by WADE, T I
Astermine I and II, the two mining ships with their belly pods, were about to be completed in a month. Much smaller craft, they could comfortably take 24 crewmembers plus two pilots back to Earth. Using the blue shields for reentry, they could reenter the atmosphere and land back on the blue planet with ease. Asterspace Three was the last to be reconfigured, and would be able to carry thirty plus two.
With the base’s population at 244, the remaining 54 of the crew could use America One, which still had living space for 100. Nobody yet worried about population numbers, and had no need to.
Jonesy’s mind returned to the present.
“Our first showing tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is something that our dearly beloved Mr. Rose has spent fourteen years perfecting: a barrel-aged Cabernet Merlot.” There were the usual oohs and aahs from the wine lovers in the crowd. “Mr. Rose, if you please, and don’t drink it all yourself!”
There was much applause as the long-white-haired biologist walked on stage with one bottle of red wine. He bowed to the audience, and the room stilled to listen.
“Fellow friends of The Martian Club Retreat, I have the honor to show you the first bottle of Batch Two, our first red wine Frau Noble and I made while we were still in orbit around Earth. This wine was made from Californian grapes of two varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. This bottle is from our first vines General Jones lifted up before he was even married.”
There was hearty applause for the astronaut.
“Let me tell you about those vines. They are our oldest vines, and we have half of Cube One in the mother ship full of new plants from these first 3 dozen vines. Because they were brought up from Earth in a mature state, they already had grapes on them. From this first batch of red, we produced 50 gallons. Ten percent disappeared through time while aged in our two 25 gallons oak casks, and we bottled them eleven years ago. Today we have 54 bottles in total. Frau Noble and I tried a bottle five years ago.” There was more applause. “We kept this one batch to make a vintage, and just to remind you wine drinkers, we have drunk most of the other batches since this one was produced, but good news. We still have two more vintage batches for you in the future. During our intermission this evening, you will be able to have a glass or two each – that is, if you partake of jet fuel, as our Commander Joot describes fourteen years of alcohol perfection.”
Everyone looked in the commander’s direction, and he smiled, thinking that he would never taste whatever the clever biologist was talking about.
The crowd watched as Ryan walked onto the stage with a wine opener and with a background of rolling drums helped Mr. Rose open the first bottle. Suzi and Kathy Richmond brought up four glasses and performed a wine tasting in front of everybody.
The second show was a new cloth for clothing made from hemp, which caused Jonesy to shout out that he now knew why Captain Pete was always up in America One, where the hemp was grown in Cube Two.
During intermission, the wine was tasted and Jonesy gave Commander Joot a glass and dared him to try it. Tow egged the commander on, and for the first time in his life, “jet fuel” passed his lips.
It was the most beautiful thing the commander had ever tasted. It tasted like earth, like soil, vines and grapes, and it was as smooth as silk. He couldn’t take just one sip, and emptied his glass. Even Jonesy looked on at the transformation of Joot’s face. He actually enjoyed the stuff. The others already knew it was good, very good, and most of the batch was drunk during an extended intermission, with Mr. Rose stating that a Batch Five Vintage would be ready next Christmas.
The third showing was a new strain of avocado-cucumber by Suzi and her department, with pieces served to the population by the NextGen biologists.
Silence reigned as the next presentation was readied. VIN Noble could be heard giving somebody orders from behind the side curtains. The room was silent as the first mechanical robot marched onto the stage next to the Head of Security.
The robot walked as easily as VIN did, dressed in military camouflage uniform. It carried a small weapon in its right hand the size of a hand gun. The weapon was connected to an empty-looking backpack.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Fritz Robot, the one and only mechanical Fritz Warner, and copied from most of his body parts.”
There was loud applause.
“Fritz Robot hasn’t got its backpack on yet, and is running on battery power, exactly like my legs do. The backpack would be radioactive in here. Each of our new security guards will dress themselves in their new own plutonium power packs once outside our shields. Only then will its laser become operational. Until then, Fritz Robot has a black belt in Judo and Karate and can take your head off with one blow.”
