by L. S. Wood
“Take off your flight suits; we have to get the hell out of here”, yelled out Chenco over everyone talking and grumbling out of fear. “They will drag you down to your death if you don’t get rid of them now. The inflating firing mechanisms are wet, and will not work now. Get rid of the damn things. Where are the life rafts?”
“In locker number two, Chenco,” a voice yelled out. “Help me get Sebastian’s flight suit off him.” Arms intermingled with arms, while the legs of his flight suit kept catching on switches and knobs, as everyone tried to rid themselves and Sebastian of their cumbersome flight suits all at once, and deposit them beneath their feet on the ceiling of the craft.
The air in the capsule was becoming very stagnant and unbearable with the smell of vomit as their oxygen supply was running out on them.
The crew didn’t have much time left in getting him or herself upstairs to the surface of the sea or Great Lakes out of the crippled capsule before everyone died from asphyxiation from the lack of fresh air and oxygen.
“When we do this,” Chenco yelled out, “we have to stay together so we don’t lose someone to the raging waters. We shall use the tow-line rope method leaving the vessel together. John, you go first. When you blast away the locked hatch, wait until the pressure from the water stops coming in on us. You will not be able to fight the flow of water against you as it is rushing in at you. We need to cover Sebastian’s head so he won’t drown.”
“Is he still alive?” “I don’t know, Gina, but I sure hope so!” Sebastian had made it this far, but would he make it the rest of the way home?
Would anyone of them make it any further in their desperate flight to freedom? It was hurricane season in the Atlantic, and since the big bang, the storms had grown in massive size and magnitude of strength. It all depended on their luck, if they had any left at all.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The Great Escape
The cloud cover they had observed from outer space a few days before coming off from the North African coastline heading westward toward the Leeward Islands and east of the United States was the first major hurricane of the season and the biggest the earth had ever experienced this early into the new hurricane season. Storms and weather around the globe were continually changing with the strengthening and weakening of the neutron force field that now surrounded the globe.
John slammed the mechanical triggering device to blow away the sealed hatch. The door flew out only a couple of inches then slammed instantly back against the capsule, leaving a gaping hole and opening of about six inches just above it. The waters from of the sea came gushing in at them, and when the outside pressure equalized itself with the inner pressure of the capsule, the loosened hatch door fell down and away from the capsule.
John at first was getting panic-stricken, as he was about to try and kick the hatch door away by himself before it fell. He knew what to expect, but his racing nerves were starting to get the best of him, and he knew if the door was stuck in place it would only be a matter of seconds, not minutes, they would all have left to live. What a relief it was when the hatch door slithered away down into the far off depths of the water out of sight.
John dove out of the hatch pulling a cable towline along with him in hand behind, frantically swimming toward the surface of the raging waters. Next, out went Gina, then went McGill, and then Gorbachaz holding on tight to Sebastian under his arms kicking with all his might toward the surface above, and then next out went Ludwitz. The rest followed with Chenco bringing up the rear, being the last one out of the capsule.
Ahead of going out the blown off hatch, John pushed out two inflatable rubber raft kits, and then pulled the cords to the Co-2 charges on them, to inflate the rafts. Everyone was hoping there would be at least one rubber raft and possibly the two of them bobbing up and down on the surface of the water to greet the crew when they all finally reached the surface.
They found way more than they had expected when they got to the surface of the sea. They were in one hellacious storm, and greeted with twenty and thirty-foot high waves bouncing and churning all around them.
One of the rubber rafts had blown away, and they were damn lucky the one John was holding onto did not fly away as well in the strong wind. Pushing Sebastian up and into the rubber raft first was a real chore for McGill and the others to handle with the immense swells of waves tossing them all around like loose bobbers in a raging river. Next into the raft were the three girls followed by the men. The waves broke over them as they would over a surfer who had just lost his surfer’s riding board at the bottom of a great giant kahoona’s surfing wave.
They were slapped by the wave of water coming down on top them like they had just made a huge belly flopping dive from off of the top of a ten or better foot high or higher diving board every time one of these huge pounding waves would break down over the top of them.
The two men along with Dominique all huddled together in a circle above and around Sebastian, Gina, and Krista. They tried their hardest to protect themselves and their unborn children from the ravage beating everyone was taking in stride of their horrendous situation.
The two girls’ lives carrying the babies along with Sebastian still knocked out cold seemed the most important thing to them at the time. Sebastian lay limp and motionless between the two girls’ laps, and was still breathing. Every time a wave was about to explode over the top of them, the two men and not the pregnant girls would take their battering positions again above the others to give them as much protection from the hammering wave as possible.
Chenco would yell out every time he saw a huge rolling breaking wave was coming getting ready to crest above them.
“Here comes King-Neptune again. He is going to flog the hell out of us again.” The two men along with Dominique would stand tough with their six arms interlaced above the others, and take the punishment of the pounding water time after time to help protect the more weak and needy for protection.
