//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7: Missions 6, 7 and 8: Exemplary Geniuses Making a Big Mess 
// Story: Changeling Space Program 
// by Kris Overstreet 
//------------------------------//

Warner von Brawn, Cherry Berry and Chrysalis sat in a row in the press-VIP balcony overlooking Cape Friendship’s mission control room, each thinking the same thing: I covet my neighbor’s Mission Control building.

Compared to the plush pony digs, the Changeling Space Program’s mission control facility was a shack- literally a portable shack on skids. True to her promise, Chrysalis had released funds for construction on the Changeling Space Program’s new permanent mission control ahead of schedule, but it wouldn’t be finished for at least a month. Even when it was finally finished, it wouldn’t be nearly as nice as the warm, comfortable, well-lit control room with its large visitor’s gallery.(78)  Instead of desks thrown together at random, there were neat rows of workstations, each pony having their own personal illusion projection tweaked to focus on their particular jobs.(79)

The working environment likewise made all three CSP leaders present- Cherry Berry, Chrysalis, Warner von Brawn- jealous. Unlike the sometimes fractious, more often professional-acquaintances-nothing-more attitude at CSP, the ponies of the Equestria Space Agency were all friends, and mostly very close friends. Necessity had forced the ponies to adopt a system somewhat similar to CSP’s, but the goodwill all around made many of the particulars very different indeed.

Compared to this, the current working relationship at CSP seemed… 

Fraught.

It was an unusual, seldom-used word that never meant anything good, but Cherry Berry thought it fit the mood in the Changeling Space Program after Chrysalis’s almost disastrous flight.

She couldn’t figure out what the mood was fraught with. Anything fraught had to be fraught with something. You couldn’t just be fraught. Maybe you could be fraught with fraughtedness, but Cherry didn’t think that was it. 

After the event, opinion of Queen Chrysalis’s flight split into two camps. The non-changelings thought it had been a reckless fit of vanity, and that was all. The changelings, on the other hand, couldn’t stop chittering about how brave and calm their queen was in the face of almost certain death. The fact that she’d put herself in a position of almost certain death didn’t bother them at all. That was a changeling’s life. That was a queen changeling’s job description, in fact. 

But if Chrysalis noticed that her subjects regarded her with a little more affection and loyalty, she didn’t show it. In fact, for a couple of weeks after that flight, she didn’t show much of anything. She stayed in the same professional-pilot mode all the time. To Cherry’s mind that wasn’t healthy. Pilots needed to be able to relax.

Cherry Berry had originally intended to discipline her rebellious boss by assigning extra simulations and training. That fell apart when Chrysalis beat her to it, demanding more training and more intense simulations. For two weeks thereafter the queen threw herself into the work of becoming an astronaut like she’d never done before. Her demands for drop training of the space capsule, more time in the centrifuge, and other physical challenges pushed what even Cherry, flight obsessed as she was, considered the limits of sanity.

Finally, after noticing the holes in Chrysalis’s legs growing larger from lack of feeding, Cherry Berry used the upcoming transfer of training equipment from the hive to the space center as an excuse to declare a moratorium on all training. She then browbeat the queen into going out and doing whatever she needed to do to feed herself back up to training weight. Chrysalis disappeared for a week, during which reclusive wealthy socialite Cool Drink appeared in Las Pegasus and provided the tabloid press with enough material for weeks of supermarket reading.

And then Chrysalis turned up at the new space center in Horseton, personally supervising the assembly of the simulators, checking off the final stages of construction on the vehicle assembly building and tracking centers, and working off whatever weight she’d managed to gain from the shallow love of Las Pegasus’s elite. 

She’d even begun actually studying the chemistry behind the rocket engines. That shocked Cherry worse than anything else. Chrysalis hated the scientific details of the space program. Learning from a book bored her to tears. (That is, any book that didn't have Daring Do or a mare with her blouse half ripped off on the cover.)

And then, just when Cherry was seriously beginning to worry about a royal nervous breakdown, the invitation from Twilight Sparkle to the Equestrian Space Agency’s next launch arrived. That took everypony’s mind off the previous flight and Chrysalis’s mental state, to Cherry Berry’s intense relief. 

Now, in the comfort of the padded chair with a pegasus-eye view of the upcoming launch, she pulled a small basket of cherries out of her saddlebag and settled back to enjoy the show. I’ve had a tense month, she thought. Now I am going to relax, and no temperamental changeling queen is going to ruin it for me.

Meanwhile, next to her, the changeling queen in question sat stoically on her chair and tried to pretend she wasn’t jealous of the currently absent pony princess and her friends.

“Dash, you all right in there?” Applejack served as both mission planner and capsule communicator, although the ponies had not yet seen the need for strict control of the communications channel through the telepresence spell between pilot and ground.(80)

“Yeah, of course I’m all right,” Rainbow Dash said from the cockpit. “Are we ready to light this thing yet?”

“Hold on there,” Applejack said. “We’re waitin’ on confirmation of th’ retrieval team bein’ in position.”

“Well, tell ‘em to hurry up!” Dash replied. “I’m ready to be awesome!”

Good-natured laughter rang around the mission control room, of a kind which never happened at CSP. 

A pony sat down next to Chrysalis. The changeling queen glanced over to see Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and head of the ESA, letting out a sigh of relief. “I finally got the press set up on the roof,” she said. “You’d think an hour doing nothing but taking photos of the two of us would be enough.”

“Pony world problems,” Chrysalis muttered.(81)

“By the way,” Twilight murmured, “thank you for recommending me to Ad Astra.” She gestured to the Canterlot Royal Astronomical Society observer, who had taken a seat in the back row of the mission control workstations. “I found her counterfactual scenarios interesting.” After a pause she continued, voice unchanged, “I would have found them more interesting without the illustrations.”

“Once seen, never forgotten,” Chrysalis agreed. 

“Luna is beginning to complain,” Twilight added, her tone taking just the slightest measure of accusation, “about all the magical cockroach monsters she’s had to remove from my nightmares.”

“So, what are your contracts for this mission?” Chrysalis asked innocently.

“Hm? Oh, no contracts,” Twilight said. “This is a purely experimental flight. We’re reproducing CSP’s Mission Four with hemispherical nose cones added to the outboard Flea engines.” Now her voice oozed smugness. “A development made possible by the wind tunnel in our expanded research and development department, headed by my student Starlight Glimmer.”

“I’m sure Dr. von Brawn’s assistants-“

“Partners,” von Brawn rumbled, not sounding particularly offended.

“-and my changelings will enjoy seeing it on the tour,” Chrysalis continued. “But toys aren’t everything, my dear.” Chrysalis had expected a game of one-upsmareship with the princess, and she had come with a full arsenal. “We’ve just finished construction on our tracking station and our vehicle assembly building, so in the next week or two we’ll begin test launches of several new engine systems. Doctor, the briefing materials?”

Von Brawn reached into Cherry Berry’s saddlebags(82) and pulled out a small binder, which he offered to the princess. Twilight took it with her magic, opened it, and flipped past the abstract to the illustrations. “Two liquid fuel systems?” she asked. 

“Goddard the Griffon’s first fruits,” Chrysalis replied. “His ‘Reliant’ design is his first full-size production engine. The ‘Swivel’ has a bit less thrust and weighs more, but it can be steered, providing for greater maneuverability in flight.”

Twilight turned a page. “And these must be the fuel tanks?”

“Two different sizes depending on your needs,” Chrysalis agreed. “All perfectly interlocking for simple assembly, using a fuel-oxidant dual-liquid propellant.”(83)

“This is fascinating!” Twilight Sparkle gasped. “If these numbers are correct, even the less powerful of these two engines produces more thrust than the Flea!”

“The Flea,” von Brawn rumbled, “was never meant to be anything more than a disposable(84) engine to be used only for brief flight tests. Dr. Goddard’s engines can be provided with as much or as little fuel as one wishes and can be throttled up or down- their speed and fuel consumption controlled, as is impossible with solid fuel motors.”

“Fascinating,” Twilight Sparkle repeated. 

“We’re also working on larger solid rockets to use as boosters,” von Brawn said, “much like the two outboard engines on your current launch. One is already in production, and another-“

“Shh!” Cherry Berry spoke up, nudging the changeling queen on one side and the minotaur on the other. “Soarin’ just flew in! The Wonderbolts must finally be in position.” She tossed her empty carton of cherries and pulled another carton out of her saddlebag. “Looks like we’re about to have a show!”

“And I suppose my subjects are going to miss it,” Chrysalis muttered.

“I’m sure they’re enjoying their tour with Fluttershy,” Twilight Sparkle remarked coldly.



Footnotes: 

(78) For one thing, the CSP mission control didn’t have a visitor’s gallery at all. It took Cherry Berry hours to convince Chrysalis that she needed someplace to put VIPs, Twilight Sparkle for example, when they returned the visits CSP personnel had taken to shamelessly spy on the other space programs.

(79)  CSP used a jumble of tables and desks, all sharing the single huge telepresence display, and mainly working with paper and pencil. Occupant in particular was complaining about the effect pencil shavings had on his stomach.

(80) Although loud simultaneous shouting arguments were not unknown among ponies, they were nothing like as common as among changelings, never mind the multi-species CSP. In the absence of a queen to tell them to cut it out, changeling arguments could last all day, mutate from one dispute to another, and totally switch arguing positions in the process. This common experience gives changelings in general a profound insight into the value of peace and quiet.

(81) Despite the program’s achievements, the Equestrian press had chosen not to pay a visit to either the hive or the still-under-construction Horseton Space Center… except for the Manehattan Weekly Supermarket Snoop, whose reporter had been stuck in a pod and mailed back to Manehattan labeled RETURN TO SENDER, DELIVERY REFUSED. The writer, once released by her editor, had written an article about her visit entitled SEVEN SURE-FIRE WAYS TO MAKE YOURSELF UNAPPETIZING TO CHANGELINGS. 

(82) He had to dig under several baskets of cherries to get to them. Cherry intended to do absolutely nothing except watch the flight, and she had come prepared with her favorite snack. 

(83) Chrysalis had memorized the terms in training. She'd only learned what they actually meant in the previous week or so. Still, she could rattle the words off on command, and that was what counted now. 

(84) Chrysalis reflected, not for the first time, how difficult it was proving to dispose of the vast number of engines the minotaurs had built before she bought them out. Another couple of months might do it, at current sales and consumption rates. And the engines which had come home were being reconditioned and refueled for reuse or resale, so more than likely they’d never run out.




The Equestrian Space Agency had been shocked, not to say appalled, when they received Changeling Space Program’s RSVP for one hundred and fourteen guest passes. The number of non-changeling members of the CSA was well known, so very elementary math showed the vast majority of the passes would be for changelings. 

But ESA had announced the flight, and they couldn't say no now. CSP’s construction workers were due a couple of days off, partly due to the highest-priority buildings having been completed, partly due to the three solid days of rain that Eye Wall had insisted on bringing to the Muck Lake(85) area. Given the combination of factors, Chrysalis had decided to give the changelings working at the space center a break, chartering a barge to carry every single employee north to Baltimare. They arrived in the evening, giving the citizens of the fair city on the bay a night they would never forget. 

The world had seen changeling infiltration, changeling subversion and changeling invasion, but ponies simply didn’t know how to deal with changeling tourists.(86) In the battle which followed many a roll of film was shot, many restaurants and theaters were conquered, and the casualty list filled the floors of the harbor’s watering holes. 

Baltimare survived the night with only a couple of minor legal entanglements(87), and the next morning all of the changelings arrived at Cape Friendship, a considerable majority of them wearing I HEART BALTIMARE shirts or caps,(88) all with fresh rolls of film in their cameras. In their wake came dozens of reporter ponies plus a newsgriffon, some following up on “Changeling Gras”, some having heard of the meeting between Queen Chrysalis and Princess Twilight Sparkle, and some just showing up for the launch without having heard of the one hundred and fourteen surplus visitors.

Chrysalis and Twilight, wanting to be able to speak to one another on business at some point during the day, sent most of the changelings, plus three minotaurs, on a tour of the ESA facility led by backup pilot Fluttershy(89). The tour had been most successful, from mission control to Astronaut Village to the vast recovery-airship hangar to the tracking station. 

And then came the research and development facilities, which Fluttershy had expected would be the most uninteresting to the changelings. The three minotaurs, having their own labs, only asked a few questions which Fluttershy couldn’t answer before observing in silence. The changelings, however, poked and prodded at almost everything, asking question after question until Fluttershy was ready to scream.

It was Dragonfly who first noticed The Thing. 

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a large glass-walled chamber with a large control panel in front. 

“Oh, that’s our wind tunnel,” Fluttershy said. “Using those controls we create strong winds that create the conditions of high-speed flight. By using models of our ships and smoke streams, we can see how air currents affect our spaceships and adjust our designs to make them more aerodynamic.”

One changeling raised its hoof. “What’s aerodynamic?” he asked.

“Able to fly better,” Fluttershy said. 

Stinger Charlie nudged Dragonfly. “I’m more aerodynamic than you,” he said. 

“You know you’re not,” Dragonfly snapped.

“Am too,” Stinger Charlie said.

“Which one of us is a pilot,” Dragonfly hissed, “and which one is ground crew and recovery team?”

“Which one of us,” Stinger Charlie snapped back, “is a pilot who’s never flown a rocket yet?”

Dragonfly’s eyes narrowed. “Right, that’s it,” she said. “I’ll show you who’s more aerodynamic. Miss Fluttershy, how do you work this thing?”

“Er,” Fluttershy mumbled in a very definite way. “I, um, don’t think we should play with the wind tunnel… if you don’t mind…”

“Actually,” one of the minotaurs, George Cowley, interrupted, “I should be extremely interested to see this machine in action. Would it do any harm to changelings?”

“Well, not at relatively low speeds,” Fluttershy admitted, “so long as the wind strength never goes higher than terminal velocity.”

“Ah, yes,” Cowley nodded sagely. “A wind stronger than the air pressure of terminal velocity would slam the changeling into a wall, wouldn’t it? Very well,” he said, looking at the controls, “I see no reason why we could not give it a try.”

“Um… I don’t know about this…” Fluttershy muttered, shifting uncomfortably on her hooves.



Footnotes:

(85) The name the villagers of Horseton gave the tidal inlet that ran next to the rapidly arising space center. 

(86) And thanks to paychecks from Chrysalis and a bit of generosity from casino part-owner Lucky Cricket, the changeling tourists had come bearing money and an inclination to spend it. This made the mental adjustment in pony merchants’ minds considerably smoother than it might have been otherwise, particularly when it was discovered that your average changeling has much less spending discipline than your average pony.

(87) Chrysalis was not amused by the changelings who claimed their capture of a newlywed couple was merely for sport. Even less amused was Twilight Sparkle, who explained with more patience than was probably justified that Equestrian laws on kidnapping did not include exceptions for “catch and release.”

