Red Hope

by J J (John) Dreese

  They walked past the toppled door and into the pyramid. The room was heavily illuminated by sunlight. Adam quickly found the anti-gravity cube floating over near a wall. He picked it up and was still amazed at how dense it felt. With nowhere on his suit to store it, he walked back outside and placed it in the body bag with Keller. Next he tied a bungee cord to the bag and attached it to his pressure suit. With the low gravity on Mars, it wouldn’t be very difficult to pull it back to the Big Turtle.

  “Let’s head home,” said Adam over the headset to Yeva.

  Adam didn’t complain about having to drag the load several miles. Once again nobody spoke. As they approached the base, they noticed that Molly had decided to join them. She was next to the gravesite, kneeling down to look into the freshly dug hole.

  Adam knew that Molly had grown very close to Keller during the training in California; they were unofficially a couple that neither he nor Yeva told NASA about. Keller’s death was very hard on her.

  In between these somber thoughts, Adam remembered that he and Yeva had all of the remaining oxygen tanks with them. Molly had none.

  Chapter 23

  Molly had done something simple. She put on her pressure suit without bothering to include an oxygen tank. She exited through the airlock and walked over to the gravesite. Then she kneeled down in front of the empty hole and thought about her friend Keller as she slowly opened the air valve on her suit letting any remaining air leak out. She didn’t fall over. She just sat in that position. By the time Adam and Yeva had found her, she was frozen solid in a position of eternal mourning.

  Yeva started sobbing uncontrollably. Her helmet was fogging up. She ran over to Molly’s lifeless body wanting to help but realized none of her actions could help anything. Adam let go of the body bag and ran over to Yeva.

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone,” cried Yeva.

  “Look Yeva, we’re all under tremendous stress. You couldn’t have known.”

  She swung around in impatient anger.

  “But I did know!” yelled Yeva.

  “What do you mean?” Adam asked confusingly.

  Yeva closed her eyes and asked, “Do you remember back during the training in California when you thought Keller and Molly were getting a little too close and it might jeopardize the mission?”

  “Yah, we both remember that,” admitted Adam.

  “Well, you were right on all counts. You should’ve said something to them! During the initial launch up to the Space Station, do you remember her vomiting in her helmet?”

  “Yah, she got motion sickness. I did too. It’s common.”

  Yeva gained her composure back and stared blankly at Adam. She delicately shook her head back and forth.

  “No, she told me it was morning sickness.”

  Adam collapsed in body and soul. The shovel was the only thing keeping him out of the red dirt.

  Yeva looked down at him.

  “I take it you didn’t know?” asked Yeva plainly.

  “Of course not. No. I had no idea.”

  Nobody spoke for an eternity. Adam broke the silence with an offer for Yeva.

  “You go inside and I’ll dig another grave. Right next to Keller.”

  Yeva nodded her head and then said, “You know what, I’ll stay here with you for a while.”

  Adam took the shovel and started the arduous task of digging another hole in the hard sand and loose bedrock. He couldn’t help but thinking that he was actually digging graves for three people. Adam considered joining them.

  Each shovel of dirt weighed more and more. It took longer than he wanted, but he didn’t care. He put Molly gently down in the new hole and slowly covered it over in Martian sand and gravel. Then he carefully put Keller in his hole and buried him too. The dry red dust swirled around as he shoveled dirt on top of the bodies.

  Adam found the American and Russian flags they had planted early on and created a cross out of them. Then he stuck it in the ground between the graves. He said a quick prayer and asked for forgiveness.

  Yeva didn’t say a word. She walked up the dented ramp and paused. She tilted her head to try to figure out what was wrong with the airlock. She could see straight through it.

  “Hey Adam?”

  He paused to lean on the shovel and looked at her.

  “Yes Yeva?”

  “Both ends of the airlock are wide open. I don’t think Molly bothered to close them when she came outside.”

  Adam swung his head around quickly.

  “Oh no! The air must be all gone by now!”

  Yeva ran through the airlock quickly followed by Adam. He grabbed both doors and slammed them shut. The inside of Big Turtle was at a near vacuum and the temperature had dropped to nearly -100 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Adam, returning to panic mode stated the obvious, “We can’t take our helmets off and neither of us has much air!”

  Yeva said, “Calm down, Adam. First things first. We already sealed the door. Now go over to the life support panel and crank up the oxygen generation system if it still works.”

  Adam sprinted over to the panel, but slipped and fell smashing his helmet on the dinner table. The water supplies had frozen and exploded leaving an ice sheet on the floor. Adam heard a hissing sound coming from a growing crack in his facemask.

  “Oh God no!” he yelled as he stood back up and speed-walked over to the life support panel. Adam grabbed the oxygen system knob and cranked it up to its maximum. That would make the room breathable in a few minutes. Adam tried to focus his eyes at the crack only three inches from his face. His gloved hand came up against the crack to help stop the leak.

  That was enough to help avoid disaster as the ship was finally pressurizing with both nitrogen and oxygen.

  Adam looked down the hallway connecting them to Little Turtle and noticed the door was shut.

