Lieutenant Jason Greco looked over from his co-pilots seat. “Excuse me sir, but you look sort of green about the gills, are you ok?”
“I still just have a little bit of vertigo left from when we spun the crew’s habitat back up. It will pass. I have the watch, Lieutenant, if you want to go below and grab some sleep or chow.”
The young Lieutenant’s stomach answered for him with a loud rumble and he grinned. “Guess I will take you up on that sir. Call me if you need me.” He flipped over his seat and went below.
Colonel Pierce strapped himself in and laid his head back into his seats headrest. Actually it felt better here in the zero G area of the flight control deck than down in the crews habitat with its centrifugal gravity. Normally, the flight deck should not have to be constantly manned, but any time they were maneuvering or conducting remote ground operations it had been decided that it was a prudent precaution. He activated his monitor that showed the video feed from the ground robot as it advanced toward the alien artifact site. Then on a separate screen, he opened up the secure attachment to the communication from Mission Control. It was the orders he had been expecting. He frowned as he read them. Although he rarely questioned his superiors, he was not in agreement with the paranoia of command staff on this issue. He had also been less than happy when he had been notified of the fusion warhead that had been stowed in the landing pod. Orders are orders though, he thought. He laid his head back to try and ease the throbbing pain behind his eyes as he waited for Lieutenant Greco to guide the robot to the alien artifact site.
Approximately two hours later, Lieutenant Allan Greco thumbed his microphone. “Colonel, the robot has arrived on the hill at the alien site.” The screen before him showed the buildings, excavator and ship unchanged from the way they were two days ago when he had piloted the airship over the site. He stopped the robot there as crewmembers started slipping into the operations deck to watch the reconnaissance video from the robot. When the Colonel did not come down from the flight deck he called again. “Colonel, I am standing by on the hill overlooking the site. I am ready to take the robot into the site.”
Allan's brother Jason was standing next to him. “He was up on the control deck, I will go relieve him,” Jason said. Lieutenant Jason Greco went up the ladder to the center of the compartment and pulled hand over hand to the flight deck. Allan Greco had his hands on the controls, itching to move the robot down for a closer inspection of the ship and buildings there. The ships announcing system clicked on “Medical emergency on the control deck, medical specialist to the control deck NOW!”
One of the crew members in the back of the gathered crew grabbed a med kit off the wall near the center handrail and all but flew up the center passage to the control deck. She arrived to find Lieutenant Jason Greco attempting to get the unresponsive form of the Colonel out of his pilot’s chair. “He has no pulse and is not breathing,” the Lieutenant told her.
The Medical specialist grabbed the Colonels collar and pulled him to the center passage. “Help me get him down to the mess deck, quickly now!”
Nineteen pairs of hands helped float the unresponsive Colonel to the Mess deck where he was lowered and placed on a table. The medical specialist tore the Velcro zipper of the Colonels coverall open and slapped defibrillator patches on his chest and placed the leads of a bio-monitor on the Colonels chest and temples. Another crewmember reached over and put an oxygen mask over his face and started pumping the gas bag. The Specialist held up her hand to stop them.
“It’s too late,” she said in a quiet voice, “He has been gone for probably over an hour. Cellular decomposition has already set in. There is nothing we can do.” Word that the Colonel was dead was passed quickly through the ship and the crew all stood around with stricken looks on their face.
Allan Greco looked at his brother. “I guess that makes you the captain now, since you are the copilot.”
Jason shook his head “You are the same rank as me.”
“I am not qualified to fly this ship, you are Jason.”
Jason stood in silence letting it sink in. “Do you have any idea what happened?” he asked the medical specialist.
“We have no real diagnostic equipment on board. He had been complaining of the headache and vertigo for several days. He told me that it had gotten better. If I were to guess, I am afraid he may have had a brain aneurysm, a bleeding stroke in his head. I cannot be absolutely sure of that though without a scan of his head. I just do not have the equipment on board to confirm the cause of death.”
“What do we do now?” asked one of the female engineering specialists with tears in her eyes.
Jason stood up straight and spoke. “We do what the Colonel trained us to do, and we carry on just as the Colonel would have wanted us to. Lieutenant Greco, would you please help Specialist Larson put the Colonel's body in a body bag. Then I want two volunteers to go EVA and secure the body outside the airlock where it will freeze. We will carry him home when we leave. I will be on the control deck. I need to talk to Mission Control at Alpha Station.”
…
General Seale sat in Colonel Ellis’s cabin with the Space Station Alpha commander. “I am sorry Rob, he was a good friend of mine also, but I know you two were especially close.”
The General nodded. “We basically started Space Force together. It was nothing but a concept and dream of David Honstein and President Montgomery at the beginning. Together we tested the first ships, planned all the missions, and worked the bugs out of the equipment. He was one hell of a pilot, and one hell of a good friend. My wife is going to be devastated as Mike was like a brother to her.” He shook his head. “Tell them to bring him home. He deserves the state funeral of a hero.”
