by T I WADE
The most exciting item was a handheld radio. Captain Pete had often thought that there should have been a communications device somewhere in the supplies and he had not yet found it, until he smacked himself on head.
“Of course!” he shouted out loud. “Each of the three spacesuits have radios. Nancy, I think I have Alzheimer’s. I keep forgetting everything.”
“No, you don’t,” she retorted. “Maybe call it “Old Timer’s,” but I know for a fact that you have nothing more serious.”
“Who would put a handheld radio in here?” he asked his wife, looking at the most powerful handheld the ship had, which had come from the last visit to Earth.
“I would bet my money on General Jones,” replied Nancy, not looking up.
“Why Jonesy?” asked Captain Pete, his brow wrinkled.
“Remember your prohibition days on America One? The days the girls took over the ship since the crew were found drunk in the room below?”
“Yes, Kathy Richmond kept the boys off the booze for over 150 days. Why?”
“Well, the boys still had meetings, I believe in here, and we did find three empty bottles. Somebody was drinking up here, and there has been vodka stashed all over these supplies. Who would be the first name that comes to mind about hiding liquor during prohibition? And we haven’t found his stash yet? Lover boy, you don’t need to answer that question.”
They found Jonesy’s stash in the wall unit containing extra fire extinguishers, once they began looking in earnest for it. Nancy knew it was Jonesy’s, as three and a half of the four bottles had been drunk and there was a note in Jonesy’s handwriting telling of certain death if anybody touched the remains in his last bottle.
Captain Pete read the note, saluted General Jones, swigged a decent amount, and let his wife finish the last bottle. She and General John Jones had never got on well together.
Chocolate and candy were the last items found with a kilo of coffee beans Suzi had stashed away for Ryan. They had a decent amount of coffee remaining, a year’s supply, and another kilo could come in handy.
A couple of months later, they had a party, eating caviar and drinking a bottle of vodka between them, when Earth rounded its orbit and began coming towards them. They could see a very small star orbiting the blue planet now only 10 million miles away through the ship’s telescope.
They didn’t know that back on Mars the NextGens had just loaded the old timers into the chambers of DX2017 and were heading back. Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy had been flying a supply pod and Ryan’s old office for two years.
This time the blue planet moved visibly daily. Their forward speed was 4,410 miles an hour with a sideward speed which had reduced over the two years to less than 49,000 miles an hour. Captain Pete was ready to swing into action. He needed to increase their sideward movement to a minimum 66,000 miles an hour to equal Earth’s as it passed them by. He could change direction and divert the forward speed into sideward motion, but he was still 10,000 miles an hour short. This was why he had closed down the thruster at 90 percent fuel capacity. He still had several hours at full thrust with the now two liquid hydrogen fuel tanks they had found as backup. It would be touch and go to speed up to be attracted by the fast-moving planet.
He knew that the pull of the much larger blue planet would certainly help in the attraction but could also hinder them unless he turned into its forward direction at precisely the right time: when the planet was directly in front of his nose. Everything rested on the moment when Earth began pulling them in and their forward speed increased.
It happened four weeks later. He awoke one morning to see that their forward speed had increased by 180 miles an hour overnight. He was quite shocked at how fast it had happened and decided to give an hour at full burn to test the thruster and help increase speed.
Over the next 24 hours, with the blue plant clearly visible off their port bow and the moon now a star, their speed had doubled and was still increasing by 5 miles an hour. He had 16 hours of burn left and still needed another 5,000 miles an hour. He and Nancy began to pray.
His next task was to change the ship’s direction by 5 degrees in the direction the planet was moving. Again he added another 30-minute burn at full power. Their forward speed climbed slightly with the use of the thruster and some of the remaining sideward slip turned into forward speed. Earth would now pass by them in a week, 590,000 miles in front of them.
Captain Pete didn’t sleep for 24 hours and recalculated the equations and angles hundreds of time.
“Nancy, we are going to be 1,000 miles an hour short if I don’t change something,” he stated to a tired wife who had also lain awake most of the night. “We are at 55,000 miles an hour, not including the 5,000 miles an hour we will add once we turn her nose tomorrow. I want to add another 30-minute thrust. It seems that the earlier I do it, the faster the planet will pull us in. We are 411,000 miles out from a low Earth orbit. What do you think?”
“You are the captain, lover boy. I would prefer to crash and burn than miss the boat altogether. Put the pedal to the metal.” He did.
Instead of 30 minutes, Captain Pete gave the thruster 90 minutes at full power, burning up valuable fuel. Their speed climbed as Earth grew larger and larger in their port side window.
“She’s moving like an express train,” shouted Captain Pete. This was the most exciting flying he had ever done.
“Who? The planet? Or us?” shouted Dr. Nancy back while biking upstairs.
“Earth. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful. It’s the first time I can actually see rapid orbital movement as a planet passes us by. We are at 159,000 miles and she’s going by like an express train.”
“Well, do something about it, you oaf,” replied his loving wife.
I’m turning to convert full sideways speed into direct forward speed. I’ll engage the thruster in 30 minutes,” he replied. “It seems we might have backup, darling!”
