Pharaoh took one step closer to Mosa and pointed with his index finger like a grade school teacher scolding a student. “Anubis is wise beyond all measure. He provided food for all and the means to construct this monument and a passageway for those of royal blood to join the ranks of the gods. Have you forgotten the night of fire when Anubis came to us? His power is beyond refute. My patience grows thin sister, I will have your apology, or I will have your life.”
Mosa turned to look at Tonwen. As she did, a sickening knot formed in Hastelloy’s stomach. The moment of truth had arrived. Would she give up Tonwen as a scapegoat and have the rest of the crew hunted down, or would she join their effort? What couldn’t have been more than a second drew out before Hastelloy as an eternity.
Finally, he saw Tonwen give an affirmative nod and Mosa turned to face Pharaoh again. She slowly spread her arms out wide. As her arms widened, a deep rumble slowly built all across the land. “Behold a simple display of my God’s power.”
The rumble started as barely audible background noise, but soon grew to a deafening roar that shook the ground and pounded relentlessly against the body. Every man, woman, and child put their hands over their ears as the powerful concussion waves beat painfully against their eardrums.
Slowly, the rumbling faded away and was replaced by a thunderous silence. There was no sound of movement, voices, or even breathing. Only stunned silence for several minutes. Eventually Mosa broke the soundless void. “In three days, I will return to hear your reply to my God’s demand.”
With her final statement, Mosa turned on her heels and melted away into the crowd of slaves gathered all around. Pharaoh did nothing. The massive volcanic eruption that originated hundreds of miles away successfully played its part in Hastelloy’s ruse. He looked around and saw nothing but panic and fear in people’s eyes - even Pharaoh’s.
The captain put his hands on the shoulders of Gallono and Valnor. “Let’s take our leave of this scene, gentlemen, just in case Tomal decides to cause trouble for us.”
As the three men walked away to rejoin Mosa and Tonwen, Hastelloy looked back over his shoulder to see Tomal standing alone at the base of his obelisk sporting the most depressed look he had ever seen in his ten thousand years of life. Suddenly the scars on his back felt a little better than before.
“Sorry to ruin your big moment there friend, but my show was bigger than yours,” Hastelloy whispered to himself.
**********
Dr. Holmes dropped his pencil on the floor but didn’t move a muscle for several seconds. Finally, he bent down to retrieve the writing utensil. As he sat up straight again he stopped to rest his elbows on his knees and crossed his arms over his lap.
Jeffrey looked at the patient in front of him for any signs that this part of Hastelloy’s story was some sort of joke. If it was, his face wasn’t betraying the intent.
Finally, Jeffrey spoke while fighting back the urge to laugh out loud. “Have you been reading the book of Exodus from the Bible lately? This is all sounding vaguely familiar. If you go much further with this I may have to refer you to the authorities for plagiarism.”
Hastelloy delivered a reply equal to Jeffrey’s playful jab. “I assure you, Dr. Holmes, I’d be safe from prosecution in this instance. After all, an element of that particular crime is to pass off someone else’s work as my own. I assure you that is not the case.”
Try as he may, Jeffrey simply could not contain his laughter any longer. “Are you seriously claiming you were the original author of the book of Exodus and the tale of Moses?”
Hastelloy sat sternly silent until the grin had completely faded from Jeffrey’s face. The patient then leaned forward in his chair, “I wrote the story of Mosa, but as I said before, history was not kind to her memory. She deserved better.”
Chapter 31: Power It Up
Flight director Kranz stood up from his work station and placed a beat up Texas Rangers baseball cap on his head.
“What’s with the ratty head gear?” Mark asked to pass the time.
Alfred stared straight ahead as he answered, “It was a gift from my late wife. It’s always brought me good luck.”
Mark found it rather ironic the flight director’s lucky cap supported a professional baseball team that had never won a World Series.
“It’s show time people,” Alfred boomed. “Julie’s team has put the reactor’s slingshot and subsequent break from orbit maneuver into the guidance system. We’re going to have a seven minute full throttle burn around the moon that will use all but the last few drops of fuel. This will fling the reactor section out of orbit to chase down the errant probe. If we miss the entry or exit angle by so much as one degree coming around the moon we’re all out of a job. Now let’s get it right.”
On the view screen Mark watched a computer generated diagram of the earth and moon with the reactor section traveling in between. A solid blue line showed the craft’s current path, and a dotted red line showed the project path resulting from the engine burn. In the upper right was a number counting down from ten.
The maneuver needed to be so precise in its execution that the computer was given full control of the process. For the next seven minutes, everyone in the flight control room was just an observer. All they could do was hope they got the calculations right.
The countdown reached zero and Julie announced the obvious, “Full engine burn initiated.”
Seven minutes ticked by at a glacial pace. Some people simply stared at the screen, others paced around the room. Alfred had the annoying habit of removing his lucky hat, smoothing the hair underneath with his free hand and then placing the cap back on his head. The flight leader did it so often Mark feared the man would soon rub his scalp bald.
Mark glanced at the screen and around the room periodically but spent most of his time inspecting the inside of his eyelids. He was totally at peace with the situation. If the maneuver didn’t work then his job was complete. If it did, he still had a few maneuvers of his own to end the mission prematurely.
