Red Hope

by J J (John) Dreese

  Four miles away at a lush suburban green park, a little boy was being pushed on his bicycle through the morning mist by a very proud father.

  “Okay, you got it. Gotta let you go! I can’t keep up!”

  His voice was loud, but the echo melted into the fog.

  “No, don’t let go of me Daddy!”

  “I already did, it’s all you Cody!”

  The little boy rode his bike very wobbly down the rolling grassy hill and reached the bottom. The bike slowed and he fell over sideways.

  The boy yelled out, “I did it Daddy! I did it!”

  Adam Alston developed an unfixable grin. He picked up Cody’s bike and pushed it back up the hill. When he got to the top, he saw his wife Connie waving her arm from the bench next to the parked minivan. She held the cellphone up high while yelling a message at him through the humid morning air.

  “NASA wants to know where their team leader is!”

  Adam sighed. He took his time getting to the parking lot; one hand on the bike and the other holding Cody’s hand. He waited until Catie rode her tricycle up next to them and then they ambled back toward the car as a group. Adam grabbed the cellphone and put it to his ear. His wife and kids only heard one side of the conversation.

  “Yah, Adam here. Yes, I understand. No, I wouldn’t want that to happen. Don’t worry, you won’t be the laughing stock. I’m on my way.”

  Adam shrugged his shoulders to Connie and admitted, “Guess we gotta go back.”

  They piled into the minivan and rolled out of the parking lot; the sound of crushed gravel was replaced by the surging engine and then absolute quiet. A silver snake slithered across the desolate road followed by a cloud of billowing fog.

  The Alston family headed South onto the main road which led straight to the launch facility. After just a few minutes they reached the main entrance guard shack. A man holding an M-16 rifle leaned over to check Adam’s badge.

  “Welcome back Captain Alston, we’ve been wondering where you went.”

  The gate opened and the vehicle eased through. It followed the winding road that took them to the large limestone-clad main mission prep building. This is where the families had to separate from their astronauts. Adam hugged each member of his family and then whispered something to his wife; she laughed out loud. He leaned down to look into the back row of seats where the kids were sitting.

  “I need you guys to take good care of your Mommy while I’m away, okay? Tell all your friends that your Daddy is on a rocket to Mars. It’ll be so cool.”

  “Okay, Daddy, just remember the Space Ice Cream that you promised us.”

  Adam leaned in and hugged each one again before closing the sliding door. He waved to them through the tinted glass and then walked toward the building. He disappeared through the industrial gray doors.

  In just a few hours, he would no longer be an Earthling.

  Chapter 13

  The Soyuz engines ignited with a loud grinding roar; every car alarm within ten miles screamed. During the initial bump the astronauts looked at each other in disbelief at the ride that lay ahead. They held their breath waiting for the launch tower to release the rattling rocket. Suddenly, it lifted and they were rammed back into their seats. Mission Control announced speeds every ten seconds, but after just one minute the numbers being said were too big to comprehend.

  Subtle at first, the view out the window showed the curvature of Earth growing by the second. The deep black of space and the brilliant blue and white of Earth created intense contrasts.

  Adam was feeling nauseous.

  “Don’t puke! Don’t puke!” he repeated to himself.

  The rattling was just slowing down when Adam turned to look at his crew. Keller gave him a thumbs up. Yeva smiled a stressed grimace. Molly was invisible. She vomited in her helmet and it coated the visor. However, she wasn’t flailing for help so Adam assumed she was okay.

  Aside from the nausea and vomit, the launch of the Soyuz up to the International Space Station went like clockwork. It took the better part of two days for the Soyuz capsule to catch up with the racing Space Station and dock with it. When the door opened, a hand reached into the ship followed by a voice.

  “Welcome to the International Space Station!” yelled an astronaut with a Texas accent.

  During the next four hours, they readied the Little Turtle and double-checked all of the systems. After transferring the last of the supplies from the Storage Wart to the Little Turtle, the crew strapped in for the final leg of this two-stop flight to Mars.