“How can we have backup out here? Is that General Jones coming to get us?”
“No, but the moon is presently directly behind Earth and orbiting in our direction. I’m going to try and get us between it and the Earth. At least if we’re too slow for an Earth orbit, we could enter into an orbit around the moon. Oh, this is so exciting!”
Captain Pete was like a kid in heaven. Even if they didn’t live through this, this was certainly worth living for. He powered up the thruster and once it was ready gave her full thrust. Thirty minutes later he turned directly in the direction the blue planet was heading. For two hours it pulled them in, and he gave chase. He watched as the altitude above the planet decreased, and his forward speed increased. At 140,000 miles altitude, the planet was just off to their starboard side, and he angled his projection another degree. At their forward speed of 66,300 miles an hour, the planet was getting away.
He had one hour of fuel remaining in the first reserve fuel tank when he topped 66,400 miles an hour. He was now coming in behind the planet and their altitude had dropped to 131,000 miles.
“We are 210 miles an hour too slow, and she is now ahead of us by 131,200 miles,” he stated to Nancy, now sitting next to him.
With the thruster at full power, the fuel headed down to empty. Fifty minutes later he asked Nancy to head upstairs and transfer the fuel from the liquid tank to the first of the two gas tanks. At 64,500 miles an hour and directly behind the planet, they were now being left behind.
The tank was exchanged at 64,510 miles an hour and he allowed 30 more minutes at full power but only reached 62,525 miles an hour. Something was pulling them back, and he knew what it was.
“Do you know, the moon is going to hit us up our rectum if we are not careful,” stated Nancy after floating down and looking the opposite direction Pete had the Earth in his sights.
“I know. We are now 230 miles an hour too slow. Even if I used all our remaining fuel, we can’t achieve orbit. I’m going to aim for a moon orbit. In her orbit around Earth she will come around the side of us in about 200
,000 miles. I’m leaving 50 minutes of burn time to lock us into an orbit, and then I have a plan.”
“Care to enlighten me?” asked Nancy as he shut off the thruster. Now the pull from the moon was slowing down his speed towards Earth. They were 136,000 miles behind the planet and the distance was growing. He worked out that they were 100 fuel gallons too short to land the ship on the blue planet.
“The moon is going to catch us up in her pull, right?” Pete said. Nancy nodded at what her man was telling her. “Then we wait until we hear chatter on the radio, and when the moon is in front of Earth instead of behind it, we use what fuel we have left to head backwards towards Earth instead of trying to catch it up.” Nancy thought it sounded logical, even to a surgeon.
Thirty-one very tiring hours later Captain Pete fed much of his remaining fuel into the thruster and Ryan’s old office went into orbit around the moon.
Chapter 4
Is Anybody Ever Going to Finally Arrive?
The new view through the office windows was breathtaking. It ignited a new romance and, for the first few days after Pete had rested, kept them busy. Their orbit was strong and constant. It had to be with only half of one of the reserve tanks of hydrogen gas remaining.
It took Captain Pete a week to calculate that with absolutely minimal correctional thrusts, their new orbit would stay stable for a maximum of 25 months. Then all hell would break loose as the craft would gradually begin to spin out of control. They could end up a mess on the moon’s surface with the old American flag there becoming their gravestone.
Captain Pete wasn’t worried, though. At least they could die in peace with a view of home outside. That was far better than it being a star and the surface of Mars rushing up to meet them. Also somebody was going to see a faint dot orbiting the moon one day and hopefully get into radio communications.
Then he began to realize that it might be time to repair what he could on the outer skin of their craft. Any communication was better than none, and currently they only had about 200 miles of range with the handheld radio. It was time to do something that had become a phobia in him—the art of spacewalking.
“Nancy, I have to go out there soon,” he stated one morning over a breakfast of dried fruit, dried cookies and one of their last hot cups of coffee.
“Not something you really want to do?” she replied, knowing that he didn’t want to go out there anymore than she did. Also, her main fear was all the radiation he could bring back with him on the outside of his spacesuit.
“Well, I suppose if we ever want to see our old home, somebody has to go out there. Do you want to pick straws?”
“Not in your lifetime,” responded his wife. She wasn’t going outside and had stated that fact a number of times during their long and boring voyage across the solar system.
For a couple of weeks he tried to keep himself busy doing odd jobs like clearing up the storage area, but every time he cleaned up an area, supplies like extra radio antennas and spare outside parts kept peering up at him from where they were stored.
After a month, he couldn’t stand being such a coward anymore and prepared one of the suits for exit. Each of the seven supply cylinders had a jetpack attached to one suit, so that was the suit he prepared. The problem was that he had never used the system before.
“Hopefully you have the brains to tie a cord to the outside of the docking port like VIN used to?” Nancy asked the night before his odyssey. “I can’t do it for you, as the inner hatch will be closed, and you need to make sure the ‘D’ ring is secured and tightened down, or I’ll wave, watch you float away and then you’ll crash and burn on the moon’s surface alone.” Sometimes his darling wife was as soft and romantic as a rattlesnake.
