Thomas Aquinas, Explorer of the galaxy

by Rico, J. Luis

  At the end of the two days of fasting, Pope Anacletus announces his decision.

  “A Schism of the holy Mother Church cannot be tolerated. A division and loss of control of the Holy Gospel would spell slow but certain doom for the gospel. After prayer and reflection, I have come to a decision. I will abdicate my throne. I resign.” Pope Anacletus lowers his large head piece and robes off and into the hands of his aides, who take the garments and pack them for delivery to the Anti-Pope.

  “I declare the new Pope to be the Schism Pope. I know Pope Constantinople well. He is a strong man. I invite him back into the fold of the church as the head of the church. If he will declare an end to the new Eastern Space Church, he can rule and lead the one true church. Pope Constantinople please journey back to Mars on Sol system with me and take your throne.” They leave later that day on the Popes colony class space ship.

  The new Pope Constantinople travels with hundreds of his allies, Cardinals, and Bishops of the Schism systems that joined his efforts. It is a large and magnificently dressed group. The new Pope boards the ship in his royal vestments carrying a large scepter with holy water in the top misting out as he walks. The Cardinals, dozens of Cardinals wearing reds and blues and royally coifed in leather and diamonds, wearing rings and necklaces to reflect their stature in the new structure of power, enter the large ship one after the other to applause and cheering from their allies.

  The Bishops arrive, hundreds and hundreds of Bishops and the various other hangers on who have secured their passage on the ship with the new Pope and lastly the deposed old Pope. Hundreds and hundreds pack the large ship. Pope Anacletus denies his Cardinals and Bishops access to board his ship. He turns them away. “This is not about us. brothers. It is about the new Pope.” He turns all his allies away to find their own way home on a lesser ship.

  The newly Christened ship CS Constantinople leaves its parking orbit around the planetoid and uses a gravity assist to get up to 20,000 meters per second before firing the large ion thrusters on the rear half of the ship. The ion thrusters build speed and momentum for several hours before reaching 100,000 meters per second. The ship begins a lazy roll to the clockwise direction. The CS Constantinople enters the transit terminal and the space ripple bubble and disappears.

  Aboard the ship, it is a party like atmosphere. The new Pope declares a miracle and names several new Saints, men, and women whose families had supported his claim. Several Bishops are elevated to Cardinal. Several Cardinals are elevated to leadership positions within the new Vatican. The party rages for hours and hours in side space. The new Pope makes several announcements to the galaxy wide audience via entangled communicator. He conducts mass several times while underway in side space.

  At long last after nearly a full week of side space celebration and revelry from the new Pope and his followers, the cruise nears its end.

  Along the centerline axis of the large spaceship, an antenna emerges, telescoping outwards to nearly two kilometers distance from the main body of the ship. The antennae begin its normal pre-programmed operation to extend the Mobius strip portion of its internal workings and collapse the field of side space and force entry into normal universe. The Captain of the ship watches the instruments closely.

  The antenna fails. It is apparently jammed. The ship has missed its arrival window and continues along in side space at a relative .75 light years per hour speed. The Captain orders the crew to investigate quickly. In the history of manned exploration, an antenna has never failed, this is unexpected and a potential catastrophe.

  The crew scrambles to respond to the rapidly emerging casualty. The antenna is retrieved. It fails to telescope fully back into the ship. They try to cycle it back and forth to no effect.

  The new Pope arrives in the command room and bellows for news. “Fix this and return me to normal space!” he yells at the Captain and the executive officer. Sweat begins to form on the heads and necks of all the officers on watch. They realize quickly what this means for them personally. The new Pope screams and yells and orders crew and passenger alike out of his way. He clears several crew members out of the control room to make room for his leadership team of Cardinals. His hangers on.

  The ship’s antennae unfold and deploy a gigantic Mobius strip as they watch. “Finally! Captain as soon as we enter normal space make for earth and the Vatican!” the new Pope orders. The Captain and crew return his stare with their own blank and fearful stares. The ship enters normal space.

  The entire front window of the command and control ship is covered by the corona and ejecta of the sun. Sol systems sun. “We have missed our exit point by several light minutes while the antenna was hung and inoperative.” The Captain no longer even looks at the new Pope, his gaze is forward with the ever-growing presence of the sun in front of his ship. Several of the ship’s crew begin to pray. Two take their knees and pray out loud. The Captain keys the mic for the ship wide communicator and says blankly. “Crew and passengers, we will collide with the Sol system sun in three minutes and fifteen seconds. It will be quick I assure you.” He drops the mic and uses his personal pocket phone to call his wife and family back on Mars to say his goodbyes.

  The new Pope screams and yells and orders the crew on the bridge to “do something!” To “do anything!” One of the warrant officers hits him in the mouth. “You bastard, you have killed us all. I will see you in hell in three minutes!”

  The group of Cardinals and the new Pope scream and fight among themselves.

  In the small and private quarters assigned to him, the old Pope opens his personal communicator and dials the lines of the major news channels. He begins to speak without preamble.

