C James

In Changing Lanes, the island of La Palma and its volcanism was central to the story. However, one thing I did get dinged on a lot about was that it was implausible the news wasn't getting out regarding how serous the situation was. (or at least, might be). To be honest, I was worried I'd messed up there, so it was a good point to raise. So, I can't resist posting about Herrio, the island southwest of La Palma. It was mentioned in the story due to having suffered an enormous volcanic collapse (leaving the north side looking like someone took a ten-mile bite out of it) about 130,000 years ago. Well, one would think it'd be big news if it was getting ready to blow, right? Nope... have many of you heard about it? It was in the news a bit last year due to an eruption just off the coast, but now it's rumbling again, and this time the signs point towards a larger eruption. No one knows where; it might be on land, might be just offshore, but it'll almost certainly happen this summer. Herrio eruption report, frequently updated. CJ

OOPS!!! Thanks for the heads up; it's fixed now. It'll be weird for me when this ends; this story and its characters have been a huge part of my life for over two years now.

Operation Mincemeat is up. BTW, for anyone interested in the real operation mincemeat, here's a link. It's one of the most remarkable operations of WWII.

Chapter 127: Operation Mincemeat For Trevor and Shane, their sojourn in Fleet Base West was beginning to chafe. They were not free to roam the base unescorted, and going into Perth was judged to be too great a risk with Bridget still at large and presumed to be in Australia. In the Bahamas, it was barely forty-eight hours since Bridget had replaced Sanchez. She had moved swiftly, assuming full control of his operation in the Bahamas, and was in the process of reactivating the survivin

ROFL!!!! Ya got me!!!! It's entirely coincidental that I have a touch of sunburn. I fixed the AC. Took me a bit of doing though... a few of the screws and a bracket arm kind of, somehow, mislocated themselves and took me a while to find.

Bridget isn't likely to receive a humanitarian of the year award, is she?

I should have the AC fixed by Tuesday... assuming my parts arrive AND assuming I put everything back together okay. ROFL!!!! Funny you should mention that.... I decided to use a blower motor from a different make of AC, because getting the original part would have cost hundreds. It'll work just find though, once I alter a support arm with a touch of welding. I'm pretty sure it was a power surge that took out the motors. I'm just glad it didn't kill the compressor too, that would have cost far more. It'll be hooked up to surge protection by the time I'm done (surge is a common problem here). It would cost a ton if I was having a repairman in. I live far from any towns and on a 4 wheel drive road, so the only place in the region that would send a guy charges around $200 extra due to the location. So, like most everything else, I do it myself. The way it's looking right now, It'll cost under $150 total to fix it. But but but... you know I never, ever use cliffhangers!!!

Bridget is now vastly more powerful than she's ever been. Trevor has had it easy so far. However, just in case anyone is worried, I hereby renew my pledge; there shall be no cliffhangers in Circumavigation! I couldn't respond to your comments, because you were right! (well done!!) And yep, the "hearty meal" was one of the clues that Bridget needed to borrow Billy's head. Also, remember her words to Sanchez while the first amongst equals was standing beside her? When he asked about the head, she said, "I have the vile thing with me". Well, she wasn't lying. Bridget was satisfied with her open operation in Florida; she only began hungering for Sanchez's when she had to flee. She's not prone to unnecessary risks, so we can't count on her making a mistake. Trevor would be well advised to stay far away... good thing he's not planning on moving to the Bahamas and running charter ads... oh, wait, he is... well, it's probably nothing to worry about; I'm sure he'll get some customers. It's August 2007 in the story when it ends... It should be well before our August. Thanks!! Billy was fixed up by the hair stylist in Santiago to make him light blond (to look a bit like Trevor). Sanchez has never met Trevor, and has only seen Billy in passing. Bridget shooting Billy in the temple distorted his features a bit via hydraulic shock, so he was a great stand-in for Trevor's head. BTW, Bridget was nice enough to offer to pay Billy; she told him to remind her once she got her duffel. However, he was already decapitated by then, so for some reason he didn't ask.... Bridget is interesting; she takes no joy in killing; she only does it when it suits her goals. She's not a psychopath, just ruthless and amoral. That actually makes her far more dangerous. One thing out of many in the prologue; Ares was sold to Rachel and Dirk by Arnold Bellevue, and Bridget is sort of mentioned; he's preparing for a divorce. This was shortly before Bridget added "the late" to his name. That he was the one who sold the boat (and had possession of it) is very important to what's coming. You're right, she does use people like tools. Yes, well done Benji! The title of the coming chapter is indeed Operation Mincemeat. CJ

Bit isn't a relationship story made nicer by a touch of murder? :)Well, okay, maybe not.

Thanks!!! I'll see what I can do.

