Chapter Text
After a sleepless last night on Earth, Major Don West thought maybe a five and a half year nap in a freezing tube would do him some good.
The young pilot made a last entry in the log, said a wordless last goodnight to Judy, shook hands with her father, then entered the freezing tube meant for him. He closed his hazel eyes
Just before he lost consciousness, the pilot began to dream of the many years that he had spent waiting for this day. All the years of schooling and training that he had to go through before he was selected for this special flight. He probably wouldn’t be much help as the ship was equipped with many new automatic devices that controlled each flight course much better than he, (a guy with the nickname “Crash”!) could ever hope to do. It would only be fate if he had to take the controls even once on the long journey to Alpha Centauri.
“If you wake up and find me driving, you’ll know you’re in trouble!” That was what he had said, with a big grin, knowing that such a thing probably wouldn’t happen. And yet, the Robinsons had in fact woken up and found Don driving. And they were very much in trouble.
He sat at the flight console in the fold-out pilot’s chair. He felt guilty about not being there to support the family while Maureen was having a medical emergency, but it was his responsibility to make sure the ship was all right and didn’t run into any more unknown asteroids. He checked the notes he had made on his clipboard. With the guidance system and control system all damaged, he had no choice but to do everything by hand, the good old fashioned way.
As far as he could tell, they had been thrown clear out of the edge of the Kuiper Belt by the meteors, although he had no way of estimating their precise position. He could see the Trifid Nebula out the viewport, which meant they would be over fifty degrees off course, but he had no clue how far they had been thrown in any direction. There was no way they could have reached the Oort Cloud in such a short time, right?
He didn’t really want to decelerate the ship, but he had no choice, so he brought it into the middle of low range acceleration, switching from the great atomic motors to the ion propellant while keeping the magnetic drive active. Fortunately, they had plenty of reserve fuel cells, so they could still accelerate again, and course correct and compensate. Once they knew where they were.
“My mother’s all right now.” Judy came up behind him, whispering.
“Good.” Don said plainly, softly. He wished he could do more to comfort her, but he had to put his job first. All of what he was doing was to protect her and her family.
“Are we?”
“I’ll let you know in a minute.”
A second later, Penny and Will rushed up to the main console as well. “Wow!” Will gasped, awkwardly running past and climbing over Don to be as close to the viewport as he could and just stared mesmerized into the void. Well, at least someone was excited. And he was a lot like his oldest sister in that way, Judy was doing the same thing, and so was Penny.
Don didn’t look up from his clipboard, the calculations were just too important.
On a separate column, he was also making a list of damaged systems and subsystems. If even one system was destroyed, it would affect the ship’s equilibrium, and with so much damage, Don was pretty sure he would have to start using glue, like the whole mission was some big arts-and-crafts project in grade school.
The booster regulator was shot, the solenoids were out, inertial navigation system damaged, the central computer system hadn’t even been installed, since everyone was supposed to be in the deep deep-freeze. Basically, it was a total mess. Fortunately, everything seemed structurally intact, aside from the Pod and Scoutcraft, their only means of escape, which had been thrown against the hull and totally smashed up during the meteor storm.
Penny broke the silence. “Where’s Alpha Centauri?”
Don didn’t reply. What was there to say? He didn’t know how to break it to the kids that they weren’t anywhere near Alpha Centauri and had only been sleeping for a few hours. He was sure that they picked up on the fact that he had totally lost his usual laid-back attitude.
“It’s out there. Somewhere.” her brother said, curious but unsure.
“Gee, it looks like we’re standing still!” Penny observed.
Judy was silent. Don knew she knew, maybe he shouldn’t have told her first? He just couldn’t keep it from her. Her siblings were just still so young…
Normally, Don might have asked Penny and Will if they wanted to see something interesting out in space like ‘hey, there’s the Trifid nebula! Just look at it kids, and forget the fact that we’re off course and everything is damaged!’ or something like that, anything to distract them from being scared. He just couldn’t bring himself to do that now.
He liked both of Judy’s siblings an awful lot, and felt bad about being irritated or ignoring them, the last thing he wanted to do was be rude to them. He really was relieved that they seemingly weren’t too upset by what had happened. Still, at the end of the day he was a USSC officer, not some school bus driver, and he had to get things back on track.
