Saucer by Stephen Coonts Page B

3, Charley pulled back on the control stick and pointed the saucer almost straight up. She stayed on the juice.
    The saucer roared skyward on a cone of fire.
    Aboard the boat, the passengers stared with open mouths as the rising fireball began slowly tilting toward the northeast. They could still hear the distant thunder of the engines echoing back and forth between the steep shores of the lake when the bright fire from the rockets merged with the great golden orb of the sun.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    The computer displays consisted of graphics and short rows of symbols that both Rip and Charley thought were probably words and numbers. Since they couldn’t read any of it, Rip held on tightly to the pilot’s seat with his left hand and flipped through the displays with his right, looking for…
    “I’ve never seen graphics like these,” he shouted. “They’re so real, like you should be able to touch them. They almost look like holographs.”
    “They are holographs,” Charley said. “That’s it, right there! That display is the one we want.”
    Rip held tight with both hands and stared. A curving pathway led upward and eastward. A series of analog needles arranged vertically along the left side of the display might indicate altitude, airspeed, direction… but which was which?
    Ah, yes. The second one down from the top must be altitude, and the one under it airspeed. He said as much to Charley, who told him, “I think you’re right.”
    She had the juice full on now. At least four G’s were pushing them toward the rocket engines in the rear of the ship. Rip was holding on as best he could, but he was tiring.
    Finally he could hold on no longer and let himself go. He crashed into the aft bulkhead.
    Charley Pine was shouting, a primordial yell of pure triumph as she concentrated on the computer graphics before her. She felt so good. All those years of flight training, all those years of school, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifices, and now she was flying this thing into space! Her fellow Air Force test pilots would turn green with envy when they found out. And they would find out, of that she had no doubt.
    She inhaled deeply and let out another rebel yell. “Yee-haaaa! Oh, yes. Go, baby, go!”
    Charley kept the steering centered on that pathway into space. No doubt there was an autopilot in this thing somewhere and a simple push of a button would couple the ship to it, but she had no idea where it was or how to work it. Even if she had known, she probably would not have used it.
    Outside the sky was almost black, a deep obsidian black arcing over the blue planet. They were high, twenty or thirty miles, she guessed, and going higher. The ship was still accelerating at four G’s with the canopy pointed toward earth, climbing at about a forty-degree angle. With the earth above them, the concept of up and down seemed to no longer apply.
    The glowing of the saucer’s nose faded as the ship raced through the last remnants of the atmosphere. Although slightly muffled now, the dull roar of the rocket engines still filled the saucer’s cabin with sound.
    Orbital velocity was eighteen thousand miles per hour. Charley Pine had to accelerate to at least that speed or she would merely go over the top and begin reentry. Excess speed would cause her to orbit higher and higher. If she accelerated past twenty-five thousand miles per hour, escape velocity, the saucer would fly off into space on a voyage into eternity.
    Charley knew the physics cold; what she didn’t know was the computer program that she was using as a flight director. If only she could read the words and numbers!
    This had to be the right program! It had the right look; the physics seemed right; everything about it seemed right.
    But how was she going to know when she reached orbital velocity? And how high would this orbit be?
    Why was she asking herself these questions? The saucer flew, whoever designed it obviously knew their stuff, whoever made it sure as hell