Mongoose Among Us...

DELAYED AND CONFUSED

The rungs of a step ladder presented itself in front of me. The ladder was surrounded by a thick tarp held up by wooden support beams (this was to give us privacy from the audience's eyes when we enter the ship). I swallowed hard before I started climbing the steps. This was it, I thought to myself. There was no turning back now. I climbed the last step of the ladder and up onto a steel platform. There was a hallway in front of me; a hallway that led you into the cafeteria of the ship.

I took my helmet off and walked towards the cafeteria. At that moment I realized that I hadn't noticed the rest of the crew since I went to put my suit on. Everyone must've already been in there, or I would be the first to arrive. I guess it didn't matter, but I hoped I wasn't last.

I heard the chattering of voices before I reached the cafeteria. When I walked in, I saw the six other crewmates. I was last.

"This is ridiculous," I heard Madison say.

"No kidding," Aubrey replied.

"It's not that big of a deal," Sophia said.

"Not that big of a deal?" Sira started, "I signed up for a seven-man, two-year trip to Saturn and a one-year trip back! Not whatever this is!"

"What's going on?" I practically shouted. Everyone stopped talking and looked at me. Madison began to say something but was quickly interrupted by another voice.

"If you all are going to be pissy, I won't let this ship fly an inch in the air!" I hadn't noticed the three men standing beside a table across the room. The one who spoke wore a pilot's uniform. He was shorter than the other two and seemed about our age. He had short blonde hair and brown eyes as well as a scruffy chin. The man to his left seemed older than us, with round glasses and graying hair. He was also carrying a tall stack of folders. The man to the right was taller than the other two, with floppy brown hair and green eyes. He was much more muscular than everyone here, too. I locked eyes with him and he winked. He winked. At me.

Before I could even react, the man in the middle started talking again, "Alright everybody listen up. I know that you all think that us coming with you is the end of the world, but it's either us or delaying this little adventure of yours," he cleared his throat and started talking again, "Some of you have heard rumors about why this is, so I've decided to clear it up for you. This morning one of the scientists here predicted that a large mass of rock would interfere with the ship's course. The executives at Space Z didn't want to take any chances with this ship getting wrecked, so they sent us to tag along to make sure everything goes well."

"That's what the people down on the ground are supposed to do. Not you," John David interjected. He's not wrong. Space Z told us that there would be people in the space station monitoring our flight constantly so that we would be perfectly safe while we were in hyper-sleep.

"There could very well be other things surrounding this rock mass, and the people in the station may not be able to avoid these things," the pilot answered. "Which is why we will spend an extra 5 months traveling to our destination."

Another 5 months? I thought. Something about this whole situation didn't sit right with me. Extra traveling time because of a rock? Not to mention the last-minute crewmates. There had to be more that they weren't telling us, more information that Space Z was keeping from us.

The pilot started again, "Do you all under-"

"What are you not telling us?" I blurted out.

"I told you everything they told me."

"I don't believe you."

The pilot narrowed his eyes at me, "I don't care what you do and do not believe. From here on out I am in charge of this ship. If you don't believe that you can look at the documents right here," he said aggressively. The room got silent after that and everyone took a seat at one of the tables. Everyone decided to swallow their egos long enough to wait for whatever information we still had to receive.