AMERICA ONE - Return To Earth (Book 4)

by T I WADE

  The walls began to glow extremely bright and the second door control flipped open, allowing them to enter the globe room. VIN was surprised to see two globes in this room. On Mars and the other moons, there had been only one, Earth. Only DX2017 had all five globes, and now this moon, Titan, had two.

  Earth was the first globe. With the power on the metal skin around the globe disappeared and the blues, greens and browns of Earth were visible. The second planet, or moon, interested both of them, and Roo immediately went up to the second pure white globe and put his hand on it.

  “You won’t feel anything with your glove on,” suggested VIN and Roo nodded and began unscrewing one glove with his other hand. Fritz shot forward and stopped him.

  “These little guys don’t think as fast as we do,” he said, looking at VIN. Roo suddenly realized what he had done and thanked Fritz.

  “Do you know this planet?” VIN asked Roo. Roo didn’t, but the red dot on Titan up on the Bridge was tiny and dull compared to the much larger bright red dot on the new white globe.

  “But there is somebody here, or the dot would not exist,” replied Roo, and VIN knew exactly where the live person would be, and he pointed towards the door to the room where he had found Roo, Tow and Put. Roo nodded, but wanted to open the command center first. He used the mirror and the door opened easily, disappearing into the wall.

  The command center was bright and Roo immediately began playing with the knobs and dials. The hologram opened up on the roof above them and he could see the two craft inside the shield. He could also hear Allen and Jonesy speaking to each other. Then Roo hit a switch and the door to the power room opened. Fritz was keen, on Igor’s orders, to find anything of value in the room, and there was one black box sitting on the same shelf where they had found the others in the other bases.

  “Don’t turn it on, Fritz,” Roo said. “There is no need, we already have one shield.”

  “Will you need Doctor Martin and Doctor Nancy if there is somebody in the room?” asked VIN.

  “No,” Roo replied. “I don’t understand what the doctors did to help us. The system is designed to wake us up, and throw us out when we are ready.”

  “Roo, what about the atmosphere and the heat inside the cryonics room?” asked Fritz.

  “VIN,” replied Roo pointing at the walls, “that whole area above and below the stairs that you could never open, and that is sealed even from me, is a power system for the sleeping room and the people inside. It was sealed so that nobody could break the system except a commander, and it was made to run for many years. It will give air and heat into the sleep room for a long time.”

  “Maybe not 10,000 years,” VIN replied.

  “Maybe, but you found my mother and me, and we will find somebody in that room who will tell us where the others are. And, where this white moon is,” Roo replied simply heading back into the room. He pressed one button underneath the console, the only place VIN had not thought to look.

  Up to now, Roo and Tow hadn’t been very forthcoming on how the command console worked. Either they didn’t know everything, or it was top secret, and nobody asked them for the information.

  VIN was totally surprised when, at the push of three more buttons in a controlled order, the whole console flipped over, revealing a new set of controls. VIN remembered looking underneath the console and only seeing the metal surface.

  “You can turn off your power now, Fritz, the whole base is running on its back-up power,” Roo instructed. Fritz did as instructed and returned to stand next to VIN, just as surprised, and his mouth just as open. From nowhere, in the middle of a vacuum of space, three control screens came alive and information began to pass speedily across the screen, faster than Fritz could read Matt.

  “Our first commander, Commander Joot, is here waiting for my father,” Roo said. “He has a message for him. It reads: ‘The white planet is a better, safer home than here on this one, and the crew took all the equipment and the ship 300 years after you, Commander Put, did not arrive to build a second base on the moon. The white moon is eight moons closer to the ring planet than you are now standing on.’ I do not know the name of the planet in your language, but in mine it is called Geetin.”

  Everybody was able to listen, the two craft above ground and those on the Bridge on America One, as Roo read the information destined for his father.

  There was silence until Captain Pete confirmed the moon’s name, “Enceladus, thought to be the most habitable moon by our peers down on Earth. It has to be.”

