AMERICA ONE - Return To Earth (Book 4)

by T I WADE

  “Will we will have blue carrots instead of orange ones?” Jonesy asked appearing to look serious.

  “As usual, Mr. Jones, you are first to comment. It might be, but we will be doing more concentrated analysis of produce quality than is usually done on Earth. We will take whatever we grow and completely quantify the nutritional values of the food. I wish they had done this in America before we left. Only a few universities did any complete nutritional breakdowns on food in supermarkets, and usually they were hidden from the media. We did hundreds of tests in Nevada on produce designated for America One, and compared it to off-the-shelf produce. We found that the food grown on Earth, and available in Las Vegas supermarkets with the highest quality fresh foods, was less than 25 percent of what we thought the nutritional value was. I am still proud to report that up here we have not equaled pure vegetable nutrition, but have achieved 75 percent of perfection, or three times better than in Nevada.”

  “Will this quality continue?” Ryan asked.

  “I think it will degrade over time,” responded Suzi. “The reasons for poor nutritional quality on Earth were due to soil degradation, pesticides on non-organic produce, and overuse of land. Of course, with imported food, the problem was not local. For instance, bananas not grown in America, contained only half of the normal levels of potassium and other nutritional ingredients. Price competition drives down quality, and farmers big and small cut corners in soil reformation to grow top-quality food. Only certain small countries, mostly African, and not mass grown were better in quality. Further, 75 percent of organic merchandise from the West Coast had remnants of pesticides in the plant’s historical DNA. So, I expect that whatever we grow on DX2017 might not make optimal nutritional standards, but hopefully will be better than what is grown on Earth during this century.”

  “Thank you, Suzi,” Ryan said. “Now, about the air. We already have enough to set up an atmosphere in the metal caverns. Within a few weeks, we can supply the smaller dome with air. Since the second dome turns on when we arrive, and off when we depart, we can park one of the Astermine craft with its forward cargo bay inside the first dome; that means spacesuits will not needed to travel once we have an atmosphere in the dome. When this system is secure, I can allow crewmembers to disembark without suits and even allow the children to go to the surface. The two caverns are quite spacious, certainly larger than America One, and having crew down there will relieve our systems up here. The nuclear batteries should give us at minimum 50 years of continuous power, enough for three flights along DX2017’s path around the solar system. That also gives us a sort of free ride, and more than enough time to live on this planet, or Mars, or wherever, for the rest of their lives. The only long-term problem I foresee is the lower gravitational fields compared to what our bodies were designed for on our own planet.”

  “That is one reason these early Earth people may have died off,” interjected Petra Bloem. “I am firming up my belief that something went drastically wrong. They may have died from the lower gravity, or maybe they ran out of air and supplies on the moons and planets before DX2017 arrived. Maybe DX2017 arrived with no supplies. Maybe their structured supply system broke down due to a problem on Earth, or here in space.”

  “Ja,” added Martha. “If we are not careful, we could end up the same way in 50 to 100 years, when something goes wrong. Something always goes wrong, given enough time.”

  “That is why each of our bases must be completely self-sufficient and never need supplies from Earth, or one of the other bases,” Suzi admonished. The others all nodded.

  “So, I will eat quality blue carrots up here, but could have to eat crappy orange carrots if I return to Earth?” asked Jonesy.

  “In a nut shell, or shall I say a carrot shell, Herr Jones,” smiled Suzi.

  “I’m not a scientist, but won’t your soil degrade with time, like it might have done for these guys, or how it is currently happening on Earth?” asked VIN.

  “Something Mr. Rose and I are working on,” his wife smiled at him. “You are 100 percent correct, and those ongoing fresh soil supplies are what we are working on. I was very careful to get our soil supplies from only the richest freshest soils I could find, and want to reform plant science to actually never need soil at all; that has been accomplished down on Earth, but not yet in space.”

