A BIT MORE:

“What’s up?” Nick asked.

I reached forward and pushed the button to replay the exchange of transmissions between Vladimir and myself. When it had finished, I reached forward and hit the stop button. There was a short silence on the flight deck, until everyone suddenly started talking at once. Everyone, that is, except Nick and me. He just sat in his chair staring at me with a calculating and speculative expression on his face.

“Oh, for God’s sake, why don’t we all go down to the cafeteria and have a coffee while we discuss this?” I exclaimed.

I was fed up with all the loud commotion in such a small space. They filed out of the flight deck, leaving Nick and me room to climb out of our chairs and follow them down to the cafeteria. They all started talking again as they sat down with their coffees until they ran out of things to say and voices to say them. Then Nick spoke,

“So tell me, Drew, what was this idea you mentioned to Vladimir?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Richard, I have a job for you to do. Could you go and have a chat with the nav computer and see if the two of you can come up with a flight plan for the fastest journey to Earth’s orbit and back to Mars?”

“OK, I’ll do it right now; it should take me less than an hour,” he said as he jumped up and left.

Everyone started talking at once again until Nick silenced them with one word,“Quiet! OK, Drew, you don’t have to bother answering my last question, but could you answer me this one: why do you think you should be the one to go?”

“You can’t go. You’re the captain, the commander, the head honcho, the big cheese, our exalted leader…I could go on.”

“Don’t bother! Give me serious reasons.”

“Those were serious, but also, I am a pilot—I can fly the ship.”

“And I can’t?”

“I can fix things if they stop working.”

“I can also fix things if they stop working.”

“I am a trained and qualified paramedic.”

Nick stared at me as his eyes narrowed. “OK, you got me on that one. So could you answer me this one? Who are you intending to take with you—because you sure as hell aren’t going alone.”

“You’re not going to believe me when I tell you. Hell, I don’t believe I’m going to say it, but here goes: Dick.”

“Richard? You’re joking, mate. You two alone on a ship in the middle of space? You’ll wind up killing each other.”

“No, we won’t, because we need each other. Granted, I’ll probably shoot him in the back of his helmet as he leaves the ship after we get back, but not before.”

“But why Richard?”

“Because no one on this crew can interface with a computer like he can, and no one on this crew understands astronavigation like he does. We are the most unlikely pair of misfits to team up for this mission, I admit. But with our individual skills combined we are the team most likely to pull it off.”