  The commander of the Space Station was the last to check on them. He made sure their belt restraints were all locked down. As he was about to leave the Little Turtle and lock the hatch, he spoke with the crew.

  “Good luck on this mission. Wish I was going with y’all.”

  Adam replied, “You just keep those antennas pointed at Mars so we can maintain communication.”

  “Will do. Godspeed.”

  He floated back through the hatch to the safety of the International Space Station. Then he closed the door. A clunk sound finalized what their future had in store. The countdown started for the release of the Little Turtle and the ignition of the MM10 motors. Instead of the gut-wrenching roar of the Soyuz rockets, the MM10’s started up with a gentle push that never stopped. No real noise to speak of. And that was it.

  Days passed and daily calls to home were helpful with the inevitable cabin fever. Adam especially cherished his family video calls.

  “It’s like being in an elevator that is falling faster than it should, but not quite fast enough for you to start floating.”

  Adam was talking directly to the iPad video conference software. On the other end of this video call was his family who were very excited to get their daily 15 minute call to Dad on the Little Turtle. The astronauts were hurtling through space towards Mars. As of today they were far enough out for there to be a twenty second delay between when Adam spoke and when he would hear a reply.

  Adam’s daughter Catie laughed and asked, “But I thought you floated in space ships?”

  Adam grinned proudly.

  “Normally that’s true, but this space ship is special. The motors never shut off. They just keep pushing, making us go faster every second. It’s just enough to keep us planted against the floor of the ship. It’s like walking on Earth if you barely weighed ten pounds.”

  Adam laughed and continued, “The launch from Earth to the International Space Station went great aside from Molly and me getting motion sick. The launch from the Space Station toward Mars was a snap.”

  Over the next twenty seconds, Adam’s message would travel from their long-range antenna through the inky blackness of space to the antenna on the Space Station. At that point it would then be relayed to Mission Control in Houston. They would hear his message and then reply.

  As the mission went on, the time lag would get longer and longer. Once they were on Mars it would take a full ten minutes for the communications round trip (five minutes each way). Radio waves move very fast, but Mars is very far away.

  “Okay Dad, we’re going to the park after this call. We’ll talk with you tomorrow,” announced Adam’s son Cody.

  Adam looked down and then back at the screen. He said, “Okay guys. I’ll talk with you all tomorrow. Love you.”

  The screen went blank.

  Adam closed his eyes for a few seconds and thought of being home. Then he put on a fake smile, thought about the million dollar bonus and opened his eyes. He put the iPad back in the cabinet and climbed up the ladder to the command capsule at the front of the ship.

  The small amount of fake gravity they were feeling due the MM10 rockets altered the way Little Turtle was designed. The space shuttle had the advantage of its occupants floating all of the time. There were panels, controls and knobs everywhere on the shuttle because the occupants could reach them at any time. If the astronauts were near the floor, they could push off and float to the ceiling.

  Little
Turtle was arranged more like a ship on Earth. There were still controls on the ceiling and walls, but nothing on the floor because they were still walking around the ship. To make sure the crew could reach the ceiling knobs, it was lowered to only six feet above the floor. Little Turtle was a very cramped workspace that could’ve been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

  The only noticeable noise on Little Turtle was the hissing sound that was being transmitted by the MM10 rocket engines through the structure and into the cabin. The Moon and the Earth looked to be about the same size now, but both were behind them. Mars still looked like a red dot far away.

  Adam stuck his head up into the upper module and commanded, “Okay folks, it’s 9:00 a.m. Let’s take care of the morning checklists.” Then he climbed back down grabbing his checklist, pushing buttons, and turning knobs.

  Molly was already checking the oxygen supply and carbon dioxide filters. After that she would check the food supply for any signs of spoilage or damage. Yeva was looking at the chemical supplies that would be used during the exploration phase. It included some acids and other volatile substances that needed human tending.

