by T I WADE
“It looks like we now know where this bus, DX2017, is heading,” suggested Ryan.
“The second one is Mars, but the other three we are going to have to do some research on; I’ll get the crew on the mother ship to begin photographic comparisons with known planets,” Boris said. “I think we made a mistake dismantling the single globe on Mars, and we better not touch these.”
“Any guesses?” asked Ryan.
“Since Earth and Mars are in order, first and second, I would say that the next globe must be one of Jupiter’s moons; Europa or Ganymede would be my best,” Boris responded.
“If the red dot shows where they lived on Earth, wouldn’t the other red dots indicate the exact locations of their bases on the other globes?” VIN asked.
“I would think so,” replied Ryan. “If that is the case, we have places now to aim for, instead of blindly heading out into the solar system, and this bus should connect us up with the next location.”
VIN touched the globe representing Earth. It seemed that the globes weren’t interactive, and that made him wonder why they were here in this room in the first place.
“I believe that they could be homing devices, there must be a reason that they are here,” added Ryan breaking into VIN’s train of thought. All four men walked towards the second globe; the dull, red dot was placed exactly on the side of the small crater where they found the first base.
“This red dot,” VIN said to the others “is only a quarter of the size of the one on Earth. The dots on other globes are all different sizes; the last one is bigger than the rest, and the same size as the dot on Earth.
“I see that,” responded Igor. “It could mean base size, population, or something else. I would guess either base size or number of people, because the dots on the third and fourth globes are extremely small, half the size of the dull dot on Mars and the dot on the fifth globe is considerably bigger.”
VIN looked up and was quite surprised to see that the hologram in the wall hadn’t appeared, as it had done on Mars, but Jonesy did get their attention over the intercom.
“Guys, someone activated the bubble; if you didn’t do it by turning on the power, I must have when I came into land; it’s rising out of those metal wires you found in the surface, partner.” That made VIN look upwards, as Jonesy was above them on the surface. His mouth fell open as he saw that the hologram wasn’t on the wall, but this time covered the roof of the room. The whole roof exposed the bubble beginning to show itself above their heads, as though they were near the surface, not 30 feet below it.
He could see the same bright blue bubble growing into a dome above the room. VIN’s brain went back to his discovery of the wires. He had measured them radiating out 20 feet from the center spot, and the center spot wasn’t where the door was, it was directly above them. “Why would they make a shield in the middle of nowhere, and not over their entrance hole?” VIN asked nobody in particular. “Igor, check out the power room. You found one box in the one on Mars; I bet there are two of them in this power room.”
VIN was right, Igor told them over the intercom a few seconds later that there were two boxes, on top of each other, like a stereo system, and one was blinking, one wasn’t.
“What are you thinking, Mr. Noble?” Ryan asked. “A landing zone maybe?”
“Could be,” replied VIN.
“There is a third box,” added Igor. It looks the same as the other two; it’s open and I can see interesting systems. It looks like a large green motherboard, but it is purple, I think we can dissect this third one and see how these things operate.”
“Yes!” stated VIN excitedly. “I believe that the one above us could be a permanent shield, and to conserve air, the shaft we found was a docking port, maybe where their spaceship landed and stores received down the shaft. Maybe the second box works on a separate frequency, or only when a space ship is on the ground. Jonesy, lift off and park over the shaft we entered. I think I know what is going to happen.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jonesy lifted off the surface, fifty feet from the shaft. The 100-foot long mining ship wasn’t far from the shaft they had entered. The four below could see the craft’s movements through the blue dome walls, as if they were watching from the surface through a window. Jonesy slowly rose twenty feet and hovered over the hole.
“Your dome is now fully extended,” Jonesy informed them. “It’s about thirty feet high and forty feet across. I’m over the entrance, right over the docking port, and nothing is happening.”
“Land on the surface,” VIN ordered. Still nothing happened. He sat there with the thrusters running while VIN thought. “Okay, sorry, false alarm, bad idea. But it seems I was on the right path. Jonesy, head back to where you were. I think it’s safer, just in case,” VIN added.
They watched from below; the mining craft looked like a whale in a large aquarium as it lifted off. Jonesy was facing towards the blue dome and he flew low over the dome to clear the area.
Suddenly, a vibration emanating from the floor was felt throughout the metal-walled room; at the same time the bright walls grew dull, as if power was being reduced.
“Something happening in here,” Igor observed. “We have reduced power, or power starvation or something.”
“I didn’t touch the dome,” replied Jonesy, sounding surprised, “but I was only a couple of feet above the top of the dome.”
“Jonesy, swing back,” stated VIN “and gently return to land at the same spot, but this time I want you to either touch the shield, or allow just the tip of something to glide gently through it. I think I know what is happening. The system is automated. The lights are glowing brighter in here again, and the vibrations have gone back to what they were before. I think that when their craft approached, somehow they automated the second shield by touching, or getting close to the permanent one. The air, or atmosphere wouldn’t escape in the first dome, when something glided through the shield. It is always sealed.”
