One Giant Leap

by Keith Martin

  “That won’t happen. She is under the Commanders care now; you’ll not be contacting her. If you are found trying to contact her, you will be mining ice for the rest of your life. Copy?”

  * * *

  He had messed up, again, and he knew it. “Ok Otto. You got me this time, but it’s not over.”

  “Don’t you want to know about Connie?”

  “Hell no…! She’s not my blood so she can just go to hell with the rest of you. I should have put that prissy bitch in her place long ago. A few more years and I would have shown her who the man of our house is.”

  * * *

  Ton walked in the door and stood by. He had heard that Otto was confronting David and he wanted to be there to back Otto’s play. His men had never left the room. It wasn’t that any of them thought Otto couldn’t handle himself. But he was not going to be allowed to even take that risk.

  * * *

  “You’re not to go near them. You have my word on it David, your life won’t be worth spit if she tells me she even smells you.” Otto stood, finished with him. As he turned he ordered Ton to work David’s tail off. “I want him as far from the base as possible, with a pick in his hands. He is not to talk to any women.” He turned to face David one last time. “His days of abusing women are over. I hope you like your hand because it’s all you’re going to get now Mr.” He turned, marched out the door, and went for a long walk.

  Before he returned to his duties he gave Margaret copies of the divorce and informed her of his orders. He warned her to never attempt contact with David.

  “Otto, I loathe that man. I was just never sure enough of myself to leave. I have your wives to thank for giving me the strength to leave him. I won’t let you down. I will never let any of you down again.” She couldn’t stop herself and kissed his cheek quickly as a way of sealing her vow.

  He pulled her into his arms and let her lay her head on his chest and cry it out as he stroked her hair comforting her. As soon as she regained composure he called his wives and asked them to come spend some time with her. He understood this was going to be an emotional time for her.

  They were on their way at once, Margret was soon in good hands which would help guide her into a new way of life.

  Otto called Ton and asked for a meeting. He wanted to know just where David would be housed and where he would be working. He didn’t care if the men of S.M.B. had to hand him his food from now on, David was never again to go near a woman on the Moon. “Ton… we need a place to put men who abuse women. They must be completely separated from the population of S.M.B. I want them working their fingers to the bone, and David is to be the darkness all men turn their back on. They need to know that if a man hurts a women he becomes an outcast, His ability to ever touch a woman will be removed.” Otto was shaking with rage as he spoke.

  Ton knew just where to place David and filled Otto in. “There is an outpost that was used when man first started to populate the Moon. A radar station is what it was. It’s a fully self-contained livable unit; Twelve hundred square feet or so is size. We can pull all the electronics, gut anything that could be used to make an escape and house David there. The working his fingers off part, we can figure out later. It will take my crew about a week to have ready. We will not leave a space suit there so he can’t walk out.” Ton had a great plan for David and agreed harming a woman was a crime that needed punishment.

  * * *

  Shianne recruited a force of twenty to help with the retrofitting of The Seeker. They had all the new parts assembled, it was just a matter of reattaching everything, and The Seeker would be ready for a test flight. The new main thruster bell was eight feet longer than the one they removed. It would cause greater compression of the ignited fuels as it pushed The Seeker through space. With the added tank of Blue Thunder fuel and the six secondary thrusters the ship would travel at fantastic speeds.

  When they captured The Seeker it was traveling at twenty-seven thousand miles an hour. It had traveled for ten years to reach the place where it had taken the photos of Hope, after it passed Pluto. That means it traveled a total of twenty-three point six billion miles, at least, from Earth.

  Her calculations with the new thrusters and fuel came to twelve thousand and six hundred miles a second, seven hundred and fifty-six thousand miles an hour. It would take just one hundred and thirty days for The Seeker to reach Hope the next time it was tasked to explore the planet. In less than nine months it could complete a mission, delivering a wealth of information to be deciphered.

  At these speeds it would be possible to retrofit a G-Class shuttle for a manned mission to Hope.

  The stars would be within the reach of mankind for the first time.

  * * *

  A math whiz from Cal Tech asked Shianne if she could look over her numbers to confirm her calculations. Shianne had her pledge to silence of anything she heard or learned about the work they were doing. “You have my word Commander. I only wish to be a part of the team to back your play; confirming your calculations are correct. I don’t expect to find a thing wrong with any of your work. But it is wise to have all your calculations audited by a second party. I wish to be that party.”

  Shianne hired her on the spot. She then radioed Hackett on G-3 and asked her if she would take care of her paper trail as her personal Master Auditor. “Did you have a choice Shianne?” Hackett responded. “Just have your girl Friday download everything to me daily. If I find anything at all sis, I will fix it and return ASAP.”

  Shianne had her safety net set and she went forward with her work a lot surer of her direction.

  She talked with her father about the test mission… to program the ship to fly out for three hours then return for two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-eight seconds. Then Joshua would go out and pick it up for refueling and readying for the mission.

