by T I WADE
The crew needed twelve hours to pause, and recharge their suits and on the next visit Suzi would join them.
Jonesy, Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt emptied additional tanks they had transported to the surface and, Martha, with her small amount of whatever-it-was she had scooped up, headed straight back up to America One to analyze her treasure. Suzi would take her place in the ground crew while Maggie looked after the kids in the cylinder.
“Ryan, we have a message for you from Earth,” stated Captain Pete an hour after Asterspace Three left to return to orbit.
“I’m sure not as exciting as what we feel down here,” replied Ryan. “Broadcast it down here, or over the entire intercom if you think it proper.”
“Nothing really top secret, or painful for anybody to hear,” replied Captain Pete.
“Opening the ship’s intercom for broadcast now. ‘Captain Pete to crew, Captain Pete on the Bridge to all crew. For your Information. We have a message from the President of the Unites States. I will read it now. Temperature in Nevada today, 121 degrees and climbing. Europe, and USA in sporadic space battles with Chinese. Unmanned space cubes on both sides taking casualties daily. Ground war here on Earth imminent. The satellite relaying this message to you is armed, and, hopefully, can defend itself. ISS destroyed by Chinese Attack Cube yesterday. Now they are going after our new GPS satellites. One, one-month old satellite destroyed this morning. US Navy, Pacific Fleet, heading over to Asia. War about to start between North and South Korea for the second time. This time the South will not stop until North is destroyed. Iran wants to go to war, now ally of China. Japan gearing up to retaliate and defend itself. Europe having bad cube attack, and three new satellites destroyed by Chinese. Russia is about to launch cubes, and has warned China with certain death. China now about to cause world catastrophe, I order you to re—’” The intercom went silent and Captain Pete came back on. “That is the end of the message everyone. It seems that it was interrupted, and we might not hear much more for a while. Out.”
Chapter 13
A new home
“Sounded like the president wants you to return to Earth,” VIN said to his boss.
“Seems so,” he responded sitting comfortably in the cylinder, and out of his suit. “It is not easy to just turn around and head home. It is a fair distance and we could lose the chance of ever returning in our lifetimes.”
“I’m sure the good old USA can defend itself,” added Jonesy playing with Saturn.
“I believe we should go on,” was Suzi’s opinion.
“Maybe a vote by the crew would be a more democratic way?” added Maggie. “If Earth is in danger, we might need to help now, or there might be nothing to go back to.”
“China is a big ball of hot air,” injected Fritz. “All I saw and heard while I was there is pollution, people being worked to death, too much building going on too fast, and they are going to end up stewing in their own pot of forced advancement. I think China has as big a threat from its own people, as from outside countries. If the Chinese government turns on the whole world, the people of China will turn on their own government. There is only so much a nation of people can take before they get pissed off. Ask the French.”
“I agree,” continued Igor. “It happened in Russia, not on a massive scale like the whole population, but it has happened. Once Stalin was dead, the Russian people learned again how not to fear their government, and that they did have a say, except that their say was extremely insignificant.”
“I think that the Chinese government doesn’t want a world war,” added Boris. “They live on exports and can’t do without them. I believe they will rattle their sabers like the North Koreans have done for the last couple of decades, but will back away from a total world war. They cannot win, especially against America and Russia, and the president’s message about Russian satellites back in orbit will subdue the Asians.”
“So you think this whole battle for the control of space will calm down?” Ryan asked his crew. The Russians nodded. They knew the might of their country. The Americans nodded. They knew that money and survival were more important to the Chinese than committing suicide.
Ryan decided to return with the next shuttle and discuss the problem with Captain Pete, present it to the rest of the crew and, do what Maggie suggested: let everyone vote on it. Three days later, Ryan joined Allen and Michael Pitt, who had brought down the next load of cylinders a day earlier.
Time took on a different meaning on America One. The concept of rushing around belonged on Earth. In space, time was measured between work and sleep, or not working and sleep. Weekends were of no consequence; everyone had one day off from a schedule that wasn’t demanding. Only the scientists were hyperactive, wanting more products to test, seeking new doors to open new rooms, and eager to begin living on DX2017. Jupiter was still two years away and that, to the crew in space, was like a lifetime.
It took Boris 24 hours of contemplation and consultation with the other scientists before they solved the puzzle of opening the doors. It took nothing more than holding a piece of metal in front of the panel, which then sent out its blue light. A shiny piece of metal, or a glass mirror worked best, and the light bounced back at the panel and the door then opened. Except for VIN’s door in the front cavern. Whenever they tried it, that door sent out a green light instead of a blue one, and when it was bounced back, nothing happened.
The other two rooms were full of what looked like 5,000-year old supplies. The soil, or poop, Martha was analyzing was found in both rooms. VIN calculated that, in total, the soil would have weighed at least five tons on Earth. There were a dozen water urns, and he was sure if they still held water, it would taste horrible. The urns had been sealed, and were still in perfect condition. The rest of the supplies were mounds of dust. Boris found a few whole grains of corn sifting through the dust one day, and Fritz found grains of what looked like barley, or oats the next. One of the rooms contained shovel type instruments, a dozen of them, meant for four-foot tall people. Papers, or what looked like small remains of papyrus leaves, were also found.