  “I excommunicate Cardinal Linus and his accomplices from the Holy Catholic Church.” He names seven of the prominent Cardinals as well, all men who are at this moment screaming at each other in the control room with the new Pope. “These men are consumed by the lust of power and have lost their way. They are forbidden from wearing the vestment or giving the mass, they are forbidden from entering into a Catholic Church, they are forbidden from the sacred confessional and forbidden to taste the blessed communion. They are outside a state of grace. They will perish in less than three minutes in a state of despair on this earth and are bound for the new home of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites and violence, by perverting their human intellect to fraud and malice against their fellow men. These men will not despair in purgatory, no… they will be confined to the gates of hell.”

  The Pope, the true Pope, places his phone on speaker and begins his final prayer. The windows of the spaceship stateroom are now glowing red hot. “It will have to be a short prayer.” he thinks to himself. He smiles. “If you told me as a child I would be Pope and would die in a fiery of impact with the Sun, I would never believe you. What a wonderful, and exciting life.”

  In the stateroom with the Pope sit two senior warrant officers. These two men helped the Pope plan his sabotage in perfect detail. They are in a state of grace, anointed and forgiven by the true Pope. The true Pope continues. “I name Warrant Officer First Class Edward Bailey and Warrant Officer Third Class Brian Neil Military Hero’s and Saints of the Highest Order. They stood with me when others fled. They stood with me when they knew it would cost them their lives.”

  The Pope sings in his best voice. The two good and true men hang their heads and cry. These two strong and faithful Catholic men knew they were committing themselves and their lives into the abyss. They never wavered. They never questioned their Pope. Their names will soon adorn schools, churches, and even new Colony ships and worlds. In the history of the Catholic Church never have there been living Saints. They will not live much longer.

  “It appears we have no time for the Lord's Prayer brothers.” The Pope closes his hands over the hands of the two Warrant Officers. “This will have to do.” The Pope smiles and sings the words, rubbing the holy oil he had previously anointed on the men’s heads, hands, and feet.
"Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up." Hundreds of billions of Catholics listen live as the Pope blesses his two new Saints. The men weep openly as they face their end. Even the love and blessing of the living Pope cannot bestill a man’s heart when he knows his end is here. It is emotional.

  All three cry out and force their eyes shut against the suddenly bright light… And then nothingness. They expand in a rapidly increasing ball of plasma.

  All over the galaxy Catholics react. Some in prayer, some scream and pull their hair out. The Pope’s ship has just collided with the Sol system sun at 100,000 meters per second. The Schism of the Anti-Pope has been crushed in rather spectacular fashion. The Anti-Pope is dead along with almost all of his senior followers. Pope Anacletus has martyred himself to save the Church.

  The Pope’s Mars apartments are closed and sealed by the Bishop’s Assistant at the Pontifical Throne upon receiving news of the deaths of both the new and the old Popes.

  A new Papal conclave is declared by the Bishop of Rome. Cardinals again gather. There is no politicking and argument. The Cardinals pray and meditate with one another.

  Cardinal Johnston of Los Angeles on Sol system is elected Pope on the first ballot. He chooses the name Anacletus. Pope Anacletus the Third.

  A renewal of faith spreads among the thousands of systems. The Catholic Church has survived its first rebellion in fifteen hundred years. It emerges reborn and stronger than ever before.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Clevern and Misri

  The Year 2628, drop ship DS1, planetoid DF39, Unnamed system

  Azire and Tommaso walk the confines of the drop ship passageway. Back and forth they walk, nervous and impatient. The Colony ship CS Brian Neil remains in its parking orbit, a geosynchronous orbit, its speed and height matching the spin of the planetoid below.

  “The wind storm on the surface is still too strong to land.” The AI pilot system informs them every fifteen minutes whether they ask for it or not. “I anticipate an opening in the weather patterns in eight minutes. If you would take your seats in the crash couches, there will be no delay. It will be a difficult descent.”

  Azire and Tommaso buckle themselves in tightly and then double check each other’s clasps and restraints. The crash couches inflate slowly around their thighs and legs, then their belly and chest, finally the slow moving but extremely tough foam closes around their head, leaving only their soft breathing tubes extending from the gray green foam. The foam hardens. The ship breaks orbit by beginning a rapid burn from the forward ion thrusters to slow and drop, allowing gravity to reach from the well of the large planetoid and pull them down. The sudden downward jerk as the outer atmosphere makes contact is violent. If the two were not encased in crash couch foam they would be dripping from the ceiling in suddenly jellied and small pieces.

  The ship jerks upwards and downwards violently. Then left, then harder left, then right. Shedding speed and fighting the high-speed thick cloud cover at 60,000 meters. Lightning strikes the ship almost continuously. The super conductive and reflective coating takes a beating. The amperage of the lighting strikes exceeds, significantly exceeds predicted values. Only the aggressively engineered exterior Nano bot coating saves their lives. The ship drops for a minute with no jerks or hard turns or maneuvers.

