Earth Lost Without Power

by L. S. Wood

  He stayed up many, many nights worrying and wondering how to go about the rules of this particular lottery in making it work in a fair and just manner. He had spent the many sleepless hours making up the many envelopes, slipping the winners’ and losers’ slips into every one of them and into the makeshift basket they would be picked from, one by one.

  No one, not a one, showed any jubilation or sorrow in winning or losing as the first round of lottery tickets were passed out. Everyone knew that most everyone onboard the doomed space station was going to die, and there wasn’t any reason for jubilation to be shown at the first drawing, knowing very well they were just one step closer to living, and one of your many friends would be left behind were that one step closer to dying.

  Everyone onboard the space station felt the same way about this damn lottery for life. If they were to win so be it, and if they were to lose and be left behind to die, so be it.

  The commander waited for everyone to open their chanced envelopes and had the lucky winners come forward for their next drawing, and did the same for the losing members. The next drawing, he had the winner and loser crewmembers come forward in similar fashion until the lottery was completed, and the four lucky winners were standing there beside him.

  Everyone now showed great joy for the ones who had won the lottery with tears of sorrow welling up in their eyes for themselves. Tears shed were either happy ones filled with joy for the winners, or they were more sorrowful sad tears for themselves. Everyone tried to represent themselves as joyful tears for the winner’s sake anyway or because their commander had been so strong in showing his heroism. He did not play the lottery or let his commanding powers of authority leave someone of them behind because of greed for life and power over them for himself.

  Everyone onboard knew Commander Ivan would designate the time for departure, and that no one else onboard the space station, but he and the lucky four lottery winners along with the two Germans, would know when that special time would come in the near future. It would take place within the next couple or few days or weeks, and no later than two weeks before their oxygen supply was to run very low for them.

  The commander had the only access keys to the capsule, and his own newly encoded releasing numbers he had himself entered into the onboard computer to release the capsule and its booster rockets from the space station, memorized by him only in order for the capsule to leave the security of the space station under his power.

  He had performed all this security surrounding the space capsule just in case someone onboard the space station tried to steal the capsule and try to return to Earth for his or her own benefit. He knew the situation at hand would cause many minds to wonder. He didn’t want anyone onboard falling into the situation of trying to dessert leaving them all behind to die when there was a slim but small chance for some to survive and possibly send back some relief help from Earth for the rest of them. He wanted to send the lucky winners of the lottery off with plenty of time left for the ones left behind onboard to live a little while longer.

  They needed to know someone down below cared about them, and the lottery crew could possibly send back some help to them by way of supplies. Whatever they could do to try to help them in their desperate situation aloft knowing it was probably futile, but he had to do something to give himself and the others a little hope, if nothing at all.

  The time had come for the lucky six to leave the space station. Time was running out for everyone, and if the four cosmonauts and German astronauts were to leave, it would mean all that much more oxygen for the rest of his crew to have to live on before that horrible time of suffocation or starvation overcame them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Excitement of a Sighting

  Commander Ivan. Report to the laboratory’s command center bridge immediately, sir. The space shuttle Twitchel has been brought out of its storage hanger and being brought out to one of the three launching pads below sir!”

  Commander Ivan ran floating along in weightlessness along the way as quickly as he possibly could move, stumbling in the air in the space station’s corridors, bouncing off everything in sight in his way it seemed. Everything along the way, the walls of the tubes between the cubicles seemed to try to stop him from getting to the large eye in the sky telescope quick enough. He wanted to take a look see for himself before the space station’s orbit took them too far away from Florida for him to see what was taking shape below at the cape. He figured the United States was either going to send them some very much needed help or supplies for them to keep alive a while longer or it was just going to send up another shuttle to do more of their own experiments in outer space again.

  His hopes were that it was his first thoughts that were about to happen, and not those of his second thoughts that he had had. He had been just about ready to allow the lucky contestants of the lottery for life to prepare themselves to leave the space station in the awaiting space capsule they had the next morning prior to seeing action take place below. He had for some unknown reason held off his final decision for a couple of extra days, almost letting the lottery winners leave just before the Americans showed any signs they were coming to help rescue them from their craft or help them in some other way.

  He was delighted the Americans had moved the Twitchel out of her hanger when they did or the lucky lottery winners would have already left and been on their way back to earth.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The Beautiful Launch

  Two more time-consuming overwhelming long days passed slowly by for the crew of the International Space Station. The weather around the cape was rather cloudy over the launching sight of Florida as they passed overhead again just before dawn. It did not look like a good day for a launch of any shuttle.

  On their next pass over Cape Kennedy, the Twitchel was no longer on her launching pad as the craft was gone. There was a white squiggle cloudy of steamy white smoke twisting itself into the morning sky. The powerful telescope aboard the space station did not pick up the tiny black speck giving off the flume of steam and smoke behind it.

