As soon as they got off the plane Brian spotted the spaceship.
“WOW!” He yelled excitedly, hopping up and down.
Hannah backed off the plane, dragging Jess by the ankles.
“NO! NO, GOD! LEAVE ME ON THE PLANE! PLEASE!”
A loud speaker crackled and an announcement was made by an American voice. “WELCOME! PRESIDENT JESS, TO OUR SECRET LOCATION SPACE PAD!!”
Jess almost got her head blown off by a 32-gun salute by a flash looking military. “That's it! I'm going back to the plane!”
Jess wriggled free of Hannah's clutch and ran back to the plane. Hannah sighed, figured Jess wasn't exactly who she wanted to be holding anyway and ran off to Keanu as they walked slowly to the shuttle.
It gleamed in the sky and they ambled along the red carpet and got into a lift, which ascended them to the boarding platform where they got into the ship.
“Would you like me to show you your seat, madam?” A pleasant lady dressed as a smart shuttle hostess walked up to Hannah.
“Wow, this building on Mars must have been good business.” Hannah commented.
“Very right, madam, my children haven't eaten for years until now.” The hostess replied.
Hannah was distracted from further conversation from a squeak getting increasingly louder outside the door. The sound explained itself as Jess appeared at the door with Sean, beaming.
“What happened to Elijah?” Asked Hannah.
“Erm…he…he fell down the waste chute.” Jess said, shiftily.
Sean looked at Hannah in terror and mouthed: “HELP ME!”
Hannah leapt into a plan of action and pointed somewhere behind Jess.
“LOOK! IT'S THE BIGGEST CAESAR SALAD IN THE WORLD!”
“Where?!” Jess turned around.
“RUN, SEAN! RUN!” Hannah screamed. Sean ran back onto the plane and it took off.
“ARSE.” Jess stamped her foot.
“Sorry, Jess, but you've got two hobbits. Three is just greedy.” Hannah said, maturely.
“WOULD ALL PASSENGERS PLEASE BOARD THE SPACE SHUTTLE IN PREPARATION FOR TAKE OFF.” Said a voice on a loudspeaker.
“I'm scared.” Jess said in a small voice.
“I'm not.” Hannah clutched onto Keanu tightly and grinned.
Jess walked over to her seat that looked worryingly like a throne. She sat down and did up her seatbelt far too tightly to over-compensate for the madness.
The shuttled began to rumble and then as the countdown reached its climax the engines roared into life.
They zoomed off, but Jess was half impressed since they didn't feel to be flying much faster than a plane, yet she still didn't like the feeling.
She looked out of a nearby window, saw clouds zooming past and decided to look at the large plasma TV screen that was screening a map of their shuttle and where it was in relation to Mars.
The overhead speaker interrupted her trail of thought. “Ladies, gentlemen and President Jess, we have now exited the Earth's atmosphere and I have enacted the gravity simulator so you can carry out your normal day's activities. The weather is pretty clear from what I can see and there aren't too many space monsters around, so our expected time of arrival is 2 hours from now.” There was a pause. “Oh, by the way, I'm your captain.” There was a hiss and crackle as the loudspeaker switched off.
“Ooh! This is so exciting!” Squeaked Hannah, who was sitting in a seat near Jess. “I wonder what Mars will be like?!”
“Red and dusty I should expect.” Keanu muttered, eating some complementary coconut flakes.
“No…but inside the glass houses! They're probably going to try and make it look all different, aren't they?”
“As long as they don't put retro designs in there otherwise it'll go out of fashion really quickly.” Keanu reflected.
“I wonder if they'll have a red theme?! That would be clever, wouldn't it?” Hannah continued.
“We'll fid out in 2 hours!” Jess snapped. She picked up a nearby book out of her seat pocket and read the title: “YOUR GUIDE TO MARS.” She opened it up, interested in how someone could write an entire book on the Red Planet still managing to keep it exciting. The book fell open on a chapter named: 'Time keeping on Mars'. Vaguely fascinated by the thought, Jess continued on reading. 'The Martian day is 24.6 hours long,' Jess was slightly perplexed at the thought of this point 6 of a day and continued reading, 'However the months can vary of up to 55 days long as a Martian year is 687 days long.' Jess was downright confused now. She flipped to a different page and began to read about the two moons that circled the planet, called Phobos and Deimos. This was a lot less confusing.
Hannah, who had spent 25 minutes playing Tig Tag with Billy and Dom, stood up and ambled over to Jess.
“Miss President?”
“Shut it, Hans.”
“Sorry. Watcha doing?”
“Reading a book.” Jess replied.
“Oh? What about?” Jess looked up at Hannah, exasperated.
“MARS.”
“Oh.” Hannah nodded in understanding and waited patiently for Jess to talk to her.
“What?” Jess asked, after Hannah had stood there in silence for 5 minutes.
“I thought you'd like to talk to me.”
“To be honest, Hans, I'd like to curl up and DIE.”
“Oh.” Hannah paused. “Don't fancy a game of Tig Tag, then.”
“No.”
“Or going and poking Billy to make him say 'ooh'?”
“No.”
“Or trying to seduce Keanu-“
“NO!” Jess took her complementary eye mask and pulled it on.
“Watcha doing now?”
“SLEEPING! NOW SMEG OFF!”

The shuttle landed two hours later.
“Thankyou for flying with us, come again soon!” The loudspeaker said cheerfully.
“We haven't got a choice if we want to go HOME.” Keanu moaned.
They exited the shuttle into a glass tube going down. There were lots of steel steps and they all walked along in silence watching the landscape.
“It's all red…” Jess said.
“Nicely observed.” Dom said, then looked around at the others. “She's my daughter, you know!” He said proudly.
“Uh-huh. And I'm Genghis Khan.” Muttered Hannah.
“It's a bit dusty…” Keanu observed out of the glass tube.
“I think it's nice!” Brian said.
“You would, you FREAK!” Jess muttered.
“What's your problem? You're President of the World and you have your own planet resort!” Hannah exclaimed exasperated.
“Being President is only fun whilst I'm on Earth so I can control everything.” Jess explained. “And it was YOUR idea to come to space. I didn't want to come up here.”
“So it hasn't got anything to do with the fact that you're on Mars and Sean is on Earth?” Hannah said, raising an eyebrow cheekily.
“NO!” Jess went pink and ran the rest of the way to the bottom of the steel steps.
The other finally joined her at the bottom and they looked down a long glass corridor lined with doors leading to innumerable rooms. Above them, through the glass roof, they could see black sky with thousands of stars twinkling.
A man came walking past them. “Um, excuse me!” Hannah asked, running up. “What's the time?”
“24:11!” The man answered, running off.
“What the hell…?” Chorused the various people who hadn't read the handbook.
“Doesn't matter.” Jess dismissed. “It's the middle of the night, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Hey look…here!” Billy said, pointing to a door at the end of the corridor which read: “Entrance to Mars” above the handle.
“Okay…” Jess said suspiciously. She turned the handle and they walked in. It was like a completely different world.
The glass domes stretching 40 metres into the air, lush greenery everywhere and shops around. The group almost got knocked over as a man whizzed past them on a really weird mode of transport – it was just a circle of metal hovering above the ground.
“How cool!” Said Billy.