Sometime around the time I turned twelve or 13, I became a fan of science fiction, particularly stories by Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov. Among my very favorites were many of the stories Heinlein wrote in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, stories that envisioned regular space travel to space stations orbiting Earth and to bases on the moon (invariably called Luna) in the far distant year of 1999.

There is a quaintness to these stories: catapult-assisted rocket launches, seat of the pants flying, and daring heroes. Many of the characters regularly smoked cigarettes! But these stories were also filled with genuine hard science and challenging, adventurous situations. They also rang with optimism about the future and humankind’s relentless drive to see over the next hill, cross the next river, and leap to the nearest planets and stars.

A simple story along those lines had been percolating in my brain when my wife Sherrie (Grandmommy and Mimi to our grandchildren) and I had the opportunity to stay with our grandson Dylan for a few days while his parents were out of town.

One afternoon, Dylan and I were talking on the way home from school. We had just seen Dune: Part 2 the Saturday before. At some point I mentioned that someday I hoped to write a story with him, his brother Jake, and cousins Annabelle and Sawyer in it, maybe a science fiction story. Once home, Dylan had a quick snack and ran upstairs to do homework. I sat down at my laptop intending to work on a novel I was struggling to finish when the first scene in the following story popped into my head.

Scene followed scene, plot point piled up on plot point, all faster than I could make notes. I wrote as if in a fever. It only took a few days to finish the first draft, another week to edit it and polish it up. Then I turned it over to my long-suffering editor, Sherrie. So here it is, my tribute to our wonderful grandchildren, a sci-fi story set in 1999 written from the optimistic viewpoint of 1959.

ESCAPE TO LUNA

Flight Officer Captain Jake Rogers squirmed around to make himself comfortable in the third command seat and sighed. He was bored and more than a little irritated. He was senior to the pilot and co-pilot but had no responsibilities on this lift up to Earth Station II. Unless something should happen to either of them, in which case he would step in as needed. No, he was simply a passenger this morning. And that was the irritating part. Jake had scheduled a hypersonic hop from the Rocky Mountain Spaceport to the Netherlands for a date with a shockingly beautiful blonde flight attendant he had literally bumped into two weeks ago on his Luna Station to Luna City run. That was one of the benefits of space travel in zero-gravity, bumping into beautiful women.

That had all changed when the scheduled rocket jockeys had come down with a hitherto unknow strain of measles and exposed the back-up flight crews. Practically every dang pilot between here and Luna was in quarantine. Jake had had no idea about all of this as he waited, ticket in hand, to board the hypersonic jet, appropriately named Yeager. With a quick glance at Jake’s ticket, the gate agent said, “Captain Rogers, you have an important message. Please step over to the communications console to your right.”

Jake had raised an eyebrow. He was hoping Elke’s plans hadn’t changed. “How important?” he asked.

The agent had leaned forward. “It’s from Space Command, Sir,” he whispered.

Five minutes later, after a terse call with Major Taylor, Jake had taken an air taxi back to his apartment in Colorado Springs, changed into his uniform, and air taxied the ten miles out to the Rocky Mountain Spaceport. Now he sat in the third seat of the Space Command Ship Goddard, right behind the co-pilot between the navigator and the communications officer listening to the ship’s thumps and sighs as the hypergolic liquids used for fuel were loaded into the sleek ship, more airplane than rocket. Measles of all things, he thought, and in 1999!

Jake stared through the front window at the long, curved steel ramp of the catapult glistening in the rays of the morning sun. Space Command, a once uneasy alliance of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, had evolved into a functional amalgam of the two. The main spaceport was outside of Colorado Springs which appeased the Air Force, and the first phase of every launch was via the huge catapult, a giant version over one-half a mile long similar to the ones the Navy used on their aircraft carriers.

Jake had nearly dropped off to sleep when the Goddard began to move. Through half-open eyes, he watched the catapult slide by, then closed them when the rockets kicked in. He lay pressed deeply into his couch relishing the power of the catapult as it slung them up the curved ramp. Just before the end of the catapult, the Goddard’s huge rocket engines kicked in and flung them skyward. If anything went wrong, had the rockets failed to ignite or attain full thrust, the ship would have glided across Kansas for unpowered landing on the ten-mile-long runway built in for that eventuality. It had only been used for an emergency landing once and that had been five years ago.

Jake watched transfixed. No matter how many times he had seen it, the transition from the blue skies of Earth to the black depths of space with the lovely Earth curving below them always moved him. He sighed at the thought of the next few dull days ahead of him. Jake loved taking off and landing the large, sleek ships like the Goddard as well as the Lunar Landers between the Luna Station and Luna City. Anything was preferable to driving the Bus between the earth stations and the Luna Station, but that did not matter. That was what Space Command needed today: a bus driver.

Annabelle Rogers loved her life. In a shockingly few short years her stature in the world of fashion was such that people referred to her by one name only, like Givenchy or Dior or Gucci, with the one notable exception: everyone used her first name - Annabelle. Her talent and her eye for style, which she was sure she had inherited from her mother, extended beyond clothing and into interior design. That was the reason that she was sitting in the Parisienne Lounge on Earth Station-II sipping a mojito. She was on her way to Luna City for a potential very lucrative interior design contract for the new Trans-Luna Hotel currently under construction. The challenge intrigued her. She had never designed anything under a dome much less partially underground like essentially all of Luna’s habitats were.

