by T I WADE
Bill Withers entered Ryan’s office. “Great set up in Hangars Two and Three, Ryan. How long have you been working on this project and what are all those panels for? There must be fifty to sixty outer-wall panel skins in here.”
“My answers depend on how much you want to know, Bill,” Ryan replied. “This is your first visit to Hangar One, the control of the entire mission. How much can I trust you?” Ryan added as he watched Bill look over the large screen on the wall. It looked like the one NASA would use for all its space flights, except that Ryan’s covered a thousand times more area. “I’m planning to go and live in space. Do you want to come?”
The former head of NASA’s face went white, and he looked at Ryan in shock. “How can you have set up such a large operation in so short a time?” he asked.”
“Bill, I started this mission at seventeen years old, nearly three decades ago. I have spent well over five billion dollars and twenty-four years of my life planning what I’m going to achieve in the next twelve months: build a space ship to leave earth.”
“A spaceship?”
“The panels you asked about are the outer skin of the spaceship. The hundreds of cylinders over there, nearly filling up this hanger, are corridors and living areas for our crew to survive in normal earth gravity. We will grow our own food, mine our own water and minerals, and survive for at least a generation before my ship returns to earth. I, and all the crew, will probably be dead by the time we return. Where we are going nobody knows. Even I don’t, but it will be far away from anyone who might want to follow us from earth. Maybe we never come back, find a new place to live, or perish out there. Nobody knows.”
“Well, I have lost the only job I truly loved, heading up NASA. I have never thought about living in space for longer than our missions to the ISS. My wife left me several years ago, the kids all have their own families. Apart from my dog, Shep, there isn’t much to stay here for. What can I add to your mission Ryan to be of service to your journey? I’m just an old space guy.”
“Bill, there are few on earth who know as much as you about space, our solar system, our planets, and the engineering of space. You and Shep might be the last passengers I invite on this trip. I wanted 36 travelers, and I already have 47 including me and my new pilots. Our space ship infrastructure has been designed to handle 100 humans and a dozen animals, dogs, cats, pet fish, etc. The balance of our inhabitants will be born in space.
Because our children will take our places, we must teach the new generation everything we know so they can survive, as well as return to earth one day. Every piece of information we have stored in our collective human memory has already been assembled in several formats and will be our library of knowledge. Even with this knowledge, we still need teachers to instruct our crew, and then our young on the practical means of survival, not just the theory; your knowledge will be a valuable tool to make sure that everything you have learned in your 60 years is passed on, generation to generation.”
“How will you keep the number of people aboard to 100?” asked Bill.
“Easy, fifty plus passengers, aged 13 to 71, will leave with me, and fifty babies will be born at some time. After we reach a total of 100 passengers, we rely on proven birth control techniques so that we wait for one person to die before we allow a new baby to be conceived. When I die, a new baby will be born to replace me. We wouldn’t suffer many problems on earth if we controlled the population explosion around the world a little better. I’m sure my way of thinking doesn’t make many conservatives happy, but I believe that humans are far cleverer than we make them out to be, and we can change to suit any new necessary patterns of survival. If we ever find a new place to live, outside the panels of the spaceship, then we will do what we do best: populate them!”
“If Shep can come with me, then I’m willing to sign up and scrub the decks,” replied Bill.
“Shep is welcome as long as your dog enjoys rabbit or chicken. There will not be dog food, beef or pork on board. Three other dogs are already on the manifest and they will have to live with the two cats and one Guinea Pig already booked.”
“Shep can handle that; so can I for that matter.”
“Good. Now I have a problem. I have loose cargo in the holds of my mining craft. How can I get the cargo, hundreds of rocks, collected so that I can transfer them into the shuttles bound for earth.
Chapter 7
Back to Earth
It was good to rest. The last two days of non-stop work had exhausted VIN. It wasn’t easy getting a full space suit on in cramped conditions; he hadn’t actually taken off his lower suit for four days now; and, for the first time the bath-bag didn’t sound so bad.
VIN was out of his suit and fully in control of Astermine One. After he set the spacecraft on auto-pilot and on a computer-controlled flight to Ivan five days ahead, he had helped Jonesy into his space suit. Jonesy exited the docking port on the 300-foot cord; he had set the automatic release in the port so that on instruction VIN could release the cord from inside the cockpit.
Maggie had maneuvered Astermine Two close behind and as Jonesy floated away from the craft Maggie hovered nearby allowing him to slowly get closer to her docking port. When he grabbed on, Maggie checked the two-hatch system and then opened the outer hatch. Jonesy slipped inside, VIN released the cord, and Jonesy pulled it in and closed the outer hatch. Now he and Maggie had five days to enjoy space travel in private.
VIN had a quarter bottle of vodka to enjoy, two bags of jerky and a packet of cookies transferred while on DX2014. He also didn’t need to hear Jonesy’s music; life in space wasn’t that much different from life with Jonesy on the road.
An incoming message woke him several hours later. It was from Ryan giving VIN instructions on what he and Bill Withers had discussed after looking at the spacecraft blueprints.
