AMERICA ONE - NextGen (Book 5)

by WADE, T I

  DX2017 looked the same to Jonesy and Maggie as they caught it up 48 hours later. They had orbited the red planet twice, and then blasted off toward the small asteroid-planet. The three crew compartments were crowded, but this flight would be very short compared to the return to Earth by the NextGens in 4 weeks’ time.

  “Looks like home from home,” said Jonesy to Ryan as the planet grew from nothing to a dull blue round ball in front of them.

  One orbit was enough to give Jonesy the direction to lower the ship down to the blue shield below them. The single shield was still there, and he hoped the internal atmosphere was there as well. Slowly the craft was lowered into the shield as VIN, Mars and Jonesy prepared to exit through the docking port.

  “A little cold, 45 degrees Fahrenheit but safe for passage into the underground chambers,” said VIN once his outer suit had read what was in the shield.

  “Fifty-five degrees inside the chamber, a little high in oxygen and helium but safe to breathe. I’m increasing the power to warm up our new home,” he added ten minutes later, asking his son to take off his helmet.

  “That’s right, light the fireplace, partner, fix up my old comfortable chair and get the dog to bring me the evening paper,” joked Jonesy as he helped the crew out of the shuttle above ground.

  There were only a dozen spacesuits left between them. The rest had been destroyed aboard the mother ship. Slowly, Allen and Jamie, Michael and Penny Pitt, and Commander Roo helped the aging crew one by one. He then led them to the opening of the underground chamber and down the ladder, which had been put up many years earlier on the first visit.

  To VIN’s eagle eyes, nothing had moved. The inside of both chambers were as neatly packed as they had left it. Ryan asked VIN to check the alcohol supplies in the barrels before he himself headed down, and it was there, all 500 gallons of it.

  VIN and Commander Roo immediately headed to the medical room where Roo had been found by the astronaut. It was as they had left it, and Roo began to look carefully for anything telltale that would move or open a section of the floor of the room.

  “I believe this is the control console; remember, the one you guys turned upside down?” VIN asked, and Roo nodded.

  “There could be a button we missed, not knowing there was a second chamber,” Roo replied.

  Together they scrutinized the console. On the underneath part were more than a dozen buttons, and one by one they triggered them. The doors opened and closed around them. The lights went up and down, and suddenly VIN remembered how the Matt system worked. The last blue switch turned to green as the metal floor vibrated under their feet.

  “We can’t find the door, because we never started the system to reheat the lower cabinets,” he said to Roo, who nodded in agreement. “Tell the doctors we have started the countdown to the second room, wherever it is,” ordered VIN to his son. “Tell them we have twelve hours.”

  During the twelve hours of waiting, the supplies were unloaded and the metal tanks full of liquid nitrogen readied to be exchanged. Nobody wanted to enter the medical room in case they got in the way of the proceedings.

  Eleven hours after the floor had vibrated, and much to VIN’s delight, half of the floor of the medical room suddenly moved and slid back into the other half of the floor. Inside was a set of silver metal stairs down to a lower room. Carefully, and after donning suits, he and Roo stepped down into the second room below the first.

  It looked identical to the upper level, except it had two walls of cabinets instead of just one.

  “I believe we have 36 chambers in total,” shouted VIN to Ryan excitedly. Ryan was standing in the command center with a radio. “I see three red lights; one is red and flickering, two are still. I think the nitrogen must have finally run out in the last couple of decades. Roo, it looks like we saved you and your mother just in time.”

  VIN began to open the cabinets with no lights as the atmosphere bettered itself around them. Every cabinet on the right hand wall was empty and unused. Only the three with lights refused to open. The last cabinet held what they were expecting—a large Ruler chest and two smaller ones.

  “I bet this is your Ruler, his wife and a child,” VIN said to Roo as the doctors came down the stairs with just three IV stands and a case of other equipment once the air was safe and they had removed their helmets.

  Dr. Walls was excited. This was cutting edge technology to him, and Dr. Nancy had spent hours teaching him and Dr. Rogers what she had learned from the Matts, before she had died.