(88) One very fast-moving souvenir vendor had managed to get I CHANGELING BALTIMARE in print in time for some of the CSP workers to snag that as well. Dragonfly wore I HEART on a cap and I CHANGELING on a shirt. However, the vendor ended up selling a lot more of his new design to Baltimare natives than to any changelings.

(89) Who told them they would only get to visit the gift shop if they were very, very good for the rest of the tour.



“… and we have splashdown! Splashdown at nine point nine kilometers downrange!” 

The ponies in mission control cheered and danced around as if they’d all drawn the winning number in a Los Pegasus lottery. Chrysalis snorted. “Unprofessional,” she muttered.

“Oh, lighten up,” Cherry Berry grinned. “We’re ponies. We do things like that.”

“Don’t remind me.” Chrysalis turned her attention to Twilight Sparkle, who was scribbling like mad on a notepad. The pencil held in her magic danced down one page (flip) and up the other (flip). 

“Hey, guys!” Rainbow Dash’s voice called over the illusion. “Capsule’s secure here. Ya wanna tell me how I did?”

“Max’mum velocity five ought seven meters a’second,” Big MacIntosh replied. “Altitude topped out at fifty-one hundred forty-two meters.”

“Hey, yeah!” Rainbow Dash laughed. “And almost ten kilometers downrange! That makes me twenty percent better than Cherry Berry!”

“Rainbow Dash, don’t you be like that!” Applejack replied. “Stick to yer own knittin’ an’ don’t mind what other ponies are doin’!”

Up in the visitor’s balcony Chrysalis leaned over to mutter to Cherry Berry, “Doesn’t that upset you? Her, gloating over her victory?”

“Our race is to the moon,” Cherry Berry said, not bothering to mutter. “We’re going to take back the lead as soon as these new engines come into play.”

Chrysalis noticed Twilight Sparkle’s scribbling accelerate slightly, but said nothing.

Back on the illusion, Rainbow Dash said, “Hey, Spitfire’s hooking up the lift cable now. Gotta go, see you back at base in fifteen!” Almost as soon as she spoke, the illusion flickered and died as the capsule shut down.

“Why don’t we go congratulate Rainbow Dash?” Cherry Berry asked. “That flight was almost perfect!”

Chrysalis shrugged and nodded agreement(90). 

“For my part,” von Brawn said, “I shall investigate the vehicle assembly building. I might pick up more inspiration for new rocket designs.”

“Very well, Doctor.” Twilight’s smile as she turned her attention to the other two guests seemed, to Chrysalis’s eyes, a little forced. “Shall we go to the yard?” she asked, gesturing to the door with one hoof.

Of course Fluttershy chose that moment to barge into the door, screaming, “Twilight! Twilight!” before stopping and freezing at all the faces turned her way. “Er… um… I… have a minor… a teensy weensy little issue with the… er… thingy,” she whispered, trailing off to nothing under Chrysalis’s gaze. 

The changeling queen sighed. “Have my subjects done something foolish again?” she asked.

“Oh, no!” Fluttershy denied. Then, “Well, maybe. Yes. But just a little.”

“Because of course they did,” Chrysalis grumbled.(91) “Your Highness, would you like me to accompany you?”

“I’m sure this is nothing that can’t be straightened out,” Twilight Sparkle said, her smile containing a definite grit-teeth component. “You and Cherry Berry go say hello to Rainbow Dash, and I’ll straighten this out myself.”

As Chrysalis and Cherry Berry watched Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle leave, Cherry asked, “Why didn’t Twilight want you with her? Doesn’t she need you to give orders to the others?”

“If she has any good sense,” Chrysalis muttered, “she senses a trap. She thinks she can handle a hundred changelings, but not if I’m in the fight myself.” She shrugged. “Bad Idea #717; False Peace Negotiations Kidnapping. I could make it work up until the point I had Sparkle in a pod, but that leaves three very angry alicorns unaccounted for. A tactically deficient(92) position, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Cherry Berry considered this, then shrugged. “So long as you think she can handle it,” Cherry said. “Let’s go see the capsule retrieval.”



Footnotes:

(90) Chrysalis didn’t feel like breaking her Professional Pilot façade. Also, whining, “Do I haaave to?” is not a thing a powerful changeling queen does, as her late mother had reminded her time and time again. 

(91) Not every changeling can be a successful infiltrator, and CSP’s staff were mainly drawn from those who weren’t, but even so Chrysalis believed that being out in the open caused her subjects to lose the little discretion they ever had. Yet another reason, she believed, that secrecy was better for changelingkind, at least until she succeeded in her conquest of the ponies.

(92) “tactically deficient,” adj. Describing a position you’ve put yourself in by choice, from which there is no possible happy outcome. Synonyms: “doomed,” “totally bucked,” and “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”



The first thing Twilight noticed was the lone changeling sitting at a table with a stack of books. The changeling was reading, with every sign of enjoyment, Elementary Principles of Non-Magical Physics. As Fluttershy and Twilight stared, the changeling slowly turned a page, oblivious to their presence. 

This was remarkable only partly for the inherent discontinuity of a changeling reading books(93). What made the tableau truly compelling was how the changeling, lost in a young readers’ textbook, completely ignored the commotion in the room next door.

The roaring wind noises and the happy chittering and laughter of changelings required quite a lot of ignoring.

Fluttershy led Twilight into the wind tunnel chamber. Most of the changelings were standing in single file, eagerly waiting their own turn in the chamber. Cowley the minotaur had found out how to switch the tunnel from horizontal to vertical blow and had generated a massive updraft, inside which about a dozen changelings tumbled, hovered, and roughhorsed with obvious glee. A group of changelings assisted those exiting the chamber, some of whom were a bit motion-sick as they readjusted to the outside. Dragonfly, Stinger Charlie, and a few of the strongest flyers among the changelings had taken printouts of their own time in the chamber and were comparing notes, each defending particular qualities of their bodies which made their particular flying styles better.

And then there was the one responsible changeling in the room, Occupant, who far from stopping the madness was quite cheerfully metering the line, letting one changeling into the wind tunnel as another tumbled out.(94)

“I tried to tell them to stop,” Fluttershy whimpered. “I asked most politely. But they were having so much fun, and… well…”

“I understand,” Twilight said, walking over to the responsible changeling(95), intent on bringing the shenanigans to an end. Scientific equipment was not meant to be used as a toy, no matter how good it was at keeping lots of changelings out of more serious trouble.

And just as Occupant noticed her, his ear-fins drooping sadly, something in the back of Twilight Sparkle’s brain made her pause. 

She shifted her right wing, where she held the briefing binder on upcoming CSP rocket technology, with its wonderful rockets and things and stuff that all required testing.

And then Twilight Sparkle had an Idea.

An awful idea.

Twilight Sparkle had a WONDERFUL awful idea.

“Aww,” Occupant moaned, “I kind of expected Uncle Pointy would make a lousy scout.”

The changeling at the front of the line sighed, “Does this mean we don’t get to visit the gift shop?”

“Actually,” Twilight Sparkle drawled, choosing her words carefully, “I just came to remind you that the gift shop will be closing soon, so you need to get over there to get your souvenirs.”

“YAAAAAAY!” Dozens of changelings flocked next to a startled Fluttershy. 

“Now, Fluttershy will take everypony to the gift shop,” Twilight continued, “while I talk with Mr. Occupant about maybe… just maybe… getting you all a wind tunnel of your own?”

“YAAAAAAY!!!”

With cheering and shouting and laughter the crowd of changelings gradually exited the wind tunnel room, with Cowley shutting down the wind tunnel and shooing out the last few lingering changelings. Trailing along behind, holding a book in one hoof while carrying the others in his magic, Uncle Pointy the changeling scout followed.

“Do you really mean it?” Occupant asked. “A wind tunnel of our very own?”

“Sure!” Twilight Sparkle said, smiling in a most friendly fashion. “All you have to do is perform a few special tests…”



Footnotes:

(93) This is unfair to changelings, most of whom are literate and many of whom enjoy the occasional good book. Just because they are magical monsters dedicated to world conquest and draining emotions out of victims does not mean they are all mindless, uncultured brutes. Their love of professional pegasus wrestling should not be held against them, as they follow the sport “only for the story.”

(94) Occupant has been the test changeling, had taken a good long turn while Cowley learned the controls, and was content to keep things orderly so that everyling could have a turn in the Fun Machine.

(95) Twilight was SO grateful for Occupant’s buck teeth. She didn’t want to admit that all changelings looked the same to her. Yes, they tried to conquer Canterlot, ruin her brother’s wedding, and kill her friends, but that didn’t excuse a pony being speciesist.



“…so the secret,” Rainbow Dash said, thoroughly enjoying the attention of the press and particularly of Chrysalis and Cherry Berry, “is not to try to make any hard turns. You have to think ahead in rocket flight and make only little, careful adjustments. If you try to make a hard turn when you’re going that fast you’re only going to lose control. Little adjustments, that’s the key.”

“I’ve noticed the exact same thing,” Cherry Berry agreed. “But it’s not just about little adjustments. You have to get it in your head that you can’t make hard turns in a rocket. It’s all about carried momentum. You can’t make a tight turn without slowing down, and if you do slow down you’ve wasted the fuel you used to get that fast.”

Rainbow Dash spared a half-second glare for Cherry Berry before continuing, “That’s right. You really have to think ahead if you want to fly a rocket.”

Twilight Sparkle walked up to the group of reporters surrounding the pilots. Occupant trailed along behind, looking considerably worried. “Thanks for coming, everypony,” she said, “but I’m afraid we need Dashie for her mission debriefing, and we need to get to work reconditioning the rocket, so it’s time for you all to go.”

This announcement was greeted with the usual grumbling by the press corps, which always wants a few minutes longer for a celebrity to hopefully say something embarrassing. 

“But before you go, I have an announcement,” Twilight Sparkle continued. “I’ve been speaking with Mr. Occupant, the changeling who plans the missions for the Changeling Space Program, and he’s agreed to launch a special test rocket for ESA a week from tomorrow!”

“WHAT??”

Every eye turned to Chrysalis. Two dozen pencils hovered or waggled at the ready over blank notebook pages. 

The changeling queen, political survival sense kicking into high gear, continued with barely a pause, “Your Highness, we had intended to wait for the regional weather schedule to be confirmed before making the announcement! We don’t want to inconvenience the busy, hardworking weatherponies, after all!”

“Oh, you’re totally right!” Twilight Sparkle replied. “I’ll have to talk it over with the pony in charge there and adjust the schedule to make sure launch day is clear.”

“Er… we’ll want two days clear, actually,” Chrysalis improvised. Eye Wall would grudgingly agree to a one-day change in schedule, but surely never two, the stubborn, overbearing… “You never know when a technical glitch can tie things up for hours.”

“Oh, I agree!” Twilight Sparkle nodded. “I’m sure it’ll be no trouble. I’ll take care of it personally.”

Chrysalis glared at Occupant, who wouldn’t return her gaze. “Then I shall see you in eight days,” she said, accepting defeat. “Meanwhile, my staff must return to Baltimare for the evening. We have to take ship back to our space center early in the morning, after all.”

“Actually-“ 

Chrysalis plowed forward over Twilight Sparkle’s objections. “I’m sure you’ve arranged for the merchants of Baltimare to show us more of their world-renowned hospitality,” she said, “which of course we shall return to those ponies joining us at the special launch. Surely Mr. Occupant reminded you of that during your… negotiations?”

Occupant looked like he wanted to bury himself. At that moment Chrysalis would have been delighted to help with the digging.

“Er… sure he did!” Twilight replied. Chrysalis noticed the alicorn beginning to sweat, holding her smile in place by force of will. 

Suffer, pony, Chrysalis thought. You’re much less experienced at this kind of negotiation than I am. You only win this round because you got to someone even less experienced who I can’t publicly undermine. 

But when I get you in private, Occupant…

“Excuse me.” Cherry Berry spoke up, breaking the tense tableau. “But as the pony who will fly this special launch, I need to take Occupant aside and discuss the mission goals and procedures.” The earth pony, Chrysalis noted, had an advantage; as a pilot with serious business ahead, rather than a political figure, she didn’t have to keep smiling. And she wasn’t even trying to. 

In fact, Chrysalis thought, based on that glare she might actually be angrier with my little changeling than I am. I might need to go along and protect him… 

… at least to make sure there are enough pieces of him left for me to have my own turn at him.




“You agreed to WHAT?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Occupant bowed deeply before Cherry Berry(96). “I didn’t have a choice!”

“You didn’t have the authority!” Cherry Berry growled. “You do NOT get to accept missions without Chrysalis or myself signing off on it first!”

“I know, I know!” Occupant whimpered. “But if I said no, I’d have to tell the others that I said no to them getting a brand new Fun Machine!”

“What,” Chrysalis asked archly, “is a ‘fun machine’?”

Bit by bit Occupant managed to explain the wind tunnel and the changeling shenanigans involved. By the time he was done, Chrysalis had almost come around to his side. True, he shouldn’t have signed the contract, but he didn’t have the stature of a queen to ignore the strong desires of the hive. 

Indeed, she noted as Fluttershy led the souvenir-laden(97) changeling tour towards them, even a queen defies the wishes of the hive at her own peril. Which is why I insisted on the second night in Baltimare, and why I don’t expect a copper back of all those bits I doled out as mad-money.

And the wishes of the hive were blatantly clear, since at least a quarter of the hundred-odd changelings were singing a happy little song: “We’re gonna get a fun machine, we’re gonna get a fun machine…”

“How expensive is a wind tunnel,” Chrysalis asked, “if you paid cash instead of trade?”

“Very expensive,” Cherry Berry replied. “I’ve never heard of one outside of Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or the Wonderbolts training camp before.”

“Oh,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Wonderful.”



Footnotes:

(96) Technically this was lese majeste, bowing to a common pony in the presence of his rightful queen, but Chrysalis was willing to let it slide. For one thing, she had put Cherry Berry in overall charge of the program. For another… she didn’t want to be on the wrong end of that glare herself. The gentle, happy-go-lucky pony could be terrifying when someone got between her and cherries, or between her and a safe flight.

(97) When Filthy Rich saw the sales totals from his licensed gift shop for the day, he would be delighted. Most notably, Uncle Pointy had quietly purchased one of each book on the gift shop shelves, including the newly released “Daring Do and the Crystal Comet,” written by Reserve Pilot A. K. Yearling, ESA.




Looking back, all involved were grateful that none of them had uttered the words, “How hard can it be?” The answer, as it turned out when they examined the contracts, was, “very.”

The main contract was subdivided into three separate contracts with a codicil. The separate contracts, in more or less order, were: (1) Fly a parachute up to between 4,000 and 7,000 meters, at a speed between 130 and 210 meters per second; (2) Fly a Flea booster up, holding between 460 and 540 meters per second between 12,000 and 18,000 meters; and (3) fire one of the new Hammer boosters at 16,000 meters at a minimum starting velocity of 440 meters per second. The codicil required that all three tests be performed on the same rocket, on a certain date, said rocket also to include both a Reliant and a Swivel liquid-fuel engine. The individual contracts were still valid after the date, but if any of the tests failed, or if the changelings simply didn’t launch, Twilight Sparkle would have the right to reclaim the wind tunnel plus a very substantial penalty payment.