  Keller was still sitting in the command chair in the upper room.

  After the checklists were done, they hung them back up on their Velcro hooks and started preparing lunch. Although they had some fake gravity, they still ate typical space food as a cost savings. It was the normal stuff. Mashed potatoes, pureed steak, etc. all squeezed out of tubes or bags. Adam popped up the table and sat down next to it. Molly and Yeva joined him. As they ate, Molly said, “Adam, tell us one of your stories where you almost died.”

  “Hmmm, a challenge,” he said as he took a bite of the steak puree instinctively chewing even though that wasn’t necessary.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time that I got hit in the cuzzif?”

  The two women looked at each other laughing.

  “No, you did not,” said Yeva.

  Adam started, “Well there was this time. Wait, hey Keller! Are you coming down here to eat or what?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute. Just finishing up,” said Keller as he sat in his chair shaking.

  Adam returned to his story. “Okay, so when my friends and I were in high school we were hired by a farmer to remove some large rocks from a newly ploughed section of his field. So we got some shovels and pry bars and went to work.”

  He looked at them to see their anticipation and took another drink of steak.

  “So we removed all the rocks except for a huge one,” he said as he lifted up his arms to show how big it was.

  “I put my shovel under the edge of that rock and pried and pried. It wasn’t budging. So I put the shovel all the way under it and the handle was sticking out, you know, like at a 45 degree angle? The plan was to jump up on the shovel handle. Well, I jumped and I did get onto it, except once it flexed down to the ground, my feet slid off and it came up and smacked me right in the testicles. Can I say testicles?”

  Molly was laughing so hard that liquid steak sprayed out of her nose. Adam grabbed Molly’s shoulder and asked laughingly, “You’re not going to puke, are you?”

  She laughed even harder.

  “So anyway, it hurt so bad, I was sure I broke my pelvis and there was probably blood involved. So I yanked down my shorts and asked if my cuzzif was bleeding.”

  Adam was laughing himself now.

  “So my friends are all on the ground laughing and one says, ‘No, but my eyes are bleeding from laughing so hard’.”

  Yeva was laughing quietly and asked, “So what is a cuzzif?”

  “It’s called that ‘cuzzif’ it wasn’t there, my guts would fall out the bottom.”

  Yeva started to laugh out loud now.

  Some rustling noises came in from above. Keller climbed down the stairs and without saying anything he rushed into the latrine and shut the door. They heard the rattling of a pill bottle and then the sound of the vacuum-powered sink.

  After a few minutes, the door opened and a relaxed Keller emerged.

  “Come join us for lunch,” commanded Adam.

  “Oh, I’m not hungry just yet,” answered Keller.

  Adam looked at Keller and saw he was covered in sweat.

  “Are you feeling okay? What’s going on?” asked a concerned Adam.

  Keller didn’t say a word and walked toward the ladder to climb upstairs. He got to the second rung when a prescription bottle fell out of his pocket. It slowly flew across the room heading toward the ground. When it hit, the lid popped off and pills sprayed everywhere.

  Keller’s eyes were wide open. The ladies didn’t know what to think. Adam lurched for the bottle, but Keller pushed off the wall with his feet and reached it first. Adam tried to grab it from his hand. A struggle ensued as each tried to grab the bottle from each other. Finally, Keller punched Adam in the stomach and wrenched the bottle away and ran over to the ladder. He stood still.

  Keller was still breathing heavy. He warned ominously, “We have to collect all of those pills.”

  Adam could barely breathe as he screamed, “What is wrong with you! What is going on? You’ve been squirrelly ever since we left Earth!”

  Keller closed his eyes. With them still squeezed shut, he said, “Let’s just say that I have extreme claustrophobia, okay? This medicine helps when I need it. Being in this ship though… I need it constantly. I tried to go without it, but that didn’t work. If we find them all, then I may have just enough for the trip there and the trip home. Without them, well, it’ll be bad for everybody.”

