-Look what I found in the depths of my hard disks! Hope you enjoy it :D-
"Where is Kitty?" asked Dudley nervously. He was running out of time and his last wish was talking to her before the inevitable would happen.
"She´ll be here soon, Commander." Mission control tried to calm him down. "By the way, do you think you can repair the transmission module in front of you? So we could have a constant video link to you?"
"Hm… I think I have an idea. Give me a few minutes." Dudley opened the metal cover under the camera lens. With a firm grip he ripped the camera out of its fixing. Then he took the little camcorder which served him well and opened the plastic cover.
He took a few wires out of it and connected it with the wires which protrude out of the hole which was covered by an iron cover before he removed it. Finally he put the camera carefully into the hole and switched it on.
A surprised "Ah!" followed by a shocked "Oh!" sounded from the speakers. The first time since the connection broke off mission control and also the others saw Dudley. And he wasn´t a nice view. He looked overtired with bloodshot eyes and eye circles that hung to his knees. But the most terrible view was Dudley´s left hand which had a big red hole in it.
"Sweety, what happened?!" Called Peg so loudly that it was audible even though she didn´t speak into the microphone.
"Meteorites… these little things are worse than bullets! I had to cauterize the wound. I can tell you that hurts like hell." Dudley looked a bit tortured as he remembered how he heated a piece of metal to ram it into his bleeding wound. The hissing and the steam of the evaporated blood were memories he really liked to forget.
"Commander!" the voice off mission control torn him out of these disgusting thoughts. "We´re receiving very strange energy signatures from the sensor array in front of the shuttle. Can you see something there?"
Dudley looked confused through the big window pane. Lightings flashed on the tip of the shuttle. The peculiar thing was that the lightnings seemed to come from the back of the shuttle.
"What the heck is that?" thought Dudley out loud. "Let´s see…" He keyed some commands into the computer and called up the diagnosis program.
Immediately a red warning flashed up on the screen.
"Oh… crap." He cursed.
"What?"
"I have some kind of energy drawdown in the reactor… I think I see now where the energy is going."
"That isn´t good! Wait…" a quiet mumbling came from the speakers which suddenly stopped abruptly. "Okay… I just did some calculations and if I´m right you just have 120 seconds left before your engines shut down."
"Damn… I could have thought of something." Meant Dudley calm. "What causes the drawdown?"
"I suppose there is a short circuit in the reactor because it´s overheated. Maybe some conductive parts stretched because of the heat. Commander, you have to cool the reactor down somehow! Use the liquid nitrogen of the environment system!"
Dudley didn´t hesitate and searched for a container in which he could transport the 77 Kelvin cold fluid. As he hovered with a thermos can to the covering behind which the environment system. He moved it away and revealed a little pool full of steaming nitrogen. With the courage of desperation he reached with the full can into the pool.
The extreme cold brunt for a few seconds on Dudley´s skin. Then his hand became numb. As he pulled it out of the steam he knew why. His left hand was frozen, it looked like blue ice.
Dudley flew to the reactor, he just had 45 seconds left. In this time he had to reach the reactor, find the spot with the greatest heat and pour it over it.
Reaching the reactor was not a big deal but finding the spot was another problem. The reactor wasn´t big. A circa one cubic meter big box with many furiously blinking lights on it. Knowing that pushing any of these buttons wouldn´t have any use Dudley eyed the outer of the reactor closely. Until he saw it.
The main energy cable melted and was now somehow connected to the shuttles hull. The metal was still hot and glowing. Dudley grabbed the cable on its insulation and was able to pull it easily of the wall. He reconnected the cable and poured the fluid nitrogen over it.
"I hope that´ll be enough." Sighed Dudley as he pushed himself off to fly back to his seat.
"Good work, Commander." Called mission control from the speaker. "All energy levels are back to normal."
"So how much time is left?" said Dudley as he ripped the thermos can out of his left hand. Three of his fingers broke of his still frozen hand and fell to the ground.
"Uhm… that was disgusting." Commented mission control the falling fingers.
"I asked you how much time is left!" repeated Dudley angry.
"Yeah, it´s okay. 30 minutes I think."
"Good" panted Dudley released. "I hope that´s enough time to talk to Kitty."
Two months earlier.
Dudley was excited. Just yesterday the audience decided that it was him who would be on the shuttle. To be honest, that wasn´t really surprising after Dudley´s little speech in the capsule. The two others didn´t dare to do anything that could arise his anger.
Miss Petropolis even quit earlier from the show and went to the Petropolis collage. Dudley was pretty happy about that because of two facts. Fact one was that there was one competitor less and fact two was that he, even if it wasn´t his intention, reached something speech. Miss Petropolis really rethought her life.
