Rocket Man

"What did you figure out," asked Walker.

"Later Johnny," I said. "I have to concentrate on driving. Remy do you still have your suit on?"

"Of course, I do," said Remy. "Shit, the way you're flying that bus, even the guys who were stationed here have started putting their suits on. One bad bump and we could be venting our atmosphere."

"Remy all I need you to do is open the air lock, Dummy. Even an average pilot like yourself can handle that," I smirked.

"What do I do after that?" he asked.

"Don't worry," I said. "Cassie will tell you what to do next. I'm filling her in as soon as you shut up, so I can run the numbers."

The jets hissed as I adjusted them and fired short bursts, it took constant corrections to move the capsule close to the docking port.

"Commander ... Jack ... You saved my life, you know," said Cassie.

"Get ready Cass," I said.

"What am I going to do?" she asked.

"You're going on the shortest space walk ever recorded," I said. "I'm thinking it's going to be about a foot from the open capsule door to the airlock. When I get this in position, it's going to be very tricky keeping this thing from crashing into the station, so you're gonna have to be quick. Can you do it?"

"Of course," she said. "And what do I ...?"

"Remy open the outer airlock door and step back," I yelled cutting her off.

"Shit Jack," he screamed. "You're gonna crash."

"Remy Martin, I thought you were supposed to be smooth. You're acting like an old lady. Just get that God Damned door open," I yelled just as I fired the jets to reverse our momentum.

"Cassie, Open the door and jump," I yelled. She quickly did exactly what I told her to do.

Remy closed the outer airlock door as soon as she was aboard.

"I got her Jack," he crooned. "Not bad for an AVERAGE pilot huh? Now how the hell do we get you over here so we can hear this brilliant idea of yours to make the air last. Terry has an idea. He thinks he can hook the capsule's O2 scrubbers to the station to bolster our life support and make it so all of us can ..."

"It won't work Remy. The capsule's system was destroyed as soon as the wreckage from the docking port hit it. There's no air over here. I'm in my suit ..." I began.

"Then why did you ever open the ...?" he began. He waited for a while, clearly thinking about things. "Jack that was some really tricky flying you did to get Cassie over here. How the hell are you going to keep that pile of trash steady enough for you to come over without it crashing into the station?"

"Just watch," I said as the capsule began moving further and further away from the station. "Cassie, LLAP. Remy, you, and Captain Morgan take care of each other. You're the best NASA has and two of the bravest guys I ever met."

"Shit, neither of us will ever be the best Jack. Not as long as you're ... Jack, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you turning ...!"

"Remy don't make a stink about this," I said. "The eggheads had it right. There's just not enough air for all of us. Either ten of us barely survive or we all die. I'm going with the ten. I'm just not going to be one of you." Then I turned off the communications feed from the station.

* * * * * *

Liz

The next morning as I awoke; I felt off. I immediately realized the situation and dressed. There was no one outside of my room. I walked down the stairs and saw the two huge men still there.

Brett was still curled up in the corner of the room using his jacket as a makeshift blanket.

"Does anyone want coffee?" I asked.

"That would be good, Ma'am," said the darker of the two bruisers. "The senator should be calling at any moment."

I quickly made coffee and poured three cups. The two men had theirs at the table. I had mine in the kitchen. A few minutes after I began sipping my coffee, one of the men answered his phone. I never heard it ring. He just pulled it out and started talking.

"We're on our way," he said closing the device. The two of them stood up, and I grabbed my keys. I didn't bother with a purse because I wasn't sure what I would be allowed to carry.

The blond man grabbed Brett by his shoulders and yanked Brett to his feet. As soon as the man let go Brett collapsed again. As he hit the floor, he regained consciousness.

"Huh? Whuh?" he said. He looked around the room, and recognition dawned in his eyes. "Is that coffee?"

"It is," I said. "Coffee is great ... first thing in the morning especially. It really helps to wake you up. That shot of caffeine gets the brain working on all cylinders. Too bad you can't have any."

The two men propelled him out through the open door, and into a waiting SUV. We were forced to sit next to each other.

"You seem awfully perky," he said.

