Continued

She left with Rob and Earl all of the others were already at the location. Rob was driving. It was scary, but they made it. The ship was located on a farm in the barn. This farm was owned by the benefactor. The barn covered only the tip of the ship the rest was stored underground…where it had crashed. The entire farm was built around it. It was Sue who had crashed on earth in this ship. It was she who had been working on fixing it and it was fixed (or so she said). Natalia was at awe when she saw the tip of the ship - it was huge and that was only the tip of the iceberg (excuse the cliché). They enter through the exposed air lock hatch. Earl went first then Natalia followed by Rob. They had to claim down a huge ladder to get to the floor. This was about an average sized air lock; they closed the hatch and opened the door. They were met by something strange.

It was a crew member was about seven feet tall, biped, teal and had a short tail. Arms were long; feet where hoofed. Natalia was startled. He had four eyes and a mouth, flat nose, silted nostrils.

“You must be Miss Blank. I knew your parents well,” he said, “my name is Art.”

“Hello,” was all Natalia managed to say. They all then followed Art to the elevator to get to the bridge to meet up with Sue, the captain. Natalia still could not believe that Sue was the captain of a space ship... though she did crash land here, and that slightly worried her. Crashing is never good. The ship seemed huge to Natalia, who had never even been on an airplane before. It all looked so unreal to her. To her it was huge but in reality it was a small ship - crew of ten. Later this was explained to her, a huge ship would have a crew of over three hundred - she was on a tiny ship.

All were on board and ready for takeoff. Sue took her chair and fired up the engines and prepared to burst out of the ground and the barn. It was a bit nerve wracking since none of them were positive that the ship would work, but it did end up starting, got out of the ground and got enough force to project it out of the ground and hovered above the ground…by hovering we mean thirty feet. They all tensed up, ready for whatever official takeoff had for them. But before they knew it, they were in the atmosphere. Rob had closed his eyes and peaked out just in time to see Sue standing up stretching and announcing that she had set a course for the nearest planet with Earth-like conditions. They all let out a sigh of relief and headed toward their quarters. Sue pulled Natalia aside.

“If you need anything, just let me know.” And then she sat back down to monitor the controls.

Natalia went to find her designated bed. It was going to be a long flight.