«It doesn’t look bad» she commented casually.
The two boys noticed her and took their suits off as well.
They ate a couple of bags of lyophilized food each and remained at the table of the kitchen some more time to talk about the Rubentes Terrae and still wondering why would they keep that place hidden from the three of them. When they entered the dorm to spend the night, after making turns to wash themselves, they felt totally exhausted.
«I sleep here» Jordan declared throwing himself on one of the first lower beds.
Anna picked the one on the other side of the room and sneaked under the sheets without another word. Yan appeared at the entrance of the dorm lastly and sent a calculating look firstly at Jordan and then at Anna. Finally he spoke.
«Mmm, I’ll sleep on Jordan» he decided.
«You what!?» the boy exclaimed, stopping the fitting-out of his pillow to make it more comfortable and turning to Yan with an unbelieving, amused expression.
A giggle raised from Anna’s bed. Yan, who was approaching Jordan’s bed, stopped frozen and burst out laughing.
«What did you think!? I mean on the bed above yours!»
Jordan glanced at the sky and shook his head, returning to his work with the pillow.
«You want me to sleep with you, Jordan? I might change idea» Yan continued mocking a mischievous tone, Anna laughed in the background.
Jordan turned to him sharply with a look that was shocked, amused and furious at the same time.
«Yan Heng, off to your damn bed immediately!» he shrieked before bursting out laughing, «It’s an order!» he added.
«Aye, commander» Yan obeyed, after glancing at him from top down with a superior look, still unable to repress a laugh.
«I’m going to die with the two biggest idiots on this planet!» Anna complained.
When eventually all the laughs died down in the darkness of the room, Jordan was laying on his back, his gaze was lost on Yan’s bed above him. He felt extremely relaxed. It felt like an infinite time had passed since the last time he had laid in a real bed. As tired he was, it seemed sleep had forgotten about him. He was slowly realizing that he had really made it to the mysterious base of Rubentes Terrae. He didn’t know what to expect exactly, but everything there seemed just as normal as at the Aresland. In his distant mind he wondered why there were six beds and why in the kitchen there was a table with six chairs. Who were the six persons to whom those beds and those chairs were destined? But in the end he didn’t manage to find an answer because sleep took him over.
The following morning he felt like he had woken up too early. And yet, since the moment he opened his eyes, there was no way that he could fall back asleep. He thought it was probably because it wasn’t his bed in his room, the one he had always been used to. It was very similar of course, but it wasn’t his. Not even Jordan could really tell why, but finally he just got up to sit, stretching and being careful not to hit Yan’s bed with his head.
He noticed Anna wasn’t in her bed, probably she had already gotten up. Maybe she felt that same magnetic repulsion as well. Yan, on his behalf, snored loudly. He imagined Anna had gone to the kitchen or to the bathroom. He thought of going to her, but that idea aroused a pain in his stomach. He began to reflect on the fact that every time Anna and he were alone, something weird happened, as if the air pressure decreased and temperature increased and their conversation took an unusual turn. And on top of that, he always perceived a kind of tension, a static electricity that was probably going to provoke a lightning if they got too close. On one hand he was eager to feel that happen again, but on the other he was terribly afraid of it. He decided to wake Yan up. He stood up on the edge of his bed and began to shake his friend.
«Hey, wake up» he shouted in a whisper not to scare him and continuing to shake his shoulder.
Eventually the boy stopped snoring and turned heavily to Jordan with a goofy expression.
«What – what’s the matter?» he asked trying to get up in a fidgety way.
«Nothing, nothing» Jordan reassured him, «Time to get up.»
«What time is it?» Yan mumbled.
«I have no idea.»
Yan frowned, but Jordan couldn’t see him because he had already turned to leave.
«How can it be time to get up if you don’t know what time is it?» he asked aloud then.
«Just get up!» Jordan snapped before disappearing into the kitchen.
As he imagined, he found the girl sitting at the table, busy chewing a dry energy bar.