All this being battered to death on earth by the anger of a raging sea and drowning a better way to die, than running out of oxygen and food aboard the space station and slowly suffocating, they all thought not.
Up and down they went with the rolling of the angered sea. Slap after bitter slap, the large waves continued pounding on them hour after hour and late into the evening until the darkness of the frightful night overtook them. They could not see the huge waves coming toward the raft after dark attacking them, but they sure could tell when one was going to crest over the top of them again.
The sounds made from the approaching thrashing wave was similar to that of the king of the jungle, a lion roaring in the distance protecting its freshly taken prey before the wave reached them and came slamming down on them like a huge wet fly swatter of water.
If it hadn’t been for the rope encircling the out ring of the raft, and everyone tied together by it, one if not all would surely have been swept out, washed overboard of the raft by the hard pounding of water that came crashing down on them relentlessly time and time again.
This was the way of Old King Neptune telling those unlucky souls upon his back they were not welcomed on his surf. The ocean was his home, and he did not want to be hospitable to the newcomers; especially the ones just returning back home from outer space.
The intense beatings lasted well into the late darkness of the night when finally the unstable waves of the ocean became friendlier to these newcomers riding upon the waters on her surface.
The two men and especially Dominique were exhausted from standing over Krista, Gina, and Sebastian every time they heard another approaching deadly wave come rolling toward them. There had been no more mammoth-sized waves come toward them for quite some time now, as the exhausted crew slipped off into a shallow restless soggy sleep, keeping one attentive eye and ear open for Chenco to call out for another wave to be coming. The waves were huge but rolling with smoothness as the rubber raft climbed up
one side, and slid down the other side with ease.
As dawn over took the crew of the raft, the ocean became as quiet and smooth as a mirrored lake in the still quiet of a warm summer’s day. There was not the least sign a raging storm anywhere in sight according to the quietness of the waters, but they knew better of it and could see the large circle of intense dark clouds around them, and could sense the rage within them.
The sun was brightly shining on the raft of cosmonauts, shining down through a huge hole in the circular canopy of clouds all around them. The clouds were swirling around them in a counter clockwise direction. The dark clouds looked like a huge doughnut spinning in the sky above them. Chenco knew they had just survived the worst part of a severe hurricane, knowing they could look forward to even more lashing from it when they entered the outer ring of the storm’s madness once again. The only good thing about the other side of the storm if there was a good thing about it was that the returning winds would have had time to cool down and weaken before coming back at them from the north-northwesterly side of the storm if it went over cooler waters. It all depended upon their longitude and latitude position upon this angry sea.
The eye of the storm had to have been at least a hundred or two or more miles across from what they could guess from where they were in its eye. Gina had never seen or heard of such a huge eye in any storm in all the meteorological classes she had to go through and studied before becoming a cosmonautic astronaut. She had studied weather as her major in the Soviet college she had attended, and the size of this storm amazed her with the enormity of its huge eye in which she was now sitting in the middle of and in a stupid rubber raft.
The water was not as calm on the outskirts of the eye as they could see the waters churning in rage. For them it was clam as a mirror with only a little ripple to break its plain. They were all hungry, thirsty, and extremely exhausted from the torrential harsh beating they all endured during the prolonged night. There was not the least sign of a boat, a ship, or anything of any size anywhere out there to be seen, not even an outcropping of land, or a desolate volcano peak sticking up out the horizon above the sea anywhere.
They were definitely all alone out there, wherever there was.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The Capsule
Miraculously the only thing they could see sticking up out of the water was this steel round bottomed belled looking buoy with an orange rubber raft affixed to its outer circumference so to keep it from sinking to the bottom of the sea.
It was the bottom of their abandoned space capsule, and was truly a miracle it had made it through the night and had not sunk in the middle of the storm. They were glad it had not come crashing down on them during the worst of the storm as it would have killed them all. If they could get the capsule to float upright the way it was supposed to float, maybe they could use it for shelter from the blazing hot sun. It might also protect them as well from the other half of the raging storm they knew they would soon have to face again when it came their way.
They sat there in the storms middle watching the huge eye of the storm with its flotilla of clouds swirling around them as a militia naval convoy encircling them within its most inner circumference. Food, water, and a protective canopy for the raft was all locked away in a locker beneath the water inside the space capsule. In their hurried time to escape their sinking space capsule, they left behind these necessary items, not realizing the necessity of them until after reaching the surface. Going back down to retrieve them at that time in their desperate time of departure from the craft was ludicrous. It was a true miracle that any of the crew were still alive after spending such a frightful night and beating out on the open sea in a hurricane in an open rubber raft filling with water most the time. Never mind diving back down into a rough sea to enter a steel coffin bobbing ready to sink to the bottom of the sea at any given moment. It was time to see if any of the survival supplies had weathered the storm locked in their compartments in the upside down capsule.
Squid, both large and small, were floating everywhere the naked eye could see. There were so many of them that they looked like a huge blanket covering the surface of the sea all around them.