Chrysalis and Occupant both did the math, and then they called George Bull in to check their sums. Looking at the final sum, Chrysalis said, “This could break us, you know.”

“I’m trying not to think about that,” Cherry Berry said, looking at the same numbers. “This is like a win-win for Twilight, if you think she’s evil enough to want to bankrupt us.”

“She might be,” Chrysalis said, “but she’s not competent enough. I think she just saw a way to get us to do a test flight for her, and she got carried away with herself.”

“Going three times as high as we’ve ever gone before is a bit more than just carried away!” Cherry Berry said.

“Depends on whether the buzzard’s new engines perform as advertised,” Chrysalis replied.

And if failing the flight didn’t break the Changeling Hive, the rush to get some minimum level of hospitality in place for the press and pony dignitaries might. Horseton’s hotel rooms were confined to the upper story of the general store(98). The space program was still working out of the temporary shack. There was no gift shop or anything even remotely resembling entertainment for visitors. All these things had to be remedied in less than a week.

Fortunately for them, as Chrysalis pointed out, the changelings had a major advantage: overwhelming free labor. Three hundred more changelings were temporarily transferred from the hive to join the now semi-skilled construction changelings on-site.(99) Top priority was given to expanding and finishing the new mission control building, with the temporary building to be converted into the new gift shop. Second priority would go to getting the astronaut training center far enough along to allow ponies to use it as a temporary hotel. Workers and building materials were pulled off the research center, the administration building, and the hangar.

Reserve funds were tapped to buy additional building materials, which arrived on the same barges that brought a new capsule, six Hammers, three Reliants, three Swivels, and a couple dozen fuel tanks, plus one other development that Goddard and von Brawn had been cooking up together… which, Goddard explained at a meeting after he arrived at the space center, might be enough by itself to achieve the mission goals.

“What is it?” Chrysalis asked, looking at the picture of a metal ring taped to the chalkboard in the astronaut facility’s briefing room.

“This is a decoupler,” von Brawn said. “Goddard has tested the concept and found it sound, and I contracted some friends back home in the mining business to manufacture them.”

“Great. What’s a decoupler?” Chrysalis asked.

“It’s an explosive charge,” Goddard answered simply, “that separates part of the rocket from the rest of it, allowing the pilot to dump useless weight and thus fly higher and faster.”

“But there isn’t any useless weight on a rocket,” Cherry Berry said. “We make sure of that.”

“Do we?” Goddard asked. For once the old griffon seemed to smile, just a little. “Do you remember Chrysalis’s most recent flight? We staged the engines separately, trying to extend the flight time.”

“Which worked,” Chrysalis said, “even if little else did.”

“But your rocket still had to haul two burned-out engines,” Goddard said. “You could have saved about a ton of weight if you could have dropped those pods before lighting the other engines.”

“Making the rocket lighter,” Cherry Berry nodded, “which would make the thrust more efficient. Yes, I can see it.”

“And what happens to the parts that drop?” Chrysalis asked.

“What happens when anything gets dropped? It falls,” Goddard said, the smile vanishing under the influence of a Stupid Question. “And presumably goes splash or boom depending on what’s beneath it.”

“You can’t do that!” Cherry and Chrysalis said in the same breath.

“What if it drops on someone?” Cherry asked.

“How can we reuse or resell it if it breaks into a million pieces?” Chrysalis asked.

“Better them than you,” Goddard snapped, “to both of you! Once a rocket burns out, it’s useless! We can’t refuel them on the fly, they weigh down the craft and slow it down- why not get rid of it?”

“Because it costs money, that’s why!” Chrysalis shouted back.

“I know it does!” Goddard returned glare for glare. “But I’ve done the math, and that’s just what you’ll have to spend to get into space! Besides, there’s a hard limit to what we can bring down under parachutes anyway!”

“That’s what you think!” Chrysalis replied. “Dragonfly designed a new parachute that we can stick on the sides of things! Now we can put all the parachutes in the world on a ship-“

“And all that unnecessary weight slows us down!” Goddard snapped. “Detaching the used fuel tanks and engines is the only way we can reduce our fuel consumption and gain delta-V.”

“What’s delta-V?” Chrysalis asked. 

Goddard looked at Cherry Berry. “Didn’t you teach this in your astronaut training?”

Cherry shrugged. “Calculating delta-V requires calculus,” she said. “I just barely got to algebra in school.”

Goddard sighed the universal sigh of all scientists being forced to explain things to the innumerate. “Delta-V is a mathematics term,” he said. “Delta being the fourth letter of the ancient minotauran alphabet, symbolizing change, and v for velocity. Two symbols.”

“Leave it to scientists,” Chrysalis grumbled, “to make up a new word for speed.”



“Acceleration,” Goddard corrected her automatically. He grabbed a piece of chalk in his talons and sketched out some equations on the chalkboard. “Since neither of you knows calculus(100), I’ll avoid differentials. But you probably know that the heavier something is, and the faster it’s going, the harder it hits, right?” He pointed to the first equation:


 


“Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. Right?”

“Of course,” Chrysalis acknowledged. 

“But we can tweak this equation to define acceleration,” Goddard continued, pointing to the second equation: 


 


“Acceleration equals force divided by mass. Do I need to explain how I got here?”

“We had this much in Cherry’s pilot training,” Chrysalis said. “We also had these line drawings to show how thrusts in X and Y direction added up to going in direction Z.”

“Unfortunately that’s as far as I could go,” Cherry admitted. “I was focusing on vocabulary and theory more than math anyway.”

“I’ll keep it simple,” Goddard grumbled. “So what happens when, for example, we apply a force of ten to a mass of five. Acceleration equals two, right?” The third equation: 





“I see it, yes.” 

“But what if we apply the same force to something with a mass of only two?” Goddard rubbed out the first number and replaced the third, leaving: 





“Ten divided by two is five,” Chrysalis said. 

“Which is a lot more than two,” Goddard finished. “This is why your acceleration goes slightly up the longer your rocket burns; as you use up fuel the ship becomes a little lighter, so you get more acceleration out of your force.” He began sketching out a long equation. “This will be a long one,” he muttered as he sketched, “and bear in mind I’m simplifying down enough for that idiot Occupant to understand, never mind a queen. The actual result requires enough math that von Brawn’s crew invented a machine to do it for them.” Under his breath he grumbled, “And they always beg for more money to build a better one, Faust help us.”

“The cost of advancing technology,” von Brawn said, unruffled by Goddard’s complaint.

The final result was actually two equations: 








“Now,” Goddard said, “let’s ignore the aerodynamic problems of your last flight. Five Fleas on your rocket, yes? So let’s say you launch burning two, then burning two more, and then burning the final one last. All the motors stay attached. That means the mass is constant for all three burns. Do you see it?”

“You’re not accounting for the fuel burning up and lightening the ship,” Chrysalis pointed out.

“I told you I’m simplifying,” Goddard snapped. “The chalkboard’s only so big. Anyway, we do the math and get…” He sketched out under the second equation:





“A total acceleration of five.”

“Five whats?”

“Just five. Simplifying.” Goddard paused to clear chalk out of his claw. “But,” he continued, using his tail to brush away the last line of math, “what if you dropped two engines each time you hit burnout? And say that two engines equals one-third of the ship’s starting mass.” 

He rubbed out the nines in the second equation and rewrote it: 







“At each stage after the first,” Goddard pointed out, “the ship is lighter, so the same force produces much more acceleration.”

He completed the math: 





“Instead of five, we now have eight,” Goddard said. “A sixty percent improvement in acceleration. Imagine your last ship going sixty percent faster, higher, farther.”

Chrysalis’s face went a bit pale. “I’d rather not,” she said.

Goddard chuckled. “Fair enough. But do you see my point? More flight for less fuel. And that,” he pointed one final time to the griffon-scratches on the chalkboard, “is what the decouplers can do for us.” He smiled slightly once more as he added, “To tell the truth, I’m expecting gains of a lot more than sixty percent.”

“It’s an expensive sixty percent if we can’t recover the parts,” Chrysalis said.

“How much are you willing to spend for the moon?” Cherry asked pointedly.

“The question is,” Chrysalis said, standing up and bringing the meeting to an end, “will I spend everything and not get to the moon because my subjects fell in love with a glorified ceiling fan?”



Footnotes:

(98) All three of them. It was easy to pick out the general store in Horseton. It was the only building in the village with more than one floor.

(99) The newcomers were told about the Fun Machine, shown photos taken during the tour of Cape Friendship, and plied with descriptions of how wonderful it was to play on the wind, effortless, weightless, with no danger of going splat. The newcomers were quickly won over to the cause, and as the work hours grew long and tempers short, the motto, “Do it for the Fun Machine,” put everyling back on track.

(100) The author had differentials very briefly his last semester in high school, barely got through the lesson, and has completely forgotten how to work them since. Furthermore, he doesn’t feel like working out how to present differential equations in a text format like this one, so he is grateful to Goddard for dumbing it down enough to demonstrate the principle while yielding no actual useful numbers for flight.




Work went forward. Cherry Berry and Chrysalis tried to squeeze flight training in between interruptions for one reason after another. Blueprints needed correction. Goods for the gift shop needed purchasing(101). The carpet for the astronaut quarters spontaneously combusted on the docks. One thing after another called Cherry, Chrysalis or both away from simulations, woke them up from sleep, postponed meals.

And then there was the rocket design.

“We only need to bring the Fleas up to altitude for Princess Twilight Sparkle’s test,” von Brawn said in his briefing. “Nothing in her brief says they can’t be fired before then, so we’ll light them up for initial thrust along with the first stage engine. That will be a Swivel for extra control. The first stage should be enough at least to get enough momentum to carry the ship to altitude for the parachute check.”

Von Brawn pointed to a sketch of the proposed design. “We decouple the first stage once its fuel is exhausted and ignite the second stage, also a Swivel, which should carry the ship up to altitude for the Flea and Hammer tests. Once the Hammers light, the ship will be under tremendous acceleration, probably with reduced control as we’ve experienced in the past. For that reason I’ve added fins to the first and second stages to keep the ship going straight.

“Once the Hammers burn out,” von Brawn continued, “we decouple and ignite the Reliant final stage, which will have just enough fuel to lengthen and flatten our trajectory. At the end of this burn the ship should be very high and fast in the atmosphere, bringing into play an issue we’ve not addressed before… atmospheric friction.” Von Brawn tapped the base of the capsule. “Thanks to the changelings working for us in Appleoosa, we’ve developed a special ablative material which gradually cooks off under heat, keeping whatever’s behind it relatively cool. We’ve built shields coated with this material, and one such will be on the base of the capsule, to be uncovered by the final decoupler.”

Von Brawn addressed the other CSP leaders gravely. “All of this presumes a perfectly nominal flight,” he said. “This test flight pushes the very limits of theoretical possibility of our new technology, if it does not exceed them altogether. I cannot stress enough that any pilot error or malfunction will lead to failure of one or more of our mission goals.”

In the moment of silence that followed, Chrysalis put a hoof on Cherry Berry’s back. “Well, it’s a good thing we have the single best pilot in any space program on Equus,” she said boldly. “If anypony can do it, Cherry Berry can!”

“Sure,” Cherry Berry agreed, her voice cracking as she said it. “No pressure.”

The rocket’s final design set, the orders were given to the rocket assembly crew, and everyone moved on to the next emergency of the moment. No further thought was given to the rocket; von Brawn, Goddard, Occupant, Cherry Berry and Chrysalis all found themselves busy all hours of the day and night.

Thus, on the day before the launch, when a royal barge carrying three large white objects, obviously rocket components, pulled up to the space center’s dock, already frayed nerves frayed just a little bit more. The barge belonged to Twilight Sparkle, who had arrived unannounced, practically unescorted, and a full day early.

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry had agreed on a script for the meeting, for when the reporters were present. The script went roughly thus: Welcome, Princess Twilight Sparkle, to Horseton Space Center. Two months ago this was swampland used only for growing hay and fishing. Today we are well on the way to having the finest state-of-the-art space center on the planet. We are most pleased to show you our facilities under construction and offer you the hospitality of our newly finished astronaut training center. Would you like to see our gift shop?

The combination of short sleep, shorter nerves, and Twilight’s unannounced arrival did not so much throw out the script as use it to line the cage underneath some pony’s pet salamander.(102)

What actually happened was, before Twilight could do more than begin her own greeting, Cherry Berry pointed a hoof at the barge’s cargo and shouted in a voice full of barely controlled rage, “WHAT are THOSE?”

“Oh, those are my newest development!” Twilight half-jumped, half-glided back onto the barge, using her magic to lift and turn one of the big white drums. Doors opened, revealing a host of thingamabobs and doohickeys. “I call it the Science Jr.! It’s a remarkable advancement on your ingenious mystery goo! It performs several materials experiments at once, automatically, and then keeps them secure for return to surface!” 

“Brilliant,” Cherry Berry snapped. “We’ll take some. Talk with Occupant about the details. But why did you bring three? You didn’t need three to show us.”

“Well, the thing is,” Twilight Sparkle said, grinning eagerly and apparently with no recognition of just how angry Cherry Berry was, “since you’re already launching a rocket for me tomorrow, I was thinking we could just add these to it. You know, get more done at the same time.”

“No,” Cherry Berry said. It wasn’t a growl, but it carried the same tone of concentrated back-off that an ursa minor (or even major) might have at its disposal.

Chrysalis took two careful steps away from her lead test pilot and silently prayed the barge had no cardboard boxes on board.

“Why not?” Twilight asked. “It’ll save time, and they’re lightweight- only a quarter-ton each- it’ll just need a bit more-“

“I SAID NO!!!” Without the advantage of wings the earth pony  was suddenly up in the princess’s face, prodding a hoof into her chest. “I’m already going to risk my life in an overloaded rocket full of components never before tested in flight! We’re already running the ragged edge of disaster to meet your contract! We don’t even know if it’s possible for ANYPONY to achieve your demands! You’re in a position to kill this entire program if anything goes wrong tomorrow! And you come in here asking us to PUT MORE THINGS ON THE ROCKET? To make it even heavier? More complicated? More DANGEROUS??”

Green light surrounded Cherry Berry as Chrysalis pulled her lead pilot off of Twilight before things grew any worse. “Please forgive Cherry,” the changeling queen said smoothly. “We’ve been short of sleep lately, making sure everything’s ready for your test tomorrow.”

“But…” Twilight had lost her manic eagerness. It had fled from the raw fury of Cherry’s rant, leaving behind only hurt and bewilderment. “But it’s not like that at all,” she said. “I never meant to… I just wanted-“

“And I’m sure you’ll get what you wanted tomorrow,” Chrysalis finished. “But I think Cherry needs a meal, rest, and quiet. After all, she has a big day tomorrow.”

Cherry Berry, still held aloft in Chrysalis’s magic, said nothing, continuing to glare at the purple princess with fire in her eyes and righteous umbrage in her heart.