  The Twitchel was shooting skyward toward them. Commander Ivan lessened the varying power on the telescope’s control panel, drawing in the huge extended lens on it and back into the many powered telescopes varying sections to lessen its huge magnification capabilities.

  There she was looking beautiful and everything ascending skyward toward them and the heavens. She looked like she was on a flight path that would line her up in a direct line with them. She was climbing toward them at the 0800 hour position located on his wristwatch.

  He watched the craft as her two main thruster launching rockets were ejected from her sides, then several seconds later her second stage booster rockets came to life. She was a beautiful sight to him while he prayed in his own way that the craft he was watching shooting skyward was coming to bring he and his crew some very much-needed precious food, oxygen, and other supplies they so desperately needed to keep them all alive, but he couldn’t be dead nuts sure they were coming for them.

  He tried contacting the Twitchel on their once designated NASA radio frequency, but there was no response on that channel. They had not quite come out of the silent quiet radio zone yet he thought, as they were just barely entering the outer edge of the globe’s atmosphere’s outer edge of the space realm.

  The space station quickly lost sight of the ascending shuttlecraft as the telescope’s ability to turn and maneuver to follow the ship up was limited in its ability to turn its lenses sideways. The huge telescope onboard was built to follow the smallest in movements upon the earth’s surface and into outer space, but not very adjustable to the laboratory’s sides or to its rear in order to follow the shuttlecraft any longer.

  Commander Ivan ordered the smaller telescope onboard to be switched on at his observation station so that its ability to turn in any direction that he wanted he could use. There she was drifting further and
further away from them in her own orbit when he was able to lock onto the craft with the smaller of the two telescopes.

  Commander Ivan was very disappointed. He had figured the shuttle just launched would be zooming in at them under full power in order to catch up to them in their orbit if they were on a mercy mission to help save them. He and Commander Anderson had figured wrong about the amount of supplies that were onboard his craft when he and Commander Anderson departed a couple of months before. The two figured the space station would have enough food and oxygen supply to last them about eight or nine more months if used sparingly, and they were totally wrong.

  The longer they watched the Twitchel, the further away it drifted back, back, and away from them. After several long hours of disappointment it seemed watching the Twitchel drift further and further away from them and finally disappear out of their sight, the commander of the space station had the four select raffle winners along with the two German astronauts report to his quarters.

  “The time has come, gentlemen, for the six of you to prepare to leave your posts. Our mission has truly become a sad one for the rest of your fellow cosmonauts and for me as well. In your case, the many friends I hope you have all come to make over the last countless months together. The hope of being saved by the Americans has dwindles down to nothing now I guess. I was sure of it when I first saw them, sure the shuttle launched was coming for us or at least bringing us some much-needed supplies. I guess they don’t really know our plight up here and are just out doing some more outer space experiments of their own, instead of including us in their new program. It is truly a shame. We must now prepare for the worst for the ones left behind, and the best for you six at the same time. Remember comrades, 0600 hours Eastern Time. You will report to the capsule’s docking platform in your full flight gear for departure.

  If, or should I say when, you make it back to Earth crew, I am quite sure you will try your hardest back on Earth to convince someone to please send some oxygen, at least, and other much-needed supplies immediately back up to us or we shall all perish. We do have enough food and oxygen for a couple of more or less months, and we can still use the filtering systems for our water, even though everything is starting to get a little rancid tasting around here. We desperately need more oxygen to stay alive much longer than the plus or minus months.

  Your mission will be a mission of mercy for your fellow comrades. I had my own hopes way too high for the last couple of days while seeing the American shuttle ascend toward us, but now to no avail. Remember 0600 hours, comrades, and don’t be late. Everyone other than the seven of us will think this just another practice dry run for your preparation to leave, but it will not be. This will be the actual time of leaving comrades and hope you will all remember the instructions we have been going over and over these last few weeks of practice.

  You must enter the earth’s atmosphere at exactly a thirty-five degree approaching angle to your downward slope reentry or you will burn up without the bottom of your capsule absorbing the intense heat of going through the atmosphere. Remember comrades, 0600 hours, and do not be late. The trajectory point to land at the U.S. base depends on a quick departure so you will land on target and on time in the daylight hours.

  No one will suspect your departure just like this was supposed to be another hour of instruction on how to maneuver the capsule with the positioning rockets for your reentry. Remember 0600 hours and do not be late. Whoever shows up late for the departure will not be going due to the short reentry window available at that time of day. The window for departure is narrow and cannot be missed!”

  “Commander Ivan, please report to the control room immediately. Commander Ivan, please report to the main control room immediately.”

  “What is it Sergeant?” Commander Ivan asked the sergeant at the control board over the intercom system.

