Stenner began yelling as Mara walked away. “Don’t do anything! Mara!” he yelled again, but it was useless.
Mara was beside herself as she walked to the crane. Her lips were quivering in anger. She began angrily punching buttons on the control panel to operate the sub. Hanson stood nearby and watched her trying to work the mechanisms by herself. He walked to her and showed her the correct buttons to use, hitting one of them she hadn’t tried yet. The crane began to descend immediately.
“It’s set on max to get you down there asap. I’ll set it to lower for you the entire way.” He turned from the crane and looked at her. “I’m going outside to move the electrolysis system, and then I’m going to the fissure,” he said.
Mara paused to consider his plan, and she reluctantly nodded at him.
The sounds of the quickly unwinding cable whirred right beside her. “How much time for you to get there and back?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It will take some time for me to disconnect the system and hook it up at the Hab. Then I’ll go to the fissure. It will be a few hours.” He looked squarely at Mara and lowered his head. “Don’t make the mistake of waiting for me,” he told her. He glanced back up at her.
Mara looked worried as he said the words. “Maybe you shouldn’t. We could use you here.”
Hanson looked squarely at her. “You can use one of the loaders outside to help collect ice. I’ve done all I can here,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going out there. Those miners are my fight.”
Mara considered what he was saying for a second and then nodded with a worried look on her face. She hated it, but she agreed to his plan. She looked up at him, and Hanson reached out and held her hand briefly. Then he turned and walked through the airlock.
She couldn’t watch as he exited the doors. She turned to Reese, who was still sitting at the console working the controls to the sub. Their eyes met, and Mara saw that they were as ready as they were going to be for the battle that awaited them.
“Just don’t hurt my baby,” Reese said as she placed her headset over her helmet and returned her focus to the controls.
Mara glanced down at the console, checking the system readouts. The hum of the crane dropping the sub continued to whine in the background, and then she turned back to look at Hanson, who was just leaving the airlock. She waved to him as he stepped out, and he stopped to look at her one last time as the door closed on him.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Reese said.
Mara released a quiet and nervous breath and kept her eye on the camera that showed the cold exterior. A moment passed as she observed the monitor feeds and watched Hanson leaving. He stepped from the airlock and onto the icy plains outside. “I think he knows that,” Mara said. “Johan hasn’t given him anything to lose.”
Sol 16; Mission time - 13:38
“No,” Mara said loudly over the sound of the crane. “There are no tanks here to transport the fuel or water,” she said. “Collect the ice, get it into the electrolysis system that Hanson is bringing you, and then wait for it to make the fuel. Use the electrolysis system to send the fuel directly into the capsule.”
Dr. Aman was still confused. “We need to gather our own ice?”
he asked.
“Affirmative,” Mara said over the hum of machinery. “We will need it to make our own fuel and water, and we need to do it fast!”
“How can you know this is going to work?” Dr. Aman asked.
Mara hesitated, frustrated with the doctor. “Hanson says you have time to make the fuel. He will plug the system into the Hab,” she said. “It is drawing power from the Zephyr now that he switched us over. You can do it,” Mara finished.
Dr. Aman hadn’t made a sound.
“Aman,” she said. “It will work. Get it up and running,” she insisted. “You’ll see.”
Dr. Aman still hadn’t said anything to her, and he hadn’t ended the communication. “You said we if we stayed here, we would have the time we need. I’m going to need your help here. This feels like a bad idea,” he finally said.
Mara took a deep breath. “Look, we might not even have a quake if I can stop them. Give me a shot at stopping them, and you start making the fuel.”
“You better not be wrong,” he said. “I see Hanson coming with the system now.”
“Good!” Mara said. “You see, it will be fine.”
The doctor turned off the communications without saying anything. He watched Hanson approaching on his rover, and the electrolysis system was behind him when he arrived. He had completely disconnected it from the distributor at the Zephyr, and from the oxygen and hydrogen storage tanks that were outside of the rig.
Hanson jumped off the rover and positioned the system near the door so that it could be hooked into the return capsule. Dr. Aman stood nearby watching.
“Nice of you to drop by,” he said. “At least there is one miner that does not want to see us all killed here.”
Hanson looked at him derisively but decided not to respond. He began checking the ports and connections for the power and fuel distribution. “This will take ice to melt into water and then fuel,” he told Aman. “Mara says you are working on a way to collect the ice you need?”
“I’ve been told we have enough time,” Dr. Aman complained. “But I don’t see how we are going to collect, melt, and then convert the ice here into water.”
“It’s not ideal, Aman, but I know you can do it,” Hanson told him. He kept pulling on the power chords and pipe fittings in order to get the system set up.
“And I heard you are going to the fissure to stop them,” Dr. Aman said. “I hope you get there before they kill us all.”
