America One: The Odyssey Begins

by T I WADE

  A few minutes later VIN’s voice came through their suit radios, “I think I’m directly opposite you, about 60 feet down and it is sure dark in here.”

  “There is no way we can do this and carry a canister,” said Jonesy, waiting for VIN to get to the bottom.

  “I was thinking the exact same thing,” VIN responded, resting and looking into the pitch darkness around him. “We still have those nets we used to collect the last load of diamonds out of the cargo bays. You know the ones we pressurized with cockpit atmosphere to collect the diamonds?”

  “I saw them stashed in the back of the cargo bay somewhere, but remember we also have nets holding down the canisters in each hold. I have a great idea,” said Jonesy.

  “Perfect thinking, partner. We can lower the canisters into the crater in the nets, fill them up, and haul them out again.”

  “Great minds think alike, partner, but think I thought about it a few seconds before you did,” returned Jonesy.

  “And you could lower me down here at the same time with the nets and save time,” VIN added.

  “I’m sure about 100 feet from the blasts of the thrusters should be safe for you,” Jonesy suggested.

  “Hey, General Jones, remember I’ve even waterskied behind these ships collecting diamonds. There is nothing I can’t do. OK, I’m down. I’m about 210 feet from the crater rim. I have thirty feet of ladder left, and I think I should come back up and we try my way, there is no way I’m carrying canisters down here. Oh! A nice diamond, about the size of the one Ryan gave the president. I just stepped on it, they are everywhere.” VIN climbed back up the ladder holding his first diamond.

  Thirty minutes later they got a net out of a cargo hold, put 10 empty canisters into it and connected it to the bottom of Astermine Two. VIN passed a 100-foot Kevlar cord through the middle of the net and secured it to hooks underneath the craft. He clipped his suit belt onto the cord and put his foot into a loop at its end. The canisters would hang just above his head. He practiced slipping his large boot in and out of the loop while Jonesy fired up the thrusters, and lifted off the surface as slowly as he could. VIN shouted out Jonesy’s altitude as they got to the second half of the cord and the canisters lifted off the ground; one fell out and VIN loped over and threw it back in, walking directly beneath Astermine Two. The Kevlar cord was attached to a small middle hook underneath the space craft, like a lifting helicopter, and without effort he slowly headed upwards underneath the net of canisters.

  As the gravity lessened, it became more like floating. Jonesy gingerly headed over the crater wall, and with all lights on full power, he descended foot by foot into the blackness careful to ensure VIN’s safety. Suzi, in the other craft, looked on aghast at what these two men were doing.

  “I can just see the glitter down there, about thirty feet, Jonesy, 25….15…slow a little….5 feet…. I’m on the surface. Keep coming, five more feet, OK, canisters are down, the release hook is sixty feet above me, the net is on the ground, I’m moving it to the rear of the craft out of the blast zones…. 20….. 10….6, OK, hover! I’m unlocking the net; it’s free. Head back up and get a new load while I see what we can do this side. Since you can’t help me, bring in two more nets of canisters. How long do I have before I must end this walk?”

  “One hour forty minutes,” Jonesy replied.

  “OK, you have time to lift two more nets, let me see how hard it is to fill the canisters, and then you can lift me out.”

  “Roger that,” replied Jonesy and, after VIN had cleared everything away he rose up and out. Only VIN would be able to work down there until the third craft arrived. He also noted the amount of fuel needed to complete the ten minutes of hovering. They were using a lot of fuel.

  VIN went to work. It was sure nice to be out of the craft, but the blackness did not make him feel as free as he had felt on DX2014. On the asteroid, there had been much more light, and the movement of the sun broke up the time.

  First, he looked around. His helmet lamp illuminated the ground to about twelve feet in front of him, and the glittering diamonds made the area even brighter. He looked at his feet; he was standing on black graphite shards about three to four feet from where the main mound of diamonds started. This mound was also about four feet high and looked like the middle of the impact area. Except for the diamonds, everything that was scattered here and there was covered in the shards of black graphite; even the walls of the crater looked black. There were hundreds of diamonds strewn in the area his helmet light visited. Stepping very carefully, and over diamonds the size of soccer balls, he carefully walked around the mound. It took him twenty minutes, and he estimated the mound to be about thirty to forty feet across. There was twice the amount of room in the gap between the sides of the mound and the walls of the crater, about 80 feet. The vertical walls stretched nearly 200 feet above his head. VIN suddenly felt like a tiny insect in a vertical pipe, and realized that Jonesy had hovered Astermine One into this hole with less than forty feet spare on each end.

