapped her flight couch restraints and floated out of view, and for half a minute the screen showed an empty seat. Amicitas remained on course, burning straight ahead, without its pilot.

“Fuel down to ten percent,” Minuette mentioned into the silence.

“Altitude ten point two kilometers and rising,” Lemon Hearts called out. “New projected apoapsis of twenty-two kilometers and rising. Still suborbital.”

Twilight Sparkle ground her teeth. “Come on, Dash,” she muttered.

Then, on the screen, Dash dropped into her seat again, slinging herself into the restraints and shoving the buckles together. “All right,” she announced, “I’ve closed the hatch to the midsection and isolated the bridge’s life support.” Her eyes made a single sweep of her console. “Six percent fuel remaining,” she said. “Reorienting to burn for the horizon. I should be able to circularize orbit with maneuvering thrusters.”

“Confirm that, Trajectory,” Moondancer called from the flight director podium.

“Roger, Flight.” Lemon Hearts looked down at her console, then shouted, “Periapsis! Less than a kilometer! It’s still showing impact with a couple of ridges, but-“

On the projector, the last feeble hints of exhaust from Amicitas’s engine bells flared out.

“Burnout!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Altitude twelve kilometers and rising. Will begin maneuvering thruster burn at twenty kilometers.”

“That should be good enough,” Lemon Hearts answered.

“Life support restored, bridge only,” Minuette reported.

Twilight Sparkle breathed out a sigh of relief, but only for a moment. “Thirteen, Baltimare,” she said quietly.

“Go, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said, her face still grim as ever.

“You’ve got a few minutes before you reach your new apopasis,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I’d like you to go ahead and suit up now. Once you’re done with your maneuvering thruster burn, we’re going to have to shut down life support and vent the ship to clear the fuel vapors.”

“Roger,” Rainbow Dash said, not moving from her seat.

Twilight watched for a moment, then asked, “Thirteen, is something wrong?”

“Remember what I told you before, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked, tone no longer hard and firm.

“Um… yes?”

“I just want to say… I’m really glad you’re not up here with me right now,” Rainbow Dash said. Her voice cracked as she added, “Now get me down, please?”

“We will, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I promise.”

And a quarter of a million miles away from Cape Friendship, the all-but-dead Amicitas drifted around the moon, hanging.

Footnote:

(460) Launch being the second most dangerous, and the aerobraking and re-entry of the less-than-stable aircraft being the most dangerous by a mile.

Author's Note

I wanted to give people an idea of the kind of things that make the Equestrian Space Agency a part-time affair for the Mane Six plus Starlight and Spike. The examples all come from the end of Season 7, with the events of the movie moved up a bit in the timeline and Season Eight obviously postponed for most of a year in story time. Events of the episodes referenced in the chapter may be taken as having run more or less as per the original.

This is the first mission in this story, aside from the cardboard box flight, that doesn't have a corresponding flight in Kerbal Space Program. This wasn't for lack of trying; I built a space-shuttle looking thing in the game so that, next chapter, I'd have a target for the rescue ship to go to. However, I wasn't able to build it to make a stable ascent to orbit, despite multiple tweaks and advice from other KSP players among you readers. And, of course, the one time I did get the thing onto a suborbital space trajectory, the empty ship was so unstable on re-entry as to be unflyable, eventually nosing in and hitting the water at supersonic velocity.

Stranding Amicitas in lunar orbit was a plot point in the story practically from the word go. I had hoped the game would give me a rescue mission contract to fulfill the conditions, but it never popped- possibly because, in game, I've yet to fly a manned mission to the moon.

But even so, this chapter proved tough as hell to write, because I kept finding one plot hole after another that had to be written around. My original idea, to have a single giant magic battery that failed in orbit of the moon, failed for multiple reasons, not least that Twilight Sparkle would DEFINITELY have gone along for the ride, and for plot purposes I needed Rainbow Dash to be flying solo. (Also, I'd written myself into a corner by mentioning in The Maretian that a magic battery enchantment ranked among the simplest and most fundamental enchantments, which limited my ability to justify failure.)

I considered and ultimately rejected having the magic engines fail for no apparent reason; having the moon lander test be conducted in lunar orbit, ending in an uncontrolled crash of the lander into Amicitas's engines; and having the magic battery just fail to recharge. All of them failed my inner credibility test, mostly because Twilight Sparkle would never allow the ship to launch under conditions which would make those failures even possible. Eventually I faced up to the fact that Amicitas would have to launch without the magic engines in order for the stranding to be halfway believable.

Even then, my mode of failure was restricted. I'd originally intended the oxidizer fill valve to fail under reduced pressure, but then I figured out a slow, dangerous but feasible way of restoring oxidizer to the system via the life support system and on-board tinkering. That led to what you've just read- a defective fuel filler valve that passed inspection but didn't quite work properly with the filler hose, which led to it failing once internal pressure no longer held the seal in place. As will be explained next chapter, the design was intended to be fail-safe, and therefore didn't include a redundant shutoff valve for that reason, proving that Twilight Sparkle, although diligent, does not rise to NASA levels of engineering paranoia.

As I post this, it's less than an hour to tonight's KSP game stream. For those interested, Mission CSP-23 will be flown in a special Saturday afternoon livestream beginning 3 PM Central time this Saturday, http://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin .

Two chapters remain.

Chapter 17: Mission 23 - The Snack Supplies May Be Starting to Run a Little Low

Contrary to popular belief, leaders do not usually walk in front of absolutely everyone else. A truly important ruler travels with an entourage of guards, secretaries and majordomos to take notes, announce their arrival, and discourage attacks. This large swarm of subordinates, not to say underlings, allows the ruler to walk at an unhurried, unruffled pace.

Chrysalis had known this since she was a nymph, and yet she had to grip on to that fact with a bite of steel just to allow two of her bodyguards to lead her to the administration building. She'd been pulled out of the final day of simulations- less than forty-eight hours before the pony launched for the moon-orbit test flight Mission Twenty-three- at the request of her fiercest, most despised rival.

Request? Summons is more like it, she thought. Typical pony princess behavior, throwing a wrench into our preparations when we're on the back hoof, trying to guarantee her victory! The thought put more quick into her quickstep, forcing Cherry Berry and the rest of the prime and backup crews for CSP-23(461) almost to a trot to keep pace.

The launch of Amicitas and the successful test of the Chickadee lander and the refueling drone had given notice to the Changeling Space Program that their lead in the space race was gone. Taking Amicitas into lunar orbit had only extended the Equestrian Space Agency's lead. Within two weeks of that pink monstrosity's return to Equus, it would be ready for a new launch... and that meant Chrysalis had that amount of time to see the test flight completed and the final landing mission launched, or else almost two years of scheming would go up in smoke. The last thing she wanted was any delays- especially Twilight Sparkle induced delays.

The drones guarding the main Administration doors snapped to a trembling attention and saluted snappily as Chrysalis approached.(462) The guards preceding her went through the doors without looking back, and Chrysalis followed, paying no attention as the footsteps behind her sharply reduced in number after a murmur from Cherry. After all, she and the pony had been the only ones summoned(463); no need for all the others to crowd into the room.

The guards led the way to the main conference room, which had two more changeling guards flanking it. Chrysalis allowed herself a brief snort at the sight; had protocol been followed, there should have been two pony guards present as well. Sparkle doesn't even understand how to behave within her station, she thought. Weakness.

Then she and the pony were through the door and into the conference room, where Twilight Sparkle sat, looking nervous and worried, on the other side of the main table. Chrysalis took a seat across from her, paying no mind as Cherry found a chair next to her. The door behind them shut, the guards withdrawing to wait outside.

"Well, little princess, you know we have a launch in two days' time," the queen snarled, not bothering with any greeting. "Yet you come here saying it's an emergency and you have to see us at once, pulling us out of vital simulator work." She leaned forward in her chair and nailed Twilight Sparkle with her most imperious glare. "So make it good."

Twilight Sparkle didn't flinch. She stared back at Chrysalis with pleading eyes and said simply, "We have a pony stranded in orbit around the moon."

Chrysalis blinked. She hadn't paid close attention to ESA Flight Thirteen, settling for the daily news briefings and an occasional dose of padded headlines which counted as so-called "television news". And today in particular she'd spent all day in simulations, watching Cherry and her crew two-thirds of the time, leading her own crew the other third. But nothing in anything she'd read or heard had hinted at something as horrible as this happening to the ponies.

"One of the refueling valves malfunctioned earlier today," Twilight continued. "It probably got damaged days ago during the orbital refueling we did. Anyway, the valve wasn't properly capped after refueling, not that the cap would have held under pressure anyway. It leaked fuel into the mid-deck, and in the process the loss of pressure caused the engines to malfunction. They lost power until they eventually flamed out, and the remaining fuel either vented through the engine pumps or into the compartment." Twilight's voice squeaked a little as she got to the end, and she stopped, swallowed, and got her composure back before continuing, "We have a stable orbit, but the ship has no fuel and not enough power in the thrusters to break orbit and return home before food supplies run out."

A quiet squeak popped out of Cherry Berry. Chrysalis, her own head spinning slightly, leapt into the gap before the pony could say something either foolish or soppy.(464) "You had better fill us in on the details," she said in a brisk, sober voice. "How many days of food does Rainbow Dash have left?"

"At full rations, nineteen days, not counting today," Twilight Sparkle said. "After the multiple rescues your space program performed back in spring, we doubled down on packing food supplies for emergencies. Rainbow launched with a thirty days's supply. But we don't have the rocket parts we need-"

"We'll come back to that," Chrysalis interrupted, raising a hoof. "Your steering rockets-"

"Maneuvering thrusters," Cherry muttered.

"Reaction control system," Twilight muttered at the same time.

"Whatever." Chrysalis dismissed the interruptions with a flip of the hoof. "As I understood it, they're rechargeable, just like the spacesuit thrusters. How long would it take to get home on those?"

Twilight shook her head. "The current generation of RCS batteries require time to recharge," she said. "We're still working on batteries efficient enough to provide steady thrust. With the weight of Amicitas and the thrusters on board, we can't do better than twenty meters per second of delta-V per day. It would take thirty-two days to escape the moon's gravitational sphere of influence, and then even more to drop our periapsis down to Equus atmosphere."

"What about the get-out-and-push thing?" Chrysalis asked. "Like Cherry Berry did."

"Rainbow Dash wouldn't even get half a meter per second of delta-V by getting out and pushing," Twilight said. "We already did the math. Three pushes in twenty-four hours, about 1.3 meters per second total. It might shave about two days total off the return flight. That's still longer than Dash has, even on half rations."

"I see," Chrysalis said, nodding her head in understanding. "And so, with one of your closest friends- and, might I add, one of the mares most vital for the defense of Equestria from people like me," she added, unable to prevent her fangs from showing as she said the last three words, "in horrible danger, you have come to us for aid." She put on her most judicious facade, steepling her forehooves together. "What, specifically, can we do for you, princess?"

"All we need are some rocket components," Twilight Sparkle said quickly. "I have a list here, but the main items we need are a probe core, some fuel tanks, and a couple of Swivel engines. If we get those in ten days, we can launch-"

"Are you CRAZY?" That was Cherry Berry's voice, and Chrysalis couldn't help flinching at the outburst. "Anything could happen in that time! And we're going up there ourselves with a ship big enough to haul Rainbow Dash back!"

Chrysalis heard in her head what the pony's next sentence would be. No. No, no, no, NO. Think fast-

Twilight's eyes widened. "But won't that-"

In three seconds Chrysalis had split the difference between analyze all the options and I need something right the buck now and decided on action. "It won't be any trouble at all!" she said loudly, cutting off all possible words from both that pony and her pony. "We can perform the rescue as part of our shakedown flight. We won't even need to change the rocket!" A hoof struck the table as the queen finished, "In fact, I shall personally fly the mission and guarantee the safe return of Rainbow Dash!"

"That's righ- whaaaaa?"

Chrysalis felt Cherry's head snap round to look directly at her for the first time in the conference. She herself kept her eyes on Twilight Sparkle. Calm, poised, in control, that was the look she wanted.

"Now hang on just a-"

"After all," Chrysalis continued, reaching a hoof to the side to firmly push Cherry back in her chair, "the Changeling Space Program is the preeminent organization where it comes to in-space rescues! And we have a reputation to uphold!"

"Actually, I'd prefer Cherry to fly the rescue, if you don't mind," Twilight said quietly. "In fact I was going to ask her to help with-"

"Oh, no, I insist," Chrysalis said hurriedly. "After all, Cherry will be needed to fly our actual moon landing. And besides," she added, deciding it was safe to pretend to admit the truth, "if the pony flies a rescue mission for another pony, the world will see it as one pony rescuing another. For the sake of my children," she concluded firmly(465), "I must insist that the Changeling Space Program be seen as doing its duty, in the eyes of the world, for fellow astromares in distress."

The purple princess's eyes went from pleading to thinking, then to resolve. Despite herself, Chrysalis approved; firmness was a trait you wanted to see in rulers, even enemy rulers. "I understand your point," she said quietly. "But if you're going, then I have to go too. Because otherwise everypony will think you've replaced Rainbow Dash with a changeling."

"Oh, really?" Chrysalis asked, raising an eye ridge. "I don't remember seeing you in any of the joint astronaut training exercises. To the best of my knowledge, you went up in Flight Eleven on less than a week's total training, if that. How do I know you won't be dead weight on the flight, princess?"

"I know every system on Amicitas nosecone to tailfin," Twilight replied, not giving an inch. "I designed the flight systems in your EVA packs, the locking seals on the helmets, the life support systems. I created the spacewalk training systems themselves. And I designed the docking system you're going to need to link up with Amicitas when we get to the moon!" She leaned forward over the table, eyes locked on Chrysalis. "Plus I know every aspect of space flight theory just as well as Dr. Goddard and Dr. von Brawn. I've studied all their work cover to cover and applied it to my space program. There is no pony more likely to be useful to you on a rescue flight than me."

"Ahem."

"No offense, Cherry," Twilight added quickly, "but it's true. I was wrong about not accepting you as a pilot, but I'm not wrong about this."

"So you're a scientist and an engineer," Chrysalis drawled. "Which is all well and good on the ground. But will you know what to do in an emergency? In a space capsule? With deadly vacuum outside and nothing but your wits and a few switches inside? A pony who panics at the first drop of a flower petal has no business in space, princess."

It was Twilight's turn to raise an eyebrow. "I think," she said quietly, "that the list of enemies I've defeated over the years speaks to that. I'm no filly anymore, Chrysalis." She rested her forehooves on the table and leaned a little farther forwards. "And I am going. I am going to see my friend rescued for myself, and you're not going to stop me."

Chrysalis let the expression of intent pass by like a bullfighter dodging a charge(466). "Stop you?" she said, smiling broadly. "Why, dear princess, we are here to help! Nothing could be further from our minds than hindering in any way the rescue of Rainbow Dash! After all, what fate is more horrible than being stranded in space, all alone? And who truly understands that aside from astromares?"

The expression of confusion on Twilight Sparkle's face that followed warmed what passed for Chrysalis's heart. Good, good, she thought. Let the enemy be confused.

"But now that the key point has been decided," she continued, "I believe we should take a short recess. You will need time to prepare a detailed briefing on what we need to know for the rescue. And my chief pilot and I," she said, putting a hoof on the trembling shoulder of a pink pony ready to explode at any moment, "need to assess the changes we will need to make in our flight program to include the rescue."

"Er... thank you," Twilight said, "but I already have some briefing-"

Chrysalis arose from her chair, giving Cherry a subtle hint by pulling back the pony's chair a little with her magic. "Guard!" The door swung open, and one of the space center guards poked his head in. "Twilight Sparkle is to have run of the space center," she continued. "Remain with her and see to it she has everything she requires. We will reconvene here in..." She glanced at the clock above the wall. "Well, it's just time for lunch now anyway, isn't it? Two hours. We'll meet back here in two hours. Until then, princess!"

The door shut behind her and Cherry Berry, and instantly the pony's mouth was wagging. "What the sun-forsaken BUCK do you mean-"

"Outside," Chrysalis said, drawing the pony's mouth shut again with a brief flash of magic.

Footnotes:

(461) Prime crew: Cherry Berry commanding; Leonid the yak, backup pilot; Dragonfly, engineer. Backup crew: Chrysalis commanding; Fireball the dragon, backup pilot; Gordon the griffon, engineer.

(462) Under most circumstances fear makes people stupid. In certain select cases, however, fear is an effective reminder to people that now is the time to be extremely careful and correct in everything they do. It only took a moment's glance at Chrysalis's face for the door guards to realize this was one of those times. It didn't hurt that the guards, like all changelings selected for duty in the space program, were significantly more intelligent than the average changeling... but it didn't take much brains to know that getting your head literally bitten off by an angry changeling queen would not look good on a resume.

(463) Twilight had only asked to speak to Cherry Berry about an emergency. Chrysalis hadn't been asked for. Chrysalis knew this, but she felt that she should have been asked, and therefore she would act as if she had been, just to demonstrate to Twilight Sparkle that she wouldn't permit anyone to go behind her back. That was how you started sprouting daggers, after all.

(464) If Chrysalis had known what a Venn diagram even was, she would have had the field marked "soppy" as a circle entirely enclosed within "foolish".

(465) "For my children" was a lie that, for all the many times she'd used it, never failed to weaken pony resolve. Chrysalis did things for herself, like a true queen should. If the rest of the hive benefited that was a happy bonus, but she wouldn't hesitate to feed every last one of them into a woodchipper if it advanced her ends. After all, the hive was hers, her possession. If the ponies wanted to make more of her reasonable interest in the well-being of her primary asset, well, she'd keep using that tool until it broke.

(466) Bullfighting is indeed a sport in Equestria, though it is more popular in other lands around Equus. Unlike the brutal and senseless so-called sport known on less civilized worlds, Equestrian bullfighting does not involve bladed weapons of any kind. Even the bull's horns (minotaur or bovine) are covered to prevent accidental goring. Instead the sport is one of agility versus endurance, pony skill versus bovine strength, as each opponent seeks to hurl the other out of the bullring. Bulls are famed for the number of ponies they can throw out before they tire out and leave themselves vulnerable to a well-timed kick or jiu jitsu throw, while ponies are considered heroes even for taking on a bull casco a pata, let alone winning.

Cherry Berry steamed as she walked out into the middle of the space center complex beside Chrysalis. Only the fact that she really didn't want Twilight Sparkle to see her lose her temper again had kept her mouth shut in the conference room. Now that resolve was being aided by a soft but very firm magical grip keeping her jaw shut. That was fine by Cherry: it gave her time to pick which bad words she was going to use first.

Because she was just about ready to use them all.

"Right," Chrysalis said, stopping at a point almost equidistant from all the other buildings in the space center but well off the walkways connecting them. "Let's get this over with."

The magical grip released, and Cherry opened her mouth wide, taking a deep breath. "Now you listen here, you-"

"No, you listen here, pony." Chrysalis said firmly. "You heard the same things I did in there. All Twilight Sparkle wanted was some rocket parts so she could conduct the rescue herself. Rainbow Dash would probably have been just fine cooling her hooves for two weeks waiting for her ride home. And that ride home would have left the pony spaceship abandoned, in orbit, around the moon, while we had a wide open road to victory in the space race. Sparkle was ready to accept all of that, pony." The changeling queen bent her head down, lizard eyes glaring into Cherry's with a stare designed to inspire mortal fear. "And then you opened your big mouth and threw all of it away."

The stare might have worked on Cherry three years before. Here and now, she'd been around Chrysalis too long(467) for it to work on her. "Things happen in space," she said, putting as much snarl into her squeaky voice as she could. "And we agreed that I call the shots on anything space-related. How dare you take my flight away from me-"

"We also agreed," Chrysalis interrupted again, "that you would keep out of political affairs. And you have skirted that line once or twice, as you well know. Well, this is political now, pony. This is me salvaging some sort of advantage out of your monumental blunder."

"It is NOT a blunder to help a pony in distress!!"

"You could have helped by rushing their parts order!" Chrysalis snapped. "You could probably have even given them a Mark 2 capsule, and I would have put up with it! I would have been seriously annoyed, but that's nothing compared to how I feel right now!"

"But we are able to help, here and now!" Cherry insisted, pawing the ground. Even in her anger she knew that was dangerous- a pony openly challenging a changeling queen- but she didn't care. "And you cannot possibly tell me that you really think, in the privacy of your own head, that you're a better pilot than me!"

"I am as good a pilot as you," Chrysalis said, which part of Cherry supposed would be as close as the queen would ever allow herself to admitting Cherry's point. "But as I said in there, you are not a changeling. And I want Twilight Sparkle in my debt, pony. I want something I can hold over her. And, by extension, Celestia as well."

"The Mark 2 isn't flight-tested," Cherry said. "I fly all experimental ships."

"Not this one," Chrysalis said.

"You're breaking our deal!!"

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "Consider your next words very carefully, Cherry Berry," she hissed. "For purposes of publicity I have to fly to the moon with a pink pony. Whether it is the real pink pony is still up to my discretion."

The words you wouldn't dare died on Cherry's lips. Chrysalis absolutely would dare. To be honest, she kind of wondered why she hadn't made the swap long, long ago. A moment's reflection brought the answer. "You're not going to do that," she said quietly. "Because you want me to fly that ship. A lot."

"I would prefer you to fly Mission Twenty-four," Chrysalis corrected. "If circumstances force me to do otherwise... I will be mildly disappointed. But I will still fly. Do I make myself clear?"

"I think so." Cherry didn't like it, but she understood. "Now explain to me why it absolutely has to be you."

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "Didn't you listen to what I've been telling you, pony?" she snapped. "Twilight Sparkle is a princess of Equestria. If she'd actually thought for a moment, she could have ordered you to fly her rescue mission. She has that power, legally, do you understand? She wouldn't owe you anything. Not favors, not respect, nothing. It would be expected of you- by her, by Celestia, by the world!

"But nobody expects anything good of changelings, do they? If you fly the rescue it's normal. But if I fly the rescue it's something special. It's a gesture of trust. Of generosity. It. Is. A. FAVOR." Chrysalis settled on her haunches and looked at Cherry, no longer glaring or intimidating, almost on an equal basis with her. "If we were both ponies there would be no question of taking your flight away. But we're not. And that difference is why I have to fly."

Cherry thought about this. On the one hoof, it was such a selfish point of view that she very nearly couldn't understand it. But on the other... this wasn't just Chrysalis wanting to fly for her own glory, was it? This was about all changelings. This was about a feared species proving itself worthy- as it would probably have to do for many years to come. Put that way, she could almost accept the reasoning.

But she couldn't leave it at that. "I know you're still plotting something."

Chrysalis gave a snort of derision. "When am I not plotting something, pony?" she asked.

"Well, I'm pretty sure you're not plotting anything when you're reading those trashy romance novels."

"Figure of speech, pony."

"And I'm pretty sure you weren't plotting anything on that first spacewalk of yours," Cherry continued. "I remember how you looked on the screen when you were scrabbling to get back into the ship."

"Point made, pony."

"And then there was your first actual flight," Cherry pressed on. "I'll never forget the look on your face when-"

"Drop it right now," Chrysalis said, "and that's a royal command."

"Fine," Cherry said, and she dropped all of it. "So, let's figure out where this leaves Mission Twenty-three, hm?" She waved a hoof at the astromare center and added, "By the way, not it for telling Leonid and Dragonfly they're not going up."

Footnote:

(467) Or, some outside observers would say, not remotely long enough.

Rainbow Dash floated in Amicitas's bridge(468). She didn't exactly have a lot else to do.

There had been some scientific experiments earlier in the flight, but she'd finished all of them except for a couple which could be summed up in a five minute report back to the ground. There had been interviews with reporters and even a couple of live telepresence conferences with schools on the ground, but those had been cancelled hours before, as soon as everypony on the ground had realized that she would be stuck in orbit and not making the moon's newest crater.

All she had to look forward to was the two or three hours in the evening when Fluttershy would read to her(469), and story time was still some hours off. Other than that and the occasional fragment of chit-chat from the ground, she had absolutely nothing to do until she got rescued- which, by her own rough calculations, would take a week at the earliest, depending on how quickly Twilight could slap a rocket together that could reach her.

Dash was already trying to predict what would happen in that evening's chapter of Robo Rock Another World Live! when the beeping of the telepresence comms alert yanked her out of her daydreams. Her reflexive jerk and shout sent her spinning in the cabin for several seconds before she stabilized herself with her wings and found hoof-holds on the flight couches. As she reached down for her discarded comms headset, she heard a voice: "ESA Flight Thirteen, this is Horseton Space Center, comms check, over."

Horseton? Dash thought. What do the changelings want? Does Chrysalis want to gloat at me or something? "Uh, Horseton, Amicitas," she replied as she settled the headset over her ears, "I read you loud and clear. How me?"

"Reading you same. We have you on screen now." As the buzzy voice spoke, Dash recognized it as belonging to that one changeling, the one who had rescued those three other astronauts- Dragonfly, that was the one. "We have someone here who wants to speak with you. We've cleared our Mission Control for this, so this will be a private conversation once I transfer you. Do you copy?"

"Uh... Amicitas copies, Horseton," Dash answered cautiously. "Copy private conversation, no press. Stand by." Rainbow Dash looked at the comms controls, with their regrettably small number of knobs and switches. None of them, so far as she knew, allowed Amicitas to switch the telepresence to limit it to a specific planetside target. There was a private channel for spacesuited personnel, there was a switch between push-button microphone activation and voice-activated ("vox") comms, there was off and on... but she couldn't cut Horseton out of the loop while she talked with Cape Friendship. In fact, any telepresence system that knew how to tune in to Amicitas's specific enchantment could talk to her(470), and she couldn't shut them out.

Sighing, she bent to the inevitable. "Baltimare, Thirteen," she said. "Did you copy my last exchange with Horseton?"

"Affirmative, Thirteen." For some reason Moondancer was at the capcom seat. Dash had guessed Twilight wouldn't have been there, but Spitfire should have been on shift, at least until Fluttershy managed to nerve herself back through the mission control doors. "We are now clearing Mission Control except for flight director. I have to be here no matter what. Sorry, Rainbow Dash."

Okay, so that explained that. "Copy, Baltimare," Dash replied. "Just wanted to make sure you were on board with this."

"Amicitas, Horseton." Dragonfly again, as serious and straight as Dash had ever heard a changeling be- not that she'd spent any time listening to changelings more than necessary.

"Go, Horseton."

"Be advised that Horseton capcom is now Twilight Sparkle," Dragonfly said. A soft rustling sound, as of a headset microphone being jostled, whispered into Rainbow's ears.

"Twilight??" Rainbow Dash squeaked, and then followed it up with a hurried, "Uh, Amicitas copies capcom Twilight Sparkle." I figured she was there- where else would she get rocket parts from at short notice- but why is she calling me from there??

"Hello, Dash," Twilight Sparkle's voice called, loud and clear. "How are you doing up there?"

"How am I doing up here??" Rainbow Dash asked. "I'm going round and round an enormous silver glowing space rock. You know that. It's only been six hours or so! What I want to know is," she said, trying not to shout too much, "what are you doing down there in Horseton??"

"Well..." Twilight Sparkle didn't hesitate much, but Rainbow Dash had known her favorite egghead long enough to recognize the You Aren't Going to Like What I'm About to Tell You tone. "Remember how you said I'd find a way to get you down, no matter what?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the good news is, I should be up there myself to come get you in about twelve days, plus or minus."

"Oh!" That was days and days before Rainbow would run out of food. And she'd been expecting an empty robot-driven capsule just big enough for herself, not an actual crew. "That's great, Twilight!" Only then did she remember that changelings were involved in some way. "Now what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is," Twilight said, dragging it out, "I won't be the one piloting the rescue mission."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Dash said with an extra dash of irony. "So who's flying? Spitfire? Princess Cadance?" Then it clicked. "Of course! You got Cherry Berry to fly it! Hey, that's great news! Did you think I was going to be upset because she's working for Chrysalis? Because she's a great pilot, you know. Trained her myself!"

"Um, no, Dash," Twilight said. "It's not Cherry Berry."

"Oh." Dash prodded the question forward like a tongue investigating the precise location of the aching tooth. "Then who is the pilot, Twilight?"

"Queen Chrysalis."

Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped hard enough to send a pop over the telepresence connection.

"Thirteen, Baltim- I mean Horseton, comms check," Twilight said.

"Twilight, what were you THINKING?!" Everything Rainbow Dash had learned about communications discipline, and then insisted her friends learn about the subject, flew out the window faster than the air in her cabin would have if its windows actually opened. "Chrysalis?? Of all ponies? What's going to stop her from taking us prisoner and then trying to take over Equestria again?"

"Me."

"Besides you," Rainbow Dash insisted. "If this is the real Twilight Sparkle I'm talking to! How do I know you're not some changeling disguised as Twilight?"

"Of the six familiars of Ahuizotl," Twilight said, "Fluffy the Terrible was the only one to lay a claw on Daring Do in two different books."

"So you're a changeling who reads Daring Do," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Big deal!"

"Dash, you're making a scene," Twilight said. "Do you really want me to prove I'm me?"

"I dare you to!"

"O-kaaay." Twilight's voice shifted into her You Asked For This And I Am Going to Enjoy It tone. "Seven weeks ago you went into a certain establishment in Ponyville with Fluttershy and Rarity. I wasn't there, but Rarity told me that cucumber slices were involved. And Bulk Biceps-"

"Okay, okay, OKAY!" Rainbow Dash shouted, her mane standing on end as she realized what Twilight was about to blab. After all, she only had a changeling's word that nopony was listening! "You're Twilight! You're Twilight!" In a softer voice she grumbled, "And when I get down from here I'm going to talk to Rarity about what 'tell absolutely nopony' means!"

"In her defense," Twilight pointed out, "you didn't actually ask her to make a Pinkie Promise on it."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow said. "Anyway, you're you. But how long is it going to stay that way, Twilight? And why is Chrysalis involved at all?"

"Because she insisted," Twilight replied. "She wants the publicity of changelings rescuing ponies. Plus this way I get a ship that docks with Amicitas, without having to risk you transferring ship to ship on EVA like with CSP-20."

"But Twilight," Rainbow pressed, "you know she's going to demand we give up the moon for this! If you do this, we lose the space race!"

"Rainbow Dash," Twilight said quietly,"we lost the moment you had the fuel leak. We can't fix Amicitas or put together a new multi-pony capsule in time. And anyway, I don't care about that now," she added. "I want my friend back safe. And that's more important than a hundred moon landings."

"Oh." Rainbow Dash leaned back, as much as free fall would allow, against her flight couch. "Um, thanks, Twilight."

"What are friends for?"

After an awkward pause, Rainbow Dash asked, "So, what happens now?"

"I spend a few days training with Chrysalis while the changelings tweak their rocket for the new mission," Twilight said. "You'll get a briefing for your part of it, but that's mostly going to be for the docking of the two ships. You'll be a passenger all the way home, really."

"Swell," Dash muttered. "Twilight, evil mastermind stuff aside, I'm a better pilot than Chrysalis."

"But it's her ship," Twilight said. "And so long as she behaves herself, we don't have any right to take it from her. So not another word about that, all right?"

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were about to."

"Prove it."

Long sigh over the comms. "Look, I need to get back to the conference room and begin briefing the CSP staff," Twilight said. "For now just sit tight. We're coming, Dashie. We'll be there soon. Just hang in there."

"Where else am I gonna go?" Rainbow Dash asked.

A long pause, followed by the buzzy voice. "Amicitas," it said, "be advised that Horseton capcom is now Dragonfly."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Amicitas copies, over."

"We'll be monitoring you from here from now on through rendezvous with Mission Twenty-three," Dragonfly continued. "We're going to work out the details with Baltimare later, but as of now you're part of a CSP mission."

"Lucky, lucky me."

"Amicitas, we didn't copy that last, please repeat."

"Nothing, Horseton," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Just waiting for my evening book-reading."

"Oh, we can help with that!" Dragonfly said. "I think we have a book around here somewhere..." Rainbow Dash heard some soft rustle and faint voices not on the comms circuit. Then Dragonfly broke in again, saying, "Found one! I don't know who it belongs to, but it's definitely not one of my queen's books! Definitely not! And it's called Stirrups at Sunset, by Tight Plot. Chapter One. She watched as the massive earth pony's muscles shone with lather, bits of soil falling from his withers as he removed the heavy collar which was his only-"

"Not that kind of book!!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Look, I'll wait for Fluttershy. She's midway through a book now, and I don't want to change midway through, all right?"

"Are you sure?" Dragonfly asked. "Because this is a pretty thin book. I'm pretty sure we could get through the whole thing in a couple hours."

"Positive," Rainbow said. "I'll just wait for- no, wait, there is one thing you can do for me."

"What's that, Amicitas?"

"Take a note for Twilight. I forgot to mention this to her before, but the comms system needs some tweaks. We need better channel controls up here for private conversations. Can you pass that on to her?"

"Will do, Amicitas," Dragonfly said. "And pilot to pilot, I know exactly what you mean."

"Good. Okay," Rainbow Dash said. "Now transfer me to Baltimare, please." With that she relaxed, letting zero-g float her away, satisfied that, for all the flaws Fluttershy's reading material had, at least it was the kind of thing you wouldn't mind fillies getting their hooves on. (472)

Footnotes:

(468) Rainbow Dash had had a little experience with powered flight before the space race- mostly flight-school requirements before she'd dropped out- and she was pretty sure what Amicitas had wasn't a bridge. An airship bridge was open to the elements. An enclosed control center, particularly one where the pilot and/or steerspony sat down, was a cockpit(471). But Twilight had insisted that the Amicitas control compartment, which had space enough in theory for seven flight couches, was too large and roomy to be called a cockpit. Rainbow didn't care enough to keep arguing over it, so Amicitas had a bridge, even if it did annoy Rainbow just a little.

(469) Fluttershy's reading preferences were not the same as Rainbow Dash's. Her oldest and best friend tended to like two kinds of books: century-old romances and translated Neighponese or kirin novels. After almost two weeks of listening to them, Dash had decided the two genres were more or less identical in that they both involved relationships between two or three ponies who, for whatever reason, lacked the capacity to say Hey, I really like you out loud. Given that, Dash preferred the ones where the ponies in question got sent to another world, piloted giant robots, played in rock bands, or did all three at the same time. Sitting around sipping tea and making snarky comments just seemed lame by comparison.

(470) Tuning a telepresence system to a specific target, or "address" as Twilight Sparkle called it, was a non-trivial affair. It was possible to provide telepresence systems with a limited number of pre-programmed addresses, but finding one by just sticking a unicorn horn in and mucking around would leave the unicorn with a headache and some number of lost hours they'd never get back. This fact was why two-way telepresence communication, despite its obvious utility, had not yet taken off in Equestria... and why this massive security hole in space program communications had not, as of this point in time, been nailed shut. Rainbow Dash would shortly correct this oversight.

(471) In some horrible, evil worlds the term cockpit originates from how the tiny, cramped quarters of early aircraft resembled the stinking, blood-covered holes where two young roosters would be unleashed to fight to the death while half-drunk people made bets on which one would win. Not so on Equus, although to the ponies the source of the term was still a bit barbaric. Some communities, when confronted with a cockatrice problem, would dig a narrow, deep hole, one that the monster couldn't get out of quickly, and then place a small mirror on one side of it. At least some of the time the creature would see itself in the mirror, think itself under attack, and use its petrifying glare on its "attacker". At the time of this writing the practice was almost a century out of fashion among ponies, who felt that petrification was a bit cruel even when done to a monster that would quite cheerfully do it to ponies.

(472) This is not to say that Fluttershy's Neighponese novels didn't have their share of fanservice. On the contrary. Fluttershy picked only those books for on-the-air reading which didn't cross a certain line. The more embarrassing books in her collection remained in a little chest locked in the bottom of a bureau in her bedroom. If Stirrups at Sunset had contained magic lockets, martial arts tournaments, or robots of any size whatever, it also might have found a happy home in that bureau. Further details, of course, must be withheld for the sake of Fluttershy's peace of mind... and also to prevent the first recorded case of spontaneous equine liquefaction caused by absolute mortification.

The top line of the chalkboard had a series of numbers across it, one to twenty. Under the numeral 1 the word "Today" was scribbled in. A line drawn under the numbers 13 through 20 marked these Reserved For Ship Retrieval. A shorter line ran under numbers 9 through 12, marking these as Transit Time, Equus to Moon. Only the numbers 2 through 8 remained unlabelled- marking the days CSP and ESA had to train and prepare for the rescue of Rainbow Dash.

Twilight Sparkle finished the last stroke on the complex diagram of the three-person capsule with fuel tank and engine attached. Labels pointed to various points on the capsule, connected to a drawing of a not-quite-square box with multiple nozzles extending from it. "The primary goal of the mission is to rescue Rainbow Dash," she said. "But the secondary goal is to fully inspect Amicitas in preparation for a future repair, refueling and retrieval mission. The best way to do this is to have Mission Twenty-Three dock with Amicitas using our new docking port system and remain there during the entire inspection and close-out period."

"And why, exactly, should we bother with this?" Chrysalis asked. "I can understand you wanting to get the ship back. It's yours, after all. But why can't we use the hatch-"

"Airlock."

Chrysalis blinked. "What?"

"Amicitas has airlocks," Twilight said. "Two of them. One in the bridge compartment, behind the co-pilot position, and a larger one for engine repair on orbit."

"Really." Chrysalis gave Twilight a level look. "And you've repaired engines in mid-flight how many times now?"

Twilight blushed. "Well, we'll be able to some day!" she insisted. "And when that day comes, we'll be prepared!" She lifted a pointer in her magic and slapped the chalkboard with it, a little harder than necessary. "And as to why we can't use the airlocks, it's a question of orbital mechanics."

"You mean the orbital mechanics who are going to fix your engines mid-flight someday?"(473)

As Twilight snorted and huffed in indignation, Warner von Brawn rumbled, "The princess, I believe, refers to the fact that two objects in space, separated by any distance at all, technically occupy two different orbits. Over time they will drift together or apart, depending on relative velocity. Station-keeping with any safety would require repeated orbital correction burns, each with the potential for accidents. If you can make the two objects into a single object by linking them together, the need for constant piloting is removed."

"Exactly," Twilight said, having had a moment to calm down. "I want to spend a full day going over Amicitas, first diagnosing the problems that caused the accident, then performing a systematic close-out of the ship to prepare it for a long period of hibernation." Seeing Chrysalis's mouth opening, she added hurriedly, "Because we don't know when we'll be back again, NOT because winter is coming!"

Chrysalis shut her mouth and shrugged.

"So," Twilight continued, "in order to dock safely, the pilot of Mission Twenty-three will need to be able to maintain orientation with the target while controlling trajectory in all three axes of motion simultaneously." She tapped the chalk outline of the rescue ship's main engine. "While this can potentially be done with the main engine alone plus reaction wheels, it would be both inefficient and highly dangerous. Therefore instead we will be using the RCS- the Reaction Control System."

"Maneuvering thrusters," Cherry Berry said helpfully.

"So I had guessed," Chrysalis hissed back.

"ESA will provide eight RCS blocks to be arranged like the corners of a cube around the ship," Twilight continued. "Starlight Glimmer will coordinate with your ship construction team-"

"Could she not?" Chrysalis interrupted.

Twilight snorted again. "What is this about now??" she snapped.

"Oh, it's nothing personal to your student," Chrysalis said. "I'd just rather not risk having a unicorn whacking my rocket with a large rock in some desperate attempt to stop my evil scheme. Unlikely as the prospect is."

Now Chrysalis had every eye in the planning meeting on her. After several seconds of choked silence, Cherry Berry finally said, "I'm pretty sure you didn't intend to use your out-loud voice when you said that."

"Just humor me," Chrysalis said. "Have Moondancer oversee the modifications instead. It will help me keep my mind on the training."

"O... kay?" Twilight Sparkle had three kinds of worry on her face, fighting like three fat stallions over a two-mare train bench. "I... I guess Starlight can focus on preparing the simulator to handle docking exercises?"

"Much better," Chrysalis agreed. "The simulator is much less likely to explode and take the top of my castle off. That I don't have."

Twilight's three kinds of worry formed a united front and unbreakable alliance, using her eyes to silently petition Cherry Berry for foreign aid.

Cherry shrugged. "Long story," she said. "You could try asking Princess Luna about it."

"Oh. Okay." Twilight managed to pull herself together, then pushed on. "Moondancer for installing the thrusters and the docking port, Starlight to oversee simulations. Um... where was I?" She lifted up a stack of index cards in her magic and ruffled through them, muttering, "Covered that... did that... and that... oh!" She straightened up, using the pointer to tap the row of numbers up top. "Now, ideally we want to save four days of food for two ponies to use in the future retrieval mission," she continued. "That means we need to get to Rainbow Dash not later than twelve days from now. Allow four days from launch to lunar orbit and rendezvous, and that leaves us a launch date not later than eight days from now."

"Giving us seven days for training and prep," Cherry nodded. "We've done more with less time. And we've already had training for the other mission items on this flight."

"There will be some changes," von Brawn said. "We were originally going to put the science package on top of the lander. That way it could be jettisoned after the data was collected to lighten the load on the way home. But we can't use that configuration with the docking port. We'll have to contrive an experiments bay to ride below the crew capsule."

"At least this way we'll get the equipment back," Chrysalis muttered. "Less wasted money."

"This will make the ship substantially heavier," von Brawn continued. "All the more reason to test the return stage engines in lunar orbit, to make sure performance is adequate."

"So throw more boosters under it," Chrysalis snapped.

"We may indeed need to do that," von Brawn agreed. "But we'll have to fabricate the cargo bay in less than five days to meet our launch date. I'll speak to Goddard about that."

Cherry shook her head. "Appleoosa's working full steam ahead just building the boosters for Twenty-three and Twenty-four," she said. "Plus the ESA parts restock order. We don't have the floor space, even if we added more skilled workers."

