When the space shuttle Atlantis hit the runway just as the sun hit the horizon at the Kennedy Space Center, no one at NASA knew just how historic its final flight would be. The commander of the mission, Captain Christopher Ferguson, radioed Mission complete, Houston as the giant spacecraft rolled to a stop.
The ground crew swarmed over the spacecraft, venting the last of its propellant, and helping the three crew members out of their flight couches and into the bus to be rolled to the Space Center complex.
It was a bittersweet occasion, the end of the space shuttle program, and everyone spoke in hushed and respectful tones.
Until, that it, one of the green-shirted ground crew opened the door from the cockpit into the shuttle’s immense cargo bay. At first, in the dim light, he wasn’t sure of what he was seeing. Turning on his immense flashlight, hanging from its shoulder strap, however, revealed something he had never imagined seeing; something, in the old phrase, ‘not of this Earth’.
“Control, ah, we gotta problem.”
“Jones?”
“Yes, sir, in the cargo bay. There’s something in here.”
“Jones, you been drinking again?”
“No, sir, gave it up. But, after this, I may start again.”
“Jones, what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s, ah, it’s a spacecraft.”
“Jones, the whole damn thing is a spacecraft.”
“Yes, sir, but this is one we didn’t launch originally.”
There was a long silence, then Control finally answered: “Ah, Jones, you mean there’s a Russian craft in the bay?”
“No.”
“Whose, then?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll ask.”
“Ask who?”
Jones sighed. “Those little green men.”
“Little green men? Jones, are you sure you’re not drunk?”
“I didn’t want them to be little and green, but they are.”
“Bring them out. We’ll talk.”
21 July 2011
Fiction, hot off the keyboard
Rico says he entered the Flash Fiction Challenge at Writing.com; it had to be new and less than three hundred words, so he did something topical:
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