The crowd was totally silent as two men entered from the other side with a one inch thick tube of metal about twelve feet long. The robot, on VIN’s command, hit the metal hard with its right hand, bent it into a perfect square in less than ten seconds and jumped through it. Even Jonesy was impressed.
For the next twenty minutes VIN explained that Sergeant Fritz Robot was the first of six robots on production. Its laser was accurate up to twenty miles over land or through space, and the robot’s eyes were its aiming systems, copies of the powerful cameras given to the crew from the last visit to Israel. Plutonium-238 from the backpack fed the dozen batteries inside its system, and the robot would be powered up for about 70 years. Fritz Robot could run faster and jump higher than VIN.
It then jumped as high as VIN did when ordered, turned and moved in sequence as VIN gave it further orders, and even waltzed with Maggie Jones to music when she was asked up on stage.
“Once they are outside, they will be radioactive, which means they cannot ever return inside the shields,” continued VIN. “Sergeant Warner’s buddies will be ready in twelve months and altogether will be our external security unit, and we have three more robots on the build schedule, who will only be battery operated and will be able to work inside. Their batteries from our friends at Tesla, now in Israel, will have fifteen hours of full exercise.”
“What about housemaids for cleaning and cooking?” shouted one crewmember.
VIN told her that they were on the schedule and were still 2 to 3 years out.
It was a great night, and so were the other nights, which took on a much lighter fun-filled tone as the festivities wore on.
“We need to vote on a possible visit to Earth beginning in two months’ time,” said Ryan to the astronauts in the same room ten months later. “The journey will last two years, and if we think it necessary, one shuttle will make the journey landing in Australia.”
Three years and eight months had gone by since their return to the red planet, and much to Jonesy’s distaste, most of the astronauts present didn’t think it necessary for a return again just yet. Only Jonesy wanted to return, and Ryan decided to put it off for another two years. Ryan added to the unhappy Mr. Jones that the blue planet was due to bypass Earth and Mars in four years’ time, and Jonesy was persuaded that a return during the next opposition was a serious affair, as they could come back with far more supplies on DX2017.
It was exactly a year later when the visitors returned. VIN was in his spacesuit checking on his six troops. They had worked well, had intercoms to his suit, and could take orders from VIN or Fritz Warner, when Vitaliy, who was in charge of the mother ship 200 miles above, came over the intercom. His radar showed two small craft approaching from the east.
Alarms went off inside the base and Commander Joot and a few others immediately went to climb into their spacesuits.
VIN gathered his six robots a few yards outside the shields. They had been ready for months. VIN had personally trained them in tactics like creeping up on an enemy, attacking an assailant and holding an enemy captive instead of pulverizing them into hamburger meat. VIN was also the only human who could keep up with them on the Martian surface when they went for slow runs. VIN, his legs operating on batteries, had only an hour on full power to try his best to keep up with
them. With the limited gravity on the planet, and taking large strides, he and the six robots managed to cover ground at what he thought over 50 miles an hour.
When he wanted to push them to their limit, he had to fly with Jonesy in the shuttle and watch them cover the ground at well over double that. Their strides alone were ten yards at a time.
Also they had been built like modern tanks, able to run and fire accurately at the same time. VIN had actually been waiting for the aliens to arrive, as he had the first indoor security guard standing inside the blue shield. Like him, these robots ran only on battery power, had an Electrolaser instead of a laser, could walk around outside the shields, but as yet hadn’t been tested for speed or endurance.
“VIN, two small craft, distance 100 miles due east, altitude 5,000 feet above ground, speed 510 knots, ETA the base nine minutes, over,” said Vitaliy.
“Copy that, Vitaliy,” replied VIN. “All ground crew to go underground and close all external doors to the shields. Ryan, Jonesy, Commander Joot, you need to hurry if you want to meet aliens, over.”
