by T I WADE
They worked with Mars, as did Dr. Nancy, who had regained her strength with Captain Pete feeding her well, on getting his arm applied to the stump below his shoulder and connecting all the attachments so that cybernetic impulses could feed through to the robotic hand.
It would take Mars at least a year or more to regain full control of his “flying arm” as he called it, but by the time they reached Earth, he would be familiar with its workings.
Saturn Noble was now in command of flight and she worked with Captain Pete, who was still acting-commander in getting the crew back. Nobody thought to use the radios.
With the cargo holds full of the ingots melted from the tunnel, 33 crewmembers flew towards a hole in space where one day the earth would plant itself.
Three months later Captain Pete had very little to do. They were still more than 20 million miles from Earth. He thought it the right time to check that the three radio systems aboard were working and through the intercom, not the radio, asked Jenny Burgos in SB-III to turn on her radios for checks.
“Jenny, I want to service our three radios, then I’ll come across with Max and spend a few days with you servicing yours.”
“Copy that, Captain Pete. We are out of cocoa for Suzi’s famous chocolate cake, could you spacewalk some over when…”
“Nevada base to Planet Mission. Nevada base to The Club Retreat. Nevada base to any Astermine shuttles in space, if you hear this transmission, please acknowledge. Nevada base to Planet Mission. We have new satellites in orbit around Earth and can transmit around the entire solar system… Jack, I wish we would get a response,” stated the familiar voice of Jerry, the head radio operator from the base.
“Did you hear that or am I hearing things, Captain Pete?” stated Jenny Burgos totally shocked in SB-III.
“I heard it. Damn, we should have followed the radio protocol we had in America One—to always have all radios on. Thank God! They have satellites back up in space. We certainly have been away for quite a while.”
“Three years, nine months, and fourteen days,” stated Jenny. “And I for one will be glad to be back.”
“Sierra Bravo IV to Nevada Ground Control, do you copy? I’m ready to grant you your wish, Jerry. Good to hear your voice, this is Pete.” There was silence for several minutes as the message reached Earth, the radio crew in Nevada got over their shock and replied.
“Pete, Pete, is that you? Get Lunar, we have contact! Sierra Bravo IV, are you really out there?”
“SB-IV to Nevada base, yes Jerry, it’s your old buddy Pete. Hearing you as if we are neighbors across the fence. You know I have a habit of getting lost in space, and I seem to always get back to Earth. Tell the crew we were delayed by storms again. SB-III and SB-IV are in formation 81 days out from Earth orbit. It is fantastic that we can hear you so far out. Speed 47,000 knots, and that’s been stable for 87 days. We had to get off the planet early, so doing a slow cruise to reach you guys in 81 days’ time. The storm reappeared and cut us off from our base. Thirty-three crewmembers aboard, and we have good supplies of food water and fuel to reach Earth. The storm reappeared and cut us off from our base. Thirty-three crewmembers aboard, we have good supplies of food water and fuel to reach you, over.”
“Thank God!” stated Lunar Richmond several minutes later when the transmission returned. “We launched three communication satellites thirteen months ago, got them active about 150 days ago and have nearly destroyed these mikes trying to get a response from you guys. I assume you did not have your radios on, Captain?”
“We did not. As you and I agreed on during our last visit to The Retreat, it was decided to save them, since they just wasted power and got old at the same time. I was about to service them and Jerry then scared the bejesus out of Jenny Burgos and me. She is in command of SB-III, I’m in command of the mission and Saturn command of SB-IV. A few changes, I’m afraid.”
For several hours Captain Pete brought the ground crew up to date on the mission. No planets or places were mentioned. There certainly were hundreds, if not thousands, of earthlings listening in.
Saturn, and many of the crew, got on the radio to say hello to Lunar, Pluto Katherine and their friends back at base. Everybody was sad about Johnny Walls, and Lunar said that she would go and tell his father who was at The Pig’s Snout in the Sahara personally.
Mars sent his message saying that he was fine, looking more like his father every day and would be fit for active duty when they arrived.
“Oh Lunar, how is the new mother ship coming along?”
“Not well,” Lunar replied four minutes later. “Our mining mission did not return with exactly what was needed. Work has shut down in many departments and we are sending build crew personnel home. We are out of copper and many of the necessary rare earth metals. The gold is all gone, so is what we need to buy it back, we are in a lousy position, and I cannot say more over the radio, over.”
“You need gold?” Mars replied excitedly.
“Gold would work instead of copper wiring, yes, and everything else we went to 2030JD for,” was her reply.
“Well,” smiled Mars. “Just send the crew on a three-month vacation. We have a little of what you need, everything you went to 2030JD for, well maybe not everything, I’m not the chemistry major, but we do have supplies in our holds of most of what you need. I will not say more, so sleep well at night, Lunar, your prince in shining armor is only 81 days away.”
“Thank God!” stated Lunar again.
Chapter 22
Wake Up Time!
