by Keith Martin
“Whom are you talking about?” Dr. Craft asked innocently.
“What’s up Shi? You’re scaring the Doc.” Ashley added.
Shianne sucked in a deep breath, and just let it out. “Joshua is in love with this woman’s daughter Samantha. He asked her to marry him. She cornered him on the shuttle, something about the incentive program with the last flight school graduates. Did she really become a flyer just to get on a shuttle to Mars with Joshua? She accepted!” Shianne turned to Dr. Craft again, and a new hug ensued. “We have a new sister.”
“How could you know this?” Dr. Craft incredulously wondered aloud.
It was work time, and the news had to be spread. “Ashley, get Dad… he will need to be a part of this.” Shianne wouldn’t let go of Dr. Craft.
Ashley was on her cell phone in a flash.
“Have him bring Mr. Dr. Craft with him, we might as well kill two birds with one stone.” She turned her attention to Dr. Craft again. “Do we call you Dianne?”
“Well of course you can child, of course you can.” Dianne responded with joy. She still didn’t understand, but she knew whatever was happening was real. She just let it take her where it must.
“I have …ESP…. at times it’s very strong.” Shianne started to fill her in.
“How did you know about my Samantha?”
“I read it all from your heart. I read the story of a long fight to win Joshua, and your love for Samantha, and your hope for a large family, with Joshua as her husband.”
Dr. Craft felt faint again. She got goose bumps from head to toe. “How could you know?”
“I’m sorry for scaring you Dianne, I have had it all my life.”
Dianne was looking deeply into Shianne’s eyes, looking for any sign of untruth. She found only reality there. “But they are millions of miles from us. Joshua didn’t even know she existed when the shuttle took off.”
“Let’s wait for the boys to get here and I will tell you all I know at one time… Pete knows about all of this?” She was still pulling in information holding Dianne’s hand softly.
“Yes he knows as much as Samantha told him. I’m sure she told Pete she is in love with Joshua.”
“That rotten little… I was just too excited to read it on him.”
“Sam is the one at fault…” She came to Pete’s defense. “She convinced Pete to act sick so she could be alone with Joshua on this mission. She worked for more than a year to get on this mission. She wanted to be on the Mars crossing with him so she would have weeks to make him fall in love with her.”
Ashley stepped just outside the door into the hall and looked for her father and Pete. A quick dial and she was online with him. “Hi. What’s up?”
“Hi Papa, could you pick up Dr. Craft and bring him here right away please.”
“It took her long enough to figure it out!”
“Dad!” Ashley scolded him.
“Like I don’t know when my own son falls in love. Or is being set up for it. It’s for his own good Ashley. He needs a woman to back his play and make little Chisholms.” He stated combatively in his sons defense.
“You are in big trouble mister.” Ashley warned him.
“Why thank you little one. I’ll get Dr. Craft on my way. Give us ten please.”
“OK Dad. But hurry, this is all scaring Dianne a little.”
Ashley stood in the doorway chatting with the Dr. and Shianne. Her mind totally focused on their conversation.
“BOOOO!” Pete grabbed her sides as she let out a blood-curdling scream. “ Joshua said you screamed best.”
She punched him soundly for his antics. “You’re a butthead Con Man.”
He was wondering what had brought them back so soon.
Dr. Ed Craft walked up with Otto and entered the housing unit.
Ashley sat Pete down on the couch, and started to roll the ball. “You knew the whole time, right?”
“You mean it worked?” He asked innocently. The look on his face proved to all that he too was just a part of Samantha’s plans.
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Ed Craft wanted to be filled in at once. He was not a man to be fooled with.
“You’re his wing man, and you don’t know?” Ashley chastised him.
“But she made me swear not to tell a soul. I had to raise my hand to it and everything. I couldn’t tell anyone.” Pete stated in his defense. “And she’s just making a shot at this not flying to Las Vegas for the weekend with him hogtied?”
Ashley turned to Shianne and added “Dad knew too.”
“That’s why he wouldn’t talk about Joshua.” Shianne said looking her father directly in the eye.
He didn’t show a single sign of remorse.
“This was a test!” Shianne had figured it out.
“You passed.” Otto informed her as Dr. Ed Craft had enough of this cryptic talk.
“OK, in clear English that a normal human can understand, what is going on here?” He demanded.
Otto took the Dr. by the arm, guiding him back into the hall. “We men will be at the club for an hour or so having a beer. You work this out between you girls… Con Man, fall in.” He looked to Ashley. “Call me when you’re finished here.”
THE SEEKER.
In 2018, a telescope was secretly launched into space with the hope of finding blue water planets within the Milky Way galaxy. It was named after the job it was to perform. It was christened. “The Seeker.”
The Seeker was programmed to fly out past Pluto and once there to search for blue planets, water planets. At this distance from the sun the satellite would be able to record planets never seen before. It was to return to Earth with its treasure of memory to those who had designed her once its data banks had filled with all there was to find out in deep space.