"We could build it," Twilight said. "We have a fabrication shop at Cape Friendship currently doing nothing. All we have to do is scale up the existing cargo bay module for the new tanks and engines, right?"

"And who are you going to get to build it?" Chrysalis asked. "You and Starlight Glimmer are your main engineers, and you're both going to be here."

"I can do it." Dragonfly, who had been in the meeting by virtue of not having been kicked out by the others, raised a perforated hoof. "I know the facilities from working on parachutes and space suits. And I've been sketching out new cargo bay doors that fold up flat and don't get bent or twisted if the rocket's lying on its side."

Chrysalis's eyes narrowed. How dare you interrupt- no, no, not the time. Instead she asked, "Don't we have a fabrication shop here for you to use?"

"Not big enough," Dragonfly said. "We've been building so much for so long at Appleoosa that we never bothered to gear the Horseton fab shop up for large component construction. We mainly use it for computer component testing."

"Hmph," Chrysalis grunted. "What about that Jet Set pony? He keeps sending us passenger compartments to test. Can't he build a cargo one?"

"Not his company's field," Cherry put in. "He invests in pony flight, not freight."

"All right," Twilight said, "then that's what we'll do. I'm sure we have copies of all the same scientific instruments and bays you've been using, so we won't need to ship anything there."

For the first time Chrysalis looked taken aback. "Just like that?" she asked. "Not even thinking of saying no?"

"Why should I?" Twilight asked. "Those instruments will be doing important scientific work for all ponykind!" She smiled a little and added, "And it'll be ready in time. I know it."

Chrysalis gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. "Very well. Are there any other issues we need to know about?" When no one spoke up, she nodded her head. "All right, let's get started. And let's see if we can't launch sooner than eight days from now, hm? I'd like to be back home in time for Nightmare Night."

Footnote:

(473) The time had passed when this question would have been asked by Queen Chrysalis in any sincerity. She knew what orbital mechanics were, even if she didn't give two figs about the math. But needling Twilight Sparkle was too fun to pass up.

“Why do you have a book clipped on that clipboard?”

Twilight Sparkle glanced up at Chrysalis, who wore a set of snazzy blue CSP coveralls(474) contrasting Twilight’s own light violet ESA ones. “What book?” she asked. “This is just the pre-flight checklist.”

“In whose nightmares, princess?” Chrysalis asked. “The capsule preflight checklist is three pages long, and one page is just the mission profile action items. Everything else is checked out by VAB staff before the rocket goes to the pad.”

“I know,” Twilight said. “That’s where I got this from! We have to go over all the switches in the capsule before launch, just in case the VAB crew missed some!”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Chrysalis said. “Getting those switches right is the assembly crew’s job. It’s the whole reason they’re here at all.”(475)

“But everypony makes mistakes,” Twilight insisted.

“Every pony, perhaps.” Chrysalis put her nose in the air and placed a hoof over her heart. “But my changelings are highly trained professionals who know they’re working directly under their queen’s eye. Why, I’ve never been afraid for a moment to trust my life to the unfailing professionalism and skill of my subjects.”

A tiny portion of Chrysalis’s brain examined the boast the instant it left her mouth, found a potential error, and waved a frantic red flag at the rest of the brain.

Wait a moment… I said what?

Pure survival instinct froze her smug, triumphant expression in place (476) while Chrysalis reviewed her last three sentences in detail. Upon examining the evidence, she convened a mental review board to subpoena memories involving her subjects’ laziness, their tendency to squabble among themselves when not watched, their three-second attention spans, and their inability to understand why life-threatening danger was not “fun”. By the time the evidence got to certain rocket flights, and particularly her own narrow escapes from death, the verdict had become crystal clear.

HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID??

I said THAT… and I KNEW better… and oh, sweet Faust, I really HAVEN’T thought about the idiots in the VAB for flights and flights! And I KNOW they screw things up! Even with one of the brain-bulls watching over them!

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle said, not noticing the sweat beginning to run down Chrysalis’s head, “I’d still feel better if we ran a simulated launch with this checklist. Just to be thorough.”

“W-w-well, if you need the security blanket of routine,” Chrysalis said, “I’m sure we can indulge you once or twice.” She levitated the clipboard out of Twilight Sparkle’s magical grasp. “Just a moment while I discuss this with the simulator crew. Won’t be a second!”

“But I’ve already-“

“Just a moment!” Without a second glance at Twilight Chrysalis trotted towards the simulations crew (the usual gang plus one Starlight Glimmer) with what she intended to be a light-hearted step, but which instead became the High-Stepping Canter of Doom. The cheerful smile had enough jagged teeth in it to make the observers afraid for their necks, individually and collectively.

“I-i-i-is something wrong, m-my queen?” Occupant asked on behalf of the group.

“Everything’s juuuust fiiiiiiine,” Chrysalis said as she skipped up to them, her smile getting even more gapey and drooly. “Just a teensy, eensy, weensy little change to the schedule.” She leaned forward, took one glance towards the capsule, and then dropped the cheerful act.(477) “We’re spending the whole morning on launch sims,” she hissed in a rapid-fire whisper. “All morning, nothing but launches, do you understand? And you,” she said, jabbing a hoof at Cherry Berry, “will make sure between one and four switches are set wrong at the start of every sim, to see if Book Princess and I can spot the difference. If we don’t, simulate what happens. Do it.”

Occupant, von Brawn, and Cherry looked at each other. Occupant shrugged. Von Brawn tossed his head noncommittally. Starlight Glimmer, standing too far back to hear, just looked confused. Cherry, having no one else to shrug at, looked at Chrysalis and said, “O… kay?”

“Capital!” Chrysalis said in a fake but less obviously lethal cheerful tone. “Let’s get to it, people!” And in one final menacing hiss she added, “And no matter how many times I mess up, we keep doing it until I get it right.(478) Clear?” With that she turned and trotted back to the sim capsule, singing, “Co-ming!”

Starlight Glimmer leaned forward into the cluster of CSP staff and asked, “What was that all about?”

“Nothing," Occupant said. "Just our queen ordering us to do what we were gonna do anyway.”

Shaking her head, Starlight returned to the simulation computer. “Changelings,” she muttered.

Footnotes:

(474) Marred somewhat by stitching here and there to suggest the holes in the body underneath. Chrysalis couldn’t actually wear a patched spacesuit, no matter what inspirational propaganda posters suggested, but the new astromare duty uniforms provided the next best thing.

(475) This didn’t count the actual assembly of the rocket, the welding and bolting, the inspection of each component, the thwacking over the head of the changelings who thought roller hockey in the parts storage room was a good idea, the chewing out of the ponies who sold them the equipment, the stocking of capsule stores, the strapping down and shutting in of the crew, and above all the lifting of the massive, easily toppled rocket from the VAB all the way out to the launchpad. When it came to Chrysalis and arguments, accuracy only got in the way.

(476) Chrysalis was not as perfect a deceiver as she liked to believe. Had any pony not focused on a critical issue been watching, they would have noticed the moment the eyes widened, the pupils contracted, and the sweat beaded up on her face. Twilight Sparkle, on the other hoof, had decided to tune out Chryssy’s brags in favor of her own agenda, and so she didn’t notice the queen cracking at the seams.

(477) Much to everyone’s relief.

(478) To be fair, out of eight simulations that morning, Chrysalis only missed four switches total, and Twilight caught three of them. The one switch neither of them caught turned out to be relatively harmless; the RCS was turned on in flight, and it took Chrysalis only a second to shut it back down before resuming the practice liftoff.

The next day, simulations continued, this time focusing on docking practice…

… or, as Twilight Sparkle thought of it, teaching a particularly difficult student who should have already known that “good enough” was not actually good enough.

“All I’m saying is,” Chrysalis growled (479), “I targeted the docking port like you told me to. I got the ship oriented at the target, no problem. I flew the ship just like I would an EVA, like you told me to- and like the LAST THREE TIMES!!”

“Indoors voice, please,” Twilight said, trying to be patient.

“And we made contact at zero point four meters per second,” Chrysalis continued, dialing back the volume again. “Perfectly safe speed. And then all the controls go crazy, every single thruster fires at once, and we end up with zero monopropellant and a failed sim! AGAIN! I’m doing it like you TOLD me, princess!” Chrysalis waved a hoof at the red-lit controls. “Now you tell the moronic computer I’m doing it right!”

Twilight sighed. “But you forgot one thing, Chrysalis,” she said, reminding herself not to use a didactic tone.(480) “It’s not enough to hit the target. You have to hit it straight, so the docking couplers can interact. If you hit it at an angle, the docking magnets pull on both ships, the SAS and RCS fight the magnets, and everything goes crazy until the two ships settle down.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” she asked. “So the magnets will pull the ships together if I do nothing, right?”

“If the ships are less than two meters apart, yes,” Twilight said. “And only if the ships are within a certain range of degrees off the perfect-“

“BLAH BLAH BLAH,” Chrysalis interrupted. “I get close, I do nothing, and the magnets dock the ships. Got it.” She leaned from her seat on the left of the three-pony capsule over the empty center seat. “So when were you going to tell me to turn SAS and RCS off right before docking?”

Twilight blinked. “Um… but you want those,” she said. “You want to maintain your ship’s attitude to the target, because if you don’t, the magnets could throw either ship back and forth like a rodeo pony throwing a haybale! You could hit vital components or even breach the hull! That’s why you always want to find a good translation of your ship in relation to the target until-“

“Uuup, uup uup uup!” Chrysalis held up a hoof. “What is this ‘translation’ you’re talking about? Do I have to learn how to speak Spaceship?”

Yes, you do, Twilight groaned mentally. And I don’t know how you haven’t learned it in a year and a half of spaceflight. “In this case,” she said aloud, “translation means shifting your position and orientation in relation to another object, like a targeted ship. It means that, instead of coming straight at the target when your angle is bad, you make a right-angle turn, moving sideways and then turning the ship so you’re on the right line to dock!” She waved the heavy flight checklist(481) in the air and finished, “It’s all right here in the documentation!”

“I haven’t got time to read everything shoved in front of me!” Chrysalis said. “We launch in four days, right?”

“Five,” Twilight corrected.

“As soon as we get this to work,” Chrysalis countered. “And it doesn’t have to be pretty. So long as we don’t actually break anything on either ship and we get a dock, everything will be fine. Right?”

“But it’s important to learn the right way to do-“

“RIGHT??”

Twilight decided to surrender. “Fine,” she sighed. Whatever. The next sim will prove me right anyway.

“Good!” Chrysalis banged a hoof on the inner wall of the simulator. “WE’RE READY!” she shouted. “LET’S DO IT AGAIN!”

“You know they can hear us over the comms, right?” Twilight asked, tapping her headset with one hoof.

“Whatever,” Chrysalis grumbled, resetting the SAS and RCS systems as the simulator internal lighting blinked red, then resumed normal white as the computer verified all switches in their proper position.

A few minutes later, Twilight found herself grinding her teeth as Chrysalis made the same oblique approach as before, then switched off both RCS and SAS at two meters out, and then pumped SAS off and on to reduce the ship’s thrashing until the docking ports registered a solid link.

And then it worked again in the next sim.

And the next.

And the next, with Chrysalis staring smugly at Twilight as she switched the SAS on and off with one hoof.

“It’ll never work this way in real life,” Twilight huffed.

“Watch me, princess,” Chrysalis gloated.

Footnotes:

(479) Which Twilight liked better than the shouting. She’d heard enough of that.

(480) And not a shouty rant either, no matter how very good it would feel at this moment.

(481) On the Operations and Objectives of Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-Three in Conjunction with Equestrian Space Agency Flight Thirteen, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, With Annotations By the Author, Canterlot University Press, printed on demand. Being a princess meant people of lesser authority no longer tried very hard to curb one’s obsessions with checklists.

CSP-23 Mission Day 01

The giant rocket, assembled and early, sat on the launchpad before dawn of what the mission conference had dubbed Day Seven- one day earlier than the target date. The immense Twin Boar liquid-fuel boosters, the newest invention from Goddard and von Brawn, held up a second stage powered by the Skipper engine, cousin to the Mainsail engine which had propelled the rovers R5 and R6 to Minmus and the Moon, respectively. Further up the stack lay a weaker but more efficient Poodle engine on the lunar transfer stage, topped by the experimental lander which would get its orbital testing around Luna’s moon.

And inside the capsule, slowly, methodically, Chrysalis and Twilight Sparkle went down the entire expanded checklist(482). Outside. the sun jumped above the horizon over the Celestial Sea, the almost new moon hovering above it in the early morning sky(483).

“Repeat mission objectives,” Cherry Berry called out from the capcom seat in Mission Control.

“Testing of prototype landing ship in orbit of the moon,” Chrysalis replied. “Suborbital flight test and delta-V verification test. Docking with ESA Amicitas and evaluation of on-board malfunctions. Return of astromare Rainbow Dash safely to Equus.”

“Roger, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry said. “Final fueling in progress; launch countdown now rolling at four minutes… mark!”

“Confirm T minus three fifty-five and counting,” Chrysalis said. She flipped the switch to mute her microphone and muttered, “I miss the days when we could just go.”

Twilight Sparkle blinked. She hadn’t expected conversation from Chrysalis. Bickering, yes- she’d had days of bickering, and she’d come to expect it, even if it did drive her up the wall. “More complex ships require more caution,” she replied.

“It ought to be the other way around,” Chrysalis muttered. “The more we build ships, the easier they ought to be to fly, not harder.”

“We’ll get there,” Twilight said. “That’s what this flight is all about. We’ll get there.”

Twilight saw Chrysalis turn her spacesuit helmet to give her an icy glare. “Yesss,” she hissed. “We will.” With a click the comms switched back to open channel. “Horseton, Twenty-three, fuel reading optimal, please confirm.”

Oh well, Twilight thought, and sat back in her flight couch as the last minute of the countdown ticked down in Cherry Berry’s squeaky voice.

At the count of zero two times the force of Equus gravity shoved Twilight back in her seat- rather more forcefully than her first flight, which even under eight Thumper solid rocket boosters and full main engines had barely topped 1.4 G’s at launch. In a mere thirty seconds the rocket went supersonic, shaking under the forces of aerodynamic pressure ahead and four controlled explosions behind, all kept under skillful control- much to Twilight’s ongoing surprise- by a calm, stern Queen Chrysalis.

The giant rocket shuddered and shook its way through max-Q, tipping slowly in a controlled curve towards the eastern horizon. The forces of acceleration continued pushing Twilight deeper against her spacesuit backpack and flight couch, as two G’s became three. As three G’s reached towards four, plasma began to flicker through the capsule’s hatch window, as Equus’s atmosphere objected to the massive thing plowing through it.

Chrysalis, so far as Twilight could tell, didn’t bat an eye. “Approaching first stage burnout,” she said calmly.

“Confirm, Twenty-three,” the squeaky voice of Mission Control replied.

Then, at a mere one minute and eleven seconds into flight, the ship staged. For a moment Twilight felt herself yanked forward in the straps, her horn tapping the inside of her helmet uncomfortably before, a split second later, she was slammed back into place by the ignition of the second stage’s Skipper engine.

And then, after only a few seconds, Chrysalis shut down the engine. “SECO,” she called out. “Showing a high apoapsis, Horseton. Will circularize orbit once we’re out in space.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “We show all systems GO for space, GO for orbit.”

Twilight saw light flickering in the hatch as something pulled her forward in her straps. She looked down at the nav-ball in front of her and saw it steadily rolling from the blue into the brown. “Chrysalis, what are you doing?” she asked, trying not to panic. “We’re tumbling! The centripetal and aerodynamic forces will-“

“We’re already well into the upper atmosphere,” Chrysalis replied. “The air’s too thin to do more than drag a little. Sit back, shut up, and let me show off.”(484)

A few moments later something went BANG directly in front of the two astromares. “Nosecone separation,” Chrysalis said, as the pointed metal that had shielded the docking port through the launch got sent up and away, well out of the flight path of the rest of the ship. Twilight caught a glimpse of the stack separator ring through one of the capsule windows before the ship’s tumbling took it away again.

“Confirm nosecone separation,” Cherry said. “The bullpen is sending data up to your computer for orbital insertion burn.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, flipping a switch with her hoof and looking with a casual disdain at the diagrams on the little computer screen before her. “Specialist, extend solar panels.”

Twilight blinked, then shook her head. “Solar panels, aye!” she said, finding the switches and flicking them on with her magic. A soft whirr filled the capsule, followed by a snap as the retractable solar panels locked into place.

“Apoapsis in forty-five seconds,” Chrysalis said, pushing slightly on the flight yoke to stop the tumble. “Preparing for manual orbital burn.”

“Roger, Twenty-three.”

Twilight opened her mouth, saw Chrysalis glaring… well, no, not glaring exactly. This time there wasn’t either heat or cold in the expression. There was just this look of… supreme indifference. They locked eyes for a moment, and Twilight’s mouth clicked shut. Without even a nod of recognition Chrysalis returned her attention to her console, tweaking the flight yoke in her hooves before slowly bring the throttle back up to full.

The ship rocked back and forth as Chrysalis sought the optimum trajectory, glancing from one readout to another almost faster than Twilight could follow the motions. The changeling queen’s eyes seemed to narrow slightly, but aside from that Twilight couldn’t read anything in that silent, stoic expression. For a moment she had the impression of a changeling Maud Pie in a spacesuit… except that Maud talked a bit more.

The roar of the engine went silent, and Chrysalis said, “Burnout. Staging.”

Without waiting for confirmation from the ground she hit the staging button, and Twilight felt a harder jolt than before as the decoupler pushed the second stage away. The third stage ignited with a much softer jolt, but only a few seconds later it grew quieter as Chrysalis gradually eased the throttle back, her eyes planted firmly on the computer readouts showing the ship’s projected apoapsis and periapsis. Finally, with a nod, she slapped the throttle all the way to zero and called, “Shutdown! Reading an orbit with an eccentricity of four point six kilometers!”

Cherry Berry’s voice carried only a hint of congratulations. “Well done, Twenty-three. Unfortunately we’re still showing a difference in orbital plane of zero point nine degrees. Stand by for orbital adjustment burn instructions.”

“Roger, Horseton, standing by,” Chrysalis grumbled, reaching down to the communications panel and switching off her microphone. “And that is how we do that, princess,” she added for Twilight’s ears alone.

“Hm-hmm,” Twilight nodded absently. Her hooves were already on the small keyboard in front of her, tapping out instructions and bringing the capsule’s trajectory computer to life. “I’m looking at the position of the moon right now,” she continued. “I think we can get away with a direct ascent without an orbital adjustment, depending on where exactly our orbital plane crosses the moon’s.”

“Ahem.”

The frosty nature of the word(485) brought Twilight up short. She turned her attention away from the tiny computer screen to face the glare of an angry changeling queen on her dignity.(486) “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, you did, princess,” Chrysalis said. “You missed the part where I ordered you to calculate the trajectory. Because I gave no such order.”

Twilight cocked her head. “Why should you need to?” she asked. “I can do the job up here just as well as the scientists on the ground. This way will be faster.”

Chrysalis’s mouth worked, and for a brief moment Twilight thought the changeling queen might go for her throat, little things like their spacesuit helmets notwithstanding. The moment passed, and Chrysalis slumped a little in her harness, brought up a hoof to her faceplate, and shook her head inside the helmet. “How do you expect to be a princess,” she muttered, “how do you expect to rule Equestria one day, if you don’t understand the most basic concepts of command?”

“But this works- this will- ugh!” It was Twilight’s turn to slump. “Fine. Enlighten me.”

“It is very simple,” Chrysalis said, sounding more patient than Twilight would have expected. “If you were an ordinary pony, say Pinkie- no, bad example,” she muttered, shaking her head again. “Like… um… like an ordinary pony…”

“Like Cherry Berry?” Twilight asked.

Once again Chrysalis’s mouth worked silently for a moment. When sound came, it came as if worked through an old earth pony’s laundry wringer. “Nooooo. Not like Cherry Berry.” After another shake of her head, she continued, “You are a princess. You hold authority. You represent a potential challenge to me for command of this mission. If you were not a princess, not head of another space agency- just an ordinary astromare- then I, as commander, could let you do whatever you liked, secure in my command.”

“But I’m not challenging your command,” Twilight said. “I don’t really want it.”

“They all say that,” Chrysalis muttered dismissively. “And it’s beside the point. A proper ruler cannot encourage initiative without risking their supremacy. So in order to maintain our current modus vivendi-“

“I didn’t know you spoke Old Ponish.”

“Inordertomaintainourcurrentmodusvivendi you will NOT INTERRUPT ME!” Chrysalis shouted.

Twilight flinched, ears trying to flop back under her comms headset. “Sorry!”

“And you will also wait until ordered to do something before you start doing it!” Chrysalis continued. “In so doing you will be showing respect to my position as mission commander! Not doing so is showing disrespect, and disrespect will have consequences! Do you understand now, princess?”

Twilight hesitated. “I understand what you want me to do,” she said slowly. “But it seems just… just so… insecure.”

Now Chrysalis did lean over as far as the flight couch straps would permit. In a soft but lethal hiss she spat out, “I defy you to say that again, pony.”

“Well, it does!” Twilight snapped back, not backing down(487). “You make it sound like you can’t trust anyone except the most lowly servant! Like you’re always looking over your shoulder for someone to backstab you, instead of looking forward! I don’t know what you call it where you come from, but I call that insecure!”

“I call it reality, princess,” Chrysalis replied.

For Twilight Sparkle, the penny finally dropped. “Oooooh,” she said.

Chrysalis settled back in her flight couch again, rolling her eyes. “Oh, Tartarus, princess,” she grumbled. “Don’t throw me the standard pony pity party. I don’t take it from Cherry Berry, and I certainly won’t take it from you.”

“All right,” Twilight said, wondering how she was supposed to stop feeling things on command. That didn’t seem like a thing any healthy person would do, not to her.

After another sigh Chrysalis reached down and reactivated comms. “Horseton, Twenty-three.”

“We read you, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry’s voice answered. “We’re almost ready with that orbital adjustment burn.”

“About that,” Chrysalis said, “we have an idea up here. Have the bulls check two or three orbits from now and see whether or not we can get a moon intercept on the line where our orbital plane and the moon’s intersect.”

Twilight leaned forward in her seat for a better look at Chrysalis, who was no longer looking in her direction at all.

“Uh, we copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “We’ll have something for you on that shortly. In the meantime, we’d like you to begin going through the checklist for trans-lunar injection.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied. “We’ll get started on that.”

“And tell Twilight that von Brawn said good idea,” Cherry added, a touch of smugness in her voice.

Twilight couldn’t help smirking as Chrysalis, for a moment, lost control of her facial muscles.

“I like that even less than the pity, princess,” the changeling queen muttered once she had her face back under control.

“You’re still on vox,” Twilight pointed out.

“Am I now?” Chrysalis asked. “Booger.”

“It’s not funny the second time, Chrysalis.”

“Oh, bite me,” Chrysalis huffed. “And haul out that brick of a checklist. We may as well get started.”

Footnotes:

(482) It actually went surprisingly quickly once you realized that, if you ignored all the explanations for why these switches needed to be in those positions, there were at most four action items per page. By launch day Chrysalis had mostly gotten over her annoyance at Twilight’s pedantics, especially once she’d privately learned from von Brawn exactly how many ways those switches could get her killed. (Hint: lots.)

(483) Celestia and Luna had actually planned this in advance as a good-luck gesture for the rescue mission. For the large crowd of launch-watchers at Horseton Space Center, the sight was almost as impressive as a Summer Sun Celebration. For the two people actually in the spaceship… the hatches were turned the wrong way, and they missed it completely. Unfortunate, but as Rarity would point out much later, this is why cameras were invented.

(484) Truth be told, Chrysalis didn’t have control of the craft. Without the engines firing, the reaction wheels and tiny fixed-position fins weren’t enough to counter certain aerodynamic forces that caused the second stage to tumble. But there were reasons why Chrysalis didn’t like the phrase, “truth be told.”

(485) When someone says the onomatopoeia “ahem” as a word rather than a sound, it means, “I want your attention.” Depending on tone, it can mean anything from, “I apologize for committing the unforgivable crime of interrupting you,” all the way up to, “Contrary to what you may have thought, nothing in your life, including your life itself, is more important to you than listening to me right now, because if you continue to ignore me I shall end you.” Chrysalis was much closer to the latter end of the spectrum than the former.

(486) More accurately, she was facing the glare of an outraged rocket pilot on her dignity. They’re more dangerous.

(487) More accurately unable to back down, owing to the same straps that held Chrysalis in her own seat.

One translunar injection burn and three hours later, Chrysalis and Twilight Sparkle floated around the capsule with nothing very much to do.

“Maybe we could go through the lunar orbit checklist?” Twilight asked helpfully.

“Or maybe you could shut your mouth,” Chrysalis muttered, staring out the hatch porthole.

“All right, all right,” Twilight said. “I’ll just work on the scientific instruments. Nothing like fresh, new scientific data to stimulate the mind.”

“Fine. You do that,” Chrysalis muttered. “But do it quietly. I’m contemplating the universe.”

“Really?” This was an aspect of Chrysalis Twilight hadn’t imagined could exist. “What have you discovered so far?”

“That it’s noisier than it needs to be,” Chrysalis replied, a bit pointedly.

“Oh. Sorry.” Twilight hesitated, but not for long. “But could we talk about it later? I’d really like to know.”

“And I’d really like to not talk about it,” Chrysalis snapped. “If you want to make philosophical discoveries, do your own contemplating.”

“All right,” Twilight said. “I’ll just be quiet now.”

“Good,” Chrysalis huffed.

Twilight hadn’t quite finished drifting over to the copilot controls containing the readouts for the various scientific instruments around the spaceship when the comms crackled to life. “Twenty-three, Horseton, comms check… if you don’t mind,” whispered a voice on the edge of audibility. “Capcom is now Fluttershy.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Chrysalis pushed herself back from the hatch, spinning with long practice to line up exactly with the pilot’s seat as her hoof hit the vox switch on the comms panel. “Horseton, Twenty-three, didn’t copy that last, over.”

“I said, capcom is now Fluttershy.”

“Negative, Horseton, still did not copy.”

“Oh, let me,” Twilight grumbled, switching her own mike to vox before Chrysalis could stretch the cruel joke out any longer. “Hello, Fluttershy. I didn’t know you were in Horseton.”

“Hello, Twilight. We all are,” Fluttershy said. “I don’t think the changelings are too happy to have us, but we’re here. Mr. Occupant is working out a roster so that we can rotate through the control stations.”

“Is he, now?” Chrysalis replied. Twilight could just see one of the queen’s cheeks twitching.

“Um, yes, um, he’s very helpful, Twenty-three.”

“I just bet he is.”

“It’s good to hear you, Fluttershy,” Twilight continued. “And it’s good to have my friends all helping us out. But, um… do you have any updates or anything?” After a quick glance at Chrysalis, she added, “Because I think our mission commander was on the verge of a great insight into the nature of the universe.”

“Oh, was she? I’m sorry,” Fluttershy whimpered.

“Very funny, both of you,” Chrysalis growled. “And can I please remind capcom of comms discipline, Horseton?”

“Oh, um, I’m sorry, Chr… um, Twenty-three,” Fluttershy continued. “It’s just that I’m about to give Rainbow Dash her book reading, and we’re tying your ship in on the same circuit, so I can read to you both.”

“Be still, my shriveled crusty heart,” Chrysalis muttered. “What will we be treated to tonight?”

“Um,” Fluttershy said quietly, “I’m starting a new book, so that you aren’t going to be lost on the one Rainbow Dash is halfway through. It’s a translated book from the kirin lands.”

“Oh, lovely,” Chrysalis said. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Okay,” Fluttershy said, apparently not so much ignoring the reluctance as not having noticed it at all. “Ahem. That Time I Was Reincarnated as an Alicorn Princess Robot, by Lit Dynamite. Prologue. It was just your typical kind of life. I graduated from college, got a job in a big office building in Manehattan, and with my older brother taking care of my parents for me, I was enjoying all the benefits of an independent single life in the big city. Thirty-seven years old, no significant other…”

Chrysalis switched off her microphone. “Are we really going to listen to this dreck?” she whispered, while Fluttershy continued to drone on in her headset.

“It’s one of the most popular book series in the Far East for the past five years!” Twilight hissed back, her hoof on her own microphone’s kill switch. “Besides, it won’t hurt you to listen!”

“… I turned around to see a delivery wagon skidding towards me. I recognized the pony in the leads, Truck Tripper, his eyes rolling with fear. I could hear the screeching of the metal wheel rims on the cobblestones, and there in front of Truck-kun’s out-of-control wagon was my co-worker Buck Younglove…”

Chrysalis groaned and muttered, “That’s what you think.”

CSP-23 Mission Day 02

“For the last time, princess, nopony cares about half a degree temperature discrepancy!” Chrysalis shouted. “If the ship isn’t about to blow up, keep your scientific breakthroughs to yourself!”(488)

“Well, excuse me for experiencing the wonder and majesty of the universe!” Twilight snapped back.

“Half a degree of temperature is neither wonder or majesty! It’s a NUMBER on a STICK!”

“It’s the WRONG number on the stick! And that casts severe doubt on Haypennysworth’s theory of caloric transmission through aether!”

“You keep saying words, but they’re not Ponish!”

“That IS Ponish!”

“Not where I come from!”

“You come out of a hole in the middle of a desert! That hardly qualifies you to be judge of either grammar or science!”

“That’s MY hole in the ground you’re talking about, smart girl!”

“And what’s wrong with being smart anyway??”

Meanwhile, back in Horseton, Applejack and Occupant looked at each other, ears in identical drooping postures. “How long until one of ‘em realizes their mikes’r hot?” Applejack asked.

“Probably not until I tell them,” Occupant said.

“Not it,” Applejack said.

“Not it,” Occupant added.

From the capcom station, Dragonfly added, “Double plus not it backsies.”

“But that’s your job!” Occupant whined.

“It’s also my life,” Dragonfly said. “And I wanna keep it.”

Occupant and Applejack looked at each other again. “Well, somebody has to tell ‘em,” Applejack said.

“Yeah,” Occupant said. “If this keeps up, the reporters are going to run out of note paper.”

Up in the press gallery, the scribbling intensified.

CSP-23 Mission Day 03

“… the next thing I knew, I realized that the four dwarves were all staring at me. I don’t like being stared at! What are they expecting from me? I’m just a robot, you know!”

“Here it comes,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash’s voice cut across the channel. “Don’t interrupt the reading!”

“Well, this is the point where the main character, this Roboru, does something impossble, right?” Chrysalis asked. “Can we take it as read and skip ahead? I want to hear more about this evil vizier the dwarves were talking about!”

“I’ll bet you skip ahead to the end of every Daring Do book, too!” Rainbow Dash’s raspy voice barked.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Chrysalis asked. “You read one Daring Do book, you’ve read them all.”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY??”

Twilight Sparkle put her head in her hooves and moaned, “It’s going to be a long flight back home, isn’t it?”

“Um,” a soft voice echoed over the comms, “this section’s only got a page or so to go… and then we’ll be done for the night… if you don’t mind… please?”

CSP-23 Mission Day 04

“Twenty-three, we show a slight prograde burn at your periapsis will set you up to intercept Amicitas with a closest approach of zero point four kilometers,” Cherry Berry’s voice said inside the headsets of pilot and passenger alike.

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. A nearly perfect orbital insertion burn had put the rescue ship almost perfectly level with Amicitas’s altitude and orbital plane. The next step was to pinpoint a moment where the two ships would pass very close to each other, whereupon Chrysalis could haul in the reins(489) and match speeds with the stranded ship.

“Are you sure it’s a prograde burn?” Twilight asked. “Won’t that just mean we have even more velocity to scrub off for rendezvous?”

Pause. “The bullpen tells me that can’t be helped, Twilight,” Cherry said at last. “On this pass you and Amicitas will be on opposite sides of the moon. Bringing down your apoapsis any farther at this point means no intercept without going suborbital.”

“Which we will eventually do,” Chrysalis pointed out. “That’s one of the tests on the schedule.”

“After you dock with Amicitas, not before,” Cherry replied. “It’s only a few meters per second. You have more than enough delta-V for that.”

Which was true enough. The lunar transfer stage still had more than a third of its original fuel load- not quite enough for a landing on its own, but plenty for orbital maneuvers. “I’m just saying it’s an option we could explore,” Chrysalis stated.

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied, “and we’ll explore it a bit. But we’re not gonna do it. Copy?”

“Copied, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “What’s the story on our burn?”

“You have about one hour and forty-five minutes until periapsis,” Cherry said. “A little less than four hours after that, you should be burning for rendezvous.”

“You should probably tell Rainbow Dash that,” Twilight said. “Is she on this channel?”

“Not right now,” Cherry admitted. “We’ve got her on spacewalk now. Dragonfly is her capcom at the moment. We’ll patch her in once she’s done inspecting Amicitas’s docking port.”

“Right,” Chrysalis said. “Time enough for lunch, then.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight asked. “Since when do-“

“Vox,” Chrysalis hissed.

Twilight switched off her microphone at the same time Chrysalis did. “Since when do you eat food?” she asked.

“I eat sometimes,” Chrysalis said. “I’m just not addicted to the stuff like you ponies are.” She held up her head and added, “Though I am a gracious queen and thus put up with the weaknesses of my inferiors.”

“Ha ha,” Twilight said, pouring enough iron in the two syllables for maybe half an anvil. “Do you want some coffee from the stores, then?”

“Pass me a C ration while you’re in there,” Chrysalis said.

“C ration?” Twilight paused in the act of pulling herself down to the capsule’s storage bays. “We don’t have anything called a C ration.”

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough for me,” she said, opening the cabinet where Pinkie Pie, in defiance of flight rules about crumbly things, had stashed several large heart-shaped sugar cookies with red frosting.(490)

Footnotes:

(488) This was on a hot mic, and so later Chrysalis would have ample opportunities to berate herself for saying something like that in public to the single brightest idiot genius of the last century, if not the entire history of Equestria and every country around it.

(489) Equestria and the other civilized peoples (if you count the changelings as civilized) did have a few devices with brakes installed, but not enough for “hit the brakes” to be a popular metaphor for slowing down. Reins, on the other hoof, were universal wherever you had wagons or trains large enough to require pony teams and a driver to control them.

(490) Strawberry flavor. Cherry Berry wouldn’t have raided the ship stores prior to launch even if they were cherry flavored, but Pinkie Pie hadn’t wanted her to even be tempted.

ESA-13 Mission Day 20 (still CSA-23 Mission Day 04)

Rainbow Dash floated along the length of Amicitas, giving the flattened-tube with fins a careful look-over from above.(491) Everything seemed in order, especially the docking port which, in just a few hours, would need to link up with an identical docking port on the nose of the changeling moon lander.

And that fact still, after almost two weeks, galled Rainbow Dash no end.

Rescued by Chrysalis! she fumed silently as she nudged the controls on her suit’s thruster pack. I know Twilight was under a lot of pressure, but really! What was she THINKING?

After all, what was there to stop Chrysalis from docking, pushing Twilight through the hatch, and then undocking, leaving not one but two ponies stranded for all eternity in moon orbit?

Well… besides the fact that Twilight could probably whip up a spell to teleport the ship home by stages, or push it out of lunar orbit, or get it home somehow in the roughly six days they’d have to do it in, based on the food left in Amicitas. And then Chrysalis would have to deal with the wrath of six reunited Elements of Harmony, plus three other princesses who would be ready to sing line and verse out of the Olde Yakyakistan Smash Hit Song Book.(492)

But aside from those minor considerations… what was there to stop her?

Rainbow Dash knew she wasn’t being fair to Chrysalis. That was kind of the point. Since when had Chrysalis ever been fair to anypony? It didn’t pay to be fair to that kind of person. And it sure didn’t pay to be utterly dependent on that kind of person for your life!

But… well, the fact was, the decision had been made, and there wasn’t much Rainbow Dash could do about it. Fighting inside the spaceships seemed like a good way to not have spaceships anymore, and fighting outside seemed like a mutual suicide pact. The only way she could see out of her situation was to trust Chrysalis and hope Twilight could prevent the much-expected betrayal.

That realization made Rainbow Dash about as happy as you’d expect, which meant she was about as far from happy as you could get.

Maybe I’d like it better, she thought as she made her way to the bridge airlock to reboard Amicitas, if I knew exactly what Chrysalis was plotting. If I knew her evil scheme, maybe I could stop it!

I wish I knew what she was thinking…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the moon, Chrysalis was trying and failing to find peace and quiet.

All the time! If it’s not the purple babblemouth here next to me, it’s Mission Control telling me this or that thing I already know! Or it’s some stupid story written to entertain spectacularly lonely pony and kirin stallions! Why won’t these fools be quiet for just ten minutes and let me enjoy some peace and quiet?

Ever since Mission Twenty-Three had broken Equus orbit, Chrysalis had sensed something growing around her, around the ship, around… something. It felt familiar, so familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on it. It certainly felt like it was putting a hoof on her, though- a gentle touch, even a caress, that left Chrysalis both terrified and longing for more.

But every time Chrysalis tried to concentrate on that feeling, to try to pinpoint it, some loud-mouth annoyance broke her concentration. All she wanted was a few minutes of time to herself, darn it! Why couldn’t those other people read between the lines and figure it out?

And then she heard the laughter.

It wasn’t her own voice. It certainly wasn’t Twilight Sparkle’s. Nor was it any of the people on the ground. It was female, deep and rich, and the humor behind the laughter rolled across her like the tides… and at least as ancient.

She snuck a quick glance at Twilight Sparkle, who was going over readouts from the science gadgets again. She didn’t have to ask if she’d heard the laugh; obviously she hadn’t.(493) And since the capsule’s headsets were both set to receive Mission Control at all times, if the laugh had come from there, she would have heard it.

Who are you? she thought.

And to her shock, a word came back in the same voice as the laugh: Soon.

Soon what?

. . . . .

Soon what?

Laughter and voice were gone, and the sensation of the gentle touch faded almost, but not quite, to nothing again.

Chrysalis snorted. “Soon,” she muttered.

“Hm? Something wrong?” Twilight asked, looking up from the science stuff.

“Soon we can get this stupid rescue over with,” Chrysalis said, careful not to give the slightest indication she was covering up for anything.

“You didn’t have to come, Your Majesty,” Twilight snapped back. “But I’m rescuing my friend, and I don’t find that a stupid thing at all.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” Chrysalis said coldly. “But I have flight tests to conduct. And as soon as we pick up your friend, we can get to the reason I came here in the first place.”

Well… one reason, anyway, she admitted in the privacy of her own head.

And now, as she poked and prodded at the memory of ghostly laughter, she had a brand new reason.

She’d had these feelings before, but now they were speaking to her…

… and she was going to find out what was behind them all, one way or another.

As soon as she figured out how.

Footnotes:

(491) Or below. Or either side. Because space.

(492) In Yakyakistan, “smash hit” has never been a metaphor.

(493) Asking people around you if they heard the laughter only you could hear seemed to Chrysalis an excellent way to get committed. In fact, several of her subjects had used that very tactic to dispose of some nosy pony getting a little too close to sensitive hive matters. The nice stallions in the white coats would have a lot of trouble putting Chrysalis into a padded room, but she would just as soon avoid the annoyance.

“Twenty-three, Horseton, comms check.”

Chrysalis switched on her microphone. “Stand by, Horseton.” She switched it right back off again, shouting, “Hurry it up, Princess, they’re getting impatient down there.”

A voice from behind a not terribly effective plastic curtain snapped, “Have you ever had to use one of these things? In free fall?”

“It’s not my fault I come from a race with markedly superior means of disposing of bodily waste, princess,” Chrysalis chuckled. “But we are coming up on our intercept.”

A groan came from the other side of the curtain.(494) “I’m hurrying, already. Why didn’t Cherry Berry say anything about constipation?”

A minute later Twilight Sparkle shoved the curtain back into its cabinet and shut the lid on the toilet, throwing the lever that clamped the lid on, and hit the switch venting the contents into space. “There,” she said. “How long until closest approach?”

“Computer says less than two minutes,” Chrysalis said. “We’re about seven kilometers out and approaching at a relative speed of sixty-three meters per second.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me??” Twilight rushed to get back into the copilot seat. “We need to brake and adjust trajectory right now!”

“No hurry,” Chrysalis purred. With a flick of her hoof she reactivated the outgoing comms system. “Horseton, Twenty-three, secure from private time.”

“It’s about time, Twenty-three!” Cherry Berry’s voice couldn’t choose between frantic or furious- most unusual for Little Miss Perfect Pilot. “You need to be on braking burn right now!”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, drawling out her words in the way Twilight was beginning to recognize as Pilotese. “Orienting for deceleration burn now.”

The stars, sun, and the huge dark gray stretch of the night side of the moon traded places in the tiny windows of the capsule. As the ship tumbled, Twilight looked at Chrysalis and asked, “Are you actually trying to wind me up? Because it’s working!”

“Vox,” Chrysalis muttered. She looked at the nav-ball, which now showed the retrograde-relative-to-target marker and the this-way-away-from-ship marker close to, but not touching, each other. “Lining up the precise burn now…”

“Two kilometers and closing.”

“Copy two K, Horseton.” Chrysalis’s eyes never left the navball. Her hooves made small twitches on the flight yoke.

“One point eight. One point six. One point four!” Twilight’s voice rose with each callout.

“I think we can burn now.” At just under eleven hundred meters distance Chrysalis’s hoof dropped to the throttle and eased it forward to twenty-five percent. The ship bucked to life, rocking up and around as the queen matched speeds with the target ship, constantly jockeying to bring the ship closer to its target. The distance-to-target readout on the computer dropped rapidly, seven hundred meters, five hundred, four hundred… three hundred… two hundred fifty…

At two hundred ten meters Chrysalis shut the engines down again. “Approaching target at six meters per second,” she said. “Closest approach at less than one hundred meters.”

