Tim asked, “Do we notify E.D.?”
Austen asked him if he was kidding, then when he saw the look on Tim’s face, Austen said, “They would just order us to turn around and stop to help, so no!” Tim turned back around, and he was pleased with the answer.
Derek said, “Speak of the devil, they’re hailing us now. It’s a shame our radio is broke again.”
Austen agreed and said, “Yep, a terrible shame.”
Tim said, “At least our radio is working again now.” It wasn’t jammed anymore is what he meant.
Captain Oron was hanging onto his seat for dear life; he thought to himself that the next upgrades would be safety harnesses for the chairs on the bridge. He could barely lift his neck and when he did, he saw Radar flopping around the ship. His neck was broken. He huffed and swore he would hunt down the One-Oh-One and have his revenge, although he had planned on killing Radar anyway. Now he just wanted to kill this Captain Austen of the One-Oh-One!
It took the One-Oh-One two and a half weeks to navigate the asteroid belt. They were just about to clear it, but they had one more course correction to make, and then they would just let their momentum carry them the rest of the way to “Deep Space Station Jupiter.”
JR was sitting in his chair; he had come back from the hidden false panel. Derek said to him, “You know that’s not the bathroom, right.” JR’s brothers knew what he was doing; his eyes were glazed over and his pupils were contracted to a pin. He shot Derek the bird, and as soon as he did, Derek, Austen, and Tim fell over forward. If it hadn’t been for the safety harnesses, the three would be laid out on the floor. Everybody but JR was unconscious on the ship for some reason unknown.
JR just stared at them and laughed. They must be pulling his leg. He threatened Derek, but Derek never moved, so he shouted at the top of his lungs. He sat there wondering if he was just imagining all of it and if he had brought dementia on himself. When he realized it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him, he thought something else was going on - a bad something!
He lurched forward to check on life-support, but as far as he could tell, everything seemed OK. Then it slowly dawned on him that if something was wrong with life-support, he would be affected too. He turned around and went to the doorway to check on the passengers. Sure enough, everybody appeared to be sleeping.
He saw the wall glowing on the port-side of the ship. “What the …?” JR said, as a line went up and down, and another line began going side to side. Then the wall opened horizontally and vertically until there was a squared opening, three feet long and seven feet wide. JR could only see a bright light from the other side of the portal.
He quickly closed the cabin door and spied through the portal. He saw, blocking some of the light, a few short, bug-ugly looking aliens with big eyes coming into view, but not into the ship.
He reached over to check his younger brothers’ pulses and leaned over Derek to look out the window, but he saw nothing. Weird, he thought and went back to the door. When he looked back out, his nephew, Kirk, was levitating and slowly started floating towards the light. JR was just about to go charging in, but he thought that maybe E.T. had weapons. He didn’t want to chance Kirk getting hurt. He said to himself, Pull myself together, man!
The android’s remote control was lying in the fifth seat where Kirkie had set it earlier. JR looked at it, picked it up, and studied it quickly. He figured out how to make the android stand up and walked it over to where Kirk was floating forward to cut him off. It intercepted the teenager, stuck its arms out, curled Kirk into its arms, and walked away from the portal. ET didn’t know what to do or why this "person" wasn’t unconscious.
Then JR had the android walking his way bringing Kirk to him. A couple of E.T.s jumped into the One-Oh-One to go after Kirk, but they only made it a couple of feet when one of them noticed JR looking out the window. It pointed at JR with one of its long fingers, and they both ran back and jumped into the light and disappeared leaving as quickly as they had appeared. The portal slowly closed behind them until it was gone like it had never even happened.
JR opened the door and grabbed Kirk and placed him back in the seat he was in before the nightmare. Then he made the android sit back down. As JR sat down himself on the bridge, everybody started to wake up like they had never missed a beat. Derek was looking at him shaking his head in disgust.
JR figured that nobody would believe him if he said anything. They would just believe he was in a drug induced state, so he kept it to himself. He gave Derek a dirty look. He noticed that he was still holding the remote, so he set it back on the seat next to him and closed his eyes. This incident shook him up more than he would admit.
It was three months exactly from the date of the launch that they all saw Jupiter Station. They were so close that Jupiter was filling up the whole screen. What an awesome sight the gas-planet was!
To some, space is just black and white. To some, it’s all shades of grey, but to the Space Cadets, this area was every color of the rainbow and then some, due to Jupiter taking up the entire screen. They were all speechless staring out the window in front.
Derek touched his radio button by his chair and tried to contact the station. “This is Captain Derek of the One-Oh-One; come in.” Nothing … Derek noticed the few on the bridge were all staring at him so he told them that he had forgotten to say “over.” “This is Captain Derek of the N.A.S.A. ship One-Oh-One; come in … over.” Nothing …
Tim said, “Maybe there’s no one home?” Austen asked Tim if he thought they were at the neighbors and Tim laughed.
Chapter 7
DEEP SPACE STATION JUPITER
Deep Space Station Jupiter, or some might call it Jupiter Station, was a monumental achievement by Earth. It was the farthest outpost Earth had built. It took nine years before it was finished and was the only outpost built past the asteroid belt. It was a research facility to study Jupiter. Their priority was to figure out if it was possible to turn Jupiter into another sun in case one day the Sol (Earth’s sun) dies out and becomes impotent. Jupiter was always Earth’s back-up plan.
A total of thirty-eight techs, scientists and assistants were stationed there. Every year the planets expand in the solar system, and everything moves away from the sun as it grows bigger. Earth’s lunar satellite comes closer every year. So mankind looks to Mars as the sun gets hotter and bigger with age. Still, there is time to find answers; at least that’s what everybody hopes. Lead scientists still hoped there were other planets to inhabit, but intergalactic travel still wasn’t available as of yet.
Austen was a bit confused; he asked Tim if the radio was still being jammed. Tim replied, “Nope, everything is kosher.”
Derek raised an eyebrow and repeated to Tim, “Kosher?” Tim shrugged his shoulders.
Austen said, “Use our thrusters and circle the station slowly, but be very careful.”
“Aye, Captain, thrusters engaged, circling the station, Sir”, Tim said. He was confident in his skills as a pilot.
Derek was on the ship’s intercom, “Brace for impact!” Austen looked at his brother like he was mad! Derek pushed the button again and said, “Not really people, I was just joking around … Strap in though. We’re here, and thank you for flying Houston.” They could hear some of the cadets complaining, but there were more laughs than complaints. Derek waved behind him at the crew.
The ship angled toward the station, but it was slowly moving to its right. As they came to the other side of the station, they had to go straight up for a hundred feet quickly! There was the biggest ship the Houstons ever saw and they thought that they had seen it all. This ship was bigger than any E.D. cargo ship. It was also a lot prettier and graceful.
Derek moved out of his seat and leaned forward, “Wow, will you look at that.” He rubbed his eyes thinking