With dread pulling at his stomach like a lead weight, Fry twisted in his chair to face the bureaucrat
With dread pulling at his stomach like a lead weight, Fry twisted in his chair to face the bureaucrat. The Jamaican's broad face was grinning back at him in the manner usually reserved for unexpected letters from the DMV. His wife Labarbara and his son Dwight stood at his side. Both of them returned Fry's gaze with blank looks, as if they hadn't realized yet that he was there. Fry could see Professor Farnsworth maneuvering his arthritic frame through the maze of tables in the background. His son Cubert, obviously frustrated by the shuffling old man, detoured around a couple of Thurians who were noisily devouring a heaping pile of mustard and olives, and, in a few quick strides, crossed the room to stand next to Dwight. The pudgy 11 year old regarded Fry and Chelsea, and then gave Fry a skeptical look. Fry swept the room with his eyes, but he didn't see any signs of Leela or Bender. Or Amy for that matter. The weight in his stomach eased somewhat.
"Fry mon!" Hermes continued. "It's great to see you! Where in Babylon 'ave you been all dis time?!" There was a beat as the Jamaican noticed Chelsea, seemingly for the first time. "And who might dis be?"
Fry found himself completely caught off balance. He fumbled for something to say, but had no idea how to react. Should he treat Hermes as the casual acquaintance that he had been back when Fry had been a delivery boy, the coldhearted bureaucrat that had fired him, or the long lost friend that he had never been, but that, if his current enthusiasm was to be believed, Hermes seemed to think he was? Fry was aware that he had to say something, and do it before the silence became strained. A few confused words escaped Fry's lips, but his brain was unable to come out with anything even remotely coherent.
Luckily, Chelsea came to his rescue. "Hermes, is it?" She asked pleasantly, and extended her hand. "My name's Chelsea. Chelsea Porter." The Jamaican's beefy paw engulfed her hand, but when they shook, it was Chelsea, not Hermes, who had the stronger grip. The bureaucrat, surprised, withdrew his hand.
"Nice to meet you." Hermes said, then gestured for his party to settle around an adjacent table. Hermes lowered himself into a chair and twisted around so that he could continue the conversation.
"So Fry, where 'ave you been all 'dis time? I haven't seen you in weeks."
Fry stared at the bureaucrat for a moment. What the heck is going on here? "Uh, Hermes, don't take this the wrong way, but why are you being so nice to me? I mean, the last time we talked was when you fired me for- well, you know."
Instead of getting offended, which is what Fry had expected him to do, the Jamaican just chuckled and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. Ok, this is too friendly. Fry told himself. Something's up. Self-preservation instincts, dormant after months of safety at Applied Cryogenics, suddenly kicked into high gear.
Fry noticed the somewhat heavy expressions on the faces of Labarbara, Dwight, and even Cubert. Only the Professor seemed his normal self, although, since the scientist had fallen asleep in his chair, it was somewhat hard to tell. Where are Leela, Bender, and Amy?
At that moment, Zoidberg, having been feasting upon the delicious leavings in Elzar's dumpster, waddled into the restaurant. Elzar moved to intercept him, but the Decapodian made a beeline for his coworkers. Satisfied that the creature was part of the Planet Express party, Elzar returned to the kitchen.
Warbling softly to himself, Zoidberg squeezed his way between Chelsea and Hermes and sat down next to the Professor. As the Decapodian lowered himself into his seat, he gripped the back of Chelsea's seat with a garbage-streaked claw for balance. In the process, the claw almost came into contact with Chelsea's hair. Chelsea jerked away and glared at the alien. For a moment, Fry thought she might say something, but she seemed to catch herself.
Zoidberg didn't notice Chelsea at all, but upon recognizing Fry, let out a squeal of joy. "Fry! Good to see you, it is!"
After acknowledging the Decapodian with a quick "Hi, Zoidberg", Fry proceeded to follow the Planet Express employees' example of pretending Zoidberg wasn't even there. Turning back to Hermes, Fry asked "How's business?"
Hermes was caught slightly off guard. "Oh. Uh, business is fine." He said. "In fact, it's running so well dat I took the whole company out to dinner to celebrate. We've been doin' so much business dat I just stamped my ten millionth form dis morning!"
Labarbara, who had until this point been silent and detached, broke into the conversation. "Husband, stop playing games with 'da poor boy." She said, giving Hermes a reproachful look. "Your ten millionth form was a letter to notify 'de Central Bureaucracy dat three of your employees are missing." Turning to Fry, she continued. "I'm sorry Phillip, but three of your friends- 'da cyclops, 'da robot, and 'dat Martian girl- are missing."