“Confirmed, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry said in a somewhat calmer voice. “But next time how about easing the ship in, hm? We don’t really know how much damage rocket thrust can do to another spaceship.”(495)

“I was never pointed directly at the target, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “So no need to worry. I’m going to fly by the target. Its belly is turned to us.”

“Roger that,” Cherry replied. “Amicitas, be ready to orient on Twenty-three once it flies by.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Rainbow Dash called out.

“All right, Twenty-three, you are go to fly-by Amicitas and match speeds for docking.”

“Already doing, Horseton.” Chrysalis glanced at the nav-ball, where the retrograde marker and anti-target markers were separating from each other quickly. “Looks like no danger of collision. Ninety meters and closing.”

“Looks safe from here, too, Twenty-three,” Cherry said. “You’ll pass just under and in front of Amicitas’s nose.”

“Copy that.”

Twilight sat in silence and waited as the distance to target dropped, then slowed, then finally bottomed out at twenty-two meters distance. As it began rising again Chrysalis’s hoof returned to the throttle, opening it up only a tiny fraction to slow the ship. To Twilight the engine only sounded like someone spraying a tin shed with a hose.

“Visual on CSP-23,” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. Twilight wished she could say likewise, but none of the capsule’s windows pointed at a useful angle for seeing the ship she’d designed and sent off into space… with her friend inside.

“And… shutdown.” The throttle clicked closed as Chrysalis reached up to switch on the reaction control systems. “Ready to target Amicitas’s docking port as soon as it’s halfway pointed at me.”

“Stand by, Twenty-three,” Rainbow Dash said. “Maneuver in progress.”

“Amicitas, we show your solar panel still extended,” Cherry said. “You need to bring that in to clear the docking port.”

“Way ahead of you, Horseton.” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. “Emergency solar array retracting. Reaction wheels hot, RCS active. Pitching down.”

After a couple of seconds, Chrysalis said, “Computer has signal from docking port.”

“Roger, Twenty-three. Stabilizing.” Rainbow Dash went silent for a moment or two longer, then added, “Try not to put too many dents into my ship. I want it in one piece for the retrieval mission.”

“Fat chance,” Chrysalis murmured under her breath, and Twilight shot her a glare. The queen didn’t even notice, continuing in full voice, “Target lock on docking port. Rescue ship attitude go for dock. Orienting for docking run.”

Twilight flinched as loud banging noises filled the capsule. She’d known the thrusters were loud in atmosphere, but standing outside the craft on the ground during a burn test was nothing at all compared to being inside in space while they fired…

… and they were firing a lot. Chrysalis burned through monoprop by the hoofful as she worked to get the fuel-heavy rescue capsule aimed and moving directly at the unseen docking port. After several seconds she reached up, switched the RCS off, and said, “Approaching target, zero point three meters per second.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry said over the comms. “By the way, I want to make a few announcements. Ad Astra of the Royal Astronomical Society is cutting checks to ESA for first spacewalk in orbit of the moon and to both ESA and CSP for conducting the first ship-to-ship rendezvous in lunar orbit. And there’s more money coming when you finish this docking.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said without emotion. She reached up again to activate RCS, made a few more burns, then said, “Zero point three at thirty.”

“Copy. By the way, Twenty-three, check your nav-ball. Wouldn’t it help if your ship was actually pointed at target?”

Twilight noticed Chrysalis’s body absolutely freeze in place for a moment- just a moment. “I’ll defer to the experts on that one,” she said at last, drawling it out.

“Yes,” Twilight spoke up. “Yes, it would!”

“Oh, very well, then.” Chrysalis’s hooves had been moving before she spoke- really before Twilight had spoke, most likely. The navball flickered, spinning slowly until the target marker and prograde marker- the latter laid perfectly over the former- lay in the center of the display. “Zero point three at fifteen. Final approach begun.”

Twilight watched as Chrysalis reactivated RCS, tweaking the reaction controls here and there seemingly at random. Feeling like she ought to be doing something, she began calling out distance to target. “Twelve meters… ten meters…”

“Thank you, Twilight,” Chrysalis said through grit teeth.(496)

Twilight shut up at once.

“Eight meters… getting some drift…” Chrysalis made a couple more bursts with the rockets. “Zero point two at five, RCS and SAS shutdown for docking.”

There came a loud CLANG.

“And contact!” Chrysalis cheered.

“Negative!” Twilight countered. “Red light on dock. No capture, repeat no capture!”

“What??” Chrysalis looked at the controls, noticing the slowly growing distance between ship and ship. “I did it right!” she snapped, cool, calm façade broken. “That would have worked every day in the simulator! Where are the magnets? Where are your stupid magnets, princess??”

“I don’t know! Maybe you just missed!” Twilight snapped back.

“Well, how about you don’t miss again, huh?” Rainbow Dash contributed. “For zero point two meters speed, it sounded like a steam train hitting the hab deck!”

“All ships, Horseton, comms discipline!!” Cherry Berry’s squeak carried a crack like a whip through it. “All of you, take a deep breath and get professional about this! We’re going to have to do this again!”

“Well, no… um…” Twilight watched Chrysalis take a deep breath. When she let it out again, the calm pilot persona was back in control of the queen’s face. She snapped both the SAS and RCS back on, popping a few short bursts of thruster fire. “Zero velocity at ten meters,” she said. “Preparing for second docking attempt.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “Amicitas, how’s your atmosphere?”

“Full pressure, no leaks,” Rainbow Dash replied immediately.

Meanwhile Chrysalis fired the RCS a bit more, then muttered, “Aborting approach. Didn’t have the alignment. Backing up for a better run-up.”

“Take your time,” Cherry Berry said. “Do what you have to. But get it right.”

“Roger.” Chrysalis popped the RCS a few more times. “Zero point two at twelve meters,” she said, and then went silent, with the very occasional pop of thrusters producing the only sound in the capsule.(497)

“Two meters, RCS off!” Chrysalis said suddenly, removing her hooves from the controls.

CLANG.

“And… and… no, no, no!” She switched the RCS back on, immediately firing the thrusters forward again. “Zero at one point nine meters! We should be feeling the electromagnets by now!”

“Did you make contact square on?” Twilight asked.

“Princess, that time I hit it more square on than any time we did it in the sims!” Chrysalis said. “And it just is not working! This is NOT my fault!!”

“All right, Twenty-three, let’s work the problem,” Cherry said over the comms. “Systems check on docking systems. Twenty-three?”

“Princess?” Chrysalis asked. “I’m pretty sure that’s on your side.”

“Right,” Twilight said, scanning the controls in front of her. “Docking system… all green on our side. Plenty of power, no warning indicators.”

“Copy. Amicitas, docking systems check?”

“I’m not seeing any warning lights over here, either!” Rainbow Dash said. “So it must… be…” Her voice trailed off, and after a few moments it came back, much chastened. “… because I had the system deactivated to save power. Whoops. My bad.”

Chrysalis gave Twilight a little glance that didn’t scream so much as say in a quiet, matter of fact matter, I know this is not actually your fault, but I still blame you for this. Aloud she said, “Belay action, Amicitas. Let us back off from you before you reactivate your systems. The sims weren’t kind to us when we had two docking ships improperly aligned.”

“Yeah, that would be bad,” Rainbow Dash’s voice agreed. “Just a little. Standing by.”

“RCS on. Backing out to twenty meters.” The thrusters banged again.

“We copy twenty meters for third approach,” Cherry said. “At this rate you have enough power for two more attempts.”

“I won’t need more than one,” Chrysalis said. “And…” A loud series of bangs. “Zero at twenty meters. Ready to approach.”

“Hang on… okay!” Rainbow Dash called. “I’m showing green across the board on the docking system now! Ready for docking, Horseton!”

“Roger, you are GO for docking attempt three,” Cherry said.

“Proceeding.” The thrusters barked again. “Zero point four at twenty… seventeen… fifteen, on target…” Chrysalis called out a few more numbers as seconds and distance ticked by. “Seven meters, on target…” Her hooves hovered above the controls, shaking a little bit to Twilight’s eyes. “Four… three meters, RCS off!”

CLANG-CHUNK.

The ship wobbled and shook.

“WHOA!” Rainbow Dash’s voice flooded the comms. “Get that ship under control!”

“Soft capture,” Chrysalis said calmly. “SAS off… SAS on… SAS off…” And under her voice she murmured just barely loud enough for Twilight to hear, “Catch, you stupid pony-cobbled piece of-“

CLANG-CLACK! CHUNK!

The green light for a hard capture and confirmed dock lit up on the control panel.

“We have hard capture!” Chrysalis said triumphantly. “Horseton, Baltimare, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-three; we have Amicitas, repeat we have Amicitas!”

“Swell, Twenty-three,” Rainbow Dash growled. “Now how about we get these hatches undogged, huh?”

“And why should I open my door to you?” Chrysalis asked, more than a little tease in her voice. “You weren’t very welcoming just now.”

“I can’t help it if my ship wants to be rescued by you even less than I do!”

“Rainbow Dash!!” Twilight shouted. “The world is watching us!!”

“That’s right, ladies and gentleponies,” Chrysalis said, not bothering to hide her smile. “The top diplomats of Equestria, hard at work!”

“Uggggghh!” Twilight groaned, holding her face in her hooves.

It would be a VERY long flight home.

Footnotes:

(494) Ever since Gordon the Griffon first ralphed in full view of the griffon space program’s telepresence projection (and all the media cameras recording it), the system was changed so when the astronauts fully shut off their microphones, it also shuts off all internal views of the spacecraft via telepresence. Obviously this became standard procedure for dealing with bathroom breaks, especially during Cherry Berry’s Minmus flight. Although the plastic curtain helped a little with privacy, its main purpose was to keep droplets of various kinds from escaping the reach of the new suction toilet. For smells, of course, it did very little, and for sounds nothing whatever. It was fortunate for both crewmembers that Chrysalis found the princess’s regular moments of bathroom humiliation hilarious rather than both disgusting and annoying.

(495) In our world the answer is “plenty”. However, space components that have officially been insured by Lloyd’s of Trottingham as “foolproof, waterproof, foalproof, changeling-proof, and yak resistant” tend to stand up to anything short of a full-blast rocket burn at point blank range.

(496) On Earth the Western legends of fairies and elves claim that saying ‘thank you’ to such a creature is a dismissal. Certainly nobles and aristocrats used it as such with their inferiors, usually as a polite but firm order to shut up and butt out. The ponies had no legends of elves as such, but they understood what a sharp “thank you” meant, even one as sheltered and bookish as Twilight Sparkle.

(497) Not true, but the sounds of the air recirculation fans, the coolant pumps, and the dozen or so other sound-making things which kept the interior of the capsule habitable had faded into the background of Twilight Sparkle’s mind. Until and unless one of them stopped making noise, she couldn’t tell that they were making noise anymore, especially in comparison to the hull-pounding bangs of the thrusters.

“I was an idiot!” Twilight Sparkle shouted.

Chrysalis let a little of her gigantic inner smile bleed to the outside world. “No doubt,” she said, “but possibly you could tell us what specifically you’re an idiot about this time?”

“Hey, back off!” Rainbow Dash said, shoving herself between the two. “When was the last time you designed a spaceship without paying someone to do it for you?”

The three of them floated in their spacesuits, the interior of Amicitas depressurized so that Twilight Sparkle could remove the entire fuel system intake assembly from its hole in the engineering cabin. Thus Rainbow Dash’s shove wasn’t much of a shove, but it sent Chrysalis gently drifting back towards a bulkhead while the pegasus’s body carried on along its own new trajectory. Twilight, meanwhile, got shoved a little against the assembly she was inspecting.

“Cut it out, Dash,” Twilight said. “She’s right. This system was a stupid idea, and I did a bad job on it.” She held up the assembly, with its large outer valve and its complicated second valve behind it. “I thought I could adapt a simple air-pressure valve for the purpose, with a second valve behind it to prevent cabin air from leaking out through the valve when the fuel pressure got too low.” She pointed at the large valve with the slightly bent locking ring at one end, then at a smaller metal sphere a bit further along. “But the backup valve doesn’t do anything about backflow from the fuel system, and when the outer valve got damaged-“

“Totally not my fault!” Rainbow Dash interjected.

“-then the only thing holding the fuel in was its own pressure, and when that pressure dropped, it found this weak point in the seal…” She pointed to a tiny, eroded-looking bit on the red circle which formed the inside of the valve. “… and it started leaking, and the more it leaked the faster it leaked, and then all the fuel was in the compartment!” Twilight’s eyes rolled with panic as she pushed away the assembly and drifted over to Rainbow Dash. “If there had been a spark in the cabin, the ship would have been destroyed! Oh, Dash…” She reached forward and slowly wrapped her spacesuit-covered forehooves around her friend. “I almost got you killed for a second time!!”

“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash returned the hug for a moment, then pushed Twilight back a bit. “No, Twilight, you didn’t get me killed. Not even once. I volunteered for this, remember? I got into Flight Five all by myself. And then when it… well, after that, I kept bothering you and pushing you until you got back to work at space stuff! I knew it would be dangerous! But-“

“Httthp.”

The two ponies froze, then carefully pushed on one another so they could turn their suits to face Chrysalis.

“What the…” Twilight said.

Rainbow took one look and curled up laughing, suit shaking with every big, broad belly laugh.

Chrysalis had rather hoped they wouldn’t notice her sneaking her tongue out to suck down a bit of the overflowing love between the two friends at a particularly emotional moment. Unfortunately for her, she’d forgotten she was in a spacesuit, and her long forked tongue had slapped against the plastic visor and its inner coating of anti-condensation material.

And stuck.

And, thus, she had treated the two ponies to the vision of a changeling queen with two feet of long, skinny tongue adhered like spaghetti to the lower half of her visor, while her eyes stared out over it.

“Eeheey uhuhee,” she said, which wasn’t what she wanted to say. “Ow ekk-oo-iie ee ikk oh I eeh akke iih oo-iih ellh-iih orh,” she added, which was even less what she wanted.(498)

“Chrysalis,” Twilight said, shock and surprise rapidly giving way to suspicion, “were you trying to devour our friendship just now?”

“Oh-ee uuh ihh-uul,” Chrysalis grunted. “Uhh iih oo ech-ech?”(499)

Twilight sighed, ignoring the loud paroxysms of Rainbow Dash. “Never mind,” she said. “Anyway, even if we had the fuel, I can’t fix this here. This whole system needs a redesign. The oxygen valve too- it’s built the same. We’ll need to purge that system before we leave.”

Chrysalis shrugged. She wouldn’t have had anything to add to that even if her tongue wasn’t plastered to her helmet.

“Anyway, I better get started.” Twilight’s magic reached out to the ship, and she used it to reorient herself before she caught the assembly in her magic. “Unless you have any questions?”

Chrysalis had tired of trying to grunt her messages. She settled for tapping her helmet while giving Twilight Sparkle as arch a look as she could manage.

“Oh. Right.” Twilight turned to face the refueling console. “I’ll try to hurry this along, then.”

“Ooo ooo akh.”(501)

Footnotes:

(498) “Very funny. Now pressurize the ship so I can take this stupid helmet off.”

(499) “Only a little. What did you expect?”

(500) Some people would argue that five hundred footnotes is far too many for a non-academic work, especially one without a bibliography for attribution. As you can guess, the writer does not hold with this argument.

(501) “You do that.”

“You two get to have a meal,” Chrysalis protested. “Why can’t I?”

“Because neither of us wants to end up a drained husk, that’s why!” Rainbow Dash snapped. “We remember what happened at the wedding!”

“I’ve been trying not to remember what happened at the wedding,” Twilight Sparkle added in a more dangerous tone than Chrysalis could remember her ever using in her presence. “And you trying to feast on us doesn’t help.”

“I wasn’t going to feast!” Chrysalis said defensively. “It was more like a quick snack. Honest!”

Rainbow Dash snorted. “A likely story,” she said.

“Fine,” Chrysalis said. “I’ll just be looking out the window.”

The three of them were still in Amicitas. They’d made two things clear: neither one wanted to leave the ESA vessel until after they’d had a meal there(502); and neither one of them would let Chrysalis back through the docking hatch before both of them were in the ship that was going home. Thus they sat in the bridge, Chrysalis in the copilot seat, Rainbow Dash in the pilot’s position, and Twilight Sparkle behind them both, watching for any sign of treachery.

Despite the fact that Chrysalis genuinely, honestly hadn’t intended to do more than slurp up ambient love when she got her tongue glued to her helmet(503), she couldn’t blame the ponies for their suspicion. But abandoning them in orbit would be saying, “I hereby declare war on Equestria! See you in three days, fools!” That would be a wonderful way to guarantee a welcoming committee on splashdown… and a large prison for every last one of her subjects long before then.

No, she couldn’t afford that, not until she had the mystic power of the moon in her hooves. After that, of course, no holds barred.

She looked out the pony ship’s cockpit windows, out at the stars and galaxies. With the ship turned away from both sun and moon, she could see spots of light and clouds of color no earthbound pony would ever experience… and right now, she didn’t give two bits for all of it. She wanted to look at the moon, at her final goal, so close and yet too far away.

And yet… it didn’t have to be that way, did it? The whole point of this mission before it became a rescue flight was to test a landing-capable craft before the final landing. CSP-23 was ready to go down to the surface, if she so chose.

She could do it.

She could do it right now.

Well, not right now, right now. She’d have to incapacitate Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash first to stop them from meddling. Twilight would have to come first, but that wouldn’t be hard. She was vastly more powerful, but she was also the more naive of the two, and tricking her into a moment of vulnerability would be child’s play. After that, subduing Rainbow Dash would be as much of a breeze as catching a breezie.

And then, with the two of them sleep-toxined in their seats, she could take the ship down, land, and claim the moon for herself… and with that power-

Not yet. Soon.

There was the voice again, and this time it wasn’t laughing.

Who are you? Chrysalis thought as clearly as she could.

No response, but the presence she felt in space seemed stronger than normal. If there was something out there, she had its attention.

I said, who are you? Chrysalis demanded in her mind. You can read my thoughts, whoever you are. So who are you to say it’s not my time for triumph??

No response.

If you don’t give me an explanation right now, Chrysalis said, I’m going to jump in my ship right now, undock from these two fools, and-

The universe blurred.

The main engines roared as CSP-23 decelerated, less than ten kilometers above the crater-pocked surface of the moon.

Rainbow Dash, glued firmly to her flight couch, was out like a light, snoring away under the influence of a potent bite of sleep toxin. Twilight Sparkle had resisted, as Chrysalis should have expected an alicorn to resist toxins, so she’d had to go to the trouble of encasing the unicorn’s horn in hard goo. The horn still glowed a bit as Twilight tried to force her way free, but it would take time to burn off- enough time for Chrysalis to land the ship.

But not much more time than that, she thought. She needed to land quickly, which meant she didn’t have time to be too picky about a landing spot.

“You won’t get away with this, Chrysalis!” Twilight Sparkle moaned as she struggled weakly against her bonds. The sleep toxin still had that much effect, at least.

“Why do they always say that?” Chrysalis muttered to herself. She didn’t have time for witty banter with her doomed foe, no matter how much fun that always was. She switched on the surface radar and flinched as the first digit on the altimeter immediately switched from a nine to a four. Less than five kilometers off the surface… and, she noted, now on a suborbital trajectory which would kill her unless she either landed safely or boosted back to orbit right now.

And boosting back to orbit would mean an end to all her plans- likely an end to her rule, for once Twilight Sparkle got free it would be either mutual death when the fight blew up the ship or (more likely) Chrysalis’s defeat and capture. She had no illusions; Twilight Sparkle had been a powerful unicorn when they’d first met, and she was almost certainly the most magically talented alicorn in the universe now. A fair fight wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So- land or bust. And furthermore, land blind, since there were no rear-view mirrors for the ship, nothing but radar distance-finding and feedback from mission control back in Horseton… which she had turned off completely, lest Cherry Berry try to get the other alicorn princesses to stop her. For all she knew, that was in process already, which meant she really did need to land right this very minute if possible.

Of course she couldn’t do that yet. The transfer stage was still attached, still burning. She needed to use it up, then dump it, before she could land.

The altimeter began fluctuating up and down, swinging wildly between three and five kilometers. Vastly uneven territory below, as Chrysalis could verify by looking out the side window at the surface the ship had just passed over. Still she kept the ship slowing down, watching the surface velocity shrink. She just needed to find a small patch of level ground, anything would do…

There. It wasn’t perfect, but it looked better than what came before. And besides, she’d almost totally nulled her lateral momentum, so it was that or nothing.

Taking a deep breath, she committed herself, watching the surface speed drop to a mere twenty-five meters per second, then cutting the throttle and setting the ship’s SAS to orient on retrograde as it began to fall straight moonward. The ship picked up speed, but not enough for her taste; one point six meters per second squared, as opposed to the almost ten meters per second squared she could expect on Equus.

Faster. Faster. Must get down faster!

She kept the engine off, checking with a glance that the staging system was correct, that the next strike of the stage switch would dump the transfer stage and leave the landing legs free to touch the surface. At eighty meters per second, just above two kilometers altitude, she throttled up briefly, slowing her descent to twenty-five meters per second. She throttled back, keeping just enough thrust to drop the descent speed by tenths of a meter each second, as the last of the fuel and oxidizer burned through the transfer stage’s engine.

At thirteen hundred meters she cut the stage loose.

The landing engine lit without a problem. She shut it down immediately, letting the ship drift down below eight hundred before bringing it back up again. First a hard burst to get the speed back down below twenty-five meters per second, then slower. At seven hundred meters she stalled, as a flicker of light on her console advised that the discarded stage had struck the surface. For a second she started going up again, but thankfully the SAS automatically ticked over to attitude control, saving the ship from a tumble before the moon’s gravity reasserted itself.

Chrysalis cut power and let the ship fall a little, then gave the engine just a tiny bit of throttle. At five hundred meters her speed was thirteen meters per second; at four hundred meters, eight. She pulled back more, just barely holding speed with the engines at less than ten percent throttle. She very carefully let the rocket decelerate her- too much, again, stalling out her descent at two hundred thirty meters up.

She cut the power once more, waited for gravity to put her back on course, then relit the engines on lowest power. She would find that happy medium, one way or another. The pony wasn’t the only astronaut who could land a ship!

Six point five at one hundred meters.

“What are you doing??” Twilight Sparkle shouted, fully awake again.

Five point seven at fifty meters.

“That’s too fast!!” Twilight shrieked.

The ship touched down at five point four meters per second.

The landing legs compressed hard, but unevenly, because although Chrysalis had come down on a flatter part of the moon than the crater-pocked hellscape surrounding it, it wasn’t absolutely flat.

The legs rebounded unevenly, tipping the ship hard forward.

Panicked, Chrysalis shoved the throttle to the firewall. No! Must not crash! Must get away!

“NOO!!!” Twilight Sparkle screamed. Her horn glowed brighter, and a tiny crack appeared in the hard gel.

The ship took off, still tumbling, SAS unable to straighten it out.

Chrysalis caught a glimpse of fractured rock and sand through the hatch window as the ship tumbled end over end, still at full throttle.

Then there was a loud crunch, an even louder explosion, a moment of flame-

and then so much darkness…

“Jeez, Chrysalis, what was THAT for?”

Chrysalis’s eyes opened. The darkness in front of her had stars in it, and nebulae, and the Milky Way.

“I think she fell asleep looking out the window,” Twilight said. “Are you all right? That was quite a scream.”

“Er… yes,” Chrysalis managed, her brain rushing to find some acceptable response. “A nightmare, perhaps? If daydreams can become nightmares.”

“I hope not,” Rainbow Dash said firmly. “Look, we’re almost done eating anyway. How about we finish this in the other ship?” Under her voice she added, “The sooner we get away from crazy bug the better.”

“I’m choosing to ignore that,” Chrysalis said. “But no, go ahead and finish. I… need a moment first.”

“Suit yourself,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Weirdo.”

As the two ponies finished raking out the dregs of their meal packs, Chrysalis stared out the cockpit window again. All right, voice, she thought, you made your point. But I’m coming back soon. And when I come back I will be prepared. Next time you won’t stop me.

Laughter, but softer and shorter than what Chrysalis had heard before, was her only response.

I don’t appreciate being mocked, Chrysalis thought. Whoever you are, after I’ve dealt with the ponies, you’re next.

Next time, the voice said, you will see all your wishes fulfilled.

And then, almost instantly, the presence faded to as thin as Chrysalis could remember it- not absolutely gone, but definitely shifted elsewhere.

All my wishes fulfilled, voice? Chrysalis thought.

Well… yes, that is the plan.

That’s been the plan for the past two years.

Time is almost up.

Footnotes:

(502) It was the one thing they could do to stretch out the time they had on their own ship, before they became passengers on a ship that not only belonged to a hostile power, but which was piloted by the very hostile ruler of that power.

(503) Removing the tongue had taken twenty minutes, a lot of magic, and eventually some alcohol from Amicitas’s medical stores. This extra time spent aboard was not appreciated by any of the three astromares, who had been too busy with the difficult and unpleasant task to care. Chrysalis’s helmet would be in danger of fogging up on the trip home, but at least she would be able to talk.

CSP-23 Mission Day 05

“… and shutdown in five, four, three, two, one!”

“Shutdown!”

“Twenty-three, we confirm shutdown, stable lunar orbit of twenty-five kilometers with a deviation of less than one kilometer. Good work!”

“Of course it was. It was me doing it.”

Rainbow Dash thought she might gag. You didn’t need to be a changeling to sense the smugness radiating out from the pilot’s seat. Chrysalis had just finished the exact same maneuver which had left Rainbow Dash marooned around the moon for two weeks… except that this time there was a transfer stage still twenty percent full attached to the ship, plus a landing-and-return stage with its fuel tank absolutely untouched.

The suborbital flight performance test had been the final test of CSP-23, and like the other tests it had passed with flying colors. The next time Chrysalis came up, it would be to land.

The space race was over. Equestria had lost.

“Twenty-three, just thought you’d like to know,” Cherry Berry’s voice added as Dash sat in the center seat sulking. “The bullpen’s early analysis of the test says our current rocket design is go for landing on any site within at least twenty, maybe thirty degrees of initial orbit. With a massive safety margin.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Chrysalis muttered, in a subdued tone that didn’t seem to Rainbow Dash like the kind of swagger the changeling queen had been enjoying a moment before.

“Sure you did,” Cherry replied. “Well, the scientists confirm it, if you care.”

“Actually,” Chrysalis replied, her voice rising again, “I do care. Ask them if we have enough oomph in this ship to re-dock with the pink paperweight and push it back home.”

“Er, Horseton, cancel that,” Twilight Sparkle spoke up quickly from Rainbow Dash’s other side. “Even if the delta-V is there, we’ve never tested the docking port under acceleration. We’d risk permanent damage to the ship. And besides, Amicitas would have to return through atmosphere without power, as a glider. It’s technically possible, but everything would have to be absolutely perfect. We’d rather come back and get her when we can fix her.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash grunted. Not that it mattered much, but she did want to bring the ship home, if she could. Even after the changelings landed on the moon.

“I see,” Chrysalis said lightly. “If that’s the case, then tell the bulls they’ll have to start designing a new ship. A bigger one.”

Rainbow Dash gaped at Chrysalis, then looked at Twilight, whose jaw was just as slack.

“Er, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry’s voice came slowly from their headsets, “why do we need a bigger ship?”

“Because by my count, Mission Twenty-four is going to need at least four seats,” Chrysalis said. “You piloting, of course. Myself. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, to see to their ship.” A thought occurred to her. “That contraption that was on Dragonfly’s ship, it holds four people, right? So we could get seven seats for Mission Twenty-four. We could bring along Dragonfly and Occupant, since they’re trained. And one more seat… what about Fluttershy?” The queen, for the first time, looked over at the two ponies with honest curiosity. “Do you think Fluttershy would like her first flight to be to the moon?”

“She wouldn’t like her first flight, period,” Rainbow Dash blurted.

“Ah. Well, maybe we’ll draw straws among the other astromares. One of the non-pony, non-changeling flyers, perhaps-“

“Are you saying you’re going to give us a second flight?” Twilight interrupted. “Just to retrieve our ship?”

“No, no,” Chrysalis said. “I’m saying we should end this space race properly… together.” Adding a little smirk, she added, “If you like, princess, you can be the second one down the ladder after me.”

Rainbow Dash hadn’t thought her eyes could get so wide.(504) “You and us landing on the moon together??” she asked. “In the same ship??”

“Well, it does seem a waste to bring you all the way out here twice,” Chrysalis said. “Three hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-five kilometers(505), and then stop to drop you off before the last twenty-five.”

Rainbow’s eyes went from dinner-plate wide to mail-slot narrow. “You’re plotting something.”

Chrysalis sighed. “Yes, I’m plotting something,” she said. “Fish swim in water, pigeons roost on buildings, bees do unspeakable things with flowers, and I plot things. I’ve been plotting this particular thing for the past two years, Rainbow Dash: I’ve been plotting a way to demonstrate that we changelings are not just monsters.”

“Reeeeeally,” Rainbow drawled, ignoring the nudge on her right shoulder from Twilight.

“For two years I’ve been working to show the world exactly what changelings can do,” Chrysalis replied, totally unruffled. “And when the cameras of the world see me step off that ladder first, then I will truly show them all!”

“You could phrase that a little less like a threat,” Twilight muttered.

“But where would the fun be in that?” Chrysalis smirked at the alicorn before returning her attention to Rainbow Dash. “I would prefer that the second pony off the ladder be Cherry Berry, for all she’s done to make this possible. But I wouldn’t insist on it. After all, who cares about the second pony to climb a mountain or sail a sea? History only remembers the first. Which, as we all know now, will be me.”

“You’re still on vox, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry reminded them from an unimaginable distance away.(506)

“Have I said anything embarrassing yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

Chrysalis snorted. “Anyway, my bringing you two along will serve two functions. It will bring your people and mine much closer together…” The teeth came out, which some might mistake for a smile, but not Rainbow Dash. “…and it will rub my victory in Celestia’s face when the world sees her favorite student setting foot on the moon only by my sufferance.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, “I could almost believe-“

“We accept,” Twilight Sparkle put in before Rainbow could continue.

Rainbow looked at Twilight. “Twilight? Really?”

Twilight put a hoof to her headset, as if to hold it steady. A single tap on an earpiece gave Rainbow a reminder: all of this was being heard by the world. “Leaving aside the obvious gesture of friendship,” she said, “the possibilities for scientific advancement are incalculable! We can’t pass up this opportunity just because of hurt feelings!”

“Of course you can’t!” Chrysalis said, not particularly convincing as a newfound friend.

Twilight shot the queen a glare. “It would help if you’d stop sounding quite so evil.”

“Oh, but can’t I at least gloat about one thing?” Chrysalis asked.

“What?”

Green fire lit up the capsule, and a couple of cameras floated out of a storage bay. “I’m going to get you two to do all the work photographing the moon so we can pick out a smooth landing site!” The cameras dropped into the hooves of the two ponies.

“And what will you be doing?” Twilight asked.

“Why, listening to the next chapter of that Other World Robot business,” Chrysalis said, stretching back on her flight couch. “When those earth ponies started fighting the metal ants, it was getting interesting.”

Footnotes:

(504) Outside observers would claim the Equestrian pony (Equus cutius sapiens) already had a face that was half eyeball. Indeed, at the time of this story the paleontologists of Equestria were debating the causes which gave the modern pony a much narrower range of vision and larger, more forward-facing eye sockets than their distant ancestors Equus cutius majestrix and Equus cutius tertius. These debates tended to end unsettled because the artist reconstructions of said fossil forbears gave everyone the creeps.

(505) The author knows some of you are screaming about the inaccuracy of this number. Suffice to say that people seeking accurate scientific facts and figures should not look for them coming from the mouths of megalomaniacal despots. Pour yourself a calming beverage, sit back, and relax, secure in the knowledge that if you really need to know the exact number there are encyclopedias for that.

(506) Most intelligent species really can’t imagine distances of a very great length at all, not in relation to themselves. Even species like the ponies of Equus can’t easily imagine distances as long as, for example, the circumference of their own world. That circumference, if peeled off the equator in layers and stitched end-to-end, would extend nine times between Equus and its primary moon, with a tenth circumference able to double over and act as a leash. The fact that this barely counts as getting one’s toes wet in interplanetary travel ranks second among Reasons to Stop Even Thinking About Space, just behind Reason #1, namely the number of zeroes between the significant digits and the decimal on the cost of the flight.

CSP-23 Mission Day 06

The end had come.

Not to the mission; Mission Twenty-Three was due for a high-atmosphere aerobraking run in another day and a half, during which it would use up the last of the transfer stage, followed twelve hours later by the final descent into atmosphere. Splashdown was due for late night Horseton time in the waning minutes of Mission Day Eight.

But for the first volume of That Time I Was Reincarnated as an Alicorn Princess Robot, the last page was near at hoof, and the final scene of the story proper deeply affected all three members of the crew.

“Poor Inferno,” Twilight Sparkle sniffled. “At least she’s reunited with her mother now.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, her raspy voice cracking more than usual. “And she was so awesome, having Roboru assimilate her so she’d have all her skills and memories. She was so brave. I hope I can go out like that when the time comes.”

A soft sniffle echoed from the left-hand seat. “Me too.”

Rainbow Dash looked over. “What are you crying about?” she asked. “I thought you hated the mushy stuff!”

“That wasn’t mush,” Chrysalis said, brushing a small tear from one eye. “That was the way every changeling queen would want to go out; defeated in battle by a strong and worthy successor, making the new queen swear to vengeance against her old enemies.”(507) She sighed deeply and said, “I wish I could’ve given my mother that luxury. Stubborn old bat.”

Rainbow Dash and Twilight looked at each other for a long moment.

“Horseton,” Dash eventually said, “we’re ready for that epilogue chapter now.”

CSP-23 Mission Day 08

The plan had been for the aerobraking pass to set up a final descent which, thanks to the almost unused landing stage, would bring Mission Twenty-three down just offshore of Horseton Space Center.

Things hadn’t worked out that way.

“I TOLD you to wait until we landed!”

“But I hadda go THEN, Twilight! I couldn’t hold it for six HOURS!”

“And why didn’t you make a correction burn like all the other times?”

“Because, princess, nobody TOLD me I needed to make a correction burn! I thought everything was just fine until ninety seconds ago!”

To be specific, thanks to a tiny but non-trivial thrust provided by flushing the capsule’s suction toilet into space just after the final orbital adjustment burn, the ship’s re-entry trajectory had been altered just enough to bring the ship down earlier than expected. Thus, instead of passing over the space center at thirty kilometers as planned, the three astromares had flown over it just as they entered atmosphere.

“Well… buck it,” Chrysalis muttered. She put her hooves to the controls, slamming the throttle to one hundred percent and igniting the ship’s engines. “We’re coming down now.”

“What??” Twilight looked out the windows, where flickers of re-entry plasma, produced by compression of the thin air around the capsule, shot past them. “What are you doing?? You’re flying directly into our engine exhaust! You’ll cook us!”

“Not if I slow down fast enough,” Chrysalis grunted, keeping her eyes planted on the instruments. “Faster re-entry speed, more heat. Slow down, less heat. Simple.”

“But we don’t have the thrust to do a powered landing!” Twilight insisted.

“I know that!” Chrysalis snapped. “But I can stop us from sailing off downrange to Saddle Arabia!”

“The Poodle engine is designed for vacuum only, not atmosphere!!”

“Then I’d better get all the use I can out of it now, hadn’t I?” Chrysalis looked at the velocity indicator, a rapidly shrinking number just above the navball. “If it drops us straight down now, so much the better!”

“Um, no way, Chrysalis!” Rainbow Dash said. “Straight-down descent is a no-no. Take it from a pony who knows!”

“Ugh! All right, I’ll save some fuel for final descent!” Chrysalis said. “Now shut up and let me make sure we come down in the right ocean!”

“For once,” Twilight muttered.

“It’s not too late for you to get out and walk, pony!”

“I just might!”

“Twenty-three, Horseton,” Cherry Berry’s voice snapped over the comms. “Please refrain from threatening my friends.”

“Fiiiiiine,” Chrysalis groaned.

The engine roared on for over a minute, until finally Chrysalis shut it down with half the fuel remaining. “There,” she said. “Let the air do the rest.”

“Feels like you’re still burning,” Rainbow Dash muttered.

“One g and rising,” Twilight reported. “Air resistance decelerating the ship.”

“Exactly,” Chrysalis said. “Just lay back and wait for the heat to die down.”

“Two g’s. No heat warnings yet,” Twilight said. “Our trajectory has us coming down just short of the Dragonlands, though-“

An alarm began blaring in the capsule.

“Heat warning, fourth stage fuel tank,” Chrysalis said plainly. “If it gets worse I’ll light the engine up again and slow us.”

“Won’t that just make us hotter?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Chrysalis looked at the airspeed indicator and said, “Doubt it. We’re slowing down fast. We should be coming out of the plasma ball in less than a minute anyway.”

“We’re a lot lower than usual,” Twilight pointed out. “Denser air. And we’re still going-“

The alarm claxon began to echo.

“Heat warnings, landing legs one, two, three and four,” Chrysalis confirmed.

“Heat rising on the fuel tank,” Twilight added.

“Fiiiine,” Chrysalis sighed again. “Throttle to full.”

Once again plasma jetted out of the rocket engine, the exhaust smoke adding to the fireball that surrounded the ship. The G-force indicator rose to five G’s, pressing all three astronauts hard back in their couches. After a few seconds the heat claxons stopped, then started, then stopped for good, leaving nothing but the roaring of wind outside and the rattling of the ship inside.

“There,” Chrysalis grunted. “Now we should…” She grunted again as something took hold of the ship and began to rock it. “Three point five G’s and rising fast… ship’s wobbling… off-course… what the hay?”

“Lifting body effect,” Twilight grunted out. “Your ship isn’t… aerodynamically stable… with the engine bells still on.”

“You mean… it’s gonna flip nose-first?” Rainbow Dash grunted back as the G-meter continued to climb.

“No, it’s not!” Chrysalis snapped. “Brace!” Once more she slammed the throttle forwards, and the force pushing them into their seats became Faust’s heavy hoof itself, applying over six times the force of normal gravity for a moment before Chrysalis got the ship back on its proper attitude.

Outside the ship, the plasma cone began to fade, leaving only the orange and red exhaust from the rocket. The G-meter began to drop from its peak, falling below five G’s, then below four. And still the engine burned.

“Status… on parachutes?” Chrysalis grunted.

“Red,” Twilight called back.

The engine continued to burn, as the last of the plasma faded into nothingness.

“Fifteen K,” Rainbow Dash gasped. “Descent rate-“

“I see it,” Chrysalis grunted back.

“Fourteen K.”

“Parachutes?”

“Red,” Twilight said.

“Thirteen K.”

“Parachutes?”

“Yellow- no, green!” Twilight grunted. “Green light on parachutes!”

“Good!” Chrysalis cut the engines, and the crushing forces became merely normal gravity, feeling a bit heavier than normal after eight days of space.

“Um…” Rainbow Dash said, after a couple of moments of deep breaths, “aren’t you going to pop the chutes now?”

“In a moment,” Chrysalis purred. She reached up and hit the switch to lower the landing legs. The sound of four whirring motors echoed through the ship.

“Um… what was that for?” Rainbow Dash asked. “We’re coming down over water.”

“You never know,” Chrysalis said.

“Eight kilometers and descending,” Twilight reminded them.

“No hurry,” Chrysalis said. “Five kilometers will do.”

“Is it me,” Rainbow Dash asked, pointing to the nav-ball, “or is our airspeed starting to tick up again?”

“Or now,” Chrysalis said, hitting the staging button. “Now works, too.”

Four parachutes billowed out around the capsule, rocking it back and forth as they caught the air and decelerated the ship.

Five minutes later, the ship hit the water of the Celestial Ocean, the highest peaks of the Dragonlands just barely visible on the distant horizon.

CSP-23 had come home.

Footnote:

(507) Chrysalis was far less impressed by the epilogue, which had a lot of kindergarten stuff to her mind, all about Roboru experimenting with transforming into Inferno’s flesh-and-blood unicorn body. “Bo-ring. Been there, done that. Why couldn’t the writer just get on with the vengeance?”

“What is this?” Chrysalis asked, as the large air chariot carrying the three space-suited astromares from the ocean landed not on the runway at Horseton but, of all places, next to the fully illuminated launchpad. There, on the pad, sat a fresh three-person Mark 2 capsule, with nothing else attached to it. “Why aren’t we going to the astronaut quarters? My bed is calling me.”

“Public relations!” Cherry Berry said cheerfully, waving a hoof at the army of ponies aiming their flash-bulb cameras at the trio. “Everypony wants a picture of the three brave astromares returned home after a great adventure! So, if you could stand right over there, next to the flag on the capsule-“

“What??” Chrysalis asked. “Now?! It’s three in the morning!”

“Well, of course now!” Cherry insisted. “Everypony’s been waiting for this moment! You just rescued Rainbow Dash, flew within ten kilometers of the moon, and then executed the most daring re-entry profile ever! You’re heroes!”

Chrysalis looked around… and, yes, she could feel the admiration coming off the reporters and cameraponies just barely kept back from crushing the trio by a half-ring of changeling security guards. It felt… delicious…

“-and Twilight, you and Rainbow Dash stand on either side- no, tall, hind hooves, because you’re heroes! Brave astromares who survived a dangerous-”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re awesome,” Rainbow Dash agreed. “No need to rub it in! … and by that I mean you can totally rub it in, by the way!”

“Um, okay, Cherry,” Twilight said. “Give us a minute. We’re not used to normal gravity yet, much less standing on our hind hooves.”

“It’ll only be for a minute,” Cherry reassured her. “And take off your helmets so the world can see your faces!

“All right.”

Two helmets came off.

“Um… Chrysalis? You too. This will be great for your image!”

“Uh-uuuuuh.”

“Well, at least turn around. We can’t see your face.”

“Oh aay.”

Twilight and Rainbow looked at each other. “Did you do it again?” Twilight asked.