It had been really weird to speak to friends 20 million miles away, Saturn mentioned one morning to Lunar over lunch. The radio call had been free, a good gossip channel, real long distance, and the whole world was listening in so they had to be careful in what they had said to each other.
They had returned to Earth the week before, and as usual, the old-looking wheelchairs had to be taken out for the returning astronauts.
Saturn was still in her wheelchair 24 hours later to help Mikey and herself rehabilitate back to the nasty, heavy gravity of the home planet.
Once the returning crew had realized that they had permanent communications, they had tried to reach The Martian Club Retreat. Unfortunately, the crew still on the red planet had done as expected and turned off their radios to save them. Nobody was expected to be around until the next opposition.
“I really don’t want to go back until Mikey is really strong,” stated Saturn to her best friends Lunar and Pluto Katherine holding Mikey.
The weather on Earth was hot, the smells rich, and the real atmosphere beautiful.
“And now that I’m pregnant again, I assume I’m not much use for the next few years. Maybe I should head up command of the base here, or in Australia?”
“You are not alone,” smiled Lunar in return, and Pluto Katherine nodded.
“I’m also three months,” she stated. “It seems we girls need to stay home and keep the home fires burning.”
“It’s about bloody time, Pluto Katherine. You are a baby behind Lunar and me. Did you need to read up on what to do or something?”
Mars Noble was in the robotics department, also in a wheelchair, and the crew were looking through old cybernetic boards and hardware to see if they could better Max’s arm he had applied to Mars on the return flight. They were also discussing the robots built on Mars and how the robots the Martian crew had made could help the mother ship build up in orbit.
It had been heaven for the whole crew that had arrived back to finally be rid of the crew compartments from both shuttles after being cooped in there for nine months.
As usual, the returning crew to the ground crew had looked thin, pasty, and each one was wheeled off to the infirmary, including Dr. Nancy.
“What are the supply levels left for the crew at The Retreat?” Lunar asked Saturn.
“Well, for the remaining crewmembers, they have about twenty years of water in the system. The power plants are forever. The three external shield
s can produce far more than they can consume, and the base is on maximum food savings and drying in case those nasty Matts return after the storm ends. Captain Pete reckons that this one large storm and the baby storms around it has plagued us since we started having these hurricanes, or whatever they are, and by the time we get back in two years’ time, this single pain-in-the-butt storm should be closer to being gone forever. It seems that it just runs around the planet, but it is getting weaker, we believe. The crew, even if they are attacked, can lose all three shields and survive for at least a decade.”
“Good,” replied Lunar. “Since you were attacked, I’m sure that there are more, and I don’t want to risk our shuttles and crew to more of these people. They don’t want peace, and fire at us without warning, which means we are at war with them. I think the best plan is the new mother ship and all our shuttles head back as a fleet to finally rid these nasty Matts from Mars once and for all. In two years’ time, Dave Black will turn on the radios waiting for our arrival, and then we can tell them we are not coming until my father, Jonesy and VIN are back in command.”
“We should arm America Two like a battleship,” added Pluto Katherine.
“Like twenty battleships,” laughed Saturn, “and by then I should be ready for my next command. I know that Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy are done. They talked nothing else but fishing, Earth, and the islands all the way back. She nearly died giving my husband so much blood, Lunar.”
For the next two years, the departments returned to maximum production with the valuable mineral bounty returned from Mars. There was everything they needed, and if one metal wasn’t available they found ways to use another that was in plentiful supply. America Two would only be 3 years behind schedule, and Lunar stated to the entire crew that there was no return to the red planet until her father was back in command.
The ship in space grew in size, the wives had their children, and early in the two-year period President Dithers Roo swept into her second term with ease. Roo and Jo had returned to Washington to be by her side for her second term.
The country was mending. The world around them was getting strong again, and launches into space were started by other countries.
Space exploration wasn’t only important to Astermine. The rest of the world had a big enough job bringing the planet back into alignment in industry, and three years after the crew returned from Mars, basic materials began to flow into the Nevada base from rapidly growing companies across the country and the world.
The children grew, and the NextGens matured into adult men and women, and still DX2017 travelled around the solar system with its crew fast asleep and totally alienated from the happenings on Earth.
The crew on Mars had been connected by radio a month earlier than expected. They were ecstatic that there was real communications from Earth, and sad that the next visit wasn’t going to happen.
The most recent storm had lasted 11 months and then one day was suddenly gone. They had no ships to launch to inspect whether it was about to return. Nor had the enemy returned. The shields were doing well growing far more than they needed, and they had so much food in storage that they would need to reduce production in two of the shields after the next growing schedule.
Mars Noble recuperated and was given a more modern prosthetic arm with the latest in cybernetics. He could use his new metal arm as well as the old one and returned to flying shuttles into orbit with the whole family as co-pilots—Saturn with their two growing children.
When they had time off in the fourth year, they caught a ride with Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy to the island of Australia. Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy were retiring from space flight and wanted to spend the rest of their lives with Bob Mathews and crew. The Astermine fishing fleet was certainly growing rapidly.
