Ad Martem 12
Page 17
«How are you? Over» Yan’s voice spoke again and this time Jordan heard it more clearly.
«I’m fine. Over» Anna’s voice said.
It’s been a while since Jordan had heard her speak. He felt relieved. Although she sounded confident, the boy noticed a hint of struggle in her voice. It had been no picnic. He let out all the air he had been holding in order to speak.
«I’m still alive. Over» he said.
«Ah! So amazing to hear you guys, you’re in space, Holy Olympus! Time: minus sixty-three minutes to docking with Odysseus. Tell me, how was it to bear all those g’s?»
Jordan noticed with delight that the accelerometer had calmed down and he returned to breath normally.
«If your bed had broken down, last night, and you had fallen on me, I would have suffered equally» Jordan explained ironically.
«Oh, listen to you! Take care how you speak, Jordan, remember your life is in my hands and I might accidentally make you crash on the ground.»
«You wouldn’t dare.»
«Are you challenging me?»
«Now stop it, you two! Even kilometres away!» Anna blared.
Jordan chuckled.
All of a sudden they heard a weird buzz, an interference in the communication.
«Hey, what – are you receiving me? Over» Yan’s voice called, all chopped up.
Jordan and Anna exchanged looks. Before they could answer, the sizzle increased intently before ceasing suddenly.
«Yan?» Anna asked, hesitantly.
No answer.
«Yan? Do you copy?» Jordan tried, but also that time no one answered.
«That’s odd» Anna whispered almost to herself, furrowing her eyebrows.
«Now what?» Jordan asked.
The girl let out a nervous sigh.
«Time: minus one hour to docking. With or without Yan, we go on. At this point we have no other choice.»
* * *
Huygens Crater – some minutes before.
Three rovers of the Aresland crossed together through the plain of the Huygens Crater in the dim morning light. After the sudden missing of the three kids, everyone at the Aresland had developed a rescue plan and the following sol they had started down towards the Huygens: they knew perfectly that was their destination. Regardless of whether NASA agreed or not, they were going to go after them anyway, end of the issue.
«ETA to Rubentes Terrae?» a female voice resounded in the cockpit of the three rovers.
It was Ling Yu, onboard a Hong Se De Du rover together with Tain Tseng. George Jenner’s voice replied from the central rover, he was with Alexander Miles.
«Ten minutes.»
Finally, onboard the Krasnij Gorod rover, there were Viktor Taykeev and Artëm Levitsky.
«Let’s just hope it’s not too late» Alexander said to himself, he was sitting in the passenger seat.
He didn’t receive any answer.
«What do you think, Jenner? What will happen? It still sounds crazy to me that they’ve fled like that, by night!» concern and frustration were evident in his voice, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
«I wouldn’t define it crazy, Miles» he replied with caution.
«Don’t tell me it was to be expected!»
«Actually, it was» he pronounced slowly.
Alexander threw his hands up in a distressed gesture and George continued.
«I’ve already told you, Miles. They might also be Martians, but they’re human beings first of all. And human beings need to understand themselves, exploring the reality around them, pushing the limits to know them. They need to understand themselves and, in order to do it, they begin from the origins.»
«Risking their lives…» Alexander added bitterly.
«Let’s get this straight. Anyone who ever even thought those three kids were going to resist twenty years of their young existence inside a closed and monotonous environment such as the Aresland is an imbecile.»
A moment of silence followed, Alexander’s gaze was lost on the floor. He shook his head slightly and looked at George.
«Then why does Ad Martem 12 exist? That was the goal of the mission after all, wasn’t it?»
George sighed profoundly, his gaze focused on the path.
«Because we are human beings, Miles. And even we are still trying to figure out who we are. Every single choice they make, every behaviour or action is characterizing of our species.»
Suddenly they heard a rumble from the radio and shortly after, Viktor Taykeev’s voice spoke.
«Stop the rovers! Look South-Westward!»
«South-West, he said?» Alexander repeated. «What the?!»
In the meanwhile George did as he was told by the commander of the Krasnij Gorod and stopped the rover after turning it to the indicated direction. Both of them, as well as Ling and Tain, leaned forward to look outside the front window, but it didn’t take long for them to notice it: a dot brighter than a star or a moon, followed by a fierce trail, was crossing harmoniously the still dark sky, following a curve trajectory. It could resemble a meteorite that, burning, was precipitating to the ground like a searing ball. With the only difference that that meteorite was actually rising in the sky. And it wasn’t a meteorite, it was the ascent vehicle Argus. At that sight, George let out an incredulous chuckle.
«Good heavens, that’s them!»
«That’s them!» Alexander repeated with a way more desperate tone. «No, no, Jenner, no! It’s impossible! There was nobody with them in the Control Room! Who launched that rocket?!»
George turned to look at Alexander in the eyes for the first time and lost that half smile that curved his lips. His gaze became suddenly serious and quite worried.