“Uuuuuuhhhh,” Chrysalis grunted in a noncommittal tone.

The Princess of Friendship sighed. “Just take the photos,” she said. “And then you might want to take these ponies elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Or else Chrysalis is gonna be staring at the back of that capsule all night.”

Laugh it up, Chrysalis thought. Your time will come.

After I get my tongue unstuck from this accursed visor. Again.

It’s not my fault I got peckish!

Behind her, the flashbulbs began to pop.

MISSION 23 REPORT

Mission summary: Test moon lander in lunar orbit; execute suborbital moon flight to evaluate delta-V calculations and performance; rescue Rainbow Dash from lunar orbit

Pilot: Chrysalis
Science Officer: Twilight Sparkle (ESA)

Flight duration: 8 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First rendezvous in lunar orbit; first ship docking in lunar orbit; first crew transfer in lunar orbit

Conclusions from flight: We have the data we need! Next stop, moon!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: PENULTIMATELY SUCCESSFUL

Author's Note

First things first: I'm sorry the screen grabs are so tiny this time around. I did a livestream of this mission back in May and recorded it... but didn't realize until TODAY that the recording was MUCH lower res than I thought. I might have to refly the mission to get better images, or I might just not bother. After all, Amicitas in the pictures is just a bad Shuttle bodge that was as close as I could get in KSP to what I had in my imagination. Hell, I couldn't even make it pink.

There are two main failings in this chapter I regret. First, I wanted to have this chapter entirely without a Chrysalis viewpoint. That didn't last beyond the first two thousand words, because having the first scene from Cherry Berry's POV just didn't have a good hook. In order for that scene to work, we needed to be in Chryssy's head instead. And that opened the door for more scenes... including the vision of the moon crash that never was, which was inspired by a wild impulse during the game livestream. (And that's all I'll say about that whole scene until the next and final chapter is out.)

The other thing I wasn't able to do and regret is this: Twilight Sparkle doesn't come off as Chrysalis's equal here. She has a couple moments, but she never really gets a solid triumph, and I wish I'd found a way for that to happen. But then, Twilight Sparkle as a character doesn't lend herself to that all that well. She's not someone who shoots for petty victories over others; given her choice, she'd like everyone to be a winner. (Granted, she's not above enjoying a petty victory when she stumbles on one, but that's her limit.) Also, she's a guest on Chrysalis's ship and, compared to Chryssy, she's a space tyro. So her opportunities to show herself more competent are drastically limited, especially when the whole mission comes down to her screwing up a ship part design.

Docking in Kerbal Space Program is almost NOTHING like real life. KSP makes it LUDICROUSLY easy and forgiving. For one thing, in real life docking ports are male and female, whereas in KSP they're flat. Anything can dock to anything, provided it's the same size of docking port on both sides.

During the livestream I did, indeed, fail twice to dock. Only at the prompting of viewers did I find out I'd failed to put the right docking port on the rescue ship. I wanted to keep the bungles in the story, but I couldn't explain them away except by having one side's docking system deactivated. (Sorry, Rainbow Dash.) And even that doesn't make logical sense, because you'd think electromagnets would glomp onto any ferrous material, even if the target was NOT generating its own magnetic field. In fact, magnetic docking ports would just grab for the nearest metal, period, making actual docking almost impossible. So the more I go round this rabbit hole.... ugh, let's just move on.

The way Twilight Sparkle describes rendezvous and docking in this story is much closer to real life. For one thing, main engines of ships are NEVER burned anywhere within MANY kilometers of each other. The International Space Station has a large no-fly zone with a specific exception corridor for ships heading to it. This is because engine exhaust might disperse with distance, but it does NOT slow down in space, and it DOES damage other ships even at distance. So approach to the ISS is set up long in advance so as to be done with a glacial slowness that makes a KSP docking approach look like the race car driver who does a three-sixty drift to a perfect stop in his pit.

Then there's the docking itself. The ship doing the docking lines itself up perfectly straight on target before it even THINKS of making final approach. This is from simple necessity; real life docking ports won't engage properly at anything less than perfect approach angles. (RL docking does take place a bit faster than what I do in KSP, though- over a meter per second- but still very slowly.) The whole process is done with excruciating caution, because thanks to the masses of the ships docking, orbital speeds, and other conditions, it is very easy to screw up in such a way that one or both ships have something break- or, worst case scenario, a hull breach.

Two of the three books mentioned in this chapter are made up from whole cloth, but the third is more or less a direct ripoff of That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime, which isn't a bad series... but the manga and anime, for a change, are better than the novels unless you LIKE someone describing the fiddly little details of RPG-style skills and power levels to the point that the story comes to a screeching halt. And, of course, "Scare Master" makes it canon that Fluttershy is an anime fan.

Now on to the FINAL CHAPTER. The moon awaits...

EDIT: Oh, BTW, plugs:

Online store (since cons won't be a thing again until 2021 at least) - https://wlpcomics.com/shop
T-shirt listings - http://wlpshirts.com/
Twitch channel (game streams M-W-Sat, other streams as announced) - https://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin

Chapter 18: Mission 24: The Last Step, The First Step

Chrysalis tried not to yawn as the mayor of Manehattan droned on(508) about the dreams of ponykind and the advancement of pony knowledge and all that. She didn’t really want to be here, not now, not so close to the culmination of almost two years of work. But, by the same token, she didn’t want to blow it so close to the end, which meant she had to continue to pretend to play nice with the ponies. And that, of course, meant appearing at public events when invited.

(508) Actually Chrysalis only wished her drones were as boring as this time-serving minor official. Boring meant her careful plans weren’t being totally wrecked to the all-too-familiar tune of, “Oops.”

Not that anyone had invited Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings to any other public events before. Even here she wasn’t the guest of honor. She had been invited only because it would have been unseemly to invite Changeling Space Program’s top astromare and not invite her employer. But even such a begrudging invitation represented an obligation she had to fulfill if she wanted to maintain the public image she’d cultivated as part of this whole scheme.

So she stood, smiling and attentive as she could manage while being bored out of her mind, as the actual guest of honor sat in the front row in front of her, flanked by various high personages, including (of course) Twilight Sparkle and her annoying friends.

“… and by setting an example for what ponies can achieve, beyond the expected limitations of her tribe, Cherry Berry has shown herself a shining example of what Equestria should aspire to be! And so, without further ado-“

I only wish, Chrysalis thought.

“-it is my deepest honor to unveil before you the newest work by August Rodent-“ and here the mayor gestured a hoof to the short bipedal figure of a hedgehog with a beret and a massive beard(509)- “which he has chosen to entitle Exploration. Ladies and gentleponies, I give you the first pony to set hoof on another world: Cherry Berry!”

(509) The beard was so massive and bristly that, if not for the vest the artist also wore, it would have been nigh impossible to tell the hedgehog’s front from his back.

A rope was pulled, and a drape-cloth fell down to reveal a statue of Cherry Berry, twice as tall as life, striding forwards on three legs with her spacesuit helmet held under the fourth. Behind her stood a stone space capsule, and behind that a flagpole, where the flag of the Two Sisters caught the breeze and flapped to life in a way the actual flag she’d planted on Minmus never would.

Bah, Chrysalis thought, and also, Humbug. If she’d taken off her helmet up there she would have died almost instantly. And the flag she planted was mine, thank you very much! And once I’ve taken care of your precious princesses, the first thing my new governor of Manehattan will do is put the correct flag on that monument!

At least she'd arranged to fix the plaque. Instead of the steel plate that read, EXPLORATION - A. Rodent, the pedestal bore a much larger bronze plaque, one Chrysalis had arranged to have made and, the previous night, mounted by six of her more mechanically inclined servants. The new one read, in much larger letters, WE GOT AWAY WITH IT: "Quid mirabilis si potest si quis nesciat quod non potest." - Clover the Clever Chrysalis had run across the quote while looking for subtle insults in Old Ponish, and found this one fit Cherry Berry exactly. Indeed, it was amazing what one could accomplish when one didn't know what one couldn't do- like, for example, walk into a changeling hive and declare oneself in charge of a space program.

And, of course, before long the "WE GOT AWAY WITH IT" blurb would have a much more... appropriate... meaning. Chrysalis suppressed a smirk at the thought.

She cast an eye at the hedgehog sculptor, whose face remained totally still except for a rapid twitching of one eyelid as he stared at the replacement plaque. And the second thing I’ll do, she thought, is hire this pokey-rat to sculpt me- half again as tall! And it won’t be in some obscure corner of the park- it’ll be in the middle of Bridleway, where every miserable pony will be reminded of who is in charge!

Chrysalis’s imagination paused a moment as Cherry Berry got up and walked over to the podium. She’d been asked to have a few select words ready. If that mayor hasn’t already used up all of them, the changeling queen chuckled in the privacy of her own head.

“Thank you all, everypony,” Cherry Berry said. “I’d say this is a great honor, but… well, it’s really embarrassing for me.” The pink pony blushed a bit as she continued, “After all, what I did, any pony with the proper training could have done. And I’m sure a lot more talented and educated ponies will do it in the near future.”

Cherry looked over her shoulder at the dignitaries- and for a moment her eyes met Chrysalis’s before she turned to face the audience again. “And it’s not like I flew into space by myself,” she continued. “Thousands of people of all races, pony, changeling, griffon, minotaur, yak, dragon… all of them contributed to our success. It doesn’t really seem fair that I’m the only one who gets a statue.”

“I cannot sculpt ze changelings,” August Rodent said from where he stood on the edge of the platform. “Ze holes, they make the stone too weak.”

While Cherry waited out the laughter, Chrysalis didn’t bother hiding her frown. Laugh it up, Pokey, she thought. But you’re on my list, now.

And I really didn’t want you to carve me a statue anyway.

“Anyway,” Cherry continued, “on behalf of all of us involved in space flight, thank you for the honor. Because this statue can’t be about just me. It needs to be about everypony who follows their dreams, everyone who dares to do the impossible. Whether you’re a pony or not. Because if a simple farm pony from Ponyville can fly to the moon- like I will in a few weeks- then you can accomplish anything. Thank you!”

The crowd, who apparently hadn’t been listening to the same trite and uninspired dreck Chrysalis had just sat through, cheered, clapped, and pounded the ground with their hooves. Chrysalis caught glimpses of Cherry’s smile as she waved to everyone and repeatedly thanked them for the ovation- that innocent, clueless smile of a simple person who was simply happy for simple reasons.

Well, enjoy your moment, pony, Chrysalis thought. I assure you it won’t come again.

And once my plan is complete, all these fools applauding your little speech will have no reason to thank you for anything…

“Well, hello, Twilight,” Celestia said. “And what brings you by this morning? Don’t you have training for the big flight? Launch is four weeks away, isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s right,” Twilight Sparkle said as she stepped into Celestia’s private chambers. Out the window the faint sounds of the royal guard drilling echoed from the Canterlot palace courtyard. “But… well, I’ve been having second thoughts. About everything.”

Celestia smiled. “Oh, I know how that feels,” she said. “What specifically?

“Well,” Twilight said uncomfortably, walking over to the tea-table and taking a stool, “this is the big flight. Chrysalis gets what she wanted. She gets to walk on the moon. And that means whatever evil scheme she had is almost complete!”

“Possibly,” Celestia admitted. “If nothing else has changed since she first started her scheme, that is. But we have no way of knowing whether or not that’s the case.”

“But we’re actually helping it happen!” Twilight shouted.

“You have been from the beginning,” Celestia said. “When you wrote your essay. When you and your friends created the spacesuits, the life support systems, the thruster packs. Even the scientific instruments helped the changelings along, didn’t they?”

“But I thought that was different!” Twilight said, slumping over the table. “Those were for everypony! But now it’s just us and Chrysalis now, and we’re working together on the same flight! Rainbow Dash and I will be on that flight, helping it succeed!” With a sigh of mixed disgust and despair, Twilight flumped her head down onto the table, her mane half-covering it.

“Do you regret agreeing to go?” Celestia prompted quietly.

“Yes… no… I don’t know!” Twilight sighed. She raised her head again to look at her mentor. “If it was anyone else other than Chrysalis, it wouldn’t be a problem. I’d be going to advance science and nothing else!”

Celestia smirked a little. “And Rainbow Dash would be going to advance awesomeness,” she put in.

Twilight’s mouth curled up for just a moment. Then it turned down again. “But it is Chrysalis, and we know she’s plotting something! Something which will let her take over all Equestria- or even the world!”

Celestia nodded. “Probably,” she agreed. “In which case you will be there to stop it, won’t you?” She stretched a wing over the table to pat Twilight on the shoulder with the tip. “Don’t worry, Twilight. Have faith in yourself and your friends. You’ve never failed Equestria yet.”

“But…” She shook her head. “I just keep thinking that now is the time to stop her, before it’s too late! But… well… I don’t have any reason, any justification! So I keep looking back, wondering what I did wrong, what I should have done differently.”

Celestia nodded again. “I’ve done that so many times over the centuries,” she said. “Just from one princess to another? It doesn’t help.”

Twilight gave Celestia a peculiar look- partly peculiar because she herself didn’t quite know what it meant. “The thing is,” she continued, “there is one thing I keep coming back to that I could have done differently. Something which, if I hadn’t done it, would have left Chrysalis unable to even get started in space flight.” Now the look took on a more defined form: suspicion. “Why did you tell me not to hire Cherry Berry as a pilot?”

Celestia’s smile slipped. “Would you have hired her if I hadn’t?”

“No,” Twilight said instantly. “Not at first. I really thought only pegasi had the reflexes and instincts for flight. I didn’t understand how different space travel was going to be.” Her stare intensified. “But if I’d tried harder I could have got her as ground crew, or an advisor. And after two weeks of listening to her, I’d have put her on the roster. I know I would have!”

Celestia shrugged. “But you didn’t,” she said.

“Why did you tell me?” Twilight insisted.

Celestia broke off her gaze, looking down at her forehooves. With a flash of magic, a tea kettle and a little burner floated over to the table. As the tea began to brew, the elder princess finally said, “Twilight, I have often given you assignments without explaining them. And oftentimes I’ve given you such difficult jobs that you’ve questioned yourself, questioned whether or not you could accomplish them.” She looked Twilight in the eyes again and continued, “But this is the first time I can remember that you’ve ever questioned me.”

“Please don’t sidestep the question,” Twilight said. “Why?”

“I’m not sidestepping it,” Celestia said. “You see… one day you will rule Equestria. And you will have students. And when that time comes, you’ll discover that you can’t tell everything you know about an assignment when you give it. Sometimes it’ll be for the sake of the student- so they can learn something they wouldn’t understand if the answer were just given to them. And other times it’ll be for the good of Equestria- and those will be the hardest times, Twilight. Those will be the times when you second-guess yourself for years after the fact, even when everything ends happily.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “You mean like when you first sent me to Ponyville,” she said. “To make friends so we could defeat Nightmare Moon and restore Luna.”

“For one example, yes,” Celestia said. “If I’d told a pony just out of fillyhood, one who didn’t even understand what friendship was, that she needed to make friends so she could defeat an evil monster… well, you can imagine how badly that would end.”

Twilight thought about how she’d coped- or failed to cope- with Discord altering her friends’ minds. “I guess so,” she said. “But even so, that was over a year and a half ago. Can’t you tell me now? Or have I not learned the lesson yet?”

“Well, there are two assumptions in your question,” Celestia said as the tea kettle began to whistle. She turned off the burner and poured a couple of cups with her magic, passing one to Twilight and keeping the other for herself. “The first assumption is that the critical moment for secrecy has passed.”

“And has it?”

Now Celestia did sidestep the question. “The second assumption,” she continued after taking a sip of hot tea, “is that you are the student who needs to learn a lesson without being prompted.”

“What??” Twilight blinked, joggling her teacup in her magic and almost spilling it. “You mean you’re trying to teach Chrysalis, of all ponies?”

“Let’s just say I’m hoping she’s open to learning experiences,” Celestia said. “If she is, I believe Cherry Berry will have taught her a great deal, by example if nothing else.”

Twilight blinked. “So… you knew Cherry Berry would go to the changelings?”

Celestia took another sip. “Ask yourself, Twilight,” she said, “what would have happened if she hadn’t? Would Rainbow Dash have survived Flight Five without the changeling-made parachutes? Would Fauntleroy, Fireball and Gordon have been rescued without a viable space program in the wake of the Storm King’s invasion?” Her soft gaze over the teacup sharpened a little. “Would you have advanced as quickly as you did without the pressure of Chrysalis’s effort to spur you along? And how long would it have taken you to learn all the things the changeling flights discovered- by yourself?”

Twilight didn’t say anything for several seconds. When she did speak, it wasn’t to answer any of those questions. “If you knew Cherry Berry was going to join Chrysalis,” she said, “then you had a reason for letting it happen.”

“Several,” Celestia said. “Assuming I did.”

“I’m not going to ask you,” Twilight said. “I trust you to tell me if you could. But…” She set the teacup down and leaned over the table. “But can’t you at least tell me? Is Cherry supposed to stop Chrysalis? How? And do I sit back and wait for her, or do I do something myself?”

“That,” Celestia said, sipping more tea, “is a question I honestly can’t answer for you.” Another sip. “I know some things you don’t know, but I don’t know everything. And when the moment comes, I won’t be there. You will. You’ll have to make that decision for yourself.” A small smile returned to her face as she added, “I’m sure it will be the right one. With you, it usually is. More often than with me.”

“I don’t understand,” Twilight said. “More often than you? What-“

“Twilight, I’m not the infallible sun goddess(510) you make me out to be,” Celestia said. “I have made my share of mistakes in my life. And you have made mistakes and will continue to make them. But as I’ve watched you grow, I’ve come to the opinion that your judgment is better than mine on a great many things.”

(510) Twilight Sparkle was not a devotee of any of the various religions which had sprung up around Celestia. Her faith in her teacher went far deeper than any of those.

“Then why won’t you tell me??” Twilight’s frustration twisted the end of the question almost into a squeak.

Celestia’s smile widened. “Because I can only use my judgment,” she said, “and hope that I’m not making a mistake.” Again the wingtip reached over the table to caress Twilight’s shoulder. “If I did make a mistake, there’s no pony in all Equestria I trust more to make things right. But for now, wait and see. And give Chrysalis a chance to show us what, if anything, she’s learned.”

The sailor ponies cast out lines, and the stevadores on shore secured them to the pilings, carefully drawing the little ship against the quay, while a group of mares leaned over the railings and stared at all the activity on shore.

“Th’ last time I saw so many changelin’s,” Applejack said, “it was in Canterlot.”

Horseton Space Center seemed covered in changelings, one drone after another flying or trotting from building to building. A team of four changelings drew a large wagon full of supplies into the Vehicle Assembly Building, while eight others levitated a large pile of raw materials over to one of the larger buildings in the research and development complex. Uniformed guard changelings exchanged salutes with armored hive warriors. Twilight Sparkle and her friends couldn’t look anywhere without seeing at least a dozen changelings on one errand or another.

And a number of ponies, plus a couple of griffons and dragons, walked among them, not batting an eye at the crowd of bug-ponies all around them.

Members of Twilight’s little ship’s crew shouted orders at one another as about twenty changelings flew up to begin the process of unloading the ship’s hold. There was the occasional angry shout as one worker or another made a slight error, but as Twilight watched, she couldn’t see that much in the way of actual hate or fear.

And as she led her friends down the gangplank and onto the landing, she saw it was the same throughout the space center. No real anger, no oppression, no fear… just hundreds of creatures- of people- with jobs to do, doing them.

“I wonder,” Twilight murmured to herself as she stepped off the planks and onto the concrete walkways of the space center.

“Yes, I don’t doubt that you do.” As if stepping through stage curtains, Chrysalis appeared between two passing changelings, walking up to Twilight’s group. “Today is a special day, after all. Today is the first day of training and final preparations, after all. The day when we begin to take the final step.”

Rainbow Dash stepped around Twilight, her eyes narrowed. “Final step towards what?” she asked.

“Towards everything my children have been working for,” Chrysalis said smoothly. “The hoof of changelingkind is lifted, my dears. And when it comes down it shall leave its hoofprint on the moon.”

Somewhere up above them came a most unusual sound- like roaring wind, and yet harsher, sharper, different. For a moment everyone- all the workers, the sailors, Twilight and her friends, and Chrysalis- stopped what they were doing and looked at the sky for the source of the sound.

It came.

At first it looked like a white triangle in the air, but as it came closer the details of a nose and fuselage became visible. As it approached the roar grew louder, until with an ear-splitting rush of noise and smoke it flew overhead at spectacular speed just above the level of the roof of the VAB.

“Whoa whoa WHOA!” Rainbow Dash shouted, eyes wide. “Was that an aeroplane? I’ve never seen one go so fast!”

“Yes, well,” Chrysalis said with blatant false modesty, “that’s one of the little side projects we’ve been working on. It’s like a rocket, except instead of oxidizer it uses air pumped into the engine at tremendous force. We’ve named it after the pony who’s funding the research: the Jet engine.”

The roaring sound, which had subsided, grew again, but at a subdued level, and as the ponies watched they saw the little swift plane, landing gear extended, touch down on the runway at the far side of the space center.

“Took her long enough,” Chrysalis muttered under her breath, her eyes locked on the plane.

“That’s… that’s fantastic!” Twilight Sparkle gasped. “You’re adopting rocket engines to normal air travel? And you’re doing it safely?”

“Much more safely than rockets, as I understand it,” Chrysalis said. “No need for pressure tanks or cryogenics. We can use room-temperature stable fuels and natural air.” She smirked and added, “And I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to substitute magic. But for now, we remain in the lead.” She waved a hoof around them. “More and more, we’re changing the world in ways we can’t imagine!”

Another changeling trotted up- Occupant, recognizable instantly even without the white vest he wore in Mission Control. “The control tower says Miss Berry has landed, my queen,” he said. Then, noticing the ponies, he smiled and continued, “Oh, hello there! Follow me, and I’ll get all of you settled in to your rooms in the astromare quarters!”

“I’ll leave you to Occupant for now,” Chrysalis said. “I have a couple of little chores to take care of before we work out the sim schedule. Until then!” With a smug smirk the changeling queen turned her back and walked into the crowds, vanishing among the swarm.

As Occupant led the way towards the astromare complex, Starlight Glimmer eased up next to Twilight and quietly asked, “You said, ‘I wonder.’ I wonder what?”

Twilight shook her head. “Huh? What? Oh!” She gave Starlight a moment’s glance, then returned to following Occupant. “I was just thinking… do you think Princess Celestia knew all of this was going to happen?”

“All of what?” Starlight asked. “Flights to the moon? Rocket aircraft? Instant magic communication? Television? Radio?”

“All of this,” Twilight said again, waving a hoof at the crowded space center. “Ponies and changelings working together in peace. Could you even have imagined it two years ago?”

Starlight Glimmer blushed. “Um, two years ago I was still working on the concept of you and I working together in peace. You know, after I tried to rewrite history and-“

“Are you about to apologize again??” Rainbow Dash snapped, swooping overhead to join the conversation. “Starlight, after the two hundred and seventieth time, it gets old.”

“And after a certain point, dear,” Rarity added from behind them, “it sounds less like contrition and more like bragging.”

Starlight’s blush deepened. “I’m sorry-“ she began.

“And we forgive you,” Fluttershy said, just above the background noise around them. “Again.”

“C’mon!” Rainbow Dash said. “I heard Dragonfly just bought a couple of new video game cabinets! I wanna see if she got Star Horse!”(511)

(511) A video game based off a movie which had been released just before the Summer Sun Celebration. Like the movie, the game began with the words: A long time from now, in a pasture far, far away…

Twilight picked up her step, smiling and setting aside, for now, the question of whether her mentor had planned all of this. If this is really the way things are, she thought, then maybe we did the right thing after all…

“Well,” Gordon the Griffon said, opening his claw and staring at the black bean in his grasp.

“Heh. Better you than me,” Fireball rumbled, the hard-baked white bean in his own claw barely visible against his white scales.

“Griffon have all the luck,” grumbled Leonid the Yak.

“At least we don’t have to spend over a week in that ship with Chrysalis,” Fireball put in.

Leonid considered this. “Dragon have point,” he grunted.

“So, that’s the final seat decided,” Cherry Berry said brightly. “Myself, Chrysalis, Dragonfly as capsule crew; Twilight Sparkle and Occupant as mission scientists; Rainbow Dash and Gordo as mission specialists.”

“What pony mean by mission specialists?” Leonid asked.

Fireball snorted. “It sounds better than ‘dead weight passengers.’”

Cherry blushed. “We’ll find something for everypony to do,” she said. “But it’s important that this mission have somepon… er, someone on board who isn’t a pony or a changeling, to show that space is for everybody, not just us.”

“So far as I’m concerned,” Fireball said, “you can have it.”

“Still waiting on your resignation letter,” Cherry said brightly.

“I sent it,” Fireball snapped. “And then Ember un-sent it.”

“You know,” Gordo said, “you’re never going to build up any flight seniority if you keep quitting.”

“Oh, bite me,” Fireball said. “I’ve nearly died twice doing this stupid stuff. All I want to do is get out before lucky number three. Is that too much to ask?”

“Mighty Dragonlord Ember think so, haw haw!” Leonid guffawed.

Fireball glared at the three of them. “Whatever,” he said. “I didn’t get the black bean, so I can go home again. Right?”

“Nope,” Cherry said, shaking her head. “We need you and Leonid along with Spitfire and Fluttershy for the capcom seat. And we also need you in case Gordo gets sick or something else happens. So get ready to work, all of you- sims start tomorrow.”

“Work,” Fireball snorted again, this time letting a little flame come out of his nostrils.

“Yaks good workers,” Leonid said. “Also good at making dragon work.”

“You guys get the easy part,” Gordo insisted. “Chrysalis, remember?”

There are three kinds of guards.

There are the guards who work hard for years, keeping their records clean, demonstrating absolute devotion to duty, with a single goal on their minds: being the guards honored with the most prestigious, publicly visible posts. They are the best of the best, at least when it comes to obeying the rules of the service. If they are actually good at guarding things this should be considered a happy bonus, but their primary role is to make the service look good.

Then there are the guards who get things done. These are the guards who aren’t interested in the shiny buttons or the ability to hold parade attention and ignore all tourist provocations for four hours at a time. These guards live for the moment when they can take down someone who dares to threaten whatever they’re protecting. If they look a little scruffy, or if they have friction with their superiors or peers, so what? To them that’s all style, and they care only about the substance.

And then there is the third, and by far the most common, kind of guard, the kind who fills a uniform and collects a paycheck and, if their superiors are fortunate, does not actively embarrass the service.

In the changeling hive, the first kind of guard forms Chrysalis’s personal bodyguard, under Elytron. The second kind of guard mostly concentrates into the hive defense forces under Pharynx. The third kind of guard, being everyling else, is everyplace else, but an outside observer could be forgiven for thinking the group had gone to paradise wearing not white robes but navy-blue Changeling Space Program security uniforms.

Type One guards never gossip on duty, because it’s against regulations. Type Two guards never gossip on duty, because it gets in the way of doing their job.

Type Three guards never gossip… if they think anyone else can hear them.

And after years of watching non-guards ignore them, they begin to believe the rest of the world is at least slightly hard of hearing.

Two examples of this kind of guard, HSC’s finest, stood by the side door to the VAB’s parts storage room.

“A boardwalk, you say?” the first one said to the second.

“Yeah,” the second said. “I hear Lucky Cricket’s got some investors from Las Pegasus, and he’s getting other changelings to chip in. Gonna build it where the fishing pier is up the road in Horseton. He’s talking about renting one of the carnivals for a year’s permanent show, until the brand-new carnival rides and restaurants get built.”

“Sounds pretty risky. You put any money in?”

“You kidding? It’s Lucky Cricket. The only time he lost money on a scheme, the ponies busted up the scam, and he was able to play victim and get away clean as a whistle.”

“Huh.” The first guard tapped his chin with one holey hoof. “Why do ponies say ‘clean as a whistle’ anyway? Whistles are pretty messy when you think about it. All that spit and stuff.”

“Ponies say it because ponies are stupid,” the second guard said. “Don’t try to figure ‘em out. You’ll just get a headache.”

“Eh, maybe.” The first guard shrugged. “You think Carapace will go in on the boardwalk thing? Big fancy restaurant- that’d be just his thing.”

“I hear he turned Lucky down flat,” the second guard said. “Carapace asked Lucky if his kitchen would be as big as the one he uses to make space rations. When Lucky said no, Carapace told him where to stuff it.”

“Wouldn’t have expected that,” the first guard said.

“Why not? Carapace loves it here almost as much as Occupant does.”

The first guard rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah, Occupant,” he said. “When he dies I think his shell will just stick to the mission control floor. But what does Carapace care about space?”

“He cares about cooking,” the second guard said. “He told me he’s learned more making space food than he did under seven different master chefs. He gets all the ingredients he wants and every single food prep tool you can imagine.”

“Probably more,” the first guard admitted. “I can’t imagine much beyond a pot and a spatula.”

“Well, there you go,” the second said.

“What about you?” the first asked. “Are you staying? Or you gonna ask the queen for a transfer?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” the second guard said. “I mean, with my experience as a trusted security officer at the hive’s most important installation(512), I could probably go to the Odd Jobs and write my own ticket. Probably have ponies beating down the door to hire me.”

(512) Some might argue that the actual hive was more important. No changeling who lasted more than a month on CSP staff would make that argument. You could always dig another hole, but Horseton Space Center was… special.

“That’s what I was thinking, yeah.”

“But I think about that, and then I think: why would I want to work anyplace else?” The second guard gestured at the buildings around them. “This is the place where history happens. Anything after this would be… boring.”

“Maybe,” the first guard said. “But I notice we don’t have any missions scheduled after Twenty-four, right? Maybe this is it. Maybe the queen’s gonna get bored of space now. What happens after that?”

The second guard snorted. “Get bored of space?” he asked sarcastically? “If she gets bored she’ll just find some other part of space to do instead. There’s so much of it up there, you couldn’t possibly get bored!”(513)

(513) As mission planners in many times and from many worlds can attest, they go to extreme lengths and pains to prevent astronauts from getting bored. And no space program ever has been able to counter what happens when governments get bored of space. Considering that the guards were discussing someone who was both an astronaut and a government, the second guard’s optimism was foolish even for him.

“If you say so,” the first guard said doubtfully.

“Hey, cheer up,” the second guard said. “Even if the queen does get bored, think of this: this past two years we’ve had the sweetest, softest scheme the hive has ever run, right? We’re stronger, better fed-“ He fluttered his wings, which glittered even in the shadow of the VAB. “And we’ve got these now, which is pretty darn neat if you ask me. You think she’s dumb enough to drop all of that?”

“No, of course not,” the first guard said. “Though sometimes I wonder. You know how she never rides in the Fun Machine?”

“She rides in the rockets,” the second guard said. “And if rocket rides were as cheap as a ticket for the Fun Machine, we wouldn’t call it the Fun Machine anymore, now would we?”

The first guard sighed. “I’d like to find out for myself someday.”

“Well, then you just stick around here,” the second guard said, as mentor to junior. “Before long they’ll need new astronauts when the others get old or retire, and you’ll be right here ready to be discovered when that time comes.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Nah,” the second guard said. “If I did that some bug would steal my place in line for the Fun Machine.”

The conversation paused for a moment as a peach-colored pony with a turquoise mane, wearing a shirt that marked him as one of CSP’s small army of general assistants, trotted past them through the doors into the parts room.

“Lepid’s not fooling anyone,” the second guard said. “Least of all the ponies.”

“At least he’s not painting himself anymore,” the first guard said. “I never met a changeling who liked ponies that much. How much do you want to bet he pulls a Thorax?”

“Sssshhhhh!” the second guard hissed. “What if the queen heard you? That name is almost as bad as saying Kevin!”

“WHAT WAS THAT??”

The sudden coming to attention and rigid parade ground salutes from the two guards would have put any Type One guard to shame, if not for the rivulets of sweat running down their shells at the sudden appearance of Queen Chrysalis.

“I asked a QUESTION,” Chrysalis shouted marginally more softly.

“My queen,” the first guard said quickly, “I don’t quite know what you mean, but it certainly wasn’t any changeling saying the Forbidden Names.”

“That’s right, my queen!” the second changeling added. “Why would we be talking about two changelings who are dead to the hive? That would be silly!”

“Two changelings,” Chrysalis snarled, one eye and then the other glaring at the two trembling guards, “who never existed so far as the hive is concerned. And if I hear those names again, it might become four changelings.”

The snappy salutes snapped again. “Understood clearly, my queen!” the first guard said.

“Good!” With that Chrysalis stepped through the door into the VAB. The guards waited until the door latch clicked before they gradually relaxed their stance.

“That was close,” the second guard said. “That was almost really bad.”

“I’ll say,” the first guard said. “And it would have been worse if she knew what our names were.”

Occupant and Dragonfly stared up at the lander under construction. “That’s kind of big, isn’t it?” Occupant asked.

Dragonfly shot him a look that said Don’t be stupid.(514) “It has to get seven people down to the moon from orbit, then off the moon, and all the way back to Equus,” she said. “Of course it’s going to be kind of big! I’m surprised it isn’t bigger!”

(514) Occupant had learned to recognize that look a long time before, from getting it so often.

“Well, yeah, I get that,” Occupant said plaintively. “But I was thinking about the early missions. You know, the Flea missions? Compare that lander to, oh, Mission Two. See how much bigger it is?”

Dragonfly looked at the lander again, sort of squinting her eyes. Her imagination assembled Mission Two in the space next to the lander- a parachute, a capsule, a Flea engine, two goo canisters. Compared to the lander, it looked like a newborn grub.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Each one of the supplemental fuel pods on the lander is bigger than Mission Two was.”

“I think it shows just how far we’ve come,” Occupant said. In a softer voice, he added, “And how much we’ve changed in the last two years.”

“You may have changed,” Dragonfly said forcefully. “But I’m the same top-flight warrior I’ve always been!”

“If you say so,” said Occupant, obviously not believing it.

Dragonfly didn’t really believe it herself. The Dragonfly she’d been two years ago… well, that Dragonfly would probably have told Occupant to get out of her way and leave her alone. She certainly wouldn’t be sketching proposed design updates for flight couches and supply storage compartments on the assembly floor of a VAB, or anything like it, not where anyling could see.

“But everything else sure is different,” Dragonfly said, guiding the conversation away from awkward personal revelations. “We’re letting ponies walk among us when we’re not disguised. Well, except for that mail pony you liked.” She tilted her head. “Whatever happened to her, anyway?”

“I hear she got a promotion,” Occupant said. “Assistant postmistress in her home town. She doesn’t do the Hive mail run anymore. I’m gonna miss her.”(515)

(515) Carapace, aka Heavy Frosting, already missed having the easiest Guinea pig in the world for new muffin recipes.

“Yeah. Everything’s changing for the better,” Dragonfly said. “Looks like the Bad Old Days might really be over.”

“The Bad Old Days?” Occupant asked.

“Yeah. Think about it,” Dragonfly said, tapping her head. “We were always hungry- well, hungrier than now, anyway. We always had to hide, and everyone and everything was our enemy. Now we don’t have to hide, we don’t have to steal, and there’s always nibbles available. Sure, a lot of ponies still hate us, but we don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

Occupant shook his head. “Well, I guess,” he finally said. The doubt in his voice didn’t surprise Dragonfly. He’d never been afraid of ponies(516) that Dragonfly could remember, and he never quite understood why everyling thought him an idiot for that, Dragonfly included.

(516) As a group. Individual ponies could still frighten him, particularly red-faced angry ones shouting things like, “IT’S A BUCKING CARDBOARD BOX!!”

“Makes me wonder,” she continued, “if we’ve come this far, where are we going next?”

Occupant shrugged. “That’s up to the queen,” he said. “But she just approved a post-moon contract. We’re gonna build a ship that stays in space- an orbital way station. That way we can give tourist flights a place to go, and the bulls can send up experiments for zero-G research. And we’re looking at contracts to send probes to Bucephalous and Sleipnir.”

“Huh,” Dragonfly said. “First I’ve heard about it.”

“We won’t begin design work until after Mission Twenty-four,” Occupant said. “But apparently the queen doesn’t think we should quit space flight even after the space race is won.”

Dragonfly nodded. “Good,” she said. “Because I want more flights. I don’t think I’ve danced enough with the Pale Horse yet.”

“Ah, there you two are.”

Unlike the two guards outside. Occupant and Dragonfly did not come to stiff, terrified attention at the sound of their queen’s voice. This wasn’t to say either one relaxed as they turned around to face her. “My queen?” Occupant asked respectfully.

“I want a private word with both of you,” Chrysalis said. She waved them over to the side door into the parts room. “In here, please.”

Occupant obediently trotted along after the queen, and Dragonfly followed with a little shrug. The parts room was small only when compared to the main vehicle assembly floor; it was still one of the six largest enclosed spaces on the space center grounds. Using it for a private meeting seemed really strange to her, especially when every once in a while a changeling would pop through the door, look at the stored parts, make a checkmark on a clipboard(517), and depart.

(517) Sometimes there would even be a piece of paper on the clipboard, but even after two years some changelings hadn’t quite got the concept.

Chrysalis magically sealed the doors as soon as the three of them were alone inside the room. “There,” she said. “No one can eavesdrop on us in here.”

“What’s going on, my queen?” Occupant asked, as Dragonfly silently thanked him for asking the stupid question for her.(518) “Why couldn’t we talk out on the assembly floor? Or in an office. That’s what offices are for, isn’t it?”

(518) Those who claim there are no stupid questions have never asked them of a tyrant.

“Not for this,” Chrysalis said. “Now listen. This is important.” After a quick glance to either side to make absolutely certain no one was lurking in a corner or tucked behind a fuel tank, she said softly, “There’s a chance that the ponies might interfere in the moon landing.”

Dragonfly clamped her jaw shut, resisting the urge to ask the obvious question. Occupant, again, obliged her. “But the ponies are helping us with the moon landing. Why would they sabotage it?”

“Specifically,” Chrysalis said, as if Occupant hadn’t said a word, “they may try to stop me from being the first to set hoof on the surface. Of course they’ll deny it if we accuse them to their faces.”

Occupant and Dragonfly both nodded. This was so obvious to any changeling, even Occupant, as to require no justification.

“So I want the two of you to be ready. Just in case.”

Neither drone asked ready to do what. Again, even to Occupant this was obvious.

“If I say, ‘Occupant, Dragonfly, now,’” Chrysalis said, “or if I say, ‘Dragonfly, Occupant, now,’ I want you to take the ponies down immediately. Twilight Sparkle first- she’s the most dangerous, and you can’t give her even a second to respond. If you hesitate, she’ll stop you cold. Full venom to the neck, don’t spare a drop. If you can’t do that, full power blast. Rainbow Dash comes second, but take her down hard and fast.”

“What about Miss Cherry Berry?” Occupant asked. “She’ll be really upset.”

Chrysalis hesitated only a moment. “I want her alive and uninjured if possible,” she said. “She won’t put up much of a fight once the bookworm and the featherhead are down. But you take those two down as fast as you can when I- if I give the word. You’ll only get one moment, so be ready.” She looked at the two of them. “Do the two of you understand my orders?”

“Actually-“ Occupant began, only to be stopped by Dragonfly wrapping a not-at-all gentle hoof around his buck teeth.

“I’ll explain it to him, my queen,” she said. “We’ll be ready. You can count on us.”

“Good.” Chrysalis took a step back, preparing to leave, then paused. “Oh. And this should go without saying, but not a word of this to anyone, especially Cherry Berry.” She smiled a little smile and added, “After all, it may never happen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dragonfly said, and she used the frog of her hoof to move Occupant’s head up and down.

With a nod, Chrysalis dispelled the seal on the doors and walked away, leaving through the doors leading outside. The two senior drones watched her leave, Dragonfly not releasing her grip until the door shut behind the queen.

Once Occupant could work his jaw again, he said, “Why did you do that?”

“To keep you from saying something stupid,” Dragonfly said.

Occupant’s jaw waggled for a moment before he nodded in agreement. “All right, that’s fair,” he admitted. “But why is the queen doing this? The ponies aren’t going to interfere! Ponies don’t break promises! They’re kind of dumb like that! And the queen knows it!” His face twisted with confusion. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

It did to Dragonfly, as soon as Occupant said And the queen knows it. She saw it all in an instant of clarity.

She really wished she hadn’t.

There’s no ‘if’ about it. The queen intends to do away with Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash. But why? And more importantly, how? Cherry and Gordo won’t stand for it, and we can’t hold them all in the ship for three days. And if we kill them, the ponies will have three days and more to go to war on the hive. So she’s got a scheme… but what?

And more importantly, why? We’ve never had it better. Why throw it all away?

She wouldn’t. She’s the queen. She’s smart and sneaky, and this isn’t a smart or sneaky plan, at least not our part in it.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she is just being careful.

But…

“It’s not our job to challenge the queen,” she said out loud. “You just be ready when the time comes. You get the princess’s helmet off, and I’ll take care of the venom. Your fangs wouldn’t penetrate butter.”

Occupant tried to look down and around his own muzzle at his broad, flat buck fangs. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “But Miss Berry is gonna be so mad. I don’t wanna have to pod her.”

Me either, Dragonfly thought. And not just because I think she’ll put up a lot more fight than the queen thinks…

“The only problem is the aerodynamic cones,” Warner von Brawn rumbled. “The friction might be too great for the capsule to get clear.”

“Look,” Goddard the Griffon growled, “use my design or don’t. I put those cones there for a reason. No flat surfaces on the top of the ship. You think you know better? Go ahead and try it.”

“Now, Doctor,” von Brawn said in his normal unruffled tones, “no one is questioning your brilliance. Only this design.”

“Eeeh,” Goddard shrugged, calming down a little bit. “That’s what you always say.”

“Because it’s always true,” von Brawn said. “Your writing, your research, inspired us- my colleagues and myself. Cowley, Bull, Knee and myself would be nothing without what you did before us.”