First, they had decided that there was no rush to return to the remains of the asteroid, and since part of it was going to miss earth by about 100,000 miles, they might as well wait for the rock to be as close as possible for the next mission. Ryan also said that if they indeed had the quality and quantity of pure diamonds they reported, there wasn’t much need to return. There could be enough money to finish the whole America One mission and pay the remaining $1 billion fuel bill to get all the equipment into space.
Both men also decided that the only way to collect the loose stones was through the smaller side cargo area and their side doors one compartment at a time. In each cargo hold was a nylon canister cover. It was much like a very strong mosquito net which covered the ten canisters in each cargo bay once they were individually secured. Asterspace Three was heading into space in ten days with more of these nets. Ryan had organized a team to make six more of these nets which were just big enough to fit around a side cargo bay door, eight feet long and three feet wide. Since each bay was separate and could be pumped full of air, the plan was to seal the net to the side of the craft, and pump air from the cockpit into the cargo bay area. The rush of air through the bay and out the side door into a vacuum would carry all the stones with it. The net would capture the escaping stones, the net would be closed with a drawstring capturing the stones in a bag, and the bag removed from the side of the craft and placed into a shuttle hold.
VIN thought the plan was both simple and excellent. He agreed it would work well and would take only one spacewalk to empty each of the craft. He recommended to Ryan that Astermine One be done first as it had ten of the seventeen canisters filled with a variety of rocks, including many of the larger diamonds; the bags of stones could be tied down under the shuttle’s nets. He estimated that the entire load out of Astermine One would be less than four tons.
VIN smiled thinking how each situation was thought out by the team. It also meant that he had little to do for the next four days, so he checked his Surface to see which movies needed his attention while U2 played loudly through the cockpit’s loudspeakers.
He did not hear from Jonesy for two of the four days. Both craft
were heading towards Ivan at 28,000 miles an hour, the computers had them locked in formation, and the thrusters began to slow them down at the correct distance from Ivan.
“Are your thrusters doing what they are supposed to, partner?” Jonesy’s voice broke through the “Apocalypse Now” movie he was watching for the second time this trip.
“Yep,” VIN responded. “Are you coming over? Is your hibernation over? It was pretty short for an American grizzly bear, especially an old one like you.”
“Mind your manners, kid. Remember to have respect for your elders,” Jonesy responded. “You can fly that diamond bucket as well as I can. Why don’t you take her in? She will be on auto pilot the whole way if you think you can’t handle her. Remember, I’ve seen your driving; much to be desired sometimes.”
After several insulting, but friendly comments to each other, VIN agreed to be his ship’s captain. After all, it wasn’t like flying, more like directing five computers.
VIN had completed more than fifty hours on spacecraft flight in the simulator in Hangar One. He certainly wouldn’t be as good as Jonesy or Maggie landing the craft, but in three dimensional spaceflight, anybody with the help of five computers could keep Astermine One straight and level, unless something happened.
The computers continued to fly both craft only a mile apart. The occupants, a little tired of being cooped up discussed how they would spend the first few days swimming in beautiful clear swimming pool water, and have the sun actually shine hot on their white bodies. It was surprising how much a human could get to miss the pleasures of earth in less than a month.
Jonesy even admitted that he was really looking forward to the next run, and even a chocolate milkshake, which made VIN think that the liquor cabinet in Astermine Two had been dry for some time.
Space travel was getting easier for the pilots. Every piece of data from all of Ryan’s spacecraft was being relayed back to the computers in Hangar One; the information enabled the flights to become faster and more direct.
The two craft saw Ivan come into sight three hours before they were due to arrive. Six hours out, the Cloaking Devices were activated as a precaution and the whereabouts of the two craft were seen only on Ryan’s large screen.
It would be five more days before the next shuttle would arrive with the nets. VIN spoke to Suzi fifty miles out. Suzi was helping unload the panels from the shuttle which had arrived twenty-four hours earlier. Suzi had been a passenger aboard and, two hours later as they slowed and then floated in formation next to Ivan, she waved; she was helping Michael fit the second docking port onto Cube One.
The second large cube was one side away from completion. They looked like two silver warehouses joined together.
“Suzi, I’m exhausted. I think you need to float over here, give me a kiss, and dock Astermine One. I don’t think I’m able to do it without a kiss,” said VIN over the intercom while waving at Suzi a few hundred feet away.
“VIN, get ready to catch me! I will jetpack over to dock your ship for you,” she replied. She pushed away from Michael on the side of the cube and she moved quickly, her strong new legs propelling her away from the silver panels fast. Within seconds she was telling VIN to open the outer hatch. VIN realized that they all were slowly becoming attuned to living in space.
“A good jump, Suzi,” commented Maggie, watching her reach the other ship.
“Ja, I’m getting good at this floating stuff, Fraulein Maggie. Now, lover boy, open up the hatch, I want to come in.”
“You won’t get much done dressed like that, Superfraűlein,” added Jonesy.
“You stick to your woman, Herr Jones; I will stick to my man. I’m sure he doesn’t care what I’m wearing,” returned Suzi slipping feet first into the docking port.