  Otto approved of the test mission, but had her add a passenger to the cargo list. A rat would become the fastest being in the history of man.

  Shianne sent for ‘Flash’ to be sent up from Earth. The Moon had no rodents. So Flash was a real novelty on the base. A cage was set up in the school for the children to care for the little test pilot.

  Many people worried about introducing rodents to the Moon. Otto called a meeting of all who had any concerns on this subject and once he had heard their side he asked for volunteers to ride along on the test flight. “We have to know what this speed could do to us on a physical level. Flash is a female lab bred rat. She is two years of age, which will give her a year or two at best before passing from old age. Even if she was to escape her cage she is all-alone here. It’s not like she can procreate by herself. I’ll even clean her cage.” He volunteered, this whole time Flash sat on Otto’s shoulder sniffing the air and looking around, just checking things out.

  His words calmed their fears and Flash sold herself, becoming a fixture of life on the base the day she arrived. She was perhaps the best-loved rat in the history of rodents.

  * * *

  Flash was indifferent about the mission. She only knew that she was being placed in a new cage. She had a microchip implanted to monitor all of her vital signs, and to record everything she experienced in real time. Cameras recorded her every move.

  The Seeker was loaded and G-1 took it out to the launching point. Joshua had refused to take anyone along for the ride except his co-pilot. There was no need for anyone else in the shuttle for this short mission. All information would be down loaded after they returned to base with the satellite.

  “The Seeker is deployed and we have moved off two hundred miles. All is green to commence mission. Light the candle on your go Shianne. Over.”

  “Five, four, three, two, one.” Was all they heard in response as they watched a glow appear in the black void of space where they had placed The Seeker and the mission was underway.

  “So we have six hours to wait.” He started G-1 chasing after The Seeker at full speed. Once he was sure G-1 was tracking The Seeker properly he engaged
the Autopilot and started to take off his gear. “I wonder what we could do for six hours.”

  Samantha needed no more direction. She ran to their bunk leaving a trail of her gear and clothes on the way.

  * * *

  The mission was a complete success. All systems worked flawlessly and Shianne started loading The Seeker for a mission to study Hope. All fuel tanks where topped off, and the area that held Flash was now filled with more memory for the scanners recording equipment. Hackett wrote the program that would be used to search for life. If anything crawled or scurried around, this program would record it.

  Flash seemed to come through unscathed and ready to return to her new life as pet of the school. The children gave her a hero’s welcome upon her triumphant return with a parade and feast of fruit. By the end of the day she was tired of being passed around from child to child. All of them wanted time with her. In her cage she simply dug into her bedding and went to sleep not caring that she was now the fastest being in recorded history.

  * * *

  A meeting was called for all Commanders and Chair May was asked to attend via Internet link. A scrambler that Hackett designed would keep this meeting Top Secret. No one on Earth knew of the test mission of The Seeker except for Chair May. She was a member of the S.M.B. inner family now and she was informed of everything they were doing as it happened.

  In an effort not to build up a world of hopes, they decided to keep things secret until they had all the information needed to move forward with a plan.

  A decision was made; a mission would return to Hope for a low fly over with a full scanning. Humans had to know if this planet could support life. If it could support life, there would be a mission planed at once to send colonists to save the seed of human kind.

  Two days later G-1 went out and released The Seeker once more. It was on its way to confirm what it had found in deepest space. Only this time there were five external fuel tanks molded to The Seeker like an extra skin. Shianne filled these tanks with B.T. gas and liquid oxygen to sustain the burn for as long as possible, she wasn’t positive that the math on the speeds The Seeker would reach was perfect. Space had too many variables to be positive until mankind had been there to experience it first hand.

  * * *

  Shianne requested all the parts needed to retrofit G-1 for the use of B.T. fuel, the day she sent The Seeker on its mission. Master Chair Doreen and Chair May had to coordinate the skilled working forces of the planet to fill the supply lists that Shianne was sending to Earth. Thruster bells, high-pressure valves, platinum supply lines, new platinum lined fuel tanks, redesigned fuel nozzles, the engineers of earth went to work building all she needed.

  Joshua was walking on air as he waited for his ship to be turned into the hotrod of the fleet. His would be the test platform that would lead to a total conversion of all space flight vehicles.

  * * *

  The Seeker passed through the solar system like a bolt of lightning cracking through the atmosphere on Earth. Hackett’s program used the planet’s gravitational fields to help pull it to ever increasing speeds as it reached for the void of deep space. By the time it reached Pluto on its way out of the solar system, it was moving much faster than Shianne had calculated. Hackett’s program had it flashing along at a mind numbing seventy-nine thousand miles a second.

  It’s crossing to Hope was going to be completed in a third of the time she had estimated. No one could truly calculate the gravitational force The Seeker would encounter as it did the low orbital fly bye of outer planets. With each new trip into the gravitational field of a planet, and a long burn of thrusters here and there, the Seeker just ate up space.