  The first door burst open with its usual smell of bad air, vibrations and gases. VIN knew it was death before his eyes saw the small shape inside. She looked female, her face the paleness of death.

  The next cabinet opened and inside was a larger body. The Ruler, and he had died a long time earlier, as his body inside the blue suit was already dust.

  “Hope this doesn’t happen to me,” said VIN as the third door opened. He was right; inside was a small two-foot tall spacesuit, a child, and the child was beginning to stir.

  The doctors got to work and lifted the still vibrating child out of the cabinet and up the stairs where it was warmer.

  “Mark each chamber that didn’t work,” said Ryan to VIN, who did so. They were not going to tempt fate.

  An hour later the child, a boy, was talking to Roo, his arm on drips and his small body wrapped in space blankets. The boy was scared and Roo was left alone to comfort the boy.

  A few hours later, Roo talked to VIN and Ryan.

  “Like my journey in the cabinets, the boy was shocked to learn that so much time has passed. He felt that he had just gone to sleep. He had gone through a dream of being cold, and then he was being vibrated like crazy, and awoke to see us looking him. His name is Foo. Son of the Supreme Ruler, fifteen years old, a baby in our world but old enough to talk. There were two guards.”

  “I assume the guards died, two of the dead bodies we found in the rear chamber,” VIN added. The others nodded.

  “Well, we have 30 working cabinets for the older 40 crewmembers,” said Jonesy. “Who returns to Mars?” he asked Ryan.

  “I have the list,” Ryan replied. “We must use all 30 useable cabinets to make as much room as possible for the others for the flight home.”

  Over the next hour the first crewmembers who were going to sleep were prepared. Vitaliy and his crew were heading for sleep in the third shift, after they had finished exchanging the nitrogen tanks. If the original tanks had lasted nearly 10,000 years, thirteen years wouldn’t be a big deal. Ryan and VIN would enter last.

  VIN and Roo finally opened a door leading down a corridor from the lower chamber. They quickly closed the door, exited the chambers and returned to their suits. Then, with Mars Noble also suited up, they opened up and headed back into the lower sleep chamber to find the Ruler’s ship. The three men jumped quickly through the doorway as it was opened, and the door was quickly closed behind them to avoid allowing too much of the atmosphere to escape, and to let the final tanks to be replaced.

  It was there, and with a black box in a small cavern sealed off from the surface. The spaceship was identical to all the others, and had transported ten Matts and two pilots from the Earth’s surface to DX2017 sometime in its past. For Ryan, the find was important in many ways. First, it reduced the crowding in his craft by one person. Some of the crew could live aboard this craft while it piggybacked its way to Earth linked to one of the shuttles.

  Then it could enter with a black box secretly anywhere on Earth, and wouldn’t be dependent on the other six craft once it was in orbit around the Earth. The Matt craft rarely ever showed up on radar in space or in the atmosphere, and a new plan came to him.

  The ship, though in perfect condition, was almost empty of alcohol. It had about 50 gallons in its tanks. Ryan ordered Vitaliy’s men to suit up and refuel the ship. It was to be filled with every drop left on the planet and the rest placed in its hold.

  After showing Mars Noble how to open the cavern, they h
eaded back and returned back into the lower room once they had warned everybody to get out.

  The first ten crewmembers were nearly asleep in the upper room inside the cabinets. They were not wearing the blue suits the Matts had done. The suits weren’t necessary. Suzi was one of them, and VIN and Mars had a few minutes to say goodbye, kissing her fondly as she felt the powerful sedative take effect, and she passed into a peaceful sleep.

  The medical crew were ready and working fast. Each of the ten had their nose, ears and throat sealed, and the cabinet pushed into the wall. Most of the wives were in the first group. Kathy Richmond was the last to be closed. Lunar, Pluto Katherine and Ryan saying their tearful goodbyes. Penny Pitt and Jamie Saunders were already asleep. It was girls first, which would give them the opportunity to be first to be woken up. Their names were written onto each of the cabinets end panels. It seemed the men would be the majority downstairs.

