CHAPTER 67 – LIFT OFF

Lift-off had been how Elizabeth remembered it from her first trip into space. She could sum it up on one word. Awful.

She had tried to turn her head to keep an eye on Aaron but the pressure of leaving Earth was too much.

Just before leaving the planet, she and Jack had Velcro-ed Aaron's astro-mittens and helmet onto his suit, taken away his pacifier and rattle - much to the baby's bewilderment, and pushed the button to activate the suit. If all went according to plan, the suit which had been made to his exact specifications would keep his body protected from the intense G-Forces.

Less than ten minutes after lift-over, the worst was over. The oppressive G forces was gone. Not just the pressure from the speeding flight. But all physical pressure.

By the time Elizabeth could move her head, had managed to take a breath without pain, and had swallowed to keep her breakfast down in her stomach, Jack was already taking the helmet off of Aaron.

"How is he?" she asked. Her ponytail was floating straight-up from the back of her head. An obvious indication that the artificial gravity hadn't been turned on yet.

"Better than me," a pale-faced Jack replied. "I feel like vomiting."

"I already did," she noted dryly. "I kept my mouth closed."

"I appreciate that," Jack replied in disgust.

"He seems perfect," he added as he looked at Aaron and gave the boy a big grin. "I'll leave him strapped in until gravity's on."

"Are you sure he's okay? Feel his skull," a worried Elizabeth instructed but then didn't bother to wait for Jack to do it.

She quickly placed her palms on Aaron's tiny head, and began moving her fingers through his fine dark hair in an amateur attempt to determine if his fontanel had changed in size.

"What are you feeling for? You have no idea what you're feeling for? You're just feeling it without having any idea why," Jack noted comically. "It's a skull. What do you expect to feel? If his skull was smooshed in, I think we would have noticed it in his face."

"Hush. A mother knows when something's wrong." Elizabeth continued to gently rub her hands in her son's soft hair.

"Like you knew that he had an awful disease that one time because his skin had turned orange, and you insisted that I use the patrol vehicle's siren while we rushed him to the doctor's office? And then it turned out that it was just the color from his onesie was bleeding because it was cheap quality."

Elizabeth shot him a dirty look. "I told you that any mother could make that mistake."

"I told you not to buy baby outfits at a flea market stall," he reminded her with a knowing smile.

"It was an artists' boutique!"

"Artists can't be expected to know how to dye fabrics? How hard can it be?" he questioned cynically. "They can make a onesie to look like a carrot but they can't keep the color from bleeding the first time it's worn?"

"They were hand-made, one-of-a-kind, nature-inspired cute outfits," she replied haughtily.

"Thank goodness we didn't buy a brown one or people would have ended up questioning Aaron's parentage," he said with an amusing shake of his head.

"There wasn't a brown one," she replied with a huff even though she secretly agreed with Jack that the onesies had turned out to be overpriced crap. "I said nature-inspired. Not dirt inspired."

"Well then it's a good thing we didn't buy the green one. People would have thought his father was the Jolly Green Giant . . . or a pea pod."

Elizabeth bit her bottom lip and avoided looking at Jack. I'm definitely not going to mention that I DID buy the green one when he wasn't looking. All the snaps fell off the first time I tried to put it on Aaron.

I should have known the couple manning the booth weren't professional artists. Who spells Van Gogh without the gh?!

A flight attendant came down the aisle, glancing at each passenger to make sure they were okay. She carried a small defibrillator with her on the off chance that one of the passengers hadn't handled the take-off well. Although considering that everyone had undergone physical examinations and evaluations, the chances of needing the device to restart someone's heart was minimal. Which might be why the flight attendant seemed more concerned with making sure that no one vomited on her uniform and whether one of the attractive young men in aisle 5A was single and looking for a girlfriend.

"He seems okay," Elizabeth told Jack in mixture of surprise and extreme relief when she finished opening the top of Aaron's suit and reaching in her hands to feel his ribs. Gently poking around.