“Lieutenant Jason Greco is the acting captain now. The kid is only six months out of the academy. Do we pull them home or proceed with the mission?” asked Commander Ellis.
“Actually, it is a little more complicated than that,” said the General. “Could you set me up a secure link with the Lieutenant? I need to borrow your cabin also for an about an hour to brief the Lieutenant on his orders. We will continue with the mission and hope that Colonel Pierce’s assessment of the young Lieutenant’s qualities was correct.”
Commander Ellis nodded. "I will leave you here then and have a communication link patched down to you."
…
Jason Greco switched on the ship’s intercom. “All off-watch crew assemble on the mess deck.” Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he pulled himself down the tube to the mess deck. After everyone was assembled, he nervously cleared his throat. “I have just gotten off the comm link with General Seale at Alpha Station. Whether I like it or not, I have been promoted to the temporary rank of Captain. I am to assume control of this ship and carry out our mission that we were sent here for. Lieutenant Allan Greco is to be second in command. We are to reconnoiter the alien site with the ground robot gathering as much information as we can. Looking at our fuel reserves and the projected course for us to get back to Earth, we need to leave orbit in eleven days, so tomorrow morning we will send the robot in. I have also been instructed to leave a container of instruments behind at the alien site when we leave. That means that we have to do our look around and investigation and then send the robot back to the lander. We will then load the instrument pack onto the robot and send it back to the site again. Having to get all of this done means we will have very little down time. At first light at the alien site tomorrow, which is in nine hours now, we get started.
We have also been instructed to bring the Colonel’s body home for a full state funeral with military honors. Does anyone have any questions?” The crew was silent. “Very well. Carry on then, and let’s do our duty as the Colonel would have wanted.”
Jason was sitting back in the pilot’s seat of the ship when his brother Allan come up from below and settled into the co-pilot seat.
“I bet you did not expect to sit there as captain so soon,” said his brother.
“We are doing what we have been trained to do. You and I both know that Father pulled some big strings to get us into the academy. We had to work twice as hard as the other cadets because of what everyone blames our father for. This is your chance and mine to prove that we are up to the challenge and we are not here because of our father's money or power. You know how to fly this ship. Hell, the Colonel made you do all the maneuvering on the way here, and the computers do most of it anyway. I know how to control the remotes down on the planet. What are you worried about?”
“I can handle flying the ship. It is the responsibility of getting those other eighteen crewmen back home safely that is worrying me. They are depending on me now,” Jason said.
“Welcome to command Jason,” said his brother. “You will do fine. Now we both need some sleep before tomorrow. Getting that look around done and getting that instrument package back to the site is going to be pushing it. I will see you in the morning,” Allan said as he went and pulled himself down the access tube.
Jason pulled up his communication screen and read his orders again. If his brother Allan only knew that his twin brother was now holding the arming code of a fusion bomb that was sitting on the planet below them, he may not be so carefree. "Welcome to command, my ass," he said to himself.
…
The next morning Lieutenant Jason Greco sat in the pilot’s seat on the flight deck. As he was now the only qualified pilot on board, he needed to be there just in case there was some sort of response from the alien artifact site when his brother guided the ground robot into the site. He still could not believe the Colonel was gone. Not only had the man been a living legend, but over the past couple of months he had come to admire and respect the Colonel tremendously. He realized that he may be able to sit in the Colonel’s seat, but he would never be able to fill the void of his presence. If he ever became half the man that the Colonel had been, he would be happy.
Jason laughed grimly to himself. His father had been totally against him and his brother joining the Space Force. He knew his father was expecting both of them to do a couple of years of service, then resign and come back to the life of luxury and manage their father’s financial empire. He would give anything to see his father’s face when he found out that his son, fresh out of the academy, was now commanding a spaceship investigating an alien planet millions of miles from home.
He hit his radio comm button and called down to his brother on the operations deck. “Ok Allan, the show is all yours now. Just please do not wake up the watchdog if there is one. We have nothing to fight back with up here.” Nothing, that is, but a fusion bomb sitting a kilometer from the alien site, he thought to himself with a shudder.
Below on the control deck Lieutenant Allan Greco activated his controls and started the remotely controlled robot moving. The robot resembled a short squat horse with four independently powered tracks where its legs would be. Most of the technicians who had worked on it, called it a Centaur. It truly resembled that mythological creature. In place of a head it had a short squat mast about one and a half meters above the ground with stereoscopic video cameras that could raise, lower, or even pivot one hundred and eighty degrees. Below the “head” and eyes, there were a set of mechanical arms that could extend about a meter in front of the robot and just reach the ground. They ended in a pair of very flexible mechanical hands that had a remarkable bit of dexterity. The hands could be controlled by the operator by placing his own hands into a pair of control gloves back on the ship. Whenever the operator move his hands in the gloves, sensors would then translate that movement back to the robot on the planet below and it would move its hands in the same way. On the centaur's back was a multitude of sensors and antennae.
