by T I WADE
Commander Joot already knew that there was only a slight chance of finding any Martian members of his tribe alive. He had been given all the gold boxes found in the dormitories. He knew that the Base Commander, a man several thousand years younger than he, was one of the dead; the beautiful Eagle broach told him so. So were many, if not all of the Elders of the base. The number of gold boxes matched the number of bodies found, and he doubted that there were tribe members asleep in the cryonic room.
When they reached the tunnel area where it split in four directions, Commander Joot opened a small control flap in the wall, and turned the one switch behind the flap. The metal walls began to glow and the regular hum of power could be heard without the helmets.
The Commander immediately headed towards the forward cavern. VIN was the only one who had to stoop inside the tunnel; a growing Mars Noble was now as tall as Elder Roo. Within a minute Commander Joot had the door to the command center open, and admonished VIN for all the destruction he had made getting into the rooms. Even VIN agreed, after seeing how much damage he had actually wrought.
VIN knew what the commander would do next; he turned the control console over and pressed several buttons. He felt the same vibrations and heavy deep noises in the floor and walls around them for close to a minute as on Enceladus.
“I have activated the power unit to full power and activated the warming of the sleep room,” Commander Joot said to VIN in perfect English. “A few of the sleep cabinets are active, or we wouldn’t have heard the noises; I believe we might see some of our people walk out of there. Friend VIN, I think you should get Nancy and Martin down to get ready to tend to our people. Like me, they might have been asleep for a long time, and we still have twelve hours to wait.”
VIN had his son connect his helmet and through it relayed the information to the Bridge. The two doctors, Martha Von Zimmer, Petra Bloem, and Lunar Richmond were ready in Astermine Two. They would be transported to the ledge by Kathy with her now experienced husband as co-pilot. The first Richmond family journey outside of America One.
During the wait, the four helmetless astronauts checked out both the forward and aft caverns, VIN showing Commander Joot where they had found the bodies and where they had found the supplies they took with them. Then Commander Joot activated the new shield he had brought with him and placed it in the power room, which would be partly filled with the first cargo of new atmosphere arriving with the next craft.
From the water from Enceladus, they had made enough atmosphere for one shield only, and Ryan made the decision to use the valuable air on Mars, and not around the mother ship. That could wait another year or two.
With helmets reattached, the three went out to help unload the two mining craft while the shield steadily increased in size; it could be seen from Astermine Two on its third and final orbit overhead.
Kathy Richmond brought her ship into the dock area Allen Saunders had vacated an hour earlier. Astermine One, unloaded, was already going back up to get the rest of the shield’s atmosphere, once there was enough fuel to fill his liquid hydrogen tanks. That would take another week, but at least the doctors had arrived. They had thirty minutes to get out of the docking hatch, helped out of their spacesuits in the inner chamber, which was now warm, and attend their patients.
Together, both Nobles maneuvered the canister of medical equipment into the inner chamber, down the corridor and into the forward cavern minutes before the cryonic door opened.
The whole crew minus helmets waited for the door to open. It was a tense scene. With so many of their tribe already dead, the Matts were desperate for more members to be able to continue their species. Everyone was relieved when one taller and three very short Matts in blue suits and helmets were seen lying on the floor when the door opened.
They were alive! The team scrambled to remove their helmets while the doctors readied the stands holding the IVs.
“One adult female, the other three, all children, boys,” stated Commander Joot as the last helmet was removed.
“I also see three boys,” added Elder Roo. “Not more than ten or fifteen years old.”
The three children were semi-conscious and the doctors got to work pumping fluids into the three small bodies. The adult was sitting up, looked sick and puked on the floor. It was quickly cleaned up by Kathy and Martha while the doctors got fluids into the ashen patient.
As soon as the fluids, mixed with a pain reliever, a relaxant, and nutrients, entered their bodies, they fell asleep and would be at rest for several hours. Dr. Rogers determined they were strong and healthy enough not to need immediate transport to America One. The four new members were left on the warming floor and rolled into blankets. The temperature in the room was climbing.
