by T I WADE
“Roo, we won’t have any carbon dioxide in this room when the door opens,” VIN realized, an hour before the door was due to be open.
“We can help by breathing in from our helmets and breathing out into the room,” suggested Roo.
“Actually, you can allow your exhaled air to exit the backpack,” stated a scientist from the Bridge aboard America One. “There is a breathe-out release valve on the side of the rebreathing tank.” Up to now the communications had been silent, allowing the astronauts to solve their own problems. Ryan had asked the scientist who designed and built the suits to come to the Bridge.
Under his guidance, VIN and Roo changed the system on each other’s backpack and the two astronauts began to not only increase the carbon dioxide level, but heat the room at the same time. It was interesting to see condensation blowing out from the rear of the tank every time they exhaled warm air.
Slowly the temperature crept over the freezing mark. They had a little under three hours left in their suits when they heard a rumble through the wall to the cryonics room and there was a vibration through the floor.
“Ryan we feel something. Permission to take off my helmet, or allow Roo to take off his. If some wheezy guy walks out of the room, he’ll get quite a shock seeing two alien-looking astronauts in white suits. He might retreat back in and close the door. We have three hours before we run out of air in the tanks, so breathing the new air will extend our suit time.”
“I see your point,” replied Ryan, and he gave them permission to test the air. At five degrees above freezing they helped each other off with their helmets.
This time the icy air didn’t hit VIN as Roo took off his helmet. His fingers still hurt like hell, and he kept his gloves on. The air was clean, the pressure still slightly low and VIN opened the last bottle of pure oxygen. The mix in the room was already rather high in oxygen; VIN felt dizzy struggling to suck in his second and then third lungful of new atmosphere.
He held onto the wall for support and Roo told him that this mix reminded him of their spaceships and bases. It seemed that Roo’s team preferred a higher mix to what the Homo sapiens were currently used to on Earth. In one of her many lectures about the “Green Time” in the Sahara, Martha said she thought the carbon dioxide and monoxide levels of Earth’s atmosphere were significantly lower, and that a higher level of oxygen could have been in the air at that time. Once again it seemed to VIN that she was right in her assumptions.
“How do you feel?” VIN asked Roo.
“I think it is still cold, but it shouldn’t stop the door from opening. As long as we can breathe the air, it will register as safe on the system inside the room. It will open soon; the vibrations we felt was the system opening up and pressurizing the sleep chamber Commander Joot was in. He will have suit on, but will need to put on his helmet before the door will open. It can only open from inside.”
They waited. VIN again checked the time left and readouts. His eyes needed to focus on the LED readouts as he pressed the buttons. He was still dizzy, and it was getting worse. As soon as he saw the air pressure, perfect at sea level, he closed off the small oxygen bottle and then pressed the temperature switch. It read 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the oxygen was 2 percent higher than maximum, nitrogen was also high, and carbon dioxide was just registering at a trace. He looked up to see a blue helmeted space-suited person staring at him from the door that had opened silently.
Roo was bowing, suddenly jabbering away in his native tongue, clicks coming out by the dozens, and the short but stocky blue-suited astronaut, legs slightly apart and hands on his hips, just stared at the two white-suited, alien-looking astronauts in front of him.
Chapter 22
Commander Joot, Enceladus and two little, old people
After a few seconds, Roo stopped his incessant speech delivery when VIN told him that maybe the other guy couldn’t hear what was being said. VIN pointed at Roo, and then himself, showing the new person that the air was fit to breathe.
Slowly, the person put his hands up to his helmet and within seconds lifted it above his head, and breathed in the cold, new air. Roo’s clicking continued this time at twice the speed of sound. VIN noticed that the person, a man, looked much older than Roo. His brown, and sickly face indicated he was pretty old, maybe 100 years old, and long past retirement age rather than commander of a spaceship or base in the middle of nowhere; but that what cryonics did to everyone.
Roo’s chattering continued for several minutes, until the commander made one sound, pointed at the six-foot tall VIN Noble, and Roo shut up.
The commander clicked at a far slower rate and what he said seemed like questions or orders.
“Roo, tell your commander that we need to get out of here. Ask him if his suit is good for outer space transportation. Then we need to get out of here, like fast.”
It took Roo a few minutes before he could get a word in, and the commander seemed surprised at what Roo told him. He wanted to head for the control room and open the door but VIN barred his way. The short commander looked up into VIN’s eyes, as VIN stood in his way, and VIN told Roo to tell the commander to back away from opening the door, or they would all die. He told Roo to also tell the commander that there was no atmosphere behind the door.
That seemed to work, as the old man backed away from VIN.
“Commander Joot wants to know who you are, why you are so big, and why I am dressed in a very large spacesuit he has never seen before,” Roo translated.
“Tell him, he has been asleep for 7,000 years, I rescued you, we are the new species of humans on Earth, and that he must be helped on with one of our suits. I’m sure our suit will fit over his blue suit, but not his helmet,” VIN replied.
After several minutes of discussion, it seemed that Commander Joot did not want to wear the alien suit. It could be a holographic trick, Roo translated in English.