«Morning» he said before sitting as well.
Anna had her mouth full, so she simply waved her hand in acknowledgement of his presence, meanwhile Yan entered too, still looking sleepy.
«And since how long are you awake exactly?»
«Nearly an hour» she replied casually, before slipping the last bit of the bar in her mouth and leaving the wrapping crumbled up on the table.
«At least you know what’s the time?»
«Almost seven thirty.»
«How come you got up so early?» Jordan investigated.
The girl shrugged.
«I woke up and didn’t fall back asleep. However, I have good news» she announced. «Beyond that door there’s a storage room» she said pointing at a door next to the dorm which Jordan had been too tired to notice before. «There are some new biosuits and then three more suits that… I don’t know, they look like the usual sort of suit that the new arrived ones wear, but it looks, how can I say, less bulky. But at least, Jordan, you can take a new biosuit.»
Yan nodded.
«Only three?» Jordan asked instead.
The girl raised an eyebrow at him.
«Yeah, why?»
«It’s weird. There are six beds, six chairs. There should be six suits of that kind. Or not?»
The girl drummed her fingers on the table, thoughtfully.
«I didn’t think about it» a moment of silence passed. «I don’t know.»
After Jordan and Yan had finished their breakfasts too, they decided to change their clothes with some new ones that they found in the storage room. They hadn’t changed them for three sols, not even to sleep. Jordan found himself wearing a black t-shirt with a text saying “Occupy Mars” in the center and a brownish circle that he assumed being Mars. Then he had a pair of dark grey trousers, quite comfy, and finally he kept his usual hoodie because he couldn’t abandon the photo with his mother and he had no idea where to hide it otherwise. Anna had a t-shirt similar to his, but with the text “Mars or Bust” while Yan’s one said “Get your ass to Mars”.
«What the hell?!» Yan exclaimed, looking down at his t-shirt. «My ass was born on Mars already!»
They decided to venture on the upper floor. They took the mysterious stairs, but at the end they didn’t find anything of what Jordan had imagined the sol before. The whole floor was a single hall containing three long tables, one in front of the other, with at least four or five computers each. In front of the three tables there was a huge offline screen and on the entire perimeter there were closets and drawers.
«Alright, I didn’t see this coming» Yan admitted, mouth agape in front of all those computers.
Jordan was beginning to think that his doubts about the mysteriousness of that base were confirming.
«It kind of looks like a... an office» Yan continued, but his voice was drowned out by Anna’s.
«A Control Room» she said. «I know on Earth they control missions from places like this.»
«How do you know?»
«Oh, well... There always are in literally any novel about space.»
«So there has to be a kind of mission controlled from here. The Nostoi Mission, for example» Jordan thought aloud.
«It has to be so. Do you remember? In the images that Nunki downloaded there was a rocket not too far from the base. I read the guidelines for the Rubentes Terrae from top down, but there are not even hints. I suppose we can only find all the answers... in this room» s
he said moving her gaze around herself.
«Fine. Let’s get to work, then» Jordan prompted.
For nearly two hours, all the three of them spent the time exploring that Control Room. Mostly, Jordan and Anna inspected and dug through all the shelves and drawers on the perimeter of the room, while Yan jumped from a computer to another trying to turn them all on and figure out their function.
Jordan found plenty of plastic folders containing endless papers, documents, calculations, data, some of them showed orbital trajectories, others explained the slingshot effect and then many many manuals concerning life in space, how to live in microgravity for six or nine months and so on. Tired and by now quite resigned, he was absorbed in reading a paragraph explaining that you can’t take showers in space, but you can only wash yourself with wet wipes, when suddenly he heard a loud crash. He came out from his reading and raised his gaze towards the source of the noise.