“I have done this before, I just don’t like being locked into the confines of the suit. It is such a confined space,” he replied. “I heard that many of the astronauts really enjoy just going out there and relaxing, watching space go by. Saturn told me it was her and her father’s favorite pastime to alleviate the boredom of flight. They got the idea from VIN and Mars.”
“Well, don’t get any romantic ideas of me heading out there with you,” replied Nancy sternly. “Lover boy, you don’t even have room inside your suit for a hard-on, and I figured out that spacesuits are the best chastity belts ever invented. By the time you get out of the suit, the raving lust for quality sex is long gone.”
Nancy wasn’t helping Pete make the leap, but he didn’t expect anything else from his lovely wife and he made sure that raving lust for quality sex would not raise its head on the morrow.
“Remember to dampen a few pieces of cloth to wipe me down when I enter,” stated Captain Pete, giving her his last orders as he suited up. “We can always store them in a sealed container and add any others if I need to do this again.”
It was seconds before she helped him on with his helmet that her concern for him rose to the surface.
“You just come back to me now and give me orders. It will be worse in here without somebody to talk to. I’ll go mad quicker than what I’m doing right now. When we get down to Earth, I’m not coming back out here for anything, including all the tea in China.” Pete looked at her talking into the handheld with a sideways look. Sometimes she came out with very odd and old sayings, things his long-dead mother used to say.
The inner hatch closed behind him. Three antennas and a space tool kit were strapped around his upper right leg, and 100 feet of cord. Going through the small hatch made his sense of confinement even worse and he operated the outer hatch as soon as he had the cord’s “D” ring attached to the connection inside the hatch.
He drifted out of the rear of the office, attached the “D” ring of the other end of the cord to the outside connection, opened the other ring and secured it to his belt. He checked that both rings were secure twice, then he closed the outer hatch.
Captain Pete had a difficult task ahead of him. All the antennas, three of them, had been placed on top of the supply pod twenty feet above him, and nobody had thought to weld a ladder up the side of the pod. He had no choice but to push away from the side of the ship and learn how to maneuver himself upwards. He placed the thin two-foot-long antennas under his left arm and allowed himself to drift outwards.
Pete grabbed hold of the two controls of the jetpack and nearly gave himself a headache as the pack moved him forward and he nearly collided with the side of the ship. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how the computer game handheld devices worked and was surprised when he opened his eyes several seconds later and realized that he hadn’t moved more than a foot but was now inverted and staring at his wife through a window. Her shocked face added to his dilemma. Slowly he righted himself up and headed in the right direction.
Captain Pete began to notice that the entire skin of the craft looked dull, sort of blackened as if it had gone through a fire.
He reached the first place where one of the antennas had been located and found a melted glob of metal. He grabbed a screwdriver-type instrument from his leg pack and took a couple of minutes to pry the molten metal off the ship. Underneath, the fittings were not melted, and he managed to open two large butterfly nuts and within his first hour had a new antenna erected.
“I have one antenna attached and in hard-on position, Nancy. Try the main radio. See if the static noise has changed.”
“Negative, just the same old static, darling, no radio BBC or anything new,” she replied, talking into the handheld after a few minutes.
“I’m by the middle antenna location. This one is completely melted to the pod’s skin. I’m scared that if I use too much force I could damage the outer skin—it’s only aluminum. Floating to the most forward one.”
The antennas were about ten feet apart, and this one was right on the front edge of the supply cylinder. Again he tried to pry the molten glob off the connection. He couldn’t budge the metal without floating into space and figured out a way to affix himself to be able to pry it off. On the front side of t
he pod was the melted remains of a massive camera, a foot below the antennas. He wrapped the cord around what was left of what looked like the infra-red camera. He wrapped the cord tightly around it and this time managed to send the glob spinning off into space.
Pete was now sweating inside the suit, and he turned down the inside temperature several degrees.
“Two hours of spacewalking. You have 60 minutes to hightail it back in here,” stated Nancy.
“Copy that,” replied Pete. “I have one of the nuts loose and am working on the second one. I think it’s melted with the surface of the thread. I’m going to try and connect the antenna with the one nut.” He monkeyed the new antenna onto the short stem it was meant to fit over, but couldn’t secure it down, so he grabbed the same screwdriver and began hitting the melted screw, bending it downwards. He was surprised how soft the metals were. After a dozen hits, the nut was unrecognizable. He jammed the antenna down on the stem and managed to tighten the other nut down so it would have a connection and be stable.
He thanked the space god that there was no wind out here to undo his master work when Nancy piped up from inside.
“I think something in the static has changed. I’m sure I heard a few human tones, or somebody saying something. Maybe I am going crazy, Pete?”
“Well, it will take several minutes for any radio conversations to reach us out here so far from Earth, but give this second antenna a few minutes to catch something and maybe we will have the BBC News after all.”
“Well, that is Asia below us, not Great Britain,” replied Nancy, checking the blue planet.
“Ok, the Chinese BBC News then, but we won’t understand it,” Pete joked, feeling more confident than he had since they had begun orbiting the moon. He didn’t want to tell Nancy their chances of being rescued. They weren’t much, if anything at all, on the Richter scale.