One paper looked perfect. It was on a wall, and encased in a vacuum-sealed frame. Another was found in the third room.
Inside the large, vacuum-sealed frame, a piece of white material displayed a full color drawing, or picture, of the Sahara Desert. VIN could identify it, as its shape looked like the head of Africa. VIN took it to be a map which depicted three large tribes in the middle of the green belt, an area about the size of the United States. “Pretty desolate place. There is the Nile and I bet the people living in this area must have a name,” he said to Fritz as he got his helmet and visor as close as he could to the picture.
The atmosphere wasn’t quite right yet, the pressure was still below safe, the oxygen was low and they needed the third supply, on its way down, before they could take off their suits.
Fritz took a close look and copied down the letters, or squiggles.
“I think you could take the whole thing up to the ship and analyze it with Martha and Petra up there. Nobody is going to charge you for stealing it,” VIN joked.
“There could be life still in here?” asked Fritz, not understanding what VIN was getting at.
“I don’t think so,” replied VIN. “Here, on this little ball, my sixth sense has never alerted me to anything alive around us. It did feel to me that there could be life in the front cavern on Mars, and it wasn’t the dead people either. Something was very different there. I believe this was just their supply ship with a small crew, and one day the passengers just didn’t board and it has been whizzing around the solar system ever since.”
“Maybe with their ghosts?” asked Boris still checking out the writing.
“No, my sixth sense was honed well in Iraq. After a few years on patrol, you learn to feel that there are other life forms around you, say within a few miles. It’s like a dog that barks when its owners are coming home from work, even when they are still a mile or so from home.”
“What about the dead dust bodies?” Fritz asked.
“Never sensed anything there, in those three rooms with all the bodies, or before I opened the doors,” VIN replied. “But I do sense something in that room I can’t open.”
With Boris and Ryan in the other rooms, going through urns of all sizes, VIN and Fritz continued to study the map.
Boris was the first to open the new door panel when walking into the second chamber, and answered a question that was on many of the astronaut’s minds. Where did these aliens go to the bathroom?
The “bathroom” was interesting. The day earlier, the four men watched as a mirror opened the bathroom door. They checked their arm sensors and they noticed a decrease in pressure around them as the air they had just pumped into the cavern filled the small new room. It wasn’t big, but had what looked like a wash basin, as it was curved in the shape of a shell, could be filled like one, and it was on a pedestal with a hole in the middle. A second door had a red handle that could be opened by hand, like those VIN found on the cabinets in the first room.
It wouldn’t open, even though VIN pulled as hard as he could. It was sealed until Fritz had an idea and asked Boris to exit the small room; he closed the door behind Boris.
“I bet there is a safety device on the door, like on the trains we have in Germany,” Fritz stated. He was right. As soon as the first door was closed, the second door opened into an even smaller cubicle, and the men saw the simple form of a toilet. They knew it was a toilet as it had a real seat, shaped like a child’s bottom, and there was a hole in the middle.
“I bet this is the throne room,” VIN joked.
“Impossible to try with spacesuits on,” laughed Fritz. “Did Ryan pack any extra toilet paper? My sensor shows that there is still a horrible sort of atmosphere in here. Tons of carbon dioxide, but strangely, enough oxygen to breathe. Only the pressure is far below safe.”
“I bet nobody checked it out before the train left the last station, and the double door, sealed in the air,” replied VIN. “Fritz, check to see if you can open the outer door.”
VIN didn’t know where that idea came from, but since the throne room door was now open, the first door opened without a problem, to two men watching them.
They tried the mechanism several times. The outer door could open at any time a mirror was presented to the panel, but if the inner door was closed, it seemed to take its time to open, and if the outer door was open again, the inner door was sealed.
“I know,” VIN said as the men looked at each other. “This toilet is like a military long-drop toilet, a lot of air was used to fill this toilet, or throne room. The smell would be bad, so they must have a bottom part to stop smells wafting up continuously. Let’s pull it apart.”
The throne was all of five feet high; three feet above ground and two feet below. It was a round tube in a round hole. They had taken off the top and were looking into the tube when VIN suggested the door be closed. Since all the walls had the metal glowing brightly, light wasn’t a problem. When the inner door had been closed for several seconds, as if the room were occupied, it seemed that the power in the system opened a bottom tray which opened a vertical shaft into the depths of the planet which even VIN’s helmet lamp couldn’t illuminate. He believed it went down a long way.
“Too narrow to get a spider down to see how deep it is,” stated Boris after he looked in to see. “It can only be about 60 miles deep. I wonder if they have a hole on the other side of the planet to let the poop out?” VIN laughed.
“When we live down here, at least we’ll have a good, old-fashion never filling long-drop if it is 60 miles deep, ,” remarked VIN.
“When the air inside the toilet area is heated, and since hot air rises,” Fritz said, “the air won’t mix and the icy, smelly air will remain low in the shaft. I think that was the plan when it was designed. If they had a spider like ours, they could have dug the poop hole right through the planet. I bet it is at least one to several miles deep if they planned to use it for centuries.”
