Rocket Man

Shock and disbelief went through me. Suddenly, I was no longer nearly as drunk.

"The last one," he continued. "Every partner, junior partner, associate, secretary, steno, paralegal, and cleaning woman has given me a taste. I wish I could say that I saved the best for last, but that would be an out-and-out lie. But hey, ya win some; ya lose some. Mission accomplished." He started looking around for his clothes. He gathered them up and started putting them on.

He got to the door with his pants and shirt on. He was holding his tie and jacket in the crook of his arm.

"The best thing about this," he said. "Is that no one ever needs to know about it, right?" I nodded as tears began to fall from my eyes.

"I trust that we can still enjoy a thoroughly professional working relationship around the office, can't we," he asked. I nodded again. He smiled again, and I wondered what I had ever seen in him. What the fuck was it that made him seem to be so God damned charming?

Then I realized that I had been played. He had simply sensed my weakness and unhappiness ... No ... I wasn't really unhappy. I have never been unhappy. What he sensed was my anger and my ... Fear.

He opened the door and stepped out into the early-morning darkness. Well, he tried to. He was shoved back into the house by two men who looked like they belonged on the defensive line of an NFL football team.

"How many doors does this Damned Castle have, Ma'am," asked one.

"Hey, do you have any idea who I am," snapped Brett getting over the shock of being manhandled. The two bruisers, one of whom was white with close cropped blond hair, and the other was black with close cropped black hair looked at each other. They had probably worked together for a long time because no words were necessary.

While the black man repeated his partner's question to me, the blond one stuck his arm out. That was really what it looked like. It was an almost casual movement. Both of the men looked like tanks in suits. The arm that suddenly extended was almost the size of Brett's waist. I could hear the seams in the suit he wore protesting with the sudden movement. Brett suddenly flew across the room.

"The senator wanted you in one piece," he said. "He never said shit about you being conscious."

The black man shook his head at his partner's words. "Yeah, I know," said the blond man. "As soon as we get back, five bucks in the swear jar."

"Can you please tell me what's going on?" I asked.

"Did you hear that?" the blond man asked Brett, who was holding his nose in hands. "That's the way you should be acting. Keep things calm and cool."

The black man turned and spoke to me. "We don't actually know the full details, Ma'am," he said politely. "But Senator Cargill would like a word with the two of you."

"Senator Cargill as in the most powerful Senator in Washington," asked Brett.

Both men nodded.

"When is this supposed to take place?" I asked.

"First thing tomorrow morning," said the blond man. It was then that I noticed the iPhone placed in front of the huge 75 inch curved 4K television set. It reminded me that sometime tomorrow morning I'd be receiving a very important call.

"Don't worry, Ma'am," said the blond bruiser. "All important calls will be routed through to you."

"Great," I said. "There are no exits from the second floor except to the balcony over the pool in the back. I'm too old to jump or climb down to that concrete pool deck, so I'm going up to sleep in my bed. I have a lot of liquor to sleep off and some bad decisions to think through."

Both bruisers nodded.

"Hey what about me," yelled Brett.

"You can sleep on the floor," I said.

"Fuck you," he sneered. "If you won't give me a guest room, I'm sleeping on this couch."

"Gentlemen," I said to the bruisers. "I would prefer it if Mr. Baldridge kept his slimy ass off of my furniture. Can you at least do that for me? Help yourselves to coffee and anything else in the kitchen you'd like."

Brett sat down on the edge of the sofa. The blond man smacked his fist into his other hand and Brett leaped off of the sofa as if it was on fire.

* * * * * *

Jack

"I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife."

"It's lonely out in space."

"On such a timeless flight."

The usual thing to do on a mission like ours was to sleep. The mission specialists would sleep or try to for most of the trip to the station. The flight crew would rotate napping. Truthfully, we all could have gone to sleep. The capsule was pretty much guided from mission control. We were only needed if, for some reason something malfunctioned, or we got off course.