  “Jonesy, did you know how tight the hole is compared to Astermine One?” VIN asked.

  “I eye-balled it when we went in; I estimated 30 feet front and rear, and you saw me keep the nose within 5 feet of the wall in front. The drop was getting tighter as we went in, but the walls are nearly vertical, thank god!”

  VIN then stepped up to the mound and slid his right foot across its side; small, rough diamonds slipped off and spread out into the shards. The whole mound looked like the diamonds had separated, or broken apart on impact. He went back to grab one of the buckets inside a canister. Then, much like a child on the beach, he dug the bucket in sideways and the aluminum slipped through the surface of the diamonds for a few inches before getting stuck on a bigger one.

  He pulled the bucket out and it was a fifth full of diamonds. He grabbed the second bucket and began scooping diamonds into the first bucket. Ten scoops later it was full and he had uncovered a large basketball-sized diamond. He hauled it out and began scooping again. This was exciting work.

  “Ready to haul in the next net of canisters,” Jonesy said over the radio.

  “Roger, I’m a little out of breath, but I have one canister already full. It’s pretty easy. Did you see any of the shovels we used on DX2014 in the holds?”

  “Yes, I saw one, want me to get it?” Jonesy asked “You have fifty minutes left; I’m filling the last hydrogen cylinder into the tank. We have enough for two more hovers into the hole, and one launch into orbit. The other craft has one tank remaining, so we can enter and exit four more times before we have to wait for Asterspace Three,” replied Jonesy.

  “So, you come in one more time, drop the net and canisters, pick me up, and then I have three more trips in here; about eight hours, plus or minus getting in and out. I reckon I can fill a canister an hour pretty easily, plus throw the bigger diamonds into the net. That at least gives me a chance to fill ten canisters with the smaller stones before the fuel supplies get here in two days. Perfect timing.”

  “OK, will be there in 30 minutes. Throw my rock into the first net once you are done,” Jonesy replied.

  VIN worked hard, the scooping was alright, but a shovel would have been faster. A pile of bigger stones was growing by his side but they always stopped him from getting a clean scoop through the mound.

  Thirty minutes later, the walls around him lit up as the mining craft entered the cavern 200 feet above him. VIN had filled two canisters before the second net of canisters dropped next to him. He unhooked and hauled the whole net with the 10 empty canisters to the rear of the craft. The mound of diamonds was less than two feet from the hovering craft, and luckily there were no shards of graphite small enough to be blown around by the thrusters, which were directly over the diamond mound. It would still be several days before Jonesy could attempt a landing.

  VIN connected the first rope, slipped his foot into the end loop and slowly Jonesy headed back up, with VIN holding on 100 feet below.

  After parking Ast
ermine Two next to VIN’s vehicle, Astermine One, VIN climbed the ladder, and entered the port. He was tired, feeling like a miner after a hard day in the mine.

  Suzi gave him a meal and he was asleep by the time she had cleared away the pouches.

  ***

  America One was already powered up by the time VIN returned from playing in the diamonds, and had been for a couple of hours. The mother ship was already at full power. Her three hydrogen thrusters, in thrust mode not pulse mode, were already powering her out of orbit at 19,000 miles an hour towards the moon; she was five hours behind Asterspace Three, now 100,000 miles ahead.

  Nothing had changed aboard the massive vessel. Since America One had been in orbit around the Earth, movement wasn’t new, only that her forward speed had increased by a few thousand miles an hour. She was in full rotation again, her new engine working well, and Ryan was keen to try the three pulsers to see what would change.