"You look ridiculous," I said in reply. "You need to look into a mirror. Your hair is standing straight up on your head like one of the members of a boy band. You have a line of dried drool all over your beard. And those thingies in the corners of your eyes. Your shirt is wrinkled, so are your pants, and that jacket is ruined. I hope someone sees us. Your reputation is about to take a hit."

"Fuck you," he spat. "Oh shit," he said, slapping himself on the head. "I already did. That's where all of this animosity came from." As they walked us in the back door of a downtown hotel, he continued to mouth off.

"Are you really worried about my reputation?" he asked. " ... Or your own? I mean I have a reputation as being a pussy hound. But you ... You're supposed to be the wife of a fucking astronaut ... That's it!" he suddenly laughed.

"Your ... Ha, ha, ha ... Your husband is an astronaut. And I'm ha, ha, ha ... An ASS-tronaut. You kept telling me that no one had ever gone there before ... Ha, ha, ha."

"You act as if what you did is something to be proud of," said a voice from just outside of the room. "When in all actuality, it is the most heinous, most craven act of cowardice, there is."

"I saw it all the time during the war," he said. His rich melodious voice preceded him into the room. "I was just a boy. I was brimming with energy and eager to go overseas to do my part to protect the country I loved. I saw all of these brave, strong, upstanding young men rushing off to serve and defend the country as I wanted to. I also saw the snakes who were too weak or too cowardly to go themselves, but who took advantage of weak or simple-minded women while their husbands were away." He spat right onto the floor in front of Brett. His spittle splattering on Brett's polished eight hundred dollar shoes, told us what he thought of Brett.

The man was barely five feet tall. He used a cane and hobbled. His spine was extremely kyphotic. Whether it was from injury or just old age, I couldn't tell. However, he hobbled proudly. He wore his injury like a badge of honor. Power flowed outward from his bent form. His eyes glowed as if the power inside of this man was too much to be held in.

"Senator Cargill ... Sir ... I," sputtered Brett.

"There aren't many heroes left," continued the old man as if he hadn't heard Brett. He spat again and this time the spittle landed on Brett's pants. "And the few we have ... those few people who can take the minds and imaginations of the country ... Maybe even the world ... to places we can only imagine are Damned few. Let me ask you this, you fucking moron ... How many people can you think of who actually make you proud to be an American?"

"Well ... I ..." began Brett.

"Shut up, you pissant little bitch," spat the senator before Brett could finish.

"That's the problem with your generation," continued Cargill. "You can only think as far as your own selfish wants. The law used to be a respected profession, but look at what you've done to it. Fifty years of ambulance chasing, litigation mongering, money grubbing assholes, who only wanted to get rich, have destroyed the profession. On the scale of respectful careers, the law has steadily decreased until we finally rank beneath undertakers ... At the bottom of the list. And politicians ... We're just as bad."

"I have no idea what your father ever saw in you," he said, causing Brett to suck in a breath.

"You've met my ..." he gasped.

"I gave your grandfather the money to start your firm. My family trust still benefits from its profits, though I personally have no connection to it. Where was I? ... Oh yes ... Heroes. The only ones we have left that aren't the subject of constant denigration ... People hate cops, these days, they hate our soldiers; they hate the drug companies and shit boy; they barely even trust the doctors to try to treat them. However, for some reason, they still believe in our spacemen."

"The astronauts you were just belittling are the last true explorers we have. They bring out that spirit that all men have to go places and see things, where we as a species ... Where humanity as a whole has never been. Do you know who her husband is? The man has been to space more times than any human being in history. He is respected all over the world. Shit when we get UN ambassadors from countries whose names you can't pronounce visiting Washington; most of them know who he is. Those are the kinds of men, we need to restore respect in politicians. Not cowardly, backstabbing, backroom creeping little pissants like you."

"But ... I," sputtered Brett. "It wasn't anything serious. It was just ..."

"Shut up and talk into the phone," spat the senator. "Your career change has been arranged." He held out a phone to Brett in an extremely strong looking hand. The sight of the phone made me laugh. It was hard to believe that one of the most powerful men in the Senate ... In the country and probably the world, still used one of those early 90's flip phones.

