CHAPTER 29

The hatch slammed shut and was followed by the hissing sounds of air, the whine of electric motors, and the steady hum of large metal bolts sliding into place. A light over the rounded metal doorway turned from red to green as a buzzer sounded off. One of the three Venturestars sat on the other side. That one picked up the nickname, Spruce Goose, after a famous aircraft of enormous size that had only ever flown once.

The other two orbiters had found themselves named Wilbur and Orville. Jack actually had a say in their names. He would have probably named Spruce Goose too, and named it something else, but at the time of the press release he was unaware that such silliness was even going on. He’d grown used to the name now and kind of thought it a fitting reminder of just what he was leaving behind. In short, it was nothing less than a great big mess and Jack was not sure, right now, if he should be jumping for joy, or sighing in relief.

The closing of that hatch was more a symbol than anything else. Everyone gathered around to watch it even if they would be going in and out of it, to the Goose, plenty of times before they reached their destination. The reason this one time was different was due to the fact that no shuttle would be leaving that airlock, bound for Earth, anytime in the near future. The getting off the ground part had been done. Now it was time for the real work to begin.

Jack really saw no big deal in the simple closing of a hatch. His people did though. He let them have their moment. Maybe they were saying goodbye to all they had ever known, and for that matter, all that mankind had ever known. It was also a good way of saying hello to what this mission was really all about. There was nothing about the last year on Earth that Jack was going to miss. He was glad to be done with it and looking forward to what was ahead.

Gina captured the moment with her Polaroid camera. She had to practically beg Jack to let her do it. In fact, it was only the constant nagging of several others that convinced him. In the last few months, Jack had been shoved in front of more cameras than he ever wanted to be. If he never saw another one it would be too soon.

Other than the sounds of the hatch, and the clicking noises from the camera, everything in the module was eerily silent. Maybe it was because everyone was tired? The last few days had been the busiest that any of them had ever known. Not only was there the normal work load, but also, there was the last minute goodbyes, the ever constant demand of NASA’s public relations people, the long lists of celebrities that wanted to shake hands, and finally the parade in New York City. After that the loathsome twelve hour decontamination process began.

Everyone had a right to be tired.

That was not the reason for the silence however. Pam illustrated it all too clearly by speaking what was probably as close to an official benediction as this ceremony was going to have. Her words sounded almost remorseful. They floated in the air like the occupants who heard them. They were simple and too the point, “may god have mercy on our souls.”

Jerry Pullman finished it with an, “amen.”

Pete was floating by the hatch. He had been the one to close it. He looked to their ships commanding officer and asked, “a few words maybe?”

Jack smirked, “I am definitely a man of those as you very well know. If I had anything relevant to say at the moment,” Jack slapped his hands and smiled, “let’s give this old girl a friendly kick in the butt and take her out for a spin.”

Saiid broke into a huge grin and looked to Dee, “warp speed Scotty!”

Dee only winced in confusion, “who?”

Jack tossed a thumb up towards the upper module hatch, “all right gang. If we don’t get this bad boy out of orbit we’re all going to look a might silly. I’m not really sure but I think somebody down there made a little fuss over this trip so maybe we shouldn’t disappoint them.”

As Dee floated by she only had to say, “don’t have to tell me twice.”

“Didn’t I do that already?” Jack asked back but got no response. He simply watched the faces of his crew as they floated by. They were all suddenly smiling, eager, and more importantly they looked every bit as excited as Jack felt. A few moments ago you would have sworn they were all at a funeral. People were funny animals.

The brightest face in the crowd was also the youngest. You could barely see anything but the glare from little Joey’s teeth. Somehow, to Jack at least, it seemed fitting. The boy said nothing though. He was in too big of a hurry to reach his duty station. That impressed Jack to no end. That kid was a real trooper. He usually did his work, accepted commands, no matter what it was, with a better attitude than anyone else. Jack was starting to wonder if maybe he should have requested a crew of eleven year olds. Fortunately it was too late to worry about that now.