Mark hated working against these people and intentionally trying to scrap a ten billion dollar piece of machinery, but he had a duty to protect the nation. In this case he was protecting the whole planet from the danger this probe represented.
“Ten seconds left,” Julie announced.
Mark opened his eyes to watch the main screen. Each time he looked that way he hoped to see the craft deviating from the dotted line, but it was tracking exactly where it was supposed to be.
“Engines have shut down,” Julie reported.
“Good work,” Alfred acknowledged. “Expand the image to include the runaway probe’s path out through the Mars orbit.”
Seconds later the image of the moon shrunk as the view range expanded. The lost probe appeared as a single dot at first, until the computer plotted a bright green flight path line.
Mark was glad everyone’s attention was focused on the view screen so his open mouthed smile went unnoticed. The two paths didn’t come even remotely close to intersecting. Even though it appeared to go according to plan, the maneuver was a total failure.
“What happened?” Mark asked as he got up from his chair to join the flight leader at his station. “Everything looked like it was on track. What went wrong?”
“Nothing,” Alfred protested. “We escaped earth’s orbit as intended.”
“But the flight paths don’t come anywhere near each other, and the fuel is completely spent.”
“We don’t need the liquid fuel engine anymore,” Alfred said. “Now that we’ve achieved a safe distance from earth we can bring the fusion reactor online to chase down the probe.”
“Right, of course,” Mark managed to say through his crushing disappointment. “When does that happen?”
“Right about now,” Alfred answered. “Jeremy, are we ready to power up the reactor?”
“I’m initiating the magnetic containment field now,” Jeremy replied.
Mark watched as the young man hit a few key
s on his computer to bring up a display showing the power readings on twenty five electromagnets that made up the fusion reaction containment field. The display vaguely reminded him of a sound mixing board in a music recording studio. The bars displayed as bright green, and all but one was pegged at the top of the indicator. The lone exception hovered just below the maximum reading and drew no one’s attention except Mark’s. He looked on with satisfaction knowing everyone would soon be looking at nothing but that single power reading.
“Each magnet reads at full power and the field is stable,” Jeremy reported. “It should be safe to initiate the reaction.”
“Introduce the tritium and deuterium to the reaction chamber,” Alfred ordered. When the two types of hydrogen isotopes met, the power readings from the reactor jumped to life. “Now introduce the laser beam.”
When the heating laser met the chemicals in the reaction chamber the temperature reading increased rapidly. What was once a 500 degree Celsius reaction finally leveled off at 2,000 degrees Celsius. As the temperature inside the chamber rose, the gases inside reached a state of plasma. The hydrogen atoms shed their electrons causing their nuclei to fuse together. For the first time in history a fusion reaction identical to that found inside a star was created and contained within a manmade device.
“The magnetic field is successfully containing the heat from the plasma reaction,” Jeremy reported. He drew the flight director’s attention to the energy output indicator. It was glowing bright red. “The reaction is still consuming more energy than it’s giving off though.’
“Now introduce the lithium pellet to the reaction,” Dr. Kranz instructed. “The catalyst reaction should do the trick.”
Shortly after the order was given, a loud cheer exploded from everyone in the room. Mark was not sure how, but when the lithium hit the reaction chamber the power output increased by a factor of fifty and far exceeded the resources needed to sustain the plasma reaction. Mark pushed his natural urge to know how the lithium’s catalytic reaction worked. He didn’t need to know how it worked, it only mattered that it did work.
“The reaction is still stable and we have more energy production than we know what to do with,” Jeremy reported with pride. “We have a fully functional fusion reactor.”
A high pitched beep from Jeremy’s computer console interrupted his celebration. The young man looked on in horror as one of the electromagnet’s power indicators fell below the half power marker and was trending even lower. The indicator bar was no longer a comforting green but a flashing yellow.
“What’s happening?” Mark asked.
“The flow of electricity to one of the magnets is being disrupted. If we lose magnetic containment of the reaction it’ll have an uncontrolled exothermic reaction,” Jeremy answered.
“In English,” Mark demanded.
“Picture the tsunami of 2005 in the vacuum of space,” Alfred said with frustration. “Now shut up and let us do our job.”
Mark dutifully backed away from the NASA employees feeling good about the frustration levels he saw. There was no way they’d be able to cool the reaction chamber before that magnet gave out.
“There’s no time to stop the reaction,” Dr. Kranz said. “We need to repair the electrical lead to the magnet. It’s time to wake up Rex. Put his camera feed up front.”
The main viewer flickered and the picture was replaced by a terrifying image of a mechanical device that looked like a five legged spider. Abruptly, the image was ripped away to the side to reveal the blinding glow of the reactor chamber that housed the plasma reaction.
Mark rubbed his eyes and soon realized he’d seen the reflection of the machine off the shiny metal door to a maintenance hatch on board the reactor. Apparently NASA had the forethought to put some sort of maintenance robot on board. On screen, Rex attached itself to a data port.
“Rex has assessed the problem,” Jeremy reported. “The Iron Solenoid needs replacing. The swap out should only take a few minutes which is plenty of time to keep the magnet from failing.”
