by Bob Blanton
“Okay, then I’m giving everyone the rest of the day off,” Catie announced. “Especially after that exciting awakening.”
“Yeah,” the twins called out. “Can we play on the asteroid then?”
“Sure, we’ll set up some playtime,” Catie answered.
“Playtime?” Marc asked.
“They like to play in microgravity,” Catie said. “We tie them on with a long lifeline, but they jet around and do stunts. They’re really quite good.”
“As long as they’re safe,” Marc said. “Dr. Sharmila sends me a message every day to remind me to tell you to be careful.”
“We’re being careful,” Catie said. “We just have two more asteroids to finish up.”
“So, what else do you have planned for this celebration?” Samantha asked.
“We were just going to have a toast,” Blake said.
Liz rolled her eyes, “You woke us up from our nap to have a toast,” she said. “We’re not set up to have a toast up here.”
“Just like men to do such a poor job planning a celebration,” Samantha said. “Have your toast, and we’ll see you when we get back. ADI turn those clowns off.”
ADI cut the comm from Earth, “I assume you meant the captain and the others on Earth, Cer Sam,” ADI said.
“You’ve got it right,” Samantha said. “Now who wants to help me make a cake?”
Day 13
The only new thing they encountered on the other two asteroids was that it was much harder to drive in the anchors, so Natalia had to take over that chore. It added a day to their efforts on each asteroid, but they were pleased with the results. ADI was flying all three asteroids toward their assigned orbits, and everyone was relaxing before they started back home.
“Hey, Daddy,” Catie said as she finished her report.
Marc looked at her a bit askance, “What do you want?”
“Why do you think I want something?” Catie asked innocently.
“Well, the shift from Captain to Daddy was a hint.”
“Okay; well, we’re done here, and as we head back home, we go right by Mars,” Catie said. “It would be a shame not to stop by. We could fix Spirit and Opportunity while we’re there.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Blake groaned. “You’re just a glory hound,” he teased.
“Well, it is right next door,” Catie said.
“How would you land the Lynx without an atmosphere?”
“We’ll use the plasma cannon as the third engine,” Catie said. “It just has to control the pitch.”
“I assume you’ve run simulations with ADI,” Marc said.
“Of course.”
“How much time will this add to the mission?” Marc asked.
“Just a day and a half,” Catie said. “And we have plenty of fuel, food, water, and air.”
“Blake, what do you think?” Marc asked.
“I think she’s going to be impossible to live with when she gets back,” Blake said. “So delaying that by a day or two will be nice.”
“You don’t think letting her go to Mars will give her a swelled head?” Marc asked.
“I think it’s already too late for that,” Blake said.
“Come on you two,” Catie said.
“Okay, don’t be too obvious with the rovers,” Marc said.
“I won’t,” Catie said. “I might just fix Opportunity. Spirit has been out for a long time.”
“Okay,” Marc said as he shook his head.
“You’ve created a monster,” Blake moaned. Then he added. “Take plenty of pictures.”
“We will, Uncle Blake.”
Catie hung up and turned to the rest of the crew. They were all standing there waiting. Liz had one twin with her hand over her mouth, and Samantha had the other. They released them together and then immediately covered their ears as both twins started squealing with excitement. “We’re going to Mars; we’re going to Mars!”
“I knew he’d say yes,” Samantha said as she gave Catie a hug.
“I did too, but I was still worried,” Catie said. “You’ll probably catch it from him tonight.”
“Oh, I can handle your father,” Samantha winked at Catie.
“Yeah, but you have to do it over a video link, with no privacy.”
Samantha laughed, “Don’t you worry, I have my ways.”
“ADI set course for Mars.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Day 15
Catie and Liz manned the cockpit while everyone else was glued to their couches as the Lynx approached the surface of Mars. Catie had them drop down vertically most of the way. Now that they were within fifty meters, she used the Lynx’s thrusters to push it to an angle and the plasma cannon to keep the angle close to about forty-five degrees. This would let the Lynx settle down horizontally on her landing gear once Catie backed off the plasma cannon. She concentrated on the three-D image of the Lynx that ADI projected into her HUD as she guided the craft down.
“Touchdown in ten,” she announced as she eased off the plasma cannon letting the nose drop down. The rear landing gear touched down, and she cut the engines and let the plasma cannon ease the nose down the rest of the way. She’d been burning hydrogen and oxygen for the last five kilometers to avoid causing too much disturbance to the Mars surface by the ejection of oxygen-sixteen atoms and water molecules at zero-point-one C. The nose settled down and Catie relaxed, “Touch down.”
“We sure used a lot of water during the landing,” Liz said.
“Yeah, but we won’t need to use as much taking off,” Catie said. “Once we get a little elevation, I’ll be able to angle it so we’re not hitting the surface, and really gun the engines.”
“Good. So, let’s head back and make our great step for womankind,” Liz said.
“Is everybody ready?” Catie asked as she entered the main cabin behind Liz.
“Yes!” yelled the twins.
“Okay, into the cargo bay.”
Everyone cycled through the cargo bay one by one. Once they were all in, Catie had ADI open the cargo door. ADI had already recovered all the air from the bay as soon as they had landed.