  The meeting ended with everybody accepting that the caverns would be opened to habitation, once every room had been thoroughly investigated, and that left VIN trying to figure out how to open the remaining doors. He knew that it had something to do with the console in the command room, not unlimited power through the walls from the nuclear batteries.

  After the meeting, VIN met his old friend Fritz Warner sunning himself in the pool room. His friend now had new prosthetics on his one arm and leg, and VIN and he looked like they were turning into robots, as they relaxed in loungers in bathing suits.

  Fritz had changed. VIN could see vast and disheartening changes in mental preparedness, thought patterns, and the general will to live. The man wasn’t a mess, but he was pretty close.

  They discussed living on the new planet, with Fritz volunteering to be the first to live there. He could help work on the codes, or wording on the console, and wanted to be part of VIN’s security team. VIN agreed to everything except the third suggestion.

  Fritz continued on and told VIN that he had studied the alphabet of this distant race. He had spent hours, both alone and with others, trying to decipher the language. Between the old languages of the Middle East, especially Farsi, hieroglyphics, and Aramaic, he was optimistic that a little more time could bring a breakthrough.

  “Aren’t those ancient languages too modern for what these guys used?” asked VIN grabbing a glass of beer. He had the rest of the day off, and he had been allocated the usual pitcher of beer for his one day off. Jonesy, he noticed, didn’t have a pitcher and smiled at what Jonesy was about to do. Jonesy had pissed off someone and he was penalized one unit of his weekly beer allocation. Fritz’s pitcher was one glass from full, and both men looked menacingly at the approaching vulture.

  Jonesy was far more clever than the two men thought him to be in times of need. He ignored the beer, smiled, tried to be as pleasant as possible and, for his troubles, received a full glass, each man contributing half a glass of their precious beer. Jonesy always mooched well.

  Lying back and enjoying his brew, he listened to the conversation. He had achieved his mission, and didn’t want his mouth to cause him to relinquish any more possible donations.

  “So, what about Russian or Chinese letters?” VIN asked, not really being educated in foreign language deciphering.

  “No use at all,” Fritz replied, eyeing Jonesy to see how much time was left before mooching could possibly begin. “The closest we have is hieroglyphics and Farsi. We have a few languages from the current North African tribes and there are absolutely no similarities to the Arabic languages that help me. I had an idea yesterday to see if we had archived information on the clicking sounds of the Namibian Bushmen. Remember, Namibia was called German West Africa a hundred years ago. It was part of my school history and geography.

  “The Khoisan languages are the languages of Africa which have click sounds, and certainly do not belong to other languages we know of. I’m no expert on languages,” continued Fritz, “but I believe that this direction is the best way to go to understand the shapes, or letters around the dials and switches on the consoles. The Bushmen, or San people, are one of a few tribes in Africa who use these clicks. The Bantu are another. Most of these click languages do not have a written form, but what is exciting is that people studying this old communication used two new letters where the clicks were made. These letters, or phonemes, represent distinct units of speech sounds. VIN, I’m no expert, but these two new letters could be our Rosetta stone, the key to understanding their language. In our archives I found a Bantu language that has been written down, and which includes these phonemes. It is my understanding that the Ba
ntu people also originated in or near Namibia, and the Khoisan language they spoke was called “Nàmá”. How you pronounce that I will never know. Clicks, or phonemes, are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. Consequently, our library shows that the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. These languages have been used as far north in Africa as Tanzania, which indicates the migration of these people from the Green Sahara, as I call it, could have actually happened. I doubt that these Khoisan tribes are anything like the aliens we found, but we are getting closer to that timeline, 7,000 years B.C.”

  “So these two signs could be the key to open a code?” VIN asked. He was quite impressed with Fritz. For a German, he certainly knew different avenues of information, and clever guys like him knew how to research answers. VIN, for the first time in his life, wondered how well he might have done if he had pursued higher education. He often felt the odd one out in the lectures given by the scientists on board.