“Er… yes,” Twilight Sparkle said at last. “I suppose you’re all under a lot of pressure. I should have considered that. My apologies.” She gestured a wing to the three Science Jr's. “I’ll have the captain sail these back.”

“No, we’ll take them,” Chrysalis agreed. “We’ll put them to good use. But not on the next flight. We already have a full mission profile for that one.” Setting Cherry Berry down behind her she gestured towards the complex and said, as if the script had come off as planned, “Would you like to see our gift shop?”



Footnotes:

(101) Chrysalis had to reject a group of changelings who volunteered to be sold as “Life Size Cuddly Changeling Plushies- Scare the Monster in Your Closet Away with Brave Astro-Changelings!” That was in the File Cabinets of Stupid, #86: The Hoof That Rocks the Cradle, Variant 3.

(102) By which we do not mean newt. We mean that the paper the speech was written on would in short order be a mixture of ashes and much filthier substances, beyond all reconstitution into anything useful. Salamanders, unlike lazy unicorns, do not enjoy crossword puzzles.




The night before launch, the leaders of CSP and Twilight Sparkle were all sound asleep in the just-barely-finished astronaut quarters. The reporters, ESA observers, and others would arrive early in the morning, with launch scheduled for roughly midday. The paint was still drying inside the new Mission Control building, Occupant’s office still unfinished, the VIP balcony seats borrowed from every front porch in Horseton.(103) The only building finished in the research complex now housed the brand-new wind tunnel, which had arrived on the same barge as Twilight Sparkle and her three flying labs.(104)

With the big day in the morning, the entire space center was asleep, except for the rocket assembly crew, who had run into a major problem.

“How much does it weigh again?”

“Twenty-one tons,” 

“Shoot.” Lucky Cricket paced the floor of the VAB, looking up at the many rocket components being held in place by over thirty changelings and their magic. Thirty more changelings, all trained and by now practiced in rocket assembly, waited for the word to be given before fixing the pieces in place. “We’re overweight. Badly overweight. Three tons over the maximum capacity of the launchpad.”

“But the brain-bull says we need all of it!” said Plastron, the changeling who had been put in charge of Health and Safety(105).

“Well, the launch pad won’t hold all of it!” Lucky Cricket insisted. “How can we lighten this thing?” He looked at the mission checklist. “Let’s begin with the final stage. That’s just to show we had the engine, really. It has so little fuel to begin with. Let’s cut that in half- only half-fill the tanks.”

“That doesn’t save us much,” Plastron noted.

“Right, right. We need everything in the other liquid tanks,” Lucky Cricket mumbled. “And we need the Fleas for extra thrust at the start. But the Hammers are only there for testing. Once they’re lit, the mission-critical tasks are over, and who cares where we go then?” He looked at the two big solid fuel boosters hovering overhead. “How much fuel can we remove from those without calling in von Brawn?”

“About a quarter, I think,” Plastron said. “That’s if they’re packed the same way a Flea is.”

“Right. Do it.” 

The parts were lowered, the lifting changelings were given a break, and an hour was spent very carefully removing and storing solid rocket fuel. 

“How much now?” Lucky Cricket asked, once the pieces were all lifted back into place.

“Still over by about half a ton,” Plastron said. 

“Darn.” Lucky Cricket wasn’t an officer. He was First Alternate Pilot, which meant he had a little of the training, but no simulations, and certainly no hope of being on a flight unless something really horrible happened(106). Normally he wouldn’t even have a clipboard on his hoof; von Brawn or Cherry Berry would be holding it, giving the orders, making the decisions.

But they were all sound asleep, dead to the world, with the CSP’s most important launch to date the next day. None of them were available, not even Dragonfly, who was tasked with escorting the reporters.

Circumstances had conspired to leave Lucky Cricket in charge, which meant he had to make a decision. Something had to go, but what?

He looked at the mission checklist again. “What are those round things?” he asked. “There’s nothing in the mission about those round things.”

The four half-sphere things, two each sitting atop the Hammers and Fleas, floated up slightly, each controlled by only one changeling. “They’re hollow,” one of them said. “Dunno what they are. I think they’re just there to make the ship look pretty.”

Lucky Cricket looked at the top of one, with the sky-blue circle around the tiny white cone in the center. “Do they do anything at all?” he asked. 

“They’re just hollow metal spheres,” the lifter changeling replied.

“If they don’t do anything and they take up weight,” Lucky Cricket said, “lose ‘em.”

The spheres were floated over to a corner and set down. The Hammers and Fleas floated in air, their flat tops starkly naked. 

“How much now?”

“Seventeen point nine five tons,” Plastron replied.

“Thank Faust,” Lucky sighed. “At least this way we keep the fins.”



Footnotes:

(103) The ponies of Horseton believe that the occasional splinter builds character and that having one leg slightly shorter than the others just makes a chair more fun. At least, that’s what they say whenever the subject comes up of replacing the rickety, half-rotten thing on the porch with a new chair.

(104) The portable building formerly used for mission control had been converted into a combination gift shop and snack bar, run with an iron hoof by Heavy Frosting. Prominent among the T-shirt and ball cap racks was the legend, “I RODE THE FUN MACHINE AT CSP HORSETON SPACE CENTER.” Meanwhile, a speedboat was rushing through the night from Manehattan with a supply of helmets and padded jumpsuits to allow ponies to experience the glory of free-fall in air conditioned comfort.

(105) Which is to say, he was considered just responsible enough to be in charge of something, but far too incompetent to be in charge of anything important, at least by changeling standards. Thus, although he was an officer by title, he was not actually in charge in the VAB on this particular night or any other.

(106) Consider how lucky Mr. Cricket has been in the past, and then consider how significant it is that, heretofore, the horrible thing which would put him on the pilot roster has not yet happened. Obviously whatever spirit of fortune looked after this particular changeling had taken one look at a rocket, said, “Not MY boy,” and saw to the continuing good health of the regular pilots.



Morning came.

A full night’s rest had improved Cherry Berry’s mood, but only so much. Her apology to Twilight Sparkle was mumbling and sullen, though Twilight gladly accepted it and waved off any offense for the previous day’s rant. She managed to put on enough of a smile to pose in her pressure suit for the dozens of photographers and reporters who flocked in from Horseton or by boat after breakfast. The smile fled when she greeted Rainbow Dash at the docks, along with the rest of the core Equestrian space program leadership. For whatever reason Dash was still holding a grudge over Cherry Berry’s defection, and the earth pony hadn’t the energy to try to warm her up.

Photographs went on interminably, dragging well through the morning. It eventually took a score of changeling guards looking quietly menacing to get the reporters off to their special perch for the launch, allowing the royalty and the pilots to move to the VAB. 

It was a short walk past the storage warehouse into the main assembly floor, but it stopped cold as soon as Chrysalis, leading the way, froze in the doorway.

“Hey, move over,” Cherry Berry grumbled, trying to push past. “I’ve got a ship to fly.” When the queen didn’t move, she put both forehooves on the queen’s rump and shoved. The queen said nothing, allowing herself to be pushed out of the way. 

Then Cherry Berry saw what Chrysalis had seen, and she froze for a moment too. 

The rocket rose from the VAB floor, precariously balanced on the bell of its first stage rocket like a minotaur muscle builder with size two hooves. The assembly crew, Lucky Cricket in the lead, stood by the rocket, ready to magically lift it and carry it the two miles out to the launchpad. 

The vital aerodynamic nosecones were, as a Canterlot noble might say, conspicuous in their absence. 





Recovering from her shock, Cherry Berry stomped across the building floor to Lucky Cricket. “Where are my aerodynamic nosecones?” she demanded.

“The what?” Lucky Cricket asked. 

“I think she means the round things,” one of the other changelings said. 

“Yes, the round things,” Cherry Berry acknowledged. “What did you do with them?”

“We put them back in storage,” Lucky Cricket said. 

Cherry Berry’s purple-gray eyes turned red for a moment. She closed them, took several deep breaths, and continued, “And why did you do that, please?”

“The rocket was too heavy,” Lucky said. “Too much weight for the pad. We had to trim everything that wasn’t mission critical.” He gestured to the assembled rocket awaiting its pilot. “As it is, this rocket just barely comes in under the line.”

Cherry Berry’s rage faded, replaced by an all too familiar sensation. With few exceptions, panicky fear is a familiar thing among ponies, and although Cherry thought she had learned to control it, it was grabbing at her throat as she considered all the very, very bad things about this situation.

Hooves rang across the floor behind her. “Are you all right?” Chrysalis asked. 

“There’s no way this rocket will make it,” Cherry Berry whispered.

“I know,” Chrysalis whispered back.

“We can’t spare time to redesign it from scratch,”

“I know that, too.”

“We’re bucked.”

“I know.”

“Think of something.”

“I’m trying!” Chrysalis’s whisper had become a hiss. “You’re the smart one, you think of something!”

“My job is flying these ships.” Cherry Berry’s reply would have done a changeling proud. “Being sneaky and underhanded is your department!”

“Are you ponies nuts?” Rainbow Dash had pushed past Twilight Sparkle to fly up to the rocket for her own inspection. Now she dropped down to the others. “You can’t let her fly this!” she shouted at Chrysalis. “It’s murder!” She turned her gaze to Cherry Berry. “It’s suicide!”

Inside Cherry Berry, pride roared up from her soul, smothered her fear, and drove it back to the shadows to whimper impotently. “Watch me,” she said. “Put me in, boys.”

“Wait,” Chrysalis said, as the changelings began to lift Cherry from the ground. The lift paused, leaving Cherry on her back, neck turned to face the changeling queen eye to eye. “Remember this, pony,” she said bluntly. “Don’t mess this up. You are not allowed to mess this up. Nopony wants a Bad Day.”

Cherry Berry, in full Professional Calm Pilot mode, nodded her head, then waved her hoof. The changelings lifted her up to the capsule, opening the hatch, sliding her in, securing the hatch tightly behind her.

“Wait, Chrysalis,” Twilight Sparkle protested, finally joining the others on the floor, “let her go! I’ll give you the wind tunnel free! You don’t have to do this!”

“On the contrary, princess,” Chrysalis hissed. “We do have to do this. You made sure this launch was announced to the world. You arranged it so that my own changelings won’t let me back down. Every pony and changeling outside this building expects a launch today. And if we don’t launch your tests, we will lose all credibility as a space program.” She stomped a hoof, adding, “Even if we try and fail, we’ll be better off than if we gave up completely!”

The queen’s green eyes looked more reptilian and unforgiving than Twilight could ever remember seeing them, as they pinned her in place. “I want you to remember this,” Chrysalis continued, “the next time you have the clever idea to try to maneuver someone else into doing something. And also remember this.” She leaned forward, horn almost touching horn, to hiss, “I already have ample reason to want revenge on you, Sparkle. If this flight costs me my top pilot, I will merely add it to the list!” 

And then Chrysalis walked past Twilight, heading back towards the door. “Smiles, everyone!” she called out, sounding cheerful. “It’s a beautiful day for a launch!”

Behind her she could just hear two ponies talking.

“Are you gonna let her push you around like that?”

“I really didn’t mean for this to happen, Dash… I just hope nothing bad happens…”





For the first time in forever, Cherry Berry didn’t want to fly. 

“Mission Six, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed through Cherry Berry’s helmet. “Final systems check in progress,” she said. “Stand by for go/no go on launch.”

“Mission Six standing by,” Cherry Berry said. Yeah, she added mentally, standing by. Lying on my back on top of ten separate bombs welded together in a unit which is going to do its best to kill me.

Thanks a lot, Twilight Sparkle. If I live to see you again I’m going to remind you how the road to Tartarus is paved with good intentions. 

I’m riding in a ship with the same or worse aerodynamics as Mission Five with at least four times the total thrust. If something goes wrong I’ll be going fast enough to leave a crater in the ocean. If seaponies exist, they’ll be impressed by the boom.

“Mission Six, Horseton,” Chrysalis said again, breaking Cherry Berry’s morbid thoughts. “Verify checklist of flight tasks.”

Cherry Berry glanced at the chart clamped to one wall of the capsule. “Maintain velocity between one-thirty and two-ten em pee ess between four thousand and seven thousand meters altitude for parachute systems check,” she said. “Hold velocity between four hundred sixty and five hundred sixty em pee ess beginning at twelve thousand meters for Flea systems check. Test-fire Hammer booster engines at sixteen thousand meters. Evaluate efficiency and usefulness of Swivel and Reliant liquid engines. Visual inspection and reports on open sea coordinates JJ1-512, third attempt.”

Oh, and also, don’t die. That one’s important too.

“Roger, Mission Six, checklist verified,” Chrysalis said. “Verify switchover to internal capsule power and control.”

The capsule’s internal lights came on. The navigation ball lit up, the prograde and retrograde markers dancing for a moment on the ball’s surface before vanishing. The reaction wheels beneath her spun to life with a quiet whirr. “Confirmed on battery power,” Cherry Berry said. “All systems green.”

“Roger, Mission Six, stand by.” 

Cherry Berry forced herself to breathe through her nose, even smiling a little bit. It’s okay, she thought. I am a top pilot. No matter how compromised this thing is, I can bring it home. If all else fails I can abort- the decouplers will let me cut the capsule away and abandon the rest of the rocket. But I’m not going to do that, because even if there’s no way in the world I can meet all the mission goals, I will still fly and land this better than anypony else could even dream of.

“Mission Six.” Chrysalis’s voice seemed to burst with confidence.  “You are go for launch. Activate first stage when ready, and sweet flying.”

“Mission Six confirms go for launch,” Cherry Berry said. She knew the confidence was totally faked, but hearing it made her feel better. 

She checked the staging list one more time. She set throttle to fifty percent, activated the SAS, took the flight stick under one hoof, and hit the launch switch with the other.

With the two Fleas and the Swivel firing, the rocket should have leaped off the pad. It didn’t. Cherry Berry felt the acceleration, but she’d felt more gees in her biplane in a tight turn. A glance at the speed readout above the nav ball confirmed her fears; the ship was struggling to reach a hundred meters per second in the time that previous Flea flights hit two hundred. She throttled the rocket’s liquid engine up to maximum, which helped only a little.

And all the time, as she nosed the rocket down slowly and carefully eastwards, the ship fought her. The Swivel helped, but the fins seemed to be fighting one another, producing a small roll that made steering even more difficult. The rocket shuddered as it pushed through one hundred fifty meters per second, engines roaring. 

And then the Fleas burned out, exhausted, and Cherry Berry felt herself jerk forward just a bit in her harness. Aerodynamics were marginally worse this time, since none of the four solid fuel boosters even had parachutes to make a mini-nosecone. Speed fell off from one-sixty to one-twenty meters per second, where it held despite the Swivel’s being maxed out. 

When the first stage’s fuel ran out, the ship had only gained fourteen hundred meters of altitude. Cherry Berry immediately hit the staging switch, feeling the soft kick of the decoupler as it severed the bolts holding the bottom fuel tank on. Immediately the slow roll stopped as the two sets of fins stopped fighting one another. She waited for the green light to indicate the second stage engine was clear of its faring, and as soon as it winked on, she triggered it, igniting another Swivel with twice as much fuel as the first.

