Kentaurus date: Perseus 14, 70

I woke up in a foul mood this morning.  I am frustrated with trying to do a job with inadequate tools and parts, and trying desperately to make something of my life besides that which seems to be pre-ordained for me.   I rode my bike out to the airport, opened the hanger, and just stood there looking at the cropduster.  How is it that there are warpships flying between the stars, and my contribution to humanity is to keep this winged artifact flying?

Unfortunately, it isn’t flying.  There is a bearing in a bellcrank that operates the right flaperon that’s worn far beyond limits.  I told Nils Arvidson, the owner and pilot, that he had to either get the smithy to make one according to specs, or order one from Earth.  Ordering one from Earth is expensive, and contracting locals to reproduce it can be chancy.  The tooling often doesn’t exist.

“MoonShadow,” the familiar and particularly irksome voice of Michael Dushaine called to me. “Ricevis telefonan vokon el al universitato.  They want you to fix their recon ultralights again.”

I was, at least briefly, interested in life again.  The Universitato de Kentaurus ĉe Daltonville conducted a lot of geophysical and resource surveys over the planet, and had a fleet of six ultralight aircraft, but couldn’t get anybody to fix them.  The university actually did not have many students.  They existed on some grant from the Fundamento de Geologikaj Sciencoj, and everybody who worked there is a PhD or better.  They enjoyed flying their toys, but nobody wanted to repair them.  And they kept a large stock of spare parts.

“Facila mono,” I smiled at Michael.

There are rules for fixing airplanes.  An airplane isn’t a car.  If something breaks, the driver can’t just pull over to the nearest cloud.  That’s why the first rule of flying is, “Neniam flugu plialte ol vi volontas fali.”  This is especially true for ultralights.

I had to take two years of courses and on-the-job training.  And then they gave me a written test that took three hours to finish, and a practical exam that was actually pretty easy.  Then the government sent me a card saying that I was certified to fix airplanes and probably wouldn't kill anybody or break anything in the process.

But it isn’t a popular profession.  People on Kentaurus tend to be farmers.  And if they go into a technical trade, it’s usually computers, which pays more and technicians don’t even have to get their hands dirty.

But I like airplanes.  As a mechanic, I have no interest in fixing anything that doesn’t have wings.

And there are a large number of airplanes on Kentaurus, mostly due to lack of good roads and great distances between centers of civilization.  On Earth, they use very high tech, fly-by-wire, fusion powered flying things that rely on repulsars and momentum thrusters.  But on Kentaurus, we use wings and propellers and small reaction engines.  Often, we even use old internal combustion engines, as in the case of the crop duster.

The university kept their small fleet of ultralights at a disused farm about ten klicks from the airport, and only a klick and a half from campus.  I packed my road tools into a trailer designed to be pulled by a bicycle, strapped on a company communicator, and took off down the dusty road in the direction of the farmhouse airport.

I spent a happy five hours making minor repairs on the aircraft.  Mostly it was a matter of checking wear limits and making sure everything was still firmly attached.  Due to the fragile nature of ultralights, the university kept a wise policy of performing inspections on a very routine basis.

Only three of the aircraft were present.  The rest were out over the landscape somewhere.  After putting my tools away, I told Ean, the manager of the airfarm, that I had to take out #5 for a test flight.

Ean smiled, and considered protesting.  It was a matter of liability.  The university’s underwriter didn’t cover me as a pilot.  As the hesitation dragged into awkwardness, I insisted.  “I’m not signing this aircraft for return to service unless I perform a test flight.”

“What could you have possibly done to that airplane that requires a test flight?” Ean asked.

“You’re kidding, right?” I said, hands akimbo.  “There isn’t anything I can’t do to it that affects its flight characteristics.”

Ean sighed.

“Konsideru” I continued. “It’s my name that goes into the maintenance log book.  It’s my arse that gets fried in case of an accident.  Do you know what’s so nice about being a pilot?”

“Kio?”

“It’s that your responsibility to the machine ends as soon as you tie it down and walk away from it.  When I turn a wrench on an aircraft and sign my name to the logbook, I’m married to that machine.  Something could go wrong ten years from now, and they’d still come to me asking questions.”

I could see him relenting.  He finally tossed me the keys.  “Have it back before sunset this time.”

Number Five was my favorite.  Three axis controls, a powerful prop engine and a ten-meter wingspan giving it a glide ratio to die for.  If I lost the engine at only 150 meters altitude, I could glide nearly 15 klicks before touching down.  And with a good thermal, I could stretch that near indefinitely.

I performed a thorough walkaround, climbed in and started the engine.  I listened to it carefully, then released the brakes and taxied to the short runway.

Setting the radio to Unicom, I announced, “Tango five Uniform Tango, commencing takeoff runway one-eight.”

At full throttle, the little airplane used only thirty meters of the 100-meter runway, and I could have used less if I was in a hurry.

But there were no hurry now.  I set the rate of climb to a steep angle and flew the runway heading until the farmhouse and the university were well behind me.

In a human settlement that relies heavily on winged transport, there are specific fly-ways that people use for traveling any real distances.  I wanted to avoid these, so I banked and headed for the shore, figuring to check out the barrier islands.  The wind and sun kissed my cheeks, and I was ecstatic.

Centauri A, our main sun, was just touching the watery horizon when I turned final approach.  Centauri B was still high in the sky, but I knew better than to quibble semantics about the term “sunset” on Kentaurus.

