Fearless

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must have a key, a shaker of salt and a candle.

Fearless

The morning of April 12th, 1981 was special in one of those not-so-special ways. History would vaguely remember the names Young and Crippen the way the internet remembers baseball scores; the information was important enough to recall but not so important as to take up active space in one’s mental file of instant recall.

Young looked over at his partner and nodded the go-ahead. Crippen flipped a switch and moments later, they were singing along with Jimmy Buffett. Remotely, men in white shirts and thin ties smiled at each other as “Looking for my lost shaker of salt,” karaoked over the main speakers

No one commented on the lack of professionalism. Everyone knew you had to stay loose. Being calm and collected was key to surviving situations of extreme stress. This certainly qualified as one of those situations. The mission had never been accomplished before. It had never even been attempted. Simulation after simulation said it should work, but that was just math. With all of its precision, math still failed when a decimal was misplaced. A simple typo could end this thing in a hurry and not in a good way.

“Alright boys, let’s cut the music and make some history,” came the eventual admonishment from those in positions of high responsibility and low physical risk.

Young and Crippen looked at each other and smiled before getting down to the business at hand. They knew this was going to be dangerous and yet, they couldn’t wait to get started. They were not men in the ordinary sense of what being a man is thought to be. They were explorers; fearless in the face of the unknown.

“Let’s light this candle,” said Crippen to the suits.

Seconds later, the first orbital space shuttle mission lit up the Florida sky.

Word count 299