  Adam was still filled with anger and catching his breath. “You gather them up yourself. Why didn’t you tell us about this before we even started the mission?” he demanded.

  Molly felt the urge to talk it over with him, but stopped short.

  Keller walked back across the room and meticulously picked up each pill and dropped it in the bottle. Molly joined him. She noticed that several had fallen through the cracks in the floor panels and would not be retrievable. She said nothing. When they had found all of the visible pills that could be picked up, Keller tightened the lid and stood up to talk.

  “Look, if I would’ve told you guys about this before, you would’ve booted me off this mission.”

  Adam calmed down and said, “You’re right. But you’re here now. You’ve got enough to last?”

  Keller paused; he noticed that the bottle was less full.

  “Possibly. I’ll go upstairs and get to my checklist.”

  Keller climbed up the ladder and started his morning checklist in seclusion, albeit a few hours late.

  In just one hour, the crew would have a classified video conference with the head of NASA who would reveal Photo D and what it meant to both the mission and mankind.

  Chapter 14

  “Can you hear me?” said the shaking image of Chris Tankovitch on an iPad. It was sitting on a table in the Little Turtle as it raced toward Mars. The astronauts were gathered around in front of the screen.

  “Yah, we can hear you fine. The picture’s kind of blurry right now though,” responded Adam. He would have to wait another ninety seconds to get a reply.

  “Okay, hang on, we’re making some adjustments,” said Chris to the iPad. He walked out of frame for a while and then back in frame holding a Coke. He started tinkering with something near his camera lens and suddenly he was in sharp focus.

  Chris looked into the camera and said, “Okay, this time delay is going to make this tricky, so I’m going to talk for two minutes and then you can talk for two minutes.”

  Chris reached down to a table and pulled a photograph out of an envelope.

  “Guys, to the left of your upper escape hatch door is a locked pink cabinet. I’m going to unlock it right now remotely.”

  The astronauts could see Chris typing a keycode onto a console on his desk. They heard an audible clunk coming from the command room above them. Keller scurried up the ladder and came back down with a big brown envelope. He opened it an
d pulled out the stack of photos.

  Chris continued with his two minute talk, “You’ve seen most of these already, but you haven’t seen Photo D. That is the most important image and it will guide this entire mission. This is the photo I showed the president last year that caused this entire Mars mission to become a reality. What you’re looking at is a fossilized hand holding what we believe to be a granite slab the size of a credit card. On that slab are some symbols. A vertical line followed by a circle and then another vertical line.”

  Keller laughed under his breath and said, “So their ‘LOL’ took two million years to get to us? Okay, I guess my cellphone plan isn’t the worst after all.”

  Chris didn’t hear Keller due to the time delay so he continued right along. “At first, we believed these to be a number sequence, but note that there is a third vertical line inside the circle. And if you look closer, there is a small horizontal mark to that vertical line inside the zero. It looks like a tall cross. I’ll give you a minute to soak these in.”

  The astronauts stared intently at the photo.

  “It’s Calvary,” whispered Adam.

  Keller looked confused and asked, “You mean like with the bugles and the horses?”

  “No, no, no; you’re thinking of the cavalry. I’m talking about Calvary. Didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday school?”

  They stared blankly at Adam.

  Adam didn’t want to trot out his conservative upbringing, but he decided now was a good time to explain.

  “Okay, so there’s a hill outside of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. It’s called Calvary. There were two other guys crucified next to him. One on his left and one on his right. I don’t know what the circle means on this thing, but this symbol, with the three vertical lines, is very similar to what’s used to represent Calvary nowadays. Normally it’s just three crosses though. You see it along the side of freeways a lot, ya know? Three crosses next to each other? These carvings in the granite, though, are missing the two horizontal bars on the side crosses. It doesn’t make sense. And anyways, how would Martians from millions of years ago know about our religious symbols?”