Despite the fact that several members of her family worked in space, this was Annabelle’s first trip, and she had opted to travel with a smaller than usual entourage and had sent each of them off on one pretext or another unaware that she was booked on an earlier flight than theirs. She looked forward to a calm, stress-free trip to Luna City, sans assistants. She needed the downtime. So now she sat at an empty table in the artificial gravity of the spinning station, sipping a cocktail, and watching the passing parade of station workers, service personnel, space crews, and travelers headed either up or down. As one of her professors at NYU had drummed into her to the point that it became one of her mantras: One never knows where one might find inspiration.

As usual, Annabelle was dressed in one of her own designs, a one-piece, form-fitting, black jumpsuit, its only accent a grosgrain black belt with an understated silver buckle, all of which set off her fair completion, bobbed blonde hair, and her signature red lipstick. Her red flats rather than her usual pumps were a concession to space flight but were still the exact same shade as her lipstick, as was the simple hatband on the broad-brimmed, black straw hat that she used to hide her features.

She took another sip of her mojito and complimented herself on her attempts at anonymity when a familiar voice behind her whispered, “Clever disguise, but most space travelers don’t keep up with the latest issue of Vogue.”

“Jake,” she yelped and turned to see her cousin, resplendent in his Space Command uniform topped by a silverbelly cowboy hat whose brim could not conceal a big grin. Annabelle leapt into Jake’s arms and hugged him fiercely. Jake responded with equal fervor. The two had been born only a little over a year apart and neither could remember a time when they had not known the other. Their fathers were twins and the two families had vacationed together and spent holidays together with grandparents, they had played cutthroat free-for-all board games, and they had howled together on hilarious family performances on karaoke nights.

“What are you doing here, Jake? I had hoped to see you, but I thought you were off duty.”

“I was. Until the scheduled flight crew on the trans-lunar run came down with the measles of all things. I hitched a ride on the Goddard to take the pilot’s place. What about you?”

“Oh, I’m headed to Luna City for a possible contract.”

“Well, then I’ll be your pilot on Lunar Transport Vehicle II out to Luna Station.”

“Wonderful! I haven’t flown with you since you smuggled me aboard one of your training flights from Mega-New York to Paris. That Space Command coverall you forced me to wear was the most atrocious thing I’ve put on in the last ten years.”

Jake’s laugh erupted in a raucous bray. “Worked though, didn’t it?” he asked. “Was it worth it?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “You were right. Nothing prepared me for the sight of the immense curve of the Earth and the blackness of space. Did you get in trouble for that?”

“Are you kidding? You were simply another crewman deadheading to Paris. You?”

“Not until I wanted to return to Mega-New York. Visa control had no record of my arrival in France. Fortunately, I have friends in high places.”

Both erupted in laughter. “I’ll bet you do,” Jake added.

A two-tone chime echoed through the space station.

Jake glanced up at the speaker in the ceiling, shrugged. “Time for me to head up to the ship. Preflight stuff, you know.”

“Mind if I come with?” Annabelle asked.

“Of course not. Come along. Might be a bit boring.”

They walked arm in arm along the curved deck of the enormous centrifuge that constituted ES-II. Using his access, they took one of the crew lifts to the central hub. As they climbed, gravity diminished until at the hub it essentially disappeared. Annabelle pulled a discreet, retractable chinstrap from one side of her hat and under her chin, attaching it magnetically to the other side.

“Clever.” Jake chuckled.

“I thought you were always the one that said, ‘Be Prepared.’”

 They were still laughing as they pulled themselves hand over hand toward the docking tube. They were just passing a window when Annabelle paused. “Is that our ship?” she asked, eyes wide as she pointed to an ungainly mass of tanks and cargo compartments of various shapes and sizes apparently randomly attached to a metal framework. At one end was the large bell of the rocket engine, at the other where the docking tube was attached was what appeared to be a short, stubby airliner with no wings or tail.

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Why, it is simply horrid!”

“It’s beautiful in its own way,” Jake replied defensively. “Up here form follows function. LTV-II will never enter an atmosphere or land on a planet. No need for aerodynamics.”

“You hear about these ships and see pictures of them. But really!”

“Now you know why we call them boxcars. The part you’ll be riding in is called the Bus.”

“Really. The Bus?”

“Officially, she’s Lunar Transport Vehicle Skylark, named after a ship in some old sci-fi stories. We just call her LTV-II. Regardless, I think you’ll find your accommodations much, much nicer than a bus. Come on.”

“What are all those other things floating around out there?” Annabelle asked.

“Cargo containers connected to ES-II by tether until they get loaded on an LTV. Come on. Let’s go to the ship.”

They swam through the docking tube and in through the hatch between the bridge and passenger seating. Flight attendants in Velcro slippers that held them to the floor were preparing for departure, and Jake was correct: the first class compared favorably with first class on any hypersonic airliner.

“This way to the bridge,” Jake said and floated to the right.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll wonder why you’re bringing a woman onto the bridge?” she asked.

“Nah. They’ll just think I picked up another hot babe on ES-II. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

She punched him in the shoulder even as she appreciated the compliment. That one small action caused her to tumble backward in zero-G. Jake caught her and pulled her onto the bridge with him. There was already an officer at one of the consoles. He was young and sandy-haired and was having a hard time keeping his eyes off of her. Still, he managed to blurt out, “Good morning, Captain Rogers.”

“Morning, Mr. Thompson. This is my friend Annabelle.”

“Good morning, Ma’am,” the young man said.

Annabelle shot a look from Thompson to Jake. “Ma’am! Do I look that old?” she exclaimed in mock indignation.

Thompson’s face turned beet red and all he could do was sputter.

Jake jumped to his defense. “He’s a junior officer, Annabelle. Everyone is ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am” to him.”

“Well, in that case,” she said and smiled at the embarrassed ensign, “maybe you can tell me what you do here.”

Regaining himself, Ensign Thompson began sharing with her all he knew about celestial navigation.