Fry felt his heart skip a beat. He blinked twice, surprised by his own reaction. "Missing?" He asked.
Hermes frowned at his wife, then turned back to Fry. "Yes, I'm afraid so." He acknowledged, with a slow nod. "Dey went out on a delivery and never came back. We never even got a distress call." The bureaucrat sighed, and then shook his head sadly. "We lose more crews dat way… It is a huge loss for 'da company."
Wondering if the loss to which Hermes referred was the lives of his employees or the expensive intergalactic spaceship, and then deciding he really didn't want to know, Fry asked: "How long have they been missing?"
"Five weeks." Labarbara said.
The odds that they were alive weren't very good, then. "Did you put up 'missing' signs? Back in the 20th century, my friend's cat ran away, so he put signs on all of the telephone poles."
"Did it work?" asked Dwight.
"Yeah. Well, I mean, it turned out the cat wasn't really missing. It was just locked in my friend's closet, so I guess the signs didn't help at all. But still-"
"No, we didn't put up any signs." Hermes said, cutting Fry off. "We don't have any idea what happened to dem, or where dey are." He admitted. Strangely, there was a hint of embarrassment, or possibly even shame in his voice. The Jamaican glanced at his wife as if for support, but Labarbara crossed her arms and pointedly looked away.
Fry sighed. "You didn't even look. Did you?"
Hermes spread his arms. "How were we supposed to mount a rescue mission?" He asked. "We couldn't use a spaceship to go look for dem; the only spaceship we had was missing!"
"You could have rented a ship, or hired someone to go look." Fry replied. "Or put up posters."
"Ah, but dat would 'ave been expensive." Hermes replied with confidence, as if that somehow proved a point. "It makes more business sense to fill out missing persons notices and hire a new crew."
"What about the Wongs?" Fry pointed out, anger starting to build in his chest. "They have, like, gazillions of dollars to spend on looking for Amy."
Before Fry had finished speaking, Hermes was already shaking his head. It looked as though he'd heard the argument before. "I can't tell dem that Amy is missing until I receive permission from de Central Bureaucracy. But don't worry. Dey'll get back to me within a few months." There was a beat. "Oh, by 'da way." Hermes added, his overly-friendly demeanor suddenly back in full swing. "We happen to be hiring a new crew, and we have an opening for a new delivery boy. Since you already 'ave da training, and if things aren't working out at the cryogenics lab, maybe you could-"
Hermes never got to finish that statement. Fry exploded out of his seat. There was a clatter of dishes as his knee crashed into the underside of the table. His chair tumbled backwards and hit the floor with a thud. Chelsea was startled by the sudden noise. In a single fluid motion she was out of her seat and in a defensive position. When her brain caught up with her instincts a moment later, she hesitated and looked about her uncertainly.
"How can you say that?!" Fry was yelling, surprised at himself, and at the intensity of his emotion. "Leela, Bender, and Amy are people. You can't just let them die because of regulations and business expenses!" The ex-delivery boy's hands were shaking with the force of his emotion. "And then you actually offer me my job because you need a replacement for them?! They're- were- my friends!"
Fry looked away from Hermes and shook his head in a combination of disbelief and disgust. For a split second his eyes met Chelsea's, and some kind of nonverbal communication passed between them. One of Chelsea's hands lay casually at her hip by a slight bulge that he had not noticed before. Her left eyebrow was raised slightly. Something in Fry's expression must have sufficed as an answer, because Chelsea's hand moved away from the bulge, almost reluctantly.
"B- But I thought you would want your job back." Hermes stammered, confused. The other restaurant patrons, curious about all of the commotion, had been listening to the conversation. The bureaucrat noticed uncomfortably that many of them were favoring him with hostile looks. Obviously he had said something wrong, but all of the resources of his bureaucratic mind were unable to figure out what it was. He looked to his wife for support, but all he got in return was a silent "serves you right".
"I did." Fry replied to Hermes' question. "But not like this. I can't take back my old job, knowing that I'm replacing somebody that used to mean a lot to me. Not when you aren't going to look for them if you can find new employees instead. It would be like I was helping to kill them or something."
At that moment, Elzar came storming out of the kitchen "Hey, what's going on here?" The Neptunian demanded, all four arms on his hips. "Is there a problem?"
