by L. S. Wood
“If we lose any more airspeed commander at this height, the Twitchel will fall out of the sky like a huge ball of steel, and crumple up on impact.
“What is our altitude now, Bill?”
“6500 feet and falling rapidly, sir, along with our air speed!” “Captain, stand by the landing gear controls.”
Steven and Charles both slid down into the bottom part of the fuselage of the Twitchel getting ready in their position to lower the landing gears with the hand cranks when told to do so.
“Captain Mitchell, stand by for my command!
If I holler abort, get the two of them the hell out of there immediately! They wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell down there if we have to put this bird down on her belly.” “It’s going to be real close Major, real close indeed.”
“Her airspeed is dropping rapidly, sir, too rapidly.”
“Nose her in just a little bit more, Bill. If we make that runway, it is going to be a freaking miracle.
I wish we had the wipers right now.
I cannot see a thing out there with all that useless mist and light rain we are having right now.” “How are we doing, Major”?
“I don’t really know, sir. I do think we should chance those landing gears down, sir.
“Right now, Major, or in a little bit, Bill?” The colonel’s voice was becoming sterner with serious concern with every word he spoke or yelled out at them! “Right now, sir, let’s not wait another second, Commander, or it might be too damn late no matter where we have to put this bird down. Some wheels are better than no wheels at all in most cases, sir. Even if we are a little shy of the runway, Nelson.”
“Crank the landing gears down now Captain! Get those damned wheels down now and ready to bring us home.”
Ann yelled out to Steven, and Charles. “Crank them down, NOW!”
Charles and Steven began cranking on the jack-screwed mechanisms of the rear landing gears with all of their strength and speed they could muster up. The belly below the Twitchel began slowly opening up, as the rear landing gears began to slowly inch their way out slowly from her belly and into the mist and rain of the damp day.
Captain Morris quickly slid down into the forward compartment of the Twitchel’s fuselage and began with all of his might and speed in cranking and cranking down on the forward jackscrew opening device for the forward landing gear wells to secure the forward landing gear down.
He cranked and cranked as hard he could, and then was thrown into the ceiling of the big bird’s belly. The screw down crank handle had hit him just above his left eye, and it was bleeding profusely from the wound, down into his left eye. He grabbed the crank again with his hands still bleeding, and started to crank again as fast he could still half dazed.
Again, he was thrown about in the belly of the Twitchel, as the rear landing gear wheels on the big bird touched down for a second time in the sand just short of the runway. The front wheels hit the runway and catapulted the Twitchel back up into the air like a beginner pilot would in making his first attempt at landing an aircraft, and then back down onto the runway again, and again, and again.
The Twitchel bounced a couple more real hard times as it quickly sped down the runway at a couple of hundred miles an hour.
“The chutes now, Captain Mitchell, the damn braking chutes.” Commander Anderson yelled out to Ann to deplore the braking chutes to slow the Twitchel down. Ann yanked as hard as she could on the levers, and the slowing brake chutes of the craft shot out behind the Twitchel like clockwork. There was a slight tug on the craft at first, and then they began to slow the shuttle down.
“Some brakes, Major, some more brakes, Bill.” The craft veered to the left and then to the right. Suddenly the nose gear gave way to fatigue for it had not being fully extended and hammered upon when the Twitchel hit the ground along with the front brakes pulling back on the landing gear all at the same time.
The shuttle veered off from the runway and into the grass mounds along its side plowing a huge furrow in the grassy area and sand as it went.
The hard landing had caused the front land gears metal framed lowering unit to bend backwards under the belly of the Twitchel, as the hydraulic shafting rods bent and twisted beneath its heavy weight.
When the craft finally came to a complete stop, it had caused an enormous dust cloud of sand to billow up from the ground and encompassed the craft in a cloud of dust, and sand. Steven, Charles, and Captain Morris were in pretty tough shape when the craft finally came to a full stop.
Charles’s arm and collarbone had been broken. Steven was the luckiest of them all. He was beat up pretty good but nothing was broken. Captain Morris on the other hand was in real poor shape. When the landing gear came apart, pieces from it flew up into the wheel well and broke his left hip, leg, and his left arm. He was lucky just to be alive. They were all lucky to be alive.
Commander Anderson and Major Bill went to assist Captain Morris down in the front belly of the Twitchel. Ann and Dick along with a couple of the Russian Cosmonauts went to the aid of Steven and Charles. They managed to pick the two of them up out the narrow passageway leading down into the landing gear compartments. It was hard, being as careful as they could with them, trying not to dislocate Charles’s already broken arm and collarbone any more than it was already dislocated and broken.
When upon opening up the emergency escape hatch of the Twitchel, the crew could hear the sounds of horns blasting in the far off distance coming toward them from the command compound area. Diesel trucks were heard screaming out with clatter from their running engines seen coming down across the tarmac toward them from the garage buildings.