  The AI breaks the silence. “We have broken through the outer and higher band of turbulence. The last band at 20,000 meters should present no difficulties. We will maintain altitude and close on the landing zone for the next ninety minutes while the Nano bots repair the ships exterior coating.”

  Azire and Tommaso slowly break their way out of the foam with the assistance of an AI robot attached to the ships interior wall on a rail system. The AI uses mechanical advantage and three appendages to slowly and laboriously open the tough foam shells and break off large pieces to break the two men out. Azire spits his breathing tube out and inhales deeply from the horror that is his mouth. Tommaso kneels and prays, thankful the two are not dripping from the ceiling after the series of extremely violent maneuvers the ship suffered breaking through the storm bands surrounding the planet.

  “Six hundred kilometers per hour.” Tommaso looks at the monitor and re-reads it to make sure he didn’t misunderstand. “Six hundred kilometers per hour, from various directions. No wonder these people have been trapped on the surface of their planet. Not only can they never see the night sky and stars and galaxies, they could never break through into space. A primitive chemical rocket would be destroyed by those cross winds violence.”

  Azire brings up the second routine on the monitors. Their current position is basically on the wrong side of the planet. “The ninety minutes needed for repairs will bring us to the right hemisphere.” He spins the monitor and holds his magnifying glass closer to the display. “Our landing zone is a two-hour flight.”

  Azire leads Tommaso down to the storage bay and their lander to check for damage. All is in order thankfully. This is the same lander that Tommaso used to drive to the Nine Steps village where he and Azire met the better part of a century ago. The large rubber tires, the stubby retractable wings, the various scars where a hundred rocks and even some low-velocity arrows and bullets have struck it over the decades stand out in the harsh glare of artificial light.

  Tommaso opens the cab and they climb in and begin to run their various system checks. The cab checks out fine. Their small scooters and extra vehicular suits check out fine. Tommaso breaks out a few protein bars and a liter of water. He sits on the floor in the hanger and prays while he breaks his fast. Azire joins him within a few minutes, eagerly snacking on vacuum packed insects and slurping on a flavored water bulb. As has been the case for nearly a hundred years, Tommaso grimaces as his friend eats. It is a horrid scene to watch.

  The warning light in the bay turns yellow, the AI is letting them know they are running out of time and need to buckle up in the lander. Tommaso helps his young friend to his feet, and they zip up their flight suits, climb into their extra vehicular suits, climb into the back of the lander, and from there make their way into the cab. Tommaso makes slower progress than Azire dressing. His age and increasingly frail health are slowing him down significantly.

  The lander has plenty of room in the cab to accommodate the two. They restrain themselves with seat belts and a crash bar. The countdown to drop begins.

  The AI breaks the silence. “We are over the drop area. You may disengage at will. God-speed.”

  Tommaso spins the mechanical wheel to loosen the clamps holding the lander firmly in the drop ship. The mechanical chocks loosen their grip. The lander is now sitting on the floor of the drop ship cargo bay untethered. The drop ship cargo door opens quickly and the wind whips into the bay and fogs the windows until the electric defrosters quickly clear them.

  Azire selects the buttons to move the drive station to his control. With no further fanfare, he drives the lander out the cargo door, and they drop into the atmosphere and let gravity take them. He yells in his curious language. The AI translator says “unintelligible” and Tommaso smiles.

  The lander falls and quickly reaches terminal velocity speed of 177 kph. The stubby flight wings catch enough of the thick atmosphere to stabilize the craft and allow Azire to orient the craft as it falls. He keeps the large windscreen facing downwards so the duo can watch the descent.

  At 3,000 meters, Azire activates the drag chute. The small chute pulls and slows the craft somewhat, but it is mostly needed now to orient the craft. The atmosphere is thickening and the winds are picking up enough to whip the craft back and forth violently. The chute slows the lander significantly, but the thicker atmosphere contributes as well. The terminal velocity of the lander dragging the chute through the thick atmosphere is now less than 100 kph.

  At one thousand meters height, the rapidly approaching surface is visible through the fog and the haze of the illumination
provided by the vegetation. The ground cover appears to be several meters tall single branched bamboo trees. The illusion of similarity ends there, these alien “bamboo trees” also give off luminescence. The entire surface of the planet is brightly lit. The light coming up through the thick atmosphere and fog makes visibility difficult.

  Azire uses thrusters on the side of the lander to move laterally now and begin to select their landing spot. The vegetation is thick, but there are patches of empty sandy ground. The second and larger drag chute jerks the lander to a near halt. The rate of descent is slowed to a few meters per second. The lander actually sways back and forth under the two chutes as it descends. At one hundred meters height Azire fires the thrusters on the forward end of the lander to change the orientation as they descend. The craft makes two bounces and comes to a stop on the ground.

  “Ground check,” Azire states as the craft settles and stops moving. He cuts the two chutes, the lander and drag chute free. A moment later the chutes bundle themselves up in a ball for retrieval. Their pre-programmed routines complete.