“Good,” Alfred beamed. “And the big shots said including an autonomous maintenance robot onboard was a waste of resources.”
Mark rose from his chair and rejoined the discussion. “What is an autonomous maintenance robot? This is the first I have heard of it.”
“Oh, it’s just one of those wasteful passion projects you civilians always accuse NASA of wasting time and money on,” Dr. Kranz said as he reveled in being able to brag about the weight of his brain pan.
“The probe was designed to fly at near light speed. Pair that with the fact that radio signals also travel at light speed and you arrive at a bit of a dilemma. Any signals we try to send the probe will never reach it since the probe is traveling as fast as the message. The solution we came up with was Rex. It’s programmed to diagnose and solve a multitude of repair and software programming issues on its own.”
“I’m sure all of you grew up watching the Terminator movies over and over while real people went on dates and frolicked in their youth, so this won’t be a new concept. Doesn’t this Rex sound like a first step toward robots taking over the world?” Mark cautioned.
“It’s not like Rex has artificial intelligence,” Alfred challenged. “He can only deal with problems and solutions we coded into his programming. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing and it sure saved our bacon this time.”
“Just think of the commercial implication of automated repair robots working around the globe,” Jeremy added. “Who knows, twenty years from now none of us may need to vacuum or dust our houses or even cook meals anymore.”
“Yeah, I think I saw that concept on TV during some reruns of the Jetsons,” Mark exclaimed in frustration. “Hanna-Barbera would be so proud to know every home will have their very own Rosie the robot to order around and perform menial tasks.”
“Rex has finished the repair,” Jeremy reported.
Everyone looked to the power reading display and observed as the indicator changed from flashing yellow to bright green and extended to the top of the indicator bar once again.
“Now let’s see if we can convert the excess energy from the fusion reaction to propulsion for the craft,” Alfred said. “Start us off at one percent thrust.”
A few minutes later the overhead view screen switched back to a familiar diagram of the probe and reactor section flight paths. Mark saw the lines were now intersecting and fought back the urge to kick something. Plan B came and went, and the probe was still on track to be assembled so it could head off into the great unknown screaming out the location of earth for all to hear.
Chapter 32: I Wouldn’t Go in There
Hastelloy took the navigation unit out from its concealment one last time to verify the readings. Sure enough, in the three days since Mosa delivered the message from her god, a tidal wave of silt and ash from the sea was finally about to arrive. It was time to revisit Pharaoh and hear his reply; which would most certainly be to the negative.
There was always the small chance Pharaoh would give in to the demand to free the slaves too early. If this happened the entire plan would fall apart. Not to worry though, Pharaoh was an overly proud man bent on becoming a god himself. Nothing short of the apocalypse would dissuade him from that goal, but the leverage to change his mind was on the rise, as it were.
“Tonwen, it’s time to retrieve Mosa from her hiding place,” Hastelloy ordered. “You two owe Pharaoh another visit.”
“Yes, sir,” Tonwen responded, and left to fetch Mosa from underneath the latrine sheds. Naturally, Hastelloy would’ve preferred hiding her in a more pleasant location, but it was necessary. During the past three days the guards turned the entire slave camp upside down looking for Mosa. The only place they wouldn’t go near was the toilets, and for good reason. The entire area was infested with flies and reeked of excrement and urine. There wasn’t a reward rich enough for the guards to mount a prolonged search of that rancid area.
Hastelloy left th
e tent and headed for the river. It was morning. Pharaoh and his court of concubines always used that time of day to bathe in the river waters. The captain joined Valnor and Gallono as they led a large group of slaves toward the river to witness the royal rumble.
Hastelloy took a deep breath to calm his nerves. The fresh morning air cleared his head so he took another deep breath looking for the same sensation. This time a foul stench that nearly gagged him filled his nostrils. Hastelloy turned to see Mosa standing by his side.
“You look as radiant as ever my dear,” Hastelloy managed to say through a set of dry heaves.
The snarl on her face was difficult to miss. “You owe me your sense of smell when this is over because I’ve burned through my own.”
At least she’s got a sense of humor about the ordeal Hastelloy thought, “Sacrifices, princess. Sacrifices.”
As they made their way to the riverbank, a crowd grew behind them and swelled in ranks with every stride taken. By the time Pharaoh was in sight, a mob of several thousand gathered to watch Mosa deliver them from bondage.
One of the guards took off running towards the nearest barracks to rally reinforcements when the mob drew near. Pharaoh turned to see the commotion. If the large crowd concerned him, it didn’t show in the least. As Mosa approached, Pharaoh opened his arms as if to embrace her. He quickly lowered them and crinkled his nose.
“I’d ask where you’ve been hiding these past few days, but the answer precedes you. That stench does not become a member of the royal family, dear sister. Neither does being an advocate for the cattle who cower behind you.”
“Nor does being passed around to your lieutenants as a prize for a job well done; yet it happened. You made me a slave to your sadistic will long ago. So now,” Mosa swung her arms wide into the air and turned to face those behind her, “I serve these people, not you.”
Origins Page 21