Silhouetted against the deep blue horizon of the stratosphere, Trans-United Flight 52 cruised westbound toward Japan.
Below, Captain Alan Stuart could see pieces of the sunlit Pacific between the breaks in the cloud cover. Above was subspace—an
airless void without sun or life. The continuous shock wave generated by the giant craft’s supersonic airspeed rose invisibly
off its wings and fell unheard into the mid–Pacific Ocean.
Captain Stuart scanned his instruments. It had been two hours and twenty minutes since the flight had departed San Francisco.
The Straton 797 maintained a steady Mach-cruise component of 1.8—930 miles per hour. The triple inertial navigation sets with
satellite updating all agreed that Flight 52 was progressing precisely according to plan. Stuart picked up a clipboard from
the flight pedestal between himself and the copilot, looked at their computer flight plan, then glanced back at the electronic
readout of position: 161 degrees, 14 minutes west, 43 degrees 27 minutes north—2100 miles west of California, 1500 miles north
of Hawaii. “We’re on target,” he said.
First Officer Daniel McVary, the copilot, glanced at him. “We should be landing at Chicago within the hour.”