  The vibrations were slight, certainly not as powerful as the warming of the cabinets, and gas could be heard hissing all around them as the cabinets began to get very cold.

  “As I said to Mom, my face will be the first one you see when you regain consciousness,” said a tearful Mars Noble.

  “I hope so, son; yours or Commander Roo’s would be nice. I think I scared the crap out of the poor Matt when he saw me looking down at him,” half-joked VIN.

  There was a break of twelve hours before the second lot entered the next set of cabinets below. The alcohol had been taken through to the spacecraft, the room cleared and the door closed. VIN had seen and felt what the vacuum of space could do to the human body.

  Jonesy was squeezed into one of the cabinets, next to Maggie. He was already very drowsy when VIN and Mars arrived.

  “You make sure I get fishing, young Mars,” said Jonesy to the new commander as Saturn held his hand. Jonesy was given a slightly larger dose of the sedative than the others. “If I don’t make it, I’ll send that big space shark after all of you,” and his eyes slowly closed. He drifted off to sleep and Saturn gave him the last kiss.

  While Dr. Walls set Jonesy’s body sideways and got his long legs right, Saturn held her mother’s hand. She had wanted to sleep side by side with her husband, and Maggie always got her way. She also drifted into sleep.

  Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt were next. It took several minutes, and then the second group was done.

  The third and final group was composed of Dr. Rogers, VIN, Ryan and the rest of the technicians. The crew of NextGens helping Dr. Walls, who would be the ones to return the 30 crewmembers to life, closed them down one by one.

  “See you soon, buddy,” said VIN to his son while holding his hand and lying in the small cabinet. He was beginning to feel fuzzy, like he had felt when the pretty doctor in Baghdad had put him back to sleep. If this cabinet was so small for him, it would have been hell for Jonesy if he were awake. “Don’t grow a beard or anything so that I can’t recognize you when I come around. Fly safe and get everybody back to terra firma. Complete your mission, my boy; look after everyone equally, and one day we can go fishing back on Earth.”

  With that VIN, and then Ryan, who was kissed and said goodbye to his daughters Lunar and Pluto Katherine, went to sleep.

  Chapter 24

  Closure

  The first thing Mars Noble noticed when he walked back into the base on Mars was that all the tall people were gone. Everybody around was either Matt, or a young Tall Person, few close to six feet. Dr. Walls, who was the oldest person back at base, was only 5 foot 10, an inch shorter than Mars.

  Even old Lieutenant Walls, the doctor’s father, at exactly six feet tall, was asleep on DX2017, heading away from them at a rapid rate.

  It had taken ten days in total for the mission, and the weather wasn’t friendly when they returned.

  Under Saturn Jones’ command SB-III had left the small planet twelve hours after the medical rooms had stopped vibrating and hissing. All the cabinets showed blue handles, which was good. Nobody was staying behind; it wasn’t necessary. With Commander Roo as commander of the Matt craft, and Mars Noble as copilot in the rear seat, the cavern door opened and the craft left the planet trailing SB-III.

  “Saturn Jones, you sure look pregnant from out here,” joked Mars Noble, and they came abreast of SB-III on the port side, close enough to see waves from the cockpit. He had a handheld radio with him in the Ruler’s craft for communications.

  “In your dreams, astronaut,” Saturn joked back. The crew were solemn inside the pregnant shuttle. Many of them had just left their parents asleep at minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of space, and a thousand things could go wrong, which could leave them out there until the nitrogen ended, 7,000 to 10,000 years from now.

  Pluto Jane Pitt was in the copilot’s seat and smiled at the brashness of the young Noble in the craft next to them. “Maybe we should just ignore that lousy excuse for testosterone,” she added to Saturn. Saturn smiled, knowing that her copilot also had her eyes on her man, as well as several others, and they had no chance against a Jones.

  Ryan had spent two hours in private with VIN, Mars Noble and Saturn Jones before he and VIN were put to sleep. Ryan was worried as he always was. VIN agreed with everything Ryan told them. Most of the oldies didn’t trust the humans on Earth, and Mars and the rest of the crew had been told countless times not to trust anybody when they reached Earth. Ryan, Mars Noble and Saturn had set up a counter-plan for if any of the craft’s crew were harassed when they reached Earth.

