America One: The Odyssey Begins

by T I WADE

  “Who is following whom?” asked Suzi from the other craft. Suzi was astronaut-in-charge of Astermine One and would be for the entire mission. She was still ahead of her husband in the flight hierarchy, and her presence eliminated the need for anyone to spacewalk over to help remove helmets.

  “Since I have already programmed our flight into our computers, just tie your computers in to mine, get yourself a mile or so on our starboard side, sit back, open the popcorn, and enjoy the show,” replied Jonesy.

  The side thrusters, already pointing backwards, immediately increased their orbital altitude and America One quickly disappeared behind them.

  After one orbit, the two mining craft would be on a direct course to the moon. It was a three-day trip to the moon, much shorter than to DX2014. When they arrived the first thing they had to do was find where the diamond-studded asteroid had plowed into the dead planet.

  Compared to life on America One, life aboard both Astermine mining craft was small and cramped. The rear compartment could hold both astronauts and a crib for the baby, but one astronaut always had to be on watch. Both craft were on eight-hour watches, with one of the crew asleep. Also, both craft would rotate sleep periods so that at least three of the four crew members were awake for two of the shifts. This system of “eyes on the dials” was perfected by Jonesy and VIN on the trips when Maggie had not been present.

  Jonesy was hoping they would find a huge mound of diamonds all nicely piled up so that they could load them in and get back, but he knew the probability of that was miniscule. He was eager to complete the mission so he could take his new Earth toy on a round-the-world trip.

  At 29,000 miles an hour the Earth slowly got smaller, and the moon got bigger. Still it took three days to fly to the moon; the planet’s ever changing position in relation to the actual craft in space made the flight many times longer than the distance between them.

  Right on time, both craft entered the moon’s orbit. Before they went behind the moon VIN radioed Ryan to alert them that radio communications would be lost. Even though communications on Earth had reached an all-time low, in space were direct and easy, once you got used to the short lag time between conversations.

  “Well done, guys. We are testing the new thruster in ten hours, SB-II is due back in 18 hours and we will let you know our plans,” Ryan reported. “The doc thinks that living up here could cause Kathy to give birth earlier than expected, so I want to get moving.”

  “We looked at the crater’s estimated location and impact area on the computers and in relation to the surface, and it looks like we will be out of radio communications while we are down there, unless you move into a triangular position away from earth,” Jonesy advised.

  “Roger that,” replied Ryan. “We completed a burn on the two working engines 24 hours ago and we are already climbing towards a geo-stationary altitude, 1,000 miles a day. SB-II can follow us to the moon if necessary and we are packing in extra crew rations down just in case. By the way Maggie, your Utah coffee is still not as good as the Dutch coffee, and Suzi, we had another space-produced chocolate cake that we think Mr. Rose made for us yesterday. It was fantastic.”

  “It had better be,” replied Suzi from the sister craft. “I made twelve cakes the day before we left. I gave one to each of our mining craft and you guys were given the other ten. I know Herr Rose is good, but not as good as me, the cake meister.”

  “It was really good,” added Maggie. “We ate our whole cake over three days. I’m worried with feeding Saturn, that she might start looking like one of Suzi’s cakes.”

  “Let’s get back to work, ladies,” admonished Jonesy. “Ryan, we are forty minutes from our first pass over the general area, and will report back if we see anything. If we don’t, I will head descent on our second orbit, fly over the area, and see if I can find anything. On our third orbit, I hope to land on the moon.”

  They could only use eyesight to view the moon’s surface. Although SB-III was equipped with a laser aiming device, they needed light from the sun or Earth to use it. On the dark side of the moon light from either source was limited to a very short duration.

  “We got a visual on a crater; it appears to be about two miles across and barren. It looks like a fresh crater, whatever a fresh crater looks like. We can’t see much contrast on the dark side. It is in the larger area the computers mapped out, but not in the smaller suggested area. I’m going to head down lower and maybe land in it to look around. Ryan, I will relay any messages via Astermine One,” Jonesy radioed after the first pass.

