I sat for a while and quietly sipped my coffee before Nick eventually
spoke.
“The girls and I have discussed…” He paused for what seemed like forever.
“…if there were any reasons to stay here any longer before heading back to the city,
and we can’t think of any. Do you have any reasons that might compel you to
want to continue to lurk here?”
I looked laser bolts at him, but as my eyes could not actually fire lasers,
Nick was not suddenly riddled with burn holes. Damn it!
So instead I glanced at my watch and said,
“I’ve already battened down the vehicles in the cargo hold, so all I have
to do is seal it up and we could be back in the city within two hours.”
“OK then, let’s do it,” Nick replied.
Within twenty minutes, we were strapped in and ready to fly. I lifted off
and, with a last glance at the alien shipwreck, rotated Albatross 180 degrees and gave her a large dose of gas, sending her
rocketing up out of the crater and rapidly onward toward the city. Our flight
was so rapid, in fact, that I was setting the ship gently down onto the hangar
deck in the city seventy minutes after liftoff.
While I shut down the flight systems, Nick released his seatbelts and rose
from his chair, looked down at me with a smirk on his face, and gave me a
hearty pat on the shoulder. “Never a dull moment when you’re around!” he said
as he left the flight deck.
By the time I had shut down all the systems and returned to my cabin to
pack up my things, everyone but Mel had departed. We carried our luggage out of
the ship, paused to turn out the lights, loaded up the remaining buggy, and
headed toward our abode.
“Has Nick said anything to you and Sammy about our discoveries this
morning?” I asked on the way.
Mel burst out laughing.
“You mean about him discovering that you wander around the ship naked at
night?”
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