“Robots, stand in parade formation,” ordered VIN, and the six robots formed up in two rows behind him. He faced east and waited.
They swooped over fast and disappeared as fast as they had arrived. VIN watched as they turned in a long circle a couple miles to the north and again sped over the blue shields from north to south. Their timing was a little earlier than recorded passes, as the sun had already gone down behind the crater wall. There were many-mile-long shadows across the crater, and he could follow them from the sun’s rays glinting off their silver skins. They looked like large fighters turning and coming in a mile or two away, before they silently went over his head at about a thousand feet. As he was wearing his suit he wouldn’t have heard them anyway, even if there was any noise.
They swooped over three more times before slowing and turning down into the crater, and then turned sharply, and from below him directed their next swoop over the base and the crater wall 70 feet above them.
VIN waited, all six of the robots copying his every move, all their laser guidance cameras locked onto the two craft as they flew around them.
Finally both craft returned into the crater a few miles ahead of him and at the same height as where he was standing. They must have seen him as they slowly hovered closer, both like birds of prey staring directly at him and his men from about 200 yards away.
VIN knew that the men suiting up would still be another thirty minutes before they would be ready to exit, so he just stood there, his robots recording footage of the floating spacecraft in front of them.
For over a minute nothing happened, except the sun must have gone over the horizon on the surface above the crater, it grew dark and the two craft turned away and within several seconds were gone from view in the direction they had come from.
“Track them, Vitaliy. Use the laser optics. They weren’t wearing blue shields, weren’t ours, and looked identical to Joot’s spacecraft,” ordered VIN. “Robots, take up your defensive positions. It looks like the excitement has passed for tonight.” VIN gave the all clear for the doors to be opened.
There were still the two large metal airtight doors into the complex, inside the inner and outer glasshouse structures they had built out of nanosilicone a decade earlier. Inside this structure, Suzi had new plants growing, like in a greenhouse. The nanosilicone structure was protected by the blue shield over it, and had been built tough enough to weather all the storms they had seen so far. For VIN, it was a clear view inside when he looked out at the twelve shields outside. Here the three shuttles and three mining craft were in two lines each side of the flat area in front of the base. In between the two lines of craft were the first fields where dozens of types of crops grew. To VIN it always reminded him of two lines of fighter jets on a farm.
“Heading away at 1,900 knots, 150 miles, 10,000 feet. I can see them glinting in the sun,” said Vitaliy from above.
“Maybe they can’t navigate in the dark so well?” VIN suggested.
“Looks like it from here,” added Vitaliy. “3,800 knots, 400 miles, 25,000 feet. They can certainly move if they want to.”
“Keep tracking them,” VIN heard Jonesy say.
“They are heading into the dark,” continued Vitaliy. “Maybe they just like traveling in the sunshine, as when they went into the shadow of night, their speed doubled, and now they are really accelerating. 15,000 knots, 2,000 miles from you already and heading down to 10,000 feet. Crap! They’ve disappeared. No, I got them again, speed is reducing to 12,000 knots, 2,000 feet hugging the surface as if they are making sure nobody is following them. 10,000 knots, 2,400 miles from you. Oh dear, I’m about to head over the horizon in five seconds. They are still slowing. I will get a computer analysis of where they might end up by computing their slowing speed, and…” America One headed over the horizon.
“Looks like they covered 2,400 miles in twenty minutes, Jonesy,” VIN said as four new spacesuits joined him.
“I want to head over into that general area at dawn tomorrow. Two shuttles, SB-II and III,” said Ryan.
There was excitement in The Martian Club Retreat as eight astronauts suited up three hours before dawn. Ryan, Igor, Jonesy, VIN, Allen, Commander Joot, and young Mars Noble with Saturn Jones, now about to hit their seventeenth birthdays, climbed into their suits.
Both NextGen astronauts were competent pilots, fully versed in flying all the craft, including the mother ship. They were going along for the ride, begging the adults to take them with.