  Nobody knew if the plan would be needed, and they had to get through the possible blockade of the cubes first, if their old freighters had been nuked or something.

  A new storm approaching their area of the planet could be seen as they descended on their second orbit down to 100,000 feet above the surface. Instead of mountains and valleys, much of the surface to the west of them was a smooth pinkness around an eye. This was the telltale signs of a dust storm, and this was a massive storm, even bigger than the one Mars Noble had seen from the last water collection journey.

  The swirl of dust, which Jonesy had taught him looked like a hurricane on Earth, was pink, and not white clouds like on Earth. This one looked about 2,000 miles across, covered as far as the horizon and was heading rapidly in the direction of The Martian Club Retreat, about 300 miles in front of it.

  The two craft headed down rapidly and entered the shield with the dust already swirling menacingly around them. It wasn’t good for the thrusters and they would have to be cleaned and inspected.

  Both Saturn and then Commander Roo edged their craft into the furthest part of the second shield from the base. There was just room for both craft, and they destroyed several plants squeezing in as quickly as they could to get the craft under the protection of the shield.

  Once inside the shield, they were safe, and the ten remaining crewmembers headed back into the chambers for briefing.

  None of the old commanders were there anymore. Even Igor and Boris were asleep nearly 350,000 miles away. It was now up to the NextGens to keep protocol, and Lunar Richmond took command of the first briefing.

  The storm looked bad; the thrusters on the two ships needed to be fully checked out, and only Commander Roo and Dr. Walls said that they needed a drink. Both knew that it would be a dry base pretty soon, due to the last reserves of beer. Even the beer was now depleted, as the shields had been replanted with other vegetation for the ride home in three weeks.

  Because the older consumers of the product weren’t on base anymore, less than half a dozen of the older members of the crew partook in the old Jonesy custom, and they had only a few gallons of the brown liquid left before they would have to wait until they reached an Aussie pub somewhere in the Outback.

  Nobody was really worried, as the journey was expected to take about 180 days, six months, and in seven months they would be back on Earth and looking for their wallets to pay for drinks.

  The storm raged just like the storm before. This one seemed to have more power
, and even the shields vibrated now and again when hard gusts of dust hit them.

  The beer was gone three weeks later when they were due to leave. The storm still raged when the last departure day arrived before they needed to make Earth with their limited supplies aboard ship.

  Life inside the base became quiet. They couldn’t leave. The crew were trapped and became very quiet when Mars told them that the last day of departure had passed. Now they had to wait another 22 months.

  The storm ended eleven long months later, gave them about six weeks of sunshine, and then the third storm arrived and kept them pinned down again.

  As the time neared for the next orbital opposition, many prayed daily for the storm to end. If it ended early, they couldn’t leave until the due window of opportunity, and if another storm arrived, they would again be trapped.

  The crew in command got on with survival, did plays, worked at each other’s jobs to alleviate boredom, and education went on as normal. Some of the papyrus leaves not taken on DX2017 with the older generation were slowly understood and some of the secrets of the old Matts revealed to the physicists left. The astronauts spent hundreds of hours in the simulator, which turned into a game. Several of the younger children wanted to become astronauts, and they in turn became apt at simulator flight.

  It was three days into their new departure window when the storm ended. Many couldn’t believe it as they headed into the shield to see stars for the first time that year.

  DX2017 had been on its way for 25 months when Mars gathered everybody together. They were all ready. Nobody was to be left behind. The power would remain on inside the base, except that the two outside shields would be taken with. Each of the shuttles had a shield, so did Astermine I and II, and the Matt craft. Only Asterspace Three was short of a shield. Saturn would be giving her shield to the mining craft for reentry, and she had planned to enter the old-fashioned way once the crew had spacewalked around her craft and checked that her heat bricks were still in place. It was either that, or one of the craft could return with a black box and turn it over to her to use.