  “The shuttle has fired four small rockets, sir. It may be heading this way, but I am not certain of it, sir.”

  The commander hurried along to the main control room again, but not in as much of a hurry as last time. He then sat down to watch what was happening to the shuttle’s movement on the live television screen monitor attached to the smaller telescope. He watched as the four additional disposable jaytoe bottles affixed to the shuttle’s sides of the craft burned until they emptied themselves of their fuel and their flames went out. “They must have had a radical failure with their positioning system, Sergeant. No one in their right minds would have wasted all there positioning device capabilities like that one unless they were in an improper orbit. A switch must have failed them or malfunctioned to have all four fired off all at the same precise time. I have never seen anything quite like that before. I wonder if they are in trouble, or what they are up to.”

  He wondered, if they were coming to link up with the space station to help them, then why had the crew released the second stage rockets so soon. Even he knew the indicator’s warning lights from the computers would warn them with buzzers if they had a problem if they were to waste the second stages too soon and would have kept them from doing it automatically. Why in the hell had they gone and done such a foolish thing in overriding the computers if their mission was to come to help them. The commander sat there feeling stupefied, watching the shuttle for a couple of more hours as the shuttle drifted a minuscule closer with the passing of time, but hadn’t indicate in its actions it was coming to help them in their desperate predicament. He got up from sitting in front of the monitor, and then paced back and forth through the corridors drifting from one corridor to the next. He had finally run out of his strong mental strength in stamina, and had only wished now he had somehow found a way he too could have at least figured out a way that he might have had a fair chance to have been in the raffle of life to enable him a chance to have gone back home to his family as well.

  The situation at hand for the moment was poor, and disheartening. He could not do a damn thing about it now except to climb into that damn space capsule by himself and return back home to Earth by himself. He was the commander and chief of this damn space laboratory. He had every damn right and authority to make such a drastic call and return back to Earth all by himself and send help back to his needy crew. Why were these corrupt thoughts now going through his tired mind? Deep down inside, he didn’t really feel this way, but his subconscious worried mind kept firing up and telling him all these things to do to save himself. Either the Americans were coming to help them, or they were not coming at all. What in the hell were they up to?

  “Commander Ivan, please report to the control room immediately”. “What the hell do they want from me now?” He wanted to be left alone to gather his tired thoughts some more, so he would not show any signs of weakness. Ivan pushed off with his feet and drifted toward the control room hoping the Americans were coming this time to help them, but he had his doubts.

  “The shuttle has fired her main rockets this time, sir.” Then Commander Ivan sat down, and watched carefully this time to see what was taking place with the shuttle should time turn around, and they were coming to help.

  “Contact her by radio, Sergeant.” “Yes sir commander. She is not responding clearly. All I have is a continuance of garbled-up static coming in over this channel, sir. I cannot, understand any words being communicated, but it sounds as if they are trying to raise us on their radio, sir.”

  Even thought they could not correspond by radios, the commander’s gut feelings told him she was coming for them now, and it was truly a splendid good feeling of relief he had inside himself.

  Commander Ivan sent out a happy message out over the intercom system in the space station as everyone flocked to the control room or places where there were monitors to watch the space shuttle on the television monitoring screens. The shuttle was now zooming in toward them as she had been on her first entry into space. The ship looked like the Twitchel, the same ship they had befriended just over a year and some months ago, and
it was now coming back to them, for them, or just possibly bringing them some much-needed supplies to save them from disaster. It didn’t matter what they were up to as they were coming. At that very moment, that was what mattered the most to any of them.

  Tears of happy joy flowed freely from every crewmember at their stations, including Commander Ivan. At least now everyone had a mere smidgen of hope as all shouted with glee. They were so overzealous with emotion seeing the shuttle zooming through space toward them, and the burden on their weary hearts lightened. Many of the Russian women onboard began to cry cheerfully as all of their daily-unanswered prayers seemed to becoming answered for them. A couple of the men openly had misty eyes as the rest of the macho crewmembers hid their feelings behind gritted teeth. Many onboard the space station had been feeling the end to their lives was quickly nearing its final days, all except for the six very lucky ones. Now they all, including the lucky six, stood a very good chance of one day returning back home to their loved ones on Earth. Now if only a small number of them could return with every mission sent to them by the Americans sending supplies, and a small number of them might be able to return with the shuttle when it returns back to Earth.

  As the Twitchel fired her retro-rockets, the entire crew of the space station bellowed out with a joyous chorus as they all hugged and made merry, trying to jump up and down as they floated together in the laboratory’s sections all together.

  The very static sounding voices from the radio became clearer the closer the shuttle approached the orbiting space laboratory. When the Twitchels retro-rockets fired to slow their craft down for final hookup, the voices coming in over the radio cleared right up between the two crafts.