Joey was the first to wake up. He looked out the window and saw the approaching planet. He was in awe of its colors and patterns. After a mesmerizing moment, Joey came to realize that it wasn't Earth. He quickly shook Tony and Jae awake.
"Hey, we got off course somehow!" Joey said.
"Huh?" Tony yawned.
"How the hell are we about to land on Jupiter?!" Jae exclaimed.
"Jupiter?!" Tony asked, "how'd we get this far?!"
Joey was checking the transmitter and couldn't get in touch with mission control because they were way too far, "we are 391 million miles away from earth. On top of that, we've been asleep for a solid 600 days. Roughly a year and 235 days. Or a year, 8 months, and 5 days."
"How is that possible?" Tony asked.
"So it's right about May 16, 1957. Almost two years have passed since we went to space and we hibernated for most of that time," Jae said, "I wonder what's going on earth."
Meanwhile on earth, Stella was holding her baby as she sat in the mission control room with John.
"Please try one more time, John," Stella pleaded.
John sighed and sent out a signal a few more times, "it's almost been 2 years. We lost them."
"We don't know that," Stella said, "I believe in them."
Back in space, the three astronauts were trying to get off of the gas giant. As they were being consumed by the gas clouds of the planet, the further they got, they began to notice it was raining. But the rain wasn't normal. It was clear with a neon lining. Suddenly the rocket was being lifted back up and out of the planet enough for them to fly out of its orbit and in the direction of earth.
"Helium rain on Jupiter," Jae said as she wrote notes down.
"A sheer miracle," Tony said.
"Guys, we need to go back to sleep," Joey said as he was checking their supplies.
"Why?" Tony asked.
"We need to conserve what oxygen we have left. If it took us to get here in 600 days, it would take that much longer or more to get back to earth," Joey said.
The three agreed and went back to sleep to conserve oxygen.
YOU ARE READING
Fly Me to the Moon
Ciencia Ficción(Any and all events except for one is a work of fiction, clearly! Discretion is Advised!) It's 1955 and the start of the Space Race. A college grad, a convict mechanic, and a young prodigy are chosen to go to the moon. What will happen when this rag...