  “It looks like we had a little bit of good luck for a change of pace. Look over there, the door to the Little Turtle is shut. Our return supplies are probably still undamaged by the extreme temperatures. Maybe Molly was telling us to go home.”

  When the Big Turtle was almost done pressurizing, Adam wandered toward the return ship and investigated. He quickly opened the door and jumped in before slamming the door behind him. The water was still liquid and he breathed a sigh of relief. He cranked up the heaters on the entire complex to prevent any more disasters.

  Yeva took an inventory of their food supplies. The food was fine, but half of their water tanks had exploded from the cold.

  Yeva stood up after reviewing the water situation and said, “Looks like our departure deadline has been moved up quite a bit.”

  After a few minutes, they took off their helmets.

  Yeva admitted, “It’s still pretty cold, but we are so lucky that our oxygen generators weren’t damaged. Good God that was close. I hate to think what else is broken that we don’t know about yet.”

  Then she noticed that the communication station light was blinking again. Yeva pushed the Play button.

  “Guys, this is Chris Tankovitch again. Hello? Look, we need you to talk to us. I realize things are crazy up there with Keller gone, but we’ve got a real public relations nightmare happening down here. One of our heroes is dead and the rest of you guys are AWOL. You need to contact us. Adam, I need you to contact us in private, okay? We have some quick questions to ask you.”

  Adam could imagine what their questions would be about and talking to Mission Control was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

  The Sun set and grayness draped across the landscape. The red sky had evolved into the violet and dark tones of the evening. The two astronauts decided they would sleep through the quickly oncoming night and then send Mission Control the terrible news about Molly in the morning. Adam would get one more night of sleep while still a hero to his family. There would be plenty of time to become a villain.

  They started the Pandora streaming music service and decided on something quiet and peaceful. Calming Mozart
melodies began pouring from the speakers after the ten minute wait for data to start streaming from Earth.

  Adam climbed into bed and heard a crinkle sound coming from under his pillow. He reached under it and found a piece of paper with a note signed by Molly that said, “I watched your helmet video.”

  Chapter 24

  Life onboard the International Space Station slowed down once the Mars astronauts were gone. The media attention had left the Space Station just as soon as the astronauts and their Little Turtle launched toward the Red Planet.

  Frankly, there wasn’t much left for the Mars support crew to do on the Space Station. In between playing poker with magnetic cards on a metal table, they tended to the occasional maintenance on the Storage Wart. It still hung off of the ISS like some terrible growth. Every morning they had to make sure the large communication antennas were functioning properly. Without those, the crew on Mars would have a hard time communicating with Mission Control.

  News of Keller’s death made it there and a somber mood settled over the crew. Mission Control told them to continue doing their daily system checkups. In just one more week a fresh crew of astronauts would arrive to relieve the current batch.

  The two Storage Wart maintenance positions were manned by Larry and James, two astronauts from Boston and Mississippi respectively. The Russian crewmembers on the Space Station had an ongoing contest regarding which American was harder to understand. Mississippi often won.

  The Storage Wart garnered very little attention from Mission Control so the daily routine consisted of going over endless checklists and turning off most of the power-hungry computers except for the communications relay to Mars.

  Just after midnight, an alarm turned on. James opened his groggy eyes and hustled over to the status display readout. In red letters, it stated: RELAY #23 - OUTER STORAGE BOX-OVERVOLTAGE. The alarm was a series of loud beeps that were meant to be annoying. It worked because it woke up Larry too. He looked at James and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “You know that special auxiliary compartment on the outside of the Storage Wart? It looks like a relay in there may have shorted out. Unfortunately, we don’t have a camera view in that box. Um, we might have to get suited up.”

  They stared at each other wondering who would do the spacewalk; like two brothers staring at each other to determine who had to clean up the dog poop in the yard.

  Larry had more experience with spacewalks so he suited up and disappeared down into the utility module where the airlock was. James heard a loud clunk which meant Larry had sealed himself into the airlock compartment.

  “Okay, I’m in the airlock and it’s evacuated. I’ll be at the special auxiliary compartment in a minute,” said Larry as he wandered outside the womblike protection of the Space Station.

  James moved over to the porthole to get a better look at his crewmate outside. Larry clambered his way from the airlock exit over to the Storage Wart. He looked like an ant crawling on a big tree branch. James saw Larry’s silhouette on the outside of the Space Station. As the sun peaked over the horizon of the Earth, Larry lit up like noon in Texas. This sunrise surprise happens every 90 minutes on the ISS.

  Larry floated out to the far end of the Storage Wart where the large rectangular box was located; the box specially requested by the president himself. Larry was now out of view of James. The compartment was still closed, but a little bit of smoke was wafting out. Larry was excited because nobody knew what type of equipment was installed in this compartment. He attached his safety tether to a metal anchor loop and then twisted the big toggle-turn fasteners that kept the doors closed on the compartment.

