Chapter No.8

Margaret and Janet were surprised to see Carl relaxing on the veranda of the NASA housing building drinking a cup of coffee.

"I thought we were going to set up the rocket today," Janet said, squinting in the morning sunlight at him. "You look like you're on an Island vacation."

Carl turned to them and smiled. "Turns out we don't have to build a rocket."

She propped her fists into her hips. "What do you mean? How the hell are we going to get to the space station?"

"Turns out there's a VX-Space Plane in that hanger," he said, pointing to a large building that resembled a giant Quonset hut.

"I didn't know that they had that operational. The last I heard was that it was still being tested."

"It looks operational to me," Carl retorted. "I checked it out and it's ready to fly."

"How convenient!" Margaret quipped.

"Definitely!" he replied. "All we have to do is fuel it up and then run it down that nice runway to takeoff." He pointed to a long runway leading from the hanger. "I think they had prepared it for a test run."

"So, we're going to risk our necks on a space vehicle that has not been tested yet," Margaret said.

"It looks like we'll be doing the test they had planned but didn't get a chance to do."

"When are we doing it?" Janet asked.

"We should be able to take off later today. The weather looks good for a go."

"We don't know how to fly it," she said. "How can you be so certain we can use it to go to the space station?"

"It's all computer controlled. All we have to do is tell it where we want to go."

"Captain Kirk wouldn't be so confident about that," Margaret quipped.

"I think he would," Carl retorted. "He was always ready to go where no man has gone before."

"Very funny!" she replied with a mock frown.

Carl, Margaret and Janet entered the hanger to gawk at the spaceplane. It stood like a giant winged jet plane on two multi-wheeled landing gear assemblies ready to go on a bombing run. Two large rocket engines hung along the sides of an angled tail and the jet engines hung off the  sweptback wings. The cockpit was hidden at the front with only a curved window to reveal its presence.

"This thing looks like something from Star Wars." Janet said. "It's hard to believe that we can fly it into space."

'Actually, it makes sense," Carl said. "It relies on taking off like a plane before using rockets to fly into space. This is what should have been created long ago instead of blasting straight up into the air with giant rockets. Even better, all one must do to return to Earth is fire the rocket engines to slow down enough to enter the atmosphere and then fly back down to the ground."

"What do we need to take with us?" she asked.

"We should take food, water, oxygen, extra clothing and spacesuits, and whatever else you want.

The women turned and headed back to their rooms in the housing complex to gather up clothes and personal items while Carl went to the supply lockers to get spacesuits, food items and water containers. He also made sure that the fuel tanks were full.

They met at the hanger to board the spaceplane, which had an access door under the fuselage near the front. They had to climb up a ladder embedded in the wall of the entrance tube.

The command center was more like that of a jet bomber with seats for six passengers that were designed for high-G. After settling in, Carl fired up the jet engines to move out of the hanger and onto the main runway. After getting aligned with it, he began to rev up the engines to take off, which went better than he had expected. He pulled back on the stick to ascend into a clear blue sky. It was only a few minutes before he had the ship flying at Mach 5. After achieving an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet, he turned off the jet engines and fired the rocket engines, which quickly lifted the ship up out of the atmosphere on a course to the Lunar L2 space station.

When the G-forces abated, Janet and Margaret relaxed while Carl made slight adjustments to the course. He wasn't too sure he had it right, but he relied on the computer to help him.

"How long is this going to take?" Janet asked.

"We should get there in ten hours."

That didn't calm their nerves, but at least they were on their way to the largest space station ever created. However, what they would find there would change everything.

Author's Notes.
The Dream Chaser is a reusable spaceplane that's being developed to fly up to the ISS. I based my idea on that, with some advancements.