by T I WADE
“I now have a message for my father. Ex-President Dithers, you are still my father and family. You have a following in this country, and a large following at that. I want to meet with you in a place of safety, just you and me. I want to sort out our differences and become a family again. You have had your time as President. You served longer than many of the Presidents who have run this great country. Now it is time for another Dithers to lead this nation into prosperity, happiness and security. That, Father, is me, your only daughter, and I am willing to meet to discuss how you can help me get this country of ours back on track.”
For the rest of her speech she explained how she would encourage business to return to the U.S. to give jobs to the people, and how the whole solar system was ready for advancement. Space exploration, in the future, could give every American a job, a house, and security.
She was done. She again thanked the crowd for coming, pleaded to them to disperse peacefully, and asked them to gather support in their communities for the year-end election. The Individual Party would be on the election ballots.
The crowd roared with approval, it was deafening, and the dozen or so television cameras recorded her first political speech. The best one she would ever make.
Chapter 11
Gold and Battle
Mars landed on the runway as Saturn landed inside the crater with the other shuttle. She had Johnny, Dr. Walls, and Lunar with her. They were ready to radio Beth and Monica to haul in a planeload of supplies, including smelting equipment for the gold chests.
Captain Pete mentioned that this airfield was totally devoid of life. There wasn’t one dog or animal that ran away on their approach.
The runway was as pockmarked as the road to Las Vegas, but at least areas of fresh black tarmac showed where the holes had been.
Mars and Captain Pete, wearing spacesuits but without helmets, walked as much of the hot runway as they could before it got too hot, checked in all the remains of hangars and buildings, and found absolutely nothing. They then lifted off and headed over into the crater.
Someone had already erected one tent, and Saturn’s crew had the radio on and ready. Nobody had been there for a while, as Mars found Saturn clearing a layer of dust off the tables and chairs. Pete saw that Dr. Walls had a small quiet generator going, and that SB-III already had its protective shield up.
Looking at the silver shuttle, Captain Pete thought back over the years. These shuttles of Ryan’s had covered more miles and landed in more different surroundings than any craft that had ever travelled on Earth.
He remembered them hovering into the Mars base, and on DX2017 when he had spent time down on the asteroid. He had seen them on Titan and Enceladus, when he had peered through the cameras of America One at them far below. Now in a few short days they had been to three countries on Earth. Currently SB-III was in a desolate crater in the middle of nowhere, a desolate desert that was most probably 300 degrees hotter than the other deserts in space. Then he realized that the planets were all desert, and so were the several other locations he hadn’t been to see SB-III land. He hoped Martin’s new shuttle was as sturdy and robust as this shuttle now standing in its protective shield high in a crater in the Sahara Desert.
Later that evening, as the sand around them cooled, they heard from the Dead Chicken that she was in the air. She would be refueled over the Indian Ocean, and her crew were twelve hours out.
Mars told Beth that there was no shade of any sort on the airfield. There was a refueling system connected to an underground tank and an old tractor had been left to move the massive aircraft around. He had an idea how to hangar the old bird, as he had taken the extra blue shield with him. It would be a big mistake.
They worked for several hours in shirts and shorts, their bodies now used to the gravity. They were also used to the heat, as the Nevada desert and the Australian island had been hot, and they readied the camp for more supplies. The freezers, three large chest freezers, were still pretty empty, as were the three refrigerators once the supplies from Nevada were unloaded.
There were no mosquitoes or flies up on the crater, and many slept part of the night outside until the cold desert made them move back under the tent. The NextGens didn’t realize that the hot desert could get so cold at night.
SB-III was on the tarmac the next morning as the C-5 could be seen on the horizon coming in from the east on final approach.
What Martin had not told them was that somebody had built a new storage area much closer than the 30 miles to the airfield. The new storage location consisted of one hangar with drums of diesel fuel, more generators, and a tarmac area so that a helicopter or two could land. Flying over it early that morning, and not seeing it on the way in, as it was camouflaged, Pete remembered that Ryan had set up a storage facility before the destruction of the airfield by the Chinese bombers a decade earlier. It seemed that the repairers had also refurbished this location, maybe by accident.
There was no way the C-5 could get in here, but at least the supplies could be kept closer to the crater, resulting in less shuttle fuel usage.
Beth, Monica and Bob walked down the C-5’s front loading ramp to greet the crew. SB-III looked small compared to the massive bird; the shuttle had been in its gut many times decades ago for its first launches into space. The newly painted Dead Chicken shone extremely brightly in the sunlight as the front loading area opened upwards.
“Less than a quarter load,” stated Bob, shaking hands. “We brought in an old jeep and a rusty flatbed desert-track truck the Prime Minister sent in case we need to travel across sand. Also, we have a yellow forklift which will help us unload. It can even lift itself onto the rear of the truck. Mars, Pete, we were refueled a second time just before we reached the African coast, and the C-5 has half tanks so that we can get out of here in a hurry if need be and be refueled on the way home. How long are we staying? It’s going to be hot out here without shade for the poor girl.”
“As long as it takes to remove the gold, Bob,” Mars smiled.
