by T I WADE
“Wind force should be much less than anything on Earth, or what you encountered on Mars,” replied Captain Pete. “Less gravity and less air density mean that a 100 mile an hour wind should feel like an 11 to 20 mile an hour breeze.”
“Roger that,” replied Jonesy. “These winds look more like 200 to 400 mile an hour winds. They could overtake us if we go any slower. There’s a tornado to our right, about 15 miles away, and it stretches far above our altitude. I’d say three miles high.”
“Can you see these tornadoes or whirlwinds on any of your instruments?” Ryan asked. Both pilots stated that they couldn’t. “Go to Plan B,” he suggested. “VIN, get out with Roo and setup up the dome. Allen, you hover on the windward side of SB-III, forty to fifty miles out, or as far as you can see, as a lookout for any of the dangerous whirlwinds Mr. Jones just described. Copy that?”
Both pilots did. VIN was already in the docking port with cords, nails, and two black boxes. The nuclear battery was tight in the forward cargo compartment.
Roo pointed to the place he wanted Jonesy to touch down. Allen told him that he was in position, hovering forty miles away and at a five mile altitude. The two pilots could see each other on radar. Jonesy suggested that Allen go 20 miles farther out, so that a warning would give them enough time to get VIN back inside.
“There is an incoming funnel, about one mile high and travelling at well over 300 miles an hour,” stated Allen as Jonesy switched the craft to manual flight. “I would say that it is going to bypass you about five miles on your starboard side in about ten minutes. Other than that one, there are about 50 little ones between us, and I cannot warn you about all of them. From here, it looks like the smaller ones are approaching you at about 50 to 100 miles an hour. It’s very strange but they are not all doing the same speed. Jonesy, the big one just swallowed up a couple of smaller ones; it seems to grow as it catches up to the slower tornadoes.”
“I need minimum five minutes from ground to closing the outer hatch, Allen,” stated VIN. “That doesn’t count cutting away cords from the craft. Add another minute for that. I cannot get a tear in my suit in this soup, it looks worse than L.A. on a lousy day of smog.”
Coming around to land, Jonesy could see the telltale shaft with the melted rocks in it. Once he turned to face the wind, he could see how strong it was.
“VIN, you are not going to like this,” Penny said as Jonesy brought the craft down. “Wind over the surface is 30 miles an hour with gusts up to 50. Oops! Here comes one of those things Jonesy, directly ahead.”
“See it, will rise a few feet…” Jonesy replied, but it hit before he could do anything; surprisingly, it didn’t beat them up as much as the wind that caught them on the ground on Mars had. It hardly made a difference as they went through its center and it disappeared behind them. “I still think the big guys could really beat us up,” the pilot said, as he came back in to land again. He was surprised how little dust rose from the thrusters, and with the craft facing into the wind, the dust immediately disappeared behind them.
Within five minutes, VIN was out, and he had to hold on, as if something was trying to pull him out of the docking port. He threw out the ladder and had to wait a full minute before it floated down beside the ship on the leeward side. It didn’t even hang vertical, but at a 45 degree angle to the ground.
The wind was weird, unlike wind on Earth. At 30 miles an hour, he should have felt the air hitting him. On Mars the gusts felt the same with the added air pressure down in the crater only, but here it was like a light gust. The real problem was that he didn’t weigh very much. As he climbed out, he threw out the cords to the right side of SB-III, weighted down by having six large nails wrapped around the end. He had his Bowie knife on his belt, as well as the mallet with which he was to hammer the nails in to the surface. The cords and nails drifted down to the surface slowly, as if they were in a swimming pool, and the breeze slowly floated them away behind the craft.
To catch them, VIN literally bounced off the top of the craft to the right, doing what he had practiced to prepare for a landing. It didn’t come that quickly. Instead, he floated away behind the craft, caught up with the cords and nails, and landed gently on his feet nearly 100 feet from where he had launched himself.
