by T I WADE
“That is correct,” Ryan replied looking the younger man in the eyes and his face was as serious as the Ruler’s. The others at the table didn’t move. The Exterior Minister was the only visitor who squirmed in his seat. He wasn’t used to the way Ryan negotiated, and was about to learn.”
“Then I must remember this day,” replied Jong Lee Sim. “I must remember this day in case I need to do what you, Mr. Richmond, are doing for your daughter, saving her face. I might have to do it for my son one day, so I will remember this day.” He then turned to Lunar who was also staring into his face. “Ms. Richmond, on behalf of my country, it’s government and its people, I, Premier Jong Lee Sim of the People’s Republic of all China officially offer you an apology on the way you were treated during your last visit to Beijing. Is there any way I, or the country can make you accept this sincere apology from me, and all the people of China?”
Lunar thought for a few seconds and not a noise was uttered from anybody at the table.
“I will accept this apology Premier if you accept my two conditions?” Premier Jong Lee Sim nodded for her to go on. “I would like to have the borders of China opened for the world to visit, especially the countries represented here today. Everyone here will pledge that their country will be at peace and harmony with your country. My second condition—I would like for you and, or your son to come and visit us in Nevada one day. The reason is that we have a great bunch of kids the same age as your son on the base, and I’m sure that they would love the opportunity to show your son what they are learning in school.”
Premier Jong Lee Sim smiled, and so did Lunar’s parents, Nobody had known what Lunar was going to say, but she did it in proper Richmond fashion. Kathy and Ryan brimmed with pride. Ryan couldn’t have done better himself.
“I, as Premier of The People’s Republic of China agree to your first condition.” He snapped his fingers and two men in suits came running. He talked quickly and they wrote down what he said, then they ran off. He then motioned another man over. He was an old man, and he nodded and walked off in the opposite direction. The table was waiting for the Premier to speak.
“You guys OK in there?” stated Saturn in their ear pieces. It was the first words heard from the shuttle in Tiananmen Square. “The tanks are rumbling off, and it seems that the policemen, all twenty of them now have lowered their rifles and are more like guarding us, than threatening us. Lunar, did you copy?”
“Excuse me Premier,” stated Lunar, and she pressed her earpiece with her hand and spoke. “Lunar Richmond to ground shuttle and orbital shuttle, we are OK down here, and it seems we might have new friends. I will let you know if anything changes, out.”
“Copy that,” replied Saturn, and Jenny Burgos somewhere in orbit around the planet.
“I assume you have received your first condition, Ms. Richmond?” smiled the Premier.
“Yes, Premier, I believe we have, and I hope it never changes in our lifetime,” she replied as a young boy, dressed in Chinese clothing walked timidly towards the table.
“Ms. Richmond, visitors to China, may I introduce Jon Lee Jong, my son.” The boy looked at the table and bowed first to his father, and then to the table. “My son speaks English as well as I do. Maybe it is all the Hollywood films we watch together. I have recently made a new law, an important law that every Chinese Citizen under 50 years old must learn to speak one foreign language of their choice. I decided that English was my language of choice, so was my son’s. Jon Lee Jong, you have been invited to visit the Astermine space site in Nevada, in the United States of America. Would you like to visit?”
“Can I go to space in a spacesuit?” asked the young boy, excitement growing on his face.
“If you are willing to learn how to go to space in a spacesuit Jon Lee Jong,” Lunar replied smiling.
“How long does it take to learn?” asked the boy.
“About eight years,” replied Lunar. “My son is about to learn how to wear a spacesuit.”
“How old is your son?’ asked Jon Lee Jong.
“He will be nine next month, and his name is James.”
“You can join him and my son, Michael. He is 9, and also starts soon,” added Mars Noble, much to the table’s shock that somebody else was speaking out of turn.
“Father, I would like to learn how to go to space,” stated the boy factually and turning to his father.
“What about your lessons?” his father replied.
“I’m sure the American boys have lessons too?”
“I will think about it. Thank you son, you may go.” The young boy bowed to his father, then the guests, turned and walked off in the direction he had entered.
