by L. S. Wood
“Was that thunder, Mom,” asked Ann?
“It sure did sound a little like it, didn’t it Pa?”
“It sure did, sweetie.” Ben and Ann’s folks could not believe their ears nor what their eyes might have seen. Lightning had not been seen for months nor had thunder been heard by anyone in the region since the big bang took place. There had not been a single death by lightning or electrical power since that dreaded day of long ago. It seemed almost sadistic to hope that soon someone or something would have its life electrically taken away, and not merely snuffed out by the dreaded means and ways of the neutrons dreaded assault of dying. Maybe it was thunder Ann’s family had heard, and then again maybe it was not.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Hope
Maybe there was hope for the earth after all. Maybe the earth would reclaim that which was taken away from her by greedy human hands, and then again maybe not. How long would it take for good old Mother Nature to get her act back together; one more year, two more years, or maybe a period much greater than ten or better years in the future to regain her power over this neutron creature, if ever. No one on earth knew just how long or even if it was possible. When and if it did happen, maybe then just maybe, man might be able once more to start generating electricity on the surface of the globe one more time. If only man could put up with a few more years of learning how to cope with this menace, then maybe just maybe the luxuries of life might return slowly to everyone.
Then in the future there might be born another of the earth’s ugly inhabitants that might want to control the earth like the ones who had caused this great catastrophe to occur in the first place.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Back Aboard the Space Station
The mood aboard the space station was elated to the degree of great to excellent as the Twitchel disembarked her port of call, moving back away from her docking port. The once good mood soon swung to one of disappointment several hours later when Commander Anderson radioed back to his counterpart, Commander Ivan, the encounter Scavonivich had so brutally taken out on Ann’s head as she was about to guide the Twitchel back to Earth with its new bearings she was finishing up on typing into the computer at that time.
It could have been disastrous for everyone onboard the shuttle if he had caused her to push the wrong control mechanism switches at that time. The space stations crew continued to monitor the shuttle visually, and by radio until Ann hit the switch activating the retrorockets, and their radio communications was lost as they reentered the earth’s atmosphere through the radio dead zone as was their visual contact when the shuttle descended down into the thick cloud cover of the earth over Florida.
Looking down from space the next day when the cloud cover had finally lifted from the cape, the crew of the space station noticed the Twitchel down on the ground a far long distance from and off the side of the runway at the cape. They knew something drastically had to have gone wrong seeing the very large deep furrowed up earth behind it, caused by the forward broken landing gear when landing. They could see the emergency inflated side slide used for a quick escape in an emergency. There were several ground crew maintenance men surrounding the Twitchel the day after her landing. The craft did not look to be in too bad of a shape from where they were they could see, but something had to be amiss with the entire action-taking place around the craft.
Without radio communication to talk to Earth, it would be a long while before the crew of the space station would ever know what for certain really went wrong with the Twitchel or the safety of the crew and passengers within her. There were no flags or messages this time after landing laid out to indicate anything to them like before. They could only surmise and pray there would or could be another rescue mission sometime in the future.
Commander Khrushchev was very reassuring with his firm control of his stern voice promising his crew all went well for everyone below. The craft on the ground off the runway looked intact. It looked as if nothing major had gone too far amiss. They had probably blown a tire on landing, and veered off the runway because of it.
The time had come to start another year of experimental gardening aboard the space station to insure the safety and survival of everyone aboard. They were now able to grow extra food to sustain themselves; therefore the situation at hand looked very promising to all especially without the other eight cosmonauts’ mouths to feed, and the crew of the Twitchel which had lived with them for the year.
Four months before the end of the following year, if supplies were running low for them, they would send their last space capsule to return to Earth and request another space shuttle mission by the Americans to return them all back home to Earth aboard. At least send enough oxygen, food, and other supplies again to sustain the remaining crew until another life mission could possibly take place in the future. They all hoped one day to return to Earth. Commander Ivan assured everyone he would be the last person to leave the space station when the proper time came to abort the mission. In his heart, Commander Ivan felt the pain of untruthfulness flowing from his mouth out to his crew for to him the Twitchel looked a mess with a twisted fuselage from where he was sitting and observing it from the space station. The nosecone of its forward cockpit looked very much dislodged and bent downward toward the ground ready to fall off, and from the furrow behind it, he felt the Twitchel’s future was never to be repaired or ready for flight ever again.
He felt someone for sure had to have been very seriously hurt and injured in this hideous looking landing wondering if one of his comrades or if any of his American friends had been lost in this mission of mercy.