  “Maybe Geetin is the same as your moon you call Enn… ceee… lad… uus,” responded Roo. “Commander Joot will be waking up and will try to open the door, but it will not work because there is no atmosphere in here. We need to make an atmosphere in this central room, a perfect atmosphere, and one of us must stay in the room. We can close off the other rooms; his sleep suit can handle the cold temperature. You have in your time twelve hours before he will try to open the door. If he cannot open the door, he will not be alive anymore.”

  VIN shouted orders to the mother ship. There was just enough air left to give one room atmosphere, and every spare bottle they had aboard the shuttle, big or small, would be needed to get the pressure and atmosphere just right. That included the three air tanks meant for the shield. The entire supply now inside the shield would be wasted, three months of manufacture; but, that wasn’t important, there was a life to save, and somebody would need to survive in the middle room to make sure the correct atmosphere was ready.

  They had twelve hours to empty the three air tanks into this one room. There were three extra spacesuits aboard each shuttle, and VIN asked Roo how tall this commander was. He was a tall, five feet. The commander’s suit was not made for space walking, and the commander, Roo, and he also needed new suits to survive and then exit, as they only had four hours of time remaining in their current suits. They could survive in the spare suits from the space craft, each with six hours of life before it needed to be recharged. That was if the astronaut breathed slowly, and did not do too much exercise.

  Fritz and Vitalily lowered the three bottles, then four of the small emergency shuttle-cockpit bottles of pure oxygen, and finally the six suits down to VIN and Roo. Roo explained that the door into the cryonics room would not work unless there was close to a perfect atmosphere on this side, and they didn’t even know if they had enough air.

  VIN explained to Roo that two of them had to stay to help change each other’s helmets and suits. He ordered Fritz out, and once the door to the center room was closed and sealed, VIN opened the three bottles.

  Light from the power system was still working, and VIN hoped that three bottles would give them enough air pressure and atmosphere inside the room, when a problem suddenly occurred to him. When the time came to change suits, the room the room would still be extremely cold and it wasn’t possible for a human body to survive very long at 120 degrees below freezing, even if there was enough air to breathe.

  For the first time in a long time, VIN realized that his life hung in the balance; he had to depend on Roo, and there was nothing he could do to change matters.

  VIN and Roo had only a slim chance of getting out, a stark reminder of what space was really like outside his warm suit. VIN’s eye, the one he used to open the door controllers, began to water.

  Time slowed down for VIN, as he watched the air bubbles blow out of the three bottles in long lines. The room would heat up faster and faster as the atmosphere increased in density, and VIN told Roo that they would be lucky if the temperature was under minus 110 by the time they both had to change into the first suit in a few hours.

  Using all the knowledge he had gained from his spacewalks, VIN figured that he had less than five minutes to change into his next suit; he had to at least get the upper body part over his chest, and that could only happen once he got the leggings on, which usually took five minutes. Because Roo was using up less air, VIN suggested he change suits first, with Roo’s help.

&
nbsp; Over the next hour VIN mentally went over how to speed up changing his suit until it dawned on him that the bottom half didn’t need to be changed, only the top half, gloves and helmet. He laughed out loud at his own stupidity; that would certainly decrease the time needed for both of them to change. Then he realized that Roo’s oversized suits might not fit perfectly, and again he mentally went over every detail of the suit change that would save their lives.

  Chapter 21

  Damn, it’s cold in here!

  The last hour in the warm suit was running out. VIN’s current suit was getting weak, and he was beginning to feel it. He wanted to switch on the next two suits, but the extra time would be deducted from their total time in the fresh suit. Nobody had worn the suits longer than the six-hour test period since they had been designed, and they had since proved that six hours was the maximum. VIN also realized that all the energy he and Roo had dispersed climbing down and walking around, had reduced the time they had before they needed to change.

  As the atmosphere and air, now a complete bubble inside the room increased, the inner energy and atmosphere readouts on his suit bled down to less than 5 percent. The clock on his controls showed that he had been in the suit for five hours and fifteen minutes; he gently directed Roo to lie on his stomach, so as not to harm the rear working parts of the suit, relax and close his eyes. The longer they could stay in these suits the better.