“Yeah, right,” Goddard said. “Two world-renowned mathematicians, an electronics expert, and you. I expect you’d have landed on your feet.”

“But not as rocket scientists,” von Brawn pressed. “You created the discipline. You are the founder of everything around us.”

“Doesn’t stop you from nitpicking every design I come out with.”

“Of course not,” von Brawn said. “Nor you from, er, nitpicking ours. How else does science advance?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, young bull,” Goddard grunted. “After this flight, science can advance without me. I’m cashing out. Retiring.”

Von Brawn’s eyes went wide. His normally imperturbable expression broke into shards of dismay and agitation. “Retiring? When we’ve finally achieved the first step to-“

“Kid, I’m old,” Goddard interrupted. “I think George Cowley is the only person in this space center older than me.” He paused a moment. “And maybe Chrysalis, but who knows how old her kind gets? And I’ve been working non-stop, harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, these past two years.”

“So take a vacation.”

“I plan to. Permanently.” Goddard stretched his back out, the feline motion producing an astounding number of cracks and pops along with a flinch of pain. “I’ve got enough money now, plus dividends from my stock in the Appleoosa thing(519). I’ve got my life’s work vindicated. I get to see my dream fulfilled. That’s enough. I don’t need more.” He nudged the plans for the revised Mission Twenty-Four lander with a claw. “I sure don’t need this anymore. Let you cubs handle it. I’m done.”

(519) Goddard had been the single highest paid employee in the space race, and he’d invested a significant portion of his monthly pay into Cherry Berry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs. Even with the conclusion of the space race slowing down rocket production, the employment side of the business had expanded to such an extent as to actually create more profit than the space enterprises at their peak. And with new ideas for uses of orbital satellites being proposed every day, the end of the rocket production line still lay years in the future…

Von Brawn’s face recomposed itself into a mask of calm, though it remained a sad mask. “But don’t you want to see your dream carried on to other worlds? To the stars themselves?”

“I can see that just fine from my easy chair,” Goddard replied. “Or did you think that all of this,” and the old buzzard waved a claw in the air to indicate the space program as a whole, “was fun?”

“Well… yes,” von Brawn said. “I literally can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

“Well, I can,” Goddard said. “I imagine me with a nice cozy eyrie someplace flat. But not as hot as Appleooosa or as humid as here.” He leaned back a bit and added, “I’ve been looking at apartments in the Crystal Empire.”

“Not Griffonstone?”

Goddard snapped his claws, then flinched as two knuckles popped. “That for Griffonstone!” he said. “Griffonstone’s a rotten old dump full of the same fools who laughed at me for nigh on fifty years! And you can’t get anything delivered, and if you do get it, some grasping bird or other steals it. No, this bird will live the pony life and love it, thank you. Somewhere a long, long way from anyone looking to launch a rocket!”

Von Brawn’s little ears drooped. “I’m sorry to hear that, doctor,” he said quietly. “Working with you in this program has been the greatest privilege of my life. And before you make a comment,” he added hurriedly, raising a massive palm to forestall Goddard, “that is not flattery. It never has been. You will be sorely missed.”

Goddard’s sneer slid off his face. “Huh,” he grunted. “I don’t think anybody ever said that about me before in my life. Huh.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Thanks.”

“But while you’re still here,” von Brawn pressed on, “I’d like to suggest moving the decoupler up above the science bay. That would reduce both the danger of a staging failure and the load on the parachutes-“

“Those parachutes are more than enough to handle Mission Twenty-four’s final weight!” Goddard roared, no longer in any way subdued. “We bring back the equipment and save the money- and the science!”

And from there engineering progressed, one argument at a time.

“What is it now?” Chrysalis grumbled.

Training for Mission Twenty-four had gone without so much as a hiccup. Twilight Sparkle’s friends had slid right into their roles for the joint space mission as if they’d been there all the time, with Applejack and Starlight Glimmer taking over as mission control flight director and simulation supervisor(520). The seven-person crew worked well through the expanded training regimen, not just simulations in a mockup of the lander but also a week practicing surface operations on a high-altitude barren plateau in the Dragonlands. Aside from a few moments of snark between Cherry Berry and Chrysalis, the crew ran smoothly, to the surprise of almost every member of it.

(520) Contrary to what you might think, Occupant wasn’t doing the work of two ponies. He was much busier than that.

That had been very deliberate on Chrysalis’s part. She didn’t want any excuse whatever for trouble or dissension. She wanted the ponies as relaxed and unsuspecting as it was possible for a pony to be around a changeling.(521) And as much fun as it had been to twit Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash on CSP-23, she had higher goals for this flight. She wasn’t going to risk them for a moment of amusement.

(521) That is, not much, but Chrysalis still wanted to try.

Still, the combination of an 8:30 AM meeting called by the ponies with a full schedule of training and review for the day, plus Chrysalis having spent two weeks constantly pretending to be semi-nice, put the queen in a cranky mood. She wanted to get the training done, especially since none of it would matter the instant her hoof touched the moon’s surface. This was a delay, and worse yet a delay that cut into her sleep-in time. And if there wasn’t a darn good reason for it, she intended to unload all her pent-up temper at one go.

“There’s a vitally important part of the mission nopony’s addressed until now,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Especially considering this is going to be the most historic voyage in the history of the world.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Chrysalis thought. “All right. What did you overlook?”

“A name,” Twilight Sparkle said.

“That’s right,” Cherry Berry said. “Up until now we’ve just been flying capsules. But this landing is going to be special. And it’s going to have more ponies-“

“And not ponies,” Gordon the Griffon piped up.

“Sorry, Gordo.”

“No sweat.”

“It’s going to have a bigger crew than anything that’s ever launched before,” Cherry continued. “A ship that big, and that important, needs a name.”

“A name.” You made me get up an hour early for a name?? “Fine. I christen thee Rocky McSpaceshipface. Done and done. Meeting adjourned,” she concluded with a wave of a hoof.

“No, be serious,” Cherry insisted. “Ship names are important to ponies, if not to you! This is about something bigger than any of us, being a part of something greater!”

Shows what you know, pony, even after all this time, Chrysalis thought. There’s nothing bigger than me, except maybe Celestia’s flanks. Aloud she said, “Then do you have a suggestion, or are you just wasting our time?”

“Actually, Cherry did have a suggestion,” Twilight Sparkle said.

“Eh, I dunno,” Cherry said, rubbing the back of her head with one forehoof.(522) “When I say it out loud, it seems kinda dumb to me. I was hoping somepony else had a better one.”

(522) A feat that no equine from any other universe would ever accomplish without permanent crippling injury. Which is just as well, since very few of them would even think of trying.

“Well, I think it’s a perfect idea,” Twilight said.

“Great!” Chrysalis interrupted. “I’m glad you think so, princess! Now: try telling us what is the idea??”

Twilight looked at Cherry, who sighed. “Well, I was thinking,” she said slowly. “This ship is going to be carrying all our hopes and dreams on it, right?”

Chrysalis’s eyes widened for only a moment. Then she had to force herself not to narrow them. What does the pony know…?

“But I didn’t like calling it Beautiful Dream,” Cherry continued, apparently oblivious. “I didn’t want to suggest we were all asleep at the stick or something, you know?”

Rainbow Dash had a brief snort of laughter at that.

“So I wanted to name it for someone who has big dreams,” the pink earth pony said. “Not someone sleeping, but someone pursuing a really big goal, something they want with all their heart and soul, right?” She sighed. “But I couldn’t think of anything better than Dreamer after all. Anypony else-“

“It’s a good name,” Chrysalis said. “A very good name. Let’s go with it.”

Six pairs of eyes looked at Chrysalis with suspicion, even the pairs belonging to her subjects.

“What?” she asked. “I’m not just saying that to get this over with this time!” To her own surprise, this was almost true. “This whole enterprise is based on my dreams for my people! And you have your dreams of flight! And I’m sure Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash have their own dreams for this- dreams of uniting the world and exploring the new frontier!” She paused, then looked at the griffon astronaut in the corner. “And I suppose you must have some dream or other too. No offense.”

“Some taken,” Gordon replied, keeping a mild tone in his voice.

“So yes, a ship full of dreamers should be called Dreamer!” Chrysalis concluded. “There isn’t any name that could possibly be more appropriate!”(523)

(523) At this point Rainbow Dash quietly took the piece of paper she had tucked under her wing, upon which she’d written Eaglewing Awesomesauce 9001 before the meeting, and crumpled it up. A janitor peeked at the paper after the meeting and decided to keep it, thus providing ample embarrassment for Rainbow Dash in years to come.

“I agree,” Twilight Sparkle said. “So if nopony else has any better ideas?” After a long moment of silence, she said, “Then it’s decided. From now on Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-four is the Dreamer.”

“Delightful,” Chrysalis drawled. “Is there any other matter of earth-shattering import, or may I enjoy my last few moments before we all cram into the simulator for… what was it again?”

“Emergency return in Amicitas,” Twilight Sparkle said. “In case something goes wrong with Twent… I mean Dreamer.”

“Oh, right,” Chrysalis said. “Well, I’ll be along on time as usual, then. Ta-ta.”

None of the others wanted to argue over the obvious dismissal, and in a few moments Chrysalis had the conference room all to herself. She stared out the windows onto the space center grounds, watching the other astronauts trail over to the simulations building in pairs- Occupant and Dragonfly, Twilight and Rainbow, Cherry and Gordo.

Dreamer, she thought to herself. I suppose Conqueror would have been a better choice, but obviously that wouldn’t do. And once it’s all over nobody will care what the name was, anyway. They’ll all be too busy bowing to me!

She reached up a forehoof to caress the back of one of the conference table’s chairs. And it’s not like it’s a bad name anyway, she thought. After all, it is carrying my dream. My dream of world conquest! My dream of revenge against Twilight Sparkle and her friends, against Cadence and Shining Armor, against all the ponies who dared stand in my way!

How long had it been? Five years. Five years and six moons, almost. Five years since that day when victory had been snatched away from her, not just at the last minute but beyond the last minute, when defeat ought to have been impossible.

That day.

A tune danced in Chrysalis’s head- a tune she’d last heard on that very day, which now came to her as the perfect tune for this moment. She stared out the window at the backs of those infernal ponies and sang:

That day was going to be perfect
The kind of day that filled my every dream
Everypony on their knees
While I did just what I pleased
I didn’t know it wasn’t as it seemed

The sound of violins filled the room, high, shrill, slightly dissonant, accompanying Chrysalis’s voice as she continued the song:

That day was going to be perfect
Then the moment of my victory had passed
But I struggled and I schemed
Never giving up my dream
And soon revenge will come for me at last

Brasses joined in, striking staccato chords every time Chrysalis gave a word a touch of emphasis.

In this race they’re second place
I’ve won the chase to conquer space
Now I’ll be walking on the moon

And when I seize its mystic power
Comes Equestria’s final hour
When winter comes so does the ponies’ doom

She strode over to the chalkboard, where an old sketch of the trajectory from Equus to the moon remained unerased, the continents of Equus roughly shade in. She put a hoof under the base of the circle and sang:

Once I played the royal bride
Now I cannot be denied
And soon this world will be all mine

Her eyes shifted over to a row of photographs just below the ceiling. The one on the farthest right, just above the conference room door, showed two ponies with helmets off and a third figure with its back turned, standing in front of a brightly lit capsule in an otherwise dark night. She sneered at the smiling images of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, as the magic music rose to a fully orchestrated crescendo around her.

Now this flight is going to be perfect
One last time I’ll leave this world behind
I hope you’ve had your fun
The race for the moon is won
And Equestria will be mine, all mine!

To a final crash of horns, flutes and violins, the changeling queen laughed, her favorite loud, sinister, shamelessly evil laugh.

Meanwhile, over a hundred yards away, Twilight Sparkle froze in her tracks. Rainbow Dash, noticing the sudden loss of the other half of the conversation(524), turned around and asked, “What’s the matter?”

(524) About what flavor Chrysalis would be, bitter licorice or burning-cough-syrup.

“I’m not sure,” Twilight said hesitantly. “You know that feeling you get, when there’s a musical number somewhere nearby and you’re not part of it?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Come on, Twilight,” she said, reaching over and tugging her friend along. “We’ve got a simulator to prep.”

Winter Ramp-up was coming to Horseton, as much as it ever did, and with it the annual winter festival… greatly expanded with the tens of thousands of tourists come to see the final rocket launch of the space race which had dominated the newspapers and create the new television and radio media almost specifically to cover it.

The carnival midway had already opened by nine in the morning, but only a few ponies were on it as yet. The rides remained motionless. The only carnies doing business were the ones selling snacks and lemonade to late arrivals. Everyone else was looking for one of the few remaining open patches of meadow from which they could watch the largest rocket ever taking flight. Their better-connected and better-prepared fellows already sat in bleachers or on blankets, in lawn-chairs and under tarpaulins, some with portable radios and some listening to the voices on the loudspeakers that hung from every building, every vertical pole, on the grounds. Even inside the VAB, where twenty changelings were already assembling the ESA-16 refueling probe that would launch the next day, the deep voice of Tymbal echoed through the room, explaining this or that bit of comms chatter.

And inside the VIP booth at Mission Control, a dozen film cameras and three of the newly invented live-cast magic TV cameras took every little action on the control room floor and broadcast it to over a hundred thousand receiver sets across the Equestrian continent.

Applejack had debated, for a moment, using the fake Manehattan high society accent she’d learned from Aunt Valencia. After all, the whole world, even future generations were watching. In the end she decided to be herself. Let future generations see her for who she was. She wasn’t ashamed. “All right, y’all,” she said. “Time for th’ go – no go call for this flight. Booster?”

Goddard the Griffon sat back in his chair. “Go, Flight.”

“Systems?”

Warner von Brawn said, “All systems go.”

“Tracking?”

“Go, Flight,” said Minuette.

“Trajectory?”

“We are go,” wheezed George Cowley.

“Recovery?”

Lucky Cricket listened to a last bit of chatter on his headset before answering, “Standing by, Flight.”

“Landing systems?”

Starlight Glimmer double-checked her readouts. “We’re go, Flight.”

“Weather?”

Before Crawley could answer, Eye Wall pulled his mike over to her lips. The weather mare said, “Weather is go, Flight.”

“Medical?”

Lemon Hearts giggled and said, “All go here, Flight!”

“Capcomm?”

“Go, ma’am,” Spitfire reported.

Applejack took a deep breath. “All right,” she muttered, and then in a louder voice, “We are all-“

“Hold the countdown!! HOLD THE COUNTDOWN!!”

Muzzles wrinkled even before ears registered the slamming door and the screeching voice. Certain people had that effect on others(525), and Clickbug was one of them.

(525) Partly because soap had no effect on them, or at least it never had opportunity to try.

“Launch hold!” Applejack shouted! “We have a launch hold!”

“Dreamer, Horseton, we have a launch hold situation, stand by,” Spitfire said in words so clipped that the crew at the top of the rocket wondered if their comms were going ratty.

“Oh, for the love of Tartarus,” Chrysalis snarled, “what is it now??”

A couple of minutes earlier, hundreds of miles away:

“Time is almost up! It must be ready now!”

“Is not ready! Is not tested!”

“Is no TIME for test! Set the bang-bangs!”

“Fuses might be wrong! Ship might not steer!”

“Is Laika in ship?”

“Laika in now!”

“But Rover, is not ready!!”

“Ready or not, ship must fly now! No more time! No more chances! MAKE it work!”

“Bang-bangs set!”

“LIGHT FUSES!”

The bare, rocky ground had been a fertile ground for growing gemstones for as long as ponies bothered to remember. That was what had drawn the diamond dogs to it, despite being totally isolated from all others of their kind, surrounded by pony settlements. For the most part they had remained isolated, except for one ill-thought attempt to expand their labor pool.(526) And even with the advent of the space race, even with their loud brags that they, too, would attempt to reach the moon, the diamond dogs remained isolated, with almost nothing above ground to reveal to the world what they were about.

(526) To be precise, to expand it by the amount of one pony. This worked right up until the moment said pony realized just how sensitive diamond dog hearing was. But that’s another story, with more animation than this one.

Almost nothing, that is, except one dog-burrow which was considerably larger than any of the others dotting the hardpan surface of the gem grounds.

Now a faint echoing sound of hissing, as if a couple dozen snakes had been seriously offended by the same rude remark, wafted up through the hole. At the same time a couple dozen ripples radiated away from the hole, like giant moles in a hurry to be elsewhere.

Which, aside from the species involved, was precisely the case.

The first explosion shook the ground.

The second explosion shook the shaking of the ground, as did the third.

The fourth explosion, the fifth and the sixth didn’t so much shake the ground as play kickball with it.

By the time the tenth explosion hit, there was no longer ground as such, but merely pebbles, gravel and sand in various stages of independent ballistic flight. The after-the-fact report would use this to explain why the explosions from eleventh through sixteenth had no further effect on what they were intended to propel.

Ten seconds after the final explosion, the dirt and rocks settled back down into a very large crater, studded with brilliantly sparkling gemstones, sitting in the loose dirt like freshly turned potatoes ready for harvest.

Which, aside from the objects not being vegetables, was also quite accurate, had any diamond dogs cared about gems at that particular moment.(527)

(527) They’d get around to it before long, of course. Diamond dogs are slow and a bit foolish, but on certain subjects they are very smart indeed.

One object- one very large, mostly metal object- did not come back down with the rest.

Instead, it soared.

“Flight, tracking!”

“Go, tracking!”

“Flight, we’ve picked up a beacon in the air about six hundred miles northwest of us,” Minuette said. “It’s moving up and out really fast. I mean REALLY fast.”

“Trajectory, can ya get a projection on its course?” Applejack asked. “Where’s it headed?”

“Working on it, Flight,” Cowley said. The main telepresence screen flipped from a view of the Dreamer on the launch pad to a map of Equus and the orbits around it. It focused on a high suborbital trajectory that shrank even as everyone in Mission Control watched. “It’s going to fly over us a little north of our position,” the elderly minotaur said. “From the looks of things, that will be on the downward arc of its trajectory.”

“Hallo? Can you hear me? Can you hear Laika?”

The telepresence screen flickered again, the map screen randomly interrupted by flashes of a very roughly-shaped capsule-ish thing, which appeared to have been not so much manufactured as hammered into shape with rocks.(528) It had fins… of a sort… and there were little tubes on the bottom which might, or might not, be little rocket engines… maybe. And there was a porthole, a window which might or might not be cracked, depending on how much the flickering was interfering with the picture.

(528) Not accurate. The diamond dogs used actual hammers. Not that it helped.

“Um, unknown craft, this is Mission Control, Horseton,” Applejack said clearly. “Identify yourself, please.”

“Hello, changelings!” The voice sounded cheerful, even perky, and squeaky enough to be a match for Pinkie Pie. “I Laika! This is Project Stardust! I am going to the moon now!”

“No, she’s not,” George Bull’s low voice echoed from the bullpen.

“Not unless that thing has more delta-V in it somewhere,” Goddard agreed from his station.

“Um…” Applejack struggled for words. “Stardust, we show you as on a suborbital, repeat SUBorbital trajectory. You need to ignite your engines if you want an orbit.”

“Horseton, Dreamer,” Cherry Berry’s voice echoed over the comms. “What’s going on out there? Why are our comms cutting out?”

“Stand by, Dreamer,” Spitfire snapped. “Capcomm will be Fireball for launch.” She took off her headset and waved a hoof at the dragon leaning against a wall to come take her seat. “Flight, if they’re coming down in that, that’s an air emergency. I have to deploy.”

“Got it, Spitfire,” Applejack nodded. “Get goin’.”

Without looking back Spitfire took flight, barging through the mission control room double doors hard enough that they were still open when the outer doors got the same treatment. The controllers could just hear her shout, “WONDERBOLTS ASSEMBLE!” before both sets of doors slammed shut.

“I cannot burn rocket!” the static-filled voice of Laika reported. “I need rocket to come back down! But Great Designer say I not need rocket! Big Dirt Gun is enough!”

“Big Dirt Gun?” Applejack asked.

“Yes!” Laika said cheerfully. “Designer say, one big bang turn diamond dog to paste, but a lot of small bangs and a diamond dog fly! And here I am, flying! Laika is flying!”

“In another three minutes,” von Brawn said from the huddle of minotaurs and griffon in the bullpen, “Laika will be falling almost straight down into the Celestial Ocean.”

“Um, stand by, Laika,” Applejack said. Covering her microphone, she said, “Do I understand ‘er right? Did she just say she got shot out of a dirt cannon?”

“Theoretically possible,” von Brawn shrugged. “Not practical, though. The G-loads would still be tremendous even with staged explosive charges.”

“And I don’t think anything we’ve got could stand up to those forces,” Goddard put in. “Never mind stand up to them and still keep a pilot alive!”

“And it’d be almost impossible to aim,” von Brawn added. “After all, once you dig a hole, it tends to stay dug. You can’t really point it.”

“Oh, hey, changelings!” Laika’s voice put in cheerfully. “You make good space suits, hey? My suit only leak a little bit! Good thing, too! Ship window just blow out!”

“How did she get one of my space suits??” Rarity shouted. “I never fitted a diamond dog!”

“Um… glad to hear you’re all right, Laika,” Applejack said. “But, um, uh… you know, you can’t eat through your space suit, right?”

“Not a problem!” Laika said.

Applejack’s imagination rushed to a conclusion made all the more obvious by the other circumstantial evidence. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Ya cut a hole in the suit so you could eat through it.”

“No!” Laika said. “Lunch fly out window when it blow out! But that is smart idea! I tell Great Designer! He will be so happy!”

“Well, you better come right back down so you can get your lunch,” Applejack said quickly. “Don’t wanna go to th’ moon on a empty stomach!”

“More good idea!” Laika said. “You changelings are smart! I come down now.”

“No kidding,” Minuette muttered from the tracking console.

“Um, changelings?” Laika said, a little less cheerfully. “When I go to fire rocket, all the lights in the ship go out. Great Designer doesn’t answer. What do I do?”

Applejack’s eyes managed to go even wider than they’d already been. “Um… ideas?” she asked.

“On it,” Fireball grumbled, sitting down at the capcom position. “Dreamer, Horseton, capcom is now Fireball,” he said. “Twilight Sparkle, we have a little alicorn situation out here. Could you spare us a minute or two?”

Three minutes later, a figure in a white spacesuit, suspended in the air by sheer magic power(529), slowed down a ball of burning metal enough for twenty Wonderbolts to gather it into a net and carefully lower it to the surface.

(529) Just an example that, in every teacher-student relationship, the learning goes both ways.

Ten minutes after that, a happy-looking diamond dog with sleek gray fur, a long elegant muzzle, and a sling around one arm lay in a hospital bed and watched happily as she watched the second largest explosion she’d witnessed that day lift a steel tower into the sky.

Of all the launches of all the space agencies in the two years of the space race, the Dreamer’s launch went more smoothly than any other. After a steep initial ascent at high speed, Cherry Berry shut down the engines in upper atmosphere and used the same slow tumble Chrysalis had encountered on the prior flight to ditch the ship’s nosecone behind it. A minute later she relit the engines, and after a long and careful burn which ran well into the rocket’s third stage, Dreamer rested in an almost perfectly circular orbit exactly on the same orbital plane as the moon.

One orbit later, after a full check-over of the ship and a test run of the lander’s scientific equipment, the transfer stage’s single Poodle engine lit again, and two and a half minutes later, the ship and its crew of seven were on their way to the spot in space where, three days later, the moon would be waiting for them.(530)

(530) Assuming Luna kept to her schedule, of course. Fortunately for all on board Dreamer, she did, though not without grave misgivings.

The three days outbound passed in remarkable peace. Chrysalis restrained herself from baiting Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, and Twilight talked Rainbow Dash down from her suspicious accusations. Every astronaut participated in the daily “television” shows for the benefit of the press at Mission Control, answering questions and playing little games with their food in zero-G.(531) Between these, the daily chores of watching over the ship, and entertainment piped up from the ground, time passed as swiftly as the miles separating the ship from its destination.

(531) These ended when a slice of flying flatbread ended up perfectly impaled on Chrysalis’s horn. The calm and polite request she made that the shenanigans cease frightened everyone else in a way her usual hostile rants never could.

A single burn brought Dreamer into an elliptical orbit of the moon; a second burn, two hours later, trimmed its trajectory to produce a close fly-by of the drifting Amicitas. Only Chrysalis noticed when, on the third burn, Cherry Berry’s jaw set in that subtle way which it had taken Chrysalis over a year to realize meant I just goofed and need to fix it right this minute. Everyone else might have thought Cherry had planned the last moment braking burn so as to get the closest fly-by with Amicitas … but the two of them knew better.

The docking went… smoother than Chrysalis’s had, but not much so. Chrysalis had had a pony in the target ship cooperating with her; Cherry had a powered-down, uncontrolled target to deal with. To make things worse, the docking port on Amicitas lay in shadow, almost invisible to the tiny forward-facing windows on the outer edges of Dreamer’s forward capsule. It took two fly-bys and most of the charge in the magic-powered maneuvering thrusters for Cherry to finally get an angle on her target and make her approach.

Then came the moment of docking itself, and seven astronauts all not-quite-shouting at once. Dreamer, with its landing stage still full, wasn’t much lighter than Amicitas with its tanks empty. The bump between ships actually pushed Amicitas tumbling slowly away, and only the magnetic collars of the docking points kept the two ships from separating. As it was, each of the crew on board experienced their own eternities in the twenty-seven seconds the ships rocked and rubbed against each other, coming close to ripping one of Dreamer’s solar arrays off or smashing Amicitas’s tailfin against the lander’s science bay, before the docking clamps finally engaged and sealed the two ships together.

The docking lasted two hours, with Rainbow Dash and Cherry Berry holding the two ships stable while Twilight Sparkle and Dragonfly installed the replacement refueling valves in Amicitas’s engine deck. They tested the new system using a hoof-held canister of nitrogen, then purged and secured it again. The robot probe ESA-16, with enough fuel and oxidizer to allow Amicitas to return to Equus, would arrive in lunar orbit a day later, at which point Twilight and Rainbow Dash would finish the job themselves.

And by that time, Chrysalis smirked to herself, no one will care anymore, because my conquest will be well underway.

And then it was time to descend- to take Dreamer down to the surface at last.

“Dreamer, you are go, repeat GO for final approach and landing on Site Alpha. Set timer for twenty seconds on our mark. Hundred percent burn to start.”

“Copy, Horseton. Set at twenty seconds.”

“Mark.”

“Timer started. Switching to surface altimeter.”

Two landing sites had been chosen on the surface, both on the right-hand side of the moon as it faced Equus. The requirements for landing- a nearly flat surface, sun and Equus both overhead, directly beneath Amicitas’s orbit- had narrowed down the acceptable sites that radically. Both sites consisted of small-ish patches of not-really-level ground surrounded by all-sorts-of-not-level craters and hills- difficult, even treacherous terrain, but it was the best there was.

The first couple of small burns had dropped Dreamer into an orbit below Amicitas’s. The third burn took the ship suborbital, enough for Cherry and the mixed team of boffins back in Horseton to verify the final approach, which they had just done.

Now Chrysalis sat in the command seat, watching the seconds tick by on the timer, remembering all too well the hallucination she’d had on the previous flight. “Remember,” she muttered, “keep touchdown below three meters per second.”

“I know,” Cherry Berry murmured back in a shut-up-now tone that warmed Chrysalis’s heart. After all, she’d taught her that.(532)

(532) Or so Chrysalis chose to believe.

A few seconds later, exactly on the tick of zero, Cherry shoved the throttle wide open, and gravity returned to Dreamer at almost the same level as on Equus. The lander’s engine roared, bringing the ship down from almost-orbital speed almost to a dead stop. After about half a minute Cherry Berry pulled the throttle back and let the stability assist system, set firmly on retrograde, gradually reorient the ship so the rockets pointed towards the surface of the moon.

“Eighty meters per second at forty-five hundred meters,” Chrysalis called out, reading off the indicators. “Fuel’s good.”

“Roger,” Cherry replied, keeping her eyes on her own instruments.

On the multiple nav-balls in the capsule, the orange field all but vanished, replaced by blue as the ship’s trajectory went completely vertical.

“Forty-two meters at three thousand.”

“Roger.”

“It’s a shame we can’t see the surface,” Dragonfly said from the third and final seat in Dreamer’s capsule section. “I bet I could design a lander where the windows faced down. Be a lot safer.”

“Thirty seven meters at two thousand,” Chrysalis said, her voice pitching up only slightly.

“Good,” Cherry said. “Almost time to slow her down. Fuel still looks good.”

“Confirm.”

“Holding descent rate at twenty meters per second.”

“Confirm twenty at thirteen hundred.”

The engine’s soft roar had reduced to an even softer hiss, just barely burning enough to cancel lunar gravity, not enough to slow down.

“Hm, that’s too slow,” Cherry muttered. “We’ll use up our safety margin at this rate. Reducing throttle.”

“Slow is good,” The words came out of Chrysalis almost calm and level… almost. After her previous landing experience- even if it had been a hallucination brought on by a mystery voice thing- she was in no hurry to, well, to be in a hurry.

“And bringing it up again,” Cherry said a moment later, and Chrysalis forced herself not to let go a breath of relief.

“Hey, Cherry,” Gordo called up from the passenger bay beneath them, “I’m looking out the porthole at the hill next to the landing zone, and I can see our shadow.”

“Roger,” Cherry said, and nothing else.

“Twelve at five hundred,” Chrysalis said.

“Looks like we’re coming in on the east edge of the landing zone,” Gordo added. “About a five degree slope under us, I think. Should be stable.”

“Sounds good, Gordo,” Cherry said, her own tone rising just a fraction.

“Four point eight meters per second at one-fifty,” Chrysalis said. “Comms silence, please.”

“Thanks,” Cherry said, her steel-violet eyes locked on the nav-ball in front of her. She grunted, and Chrysalis saw a frown form on her face. “Getting a wobble from SAS,” she said. “Switching over to radial-out mode.”

With a flip of a hoof the slight wobble ceased, as the guidance system switched from tracking a retrograde motion it could no longer properly calculate to the more simple away-from-the-center-of-the-moon attitude.

After a couple of breaths to compose herself, Chrysalis said, “Two point zero at forty.”

“Almost down,” Cherry replied.

Chrysalis felt something rise into her throat… that can’t be my heart, she thought, it’s far too large. And besides, I’m pretty sure I can feel that shaking my chest about three times a second…

“Holding descent at one point five,” Cherry said.

“I see dust!” Gordo blurted. “Dust from under the ship!”

A moment later a large blue light lit on the panel directly in front of Chrysalis. “Contact!” she shouted.

“Shutdown!” Cherry Berry said.

The soft sound of the rocket ceased, and the ship tipped slowly backwards to settle on all four legs. There was a tiny bounce- more like the motion of a rocking chair than anything else- and then the ship stood, motionless. Cherry switched off SAS, and the ship’s reaction wheels’ whine faded down to nothing, and yet the ship didn’t move.

For a couple of seconds, no one made a sound.

Then, finally, Cherry Berry said, “Horseton, this is CSP Mission Twenty-four. Dreams come true; Dreamer has landed.”

A quarter of a million miles away, a golden aura of magic reached out to a television knob and turned it on. The screen lit up with a telepresence-relayed image of the outside of a metal tower resting on a gray surface.

"Your tea and biscuits, Princess," the maid said, levitating a tray of nibbles over Celestia's broad, plush bed.

"Thank you so much," Celestia said. "Don't let me keep you. I won't ring until after the big moment."

"Thank you, Princess!" The maid didn't quite gallop off, but the exit would have drawn lese-majeste charges in the time of Princess Platinum. The door was actually allowed to slam shut.

Celestia didn't care. The instant she was alone in her bedroom, she slumped fowards. The teapot clattered in her telekinesis when she lifted it to pour herself tea. Three biscuits bumped into each other in an attempt to hit her mouth at the same time.

"Did I do the right thing?" she muttered. "Did I buck up? Did I buck up? Oh, for Mom's sake don't let me have bucked up..."

Her eyes stayed locked on the screen, and on the little figure climbing down the outside of the metal tower.

“There’s a spot midway down the ladders where the assembly crew didn’t mount the rungs quite straight. I’ll have words with them when we get home. Not dangerous, just annoying.”

“Copy. We’ll be careful.”

“Twenty-four commander, you’re almost to the second extendable ladder. Mind the transition.”

“I feel it. No problem so far.”

Chrysalis scrambled for inane things to say as she slowly descended the series of ladders, some extendable and some permanently hammered into the side of the Dreamer, leading down to the lunar surface. So close- she was so close to victory! She could feel the immense power beneath her, the mystical energy of an entire world unclaimed except for one tenuous link to a single mare a quarter million miles away. She wanted nothing more than to throw herself off the ladder, leap to the surface, and get started on the vengeance and conquest.

She didn’t, of course. She’d got this far by being cautious, careful, circumspect. And she didn’t dare risk it all now, not when the single most powerful mage in Equestrian history waited in the ship above her, probably ready to wreck all her plans at the absolute last second if given the slightest warning.

So she would not give that warning. She would follow procedure, reporting safety concerns back to the others, until she was ready to raise the force field, de-suit, and set her bare hoof on the lunar dust below. Then she would give Occupant and Dragonfly the word, cast the spell to seize the moon’s power, and then…

She chuckled silently to herself. None of them knew. Not even Occupant and Dragonfly knew. Absolute and final victory- victory on her terms, not on some disgusting friendship-and-harmony basis- lay only four meters below her.

Chrysalis’s heart raced as she counted the rungs- five, six, seven, eight and last. Assuming the training mockup was correct, there remained about a two-meter gap between her right hind hoof and the pad of the landing strut. All seven of the crew had proven themselves able to jump the gap well enough to pull themselves up in Equus gravity. Here, weighing only one-sixth as much, the transition would be a piece of cake even without the spacesuit’s thruster pack.

Two meters between myself and godhood…

No. Calm down. I need a clear head. I must be ready.

“I’m going to pause on the ladder for a moment,” she said aloud, “and take in the scenery for a moment. This is all just…” Words genuinely failed her. She hadn’t felt like this since that glorious moment when Celestia had lain powerless at her hooves, defeated in a clash of magic, leaving Canterlot and all of Equestria at Chrysalis’s mercy. The combination of fear, surprise and happiness mixed together into a wave of exultation that threatened to overwhelm her iron self-control.

“Copy, commander,” Spitfire's voice rasped in Chrysalis's earphones. “We show your heart rate elevated. Take a moment, breathe-“

Sound ceased.

Chrysalis noticed it at once; not only did the moronic guard pony's voice stop, but so did the quiet whirr of her suit’s air circulation fans, the slight hum of the active telepresence spell, even the sound of her own breathing. She had the sensation of absolute stillness, as if the entire world had stopped except for her.

And then the sensation she always had when on EVA, the faint background hum of unconditional, omnidirectional love engulfed her, becoming a presence- no, an embrace, tighter than a python, softer and warmer than a blanket.

Welcome, my daughter.

It was that voice.

“So there you are, whoever you are,” Chrysalis said. “And don’t call me daughter. You sound nothing like my mother.”

A soft chuckle. Daughter nevertheless.

“Well, you’re too late to stop me. All it takes now is one step, one small step, and I win.”

I know, the voice replied. And now you shall see your dreams made real.

“Well, of course I-“

Chrysalis’s voice cut off as she felt herself… not turn. Her vision turned, rotating slowly away from the white-painted metal of the fuel tank in front of her, but at the same time she could feel the rungs firmly beneath all four of her suit’s hoof-boots.

The Dreamer panned out of her line of view, leaving the empty, desolate lunar surface… and then, suddenly, another Dreamer, identical to the one Chrysalis was still clinging onto…

… no, not identical. There were lumps at its base.

Like a movie camera, Chrysalis’s vision zoomed in at the white lumps. There were three of them, piled on top of one another at the base of the other Dreamer’s ladders. One of them sported a patch of blue, with a scattering of other colors. A second one ended in a smaller lump of lavender. A third one was all white, except for tiny patches of maroon and purple surrounding a fleck of yellow.

It took Chrysalis only a moment to realize what was going on. “You’re showing me the future,” she said slowly. “The future where I win.”

The voice didn’t reply.

“Well,” Chrysalis drawled, as the illusion drew her in close enough to see the backs of Rainbow Dash’s and Twilight Sparkle’s helmetless heads, “apparently I finally get revenge on Twilight Sparkle and her friends.” She paused a moment, choosing to focus on the golden claw of Griffonstone and not the all-too-visible face of the astronaut wearing the patch. “And apparently Gordon sided with the ponies. Too bad for him.” She shrugged. “No Cherry Berry, but I imagine she was too scared to fight. Which means she gets to watch helplessly at my side as I conquer her species.”

There is more.

“Well, of course there’s more!” Chrysalis snapped. “I can’t rule Equestria from the moon! I must have used my new power to teleport back without the ship! So show me what happens next!”

I will show you everything.

Chrysalis’s vision was pulled upwards, above Dreamer’s capsule, to the sphere dominating the sky overhead…

Wait, Chrysalis thought, isn’t that a bit large for-

And then she fell upwards, flying swiftly towards the thing in the sky, until up became down and the object above became ground beneath. In a matter of a few seconds Equus swelled to fill her entire range of vision. A little more than half of the world lay in absolute darkness, except for the glimmer of moonlight off of the clouds-

-and there are too many of those, aren’t there-

while the sunlit visible parts shone and glittered under intense light.

And then, after a swift plunge through the clouds, the apparent motion slowed, and Chrysalis found herself flying over… over…

… well, she recognized Mount Canter, so it had to be Equestria… but it wasn’t. Equestria was a green, rolling, fertile land, full of forests and farms and bright colors. Wherever this was, it was a barren wasteland, without a single speck of green to be found. Half-broken trees stood up bare-limbed to the sky. Dust swirled from the ground in whole waves of dust-devils, rising up to further darken an already gray and dirty sky.

The vision shifted, and there in front of her was Mount Canter. An enormous bite had been taken out of the side of the mountain. A few fragments of Canterlot city still clung to the remains of the shelf that had held the city up for a thousand years. Of the royal palace, nothing remained but the hole.

Chrysalis noticed some lighter-colored, lower-flying cloud to the left of the mountain. For a second she took it for only cloud… until she began to see the details. Here and there were the slowly unraveling stumps of what had been beautifully crafted columns and arches. Hollow spots in the clouds turned out to be doorways into once-cozy homes rapidly losing their shape. Just enough of a bowl-shaped structure remained for her to recognize it as Cloudsdale’s coliseum, almost totally reverted to ordinary cloud-stuff. Not a single scrap of rainbow remained.

The vision shifted again, and to her disgust Chrysalis recognized the layout of Ponyville. But this Ponyville had been devastated by fire and storm. The few thatched-roof houses which hadn’t burned down had collapsed in on themselves. The entire top story of city hall was gone. The eyesore which had been Twilight Sparkle’s castle, with all its glittering color, had been reduced to a stump of dead gray crystal.

The vision shifted again, and again, and again, showing Chrysalis one example after another of the total devastation, not just of Equestria but the rest of Equus as well. The Everfree Forest retained a scattering of pitch-black leaves on otherwise gnarled and twisted trunks. The snowy peaks of Yakyakistan lay as bare rock under the sun. The peak of Griffonstone lay stripped bare, not even a single hovel or eyrie clinging to its crags anymore. The haven of the hippogriffs, the caravanserai of Saddle Arabia, the villages of the kirin- all of them lay in ruins, burned, withered, utterly destroyed.

And nowhere, not in a single place, did she see a living soul.

And then the vision brought her to Manehattan. The parks were just as blasted as the farmland on the other side of the harbor. The masonry of the tall buildings of the city still held up, but Chrysalis spotted many with holes blasted through them by magic or some other means. On one wall she spotted a tattered poster with the pictures of two ponies- Starlight Glimmer and some light blue unicorn with a white mane. The words at the top of the poster read: WANTED for Treason Against the Changeling Regime. Another poster next to it showed a picture of herself, not wearing a crown, but decked out in a snazzy white uniform with gold trim and a peaked cap. That one merely read: OBEY.

And then she saw the statue- that statue, the statue of the pony, the one she’d attended the unveiling of just a few weeks before. A CSP flag lay atop the shattered flagpole. Cherry Berry’s head had been roughly removed and thrown to the base of the statue. And at the base someone had spraypainted TRAITO, trailing off in a frantic swirl of spray paint- likely caught in the act.

Chrysalis had watched the vision with her pleasure giving rapidly away to alarm, but the sight of the statue kicked her in the gut in a way the empty towns and barren fields hadn’t. Anxiety gave way to outrage. How DARE they? she thought. Cherry Berry would never betray her friends! How dare whoever this is sully her memory by-

Wait a minute. Why do I care?

Because they’re short-changing my ingenuity! Because they insult me by refusing to believe I could fool a common earth pony…

… no. Even I can’t believe that.

But…

And then the vision blurred again, and this time in front of her lay the ruins of Horseton Space Center. Muck Lake lay bare, cracked black mud gaping up below an intense heat haze that almost rendered the too-distant ocean invisible. Only skeletons remained of the VAB and the aeroplane hangar. Of the rich meadow that had surrounded the buildings, not a single blade of grass remained, and the swamps and jungle surrounding that stood as bare of vegetation as everything else.

And then, for the first time, Chrysalis saw something move- a small, black figure darting between the ruins of the R&D complex. It was one of her changelings, clinging to the corner of a building and looking back and forth as if expecting the wrath of the queen to come down on its head at any moment. Its eyes darted all around, not with the measured movement or trembling terror of a thinking creature, but with the instant shifts of an unthinking, unspeaking creature.

Then, with a hiss that seemed deafeningly loud after the eternity of silent visions, a second changeling leaped out from cover and tackled the first. For a couple of moments the two rolled one over the other, but the second one had the weight advantage, and the first one ended flat on its back, totally helpless.

