by T I WADE
“I think that is the best idea,” Ryan replied. “A rung every 12 inches, starting from the beginning of the shaft, and a cord ladder up to the first rung, should be enough to initially get up there.”
The work would take more time and Ryan radioed up to the mother ship that they needed metal rungs one foot apart and enough for ten feet of vertical tunnel. They would be ready in a day, and the spider was then programed to burn the necessary holes through the metal.
The spider would have to fill the rest of the ten feet of shaft with rubble to stand on, enabling it to stand at least halfway up the first eight feet of the shaft. It would also take a day to burn the first eight holes for the first four ladder rungs to be hammered into the rock.
Two days later, nine rungs arrived with the next load of 200 glass panels for the outer space chamber.
VIN began hammering the first rungs into the tunnel. It wasn’t too difficult except that wearing his spacesuit made the work harder, and he couldn’t take big swings with the mallet. In the first three hours, he managed to get half way up, hammering the first rungs into the perfectly burned holes, 12 inches apart. Ryan was taking no chances, and when anyone entered the tunnel he took readings of the air around him.
With the first rungs in place, the problem of getting higher was solved. VIN climbed up the new rungs and hammered in the next rung into the holes made by the spider. In the three foot, six inch wide shaft, there wasn’t much room to work, and with the first rungs holding his body weight, there was just enough room to move up and down.
It took six hours of hard work before VIN managed to hammer home the last rung an inch below the horizontal tunnel leading out into the blackness in either direction above his head.
His helmet light revealed the metal did not reflect light, and the flooring was the same soft consistency they found on the smaller planet. He was done for the day, and was happy to descend. Ryan wanted to go with VIN the next day when they entered the base or whatever it was.
The excitement of the next day was spreading through the crew like fire. Even a hundred miles up in America One, the entire crew was excited, wondering what would be found. So did Ryan; he didn’t sleep well that night. His dreams were of little green men attacking him, and VIN beating them off.
The production of glass panels was at full speed in America One. The workforce producing the panels still had 1,200 panels to make when they brought the second smelter online. Previously it had heated up the Nano-Silicone rods, but now that work was complete and it took the crew a week to transform the smelter to increase the number of glass panels they could manufacture in a day. They only had one month of good weather left and the men on the surface were installing the panels faster than they could manufacture them.
VIN was first to climb up the newly hammered rungs. They were hammered eight inches into the rock with the last four inches protruding. The space was cramped, even for him, but luckily, there were no overweight crew and nobody was any bigger or heavier than he, with his half metal body. Carrying several long-life lights, he heaved himself over the edge from the last rung, and into the horizontal corridor.
“Remember, somebody must bring up the metal cover for the vertical hole so nobody falls down it,” he said into his helmet intercom.
“Boris has it,” somebody replied. “He will push it up and get it to you once the boss is up there.”
Once Ryan was up in the corridor, Boris’ helmet appeared in the light filling the tunnel. VIN lifted up the almost three-foot wide by six-foot long metal floor as Boris propelled it up from below. It wasn’t heavy. Its purpose was twofold: to cover the shaft so nobody could fall down it and, to provide a walkway to the other side.
Boris was helped out of the shaft and he and VIN maneuvered the metal cover over the hole, and Boris walked over it to show that it worked.
They would get out by pushing the floor further into the opposite corridor which opened the shaft.
“Eerie in here. Which way do you want to go first?” asked Ryan.
“I went this way first in the other corridor, I might as well check this one out first,” VIN said.
Dropping a light every ten feet, they headed down the corridor. The floor felt the same to VIN, a slightly soft feeling under his space boots. The corridor made a right-hand turn 20 feet from the shaft and, leaving the third of five lights at the corner, he could see that the tunnel led into the same perfectly clean cavern he had seen before; it contained the exact same stairs and walkway and there wasn’t a door to be seen.
“Exactly the same as the cavern on the blue planet,” VIN reported, looking at Ryan.
“Fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!” Ryan replied in awe. He stood there and his helmet turned left and right. They were standing in the middle of a large, nearly 16-foot high cavern, and it looked totally sealed.
“There must be doors leading off from this place,” stated Boris.
“What would we do if it was our last day?” Ryan asked, thinking of what he would do.
“Maybe close all the doors and die in private,” VIN replied.
“Maybe they were never in danger, and just closed up shop and headed back to their planet,” Boris suggested.
“Well said,” replied Ryan. “Two good thoughts. Maybe it was their last day, maybe they just left, their mission over. But that doesn’t give us a way to open any doors, there must be a door somewhere, and I don’t want the spiders to burn holes in the walls. There must be another way.”
“I think submarines have automated hatch lock downs when there is a threat of water,” suggested Boris. “Maybe with a normal atmosphere in here, something might happen. Plus we could get our suits off and bang the walls with metal objects to hear something.” Ryan liked that idea, but they needed to see the other side of the base, across the tunnel first.
It was identical to the first side in size and shape with the exact same walkway circumscribing the smooth metal wall.
“I bet whoever they were, they sprayed this metal material onto the walls. Our Nano-Silicone will certainly not be as strong, but it would do the same job nevertheless,” stated Ryan looking at the walls carefully.
“If the chemists can figure out what it is made of, maybe we could melt areas to see if anything is behind it,” suggested Boris.
“What about a massive jolt of electricity, say from one of the plutonium batteries?” VIN asked. “Maybe a shock would make something pop open, even just a crack, to see where a door could be.”
“Electrifying the whole place would work if the metal on the walls conducted electricity,” added Boris. “If it doesn’t, nothing would happen.”
“I think Mr. Noble has a good idea there, and it won’t cost us any material to give one of these caverns some shock treatment. We could try that when we have a breathable atmosphere in here, and then we can tap the walls for sound. What do you think it will take before we can breathe freely in here, Boris?” Ryan asked.
“I believe it will take about ten air tanks, all we have to spare right now. I have asked the crew in America One to begin to manufacture again, but it will take at least a month to replace what we use in here. I’m sure that air has purged through into here from our safety chamber; we have had to constantly refill the air pressure. There is nitrogen in here already. We will add too much nitrogen into the air with our air tanks, so I recommend using only pure oxygen to start with. A touch of argon will go down well, and we have more pure oxygen in storage than breathable air right now.”
“Do it,” ordered Ryan. “How much oxygen do we have here on the surface without waiting for resupply from orbit?”
“Five tanks of pure oxygen,” replied Boris.
“We could get a decent breathable atmosphere out of those five tanks. Boris, ask the guys to bring in the tanks. We can start right away and they can carry the open tanks with them supplying the corridors as they come up. The temperature in here shows 23 degrees Fahrenheit on my suit’s readout. What do you show?” Both men’s gauges had
the same reading. “We have two spare heaters in the safety chamber, let’s put one in each upper cavern and warm this place up when we have air in here. Like on Earth the ground around us, and especially that metal covering the walls, floor and roof, should keep the heat inside.”
The entire crew of sixteen got to work. Some grabbed oxygen tanks between them, and others held the cord ladder so their teammates could maneuver the spewing tanks up towards the caverns. Ryan, Boris and VIN stayed in the first cavern they had visited and waited for the men to move up through the shaft. Ryan ordered up five additional normal air tanks; they still needed to add air pressure to actually breathe.
Within two hours, the atmosphere was vastly improved compared to what it had been when they first entered. On Boris’ suit it showed the nitrogen at maximum and oxygen at 70 percent of safe usage. The atmospheric pressure in the cavern was now 900 millibars, still too dangerous for them to discard their helmets.
All the tanks were left to bleed out as everybody, looked around and then, one by one, descended down the shaft and into the tunnels to the safety chamber.
With everybody out, the crew returned to the two housing units outside to recharge their space suits. It would be 12 hours before they could enter again.
