by L. S. Wood
Ivan felt as if he had two personalities living within his own being, and they were verbally abusing one another first silently, then suddenly screaming at one another in the far off depths of his mind driving him crazy. This by far was the hardest mind over matter of mind control he had ever experienced in his lifetime, as he continued on silently counting down to himself. He never wanted to experience or ever having to experience a situation like this never again, if he was ever to live through this traumatic experience at hand. He was getting closer to the zero. Zero-hundred-hours when he could finally release the parachutes. His mind kept spinning with frantic emotion as he held firm his conviction on waiting till he hit the exact time to execute his hand, holding firm the lever to open the small tethered tied chute to his main chutes behind them. He wanted to vomit from the pain of his mind wanting to do everything but wait, along with fighting the feeling of the g-force exerted upon them, making him want to vomit as well as he counted. One thousand three-hundred and eight. One thousand three- hundred and nine. One thousand three-hundred and ten. One thousand three- hundred and eleven. It was now release time, zero hundred hours. Finally it came time for him to execute his own command. He yanked hard on the lever when his counting ended at the precise number count. He felt like passing out because it made him so sick anticipating the worst, but the faith in his training made him have to wait.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Many Eyes Focused on the Heavens
Many attentive eyes were scanning the bright blue sky above the command center as a mist of fog started coming in off the changing temperature air flow over the Atlantic Ocean’s surface. The different temperatures of the sea and land were fighting with one another, and the change was going to bring in an unsuspected cloudbank cover over the landing site at a most unfortunate time, if the space module did not hurry up and land very soon. The crew of the first space module to land were there with one couple standing as the others sat on the grass alongside the ground crew and Colonel Anderson. They all had very high hopes in greeting their fellow comrades back home from space. The ground crew had doubts about this landing being a good one, due to the many dark clouds swiftly coming in off the ocean and covering up the landing site were disheartening. If the Russian space module did not land soon, no one was going to see them above or have any idea where they might land. If by chance they were to end up out in the frothy waves of the sea, they had better be prepared to fight a hard battle with the hurricane coming in across the Atlantic toward them from the Virgin Islands, causing the surf along the shoreline to begin to rage a little. Everyone on the ground was getting rather panicky for the last of the crew from above to appear.
The cosmonauts aboard the space capsule were very happy folks, feeling the main parachutes attached to the capsule lift them up from their rapid descent toward Earth to almost a stop, even though it gave them all a very funny sick feeling inside with the sudden yank of the chutes slowing them down. Things had gone way too smooth for this mission with the Omega One landing safely four days prior and then the first capsule, too. Something amiss had to go wrong with everything going way to well for them.
Either by the end of the day there would be a lot of rejoicing taking place on back on Earth, or a lot of grieving by the ones who had made it back to Earth safely. Whatever the outcome of the day would bring, it would be the end of an era of space travel until the restoration of electrical power to the world would come about, if ever possible. Everything about space travel had become a way of the past as of this day. It was too dangerous for anyone to attempt another try at conquering space travel the way things were on Earth now, and if it was not for pure luck alone or for the grace of God which it seemed to be. Whatever the reasoning, the good people from aboard the International Space Station would not be alive without the determined help of Commander Colonel Nelson Anderson.
Commander Ivan released the heat shield covering over the window portal. The brilliant sunlight almost blinded him as he looked directly up into the bright of the morning sun with it shining directly into his eyes. He closed his eyes for a mere second as the spacecraft turned on the gentle air currents aloft. When he reopened them, he could see the massive horizon of the earth getting bigger and broader and further away as they approached the surface of the earth. This was truly a day to rejoice.
One of Commander Ivan’s crewmembers already on the ground spotted his comrade’s space capsule first, as he shouted out in jubilant joy. “There! There! Up there!” He pointed toward the capsule floating down from above. Everyone’s eyes had been looking toward the northwest sky, and the capsule was coming in at them from direct west. Two very large white chutes and a huge red chute with a large white Soviet emblem affixed to its side shown bright slowly drifting down toward them on the ground below.
If everyone onboard had come through the attack of the massive neutron field unscathed, it would be a day for rejoicing. If all or even one of their comrades had died from the neutron invasion on the capsule, it would not be so joyful. No one knew for sure what these masses of neutrons could really do to the unsuspecting public around the world as of yet.
They had all survived the neutron attack at reentry, but Commander Ivan didn’t know if all had survived the reentry as of yet, and they were all so cramped up inside this reconfigured module. No one could really turn around or see how everyone had managed until they were able to get out from their cramped sitting stations.
No one on the ground would have to chase this capsule anywhere. The commander had subtracted the correct amount of seconds along with time change for the past two days, and then subtracted several more seconds to the countdown for the releasing of the main landing parachutes, because the first capsule had overshot its intended landing target by several seconds.
