by gerald hall
“Well, Arthur. It is about a certain mutual friend of ours. I would like to see about getting some of her friends and family out of harm’s way back on Earth. I was hoping that perhaps you would tell me who they are so that I can start making the arrangements.”
“I am correct that you are referring to Deborah? She certainly is not the type to pull strings on her own behalf. She is particularly selfless in that way, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, I brought the idea to her earlier today. But as you said, she did not want to use her influence to take what she considers to be undue advantage of the situation.”
“So what do you want to do, Colonel?” Matt asked after finally removing all of his protective gear.
“I was hoping that you could tell me about the people still on Earth that she is closest to. I know that she has a lot of friends who came from that same town in Central Ohio, including the family that raised Deborah after her parents disappeared.
One other thing, please call me Matt. I’m here as Deborah’s friend, not as the commander of the colony’s security force.”
“OK, Matt.” Arthur said with a smile. “Well, if you are going to do this, you have to start with Deborah’s adoptive parents and their extended family. They’ve got four children, plus spouses, offspring and significant others that you would have to gather up.
Now Aaron Marcum is already up here since his wife Miriam is one of the polymaths. There are the twins, Nathan and Nancy. You might have to do a little negotiation with Nathan since he is a Major with the North Carolina National Guard. I know that Nancy is married and has a couple of children of her own. Suzanne has just finished college in North Carolina, but I believe that she is still single.
You also have Jeff and Melanie Knox. Deborah and Melanie have been close friends ever since Deborah could walk and talk. They have a few kids who still live in the area though I don’t know them particularly well. I only briefly got to meet them at the wedding.
There is also Marilyn Barnes and her two children Benjamin and Lissette. The kids have really made something of themselves creating their own small custom manufacturing business out there in Ashley.
There are probably others, but those are the closest thing to family that Deborah has still down on Earth. The biggest problem will be that the older ones like Deborah’s parents, the Knox’s and even Marilyn Barnes. They will probably not want to leave their homes to the Islamists. They would much rather fight and die than just abandon everything and leave.
The younger ones like the Marcum twins and Marilyn’s children are the ones that we might just be able to convince to come up here though. They are all very accomplished as well in their own right. That will make it a lot easier to justify making space for them on one of our evacuation shuttles too. They will make a valuable contribution to us here.”
“Thank you for the information, Arthur. If you can give me any more details, please email them to me. I will get started right away on making arrangements for as many of Deborah’s extended ‘family’ to be evacuated to Hebes Chasma as possible before it is too late.”
“Thank you, Matt. I’m sure that Deborah will appreciate seeing all of the familiar faces from her childhood once again.”
“Well, I better get going, Arthur. Good luck with your latest invention here, whatever it is.” Matt said with a pleasant smile before turning and leaving Arthur’s lab.
Arthur smiled too until Matt had left and closed the door. He knew that Deborah would enjoy seeing her family and friends from back home once again. But Matt did not know that the days of that reunion could be very limited, especially with one of the projects that Arthur and about a hundred of the other polymaths were working on.
Most of Deborah’s friends would end up having to say goodbye to her one more time after they arrive here. Only this time, it would most definitely be a last farewell for her.
Speaking of Deborah, Arthur had asked her to come visit him at his lab a little later in the day. He wanted to finally tell her about the secrets that he and several hundred of his fellow polymaths had kept hidden.
A gentle chime informed Arthur that his guest had arrived. He opened the door to his lab and Deborah promptly came in. She gave her old friend a warm hug after arriving.
“Peter and I have barely seen you at all in the past few months, Arthur. You should have come by to visit us and the twins at least to say hello every once in a while.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve just been very busy with this new project of mine. It actually the reason why I invited you here. You know that I never did tell you exactly how the gravity drive technology worked.”
“I know. I figured that you wanted to keep that under wraps because of what might happen if someone from a foreign power obtained that technology.”
“Well, that’s true. The real secret is that it runs off of dark, or what some scientists call, negative matter and energy.”
“You found it? I know that many scientists had speculated about dark matter and energy for a long time. But they had not been able to find conclusive proof of it, much less discover real examples of it.”
“Well, I did. Of course, I had help from a few hundred of our fellow polymaths. I had to arrange to have probes flown to the dark side of the moon onboard several conventional rockets. These probes had a new kind of sensor and collection device onboard a nuclear-powered rover.
Anyway, one of the rovers found and collected a small sample of what we suspected was dark matter. The rover then brought the sample container to a return vehicle that was launched back to Earth for me to examine. It was everything that we had imagined. The sample was also just large enough to use to construct the gravity drive modules for my prototype gravity drive shuttle Manassas.”
“I remember that one of the first flights that you took with Manassas after rescuing that crippled rocket was a flight to the Moon. You went back for more dark matter on that flight, didn’t you?”