  The doors hinged open and flexed back and forth as thin metal doors do. Larry’s heart pounded as the blinding sunlight illuminated the eight thermonuclear B61 bombs loaded into the compartment. They were mounted on some type of ejection racks. It was the same kind Larry had seen when he worked in the Air Force as a crew member on a bomber airplane. These bombs were modified from what he remembered; each one had a rocket motor attached to it along with a guidance system. The smoke that he saw came from a small white control box. It had cables running to all eight of the ejectors.

  “Hey, do you see the problem? Is it a blown fuse?” James asked over the headset.

  “I see the problem all right,” Larry answered in the calmest tone he could find.

  “What do you mean? What do you see?”

  “I think somebody in the Pentagon thought the Storage Wart would make a good permanent spaceborne launch platform for nukes. There's enough destructive firepower here to start a new hell.”

  James was confused. He pushed the radio button and asked, “What in the world are you talking about?”

  Larry said, “This auxiliary compartment on the Storage Wart is filled with bombs. B61’s I think. The big boom kind. It looks like the ejector controller is sparking. Some kind of short circuit for sure. Maybe the wires got chaffed on the bumpy ride up here? They built these modules too quickly.”

  “Sparking? Bombs? Um, let me contact Mission Control.”

  Larry smirked and said, “I don’t think there is a checklist for this problem.”

  His heart rate skyrocketed. He saw the smoke coming from the corner of the white ejector control box. Larry carefully grabbed onto one of the bomb bodies for leverage and reached up into the tight compartment trying to feel with his thick-gloved fingers. He managed to move a large spring loaded retainer clip from the cover of the white box.

  The control box exploded in a shower of sparks. All of the bomb ejectors fired off sending a sharp mechanical jolt through the entire Space Station. Eight B61 thermonuclear bombs leaped out of the compartment with their arming panels lighting up and coming to life. The violent ejection ripped the glove off of Larry’s suit and the decompression happened so fast that he didn’t have time to scream out in pain. His radio crackled for a few seconds as James asked him what was happening. There was no response.

  James had his face planted to the observation window trying to see what was happening. He saw Larry’s body floating at the end of the tether. Just past his crewmate’s body was a cluster of bombs sinking down toward Earth silently and slowly. He was screaming at the other astronauts to come help, but they couldn’t get James to calm down enough to tell them what had happened.

  The bombs floated down for a while until their rocket engines lit and they took off in large curved trajectories toward targets in Russia. Chaos was happening behind James as he stared helplessly out the portal window mouthing the words, “No, no, no!”

  Large flashes appeared on the ground in Russia, each one growing its own mushroom cloud. James screamed over the radio to Mission Control, "Tell the Russians not to retaliate! It was an accident!" Unfortunately, his voice was so loud that it squelched out any useful communication.

  Suddenly James went silent. He saw a dozen retaliatory missiles launch from rural locations in Siberia and head over the North Pole towards America. Each astronaut on the Space Station had his face planted in one of the available portholes with a view down to Earth. Minutes passed. Plumes appeared on the blue and white planet below them.

  A solid buzz alarm turned on. The space station was losing pressure. The jolt caused by the ejectors going off had caused a leak between the Storage Wart and the rest of the station. The Wart was now killing its host. It was losing pressure quickly and electrical problems were plaguing their rescue attempts. The crew couldn’t seal off the other compartments fast enough.

  The captain realized that the station was doomed. He got on the intercom and gave the signal, “Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.”

  The astronauts made their way to the emergency escape vehicle. They put on their pressure suits as fast as they could and belted in. The door closed and they started the release sequence.

  With a clunk, the module separated. They floated quietly down toward Earth where visible mushroom clouds pockmarked the surface like big deadly flowers. As they looked through
the porthole window back at the Space Station, they saw the Storage Wart shaking and then ripping from the International Space Station. It was as if the Space Station had flung off an irritating parasite.

  Chapter 25

  The streaming Pandora music service stopped playing over the speakers on Big Turtle. That was the first sign that something was wrong. Alarms started blaring, one by one, ending in a crescendo of ear-splitting chaos.

  Adam ran around clearing them all, but the worry shown on his face became more pronounced with each one. They were slowly losing contact with Mission Control back home. After engaging the last backup communications switch, he heard nothing but pure silence. The kind that doesn’t end well. The video screens went blank. The laptops were disconnected from the servers in Houston.

  “We’re completely cut off,” Adam complained out loud.

  The racket woke Yeva up and she came stumbling in.

  “What is going on?” she asked while rubbing her eyes.

  “I don’t know, we’ve lost all communication with Mission Control. We’ve got power, just no signal. No video. No data. Nothing”

  These two humans were all alone on a desolate planet and they didn’t know why.

  “Have you tried the deep-space emergency frequencies?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Yes, I’ve tried them all. Nothing has come back so far. We’re cut off from Earth,” said Adam.

  He looked up at Yeva with a worried look on his face.

  “We’ll just have to wait, I guess.”

  Adam jogged over to the window and craned his neck upward to see the long-range antenna tower sticking up out of the top of the Little Turtle. It was their main communications antenna. During the long trip between the two planets, it was their only means of communication and had to always point toward the Earth. If he looked up now and saw that it had fallen over, then that was something he could potentially fix. His heart sank when he saw that it looked perfectly fine.