All the best recording equipment and sensors available at the time were on board. Its nuclear engine had a half-life of twenty years, so the plan was for a nine-year flight out then it would come to a stop. After a year on station recording everything it could find it would return with a years worth of power to spare before there was even a worry of power loss.
The rest of the power plants half-life was to be used to store the data it had found. With a twenty year window for The Seeker to return, the committee that funded her had no idea what the world would hold twenty years in the future. It was programmed to enter an orbit around the Moon. There to remain on station until it was picked up by some future system that would be developed. The remaining nuclear fuel able to hold the information it held within for hundreds of years into the future.
It was an old relic now, yet it still had a memory that could store millions of images. The Seeker held more information in its memory than all the knowledge of space compiled by mankind to date.
The mission had taken almost forty years to design, fund, construct, launch and complete.
The mission was totally Top Secret.
* * *
The leaders of industry and the top brass of the military decided that a select group of people could be relocated to a living planet while a strain of E-bola was released into Earths human population. It would kill off most of the planet’s population giving the Earth time to heal from man’s destruction. Fifty years later they would return to a clean empty planet and start over.
The E-bola would die over the years and the planet would be a garden in need of a master to take control of it. Mother Nature would have cleaned up the human mess. The land and seas would be teeming with life again.
Even after all the years had passed the biological-germ warfare division of the U.S. military had still not found the right combination of virus to fill this need. They had to be sure it would attack only humans. If it crossed over to the other life forms on the planet it could set up a chain reaction that could end life on Earth for everything.
They were sure what their target was going to be. Mankind had to be thinned from the face of the Earth, and they planed to play Gods and make it happen for their own p
ersonal gains. Billions left behind to die and rot where they fell while the cream of the crop vacationed on some far off planet for a generation before returning to take control of it all.
A small falling rock ended their 68-year search for the right combination of viruses to do their bidding.
* * *
The population of S.M.B. was still unaware of the events during the last World Government meeting.
Critical supply runs were caught up and there was no need to schedule a mission to Earth for a week due to all the pilots given a seven-day pass while Jackal was off base. Mission Control with no flights scheduled for a week had only one full time position ‘Warning Radar’. It no longer searched for incoming I.C.B.M’s. It was now searching near and deep space for all incoming bodies.
To get the duty of monitoring this station was considered the rear end of Mission Control. With twenty-five massive Doppler radars on Earth and five more on the Moon this system could detect an object the size of a basketball at twenty million miles.
The ‘Big Sweep’ that Joshua had done to clean up all dysfunctional objects orbiting Earth was completed with the help of all the pilots in training at the time. It became a game to line up with some old spinning object, catch up to it and capture for recycling. They pulled in thirty-four thousand eight hundred and eleven pieces of trash that orbited the planet and would have taken thousands of years to fall back to the surface of the Earth. All of these objects were interfering with radar sensitivity, Joshua was going to have none of that and it made for some great training for the pilots.
The view out into space had never been so clear. Even insects and flights of birds crossing through the systems beams set off warnings now.
* * *
Duty monitoring this system could be so boring that Vic was using this duty as punishment for drunken brawlers once they sobered up. A two-week, six on six off schedule at this station would put anyone back in line. No crewperson ever needed a second duty tour here. In fact just the idea of a stent on Radar Duty was enough to keep the crew in line so well most of the time a rolling schedule of six on and not back on until the whole crew had finished their 6 was implemented to man the station.
Otto took the first shift at the station with a 48-hour performance to set the bar. No one complained much about a 6-hour shift every few months after that. Many with the time to pull a 48-hour shift would do so to the admiration of the whole base. While doing the long haul on duty a pool would be created and the crew would guess just how many hours would be completed before those on duty just couldn’t take it any more.
Jackal put in 56-hours, Con Man did 68-hours and Fred Bragg stomped all takers with 100 hours on station without a break. Fred admitted to all that it was the good strong coffee Terry sent over from the chow hall by the gallon that made it possible... then he crashed for 26-hours straight and no one was brave enough to bother him with anything while he rested from this mission.
* * *
The women quickly joined the men at the club, they had only spoken for a few minutes and Dianne wanted to be with her husband.
Taking Ed’s hand, she began from the beginning. “It’s all true Ed. Sam has been in love with Joshua for years. Shianne informs me that he has proposed.”
“When did he radio this to you? Why isn’t this all over the base by now?” Ed knew all incoming transmissions would go through Mission Control and many would hear everything said. News like this would have gotten out like wildfire. “I thought they were on the way to Mars and Joshua was training her to pilot G-Class shuttles.”
Dianne told him what she knew with Pete adding his small part. Ed drank two shots while the story unfolded and if looks could kill Pete would have needed an undertaker. “Commander...” He braced Con Man. “... in the future you will never again be a part of something like this. No lies, even if it’s for the good of the crew, to me. In my department there is only the truth... agreed?”
