Chapter 4

Enedelia did as she was told, observing Kirk as he was double checking his own straps. She felt a bit of excitement. “What should I expect?” she asked.

“One minute and ten seconds of thrust, and then one minute and ten seconds of a sensation of falling,” Kirk 23 said. “It should be perfectly safe, provided, of course, everything has remained constant, and the data I have is correct, and…”

“What happens if something is wrong?” Enedelia asked.

“It depends on the severity of the discrepancy,” Kirk 23 said.

“Worst case scenario?” Enedelia asked.

“You want to know my worst case scenario, or your worse case scenario?” Kirk 23 asked

Enedelia didn’t know how to respond to that, but by the time she figured out what she wanted to ask, there came a build up of noise, like a generator on overload, drowning everything else out. It was so loud that talking to Kirk would have been useless. She couldn’t hear herself think, much less hear herself shout over the din. Then suddenly, the stars on the screen, which had been there for her benefit only, streaked across the screen becoming solid white lines, twirling to make circles, like a time lapsed photo from a stationary telescope. At first, she felt a bit of vertigo, but she focused on the streaking stars which swirled giving a tunnel effect. The screen itself filled with more and more white streaks until the screen was completely white with light. Enedelia was pushed back into her seat, as if she were in a car accelerating at a tremendous rate of speed, and it’s exactly what she had imagined the astronauts experience when they get launched into space. She felt the vibration through her seat, and could smell ozone in the air, the scent she would have usually associated with a summer rain. A minute and ten seconds seemed like an eternity, but she managed to look at her watch, gauging how much longer this experience would continue. The vibration grew stronger until, at the height of one minute and ten seconds, all sensation of thrust stopped. There was an intense, melodic noise that faded to an awkward silence, like an orchestra coming to an agreement on one note after a piano crashed from being dropped from a very high building. The screen glowed in patches of colors like an old disco light from the sixties that would alter its patterns with the tempo of the music. For just a moment, all sense of motion ceased, and if it weren’t for the harness Enedelia felt certain she would have flown across the room.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.

Enedelia felt the ship’s orientation change, or so she assumed, partly because she fell forward in the seat slightly, and to the right. The only thing that kept her from flying forward was the seatbelt, which dug into her body. She noticed Kirk 23 was whistling a song, not concerned at all, but her body began reminding her of what happens to objects that fall. They go splat. She was very concerned about going splat, but no matter what thoughts she came up with to convince her body she wasn’t about to go splat, it all came back home to that one word. Splat. She always imagined the worse. Like a giant trash bag full of vegetable soup, dropped from the top of the Sears building in Chicago, going splat. Of course, that would probably hit before a minute and ten seconds were up, so her splat would, no doubt, be much more spectacular to witness. She had a strong desire to be home. Maybe even a pounding from her brother would be better than going splat.

They dropped into normal space, and after a moment of vertigo gravity returned to normal, and she felt surprisingly fine. Kirk 23’s song came to an end.

“Exactly two minutes, twenty seconds. Perfect. I am in touch with space traffic control. We should be docked in about twenty five minutes,” Kirk 23 said. “Let me be the first to welcome you to Indigo Space Center. Almost everything you want to find can be found right here. It may be only the fifth busiest space traffic port in all the Known Galaxy, but I have found it’s certainly the friendliest.”

There was indeed a space station on the screen. Enedelia couldn’t discern if it was a large space station, or a small station, since it was the first station she had ever seen, but based on Kirk 23’s statement, she assumed it was large. She identified various ships coming and going, and the light reflecting off a thousand objects just beyond the station. The bulk of the station seemed to be cylindrical in nature, which acted as an axis for five rings, and it looked like two more rings were in the process of being constructed. They were approaching the top end of the cylinder part of the station, which flared out like one of those screws that set flush in the wall.

The most noticeable feature of the back ground was the nebula. It was as if a painter had splashed various colors of blue against the night sky, and then illuminated it from with-in and with-out. There were places where stars burned through the haze, and other places where the nebulous clouds were so thick and dark it looked like it might rain. Every now and then there were flashes of light, as if lightening was occurring, and once she actually caught glimpse of a clear lightening path as it spider webbed across a lobe of the nebula. Parts of the nebula spread out like pseudo pods, as if the nebula were an amoeba that was reaching for something to eat.

Something nearby flashed, catching her attention. Beyond the space station, but much nearer than the nebula, was a series of objects. The nebula was so far away that it almost looked flat, as if painted on the canvas, while the closer objects had more three dimensional appearances. Some of them were lit by station lights, some of them had small beacon lights that flashed, while others had a slight internal glow. There appeared to be lines upon lines of these barrel-like objects that would comprise a cube if you were to draw a line connecting each one.

“What are those? Spaceships waiting to dock?” she asked.

Kirk 23 looked to where she indicated. “Oh, no. Those are storage containers. Some of them are shipments waiting to be moved to other destinations, some of them contain property, probably belonging to people on the station that couldn’t afford a big enough flat to house them and their stuff. Toxic waste capsules. I suppose some of them might even be prison pods. Yeah, the ones with the internal glows are most likely indications of internal life support, prison cells, or simply low cost housing, which is no different than a prison. Sometimes the Grays are forced to live off station, so they could be housing for Grays. Mostly its cargo. That’s a great thing about space stations, especially outside of a star system. Practically unlimited growth potential. This is about as civilized as you’ll find, I assure you. You’re going to like it here. I just know it.”