ISS by Laurie Mains, L Valder Mains

change the sheets on his bed because, who knew how long it was since he changed them, if ever. She had little energy and moved slowly but she was determined to get it done before bedtime. The hall closet next to the master bedroom held lots of sheets and pillow cases and she grabbed a few of each and slowly made her way downstairs to his basement bedroom. It took her a long time to strip the sheets and blankets off his bed. She had to stop and rest frequently during the effort. When it was stripped she slid the dirty bedding down the hallway into the laundry room and left it on the floor. When she returned she felt dizzy and had to lie down on the bare mattress and rest for a long time, she was sweating and seeing black spots before her eyes.
    It took half an hour before she felt well enough to stand up and make the bed. When she lifted one corner of his mattress to place the fitted sheet she saw the curled pages of a glossy magazine poking out. Without thinking about it she reached in and pulled it out and scanned the cover. It was an ancient copy of Penthouse magazine. She’d seen this kind of magazine before and was not particularly impressed but this time as she flipped through the pages she had a different reaction. Her face flushed when she saw the explicit photographs and it made her feel anxious. She put it back where she found it under the mattress and finished making the bed. She was shaken by what she’d seen, not because porn was unknown to her, it was the situation she found herself in that is unknown. She tried to convince herself that she should not be worried about Jack but she was.
    Her experience so far told her that he was a nice guy. He saved her life and she was pretty sure he did not do anything to her in the bathtub, though she’d been pretty ‘out of it’ and she could not be positive. Just because he didn’t do anything did not mean that he wouldn’t. He has a gun and he knows how to use it, she thought, and shivered at the unwelcome vision that entered her mind. She shook her head quickly dismissing the scenario. “That will not happen,” she said aloud. Her voice sounding confident though inside she did not feel confident at all.
    ***
    “This is what I’ve been thinking about,” Jack said. He was holding the microphone and looking up at the stars through the open skylight. ”I believe I’ve figured out a way to bring you guys’ home safely without becoming infected. Do you know the company that takes tourists into space for like a million dollars a ride?” he said.
    “Yes there are two, I believe one is based near Las Vegas in Nevada,” Steve said.
    “Okay this is my plan, Sara and I will drive to Nevada and find the spacecraft and fly it up to the ISS. We bring you a sample of the plague and the supplies you need to create an anti-virus,” he said.
    He waited for a response; there was a long pause and for a moment he thought that the ISS had moved out of range.
    “Jack that is a very interesting idea but I’m afraid it just won’t work. First of all the ISS is almost three hundred miles above the planet and we are traveling at over 17,000 miles per hour. I believe the commercial craft used for space tourism has an operational ceiling of around one hundred fifty miles maximum.
    Another thing is, Jack, you don’t know how to fly. You are obviously intelligent and I know you said you’ve played lots of flight simulation games on your computer but that is simply not good enough. Playing computer games is a long way from flying a rocket propelled aircraft at Mach 1.75 into orbit. Lastly, and I do appreciate you wanting to help us, if you and Sara did manage to get up here in all likelihood we would become infected. We have been in contact with a plant bio-technologist in Australia and he has been trying to work on the problem but he has had no success. This virus is unbelievably contagious and it is only rare people like you and Sara, people with natural immunity, who survive.”