Chapter 1

I saw a hole… I saw a hole!

“I saw a hole… I saw a hole, and there is no spider in the asteroid’s cavern!” explained VIN Noble on the shuttle’s scratchy radio to his boss, Ryan Richmond, who was still orbiting Mars in America One 270,000 miles away.

Lieutenant VIN Noble, ex-Marine Force Recon, saw this second hole in the asteroid. The first had been excavated by the team’s automated mining spider a few months earlier to dig out a cavern.

“Okay, okay, Mr. Noble, just clam down,” replied Ryan, perplexed that this hole had freaked out this Marine. He had known VIN for a couple of years, but had never known him to be shaken by anything in all that time. “Just go through what you saw, and tell me every action of yours,” continued Ryan. His international team of aging scientists listened in through the intercom as VIN described every part of the new cavern.

Jonesy, VIN’s pilot, and Boris, who had gone with the two men as backup, listened in on Sierra Bravo-I—SB-I for short—the shuttle that transported the three men from Mars to the asteroid. This small, round asteroid, only 60 miles across, was still on an incoming trajectory to Mars, and would pass by the red planet in several days, only 115,000 miles out.

“I knew it would be there! I just knew it!” VIN exclaimed. Jonesy was shocked to hear his partner so emotional, and kept quiet as VIN slowly recounted his story. “Jonesy and Boris lowered me through the tunnel the spider dug. It was four feet lower than I expected and 38 feet deep when my feet touched ground. The sides of the tunnel were clean and smooth, not a danger to my space suit. The cavern is circular, about 40 feet in diameter, its roof eight feet high, or two feet above my helmet. The cavern walls are as smooth as the tunnel, and the material looked to be the same type and color as the asteroid’s surface matter. The floor is flat and horizontal, and the spider, wherever it is, did a fantastic job until it hit the hole. The hole, which is about three feet wide, is in the side wall of the cavern, exactly where I saw the same type of hole on the surface, the first time we landed on the asteroid.”

“Is the break in the wall where the spider disappeared, vertical or horizontal?” asked Ryan.

“Both,” replied VIN. “I didn’t get any closer, but I could see when I shined my light into the hole, that there seemed to be two shafts; one is vertical and a second, small area just above the break, seemed to head off in a horizontal direction. I didn’t get any closer, and asked the guys to pull me back up to the surface.”

“Well, you are in charge there, Mr. Noble. What do you want to do now?” Ryan asked.

“Hell! I don’t know. The hairs on the back of my neck told me to get out of there, but I suppose part of me wants to find that spider and bring it back.”

“Can you get into the hole? I will suggest that the vertical hole is impossible to go down into, as all three of you can’t get down into the cavern, but the horizontal tunnel would be the first I would check out,” suggested Ryan. “Mr. Noble, you do what you think is best.”

“Ryan, as I told you, the hole the Rover got stuck in on Mars, on the cliff above the ledge, is exactly above the area you are excavating. If you keep the spiders digging, you should hit the vertical tunnel sealed with the molten rock.”

“I stopped the spiders when we heard of your find, Mr. Noble,” Ryan continued. “While we wait for your findings, the dozen crew members I left on Mars are completing the safety chamber. It will be ready for testing for atmospheric conditions tomorrow. As of yet, no one has been inside the tunnels the spiders have completed, and I will hold off until you tell us what you find.”

“I don’t know what to say, but it’s not worth doing another spacewalk today; I only have 70 minutes of time left, so I’ll go back in on my next walk in 20 hours,” VIN responded.

“I agree,” replied Ryan. “I will stop our spiders until you report back. By the time you report in, we will be testing our new safety chamber with breathable air and atmospheric pressure and, I will seal off our two internal tunnels to prevent our atmosphere from dissipating into the dug tunnels. By the way, Martha Von Zimmer and Petra Bloem have produced new breathable air from your acquisitions on the first two stops you made on Mars. The water and frozen nitrogen has been turned into three full tanks of breathable air and, there is more. Frau Von Zimmer tried the new air through a scuba-type breathing system yesterday and reported back alive and well. She breathed the new air for twenty minutes, and showed no signs of being negatively affected by it. Her team estimates that the new product will add 20 100-pound tanks of breathable air to our supplies, enough to fill our new safety chamber and the tunnels, if there are no leaks. Mr. Noble, check out the horizontal hole, and then return to America One. It doesn’t matter if you don’t find the spider, we can close the tunnels by hand; so, reconnoiter and then get the hell out of there.”

“We still have eight days before the asteroid gets as close to Mars, so you can head back to the asteroid if need be, after you return back here,” added Igor from the Bridge, standing next to Ryan.

“I would prefer that you check out the tunnels at your location first, Mr. Noble. The crew on Mars is sealing their tunnels as we speak,” continued Ryan.

Jonesy poured VIN a large stiff tot of space-made vodka and gave him a pouch of Earth-made scrambled eggs. With the more powerful gravity on this asteroid than on Mars, it was possible to pour liquids into a shot glass, something Jonesy didn’t leave home without. VIN calmed down and thought about what he was going to find down there, and whether this was his last day on Earth or in space.

Eighteen hours later, after a sleep filled with dreams of monsters and horrible creatures, VIN headed out of SB-I with a quiet Boris and Jonesy to lower him into the shaft for the second time. They had discussed a choice of weapons and, after careful thought, agreed, that an old-fashioned space-mining shovel was the best, and only weapon he had. The laser Taser would just put him to sleep inside his suit and, for the first time in his life, he wished for the Bowie knife he always carried in Iraq. The knife was in his apartment back on board the mother ship, and he reminded himself to always carry it in the future, if he lived through this day. A knife at a laser gun fight wasn’t much, but at least it was good for defense and close combat.

After gathering his courage, he was lowered down the 38-foot shaft to the cavern below. Boris, being an inquisitive scientist, had pleaded with Jonesy and VIN to allow him to go down as well so he could help protect VIN or at least have his back, and Jonesy was strong enough with the weak gravity to pull Boris back to the surface. On this asteroid Boris weighed in at around 40 pounds Earth weight. Jonesy had already warned them, that there was no way he could come down to save them. They needed radio contact at the surface to call for backup, and SB-I would have to be flown off the asteroid; they were on their own.

Jonesy slowly lowered Boris into the seemingly endless tunnel, with Boris pushing himself off the round walls. Jonesy struggled to keep the scientist’s descent down to a slow crawl; he could feel perspiration on his brow inside his helmet when his arms were finally relieved of the weight. He was getting too old for all this excitement.

“You okay up there, partner?” VIN asked Jonesy, once Boris stood next to him.

“Sure, a billion miles from nowhere and no U.S. cavalry to ride in when we need them. I think I will just keep quiet up here and make sure I don’t attract that space shark, in case it’s flying around here somewhere,” Jonesy replied, a little concerned about his solo status.

“Check in with Ryan, tell him that Boris and I are now out of direct communication with him, and stay around so that we can talk to somebody out there,” replied VIN. “I’ll check in every few seconds to make sure that we have contact.”

Down in the cavern it looked exactly to VIN as it had looked the visit before. He directed his light at the hole in the cavern wall so that Boris could see it when he was lowered down. VIN carried the shovel, and a 4-foot nail used to tie down the shuttle on Mars. He felt better having two weapons.

For several seconds both men said nothing as they looked at the empty hole in the wall, a million miles from nowhere.

“No welcoming committee?” Boris joked, to make sure that VIN and Jonesy could hear him.

“Expecting one?” VIN replied, with Jonesy again mentioning the possibility of the space shark. VIN, smiling, told Jonesy, now alone at the surface, to also keep a look out for his favorite friend and smiled at Boris’ helmet, nervously. “Glad I have company. Who knows what we are going to find down here. I’m sure nobody on Earth will believe me when I tell them. Stay behind me I’m going to inch towards the hole.”

Slowly, he headed towards the hole in the wall. He had only moved halfway to the wall when he called Jonesy again. The chief astronaut could still hear him, and he transmitted to Ryan whatever VIN said to him.

He moved forward again and stopped five feet from the hole. He couldn’t hear anything in the spacesuit other than his own breathing, and, with no atmosphere, he could only use his eyes, and sixth sense, to detect anything about to pounce.

Lifting the shovel a little higher, VIN closed in on the hole. Boris’ light, at a slightly different angle, helped him see into the second tunnel—the tunnel that was not supposed to be there.

The inside walls of the second chamber had a dull metal look to it, compared to the shiny walls inside their cavern. He got to the hole, and saw the shaft led upwards, exactly where he had first seen it from above; the molten rock above his head kept it sealed. He could also see that the shaft headed further down, deeper than they were currently standing. VIN then shone his light towards the small gap where he could see a smaller two-foot wide hole heading off horizontally to the left of the vertical shaft. It was large enough for the spider to get through, but he would need to increase the size of the hole to accommodate his cumbersome spacesuit before he could climb inside. The tunnel to the left was in the roof corner of their cavern and he decided to look inside the downward shaft before he banged on the cavern wall to open the hole wider.

Carefully he bent forward and leaned over the hole. He handed Boris the shovel and, very slowly, allowed his helmet to enter the alien area. Nothing happened. He didn’t know what to expect from within, but he slowly moved his right hand in, and shone the second light at the opposite wall of the round shaft; it was a little smaller than the one their own spider had dug out.

“The vertical shaft leads further down, and is about six inches narrower than our spider’s shaft. Jonesy can you hear me?” VIN asked. He got a faint crackly response from Jonesy above, but a clear response from Boris behind him. His helmet light was only three feet away from the opposite wall, and he was too apprehensive to look down at first, so he looked across at the dull wall of the shaft. Something wasn’t right. The dull metallic material did not reflect back anything, even the light from his helmet.

He scraped the opposite wall with his handheld light, and he felt it touch the metal surface. He couldn’t hear anything, so the sound of metal scraping on metal eluded him.

“This wall is smooth and perfect. It’s like the inside of our cylinders in the space craft or inside the barrel of a smooth shotgun. It reminds me of the inside of the canisters, Boris, except that there is no shadow or even my reflection on it. I’m going to touch it again.” Boris relayed the message upwards.

VIN gently touched the wall. It was there, and it was solid. He couldn’t maintain this view any longer and slowly directed both his handheld light and his helmet light down, along the opposite wall; gradually, the shaft below him lit up as the light descended farther and farther.

It came to an end about twenty feet below; it was like looking into the bottom of an open beer can. The shaft was perfectly round, its floor perfectly flat, and there was something down there.

For the first time, he got a reflection from a metal surface as his light shone on the spider. He knew it was the spider, as it was lying in close-down mode, and like a sleeping Black Widow at the bottom of the shaft. Also, there was no exit from the round tube, and the spider looked trapped.

“I found the spider,” VIN reported to Boris, who again relayed the message. “The shaft heads down 20-odd feet, and I bet it fell in; the sides are so smooth, that it was trapped and couldn’t get out. It is in dormant mode at the bottom of the shaft.”

“What is above your head?” Boris asked. VIN slowly turned and allowed the light to shine upwards. It was fascinating that no reflections shone off the surface of the shaft. It was as if the light didn’t touch the walls. The light had reflected off the walls inside their cavern.

“The same molten rock about ten feet above my head and I see one horizontal shaft just above me, about five feet tall, heading in two directions. The floor is about two feet above my head. I can’t see any farther as there is absolutely no light bouncing off or any reflection from any of the walls,” VIN reported. “Shall Boris and I rescue the spider first?” VIN asked High Command.

Ryan suggested that the rescue was a good start, and Jonesy went back to the shuttle to retrieve a couple of cords.

Boris was about 90 pounds lighter than VIN on Earth, but 40 pounds in dead weight on this asteroid. VIN, with the added strength of his metal legs, suggested that he lower Boris down the shaft to the spider to tie a cord to the sleeping metal robot; then, he could pull Boris back up, and finally rescue the spider.

It went off without a hitch, the spider weighing only 100 pounds on this asteroid.

“I have a great idea,” VIN remarked excitedly to Boris, when they were back in their cavern, resting. “I’m sure I can lift the spider up into the horizontal shaft through the hole. It can open the hole wider so that I can get in, and then we can send it off down the corridor. If it comes back all tangled and broken, I’m not going in there. Can you activate it, Boris?”

Boris said that he could, but he needed the remote control in SB-I. They still had 90 minutes of spacewalk time left, and Jonesy hauled the lighter Boris to the surface, while VIN stayed and waited.

Thirty minutes later, he saw the light descending down the shaft above his head, and Boris appeared with a spider remote control which looked much like a model aircraft remote control, but with many more knobs and switches.

It took Boris all of ten minutes before the light on the front of the spider’s face flickered on, and the mechanical beast began to awaken from its dormant mode. It stood up next to VIN and he was sure that the face of the spider, two bright lights that looked like eyes, looked grateful for the daring rescue.

“Can this thing defend itself?” VIN asked Boris.

“Nyet,” replied Boris in his mother tongue. “It has a sort of hit-back mode, if something strikes it, but it was not programmed to spar, or box, or fight an opponent.”

“Well you had better think about adding some more programming; it’s a pity you guys didn’t include a camera on these guys. A pair of remote eyes, like Ryan had in his black-rimmed glasses, would help right now.”

The conversation was being relayed word for word back to Ryan, who replied that it was a great idea, and he would get the crew to connect his glasses onto one of the spiders on Mars. Unfortunately this one would go in blind.

“We can follow it on the remote’s screen,” Boris suggested. “Like Pac Man, we can follow it wherever it goes, showing its distance, direction and speed of movement.”

“So you can put it into search mode?” VIN asked.

“Not exactly, more like go-and-find-the-end-of-the-tunnel mode,” replied Boris. “Just as I programmed it to exit the tunnel with rubble, drop it, and return to the exact spot it was digging, I can program it not to dig when it reaches the end of the tunnel.”

The spider was heavy but with Boris’ help, VIN managed to lift it and push it through the hole above him. Boris had deactivated the robot before VIN lifted it, in case the machine didn’t like being manhandled. Once in the shaft he switched it back on, it stood up in the corridor and, after being given orders, it moved forward and disappeared down the horizontal tunnel. Within seconds the readout from the remote also disappeared.

“It seems that something is blocking its return signal,” stated Boris showing VIN the controller.

“Give it to me, quickly, I think I know what’s wrong.”

VIN held the remote inside the hole, and the feed returned. “There is some kind of metal or something on the walls of the tunnel. I pressed its stop button, Boris, you need to take over and get it to return. It must dig out this hole first so that I can get in. Jonesy, I’m going to need a ladder or something in here to stand on, so that I can climb into this tunnel on my next spacewalk; something about four to five feet high.”

Boris, as tall as VIN, took over the remote controller and the spider returned to the hole in the wall. He was careful to prevent it from going too far, and falling into the vertical shaft for a second time.

While Jonesy returned to the ship to find something for VIN to stand on, Boris programmed the spider to use its laser to increase the size of the hole. Both men were very surprised when mighty sparks, like the grand, multi-colored displays of fireworks, blew off the side of the wall where the sealant or metal wall covering was; and then, the covering began to glow.

The laser took much longer to cut through this covering than the rock around it. When the area to open was programed into the spider’s memory, the two men realized it would take several hours for the spider to cut its way through, and decided to return to the shuttle.

Back inside the shuttle, and out of their space suits, VIN began to describe the substance coating the tunnel. “That stuff is really weird,” VIN said to Boris and Jonesy, with Ryan listening in. “I would bet every dollar in my North Carolina bank account that the stuff covering the outer walls of all the shafts is man-made, or shall I say alien-made.”

“I was going to seal our caverns with our Nano-silicone,” Ryan said. “See if you can cut off a piece and bring it back with you; I’m sure our team here would love a piece of somebody else’s world.” That statement made VIN cringe.

For an hour the group chatted about the findings. Ryan told the shuttle crew that the tunnels inside the new safety room were now sealed and the team on Mars was filling their new chamber or glass room, with air. The second, outer layer of glass, with the 12-inch helium gas barrier between the layers, was complete. Once the room was sealed, the radiation readings were only slightly higher than on Earth, not enough to hurt humans, even if they walked around inside naked. When the second room—ten times the floor area and twice as high—was completed, the radiation inside the safety layer would be the same as a normal day on earth.

For the next twelve hours, while slowly acclimating to the mild vertigo instilled by the rapid rotation of this sixty mile-wide planet, VIN, Boris and Jonesy rested and strategized a plan of action. Inside the tunnel the spider could not be controlled from the shuttle with the remote controller. Even the ship’s powerful onboard computers could not talk to the spider’s computers inside the metal corridor. Once its job was done, it would go into dormant mode and wait for the humans to return.

The spider, settling down and about to go dormant, had increased the width of the hole to a three-foot diameter, much like the vertical shaft which reached all the way up to the cavern’s ceiling. VIN could climb through when they returned.

The only stepladder Jonesy could produce was composed of empty aluminum canisters that had been packed in the forward cargo bay to collect soil samples. Each round canister was four feet across and five feet long, designed to fit inside all the docking ports and all tunnels dug by the spiders. On Earth they weighed 70 pounds apiece, empty; on this planet, they only weighed 15 pounds. Jonesy lowered two of them to VIN who was standing 30 feet below.

VIN placed one canister upright underneath the hole, and the second one sideways next to it to act as a step so he could get onto the tall upright canister. Since the spider had dislodged asteroid rocks, there were now a few available to use as chocks to prevent the canister from rolling around.

VIN took the hand Boris offered him to step onto the first canister; then, swallowing his fear, VIN kneeled on the second one before slowly, and with great care, he pulled himself into the hole. Boris had already programed the spider move away from the hole.

“VIN, at least you will have some company in there. I’m sure you can control the spider with the simple remote toggle. It works like one on a model aircraft. Forward, and the robot will move forward; backwards, and the spider will reverse. Just forget about the other toggles.”

VIN thanked the Russian, accepted the remote and within seconds had the spider standing, turned it around, and had it walk forward on its eight legs a few yards.

“Boris, can you hear me?” VIN asked.

“Da, I can,” Boris replied clearly. “I have my upper body inside the tunnel behind you. I am half kneeling on the canister like you did.” VIN looked around and saw the helmet of the man looking at him a few feet away. Then he turned back and looked up into the tunnel where the spider’s front lights were aimed. The glow of the lights looked eerie and weird. There was no reflection; it was as if the material itself was impervious to light, neither absorbing it nor reflecting it.

VIN was standing, just. The tunnel was not high enough for him to stand up straight. He was six feet tall, taller with his helmet, and the tunnel or corridor was about six inches too low. Crouching, he worked the remote and the spider moved forward several feet before he stopped it.

“This is like the inside of our America One cylinders,” VIN reported to Boris, who, in turn, lowered himself out of the hole in order to communicate with Jonesy above them. He and VIN had agreed to report in short sharp sentences, so that they could be relayed to Ryan nearly a quarter of a million miles away. “I can see a tunnel stretching about 20 feet in front of the spider. The spider is 10 feet in front of me.” Boris relayed the info. “The tunnel is spotlessly clean, not a speck of dust anywhere, except where the spider has dug……… there is a flat walk area about 18 inches wide, again like our ship corridors…… no carpet or anything, but a non-slip asphalt type surface…… it is slightly soft and spongy…… I see a corner now, about 35 feet in front of me, heading right, starboard……… I’m now looking back the way I came, at the hole past Boris. The tunnel continues in the opposite direction, on the other side of the vertical shaft……… I have now reached the end of the first section, and am about to look around the corner. Boris, how do I get the spider to turn right?”

Boris gave him directions on how to program the spider to turn, and it disappeared around the corner. “I bet that the shaft the spider was in is a pit or a protective addition; if somebody came too far down the shaft without a rope……… he could be trapped. If the spider couldn’t get out, I don’t think or anything else could either,” VIN continued.

Apprehensively, VIN peeked around the corner, and was shocked at what he saw. Ten feet down the corridor, was a cavern twice as large as the one their spider had dug out, and its roof wasn’t eight feet high, it was twice that, and the light from the spider didn’t even reach the far wall. From what VIN could see, the cavern was totally empty.

Step by step he moved forward. The light he was carrying slowly increased the size of the cavern. It was big, about the size of one of the smaller aircraft hangars back in Nevada, and he was now positive that this wasn’t a natural cavern; there was a walkway halfway up the vertical walls, and stairs ascending from the ground level.

“Boris, Boris, do you hear me?” VIN asked over the intercom. There was silence, absolute silence; he could hear his heart pounding in his ears, much faster than normal.

VIN stood there gazing in disbelief at the cavern. It had a second-level walkway jutting out from the smooth wall, which went all the way around the four sides and, he couldn’t see any doors leading off from the walkway; nor were there any doors on the lower level, on which he was standing on. Carefully he pressed one foot onto the floor. It was the same slightly softer material with some “give” in it. It certainly wasn’t the hard rock on the surface of the planet or in the cavern the spider had made.

His mind racing, he decided that he needed equipment to check for different metals, or even to detect if there was any air down there. If there had been, the hole the spider made entering the secure area would have destroyed any evidence of an atmosphere in there.

He looked at his space suit’s external readouts and was quite surprised. The temperature was minus 99 degrees, sixty degrees warmer than on the surface. Other than that the readings appeared much the same as on a normal spacewalk with two exceptions: the radiation was lower than what he had experienced on the planet’s surface, and there was no air at all.

VIN thought for a few seconds, and then decided to turn around and go back.

As he turned the corner, he found the scientist shouting to him over his intercom. “Of course!” he replied to Boris. “This metal stuff on the walls stops all communications once I turn the corner. Tell them I’m okay. This place is man-made. It has stairs and walkways, like the inside of an aircraft carrier. This was made by humans or something pretty close to humans, with two or more legs to use those stairs. I think we need to close this hole up,” he told Boris, pointing to the vertical shaft.” Ask Ryan what we should do.”

Boris relayed what the excited VIN had told him. Ryan came back asking VIN what he wanted to do.

“If you must know, I want to get out of here. It’s creepy, really creepy down here!” VIN replied. “Boris can you program the spider to close this hole?”

“Nyet, VIN, this hole is too large and ragged. If you want to seal this area, I suggest we seal it at the surface. Then, if you want to keep it sealed, we can add a docking port to the upper surface. We have several on board America One. Why?”

“I think that this underground chamber, or chambers, had life in it at some time. There is an open cavern with no doors that I could observe. I’m sure there are doors, but we could destroy everything we find if we don’t seal it. There could even be life forms down there. Ask Ryan or Captain Pete if they know if there were any secret military space installations. This looks far too human to be some green blob of a life form running around on stairs and walkways.”

When VIN returned to the surface, he communicated to Ryan directly. All three men were back inside the shuttle cockpit, the other two silent, as VIN explained every minute detail he had seen.

Ryan agreed that preservation was necessary. He told VIN that he would immediately order SB-II to be loaded with a docking port, supplies, a dozen air tanks, and three of the build crew who would install the docking port to seal off the entrance. Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt were to fly the shuttle to the planet. VIN suggested that the spiders working around the same type of installation on Mars, be halted. Any open tunnels outside the safety room, should be temporarily sealed, and excavation into the chamber he believed was there on Mars, should be opened from only the secure room once it had an atmosphere inside.

Ryan agreed that this was the right idea. The whole team could assess what they would find on Mars, and then, if necessary, they could return to the asteroid. At 19,000 miles an hour, this small round planet would be easy to catch up to once it passed the red planet. Slowly, the planet got closer to America One and Mars, and SB-II required only 30 hours to complete the flight.

Boris told him that he was the first human ever to find proof that other life forms existed, and VIN remarked that he was sure that the Pentagon was behind his discovery.

VIN needed a break from what he had seen. For the next 24 hours, they stayed inside SB-I, until Ryan reminded VIN that he needed a piece of this so-called metal on the walls of the tunnel. Reluctantly, VIN returned to the tunnel with Boris and, for an hour, Boris programed the spider on low bursts to fire its laser at the side of the tunnel to cut off a round, twelve-inch piece of the mystery substance. Both men watched as the spider got to work.

For an hour the laser made sparks every two or three seconds. The sparks, sometimes blue in color, reminded VIN of a welding torch. What really surprised them was that in one hour the spider had cut less than a quarter of an inch through the material; this operation could take several hours. Boris programmed a decrease in the size of the sample by half so they would have something to send back within eight to ten hours. It must have taken the spider a couple of days to cut through the wall into the tunnel.

Several hours after they were back in the shuttle, Allen Saunders radioed in to tell Jonesy that he had their round planet in sight and that he would be landing within the hour.

Once Allen parked his shuttle next to Jonesy’s, VIN, Boris and the build crew of three opened the rear cargo bay and lifted out the several parts that made a docking port complete. Several solar panels had been included to operate the port, since it wouldn’t have power from a ship or space station. Boris got a soil/metal detector out and began to scan the area around the rock-sealed hole VIN had originally found. He had his own ideas what might be out here.

“What are you looking for?” VIN asked, following the scientist.

“Think about it VIN. We have a filled-in hole or entry point that goes down into a tunnel lined with metals and alloys we do not have on Earth. As you correctly stated, we could damage the interior by allowing in the vacuum of space, or we may have already damaged the area when the spider broke the seal into the underground cavities. The hole doesn’t look like an entrance. I’m sure there is a more elaborate entrance around here somewhere. I want to find it, and, hopefully, this detector will locate it.”

The detector showed a constant supply of metal rocks and stones on the surface of the planet they were walking around on. Its constant audible sound in Boris’ helmet told him so.

Ten minutes later and twenty feet away from the old entrance, Boris heard an increase in sound. There was a thin line of pure metal under the surface. Then the detector located something slightly larger. VIN knelt down and began clearing away the dark blue stone and particles of blue sand and found a small object the size of the nib of a pen sticking out from the rock.

He then followed the thin metal line Boris showed him, and uncovered something that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise: silver wire. It looked like a booby trap to VIN. He let the right glove of his suit slowly displace the tiny pieces of silver sand covering the wire.

“It’s going around in a circle,” Boris said. After finding two more little nibs, VIN realized that this thing, whatever it was, was twenty feet from the hole and completely surrounded it.

By the time they had to return to the ships, Boris and VIN had unearthed a round metal ring that was not connected in any way to the entrance. The build crew had sealed the outer wall of the docking port inside the new entrance the spider had dug; and, it looked like the poor spider was to remain in the cavern it had built.

Two days later, Boris had the sample the spider cut out bagged in a special container. He speculated that the metal must have titanium in it because of its strength, and he was pretty sure the rare metal, osmium, could be responsible for the lack of reflection; another rare metal, mendelevium, caused disruption of the radio transmission inside the tunnel. He was not wrong. Chemistry didn’t change in the universe, just the ways it was used.

The docking port was complete and operational, and the solar panels operated for the one hour the sun appeared, twelve times per day. There would be minimal sunlight for the dozen space batteries to be able to bank power. Two cord ladders had been placed in the port, and tanks of air lowered into the now sealed vertical shaft for future use.

By the time Boris deactivated the spider, leaving it dormant on the surface of the planet, it was nearly time to leave. But, not before VIN took Jonesy and Allen Saunders down the ladders to show them what he and Boris had seen. Inside the large spotlessly clean alien cavern, the intercom between the men worked perfectly. However, they could not communicate with the outside universe until two of the build crew entered the first cavern; VIN asked one to thrust his head into the hole, as Boris had done, and the second to climb in and relay messages, as well as stand ready for trouble with a shovel at the 90 degree corner.

“It really looks like the inside of an aircraft hangar bay,” Jonesy responded, getting his first glimpse of what VIN had found. “The walls look bluish in the light, and that walkway is something else. I wonder what it is made of.” Boris, hit it gently with the shovel he was carrying.

The scientist felt it clang like metal, but the men couldn’t hear anything.

“We are a fine group of well-armed soldiers in an enemy camp,” suggested VIN, as he watched Boris hit the railing. The metal was stronger than the shovel, and the shovel bounced off it. “Let’s look for a door.”

For nearly half an hour they searched the smooth metal walls for a door. There were no controls or breaks in the walls to show the outline of a door on the ground floor or around the walkway above. It was as if the walkway had no use at all. Boris gently hit the shovel on the wall every now and again to see if he could hear or at least feel a difference. He couldn’t hear anything, and the shovel bounced off the wall the same way wherever he tried.

After taking several pictures their spacewalk time running out, so they left the mysterious cavern for the shorter journey back to Mars. It was time to check out what was underneath the entrance in Endeavor Crater.

Chapter 2

What is buried under the cliff on Mars?

Both shuttles flew back to America One which was orbiting Mars 75 miles above the surface.

Ryan, fully suited up with the rest of the crew, was on the Martian surface supervising the placement of docking ports on the ledge in the two open vertical shafts outside the new safety room. The build team had already started to work on the second outer chamber, bigger than the first one. When complete, the structure would cover the two vertically mined holes the spiders dug.

Ryan was relieved when all four spiders exited their holes as they were programed to do at the end of the shift. The two more narrow horizontal tunnels into the cliff wall were just inside the inner glass walls of the safety chamber, and Ryan wanted VIN to return before more digging was done.

“What programs have the spiders completed?” he asked the man in charge of the four spiders. Hans the German, as he was known, second-in-command on Fritz Warner’s team, replied that 30 feet of vertical shafts had been completed by the spiders on the ledge. The two spiders had also excavated 40 feet horizontally towards and underneath the cliff, and then started to dig out larger caverns. Each spider dug out one cavern that was eight feet high, six feet wide and six feet deep. Digging towards each other, they needed another eight feet to join up and make one larger cavern.

The two spiders digging into the cliff wall inside the safety chamber had dug 30 feet horizontally into the cliff, gone down 32 feet and were within 20 feet of the first two spiders at the same level. These two also began caverns and it seemed that the entrance VIN had seen from the cliff top was now right in the middle of the four spiders. If Ryan hadn’t stopped them, they would soon have dug into the area from where the shaft descended.

Fritz Warner had voluntarily isolated himself from his crew of robotic specialists since the tragic events in China and his return to the airfield in Nevada only days before they left Earth for good. His left arm and left leg were missing as a result of the attack on his and his wife’s lives in Beijing and, he was in a bad way both mentally and physically. The doctors and mechanical teams worked hard to put his body back together again, but, like VIN, adding robotics to his missing limbs was the easy part. Healing him mentally and emotionally was not so easy.

Mentally he was a mess. Although he didn’t want to see anybody, VIN tried his best to get visitation rights, often just sitting with his old friend who did not acknowledge his presence. Whether by decision or happenstance, it was as if the man’s brain just wasn’t functioning.

Over the course of the first months aboard ship, Fritz began to walk and use his new metal arm, much like VIN had learned to use his two legs. Doctor Nancy Martin was astounded with what Ryan’s crew could do in the prosthesis department. Unfortunately, Fritz didn’t seem to care.

When VIN arrived back on America One, Suzi noticed a slight change in her husband while he rested aboard ship. He seemed more serious than before. Even while he helped her tend the cubes, he remained deep in thought. As usual she floated about, little Mars Noble asleep on her back wrapped up like a papoose. Nine months old, he was growing, and he was beginning to look like his father. He was sturdy and strong, had the same eyes, and smiled a lot.

VIN visited Fritz, finally whole again, in the special small cubicle built for him on the midlevel behind the hospital ward. He had a quarter of a supply cylinder for living space, his own bathroom, three meals a day, and was looked after as much as the crew could. There were no physiotherapists on board ship, and Nurse, or Doctor Rogers, or Doctor Martin each spent an hour a day with him, helping him learn how to work his new limbs. At other times, he read science books on a Kindle or watched movies, hundreds of them.

What did seem to spike Fritz’s interest was when VIN told him about what he had seen on the asteroid. For the first time Fritz acknowledged that VIN was in the room with him, and that he was listening to what VIN said. The injured man hadn’t said a word since his arrival nearly a year earlier. He still didn’t, but he turned to stare at VIN, a first on this trip.

A day after seeing the positive reaction in Fritz, a rested VIN arrived back on Mars. Jonesy, flying Astermine Two, dropped VIN off atop the cliff. VIN worked out exact coordinates down to an inch, and then climbed back up the ladder onto the roof of the mining craft. Before climbing back into the docking port he surveyed the scene around him. The day was beautiful. As far as Mars was concerned this was a hot summer day; the temperature outside his suit was a balmy 39 degrees Fahrenheit, and he imagined he could actually feel the rays of the sun through his suit. The view and light on Mars, although less than on Earth, was so much more brilliant than on the small blue planet he had just left. The vista did remind him of Nevada and the desert he had often run through, testing his new legs to the max.

However, something was missing and he couldn’t think what. Then he saw what he had thought had gone missing. The Rover, Opportunity, was not where he had left it. It had not moved far, about seventy to eighty feet from where he had left it to charge and right up to the edge of the cliff top.

The charging completed, the battery charger was on the ledge. The crew told him that the Rover was as dead as it had been before the charge. Since it looked like it was completely shut down, they just left it alone. But it had moved; he could see the tire tracks, new ones, and the Rover was close to the edge with its camera pivoted down, staring at the workers on the ledge below.

The Martians weren’t the only people spying on them. NASA, on Earth, must have had a satellite launch and got communications back with the Rover. Now they were being spied on from Earth.

“VIN to Ryan,” said a smiling VIN into his helmet intercom mike.

“Did you find any Martians up there, Mr. Noble?” asked Ryan, 75 feet below him. He promptly told Ryan the news and his boss laughed when he heard that his old friends at NASA were spying on them. “Turn the Rover around, peer into its camera lenses and wave or something. Show them that we are a happy community up here. The movement of their Rover won’t only shock them, but it will let them know that we know that they know.”

VIN happily climbed back off the shuttle, headed over to the Rover and carefully, since it was so close to the edge, pulled it back. He turned it 90 degrees to face towards where Astermine Two stood. There was a minute red light blinking on top of the camera and since the camera was now pointed at the ground, he drew “HELLO EARTH!” in the dust where it was aimed. Then he raised Rover up in front to film Jonesy and the mining craft, a nice panoramic view, 80 feet away on the side of the cliff. On Mars the Rover didn’t weigh more than 200 pounds, and although VIN couldn’t get onto the feed himself, he was able to get the small America flag on his shoulder in front of the lens by getting down on one knee.

He left the poor, bullied Rover staring at the message and made a mental note to check up on it the next time he was there.

An hour later he mapped out the exact position of the descending shaft on the ledge; the spiders must have been really close and he decided that he had no option but to get into one of the shafts himself to check out its convergence with the older tunnel, if there was one still existing. He asked Boris if he could program one of the spiders to work on exact coordinates and, twenty minutes of programing later, the spider disappeared from the safety room to resume work along the tunnel. It was programmed to deposit rubble into the safety room where it would be analyzed for any metal particles. Boris determined that it would take two days before the spider would reach the walls of any shaft.

Ryan had to get back to America One. The build crew had plenty to do to join the glass panels together, and there were enough of them to do the job, but they needed a fresh supply of glass panels from the mother ship. VIN joined Ryan and Jonesy flew the two men to America One. The Rover was still in the exact position VIN had left it, staring down at the written letters in the sand.

“Okay, Martha, your latest findings, please,” Ryan began, 20 hours after they had docked with America One. It had been a few weeks since a complete Heads of Departments meeting had been called and, as usual, the meeting started with fresh coffee in the cafeteria.

“Usable water saved from the Martian surface: 2,197 gallons; nitrogen gas collected from the dry ice and turned into liquid: 97 gallons; liquid hydrogen drawn off the ice: 190 gallons. We also found traces of osmium, neodymium and the other platinum metals in the ice, less than a kilo of each, but welcome nevertheless. You already have the metal analysis from the first asteroid Herr Jones destroyed, and I now have the analysis from the rocks collected from the blue, round planet that Herr Noble thinks has signs of life forms. It is mostly ore mixed with cobalt, and nickel. We also found interesting amounts of molybdenum, mendelevium and platinum and several other Rare Earth metals and we are still determining their amounts.”

“Yes, exactly what I thought,” Boris commented. A piece of a puzzle he was working on fit into place.

Not pleased by the interruption, Martha continued, “The surface of Mars where we are currently working has very little of anything we need at the moment, but we did find traces of gypsum. To end my report, and before the pilots fall asleep, I would suggest we harvest as much of the Martian water as possible to extract the hydrogen and nitrogen in the ice before we continue on our distant solar journeys to Jupiter and Saturn. Also, we are now communicating with Herr Fritz, and he seems interested in our results.”

“Thank you Martha. Boris, you have something to add to what Frau Von Zimmer was saying?” Ryan asked.

“Yes. I was with VIN when he showed me the lack of deflection of light on the metal walls. I bet Martha’s team will find titanium, osmium—which doesn’t like light—and also large amounts of several other Rare Earth metals. What I find exciting is that we all use the same materials in the universe, just in different ways and amounts. I think we are going to learn something new about life.”

“What about your report on this circular defense system or wire you and Mr. Noble found?” Ryan continued.

“It resembles a defense perimeter, but I think it is more likely a landing pad; another possibility is that a protective dome stood on that spot. I believe that a lot of time has passed since the chambers were built. If there were any above surface buildings, they have long since eroded to nothing. I believe the metal below ground is made of long-life Rare Earth metals, as is the circular system we dug out. And, as Frau Von Zimmer would agree, the half-lives of these products are sometimes longer than the very existence of the universe itself.” Martha nodded at that remark. She was finding the Russian’s train of thought very interesting.

“So you believe that this base, or civilization, could be hundreds of years old, Herr Boris?” Martha asked. “It would certainly take a long time for buildings to erode on the surface of an asteroid, even thousands of years, or never at all. Besides, these small metal tips you found have not eroded. I think that your ideas are sound, but your idea of possible buildings on the surface is not accurate. Very little erodes up in deep space.”

Boris listened intently, and then agreed with the clever German.

“We will certainly find out more once we unearth, or shall I say, un-mars whatever lies beneath Mr. Noble’s tunnel,” added Ryan, smiling happily. All his life-long dreams were coming true, and he knew that there was no way the current human race on Earth had anything to do with these findings. They, as a crew and a scientific team, were in totally and wonderfully new territory.

Eighteen hours later the crew returned to the Martian surface with 900 newly-made glass panels. They would need a total of 7,000 in all to complete the above ground space base.

Approaching the ledge, VIN noticed that the Rover had moved. It was back on the ledge looking down at the work going on below.

“I’m sure we are making prime-time news,” laughed Ryan when VIN pointed to the Rover. “I wonder if we are on the morning show, daily with Nora and Charlie. Maybe we are bringing back memories of space flight to my buddy Scott,” he commented to the crew as Jonesy brought the mining craft in. The Astermine craft used less hydrogen fuel than the shuttles and could haul supplies; the three shuttles were now attached to America One, waiting for the next journey to the small, round asteroid.

The crew on the ledge ran out of glass panels and were ready to unload the new supply; but first, Ryan gave them a day off, or as it was called on Mars, “a free work cycle” in the new safety chamber which was filled with breathable air and heat.

Warm and safe, they didn’t need to wear their suits for a whole day. Several fold-up Earth chairs had been transported with the building supplies and the men lounged in them taking in the Martian sunlight. Beer, snacks, low levels of radiation and sunshine from the sun far away was sure a good day off.

And, too soon, it was back to work.

Many of the crew needed to exit the safety room to begin unloading, however, the exit chambers could take only four men at a time wearing full suits. The internal door would only be opened once all the men inside the chamber were fully suited up.

“Okay everybody, listen up,” stated Ryan once the crew had completed getting on their space suits. “We are going to open one of the tunnels from this chamber into the cliff. We will lose air pressure because the air in here will stream into the tunnel. The air tanks we brought down from the ship will be vented to see if we can rectify the pressure. We have worked out the quantities needed to fill the tunnels and caverns—about 12 tanks should equalize the pressure—but first, Mr. Noble and Boris will enter this tunnel, here,” Ryan said, pointing to the nearest tunnel, “and we will seal it behind them. They will make sure that there is no hole in the tunnel for our air to escape. The second tunnel will remain closed.”

VIN and Boris, without shovels, but with lengths of cord, cord ladders, padding on their knees and thick pads on their gloves, got down on all fours and entered the four-foot high hole. VIN led, feeling more secure with his Bowie knife strapped to his space belt.

This tunnel was completely different than the one on the round planet; it unsparingly reflected light, and illuminated the tunnel all the way to the corner which descended downwards.

The first cord had been secured inside the chamber and was played out by Boris. VIN tied the cord ladder structure to the first cord to descend the expected thirty feet to the half-finished chamber. The comparatively low gravity permitted him to easily turn around in the four-foot wide tunnel and step backwards onto the ladder. Rung by rung he lowered himself, while Boris watched from above. Boris shone his helmet lamp onto the walls so as not to blind VIN.

Stepping onto the rubble littered floor, VIN peered around the half completed new cavern. The spider had done a good job. It was larger than the tunnel. He moved in two feet, and stood up. The ceiling was eight feet above his head and extended six feet in front of him and to his left. This tunnel was one of the two rear tunnels, and the cavern was to converge with the two outer tunnels to his left. Checking his suit readouts he saw that the temperature was an interesting minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit, radiation was nil, and oxygen also nil. He checked every foot of wall space and found no hole. He didn’t expect to. The wall was still three or four feet from directly below the shaft.

VIN climbed back up and told Boris they would go back. Other than opening the shaft to allow the spider to continue, there wasn’t much else to do.

When the two men emerged from the tunnel with their report, Ryan gave the order to allow two spiders back into the first tunnel to excavate the chamber. Hans the German, in charge of the dig, figured that 50 more hours of digging should bring them close to their intended destination underneath the shaft.

For the next two days the spiders, on an hourly schedule, were programmed to walk through and out of the new outside room, through the pressurized side exits, and onto the ledge to deposit their rocks and soil. It took ten minutes to pass through the two sectioned-off areas of the chamber’s two exits to the outside, and space suits were again mandatory inside the chamber for the men controlling the spiders.

The men operating the doors were working in four hour shifts, the maximum usage before their suits needed supplies of air. During daylight, which lasted 15 hours—a long summer day—the other crew members worked outside the first chamber in three-hour shifts to seal the panels into the graphite rods and erect them to construct the outer room of the base. Finished, the new exterior Martian base would be eighty feet wide and eighty feet long, stretching out from the cliff on the ledge.

The crew lived in the two sealed corridors. Life in them was warm and clean, and they worked, slept, enjoyed computer games, read eBooks or played cards. Small windows allowed in light during the day, and kept out the bitterly cold minus 70-degree summer nights.

As yet the team had not yet endured a bad storm. On one occasion when winds rose to 100 miles an hour, the entire crew boarded the space craft and left for two days, returning when the storm dissipated.

They still had a month of summer before the weather changed for the worst, and they had to have the outer glass walls up before then. Winds of up to 300 miles an hour were predicted for the new weather pattern. For this reason new plans had been drawn; the outer walls of the base were redesigned to be at a 20-degree vertical angle to compensate for the high winds. Only the two outer chamber entrances would be vertical, four feet wide and eight feet high, and they would be well secured against any possible storm damage. As long as the whole new system was sealed, it should be safe from any winds or dust storms expected at the end of summer.

VIN, Ryan and the astronauts stayed with the men in the two cylinders. VIN thought it looked like a mining camp, not the forward barracks he was used to in Iraq all those years ago. There were ample supplies of food pouches, and Jonesy made sure that there was the odd bottle of vodka available now and again.

Jonesy had the habit of filling up the old Russian vodka bottles they found in Ivan. Ryan rolled his eyes when the first bottle was produced but, since in this dangerous part of nowhere their lives could end at any moment, rigorous discipline had diminished somewhat. VIN smiled when Jonesy, up to his usual tricks, and with the original labels still on the bottle, tried to make the Russians on the team think that this was his last real bottle from Russia.

The men, aware of the astronaut’s antics, never believed him for a second, and usually returned the ribbing by saying that if he ever drank real Russian vodka, he would see the space shark he kept reminding everyone about.

Most of the time the camaraderie aboard America One was stable and strong. All had no choice but to get along; there wasn’t much choice.

Ryan now had an opportunity to catch up with many of the crew he hadn’t had much opportunity to talk to when he was up in orbit. These crewmembers were often in space suits working or had no reason to come to the Bridge, where he spent most of his time.

A hot topic of conversation and discussion among the crew was about the babies being born. America One had nine babies on board, including the two who had been born on Earth. Only two babies were boys, both having been conceived on Earth. Seven baby girls had been born, all conceived in space. A scientific and mathematical oddity, the biologists discussed the subject daily aboard the mother ship.

Nobody had a provable theory for this oddity of nature. The biologists conjectured it was due to a lack of gravity affecting the male sperm or female eggs. The chemists surmised it was something in the diet, and the physicists attributed it to the pull of foreign planets. Jonesy thought it was the purity of their homemade booze, but nobody listened to him.

Two more of the crew were pregnant, both first time pregnancies, and bets abounded—payable in liquor rations—on whether both would be boys or girls. VIN felt quite proud of himself, knowing that Mars, his son was only one of the two boy babies, and he would have a great chance to be the new ship commander one day. There were other older boy babies, but none born in space.

Second to wagering on the genders of new babies, VIN’s discoveries were the hot topic. Word had circulated that he was about to meet possible extraterrestrials.

It was nearly a year since the start of the Odyssey, and life aboard ship was becoming routine. Memories of Earth were never forgotten, but they slowly faded as the humans aboard America One adapted to life in space. As on Earth, exercise became routine, so did work, but everyday brought something new and interesting. There were no overweight crew aboard, illness was confined to colds or the odd hangover, and there was much camaraderie. Chess games, as well as computer games, became big events; people played for liquor rations and chocolate rations from the dozens of computer workstations aboard ship.

The most popular game was the new Sim City, the game that had launched on Earth a couple of years before they left. Several of the members had harassed the Sim City Company to give them their own cloud infrastructure so that they could carry on; as a result, the ship was given its own “cloud” because the owners of the game understood that the crew would never be back in the life of the game. Many enjoyed building Earth cities and areas, which gave them the satisfaction of feeling they were still virtually on Earth. The games, with teams playing each other, could last months aboard ship.

Forty-eight hours after they arrived back on America One, Jonesy flew VIN and Ryan back to the surface. Both Suzi and Kathy wanted to go with their husbands, but Ryan, ever cautious, suggested they wait until the outer walls were up and it was totally safe to bring their babies. Work on the outer walls had progressed in the two days they were away. Two of the four walls were complete, propped up by aluminum canisters full of rubble.

Astermine One, the ship they were flying down on, carried 300 more panels, ready for sealing. The chemical team in America One couldn’t manufacture them fast enough for the crew on the surface. It would be touch and go whether they would have enough panels made by the change of seasons.

“Jonesy, remember to put us on the top of the cliff,” VIN said into his helmet intercom as they came in to land. He was going to take Ryan over to show him Rover Opportunity. Ryan wanted to wave and send a message to the world many millions of miles away.

The distance between the two planets was still growing; the night before they left America One, the small, round planet passed by Mars at its closest distance. The blue planet was on its long orbit around the inner solar system and the scientists aboard the ship believed that this asteroid, or planet, now nicknamed Blue, stayed on much the same course orbit after orbit due to the gravitational pulls of Mars and Jupiter.

Nobody on the mother ship who had studied the solar system had seen such an extended orbit by any piece of rock. Captain Pete and Igor had been following the trajectory of the round ball for two months, and they created a computerized version of its possible rotation around Jupiter, the sun, Earth, Mars and sometimes Saturn, when the slower orbit of Saturn was in the same area as Jupiter.

The team calculated that at its constant speed of a little less than 19,000 miles an hour, Blue would pass by Jupiter in 969 days. At that time Jupiter would be 442 million miles from Mars. Of greatest importance to Ryan, Blue could be a defensive shield for America One when it sped through the 112 million-mile wide asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Blue’s orbit on this rotation would take it to within 100 million miles of Saturn, the curvature of its orbit getting as near to Saturn as it ever did. In addition, Saturn and Jupiter would be about as close as they ever got, within 500 million miles of each other.

The planet would then curve around to return to the center of the solar system, bypass the sun at 700 million miles, and then Earth again at a 1.7 million miles. Mars would be reached 14 months after bypassing Earth.

So, in total Captain Pete and Igor had calculated that the asteroid’s orbit was nearly 2.8 billion miles in length, and took approximately 16.8 years to complete. The planet bypassed Earth about every 17 years.

Blue was like a bus, slow, but precise in its route. By not using fuel for much of the journey, and orbiting the planet, America One could conserve fuel, then catch up, or speed away from the “bus” to visit other moons or planets. With an estimated top speed of about 90,000 miles an hour, thanks to her new pulse engines and ion drives, Ryan’s ship was at least five times faster than the constant movement of the planet through part of the solar system. A whole new plan of travel was being discussed on the Bridge.

Captain Pete, Ryan, Igor and a few others had developed several weird ideas on why this alien base, or whatever it was, was travelling around the solar system like a suburban bus on a time-scheduled route; and, this bus could provide a free ticket for America One, to get her to the moons of Jupiter, and even Saturn, without using much valuable fuel.

The captain spent days working out when and how to catch a ride. They needed to orbit this asteroid at exactly 128 miles to get a free ride, and they had seven months to catch up to it before the planet entered the asteroid belt; they needed to be aboard if they wanted safe passage through.

VIN helped Ryan out of the docking port and down the ladder and both men walked to Opportunity. VIN noticed that it had moved again, three feet this time, and it seemed to be digging into a small rock with what looked like a small drill.

Ryan had written a message on a white silicone board which read: “Greetings from Mars. Nice summer day here, temperature a warm five degrees above freezing, and the team in good spirits.”

He wrote a second message on the other side, which VIN was to turn over on his next visit. It read; “Setting up a base here. Will look after your puppy, Opportunity. A few of us will leave for Jupiter in a few months, once winter sets in. Ryan Richmond.”

The view was pleasant and up on the cliff top, Ryan let it sink in. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and to Ryan, the sparse Martian scenery was beautiful in itself.

“I wonder what winter will be like here,” he said to VIN, both men enjoying the view.

“Maybe we should have brought skis and poles. The area below the ledge would make a good ski slope, and these boots aren’t much different than ski boots,” VIN replied.

“A good reason for some hot Glühwein,” interjected Jonesy, watching them from the cockpit. He was ignored.

“We had better get down. Hans must be close to the area underneath the shaft,” Ryan added.

Jonesy flew them down. He was right; the spiders had stopped work and were in dormant mode and the tunnels were ready for VIN to inspect. Inside the safety chamber, VIN, with Boris behind him, entered the tunnel. The horizontal part looked exactly as he had last seen it. So did the vertical shaft down to the larger cavern one spider dug out. It was bigger and the wall extended to where the shaft should be. There was nothing that he could see that indicated an old shaft or the mystery metal from the other planet that the crew aboard America One was still testing.

VIN couldn’t tell if the spiders had dug far enough and suggested to Hans the German that the spiders might as well keep going. If they hit the metal, it would take them a day to get through it. Ryan suggested that VIN check back again in 24 hours.

A day later, with all four spiders back at work, the two that had kept digging had found nothing, and the inner half of the cavern was complete. The other two were increasing the height of the horizontal tunnel. There was still no shaft and Boris suggested that they were too deep; they should form a rubble pile where the shaft should be, and one of the spiders could start digging a tunnel upwards into the ceiling.

Two days later they were ten feet above the original ceiling. VIN shone his light into the new tunnel and saw the same dull looking material he had seen on the small planet. Once again the hairs on the back of his neck stood up; he knew exactly what he was looking at. VIN, Ryan and the team immediately met in the safety room. The small room was now safe, and the men did not require helmets when the spiders didn’t work.

“So, this shaft, with the same metal material, begins or ends 85 feet below the entrance above the cliff? Only ten feet lower than we are right now?” Ryan asked VIN.

“Correct, and I think I know exactly what the spider found,” VIN added. Ryan looked at him quizzically. “Remember, I told you about the cell I found the spider in? It was at the bottom of the vertical shaft, and twenty feet below where I found the horizontal corridor.” Ryan nodded and kept silent. “I believe our spider has found the bottom of this same shaft.”

“So, we should get the spiders to dig a tunnel horizontal to the exact area where this metal is, clear the dirt away, cut its way through the metal, and we should find a corridor ten feet above us?” Ryan asked. VIN nodded.

“I don’t know if we will find anything else, but I would bet a bottle of beer, what I find up there will look much like what I found on the asteroid. Why would whoever build a shaft and line it for no reason at all?” Ryan and the men listening nodded. They were very excited. It was time humans found other life forms in the universe.

Chapter 3

Déjà vu

VIN was impatient. He wanted to see what the hairs on the back of his neck were so worried about. Two days later, he was in the ever-expanding tunnel; the tunnel and the cavern were being excavated by all eight spiders, working like a team of ants. They had opened the entire area beneath the metal and Boris was programing one of the spiders to clean the dirt away from the side walls of the metal which was visible inside the new, but very small cavern.

