Tonight's live-writing: a little more CSP (Patreon)

“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 going on 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 going to pick a deorbit burn time, and then we’re going to see how small a splash we can make in the Griffon 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(331) 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:

(331) 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. It’s also cheaper from a power standpoint.

“Commander?” Fauntleroy called over the comms.

Dragonfly dozed, her fangs idly gnawing on the pencil in her mouth.

“Hey, Dragonfly, you awake?” That was Goddard, 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(332), 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 Zebrica- 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 due to 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 decoupled, sent 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:

(332) Cover sealed, thankfully. Goddard and von Brawn had figured out very early that it was vital, when dealing with changelings, to design 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(333). “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(334). “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, trying 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 has 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!(335) 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 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:

(333) Fireball was a dragon just out of adolescence, still small enough to fit in pony homes and pony spaceships, and thus he couldn’t treat yaks with the same contempt a centuries-old mature dragon, as long or longer than a city block, could. But that wasn’t what worried Fireball. 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 wanted to fight someone who literally did not know how to quit, scales and fire or not.

(334) 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.

(335) 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.