However, space travel did have its share of dangers that were faced nowhere else. For one thing, we were prisoners inside the capsule. Without our oxygen supply, and life support, we wouldn't survive for very long in the cold, dark vacuum of space. As I looked out into the universe, I felt many things. I was amazed at just how bright the stars seemed to be away from the earth. I was amazed at exactly how small we are when compared to the almost infinite size of the universe. And I felt loneliness.

I think it was then that I decided that this would be my last trip. The rocket man would settle down. I'd take a long vacation and see some of those tropical places that Beth and I had always dreamed of seeing when we were young. We were actually still young. We were just an older version of young. To me, Beth was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And I had short changed her in our lives. I was always out exploring this or that, when all she ever wanted was to keep her feet planted on earth.

It kind of reminded me of that old KISS song lyric. "Beth I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now."

It was almost as if I had grown up while I looked out at the nothingness. Beth hated to watch me take off. The challenger disaster from so many years ago had shaken her to her core. We always argued just before a mission, and the closer the launches got, the angrier she seemed to get. However, as soon as I was back, she was right there with me, making up for lost time.

I got my iPad out of a storage locker. I decided to make a video for her. I guess it would be kind of like a selfie from orbit. I figured out what I wanted to say and figured out two ways to get it to her. The first possibility would be if I could hook into the Wi-Fi on the station. There was wireless communication between devices on the capsule too, but I had no way of knowing how to hook into it.

"Beth, Honey, I love you. And I'm coming home," I said. "And this is the last time. This is my last one."

I recorded my heartfelt words and tried to play it back. I didn't want anyone else to hear what I had said, so I spoke softly and kept the volume down as I played it back. Or as I tried to.

I need to point something out here. I'm a pilot. I'm an aerospace engineer. I work with some of the most high-tech equipment in the history of mankind. BUT ... I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea how the fucking iCloud works.

I do know that my iPhone back on earth and the iPad I had on my lap were linked. So that pictures or videos shot on one automatically went to the other. But the nearest thing I could figure was that as I tried to play back the video I had just made, it somehow told my iPhone back on Earth to start recording as well. That had happened to me a couple of times before. I usually got recordings of a wall or the inside of my pocket. However, this time it was different.

This time as I hurtled through the emptiness of space with nothing but Beth on my mind; my iPhone sent me video of my Beth fucking some guy in our living room. I've heard that there are men out there who are turned on by the thought or sight of their wives with other men. I clearly am not one of them. As horrid as the video was I couldn't turn away.

I saw Beth, suck this guy's junk. It made me want to vomit. He fucked her at least a couple of times, and he even fucked her ass. Beth and I had been married for over twenty years, and I had only been allow to do that a few times on special occasions. The one thing that was merciful was that there was no sound. I don't think I could have taken listening to the sounds of the pleasure she was having with him. The smile on her face throughout it, told me more than enough.

I shut the iPad off, and the tears began to flow. Once we'd left the atmosphere we had all taken off our helmets and heavy suits. I watched as several tears rose into the air intearsat ro gravity of space. As much as I tried not to a few very soft sobs escaped my lips.

"Commander, are you okay," asked Cassie.

"I'm fine," I said trying my ass off to make my voice sound as normal as possible. "I'm just in awe about how beautiful it is out here."

"Sorry," she said. "I've heard there are weird echoes out here because of the lack of air for sound waves to travel on. But for a second, it sounded like you were crying."

I started laughing.

"I just wanted to know if I could help," she said. "You know ... Make you feel better?"

"Oh my God," I snorted. "Cassie, are you really hitting on a man who's almost old enough to be your father?" She folded her arms across her chest and stuck her lip out.

For a while, I sank back into my seat and thought about things. I could not for the life of me figure out where I went wrong. But then I tried to see things from Beth's perspective. She literally hated what I did. I couldn't understand it. We grew up together. She had always known that I wanted to be an astronaut. She had encouraged me to go for it, just as I had encouraged her to go to and had paid for her to go to law school.

