by L. S. Wood
Every experiment onboard for producing different varieties in foods and ways in producing oxygen had been very successful, while everything was being over taxed daily having so many participants taking advantage of its limited usefulness, and soon the extra consumption of everything aboard the space station would put everyone onboard in jeopardy of extinction.
The two commanders, Commander Colonel Nelson Anderson from the Twitchel, and Commander Colonel Ivan Khrushchev from the International Space Station having seen so many once very active herds in cattle all dead, destroyed out in open fields on the earth below, along with the farmers who owned them lying dead beside them.
Witnessing the many dead bodies around the planet laying exposed to the elements of Mother Nature’s wicked force everywhere upon the face of the earth this last year didn’t want to see the same thing happen to their supportive crews aboard the space station. Especially the ones who had so unselfishly risked their own lives in helping Commander Anderson’s crew in need of nurturing them to stay alive for the last slow long tedious year. They did not want the space station to become like the so many small cities and towns below they had sadly observed from above gone by the wayside.
Desolate little dead ghost towns, with many dead bodies of people and animals still scattered everywhere around, after a year of exposure to the elements of Mother Nature with only their skeletal remains still lying out on the ground. Slain and annihilated by the multitude of neutrons where they stood, when the many rockets in the air exploded with the push of a single button.
The cumulative poor circumstances of life on earth below lie beyond the scope of human imagination. It all seemed worse than going to a theater to watch a good horror movie one could not forget after leaving the theater. This was a true to life show, as it all unveiled right in front of a live audience who took turns watching the deteriorating earth through the eye in the sky telescope, watching the Earth in real live action. Everything happening on earth was real, and not a make believe screen set. The many distasteful scenes below, they were not able to wash away and out their minds with a good night’s sleep, for it would be there again as they reawaked in the morning.
The situation aboard the space station was slowly becoming a very critical one, as the two commanders discussed in private conversation away from their people not to upset the two crews what the next best thing would be for them all to do. The several extra mouths onboard the space station to feed was dwindling down the reserve oxygen and food supply to a very critical point, and it wouldn’t last but a mere three or four more months more for everyone the way things were being depleted so rapidly.
The situation onboard did not look too favorable for anyone, even if nothing bad was to happen to his or her new experiment of food plants that seemed to be doing a fine job of supplying everything, but minimally.
It was not keeping up with the high demand placed on the space stations source with its life supporting supplies capabilities. Drastic steps had to be forthcoming straightaway. A critical decision had to made sooner than later in order to save the crew aboard the space station from starvation and suffocation, along with the crew of the Twitchel.
Commander of the Twitchel, Commander Colonel Nelson Anderson gave a direct order to the shuttle’s crew. “Pack it up ladies and gentlemen. We are to prepare our ship the Twitchel for our return trip back home to earth. Whatever and wherever that might be,” he added.
It was time to take their very, very, very slim chances against this evil demon they were to face back on earth in and around its deadly skies above.
They were going to meet this evil demon head to head and face it when they reentered the earth’s troubled atmosphere, and may God help them all when they do!
There had not been a single sighting of any type of airplane or other form of aircraft flying in the skies around the earth below, that they were able to observe over the last year. There had been a group of Canadian geese they watched migrate back north after a long winters stay in the south. There were other birds, not many, flying in the skies these days as well, and one of the observers on the telescope said she had seen a single hot air balloonist on one occasion drifting along over Earth. She could not tell if the pilot was still alive or dead because of the attitude of the telescopes ability to twist and turn, but the balloon looked to be under good control all the while she had the opportunity to watch it ascend up into the sky above the ground.
Commander Anderson’s only hope for his crew of the Twitchel was that whatever it had been that had stopped so many vehicles on the ground and prevented all the airplanes in the sky from flying in its heavens, wouldn’t be able to stop he and his crew from safely returning home in the Twitchel back to Earth.
He hoped to land their big bird safely back down at the Florida landing site from where they had first taken flight from. They all knew the high risks in whatever had happened to the other aircraft in the sky that terrible day just might happen to them, or they could all stay up in the space station and die a slow suffering death along with everyone else.
After lengthy discussions of openly discussing their slim chances in space, talking it over for the last several days, they all came to the same final agreement and conclusion that it was time to take their chances, and try for a safe trip back home to earth. They would at least all be back home on Earth one way or another. This way they stood a slight chance of a burial in separate graves by their loved ones, if not all buried together in one large crater made by their bird should the shuttle go straight into the ground without them able to land as the many other aircraft seemed to have done that horrific day.
It would be one hell of a rush going into the ground at that fast a rate of speed, and the haste of death would come so fast to them not a one onboard would ever experience the pain of it.
The almost fifty Soviet cosmonauts with the two German astronauts, and the several American astronauts, had all become very close friends during their year-long stint of living together in outer space, aboard the International Space Station.