  For what seemed an eternity, not hearing anything through the walls, his mind wandered over his life, family, and what the hell he was doing on some moon in the far reaches of space about to freeze to death, or run out of air.

  He began to dream, when suddenly Ryan’s voice over the intercom brought him back to reality. His oxygen was going, he was about to lose consciousness. He kicked Roo, and shouted through the intercom that it was time they both change. His suit readout showed five hours, fifty five minutes.

  Roo moved, and VIN checked both suit’s gauges. The smaller guy still had a percent or two more than he did, and VIN immediately turned on two of the spare suits to warm up. At least the material would be warm Roo fitted the front and back to him. Roo had donned suits several times and he was pretty good at helping somebody get a suit on.

  First the helmet and gloves needed to be unscrewed and then removed: one minute; then the back separated from the front: two minutes; then detach from the body and connect the new suit the same way: three to four minutes.

  “Roo, can you hear me?” VIN asked and Roo nodded. “The temperature is at minus 115; we will freeze within minutes, if we don’t work quickly. We must screw off each other’s helmet and gloves to within one or two turns from detaching; then you, must get my new suit separated and laid out, upper front and back halves only. Then I will whip the top-half of my suit off, you grab the backpack, and immediately put on my new backpack; I will hold the front while you connect them up. We have under-gloves on so our hands will be a little protected, but I think I have only five minutes before I pass out, so we must be quick. First, backpack, then front half, attach, fit gloves, attach connectors, fit helmet, screw on gloves, screw on helmet. You need to hold the heavy back while I hold up the front and attach them together, understand?” Roo nodded.

  “Okay, gloves and helmet first. Remember, I remove my old suit, you hold the new backpack, I hold the front, and you connect the two. Then screw on my helmet, one screw, after connecting the electrics. I put on my gloves, you screw them on, and that’s it! Hopefully the suit warms up fast. I have it at full power and then I will do the same for you. Pure team work, my friend, or I’m too dead to help you. Understand?” Again Roo nodded. “Temperature minus 114, a little warmer. Let’s go!” Roo unscrewed the helmet to the last screw while VIN flexed his hands to warm them up. He was getting dizzy.

  Two minutes later Roo had the helmet ready and began working on the gloves. VIN was beginning to get really dizzy from the lack of air, he also noticed that he had beaten the six hours by three minutes of overtime in the suit, and that gave them a little more survival time at the end. He knew that the crew on the Bridge knew the exact time they did. It was simple math.

  “Okay, Roo, gloves coming off, unscrew the helmet, detach the electrics,” and an icy cold air that VIN had never experienced in his life hit his warm hands and uncovered face, as if he was in the middle of a block of frigid dry ice. The pain was merciless; he felt as though he had just plunged into an icy-cold lake, even though his under-helmet cloth protector covered the top, sides and back like a balaclava.

  He opened his eyes and could still see clearly, except that the liquid in his eyes immediately began to freeze, so he closed them again. He felt Roo helping him detach the two halves of the suit, and once he felt Roo begin detaching his waist connection, grabbed for the front of the suit in front of him. Within seconds Roo had the back of the suit off, the new part on, and he let the front half float away to the floor, and with his boot pushed it out of the way.

  Now the cold wanted to penetrate his skin and heart. He had taken as deep a breath as the low pressure allowed a split second before his helmet was removed, and knew that getting too much cold air into his lungs would just finish the job of freezing him solid even quicker, so he held his breath for as long as possible.

  VIN opened and closed his eyes rapidly to keep the liquids from freezing. He had put on suits so often that it was second nature to him. He could do it blindfolded, and not having to take off his lower suit probably kept his body temperature a lot higher.