Two hours later both mining craft were docked on Ivan with the shuttle in-between them. Out of their suites and all but one wearing magnetic shoes, the returning crew hugged, glad to see each other. Michael and Fritz, who had returned from working the spiders, were also happy to see everybody and told the crew that it would take two more days of work to get the fifth needed docking bay, the second on Cube One, operational. He told them that Asterspace Three was arriving with the next flight, so they needed five docking ports to park their vehicles. Outer space was on the verge of a traffic jam.
VIN and Suzi were happy to find that there were three jars of caviar left. Other than that, their secret supplies were gone.
****
Ryan was studying the new rock Diamond One, which was now well away from the rest of the forward remains of DX2014. The beacon, if it was still on the rock had changed direction by a tenth of a degree and was several miles away from the other beacon which, hopefully, was still on the front piece which remained close to its original course and holding its 3,000 mile an hour forward speed.
“Hi Bud, Ryan here,” he stated after calling his friend at Hubble on his cell phone.
“Hey! Ryan, we have new directives not to talk to members of the public anymore. I don’t know if they can follow our conversation on our cell phones, but Skype me, it’s safer.”
Ryan agreed stating that it was quite possible and hung up. He moved to his computer and Skyped his friend.
“Much better,” stated his contact. “What do you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I want to let you know about the breakup of DX2014. I’ve been told by reliable sources that it has broken into three or four large pieces and one piece, about the size of the Empire State Building, is heading our way.” Ryan gave him the latest coordinates and his friend told him that he would get back to him.
Three hours later Bud confirmed that his next scheduled time on the telescope was in twelve hours; it had been moved up due to his urgent request to study the possibility of a new meteor coming close to earth.
It took his friend at Hubble twenty-four hours to get back to Ryan.
“First question Ryan, you told me that this is the second, rear part of DX2014. Is that correct?”
“Yes, the middle section of DX2014.”
“I have alerted the asteroid search stations around the world. Your piece of rock is about three times the size of 2013DA14. 2013DA14 is a newly discovered 150-foot-wide asteroid astronomers at the LaSagra Observatory in Spain found a year or so ago. This new asteroid came pretty close to the Earth a few weeks ago. It passed within 67,000 miles of our atmosphere. We were told by NASA not to make a public statement and very few astronomers knew enough to go public. I think that was the reason Bill Withers was removed. He wanted to tell the U.S. population, but the government acted faster and let him go to shut him up. There was only a 0.021 percent chance that 2013DX14 would have hit earth, but there is higher probability on its next pass in six years. Your piece of rock is three times the size of 2013DX14. If 2013DX14 hits earth on its next flyby, it would hit with the force of approximately, a 2.4 megaton explosion. This force is similar to the mysterious Tunguska event of 1908 which leveled hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest. Your rock looks pretty fissured and could break up and disappear during entry, or at worst it could hit with the force of a 3 to 4 megaton explosion. In other words, it could take out half of Australia if it hit anywhere on that continent. For your information Ryan, your new piece of rock has been given a complete trajectory analysis by our computers here at the observatory.”
“Do I need to hurry up my mission?” Ryan asked.
“Not yet,” replied his friend. “The good news is that it has a slight chance of hitting earth in two months’ time. Your new rock, now named DX2014B is speeding up; we believe it is being pulled in by our own moon. When it does pass by the moon in six weeks, its speed will increase to a velocity of 7,000 miles an hour faster than earth’s movement through space. This is a very, very slow rock compared to 2013DX14, many times slower. It looks like it will bypass earth inside the 60,000-mile orbit of geosynchronous satellites, or the ring plane we call this area around earth. That means that it could take out geostationary and even
military and GPS satellites operating as low as 12,000 mile altitudes. That is the problem.”
“It could swing into an orbit close to earth?” Ryan suggested.
“Correct. Our calculations show that after its first pass, it will go into a two-year orbit, or less, around our planet and on each pass it will be pulled closer to earth. Now, if we return to 2013DX14’s pass in 2020, this asteroid has a 79.997 percent chance of hitting earth on February 15th 2020. Your rock already has an 87.779 percent change of hitting earth on February 24th, 2020. This could be a double whammy.”
“So in two months’ time, this rock could pass through the ring plane and hit any satellite in its path?” asked Ryan.
“Correct, or hit the moon directly. Plus there is always debris around a breakup. You said this one has a magnetic pull around it, so hopefully any close rocks have already been pulled back to it. There are three more dangerous pieces we recorded around it, all about seven to twenty miles away from the center piece and we will keep an eye on this group from an observatory in Spain.”
For the next several hours, Ryan met with his inner team about the possible ways to speed up completing the flights to Ivan. He and his team needed to get new ideas thought out on getting his necessary cargos off earth as fast as possible, and it looked like asteroid mining was over for at least six weeks. Why go all the way out to the diamond mine when it was coming to them?
Over the next day he spoke to his mining crew and decided that he needed to get his duty-free treasures into earth’s atmosphere and out of the country.
He still had several hundred pounds of native platinum in supply and he asked his Earth-Exit friend, Martin Brusk, for the loan of his jet for the transfer of the platinum to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Amsterdam also had the best diamond cutters and they could be interested in the incoming fancy stones, if they were real diamonds.