Ryan ordered rest, food and relaxation for the next 12 hours. Jonesy launched his craft off the ledge when the men exited the safety chamber with the empty tanks. He and Allen Saunders loaded them aboard and returned to the mother ship to get them refilled. Ryan knew that supplies were becoming stretched, but one didn’t have the opportunity to find new forms of life in the solar system every day.
Ryan, VIN and Boris couldn’t wait for the rest period to end. The time dragged and they discussed how to find doors or any opening; they had to be in the old caverns somewhere! The spacecraft wouldn’t be back for two days, and the crew on the surface only had three more spare cylinders of air. The rest of the pure oxygen was for emergency use only.
The suits were finally recharged, and half the team went back to working on the glass panels, while the others prepared to enter the tunnel again.
Outside the safety chamber, the spare nuclear battery was taken out of Astermine Two’s cargo hold. One of the crew made cables that could directly be attached to the battery. Much like thick engine jumper cables, they had clamps on the end to enable the battery’s massive power to connect with the walls. Ryan was going to connect them to the metal railing first. Because everything in the chamber was metallic in nature, he hoped the surge of electricity would flow throughout the room. To make sure that they themselves would not be electrocuted, they would stand on the soft, rubber-like black floor, Boris didn’t think the soft floor would conduct electricity. But, as an added precaution, the rubber, non-slip floor mats in the craft’s cockpit were hauled out to stand on.
Inside the cavern, the temperature was warmer, approaching comfortable, at 33 degrees Fahrenheit; very toasty for Mars. The pressure was just over 1,000 millibars. The oxygen tanks were empty, and VIN brought along one of the emergency bottles of oxygen from Asterspace Three, just in case.
This bottle had the same mouthpiece a scuba bottle; he could remove his helmet and take breaths from the mouthpiece if necessary.
Boris told him that at this pressure, he would be gasping for air. While two of the crew hauled up one final bottle of air to the cavern, VIN got ready to have Ryan remove his helmet.
“If I’m okay, I’ll help you off with yours, Boss. Boris, remember the old diving signal?” and VIN showed them the round “O” with his thumb and forefinger; the diver’s way to show others underwater that he was okay. Once their helmets were off they had no way to communicate through the intercom to those who still wore them.
Unscrewing VIN’s helmet took several minutes, and it was slowly pulled away from his head. The connections inside were parted and VIN stood there with the emergency bottle ready. He exhaled, and then tried to inhale. Everybody watched him. They could see that he struggled to take in air. He really had to make an effort to inhale but he did it. To Ryan, who was a competent scuba diver, VIN looked like he was sucking at a virtually empty scuba tank that did not have enough pressure to give him the air his lungs needed. But VIN showed them the “O” sign and pointed to the large tank releasing air and motioned for someone to bring it to him. The pressure in the tank was propelling perfect breathable air from its spout and he pushed his face into the soft jet of air; he drank from the jet slaking his thirst for the right pressure and mix his lungs were being starved of. He didn’t want to breathe pure oxygen just yet.
Ryan gave him the thumbs up, telling him that he thought his move was great; then he asked Boris to begin unfastening his helmet. The large 100-pound air tank would take an hour or two to release all of its contents, and the rich air would flow out into the other cavern and probably down into the other cavern and tunnels. The second to last bottle was ordered to be released in the other chamber and would help distribute air fit to breathe.
After gulping in from the jet of air, VIN looked better. Nobody could hear what he said, until Ryan had his helmet removed. Like VIN he took a large gulp of air before being detached from the flow inside his helmet.
He slowly breathed out, and tried to breathe in again. It was hard and he literally had to pull the air into his lungs. He too put his head down to the jet and gulped in several lungsful.
The smell in the chamber got his attention next. Mixed with the air he was breathing in from the jet, was the stink of an old musty room. Both men kept taking turns at the fountain of life.
It was weird to look around without looking through the helmet window.