  He descended from a forty-mile altitude to a five-mile altitude, and slowed. At this lower altitude everything went passed by quickly. He also felt a very slight pull from the planet, but not enough to prevent the odd, untied object from floating around in the rear cabin.

  “The crater should be coming up over the horizon in about ten seconds,” Maggie said. Jonesy aimed the craft to fly over the crater, slowing the forward speed as much as possible. They were still passing over the desolate dark terrain at a rapid speed.

  “There it is, a couple of miles in front of us. I can see the contrast of the crater walls,” Maggie observed.

  “We’re slowing down but I don’t think I can get her down quickly; we are still at 1,500 hundred knots over the surface. I’m reducing altitude,” replied Jonesy.

  Slowly they passed over the crater, seeing nothing. It would take one more orbit, thirty minutes, to land.

  This time Jonesy approached at a one-mile altitude, and at a significantly slower speed. It was still hard to see the crater; the surface was dark and would always be, but Maggie plotted its center on the computers during the last pass.

  “Twenty seconds to crater,” reported Maggie. “I think I can see its wall, about 200 feet high, two miles in front of us. It’s certainly a wall or a dark rock face.

  “Landing and search lights on, landing gear down,” ordered Jonesy as the crater wall came into sight. “Decreasing speed and altitude…. 1,500 feet, we are over the wall…. can you see how smooth it is down there?” he asked.

  “What’s smooth? It looks the same as the crater floor on the asteroid from here. Just bring her down slowly. The closer you are with the lights, Jonesy, the better I can see.”

  As the thrusters halted the forward progress of Astermine Two, Jonesy let the craft hover at 900 feet. Maggie looked out.

  “Bring her down slowly,” Maggie ordered.

  “In the hover, 700 feet… 500 feet, slowing, thrusters on 35 percent power, increasing to 38 percent. Four hundred feet. What do you see, Maggie?”

  “It looks clean down there to me, the ground is beginning to look red, but I still don’t see anything jutting out.”

  “Decreasing thrust to 36 percent, I feel a slight pull, 200 feet…”

  “Stop!” ordered Maggie. “There is an incline below us. It’s going deeper into the crater. Take her 200 feet starboard, it looks flatter over there.” Slowly Jonesy moved the hovering space craft to the right, towards the middle of the crater. “Another 100 feet to starboard, Jonesy; there is a large rock, about forty feet high, directly ahead, and still below us.” Jonesy continued heading towards the center until Maggie said that it looked as flat as possible.

  “Reducing thrust to 35 percent, altitude 170 feet…”

  “Halt, descend,” ordered Maggie. “Jonesy, what did we see shining on the asteroid?”

  “Diamonds…. holding at 180 feet,” he replied.

  “Well, I don’t see anything sparkling down there. Don’t you think they should be all over the surface from the impact?”

  “Also, remember how magnetic that rock was? I’m sure that there should be more of a magnetic pull if we were directly over the impact sight,” added Jonesy. He slowly turned the craft in a circle to look for any glitter on the surface. There was nothing sparkling.

  “That’s how we are going to find this treasure, glitter and gravity fluctuations,” Maggie agreed. “Jonesy the best viewing altitude was at ab
out 200 feet, spend a bit of time canvassing the crater.”

  For twenty minutes, they searched the crater surface, it was barren and empty. Jonesy then increased altitude a few hundred feet and began a circular pattern around the outer rim of the crater. There were thousands of smaller craters everywhere, some in other craters, and after ten minutes they gave up and moved closer to where the computer configured the point of impact was, twenty miles away.

  “Keep her low and slow,” said Maggie. “Aim for the center of the area. We have about ten minutes before we have to land to conserve fuel.”

  In the middle of the ten-mile square area where the computers calculated the impact should be, Jonesy put Astermine Two down on the moon for the first time. They had found nothing, and it was time to rest. On VIN’s next pass 40 miles above them, they told him the Jones family was preparing to spend their first romantic night on the moon.

  Their first moon dinner consisted of a sardine-sized tin of New Mexico rattlesnake, complimented by a pack of cheese snack biscuits, purchased in a Las Vegas supermarket. The meal reflected the view outside: barren desert. It was more desolate than Nevada. Maggie, being a good wife, had brought some fresh fruit, already a luxury on America One.