  Three hours later, only a slight vibration ran through the vessel as the three large hydrogen pulsers began emitting their pulses every second for one minute. The forward speed began to increase three times faster than on the less powerful hydrogen thrusters, and the pulsers used only half of the hydrogen fuel needed for the other thrusters. The speed increased over the next few hours to 30,000 miles an hour. The journey would cover a total of 400,000 miles, the ship pointing to where the moon would be in three days’ time.

  Ten hours after the hydrogen pulsers stopped, forward thrusters were already working intermittently to slow her speed down. She wasn’t able to maneuver as quickly as the much smaller shuttles, or the mining craft, on such a short flight.

  At the same time that Allen Saunders was on reentry to Nevada with Penny, Asterspace Three was 70,000 miles ahead of America One on the same flight trajectory, and VIN Noble was getting ready for his second day of work at the diamond mine, as he called it, in conversation with Suzi over a breakfast of pouches of scrambled eggs.

  Jonesy had also donned his suit, sorting out the nets with the 40 remaining canisters from both craft, and he had refueled Astermine Two with every drop of liquid hydrogen to spare. The other craft had enough to get back into orbit, but that was it. Jonesy hoped they had enough extra hydrogen fuel aboard Asterspace Three. Since they were not in radio communication, and wouldn’t be until the third ship was in overhead orbit, they didn’t know if America One was on the move. They hoped so, since it was Ryan’s hope to have his baby born in orbit around the moon.

  VIN descended for his second stint at the mine. He saw his pile of larger diamonds as he neared the exact same spot he had been collecting them, and stepped off the loop, telling Jonesy to head back up. He would return in two hours and forty minutes; had taken VIN fifteen minutes of his three-hour spacewalk to get out of the craft and into the crater.

  This time VIN took the shovel from the net delivered the previous day and began digging deep into the mound; he calculated that it would take about 120 shovel loads to fill a canister. He concentrated and timed his shovel. He had to step on the side of it to get it into the diamonds. At the gravity in the crater, VIN only weighed 80 pounds at the most with his suit on, and it took all his weight to push the shovel in. He worked the shovel gently. He knew diamonds, especially these space diamonds were the hardest material known to mankind but it still felt like he was scratching them, as he pushed the long handle of the aluminum shovel downwards to scoop up a pile. He lifted the pile, not weighing very much, and let them slowly fall down into the canister by his side. As each canister was filled, he could easily push it to the wall out of the way and get another empty one.

  He was on his third canister when his shovel, now deep into the mound, stopped. He had again hit a bigger one, and he needed to find a new place to begin digging.

  By the time Jonesy returned VIN had filled three more canisters, and had another two dozen large soccer-ball sized and bigger diamonds like a mound of cannon balls in his pile by the wall next to Jonesy’s diamond, still three times bigger than any of the others.

  He was exhausted as he was brought out. He slowly climbed the ladder onto the roof of Astermine One and slipped feet first into the docking port.

  Suzi had cleaned up while was out; she immediately gave VIN dinner, and he went to sleep in the closed rear compartment so that Mars’ crying wouldn’t wake him. The gravity was soft but firm in the craft; nothing floated. Suzi’s job was to empty her husband’s suit of any liquids, blow dry the inside with a hair dryer-type blower, fill his drinking pouch with water for when he wanted a sip from the mouth piece inside the helmet, and keep Mars and herself fed. She was dying for a slice of chocolate cake.

  Maggie, aboard the other mining craft, did the same, except that Jonesy’s suit was not as wet inside as VIN’s was, and the wives could chat to each other throughout the day. The compact living arrangement was getting to them, and once America One arrived they could leave the men to their routines. Their husbands would have two other men in the work team and they could go back up to the larger mother ship. Living in a space the size of a minivan wasn’t fun for more than a few days at a time, and the smell of dirty diapers was beginning to overwhelm both craft.

  It was the next shift when Maggie couldn’t take the smell anymore; the internal system wasn’t handling the increasingly foul odors, and she ordered Jonesy to take out the garbage, a husband’s job.

  “But that is pollution!” Suzi complained from the other craft. VIN was already at the mine.