By the time they decided to call it a day, the spider had cleaned a distance of 12 inches into the side area of metal. The round metal tube was six inches narrower than the tunnel the spider excavated, and the metal was the same dull bluish-grey that VIN had seen on the other planet. He was sure that he was looking at the side of the shaft.

Boris wanted to get the air tested inside the sealed tunnel before it escaped; he had a device, a dial connected to a line with a tube at the end, which would be able to analyze what gases, if any, were on the other side once a minute hole was broken through.

Ryan was also in the cavern. He was also dying to see what they would find. It had cost him over $6 billion to get this far, and now he was only inches away from finding foreign life forms.

“Boris, start up the laser, I suggest you hit it in the same place about 100 times. That should pierce a hole in the metal,” VIN instructed. Within minutes sparks began to fly. All three men wore full space suits, and the tunnel entrance had been sealed behind them.

It took ten minutes for the spider to hit the metal with 100 laser bursts. They could see the metal beginning to glow, and when the spider was done and out of the way, Boris raised the tube in his hand to the tiny pinhead sized hole.

He already had readouts from what was in the cavern, as atmospheric air had leaked into the tunnel with all the human and spider entrances and exits, but it wasn’t safe to breath and the pressure was certainly not safe. That information was displayed on his air analyzer until he got the tube close to the where the hole was cooling.

“The nitrogen level has shot up!” shouted Boris excitedly into his helmet intercom. “There is something other than a space vacuum in there. My readouts are going up and down, but I’ve got increased amounts of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, no oxygen, and there is pressure. I believe that there is or was an atmosphere in there.”

“Everything other than the basics for breathing?” Ryan asked.

“Dangerous levels of carbon dioxide, and no oxygen. I’ve seen analyses of this type before, in reports of salvaged Russian submarines where the crew died using up all available oxygen. We need to get an air restorer in here from outside. It will clean the air and hopefully bring the CO2 down to reasonable levels. As for air pressure, my best read was 103 millibars, about 10 percent of air pressure at sea level. Ryan, there is or was certainly some sort of atmosphere in there, but we need to clean it before we allow the air to mix with ours. Because the pressure is so weak, I believe this air is very old. The nitrogen amounts were nearly perfect for human use. Also, it’s weird, but the tube found traces of helium. The only time I’ve heard about helium in breathing air is, for deep sea diving. The helium is just a trace though, and still safe for us to breathe.”

“Okay. We will keep our new chamber closed off from our new outer chamber until we know more,” Ryan replied. “I’ll have a docking port added to the entrance of this tunnel until further notice. Boris, get the spider to open up the tunnel when the port is in place; the crew will only need a day or two. Then, I want Mr. Noble in there to check around. Also, the foul air will disperse into this cavern, so even though we lose more air pressure, we don’t want to lose their valuable nitrogen. We don’t know how big it is in there; it could hold a lot of valuable atmosphere.”

As soon as the docking port was in place, sealing off the new tunnel from the outer chamber, the spider worked non-stop for another five days to open the entire side of the metal tube. This time the team would have a much larger piece of the foreign material to test. The metal, whatever it was, was far stronger than any metals made on Earth.

The other spiders had been taken out and everybody waited for the one spider to laser its way through. With a laser powerful enough to go through tank armor, it still took 36 hours, to cut away a seven-foot long section from the sidewall of the shaft before the piece dropped to the ground.

Once the piece cooled down, Boris called VIN and Ryan to the cavern. They had to figure out how to get inside the newly opened part of the shaft.

“It looks exactly the same as on the asteroid,” VIN said to Ryan as both men peered into the visible tunnel above them. “See there?” He pointed, as both men looked into the tunnel. “There, about ten feet higher than where the spider has cut. Do you see the shadow on each side that is the horizontal tunnel or corridor leading off the vertical shaft?” Ryan acknowledged that he could see the entrances. “Somehow we must get a ladder up there. I think the only way is if the spider can burn holes into the metal, we can get metal rungs made in the mother ship, and then we just hammer steps into the wall to make a permanent ladder. What do you think Ryan?” VIN asked.

“I think that is the best idea,” Ryan replied. “A rung every 12 inches, starting from the beginning of the shaft, and a cord ladder up to the first rung, should be enough to initially get up there.”

The work would take more time and Ryan radioed up to the mother ship that they needed metal rungs one foot apart and enough for ten feet of vertical tunnel. They would be ready in a day, and the spider was then programed to burn the necessary holes through the metal.

The spider would have to fill the rest of the ten feet of shaft with rubble to stand on, enabling it to stand at least halfway up the first eight feet of the shaft. It would also take a day to burn the first eight holes for the first four ladder rungs to be hammered into the rock.

Two days later, nine rungs arrived with the next load of 200 glass panels for the outer space chamber.

VIN began hammering the first rungs into the tunnel. It wasn’t too difficult except that wearing his spacesuit made the work harder, and he couldn’t take big swings with the mallet. In the first three hours, he managed to get half way up, hammering the first rungs into the perfectly burned holes, 12 inches apart. Ryan was taking no chances, and when anyone entered the tunnel he took readings of the air around him.

With the first rungs in place, the problem of getting higher was solved. VIN climbed up the new rungs and hammered in the next rung into the holes made by the spider. In the three foot, six inch wide shaft, there wasn’t much room to work, and with the first rungs holding his body weight, there was just enough room to move up and down.

It took six hours of hard work before VIN managed to hammer home the last rung an inch below the horizontal tunnel leading out into the blackness in either direction above his head.

His helmet light revealed the metal did not reflect light, and the flooring was the same soft consistency they found on the smaller planet. He was done for the day, and was happy to descend. Ryan wanted to go with VIN the next day when they entered the base or whatever it was.

The excitement of the next day was spreading through the crew like fire. Even a hundred miles up in America One, the entire crew was excited, wondering what would be found. So did Ryan; he didn’t sleep well that night. His dreams were of little green men attacking him, and VIN beating them off.

The production of glass panels was at full speed in America One. The workforce producing the panels still had 1,200 panels to make when they brought the second smelter online. Previously it had heated up the Nano-Silicone rods, but now that work was complete and it took the crew a week to transform the smelter to increase the number of glass panels they could manufacture in a day. They only had one month of good weather left and the men on the surface were installing the panels faster than they could manufacture them.

VIN was first to climb up the newly hammered rungs. They were hammered eight inches into the rock with the last four inches protruding. The space was cramped, even for him, but luckily, there were no overweight crew and nobody was any bigger or heavier than he, with his half metal body. Carrying several long-life lights, he heaved himself over the edge from the last rung, and into the horizontal corridor.

“Remember, somebody must bring up the metal cover for the vertical hole so nobody falls down it,” he said into his helmet intercom.

“Boris has it,” somebody replied. “He will push it up and get it to you once the boss is up there.”

Once Ryan was up in the corridor, Boris’ helmet appeared in the light filling the tunnel. VIN lifted up the almost three-foot wide by six-foot long metal floor as Boris propelled it up from below. It wasn’t heavy. Its purpose was twofold: to cover the shaft so nobody could fall down it and, to provide a walkway to the other side.

Boris was helped out of the shaft and he and VIN maneuvered the metal cover over the hole, and Boris walked over it to show that it worked.

They would get out by pushing the floor further into the opposite corridor which opened the shaft.

“Eerie in here. Which way do you want to go first?” asked Ryan.

“I went this way first in the other corridor, I might as well check this one out first,” VIN said.

Dropping a light every ten feet, they headed down the corridor. The floor felt the same to VIN, a slightly soft feeling under his space boots. The corridor made a right-hand turn 20 feet from the shaft and, leaving the third of five lights at the corner, he could see that the tunnel led into the same perfectly clean cavern he had seen before; it contained the exact same stairs and walkway and there wasn’t a door to be seen.

“Exactly the same as the cavern on the blue planet,” VIN reported, looking at Ryan.

“Fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!” Ryan replied in awe. He stood there and his helmet turned left and right. They were standing in the middle of a large, nearly 16-foot high cavern, and it looked totally sealed.

“There must be doors leading off from this place,” stated Boris.

“What would we do if it was our last day?” Ryan asked, thinking of what he would do.

“Maybe close all the doors and die in private,” VIN replied.

“Maybe they were never in danger, and just closed up shop and headed back to their planet,” Boris suggested.

“Well said,” replied Ryan. “Two good thoughts. Maybe it was their last day, maybe they just left, their mission over. But that doesn’t give us a way to open any doors, there must be a door somewhere, and I don’t want the spiders to burn holes in the walls. There must be another way.”

“I think submarines have automated hatch lock downs when there is a threat of water,” suggested Boris. “Maybe with a normal atmosphere in here, something might happen. Plus we could get our suits off and bang the walls with metal objects to hear something.” Ryan liked that idea, but they needed to see the other side of the base, across the tunnel first.

It was identical to the first side in size and shape with the exact same walkway circumscribing the smooth metal wall.

“I bet whoever they were, they sprayed this metal material onto the walls. Our Nano-Silicone will certainly not be as strong, but it would do the same job nevertheless,” stated Ryan looking at the walls carefully.

“If the chemists can figure out what it is made of, maybe we could melt areas to see if anything is behind it,” suggested Boris.

“What about a massive jolt of electricity, say from one of the plutonium batteries?” VIN asked. “Maybe a shock would make something pop open, even just a crack, to see where a door could be.”

“Electrifying the whole place would work if the metal on the walls conducted electricity,” added Boris. “If it doesn’t, nothing would happen.”

“I think Mr. Noble has a good idea there, and it won’t cost us any material to give one of these caverns some shock treatment. We could try that when we have a breathable atmosphere in here, and then we can tap the walls for sound. What do you think it will take before we can breathe freely in here, Boris?” Ryan asked.

“I believe it will take about ten air tanks, all we have to spare right now. I have asked the crew in America One to begin to manufacture again, but it will take at least a month to replace what we use in here. I’m sure that air has purged through into here from our safety chamber; we have had to constantly refill the air pressure. There is nitrogen in here already. We will add too much nitrogen into the air with our air tanks, so I recommend using only pure oxygen to start with. A touch of argon will go down well, and we have more pure oxygen in storage than breathable air right now.”

“Do it,” ordered Ryan. “How much oxygen do we have here on the surface without waiting for resupply from orbit?”

“Five tanks of pure oxygen,” replied Boris.

“We could get a decent breathable atmosphere out of those five tanks. Boris, ask the guys to bring in the tanks. We can start right away and they can carry the open tanks with them supplying the corridors as they come up. The temperature in here shows 23 degrees Fahrenheit on my suit’s readout. What do you show?” Both men’s gauges had the same reading. “We have two spare heaters in the safety chamber, let’s put one in each upper cavern and warm this place up when we have air in here. Like on Earth the ground around us, and especially that metal covering the walls, floor and roof, should keep the heat inside.”

The entire crew of sixteen got to work. Some grabbed oxygen tanks between them, and others held the cord ladder so their teammates could maneuver the spewing tanks up towards the caverns. Ryan, Boris and VIN stayed in the first cavern they had visited and waited for the men to move up through the shaft. Ryan ordered up five additional normal air tanks; they still needed to add air pressure to actually breathe.

Within two hours, the atmosphere was vastly improved compared to what it had been when they first entered. On Boris’ suit it showed the nitrogen at maximum and oxygen at 70 percent of safe usage. The atmospheric pressure in the cavern was now 900 millibars, still too dangerous for them to discard their helmets.

All the tanks were left to bleed out as everybody, looked around and then, one by one, descended down the shaft and into the tunnels to the safety chamber.

With everybody out, the crew returned to the two housing units outside to recharge their space suits. It would be 12 hours before they could enter again.

Ryan ordered rest, food and relaxation for the next 12 hours. Jonesy launched his craft off the ledge when the men exited the safety chamber with the empty tanks. He and Allen Saunders loaded them aboard and returned to the mother ship to get them refilled. Ryan knew that supplies were becoming stretched, but one didn’t have the opportunity to find new forms of life in the solar system every day.

Ryan, VIN and Boris couldn’t wait for the rest period to end. The time dragged and they discussed how to find doors or any opening; they had to be in the old caverns somewhere! The spacecraft wouldn’t be back for two days, and the crew on the surface only had three more spare cylinders of air. The rest of the pure oxygen was for emergency use only.

The suits were finally recharged, and half the team went back to working on the glass panels, while the others prepared to enter the tunnel again.

Outside the safety chamber, the spare nuclear battery was taken out of Astermine Two’s cargo hold. One of the crew made cables that could directly be attached to the battery. Much like thick engine jumper cables, they had clamps on the end to enable the battery’s massive power to connect with the walls. Ryan was going to connect them to the metal railing first. Because everything in the chamber was metallic in nature, he hoped the surge of electricity would flow throughout the room. To make sure that they themselves would not be electrocuted, they would stand on the soft, rubber-like black floor, Boris didn’t think the soft floor would conduct electricity. But, as an added precaution, the rubber, non-slip floor mats in the craft’s cockpit were hauled out to stand on.

Inside the cavern, the temperature was warmer, approaching comfortable, at 33 degrees Fahrenheit; very toasty for Mars. The pressure was just over 1,000 millibars. The oxygen tanks were empty, and VIN brought along one of the emergency bottles of oxygen from Asterspace Three, just in case.

This bottle had the same mouthpiece a scuba bottle; he could remove his helmet and take breaths from the mouthpiece if necessary.

Boris told him that at this pressure, he would be gasping for air. While two of the crew hauled up one final bottle of air to the cavern, VIN got ready to have Ryan remove his helmet.

“If I’m okay, I’ll help you off with yours, Boss. Boris, remember the old diving signal?” and VIN showed them the round “O” with his thumb and forefinger; the diver’s way to show others underwater that he was okay. Once their helmets were off they had no way to communicate through the intercom to those who still wore them.

Unscrewing VIN’s helmet took several minutes, and it was slowly pulled away from his head. The connections inside were parted and VIN stood there with the emergency bottle ready. He exhaled, and then tried to inhale. Everybody watched him. They could see that he struggled to take in air. He really had to make an effort to inhale but he did it. To Ryan, who was a competent scuba diver, VIN looked like he was sucking at a virtually empty scuba tank that did not have enough pressure to give him the air his lungs needed. But VIN showed them the “O” sign and pointed to the large tank releasing air and motioned for someone to bring it to him. The pressure in the tank was propelling perfect breathable air from its spout and he pushed his face into the soft jet of air; he drank from the jet slaking his thirst for the right pressure and mix his lungs were being starved of. He didn’t want to breathe pure oxygen just yet.

Ryan gave him the thumbs up, telling him that he thought his move was great; then he asked Boris to begin unfastening his helmet. The large 100-pound air tank would take an hour or two to release all of its contents, and the rich air would flow out into the other cavern and probably down into the other cavern and tunnels. The second to last bottle was ordered to be released in the other chamber and would help distribute air fit to breathe.

After gulping in from the jet of air, VIN looked better. Nobody could hear what he said, until Ryan had his helmet removed. Like VIN he took a large gulp of air before being detached from the flow inside his helmet.

He slowly breathed out, and tried to breathe in again. It was hard and he literally had to pull the air into his lungs. He too put his head down to the jet and gulped in several lungsful.

The smell in the chamber got his attention next. Mixed with the air he was breathing in from the jet, was the stink of an old musty room. Both men kept taking turns at the fountain of life.

It was weird to look around without looking through the helmet window.

“Can we talk in here?” Ryan asked VIN, seeing if they could speak. Ryan’s voice sounded foreign and high pitched. The added helium in the room together with the difference in the pressure made Ryan sound like a squeaky toy.

“Like children breathing helium, but we can breathe and talk. I’m going to let a stronger burst eject out of the tank for a minute. It should make it just a little easier to breathe,” replied VIN, not hearing the voice that was his own.

For a full minute he let the tank blast out its contents at a high rate. Water droplets began dripping out of the spout with the release of the pressure. Things were beginning to feel almost normal, as though they were in a cavern on Earth, except that the gravity was much lower, it really hard to breathe, and it smelled very stale. Ryan was distressed by the horrible musty smell and decided that it would be better to refit the helmets after they hit the walls with the metal nails, to see if they could hear a difference in sound.

With Boris and a fourth man carrying the tank they moved towards the closest wall and peered at the metal. They had touched and played with the metal in the chemistry lab in America One, and it was no different in the chamber—an extremely smooth, dull, unwelcoming wall covering, which made them feel that they were in a steel chamber.

VIN hit the wall with his ear next to it. He heard a faint thud, and he hit it again harder. The wall sounded solid.

“Ryan take off my one glove, maybe I can feel something if I run my hand down the walls. VIN winced at the icy coldness he felt, even though the temperature in the cavern was rising, albeit very slowly.

He slid his hand across the metal at about four feet above the floor. He had already surmised that the alien beings were shorter than he was. The first pass along the wall underneath the walkway was soft and slow. On his second pass along the same area, he added some pressure and still felt nothing.

“Find anything? It is getting a little easier to breathe in here. We will have to get an air purifier from outside to sort out the carbon dioxide and lousy smell tomorrow,” Ryan said still squeaking.

“Nothing,” VIN responded. “I think an electric jolt is needed.” For this they needed to refit their helmets. The battery did protect against radiation, but it still emitted dangerous levels over time, and a sizeable charge could disseminate larger amounts of radiation.

It took time to secure their helmets and VIN’s glove. When they were breathing perfect air again, two men wrestled the battery up the shaft and into the cavern. Even in the lower gravity, the 500-pound battery weighed nearly 200 pounds on Mars; plus, it was hard work to get it up the shaft rungs.

Everybody was evacuated from the cavern except Ryan, VIN and Boris. Boris now held a shovel at the ready and Ryan a six-foot metal nail used to ground the spacecraft in high winds. VIN held the two cords. Like one would jump start a motor vehicle, and he touched the black cord to the stair railing. Nothing happened. Then he touched the railing with the red cable and he could suddenly see the railing pulsate, blue movements of light coming off the metal. For several seconds the three men stood on rubber mats, with no one else near the cavern walls, while he allowed the juice to run along the railing and, hopefully, into the metal. Still nothing happened and he detached the smoldering cables.

“Where do you think one would put a door?” VIN asked Boris and Ryan.

“Close to the stair entrance?” Ryan suggested.

“The exact middle of the cavern underneath the walkway?” suggested Boris. “You have only 10 percent power running through the cables.”

“Well I think both answers are good, so let’s start right here,” replied VIN putting the black cable, and then the red cable directly onto the metal railing where the stairs started. Again nothing happened, except that the metal wall seemed to glow lighter. There was certainly a lot of electricity being pushed into it; maybe enough for two dozen households down on Earth. Boris then increased power to 20 percent.

VIN followed Boris’ suggestion, and located the middle of the chamber. Four feet from the floor he touched both cables onto the wall directly in front of him. Again, nothing happened. Then Boris increased the power to 30 percent. This time something did happen.

Chapter 4

What is that?

VIN jumped! He was looking directly at a spot on the wall that moved; a small round part of the metal covering the wall, flipped out from the wall. Then Boris turned down the power and the round cover just disappeared into a crevice behind the wall covering somewhere. He was staring at the exact area where the part disappeared, but there was no visible join or indication that this piece was even separate from the rest of the metal wall.

“What is that?” VIN looked at the other two, who were just staring at the same spot.

VIN released the cables from the wall and the hole stayed open. He felt inside. There was a smooth surface directly where the cover had been, like a fancy keyless entry found in secure buildings; however, those systems generally glowed green or blue, this one didn’t glow at all.

VIN asked Boris to close down the battery and, once it was secure, asked Ryan to help him remove his right glove. The gauges on his suit showed a slight increase of radioactivity, but not at dangerous levels yet. Boris handed VIN a Geiger counter and the emission from the opening was no different.

Carefully, he touched the wall. It was still warm from the power of the battery juicing through it. Then, he touched what looked like a glass panel inside the opening in the wall. It was warm and smooth, just like glass. He pushed it gently at first, then harder; nothing happened. He pushed his fist, and then the palm of his hand against the inner glass panel and still nothing happened.

“I’m sure this is a secure entry for a door somewhere in here,” VIN said. “Ryan, put my glove on again. Boris, get the battery fired up and connect both cables directly on the glass panel, it might blow it up, but anything happening is better than nothing.”

Again, nothing happened, except the usual sparks and fireworks, so he let the power bleed through the glass and into the wall.

Suddenly, a much larger area—a door—opened next to the newly glowing blue panel. They couldn’t hear anything since they were fully suited up, but a five-foot tall door moved sideways a fraction, exactly as the panel had done. Boris kept the juice flowing, but the door only moved another fraction of an inch and then seemed to jam. Ryan asked him to shut the battery down and place the tube from the air analyzer into the quarter-inch space. The tube was just narrow enough to fit through the hole, and the readouts on the machine were exactly the same as when they had first entered the caverns. Little to no oxygen, favorable amounts of nitrogen, but this time the carbon dioxide was at dangerous levels.

“I bet whatever was in there breathed the same air we did, ran out and maybe died from carbon dioxide poisoning,” VIN suggested, looking at the readouts.

“You think something was asphyxiated in there?” Ryan asked. VIN nodded his head.

VIN tried to open the door further. For two minutes he had the battery on 30 percent power connected to the wall. The glass panel glowed deep blue, and he was sure the entire wall was getting very hot, but nothing else budged. Boris suggested they try further along the wall, and still they had no luck.

“I think we should give it a break and get the spider in here to cut out the door covering,” suggested Ryan.

“I’m worried about our new air entering a space that has not had atmosphere for a very long time; there could be relics or remains that have been maintained in perfect condition, like that 29,000 year old skeleton found frozen in the Alps several years back,” suggested Boris. The two other men concurred.

“I think we can get this door open. I’m sure there are other rooms or chambers, but I’m convinced we will find something new in this one,” Ryan continued.

The battery was removed to the safety room by the two helpers, while Hans the German walked the spider back into the cavern.

VIN, and then Ryan and Boris tried to peer through the slit in the door, but it was pitch black on the other side. There was nothing else to do but to wait for the spider to cut part of the door’s covering away; they needed a hole big enough to allow a spacesuited human through and that was going to take at least a few days.

Satisfied that at least they had found something, Ryan decided that it was time to return to America One, and assemble all of the scientists to discuss the subject Boris had brought up: the potential of decay due to a return of an atmosphere.

Jonesy and Allen Saunders returned to the planet six hours later with supplies and new glass panels, and transferred the three men back to the ship. With a little luck, and non-stop work in America One, they would have the outer glass chamber completed in time, just before the first storms were expected.

In the cafeteria the next day, Ryan opened the meeting. “Thank you, everyone, for your hard work. Let’s begin this meeting by hearing what has been learned about the piece of metal Mr. Noble brought down from the little round planet. For your information, this little planet is heading towards where Jupiter will be in about two to three years.”

Martha and two other scientists delivered their findings on the metal. All three said that they did not learn much more than what Boris had suggested, that it did contain elements of titanium, osmium, mendelevium, nickel and platinum in the makeup. They had carbon tested the metal and couldn’t get closer than that it was between 2,000 and 12,000 years old.

That surprised the crew. VIN suggested that the door didn’t open due to being extremely old, and that the mechanism was rusted or just not working, but 2,000 years old? That was impossible.

The chemistry specialists said they would have more information in a few weeks, but they needed to do more tests. One did state that the same metal found on the asteroid and Mars, appeared to have been made at the same time by the same people. That interested Boris and VIN. It looked like the two caverns had been made by the same extraterrestrial group.

Then the senior chemist shocked them to the core with his tests. He believed that the metal had been produced on Earth. One could have heard a pin drop in the cafeteria. The whole crew looked at him in disbelief.

“Well that fits in with a dream I had the other night,” VIN commented. “I dreamed about chariots, cavemen and old prehistoric wall paintings.” Nobody added to that.

VIN tried to rid his subconscious of the weird dreams he was having. Since finding the first cavern, he had been troubled by nightly dreams. They weren’t the same, although many times he saw himself as a Roman, or a Greek Olympiad, or even an African swordsman fighting what looked like Roman soldiers, but the theme was always the same. He hoped that when they finally got into the room these weird and colorful dreams would stop.

Suzi arrived with Mr. Rose, a happy smile on her face, and a container filled with a dozen of what appeared to be avocados.

“Remember the first tree we brought up here?” she asked the group. Not many could. “Well, it is an avocado tree from California, and was nearly mature enough to grow fruit when we brought it up. These are its first space crop. Actually, there are about 30 avocados ready for picking, I have brought a dozen up here, but avocados ripen only once they are picked, not on the tree. These will be ready to eat in a few days.”

“Interesting place our ship,” Ryan said, smiling. “What scientist wouldn’t be happy up here? In one second we go from a 2,000 year old mystery metal to nearly ripe, space-grown avocados from California. I’m sure Hotel California must also be around here somewhere!”

“A crazy place to be, Herr Ryan,” Martha Von Zimmer added, “but that is why we all came.”

The doctors were then invited to the meeting. Doctor Nancy was asked what she would need to determine the age of any extraterrestrials or humans, if any were found; she replied that between the medical and biology departments, they had everything they needed, except a body.

Now they just had to wait for the spider to do its part. Ryan made sure that oxygen and atmospheric air manufacture was at maximum aboard the ship, and Martha stated that a third visit to the Martian water oasis in the large crater would be necessary in the near future. Jonesy was given orders to return to the crater. At least 2,000 gallons of water were needed to supply the departments that were producing livable air for the new caverns; but no one knew how big they were.

Since they had five days before a return to Endeavor crater, there was time for a mission to the oasis.

Jonesy, Allen Saunders, Michael Pitt, VIN, Martha and Boris flew down 12 hours later in two shuttles and the mining craft in which they had returned from the Martian surface.

Orbiting the planet was like getting a free ride. The computers were already well aligned with the planet and had set up orbital glide slopes and directions to wherever they wanted to go, and then released the craft from orbit at the right moment. Martha accompanied Michael Pitt, the only astronaut she said she trusted, and that let Jonesy, especially, off the hook.

Since the planet, or at least the area around the water basin, was entering the autumn season, it seemed that the winds and storms had taken a break from beating up the area. It was a beautiful sunny day when the computers showed the three craft to be exactly above the same landing zone they had used the last time. It looked totally different. Three feet of dust had to be cleared before the top of the white ice dome stood out from the flat red soil.

Once he had cleared the landing zone for three craft, Jonesy swept the area down to the water’s edge so that his partner didn’t have to dig for water. He tilted the craft at an angle, and used the thrusters on full power to blow mile-high clouds of dust away from the white mound and the water’s edge.

It took a full spacewalk of digging and moving soil, but VIN and the crew cleaned a three-foot wide area where they could see the clear life-saving liquid. They brought large buckets to collect the water and, with every scoop into the cold icy water, they emptied five gallons into a canister.

The build-crew, still aboard the mother ship, had devised a sled which was able to slide one full canister at a time to the mining craft, where Astermine’s arm lifted it into the cargo hold.

Even in the reduced gravity, the mining craft could not launch off the surface with more than sixteen of the water-filled canisters; eight canisters would have to be loaded aboard each of the shuttles.

The weather was perfect and it was hard to believe that they had ever encountered violent winds in the same place. Loading the water took a day longer than necessary. They nearly lost Martha Von Zimmer a couple of times; she walked farther out than Jonesy had given orders to go. One time VIN saved her from freezing to death; he stopped her within inches of walking into the cold water. The spacesuit would protect her, but if she slipped and disappeared underneath the surface, the suit would lose power and it would only be a matter of minutes before she froze to death.

The team arrived back a day late to find Ryan eager to get back down to the crater. Only SB-III was refueled and ready to go; the build-crew could unload the water from the other three, still dusty, craft. Jonesy piloted the third shuttle with VIN, Boris, and Ryan, as passengers, and 620 new glass panels as cargo They went straight back to the ledge on Endeavor crater on the Martian surface. Ryan told the crew on the way down that they had about 900 panels to go, and that they were down to three tons of Nano-Silicone.

The exterior chamber was beginning to look grand when they came in to land. The Rover Opportunity had moved several feet and seemed to be staring at a little, lone rock when they flew over it. VIN mentioned that the Rover did have a quiet and peaceful life. Ryan added that maybe they should take the camera part of the Rover into the cavern, and let Earth see what they had found. All countered that the images might not be believable, so far away.

The panels would complete the three sides of the outer chamber. Suzi told VIN that she was really looking forward to shuttling down several tons of top soil and composted waste, and turn her new greenhouse into a vegetable producing unit. One third of the new chamber was to be a vegetable and fruit garden.

Good news abounded when they exited the craft. The spider had suddenly stopped working thirteen hours earlier, and since nobody had been in there, nobody knew what was going on.

VIN, Ryan and Boris immediately entered the cavern once the tunnel seal had been pulled away. Boris mentioned that the atmospheric pressure had decreased since they had left, by a few millibars, but it was still better than when VIN had first tried to breathe. Nitrogen was the same, oxygen a little low, and helium registered at 0.9 percent on his air analyzer. It was even higher than the carbon dioxide in the shaft below the caverns.

One by one they climbed up the ladder. VIN immediately turned left and into the cavern with the broken door. The lights, on motion sensors, automatically switched on as he passed and he found the spider in dormant mode on the floor of the cavern, a round three-foot wide piece of the metal next to it.

VIN was quite surprised by what he could see inside the frame of the door behind the metal. The frame reminded him of his own legs, a very strong, very sophisticated metal skeleton. He looked carefully at the cross beams inside the four-foot wide, five-foot high, one-foot thick metal door frame. There was just enough room for him to squeeze through, without his suit on.

“It looks like I need to go in nearly naked,” VIN stated over the intercom. All three men were still dressed in full suits.

“Oxygen okay, nitrogen breathable, helium high, but not dangerous, temperature 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Funny, that is about the same temperature as normal underground on Earth. I think it’s okay for you to disrobe. I hope there aren’t any little green maidens in there,” Boris joked.

“Take my lamp with you, it looks dark in there,” added Ryan.

The two men helped VIN, first with his helmet. VIN inhaled the air. It tasted better, and this time he didn’t need to force it to his lungs. The pressure had increased to where he could nearly breathe normally. He removed his suit piece by piece. There were a dozen separate parts he needed to take off and he sat on the metal staircase pulling off the bottom parts. It would take 20 minutes to get dressed again before he could have his helmet screwed back on.

It was cold compared to the warmth of his suit, which he kept at 68 degrees (he could adjust the temperature at any time). The outside gauge on his suit registered 56 degrees in the cavern.

The novelty of getting out of his suit in open conditions, on a foreign planet, millions of miles from Earth, was compelling to VIN. There he was, dressing down to the long johns he preferred to wear under the suit. The thick underwear would wick away moisture, and worked well when he was working up a sweat in the suit.

“Hope I don’t scare any little green men in there with my long johns,” VIN said loudly to no one, as he peered into the blackness of the room behind the door; he hoped he was not heard by any foreign bodies.

He stood up; his legs felt strong and his body light in the lessor gravity, minus the additional 100 pounds the suit weighed. He jumped and his powerful metal legs propelled him upwards; he easily grabbed onto the upper walkway’s railing after he stopped himself from hitting the cavern’s metal roof 15 feet high. VIN knew that outside, and in these conditions, with full power, he could just about jump the 75 feet up to the cliff wall above the ledge. He thought he might try it sometime.

Both Ryan’s and Boris’ hearts nearly stopped when they saw VIN leap like a flea and nearly knock himself out on the high ceiling but they couldn’t say anything to him.

VIN, smiling, took the lamp offered to him and carefully he twisted and turned to fit through the inner door frame and, with his heart in his mouth, he stepped into the room behind the door. He stood up, wary of looking around. Instead, he scrutinized the door, trying to find some sort of opening mechanism. There certainly wasn’t one on the frame, so he examined the metal wall on either side.

As before, the wall was a sealed piece of metal. Maybe the battery could entice the door to open? Then he remembered that it was not safe for an unsuited human to be in the vicinity of the radioactive battery.

Boris had given him a one-foot square white board and a marker; America One had several of them. He quickly wrote that he needed power, and maybe longer extension cords could be connected to the plutonium-238 battery left in the cavern. It would be far away from where he was.

Ryan must have communicated over the intercom, as Boris passed the white board back saying that they were gathering extra electrical cables from the outside supply cylinders. VIN realized that he had a wait of about 30 minutes, so he gathered enough courage to look around. Nothing had attacked him from the rear, yet.

Slowly the light played over the empty room. It wasn’t as large as the cavern. The room was small, had three solid walls and one piece of furniture; a four foot high fixture with a flat surface stood in the middle of the room. It looked like a restaurant kitchen work table covered in stainless steel. Or did it look like a morticians table in a morgue? VIN had been to a few morgues in his lifetime, and several hospital operating rooms, and this desolate room reminded him of those places. He tried to move the table but it was stuck to the floor. Since there was no monster attacking him, he moved closer to one of the walls. He looked carefully and for the first time saw hairline cracks in the solid covering. The cracks were rectangular, about an inch wide and four inches across. He swallowed hard when he realized what they could be; door handles of some sort.

He inspected the wall even closer and found twelve of these sections, three high and four across along the wall. Taking a deep breath he touched one and nearly jumped across the room, when a handle ejected out of the wall, a handle to a drawer in the wall.

The handle was the same color as the wall, but it began to glow red when it sprang out. It was small, a child could get her entire hand into the handle opening, and slowly he pushed two of his fingers into the small space between the wall and the handle and tried to open whatever it was.

Silently, a drawer slid open. His light was not high enough to see into the drawer but his heart nearly missed several beats as it opened. The drawer was long, over five feet long, and it was as if he was opening a drawer in a morgue. Trying to keep calm, he already knew what was in there and its condition from the red glowing handle. There was no power to the handle, at least none that he could see, and the red glow was a complete mystery as to how it worked.

The interior of the drawer was still dark. He slowly raised his lamp, and his personal warning signal sprang to life again as the hairs froze on the back of his neck; he was looking at a complete spacesuit of a vivid blue color, and inside it was, dust… dust which had certainly been a body of some sort at one time. He gazed carefully at his first alien. It had two arms and two legs. The suit had a helmet just like his, and VIN broke into a sweat.

The body, or pile of dust, or whatever was inside the helmet, was unrecognizable through the clear helmet visor. The dust inside the visor looked like a fire had burned inside the suit and the remains were nothing more than fine ash; fine wood ash from an old fire. Gingerly he touched the suit. The blueness of it reminded him of a surgical gown worn by medical staff. The suit held. VIN was sure that the suit would turn into dust, just like its occupant, but it didn’t. There were no markings on the suit, not even a flag, or any kind of insignia. His eyes looked down the body and he knew his dreams wouldn’t end today.

The alien’s suit looked less cumbersome than their suits. It was thin, more streamlined, and only the helmet with a clear visor looked like the helmet he wore. This helmet was silver and looked like it was made of the same material as the walls. Only the visor stared up at the ceiling.

The head of the alien was facing outwards, and VIN opened the drawer to its fullest. He was surprised that it was only five feet long. The whole space suit looked more like a kid’s suit than what would fit a fully grown six-foot astronaut.

He opened a second drawer. It was empty, as were the next five, their handles didn’t glow. This was definitely a morgue of some sort, and there were bodies missing. He opened all 12 drawers and found only two bodies. The second body looked shorter than the first body, only four feet tall from helmet to boots. The handle of the drawer containing the second body also glowed red.

He returned to Boris and Ryan looking through the hole and wrote on his white board; “Two alien bodies, dead, dust, a morgue.” Ryan gave the board back to VIN a few seconds later though the door. It read “Can you check the entire room? Power 10 minutes.”

VIN, a little more relaxed than when he started, began to check the opposite wall. Again there were twelve places where the small handles would jump out. He tried one in the middle on the bottom row and opened it. The insides were empty. He tried all 12 and found only one body. It was even smaller than the other two, about two-thirds the size, maybe three feet, six inches, wearing a full black space suit with, no insignia, and the silver helmet.

He could get the entire suit through the hole in the door, but was interrupted by noise from the door. Somebody was trying to get his attention.

He quickly looked around, his heart in his mouth, but it was only Boris showing him a black metal connector at the end of a long cable. He quickly moved over to the hand coming through the door. Ryan had the second connector, a red one, and VIN knew that the power of this battery would quickly fry him if they ever connected.

He placed the one connector directly on the framework of the door, and carefully received the second one from Ryan after receiving a set of half-inch thick stiff rubber gloves from Boris. Both Ryan and VIN made sure the second connector wouldn’t touch the steel framework on its way through.

With one connector already on the door, he pulled the coated cord through so that he had room to move. Carefully, he touched the second connector to the door. There was a loud explosion, smoke filled the air with the usual sparks and the door slid half an inch. He did it again and again until the door was a third open.

He warned the two men to stand back and carefully he connected the red connector to the door’s framework.

With the usual sparks, flashes and smoke the battery juiced the door, a tenth of a pound of plutonium-238 delivering 40 percent of the power it had.

The fireworks display was loud and noisy, but he let the connector remain. He needed to release the connector; it was starting to burn his rubber glove. The door moved again and suddenly the whole door slid sideward; he was just able to grab the second connector as the door tried to disappear into the wall. With the power off, it stopped, but not before two round flaps opened up in the wall in front of where the sliding door was disappearing. Boris sent word to shut down the power and the three men waited until Boris gave him the thumbs up sign that the power was off.

VIN disconnected the black connector, and then easily pushed the door the remaining way into the wall. The door was now easy to push and it disappeared as if it had never existed. Somehow, the solid metal could open or seal at will, once enough power was applied.

The open round flaps, four inches across, looked the same as he had seen in the cavern, except that one didn’t have a glass face, it looked like a power panel, a panel that could have something attached or connected to it. There were dozens of tiny holes inside the flap, it looked more like a computer terminal connector than a power socket, but he bet to himself that it would do the same thing.

Now Boris and Ryan could enter. Boris slipped him the white board telling him to get back into his suit. He had been in a dangerous situation for too long, and after this space walk, he would need to fly up to America One for a full medical checkup by the doctors.

Thirty minutes later VIN regained communication through his helmet and suggested that he take up the smallest space suit to be looked at by the experts in America One.

Ryan agreed; they had found aliens and they could take one with them. They had not opened too big an area that would need vital air, and the team would regroup and discuss how to go further. As head of security, VIN wanted to be sure that nobody would touch anything, and Ryan made the whole area off limits to everybody.

Carefully, he lifted the smallest body out of the drawer. It was light, weighing less than 10 pounds, even with the suit on. He wrapped it in a couple of blankets, brought in from the supply cylinders. The tunnel the spider dug was perfect for an empty canister to pass through and once he filled it with the suited ashes, and enough blankets to secure it, he helped the crew gently move it through the tunnel and into cavern where the battery was.

With Boris’ help he carefully exited the chamber, walked through the open doors of the outer chamber, and over to where Jonesy was waiting to take them up to the mother ship.

Ten hours later two excited doctors, Suzi, Martha Von Zimmer, Petra Bloem and several of the crew from the biology and chemistry departments, waited as the canister was carefully passed through the docking port. For the first time, America One had an alien aboard. What really surprised VIN was that Fritz was also there, weak and pale, but walking. Somehow, Petra and Martha had awakened the mind of the man he considered a good friend.

As carefully as they could, two men carried the canister up to the midlevel where the doctors would carefully open it inside the sterile room of the biology department.

VIN went up to his apartment. He was tired, had seen enough of aliens for one day, and dreamed about Atlantis, while his wife and others excitedly speculated about her husband’s findings.

“A small sample was cut away from the alien’s space suit,” Ryan reported to the flight crew assembled in the Bridge two days later. “The material is not too different than our own, but constructed differently, and much, much thinner. It seems to have a metallic texture to it and I would be surprised if the makeup of the suit is nothing other than our Nano-Silicone, but more refined, or shall I say, designed. The crew is working on a copy right now. The helmet has been removed. Kathy, my wife, is very excited, and is acting as my liaison between the sterile room and the Bridge.” As he said that his wife arrived with coffee and avocado sandwiches.

“Avocados off Suzi’s tree; the bread and all its ingredients, grown in our cubes and baked by Mr. Rose. I think it is definitely time for Mr. Rose to give me cooking lessons. The guy is a master of all trades!” smiled Kathy once she and a young helper handed out the steaming mugs of coffee. “I’m on cafeteria duty at the moment and Little Joe Morgan, here, actually knows how to cook better than I do,” she said, patting the ten-year-old’s head.

Little Joe Morgan, one of the youngest children born on Earth, belonged to a family of two scientists, both in the biology department. He was one of five young boys aboard, and 13 girls, including all the children born before the flight, during the flight and while they were on the odyssey. The latest birth, only two days earlier, was a girl. Suzi was monitoring the three current pregnancies, with the next birth still a week away.

Ryan thanked his wife, and continued with the meeting. There wasn’t much more to say about the alien. It would take weeks before details of the body would be released.

“I believe that there must be more bodies somewhere in the underground chambers,” VIN said. “Why would they have nearly 50 morgue drawers if they only had three crew members? I believe there must be some in other areas that maybe didn’t make it to the morgue.”

“Or the three we found were already deceased and were awaiting transportation back to their planet,” suggested Boris. Everyone nodded at this suggestion, agreeing with it.

“The cavern on the little planet, Blue, heading to Jupiter looks the same,” added VIN. “Maybe we found the morgue by mistake. Maybe the rest of the crew were aboard the planet heading for Jupiter?”

“Well, since I haven’t been down there, and I have had a lot of time to contemplate other ideas, can I make a suggestion?” interjected Captain Pete. Ryan, the astronauts, and everyone else turned towards him. “This little round planet, asteroid, or piece of rock we now call Blue, travels in approximately the same orbit century after century. To my way of looking at this, and to add to what Ryan said, this planet could have been a transportation system, and also the resupply system for this Martian base, and maybe several others dotted around the solar system.”

“You are suggesting that these aliens came from one of the planets it frequents every 17 years or so?” Ryan asked.

“That seems a logical assumption to my scenario, until somebody comes up with one better,” replied the Captain. “This planet passes Earth, Mars, and Jupiter every second or third pass, and Saturn every four or five passes. That includes the mentioned planets, and all their moons, and that is a lot of moons.”

“So these aliens could have come from our own moon?” Jonesy asked intrigued at this idea.

“Correct, Jonesy,” the captain replied, “or from Earth itself, or Titan, Europa, or any of the dozens of moons around the larger planets. Or even Mars could have been their initial home and things here got too hot and the alien population emigrated in search of new places to live. I’m beginning to believe that they could have even come from our own planet hundreds of centuries ago.”

“But wouldn’t that show up in the history books?” VIN asked, his dreams coming back to him.

“Earth didn’t have history books 10,000 years ago,” replied Ryan, “it was before recorded time. “If they left around the time of Jesus, there might have been a story handed down and recorded in history books or the Bible; but, we only acquire knowledge about times that precede that through archeological digs and carbon dating. There is no way that we would ever know about a tribe, a modern human tribe, inventing nuclear bombs 50,000 or 100,000 years ago. Nor will future generations of humans find any of our current relics if we terminate ourselves on Earth, say 500,000 years in the future.

“So these aliens could be a human civilization from Earth that was never found, or never excavated?” VIN asked.

“Correct,” replied Ryan. “Think of the Romans, 2,000 years before modern civilization, or the Greeks maybe a 1,500 years before them. What do we have before the Greeks, say 5,000 years ago? We know hundreds of tribes lived on what is now American, European, Asian, and African soil. We found their relics and bones.

“Atlantis,” stated Jonesy, and everybody was suddenly silent, and looked at the person they often never took seriously.

“Why did you say Atlantis, Mr. Jones?’ Ryan asked. “Even he hadn’t thought about a myth that could only be a myth.

“Maybe these people are from Atlantis, knew their city was disappearing into the sea, and had the knowledge and capabilities to go somewhere else?”

“Not bad, Mr. Jones, not bad,” replied Ryan smiling. “I think Atlantis was about 3,000 years ago,” he suggested.

“Double that,” Boris corrected. “Mythology states Atlantis was sunk sometime between 9,000 and 3,500 years ago by Poseidon, a Greek God. The city was supposed to be attacking Greece, and Greece in those days was a very new nation. Mythology also states that the city was destroyed by an earthquake or a Tsunami, and its location could be one of a hundred places on Earth. As a scientist, I feel that Atlantis might stay a myth, but other civilizations could have existed, ones that left earth with no telltale details of ever existing.”

“I think we are so far away from the real facts that we are wasting our meeting time. I’m sure Frau Von Zimmer, the biologists, and the doctors will come back with totally different information,” Ryan continued. “Also, I like Mr. Jones’ theory of Atlantis, but I’m sure there were hundreds more that were never destroyed by Poseidon, a myth unto himself.”

With much thought still concentrated on early human civilizations, the meeting continued with VIN describing how he opened what looked like a power connection in the wall in the morgue. Ryan agreed that Igor, the real onboard expert in the field of electricity, should be taken down to work out how to connect power to the opening. Maybe it would open the next door, or portal into another world.

The final discussion was about hitching a ride to Jupiter on Blue. Who should stay on Mars, if anybody, and should they even be thinking of leaving the red planet where they had already found a new home?

For a whole hour, ideas were contributed for the next stage of the mission. Even Suzi and Martha were brought in to give their views of staying on Mars, or heading further afield. Both ladies had different ideas, and again, VIN was quite shocked to see Fritz Warner with them.

“So,” Igor contributed after additional discussion, “I joined this dream of Ryan’s to explore the solar system. I agree that we should develop a habitat on Mars and agree that several of our group, who really want to, stay behind. But, with new information about aliens and speculation about how they may have died, perhaps nobody should stay. We, aboard America One, cannot just zoom across the solar system and save lives on Mars when in need. If anything goes wrong on Mars, the crew could become isolated like these aliens. Of course we would leave behind a shuttle and a freighter or supply capsule. With these ‘lifeboats’ the crew could reach Earth. With America One, once we go further out into the solar system, we will cross boundaries of no return. So far we can get back in the emergency craft with supply capsules to Earth from as far as Saturn. But what happens if we are hit by a passing asteroid, or destroyed trying to get through the asteroid belt? Or attacked by something unknown or some of our craft or supply capsules are destroyed on a faraway moon? From here on, we are entering extremely dangerous territory. My feelings are, if it happened to these aliens, human or non-human, it could quite easily happen to us. I feel we should find out exactly what happened to these poor space travelers before we place ourselves on different planets. Who knows? It might be a freak of nature in the universe which destroyed them, and we could be walking straight into the same situation blindfolded. I also believe that since this is the very beginning of our odyssey, we should all stay together, as one, until we are experienced space travelers.”

The crew agreed completely with Igor. Even Ryan was surprised at the depth of his friend’s thinking. A born optimist, he never thought that too many disasters could be lurking out there, waiting for them. He only thought that getting through the asteroid belt was the one possible disaster to be beaten by the team.

Two days later, with the next shipment of glass panels, and fresh crew, VIN, Ryan and Boris returned with Igor, who was one of the most recent to go through spacewalk school. Igor had never wanted to spacewalk, but the thrill of seeing a new world down there inspired him to learn the art. Not including the children and babies, only five members of the entire crew had never spacewalked.

The scientific crew had not been idle since they had been in the mother ship. In addition to the continuous production of the Nano-Silicone glass panels and graphite rods, they also developed a smaller space suit to fit a child between the ages of eight and twelve; by the time they reached their teens they would fit into adult suits. A baby bubble space suit was also in design. In addition, the lightweight material worn by the alien was something new and exciting and several scientists were already trying to copy the design of the material.

As a scientist, this was the moment Igor had waited for his whole life: an opportunity to study new ways to enable survival using electric power, nuclear power, computers or whatever other sciences the aliens had mastered. The alien bodies were pure biology to Igor. It was their sciences that really interested him. He was the most knowledgeable person aboard ship in electronics, electricity, computers and astrophysics. Igor knew that down there in Alien Land, there were electronics never before seen by modern civilization. How could these space travelers have arrived on Mars without them?

The few days away revealed to the returning crew how hard the build crew worked on the ledge. Two of the three outer walls, and the double wall of the larger chamber were up, sealed and supplied with helium to compensate for the higher amounts of radioactivity charging through the Martian atmosphere. The Rover had moved two feet from its last position and was looking at another rock. It was surreal, VIN thought, to see the contrast of how much one set of humans was achieving compared to how little the other side was accomplishing.

It was time to find out how these aliens lived.

Chapter 5

Wow! Never seen that before!

For the umpteenth time, VIN was first through the tunnel to the ladder which would take him up to the alien cavern. This time there were four men behind him, Boris, Ryan, Igor and Vitalily. Igor had a computer laptop and electrical testers used on Earth. Sometimes the simplest devices worked. Vitalily dragged up the cables which had been connected to the nuclear battery, placed in the cavern below for safety.

Nothing had changed in the morgue and, with the door open, they could all enter. Both Igor and Vitalily wanted to de-suit in the chamber. How could they figure out how a system worked wrapped up in a space suit?

VIN undressed with them. He could at least talk to them and, without his suit, he had Boris’ Plasma Taser and his Bowie knife if there was any trouble.

Igor was the most excited upon seeing the cavern and entering the first located chamber. VIN could see it in the excitement in his eyes. The typically quiet Igor was never so upbeat.

As soon as all were undressed and in long johns (VIN’s suggestion; it was cold down there), Igor looked at the electrical outlet VIN had opened in the wall.

“It is totally dead, made out of some sort of ceramic material,” Igor determined after testing to see if anything was live. “Maybe they used gypsum in alabaster form from here to make this, whatever it is.”

“How many holes are there in the socket?’ Vitalily asked.

“Eleven,” Igor responded. “Physics and electricity are much the same across the universe,” Igor added not turning away from the socket. “The largest hole, I bet is the ground, or the main power connection. I would say the latter.” Vitalily agreed with him and over the course of an hour they discussed each hole.

Igor connected certain wires from the now decapitated grips, the same cables VIN had used. VIN wasn’t an electrician, not like these guys, and he watched as they fed in several wires separated from the others from the power cables.

“Looks more like a computer connection to a computer screen,” VIN suggested.

“I think you are on the right track,” replied Igor. “I bet this is a positive, maybe a couple positive, a negative, a ground, also video, sound and even holes connected to gauges, like atmosphere, temperature, even radioactivity, all coming through one connection. This is like a Rubric’s cube. I just wish they were color coded.”

“So they could determine what was in this room from their headquarters, or command center?” VIN asked.

“I’m sure every room we are going to find will have the same connections. I just wonder where the connections went to. It looks like something was connected to this unit, but what?”

“Maybe light or laser connections?” suggested VIN, and he got a slap on the back from Vitalily he never expected.

“Of course!” Igor said, standing up and acknowledging VIN. “You are so in tune with the universe, Mr. Noble. What the hell were you doing in the Marines?” he laughed. “Of course! These terminals or connectors could feed laser beams or light beams through them.”

“That is what I thought when Boris and I were on the asteroid,” VIN added.

“Yes, I believe you are right. Maybe that circle you guys found was a plasma circle of defense, a sort of shield against outside space and its radioactivity. Ingenious!” shouted Igor.

Ryan and Boris, still in spacesuits, were trying to figure out what everybody who was undressed was so excited about.

“You mean a wall, a barrier against the outside?” VIN asked beginning to get lost.

“Yes, I believe you found a shield against space, something much like a laser or light shield against the outside elements, and if that asteroid had a shield, I bet this place has one too.”

“Wow!” was the only word VIN got out.

Igor and Vitalily discussed the possibility of feeding electricity back through the plug, or whatever VIN thought it was, into where the system led.

After two hours, the two men were finally satisfied that they had wires in a few of the correct holes; VIN wrote on the white board for Ryan to give juice for a second or two only, and on low power. The power came on and suddenly a second door slid open in the far corner of the room where they were. This time the door opened silently, with no noise and disappeared into its recess in the wall. The metal joined back together and it was if there had never been a door there.

“Well that opens up the next room,” stated Igor excitedly. “Vitalily, check the air change before we go in.”

A minute later, standing close to the door with his arm inside the new room, Vitalily told the two that the readings were nearly back to normal. There was a slight reduction of oxygen and an increase in carbon dioxide, but most importantly, there was no severe reduction in pressure, and it was safe to enter. VIN was back to breathing in hard.

Carefully, the three men who were not very diplomatically outfitted, peered into the next room. Ryan and Boris, more formal in full spacesuit attire, joined them to possibly meet alien beings. The room was dark and empty, and Igor wrote a message on the whiteboard to be relayed to the battery room: I want 20 percent power for 60 seconds. Ryan relayed the message over the intercom and as the power surged up the cable, the room in front of them changed color, and the walls began to glow slightly.

“Not only is the wall covering a protection against the outside, but I think the light emanates from the metal, which may also control the heat for the room. I just had a notion, thinking about your defense shield,” Igor said to VIN.