“I need a year for him to finish his current schooling. My son is learning Chinese history, and he must be perfect in this subject, Ms. Richmond. If it is possible, I would like to, as you Americans state in the movies, take a rain check on the offer? Lunar nodded. The Premier continued. “I believe my apology has been accepted and now new friends of China, I will assume that you have other requests for me and my country?”
“The lunch was really good, especially the Roast Duck,” stated Maggie as she sat with Lunar and her husband as they flew towards Seoul, South Korea.
“What happened next?” asked Saturn her father doing the flying, or at least the monitoring of the instruments. The others were all in the Captain’s apartment which had been turned into a seating area for the journey.
“Once Lunar was offered her apology, everyone at the table relaxed and there was even some laughter from both sides,” Maggie continued. “Ryan stated what he needed to complete the scheduled mission to Mars, and the Premier was quiet for several minutes. Then he clicked his fingers and the two same men ran over and bowed.”
“If I bowed so much my back would begin to hurt,” stated Jonesy.
“Don’t forget your legs, Dad,” added Saturn winking at her mother. Since he had returned from DX2017, Jonesy’s legs always seemed to hurt. They hurt when somebody mentioned the word, beer. Same with the words, whiskey and vodka.
What had made Saturn really think was a week or so earlier, when VIN and Suzi Noble caught up with her father on one of the jogs. Saturn and Maggie were about 100 feet behind Jonesy, who seemed to run quite well with his “painful” legs. VIN, with Suzi using her metal legs passed and apologized to the two girls. When the “half-metal” pair reached Jonesy though, he didn’t want them to overtake him, and the burst of speed he managed with his legs in the “bad way” they were, raised both the girl’s eyebrows. Jonesy was like a race horse out of the gate and VIN and Suzi took a couple of seconds to catch him up.
What passed the lips of those three runners wasn’t heard by anybody else, but both Maggie and Saturn had ignored Jonesy’s bleating’s about sore legs from then on.
“The desert was also good and it seemed that we were suddenly all friends,” continued Maggie while Lunar dozed next to her. “Ryan explained that he would like to share some of the gold from Mars with China, if they helped him with liquid hydrogen fuel to get to the planet and back. The Premier reminded Ryan that his country used to have a space agency, and program of its own, until the United States Air Force blew their space station out of the sky, when they nuked an incoming asteroid too close to earth three decades ago. Ryan apologized for his country, so did the U.S. Government aide, and then the Premier told the table the good news that his country still had liquid hydrogen reserves. The fuel was decades old but still useable as a fuel in space. His country had about 80,000 gallons at a secret location, and had already begun making new rocket fuel only a month earlier. Ryan stated that he needed 80,000 gallons within 60 days, and for three tons of gold the new Premier was happy to shake Ryan’s hand.”
“But that is a quarter of the gold we are returning from Mars with,” stated Saturn.
“They get some of the gold, we, and the other countries get the Rare Earth metals,” stated Lunar half asleep. “A pretty good deal, and we won’t need to bargain s
o hard on the next flight. But Maggie, go on. Saturn you haven’t heard the best part yet.”
“It seemed that a large reserve of liquid hydrogen had slipped the Premier’s mind,” continued Maggie. Saturn looked at her mother inquisitively. “Several minutes later a light bulb went on inside his head, and he told us about the reserves of the hydrogen fuel in South Korea very few knew about. Another 40,000 gallons.”
“That is why we are heading there, to discuss getting that fuel as well?” Jonesy asked, and the two girls sitting in the rear cockpit jump seats both nodded.
It was twelve hours later when the same group sat in the shuttle’s cockpit, this time on the way to the Australian island. They had landed in Seoul, also unannounced as that country still hadn’t communications with the West.
Martin Brusk offered, as he had done so in Beijing, to build South Korea a space shuttle, like the one that had landed. For a new space shuttle the Chinese Premier had quickly forgotten the three tons of gold, and the same happened in Seoul. Martin Brusk would take the five tons of gold as payment for building the two space shuttle bodies, much like the two shuttles he had built for Astermine.