“After you, Captain,” Natalia motioned for Catie to make the first step onto the Mars surface.
“No, I think this time, the twins should take the first step.”
“Yeah!”
Everyone lined up at the edge of the door while the twins, hugging each other around the waist, stepped out onto the wing, then moved forward a few feet and stepped off. They dropped smoothly to the Mars surface. Their two inside feet touched together, then they took a big step to absorb their momentum, hopped a couple of times to turn themselves around, and waved.
“How did they pull that off?” Natalia asked. “Their feet touched at exactly the same time.”
“They clipped their legs together,” Samantha explained while pointing to the small clip holding the twins’ two inside legs together. “They were always going to land together; they just didn’t know they’d be going first.”
“That is so cool,” Natalia said. “Last one down is a rotten egg.” She laughed as she jumped down.
Catie let Samantha beat her to the surface. “Now, what was that thing about rotten eggs?” she asked as she turned toward Natalia.
“Sorry, Captain,” Natalia laughed. “It just slipped out.”
“Okay, Liz and I are going over there to see if we can find the Opportunity and fix it,” Catie said. “Nattie is going to collect some rock samples. You two and Samantha stay close to the Lynx until we get back. We have to get out of here in a little over an hour before the Mars Odyssey can see us.”
“Okay,” the twins giggled.
An hour later, Catie and Liz came back over the hill, “Is everybody ready to go home?”
“I sure am,” Samantha said. “I want to take a long bubble bath, sleep in a huge bed all by myself, then go out and have a nice dinner.”
“All by yourself?” Liz scoffed.
“Just t
he first night,” Samantha said. “Or the first day, depending on when we land.”
“I’m totally with you on that,” Natalia said. “I wish I could manage the bubble bath.”
“You can use mine,” Catie said. “I’ll use Daddy’s.”
“You’re on.”
“Did you get enough samples?”
“I got a bunch, whatever ADI told me to pick up,” Natalia said. “Did you fix the rover?”
“Yeah. Solar panels were busted up. We set it up with a new battery pack and new solar panels. It should last a few years.”
“When does it come back online?”
“It’ll take a couple of hours to charge the battery pack, then it should be online.”
“Won’t NASA be surprised.”
“I can’t wait to see what they say,” Catie said. “Everybody, strap in. We’re going to do about three Gs when we get this baby into the air, so, hang on.”
Catie fired the plasma cannon so that it lifted the Lynx’s nose up. When she had a forty-five-degree pitch, she fired off the main engines, and the Lynx leapt into the sky. After two minutes, she dialed the exhaust velocity up from five thousand meters-per-second to zero-point-five C. She pushed the throttle forward until the Lynx was accelerating at three Gs. In just another fifteen minutes, they had left Mars behind and were streaking for home. She backed off of the acceleration after another ten minutes and announced that she would be bringing their acceleration to zero in an hour so they could reconfigure the cabin again.
“Oh, so that’s what they were doing,” Samantha said as she watched the recording of their ascent.
“What?”
“They made a giant smiley face,” Samantha laughed.
The twins giggled loudly.
“Will that be a problem?” Samantha asked.
“It’s going to be hilarious if one of the satellites picks it up,” Catie said. “I wonder what they’ll say.”
“Probably nothing,” Liz said.
“You girls are very bad,” Catie scolded, barely able to contain her own giggles.
“We were practicing our circles and arcs,” the twins giggled.
“Very bad.”
Day 19
“Doesn’t it look beautiful,” Samantha said. Everyone was watching the Earth grow in the monitor as they approached.
“Yes, it does,” Natalia said. “When will we land?”
“We’ve got another hour of descent before we hit thirty thousand kilometers and can start flying. Then we’re just thirty minutes from home.”
Catie and ADI had set up their descent so that the angle and velocity had them entering the atmosphere with their jet plume angled just above the horizon. They settled down to thirty thousand kilometers, and Catie switched the engines back to atmospheric as she flipped the Lynx so it was now heading in the direction of their descent. The wings bit into the atmosphere, creating lift, and Catie turned the nose of the Lynx toward Delphi City.
“Delphi City, Lynx One on approach,” Catie announced.
“Lynx One, you have a clear sky, approach from the west, runway is clear.”
“Lynx One, changing to heading …., now at fifteen thousand meters.”
“Roger, Lynx One. You are clear to land.”
The Lynx approached the runway and set down one hundred meters past the edge, Catie cut the engines and braked the Lynx to a stop after eight hundred meters. She turned off the runway and headed to the hangar. As the Lynx entered the hangar, she could see a small welcoming committee, with her father at the front. She taxied to a stop, shut down the power, and exited the cockpit behind Liz. Natalia was already getting the hatch open when she entered the main cabin.
“Welcome home!” rang through the cabin as the hatch opened. Catie saw her father, Uncle Blake, Kal, Dr. Sharmila and the ground crew, all waiting to greet them. She bounded down the ramp and ran into her father’s arms.
“Welcome home, Sweetie,” Marc said. “You did good!”
“Hey, Ms. fancy pants,” Blake said, greeting his niece.