Allan Greco hit a button on his control panel and started recording the video feed from the robot and started his running narrative to go with the video feed. “I am proceeding down into the site now.” He slowly guided the robot down into the alien site pausing between the two small alien domes that they believed were storage bunkers. Using the centaur’s telescoping cameras he zoomed in for a close up view. On close inspection, the surface of the two storage bunkers gave off an iridescent gleam in the diffused sunlight filtering through the clouds. “I am right up next to the surface of the bunker. It sure looks like some sort of solar cells on the buildings surface, but there does not appear to be individual cells. I cannot see any seams or individual components. It looks almost like the coating was painted onto the building. I am proceeding around to the front flat side where the doors are. I am detecting no electrical activity at all except for the beacon.”
Allan guided his robot around until it was about five meters from the flat side of the small dome. On this side of the dome was the large iris mechanism that everyone was assuming was what the aliens used for a door. The separate leaves of the iris seem so finely machined that they were barely visible. He moved the Centaur right up to the door. “This side of the building does not have the coating on it that is on the domed sides. The door appears to be some sort of metal alloy and you can see at the edges of the door where the iridescent coating stops, that the underlying material is the same metal as the door. Whoever these guys are, their metal working ability is amazing. Look how well the individual leaves of the iris are machined and fit together.” He zoomed in on one of the joints. “I would bet that there is less than a thousandth of an inch where the leaves overlap. This is amazing.” He backed the centaur away from the door. “There appears to be some sort of small recess over here on the left side of door.”
Moving the Centaur over to the left he stopped in from of a small square recess set in the wall of the building. He moved one of the centaur’s “eyes” in for a closer view. “Ok, looking in this recess, which is about, oh twenty centimeters or eight inches across, there is two smaller recesses with a ridge or maybe a bar in the center. All of that seems to be superimposed on a circle with a slight seam. If I did not know better this is a door knob, or an operating mechanism. Again the metal machining work is so fine you can barely see a seam. It would be a little on the big side for a human hand, but it looks like you stick your hand in there and turn the mechanism.” He extended one of the centaur’s mechanical hands toward the recess.
“Do not touch anything, Allan!!!” Jason called down from the flight deck.
Allan grinned to himself and the crewmembers sitting around watching. “I wasn’t really going to turn it,” he said as he winked at one of the female specialists.
Allan moved the Centaur around to the front of the alien excavator. He raised its video imager eyes to get a closer look at the manipulator arms on the excavator. Below the arms were two large heavy extension bars that were obviously where the scraper blade that was on the ground was previously attached. “This is as close as I can get to the excavator arms. It looks like it has large manipulator claws on the end. They are three pronged but I think they are mainly for moving cargo or picking heavy stuff up because they are nearly a meter across. Whatever type of hand or claw these guys have that could turn that door knob back there would have to be much smaller and delicate than those. These look like the claws on the cargo manipulators that are used back on Farside Base. I am sure they have a similar function. I am proceeding around the excavator to the back, I what to see if the door back there has a doorknob like those buildings.” He moved the Centaur around to the back of the squat excavator. “This door is a little over two meters in diameter. Here is another doorknob just like the one on the small building. I am convinced that these knobs are what opens and closes the doors.”
Allan circled the robot around the large dome. It was pretty non-descript, appearing to be of the same metal as the excavator and the two smaller buildings. He moved the Centaur over in front of the square structure that seemed to merge seamlessly with the larger main dome. Again, there was another iris type door and a rece
ssed panel with the doorknob mechanism as they were calling it. “That is the grand tour of the outside of the buildings. All of them have the same door mechanism as well as what appears to be the same mechanism to open the iris. I am going to move over under the ship now. I am curious to see if there is an access there with another of the iris door structures.”
Allan moved the Centaur robot around to the rear of the alien ship. “Those are definitely some sort of propulsion nozzles I would guess, but those iris structures have extended and covered the nozzles. They look almost like rose buds. From the way these guys used these overlapping leaves, I bet these guys had a thing for flowers.” Up on the flight deck Jason rolled his eyes. Almost sixty seconds later, the staff in mission control on Space Station Alpha and down in Houston did the same thing as they heard Lieutenant Allan’s running commentary repeated after the long time delay for the signal to get to Earth.
Allan slowly guided the robot underneath the port wing and stopped at the aft port landing gear. The bottom of the ship was smooth and seamless except where the landing gear entered the hull. There the landing strut went into the hull and sealed around the strut was again an iris structure. Allan swiveled the Centaurs video imagers down to look where the landing gear was half sunk in to the soil. The top of a large flat round pad could be seen. “The landing gear definitely has pads on the struts and not wheels. This thing was made for landing and taking off vertically.”
Allan rotated the Centaur’s imagers up to the bottom of the ship and moved from the port to starboard on to the bottom of the hull. He stopped and zoomed in on another iris about a Meter across. Swiveling the robots imagers back the way he had come he could see another iris in the same place on the port side he had overlooked. “I am guessing that these are covers for the vertical landing and take-off thrusters.” He moved the Centaur toward the nose of the ship. There were other similar iris ports along the ships bottom. Just aft of the front landing gear there was a large iris structure that was almost four meters across.
Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) Page 37