  Before they left Nevada on their three-day shopping trip, Maggie asked her husband how they were going to pay for anything since neither of them had an available ATM for their old bank accounts or even a credit card. So, Jonesy went to the airfield office to see if he could get some cash. When the office administrator asked how much he wanted he suggested $10,000. The administrator looked at him quizzically. When Jonesy advised him that a Gulfstream 650 would take a lot more than that to tank up, he received a company credit card instead. With the credit card and $500 in cash, they could purchase what they wanted.

  Maggie bought oranges in an outdoor market in Santa Fe, but didn’t tell the vendor that she and her husband would be enjoying them on the moon, 320,000 miles away.

  After the oranges, they ate cheese and biscuits and Jonesy pulled a half bottle of champagne out of a hiding place.

  “I don’t really like the stuff, but I thought it would be appropriate for our first night on the moon,” he told Maggie. Then smiling, he reached towards his secret stash, bringing out two bottles of Budweiser and a small bottle of a clear liquid. “A present from Suzi,” added Jonesy. “For purely medicinal purposes only.”

  “I could be in a row boat a hundred miles from shore and stranded for days, and you, fake General Jones, would still pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

  The only spaceship on the moon certainly rocked that night; of course Frank Sinatra was playing in the background on the computer.

  “Astermine One to Astermine Two, you guys still alive down there?” came a familiar voice over the radio as the sleepy pair were finishing breakfast, a scrambled egg pouch and freshly brewed Dutch coffee. Living on the moon wasn’t as bad as Neil Armstrong had made it out to be.

  “Morning, partner, just having breakfast, and too early for the morning run,” replied Jonesy.

  “Found any diamonds down there yet?”

  “Sure millions, I took Silver, my trusty steed, and Tonto and I headed out over yonder and rounded up all the diamonds. We are ready to go home,” Jonesy replied with a western drawl.

  “Stop bull crapping General Custer, life up here is getting boring. Suzi and I are going around this little planet like a damn yoyo.”

  “OK, we will clean up and take off in thirty minutes,” replied Jonesy.

  Looking at the ten-mile area, Maggie suggested they stay as low as possible, check for any abnormal gravitational pulls, and keep all outer lights on full power looking for anything that shined back at them.

  Ten minutes later VIN came back over the radio. “We see you guys, a faint light on the surface. What can we do to help?”

  “VIN, Suzi, on your next pass bring your craft down to about five miles and slow her down to about 200 knots forward speed. Suzi you will need to hover the craft to stay up. I want you to search for craters. Down here it’s like scuba diving on the bottom of a dark lake. Maybe you can lead us to a crater. We will land and wait for you. Let us know when you come over the horizon and I’ll get her back up.”

  Thirty minutes later Jonesy lifted off the surface as Astermine One appeared on his radar screen. Suzi was not as experienced at flying Astermine One as VIN was in these conditions, and he had taken over. “VIN here, 13 miles above the surface at 580 knots, still slowing and coming down fast. I have you on radar; will put my lights on so that you can see me pass over.”

  “I have you visual,” stated Maggie two minutes later as the two craft closed.

  “390 knots at 7 miles altitude, twenty miles behind you,” VIN reported.

  Slow her down to hover over us, just like we practiced on the asteroid,” instructed Jonesy.

  “Will do,” replied VIN. “Five miles altitude at 220 knots, 9 miles out.”

  “Keep coming,” Jonesy replied coaching VIN on. He wasn’t bad at flying, he just wasn’t as good as he and Maggie. If they didn’t find it in the next hour, they could both land; and he could suit up and walk over to VIN’s machine, with Maggie flying theirs.

  “Bring her to a hover directly over us VIN at about 2 to 3 miles altitude, and then you and Suzi tell us where the craters are.”

  “Roger that, 3 miles altitude, going into hover-mode, two miles behind you and slowing through 100 knots….80….75….30…. Partner, we are overhead, give or take a mile or so. Suzi can see the front lights of your craft. Head starboard to your two o’clock position, there’s a large crater a couple of miles wide about a mile from you.”

