BC1 came apart at the seams. Colonists were kissing, cheering, dancing and shouting. Peter and Ashley could hear the racket in their helmets, then they stood up and embraced; not a small undertaking in their pressure suits.
“We just bought ourselves hundreds of sols, people,” Peter said to Ashley and all who were listening.
“Peter, hang on a minute…” Francis voice said tensely. “Hey, tell everybody to stop the ruckus for a single damned second, will ya?” he shouted.
Everyone immediately fell silent and Peter grew to be concerned as the silence became complete and went on for minutes. “BC1, what’s your status; over?”
More silence.
“BC1, what’s your status; over?” Peter said with urgency creeping into his voice.
“Peter, this is Francis. We’re in the middle of receiving communications traffic. I’m going to patch you over to a secondary circuit. I’m also going to patch this over live to everyone else, so watch what you say, buddy.”
There were several seconds of silence, then much static, followed by a distant sounding voice over his helmet communicator.
“Dr. Traynor, are you there? I’m Aaron Seven, Commander of the Spacecraft Singleton approaching Mars orbit. Do you read me?”
Peter looked over to Ashley and they noticed simultaneously that their mouths were gaping wide open.
“Answer him,” she mouthed silently.
“Yes, this is Peter Traynor, Commander. We weren’t exactly expecting a call,” he said simply but truthfully.
“What’s your status on the ground?” Seven asked.
“It seems we’re doing better than expected, at the moment.”
There was silence followed by static.
“We’ve been attempting to raise you over your direct communications circuits for weeks, BC1. This is the first successful contact we’ve been able to make. We gave up attempting daily contacts and have been trying once a week.”
“Roger that, Commander. We’ve been having many problems of late, but our communications links are all reestablished now. When do you expect to enter our orbital space?”
“In three weeks, Dr. Traynor. Where’s Dr. Lipton?”
Peter paused. “He’s dead, along with many others here. We’ll have to detail that story to you later. What’s happened on earth?”
More silence followed by static.
“There has been a great global war, as you’ve probably figured out by now. We’ll be the last visitors from earth in a very long time, I’m afraid. We barely escaped to tell the story, and what a story it is, Dr. Traynor. We have 14 souls on board. We lost a few on the way and on arrival we’ll be down to our last breaths of oxygen, literally. But it looks like, with some luck, we’ll just make it.”
“How about your other supplies, Commander?”
“Well, now there’s the good news. Plenty of water and every other supply you can name. We lost most of our oxygen storage and production capacity in an unfortunate, er, accident. But we also come with plenty of your regularly scheduled supplies: mail, solar generating panels, the in-situ rocket fuel generating plant that was already scheduled for this run, and even a fairly large portable nuclear reactor.”
“A what?”
“A nuclear reactor. We snagged that from the Soviets on the way out. Another long story. Why? Can you use it?”
“Commander Seven, we have a saying here on Mars,” Peter said in a loud voice. “Aaron Seven, you’re the maaaannnn!”
If the colony had engaged in a party before, this time they erupted in a fully developed orgy of screaming, crying, embracing and simple hysteria. Peter and Ashley could clearly hear the noise through their communicators. Peter stood to face Ashley once again. Looking into her visor, he said, “I love you now, and I’ll love you tomorrow, in 90 sols and even a year from now, right here on Mars, on our planet.”
She pressed her helmet against his and looked into his eyes. “Now that things are so much better, I think there’s one more thing I should tell you.”
“At this point, I’m almost afraid to hear it,” he said with a light laugh.
“I want to introduce you to the first Martian,” she said with a tender smile.
“The first Martian?”
“Yes,” she said, taking his hand and placing it on her abdomen. “He or she will be along in about seven to eight months, I suspect. About the first light of spring.”
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, with archetypal male cluelessness. What he did not know was that the cheering had subsided in the colony and his voice was being carried across the open communications channel.
“Yes,” Ashley said with a beaming smile. “We’re going to have this planet’s first child!”
The party that immediately ensued would be remembered for a generation.
47
Epilogue
hree weeks later, the Singleton’s lander touched down at Crippen Spaceport without incident. They had just enough oxygen left for one more sol. Aaron Seven managed to leave his primary cargo carrier and a Soviet space station module attached to Bob Kerry’s ship which still orbited Mars.
Seven landed with a secondary cargo carrier filled with water, supplies and the last mail from earth. Onboard was also a fuel generating plant that would eventually produce enough fuel for the Singleton’s lander to allow them to retrieve all the items remaining in orbit, including the nuclear reactor which would soon mine and process the permafrost waters of Elysium.
The water deposits were more valuable than gold on earth. They literally meant the difference between life and death. They were the key to the ultimate survival, not only of the young colony, but of the human species. They called this most important place the Lipton-Traynor Water Fields, in honor of its discoverers.
The colonists sent out a rescue mission to Shturmovoi, where the surviving scientists were brought food and supplies. Some returned to BC1, but most decided to stay and conduct independent research with periodic visits from their sister colony to the north.
