“Copy that, station master,” Rear Admiral Sopoaga’s voice came out of the speakers.
“The President is at the station with five recruits and he wants you to give him a lift to Base.”
“Okay, station master. Send them.”
“They’re on their way,” Harper said. “They’ll intercept you in five minutes.”
“Okay, station master.”
“Anderson, you’re going to intercept HF4 and put the President and the new recruits on the fleet,” Harper said. “Mr. President, get ready to get back to the Ultravoyager 3.”
“I’m ready,” Cruz said, putting on his helmet.
“Put on your helmets, we’re going back to the ship!” Captain Anderson barked at the new recruits.
The crew and passengers of the Ultravoyager 3 quickly returned to the ship. The ship left the station and accelerated to gather enough speed to break away from Earth’s gravity.
“Rear Admiral Sopoaga, can you hear me?” Captain Anderson said.
“Yes, captain.”
“We’re on our way.”
They left orbit and travelled along a trajectory that was at an angle of hundred and eighteen degrees from the trajectory of Harvesting Fleet 4.
Harper’s estimation wasn’t far off the mark. Ultravoyager 3 intercepted the first squadron of Harvesting Fleet 4 after five minutes thirty-six seconds. The voyager followed the fleet’s course and accelerated till it was stationary with respect to the fleet.
“I’m ready to transfer the passengers, sir,” Captain Anderson told Sopoaga.
“Come to the flagship, OH64, and give me the President. Put the other passengers in other ships, one passenger per ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sopoaga ordered the captains of the squadron’s ships to be ready for passenger transfer.
Ultravoyager 3 accelerated and caught up with Sopoaga’s ship. The Ultravoyager’s higher thrust to weight ratio enabled it to outpace the Oxygen Harvester. Flying next to the Oxygen Harvester, the Ultravoyager looked like a tiny beetle.
“Mr. President, have a pleasant journey,” Captain Anderson said.
“Thank you, captain.”
“Grump, escort the President to the milkmaid.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Grump said. “Let’s go to the airlock, Mr. President.”
Cruz and Grump went into the airlock and strapped safety belts on their waists and upper thighs. Grump punched a code and the airlock’s outer hatch opened. The two men spacewalked to the OH64 and found the outer hatch of one of the Oxygen Harvester’s airlocks open for them. They entered the airlock and Grump untied Cruz’s safety belt and saluted. Cruz saluted back. The outer hatch of the airlock closed when Grump walked into space. The inner hatch opened seconds later, admitting Cruz into the ship.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. President,” Sopoaga said before he saluted and stood at attention.
“At ease, Sopoaga,” Cruz said.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. President,” Commander Jantunen said with a salute.
“At ease, commander.”
Sopoaga introduced Cruz to the senior officers of his ship before he offered him a sit beside the bridge.
“How is Mother Earth, sir?”
“Mother Earth still has enough oxygen to sustain polluters,” Cruz said.
“We’re winning the war, sir. Soon our new planet will be fully habitable.”
“Yes, we’ll soon be able to walk on EU without oxygen masks, but that doesn’t mean we should leave Mother Earth to polluters. We shall wipe all polluters from Earth, re-oxygenate Earth’s atmosphere and return animals and plants back to Earth. We shall soon have a bi-planetary empire that we shall rule under strict environmental law. That day is coming, Sopoaga. And it’s coming very soon.”
Sopoaga felt a chill running down his spine when he thought about his family and friends on Earth.
“When will the evacuation begin, sir?”
“Soon, Sopoaga. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that the people on your list will be evacuated to E Utopia.”
“Rear Admiral Sopoaga,” Captain Anderson’s voice came out of the comm. “Can you hear me, sir?”
“Roger, captain.”
“We’ve completed passenger transfer, sir.”
“Thank you, captain. Have a safe journey.”
“The same to you, sir.”
* * *
Sara moaned as George’s erectile member oscillated inside her. Half of her wanted him to go on forever and the other half wanted his assault of her most sensitive areas to end. The erotic sensations were almost too much to bear. The contractions of muscles inside her became more pronounced and she felt as if she was drowning in a sea of pleasure, tingling waves running throughout her body. She suddenly felt as if she wanted to pee and she shrieked when she felt an explosion inside her. He came seconds after her and rolled away from her.
“You’ve sapped my strength again, witch,” he said, looking at her contented face.
“People are happy that sand reduction plants have reduced the rate of the fall in oxygen levels,” Sara said, looking at the ceiling. “But it’s clear that sand reduction won’t provide a long-term solution to El Monstruo.”
“Don’t tell me you were thinking about El Monstruo while we were making love.”
“I wasn’t. When we finished making love I started thinking about the events that brought us back together. El Monstruo played a huge part in bringing us back together. The attempt on my life came as a result of my efforts to fight El Monstruo. If there was no El Monstruo, maybe we’d still be away from each other.”
He kissed her forehead. “We’ll never be away from each other again, Sah.”
“I want our kids to live in a clean hospitable world but the world is fast becoming a huge silicon dump. I think the people of the world should not put all their efforts on sand reduction.”