Finally, John explained the situation to the kids, and Don was relieved he didn’t have to be the one to break the news to them. Penny and Will went very quiet after that and just stared out the viewport. After just a few more moments, Don left the console and walked over to the other adults to give an update. Judy followed next to him.
“The meteors clobbered us. Our whole control system’s badly damaged,”
“You're supposed to be a space pilot and qualified, improvise something. Turn us around and get us back to Earth!” Colonel Smith demanded.
“If I were you, Colonel, I'd keep my mouth shut.” Don warned him.
Yes, Colonel Smith had saved his life, but Don wasn’t buying his excuse about how he got trapped aboard for a second. Something was just off with him. Right before he woke up the Robinsons, he could have sworn… no, he didn’t even want to think about it. Whatever his reason for being there, Don just didn’t trust the guy. And besides, he had to vent his irritation on someone.
“Don!” Judy scolded him. He forgot she kind of liked the colonel, sometimes. Much as he respected Judy’s judgement, that still didn’t change his feelings one bit. He couldn’t prove his suspicions, but he had a gut feeling. “You're responsible for this mess we're in.”
“Really, Major? Have you bothered to wonder who revived you? You tumbled out of there like a block of ice, dead as a coffin nail. Who do you think brought you back to life?”
“Thanks,” Don managed quietly. He explained the situation with Smith’s extra weight, while the colonel demanded to be taken back home. Even Dr. Robinson was visibly irritated with him. Don liked this new side of him, and how committed he was to the mission.
“Don, do you have any idea of our present position?.”
“Not precisely.” Don walked off and around the astrogator. The others followed, except for Penny and Will who were still looking out the viewport.
“Well, look into it, then.” John commanded as casually as he could, close behind Don. “I want to know exactly where we are while we plan our next course of action.”
“All right, Doc. I’ll check the central astrogator first, then the gyros and IGS systems.”
“Here, I’ll help.” John offered.
Don spent a few minutes checking the systems out. The astrocompass and map screens weren’t installed, only the navigational guidance system and spectroscope. He checked the Inertial Navigation System out briefly. Fortunately, most of the damaged controls had been automatically regenerated.
“I’m sure Alpha Control planned for all contingencies. Doesn’t this marvelous craft of ours, of yours, rather… have any lifeboats?” Colonel Smith inquired. “It should, at any rate-”
“The Pod and flier got pretty banged up by those meteor impacts.” Don told him in a clipped, irritated voice. “Uh, but you’re welcome to take your chances, Colonel.”
Don got down on the floor and pulled on one of the handholds all along the astrogator base, opening a panel and peering inside.
“Ohh boy, after all that work to set it up, the auto-nav is completely out. We can’t even raise it up to the upper dome to try and get a fix, until we can be sure the dome wasn’t compromised by the impacts.”
“Well what about the NGS scanner?” John asked.
“I’ll have to check that out later. How did this even happen? The astrogator’s still functional as far as manual navigation goes, but the magnetic fields are going crazy. We haven’t been flying nearly long enough to clear the heliosphere, so we should still be within the sun’s magnetic influence. Unless those were somehow magnetic meteors, I don’t see why it’s not working. I guess it’s the extra payload,” he glared at Smith, who averted his eyes.
“Well, what about the freezing tubes? Could their electromagnetic fields being exposed have affected the automatic navigator at all?” Maureen wondered.
“It could be any number of things. Well, whatever caused this, we can manage fine without the astronomical navigator, right?” John asked.
“Yea, uh, that’s what I’m here for.” said Don. “I just need to get the coordinates. Maybe I can get some manual sightings from the navigation blister, and relay them down to you at the main console.”
“Right,” John nodded. Don proceeded towards the glide tube elevator that led up to the retracted astrodome above, which unlike the central astrodome in the middle of the deck, had thankfully been protected from the barrage of meteoroids. Don didn’t want to tell anyone that the main viewport could still be a risk point, since the port-view blinder mechanism on the Upper Deck was out, leaving the window exposed. But one thing at a time.
John and Maureen walked over to the main console to open the hatch and raise the dome.
Judy accompanied Don, and as much as he thought some alone time with her was just what he needed, he couldn’t afford any distractions from getting back on course, not even personal ones. But as Judy reminded him, she had studied astronomy in school, and had a really good memory for recognizing celestial phenomena. Even if science wasn’t her thing, Don realized she could help a lot.