The boy’s mother was an entirely different matter. If Joey was smiling the brightest, Julia was the only one who had not a hint of joy on her face. At least she was concentrating on her work, although, Jack had to admit that work had never really been her problem. Julia had proven herself to be exceptionally skilled at a lot of things besides her own area of expertise. She quickly grasped concepts that were totally alien to her, and was all business till she got something done. Maybe that was where Joey got it from? Now if she would only get her attitude from him!

The only two left in the module, when Jack got ready to leave, were Larry and Red. They were just kind of floating around for seemingly no reason at all. Jack looked them both over and had to wonder, “don’t you guys have something to do?”

“Sure do Jack,” Red replied in a way that made Jack absolutely certain that he was up to something.

“I don’t want to know, right?” Jack asked. The two older crewmen looked to each other and then nodded to Jack in the affirmative. Jack shrugged, “you’re inspecting the outer seals no doubt?”

Larry only nodded but Red grinned and replied, “sounds good to me Jack.”

Mumbling to himself Jack said, “I don’t want to know.” Then as he climbed out he yelled back, “don’t blow up the ship while you’re at it guys.” There was no telling what those two were up too. Red had already proven he had a knack for mischief. Larry was kind of shy until you put him the company of Red. If you tossed in the other old fart, McCandles, you had trouble just waiting to happen.

Fortunately the Sergeant Major was waiting for Jack in the Command Module. If he could have snapped his heels on the floor he probably would have. He did give a snappy, “commander on deck!” For an Army guy, McCandles had learned his navy jargon pretty quick.

Jack had little use for it though, “note in the log Sergeant Major. Since military protocols are not a practical necessity in our situation we may dispense with them now. For the record you can call me Jack.”

“Thank you sir,” McCandles replied in his crisp military way, “and for the record you can either refer to by my glorious title of Sergeant Major, or by my personal name used only by my closest friends and associates.”

Jack arched an eyebrow and looked to his senior Non Com, “and that is?”

“God almighty, lord of all he surveys, sir.”

Jack stopped next to his chair. It was a silly looking thing, in a cage, and could have passed for a lawn chair if not for the tie down straps. Jack still couldn’t get the idea out of his head that it resembled some kind of strange sex toy. For that reason he decided that he wasn’t going to use it until hell froze over, and maybe not even then.

Gina and Saiid were taking the first full watch. They were Jack’s A crew for the command module and this was their primary duty station. Jack had watched them in all the simulators and they worked fairly well together. Jack was starting to see why. Every now and then Gina would slap Saiid’s hand away from something and give him a very motherly sounding, “don’t touch that yet!”

Saiid usually either pouted or would try and protest. If his mouth opened normally Gina’s eyes would narrow and Saiid would not even get a word out before Gina simply said, “no” and ended the conversation. Jack had thought about commenting on the unusual dynamics of his command crew but then he figured he had better not. Why should he? It worked.

Most of the time, Saiid was playing with his toys anyway. The command module was packed from end to end with computers. All the crew really did here was make sure that the machines did their jobs. Most of the manual controls would never be touched, save in an emergency. When it came to running the ships computers, Saiid was not only second to none, he was the only guy on the list.

The software was specifically written for the Hermes by Saiid. Jack had went with it because it was a lot better than the off the shelf stuff that the NASA guys were modifying. Jack was a little weary of that situation though. There was the big weakness, like, what if something happened to Saiid? Then there were all the small quirks that Saiid had transferred from his personality into Jack’s computers.

The first of these quirks was all too obvious. The battery of monitors that displayed data streaming in, from every single system on the ship, did not just say everything was all right. If the system was working properly you would see a little guy standing next to the column of figures. He had a disproportionately huge hand and an even bigger thumb that pointed up. If something went wrong with the system in question then the same little guy would turn around, drop his pants, and moon you. He would literally ‘shake his booty’ until the system was running right. Naturally Saiid called the guy, appropriately even, “Gremlin.”

At the moment Jack could see more than a couple of shinning moons that were waggling at him from the monitor screens. They had a lot of things to fix but plenty of time to do them in. At least none of the problems were so critical as the most visibly prominent quirk from the crew’s official computer dweeb. Saiid was wearing a large pair of, pointed, prosthetic ears.