“A pretty pink color?” asked VIN. Igor asked for 30 percent power and suddenly the walls glowed white, the room lit up and a faint humming could be heard from behind the walls. “Leave it at that power setting for now,” wrote Igor. “Vitalily, Geiger counter, please.” The Russian turned on the Geiger counter and it omitted no sound. There was zero radiation in the room.

VIN looked around. Several round covers had opened showing three possible doors around the new room, one to his left, one directly in front of him, and one on the wall to his right; the last was where the humming was coming from. In the middle of the new room a globe two feet in diameter was perched on a two-foot high pedestal. He wandered over to the ball, while the two electricians returned to the morgue explaining to VIN that they needed to add more wires into more holes.

The ball was perfectly round, or was it? VIN’s hand slipped over the cold metal surface which was as smooth as glass. The lights suddenly cut out as he was touching the ball, the power must have been turned off, but he could see light from the lamps placed in the morgue. The round ball was covered in the same metal that covered everything. Then he suddenly understood what this metal was: a protectant against the air, the cold, and the extremities of space. Ryan sent the message board around ordering everyone to get dressed, helmets on.

“Can you hear me?” VIN shouted into his intercom once Boris had helped him on with his helmet, his now gloved hand again on the globe.

“Da,” Igor responded, “I’m now dressed, so is Vitalily.”

“I know what this metal is. It coats everything. It protects everything it covers from decay, or bad air, or cold, or even outer space. It has been on everything I have ever found on both planets. It is like a seal covering the equipment when not in use.”

“I think you hit the nail on the head, VIN,” Ryan said.

“You have made a correct assumption, now don’t touch anything,” continued Igor. “I’m testing the electrical socket. It might change something. Boris, increase the power to 40 percent. Turn power on now!”

Suddenly the humming started up, the same lights came on, much brighter this time, and the globe in front of VIN’s eyes changed color from silver to something he didn’t believe. It was an exact replica of Earth, and he was staring down at the planet they left over a year ago.

“Africa looks different. Very different! There is a red dot in the middle of the “Head” of Africa, and the “Head” of Africa doesn’t show the Sahara Desert; it shows a green belt right across from east to west, and even greener than any other part of the continent. Wow! Never seen that before!” he exclaimed, not over the intercom, but to himself. He had passed over this exact area a hundred times while in orbit. “Guys, leave the power on exactly how you have it. Come and see this!” As his gaze shifted from the globe he was staring at, he beheld a fully computerized or electrical command system, like the entire Bridge of America One; it was on the other side of the wide doorway that he did not see or hear open, to his left. But, what really stunned him was that the entire rock wall on the opposite side of the room had either opened or disappeared, and he was looking directly outside, outside the cliff and right into the Martian atmosphere itself, except that there was some sort of barrier between him, the new room, and the outside.

“For heaven’s sake, Igor, tell them not to turn the power off,” VIN shouted. “The whole side of the cliff has opened, like a bloody cave door to the outside. If they turn the power off we could lose our atmosphere.”

Ryan and Boris entered to see what VIN was babbling incoherently about. They were rooted in shock at seeing three newly opened doors and VIN standing in a chamber that one of the doors opened into with his hand on a globe of the Earth. VIN turned to them and beckoned them forward.

Ryan immediately saw what VIN was staring at: a hole in the cliff wall about twenty feet wide and ten feet high. The outer wall, the rocks, and the cliff face to the outside atmosphere were gone. He and VIN were staring directly into the atmosphere of Mars. Protected by his spacesuit, Ryan quickly walked over to the wall and realized that it was actually still there; it was like a hologram from a camera that depicted the outside. The wall was still there, except that it had become invisible, like a glass window.

He beckoned the others over and their hands played on the smooth wall/window.

“Is anyone outside of the outer chamber?” Ryan asked into his intercom.

“Yes, a couple of us working on the panels,” one man responded.

“Look up, look up to the cliff wall. Can you see any difference?” Ryan asked the man.

“Holy crap! There is a massive hole in the cliff! It wasn’t there before. Is that you, Boss? I can see five astronauts, clear as day! I can’t believe it! Everybody look up. A large hole in the cliff has just opened up. You guys look like you are staring out of a screen in a drive-in movie.”

Ryan felt the wall as far as he could, just to make sure that there was a barrier between the outside and inside. It was as if the wall had never moved. It hadn’t, it was still there.

Everybody, inside and out, stopped what they had been doing and stared with disbelief at what had been the rectangular slice of cliff wall directly above the outer chamber they were working on.

It took a full minute before Igor, the first to regain a sense of reality, moved. In front of the clear wall was a command console about three feet high; it looked like they had found the command center, or at least something to do with the controls of the cavern.

For the first time, VIN and Boris saw lettering above and below numerous buttons and dials, all of which resembled the controls they found on the walls, albeit much smaller.

“I’m afraid that if we turn off the power, something may go wrong. Until we know more about the workings of this cavern, we could push the wrong button and something could go amiss. I want full suits in here until further notice.” Ryan ordered.

Boris brought in two lights, and then Ryan asked that the battery be turned off, then on again a minute later. The room went dark; their lamps lighted the command center, the wall reappeared, and the door closed behind them sealing them in. He had been right. It was not a place to walk around without power. They waited a full minute and the power came back on, the door opened, the walls glowed and the outside view could again be seen.

“Igor, Boris, Vitalily, figure out how we can get continuous power into this system. We can afford to part with one nuclear battery for the time being so we can wire it up to keep this system running. It just means that one of the shuttles will lose its laser weapon, which is no big deal out here. We need to be protected in here, so let’s find a room, or a cupboard where we can keep the battery sealed up until we find some sort of power room.”

“One of the body cabinets in the morgue?” suggested VIN. All agreed and the spider was activated to laser two holes big enough for the thick electrical cables to protrude from the cabinet. They lifted the battery up the shaft and into the morgue; then VIN lifted it into a cabinet and closed it. VIN was on the button; no radiation was being emitted from the battery in the closed cabinet. This metal, whatever it was, worked well.

Twenty-four hours later they returned to the morgue on their next spacewalk shift to find that the spider had created two holes large enough to squeeze the thick cables through. Ryan brought some of the soft Nano-Silicone to seal the holes around the protruding cables and, once this was done, Igor and Boris reconnected the wires as they had done before.

“What about our time?” Ryan reminded the team. “We have sixteen minutes before our suits run out of energy. Let’s call it a day, leave the power off, and return in twelve hours.”

Reluctantly, the crew put down their tools; the spider was put in dormant mode, and the cavern was closed and sealed.

Peering up at the cliff wall, the outside workers showed them where the hole had been and where they had stood. The lower edge of the hole would be a foot higher than the top of their outer cavern; Ryan was to beginning to suspect that building these chambers was a total waste of effort.

Ryan wanted to know what VIN had seen on the globe of Earth. They were in the supply cylinder relaxing with the five other men while their suits powered up.

“Africa, and the entire Sahara region was green, like a dense belt of vegetation around the equator, just like the Amazon,” VIN replied. “I have orbited Earth so many times the entire planet is fixed in my memory.”

“Who remembers their history or geography? Anyone?” Ryan asked. Nobody could remember when a green Sahara might have existed, so Ryan called up to America One. The ship had risen over the horizon several minutes earlier. Ryan asked Captain Pete who thought that it was millions of years ago, the last ice age. That was impossible so he asked Suzi for her opinion. Suzi knew of a more recent time, but the real brains on the ship, Martha Von Zimmer, the walking encyclopedia, as Jonesy called her, came to the mike.

“Ja, the most recent time the Sahara was green, was only about 10,000 years ago,” she replied shocking the men listening down on the surface. “I have been discussing the exact era with Fritz and Petra. ‘When the Rains Came’ was a thesis I did in university for one of my examinations, which one I can’t remember, but it was fascinating to me, and I remember my writing well. Herr Warner did the same thesis exercise as well, and we were discussing what we had both written. Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile Valley, but around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land. This opened the door for humans to move into the area, as evidenced by nearly 400 radiocarbon dates of human and animal remains from more than 150 excavation sites. The climate began to change 10,500 years ago, which turned the 3.6 million square mile Sahara into a savannah-type environment. This actually happened within a few hundred years, certainly within less than 500 years. This change was also researched by a colleague of mine who still works at the University of Cologne in Germany. In the Egyptian Sahara, semi-arid conditions allowed for grasses and shrubs to grow, with some trees sprouting in valleys and near groundwater sources. The vegetation and small rain pools drew animals well adapted to dry conditions, such as giraffes, to enter the area. Paintings of humans frolicking in the rain pools were depicted in rock art from Southwest Egypt during the same time, and they did not look to be Homo sapiens. If they were, they looked more like the Bushman from the deserts of southern Africa. That is a question that still nags me to this day. Why did the paintings look like perfect Bushman paintings, so far north? In the more southern Sudanese Sahara, lush vegetation, hearty trees, and permanent freshwater lakes persisted over hundreds of years. Nobody can tell exactly, but it lasted as long as ten to fifteen centuries. I personally believe more than that. I believe this time zone was about the same amount of the time our current human civilization has existed. Anyway, there were large rivers, such as the Wadi Howar, once the largest tributary to the Nile from the Sahara. Wildlife included very demanding species such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, and more than 30 species of fish up to two meters long.”

“Like the Amazon jungle?” VIN asked.

“Correct, Herr Noble, exactly described, but think of the animals as African, not South American. Between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, retreating monsoonal rains initiated desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move quickly to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara and again closer to the Nile and its tributaries. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara coincides with population returning to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society, or the time of the Pharaohs. Many of us who studied this time period believe that this green period in the desolate parts of northern Africa could have lasted even 2,500 years; its end brought about the Sahara desert and the disappearance of many of the people living in the area. My friend at the German university believes that civilized species of humans lived and died in this region, and were never mentioned in our history books. Lastly, this area, the green Sahara, was the place where much of the pharaonic society developed intellectual prowess such as, building systems, construction of their great pyramids, and their systems of government.”

“Atlantis?” added Jonesy listening in.

“You would think along lines of fantasy, Herr Jones, but some of us believe that the people of North Africa headed far afield and even ended up in places like Indonesia and southern Africa, not Greece.”

“You said that these people might have been civilized, maybe technically able to be equals to our current areas of technology?” Ryan asked.

“Ja… that is where my theories break apart, Herr Ryan. There has never been evidence of anything modern throughout the Sahara, other than what has been left by our current civilization and, the people believed to have ended up in Indonesia and a few other areas, were no more advanced than the Bushman, who many believe, moved on to Southern Africa.”

Ryan thanked Martha profusely. He was so glad she was aboard. Between her, Petra Bloem, Dr. Nancy Marten, and dozens of others, America One was a hive of knowledge.

“We need to take a concentrated look at that globe,” stated Ryan, deep in thought. Why does this alien globe show Earth, Africa and a period 10,000 years ago?”

“Maybe these are the tribes that never made it into our history books, as Martha suggested,” replied VIN.

“So the aliens, or as you are implying, Mr. Noble, these Earth people who set up this base, could look like us?”

“Or Bushmen. They are short and dark and the Africa Bushmen don’t look much like Americans or Europeans,” added Jonesy. “I’ve been told that they are only four feet tall.”

“Exactly,” replied Ryan. “If we conflate what Martha told us, with the size of those bodies and spacesuits, the size is a perfect match.”

“And I was so looking forward to shaking blobby hands of little green men,” smiled Jonesy.

“I doubt that, Mr. Jones,” remarked VIN smiling at his partner. “Why would you, they don’t brew Budweiser!”

While the five men eagerly waited for the 12 hours to pass, they chatted about what they might find next. VIN told them about the dreams he had been having, and that he thought that they would find more on the asteroid which was on its way farther out into the solar system. With a couple weeks remaining before America One had to leave Mars in order to catch up with the small round planet and catch a free ride to Jupiter, they were determined to uncover everything these people had built on this planet. During the 12 hour rest period, the remaining spiders had been activated to continue enlarging the tunnel into the cavern. The height from the docking port was increased to enable the men to walk upright to the cavern.

On their return to the surface to resume excavation of a different civilization, Igor hit the power switch. The globe returned, as well as the hologram opening to the outside. Ryan was consumed with exploring if there was a shield covering the ledge, so, rather than have the build crew work on their chamber wall, they were instructed to go to the ledge to look for little dots in the surface, and any wires leading to them.

VIN joined the other four, the only crewmembers allowed in this area, and saw that the globe still showed planet Earth in all its glory. Ryan, Boris, and Igor were examining the globe; it was exact. Somebody must have been in orbit around the planet to get such accuracy. There were no signs or marks on the planet, only a red dot placed in the middle of the green Sahara region; there also appeared to be a very low, white snow line that extended down the U.S. East Coast to Key West in Florida, and covered most of Europe right down to the shores of the Mediterranean.

VIN then looked towards Boris, who was studying the console and all its dials and switches, and was taking notes.

“Trying to figure out the dials?” VIN asked.

“No, the scribbles, or letters around each dial,” replied Boris. “It is like Chinese, or hieroglyphics. I think I should take photos of the letters and let Frau Von Zimmer take a look,” which he did with a small camera.

VIN felt he was out of the loop. The other four were deep in thought or conversation. As they were all suited up, he could hear what they were saying, but he couldn’t see as much as he would like through the visor. He suggested to Ryan that he would learn more if he took off his helmet; he also wanted to listen for the hum he heard before and try to locate its source.

Gradually Ryan gave in and asked Igor to help VIN off with his helmet. The temperature in the room was 52 degrees, the air a little thin, and the pressure a hair over safe levels. Ryan ordered the last tank of air to be brought up; after that they would have to wait for resupplies from above. VIN drank from the life-giving tank.

The first thing Ryan did was give him the white board. The boss looked serious through his helmet visor. He wrote, Will connect breather to tank before its empty as back up. VIN gave him the diver’s sign that he understood and listened to the room while the others got back to work. The humming sound was coming from the rear wall, opposite to where the hologram was showing its movie of the outside.

Carrying the tank of air, VIN walked towards the rear wall of the room that held the globe, where one of two other security panel covers had opened up showing some sort of controls. He inspected the glass face with his naked fingers and noticed that it was glowing like an LED light, and looked blue on his skin. VIN thought he detected life in what he thought were door openers. The panels were all only four feet off the ground. He placed the palm of his hand over the glass face; nothing happened. He exerted pressure on the glass face, still nothing happened, He tapped it, swiped his hand over it, first slowly, and then quickly. The damn thing reminded him of a self-checkout station in Home Depot, when an item’s barcode won’t scan.

After a few seconds of thought he decided to look into the blue glow inside the glass panel to see if anything inside might reveal more secrets to the controls.

Ryan was watching VIN, smiling at his antics, when he saw him kneel down and gaze directly into the panel. Suddenly, a blue light shot out and shone directly into VIN’s eye. He didn’t know if VIN could see it, he hadn’t jumped back or anything, and Ryan bounced over to the non-helmeted man. He was too late.

Chapter 6

So that is how you open these doors!

VIN experienced the odd sensation of having his eye flashed by the glass panel, as though it was photographed using a flash bulb. It blinded his eye and he closed it and opened the other eye.

He stood up and felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Ryan, whose body language communicated concern. VIN turned back to the wall and slowly opened his momentarily blinded eye. Next to the glass panel, part of the wall disappeared and a narrow doorway opened revealing a very small room that looked like an electrical, or power, room, filled with what appeared to be strange electric boxes, most of which had flashing red lights.

Igor and Boris came over rapidly. It seemed that VIN’s eyeball had hit pay dirt. VIN pointed to the second panel on the far wall. The men entered the middle room and approached the new panel with the hope of opening it as well. This one was different; it had a red light inside the glass panel. VIN tried to open it with his eye, but this time nothing happened. The light inside the panel just continued to glow red.

Twenty minutes later, as Boris helped VIN put on his helmet, the scientists returned to their previous conversation. “I believe this control system is what we are looking for,” Igor told Ryan. “If there is a protection shield out there, this one, the largest control box, must be the master control, but how do we connect power from the one we have working to the one we want to work?”

“Connect them all up by splitting the wires from our batteries?” VIN suggested.

“But the other boxes have no terminals, or plugs we can connect into,” Igor replied.

“Try to make a direct connection by bringing the battery into this room,” VIN continued. “Since you wanted a secure room to protect us from the battery’s radiation, wouldn’t this be the perfect room to store our battery in?”

“But how do we disconnect the battery? It will close all the doors and trap us inside,” Ryan added.

“By using a second nuclear battery from one of the other shuttles, or maybe the crew aboard America One can devise another power source,” replied Boris. “Maybe solar or even one of our spare hydrogen engine turbines; either unit can be installed on top of the cliff. If this shield activates, I’m sure it won’t be on the top of the cliff, more likely on the ledge.” A second battery was called for.

VIN tried to convince Ryan that he could not wear his helmet if he was to continue trying to find ways to open more doors. Ryan, always concerned with safety, reluctantly agreed, but stipulated that he must always have the tank of air with the breather next to him before he allowed Boris to remove his helmet.

There was only room in the smaller electrical room for two suited astronauts. VIN motioned to Boris to follow him. He grabbed the tank and they returned down the corridor to where the vertical shaft was, moved the steel floor over the hole, walked over the hole, and then opened the shaft for the crew underneath.

For the first time they entered the rear cavern with two of the mobile lamps and their helmet lights. Their lights weren’t needed as the power in the walls now glowed in this cavern as well. VIN noticed that the power jolt had opened two small round security wall covers in the cavern walls, one on the second floor, above where the walkway stood out from the wall, and the other at ground level on the opposite wall.

VIN asked Boris to unscrew his helmet and, after putting the breather in his mouth, he peered into the ground panel with one eye and was again blinded by the blue light. The same type of sliding door opened and he saw that the walls in the empty room glowed just as they did in the cavern. However, instead of many small handles glowing blue on the walls, there were only three; VIN opened them one by one to reveal large store rooms. When they had opened all of the doors they could find, Boris reattached VIN’s helmet.

“So that is how you open these doors! I still wonder why they would put the morgue right next to the command center,” VIN said to Boris when they could talk again. Of course, everybody else could hear them.

“The captain’s day room, or sleeping quarters would be next to the Bridge on a boat. Captain Pete has his day room pretty close to the Bridge.”

“Where are you, Mr. Noble, Boris?” asked Ryan over the intercom.

“In the second cavern, Boss, going through the rooms I can open. So far, nothing.”

“Just be careful, guys,” Ryan returned.

“Maybe that wasn’t a morgue, maybe it was a sort of command off-duty sleeping chamber, where the last three aliens who were alive decided to end their days,” continued VIN thinking deeply.

“Maybe they didn’t even know that they were going to die,” Boris suggested.

VIN nodded. “Then we might find more bodies in here.”

They didn’t find any more bodies, but they did find interesting containers that looked both ancient and familiar, such as old oil lamp vessels, and wooden cases made from Earth-like wood, with strange writing on them. Unfortunately, as soon as VIN’s hand brushed against a corner of a very ancient-looking case, the object disintegrated leaving nothing more than a pile of dust.

Before they destroyed anything else, Boris took photographs of the several dozen objects that would be the most likely to disintegrate. The six large urns, or jars in front of them that retained their integrity looked like they were made of clay, and were as strong as when they had been formed.

Both men realized that this must have been a main storage room, perhaps where the aliens kept their produce. Some of the clay jars were six feet tall, probably weighed a ton or more, and must have held at least 1,000 gallons, Boris surmised they only held liquids, but there were no taps, or faucets to open the jars.

After checking the two other storage areas, easily opened with the same handles that the cabinets in the first room had, their interiors viewed and photos taken, the two men returned to the larger rear cavern to scrutinize the room they knew to be on the second level.

Their intercoms crackled. “We have the second battery up here and will let you know if we play with the power. Igor is leaving the first battery in place and is connecting the second battery to the systems in the power room,” stated Ryan.

Carefully, VIN and Boris climbed the staircase to the upper level. Each of the steps was only six inches high and certainly designed for smaller people than VIN. Once again Boris removed VIN’s helmet—a task that was quickly getting old—and he was breathing air from the tank. VIN kneeled down before the glass panel and peered in. As before, the light flashed and, this time a large double door opened. The walls did not glow in this room, and something made VIN check the readouts on his arm monitor. It didn’t surprise him to see that no breathable air existed in this larger room. He was grateful that he had good air, took several breaths and had his helmet replaced.

This room was nearly as large as the cavern below. When VIN was secure in his helmet, the two men played their lights over at least a dozen horizontal beds along each side wall, each bed three feet from the next one.

What shocked both men was that each bed was occupied; twenty-four beds, two feet high, each with a pile of dust on its flat surface, in the shape of what appeared to be the remains of a body.

“Boss, I think we found the real morgue,” Boris said into his helmet mike. “Twenty-four mounds of ash, or dust, on steel beds.”

“Also, before we opened it, the room had zero oxygen, high levels of carbon dioxide, and nearly 92 percent nitrogen. Glad you made me get back into my suit, Boss,” VIN added.

“Don’t touch any of the bodies; Igor and I are on our way,” Ryan replied.

“Well, that’s makes the air in this entire alien base a new and dangerous mix. We will have to clean it up before we can get out of our suits again,” VIN commented as he looked around the room.

“Look,” said Boris. “Each bed has a sort of gold-toned metal case at the bottom of the bed.”

“I see,” said VIN, “like military barracks, back in the Marines. I bet the cases have the private possessions of the dead aliens. We need to number and record them so we know which case goes to each bed. Let’s start from the left side of the room and number the beds down one side and then up the other. Didn’t you bring some tags, or a notepad and marker, with you?” VIN asked Boris, who nodded.

By the time Ryan and Igor arrived they had six of the 24 gold cases outside the door. Ryan told them to replace them; they needed to be photographed with each bed and its pile of dust before being taken out. Once each bed was numbered and each chest labeled with the black marker, the four men completed the task of carrying out the small cases. They weren’t big or heavy, about two feet square and weighing less than 20 Martian pounds.

There was nothing more to see in the room. They searched for telltale signs of other doors, but there were none. The room was a dead-end, so to speak.

Next, the four examined the entire staircase and found two more door handles glowing red.

Looking inside they found exact replicas of the last room, 24 beds with the ashen remains of bodies and gold-toned chests. VIN couldn’t understand why the walkway completely circumscribed the cavern if it only went up to rooms along one wall. It was the same with the last door he had tried to open on the first level. It seemed to require a higher authority than just somebody’s eye. He was sure they were missing something.

VIN had no interest in viewing dust piles. They were unrecognizable as bodies without the spacesuits the first three bodies were wearing in the first cabinets. Even the tops of the beds were dust, except for the metal bases and legs. The bedding, or whatever was on the metal bases, must have also disintegrated, even without oxygen in the room. These bodies had been here for a very long time.

He saw the other three exit each room; each had marked and grabbed a case and they all headed down the stairs.

Twelve hours later they were back. Because they didn’t have down time on their previous break, they slept most of the twelve hours. Jonesy and Allen Saunders were in orbit on America One and wouldn’t be back for two days with more panels, so the crew just continued building outside, and the four men returned to the first cavern.

Boris and VIN marked and emptied the rear morgue’s 72 private boxes, and had them ready to ship up to America One. Meanwhile, Igor was ready to power up the largest of the aliens’ control boxes.

As far as anybody knew, Igor could be blowing them up. The crew outside was ordered back into the inner chamber, or inside the accommodation cylinders, and was instructed to find the four men if they didn’t hear from them through the intercom when the power came on.

The other three watched as Igor switched on the power to 20 percent from the one pound of plutonium-238 that was inside the second battery casing; it was connected to the larger of two black boxes, about the size of a personal computer.

Inside the rear power room nothing happened, except the silver walls, now nearly white, glowed even brighter. VIN peered outside to see if anything had happened and was shocked to see a vivid blue bubble begin to grow from the floor of the ledge. He told the others to look through the hologram, or window, to see a line of clear blue seawater building itself upwards, foot by foot. They rushed over to the console to watch.

The steadily growing blue wall did not cover the whole ledge, and nobody had found any lines of wire or small pimples of metal sticking out of the rock. The line, a circular shield, was growing a couple of feet further out from where their own new outer chamber ended. The empty air tanks and aluminum cylinders were outside the shield, and so was the empty landing zone. There was one thing on the ground right where the growing dome originated, a single canister, forgotten by somebody, and VIN watched as the light surrounded the sides of the canister.

The shield quickly grew higher than where they stood. While the other three watched, transfixed, VIN told them that he was going outside to check out this new alien protection system. How, he didn’t know yet, but he was sure he would find a way.

As quickly as it was safe and possible he proceeded through the docking port into the safe room. The spiders had completed the increase in height along the vertical tunnel during the last break period, so he walked along the tunnel, crawled into and through the port, and out into the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Several of the crew in the inner chamber were looking up and pointing at the growing blue plasma wall. VIN exited the inner chamber through one of the side chambers and then he was outside, alone with the monstrous, blue shield towering above him.

The others hadn’t yet seen that the blue plasma was also coming out of places on the vertical side of the cliff 75 feet above them. Looking up, VIN realized that the original sealed entrance he found on top of the cliff would also be covered, and would be inside the shield. Even Rover Opportunity, if it had traveled closer, could be inside the shield.

VIN checked the readings on the arm of his suit. There was no change to the vacuum of space inside the shield, and it proved something he already knew; these aliens had died of asphyxiation. Even though the shield hadn’t closed into a completely solid wall yet, he didn’t believe there was enough air inside the old caverns to fill an area of this size. The growing dome was massive. It was nearly 100 feet wide, and it would grow at least 100 feet high before it would contain the original hole twenty-odd feet back from the cliff face. It seemed that the shield just grew until the walls met up and sealed the entire area.

He watched it grow until the shield was completed, high above him. VIN then looked down towards the floor of the ledge. He could see through the wall easily. The dull Martian sky, normally a dark grey or brown, now looked as blue as a beautiful spring day on Earth. He suddenly realized why it was blue; for the first time since leaving earth, he felt as if he was back on Earth.

Others began to exit the cylinders outside the shield. “Can you guys hear me?” VIN asked looking at them on the other side.

“As clear as before,” returned one man looking at VIN through the wall.

“Is that you, VIN?” asked another. “You look like you are standing inside a large soap bubble.”

“Don’t get close, until I’ve checked it out. It might be deadly,” VIN replied. He walked over to where the canister interrupted the wall of the shield. He looked at the canister carefully. It was stuck inside the wall and it looked like the plasma, surrounded, and sealed itself around the canister perfectly.

VIN wanted to touch the canister, but decided against it. He looked around for a small pebble, found one, picked it up in his suit glove and threw it at the canister. Nothing happened. He looked around for something larger, but there was nothing; the men kept the ledge clean.

“One of you guys outside the blue wall, find a tool, something metal and throw it gently at the wall. I suggest you stand at least six feet away in case it bites the hand that threw it. Expect a bolt of electricity or something.”

One man returned a minute later with a nail used to tie down the spacecraft. VIN coached him on what to do.

“Okay, step back about six feet from the wall and gently throw it underhand with both hands. If it comes through the wall, I’ll catch it, and we’ll see what happens.” The man followed VIN’s directions and the nail flew towards the blue wall. It surprised everybody when the nail hit the wall, and just as it would have done if it hit a solid wall, it bounced off landing a couple of feet back.

VIN asked him to throw it again and gingerly the man picked it up—nothing happened to him—and he threw it even harder than the first time. This time the six foot long nail bounced back towards the thrower hard, nearly hitting him before it landed back on the ledge in front of his boots.

“I can’t understand this,” said VIN, totally puzzled. “The canister happily sits in the wall, yet something thrown at it bounces off. Weird. Joe, pick up the nail again and carefully touch the canister. The suit should protect you from any electric shock.”

Carefully the man did as ordered. He touched the canister gently with the nail. Again nothing happened and no burst of blue flame crept up the nail to his hand. VIN then moved closer to the canister, he carefully touched the canister. The readouts on the arm of his suit didn’t change, and he couldn’t feel if the canister was hot, cold or electrified. Then he knew what he had to do.

With everybody watching him, VIN touched the blue wall with his hand as gently as he could. He couldn’t feel anything, but he was surprised to see his finger pierce the wall and stick out the other side, right in front of Joe who was watching him six feet away.

“Joe, pick up the nail again, come and touch my finger with it. My finger is on your side of the wall.” Joe did and VIN could feel the man touch his glove with the point of the steel nail. VIN leaned forward slowly and allowed his hand to exit the shield. He noticed the shield fitted perfectly around the arm of his suit as he took hold of the nail.

Slowly, he pulled his arm back and his hand, still holding onto the nail returned intact. The nail didn’t interact with the wall and inch by inch he brought the whole nail inside the shield.

“Okay, first report, the shield repels objects hitting it with force, but will allow an object to penetrate slowly. I think that it is safe enough for me to try to walk through it, and I can’t think of any other way to try this. Men, if I fall over while coming through, get me into one of the cylinders.”

With his heart pounding, VIN moved close to the wall, and then slowly walked through it as if it wasn’t there. All he could feel was a slight drag on his suit, as if he was walking through a thin wall of water. Once through, he turned and hit the wall with his fist. VIN was again shocked; it felt like his fist hit a rubber wall, or perhaps a car tire, only slightly softer. It gave slightly, but didn’t allow his fist through. It was resilient but solid at the same time.

“Second report, the shield allows slow movement through it, but would stop a stone, or maybe even a bullet or rocket. I bet it is a defense shield, and I’m sure that an atmosphere will not escape through the wall. It is up, it’s safe and I have run out of tests. Ryan do you want me to do anything else?”

“Negative, I think we know why it was placed there,” Ryan replied “I still want to complete our outer chamber, in case it breaks down. Joe, you figure out how much air we need to fill this thing. It’s going to take us months, or years, to fill it with breathable air. Once our own outer chamber is complete, we won’t need this shield, unless it protects us against the wind storms. I think I would like to take this control box and test it around one of our shuttles or something to see if it gives us a defense shield against space junk, or bits of rock while travelling through space.”

“We might have a second shield on the asteroid,” added VIN. “It doesn’t look like these alien dust heaps need their shields anymore, and I’m sure we could use them on America One. There is nothing like a good shield when you need one.”

“I totally agree, Mr. Noble,” and VIN heard Ryan tell Igor to disconnect it and that he wanted it aboard America One.

Three days later, they had opened every door they could find in the caverns, and had tried everything they could think of to open the last door, with no success. Boris couldn’t figure out how the small people got the large earthenware urns into the caverns, and it seemed that secret was going to stay with them.

On the console in front of the hologram, Igor, Ryan and Boris tried everything to get all the dials and switches to operate. The cleaned them, lubricated them, even electrocuted the whole console, but it seemed that the whole console was dead, long dead, or long decayed.

Suzi and Martha Von Zimmer were transported down to check what was in the urns, and the 72 boxes of what VIN thought were the aliens’ personal items were transported up to Dr. Petra Bloem and her team.

After drilling small holes in the urns, water spouted out of two of them. Martha was prepared for this eventuality; she brought containers to collect the liquid which turned out to be just over 1,200 gallons of the clear, clean liquid, which must have been very frozen until the power was turned on. Five of the large urns were empty.

The globe of Earth, with its stand and table, was disconnected from its floor mountings. The power unit and the shield controller were carried carefully down the shaft and readied for a second test outside.

Ryan first wanted to see what this shield could do. He had VIN, Igor and Boris carry the control box and the nuclear battery closer to the edge of the ledge to see what would happen.

While Igor got the unit powered up, the ledge was cleared of all spacecraft. A few canisters were strategically placed on the ledge not far from one of the two accommodation cylinders; all of the test objects were in possible range of the blue shield.

“I’m ready, Boss,” Igor reported. The three-foot square control box, atop one of the steel beds from the morgue, began its lighting sequence.

“Are all our tests ready?” Ryan asked looking at the prepared ledge in front of them.

“The two accommodation cylinders are 100 feet away,” VIN responded. “One canister is 70 feet away, one is 40 feet away, and the nearest one is ten feet away. Other than the four of us, all of whom don’t need to be here, and the box of tricks, that’s it. I will stay with Igor. Ryan, you and Boris go back into our inner chamber and out of any danger,” the head of security ordered.

Knowing that their two crewmen weren’t in any real danger from the shield, Ryan and Boris returned to the inner chamber.

Five minutes later, with the whole crew in the chamber looking out, and astronauts in the spacecraft watching from the top of the cliff, Igor fed 10 percent of the battery’s power capabilities into the box.

Ten percent of the power was still a lot. On Earth ten percent could have powered up several big housing estates. Nothing happened, except a few more lights on the box came on.

“I think we need at least 20 percent power before anything happens,” stated Igor over the intercom.

VIN looked around. He didn’t have much to do and Igor wasn’t rushing. Igor was going to increase the power output in 10 percent increments. VIN, who was really just a bystander keeping the Russian company, let his mind wander.

He noticed the weather seemed to be changing. The daylight wasn’t as clear and even though the sun was more or less overhead, it wasn’t as bright as usual. The sun had dipped and wasn’t on as high a trajectory as it had been when they first arrived. Turning his thoughts to the chambers, which would be complete in two weeks, he realized that none of the crew had expressed any interest in staying behind and making this base a permanent outpost, especially since the remains of 72 bodies had been found. Knowing that the bodies, all piles of dust, had been found inside the alien caverns, this base was about as popular as a graveyard, which it essentially was.

“Going up to 30 percent; I believe we will see something happen this time,” stated Igor and VIN came back to his surroundings.

With the increase in power the blue wall began to erupt from directly around the box. VIN observed that the first wall seemed to have been choreographed by a field of connections they hadn’t found in the ground anywhere. Now the box was the only home the bubble had. Igor was sure that a bubble would form, first around him and then spread out. Ryan wanted to see how big the bubble would get.

As the shield enveloped Igor he felt a slight sensation inside his suit. Then he was inside the bubble. The bubble formed a prefect dome on the flat surface of the ledge. It had only 20 feet to go before it reached the rim. Igor increased the power to 40 percent and, like a balloon, the bubble grew rapidly. It had already enveloped the nearest canister and VIN, who felt like he was in the deep end of a large swimming pool.

Both he and Igor watched as, at 50 percent power, the shield reached the end of the smooth area of ledge and continued to seal even rough ground. It had enveloped two canisters and was about 100 feet across and 100 feet high.

“What do you think, Igor, should we increase power or shut it down?” Ryan asked.

“Our mistake was that we should have started in the middle of the ledge. I would like to shut it down and move it before we add more power,” Igor replied.

Ryan agreed and the bubble decreased as the power was reduced. VIN and Igor carried the table with the box, while Ryan and Boris returned to carry the battery, still connected by wires.

For the second time, the power was increased until the bubble was as big as it had been on the first test. By the time 50 percent power was running through the cables the bubble enveloped the three canisters and half of the living cylinders. One of the crew inside a cylinder reported that he saw no blue wall inside the cylinder itself.

At 60 percent, it continued to grow, although not as much, and at 80 percent, the bubble covered the entire ledge, everything on it, and was about to cover the hologram looking through the wall. At 90 percent it did; it was as long as America One. Ryan believed at 100 percent the bubble would envelop the entire mother ship, something he was interested in finding out.

Neither Igor, nor Ryan nor Boris wanted to load 100 percent of the battery’s power through the system just yet. It wasn’t good for the battery, shortening its half-life by a noticeable amount.

Igor reduced back down to seventy percent and left the battery humming away. Slowly and gently, the crew got used to moving in and out of the bubble. VIN threw a canister at the bubble and, when it rebounded, he caught it and gently walked through the blue wall slowly with the same canister on his shoulder.

An hour later, Igor powered the battery down and the bubble disappeared. The test was a success and everyone was impressed by this new piece of technology nobody had down on Earth. Earlier, Jonesy had turned Rover Opportunity around on top of the cliff to face the opposite way so scientists on Earth could not see what Ryan and his crew was playing with.

Chapter 7

Time to leave Mars, and a reminder of a day on Earth.

“Well, Frau Von Zimmer, I will assume that you don’t want to stay on Mars either?” Ryan asked the German several days later. Ryan, Igor, Boris, and VIN were back aboard America One. With the outer chamber nearly complete, and all of the alien’s equipment brought aboard the mother ship, there wasn’t much enthusiasm to stay on the planet anymore.

VIN wanted to get back to the asteroid. Jonesy wanted to test their new shield by moving SB-III away from the mother ship and getting Igor to test it in outer space. Ryan wanted that as well, but now he had a base nearly complete on Mars, it had used most of their supplies of valuable air to make an atmosphere in it, and nobody wanted to make it home while America One continued on its odyssey into the outer solar system.

Several of the biologists had wanted to stay, until, as VIN predicted, news of all the dead bodies spread through the ship.

“Nein, I do not want to stay with old dusty bodies we can’t get any information from,” she replied. “All we have found is the same as we knew before. These bodies died around 10,000 years ago, and all we can tell, even from the three we brought up inside the suits, was that they had two arms and two legs. I’m looking forward to Petra’s report on what was inside those small boxes. Did you know the boxes were encased in a pure gold layer?”

“And you can add one head to each of the bodies,” Jonesy commented, “and these aliens were far more technically advanced than we humans have ever been. That shield is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen.”

“And it seems it will take us quite a bit of time to dismantle the box to see how it works,” added Igor.

“What happens if you dissect the box and then you can’t get it to work again?” Jonesy continued. “I think my partner is right; we should see if the little blue planet has a second one on it first; at least then we have a backup while you guys figure out how it ticks.”

“I believe that our new Mars base will be secure for a long time while we take a ride around the solar system, “Suzi said. “We can always return to it in a few years, and that robot on the cliff top can’t get down there. Their base lasted for 10,000 years; ours will do the same, especially with nobody inside sucking out the valuable oxygen.”

“I bet the base will look exactly the same when we return, say in a decade or two,” Martha added. “Anyway, we scientists all want to go farther afield for more interesting research. Mars is the closest planet to Earth, somewhere to live when we are tired of travel, a retirement home for space scientists, or maybe for our next generations of children. We should go on and orbit the little blue planet on its way to Jupiter. I’m dying to check out Europa, as well as Jupiter’s other moons. I recommend that we collect a final load of water from our Martian watering hole, and then go walkabout.”

Everybody agreed. There wasn’t a real need to leave anybody behind, and since the odyssey had just begun, why leave humans deployed all over the solar system?

Over the next weeks, the outer chamber was completed. Stores, including soil, water, dry food, and several spare tanks of air were left for the next visit, or visitors. The flight crew returned to the watering hole twice and returned with 3,000 gallons of water. Now they had enough for fuel, oxygen and liquid consumption for the flight to Jupiter and even as far as Saturn if needed.

Nearly two months after the small round planet had passed by the red planet, America One left orbit to track their free ride, now 28 million miles ahead of them.

Having fresh supplies of hydrogen fuel, Captain Pete swung the ship out of orbit and allowed the massive pulse thrusters to get her up to a rapid cruising speed. After several hours of pulses, not heard or felt, the mother ship’s ion drives were activated. They were accelerated to equal the planet’s speed ahead of them and, would continue to increase their speed, which would allow them to catch up to their quarry within a month.

America One would reach speeds of 60,000 miles an hour within a week of the ion drives coming on line. More valuable hydrogen fuel would be needed for a week of thruster braking when they were within range of the planet, to slow down to enter into a steady rhythmic orbit around the sixty-mile wide piece of rock named Blue.

At last Jonesy could test the new alien shield around SB-III. Igor and his team of electricians spent a day in SB-III hooking up its outside nuclear battery to the alien box now strapped underneath the belly of the shuttle.

Igor had perfected a system of connecting the wires. He built a connection system where the wires would link to the smooth wall of the box, and then, wirelessly link the controls to the cockpit. It was ready for testing and Jonesy and VIN slowly maneuvered the shuttle out of the mother ship’s array of cylinders and edged away from the larger vessel.

VIN spent much of the time staring outside the cockpit. Jonesy could control the craft without his help and crept away from the ship. Mars was already another star in the sky, just a little larger than the other stars as it appeared outside VIN’s port side window.

The sun was a constant; always there. It took a long time for such a large body to grow small, and even at 51,000 miles an hour, they were creeping through space slower than a tortoise across a road. Earth was also just another small star and they were now in new territory, well over half a billion miles from Earth and getting farther away all the time.

Ryan left the last message for Earth before leaving. In the dust before Opportunity’s camera, it read “America One-heading for Jupiter-back in a few decades-see you around sometime.”

“Ready to start the alien shield defense system,” Jonesy communicated to the Bridge. Nobody had really put a name to the box or the magic it generated. Jonesy and VIN were going to allow the shield’s box, now strapped exactly halfway down the length of the shuttle, to power up for ten minutes. Their objective was to see how large the blue shield would grow, and if it stressed out the battery, the shuttle’s computer systems, or the thrusters while it was operating.

“You are now one mile off our starboard side. We are ready, Mr. Jones, when you are,” Ryan replied, watching the shuttle from the Bridge.

“We have video feed running and you can start her up. I suggest 30 percent and then hold it there for several minutes,” added Igor standing next to Ryan.

Fully suited up, the two astronauts prepared themselves for activating the shield. Everything in the cockpit was strapped down tight, all backup computers were live, and they themselves had videos running inside the cockpit, and outside to record what was about to happen.

At 30 percent, the same blue shield made its appearance from the box underneath them, and began to grow. The forward movement of the craft did not affect the blue wall. A beautiful round ball began to envelop the shuttle and, foot by foot, it crept along the shuttle’s fuselage in both forward and rear directions simultaneously.

“Increasing to 40 percent. How does it look from the Bridge?” Jonesy asked.

“Beautiful,” replied Ryan. “It is as far back as your tail section.”

“I see it still creeping along our cockpit windows, right by my helmet,” added VIN. “I don’t see any readout changes in the craft, or on my suit.”

“Okay, holding power at 40 percent. I have a question,” Jonesy interjected. “If it envelops our rear thrusters, what is going to happen? Are we going to explode?”

“How do you mean?” Ryan asked not getting what Jonesy was saying.

“We need continuous thruster movement, from side thrusters, and or rear thrusters, from time to time. What happens when I ignite the engines?” Jonesy asked.

“Well, that is what you are going to find out, Mr. Jones,” replied Ryan.

“I would bet that the manufacturers thought of that, whoever they were,” Igor commented. “I think thrust emissions could be classed as ‘soft emissions’ for the shield. Because the thrust out of the motors is not dense or solid matter, in an atmosphere like on Earth, it should not affect the shield. Those are my thoughts only, not fact.”

“Okay, increasing power to 50 percent,” continued Jonesy and VIN watched as the blue wall left the front of the ship and advanced out in front of them a foot at a time.

“The walls are not touching the craft, the shield has changed from a perfectly round ball to an oval circle. It seems that it keeps the same distance from the sides as it does from the ends of the ship,” stated Ryan. “It now looks like a peanut shell, or a cigar around your shuttle, Mr. Jones, Mr. Noble.”

“Well, it is about twenty feet in front of us and twenty feet above the roof of the shuttle,” added VIN.

“And only at 50 percent power,” added Jonesy, “and it is still growing, I think it’s time for my partner to head out and check what it’s like out there.”

Since VIN was suited up and ready for a spacewalk, he pushed the control lever to raise the docking port out of the roof.

“The cigar shape changed slightly to accommodate the expanded width caused by the rising docking port,” Ryan observed as VIN headed into the port.

VIN grabbed the cord and sealed the lower door to the port. He allowed the port to purge by sucking 97 percent of the air back into the tanks, to keep the valuable air within the shuttle; once he was down to a vacuum, he allowed the outer hatch to open. Gracefully VIN floated out.

The blue soap bubble picked up all the light there was out there. It looked much lighter inside the bubble than outside and slowly he let the cord out and floated away from the ship.

“I wonder if this bubble would expand all the way down to Earth, maybe even for a landing in our atmosphere,” Jonesy mused out loud.

“Yeah! And bounce all the way down the runway like a rubber ball. I don’t see it,” responded VIN, riling his partner from outer space.

“Well, we won’t try that for a while, Mr. Jones,” smiled Ryan.

“If you could, Jonesy, you could disappear inside your bubble, in your fancy Gulfstream, and head around planet Earth totally off the radar,” laughed Igor.

“Mr. Noble, we can see you. You look like a fetus in a cocoon through the binoculars,” added Ryan.

“I’m going to try and exit the shield using my jetpack,” VIN said.

It was very pretty in the blue bubble, but the color dimmed back to plain black when his head floated outside of it. His suit and his jetpack didn’t change anything. “I think Igor is right, my jetpack doesn’t change the bubble. I’m now three quarters out and can’t feel a thing. Let me hit the bubble as hard as I can.” Even with half his body still inside the shield, when he hit it with all the strength he could muster in space, his glove connected hard onto the bubble’s surface. He left his hand there, and once the initial impact was gone, he could immediately sink his hand into and out of the bubble, not feeling a thing. “I got it! How they designed this thing,” VIN laughed as he hit the bubble hard from inside, again hitting solid matter. “Ever smack your flat hand onto water? It’s like hitting a hard surface, but if you let your hand glide into the water, it just passes through.”

“Pretty close, VIN,” remarked Boris from inside the mother ship “but you don’t actually enter the water, a thin skin is always between you and the water, and I believe this is how this alien shield reacts. I believe that any laser beam fired at the shield will just add to its strength, from inside or out.”

Jonesy was ordered to increase the power another 10 percent and the shield increased, this time doubling in size. When Jonesy increased the power to 70 percent, the bubble extended about 100 feet from the shuttle, but it didn’t grow anymore, the shield just became brighter.

“It seems that it doesn’t extend out further than a certain distance, it just gets brighter and stronger,” VIN reported as he followed the bubble. To him it had certainly got brighter. Again inside the shield, he felt he was in the deep end of a large, bright blue, clear swimming pool.

Finally, when VIN was back inside, Jonesy ignited the rear thrusters; again, nothing happened. Somehow the shuttle’s speed increased and the bubble didn’t change. That blew Jonesy away.

Once the test was over, it was time to test it on America One herself. The box would be connected to the much larger, more powerful nuclear reactor underneath the mother ship. With 10 times the power, they would have to be really careful how much power they sent through the box. Too much and it could be destroyed.

An hour later, with the box closed down and the docking port back in its retracted position, Jonesy reconnected the shuttle to America One.

It had certainly been an interesting test. The next step was for spacewalking electricians to connect the box halfway down the underbelly of the mother ship, which put the alien box in the same location as the reactor.

With their workday over, the two astronauts entered the cubes, took the elevator up to the Bridge, debriefed, and then headed up to the pool deck. It was time for a swim and a few space beers on the loungers. During their four-month stay on Mars, they had certainly missed the inner luxuries of America One, and the stockpiles aboard, which had increased.

“So, gentlemen, today our settings are much more powerful using our reactor, than the one Mr. Jones used on SB-III,” Ryan said to the group gathered on the Bridge the next day. The crew had placed the battery onto the underbelly of the mother ship, and during a three-hour spacewalk Igor and Boris secured the cables to outside connections on the reactor.

“I believe two percent power to start with would equal the 20 percent used yesterday,” Igor calculated from the notes he had worked on earlier. “Under no circumstances can we go over nine percent. The shield has never been subjected to our raw power, and we certainly don’t want to damage the reactor or the walls of the ship.”

“We will start at one percent and carefully go up to eight,” replied Ryan. “Eight percent power from our reactor won’t hurt usage aboard the ship, and it will give the shield far more concentrated juice than Mr. Jones used yesterday.”

Most of the astronauts, Captain Pete, Igor, Vitalily and Boris were on the Bridge, the best place aboard ship to view the shield. Jonesy and VIN were half a mile off the starboard side of the ship, and were to record events from outside.

“We have cameras running, and we are ready for you to start the test,” VIN reported. They were not wearing helmets so they could watch what was happening without any distortion that might occur from looking through Plexiglas.

Nothing happened for the first couple of minutes; Ryan was holding the power down to one percent. At two percent the two men in SB-III saw the blue ball begin to grow. As expected, it seemed to want to cover any parts of the ship protruding out of its wall. The ball flattened out and stopped growing quickly underneath the craft, concentrating its energy on covering the cylinder tubes sticking out in three directions.

“Increasing power to five percent,” stated Igor and, the ball grew quickly.

“The blue wall has just about reached the upper cylinders,” Jonesy briefed the crew on the mother ship. “Now it’s creeping up the cylinder walls.”

“Both ends of the ship are covered and now you guys on the Bridge are about to go for a swim in a blue pool,” VIN added.

He was right. The crew on the Bridge watched in fascination as a blue line worked its way along the outside of the large windows, passed the Bridge infrastructure, and continued growing. Ryan and the other observers watched it stop growing about twenty feet in front of the Bridge.

“Just about over the cylinder roof now,” VIN informed them. “There, it has completely covered the craft.”

“We can now pump it full of air and begin sunbathing on the outer decks,” Jonesy joked.

“I would suggest heaters first,” replied Maggie, his wife, from inside the Bridge.

“Well, tell the boss to fly closer to the sun, then we can haul out the pool, and get enough radiation for the rest of our lives,” Jonesy added, making everyone aboard smile.

“We need to increase the size of the bubble,” continued Ryan seriously. “Igor, increase power to six percent.” The bubble grew and the light became brighter inside the bubble, and also inside the Bridge.

“Does looking through the bubble seem okay?” asked Boris.

“I brought dark glasses just in case for me and Mars,” said Suzi, holding Mars Noble; the two were wearing the glasses she brought. “If I keep my Polaroid glasses on, I can see through the bubble much easier than if I take them off.”

“Interesting,” replied Ryan. “Mr. Saunders, could you please get my spacesuit helmet from the dressing room? Also, Mr. Noble, I want you to get your helmet on and go out to view the bubble externally. The binoculars I’m looking through distort the view; it’s like being underwater and we need to complete our tests within our three-hour test schedule.”

Just as Ryan’s helmet was placed over his head, he noticed that the deep blueness inside of the bubble decreased somewhat. VIN reported the same effect when Jonesy helped him on with his. Jonesy extracted the docking port and readied it for his partner.

“It seems the bubble has stopped growing,” Jonesy observed when he returned to his flight seat. “Like yesterday, the bubble boundary is about 100 feet from the external points of the ship. It looks identical underneath the ship, as it does over the upper level, and in front and in back.”

“Any feedback on power output?” Ryan asked Igor.

“Negative, the reactor, and the shield—which I cannot gauge—seem fine. I’m certain the box was designed for long-term use and I think it is not necessary to halt the power. The first test is to allow SB-III to enter the shield while it is under power. If that is positive, then we can do a short thruster test. I don’t really want to use a Pulse thrust test inside the bubble until and unless it is absolutely necessary. If anything can harm, or damage our outer walls, it is a hydrogen pulse bouncing around inside the bubble. Remember what the smaller shuttle pulsers did to our hangars down in Nevada?” Everybody nodded.

“If we can get SB-III through the bubble, Mr. Jones, connect the shuttle back up to America One inside the bubble, and complete maneuvers with hydrogen thrusters only. With the success of that test, we will have achieved a dream of every science fiction fan: to have a shield against the destructive aspects of space matter.”

“What would happen if something big, like an asteroid hit us while we are in the bubble?” Kathy, Ryan’s wife, asked Igor.

“That I don’t know, but I’m sure the bubble would take most of the impact and, hopefully, America One would not be damaged when it bounced around inside.” Igor thought for a few seconds. “Since all of our electronics are still 100 percent operational in here, I believe the best way to diffuse the impact is to divert it beforehand and not have any impact at all.”

“Well said!” Ryan commented.

VIN went out for a short space walk to photograph the mother ship inside the bubble. The bubble didn’t look as blue with his helmet on, the difference being the glass of SB-III was made of polarized armor glass compared to his helmet’s Plexiglas.

Twenty minutes later came the first big test. With VIN still outside the shuttle, Jonesy was to slowly inch the craft through the wall, the operative word “slowly” of utmost importance.

By now Jonesy could command his beloved SB-III to do somersaults if anybody wanted him to, and he carefully aimed the shuttle’s nose towards the blue barrier. The space closed and, as slowly as possible, he allowed the most forward part of his craft—the particle deflection shield two inches in front of the nose—to touch the wall; the shuttle’s nose passed through the shield and into the blueness inside.

VIN was pulled along and hit the wall hard as he came in contact with it, bounced off, and floated halfway down the fuselage. He relaxed his hand and it and the rest of him slipped through the wall with the shuttle below him.

“I’m still using the side thrusters, and they aren’t being detected or deflected by the wall,” Jonesy reported.

“Three quarters of the shuttle inside the shield,” VIN added. “There goes the tail; okay Jonesy, we are inside the wall.”

“Preparing SB-III for a connection to the docking port,” Jonesy stated, as he worked the craft in-between the cylinders. “Turning inverted for docking. It is really pretty in here, like being in Earth’s atmosphere. Everything is clear and nothing looks distorted to me. Two feet from the port… one foot… three inches… ready to connect to the docking port.”

