Fly Me to the Moon Pt. 02

Linda and I looked at each other, shocked at what had happened. "Oh, Jesus... now what?" Linda asked no one in particular as we rushed to the middle of the now empty hanger, trying to see where the ship had gone. We knew we would have to wait for their return to hear what had happened.

Meanwhile, in the ship, the two men were watching the displays as the ship rapidly headed west toward the Pacific, leaving Area 51 far behind in a matter of moments. They crossed the coastline and headed into orbit, leaving a sonic boom trailing behind them that woke up Southern California in the night.

The major looked at the displays, seeing the western United States far below them as the ship headed into orbit. "Now what?" he told us later, admittedly scared for the first time in his life as events seemed to move faster than he could control.

"It moves pretty fast, don't you think?" said the general, wondering if the ship had a destination in mind or was just flying away from Earth. He told us later that there was no inertia, no feeling of movement as the ship sped on.

A few minutes later, various displays opened attempting to update the map showing North America, symbols streaming across them. As the ship orbited, maps were being updated with each minute passing by.

Another display opened, showing bar graphs of what the two men guessed were energy levels, surmising the ship was somehow gaining energy from the sun as each orbit brought more power to the ship. Finally, energy levels reached what must have been one hundred percent.

The ship broke orbit and five hours later they were rapidly approaching the moon and then slowing. Needless to say, we had no idea of what was happening until they finally returned.

"Looks like that was all pre-programmed into the computer. I wonder what we push to go home," said the general.

The ship skimmed the moon about 1200 meters above when it stopped and gave a series of signals to the surface and slowly settled toward the gray dust.

"Well, we're here, wherever that is," said the general as the ship approached a series of gray domes, one of which opened and allowed the ovoid to enter, closing as the ship landed. Silent except for the hushed sound of fans, it waited for the two men to rise before opening the hatch, allowing them to leave.

"There seems to be air here, can we chance it?" asked the major.

"I don't think we have much choice. We're going to run out of air as it is." He moved to open his helmet, breathing in the ancient atmosphere that had waited all these many years, coughing nervously. It smelled tired, old, metallic.

After a moment, the major followed suit, setting his helmet down on his seat and moving behind the general. Lights came on, showing the way from the moonbase hanger. While they walked they could see many more ships, all the same, waiting for crews that would never come.

They came to a doorway that needed the touch of their hands to open and they finally arrived at what seemed to be central control with keyboards and displays, lights coming on as they entered.

"Looks like Houston control, doesn't it?" said the general, looking around the vast room, searching for anything that would give a personal touch to it.

"I think they cleared out of here a long time ago," said the major, moving to one side of the room and walking past row upon row of lonely computers. "There's still no way to find our way back home."

"This is just great but we should be trying to get home," answered the general. "I don't know what to do except push buttons and try and get home that way."

The two men retraced their steps, returning to the moonbase hanger and finding the ship that they had arrived in. The door had stayed open, most likely a result of being in the hanger. As they sat down, the hatch closed and the ship rose toward the top of the area and then flew through the space that opened.

"Looks like we're heading back home. That's good. I was worried that we were stuck on the moon with no way back."

"Well, General, at least we can say that we're a couple of astronauts. Do you think we're going to end up back at the base or what?"

"I don't want to end up in central Utah, if that's what you mean. Look how fast we're going. This thing is light-years past what we have. There's got to be a way to reverse engineer it. Thank God it came down in Utah and not Siberia."

The small ship finally approached the North American continent and slowed as it entered the atmosphere, quickly coming to rest back in Nevada, once again trailing a sonic boom behind it.

"The autopilot is incredible. I wish I knew how it worked." The general stood up from his seat, taking his helmet off. He exited through the hatchway, followed by the major, stepping off the ledge and onto the cement.

I slowly walked toward him and threw my arms around him. "I thought I had lost you," I said, sobbing. "Thank God you're back."

Max put his arms around me, holding me tightly as I cried.

"Not much of a Marine officer, am I?" I asked, embarrassed at my emotional outburst.

"I'd have been disappointed in anything else," he answered, kissing me for the first time. "What we saw... it's amazing, Sophia, just amazing."

"Where did you go?"

"To the moon and back," he said, now realizing they had been gone for only a few hours or so. "But we still don't know more about how to fly the thing than we did before. It's very exasperating."

Meanwhile, the major had been telling Linda his own version of the events, leaving nothing out, including how scared he was.

"You're only human, John, nothing to be ashamed of. I didn't want you to be lost in space, you know." Linda reached out and held his arm.

"Thank you," he said, wondering how they were going to learn what the spacecraft did without pushing buttons and flipping switches.

They all met a half-hour later to write a report of what had happened, leaving nothing out except their fears.

The next week was filled with experimentation, careful experimentation, as one switch was used after another in an attempt to determine what they did until finally the two men had a working knowledge of the control panels as the ship flew around the dark Nevada desert sky, trailing a sonic boom in its wake.

"It's time to go back to the moon and retrieve another one of these ships," said the general to the other three. "I believe that it takes two pilots to make them work so we're going to teach you what you need to know to help us bring another one back."