The crew welcomed the warmth of the water at the top of the ocean surface. If they had drifted much further toward the north northeast and had the storm hit them there, they could have died from hypothermia from the cold of the water that inundated them most all the night. They would have become too weak to fight for their lives.
Ludwitz volunteered to swim through the littered up water covered with the thick layer of slimy corpses of squid to the capsule‘s entry port, and then tie the tether line to one of the craft’s two metal tie-down hoops so they might pull themselves over to it for some security. He had about five feet left to go when the length of the tether line attached to him ran out of length. “I need five more feet of rope,” he yelled out to the others in the raft.
Chenco and Dominique both instantly slid down into the slimy water behind the raft, and they both began kicking with all their might to push the raft toward the capsule and Ludwitz. In the raft, Krista and Gina began using their hands as paddles, splashing at the water of the sea with all their might to move the raft forward toward the space module.
Ludwitz felt an object of some kind bump up against his legs. It felt like a floating oxygen bottle or one of the protective flight suit helmets they all wore during their flight or something hard like that beneath the water’s surface. After mustering enough rope, he immediately crawled up out the water and onto the bottom of the floating space module without any time to spare. An enormous grayish black colored shark of some kind came careening up out from the far depths of the sea behind him with its rows of ragged teeth showing bright and chomping at the air beside the module. Ludwitz heart went instantly up into his throat as he yelled out to the others still kicking hard. “Sharks!’ Get the hell out of the water,” yelled out Ludwitz in fear to the ones on the raft and ones still in the water. Dominique and Chenco both scurried out of the water as fast they both could move with some help from Krista and Gina. The two girls had taken their paddling hands out of the water as soon as they heard Ludwitz yell out.
The surface of the water around them almost instantly came alive with hundreds of hungry chomping sharks of all sizes swimming all about the surface everywhere their eyes could see. The splashing of the girls’ hands in the raft and the hard kicking of everyone’s feet in the water both behind the raft in the water and Ludwitz kicking his feet while swimming toward the capsule must have attracted the many sharks from the far off depths of the sea below. The hard noise of their hands and feet splashing must have sent a signal to the sharks below that there was food up above them for the taking. They were ready for the feast of flippers and bodies of seals, sea lions, walruses, or whatever it was that was causing all the ruckus on the surface of the water.
Ludwitz pulled as hard he could on the slimy tethered towline tied between him and the rubber raft, twisting it around his hands to grip it. The three girls in the raft screamed out in panic as the multitude of sharks were dragging their large dorsal fins up along the bottom of their rubber raft. The fins were pushing the soft rubber of the raft up against their bare feet and their undersides as they sat on the bottom of it. Shark fin after shark fin rapidly appeared out on the surface of the water. Multitudes of hungry sharks everywhere were devouring the dead squid floating loosely on the water’s surface. An eating frenzy erupted all over the place surrounding the raft. All they could do now was to hope and pray none of the sharks’ fins or teeth would puncture a whole in the bottom of their raft and all would become part of this crazy eating frenzy.
Ludwitz helped to keep a taught line on the tether line so it stayed up and out of the water most the time as he pulled the raft toward the module all by himself. He was exhausted when he finally got the raft pulled up alongside the overturned module. He helped everyone out of the raft and up onto t
he bottom of the space module.
They carefully pulled Sebastian up out of the raft and laid him down placing his head gently into Krista’s lap again for her to watch over him. He was breathing normally but not responding to any one’s voice or the water that had been splashing over him all night long. He must be in some kind of a coma they all thought or pretending to be fast asleep and not wanting to know what was going on around them, but they all knew better.
It seemed like the sharks eating frenzy went on for hours. How could there be so many sharks in one lousy place in the vast sea, everyone wondered. It looked more like a huge family reunion of sharks from around the entire world that someone had invited to join in this picnic feast of squid and fish, and they all had come. The thousands of dead floating squid seemed to be the sharks’ appetizers, and their main choice of meal for all seemed partial to the dead or almost dead squid floating everywhere.
The crew worried while sitting on top the bottom of the module. They hoped these sharks were not going to be fancying one of them on their dessert menu. The scorching rays from the hot day’s sun beat down on them relentlessly. They managed to pull their life raft up out of the water. They used it best they could for shade to shield and protect themselves from being burnt to death by the hot sun. Their bodies began to dehydrate from the lack of fresh water to drink, all hoping there was still precious water and food available down below in the module. At this time they were unable to get to it if there was any with the frenzy of sharks swimming all around them. No one dared to risk their life diving into a food bowl for the sharks to feast on by trying to retrieve anything from the module.
As the day slowly progressed, so did the approaching clouds of the storm. The center of the eye of the storm was moving away from them now, leaving them closer and closer to its most southern side. The quiet mirrored image upon the water’s surface started to ripple more and more as the much larger waves could be seen churning off in the far distance coming closer and closer toward them.