“Agreed Sir. You have my word on it.” He offered his hand to Ed to seal their accord.
When it was finished Ed just sat there for a few minutes as he soaked it in. “Let me get this straight in my mind. Sam has been in love with Commander Joshua Chisholm for years. But she kept her mouth shut about it because I would have killed him at the time due to her age. She took flight school so she would be near him when she had grown up. She made Pete part of her plan by falsifying his Med records to get him bumped from this mission. Joshua didn’t know anything about any of this when they took off and in just five days he has fallen in love with her and asked her to marry him?”
Dianne’s head was nodding in agreement to all he said.
“…. They haven’t told a soul any of this. But Shianne knows it to be true because she held your hand… did I get this all straight?” Ed looked confused and a little doubtful.
“Yes dear; you have it all lined up now.” Dianne assured him like this was all just normal now and always would be. She was handling this all with a mothers ease, Ed was a father that thought he had a little girl still.
“Otto, we as fathers should not be the last to know these things.” Ed said looking for the common ground between them.
“Sorry Ed, I knew it all before they did.” Otto admitted. “Sam took my blood a year ago and I figured it out then. Or at least that she was in love with Joshua. This plan of hers slipped by because I figured something like this had to grow on these kids on its own. I’ve stayed out of contact with Samantha for this past year so I didn’t mess up the natural process.” Then he chuckled and added. “I didn’t expect this out of her though I will admit that Ed. We should both be proud of her. She made a plan, executed her plan after training for the mission long and hard to get it right, put her target in her sights and took her chance risking it all to have him. Like we never did that before?”
It was time for Ashley to add her two cents to this mix. “Ok, we’ve no time for daddy worries. We have a wedding to plan, and it will have to be done as soon as they get back.”
“Why so fast.” Ed was trying to hold on to his little girl for just a few more days before he gave her away. He had to admit to himself she had set her sights on a good man.
“Because Joshua wants a wife not a play toy, if I know him he won’t…. You know…. he won’t until they are married.” Shianne informed him.
“I raised him old school Ed.” Otto stated with pride. “Now if he is just strong enough to keep himself in check with you’re Samantha working her powers on him….” He grinned and all at the table went silent. “… They’re young and in love… things happen. So lets get them hitched right away.”
“Men…” Pete announced. “It is time that we had a drink as men and let these ladies start the planning for this event. Shall we depart to our own table and give them their leave?”
“HALLELUJAH!!! The boy does have a brain.” Otto said as he rose and took Ed’s arm. “Let’s go old man or these she wolves will eat us alive.”
* * *
Forward seeking radar picked up an object while the two young lovers where playing a game of chess over their meal. The warning light started to flash and it was Samantha who spotted it on the control panel.
“We have incoming!” She warned Joshua.
Like a shot they were both in their seats and at work gathering information on the incoming object. “Looks like a ship.” Joshua said as he turned up the power to the radar and focused its directional beam directly on the incoming target.
“Bringing the telescope on line.” Samantha informed him as she started to bring the object into view.
Their movements were fluid; each backing the other as they got everything the ship had scanning what was headed their way.
16 Seek and Destroy
It was an old style satellite; long, conical, and there was a single thruster bell attached to its flat rear. It had the Name ‘The Seeker’ painted across its nose and there was an American flag affixed over the name.
“I guess it’s one of ours.”
Joshua pointed out the obvious.
Samantha powered up the communications system and radioed Mission Control to get them on line for Joshua. She also started to record everything that they were seeing.
“Moon Mission Control, this is G-1, Come in, over.” He knew there would be a wait of more than a minute out here each way.
Samantha was sitting with her stations lap top on her knees and her fingers where flying seeking information. “Two-thirty-nine before response Joshua.”
“Thanks Blue Angel.” His response was crisp, he was her Commander now and his feelings for her could not be brought into play as he focused on this new twist in their mission. Nothing like this had ever happened to him or to any of the shuttle pilots ever before. They were breaking into new grounds and he was a professional all the way. He was focused on the screens before him; digesting the streaming information incoming. He was doing an ‘Earth Space Launch Record’ check; the U.S. search had turned up nothing at all.
Samantha understood that this was work time and she reminded herself to be professional while working with her Joshua. “I’m finding nothing Commander.” She gave him what she could.
“Same here, Let’s just keep at it. Connect a streaming feed to S.M.B. Keep it laser transmitted. Only let the Moon receive this.”
“Yes Commander.” She responded smartly as she finished completing his orders. “Connected now.”
All they were doing, the cameras on the ship, every word spoken and every keystroke was now being transmitted to the Moon on a beam of light. Samantha also gave them everything they had done up to the moment the connection was made in a burst. The ship was at work trying to identify the Seeker, and they were stumped.