“Very good, my friend. That is exactly what I did. Our collectors were a lot more efficient too by then. I was able to collect enough dark matter to power literally hundreds of gravity drive modules. That allowed us to build all of our existing fleet of shuttles and more. We have also equipped all of our deep space probes with advanced dark matter collectors as well. So, our stockpile of this new exotic form of matter and energy has been steadily increasing as well as our knowledge of its qualities.” Arthur explained.
“I have a feeling that all of this is leading to something else, Arthur. Come on now. Give it up.” Deborah chided.
“You’re right, Deborah. We now have enough of this critical material to begin working on our next big project. You are familiar with the faster than light or warp drive that the physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed over fifty years ago, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. I also remember that for many years after that, scientists said that the Alcubierre Drive was impossible to build without the use of exotic matter. But you have that now, don’t you?”
“Correct. We also have further refined the power and exotic matter requirements for the drive to the point that we believe that we are able to build an interstellar ship. In fact, we can build a ship large enough to take all of us to a new world to start again, free of any threat.”
“What do you mean by ‘all of us’, Arthur?”
“We will be able to take all of the polymaths and their entire families. Before you object to this, we already have enough talented people here at Hebes Chasma, outside of our community of polymaths, to keep the colony operating and even continuing to expand it. The terraforming of Mars is also progressing far more quickly than anyone would have dared imagine. Humanity will be able to survive on Mars without the help of us.”
“So we are going to abandon them?”
“No, my friend. You should know better than anyone that we, the children of Earth, need to go out and find our own destiny far away from the strife that has been perpetrated by our ancestors. We can go find our own Garden of Eden and put aside th
e iniquities that we have had to suffer through. The people that we leave behind here will have their own destiny as well. Hopefully, they too, will find their way to the stars and new worlds to settle on.”
“This is going to require a tremendous effort to build a ship large enough to hold us all, Arthur. Besides, when someone on Earth sees this vessel taking shape, they are going to immediately panic. Who knows what scared men will do then?”
“We believe that the construction will both be far simpler and less obvious than anyone dares imagine. You see, we have already started the process. One of the Class-M asteroids that is being pushed into Martian orbit will have its interior hollowed out for our purposes. As far as most people are concerned, we are simply mining the asteroid for valuable metals and to turn its interior into another habitat.
The reality is that we are also turning it into a starship with an advanced version of the Alcubierre warp drive incorporated inside. It will still take some time to complete. But we are all confident that it will work. All of the polymath community, including myself, pray that you will come with us when the ship is finished and ready for flight.”
Deborah silently stood there after hearing Arthur’s revelation. She had not anticipated this, even though Deborah was aware that some of the polymaths had been working on several very secretive projects within one of the newly excavated tunnel complexes. She was much more focused on her husband and children than anything else during the last few years.
“What about my brothers and sisters who are supposed to be coming here from Earth? Will they and their families be coming on this starship too when it is ready?”
“If they want to, we will be more than happy to allocate space for them, Deborah. We certainly owe you that much for all that you have done for us.” Arthur warmly replied.
“Thank you, Arthur. You have given me a lot to think about. Just to think that I was just getting accustomed to living here on Mars. Now, you have just told me that we will be going to the stars soon.” She responded.
“Well, it’s not going to happen overnight, my friend. It is going to still take years before the ship is ready. We are still going to keep all of this under wraps for as long as possible for security reasons, of course. But until then, we have so many possibilities to dream about, don’t we?”
“Yes, we certainly do.” Deborah replied, already quietly sad about the probability of having to leave yet another home.
Chapter Thirty:
Eastern Alliance Evacuation Center
Charlottesville, Virginia
May 1, 2048
The support crew for the next gravity shuttle flight waited patiently for the next flight to come in. The half-dozen men and woman had flown down from the last flight about three weeks earlier and stayed to spend some time on Earth-normal gravity before they would fly back out on the next shuttle to go back to Hebes Chasma.
During this time, the crewmembers took the time to visit friends and family that were still on Earth. It was springtime in Charlottesville and all of the trees and plants were blooming. This was a unique opportunity for the Martian colonists to get to enjoy this part of Earth while they still could. But they still thought about the events on Earth that have forced so many people to consider leaving the world of their birth.
“It’s getting a little hairy down there now with the evacuations. We’ve already had to dodge several missiles that have been fired at us, either by infiltrators or by fighter-interceptors racing in on one-way suicide missions. The Caliphate and the Arab Brotherhood both want desperately to shoot down our gravity drive shuttles. As a result, we’ve had to install some defensive countermeasures aboard our gravity drive shuttles to protect against enemy missiles.” Eric Carter, the gravity drive shuttle’s pilot commented.
“What are you using?” James Belmont asked. He was one of the Eastern Alliance technicians providing ground support for the evacuation effort. James had been working near Titusville, Florida previously, but had been away at the time of the Islamist nuclear attack on the Cape Canaveral launch facilities.
