by T I WADE
The others hadn’t yet seen that the blue plasma was also coming out of places on the vertical side of the cliff 75 feet above them. Looking up, VIN realized that the original sealed entrance he found on top of the cliff would also be covered, and would be inside the shield. Even Rover Opportunity, if it had traveled closer, could be inside the shield.
VIN checked the readings on the arm of his suit. There was no change to the vacuum of space inside the shield, and it proved something he already knew; these aliens had died of asphyxiation. Even though the shield hadn’t closed into a completely solid wall yet, he didn’t believe there was enough air inside the old caverns to fill an area of this size. The growing dome was massive. It was nearly 100 feet wide, and it would grow at least 100 feet high before it would contain the original hole twenty-odd feet back from the cliff face. It seemed that the shield just grew until the walls met up and sealed the entire area.
He watched it grow until the shield was completed, high above him. VIN then looked down towards the floor of the ledge. He could see through the wall easily. The dull Martian sky, normally a dark grey or brown, now looked as blue as a beautiful spring day on Earth. He suddenly realized why it was blue; for the first time since leaving earth, he felt as if he was back on Earth.
Others began to exit the cylinders outside the shield. “Can you guys hear me?” VIN asked looking at them on the other side.
“As clear as before,” returned one man looking at VIN through the wall.
“Is that you, VIN?” asked another. “You look like you are standing inside a large soap bubble.”
“Don’t get close, until I’ve checked it out. It might be deadly,” VIN replied. He walked over to where the canister interrupted the wall of the shield. He looked at the canister carefully. It was stuck inside the wall and it looked like the plasma, surrounded, and sealed itself around the canister perfectly.
VIN wanted to touch the canister, but decided against it. He looked around for a small pebble, found one, picked it up in his suit glove and threw it at the canister. Nothing happened. He looked around for something larger, but there was nothing; the men kept the ledge clean.
“One of you guys outside the blue wall, find a tool, something metal and throw it gently at the wall. I suggest you stand at least six feet away in case it bites the hand that threw it. Expect a bolt of electricity or something.”
One man returned a minute later with a nail used to tie down the spacecraft. VIN coached him on what to do.
“Okay, step back about six feet from the wall and gently throw it underhand with both hands. If it comes through the wall, I’ll catch it, and we’ll see what happens.” The man followed VIN’s directions and the nail flew towards the blue wall. It surprised everybody when the nail hit the wall, and just as it would have done if it hit a solid wall, it bounced off landing a couple of feet back.
VIN asked him to throw it again and gingerly the man picked it up—nothing happened to him—and he threw it even harder than the first time. This time the six foot long nail bounced back towards the thrower hard, nearly hitting him before it landed back on the ledge in front of his boots.
“I can’t understand this,” said VIN, totally puzzled. “The canister happily sits in the wall, yet something thrown at it bounces off. Weird. Joe, pick up the nail again and carefully touch the canister. The suit should protect you from any electric shock.”
Carefully the man did as ordered. He touched the canister gently with the nail. Again nothing happened and no burst of blue flame crept up the nail to his hand. VIN then moved closer to the canister, he carefully touched the canister. The readouts on the arm of his suit didn’t change, and he couldn’t feel if the canister was hot, cold or electrified. Then he knew what he had to do.
With everybody watching him, VIN touched the blue wall with his hand as gently as he could. He couldn’t feel anything, but he was surprised to see his finger pierce the wall and stick out the other side, right in front of Joe who was watching him six feet away.
“Joe, pick up the nail again, come and touch my finger with it. My finger is on your side of the wall.” Joe did and VIN could feel the man touch his glove with the point of the steel nail. VIN leaned forward slowly and allowed his hand to exit the shield. He noticed the shield fitted perfectly around the arm of his suit as he took hold of the nail.
Slowly, he pulled his arm back and his hand, still holding onto the nail returned intact. The nail didn’t interact with the wall and inch by inch he brought the whole nail inside the shield.