Fry was about to explain the situation when Chelsea leaned across the disheveled table and touched his arm to silence him. Regarding the Neptunian with distaste, Chelsea said. "No problem. We were just on our way out." She reached into her purse, pulled out enough bills to cover both of their dinners, and tossed them onto the table. Walking around Fry's fallen chair, she put a hand on the redhead's shoulder and began to steer him towards the door. Fry tried to object, but Chelsea was insistent, and he let himself be led away. At the last moment, Labarbara reached out and grabbed the hem of Fry's shirt. "Hold on a second, boy." She said. "You should know. The name of da planet they went to was Cardena." With that, she smiled, let go, and turned away.
As Fry and Chelsea walked down a narrow side street a few blocks from Elzar's, Fry could feel the anger building inside him. "Can you believe all that?" He was saying. "All that 'Hi Fry, nice to see you again' crap. He just wanted to take advantage of me." The redhead sighed. "I guess nothing changes."
Chelsea didn't answer right away. The two of them were alone on the cracked sidewalk. The rain had stopped some time ago, though a thick dampness still hung in the air. A distant rumble of thunder rolled in over their heads. The street was only sparsely lit by the soft, orange glow of the streetlights, which were further dimmed by a thick mist that was rising off the pavement. When Chelsea finally spoke, it was in a guarded voice. Fry tried to read the expression on her face, but they had passed into the shadow between the street lamps, and he could only make out her silhouette.
"Fry, sometimes people say or do things that other people misunderstand, not because they're cruel, or evil, but because they believe it is right. Even when they're wrong, it's not always right to hate them. They can't help what they're doing; they don't know any better."
"I don't hate-" She held up her hand to silence him. "I know you don't, and I agree with you that Hermes was wrong to put you in that position. It was a dirty trick to try and maneuver you into returning to Planet Express as a replacement for your old friends, but what else would you expect from someone that associates with aliens? Remember that, whether or not he actually was wrong, he didn't know it, and he didn't mean it."
"Yeah I know." Fry said, unconvinced. Then, frowning he added: "Wait, what about ali-?"
But Chelsea was speaking again. "Back in the 21st century there was someone who was very close to me that did something… unforgivable. It took me years to understand that she betrayed me, not because she was cruel, but because she was too ignorant to understand what she had done. I didn't hate her; I wasn't disgusted by what she did. I just had to tell myself that that's who she was. She couldn't help it."
"Oh." Fry replied, not quite sure where this new turn in the conversation had come from. "Who was she?"
"It's not important." Chelsea said quickly, and there was silence between the two of them. Fry was just beginning to worry that he'd said something wrong again when Chelsea changed the subject. "What are you going to do with the information that Hermes' wife gave you?" She asked.
Fry thought it over as they approached another streetlight. They were approaching an intersection. "I don't know." He said.
"Isn't there some kind of search and rescue organization here in the future?" Chelsea enquired. The two of them reached the intersection and Fry paused momentarily. He was used to the transport tubes and hadn't walked around this part of town often enough to recognize where he was. Chelsea, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly where they were. She immediately turned left. Fry rushed to catch up, and almost got backhanded in the face as she waved at a passing trashbot. She noticed that Fry was again at her side. "But anyway," she said, addressing the redhead, "isn't there a space-coastguard or something?"
Fry had to think about it. "Huh. I don't know. I mean, I guess there ought to be." He hadn't really considered the possibility. "What I meant though was that I didn't know what I was going to do about it."
"What, you mean you're thinking about going to look for them?" She asked, incredulous. "You don't think you still owe them some kind of loyalty, right? I mean, Leela betrayed you. You kicked her out of your apartment for lying about it to your face."
Fry nodded, although Chelsea almost certainly didn't see the gesture in the murky light. Did I really do that? He thought to himself. He knew that he had, but it seemed so… strange now, like it was something he'd seen a long time ago in a half-forgotten movie. It was true that he was still angry at Leela and Bender for what they had done, but Chelsea's earlier words echoed in his head. Sometimes people say or do things that other people misunderstand, not because they're cruel, or evil, but because they believe it is right. That didn't work for Bender, who was undoubtedly cruel and definitely evil ( Bender had once shown him his 'certifiably evil' card), but as for Leela… Had she, somehow, thought that it was right to go behind his back and then lie about it? Either way, he wondered, can I really hate them for being who they are?
"Fry?" Chelsea prodded.