Mars, Saturn, and family, Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy headed over to the island and had several ingots of gold with them. The gold was payment for the mission to Mars, and all the money was spent on the two ordered and ready fishing boats for family Jones and family Noble, and Captain Pete spent his on a new boat for him and Nancy.
The rest of the astronauts flew the shuttles for that year. The schedule was pretty easy, and a shuttle headed up once a week with supplies. The larger two shuttles carried up the outer skin panels of America Two, and the smaller shuttles the inside instruments and accommodation/department needs.
Time passed by happily for the Astermine crew. Months changed into years, the children began the same school curriculum their parents had learned at age 4, and Mikey Noble entered the flight simulator on his fifth birthday.
The flight seats inside the simulator, one each for the pilot and the co-pilot, could be moved down and forward enough to able a small child to do basic maneuvers. This was all that was needed for the first 18 months of simulator training.
As time passed, DX2017 headed closer and closer to Earth. The main topic of discussion in 2047, eight years after they had returned from Mars as young adults, was when they should fly to the planet to awaken their parents, the “OldGens” as they were now nicknamed.
The distance to DX2017 was the factor that made them have to wait. The map of the solar system, and the asteroid’s journey around the vast area, showed that the best time was in the last month of the eleventh year, a year and 200 days from then. Including the time they had waited to leave Mars, the exact time the OldGens had been asleep was fourteen years.
At 190,000 miles from Earth, it would be at its closest point, and Lunar decided to wait until the time was perfect, as she wanted America Two to be a gift to her father, and actually fetch the sleepers in Astermine’s newest craft.
The building of the ship was only six months from completion, but the systems still needed hundreds of flight and instrument checks and tests before it could attempt such a journey.
So the date the asteroid would be closest to Earth, the original date given to the sleeping crew, stayed as the day to fetch the rest of the Astermine family.
President Dithers Roo had ended her second term successfully in Washington a year earlier. The country had come a long way in the eight years she had been President, and the elections succeeded in giving the U.S.A. it’s second female President, one of Joanne’s closest allies, Debbie West. It seemed that the Freedom Party was going to rule for another four years, and Penelope Pitt had been asked by the new President-elect Debra West to be her Vice President.
History was being made as both the President and Vice President of the United States of America were female.
They say that good, or bad, things happen in threes.
Joanne’s father died a very unhappy man a month before the elections and was laid to rest in his favorite city, Atlanta. So did the oldest and most senior Astermine scientist in Nevada a day later, and thirdly Sergeant Meyers passed away peacefully on the base a day after the scientist was buried in the base’s new graveyard. It seemed that many wanted to rest at their place of work.
These deaths made the younger crew realize that their OldGens, mostly their parents, had been given a second chance on life, and they prayed often that they had survived.
Life for the astronauts went on as usual on both sides of the world. Everybody matured and the fishing in Australian waters was always good.
America Two completed her tests two years after Joanne, Roo and their family of two children returned to Nevada, she as a United States citizen and the first ex-President to refuse her Secret Service attachment.
Ruler Roo was ready to take up his new command as leader of The Martian Club Retreat, but was happy to wait to see the awakening of his old friends. Everybody was counting down the days to rejoining friends and family.
By the time the 31 members of the crew, who had parents asleep on DX2017, launched to join the new ship in orbit, many hadn’t slept well for weeks. The young children were not allowed on board and stayed with Pluto Katherine back on base.
Both SB-IV and SB-V launched for the occasion, as three dozen younger crewmembers were
taking over the building of America Three from the three retiring crews working 24/7 currently in orbit.
The sight of the new spaceship was majestic for everyone. At nine hundred feet across the wheel structure, she could be seen floating by her build bay from 25 miles out.
The second build bay had two sections of the third ship joined together, a sixth of the round wheel section of America Three tethered to its cubed structure.
The third mother ship was also behind schedule, and fresh metal supplies were needed from Mars. They were running out, and the growing suppliers on Earth couldn’t keep up with the dwindling supplies of rare earth metals on the planet. China was still not selling their rare earth metals to anybody, especially Astermine.
It was certainly an eye-opening experience when the entire crew walked around the new ship wearing the usual metal shoes. The inside area of the ship was about a third larger than America One. There were several cargo bays instead of the growing cubes that had been the center point of the first mother ship. The cargo bays could take vast amounts of cargo across the solar system, and the two struts of the wheel were the elevators from the center point up to the wheel itself. On the inside skin of the circular wheel were a dozen docking ports for the shuttles, out of the way of the laser guns above the wheeled structure.
Above the cargo bays and on the outer layer of the forty-foot-wide wheel structure were the corridors and living quarters. This ship could easily sleep 300 crewmembers in its accommodations.
The bridge was in the middle, on the front hub of the wheel, and was about the same size as the old bridge, except that this ship bristled with laser weapons. Twelve lasers had been erected on the exterior sections of the wheel, and each could fire independently at different targets. Each one was connected to a small Cold Fusion power plant, which gave them double the firepower of the older lasers on the first shuttles. Also, new cooling systems around the barrels had been designed to double the length of time the lasers could fire.