“Can we talk in here?” Ryan asked VIN, seeing if they could speak. Ryan’s voice sounded foreign and high pitched. The added helium in the room together with the difference in the pressure made Ryan sound like a squeaky toy.
“Like children breathing helium, but we can breathe and talk. I’m going to let a stronger burst eject out of the tank for a minute. It should make it just a little easier to breathe,” replied VIN, not hearing the voice that was his own.
For a full minute he let the tank blast out its contents at a high rate. Water droplets began dripping out of the spout with the release of the pressure. Things were beginning to feel almost normal, as though they were in a cavern on Earth, except that the gravity was much lower, it really hard to breathe, and it smelled very stale. Ryan was distressed by the horrible musty smell and decided that it would be better to refit the helmets after they hit the walls with the metal nails, to see if they could hear a difference in sound.
With Boris and a fourth man carrying the tank they moved towards the closest wall and peered at the metal. They had touched and played with the metal in the chemistry lab in America One, and it was no different in the chamber—an extremely smooth, dull, unwelcoming wall covering, which made them feel that they were in a steel chamber.
VIN hit the wall with his ear next to it. He heard a faint thud, and he hit it again harder. The wall sounded solid.
“Ryan take off my one glove, maybe I can feel something if I run my hand down the walls. VIN winced at the icy coldness he felt, even though the temperature in the cavern was rising, albeit very slowly.
He slid his hand across the metal at about four feet above the floor. He had already surmised that the alien beings were shorter than he was. The first pass along the wall underneath the walkway was soft and slow. On his second pass along the same area, he added some pressure and still felt nothing.
“Find anything? It is getting a little easier to breathe in here. We will have to get an air purifier from outside to sort out the carbon dioxide and lousy smell tomorrow,” Ryan said still squeaking.
“Nothing,” VIN responded. “I think an electric jolt is needed.” For this they needed to refit their helmets. The battery did protect against radiation, but it still emitted dangerous levels over time, and a sizeable charge could disseminate larger amounts of radiation.
It took time to
secure their helmets and VIN’s glove. When they were breathing perfect air again, two men wrestled the battery up the shaft and into the cavern. Even in the lower gravity, the 500-pound battery weighed nearly 200 pounds on Mars; plus, it was hard work to get it up the shaft rungs.
Everybody was evacuated from the cavern except Ryan, VIN and Boris. Boris now held a shovel at the ready and Ryan a six-foot metal nail used to ground the spacecraft in high winds. VIN held the two cords. Like one would jump start a motor vehicle, and he touched the black cord to the stair railing. Nothing happened. Then he touched the railing with the red cable and he could suddenly see the railing pulsate, blue movements of light coming off the metal. For several seconds the three men stood on rubber mats, with no one else near the cavern walls, while he allowed the juice to run along the railing and, hopefully, into the metal. Still nothing happened and he detached the smoldering cables.
“Where do you think one would put a door?” VIN asked Boris and Ryan.
“Close to the stair entrance?” Ryan suggested.
“The exact middle of the cavern underneath the walkway?” suggested Boris. “You have only 10 percent power running through the cables.”
“Well I think both answers are good, so let’s start right here,” replied VIN putting the black cable, and then the red cable directly onto the metal railing where the stairs started. Again nothing happened, except that the metal wall seemed to glow lighter. There was certainly a lot of electricity being pushed into it; maybe enough for two dozen households down on Earth. Boris then increased power to 20 percent.
VIN followed Boris’ suggestion, and located the middle of the chamber. Four feet from the floor he touched both cables onto the wall directly in front of him. Again, nothing happened. Then Boris increased the power to 30 percent. This time something did happen.
Chapter 4
What is that?
VIN jumped! He was looking directly at a spot on the wall that moved; a small round part of the metal covering the wall, flipped out from the wall. Then Boris turned down the power and the round cover just disappeared into a crevice behind the wall covering somewhere. He was staring at the exact area where the part disappeared, but there was no visible join or indication that this piece was even separate from the rest of the metal wall.