Ann pulled the lever on the CO2 escape chute mechanism deploring down the inflated chute to the ground for their safe escape. She then returned to help with Captain Morris who was groaning in dreadful pain. He would scream out in pain no matter where anyone touched him to help him. The medical situation onboard was bad, but help was on its way, they hoped. Returning to the emergency chute exit, Ann beckoned to a medic who was just barely arriving. She screamed to him to bring up some shots of morphine or some other type of oral drugs to help Captain Morris ease the severe pain he was experiencing from his injuries, and to bring her a stretcher for the captain as well.
A fire truck stretched out its aluminum chute and ladder for them to use in their escape from their disabled spacecraft. After the medic had quickly scurried up the ladder, Ann showed him where to go to find Captain Morris. With the forward wheel cavity being so damn thick with dust still in the air, along with sand scattered about in the cramped compartment made it damn near impossible to help the injured man.
The medic gave him a shot that knocked him out cold so they could strap him to a stretcher board for his extraction from the forward compartment, and then down to an awaiting ambulance. The ambulance to arrive first on scene took away Lieutenant Steven and Charles to the hospital for treatment. They both received non-life threatening injuries, but was Captain Morris going to make it with all his injuries?
Scavonivich had a look upon his face as if he were in complete total blackout shock. He looked to be in a la-la-land state of mind, just staring off into outer space even when he was spoken to. He was in another world all by his lonesome now, and no one could locate him anywhere therein, as they tried to get his attention to unbuckle himself from his seat in the cockpit. He was to leave with the others to an awaiting vehicle to transport them to the compounds medical unit for a health checkup. He became just another statistic of the neutron invasion, an individual who was going to need help to get him through life if he made it that far without taking his own life to end his sorrow and misery of facing life alone.
Commander Anderson was totally blaming himself for making such a lousy choice of landing sites. He now knew he should have made a firm decision back in orbit in their making another go around one more time, and then taken hi
s chances on a clogged runway in California other than chancing his way down through the toxic mix of neutron saturated clouds, rain, and foggy mist the way they had.
“I am sorry I did this to us, sir”, Ann spoke out to Commander Anderson.
“You performed just fine, Captain. It is I who owes you an apology Ann. I will take full responsibility for this catastrophic event taking place if it turns out to be that way in the report. I shouldn’t have been so damn adamant and indecisive up there in making the simplest of decisions, Captain.” We should have tried a dusk landing. I know we could have made it.”
Commander Anderson smiled at Ann, trying to make her feel a little more at ease with what she had just been a part of in helping happen, but knew it was all riding on his shoulders now for it was he who was more at fault than hers.
“I shouldn’t have slammed on the retro rockets, right, Commander?”
“Yes, you should have, Lieutenant, I mean Captain Mitchell. I was about to give you the order to fire them on anyway.”
“I guess it was a wrong set of choices chosen by the two of us then I guess, I don’t know.”
He took Ann by the arm leading her out the hatch and down the aluminum ramp to an awaiting service vehicle that would bring them all back to the compound to be checked out for bumps and bruises they might not know they had being in slight shock from the awful incident.
The next day, Ann felt extremely superb with herself knowing she was now one day closer to be going home to the farm and able to be with her loved ones once again. She was still feeling the ill effects from the roughness of the crash landing from the day before, but she did not really care about her own bruises as she was still much better off than poor Captain Morris, Charles, and even Steven. She did feel sick though, extremely mentally headachy sick. She felt exhausted from not sleeping a whole hell of a lot not even a wink all night long it seemed for all she could do between dozing off once in a great while she would almost instantly wake right back up hearing Scavonivich screaming, “death to everyone death to everyone. The Commander is a mad man! We are all going to die. He is a mad man!”
Ann’s sub conscience was working overtime, making her think about everyone who had been onboard the Twitchel, without letting her take a break to sleep for herself. If she had fallen asleep at all, it was short lived, dreaming of the crashing shuttle repeatedly.
She could still hear the frantic screams of pain come echoing up into the cabin into her ears from the belly of the Twitchel below. It was Captain Morris screaming out in excruciating pain and from everyone else in the craft including her own silent sub conscience, unconsciously pleading screams for her want of her children and husband. She watched frantically through the windshield of the shuttle as it tried veering off to the left and then shot off to the right, screeching off the runway into the soft grass and mounds of sand. She watched in slow motion as dirt, grass, and dust escalated up into the cabin of the Twitchel and around all them. She knew in her short dreams she was going to be killed and die every damn time she dosed off for those few quick seconds, but then she would wake up in a cold wet clammy discomforted sweat, all chilled, crying, and nervously shaking.
Ann thought for sure she was about to experience an intense self-imposed nervous breakdown when suddenly she thought about home, Ben, and the children which calmed her right down almost instantly. The first night back on Earth safe and sound seemed to be the shortest yet longest most trying, strenuous, demanding night of her entire life yet. It had been a more nerve-wracking vicious night of worry worse than the anticipation of giving birth to her two small beautiful precious children. She would have much rather have had a dozen or more babies just like them, then go through anything like the night she had just gone through ever again. “Having a baby” she thought quickly to herself. Ann could not wait to get back home to hold her two little precious baby girls, Sarah and Amber, in her arms once again. She could not wait for Ben to throw his loving arms around her one more time and make her feel safe again as he always did. Especially after she had just promised him she would never leave him or the children ever again before Commander Anderson came knocking at that damned farm house door. That ever so shocked mind riddled morning, not that many weeks ago with that special life heart melting request of his.