Aaron giggled at Elizabeth's touch and he kicked out his feet in laughter.

"That's our little space-traveler," Jack said proudly and gave the boy a quick kiss. "He was made for space."

"He was made in space. Geez, you don't think he's destined to be some sort of space explorer, do you?" Elizabeth asked with a start. "Because he was conceived in space?"

"What?" Jack narrowed her eyes and gave her the look. The look that silently said 'are you crazy?' Or perhaps the look that meant he was thinking 'For a smart woman sometimes you said the oddest things'. Elizabeth was never quite sure about some of the looks Jack gave her.

"What?" she responded defensively. "What's wrong with my question? Maybe he's destined to have a yearning to be in space because that's where he was conceived and was partially formed," she added with confidence.

Jack gave her a sideways look. "Are babies conceived in the back seat of a car destined to be used car salesman?"

"Hush," she ordered him. Okay, so maybe it was a stupid question on my part.

"Are babies conceived in a recliner destined to be Lazy Boys?" Jack asked while trying not to smile. "Because we've done quite a bit of making out in our recliner. I'm kind of looking forward to it when we get back to Earth."

"But not if our children are destined to be male and lazy," he added with a shake of his head. "Definitely not then. We want productive children. No lazy boys for us."

"Hmmm," he continued pensively while Elizabeth pretended to ignore him. "If we conceive the next one in the study, we'd be guaranteed a studious child. . . . . But what if he or she was conceived in a recliner in the study?. . . . Then we'd get a studious lazy boy. Maybe a boy who studies HOW to be lazy? Definitely not a good idea. Let's make a note of that – no conceiving a child in the study on the recliner."

Elizabeth glared at him but Jack continued musing about places to conceive children. In fact, he seemed to find the topic a humorous distraction while waiting for them to be released to go to their quarters.

A pensive expressed crossed Jack's face as if he was pondering a universally perplexing question. "Are babies conceived on a staircase destined to be step-children?" he asked with a straight face but a gleam in his eyes.

"Because that's just not right," he added vehemently. "Forcing young innocent children to be step-children just because their parents couldn't contain their passion until they got upstairs. Make another note – no conceiving a child on a staircase."

"If you don't stop teasing me, I'm never going to kiss you again," Elizabeth said calmly.

"Impossible. You love me too much."

A smiled escaped Elizabeth, causing Jack to smile, and Aaron – unsure why everyone was smiling – decided to gleefully join in.

Elizabeth leaned back in her seat and then took a deep breath.

As she waited for the passengers to be released to their cabins, she remembered her first flight when the uniformed staff had treated her as if she was a first-class passenger after take-off. Back then, everyone on staff recognized her last name of Thatcher, and had been keen on keeping her happy. Bringing her a crystal glass and cool bottle of water to freshen mouth and throat, and even a using silver tongs to place a warm damp towelette in her palms.

"Remember that towelette that I got on our first trip?" She kept her eyes closed as she asked Jack.

"It was so refreshing. Eucalyptus," she added with a wistful sigh before thinking about Aaron and his first lift-off. "I just don't want him to get a job where he ends up leaving us. Like a space explorer. Now I know how our parents must feel with us leaving Earth."

"I don't think you need to worry about him leaving us for about two decades."

"That's not that far away!" Elizabeth argued as she sat up straighter in her seat and looked at Jack.

"Technically it's about twenty years. So, yes, it is far away. I thought you were the one that was good at math," an amused Jack told her.

"Not when it doesn't benefit me," she replied smugly.

"Aaah. So that's how math works." Jack acted as if he was just realizing an important fact that had always eluded him. "All this time being married to a teacher, and I never knew math worked that way."

"Yep,"

"And when there was a sixty percent sale on winter coats, then math benefits you?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

"Exactly."

