One Week In.

Its been a week that falls under the heading "interesting times".  But, I'm not really going to comment on world events - those are getting enough coverage elsewhere.
Its starting to get warm here.  Of course, its time for the yearly "OMG its so hot!" commentary on the news and by everyone I know.  We go through this every year this time.  Perhaps I'm a bit weird, but when it hits June in Texas, I expect the temperature to go over 100 degrees.  It happens every year about this time.  But for some reason, people seem shocked that it gets hot in Texas in June.  This is the land that Phil Sheridan offered to abandon in favor of Hell - Hell having a more salubrious climate in Sheridan's opinion.  But for some reason, normal weather is unexpected.
The project, which now lives under the title "Martian Aria" has reached 53000 Words.  At this rate, I should be finishing it up and getting it ready for the Beta readers by the end of the month - I've had to go see the doc last week and have to go again next week, and that kinda kills the mood for writing for a day or so.  But, the end is in site (in about 20000 words or so) and the next idea is already forcing its way forward in me brain.  Space Horse Opera, anyone?

Today's snippet -  for your perusal, of course:

“Gear is down and locked.  Horizontal speed is zero.  Vertical speed is zero.  We are hovering at eight meters . . . seven meters . . . six meters . . . five meters . . . we are in ground effect, cutting thrust . . . thrust down to fifty five percent . . . three meters . . . two meters . . . one meter. . . CONTACT!  Burroughs base here, Vostok has landed.”

A roar of applause went through Gagarin, and the tapes show the same happening on Ride.  From what I’ve seen, the same thing happened eight minutes later on Earth when the signal hit ya’ll there. 

“Gagarin Ops to Vostok.  We show you as down.  Congratulations.”

“Thank you Ops.  We’re going to grab a bite to give things a chance to cool off, then we’ll pop a hatch and see how things look.”

“Roger that Vostok.”

We waited.  I fiddled around, and I’m pretty sure everyone else did the same.  We were waiting for the hatch pop and the first step.  The really odd part about the “first step” was that as soon as the second person hit the surface, they were going to turn and make a plaster cast (well, it was a high tech polymer that could be mixed as a liquid and would harden rapidly into a cast, but we called it plaster – humans are linguistically lazy.) of that first step.  Why?  Because when Vostok lifted off on her return trip to Gagarin, that foot print would be obliterated by the thrust, and we wanted it for the future generations.  Or the PR value.  You decide.

Forty five minutes or so later, we all watched as the ramp on the Vostok went down.  The camera’s perspective changed to that of Commander Frank’s chest camera.  We all watched as he went to end of the ramp and paused.  With a flourish, he stepped one foot off the ramp, following it with the other.

“That’s . . . oh shit!”  He apparently had missed a fist sized rock at the bottom of the ramp and stepped on it, causing him to stumble.  We watched as his hands flashed forward as he attempted to keep his balance and he stumbled about ten to fifteen feet forward.  His historical speech for the ages was shot to hell and he knew it.  Once he regained his balance, you could hear the humor in his voice as he said, “Well, we’re here.  Let’s get the show on the road.”