Returning Home

I spent 127 days on the spacecraft. Of course crafts today are much more com­fortable and even more luxurious, but that early craft from Octula was a marvel in its day. After we had been under way for about four hours, I started to explore.

Right outside the main bathroom on my deck was a map of the craft. The design was essentially circular. There were four main decks, with my stateroom on the sec­ond from the bottom. Each passenger deck had seven staterooms on its perimeter, some larger and some smaller than mine. The bottom deck was reserved for the staff of nine, with small individual rooms, a laundry, and a kitchenette. The top main deck contained the kitchen, the dining room, and a lounge. A fifth deck at the top con­tained the Captain’s quarters and the navigational and communica­tions equip­ment.

In the center of the bottom three decks were the cargo areas and the mechanical workings of the craft. I never saw this part of the spaceship.

Each passenger deck had a hallway that connected the staterooms, and four win­dows with window seats opened onto each hallway.

During my first tour, I rode the elevator to the higher decks and walked around. Some doors were open, and I was able to see how the staterooms increased in size and luxury as I got higher in the craft. Some rooms were three times the size of mine.

The crew was made up entirely of humans. Although the Octulians had built the craft and were managing the flights, they had trained humans to pilot and service the space­ship. I learned later the flights to other planets were staffed by entities from those planets, not by Octulians.

The best part of the trip was the food. A very fine chef from Europe was in charge of the kitchen. She spoke German and French, so I was able to talk a bit to her. She worked one trip per year, back and forth to Oc­tula, and was paid better than most restaurant or hotel chefs. She had two assistants in the kitchen and two waiters in the dining room.

A buffet table was set up around the clock with essen­tially anything a passenger could want to eat. The main meal of the day was pre­pared to order at any time, with at least one kitchen assistant and one waiter al­ways on duty. Each week the maid left a notice in my room telling me the menu for the main meals of the following week, and I could plan what I would eat and when.

My major difficulty with this food was that it was all so wonderful I gained weight. There was no exercise room on the craft, so I walked the circular hall on my deck twenty times before breakfast each morn­ing.

A typical main meal’s entree would be salmon with a dill crust or chicken breast stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms. Breakfast items on the buffet, around the clock, always in­cluded crepes stuffed with cheese, bagels with lox, waffles made from buckwheat flour, fruits of every variety, and several kinds of coffees and teas. For lunch this same buffet offered pizzas, calzones, lettuce salads, various chicken salads, sandwiches with many different meats and spreads, and a tray of cookies. The main meals were al­ways served with three green vegetables and a potato dish. A self-service bar served all kinds of drinks, again around the clock. The trip to and from Octula was a favorite with the very wealthy, and the food was planned to make it just as special as a lux­ury cruise.

On my trip to Octula the craft carried fif­teen passengers, nine crewmembers, and a full load of cargo. Of the passengers, seven were vacationers and eight were going to Octula for work.

I spent my time looking out the window for most of the 127 days. I read some of the over one thousand books I had loaded onto my computer. I did not look at the materi­als my director had given me for my as­sign­ment. After nearly twelve years of working, I had a wonderful vacation.