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  He discovered that the spacecraft appeared to be fully fuelled. This was an enormous bit of good luck because he had no clue how to fuel it or even where the fuel tanks were located. It occurred to him that the spacecraft was prepped for takeoff when the plague hit. If that was true it really was an incredible bit of luck. He shut the main buss down and went back to the RV it was time for ISS to pass overhead.

  “Steve can you hear me, over,” he said. This time there was some excitement in his voice.

  “Hi Jack, this is Gerry Wright Steve is getting some sleep. Over.”

  “Hi Gerry, I’ve been looking over Jericho One again and I think maybe I over-reacted. With your help I believe we can do it. I think Sara and I can fly it.”

  He looked over at Sara sitting next to him in the RV passenger seat and grinned. She was awake and looked back at him but he could not read her expression.

  “There are a lot of things to learn before we can try it but right now we seem to have a lot of time on our hands. Over,” he said.

  There was a few seconds of dead air.

  “That sounds encouraging Jack and you are right there is no reason you could not learn the steps to flying the Jericho One. I was a flight instructor in the Air Force I will teach you everything you need to know and the crew will certainly help you any way they can. I have no doubt you can fly JERICHO ONE but my main concern is what will happen once you reach orbit, more specifically, how you will control the vehicle and manoeuvre it safely into proximity of ISS. Sara was correct, I’ve done the calculations and if we bring ISS into a lower orbit and we stretch the operational ceiling of Jericho One it is possible. The hard part is when we try to grab JERICHO ONE with the Canada Arm that will be extremely tricky. I’ve flown every type of aircraft there is and I had trouble manoeuvring the shuttle in weightlessness at 17,000 miles per hour.”

  There was a pause in transmission.

  “Everyone on board will be working on a plan. In the meanwhile you and Sara need to do some things to prepare. You’ll need to find spacesuits that can sustain extended periods in space. I don’t think the ones they give the tourists are good enough for an E.V.A.”

  Sara whispered to Jack, “What’s an E.V.A.?”

  He shrugged and said, “Going outside.”

  “Outside where?” she said.

  He looked over at her to see if she was kidding. ”Space,” he said,” outside in space.”

  He saw her face redden at this and he smiled to try to soften whatever it was he said that she’d reacted to. She smiled back but he missed it when her face suddenly went pale as she processed what ‘going outside in space’ really meant. She turned away from him and stared out the windshield. The sun was setting over the long expanse of runway before her. It was beautiful but she was unable to see the beauty because she was filled with dread. All the plans and discussions they had on the way here and all her hope and excitement at the prospect of a great adventure had suddenly vanished in a gut wrenching bout of fear.

  She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands an old habit that came back when she was under stress. What am I going to do, she thought, I can’t go outside in space. I won’t go. She began to cry and when Jack saw her tears he tried to ask her what was wrong but she jumped up and ran into the bedroom slamming the door behind her.

  “Jack, we need technical data, anything you can find about Jericho One and its flight systems. We will work on a method to transmit the data to us but in the meantime, gather as much as you can, and don’t worry if it does not seem relevant or important we want everything you find,” he said. His voice faded as the ISS passed over the horizon. Jack walked to the back and stood outside the bedroom door and spoke softly. “Are you okay?” He tried the handle and the door opened, “I’m sorry I wasn’t making fun of you,” he said guessing that was the problem. He’d had experience with this, his sister Marion though she was two years older than him, would have extreme reactions if she thought he was making fun of her. He sat down on the end of the bed and touched her ankle.

  “Hey, I said I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not you,” she said.

  “So what is it?” he said.

  “I’m afraid. I don’t want to go outside in space.”

  He thought about that for a moment and said.

  “Well you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  At this she began to really cry sobbing into the pillow kicking her leg away from his touch. He figured out that he’d said the wrong thing but he was not sure why. “I don’t think you’re chicken or anything,” he said.

  He was trying to console her and desperately searching for the right thing to say but that definitely wasn’t it she pulled a pillow over her head.

  ”Just go, get out of here,” she sobbed.

  He got up off the bed and gently closed the door behind him. He was confused by her reaction but it was not making things any better by hanging around so he grabbed a flashlight and headed back to the hangar. It did not matter that there was no electricity in the hangar or the offices attached to it. In some ways he found it easier to be methodical searching in the dark with the narrow beam of the flashlight. It was less distracting. They had not seen any dogs or wildlife of any kind and it had been a long time since they’d seen any living people. He figured the Jericho Space venture people would be careful about keeping animals off the property especially the runway. He went into the main administration offices and found a computer. It was a Dell and it looked pretty old. He figured it would likely be networked with a main computer somewhere in the building but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to power up a network mainframe but he would have no problem booting up the Dell. He unplugged all the wires from the back and left them all except for the power chord. The RV had a good 110 volt power supply and there was the old folk’s desktop computer. It had a monitor and all the peripherals he would need to run the Dell. He hoped that this computer has some useful information for the crew on ISS to figure out Jericho’s flight systems.