For the next two weeks rudimentary flight lessons were given Linda and me so we could serve as co-pilots for the return flight from the moon.

"All set?" asked the general.

"As much as we're ever going to be, I guess," answered Sophia. "I wish we could have gotten the radios to work."

"I think they work," said Linda, " just not on any frequency we use."

By this time, we had learned to control the speed of the ship and not leave a sonic boom across the desert until we had reached the upper atmosphere and were heading toward space.

Soon we had reached the moon and approached the base which opened its dome to welcome us.

"Colonel, Captain, we can give you a short tour of what we've seen already before we pick a ship to take back with us."

The two men escorted us through the hallway toward the vast control room that they had found on their first trip to the moon.

This time photographs were taken every step of the way as we entered the control room. After walking through the room, two of the computers were selected to bring back to Groom Lake for study. Back in the hanger, we arbitrarily chose the first ship we came to and attempted to enter it but were unable to do so.

"Maybe its batteries have run down too far," said Linda, disappointed that we couldn't get inside. A second ship was selected and they were able to enter, so the major and captain went inside and powered up the ship, waiting for the general and me to also enter the ship we had flown from Earth.

With a low hum, the two ships rose from the hanger and headed back to Nevada, the second ship quickly energizing from the sunlight.

As the ships landed, the four of us were met by the medical staff.

"General Stanbery, we have surprising news for you. Using the Potassium-Argon system of dating, the two stains you discovered are from the K/T Event and we think that the original creatures committed suicide due to the destruction of the Earth and their civilization."

"That confirms what I had been thinking," he replied, "given what we've learned since then. We've brought back two computers for the lab men to work with. We should be able to learn more from them. I'm still amazed that the technology still works after all these years."

We moved back to our quarters, quietly talking as we went, comparing impressions we had of the moon base.

"I think we can re-open the moon base, General, as soon as we can re-supply it with food and other perishables. I think that's what caused the suicides, no hope for the next day, you know. It's too bad but... well, we wouldn't be here if they still were."

"Colonel, I don't know, maybe evolution would have brought us here just the same, maybe not. We'll never know." The general laughed and kissed me, holding me in his arms. "It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, what we've inherited from them. We haven't found any bodies on the moon so they must be buried there somewhere. Of course, we haven't explored the whole base, either, so, who knows?"

He left me at my door, stepping aside so that the accompanying technicians could help me with my spacesuit. They carefully removed the suit, making sure that everything was as it should be before leaving with it.

Meanwhile, the major and captain were overseeing the turnover of the computers to the lab men. "I don't know if they work at all, after all this time." The computer technicians eagerly set about their task, looking at the two keyboards, similar yet so different from what they were used to.

They worked with one, leaving the other alone to protect it in case they did something wrong and destroyed it. Three days later, they had it running with fifty volts of direct current and were amazed that it worked at all.

"Well, General, either their technology is so advanced it's like magic or being on the moon protected everything. We've video'd everything we've done for the record but want to show you this. It's tragic to watch but explains what happened."

The technician pushed a key and the screen showed a large asteroid, the killer asteroid, approach the earth followed by all the ships from the moon. They were attempting to blast it to no avail as it reached what was to be Mexico and burrow into the Earth, releasing a huge amount of energy that raced around the planet, setting fires everywhere. Not lost on the viewers were the many cities destroyed by the initial blast and the following tsunami. There was a raspy commentary that accompanied the video and although the words were too foreign to understand, the panic and grief came across the ages from one civilization to another.

The second video showed the deaths following the lack of supplies.

General Stanbery was shaken as the video finished, the computer waiting millions of years until it was finally found again.

"I don't know what to say," said the general, staring at the now blank screen. "A whole civilization lost, a greater tragedy than what we thought originally happened."

He walked into the common room that the we had appropriated after our medical quarantine. In the room were computers that we were using to put together our reports. Since the arrival of the second ship, security had doubled with Marine guards everywhere.

With each day bringing new discoveries, there had been little time for romance, so the general declared a respite as we had a private dinner to talk about anything except the ships and the moon.

"Don't worry, baby, everything will turn out all right," quietly sang the general to me. The Beach Boys had an answer to everything, I thought.

"Have you thought about children?" he asked.

"Never had the opportunity, to be honest with you. Do you want children?"

"It would be nice, don't you think?" He reached out and touched my hand, his fingers tracing mine.

"Yes, if they were with you... I know you didn't want to talk about the moon and all but are we going to bring back the rest of the ships? We can't leave them there."

"I know. We need to train more pilots and that means opening up the circle of people who know what's happening."

"If we bring them back and everyone thinks we built them, it should be all right. No need to tell the world that the dinosaurs got to the moon before we did."

Over the course of the next two months we made trips to the moon to bring back all the ships that still flew, sadly leaving five behind, too low in energy to allow entry. We now had a fleet of fifty-two ships to use. Max wanted to take one apart in the hopes of building more but decided to wait until later. Whether to tell the President was another question he didn't have an answer for.

The four of us soon had a song for when we lifted off: Max had "All along the watchtower"; the major had "Danger Zone"; Linda had "My girl" and I had "Eight miles high."