Catie kissed her father and then pushed him toward Samantha. She turned to her Uncle Blake and hugged him.
“I’m so glad to be back!” Catie really squeezed her uncle. She looked over to where the twins were hugging their mother; they were talking a mile a minute, and she was sure that Dr. Sharmila couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Liz and Natalia were getting hugs from Kal, while the ground crew stood around looking embarrassed.
“Let’s take this party inside and let these people get to work,” Marc said as he turned, and holding Samantha’s hand, led them all to the corner of the hangar and the office there.
As Catie and Blake followed, Blake leaned over to Catie and whispered, “A smiley face, really.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Catie said.
“You were in charge,” Blake said. “You’ll forever be known as the mission commander who left a smiley face on Mars.”
“I think it’s funny,” Catie said.
“It’s hilarious,” Blake said. “There’s still no mention of it, although there is quite a buzz about Opportunity coming back online. Kids, the world over, are celebrating the fact that Opportunity is now communicating again. They’re loving the new mission reports.”
“Good. We accomplished that at least.”
Chapter 10
Growing Pains
Dr. Sharmila was doing clinic duty. With all the new workers and their families living in Delphi City, they needed to run a regular clinic to deal with the medical issues that come up in any community. She actually liked clinic duty; it gave her a chance to interact with other members of the community and to help out. Doing limb restorations was exciting, but she really spent most of her time in surgery and not so much with the patient.
She was leaving the treatment room, a simple cut that she was able to treat by cleaning it and applying a bandage with a discreet shot of nanites to heal the wound. She couldn’t wait until they had cleared a few nurses to handle the nanites. That would allow them to increase their efficiency and provide the miracle cure to more patients. The nurse could have dealt with this case without needing a doctor if the nurse had been cleared to know about nanites.
Before she could enter the next treatment room, the head nurse pulled her aside. “Dr. Sharmila, I need you to see the patient in treatment room four now.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The woman has been beaten; she won’t talk to anyone.”
Dr. Sharmila hurried to the room, pausing at the outside to calm herself, and then entered the room quietly. “Hello, I’m Dr. Sharmila.” The woman in the room had a black eye and was holding her left arm close to her body.
“I know, you did my exam when I came here,” the woman said.
“I see that on your chart, Dareen. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I didn’t get pregnant,” Dareen said.
“Dareen, you can’t get pregnant, don’t you remember? It says here that you opted for the birth control option. If you want to get pregnant, you have to come back for us to reset it.”
“I don’t want to get pregnant. I am studying to become a nurse.”
“I’m happy to hear that. We really need more nurses,” Dr. Sharmila said. “So, can you explain what happened again?”
“My husband beat me because I didn’t get pregnant.”
“Does he know about the birth control?”
“No, he wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“It’s not his choice.”
“He thinks everything is his choice.”
“Let’s get back to that,” Dr. Sharmila said. “First, we need to get you fixed up. What are your injuries?”
“My eye, my arm hurts, and my ribs hurt.”
“Anything else?”
“My pride.”
“Let’s fix the easy things first, then we’ll get back to that one.”
Dr. Sharmila first did a
scan of the woman’s head to make sure that there wasn’t a fracture around the orbital socket or any brain swelling. Thankfully it looked like it was only a black eye, which could be easily treated.
Dr. Sharmila then had the woman remove her top so she could examine her ribs. She had severe bruises on the left side; it was obvious she had been kicked. Dr. Sharmila brought over the scanner and took a reading. She saw that the Dareen had three cracked ribs. Dr. Sharmila then took a scan of her arm; Dareen had a dislocated elbow and tearing along the ligaments. Dr. Sharmila gave Dareen a shot near the elbow. It would isolate the pain receptors for the next twenty minutes. She also gave her a shot near her ribs to stanch that pain as well. She took swabs from each of the damaged areas and high-res photos of them as well.
“Okay, first, I’m going to fix your arm. You shouldn’t feel any pain, but it’s going to be uncomfortable.”
Dareen just nodded.
Dr. Sharmila carefully manipulated Dareen’s arm while watching the scan. She got the bones realigned, and after verifying that they were actually in the right place, she gave Dareen a shot that would bring the swelling down and eliminate the inflammation in the area.
The nurse had already gotten a blood sample and put it in the analyzer. Dr. Sharmila smiled, the nurse didn’t know that the analyzer would not only analyze the blood for them, but it would extract stem cells, convert them to pluripotent stem cells so they would work on any tissue in Dareen’s body and duplicate it.
She injected the arm with nanites that would dissolve the damaged cells in the ligaments. After they had a chance to do their job, she injected the arm with another set of nanites that would fill in the voids with neutral ligament tissue. This would allow the stem cells to come in later and convert the tissue to match Dareen’s DNA.
Dr. Sharmila then moved to the ribs. She injected bone-grafting material that would heal the cracks. In two days it would be impossible to tell that the ribs had ever been cracked. She added a booster shot that would ensure that all the swelling and any infection were taken care of.
A couple of injections took care of the eye. By tomorrow morning, Dareen would be back to her usual self, at least physically. Now she injected Dareen with a large supply of her pluripotent stem cells so that they would go in and finish up the repairs.
