We sat in stunned silence. Mr. Fisher tapped his fingers on the table, while looking up at the ceiling. 

    “Mr. Fisher, what are we going to do?” I asked. 

    “Hmm. What? Oh, sorry, Tom. I was distracted for a moment. This is all very odd.” 

    “Odd?  Is that what you call it?,” asked Brian. “What are we going to do now?” 

    “Well,” Mr. Fisher said, “I imagine we're going to get to see what space flight is like. That should be pretty interesting.” 

    “Sure, until the Chatrang blow us out of the sky,” I noted. 

    “Yes, that will be less interesting.” 

    Brian stood up suddenly, swearing quickly before Mr. Fisher could interrupt. “He didn't tell us about Jack. We don't even know where he is.” 

    “I can answer that question.” We all jumped at the sound of Jack's voice. He stood in the same doorway that the Prince had just walked through a minute ago. He was wearing the same beat up jeans he had on the day before, but no shirt—above the waist he was more bandage than skin. His arm, the one that wasn't attached the last time we'd seen him, was completely covered in a honey-combed cast that quivered and undulated, giving the impression that whoever put it on forgot to remove the prior inhabitants. The cast was held in place by a series of almost transparent gel-like strips that wrapped around Jack’s chest and over his shoulders. Small flashes of light could be seen in the gel, making it look like a swarm of tiny fireflies trapped inside a gigantic fruit roll up. 

We ran to him, instantly, asking questions as we moved. 

“Oh my God, we were so worried!”

“Are you okay?”

“What did they do to you?”

    “What did the doctor say about your arm, Jack?” 

“She said it would be better than new in two days, if you can believe it. This cast is all self-controlled. It does whatever it does and then she said it will fall off by itself when my arm is healed. Pretty cool, huh?” 

“Very cool,” J.P. said, with absolutely no sarcasm in his tone. 

    “Thanks,” replied Jack, with a glance to Brian that seemed to say, “who’s this nice guy in J.P.’s body?”  

  “I agree with J.P. that the cast is cool,” Mr. Fisher commented, “but unless my eyes are deceiving me, it's moving, which is a bit disconcerting, I have to admit.” 

    “Yeah, try wearing it if you really want to be freaked out. It feels like a thousand ants are crawling around me and the doc threatened me if I even thought about trying to swat them. Otherwise she was okay. She was pissed off at the Prince, though, I’ll tell you that. Kept muttering to herself about how irresponsible he was and what a waste of her time all this was.” 

    “Does it hurt?” asked J.P. 

    “Okay, seriously J.P., did you get hit on the head or something? Yesterday you wanted to punch me and today you're worried that I'm in pain?” 

    “Relax, I still don't like you. I just feel bad about your arm, and all,” J.P. said. “We're all stuck on this ship, so, well, you know.”

    Mr. Fisher put his hand on J.P.'s shoulder. “I think what J.P. is trying to say is that we are all in this together, whether we like it or not.” 

    “Okay, great. We're all buddy-buddy,” said Jack. “So tell me--what did I miss?” 

    I got as far as, “Well,” when the  spaceship started vibrating madly and a low rumble, like approaching thunder, seemed to come from every direction. The Prince's voice boomed throughout the ship. 

    “The time for talking is over.. Your mission begins now. I would suggest you all find your way up one level to the control room. If you run, you might make it in time to buckle in before lift-off.” 

    Jack swore. Mr. Fisher didn't try and stop him. We ran. 

In a room above where we met the Prince and questioned Jack, we found chairs affixed to the floor, each with a straightforward set of belts to secure a person into place. No sooner had we all strapped in and  begun to glance around at a series of screens on the walls, then the ship took off. As though I needed to be reminded that I had no idea what was going on around me, we  blasted off without any blast. The ship simply started to rise, quickly, the images displayed on the screens streaking by until they were filled with stars. We sat speechless and stared into space, literally. The view was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen, as if a thousand artists had spent their lives trying to capture the essence of light by drawing stars upon a perfect black canvas and the result was the universe.

