Orbital

Sixty-One Re-entry

“You ready for you return trip — now that your, um research is finished?” asks Tamara as I enter the command module.

I give her a weak smile. She’s still a little bitter that I didn’t to tell her at the onset what my mission was really about. But I’m sure she’ll get over it.

“I finished loading the interior,” I explain.

I’d placed Ling’s hard-drives and files into the ship as well as his body. As a precaution, I also took the backups of Attwell’s and Cara’s files as well, making a copy of the entire encrypted disk for DARPA to sort through.

Attwell wasn’t too pleased when he saw Tamara and me in his lab making the duplicate, but the email order from his superiors seemed to satisfy him. The loss of Ling and the circumstances seemed to have hit him really hard.

I don’t know if they’ll be able to get any actual communications from Ling if his files are too heavily encrypted. However, the master DARPA log can show time stamps and has a record of IP addresses the DARPA lab transmitter was in contact with. That might not be much, but it can sometimes make a difference.

Tamara straps herself into a workstation in front of a large curved monitor and taps away at a keyboard. The screen fills with an external view of the spacecraft and the cargo airlock below.

The long robot manipulator arm unfolds as the outer door to the airlock slides open, revealing the remainder of the cargo to be carried down.

Colored rectangles form around the crates as the computer identifies the cargo. Another screen shows a floor plan of the trunk and the intended stowage placement.

Tamara presses a button and the arm proceeds to grasp the first box. She floats back and watches the operation.

“That’s it?” I ask.

“What? You think I control the arm to do the loading? What do you think this is, 1985? I’m here to make sure the robot doesn’t screw up. Technically, I can do this from my bunk.”

I watch as the last of the containers I inspected is loaded into the trunk section and the ship’s hatch firmly secured.

“Anything else?” asks Tamara.

“Yeah, can you do a sweep of the exterior of the ship with your robot arm camera?”

“Paranoid about any surprises left by Ling?”

“I prefer to call it cautious.”

She uses the arm to do a slow inspection of the heat shield and the inside of the thruster ducts on the sides of the craft.

Despite her impatience with me, she understands the importance of this and does a thorough job, even using thermal sensors to look for anything out of the ordinary.

“Satisfied?”

“Yes. Thank you. Sorry I couldn’t be up here under different circumstances.”

“Well, I guess it was a good thing after all. You’re not as big of an asshole as I thought you would be.”

“Thanks.”

“Come here,” she embraces me in a hug. “Don’t forget who stole your space cherry.”

I drift down the corridor to the junction that leads to the docking module. Eduard and Alton are waiting there with a plastic container holding the missing canister.

“We found fingerprints on the lid,” says Eduard. He puts on a pair of gloves to open the outer box.

Florescent green prints are scattered around the metal.

“Ling’s?”

“Yes. We matched them against the station records.” He reaches inside and opens the cylinder. “I figure you wanted to check the inside.”

“Thanks. Could you take it out of the box?”

I inspect the outside of the container and its shipping box, as I’ve made it a point to inspect every square inch of the anything going into the ship.

Satisfied, I take the box from them and thank them for their help.

When I get to the lower section where the ship is docked, Samantha is waiting next to the closed hatch. She has a backpack in her hand.

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to have a look.”

She gives me a smug grin. “Sure thing, boss.”

I pull her clothes out and let them float in the air as I search through the pockets. When I look up black thong underwear is drifting a few inches in front of my nose.

Samantha has a satisfied look on her face. I suspect the placement of the items was planned, but I don’t call attention to it. I shove her things back into her bag and hand it to her.

“Here,” she takes a small hard-disk from her pocket and hands it to me. “Cara says there was another backup. Now you can pat me down.”

She turns around in midair and raises her hands above her head. I proceed to give her a brisk search.

“I didn’t think you were actually going to do that,” she replies. “Do I get to return the favor?”

“Then it’s just foreplay.”

I key in the pass code and the hatch to the SSV unlocks.

“Ladies first.”

She takes a hesitant look inside, possibly afraid that Ling’s body would be strapped into a seat upright.

“I stowed everything in the lockers below.”

“Oh. Where should I sit?”

“Customarily human cargo sits in the row of seats behind the pilot, but I’ll make an exception if you promise to be on good behavior.”

“I promise to give you every intention of good behavior.”

“Close enough.”

I close the hatch behind us and drift into the pilot seat. Samantha buckles herself into the spot next to me.

She puts a hand on my thigh and squeezes. “How catastrophic would it be if I distracted the pilot?”

“Well, considering we’re going to be on automatics all the way down, not very, unless something unexpected happens and I have to take control. In that case, very.”

She folds her hands in her lap. “Then I’ll be good.”

I have to use all my concentration to stay focused on the controls and not on the super nova of sexual energy sitting two inches away from me.

I start up my command screen and go through all the pre-flight checks. Samantha watches with interest.

I realize that her flirtatious comments were probably her own way of distracting herself from the anxiety she feels about returning to Earth after her last attempt almost killed her.

I check in with Tamara and get an all clear. A bright green launch button appears on the screen.

“All you do is press that?” asks Samantha.

“Yep.”

“What a job. Some of us have to think for a living.”

“Clearly I’m not qualified for that.”

“Clearly.” She fixes me with an intense gaze and points to her lips. “For luck.”

I give her a quick peck, then tell her, “You’ll be fine.”

“Never say that. That’s what the doctors tell you when you’re going to die.”

“It’s all automatic and remotely controlled from here. Just about everything is now.” I raise a finger over the button.

“What is it?” she asks after noticing that I’m hesitating.

I click the comm off to make sure nobody in the Sagan can hear us.

My pulse is starting to race. “I just realized something.”