“You are connected to your port, SB-III, outer hatches locked, retracting docking port now,” a crewmember inside the mother ship conveyed over the intercom.

“Great! The most important test is complete,” Ryan said. “Now at least we know that our smaller craft can come and go as they please, albeit very slowly. Now we need to test the side and rear thrusters of the mother ship.”

For the next hour, the ship’s thrusters went through tests. The shield around them didn’t deter any thrusts or movements and the Bridge decided to leave the shield up permanently. It still worked after being dormant 10,000 years, so another few decades wouldn’t matter.

An unexpected and especially pleasant aspect of the shield was that it produced a sense of light coming through the windows. Instead of blackness and stars, there was a little reminder of a sunny clear day on Earth. Ryan wondered if this was part of the actual design; to remind the aliens, or first voyagers what a day in atmosphere looked like. Insulated from the blackness of space, the crew grew accustomed to a new sense of comfort and protection within the cocoon of the blue shield.

Chapter 8

The little round blue planet, or is it an asteroid?

Gradually, Mars was left behind as they crept closer to the asteroid in front of them.

America One couldn’t see or find the minute planet on its radar. The only way Captain Pete could follow the direction of the rock, was to rely on the computers and follow the programed path they had created based on its previous direction and speed.

Since leaving Earth orbit, life aboard the mother ship had become routine. Daily meetings between certain sections occurred either in the cafeteria or on the Bridge. Daily meetings were also scheduled within the sections of the ship: biology, physics, chemistry, fuel manufacture, water purification, the build and repair crew, engine maintenance, health, diet, and numerous others. Quite a few of the crew belonged to several of the discussion groups and had to tier their meetings.

Security was the smallest group, consisting of VIN, Jonesy, Boris, Igor, Ryan and Vitalily. One of the doctors, or even the biologists, was asked to attend if there was a security problem in their areas.

VIN often attended the biology discussions with Suzi and eighteen-month old Mars Noble. He also attended health meetings and get-togethers to discuss disease, diet and general health aboard ship.

This was to be a long voyage and no part of life aboard America One was taken for granted or escaped scrutiny for safety and possible dangers.

Ryan attended many of the meetings, and if he couldn’t make it, either Captain Pete or Kathy went in his place. Often in the health meetings there was little to discuss, except the everyday changes made by the crew. One became pregnant, another delivered another baby girl, one crew member wasn’t happy about the noise in the area around him, and another wanted to return to Earth. All these issues were discussed in a “think tank” where remedies were floated that might resolve the situations.

The topic of most interest was the babies. Still no baby boy had been born on America One. All of the last nine babies born in space were healthy baby girls. Three more couples had married since Earth, and six babies were on the way.

Both doctors, Martin Rogers and Nancy Martin, suspected that the ship’s lower gravity was, at least in part, responsible for the unusual gender bias. Doctor Rogers also wondered if it was the way the baby was positioned in the mother’s womb, while Doctor Martin suspected a lack of good, old-fashioned sunshine had something to do with it. Prospective moms were offered tests to see if the doctors could change anything.

In one apartment, newly married Joanne and her husband were trying for a baby boy. Extra gravity flooring was added in the family unit. After tests by the build crew, it was found to be 105 percent of Earth gravity and Doctor Rogers happily monitored the family’s daily life. In another apartment, one of the sun lamps was taken out of the pool room, to be used by both husband and wife for three hours per day. That couple, married for only two weeks, also wanted a baby boy. Doctor Martin was interested in following this family.

Other essential necessities that required daily monitoring were fuel usage, fuel manufacture, air manufacture and pure oxygen manufacture. The crew had used up important supplies on Mars, and the production of new breathable air was a long and difficult process.

Electrolysis was the normal way to separate both oxygen and hydrogen from the water collected on Earth and Mars. Oxygen gas was obtained by fractional distillation of air while hydrogen gas was obtained via the “water gas” reaction or the “steam reforming” process. The oxygen had to be added to the correct parts of nitrogen, argon, and a few other nondescript gases, then pressurized into tanks for storage. The lush gardens in the cubes performed enough photosynthesis on a daily basis, to turn exhaled carbon dioxide back into oxygen.

With limited amounts of water, and numerous uses for the liquid, it was worth more to the ship than all the diamonds delivered to Earth.

With the ship being driven forward by the ion drives, very little hydrogen fuel was being used, but more would be needed to slow the ship down, using the dozen side thrusters, when they needed to align the ship’s speed to the target. Once in orbit around the round planet, only small amounts of hydrogen fuel would be used to keep the ship in a perfect position. Captain Pete estimated that 26 months would be the time traveled before they would need to disengage from their orbit around Blue, if they wanted to visit Jupiter and her moons, and then get back into orbit about a year later.

On this orbit around the solar system, Saturn would also be a close flyby if they wanted to continue, but, like Mars, they would only have four to six months in the general area of Saturn before they would lose their free ride. Their return flight might not include the free ride with Blue, as they could take a more direct route from Saturn back to Earth when the time came.

To most aboard, the odyssey had already been a life event, and many knew that they might never see their blue home planet again. Several of the older scientists were already in their late sixties, and a decade or two made a lot of difference to them.

The younger children and babies would never remember that they were ever on Earth, and might be shocked at meeting Earth humans. So much was going to change in the minds of the crew, and Ryan was happy to know that now, even for him, there could be an end to this journey of advancement.

Many of the scientists could not be more grateful for being included on the odyssey. They were on the forefront of science and nothing else really mattered, as long as they might have the chance to one day share their findings. They documented their work and discoveries through journals, recordings and videos for delivery back to Earth, even if they were not alive.

Suzi and Mr. Rose, with their crew of seven did a wonderful job of feeding the crew; they were often helped at harvest time by VIN, Maggie and many of the astronauts. The chickens and rabbits were tasty, the meat had little fat, and the greens, fruits and other produce were turned into feasts for the crew on a daily basis during the long journey.

Jonesy, naturally helped Mr. Rose at bottling time, in the alcohol department, and often thought of himself as the official taster for the whole crew. Jonesy and VIN had also been banned by Mr. Rose on a couple of occasions.

As time passed, the asteroid, 200,000 miles ahead of them, came alive on the radar screens. That was the maximum limit a planet of its size could be monitored by the systems. The farthest the radars had plotted a planet, was the departure from Earth, at 490,000 miles.

Ten hours after the first dot appeared on the edge of the radar screens, the planet was verified by the computers from the lone spider’s emergency communications signal.

Captain Pete was on duty on the Bridge when Ryan arrived twelve hours after the asteroid appeared on the screens. The computers were only three miles off course in their forward direction.

“So we have six days of slowing before we can get a visual?” Ryan asked, grabbing his first cup of coffee.

“Six days, eleven hours,” replied Captain Pete. “I believe we will have visual, at least through binoculars, at 500 miles.”

There was no need to send out a shuttle or mining craft this time. It would be a waste of fuel, as they were intending to orbit this planet for two years before departing in the direction of one of Jupiter’s moons. They would have a lot of time to inspect the underground chambers VIN found, and Ryan wondered if they would reveal any new secrets or surprises. The whole crew was in for several surprises.

A week later, on cue, America One went into a permanent, slow orbit around the 60-mile wide planet.

The ship would orbit the small planet once every two hours; with the ship’s own revolutions, it made one’s stomach a bit queasy to look outside. The side thrusters were powered down to orbital mode and as little fuel as possible was used to keep the ship in orbit. In the Bridge, the movement was not as noticeable as it did not directly face the continuous revolutions of the asteroid, and it didn’t revolve like the rest of the ship.

The gravity aboard the ship, sometimes noticed in the upper level, changed somewhat. Some of the crew could feel the gravitational pull of the planet ever so slightly. Dr. Rogers thought this new pull of gravity could benefit the family he was studying.

VIN was eager to get back onto the planet’s surface. He had named the Planet DX2017, after the planet DX2014 he had found the diamonds on, and the current Earth year they were in, and the nickname Blue became less popular. DX2017, a real scientific name, was naturally accepted by the scientists.

Blue looked cold and hostile to anybody looking at it out of a window. To some it resembled a cannon ball heading through space to its target.

Once the Bridge had agreed to VIN’s new name suggestion, it was time to revisit DX2017. Jonesy would fly down with Ryan, Boris and VIN in Astermine One. Doctor Martha Von Zimmer naturally wanted a ride, and so did Igor and several other scientists, but the first flight down would be a reconnaissance flight with a duration of only three hours. A supply cylinder, now nearly empty of Earth provisions, was to be fitted out as a temporary housing unit on DX2017, just as they had done on Mars. They left the two cylinders on Mars well supplied for future visits.

On DX2017 there would be no friendly Rover Opportunity to visit, and VIN hoped they might find something new.

The shield was still up, working perfectly, and Jonesy eased the mining craft through the wall and into open space. As they increased their distance from the ship, the beauty of the shield became apparent. America One, revolving slowly, looked safe and secure in the shield’s blue bubble. They had become a little spoiled by the light and sense of security and the departing crew wanted to take the bubble with them.

Jonesy, used to landing on this desolate round rock as he called it, brought them down. The gravitational pull could be felt as soon as they were within a mile of the surface. The directional computer followed the radio emissions from the spider, still transmitting from the surface.

Astermine One came in, flared out and, like a helicopter, touched down on the planet they had left three months earlier. It was only in that brief time period they learned that they weren’t alone out there. Somebody, maybe from Earth, had beaten them into outer space.

It was tight in the cockpit and VIN was glad to exit through the docking port to ready the cord over the roof of the craft so that the others could climb down. The gravity—lower than the upper level on America One, but more powerful than on Mars—greeted him as he jumped off the last rung and onto the ground.

The spider was in the same position as they had left it. Boris began to awaken the dormant machine while VIN inspected the docking port they built on their last visit. It was powered up and ready, its solar panels working well.

He activated the outer hatch and headed into the port. There was still no atmosphere inside the tunnel and caverns; its new atmosphere was still being produced in the mother ship. His early warning signal—the hairs on the back of his neck—remained composed. He knew that the cavern was identical to the one they had excavated on the Mars surface and he knew what to expect.

He allowed the inner hatch to open, let the cord ladder descend into the darkness, latched the extra lamp onto his other glove and descended to the cavern floor where it was pitch dark. He left the lamp on and climbed back up to get more lights. He knew that Boris would have the lights trained on the surface above, and probably had the spider doing jigs around the hole.

Twenty minutes later he was back inside the cavern with Boris and two more lamps and their helmet lights illuminating the cavern. Nothing had changed. None of the rubble the spider had made to open the horizontal tunnel had been moved, and VIN felt confident to proceed. He knew that if he came across any aliens, they would have two legs, two arms, one head, and probably stand between four and five feet tall.

He needed the canisters to gain access into the horizontal tunnel, a height equal to his head, and waited for them to be lowered though the docking port and down the shaft.

All VIN had time to do on this first, abbreviated mission, was to confirm that the first cavern was intact, and that there was no sign of any other being, walking or maybe scurrying, around. There was nothing out of place, and he happily left the alien cavern and corridor. The next meeting, the very interesting one with Petra Bloem, was to begin when they returned to America One. That meeting had to do with what had been found in the personal gold-plated cases they found on Mars, and he wasn’t going to miss that one for all the gold on DX2017!

Chapter 9

Combs, mirrors, scrolls, jewelry and blank photos.

The cafeteria was filled with every crewmember not on duty. Even the children were present. Suzi had spiked the meeting with her famous chocolate cake, fresh coffee for the adults and hot chocolate—a real treat—for the children. Ryan was ready to begin the meeting as soon as the noise dissipated. He could see that everybody was excited. Petra, who had inspected the treasures for a whole month, ordered the scientists under her to release little or no information.

“Thank you all, quiet down please. Suzi, Mr. Rose the cake is wünderbar, and I was told that this is the last pot of coffee from the supply the Jones family purchased in Amsterdam.

“We are left with a mix of coffee that is space grown and from Salt Lake City. The Utah coffee will last one more year so be prepared crew. I really enjoy the pure space blend. Light, robust and tangy, like most of our crew here today.” There was mixed amounts of laughter.

“Petra is ready and, I assume, is going to blow your minds with the findings from the caverns on Mars. Dr. Bloem.”

Ryan sat down next to Kathy and sat his growing little girl on his lap. Like the rest of the earliest babies, Lunar was sitting up straight, crawling, and learning to walk and talk.

“Danke schoen, Herr Richmond,” began Petra, not the most willing of large group speakers. “Please, my English is not as good as my friend, Dr. Martha, so bear with me. My team of four and I have thoroughly gone through these exciting chests of personal belongings. Each chest is the exact same size, is gold-plated, and the lids seal perfectly. They are extremely well made and each has one exact kilo of pure gold plated onto an alloy of nickel and palladium, an interesting mix. The metal is every similar to rings, wedding rings mixed with gold, made around our world at the present time. Actually, the alloy inside the gold-plating is the exact alloy we have often seen in ancient Greek jewelry. Very exciting.” She took a breath and a sip of water.

“There are no locks on the chests; the owners did not think their contents would be stolen. There are also no names, or signs, or letters on the outside of the cases, but the gold layer has a variety of lines or patterns, which indicate differences. The lids of the chests open with excellently made hinges, constructed of the same material. These chests were machine made, not handmade. They are too exact to be made by master craftsmen, or women.

All of the chests contained many the same items. Hans, can you bring the sample chest forward?” Hans the German came up from the back of the cafeteria holding it for everyone to see. There were several oohs and aahs, as many hadn’t yet seen the alien chests. Placed on a table, the chest appeared to be pure gold. Petra pointed out the very slight lines in the gold of the chest walls and lid.

“No two of these designs are alike,” she continued. “They looked like the result of liquid gold being poured and then smoothed out onto the shell of the chest. How they did that is foreign to us from Earth, but if I hadn’t looked at the chests carefully with a magnifying glass, I wouldn’t have seen the slight differences in designs.” She opened the chest and pointed to the inside roof of the chest lid. “Once again there are no marks, or names, or letters inside the chest, but somehow the owner knew it was his or hers. Tests done on the remains of dust in each bed, show 32 men, 32 women, and eight children under the age of, in our own years, twenty. Tests of one female, we think indicated possible pregnancy.”

VIN shook his head at these results. He couldn’t understand how piles of dust had given away so much information, until Petra told him how they knew.

“We took apart the dust speck by speck and guess what we found in the most bottom layers?” she asked the group.

“Teeth?” suggested Jonesy, quickly. VIN was surprised that his partner was so attentive. Maybe Petra Bloem had more pulling power when she spoke than Martha Von Zimmer? He smiled at his partner as his wife Suzi shouted out, “Bone matter?”

“Ja, bits of both, but the teeth, being ivory, are much stronger than bone, and are the best history we could hope to find inside these old tombs. I have never had the opportunity to dissect such old mummies, as I would call them. I have seen older skeletons on earth preserved in different ways, but remember, these bodies were subject to atmospheric conditions for hundreds of years before the pressure, or the air itself either weakened down to nothing, or escaped and the vacuum of space entered. Before we head into the chest, let me say that these remains are human, around 9,700 years old, and I believe came from Earth.” There were suddenly shouts and questions from the audience.

“How can that be?” shouted one.

“Impossible!” shouted another.

It took Ryan a minute or so to quiet down the crew. “Okay, okay, everybody, some of us have considered this possibility for some time, but we didn’t want it known until the experts verified the remains. Dr. Bloem, are these bodies from North Africa, the Sahara desert?”

“Yes, we believe so, and I have discussed the fact with Dr. Von Zimmer and Herr Fritz Warner, who was my best aid in determining these final results.” All eyes turned to the back of the room where VIN’s friend sat, staring at everybody looking at him, totally unconcerned. It was his usual look, and for once he smiled.

“Let me tell you a story,” Dr. Bloem continued and explained the era when the Sahara desert was lush and green, around 10,000 B.C. “Igor, Boris, Martha, Herr Warner, and I knew about this age, that wasn’t well recorded in our history books. After discussing everything we came to believe that these people lived for about 2,500 years in the lush greenery of North Africa before realizing that their area was drying up. Some earlier tribes that resemble our findings, noticeably the Bushmen and one other tribe migrated south over a thousand years earlier than the carbon-dating on these remains. Maybe they had a fight, or the tribes in this area split up, but something happened and these people were left alone for the final ten centuries; all alone. They became extremely knowledgeable in chemistry, physics, biology and other sciences. We modern humans are only halfway to their knowledge. My thoughts, personally, are that they had no wars to fight, like we are constantly involved in; they had no political differences that consume most of our time, and they had a simple form of community or organization which allowed them to make rapid advancements that we have achieved only now, in our era.”

“You mean these aliens are Homo sapiens, humans like us?” asked one person. Dr. Bloem thought for a moment before replying. Humans yes, Homo sapiens no. I believe these remains are of Homo floresiensis, a very close relative of Homo sapiens. The most recent Homo floresiensis remains, found on an island in Indonesia, indicate they stood only about three and half feet tall. The Homo floresiensis lived at approximately the same time as our remains, hence my results.”

“So you are saying the Homo-whatever remains in Indonesia, and the remains on Mars are the same people?” asked Maggie.

“We believe so, or at least they are closely related,” responded Petra smiling at the logical question. “Of course, we must take into account several dozen genealogical changes that occur naturally over time to one group of people. I, and coincidentally, a few others in this room, completed papers on the Homo floresiensis during our university years; our earlier research helped our group arrive at these conclusions. Also, a few of the really old relics in the chests backup our beliefs.”

Petra brought out an ancient comb from the chest. “A simple hair comb, found in archeological digs from the time of the Stone Age. For some reason, we, as animals, always considered our hair on our heads to be of vital importance. Ask any middle school student in America.” (The Americans aboard found this very amusing.) This delicate comb was made by hand from the tusk of an African elephant. Yes, it is pure ivory, creamy white, and in perfect condition. In the dense, lush valleys of the Sahara at the time, elephants were common. So were all the African animals still alive today. Remember, we are only talking about these people leaving Earth about ten thousand years ago, about 7,500 to 8,000 B.C. This comb is very modern compared to others found around the world.”

Next she brought out what looked like an encased mirror, with a handle. “Yes, ladies, something most of us have seen before, a cosmetic hand mirror. The glass is like ours, created by melting sand. The case is interesting though. It is not plastic, but a form of rubber. Ja, a form of white, clean, rubber; the same product we used on our automobiles back on Earth.”

“But rubber was always black on Earth,” somebody offered.

“I agree, but, remember latex, from the rubber tree, is white before it is processed into rubber as we know it. This rubber, comes from Indonesia, which supports two of my theories: One, that the Homo floresiensis were connected somehow to where their last remains were found in Indonesia; and two, that there was a connection between the remains here on Mars and the remains across vast seas from the Sahara. Imagine how far this ancient people had to sail, and or walk, to get as far as Indonesia. I now believe that these people walked down the continent of Africa, some of them remained in Southern Africa, the Bushmen as we know them today, and the balance sailed as far as Indonesia and became extinct. Of course, both Homo species have integrated over the centuries, and maybe that is why the African Bushman species is still alive today, and the Indonesian tribe is not.”

The third item she lifted out of the chest made the audience gasp with surprise. It was a rolled up scroll.

“An ancient scroll?” asked Kathy not believing what she was seeing.

“Correct, Frau Richmond, a scroll. A scroll made exactly as the scrolls found around the Middle East, and others areas of the Mediterranean around the birth of Christ and earlier, and this one has writing on it which we cannot decipher, yet.” Carefully, she unrolled the scroll.

“How come it hasn’t turned into dust?” asked Jonesy.

“An excellent question, Herr Jones,” remarked Petra. “Herr Warner asked the same question when I first showed it to him.” Even Martha Von Zimmer looked at the aging astronaut with respect, giving him a German nod of approval.

“It must have been protected by oil, or another type of liquid,” said VIN. “During my walkabout in Iraq, many archeologists we met walking in the safer, southern areas of Iraq told me about finding old artifacts with dried oil residues on them.”

“Correct, Herr Noble,” continued Petra. “It seems that olive oil had more benefits than light cooking. Even though this scroll was found dry, the earthenware jar it was found in showed evidence of being an oil jar. The small urn, or jar, is identical to the much larger water urns you found at the scene. It had an earthenware stopper on it which fit perfectly, sealing the interior. The liquid broke down or evaporated over time. I believe that given another thousand years, this scroll would have disintegrated. But, as you see, it has survived the journey in such a condition that I can carefully unroll it.” She did so and showed the writing to the audience.

“Looks like old Hebrew,” stated one.

“Greek Hieroglyphics,” stated another.

“Both correct, but not correct,” smiled Petra trying her best in her third language; German and Russian were her first two. “Maybe an older form of both, but as yet, we haven’t decoded the symbols. There are many alike, but with all languages, we need one item of information, a symbol, or a letter to be able to decode the rest. The team believes that these are scrolls depicting the person’s family line or family tree. Each chest contained one of these scrolls, although many were rotting or had already decayed. After examining several of them we realized that they seem to have been written in the same format: a symbol or symbols, likely a name, was inscribed at the top, underneath which appeared to be lists of generations. If so, the possible family trees went back a dozen generations, or in our world, about 30 to 40 years per generation. So, these scrolls could reveal up to 500 years of this tribe’s history, unless their typical longevity far exceeded ours…”

“What chances do we have of ever finding out what these scrolls mean?” asked one child.

“Christian, we have all the time in the world, or solar system, and there are many aboard this spaceship that will never give up trying to decipher what is written here,” Petra replied.

“Are they going to decay more?” asked Michael Pitt.

“Of course, now they are in atmospheric conditions, Herr Pitt, but we are chronicling and photographing everything, and will place the scrolls in fresh olive oil that Suzi will prepare for us once we have collected all the information.” There was silence. Everyone was transfixed by the opened scroll and the hundreds of letters on it, nothing more than squiggles and dots.

“I’m glad we now live in space, so valuable jewelry is of no importance to us anymore, right ladies?” Petra smiled, questioning the women.

“Depends how pretty it is,” answered Jamie Saunders from the back.

“Who said we don’t like pretty things anymore?” added Maggie. I look at my jewelry, especially my necklace and wedding ring every day.”

“Me, too,” added Suzi.

Jonesy rolled his eyes at the women, who were once again engaged in chatting about bobbles, bangles and beads. It seemed things hadn’t changed much.

Suzi noticed Jonesy rolling his eyes and commented, “Herr Jones, we ladies still think about pretty things, just like your one-celled brain thinks about the alcohol we brew in the cubes. And you are still banned from entering our establishments at tasting times. You and my husband,” who she elbowed in the ribs like Maggie had taught her.

“Alright fellow space citizens, calm down,” Ryan said, interrupting the laughter. “Dr. Bloem, please continue before you are attacked by these ladies thinking they are at a jewelry house party.”

Dr. Bloem brought out a beautiful green broach and laid it on the table. “Twenty-four carat gold, with diamonds, rubies and emeralds; this broach is the exact shape of an African crocodile. Most of the jewelry is of animals, and each chest had one to five pieces.”

Everyone could see that the piece was exquisite.

“We think they could be either items of jewelry, or maybe insignia of rank, as many of the pieces are identical. Each chest had the alligator, even the children’s chests. The smaller adults, the females, had leopards, and the men’s chests had lions. The four chests of what must have been the most senior men contained an alligator, a lion, a hippopotamus and an elephant; that is why we think the jewelry could be a ranking system. Only one chest had five pieces of jewelry, the one where there were no remains on the bed. Remember, three of the beds were empty, and we decided that they were the beds of the suited bodies Herr Noble found in the first room. The single, most beautiful piece of jewelry was this,” and Petra lifted out a second broach, twice the size of the alligator, and easily seen by all in the room. It was a beautiful eagle with two pure white eyes that shone like the diamonds on DX2014.

There was absolute silence as everybody stared at the beautiful piece of artwork. The colors of a bald eagle were exact and, even from a distance, it expressed authority.

“So, you think this eagle could belong to the ship’s commander or captain?” VIN asked.

“Yes, we believe so. Why would there be so many exact pieces, and so few elephants compared to the alligators? That is why we believe that they are insignia of rank, Herr Noble, and not just pieces of exquisite jewelry. Let us get on. The last semi-recognizable item included in all of the adult cases were these,” and Dr. Bloem brought out several pieces of paper, blank, white paper, about four inches square that were beginning to crumble.

“What are they?” asked Maggie.

“We believe them to be the remains of color photographs, replied Dr. Bloem.

“But how could this tribe that looks like the Bushmen of 10,000 years ago have had Kodak cameras?” asked Jonesy.

“Kodak cameras they certainly were not,” responded Petra Bloem kindly. “The chemical residues and the type of paper is nearly exact to what we have here on board. Several of us brought old family photographs with us. Some brought the latest in technical photo viewers like revolving photo images; and, some of the older folk, like me, brought old Kodak and Brownie camera-made photographs of our mothers and fathers. We tested and compared the alien paper to some of the oldest photos we have, about seventy years old, and this paper was close to identical to our own.”

“But how could these people have cameras?” Jonesy asked, still puzzled.

“Well they achieved space travel, created a blue defense shield, and made space suits out of better materials than we have. Why shouldn’t they have cameras, televisions or even computers?” VIN replied to his partner.

“They must have had computers,” added Captain Pete. “How else could they get around such a vast area like the solar system?”

“And I’m sure we will find their better weapons that will blow ours away,” injected VIN.

“Thank you gentlemen,” smiled Petra. “That is all I have for you for this meeting. There were other items, we believe clothing and other personal belongings in the chests, but unfortunately like the bodies, these items have decayed down to dust. All of the items we discovered, like the teeth and bones, were found under piles of dust that filled the chests.”

The meeting was over and one by one, the entire crew got in line to look at, touch and feel the objects just described. Now VIN really wanted to get back to DX2017 and find more items. He knew that everything he would find would add pieces to the puzzle these space travelers left behind.

He was about to get the surprise of his life.

Chapter 10

What is the meaning of life, and back to DX2017.

America One was in a comfortable orbit around DX2017. The planet was doing all the work of transporting them through space, and all the internal builds and upgrades were long since complete. Many of the crew wanted to spacewalk, now that there was more to see on the little planet than in the ship.

The results of tests to analyze the materials used in the alien spacesuits were shared with the astronauts in the Bridge twenty-four hours later over cake and coffee. Martha Von Zimmer and Suzi were in charge of the lecture. VIN, Fritz Warner, and Petra Bloem were the only extras in attendance.

Martha let Suzi do much of the first part, since fabric was in her domain: biology.

“Darwin’s bark spider is an orb-weaver spider that produces one of the largest orb webs in the world. These webs have anchor lines that can span over 25 meters, or about 82 feet. The spider was discovered in Madagascar in 2008 or 2009. The bark spider was named in honor of Charles Darwin, and what is so fantastic is that its silk is the toughest biological material ever studied.

“It really surprised me to see how they managed to bond spider silk and silkworm silk together. Their version of “Kevlar” is a much different form than what we know our synthetic Kevlar to be.

“Not as strong as Kevlar, nothing is stronger,” VIN, her husband, retorted.

“Wrong, darling,” smiled Suzi back. “Darwin’s bark spider spins a silk 10 times stronger than your American Kevlar, which was invented by a scientist working for a French company inside America. I know. I loved to study spider and silkworm silks in university, as much as you and your friend Fritz love studying weapons. The Bark spider’s silk is twice as strong as what is produced by any other spider. The only problem with spiders is that they spin far slower than silkworms and in our classes in Munich we tried to mate Tarantula spiders with silkworms. Silkworms produced hundreds of times more silk than any spider. It was impossible, the spiders often ate the silkworms and the eating of many silkworms did not help the spiders make silk any faster,” Suzi joked. “Actually, to be more serious, we worked on genetically splicing the genes of the silkworms and the spiders. The American military, and the French company Du Pont, have worked hard for the last two decades trying to develop lightweight, flexible soft body armor with a higher degree of protection. But, apart from Kevlar, their quest has so far been an impossible dream.”

“DuPont’s Kevlar fiber, the soft armor fiber widely adopted by American and other law enforcement, is often described as five times stronger than steel; but spider silk continues to outperform its artificial counterparts, so the pursuit of “Spider-Man” style armor has been underway for decades,” added Martha Von Zimmer.

“Ja, I know, I was involved in many of the tests,” continued Suzi “Strand-for-strand, researchers in Germany and America know the drag line of an orb-weaving spider, especially the bark spider, while weighing much less, can be three times more flexible than Kevlar and five to ten times stronger than steel. Also, contrary to its size and weight, spider silk is naturally capable of absorbing a huge amount of energy. Several years ago, a team I studied with at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies in Germany, identified the building blocks that make spider silk so naturally strong. There are two key components: the soft gel that is manufactured in the abdomen and the strong, solid thread it becomes when it leaves the body. What we are seeing here, is what we tried to accomplish in Munich in my last year of study; to somehow join the silkworm’s extremely high production quantities to the bark spider’s silk strength and energy absorbency.”

“These people have done it,” continued Martha. “We found the DNA of silkworms and of the bark spider in the material of the suits. Also, if you recall what Dr. Petra said yesterday, Madagascar is a natural stopover for any ship traveling between Southern Africa and Indonesia. I believe these silk spacesuits give us another piece of our fantastic and most interesting puzzle.”

Since Suzi had no spiders aboard ship, the potential to copy the material would have to wait until the scientists returned to Earth.

Ryan was in his element. He never saw Suzi, a person he respected for her vast knowledge and intelligence, so excited. In addition, Dr. Martha Von Zimmer and Dr. Petra Bloem were at the cutting edge of new technologies. But to cap it all, the same advances scientists on modern Earth were struggling to achieve, already existed, and had been developed by an ancient tribe from North Africa who had found their way into deep space.

As he listened to the discussion, Ryan allowed himself to slip into a moment of reflection. Years of observation and discussions still brought him to the same conclusions. Humans, so intelligent, so clever, so capable of expanding knowledge and achieving outstanding advancements, were blocked by greed, politics, wars, religion questionable ethics, and moral turpitude. Humans were extinguishing their own chances for long-term survival on a beautiful planet. He had seen the unintended consequences of bad decisions made by corrupt politicians. He had seen the excitement the act of killing could engender in too many people. He, himself, felt vindicated when Jonesy fired on the speedboat in Greek waters. Yet, other humans like these scientists, only wanted to get on with their work, in harmony with others, and advance knowledge. Why was there such a difference in one’s own breed?

Before her accident years earlier, when he and Suzi were together, they frequently discussed biology over a bottle of wine. She maintained that humans did not differ from animals. He was shocked to hear her say that she believed animals mated, cheated, destroyed, and stole anything they could from other animals, without remorse or shame at doing unjust things; it was as if they had been born, or primed by external, or internal forces. One thing Suzi did say was that the greatest achievement of any human was to do battle with his evil inclinations and become a good human. Suzi did not believe that helping others was the ultimate goal; it was to live a good and honest life.

Ryan had tried his best to be a good person, to always be fair to others, and he had done well. The only real exception was when others, so excited by force and subterfuge, so eager to harm, destroy and kill, came to attack him and lay waste to all he had achieved. Then, and only then, were feelings of revenge ignited within him.

He wondered where all this “bad” came from. Was it a chemical that arrived on Earth from an asteroid? Was it really because of eating an apple, or talking to snakes? Did everyone carry a gene within their DNA to kill, hurt, destroy or maim for pleasure, for entertainment, or revenge? Where was the other world? The perfect world where only good things happened?

Ryan was brought back to the meeting by Dr. Petra Bloem speaking quietly, as she always did.

“I am beginning to get a few ideas on these people we have located through pure luck, this ancient tribe. One just has to study what we now believe are their possible ties to people that still exist today. We can learn a lot from the Bushmen. It so happens, I studied them for a project in high school. It wasn’t an in-depth scientific study, just a high school semester paper. Others have studied the Bushman of the Kalahari in extensive detail. But what I remember about these small people is their way of life. They respected and worked with nature. I believe they said a prayer before, or after they killed for food, and a prayer for the animal. They ate the entire animal in respect for Mother Nature and the animal. They used every part of the animal they could, again respecting and, I suppose, thanking their gods for giving them food. They were kind to each other, looking after each member of the tribe, and sharing their knowledge with their children. As I recall, they didn’t even have a chief of their tribe, just an elder who had gained wisdom through experience and age. The Bushmen were a hardy people, and due to their way of life, they lived in a place nobody else at the time could survive, even many animals.

“I am beginning to believe that this tribe, these people are the same. By thinking the same, they advanced themselves in science and exploration faster than anybody else living on Earth ever did. We have that ability, but are clouded in our judgments by others who have a different agenda.

“As a scientist, my beliefs differ from the person whose goal is to amass money and wealth. Yes, work hard for a comfortable secure life, but do not steal, rob, or pillage for mountains of glitter or fake power you can never use in a lifetime. I believe the belief system of these people were more in line with true science and, what really interests me, is what we are going to learn from them. Herr Noble, have you found one metal, plastic or synthetically-made weapon these people owned?” VIN replied that he hadn’t. “I believe, team, that we won’t.”

Everyone listened intently to the German lady, and heads nodded in agreement. Even Jonesy listened closely, gaining insight into how these scientists ticked. The crew aboard America One was changing.

Ryan reasoned that leaving the rest of humanity behind gave one the opportunity for change.

Twenty-four hours later, Astermine Two left for DX2017. For the second visit the shuttle carried the same five men squashed into the forward and rear cabins, plus the same nuclear battery in the cargo hold they had used to open the doors in the base on Mars. The flight down was brief, only one orbit, and within two hours they were touching down. The battery was in the mining craft’s rear cargo bay, and was to be used in a single three-hour spacewalk into the cavern to see if any doors could be opened. The scientists did not want any atmosphere to be released into the caverns until every room had been inspected. With absolutely no atmosphere around DX2017 compared to Mars, there was a better likelihood that any remains would be better preserved. All of the men knew exactly what to do.

VIN loved his job. As head of security he could go where no man had gone before. He always saw everything first, and encouraged by Dr. Petra’s ideas, he wasn’t worried about trip wires, or mines, or any possible dangers as he explored new territory. He was still a Marine though, a darn good one, and he never forgot his training. He trusted what the scientists said, but he still entered every new area as if it was booby-trapped. He was armed, his Bowie knife connected to his suit’s belt. He still wasn’t taking any chances.

VIN entered the docking port first. Jonesy stayed in the pilot’s seat, and one by one, Ryan, Igor and Boris followed VIN down the ladder and into the first cavern. Nothing had moved inside the cavern, or was out of place since his last visit. He climbed onto the two canisters, and into the horizontal tunnel leading to the silver-walled alien cavern. The other three spacesuited men handed up the nuclear battery to VIN. It had also taken three of them to lower it down the vertical shaft. The battery was slightly heavier on this planet than on Mars with its lesser gravity; equal to about 250 pounds Earth weight, he had to work hard to place the heavy unit onto the floor of the tunnel.

After moving it out of the way, VIN helped the three men enter the tunnel. Together they lifted the battery through the right turn and into the cavern. They placed it next to the staircase and the two Russians prepared to connect the live open ends of the wires to the metal railing of the staircase.

Within minutes they had it connected and Igor turned the battery dial from zero to 10 percent power. He didn’t leave it there long knowing that nothing would happen. At 20 percent, the walls began to glow. At 30 percent they became as bright as neon lighting and panels began to open here and there. For the first time, he tried 40 percent, but nothing further happened.

“I believe that their power ratings equal our battery at 30 percent,” he said into his intercom. The next problem was how to open the door, which seemed to only be activated by VIN looking into the panel with his naked eye. They had discussed it the day before separating from the mother ship.

They had two choices. Either VIN could open his visor for the few seconds required, or Igor could tie the battery into the same wall connection he used on the first cavern wall on Mars. Ryan preferred to try the latter while the doctors and scientists in the mother ship tried to produce an exact replica of VIN’s eye, which would take a week.

VIN said that if he would not be allowed to take the risk using the special visor the electronics crew had modified for this task, he was prepared to take his chances and open his visor in the vacuum of space. Under his helmet he was wearing a tight nylon balaclava and an additional mouth piece to supply oxygen.

It took twenty minutes for Igor and Boris to connect the open battery wires, dozens of them, into the eleven holes in the alien wall socket. However, when they tried to open the door it didn’t budge, even at 45 percent power. The cavern was glowing so, brightly it looked like it could explode.

“So, now what do we do?” Ryan asked. “How much time before Mr. Noble is affected by the lack of pressure when he opens his visor?”

“As we discussed yesterday,” began Boris, “even with the pressure in his suit at maximum, it will take only a few seconds after he opens his visor before the pressure inside the suit dissipates. I think VIN is safe for three seconds or he will lose too much pressure. The extra mouthpiece to breathe through will protect his internal systems. Or we can just bring down air, seal off this cavern and do what we did on Mars: build up the air and pressure.”

“Mr. Noble, how long did the security system take to scan your eye?” Ryan asked. “Please confirm the three to five seconds, you stated yesterday.”

“Affirmative,” replied VIN. “With this airtight balaclava on, and believe me, it’s tight, and only my eyes and mouth open, I will be fine for five seconds. I want somebody to count up to five for me and give me the signal to hit the control to close my visor. It only takes half a second for the visor to open or close. I already feel that the seal on this new helmet is not 100 percent. The dials on my suit are showing my inside conditions to be slightly off.”

“Okay, let’s try it. We get out immediately if Mr. Noble feels any ill effects.” And Ryan prepared his crew for something very dangerous.

The human body doesn’t just explode in a vacuum. Heat does not transfer away from a body quickly because of the containing effects of the skin and circulatory system and, loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood.

The temperature inside the cavern was warmer than outer space. Igor looked at the suit dials on his forearm; it was minus one hundred and ten degrees Celsius, survivable for the few seconds VIN needed. Only his eyes were in real danger, and he wore a pair of clear worker protection glasses underneath his visor. Jonesy had put them on his face when VIN opened and tested his visor just before leaving the craft.

He readied himself, knelt down in front of the four-foot high control panel, took a couple of deep breaths, opened both eyes and pushed the button on his suit to open his visor.

He suddenly got dizzy; he began to feel his body was being sucked out of his suit through the visor, but he kept his watering right eye glued to the center of the panel. The cold was like nothing he had ever felt on his face before. He had ridden motorbikes in the middle of winter without a helmet; as a Marine, he had dived into freezing cold water to toughen up; but the excruciating cold on his exposed skin was much worse than even what he had felt on Mars when he had damaged and punctured his suit. The solid wall of cold was hitting his face. Still his one open eye, feeling that it was being pulled out of its socket, was trained on the panel which responded with its familiar blue blast at the exact moment someone hit him over the helmet to tell him time was up. He didn’t move for what seemed like another second before he saw movement to his left, and he turned the switch on his belt to close his visor.

VIN felt dizzy. He couldn’t hear anything and suddenly felt a muscle spasm hit him hard up his left arm. He could feel the pressure building in his suit and as it did, he straightened his arm. Immediately the spasm softened, and then disappeared. “Must be like the bends,” he thought to himself.

He felt three gloves holding his body upright, and then he took his first breath since he had opened his visor. The air was there, it was sweet and he was okay, so far. His lips felt dry, so dry they were cracking, even though Suzi had thoroughly coated them with a thick layer of lip gloss. His eye began to burn and water, reminding him of the bad pollen in North Carolina during spring time.

Slowly the suit pressurized back to normal and for the first time in his life, he realized what these suits did, and how well they protected them.

He staggered to his feet, his head still swimming. “Is it so nasty on the other side of my thin suit?” he thought and floated his right hand through the vacuum in front of him. He would respect the nothingness of space when taking a walk outside from now on.

All this had only taken seconds. Ryan’s voice over the intercom penetrated his consciousness, “Are you okay, Mr. Noble? Mr. Noble, are you okay?”

VIN slowly formed the diving sign that he was okay. He carefully sat down on the metal staircase to allow his brain and his bodily systems return to normal.

It took a minute, with the other three watching him. He felt as though he had fainted or something but as the suit warmed his cold body and sweet air was drawn into his lungs, his balance returned.

He raised his head. Nobody had moved; they were all staring at him, and he looked past them into the just opened door.

“Do you see what is inside the room?” VIN asked, and all three turned to look inside the exact same room they had first seen on Mars. The same empty room with the same cabinets on both opposite walls; the same room VIN had thought to be the morgue; the same room where he found the first three suited bodies on Mars.

With trepidation he stood up and decided that if anybody was going to find more dead people, or aliens, it might as well be him. He walked unaided into the room and looked for the same narrow groves. They were all there, in rows of four and he pressed the one closest to him.

The handle shot out glowing red, as all had done down on Mars. VIN closed his eyes as the cabinet opened and then opened them again to find… nothing. The drawer was empty. So was the next one and the next one. Then he remembered that he was on the second side of the room they had opened. The three bodies were found in the middle cabinets on the opposite wall, the right hand side.

“Igor, Boris, you open the rest of these. Tell me what you find. I will open the ones on the other side where we found the bodies.”

With trepidation he touched the handle of the same cabinet he had first opened back on Mars.. It was empty, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

All of the cabinets were empty. It looked like there weren’t any bodies aboard this base, yet.

The spacewalk time was up. It was time to return to the mother ship. VIN had a splitting headache and he needed water and a beer and a spot under the sunlamp.

“So, Mr. Noble, how do you feel twenty-four hours after your face braved outer space for the first time?” Ryan asked at the next morning’s meeting. “I see that your lips are dry and might crack. Have Suzi or the doctors given you any medication?”

“My head still feels like I had a few beers yesterday, which is true, so other than my dry lips, for which my wife is allowing me to use her precious supplies of lip gloss, and the skin on my face that itches like the last time on Mars, I’m fine. It seems that suntan cream and lip protection weren’t included in the medical supplies. I suppose nobody thought we would need it out here.” Ryan smiled. In the $13 million dollars’ worth of medical supplies, nobody had thought of suntan oil, or lip cream. He was sure that another million items had also been forgotten.

It was a short meeting. On the agenda was how much air they had, and whether they should fill the caverns with it. They had nearly enough for one cavern. It was worth filling the caverns one by one, as they would be here for the next year or two, but a full reconnoiter of all the rooms running from the first cavern should be undertaken before the valuable air was released. Who knew what they might find in there?

VIN had the rest of the day off, and spent it with Suzi in the cubes. Little Mars was beginning to walk. It seemed easier for a baby to walk in higher gravity conditions on the upper deck, than in the cubes. Mars actually smiled more when he was allowed to float around, tied to a cord attached to Suzi’s waist band. Seeing that floating was his thrill in life, over the weeks Suzi had let him out on a longer and longer cord, until he was now happy on a cord 10 feet long.

The cubes looked like jungles of plants of every type. It was hard to believe that 80 percent of all the food eaten aboard ship came from these seven cubes. For another year or so the balance of their food would still come from the stores gathered down on Earth.

Each cube had its own ecological environment A couple of them looked like fields of crops, others like real jungles with birds and bees flying around. Some were at 70 degrees, others at 85. VIN was glad that Suzi, Mr. Rose and their team knew what they were doing. It was a long drive to the nearest take-out.

All that day he wondered about the empty cabinets. Maybe this base was the supply base, and it was empty of people because nobody else was alive in outer space. Maybe the scientists were right; this planet was a good bus ride around the solar system, and not used anymore. He was to get a few questions answered the next day.

VIN felt better; his face stopped itching and his lips were well glossed. He donned the balaclava in the mining craft, when they touched down 20 hours later. The same group was returning to the underground chambers to search for whatever they could open.

VIN was wearing the special helmet. He would need to use his eye again to open the next door. Ryan wanted to open the control, or command center from the next room before any air was purged into this one cavern the next day.

Better mentally prepared, VIN opened his visor at the panel that would take them into the room where they had found the globe of Earth, and which would open doors into the three different rooms. One door would open into the command center, the one to his right would lead into the power room where they hoped to find a second shield control system, and the third, if it was there on the left, would be the same one he had not yet managed to open.

The third door had proved to be impossible to open on Mars. They had tried everything, but without success.

The nuclear battery was still placed in the outer cavern to protect VIN. The blue light pierced his eye and the same door opened. On Mars they had taken a couple of hours to wire the battery up to the power connection on the wall, now they knew that VIN’s eye did the same job.

With his visor down, feeling as dizzy and disoriented as the first time, the other three steadied him when he stood up. It took a minute; his face felt like it had been subjected to another serious sunburn. They all walked into the Globe Room together, the walls already glowing in low-power pink light.

The globe on a tripod pedestal was there, identical to the one on Mars, the same silver metal covering it. Only, there wasn’t one, there were five silver globes in a line.

“Okay, it seems we need to have some power in here,” demanded VIN. “Power up the system like the last time to open the doors and take the metal off the globe. We still have 147 minutes before we end this spacewalk.”

“We will have pressure and atmosphere in here tomorrow I promise, Mr. Noble. I can’t risk your handsome face anymore,” replied Ryan and promptly got connected to Jonesy to ask him to relay a message up to America One; he wanted the air tanks down here ASAP. The crew on America One heard the message at the same time Jonesy did. Just as on Mars, once the walls were powered up from the battery, their intercoms immediately had improved to perfect communications, even up to the mother ship.

Captain Pete replied that Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt would be leaving within the hour.

The team headed out to Jonesy, collected the second battery and manhandled it down the shaft, up into the hole in the wall and through to the room they were working in. They had a two-hour wait for Igor and Boris to splice the ends of the cables and, part by part, connect different cables into the eleven holes of the power connector.

Time was running out on this spacewalk but Ryan and VIN had no choice but to hang around.

Finally the men were done, and they were ready to turn on the power. Ryan wasn’t worried if anything happened outside, Jonesy and the recently landed Astermine One were a hundred yards away from the vertical shaft.

“Mr. Jones, astronauts outside, please prepare. We are powering up the underground systems with the second battery. Everybody, just give us ten minutes, in case the blue shield is activated or something unexpected occurs.” Jonesy acknowledged his message and Ryan gave Igor the okay to start the power.

Igor immediately turned it up to 20 percent. With another 20 percent coming from the first battery back in the cavern, the whole area lit up like a Christmas tree. Two doors opened on opposite walls, the one into the command room, and the door into the power room where the security flap again opened on the opposite wall, the same panel he could not open on Mars. Then his attention focused on the globes and all four men just stood there wordless.

Chapter 11

Bonanza! Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Earth.

The four men just stared at the five globes, and all could tell that Earth was the first one. The second was orangey-red and the others mostly cream or yellow. VIN could see the red dot in the middle of the Sahara on the first globe, and then noticed a red dot on each of the globes.

“It looks like we now know where this bus, DX2017, is heading,” suggested Ryan.

“The second one is Mars, but the other three we are going to have to do some research on; I’ll get the crew on the mother ship to begin photographic comparisons with known planets,” Boris said. “I think we made a mistake dismantling the single globe on Mars, and we better not touch these.”

“Any guesses?” asked Ryan.

“Since Earth and Mars are in order, first and second, I would say that the next globe must be one of Jupiter’s moons; Europa or Ganymede would be my best,” Boris responded.

“If the red dot shows where they lived on Earth, wouldn’t the other red dots indicate the exact locations of their bases on the other globes?” VIN asked.

“I would think so,” replied Ryan. “If that is the case, we have places now to aim for, instead of blindly heading out into the solar system, and this bus should connect us up with the next location.”

VIN touched the globe representing Earth. It seemed that the globes weren’t interactive, and that made him wonder why they were here in this room in the first place.

“I believe that they could be homing devices, there must be a reason that they are here,” added Ryan breaking into VIN’s train of thought. All four men walked towards the second globe; the dull, red dot was placed exactly on the side of the small crater where they found the first base.

“This red dot,” VIN said to the others “is only a quarter of the size of the one on Earth. The dots on other globes are all different sizes; the last one is bigger than the rest, and the same size as the dot on Earth.

“I see that,” responded Igor. “It could mean base size, population, or something else. I would guess either base size or number of people, because the dots on the third and fourth globes are extremely small, half the size of the dull dot on Mars and the dot on the fifth globe is considerably bigger.”

VIN looked up and was quite surprised to see that the hologram in the wall hadn’t appeared, as it had done on Mars, but Jonesy did get their attention over the intercom.

“Guys, someone activated the bubble; if you didn’t do it by turning on the power, I must have when I came into land; it’s rising out of those metal wires you found in the surface, partner.” That made VIN look upwards, as Jonesy was above them on the surface. His mouth fell open as he saw that the hologram wasn’t on the wall, but this time covered the roof of the room. The whole roof exposed the bubble beginning to show itself above their heads, as though they were near the surface, not 30 feet below it.

He could see the same bright blue bubble growing into a dome above the room. VIN’s brain went back to his discovery of the wires. He had measured them radiating out 20 feet from the center spot, and the center spot wasn’t where the door was, it was directly above them. “Why would they make a shield in the middle of nowhere, and not over their entrance hole?” VIN asked nobody in particular. “Igor, check out the power room. You found one box in the one on Mars; I bet there are two of them in this power room.”

VIN was right, Igor told them over the intercom a few seconds later that there were two boxes, on top of each other, like a stereo system, and one was blinking, one wasn’t.

“What are you thinking, Mr. Noble?” Ryan asked. “A landing zone maybe?”

“Could be,” replied VIN.

“There is a third box,” added Igor. It looks the same as the other two; it’s open and I can see interesting systems. It looks like a large green motherboard, but it is purple, I think we can dissect this third one and see how these things operate.”

“Yes!” stated VIN excitedly. “I believe that the one above us could be a permanent shield, and to conserve air, the shaft we found was a docking port, maybe where their spaceship landed and stores received down the shaft. Maybe the second box works on a separate frequency, or only when a space ship is on the ground. Jonesy, lift off and park over the shaft we entered. I think I know what is going to happen.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jonesy lifted off the surface, fifty feet from the shaft. The 100-foot long mining ship wasn’t far from the shaft they had entered. The four below could see the craft’s movements through the blue dome walls, as if they were watching from the surface through a window. Jonesy slowly rose twenty feet and hovered over the hole.

“Your dome is now fully extended,” Jonesy informed them. “It’s about thirty feet high and forty feet across. I’m over the entrance, right over the docking port, and nothing is happening.”

“Land on the surface,” VIN ordered. Still nothing happened. He sat there with the thrusters running while VIN thought. “Okay, sorry, false alarm, bad idea. But it seems I was on the right path. Jonesy, head back to where you were. I think it’s safer, just in case,” VIN added.

They watched from below; the mining craft looked like a whale in a large aquarium as it lifted off. Jonesy was facing towards the blue dome and he flew low over the dome to clear the area.

Suddenly, a vibration emanating from the floor was felt throughout the metal-walled room; at the same time the bright walls grew dull, as if power was being reduced.

“Something happening in here,” Igor observed. “We have reduced power, or power starvation or something.”

“I didn’t touch the dome,” replied Jonesy, sounding surprised, “but I was only a couple of feet above the top of the dome.”

“Jonesy, swing back,” stated VIN “and gently return to land at the same spot, but this time I want you to either touch the shield, or allow just the tip of something to glide gently through it. I think I know what is happening. The system is automated. The lights are glowing brighter in here again, and the vibrations have gone back to what they were before. I think that when their craft approached, somehow they automated the second shield by touching, or getting close to the permanent one. The air, or atmosphere wouldn’t escape in the first dome, when something glided through the shield. It is always sealed.”

Jonesy understood what VIN meant and returned slowly over the surface, allowing a few feet of his landing gear to touch and penetrate the glowing shield. The vibrations increased in the command center, the lights dimmed, and something outside started happening.

“I’m passed the point of no escape,” Jonesy said above the men, who were still watching him. They crew below ground couldn’t see any changes. “What’s happening?” Ryan asked, worried.

“No much,” replied Jonesy calmly. “A second blue wall is growing out of the ground all around me. It is much bigger than the first dome, about sixty feet across, not forty, and I’m in the middle of it. The new shield won’t cover my entire craft by the look of it, but I’m continuing with the landing on top of the shaft and docking port.”

Only then could the men see a second wall, denser and bluer than the first shield, grow into their vision. They watched in wonder as the shield grew rapidly. Jonesy, carefully and extremely slowly, landed on the surface as the wall grew, encompassing the craft.

“Jonesy, lift off and turn your tail into the first shield,” stated Boris. “I bet both shields are big enough to cover the entire craft.”

“Roger that,” replied Jonesy. He again lifted the mining craft a foot or so off the surface and gently brought the tail around to penetrate the first shield wall. Then he touched down. “You are right Boris, I can’t see the rear of the craft, but the shield has just crept along the outer walls of the cockpit. The shield is now about three feet in front of me. Can you see the tail area?”

“We can,” replied Ryan. “You are partly in the first shield and mostly in the second one. I believe the dome is still growing and the entire ship is covered. I want to go up and see what is happening up there.”

‘I’ll come with you,” VIN said.