As hard as Chrysalis tried, the vision would not budge one inch from what happened next. Her mind, trying to blot out what she saw, focused on one detail: the changeling on top, the mindless cannibal, wore the tattered remains of a CSP security guard uniform.

Stop it! she shouted in her head. STOP it!!

I will show you everything.

And then the view shifted to the Badlands, and to a familiar-looking mesa.

Something had been built atop the mesa, or begun. It looked like the foundations of a castle, if the engineers and work crew had been ten million spiders trained in architecture. But about fifteen feet above the top of the mesa the structure ended in fragments, bits blowing like tattered sails in the breeze here, jutting up like broken saw teeth there. The topmost edges of the walls ran black with soot and ash.

The old entrance to the caves under the mesa had caved in. In front of the rubble-filled hole a large granite dais rose, the obvious pedestal for a giant statue… but without a statue. The top remained perfectly smooth, so smooth that, except for some dust and sand, it seemed like the giant mass of rock had been carved only yesterday.

On the front of the stone were two messages. Carved into the stone in letters taller than a pony, the first message read: I AM CHRYSALIS, RULER OF ALL EQUUS. LOOK UPON YOUR MASTER AND DESPAIR. The second message attempted in vain to blot out the first using pink spray paint, and it read: Avenge Miss Berry. The spraypaint ended with the changeling crossbar symbol which indicated a lethally dangerous cavern or burrow.

“What?” Chrysalis gasped. “Avenge? What happened to her?”

Innocence could not save her.

“What?? But I would have been all-powerful! I would have protected her from any foolish pony attempts at revenge!”

For a while.

“For a while? And what do you mean-“

This time, instead of the disembodied mystery voice, Chrysalis heard the voice of Twilight Sparkle. “You’re always looking over your shoulder for someone to backstab you, instead of looking forward! I don’t know what you call it where you come from, but I call that insecure!”

And then she heard her own voice say, “I call it reality, princess.”

Chrysalis did not gasp in horror, but she felt it open its maw deep within her… and, part of her wondered, why? “Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked, when she had recovered well enough to speak coherently.

I will show you everything.

“No!” Chrysalis shouted. “I don’t want to see that! I don’t want to see any more! I refuse to accept this!”

Everything.

“No!!”

The vision pulled Chrysalis up and away from the hive, towards a sky now empty of clouds. In the middle of it soared a burning sun, a little larger than Chrysalis remembered it, blinding bright yet not painful to look at. And then beside it, in the sky with it, there rose the moon, more than twice the size it should have been, much larger than it ever ought to have been, large cracks running across its surface, lava bursting through the cracks… and it grew larger, closer, until it filled Chrysalis’s vision from one corner of her eyes to the other-

-and then Chrysalis felt the rungs of Dreamer’s boarding ladder under her hooves again, saw the white-painted fuel tank before her, and felt the first genuine tears she’d shed in a very great many years in her eyes.

The sensation of love curled itself tighter around her, nuzzling her like a mother pony nuzzling a very little filly. In a soft, comforting tone the voice said, You have now seen your dreams become reality.

Chrysalis wanted to be angry. She wanted to be furious with the vision. But instead of a snarl or a yell, what came out of her was a squeak twisted by a throat that didn’t want to open. “Why did you show me that…?” She couldn’t even say lie. As much as she wanted it to be one, something told her it wasn’t. There had just been too much of it to be false.

Because, the voice said with the soft reassurance Chrysalis had never had directed at her before, I love you.

Chrysalis managed a snort. “You love me,” she repeated sarcastically. “If you love me, then why did you show me all of that? Why did you show me the world ending because of me?”

Because I love all of you.

Chrysalis snorted again, a little more strongly. The tears had stopped, and with a few blinks she could pretend they had never happened. “Is that what this is about? You did this to stop me? Because I’ll still do it! It doesn’t have to happen like that! I can fix it! You’ll see! I’ll make it work!”

I can only give you a choice, the voice said.

“A choice? I don’t see a choice,” Chrysalis said. “All I saw was you telling me not to do it!”

No. You told yourself that.

If Chrysalis could have shaken her head, stuck in her timeless moment, she would have. “I don’t understand.”

Then, the voice said, I will show you something. The tone gave that last word an odd quality, as if the voice meant it as the diametric opposite to everything.

Once again Chrysalis’s vision turned away from the side of the Dreamer, pivoting behind her to see… not another Dreamer, not this time. Instead there stood three flags in a cluster- the CSP flag, the Two Sisters banner of Equestria, and the claw clenching golden lightning which was the emblem of Griffonstone. A metal fence surrounded the site. A patch of lunar ground had been leveled off as flat and hard as concrete next to the fence, with a small plaque on a pole standing next to it. There was no ship; there were no dead pony bodies; nothing but the flags, the fence, and a number of bootprints.

And then movement- something bright zipping across the black sky at tremendous speed, too fast and small for Chrysalis to identify it. But it pulled her attention upwards, and her gaze turned towards Equus…

… an Equus clearly green and full of life, but also an Equus surrounded by a thousand tiny glittering jewels of some kind. Even as Chrysalis wondered what they were, she began falling upwards again, zooming back towards the planet… but this time the vision slowed before hitting atmosphere, pausing in orbital space above the world to see the glittering jewels up close.

Each jewel was a spaceship.

None of them looked anything like Dreamer, or Amicitas, or like anything any of the space races had launched in the previous two years. A few of the ships- the older, shabbier ships- had a vague resemblance to CSP ship designs, but the rest looked totally alien to Chrysalis. She passed ships shaped like tubes, like saucers, like spheres, like bizarre mixes of all three. Her eyes passed over vessels that looked grown rather than built, over vessels that looked more like submarines than spaceships, over things that looked like someone had taken the foam packing forms out of a cardboard box and put engines on them. She couldn’t imagine how any of them flew, or even how they worked.

And among these smaller jewels floated great shapes, spaceships the size of entire cities. She saw one opening a gargantuan hatch to allow a smaller ship to depart. Another one had ships docked around its middle in a giant ring. Chrysalis remembered the new contract Occupant had mentioned, which she’d signed off on casually, never expecting to launch the thing. Space stations, she thought. I’m looking at space stations.

And then a streak of light, like a gigantic magic blast, blurred towards the world… and then stopped, resolving itself into an immense ship that looked like what might happen if ten million spiders trained in shipbuilding read a sci-fi pulp novel. The vision zoomed in to a flag- a changeling flag, except that the green field was a light pastel blue, the wings were solid instead of tattered, and the changeling head had no fangs. And yet, despite the flag being wrong, the name painted next to the flag on the hull read CSP Chrysalis.

She only had a moment to read her own name on the side of the ship, and then the vision shifted, blurring down through the clouds and soaring over an Equestria full of life and color… and yet very, very different from the one Chrysalis knew. There were more cities, and larger ones, scattered across the land, connected by gleaming railways that bore almost no resemblance to the steel and wood ribbons she was familiar with.

Ponyville still had some thatched-roof cottages, but not many. Its central streets had been paved in the same fashion as Horseton’s aeroplane runway, though most of the smaller streets and outlying roads remained dirt. That made sense; hardtop was rough on hooves. But the pavilion tents Chrysalis remembered from the outskirts of the town had been replaced with glass-front buildings and shingled-roof bungalows, reaching out from old town center past Twilight Sparkle’s still-glittering castle to a large complex of buildings rising on a hillside whose design screamed UNIVERSITY right down to the ivy-covered brick.

Canterlot looked the same, only bigger; the shelf the city rested on had been greatly expanded, the base of it stretching down almost to the base of Mount Canter itself. Around its perimeter large airship berths alternated with enormous landing pads, most of which held a sleek gleaming metal craft- the little cousins of the gleaming jewels in orbit above. Only the royal palace remained unchanged… except for the private landing pad built where the great driveway had once been.

Baltimare had swollen to ten times its original size, its outskirts stretching a third of the way to Fillydelphia. Nearby, Cape Friendship had been converted to a massive port for spaceships, with not one but three VABs that dwarfed either Twilight’s current facility or Chrysalis’s own. In addition to its own gleaming rail line, a paved highway ran to and from the spaceship-port, with wagons, carriages and omnibuses going both directions, half of which had no ponies pulling them.

Horseton she only saw for a few seconds. Unlike Cape Friendship, the CSP space center had only a slightly larger VAB, plus a much larger aeroplane hangar, two runways and one large landing pad. On the other hoof, the R&D center had buildings taller than anything else except the VAB and the flight control tower. A smaller university- but unmistakably a university- rose on the ground northwest of the complex, surrounded by various housing. The entire property line south of the old road turned runway was lined with giant tracking dishes, all pointed skywards. Obviously, for whatever reason, the space center had turned its focus to egghead pursuits.

And then Chrysalis found herself dropping into the great crowded square at the heart of Manehattan… which she only recognized by the shape of the streets framing the square. Not a single other landmark did she recognize as she came down. Most of the brick and masonry buildings had been replaced by glass and steel constructions with more floors than she could count, and the buildings that hadn’t been replaced had been covered with what looked like gigantic television screens… except that many if not most of them showed images in three dimensions, ponies popping forward into thin air to show off products or point to news bulletins.

After the other visions, this change hardly surprised Chrysalis… but here, for the first time, she saw the people of the city, and that shocked her to the core.

Ponies were the most common, but they were a minority. Griffons and dragons shared the sky with pegasi, while hippogriffs and yaks walked the street below. She spotted a minotaur with a cluster of goat assistants on one sidewalk, while on the other side of the street a yeti from the Storm Kingdom walked side by side with a harpy, both dressed in sharp business attire. In less than a minute Chrysalis had spotted at least one of every non-monstrous speaking race she’d ever heard of.

And then there were the races she hadn’t heard of. Most numerous were skinny bipedal things, sort of like minotaurs with flat furless faces and no horns, some in pony-type colors, others in various shades of dull beiges and browns. A cluster of beings that looked like robed foxes, with long pointed muzzles and tall pointed ears, walked in solemn formation across the square. Something that looked like a robot from the wilder B-movies strode carefully over the masses, moving with a graceful fluidity nothing like what the cardboard-suited actors had ever managed.

And there were changelings. Sort of.

There were a few of the beautiful black-chitin forms with green or pale blue crests and wings, but the wings glittered in the sun, and Chrysalis noticed instantly their straight horns and total lack of holes. But there were only a very few, badly outnumbered by the other kind, the kind Chrysalis had only seen once before in the worst nightmare she’d ever had in her life- pony-colored changelings, holeless, fangless, all the colors of a particularly nauseating rainbow, all obviously unaware of how disgusting they looked.

Even more disgusting, the “true” changelings didn’t seem to notice, either. By the smiles exchanged as they flew by or walked with each other, they all regarded this as normal.

The vision lingered here, drawing Chrysalis slowly through the streets of Manehattan, choked with wagons and ponyless carriages, swirling crowds of pedestrians and flashing signs and beacons enough to overwhelm the senses. Before she knew it she’d fetched up at the park and at the statue of Cherry Berry, now obviously much-weathered but still quite intact. Slightly newer statues had joined her, each with its own flag behind it. Chrysalis recognized Starlight Glimmer on Cherry Berry’s left, but Dragonfly, to her astonishment, also had a statue on Cherry Berry’s right. And there was a dragon, and a griffon, and more ponies, and one of those skinny weird things-

-and then the vision drew her up into the sky, out into space, and through the walls of a spaceship. The interior gleamed, everything white and shiny and ready to be used for the first time. Over a dozen crew members sat in seats that looked more like actual chairs than flight couches, though each was strapped securely in place. Chrysalis counted two changelings- one of each type- a young dragon, a hippogriff, one of the skinny things, and several ponies.

The pony in the center seat said something- her mouth moved, but Chrysalis only heard a muffled noise without words in it. Hooves and hands moved on controls, and the light in the room- in the bridge- shifted. The vision turned to let Chrysalis see a great window- no, too flat, a telepresence projection- just in time for the sliver of Equus to vanish from the left-hand edge of the screen. A few glittering jewels also moved- or, rather, the ship moved past them, slowly gaining speed as it raised its orbit.

And then, with a bark from the ship’s commander, the stars turned into streaks. Chrysalis had a moment’s sensation of incredible speed, infinite speed, beyond the infinite-

-and then she was still, frozen, hooves once more on the rungs of Dreamer’s ladder.

You have now seen, the voice said.

“I haven’t seen everything,” Chrysalis said. “I haven’t seen who rules that world! It certainly isn’t me, not with those… those… and I noticed none of the statues were of me! If they named a ship after me, there ought to be a lot of statues of me, too! Why didn’t you show me that?”

I did not show you everything, the voice said patiently, because in that world everything did not happen.

“So… so,” Chrysalis said at length. “When you say ‘everything,’ what you mean is the end of everything. You mean that…” She forced herself to say it, as much as each word galled her. “You mean a world that I conquer has no future. But a world where I don’t conquer does?”

What will be is now up to you. But whatever you choose, I will always love you.

“Singular or plural?” Chrysalis asked.

Yes, said the voice, and giggled.

And then sound returned.

“-deeply, and go ahead in your own time,” Spitfire’s drawl picked up where it had left off. “You’re good to stay there as long as you need.”

“Thanks,” Chrysalis said absently, feeling movement return to her limbs. She blinked again, feeling the sticky crusts of what certainly were never tears on her cheeks.

Which reminded her…

Drat. I completely forgot to find out who or what she was.

Chrysalis didn’t believe in gods. Spirits, on the other hoof? Those were documented fact. Windigoes were spirits. The Pony of Shadows, that had been a spirit. And didn’t some ponies say Nightmare Moon was a spirit that had possessed Luna? And she’d heard that dreams could escape the dream realm and become spirits or monsters in the waking world, given enough power. Doubtless there were a host of other spirits of one kind or another, good and evil, generous and predatory.

But why would a spirit powerful enough to freeze Chrysalis in time long enough to see not one but two possible futures…

Why would she call me “daughter?”

And why was I so upset…

She shook her head. No. Time isn’t frozen anymore, and none of that is important. There’s two meters below me calling my name. And before I drop, I have to pick a future.

And I really don’t like the two options I’ve got.

She thought about it, and after a moment the obvious answer came to her.

And I don’t have to accept either one, do I?

I’ll be around a very long time, if I’m not assassinated by my heir, if I ever raise one. I’ll have a lot more chances to conquer the world. I can wait. I can certainly wait until the day when the world won’t end just because I took it over!

I just have to figure out what went wrong and fix it. For one thing, obviously I didn’t figure out the whole sun and moon thing. I need to trick Book Horse into figuring that out. It’s obvious Celestia’s going to hoof over everything to her before long anyway. She might as well get a head start.

But the point is, I’m not giving up!

One hind leg left the eighth rung.

My conquest of Equus is only a matter of time and patience!

The other hind hoof left the seventh rung.

My enemies know nothing, and after this they will SUSPECT nothing!

Forehooves pushed gently away from the ladder.

So stuff THAT up your nonexistent plot hole, Mystery Voice! I do what I want!!

Four space-booted hooves touched the pad at the base of the landing strut.

“I’m on the pad now,” Chrysalis said. “I’m ready to step off.”

One foreleg stepped forward, pushing down firmly on the lunar dust. It held her weight.

“With that I take the last step of the space race,” she said, slowly and clearly. “And the first step in the conquest of the stars.”

She walked off the pad, stepping a few lengths away from the ship before rearing onto her hind hooves. Reaching to her pack, she drew out the Extend-o-Matic flag, popped out its staff, and jammed it firmly into the lunar surface. When the point refused to go more than an inch or two in, she used her magic to bore a hole for the staff until it stood on its own. Then, with a push of a button, the changeling flag popped out.

“I hereby claim this world, the Moon of Equus, for all the speaking peoples of our world,” she said, in the same slow clear voice. “May we continue our exploration of space the same way we began it: in cooperation and in peace, as equals, sharing its dangers and its rewards, together.”

As she spoke she felt the power of the moon dissipate, divided up among millions of new links, with the strongest one still tethered to Princess Luna. A tiny fraction- barely noticeable over her own natural might- came to her, but nowhere near enough to justify a challenge to Celestia or whoever.

She’d made her decision, and now she couldn’t take it back… as much as she suddenly wanted to.

“And now that the history books are happy,” she forced herself to say, “the ground is solid, with only a thin layer of light dust. It clings to my suit, but that’s all. I’d say it’s safe for you to come out, princess… if you’re up to it, that is.”

It was a lame shot. But considering how much she’d teased Twilight Sparkle by saying, “No one will ever remember the second pony on the moon,” Chrysalis had expected it to cheer her up at least a little.

It didn’t.

It’s over. So what do I do next?

A quarter of a million miles away, a golden aura of magic reached out to a television knob and turned it off.

Princess Celestia, Raiser of the Sun, Diviner of the Future, Terror of Bakeries, and so forth, let out an extremely long sigh of relief, slumping back on her plush pillows.

“Thank Faust,” she muttered. “I wasn't wrong. I didn't screw it up. I don't know how it worked, but I didn't screw it up." She rubbed her forehead just under the horn with one hoof. "I'm getting too old for this.”

She poured herself a fresh cup of tea and rang for more biscuits.

Chrysalis’s hoofprints soon had company.

In a few minutes everyone was out on the surface. Occupant and Twilight set out experiments. Gordo and Dragonfly gathered up rocks and bagged them for transport back to Equus. Rainbow Dash and Cherry Berry took photographs using cameras specially built to operate in total vacuum.(533)

(533) There had been a scary moment when Spitfire, acting as capcom back at Mission Control, had had to shout at Rainbow Dash to stop her from removing the lens cap while facing the sun. According to the scientists, the direct and unshielded solar rays might have overexposed the entire roll of film inside the camera, which would have meant that no pictures of Cherry Berry standing on the moon would have existed except those taken from Mission Control’s telepresence projection. For a little while the situation seemed like a narrow escape from disaster, before cooler heads pointed out that it wasn’t really such a big deal. Afterwards it became a thing the ponies could laugh at, particularly among the Wonderbolts: “Picture time! Nopony let Crash near the camera!”

(534) They weren’t. Afterwards Celestia had to talk Twilight Sparkle out of using Chrysalis’s pictures for a monograph entitled, “Geologic photography: how NOT to do it.”

(535) The switch on the spacesuits allowing two astronauts to have a conversation separate from the rest of the crew had been added, on Chrysalis’s insistence, for this mission. She’d expected to use it, if at all, long before this.

And Chrysalis… wandered.

She never went very far from the ship- in fact, she never even went around the other side of it from where she’d planted the flag. Every once in a while she took a few desultory snaps with the camera on the front of her own spacesuit, but she hardly even bothered looking through the viewfinder to check if they were any good.(534)

Only twice, during the entire moonwalk- or extra-vehicular activity, as Twilight Sparkle insisted on calling it- did anyone speak to Chrysalis directly. The first time it was Occupant, who sidled over to her after the last of the surface experiments had been deployed. “Um, my queen,” he said quietly, “private channel?”(535)

“Private channel,” Chrysalis muttered back, turning the knob on her suit at the same time Occupant did on his. “What is it?”

“Um,” Occupant mumbled, “I was just wondering, well, about the, um, the you-know-what-“

“Stand down,” Chrysalis sighed. “Obviously. Back to public and let me be.”

That, after Occupant announced to the others that the private channel was clear again, was the end of the first conversation.

The second conversation came hours later, after everyone had completed their tasks and had a long walk around the surface. Mission Control finally called them back in to prepare for launch; Amicitas would be overhead before long, and everyone wanted a full sleep before ESA-16 arrived, refueling went forward, and final tests were done to ensure Amicitas as spaceworthy.

One by one the astronauts returned to the craft, ferrying in over a hundred pounds of rock samples as they went. Soon Cherry Berry and Chrysalis stood alone on the surface, and Cherry walked over to Chrysalis and said, “Private channel, please.”

Chrysalis, without turning to face Cherry, switched over. “What is it?” she asked.

“I’m just wondering,” Cherry Berry said. “You got what you wanted. But you don’t seem to be enjoying it very much.”

Chrysalis considered and discarded half a dozen half-truths and outright lies before deciding on three-quarters truth. “Like Luna, I got what I asked for,” she said quietly. “And what I asked for didn’t get me what I wanted.”

“Oh, really?” Cherry asked, grinning at Chrysalis as she walked up beside her. “I thought you always wanted all of Equus under your hoof.” She put a hoof on Chrysalis’s shoulder and turned the queen around to face the Dreamer… and also to face Equus, which hung frozen in the sky just above the lander’s solar arrays.(536) This done, she reached up a hoof to the sky. “Now I, Cherry Berry, have all you ants right where I want you! Bwa, bwa, bwa ha hah!”

(536) The moon of Equus was tidally locked, always showing the same face to its mother planet. Thus anyone who stood on the surface for long enough would notice that the big blue shiny thing in the sky hardly moved at all. It never rose; it never set. The only apparent motion was a brief wobble once every twelve hours, when a certain alicorn moved the moon from where it was in orbit to where it should have been.

“Very funny,” Chrysalis grumbled. “That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

“Try it for yourself,” Cherry said, lowering her hoof. “It might make you feel better.”

“I feel just fine, pony,” Chrysalis said, turning her back on Cherry again.

Cherry rolled her eyes- Chrysalis could feel it, even with her back turned. “I’m going back in the ship now,” she said. “We launch in half an hour. Don’t linger too long, okay? If we miss our launch window, it’ll cut into our sleep period.”

“Just a few- wait, public channel.”

“Oh, right.”

Both astronauts switched their comms back to all-call.

“I’m going to be a couple minutes more,” Chrysalis said, now that everyone could hear. “I’ll be in well before launch. Just… thinking about things.”

“Copy, Twenty-four commander,” Spitfire’s voice replied from Horseton. “I’ll remind you in five minutes.”

“Thanks.”

Chrysalis waited until she saw the capsule hatch close behind Cherry Berry before turning her suit comms back to the private channel. She had no interest in her meditations(537) being disturbed by any raspy-voiced pegasus. (And seriously, what was up with that? Spitfire, Rainbow Dash- did Cloudsdale have some sort of epidemic twenty-odd years ago or what?)

(537) Or, more honestly, wool-gathering.

She turned around and looked at Equus again. It hung in the sky behind and just to the right of the ship, a big blue half-circle with a white rim. On a whim, she raised her hoof in imitation of Cherry, putting it over Equus as if doing so would give her power over it.

To her shock the entire planet- the entire world she’d planned to conquer- fit under the sole of her hoof-glove with room to spare. Everything she’d ever known- everything she’d ever wanted to rule- fit on that one small, insignificant dot on the infinite night.

The realization brought her to herself more suddenly than she expected, and she found she needed all four legs for balance. It wasn’t just that it was all so small, though that was a nasty shock to her system as well. But for the first time, she’d looked at the ground below her and realized it wasn’t below her anymore. It wasn’t down there; it was over there.

And she was over here.

Over here, on the moon. On an entirely other world.

She looked around at the brightly glowing gray rock and allowed herself a snort. Not much of a world if you asked her.

But… it wasn’t Equus.

The thought made her feel simultaneously very large and very, very small. Large, because she had traversed the gulf between these two worlds. Small, because the big, vast, wild world she’d come from could be concealed under a few inches of hoof and rubber.

A tune flowed through her mind again, and words followed:

This flight was going to be perfect
Then I let my final triumph slip away
Let the ponies have their fun
All my dreams and schemes undone
And vengeance left to wait another day

This flight was going to be perfect
But now I’m standing on this dustball all alone
I once thought I’d have it all
Now home looks so very small
My hoof can cover everything I’ve known

Her eyes strayed to the tiny, faint dots in the sky, almost drowned out by the sunlight reflected off the lunar surface. According to von Brawn and the other eggheads, each one of those was either its own world or was a sun with its own worlds, millions, billions of them.

So many worlds. And this one- the one she’d been born on- fit under her hoof-glove.

Look at all the stars and suns
Worlds encircling every one
A million planets waiting to be seen

Did I really never care?
Stop at one, leave it there?
One little planet for a little queen?

It’s not enough! I want more!
There’s still so much to explore
Who needs one when I could have it all

Yes. This felt right. Equus? Pooh. Pish and tosh. One piddling little world, full of annoying ponies? Why had that seemed like such a big thing to want? When there were millions, billions, uncountable others just like it out there?

One world? The universe was full of worlds. Staying on just one planet seemed… confining. Cramped. Petty.

Yes. Now she knew what she would do next. More or less.

And the thought of it brought laughter to her heart as she let the music take her one more time.

This flight was very nearly perfect
It’s shown me what the future has in store
Let the ponies lag behind
But the stars shall be all mine!
And Equestria …

… I’ll be back!

She let herself enjoy the diabolical laughter until she began feeling hoarse.

And why not laugh? In space no one can hear you cackle.

She no longer had to hide and cower from ponies. She now controlled more wealth than any changeling had ever possessed, most of it legally. Her subjects were happier, healthier, and more loyal to her than at any point in her reign. And she now had the trust of the pony most likely to invent some magic doohickey that would let her go beyond the moon, beyond the entire solar system, where she belonged.

One world? She’d conquer the galaxy, one spring-loaded flag at a time.

And she’d find whatever it was that dared to call her daughter, too.

She’d see it all.

I’m the first being of any race to leave hoofprints on the moon, she added. And I’ll be the first to the stars. So kiss my flank, Celestia. And Luna, you kiss the other one.

I still win.

Then, switching back to all-call, she said simply, “I’m coming in,” and made for the boarding ladder.

MISSION 24 REPORT

Mission summary: Rendezvous, dock with, and repair ESA-13 Amicitas; land on the lunar surface; plant flags on the moon; conduct scientific experiments and sample retrieval; return to Equus safely

Commander: Chrysalis
Pilot: Cherry Berry
Science Officer: Occupant
Engineer: Dragonfly
Mission specialists: Gordon the Griffon, Twilight Sparkle (ESA), Rainbow Dash (ESA)

Flight duration: 7 days, 5 hours, 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: First landing on the moon

Conclusions from flight: This concludes the race to the moon. The Equestrian adventure never ends.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

It was sleep-time, or so the schedule said. Dreamer and Amicitas were docked again, waiting for the arrival of the fuel which would let Amicitas return home. The seven astronauts had scattered among the four rooms available to them, each finding a measure of privacy for sleep…

… except for Chrysalis, who Cherry Berry found sitting alone in Amicitas’s bridge, staring forward out the large forward windows. “Hey,” she said, floating over to the flight couch next to the queen. “I couldn’t sleep. What about you?”

“Mmm,” Chrysalis grunted, keeping her eyes on the thick glass in front of her.

Cherry strapped herself into the seat. “We’ve come a long way from a hole in the side of a mesa, haven't we?” she asked.

“So the brain-bulls told me at every opportunity,” Chrysalis replied.

“Not just distance,” Cherry said. “The past two years… it’s been… really something, y’know?”

“Ah,” Chrysalis said, “the famous poetic muse of Ponyville strikes again.”

“Quit that!” Cherry said, giving Chrysalis’s coveralls a light swat. “You know exactly what I mean. Three years ago I would have screamed and run in terror at the sight of you. Even from Occupant. And you? I’ve watched you warm up. You used to seriously hate everypony. Now you’re just kind of-“

“Please spare me your delusions of my domestication,” Chrysalis growled. “I still hate your entire species. I just make… the occasional exception. For exceptional ponies.”

“Aw, thanks!”

“Did I say you were one of them?”

“Did you need to?”

The silence from the left-hand flight seat said everything.

“And the world’s changed, too,” Cherry went on. “When I go home it’s going to be to a Ponyville that has its own radio station. And I’ll be able to talk to my aunt Jubilee in Dodge Junction without a telegraph, instantly. And maybe before too long I’ll be able to talk to someone here, or on Bucephalous, just as easily.” She sighed. “Of course, I’ll need to get my own place to live. Carrot Top rented out my room to a changeling she hired for the harvest.”

“I don’t remember that,” Chrysalis said.

“You were busy.”

“True.”

Silence fell again.

“So,” Cherry said quietly, “what are you going to do now?”

“Plot, plan, and scheme. When I’ve got one ready I’ll let you know.” For the first time in the conversation Chrysalis moved, turning to face Cherry. “What are your plans?”

“Hmm,” Cherry said. “Well, I don’t know either. I mean, landing down there,” she said, gesturing at the sliver of moon visible through the windows, “that was the single most thrilling moment of flying I think I’ve ever had. Instruments only, totally blind. And I aced it.” She frowned. “Well, almost. If I’d started the burn two seconds earlier, I-“

“It was a good landing,” Chrysalis interrupted. “But what about it?”

“Well, this was my eleventh space flight,” Cherry said. “And, well, it’s nice to fly a rocket, and I think I’m getting better at it… but I like to fly other things, too.”

“You fly your biplane all the time,” Chrysalis said. “And you’re testing that triangle thing of Jet Set’s.”

“I want to fly just for myself again,” Cherry said. “I put so much time into the space program. I’m going to take the winter off, relax, maybe do some balloon charters. It was fun taking the Gold Horseshoe Gals on their semi-annual Las Pegasus trip, but I really had to squeeze that in between stuff.”

“So… are you quitting?” Chrysalis asked.

“Maybe?” Cherry replied. “I still want to fly rockets… but I don’t want any more long trips like this one for a while. Maybe I can take some tourist flights up or something, day-trips and like that.”

“Hmm,” Chrysalis shrugged. “Well, don’t make any final decisions just yet, pony. I’ve still got some thinking to do. We’ll talk more about this on the ground.”

“You already have a scheme, don’t you?”

“Scheming is what I do, pony,” Chrysalis replied. “Now go back to sleep and leave me to it.”

“Miss Berry?”

Something shook Cherry’s shoulder, and the dream of her floating through cherry-colored, cherry-flavored clouds burst apart, leaving her to lift her head off the pillow.

Five days had passed since the moon landing. Dreamer had returned uneventfully the morning before, and Amicitas had landed not long before sunset after an aerobraking maneuver to scrub off the excess velocity gained by returning from lunar orbit. Dreamer, its mission completed, was destined to become a museum piece, with the construction crews returning to Horseton to build a special building just to house it. Amicitas would return to its normal hangar at Cape Friendship, where Twilight Sparkle promised to keep working on the design, improving it for a future flight beyond the moon once the technology was ready.

“Quarantine and observation runs for another three days,” Cherry grumbled, blinking her eyes. “What are you doing-“ Her eyes snapped wide open as she recognized the changeling. “What are YOU doing here?”

The changeling, who remained by far the chunkiest changeling Cherry had ever seen, even if not so spherical as she had once been, shrugged. “Queen Chrysalis commands your presence, Miss Berry,” she said simply.

“No, no,” Cherry said. “That answers what you are doing here. I want to know what you are doing here.”

“Fetching you, Miss Berry,” said Neighing Mantis simply.

“Give me a straight answer or I might hurt you.”

“Oh, please?” Neighing Mantis asked. “All I wanted was some of that cherry-flavored love! It’s so sweet and fluffy! Nothing else is like it! So I just-“

“I am not your personal dessert cart!!” Cherry Berry shouted. “Now go work off some of those pounds!”

“But the queen-“

“Out!!”

Neighing Mantis waddled rapidly out, her security-guard uniform creaking alarmingly as she trotted out the door.

Drat, Cherry Berry thought.(538) I forgot to ask what Chrysalis wants…

(538) The words in her head were a great deal stronger, but Cherry would only admit to “drat”. That said, years of working odd jobs had given her a vocabulary of invective so rich and varied that once, long before the space race, when all four wheels had simultaneously come off a Manehattan trash wagon she’d been hauling, several veteran sailor ponies had stopped to take notes. To her mortification, one had actually been bold enough to ask for definitions.

(539) Chrysalis had her washbowl filled with specially aged algae-encrusted water specifically so she could look her finest. The wash took all the body out of her hair and buried it in a shallow unmarked grave out in the woods, just the way she liked it.(540)

(540) Apropos of nothing, the author just wanted to point out this is, at long last, the final footnote, and thanks you loyal readers for your patience. For those of you who were impatient and skipped these footnotes, he offers only the choicest raspberries. :p

Of course, since Chrysalis was also stuck under medical observation, Cherry didn’t have to work hard to find her. She found the queen undergoing her morning ablutions(539) while talking to Occupant: “And find out who the senior airship designer is at Jet Set’s company. See if we can’t talk him into a side job.”

“Just a moment, my queen.” Occupant was juggling pen and paper while trying to keep several other documents straight and, at the same time, pouring a cup of coffee… and doing all those things poorly. “G-give me a moment to c-catch-“

Sensing (a) imminent disaster and (b) imminent caffeine, Cherry Berry grabbed the mug out of Occupant’s magic. “All right,” she said, sipping carefully from the still-steaming mug, “What’s got you up so early?”

“Where have you been?” Chrysalis asked.

“In bed. Where you’re supposed to be, too,” Cherry said. “I looked at the clock. It’s only six twenty-two. Celestia hasn’t even raised the sun yet!”

“No rest for you, pony!” Chrysalis said cheerfully. “We have a press conference at eleven AM!”

“What for?”

“For our next big project!” Chrysalis said. “Occupant, tell her about the big project!”

“Um, my queen, I’m pretty sure she knows,” Occupant said. “It’s the space laboratory contract-“

“A hotel in space!” Chrysalis crowed. “Princess Bookworm will pay us to build and launch it, and the tourists will pay to spend a night or even a week up there! And we can charge people to get a week or two of training even if they don’t have the bits for an actual flight!”

“Really.” Carpenters could have tested their spirit levels on Cherry Berry’s voice. “And since when did you care about money?”

Chrysalis’s smirk didn’t even flicker. “Since a certain suicidally insane pink pony knocked on my front door and told me she was going to run my space program,” she said. “And speaking of, it’s time you got back to work!”

“Back t- back to wh-“ Cherry spluttered at the thought. “We’re in quarantine for another three days! Hearth’s Warming Eve is in five days! And I haven’t bought a single present yet!!”

“Would you like to borrow some of my catalogs?” Occupant asked. “I’ll try to find you some that still have the order forms. It’s a little late to get things shipped in time, but-“

“Just steal a few moon rocks out of what we brought back, and wrap those,” Chrysalis said. “We collected something like half a ton, didn’t we? No one will notice a few pounds less.”

Cherry felt her eyebrow twitching. She forced it to stay still. “Seriously, Chrysalis, what’s this really about?” she asked. “And no funny business. I told you I hadn’t decided whether or not to keep doing this.”

Chrysalis nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Here’s the truth. We won the race to the moon- and you and I both know the kind of corners we cut to do it.”

Cherry, sipping her coffee, nodded.

“If it had gone on another year- another four months, really- Twilight Sparkle would have won,” Chrysalis continued. “And although she might be handing off direct control of the space program to Moondancer, she’s not going to stop working on it. She will get those magic engines of hers to work, one way or another. Or she might invent some entirely new engine. von Brawn tells me we’ve already reached the practical limits of chemical rocketry.”

“Marked Knee was talking about something called ion propulsion,” Cherry said between sips of coffee. “But he also said our in-space electrical generation tech was about ten years away from even testing it.”

“By which time Twilight Sparkle’s program will be flitting around the solar system on zero-fuel magic rockets,” Chrysalis said. “Which would be fine by me, except that if we let it happen, then I won’t get a seat on any of those rockets.”

“Oho.” Cherry sipped the last of her coffee and held out the mug to Occupant for a refill.

“Oho is right, pony. I intend to keep flying. I want more firsts. And I think the only way I get to do that is if I make myself indispensable to the Equestrian Space Agency’s plans.” Chrysalis took a mug in her magic and intercepted Occupant’s pour. “Which means no let-up in activity, at least for the time being. We have to press our advantage, or at least our current equal standing, while we have it.”

Cherry sniffed at what ended up in her mug, the dregs of the pot. “So, another space race, then?” she asked. “Where to now? Bucephalous?”

“Hardly.” Chrysalis smugly sipped her coffee. “Like I said, in the long term, we lose any future space races. No, what we’re doing instead is division of labor. Complete partnership.” She smirked a little wider, sipped, and added the word, “Symbiosis.”

“Big words,” Cherry said, sipping her own coffee. “What do they mean in practice?”

“Simply put, CSP is going to focus on two things,” Chrysalis said. “Namely, astromare training and long-term space infrastructure. Let Twilight Sparkle’s classmates work out the problems with magic rockets. They’ll be good at that. But we don’t need magic rockets to put permanent ships in space. And we don’t need magic rockets to train new crew on the ground- or to keep existing crew up to speed. And the more we do both, the more ESA will rely on our doing so.”

“Sounds fair,” Cherry Berry admitted. “So why don’t you just say this in public? Why all the rigamarole with a space hotel?”

Chrysalis took a long pull on her mug. When she lowered it, her smile broadened just a little bit more. “Because,” she said, as if it explained everything in the universe, “it’s me.”

Cherry Berry groaned and buried her face in the coffee mug.

“So, get finished with that coffee and come along!” Chrysalis added, setting down her own mug. “We’ve got no time to spare!” Striking a visionary pose and pointing one hoof into the future, she shouted, “Let’s get on with the next stage of Changeling Space Program!”

“Um, my queen,” Occupant said hesitantly, “what are you pointing at? There’s nothing on that wall.”

Chrysalis dropped her hoof and slumped. “Why do I continue to feed you?” she asked quietly.

“Because I like doing paperwork,” Occupant said. “You told me so yourself.” He blinked, then added, “Um, that was one of those questions I wasn’t supposed to answer, wasn’t it?”

“Just get us some fresh coffee,” Chrysalis growled.

THE END

Author's Note

The climactic scene of the story was more or less in vision from the start of the story. It was firmly in my head, if not on paper, before I wrote any of Dragonfly's dreams in The Maretian. It may seem a bit of a cheat to some of you, but the only difference between it and Starlight Glimmer's redemption is that I didn't put the friendly voice in a lavender body.

The actual mission (which got flown twice, because I screwed up the video settings the first time) went smooth as butter both times. I spent more time setting up the "lookit all the kerbals on the moon" shot the second time than I did actually LANDING. And, besides, the focus of this chapter is endings and beginnings- the ending of this story, the setup for how things are twenty-seven months later at the beginning of Maretian. We've seen the trip to and from the moon by now. It was time to give Chrysalis center stage...

... well, it was once I got Project Stardust out of the way. A quick word on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon

Yes, it really got built, multiple times. Yes, it was a truly ridiculous concept. Hell, Saddam Hussein was supposedly working on his own at the time of Operation Desert Storm. And yes, within extreme limitations, it actually works.

For projectiles. Even with the staged explosives, the G-forces for anything that was actually built would turn any crew into paste. And, again, you can't aim it once you've built it. It could be made to work, possibly... with a miles-long barrel, perfect timing and no errors with the explosives, and other things that in the real world will result in a lethal fireball, because nothing goes 100% perfect.

But it still works better than the giant one-charge cannon used in Jules Verne's Journey to the Moon. That wouldn't have turned the heroes into paste; it would have turned them into PAINT. Flat crunchy greasy spots, that's all.

All in all, Laika the diamond dog was lucky there was an alicorn in the neighborhood.

Thanks to everyone for your support of this project over the years. I'm still writing things, and streaming games on Twitch, and selling stuff. Here's the links one more time:

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet
Ko-Fi - https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet
Twitch - https://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rpCsd1nSqDvZ72ovLVcug
My company - https://wlpcomics.com/shop/

And the three special pics in this chapter are all by Jason Meador:
https://www.deviantart.com/texasuberalles

BTW, there will be at least one more post to this story- a link to a commemorative video I'm going to edit together. I might also go back and do a short chapter for CSP-15 like I meant to.

As for print versions: thinking very seriously about doing it myself, this time, and possibly also doing a Maretian re-release. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for everything, folks.

Appendix: Who's What in CSP

NOTES ON DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CARTOON CANON AND THIS STORY:

The story begins near the end of winter after the Season 6 episode "A Hearth's Warming Tale."

As a general rule, any episodes which don't directly conflict with the story have happened in Changeling Space Program. This does not, sadly, include the Season 6 finale "To Where and Back Again," for a number of reasons.

None of the comics are canon, ESPECIALLY not the one where the Mane Six walks up a rope to the moon.

For purposes of Changeling Space Program, the following things are established information about changelings. The items listed here are listed because they probably conflict with cartoon canon.

* Queen Chrysalis is not the only queen the changelings have ever known. She definitely has not been locked for centuries inside a volcano. She was raised by the previous queen and, as per changeling tradition, betrayed and overthrew her own mother (after a couple of failed attempts).

* Chrysalis is the mother of some, but by no means all, of the members of her hive.

* Changelings are mildly empathic, being able to taste emotions almost exactly the same way they taste food. They do not have a hive mind of any kind.

* Changelings can derive nourishment of sorts from most positive emotions, but not negative ones. Love is by far their favorite food. Changelings can eat and drink in small amounts, but they only need to do this to generate various kinds of goo for building nests, cocoons, venom, etc. Most changelings can only hold a very small amount of food or drink inside their bodies- just enough to maintain their cover.

* Changeling drones specialize in their duties according to their talents. The best actors and liars become infiltrators, who hide among ponies, harvest love, and return it to the hive. The stronger and more active changelings become warriors and guards. Those changelings not particularly gifted in either battle or deception become support staff- hive builders, youngling teachers, bureaucrats, etc. (Intelligence is not a trait Chrysalis has in the past encouraged in her drones.)

* Changelings can absorb emotional energy both passively (just by being around strong emotion) or actively (magically draining their victims). Their favorite method is to kidnap ponies, take them to a safe place, put them in a cocoon, and inject an intoxicating venom which causes happy, love-filled dreams, which the changelings can then harvest. Ponies can be kept in pods for a considerable time, but not indefinitely; the usual benchmark used for release is, "When is somepony likely to start searching for this pony?"

* Changeling infiltrators bring collected love back to the hive and either give it to the queen or store it in a sort of magic-honey form in cocoons. The queen then redistributes this love to the rest of the hive. Changelings can go quite a long time without feeding, but not forever; a year without feeding can kill a changeling.