Jonesy understood what VIN meant and returned slowly over the surface, allowing a few feet of his landing gear to touch and penetrate the glowing shield. The vibrations increased in the command center, the lights dimmed, and something outside started happening.
“I’m passed the point of no escape,” Jonesy said above the men, who were still watching him. They crew below ground couldn’t see any changes. “What’s happening?” Ryan asked, worried.
“No much,” replied Jonesy calmly. “A second blue wall is growing out of the ground all around me. It is much bigger than the first dome, about sixty feet across, not forty, and I’m in the middle of it. The new shield won’t cover my entire craft by the look of it, but I’m continuing with the landing on top of the shaft and docking port.”
Only then could the men see a second wall, denser and bluer than the first shield, grow into their vision. They watched in wonder as the shield grew rapidly. Jonesy, carefully and extremely slowly, landed on the surface as the wall grew, encompassing the craft.
“Jonesy, lift off and turn your tail into the first shield,” stated Boris. “I bet both shields are big enough to cover the entire craft.”
“Roger that,” replied Jonesy. He again lifted the mining craft a foot or so off the surface and gently brought the tail around to penetrate the first shield wall. Then he touched down. “You are right Boris, I can’t see the rear of the craft, but the shield has just crept along the outer walls of the cockpit. The shield is now about three feet in front of me. Can you see the tail area?”
“We can,” replied Ryan. “You are partly in the first shield and mostly in the second one. I believe the dome is still growing and the entire ship is covered. I want to go up and see what is happening up there.”
‘I’ll come with you,” VIN said.
Slowly they headed out of the command center while Boris took photos of the globes, and Igor continued to look at the broken box in the power room. Even though there was no atmosphere inside the cavern and shaft, both men still had to go follow the prope
r sequences to exit docking port one at a time, to reach the surface.
Standing up, VIN helped the older man out of the outer hatch; he saw that the second shield was completely around them, and that Jonesy, landing to the side of the port, had left just enough room to let them out. The mining craft’s underbelly was only a couple of feet above the surface.
The tail of the mining craft was covered, it’s top a few feet under the dome wall; the first shield reconfigured itself to include the height of the tail in the other shield. Surprisingly, the rest of the craft was in the second dome, and what fascinated both astronauts, was that the two domes had not merged into one; they were still two different domes.
“They must work like radio stations, on different frequencies,” suggested VIN. Ryan nodded his helmet in return looking at the blue scene. Both men also noticed that due with two batteries working in-system, the shields were much brighter than the one around the ship in space, and that even the planet’s surface bounced the light off its grey-blue exterior, adding to the brightness.
They approached the front of the ship, until they could wave at Jonesy from outside his starboard cockpit window. Jonesy told them they looked fine and their suits weren’t smoldering or anything.
VIN then headed towards the rear of the craft, Ryan right behind him. “If there was an atmosphere in the first shield, it wouldn’t have escaped when supply craft landed,” he stated.
“It might also have allowed vegetation to grow, or enabled people to work outside of the cavern while the craft landed and unloaded,” added Ryan.
“Or they just had smaller ships?” suggested VIN.
“Possibly, but even if their ship was the same size, or bigger, with more electrical power, the shield would grow to compensate,” added Jonesy from the cockpit. “Are you going to walk through the wall?”
VIN replied that both he and Ryan were about to do so; and, with VIN holding Ryan’s glove, the two slowly walked through both shield walls at the same time.
VIN commented he could feel a vibration as he penetrated the walls, as if something was vibrating in his electrical system. Ryan said that he felt the same as he went through and then they were out of Jonesy’s bubble and above the command center.
“Weird feeling,” added Ryan. “It made my skin tingle inside my suit. You guys checked for radioactivity, so it can’t be dangerous, just the electricity humming through the suit’s skin.”
“We see you standing right above us,” reported Boris from the command center. “It is certainly not a camera taking the hologram, you guys look exactly like you are standing right on top of an invisible roof, a foot above the ceiling of this room, but you are actually 30 feet above my head!”
“There is zero radioactivity inside this shield,” VIN informed them, “but that electrical buzz we felt was several times stronger than passing through the shield around America One.”
Ryan and VIN walked around the first dome.
“Hey! I can see two blue bubbles on the surface,” said Captain Pete from America One. “We just came over the horizon. I see two minute blue blobs down there and, through the binoculars, I can see you bouncing around; two stick figure shapes, but I can see you.”
“I bet we could see you if we step outside,” replied VIN, and guided Ryan towards the wall of the shield again. Slowly and gently they walked through the shield, still holding hands, to see the solid shield increase and decrease as they went through. “There, a minute blue blob,” VIN said, pointing to a spot low on the horizon amidst the mostly white stars of the Milky Way.
Ryan could also see the blue star, about the size of a pinhead, slowly making its way across the planet’s black sky. It was the first time since Earth that anybody had seen the spaceship passing over. It had been impossible from the surface of Mars and, without the blue shield surrounding it, it would also have been impossible to detect it at the distance it was from it on the blue planet.