It had taken much of the night to activate the two new indoor security guards, and all three were powered up in SB-III’s forward crew compartment with Electrolasers, which were pretty much useless in space conditions. Unfortunately, the outside guards would leave radioactive residue in the compartments, and there hadn’t been time to lift them out.
SB-I was having hers removed as they launched slowly out of the shields, and VIN’s six mean machines, as he called them, could be backup for the next visit, or ready if the base was attacked.
Overnight and on his next ride across their black sky, Vitaliy had sent computerized estimates of where the alien craft were heading. America One’s computers reckoned that the two craft were going into an area 2,900 miles due east of Ryan’s base. Ryan wanted the shuttles to follow the exact path, and Jonesy made sure that they did. At 5,000 knots and 10,000 feet above the dark surface they traveled east.
Within 30 minutes, they descended to 5,000 feet where their ground directional systems took them around mountains higher than their altitude. Slowing to 500 knots for the last 300 miles and with the sun coming over the horizon, they descended down to 2,000 feet and S-turned around hills and mountains in their way.
“Still haven’t seen any blue shields,” VIN said in Jonesy’s copilot seat. Up to now he had been scanning the ground with the laser-aiming cameras, but now it wasn’t necessary anymore.
“Change the cameras to infrared search with an alarm,” suggested Jonesy. “We are going blind,” he said as the weak small sun rose over the horizon. They were flying directly into the sun, and the two shuttles were flying purely on instruments. “SB-II, slow to 250 knots, 2,500 feet altitude and keep a one mile distance. I don’t want a midair collision.”
“Copy that,” returned Allen, who had Mars Noble as copilot.
“Still negative heat source down there,” Mars added. “Suggest one scanner on infrared and the other on heat?”
“Roger that, I’ll keep mine on heat,” replied his father, smiling at his son’s growing experience. He was about to give the order himself.
For an hour they flew around the large area that Vitaliy had suggested could be the target zone. They found nothing.
“There, dead ahead on the top of that mountain, I see a flat plateau,” said Ryan, peering through the forward windshield of SB-III with binoculars. “Mr. Jones, let’s retract shields and head there. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and I’m sure we can look down
at much of the area from there more clearly once the shields are down.”
The two shuttles retracted their shields and gently put down on the flat plateau on the side of a mountain. It was high, about 6 to 7,000 feet above the surface area, and it was like looking down into a hundred-mile-wide Grand Canyon on both sides of the steep mountain.
“A good vantage point,” suggested Ryan.
“Lucky there is no wind or storm up here,” added Jonesy.
They all climbed out of the shuttles. The vista was beautiful, and Ryan reminded himself to get video footage. Mars was a hostile place to live, but its desert beauty was often far more impressive than one could see on Earth.
The mountaintop was nearly flat and only a few hundred feet or so across. SB-III pointed south and SB-II faced the other way. Both areas below them looked vast and about the same distance, and with no storms in the area there was no dust blocking their view.
“America One to Ryan. We are over the horizon and I have your pinging on my screen. You are stationary, at 7,200 feet above the surface and dead in line to the heading those craft were going last night. Are you guys hovering, spacewalking, or what, as I see heat shapes around your ships?”
“Negative. We are atop a mountain, the heat shapes are us, and I have our scanners directed south and north,” replied Ryan.
“Roger, got you on camera feed, certainly a pimple on a flat surface. Like a mini-volcano without a crater,” added Vitaliy.
“Thanks for the volcano part, Ivan the Terrible,” said Jonesy.
“Mr. Noble, what can your new robot fellows see from up here with those fancy cameras in their heads?” Asked Ryan. “This is certainly a good vantage point.”
VIN opened the shuttle’s forward cargo area roof doors, and after being given orders by VIN, the three robots nimbly sprang out and landed several feet from the suits.
“Not bad, partner. They jump far higher than you,” said Jonesy, impressed.
“Remember, I have human tissue to break; they don’t,” VIN replied.