“What the hell you trying to do out there, partner? We can’t see you anymore,” Jonesy said over the intercom.
“I’m on the hard surface and bouncing back to get a visual with you. Gee, this is fun. I bet I could jump over any of the tornadoes coming our way. I can hardly feel the wind, and the hardest part is staying on the ground. Even a normal walking step lifts me a couple of feet off the ground!” replied VIN.
Jonesy laughed when VIN came into view. He was bouncing high and in slow motion across the surface. Like a kangaroo, he kept both feet together and each slow-motion jump took him a dozen feet forward and at least as high. He could see that VIN wasn’t trying at all to bounce around.
“I’m trying hard not to fly; these would be only inch high bounces on Earth,” replied VIN. As he passed by the side of the ship he saluted the two pilots with one hand while holding the cords and pegs in the other.
Roo was just exiting the outer hatch as VIN returned to try to receive the nuclear battery from him. On Earth it would have been extremely heavy. On Titan it floated down like a leaf off a tree. Roo then threw out the black box which VIN easily caught in midair.
As he caught it he shouted a warning to Roo. Another of the twisters was approaching fast, bigger than the last one. VIN braced for the worst. He leaned forward and crouched down. When the twister, about twenty feet wide hit him, he felt his suit being gently plucked from his body in an upward movement. What was peculiar was that although the twister looked as though it was swirling with high winds, it actually wasn’t; however, it displaced any gravitational pull and he rose several feet off the surface to gently descend about 100 feet behind the craft, the same distance he had bounced back from. The far heavier ship did not move.
These tornadoes reminded him of waves carrying him into shore, lifting and depositing him farther down the beach. He did not want to see how far a mile-high twister would carry him, and he quickly bounced back to SB-III. With Roo’s help, he hammered four nails deep in the moon’s surface before the next even larger twister hit. When it did, the cords held down the spacecraft, and he and Roo, clutching the straps, held onto everything moveable. The twister quickly passed.
They worked quickly, having practiced connecting the black box with the nuclear battery. The build crew made a rectangular unit that held the battery a few inches above the box, and was welded directly to the outside battery casing. Within minutes, the blue dome began to expand out, covering the two astronauts before the next twister arrived.
As expected, the dome protected them from any wind from the twister. They couldn’t feel any soft breezes coming through the growing wall, and VIN didn’t get airborne as before. VIN could see SB-III’s undercarriage pulling hard at the two cords keeping the craft on the surface. Seconds after the twister passed, the dome began creeping over the surface of the shuttle.
“You had better get out of there. A big guy is coming in your general direction,” Allen alerted them. “It just passed below us, about two miles on our port side. It’s a mile wide and this one is really moving fast, I would say 700-800 miles an hour, and it reaches up about three miles. Weird, we couldn’t feel any pull from it. ETA your position five to six minutes.”
“Jonesy, I think the shield will protect the ship and us,” stated VIN. “I have the battery on thirty percent power, and will pump it up to seventy percent; it should cover you by the time the twister gets here. I can get you free, but we can’t both get inside that fast. Suggest Roo and I test the shield to be twister proof. Over.”
“Copy that. I won’t stay, thanks for the invitation. Untie SB-III and nail yourselves down. If you guys fly away, I can follow you if I’m free,” replied Jonesy.
VIN slowly walked through the w
all to unpin the nails. He had hammered them in with all his strength to get them into the ground quickly, and it took all his strength to pull them out. He could cut the cords with his knife, but that was the last option. He grabbed the closest two nails one after the other and, with the added strength of his metal legs and nearly bursting a blood vessel, he pulled the nails back out of the hard ground. Without the metal legs, he wouldn’t have been able to do it, but he released the undercarriage, telling Jonesy to get out of there as he bounced back towards the shield and out of the way of the right-side thruster that pushed him against the hard shield wall, but not hard enough to cause any damage.