The redhead snapped out of his reverie. "What? Oh, sorry." He was quiet again for a moment while he collected his thoughts. "Yeah, I'm going to go look for them." He said. "They were my friends; I guess I feel like I owe them somehow. Besides, I think Leela would do the same for me." Fry realized suddenly that they had reached Chelsea's apartment building. Chelsea opened the door for him and they entered the lobby.
Chelsea mulled over what her friend had said while they waited for the elevator. "You talk about Leela as if she was such a great friend, and yet she betrayed you simply because it was convenient." The elevator car arrived and they walked in. Chelsea automatically pressed the button for the eighth floor. "I don't think I'll ever understand why you think that you need to go look for her and the others." She paused again. "But if you really think you need to, then I want to help you." There was a brief acceleration and then the doors opened. Moments later, Fry found himself standing right outside Chelsea's door. He heart immediately began to beat faster.
"T- thank you." Fry said, trying to concentrate on the issue at hand.
Chelsea's right hand was on the doorknob but her left was propped under her chin as a plan started to form in her head. "I'll tell you what." She said. "They've been missing for weeks; another few hours won't make a difference. Tomorrow morning we can rent a spaceship and go look for them at that planet that Hermes' wife mentioned. Does that sound alright to you?"
Fry nodded, and couldn't quite resist sneaking a glance at Chelsea's hand on the doorknob. Chelsea immediately caught on. "I'm really tired right now-" she said carefully. Fry's face immediately crumbled, and Chelsea put a hand on his shoulder. When Fry looked up at her she smiled at him. "Will you take a rain check?" She asked. Fry's face immediately lit up. Men. Chelsea thought. So very easy to please.
Chelsea gave Fry a quick hug and waited expectantly as the redhead got up the nerve to kiss her. When it finally came, it was on the cheek. Chelsea opened the door and slipped into her apartment. She waved at him as she started to close the door. "I'll come by your apartment tomorrow morning at dawn." She said, and Fry nodded. Right before the door clicked shut he spoke. "Chelsea?" He asked, hesitantly.
"Yes?"
"Back at Elzar's, right after Hermes offered me my job back, when you gave me that look… You weren't about to…" His voice trailed off.
The warm smile didn't leave Chelsea's face, but something changed back in the depths of her eyes. "Good night, Fry." She said softly, and closed the door.
Fry's doorbell rang at precisely 5:00 am. The redhead, who had just two hours earlier managed to slow his brain down enough to sleep, grunted, mumbled something incoherent, rolled over, and then continued snoring. Something touched his leg. He bolted upright, immediately awake, as his fight-or-flight, but mostly flight, reflex went into overdrive.
His eyes locked on a dark figure that was hunched over him, which quickly focused into Chelsea. She had a lopsided grin on her face, and her right hand was still lightly clutching his ankle through the sheets.
"Morning, sleepyhead." She teased him. "Ready to go?"
"Ch- Chelsea?!" He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "What are- How did you- What time is it?"
"5:03." She replied cheerfully.
Fry let himself fall back to the bed. "It should be illegal to wake people up this early." He grumbled. Then, after yawning dramatically, he sat up and then hauled himself to his feet. He completely forgot to be embarrassed that he was only wearing his boxers.
Fry went through the motions of dressing, showering, and shoveling a bowl of Bachelor Chow into his mouth. He noted somewhat absently that the Bachelor Chow didn't quite taste the same as usual. There was a distinctive, woody taste there that he'd never noticed before.
Chelsea was perched on his couch in the same spot as Leela had been during their argument so many ages ago. She was staring blankly out the window, but she apparently sensed that he was watching her, because her gaze swiveled to meet his. "All set?" She asked in a voice that, in Fry's opinion, was much too perky for that early in the morning.
"Umm, yeah." Fry acknowledged. "But uh, if you don't mind my asking, how did you get in here, anyway?"
Chelsea shrugged. "You didn't answer the doorbell, so I opened the door. It wasn't locked."
"Yes it was."
Another shrug. "Not very locked."
Fry decided to let it go. After all, worse things had happened to him than being startled awake by beautiful women in the middle of the night.
The rental agency sat atop one of the larger towers in downtown New Manhattan. The office occupied the upper floor, with the rental ships parked in neat rows on the roof overhead. There was no line, and Fry was able to walk right up to the rental counter. A pretty looking redhead, about his age, was behind the counter. She was leaning against the desk and staring blankly at the countertop in front of her. The girl seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place her. All that came to mind was an image of a bar, and, for some reason, the word 'gaydar'. He tapped the counter to get her attention and she looked up at him.
"Oh, sorry, sir." She said. "I didn't see you come in. Can I help you?"