“Second stage active,” she said, the first words she’d been able to spare since launch. “Swivel engines are responsive to both pilot and SAS controls. Impossible to judge acceleration due to aerodynamic and mission constraints.” She glanced down at the speed readout; it was climbing again, passing one-eighty slowly but inexorably. 





If this mission wasn’t bucked up from the word go I’d ride this out at full throttle, she thought, but I need to hold down the speed. She slowly throttled down to about two-thirds power, which held the ship at just over two hundred meters per second. As the ship crawled upwards past three thousand meters, as the fuel readouts for the second stage shrank visibly, rapidly, like a shortcake in the presence of Pinkie Pie, she thought to herself, Of course, this thing might not even make four thousand meters in the first place.

The rocket shuddered, bucked and swayed, and Cherry did her best to hold it at sixty degrees attitude, bearing ninety degrees east. Slowly, gradually, it crawled to thirty-eight, thirty-nine… four thousand meters. As soon as the digit 4 ticked over on the altimeter, Cherry hit the switch for Twilight Sparkle’s systems test(107). When it flashed green, she said, “Parachute test successful; throttling up full burn.”

Once she did so, she glanced at the fuel remaining. Only a sliver remained on the gauge. 

“Report no joy on Hammer and Flea tests,” she said, “repeat Hammer and Flea tests are scrubbed. No way I can achieve target altitudes on fuel remaining.” She reached a hoof to the staging switch, holding it above the button as she added, “Preparing to ignite Hammer boosters to extend flight to target survey zone.”

A moment later the second stage burned out. Immediately, without the control provided by the Swivel’s thrust, the ship’s nose began to dip and the craft to slow. 

“Roger, Mission Six,” Chrysalis replied. “Copy no go on booster tests, go for extended flight.”

When Cherry activated the boosters, the ride became really interesting.

Under the thrust of the two heavy boosters the ship accelerated hard straight into the sound barrier. The turbulence pulled the rocket’s nose down like a millstone, and Cherry’s efforts with the stick didn’t quite counter the force. The ship shook, bucked, and began rolling again, worse than the cheap coin-operated chariot machine Cherry had seen as a little child on a visit to Fillydelphia. 

Only this time there wasn’t a loving aunt standing by with another nickel.





And then, while she was wrestling with the stick to try to keep the ship going in only one direction, ANY one direction, the amber light flashed indicating entry of the target zone. She spared a sliver of attention to hit the switch for the flight recorder, look out the window, and say, “Target zone JJ1-512 appears to be deep, featureless water, somewhat muddy. No apparent features visible at this time. Estimated resources negligible.” She punched the switch again, noticed the ship was now well into a shallow dive, and turned her full attention to regaining control.

And then, mere seconds after completing her survey recording, to her blessed relief, the Hammers burned out. The ship immediately decelerated hard, almost five gravities pulling Cherry Berry forward in her harness. She hit the staging button, releasing the dead-weight, non-aerodynamic second stage with all its attached boosters, and immediately the deceleration eased. She was still going well over two hundred sixty meters per second. Good.

Still losing altitude, though. Bad.

I have maybe half a minute to save this thing. Nose up. Good. Reaction wheels very efficient with only the Reliant and its little tank. Attitude ninety by sixty. All right. Third stage ignite!

The moment the final liquid-fuel engine lit, the remaining spacecraft did a complete backflip. For half a second Cherry Berry was in an uncontrolled tumble. In another second she countered it, then realized to her horror that the nav-ball showed her pointed directly at the retrograde marker. The rocket was slowing her down, and hard.





And then, before she could correct the mistake, the fuel ran out, far too early. There should have been at least ten seconds at full throttle. Instead, maybe five, and all absolutely wasted.

Okay, Cherry thought, take stock of the situation. No fuel. No more engines. Air speed sixty-two meters per second, beginning to climb as I fall. Altitude thirty-four hundred meters, dropping slowly. 

You know, I’m going to get away with this one.

“Horseton, this is Mission Six,” Cherry Berry said, relaxing for the first time. “Reliant proved uncontrollable in low altitude without fins. On the other hand, I believe the total weight of this craft is now less than that of Mission One, so I’m going to try to bring this engine back intact. Triggering parachute now.”

She hit the manual parachute deploy switch, felt the parachute begin pulling up on the nose of the capsule, and relaxed in her seat. 

I’m alive, she thought. I’m alive, I managed to complete one of Twilight’s mission contracts, and I’m going to live to try this again.

And I WILL try this again, because I want a chance to do it properly, darn it.


MISSION 6 REPORT

Mission summary: SURVIVE; test performance of prototype in-line decoupler systems; attempt visual survey of target area (holdover from prior missions); in-flight specific tests of “Hammer” booster, “Reliant” and “Swivel” liquid fuel rockets, “Flea” as booster, and  M16 parachute

Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration:  2 min. 30 sec.
Maximum speed achieved:  383 m/s
Maximum altitude achieved:  4385 m
Distance downrange at landing:  18 km

Contracts fulfilled: 2
Milestones: New land distance record (insufficient for benchmark)

Conclusions from flight: We got too ambitious, but I think I know where we went wrong. We’re doing this again, properly this time- and with nosecones for the boosters.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: MARGINAL FAILURE




Footnote:

(107) The command pod manufactured and sold by Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, Inc. had a number of electric switches which could be assigned to mission-specific devices and tests. For this one, Cherry had specified that the switch designated for the parachute systems test be the one farthest away from the actual parachute release switch.


 
“Tracking records splashdown at eighteen kilometers downrange from launch,” von Brawn said from his station. 

“Longest surface distance of any launch to date,” Ad Astra noted, “but not sufficient for a benchmark award.”

As the projected illusion showed the parachute drifting away from the capsule and engine bobbing on the ocean’s surface, the ponies from ESA and the press cheered and stomped their hooves. None of the changelings on the floor joined them, nor did von Brawn. All of them were silently aware that something had been screwed up badly, and as a consequence they had narrowly avoided a Bad Day for the third straight flight. 

“Awesome! Way to hold her, Cherry Berry!” Rainbow Dash shouted. 

“I must say,” Rarity added, “poor show, whoever designed that rocket. Not only was it horribly lopsided, and not in an avant-garde manner I might add, but it put that poor pony in horrible danger!” She turned to Twilight Sparkle, whose face had gone slightly green from the launch and had only become more so as the flight continued. “Don’t you agree, Twilight darling?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” the princess said in a voice more suited to Fluttershy.

Chrysalis, taking off her headset, decided this was the time to act. She’d had just enough time to figure out how to remedy the inevitable failure(108), and the plan had come together not long after Cherry’s parachute opened. 

“Good work, my faithful subjects, Dr. von Brawn, Dr. Goddard,” she said. “Remember, please that every launch that fulfills at least one mission goal and lands safely is a success. We’re still in the infancy of rocket flight, after all. And on that note, Princess Twilight Sparkle, ponies of the Equestria Space Agency, and our most honored guests from the press,” she added, raising her voice, “I invite you to our gift shop, where the notable chef Heavy Frosting has prepared refreshments. Unfortunately your guide Dragonfly will not be able to join you,” she continued, her speech beginning to take on elements of the Royal Canterlot Voice, “as we have to prepare her for the second launch of the day.”

Consternation erupted from the gallery. 

“Yes, I know,” Chrysalis replied, “you weren’t notified of the second launch. It was quite unexpected even to us. But when Princess Twilight Sparkle brought us three examples of the latest untested scientific device from her own labs, we decided the opportunity to test them, before the press, before all the peoples of Equestria if you will, was too good to pass up.” She smiled the most winning smile any changeling could muster(109) and added, “Which, incidentally, will also be Dragonfly’s very first flight as a pilot. It’s an event very important to all of us.”

The consternation changed to the usual melee of reporters shouting questions over one another. That suited Chrysalis fine, as she had no intention of answering any.

“Doctor von Brawn, if you could see fit to escort the Princess and her party to the gift shop for our late lunch? Doctor Goddard, Occupant, Dragonfly, please join me in the astronaut center at once.” With that Chrysalis walked out of the mission control center, never looking back, confident that she would be obeyed in all things.

Faust, I hope this works, she thought to herself.

Five minutes later, alone in the astronaut complex, Chrysalis, Goddard, Occupant and Dragonfly huddled. “All right,” Chrysalis said, “we need a rocket that can fly all three of those grade-school science projects and land safely. We need to not use anything that we’d need to rebuild the rocket we just launched, because we’re going to try again first thing in the morning on that. And we need any money-making contracts we can accept right now, because any further failure and this program is sunk, and likely the hive with it.” She looked at all three of the others. “So unless you’re looking forward to a life selling pencils from a tin cup on the Canterlot streets, let’s make this happen. We have maybe an hour to plan, and we have to launch before sunset.”

“Wait a minute,” Goddard grumbled. “We’ve never done two flights in one day. We’ve never even considered it. What’s the rush?”

“We’re stalling for time!” Chrysalis snapped. “I want to hold the princess and the press here overnight, to give us enough time for a second try at her contract. Fixing the problems with the Mission Six rocket will take time, so we need some other launch. It’s the only thing that will keep them from going home as soon as they’ve eaten.” 

Goddard nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that,” he said. “And with the second capsule we could maybe do it. But we’ve only got one Swivel and two Reliants left. We can’t replicate Mission Six exactly.”

“The redesign will be von Brawn’s job,” Chrysalis said. “His and Cherry Berry’s, when the recovery team gets back with her. Your job is Mission Seven. One capsule with parachute, all three Science Jr. pods with sufficient parachutes to bring them down safely, and engines enough to get them off the pad, just offshore into the water, and down.”

“Grm,” Goddard grunted. “Sounds like the Fleas get one more outing as a main engine after all. We still have over a dozen of them on-site.”

“We also have the Terrier,” Occupant spoke up for the first time. “You put in a paid request for a splashdown test.”

Chrysalis’s ear-fins perked up. “A contract?” she asked. “Can Cherry’s Rocket Parts afford the payoff right now? Because we might really need it.”

“We can take it off what the program owes us for the Swivels and Reliants,” Goddard replied. “You haven’t written that check yet.”

“You’d better hope I’m in a position to do so after tomorrow,” Chrysalis noted. “Fine. So we use that engine?”

Goddard snorted. “Not a chance!” he barked. “I designed that engine to be a slow-burn, high-efficiency orbital transfer engine. On the ground it won’t even lift its own weight!”

“But we can still test it,” Chrysalis said. “How many decouplers do we still have?”

“Seven,” Goddard replied. “With more already on the way from the minotaur islands, including lateral decouplers that’ll let us dump boosters without losing the main stage.”

“Good. We only need one.” Chrysalis walked to a chalkboard and, using chalk held in her magic, sketched out a design very similar to her Mission Five ship. “Five Fleas fire simultaneously at launch,” she said. “The weight of the Terrier and the Science Jr's. will offset thrust enough to keep the thing controllable enough.” She looked at Dragonfly. “You’ve missed a lot of simulator time, I know,” she said, “but your mission is very simple. All you have to do get the rocket over water and high enough to pop the chutes. That’s it. You can do it.”

Dragonfly, who was still in shock from the news that she was going to fly, nodded. 

“Occupant,” Chrysalis continued, “is there anything else- anything simple and doable that doesn’t require more rockets- that we can do to earn money?”

Occupant nodded. “The mining company that made the decouplers also sent these sort of clamp things,” he said. “They suggested that we could use them to hold the rocket upright and in place prior to launch. They want us to test them to see if they unclamp properly.”

“Good. Make it happen.” Chrysalis looked around. “Doctor, go to the VAB and get that rocket built. Fast. With ALL the parachutes. Occupant, get those contracts signed and telegraphed now. Dragonfly, let’s get you suited up. I need to get back to our guests as soon as possible.”



Footnotes:

(108) Presuming Cherry Berry and the capsule returned in one piece each, that is. Nothing Chrysalis could think of could redeem a truly Bad Day.

(109) It was an improvement over Wicked Laugh Smile and Pleasure at Your Pain Smile, but no changeling, not even Chrysalis, would so much as win Miss Congeniality in their natural form. Not without bribing or threatening the judges, anyway.




Well-fed but still bewildered ponies (and griffon) returned to Mission Control, where the changeling crew was caught between finishing reports on Mission Six and beginning fresh worksheets for the unexpected Mission Seven. They were joined a few minutes later by Chrysalis, who brought Dragonfly in wearing her pressure suit and helmet. “Gentleponies of the press,” the queen said smoothly, “before the launch we wanted to give you the opportunity to meet Dragonfly. In the late invasion, you may be interested to know, she was one of my leading warriors, successfully subduing a number of Royal Guard pegasi while fulfilling her duty to the hive which is both her country and her family.”

This speech won no admirers with the ponies, many of whom either lived in or had relatives in Canterlot, but they wrote down the information in their notepads anyway.

“Dragonfly is extremely brave and loyal, and more important, she is intelligent,” Chrysalis continued. “In addition to her training as a pilot(110),  Dragonfly is our chief materials researcher. She personally designed the parachute systems which are currently used by almost all the space programs of Equus. She is a bug of many talents, and I am proud to have her as one of my hive.”

This accolade won a bit more approval than the war-hero bit, and Chrysalis could feel the greater enthusiasm in the pencil strokes she heard.

“Now please bear in mind that twenty-four hours ago Dragonfly didn’t know she was going to fly today,” Chrysalis said, neatly bypassing the fact that the same was true for one hour ago. “But we’re giving her a short, simple flight to give her experience, and we have full confidence that her training, intelligence and skill will bring nothing but success. Now, while you’re asking her your questions, I need to go check on preparations for launch.” Ducking her head in respect to the press, and making sure to note that said press were between Twilight Sparkle and the exits, she left Dragonfly to the nonexistent mercies of journalism and stepped back outside.

This, as it turned out, was perfect timing. Cherry Berry’s capsule had just returned, and the pink earth pony had already climbed out of the hatch and doffed her helmet. “That,” she said bitterly, “was every bit as bad as I expected and almost as bad as I feared.” Shaking out her yellow mane, she added, “Where do we stand?”

“I’m avoiding Twilight Sparkle,” Chrysalis said. “So long as she never gets me alone and away from the press, she can’t call in the failure penalty. Not that I expect her to, but she could still cancel the contract without fault, and that would be almost as bad. The plan is to keep the press busy with a second launch so they have to sleep over tonight. That gives us time to recondition the capsule,” she said, pointing at the still-damp ship Cherry had just emerged from, “and put together a second attempt to launch at dawn, before the reporters can leave.”

“With the nosecones,” Cherry Berry said.

“With the nosecones,” Chrysalis agreed. “And with a substantially different design. My reasoning is, we made a good faith effort to meet the conditions of the contract with your launch. If we can actually complete the mission goals on the follow-up, in front of witnesses,  we look like winners instead of losers, and the program survives to fly another day.”

