Birthday on The Moon

First Edit, Part 22

They continued to black through space as the earth could not decide which window to peer into. Adrian approached the controls and unable to take his attention off the buttons, beeps and whizzes. It if had eyes it would have stared back at him, instead it was making the noises as it wanted to befriend him, yet it had to keep them afloat. Grandpa welcomed him to the front of the spaceship.

"It has the best view here," he commented, "these control the speed," he began as he tried not to overload him, "and these for the gravity," he added as the lesson barley began. The array of buttons looked up at them, each wanted to be pressed but few needed to be. Adrian scanned them all as he processed their purposes. "This one," continued Grandpa," allows the paint to spread and leave the canister," he wanted to keep it useful for them both.

"Woa," replied Adrian with his hands on the panel, he did not press or pull anything, "how do you tell it where to go?"

"Well," began Grandpa he thought for a moment and considered their current instability "again, the paint pulls us towards things and it is doing most of the work for us, however, the control adjusts the ship so we can lean into the direction we want to go."

"oh, I see."

"Indirectly controlling the paint and spaceship at the same time."

"Lean?"

"Yes, gently pushing ourselves into the direction we want to go."

"I see," said Adrian as he absorbed knowledge like a sponge, "so, how can we stabilise ourselves? How can we stop spinning?"

"Well, look here," Grandpa pointed and guided Adrian along with the controls. Although there multiple levers, dials, buttons and beeps that all played their part and did their duty for their passengers they tried to be as friendly and approachable as possible for their new pilot.

"Start with this one," as he showed Adrian which dial to twist; the dial turned as though it was dancing. "We need more of these," he invited Adrian to press a sequence of buttons as he pointed to them one by one. Adrian only followed him; it was not very often that a soon-to-be 13-year-old would pilot a spaceship for his birthday. "Now, pull... this... lever," with each word he got a stronger grip of it, Adrian joined him quickly and helped it click into place. A number pad lit up and wanted some fresh digits pressed. "Here, look," said Grandpa as they looked at it, "we need to do some maths," said Grandpa as Adrian stood over the number pad eager to give his first commands to the spaceship.

"What shall I do?" he asked.

"Whatever you do: be careful," warned Grandpa," one small mistake and we will miss earth by a lot.

"Oh,"

"Even the smallest mistake in life can have a big impact on it," he warned in a philosophical manner, "you need to put in the coordinates for earth." He began to press the numbers and turn different labelled dials. They all played their part like a big orchestra.

"Be careful," warned Grandpa as Adrian turned to him, "one small mistake."

"So, the square root of eighty-one is nine and judging by the distance of the earth, then 9 is how hours we'd need," he pressed the nine. "Eight multiplied by seven is forty-eight, so that is how many degrees we need to be and the angle of our descent," he pressed the buttons and lights started beeping! "Woa, what is happening?"

"I am not sure," said Grandpa as he intervened, "let me try..." his voice trailed off to pull another level and press some buttons untouched by either of them. The beeping stopped.