And he did really want to have some time alone with her to see how she was feeling. She had been awfully quiet, except for reacting to how he was treating their unexpected passenger. He still felt bad about not being able to comfort her earlier, but he had to stay focused. Some time to be alone and really process their situation might be a good thing.
It didn’t happen. Will decided he wanted to go too, he had studied astronomy and probably knew even more than Don in some ways, so Don agreed even though it would take away from his alone time with Judy, and would be harder to talk honestly about their situation with someone so young.
And then no one wanted to leave Penny out after that, so he ended up crammed in the extremely tiny transparent dome with all three Robinson siblings under the stars. Talk about awkward.
He would think at a time like this they would want to be with their parents, but he knew they had wanted to speak with Colonel Smith alone anyway.
As Penny and Will were mesmerized by the view from the transparent dome and had their faces pressed against the transparent polycarbonate material between them and the vacuum of space, Judy whispered, “Don, I know we’re all frustrated right now, but did you really have to say those things to Dr. Smith? He did save my mother’s life. And yours. And whatever we think of him, the poor man didn’t ask to be here.”
“Yea. I know all that.” Don relented, “It’s just, I don’t buy his excuse about how he got trapped aboard the ship for one minute. Something’s just fishy,”
Will was intrigued by the conversation. “Dad said he told him he got stuck aboard because he went downstairs to adjust the helium nitrogen intake valve, but isn’t that on the Upper Level? And why would he be doing that anyway? Isn’t he just our doctor? And a colonel… I mean maybe it makes sense if he was just gonna check on the life support systems, I guess, but I think he got kinda mixed up.”
“‘Mixed up’ is right” Judy said, a little sarcastically. “I feel bad for him, being trapped here with us like this, it’s really not fair. But okay, that is really so strange.”
“Yea, you can say that again.” Don agreed. “I know, I know, he’s a colonel, I’m just a major, I get it. But he’s got no place on this mission, he’s still a stowaway.”
“Hmm…” Judy pondered the whole thing, but didn’t say anything else.
The Major muttered, “Helium-nitrogen intake…” bitterly under his breath. “All I can say is, when I went to cadet school, that kind of BS excuse wouldn’t’ve- ”
“BS?” Will asked. “What’s that? Some kind of technical code or something?” and Judy looked at Don with a warning expression.
“Bad stuff? Bio-something… bio-system? Ohhh… Blatantly silly?” Penny suggested, sounding especially pleased with the last one.
“Yea, all of those.” Don sighed. He had much stronger language he wished he could say about their in his view very unwelcome guest, but he’d have to save it. “Anyway, uhh, when I went to cadet school, an excuse like Smith’s wouldn’t have gotten me out of Sunday chapel.”
Don wondered how that would go over with the Robinsons since he knew they were a lot more religious than he was- was that why they were being too forgiving with Smith? Still, Will grinned at that comment. Don supposed they were all sort of in some mandatory Sunday chapel of space, with nothing to do but hope and pray. No, Don wouldn’t let himself leave their fate in anyone else’s hands, whether the almighty or an Alpha Control rescue ship. Their mission was too important, and he was not about to turn around and go back.
While the astrodome itself was undamaged, the delicate instrumentation had been dislodged, so unfortunately there was no way to navigate except by sight, and the NGS scanner wasn’t working either.
Judy identified the Trifid nebula too, and Will was surprised, he clearly thought he was the only one with astronomical knowledge among his siblings. Don was impressed too, he knew Judy had studied nebulae and galaxies in school, and she did have a very good visual eye, even if it wasn’t her field of interest, and a good memory- she had to, to be able to memorize all those lines and lyrics and stage directions. Don felt guilty because despite his astronomy knowledge, he wasn’t very observant at all, and he felt bad that Judy could recognize so many celestial phenomena, but he often didn’t notice when she changed her hairstyle sometimes. Even so, he loved her so much. He only hoped that she wasn’t regretting her choice to come along on the mission, after all the drama none of them had expected.
The sun wasn’t visible, but it couldn’t be far- it was maybe just below their field of view and blocked by the rest of the saucer that had once seemed so massive on the launch pad, but now was rapidly feeling smaller and smaller. Judy’s younger siblings still seemed too mesmerized by the excitement of space to even process that they were in trouble, but he could tell Judy was troubled, and he wanted to comfort her. One thing gnawed at him- what would he do if she wanted to go back to Earth, and he insisted on carrying out the mission?