There was Anna, standing next to an open drawer, she was holding a white plastic folder in her hands open on the first page, a bunch of papers and books had fallen at her feet, probably she had dropped them. He wasn’t touched by all that chaos though. What impressed him was the expression on her face. The way she was looking at that page. He couldn’t decipher what she was feeling, he had never seen her like that before. Her eyes were wide in a mixture of surprise and fear, her lips disclosed, her face paler. He thought he had seen her been crossed by a shiver. Also Yan had remained blocked looking at her, as fearing what she could say.
Jordan hurried to reach her.
«What is it?» he asked with worry. «Did you find anything?»
The girl raised her gaze on him and Jordan read in her eyes a storm of emotions that had fallen upon her. Jordan felt anxiety mounting up inside of him. If something was able to upset Anna Taykeeva so much, it was nothing good. She swallowed hard.
«You r–read it» she stammered, before handing him the folder.
Jordan took it, confused. Before he could lower his eyes to read, the girl added: «It wasn’t only a dream, Jordan.»
The boy tried his best to ignore her last words and tried to calm his mind down, although it was already running to find a sense to Anna’s statement. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth. He took time sighing and closing the folder to observe the cover. Despite the black text in the center, “Nostoi Mission”, accelerated his heartbeat, it was nothing of enthusing: it was all flatly white with the small NASA blue logo in the upper left. He happened to see it anywhere very often. But it was probably all that seriousness, so rigid and technical, that made him realize he was holding all the answers in his hands. Then he opened it, cleared his throat and began to read aloud.
«Kennedy Space Centre, United States. February 13th, 2056. Nostoi Mission. The robotic building of the base Rubentes Terrae, inherent in the mission, is automatically concluded in the year 2060 and the interiors are manually set up by the already present astronauts at the Aresland station in the Hellas Planitia. Ad Martem 14 brings the Odysseus spaceship in a Low Martian Orbit and the Argus ascent vehicle in the Huygens Crater, three miles away from the Rubentes Terrae, control centre» Jordan stopped to breath and briefly raised his gaze on Anna and Yan.
The girl was staring at her feet, the boy hung on his every word. Then he resumed.
«The Nostoi Mission, with purposes of medical research, has the goal to analyze the effects provoked on the human body by...» the boy stopped, reading silently what followed and, as if certain of having misunderstood, he kept scanning the same sentence with his eyes.
«Go ahead, continue. You’re almost there» Anna encouraged him.
Jordan was crossed by a shiver and continued.
«... by being born in different conditions from those of Earth. As such, with this mission, Jordan Arcturus Miles, Anna Yesfir Taykeeva and Yan Heng, as the first human beings ever born on planet Mars, inside the Red Stone, Krasnij Gorod and Hong Se De Du bases of the Aresland station, will be brought back to Earth for further medical studies. On January 18th, 2056, the Nostoi Mission is approved. It will start in the year 2064 from the Huygens Crater on Mars and will end, after six months of trip onboard the Odysseus, in the Kazakhstan desert on Earth. Signed, Claire Dennis, Alger Wolff, Roman Garibov and Wong Fui.»
Jordan understood immediately the reason why everything had fallen from Anna’s hands shortly before: he felt like even his legs could give up at any moment. He stood still, staring at that page and reading and re-reading it, until someone took the folder out of his hands.
«Oh, please!» Yan’s voice exclaimed. «Good joke, you two. What is it, you made a deal?»
Both Jordan and Anna raised their shocked gaze on Yan in time to see him read the page and change expression. He whirled his head back up with wide eyes.
«It wasn’t a joke?!»
«Not really, Nunki» Anna answered coldly, she was slowly recovering.
Jordan was in a kind of trance. He felt his mind foggy as he let that information sink in. It was hard to accept. Like if it was a nightmare: you wake up scared, but you don’t remember why.
«No, wait a second, hold on… WHAT?!» Yan shrieked and returned to stare at the folder with wide eyes. «You are telling me that… For Olympus’s sake, this Nostoi Mission is for us?»