Hanson stood up from the equipment for a second and looked at the doctor. “They don’t know what they are doing,” he said. He was breathing heavily from his work, then he bent over and started connecting the electrolysis system into the power supply. He expected the doctor was trying to pick a fight and would say something else.
“Your crew knows exactly what they are doing,” Dr. Aman said. “We gave them all the information they could need. We told them about the signals. They are choosing to ignore it, and we will be lucky if we survive,” he said.
“The miners aren’t scientists,” Hanson replied. “You can’t expect them to understand your theories.”
A sickened expression formed on the doctor’s face. “And why not?” he asked him. “We are all on this moon together. Would it be so much trouble to ask them to try?”
Hanson had an exasperated expression. He was finished with the argument already. “You know with those diamonds down there it won’t matter. They’ll ignore anything you tell them. As long as there is something valuable to mine, your theories don’t matter.”
He waited for the doctor to say something more, but he saw the same disgusted expression on his face as before. Hanson backed away to check the power readings.
“Electrolysis system is ready,” he said. He turned to the doctor again. “I’m going to go stop them,” he said. He waited for the doctor to say something else, but he had remained silent. “Good luck,” he finished.
Dr. Aman looked over him suspiciously as he was about to leave. “I hope you do,” he said. “For all of us.” He stood straight and watched Hanson with a blank stare as he climbed onto the rover, and with a push of his ankle he was driving quickly toward the horizon.
Sol 16; Mission time - 14:54
Julian was just finishing his communication update with Dr. Aman when he walked into the laboratory. He found the lab lit with the newly provided power, thanks to Hanson. He stopped to look around at what he had to work with. He noticed the space was very lived in. He saw where Hanson and Reese and Mara had each set up a sleeping area while in quarantine. Blankets and pillows were scattered about and laying where they had slept. He briefly considered that there could stil
l be a bio-threat from the cross-contamination event, but he reminded himself they had tested negative. The space was messy, but he found his way around to the equipment.
He was glancing around the lab and he saw Mara’s isolation box that she had used to dissect her samples. It was made of thick stainless steel and polycarbonate, with a high-melting-point, and an airtight internal chamber. It even had the two ready-made holes that had held the examination gloves, and the openings they fit into could be converted to an ice-feeding side and a water dispensing side.
He approached the box and saw that one of the rubber gloves had already been torn from the chamber, leaving it open. It was the left one, where Mara had cut her thumb and ripped the glove off. He tugged at the remaining glove in the fixture, on the right side, pulling hard on it, and he yanked on it and tore it out of the box.
He would have to construct the tubes and the pipes that would carry ice into the box and then the water out. He began looking for pipes and fittings. Everything would need to be created from scratch, and he would need to be resourceful. He searched the room for leftover tubing, or pipes, or anything else he could use.
There, in the corner, he saw where Hanson had left some old plastic tubing from when he’d repaired the hydraulics and the plumbing after the quake. The busted distribution pipes had been placed in the corner and left out of the way. Julian thought he could get the pipes inserted into the examination box, then seal it properly to keep the box airtight as much as possible.
He gathered the isolation box, the pipes, and some of the blankets and pillows from where Reese and Hanson and Mara had slept. But there was something else he wanted to bring back, something he knew he would need.
He went to the mechanical section of the laboratory. This was the isolated air distribution that served the laboratory to keep it independent in the event of a quarantine situation. He went inside the mechanical room and began to look through the air system for heating coils. He knew that the air, and the space used as the laboratory, would be kept warm with a substantial heating system. He tore into one of the air units with a screwdriver and crowbar. There, inside, were several heating coils, each wired into the lab’s battery that fed off the connection with the Zephyr. Julian began to remove the coils and the wires that led to the battery.
He took a deep breath. He carried the coils to the pile of items he had been collecting. Then he found a roller cart in the lab nearby that he could use to carry his configuration to where the electrolysis system was attached at the return capsule. He carefully considered the size and weight of everything, and if he could make it in one trip.
He stood over the items, staring at them. Item by item he pictured how they would go together. He tried to think of the reasons his plan wouldn’t work to fix any problems before he moved everything. It was a simple project, but he knew that one wrong assumption, no matter how small, could spell disaster for him and the crew.
He took another deep breath, and he looked over the equipment he would need, all of it collected in a makeshift pile in the middle of the room, and with another sigh, he got started.
He began by turning the isolation box onto its side, so that one of the armholes was stacked above the other, figuring he would let gravity do as much of the work for him as possible. He’d run the ice through the pipes into the upper opening, then let the melted water trickle down through the pipes and out the lower one.
He started fitting the pipes he would need together, running one through the top, fashioning a one-hundred and eighty-degree bend to round the corner inside, then running another pipe out of the remaining hole, and returning it to the outside. When he was done, he had an inlet pipe and an outlet pipe, and a bend inside that would hold the ice.
He gathered up the pillows, blankets, and anything else the lab’s previous inhabitants had left behind so that he could jamb into the openings, sealing between the pipes and box as tight as he could to prevent as little heat to escape as possible.
