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:

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-

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.

Wait a minute. This is me talking to myself, right? So shouldn’t it be I instead of we?

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.

But I couldn’t DO anything! It was all going wrong and I couldn’t help at all!

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!

Don’t ask me. I just do guilt trips. I’ll have to figure it out for myself.

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.

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.

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.

“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?”

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?”

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?”

“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-“

“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.

Y’ALL COME
Appleoosa’s 3^rd 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.

“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!”

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

OPEN DICTIONARY READ DEFINITION VACATION STOP SEE YOU THREE WEEKS AFTER NEW YEAR AND NOT BEFORE STOP HAPPY HEARTHSWARMING

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.

“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-“

“-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??”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nah. Carapace bought that one for the tourists. And of course they never touched it.”

“Wait!!” Marked Knee bounded over to the porters. “I meant to ask, where is Dragonfly??”

“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.”

“How’s that?” Occupant asked, not having really paid much attention to the conversation.

“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.

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.”

“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.

Dragonfly considered, and answered, “If it gets me a flight, sign me up for a padded paddock. What’s the deal?”

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!!”

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.

“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-“

“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.”

“All right, all right,” Lucky shrugged. “So we’ll put a heat shield on it. It won’t hurt anything, I’m sure.”

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?”

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!!”

“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.

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!

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…

“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?”

We are apparently launching something called Shotputnik tomorrow. It’s a remote control rocket, and it’s going to attempt to reach the Moon.

“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!”

“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 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.

“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?”

“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.

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.”

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??”

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, 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)

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…”

Twilight Sparkle nudged Occupant and said to Marked Knee, “I think this is the part where we leave.”

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?”

“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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

“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.

“All right, we’re all go for launch,” Occupant said as the last confirmation was called out. “Restart countdown clock.”

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.

“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.

“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-“

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)

On the screen, the plume of flame from the first stage engine died. The ship continued tumbling.

“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.

“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!”

“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).

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.

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!”

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.

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.

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

“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.

“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.

“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.”

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?”

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!”

“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-“

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-

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.

“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 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.”

“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?” 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-“

“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!”

“Redesign?” Marked Knee asked, showing the first flickers of life for the first time since the previous day’s launch.

“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.

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, 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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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!”

“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!”

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!”

“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!”

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-“

One brief eyeroll later, Twilight continued, “Which, at least for now, we’ll call Probodyne.”

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."

“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).

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)

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

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?”

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?”

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."

"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."

"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."

"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-"

"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."

"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, 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-"

"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.

Wishing all in Equestria
A Magical New Year
Full of Happiness and Friendship

Celestia * Luna * Twilight Sparkle

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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!”

“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!”

“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.”

“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!!”

“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-“

“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.”

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!!”

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.”

Marked Knee shuffled his hooves, wrung his hands, and bit his lower lip, saying nothing.

“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!!”

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.

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!”

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

Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 11: Missions R1 and R2: Another Unplanned Ignition