«Yes… The Return Mission. Our return» Anna replied thoughtfully. «This mission should start in two years, in 241. Sooner or later they would’ve told us.»
«Now that’s why there are only three suits of that sort» Jordan began, addressing his feet. «They’re for us, for the launch. Six beds, six chairs, because clearly someone would have accompanied us, we weren’t supposed to come on our own. And that’s why they’ve been keeping it hidden. Probably they feared a wrong reaction on our behalf, like, if we had known of a rocket that would bring us to Earth we could have escaped alone, driven by curiosity or something. And in fact they were right» the boy added after a moment, raising his gaze on his friends. «I want to go.»
Anna sighed.
«I’ve been studying rockets and spaceflight so far. I know the launch procedures. On top of that, Mars and Earth are still in good positions for us to leave, at the moment. If you think about it, three new people arrived at the Aresland nineteen sols ago. This means that if we don’t leave within eleven sols we’ll have to wait for five hundred more or the trip would be so long that such an exposure to cosmic and solar radiation would be devastating. Hereby I’d agree to leave, if it wasn’t that… it’s impossible» she stated.
Jordan sent her a questioning look, furrowing his eyebrows.
«Why?»
«Look around yourself. Where are we?»
«In a… Control Room?»
«Exactly.»
Jordan’s expression eventually darkened as he got the point of the issue.
«It’s impossible to launch without a ground control.»
They remained in silence for several minutes, reflecting. Nothing but the far buzz of the Life Support System could be heard. Until silence was broken by Yan’s firm voice.
«I stay.»
Jordan and Anna fixed their eyes on him and he continued.
«I’ll stay here. I managed to switch on all the computers, I’ve seen that all the trajectories and everything are automatic. I’ll be your ground control. I’ll take you to Earth.»
«Forget about it» Jordan established even before Yan could finish the sentence. «I’m not leaving you here.»
«It’s not about leaving me, Jordan. It’s a choice. My choice. I knew from the beginning, like you, like Anna, that this trip would have a purpose in the end. And this is it. Look, it seems this was meant to be so! You’re a rover expert and we got here thanks to you, Anna is expert of launches and spaceships so she’ll know how to handle the situation up there and I’m a computer expert, we wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t downloaded the data and you couldn’t reach the Earth if I weren’t here.»
His words lingered in the air. Jordan felt his heartbeat resounding in his e
ars.
«We cannot leave you here alone» Anna intervened with caution.
«Yes, you can. And then, however, I’m certain that by now someone is coming for us from the Aresland. You leave tomorrow morning or it’ll be too late.»
Jordan swallowed and searched Anna’s gaze for support. The girl seemed to do the same.
«We can’t take hasty decisions. If we’ve been risking our lives so far, in case we decide to leave, our probabilities of making it would be maybe a little more than fifty percent. A trip in space for so many months is hard. Frustrating. It would be all about living in minimal spaces and conditions that are barely sufficient to stay alive. It would be a huge sacrifice and an even bigger risk» Anna considered.
«But in the end it would be worth it» Jordan said, Yan nodded. «And then… If I think that I might have even the slightest possibility to see my mum again, I’d be ready to risk anything.»
«Jordan…» Anna’s voice sounded moved.
«That’s my biggest motivation» Jordan confirmed «Anna, if you want to take this risk, you need a motivation as well. What is it?»
The girl seemed taken aback, she dropped her gaze to the floor.
«I…» she shook her head, «I have a very good one, that’s all you need to know» she admitted quickly, then she returned to look at the boy. «But… I don’t know if you understand the matter, Jordan. We’re talking about potentially never coming back. If something goes wrong we might not even make it out of this atmosphere. Or we could survive the entire trip and then die at the landing!»
«Anna» Jordan stopped her and moved a step forward, their eyes locked. «I’d rather die trying than not trying at all and living the rest of my remorseful life in a box» his last statement came out almost like a growl.
Anna was slightly startled by his words but her expression hardened right away.
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