  * * *

  Ton was working his crews hard, training them for their mission to Mars. He understood the need for speed once they began to dig the base on Mars. He was going to make sure that the new base was so solid it would still be a working base until it was abandoned, even if that didn’t happen for thousands of years.

  He had maps of Mars hung all over the base wherever his miners worked. He wanted them to concentrate their thoughts on the real goal of the mission they signed on for. His own office looked like a temple to Mars itself. He even had a three-foot topographic globe of the red planet filling one corner of the office. May had sent it up for him as a surprise. She knew how much he thought of the mission, and she wanted to give him a real feel for the research he was doing on his next dig site.

  The slag piled up fast and it all had to be recorded so that they would know just how fast the women where working. The men were finished training them and they now only worked on loaders and on the underground hanger dig. All of the chamber work belonged to the women now; they were ready to dig on their own.

  He gave Margaret the job of recording the volume of slag being removed from the dig sites. It was an easy task, she just had to count the loads moved by the loaders and multiply by six cubic yards. This job was so big she had to employ a small crew to help her do the job properly. Ton gave her all the help she needed when she asked for personnel to cover all shifts. He brought in non-mining personnel to cover this need and Margaret had them covering the slag chamber sites on rotating schedules. After just a few days, the system she had made could run without her. She just added up the figures at the end of a shift and reported everything directly to Ton. She had turned a mindless counting job into a crew leader’s position. Everyone called her the Count Master. He was impressed. She had won the respect of those around her by proving she was good at her work.

  One of the women he had sent her was his spy. She covertly reported to him every few days to let him know how she was doing. His spy also helped to make sure she was not meeting with her ex-husband or that he was not harassing her. There were still days before the shack that would house David would come online again and he was given a job filling the garden beds of the planters, and watering planters in Alpha chamber so that he could be watched.

  At first he didn’t want to work and refused to lift a finger. Then he figured out the food on his plate was directly in proportion with his work. If he refused work there was no food. If he worked hard he would get a feast. He had no real choice; if he wished to eat and live he was going to have to work his butt off.

  Ton had asked his spy to befriend Margaret and to find out if she had higher goals than just counting loaders as they drove by. Margaret knew she was starting from the ground floor and working her way up. She didn’t have Connie’s brain, but she in reality was no dummy. She made fast work of anything that came her way. Even the spy was impressed, and she held a PhD.

  She had followed Margaret to the lift leading to the Chisholm dig three times before she went to Ton with this information. “She goes up to the Chisholm place every morning before she goes to work. I haven’t gone up to see what she is up to. If I did it would blow my cover. I swear, I think she’s working up there. She’s covered in dust when she gets to work.”

  Ton being a real professional crew leader knew whom to talk with next. He pulled Ben over and asked him to find out if the finishing crew that was working on the Chisholm place noticed anything out of the ordinary going on. It didn’t take long to find out what Margaret was up too.

  “Otto we need to talk. Let’s say tomorrow morning at five-thirty at your place in the main chamber.” Ton called for the meeting.

  Otto tried to get him to just tell him what was up. But Ton wouldn’t budge. His only hint was when he told Otto to bring three coffees.

  The stone masters were the last ones in a home site; they were the ones who would grind down all the surfaces that needed to be polished flat. Some walls, all floors, carved table and counter tops, the pool. They all needed a polished surface. These men even carved a slide into the pool that had a water jet to make it slick. They thought it would be fun for the Chisholm’s children as they grew up here.

  All of this grinding caused a massive amount of dust and sand to be generated. Because of the fineness of this dust it had to be bucket
ed out of the work areas and added to slag piles on the chamber floor. If it were dumped like the rest of the slag from high on the chamber wall it would just spread out and fill the air with its fine dust. This was a part of the job all the stone masters hated.

  * * *

  Otto wanted to be sure he was on time and he was at the lift fifteen minutes early, coffees in hand. Ton was standing there waiting for him. The lift door held open. He took his coffee and they went up to the Chisholm’s landing. They quietly started to look around and found what they were looking for working hard at the bottom of the pool.

  Margaret had been at it for hours. She would come in before the start of her shift and do some clean up here at the Chisholm dig. She wouldn’t stop until all the empty buckets were filled. She couldn’t take them down for emptying. They were way to heavy for her to lift once they were filled with the powdered rock. She had noticed that the number of buckets had grown from ten, to twenty-five as she did the work. The stone masters liked not having to clean up the slag of their work.

  She didn’t mind. She just came in earlier and filled them all anyway.

  “How about a coffee break.” Otto’s voice made her scream from surprise.

  “I knew she was a spy, she was just too nice.” She said as she started to climb up the pond stairs. “A coffee would be great.” She took the offered mug and took a seat on the edge of the pool.

  Otto and Ton sat down on both sides of her and waited for her to open up.

  “I had to do something Otto. You are all being so good to my Connie and to me. It’s the least I could do for all you’ve done.

  “You do this every day before your shift?” Otto asked.