“Do you know how much gold is down there?” he asked, already knowing.
“No, but it is now or never,” Lunar added. “How much gold can this chicken carry?”
“Two hundred and fifty tons, but there is not that much down there. My father reckoned on 150… maybe 200 tons of the stuff. Soames told me that the latest gold price in Australia is 2,000 old U.S. dollars per ounce in Australia, compared to $1,875 in the rest of the world. It looks like we could have a bidding war on our hands.”
“Does he know that there is gold in the crater?” asked Lunar, quite shocked.
“No, I think Martin is the only one who knows it is somewhere around here,” replied Bob seriously. “To the rest of the world, if there is more of Ryan’s gold, it could only be on several bases of his, or like I told PM Soames, in space or buried like pirate treasure on a deserted island somewhere. That is if this place hasn’t been fully excavated by interested parties searching before we arrived. I bet somebody has dug into the crater, Martin, the Israelis or the Australian army, but I don’t think they would have dug deep enough. We will only know that when we either find gold or we don’t. Mars, was there any evidence in the crater of digging?”
Mars said that he couldn’t see any evidence, apart from a tent that was already erected, there were supplies, and the earthmoving vehicles had already been lifted up into the crater.
Captain Pete then explained to Bob about the new storage facility a couple of miles from the crater walls.
They all peered inside the aircraft’s hold. Apart from three vehicles, several large military tents, beds, piles of blankets, refrigerators, freezers, suitcases, pallets of water, beer, and several large 20-gallon plastic containers of alcohol for the Matt craft, there wasn’t much. There was one very important piece of equipment Mars had ordered from Prime Minister Soames—the small Cold Fusion plant now produced in Australia. It was the same model that Martin had in his aircraft, and it was the size of a large box, weighe
d 1,000 pounds, and was on its own small steel pallet.
They had also received one of these 30-megawatt units on the island for power. Over the last few weeks, the build crew on the island had modified the Cold Fusion plant’s protection layer and designed an outer layer around this one which made it impervious to non-atmospheric conditions and totally space-proof. Now it could be activated inside the shield. The fusion plant had arrived with a big generator, large enough to kickstart the reactor.
This power unit in a box could power 2,700 homes, and the build crew knew that it was powerful enough to power up a shield.
The water was very important, so the pallets were rolled out onto the tarmac, and once the truck was out, the forklift lifted the valuable water onto its rear bed. Once the alcohol and some of the supplies were crammed on, the truck, driven by an excited Lunar Richmond, and with her cab full with Johnny and Bob instructing her on desert driving skills, they headed towards the supply depot over twenty miles away. The jeep to be driven by Captain Pete was filled to capacity next. Once it disappeared in the same direction as the truck, only Saturn and Mars were left on the hot asphalt.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked her husband, helping him into his full spacesuit.
“I hope so,” he replied just before they added his helmet. “I’m not sure what stresses or pressure will be put on the airplane. I hope that these shields can protect and not harm these atmospheric craft. At least somebody will need a full spacesuit to get in to steal it, which should relieve the aircraft of much of the hot sun all day. We are going to be here for at least a month.”
With that, Mars had his helmet screwed on and headed over to the aircraft. He connected the large-wheeled generator to the Cold Fusion plant on the tarmac directly underneath the C-5. The plant began humming, and he disconnected the generator. With Saturn’s help he pulled it to the closest square of shade.
He was surprised when he turned on the blue shield. It grew and slowly inched along the whole aircraft. Only a foot or two of the outer wings were outside the shield once it stopped growing, and Mars stepped through the shield. The blueness inside reminded him of the red planet, and part of him yearned to return.
The Dead Chicken was sealed like the spacecraft were normally, maybe not as well, and he wondered if the sealing against atmospheric conditions kept the aircraft protected.
Once everybody was up in the crater a couple of hours later, they checked the sand for any clues as to whether somebody had dug recently. When they realized that the top layer of blown sand covered any evidence, Bob Mathews fired up one of the two earthmovers.
Bob had reminded Saturn that he and her grandfather, John Jones Senior, had done this the last time, and he was the only one in the current group who knew how to drive an earthmover. Johnny Walls watched what Bob did with a keen eye. He seemed eager to learn, but there was no way that Johnny could learn how to work one of these massive beasts within a day or two. Bob remembered exactly where he had dug before. The rest watched as the powerful machine began to dig into the sand surface, move sand and open a hole.
This time there was no rush, so the rest of the crew rested, sunbathed and watched as Bob worked 6 to 7 hours a day for the first three days. Once he was done for each day, Bob gave driving instruction to young Johnny.
Johnny, with Bob and his father’s help, slowly got the second earthmover moving, but it took another couple of days before Bob thought he could safely drive down the steep road into the hole.
As before, Bob had made a flattened path down into the hole, and it looped down and around the four sides. Johnny slowly inched his mammoth machine forward and went deeper, and then made sure that he kept to the middle of the flattened incline as he brought up his first shovel of bright white sand.
Mars couldn’t believe how deep Bob needed to go. Day after day they went deeper and deeper until, on the ninth day, both drivers returned beaming from ear to ear and told Mars to get his suit on.