  “At least we can get the stuff out of the ship! Suzi, pack your space trash bags together. I’ll get Jonesy to slip a canister into the docking port; I’ll fill it with my trash and then he can carry it over to you and you pack yours in it. I don’t know how we can label it, but Jonesy can put it outside and at least it’s not pollution until VIN needs the canister.”

  “Great idea, Maggie” replied Suzi. “We can take it back up to the big ship and get it through the recycling compactor. I wonder if Martha Von Zimmer has thought about thousands of dirty baby diapers over the next twenty years? Maybe we can make a coffee table out of the remains…?”

  “Or maybe fuel for the pulsers, like that old ‘Back to the Future’ movie years ago? Just shove the dirty diapers into the engine reactors or something!” laughed Maggie. Life on the moon was a housewife’s dilemma.

  Meanwhile, VIN was on his last canister for this shift, when he needed a break. He had found a large rough diamond about two feet square and he used it as a seat now and again. He was on his eighth canister, it was nearly full, and he still had ten minutes before Jonesy would come and get him. He was thinking of a way to get three guys down here at one time and the only way he could figure out was with three separate cords. The pile had hardly diminished. He wasn’t taking out all of the larger diamonds, and they would need to get full shovel-fills each scoop.

  On the trip they could get the first haul up, but he wasn’t happy to be dangling underneath, so he decided to complete the ten, and leave them ready for the next flight up.

  Finishing the next shift, he had just completed his tenth canister, and was packing larger diamonds inside the flat net and on top of the canisters when a new voice lit up all their radios.

  “Asterspace Three to either Astermine craft, Asterspace Three to the team on the moon, we are descending through a 50-mile orbit around the moon at 7,000 miles an hour. Is there anybody down there?” There was a commotion as everybody tried to talk on the radio at the same time; VIN took his seat on the 18,000-carat square diamond and smiled. Jonesy finally got the excited girls to stay off the air, and he gave Max Burgos the necessary details: orbital direction, speed of descent, angles etc., to come in and land on his prepared LZ.

  Max thanked Jonesy, and updated him on America One: she was two hours behind him, still slowing, and he had sent her the coordinates of their whereabouts; America One would go into a 100-mile altitude orbit, and Kathy Richmond had just gone into labor.

  Jonesy returned to pick up VIN, while Asterspace Three
completed another orbit.

  It took Jonesy 30 minutes to pick up his partner and as VIN landed on the dark surface, the lights of Asterspace Three came over the crater, a couple of miles out at three miles altitude.

  Max Burgos had flown the simulators as much as Jonesy had, except that he was also on the build team, which meant that he didn’t get in that much real flying. He brought her in perfectly, with Jonesy coaching him down until he could see the landing zone arranged for him by the two miners. Once he could see that at one mile high and on hover, he expertly descended and the three craft sat on the moon, like a busy parking lot outside Walmart; all in a row.

  Already in their full suits with helmets on, both newcomers, Max and Yuri, one by one exited the craft to step on the roof. Jonesy could hear how excited they were.

  “OK guys, it’s only the moon. Throw your ladder over the top, just like ours and slowly climb down. The gravity here is about 25 to 30 percent of Earth’s so don’t jump, step gradually. There is no dust; the impact cleaned this whole area for us.”

  “This is fantastic, Jonesy, far more exciting than working on that thruster. I never want to see it again. Can we plant a flag? Both Yuri and I brought one along, one American, one Russian.”

  “When you have them unfolded you’ll need to find some rocks; plant the flags at least 200 feet away and in front of all three craft. VIN and I have a habit of always blowing them over on launch,” Jonesy replied.

  After a few minutes the men were on the ground and both yipping like puppies and bouncing around. Kids in a sand pit wouldn’t have been any happier. Jonesy and VIN watched the men’s antics with amusement; they had done the same on DX2014 a lifetime go. After a few minutes both men came up to greet the two experienced moon astronauts and shook gloves. Jonesy didn’t have good news for them.

  “OK, Max, Yuri, work. Get four hydrogen tanks out for us for each craft; we are out of gas, and the ladies want to help Kathy with her birth, whatever that means. VIN has already gone back inside; he was already ten minutes over the allowed three hours, so the three of us need to refuel these two mining craft. Better down here than in orbit.”