Sapphire Star

Chapter 12 Barbecue

Somehow after everything that was said we pulled ourselves back to reality, back from out of the stars in heaven. We put on our headsets. "All right I said. Now's the moment of truth," as I punched in the auto home destination to the navigator. I watched the command line interface readout on the Navigation relay.

---> C:\Users\qqbir>adb shell---> sailfish:/ $ cmd overlay list

---> com.aoi.documentsui

---> com.substratum.Auto_generatted_rro_

---> Preset: "Home" Destination---> Lat City Degree ±0.0001°

---> !43.8041 ¡gravity_falls¡ !43.8041° N¡ !120.5542° W¡

The nav computer punched in the destination feeding the relay to the ship's computer. This time I noticed the fourth line in the Alien symbols had changed! Then I heard the gravitic drive begin to actuate with a building electromagnetic hum. I grabbed Pacifica's hand and I began to feel the world stretch out behind me and before me, I turned to speak to Pacifica but when I spoke the words were distorted as even audible waves could not escape relativity. The feeling was scary and thrilling like nothing I had ever felt before traveling like this. Then I heard the pop and the world was back in focus as the ship was coming into the airspace over the shack. I heard as the headset crackled in making a connection. "...alling to ship do you read me over." I spoke into the mic on my headset "Grunkle Ford this is Dipper Pines we read you five by five can you hear us?" "Thank heavens your all right, STANLEY," he yelled, "they're ok its all right. We thought something might have happened." Then I said, " Well, it sort of did." Grunkle Ford continued, "We can debrief you on the ground." "Understood, over and out," I responded.

Pacifica landed the craft with deft skill only having to adjust pitch for overcompensation once. "Not bad for a first landing rookie," I said grinning at her. She smiled shaking her golden blonde hair out of her eyes. After removing the purple crystalline hexagonal ignition key we popped the overhead top with a vacuum hiss and stepped down the handholds jumping the last few to the ground. I could see from here Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan running across the lawn. We walked towards them.

"Are you guys ok, is everything all right? Grunkle Ford asked. "We're just fine," I said. "Just fine!?!" Grunkle Stan said looking angry. "You scared the living daylights out of us. Do you have any idea how hard it would be for me to have to tell your mother and father if anything ever happened to either of you two!?" "I'm sorry Grunkle Stan," I said. "I'm sorry Mr. Pines," said Pacifica. Grunkle Stan reached forward and hugged me. He reached over and pulled Pacifica in. "You to kiddo," he said with gruff emotion. "Your safe, that's all that matters." I hugged Grunkle Stan fighting back the tears threatening my eyes. "We didn't mean to scare you," I said choking back emotion. "So what happened," asked Ford after a respectful amount of time?

"We accidentally punched the throttle all the way forward," I said. Grunkle Ford's eyes popped. "How far away did you end up??" he asked. I replied, "judging by the astral bodies around I want to say we were somewhere out around Mars orbit, but Mars was not in orbit there at the time. It was probably somewhere around the apogee point right now. I could see the Earth was a tiny blue ball and I could see the asteroid belt in the far off distance behind us." Grunkle Ford was speechless. How did you get back?" he asked. "The nav computer," I said. "It worked!"

We told him about everything else and how beautiful outer space was. I told him how brilliant a pilot Pacifica had become in such a short time. We walked inside and sat down on the couch. Grunkle Stan grabbed us each a Pitt cola, and one for Grunkle Ford and himself. As Mabel came in she jumped on the couch next to us. "So how was rocket man?" she asked. Grunkle Stan looked at me and Pacifica and said "I think it's gonna be a long long time till touchdown brings them flying that ship down again." He said winking at me. I grinned sheepishly.