First flight:

Author's note on history: It has long been my theory that the world of Thunderbirds, though having the same history as our world up to 1965 could have an entirely different one from that point on. What I have put below is purely my own idea, and not canon, but at least it does give one possible explanation for Kyrano's statement in 'Trapped in the sky', that Jeff was 'one of the world's first men to land on the Moon'.

My thanks to Kaeera for the German lesson.

John

T-minus 30 minutes and counting…

The hatch shuts with a clang. I am sitting next to it and turn to see the technician give a thumbs up through the small porthole before he leaves. I manage a what I hope is a cheery smile in return. This is no simulation, no test. There will be no climbing out of here in a couple of hours to stretch our cramped legs and take the elevator back down to the ground to discuss things over a cup of coffee in the staff canteen.

How long have I been waiting for this moment? A year's training at NASA, three years at Harvard before that studying laser communications, all the years through college and school, right back to standing beside Dad in the back yard of our Kansas home, looking up at the stars as he named them for me. A long time.

T-minus 25 minutes and counting…

I turn and look the other way. Alison, sitting beside me, is the only other space virgin on this trip. She gives me a tight smile in return. The other four members of the crew have all made at least one flight before. Paul, our Flight Commander, is talking in quiet tones with Mission control. Co-pilot Sam is busy checking some instrument readings and the other two crew members who like Alison and myself, are destined for duties on the space station, look relaxed, almost bored if anything.

Their calm is reassuring. I can't help but be aware that we are sitting on top of enough explosive material to destroy a small town. I know NASA has a good safety record, but am also conscious that only a mile from here is the launchpad where my brother Virgil's namesake was killed, way back in the mid twentieth century. That accident put paid to the Apollo project, then by the time the United States was ready to try for the moon again the Cold War had ended, reducing the need to get there for purely jingoistic reasons. The upshot was that when men did finally reach the moon in 2038, one of those men was my father.

T-minus 20 minutes and counting…

Dad is down in the visitor area now, watching. I spoke to him on the phone this morning. He wouldn't have missed this launch for the world. I know he is proud of me, of what I have achieved. Having a famous astronaut for a father hasn't really helped me – in fact I think I have had to work doubly hard to demonstrate to everyone that I have earned my place on my own merits, not just because my father in on first name terms with most of the NASA top brass.

T-minus 15 minutes and counting…

I take another look out of the window. The rocket and its gantry cast a long shadow over the ground. Take-off was delayed for a couple of hours by strong winds, but by late afternoon these had dropped and we were given the go-ahead. This means the space station will be in the Earth's shadow by the time we catch up with it, but the pilots have trained for this and do not consider it a problem.

T-minus 10 minutes and counting…

I'm looking forward to my month in space. I'm there because of my expertise in communications, but I'm hoping to be able to use some of the astronomy equipment while I'm there for my own enjoyment. The long term aim of the station of course is to see how crews function together in space, as preparation for long voyages to Mars and other parts of the solar system.

I remember once reading the journal of Captain James Cook, written when he was exploring the unknown waters of the Pacific Ocean in the late eighteenth century. (I sometimes wonder if he visited Tracy Island on his travels, and what he thought of it.) Cook wrote 'I had the ambition to go not only further than any other man had been, but as far as it was possible for man to go'. Yes, Captain, you'd have wanted a seat on that Mars trip, wouldn't you? In a way, he was braver than all of us, setting off into the unknown, no way of contacting home, no knowledge of what he would find. For all he knew there could have been fantastic creatures waiting for him on these strange lands, every bit as exotic as the multi-tentacled bug-eyed monsters so popular with the sci-fi pulps.

T-minus 5 minutes and counting…

Of course, no-one else on this mission knows that I have a secret agenda – to check out ideas of space station design for Dad's planned rescue organisation. Hopefully any tips I pick up about living in space can be incorporated in the design of our own station.

The countdown reaches the final minute and begins counting off the seconds. The voice of the announcer is lost in the last ten seconds as the rockets ignite with a roar. I feel the ship tremble beneath me as it balances for a few seconds on a column of fire before starting to rise. I feel myself being pushed back into my seat, the noise of the engines now so loud that it is felt rather than heard. Apart from the fact that we have just passed the control tower there is little sense of movement, except when we break through the cloud layer and back into the last rays of the setting sun. The G force is increasing now 3Gs, 4, then it stabilises at 4.5. I feel it as a heavy weight pushing on my chest. It's bearable – we were taken up to 6Gs in our centrifuge training – but I'm glad it won't be going on for too long. Suddenly the noise and the pressure cease and we are thrown forward against our straps.

"Orbital velocity achieved," says Paul. "Rendezvous with space station in seventeen point five minutes."

Still strapped in my seat there is little sensation of weightlessness, apart from a slight tendency for my arms to float up in front of me. What I do notice is all the bits of dust and debris that are suddenly floating loose in the cockpit. A paperclip drifts past my face – no doubt dropped by someone running through a checklist sometime during the ship's construction or testing.

Abruptly the ship is plunged into darkness as we cross the terminator line. We are flying over the Atlantic, approaching the coast of Africa, so the Earth below is inky blackness. Then I look up and see the stars. Not the twinkling lights we see from Earth, filtered through the atmosphere. Not even the view I used to get on a summer evening on the plains of Kansas, far from any competition from the lights of town, when the whole sky seemed to be aglow. No, these stars are like nothing I've ever seen before, hard, bright, steady, like diamonds. A king's ransom in diamonds, spread across a field of black velvet. When I was learning German, I was intrigued to find that their word 'himmel' means both 'sky' and 'heaven'.

Now I know I'm in heaven.