  “They could open a door, but that depends on whether these tribes all used the same language. If they used a click at the same time, something should show up in the written signs. Or I could be barking up the wrong tree.”

  “How about the tree of beer?” asked Jonesy, eyeing both pitchers.

  “Go bark up a tree, General Jones. Behave yourself in the future and I’ll put in a good word with my wife,” smiled VIN.

  “It’s not Suzi,” replied Jonesy. “Get a good word in with Mr. Rose and I’ll take you to the Seychelles next time we fly.”

  Jonesy was not lucky. There were to be no more donations and the contents of the pitchers were consumed by their rightful owners.

  Forty-eight hours later the first radio message arrived from Earth. It was quite short and garbled with static, and seemed to convey a warning to Ryan and America One.

  “Ryan Richmond, your friend, President of the United States, sending this message. Yes, still president. Have new satellites in space. Unfortunately China thinks they now own all space above Earth. Chinese shot down your Russian Space Station 32 days ago. They have small cubes with lasers on them, dozens of them, acting independently. Negotiating again over the ISS. We will not give the station to them. ISS has destroyed dozens of cubes. Your laser still has a longer range, but these cubes are hard to see, they are so small. This station is in danger too, and we have warned the Chinese that it will mean total war if they destroy it. About to have talks about a space cease fire. We saw your helmets on the Mars Rover’s video feed. Congratulations. World life quality decreasing, much disease and dying. Global warming still a threat, oceans have risen by nearly half an inch. On-going wars with several countries, on and off. We are still here and will remain so. I need an ETA of your return. Please reply if you get this. The United States of America signing out and awaiting a response.”

  “It seems that the world is no better a place than when we left it,” Ryan commented over the intercom after the short message had been played back to the crew. “If anybody wants to suggest a reply, a meeting for astronauts and security will begin on the Bridge in an hour. Following the meeting, Captain Pete and I will discuss a reply which we will transmit to the president and broadcast live to you over the intercom. Out.”

  “What should we say as a possible ETA (estimated time of arrival)?” Ryan asked the group of astronauts, Captain Pete, and VIN in the Bridge. Nobody had any suggestions and got on with what they were doing. “Captain Pete, you have been studying DX2017’s solar system orbit for weeks now, what do you suggest?”

  “This orbit takes us close to both Jupiter and Saturn and all of the scientists have told me that they would like to visit moons around both of these planets. I think it best to do that. If we leave DX2017, speed up, and get to the Jupiter area a year ahead of our ‘bus’, we could spend up to twenty months in that area. However, we will need fuel to continue our odyssey if we do this. Martha tells me water, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen will be available on at least one of the moons. Then, we can catch up with DX2017, and spend eleven months on her before jumping off again to speed up to survey Saturn’s moon or moons. If we do that, we will have two years to either catch up DX2017, which should have turned 158 degrees; the change in direction could be due to its flyby around Saturn, and it will be heading back to the center of the solar system for the flight home. Or with full tanks we could return to Earth faster ourselves, three years before DX2017 reaches the area. If we want, we can go around the circle again, and hitch a ride back to Mars. I believe that is very possible; we achieve your long-term plans for the journey, Ryan, we satisfy the scientists, and the crew who want to eat orange carrots, as Mr. Jones so eloquently put it, can disembark and return to Earth for their retirement years.”

  “Some of our children, the older ones will be in their teens, and will already be trained to continue the odyssey for round two,” added Igor.

  “Some of us could be dead, but I like Captain Pete’s idea. I can get Maggie to fly her old husband far and wide,” Jonesy said. “Who knows, maybe with a few lessons, old me might still be able to do it.”

  “What? Have children?” joked VIN, smiling.

  “No, fly, you ass,” remarked the ever-polite chief astronaut.

  “I think that is a perfect plan,” added Maggie. The rest of the female pilots agreed and even Kathy nodded, Ryan noticed.