He would have rather been a couple of miles or more off course inland than a few miles off course out to sea with another massive storm approaching from the east. The space capsule came down right on the mark; the results of Commanders Ivan’s careful calculations before deploring the chutes. The capsule was coming in real close to the ground crews waiting position. The ground crew had to move all their vehicles away from the descending space module.
It was an amazing landing. The space module landed directly across the runway in the soft grassy and sandy section of the compound. It bounced a couple of times. The first bounce looking to be rather hard that must have really jarred the occupants. The sudden stop was not their typical soft landing in the water where the water would have acted like a softening cushion during their touching down.
As soon as the capsule stopped, Ivan blew off the hatched door covering from the craft. Seeing the ground crew and their friends from the other module were rushing toward their space vehicle to see if everyone inside was either dead or alive. They all hoping for the latter of their two thoughts. It was as funny a reunion as anyone on Earth had ever seen before. Commander Ivan from the space station ignored Colonel Anderson’s extended right hand in greeting him. He literally almost on purpose fell down to the ground to the good old terra firma beneath him. “Good old Mother Earth, he said,” with a smile and kissed the grassy ground with a long slow emotional kiss, an embrace only a child would give his own mother. He tried jumping back up to his feet, but instead staggered from his kneeling position on the ground fighting against his own heavy weight against his feeble weak muscles. He fought the hard fight with Mother Earth’s gravity, and then fell into Colonel Anderson’s extended arms weeping with a great relief of emotion. He then staggered toward the space capsule that brought him and his comrades back home, as he tried to help the others out from within the craft without success. He was too frail and pathetically weak from spending too long a time in outer space without gravity to help keep him in shape enough to help his fellow comrades out of the space module. The ground crew from the compound helped everyone out of the passageway of the very cramped space module to their freedom and safety, while everyone, espe
cially their fellow comrades, cheered for them as they exited out their space module.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
Home at Last
The reunion of the men and woman of soviet lineage from the space station was the best of the three return missions to Earth from space. All the astronauts finally rescued from aboard the International Space Station and its harsh environment of living in outer space that was not meant for man. The same went for the far off depths down in the seas of the world not meant for man to live or survive in without artificial help from some mechanical means of life support.
Home at last on good old solid terra firma to kneel down on and kiss for good luck. It was better than any hot-fudge sundae or a tall cold drink on the hottest muggiest summer’s day during the month of August, July or any other hot day of the year for that matter. This would mark the end to a long time standing for man caught up in a saga of times in outer space that might not ever repeat itself. It probably would never happen again in the lifetimes’ of those who were fortunate enough to have escaped the wrath of time in space. Who would remember this one, that had been saved from a fate of cruel happenings their own leaders of their beloved country had caused, and were going to leave them stranded aloft to fend for themselves and eventually die from lack of air and starvation.
The reward to Commander Ivan Khrushchev for saving the lives of the several Americans was life itself, extended back to him and his fellow Soviet crewmembers. Let’s not forget the two Germans who were definitely held prisoner in space by an awful obstructive want of selfishness by others. They, too, could have just as easily have played a role in sealing off the life-giving portal of the space station to the space shuttle Twitchel and its crew. It definitely did seem fair, a life for a life, but was bringing them all back to this new earth the right way of a fair reward for what they did for the Americans. Time back on Earth would prove to be cruel to most of the cosmonauts who returned after being saved. Were they really saved having returned to the mess the earth was in now due to some over egotistical greedy individuals?
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
The Celebration
NASA gave a celebration of life party at the NASA space compound the week after the last space module landed. The party was to give honor and thanks to the Twitchel crew, the Omega One crew, their families, and the crewmembers aboard the International Space Station.
Chenco came along with his wife, Gina, who was due to give birth to another of their children at any minute from the first space capsule, the two crews aboard the last two capsules, and the two new brave officers who replaced Major Yeager who was lost to the neutron mass. They came to celebrate Lieutenant Charles’ bravery and Captain Ann who decided not to participate in the last mission to navigate the Omega One into space for its final mission. Ann and her husband, Ben, arrived on Friday, six days after the landing of the last space capsule. The party included most the rest of the families from the shuttle’s crew, including the wife of Major Yeager. This would be a way to allowing the families and crewmembers from the Twitchel and the Omega One and their families to give their own personal loving thanks to the men and women from the space laboratory for extending their hospitality to their loved ones at a dire time of need.
A couple of very lucky news media personnel from the highly respected newspapers in the Washington D. C. area were allowed to join in and attend this special party given by invitation only. Feeling privileged to interview the ones who told their stories about the horror felt above, wondered what in the hell was going on in the world below. How could anyone around the earth hold these innocent caring people from the Soviet Union responsible for wreaking havoc caused by the few greedy tyrants who executed themselves during the first reentry of the deadly neutron missiles. If any were still alive, they would surely be in hiding, hiding mostly from their own people who would want them tried and punished by the tribunal justice system of the world. These few selfish people who caused world havoc in the countries around the globe, and by ignorantly destroying their own people.