On the second sol of spring, the first Martian child was born to the new nation: Peter Traynor II. A week later, Rachel Lucia Seven was born, daughter of Commander Aaron Seven and his wife, Serea.
Six months after the discovery of the water fields beneath the desert of Elysium and the rigging of the new reactor, the colonists determined that they had topped the life support hill and were fully self sufficient. They would never require another transport from earth to survive.
In time, more children were born – to Kerry and Suzanne, to Brinker and Hiraldo and eventually to Rat and his wife, one of the two surrendered Soviet women, along with the other colonists and Earth survivors who had married. And thus it was set in motion; a second chance at human civilization.
On earth, there were a few survivors who managed to escape the deadly effects of the war. Many years passed before the clouds all disappeared and the sun warmed the earth again. One culture began to rebuild the earth just as another new human culture began on Mars. Many generations would pass before the citizens of earth and the independent nation founded on Mars would meet again or even know that the other existed at all.
But long before that, the colonists decided BC1 was no longer just a remote outpost on a distant planet, but a fully independent sovereign nation state.
They named it Elysia.
Acknowledgements
n the full bloom of Victorian culture, various works of writing fell into disrepute as determined by the more apposite scholars. Much writing fell from social grace during those heady days of collective literary suppression, works that were deemed loathsome written by those who were called “lascivious poetes,” such as Ovid and Virgil. Rascals, deviates, hooligans all... But it just so happened that on the very day the authors of the same classics that were being labeled the “lascivious poetes”, a young man of 18 years of age began his own writing career in the very city in which the verdict against his predecessors was rendered. William Shakespeare answered his call
ing at the precise moment when things looked bleakest for the craft of writing. You see, if Ovid and Virgil were accused of lascivious verse, then the Bard truly outdid them all and still stands today as the very master of heated, white hot passion – framed in the most astonishingly beautiful prose the world has ever known. It seems humanity’s rare moments of glory are always most clearly defined as times of irony when the tiny minds of control are inevitably trumped by the power of sheer intellect and overcome by the brilliant light of purified genius.
As a writer I am continuously reminded by the masters that the state and art of the craft of writing is controlled by rules that are somewhat rigid, to be sure. And day by day, the art and craft is tilted one way or another by various and ever changing contemporary methods, formats and traditions such as rigid tense control, point of view, scene, sequel and other tricks of the trade. But the masters also remind me that they always seem to overcome these limitations to their art by somehow ripping away the veneer of regulations and substituting raw passion in its place. Hence, the reader is never burdened by the tedium of talent and is thereupon allowed the full freedom to be subsumed in the passion framed by the creative act which is ultimately formed in the collective word of the lascivious poet written just for “someone.”
If you are one of those determined readers who have actually made it to this point - well past the end of the tale, let me tell you who that “someone” is – it is you. Let me say to you directly that this work was written for you, dear reader, alone. It was not written for any other reason but to entice you along to a world floating hundreds of millions of miles away. Like Peter Pan, fate, circumstance and an open window of time in your life somehow convinced you to risk stepping away from all you have known and fly along with me to a never-never-land, peopled with characters that I hope you have loved, hated and fretted over with passionate intensity. I can promise you that I had your image fixed in my mind as each word was fashioned and placed carefully on page after following page. To me, you, my precious reader, are everything – you are my closest companion, you are my friend and my alter ego. You don’t remember sitting beside me as I wrote, but you were there nonetheless. I wrote just to make you happy, and I hope I have. You are why I write and you are the one whom I hope to please – not the editor, not the boss (whoever that may be) and not the critic – no one else but you. If I have made you happy, made you worry, made you love, hate, turn the page in haste or just have a good time between these covers, then I have succeeded.
No work like this is an isolated event. While the author’s name is on the cover, it is not at all by his effort alone that it was created. Without the daily help and encouragement of my beautiful and awesomely gifted wife Claudia - my sweet Charlie - no one would be reading any words. Charlie, YOU are my passionate intensity – forever - you constitute the very fire of my being. The story was mine – its passion is ours.
I can also tell you, dear reader, that this work would not have been possible without the world’s finest editing team whose ideas, suggestions and corrections are found throughout: Susan Austin, Joseph Bishop, Claudia Chamberland and Martha Smith. These guys are incredible and their invisible mark is on every page, I can assure you.
This book could not be what it is without the artistic talent and sacrifice of three of my sons: Christopher Chamberland, Brett English and Peter Chamberland. Guys: thank-you for your gifts of genius, sweat and sweet toil even while dad was hanging around and looking over your shoulders. As always, you make me proud.
Many of you whose eyes scan these pages found this work through the efforts of Mark Ward. Mark and his brilliant promotional style is a Godsend in every respect. I truly do not know what we would have done without him and the deeply refreshing and extraordinarily creative work of Infotainment.