"When I asked you'd why you got a speeding ticket for doing forty miles an hour in a thirty mile an hour zone, and you said that you didn't feel like you were going that fast, was that math not working in your favor?"

Darn. He always remembers that time.

My one speeding ticket on my way to pick up Aaron from my mother's and I would happen to get stopped by one of his buddies.

It was totally unnecessary for the officer to message Jack and tell him that I tried to flirt my way out of the ticket! I meant that I wanted him AND his wife to come to dinner. Not just him!

"How long do you think until they turn on the artificial gravity?" Elizabeth asked as she ignored answering Jack's question and instead swiveled her head around and looked up and down the aisle. Several passengers had pulled out their laptop computers and were busily pecking away at the keyboard.

Scientist. Engineer. Fitness Instructor. Bewildered Husband. Elizabeth mentally tried to guess the occupations of the passengers from their actions. The "bewildered husband" was wiping sweat from his brow, staring nervously out the window, and then glancing at his wife who had already taken a small plastic contraption from her pocket and was intently poking at it.

"Probably just a few more minutes."

"That lift off was awful. Can't they invent a better way to leave Earth's gravity?"

"We don't have to do it for another two years," Jack replied with his own sense of relief. Even though some people didn't mind the lack of gravity, it made him feel out of sorts. He was used to orderly dependable things in life. His law enforcement experience relied on forensics, following patterns, and deducing the likelihood of actions. It didn't involve having his feet trying to float out from under him.

Two years. I almost forgot that we'll be gone from Earth for two years, Elizabeth thought anxiously.

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't be mad at me," she implored remembering that prior to lift-off the couple hadn't yet resolved their problem or their hostility. "About the other thing. Please."

"I'm not," Jack admitted with a sigh. "I love you and I know that this has been a lot for you to take on this week. Finding out we're moving. The appointments. Getting things in order for our trip. I shouldn't have gotten upset with you. It's just –", his voice trailed off.

"I know," she admitted glumly. "If I was going to forget something, it should have been something less important."

The two sat in silence. Each wondering what to do.

Aaron Daniel sat between them. Oblivious to his parents' dilemma, he managed to pull off one of his mittens. It slipped from his tiny fingers but instead of dropping to the floor like he expected, it floated in front of him.

His eyes widened and his mouth gaped open as the object was suspended in the air.

Elizabeth giggled at the boy's expression of awe.

A second later, the mitten fell to the transporter's floor.

Grateful for the initiation of the transporter's artificial gravity, Elizabeth picked up the mitten and handed it to her son.

"Gravity," she told him with a smile. "Gravity is the force that pulls things to the Earth. And we are without the real gravity of Earth for the next two years. Welcome to space, Aaron Daniel. It's where mommy and daddy fell in love and made you."

"AT THIS TIME, ALL PASSENGERS MAY UNBUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELTS", the voice came over the intercom. "PLEASE CHECK YOUR ON-BOARD ELECTRONIC PASSES WHICH SHOULD NOW CONTAIN YOUR ASSIGNED LIVING COMPARTMENTS. YOUR LUGGAGE HAS ALREADY BEEN MOVED TO YOUR QUARTERS. MEAL TIMES ARE POSTED IN YOUR QUARTERS AS WELL AS RULES AND REGULATIONS. WELCOME TO SPACE. WE'LL BE TOGETHER FOR THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS. WE WISH YOU ALL ENJOYABLE TRAVELING."

Twenty minutes down, Elizabeth thought as the passengers began standing up. One million, fifty-one thousand, one hundred and eighty minutes to go until we're back on Earth.

Twenty condoms, and one million, fifty-one thousand, one hundred and eighty minutes of close proximity to a sexy husband that I can't avoid.

I wish I wasn't so good at math, she grumbled to herself as she gathered her small handbag.

And how do I get THIS math to work in my favor?!

UP NEXT: CHAPTER 68.

Dear Readers: Welcome back to our space!