by Bob Lee
The scientist watched as the soldier turned and tried to goose-step march towards the control room. He lifted his leg straight forward and hopped ten feet with it extended, and then landed and hopped with the other foot extended. The scientist couldn’t help but wonder whether he had practiced that while walking from the spaceship to the hangar.
Li Julong turned towards his Korean workers. “Well, you heard him. Put those guns in the box and get it stacked with the others. I’m going to go talk to the general and straighten this situation out.” He started to turn to walk away, and then turned back. “And for Buddha’s sake, be careful!”
CHAPTER 21
Mars mission biologist Charles Winston peered through the microscope at yet another slide of the alien creature’s remains. For the past two months he had examined various parts of the eel-like animal, as well the material that the other creature had seemed to be guarding, and nothing added up. The material from the center of the crater was simply a tube filled with fluid. There were no cells or DNA that he could locate. At first he thought it might have been excreta, but he was slowly starting to think that it was actually a decoy that he was meant to go after, resulting in his falling into another pit during the battle. He remembered that there had been a Peruvian spider that was discovered a few decades back that built decoys of itself, so at least that was a remote possibility.
But what was most surprising biologically was the body of the one creature that had not disintegrated. It appeared that parts of the creature contained strands of pure metal. Under magnification, the strands seemed to branch the same way that normal nerves did. “It’s a shame that the head of the creature dissolved away,” he sighed. “It probably would have provided answers to many of my questions.”
Charles dutifully gathered together his latest images and findings to transmit to the Ames Research Lab, as he had done every day for the past two months. “I asked them in my last transmission why I hadn’t heard back any comments from the NASA Astrobiology Institute members, and they’ve been strangely quiet on that point,” he thought. “You would think that by now I would have received at least one suggestion on a new line of inquiry to pursue.”
Just then, the speaker on his console came alive. “Chuck, it’s Grant. Come up to the main room. We’ve received a new message from Mission Control that you need to hear. I’m calling everyone together for a meeting.”
Charles closed up his work, went to the ladder and climbed up to the main central room of the base. He saw that the others were already seated, and grabbed a chair next to Sergey. The commander was standing by the monitor, which had a paused image of Brick Shinefield from Mission Control on it. “Uh oh,” Charles thought. “Brick isn’t in any sort of disguise this time. This must be pretty serious.”
“Alright fellows,” Grant said. “I’m not going to sugar coat this message that I received a few moments ago. You’ll just have to watch it the way I did, and then we can discuss our next steps.”
As he activated the video message, Brick started speaking to them. “Gentlemen, first let me apologize for our inability to provide you much in the way of direction the past few weeks. As soon as you discovered alien life, especially what has been determined from your videos to be hostile alien life, we were mandated to unseal specific protocol documents. These protocols directed us to contact a certain secret committee to convene which reported directly to the President of the United States. The committee’s first action was to immediately confiscate all of the material about the incident, and to direct us to keep you safely locked down at the base and our mouths shut. It is for that reason that we had ordered you not to go out and retrieve the rover until we had more information. The committee has now come back to us with additional directives. I need to remind you that this comes directly from the President. You are all to stay at the base when the AB Cycler completes its pass of Mars in three months. You are not to come home.”
“What?” yelled Charles as he jumped up out of his seat. “Are they nuts? We have to stay here for another three years?”
“Wait,” admonished Sergey. “He can’t hear you, and we need to hear what else he says.” Charles slowly sat back down, watching the screen.
The video message continued. “Commander Roy Olstein and Pilot Samantha Tuttle, who are currently on the cycler, will not be your relief mission. Instead, they will join you there at the base once they have gotten the Brother Jacobs colony settled. The committee determined that you will need the increased numbers for the next phase of operations that they have laid out for you. You will start stockpiling methane and oxygen for fuel bombs, and we will be sending you directions for your 3D printers to start manufacturing small rockets to deliver them.”
The four astronauts stared dumbfounded at the monitor. “Oh this just keeps getting better and better,” mumbled Charles.
“Commander Olstein and Pilot Tuttle will be using the manufacturing facilities aboard the asteroid cycler to create launch tubes for mortars and bazookas, which they will bring with them when they arrive. You are to do nothing, and I repeat nothing, until Olstein and Tuttle join you and you are provided with further instructions.”
Brad, the geologist, laid his head on the table as he listened. He too could not believe the direction that this had taken.
“I know this sounds extreme,” Brick continued saying, “but a four-star general has been put in place as the head of the committee and has been running the show. The Chinese have been acting up here on Earth again, and our space surveillance has picked up that they’ve been launching some types of packages towards Mars from their Moon base. The military is sure this is no coincidence, and has taken over the strategy sessions. They created a small task force to recommend defensive and offensive strategies, and given that you have no explosives on Mars, but do have plenty of rocket fuel, they came up with this whole scenario of creating bazookas and similar weapons. The committee has not provided any details about what you are to do with these once you create them. All we have been told is that you will be given further instructions when the time comes.”