Saturn wasn’t being left behind, nor was Lunar. Even Captain Pete donned his suit to solve his anxiety problem of there not being any gold left as Bob drove back down carrying Beth and Monica, along with shovels and brooms to clean away the last layer of sand.
An hour later, the four astronauts were carried down in Bob’s Caterpillar front bucket.
Bob had the handheld so that he could speak to the suits. “The door area is the part cleared. Mars, you need to use your telepathic skills somehow to open it, or we need to blast it. Commander Joot thought hard enough to open it the last time. Hopefully you can do the same. There should be a blue shield right underneath the door as you open it. We three will head back in case it is dangerous. Shout if you need help or have a problem.” With that his earthmover and its two female passengers headed up and out of the hole.
Ruler Roo had prepared Mars to open the door. “Think of the door. Look at it, study it, control it, and then close your eyes and command it to open. That is the way I was taught how to do it. If you can’t, then you will have to come and fetch me in Canada,” Mars remembered Roo telling him.
The girls had done a good job clearing away the last grains of sand, and the square edge of the flat horizontal door could be clearly seen.
Mars stared at the door. Roo had drawn a diagram of the door for him, and it looked exactly as it had done on Roo’s drawing. He concentrated on the door. The others stayed quiet. Nobody wanted to fly to pick up Roo.
I see the door vividly in my mind, thought Mars to himself. He really concentrated on the door in his mind and commanded it to open. Nothing happened. He tried again and again, until he remembered Roo telling him to actually open the door with his mind. Then he remembered which side of the door would open, concentrated on that part and made his mind open the door. He pictured the door opening, but was distracted by Saturn shouting into his ear that the door had vibrated. He opened his eyes and gave her a stare. She apologized. He looked at the door again for a full minute, made sure that Captain Pete had the tent nail ready in his hand to keep the door open if it moved and closed his eyes. This time he could see the door vividly and watched as a third party in his head as he saw his mind opening the door.
“There, the peg is in, Mars,” he heard Pete state calmly far, far away, and that brought him back to the present.
He looked at his handiwork and saw that the heavy-looking door was held open a foot, the length of the metal tent nail.
“I moved that?” he asked, not believing the power of his own mind. “Funny, I can only move Matt-made things with my mind. I’ve tried to move our things on America One, and here on Earth, but it just doesn’t work.”
“It took time, but the door suddenly rose out of the roof and opened just enough to allow me to get the nail in,” replied Pete.
“I will never think you a shallow-thinking husband ever again,” added Saturn, slapping him on the back of his suit gently. “Also, I think I must take a break from these suits, unless I can find a bigger one. The baby and I won’t fit in here much longer.”
As expected, a blue shield began rising out of the hole. Mars and Captain Pete opened the door fully, and one by one the astronauts headed through the shield wall and into the cavern. Even though they were in a vacuum, they could still feel the gravity of Earth. It was certainly not like being in the shield in space.
Mars immediately closed down the upper shield and opened the door in the floor to the second level. There was a second shield, and he did the same as before and opened up the third level. Here there was no shield.
They could look at the upper cavern once they had found the gold if it was still there, and with the shields in place, it had to be.
The gold, the Matt’s wealth if they wanted to start a new home on Earth, had weighed on all of their minds ever since they had all returned to Earth penniless, and each breathed a sigh of relief when the shelves of gold boxes of all sizes were found on the third level.
“This is going to take months!” exclaimed Captain Pe
te, walking between shelves of thousands of gold chests.
“We were warned,” stated Lunar. “Each box has to be taken up three flights of stairs by us.”
“No, once the shields are gone and the air safe, Dr. Walls, Johnny, Beth and Monica can help us,” replied Mars. “That makes eight of us, and one month of work instead of two. Maybe we should get a few more shuttles with more crew over now that orbital patrols could be a thing of the past.”
Lunar wasn’t prepared to give up on their protection in space just yet, but a couple of the build crew on the island didn’t have much to do. They discussed who to fly over as they ascended the stairs to the outside to allow fresh air to circulate. Moving gold certainly wasn’t spacesuit work.
Penelope Pitt landed in her shuttle the next day, and Pluto Katherine back on the island was ordered by Lunar to let the newer astronauts do a few stints in space with just one shuttle instead of two. Penelope was ordered to fly over and drop Pluto Katherine, who had been out of the excitement for too long, and anybody else who had nothing to do. Penelope would return and take over control of the base, her first real stint as Earth base commander.
The shuttle arrived 36 hours later and there was a shock at who was on board. Apart from four of their crew, Pluto Katherine had brought two good-looking Australian Air Force pilots to help. Lunar’s face had paled as she calmly asked her sister why she had brought non-crewmembers.
“Lunar, this is Flight Lieutenant Gary Darwin, the guy I have gotten to know while you were having fun over here. The other good-looking Aussie is Flight Lieutenant Mark Price. Both are high-security cleared and, remember, flew their Prime Minister in for the wedding? He gave them and two others permission to spend a few weeks with us, as you allowed them to do.”
“G’day, Commander Richmond,” said both men together, standing to attention in Australian flight overalls and saluting.