“Well, tell him we must leave,” ordered VIN. “I’m putting on your helmet, you help me on with mine, and when we open the door he is dead. Roo tell him exactly how I said it. Tell him about your father.”
Again Roo clicked at faster than the speed of sound, this time only for two minutes. There was silence, as the man thought about what this young member of his tribe told him. It seemed that he was more fascinated that this young man, who wasn’t even old enough to be a commander knew the language of this tall white alien standing next to him. From the commander’s mouth more questions came out. Roo answered them.
VIN knew little of what was being said, it was spoken too fast. Commander Joot stopped in mid-sentence when VIN clicked and slowly asked him in his own language to allow them to help him on with his suit. For several seconds the man looked at VIN, suddenly realizing that this alien-looking beast could speak his language. VIN just bowed and smiled.
From then on it was as if VIN had pressed the Easy Button. Roo undid the suit expertly, helped the commander on with the oversized legs and then boots. The poor man’s feet were only about a size six or so and would be lost in the size 10 boots. The legs were too long, but that didn’t matter. VIN made sure that the backpack was operating and that it was ready when Roo turned the commander around and VIN helped him on with the back while Roo held the front. Then the attachments were connected and the helmet screwed on. The gloves were screwed on last and then the two men again helped each other checking their helmets.
“Roo, speak to your friend,” said VIN. “Tell him we have two-way communications. Scotty, on America One, we will be ready to be beamed aboard in twenty minutes. I will head up through the shaft first, our new guest second, and Roo third. Please don’t acknowledge this. I don’t want to freak the guy out until we are through the shaft.” There was no response but a double click of a mike from the other end.
They had only an hour left when the three were ready to exit the room. VIN piled the empty tanks in one heap so that Fritz and Vitalily could retrieve them once he had the commander aboard one of the ships.
For the last time
he checked all readouts from the three suits before he showed the mirror to the door opener, and the bubble of air gushed out of the room with visible force when it opened. The one room of air turned into millions of bubbles of air moving around at speed in all directions, completely lost and each would hang around inside the caverns.
With the Commander between them, VIN and Roo helped the man into the control room. The hologram was still showing, although it was difficult to see through it clearly with all the bubbles. The three astronauts saw the two ships waiting for them and Roo told the commander that the shield was in place, but there was no atmosphere until they reached the spaceships. The commander nodded that he understood.
Slowly and carefully they helped the astronaut through the shaft. He was small and fit through more easily than VIN. Commander Joot hesitated a little when he was helped aboard the mining craft with Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt flying. VIN thought that seeing Michael’s face, which was slightly darker than the commander’s, and the friendly smile of Allen Saunders, would be a better introduction to the new world order than Jonesy, even at his best. Roo entered first and then VIN helped the commander through the docking port.
He only had twenty minutes of time left, and decided to head straight into SB-III. Jonesy’s not so friendly face would be slightly better than running out of air. Once VIN was safe, Ryan ordered Allen off the planet. Jonesy was to wait for Vitalily and Fritz to collect the black box, anything else they could find, the tanks, the spent spacesuits and any cords left behind.
An hour later, SB-III left the surface of Titan and Jonesy worked hard to miss the tornadoes and clouds on the way through the atmosphere, happily telling everyone that this moon never needed to be visited again.
With Roo and Tow on each side, a fresher looking Commander Joot entered the Bridge 24 hours later. He had been checked over by both doctors, just as Roo and Tow were when they were found. The commander was still very weak, needed a lot of liquids for the first twenty-four hours, and was introduced to VIN by Roo when VIN had entered a few hours after his own arrival in the hospital to get his badly frostbitten fingers bandaged, as did Roo.
The commander did not want to believe that he had been asleep for 7,000 years. Martha estimated that it was more like 6,700 years, but a few hundred years didn’t matter one way or the other. When Tow told him that their old home was now nothing but desert, and a map and pictures were produced by several members of the crew, he began to realize that he had in fact slept far longer than he had ever dreamed of, so to speak. Then, Commander Joot was angry at Roo, asking why he and his mother had taken so long to rescue him.
He was saddened at the news that Commander Put didn’t make it; something in his cryonic cylinder didn’t work.
What made him happy was to see America One surrounded by a shield. Still wary of his surroundings, he was very reticent since boarding the mother ship, speaking only to Roo on the flight up, and then to Tow, several hours before the meeting. On Ryan’s orders Roo stayed constantly by his side.
“Good morning, all,” Ryan began to get the meeting started. He started with the usual pleasantries in English, and then used the language Tow taught him to greet the commander. Joot was extremely surprised by the greeting, and then Roo introduced everybody in the Bridge to the commander, who was able to walk, weakly, but independently again.
He was introduced to Ryan, Captain Pete, Suzi, VIN, Martha, Michael Pitt, and Petra, then to Fritz, Igor and Boris as they walked in. His first question using Roo as the interpreter was to ask what the humans ate to get so tall. Martha and the others laughed at the statement, and told Roo that it was the genealogical difference of 10,000 years and a slightly different Homo species that was standing in front of him. His second question was why the spaceship was so large and how many people were aboard. He then explained that their space craft were smaller than the smaller mining craft he had seen out of the window, and that they could only fly with 25 small passengers and two crew, or supplies, not both.