“Grant, we don’t have to listen to them, do we?” Chuck moaned. “They can’t force us. We aren’t soldiers; we’re explorers and scientists, for God’s sake.”
Grant shook his head at him and said, “Hold your comments until the message is done.”
“Since the committee confiscated all of your communications, and has begun collecting everything that you send to us daily, we have not been able to analyze the alien biology from your correspondence,” Brick continued. “However, some of the guys here think that those creatures were manufactured, and not natural. The way they melted away seemed to be specifically designed so that we could not learn more about them. The consensus is that there is some type of very advanced intelligence out there where you had the encounter. Perhaps what you met were mere scouts, and there are even deadlier things out there. We concluded that the military mentality of creating weapons might not be such a bad idea. We feel that at least that will give you some options. For now, hunker down, and keep the doors locked. Mission Control out.”
The four astronauts all sat there as the screen went dark. Charles was the first to speak. “This is just great. We finally find alien life, and the military wants us to bomb it to smithereens. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“As Brick said, perhaps having the option is not a bad idea,” Sergey said. “After all, look what one little creature did to me,” he said as he waved his still bandaged arm in the air. “I, for one, do not relish having a close encounter with an even bigger one of those things.”
“But bombs?” Brad chimed in. “We might blow the whole habitat up in the process if we’re not careful. You heard them; they want us to package up methane and oxygen into rockets. There are three things that you need for an explosion: fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. One stray spark and kablam, that’s all she wrote.”
“They can’t force us,” Charles said emphatically. “We’re here, and
they’re over sixty million miles away. We should think for ourselves, and not just listen to some military wonk.”
“Serge, do you think you could create small rockets safely?” Grant asked, turning to the mission engineer.
“Da, if we keep the fuel and oxygen separated in their own small packages,” Sergey replied. “I will need to check the 3D printer instructions that they send to us, but as long as the volatiles are separated in the small missiles, we might be fine.”
“And I don’t relish being defenseless,” Grant continued. “As Brick said, maybe having the option is not such a bad idea. Okay, let’s take a vote. All in favor of following the instructions, raise your hand.”
Grant and Sergey raised their hands, but Brad seemed hesitant. “You’re not going to go along with this foolishness, are you?” Charles said looking at the geologist.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Brad replied. “The only thing that saved you before was that I could use the laser on the rover. If we didn’t have that as an option, things might have turned out really badly.” Brad thought for a moment, and then continued. “I think I’ve changed my mind and we should make some weapons.”
“Brad, we’re scientists! We’re supposed to study and learn. We should save any discovery, even if it means we get destroyed in the process, not go blowing it up because we’re scared children. It’s the knowledge that’s important, not us!” Charles exhorted.
Brad shook his head and slowly raised his hand.
“Alright, that’s three to one. Serge, go check those instructions and report back to me on what you find. Brad and Chuck, you’ll need to let your families know that our mission has been extended. You are not to tell them why. Just tell them we’ve made an important discovery and it’s classified. In addition, from now on, whenever any of us go outside to perform maintenance or to work in the greenhouse, we go in twos. No one is to be outside alone at any time. There’s no telling if there are any more of those creatures out there.”
As the astronauts went their separate ways, they did not know that downstairs, the alien hopper had heard everything that had been said. In the months since it had snuck aboard the transport and made its way inside the habitat, it had remained hidden and transmitted everything it saw and heard back to its mother probe. What was done with that information was not its concern. Its only instructions were to hide, record, transmit and wait.
CHAPTER 22
“Pilot Sam, are you going to the Pegasus now?” Jean said as she ran over to the NASA astronaut who was starting to climb up the central ladder of the AB Cycler. “Can I finally come with you? I studied all that material you gave me about orbits and trajectories really hard, and you said I could once I mastered it.”
Pilot Tuttle turned around and sighed. “You’re not going to quit pestering me until you get in there, are you?”
Jean gave a little frown and stamped her foot. “You promised!”
“Okay. Define for me a Hohmann transfer orbit.”
“It’s a minimum energy maneuver to go from one orbit to another,” Jean replied.
“And what’s a delta-v?” Sam asked.
“That’s the change in velocity of a ship,” Jean said smiling.
Sam tried to throw her off. “Why do we say velocity instead of speed? Aren’t they just the same thing?”
“No, speed is a number. Velocity is speed plus direction, which is important in space.”
The pilot inwardly smiled to herself. Jean’s enthusiasm reminded her of herself when she was that age. “Oh, alright, come on. But don’t touch anything unless I tell you it’s okay,” Sam said.
Jean clapped and jumped up and down. “Yah!” she cried and scampered up the ladder ahead of Sam.
Sam gave a small laugh at her exuberance, and followed her up the ladder at a more dignified pace. “At least here’s one other person I can talk to about these boring maintenance activities,” she thought. “Talking only to Roy about our duties is getting pretty old by now.” When she reached the top of the ladder, she could see Jean skipping down the tunnel towards the hangar. Sam hurried after her, as she wanted to make sure that the girl didn’t enter the Pegasus without her, but Jean was dutifully waiting by the closed hatch of the ship.