Roo, not as fast or as forward thinking as VIN just stood there and watched as VIN slowly entered the dome, now ten feet over his head. Roo hadn’t moved in the time it had taken VIN to release the ship. He wasn’t used to making quick decisions.
“Have the twister in sight,” stated Jonesy. “About ten miles out. You have about two minutes to tie yourselves down, partner. I have the blue dome visual, I will sweep out of the twisters way, and come in behind it.”
VIN grabbed the two lose nails and banged them hard into the ground. Then he tied a short part of the cord around Roo’s leg, and then one to his own leg.
“Roo, sit down here,” he pointed showing his friend what to do.
“About a minute,” stated Jonesy.
Roo did as he was told. He was wondering why VIN was so worried about this wind thing, but sat next to VIN. The ex-Marine had placed the nails three feet apart; they sat in-between the nails and he tied the rest of the cord across them and around the nails a dozen times before he looked up and surveyed the area around them.
The blue shield’s growth had stopped and since the battery was right next to him, he grabbed it to hold on. Then he looked in the direction of the tornado and was shocked to see a wide and powerful mass of red and yellow dust swirling around at great speed, and coming towards them like an express train.
“Hang on, Roo!” was all he could say before the moving dust cloud hit the dome with a force far stronger than the little ones. They could actually hear the tornado slap the dome with winds of up to 800 miles an hour or more, and begin grinding at the dome wall as a tornado would do on Earth.
The dust and wind surrounded them for several seconds, bits of the moon Titan flying in all directions. VIN noticed that the 100-foot cords he had left pegged down outside the shield were stretched out in nearly a straight line; at the same moment, they began hitting the outside wall of the dome as the wind forced them to begin a drum solo slapping on the shield both VIN and Roo could see.
Then it was gone, and he heard Jonesy and Ryan trying to contact them.
“Shield worked like a dream,” VIN stated calmly over the radio. “Jonesy, I’ll pump up the power again and there should be enough room for you to land inside. I’ll bring in the cords and nail them in right next to the shaft into the caverns.”
By the time a second, smaller twister hit twenty minutes later, SB-III was safely tied down inside the dome which stretched many feet over and around the craft. VIN still had the power at seventy percent, and he increased it to 80 percent to enlarge the shield to accept the second craft.
Allen came in and slowly pierced the shield. VIN and Roo then tied down the second craft. None of them would know that the next gigantic twister, larger than the first big one, was to pass within a few hundred yards of the dome. They felt nothing inside the shield, except powerful vibrations under their feet.
Within three hours, their first spacewalk time, they had 20 air tanks spewing air into the large dome. With the water collected on the Jupiter moons they had enough air to fill this big shield; it would take all of their reserves, but it was worth it to ensure the safety of the occupants underground. VIN had one spider out and digging down through the melted rock, something Roo suggested, which would save the spider having to dig through the metal wall.
What worried VIN was that the hairs on the back of his neck weren’t dancing around this time; that might mean be no one was down there.
Chapter 20
Where is the life?
It took 15 hours for the spider to pile up the melted rock in between the two craft, and the crews watched from inside. The atmosphere inside the shield was at bare minimums, and the spider didn’t need to exit the dome. With the nuclear battery inside the shield, spacesuits had to be used at all times, especially considering the minus 150 degree temperatures, which were already warming.
VIN hoped that they weren’t warm and cozy inside the caverns; the cold air would certainly change that once the spider emptied the last loads of rubble.
The spider returned to the surface its job done. VIN and Roo waited for somebody to either contact them telepathically, or at least climb out and greet their visitors. Since no one emerged, they decided to wait for a few hours, so as not to frighten the people down there.
While sitting without helmets in the mining ship, VIN asked Roo something he still wondered about, “How did you dig that toilet, and how deep is it?”
“Very deep. We don’t know. Commander Joot had machine mining down in shaft for two months before it disappeared. We think it fell out other side,” Roo replied, smiling sheepishly. “It wasn’t my father, Commander Put, but the first commander of the little planet, Commander Joot, who lost mining machine.”