He remembered one time, when Judy had stayed over at his place, before they were even officially dating so nothing “happened”, but he knew it had been hard for Judy to be away from her family. She had been away from them a lot longer when in NYC, but that was before. Don knew that he and Judy were always wanting alone time, but when it had happened that night, Judy was probably half asleep and had been so, so upset, crying about how she wanted to go home.
Don had never seen her like that, but he had done his best to comfort her and help her through that. They had never really talked about it after that, and he had never seen Judy like that since, but he half expected her to have a similar reaction now. No, she was just quiet, composed, but he hoped she wasn’t just doing that for her siblings’ sake, or his sake even. He just wanted her to be okay. Next to getting back on course for Alpha Centauri, Judy’s (and her family’s, of course) safety and comfort was his interplanetary priority number one. He could have two first priorities, right? It was so hard to be torn between his duty and his feelings. And the dream about their future that he had in suspended animation was already fading away- he just wanted to hold onto it.
Penny and Will kept asking questions about things beyond the astrodome they noticed in space, and he admired their curiosity- he just couldn’t match their energy then. Maybe he was still groggy from the freezing tube disaster, or he just didn’t feel like being some sort of a tour guide on a field trip. Not when the mission was at stake.
Eventually, they descended back to the Upper Level and Don paced around the central astrogator again, while Penny and Will went over to the main viewport, seemingly without a care in the world. Judy still seemed bothered, while Don reported to her parents, who had been talking with Colonel Smith over by the freezing tubes.
“Don, were you able to figure out how far we are from Earth?” John asked.
“It wasn’t possible from just looking.” Don admitted, as he paced away, and everyone except the still distracted Penny and Will, followed close behind him. “But maybe we can calculate it. Luckily, the atomic clock is still working and it’s nearly eight hours since take-off”
Don walked over to the flight recorder and checked out the vector tapes, those spinning spools that the ship could switch out interchangeably. Unfortunately, he soon realized the tapes were damaged.
“Well is there any way you can repair the Inertial Navigation System?” John asked.
“I can try, but it means shutting off the artificial gravity for a while.”
“All right, do it.”
Don hoped that without the extra magnetic confusion of the artificial gravity, it would be possible to re-orient the gyroscope mechanism, that big red ball of doom, as he called it in his head. Normally he would control the gravity from the main console, but there was another switch behind the gyroscope for a full shutdown. After that, they would be in free fall.
Don lodged himself into the cabinet where the gyroscope was stored and began his work, while behind him, Penny and Will began to play and float around the control room. It was a little distracting, but hey, they were having fun. At least they weren’t upset. It did make him feel like a school bus driver again though…
“I’m an officer in the United States Space Corps, not a… school bus driver.”, he said, a little later, when the gravity was back on and he was talking to John and Maureen.
Don wasn’t particularly a fan of school buses, they reminded him too much of that creepy foster home bus he had been on before being adopted. And of course Alpha Control’s interplanetary space shuttles just had to be bright yellow? That was why he had never wanted to pilot one. But even aboard the sleek and silver Jupiter 2, he felt like he was a school bus driver after all, only he wasn’t about to stop it and let anyone off. Not now.
“I’d like conditions to be perfect, but just because they’re not isn’t reason enough for me to abort a thirty-billion dollar mission.”
It was Maureen who disagreed with him, and before long she and John were having quite the argument, and Don was just on the sidelines, feeling very awkward. He knew it was bad when those two were fighting, since they hardly ever did. He had tense moments with them both in the past, but he had never seen them argue like that before.
He glanced at the back of the deck, where Judy was talking with Penny. Don was determined to continue the mission, but he still hadn’t asked her thoughts about it. Would she agree with her mother, or her father and him? He hated to interrupt her and her sister, but he thought before he came between her parents and their disagreement, he wanted to know what she felt. Before he could, Colonel Smith came up to interject. Don had almost forgotten he was even there, but being reminded didn’t help his mood at all.