I hated the idea of her parading around with her tight little ass in one of those pseudo business suits with the short skirt. I hated the idea of her working with all of those sleazy Washington lawyers. But, I trusted her. I trusted her with my heart and soul and look what I got for that trust. After that I began to wonder exactly when she had begun cheating on me. I tried to look back and figure out when things changed. Could it have been when she simply stopped coming to the launches?

If that was the case, then this shit had been going on for five years or more. And the thing that bothered me the most about it was that if she was tired of me, all she ever had to do was to say, "Jack I want a divorce."

I would have given her anything and everything she wanted. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Fuck that bitch.

"The station should be in sight, people," the voice of mission control sounded out through the speakers on the control console. And it was.

From where we were the shuttle appeared as just a very bright light in space. Our relative orbital speeds made it seem as though the station was moving relatively slowly. However, it was moving at more than 10,000 miles per hour around the earth.

The shuttle orbited the planet every 92 minutes. We were exactly on time. The mission thus far except for my personal tragedy was a good one.

"Rise and shine Specialists," I said in my most booming voice. "Time to earn your keep."

Terence was the first up. He suited up and then helped Cassie. Vladimir was involved in an argument with Nathan Penn, who had tried to switch helmets with him.

"I can't use this thing," yelled Penn. "it smells awful."

"We told ya not ta upchuck in it," smirked Remmy. "But you can always go without it."

"Remmy, you've got the controls," I said. I climbed back into my heavy space suit as he nodded. Then we switched, and I watched the shuttle as he suited up. The capsule had an airlock. So we should be safe even if the docking maneuvers went wrong, but we were better safe than sorry.

Mission control walked us through the process of docking with the station. I guess I make it sound easy, and we had done it so many times that it was. We simply matched speeds with the station and then lined up the capsule's airlock with the docking port on the shuttle. Once we touched, a mechanical lock was engaged, and the two orbiting bodies became one.

I could tell that Cassie was a bit apprehensive about leaving the ship. Going through what basically amounted to an aluminum tube into a different environment could be frightening.

"Don't worry we're all going," said Captain Morgan. "You guys are staying for two weeks until the next ship comes along to take you home. I think it's a Soyuz. But, the three of us will take turns going over to the station before we head for home. We can "phone home" from there. The news media eats that kind of stuff up.

"Who's going first," asked Penn.

"I will," said Terry.

"Why do you get to go first," whined Penn.

"Okay, you can go first," said Terry.

"Are you out of your Vulcan mind," asked Penn. "I'm not going first. I've seen this God damned movie too many times. Whoever goes first dies. If he doesn't, then it's whoever goes last. One of the flight crew has to stay in the capsule that means there are six of us going. I'll go forth, or fifth."

"Who elected you president," asked Remy. "Look I'll go first to make sure everything is correctly attached. That way, I can speak with my wife and my boys and come back so the commander can call that hot wife of his before we drop back to earth."

"I'll go second," said Captain Morgan.

Terence and Vladimir agreed to go third and fourth. "I'll go last," said Cassie looking at me.

"Take your time guys," I said. "I have to arrange some things with mission control. I think I'll pass on the phone home thing." Remmy and Morgan looked shocked. As soon as the docking procedure was done they opened the airlock door and walked across the small tube of the docking port.

"Hot wife, huh," said Cassie. I didn't know what to say to her. She seemed out of sorts at discovering that I was married. I was surprised that it hadn't come up before. As I turned to her, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Terence and Vladimir had just gone into and through the docking port. Nathan Penn was in the port when suddenly we heard a giant clang.

I believe that Cassie thought the noise we heard was the sound of the airlock closing on the other side, so she could go through. But it wasn't; it was a large piece of space junk that I had seen out of the corner of my eye, traveling at a high rate of speed had slammed into the docking port ripping it from the side of the station. It has also separated the capsule from the station.

Cassie had simply stepped out into nothingness. The airlock was destroyed, and Nathan Penn's bloody body went floating out into space. Cassie grabbed for anything she could get. As she did so, I saw Nathan Penn's cracked helmet float by. His body followed it on the same trajectory. A look of "I told you so," was frozen on his dead features.

