CHAPTER 34

“We see it up here.”

Jack thought about that for a second or two after saying it. Was he really up here in comparison to Dee? The command module might be forward of Dee but, it was also in the very bowels of the ship. He could just as easily say ‘down here’ and be correct. Forward really didn’t matter as much as the layers of modules that rapped around each other like a collection of cans bundled together. The command module would always be in the middle of the bundle. The ‘nose’ of the vessel would not always be pointing in the direction of their forward momentum. In fact, it seldom would.

On the monitor screens, that Jack kept an eye on, he watched the little gremlin guy giving the thumbs up on the drive train’s various systems. It was kind of embarrassing too. Jack and his team had been working on the hull of the spaceship for nearly a year. Dee’s team had to do a rush job on their propulsion unit and the long pole arm it was suspended too. She got it all perfect on the first try it seemed. Jack’s work looked sloppy by comparison and to the uneducated observer might have seemed the simpler task.

Gina had also been watching the drive modules. She pushed herself away from that section and did a back flip in mid air. When she was pointing, and closer, to the positional monitors she called out, “we’re about to make our final orbit Colonel.”

Harry Wu had come down from his observatory where he had little to do. As the director of the scientific part of the mission, he would have years to hammer out the bugs in his stuff. Right now Harry just wanted to be where the action was. Jack let him stay since the help was needed. Of course Jack somewhat regretted it as Harry was acting like a kid in a candy shop now.

This time Harry slapped his hands and did a flip of his own, “hot damn! You know it took the Japs six months to build up this kind of velocity!”

Saiid waived his hand around to get everyone’s attention but Jack cut the kid off. Harry’s two flips in an as many seconds had Jack sweating. His mind just kept seeing someone’s foot going through a monitor screen. That would of course be followed by little tiny pieces of glass floating away and that could be dangerous. Some of those shards would be so small that they would be nearly impossible to clean up. To push yourself through a cloud of them would mean eye damage, cuts all over your bare skin, and much worse, you could inhale them!

“No more flips in here guys!” Jack followed the command with, “Sergeant Major, post signs in here for that.” Jack’s next major project for this module was going to be making some covers for monitor screens to keep such small disasters at bay.

Finally Saiid got his question out, “has anybody, like, given any thought to what happens if we catch up with the Japs? I mean you don’t think they’d use one of their nukes on us, do ya?”

Gina only rolled her eyes at the question.

It was Harry that answered, “we won’t be anywhere near them. They left so much earlier our two courses won’t come within a million miles of each other.”

“Oh,” clearly by Saiid’s reaction he didn’t get it.

Jack finished off Harry’s thought, “our courses could possibly converge in the Centauri system but then again,” Jack shrugged, “a solar system is a pretty big place. Besides that, if Dee’s little toy works to expectations we’ll get there long before they do.”

Leaving the crew’s official nerd perplexed, and Jack figured the confusion was because Saiid knew more about science fiction than the real thing, Jack got on with the business at hand. He unclipped the little phone like communicator from his belt and punched in the code that allowed him to transmit over the radio. He had been doing a lot of talking with ground control during their preliminary orbits. This time he would be saying the most important message of his life.

“Houston control,” Jack held his breath and tried to keep from saying, ‘we have a problem. We lost our keys.’ He did think to disengage the transmit button while he chuckled.

Then Jack saw the funny looks from his crew. He told them the joke but they didn’t get it. Jack went on, “we have a green light, prepping for red dog. USS Hermes requests permission to leave orbit.”

The electronically garbled reply kind of sounded like Rockmont! Maybe it really was? “We show green light Hermes, call the ball.”

Jack looked to Gina who had long since checked, and rechecked, everything she needed too. She nodded and Jack transmitted again, “I have the ball Houston. We show red dog in mark twenty. You guys keep the lights on for us. USS Hermes out.”

Gina had switched on the loud speaker as the reply came in, “Roger that Hermes. Make sure you let the little green men out there know that the human race just grew up. For you guys up there on Hermes… well standing here on the ground, speaking for the people of this little blue speck in the cosmos, all the six billion of us can really say is goodbye, farewell, and amen. God go with you Hermes. This is Houston Control, signing out.”

It was silent in the command module after that. Jack could see a good deal of reflection in everyone’s faces. As for Jack’s part, in all of this, he could understand that this moment was supposed to be monumental. He just couldn’t make himself feel it. To Jack, this was a job and they had work to do right now.

“Come on gang,” Jack told everyone, “let’s see what this baby’s got under the hood. Else we’re all going to look damn silly.”

Saiid was the one who got to call it out, “ten seconds to ignition!”

“Five…”

Jack commented, “hope everybody remembered to pack everything.”

“Four…”

Harry replied, “Jack, I think I left my toothbrush!”

“Three…”

Gina developed a huge grin, “are we there yet?”

“Two…”

The strange stares she got made her reply, “well Saiid’s busy so somebody had to say it.”

“One…”

Jack crossed his fingers, “well here goes nothing.”

TO BE CONTINUED