“Given a choice, I’d rather live in an environment full of silicon dumps than die on immaculate land,” George said.
“To return the atmosphere’s oxygen levels back to normal, we’ll have to build thousands of sand reduction plants and the plants will have to continue running for God knows how long.”
“We could send some of the silicon to space,” George mused.
“But that will leave huge pits on the Earth.”
“These pits can be used as dams.”
“Taking the silicon to space will reduce the weight of the Earth and this might actually change Earth’s gravity as well as its speed and position relative to the Sun and the moon, probably causing disastrous climate changes.”
“But still it’s better than letting El Monstruo kill us right away.”
“If we dump the silicon in space it could form asteroids which could someday collide with Earth.”
“We can dump the silicon on the nearest planet.”
“We’ll need lots of fuel and lots of oxygen to power the rockets that will transport the silicon waste to space and the oxygen we use to do that could outweigh the oxygen produced during the sand reduction that produced the silicon dumps.” Sara’s eyes widened. “When spacecraft travel in the Earth’s atmosphere, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is not so bad because the carbon dioxide can be split into carbon and oxygen by green plants or by UVL plants. But when rockets leave the Earth’s atmosphere and enter interplanetary space, their engines continue combining oxygen and fuel, releasing carbon dioxide into space. The oxygen molecules in the carbon dioxide that they release in interplanetary space are lost to the Earth forever.”
“I get it,” George said. “It’s impractical to send silicon waste to space.”
“I think the world should limit the number of space shuttles that leave the Earth because they release carbon dioxide into interplanetary space, and the oxygen and carbon atoms in this carbon dioxide are lost to the Earth.”
“The scientific talk is a little stimulating.” He kissed her. “I’m feeling strong again.”
&n
bsp; She purred when he parted her legs. When he finished pounding her, she looked at him with amusement, knowing he would soon be asleep. She lay on her back, her hands on the back of her head, enjoying the high that she always felt after sex. A motherly feeling surged in her heart when she heard him snoring like a little baby.
Her thoughts moved back to El Monstruo. Where is the oxygen going? What will happen to the environment if people continued to chemically break down sand? There was a lot of sand on Earth and no one seemed to be concerned about the possible consequences of overexploitation of sand. Sara knew that although sand was abundant, overexploiting it could tip the mineral balance of the Earth.
She fell asleep still thinking about El Monstruo and the environment.
* * *
The arrival of Sam Cruz changed the living arrangements in Sopoaga’s ship. Sopoaga had no choice but to vacate his sleeping cell to the President and Commander-in-Chief. He and Commander Jantunen had to share her sleeping cell. This didn’t pause much of a problem since the rear admiral and his ship’s XO never retired to bed at the same time. Sopoaga wished Lebia Nuate was still his ship’s XO. He felt a stir in his pants when he imagined himself sharing a sleeping cell with Nuate.
Cruz sprawled on Sopoaga’s bed, reliving how the E Utopia Project began. He had always been fascinated by science and nature. Since he was a child, Cruz wanted to travel to space. When the first space tourist travelled to the International Space Station in 2001, Cruz asked his father for money to pay for a seat to space but the old man refused.
When his father died, Cruz shed crocodile tears. The old man only cared about making money and maintaining his pole position on the world rich list. He had no interest in saving the environment. He owned several companies that committed gross acts of environmental degradation in Africa and South America. One of Cruz’s first acts after inheriting his father’s estate was to sell companies which he thought had a strong impact on the environment.
He travelled to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz Spacecraft. He vividly remembered his first journey into space. Viewed from space, the Earth looked so beautiful and so perfect. It was even harder to imagine that there was war, poverty and hunger on the surface of this gorgeous globe. It was hard to imagine that some people were willing to destroy this beautiful planet for personal gain. He vowed to do everything in his power to protect the globe.
He immediately formed the International Green Movement. Through the International Green Movement, he supported green parties around the world and printed millions of pamphlets to educate the people of the world about the need to preserve the environment. At the same time he founded his space company, Eureka, and hired a team of rocket scientists and technicians to design and build spacecraft that was ideal for recreational space travel. He believed that if people saw how beautiful the Earth looked from space, they would appreciate the planet better.
It took three years for his team of experts to build Eureka’s first spacecraft, the Ultravoyager. Eureka Space Company used its Ultravoyager to take rich tourists into space. Sam Cruz offered a number of people in positions of power free rides to space, hoping that the beautiful space view of the Earth would make them cherish the environment.
His efforts to preserve the environment did not produce the results he desired. The politicians and businesspeople he talked to only paid lip service to sustainable use of natural resources. Dismayed, Cruz spent more and more time in space, away from polluted Earth. Doctor Hitchcook, a member of Cruz’s team of scientists, asked for funding to make what he called a “jump drive,” which he said he hoped could make spacecraft travel at speeds faster than light.
Cruz seriously doubted the feasibility of Doctor Hitchcook’s “jump drive,” and in jest, he contracted Hitchcook to develop the jump drive. Two years later, Hitchcook told Cruz he was ready to test his jump drive.
Cruz accompanied Hitchcook and two scientists into space to test the jump drive on a space drone.