“That sounds… a lot less sneaky than I was expecting, to be honest,” Cherry Berry admitted. “I thought you would either mind-control somepony or else just write off the program as a failed plan and go back to plotting conquest.”

Chrysalis shook her head. “I thought about that weeks ago, pony. It can’t be done. Changelings are in the open now. By Faust, both Celestia and Cadence have my home address! More and more of my infiltrators are revealing themselves, because they feel there’s nothing to fear anymore.” She stamped her hoof, continuing, “If this program collapses, the hive will have to evacuate our home and vanish even more completely than before- with no resources in reserve- or else dissolve and become totally dependent on whatever charity you ponies will spare us. All our assets are now tied up in this effort.” She stared at Cherry Berry, transmitting as much sheer determination as she could into the pony’s non-changeling senses. “For us it is literally the moon or bust now.”

Cherry Berry gave Chrysalis a flat stare back. “Forgive me if I don’t take you wholly at your word,” she said dryly.

Chrysalis’s mouth turned up at the corner. “You might actually be learning something, pony,” she said quietly. “Anyway, I need you to get in conference with von Brawn as soon as you can. Goddard will take his position in Mission Control. The two of you have to get to work on the re-do rocket the instant we get Mission Seven on the pad.”

“Roger,” Cherry Berry nodded. “But first I’m going to get out of this suit.” She walked away, adding, “And if I get any chance at all, I want a word with Rarity. The bathroom features in this stupid suit are totally insufficient!”



Footnote:

(110) More often instead of her training as a pilot. Dragonfly had been a backup, and her work with Goddard the Griffon on materials studies and applications, especially her parachutes, often took priority. Also, she was one of the few changelings Chrysalis could trust not to mess everything up if left unsupervised, which made her indispensable as a supervisor when none of the top leaders could spare time.



Dragonfly sat in the brand-new capsule, breathing deep sighs of relief. She was well away from those reporters with their horrible prying questions and their staring eyes. Now she was stuck in a full-body suit without wingholes, strapped inside a metal box on top of several devices which, if anything went wrong, could explode and turn her body into the finest ash on the wind in an instant. If everything went right, they could just send her hurtling into the water or soil fast enough to make her into a changeling waffle(111).

So, perfectly safe.

“Mission Seven, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice echoed through her helmet, the calm, soothing sound of the queen making her even more relaxed. “Verify list of mission goals.”

Oh, right, those. Dragonfly felt a little nervous about them. In every mission up until now the mission goals had been carefully printed on a checklist in bold ink and clamped on a special mount in the capsule. This time the list was hastily scribbled in pencil, hard to read, and taped next to the capsule window.

Still, she could read them, and she could definitely use the reminder. “Control test of first Science Jr. on pad,” she said. “Test release of TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer. Launch. Activate second Science Jr. pod in flight. Splashdown. Activate third Science Jr. pod in the water. Perform systems test on Terrier liquid fuel motor while submerged.”

“Roger, Mission Seven,” Chrysalis replied. “Stand by for go-no go on launch.”

“Mission Seven copies, standing by,” Dragonfly replied, settling back and putting her suit-covered hoof on the flight stick. She’d handled the stick in simulations, if all too seldom. She’d put in a couple of runs in the centrifuge. She knew prograde from retrograde. And yet, sitting in the seat, she wasn’t quite sure that she knew enough to do it right.

But she knew she certainly wanted to try.

“Mission Seven, Horseton; activate first science module.”

Dragonfly skimmed the control panel; that would be one of the multiple-use switches, so… ah, there it was, with “SJ1” on a piece of masking tape to label it. She pushed the button, watching the light turn green. “Science Jr. One activated, experiments complete,” she said. 





“Roger, Seven, Horseton confirms. Release launch stability clamps.”

One of the multi-purpose switches had been labeled CLAMPS. Dragonfly hit the switch, felt a soft thump through the rocket, heard the two swing arms fall away from the rocket and bounce on their towers. “Clamps released.”

“Roger, Mission Seven,” Chrysalis repeated. “You are go for launch, repeat go for launch. Fire first stage when-“

Dragonfly didn’t wait for her queen to finish. She was going to fly NOW.





Five Flea engines kicked in simultaneously. There hadn’t been time to fit thrust restrictors on the engines, and Dragonfly thrilled at the sensation of being crushed back in her seat by sheer acceleration. The mass of the rest of the ship, even the uncapped flat tops of the engines, wasn’t slowing the ship down at all against that much thrust.

Her left forehoof reached for the second Science Jr. switch while her right hoof tried to steer the rapidly accelerating ship. She did neither very well, but after a couple of misses she managed to activate the second experiment. “Science Jr. Two activated,” she said, shouting to get her words out of her heavy, heavy chest. “Attempting pitch to-“

The rocket gave a shudder as it broke through the sound barrier, mere seconds after liftoff. The ship pushed back against her, pointing straight up despite her effort to correct it. “Negative on pitch,” she said. “Ship not responding to control.”

“Horseton copies,” Chrysalis replied. “Keep trying. You should regain control after engine burnout.”

A few seconds later, the engines did just that, and Dragonfly found herself pushed almost out of her seat by deceleration, as hard or even harder than she’d been crushed by acceleration. “Burnout,” she reported unnecessarily. “I guess the ride’s over, huh?”

“Decouple!” Chrysalis said, her voice taking an ounce of urgency for the first time. “Dump the Fleas, they’re slowing you down!”

“Oh, right!” The decoupler hadn’t been in any training she’d had. She hit the staging switch, and she felt the kick of the explosive charge. And the deceleration slowed only slightly. In her seconds of hesitation, her air speed had dropped from over five hundred meters per second to a little over one hundred… and as she watched, it dropped below that. In a few seconds she’d be coming back down.





“Activate second stage, Seven,” Chrysalis continued. “Set throttle to half power and thrust attitude forty-five by ninety.”

“Okay… I mean, copy, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. She set throttle, pointed the ship with the reaction wheels, and lit the engine…

… and felt nothing. 

But the ship had stopped decelerating, holding at eighty-six meters per second. “Horseton, Mission Seven,” she said. “Full control restored. Any-“

Even at almost six thousand meters altitude she could hear the soft boom of the first stage hitting the ground. 

“Just keep her steady for a minute, Seven,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re doing well. Your trajectory is moving out over water. All is go.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Mission Seven copies all go.” She sat back, watching as the altimeter crawled up a few more meters and then slowly, gradually, began counting back down again. This part wasn’t difficult. In fact it was kind of boring. She had more interesting flights than this on her own wings, crossing the Badlands between the hive and Appleoosa. 





“All right, Seven, this is Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “Cut throttle. We still want fuel in the tank for the splashdown test.”

Dragonfly checked the gauge; half the tank left. “Roger, Horseton,” she said, throttling down, “throttle set to zero.”

“Horseton confirms throttle back,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re over deep water now; you are go to deploy parachutes.”

Dragonfly was reluctant. She could feel the ship descending faster, and she liked the fluttery feeling it gave her barrel. On the other hand, she knew better than anyling what might happen if she waited too long. After all, she oversaw the construction of all five parachutes on the craft herself. “Deploying parachutes,” she said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

Five canopies rippled up from the ship, pulling and yanking it back and forth in a hard rocking motion. Then, as the canopies opened fully, the ship braked hard one last time, slowing from over a hundred meters per second down to only four and a bit.





“Well, that was fun,” Dragonfly said to herself.

“We can all hear you down here, Seven,” Chrysalis chided her.

Dragonfly didn’t care. She lay back, legs limp, and lolled. 

I’m bored again, she thought. We need something to do for the boring bits. 

I wonder if I can get some snacks in the ship next time?

The light of the setting sun flickered back and forth past the parachute ropes, through the window and into the capsule.


MISSION 7 REPORT

Mission summary: Collect science from Science Jr. on pad, in flight, and in water; test TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer on pad; test radial parachutes; test Terrier motor in water

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration:   4 min. 46 sec.
Maximum speed achieved:  514  m/s
Maximum altitude achieved:  6447 m
Distance downrange at landing:  5.7  km

Contracts fulfilled:  3
Milestones: none

Conclusions from flight: That could have gone better, but we knew the design was bad going in. It did what we needed to do, and Dragonfly got experience which will serve her well in future flights. On the other hand, we’re going to need to repair the launch pad after this…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL (for once)




Footnote:

(111) Because pancakes don’t have holes.



“How’s it coming?”

Chrysalis walked over to where Cherry Berry stood on the floor of the VAB, watching the changlings bringing in components for the rocket which would be Mission Eight. 

“Well enough,” Cherry Berry admitted. “von Brawn and I think we’ve figured out how to- HEY YOU!” The pink pony galloped across the floor, to where a changeling had been merrily rolling a T-100 fuel tank like a foal rolling an old barrel hoop. “What do you think you’re doing?? Fuel tanks are not toys!”

“But, Ms. Berry!” the changeling whined, “it’s perfectly safe! They hardly ever explode!”

“HARDLY ever?!?”

The changeling pointed far up one wall of the VAB. Some changelings had, evidently, mounted a giant basketball hoop. The backboard was severely scorched and cracked almost in half.

“You… have you... you have… no, I don’t want to know,” Cherry Berry said, shaking her head. “This is delicate equipment. You treat it with respect. Our lives could depend on it, understand?” she snapped, staring right into the changeling’s glowing teal eyes.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Now take this back to storage and get a new one. And CARRY it. No rolling!”

“Awww,” the changeling whined. “That’s boring. And it takes so much work!”

“Have you never heard of a CART?” Cherry Berry snapped. “Get to it!”

The changeling trudged off with his burden, while Cherry Berry walked back over to Chrysalis. “They’re like children, I swear it,” she muttered. “They need watching every minute, and they have all the self-preservation instincts of a head of lettuce in a Manehattan all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Said the pony who walked up to a changeling hive and demanded to be let in,” Chrysalis replied. 

“That was different. What about you? Do we still have a contract?” 

“Well, I’ve successfully avoided Twilight Sparkle-“

Violet light flashed above them, and a profoundly annoyed voice shouted, “THERE you are!”

“-until now,” Chrysalis said. “I kept her busy as long as I could.”

“You certainly did!” Twilight Sparkle grumbled, hovering overhead on spread wings. “Your changeling chef feeding us and pressing me to take thirds(112), that second launch you obviously threw together at the last minute, the interviews, having Dr. Goddard bury me in data, dinner, more thirds- I had to wait until my friends were in their quarters for the night before I could get away!” 

“I could have knocked you out and put you in a pod for the duration,” Chrysalis replied coolly. “How do you like the reformed me? Isn’t this nicer?”

Twilight growled with frustration, letting herself settle to the floor. “None of it would have been necessary if you’d just let me talk to you for five minutes!” she said. “I’m calling off the contract. The wind tunnel is yours. No penalties, no payments, and no ponies or changelings maybe riding to fiery deaths for a stupid experiment. You win, all right?”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. She didn’t really know how to respond to that. Yes, this was a victory, no mistake about that. Here and now she could probably make that detestable meddling pony grovel at her hooves, and she’d still have the moral high ground. But… but… but… 

“As much as I would love to accept your offer,” she finally said, “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“What? Why not?” Twilight asked.

“Do you remember what I said earlier, just before Mission Six launched?” Chrysalis said. “You put me in a position where I had to accept your contract. You thought it was a sweet win-win; you get your test data, or else I get egg on my face, yes? But you didn’t think through the consequences of your actions. You didn’t realize just how close to the edge your challenge took my space program. And, above all, you underestimated just how important our reputation is to us.”

“What reputation?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “You’re changelings.”

“Twilight, that’s the whole problem,” Cherry Berry butted in. “The Changeling Space Program is an enormously expensive exercise in public relations. When we started, changelings had a reputation as evil sneaky monsters.”

“Which we are,” Chrysalis admitted casually.

“Not helping. Anyway, by demonstrating their bravery and ingenuity, the changelings hope to gain respect and acceptance among ponies, right? But you gave this program a challenge that we weren’t ready to meet. And you did it in such a public way that we couldn’t shrug it off.” Cherry pointed towards the hallway to the front doors and said, “When those reporters go home in the morning, do you know what the headline will be on every story?”

“No, what?” Twilight asked.

“Changelings Fail Princess’s Challenge will be one,” Cherry Berry continued. “With an editorial, probably titled, Changeling Dreams Swatted Down By Reality.”

“Too positive a spin, pony,” Chrysalis added. “Try, Is CSP a Front for Changeling Infiltration? Or even better, CSP a Fraud- Rockets Going Nowhere. Or, best of all, They’re Not Just Monsters, They’re Incompetent Monsters.”

“Instead of respect, the changelings will get scorn and derision,” Cherry Berry continued. “Instead of love, they get contempt. They can’t eat contempt. Even if you gave us a million bits in the morning so we could buy all the rocket stuff we ever wanted, our program couldn’t recover from that kind of press.” She frowned sadly. “Chrysalis would have to find some other way to feed her people, and I’d be out of a job.”

“And although my children are backstabbing, sneaky, evil monsters,” Chrysalis said, “we have our pride. That’s why we’re building that.” Chrysalis pointed to the rocket components coming together on the VAB floor. “Mission Eight launches as soon as we can get those reporters up in the morning. This time with the nosecones.”

“Why?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

“As I said, pride,” Chrysalis said. “We accepted a challenge. We intend to accomplish it. And we want to be seen accomplishing it. Without charity from a pony princess who feels sorry for us because we couldn’t do what she asked of us.”

“Oh,” Twilight said in a small voice. Her ears drooped, and she stared at her hooves.

Oh Faust, Chrysalis thought, I’m actually feeling sorry for the accursed meddler. She looks like me when mother thwarted my first coup attempt. Not that I will admit it to anypony.

Cherry Berry put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Twilight, it’s okay,” she said. “This is our choice. We know you didn’t really mean to put us in danger.”

Really? My dear pony pilot, it was you who said this might all be a plot to destroy us.

“But from now on,” Cherry Berry said, “no more clever tricks, okay? No more playing on the changelings’ whims, or using the press as a club. If you want us to perform an experiment for you, ask, and we’ll see if it’s safe enough for us to try.”

“Yes,” Chrysalis said. “Leave the clever stratagems to Celestia. She’s much better at it than you are.”

Cherry Berry ignored the interruption. “And we’ll deal honestly with you in return.” She glanced up and said, much less gently than before, “WON’T we, Chrysalis?”

Chrysalis couldn’t meet either pony’s gaze, but she did choke out the word, “Yes.” It tasted filthy.

“Now go get some sleep,” Cherry Berry said. “We want you rested for our launch in the morning, and you’ll have to be up before dawn.”

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to stop?” Twilight asked. “You don’t even have a launch pad right now! Those Fleas crashing down on it wrecked the place!”

“We’re fixing that,” Cherry Berry reassured her. “I won’t say tomorrow's launch won’t be dangerous. All powered flight is dangerous, especially rockets. But tomorrow’s launch will be a managed risk. We’re not going to push it again like we did today.”