Slowly they headed out of the command center while Boris took photos of the globes, and Igor continued to look at the broken box in the power room. Even though there was no atmosphere inside the cavern and shaft, both men still had to go follow the proper sequences to exit docking port one at a time, to reach the surface.

Standing up, VIN helped the older man out of the outer hatch; he saw that the second shield was completely around them, and that Jonesy, landing to the side of the port, had left just enough room to let them out. The mining craft’s underbelly was only a couple of feet above the surface.

The tail of the mining craft was covered, it’s top a few feet under the dome wall; the first shield reconfigured itself to include the height of the tail in the other shield. Surprisingly, the rest of the craft was in the second dome, and what fascinated both astronauts, was that the two domes had not merged into one; they were still two different domes.

“They must work like radio stations, on different frequencies,” suggested VIN. Ryan nodded his helmet in return looking at the blue scene. Both men also noticed that due with two batteries working in-system, the shields were much brighter than the one around the ship in space, and that even the planet’s surface bounced the light off its grey-blue exterior, adding to the brightness.

They approached the front of the ship, until they could wave at Jonesy from outside his starboard cockpit window. Jonesy told them they looked fine and their suits weren’t smoldering or anything.

VIN then headed towards the rear of the craft, Ryan right behind him. “If there was an atmosphere in the first shield, it wouldn’t have escaped when supply craft landed,” he stated.

“It might also have allowed vegetation to grow, or enabled people to work outside of the cavern while the craft landed and unloaded,” added Ryan.

“Or they just had smaller ships?” suggested VIN.

“Possibly, but even if their ship was the same size, or bigger, with more electrical power, the shield would grow to compensate,” added Jonesy from the cockpit. “Are you going to walk through the wall?”

VIN replied that both he and Ryan were about to do so; and, with VIN holding Ryan’s glove, the two slowly walked through both shield walls at the same time.

VIN commented he could feel a vibration as he penetrated the walls, as if something was vibrating in his electrical system. Ryan said that he felt the same as he went through and then they were out of Jonesy’s bubble and above the command center.

“Weird feeling,” added Ryan. “It made my skin tingle inside my suit. You guys checked for radioactivity, so it can’t be dangerous, just the electricity humming through the suit’s skin.”

“We see you standing right above us,” reported Boris from the command center. “It is certainly not a camera taking the hologram, you guys look exactly like you are standing right on top of an invisible roof, a foot above the ceiling of this room, but you are actually 30 feet above my head!”

“There is zero radioactivity inside this shield,” VIN informed them, “but that electrical buzz we felt was several times stronger than passing through the shield around America One.”

Ryan and VIN walked around the first dome.

“Hey! I can see two blue bubbles on the surface,” said Captain Pete from America One. “We just came over the horizon. I see two minute blue blobs down there and, through the binoculars, I can see you bouncing around; two stick figure shapes, but I can see you.”

“I bet we could see you if we step outside,” replied VIN, and guided Ryan towards the wall of the shield again. Slowly and gently they walked through the shield, still holding hands, to see the solid shield increase and decrease as they went through. “There, a minute blue blob,” VIN said, pointing to a spot low on the horizon amidst the mostly white stars of the Milky Way.

Ryan could also see the blue star, about the size of a pinhead, slowly making its way across the planet’s black sky. It was the first time since Earth that anybody had seen the spaceship passing over. It had been impossible from the surface of Mars and, without the blue shield surrounding it, it would also have been impossible to detect it at the distance it was from it on the blue planet.

After watching the bright blue speck of dust crawl across the sky for a few minutes, they reentered the first shield, and then into the second bubble to join the two crewmembers in the cavern. They had an hour remaining for search and discovery.

“We packed the third box,” Igor told Ryan when he and VIN returned.

“I believe that these globes are some sort of directional device,” added Boris still looking carefully at the globes. “I checked the console in the command center. I’m wary of touching anything in the event it locks us in or out, or opens something we don’t want to find. The wording is identical. We have two years on DX2017 before we leave to visit planet number three which believe is Callisto, Ganymede or Europa, judging by their distances from Jupiter and the colors on these globes, which are exact for Earth and Mars. Callisto is the farthest out.

“That gives us two years to study these surroundings,” added Igor. “We might as well fill this cavern with air and pressure. The walls will warm the interior and, with air inside, it will become habitable in a day or two. I know VIN is dying to get in the door he has yet to open in both caverns, that one.” The Russian pointed to a door in the wall between the two open ones. VIN nodded his head.

“Let’s return to the mother ship. We’ll take this box for the piranha scientists to feast on up there, and we can discuss what and how much we can release in here,” replied Ryan. “We can leave the two batteries powered up and see the shields from above; at 20 percent, we certainly aren’t draining them. I think we should close off these two caverns from the shield if we can arrive and depart from inside the shields. Next week, we’ll check the rear cavern for bodies. If we don’t find any, then I’m sure a skeleton team could begin to live down here. If we want to fill one shield with air as well, it will take us at least a month’s production to have enough for one cavern and outside. I’m sure Suzi will be chomping at the bit to try to grow something down here on the surface once we have an atmosphere in the shield.”

With no rush to go anywhere, and using fuel only when necessary, the crew orbited aboard for the next seven days. It took that long to complete the newly modernized cylinder to enable the skeleton crew to stay on the surface. With the possibility of creating an atmosphere inside the cavern and the main shield, it might not be used for long. Many of the additions were supplies for Suzi: topsoil, water, plants and seeds. The cylinder was turning into a greenhouse/storeroom for the biologists.

Their primary focus was to increase production for the 75 air tanks required to fill the main shield as well as both caverns. America One had produced 55 tanks since leaving Mars.

Just as Ryan described, the crew aboard, with Igor in command, attacked the broken black box and its contents with excitement. Not discounting the level of brilliance and experience encompassed by the scientists, Igor expected it would take the crew months, maybe even a year or more, to figure out the electronics of the box, and how they worked.

“We believe that it will take 15 days to produce the needed air at maximum production 24/7,” stated Martha Von Zimmer the next day at the morning meeting in the cafeteria. “My main question is, do we have two years before we depart for the next port of call? When we continue on to Jupiter, are we going to take everything from DX2017, or leave supplies for a continuation of our journey to Saturn, or our return journey to Earth? I will probably be in my eighties by the time we reach Earth, and we are going to use up all our water supplies producing this atmosphere.”

“A few years older than me, Ms. Von Zimmer?” joked Jonesy enjoying cake and coffee.

“About a decade, Herr Jones,” remarked the German without smiling.

“That reminds me,” interrupted Ryan, “I believe we received some sort of transmission a few hours ago, a test transmission from Earth, while most of us were asleep. Captain Pete?”

“Yes, on my watch,” smiled Captain Pete. “Very exciting. When we left, the president said that NASA would be working on getting new technology into space and, if I remember, he said that it would take them about two years. It seems that they are about four months early, if this was the first communications test to outer space.”

“And?” questioned Jonesy.

“No, Mr. Jones, they didn’t tell me that your Gulfstream was missing you. The complete message was only a few seconds long and was more like the emergency response signal we used to get on radio and television as in, ‘this is a test, it is only a test…’ Do you remember that sound?” Most of the Americans nodded. “It sounded exactly the same. At this distance, the message will take about 29 minutes to reach us at the speed of light. The squawking was very faint and it came through on the last radio frequency we used to say goodbye. I believe that we will hear something from Earth soon, and Ryan has asked me not to respond until we get a real message.”

“We received the signal, or message through the shield?” VIN asked.

“It seems so,” replied the captain. “I’m sure it would have been stronger without the shield, but we received it alright. We can always decrease the shield to allow the antennas above us in the cylinder to stick out of the shield if necessary.”

“Getting back to today’s agenda,” continued Ryan, “to answer your question, Frau Von Zimmer, we will be leaving supplies on DX2017, and I understand we will need water supplies very soon after reaching the next moon. I believe Ganymede will be our next port of call. Ganymede is the third planet in line in the alien base. We have decided to send down supplies for Suzi to try to grow produce on the surface. Suzi, please elaborate.”

“Ja, my team and I believe that the light from the blue shield will enhance the growth of vegetables inside it. Although we are still testing our theories, it seems that somehow this shield collects light from the sun, increases the real strength of its rays, and uses the collected rays to increase the light inside. In other words, the light spectrum is collected and magnified, and will aid us in growing plants with, let us say for now, unnatural light.”

“Will we will have blue carrots instead of orange ones?” Jonesy asked appearing to look serious.

“As usual, Mr. Jones, you are first to comment. It might be, but we will be doing more concentrated analysis of produce quality than is usually done on Earth. We will take whatever we grow and completely quantify the nutritional values of the food. I wish they had done this in America before we left. Only a few universities did any complete nutritional breakdowns on food in supermarkets, and usually they were hidden from the media. We did hundreds of tests in Nevada on produce designated for America One, and compared it to off-the-shelf produce. We found that the food grown on Earth, and available in Las Vegas supermarkets with the highest quality fresh foods, was less than 25 percent of what we thought the nutritional value was. I am still proud to report that up here we have not equaled pure vegetable nutrition, but have achieved 75 percent of perfection, or three times better than in Nevada.”

“Will this quality continue?” Ryan asked.

“I think it will degrade over time,” responded Suzi. “The reasons for poor nutritional quality on Earth were due to soil degradation, pesticides on non-organic produce, and overuse of land. Of course, with imported food, the problem was not local. For instance, bananas not grown in America, contained only half of the normal levels of potassium and other nutritional ingredients. Price competition drives down quality, and farmers big and small cut corners in soil reformation to grow top-quality food. Only certain small countries, mostly African, and not mass grown were better in quality. Further, 75 percent of organic merchandise from the West Coast had remnants of pesticides in the plant’s historical DNA. So, I expect that whatever we grow on DX2017 might not make optimal nutritional standards, but hopefully will be better than what is grown on Earth during this century.”

“Thank you, Suzi,” Ryan said. “Now, about the air. We already have enough to set up an atmosphere in the metal caverns. Within a few weeks, we can supply the smaller dome with air. Since the second dome turns on when we arrive, and off when we depart, we can park one of the Astermine craft with its forward cargo bay inside the first dome; that means spacesuits will not needed to travel once we have an atmosphere in the dome. When this system is secure, I can allow crewmembers to disembark without suits and even allow the children to go to the surface. The two caverns are quite spacious, certainly larger than America One, and having crew down there will relieve our systems up here. The nuclear batteries should give us at minimum 50 years of continuous power, enough for three flights along DX2017’s path around the solar system. That also gives us a sort of free ride, and more than enough time to live on this planet, or Mars, or wherever, for the rest of their lives. The only long-term problem I foresee is the lower gravitational fields compared to what our bodies were designed for on our own planet.”

“That is one reason these early Earth people may have died off,” interjected Petra Bloem. “I am firming up my belief that something went drastically wrong. They may have died from the lower gravity, or maybe they ran out of air and supplies on the moons and planets before DX2017 arrived. Maybe DX2017 arrived with no supplies. Maybe their structured supply system broke down due to a problem on Earth, or here in space.”

“Ja,” added Martha. “If we are not careful, we could end up the same way in 50 to 100 years, when something goes wrong. Something always goes wrong, given enough time.”

“That is why each of our bases must be completely self-sufficient and never need supplies from Earth, or one of the other bases,” Suzi admonished. The others all nodded.

“So, I will eat quality blue carrots up here, but could have to eat crappy orange carrots if I return to Earth?” asked Jonesy.

“In a nut shell, or shall I say a carrot shell, Herr Jones,” smiled Suzi.

“I’m not a scientist, but won’t your soil degrade with time, like it might have done for these guys, or how it is currently happening on Earth?” asked VIN.

“Something Mr. Rose and I are working on,” his wife smiled at him. “You are 100 percent correct, and those ongoing fresh soil supplies are what we are working on. I was very careful to get our soil supplies from only the richest freshest soils I could find, and want to reform plant science to actually never need soil at all; that has been accomplished down on Earth, but not yet in space.”

The meeting ended with everybody accepting that the caverns would be opened to habitation, once every room had been thoroughly investigated, and that left VIN trying to figure out how to open the remaining doors. He knew that it had something to do with the console in the command room, not unlimited power through the walls from the nuclear batteries.

After the meeting, VIN met his old friend Fritz Warner sunning himself in the pool room. His friend now had new prosthetics on his one arm and leg, and VIN and he looked like they were turning into robots, as they relaxed in loungers in bathing suits.

Fritz had changed. VIN could see vast and disheartening changes in mental preparedness, thought patterns, and the general will to live. The man wasn’t a mess, but he was pretty close.

They discussed living on the new planet, with Fritz volunteering to be the first to live there. He could help work on the codes, or wording on the console, and wanted to be part of VIN’s security team. VIN agreed to everything except the third suggestion.

Fritz continued on and told VIN that he had studied the alphabet of this distant race. He had spent hours, both alone and with others, trying to decipher the language. Between the old languages of the Middle East, especially Farsi, hieroglyphics, and Aramaic, he was optimistic that a little more time could bring a breakthrough.

“Aren’t those ancient languages too modern for what these guys used?” asked VIN grabbing a glass of beer. He had the rest of the day off, and he had been allocated the usual pitcher of beer for his one day off. Jonesy, he noticed, didn’t have a pitcher and smiled at what Jonesy was about to do. Jonesy had pissed off someone and he was penalized one unit of his weekly beer allocation. Fritz’s pitcher was one glass from full, and both men looked menacingly at the approaching vulture.

Jonesy was far more clever than the two men thought him to be in times of need. He ignored the beer, smiled, tried to be as pleasant as possible and, for his troubles, received a full glass, each man contributing half a glass of their precious beer. Jonesy always mooched well.

Lying back and enjoying his brew, he listened to the conversation. He had achieved his mission, and didn’t want his mouth to cause him to relinquish any more possible donations.

“So, what about Russian or Chinese letters?” VIN asked, not really being educated in foreign language deciphering.

“No use at all,” Fritz replied, eyeing Jonesy to see how much time was left before mooching could possibly begin. “The closest we have is hieroglyphics and Farsi. We have a few languages from the current North African tribes and there are absolutely no similarities to the Arabic languages that help me. I had an idea yesterday to see if we had archived information on the clicking sounds of the Namibian Bushmen. Remember, Namibia was called German West Africa a hundred years ago. It was part of my school history and geography.

“The Khoisan languages are the languages of Africa which have click sounds, and certainly do not belong to other languages we know of. I’m no expert on languages,” continued Fritz, “but I believe that this direction is the best way to go to understand the shapes, or letters around the dials and switches on the consoles. The Bushmen, or San people, are one of a few tribes in Africa who use these clicks. The Bantu are another. Most of these click languages do not have a written form, but what is exciting is that people studying this old communication used two new letters where the clicks were made. These letters, or phonemes, represent distinct units of speech sounds. VIN, I’m no expert, but these two new letters could be our Rosetta stone, the key to understanding their language. In our archives I found a Bantu language that has been written down, and which includes these phonemes. It is my understanding that the Bantu people also originated in or near Namibia, and the Khoisan language they spoke was called “Nàmá”. How you pronounce that I will never know. Clicks, or phonemes, are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. Consequently, our library shows that the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. These languages have been used as far north in Africa as Tanzania, which indicates the migration of these people from the Green Sahara, as I call it, could have actually happened. I doubt that these Khoisan tribes are anything like the aliens we found, but we are getting closer to that timeline, 7,000 years B.C.”

“So these two signs could be the key to open a code?” VIN asked. He was quite impressed with Fritz. For a German, he certainly knew different avenues of information, and clever guys like him knew how to research answers. VIN, for the first time in his life, wondered how well he might have done if he had pursued higher education. He often felt the odd one out in the lectures given by the scientists on board.

“They could open a door, but that depends on whether these tribes all used the same language. If they used a click at the same time, something should show up in the written signs. Or I could be barking up the wrong tree.”

“How about the tree of beer?” asked Jonesy, eyeing both pitchers.

“Go bark up a tree, General Jones. Behave yourself in the future and I’ll put in a good word with my wife,” smiled VIN.

“It’s not Suzi,” replied Jonesy. “Get a good word in with Mr. Rose and I’ll take you to the Seychelles next time we fly.”

Jonesy was not lucky. There were to be no more donations and the contents of the pitchers were consumed by their rightful owners.

Forty-eight hours later the first radio message arrived from Earth. It was quite short and garbled with static, and seemed to convey a warning to Ryan and America One.

“Ryan Richmond, your friend, President of the United States, sending this message. Yes, still president. Have new satellites in space. Unfortunately China thinks they now own all space above Earth. Chinese shot down your Russian Space Station 32 days ago. They have small cubes with lasers on them, dozens of them, acting independently. Negotiating again over the ISS. We will not give the station to them. ISS has destroyed dozens of cubes. Your laser still has a longer range, but these cubes are hard to see, they are so small. This station is in danger too, and we have warned the Chinese that it will mean total war if they destroy it. About to have talks about a space cease fire. We saw your helmets on the Mars Rover’s video feed. Congratulations. World life quality decreasing, much disease and dying. Global warming still a threat, oceans have risen by nearly half an inch. Ongoing wars with several countries, on and off. We are still here and will remain so. I need an ETA of your return. Please reply if you get this. The United States of America signing out and awaiting a response.”

“It seems that the world is no better a place than when we left it,” Ryan commented over the intercom after the short message had been played back to the crew. “If anybody wants to suggest a reply, a meeting for astronauts and security will begin on the Bridge in an hour. Following the meeting, Captain Pete and I will discuss a reply which we will transmit to the president and broadcast live to you over the intercom. Out.”

“What should we say as a possible ETA (estimated time of arrival)?” Ryan asked the group of astronauts, Captain Pete, and VIN in the Bridge. Nobody had any suggestions and got on with what they were doing. “Captain Pete, you have been studying DX2017’s solar system orbit for weeks now, what do you suggest?”

“This orbit takes us close to both Jupiter and Saturn and all of the scientists have told me that they would like to visit moons around both of these planets. I think it best to do that. If we leave DX2017, speed up, and get to the Jupiter area a year ahead of our ‘bus’, we could spend up to twenty months in that area. However, we will need fuel to continue our odyssey if we do this. Martha tells me water, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen will be available on at least one of the moons. Then, we can catch up with DX2017, and spend eleven months on her before jumping off again to speed up to survey Saturn’s moon or moons. If we do that, we will have two years to either catch up DX2017, which should have turned 158 degrees; the change in direction could be due to its flyby around Saturn, and it will be heading back to the center of the solar system for the flight home. Or with full tanks we could return to Earth faster ourselves, three years before DX2017 reaches the area. If we want, we can go around the circle again, and hitch a ride back to Mars. I believe that is very possible; we achieve your long-term plans for the journey, Ryan, we satisfy the scientists, and the crew who want to eat orange carrots, as Mr. Jones so eloquently put it, can disembark and return to Earth for their retirement years.”

“Some of our children, the older ones will be in their teens, and will already be trained to continue the odyssey for round two,” added Igor.

“Some of us could be dead, but I like Captain Pete’s idea. I can get Maggie to fly her old husband far and wide,” Jonesy said. “Who knows, maybe with a few lessons, old me might still be able to do it.”

“What? Have children?” joked VIN, smiling.

“No, fly, you ass,” remarked the ever-polite chief astronaut.

“I think that is a perfect plan,” added Maggie. The rest of the female pilots agreed and even Kathy nodded, Ryan noticed.

“So leave ‘Round Two’ to our younger generation,” Ryan summarized. “Not a bad idea, plus if anybody wants to continue, and expire in space, they have the freedom to do so. It just worries me what we are going to find on Earth when we get back. They are still trying to kill each other, won’t stop, I doubt ever will, and there could be nothing left when we return.”

“Plus millions of little Chinese cubes attacking us?” added Captain Pete.

“Nothing we can’t handle with our new shields,” added VIN. “We just blast everyone out of the sky and tell everybody to back off.”

“And I’m sure we will then have a search team of scientists in the Sahara, trying to find evidence of these little guys, and will need VIN and me for air protection,” Jonesy added.

Slowly a return message was worked out, agreed upon and sent back to Earth.

“United States of America, and the planet Earth, Ryan Richmond replying. Got your message. Currently on our way to Jupiter. Left Mars a few months ago. Everything running to plan up here. Powered up Rover Opportunity, she is good to go. Found all we need in supplies to continue. Estimated time of arrival in your vicinity, seven to nine years, if our plan comes together. Have found other life forms, although no living species. End of message.”

Everyone knew that it would take nearly half an hour for the message to get to Earth, and several waited around for a response. Nothing came back.

Chapter 12

Puzzles deciphered

The eight-hour journey back to the blue bubbles below them was fascinating. They needed three orbits to decrease altitude and the bubbles grew each time they passed directly over them. Asterspace Three had the new accommodation cylinder strapped to her underbelly.

Jonesy brought her in and gently lowered both the cylinder and the mining supply ship through the bubble they were going to fill with an atmosphere. VIN exited the docking port to untie the three thick cords. He threw out the ladder and, because of the added height of the cylinder, he had to jump from the bottom rung while still a couple of feet above the surface; jumping higher than normal with his powerful metal legs was normal. He landed gently, much more so than he had trained to do in the hangar in Nevada. Once on the ground, he moved away from the craft.

Maggie was in control of the mining craft, Jonesy giving her some flying time, and she gently lowered the cylinder the last couple of feet onto the blue, glinting surface. After VIN untied the straps she slowly piloted the craft over to one side and brought her into land. The supply cylinder had been exactly positioned to allow as much of the space craft into the bubble as possible.

There was enough room in the same blue dome for the cylinder and the front half of the ship and she carefully placed the craft’s tail area into the second dome. Jonesy assisted her by relaying VIN’s directions so she could bring the craft’s nose close to the wall of the dome.

A permanent crew would not be transported to the surface until the caverns were completely searched and every door opened, which was VIN’s job. For the first time, Fritz was with him and was exhibiting new life. Two new projects had captured his interest; he was fascinated by the prospect of deciphering the writing in the console, and also helping VIN open the doors.

Allen Saunders was ready to depart the mother ship in Astermine One once the first craft gave him clearance to descend. He had another four men squeezed into the front area.

There was just enough room for Allen to park Astermine One’s front area and forward cargo bay in the same bubble. The pilots had to work in extremely tight spaces to get the craft in, which gave them practice for when the atmosphere would be released.

Ryan deemed the bubble safe, so the pilots did not to have to remain in their seats ready to lift off at a moment’s notice. Jonesy and Maggie disembarked.

Igor and Boris worried about radiation contamination from the outer skins of the craft entering and departing, but they wouldn’t be able to conduct tests until the actual air was released.

It would take a few weeks to manufacture enough air to fill the two alien caverns, all the rooms inside, and the bubble. No knew if there might be miles of corridors and rooms inside the body of the blue planet once they got doors open. But with the cylinder on the surface, at least they could stay and work for several days.

The cylinder, with adequate housing for 12, was equipped to recirculate air, and was stocked with food, and water; it contained two horizontal bunks in separate compartments, a communal lounge and kitchen area, a space shower and one toilet for each sex. The decent gravity was sufficient for them to sleep horizontally, eat normally, have privacy, and perform one’s necessities.

Suzi was inside Asterspace Three with VIN and Mars, Jonesy, Maggie and Saturn, Ryan and Fritz. Both babies could now walk. They were squeezed into the two-room cockpit, all in full suits. The toddlers looked extremely professional in small space suits, made by the crew aboard America One. There were three sizes of suits to accommodate the crew: toddler, medium and normal adult. Only the helmets were all the same size. They weren’t heavy, but the children were fitted with extra supports to help keep their necks straight.

To complete the first crew on DX2017, Allen Saunders, with Michael Pitt as copilot, were bringing down Igor, Boris, and Martha Von Zimmer. The second craft would return to America One once the first cargo bay was unpacked with added supplies for a long stay.

The whole team spent the first three-hour shift unloading supplies. Suzi and Maggie were excited about taking their children on their first short space walk. When the inside of the cylinder had been double-checked to ensure it was ready for habitation, the two women were aided out of the docking bays with the kids in their arms and helped down the stairs; they carried their children— the first children ever to be outdoors in space—the short walk to the docking port on the cylinder.

The whole crew helped, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief once the mothers and children were safely inside the newly prepared living quarters. After testing for radioactivity, the mothers removed their suits and then got the children out of theirs.

Martha Von Zimmer helped them change diapers, which were placed into a special container made for the purpose. A more powerful air circulation system had been developed which could remove all odors as well as additional carbon dioxide.

Jonesy had mentioned months earlier that dirty diapers were certainly not part of space exploration in small, tight spaces. He already had enough of the problem in his larger apartment aboard America One.

While the ladies were doting over their space children, the men were outside reopening the alien-sealed shaft in between the caverns. One of the mining spiders was unloaded to blast through the melted 25 feet of rock sealing the shaft. They also had to get the original spider out of the third cavern, which required taking out the docking port. All this work had to be done, and the entire alien system opened and then resealed, before any air could be released.

Fritz, Boris and VIN began to take apart the docking port on their shaft after Igor programed the spider to laser the melted rock that sealed the shaft. Its first program was to open the first six feet of the alien shaft another foot to fit the four-foot wide docking port, as well as take out the melted rubble. Next, the spider was to be programmed to blast the walls and increase the diameter of the alien shaft until it reached the horizontal corridors thirty feet below, 48 hours of non-stop work. VIN also wanted to move the broken rock to fill the twenty-foot shaft below the horizontal corridors; that dead area would just take up valuable air. But, digging from above, the spider would need to haul the rock out first.

Jonesy, Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt unloaded a dozen canisters of supplies from both craft. Then they unloaded the tanks of air. Using the winch, Michael Pitt, who was as good as VIN at unloading, connected each set of three 100-pound air tanks strapped together, lifted them up and over the side to Jonesy and Allen, who made sure they didn’t touch the outside skin of the craft as they were lowered to the ground. Even in this lighter gravity than Earth, the three tanks together weighed a hundred pounds, and could do damage to the skin of the mining craft.

Asterspace Three and Astermine Two each carried 15 tanks. It would take ten more flights to bring down all the air tanks needed, but there was no rush. It would take days, maybe weeks, before the caverns were ready for their first atmospheres for many centuries.

The crew worked in three-hour shifts, and by the time the men entered the cylinder one by one after the first shift, the ladies had dinner ready.

Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt took off and headed back up to the mother ship; they would return with more tanks in 36 hours.

The 40-foot long, 12-foot wide cylinder had ample room, with separate sleeping units, for eight crew members and two babies for that first night. Half had been divided into three narrow compartments on each side with a very narrow corridor in the middle. Each compartment had narrow bunk beds three high, enough to accommodate 18 crew members. Martha naturally wanted her own compartment, as did Ryan, and the others shared for the first couple of nights.

Ten feet of the cylinder was dedicated to storage rooms and its power plants. The third nuclear battery, taken from SB-III, was installed outside the cylinder and supplied heat and light and ran the dozen different systems in the power room. The air cleaning system, the heater, the lighting, the infrared food heater, the music, television DVD player, space suit rechargers, and even the pressurized water system to the faucet, shower, and toilets, worked off the single power system. At one percent power, it could easily look after twelve crewmembers in such a small space.

Inside the lounge, a ten-foot long area was set aside where the dozen space suits were hung and recharged. A CO2 detector was in every compartment, as were carbon monoxide detectors, radiation detectors, several air density detectors and pressure monitors in the communal, storage and electronics areas. The roof and walls had several monitors everywhere. The kitchen was more like a small bar area with a refrigerator and an infrared stove. In the lounge was a dining table able to seat six at a time and three couches to relax on, or to use as beds.

With 20 percent higher gravity than Mars, the crewmembers could sleep horizontally, without having to be tied down. With body weight at less than 60 percent, any thin mattress was comfortable to a light space body. Except for a slight buzz from machinery, the cylinder was extremely quiet. As quiet as sleeping in a sardine can.

Twelve hours later the crew began its next shift. On this shift, all they had to do was to carry the internal parts and the walls of the docking port to the other hole; when that was accomplished they were done for the day.

The spider had created a seven-foot tall pile of rubble next to the shaft it had been expanding, which was wider and clear of rock for ten feet. After VIN, Fritz and Boris removed the docking port from the first shaft, thus releasing the second spider, Fritz programed it to collect the rubble from the pile and to take it back down the other hole to begin covering the bottom tube area where it had been imprisoned.

VIN carefully sat down on a pile of air tanks and looked around; it was the first time he could actually just sit and observe the scene around him. Allen and Michael Pitt weren’t due for another 15 hours, and he still had an hour of time left. The other crew members were also finished and were climbing back up the side to the roof and into the cylinder.

Suzi, looking out of one of the cylinder windows at him, asked her husband what he was doing.

VIN, quite surprised to hear his wife over the intercom, replied, “Just relaxing and checking out this blue space scene.”

“I am all suited up and all I need to do with Mars is to attach his helmet. Do you think it’s safe for us to join you?”

“I don’t see why not, what does Ryan say?”

“I think it is time for young Mars Noble to join his father. He might lead the next generation one day, and I’m sure he needs to find his space legs,” Ryan said. VIN stood up to help Suzi exit.

Suzi and Mars climbed out of the outer hatch of the docking port. Suzi leaned over the side with little Mars in her hands and VIN grabbed onto the toddler, who looked very dapper in his new suit. Being a baby, it wouldn’t take long for him to become curious about his new surroundings.

Young Saturn Jones was used to helmeted characters running around, and had been quite content to try on her helmet a few weeks earlier; but, like her father, she wasn’t very happy after having it on a few minutes later.

During the last few weeks, four toddlers had worn the suits for a couple of hours a day to get accustomed to them. Only the helmets and a complaining Saturn Jones had posed any difficulty.

Mars Noble was a happy kid in his suit and could often be found napping in it. Saturn Jones, on the other hand, always had big eyes whenever she looked through the helmet, and appeared to be in a state of shock.

VIN held Mars under one arm, while Suzi slowly maneuvered down the ladder. It was difficult for her to get about wearing the cumbersome metal frames around her useless legs when she had to walk, especially down a tiny cord ladder.

She reached ground and, still holding onto her husband, they gently touched helmets; Mars seemed happy making a few incoherent noises into his intercom. VIN let Mars down onto the surface of DX2017 to take his first mini-steps for mankind.

With the rest of the crew enjoying the scene from inside the cylinder, Mars took his first step. He was already used to changes in gravity and his first step was pretty good, with VIN helping him stay upright in case he fell down, a no-no in a space suit. Suzi found her balance and footing, held onto Mars’ other space glove and, first the first time in their lives, the Noble family, walked on a foreign planet together.

With rousing applause from inside the cylinder a dozen steps were taken before the family had to reverse the proceedings and return. In space it took much longer to get anything accomplished than it did on Earth.

Even young Saturn Jones, in Maggie’s arms, was silent as she watched her friend—who happened to look like a silver monster—walk around the planet’s surface as if he was out for a walk in the park.

There were smiles on all three Noble faces, once their helmets were removed inside, and the docking port secure. Even Mars had enjoyed his first walk. It would certainly not be his last.

Several hours later, it was back to work. The first objective was to open all the same rooms as they had opened on Mars, a task expected to take a few days.

The internal doors needed to be opened, and VIN would be the first one in with the usual investigative crew, joined by Martha Von Zimmer.

The docking port was secure in the new shaft the spiders had widened. It was interesting, that there was no metal, where the rock plug had been. The first twenty feet of the vertical shaft was not covered in the metal skin. The men postulated that maybe the aliens had a longer docking port, or entrance system. Ryan and Boris suggested that their space ships, or at least one of its legs, or a supply and transfer tube, might have penetrated the hole and sealed it from ship to tunnel.

VIN had rope ladders and a dozen metal ladder rungs ready to hammer into the wall. The spider had made the docking port area to exact specifications, but underneath it made the tunnel wider to allow space for the rungs, and not interfere with the canisters being lowered down the hole. His first job was completed in his first three-hour spacewalk.

The next day the shaft was ready for the crew to join him. The spider that had dug the wider shaft was still in the cavern. VIN made sure that the rock filled the bottom part of the shaft the other spider had been trapped in.

While Boris and Fritz sealed the wall where VIN first entered the tunnel, the others walked into the opened cavern. Ryan and Igor took Martha to the interior while VIN proceeded to the rear cavern. He had been here once before, and it seemed to be identical to the one on Mars. It was time to see if there were any bodies in the rear dormitories, or the morgues. VIN was in intercom contact all the time, since the battery was powering up the walls with light and heat.

He checked the cavern; it was as if he were standing in the same cavern on Mars. VIN sat on the steps and waited for the battery Boris and Fritz were going to carry through, when they finished patching and sealing the hole. He didn’t know if the doors in this cavern would be the same as those on Mars, but he hoped that the surge of power through the metal railing and into the walls would flip open the door panels. Then, he would have to do undertake the still dangerous task of removing his helmet in a vacuum.

“Okay, Boris, power up the battery to 40 percent,” VIN ordered. Nothing much happened, except one panel on the second floor, and the expected one on the first floor flipped open, and the walls began to glow brightly. “Fifty percent,” stated VIN, and the second panel on the second floor opened. “Sixty percent,” VIN ordered, and the walls glowed so brightly around them they felt like they were inside a light bulb. They had never gone over 50 percent before, and VIN didn’t really want to tempt fate, but he had to try one more notch. “Sixty-five percent,” he ordered and even their Polaroid helmet visors weren’t dark enough to keep the men from being blinded, but a new door panel flipped open on the ground floor, where the cavern joined the tunnel leading to the forward cavern.

Ryan called from the forward cavern. “What are you guys doing? This place is like being on stage in a rock concert. The walls are really bright in here.”

“Shut it down to 20 percent,” VIN ordered. “Just taking the power to the next level. We hit sixty-five percent and located a new door. I think the only way to get these doors open is to blast them with electricity. I wonder if a laser might work,” VIN thought aloud.

“Well, the spider is here, and I can walk it in and see what happens,” suggested Boris.

I’ll do one eye maneuver to open the door upstairs and then see if there are any more dead bodies,” VIN said. It seemed that this was the most important task ahead, before anybody really wanted to live down here. Fritz, who hadn’t yet seen how VIN’s eye opened the doors, wanted to see how it was done.

Breathing into the mouthpiece, VIN did his job, with Boris knocking on his helmet him after four seconds. On the fifth second, and on cue, VIN shut his visor. He sustained the expected immediate itchiness and profusely watering eye as he tried to keep his balance. The door opened.

There was silence as VIN’s eyes cleared slowly; it was like looking through water in a swimming pool. The other two just stared into the already lit room. VIN’s focus returned to see the exact same size room as on Mars, but it wasn’t furnished with beds and dust; the three men looked into a machine room. A machine room! Much like down in Nevada, and on board America One.

“Wow!” Was all Boris could say; the other two were speechless.

“Find something?” asked Ryan from the forward cavern.

“You had all better come and see this,” VIN responded. Nobody moved until Igor, Ryan and Martha walked through the tunnel and climbed the stairs to peer into the room.

About 30 feet long and 20 feet wide, the room was filled with strange looking machines. There were four different machines along each side wall, and what seemed to be piles of raw metal in sectioned off areas at the end. VIN could see what looked like pure gold. Also he saw diamonds, large ones, exactly the same kind he found on the first asteroid. The other three sections had square blocks of different silver metals. Above the sections were other, smaller supplies of metals and on the top shelf, six feet high, were what seemed to be premade electrical connectors and wires of every color and thickness.

“Electrical production room! Hallelujah!” Igor shouted, scaring everybody that could hear him, even the kids in the cylinder, and the crew on America One’s Bridge.

Igor had found his dream. Boris and Fritz were equally excited, and Martha wanted to open more doors.

“VIN, I believe that if we train the laser onto the glass inside the panel, the same thing will happen,” suggested Fritz once he had got over the initial shock. “I bet your eye is returning the light sent out from the panel. I think even a mirror might work, but we don’t have one with us.” Fritz walked the spider up to the only door panel below the staircase, programed a five second burst onto the panel’s glass where VIN looked into it.

Fritz was right. The laser acted like a key and the large double doors opened. The wall inside was glowing with light, and Martha was making happy yelps. Inside there were the water urns, red, glowing panels in the walls, and even what looked like a sectioned off area full of what looked like dirt, or top soil.

“Alien poop?” suggested VIN, but Martha wasn’t worried.

“You beating up my dear friend?” asked Jonesy from inside the cylinder. “Give her one for me,” he joked.

“Martha, tell me! Tell me what you have found!” interrupted an excited Suzi.

“Soil, or poop, as your husband describes it, Suzi; about a ton of it. Also, urns on three shelves around the room and on the floor. Big urns, small ones, red ones, green ones all with faucet-type devices on them. I think this is the food supply room, or the biology supply room for the other bases,” she replied. “Herr Noble, we need to shut the door immediately. The temperature in this room is plus 44 degrees Fahrenheit and the cold vacuum of space is going to kill anything in here.”

Martha grabbed a glove full of soil (or poop), and rushed out of the room pulling VIN behind her with her other hand, and Fritz fired the laser. As prompted, the door closed behind them. They had been in there for less than a minute.

“There must have been an atmosphere in there to have heat,” Ryan commented, coming down to join them.

“Ja!” replied Martha. “My suit showed high oxygen, low nitrogen and small amounts of helium, about three percent. There was not enough carbon-dioxide to register, but there was an interesting sulphur-mix content, two percent. We need to get air in here immediately to restore the atmosphere, or everything will be worthless.”

The men headed to the shaft where Jonesy, Allen Saunders, who had just arrived, and Michael Pitt readied three tanks at a time to send down through the docking port.

“Since that room had air, and heat, it will save us a couple of tanks,” Ryan said, as he watched VIN, Igor and Boris open the first three tanks in the rear chamber. Nine more tanks were opened before their three-hour spacewalk was over, and they had to return to the surface.

Twelve tanks of air would be enough to get a basic atmosphere inside the two caverns and tunnel, and it would take several hours before the tanks emptied; that would increase the pressure, oxygen and heat for the next visit.

The crew needed twelve hours to pause, and recharge their suits and on the next visit Suzi would join them.

Jonesy, Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt emptied additional tanks they had transported to the surface and, Martha, with her small amount of whatever-it-was she had scooped up, headed straight back up to America One to analyze her treasure. Suzi would take her place in the ground crew while Maggie looked after the kids in the cylinder.

“Ryan, we have a message for you from Earth,” stated Captain Pete an hour after Asterspace Three left to return to orbit.

“I’m sure not as exciting as what we feel down here,” replied Ryan. “Broadcast it down here, or over the entire intercom if you think it proper.”

“Nothing really top secret, or painful for anybody to hear,” replied Captain Pete.

“Opening the ship’s intercom for broadcast now. ‘Captain Pete to crew, Captain Pete on the Bridge to all crew. For your Information. We have a message from the President of the Unites States. I will read it now. Temperature in Nevada today, 121 degrees and climbing. Europe, and USA in sporadic space battles with Chinese. Unmanned space cubes on both sides taking casualties daily. Ground war here on Earth imminent. The satellite relaying this message to you is armed, and, hopefully, can defend itself. ISS destroyed by Chinese Attack Cube yesterday. Now they are going after our new GPS satellites. One, one-month old satellite destroyed this morning. US Navy, Pacific Fleet, heading over to Asia. War about to start between North and South Korea for the second time. This time the South will not stop until North is destroyed. Iran wants to go to war, now ally of China. Japan gearing up to retaliate and defend itself. Europe having bad cube attack, and three new satellites destroyed by Chinese. Russia is about to launch cubes, and has warned China with certain death. China now about to cause world catastrophe, I order you to re—’” The intercom went silent and Captain Pete came back on. “That is the end of the message everyone. It seems that it was interrupted, and we might not hear much more for a while. Out.”

Chapter 13

A new home

“Sounded like the president wants you to return to Earth,” VIN said to his boss.

“Seems so,” he responded sitting comfortably in the cylinder, and out of his suit. “It is not easy to just turn around and head home. It is a fair distance and we could lose the chance of ever returning in our lifetimes.”

“I’m sure the good old USA can defend itself,” added Jonesy playing with Saturn.

“I believe we should go on,” was Suzi’s opinion.

“Maybe a vote by the crew would be a more democratic way?” added Maggie. “If Earth is in danger, we might need to help now, or there might be nothing to go back to.”

“China is a big ball of hot air,” injected Fritz. “All I saw and heard while I was there is pollution, people being worked to death, too much building going on too fast, and they are going to end up stewing in their own pot of forced advancement. I think China has as big a threat from its own people, as from outside countries. If the Chinese government turns on the whole world, the people of China will turn on their own government. There is only so much a nation of people can take before they get pissed off. Ask the French.”

“I agree,” continued Igor. “It happened in Russia, not on a massive scale like the whole population, but it has happened. Once Stalin was dead, the Russian people learned again how not to fear their government, and that they did have a say, except that their say was extremely insignificant.”

“I think that the Chinese government doesn’t want a world war,” added Boris. “They live on exports and can’t do without them. I believe they will rattle their sabers like the North Koreans have done for the last couple of decades, but will back away from a total world war. They cannot win, especially against America and Russia, and the president’s message about Russian satellites back in orbit will subdue the Asians.”

“So you think this whole battle for the control of space will calm down?” Ryan asked his crew. The Russians nodded. They knew the might of their country. The Americans nodded. They knew that money and survival were more important to the Chinese than committing suicide.

Ryan decided to return with the next shuttle and discuss the problem with Captain Pete, present it to the rest of the crew and, do what Maggie suggested: let everyone vote on it. Three days later, Ryan joined Allen and Michael Pitt, who had brought down the next load of cylinders a day earlier.

Time took on a different meaning on America One. The concept of rushing around belonged on Earth. In space, time was measured between work and sleep, or not working and sleep. Weekends were of no consequence; everyone had one day off from a schedule that wasn’t demanding. Only the scientists were hyperactive, wanting more products to test, seeking new doors to open new rooms, and eager to begin living on DX2017. Jupiter was still two years away and that, to the crew in space, was like a lifetime.

It took Boris 24 hours of contemplation and consultation with the other scientists before they solved the puzzle of opening the doors. It took nothing more than holding a piece of metal in front of the panel, which then sent out its blue light. A shiny piece of metal, or a glass mirror worked best, and the light bounced back at the panel and the door then opened. Except for VIN’s door in the front cavern. Whenever they tried it, that door sent out a green light instead of a blue one, and when it was bounced back, nothing happened.

The other two rooms were full of what looked like 5,000-year old supplies. The soil, or poop, Martha was analyzing was found in both rooms. VIN calculated that, in total, the soil would have weighed at least five tons on Earth. There were a dozen water urns, and he was sure if they still held water, it would taste horrible. The urns had been sealed, and were still in perfect condition. The rest of the supplies were mounds of dust. Boris found a few whole grains of corn sifting through the dust one day, and Fritz found grains of what looked like barley, or oats the next. One of the rooms contained shovel type instruments, a dozen of them, meant for four-foot tall people. Papers, or what looked like small remains of papyrus leaves, were also found.

One paper looked perfect. It was on a wall, and encased in a vacuum-sealed frame. Another was found in the third room.

Inside the large, vacuum-sealed frame, a piece of white material displayed a full color drawing, or picture, of the Sahara Desert. VIN could identify it, as its shape looked like the head of Africa. VIN took it to be a map which depicted three large tribes in the middle of the green belt, an area about the size of the United States. “Pretty desolate place. There is the Nile and I bet the people living in this area must have a name,” he said to Fritz as he got his helmet and visor as close as he could to the picture.

The atmosphere wasn’t quite right yet, the pressure was still below safe, the oxygen was low and they needed the third supply, on its way down, before they could take off their suits.

Fritz took a close look and copied down the letters, or squiggles.

“I think you could take the whole thing up to the ship and analyze it with Martha and Petra up there. Nobody is going to charge you for stealing it,” VIN joked.

“There could be life still in here?” asked Fritz, not understanding what VIN was getting at.

“I don’t think so,” replied VIN. “Here, on this little ball, my sixth sense has never alerted me to anything alive around us. It did feel to me that there could be life in the front cavern on Mars, and it wasn’t the dead people either. Something was very different there. I believe this was just their supply ship with a small crew, and one day the passengers just didn’t board and it has been whizzing around the solar system ever since.”

“Maybe with their ghosts?” asked Boris still checking out the writing.

“No, my sixth sense was honed well in Iraq. After a few years on patrol, you learn to feel that there are other life forms around you, say within a few miles. It’s like a dog that barks when its owners are coming home from work, even when they are still a mile or so from home.”

“What about the dead dust bodies?” Fritz asked.

“Never sensed anything there, in those three rooms with all the bodies, or before I opened the doors,” VIN replied. “But I do sense something in that room I can’t open.”

With Boris and Ryan in the other rooms, going through urns of all sizes, VIN and Fritz continued to study the map.

Boris was the first to open the new door panel when walking into the second chamber, and answered a question that was on many of the astronaut’s minds. Where did these aliens go to the bathroom?

The “bathroom” was interesting. The day earlier, the four men watched as a mirror opened the bathroom door. They checked their arm sensors and they noticed a decrease in pressure around them as the air they had just pumped into the cavern filled the small new room. It wasn’t big, but had what looked like a wash basin, as it was curved in the shape of a shell, could be filled like one, and it was on a pedestal with a hole in the middle. A second door had a red handle that could be opened by hand, like those VIN found on the cabinets in the first room.

It wouldn’t open, even though VIN pulled as hard as he could. It was sealed until Fritz had an idea and asked Boris to exit the small room; he closed the door behind Boris.

“I bet there is a safety device on the door, like on the trains we have in Germany,” Fritz stated. He was right. As soon as the first door was closed, the second door opened into an even smaller cubicle, and the men saw the simple form of a toilet. They knew it was a toilet as it had a real seat, shaped like a child’s bottom, and there was a hole in the middle.

“I bet this is the throne room,” VIN joked.

“Impossible to try with spacesuits on,” laughed Fritz. “Did Ryan pack any extra toilet paper? My sensor shows that there is still a horrible sort of atmosphere in here. Tons of carbon dioxide, but strangely, enough oxygen to breathe. Only the pressure is far below safe.”

“I bet nobody checked it out before the train left the last station, and the double door, sealed in the air,” replied VIN. “Fritz, check to see if you can open the outer door.”

VIN didn’t know where that idea came from, but since the throne room door was now open, the first door opened without a problem, to two men watching them.

They tried the mechanism several times. The outer door could open at any time a mirror was presented to the panel, but if the inner door was closed, it seemed to take its time to open, and if the outer door was open again, the inner door was sealed.

“I know,” VIN said as the men looked at each other. “This toilet is like a military long-drop toilet, a lot of air was used to fill this toilet, or throne room. The smell would be bad, so they must have a bottom part to stop smells wafting up continuously. Let’s pull it apart.”

The throne was all of five feet high; three feet above ground and two feet below. It was a round tube in a round hole. They had taken off the top and were looking into the tube when VIN suggested the door be closed. Since all the walls had the metal glowing brightly, light wasn’t a problem. When the inner door had been closed for several seconds, as if the room were occupied, it seemed that the power in the system opened a bottom tray which opened a vertical shaft into the depths of the planet which even VIN’s helmet lamp couldn’t illuminate. He believed it went down a long way.

“Too narrow to get a spider down to see how deep it is,” stated Boris after he looked in to see. “It can only be about 60 miles deep. I wonder if they have a hole on the other side of the planet to let the poop out?” VIN laughed.

“When we live down here, at least we’ll have a good, old-fashion never filling long-drop if it is 60 miles deep, ,” remarked VIN.

“When the air inside the toilet area is heated, and since hot air rises,” Fritz said, “the air won’t mix and the icy, smelly air will remain low in the shaft. I think that was the plan when it was designed. If they had a spider like ours, they could have dug the poop hole right through the planet. I bet it is at least one to several miles deep if they planned to use it for centuries.”

“Ingenious,” remarked Ryan. “The warm new air in the room would be much warmer above the cold, stale air low down in the shaft, actually close to 200 degrees warmer.”

Now with all the doors open, at least the doors they knew about, or could see, the only remaining door was the one VIN was pretty frustrated about. Ryan didn’t want to add more air until this door was opened, or until a decision was made to leave it closed. VIN knew that there was something very important in there. His gut told him so. Ryan made the decision to leave the door closed for the time being.

At the next meeting inside the cylinder, Igor and Boris explained to Ryan that they could soon control the doors independently, make them open and close at will, with the small hand mirrors on the next arrival. With that information, Ryan decided to open up the caverns to occupancy.

Since there were glass mirrors in each of the crew apartments, it hadn’t taken long for the crew aboard America One to cut one down into small round discs, nine in total, and make sure they had a Nano-silicone protective layer around the edges to prevent cutting, or destroying, spacesuit fabric or skin.

The nuclear batteries were working well, and the pressure in the caverns was now equal to 8,000 feet above sea level on Earth, still increasing, and the air reasonably good and safe with 60 degree temperatures.

Six of the scientists, mostly biologists were flying down in 24 hours aboard SB-III in its crew compartment in the forward cargo hold. Jonesy, Maggie and Saturn returned to the mother ship with Allen and Michael on the last launch ten hours earlier to fly the shuttle back. General Jones was particular about who flew his baby, SB-III, and so was Maggie. The scientists were bringing bags of clothing, bedding and scientific equipment to begin a 10-day trial living in the caverns. Suzi, Mars Noble and VIN would be joining them.

In case of emergency, the cylinder inside the now permanent shield would be an emergency shelter, so at least the crew could be accommodated in safety until picked up. Jonesy, Maggie and Saturn were going to have some private time in the accommodation cylinder, as an emergency flight crew on standby. Ryan was to return to Kathy and Lunar in America One for the first period.

An Earth day, or actually many days on this small planet, later, Jonesy brought his shuttle in for landing, making sure that the front area where the crew compartment was, landed inside the shield, not that it yet mattered as there was still no atmosphere. He had the atmosphere for the shield, or fifty percent of it, in the rear cargo bay. America One was still producing the air as fast as possible, but half of the needed atmosphere would be a good test to see what happened when air was pumped into the shield.

VIN and Boris were waiting for him inside the shield. They stayed out of the way of the powerful down thrusters, and now could stay out during a landing since the area was completely clean of any lose matter on the surface; once swept out, it stayed out.

“Perfect landing, partner,” VIN relayed over the intercom. “We have just returned from the caverns, and they are ready for habitation.”

Two hours earlier, VIN, Boris, Igor, Fritz and Ryan went into the cavern with three more tanks of air to complete the atmosphere.

Fritz was the most excited in this team. It was all Ryan could do to stop him from taking off his helmet before they had even opened the last tanks to increase the oxygen levels and give more pressure to both caverns.

The pressure stayed constant in the last 72 hours, telling them that there were no leaks out into space. The air mix had settled down, and the biologists were bringing down a hundred plants and several lights from one of the cubes to turn the future carbon dioxide into oxygen.

The air wasn’t perfect; it would smell, due to old stale air that remained in the cavern, and the toilet might have a pungent odor. The crew was bringing two air purification machines to filter the air of odors and tastes.

Ryan hadn’t heard of “Frebreze” when Kathy asked him how he was going to clean up the bad smells.

Kathy and Lunar were excited to be included with the second group of eight who would test out the alien habitat with Ryan. They would be joined by Suzi, Mars, and VIN, staying behind, when the first exchange took place. Ryan and Captain Pete decided that no more than half of the crew would ever be down there at once, and that each visit should be looked at as a sabbatical from America One.

Everybody would be in for a surprise when the air was added into the above ground shield; several had made bets that something interesting would happen.

Do you want the crew to exit through the side hatch, or are you going to open the roof door?” VIN asked the astronaut-in-command when the ship landed.

“I’m a little hesitant about opening the roof door on the first pass, so I’m asking the scientists to exit through the docking port,” Jonesy replied. “The guys up there knew that we would lose the air inside the crew compartment once we allowed the crew to exit from the roof exit and side exit. It would open the whole crew compartment, and or cockpit, to the vacuum inside the shield. At least we keep the air inside the larger compartment and stored inside the shuttle, so they are exiting one-by-one out of the docking port like always.”

“Roger that,” replied VIN.

Can you clean the windshield while you are out there, partner, and check the tires?” Jonesy joked.

VIN suggested that he go somewhere and enjoy himself. Jonesy smiled, so did Maggie next to him. “Also, partner, the chemistry crew up there wants us to release one tank of air directly at the shield wall before we allow the atmosphere to be released,” continued Jonesy from inside the cockpit. “Oh! You must make sure that the air doesn’t penetrate the shield wall and disperse outside through the shield. Do you still have any spare tanks down here?”

“Only the two for emergency use. We just opened up the last three supply tanks in the caverns,” VIN replied.

“Okay, partner, use one of the emergency tanks. I have two extra tanks in here. Captain Pete wanted double the emergency supply down here with more crew. “I can bring down an extra tank on the second trip.”

“Will do,” replied VIN.