  Both craft did this for an hour, using up valuable fuel and achieving nothing. After a dozen craters, and completing half of the ten-mile radius field, they gave up for the time being and landed in a large flat crater.

  “Good flying, partner,” Jonesy commended VIN on his new ability.

  “So where do we go from here?” asked Suzi, feeding Mars. Life on the moon was getting as routine as down on Earth.

  “We have covered half of the small concentrated area where the computers show a 90 percent probability,” replied Maggie.

  “We covered a small part of the larger area. If we don’t find anything on our next try, say in two hours, then we will have to go back into orbit and report in. Also we will need to refuel our tanks with the spare tanks in the cargo hold. That gives us five more hours before we are stuck here waiting for the mother ship to come and beam us up.”

  For two more hours they searched the rest of the area, VIN at two miles high looking for decent sized craters, and the lower craft surveying the entire area within the radius of each one. Again they both landed. As VIN came in Suzi saw a distant two-mile crater a few miles away and told Jonesy about it. But it was too late; he needed to refuel first. Astermine One had more fuel because she had completed two fewer orbits.

  Craters about two miles in diameter were what the computer analysis determined were most probable. The one Suzi had just seen was optimal for the asteroid’s size and impact speed.

  Three hours later Jonesy suited up to refuel his craft, which could only be done from outside. It didn’t really matter when they worked, since on the dark side of the moon it was always night. He would be the first of Ryan’s team to step foot on the moon. As usual Saturn screamed her head off, when she saw the helmeted monster before her.

  “One small step for General John Jones, one giant leap to pay off America’s debt,” Jonesy said as he took a small jump and landed on the moon.

  The moon’s gravity was much less than DX2014; it was about the same as the cubes when the mother ship was rotating. He was now accustomed to low gravity conditions and got to work taking out several 100-pound tanks of liquid hydrogen, one by one. He connected them to the pressurized fuel inlet and, from the cockpit, Maggie opened the valves to allow the fuel to enter. They only had ten tanks in reserve, and Jonesy used up seven of them filling the craft’s tank
s. Full tanks would give them only five hours of hover time.

  Jonesy then walked over to the other craft 150 feet away; it was the maximum distance he thought would be safe taking into account any fine moon dust on landing.

  “At least Mars doesn’t scream his head off when he sees me wearing a helmet,” Jonesy said as VIN helped him remove his helmet.

  “There was less dust on landing, did you notice that?” VIN asked when Jonesy was able to talk.

  “Actually, I did. There was much less dust than on our last two landings. I wonder why?” Jonesy replied.

  “Maybe a vacuum sweeper cleaned it up,” joked Suzi.

  “I think you could be onto something, Suzi,” Jonesy replied.

  “Not a vacuum cleaner, but maybe something hitting the surface and blowing the dust outwards in a dust storm,” suggested VIN.

  “Well, we don’t have atmospheric wind since we don’t have an atmosphere here,” Jonesy continued, but I’m sure a rock impacting the surface could have caused a blast shock, and I’m sure that a shock would have done the same thing. Suzi, which direction did you say you saw that crater?”

  “As you army men say, when you describe a direction like a clock face, over there, about one o’clock to where both craft are pointing,” Suzi responded, also turning and pointing in the direction. “It had to be right, or starboard, as that was the side I was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. Do you have a co-astronaut, or just a co-pilot in English?” Suzi asked Jonesy.

  “Never thought of that one,” replied Jonesy looking at VIN, who shrugged his shoulders. “About two miles away?” Jonesy asked, and Suzi nodded.

  “The space between this crater we are in, and the next one is the same size as the crater itself,” Suzi replied.

  Jonesy got into the left hand seat put on the headset and began take off checks. “Maggie, you should have full tanks.”

  “Just under the full mark,” she replied.

  “We have half tanks so we have about two hours. VIN and Suzi noticed little dust in this crater, so we will head into the next one and land. If it’s the same then we might be on the right track. Just keep looking for shiny diamonds, all of you. The first one you see, you can keep.” That made the crew smile. What were they going to do with it?