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  “Would you be upset if I… touch you?”

  She lay quiet for a long moment and he was beginning to think she might be mad or would start crying or something. He’d blown it he just knew it.

  “You mean like a hug?” she said.

  “Yeah, a hug, to warm you up,” he said.

  He was about to add, ‘I won’t do anything creepy’ when he heard her say ‘okay’. She spoke softly and it took him a moment to process her one word answer then a few moments more to figure out what to do next. He slid his hand under the covers towards her until his fingers touched the cool skin of her leg. It was soft and smooth but before he could begin to explore it she found his hand and gently pulled him over onto his side then tucked her back up against him holding his hand in front of her. His legs touched her legs and his chest touched her back as they curved together. He was tense at first but it felt so warm and comforting he soon relaxed and simply enjoyed the sweet feeling of her tucked into his embrace.

  “Is this okay?” she asked.

  “This is really nice,” he murmured into her hair.

  They lay quietly for a time and then for no reason he could explain he nuzzled his nose into her hair at the back of her neck. At first he did not realize that he was doing it wanting to snuggle with her just came naturally; he loved the feel of her skin and the smell of her hair against his face. After doing this for a while he felt more than heard her making a deep throaty sound, like a cat purring, and he hoped it meant she liked what he was doing.

  The purring made him brave and he snuggled more closely and this time put his lips to her neck and ever so softly kissed her. She did not immediately object to this so he pressed his lips to her skin lingering swimming in the rich sensation of her sweet scent and again she did not object. Emboldened he placed tiny kisses along her neck and shoulder until she’d finally had had enough. Squirmed out of his grasp and turned around to face him but before he could apologize she kissed him, gently, sweetly, but definitely.

  When morning came and they awoke. Moving quietly, they were quiet, self-conscious of their new intimacy and shy about what happened between them the night before. They avoided eye contact and touching or even speaking to each other until, comically, they bonked heads bending over to pick up a dropped dish towel. This released the tension and awkwardness and they laughed rubbing foreheads and when they were near she leaned in and kissed him.

  She kissed him and he felt like he had to tell her something, he felt an urgent need to say something important, but he didn’t know what it was. The only thing he knew for certain was, if he opened his mouth, whatever came out would sound lame; it happened whenever he tried to talk to girls so he settled for sneaking sidelong glances and suppressing the urge to grin.

  She seemed different, more real, or maybe it was something else entirely. Overnight something he could not readily define, had changed. He struggled as the understanding he was aiming for skittered just beyond reach. He could not describe exactly what he was feeling in words but he knew he wanted her to stay with him, he needed her to stay.

  ***

  The new ride had a diesel engine which caused a hitch in their plans, it meant they couldn’t use the gasoline they’d collected in Eloy. The fuel gauge in the RV read less than half and he wasn’t sure where they would find more diesel fuel.

  “Do you think we should take the motorhome,?” he said.

  “Are you kidding, of course,” she said.

  “Well we are going to have to find diesel fuel, the tank is only half full,” he said.

  She smiled at him and said, ”You mean it’s only half empty. You’re such a pessimist.” She laughed and darted away when he tried to tickle her.

  “Whatever,” he said and smiled, ”but we still need to find fuel. Our trip through New Mexico will have lots of empty miles.”

  Fuel was a problem but they agreed they didn’t want to give up the comfort of the motorhome. They started out after breakfast transferring the items for ISS from the Subaru to the storage areas underneath the RV. They planned to keep their eyes open for abandoned highway tractors to syphon fuel from and fill the RV tank. This could be a problem because he did not know how far half a tank would take them in a big vehicle like the RV. He had not noticed many big rigs while they were traveling yesterday but he hadn’t been looking for any. Sara studied the roadmap; the route they were planning to take would take them all the way to New Mexico and would pass through a lot of small towns and a few large centers like Tucson so she wasn’t worried about finding fuel.

  They set off and had been driving for an hour when he spotted a large semi-trailer truck halfway into the ditch. They stopped and he got out with his syphon hose and an empty fuel jug. He was about to crack open the saddle-tank on the driver’s side of the truck when he heard a vehicle approaching fast from behind them on the road they’d just come down.

  He could see that Sara hadn’t heard it coming and he was turning back to warn her when a white van suddenly appeared on the road and screamed past their parked RV narrowly missing it and ramming headlong into an abandoned U-Haul trailer sitting crossways in the lane ahead of them. It smashed into the trailer with such force the van took flight and slammed into the ditch on the far side of the road. It rolled several times before skidding to a stop on its roof. The speed and violence of the impact was shocking and they were frozen into stunned silence watching the front wheels of the van spinning in the air.

  “Holy Crap!” Sara ran to the vehicle and he headed to the RV. He had no idea what to expect inside the van so he got the gun before heading to the over-turned vehicle. He did not know if it was the same van he saw in Eloy but he wasn’t going to take any chances with their safety. When he got to it Sara had already crawled halfway in through the passenger side window and was trying to free someone.

  “She’s stuck Jack, I can’t get her out.”