  He looked around and found a cart in a hallway closet and put the computer on it and rolled it out of the office. The interior of the hangar was huge but with the lights out it felt like the walls were closing in on him. He was walking back to the RV when it struck him that a business like this must have a backup diesel power supply. Tomorrow he would search for it because he realized he would have to be mighty lucky to have picked the one computer in the whole place with the engineering data they needed. Gerry could help him with the mainframe. When he got back to the RV he heard the shower running and he took that to be good news. He was finishing plugging in the computer when Sara came out of the bathroom wearing a shiny looking bathrobe with Flamingos on it and a towel wrapped around her wet hair. The sight was completely female and it reminded him of his mom and sister; it was what they used to do and suddenly he missed his old life. She came over to him and put her hand on his back.

  ”I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be such a girl,” she said.

  He smiled and said, “It’s okay I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me too and anyway I like girls,” he said. When he realized what he’d said he blushed bright red and she laughed at his discomfort.

  “Oh really Jack how hard is it?” she said teasingly. He turned a deeper shade of red and quickly ducked his head under the desk and pretended to be busy connecting wires. They did not talk about what had happened between them and now because time had passed since the ‘event’ he was shy about it.

  She giggled at his discomfort. She could never figure out why some guys were so uncomfortable talking about something so basic to human beings. She and her friends talked about boys and sex from when they were preteens and two of her friends were fourteen when they first tried it with actual boys. It was usually the nerdy ones like Jack that came to it late in their teens or even twenties. She stopped herself from teasing him more; after all, she thought, he was trying to make her feel better. He was a nice guy and unlike most of the guys she
knew he was at least trying. She had no practical experience with sex herself so she was being disingenuous by acting superior to him where that was concerned. She was always skinny and flat chested growing up and there weren’t many boys that were interested in her, at least none that she was interested in.

  “So what’s with the computer?” she asked. He was relieved to be on a different subject and he looked up at her from under the desk.

  “If I can boot it up there might be useful plans or technical data for Jericho One on it. Jerry needs it for figuring out what to do and to teach me how to fly it.” She noticed that when he talked to her his eyes kept dropping to the front of her bathrobe. She leaned in closer to him to look at the screen and she let the front of her robe open up a little. She did not have to look at him to see if he noticed she felt the heat of his gaze upon her bare skin and it gave her goose bumps. “There is something I didn’t tell you,” she said, “when I was a kid my dad had a Cessna 185.” He shifted his gaze to look at her face waiting for her to explain what she meant.

  “Do you know what that is?” she said. He shook his head no.

  “It’s an airplane.” He continued to look at her blankly his mind clearly on something else.

  “I know how to fly an airplane,” she said putting it together for him.

  He looked at her face and it took him another few seconds but he managed to say.

  “You know how to fly an airplane?”

  “Well you don’t have to act so surprised lots of women fly.”

  “Ah, like do you have like a license and everything?” he said, confused by this new information.

  “Why? Do you think I’ll need one?” she laughed at his amazed expression.

  “Wait, you told me you were afraid of heights,” he said.

  “I am, my fear was partly the reason why my dad bought the plane, to help me get over it, and also because he wanted one,” she said smiling.

  He stood up and looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. She could not read what was on his mind until his face broke into an excited grin.

  “This could work,” he said,” I mean actually work.”

  She watched his face as the impact of this news continued to dawn on him.

  “Well the flying part yes probably,” she said, “but the rest of it, the space stuff, I don’t know anything about that.”

  Without realizing what he was doing he came to her and wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight.

  “Oh my God we can do this we can really do this,” he said. His tone was incredulous.

  Sara hugged him back grinning at his infectious excitement. Yes we can, she thought, dam right we can.

  Steve was happy to hear about Sara’s flying experience and they were talking about flying small aircraft as Jack left to search the hanger for the mainframe and backup power supply. He found a diesel generator around the back of the building but it was out of fuel and would not start. He figured it must have started automatically when the power went out and run continuously until it used up all its fuel. He found a tank of diesel in another building and used it to replenish the generator. He fired it up and it was running smoothly by the time he’d found the mainframe computer on the second floor. Restarting it was simple he pressed the reset button and in less than a minute everything was back on-line. The next job would not be so simple he needed to find a microwave dish transmitter which he could aim at the ISS. They began training the next morning with Steve directing them for fifteen minutes every ninety minutes from the ISS. He made them practice ten hours a day until they almost dropped from exhaustion. The work of flying the Jericho One was divided up between them, they both spent hours in the cockpit going over systems and controls with Sara spending the most flight seat time while Jack maintained the physical systems and learned all the ground crew and navigation duties.