"Yeah, we'd like to rent a ship. Nothing big, just a…" He stopped. The girl was staring over his shoulder, mouth agape. "Uh, is something wrong?" He asked.
"Y- y- you!" The girl stuttered and pointed behind him. Fry turned to follow her finger. Chelsea was standing in the middle of the room, staring back at the clerk. She looked around and then behind her, trying to figure out who the clerk was pointing at. There was no one else around. "Uhh, do I know you?" Chelsea asked, startled. She looked as confused as Fry was.
There was panic in the rental clerk's eyes. "Oh my god. It is you!" Then, to Fry's absolute bewilderment, she screamed, vaulted the counter, and ran for the nearest exit. In a split second she was gone.
Chelsea and Fry stared blankly at each other for a moment. "Uhh, any idea what that was all about?" Fry managed.
"I have absolutely no idea." Was all that Chelsea could think to say.
Somebody cleared their throat. Fry and Chelsea whirled to find another clerk standing at the doorway to a back office.
"Can I help you two?" he asked.
The balding, weasel-like clerk had been less than willing to assist them. Something about Fry that he couldn't quite place had sent alarm bells ringing in his head. It was only after extracting a promise that they would buy every type of insurance possible that he grudgingly turned over a set of keys.
The ship was a sporty little vessel, streamlined and elegant. The main body was a bright red cylinder of ten meters that tapered smoothly to a point at the bow. Four dark red fins sprouted from the aft quarter of the ship and stretched backward, extending beyond the main engine. A tiny defensive laser sat mounted on a turret between the two upper fins. The smoothness of the hull was broken by a narrow strip of tinted glassteel that marked the ship's cockpit. Inside, the ship was divided into three sections, each of which was separated by an airtight emergency hatch. The ship's main ramp led to a tiny airlock. Beyond that was a corridor that connected the bridge in the bow with the engine room in the stern. The living quarters, consisting of a head, a meager kitchen, a bed, and a couch, was situated amidships.
Fry wasn't particularly impressed by the ship's cramped cockpit, which barely contained enough volume for the two of them to squeeze in next to each other. At least the controls were familiar. He just hoped he still remembered how to fly. It had been awhile since the last time he'd flown a spaceship, and that hadn't ended well. Too bad Chelsea couldn't fly; She hadn't had time to apply for a license yet.
Fry started to rev up the engine as Chelsea watched, fascinated. She had not yet had the chance to travel off-world. The roar that started to build through the deck did not have the deep, throaty undertones of the Planet Express Ship. The quintessence engine that powered the vessel couldn't muster the raw power of Professor Farnsworth's dark matter engine. Still, when Fry pulled back on the stick he could almost feel the ship's eagerness to be airborne. Carefully, he began to apply pressure to the throttle, and the ship leapt into motion.
There was a jarring crash. "Oops." Fry said, taking the ship out of reverse. This time, when Fry fed power to the engines, the little red ship hurtled into the sky.
It took a few hours for the ship to reach the Cardenian System. Fry kept a close eye on the sensors for some sign of a distress signal, but apart from weak synchrotron emission from the nearby Taurus star-forming region, there was nothing unusual to speak of. One burst of radio noise briefly caught his attention, but the computer immediately disqualified it as coming from a known pulsar.
When they entered Cardenian space, Fry cut the engines and let the ship glide into the star's gravity well. It was a technique that he'd seen Leela employ on many occasions when she'd wanted to avoid detection. Anyone scanning them from long range would think them just another hunk of space rock hurtling starward in a hyperbolic orbit. Fry, on the other hand, could use his passive scanners to study the situation.
The Cardenian System seemed to be fairly ordinary. The central star was about twice the mass of the sun and glowed slightly bluer than Sol. Two rocky planets resided in the inner system. One was huge by human standards. Composed almost entirely of iron, it contained at least six times Earth's mass. The other terrestrial world was Cardena itself. The outer solar system consisted of a thin ring of rocks that could barely be called an asteroid belt and three distant ice giants made of helium and liquid methane.
"Uhoh." Chelsea said, and Fry took his eyes away from the radar.
"What?"
"This ship must have some kind of spectrometer built into it somewhere, because it just gave me a report on the composition of that second planet's atmosphere. It's mostly oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, but there's a lot of carbon monoxide too."
Fry stared at her. He was used to future-y science gibberish from Farnsworth and Leela, but it was bizarre to hear it from someone from the past who'd never even flown in a spaceship before. "Specter-ometer?"