Martin Brusk was as good a businessman as he ever was, and it saved an extra ton of the returning gold from Mars for more Rare earth metals that he needed.
Martin and Ryan were working out the payments and who got what as Jonesy flew them onto Australia. Ryan still had the other countries to pay for the loans of fuel, but Canada had already put the repayment off until the second Opposition in less than three years’ time.
By the time they reached the island, it looked like Ryan Richmond could have enough cash from the first mission to complete the build of America Three.
“Looks like a large reception down there?” smiled Jonesy to Saturn as he brought SB-IV in directly above the island’s airfield. They could see a group of four people outside in the morning’s light of the rising sun outside the main hangar where the shuttles always parked.
SB-V was already re-entering earth atmosphere high above the United States and was due to land next to SB-IV in about 30 minutes.
“Don’t mention Bob’s or Beth or Monica’s white hair,” stated Saturn to her father, who’s greying hair had been halted for 14 years.
“Yes, don’t insult your friends by telling them how old they look,” added Maggie knowing that it was certain that her husband would open his mouth in greeting and say the wrong things. That was why he hadn’t been at the lunch in Beijing, and the dinner in Seoul. Now it was breakfast in Australia, and it was time for Jonesy to see his old flying buddies, and the word “old” was very important. What Maggie told him didn’t really help.
Saturn took over and landed SB-IV from 5,000 feet altitude as her father ordered her to do so as he wanted to get out fast and greet his old flying mates.
Seeing the age of his old flying buddies did give Jonesy a shock. Seeing the younger age of their old flying buddies certainly gave Bob Mathews, Beth and Monica a shock. They hadn’t realized that the time out in space for the “OldGeners” was actually an age-saving device.
Jonesy had always considered Bob Mathews to be one of his special friends. They had often flown together throughout their lives, and always seemed to be as one with flying as each other.
One knew what the other was always thinking and the reactions times due to suggestions was always rapid. They had flown Transports together, C-17s, and C-5s in the 1990s, and a few years earlier, when they were fresh out of flight school as budding Second Lieutenants, they had flown fighter jets, first the F-16 Fighting Falcons, and then the first F-15E Strike Eagles in 1989 that had arrived in the ranks of The United States Air force, and at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.
Both men would have stayed with the 336th Tactical Fighter Squadron flying F-15s in North Carolina, but Jonesy’s mouth and both their drinking and bar brawl habits got them moved to flying Transports—C-130s out of Fort Bragg.
It didn’t really matter what they flew as every type of aircraft had its own set of ways to fly it and both men had excelled in every aircraft. To them a C-17, or even a C-130 turboprop was as interesting to fly as was a modern fighter jet.
“You been to a plastic surgeon, Jonesy?” Bob Mathews asked hugging his old partner.
“No, I see you haven’t either,” replied General Jones.
“You haven’t aged a day since we said goodbye in Nevada, what 15 years ago?” Bob added not believing how young his old flying buddy looked in front of him.
“I can see fishing doesn’t help in the age department Bob. No, we were asleep for 14 damn years, and now look at me. Maggie, Ryan, Kathy, Michael Allen and I were put to sleep in these weird and out of this world cryogenic sleep chambers for 14 years, and now look at what we all look like, bleeding kids compared to you. Hi Monica, Beth, like your white hair” nodded Jonesy to Bob’s crew.
“Well, fourteen years of sleep, doing nothing, and having nothing more than a face lift, I’m glad I’m old. Jonesy, I’ve had the best 14 years of fishing a man could ever have while you were acting like Sleeping Beauty,” replied Bob Mathews, very used to Jonesy and what came out of his mouth.
“I’ve heard about your fishing from Saturn and young Mars,” replied Jonesy. “The only problem with not getting old on time, is that I’m still expected to work. A bit of a bummer when I also wanted to go fishing, Bob.”