«Not all the three of them have left» he concluded. «One of them is controlling the launch from the ground, it’s the only way.»
Alexander passed a hand a through his hair and returned to look at the rocket that was by now leaving the rarefied Martian atmosphere. It was barely visible and eventually it disappeared from sight. There was no way back. What was done was done. And all they could do was watch.
«I bet it’s the Chinese» he commented. «He’s expert of computer science.»
«Very, very likely! And the girl… Anna, she studied the rockets.»
«Indeed. And… Jordan…»
«The rover» they said at unison shortly after.
«Gosh, Jenner!» Alexander sighed, «What did we create! In the face of NASA and all its employees!»
«You’re perfectly right… Come on, let’s go get that deranged lunatic before he decides to come up with a way to leave as well. Because, I swear, if he found it I wouldn’t be surprised.»
* * *
NASA Kennedy Space Center – ten minutes later
It was 4:55 pm on Monday when in an office of the Kennedy Space Center, a mobile phone rang. Claire Dennis was massaging her temples, recently she had spent the most of her nights awake in order to follow the development of the events and the updates from Mars and tiredness was taking over. She hated the sound of her mobile’s ringtone. Every time it rang, it didn’t bring but bad news. She passed her hands in her hair to fix it, she cleared her throat and picked up her smartphone. When she read on the screen the name of her vice director, Leonard Kelley, she was already certain that bad news was coming. She answered.
«Hello? Tell me… What? I’ve got to see it with my own eyes?! … I’m on my way» and she hung up the call.
She flew out of her office and headed to the control centre. After several corridors and stairs, Kelley appeared at her side.
«I called you as soon as we got to know, unfortunately there’s nothing we can do» he said and shortly after they entered the large room where some analysts were scrutinizing their computers and a couple of people were at the bottom, speaking among themselves. Dennis immediately recognized Reynolds and Walker.
«Finally, Claire!» Reynolds urged as he saw Dennis approaching and walked to her.
«What’s the matter?
»
«Look» he answered nodding his head at the main screen, «Show the images, Terry» he addressed Coleman.
And soon those images appeared, they were in sequence, satellite photographs clearly showing an ascent vehicle leaving the surface. Dennis stood paralyzed for some moments, letting that information sink in.
«That is… the Argus?» she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
«Tell me I’m wrong» she turned to Reynolds, Walker and Kelley. «Tell me it’s not the way I think.»
Reynolds nodded weakly and turned to look at the repeating sequence of images.
«They’re coming, Claire» he said. «They’re returning to Earth. They’ve just started the Nostoi Mission.»
Dennis sighed and moved her gaze back to the images as well.
«It is not possible… It seems already a miracle that they’ve survived the launch» she commented, then addressed Walker. «How many probabilities do they have to survive a landing?»
«The gravitational acceleration will be hard to bear for them, since they’re used to the Martian one. Probably they’ll lose consciousness, but I don’t think they’re risking their lives, unless they have an accident, of course. It’s what comes afterwards that worries me. They won’t be able to walk, they’ll struggle to breath probably, also their heart will strain more. Even the sunlight will be a problem, on Mars it is reduced by seventy percent in respect of here. They risk problems to their sight without adequate protection. We need to study a solution.»
Some moments of silence passed while everyone considered and pondered the situation. Then Reynolds broke the silence.
«Director, what shall we do?»
Dennis turned to look him in the eyes with determination and then did the same with all the others.
«If the Nostoi Mission has started, we’ll carry it out. We will do everything in our power to make sure they survive and finally we’ll welcome them to Earth. We are NASA, we don’t flinch before twists and turns.»
FOURTEEN
~ 88 sols before ~
Jordan Miles didn’t have many certainties, but one of those was that he had never lived in a place as weird as the Odysseus spaceship before. He had been travelling to Earth for three months by now, time seemed to pass inevitably slowly and often he felt alone, lost, despite there was Anna with him.
What freaked him out more than anything was staying next to a wall of the ship and thinking That’s it, it is all about some layers of metal and then nothing. There’s absolutely nothing above me or beneath me. Everything’s cold, dark, far and extremely dangerous. Some layers of metal and that’s it. He had spoken about it with Anna, discovering that often she found herself thinking about it too, but finally they decided that ignoring some thoughts would be better. They had to focus on the fact that soon they were going to reach the Earth and, most of all, they had to find something to do to fill the time.
But it wasn’t certainly easy in that limited space, lacking of any sort of entertainment. One hundred and forty sols had passed since the launch. During those months Jordan had been studying the whole mission project and the spaceship neatly so that he would be able to make the right moves in case of emergency.
The descent module, with the three seats, was designed to host the passengers during the landing and it was linked, on the top, to the orbital module and, on the bottom, to the service module. Jordan knew that actually there was no up or down in space, but they needed them inside the ship in order to communicate positions, therefore Anna and he decided some reference points: the orbital module, that firstly pointed towards the tip of the rocket, was the “up” or “front”, while the service module, which pointed towards the boosters, was the “down” or “back”.
