'Uh huh.' She said. 'We're a fixin' to git hitched!' She said in her best Texan and then hit the margaritas in reverse order this time.
'Okay with me. Can we get it arranged that fast?'
'Our moms, 'Becca, and Anne Marie are in there just a plottin' and a schemin' as we speak.'
I wiped my hands off on my
CHAPTER 21
The wedding planning had gone off without a hitch. The girls had decided it would be best to have it in the big nondenominational church downtown. Tabitha somehow pulled some strings and managed to get us in on such short notice. She spread the rumor that the NASA Administrator, Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President were on the invitation list. Things started happening. Of course, I'm not sure that Tabitha hadn't really gotten an R.S.V.P. from any of their offices, but it was a good ploy one way or the other. Imagine my surprise when not only were they there, but they were seated next to the President himself.
Jim was my best man and Al and Calvin and my brother stood up with me. The bridesmaids were Sara, 'Becca, and an old flight school buddy of Tabitha's, Colonel Margie Finest. Anne Marie stood beside her as her maid of honor. The men were wearing charcoal tuxedos with tails except for my brother, who wore his dress blues. The ladies all wore long slender sky blue gowns, except for Anne Marie and Colonel Finest, of course, who were both in their Air Force dress blues. Tabitha, not being General Ames at the moment, of course was wearing white. She sported a long white form-fitting backless gown with lace trim covering the chest and open cleavage and a train that had to be carried by two flower girls. Fortunately, a cousin of mine had two twin youngsters who fit the bill perfectly.
I was a nervous disastrous mess! I fumbled over the words that the preacher had me follow and even put the ring on Tabitha's wrong hand. She changed it without anybody ever noticing. She was cool as a cucumber, her typical head-astronaut-what-be-in-charge self. I had never been more in love. Eewww God this is mushy. Sorry. Weddings are like that.
The President and his entourage stayed just long enough to let Tabitha salute him. He saluted her back smartly, then shook my hand and whispered to me, 'Good luck son!' Not real sure if he was talking about with Tabitha and marriage or about protecting the world and living on the Moon. Either one was a daunting task. I couldn't wait to get started on both, but the Moon was just going to have to wait tonight.
'Thank you, Mr. President!' I should have swelled with pride but I didn't. But as he walked away and Tabitha hugged and kissed me, I sure enough did.
The reception was at Tim's place. He shut down the place and catered to Tabitha's every whim. There were shrimp cocktails, raw oysters on the half shell, and crawfish in a cajun remoulade sauce as appetizers. We had a choice of blackened trout or chicken as the entree, each with appropriate sides. The wedding cake was typical in shape and three tiers high. The only unusual part was that somebody had the idea of putting two action figures in spacesuits on top of the cake instead of a bride and groom. Fortunately, they had the foresight to paint one of them the same color as my tuxedo. My guess was that they got the action figures from the Space and Rocket Center.
The groom's cake was the shape of a Space Shuttle. The first layer looked like the External Tank with the two Solid Rocket Boosters attached. The second layer was the Orbiter itself. There were miniature beer cans on a string tied behind the Orbiter and 'Just Married' was iced on the wings of the Orbiter and on each Solid Rocket Booster. It looked cool. I hated to have to cut it. We got plenty of pictures.
Somehow, Tim or Tabitha or somebody, had managed to get my favorite local band to play the reception. We had a good crowd of forty or fifty people who partied on through until about two in the morning when the band finally quit. At one point, 'Becca, Sara, and Anne Marie got up and sang with the band. It was a hoot, an absolute hoot!
Nobody ever asked who the gentlemen in the suits standing in the corner were. Those of us who knew they were security didn't let on. Everybody else just thought they were part of the other family that they hadn't met. After having the President's entourage in town, seriously, nobody paid any further attention. Besides, everybody was real drunk.
A week later, we were back in Roswell planning our massive Exodus to the Moon. We weren't in a big hurry this time. So, we decided to take a little better detailed care in designing the facility now that we had time to do so. Along with the trailer park, we had permanent homes constructed. We now had more power with the modifiable warp field and the flubell ECCs. So, we planned a much larger facility. The central dome would be seven hundred meters now instead of three hundred. There would be two other domes three hundred meters in diameter for the manufacturing plant and the lab. We would have much more space.
The trailer park would be for temporary and short-term visitors as well as crew bunks for the noncommissioned military men and women. We decided to allow the main science and engineering core a twenty by twenty-five meter area for housing and yard. The houses could be as tall as desired up to three stories above the surface. Each of these residences were then allowed five meters on each side between houses and a ten meter by ten meter back yard and a five meter deep front yard. A small two-meter diameter window would be placed over each residence. Each of the windows would be tinted to act as the atmosphere on Earth does for filtering harmful sunlight. The windows would be cycled with the rest of the facility to allow night and day. Forty-eight, three story houses were built with privacy fences. Tabitha and I picked out our interior and house design and so did Jim and 'Becca. Our two houses were adjacent at the end of one of the cul-de-sacs. Those lots were twice as big. There were six cul-de- sacs off of Main Street. Main Street ran circumferentially about a hundred and twenty meters inside the dome. Each cul-de-sac had three houses on each side and two at the end or eight houses per street. Sara, Anne Marie, and Al were each given a house as well. They were on the same street. We named our street Warp Drive. Hey, if we were all going to be living on the Moon for the rest of our lives, it had better be comfortable. I soon found out that Colonel Finest would be living on our street also. Somebody had managed to get her transferred to the Special Group WW as we were now being called. The WW stood for Warp Weapons and I just wondered who got Margie transferred. There was a saying filtering around us that if you think that Group W was crazy, you ought to see Group W squared.
We all visited the town site in Georgia at least once a week to make sure things were going as planned. Things were going well. At the same time, we were constructing new flubell based ECCs and new modifiable warp field generator coils. We contracted out to a small aerospace company to build several aerodynamic spaceframes from lightweight composite materials. The frames looked like miniature Orbiters but a little sleeker and a little more aerodynamic. The little spacecraft were designed to accommodate about eight people very comfortably. They even had a space-qualified standard restroom and shower facility. We had five of the vehicles constructed. Tabitha and Margie flew the first one during its drop test out at Dryden. It performed beautifully. Tabitha said it flew a lot easier than the Shuttle Orbiter during its glide path. Margie said it handled like a cargo jet. But I guess that is about how the Shuttle Orbiter feels. You'll have to ask Tabitha. I told them that it would for sure fly easier when we retrofitted