  They used the next fifteen days, with only one day off for a trip to the city for food, to prepare for their flight. By the time they were finished training they could locate and read off any instrument or gauge or instantly flip any safety switch on the flight deck. They did not necessarily know why they were flipping the switch they simply needed to be able to find it quickly amongst the hundreds in front of and beside them. The crew of the ISS would make the decisions as to which switch to deploy and why. Steve was a tough task master making them go back over it many times if he had any doubts about their knowledge. They did not complain because, after all, their lives would depend on them pressing the right button.

  The spacesuits they found were intended for use by the flight crew of Jericho One and were much better than the light duty suits used by the tourists. They’d spent a campy hour modeling them for each other and laughing at the bulky butt pads. There were some awkward moments when the topic of going to the bathroom in zero gravity came up and it was Commander Randall who helped them with the details of that.

  The pre-flight training and preparations were complete and the supplies needed to replenish the ISS were loaded into the external cargo holds and strapped down. Sara spent so many hours on the radio with Gerry Wright going over the details of how to fly the huge spacecraft that she mumbled about inertial dampener controls in her sleep. They practiced the procedure for depressurizing the cabin and opening the hatch once they reached the ISS. They were to stay aboard the JERICHO ONE until the scientists were certain they’d found an anti-virus but just in case something went wrong they needed to be able to leave JERICHO ONE. Jack searched the exterior of the aircraft for a likely place for the astronauts to grab and secure Jericho One with the Canada arm. There was nothing solid enough on the exterior to safely latch onto so Gerry decided that they would have to risk deploying the landing gear in space so they would have something reasonably strong to grab onto. The risk was that grabbing the gear might damage it and they would lose the ability to return to earth in JERICHO ONE.

  ***

  “Do you want some more?” she asked him as he put down his glass.

  “No thank you I think that should do it.”

  “Are you sure?” she said but before she finished speaking he jumped up and ran to the bathroom making it just in time. He sat on the toilet and it felt like everything inside him, including his brain, was falling out his bottom. Jesus, he gasped, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It was, unfortunately, his idea and he was not in a good position to suggest a change now. He was sitting there waiting for the next load when there was an urgent knock at the door. “Hurry up!” The look she gave him when she rushed past him into the tiny washroom wasn’t exactly sweet. It had been his idea to drink a lot of orange juice laced with Vitamin C to clear their digestive tracts so they would not have to ‘go’ in weightlessness.

  They could collect urine easily enough but solid waste was another matter. The space company provided hi-tech diapers for use by the tourists but because he and Sara would be out longer than the average tourist ride they needed to make sure that most of what was inside them had come out before they took off in the morning. It was two A.M. and they were lying in bed not sleeping.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked her. She looked at him and grimaced,

  ”Hungry, how about you?”

  He nodded his agreement it was going be a long night of listening to their stomachs growl, he thought. They were comfortable in each other’s company they had become close friends. It came into his mind quite often that she was a girl and all the things that went with that but more often she was just someone he liked as a person. He didn’t mind that she teased him sometimes, in fact he liked it.

  “What do you miss the most?” she said. She didn’t have to say any more.

  “My mom I guess. You?”

  “My Dad,” she said.

  She told him that her mom died when she was a baby in a car accident. She had no memory of her except for the pictures that her dad had of her. Her dad was her whole world for her entire life. He reached over her and turned off the light.

  In th
e dark she asked, “Do you think anyone has done it in space?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. Probably the French,” he said.

  “Yeah, that makes sense. They probably drank wine too,” she said and giggled.

  “If a NASA astronaut did it, the evidence would show up on their life-support telemetry data. How would you like to explain that NASA,” he said.

  “I wonder what it would be like, I mean doing it in zero gravity?” she said.

  “The word ‘fun’ kinda comes to mind,” he said.

  “Yes it does,” she said.

  They were silent for a while and then she slipped her hand into his.

  Chapter Nine

  On the day they were to blast into space they were up early. The dawn sky was pink and the rising sun cast long shadows behind them as they walked to the hangar. The air was cold enough to for Jack to see his breath as he climbed up onto the tractor. He started it and let the engine warm up before backing it up to Jericho One and slipping the tow ring onto the nose gear. He was used to driving the tractor because two days earlier he’d used it to push open the unpowered hangar doors so that the highest part of JERICHO ONE’s tail section could pass through. He climbed down and walked around the spacecraft and did the visual check he was taught and then removed the wheel chocks from the landing gear. Climbing back on the tractor he gently applied throttle to the engine and the massive spacecraft crept forward.

  He turned and saw Sara carrying the ladder as she climbed onto the engine starting unit. There was a plume of white smoke when she started it and drove onto the tarmac following along behind JERICHO ONE. When the spacecraft was centered and pointing down the main runway he stopped and backed up to release the tow ring. He drove the tractor off the runway safely out of the way and shut it off. They’d rehearsed the next part quite a few times but it still made him nervous.