They all had headset communicators that could relay messages to each other, via repeaters, all throughout the ship. The actual headsets were plugged into a small box that fit on your belt and worked much like a cell phone. Unlike similar devices, down on Earth, they worked more like radio’s in that you could monitor all ship board communications with them. You had to actually dial a two digit number to get a private conversation and even then you could set it so that you could hear other traffic.

Saiid had designed this system, and the repeaters, that made it work. Jack had actually thought they were going to be stuck with hard wired phones. The shielding in the ship was so thorough that it blocked most radio signals from module to module and hence made wireless communications next to impossible. Saiid had managed to fix that by a series of routers. The radio transmitted to a module repeater and then the message was sent via hard wire to the repeater that was nearest the person you were talking too. There was nothing all that groundbreaking about the system but it sure was a neat solution to their problem.

If Saiid had only left it at that then he might have been called a genius or clever at the least. Instead he had to go that one step further in his personal choice of headsets. Jack could think of no solid reason to order Saiid to take them off and replace them with a normal looking headset. So it came to be that the USS Hermes had it’s own Vulcan computer dweeb.

“We got ground control on the horn?” Jack asked his command crew.

It was Gina who answered, “reading them five by five sir. All telemetry is coming in steady. Looks like,” Gina looked up to one of the clocks on a monitor, “we’ll be completing orbit number one in just under ten minutes.”

Hermes had been sitting in a geo-synchronous orbit since the day the first modules were slapped together. They started building velocity, slowly, by firing the chemical thrusters. The plan was to build up momentum with each circle around the Earth. When they reached the correct position, pointing towards their destination, and the velocity to just escape the Earth’s gravity, they would fire their brand new drive train. At that point, they would pass the moon’s orbit in minutes and leave the solar system in days. Neil Armstrong would have been envious.

In the meantime they had a lot of work to do. Every last critical system had to be checked and rechecked. If something serious failed after leaving orbit they would likely all die.

A second starship project was already underway but it was nowhere near completion. Even then, once the other ship was ready, it might take years for it to reach the Hermes should a rescue be required. That was if they could even find the Hermes at that point. Being propelled into the vast depths of space at millions of miles an hour was probably the best way to vanish forever if one had a mind too. There was a lot of space in outer space.

“Passing first orbit,” Gina stated. Then she looked away from another of the monitors, “Colonel, maybe you should listen to this one on the speakers sir.”

The airman switched the audio transmission over so that everyone in the command module could hear it. The compartment filled with the triumphant sounding music that Saiid instantly recognized as, “hey it’s Ride of the Valkyries. Cool!”

Pete floated into the module just in time to hear the music. Quickly he stopped and concentrated, “why do I always think of helicopters blowing up every time I hear this?”

Gina had been intently listening to the other audio transmissions on her own headset. She switched another over to the speakers and the voice of the President of the United States was interposed over the music. Gina also noted, “we got a video signal coming in too, sir. Want me to put it on a monitor?”

Jack listened to the words of his commander and chief and decided, “you know this sounds like a historic speech in the making. Turn it all off Gina.”

As she did Pete snorted out a laugh that was mixed with the sounds of relief. He was most definite in his words, “thank you.” He floated over to the various navigational monitors and noted, “coming up on our second orbit. We’re about ready for the next burn.”

Pete reached up over the command chair cage and set the stop clock. It marked the next firing of the chemical thrusters. That was all that needed to be done. The computers would do the actual work and they had been preprogrammed. All the crew had to do here was make sure it happened. It felt to Pete like a strange way to fly. There were no sticks, no helm, no flight controls to speak of, and worst of all there was no pilots chair.

In space there was nothing that could slip up on you that could not be seen from a long way off. You had time to make decisions, plot courses, and consider options. As a result there was really no need for hair trigger controls. Besides all of that, at the velocities that they would be traveling, such things as turning on a dime were impossible. The ship had to slow down to do maneuvers of any consequence and in reality there was no need for such aerobatics anyway. There was just nothing out here to run into. The result was a ship that was piloted from a keyboard.

Jack noted the time that was steadily counting down. “Ok, so what’s next on our little checklist?”

Saiid called out, “spin arms?”

With a wink Jack replied, “very well Mister Spock. Let’s turn on the gravity.”

With a huge grin Saiid replied, “Fascinating Captain.”