Maggie exited the docking port first and helped the scientists through, one by one; Suzi was outside ready to help. Mars was asleep. VIN and Fritz opened the rear cargo bay in the second shield to unload the cargo, and the dozen air tanks.

Jonesy was exit number six to come through the port to help the scientists. VIN and Fritz’s three allotted spacewalk hours were nearly up and Jonesy helped complete the offloading of the cargo.

It would be twelve hours before the VIN could venture out to air test the shield, and during that time it would be sardine-tight in the cylinder with the new visitors and the crew returning from the caverns. Boris and Igor needed to return on SB-III which gave everybody staying a little more elbow room.

Boris and Jonesy and family would be heading back down in twenty-four hours with more air in one of the mining craft. Igor needed a break and wanted chance to study the black box already up there. He hoped his team had found something out.

Once there was an atmosphere in the shield, no more craft could be unloaded inside the shield, as the vacuumed spaces inside the sealed cargo bays would not open. It was exactly the opposite when the team had opened the treasure canisters with a vacuum in them, down on earth.

“A little tight in here,” VIN said, once everybody was unsuited and inside the cylinder. The tightness would last for twelve hours until VIN and a few others could go outside to begin loading the docking port inside the shaft with supplies. They needed two hours of spacewalk time before they could begin helping the crew into their new underground home.

As Jonesy flew back up with Boris and Fritz aboard, Ryan was the last to have his helmet unscrewed; as an experienced spacewalker inside the cylinder, he welcomed the new crew aboard DX2017. Three of them were first-time spacewalkers.

“VIN, the pressure in there is perfect,” continued Ryan looking at his head of security. “The caverns are certainly heating up; temperature should be in the seventies by tomorrow, and the pressure was down to 5,000 feet above sea level when we left. The bottles are still half full, so we expect near sea level conditions, or at most, pressure for a 3,000-foot altitude. Perfect for Nevada conditions. Crew, once we, the canisters, and you crewmembers are inside the caverns, we can take off our suits and do a tour; we’ll figure out sleeping arrangements, and show you how to use the bathroom. By the way, a space shower will be aboard the next flight for use down there. It will take a day or so to erect, and to get the pumps and infrared heater connected, so there are no showers for at least 72 hours. You were all told to shower before departure. If you didn’t, tough luck,” he said, turning to the new arrivals. “Also, we have two bottles of my last champagne in one of the cargo canisters. We are going to celebrate new life on a new planet, and our two-year anniversary since we left Earth.”

Dr. Petra Bloem was one of the crew in the cylinder, as were Dr. Martha and Mr. Rose, looking the worse for wear having completed his first spacewalk. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to view alien life.

With everybody trying to stay out of each other’s way, the 12 hours passed and, thankfully, VIN, Fritz, Ryan, and Vitalily who had arrived with the new crew, went back out to begin hauling the canisters through the docking port. Now that there would soon be atmosphere in both “departure” and “arrival” cargo halls, the canisters could be used to move food, water, equipment, clothing, bedding, and everything else the crew needed. There were a dozen canisters and a dozen air tanks to get through the docking port, all done by cords. Even though the gravity was much lower than on Earth, several of the canisters were heavy, and so were the air tanks.

Two men lifted each canister into the docking port, tied a cord to it, while two men waited at the bottom of the shaft below. The outer hatch was closed. Through remote control, a small electronic pulley system inside the docking port allowed the canister to descend the thirty feet once the inner hatch was opened. This had been done many times by the crew in orbit, but it was the first opportunity they had used the new pulley system designed aboard America One to lower and raise cargo on a planet. It worked like a dream.

Within two hours, loading of the canisters and one set of air tanks was complete.

Now the crew was ready to help the others to descend, this time down the rungs VIN had hammered into the wall of the shaft.

VIN went down first to join Fritz and Vitalily; the crew would be helped into the docking port by Ryan. The caverns were lit up, looked pretty with glowing walls, and were ready for occupancy. He was quite surprised to see both men with their helmets off carrying the last canister down the tunnel to the rear cavern. Since the crew had decided to bed down in the rear cavern, where all the supplies and rooms with equipment were situated, VIN decided that the spacewalk crew would sleep in the forward cavern.

He needed to take off his helmet to talk to the others, and he helped the next person, Mr. Rose, off with his helmet. At least the spacewalking time limit wouldn’t be of concern anymore.

The crew arrived. The second to last person was Ryan, who helped Suzi through the docking port. Suzi had Mars ready, and with Ryan’s help she expertly exited the cylinder’s port with her son in her arms, was helped down the ladder by her boss who then helped her into the shaft’s docking port by going first and then taking Mars from her once the inner hatch opened.

Carefully, one rung at a time, he holding little Mars, who weighed next to nothing, Ryan descended down the shaft with Suzi right behind.

Ryan and Suzi had their helmets removed before they unscrewed little Mars’ helmet. The air smelled weird, a little stale and with a very slight metallic taste, but the others were still alive and breathing normally, for the first time ever in a planet’s atmosphere away from Earth.

“So, what is the verdict on the air quality?” Ryan asked the crew. He was quite surprised that his voice had risen an octave or three, and VIN told him that it was probably due to higher than usual amounts of helium in the air; four times more than normal, but still within a safe zone for humans to breathe.

Everybody was happy, and Suzi unscrewed the last helmet.

“Let me give you a quick layout of these alien caverns,” VIN began. He led the group into the command center or control room. There were gasps and excited comments about the hologram above their heads. “We still don’t know how it works,” explained VIN looking upwards. “Like a car’s rear view mirrors, the distance is not accurate. The hologram appears to be a foot or less above the roof. Please understand that we are 30 feet below ground. This is the control room, or command center, as we call it. From now on this room is called the Alien Command Center. We unscrewed our helmets in the forward cavern,” squeaked VIN continuing, Suzi rather surprised how high her husband’s manly voice had become. “On the opposite wall in the room where the five globes are placed is the power room. That is where we found the black box being scrutinized by your fellow crew in the mother ship. To the left of the Globe Room, its new official name, is a room that I haven’t managed to open yet, and unless we figure out a way to open the door, we might have to resort to the spider’s laser.

“The forward cavern has the room leading off to the Globe Room. That was the exact same room where we found the three suited alien figures. It has cabinets inside two walls, 24 in total, and each of you will be allocated a cabinet to store your supplies, clothing or whatever you need to store so that others don’t fall over anything. Safety down here is the most important factor. We will be bringing three of the spacesuit recharging systems down here on the next cargo load. The Forward Cavern is the cavern’s new name. The tunnel we walked through to the Forward Cavern leads to the rear cavern. The Rear Cavern is its new name, and leads to the three rooms you guys want to get into and research, but first we must clear away the supplies. In each cavern there is the staircase you noticed. We haven’t found much else apart from the three rooms up there yet, but I’m sure new doors might show up once we learn more about these people and their systems. The most recent doors we found connect the supply rooms between caverns. The actual storage area of this base is between the caverns on the upper level, and the rooms open from both caverns. The very interesting bathroom, the only one, is to your right as you walk into the Rear Cavern,” and VIN explained to the crew how it worked.

Ryan took over when VIN was finished and elaborated about living on DX2017.

“As Mr. Noble has stated, we are going to run a tidy ship down here, as tidy as America One. Each scientist or crewmember will be allowed to stay down here for the first few months in 10-day durations. The first few teams will be you scientists wanting to research what is down here. When you are finished and have researched everything you can, and all items of importance have been taken up for storage on our mother ship, these caverns will become a sort of resort; a home away from home for anybody wanting to travel down. The only person who might not want to visit is our captain, who I’m sure won’t leave his ship. I’m sure Mr. Noble and I, running the ship with Mr. Jones’s company, might change his mind.

“There is not much to do down here yet, but there will be. I would like to make the Forward Cavern our first place of residence. The Rear Cavern and storage rooms will be completely opened up for greenhouses and Suzi and Mr. Rose will tend our gardens. All of the crew will work with them helping grow our food down here. As Dr. Martha’s latest research shows on the soil currently in the storage rooms, it can be returned to rich growing soil with a few additions to it coming down on the next flight. Igor has suggested that the glow from the metal walls and roof are actually within the sun’s light parameters, even better than our lighting systems aboard ship. It seems that the aliens had the same idea, about growing food; the caverns or rooms, or even a part of this base we haven’t found or opened yet, might be even a bigger growing area for vegetation. We know that these people came from a fertile area in North Africa thousands of years ago and, like us, wanted to grow everything themselves. This planet, DX2017, might have been their transportation system, and also their supply system for frontier bases across the solar system; this ‘bus’ as we call it, grew supplies even while in transit.

“We must assume that the other bases are identical to this one, and the one on Mars. The globes you have all seen photos of are here for your inspection. We now know that Globe One is Earth, two is Mars, three is Europa, four is Ganymede, and five is Titan. We are going to visit these planets in the order of the globes. The red dots on the globes are of different sizes and brightness, and we don’t yet know if they correspond to base size, population or health, but we might find out if there is life out there somewhere.

“America One will be orbiting DX2017 for two more years. Our orbits will change as we pass through the Asteroid Belt, now only three months away. Things could get rocky, as it were, as we transit through this belt of millions of rocks and asteroids. We will try and keep our ship out of the way of debris passing by, and I’m sure this asteroid will take hits as it passes through. DX2017 has probably passed through this belt twice every complete orbit, and it has been orbiting on this exact path for thousands, maybe millions of years, and it is still in prime condition. Of course a larger asteroid might end the free ride at any moment, but the asteroid belt, once we are in it, is not so heavily populated with matter as to give us too many problems. Many of you have told me that this asteroid’s survival is due to its makeup. Like granite, this planet is like a cannon ball flying through space, and apart from the odd hit every now and again, has kept to a reliably constant path. Computer analysis and suggestions of its past and future orbits show that it has never diverted from its original path and the combination of planets and moons it passes by more than a million miles or so. Saturn, for example, realigns its flight trajectory. That is until something much bigger hits it, and disintegrates DX2017, or propels it out of the solar system.

“So we will use this base as a supply base and for a free ride, just like the people before us did. Dr. Von Zimmer and Dr. Bloem have asked me not to call these people aliens, as they have proved that they did come from Earth, but until we have a better name for them, we will continue to call them aliens. Aliens from Earth, and not aliens from outer space.

“Mr. Noble, our illustrious Head of Security, has suggested that this forward cavern is high enough, and big enough to play volleyball in. With the much lower gravity levels, it could prove to be a newly designed form of volleyball, maybe more like racket ball, bouncing the ball off the roof; if this game is possible, we are going to give it a try. Better than running around the airfield back in Nevada! A ball and a net are being made out of cargo netting in the mother ship and will make their appearance down here soon.

“Nobody gets into, or out of a spacesuit without permission from Mr. Noble or me, or any person in command down here at the time. In the next cargo manifest, is the second half of the air for the outside shield. If everything goes to plan it will serve three purposes. First, it means that the docking port above us can be programed to stay in an atmospheric positive position. It will be fitted with an emergency mechanism to sensor any major changes in atmospheric pressure either in here, or out there. Second, the travel between America One and DX2017 will soon be made without using spacesuits. For many of you that will be a relief and far more comfortable than having to suit up every day.” Ryan needed a bottle of water to help his scratchy throat.

“As some of you know, we are currently designing temporary atmospheric controls for the forward cargo bays of all six craft until we have a steady atmosphere inside a new atmospheric positive loading dock we are putting together aboard the mother ship. These bays will work on the same basis as the docking ports. Air will be pumped into the vacuum inside the cargo bay up in orbit once the bay is loaded and sealed. The air will be retracted once the craft returns to America One, to reuse the air. The shuttle, or mining craft, park with the forward cargo bay inside the atmospheric positive shield. Once there is the same air pressure on each side, the cargo door will open. The rear cargo bays will be outside the shield, in the second non-atmospheric shield and will continue to be non-atmospheric cargo bays. This means that the crew and forward cargo can be extracted in atmospheric conditions. Spacesuits will be used to extract rear cargoes, if any. The build team, under Vitalily’s direction, is preparing one of the last of our extra cylinders strapped outside the mother ship to be turned into an atmospheric cargo loading system, which the ships can attach to, but that is still on the drawing boards. Once ready for use, that means that the forward cargo as well as crew can travel in complete atmospheric conditions.

“Third, Suzi, Mr. Rose, and the biology team will be testing possible growth of vegetation inside the atmospheric shield. We believe that with the atmosphere inside the shield, the shield could heat up the area, and since hot air rises, we can also control the inside heat in the shield from inside here. We will begin on the shield’s atmosphere release on our next spacewalk in twelve hours.

“Finally, whatever you need down here, we will send down. We already have an infrared oven for meals in our canisters and a refrigerator, gladly donated by the biology department. We have a bathroom, and remanufactured toilet paper and towels. A space shower will be installed in the Rear Cavern. Suzi will bring down liquid refreshments for Mr. Jones and others, and we have a dozen camp beds to use until we decide to bring down the 30 extra beds aboard America One. There are lightweight room panels and dividers coming down on one of the manifests, enough to make living down here relatively private, and we will have a ship with cargo every ten days, so get what you want on the list. Emergency evacuation drill is: first spacesuits, then an organized move to the cylinder, which will remain as an emergency center, and exit one by one through the shaft and docking port in the shield outside.

“And one last thing; Suzi will be growing grass and flowers in the shield, and once the shield is secure and operational, each person will be free to go out at any time. To start with, and as with all spacewalks, a three-hour limitation will be in place for outdoor visits. Thank you.”

VIN opened the air tank twelve hours later and sprayed a shot of compressed air directly at the shield wall. Holding the tank a foot away, the usual bubbles of air escaped in a multitude of millions. Ryan was on the other side of the shield, and his heart was pounding. If the aliens’ ideas proved correct, and they had been thinking like all humans who had ever lived, the air would be corralled inside the shield when they designed it.

“No bubbles escaping yet,” Ryan stated over the intercom to VIN’s spacesuit a few feet away, and inside the shield wall. Ryan was standing in the blackness of space, as the other temporary shield hadn’t been activated by the approaching supply ship yet. It was still an hour out, and on its second to last orbit forty miles above the surface. “Bring the tank closer to the wall,” Ryan ordered and VIN shortened the distance to six inches. The ball, or main bubble of air was growing, now ten feet across and he opened the tank a little more and actually inside the bubble of air forced the escaping air directly at the shield wall.

“Like an asteroid, or rock hitting the shield, it will repel anything hitting it hard, the same is happening with the air blast,” VIN observed.

“Seems so,” responded Ryan. “Get the stream of air as close and as hard against the wall as possible, see if you feel a resistance. That will tell us that the shield is resisting the air blast. Then reverse the tank and stream until it is gently cascading onto the wall. Maybe that would be a better test,” suggested Ryan. VIN did as ordered and the air bubbles, now several large ones filling his area of the shield, began spreading out.

He tried his best to slow the air down to connect with the shield wall as softly as possible and Ryan told him that still no air had escaped. Escaping bubbles of air were easily seen in the vacuum of space.

“I’m going to reverse the tank once I have a good-sized bubble of air around me and see if the atmosphere stops penetration,” VIN said. Ryan nodded and after a few more minutes, and with the air escaping the tank as fast as was safe, VIN closed off the air and turned the tank around. Slowly he aimed the bottom of the tank into the wall and easily slipped through.

“These guys are so much more clever than we are,” VIN said over the intercom.

“Yes, Mr. Noble,” replied Ryan. “So would we Homo sapiens be if we stopped fighting with each other. These Homo whatevers certainly show us up, and how stupid and how uncivilized we are.”

Then VIN tried a new trick against the shield. He handed the whole bottle to Ryan and at the same time slowly walked through the shield. Nothing changed, even though he had just walked out of a massive bubble of perfect atmospheric air, through the shield wall and into the vacuum of space. He was expecting shiny bubbles of air to be on the outside fabric of his suit, but both he and Ryan couldn’t find one minute bubble. He had come out totally dry.

His next test was to spray a few bubbles of the valuable air into space. As usual the bubble flew out of the nozzle and immediately began dispersing outwards. Then he returned through the bubble with the tank slightly open and back into the large bubble of air slowly floating upwards. This tank had been stored inside the cylinder and was still warmer than the blankness of outer space. The top of the inner shield area, like an upside-down swimming pool was filling up with the captured, warmer air.

Also something different was happening to the shield. The shield wall above, and inside the bubble of air was beginning to glow brighter, just as the metal walls in the cavern had done when they had powered more electricity through it.

“Wow!” he stated. “It is sure going to be pretty in here once the atmosphere is in.” He was standing inside the bubble and the tank was again spreading more bubbles into the empty vacuum spaces. “If we could fill the shield around America One, we could haul the pool outside, form a beach with some sand and live outside,” VIN continued.

“I think grow more hops, and vines, like in California,” suggested Jonesy’s voice in his helmet.

“You playing with space sharks or with Saturn Jones up there, Mr. Jones?” inquired VIN.

“No, just earning my paycheck. Maggie is doing the playing in the rear cabin, and flying around this little ball like my mother used to ball wool. I wish they had made this darn planet a little bigger. These orbits are making me want for hard liquor, in gallons…”

“Mr. Noble, I watched as you went through the wall,” Ryan interrupted. “You had the air spurting out and it just kept spurting as it went through. The bubble flow didn’t stop, which shows that the shield is holding the vacuum outside and an atmosphere inside. I think we have just hit pay dirt, and our experiments have worked. Leave the bottle in there and come out and help me drag these nine frozen bottles out here into the shield and let them warm up. We might as well empty the first bottle and open two more. Mr. Jones can haul out the remaining bottles from his cargo bay outside while we pressure up the shield. And, I think giving the shield an atmosphere around America One is a great idea. It will take about a year or two of air production once we find more water, but we should have that atmosphere for as long as we fly America One around the solar system. Maybe we could put out an outside pool and beach somewhere. We’ll find the water, but I wonder if there are any beaches and sun chairs and umbrellas out there anywhere on the moons we are going to visit? I think maybe Portugal, or the beaches in Florida might have the closest deck chairs once we return.”

Chapter 14

Smelly astronauts

Just before the first rotation of scientists was about to take place, VIN ventured out into the shield with Ryan and Fritz. Jonesy was about to leave America One, high above them at an altitude of 120 miles. In order to orbit DX2017, a tiny pebble of planet, the mother ship had to continually adjust its altitude. DX 2017 was not the ideal planet to orbit.

The last cargo delivery included the second load of air which VIN was pumping into the shield. The heat slowly increased in the brightly lit blue dome with the dissolution of the vacuum of space. Although heat from underground could have been released into the dome, Ryan and Igor, in the mother ship, were still conducting a scientific experiment; they were recording the time it took the shield to become warm and what temperatures it would reach. The tanks contents were always released extremely slowly, so as not to explode or become a danger.

The first three tanks were warm, having been stored underground for a few days. Twenty-four hours after VIN released the first batch, the temperature inside the shield rose by 31 degrees to minus 144 Fahrenheit. All of the others in the first batch had been stored on the planet’s surface, and were well below freezing when VIN carried them, one by one, into the shield.

The second load of 24 tanks that Jonesy brought down was offloaded outside the shield, and VIN moved them inside the dome, still cold. The second batch of tanks took 96 hours to empty. In those four days the temperature had risen to minus 60 degrees; it seemed it would take forever to rise enough for VIN to have his helmet detached and breathe in the new atmosphere.

VIN remembered minus 163 degree temperatures in orbit around Earth, but as they orbited farther and farther away from the sun it was getting colder. It had been colder on the frozen areas of Mars and warmer in the crater, but overall the temperature was already more than ten degrees colder, and he knew it was going to get worse. Fortunately, the temperature didn’t matter to VIN inside his cozy space suit which fully protected him from temperature extremes.

The air pressure was finally equal to 3,000 feet above sea level on Earth, and was exactly the same pressure as underground. The atmosphere in the shield was clean, virgin air produced in the mother ship, and until it was mixed with the dry, slightly smelly air from underground, it would be perfect. The docking port was the only thing separating the two unconnected atmospheres.

A small amount of water was always mixed into the air tanks; it appeared as a light snowfall, glistening on the planet’s surface inside the shield. The quarter-inch thick frosty layer was a strange sight in the middle of nowhere. Even Captain Pete, watching through the telescope from high above, mentioned how bright and light blue the inside of the dome looked.

The purpose of the water was to add humidity, as dry air with zero humidity was just as dangerous as no air. The general humidity would be around 50 to 55 percent, and increased for plant growth. Some of the cubes, those housing tropical plants, had upwards of 65 percent humidity, and the plants themselves were actually increasing the humidity in two of the cubes.

The time had come to exchange scientists. Ryan, who was returning to the mother ship, wanted to leave wearing his overalls, not a clumsy space suit. The charged suits would remain for the newcomers, saving a lot of time and trouble.

VIN checked his suit’s temperature readout for the third time. The temperature inside the dome was minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, warm enough to go winter skiing and take off his helmet. The pressure was good and the air mix perfect, just very dry. He had played with snow globes as a kid on Earth and, standing 100 feet outside the wall of the shield dome, it looked like the snowy winter wonderland of one of those snow globes come to life.

VIN and four others wearing space suites unloaded Jonesy’s ship, and the supplies were taken in through the docking port. Vitalily helped Jonesy unload, and VIN and Fritz sent the dozen canisters down through the docking port. Jonesy mentioned how much brighter the shield looked when he came in; one could already distinguish a difference between the permanent shield and the one activated by the incoming craft.

Fritz and Vitalily went back inside the cavern with Jonesy, who collected Maggie and little Saturn to return to America One. Maggie wasn’t needed as a backup pilot anymore, and enjoyed the tranquility of the cylinder with her daughter. They even spent the last day underground, but Saturn was still not very happy about wearing her spacesuit.

Once Jonesy and family were away, life got down to clearing supplies, figuring out sleeping arrangements and associated human territory arrangements. The biologists would work in one room and the chemists and electricians in the others, until they needed to swap.

The rear cavern was off limits for overnight accommodation, and several of the scientists decided to sleep in the rooms they were working in. With all doors permanently open, every snore, or grunt could be heard by everyone.

VIN, Suzi, Mars and Ryan elected to sleep in the command center. Fritz was happy to sleep in the power room; he said that he seemed to get a buzz in his mechanical leg from the energy in there. Everyone else slept in the forward cavern, including one man who slept upstairs on the walkway, saying that it was warmer and more peaceful. The rear cavern held the supplies, the cooking facilities and a few of the plastic fold out camp chairs that had been brought down. The canisters were also packed with a couple of small foldup tables, fifty gallons of water, a water recycler, an air recycler, a food waste recycler, air purifiers, a refrigerator, and an infrared stove, but no washing machines or dryers.

A shower had arrived, but it would take three days to piece it together. Anyway, there was still not enough water for bathing; water would be on the next flight. The first rotation of scientists was certainly going to be happy to return to the mother ship where they could clean up and enjoy the luxuries aboard.

Jonesy would have been happy to stay. There was a five-gallon glass jar of vodka, the same of beer, and a third that held the ship’s own house-produced red wine. There were also fresh eggs, frozen chicken, vegetables, potatoes and the first pasta that was still being developed in space.

All in all, the crew were happy workers for the first few days. One thing that surprised many of them was how unaccustomed they had become to the normal sounds people make, particularly snoring. After living in almost complete silence aboard ship, communal life was teaching them new things about each other. Martha Von Zimmer was the worst snorer and Mr. Rose, in the same biology lab, was the second worst. Sometimes it sounded like a middle school battle of the bands, accompanied by Dr. Bloem who spoke constantly in her sleep, often in languages no one had ever heard.

After three nights, VIN and Ryan agreed they were lucky to be in semi-isolation and perhaps the doors to the biology lab should be closed at night.

During the first few days, a great deal of work was carried out using every sort of instrument found in laboratories everywhere: microscopes, Bunsen burners, and test tubes were abundant in all three rooms. It was quieter when the crew worked, than when they were asleep.

VIN was not able to test out the new form of volleyball, as the ball and net had not yet arrived, so he worked out with his normal exercises, and also tried to run around the caverns. Unfortunately, to everybody’s dismay, especially his wife’s, his personal scent became less than alluring. By day four, some of the ladies hinted that a bath would be a good idea. By day eight they were complaining out loud about how badly VIN smelled, and by day ten they were thrilled that VIN was going out to check the shield’s temperature. The night before, even Suzi had moved her bed and the little cot Mars slept in far away from smelly daddy.

“SB-III to DX2017, do you copy? Over.” VIN heard Jonesy’s voice over the intercom which also blasted out on the single radio inside the command center of the cavern for the same purpose.

“Reading you, Jonesy,” VIN replied a second before Ryan echoed the same.

“Two minutes to overhead, ten miles out, at 7,000 feet. Partner, you outside?”

“Yes, General Jones, sir!” joked VIN. “Awaiting Your Majesty and your flying carpet, and especially the water for the shower. My wife doesn’t like me anymore.”

“She is joining a growing group,” Jonesy joked in return. “Copilot doesn’t have helmet on, only me. Will Maggie need to have her helmet attached? Over.”

“Negative,” VIN replied, “but you might need skis. It is frozen and a little slippery inside the blue dome; temperature is 13 degrees below freezing, Fahrenheit. Suggest that Maggie wrap up before opening the cockpit to the cargo compartment, and since you are going to lose warm cockpit and crew cabin air, turn up the heat in SB-III a little.”

“Not only must I fly up and down like a yo-yo, I’ve got to warm you guys up as well. Turning up heat to maximum.”

“I hope you have your coats with you,” Jonesy relayed to the passengers.

“Any wind down there, partner?”

“Only yours,” VIN replied.

“Thank you for letting me say something, heads of Security and Astronaut departments,” Ryan joined in. “Mrs. Jones, all are unfavorably disposed to the nose down here and are looking forward to the mother ship’s showers. Mr. Jones, we are ready for boarding. The new crew will need to be helped across the ice by Mr. Noble, one by one. Mr. Jones, open up the forward cargo bay, the crew can disembark, and then we can embark through the new roof door and stairs. Mr. Noble, open up the docking port when you have the first crewmember to send down, and our air down here will help warm up the dome. We are prepared for an arctic blast down here.”

Jonesy came in slowly, touching the top of the dome, which activated the second shield. They still hadn’t figured out how to make the shield permanent. Suzi and Mr. Rose wanted an atmosphere in the second dome one day so they could plant more vegetation in it.

SB-III touched down gently. VIN was still outside in the second shield to make sure that Jonesy parked correctly. The shuttle needed its forward cargo bay inside the first dome and the rear cargo bay with all the supplies in the second one.

Jonesy was a few inches out, but the two cargo doors were where they were supposed to be. VIN knew what would happen when the cockpit hatch and the new crew cabin door opened. The air inside would be much warmer than the negative readings outside; condensation would be interesting. He slowly walked through the dome walls to watch as Jonesy activated the forward cargo door.

“I’m not opening the side hatch, partner,” Jonesy said. “I’m coming through the front cargo bay door to help you unload. We have seven crew aboard. Kathy and Lunar didn’t come since the boss is returning to the mother ship. Maggie and Saturn will stay in the cockpit while we unload. Over.”

“Roger that, Chief Astronaut Jones, and leave that cantankerous old dog in you inside with the copilot, I certainly don’t need it out here.”

“Well said, Mr. Noble,” smiled Ryan from below, much to Maggie’s chagrin.

It was a pretty sight watching the warm air mix with the cold; it made VIN think of a visit to New York when he watched clouds of condensation rise upwards from the manhole covers. The blue glow inside the dome made the condensation clouds blue and lent an air of tranquility. It was as if they were back on Earth.

The large roof door of the shuttle opened outwards into the thick, moist condensation and a ladder was thrown out. As VIN climbed up the ladder on the side of the shuttle he appeared to be climbing up the side of a large boiling pot of water. The eerie shape of the first person was waiting for him dressed in a warm coat. Wearing space suit gloves to keep his hands warm, Max Burgos followed VIN down the ladder and together they helped each other across the icy surface to the docking port.

“We could do with some salt out here,” VIN commented.

“It’s just temporary, Mr. Noble,” replied Ryan. “Just walk slowly and don’t fall, not that you are in any real danger, except freezing to death.”

Max couldn’t speak to VIN, since he was not wearing a spacesuit or helmet, only the gloves; they communicated through hand signals to get to the docking port. The port had been pre-programmed to open both doors; VIN pressed the outer control and the hatches opened together. Max indicated that he could feel the warm escaping air. He turned around, found the rungs inside the chamber with his feet and began to descend. When VIN hammered the rungs into the planet’s wall, he made sure that they were aligned to the rungs in the port. As Max disappeared into the dense fog, VIN closed the outer hatch, and went back each to assist the next crew member. One by one the seven new crew members disappeared down the shaft, enveloped by masses of condensation.

The inner cargo bay of SB-III must have cooled as the condensation there had ceased.

“Temperature has risen four degrees, to minus nine, Boss,” VIN reported over the intercom. “We could be seeing a snowmelt in the dome soon.”

“Roger,” replied Ryan. “Get the rear cargo bay unloaded and make sure everything is in the dome. The cold of the outer walls of the canisters and air tanks could lower the temperature again.”

The shuttle carried the same cargo as it did on the previous trip; twelve heavy canisters which Jonesy and VIN carried over to the shaft one at a time and lowered down. They could hardly see for the escaping condensation each time the port was opened. Next, they unloaded twelve more tanks of air and the emergency supplies; these were left in the dome to warm up to the 130 degree difference between the first and second dome.

Finally, the departing passengers climbed up the ladder one by one, and were helped across the white ground and up the stairs to the docking port.

“Reminds me of being a baggage handler at JFK,” VIN commented.

“And the aircraft crew who opened the doors for boarding,” added Jonesy. I never got this quality of service aboard any aircraft, especially when I flew to Denver during that Sequester period, or whatever they called it, several years ago. It was utter chaos.”

They were the only two chatting. When they helped Ryan to board, they bowed in fake reverence as he climbed up the ladder against the side of the shuttle. He had no helmet on and was robbed of a chance to land a good retort.

With the eight departing crewmembers aboard, Jonesy went up the stairs to secure the shuttle and try to get some warmth into it.

“Next time wear a bathing suit, Mr. Jones. It could be a toasty seventy degrees in here,” VIN said. “The temperature is only three below freezing.”

VIN walked back into the second dome and stayed away from the thrusters as the next scheduled flight by ‘Ryan Air’ to America One left the airport, rose gracefully up a hundred feet and slowly moved forward as the pilot ignited the rear thrusters. It reminded him of his days in the Marines watching the VTOL, V-22 Ospreys.

Once his job was done, he descended back down the shaft, closing the docking port to keep the warmer air inside. The crewmembers in the cavern were bundled up, and looked cold. He checked the outside temperature readout on his suit and saw the temperature in the caverns had dropped by thirty degrees; it would take a day to warm it back up. Since he was not allowed to get close to his wife and it was too cold to shower, he decided to stay in his suit, with the helmet off, until his turn came to clean up. The predetermined order to shower was: women first, children next, and then the remaining smelly person, himself, would be able to clean up.

Chapter 15

Aliens found!

DX2017 had become an oasis in the solar system during the long stay. The scientists were still baffled by how the shields worked, and embarrassed they had not figured it out. Even with months of research, they had not decoded the black box and its totally unfamiliar system of electronics. Igor, the best in the business, couldn’t figure how to repair the system. The broken black box had been dissected a hundred times, but still did not give up its secrets.

VIN’s room, the one he finally had the spider cut through, had given up its secrets. This room held the most interesting feature of the alien base, more so than all the other rooms put together.

VIN, then Fritz, then Igor—when he gave up on the black box—tried to get the final door to open, but to no avail. They even set the backup nuclear battery at 90 percent, nearly blowing the whole cavern up with sparks and rays of lights shooting out from the walls. Ryan ordered them to give it up.

When VIN’s attempts failed, many of the scientists began to return to America One to complete tests using the massive array of scientific equipment still in the mother ship. Only Suzi, Fritz and Boris, remained on DX2017. Suzi was already planting crops in the dome above; it took a month for the temperature to reach sixty degrees, and was now hovering in the 65 degree range, never getting warmer.

But, before the door was finally opened, much would happen in their new home.

Time flew by. VIN only returned to the mother ship once during the first six months. He, Suzi and Mars were happy in the caverns. Mr. Rose spent ten days on the planet and then ten days in the mother ship working on both of his greenhouse farms, as he called them. The biology team spent time travelling up and down as well, bringing down and taking up new plants, or cuts of vegetation to test in their labs. Jonesy and Allen Saunders flew down once every ten days.

The chickens hadn’t done well down on the surface. The gravity wasn’t strong enough for them to grow, but the rabbits thrived, and Suzi was surprised to see that female rabbits were born in America One, but on the planet’s surface at least one male rabbit was born for every dozen females. Also many of the crew had stopped eating meat, and it looked like the rabbits and the meat chickens could become extinct aboard ship.

What held true for rabbits also held true for humans aboard America One. Since leaving Earth, 19 babies had been born, and of the babies born in space all were girls. Suzi was hopeful though, as two of the crew might have become pregnant while on the surface of DX2017, Penny Pitt and Jamie Saunders. Everybody was hoping for a baby boy.

An older scientist in the chemistry team had died, the first death aboard. He died of a heart attack and left his body to science. His coffin had been sent off in the direction of the sun for cremation about a month later.

Maggie, Jonesy and Saturn came down to visit for ten day periods every now and again, letting Allen and Michael Pitt do the driving. Ryan, Kathy and Lunar and the other families of the astronauts also stayed over.

With the shield coming up to temperature, the Noble family took their daily three-hour allotted time on the surface. Ryan continued to be worried about his radiation hazards inside the shield without full spacesuits on. However, after several daily excursions with the temperature at 34 degrees, he relented when VIN’s readouts showed that the amount of radiation hitting his spacesuit day after day was about the same as being on Earth.

VIN was elated. The next day he mounted the rungs up and through the open docking port wearing only his camouflage flight suit, a coat and woolen mittens Suzi had knitted for him. It was cold, very cold, compared to underground, and he knew that if he wasn’t careful and walked through the wall of the shield, he would perish without his spacesuit.

His first job on the surface was to hammer six-foot high nails into the ground to use as uprights, and stretch three sets of cords around them to create a protective fence three feet in from the sloping wall. The fence was not high enough to get in the way of the shuttles’ tails coming and going, but it prevented any of the crew from getting too close to the dome wall. That area was no man’s land.

On his second day, the temperature was a degree warmer, and Suzi and Mars joined him, also wearing winter coats and gloves to walk around on the surface of a foreign planet without spacesuits for the first time. VIN’s breath condensed like it would on Earth, and he really felt like he was in a snow globe. His breath came out in clouds, and a lot of the white covering on the surface was still there.

Suzi and Mars screamed in delight and tried to make snowballs to throw at each other. Mars was standing now and walking, so Suzi used the same cord she had used inside the cubes to tether her son to make sure he didn’t climb into no man’s land.

It was beautiful. VIN could not communicate with anyone when he was on the surface, and he made a mental note to bring up a backpack radio and a few chairs to enjoy the scene on his next visit. Also, he could stay on the surface all day; the three-hour time limit was suspended.

The first family visit was peaceful, totally silent except for his wife and son shouting and laughing. VIN showed Suzi around the circular area, where the first load of top soil from the mother ship would be arriving in a week.

If she stayed out of the areas needed for incoming shuttles, Suzi could cultivate half a dozen decent-sized vegetable beds on the surface, plus a few areas for flowers and even a small shrub or two. The area wasn’t big, but an herb garden, a vegetable patch and a flower garden with a few chairs could make this dome into a fantastic place to work and relax. It would be like a roof garden in Manhattan.

Every day for the first couple of days, VIN and his family, and any other visiting crewmembers spent time on the surface looking through the dome wall into the black vacuum of space only a few feet away. In a reverse of what they knew as normal on Earth, these humans were like guppies, but in an air-filled aquarium, gazing at what existed on the other side of their bowl.

Although the temperature was warming up at about a degree a day, it was still too cold for plant growth when SB-II arrived packed with twelve canisters, or about 1,200 pounds, of top soil, two canisters of water, two canisters of plants and shrubs for planting, six tanks of freshly made air, warm clothing, and the Jones family for a 10-day vacation.

The crew container wasn’t needed as the shuttle carried only four adults and a baby; this fact greatly simplified the transfer of cargo, which was packed in the front hold. The crew could unpack the cargo from the forward cargo roof door inside the dome instead of carting the equipment from freezing space conditions through the dome wall.

At the other end, the new cargo loading station aboard America One, a secure loading cylinder, had a soft silicone opening that sealed itself with pressure to the shuttle’s sidewalls around the forward cargo roof door. The air was forced into the section which enabled atmospheric loading to any of the three shuttles or mining craft. Afterwards, the air was sucked out by machines into tanks and could be reused time and again.

The side hatch of the shuttle’s cockpit was opened to allow the unsuited vacationers out one by one. The temperature was eight degrees above freezing, the white covering was gone, and the warmly dressed Jones family joined their friends who were sitting in just delivered deck chairs on the surface of DX2017 without spacesuits. Saturn Jones was ecstatic not to be suited up for this visit.

VIN, Boris and Fritz got to work unloading the cargo; within two hours of landing the soil was ready on the surface. The plant canisters were lowered into the cavern by rope, which was still closed off from the outside dome for protection. Every time the docking port was opened, warm air gushed out helping to increase the dome’s temperature, but also cooling the interior of the caverns. Until the temperatures were equalized, and/or the dome’s walls produced its own heat, the docking port was kept closed.

Raising the temperature, even in the caverns, was a very slow process; it took a day to make up one degree. Boris and Igor learned that after the door was closed for the day they could raise the temperature in the cavern by increasing power slightly. However, caution was the rule; they wanted to conserve as much power as necessary in the event, like the last inhabitants, they remained there longer than intended.

“So, I hope you didn’t drink all the booze,” Jonesy remarked when the work was done and everybody was still inside in the shield wondering at the alien technology.

“We left a little for you, partner,” VIN replied. “I wonder how these people created and designed such elaborate technology.”

“I would like to make a comment about that,” Fritz answered, and all of his snuggly dressed companions turned to him.

“Martha and Petra proved that these people came from the Sahara; it was green and tropical then, like the Amazon is today. These folks had two and a half thousand years to progress from what the Bushmen’s civilization is today in Africa to a civilization replete with modern technological in which wonders like this were designed.”

“So have we,” VIN commented.

“We’re still about 500 years short; our civilization goes back to the birth of Christ, which we believe was 2019 years ago. But Martha believes that these people became space bound within 1,500 years, much faster than our progression. Also, information gleaned from carbon-dating objects found on Mars indicates these people left Earth to begin their odyssey around 7,900 B.C. However, tests on items collected here on DX2017—soil, fine dust picked up on shelves, and even the foul tasting water—indicate these items are even more recent, 7,000 B.C., or 900 years later.”

“So, the team thinks that these guys have been flying around space for nearly 1,000 years?” Suzi asked incredulously.

“Actually, I helped Martha on the carbon-dating,” added Maggie. “More like 750 years, but we haven’t yet found any people, except for in the Mars base. This asteroid could have passed Earth hundreds of times, empty of people and carrying supplies nobody offloaded. DX2017 doesn’t need pilots and crew to fly, so I believe the ancient people flew supplies up from Earth when it got close. They knew when it would pass close to Earth, so they sent a ship up to unload the supplies and resupply themselves as it flew past. Remember, this little planet only flies by Jupiter every second orbit, Saturn every third or fourth, or all the planets every half century or so. The orbit we happened to find ourselves on is the every stop ride. That’s what Captain Pete told Jonesy and me.”

“I understand this was a supply ship, and a passenger vessel when needed, but where did these guys get their technology?” VIN asked again.

“I was going to answer that,” continued Boris. “Igor and I have done hours and hours of research on these electronics. They are mostly made of Rare Earth metals, most of which were unknown to us until a few hundred years ago, and some only in the last century. Also, the metals are used in huge quantities. For example, there is no plastic, steel, or iron in any of their products. Even the casing on their boxes is made out of rhodium, the same metal we found on DX2014. I wondered if they might have found an asteroid similar to DX2014 in their space travels.”

“Another very interesting fact is that their world is far more civilized than our world,” added Fritz.

“How do you mean?” asked VIN.

“We need some deck chairs, or sun loungers up here,” interrupted Jonesy.

“Your job is to haul deck chairs down here. They have a few in the shuttle. Start tomorrow,” replied VIN, smiling. “Fritz?”

“Thank you, Herr Jones. You always remind me of Sean Connery in that Indiana Jones Movie. Never listening to what anybody is saying. Anyway, Igor, Ryan, Boris, Martha and I have spent hours discussing this fact. Our final answer is, simply, they were civilized.”

Seeming not to have answered the question, everyone waited for Fritz to continue.

“Look at our civilization on Earth. What is the only thing they want from us?”

“Our firepower?” answered Jonesy.

“Correct. And what is going on down there right at this minute? And, I don’t have to be there to know it’s true.”

“They are beating the hell out of each other?” VIN volunteered.

“Wars everywhere,” Suzi suggested.

“People killing people,” Maggie added.

“All correct,” replied Fritz smiling. “All we have ever done since we became civilized some 2,000 years ago is to act like crabs in a bucket.”

Everybody looked at him curiously but kept silent.

“The old story told by fishermen: If you leave several crabs in a bucket, one will try to get out, and just before he does, the others will grab onto him and pull him back in.”

“You lost me at the crabs,” Jonesy said.

“Every time we humans try to advance ourselves by climbing out of the bucket, somebody else will pull us back to stop the advancement. It is because of jealousy, money, power, politics, call it what you want, but human advancement is stifled by self-interest. We pull ourselves back by decreasing budgets earmarked for space travel, education, and financial help to scientific institutions to increase defense spending and finance wars. What’s worse, politics has recently changed around the world; instead of leaders who protect the common interests of their constituents, many are just helping themselves. If that General Mortimer wasn’t dead, Jonesy, who would he be looking out for?” Jonesy nodded, and Fritz continued.

“And let’s not omit religion. A difference in religion is probably the single most common factor underlying most conflict. This one tribe does not appear to have been torn by different religious beliefs. Up there in America One, we came to the conclusion that these people are far more advanced than we are, simply because they got on with the goal of advancing themselves through education, sharing knowledge, and working together towards common goals. They didn’t act like human crabs in a bucket. If one crab was climbing out, it might have been helped, and then it would have turned around and helped the others out.”

“Crabs don’t have the brains to do that,” Jonesy said.

“Nor do we Homo sapiens, Herr Jones,” replied Fritz bluntly. “I think the genes of this Homo whatever race are different than ours; maybe they didn’t have the ‘I want to beat the crap out of everybody else’ gene, or the ‘I want to rule the world’ gene. We have yet to find one weapon of theirs.”

The group was quiet for a minute and then VIN asked, “The president said that Mortimer had a boss?”

“That’s right, some guy in Iran; so did the president who committed suicide,” added Fritz. “Which begs the question, does our friendly president have a boss? Is somebody controlling him?”

“Could be,” Jonesy answered. “It seems that everybody down there has a boss.”

“Maybe Ryan is now the only boss, who doesn’t report to somebody or some group, or have a boss himself,” Suzi remarked.

“I believe that could be an astute observation,” Boris added. “I’ve known Ryan since he was a teenager. He is three years younger than me, and if Ryan was being influenced by anybody, Igor and I would have sensed something. Igor is a few years older than me, and we were in our twenties when Ryan hired us. We are two of the first three people Ryan ever hired. He brought us over from Russia. He was 17 or 18 at the time, if I remember correctly, and we have been with him ever since.”

“Igor would have noticed anything out of the ordinary,” Fritz stated.

“Igor has eyes like an eagle, especially when it comes to the vodka bottle,” Jonesy added. “That time VIN and I sampled two tiny tots out of the five-gallon jug, Igor asked why the level had decreased. VIN and I couldn’t see that the level had even moved.”

“Igor never missed anything, except our Plasma Tasers,” replied Fritz. “At that time Ryan was putting the pressure on him to get us up here, and he was blinded by long hours of work for weeks on end, until he found out of course.”

“So who does rule the world?” Maggie asked.

“Not who we think,” replied Boris. “The big banks, the credit card company presidents, pharmaceutical companies, agriculture, who knows?” answered Fritz.

Maybe even the U.S. supply companies supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?” suggested VIN. “They made all the money from the wars, all the profit, while the country went deeper in debt.”

“Just big business?” added Maggie.

For another hour they discussed the plight of Earth over drinks down in the mostly empty cavern. The conversation didn’t get around to who was going to stay on Earth, when they finally returned, or who would stay on board.

Ryan, Kathy and Lunar came down with the next schedule flight in Asterspace Three. More air was brought down, fresh from the manufacturing room. The Richmond family also brought a few delicacies with them: Dutch cookies, fresh coffee, ingredients Suzi requested to make chocolate cakes and cocoa that Mr. Rose was bringing to make hot chocolate for the kids.

Mars, Saturn and Lunar were all walking and were beginning to interact with each other; more toys and other playthings had arrived with Lunar. Over the next several weeks, while the children played underground in the warmth, all of the adults except Maggie, who had opted to look after them, began work in the shield.

“The temperature is warming up slightly,” Ryan observed when he climbed through the docking port behind Kathy. Wearing coats over flight suits, the crew gathered together to discuss the possibilities of the “dome” above their new garden.

Since Ryan’s last visit the temperature had risen 15 degrees, to the low fifties. Suzi said that she and Mr. Rose would spend the next few days planting spring vegetables. They were looking forward to their first crops in about 60 to 90 days, but they would be dissected and analyzed before they were served for dinner, if anything grew at all.

Mr. Rose brought the light spectrum sensing equipment from the mother ship to conduct tests while he was on the planet. He and Suzi agreed that even though a day on the planet lasted only a few hours, as did night, it didn’t really matter if the dome collected the incoming rays from the distant sun and relayed them into the correct light spectrums for growth inside the dome.

They thought this out after finding out how sophisticated these shields were, and how inside the domes Earth daylight was duplicated. They both thought that growing crops with the perfected spectrum of rays was the actual reason the aliens had made the domes glow blue. Everyone had noticed, VIN in particular, that the color inside the dome grew lighter, changing from deep blue to sky blue, as more and more atmosphere was introduced, and as the air inside was warmed up.

He also wondered if this whole wonderland could just disappear; atmosphere, heat, and light at the flick of a switch, if the black box stopped working. VIN was not alone in hoping it wouldn’t.

On Ryan’s next visit a month later, VIN tackled him about using the spider to cut through the door that couldn’t be opened. Ryan worried that opening the door might somehow ruin the ideal setting that was being established. Even Suzi opposed her husband opening the door.

VIN had spent many hours with Igor and Fritz trying to figure out how to open the door to the secret room. The surface and cavern atmospheres were both livable, the docking port between them could seal at a moment’s notice, and the crew could survive in either location. The lone spider remained dormant in the rear cavern and VIN wanted to use it to cut a hole in the door frame, just it had done at the very beginning.

The Forward Cavern was already empty of beds and equipment. Ever since the temperature had reached comfortable levels on the surface, the sleeping quarters were either in the Rear Cavern, or above ground. The central supply rooms, long emptied of anything alien to be tested, contained America One’s crew supplies. A thousand gallons of water had been brought down by Jonesy and Allen Saunders in the canisters to recycle through the bases’ new water system.

The long-drop toilet never filled up, but did smell rank; fortunately, the air purifier close to its outer door removed most of the odors. The crew learned that if the toilet was off limits for two days out of every seven and they used a space toilet instead, the temperature in the toilet shaft froze enough to stop releasing odors.

Temporary walls had been installed in the Rear Cavern to create six separate two-room apartments with doors. Although the walls of the units did not reach the ceiling, they still afforded some privacy to families or single people.

One of the rooms, a sleeping area, was furnished with clothing cabinets, two chests of drawers, and one to four beds; the other room was furnished with one or two couches, and a light to read or work by. Pretty simple surroundings, but most crewmembers didn’t stay for more than ten days at a time.

“What happens if the door you want to laser open leads to a massive underground area, and bleeds our entire atmosphere out of the caverns?” Ryan asked VIN during their next discussion. Suzi and Mr. Rose were proudly displaying their first space-grown cocoa/chocolate cake and drinks for the kids from their own plants aboard America One. The chocolate supplies from Earth were nearly gone; every day on this odyssey, something ran out, and something new was reaped or manufactured, which made the lives of the crew more comfortable.

“We can close off the command room and the other two doors leading out of the central room, so that if that happens we are prepared,” replied VIN. “Also we could all sleep outside in the dome, something I‘m really looking forward to.”

“A little hard to get a suntan at this distance,” Jonesy suggested.

Finally, Ryan was persuaded to allow the spider to laser a hole in the door, but only VIN, Fritz, Igor, Boris and he, in full spacesuits, would be in the caverns.

Unfortunately, scheduling a date to open the door had to be postponed longer than expected; scientists and non-scientists were beginning to arrive to look for more relics to analyze and inspect for more information. Other crew members were interested in testing Dr. Nancy Martin’s theory that living in an orbiting spaceship might be the reason only female babies were conceived.

When the fourth group of ten-day vacationers arrived, it consisted of five married couples and no scientists. A good time, VIN thought, to take his family back to the mother ship for a ten-day break. He wanted a few days by the pool, and it would be quieter up there.

Three months after Ryan agreed to open the door by laser, VIN and Fritz finally got started. VIN had been on DX2017 for close to a year. Suzi and Mars had returned on the last shuttle with perfectly grown crops that she and Mr. Rose had cultivated; carrots, onions, garlic, leeks and cabbage were to be deposited into the freezers aboard America One. The dome under the shield had surprised everybody, including Mr. Rose, with its growing capabilities, even with sunlight at half the strength of Earth. The first crops filled three canisters; enough greens for the crew for two or three months.

In America One the food was frozen for longevity, a branch of science VIN was going to find out about when he entered the room protected by the unopened door.

It took the spider several hours to cut the first hole through the metal. The metal on the door seemed stronger than any other in the cavern and had a current passing through it. The power to the walls was turned off to help the spider burn its way through.

With the temperature at a sweet 66 degrees under the shield, it was a pleasure to sleep there in real beds brought down from the mother ship. The docking port between the above and underground units was activated; even though the atmosphere was plentiful underground, if a hole appeared in the seal of the wall, everything could change.

Less than an hour after Ryan, Igor and Boris were notified that the first hole had been burned in the door they arrived aboard Astermine Two with six more air tanks. Together with the 30 air tanks stored in the caverns in case of emergency, there was enough air to equip another two caverns with atmospheric pressure.

“Great news,” Fritz said when the three men came down to join those wearing full suits. Ryan was surprised to see VIN helmetless and breathing the cavern’s air. “Our suit sensors show an atmosphere on the other side, just a very cold atmosphere. The new alien atmosphere is extremely rich in helium and only its oxygen is low. I opened a bottle of pure oxygen and the oxygen levels should equalize as the hole-size grows, depending on the size of the other room. VIN wants to look through the hole with his helmet lamp once the hole is big enough.”

With little to do, the team of five returned to the dome on the surface where they had the comfort of beds, cooking and drinking facilities, and a private space toilet. They helped each other out of their suits, unloaded the supplies from the front compartment of the mining ship, and then relaxed in chairs playing chess, or lying on the beds reading.

“With the warmer temperature, the stars have nearly disappeared,” Igor noticed, lying on one of the beds, staring upwards, and trying to peer through the dome wall.

“They began dimming weeks ago,” VIN said, “even long before Suzi and Mr. Rose went back up the last time. The lighter blue appeared when the temperature rose above 60 degrees. Now that the temperature has stabilized, we haven’t been able to see through the shield wall. Jonesy told me that it is the same when he comes through the wall to land. He can’t see anything inside until his cockpit slides through the wall. It is opaque from outside, and he has to determine the ship’s exact landing position, so he doesn’t end up in Suzi’s vegetable beds, or the bathroom hut. Once he enters the dome he can’t see the area outside very well, even the tail of the aircraft.”

“It seems that the wall is an exact copy of what we would see on a bright, sunny, humid day on Earth,” Ryan commented. In Nevada, the blue was deeper than this, but on the East Coast where it’s more humid, it looks just like this when there are clouds in the sky.”

“I’m used to the shield around America One, it’s so transparent without an atmosphere compared to this wall,” added Igor.

“I have looked through Captain Pete’s telescope on the Bridge on several occasions,” continued Ryan. “Every time I looked at this dome as we flew over, it seemed to get paler and paler in color, and I thought it was just my bad eyesight, or my eyes playing tricks on me. What made me realize that the color was changing was that before, we could view the ship inside the dome when it was down here. Lately we have only been able to see its tail inside the second shield.”

“And that shield is still the old original deep blue color,” VIN added.