They hardly ever went to the service module, it had the shape of a cylinder and it contained the electrical current control panel, the temperature controller, the radio telemetry, the long-distance radio, the instruments to control and orientate the vehicle and some spare components. On the back, outside the module, there was the main engine of the spaceship while all around the ship there were some small engines which served for controlling the orientation. More than that, on the outside, two large solar panels unfolded for five meters and a half. In the orbital module, cylindrical as well, there was a small room containing the hygiene facilities. Everything else was packages containing supplies of food and water and then three sleeping bags fixed to the walls.
The orbital module ended with a small window on the cosmos, the thirty-centimeters thick double glazing contained liquid water in the middle which worked as a shielding from cosmic radiations.
An inflatable module was attached all around the orbital module, it was roughly four meters wide and it reminded a sort of space donut, as the two of them called it. It rotated at a frequency of 0.21 turns per second thus creating a centrifugal force that, on the edge of the donut, made it feel like there was a gravitational pull. Clearly 0.5g was slightly more than on Mars, but they needed it to gradually get used to the terrestrial gravity of 1g and to be able to stand on their feet and not to float as they did in the rest of the ship. Generally they used that space to do physical exercise with equipment or simply to walk and run: they did it for the majority of the time. And even though at the beginning they hated that sensation of extra weight to bear, they soon got used to it, even if they tended to get tired more quickly.
Then, almost miraculously, during the second month of trip, Anna had discovered a package containing books, cards and some consoles with videogames and since then they convinced themselves that the trip was going to be a little bit more bearable. They still measured time with the Martian system, they decided to keep it until they would land as they weren’t used to the terrestrial one. The sols passed very similarly to one another: the first of the two who got up in the “morning” usually woke up also the other, then they had breakfast sitting in the inflatable module, they did some physical activity, they read or played something, they had lunch and then all the same repeated till dinner and finally they fell asleep in the donut or in the sleeping bags floating in the orbital module. After they had lost signal with Yan once they had entered the orbit, they didn’t hear from him anymore. Not a message, not a sign, from anyone, from any permanent base. They were completely abandoned to themselves in the darkness of cosmos. And nothing was harder than accepting that situation.
It was almost 12:30 am of the eighty-seventh sol onboard the Odysseus. Jordan was floating next to a wall of the orbital module, absorbed in reading a thick book entitled “Schrödinger’s cat”, where a dude named Erwin, kind of crazy according to Jordan, was convinced that closing a cat in a box, together with a radioactive substance that might activate a sensor which would spread a poison or not, the cat was going to be both dead and alive until the box was opened and one would see if the cat was effectively dead or alive. Jordan wondered how could it be possible that a living being was dead and alive at the same time. He also wondered if cats were odd creatures, capable of such paranormal activities and no one ever told him. He had never seen a cat, he wasn’t even completely sure of what was it exactly, apart from a carnivore mammal belonging to the family of felids.
«Jordan?» he heard his name called by the only other person in that place.
He slipped out of his thoughts and reemerged from the book. The voice came from the descent module.
«I’m here» he answered aloud and soon Anna came out from the hatch of the module.
The girl pushed herself forward with her hands and proceeded towards Jordan, upside-down. The boy wondered if it was him being inverted or Anna. Finally, however, he decided to turn in order to face her straightforwardly.
«There you are» she said reaching him. «Let’s grab something to eat and go to the donut. We need to talk.»
Jordan nodded, he abandoned Schrödinger’s cat in midair and reached one of containers to gather a couple of tins to heat up. He tried to imagine what the girl had to tell him. He got very curious as
recently they hadn’t had much to talk about. They slipped through one of the four gaps that led into the donut and, holding onto a rope, they descended more and more quickly until they touched the border with their feet, under the influence of the artificial gravity. They sat there on the ground with crossed legs, facing each other, as a habit. Jordan opened a tin of rice and beans that he had just heated up in an oven, similar to that of the Atenavan, and began to eat his insipid meal with a steel fork. Anna opened a transparent bag containing some dehydrated vegetables where she had added some warm water.
«So, what’s the matter?» Jordan asked, unable to keep himself anymore.
The girl plunged the fork into her greens and sighed.
«Do you realize it is impossible that after all this time still no one has tried to contact us?» she asked, going straight to the point.
«We’ve already talked about it» Jordan huffed, «We won’t have more probabilities to be contacted just because we discuss it.»
«No» Anna convened, «But as I already said and I repeat, it is not possible. I’m sure they tried. That’s why… I believe it is us who have a problem.»
Jordan abandoned his meal temporarily to focus all his attention on Anna and found she was staring at him. Her eyes were serious and determined. He saw a spark in her gaze that he knew well by now. And he began to fear what would follow.
«What kind of problem?» he articulated.
The girl lowered her gaze and began to fiddle with her fork while searching the best words to answer.