Ryan asked him why his people had moved to Enceladus, and explained that they were about to leave Titan’s orbit to travel to the white moon, which would take 14 days. Ryan had already learned that Roo’s days were also around 24 hours, as the days and nights in the Sahara region had been just north of the Tropic of Cancer, and much the same length of time throughout the year. What both Roo and Tow didn’t know was the exact position of their base in Africa. It seemed that only those who obtained the rank of Commander knew where the tribe’s original home was.
The commander easily pointed to the exact location when he was shown a map of the Sahara desert. He pointed to a dark round shape in the south eastern corner of Libya, and through Roo said their home was called “Fot Doot”. He explained through Roo, and to Martha, Petra and Fritz who were studying the map, that their home looked like the snout of a pig. In English, their African home base got the name “Pig’s Snout”; that is what it looked like on a satellite map at 2,000 feet altitude and it was in the middle of a dried up lake inside a massive high altitude crater.
“Pig’s Snout?” repeated Ryan, thinking aloud.
“Well, its 140 miles east of a small town, Al Bakki, in Libya, and about 280 miles west of Al Jawf, also in Libya. It is in the middle of absolutely nowhere,” Captain Pete related, sitting at one of the computer terminals.
“The area the commander identified as their base does look like the snout of a pig,” added Martha looking at another screen. She beckoned the commander over and he became excited, pointing at the left “nostril” or visible hole in what looked like a pig’s snout.
“That is where our home is, and it should still be active with people,” translated Roo listening to the rapid clicks of the older man.
“Now that would be a worthy find; a totally unknown human civilization still living on Earth,” Martha Von Zimmer said excitedly.
“Ja!” added Petra Bloem just as excited.
“But they couldn’t be living above ground. There’s nothing there,” observed VIN.
“No soil or water to grow food?” asked Suzi.
Roo translated the questions for the commander, who replied that the tribe must have moved underground with the loss of vegetation. There had been well over 1,000 people when he left. Roo confirmed his recollection, remembering many people there when he, Tow and his father left Earth for the last time, at least 150 years after Commander Joot had. Roo asked his mother, and after several minutes of discussion between the three, Roo told the others that he and Tow knew that a plague of some sort hit their people a few decades after Commander Joot left. Tow remembered only a few hundred people, not a thousand, when they left to connect with DX2017, and once they and 24 of the tribe had joined others on the orbiting planet, the craft returned to Earth. Then there were even fewer remaining.
This meeting was one of the most exciting aboard ship. The possibility of finding a lost civilization on Enceladus and now on Earth excited Ryan Richmond. This was as exciting as finding a new life form out in the universe. Ryan had dreamed this since he could remember: the discovery of something totally new.
Commander Joot was still weak and the doctors wanted him to return to sick bay to continue strengthening his body. The meeting resumed 24 hours later, once again on the Bridge.
It was Igor’s turn to question the commander, questions about the electronics of the systems which he still could not unravel. Unfortunately, Commander Joot didn’t know how the shields worked either, only how to operate them; it wasn’t his department. He told Igor that only the people on Earth knew how they worked.
Igor produced the broken black box for the commander. After looking at it for several seconds, he asked through Roo where they found it. Using Roo to interpret he explained to Igor that without the correct repair instruments it was impossible to repair the box and, they would only find the tools on DX2017 or back on Earth.
As the commander recovered his strength, America One neared the next moon, a tiny one.
; “I hope we don’t need air to open this base,” Ryan commented to the crew at the flight briefing; the ship had just entered a 200-mile orbit around the small white moon. They had only minimal reserves of water available to produce more air. Many of the supplies found on the other moons had been used up and they would have to wait until Enceladus was reached to replenish the water supply.
Enceladus still glowed a faint dirty white in the vastly depleted sun’s rays. From their location in the solar system, the sun was only twice the size as the brightest star but still created dull shadows. The side always facing Saturn and her rings was three times brighter.
On the second day of orbiting excitement flowed through the personnel on the Bridge; a blue shield was sighted on the moon’s surface through the telescope. Commander Joot was invited to look through the telescope and amazed all present when, again through Roo, he explained that he had already been in communication with one of the people on the planet. Even Roo, who didn’t have such mature experience with telepathy, was surprised when his mother told the meeting that she too had been in contact with two of the excited tribe members on Enceladus.
Commander Joot related that there were 26 of his kind on the white moon; 24 were asleep, two were awake on guard. He also told the group that there was plenty of water, several stockpiles of what they needed, including many of the metals as well as Rare Earth metals they had collected over the centuries, and that their spaceship was in need of repair. The commander explained that their spaceships could only travel up to two months at a time, and a mechanical breakdown was the reason they hadn’t tied in with DX2017’s orbits every fifth decade. Ryan realized that the two month range on the ship meant that the people here could never return to Mars, and the crew on Mars could never have returned to Earth; the shortest flight to Earth was at least four months.