“Ingenious,” remarked Ryan. “The warm new air in the room would be much warmer above the cold, stale air low down in the shaft, actually close to 200 degrees warmer.”
Now with all the doors open, at least the doors they knew about, or could see, the only remaining door was the one VIN was pretty frustrated about. Ryan didn’t want to add more air until this door was opened, or until a decision was made to leave it closed. VIN knew that there was something very important in there. His gut told him so. Ryan made the decision to leave the door closed for the time being.
At the next meeting inside the cylinder, Igor and Boris explained to Ryan that they could soon control the doors independently, make them open and close at will, with the small hand mirrors on the next arrival. With that information, Ryan decided to open up the caverns to occupancy.
Since there were glass mirrors in each of the crew apartments, it hadn’t taken long for the crew aboard America One to cut one down into small round discs, nine in total, and make sure they had a Nano-silicone protective layer around the edges to prevent cutting, or destroying, spacesuit fabric or skin.
The nuclear batteries were working well, and the pressure in the caverns was now equal to 8,000 feet above sea level on Earth, still increasing, and the air reasonably good and safe with 60 degree temperatures.
Six of the scientists, mostly biologists were flying down in 24 hours aboard SB-III in its crew compartment in the forward cargo hold. Jonesy, Maggie and Saturn returned to the mother ship with Allen and Michael on the last launch ten hours earlier to fly the shuttle back. General Jones was particular about who flew his baby, SB-III, and so was Maggie. The scientists were bringing bags of clothing, bedding and scientific equipment to begin a 10-day trial living in the caverns. Suzi, Mars Noble and VIN would be joining them.
In case of emergency, the cylinder inside the now permanent shield would be an emergency shelter, so at least the crew could be accommodated in safety until picked up. Jonesy, Maggie and Saturn were going to have some private time in the accommodation cylinder, as an emergency flight crew on standby. Ryan was to return to Kathy and Lunar in America One for the first period.
An Earth day, or actually many days on this small planet, later, Jonesy brought his shuttle in for landing, making sure that the front area where the crew compartment was, landed inside the shield, not that it yet mattered as there was still no atmosphere. He had the atmosphere for the shield, or fifty percent of it, in the rear cargo bay. America One was still producing the air as fast as possible, but half of the needed atmosphere would be a good test to see what happened when air was pumped into the shield.
VIN and Boris were waiting for him inside the shield. They stayed out of the way of the powerful down thrusters, and now could stay out during a landing since the area was completely clean of any lose matter on the surface; once swept out, it stayed out.
“Perfect landing, partner,” VIN relayed over the intercom. “We have just returned from the caverns, and they are ready for habitation.”
Two hours earlier, VIN, Boris, Igor, Fritz and Ryan went into the cavern with three more tanks of air to complete the atmosphere.
Fritz was the most excited in this team. It was all Ryan could do to stop him from taking off his helmet before they had even opened the last tanks to increase the oxygen levels and give more pressure to both caverns.
The pressure stayed constant in the last 72 hours, telling them that there were no leaks out into space. The air mix had settled down, and the biologists were bringing down a hundred plants and several lights from one of the cubes to turn the future carbon dioxide into oxygen.
The air wasn’t perfect; it would smell, due to old stale air that remained in the cavern, and the toilet might have a pungent odor. The crew was bringing two air purification machines to filter the air of odors and tastes.
Ryan hadn’t heard of “Frebreze” when Kathy asked him how he was going to clean up the bad smells.
Everybody would be in for a surprise when the air was added into the above ground shield; several had made bets that something interesting would happen.
Do you want the crew to exit through the side hatch, or are you going to open the roof door?” VIN asked the astronaut-in-command when the ship landed.
“I’m a little hesitant about opening the roof door on the first pass, so I’m asking the scientists to exit through the docking port,” Jonesy replied. “The guys up there knew that we would lose the air inside the crew compartment once we allowed the crew to exit from the roof exit and side exit. It would open the whole crew compartment, and or cockpit, to the vacuum inside the shield. At least we keep the air inside the larger compartment and stored inside the shuttle, so they are exiting one-by-one out of the docking port like always.”
“Roger that,” replied VIN.
Can you clean the windshield while you are out there, partner, and check the tires?” Jonesy joked.
VIN suggested that he go somewhere and enjoy himself. Jonesy smiled, so did Maggie next to him. “Also, partner, the chemistry crew up there wants us to release one tank of air directly at the shield wall before we allow the atmosphere to be released,” continued Jonesy from inside the cockpit. “Oh! You must make sure that the air doesn’t penetrate the shield wall and disperse outside through the shield. Do you still have any spare tanks down here?”
“Only the two for emergency use. We just opened up the last three supply tanks in the caverns,” VIN replied.
“Okay, partner, use one of the emergency tanks. I have two extra tanks in here. Captain Pete wanted double the emergency supply down here with more crew. “I can bring down an extra tank on the second trip.”