ISS by Laurie Mains, L Valder Mains

weathered and he assumed they were built during world war two. There was one new building if you could call it a building because it looked more like a small mountain. It was painted sky blue with a one hundred foot tall Jericho Space Adventure logo on the side.
    She stopped at the entry gate and he got out to check inside the security hut. The gate was electrically operated and he could see no emergency over-ride. He walked up to the gate and tried to budge it but it was securely locked. He was looking at it trying to figure out what to do when he heard the diesel engine rev. He looked back just in time to jump out of the way as Sara smashed through the gate. She was grinning bigtime when he got back in.
    “Nice going,” he said, “now everyone knows we’re here.”
    The building was big and it took time to drive around to the other side and when they turned the last corner Sara slammed on the brakes.
    ”Holy Shit!” she said.
    “Wow,” he said.
    Jericho One did not come into view, it was the view.
    “It’s enormous,” she said.
    Jack’s mouth hung open, enormous was clearly an understatement. They got out of the RV and walked to the spacecraft both stunned by the massiveness of the thing. It was easily the most beautiful aircraft he’d ever seen and it was certainly the biggest. He was standing gazing at it in awe when Sara pointed.
    “There’s the way in.”
    He followed her to the rear of the spacecraft which was inside the massive hangar. A set of stairs led to a loading ramp which was extended to the rear section of the spacecraft ahead of the tail plane. The hatch was closed but Jack found the cover plate used by the ground crew to operate the door and managed to get it open without too much trouble. They stepped aboard Jericho One and saw two double rows of passenger seats. The interior looked a lot like a conventional airliner but with some major differences. For one thing the seats were wide and luxurious and the carpet was made from a material similar to Velcro, there were lots of windows, and every inside surface was soft, there wasn’t a sharp edge or corner anywhere.
    “Why does it seem so much smaller inside?” she said.
    He’d noticed that the interior of the cabin looked smaller than the outside of the craft would seem to predict.
    “I think it’s because of the difference in strength needed between a conventional airliner and a spacecraft. In order to keep the passengers’ safe and the atmosphere breathable it needed a heavier external hull.”
    When he saw the blank look on her face he started to explain in more detail but she stopped him with a raised hand.
    “Okay, okay, I get it already. I just thought the whole thing would be a lot smaller.”
    “So did I,” he admitted.
    They walked forward to the cockpit and opened the crew hatch and went inside. The cockpit looked like the pictures he’d seen of the flight deck of the space shuttle Atlantis with rows and rows of switches and lots of video display panels.
    “Oh my God, I can’t fly this thing, what was I thinking?” he said, over whelmed by the complexity.
    Sara slipped into the pilot seat and put her right hand on the joystick and looked down at the runway. She was pretty sure he was right but she didn’t feel good about giving up.
    “I’ll bet half these switches don’t do anything anyway,” she said.
    They gazed around at the cockpit; every surface was covered with switches or gauges.
    “Maybe not but that leaves about a trillion that do,” he said.
    She could not argue the point but she was not happy about being defeated by a machine. They left the spacecraft feeling defeated, their high spirits gone, blown away by the stark reality of the situation. It took years for military pilots to build up enough flight hours to qualify as astronauts and then years after that to pilot the shuttle. What the hell had he been thinking?
    “Steve are you there? Over,” he said.
    He listened to the static on the CB in the RV