“Okay, first report, the shield repels objects hitting it with force, but will allow an object to penetrate slowly. I think that it is safe enough for me to try to walk through it, and I can’t think of any other way to try this. Men, if I fall over while coming through, get me into one of the cylinders.”
With his heart pounding, VIN moved close to the wall, and then slowly walked through it as if it wasn’t there. All he could feel was a slight drag on his suit, as if he was walking through a thin wall of water. Once through, he turned and hit the wall with his fist. VIN was again shocked; it felt like his fist hit a rubber wall, or perhaps a car tire, only slightly softer. It gave slightly, but didn’t allow his fist through. It was resilient but solid at the same time.
“Second report, the shield allows slow movement through it, but would stop a stone, or maybe even a bullet or rocket. I bet it is a defense shield, and I’m sure that an atmosphere will not escape through the wall. It is up, it’s safe and I have run out of tests. Ryan do you want me to do anything else?”
“Negative, I think we know why it was placed there,” Ryan replied “I still want to complete our outer chamber, in case it breaks down. Joe, you figure out how much air we need to fill this thing. It’s going to take us months, or years, to fill it with breathable air. Once our own outer chamber is complete, we won’t need this shield, unless it protects us against the wind storms. I think I would like to take this control box and test it around one of our shuttles or something to see if it gives us a defense shield against space junk, or bits of rock while travelling through space.”
“We might have a second shield on the asteroid,” added VIN. “It doesn’t look like these alien dust heaps need their shields anymore, and I’m sure we could use them on America One. There is nothing like a good shield when you need one.”
“I totally agree, Mr. Noble,” and VIN heard Ryan tell Igor to disconnect it and that he wanted it aboard America One.
Three days later, they had opened every door they could find in the caverns, and had tried everything they could think of to open the last door, with no success. Boris couldn’t figure out how the small people got the large earthenware urns into the caverns, and it seemed that secret was going to stay with them.
On the console in front of the hologram, Igor, Ryan and Boris tried everything to get all the dials and switches to operate. The cleaned them, lubricated them, even electrocuted the whole console, but it seemed that the whole console was dead, long dead, or long decayed.
Suzi and Martha Von Zimmer were transported down to check what was in the urns, and the 72 boxes of what VIN thought were the aliens’ personal items were transported up to Dr. Petra Bloem and her team.
After drilling small holes in the urns, water spouted out of two of them. Martha was prepared for this eventuality; she brought containers to collect the liquid which turned out to be just over 1,200 gallons of the clear, clean liquid, which must have been very frozen until the power was turned on. Five of the large urns were empty.
The globe of Earth, with its stand and table, was disconnected from its floor mountings. The power unit and the shield controller were carried carefully down the shaft and readied for a second test outside.
Ryan first wanted to see what this shield could do. He had VIN, Igor and Boris carry the control box and the nuclear battery closer to the edge of the ledge to see what would happen.
While Igor got the unit powered up, the ledge was cleared of all s
pacecraft. A few canisters were strategically placed on the ledge not far from one of the two accommodation cylinders; all of the test objects were in possible range of the blue shield.
“I’m ready, Boss,” Igor reported. The three-foot square control box, atop one of the steel beds from the morgue, began its lighting sequence.
“Are all our tests ready?” Ryan asked looking at the prepared ledge in front of them.
“The two accommodation cylinders are 100 feet away,” VIN responded. “One canister is 70 feet away, one is 40 feet away, and the nearest one is ten feet away. Other than the four of us, all of whom don’t need to be here, and the box of tricks, that’s it. I will stay with Igor. Ryan, you and Boris go back into our inner chamber and out of any danger,” the head of security ordered.
Knowing that their two crewmen weren’t in any real danger from the shield, Ryan and Boris returned to the inner chamber.
Five minutes later, with the whole crew in the chamber looking out, and astronauts in the spacecraft watching from the top of the cliff, Igor fed 10 percent of the battery’s power capabilities into the box.