But I also wrote these words in the deep forests of Tennessee to honor the inspiration and genius of my mentor, boss and friend, Dr. William M. Knott III, the scientist, the man, whose vision will literally blaze the path to tomorrow’s worlds and human civilizations in space and to the stars. Bill, you were so patient with me over so many years, such a model of genius and of human love, humility and inspired direction. I will never forget how powerfully you shaped my life and my profession. I believe you were one of the few humans who has ever really fully understood me – you always knew who I was and where I was compelled and where I had to go. Your selfless mark and unconstrained love has been left indelibly on me for all my days.
And finally I cannot express enough gratitude to someone who has also made a commanding and profound difference in my life: my friend Scott Carpenter. I have had the pleasure and blessing several times in my life to work with this figure of history who has repeatedly given of himself for my benefit, unselfishly and unwaveringly, every single time I have asked. Scott has always been willing to give with never ANY thought of anything he might receive in return. I have met and spent time with many very well known people, but I have never met a man of such powerful integrity and such unselfish compassion and commitment to his fellow man and to the future of human space and ocean exploration as Scott Carpenter. He is just awesome... And so there it is – the writer is out of words. Scott, I just do not have the words to express the gratitude I feel except to say, thanks – it seems so little and so inadequate.
This has been a story of human exploration, of the settlement of new worlds. There has recently been a debate in our culture as to whether some version of this story should ever happen or not. But, why there has been a debate at all is most astonishing and even a little frightening. The point of history has always been exploration. The reason for any great nation has never been its settlements or its industry, never its great buildings or its accumulated treasure - but its expeditions. The expansion of humanity has always expressed its greatest achievement and in the end, its only real expression of true power. When cultures have shrunk back from exploring, those cultures have always died. The day we forget that as a nation is the day we cease to be great. It is the first day of our terminal recession into history’s formerly great peoples.
The energy that creates great empires is only found in the fires of exploration.
Dennis Chamberland
Stonebrooke, Tennessee
About the author
ennis Chamberland has been involved in the research, development and design of Advanced Space Life Support Systems and related processes considered for moon and Mars bases. He is the designer of the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, serving as its Mission Commander for seven missions on the ocean floor off Key Largo, Florida. Chamberland was the Principal Investigator for the first crop of edible food planted and harvested on the ocean floor inside a manned habitat.
Dennis is a former United States Naval Officer, serving as a Navigator and Main Propulsion Assistant Engineer onboard a US Navy Frigate while stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He also served the Navy as a civilian Nuclear Engineer at Mare Island and Charleston Naval shipyards. Chamberland is a double alumnus of Oklahoma State University where he received his M.S. in Bioenvironmental engineering and has been an instructor in life sciences at Charleston’s Trident Technical College.
He is an active writer and speaker, having written over 100 articles and four books spanning the last two decades. Some of Chamberland’s many works have been translated from English into Chinese and Braille as well as having been selected for various college and university textbooks and over a dozen reference works. Dennis has been named a Fellow of the New York Explorers Club and has shared his adventures with audiences in such diverse places as high schools and various community social organizations, as well as the Harvard Club of New York and Princeton’s Space Studies Institute.
Dennis is married to the former Claudia Schealer of Cocoa, Florida. They have six children and divide their time between Florida and their beloved Stonebrooke in the Tennessee mountains.
Readers are encouraged to visit and write the author at:
http://www.chamberland.u
s
Don’t miss Dennis Chamberland’s first
Aaron Seven®
Novel
QUANTUM STORMS
Aaron Seven®
And the Adventure of Six Billion Lifetimes
Six billion people are about to be trapped by raging solar storms blasting the earth with lethal radiation. Every living organism on the planet will be killed except a few who might be able to carve out a survival niche before the nearest star goes mad. But time is running out, the planet's inhabitants are losing their minds and nothing can stop the onrushing cataclysm. There are only a few who might be saved and only one extraordinary genius up to the impossible task of pulling it off in time. His name is Aaron Seven. From the depths of a spectacular underwater colony, QUANTUM STORM will capture your imagination as Seven battles impossible odds - a sun gone mad, intense and lethal radiation storms, rogue submarines and a deadly world above that has gone completely insane.
Quantum Storms
Available in late 2004 in all formats from:
QuantumEditions.com
Or from your local bookstore!
If you enjoyed ABYSS OF ELYSIUM -
Look for Dennis Chamberland’s parallel novel
Abyss of Space
Abyss of Space is the dramatic account of the nuclear destruction of the earth’s civilizations and the incredible escape of a handful of survivors. They had no choice – escape the earth or die. The planetary war erupted without notice, triggered by an unknown, insane military commander. The war generates enormous fires and a nuclear winter far worse than anyone had ever imagined. The fires themselves spread the radioactive debris in ways never considered by war planners and the most pessimistic of doomsday prophets. There were pockets of human survivors, but even their days were numbered. There was but a single chance of survival – in the only remaining habitable human outpost left – hundreds of millions of miles distant - on the Elysium desert of Mars. Now they had to figure out a way to steal a spaceship, fuel it and launch it through the fires of hell into the black abyss of space. Then they would have to pilot their improvised spacecraft over hundreds of millions of miles of empty space and hit their target. They only had one chance to get it right. And there was only one man who could possibly pull it off: Aaron Seven.
Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium Page 48