“This aircraft is returned to service with my full blessings,” I told Ean as I wrote in the maintenance log.

Ean had an odd look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“There are a couple of people here to talk to you.”

I was suspecious.

“That’s the woman I told you about,” Ean said to someone out of sight.  I truly expected to see the sheriff or a deputy walk through the door.

Instead, it was a different uniform that came through the door.  A man and a woman, both dressed in the dull colors of the Kentauri SpacDefendo each with two broken silver stripes on their sleeves.

“Ms McDonnell?” the woman asked.

I gave Ean a look that said he’d pay for this dearly.  There was no point in denying who I was.  But why was the SpacDefendo out here?

“I go by the name MoonShadow now.  But yes?”

“I’m Chief Petty Officer Nancy McGreggor.  This is Chief Petty Officer Drew McMahan. “ She offered her hand.

“I know you,” I said, shaking their hands. “You were a couple of years ahead of me at the public school.”

“That’s right,” CPO McGreggor said. “Since this is my homeworld, they thought I would be good at finding new recruits here.”

“Huh?”

It suddenly made sense.  Nancy McGreggor was a recruiter.  According to the news articles, the SpacDefendo was having trouble finding recruits and the Tutmonda Asembleo was trying to find ways to avoid instituting a draft.

“Mi scivolemas” CPO McMahan said. “Is James Smith McDonnell an ancestor of yours?”

McMahan’s question refocused my attention. “Mi ne scias,” I replied.  “It would be a nice thought to be the descendent of a great aircraft manufacturer.”

“Have you ever thought about going off-planet?” McGreggor asked.  “Back to Earth, perhaps?  Then you could check out your ancestors.”

I had thought about it.  I thought about it a lot.  I just never seriously considered joining the military to accomplish it.  I was born on earth just eighteen standard years ago and immigrated to Kentaurus with my family when I was three.

“We’ve been recruiting at the university,” McGreggor continued.  “But it’s slim pickings.  I told the Admiralitato that this planet’s best assets are out on the farms and in the fishing villages, not here in the city.”

“I’m not sure I’m SpacDefendo material,” I admitted.  “My education is pretty spotty.  I’m just an airplane mechanic.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘just an airplane mechanic,’” McMahan said.

“It is, of course, your choice,” McGreggor continued. “You could stay on Kentaurus, work on ultralights and crop dusters and become a farmer’s wife.  Or you could join the SpacDefendo and work on star ships.”

Well, when you put it that way . . .

“Can I think about this?”

“Absolute!” McGreggor smiled broadly.  “Here’s my card.  I’ll be planetside for three more days.”

I rode home in the half-light of Centauri B, imagining what it would be like to live and work on a starship.

“Cramped, I’ll bet,” was my conclusion.

====

I lied to the recruiters.  I didn't have to think about it.  What I had to do was to convince the other people in my family that joining the military was a good idea, and my mother is no push-over.  My father will be sad to see me go, but will remind me that it's my life, and wish me luck.  My mother will remind me of my responsibilities to clan and family, and infer that I am an ungrateful child who is abandoning her people.

This will take some shrewd diplomacy, I told myself.

In the 21st century of the Current Era, the blood lines of the old clans, tribes and races of Earth had become pretty mixed.  Though they certainly existed, finding somebody who was full blooded anything was becoming increasingly difficult.  Our family physician told me once that a examination of my genetic makeup shows ancestors from nearly every race of humanity.  But upon moving to Kentaurus, a planet settled primarily by American First Nations peoples, my parents chose to move into a community full of Celts and Danes, each setting up their own settlement on opposite sides of the Abhainn Speur River, which is as wide as the Missouri River on Earth.  I suspect that the only full blooded Scots and Danes are still back in Scotland and Denmark on Earth, but this did not stop my family and neighbors from turning our part of the continent into a reproduction of some Highlands village and calling it Speur Cala.  The rugged terrain of green hills and glacial lochs also contributed to the illusion.  So every Spring during the entire month of Phoenix we had a festival where women baked short bread and pot roast, and strong men threw telephone poles and hammers, bagpipes were played with more enthusiasm than skill, and people got into such a lather about the whole affair that they dressed in authentic Celtic garb and did their best to speak with authentic accents, and a few even went to the trouble of learning the authentic Gaelic language.  I never could bring myself to eat authentic haggis, though.

One day around Yule Holiday, I idly asked a group of grownups, "Why can't we be Californians?  At least it's warmer there."  After a pregnant pause, several men broke out in laughter.  My mother, who was born in Los Angeles, said, "California is not a clan or tribe or race or a true culture, honey."

"Put some meat on her skinny bones," a gruff and impolite man said.  "That'll keep her warm."

At the age of 11 Kentauran years, I learned to fly and became a rebellious teenager.  Deciding to adopt the culture of the dominant clan on our continent, the Cherokee, I spent as much time as I could visiting the local tribe.  Though I was willing to take on any initiation rites, the Cherokee elders smiled patiently and told me that unless I could show that my name was on some list somewhere, or that I had some certain percentage of Cherokee ancestors, that I could not join their tribe.  I was certainly welcome to hang around and learn, but they would rather I learned my own culture first.  The teenaged Cherokee girls I met and befriended decided to give me some invented contest for intitiation, and then because trouble tended to follow me where ever I went, mostly in the form of my maternal parent, they named me MoonShadow.  I couldn't pronounce the Cherokee language to save my soul, so they used the Esperanto word, Lunumbrulino.