"Who ... " asked Brett cautiously. He placed the phone against his head.

"Hello," he said tentatively. We heard the voice on the other side. The senator must have been hard of hearing because the volume from the phone's earpiece was so loud that we could all make it out.

I recognized the voice instantly as Brett's grandfather, the chairman emeritus of our firm.

"Brett, as soon as you get home, I want you to order a tractor," he said. "And make sure ..."

"Granddad, I don't know anything about tractors," said Brett. "And I'm too busy right now, to ..."

"Right now, your primary responsibility like every other farmer, is spring planting," screamed the old man. "You'll be assisting your uncle Cletus on the family farm in Arizona."

"But I'm not a farmer," whined Brett. "I'm a lawyer. I don't know anything about ..."

"Not anymore, boy," said the old man.

"What," asked Brett.

"We had such great hopes for you, Brett, your father and I," said the old man. "You were going to be our shining star ... Maybe even president. But you damned near destroyed us. How many times have we warned you ta keep it in your pants?"

"Last night, you made a spectacle of yourself in a public place. Who do you think was supposed to be your backer, your mentor? Who was the person we were going to get to help you make that step into politics? Were you going to run for dog catcher and then the school board in some tiny town? You'd never get to be president that way. It would take you forty years to get to be a senator then. By the time you were ready seriously to consider running for president you'd be almost a hundred. And people don't really trust career politicians any more.

You need to start building up that trust and that political charisma early on. It takes one of two things to get into the public consciousness on the political scene, Brett. It takes either a hell of a lot of money, or a combination of money and power. Shit, everybody knows Oprah got Obama elected.

Senator Cargill was going to do that for you. Unfortunately, the first time he sees you out on your own, you're acting like a drunken playboy while all kinds of people took pictures of it. Luckily, the senator managed to use his influence to make sure that none of those pictures or videos got out. Luckily, everyone uses cell phones. The senator made a few phone calls and there was a fake terrorist reported on the loose in that restaurant. No one was apprehended or detained, but everyone was forced to go through a security check when they left. They had to go through a metal detector. But, it really wasn't a metal detector. It wiped out the pictures and video files on all cell phones while leaving print or text information intact."

"So if no one knows, then why can't I have a second chance," whined Brett.

"Because what you did displays an alarming lack of character," sneered the senator.

"But I'm a lawyer," said Brett. "I don't know how to do anything else."

"This would be a good time to learn," said Brett's grand dad. "Because you're not a lawyer any more. Besides being let go by the firm, you were brought up on ethics charges in front of the bar."

"For what," hissed Brett. "An office romance gone wrong with one old woman."

"Actually, there were several," Grandpa Baldridge said. "Several from our firm and even a few clients. Any one of the clients could have caused a great deal of problems for the firm. That was why you were terminated immediately and with prejudice."

"But what about the ethics board," asked Brett. "I'm allowed to speak in my own defense. I'm allowed to answer to the charges. Maybe I could get it dropped down to a suspension with a heavy fine and some sort of probation. Doing all of this overnight, without notifying me is illegal. How can they take my license behind my back like... "

"Like some cowardly guy who fucks other men's wives behind their backs," asked the senator.

Tears rolled down Brett's cheeks. "Who hates me that much?" he bawled. "Who hates me enough to stir up this kind of shit?" He suddenly looked at me.

He looked at me as if he wanted to rip my head off and shit down the hole.

"Your husband ..." he screamed. "The Fuckin' Rocket Man ... He did this! I thought it would be a kick to have you. So every time they talked about him on the news or shot him up into space, I could look at him and think ... I fucked his wife. But somehow he knew. He found out, and he destroyed my career. He destroyed my career over a fling with an over the hill barely competent housewife of a lawyer ... Do you see what you've done. I could have been a senator. I could have been president. I could ..."

"You could shut the fuck up long enough for me to tell you it was me," said Senator Cargill. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Commander Daniels has no idea about what went on. And right now he has enough problems on his hands." Hearing that Jack had no idea about my mistake made me feel even better.