It was a time for peace to prevail around the globe, and for everyone to turn to one another to make this sphere of ours a better place to live. Even without the aid of electrical power to fuel all the once conveniences of modern day technologies, lost forever, but maybe not forever if everyone would work together for a better world to live upon.
Colonel Anderson talked little about the creature in the sky at the party, and in the very few days leading up to the party. He let the medical team at the hospital help the space station crew regain their strength, and health. There would be plenty of time at the briefing the following week before most the crew of the space lab would be ready to venture back home to face the reality of destruction of human life, and turmoil left in the wake of the big invasion of neutrons in their country. Colonel Nelson Anderson remained kind during the briefing of the space station crew. He held back all the bad sad news he had obtained about their families, which he had destroyed after receiving the horrifying fax the day before he ventured back into space to help his fellow man out. He had lost many distant and close family members himself, and the ones he was debriefing had lost many more immediate close members of their own families than he had. If it was he who had lost what some of these space station crew had lost, he would have surely wanted to be forgotten and left behind inside the space station to die a sad sullen death like a hermit. Commander Anderson went on to explain the nature of the creature in the sky in great depth to all. He explained how it was changing its approach in its pattern of attacks on the many different species of animals, insects, and foul of the air around the earth.
In the beginning, it attacked anything in the atmosphere all of the time and now only attacked when there is moisture in the air during an approaching storm during or when the clouds are leaving the area. It has become truly unpredictable. With that all said in the norm, but there is no norm with this creature, and the norm as everyone had remembered it, is no more.
These few words spoken by Colonel Anderson confused the hell out of every one in the room retuning from space for the moment, but would fall into perception after the fact of how life use to be on Earth before this unforgiving creature came to the earth. It sits like a rattlesnake, he explained, all coiled up and ready to strike out, but without any warning. It does not have a tiny little rattler attached to it to forewarn any approaching victim. It sits in the air like a Great White Shark coming up from the far-off depths of the ocean’s floor at forty-plus miles an hour, and attacks any unsuspecting creature floating leisurely on the surface of the sea. But in this case any creature around the world.
The space station crew tried to digest the quantity of dreadful news fed to them all at once about this new deadly creature thing living in the atmosphere. The main concept with the debriefing information was partially if not all unbelievable. The idea of it that it could not be me or my family stuck in many of the minds of the returning space crew. More than half the crew was in for some very bad news about their own families and friends when they returned home. They were the fortunate or less fortunate ones returning back home to Russia where devastation prevailed over most of the countryside and cities alike.
What use to be is no more, what should be is not, and that that is unthinkably true was true. Where their loved ones use to prevail are now an empty nest. The way of life they grew up to know from childhood had mostly disappeared, and a new way of life had started all over again as if everyone was living like the Neanderthal man from the past.
Upon their return, they would be born again into a life they did not know. Down through a birth canal from their spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere, and taking their first breathes of real air when they exited their spacecraft into a different world to begin life all over again.
Disbelief engulfed everyone’s minds, thinking all should wake up soon from this horrific dream. Never the less, reality would soon set in on them when they all retu
rned back to the bearing wastelands of reality where they all once called home where skeletal frames of buildings unscathed without any inhabitants with only remembrances from the past to cling to.
The new cities under construction beneath the earth’s crust seemed like a story from some comic strip of yesteryear, but it was now the way of life for only the rich and famous. The earth was now lit up at night using gas, oil, or paraffin candles to strip away the bitter darkness. The stars and the full moon were the only natural light at night except on cloudy stormy nights. Then there was the casting out of the storm of green yellowy streaks of light with some faint sounds of thunder.
Insignificant traces of electrical lightning in stormy clouds was seldom seen, witnessed by chance alone dancing among the storm clouds if one was lucky enough to be looking in the right direction during the storm. Most the Soviet cosmonauts thought that the debriefing by Commander Anderson and his staff was nothing but a bunch of bullshit, and some built-up American scheme of propaganda. Commander Ivan Khrushchev knew Colonel Anderson would not say these things if they were not so. They mostly thought that nothing like this was possible to their families, to their planet, and certainly not to themselves. How could it possibly rain torrentially and have no lightning or thunder associated with it. Why had this creature attacked at all times when it first invaded the earth’s atmosphere, and now lays dormant waiting, laying ready to strike out only at the beginning, during, or at the very end of a storm. How had it suddenly reactivated itself to strike again anytime it wanted to during a bright sunny day? It just didn’t make any sense to them at all, especially to the ones who had studied science in college.