Ten percent of the power was still a lot. On Earth ten percent could have powered up several big housing estates. Nothing happened, except a few more lights on the box came on.
“I think we need at least 20 percent power before anything happens,” stated Igor over the intercom.
VIN looked around. He didn’t have much to do and Igor wasn’t rushing. Igor was going to increase the power output in 10 percent increments. VIN, who was really just a bystander keeping the Russian company, let his mind wander.
He noticed the weather seemed to be changing. The daylight wasn’t as clear and even though the sun was more or less overhead, it wasn’t as bright as usual. The sun had dipped and wasn’t on as high a trajectory as it had been when they first arrived. Turning his thoughts to the chambers, which would be complete in two weeks, he realized that none of the crew had expressed any interest in staying behind and making this base a permanent outpost, especially since the remains of 72 bodies had been found. Knowing that the bodies, all piles of dust, had been found inside the alien caverns, this base was about as popular as a graveyard, which it essentially was.
“Going up to 30 percent; I believe we will see something happen this time,” stated Igor and VIN came back to his surroundings.
With the increase in power the blue wall began to erupt from directly around the box. VIN observed that the first wall seemed to have been choreographed by a field of connections they hadn’t found in the ground anywhere. Now the box was the only home the bubble had. Igor was sure that a bubble would form, first around him and then spread out. Ryan wanted to see how big the bubble would get.
As the shield enveloped Igor he felt a slight sensation inside his suit. Then he was inside the bubble. The bubble formed a prefect dome on the flat surface of the ledge. It had only 20 feet to go before it reached the rim. Igor increased the power to 40 percent and, like a balloon, the bubble grew rapidly. It had already enveloped the nearest canister and VIN, who felt like he was in the deep end of a large swimming pool.
Both he and Igor watched as, at 50 percent power, the shield reached the end of the smooth area of ledge and continued to seal even rough ground. It had enveloped two canisters and was about 100 feet across and 100 feet high.
“What do you think, Igor, should we increase power or shut it down?” Ryan asked.
“Our mistake was that we should have started in the middle of the ledge. I would like to shut it down and move it before we add more power,” Igor replied.
Ryan agreed and the bubble decreased as the power was reduced. VIN and Igor carried the table with the box, while Ryan and Boris returned to carry the battery, still connected by wires.
For the second time, the power was increased until the bubble was as big as it had been on the first test. By the time 50 percent power was running through the cables the bubble enveloped the three canisters and half of the living cylinders. One of the crew inside a cylinder reported that he saw no blue wall inside the cylinder itself.
At 60 percent, it continued to grow, although not as much, and at 80 percent, the bubble covered the entire ledge, everything on it, and was about to cover the hologram looking through the wall. At 90 percent it did; it was as long as America One. Ryan believed at 100 percent the bubble would envelop the entire mother ship, something he was interested in finding out.
Neither Igor, nor Ryan nor Boris wanted to load 100 percent of the battery’s power through the system just yet. It wasn’t good for the battery, shortening its half-life by a noticeable amount.
Igor reduced back down to seventy percent and left the battery humming away. Slowly and gently, the crew got used to moving in and out of the bubble. VIN threw a canister at the bubble and, when it rebounded, he caught it and gently walked through the blue wall slowly with the same canister on his shoulder.
An hour later, Igor powered the battery down and the bubble disappeared. The test was a success and everyone was impressed by this new piece of technology nobody had down on Earth. Earlier, Jonesy had turned Rover Opportunity around on top of the cliff to face the opposite way so scientists on Earth could not see what Ryan and his crew was playing with.
Chapter 7
Time to leave Mars, and a reminder of a day on Earth.
“Well, Frau Von Zimmer, I will assume that you don’t want to stay on Mars either?” Ryan asked the German several days later. Ryan, Igor, Boris, and VIN were back aboard America One. With the outer chamber nearly complete, and all of the alien’s equipment brought aboard the mother ship, there wasn’t much enthusiasm to stay on the planet anymore.