Had it been by sheer coincidence, or was it purposely done by the would be world leaders of Russia, that the International Space Station at that precise time of the disaster was to be manned by so many Soviet cosmonauts and had added the two German astronauts to satisfy NASA for the time being.
A few cosmonauts were now going on their second year aboard the International Space Station. Trapped and isolated in outer space ever since their replacements were not able to be sent up, they were not able to return back home to Earth to their loved ones without a replacement team’s vehicle for their transportation safely back to Earth. Now their future still looked very bleak for them all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Preparing the Twitchel for Flight
For the following next two weeks, the crew of the Shuttle Twitchel crawled inside her fuselage, out over her tiles, and below her outer skin, checking for any damaged heat shielding tiles. The crew checked her inner fuselage for any loose wiring in her electrical harnesses, and practiced to preflight her daily to the best of their abilities in her cockpit for not having flown her in over an entire year or better. They checked out her manually hand and foot operated hydraulics equipment in order to fly her, and safely land her should her electrical system fail them on her reentry back into the Earth‘s atmosphere.
Commander Anderson did not want to leave a single square inch of his majestic bird unchecked in these last several days of continual checking and rechecking her stability, and flying abilities. He knew if her onboard computers failed them when they reentered the earth’s atmosphere as he suspected they most likely would, along with the backup computers. He wanted to be able to control the flight path of the shuttle manually, by using the heavy hands on means and strong feet operation by using brute leg strength and force on her rudder and braking controls.
He had little faith in their decision to return, but it was time to dea
l with the downward life situation aboard the space station, in its life and death circumstances that was staring them all in the face.
The Twitchel crew would have to muster up an extra amount in pure adrenalin strength during reentry in order for them to activate the manual hydraulic controls of the shuttle.
Now in their weakened state of muscle after living in space without the benefit of having gravity pull constantly down on them to keep their body’s muscles properly toned. The extended period in space had weakened them extensively even after keeping a regimented schedule in an exercising program in the space station’s gym during their long stay.
What would be their chances of landing the Twitchel without her electrical back up computer system working, and in place? Not a very good one, if none at all, and they all knew it.
They double checked all of her hydraulic override equipment twice, and then sometimes three times, just to make sure it all worked properly, for if it didn’t work, they just might as well blast off into the far depths of outer space, and die. Some of the crew second-guessed themselves, not once, but twice and three times as did the others of the crew just to make sure their craft was safe, and ready.
The crew of the Twitchel pulled at all of her many levers to see just how easy they would be to operate, or not operate, and at that time, they all operated quite easily. The only exception to their ease of operation was that they were under no strain or outside pressure of gravity or wind resistance on them, as the Twitchel sat motionlessly attached to the mooring of the space station. When the shuttle reentered the earth’s atmosphere, things would become much different when the true test would come in light of her ease, or not so ease of her operation, and the fluidness of her controls against the Earths atmospherics outside forces of gravity and air against her could cause great difficulty.
According to their solar-powered clock and calendar onboard the space station during their stay in space, they would be reentering the earth’s atmosphere at approximately 0900 hours on Friday the thirteenth of May. What a day to try to land their craft they laughed. The shuttle crew might just as well crash and burn in hell on that day. As any other day of the month, reaffirming suspicions believers in the world, that Friday the thirteenth day of May or any other thirteenth day of the month of any year as a forbidden day to do anything that was important, for it was sure to become a failure.
The Twitchel were all for setting sail into the dark unknown events on that day. Why not the Thirteenth day of May they bolstered in cheerful unison? They had been away from their loved ones too darn long, and enough time away was now long enough. It was time to try their chances at returning backs home to their loved ones waiting patiently back home for them they hoped. They all prayed to God silently for a safe return home.
In general, when people separate from each other for long periods of time strange things happen to their relationships. The Twitchel’s navigator, Lieutenant Ann Mitchell, was extremely happy, maybe overly excited, about at least attempting a return trip back home, and to be reunited with her two children, her husband, her mother and her aging father at their home where they all lived in upstate Vermont.
Her daughter Sarah was only 15 months old when she ventured out on this supposedly short mission of retrieval which was supposed to last only a couple of days or more away, and had now turned into a year-long struggle of survival of her wits and soul searching madness. Amber had been three at the time, and now they were both a whole year plus days older.
Ann wondered if her two beautiful, wonderful precious children would still remember their mommy when and if she returns back home to them, or if any of them were still alive to go back home to after the catastrophe which took place on the planet.
The other crew members of the Twitchel also had wives and children waiting for them back home as well, or at least they all hoped and prayed the same as Ann, that they, too, were all still alive and doing well. Without any radio contact for over a year, there was little any of them knew about the earth back home except for what they all could see through the telescopic eye in the sky.