But all that didn´t excite him right now. It was the fact that he would meet the crew of mission control in a few minutes. The guys that control the whole flight and help him to make his dream come true. Without knowing them Dudley already knew that he would perfectly get along with these guys.
He expected that they would be a bit like him, star fanatics with a kid´s capacity for enthusiasm.
"Well Mr. Puppy." Began the tall warthog in his green military uniform. "That was the whole center. Or how you can call it for the next 60 days, your home. Behind this door is the mission control room. Go in there and meet the guys that will bring you up into space."
"Don´t you come with me?" asked Dudley as the warthog wanted to go.
"In there? Are you nuts?! These guys are too strange. Wild horses couldn´t drag me in there if it isn´t necessary." And with these words the guy cleared off. Dudley, now a bit unsure what he would find there, opened the door and entered the wide half circle formed room.
Everywhere stood computers or strange devices he had never seen. To his surprise the room was empty, just three guys, an owl, a cat and a shrew, stood in the middle of it in NASA T-shirts. They were laughing as Dudley stepped closer to hear what they say.
"Some knives are sharper than others" meant the shrew.
"Yes, and metal is a good conductor." Added the owl.
"Schrödinger had no idea from where he had the idea for his legendary equation." Laughed the cat.
"Well I´m bad at skiing" admitted the shrew.
"Uhm excuse me…" Dudley was a bit confused. The things about they talked had no common context.
"Oh, hey." All three greeted in unison.
"Yeah, hey… First question, what was that?"
"What… ah you mean our conversation. Well we´re playing and association game." The cat explained fast.
"A what?" replied Dudley even more perplex.
"It´s easy. I´ll explain it to you. For example what we just said. Drew her." The cat pointed at the shrew "said something about knives. Knives are made from metal. So Tim here." He pointed at the owl. "Said that metal is a good conductor. Mostly electrons were conducted so I began with the Schrödinger equation. An equation which Schrödinger has written while he was together with his affair in a cabin in the mountains. So Drew…"
"I think I got it." Intervened Dudley before the cat would lose itself in further explanations.
"Okay then let´s try something. The moon shines so bright tonight."
Dudley thought for a few seconds and answered then with. "The eagle has been landed."
"Not bad for the first time." Giggled the cat amused. "By the way, my name is Bill."
"Nice to meet you Bill, my name is Dudley."
"Oh, so you´re the guy we´re going to send up?"
"Seems so."
"Well I have to say, and also for my both friends here, we´re big fans of you. How you handled this Eric and Miss Petropolis in that capsule… Awesome. I even have the clip on my smartphone." Bill pulled his smartphone out and pressed on a little file called 'The moment'.
He searched for a certain part of the clip and showed it to him.
"Here look at Eric´s face when you end your speech." It was still strange for Dudley to see and hear himself on tapes. He watched himself holding his speech and looked in the moment at Eric´s face. His eyes suddenly became empty and his whole expression turned from happy to devastated.
That was the first Dudley had seen the clip with his eyes on Eric and the first time he realized the whole impact of his words.
"This brief moment when something in him dies… I live for that." Bill put his smartphone grinning away while Dudley still stared at the place where it just was.
Finally he understood about what Kitty talked back then. That wasn´t him. That was someone else, someone evil. A person that liked to hurt people. Or maybe a part of him that slumbers deep inside of him and waits to be released.
"I..I.. think about that later." Thought Dudley and tried to get out of these dark thoughts by asking Bill something. "Is it always so empty here?"
"No usually not. But the whole team except the communication officers got a free day today."
"So you three are…"
"Yes. The communication officers." Completed Bill. "We are the guys that maintain contact between you and mission control. We recently had some problems with the new KCom-8. But it should be done by now… I hope."
"And why does it need three guy to communicate with me?" The question sounded a bit provocative but Bill answered calmly.
"Because that thing is damn complicated. We need 20 of the world´s best engineers to install that thing. So you can imagine how difficult it is to use that thing."
"Hm… that´s sounds plausible." Admitted Dudley nodding.
"I know." Bill took a look at his watch. "Oh, 9pm. You should maybe think about going to bed now."
"What, already? But I´m not tired."
"Your training begins tomorrow at 4:30am. You should get some sleep."
"Okay" sighed Dudley. "But we´ll see each other tomorrow, right?"
"Dude, you´ll see us the next 60 days. You´ll see us so much that you´ll hate our faces soon." Laughed Bill and patted Dudley´s shoulder. "Good luck Commander."
-Oh and before I forget it, special thanks to HiddenWolf97 for helping me finding a better summary for this story. Thanks, man ;D-