  With three minutes, Roo and he had the front and back secure, and he took his first breath. He opened his eyes again, while feeling his body beginning to shiver uncontrollably. Roo was in front of him helmet ready. He grabbed for the bottle of oxygen lying next to him. It wasn’t as cold lying under the warmer suit and he opened the bottle and felt ice cold air brush over his face. Then his lungs felt the icy oxygen flowing into his body and began to contract with the extreme cold. Still, he felt the oxygen reviving his body and then Roo attached the electronics and screwed the helmet on with one turn while VIN felt for his still-warm gloves.

  The new suit’s system was already on maximum heat, and it would still take several minutes to bring the inside warmth to above freezing, but it already felt less cold and painful.

  VIN blindly put his hands into the still slightly warm gloves. Through the icy window of cold around him, his brain began registering that somebody was shouting his name. It sounded like Ryan. He took his first breath of warm air from inside the suit and he felt its heat begin to counteract the cold enveloping him.

  “Yes, Ryan… I’m still alive…… darn cold though. Really cold…… cold enough to freeze the frozen balls off a brass bloody frozen monkey!” replied VIN. “Roo, screw my gloves on now; the cold is hurting like hell!”

  “Thank God!” he heard Ryan reply. “We have your body sensors back on. You need to move around and warm up. Your body signs are at below dangerous temperatures. Inside suit temperature, minus 47 degrees and warming. Just stay alive for a few more minutes, VIN, and you should get above freezing.”

  Lastly, VIN’s helmet was screwed on tight by Roo. VIN’s fingers felt like he had frostbite, even under the inner gloves he hadn’t taken off and he tried to stand up. It was difficult; his entire human part of his body was stiff with cold. Roo helped him and as soon as he was standing he checked Roo’s readouts. Roo had only had a couple of minutes left.”

  “Roo make sure your new suit is on maximum. It took me seven minutes to complete dressing into half a suit, a world record. Let me get some heat back and we’ll get you taken care of.”

  VIN then began dancing around the silver room, forgot that he was in near zero gravity and nearly knocked himself out on the ceiling when his helmet collided with it hard. He quickly learned that it was even harder to run around, and get warm, as Ryan had suggested.

  Once he thought he was over the worst, he began to prepare Roo. Roo was small and his new suit was adult size, so VIN decided not to undo it at
the sides, but flip it straight over Roo’s head. That would save a minute or so. Then he only needed to attach the upper suit to the bottom half which would fit, barely, after making sure the protective flaps were correctly positioned inside.

  Roo’s new suit, on full, was warming, and VIN felt the pins and needles of blood begin moving around his fingers again. They hurt like hell.

  Once Roo told him the air was getting hard to breathe in his suit, VIN was ready and poor Roo suffered the same pain and cold VIN had been subjected to just a few minutes earlier.

  VIN worked fast and within six minutes an extremely cold and shivering Earth Alien was inside the larger suit, safe and trying to exercise, as VIN had done, without knocking himself out on the ceiling.

  Twenty minutes later, and with the temperature in the room still climbing, the two astronauts felt warm. VIN knew, he and maybe Roo had frostbite in their fingers, but that was a minor ailment in view of what could have happened.

  Six hours later, they did the same change into their next set of suits, but at a warmer and toasty minus 50 degrees. Inside fresh and warm suits with three hours to go, VIN checked the atmosphere for the umpteenth time. The pressure was low, and the bottles completely empty. He opened two of the emergency bottles of pure oxygen. The mix wouldn’t be right, but at least the door might still open.

  An hour later the small foot long bottles were empty, the oxygen level higher than normal, and the pressure still needed a boost, so VIN opened up one more bottle.

  It was going to be close. The temperature was 10 degrees below freezing and was still climbing. It certainly wouldn’t be warm enough when Commander Joot stepped out of the cryonics room, if he was still alive. VIN was impressed by Roo’s complete lack of panic. He didn’t panic when they had changed suits, and he was sure that his commander, or somebody else, would step out of the room. He wasn’t worried at all, telling VIN that at any temperature above freezing with a good atmospheric pressure showing breathable air, it wouldn’t be a problem.