Sorry, but I've had some major chaos here and the chapter will be a week late. I haven't even had chance to weigh in on the thread, and will have to wait until later today to get to it, my e-mails, PM's, etc. Long story short, I have some family commitments that had to be attended to (helping with a medical issue) and my air conditioner chose this inopportune time to break. It was hard to diagnose, because it turns out to be both the compressor fan motor (the big fan in the large box-shaped part that's the outdoors part of the unit) and the motor for the main blower in the interior part of the unit (It's a central HVAC system). I have parts scattered everywhere, because I ended up taking darn near everything apart. I now suspect a power surge fried the motors, because them both failing at the same time is downright weird otherwise. Anyway, sorry for the delay. I'll do my best to make sure this is the last one for this story (We're coming to the end).

Thank you! Ben was originally released only via PM and e-mail. It was written as a way to say "thank you" to my forum posters, but I later decided to go ahead and post it publicly. It's a spinoff of Circumnavigation, basically in the timeframe of the first few chapters (Ben is in Circumnavigation for one chapter, and Lisa is a central character). Circumnavigation is a few chapters from ending, so for anyone waiting for a completed novel, it won't be too long now.

Epaulet Mate is up. Well, as we can tell from the title, somebody is about the be checkmated. But whom? And perhaps more than one? BTW, for those who aren't into chess, the epaulet mate is a checkmate pattern when a king is partially blocked at the sides by how own pieces. Wikipedia sums it up concisely; Here's a link to their image, which shows it clearly. (I can't link that image here, it's not one image but a layered composite.). BTW, we saw all the setup for this chapter in the last chapter. Some were blatant, like the flower-gathering. Others were subtle, such as the way Bridget's boat left port; it left the dock, then two hours later, right outside the marina, joined up with the other boats. And Bridget was hoping that she wouldn't have to use the gun she'd just been given again. CJ

Chapter 126: Epaulet Mate A roar of engines sounded across the azure waters as Bridget rammed the throttles to the stops, her borrowed boat surging ahead to take the lead of her little flotilla, with Sanchez’s island base – a small cay – now dead ahead. Bridget had timed her arrival, and thus her call to Sanchez, with care; her boats approached the dock while Sanchez’s float plane was still seventy miles away. Her palms began to sweat as she approached the island. She had a backup option to

Thanks!!!

Thank you!!! Hrmmm... I can't comment. The biggest fireworks show will definitely be at the story's finale, but I doubt anyone will see it coming. The danger is far from over. ;-) As for Bridget, why assume she;s up to something? Maybe she's just being nice? She's so.... misunderstood. Maybe Bridget just likes flowers? :-) That can be arranged! Just remember, you asked for it. About eight chapters to go. We're heading for the finale. ******************************** The title of the next chapter is Epaulet Mate. It's a large one, and I think it's a good one.

The science yield from ISS has been far less than was hoped for. The US can do autodocking; Dragon has the capability already, and the only reason it can't do so at ISS yet is the lack of an appropriate docking port on the station. Falcon 9 can launch ISS modules, and Falcon Heavy could launch 3 (or a very large one, far larger than the shuttle ever could). Mir was autoassembled, sort of. It was manned for some of it. I have no idea what the future plans are, except that no one really has any yet.

ACK!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not ready for wheels just yet.

Chapter 125: Final Maneuvers For those who would like to follow the action on a map, here's a link to google maps, centered on Geraldton, which can also be moved and zoomed to show other areas mentioned. Bridget and Billy’s flight took them to Nassau, capital of the Bahamas. There, she had convened a private meeting for the following noon, with her many contacts from throughout the western Bahamas branch of Sanchez’s organization; she knew a great many of them fairly well, due to her de

Final Maneuvers is up. One of the things in this chapter is a bit of a synopsis of the changing reasons why Trevor has a price on his head, and also why they have changed over time. I realized it's been a long time on some of it, so I thought I'd try to clear it up.