* The changeling hive is hidden in a cave with a very nondescript, smallish entrance at the foot of a mesa deep in the Badlands. The interior is vast and not a little bit creepy, but parts of it are beautiful.

* Changelings can fly with abilities comparable to pegasi. They can fire magic blasts or use telekinesis like unicorns do. It's possible they can perform more complex magic with training, but Chrysalis hasn't ordered such teaching. They can't teleport, and they don't get special talent spells comparable to cutie mark abilities (unless you count their racial ability to transform into anything).

* Changelings run the full gamut of possible personalities, but they default towards being good-natured, loyal to queen and hive, predatory on ponies in a nothing-personal-just-business sort of way, and apparently dim-witted due to relative lack of exposure to new ideas.

THE VARIOUS SPACE FLIGHT PROJECTS OF EQUUS: (not complete, subject to editing)

Equestria- Equestrian Space Agency

Changeling Hive - Changeling Space Program

Minotaurs - Minotaur Rocket Project (consolidates with CSP)

Crystal Empire - Crystal Empire Spaceflight Project (consolidates with ESA)

Griffons - Griffonstone Space Exploration (consolidates with CSP)

Dragons - Dragon Space Initiative (consolidates with CSP)

Prance and Germaney - Prancy-Germane Joint Space Initiative (eventually consolidates with ESA)

Stalliongrad - HossCosmos (consolidates with ESA)

Neighpon / Kirin - Moon Flying Lightly (translated)

Yakyakistan - Yak Moon Shot (consolidates with CSP)

Diamond Dogs - Project Stardust

PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS OF NOTE (alphabetical)

Not included: the Mane 6, the ruling princesses of Equestria, Spike, Shining Armor, Starlight Glimmer

AD ASTRA - Unicorn. Observer designated by the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society to witness space launches and flights and to confirm achievement of milestones for the purpose of awarding prizes. Is particularly fond of speculative fiction.

AD INEXPLORATA - Pegasus. Professor of Astronomy, Celestia University, Manehattan. Member of the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society.

ALEXANDER POPOFF - Yak, electronics scientist associated with the Yakyakistan space program.

BEANCOUNTER - Changeling drone, support. Chrysalis's chief clerk. He can alphabetize files and perform basic mathematical functions without even thinking, and usually does.

BEN FETLOCK - Earth pony. Attorney at law serving Horseton and the greater Hayseed Swamps area.

BRIEF ABSTRACT - Unicorn, born in Canterlot. Associate science editor for the Manehattan Times.

CALENDAR WHEEL - Chief of the tribal ponies of Tenochitlan.

CANTERLOT ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY - The longest-standing organization of astronomical study on Equus. Through donations from an anonymous source they fund prizes for achieving notable firsts in space flight and offer exclusive short-term contracts for specific milestones. Twilight Sparkle is a junior associate member from her school days.

CAPE FRIENDSHIP - Rocket launch site for the Equestrian Space Agency. Sited on the northern peninsula of Horseshoe Bay, not far from Baltimare.

CARAPACE - See Heavy Frosting.

CARRIED INTEREST - Earth pony, native of Manehattan. A young accountant with tons of ambition.

CHERRY BERRY - Earth pony. Cutie mark talent: eating cherries. Not particularly good at growing them. Chief pilot and overall commander of the Changeling Space Program. CEO of Cherry's Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, Inc.

CHRYSALIS - Queen of the changelings. Seeks global conquest, but doesn't want to risk being wiped out by potentially much more numerous and powerful ponies. Has delegated authority over the space program to "the pony" but still expects her own orders to be obeyed. #2 on CSP's flight roster.

CLEVERLY CLEARLY - Earth pony. One of the most influential (and prolific) children's book authors of the previous fifty years.

CLICKBUG - Occupant's replacement and subordinate at the changeling hive. Renowned for her lack of hygiene.

COOL DRINK - A cover identity used by Queen Chrysalis when she wishes to infiltrate high pony society. The cover identity lives near Appleoosa or Dodge Junction, depending on who's asking.

CRAWLEY - Changeling drone, warrior. Chief weather officer at Horseton Space Center and liaison with the Equestrian weather service.

DERPY HOOVES - The only pony willing to deliver mail to the only postbox in the Badlands.

DOUBLE FACE - Unicorn, former guard pony interested in nothing more than his own comfort. While he was prisoner of the changelings, his form was used as a frequent disguise by changeling infiltrators traveling to and from the hive. Unimportant to the story, but he refuses to leave.

DRAGONFLY - Changeling drone warrior with unusually large wings; fastest member of Chrysalis's hive. Enjoys making things and extremely dangerous situations. Chief of manufacturing at Cherry's Rocket Parts. #3 on CSP's flight roster.

EGGPLANT - The name given Neighing Mantis, changeling drone guard, after she overfed on a certain pony's happy dreams. Even after many months of dieting, still noticeably fat.

ELYTRON - Changeling drone, chief of Chrysalis's royal guards. Acts as regent when Chrysalis is away from the hive.

EYE WALL - Pegasus; weather supervisor for the Hayseed Swamps area, including Horseton Space Center.

FAUNTLEROY - Prince of Yakyakistan; pilot in the Yakyakistan space program.

FIDDLEWING - Changeling drone, scout. Can generate a wide range of sounds from rubbing his wings together in flight, including a piercing shriek that carries for miles.

FIREBALL - Chief pilot of the dragon rocket program. Also only pilot of the dragon rocket program. One of two known people from Equus who have gone to space when they really didn't want to go.

FISH EYE - Pegasus. Cutie mark talent: cameras. Ran away from a fishing village to pursue his passion. Employed by Flim and Flam for their television enterprise.

FLIM and FLAM FLIMFLAM - Unicorns. Confidence artists with a high technical skill surpassed only by their gifts of gab and their inerrant ability to recognize the precise moment to flee town.

GANDY DANCER - Earth pony construction worker. In reality a changeling infiltrator, who replaced the original after the pony fell off a skyscraper under construction. Legendary among Manehattan construction workers for his lack of fear of heights.

GENEVA the GRIFFON - Attorney of record for GWYNETH the GRIFFON and Queen CHRYSALIS. Not aware that the two are in fact the same person.

GEORGE BULL - Former member of the Minotaur Rocket Project, specializing in mathematics and logic.

GEORGE COWLEY - Former member of the Minotaur Rocket Project, specializing in aerodynamics.

GERRY GOODMANE - Earth pony. Cutie mark talent: maintaining his own mane. Anchorpony for the Voice of Equestria television channel.

Dr. GINGERBREAD HOUSE - Earth pony. Canterlot's most talented, and most resented, diagnostician. Is, for reasons unknown except to Chrysalis, susceptible to blackmail.

GIRDLER - Changeling drone, infiltrator. Their crippling shyness and uncontrollable stutter made them totally unsuitable as a warrior, but acted as a boon in pretending to be a pony.

GODDARD the GRIFFON - Elderly griffon scientist mocked for his work on liquid-powered rocket engines until the space race began. Chief financial officer at Cherry's Rocket Parts.

GORDON the GRIFFON - Sole pilot of the Griffonstone rocket program. His buddies call him Gordo.

GUTS and STENOCARO - Changeling drones, guards. No one has stolen a building from them yet.

GWYNETH the GRIFFON - An alias of Queen Chrysalis.

HEAVY FROSTING - Pony alias of changeling infiltrator Carapace. Passionate about cooking, baking, etc. Operates Horseton Space Center's gift shop and maintains the astromare quarters.

HOBBLE JIMENEZ - Earth pony of the Nickeraguan tribe of Tenochitlan. Forcibly "volunteered" to fly in space to verify its safety for the tribal ponies' mysterious master.

HONEY LOCUST - See Skip Town.

HORSETON - A village at the extreme southeastern edge the Hayseed Swamps, near the coast of the Celestial Ocean, mostly inhabited by hillbilly earth ponies.

HORSETON SPACE CENTER - The new complex built by the changelings for space launches after the desert proved too potentially dangerous. Sited on the coast of the Celestial Ocean on a tidal inlet called Muck Lake, which marks the separation point between the Hayseed Swamps (part of Equestria) and the Forbidden Jungles (not part of Equestria).

JEBEDIAH - See Cherry Berry.

JET SET - Unicorn, of the Canterlot nouveau-riche. Majority owner of Equestria's largest airship line and airship construction yards. Vain and arrogant. Constantly seeking the next "in" thing.

KERATIN - See Sawbones McColt.

LAIKA - Diamond dog astronaut, being trained by the Great Designer for Project Stardust.

LEAFCUTTER - Changeling drone, guard, of no great importance.

LEONID - Lead pilot of the Yakyakistan rocket program.

LEPID - Changeling drone, infiltrator. Employed at CSP as a gofer.

LUCKY CRICKET - Changeling drone infiltrator. Lives a generally charmed life. Vehicle assembly supervisor and recovery team leader. #4 on CSP's flight roster.

MARKED KNEE - Former member of the Minotaur Rocket Project, specializing in electronics.

NEIGHING MANTIS - See Eggplant.

OCCUPANT - Changeling drone (birthname: Pedipalp) with pronounced buck teeth and an addiction to mail-order. Formerly a door guard and mail-pony, he is now flight director and chief administrator for Horseton Space Center. #5 on CSP's flight roster.

PARASOL - Changeling drone, infiltrator. Suffers from involuntary kleptomania.

PEDIPALP - See Occupant.

PINK MARE - Possibly the most popular (after Saltlick) of Equestria's infant technomancy-driven video game industry. The game involves navigating a maze, eating candy, and either avoiding or shooing off monsters called "party poopers."

PLASTRON - Changeling drone, support. CSP Health and Safety Officer, a job he was given specifically so he could be safely ignored.

PLECTRUM - Changeling drone, support. Hive quartermaster. Spends his days polishing armor and weapons while devising new and innovative means to ensure they are never actually issued to warriors that might damage them.

PROBODOBODYNE - A joint holding company owned by CSP and ESA 50-50, formed to oversee the development of automated space probes.

SAWBONES McCOLT - Earth pony cover identity of Keratin, a changeling drone who voluntarily exiled himself following Chrysalis's rise to the throne. Has spent a pony generation as a doctor in various places, most recently Appleoosa. His loyalty to the hive is considered doubtful. He hasn't disobeyed any orders, but Chrysalis has been careful not to give him orders likely to be disobeyed.

SILVER STAR - Sheriff, and effectively the town government, of Appleoosa. Less prone to panic or xenophobia than most ponies.

SKIP TOWN - Common alias for Honey Locust, changeling drone, infiltrator. Less than diligent about paying debts, even by changeling infiltrator standards.

STINGER CHARLIE - Changeling drone, warrior. Recovery and rocket assembly crew.

TROPHALLAXIS - Changeling drone, support. Chief negotiator and fixer for Chrysalis's hive. Generally despised for being two-faced beyond even changeling standards. Also known as "Pukey"... except when his services are needed.

TYMBAL - Changeling drone, worker. Not smart even by changeling standards, but he can read text off the page in a deep, authoritative voice.

UNCLE POINTY - Changeling drone, scout. (Actual name: Fossorius.) His passion for reading makes him really bad at his job.

UPPER CRUST - Unicorn, of the Canterlot old aristocracy. Vain and arrogant wife of JET SET who has never yet seen a need for a personal verbal filter.

WARNER von BRAWN - Former head of the Minotaur Rocket Project. Chief rocket designer, Changeling Space Center.

WIDOWER - Changeling drone, infiltrator.

WIGGLE T. PLUG - Earth pony. Technical pony working for the Voice of Equestria television network.

Chapter 1: How Hard Could It Be?

In the depths of the Badlands, where few ponies ventured and even fewer ponies wanted to, there stood a single, lonely mailbox on a post next to the entrance of a nondescript-looking cave. The box had no name; merely a number, and that number was a single digit.

Some mailponies might have questioned why tens of thousands of different names might appear on the letters delivered to that box over the years, but none of those ponies would have agreed to a mail route that required hundreds of miles of flight from the closest post office in Appleoosa. In fact, only one pony- a special contractor, not really a proper member of the Equestrian Postal Service at all- was willing to fly the route once per week.

This was just as well, because it meant that Derpy Hooves, good-natured and less prone to panicky fear than most ponies, became the one pony in Equestria who could turn up at the entrance to Queen Chrysalis’s hive and not be immediately captured and cocooned. In fact, the guard at the entrance to the hive had stopped using his disguise around her long ago, and on this particular day he waved at her as she descended to Occupant, Box One, The Badlands with a middling-full saddlebag of mail.

“Hi, Derpy!” Occupant called up to her. (His given name was Pedipalp, for the large flat fangs that became buck teeth in every disguise he attempted. He’d always hated the name, and the day the queen granted his petition for the name change remained the happiest day of his life. He had a certain slightly-confused but cheerful pegasus to thank for that.) “What have you got for me today?”

“A big bunch of the usual,” Derpy smiled, landing and pulling a thick bundle of junk mail from the saddlebag. “Also a few things for your friends… another bill collector notice for Skip Town, some legal papers and a thank-you note for Ms. Cool Drink, a letter for Gwyneth the Griffon…” The more important letters flopped onto the sandy ground as Derpy fished out a bundle of newspapers from the bottom of the saddlebag. “And Mr. Double Face’s copies of the Canterlot Herald and the Manehattan Times.”

Occupant looked up from his beloved bundle of junk mail. He lived for the weekly junk mail; it made him feel, for a little while, like the most important changeling in the hive instead of one good for not much else other than lookout duty. But Queen Chrysalis always wanted the newspapers immediately. He would have to put off looking with longing at the Elements of Harmony Commemorative Chess Set (1), customized checkbooks with pictures of kittens, puppies, and parasprites, and the newest furniture listings from the rent-to-own outlet in Dodge Junction.

(1) Mouth-carved by the Crystal Empire’s greatest sculptors in pure crystal. Available for five easy payments, limited time offer. Once this set is sold out it will never be offered again. Don’t miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to celebrate the triumphs of Equestria’s greatest heroes (and the baby dragon too). For an extra fee also receive the chessboard commemorating the Castle of the Two Sisters. Shipping and handling included. Also still available: the Wonderbolts commemorative plate series, brought back by special demand! Supplies are running out, so order today!

“Thanks, Derpy,” he said, picking up the dropped letters and gripping them in one perforated hoof along with the junk mail. “Could you wait a few minutes while I make sure my friends don’t have anything going out today?”

“Sure,” Derpy said, smiling her happy smile. “Do you need any more stamps today?”

“I think we’re good for now,” Occupant said. Which was true. He’d never bought stamps from Derpy, or from anypony. Changelings almost never had to buy anything, not when they could use other ponies’ bits or just sneak off with whatever they wanted. “But Heavy Frosting made a basket of muffins for you, if you want some.”

Derpy Hooves’ eyes widened and almost focused. “Thornberry again?” she asked. “I love thornberry muffins!”

“No, it’s prickly pear this time,” Occupant replied. “The first ripe fruits of the season, you see.” He reached into the cupola carved just inside the cave entrance and brought out the basket. Carapace, who had spent years prior to the failed Canterlot invasion in deep cover as the pastry chef Heavy Frosting, was one of the very few changelings who could cook… but he could really cook. “Let me know what you think, okay?”

As Derpy opened the basket and took out the first, still-warm muffin, Occupant rushed down the cave into the heart of the hive. The more quickly he delivered the newspapers, the more quickly he could read about how his two bits a month could help starving children in Yakyakistan…

In the innermost depths of the hive, Queen Chrysalis sulked. She was not a happy changeling. She couldn’t tell for certain whether she was bored, depressed, or frustrated, but she was certainly not pleased, intrigued, enthused, content, cheerful, chipper, carefree, or any other emotions she could think of that began with C. And “happy” was so far down the list that she’d have to send a diamond dog digging halfway to Mareitania to find it.

I should be in Canterlot, she thought, ruling my new domain. I didn’t make any mistakes. I played those ponies like violins. I broke up the Elements of Harmony as nice and neat as you please. I came this close to getting that Twilight Sparkle to kill Cadance for me, and I had a backup plan in place if they escaped. And when even that failed, which I could not have prevented, I was still able to stall for time and weaken Shining Armor until my changelings broke down his precious shield. I even had Celestia herself down for the count. Nothing should have been able to stop me.

One moment I’m on top of the world, with Equestria’s last line of defense about to be swarmed over, literally, by my warriors, and one second later we all get a painful one-way ticket back to the Badlands.

Nobody told me that love magic could supercharge a shield spell strong enough to do that. Who COULD have known? It’s the kind of thing that you’d see in one of those awful Daring Do pulp books, like when she escaped from the tidal vent Ahuizotl had caged her in because a balancing boulder that had sat undisturbed for thousands of years chose that exact moment to topple in just the right direction to break the cage sealing her in and letting her-

Chrysalis rubbed the base of her horn. She’d been reading far too many bad pony fiction books lately, for lack of anything better to do.

The changeling giving her infiltration report paused, noticing the queen’s discomfort, but continued with a wave of the royal hoof. Chrysalis was only half-listening anyway. After the failed invasion the hive had had to go back to subsistence raiding and infiltration. It said a lot about her skills as a monarch, Chrysalis thought, that within a few months the hive was doing modestly better than it had been before the invasion… which was still a borderline existence, but there was a little bit of margin and a few luxuries. The changeling network had cautiously extended itself across Equestria, careful to keep its disruptions to a minimum, never doing anything egregious enough to cause the ponies to come looking for them.

But even this long after the invasion, Chrysalis kept well away from both Canterlot and Ponyville. She was not ready for a rematch with Celestia or Luna, and as much as she wanted revenge against Equestria’s newest princess she wasn’t ready to risk open war for personal gratification… not, at least, until she had a foolproof plan.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t come up with a foolproof plan. In fact, she couldn’t even think of a functional plan. She’d had a thousand ideas, and she’d thought of ten thousand ways for them to fail catastrophically. At this point she’d filed and numbered them, and every day she would take a hundred or so out of the files, look them over, and try to find some way to upgrade them to Not Suicidally Stupid. And then she would go read another pulp novel to take her mind off how depressing it was.

“… and after I staged the fight with her, I went to the bar and pretended to get broken-hearted drunk. After establishing that I staggered out and vanished into an alleyway. I then removed my victim from the cocoon, made it look like he’d just been mugged, and circled around the neighborhood, coming back disguised as a patrol cop who just happened to ‘find’ our poor, confused, hungover victim. I escorted him home to his wife, topped off my reserves on their overflow makeup love, and left before they could ask my name. I then used the Double Face disguise and my victim’s bits to buy a ticket to Dodge, and from there back home.”

Queen Chrysalis, still brooding on how dreary was her lot, let the silence stretch to an awkward length before she realized the report was complete. “Oh! Um, yes, very well done, Widower. Take tomorrow off, then use Double Face to take train to Rainbow Falls. It’s not trade time, but see if there’s anything unusual among the permanent traders there.”

Behind her someone cleared his throat.

“Oh, yes,” she muttered, “and pick up some more pencils while you’re at it. We’re running low.”

“Please,” said the handsome unicorn stallion chained to the wall, a heavy-duty magic restraining ring clamped around his horn. The changeling hive kept about a hundred or so ponies in cocoons full time, not counting victims who had to be returned to the wild lest others begin looking for them. Double Face was the only pony within the hive not cocooned, because (so far as Chrysalis could tell) the pony had no love for anypony or anything. He was, in changeling terms, a dry well. Seeing no point in wasting a perfectly good cocoon, Chrysalis had chained him up instead.

Double Face had been a prisoner since about a month after the invasion, and he’d taken fairly well to it. He never complained about the food. He was invariably polite and even-tempered, and he knew when to make conversation and when not to disturb Chrysalis’s brooding. His only request was the crossword puzzles from Equestria’s leading newspapers as a way of relieving the boredom. Since the puzzles usually had prizes associated with them, he also asked that they be mailed back, which Chrysalis allowed.

She was certain Double Face was a spy sent by Celestia, but neither she nor any changeling had been able to find any coded messages in the crossword puzzles. Possibly the puzzles allowed him to receive messages, but he wasn’t sending any out. So he wasn’t doing Celestia any good… and his face, a face nopony would miss, that nopony was really looking for, allowed Chrysalis to send her subjects all over Equestria. So… why?(2)

(2) Since Double Face is generally unimportant to the rest of the story, the truth may be told; he was a very minor functionary in the Royal Guard who went looking for, and found, the changeling hive in direct violation of standing orders. He knows full well that he’ll be sacked for insubordination the moment he sets foot in Canterlot once more, so he’s content to remain imprisoned, getting free room and board, letting his back pay build up until he’s rescued or released or whatever. The crossword puzzles are a way of sending out messages, but after the first simple message- “Captured, treated well, situation not urgent”- he has sent no codes or information of any kind. He has, however, won a skateboard, a bespoke suit at a Canterlot fashion shop, and a set of silver hay forks.

(3) A fact which had occupied Double Face’s mind briefly, before he decided that he had a soft thing going and didn’t want to risk it by trying to escape a deep, dark cave lit only by glowing green blob things and the occasional torch, then crossing over a hundred miles of desert with tens of thousands of angry changelings in hot pursuit, loaded down with his own body weight in cash. He limited his interest in the mound of money to the occasional conversation with Chrysalis about fun ways of spending it. These conversations were usually one-sided.

The clatter of gold interrupted her chain of thought. (Chain? More like a Hearth’s Warming toy train set, Chrysalis thought. My mind forever going round in circles.) Widower had dumped the remaining contents of her last victim’s wallet on the bit pile, as was customary, before departing.

It was a very, very large pile of bits.(3) Changelings almost never spent their own money, after all.

Occupant brushed past Widower in the doorway to Chrysalis’s chamber. “My Queen! My Queen!” he chirped eagerly, bouncing up to the throne. “The mail’s here! Here are the newspapers!” He dumped the papers and letters at the foot of the throne, hopping back and forth, eager to get back to his dreary, unimaginative little drone life.

“Thank you,” Chrysalis said listlessly. “The letters are on the table by the door. Please pick them up as you leave.”

“Yes, my Queen!” Occupant chirped, leaving about twice as quickly as he had arrived. Please, Chrysalis thought, please let him not send off for another book club membership…

“May I?” Double Face asked politely, rattling his chains in the vague direction of the newspapers.

Chrysalis shrugged, levitated the week’s worth of the Manehattan Times over to her prisoner, and then looked over the handful of letters. Legal papers for Ms. Cool Drink; one of her personal aliases had just had her land grant approved for the mesa that rose above the changeling hive. Cool Drink, who depending on need hailed from Dodge, Las Pegasus or the south shore of Horseshoe Bay, had made occasional appearances in Manehattan and Baltimare to claim plots of Badlands property for “future mining interests.” In exchange for help with this effort, she had done various favors, mostly involving providing inside information, for influential ponies, and one such had sent a gracious thank-you note.

Ms. Cool Drink was in a low-level bidding war for various properties, not just in the Badlands, with Gwyneth the Griffon, another of Chrysalis’s disguises. Gwyneth’s letter was an apology from a griffon-realm solicitor for failing in the most recent conflict between the two. Of course, if you combined the two false personas’ land grants over the past six months, you would find that three-quarters of the land within a twenty mile radius around the hive was now owned outright by the two jointly.(4) All the better, Chrysalis reasoned, to keep outsiders far away.

(4) And the beauty of it was, between some quid pro quo here, some sweet talking there, and the occasional, sparing use of mind control when all else failed, Chrysalis hadn’t spent one red cent on the whole affair. Almost all the Badlands claims were free from the Canterlot bureaucracy to encourage future settlement. The other properties were likewise cheap as free, including safehouses in several pony towns, a mostly vertical plot of land in the town of Griffonstone, and several very large and partially submerged land claims near where the Hayseed Swamps began to blend into the Forbidden Jungles.

And then there was the envelope stamped FINAL NOTICE LEGAL ACTION PENDING. Skip Town, or Honey Locust as his given name was, had not paid attention to past lectures on the importance of not leaving unfinished business behind. Worse yet, he’d used the hive’s address for his cover identity without permission, a major no-no. Perhaps a prolonged stint at digging duty, expanding the hive the hard way, would teach-

“Oh, I say,” Double Face muttered, “this is most interesting.”

“What is?” Chrysalis asked. Not that she cared what the probably-a-spy pony found interesting, but if it took her mind of the tedium of daily routine that was fine with her.

“Seems a large chunk of what I was taught in boarding school has just gone by the boards,” the unicorn replied. “The entire nature of the universe turned upside-down and inside-out. Science these days, you know. Next they’ll invent trains that don’t need tracks and ways for earth ponies to cast unicorn spells.”

“Thrilling,” Chrysalis drawled sarcastically. “But what’s the specific change you’re talking about?”

“Quoting from day before yesterday’s Times,” Double Face began, continuing in the usual sing-song I-am-reading-a-thing-aloud voice, “Princess Twilight Sparkle’s recent release of a groundbreaking scientific thesis has the entire astronomical community in uproar. In her thesis Twilight Sparkle, recently crowned Princess of Friendship by-“

“You can skip that stuff,” Chrysalis hissed.

“Er… blah blah blah, she, um, stated that, contrary to the theories of Clover the Clever, the world is not a flat circle enclosed by a vault of heavens from which the stars hang and along which the sun and moon are guided by the princesses Celestia and Luna who, um, more blah blah I’m afraid. Paragraph. Rather, according to the, um, blah blah Sparkle, the world we know is a spherical planet floating in a presumably airless void, through which meteors, comets, other planets and stars fly, and through which the sun and moon are nudged through the immense power and particular cutie mark talents of Celblahblah and Lublah.”

“Don’t make a joke of it,” Chrysalis muttered. “You’re not that funny.”

“Pardon, Your Majesty. Paragraph. Princess Luna, in a special interview with this Times reporter, confirmed the accuracy of Twilight Sparkle’s findings. When asked why she never corrected Clover the Clever, Luna replied, ‘Because she never asked us.’ Paragraph. Twilight Sparkle’s thesis goes on to say that the moon and planets are not merely spheres in the sky but other worlds, and that it might be possible in the future for ponies to visit those worlds. Princess Luna, the only known pony to have visited another world, reported that she was magically imprisoned within the moon’s fabric and never actually set hoof on the moon’s surface, and that when it comes to being the first mare on the moon, quote, ‘We do not count.’”

“She slept through an invasion of the capitol,” Chrysalis grumbled. “You better believe she doesn’t count.”

“Paragraph. This speculation in Twilight Sparkle’s otherwise excellently documented and defended thesis has raised the hopes of visionaries to make the dreams of science fiction fairy tales into reality. Already multiple companies are organizing from Cloudsdale to the Crystal Empire, competing to put the first pony into outer space. Paragraph. When asked about this frenzy, Twilight Sparkle said, ‘Who knows what wonders and treasures await us on other worlds? I can’t wait to see what we find on the moon, or Bucephalus, or elsewhere in the skies.’”

The newspaper rustled. “Pardon,” Double Face muttered, “the rest of the article’s on an inside page… oh bother, I’m afraid the rest of it is nothing but the blah-blah you don’t want to hear.”

Something began tapping like a woodpecker on a door inside Chrysalis’s mind. She got out of her throne and walked over to Double Face’s semi-comfortable corner. “Let me see that paper,” she commanded, plucking it off his desk with her magic. It took a moment for her to find the quote again, and once she did, she stared at it for a full minute or more.

Who knows what wonders and treasures await us on other worlds?

I can’t wait to see what we find on the moon…

Never in her long life had Chrysalis seriously thought of the moon as a place a pony (or changeling) could go. It was a thing, an object of immense magical power, which until recently had served as a mystic prison for a spirit of wrath…

… I have got to stop reading those horrible novels, she thought to herself.

But if someone could go to the moon, touch the moon… claim the moon… then they could claim its power.

And with that power… well, it would knock little Luna out of the fight, at least, and it would let her fight Celestia with a major advantage, even without a geeky dweeby meatheaded romantic like Shining Armor to draw on for extra power.

And what about the magic power stored in the other planets, even in the meteors that lit up the skies now and again? There was untold might up there for the taking, enough to conquer Equestria. No, enough to conquer the world.

And all I have to do is… get there first.

Chrysalis thought it over very carefully. The danger, of course, would be that the princesses would sabotage her efforts before she was successful. Precautions would have to be taken to keep her efforts secret, or else the ponies would attack…

… wait a minute. Maybe not. These were ponies, after all. The namby-pamby peaceniks in Canterlot would only attack the hive if they thought the changelings were attacking again. Which we are, Chrysalis admitted, but not directly. So long as I’m declaring my peaceful intent to explore space, they’ll either have to leave me alone or admit that their whole ‘friendship is magic’ mantra is a lie. Which they’ll never do.

And if they sabotage me? Then I can reveal their plot, play the innocent victim, and force them to back down. And the beauty is, I won’t need to sabotage them. They’ll be too concerned for the safety of their precious ponies, so they’ll be slow and careful… while I, with my mighty indestructible changelings, can plow right ahead. So I lose nothing this time by taking the high road.

So long as I do everything in the open… well, everything related to going to the moon, anyway… I’m untouchable.

It’s the perfect plan.

“GUARDS!” she shouted, startling Double Face into falling backwards against the cavern wall. “Call together the hive! The time has come to come out into the open once more!” Chrysalis laughed loudly, wickedly, eagerly. “We’re going to SPACE!”

“Excuse me,” a soft voice asked unnoticed behind her. “If you’re done with the newspaper, might I have it back, please?”

Author's Note

No launches yet; Chrysalis has only decided to try. Next chapter: she learns that trying and succeeding are not at all the same thing, and that it really helps if you have the faintest clue what you're doing. Which she doesn't.

Chapter 2: My Name's Not Jebediah

Excerpt from the Canterlot Herald:

… In her proclamation, Queen Chrysalis digressed to criticize what she called the corrupt dealings of ponies who dared to lay claim to the ancestral home of the Changeling race. “We shall not be evicted by real estate swindlers,” she wrote. “Such contemptible creatures as Cool Drink and Gwyneth and their ilk shall not be tolerated, should they try to exercise the worthless bits of paper they call deeds.”

Solicitors for the reclusive social butterfly Cool Drink and the wealthy eccentric Gwyneth the Griffon expressed their wish to come to a mutually acceptable compromise with the changelings, noting their intention to defend their clients’ claims and pointing out that neither Equestria nor any other kingdom recognized the sovereignty of the Changeling nation.

Chrysalis went on to claim that the motivation for the changeling’s entry into the new “race for space” was love. “We shall demonstrate to the world the fearless nature, heroic quality, and indestructible spirit of the changeling people,” she wrote. “We have never been content to sneak the love we need like beggars or thieves, and this glorious enterprise, which carries the hopes and dreams of the entire world, is our first chance to earn what is rightfully ours- the love, admiration and respect of all other peoples.”

While our leaders in the palace reacted with suspicion, the noble and wise Princess Celestia set a positive tone by declaring, “We shall take the words of the changeling queen as genuine, in the hopes that the ancient fear, hatred and suspicion between changelings and ponies can be brought to an end. Towards this goal we encourage our ponies to cooperate with such reasonable legal requests as the changelings may put forward, to exchange scientific knowledge with them, and to do business with them on the same terms as would be given to the griffons, the minotaurs, the dragons, the yaks, the deer, and the other nations of our world.”

A week passed after the proclamation, eventfully.

This was a terrible plan, Chrysalis thought.

In the course of seven days the changelings had learned a lot about flying to the moon- as, for that matter, had the ponies and dragons and griffons. Unfortunately the main thing all of them had learned was that none of them really knew how to do it.

Chrysalis had shared her servants’ findings with the other races, although it required almost a day’s turnaround to the Appleoosa telegraph station to send out results and receive replies. She was sure the others thought she was holding back, and even more sure that everyone except the ponies was holding back from her. And she’d considered it, or even feeding them all false information. After the first day’s bungling, though, she decided to send everything and then some. The worst that could happen, after all, was that the other space programs would repeat the same horrible bungles her changelings had made.

The shared data produced quite a bit of otherwise useful information in the series of How Not to Do It results. Changelings could achieve higher altitudes in free flight and go higher without an oxygen supply than any other race. Unfortunately they were slightly slower than any other flying race when not disguised, and the fastest changeling was no match in the air for the fastest pegasus or dragon. In either case, at altitudes where the rapidly thinning air simply would not allow even a changeling to breathe, the moon appeared no closer.

The changelings didn’t have oxygen masks or pressure suits in inventory (they had a single scuba system, but no way of refilling the tank). One pegasus(5) with an oxygen mask had managed to climb twice as high as a thunderhead before getting what was described as an inverse case of the bends. That pegasus was now in the hospital but expected to recover. Another pegasus(6) had tried a full pressure suit and hadn’t been able to get off the ground.

(5) Rainbow Dash, naturally.

(6) Fluttershy. Had Chrysalis ever bothered to find this out, she might have demanded the ponies redo the test, but the outcome likely would have been the same.

So, at the greatest extreme of natural or magical flight, Equestrians could achieve maybe fifteen miles or so of altitude.

According to the princesses and astronomers and mathematicians, that left a mere 249,985 miles to go, give or take ten thousand.

The ponies and griffins had experimented with flying machines. Airships couldn’t even fly as high as unaided pegasi. The handful of heavier-than-air craft in existence likewise fell behind natural achievement. Rumors were that a group of minotaurs were working on an entirely new flying machine, but as the smallest group with a space program it was doubtful they could build whatever it was they were designing.

Magic wasn’t much more help. Teleportation could only be done either line-of-sight with a good view of one’s destination or to someplace you’d already been. Magic mirror portals could potentially link two far-distant destinations, but the trick of making new magic mirrors had been lost, and anyway you still had to get the other mirror to your destination in the first place. Furthermore, it took exponentially more power the farther you tried to teleport. Chrysalis couldn’t teleport more than half a mile on her best day. None of the princesses could teleport more than a couple of miles(7). Nightmare Moon’s famous trip had been entirely unintentional and performed through the power of the Elements of Harmony, which were not available at the moment.

(7) Or so they claimed, but Chrysalis knew they were lying about this. They wanted her to underestimate their power. She wasn’t going to be fooled.

All of these options, which Chrysalis mentally dubbed the “sane options,” had been played out in the course of a week by the other space agencies. Her subjects, on the other hand, had attempted a series of experiments which Chrysalis called either the “insanely stupid” or “idiotically insane” options, depending on her mood after the inevitable splat.

Experiment #1: Really big slingshot. Twenty changelings tested. Longest flight: about four hundred meters. Injuries: broken limbs and wings, concussions. Most wanted another ride.(8)

(8) If anything will make you blasé about the prospect of ending a thrilling ride through the air by a sudden splat on the hard, rocky desert floor, it is having experienced just such a thing before and lived. Every changeling alive had had this experience, Chrysalis included, courtesy of the Power of Love.(17)

Experiment #2: Two changelings in flight pushing a third changeling to high speeds. Three changelings tested, at altitude. No injuries, but no great improvement on performance, either.

Experiment #2A: Four changelings in flight pushing a fifth to high speeds. No injuries, and a brief but measurable improvement.

Experiment #2B: Four changelings on the ground pushing a fifth in flight to higher speed by magic. No injuries, and a significant, but temporary, improvement in speed.

Experiment #2C: Twenty changelings on the ground. Another changeling (Dragonfly, the hive’s fastest flyer) flies overhead, and the twenty changelings push simultaneously by magic. Dragonfly ended up out of action for weeks in a body cast. She reported (when she finally regained consciousness) that she blacked out as soon as the mass spell touched her, and that she regretted missing the flight, which the changelings on the ground reported as “awesome but short.”

(17) And, according to Chrysalis, the power of unfair cheating pony magic.

Experiment #3: Twenty changelings in a line on the ground. As changeling #21 (Occupant) came running at the line, each changeling would use its magic to fling the runner overhead and behind, each time boosting speed by a controlled amount. The last changeling would push up instead of backwards, sending Occupant skyward at high velocity. One test. Stinger Charlie reported Occupant’s momentum was so great that he couldn’t steer it at all, and thus he went splat into a canyon wall instead of into the clouds. Injuries: four cases of horn strain, a broken limb, a concussion, and a severe case of disappointment that, of all the things Occupant had broken, his buck fangs weren’t on the list.

Experiment #3A: The same as before, but fifty changelings, and airborne. One experiment, which ended with a black-and-purple sonic rainboom and the complete disappearance of test flier Lucky Cricket. Lucky reported in two days later, having landed unharmed in the pool at a casino resort near Los Pegasus. Lucky enjoyed his stay in Los Pegasus and would have remained there, had the pony authorities not insisted he go home.(9) In addition to realizing that Lucky’s supersonic flight had been completely unsteerable and therefore useless, Chrysalis had realized that some method of remote communications would be required. As it stood, if she got into trouble midflight, nopony would hear about it… ever.

(9) Fourteen hours after arriving the hotel had presented a bill to Lucky Cricket for eight hundred bits. Lucky had taken the fifty complimentary casino chips and, through methods unexplained, parlayed them into a ten percent ownership stake in the resort by midnight that night. The next morning Lucky became the very first changeling to be photographed in his natural state and added to the list of Ponies No Longer Allowed in Las Pegasus Casinos. He returned to Appleoosa by train in a private car full of souvenirs, with privileged stock certificates in hoof and proposals for a changeling casino resort, which Chrysalis filed for possible future action.

(10) As Occupant reported, very, very loudly.

Experiment #4: Combining all prior experiments. Getting the slingshot into the air was less difficult than expected. Hurling it, its controllers, and its passenger forward had been difficult but doable. Unfortunately, what happened thereafter could only be described as “airborne bowling for changelings.” Abundant injuries. Noling wanted a second ride.

Experiment #5: Occupant, remembering something from the Canterlot invasion, had snuck out of the infirmary and taken train to Ponyville, where he politely asked a certain pony to fire him out of a cannon. The experiment resulted in severe but probably temporary hearing loss and no real gains over previous experiments.(10)

At this point Chrysalis had called a temporary end to the experiments until she could think of a better method. That had been yesterday, and today she was beginning to think she would need just as many file cabinets for Bad Moon Flight Ideas as she did for Bad World Conquest Ideas. The moon was there, each night, up in the sky. Logically it should be possible to fly to it… but why wasn’t anything working?

Chrysalis’s brooding was interrupted by movement from the doorway to her throne chamber. Occupant stood in the doorway, and a second shadow stood just behind him in the hallway. “EXCUSE ME, MY QUEEN!” he shouted.

“You don’t have to shout,” Chrysalis replied.

“WHAT’S THAT, MY QUEEN?” Occupant asked. “I CAN’T QUITE HEAR YOU.”

“I SAID, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT, YOU IDIOT!” Chrysalis roared. “I’M NOT THE ONE WHO’S DEAF!”

“SORRY!” Occupant replied cheerfully, not lowering his volume one iota. Behind her, Chrysalis could hear Double Face groaning as he set down his pencil. “BUT YOU SEE, THIS PONY TURNED UP AT THE DOOR. HER NAME’S JEBEDIAH OR SOMETHING.”

“It’s not Jebediah!” a very female voice snapped. “I told you before, it’s Cherry Berry!”

“THAT’S WHAT I SAID, JEBEDIAH!” Occupant nodded agreeably at the shadow behind him. “ANYWAY, JEBEDIAH SAYS SHE WANTS TO JOIN OUR SPACE PROGRAM!”

“What?” Chrysalis could have thought of a dozen different reasons for a pony to visit the hive now that the changelings were openly competing in the space program(11), but that wasn’t anything she’d ever have imagined. Ponies did not voluntarily join changelings.(12) “Guard, to me!” she called out.

(11) Three of which involved Skip Town and his bad debts. Another involved Occupant sending off for eleven vinyl records for a penny, with only six albums required to purchase at full price in the following year.

(12) Chrysalis could control pony minds with an effort of will and work, but she couldn’t read them. Otherwise one look at Double Face’s thoughts would have shown her how wrong she was about this point.

Two guards squeezed past Occupant and the visitor and knelt before her.

“Bring in the pony… visitor,” Chrysalis said. “Then escort Occupant back to his duties at the entrance. And please,” she groaned, “don’t let him try to hold a conversation with you.”

The guards saluted, and as one gently but firmly guided the half-deaf shouty changeling away, the other pushed the pony into the chamber with much less solicitude. “Hey!” she complained, giving the guard a nasty look as she recovered her balance. “You didn’t have to do that!”

Chrysalis took the moment to look the pony over. Pink coat, blonde mane and tail with a bit of curl to both, earth pony. She wore a leather helmet with chinstrap undone, a pair of goggles pushed up out of the way of her eyes. “Hi!” she said, glare giving way to cheerfulness. “I’m your new test pilot!”

Queens do not let their jaw drop slackly when surprised, but it took Chrysalis a will of steel to prevent it. “You’re my what?” she asked.

“Cherry Berry, aviatrix extraordinary,” the pony introduced herself. Oh, yes; now Chrysalis noted the cherry cutie mark. “Ever since this whole space race started, I’ve wanted to take my place as a test pilot! If you’re looking for someone to risk life and limb, I’m your pony!”

“Yes, about that,” Chrysalis drawled. “Why don’t you work for the pony space program? Surely they need all the ponies they can get.”

“Twilight Sparkle said I couldn’t fly,” Cherry Berry said.

Chrysalis shook out her wings momentarily. “Well, you can’t.”

“I can fly machines just fine,” Cherry Berry insisted. “Nopony’s going to fly to the moon under their own power. And I have hundreds of hours in balloon, helicopter, and aeroplane operations- more than anypony except the top airship luxury liner pilots.” She sighed and slumped as she continued, “But Twilight says the pilots need to be pegasi because of their instinctual knowledge of flight theory and their quick reflexes. And the Canterlot unicorns are monopolizing the technical side of things. The only job she’d offer me was ground crew.” She shook her head. “And that’s important, it’s really important, but…”

“But you want to fly,” Chrysalis said. “So, of all the other races, you chose the one most hostile to your own.”

“Um…” Cherry Berry shuffled on her hooves. “Actually, you weren’t my first choice.”