VIN entered the Cryonic Room and checked the other cabinets. Only two contained something, and neither held a body. In one was what looked like stacks of papyrus leaves with the usual squiggles written on them, and in the other, the four gold boxes belonging to the four occupants.
“It seems that this could be the dead Commander’s wife and children, their personal belongings, and the written history of Base Mars,” Commander Joot said, looking through the cabinet contents with VIN.
“Why would he have not used the extra cabinets?” asked VIN. “Less of his people would have died.”
“With our system, the whole unit works together,” replied Commander Joot. “These four people and these leaves they brought with them, were frozen before the others died. Once the system was in action, it couldn’t be stopped, or these four crew could not use the freezing again. I believe that the Commander had no other options left when the end came. I’m sure these people can tell us their history once they wake up and if there are people remaining in our base on Earth.”
Three days later the new members told Commander Joot everything they knew. Yes, she was the mate of Commander Doe, one of the dust bodies found by VIN. The children were hers, and they had been made to enter the chamber and go to sleep when the 20th supply ship had not arrived. Their ship was out of fuel and they had waited in vain, generations of Matts, until the fifth Commander, her husband decided that his family be spared the pain of a slow death sometime in the future.
The four said goodbye to all of the crew, none of whom wanted to leave their commander, and they went to sleep; they woke to see many new people looking at them. Martha Von Zimmer was already taking strands of hair to analyze the DNA and determine the time difference between the piles of dust and the members who had not died.
A few weeks later she and her team concluded that the four Matts had been asleep for 5,000 years, which coincided with the bodies of dust she now calculated were only 4,900 years old. It appeared that the Commander and crew waited for several more supply ships before lying down to die.
A month after regaining life, the four fit Matts were transported up to America One with their new friends, Saturn Jones and Lunar Richmond, to meet Tow, who did not yet want to fly down to the planet.
Six months after returning to Mars, Suzi, Mr. Rose and their team had healthy crops growing in the outer glasshouse, as it was now called, and the atmosphere in the shield enabled plants to grow outside and around the landing zones.
Jonesy and others visited the ice mound three more times. With full tanks on the surface and enough fuel being produced in the mother ship, the crew on the Bridge began planning their journey to Earth.
Rover Opportunity had not moved once during the six months the crew worked on perfecting the base for permanent habitation. Compared to the rest of the solar system, the base on Mars was warm, bright, sunny, and not a bad place to live—if one could get living on Earth out of his system.
A month after VIN recharged his old friend for the umpteenth time, Rover Opportunity’s light came on; it moved erratically and, without anybody noticing, unceremoniously fell over the lip of the crater to crush itself on the rocks seventy feet below. VIN was sad to see the end of his Mars buddy. So was Mars Noble. It was VIN’s 45th
birthday.
Chapter 25
Sad farewells
“Who wants to stay and work the new base, and who wants to return to Earth? Those who do not want to visit Earth may leave the cafeteria.” Ryan addressed the overflow crowd in the cafeteria of the mother ship. Everyone on board was in attendance. There were 96 crewmembers, of which 29 were children under 15 from both tribes, and 23 adult Matts. Commander Joot repeated the question posed by Ryan to his tribe; only the new additions from Mars couldn’t speak English.
Ryan was surprised by how many people began to leave; more than half of the group at the meeting filed out. He knew Mr. Rose was not interested in visiting Earth, he was happy in the cubes and tending his beloved plants down in the shield. Many of the biology team joined him. All the Matts wanted to stay. Children of the Tall People would go or stay with their families. One had to be 18, an adult, to make a decision. All the astronauts stayed. They knew their services would be needed to fly to the surface and back. VIN wanted to visit, and so did Suzi. She could leave the vegetation in the capable hands of Mr. Rose and her crew. Ryan knew that Commander Joot and Elder Roo wanted to see the Sahara desert, and watched as Roo’s mother Tow, Fritz and their new baby Yoyo exited the room. Of the Matts, only Joot and Roo had any interest in returning.
