Sally's Secret

Chapter 34

The passenger seats on Ridley's shuttle were not as close together as Maria would have liked, but at least the reclining angle was good, or it would be, once they got to a place where gravity mattered again. Maria would have preferred to stand next to John's seat but Ridley didn't like the idea.

"Re-entry into the atmosphere is a rough ride. I need you in a seat with the safety harness on."

Maria lifted the coils of blood-filled tubing and gestured to the nearest seat, which was almost two metres away. "Do you think it's close enough for this to reach?"

She frowned. "I don't know, but let's try. Standing there could get you knocked clear into the engine room and that wouldn't be good for you or John."

True. Maria moved slowly toward the closest passenger seat. It soon became clear that it wouldn't work as it was, but Ridley saw a solution. She swivelled the second seat around 180° so that it was facing the other way. Because each connection was arm to leg, the tubing didn't have to reach as far. The slack was just enough for everything to stay connected. Maria eased into the seat facing the aft end of the ship and buckled in.

"Maybe I should make John fly backwards, since he's out cold," Ridley remarked.

Maria shook her head. "Not worth wasting the time to fix it now. I don't need the scenic tour. Just get us to Atlanta."

Ridley smiled and nodded. "You got it, Doc."

"Oh, I'm not a doctor. Just an LVN."

"Close enough." From the sound of it, Ridley strapped herself into the pilot seat and started flipping toggles.

Maria felt the shuttle disengage from the docking port. She couldn't see out the forward window, but there were some smaller ones on the sides where she could see Thunderbird 5 drifting out of view.

"So, L-V-N Maria," Ridley called back conversationally, "you're going out with one of John's brothers, right? I met Alan once. Is it Alan?"

Was Ridley trying to keep her awake too? "No, not Alan. Virgil." She couldn't help smiling.

"Virgil flies the big green Thunderbird, right?"

"Thunderbird 2, yes."

"Did you know he flew it all the way out to Space Hub 1 once?"

Wait. Virgil could have come to pick them up? Maybe Ridley was just trying to see if she was paying attention. "Really? I didn't think Thunderbird 2 could go into space."

"It was a one-time thing. I heard he had a really rough re-entry and only made it out because he literally refrigerated his hull with some industrial-strength coolant. He's a bit of a legend out here for even trying a stunt like that in a cargo plane. We may have a bit of a bumpy ride today, but we'll be just fine." And no sooner had she said that but the pressure of the atmosphere began to rumble against the shuttle. It was a lot like riding over a bunch of train tracks in a bus with terrible shock absorbers.

Maria considered that she probably should be nervous over this, but she didn't feel it. Maybe it was better to not be looking out the front when the heat shield was doing its thing. She was a lot more concerned about the poison she was sharing with John than whether a shuttle would make it through the atmosphere like thousands of spacecraft did every single day. The drowsiness was wearing off, which she thought was probably a good thing. She looked over at John. Because they faced opposite directions, she could see his face. His eyelids twitched as the jostling got more pronounced, and after a few false starts, his eyes opened. The intensity of his eyes' emerald green colour was a bit of a surprise. Maria had only seen his eyes over holo-projection, where they washed out to nearly brown. His wall portrait wasn't much help either because of the hidden projector lenses and faded pigments. She had known they were green, just not that green.