6
Melissa was nervous.
Her knees were weak; her palms were sweaty, and the lyrics to that old Eminem song were playing in her head. She really shouldn't be doing this, but here she was, stuck behind the controls of a Class-2 shuttle.
In the window, she saw a clear blue sky with puffy clouds over a field of tall, green grass. There was nothing around for miles, no other aircraft in sight. The auto-pilot kept them on a straight course, flying fifty feet above the ground at speed comparable to those of a car on the highway.
“You're doing fine.”
The sound of a voice behind her made her flinch. The big pilot's seat cut off her sense of spatial awareness, and she had come to rely on that quite heavily. She swiveled around to face the speaker.
Jack stood between the two consoles at the back