After watching the bright blue speck of dust crawl across the sky for a few minutes, they reentered the first shield, and then into the second bubble to join the two crewmembers in the cavern. They had an hour remaining for search and discovery.
“We packed the third box,” Igor told Ryan when he and VIN returned.
“I believe that these globes are some sort of directional device,” added Boris still looking carefully at the globes. “I checked the console in the command center. I’m wary of touching anything in the event it locks us in or out, or opens something we don’t want to find. The wording is identical. We have two years on DX2017 before we leave to visit planet number three which believe is Callisto, Ganymede or Europa, judging by their distances from Jupiter and the colors on these globes, which are exact for Earth and Mars. Callisto is the farthest out.
“That gives us two years to study these surroundings,” added Igor. “We might as well fill this cavern with air and pressure. The walls will warm the interior and, with air inside, it will become habitable in a day or two. I know VIN is dying to get in the door he has yet to open in both caverns, that one.” The Russian pointed to a door in the wall between the two open ones. VIN nodded his head.
“Let’s return to the mother ship. We’ll take this box for the piranha scientists to feast on up there, and we can discuss what and how much we can release in here,” replied Ryan. “We can leave the two batteries powered up and see the shields from above; at 20 percent, we certainly aren’t draining them. I think we should close off these two caverns from the shield if we can arrive and depart from inside the shields. Next week, we’ll check the rear cavern for bodies. If we don’t find any, then I’m sure a skeleton team could begin to live down here. If we want to fill one shield with air as well, it will take us at least a month’s production to have enough for one cavern and outside. I’m sure Suzi will be chomping at the bit to try to grow something down here on the surface once we have an atmosphere in the shield.”
With no rush to go anywhere, and using fuel only when necessary, the crew orbited aboard for the next seven days. It took that long to complete the newly modernized cylinder to enable the skeleton crew to stay on the surface. With the possibility of creating an atmosphere inside the cavern and the main shield, it might not be used for long. Many of the additions were supplies for Suzi: topsoil, water, plants and seeds. The cylinder was turning into a greenhouse/storeroom for the biologists.
Their primary focus was to increase production for the 75 air tanks required to fill the main shield as well as both caverns. America One had produced 55 tanks since leaving Mars.
Just as Ryan described, the crew aboard, with Igor in command, attacked the broken black box and its contents with excitement. Not discounting the level of brilliance and experience encompassed by the scientists, Igor expected it would take the crew months, maybe even a year or more, to figure out the electronics of the box, and how they worked.
“We believe that it will take 15 days to produce the needed air at maximum production 24/7,” stated Martha Von Zimmer the next day at the morning meeting in the cafeteria. “My main question is, do we have two years before we depart for the next port of call? When we continue on to Jupiter, are we going to take everything from DX2017, or leave supplies for a continuation of our journey to Saturn, or our return journey to Earth? I will probably be in my eighties by the time we reach Earth, and we are going to use up all our water supplies producing this atmosphere.”
“A few years older than me, Ms. Von Zimmer?” joked Jonesy enjoying cake and coffee.
“About a decade, Herr Jones,” remarked the German without smiling.
“That reminds me,” interrupted Ryan, “I believe we received some sort of transmission a few hours ago, a test transmission from Earth, while most of us were asleep. Captain Pete?”
“Yes, on my watch,” smiled Captain Pete. “Very exciting. When we left, the president said that NASA would be working on getting new technology into space and, if I remember, he said that it would take them about two years. It seems that
they are about four months early, if this was the first communications test to outer space.”
“And?” questioned Jonesy.
“No, Mr. Jones, they didn’t tell me that your Gulfstream was missing you. The complete message was only a few seconds long and was more like the emergency response signal we used to get on radio and television as in, ‘this is a test, it is only a test…’ Do you remember that sound?” Most of the Americans nodded. “It sounded exactly the same. At this distance, the message will take about 29 minutes to reach us at the speed of light. The squawking was very faint and it came through on the last radio frequency we used to say goodbye. I believe that we will hear something from Earth soon, and Ryan has asked me not to respond until we get a real message.”
“We received the signal, or message through the shield?” VIN asked.
“It seems so,” replied the captain. “I’m sure it would have been stronger without the shield, but we received it alright. We can always decrease the shield to allow the antennas above us in the cylinder to stick out of the shield if necessary.”
“Getting back to today’s agenda,” continued Ryan, “to answer your question, Frau Von Zimmer, we will be leaving supplies on DX2017, and I understand we will need water supplies very soon after reaching the next moon. I believe Ganymede will be our next port of call. Ganymede is the third planet in line in the alien base. We have decided to send down supplies for Suzi to try to grow produce on the surface. Suzi, please elaborate.”
“Ja, my team and I believe that the light from the blue shield will enhance the growth of vegetables inside it. Although we are still testing our theories, it seems that somehow this shield collects light from the sun, increases the real strength of its rays, and uses the collected rays to increase the light inside. In other words, the light spectrum is collected and magnified, and will aid us in growing plants with, let us say for now, unnatural light.”