Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris

by Brenton Barwick

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Let’s Take It Home”

  Mom gasped as they landed at the foot of the robot.“What’s the matter?” asked Dad.

  “The door of the robot is closed.”

  “Just whistle,” instructed Joseph.

  Mom tried to whistle but she couldn’t do the catcall whistle like Dad.

  Dad whistled. Nothing happened.

  Mom looked at him fearfully. “Are we locked out?” she asked.

  Dad whistled again. Nothing.

  Dad stepped onto the edge of the cart and climbed onto the robot’s foot. Again, he whistled in vain.

  “Maybe the whistle only activates the main door in the control room,” speculated Joseph.

  “And it can’t open because it’s not an airlock,” added Sharianna.

  Sophia began to panic. She leaped onto the foot and pound-ed on the hull of the ship where the door should have been with her fist. “Open,” she commanded, with her anxiety clearly apparent. “The ship took verbal orders before, why not now?”

  “Try being more specific,” suggested Joseph. “Open the outer door of the airlock.”

  “Open sesame,” tried Dad, as fear for his family began to wrap its bony fingers around his heart.

  Perceiving their anxiety, Percy barked.

  “There must be a secret latch, or something,” insisted Dad, as he ran his fingers all over the surface of the ship as far as he could reach.

  “Hand me the railing, please,” requested Mom.

  Sharianna handed her the railing.

  Mom followed Dad’s example and began tapping with the railing all over the top of the foot, hoping to find a hidden actuator.

  When Dad was sure he had definitely pushed every square inch of the hull that he could reach, he turned back to his family. Putting his hand on Mom’s arm he said softly, “I don’t think there is an exterior actuator.”

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered, as she sank to her knees next to Sharianna. Tears of despair began to flow silently down her cheeks.

  Dad knelt down next to her. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “They’re planning a permanent manned station here on the moon,” proffered Joseph, trying to sound positive, as he stood next to Dad.

  “When is the next mission?” questioned Sharianna.

  “Next year,” he sighed sadly.

  Sharianna put her arms around Mom. Dad continued to search in vain for a hidden actuator and tried all kinds of whistles in an attempt to open the airlock door.

  Joseph tried whistling, but to no avail.

  Thomas had no idea how long they had been there, the minutes may have stretched into hours; he felt weak. He stood in front of the airlock door; he could no longer whistle. Sophia’s panic was beginning to take hold of him as well. The knot in his stomach seemed to threaten to overwhelm his whole being.

  Tears began to stream down Sophia’s face. She knew they were trapped outside, but it still seemed better than being trapped inside the obelisk, or the mine with the terrifying creatures.

  Suddenly, Sharianna remembered the last time she had given the ship a command – she had addressed it specifically. She offered a silent prayer through her tears then said, “Robo-ship, open the outer door of the airlock.”

  The door silently and smoothly slid open.

  “Thank you Sharianna,” sobbed Mom, her tears of distress now turned to tears of joy as they entered the airlock.

  “No, thank God,” acknowledged Sharianna quietly, as she thought about her silent prayer.

  “Yes, thank God,” agreed Dad.

  Thomas was about to push the button to close the airlock door when he remembered the metal ball in the alien cart. “My souvenir,” he exclaimed, as he leaped across the robot’s foot and retrieved the strange ball.

  As soon as Dad crossed the threshold of the airlock, he was no longer able to carry the ball and it landed on the bathroom door with a thud.

  “I guess Joseph was right – we don’t even have to wait till we get back to earth for it to weigh three hundred pounds,” laughed Mom.

  Sharianna pushed the button and the door slid silently closed and they began to hear the air return to the airlock and the gravitational pull slowly rotated until they were all standing on the floor again. The ball slowly rolled down the bathroom door, until it also came to a rest on the floor of the airlock.

  As the door to the hallway opened, Dad rushed headlong to the control room.

  “I think we should get out of here,” suggested Mom.

  Dad lifted off and they hovered over the surface of the moon, looking back toward the obelisk. He flew the robot a few miles away and landed on top of a small mountain.

  Joseph grabbed his bag of Doritos off the chair: “I’m really starving now.”

  Mom began to get up. “I’ll make something to eat.”

  Dad stood up. “No, you take it easy, I’ll get it.”

  “We’ll both get it,” she insisted. “I wasn’t planning on an extended trip, so there is not much in the way of a real meal, but we’ll manage.”

  Joseph and Sharianna took off their space suits. “Here, Sharianna, help me get Percy’s suit off,” Joseph said.

  As they pulled on Percy’s suit, it just stretched, but would not come apart.

  “Why won’t his suit come off?” inquired Mom.

  Sharianna suddenly remembered when Joseph had pretended to be suffocating in the suit and she had tried to remove it. “It only responds to itself,” she explained.

  Joseph grabbed Percy’s two front feet and used them to pull on the suit and it came right apart.

  After dinner, they made their way to the control room.

  “Where to now? Mars?” inquired Sharianna, who now felt safe inside the robot. She was half serious, as she sat in one of the control chairs and looked at the console with the depiction of the solar system.

  “Yeah, right,” responded Dad, with a hint of sarcasm. “I think we should go home first.”

  Sharianna felt a little nervous as they flew up from the surface, but her piloting skills were very good, she was a natural. She looked over at Joseph, who occupied the other control chair. She was surprised and very pleased when he looked back at her with a serious face, raised his eyebrows, and nodded his head slightly in approval. She smiled wide back at him.