“If you say so,” Twilight said. “But please be careful.” She looked as if she might say something more, and then she walked away, wings furled, looking sad and thoughtful.

“There goes a pony who deserves a rough night’s sleep,” Chrysalis murmured once she thought the princess was out of earshot.

“Oh, be gracious for once,” Cherry Berry chided. “She did let us off the hook for everything except the press.”

“The press,” Chrysalis added angrily, “and self-respect.” She pointed at the rocket parts. “Will that be ready in time?”

“Just,” Cherry Berry sighed. “One of us will have to stay up and make sure it gets done right, though.” She shuffled her hooves. “Which brings up a point. Our agreement says I fly all new designs first, right?”

“And?”

“And, last time you decided you wanted a turn even when I said it was too dangerous.” Cherry Berry continued to fidget. “And we really can’t afford another scene like that tomorrow, in front of the press. So… do you want to fly this mission?”

Chrysalis looked around the room. Cherry Berry hadn’t noticed, but although the changelings around them were working, most of them had their eyes, and no doubt their ears, glued to them. She stepped as close to the pony as she could and whispered, “I wish you hadn’t asked me that.”

“Why?” Cherry Berry asked aloud.

“Shh.” Chrysalis continued to whisper. “Pride is why, pony. If you had said nothing I would have honored our agreement without a word and let you fly tomorrow. But now that you’ve asked,” she sighed, “I have to accept. If I didn’t, I’d be admitting I was weak.” She locked eyes with Cherry Berry and added, “And weakness in a changeling is fatal.”

How much am I willing to tell this pony? Chrysalis wondered. Do I tell her that after my last flight the idea of getting back into that capsule terrifies the fear pellets right out of me? That I’ve been training like a madmare because I want to stop being afraid, because I know eventually I have to get back in there and perform just as well as she does?

Would she even understand? She’s a pony, and she’s obsessed with flying. She’s never worried that a pony army would find her home and wipe them out. She’s never seen what happens when two hives meet, or when it’s time for an old queen to yield to new blood. To her this is a dream, a fantasy come true. To me it’s a means to an end, that one day everypony will fear us, instead of us fearing everypony.

But… she’s the only creature I could trust. Not Dragonfly. Certainly not Sparkle or any of her ponies. But she’s been in that little box too, and she knows what it feels like to be moments from what we call a Bad Day because we don't want to say "certain death". Who else could I speak to, who knows what I’m talking about, who wouldn’t use it for their own advantage?

Maybe I’ll tell her someday. But not now, and definitely not here.

“So I’ll be flying tomorrow,” Chrysalis said loudly. “Go find Occupant. I signed off on a couple more aerial surveys just in case we ended up still on the hook for that penalty payment. I’ll watch things here while you two work out the mission plan. Then get back here so I can get some sleep.” The queen smiled her small, almost honest smile. “I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

Far overhead, two changelings perched on the VAB’s winch rails. “The queen’s getting soft,” the first one said.

“Shut up,” the second one said, cuffing the first lightly across the horn. “The queen just got us the Fun Machine. The queen’s going to fly the mission tomorrow. And the queen’s gonna walk on the moon.” He looked back down at the floor, adding, “If that’s soft, then I like soft. Soft is comfy.” 



Footnote:

(112) To be honest, this wasn’t difficult. 







In the twilight before dawn, the Mission Eight rocket settled onto what was left of the launch pad. 

The changelings had removed the wreckage of the experimental launch clamps and the fallen Flea boosters, all of which was smashed beyond any reuse. This left several pits and holes in the launch pad’s surface, which was smoothed out and packed down as well as could be managed by a crew of tired changelings in the dark. Despite that effort, it took three lifts and drops before the assembly crew found a remaining patch of pad surface level enough to hold the rocket without it tipping over. Therefore the entire crew would remain on-site until Fiddlewing gave the final all-clear signal, because who knew?

This would be the last flight on the current launch pad, win or lose. They needed a stronger pad, one which could absorb stronger thrust, hold more weight, stand up better to things dropping from the sky. That would take weeks, again. All the more reason to make this launch count.

The new design was four-tenths of a ton lighter than Mission Six had been. Although there was only one Hammer now, replacing the second stage, there were three Fleas instead of two, all of which now wore the rounded nosecones. All the fuel tanks were full to the limit. The first stage liquid rocket was a Reliant, a quarter-ton lighter than the Swivel. On paper, the ship should fly better and farther than Mission Six by far… but on paper, before the changelings had got their hooves on it, Mission Six shouldn’t have been the clusterbuck it turned out to be.

Cherry Berry accepted her third cup of coffee from Occupant. Neither of them had slept all night. Projected on the wall in front of them was Mission Eight, its trajectory map, its gauges, and a view of Chrysalis, who appeared to read the new Daring Do book(113) with no concern. Around them the mission control staff were dragging themselves to their positions, obviously short of sleep and very, very confused. 

The confusion increased once the press corps was escorted in. “Mission Eight, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said into her headset, “smile and wave to the press, please.”

Cherry had expected to enjoy seeing the queen flinch, toss her book anywhere out of sight of the illusion, and put on a smiling confident face. Instead Chrysalis looked up, gave the illusion an if-I-must look, and carefully tucked the book into netting next to the flight seat. “Good morning, Equestria,” the queen said. “I’m sorry to have awakened you so early, but I felt a nice early morning flight would get all our blood pumping.”

There were one or two chuckles, but nothing more. The press had been awakened an hour before with no explanation, chivvied to a full-service breakfast, plied with extra coffee and tea, and then herded politely but firmly to mission control. Half of them looked rumpled, and four of them wore I RODE THE FUN MACHINE shirts.(114)

“Roger, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry replied. “I’m sure we could all use the excitement this early in the morning. Let’s jump ahead in procedure and verify the mission goals checklist.”

“Mission Eight copies, Horseton,” Chrysalis agreed. “Aerial observation of target zone alpha. Hold velocity between four hundred sixty and five hundred sixty em pee ess beginning at twelve thousand meters for Flea systems check. Test-fire Hammer booster engines at sixteen thousand meters. Evaluate efficiency and usefulness of nosecones. Aerial observation of target zone beta. Get a nice suntan on the beach in Maneaco.”

This last item drew a few more chuckles. “Eight, I’m fairly sure that last item’s not on the checklist,” Cherry Berry drawled.

“It isn’t? Wait a moment, I know there’s a pencil here somewhere…” Chrysalis made a pantomime of reaching around the capsule for a mislaid pencil, raising more laughter. 

“Mission Eight, Horseton copies mission checklist, with addendum,” Cherry Berry said. “Stand by for go-no go check.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied, “Mission Eight standing by.”

Cherry Berry removed her headset, resting her forehooves on her workstation and turning to address the press, who had been joined by Twilight Sparkle’s friends. “I’m sorry we woke you up this early,” she said, “but we didn’t want to let you leave without giving Twilight Sparkle’s mission one more try. Even when the Changeling Space Program fails the first time, we keep trying until we succeed.” She nodded to Twilight Sparkle, whose face retained the worry from the previous day. “And we want all of Equestria to know we don’t give up.”

The changelings around her cheered their agreement. von Brawn, who looked just as alert and calm as ever, merely nodded his approval.

“All right,” Cherry Berry said, turning to Occupant. “Flight manager, I yield you the floor.”

Occupant yawned, showing off his embarrassing buck fangs (115). “Right,” he said. “Um, Lucky, this one’s going to be a long flight, and we don’t know how long. Recovery team needs to stand by for orders, right?”

“Copy, Flight,” Lucky Cricket nodded.

“Dr. von Brawn, rocket status?”

“Solid fuel stable, liquid fuel and oxidizer tanks full and stable,” von Brawn replied. 

“Crawley, weather schedule?”

Crawley checked his paperwork. “Eye Wall agreed to clear skies through midday in case of launch postponement,” he said. “Clouds building towards evening with scheduled light showers overnight through tomorrow. Thirty percent chance of feral storms blowing up on the evening sea breeze.” He checked a few devices on the wall and added, “Currently fair skies, sixty-seven degrees Marenheit, negligible wind.” As he spoke, light shone through the windows in the top of the mission control room, and the illusory rocket on the wall brightened. Celestia had just raised the sun(116).  “Make that sunny and sixty-seven degrees. All conditions go for launch.”

Occupant nodded satisfaction. “Parachute?”

“Packed it myself,” Dragonfly said. “Switches and release charges checked out.”

“Right. Anyling have issues to bring up?” Occupant asked. 

Up in the gallery, Twilight Sparkle began to raise her hoof, then reluctantly put it down again. 

“Okay, then. Final go or no go. Engines?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Tracking?”

George Bull looked up from his tracking computer. “Go, Flight Manager.”

“Recovery?”

“Standing by, Flight Manager.”

“Weather?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Parachutes?”

“Go, Flight.”

“Capsule communications?”

“Go, Flight,” Cherry Berry noted. 

“Verify switchover to internal power.”

As Stinger Charlie activated the rocket’s electrical system, Cherry Berry said,  “Mission Eight, Horseton, verify internal capsule power.”

“Confirmed on battery power,” Chrysalis said. “Controls active. All systems green.”

“Roger, Mission Eight, stand by.” 

Occupant nodded. “Three launches in less than twenty-four hours,” he said. “Whatever else happens, that’s an accomplishment, everyone. Cap-com, report Mission Eight is go for launch.”

“Roger, Flight. Mission Eight, you are go for launch, repeat you are go for launch. Activate first stage when ready.”

“Mission Eight confirms go for launch,” Chrysalis said. All eyes in the mission control watched as she took a deep breath, set her jaw, and reached down for the staging button. 

The first stage and the three Flea boosters roared to life, and slowly, almost majestically, Mission Eight lifted off the launch pad.

“Mission Eight aloft and the clock is running,” Chrysalis reported. “Attempting maneuver for target zone alpha.” On the projection the ponies and changelings in Mission Control could see the rocket begin to tilt, rapidly building up speed as it rose higher and higher. 





And then… the tilt stopped. Cherry Berry looked down at the projected navigation ball… which was doing odd things. Instead of tilting south-by-southwest as required for the first aerial survey, the ship was… sliding sideways a bit in trajectory. 

“Ship controls are sluggish,” Chrysalis reported. “I think the reaction wheels are just overwhelmed by the mass of the ship and current velocity.” A few moments later she added, “I’m beginning to get a bit of roll here. It increases the more I try to push for the horizon. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and hold the ship steady. I think we’ll make the first target zone, but probable scrub on the second one.”

“Roger, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry said. “Horseton copies.” She switched off her mike. “Doctor, answers?”

“Top-heavy ship, fins not perfectly aligned, or not enough of them,” von Brawn said. "It should handle better if she gets above the thickest part of the atmosphere.”

At that point the Fleas burned out, and Cherry Berry watched as Chrysalis pushed the throttle to full. The first stage continued to burn, and slowly, slowly, the rocket’s speed continued to rise, accelerating past three hundred meters per second as the rocket passed eight thousand meters altitude. 

“Eight, Horseton,” Cherry said, switching her mike back on. “I just want to let you know you’re currently flying higher than any known living creature has ever done before.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied calmly. “Are you monitoring my airspeed?”

“We sure are, Eight,” Cherry replied. Three hundred forty now at ten thousand meters.

“It’s going to be close,” Chrysalis said, “but I’m watching my fuel consumption, and it looks like I’m going to be a little bit short of minimum speed for the Hammer test at first stage cutoff.”

Cherry Berry shot glances to Occupant, von Brawn, and Bull, all of whom nodded. “We concur,” Cherry said reluctantly. “Hold off on second stage ignition until sixteen thousand anyway. The test might still come off.”

“Mission Eight copies second stage activation at sixteen thousand,” Chrysalis replied. A moment later she added, “By the way, I found that pencil.”

This raised a bit of laughter, if nervous laughter. Cherry Berry smiled, and continued to smile as Chrysalis entered the first target zone and recorded her survey of, apparently, more open water. One contract complete, she thought. Even with one failed, this flight is running smoother than any we’ve had yet. 

Please let it keep up.

Just as Chrysalis finished recording her report, the Reliant first stage cut off. “First stage cutoff at fourteen point six kilometers,” the queen said. “Velocity reading four hundred thirty and falling slowly. First stage jettisoned. Preparing for second stage ignition and adjusting attitude for target zone beta.” On the illusion, the rocket turned ever so slowly. “Controls still sluggish,” she said. “Probably won’t finish the turn before sixteen thousand.”

“Horseton copies, Mission Eight,” Cherry Berry replied. “No joy on target beta. Focus on maintaining control.”

“Fifteen-five,” Chrysalis reported. “Second stage ignition… mark!” She hit the staging button again, and as smoke billowed into the thin air below the rocket on the projection, the speed indicator on the nav-ball climbed rapidly. “Report red light on both Hammer and Flea tests, repeat no joy on either Hammer or Flea.”





“Horseton copies, Mission Eight, stand by,” Cherry Berry said. She cut off her mike and said, “I know for a fact we were within parameters for the Flea test! Below eighteen thousand, faster than four-sixty! What gives?”

Up in the gallery, Twilight Sparkle slapped her head. “Stupid!” she shouted. “I'm so stupid! The spell I used for the test assumes a Flea has a full fuel load! It won’t recognize a used booster as a Flea! I should have told you!”

Cherry Berry joined much of the press corps in groaning. She turned on her mike and said, “Mission Eight, Horseton; seems we voided the Flea test by actually using the Flea. It needed to come up unburned, over.”

“Now she tells us,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Second stage burnout at nine hundred thirty meters per second. Jettisoning second stage…” Under her voice, but still audible for the rest of the room, she added, “… for all the good it did us…”

“Cheer up, Eight,” Cherry Berry said, “you still get to enjoy your vacation in Maneaco.”

This time nopony laughed. 

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “Adjusting attitude. I’m going to use the third stage to lengthen my trajectory. I’ve been burning pretty close to vertical and need more deceleration time.”

“Roger, Eight, Horseton copies.” Cherry Berry switched off the microphone as she saw both von Brawn and Bull shaking their heads frantically. von Brawn had lost his cool, Cherry noted; very bad sign. “What’s wrong, guys?”

“Tell her not to do it!” Bulls shouted. “She needs that fuel for active braking! She hasn’t got enough-“

“Look at the map!” von Brawn interrupted, pointing to the projection of the trajectory plot. Cherry Berry had never really given it a thought, since up until now the flights had all been short and close to home. The blue line this time, however, wasn’t short. It was very, very tall, and bent almost like a hairpin, going almost straight up and straight down.

And as she watched, the hairpin gradually spread out… but at the same time, the peak of the bend rose higher. 

“Stop her! NOW!” von Brawn said.

Cherry Berry switch the mike back on. “Mission Eight, this is Horseton-“

“Stand by, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. A moment later, she added, “Third stage cutoff. All done. Does that get me to Maneaco today?”

von Brawn made a grit-toothed face, obviously wanting to scream, obviously unwilling to do so in Mission Control in public. He merely pointed again at the top of the trajectory arc, where a number glowed next to the apoapsis marker.