They never drifted or flew over upstate Vermont close enough, so Ann never had the opportunity to look down and see if her husband, her children, or her mother and father were alive out in the fields of their Vermont farm with their cattle and crops.
If anything was to happen to her on this mission, her husband, Ben, had promised to take himself, along with their two children and her mother and father’s farm in upstate Vermont to live and grow up. She wanted her children to experience the tranquility and atmosphere provided them that she had experienced in growing up in Lunenburg, Vermont.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Returning Home
0400 HOURS A.M. as planned, the Twitchel’s crew released the docking security blocking mechanism with a flick of a hand switch on their computer. Their bird was free from her once secured birthing platform firmly attached to the space station’s docking platform, and was now drifting slowly backwards out and away from the huge space station’s laboratory air lock docking station.
There had been many, many friendly loving hugs and kisses given each other prior to the sad departure by the two very caring crews of the space station, along with the very nervous crew of the Twitchel. There were many true tears of sadness flowing, along with the overall concern for safety exchanged by the parting friends. There was no bitterness shown between the different nations living aboard the space station between its occupants. They were true friends brought together by a most unpleasant tragedy, then bound together by an everlasting friendship only one could share with others of a close family such as siblings.
A decision had long been decided prior the Twitchel departing, that if the Twitchel’s crew made it safely back to Earth and were able to land at Cape Canaveral, the few lucky candidates who were able to, and had been chosen after all the food and oxygen were to run out aboard the space-station, would then land their Soviet-made landing space capsule at the spaces programs central headquarters in Florida if at all possible.
It was a very sad goodbye when the airlocks between the two space-vessels was securely sealed shut, as everyone in space mused over the fact they might not never see one another ever again. The space station maintained a constant radio frequency open with the Twitchel until the spacecraft broke through the earth’s outer ionosphere and down into the Earth’s atmosphere. Soon as the Twitchel passed down into the Earth’s atmosphere, everything on that channel turned to instant static, as had all frequencies when any spacecraft went through the dead zone on reentry.
It was the same static coming in over the radio, just like when the space station tried talking to anyone on earth over the last year. The view from the space station’s watchful telescope watching the Twitchel returning to earth was like sitting down in the front row seat of a movie theater watching a picture show.
The crew aboard the space station lowered the high power telescopes strength to minimal power. Then transferred its camera’s image to the many smaller television monitors positioned throughout the different cubicles within the space station, so the entire crew might keep in constant visual contact with their friends aboard the Twitchel. Everyone aboard the space station was concerned for the ship as the craft and its crew made their daring decent back toward Earth.
The Twitchel’s reentry back through into the earth’s atmosphere was a picture perfect reentry, according to the television monitors positioned within the space station. A white streak followed the Twitchel’s tail section as the ceramic protective heat shielding tiles became red-hot absorbing the heat of friction caused by the atmosphere during reentry. Suddenly, as the space station crew all watched on their monitors, disaster struck the Twitchel.
It began to wildly shimmy and shake, and then it tumbled through the air a couple of hard times it looked on the several monitors they were all watching. The crew aboard the space station thought for sure the d
ay, Friday the thirteenth was as evil day for the crew of the Twitchel as it was religiously held in belief by many self-proclaimed witches worldwide.
As the shuttle parted away the docking platform drifting away from the space station, the Twitchel’s crew seemed very nervous and anxious, and extremely happy all at the same time. Lieutenant Ann Mitchell with very high hopes in seeing her precious family once again, but with tight reservation imbedded deep down in the pit of her stomach and mind. She thought about what might be waiting for her upon her return home to Earth, were both happy and sad times to be-had by all.
The other crewmembers in the Twitchel had their own dreams in seeing their loved ones, once again. Everyone aboard the Twitchel knew it would be a slim not fat chance, a snowball’s chance in hell of not melting if they were to all make it all the way back home safely to earth in one piece. Everyone felt his or her chances in making a clean reentry back into the earth’s atmosphere was slim to nil to nothing, and felt sure they would meet their maker soon.
It would be almost impossible to maneuver their big bird during reentry handling the heavy weight of her, or to control her in a level path of flight, should she lose her computerized flight navigating control systems on their reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.
Five long hours quickly passed for the crew of the Twitchel, as the crew aboard the craft fired her retro rockets to slow their craft down and position it into a reentry flight mode for their safe reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere without burning up their ship. Both computers, both the main and auxiliary computers, were gone over twice and checked again and then triple checked for their proper operation.
Their course and latitudes checked as were the manually operated hydraulic levers for their flight control. Everyone knowing very well when the computers went down, if they did, they would be going down as well, hoping they would be able to maintain control over the Twitchel, and not literally be going down to their doom in a blazing flame of glory. Everything checked out in perfect optimal operating conditions.
