Lightning Dust hurtled along. Marred grew no larger in her field of vision, so she looked back and watched Equestria fade smaller and smaller.
Lightning Dust had been awake for two entire days, too uncomfortable to sleep. A couple of hours ago, she finished the last energy bar rationed for the twenty-four-hour period, and she felt a booming headache worse than what she suffered while hungover. Sleep-flying wasn't natural for pegasi. She'd sleep-flown a few times but those occasions happened while she was drunk-off-her-tail. Since she hadn't smuggled any of the sauce, that wasn't an option to help her knock-off.
"Next time, bring a couple of Pale Ales. Or Whiskey. Or Mead." She licked her lips. Marred--a lot bigger now than it had been a few days ago--looked increasingly like a tasty droplet of orangeish mead. She opened her mouth and sucked against her Device--tasting the imaginary drink, shivering as she did. Space was colder than she'd conceived. She had thought, despite Doctor Hooves' warnings, that she was definitely going to be warm since the sun was warm and there was no atmosphere lessening its heat. But it felt like she was in the shade. Of course, ensconced within her suit, her body was warm enough--Doctor Hooves had apparently included a warming function. Maybe, if her face wasn't so cold, she could rest her eyes.
She detached her helmet from the utility belt and placed it over her head until it caught against her suit with a satisfying socket match. The suit pressurized to adjust, then it clicked closed. After a while, she warmed up and her eyelids drooped.
"She's approaching the point of no return. Do you have what we need to make an informed decision?" Princess Twilight Sparkle asked.
"Agreed. The ponynaut is off course. Slightly. But--Roseluck, run the numbers again."
"Can do, Doctor!" Doctor Hooves' assistant, a beaming red-maned beauty, winked at him, took a pencil in her mouth and puzzled out the calculations.
"And you... Moondancer?"
A bespectacled unicorn mare arched an eyebrow.
"Please check the calculations."
"I've already run them twice, Doctor. It's a worse situation than what your assistant calculated."
"Excuse me?" Roseluck spit out the pencil in her mouth. "I have a degree in--"
"And I graduated from Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns." Moondancer pushed thick rimmed glasses back up her snout. "And I'm better at this than you are."
Doctor Hooves' eyes grew wide as he skimmed Moondancer's calculations. "By Jove, I do believe you're right. Great work. Capital!" He beamed as he brought the calculations to Princess Twilight. Then, his face fell as he realized what the numbers meant. "We have perhaps an hour to send a warning--to maneuver around. If it arrives too late, the ponynaut will be stranded with no chance, assuming we cannot improve our rocket thrust."
"I'll beam the message to her!" Twilight Sparkle raced to the communications station, picked up headphones and confronted the apparatus, a mallet-shaped hammer key. "Hoarse code, right?"
"Indeed, Princess,"
"I'm a little rusty, but--"
"Then you probably shouldn't send it," Roseluck sneered. "Please move over, Princess and let me know what you want to say."
Princess Twilight's face reddened, "Of course. It's your job." Twilight slid over.
"Unlike some ponies previously employed here, I have sufficient University qualifications necessary to execute my duty. More than enough."
"You as sure of this as your mathematics?" Moondancer asked.
"Quiet you--" Roseluck's harsh tone cut off, and she turned to face the Twilight, asking in a simpering tone, "you would like me to send what message, Princess?"
"Yes," Twilight swallowed. "Ponynaut Lightning Dust! Please turn around posthaste due to the danger of exhausting fuel reserves. You must turn around."
"That's too wordy. We have to repeat this a lot. And it can get broken up and missed. Let's make it: "turn around. No go."
"...I suppose that works."
Roseluck's brows knitted and she began sending the message again and again and again.
"How long will you--"
Roseluck shook her head and held up a hoof. She continued to send the warning.
Lightning Dust dozed. That probably didn't matter as much as one would think, however, since she hadn't really mastered Hoarse Code during her training. She and Rainbow Dash were rivals, but they held about the same level of interest in intellectual pursuits. They could succeed, but they preferred to fill their minds with calculations for cool tricks rather than to memorize arcane data. The other participants, however, had grasped Hoarse Code. And Lightning Dust had known how to cheat.