“We have placed retractable chaff and flare dispensers aboard to supplement the active radar jamming equipment. The dispensers have to be retractable to protect them during reentry from the heat. Otherwise, they are pretty much just standard USAF equipment that we were able to procure from a couple of Eastern Alliance air bases.” Eric explained.
“Well, be very careful out there. We won’t want to lose any of our gravity drive shuttles or any of their crews either. It is bad enough seeing what those bastards did to the Cape with that nuke. I lost a lot of good friends out there from that attack.”
“I promise that I will, James. We are doing most of our evacuations from along the Eastern Seaboard, with the advance of the Caliphate over the Mississippi River now. But we are also staying at least a few kilometers inland to reduce our vulnerability to the sort of attack that your friends at the Cape suffered. Even so, we already have the potential threat from Caliphate fighters interfering with our operations. They have been trying to slip in after taking off from airfields in Venezuela and elsewhere in northeastern South America. As a result, our flights are virtually all personnel evacuations now rather than cargo runs.”
“What are we doing to vet the people who are trying to leave to go to Mars? I know that there are many thousands who want to escape the Islamists.”
“First, they are going to be thoroughly vetted here at the evacuation sites. A select number will go straight to Mars. The others who can get a seat on a shuttle will go to the lunar base next. Once there, we can try to sort things out some more. But unless we limit ourselves to only bringing children from the lunar base to Hebes Chasma, we are going to have a hell of a time ensuring that we don’t have any Islamist infiltrators slipping in to a flight to Mars.
That is the last thing that we need too. We have to let people know that we only have a limited number of seats. I hate to do this, but we have to utilize Sali’s database on all American citizens. If there is the least bit of doubt about a person, they will not get on a ship to Mars. If Sali doesn’t know a person, they don’t go either.”
“This really sucks that we don’t really have enough places of safe refuge to take all of these people.”
“Ultimately, the blame still has to go on the shoulders of the Arab Brotherhood and the Pacific Caliphate. They are the ones who are waging a war of aggression against the non-Muslim world. They have tremendous amount of space and resources available, especially after the massive depopulation that occurred in the wake of the nuclear autumn. There was no need for them to fight us. We could have all lived in peace.”
“I know. But they feel that they have a mandate from their god that they must place all of humanity under sharia law, regardless of the cost.” James noted.
“That still doesn’t make it right. The God that I know is a loving God who believes in giving humanity the choice to freely choose to follow Him, not to have that choice made for us at the tip of a bloody sword. ”
“We just don’t have the people or the will to fight them off this time, unlike the warriors who fought against the last Muslim offensives against the West over eight hundred years ago. Back then, they had warriors like Charlemagne, Charles Martel and John Sobieski. Now, we have no great leaders who can and are willing to inspire other to fight and sacrifice on the scale necessary to win this war for the survival of Western culture and civilization.”
“We have some fine leaders out there. They are leading the people of small towns and rural communities in the fight. They are also leading the National Guard companies and small aircraft detachments out there. These ‘sheepdogs’ are the ones buying the time for the rest of them.”
“I hope that we can save as many of these brave ‘sheepdogs’ as we can. But I am afraid that most of them will sacrifice themselves in battle to save the others in their care.”
“That is the way of the sheepdog, isn’t it?” Eric sadly said.
“How is the s
creening process going? I know that we are taking some extraordinary measures to select who gets a ticket to fly to Mars.”
“Sali is going through everyone’s background that shows up trying to get evacuated. That starts with their education, skills and work experience. Then she grades on other criteria like age, medical history, fertility, possible genetic abnormalities based on family history, their psychological profile and finally they get asked a battery of questions during a series of interviews where their physiological reactions reveal whether or not they are a possible infiltration threat.
We have already caught nearly fifty people who had been attempting come to Mars who were proven to be threats to Hebes Chasma. A few people who had been turned down tried to claim that we were using racial profiling. However, we quickly demonstrated that race was most definitely not one of the criteria that we used in our selection process.”
“That argument wouldn’t work on Hebes Chasma anyway. The polymaths alone, much less all of the other people there, come in practically every color and ethnicity that humanity has. Race had absolutely nothing to do with who has gone to Mars. Ability and a willingness to work for the future of mankind matter far more there than any other factor.”
“There are still a lot of people on the other side of that fence out there, hoping to escape the Islamists. I can’t say that I blame them.”
“It is still a shame that so many of them are completely unwilling to take up arms to fight for their freedom instead. If they did take responsibility for their freedom, the Islamists wouldn’t have a chance.”
“What can I say? There are a lot of sheep out there and far too few sheepdogs to deal with the wolves out there. Even so, the sheepdogs still haven’t exactly the most popular folks around most of the time as far as the sheep are concerned. But isn’t that how things have always been?” Eric sadly commented.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” James replied as the two men looked out from the top of a hill towards the perimeter of the evacuation center complex.