Chelsea chuckled. "Sorry. I minored in astronomy in college. A spectrometer looks at the light that comes from something like a planet's atmosphere and can tell what the atmosphere is made of by what colors make up the light."
"And it found something bad?"
She nodded. "Yes. There's enough carbon monoxide down there to kill you if you went outside and tried to breathe"
Fry didn't like the sound of that. Bender wouldn't have a problem since Fry was pretty sure he didn't actually breathe, but if Leela and Amy were stuck down there then they'd be confined to the ship. He wasn't even sure the Planet Express Ship could recycle the air for the five weeks that they had been missing, or, for that matter, that Leela, Amy, and Bender could live together that long without killing each other. And if the ship had been damaged or destroyed…
The little video screen that sat on the console between the seats beeped and turned itself on. Fry felt his heart leap, but his hopes were dashed when Leela's face didn't appear. Instead, the screen began to flash "Warning!" in bold red letters. A pleasant female voice advised them that they were entering Cardenian space and that trespassers would be 'disappeared'. Fry's felt his blood freeze.
Chelsea cursed loudly. "Well, I think we know what happened to Leela and the others." She said bitterly.
Fry wasn't so sure. It would have taken a massive force to defeat Leela, and that's if she'd been taken by surprise. But with a warning to tell her of the danger? There was no way she'd have been taken out. When he said as much aloud Chelsea gave him a skeptical look but didn't contradict him.
"Ok, then what now?" She asked.
The question sent a thrill running through his body. For the first time ever he was in command of an actual spaceship. His and Chelsea's lives, and possibly those of Leela, Bender, and Amy, all depended on his next decision. The weight of the responsibility he suddenly felt himself cloaked with was almost overwhelming. He wondered how Leela had always managed to handle that burden so confidently.
"I need to use the restroom," he declared authoritatively, and rushed from the cockpit, butterflies in his stomach. A few minutes later the butterflies were flushed and Fry crawled back into the cockpit.
Fry reached out and thrust the throttle all the way forward. The quintessence engine roared into life and the universe itself began to stretch and deform, creating the illusion that distant Cardena was rushing toward them at impossible speed. Huge energies poured into the sea of virtual particles that frothed against the bow of the ship, and the particles, suddenly discovering that they had become real, annihilated each other in a flash of hard radiation. The glow of plasma heralded their entrance into Cardena's poisonous atmosphere. They'd just broadcasted their presence to everyone within a dozen lightyears, but Fry intended to be long gone before anyone could do a thing to stop them.
They circled the planet a dozen times, flying just high enough to clear the jagged mountain ranges. Fry kept one eye glued to the sensors while his other scanned the horizon. They were flying at many times the speed of sound, and the shockwave of their passage blasted snow, and what looked like ash, from the tops of the peaks. Chelsea was staring out the front viewport, face pale, certain that Fry had gone quite mad, but afraid to say anything lest she break his concentration and find herself smeared across a hundred square miles of alien landscape.
In a manner of minutes Fry had surveyed the entire surface of the planet's one continent. Satisfied that there was no trace of the Planet Express Ship to be found, he pulled back on the stick and the atmosphere faded to the black of space. Chelsea turned to her companion with newfound respect. "Where the heck did you learn to fly like that?" She demanded.
Fry just shrugged. "Meh, that was nothing. One time, I flew all the way around the Earth at less than 100 feet in two minutes while towing the whole Planet Express Building." He paused. "Well, okay, Bender actually flew part of the way. Well, with his ass, anyway."
Chelsea shook her head in disbelief. "I thought you were exaggerating when you told me that."
"It's not as hard as it looks. The ship's computer won't listen to you if you tell it to do something that'll get you all smashed up. And besides, Leela taught me how to fly a little back when-" Something on his instrument panel caught his attention.
"What is it?" Chelsea asked, worried by the sudden concern that clouded her friend's face.
"There's something funny on the radar." He said, throttling back the engines.
"Define funny."
"Hold on." He swung the ship into a wide turn, and a tiny patch of green rotated into the field of view. Chelsea squinted at it. It was some sort of ship. A marking of some kind was painted on its dorsal fin, but she couldn't make it out.
"Bad guys?" She asked.
Fry shook his head. He pressed a few buttons and the image of the ship expanded to fill the viewport. The vessel was spinning lazily, its lights dark and landing skids extended. It didn't look like anybody was home. "No, worse." Fry replied, gesturing at the Planet Express emblem that was now clearly visible on the ship's tailfin. "The good guys."