"She cannot send a response," Doctor Hooves noted.
"How will we know if she understands?"
"If she stops. Or turns around. She might be able to execute a maneouver with landing thrusters, exhausting excess fuel. It could be tricky and she might end up pointed wrong, but she excelled in training."
"But she can't speak with us?"
"I developed something of that nature as a prototype, but the Government's Operations Director decreed it was too risky to send out untested equipment. It would, like this method, also only be reliable when Equestria is oriented in the same direction and the moon is not occluding--"
"I can move Moon."
"Not necessary. Thank you! But would that not affect the tides?"
"It's happened before," Twilight Sparkle frowned.
"Yes, yes. Of course."
"How close are the griffons to getting off the ground?" Moondancer asked.
"I'd have to ask Mrs. Harshwinny," Twilight said.
"Why isn't she here now?"
"She's with Spitfire validating equipment for the rescue." Twilight bit her lower lip. "On my orders."
"How's Spitfire doing?"
Spitfire was sputtering and gasping for air.
"We know you have had difficulties with pressure and extracting air from our simulation of space's vacuum," Mrs. Harshwhinny said.
"Not gonna be a problem, ma'am," Spitfire gritted her teeth together long enough to speak. Then, she coughed.
"Hem-hem," Harshwinny made a note on a piece of paper on her clipboard.
"I've been high altitude flying for years. I can tough it out."
"No need to be a martyr."
"But I'm the only qualified pony. Even if it is rescuing an Icarus."
Mrs. Harshwinny raised an eyebrow. "A what? I'm not familiar with the slang? Though, I am familiar with the fable."
"Same thing. A recruit who flies too high and gets burned by the sun. Especially appropriate here, ma'am, as I've heard the scuttlebutt."
"And just what does this scuttlebutt imply?" Harshwinny sneered.
"Only that Lightning Dust performed a classic loop-de-loop. I'm aware that wasn't part of the plan. And you got me training on recovery equipment. I can connect the dots."
"Perhaps you can."
Spitfire smiled.
"You win some points for astuteness," Harshwinny chuckled. "But I don't think you can execute this mission."
"You going to recruit a greenhorn?"
"Not your problem."
"Should I stop testing?"
"We still need to validate the equipment, so no."
"Ha!" Spitfire laughed. "You can't fail me. There's nopony left. I'm going to save that hotshot. I'll push myself--just like I pushed myself before every performance."
"Let us validate the dual-stage rocket next. We have a one-quarter model for low altitude."
Spitfire's spirit was great, but her flesh wasn't willing. I'd know that feeling of loss, too. I still do. I don't want to go to sleep.
Lightning Dust received the message. Alarms in her helmet woke her, just as she had managed to doze off. She jerked and jolted but recovered quickly. She tried to make out the blips and boops that indicated the starts and stops of the letters of Hoarse code. But, they may as well have been Griffon to her, so she turned off the radio.
The message could have been an emergency broadcast. Or, it could have been just congratulations. Or a reprimand. She checked her fuel levels, which were fine. She checked her bearing, which was off--a little. She activated her boosters and spent fuel to realign her trajectory. Then she checked her fuel again. It'd be close, but she could probably still get to Marred and back. At least--mostly back. Her head wasn't good with numbers. The message had probably been trying to warn her she was a little off course. Stupid rocket must have drifted. But she had a steady hoof and could realign. Everything was fine.
After an eventful couple of hours of blurry adjustments and several removals of her helmet to squint and check the bearings, Lightning Dust stared straight at Marred and used the Device to suck in oxygen, processed from space hydrogen and converted into something more palatable. Her Device still had enough chemicals remaining. She'd still be fine. And, if she didn't sleep, she could process oxygen from the floating space particles--for a while anyway.
Swallowing hard, she racked her brain thinking back to the courses on Hoarse code and the letters she cheated from Soarin's paper. But, although she could conceptualize a lot in her mind's eye, she could only do that in the short term. It had been too long since the test.
And she couldn't get to sleep for a long time after that.