“Negative on Maneaco, Eight,” Cherry Berry drawled, realizing for the first time what the number meant. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to settle for outer space.”

On the projection, Chrysalis blinked, eyes going wide. “Horseton, Eight; I didn’t copy that last, could you repeat?”

“Our trajectory shows your ship reaching maximum altitude outside of atmosphere,” Cherry Berry said. “In a couple of minutes you’re going to be the first changeling in outer space.”

“Oh.” Chrysalis looked around the cabin, noticing a pencil floating, without magic, in front of her helmet. “Could you verify that, please, Horseton? I feel like I’m falling.”

“Zero gravity,” von Brawn rumbled, back in control of himself. “Free fall. We need a conference, Flight, could you have her stand by?”

Occupant nodded, and Cherry said, “You’re still going up, Eight. Enjoy the ride and stand by; we’ll have a couple of tasks for you in a moment.”

“Roger, Horseton, Mission Eight copies standing by.”

On the projector, the bell of the third-stage Reliant engine slowly cooled, red fading to black, as the little spaceship soared towards a soot-black sky.





Cherry Berry cut the mike, removed her headset, and trotted down to the bottom of the control room floor, where von Brawn and Bull stood in which the changelings had begun to call “the bullpen.”(117) Occupant joined them a moment later. Ignoring the photos from the press gallery, Cherry asked, “All right, where do we stand?”

Bull pointed to the trajectory chart. “This isn’t exactly where she’ll come down,” he said, “but it’s close. We need to get recovery en route immediately, and we need to contact both pegasus and griffon weather control teams and make sure those skies stay clear. If she comes down safely, we don’t want the capsule sunk by a storm.”

“Yes, sir,” Occupant said, fluttering back up to his own station to give the orders.

“The problem is, she might not come down safely,” von Brawn said. “We should have planned for this, and we didn’t. She needed to reduce her speed, pointing the craft down instead of up for her trajectory adjustment burn. As it stands, her trajectory is flatter, but not flat enough. For the final ten thousand meters she'll be close to vertical, and she’s almost four hundred meters per second faster than she should be.”

“Agreed,” Bull replied. “Reaching space is a nice milestone, but only if the pilot comes back alive. She’s returning very steep. The only good news is, she’s coming in above water. For a ground landing, I wouldn’t give tuppence for her chances.”

“Right,” Cherry Berry said. “What can we do to make it better?”

“Not much,” von Brawn admitted. “Bringing back the third stage is out. We need the capsule as light as possible. The lighter it is, the faster the atmosphere will slow it down. Then we need her to get the craft on retrograde attitude and keep it there. Thankfully we put the ablative shield on for Mission Six and didn’t remove it in the reconditioning process. We’re going to need it now.”

“Anything else?” Cherry Berry asked. 

von Brawn shook his head. “Ask Twilight Sparkle if she could teleport our pilot out, maybe? No, Miss Berry,” he sighed, “at this point it’s entirely in Queen Chrysalis’s hooves.”



Footnotes:

(113) Chrysalis later said the book was the worst Daring Do adventure ever, with the crystal aliens turning out to be agents of Dr. Caballeron being “the biggest cop-out ever” and the lack of an actual space flight to a comet being “blatant false advertising.” She did approve of the two death traps in the story, though, calling them “ingenious, I wish I’d thought of them.” She admitted, when asked, that the parts about rockets were sound enough, but not all that interesting.

(114) Three of them actually had, including the griffon, and it would feature prominently in her writeup of events, enhancing a small but steady tourist trade for CSP. The fourth pony, a photographer for the Manehattan Times, had bought the shirt solely because he hadn’t brought a change of clothes and didn’t want to look like, for example, the little kid from Ponyville’s Free Foal Press. The honor of Equestria’s leading newspaper was at stake, after all.

(115) And because the press has no shame, three cameras went off at that precise moment, and his photo was part of the special supplemental section that later ran in the Canterlot Herald, the Manehattan Times, and the Crystal Empire Post-Dispatch. Reader reaction split between “how dare this paper frighten young fillies” and “how incredibly cute, I never knew changelings could be that adorable.”

(116) Technically it was the planet that moved and not the sun, but it was still an impressive feat of magic, and habits of thought die hard. Celestia likely would continue to “raise the sun” for centuries to come, and anypony who tried to correct this would be justly accused of nitpicking.

(117) If the front row of the mission control desks had been run by changelings, it might have been called the Pit or the Hole, but the two minotaurs dominated it both physically and intellectually, so no other name seemed fitting.







“Wow,” Chrysalis muttered. “Horseton, Eight; I just want to report that the controls are really responsive without any rocket attached. Too responsive. Much twitchier than in any simulations we’ve done. I just want to point that out, over.”

“Horseton copies, Eight,” Cherry Berry’s voice replied calmly. “Do your best. Aps in thirty seconds, over.”

“Mission Eight copies.” Chrysalis tweaked the roll slightly, bringing Equus into view of the little hatch window. A window not much bigger than my hoof, she thought, and I can see everything from Manehattan down to Scorchero in it, and halfway to the Everfree Forest. 

She let the craft continue to roll, and the planet fell away, replaced by black sky, and as the window fell into shadow away from the sun, a host of stars. 

“I have to say it’s beautiful up here,” she said aloud. “Really beautiful. I can pick out Luna’s little stars separate from the planets and distant stars. The Milky Way… I’ve never seen it this clearly before, not even in the Badlands. And the stars are solid. They don’t sparkle. They just shine in all the colors of the rainbow.”

The craft rotated, bringing the night side of Equus into view. “I’m looking at western Equestria now,” Chrysalis said. “The atmosphere makes a kind of rainbow with the colors of sunset. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve been around a good long while.”

Chrysalis stared out the little window, ignoring the pencil floating loose around the cabin. “It’s just so amazing up here,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe it except in terms of emotions. Everything up here tastes of joy and laughter.” She chuckled to herself. “I’m fifty miles and more above the closest pony, and up here I feel surrounded by joy and laughter. Someone tell Rarity that we need to let out the pressure suits. Changelings up here are going to get fat.”

“Eight, Horseton,” Cherry Berry replied, “she hears you and says she’ll make you an appointment when you get back. For now, though, you’re past apoapsis, and we need to get you on retrograde attitude for atmospheric reentry.”

Chrysalis sighed. “Copy, Horseton,” she said. “I hope I get to spend more time up here. Unexpected snacking aside, it’s truly beautiful. And so relaxing.”

“Can’t wait to get up there myself,” Cherry Berry admitted. 

Chrysalis adjusted herself back in her flight seat and took the flight stick in her hooves. It took a bit of rocking back and forth; even with the lightest touch, the ship moved past the retrograde marker on the nav-ball. Finally she got the retrograde marker almost centered. “Attitude full retrograde,” she said. “Look out, Equus, I’m coming home butt first.”

A choked sound echoed through Chrysalis’s headset. Finally Cherry Berry’s voice managed, “Mission Eight, we can all hear everything you’re saying.”

For a moment Chrysalis flushed with embarrassment. Then decades of training and practice kicked in. “I’m a queen,” she said simply. “I can say whatever I want. Let princesses be dignified.” Pause. “Booger.”

Giggles echoed through her helmet. Gotcha, she thought.

She glanced down at her controls, noticing her speed. “I’m picking up a bit of speed,” she said. “I must really be dropping. Twelve hundred meters per second and rising.”

“Copy, Eight,” Cherry Berry said. “According to tracking you maxed out at thirteen hundred sixty going up; you’ll go at least that fast coming back down.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied. “I’m feeling a little bumping now; I must be back in atmosphere.” The sensation in the cockpit wasn’t exactly bumping, so much as the faintest of nudges, as forces formerly absent were returning.

“Affirmative, Eight,” Cherry said. “Maintain retrograde attitude and stand by.”

Chrysalis lay back, hooves on the flight stick, eyes on the nav ball, making the lightest of touches now and then. For a minute or two nothing much happened, except that the faint nudges began to build towards a vibration, nothing like as ferocious as liftoff, but vastly removed from the tranquility of moments before. 

A flicker of redness rushed past the window. “Horseton, Eight,” she said.

“Go ahead, Eight,” Cherry Berry answered.

“I’m seeing… little streamers of red light,” Chrysalis reported. “Or is that flame?”

“Roger, Eight, and yes it is flame,” Cherry repeated. “The air is thick enough, and you’re going fast enough, to heat up the atmosphere around you. The ablator shield should prevent the heat from building up in your ship, over.”

“Mission Eight copies,” Chrysalis replied calmly. She didn’t remember the bit about coming down surrounded by a fireball being covered in either training or classes. But then, nopony had planned on Mission Eight making it to space, even for a few minutes. 

The flames increased rapidly, a roar beginning to fill the cabin. “Gravity’s coming back…” Chrysalis grunted as the ship began to decelerate. “Just a touch, but it’s there. Speed thirteen twelve at twenty-two thousand meters.”

“Horseton copies,” Cherry said. 





The sensation of weight increased little by little as flames roared past the capsule. “Speed twelve seventy-five at nineteen thousand meters,” she said.

“Horseton copies.”

A moment later Chrysalis said, “Speed twelve-ten at sixteen thousand, Horseton is there something you should be telling- oof!” The capsule had just shoved her hard in the back, and was still shoving hard.

“Mission Eight, Horseton, we didn’t copy that last,” Cherry Berry said. 

“Just started… slowing down… really fast,” Chrysalis groaned. “Two gees. Unexpected. Dropping below ten thousand, still well over nine hundred.”

“Wait until parachutes green-light before deploying,” Cherry Berry warned. 

“Mission Eight copies, deploy parachutes only on green light,” Chrysalis replied. “Gees easing up… three hundred fifty at five thousand meters altitude.” The flames were long gone, and the black of space was replaced by clear blue skies outside the window. “Three hundred at four thousand meters… two ninety… two eighty… two seventy.”

The parachute switch lights turned from red to yellow, and Chrysalis’s left hoof hovered over them. “Standing by…” At two hundred sixty-two meters per second the switch went green, and her hoof stabbed forward. “Parachutes deployed!” she shouted triumphantly. 





About a quarter mile off Nuzzle Island in the Marehamas, what looked like a slightly scorched gray gumdrop drifted down under a parachute, splashing into the water. A mother and daughter, ponies vacationing from Baltimare(118),  watched with interest as the parachute collapsed atop it, then drifted away on the water.

To their surprise, a door opened on the side of the gumdrop. Something in an orange suit crawled out, hugging the side as it closed the hatch behind it. One hoof slipped, and the thing slid into the water, splashing frantically for a few seconds, then calming down as it realized that it wasn’t actually sinking. 

Green magic enveloped the metal gumdrop. Very, very slowly the thing rose into the air, then began floating towards the beach, led by the strange thing in the orange suit. Mare and filly watched with growing curiosity and concern as the thing in the suit swam, then touched bottom, then walked through the low surf, rising up from the water like a creature out of a bad movie.(119)

The metal pod set down on the beach, and the magic shifted from it to the helmet, twisting it, unlocking it, removing it. The thing inside took a deep breath of salt air and shook out its lank green mane. 

“Stay back, Checkers,” the mother said, putting herself between her daughter and the monster. “I’ll protect you.”

“Peace, peace!” the monster said, raising a hoof still encased in the damp orange suit. “I’m a friend! A friend! I come from Equestria! Where’s the nearest telegraph office?”

The filly peeked out from between her mother’s legs. “Ma’am, did you come from outer space?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Queen Chrysalis said, smiling triumphantly, “I did!!”



Footnotes: 

(118) Having made a small fortune in just two days from the changeling tourist invasion, the family had taken a Marehaman vacation to soothe their nerves. They had money to spare, and it was the off-season. At the moment Daddy was off by the cabana bar getting himself quite profoundly soothed. Mommy was not looking forward to dragging his unconscious flank back to the hotel again that evening.

(119) Specifically, Teenage Cavehorse, directed by Bit I. Gottem, 989 CR. Why there was a monster with a spacesuit helmet atop a gorilla-suit body in a movie about cavehorses was never explained. Not many cared. When you went to a theater showing a movie with a title like that, watching the film was the last thing on the agenda.




MISSION 8 REPORT

Mission summary: Test flight dynamics of booster aerodynamic nosecones; fulfill outstanding contracts for Flea and Hammer booster tests; survey two target zones while in flight

Pilot: Chrysalis

Flight duration:  25 min. 14 sec.
Maximum speed achieved:   1361  m/s (ascent), 1374 (descent)
Maximum altitude achieved:    Trans-atmospheric
Distance downrange at landing:  302.3  km

Contracts fulfilled:  3
Milestones: all altitude milestones cleared, fastest velocity, reached space, returned safely from space

Conclusions from flight: SPACE! SPACE! SPACE! OH MY CELESTIA SPACE SPACE SPACE!!!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: A MOST SUCCESSFUL FAILURE


The telepresence illusion had failed a few seconds after splashdown, but that had been enough. Everyone in the Mission Control room was cheering and celebrating, even the changelings. Professionalism was thrown to the four winds. The only quiet pony in the room was Ad Astra, but that was because she was busy writing out checks, a couple of which would be extremely large. 

Changeling Space Program: first in space. 

That would be the next day’s headline, and every pony, changeling, griffon and minotaur in the room knew it. It was even made official when Twilight Sparkle descended from the gallery to shake Cherry Berry’s hoof. In a voice loud enough to carry she said, “I see the Equestria Space Agency has a lot of catching up to do!” As she shook hooves, she added, “Under the circumstances, you’ve more than earned that wind tunnel. ESA considers the contract fulfilled in full!”

“I’m honored, Princess,” Cherry Berry replied, also pitching her voice to carry, “but we’re going to fulfill your remaining priorities anyway! And then- next stop orbit! Because the Changeling Space Program doesn’t give up until it succeeds!”

Two figures took opportunity of the tumult to absent themselves. They bore press passes in their bright, snazzy straw hats, but had anyone checked those passes there would have been awkward questions asked. Like, for example, why the two unicorns hadn’t been with the press group the day before, why weren’t the ponies carrying a camera or pencil and notepad, and who published the Weekly Midnight Star anyway, and where?

“Well, dear brother of mine,” said one to the other, “I found this diversion most educational indeed.”

“As did I, my eloquent sibling,” said the other to the one. “And what I found most educational is, I do not believe these ponies are alive to the possibilities of that spell.”

“Indeed my cup runneth over with ideas for its use,” the first said to the second, his mustache swishing. 

“As does mine,” the second said to the first. “Now all we have to do is lay hooves on a chart of the spell matrix.”

“A simple matter, no doubt easily attained,” the first said, “and then a few minor modifications will set us well on our way!”

“Veritably, my dear brother!” The second chuckled, adding, “Let us be thankful for the institution of free scientific exchange!”

“Yes indeed!” the first laughed. “Let us go set some information free… and then sell it dearly!”

The two ponies laughed merrily, if maliciously, and took a brisk, jaunty walk in the direction of the administrative offices.