A Flight of Fancy

The following is not really a blog entry, but a flight of fancy, on my part anyway.

I originally published it on the Jottify website and got some good feedback as a result. At the time I meant to dedicate it to the men (and yes, at that time it was only men) of the Apollo Space Programme who inspired the story, but I didn’t. I would like to correct that omission now and hopefully share my dream with whoever is interested,

The crew of

Apollo 11 (1969)    Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr, Michael Collins   
Apollo 12 (1969)    Charles Conrad Jr, Richard F. Gordon, Alan L. Bean   
Apollo 14 (1971)    Alan B. Shepard Jr, Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell
Apollo 15 (1971)    David R. Scott, Alfred W. Warden, James B. Irwin
Apollo 16 (1972)    John W. Young, Kenneth Mattingly II, Charles M. Duke Jr
Apollo 17 (1973)    Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison H. Schmitt

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please let me know. If you don’t please let me know and I will try harder next time. Until then, here is the story.

* * *

Magnificent Desolation.
 

As I stand here looking over the grey landscape, I understand those words.
 

The desolation is magnificent and for the few moments of loneliness that I have before my colleagues join me, I am utterly alone. In the four days it has taken us to reach here, we have had little time to ourselves. So I am savouring this moment.

I am the first human being to stand on this surface in hundred years.
 

We are the first of three ships. We are Faith. Our sister ship Hope will leave Earth in one months time, one month after that Charity will leave from Centre Spatial Guyanais.
 

Our tour of duty on the moon will be six months. In that time we will establish the first of three modular bases made up of the lower parts of our landing craft, after that we will return to the silver blue ball that is earth. Three more crews will arrive and Tranquilty Base will be a reality.
 

Before me is a dust bowl. In the centre of that dust bowl is a white metallic spider, Eagle. The remains of Apollo 11. Her structure barely marked after all these years.
 

We descended into Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquillity. There is slight bluish tint, that I thought was due to the glass in my visor, but it’s not. There is higher metal content in the basaltic soil or rock.
 

I feel, rather than hear one of my crew members by my side. As I turn, I move back, I take a moment to look at my foot prints. I see my footsteps in the moon dust. If I walked to Eagle I would see the ‘one small step’ that Armstrong made as he stepped off the ladder.
 

I see the solid form of my boot print and I smile. As I look up into the visor of my fellow moon-walker, Helen, she returns the smile.
 

‘Mission control, Tranquillity Base here…’
 

This is no longer one small step, but a giant one towards the stars...