Then everything went from bad to worse. Suddenly, the Robot ascended to the Upper Deck and began advancing towards the astrogator. Don tried to stop the machine, but was thrown to the deck as the Robot smashed the manual controls in a massive explosion, sending the ship careening out of control. Don tried to get the Robot from behind, but it was too late. The machine knocked him to the deck. It hurt, badly, and for a moment he regretted turning the artificial gravity back on. But he had done boxing before so he knew what to do and how to fall, and it was better than being struck by lightning by that thing’s claws.
As he pulled himself up against the astrogator, Don heard a high-pitched whine, as if the ship itself were screaming. “We’re going into a hyperdrive! We’re out of control!” he warned, struggling against the astrogator, trying to find some way to stop the ship. Out the viewport, space distorted. Don’s first instinct was to try and decelerate the ship, but it wasn’t possible. The ship had never been meant to travel this fast, it was only theoretical. No one could do anything to stop it, and another danger came up. “He’s going for the pressure control!” John warned, indicating the Robot.
“Try and get him from the other side!” Don called. If anyone could stop that thing, it would have to be John, right? Or not. An electrical charge knocked John to the ground. Then the Robot began destroying the pressure control, the only thing regulating the ship’s air flow. “He’s breaking through!” Don shouted.
“Pull out the power pack!” Smith’s voice called. For once he said something useful.
Don struggled against the machine. If John couldn’t do it, how could he? He was a pilot, yes he had done some boxing in the past, but nothing could have prepared him for something like this. But he had to try. He grabbed at the thing’s torso and pulled. The power pack came out in his hand and the machine slumped over. Don ran over to the storage bay behind the communications console, struggling against the turbulence of the ship and the light-headedness from the air pressure change and having been knocked out. He retrieved a magnetic plate and ran over to the pressure control to seal the air leak.
Once he was sure the breach was sealed, Don rushed over to the flight controls. The astrogator controls were completely destroyed, which meant his only chance of navigating was from the flight controls below the viewport, which he could barely stand to look out of with how strange everything looked. Normally, he would expect to see redshift behind the ship and blue shift ahead when traveling at relativistic speeds, but instead there were swirly streaks of muted red and blue all at once, as if the ship was going in any number of random directions and breaking physics itself, colors without description and then no color at all. Even with how the suspended animation process could affect color vision a little, it was like nothing he had ever seen. Then darkness, swirling, distorted darkness.
Hyperspace drive… faster than light… there was no way that could be controlled. But he had to find a way to slow them down, there was no way to navigate. He wanted to offer John the acceleration flight chair since he had been injured by the electrical charges, but John insisted he take it and slow them down. He did feel guilty being the only one with a chair as they continued to careen out of control.
“I’ve gotta slow her down!” Don announced, doing his best. He missed just a few minutes earlier when he had been complaining about being a school bus driver- now he felt more like a racecar driver on the track with a school bus. Well, he was nothing if not adaptable. But it was a hard position of power to be in, everyone’s lives in his hands like that. He was the only one who could pilot the ship, but he couldn’t do it on his own.
“Okay docs, hold down the stabilizers while I slow us down!” he told John and Maureen. “Not you, Smith!” he shouted. Don couldn’t bother to turn around.
Maureen held down the stabilizer on one of the flight consoles, but there was another on the comms console.
“Okay great! John, get that one over on the edge of the comms console, I don’t know why its there, but it is! That’ll hold ‘er steady!”
John tried to make it to the communications console, but he stumbled and fell against the panel, the adrenaline giving way to the lightning. Penny ran to her father.
“We’ve gotta stabilize the ship!” Don couldn’t turn around. Much to his relief, the ship stabilized. “Great job!” he called, feeling more like a school teacher than a school bus driver. Then he turned to the console and saw it wasn’t John, it was Judy who was holding down the stabilizers.
“Judy…” their eyes met for just a second.
“All that time I spent with a space pilot like you paid off!” said Judy. “I remembered a few things.”
Don wanted so badly to kiss her then. He still couldn’t leave the console, but he gave her a loving, grateful nod. They were a team. Even if they had their differences, when it counted, they were in perfect synchronization, even enough to stabilize their speeding spacecraft.
Finally, Don managed to decelerate the ship, warning everyone to hold on tight and get down on the floor again. The engines whined, but they held up. Then it was over, and they were back in normal space. Not anywhere he could recognize, and he looked down sadly, quietly, when he realized that. Then he felt Judy’s hand on his shoulder, and he squeezed it tightly. Wherever they were, they were safe, and they were together. That was what really counted.