He walked to the back of the container and saw a door where the specimen tray could be placed onto the bed of the exam area. He picked up one of the heating elements and placed it inside. Then, fearing it would not be enough, he placed a second one.
Julian set the remaining items on the cart, and then he pushed it through the airlock and began walking to the Hab under the black sky. Minutes went by as he pushed the cart to the Hab, and soon he could see Dr. Aman waiting for him. When he approached, Dr. Aman helped him.
“That is it?” the doctor asked when they passed through the airlock.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty,” Julian replied.
Dr. Aman walked around it, studying the box that Julian had built. “This is going to melt enough ice to launch us off the moon?” he asked.
“You don’t think we can pull it off?” he asked. “Have some faith, doctor,” Julian smiled.
“I would be happy to have a little faith right now,” Dr. Aman said. “But this is not doing it.”
Julian sent him an insulted glance. They wheeled the box to right near where the electrolysis system was sitting. Julian began to wire the heating coils into the Hab.
“If this doesn’t work, we still have time to move to higher ground,” Dr. Aman mentioned.
Julian stopped what he was doing and sent the doctor a bewildered look. “You’re free to leave any time,” he said.
The doctor returned a glance. “No single person can survive on this moon,” he stated. “We need to work as a team.”
Julian raised his eyebrows. “That’s what we’re doing. The team is planning to launch before the quake hits. Get on board with it or don’t.”
Dr. Aman stood nervously. He grabbed the heating coil wires and started running the lines to the Hab’s batteries.
Julian turned back to his project. He began to withdraw the rest of the items he would need to make the unit functional. He placed everything where he thought it should go. He adjusted a pipe fitting and stuffed some extra blankets into the open spaces. “This was it,” he thought to himself as he tested the pipes, and he waited.
Within minutes Julian could see that the elements were working. He could feel the heat through his glove when he placed it on the outside of the box. The pipes would be getting very warm soon. He touched one of the ends of the pipes that was sticking out from the box, and it was still cold, but he knew it would take some time for the heat to make its way through the system.
They had gathered just a few small pieces of ice to test the contraption, and they dropped them into the upper pipe. They pushed it deep into the box and into the bend, where it rested. Then they waited.
They stared into the box for several minutes. Julian noticed that Dr. Aman was checking his watch every few seconds.
“This could take a while,” he warned him.
The situation was getting more intense with each minute, and there was still no water. Neither of them said anything. Nervously they watched the dry pipe, with no sign of water.
Several more minutes passed. Nothing. Dr. Aman began pacing the room, checking the monitors for the signals from the creatures. Then he’d walk back to the box. He gave Julian a worried look.
They both watched. They waited. The box was warming, and they could feel it, but there had yet to be any water coming from the ice they had inserted into the pipes.
Then, the first drop of water trickled out of the lower pipe and into a bucket.
“See, it’s working,” Julian said, and a relieved smile crossed the doctor’s face.
Sol 16; Mission time — 17:12
Reese was still at the console waiting for EUNICE to get below the ice. Hours had gone by as the sub descended through the drill cavity, and it was just getting into the water. Once underneath, she had aimed it directly at the fissure. The sub had become a weapon.
She could see the lights below, even from the top of the ocean. They wer
e guiding her to the mining crew. She looked through her visor, surprised to see them so bright. The flashing pulses were like a runway strip, showing her where to go, emanating from the direction of maximum disturbance.
She shook her head as she witnessed the phenomenon, surprised at what she was seeing. She checked the seismic readings. Julian had triangulated the likeliest epicenter based on the readings. The lights were taking her directly there, right toward the fissure. She flipped some of the switches on her control board and began directing the sub to follow the lights.
She watched carefully for any changes as the creatures pulsed below, and the sub descended to the bottom as fast as it could. It would take precious hours to get there, but she knew it would take just as much time for the miners to come up with their treasures. They would meet in-between, and Reese would have EUNICE ready, waiting.
CHAPTER 20
Sol 16; Mission time - 23:27
Reese could tell EUNICE was nearing the fissure by the flashing light signals. They had shown her and the sub the way. The light pulses had been growing even more intense as the sub moved closer. The creatures flashed a furious series of flashes that stretched outward in all directions and colors. It looked like a battlefield on the ocean floor. Reese turned off the lights on the sub and tried to contact Mara.
“You need to get ready,” she informed her over the headset. Mara had been rummaging through the Zephyr for anything they could use against the miners. She came through the doors and into the drill chamber just a couple minutes later.
When they sat at the console their eyes met, and they shared a determined glance. It was a final chance to make sure they really were going to do this. They placed their headsets over their heads and went to work.
“Systems check,” Mara said.
“All systems are go,” Reese called. “We’re fully operational. Godspeed EUNICE,” she said.
“My God… look at the commotion down there,” Mara mentioned.
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