“You can push that square button to the right side of the hatch to go in,” Sam said to her as she walked up. Jean pushed the button, and the hatch swung down from the top, revealing stairs built into the door.
As they entered the airlock, Jean turned to Sam and asked, “Why is there another door here in front of us?”
“This is the airlock. If we were in space, this door would keep the air inside the ship. We would close the outer door, and pressurize the inside room here with air, and then we could open the inside door safely.” Sam pushed the button to the right of the inner door, which slid aside, and they both walked into the large central section of the Pegasus.
“But what if you forgot to close the outer door?” Jean asked. “Would we all get sucked out?”
“Yes, that certainly could happen, but the ship has checks for that. Also, see this circular dial under the button?” she asked as she pointed to a small disk on the wall next to the door that Jean had not noticed. “We use this to manually lock the door when we are inside. You just give the dial a half turn clockwise. There is another one of these for the outer door for safety when we are in there doing maintenance. We’ll just leave the doors open and unlocked for now.”
“Oh, I better take notes on all of this,” Jean said. The girl took out her diary that her father had given her and wrote in it, ‘There is a dial under the door open and close button. Turn it clockwise to lock the door so that it cannot be opened from outside.’
Sam led the way down the side aisle to the door that led to the Pegasus flight deck. She slid it open and she and Jean entered. Sam pointed to the left hand chair. “You can sit there, Jean. That’s the Commander’s chair. I’ll take the pilot seat which is my usual spot.” As they took their seats, she continued, “So, what’s the first thing you do when you enter the ship?”
Jean sat in the seat. It was large and comfortable. She looked at the panel in front of her which had a multitude of dials and switches. She had no clue what she would need to do first, but thought about the material that Sam had given her. Finally she had it. “Checklist!” Jean shouted. “We need to go through the startup checklist.”
“That’s right. The checklist is kept in the Pegasus’ computer, so you need to wake up the ship. Flip this protective red cover up, and then press the button underneath it.”
Jean did as she was told, and the lights came on along the whole top of the flight deck and a color screen on the panel in front of her lit up. There were a number of lines on the display, the first of which was ‘Startup Sequence.’
“Just press the ‘Startup Sequence’ line, and the ship will do the rest,” Sam said.
As she pressed the screen, Jean asked, “But my dad let me drive the tractor around the farm a few times. Isn’t there a key or something that you need to start the ship?”
“Only qualified pilots like us are allowed in here,” Sam pointed out, “so there’s no need for anything like that. And having a set of keys floating from the panel would probably be a distraction and a hazard in weightlessness, especially if you needed the ship to make a sudden maneuver.”
Jean opened her diary and wrote, ‘No key needed. Flip up the red cover, press the button, and then press the first line on the screen to start up.’
After a few moments of the lights on the panel turning on and off, the screen display changed. The first line now read ‘Maintenance’ and the second line ‘Destination.’
“Press the ‘Destination’ key,” Sam said. “I think you might like this.”
After Jean had pressed it, the screen filled with a number of options. The top ones such as ‘Earth orbit’, ‘Cycler rendezvous’, and ‘Cycler docking’ all had check marks next to them, indicating completion. The next ones on the list, which were
unchecked, were ‘Cycler undocking’ and ‘Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI).’ “Press the ‘MOI’ button to see what it does,” Sam said.
As Jean complied, the screen displayed ‘Automated?’ and ‘Manual?’ Sam leaned over and pressed the ‘Manual?’ line, and the screen turned red and displayed, ‘ERROR: Pegasus docked’ and underneath it ‘Return? Override?’ Sam pressed ‘Return?’ and the display went back to the destination choices.
“So all you do is sit here and press the screens in order?” Jean asked. “That’s what piloting is all about?”
Sam laughed. “Well yes, mostly. This baby is something else. Everything has been programmed into it and is automated. It’s really only when there’s an emergency or something that is not standard that we take over manually. We spend hours and hours in simulators practicing what happens under different scenarios, like whether you want to undock and the clamps are stuck, or if one of your engines goes out, or even if you need to dodge a space object in front of you to get to your destination. Otherwise, you just pick the next option in the list and the Pegasus flies itself.”
“Will it even land itself?” she asked.
“Yes, as long as it’s a normal flight.”
Jean wrote in her book, ‘Just follow the screens in order and the Pegasus flies itself.’
“How does it know where to land?” she asked.
“When we approach Mars, we’ll launch your Martian home base that is packed in one ship near the nose of this asteroid, and then launch all the supplies and tools to set it up which are in another ship. The cycler will swing past Mars, and we’ll land on the second loop of a pretzel shaped orbit a month later. We’ll spend the intervening month setting up everything by remote control from here and directing a bulldozer to create a landing strip. We land on that second pass after we’ve checked that everything is ready. One of the packages that is set up during that month is a radar station which will sit next to the landing strip. The Pegasus will home in on that and come down pretty as you please right next to your new home which will be set up and ready to accept you.”