Interesting!!! I had no idea that they'd shared the video with the crew. I don't remember it being in the news, even on space-related sites, before the reentry, but I might have missed it. When I first saw the vid, it was a day or so after the loss. At that time, NASA was still claiming that that wasn't the cause. I remember that part well, because I got into an argument with an aerospace engineer over whether or not foam (no ice) could blast a hole into the wing. He was of the opinion that it could not, I was of the opposite opinion. NASA was still saying, at that point, that the foam on the vid couldn't have done enough damage. I was wondering what they were smoking. Anyway, I convinced the engineer my demonstrating mathematically that the foam's impact speed was probably in excess of mach1. It was simple to do; compensate for pressure altitude, use a chunk of foam the size of a ice chest as the model, and compute it's acceleration rate in the slipstream to get a rough range of velocity. The other factor was dispelling the argument that the foam would "just shatter". I proved it can't. The dynamics of a high speed impact don';t work like that. The kinetic energy has to go somewhere, and a further complicating factor is if the relative velocity differential on impact is even close to the local speed of sound in that foam, the disintegration can't propagate fast enough to dispel the kinetic potential. Anyway, it was a couple of weeks later when NASA finally did a test, using an air cannon to fire foam at a wing panel, and changed their stance to consider the foam as the prime suspect. I was astounded that they resisted so long; it was glaringly obvious. The proof is on the vid; the foam is seen, post impact, as a cloud of dust. Simply calculating the energy required to pulverize it within the tiny fraction of a second the contact had to take place in should have been enough to show that the kinnetic potential of the foam strike was more than enough to punch a hole in a carbon-carbon panel, and could not have come from a harmless glancing strike to the wing underside. They knew a lot about foam strike dynamics. For one thing, they already knew they'd come within a hair of losing an orbiter and crew on an Atlantis flight in the late 80's. Ah, found a link, there's a version online here. They nearly lost that mission because they made the same sort of mistakes in the face of possibly-lethal damage. As for Challenger, the high altitude wind sheer could well have been a factor, but they'd had blowby on a few prior launches. Having those seals (the O rings are made of rubber) ice cold was surely a factor too; they could not seal as well when cold, and the first evidence of blowby on that flight was less than a second after launch. I think it took both factors to cause the disaster. And yep, if someone in a regular company had screwed up and gotten people killed, I think they'd have been fired. In that story you linked, it demonstrates another problem a huge one; they turned down the offer from the air force of a look by a reconsat, not because they thought it was a bad idea, but because they couldn't figure out who made the request. Anytime you judge something based on who made it and not by its own merits, it's a very bad situation. Common, but bad.

She was indeed guessing that the operation in Australia would fail. However, she could not be sure, so she had a backup plan; get the tape and edit it, then turn it over to the cartel as part of her presentation. She had it planned both ways; success or failure would both serve her ends. However, she felt that failure would be a better result from her point of view regarding her true goals this time. And yep, Sanchez may well be a fool, if he doesn't see it coming, but he trusts Bridget. He was worried about someone using the tape against him, but assumed Bridget couldn't, due to it being a threat to her as well. He underestimated her... or has he?

You're right. Indeed, Bridget assumed just that, as shown by her reaction when she saw Kookaburra sail with Basingstoke aboard; What I meant to say (and phrased very badly) was that she thought his plan would fail before he got aboard, meaning he wouldn't get that far. The plan was a likley to fail one; it was predicated on forcing Kookaburra into, and then out of, port. In other words, they had to accurately predict just how the other side would react. And, it nearly did fail; had Bridget not been spotted (something that wasn't part of the plan), Kookaburra probably wouldn't have sailed.

Umm, he did find Ares.

Actually, the LEM and the command module had no data link. There were some instrumentation crossfeeds, that's it. For example to transfer guidance system readings from the LEM to the command module, you had to use a pencil and paper. In those days, computers had very little ability. Um, no, they absolutely could not jettison the SRBs or the external tank prior to SRB burnout. There was no remote-command ability to fire the explosive bolts and do so. Such a commandset could have been added easily, but the reason it wasn't is that attempting an SRB jettison before they had reached burnout would have been a non survivable event; the SRB exhaust plumes would have destroyed the shuttle orbiter and all aboard. The same is true for attempting to detatch the shuttle from the external tank (the SRB's attach only to the external tank, which the shuttle was mounted to.) prior to SRB burnout; it would be a very fatal move, zero chance for survival. They did have abort scenarios for after SRB burnout, including a transatlantic abort, but those depended upon how many of the three main engines had failed, and the payload weight. The only time they had an in flight launch abort was when a sensor failure shut down one of the three main engines (the shuttle was Challenger in that case), but they were far enough into the flight to abort to orbit via throttling the remaining two past 100%. They were damn lucky; had they not figured out it was a sensor failure and overridden the shutdown on the two remaining engines, they'd have lost them as well (they have no relight capability) and the shuttle at that point was on a trajectory "black zone", meaning that it's trajectory and reentry angle were not within the survivable envelope. A shuttle main engine failure during the SRB burn could be handled by an abort mode (return to launch site abort) but, they'd still have to ride the SRB's to burnout; There was never even a theoretical scenario where the shuttle could survivably part company with the SRB's pre burnout. (at just over two minutes into the flight). Nope... only if it's due to misconduct, violation of orders, etc. Collateral damage (including civilian deaths) happens in military missions all the time. IMHO, yes; it wasn't just an accident, it rises to the level of negligent homicide. I'd be fine if they'd just fired those responsible, but so far as I know, the only people who were punished were the two Thiokol engineers who tried to stop the disaster from happening. Can and do. Quite a few parts of the shuttle were made from carbon composites, including the wing leading edge, which was carbon-carbon. They can go beyond that now, but even in the early 70's (when the shuttle was designed) The Dragon capsule makes use of it for some components, including their reusible heat sheild. (before now, capsules used ablative sheilding; it partially burned away during reentry). The shuttle and the X-37 use ceramic tiles, but the Dragon's PICA-X sheild is one peice, and also far more resistant to damage than tiles. NASA developed PICA, but SpaceX changed the process, getting a better result and loweiring the cost by a factor of ten.