When the room quieted down, there were only 32 crewmembers left: the two Matts, the Jones family of three, the Noble family of three, his own family of four, the Saunders and Pitt families both now four, Captain Pete, Igor, Boris, Max Burgos and his family of four, and Vitalily and his family of three. Finally, one of the younger, single German chemists said he wanted to return to Earth to find a wife, any wife. Ryan didn’t really want to return to Earth. He knew quite well the politics and politicians waiting for him, but understood that he had no choice.
The date was set for 30 days from the meeting. Now that the fuel was being replenished at a decent pace, they could leave the planet earlier than expected. Their last mission was to transport as many crops from the cubes as possible down to the red planet.
Ryan had seven black shield boxes available for use, collected from all the bases visited. He would need all three shuttles and at least the two mining craft to transport supplies hidden underground at his old base in Nevada, if the secret stash still existed.
He decided to leave Asterspace Three and its large cargo bay as an escape ship for the planet if anything happened to America One. There was still one complete accommodation cylinder that had been a sleeping camp on a few of the moons and planets. The other had been used to repair the rear cylinder hit by the asteroid. He gave orders for it to be cut and retrofitted for Asterspace Three’s cargo bay; it would provide around 60 adults an escape route back to Earth if America One never returned. Asterspace Three could enter the atmosphere of Earth once only, and land on a long runway, like the old NASA shuttle, but the food and water supplies aboard would only be enough for sixty people on the four-month journey from Mars to Earth.
As the fuel supplies increased in quantity, daily flights to the new base left the mother ship. Supplies were taken down by the ton. Many of the complete laboratories, especially the biology and chemistry labs with all their equipment took six flights to get down to Mars. With Asterspace Three staying behind, a second black box was taken down and positioned at the edge of the ledge. The first shield covered the inner half of the ledge and the second box made it possible to unload the twenty tons of top soil supplies out of the mother ship; it was transported down in four-ton increments to the larger farm made possible by the second shield. The air tanks for the second atmosphere took two more loads, and then most of the medical supplies, the entire hospital, and all of the medical machines and equipment; the doctors kept enough necessities for a simple sick bay for the short flight to Earth and back. Dr. Nancy was persuaded to join the Earth mission by Captain Pete.
America One became empty of equipment. Four of the five remaining escape pods were separated from the mother ship and flown down to the planet. Jonesy had to return to “The Oasis” the name given to the watering hole to collect an extra 5,000 gallons of water. This would be sufficient to replace the air needed for the second atmosphere on the ledge, as well as to begin the atmosphere around America One.
Within 30 days, their new permanent abode was supplied with 120 tons of everything the remaining crew and the returning crew would need to survive, hopefully, forever.
It was noted that Commander Joot and his tribe had not supplied their bases around the solar system with one or two vital necessities: production machinery to produce parts, or better machines to do the work, and also spacesuits to collect water by hand if necessary. Their water collection system, to program their spiders to go outside their spacecraft and fill smaller urns with ice, had not proved very effective.
The biggest problem, and the real demise of the Matts, was that they couldn’t produce alcohol in space. They had done so on Earth, but something had gone wrong on all the space bases, hence their lack of transportation, and limited survival.
Most of the fuel and air-producing equipment aboard America One had taken a decade, but the equipment was duplicated. The second generation was more modern and worked faster, and had been designed and manufactured aboard the mother ship using only 3-D printers. In the near future, the base on Mars, and the original systems aboard the mother ship could produce twice the air and fuel produced during the odyssey.
The last flight transported the remaining mining spiders to the planet. When America One’s crew went down with them to say their goodbyes, they noticed that every inch of space, other than the living areas, was stocked high with supplies. The whole base looked like a Walmart Superstore with a gardening section outside in the first shield. A superstore for just 64 inhabitants.