She made a firm promise to her weak-minded self then and there after thinking a very short while what the circumstances of this last mission could have meant to her loving family if she were to perish in doing it. She felt her obligation for her life to her friends in orbit was certainly over with now, and she would stay on the farm forever and forever. She would now serve her fellow citizens, her friends, and her family best by being active in the local community, the church, and around the county. She would help rebuild the lives that monster living in the sky filled with massive neutrons had taken away from so many people. Ann’s outlook on her life now had changed drastically in just the last long short several hours of her entire life. Her family would now become her calling card by taking care of them the way a loving mother and wife should, according to her father. Her thoughts now about his old-fashioned ways about a woman’s’ place in the home and their life were finally sinking into her thick skull, she thought for herself.
Ben had never directly deserted his family the way Ann had. He took their children out of Florida back home to her father’s farm in Vermont. When he returned back from serving his forced government duty by being her husband, he was now protecting them the best he knew how or could against this object, this monster in the sky. He started by helping her father, his neighbors, and other folk around the community the best he could and was doing everything right according to her folks.
Ben was her hometown hero now, and she was going to take that issue up with him when she gets back home to her parents’ farm. Ann wanted to live the simple life now by becoming that wife of a hard working farmer, a real mother this time to her children, and a loving daughter to her love caring parents.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Suffering
The inhabitants of the earth had suffered dearly for the corrupt actions of a very small group of inconsiderate people who had wanted to control the universe for themselves. The massive loss of life around the globe turned out to be a catastrophe.
The ones who lost their precious lives almost instantly at the onset of the massive invasion from the neutrons were better off dead than the many people who had survived the deadly neutron invasion.
Famine along with the loss of life by starvation had finally overtaken many metropolitan areas around the globe. In the many months to follow the massive neutron blasts, many new hostile gangs formed around the globe everywhere. Groups of them going around neighborhoods beating down doors looking merely for parcels of food they had left on their mostly empty shelves in stores of food, or had hidden in closets or under boards in their household floors so not to starve to death themselves. Many of the inhabitants of the earth were becoming desperate for their own survival. Life without electricity around the globe turned most lives upside down.
Large businesses were lost without the lifeblood of electricity flowing through their many veins of empty wires which had fed their great computer’s life or operated their desperately needed elevators for travel to their highest points of skyscrapers, or power to light the dark of night. The millions of structures similar to skyscrapers and other large blacked-out buildings around the world became empty in cities around the world while food-producing facilities of the world became instantly idle.
Large stores of assorted grains in silos and other accrues of foods lay rotting in their secured bins without anyone able to process them or access them without the help of electrically operated equipment to open and close their massive security doors and chutes.
Many human beings took their own lives by not being able to cope with the many new ways of life they had to experience. There were the ones that were not able to sit and
watch their loved ones die from starvation. The ones not willing or able to help their loved ones or themselves in any way to go on in this crazy new changing world.
When the going got tough, the cowards around the earth took the easy way out, and left their loved ones to face the difficult times of life all by their lonesome.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Back on the Farm
When finally arriving back home at the farm, Ann was welcomed back home with wide-open arms by her loving caring family along with many many a wet joyful happy tear. She solemnly promised Ben, Sarah, Amber, and her two loving parents, she would never leave the farm ever again under any circumstances, no matter who it was that came knocking at the front door this time.
Not even the President of the United States, President Stallman. Not he or anyone else could convince her otherwise now. She would not leave the security of the farm or her loved ones ever again. Her commission was now up, and she was now a civilian to do whatever the best was that suited her and her family. Not even the safety or well-being of her comrades aboard the space station was any more important to her than her immediate family which now stood in front of her at the time.
Even though she prayed daily for their safe return back home to Earth, she had made this new promise to her family never planning to break this one, but who knows what the future might have in store for her.
Sitting around on the front porch of the farm that very next day high on Balch Hill overlooking Lunenburg Common, Ann and her mother sat peeling potatoes getting ready for the family’s evening dinner. While looking out over the Connecticut River Valley they watched as dark stormy rainclouds rolled in toward them from the east, northeast corner over New Hampshire drifting westward from Mount Washington.
Soon the mean looking rain clouds overtook their bright sunny day overshadowing Lunenburg proper, as the skies opened up with torrential rains bucketing down on the farm like cats and dogs. In the far off distance of New Hampshire a streak of bright yellowish-red light like the tail of a fired off missile caught Ann’s keen eyesight. Minutes later, a faint rumble of thunder or a similar sound could be heard coming toward them from the same direction. Thunder and lightning seemed something of the past not heard of or seen around the earth since the horrendous neutron invasion took place almost two years in the past.