  He bent down and saw a large middle-aged women strapped into a wheelchair dangling upside down. She was conscious, talking a mile a minute, telling Sara that when she saw our RV she went to apply the brake but something went wrong with the hand controls and it jammed the accelerator wide open. She was explaining all this as Sara frantically tried to release her from the seat. The wheelchair wheels were designed to lock into place behind the steering wheel and it was jammed, the wheel locks were design not to release if there was pressure on them. The seat belts that held the woman in the chair were hopelessly trapped behind the steering column and the distorted metal of the dashboard. He reached his head and shoulders in and tried to help Sara work her free but it was no use, they needed a knife. He was about to tell her this when he heard a pop and turned and saw a spark and smoke begin to waft from the rear of the van.

  The inverted fuel tank was dripping gasoline into the interior of the van, the spark had set her possessions aflame. The fuel was leaking faster, rolling down the inside wall of the van, he could see that it would be only a matter of seconds before the interior of the vehicle would be a fireball. Sara was pulling on the straps trying desperately to free the woman but he could see it was impossible to save her. The heat inside was building and he worried the fuel tank would explode. He had no choice he backed out and grabbed Sara’s legs and forcefully yanked her out of the van.

  “What are you doing, let me go!”

  She kicked and struggled and broke free but when she tried to crawl back inside the heat and smoke pushed her back. They both scrambled backwards moving safely away from the flames. They knew when the fire inside reached the woman because she began to shriek; the sound of her screams were nightmarish as he watched the flames engulfed her. The fire was on her clothes, burning her flesh, consuming her alive before their yes.. Jack did not notice when Sara pulled the gun from his jacket pocket.

  In one swift movement she ran back to the van, reached inside, and shot the screaming woman in the head ending her torture. In silence they walked back to the RV and watched the van burn. After a while he got up and poured two s
hots of the old folks’ bourbon and handed one to her. She sipped it with tears in her eyes as she watched.

  “You tried to get her out. Ending her suffering was the right thing to do,” he said.

  He hugged her from behind and felt her slump against his embrace. It was a brave thing she’d done, he had to admit that it had not even occurred to him to do what she did. To put the woman out of her misery. He left her and went to the truck and pumped out its diesel fuel. There was more than enough to fill both tanks on the RV. Sara was lying down when he returned and he drove the motorhome a few miles down the road and parked it in a driveway off the highway. He did not feel like driving but he did not want her to wake and see the burnt out van.

  He made diner but she wouldn’t eat, just picked at her food.

  “I killed someone today.”

  Her voice was soft, indistinct. He did not say anything, what could he say? He went to her and held her and he knew that was the right thing to do when she tucked into his embrace and sobbed.

  That night he dreamed about the woman in the white van. He wondered if the disabled woman in the van was the driver in Eloy. He could not get over the feeling that all she’d been looking for was help from him and he ran away. It could have been him that killed her only under much different circumstances. He felt sad about that and the next days neither of them talked much for the rest of their journey.

  Chapter Eight

  Clayton New Mexico

  Clayton was a tiny dot on the road map and an even tinier place in person. The big green welcome sign on the outskirts of town proclaimed a population of twenty five hundred and sixty souls. Jack eyed the empty old-west style buildings and the thick layer of dust on the cars and estimated the population was closer to two now that they’d arrived.

  Sara drove for the last hundred miles and they were both exhausted when they pulled onto a freshly paved road marked Spaceport Drive. A half mile further they came upon a group of aircraft hangars. Most of them were old and weathered and he assumed they were built during world war two. There was one new building if you could call it a building because it looked more like a small mountain. It was painted sky blue with a one hundred foot tall Jericho Space Adventure logo on the side.

  She stopped at the entry gate and he got out to check inside the security hut. The gate was electrically operated and he could see no emergency over-ride. He walked up to the gate and tried to budge it but it was securely locked. He was looking at it trying to figure out what to do when he heard the diesel engine rev. He looked back just in time to jump out of the way as Sara smashed through the gate. She was grinning bigtime when he got back in.

  “Nice going,” he said, “now everyone knows we’re here.”

  The building was big and it took time to drive around to the other side and when they turned the last corner Sara slammed on the brakes.

  ”Holy Shit!” she said.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Jericho One did not come into view, it was the view.

  “It’s enormous,” she said.

  Jack’s mouth hung open, enormous was clearly an understatement. They got out of the RV and walked to the spacecraft both stunned by the massiveness of the thing. It was easily the most beautiful aircraft he’d ever seen and it was certainly the biggest. He was standing gazing at it in awe when Sara pointed.

  “There’s the way in.”

  He followed her to the rear of the spacecraft which was inside the massive hangar. A set of stairs led to a loading ramp which was extended to the rear section of the spacecraft ahead of the tail plane. The hatch was closed but Jack found the cover plate used by the ground crew to operate the door and managed to get it open without too much trouble. They stepped aboard Jericho One and saw two double rows of passenger seats. The interior looked a lot like a conventional airliner but with some major differences. For one thing the seats were wide and luxurious and the carpet was made from a material similar to Velcro, there were lots of windows, and every inside surface was soft, there wasn’t a sharp edge or corner anywhere.