Returning to his sleeping quarters after addressing his dedicated crew, Commander Khrushchev reflected over in his mind what the next best step taken would be for him to do next for his crew. His country had not attempted in any way or tried to make contact with them never since the big blast. Should he send their last space capsule back home to Russia or to the Americans where their government at least seemed thoughtful enough to care about them more than their own country, he felt the International Space Station circling in this void of nothingness in space around the changed world below, full of friendly love caring Russian cosmonauts without a country who cared enough for them to return back home, too.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Survival in Space
For the next several months, the crew of the space station watched tentatively from above for any activities that might take shape on or about their homeland space centers. Nothing had changed except that the other rocket that had looked ready to fly had also fallen over due to strong winds or some other faulty reason, as the other rocket had done several months previously, and it too was broken in half. Railroad lines in Russia had taken their old steam engines out of mothballs that had been sitting idle on railroad sidings left out to the weather getting wet and rusty, and had put some of them back into operable service condition.
Old trains were pulling freight cars along the vast railroad system on tracks spread throughout their country. They had not moved the Twitchel from her crash landing site. She still lay motionless in her original place of landing, a good ways off the runway where she had come to her final resting place on the grass. There were no new activities taking place at Cape Canaveral that would indicate a mission or rescue mission would be taking place, or even thought about for their rescue anytime soon. It looked to them the entire world below had forgotten all about their incarcerated state in the steel orbiting container. Trapped in outer space for life or until death took them away. The only friends they had now in passing were the hundreds upon hundreds of informational satellites they passed each and every day that were sending out thousands upon thousands of informative messages per minute back to earth, with all its weather and other information falling silent upon the many deaf quiet ears of dead radios below.
There were a few military aircraft flying security missions over America and its shoreline
s now with none anywhere else around the globe. In Russia, they had observed steam engine trains pulling freight cars across Siberia along with the presence of a truck or two once in a great while moving goods along its vast empty roadways. Life seemed to be returning to normal back on Earth, whatever normal meant to them these days.
In Moscow where hundreds of people once scurried daily around the big city going busily to and fro with their many busy scheduled days, now only consists of a mere small hand full of busy people coming and going in the almost deserted streets of Moscow.
The world below as everyone had once known it to be had changed rather drastically, and could be seen practically changing daily as the crew of the space station watched all the new happenings taking place everywhere around the globe from where they could watch. It was as if the entire world below was their own private little ant farm.
The eye in the sky their private looking glass window of opportunity to be watching what new things would take place in everyone’s lives as insects instead of people. They studied these creatures below making things happen using old technology and equipment of yesteryear. The ones once controlled by electric power units were now converted over and running off diesel power and water wheels where the need of electricity was no longer available or required to operate them. The crew of the space station felt practically superior to their counterparts living below without electricity.
Like Gods in the heavens above, the crew of the space station watched with little hope as this new style of life was taking shape and developing before their very own eyes on the surface of the world below.
They only wished they did have superior powers above the rest so they might help in generating and enabling the creatures below to advance at a much higher rate of accomplishment than they were and to help them on their way to a more speedy success of recovery. Their main concern for the quick advancement of the aliens below on Earth was for their own selfish needs and wants. Without the novice creatures down below advancing quicker in life by making leaps and bounds in real life progress real soon, their own future of living was becoming very limited and sure to come to an end real soon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The Stay of Time
Time spent in the space station laboratory waiting for their friends from Earth to return for them was taken up by doing harvesting experiments of different kinds on different crops by the crew. They planted vegetables of a variety of plant mixes for a variety of food, oxygen production, and flowering seed plants as a way to relax. Everything from time of waking up until it was time to retire for the evening was performed in a clock-like fashion aboard the station to conserve food, water, and oxygen.
All unnecessary daily exercise came to an immediate halt in order to conserve on the oxygen producing capabilities of their plant life experiments, and their own oxygen supply systems. They calculated If there were four less cosmonauts left living aboard the space station at the time, the crew would be able to last a lifetime till Mother Nature took them without any help from the world below, and they would be able to die from old age and natural causes. At that time in anyone’s life there would be absolutely nothing any one could do to stop father time from performing his dastardly deeds of wearing out the body and mind, along with pulling the plug on someone’s heart. A dream!
The timing of nature in space with Father Time working diligently on failing the mechanical steel structured of the space vehicle was coming much sooner than later for the unexpected life span of the space laboratory.
The time of life expectancy was soon to come in the very near future when the space station would become a dead hulk of useless floating steel helplessly adrift in the vast heavens of space. A tomb made of steel littered with bodies of no one’s concern within itself, so thought Commander Khrushchev.
If without a new infusion of fresh food, oxygen, fresh water, and much other needed new equipment to rejuvenate the aging old craft back to at least 80% of its 100% functioning capabilities it would prove fatal, a doom’s day soon to happen for his crew.