My biggest problem was Cassie. I had no choice. I fired the maneuvering jets and inched closer to her. I had to be really damned careful cause if I accidentally tapped her, I would kill her.

I could still hear her screaming over the comm links.

"Cassie, just relax," I said. "I've got you."

"Okay," she said, calming down at the sound of my voice. "You were right. It really is pretty out here."

I turned the ship until I thought that what was left of the docking bay was pointed towards her. I grabbed one of the very sturdy lines that we used for emergency space walks and secured myself.

"Jack, what the fuck are you planning," screamed Remy. "Jack, none of that cowboy shit! If you hit us we're all dead!"

I realized then that Remy was so worried about me hitting the station that he failed to realize that Cassie was out there and still alive. I gently goosed the maneuvering jets again, moving the capsule even closer to the station. It was like performing brain surgery with a wrench.

Another thing I had to worry about is that there are no brakes. When the jets stopped thrusting, I would continue moving in that direction, unless I used a jet to go in the opposite direction. But that wasn't what I had in mind.

Looking out the view window, I saw that I had almost caught up to Cassie's rapidly moving form. I guess a sane person would have slowed down then, but to what end? I no longer had an airlock. The space debris had destroyed it.

Surprisingly, Cassie wasn't screaming like the men on the station. Just before the capsule reached her and slammed into her, I left the controls. I crossed the small space to the doorway, even though the outside door of the airlock had been destroyed. And just before the heavy capsule slammed into her, I did the least logical thing possible. I opened the hatch.

I had clipped my suit to one of the heavy cables we used when doing space walks and latched the other end to one of the internal support beams. I left only enough line for me to reach the hatch. As I expected the air hissed louder and louder as the pressure was released and my life-giving atmosphere vented into the vacuum of space. I reached out and snatched Cassie's arm before the buildup of escaping air pushed her farther away from me. I then closed the hatch.

"Jack you asshole ... You could have killed us all! Good job," screamed Morgan over the com link.

"Jack check the capsule for exterior damage," said the voice from mission control. "Your O2 scrubber seems to be malfunctioning."

"Oh, it's fucked," I said. "The same chunk of debris that hit the airlock and docking port damaged that side of the capsule. It's why my flight to get Cassie was so erratic. I have no maneuvering jets on that side either."

"Then how the hell did you manage to ...?" he began.

"It's like drifting a Mustang," I said. "You can't really control all of that power. So you just learn to use the fact that it's out of control. After a while, you get so accustomed to it that when the ass end breaks loose in the turns, you go with it and use it to make that beast turn better."

"So what's your next move," asked Remy.

"I'm gonna maneuver this busted ass ship around to the docking port on the other side of the station," I said. "This won't be easy, so give me some time."

It took me nearly an hour to move around the station. My erratic movements were hampered not only by the fact that I only had maneuvering jets on one side of the capsule, but by the fact that if I hit the station, I could damage either the station itself or our capsule.

"Jack, there's another problem," John Walker's voice from Mission Control was quiet. I already knew what he was thinking, and I was ahead of him.

"Jack, there were already five men on the station," he said. A normal crew is six. We have had up to ten people aboard for a period of up to ten days. You are leaving the four specialists there and would have brought the total up to nine. It would have been cramped but survivable. Adding your crew to that total ... Even with Penn's unfortunate demise would put that total at eleven. Jack those are not survivable numbers. Right now, everyone on earth is working toward a solution, but it is not good. The men aboard the station were scheduled to be there for three weeks. Your specialists were supposed to be there for a month.

It will take us at least two weeks to get a rescue ship to you. We've all got our thinking caps on but ... It ... It doesn't look good. If you do the math ... You might've been better off ... At least it would have been quicker for ..."

"Wow!" I said. "I guess there's a first time for everything. I'm supposed to be the "fly it by the seat of his pants pilot." And you're supposed to be the rocket scientist. How the hell did you get this one wrong? I can't believe that I've figured out something that all of you eggheads with your computers and calculators missed."