"I have an idea," he finally told the three of us. "I'm going to contact Alessa in Malibu and bring her into the group. We need her top secret manufacturing skills to make this work."

Alessa had inherited the company from her lover who had tragically been killed in a plane crash almost ten years earlier while on duty with the Corps.

Two phone calls later, he had invited her to join us at Groom Lake.

*****

The Gulfstream, call sign 'Navy 37', landed early in the afternoon on the south runway. A few minutes later, Alessa Lane and Colonel Maria Paras, her military adviser, left the plane and approached us. I shook hands with them while Linda saluted and we all left the tarmac and entered Building 7.

General Stanbery was waiting for us in the conference room and warmly greeted the two women. "Welcome back to Groom Lake," he said, showing them two comfortable chairs. "I have incredible news."

The next hour was filled with all that had happened since Linda and I had arrived, including the numerous trips to the moon. Evidently they had been apprised of the ancient ship's existence long ago.

"This is wonderful," said Alessa. "What can we do for you, now?"

"We need," stated the general, "to come up with a cover story for their existence now that we have them and I'd like your Corporation to get the credit for it. Of course, it will be years before they become public."

It was true, I thought, for years could pass before the public ever found out about the miraculous spaceships that we were lucky enough to find. That statement turned out to be so wrong.

At last the conference was over and agreements reached. The Crowell Corporation would get credit for building the ships on paper and while no money would change hands the prestige would be incredible. Eventually, one of the ships would somehow be reverse engineered with the hopes of building more.

Following all the signatures on contracts that never existed prior to our meeting, we all went to tour the fifty or so ships now sequestered in three hangers. Within minutes the two were invited aboard one ship and shown how they worked with a short flight to orbit.

After the tour, which admittedly was something as unearthly as anyone could expect, we all moved back to the conference room to have dinner together. I was in awe of the woman who had gone from being a paralegal to the head of a multinational corporation that supplied what secretly was needed for the safety of America's allies.

Later that evening, the two women flew back to Los Angeles while we discussed what had transpired. If we were able to manufacture more of the ships, it would be incredible.

"Well, sweetheart," asked the general, "how are you doing? I am so much in love with you and am glad that you are here to witness these events that will change the world."

"You're being so modest," I laughed. "All joking aside, you've accomplished a lot and we've got such a jump on everyone."

"Speaking of accomplishing a lot... will you make me the happiest general and marry me?"

"Yes, a thousand times yes. I can walk down the aisle now without a cane and dance with you, my love." I put my arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss in the solitude of the conference room.

Several weeks passed while we put together a working plan for the new space force that the president had decided to institute, using members of the various service branches but essentially falling under the control of the Air Force. The hardest part had already been accomplished, the acquisition of spacecraft that actually worked. Now, we just had to justify where they had come from.

And, most importantly, I was planning my wedding to the general. For a few fleeting moments I thought about getting married on the moon but decided that was just too crazy to actually happen. So, it was to happen at the base... with reception to follow. At least this way everyone could attend, at least for a few moments.

*****

"I, Maxwell Stanbery, take you, Sophia Origlieri, to be my wedded wife, from this day forward, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live."

"And I, Sophia Origlieri, take you, Maxwell Stanbery, to be my wedded husband, from this day forward, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live."

The chaplain finished the ceremony and people left the room so that it could be set up for the reception. In no time at all tables were set up and chairs rearranged for dinner and dancing and I was in the arms of my husband as we slowly danced to the 'Last Waltz.'

I saw in his eyes the love and respect that he had for me as we twirled to the music and I felt so warm inside, knowing that someone cared for me more than anyone else in the world.

Before I knew it, it was over and people were leaving for their rooms, the hour now early in the morning. Max took me by the arm, his other hand carrying a bottle of champagne, a smile on his face, humming a tune.

"Shall we go, Mrs. Stanbery?"

"I've been waiting all night, my General."

Before too long, we were under the blankets, exploring what had only been thought about, kissing and holding until finally our love climaxed with loud moans that would have embarrassed us if we thought about it.

The next morning I slept in, the first time in many years, not counting my time in the hospital. There was so much that had to be done that a honeymoon was out of the question but the excitement of what we were doing outweighed the loss of going somewhere but then we were invited to visit Alessa Lane and Colonel Paras in Malibu and decided to take the time to do so.

The Gulfstream took us to Pt. Magu and then a Corporation helicopter flew us to Malibu where we were greeted by Alessa herself at the landing pad. Nearby we could see the areas still recovering from the devastating fires that had ravaged California in the months past. Due to the area design of the property no damage had occurred to the buildings but the large trees and shrubs had all burned.

"Welcome," she said, shaking our hands. "I understand congratulations are in order. That's why I invited you for a visit. Consider this my honeymoon gift to the two of you."

"Thank you very much," said Max. "We've been so busy with... well, you know... that we haven't had time to do anything."

I suppose thinking back to her own loss, she replied, "You should always take time for who knows what tomorrow brings." Her voice dropped for a moment, I'm sure with the knowledge of what could have been.