Nebula by Howard Marsh

actually said anything at all. “Colonel, we’re approaching Prime. We should be docked in about one minute. The director is already there to meet you and Professor Ambrose.”
    “Thanks Milo. Harry, you are about to meet our fearless leader, Director Abraham Billingsley. He’s what you might call the chief operating officer of Nebula. He’s a bit of an aristocrat of sorts, but he treats people well and is totally committed to what we’re doing. You’ll probably hit it off with him. He respects the intellectuals with all the degrees, so he may even treat you as an equal. He’s really a pretty decent chap, at least for a stuffy, upper class Brit.” And Brad chuckled, mostly to himself. Harry sensed that Brad and Billingsley must have a long history together and were probably pretty close friends.
    The ship passed through a very large door that slid closed behind them and then came to rest in a very large chamber that was filled with water. The entry door was much higher than the floor, and the ship slowly descended about twenty meters before coming to rest at the bottom. Then the water level began to drop almost immediately, and the chamber was completely empty within only a few minutes. It was clear that they had reached their destination, Nebula Prime.
    The trip had been so smooth that Harry felt as if they had just stayed put, on the ground, for the entire flight. But Harry’s view through the displays arrayed around the pilots’ stations told him differently. He saw the rapid climb up through the clouds, and he could see the Earth moving under them at a speed faster than anything that he’d seen on airplanes. He even saw the erratic, zigzag course that they took, right up to the plunge into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The conflict between these visual images and the inner ear’s sense of standing still was a bit uncomfortable at first, sort of like the sick feeling when he’d been blindfolded in the Toyota. But he acclimated to it very quickly and actually enjoyed the flight.
    Once the water had emptied from the landing area, another huge door slid open. This door was at floor level, about twenty meters below the entry door. The ship rose about one meter from the floor and moved through it, into a very large chamber that had two other spacecraft like theirs and several strange looking tracked vehicles sitting near the walls. The ship moved toward one end of the chamber and stopped about six meters from the wall. Then the door opened and the ladder extended back to the ground. It was obviously time to disembark, or de-plane, or whatever they called it.
    Standing near the ladder were three men, one of whom looked distinguished enough to be the Abraham Billingsley that Brad had mentioned. He was dressed in a dark blue business suit, with a red bow tie and a red handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. Harry was surprised, and a bit amused, at the formality, and he recalled that Brad had said that Billingsley was a bit of an aristocrat. He certainly did stand out from the others who looked like members of either the ground crew or the security detail assigned to Billingsley and were dressed much more modestly.
    Brad took the lead toward the three of them, motioning Harry to follow. Milo apparently wasn’t going to disembark.
    “Good morning B,” Brad said as they approached. “I’d like to introduce our famous new recruit, Harry Ambrose. It took quite a bit to – shall we say – encourage him to join us, but here he is. And I think that he may even be starting to enjoy being here, but I’ll let him comment on that. So Harry, meet Director Billingsley.”
    “Hello Harry. Please call me B. Everyone else does. You’ll find that we’re pretty informal down here. And no need for the director or professor titles. Only the military seem to keep up the antiquated class distinctions. Sort of an ego trip, eh Colonel?”
    Brad let that pass. It was obvious that the two of them did this sort of back and