30 - Trying too Hard

*I am afraid to say,* Mom said. *I believe that you are trying too hard with this ‘flying into space’ design.*

“What do you mean, Mom?”  His Radiance Kyrus, sat at his working desk, where Diryish and all his zardukar, and their ancestors as well, had done the massive work of shaping the city and creating and spreading the programs that made human life on this planet possible. There were a dozen bee-made models of winged things before him.  He swept his hand over them and brushed them away, sending all the failed flyer designs scattering in a glitter of dust, carried away by the red and yellow disposal bees.

*First has been pointing out that he and the other missiles can go up to the edge of the atmosphere already.  Your problem isn’t just modifying the FireDrakes to function outside the atmosphere because you need to get a fragile human up to the moon.  I maintain my own internal climate as an emergency response vehicle.*

“But you don’t fly,” Hara said.  “You could make yourself wings I suppose…”

*I could.  But it would be a very bad, cobbled together mess.  There is no reason that One and Two could carry me up with them and then fling me at the moon.  They would have to calculate my trajectory that would let me treat it like an exceptional jump and land exactly like that.  If I break myself that will be all right because I can repair myself and it will not be my cabin that bursts open.*

“That would get you up to the Station.  But even if Terence and Agador manage to subvert the Station or seize control, there’s no guarantee that there will be a shuttle there to bring you back down to the planet,” Ilax said.  “By the way, One…”

“Your offspring are currently two point five five days away at their current rate of travel.  Sixty-Two is quite taken with their questions and Seventy-Three is annoyed with ‘human chatter’ and ‘hypersonic noises’.”

“Thanks for passing that on, One,” he said.

Hara had been sketching shapes idly into existence as Pa asked after her sibs and jumped, startled, when Mom snapped -- *There’s the simplest answer right there!*

“What? What?” She looked at her fanciful doodles.  The one she’d just finished was a silly monster version of a sandsheet… based on the horror myths that they could fly… but she’d given it silly googly eyes and no teeth and the four corners of the animal were arched out and then down to grasp a basket big enough to hold two mannequins.  “This?  It’s impossible for sandsheets to fly and the basket is open and...”

*The concept is something that your ancestors called ‘a parachute’.  What if you made a sandsheet that produced a pocket of gas that could lift them high into the stratosphere?*

*Mom,* Agador spoke for the first time.  *Excuse me… Terence is… thinking…* Either sulking or laying hands on himself, Hara thought, snidely. *... but may I ask how you would use a free flying parachute… or zeppelin like animal to fly to the moon?*

*It would be for my re-entry. I would be falling from the moon.* Mom’s mental voice sounded prim as if what she was calculating should be obvious.

“We’d have one of these things to catch you?” Hara leaned forward and examined her silly toy.

*Not just one.  If I am re-entering I will be very hot and might well burn through the first two or three of these things, or… better yet make them fold inside out and vent the gas… which is quite inflammable, by the way, so that it doesn’t add to the flames should I punch through.  After I’ve bounced off a half dozen floating parachutes… I’m certain One will be prepared to catch me and lend me their wings.*

“That is so far ahead of things…” Kyrus and Ilax put their heads together and the bees swarmed, models growing under their fingers. “First of all, One… could you fling Mom out of the atmosphere…?”