“Ah, that makes more sense,” Chrysalis nodded. “I was your very last choice, wasn’t I?”

Cherry nodded. “The griffins aren’t willing to spend the money for proper equipment, and they’re still convinced they can make it work under wing power. That’s stupid. The dragons won’t even talk to me. And the minotaurs… well, Warner von Brawn has a really good idea, but there’s no way he can raise the funds to do it on his own. I think he’s going to take his proposals to Celestia and Twilight before much longer.”

Chrysalis raised her eyebrows. “That’s a lot of traveling in only a few days, little pony.”

“I’m a pilot,” Cherry shrugged. “I left my aeroplane topside. I don’t suppose you could have one of your changelings recharge the engine? I don’t think it’s got enough charge to get even back to Appleoosa, and they’re almost all earth ponies there anyway.”

“So,” Chrysalis said slowly, “you make the rounds of four different space agencies before coming to me, all in the course of a week or less, and the only thing you want is to be the pony who flies to the moon. Do I have that clear?”

“That’s right.”

Chrysalis gave the situation a whole two seconds’ consideration before coming to the only logical conclusion.

“Pod her,” she said to the guard.

Written exchange between Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings, and Celestia, Princess Diarch of Equestria:

We have apprehended a pony who sought access to our space program through laughably false pretenses. This earth pony, who claimed to be called Cherry Berry, gave as her cover story the absurd premise that she was a pilot of flying machines who, having been turned down by all other space projects, had come to the changelings to fly. Although we changelings are no longer seeking to subvert Equestria by infiltration and deceit(13), we can scarcely pretend that no tension or animosity exists between our species at this time. Any pony volunteering to live among changelings for any reason would be suspect. A flightless earth pony coming to the hive and demanding to become our head test pilot is either lying or deranged. In either case such a pony requires detention until some settlement can be reached regarding her final disposal.

(13) You simply can’t function as an absolute ruler if you flinch at putting blatant lies in writing.

As a gesture of goodwill I pledge not to execute her outright, as would have been my right and duty under prior conditions. Instead I formally charge her with espionage and request negotiation for suitable punishment to deter future efforts before her repatriation to your realm. Such treatment as you would give to one of my subjects, caught in the act of imitating a member of your guard or a minor courtier, would be acceptable to me.

To clarify the identity of the pony: female of young maturity, pink coat, blonde mane, cutie mark of a cluster of cherries. Speaks with a central Equestrian accent, presumably lower Canterlot or Ponyville districts. No noticeable scars or unusual features.

Signed,
Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings

My very dear Chrysalis,

Cherry Berry is exactly as she says she is. My dear Twilight Sparkle verifies that she did indeed apply for the Equestrian Space Agency, only to be turned down due to lack of openings in the pilot program. She also confirms her long experience with all sorts of flying craft, her basic understanding of flight theory, etc. I am also informed that Cherry Berry is the first earth pony licensed for solo flight in and around the environs of Cloudsdale.

Since we are, of course, all sharing our scientific data freely with one another, I have no interest in sending a spy into your hive. Even had I the interest, I could never justify putting my little ponies into such terrible danger. I would simply have come myself in disguise, or sent Luna in my stead. I hope you will take my words for truth and treat Ms. Berry kindly, either releasing her into the custody of her kin in Dodge Junction or allowing her to participate in your space exploration efforts.

Finally, had I caught one of your changelings as you describe, I would treat it thus: I should give it a cell next to a kindergarten full of happy foals and fillies, allow it to eat its fill of love and joy, and pay it regular visits for tea and polite conversation. I would provide its more reasonable requests for comfort and entertainment, and once I was certain that no danger would befall my little ponies, I would offer it release into the wilds or wherever it wished to go. If it wished to remain, I would accommodate it with the warmest hospitality.(14) I hope you haven’t got any pony children in your custody, but I trust the general intent is clear.

(14) Scrawled in the margin of the original, in Chrysalis’s pen: “Of course she would, the little (expletive).”

Please treat my little pony kindly, so we may see the truth behind your words of goodwill.

With love,
Princess Celestia

P. S. Have you seen a pony by the name of Double Face? He’s a white unicorn with a drama-mask cutie mark. My current captain of the guard wishes me to tell you that we don’t particularly want him back; we just want to know where to mail his severance check. – C.

Another week passed, also eventfully. The changelings, seeing Cherry Berry’s flying machine, had wanted to use it for their experiments, but Chrysalis had forbidden it. Celestia might want the thing back, and if so she would want it back in one piece. If her changelings started toying with it, she’d likely end up returning it in a large sack. Or possibly several sacks.

The device- the “aeroplane” as Cherry Berry had called it- still gave the changelings all sorts of new ideas. These were implemented with whatever scraps and odds-and-ends could be scavenged from nearby, held together with optimism and various forms of changeling goo.

The results of these experiments kept the hive’s infirmary very busy until Celestia’s written response arrived from Canterlot. (Not least, the chief medical bug was kept hopping delivering headache pills to the queen every time she debriefed another test pilot.)

Finally Celestia’s letter arrived, and after spending a day getting over the impotent rage she felt from reading it, Chrysalis came to a new decision.

The pod was distinctly off color. It should have been a healthy green; instead it had gone some kind of murky purple. That said, the pony hadn’t been harmed, sleeping with a large grin on its face until it was dragged through the cocoon’s membrane and out into the open air of the little cell in the depths of the hive.

“Owww,” Cherry Berry moaned, staggering on her hooves, choking and coughing up bits of the fluid that contained prisoners within the pods. “Ooooh, my head.”

“Hibernation hangover,” the guard said matter-of-factly. “It passes off soon. You probably won’t be hungry for a while, though.”

“I was having a beautiful dream!” Cherry groaned. “I was having the loveliest dream in the world, and you woke me up!” (15)

(15) Cherry Berry’s dream: she stepped foot out of a standard science fiction rocket ship balanced on its fins, wearing a spacesuit with a goldfish-bowl helmet. To her delight she discovered that the moon she’d just landed on was actually an immense cherry pit. Suddenly the celestial seed was hurled across the solar system into the depths of a giant green planet, from which sprouted, all at once, a cherry tree bigger than all Equus. And then Cherry Berry, in her airplane, flew around and around the giant tree’s trunk, catching cherries in her mouth as they fell gently from the world-tree’s eternally loaded branches.

“Changeling cocoons are designed to give prisoners the illusion of their greatest love,” the guard said. “Waste not, want not.”

“Really?” Caught between horror and curiosity, Cherry Berry chose curiosity. “So…er… did I feed you well, then?”

“I wasn’t your guard,” the guard said, pointing to a lump in the corner. “She was.”

Cherry Berry decided she could have lived a long, happy life without seeing a nearly spherical changeling. It looked at her, gave a little wave with a hoof, and burped.

“Anyway, Her Majesty wants to talk to you,” the guard continued. “Are you feeling up to it?”

Cherry Berry took a deep breath, pushed her flight helmet a little bit forward on her head (ignoring its lingering stickiness), and set her jaw. “Lead the way,” she said.

Chrysalis greeted the pony with a wave of a scroll in her direction. “I’ve finally heard back from your princess,” she said. “If I am to trust her, then you are who you say you are.”

“Well, yeah,” Cherry Berry snorted. “Why would I lie?”

“I could spend a week giving possible reasons,” Chrysalis said. “However, my time is more valuable. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that you are not a spy. You might still be a madpony too dangerous to be left loose. That is what this interview is to decide.”

Cherry Berry shrugged. “You’re not the first to think that,” she said. “Fire away.”

“First, let us ask a simple question,” Chrysalis said. “By what means did you plan on reaching the moon?”

“Controlled ballistic flight within a rocket ship,” Cherry Berry said simply. “You know, like in the Buck Ranger books?”

“No, I don’t know,” answered Chrysalis.(16)

(16) Chrysalis’s hobby of reading cheap, bad books had avoided the entire sci-fi genre. It was a tiny niche market even among ponies, but with changeling minds- well, with Chrysalis anyway- the concepts simply didn’t click. Magic-less alien creatures invading Equestria? Machines that walked and talked? It was just too wild for her to follow.

“Well, basically you build a rocket ship, like a big firework you can ride along inside,” Cherry Berry said. “Only it doesn’t explode when it gets to the top. Goddard the Griffon was doing some work on making it reality, but nopony would give him the money to do more than make tiny experimental rockets. And Warner von Brawn has ideas on how to make it work, but there’s just so few minotaurs, he can’t get the funding for full-scale testing.” She shrugged and added, “Twilight Sparkle thinks she can make the concept function through concentrated magic, but she hadn’t done any tests as of the day I came here.” She looked around and added, “What day is it, anyway?”

Chrysalis’s jaw had dropped, royal reserve be damned. Her eyes stretched wide as dinner-plates. “Let me get this straight,” she said very carefully. “You say that, if you want to fly to the moon, you climb inside a giant firework, light the fuse, and somehow steer the thing until you get to the moon? And hope it doesn’t blow up?”

“You make sure it doesn’t blow up,” Cherry Berry said firmly. “And the rocket ship would be a lot more complex than a firework. But that’s the general idea, yes. I can show you the basic equations for how it would work, if you have a chalkboard.”

Chrysalis shook her head. “Back in the pod,” she said.

Another week passed, explosively. Chrysalis had put the guard who had escorted Cherry Berry into his own pod for gossiping. What kind of nincompoop would think it a good idea to suggest fireworks as a flight vehicle to her changelings?

Right. Another one of her changelings. I am surrounded by MORONS, she thought.

When she went herself to release Cherry Berry, she found the cocoon had turned a deep but vibrant red. A little bit of ooze seeped around the edges of the membrane. It smelled of sweet, sticky cherry juice.

I think I’m as insane as my subjects, Chrysalis thought, but the time has come to admit the truth: I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s time to bring in somepony who does, even if she is completely cracked. She reached into the pod with her magic and gently pulled the pony out, setting her carefully on wobbly hooves.

“You know,” Cherry said between coughing up bits of pod goo, “if it wasn’t for the hangover… and the whole creepy-emotion-draining-bugs-who-kidnap-and-replace-all-your-friends thing… you could run a spa and make big money, selling ponies time in those pods.”

Chrysalis mentally filed this idea away for future exploration.

“So, what do you want to ask me now?” Cherry Berry grumbled. “That was a really long dream, so whatever I know about the other space programs is pretty much out of date by now.”

Chrysalis sighed. It took an effort of will to even speak the words. “I want you to take over our space program,” she said.

“What.”

“We need somepony who has ideas on how a trip to the moon can work,” Chrysalis pressed on. “I want to be the first being from Equus to set hoof on the moon, but I don’t have a clue how to do it. And my subjects have even less idea. Though they seem bent on bashing, splatting, or blowing themselves up trying.” She jabbed a hoof at Cherry Berry. “Your notions sound insane, but at least you have them. And they can’t be more idiotic than what my subjects have tried.”

“Really,” Cherry Berry said flatly. “This is a bit of a turnaround.”

“I am not going to beg,” Chrysalis said. “You came here asking to be a pilot. It took me two weeks, but I’m finally willing to accept your offer. I’m even willing to put the whole program in your hooves. Take it or leave it.”

Cherry Berry considered this for a few moments. “You know,” she said at last, “that was a really wonderful dream I was having in that pod. I wouldn’t mind going right back to it.”

“You… you’re rejecting my offer?” Chrysalis gasped. “But I thought-“

“Let’s just say,” Cherry Berry said, “that being imprisoned for two weeks without trial or hearing doesn’t encourage me to want to work with the pony who ordered it done. No matter how nice the dreams were.”

“But… but… but we need you!” Chrysalis insisted. “We’ve come so far already! We can provide so much for you!” No, calm down, she reminded herself. Queens do not grovel. “At least look and see what we’ve done so far before you make your decision.”

Cherry Berry cocked an eye at the changeling queen dubiously, then shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “It can’t hurt, anyway.”

From the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society:

BE IT KNOWN TO ALL:

That through the generous donation of various anonymous contributors, the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society has assembled a fund which shall be used for prizes to be awarded to those who advance the nascent science of interplanetary flight.

Prizes shall be awarded to those who exceed records for altitude, distance and speed, for those who achieve notable firsts in the history of Equus such as orbiting our homeworld, and for those who complete specific tasks within a certain period of time.

It is to be hoped that these prizes, which range in tens or even hundreds of thousands of bits, shall encourage the various space agencies to follow through on their plans to launch astronauts and return them safely home.

The list of prizes available shall be added to as funding permits and as spaceflight technologies expand the imaginations of our various peoples…

“You did WHAT?”

Chrysalis heard a lot of that as Cherry Berry read the transcripts of her post-experiment debriefings. Other favorite phrases: “What were you THINKING?” And, “Who thought THAT was going to end well?” And, “Are you ponies out of your MINDS?”

Words failed her utterly when she inspected the changeling astronaut corps, who at that point were to the last bug housed in the infirmary. Half of them were in pods to accelerate healing. The other half had casts, slings and bandages on at least two body parts each, but they all also had big grins on their faces. Cherry Berry’s face darkened at the phrases they repeated as their queen passed by: “When can we do it again?” “Your Majesty, I’ve got a great idea!” “Don’t worry, Your Majesty, I know exactly what I did wrong! Next time it’ll WORK!”

And then Cherry Berry was taken outside to see the next prototype space vehicle under construction on what, based on the large, widely scattered scorch marks from explosions, was the launch pad. The construction crew, half a dozen eager changelings, stood at attention while Cherry Berry looked the… thing… up and down.

“It’s a lawn chair glued to the top of a trash bin stuffed full of fireworks,” Cherry Berry said. “It is a cheap, half-rusted LAWN CHAIR glued on top of a BOMB! WHAT were you THINKING? WERE you thinking??”

"Hey, we added a seat belt," the lead groundsbug said. "Safety first!"

Chrysalis sighed. “You may have noticed,” she said quietly, “that my subjects, though faithful and strong and brave, aren’t terribly bright.”

“Would you get on that thing?” Cherry Berry asked, pointing to the device. “Would you put your royal flank in that chair for even a moment, even if you had no intention to launch the thing?”

“Not on a bet,” Chrysalis admitted. “Not even to eat the last slice of cake in all Equestria while Celestia watched.”

“But you expect ME to do it?”

“No,” Chrysalis said. “I expect you to take over this mess, get my subjects pointed in the right direction, and find a way to send me to the moon safely.” She gestured at the ground crew, who were a little bit disappointed that their work had been found wanting. “They’re eager to do this. They’ll do anything. That’s the problem. If you can show them the RIGHT thing to do, then you’ll turn our biggest weakness into our biggest strength.”

Cherry Berry stood and thought this over for over a minute. “To be clear,” she said at last, “what is your primary goal for this program? What’s the one thing you want it to do?”

“I want,” Chrysalis said, “to be the first on the surface of the Moon. Second place is no good. I have to get there before anypony else. That’s the goal.”

Cherry Berry nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Then here are my conditions. First, you learn to fly. If you want to go to the moon you have to become a pilot first. That means training and learning, under my supervision.”

Chrysalis nodded. “Provided sufficient respect is shown to my rank, that is acceptable.”

“Second,” Cherry Berry said, “I have absolute authority over the space program. I make the decisions. And all those decisions will move this program towards the final goal of sending you to the moon and bringing you back safely.”

Chrysalis bristled. “I’m not going to let you unseat me as ruler of my own hive, pony.”

“I don’t care about your politics. I don’t even care if you’re still kidnapping ponies and sucking them dry of love, or whatever you do- well, that’s a lie, I do care, but not enough to try to make you stop it,” Cherry Berry said. “But on all matters directly related to space, I’m in charge. And you back me up every step of the way, or nothing flies.”

Chrysalis considered the point. She disliked giving an outsider absolute authority on anything… but… well, she’d admitted that she didn’t know what she was doing. And she could always renege on the terms whenever she felt like it, anyway. “Within those limits, your terms are acceptable,” she said reluctantly.

“You fly in nothing at all until I’ve test-flown it first,” Cherry Berry said.

“Of course,” Chrysalis agreed.

“And you provide the money,” Cherry Berry concluded. “Because we’re going to need to spend a LOT of money.”

Chrysalis choked. “Spend money?” she gasped. “Changelings have no need for money!”

“Well, now you do,” Cherry Berry said. “We need either Warner von Brawn or Goddard the Griffon, preferably both. We need technicians to build the vehicles- I know the theory, but I don’t know anything about electronics or magical engineering or metalworking, and we’re going to need those skills and more. We’re going to need a proper airfield and vehicle assembly facility built, which means we’ll need the land for that. And if you try kidnapping or stealing to make that happen, I’m out. Just because I want something more than anything, doesn’t mean I’m willing to do anything to get it.”

That last bit of logic made no sense to Chrysalis whatever; if you want something, why not do anything necessary to get it? But mass kidnapping of skilled workers would, indeed, trigger a war with Celestia which would make the moon impossible. “Fine,” she said at last. “At least we have a lot of money just lying around.”

“Good,” Cherry Berry said. “You’re going to need it, and probably more besides.”

“Do you have any more conditions?” Chrysalis asked.

“No,” the earth pony replied, shrugging. “That’s the bare minimum I need to make this work. Anything else that comes up, we can discuss then.”

“Then we are agreed,” Chrysalis nodded. “Welcome to the Changeling Space Program, Cherry Berry.”

The two formally shook hooves.

“Oh, there you are, Your Majesty.” Occupant trotted up to the group by the launch vehicle, a bundle of mail tucked under one hoof. “Mail call. Got a letter for Double Face if he’s still around.” He noticed the pony and turned to face her. “Oh, hi, Jebediah!”

“IT’S CHERRY BERRY!” both Cherry and Chrysalis shouted.

“Ow!” Occupant said, rubbing his ear ridges. “No need to shout. I can hear you just fine.”

Author's Note

Next chapter: Mission 0, the ground check to make sure the changelings' first space pod will work. Because there's no point in firing the missile if you can't steer it...

Beginning with the next chapter, every chapter will be based on a mission played out in Kerbal Space Program. Sorry, but my gaming laptop doesn't have a program to capture the video from a playthrough and likely doesn't have the processing power to run both that and KSP, so you'll just have to settle for my reports. (And besides, wouldn't you much rather watch Scott Manley or RoninPawn futzing with KSP? And it's not like there's actually a changeling/pony mod for KSP... I don't think...)

Interlude: What Might Not Have Been (or, Do Astromares Dream of Rocket-Propelled Penguins?)

Cherry Berry stepped into the Horseton Space Center administration building’s makeshift throne room. Queen Chrysalis sat slumped on her little throne, bags under her eyes, mane in an even worse state than its normal lanky, greasy condition. “I was about to say good morning,” she said cautiously.

Chrysalis groaned.

“Seriously, what happened to you?” the pink pilot pony asked. “I mean, you’re no prize on a good day, but you look like your pillow mugged you.”

“You could say that, pony,” Chrysalis grumbled. “I had a terrible dream last night. I woke up screaming and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“A bad dream? What happened?”

“ I conquered the world.”

Cherry Berry blinked. “And that gave you a nightmare?” she asked. “I think you’ve got things backwards. That’s supposed to give me a nightmare.”

“Laugh it up, pony,” Chrysalis grumbled, shifting her position on the throne slightly.

“No, really,” Cherry Berry continued, “after a dream in which you conquer Equestria, you ought to be smug and insufferable.”

“Keep talking, pony,” Chrysalis replied, “it’s all going on the list.”

“Will you cut it out? You know what I mean!” Cherry Berry walked up to the throne. “We’ve got a briefing on Marked Knee’s project and the upcoming missions in half an hour. You’re obviously in no condition for it. Will you at least tell me what was wrong with your dream?”

Chrysalis sighed, looked around listlessly, then focused her attention on Cherry Berry. “This never leaves this room, do you understand? I tell you once, and you forget it. This conversation never happened. Agreed?”

“Um…. sure,” Cherry Berry said, shrugging it off. “I can keep a secret.” She leaned forward and waggled her eyebrows. “Is this about you getting Shining Armor off to some hotel where Cadance can’t find you and-”

“What? NO!!” Chrysalis looked disgusted. “Leaving aside the fact that Shining Armor is a meathead with one trick- almost literally- I’d rather go to a cake buffet with Celestia than put up with one more discussion about whether Batmare could beat up Iron Mare.” She shuddered at the memory of what she’d put up with during the weeks she’d spent replacing Cadance. “Are you going to listen or not?”

Cherry Berry plunked her rump down on the floor. “I’m listening.”

“Well, like I said, somehow I conquered the world,” Chrysalis said. “For about a day. Then some heroes showed up and, well, it was awful. But that wasn’t the worst part!” Chrysalis’s exhaustion vanished in a wave of exasperation and frustration and about a half-dozen other ations. “The worst part was, there was no way- no way at all, do you understand?- There was no way the plan should have worked in the first place!!”

“Why not?”

“Well, first thing I did, I had my changelings replace all the princesses,” Chrysalis said. “All four of them, plus Shining Armor and the diapered engine of destruction they call a baby. And all of Twilight Sparkle’s hero friends as well. And I think maybe all the Wonderbolts, too- I’m not sure about that part.” Chrysalis paused to consider. “In most of my plans I have them filed in with the Royal Guard under ‘incompetent buffoons, not worth bothering about.’”

“Sounds good so far,” Cherry Berry agreed. “Good for you, that is. Not so good for me. Especially since Twilight’s friends are my friends too. How’d you do it?”

“That’s just it!” Chrysalis threw her forehooves in the air. “I don’t KNOW how I did it! It just happened somehow. It’s like some scriptwriter just said, ‘What with one thing and another, a bunch of ordinary changeling drones replace the mighty alicorns who control the sun, the moon, love and friendship, their friends and their family, all in a single night, and nopony NOTICES!’” Chrysalis tugged at her mane as if she would rip it out at the roots, shouting, “If it were that easy, don’t you think I would have DONE it by now?!”

“Probably,” Cherry Berry admitted. “But explain it to me. Why haven’t you?”

“I was only able to go hoof-to-hoof with Celestia because I’d absorbed a megadose of pure, blind love,” Chrysalis replied. “Me, the queen, mightiest of the changelings, right? How many changelings would it take to do the same thing?”

Cherry Berry considered this. “Um, one, with a baseball bat?” she said.

“Come again?”

“Knock ‘em out when they’re not expecting it, then pod ‘em when they’re unconscious,” Cherry Berry said. “It’s pretty much what we always thought you did. Or maybe bite ‘em and put ‘em to sleep with your venom. I know you can do that. First-hoof.” She rubbed her neck in memory.

“Oh, sure, it sounds simple,” Chrysalis admitted. “But things that sound simple usually aren’t, take it from someone with experience. Consider what happens if someone hears a noise. Or someone comes visiting while you’re disposing of the victim. There are all sorts of opportunities for an alarm to go up, not least of which some pony realizing just how bad an actor some of my changelings can be.”

“Ooooooookay,” Cherry Berry shrugged, not really getting the point. “So things can go wrong. But they can go right, too, yes?”

“Yes, they can go right,” Chrysalis said. “I could probably take out three of the Elements of Harmony in one night with no trouble. Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash, if you want names. But Pinkie Pie has no consistent habits to speak of, Twilight Sparkle is the magic equivalent of standing right next to one of our rockets when it lights, and Fluttershy has about ten thousand little critters to send up an alarm at the slightest hint of trouble.” Chrysalis looked firmly at Cherry Berry and said, “And each pony I add to the list in a single night raises the odds that something WILL go wrong. You understand where I’m going with this?”

“Okay, fine,” Cherry Berry shrugged. “But you admit it IS possible, just possible, that everything could go perfectly right?”

“NO!” Chrysalis snapped, rising from her throne and pacing around the room, and around Cherry, as she ranted. “Three teams of changelings, unsupervised- did I mention I apparently wasn’t any part of the capture plan whatever? Because apparently I had better things to do, like paint my hooves or rub fresh algae in my hair, than, you know, make sure a plan actually WORKED!” Pace, pace, pace. “Three teams of unsupervised changelings, in three different cities, capturing and subduing a minimum of… of…” Chrysalis’s lips moved noiselessly for a few seconds. “Eleven ponies! One of whom, by the way, spends her nights patrolling pony dreams or watching over the kingdom for threats like me! And that’s not counting the baby dragon with the spell that lets him send letters to Celestia instantly! So surprise? Ha! Forget surprise! No, absolutely impossible!”

“Okay, so let’s just say, for the sake-”

“Do you know, in one part of the dream I actually saw Luna in a pony’s dreams, warning her?” Chrysalis asked, not bothering to face Cherry Berry. “And apparently a bunch of my changelings reached into the dream and dragged her out! They can’t DO that!! No changeling alive that I know of has dream magic, not even me!” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Believe me, the use I could make of being able to sneak into pony dreams and learn their fears, their desires, where they keep the silverware…”

“But in the dream you did it,” Cherry Berry said. “So what next?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” Chrysalis said. “Apparently my next step in my master plan was… nothing!”

“Nothing?”

“My changelings replaced all the ponies I’d ordered kidnapped, then used a scrying scarabeus- it works a lot like the telepresence spell, that part of the dream was real enough- to tell me, ‘Look at us, queen, we’ve replaced the heroes, as you must know because you’ve got them in pods in your throne room, and now we’re just hanging out.’ Lounging in those crystal thrones Twilight and her friends have. And there I was chortling, saying things like ‘nothing can stop us now’ or some such drivel, rather than, you know, actually DOING something with my newfound advantage!”

“Well, you do tend to crow a bit when-”

“Did I mention my drones tend to be really horrible actors?” Chrysalis continued. “Granted it’s tough to get down all the little personality quirks of a subject without a memory spell on the pod you’ve got them in, but these drones were really, really bad. As in, even one of you ponies could figure out something was wrong within thirty words of conversation.”

“Gee,” Cherry Berry said flatly, “thanks for the compliment.”

“So Starlight Glimmer- that Twilight Sparkle’s student she picked up last year, right? Heads the research department at Cape Friendship? Anyway, she spots something’s not right, sees my drones and myself gloating over the scarab call, and goes and rounds up the usual band of misfits to thwart my evil schemes.” Chrysalis rolled her eyes, still pacing, still ranting. “As if my dream were some bad Lord of the Shoes knock-off.”

She hesitated in her pacing a moment. “And that reminds me,” she said. “I mentioned that somehow, impossibly, I’d captured all the princesses and their heroes, right? So anypony powerful enough to undo my scheme is out of circulation, right?”

“Well, I guess-”

“WRONG!” The pacing resumed. “There’s somepony left out, somepony with the ability to stop the whole operation with the snap of a claw. Who do you think? Come on, guess, you’ll never guess.”

“Maybe-”

“DISCORD!” Chrysalis shouted. “My brilliant yet impossible plan left out the single most powerful being at large in all Equestria! And oh, look, I’ve only gone and kidnapped his bestest pony friend in the universe, the only thing between him and rendering the face of Equus unfit for life!” She shrugged, not pausing in her steady stomping circuit around her throne as she said in a slightly calmer voice, “I admit it’s kind of hard to send changelings to subdue someone who only appears in Equestria when he feels like it. If Discord doesn’t want to be found, you just don’t find him. But knowing he’s out there, knowing he’s going to be furious at touching his precious Fluttershy, what do I do about him? NOTHING!!”

After several silent stomping steps made it clear Cherry Berry could get more than two words out, she said, “But in the dream you didn’t think he could touch you, right?”

“Oh yes,” Chrysalis agreed, chuckling most bitterly. “Oh, I had a reason. Because I had a special magic throne in my changeling castle, that’s why.”

Cherry Berry blinked. “Um… you don’t have a changeling castle. You’ve got a hive carved out of a hole in the ground under a mesa.”

“I KNOW!!!” Chrysalis bellowed. “But in my dream I had this huge, beautiful castle, all full of holes and pointy spires and moving stairs and walls that open and shut for no good reason!” She paused in her march of doom around the decidedly non-magical throne in her space center office to heave a deep sigh. “It really was a beautiful thing. You’d hate it. But against an angry sun pony it’d last about three seconds before going up in flames.”

“And this wasn’t a problem in the dream?” Cherry asked.

“Nope! And you want to know why?” The pacing resumed yet again. “Because of that magic throne I mentioned! Apparently I had this huge throne made of jagged rock. But it was a magic rock, see? It was a rock that nullified all magic of any kind- except changeling magic.”

“That sounds convenient,” Cherry Berry hazarded.

“I know, right?” Chrysalis agreed sarcastically. “By Tartarus, if I only had such a throne! Never mind the throne- I’d just like the stone it was made out of! Imagine thousands and thousands of little black amulets, and all the unicorn spells, all the pegasus weather tricks, all the earth pony strength in the world couldn’t touch you. That’s how I’d use an anti-magic rock! Not by carving a stupid CHAIR out of it!” After a breath she added, “It wasn’t even a very good chair.”

“So, how did it work, then?”

“The dream didn’t explain it,” Chrysalis said. “It just worked. All the time. I rather got the impression that the throne was the thing that caused the Badlands in the first place. Lush green woods and fields right up to the edge of the rock’s effect, then bango, desert and mountains and canyons. And there they were, the band of misfits- Starlight Glimmer, that stage magician who had the special on Channel Five a couple weeks ago-”

“Trixie?” Cherry Berry frowned at that. “I can’t really imagine her as a hero. I remember when she conquered Ponyville with a magical amulet. More villain material if you ask me.”

“Band of misfits, pony, don’t you read the right lousy books these days?” Chrysalis grumbled. “Her, Starlight Glimmer, Discord because of course Discord, and of all people Thorax.”

“Wait a minute,” Cherry Berry said. “That sounds like a changeling name, but I’ve been around your hive for nearly a year now, and I don’t remember ever hearing of Thorax.”

“You wouldn’t,” Chrysalis growled. “I forbade his name to be spoken in the hive, or here in the space center. He deserted the hive after the failed invasion of Canterlot. Said there had to be a better way of getting love other than stealing it.”

“Well, there is,” Cherry Berry said. “This space project, for a start. The changeling actors you’re funding in Manehattan. My odd jobs business.”

Chrysalis froze in place and made some very interesting faces, which appeared to Cherry like someone shouting dire, foul imprecations without any actual noise. Finally words came: “... yeeees,” Chrysalis ground out, “but that wasn’t the plan at the time Thorax betrayed me.” The queen resumed her march around the throne and around Cherry again as she added, “The last I heard, he was living in the Crystal Empire, getting full of love from the Princess of Food herself.” Under her breath, she added, “Well, at least it wasn’t Kevin.”

“Who’s Kevin?” Cherry Berry asked.

Instantly the glowing green eyes and slitted pupils of Chrysalis’s most baleful gaze filled Cherry Berry’s entire range of vision. “YOU ARE FORBIDDEN FROM SPEAKING THAT NAME AGAIN IN MY REALM!!” she shouted. “UNDERSTOOD??”

“Y-yes ma’am!” Cherry Berry said instantly, flopping onto her back in shock.

Satisfied, Chrysalis returned to her pacing and ranting, leaving Cherry Berry to pick herself back up. “So what with one thing and another they infiltrate the castle. Discord and Trixie being powerless, of course they get picked off by patrols. Thorax tries to fool me into thinking he’s Starlight Glimmer, but I see through his magic and remove his disguise.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course,” Chrysalis said. “I can sense my own kind, no matter what disguise they wear. But the funny thing is, Thorax’s wings were whole. No holes in them. And more important, they glittered. They looked like someone dumped a bottle of glitter paint all over them. I’ve never seen anything like it in real life.”

“Was that important?” Cherry asked.

“Oh, yes it was,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Quite important, as it turned out. Anyway, there was Starlight Glimmer, trying to break the throne by banging a rock against it with her hooves! I mean really!” Chrysalis threw up a hoof without breaking stride. “I know she was without her magic and all, but honestly, it was like the dream was trying to make her as pitiful as possible! Like the dream felt like it hadn’t driven home just how hopeless everything was for the forces of good!

“So of course I grab her, pull her out of harm’s way, and then to taunt her I decide to drain Thorax of all his stored love energy. Routine thing, no big deal right? Well, no,” Chrysalis grumbles. “He resists, naturally, and he actually puts up a decent fight for a drone. But it’s only a matter of time, right?” The pacing became stomping again, as hard as Chrysalis could put hoof to tile floor. “Well, that Starlight Glimmer tells him to quit resisting and to release his love energy into the rest of the hive. As if that would do anything! Ha ha! Well you know what- it did!!”

Tiles cracked under Chrysalis’s hooves as she continued, “Somehow or other freely giving away love made Thorax transform into this hideous pastel thing with mandibles for antlers and I don’t know what else. And then all my other changelings shared their stored love energy, and they all transformed too! And for some reason, my dream didn’t feel like explaining, this blew the roof off my changeling castle and made that convenient magic throne crumble into harmless rubble! No more magic nullification!”

Chrysalis’s voice rose to a piercing shriek. “And changeling magic simply DOES! NOT! WORK! THAT! WAY!” The bags that had been under her eyes were gone, stretched taut by the wide-eyed glare she gave the world as she raved. “What, were changelings supposed to go for years without food or something? Infiltrators go out, steal love, bring it back to the hive, and I take it and give it out to the others! If changeling magic looked like that, I wouldn’t have these holes in my hooves, and my shell would look like I crawled out of the paint factory rubbish bin!

“And then the one part of the dream so stupid, so asinine, so dumb that it’s actually believable, is that the ponies LET ME GO,” she said. “Oh look, we have a new changeling king, whatever that is, but you can become good too, Chrysalis. Oh, don’t feel like it? Just threatened revenge? Go ahead, fly away. It’s not like we have four alicorn princesses! It’s not like we have the lord of Chaos who could turn me into a breezie with a snap of his fingers! It’s not like we have six ponies with super-harmony magic who could shoot me down with a happy zappy rainbow friendship beam from a mile away! No, just let her go, we’ll just keep all her traitorous rebel changelings to live happily ever after in HER BUCKING CASTLE! THAT SHE DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE!!”

“My queen,” Occupant said quietly, “I’d never betray you, honest.”

Chrysalis froze in mid-stomp. Slowly, slowly, she turned her attention to the door, where the drone who acted as flight leader for missions and overall manager of the space center stood with a most sheepish expression. “What,” she hissed in quiet tones of imminent menace, “are you doing in here?”

“Er,” Occupant muttered, shifting uncomfortably on his hooves, “I kind of, um, was bringing Princess Luna to see you. She wants to talk about our moon fly-by mission.”

Chrysalis’s expression departed the Land of Rage, galloped swiftly through the Valley of Surprise, and rented deluxe lodgings in the charming burg of Terrified. She noticed for the first time the larger dark figure standing behind the small dark figure of her loyal bucktoothed servant. With a squeak she said, “How long has she been here?”

“Oh,” Occupant said thoughtfully, “since that part where Miss Berry mentioned the baseball bat.”

Chrysalis looked up at Princess Luna’s carefully blank expression, then down at Occupant, then back at the princess of the night. Then, with an ear-splitting shriek of unalloyed fright, she blasted a hole through the throne room wall with her magic and soared away as fast as her wings and her fear could carry her.

“Perhaps,” Luna said dryly, “we should reschedule?”

“Probably a good idea,” Cherry Berry admitted, rising from the floor so she could bow properly. She paused in mid-bow and looked at Occupant. “Hey, what happened to your wings?” she asked. “They’re kind of sparkly in this light, you know?”

“Oh, you noticed?” Occupant said. “It’s happening to several of the other changelings in the space center. We don’t know what’s causing it, but it doesn’t seem to hurt.”

Cherry Berry chose her next words with great care. “I think,” she said, “you should be careful not to bring up the subject around Chrysalis when she gets back.”

“You sure?” Occupant asked. “Because noling knows changeling medicine like the Queen.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Cherry Berry said, looking at Luna and getting a cautious nod in return. “We don’t want her to do anything drastic, now do we?”

Several days later, after Chrysalis had been coaxed back out of the Badlands and the hole in the wall of the admin building had been patched, the queen wrote a letter to Thorax, care of the Crystal Palace, Crystal Empire:

My former subject,

When we last spoke you and I exchanged some harsh words on the subject of changeling nature. Since then I have had cause to rethink my position, and I regret the things I said.

I understand you now have a good life in the Crystal Empire. This pleases me, and it pleases me that you should continue there unmolested by myself or any of my still-loyal subjects. I wish you a long, healthy, love-filled life in your new home.

But if I ever see you within a hundred miles of either the hive or Horseton, I will have your head.

Chrysalis

Author's Note

Yeah, if the Season Six finale had come out before I started this story, likely I would never have started it.

And yeah, like almost every episode in this last season, there were plot holes large enough to throw Minmus through.

This bit has been on my mind for a couple months, but I wrote it in one two-hour session live on a Google Doc and then edited it... and then re-edited it when "import Google Doc" turned out to mean, "Link to Google Doc" instead.

As I release this the next proper chapter of CSP (which happens just before this interlude, and will be posted to read before this interlude) sits at 18,000 words, with at least another 6,000 or so to go. I hope to have it done and out before Christmas.

EDIT: Okay, at least one commenter, who has at least one person agreeing with them, disliked this as a personal screed. So, because I feel like it, here's the difference between what Chrysalis is saying and how I actually feel about "Where and Back Again."

There was no way the plan should have worked: I'm mostly in agreement on that, but not as strongly so as the ultra-cautious CSP Chrysalis. CSP Chrysalis has a lot lower tolerance for failure modes in her plotting, and the story in her dream (being written for eight-year-olds) fails her standards miserably.

For myself, I actually write CSP changelings with a bit more ability than we generally see in the cartoon, but I can't believe ordinary drones alone should be able to take out Princess Worf- er, Princess Celestia, or Luna, and emphatically not Cadance. Having them take out twelve different people in three cities in a span of time we're led to believe is only about one or two days maximum, stretches my credulity to breaking. That needed to be shown happening. We needed a proper explanation or demonstration. Instead we just have to take it on faith that it happened, with nopony being the wiser until Sunburst and Starlight Glimmer noticed the change in behavior of the replaced ponies. On the other hand, Cherry Berry does point out that it's not totally impossible. There are ways to make it work. But we got no hint of it in the actual cartoon.

"My next step in my master plan was... nothing!": Yep, again, agreed. Once Chrysalis had the kidnapped ponies under her power, even granted Discord still being at large, she should have moved against Equestria in force immediately. Instead she's content to have her infiltrators continue to do their masquerade (poorly in the case of Spike and Rainbow Dash, quite well in the case of Twilight Sparkle) and generally gloat. CSP Chrysalis being a cautious master schemer (and an addict to what in our world we'd call airport novels), she recognized just how foolish this is.

usual band of misfits: Well, to be fair, Starlight Glimmer hasn't rounded up a random crew, and they're not really misfits except for how different they are from one another. Trixie is inventive, Thorax is a native guide, and Discord is Almost-Q. Part of Chrysalis's reaction here is her disgust at the dream, and part of it is her contempt for ponykind at work.

Special convenient magic throne: This is the story's MacGuffin. It's the Death Star thermal exhaust port. It's the One Ring. And I'm in full agreement with Chrysalis here: it was very poorly conceived and presented.

"The changeling castle that I don't have": I actually liked the castle a lot. It's one of the things I really, really wish I'd seen in the cartoon before beginning this story, because it's a lot more visually interesting than caves under the desert. (Of course, it would make the whole "hiding out in the Badlands" angle go from threadbare to totally impossible to sustain... hard to hide a structure you can see from ten miles away.) My only complaint about it during the actual story lies in how our heroes got so deep into the place without being seen by a single guard or anything. Security ultra-fail.

Thorax's transformation: I have no problem with the core idea here- that once changelings learn to give love instead of merely taking it, their fundamental nature changes. It's a very good lesson for real life, especially since- let's be honest- it runs against default human nature. However, let's be blunt- Thorax's transformed mode is an affront to the eyes. The other transformed changelings are fine, but the artists didn't just drop the ball on King Thorax, they soaked it in liquid nitrogen for about thirty seconds and then spiked the thing in their own end zone.

"The idiots let me go": Chrysalis only believes in mercy when it serves her own ends. She doesn't believe it a good in and of itself. Of course she's contemptuous of the dream-ponies for letting her go, just as almost every bad guy mocks the good guy who had the chance to kill the baddie and chose otherwise, allowing said baddie to return. To me Chrysalis is a more convincing and interesting character as a self-centered bad guy. I like to think she's capable of some affection or loyalty, but it absolutely has to be on her terms. Chrysalis having joined the reformed changelings would have been even less satisfying or credible than Discord's heel-face turn in Keep Calm and Flutter On. So, yeah, if we want her back as a villain in the future, letting her go, tactically idiotic as it is, becomes a storytelling necessity. And, yes, it's wholly in character for the ever-optimistic ponies to do.

Changeling magic doesn't work that way!: In Changeling Space Program I've already established, in a number of ways, that it doesn't. In CSP changelings can be genuinely friendly towards non-changelings. They have affection and camaraderie for one another. They have a system by which one group brings in the food and it's distributed among the others as the queen sees fit. Changeling love doesn't nourish other changelings. Changelings can sense, and in some cases derive nourishment from, non-love emotions. All of these points got Jossed by the Season 6 finale, and the finale also ended matters so that it was impossible to just edit past chapters and say, "All of this takes place after Season 6."

But the thing is, I have no problem with changelings working like that in the cartoon. Most of the stuff presented in the cartoon made sense, especially combined with prior changeling appearances. The problem is, when I began the story we didn't have any of that, and so I, like other fanfic writers in the absence of defined facts about my subject, rolled my own.

And I'm VERY strongly in favor of fanfics adhering as closely to canon as possible, except for deliberate alternate-universe views. If Season Six's finale had aired before I began writing CSP... I would never have written it. Period.

But, as you noticed, I'm not closing the door entirely on elements of the finale from coming into CSP. Nor am I outright saying CSP Chrysalis is irredeemable. I did not drop the mention of Occupant's glittery wings in just for a cheap joke.