Shanghaied to the Moon by Daley Michael J

Author:Daley, Michael J. [Daley, Michael J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781497638303
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

13

MISSION TIMS

T plus 14:38:13

A sound, fluttery, like bat’s wings. Reflexively, my hand moves to protect my face. I turn my head away from the floating mural of medals toward the sound.

Can’t be a bat in here!

Something wrong? Something ticking?

Flut flut flut flut flut.

The sound comes from the opposite corner, near the far edge of the lockers, at deck level. I take in a slow breath. It’s only the book, the one that was sandwiched between the medals. It’s wedged in an air vent. The blowing air is flipping the pages.

Could it be his journal? Maybe it can tell me what happened to bring Val so low. I sure never read anything about it in the official history put out by the fan club.

I kick off and quickly fly across middeck to the vent. I stick a finger between the pages. Warm air puffs along my forearm. Hooking a floor strap with my foot, I settle into the bubble of warmth near the vent. I smooth the flat of my hand over the page. It’s paper! And handwritten! The script is tiny, neat with a spiky edge. The pages are filled with dates and stellar coordinates with an occasional note. It’s a log.

May 8, 2153 001 234 999 range sphere B—nothing

May 30, 2153 857 000 419 range sphere W—nothing

Some kind of search, getting nowhere. I flip the page. The only large block of text immediately draws my eye.

July 19, 2153 Bad night. Endless dreams. I relive the preflight walk down. Every bolt, every circuit board, every line of code. What did we miss? I’ll go mad! Maybe you already have …

Flip.

Fight fight fight, all day, stupid HOOP scope bureaucrats. Finally convinced them to search quadrant seven. Don’t know how much longer they’ll be bullied …

August 4, 2153 quadrant seven—nothing

August 5, 2153 quadrant seven—nothing

Pages filled with that, day by day, until …

November 1, 2153 HOOPscope’s pulled from search and rescue. Midnight. On the beach. Looking to Cassiopeia. Wondering, where are you? Is the ship holding together? Are you? Beaming love and strength your way, Val.

It isn’t his log. It’s someone else’s, but whose? I hold my place with my finger and turn to the cover. There’s no title, no author, just a #5. What’s that mean? Slipping my finger out, I open to the first page. A letter on different-colored paper is taped to the inside cover:

Dearest Val,

It’s three years since the Valadium Thruster went missing during the Saturn Whip maneuver. Nobody has been able to figure out what went wrong, or if you even survived, and if you did, exactly where the ship might be right now. Certainly, it was no ordinary disaster that ripped the Valadium Thruster from its planned course to Pluto.

This journal is a record of my faith; in our ship, in you. The past three years have yielded enough clues to keep that faith alive. We’ve glimpsed the ship. We BELIEVE you’re alive in it. This details our efforts planetside. We can only guess at the dimensions of your ordeal out there.

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