“I bet the ancient people wanted the same type of blue sky they were used to in the Sahara,” VIN reasoned. “Other than the difference in gravity, which I don’t notice anymore, being in this shield is like a typical fall day on Earth. Not too hot, not too cold, just perfect.”

“We should get the pool down here; I’m sure we would get suntans, if the light spectrum is the same as on Earth,” Ryan suggested.

“Maybe they even filtered out the cancer causing rays,” VIN hoped.

The next day, the hole had grown to the size of a tennis ball. The spider was hard at work, and VIN could just put his three fingers through the hole. He felt one metal rail, which reminded him of the first door they had burned open. The oxygen was still low, the bottle still half-full as he had turned off the valuable oxygen before he left the room the day before. Each time they entered or left the room, Igor had to turn on the power to open the door from the cavern into the room.

Finally, after three days, the hole was as big as a basketball, and for the first time VIN could get his space helmet through the hole.

He was utterly shocked at what he saw.

“You won’t believe this, but I just stuck my head into what looks like a hospital operating room. No, it’s bigger than that.” Carefully, he turned his head to the right to see more with the beam of light coming from his helmet. “The same table as we found in the first room with cabinets. This room is completely sealed by the look of it; it’s about twenty feet by thirty feet. It has side tables along two walls, units that look like air tanks in one corner, and red glowing cabinet door handles, nine of them, on the third wall. Actually two are green, and one is blinking red. I can see what looks like operating tools, knives, scalpels, and other objects, like spoons, clamps, drills, and even three gas-type helmets hanging on wall pegs.”

“Is there another doorway?” Ryan asked.

“Negative, but if there is, it is safe and closed. What do your suit readouts show? Surely we can take off our suits, Ryan. It doesn’t look like we are in danger from this new room. It’s about two-thirds the size of one of the supply rooms and this room backs onto where the Forward Cavern is. This door is thinner than the last one. The frame is only about three inches thick and I can see what looks like a manual opening lever on the inside, like an emergency lever in a walk-in freezer. I bet this door can only be opened from inside if it is sealed. It is darn cold in here though, my arm is getting a layer of ice on it.”

VIN then showed Fritz where to program the spider to cut so that he could get his arm in close enough to try the lever.

After sleeping in the dome that night, the hole was rectangular enough for VIN to grab hold of the lever inside the door’s frame.

The lever worked and the door, with the astronaut’s arm still in the hole, began to glide open. VIN was prepared for this after watching how quickly the other doors slid to the side and into door pockets in the wall. He pulled his arm out with only a second or two to spare before the door disappeared into the wall, broken hole and all. He was sure that his arm would have been sliced off if it was trapped inside. It was so close that he actually felt the ends of his fingers being pinched as he pulled out his arm with all the force his other arm could leverage against the sliding door.

Feeling a little panicked at nearly losing his arm—he had already lost enough limbs in his life—VIN stared into the dark room, shouting at Igor to turn on the battery. Seconds later power was fed through the walls, the lights came on and the room in front of him lit up.

He checked the sensors on his suit, and was glad for its warmth and protection. The temperature in the central room, which was 60 degrees before he opened the door, had decreased to minus 30 degrees within seconds. It must have been the same temperature in the room as it was in the vacuum of space, or close to it.

“This room has atmosphere, but it is cold in here. Somehow this room doesn’t have heat, or is not meant to,” VIN reported over the intercom. Only Igor and he were in the room with the nuclear battery connected up inside the power room. Fritz and Ryan were in the cavern with the door closed and with the second battery as back up; Boris was in the shield really to call in the cavalry from above if communications were lost.

For the first time in a long time, the hairs on the back of VIN’s neck were dancing like there was no tomorrow. There was something in this room, his sixth sense was sure of that.

“There is something in here,” VIN stated.

“Alive or dead?” Ryan asked.

“The way my senses are jumping about I would say both. I see tanks, gas tanks larger than ours in the far corner of the room. There are tables, equipment like in an operating theatre. Ryan I think you should get Dr. Nancy down here before we go any further.”

“How do you close the door if you can’t see the manual lever anymore?” Fritz asked.

“Hell, I don’t know, but it is extremely cold in here. I think we need to at least close down the next door between the cavern and this area, and leave this place in darkness until a doctor can get down here ASAP.”

“Dr. Martin, Dr. Nancy Martin, please go to the shuttle at the planet-loading bay immediately. You are wanted on the surface. Mr. Jones, Mr. Saunders, you are needed as crew at the planet-loading bay. All shuttle-loading crew, to the planet-loading bay. Departure of SB-III ASAP,” blared out Captain Pete’s voice on every intercom and communication device in every corner of the ship.

Jonesy was on duty and was already on his way down to SB-III to check on a few improvements. Allen was in the cafeteria chatting up the person on duty to brew another pot of coffee.

The two doctors looked at each other. They were going over records of childbirth aboard ship and recording the most recent birth of the newest baby girl the day before.

“Martha, are you okay to run things up here?” shouted Dr. Rogers to his wife in the ward next door. “I want to see if I can get a ride down to DX2017 with Nancy. There must be an emergency down there.”

“Sure, Martin, Mary and baby are fine, and I’m sure I can handle anything up here until you get back. Remember take a sweater, they say it’s cold down there. You too, Nancy,”

“Nancy, grab the other side of the emergency canister. Let’s go!” commanded Dr. Rogers, and they grabbed the handles on each side of the aluminum airtight canister pre-packed for emergencies inside and outside the spaceship. It was their form of paramedic ambulance. The canister wasn’t light, nearly 80 pounds in the 50 percent reduced gravity of the midlevel, but both had practiced carrying the canister around the ship. Within ten minutes, it was being loaded into the forward cargo bay of SB-III, and they joined the two astronauts, in coats, not spacesuits, which saved them at least 30 minutes of dressing time.

It just so happened that SB-III was at the new cargo-loading bay. She was always fueled and ready to go, as were all of the spacecraft. She also was the only one of the three shuttles that still had its nuclear battery on board. The batteries from SB-I and SB-II were being used on the surface and two replacement batteries were being made aboard America One; they would use the two extra pounds of Plutonium-238 stored outside the craft, against the wall of the ship’s main external reactor on her underbelly.

Within an hour of the call, the astronauts detached SB-III from her docking port and glided out of the cylinders to begin three orbits down to DX2017.

Meanwhile, the first nuclear battery inside the central room had been closed down, and the crew were in the cavern going over what VIN had seen. Dr. Nancy was consulting from the shuttle on the intercom.

“You say the temperature could have been as low as minus one hundred and seventy degrees in this new room?” Dr. Martin asked VIN. The crew, gathered around one of the two radios on the planet, were having a warming cup of hot chocolate in the cavern. The other radio was up in the shield.

“Yes, it was really cold in there, as if deliberately. The walls are silver, the same metal, and lit up when the power was turned on, but the room must have been frozen beforehand,” VIN replied.

“Could it be the room, or maybe an electrical malfunction, Igor?” Dr. Martin Rogers asked. He had received permission to join Dr. Nancy Martin.

“Could be, but VIN said that there was breathable air in the room, although very old and stale. We could have breathed the air in there while freezing to death,” Igor replied.

“The air mix was breathable, but there was a very high content of helium, and nitrogen, hovering just under lethal amounts,” added VIN. “Why would there be too much helium and nitrogen?”

“Cryogenics!” both doctors shouted at once.

“Yes, but we used cryogenics everyday down in Nevada refueling the rockets,” replied VIN still not sure where the doctors were going.

“The MRI machine in America One uses cryogenics, we also use nitrogen freezing for our blood bank on America One,” responded Dr. Rogers.

“You should talk to your wife and Mr. Rose next time to see them, VIN,” Dr. Martin suggested. “Cryobiology is a big, new, growing field. Cryosurgery, operations at low temperatures, is big in medicine today, especially to do with cancers.”

“Cryoelectronics,” added Igor. “Research regarding superconductivity at low temperatures. Of course! These guys must know about cryogenics. Stupid me!”

“I believe we could also be dealing with cryonics here, doctors,” added Ryan.

“You think so?” asked Dr. Nancy excitedly. “Mr. Jones, hurry up, get us down there.”

“Yes, Doctor Lady. We will all be frozen corpses if I fly any more erratically,” stated Jonesy, smiling at the conversation.

“So you think my sixth sense is telling me there are frozen, living people in that room?’ VIN asked in amazement.

“Frozen dead people, frozen living people, or frozen blood, or frozen food, it could be any one of a dozen possibilities, VIN,” Dr. Nancy replied from above.

“Well whatever is in there, is frozen,” replied the Marine thinking that the hairs on his neck were still telling him that there was something alive in there.

“Maybe it’s the crews’ pets,” suggested Jonesy in his “cold” humored way. “Maybe the trip was so long that they froze their dogs and cats so that they wouldn’t be too old before they reached Saturn or Jupiter.”

“A reasonably good suggestion, Mr. Jones,” replied Dr. Nancy sarcastically, “but the cost of cryonics is a little steep for Fluffy and Brutus to be given extra life. It could be a human transportation system, or just a frozen blood bank, or meat locker. These orbital trips do take longer than your average frozen food lifespan, so hurry up and get us down there or I will invite your best friend, Dr. Martha, to join us next time,” remarked the pretty doctor knowing the astronaut’s failing. The men smiled at her remark.

Seven hours later Jonesy brought the shuttle in for a perfect landing. Ryan and the others were on top watching for the shuttle to pierce the shield. It was almost impossible to see it through the shield.

Without any vibrations, the shield was pierced and the shuttle touched down; Jonesy closed her engines down and Allen opened the side hatch to allow the two doctors out of the cockpit.

While the doctors got a tour of the inner dome and its beautiful vegetable gardens and flower beds, VIN helped Jonesy and Allen take out the one piece of cargo, the doctor’s emergency canister.

An hour later the door into the central room was opened and VIN, Igor, the two doctors and Ryan went inside, shivering in the icy cold temperature. Boris and Fritz closed the door behind them and Igor turned on the inside batteries, which brought the lights on and would warm the rooms.

“Currently minus 39 degrees in this room, and same temperature is showing in the new room, the door is still open,” remarked Igor. “Both rooms are warming quickly though, temperature already risen to minus 36 degrees. It is safe to go into the hospital room without suits, but it is going to be icy cold. I suggest we wait a few minutes, minus 34 and rising.”

The doors to the control room and power room had been closed all the time so that there wasn’t any danger to these important rooms. They would have lost power and light, but using the small hand mirrors, these two rooms could be opened and closed at will.

It was the first time Dr. Nancy had been down to the surface. She had spent most of her time researching the pregnancy problem, and had very little interest in being an actual astronaut. She was the only person aboard who expressed no interest in wearing a spacesuit; now that she didn’t need to, she was interested in going anywhere.

VIN led the way into the new room several minutes later, the first time without his spacesuit on. The temperature was now a little warmer; minus 11 degrees.

Nothing had changed. The air smelled very faintly like a hospital, but it was so cold that all smells were masked. There was no smell of rotting flesh, or anything other than chemicals hitting his nose.

He looked around, so did Ryan and the two doctors with the others peering in over their shoulders.

“Certainly a place I want to spend the rest of my life in,” remarked Dr. Nancy excitedly, her warm breath clouding the room. “Look Martin, scalpels! Look how long their blades are, three times the length we use. Over there, knives, monitors, bandages. This place does look like a hospital. That two-man saw over there reminds me of operations done on pirate ships. Why would they have that in here? Okay, Mr. Noble show us what you think is in here. Let’s start with those dials, and don’t touch anything.”

VIN saw what the doctor was looking at. On the counter top in the far opposite corner of the room were 12 dials about four inches across, and a control board with what looked like 12 round push-buttons with different colors. VIN noticed the same three lights on three of the center buttons as were on the cabinet wall; one was red and blinking, and two were green. The others were nearly colorless, but slightly pink. He looked at the 12 sealed cabinets in the far side wall and the lights corresponded.

“I think that three of these twelve cabinets are the same type of pull-out cabinets we found on Mars and here on DX2017. They are the same as the cabinets in which we found the three suited astronauts in heaps of dust; however, these have lights controlling them, or at least showing temperatures inside them. Doctors, I believe they are much the same cabinets one would find in a morgue. Except these have actual glowing lights on them, the first time I’ve seen that,” VIN remarked.

The whole team edged into the room carefully. The room was large, big enough to hold a dozen people, and they all looked towards the gauges.

“Temperature gauges; I agree with VIN,” Igor said. “The two with green lights are showing correct temperatures, I hope; the others, I assume, are red for below optimal temperature, or pink for much lower than optimal zero or could be in the ‘off’ position. Also, there are four large cumbersome air tanks on the other side, about 500 pounds of liquid nitrogen per tank I would guess. Not enough for 10,000 years. I’m sure they must have spares, or larger tanks somewhere else in this system. That means three cabinets per tank, and maybe the tanks are interactive, and one of the tanks is still controlling the three cabinets with the green lights.

“Good, then if we coordinate these little codes around the gauges we could decipher the numbers,” Ryan said. “VIN bring Fritz in here, he has studied these hieroglyphics more than anybody.

VIN came back with an excited Fritz a few seconds later. The others stood back and discussed what they had seen while the German studied the 12 dials, pulled out a small notebook and tried to take notes. His pen didn’t work because it was too cold, so he pulled out a small cell phone-size video camera from a temperature protective bag he had brought along, and got in a dozen close-up photos before the camera froze. While he was doing that the others chatted, condensation rising with every word.

“I believe it won’t hurt to bring this room up to normal heat,” suggested Nancy Martin. That is an operating table, the counter over there. I looked underneath the counter, and it has folded up legs, and I believe the counter can be pulled out from the wall. It is a space-saving system I guess. But they couldn’t do operations in here is these cold temperatures, that is my point.”

“Also, if they are the usual five foot long cabinets, the end of the cabinets would be about two feet in from the inside cavern wall next to the door; the area where there wasn’t a door in the cavern wall. Now we know. It was exactly the same in the cavern on Mars. I bet each one of their bases has one of these systems.” added VIN. “I bet we left a lot of vital information on Mars.”

“These three cabinets showing lights are probably sealed from opening manually,” suggested Ryan. “Igor, try one of the other ones. Nancy what is the optimal temperature for cryogenics?”

“Between minus 150 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures is still argued over between scientists, but I believe any temperature over 150 degrees will do.”

“Well it is minus 3 degrees in here now,” stated VIN. “The cold is dissipating out to the whole underground system and its going to take days to heat it to above freezing temperatures again.”

“We can sleep outside in the balmy 60 degrees up there,” Ryan said. “In Nevada I always slept better in the winter months anyway.”

For the next cold hour every piece of equipment was inspected. Igor began by pulling one of the non-lit bottom draws open. They were surprised to find paper-type bags of what looked like seeds, hundreds of them. Ryan asked Fritz to carefully pick up a couple of the bags of seeds and put them in his temperature-controlled bag. Jonesy, still waiting for them inside the dome on the surface, could take them up to Suzi, Martha and Petra to begin researching.

The second cabinet, still extremely cold, had an icy vapor rising out of it even in the sub-zero conditions of the room, when it was opened. The cabinet was packed full of what again looked like two hundred bags of seeds, each bag about the size of a fist. The third bottom drawer contained the same.

“Must be their long-term freezer space. At 150 minus, these supplies should last longer than we could ever imagine,” Dr. Nancy stated. The next line of cabinets was where the lights were and Ryan suggested that they leave it for last.

The third line even surprised the medical staff. All three cabinets contained glass vials of what looked like pills and powders found in a pharmacy. Most glass used on Earth would crack open at such cold temperatures. The glass containers were in several sizes, and looked like perfectly formed, transparent hand grenade cases. Of most importance, each vial had a label on it; the chemists could analyze the contents, and then likely decipher the writing.

As each cabinet was opened, VIN took the temperature with a handheld thermometer. In every cabinet the temperature was minus 145 degrees. They opened all nine of the cabinets that had no lights, or faint pink lights, on the handles, and each one held much of the same, either bags, or glass vials.

“A little warm for cryogenics,” mentioned Nancy Martin, whose teeth were beginning to chatter.

“Maybe the system is slowly running out of power?” suggested VIN.

Ryan ordered three samples from each cabinet to be put inside Fritz’s bag. They closed all the cabinets, left the area, closed the outer door from the cavern, went back up through the now very cold caverns, and returned to the warmth of the dome. The walls would warm up the caverns while they slept outside, and VIN was sure the long-drop toilet didn’t smell anymore, it was damn cold down there.

Jonesy was given the bag with the samples; he and Allen readied for takeoff, and headed up through the shield and back to America One.

VIN had to prevent Nancy Martin from falling over as the mining craft exited the dome; she looked pale and unsteady. The lower gravity the astronauts were used to on DX2017 was having an effect on the pretty doctor.

The next day was the big day. During the rest period, both doctors discussed what they had seen with Ryan and Igor, while the others slept, or cooked food. Fritz studied the words on his camera that he had carefully defrosted. He didn’t sleep a wink.

Ryan radioed Captain Pete and ordered Maggie and Michael Pitt to transport Doctors Martha Von Zimmer and Petra Bloem to the surface; they were the two astro-biologists who would be most interested in any alien or human remains. He was also sure that this was the day he had waited for all his life: to be the first human to find an alien life form, even if they did come from Earth. Who cared!

The incoming flight would take ten hours, so Ryan decided to wait for the incoming doctors. They were bringing better cameras, and the slowly rising temperatures below should allow them to photographically record this historic event.

Twelve hours later, VIN entered the new room. Nothing had changed, except that the two green lights were now blinking green lights, and the red light had stopped blinking. Something had changed due to the rise in temperature. It was a toasty 15 degrees above freezing in the outer rooms; the heating system was working at full power he guessed.

“I bet that the natural coldness down here has helped the depleted nitrogen tanks keep the cabinets within a cryonic temperature field for the extended time,” Dr. Nancy theorized as they entered the room. “Now that the tanks are probably empty and it is warming up in here, the lights are showing internal temperature changes.”

“I’m sure that the whole cryonic system is automated, to warm the internal cabinets to return whatever is in there, to normal temperature conditions and at the rates of warmth necessary,” said Ryan, and everyone nodded in agreement, none of them experts. “Let’s start with the cabinet with the red light. Red lights are not normally good, so whatever is in there, has already redlined, shall we say.”

This cabinet refused to open. There was only the one button they could push, the red one in the middle of one of the 12 temperature dials on the wall. Ryan pressed it and as he did, the lights dimmed in the room. Power from their nuclear battery, a lot of power, was diverted away from the walls to the cryonic system and was transferred to one red dial on the wall; it started to glow brightly. Rapid, sharp vibrations like an earthquake were felt through the floor. It was quite soothing on the feet, and VIN knew in which direction to dig next.

The light in the room dimmed, and the vibrations continued for over an hour before the cabinet with the red light suddenly shot open in a cloud of gas and vapor. As it did, an alarm somewhere began a horrible noise.

All eyes were on the smoking cabinet and the air began to really smell of chemicals and stale air. It took several seconds for the cloud of vapor to dissipate, revealing a space suit and helmet; exactly the same suit and helmet VIN had found in the first cabinets on Mars. Except that this suit had a whole body in it, not a pile of dust, and it looked very pale, and dead.

“Homo Floresiensis!” exclaimed Martha and Petra together.

“It is an exact replica of drawings in our biology reports,” added Martha.

“I would say dead and dead for a long while, by the degradation of the skin and its color,” added Dr. Nancy Martin.

“Mr. Noble, Mr. Warner,” said Ryan calmly, “can we detach the whole cabinet from the wall? I’m sure it would be better to take this body up to America One in the cabinet.”

VIN and Fritz pulled the cabinet as far as it would go. They had done the same on Mars to see how they were installed. The spider would be needed to cut through four metal frames to detach the whole thing from the wall. There were also several hollow metal pipes to detach before the body and cabinet would be free. Igor suggested that since the occupant, about five feet tall, was already dead, a few more minutes, or weeks in the wall wouldn’t matter, as detaching the pipes could be a dangerous task releasing nitrogen and any compressed air. They shut the cabinet and the alarm stopped. It was time to press the next button, the first one with a green blinking light.

Dr. Rogers had their doctors’ bags open and their contents already laid out on the floor and side counters by the time Ryan pressed the second button.

The same happened; the lights dimmed, the floor vibrated, but much harder and for three hours instead of one.

“Having to defrost from a lower temperature, I bet,” said Dr. Martin.

It seemed that the changes inside this cabinet demanded more power; the walls were nearly dark and more power was added from the battery, before the same cloud of vapor erupted from the cabinet as it automatically shot open.

Again alarms everywhere went off but then stopped instead of continuously blaring as they had done on the first cabinet. To the group avidly watching, it seemed an eternity before the cloud dissipated to allow the crew to stare into the cabinet.

They were surprised that the suited body was less than four feet tall, and it was still vibrating, much the same as the floor had done a minute or so earlier. The small body in a helmet and spacesuit, with the same soft tubes attached to the helmet was vibrating like Jell-O in an earthquake.

“Igor, Boris, pull out the operating table from the side wall quickly,” Dr. Rogers ordered. “Nancy, light up the defibrillator, give me an ampule of smelling salts, also the small oxygen bottle and facemask out of the canister. Martha, do you remember how to take off the helmet?”

Martha immediately grabbed the helmet, and like all the helmets these blue suited people used quickly unscrewed the ring around the neck area “It comes off just like ours,” she stated, “but we turn the ring a couple of 360 degree turns instead of our helmets’ 50 turns.”

“Table is out, and legs down,” stated Boris.

“Gently pick up the body when Martha has the helmet off and place it flat on the table,” ordered Dr. Rogers, grabbing for equipment in the canister.

Carefully, Martha removed the helmet while Nancy gently lifted up the top half of the body. “It looks like a child, maybe a boy,” said Martha, and the crew gathered on each side and six pairs of hands gently lifted the small body out of the cabinet and side-walked over to lay the body on the operating table. VIN could see the face. He was holding the body underneath the shoulders and saw the small face of what looked like a boy, a brown native boy. The boy’s face didn’t look like a normal face, it had no chin, and the face was square underneath the mouth. The nose was petite and small, and the ears looked normal, but big, slightly larger than an adult’s ears. Also there was very short, curly blond hair on his head.

VIN looked carefully at the eyes, and he saw them begin to flicker faster than the vibrating body.

“Nancy check inside the nose and ears,” ordered Dr. Rogers. “I’ll look inside the throat to make sure that the throat is clear. Check for blocked passages, I read somewhere that the body needs to be plugged, and sealed for this sort of thing, but I’m not sure. Martha, grab the large scissors, see if we can cut this suit off his upper body.”

“I’m sure I see eye flicker,” VIN said while Dr. Martin completed her checks, pulling gauze, or what looked like plugs out of both ears and nostrils, while Dr. Rogers pulled the same material out of the back of the child’s throat with forceps.

“Nancy, defibrillator please, low charge. Martha, how are you doing with cutting the suit off around the chest area?”

“Not good, the suit is too tough. I think you must try using the defibrillator through the suit material. I am sure it will just send the charge through the material to the chest.

“Hands away. Everybody please leave the body alone. Defibrillating now!” The body jumped. “Heartbeat, Nancy?”

“Affirmative, there is a heartbeat,” Nancy replied.

“I saw the eyes twitching before, Doc. I think the body had a heartbeat before you hit it,” VIN interjected.

VIN looked at the face and the hairs on the back of his neck bounced around as he watched both large eyes open. Two big, brown, extremely bloodshot eyes stared up at him, vacant for a second, and then the forehead creased, and the eyes changed, questioning who the person was that he was seeing.

“He’s alive.” VIN confirmed what everybody already knew. He was unnerved by what he had seen. The boy’s eyes never wavered from his face, searching for some recognition, without finding any.

“I’m going to give the patient an injection to calm him down, and make him sleep, in case we are shocking him by our presence,” said Nancy. She injected him in the side of his neck, as the suit couldn’t be penetrated. Within seconds the little brown boy’s eyes clouded over and closed and the 10,000 year old boy went back to sleep while the two doctors set up the heart monitors and other ICU equipment they had brought.

They all helped VIN lift the boy vertically through the shaft to the warmer temperatures above ground and covered the cold body in blankets to get the patient warm and stabilized.

“Intravenous feed and a hydration bag, Martin. Make that two hydration bags,” Nancy ordered.

The patient seemed to be stable, and it was time to see what the third drawer held.

The same series of events ensued, except this body was six inches taller, looked female and was also vibrating like Jell-O three hours after they pressed the green light. VIN was again in position to watch the staring eyes, but Martin Rogers decided not to use the defibrillator this time; the heart beat was stronger than with the first patient. After injecting her with the same sedative mixture, the crew wrapped the second person in blankets, lifted her up the shaft, and then added the drips. The second alien, or person, now appeared to be warm and asleep.

VIN organized the lifts up the shaft. He carefully wrapped a blanket around each body and then secured it with cord, making sure that the body remained in a vertical position with no bad pressure points. This Homo whatever, a name VIN couldn’t remember or pronounce, was a small race of people which made it easier to pull them up with the cords, while somebody held their bodies to prevent them from touching the shaft walls.

The group was speechless; they had all worked hard for the six hours it had taken to stabilize the two patients.

“I wonder what language they speak,” Fritz mused aloud once everybody sat down to take a breather. “I hate to see how these squiggles correspond to words.”

“The two look like family. The dead body, I believe, is a grown male, maybe the father, so maybe this is his son and wife or mate,” suggested Dr. Nancy. “I would be surprised if they are just crew members. They will be out for several hours during which time their bodies are being intravenously fed and hydrated. I’m sure that is the most important thing we can do. Ryan, we need to get them up to America One and into proper medical facilities immediately.”

Ryan told them that one of the shuttles was only three hours out from landing.

Within hours, the ship rose off the surface, through the shield and was away towards the orbiting mother ship with the patients. The two doctors, Ryan and Fritz accompanied the two patients, and left VIN, Igor and Boris to clean up and ponder the new and exciting discoveries.

Chapter 16

Roo, Tow and Put.

Not counting his wedding day and the day Mars Noble was born, the day VIN found Roo was the most memorable day of his life. At least, that was what the boy’s name sounded like when the Earth aliens were able to communicate many days later.

VIN helped transport the cabinet holding the still frozen third body to the shuttle, but remained on DX2017 for the next ten days.

When their spacesuits were discarded and replaced with hospital gowns, the doctors found they had correctly identified their genders. Isolated under oxygen tents, the two sedated patients were continually monitored as the two doctors hydrated and fed them. Dozens of bags of food and liquids nourished them as they gradually regained normal body conditions. Because they had been sustained under cryonic conditions for such an extremely long time, Dr. Nancy suggested it would take time for them to regain healthy, toned skin.

The patients were still sedated ten days after their airlift when VIN arrived on the midlevel to check up on them. Not only was it VIN’s tenacity and determination to open the final door that led to their discovery, but it was also VIN who had the first visual contact with the brown eyes staring into his. Ryan wanted him to be there when they were allowed to waken.

“How are they?” VIN asked as they entered the sick bay, or “small area” as it was called by everyone on the ship.

Nurse Martha Rogers looked up from the notes she was studying on the other side of the counter and smiled at the two.

“As good as can be expected,” she replied. “The tough time is when they come around and realize that we could be the aliens; that could give them heart attacks. Other than that both patients have had complete checkups, and we had both of them inside the MRI for several minutes for a brief internal exam. There are a few differences, but they are much the same as what we Homo sapiens have inside us. The boy even mumbled a few words, so we know there is cognitive activity. We are hoping that there is no brain damage, or memory loss. You never know, they could be blank patients with no brains at all, but we did see normal, although minimal brain activity from both patients in the MRI, the same as if one of us was sedated.”

“Not by the way those eyes looked at me with questions,” replied VIN. “Those eyes, even though they had been asleep for 10,000 years, were very quick to question my face. It was nearly instantaneous.”

“Just remember, they have been asleep, or as near to dead as anybody could ever be,” replied Martha, “but it could feel the same as a normal night of sleep to them, or even shorter, or longer. It’s possible the boy saw his doctor’s face or father’s face before going under, and suddenly saw yours, a completely different color, a second or two later. Anyway, the doctors have them off their medication drips, and they should peacefully awaken in the next hour. VIN, you can go in.”

VIN remembered that day so well. He walked into the hospital ward which had been closed off from the rest of the ship for the last ten days. Both Nancy and Martin Rogers looked up as he entered. The doctors were monitoring heart rates, and looked tired. VIN was sure that the patients hadn’t been left alone for a second. The doctors removed the oxygen tents as VIN arrived.

“Since Ryan said that yours was the first face the boy saw,” began Nancy, “Dr. Rogers, Martha and I agreed that your handsome face should be the first face he sees when he wakes up. He is coming to, but it will still take fifteen to twenty minutes for him to surface. The boy will be coming around about ten minutes before his mother.”

“We know for sure that they are mother and son,” added Dr. Rogers. “A very interesting blood type, Rhesus Negative, and we can say for sure that they are related. We believe the mother is about 25 to 30 years old, and we want an older woman to be the first face she sees; we hope it will be more comforting to her.”

“How old is the boy?” VIN asked. “And what is wrong with Rhesus Negative?”

“We believe the boy is 12 to 15 years old,” continued Nancy. “Once we have done an autopsy on the male, we can determine if he is the father.”

“I think the third person might resolve more of our questions on body structure,” Dr. Rogers said. “We could have learned so much more from his brain. If their family structure is the same as ours, he the astronaut and she the housewife, the mother’s knowledge of flight, technology, and space travel could be very limited. As to your question about blood type, Rhesus Negative is an older European blood group, even though it is now found worldwide and is not that rare. In Homo sapiens, Rh Negative usually indicates red hair, blue or green eyes, a soft non-aggressive disposition, and high foot arches. These two have the high arches, but certainly not red hair or blue or green eyes.”

“Other traits, which have been reported but not necessarily verified, include a predisposition towards compassion and empathy, high intelligence, and an ability to disrupt electricity,” Dr. Nancy added. “I think we should quiet down. VIN, you sit on the bar stool and look at the boy’s face. Smile or something, and think kind thoughts. One other thing, Rh Negs, like you Mr. Noble—and there are three of us on board—are supposed to have telepathic tendencies. Martha Von Zimmer is the third Rh Negative, and is arriving soon for the boy’s mother.”

As VIN got into position, Martha Rogers increased the soft music, which could just be heard from the speakers inside the ward. The hospital and the church were the only areas aboard ship where the intercom system could be turned off.

“Sounds more like a funeral,” suggested VIN, knowing exactly what his partner, Jonesy would have said. The others left the ward, and he was alone with the two patients; Nancy stood just outside the open door, peering in.

As VIN looked into the boy’s face, he recalled being in his position. He had regained consciousness several times after operations on his legs and could vividly remember every face. The most vivid face was the pretty doctor who told him that he was still alive but had lost both legs. She was so pretty, and her face was still vivid to him all these years later as it was that day. He smiled at the memory and looked down at a face staring back at him.

The boy’s eyes were wide open and he was staring determinedly into VIN’s eyes. Startled, VIN’s upper body convulsed backwards, his eyes revealing his surprise that somebody was staring at him. The young brown eyes registered his reaction, and a tiny smile etched itself into the corner of the boy’s mouth.

VIN said nothing, but stared back trying to recover from the shock of being spied on. He didn’t know what to do. Should he smile? Should he wink? Hell, what do these guys do? He looked down and saw the boy’s hand, still with a drip in it, on the top of the bed. He slowly moved his hand and put it over the boy’s. Nothing happened, but he did feel the warmth of the much smaller hand under his. He looked into the boy’s eyes and saw again that he was being subjected to intensive scrutiny.

“Telepathic, hey?” he thought to himself. “Hi kid, my name is VIN. VIN Noble. I’m from Earth. I’m not an alien. You can call me VIN.”

As expected nothing happened, the boy just stared into his eyes without blinking. “Sign language, these guys must have used sign language,” was his next thought. So he did what most humans do. Wary of moving too fast, he slowly raised his hand to point at his chest, “VIN, VIN, V… I… N, VIN,” he thought as intensely as he could.

He thought he felt the hand below his move slightly, but their eyes stayed locked. Suddenly, from nowhere, a word entered his quiet mind. “Roo………………… Rooo…………… Rooooo!”

“Roo?” he said quietly, not taking his eyes off the boy once, except that the hairs on the back of his neck were dancing around again. The boy’s hand moved slightly again and VIN held it, still overwhelmed at what had taken place.

Then, filled with worry, the boy’s eyes began to search past VIN’s face, trying look around the room. VIN moved his eyes from the boy’s face in the direction of the next bed, where the second patient lay. The boy’s eyes followed his, and slowly the boy turned his head, and VIN could see the pleasure suddenly light up his eyes when the boy saw his mother lying in the next bed. At the same time feelings of excitement and pleasure flowed through VIN.

VIN was suddenly just as shocked as the boy. The mother had turned her head and was staring at him hard. What happened next was surreal.

“VIN…… VIN…… V…… I… N,” jumped into his mind, and he knew immediately that the boy hadn’t said it, the mother had.

“Nancy, the mother is awake, and already knows my name. I have words going through my mind. You had better come over.”

He heard Nancy enter the room and he felt her presence behind him. The two patients also sensed the movement, and he realized that he had inadvertently told them that there was somebody else in the room. They both looked past him and settled on Nancy’s face. He couldn’t see her but concentrated on her name, “Nancy… Nancy… Nancy.”

“Nancy…… Nancy… VIN… VIN” went through his mind as Nancy moved closer to the mother and copied what VIN had done; she sat down on a stool and put her hand over the woman’s small hand.

He continued to move his eyes between both patients, and he was happy to see no fear, or pain, or worry in either set of eyes.

Nobody moved until Martha Von Zimmer quietly entered the room; as she did, and as quickly as VIN sensed her, the brown eyes looked in her direction.

“Mar… tha, Mar… tha, Martha,” VIN repeated mentally as Martha glided forward. Again, he couldn’t see her, but he heard her name come back to him twice, “Mar…… ta, Ma… ta, Mata.” The responses were not his, not correct. He smiled. They cannot pronounce “th” he thought to himself. Suddenly there were several words he could understand, and several clicks in the dialogue, not something he would say, so his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him.

He felt the small hand underneath his move to hold his own, and nobody said a word, mentally or aloud for a long time.

Studying the face, VIN determined it wasn’t ugly, it just wasn’t perfect. It lacked a chin, just sort of ending. The skin was brown, very brown, but not black. The hair on both patients was a bottle-blonde color and stood out from the brown features. Roo’s nose looked small, and the mother’s looked bigger. The boy had bigger ears than the mother, and other than that, they certainly looked human.

For the next hour nobody really did anything. VIN didn’t hear much. He didn’t know if the others were communicating. But he heard his name once.

The next day Fritz was allowed to visit with VIN and Nancy, who was in constant attendance. Nancy told him that she hadn’t heard a word in her mind about anything, but had the feeling that there was communication going on around her. She and Martha felt that everyone was just staring at each other.

On the second day a broth of lukewarm lentils was being brought in as VIN arrived. He showed them how to eat, by having a plate himself. The two patients, still in a weakened state, were hand-fed the lentils. When the plates were gone, VIN said “Roo” aloud; both patients jumped at his voice, but he smiled, and said it again.

“Roo,” the boy said slowly, then “VIN.” VIN looked over at his mother, and the boy said “Tow” in response.

Then the mother said “Tow, VIN, and then Roo,” and the group was officially introduced.

VIN sensed somebody arriving a split second after both sets of eyes turned towards the door. Fritz quietly walked through the door, pen and notebook in hand, and smiled politely at the patients. Seeing who it was, VIN mentally thought, “Fritz.” Nothing. Again he thought, “Fritz,” and again got no response. “Fritz… Fritz… Frit… zzzzzzz.” He smiled when he got a response.

“Frit… Frit… Fri… ttttt” mentally arrived in his head from both beds.

“Fritz, come in; this is Roo, and his mother is Tow. They already know you as Frit, but say Roo, and Tow, so they know you know their names.”

Slowly, a bond of trust was built up between the new friends. Never did VIN see any anger or fright in their eyes. After a few more days, the patients were helped to stand, and like VIN with his new legs, it took time for them to walk again.

For the first few days Tow frequently said something that halted conversation between her and the boy; VIN realized that they were looking around for the third member, maybe her husband. When VIN realized what Tow was looking for, he relayed the information to Martha, who returned the next day with the dead man’s empty space helmet. Immediately, the mother put her hand to her mouth, and closed her eyes, the message successfully transmitted. VIN was sure that these space travelers knew about the dangers of cryonics.

The doctors wanted to perform more tests, so during those few hours each day, VIN worked with Fritz, who was trying to transcribe the interesting noises they made. He even gave the boy the pen and paper, so he could begin to decode their language based on their names.

At first it was hard to communicate in a language nobody understood, but they began with food, basic to life, and because it changed daily. VIN, Fritz and Martha learned how to say apple, tomato, and cucumber, and Suzi was asked to increase the variety of their food.

At other times the doctors helped the two walk. Their muscles had atrophied and needed to be rebuilt.

The most interesting visit in the first week was when Suzi walked in with Mars, and Maggie with Saturn. The sight of the children changed the mother into a real person, crooning and stroking the babies. Even Roo enjoyed the children’s company; when Mars was lifted onto his bed, Roo made funny faces. Mars thoroughly enjoyed the antics. Saturn was a little more reserved. When she looked at Roo with questioning eyes, he laughed at her. Saturn was embarrassed, but sensing that, Roo stopped laughing and held out his hand. She hesitated, but touched his fingers. The two slowly became friends.

Within a week, the two visitors began to walk again. They were short, much shorter than VIN and even Suzi; VIN walked with them very slowly down the corridor. Tow brushed against his legs inadvertently when she stumbled slightly, and she pulled herself away from his legs, questioning him with her mind. He knew immediately that she was asking about his metal legs. They returned to the hospital ward where he sat on the bed and pulled up his flight suit legs. They were as inquisitive as Nancy had been aboard the ISS and prodded and poked his legs and spoke very quickly in their click language to each other. VIN showed them by moving his hand across both legs, like a knife, where the metal ended. He then turned to Fritz who was watching their responses and Fritz showed them his metal arm and leg.

Nancy and Dr. Rogers were inspected for metal parts and, not finding any on them, the two visitors seemed to be satisfied. Roo looked at him, and VIN knew he was questioning why he had these metal implants. Why would a person ever need metal replacements was on both minds.

Once the two regained enough strength to walk farther than ten yards, they were taken to an elevator, which whisked them down to the central area. Suzi and Mars were with them as they entered the first cube, full of plant life and fresh scents. It must have felt like home to them, back in the thick Saharan vegetation. VIN could see and feel their pleasure as they saw the wonders Suzi, Mr. Rose and their team had produced to give the crew aboard America One better quality food than one could get on Earth. They wandered through the first cube, with Fritz close behind, always getting one of them to write down the name of what they saw.

The coffee and cocoa trees were not known to them, but the barley, wheat, corn, and many of the more common crops were. They got excited in Cube Three, where the bees were pollinating. They expressed delight at seeing the rabbits and chickens, and seemed oriented towards pet companions; they stroked them making clear their thoughts that the rabbits looked sweet and chicken eggs were good to eat. VIN and Suzi suspected that Tow and Roo might be vegetarians.

Over the next few days, they toured all seven cubes, slowly going through them with both sides learning new names for the fruits and vegetables that would soon enhance their communication.

After they went through the cubes they toured the rest of the ship, leaving the Bridge for last. Captain Pete and Ryan were hoping that by that time they would be able to converse with each other, at least on an elementary level. Captain Pete asked Igor and Boris to erect the first globe they found on Mars on one side of the Bridge as a memento; they were all eager to see their visitors’ faces when they saw their home planet of 10,000 years ago. Two posters displaying how Earth looked in modern times were framed and hung on the rear wall behind the globe; it was fascinating to inspect both closely and see such small differences in topography over 10,000 years.

What did surprise VIN and Fritz was when they walked by the first window looking out in one of the corridors. Both Tow and Roo stopped and looked at the blue glow of the shield around the ship excitedly; VIN was sure that it brought back memories for them. He was also sure that they didn’t realize that it was their own shield from Mars, which was protecting the ship. A sudden thought popped into VIN’s head, “I wonder if they think we are their offspring? I wonder if they think we are from the same tribe, maybe just changed over time.”

His thoughts made Roo and Tow look at him with inquisitive looks. He didn’t have the privacy of thought around them.

When he concentrated hard on the word “Rooooo”, he often got a smile and the word “Viiiiin” coming back at him mentally as a response, with several clicks and words exchanged between mother and son. This was becoming a joke between the new friends.

On some of the walks Mars, who was now walking well, joined them. Roo always walked with Mars holding his hand. He was only two feet taller than Mars and they seemed to get on well together. Mars had even perfected the click that was part of their language; like all children he easily picked up languages, a talent that made the adults jealous.

Saturn and Maggie joined them for a walk around the upper levels, once their legs could take the increased gravity. Tow always wanted to hold Saturn’s hand; they were also becoming good friends.

Finally, on the seventh day walking around the ship, after seeing the apartment they would be using, they entered the Bridge. Both visitors looked through the large forward windows, the enjoyment of looking out clearly expressed on their faces. They both gasped when they saw their globe from Mars standing in the Bridge, the same way VIN had found it in the cavern on Mars.

They gently touched the globe, but did not look happy. Then they saw the pictures of the current Earth on the wall and for several minutes, they inspected it, talking and clicking in a constant flow. They touched everything, and VIN suspected they were surprised to find everything cold to the touch; that was what went through his mind as they touched the globe, the posters, the seats, the computers. He led Roo’s hand to touch the warm coffee machine and the boy smiled. VIN had thought right.

Everything in the caverns—the controls, the walls, even the switches on the command console—was warm to the touch. He realized that warmth was important to them. Something cold wasn’t working, or was dead. The globe was cold. It wasn’t working.

“Roo, Tow, this is Ryan, Ryan; this is Pete, Pete,” thought VIN as they stood in front of the commanders of the ship for the first time. As usual Captain Pete was dressed as a captain, wearing his red flight suit with his rank on his epaulets.

Ryan was dressed in a blue suit showing no rank and VIN assumed that the visitors would take Captain Pete as the ship’s captain. He was right; they looked at Ryan quickly, but regarded the captain longer.

“Ryan, Ryan, Peter, Pete,” Tow and Roo said aloud to the two tall men in front of them. Whenever they did not receive a mental response from someone when they communicated telepathically, they spoke aloud as best they could. The name “Ryan” sounded odd but “Pete” sounded perfect. Captain Pete put his hand out and both stepped back quickly, but the small visitors took his hand together and felt it. They didn’t know how to shake hands. When the taller men spoke, the two visitors respectfully listened, trying to understand what was being said.

They walked over to the large windows at the front of the Bridge and looked out at the space around them. They looked out for quite some time, pointing at stars here and there, as if they recognized them.

“I think that it is time for them to visit DX2017,” VIN said to the two commanders as Fritz arrived on the Bridge. They were happy to see Fritz, and Tow went to stand next to him; they were getting on well. Fritz spent several hours a day with Tow trying to communicate and learning more every day. He had also now perfected the click, nearly as well as Mars.

Glancing out the forward windows, VIN noticed DX2017 had just come into view when Roo made a noise VIN had not heard before. He and Tow quickly went over to the windows and pressed their small noses on the glass, excited to see something they recognized.

VIN showed Roo how to look through the telescope, and got an excited response when the boy saw the planet up close and an exclamation of excitement when the boy must have seen the blue dome down on the planet’s surface. VIN was right; it was time to take them home.

“Mr. Jones, crew and astronauts, ready SB-III and the crew compartment for a flight down to the surface,” Ryan ordered over the intercom. “There will be quite a few of us on board. Our two visitors, Mr. Noble, Mr. Warner, Frau Von Zimmer, Frau Bloem, Igor, Boris, both doctors, with the emergency canister, please, and I would assume Suzi, Mars Noble and Mr. Rose who will want to tend garden. If anyone else has an urgent need to join us, please call the Bridge. We will have room for one or two more passengers. We leave in three hours. Out.”

Igor who had just walked in hadn’t met the visitors yet, and was introduced to them. They looked up at all the men, realizing that members of this tribe were all much taller than they. Igor befriended Roo and, with VIN, led the young boy to the area where they were testing the broken black box.

The boy knew what it was when he was shown the box Igor had put together again. He picked it up; it was cold. He placed his hand over the top of the box, and a blue glow began to emanate from the box. The onlookers were stunned, and Roo smiled at them.

“It is not broken, it is cold,” VIN thought as he tried to understand the words going through his brain. The word cold was already part of his foreign language knowledge. “I think that all the doors and openings down there are activated by body heat,” he suggested. Their eyes were still glued to the small shield around the boy’s hand. Now they had another shield as reserve.

VIN was very eager to get back down to DX2017. So was Suzi; she wanted to show the two visitors the gardens and how nicely plants were growing down there.

Tow and Roo were surprised when SB-III detached from the mother ship. They were sitting in the jump seats in the rear of the cockpit so that they could see everything. VIN was with them, standing up and holding onto the side of the now rarely used docking port tube. Jonesy and Maggie were flying the shuttle, Saturn and Mars were in the crew compartment with Suzi, and the door into the forward cargo bay directly from the crew compartment was open. There were many more flight leniencies now that space suits weren’t needed.

The excited passengers were strapped down and continuously chatted between themselves clicking many times a minute, enough for Jonesy to roll his eyes. He had not smiled since he met the visitors, and VIN thought it was time he made an effort to look happier and friendlier.

“I can talk to these guys through mental telepathy,” he told his partner, knowing what reaction he would get.

“Yeah! Like maybe talking to a rock, or a stone down there,” replied Jonesy, smiling.

“Yeah partner, just like you listen to engines complaining,” replied VIN smiling back.

“Hey! I can hear engines,” retorted Jonesy. “It is not telepathic, I actually hear the sound they emit. I’m not doing a circus trick. I can hear when an engine is screaming too high, or struggling, or vibrating. Not like you talking to yourself, thinking somebody is having a serious conversation in your head. Also, you don’t speak native tongue, so don’t tell me you know what they are saying. Maggie, put the nose down one more degree.”

“I can understand about forty words,” shouted Fritz from the crew compartment listening in on the conversation through the door. “I think Mars can actually have a full conversation with Roo.”

“Yeah! Maybe I would have more chance chatting up a sexy female Roo in Australia,” commented Jonesy still smiling.

“Jonesy, mind your manners,” added his wife looking at him sternly. The two visitors had made a lot of friends during their short stay.

As they descended down over three orbits, the little blue dome came into sight. Landing, Jonesy carefully and slowly pierced the shield which came as no surprise to the two new passengers. They saw the second dome where the tail of the ship stood, and the looks on their faces told VIN that they were aware of the dangers of no atmosphere in the second dome.

Disembarking, they were surprised to see Suzi’s neat, green vegetable beds, and especially the flower garden on one side. One by one they clicked off the names of what they saw and this time Fritz had a voice recorder to save the words. He pointed to a plant, recorded what they were saying and, repeated the name of the plant in German.

“Mr. Noble,” Ryan said, walking up to VIN, “I think somehow you and Fritz should explain to Roo, that it will be dangerous for them to open any doors we don’t know about down there.”

“I agree,” he replied and then thought about how he could get them to understand “no” and “danger”. Fritz figured it out for him. He walked up to the rope in front of the shield wall, made sure both newbies were watching him, and then aimed his arm towards the shield. The same word came out of the mouths of both small people. It sounded like “rice,” and it was the first time anyone had heard them say it.

Fritz looked puzzled. Tow ran up to him as he continued walking and stopped him with his fingers only an inch away from exiting the wall. She said a word that sounded like “potdam” three times and at the same time pulled his arm back.

“Rice, potdam,” VIN repeated aloud. Tow and Roo looked at him and nodded their heads like they had seen the tall people do. Now they knew what to say to them once they got underground.

The atmosphere hadn’t changed but the heat had, as the crew descended into the cavern one at a time. Ryan gave orders to open two air tanks to enrich the air as a preventive measure. He had wanted everybody to wear suits, but so far, opening doors hadn’t caused a situation. After everyone else descended, VIN showed Tow how to go down, and then Roo; he followed while Suzi, Mars and Mr. Rose lifted gardening equipment and baskets out of the forward crew compartment.

Tow was jumping up and down with excitement when VIN arrived but Roo looked unhappy. Roo noticed the hole made by the spider to open the first door into the forward rooms, and he pointed at VIN as Fritz had done at the shield wall. VIN nodded and, looking guilty, he hung his head to acknowledge he had done something wrong. Roo smiled at him and took his hand. They walked forward into the central room and both Tow and Roo whooped with excitement at seeing the five globes still in their original positions.

Roo put his hand and VIN’s on Earth, and the globe began to glow and get warm. VIN had taught Roo how to nod yes, but up to now, the word “no” hadn’t been in their learning curve. Now VIN said “rice” and shook his head from side to side.

Roo placed his hand on Mars, the second globe, but it didn’t warm to the touch. The boy looked at the globe seriously for a few seconds and then a few clicking words went through VIN’s mind. As the others look on, the boy’s face assumed a very serious expression; he pointed at the globe, then up into space, and finally to where VIN assumed Mars, the planet itself was orbiting. Aloud, Roo said “rice” and “no”. VIN knew what he was trying to say.

VIN interpreted, “It seems that because we took the globe from Mars, and put in on the Bridge, the planet is not alive or something. The Earth globe became warm when we touched it, actually quite hot, but Mars stayed cold.”

Then Roo put their hands on Ganymede the third in line. It stayed cold. “‘Rice,’ ‘no’, ‘potdam,’ ‘dangerous planet’,” he stated in perfect English, shocking everybody.

Fritz replied to this by asking, “Why potdam?”

Roo looked at Fritz understanding what he was trying to say and moved his left hand around in the air showing a floating movement, and suddenly he crashed his hand downwards, as if something was falling. He then pointed upwards and said, “SB-III” copying how Ryan had said the name of the ship over the intercom and then showed his hand crashing to the ground.

“I think he is warning us of possible gravity problems, and that we could have problems landing on Ganymede,” Igor suggested, watching the boy intently.

“I agree,” VIN said. Then, still holding the boy’s hand, he touched the fourth globe and Roo abruptly pulled his hand away from the fourth planet.

“We have found that moon to be Europa,” said Boris and Martha Von Zimmer nodded.

“The fifth globe is Titan, I believe. If need be, we can bypass Jupiter’s moons if they are too risky to land on, but we need to land somewhere for water and nitrogen. I think Europa could be a possibility,” added Petra Bloem. “We won’t get back to Earth very quickly without finding supplies somewhere.”

“Well, even though it seems they have a base on them, the red dots are now very small, hardly visible. I was sure Europa had the second largest red dot, after Mars, but maybe I’m wrong. Both these planets are cold to the touch and the red dot on Titan has grown to be the same as the dot on Mars. It seems that these dots are changing in real time.”

VIN put his and Roo’s hand on the fifth globe, Titan. It became hot to the touch, so hot that he had to pull their hands away, and the red dot began to glow with a life of its own. This didn’t happened when he touched them by himself; Roo had some connection to the globes. Then Roo pointed back to Ganymede, stated one word, “potdam” and then he did the same to Titan. He looked VIN in the eyes, looked at Europa, and nodded “yes” to try and tell VIN that this was the moon that was safe to go. He noticed Tow was nodding an affirmative to what her son was saying.

Then Roo noticed the closed doors to the other rooms around them. He immediately walked over to the door that still had the hole in it. Somehow it had closed while they were away. He looked at VIN knowing that he was the cause of this destruction, and smiling, he beckoned VIN forward. Roo placed VIN’s hand on the door, and Roo was surprised when nothing happened. VIN got the shock of his life, and so did the others, when Roo touched the door and it immediately opened. Roo now knew why VIN had caused so much destruction to get through the door. He didn’t have the same powers.

Fritz touched Roo on the shoulder and then took out his mirror and with it opened the door to the command center. Now Roo looked surprised at how he had opened the door, took the mirror out of Fritz’s hand and covered it with his own. Then he touched the wall where the door pocket was located, and it closed and then opened again. Everybody was learning something new this day.

Roo went into the command center followed closely by VIN who mentally said “potdam.” Roo immediately stopped and carefully searched VIN’s face for what he was trying to say. VIN showed him the door opening and closing mentally saying “potdam” over and over again. Then he acted clutching his throat as if he couldn’t breathe, and then Roo knew what he was trying to say. He pointed at the space around him, breathed in deeply, and VIN nodded back, hoping that the boy understood that opening new doors might be dangerous. Then he pointed at the power room’s door and stated aloud “potdam” this time for everybody to hear. Roo looked at him, puzzled; why would that room be dangerous? But he nodded that he wouldn’t open the door.

