The High Five

Milo sat on the pull-out bench in the men's triad staring at Bobby's empty alcove. He was mentally exhausted, but the hardest task was still ahead. What to do about Bobby? Any hope the comms officer had changed his tune had been dashed soon after leaving the bunker. Bobby had been incommunicado most of the evening, responding with only the tersest of answers when he bothered to respond at all. This went beyond mere neglect of duties to dereliction, perhaps even insubordination. The worst part was, they needed their communications officer. There were updated protocols from the station, new estimates and simulations of the CME, and all manner of system checks to perform.

Milo placed his phlex over his eyes. The familiar d-pic of his Kentucky basketball team floated up before him. Back then, issues of motivation were easy to solve. Even the laziest players would bust their asses to win the respect of their teammates and coaches. No one wanted to be the guy that let the team down. When all else failed, there was the threat of being benched. The biggest team issues happened in the off-season. That was when players let their training slide, started partying heavy, or slipped into bad habits.

As captain of a spaceship crew, Milo had few disciplinary options. He couldn't bench someone or even take away privileges. What else could he do? Give pep talks or stern lectures? Look how well that had turned out.

Project Liftoff had started off so promising. For a time, he thought the six of them were on the verge of forming a team as dynamic as any basketball squad. Like any good team, they even had a name: the Stellar Six. But then they had lost their captain and, to add insult to injury, been saddled with a ridiculous name.

"What are you going to call yourselves now that there are only five of you?" Jake asked when they were gathered around his bed in med bay before the press conference. "The Stellar Six doesn't fit anymore, does it?"

"The High Five!" Jess blurted. "Because we're way up high and there are five of us," she felt it necessary to explain.

Quick on the draw, Jake snapped a d-pic, catching their reactions in the moment. Bobby was holding a finger to his head like a gun. Milo was caught mid-headshake, and even Tayen was rolling her eyes. Vivian was mouthing a silent NO.

Later during the press conference, when a reporter asked the dreaded question, "Does your team have a name?" there was an awkward silence. Patched in by audio, Jake shouted, "The High Five!" His final practical joke on the team.

Maybe things would have been different if Jake were still here. He didn't so much motivate the crew as inspire them; he had an ability to make people believe they were capable of going beyond their own limitations. Milo was content to play backup captain. It was a relief not to have to call the shots and just be one of the gang. There had been some good moments in training—a lot of good ones now that he thought about it. He flipped through some more d-pics.

There was the infamous whipped cream fight. That was the week they held a contest to see who could make Tayen laugh. Reserved by nature, the ship-engineer-in-training was still uneasy in her new face. Smiles and smirks didn't count. It needed to be a real snorter. Jess told knock-knock jokes, Milo riffed on scenes from action movies, and Vivian played her funny clips. Even Jake's personatron with its holo head got in on the action, doing face morphs of bucktoothed unicorns and nose-picking ogres. Bobby pretended to fart during serious moments, and Jake would remark, "My chemical sensors are picking up high sulfur concentrations." But Tayen didn't crack. Not even a chuckle.

Then came Thanksgiving dinner. Some of them lived far across the country, and Jake thought it would build morale to celebrate it as a team. They had their fill of turkey and dressing as they swapped stories of family traditions and raucous relatives. Tayen went to squirt whipped cream onto her pumpkin pie when the nozzle broke off. Whipped cream shot out and splattered Bobby in the face and all down his side. While Bobby sat there stunned, there was this strange honking sound like a goose having its tail yanked. It was Tayen. She was doubled over, laughing and gasping. Bobby grabbed his own can of whipped cream and aimed it at Tayen, but she ducked, and he got Vivian instead. Then it was on. All out whipped cream war.

There were the surprise "field trips" Jake arranged for them, including a visit to the Paralympics. The Stellar Six was there to inspire the athletes, but mostly it worked the other way around. Vivian sat in the announcer's box while the rest of the team handed out bottled water and towels to the athletes on the field. The future astronauts were far from the biggest attraction that day. Gina Alonso was there, the first double amputee to win Olympic gold in a track and field event, shattering the world record in the process. It was a bittersweet victory. The following year, artificial limbs were declared augmentations and banned from the Olympics. But the athlete Milo remembered most was a blind long jumper. He got a thrill every time the jumper sprinted down the approach and launched himself into the air, trusting that he would land in a bed of soft sand. The nerve it took to run headlong at something he couldn't see!

There was the first session in the zero-G chamber at Paranor Station. They wore air jets on their palms and soles so they could "fly like Ironman." Jess had a blast, but Vivian was more excited still, squealing like a schoolgirl. Other than the transit to the station, it was her first time being weightless, and the open chamber gave her room to fly.

"Catch me!" she shouted as she came flying toward Milo. Her momentum carried them into the padded wall. They rebounded back into the open, clasping each other like dance partners. "You know that move ice skaters do where they lift their partner over their head? Let's try that." She guided his hands to her waist. "Don't worry about dropping me. I'm light as a feather." Once she was in the airplane position, she used her palm jets to send them spinning. "Oh my gosh, this is the greatest!" Her laughter was contagious.

There had been plenty of fun times with Bobby too. In the early days, he had been eager to prove himself, scoring first on every test, only losing out to Jess on rote memorization tasks. When it came to technology, he was a wizard of the first order. He was soon hacking the agenda-setting program, inserting nappy-time, fondue breaks, and sex-o-clock into the dawn-to-dusk training regiment. His biggest coup was hacking the personatron's interface and programming it to dance at his command. "I don't know what's come over me," Jake would play along. "I suddenly feel an irrepressible urge to boogie-woogie." At night, after training, they held drone races in the main hangar.

For all his brain smarts, there were some gaps in Bobby's life experience. He had never been to a Birthday party, watched a football game, ridden a bike, or driven a car. The team made a list and set out to remedy these shortcomings. One Saturday when they had a free afternoon, they blindfolded him and wheeled him out to an abandoned parking lot. One of the trainers had agreed to let them borrow his car for an outing, having no idea what they were up to. They sat Bobby behind the wheel and took off the blindfold.

For the next hour, Bobby raced around like Mad Max. The parking lot was cracked and full of puddles, making it the perfect bumpy, splashy course. By the time they were done, Bobby must have stripped an inch of rubber off the tires. But the biggest toll was on Bobby himself. He came away with a hairline stress fracture in his right leg and spent the next two weeks in bed recuperating. The team got the lecture of their lives. It nearly jeopardized the entire mission. But in Bobby's words, "It was so worth it."

But those days of being a starry-eyed team seemed distant now. Not long after the driving escapade, Bobby began to withdraw into himself. It was just a little at first, but by the time they reached the station, his antisocial behavior was getting hard to ignore. Where he used to be protective of Jess, now he took advantage of her simple and trusting nature to dodge work. He had once admired Vivian, even been a bit starstruck by her; now he mocked her behind her back. Then something happened between him and Tayen during a training spacewalk, and they had been at each other's throats ever since. Milo brought his behavior to Jake's attention, but the captain assured him Bobby would pull through. He would see to it personally. But then Jake's heart condition took a bad turn, and he had to sit the mission out. Since then, Bobby had only sunk deeper into his trough.

Maybe Jake would know how to get through to him. Milo switched his phlex to comm mode, his finger hovering over Jake's image. No, Milo thought. Jake had troubles of his own now. Besides, he already knew what he had to do. He pushed up from his bench and headed to the Nest.