"Perhaps, although they weren't meant that way, my actions will serve as a last gift to a dying hero," said Cargill.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I closed the distance that separated me from the old man.

"I was sure you would have heard by now," he said. "It's all over the news. The current space mission has gone bad. There was already one death. Your husband saved the life of another of the mission specialists. But his own life is in serious jeopardy. In fact, he may already be dead. However, he died a hero. He died saving the lives of the other members of his crew and the station crew." He was serious. My greatest nightmare had just come true. I suddenly lost consciousness.

* * * * * *

Jack

"Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids."

"In fact, it's cold as hell."

"And there's no one there to raise them. If you did."

As the capsule drifted away from the station getting farther away with each passing second, I relaxed. I looked out the window and thought about Mars. I always thought about Mars. Realistically, I knew I'd never go. It wasn't anything I had done or anything I hadn't done. I was just born too soon. We didn't have the technology currently to make the trip. It was simply the luck of the draw.

However, in the back of my mind, I felt cheated. I guess it was my upbringing. I was so conditioned to believe that if you bust your ass and work hard enough, you can accomplish anything. So based on how hard I had worked, Mars should have been mine. But in the end, it was just my fucked-up luck not to go anywhere but around and around in circles. I was born too late to go to the moon and too early to go to Mars. The Rocket man was clearly locked in that NASCAR astronaut category. I went into space and drove around in fuckin' circles.

Shit, I didn't even have to drive in the circles. Earth's gravitational field did that. All I had to do was manage the amplitude of the orbit. Maybe it was fitting that I died in space. Maybe in years to come, school kids would talk about me. Maybe I'd become an urban legend like the man in the moon. I could be the man in orbit.

It was just as well. My life was over anyway. I had nothing to look forward to. My life both professionally and personally had reached a holding pattern. I had gone as far as I could go. Professionally, I would never go to Mars. What would I do? Go into management at NASA? Push pencils and requisitions around? Not Hardly. Maybe become a trainer? They would have to be suicidal to let me. I was born a competitor. So the idea of training people to do what I wanted to do was laughable. I'd probably do whatever it took to make them look bad and make myself look better. I'd be seventy years old and still trying to go to Mars.

The best thing for me would be to retire with Beth and see the world. Only that was out now. Beth had betrayed me. Beth was no longer mine. Maybe that was why I wasn't reacting to this the way everyone expected me to. Maybe without Beth it just all seemed pointless. I remembered the looks Remy and Morgan had given me when I didn't want to go into the station to call Beth. The crack Remy had made about my "hot wife," had been true. For most of my life, I'd had three obsessions; Beth, space and Mustangs. I had several hobbies, but the three things I loved the most were those.

It was unusual on a mission for me not to talk about Beth. But after what I saw on my iPad, I just never wanted to see her again. She could have the Earth; I'd just float around up here until I lost consciousness. I didn't even want revenge. I just wanted the pain to stop. I guess it's like that with everything. If you get hurt a little, you get pissed at whoever hurt you. However, when you get hurt so badly that it's life threatening, revenge takes a backseat to just living and stopping the pain.

"Hey Rocket Man, you're going the wrong way," squawked John Walker. "Dude what you're doing is one of the bravest, most noble things I've ever seen. But it's not the way for you to go out. I've got an idea. So ... you remember my friend, Jim Beam?"

"Yeah," I said tiredly. "He was one of you eggheads. He quit NASA to go to work for some private company involved in space and outlandish stunts and shit, right?"

"Yeah well, I called Jim, and we came up with an outlandish stunt that will either kill you or bring you home," he said.

"I'm listening," I said.

"Good, keep listening," he said. "We've got nothing but time. Do we still have those two spare suits aboard?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"Because your suit is going to run out of air soon, dummy. But you can use them to stay alive long enough for us to get you down," he said. I had thought of that, but it would have only delayed the inevitable. But if there was the possibility of me living I had at least to consider it. So having air might be important.

"How many functioning jets do you have?" he asked. "Our checks from down here have to be wrong. It looks like you only have five of the sixteen nozzles online."

"That is correct," I said.