“Well I think I’ll
go to bed now; it’s been a long day.”
“Yep, I’ll be
there shortly. There’s a couple of piloting things I’ve got to deal with on the
bridge and then I’ll be right behind you.”
She laughed as I
shouldered myself upright from the cabinet and walked through to the bridge,
hitting the button to close the connecting door as I passed through. I stood at
the control panels in the dark for a while staring into space (literally), the
starlight from the windows and the greenish glow from the monitors providing
the only illumination on the bridge. I stared out at the stars and wondered
what the future held for us humans out there among them. I was becoming quite
fond of the space station crew and was sure that they were no threat to us. Mel
was right, they were a “nice crowd.”
The ship seemed to
be heading in the right direction and didn’t seem to be heading toward anything
to crash into. There was nothing flashing red on any of the monitors, so I
decided to call it a night. I turned and left the bridge to go to bed.
The next few weeks
seemed to fly by (no pun intended…maybe). When I wasn’t on the bridge, I was
chatting with Vladimir and the rest of his crew in the cafeteria. Mel and I
didn’t get much more studying done, and we didn’t really care. When I took them
all on a tour of the bridge, Vladimir made appropriate ooh and aah noises, but
I could tell he was not overly excited. After all, he was not a pilot. Boris
more than made up for his leader’s lack of enthusiasm, however. He gave the
controls and each monitor very close scrutiny, and he and Dick conversed in
computer geek speak as they discussed the possible purpose of each and every
monitor and control.
It was on the
eighteenth day since we had picked up the space station crew when I detected a
change in the flight characteristics of the ship before a warning bell started
sounding on the bridge. I was in the cafeteria with most of our combined crews.
I stood up and looked around at them, saying, “Don’t worry, the ship is just
telling me that we are on final approach to Mars. We will be landing in less
than four hours.”
“Should we be
strapping ourselves in?” Vladimir enquired.
“If you can find
something to strap yourself into you are more than welcome to do so, Vladimir.
But it really isn’t necessary,” I said as I walked toward the door. Then I
paused and asked, “Oh, can someone go find Dick and Boris and let them know?”
I looked out the
windows as I entered the bridge and was a little surprised at how close Mars
was to us. The ship was rapidly slowing in preparation for atmospheric entry,
but it was still a little disconcerting how quickly Mars was filling the bridge
windows. I grabbed my control headphones and put them on to guide the ship back
to base, if for no other reason than to look useful if anyone happened to enter
the bridge.
We were ten
minutes out from atmospheric entry when I sensed movement behind me and glanced
around to see the rest of the crew members filing onto the bridge.
“Is it OK if we
watch?” Vladimir asked.
“Sure, not a
problem. Take a seat if you like,” I replied. Then I turned to face the
windows once more.
“Here we go!”
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