“I know you are only here for a couple of days. There isn’t enough time to head out, but next time make sure you get a couple of weeks so that I can take you out, and you have your own boat waiting for you down in Brisbane. It has been waiting for you for a couple of years now.”
A couple of days on the island was very relaxing. Apart for one aircraft arriving from Canberra to pick up the Aussie politician, it was very quiet.
Mary Collins and Martin Brusk had arranged to be picked up in Seoul by an Israeli military aircraft at a later date. Both wanted to stay on and do some business with the South Korean government.
Astermine had a small crew that now stayed on the island permanently to look after the company’s assets. Bob, Monica and Beth were in and out and called the island home between fishing trips. Captain Pete was now in charge of the island, and had been happy when Dr. Nancy had finally arrived back after making sure the returning OldGeners were fit to live on Earth.
Joanne, Roo, Joe and her second child also called the island home from home. They enjoyed the quiet life away from the politics of Washington, did not need her secret service detail there, and waited patiently for their return flight to Mars.
Three of the NextGeners, several scientists, and a team of five Russian scientists were the only other crewmembers on the island.
The beaches were great, the pool adequate to teach the children to swim, and the Australian beer cold.
“One more flight to Mars Maggie, and I think we should call it a day,” stated Jonesy one evening over sundowner drinks.
“What happens if Ryan needs us?” she asked her husband, not really caring where she flew into space again or not.
“There are enough astronauts, and within a decade, the third generation, our grandchildren will be taking over as commanders and flight captains. I honestly don’t think we old pilots are in demand so much anymore. Saturn won’t even let me captain her shuttle. It looks like Lunar will command America Two, or young Mars Noble. Pluto Katherine wants command of America Three, and there is no way my tired old legs are stepping on any asteroids again. I think it’s time to see what retirement packages Ryan has in mind. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m at retirement age, or like Bob, long passed it. There, the boss is coming over, I’ll ask,” Jonesy continued as Ryan and Kathy walked over. The little drinks robot Jonesy wanted to keep as a pet handed the couple a glass of wine to the Richmond’s as they walked around the side of the pool.
“It’s time Maggie and I went fishing,” stated Jonesy tactfully as Ryan and Kathy sat down at their table.
“I was thinking
you would say that once we got here,” smiled Ryan.
“I was thinking just the same thoughts,” added Kathy smiling at her husband. “Mars, is fine if you want to burrow down like a mole, but Earth is still paradise, especially this beautiful place.”
“Ask Bob to organize you two a boat,” stated Maggie enjoying her glass of wine. “Let the kids do the flying and leave us to live out our lives right here.”
“I agree with you,” replied Ryan staring at the darkening horizon where the sun had disappeared several minutes earlier. “We need some cash, retirement cash, so if we can get the next load of gold young Noble states is just there waiting for us to pick up. Let us all go and pick up our retirement checks, and let the kids, and grandkids carry on after our final odyssey. We have done our part for humanity, space exploration, and opening up the solar system for future travel. I believe Martin Brusk, shocked at how young we look, now feels very old and wants to join us here.” VIN Noble walked up with his son.
“How much gold did you say was waiting for us, Mars?” Jonesy asked his son-in-law.
“Captain Pete tallied it up at 7,000 tons Commander Jones,” replied Mars respectfully.
“I wish I could get a “Commander VIN Noble” just once out of my son,” interrupted VIN getting his and his son’s order of two cold beers from the robot waiter.
“Is that Earth tons, or Martian tons?” asked Ryan. “I forgot which weight he was talking about when he gave us his report on arrival.”
“Earth tons Ryan,” stated Captain Pete himself as the hard working robot scurried off to get the captain and Dr. Nancy two cold beers.
“And that doesn’t add what could be in the tunnels that weren’t blown out by the explosion,” stated Mars.
“We can’t bring all that back” suggested Jonesy trying to visualize what 7,000 tons of gold looked like. “A few ingots is all Maggie and I need to complete the payments on our boat and head out into the wild blue sea yonder with Bob and his girls. Bob, what gas does your boat use?” shouted Jonesy as Bob Mathews, Beth and Monica joined them.