Commander Ivan Khrushchev, commander of the International Space Station had been doing extremely well with all the critical decisions one is forced to make every day with everyone in mind. It was not hard for him for his crew of cosmonauts had become like family to him during their long hardship and untimely stay in space. He was nondiscriminatory and treated everyone with equal quality in his or her duties aboard his vessel. It did not matter to him that six couples were married, and two of the wives were now pregnant and burden with child. Having run out of birth control pills and measures to help in the prevention of giving birth to babies in outer space, the unborn children were a dear concern to him, as he had children of his own. He had grandchildren and a want for nothing but the best for everyone concerned aboard which was family bound.
Ivan was becoming hard pressed in short order nowadays with all the decision making he had to do for his crew. All he could do in his spare time, which he had little of, was to think of never seeing his loving wife, two married daughters, and his three very beautiful grandchildren never again. Living aboard the space station had become hard toil for all, especially for him. Three very long hard lonely years spent living aboard the space station now in lonely outer space. It was supposed to have been a short tour, a very few short three unflagging months at the beginning before the big mishap. Now having escalated into more a mission as though he and his fellow cosmonauts were destined to die in space, and never to see his or her loving family members ever again.
Commander Ivan had a very ethical choice to make as the commander of the space laboratory. He could very easily leave one of his top officers in charge of the space station if he so chose to return back to earth on the sole space capsule they had attached there if he chose to do so, but would that be fair to any of the others onboard. He had more than just his immediate crew to think about these days, for there would be three very much unexpected arrivals of little lives coming to live aboard the space station that he continually had to think about these last couple of months.
There were two very pregnant cosmonaut woman aboard the space station weighing heavily on his very concerned mind. Could these two young pregnant women along with their three fragile fetuses be able to sustain the harshness of a reentry back through the earth’s atmosphere in a cramped module of a space capsule? He wondered medically if it would put an end to both mother and child’s life in the six to seven g-forces they would have to endure on reentry placed upon their ever-changing bodies during the return mission. Their untimely coming into a life in this harsh environmentally unfriendly element in space was coming too quick for him to endure, and it was time for him to make a necessary decisions in life very soon.
Was he to give freedom to the two of them, and some four other very lucky deserving cosmonauts, but the crew were all so very deserving to be eligible to return back home to Earth. What was he to do? He did the next best thing he could think of. Commander Ivan called a meeting of all space station personnel to assemble in the main assembly room in the aft quarters of the space station at 1200 hours. He would put it to a vote of the crewmembers which would be eligible to return back home to Earth and the ones who would have to stay on the death ship to the very end.
If there could be no compromise in their decisiveness, he had already developed a plan of attack to the matter to fall back on. He had planned another similar life or death lottery incase no one could decide in a fair and noble manner who would leave and who would stay. The crew when asked the question about a baby’s life onboard instantly erupted into heavy sounds of almost frantic survival testing voices. So loud the loudness of their voices vibrated the tile in the room they were in like a beehive of angered honeybees whose nest had just been broken into by a bear, but in this case the commander was checking on the mental stability of everyone’s mind onboard.
The men and women aboard the space station were all extremely anxio
us to leave this hellhole of a paradise with electricity for greener pastures back home. They eyed one another with angered stares, using fright stare gestures similar an alpha wolf would use on his pack of wolves. Some almost showing their teeth as well in seeking out the weakest link in the crew who would best not be eligible in going back home on their way to freedom back to Earth, and the weakest in strength and stamina. They were to choose the ones best left behind to die, they not being so well equipped in their own survival skills, tasks, and talents to survive living back on Earth.
“Please,” said Commander Ivan loudly, Quiet please! I see this dreadful event has come about for everyone in a very unpleasant way. I have again prepared a new lottery for everyone onboard to participate in. I feel rather guilty to play in this lottery myself, but in order for the outcome of this lottery to come out fair and square for everyone onboard the station, I must participate in it for the outcome to tally up correctly. Everyone has to win five consecutive times in this drawing just like the first lottery run to enable him or her to win his and her fair ticket on the space module back home to Earth in order to send us help. It will be the same lottery game of luck as the last lottery played except with fewer participants this time. Seeing some of our lucky crewmembers, our comrades have already been fortunate enough to leave for home.
The reason behind the lottery needing be run at this point of time in our mission is crucial to Gina and Krista. If we were to wait any longer, they would not be eligible nor should I say able to participate in this lottery because of their growing fragile conditions. I personally feel they should not have to participate in this lottery of life with being pregnant and all, and should be allowed to leave without playing in it if they so choose to do so.”
