SOME MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS' :

After much thought, I eventually assumed that Nick had been delayed by Dick and Courtney wanting to show off all that they had discovered in a science geek style show and tell, so I put it out of my mind. Well at the very least I shoved it into the dim, dark, recesses of the thickly cobwebbed back of my mind, where so many things had been shoved over the years and so few had ever found their way back out into the light.

It was late in the afternoon, when the shadows were starting to grow much longer on the landscape, that my communicator started beeping loudly to advise me of an incoming radio call. I snatched it off my belt as I heard Nick’s voice and keyed the transmit button to answer him,

“Drew here, who the hell are you and what do you want? Over.”

“Yeah, nice to talk to you too, Drew. Just calling to let you know that we are fifteen minutes out from the city and to ask if you could open the hangar doors for us. Over.”

“Yeah, no worries. I’ll do it right now. Over and out.”

“Mel and Sammy, did you copy that? Steer clear of the hangar; please acknowledge,” I transmitted as I headed to the central tower elevators. They had each acknowledged my transmission by the time I exited the elevator into the flight operations control center.

After pushing the sequence of buttons to extract the air out of the hangar and then open the outer doors, I stood at the windows and stared down at the doorway waiting for the Albatross to appear.

I heard her approach before I saw her. Due to the roar of her thrusters, she could never sneak up on anyone unless that anyone happened to be deaf. Finally, she appeared in the doorway and floated into the hangar on a pillow of fire from her landing thrusters. After passing the alien starships, she stopped her forward movement and rotated ninety degrees before floating backward into her parking spot and settling gently down onto the deck.

As the Albatross’s thrusters died out, I hailed Nick on the radio.

“Very nicely executed. I’ll meet up with you in the Spaceport Café.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“Oh yeah, you haven’t heard. I’ll meet you in the Terminal Café and fill you in.”

“Great, I am so intrigued I can hardly contain myself. I’ll see you there then, whatever the hell you’ve decided to call it now.”