I wasn’t sure I understood. But enough to be quiet. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and pulled me toward the ladder. “Come on, Phil. Jake’s so charged up he’ll start flying around the room if there isn’t someone to keep him grounded.”
We spent the next few hours listening to Jake spin his tales about his times in space and what the Moon was really like. As he told his stories, a bond was woven between the three dreamers who were hoping to claim a chunk of the moon for themselves.
Chapter 9
The next morning, Nikki and I slept late. Jake was up welding an extra storage bay to the top of the van. It looked like the dickens, but gave us the extra space we needed. By the time things were rounded up and we were ready to go, the day was half gone. Jake’s nephew, Mark, had arrived and was to take over the business while Jake was “out of town” as he put it.
Nikki left her jewelry and the industrial laser for Mark to sell if he needed cash to pay Jake’s bills. Jake didn’t want to sell any of his surplus gear until we had taken our maiden flight and returned with a better idea of what we’d be needing for future trips.
With the sun overhead, we drove the van into the hot, Texas daylight and waited for Jake to climb in. He jumped into the old business chair that he’d welded just behind the two front seats of the van. I hoped his welds were good; I didn’t relish the thought of him dinging about inside the van like some piece of loose bagging at some critical moment in our flight.
We drove through the slums of Galveston and up to Highway 45 which led directly to the Houston rocket port. Because of the poor condition of the road and the number of vehicles that had been abandoned on it, we didn’t reach our destination until nightfall. Fortunately the rioting going on in Texas City had diverted the hi-pees into that area; that left us free to fire at highwaymen and weren’t stopped as we slowly made our way toward Houston.
Arriving at dusk was perfect for our plans since we were going to follow a rocket into space, again under the cover of the night. If all went well, once in space, we’d alter our course and then depart for the Moon. While we wouldn’t remain hidden from radar detection once the rocket started its arch back to its destination halfway around the world, there would be little chance of being “seen” and—if we were located—the fact that our speed and directional changes would be so different from those of conventional spacecraft would probably make an Earth-side watcher think we were a gremlin rather than an actual spacecraft. Too, we’d be headed out so that, even if they wanted to, it would be impossible to intercept us.
Now as we sat in the dark outside the rocket port, Jake bled most of the air out of the van’s tires so they didn’t pop when we got into space. Then the three of us slipped into our space suits and connected them into the support system powered by the car’s generator, leaving our helmets off so that we could talk freely.
Jake sat behind us; Nikki was in the passenger seat and I sat behind the wheel of my van.
Jake’s balding head somehow looked ridiculous without his NASA cap. “According to the schedule we picked off the Net, the Paris-bound rocket should be launched in a couple of minutes,” Nikki said.
“Okay then,” I said. “Everyone get buckled up.”
Jake reached forward and gave my hand a shake that threatened to crack some bones, “Good luck, Captain Hunter.”
“Where’d you get this ‘Captain’ stuff? ‘Major Hunter’ to you, mister.”
Nikki and Jake laughed.
Nikki leaned back and gave Jake a quick kiss. Now I really felt jealous.
I lifted the van off the pavement and floated over the fence and onto the rocket field, the force of the anti- grav rods sagging the fence nearly to the ground as we crossed, leaving it looking as if an elephant had crawled over it.
Right on schedule, the nighttime sky glowed red and I waited for Nikki to double check to be sure we were following the right rocket. She studied the computer/radar tie in that we’d improvised from Jake’s surplus equipment while the surplus radio picked up transmissions from the port and made a garbled sound that Nikki seemed to be able to decipher.
“That’s it,” she announced.
I hit the “auto” button on the dash and leaned back, hoping that the computer would follow the radar blip of the rocket rather than a flock of gulls. One malfunction was all we needed to have a major catastrophe. After vowing never to ride a machine-controlled rocket, I was now hurtling through the atmosphere chasing a rocket controlled by a machine in a van controlled by a computer. I whispered a silent prayer to ask forgiveness for my stupidity.
I also wished that we’d had room for three parachutes.
“Phil,” Nikki said.
“Uh.”
“Your helmet. Or are you planning on holding your breath for the round trip.”
The choice wasn’t hard to make. I got my helmet off the floor and turned it the proper direction.
“Phil, just a minute.”
As I turned to look, Nikki leaned over and gave me a long, passionate kiss, then pulled on her bubble helmet before I had time to try for a second kiss. I wished I could see her face in the dark van; Nikki was an enigma wrapped in a space suit. All that showed on her mirrored helmet was the reflection of the lights from the dash panel and the various odds and ends of instrument lights on the equipment we’d added to the van.
Satisfied my helmet was fastened, I sat back for our ride as our van accelerated upward, following the directions fed to it by our computers. Jake gave a long yelp for joy that threatened to ruin our suits’ communications gear as we started our journey toward the Moon. And after Nikki’s kiss, I felt like I could have flown to the moon without the van.
Chapter 10
Although we were hurtling around the Earth at orbital speed, the blue and white globe below us looked like it was only slowly meandering by while we hung in space. We had followed the passenger rocket up through the atmosphere and then passed it from a distance as it stopped its acceleration and started its downward descent back toward the ground. We continued to accelerate as we headed on around the Earth picking up more velocity to jump free of the Earth’s gravity and commence our jump across space into the gravitational field of the Moon. Soon, the sun sank behind us and we spiraled over the nighttime sky, through the Earth’s cold shadow and outward, toward the Moon.
That sounds exciting. It was. For a few hours. Then we discovered the boredom of space flight in cramped quarters. We did little during our flight. We sat and talked, tried to get the pasty food through the intake port of our suits (Jake was the only one who was very successful at this), and tried to discreetly use the waste disposal system in the suits with a minimum of fuss. (After having a pint bottle of urine escape my grasp and nearly vanish into the back of the van—save for the fast action of Jake in grabbing it—I was not too impressed with the freedom enjoyed by the glamorous astronauts of the 3V shows. And there is nothing like a plastic sack of excreta sitting in a pouch on your suit to take the romance out of things.) We didn’t suffer having to be totally weightless. While we weren’t under anything approaching zero G, Nikki and Jake had plotted our course with an eye toward maximum speed since the van didn’t have to worry about expending its motivating energy. Because of this, we had almost constant “gravity” as the van pushed ahead and our bodies tried to stay behind. About the only time we were in micro-gravity to the point of being weightless was for the few moments when the computer maneuvered the van about—so we wouldn’t feel like we were hanging on our heads—to start pushing against the Moon’s gravity as the lunar gravity overcame that of the Earth.
I was thankful for the lack of weightlessness; after the few moments of weightlessness there was little doubt in my mind that I would have endured space sickness while Nikki and Jake sat beside me perfectly blissful of my