In his goodbye message in the forward cavern, Ryan told the new inhabitants of The Mars Club Retreat to expect them back in about 24 to 30 months. The flight to Earth would take seven months, he wanted to spend no longer than a year in orbit around the home planet, and the return journey should be even shorter. He also mentioned that if they couldn’t get down to the surface of Earth, and there was nothing the new retreat needed from planet Earth, they would return earlier, until Jonesy shouted out “fresh fish.” Suzi shouted back saying that she was working on a plan to start a fish farm on Mars, if Herr Jones could be a little patient, however, while he was on Earth he could catch some fresh fish for her farm.
Amidst laughter and tears, friends said their farewells, and also gave secret shopping lists to the Earth-bound crew who could visit a real Walmart, or whatever the shop was called in their country.
A couple of hours later SB-III, its crew cabin full of contemplative passengers, left Mars to return to a very empty mother ship. Seven cubes still contained growing produce which Suzi would attend to, and the ship’s cargo cylinders held all of the valuable metals mined from the moons and planets they had visited. The metals would be used to barter down on Earth.
Igor and Captain Pete studied the metal and diamond cargo manifest for days, and inventoried more than two billion dollars of the rarest and most valuable Rare Earth metals alone; nearly every large first world country would be happy to kill them to gain possession. These numbers didn’t include five tons of pure gold, several hundred diamonds larger than tennis balls, a ton of pure platinum, the same of titanium, and excess cobalt, all pure and ready to be sold to the world markets.
For days Ryan pondered what they were going find at home, while Captain Pete, Igor and Boris, set all the computers to listen for chatter on the thousand or more radio frequencies they had used before leaving Earth nine years and nine months ago.
They received the first chatter four months later, halfway to Earth.
Chapter 26
Earth
“What is that noise?” Ryan asked one morning walking onto the Bridge and heading straight for the coffee machine.
“Ten years and you have forgotten,” replied Captain Pete. “That faint, eeri
e wailing noise you hear is the emergency notification from the federal government that was transmitted as a test over all television and radio frequencies. It’s been on continuously since we picked it up about two hours ago. I think the old record must be stuck.”
“Why would it be a continuous message?” asked Ryan. “It was hard to listen to for the 30 seconds they transmitted it every day.”
“Well, we did pick up a scratchy Chinese message, or shall I say, a message in Chinese about an hour ago,” Igor said. “It has been recorded, but I don’t believe we have anybody to decipher it perfectly. Fritz normally did that and he is back on Mars.”
“I understand a bit,” added Boris, “but not enough to decipher the whole message. I believe it was to a Chinese astronaut, or aircraft pilot, telling him to launch his cubes, or rockets at something.”
“Are we close enough to send out a message on the frequency the old president gave us, the one coded with the three children’s names in correct order, which we stored in the computers to let him know that we are back?”
“I think sending that message out in another few weeks will be a better bet,” replied the captain. “We are still over ten million miles from Earth, and we are getting just bits and pieces of scratchy messages here and there. I cannot figure out how that Chinese message, not directed at us specifically got this far out into space, unless the Chinese have a really powerful radio transmitter back in orbit. Hopefully, it is a happy, peaceful and thriving community down there.”
“Yeah, right!” replied Ryan cynically. “I really hope so too but, would you like to make a wager about peace on Earth, Captain Pete?” The captain smiled, not really interested in betting.
A month later, America One began sending out her arrival message, still millions of miles from Earth. Nothing happened for two more weeks, and then they finally heard a weak message in return. It was a voice Ryan knew well, his friend, the former President of the United States of America, and it was repeating itself once an hour. Ryan mentioned to Captain Pete that the message could have been going out since they left a decade earlier. The ship’s message went out with the scrambled codes to identify it as being sent by Ryan and his crew. Not much happened for the next several days.