  “Looks like there is still one more site to investigate,” observed Joseph, as he looked at the view screen in front of them.

  “Okay, one last site,” agreed Dad.

  Sharianna lined up the last circle with the dot in the middle of the screen and flew toward the surface.

  “It’s another rocket,” stated Sharianna, as they approached the site.

  “But it’s not as smashed up as the other ones,” observed Mom.

  “From the looks of it, they didn’t have a very smooth land-ing,” concluded Joseph.

  “I’m going to land next to that big piece, over there.” Sharianna pointed to a large piece that looked like part of the outer hull of the rocket.

  She eased back on the controls as she hovered for a moment, while turning the robot from a horizontal flying position to an upright position, ready for landing. As she touched the surface, only a small cloud of dust was kicked up.

  “Good landing,” whispered Joseph. “But don’t get a big head,” he added quietly from the side of his mouth.

  She smiled without looking at him.

  Joseph read the nearly obliterated letters on the wreckage: “DIA. What does that mean?”

  “I think there are two letters missing: IN,” deduced Mom.

  “INDIA?”

  “I heard that they had recently sent a rocket to the moon,” confirmed Dad.

  “Were any astronauts on board?” asked Sharianna with some concern, as she looked at the wreckage.

  “No, it was unmanned; I think they just sent it so they could make a claim if the moon ever became valuable real estate,” explaine
d Dad.

  “Can we go out and explore the crash site?” inquired Joseph.

  “I think we can see it just fine from right here,” stated Mom definitively. “I think one moon walk is enough.”

  “Okay,” moaned Joseph with a sigh.

  “What then?” Sharianna wanted to know.

  “Everyone’s had a chance to fly.” Dad motioned for Joseph to vacate his seat. “I’ll take this ship home.”

  Joseph made his way down to the front observation area. “Better view from down here anyway. Come on Sharianna.”

  Mom interjected, “That’s okay Sharianna, you can stay there; I haven’t seen the view from down below yet.” She went down the steps to join Joseph.

  “Hey, what about the little hover cart that we left by the obelisk?” asked Joseph.

  “Let’s take it home!” exclaimed Sharianna.

  “It would barely fit in the cargo bay,” argued Mom. “Be-sides, what would we do with it?”

  “I want to take it apart and see how it works,” replied Joseph.

  “That would be extremely interesting,” agreed Dad, as he pushed forward on the stick and the robot took a step forward, flattening the large piece of debris from the INDIA rocket. “Oops, I guess I better find the right gear.” He smiled amidst roaring laughter from his family.

  “Where is it?” asked Sharianna, as they approached the obelisk.

  Dad flew all the way around the obelisk. “It’s gone,” he concluded.

  “The door into the obelisk is closed. Do you think the lake creatures came out and got it?” asked Joseph.

  “I doubt it,” answered Dad. “I would think they would have to stay down where there is some atmosphere.”

  “Then what?” demanded Mom.

  “Sharianna did see something in the window of the control room,” offered Joseph.

  “Maybe someone came out and got it,” speculated Dad.

  “Or some-thing,” posed Sharianna.

  “It could have even been programmed to return automatical-ly,” suggested Joseph.

  “We’ll fly over to the tunnel and see,” said Dad.

  “First, let’s see if there are any new footprints,” said Mom.

  Dad bent the robot down close to the surface; they could not see any footprints other than their own and the astronauts’.

  “Nope, nothing,” observed Dad.

  “I don’t see any slime trails either,” said Joseph.

  “Okay, let’s take one more look at the tunnel before we go,” agreed Mom.

  “Hey, the tunnel is closed!” exclaimed Joseph, as they approached. “Should we fly down into the main mine shaft?”

  “No way!” answered Mom. “If there is something down there, I don’t want to find out if its technology is great enough to pose a risk to the robot—we’re leaving.”

  The moon quickly receded into the distance as they ap-proached earth. This time they didn’t hit any asteroids. Thomas made a mental note to look up the asteroids on the Internet and find out more about their orbits.

  “Let’s fly around the earth before we land; I heard you can see the Great Wall of China from space,” suggested Mom, as they made their approach to Earth.

  Joseph laughed, “That’s just a myth, Mom. NASA debunked it a long time ago.”

  “Well, we can see for ourselves, can’t we?” insisted Mom.

  “Alright, I don’t see how it could hurt,” concurred Dad.

  The western hemisphere was again shrouded in darkness as they entered the orbit of the earth. Only the lights from cities were discernable from that distance.

  “Can you see Salt Lake City?” asked Dad.

  “I think so, but it looks pretty dim compared to Los Ange-les.”

  “Look how bright Mexico City is,” Mom observed.

  “You know, that’s one of the largest cities in the world,” commented Joseph wistfully as he remembered a talk that the beautiful Rosa-Maria had given in his social studies class. He liked her almost as much as he liked Allison. Joseph remem-bered scaring Allison when he dragged her by the ankle toward the deep water of the reservoir. He felt a little guilt at scaring her so much. I’ll tell her it was me, maybe she will think it was funny. No, I’d better not; she would probably think I was immature or inconsiderate, he thought.

  He was suddenly brought back to the present: “What is that?” Sharianna pointed directly ahead at an odd-looking structure floating in space with flat panels extending from it that looked a little like wings.