  “So leave ‘Round Two’ to our younger generation,” Ryan summarized. “Not a bad idea, plus if anybody wants to continue, and expire in space, they have the freedom to do so. It just worries me what we are going to find on Earth when we get back. They are still trying to kill each other, won’t stop, I doubt ever will, and there could be nothing left when we return.”

  “Plus millions of little Chinese cubes attacking us?” added Captain Pete.

  “Nothing we can’t handle with our new shields,” added VIN. “We just blast everyone out of the sky and tell everybody to back off.”

  “And I’m sure we will then have a search team of scientists in the Sahara, trying to find evidence of these little guys, and will need VIN and me for air protection,” Jonesy added.

  Slowly a return message was worked out, agreed upon and sent back to Earth.

  “United States of America, and the planet Earth, Ryan Richmond replying. Got your message. Currently on our way to Jupiter. Left Mars a few months ago. Everything running to plan up here. Powered up Rover Opportunity, she is good to go. Found all we need in supplies to continue. Estimated time of arrival in your vicinity, seven to nine years, if our plan comes together. Have found other life forms, although no living species. End of message.”

  Everyone knew that it would take nearly half an hour for the message to get to Earth, and several waited around for a response. Nothing came back.

  Chapter 12

  Puzzles deciphered

  The eight-hour journey back to the blue bubbles below them was fascinating. They needed three orbits to decrease altitude and the bubbles grew each time they passed directly over them. Asterspace Three had the new accommodation cylinder strapped to her underbelly.

  Jonesy brought her in and gently lowered both the cylinder and the mining supply ship through the bubble they were going to fill with an atmosphere. VIN exited the docking port to untie the three thick cords. He threw out the ladder and, because of the added height of the cylinder, he had to jump from the bottom rung while still a couple of feet above the surface; jumping higher than normal with his powerful metal legs was normal. He landed gently, much more so than he had trained to do in the hangar in Nevada. Once on the ground, he moved away from the craft.

  Maggie was in control of the mining craft, Jonesy giving her some flying time, and she gently lowered the cylinder the last couple of feet onto the blue, glinting surface. After VIN untied the straps she slowly piloted the craft over to one side and brought her into land. The supply cylinder had been exactly positioned to allow as much of the space craft int
o the bubble as possible.

  There was enough room in the same blue dome for the cylinder and the front half of the ship and she carefully placed the craft’s tail area into the second dome. Jonesy assisted her by relaying VIN’s directions so she could bring the craft’s nose close to the wall of the dome.

  A permanent crew would not be transported to the surface until the caverns were completely searched and every door opened, which was VIN’s job. For the first time, Fritz was with him and was exhibiting new life. Two new projects had captured his interest; he was fascinated by the prospect of deciphering the writing in the console, and also helping VIN open the doors.

  Allen Saunders was ready to depart the mother ship in Astermine One once the first craft gave him clearance to descend. He had another four men squeezed into the front area.

  There was just enough room for Allen to park Astermine One’s front area and forward cargo bay in the same bubble. The pilots had to work in extremely tight spaces to get the craft in, which gave them practice for when the atmosphere would be released.

  Ryan deemed the bubble safe, so the pilots did not to have to remain in their seats ready to lift off at a moment’s notice. Jonesy and Maggie disembarked.

  Igor and Boris worried about radiation contamination from the outer skins of the craft entering and departing, but they wouldn’t be able to conduct tests until the actual air was released.

  It would take a few weeks to manufacture enough air to fill the two alien caverns, all the rooms inside, and the bubble. No knew if there might be miles of corridors and rooms inside the body of the blue planet once they got doors open. But with the cylinder on the surface, at least they could stay and work for several days.

  The cylinder, with adequate housing for 12, was equipped to recirculate air, and was stocked with food, and water; it contained two horizontal bunks in separate compartments, a communal lounge and kitchen area, a space shower and one toilet for each sex. The decent gravity was sufficient for them to sleep horizontally, eat normally, have privacy, and perform one’s necessities.