“This is just awesome,” said Kate.
The four women were standing in the Shuttle hangar, staring at the two stubby ships. Kate was fully suited, except for her helmet. With them were Cymon and Matias, who was also wearing a spacesuit.
“Are you ready to go?” asked Matias.
Kate nodded. The other three women stepped forward to hug her.
“Bye Kate,” said Gemma, say ‘hello’ to the Martians for me.”
“Remember - ,” said Laura. “It’s one small step for a woman, one giant leap for womankind.”
Yes,” added Amisha, “something elevated is called for. Not just ‘Boy, does this place need dusting’.”
“Will do,” said Kate, laughing.
“Helmet on,” said Matias, carefully fitting his own helmet then helping Kate with hers.
“Communications check,” said Matias. “Can you hear and see me on your helmet screen?”
Kate nodded.
“Now say something to me,” said Matias.
“I hope you know how to drive that thing,” she said, indicating the shuttle.”
“Loud and clear,” said Matias. “See the green coloured bar to the left of your helmet screen?”
She nodded.
“It shows your oxygen supply. There’s enough for two hours.The bar goes down as your oxygen supply reduces, then turns red when there is less than 30 minutes. We can also monitor you remotely, so you don’t have to worry.”
“And you won’t need it inside the shuttle anyway, unless there’s an emergency,” he added.
Matias took Kate by the arm and led her to the nearest of the two shuttles. At the rear, where a ramp led up to the interior, Kate paused and tuned to wave at the others.
They waved back.
“We must leave the deck now,” said Cymon. “In a few minutes this will all be vacuum when the main hangar doors to space are opened. But we can watch everything from the bridge.”
Reaching the top of the shuttle's ramp, Kate looked around. The interior was largely empty with lines of padded seats on both sides and, up front, what was plainly the vessel's cockpit, with two forward facing pilot's chairs looking forward and out through a panoramic screen. A quick count told her that the shuttle could hold about 30 people.
Matias motioned her forward to the left of the fron two seats, while he took the right.
* * * * *
As well as the stunning panorama of Mars, a separate screen displayed the shuttle in the hangar they’d just left. Another showed them Matias and Kate harnessed into their seats on board.
“Yoo-hoo Kate!” called Amisha, “We can see you. Can you see us?”
“No. But I can hear you,” said Kate, her voice sounding a little metallic over the intercom, “and can we please try to treat the occasion with a little sense of history. I’m not just catching the bus into town.”
“Absolutely,” said Amisha, “Will do. And may I say what a fine couple you make in your matching suits. I understand Hello magazine is offering a six-figure sum for an exclusive and particularly wants to know whether you chose the shuttle’s colours yourself.”
Kate sighed and closed her eyes.
The three remaining Aliens sat behind their consoles, occasionally speaking to one another and to Matias at the controls of the shuttle.
Almost without warning the huge hangar door began to retract upwards, gradually revealing a wide slice of space. Moments later, the shuttle floated gently off the deck and nosed slowly forwards to exit the ship. Once outside, there was a brief flare from its rear jets and it curved away and out of sight.
The hangar view was replaced by one of the planet, straight ahead and growing rapidly.
“That’s the view from the shuttle,” said Teo, “and on this other screen you can see a view from our onboard camera tracking its descent.”
They looked where he indicated and could clearly see the shuttle growing smaller as it headed down towards the red expanse of Mars. Within a few seconds it had become a small dot then vanished altogether, to be replaced by a pulsing green line that showed its path down towards the planet. As well the shuttle’s eye view, they could hear a steady low-level whine from its engines.
Turning their attention to the view from the shuttle it was impossible not to be excited as they saw the mountains of Mars growing rapidly larger. The shuttle began to level out, so that the mountains were now directly ahead. Even Amisha remained silent as the shuttle now skimmed over the peaks to reveal a wide, red plain ahead and another range of mountains in the far distance. On the other monitor they could see Kate leaning forward in her seat, plainly as awed by the view as they were.
The camera now switched to a view showing the ground speeding past below the shuttle. It was broken by rocks and small craters with smooth areas between. Suddenly, the shuttle slowed, moving forward much more slowly as Matias looked for a place to land. All forward motion stopped as the camera’s view now showed them a smooth surface towards which the shuttle was now descending. Clouds of red dust billowed up, so for a moment they could see nothing. Then the camera shook a few times and the view was replaced by a square patch of hard red rock with dust already trickling back over it.
“They’ve landed,” said Irvn, his voice also betraying a degree of excitement. On the screen they saw Matias smile and then he and Cymon spoke rapidly to each other as Matias flicked a series of switches on the shuttle. The persistent whine of the shuttle’s engine’s was replaced by silence as they watched Matias unbuckling himself from his seat, then helping Kate undo hers.
They stood up and moved out of camera view towards the rear of the shuttle.
© Adriana Nicolas 2014
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'Sacmis' (formerly 'Alien Abduction')
Science FictionFour women - a lawyer, a teacher, an athlete and a soldier - are abducted by four alien men. The aliens, far from being bug-eyed monsters, have 90% human DNA. Despite the circumstances, the women are fascinated by their captors. Particularly when...