VIN wanted to get back to the asteroid. Jonesy wanted to test their new shield by moving SB-III away from the mother ship and getting Igor to test it in outer space. Ryan wanted that as well, but now he had a base nearly complete on Mars, it had used most of their supplies of valuable air to make an atmosphere in it, and nobody wanted to make it home while America One continued on its odyssey into the outer solar system.
Several of the biologists had wanted to stay, until, as VIN predicted, news of all the dead bodies spread through the ship.
“Nein, I do not want to stay with old dusty bodies we can’t get any information from,” she replied. “All we have found is the same as we knew before. These bodies died around 10,000 years ago, and all we can tell, even from the three we brought up inside the suits, was that they had two arms and two legs. I’m looking forward to Petra’s report on what was inside those small boxes. Did you know the boxes were encased in a pure gold layer?”
“And you can add one head to each of the bodies,” Jonesy commented, “and these aliens were far more technically advanced than we humans have ever been. That shield is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen.”
“And it seems it will take us quite a bit of time to dismantle the box to see how it works,” added Igor.
“What happens if you dissect the box and then you can’t get it to work again?” Jonesy continued. “I think my partner is right; we should see if the little blue planet has a second one on it first; at least then we have a backup while you guys figure out how it ticks.”
“I believe that our new Mars base will be secure for a long time while we take a ride around the solar system, “Suzi said. “We can always return to it in a few years, and that robot on the cliff top can’t get down there. Their base lasted for 10,000 years; ours will do the same, especially with nobody inside sucking out the valuable oxygen.”
“I bet the base will look exactly the same when we return, say in a decade or two,” Martha added. “Anyway, we scientists all want to go farther afield for more interesting research. Mars is the closest planet to Earth, somewhere to live when we are tired of travel, a retirement home for space scientists, or maybe for our next generations of children. We should go on and orbit the little blue planet on its way to Jupiter. I’m dying to check out Europa, as well as Jupiter’s oth
er moons. I recommend that we collect a final load of water from our Martian watering hole, and then go walkabout.”
Everybody agreed. There wasn’t a real need to leave anybody behind, and since the odyssey had just begun, why leave humans deployed all over the solar system?
Over the next weeks, the outer chamber was completed. Stores, including soil, water, dry food, and several spare tanks of air were left for the next visit, or visitors. The flight crew returned to the watering hole twice and returned with 3,000 gallons of water. Now they had enough for fuel, oxygen and liquid consumption for the flight to Jupiter and even as far as Saturn if needed.
Nearly two months after the small round planet had passed by the red planet, America One left orbit to track their free ride, now 28 million miles ahead of them.
Having fresh supplies of hydrogen fuel, Captain Pete swung the ship out of orbit and allowed the massive pulse thrusters to get her up to a rapid cruising speed. After several hours of pulses, not heard or felt, the mother ship’s ion drives were activated. They were accelerated to equal the planet’s speed ahead of them and, would continue to increase their speed, which would allow them to catch up to their quarry within a month.
America One would reach speeds of 60,000 miles an hour within a week of the ion drives coming on line. More valuable hydrogen fuel would be needed for a week of thruster braking when they were within range of the planet, to slow down to enter into a steady rhythmic orbit around the sixty-mile wide piece of rock named Blue.
At last Jonesy could test the new alien shield around SB-III. Igor and his team of electricians spent a day in SB-III hooking up its outside nuclear battery to the alien box now strapped underneath the belly of the shuttle.
Igor had perfected a system of connecting the wires. He built a connection system where the wires would link to the smooth wall of the box, and then, wirelessly link the controls to the cockpit. It was ready for testing and Jonesy and VIN slowly maneuvered the shuttle out of the mother ship’s array of cylinders and edged away from the larger vessel.