“If this works, we’ll conquer the world,” Hitchcook said solemnly, looking at the base station that controlled the drone. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll be the laughing stock of the scientific community. I’m activating the jump drive.” As Hitchcook remote-controlled the drone’s jump drive, everyone’s eyes were on the drone that was travelling meters away from the spaceship.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. One moment they were looking at the drone and the next it was gone.
“I did it! I did it!” Hitchcook shouted.
“What happened?” Cruz asked. “Where did it go?”
“Maybe it exploded,” said Professor Bolton, a friend of Hitchcook who had ridiculed the jump drive project from the beginning. “Let’s play the video.”
Their mouths gaped when they watched the video. It appeared as if the drone had gone into a hole.
“It’s like something quickly sinking in water,” said Doctor Rudolf, the other scientist, who had equally ridiculed Hitchcook’s project.
“We’ve lost its beacon,” Hitchcook said. “It must be hundreds of light-seconds away.’’
“How does this jump drive of yours work?” Cruz asked. “Did the drive make the drone teleport?”
“Sort of,” Hitchcook said. “Think of the jump drive as a device that compresses the space in a ship’s trajectory. The drive takes the ship into what I call hyperspace. The ship moves with normal speed in the hyperspace but because the space in its trajectory has been compressed, it moves at a much higher speed with respect to normal space.”
“How fast with respect to normal space?”
“Possibly faster than light.”
“I wonder what Einstein would say to this,” Rudolf said with a sardonic smile.
Hitchcook proposed to “jump” another drone. This time he was going to program the drone to turn one hundred and eighty degrees with respect to its gyroscope needle as soon as it finished the jump, and then make a return jump. He wanted to program the drone to make the U-turn in ten seconds to give the drone’s cameras time to record sizable footage without taking the drone too far away from the point where it emerged from hyperspace.
Cruz swore the three scientists to secrecy and readily provided Hitchcook with funds. He didn’t patent the jump drive because he didn’t want Earth’s polluters to know about the new invention. If they knew about the jump drive, they could use it to pollute remote planets.
Hitchcook wasted no time making another jump drive. He fitted the jump drive on a drone that was identical to the first but this time he put three times more ultra-dense deuterium fuel in the drive than was in the first drone to provide it with energy for the return jump.
The results were astonishing. The drone disappeared like the first and they lost its beacon. Bolton and Rudolf, the co-skippers of the Ultravoyager, made the ship circle in one place, waiting for the drone to return. They picked the drone’s beckon an hour later, when they were beginning to lose hope.
“It returned,” Hitchcook said with relief, pointing at the navigation display on the drone’s base station.
The unmanned spaceship was only eight hundred kilometers away from the Ultravoyager.
“I’m bringing it back,” Hitchcook said. “I hope it has enough fuel to get here.”
Like a kid playing a video game, Hitchcook fingered the base station’s console and was delighted to see the drone approaching the ship. “She’s coming!” he shouted. “She’s got fuel.”
It took the drone less than three minutes to reach the ship. The ship automatically opened its hangar to let the drone in. They excitedly rushed to the hangars airlock to inspect the drone.
“Let’s see what you’ve brought for us, baby,” Hitchcook said, quivering with excitement.
Everyone excitedly watched the footage from the drone’s first camera. The five second footage showed total darkness. Hitchcook played footage from the second camera. Again, total darkness. All of the drone’s six cameras had recorded clips of total darkness.
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“It seems our bird was in a dark place,” Professor Bolton remarked.
“It means the drone jumped to a place with no objects to reflect light from the Sun, assuming of course that it was in the Solar System,” Hitchcook said.
“And if it was outside the Solar System?” Bolton asked.
“It means that either the system has no stars or there were no objects or planets to reflect light from the system’s star or stars.”
“So how do we go from here?” Cruz asked, his euphoria waning.
“We need to jump the drone from different locations and in different directions,” Hitchcook said. “I’m sure one of the jumps will bring us pictures of a planet or a star.”
“It might bring us pictures of unknown planets,” Professor Bolton said.
“We’ve to increase the camera angles in order to increase the chances of picking light from a star,” Rudolf suggested.
“What are you waiting for?” Cruz asked. “Let’s return to the ground and get back to work.”
They returned to Earth and the three scientists worked on improving the drone, a feat which took them three months. Cruz accompanied them to space to watch them jump the drone. The first two jumps didn’t produce any desirable results. The drone returned from the third jump with footage of distant stars. They recorded the location of the jump zone and the direction of the jump spot using ICRS spherical coordinate system and a gyrocompass.
They did six more jumps before the drone returned with footage of the planet they now called E Utopia. The footage was breathtaking. It showed and Earth-like planet with large bodies of water on its surface. The water bodies were not like oceans but rather a network of seas. The fact that the rocky planet was reflecting light and had liquid water on its surface meant that it was in the circumstellar habitable zone of a star.
For fifteen seconds everyone was speechless.
“There’s no known planet like this in the Solar System,” Bolton said.
“If this planet is outside the Solar System, how did the drone pass through the asteroid belt?” Doctor Rudolf asked.
The E Utopia Project Page 17