“That’s what Boris and Fritz guessed,” laughed VIN. “Jonesy, don’t fly low over the other side of DX2017 when you are in orbit next time. You might fly through something that used to belong to you.” Jonesy was half asleep, but VIN’s suggestion got a slight smile from the astronaut.
“Where would your spaceship be based on this moon?” VIN asked. “Inside, underground, or in the shield?”
“That is complicated. I don’t see any shield, and the shield was to grow food and protect the ship. No ship, or shield, or signs of food, or soil here. I would not be allowed to see ship’s underground cavern, I not a commander.” Roo replied, trying to frame a logical answer to VIN’s question.
“So, if there were people here, then there should be a third cavern, and a spaceship parked somewhere?” VIN asked. Roo nodded looking puzzled, unusual for him.
Two hours were up, and VIN couldn’t wait anymore. They donned helmets and he and Roo exited the port to float down to the surface. The first reading VIN got from his suit’s external readouts was that the temperature inside the dome had not risen as he expected when warm air from below rose up the shaft.
“Jonesy, the temperature hasn’t changed. Fritz, Vitalily, wake up and get suited up, you are going to have to lower us down the shaft,” VIN ordered.
Twenty minutes later the first spacesuit exited the port of the second craft. When both were down, they setup the 100-foot cord ladder VIN handed them, prepared to help VIN descend. VIN weighed less than twenty pounds, and Vitalily actually had to put his foot on the top of VIN’s helmet to help him begin his decent.
The shaft was dark and narrow. VIN slowly descended with his left arm pointed downwards so the flashlight he held could light the shaft below. At the expected depth, VIN’s feet passed the two tunnels going in opposite directions, and he pulled on the ladder, asking the men above to stop his downward movement. Nimbly, he floated into the tunnel that would lead towards the forward cavern, gently hitting the top of his helmet on the low roof. The cord ladder disappeared and would return with Roo several minutes later.
Waiting for Roo, VIN shined the flashlight onto the dull, metal-surfaced tunnels in both directions; they were identical to those on Mars, Europa, Ganymede and even DX2017.
When Roo’s small boots appeared down the shaft, VIN helped him into the tunnel and told the two helpers to leave the ladder in place for a fast exit if necessary. The temperature had risen only 30 degrees, which meant that nothing human could be alive down there.
As he turned the corner, he remembered that he had Roo to help him open the doors. Unfortunately, with no power, Roo was no better at open
ing the doors than VIN. The walkway around the cavern looked dark and cold, as if they were looking at a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. With no lights and an intercom that intercom didn’t work, they decided that nothing more could be done on this walk, and retreated back to the spacecraft to wait out another twelve hours.
On the next walk they would carry in a spare nuclear battery from Allen’s craft, and bring Fritz who had been taught by Igor how to connect it.
The fifth nuclear battery, the one that had powered the shield around America One before the shield was permanently connected to the ship’s reactor, was lowered down the shaft. Fritz followed with the cables to connect to the railing. Roo was just as surprised as Fritz when VIN connected the first cable to the railing, and carefully touched the railing with the second clamp. As expected, the walls began their slow glow, which lit up the cavern.
“Get it up to 40 percent,” ordered VIN, and the light increased showing them an empty, clean cavern. The door controls opened and Roo used the mirror to open the door to the first room; the only things in the room were the 24 cabinets along both side walls.
Seeing the cabinet door handles faintly glowing red, Roo stopped and didn’t enter the room.
“They are meant to glow blue,” he said to VIN.
“I haven’t seen that yet,” replied VIN. “Only red, except the special room you and your parents were in, and only two handles glowed green, or was it blue, in that room.”
Without pausing VIN opened each cabinet door one after the other. They were all empty. “Nobody in here,” he confirmed and Roo entered the room.
VIN asked Fritz to increase the power to 80 percent. With only two hours of spacewalk time left he wasn’t playing around; it was time to open the command room and the power room.