  “Why does it seem so much smaller inside?” she said.

  He’d noticed that the interior of the cabin looked smaller than the outside of the craft would seem to predict.

  “I think it’s because of the difference in strength needed between a conventional airliner and a spacecraft. In order to keep the passengers’ safe and the atmosphere breathable it needed a heavier external hull.”

  When he saw the blank look on her face he started to explain in more detail but she stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Okay, okay, I get it already. I just thought the whole thing would be a lot smaller.”

  “So did I,” he admitted.

  They walked forward to the cockpit and opened the crew hatch and went inside. The cockpit looked like the pictures he’d seen of the flight deck of the space shuttle Atlantis with rows and rows of switches and lots of video display panels.

  “Oh my God, I can’t fly this thing, what was I thinking?” he said, over whelmed by the complexity.

  Sara slipped into the pilot seat and put her right hand on the joystick and looked down at the runway. She was pretty sure he was right but she didn’t feel good about giving up.

  “I’ll bet half these switches don’t do anything anyway,” she said.

  They gazed around at the cockpit; every surface was covered with switches or gauges.

  “Maybe not but that leaves about a trillion that do,” he said.

  She could not argue the point but she was not happy about being defeated by a machine. They left the spacecraft feeling defeated, their high spirits gone, blown away by the stark reality of the situation. It took years for military pilots to build up enough flight hours to qualify as astronauts and then years after that to pilot the shuttle. What the hell had he been thinking?

  “Steve are you there? Over,” he said.

  He listened to the static on the CB in the RV and wondered if crashing through the gate damaged the radio. He was about to give up when he heard Steve’s voice.

  “Yes Jack, did you make it to New Mexico?”

  Jack looked at Sara and said,” Yes we made it

  but-.”

  “What’s wrong?” In spite of the scratchy radio reception they both heard concern in his voice.

  “Now that I’ve seen Jericho One I don’t think I can fly it. It’s really complex. In fact, I know I can’t fly it,” he said.

  “Jack we are just glad you are both safe. You don’t have to fly anything son and we are proud of you and Sara for trying.”

  There was dead air and then Steve came back on.

  “We’ll be out of range in a few seconds but we want you to know how proud we are of you. You are remarkable young people. Find someplace safe to stay and we’ll talk again soon.”

  Jack threw down the microphone and slumped back into the seat. He felt defeated by the whole thing and the worst part was it had been his idea to start with, after a while he got up and said.

  “I’m going back to look around some more.”

  Sara did not answer because she’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat. He gently stroked his hand through her hair as he went by. He hoped that she did not think he was an idiot because he dragged her all the way out here for nothing.

  The cockpit looked just as intimidating as it had two hours earlier only more so. He sat on the edge of the pilot’s seat and counted eleven video screens. He read some of the labels for the various switches and levers trying to make sense of them. He did not recognize the abbreviations on most, some he guessed at, the rest remained unknown. Steve said that lots of them were redundant systems, backups for backups of primary systems in the event of a failure. He scanned the rows of switches directly in front of the pilot’s seats.

  He slid into the left seat and dreamed out the windshield. The sky had darkened to a deep crystal clear blue. He shut his eyes and imagined the sound of the main engine starting, the deafening rumble and vibration. He put his
hand on the joystick and imagined taxiing out onto the runway and pointing the huge craft at the horizon. In his mind he jammed the throttle forward and imagined the growing force of acceleration as the spacecraft hurled down the runway. Pulling back on the joystick he experienced the huge rush of stepping into the vast desert sky. He felt his stomach flutter at the image. He thought about being weightless in zero gravity and he imagined his body begin to float tugging against the seatbelt. It all seemed so real, so possible, when he opened his eyes and looked around the cockpit again somehow the task of flying Jericho One did not seem quite as daunting. In fact the cockpit seemed to be almost familiar to him now.

  Well why not, he thought, this isn’t that much different from the flight simulator games he played. He found a tabbed binder with a pre-flight check list and flipped through it stopping to look for the corresponding switch or gauge amongst the hundreds around the cabin. Slowly he began to get a general sense of, if not the function of the switch, at least where it was located. The switches, levers, and video displays fell into sub-groups that were conveniently clustered using the diabolically twisted logic of an aeronautical engineer. As he progressed he ignored items associated with non-flight related functions. After all, he reasoned, if we reach the point where we need fire suppression we are as good as dead anyway. He tried to keep it simple. Navigation and communications he would leave to Sara to master.

  He would concentrate on flying, engine controls, air speed, and rate of climb. He sat and practised scanning the gauges and controls in front of the pilot’s seat. He would be able to rely on Steve and his crew mates for technical support but, when he got right down to it, flying the huge craft would be up to him and Sara. He wanted to approach the problem in a logical manner. First things first, he needed to know how much fuel was on board, if any. Before he could determine that he had to figure out how to power up the electrical system. It took him a few minutes to find the main switch for powering up the cockpit systems. When he clicked it on about a million warning lights and buzzers went off and it scared the shit out of him. He spent the next hour systematically identifying every flashing light using the pre-flight manual and then figuring out how to shut the alarms down.