Apocalypse: The Beginning of the End

Chapter XI: Safe Landing... Or Not?

Apollo Drakos

Melissa walked over straight to Ajax.

"Is this true?" she whispered. Phoenix gave me a sad look.

"I'm afraid so, ma'am," said Ajax.

The wheelchair was seriously comfortable. Ajax had built it out of titanium, but it was so perfectly shaped that it fit me perfectly and the metal did not hurt at all.

While making my wheelchair, I had noticed that the air was getting thinner and thinner. I asked Ajax what it was and his answer was most surprising.

Ajax told me that he needed the oxygen molecules in the ship to make titanium. I didn't understand how so when I asked him, he told me that he was adding protons and electrons to the oxygen atom.

I wondered why he couldn't use anything else and he said that it was the easiest thing to convert oxygen to titanium because he was made for creating titanium out of thin air.

So after he had created my wheelchair, he sprayed more oxygen on the ship, from the emergency oxygen tank.

The chair was black, just like my clothes, so it looked pretty amazing. It also had a few tricks. For example, there was a flight option, I don't know how useful was that. Then there were brakes. The wheelchair ran on electricity, so to run it, I just had to press a button. Ajax was a total genius (not more than me, but he was).

But the best part about the chair was that it generated electricity itself. It could charge itself if it was low on battery. It was surely the best wheelchair ever.

The day... or should I say the next few hours were probably our best hours in space. I kept fiddling with my wheelchair, almost electrocuted Melissa who almost punched me before realising I was already injured. Well, everyone was, but my legs were as good as dead. They were numb.

The most interesting thing to happen was when Melissa was hungry and realised that Phoenix ate all the sandwiches. She began punching him. He was already wincing because of the brutal injuries he got during the collision, but Melissa did not seem to care.

"If you punch me once more," he said angrily. "I have a box of rainbow spiders."

That stopped her. She turned pale. She hated rainbow spiders. I haven't seen any here, but on the Andromedan Earth they were a species of enormous spiders that existed all over the world. They gave me nightmares too, those gigantic pincers and the multi-coloured face, which was about as big as my body. The hairy legs were horrifying to even look at.

"It's time," said Ajax, interrupting my thoughts.

"Wha- oh yeah," I said.

This was it. I couldn't be more nervous. I pressed a button on my wheelchair and zoomed to the control panel. Then I pressed the button that said "brake" and I came to a halt.

I wanted to turn right and I pressed a button, that did it!

I turned on the fuel. And then, I turned the ship to the left. Probably too much, so I turned it towards the right slowly. Really slow, until the screen predicted a perfect landing.

"That was awesome!" said Phoenix. "Since you weren't allowed any form of alcohol, did you have some caffeine?"

"Hey!" I said angrily and nearly lost my concentration. I heard Melissa stifle a laugh.

The fuel tank was almost out. I turned off the fuel because we would not need it as of now.

The ship was silent. Everyone was so excited that we could not utter a single word. We were so close...

Fifteen minutes passed off like a second. By this time we were properly in the Moon's orbit. Then I turned the ship so that the nose of it was facing away from the moon.

That's where I made a mistake.

"Apollo," shouted Phoenix. "YOU FORGOT TO TURN ON THE FUEL!"

Then he pressed the button that turned it on quickly. And so we were getting closer to the moon. This was it.

Then we slowly began our descent. But the fuel tank that we were using was out of fuel.

We had no choice but to use the last fuel tank, which had been leaked thanks to Mr Aetos. Even though I had fixed it, there wasn't much fuel. But it looked like there was enough.­­

And then we were going straight down. I could feel the Moon's gravity now, and the ship's artificial gravity was no longer active. Even though Phoenix had turned on the fuel and slowed down the ship, I don't think the ship was slow enough to land safely.

I noticed the tilt that had taken place during the take-off was taking place again.

"The landing legs!" screamed Phoenix yet again. And again, he opened the landing legs.

At the same time, the fuel of the ship ran out.

"We're done for!" said Melissa as I felt a bump. This was it. We reached the moon. Somehow, the floor of the control panel had turned 90 degrees preventing us from falling. We landed safely.

I wheeled to a window. We'd done it, we'd made it to the Moon. I felt a knot loosening up in my stomach. I felt relieved.

Just as I looked away from the window, Melissa plucked me out of my chair and squeezed me.

"You did it, genius!" she said.

"Ow," I muttered. "Yeah, we did it... ow.. you're strangling me, I can't breathe."

She loosened her grip a little. But I felt warmth in her hug.

I heard a cough.

"I'm sorry," said Phoenix. "Am I interrupting? Because we've got to go."

"We're coming!" said Melissa.

She released me and I fell back to my wheelchair, which hurt, since the chair was made of such a strong metal.

"So," said Phoenix. "How do we get off?"

"My wheelchair," I said. "It can fly. I guess you could just grab it's sides?"

"Your chair can fly?" said Phoenix. "Cool!"

"It runs on fuel," I said. "You have to be careful."

"Sure."

Ajax sat on me (he was one heavy robot). Melissa and Phoenix looked scared out of their life as they clung on to my chair. I bet it was not easy for them when we were slowly dropping to the floor of the Moon.

"I'm never doing this again!" cried Melissa as she clung onto my chair's handle for dear life. I laughed, as I felt a tingling sensation on the side of the arm of the chair she was holding.

"Yeah, you laugh," groaned Phoenix. "Just wait till we get down, and then I'll show you."

It took a painfully long time for Phoenix and Melissa to get down. I had never flown this chair before, and I'll admit that it felt a little weird to fly it then, but it already felt like it was a part of me.

Something inside me felt great, like a part of the journey was over. But something told me it was just the beginning. There I was sitting on my chair, with Melissa, Phoenix and Ajax next to me. What could possibly go wrong?

And then I realised...

"Well," I said. "We landed. Now what?"

"What do you mean?" said Melissa and Phoenix in unison.

"I mean," I said. "What do we do now that we've landed?"

And then, we all panicked.