After checking on the pressure readouts and oxygen levels in the rocket's crew cabin to make sure they were holding steady, Stephan then told the girls to get ready to leave because he was all but done as he locked up all of the sensitive company files he had in his desk and then locked his office to head downstairs himself. Finally done with everything his worried mind had kept reminding him to do, he then eagerly and excitedly went to the elevator and directed it to take him to the level of the garage he had parked the car on.
Shaking his head as he walked up and saw all the suitcases of clothes that each of the girls was carrying, Stephan grinned and asked, "So are we going to space or are we going on vacation?"
Rachel smirked and replied, "Didn't you check your ticket? We're going on vacation but we have to take this terribly long flight to get to our destination."
Stephan replied with a chuckle, "We don't have to fly all the way to Hawaii to go to the beach. Or did y'all want to do the desert thing and go blow your money in Vegas?"
Dawn teased him back with, "I'd be smart and just blow your money. Besides, I was thinking about going to Alaska and all but the girls said they knew of some private tour to a place called Pluto."
Holly joined in by offering, "Well I would prefer a beach trip and I've heard of some awesome beaches at this place called Alpha Centauri."
Stephan scoffed and replied, "Don't lie. We all know you prefer the nude beaches and I'm certain that they don't have any of them that far out. And, if they did, your perverted self would have been so busy looking through every good telescope you could find watching the nude aliens cavort around that we never would have got done with this rocket."
In response Holly did her own scoffing as she waved away his comment and teased, "Well excuuuuse me mister goody two shoes. You're just jealous cause I ain't afraid to look." then stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry at him.
They all had a laugh followed by Stephan telling them in a serious tone, "Well I think the plane is due to take off here in a minute so we might want to hurry up and find our seats cause I've heard this is the only way to get to the cruise. And, I hate to break your hearts but the only luggage space they have given us is about equal to the size of your purses. So we might have to wait till next time for the vacation since the only way we would have been able to take these suitcases would have been if we had sent them up ahead of time."
Dawn groaned as she asked, "let me guess, the only place to store them would have been in the bathroom?"
Stephan defensively answered, "Um, no ma'am. They would have fit in the storage closet I had built to hold backup parts for some of our essential equipment."
Rachel laughed as she told Dawn, "Yeah. A storage closet mister worry wart made about as big as his office upstairs that, even with an extra piece of every bit of equipment on that engine and in the control room, still isn't even half full."
With a mischievous smile, Dawn asked, "Where is this room? When he was showing me the blueprints he never mentioned it."
Stephan, checking his watch, urged them, "Let's put this stuff to the side and I'll have it taken up to the office. We've got to hurry up and go because we're barely gonna have time to get there and get suited up before our flight takes off! HR can tell you about the storage closet and any other areas on the way."
"Yes boss!" Dawn acknowledged with a salute, then asked Holly, "Hey, I don't feel right making somebody else do all of our work, so you wanna help me take and put these bags in the elevator? That way it makes it a shorter trip for whoever Stephan designates to put them up. And you can tell me about that storage closet thingy real quick while we're doing this."
She agreed, they each grabbed the bags, and she started describing it as they rushed to the elevator and waited for the doors to open for them to put them inside. The doors opened and they quickly stacked them inside and pressed the button for the floor that had the offices as Stephan impatiently pulled the car up to them. As they then got in the car Dawn gave Holly a sly wink and said, "Thanks for telling me exactly where that room is. With your description accompanied by the picture of it you had in your mind I surely feel like it would accommodate our bags when we think of sending them up later."
"No problem." She answered, "Maybe if we're lucky, mister boss man will let us take the ship all the way to the Centauri system on our next test. And if he does then I am most definitely gonna try and find some type of swimming hole on one of them durn planets."
"Yeah," Dawn wistfully replied, "I sure do hope we get to go exploring one day after we get done with all these tests old worry wart is gonna want to put the ship through before he signs off on it and deems it good to go."
Rachel then chimed in with, "I'd be more than willing to put up with twice as many tests if we could work out our own transportation to the ship instead of having to keep using the government's rockets delivering food and air and such to the space station as our taxi service."
Puzzled, Dawn asked, "Aren't there a couple private companies that go up there too? Why don't you use them?"
With the others pointing at him as having the answer, Stephan provided, "While there were 4 different companies offering their services, I decided to go with the provider that had the best safety and success record. Which was the government given them only having a handful of failures out of hundreds of flights. When the best private company had had a handful of failures themselves but had only racked up less than a hundred flights in comparison."
And for this flight in particular," Stephan continued, "While the safety aspect was first and foremost, I also trust the government more with the sensitive material like blueprints and launch codes and such because their method of spying is through the surveillance cameras they have covering all habitable areas of the ships. The private companies, however, would also have the opportunity to accidentally, quote unquote, misplace the briefcase containing them while they were scanned and copied out of sight."
Hearing the explanation, Dawn summarized, "So basically what you're saying is you went with the government to save on the insurance costs and to help keep your paranoia in check. Or at least that's what I'm hearing here."
Holly and Rachel chuckled with Rachel making a hissing sound as Holly drawled out, "Ooh.... Burn!"
Stephan growled in response as he continued to meticulously navigate the directions he had written down to getting to the launch pad the rocket they were assigned to was stationed at. Several minutes later they pulled up to the gate and went through the painstakingly slow process of the guard checking them, their purses and bags, and their car for any concealed substances or weapons.
Being meticulous, the guard made them step out of the car one at a time and patted them down to check for any concealed items. He then checked the car over even checking underneath it with a magnifying glass and inside of it with a sniffer dog. When the guard started to check their bags and spotted the drug that Dawn had brought with her, She quickly gave him the documentation showing that it had come from her dad's company and that it was a legal drug undergoing FDA testing. Not being familiar with the drug and it looking suspiciously like an illegal drug, the guard continued to ask for more and more documentation to prove it was a legal drug. Dawn finally decided to use her talents and, handing him a piece of junk mail in Stephan's floor, convinced the man that the paperwork he was holding contained the documentation that he thought might be needed to prove the legality of the drug.
He then moved on to Stephan and, finding his blueprints of the spaceship and, thinking they might be planning on planting bombs on the spaceship, the guard started to question Stephan on why he needed the blueprints and what type of code was he using in his notes. Trying to explain that he wasn't using a code and was simply writing in shorthand, Stephan grew frustrated at not being able to make the guard understand.
Sensing the guard's raised suspicious nature, Holly then slid up to the guard and, as she pressed herself seductively against him, asked in a sultry manner, "So, honey, can I volunteer for a strip search? I'll even let you check all of my cavities with whatever you choose to use."
Feeling that his integrity was being attacked, the guard turned his attention to Holly and forcefully placed a set of handcuffs on her and was forcing her to a prone position when Holly added, "Ooh, baby! I like this whole S&M theme you're going with. You want me to play the bad girl and cry for help? Or would you rather me play the innocent, naïve part and offer you whatever you want and beg for forgiveness?"
As the guard grew visibly madder, Dawn then stepped in and used her talents to make the guard think he had seen one of them run off and then hear a gunshot in his mind. Thinking he was chasing a terrorist trying to attack the base, the guard quickly jumped up and went sprinting off in the direction he thought this person had ran.
Making full use of the welcome distraction, they quickly put all of their stuff back in the car and drove through the gate and down the road to the preparation building as quickly as they could.