"So, do we have to sit here the entire trip?" Leave it to J.P. to ruin a mood, but he had a good point. Sooner or later we were going to have to eat and, well, do other things that happen when you eat. To take my mind of off that train of thought, I looked around the room. It was a circular area at the top of the squat ship with the series of large screens built into the walls at shoulder height, or maybe they were the walls as there was no edge between where the screen began and wall around it. Under completely different circumstances, I could see enjoying a football game or some serious gaming in this room.

“Do you think this bucket of bolts has ESPN?” asked Jack from one of the six chairs that were spaced around the room at seemingly random locations, except for two that were placed in front of a complicated panel filled with smaller screens, and dozens of buttons and levers, the purpose of which I couldn’t even begin to guess.  

Mr. Fisher smiled at Jack’s question. “I doubt it, but an instruction manual or even a remote control would certainly be helpful.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be floating around?” asked Brian as he unbuckled himself and starting walking around the room, threatening to push or pull various objects that would probably eject us all into outer space. 

J.P. almost tackled him. “Don’t touch anything. The ship will probably self-destruct or something.” Apparently I wasn’t the only paranoid one aboard.

Brian looked skeptical. “What are the chances that the first button I push just happens to be the self-destruct button?”

“The way our luck is going right now, I can pretty much guarantee you will blow us up,” remarked Jack without the slightest hint of sarcasm. Brian kept his hands to himself . . . for now.

We all stood up, Jack more slowly than the rest. I looked at his alien cast again, watching it undulate across his shoulder and arm. “Are you okay? Is your arm bothering you?”

“What, no. It’s my back. Wait until you guys try the beds. They’re like rocks.”

“Really?” said Brian. “My bed last night was awesome. I know it sounds weird, but it seemed happy to have me sleep in it.”

“Mine, too,” I added before thinking about how that sounded. Fortunately everyone was nodding their heads in agreement, everyone except Jack who was looking at us like we’d all just admitted to sleeping with a stuffed teddy bear named Fluffy.

“Yes, well, let’s focus on what’s important and we will worry about sleeping later,” Mr Fisher said. “For now we seem to be headed wherever the Prince wants us to go, so I suggest we try and deal with what we can control.  Tom, why don’t you and Jack try and figure out what we are supposed to eat while on the ship and Brian and J.P. can tackle the other end of the problem, if you know what I mean.”

J.P. spoke up immediately. “Why do they get the good assignment?”

Shifting uncomfortably, I countered, “I’m okay with the bathroom search. It’s kind of important we find one fairly soon.” 

“Let’s go,” said Jack. “I know where we can start looking.” In fact, Jack knew exactly where to, um, go. He led me back down to the level below where we had first come aboard and into a room with four sets of bunk beds. They did look a lot less comfortable than the ones back on the planet. 

“This way,” Jack motioned towards what looked like a closet with no door in the far corner of the room past one set of beds.  We stood side-to-side in the doorway and stared at a wall about six feet away. 

“The doctor showed me how it works before she left. Go ahead,” Jack said.

“Go ahead, what?” I asked. “You want me to pee on the floor?”

“No, moron. Pee on the wall. Do you pee on the floor in your house?”

“No, and I don’t pee on the wall either.”

“Well, here you do. Fire away.”

“This is a messed up conversation, you know that, right?” 

“Just go!” 

“Fine. Just leave!”

“Baby.”

“Jerk.”

I listened to him walk past the beds and into the other room before I stepped into the bathroom. Okay, this part is a little embarrassing and I can’t recall HEARING many adventure STORIES WHERE THEY TAKE a time out for a bathroom break, but I really had to go. Without giving it any more thought I unzipped my pants and began impersonating a drunk guy in an alley, except instead of leaving a puddle, the floor and wall lit up with what looked like a thousand fireflies and devoured whatever hit it. I finished and before I could zip up a flash of light filled the room and my skin tingled like I’d been shocked. The room was as empty and clean as when I’d walked in. Weird. Very weird.