The command center seemed to be the only place that interested Roo. He knew his way around the console hitting switches here and there. The sounds around them changed, the lights lowered in intensity, and the humming ceased. He looked surprised that he couldn’t control the power in the caverns as he wanted to. Weeks later when they were able to communicate, VIN learned that the “boy” was 36 years old, but didn’t understand that the base was being powered by a second source.

Chapter 17

Ganymede in sight

Twenty-three months and four days after VIN’s first shower on DX2017, America One left orbit to travel to the solar system’s largest moon, and Jupiter’s farthest moon; Ganymede was 120 million miles ahead of them.

America One’s rear thrusters powered the spaceship away and within an hour their warm and comfortable home away from home was just a blip on the radar screen. The crew left the caverns as they had found them. They didn’t need the nuclear battery anymore, as Roo had powered up its own unit, even though he didn’t know how it worked, or where in the planet it was located. Three days before departure, VIN donned a full spacesuit and removed the nuclear battery from the enclosed safety of the power room.

Roo did open a rear door in the power room on their last day, when the room was cleaned and safe from radiation. The small door led to a smaller storage room, the contents of which made Igor’s day.

The second door led into an electrical storage cabinet, and Igor, who was with him, shouted with delight upon seeing the stores there to investigate. Of most importance to Ryan were the half dozen stored black boxes, which would produce shields. Now he had enough shields for the mother ship, as well as all of the smaller craft, plus the one Roo repaired as a spare.

Supplies of frozen food and water were left outside the still-operating shield for their return. The crew knew that they would see the little blue cannon ball again soon.

Time flew past and life changed aboard America One during the newbies’ stay.

It had taken six months of linguistics but they were able to communicate in a basic way with Roo and Tow. Fritz, three-years old Mars Noble, and VIN could conduct basic communications in both English, and Matt, Roo’s language. Mars Noble was pretty fluent in Matt, often spending time with Roo, whom he thought of as a big brother, but he was still too young to understand what the words meant. Most words in Matt were single syllable, many were two syllables, and there seemed to be few words over three.

Long descriptive words were what they struggled with learning English. They could pronounce cucumber pretty easily, but they struggled with “th”, “sh” “qu” and “z” as well as plurals; in their language they spoke of “one engine”, and “two engine”.

Numbers weren’t hard, until you got into distances and ages. VIN thought he was mistaken when they deciphered that Roo was 36 years old, the number of times Earth orbited the sun while he was on DX2017. He had been born on the planet, and that didn’t take in the extra 10,000 or so years of hibernation. Roo, in turn, didn’t believe that he had been asleep for seven to ten thousand years. He explained to VIN that the cryonic chambers, and there were twelve in each base and on DX2017, were only intended for travel to Jupiter and Saturn.

His mother, a petite young-looking 25, was actually 59 years old, very young for their tribe, and Roo was her first and only child.

When they returned to the mother ship after their first trip to the base they visited the third body. The man was Tow’s husband or mate, Roo explained; he was 80 years old, looked 40, and she literally broke down and needed to be returned to the hospital ICU unit to keep her stable.

Roo fared a little better after seeing his father dead, and the next day attempted to converse seriously with VIN and Fritz; he wanted to know why his father and all their colleagues on Mars had died. It all seemed to become clear in Roo’s mind a few days later when he understood that he and his mother had been asleep for several millennia. It was also true that Roo was pretty adept in space travel, and was probably his father’s protégé. His father had rounded the entire solar system on DX2017, “Dook,” as they called the small planet, three times and was the tribe’s third commander of the supply vessel/planet.

On the next visit to DX2017, Roo opened up the final area of the underground base, a sleeping area that had a few small rooms, and the same beds found on Mars, all empty. The only rooms Roo did not open on DX2017, were the rooms he didn’t know how to. Only those with the rank of commander could open certain areas on all the bases.

VIN returned to check the globe of Mars, and much to Roo’s dismay, the red dot had changed. It had become dull and looked bleached, or much older. The dot did not seem alive any more. Roo looked worried, and tried to show VIN that the globes were alive, computers transmitting information to and from all five of the planets they represented in real time. Because the crew of America One took the globe off the base on Mars, there was no active computer communication with the red planet; and they needed to return to reinstall it.

Martha and Petra kept one of the space suits sealed with the remains—a pile of dust—intact, in their research room. Both Roo and Tow cried when they viewed the remains of someone they must have known. When they saw the rest of the suits in another room, hung up, cleaned and empty, they cried at seeing such devastation. Their mourning infected those around them who also had tears in their eyes. Roo held VIN’s hand tightly.

Days later, when the two visitors calmed down, they returned to the Bridge and looked at the new pictures of their once lush home; they accepted the fact that their home on Earth was not the same as when they left, and that desert replaced the tropical Sahara forests they had lived in.

Yet, the red dot on Earth still glowed, the exact opposite of the dot on Mars. Roo explained that some of their people were still alive down there in their underground base, and certainly in the same cryonic state he and his mother had been in since their departure from Earth long, long ago.

Through more weeks of discussion and learning, VIN and Fritz found out from Roo that there was still a base on Earth, underneath all the sand that never stopped moving. Roo and his parents had visited Earth every 14 years, after dropping off supplies to the planets they were passing. Each base had a shuttle that would take off to meet the passing planet and take delivery of supplies. The bases were mostly self-sufficient, but electrical equipment and luxuries from Earth were always in demand. VIN learned that the tribe was a mix of vegetarians and meat eaters, and at one time the meat-eaters had been asked to leave. Roo acknowledged the same tribe of meat eaters, when Petra showed him an electronic Wikipedia picture of Bushmen on her computer, the San people from Southern Africa. Roo excitedly told them that these looked like the exact people that had left in a friendly manner to venture south, a few hundred years before their maiden flight into space. Roo’s tribal history records were still down on Earth, and Petra and Martha were now keen to return home, as soon as possible.

Roo told the crew on America One that his people were not inhabiting the two moons of Jupiter they were about to visit. The voyage they had left on, their last voyage, had supplies aboard to help their people make the move. DX2017 didn’t have a space shuttle on it. It didn’t need to. Their craft supplied the planet from Earth headquarters and a similar craft collected the supplies as the planet passed the planet or moon. It was a very simple system, and yes, their space craft could make the trip to Saturn from Jupiter, but could not make the voyage back to Mars or Earth. Further, Roo and Tow were not saved, or even found during the thousands of years that DX2017 had flown around on its orbit. Fuel was produced on Earth and Roo believed that perhaps the last reserves of fuel had been used to get the two base crews from the Jupiter moons to Saturn.

Working with Roo over several days, Suzi learned how they made their fuel. Roo’s tribe used pure plant ethanol, not alcohol, which she previously understood to be rocket fuel. After sniffing it, Roo was sure that alcohol would work as well.

Ryan said that there wasn’t much chance that ethanol or alcohol could be made on the moons out in space; Roo remarked, after watching Jonesy and VIN drink their schnapps, that he didn’t think that drinking pure rocket fuel was very good for the human body either.

The Jupiter tribe members must have moved on to Titan, the moon around Saturn. What fascinated VIN was that the red dot symbolizing life was not as bright on the Mars globe on DX2017 anymore, although there might be people still alive on the red planet, perhaps in a room similar to the one in which they found Roo and Tow. They needed to get around the solar system pretty fast if they were to save lives.

Over the next few days VIN participated in a meeting with Roo, Ryan and Captain Pete to devise a faster route around the solar system. Not only did it take a long time to get from one place to another, but the planets all moved at different speeds. Many computerized calculations were needed to determine a route back to Earth, via Mars.

Following several days of discussion which included details of each planet’s orbit in the solar system, Ryan addressed the planning group. “So, Captain Pete, crew, and Roo we are going to hop off DX2017, and go to Ganymede to try to find water to turn into hydrogen fuel. From what Roo has explained to us, gravity will be a challenge for us on the moon Europa, and maybe also Ganymede. We should expect changes in extremes and both might even have periods of zero, or even negative gravity. This could mean a more powerful gravitational pull at certain times from Jupiter or a closer moon. It could be extremely dangerous for America One while we are in orbit, and even more so for any craft trying to stay on the surface of that moon. What worries me is if you float off the planet at high speed we will not be able to retrieve you. Our plan is to land on Ganymede and then Europa. If we find ice, we will head for Saturn, check out Saturn’s moon, Titan, fuel up with water again and, if possible, aim for Mars without using DX2017. If we find water on the first moon, we won’t need to land on Europa, unless we want to check on Roo’s base there.

“Getting to Saturn, and then all the way back to Mars in the shortest possible time, will take three years, four months and twelve days. To reach and visit Titan, Saturn’s moon, we will have about 300 days before we need to return to Mars at an economical speed. The longer we stay on Titan, the faster we must return to get to Mars while it is at its closest point to Saturn. Mars will be on a direct four-year route between Saturn and Earth. When we return to Mars, we can decide whether to stay there for six months as it swings back towards Earth, or leave directly for Earth. At the time we are due to arrive, Mars and Earth will be on opposite sides of the sun, or in an Apogean position; in plain English that means as far as they can be from each other. At worst, after Mars we could have a long 12-month journey back to Earth, or we could just stay on the planet as Earth’s faster orbit catches up to Mars.”

Saving lives was important, and even Ryan didn’t mind that their odyssey would be made shorter by several years. Depending on how long they stayed on Mars, the whole odyssey would now be close to ten years in duration. They could always hitch a ride on DX2017 in another decade and go around again.

DX2017 was still lit up when they left, the dome alive and the lonely planet just waiting for some company. Roo and family had done exactly the same when they entered the cryonic chambers for their six-year flight to Saturn, thousands of years earlier.

“We have Ganymede on radar,” Captain Pete reported over the intercom. Four months had elapsed since they left DX2017. Compared to life on Earth, it was small and cramped—more than 20 crew lived in the caverns—but it was still bigger and roomier than life aboard America One.

With America One speeding up to and cruising faster than 60,000 miles an hour, they had used up valuable fuel resources. They had to find water on one of the next three moons, or they would never return to Earth.

VIN had been with Roo daily since he had awakened. Roo and Tow had moved into the apartment next to his and Suzi’s aboard ship. Nancy, still single, had also moved closer to be the other neighbor.

Tow was fascinated by the machines the doctors had. She was experienced in homeopathic medicine, but had never seen an X-ray machine or an MRI. An electrical machine that could actually look inside a living body was wondrous to her.

In many ways their ancient tribe had advanced beyond current technologies on Earth, but in other ways, they lagged behind. VIN never saw either newcomer get angry, or refer to any weapons. He firmly believed that this tribe didn’t know the meaning of the words ‘war’ or ‘fight’ or even know how to express ill will towards each other. He got a lot of solace from this fact, although the Marine in him remained alert in case it was just an act to fool the crew of America One into letting their guard down. With time, understanding between the old and the new continued to grow and improve.

Jonesy got his wish and had a shield permanently placed aboard SB-III; when activated, he could enter and depart the much larger shield around America One as if the shields didn’t exist.

The crew also placed one of the boxes aboard one of the now empty freighters still tied to the outer hull, made the shield live, and tried to shoot the freighter with the ship’s most powerful laser a dozen times which Roo found to be equally amazing and unacceptable. On the first count, he was stunned that VIN could go out into space in his spacesuit; he couldn’t and didn’t need to in his because they had shields everywhere. On the second count, it was incomprehensible that they would want to harm the small shield ten miles away, and just visible from the Bridge.

Allen Saunders in SB-II returned and the crew inspected the shield and then the freighter, and found the freighter to be totally unharmed. Ryan relayed to the crew that anybody who might try to shoot them down when they arrived back on Earth was in for quite a surprise.

Roo told them that their Earth supply ship used the shield immediately after takeoff and that it worked perfectly inside Earth’s atmosphere; one of its jobs was to cushion the craft from the heat impact of reentering the atmosphere on Earth, and on Mars.

This was perfect news. They had a shield that would protect the ships from attack, and also from severe risk inside Earth’s actual atmosphere. He was even more excited when Roo explained to the crew on the Bridge that the use of the shield inside an atmosphere, reduced drag by up to 70 percent, which also reduced fuel consumption. When they looked at papyrus reed records of fuel usage in Matt, Ryan couldn’t believe that Roo’s shuttles could leave Earth’s atmosphere with less than 500 gallons of ethanol. It had taken SB-III more than ten tons of hydrogen fuel to exit Earth the last time.

Ryan began to grow fearful of his own power. With the knowledge he had gained and now, with this new infrastructure protecting them, Astermine Inc., America One, his shuttles and his crew were virtually invincible on Earth. Nobody could touch them. He was getting worried about having absolute power on Earth. These friendly little people who always smiled and gave freely of their knowledge would never have given a thought to world dominance. He also concluded that there was a chance their return would not be accepted by many on Earth, and he would be forced to show the strength he possessed in order to protect them.

VIN and Jonesy, as well as the rest of the astronauts, were looking forward to flying around Earth and jeering at the enemy trying to blast them out of the sky. Jonesy was already thinking about borrowing a box for his Gulfstream. VIN explained to him that there was no way anybody could get the Gulfstream to VTOL. Jonesy thought he could fly the Gulfstream in softly enough to allow the shield to touch ground gently on a rolling landing.

Ryan did agree that these shields gave them total immunity against any enemy on Earth, if new weapons hadn’t been invented, unlikely, but a possibility. He suggested to the crew that the rest of the world, including the U.S. Government, would do their best to steal this technology away from them and, because of that, none of this technology could be left on Earth. They would have to find a home base, keep it secret, and make sure that the rest of the world would not know why they were suddenly interested in moving the Nevada airbase to the Sahara Desert, or another desolate desert, or another continent.

Ganymede appeared as a faint white star and gradually increased in size. Time on the odyssey was something that there was a lot of, and nothing happened fast. Tow helped the crew to understand the breakdown of their ancient garments, which the scientists had correctly surmised as being made of spider silk. All the other supplies taken from the planet were analyzed and found to be either made completely with Rare Earth metals, or used the simplest systems found in nature and usable on Earth.

There was a generous exchange of information. Everyone learned something from Tow or Roo, both of whom were extremely knowledgeable in everything except medicine. The samples brought up were mostly plant, or root based, and much the same as traditional homeopathic medicines found on Earth. The food stocks were mostly dried and then frozen. Tow learned more from Suzi, Martha and Petra, than they learned from her, apart from cryonics.

Roo was more technologically inclined. The commanders of DX2017, or a planet or a moon were always male. The electronics were designed and controlled by the builders, a rank equal to Roo’s father, a commander. Tow knew very little about what Roo had been taught by his father, or his grandfather, the possible Ruler who could still be alive on Earth. Roo was to become the fourth commander on their supply planet when his father became too old. However, he not yet reached adult or elder status in his tribe, and had received only basic schooling and space travel education from his father.

“Mr. Jones, Mr. Noble, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Roo to the Bridge for briefing regarding our next port of call, please,” Ryan announced over the intercom ten days after Ganymede could be seen as a tiny star in the sky.

By now Roo was pretty competent in the English language, far better than VIN was in Matt. Fritz Warner and Mars Noble were the language experts and could speak Matt as well as Roo could speak English.

Roo and Tow’s space, or flight suits, were the only dress they wanted to wear, which flustered Martha; they never needed washing as often as their own suits.

Tow spent many of her waking hours with Fritz, and often Suzi and Mars Noble when she wasn’t with Nancy in the medical area. The newcomers had also taken well to the ship’s routine, also needing ten good hours of sleep a day.

The flight crew entered the Bridge and everyone including Roo grabbed a fresh cup of coffee. He had become addicted to this new hot drink.

Ganymede, directly in front of the hip, looked large. Within the hour they were to begin orbiting the large moon at an altitude of 200 miles.

“This briefing is a short description of what we can expect on Ganymede,” began Ryan. “Captain Pete has been studying the planet, and to make our flight to Saturn shorter, we are going to look for signs of life only around Mr. Roo’s base; we will try to find ice to fill two dozen canisters and then head out. Frau Von Zimmer and Frau Bloem will be here shortly; they are trying to locate Ms. Tow. They believe we will find water on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, which will be our farthest distance from Earth before we turn back. Since there are no faucets on the moon that we can just open, and in case we don’t find water on Titan, we will try to locate water on one of the next two moons, or our last chance on Titan, before we can return towards the center of the solar system. We know for a fact that we can resupply water needs at our watering hole on Mars, but we need a minimum of 29,000 gallons of water to separate into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to replace the air we have fed into the dome and caverns on DX2017. To give us a buffer and fuel reserves to Mars, 31,000 gallons would be better, or 580 of our canisters filled with ice. Unfortunately, we won’t know the breakdown of the ice is until we get it into our chemical lab up here. Remember, we don’t want any more dry ice. Mr. Jones did not appreciate Frau Von Zimmer’s suggestion to use it for ice in his drinks. Captain Pete, please share what you have learned about Ganymede now that Frau Von Zimmer, Frau Bloem and Ms. Tow have arrived,” Ryan said as the three ladies entered.

“Thank you, Boss. Ganymede is composed of approximately equal amounts of silicate rock and water ice, so some sort of ice shouldn’t be impossible to find, however, we will not be able to return this way on the way home; Jupiter’s orbit takes these moons well away from our return journey’s direct path. The moon we see outside our forward windows is iron-rich, and has a liquid core. A saltwater ocean is believed to exist about 150 miles below Ganymede’s surface, sandwiched between layers of ice. Its surface is composed of primarily two types of terrain; a dark region called Galileo Regio, where Mr. Roo’s base, or where the red dot on the globe on DX2017 was situated, right in the middle of this round area’s circle,” he said, pointing to a large picture of the moon. “Galileo Regio is not an impact crater but a region of ancient dark material that has been broken apart by tectonics and is now surrounded by younger, brighter material that has been upwelling from Ganymede’s interior. The area is thought to be some four billion years old and is heavily cratered. This upwelling is where we could find the purest water ice, and hopefully, Rare Earth minerals that we will always collect to store aboard, and sell as retirement annuities for those who want to stay when we return to Earth. Now that we have several empty supply cylinders inside and outside our ship, we might as well fill them with any materials valued on Earth. We also want to collect any rare materials we might not find on Mars, or even DX2017, where some of us could one day call home.

“Ganymede is the only satellite in the solar system known to possess a magnetosphere likely created through convection within the liquid iron core. The meager magnetosphere is buried within Jupiter’s much larger magnetic field and would show only as a local perturbation of field lines. So, astronauts, you will be getting magnetic directions and interference with your directional computer, but we are used to similar conditions on Earth. Don’t be surprised if the compasses aboard the smaller ships bounce, or spin around. Anything is possible, but we will have visual on you and your landings from the Bridge. This moon has a thin oxygen atmosphere that includes O, O2, and possibly ozone; the ozone is of no use to us at the moment, we have enough. Atomic hydrogen is a minor atmospheric constituent around this moon, and you could notice a change of readings on your external measuring systems.

“Ganymede also has a thin oxygen atmosphere – too thin to support life. Gravity is 14.65 percent of Earth, which means it won’t be heavy work to collect ice and metals. However, changes made to the gravity by the neighbor moon Europa, at this moon’s closest time of orbit could change that number drastically. It takes Ganymede about seven Earth days to orbit Jupiter. Europa, the second moon we are going to visit, is going to cause a gravitational fracture during your stay on the surface, and vice-versa. Europa is closer to Jupiter and has a faster orbital time. Our analysis indicates that there is a 65-hour window when the gravitational pulls from both Jupiter and Europa are not a factor on Ganymede; that is the only window when we want you to be down there. If your work isn’t finished at the end of the first 65-hour period, you will leave the surface and wait up here until the second 65-hour window begins a couple of days later.

“Earth is 390 million miles from this moon. Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system and over twice the size of our own Earth’s moon. It is actually bigger than the planet Mercury. Daytime temperatures range between minus 171 degrees to minus 193 Fahrenheit, so the coldest temperatures will be much the same as you experienced on the north pole of Mars; damn cold! You will not be outside the craft after dark.

“It is unlikely that any living organisms inhabit Ganymede,” interjected Martha Von Zimmer.

“Roo’s people long ago left their bases on both moons we are going to visit,” added VIN. “We believe that the gravitational inconsistencies made living there impossible, and we are hoping to find Roo’s tribe on Titan. The globe on DX2017 shows that there is still life on Titan, and I expect that life could be either a vibrant society or a cryonic society waiting for people to come and rescue them.”

“Thank you for your inputs,” Captain Pete replied. “Mr. Jones, Mr. Saunders, the highest rock peaks in the area where we are going are 2,000 feet. For gravitational differences, you will be on the Jupiter side of the moon. This moon is tidally locked, which means that the same side always faces Jupiter; it is the same with Europa, so any real interference in pull will come from Europa or even the next moon, Lo, as it approaches on its orbital path. Europa is much smaller than Ganymede, but since all Jupiter’s moons have different orbital speeds, we believe the worst gravitational variances will come from Europa. It is necessary that we visit this moon because it is known to be an ice-moon, important for water if we are unlucky on Ganymede.”

SB-III departed first, its shield up and working before it exited the shield around America One. Astermine One the mining craft, flown by Allen and Jamie Saunders went next and, Asterspace Three, flown by Michael and Penny Pitt, third. There were no children aboard and everybody wore full spacesuits. Even Tow and Roo were fit into a small and medium-sized teenager suits.

The newly found shield boxes were already attached to the undersides of all of the craft stationed on the mother ship, and the personnel on the Bridge watched as the three blue bubbles descended towards the moon’s surface.

Each of the three craft had passengers. VIN, Boris and Roo were aboard the shuttle, Allen and Jamie Saunders carried Tow, Fritz and Martha Von Zimmer, and Asterspace Three had Petra Bloem and Vitalily, with Max Burgos as a seventh pilot; Vitalily and Max were also assigned to VIN’s mining crew. Two spiders were also aboard each ship to do any necessary digging.

The dark region 200 miles below America One was a massive area. It could easily be seen in the weak sunlight as it sat on the brighter side, close to the top of the moon.

Fifteen hours and four orbits later Jonesy brought SB-III to within a mile of the area Roo was pointing to. He knew where the base was, even though he had never visited this moon before and his telepathic sense helped Jonesy aim the shuttle; he must have been attuned to a globe on the moon’s surface.

All three craft landed and parked in a neat, but dusty line a hundred yards from each other; Jonesy’s thrusters created a large light dust cloud that lowered the visual distance around the area. VIN went out through the docking port allowing the ladder to gently float down towards the ground. He descended first, with Roo behind him. VIN had his helmet light on, and a second hand lamp strapped to the suit. Even though they were in light from the sun, it was still pretty dark compared to Mars, and he would have to locate the telltale melted rock in the hole where he would find the underground base.

It didn’t take long. Roo quickly found his space legs, and even with a dust cloud around them, he immediately headed off and stopped less than 100 yards from the shuttle. VIN scanned the area with his light, and found a three-foot wide hole a few feet in front of him identical to those he had found on Mars and DX2017.

He surveyed the surrounding area which didn’t look much different than the surface of Mars. The rocks and dust were about the same color, although much lighter than the dark blue surface of DX2017.

There wasn’t much he could do, except program the spiders to begin digging down 30 feet to find the tunnel. This time Roo did not know what to do to get inside the base. One shield box had been brought down, and while the two spiders from Asterspace Three were unloaded. Boris and Fritz came over with one of the nuclear batteries, and powered up the shield to its lowest power setting. This gave them a ten foot diameter around where the spiders would dig a shaft. This small dome, only ten feet high at its center, would only require one bottle of air to give it an atmosphere; if there was life down below the new atmosphere would prevent anyone from being endangered when they broke into the underground caverns.

VIN’s suit showed it was cold on Ganymede. The sun, a faint burst of light in the heavens, was smaller than a quarter and there was little radiant heat coming off its rays, as it was also on a low angle slightly over the horizon.

Boris and Max set the spiders digging. Roo helped VIN and Vitalily with the shield, and carried the tank of air into the dome. The dome’s controller was placed in its center a couple of feet from where the spiders were beginning to use their lasers.

The tank was left to empty and the warm bubbles of corralled heated air collected inside the top of dome. The blue interior began to get lighter as the spiders slowly traveled in and out of the shield with their loads of rock. The rocks were deposited in an area where they could be analyzed with an MMA (Magnetic Metal Analyzer) in Astermine One’s cargo bay at a later date. The first objective was to try to find some ice.

SB-III took off in search of ice followed by the other two craft. They had 60 empty aluminum canisters aboard. It didn’t take long for Jonesy to fly over what looked like a narrow strip of white, about a mile in width, only twenty miles from the shield. He carried 60 empty aluminum canisters aboard.

By the time the other two caught up to Jonesy, he was landing on what looked like a glacier. A hill 500 feet high, a perfect dome of pure ice half a mile wide, was about a mile from its source. Martha and Petra already knew what they found and were as excited as kids at a rodeo.

Chapter 18

The biggest geyser ever seen.

Jonesy did not believe what Martha was describing over the radio until he saw it for himself. Martha told Jonesy to park well away from the ice dome if he didn’t want his shuttle washed, melted, or possibly eaten into. He landed a mile farther away from the hill but laughed at her remonstrations until, while watching the dome, he had a flashback to Yellowstone National Park on a dark and cloudy day. He was glad he took her advice, especially when she said that it could be sulfuric acid, not water that the geyser spouted.

Jonesy always got pissed off when Martha was right, and right she was. With slight vibrations under the craft, a jet of liquid, which looked like water, shot out from the high point of the dome two miles away. Watching it with binoculars, the jet looked at least several yards wide.

“This is certainly not a powerless little fizzle of water like ‘Old Faithful’”, Jonesy reported as he watched the jet shoot up at least a mile high. For several seconds, the jet spread out at its peak, and with no wind or breeze, it gently floated down and settled onto the dome in a fine mist about where the shuttle first landed.

When the rest periods were over, VIN and Max Burgos went out to fill a canister with ice. They took a spider to dig a ten-foot deep hole in the ice, out of range of the cloud of spray from the hourly jet of liquid. They filled a second canister from a spot about a half a mile away from the first. As soon as these canisters were packed away aboard Astermine One, Allen took off to take the first samples up for testing.

Jonesy and Asterspace Three lifted off in search of a second geyser. On average, the geysers were about a hundred miles apart, with domes that sometimes were very white and sometimes dirty colored ice.

They landed two miles away from the second geyser, which did not erupt as frequently as the first one. However, when it did, both craft had to lift off and retreat another couple of miles away from the blast of liquid. The eruption could easily be felt through the floor of the craft like a massive earthquake minutes before it blew. This geyser was many times larger than the first one and the jet of dirty brown liquid ejected under massive pressure, headed up into the dark sky in slow motion for what looked like miles. Jonesy guessed that this plume of water was about as wide and twice as high as One World Trade Center in New York. This geyser only gushed every ten hours or so, spewing a liquid that alternated between a brownish color and a dark silvery color.

The extra time between eruptions allowed Asterspace Three, the ship VIN and Max were in, enough time to fly within a mile of the geyser. They landed on the side of the dome and with the spider’s help, dug a five-foot deep trench, and filled two canisters before they were ordered to retreat from harm’s way.

Just before they left for their second dig, the bad news expected by several of the crew was relayed to the mining team. The content of both of the first two canisters was a weak, but still unusable, sulfuric acid. Traces of metals and salt were also found in the liquid.

SB-III had the two canisters loaded inside her aft cargo hold, and Jonesy and Maggie took the shuttle up, meeting Astermine One on her way down.

Astermine One met Asterspace Three back at the shield where the spiders had dug deep and hit pay dirt at thirty-one feet. The one remaining spider in the shaft was burning through the metal wall of the outpost developed by Roo’s tribe on Ganymede; it would take at least 48 hours to complete the job.

Aboard Asterspace Three, VIN and the crew flew several hundred miles in the opposite direction in search of another geyser. They had been flying at 5,000 feet for over an hour when they spotted a big grey dome. Even at their altitude, the dome was higher than they were. This dome was huge, and there was no evidence of a glacier snaking away from it. The crew decided to land several miles away and monitor it for eruptions.

The last geyser had been impressively powerful. In contrast, it took 30 hours before any liquid gushed from this new one and it erupted in a pathetic little stream. Martha and Petra, who were also aboard, explained that the dome was suffocating itself. The pressure inside was still lifting the liquid seven thousand feet up, but by the time it reached the opening, there was just enough pressure to allow a little liquid to escape, evidence that it was safe to park on the side of the grey dome and test for water and metals.

When they found a semi-flat area to land about three quarters of the way up the dome, there were a few surprises waiting for them.

This liquid looked different. The ice was like rock, and to VIN’s amazement, stones that looked like diamonds lay around everywhere. VIN knew a diamond when he saw one; he spent months digging them out all around the solar system. These diamonds were clean, as if they had already been polished, and the grey color of the surface beneath them made them sparkle faintly in the weak sunlight. Actually, the sunlight bouncing off Jupiter, the massive mother planet less than a million miles away, was brighter than the sun itself when it was above them, but since the mother planet never disappeared, there was always a gloomy faint light around them. Now that the sun and Jupiter were both in the sky, the diamonds sparkled with as much intensity as they ever would in this area of space.

Martha and other scientists assured VIN that he was out of range of the weak spewing of the geyser, so he, Vitalily, and Max trekked out with canisters to get them filled up. They took a spider along, which began breaking up and melting chunks of ice, while the astronauts used shovels to scrape the surface of the dome and collect piles of the shiny diamonds in another canister. VIN was hoping that the scientists aboard America One would get excited at their diamond find.

He was right, but not in the way he expected. For twenty hours, which included three spacewalks, the crews of the three craft collected ice and thousands of the little diamonds. The pilot of each of the three craft remained on the side of the dome ready for takeoff. VIN often picked up one of the bigger ones, the size of a marble and looked through it, surprised how clear and pure the hard diamond was.

He thought about surveying the surrounding area. On the second walk, since there were more of the crew helping, he and Fritz climbed 300 feet up the side of the dome to a second flat area, big enough for one of the smaller craft to land.

The diamonds there were larger, the size of a quarter. Allen Saunders flew up with two canisters on a cord and dropped them to be filled. Boris sent up one of the spiders to dig into the ice to help fill a second canister.

On Earth they would have had to shovel a ton and a half of rock and soil to fill one of the canisters, but at 14 percent gravity, a filled canister weighed only 200 pounds.

After the next geyser shower VIN took a third spacewalk. He climbed another 300 feet to find fresh, whiter ice, the color of which changed slightly, and diamonds the size of tennis balls.

He asked Asterspace Three fly up to the third small ledge, where he and Vitalily filled two more canisters; the rest of the crew had been moved up to the second ledge. Ryan reminded them that they had two hours to get off the mound and the moon before their 65-hour period came to an end.

Within the allotted time, the crew boarded the three ships with two dozen filled canisters, and the spiders already asleep. Two of the ships returned to the mother ship while Asterspace Three, with VIN aboard, went back to retrieve the spider at the base.

Minutes before takeoff the mining craft became too light to stay fixed to the surface. As they flew upwards Michael Pitt told VIN that the controls had gone a bit weird, but calmed down when they left the planet’s surface. They left the nuclear battery and the shield on the surface securely nailed down with pegs, to prevent their floating off into space. Since VIN didn’t know if the spider had opened up the whole underground system by burning through the metal wall, it was best to leave the equipment there.

They could partially see the moon Europa rising over the horizon as they climbed out of the thin atmosphere on their way to meet the mother ship. As they rose high, they could clearly see the closest erupting geysers down below. The clouds from the geysers weren’t falling to the surface anymore, but rising upwards into space forming massive white clouds.

Europa could be seen from America One each time they orbited Ganymede, but VIN noticed that the moon had nearly doubled in size since he had been down on the surface; it was very near to its closest path to pass the most outer moon.

“We are seeing slight variations to our orbit,” Captain Pete reported over the intercom as Michael Pitt also orbited the moon gaining height.

“I see a change of direction of 5 degrees every time we float out of the dark side,” Michael responded, “plus we seem to rise additional feet on the lighter side only.”

“I think it is going to be far worse on Europa,” Ryan commented from the Bridge. “So far we have only a 13-hour window on the next moon; we do not believe we will be affected by the proximity of Ganymede or the smaller Lo on her other side.”

“I only felt a noticeable change within the first several thousand feet,” Michael reported, with everybody listening in. “I would say below 10,000 feet, and now the changes in direction are being controlled by the onboard computers.”

“I believe Allen and I saw no variations, but we were already at a 12-mile altitude, when Asterspace Three left the surface,” added Jonesy. “We are currently at 27 miles and do not notice anything different. We might when we get back to where we can see Europa and exit the dark side in about an hour.”

They all felt gravitational pulls, even America One climbing at 250 miles altitude; the pulls were especially prevalent when they reached the line marking dark to light and Europa was directly in front of them. The change was serious enough to cause the crew to seal the cover on the pool. It was also strong enough to cause the liquid in a glass to slope at a three to five degree angle. Other than that, and a slight queasy feeling, nothing much changed, except the crew felt much better on the midlevel.

During the two days Europa passed close to Ganymede, the crew unloaded the canisters and delivered the contents to the lab technicians for analysis.

VIN was sad to hear that the diamonds weren’t diamonds after all, but perfectly formed water droplets. The temperature in the research room was lowered to deep freeze conditions to keep the remaining droplets frozen while they were separated from the ice and the metals that colored the white ice brown and silver.

After two days, half of the canisters had been opened and liquid from the melted “diamonds” totaled 292 gallons of absolute pure water. Ice from the second level was a 50/50 mixture of pure ammonia and dry ice, or carbon dioxide, and the ice from the third geyser was same weak dilution of sulfuric acid. The ammonia was a bounty but not the dry ice.

The metals took two weeks longer to detail, but the crew had salvaged eight pounds of titanium, six pounds of cobalt, and 170 pounds of the most valuable Rare Earth metals like rhodium, osmium and iridium, which was certainly worth the effort by the crew. Finally, 112 pounds of salt and two air tanks of liquid nitrogen gas were separated and collected from inside the frozen acid from the first load.

Hoping to collect another 1,000 gallons of water from the diamond droplets, Martha persuaded Ryan to send a bigger team to the third geyser and load up on as many of the frozen “diamonds” as possible.

VIN suggested that the crew go even higher up to look for even bigger water droplets. While the build crew of a dozen men filled canisters with millions of “diamonds” and loaded them into the three craft, VIN, Ryan, Boris, Roo and Tow returned to the shaft in SB-II to inspect the base for life.

Maggie and Penny landed the craft next to the shaft. The small blue dome was still in place and one by one the crew climbed out of the docking port. By now Roo was as familiar with the workings of Ryan’s ships as the rest of the crew.

Boris and Ryan helped to lower VIN down the shaft; Roo was next and his mother third. Ryan gave them an hour to look around; there was no power down there and communications were difficult.

Neither Roo nor Tow had ever been there. Tow told VIN and Ryan that they were going to stop off from DX2017 if a ship had come up to meet them; they thought they could only visit the planets which sent up craft to meet them.

VIN was lowered into the tunnel system several feet in from the shaft with the melted rock. It had taken the spider days to laser its way through the metal wall, and VIN‘s helmet light showed the same tunnel, except that he was only a foot inside the tunnel from where it turned right towards the forward cavern. Each of the bases had been built to an exact blueprint. He yanked the ladder and Roo began his descent. Roo would be able to easily open the doors, and if he couldn’t, VIN was not going to bother to cut through them or bring down a nuclear battery to power them up.

VIN soon found out additional efforts were not needed. When he, Tow and Roo entered the forward cavern all the main doors were already open and the place looked like a tornado had swept through it. In the central room he could see the silver metal globe that he thought to be this planet; Roo touched it with his glove and VIN’s telepathy told him nothing would happen. In the command room, the console was gone. He felt lucky though when he looked into the power room and found one black box, similar to the shield boxes he found inside the other bases. He immediately picked it up and handed it to Roo.

There was nothing else inside the power room. They searched the hospital room, or cryonics room, to find them empty of equipment; the cabinets were all there and all empty except for one that contained a helmet and half a suit; even the large air tanks were gone. It looked like Roo’s tribesmen had cleaned out the room piece by piece.

A quick inspection of the rear cavern determined it had also been vacated and within an hour they returned to the surface. Their only prize was another shield, which might or might not work.

On the surface, Roo said there was no need to close the shaft as no one would ever come back. They dismantled the nuclear battery and shield box, and SB-II left Ganymede within three hours of landing. VIN did not stay to help the crew dig for water droplets; after DX2014, digging for water “diamonds” was a bit of an anticlimax. The shuttle returned to America One with a disappointed group of astronauts.

During the next 65-hour window, the crew on the geyser’s dome filled every canister they had with a good mix of large water droplets and metal-grey ice; they tried not to shovel any white ice into the canisters. They had climbed another several hundred feet to where the geyser actually deposited fresh liquid with each spray, and the “diamonds” were twice the size of the tennis-ball sized ones VIN had found. Also, much to everyone’s surprise, real diamonds were found among the water droplets; there were not many, but a dozen diamonds didn’t melt when the temperature in the lab America One was raised. In total, nearly 4,000 gallons of valuable water was hauled off Ganymede, enough to get them to Titan, and back to this moon, if need be.

Ryan and the crew immediately decided not to visit Europa. Captain Pete was sure that the gravitational pulls were much stronger around Europa, and he proved it at a 300 mile altitude above the moon, where ten shaky orbits later they headed out of orbit around the much smaller moon.

Twelve hours after Ryan ordered them to leave the weird gravitational pulls from the moons of Jupiter, Captain Pete swung the ship around in a 150-degree right turn towards where Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, would be in about 13 months.

Chapter 19

Titan

“A small but valuable bounty, Mr. Noble. You and the build crew are to be congratulated for a job well done,” Ryan commented three weeks later. All of the reports had come in from the dozen or so scientists working on the contents of the canisters from Ganymede. “Included in the new cargo manifest, we have 4,500 gallons of pure water, perfect for separating into oxygen and hydrogen. One of the most important finds is the ammonia, in ammonium sulfate, or NH3 I believe, remembering my chemistry; in solid form it is a remarkable find that will benefit our vegetation. We kept some of the sulfuric acid for further experiments, but the most common metal in the dust on the ice was titanium, 1,390 pounds of it.” Ryan was working from a list, and the list was a good recipe for extending the odyssey.

“Ti-tan-iiiu-uum, the metal you call titanium, is powerful and strong,” stated Roo in his new language. “We used it on Earth. Our ships were made of what you call titanium, and also a part of our metal walls on our bases on the planets.”

“Our spiders sure found that out!” laughed VIN.

“Yes, and Roo, I’m hoping that one of your people can show us how you melded spider silk and pure titanium together,” Ryan replied. “Our scientists are totally baffled by how your scientists managed to join these two wonders of the universe to create a stronger, softer material than we ever thought possible.” Roo did not respond, as that wasn’t his angle of expertise. He didn’t know what Ryan was describing.

“I really want to learn how these fantastic shields work,” was Igor’s wish. Again, Roo couldn’t answer, except to say that only the person with the rank of commander knew those things.

“Let us get on with our new list of treasures,” Ryan continued. “The following Rare Earth metals are, in order, the most common found, and are extremely important in the development of engine parts, batteries, and the sealants used aboard ship. We now have substantial quantities—three pounds—of rhenium aboard for the first time ever. We have added to our existing storage 97 pounds of silicon dioxide, 81 pounds of lithium carbonate, and as yet unknown amounts of two very special, much needed metals, lutetium and yttrium. In addition, we have added 50 pounds of rhodium, 48 of osmium, and 36 pounds of iridium. Included in the filings found in the ice were scandium, cobalt and nickel. Every one of these metals is an important factor in space travel. With the additional water supplies, we will have enough hydrogen fuel for twenty hours of rear burn for our mother ship’s engines, seventy hours of pulses from our mother ship’s rear pulsers, and of course, that doesn’t include the weaker ion drives fueled either by the nuclear reactor or our plentiful xenon gas reserves. We also have enough hydrogen fuel on board for 65 hours of small-craft propulsion, ten hours per craft, which is one landing and launch on a moon with less than 20 percent gravity from a 200-mile altitude. It might sound like a lot, but is less than 10 percent of what we left Earth with four years ago. Before Ganymede, we were down to 6 percent, and we used that 6 percent to get to the moon and back. So, we are still in a precarious fuel position until we find a large amount of water. Forty thousand gallons will fill two of our three main tanks, and we must find 33 percent of that on Titan to return to Mars on time. With less, we will still get home with the ion drives, but at greatly reduced cruise speeds, and that could add another ten years to our return journey. Remember crew, Mars will only be at its closest point to us for a 90-day period before it begins to lengthen its orbit away from our incoming direction.”

The scientists studied the new cargo for the next several months. The biologists continued to grow food, and the astronauts did daily stints in the flight chambers. The pool was a popular diversion for many, and five baby girls were born. Even experiments using light, and conception achieved while staying in higher gravity on the planetary surfaces of Mars and DX2017 produced girls. The increasing numbers of female babies aboard were causing the gender ratio to become very unbalanced.

Of serious concern to the doctors was the increasing number of miscarriages aboard ship. Maggie, Suzi and Kathy Richmond, all pregnant for the second time, lost their babies at the end of the first trimester. The miscarriages hit Jonesy, VIN and Ryan as hard as it did their wives.

Before the beginning of year five, and three quarters of the way to Titan, two more of the crew died, both males, and both over 65 years old. One was on Martha’s team and one on Suzi’s. There also was a possibility of a wedding on board, the first in four years; Fritz and Tow had grown extremely close. Only Dr. Nancy, the most beautiful single lady on board was still available and Captain Pete, twenty years her senior, was doing his best to change her status.

The German, Fritz Warner had grieved over the loss of his first wife for the first couple of years, but following his first meeting with tiny Tow, 24 inches shorter than him, he completely changed his attitude towards life.

Tow had also grieved for her dead husband for a few months, but it seemed that Tow and Roo more easily accepted death as a natural part of life than the rest of the crew. Tow appeared to have an urgent need to produce more children, and when she learned about Fritz’s loss, she followed him around even more. When the crew saw Fritz approaching, they always expected to see Tow following a few feet behind. She never seemed to walk next to him, always a few feet behind him.

The sun slowly diminished in size as they travelled farther and farther away. Doctor Rogers began to notice slight changes in the crew in their monthly checkups, a large portion of his daily work with his wife Martha. Dr. Nancy spent time in other areas of the ship, often with Martha and Petra, studying blood samples from Roo and Tow, and also the remains of the tribe found on Mars. Even though most of the remains were nothing more than dust, they learned much from the slow breakdown of tissue, and could now determine the periods of time it had taken the bodies to return to dust. Others studied the material of their suits. Tow and Roo often helped out explaining where some of the materials came from. Some were from insects, some were cultivated crops, and others metal.

The seeds and other crops found on DX2017 were planted, and even Suzi was surprised when almost 10 percent of the crops actually grew. So old, and yet they still had life in them. Corn, wheat, barley, several other grains, and fruit trees germinated in the natural soil and began to grow.

Every day some new bit of information or something of interest was passed around the ship.

Mars, Saturn, and Lunar, as well as other babies, celebrated their fifth birthdays on the way to Saturn. The cocoa trees could produce enough to bake the special chocolate birthday cakes, often a couple each month.

The stores from Earth were long gone. The fine chocolates from Amsterdam, the beef from Iowa, the herring from Amsterdam, and the fish from the Seychelles were now only memories. Several of the crew became vegetarians. Tow and Roo were instrumental in starting that life style change. There had always been vegans and vegetarians aboard America One, but the numbers grew when they found out that this ancient African tribe admonished killing animals for food or their warm fur. Tow and Roo had never eaten meat, and some of the scientists were now arguing the concept that perhaps eating meat underlay the killing, destruction, and general rage inherent in humans on Earth over the centuries. Discussions occurred everywhere: in the laboratories, the cafeteria, and even the pool which Jonesy frequented as often as possible with Maggie and Saturn.

“It’s all over the ship that eating meat makes us kill each other. What do you guys mean?” Jonesy asked Martha, his “best friend”, and Dr. Petra Bloem, when Maggie invited them to join their family pool hour several months into the journey to Titan. Maggie hoped that her husband could get to enjoy Martha’s company.

“If we don’t eat meat anymore, then we won’t bite or eat each other one day when we are very hungry?” asked Saturn Jones seriously. She was looking forward to her first sight of her name planet.

At five years old she was already two years into the ship’s school curriculum. On America One, kids began Kindergarten at three, mainly to help them converse in the English language. Many on board wanted the children to begin their educations at two, but language abilities at that age varied from child to child.

“Yes, Saturn,” replied Martha smiling kindly. “We think it will help.” Smiling at Maggie she added, “Who knows what our chief astronaut will do, if he ever gets hungry, and the schnapps runs out.”

Maggie smiled at the older lady. Her jabs at Jonesy always had a funny side to them. She knew that Martha certainly respected his flying abilities, but his other habits, maybe not so much.

“Some of us believe that animals that eat grass and plants are less aggressive than insects, or meat-eating animals. Saturn, think about how mean a cow, or a horse is,” Martha led the young girl.

“Well, I’ve never seen a cow or a horse, but the rabbits are friendly, and so are the chickens when Suzi allows us to help her and we get to pet them,” Saturn replied. “But in my science book about Earth, it said that horses can bite people, and even get angry and kick people.”

“Only if they feel threatened or are getting old,” Martha replied.

“I agree with the getting old part, especially getting-old scientist horses,” remarked Jonesy smiling, and resting on his back on a lounger, his eyes closed and an empty beer glass on a table by his left hand.

“Do they really have scientist horses Daddy?” asked Saturn.

“Of course not, Saturn!” replied Martha. “They are only in the minds of crazy pilots.” Maggie enjoyed the love/hate relationship between these two as Martha continued, unsmiling in her direct German way. “We are starting a research project on what would have happened if human beings had never eaten meat, and their brain patterns and bodies may have the changed. Since we have Roo and Tow and their ways of life to compare to what we are, for the first time in human history, we can artificially change the progression of humanity through the ages.”

“Well, I still like eating the cooked rabbits and chickens, as long as they weren’t hurt, and I like the eggs. I think we should not stop eating meat on our ship,” Saturn replied seriously.

“That is unfortunate,” replied Martha. “I think your father will the last one to become a vegetarian, or maybe Mars’ father, Herr Noble.”

“Increase my supply of schnapps, Frau Von Zimmer, and I could put eating red meat, rabbit and chicken behind me, but fish? No way,” replied Jonesy, not moving. “The consumption of fresh fish and flying my Gulfstream will still attach me to Earth pretty quickly once we get there.”

“Hard to fly an airplane in a wheelchair, Herr Jones,” replied Martha, winking at Maggie.

“Maybe I need to introduce you to some old scientist horses also in wheelchairs when we get back,” replied Jonesy smiling.

Over the next few months, the rabbits and meat chickens slowly disappeared from the daily menus, and became a request item only for meals. Jonesy, VIN and several of the build crew, including Vitalily, Boris, and a few others shared what they called a monthly feast when the beer was ready and a large number of chickens and rabbits needed to be consumed.

Ryan and Captain Pete became vegetarians, as did Kathy and Lunar for a short while, and the vegetarians stayed away from the cafeteria during ‘feast time’. Feast time, was also the only day when beer was plentiful, and the two commanders stayed on the Bridge for the couple of hours it took the feasters to eat and drink their fill, and smiled at the costumes many wore.

To add to the partying, a vegetarian feast and a vegan feast were planned by Mr. Rose who decided that non-meat eaters should also enjoy themselves. These feasts were scheduled on the days the wine was available to drink; these feasters thought themselves far more civilized drinking wine and eating the ‘fruits’ of the seven cubes.

Christmas was celebrated at the same time as Christmas Day on Earth, which was also true for Easter, and various holidays celebrated in different countries. They were holidays, set aside for fun and enjoyment. It was impossible to shop for presents so most gifts were handmade artwork, or gifts of small luxuries that had been hidden away for a long time. The crew celebrated two Christmases aboard America One on their flight to Saturn, and everybody became at least a year older on the second longest, non-stop part of the tour around the solar system.

The travel time back to Mars would be four or five years once they left Saturn. With Captain Pete’s returning schedule, they needed to find water, the more the better, which would provide more hydrogen fuel and a higher cruising speed; they had close to a year on Titan to do that.

“We have Titan on the radar,” Captain Pete greeted Ryan one morning when he entered, still half asleep, and heading straight for the coffee pot. He didn’t know how he would have survived without Mr. Rose’s coffee trees. Titan was so big, that they had seen the planet days before the radar detected the solar system’s second largest moon.

“Do you know they used to think Titan was the largest moon in the solar system?” Captain Pete said, testing to see how awake Ryan was.

“Yes, until somebody realized that the moon had an atmosphere around it, and the moon was actually smaller than it looked, smaller than Ganymede,” replied Ryan grabbing his coffee.

“I wonder what we are going to find on this moon,” Captain Pete mused.

“Don’t you ever get tired of this Bridge, Pete?” Ryan asked. “There are a dozen of us who can monitor this ship if you want to take a vacation for a week or two,” Ryan replied settling into his Captain’s chair.

“I love this Bridge, and where would I take a vacation? I walk the entire ship four times a day, check in to see Nancy now and again, and I’m not very good at vacationing alone on an unknown planet, or moon. I suppose Las Vegas would do for a few weeks, and I might just take you up on that offer of a few weeks gambling with unlimited funds,” the captain replied smiling. “I could be 71 or older, when we reach Earth.”

“I know. I’ll be 55, Kathy 50, and Lunar 10 or 11,” Ryan smiled. “I wonder who will be the next captain of this vessel, once we older guys retire.”

“I’ll put my money on Mars Noble,” smiled Captain Pete. “He is often up here with his father, and watches everything we do with his eagle eyes. I think the real question is, who will Mars Noble marry? With the frequency of girls being born, he, young Jacob Rogers, and the other couple of boys born on Earth are going to have harems if we are not careful.”

“Look at the bright side,” smiled Ryan enjoying his coffee. “At least we are guaranteed a few space generations before Dr. Nancy or Dr. Martin will need to start a sperm bank for our future generations. With Tow and Fritz finally getting together, maybe the ship will get a third boy from them. Plus, we still have the boys older than Mars. I, for one, don’t ever want to live on Earth again. I never felt completely at home down there, and I really disliked the viciousness and hateful deeds humans are capable of inflicting on other humans, animals and everything else down there. Pete, it has actually surprised me that we have had so little animosity up here. I’m starting to believe that this meat thing Frau Von Zimmer is going on about is the real thing.”

“It would certainly be a good experiment to see the outcome of health on the human race if meat were completely excluded from the diet; Roo and Tow are fine examples of this. Of course, it would like take more than one generation to see any change. Our next possible captain, like his father, will certainly be one of the last to kick the meat diet.” VIN entered the Bridge and the two men told him what they were talking about.

“I think it has merit. We humans have eaten meat ever since we used to live in caves, and bonked people over the head. As far as I’m concerned, if we didn’t have testosterone, and didn’t eat meat,” said VIN smiling, “we would have smelled daisies and enjoyed free love, like during the sixties on our planet, you know what I mean, dude…”

“Ja, and all the other meat-eating animals would have eaten us up and made us extinct long before our time,” Suzi interrupted, who entered with Mars. “There are many reasons why we Homo sapiens are at the top of the food chain, and it has nothing to do with eating tofu hot dogs.”

“What is a tofu hot dog, Mom?” Mars asked and Suzi said that she would make him one. Few crew members asked for tofu, which was available aboard ship as there was a generous quantity of frozen skim soy milk.

The Noble family all looked at Titan, which had grown much larger since their last visit to the Bridge a couple of days earlier. The ship was still 200,000 miles away, and the moon looked nearly as big as Earth had from its moon.

“Looks as big as Ganymede,” observed VIN.

“Does this moon have the same geysers we saw on Ganymede and Europa?” Suzi asked.

“Does it have tofu dogs running around on it?” asked Mars Noble.

The rest of the astronauts, as well as Fritz, Roo and Tow entered the Bridge, and Ryan began the day’s briefing.

“Sorry about the science lecture, Mr. Jones, but most of what I have to say deals with flight inside Titan’s atmosphere. Titan is the only known moon with more than a trace of atmosphere and is the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the solar system aside from the Earth’s. Like Venus, Titan is also a “super rotator”, with an atmosphere that actually rotates faster than its surface; that means you have to be extremely careful when entering the atmosphere and upon landing. We don’t know what this super rotation will do to our craft, except maybe sweep you over the surface faster than normal, like a strong wind. Observations from the Voyager space probes from NASA many years ago show that Titan’s atmosphere is denser than Earth’s, with a surface pressure about 1.45 times that of our planet. That in itself is a second major problem, Mr. Jones. Titan’s atmosphere is about 1.19 times as massive as Earth’s, or about 7.3 times more massive on a per surface area basis. It supports several opaque haze layers that block most visible light from the sun and other sources and renders Titan’s surface features obscure. As far as flying to the surface, I believe you may have to fly using only instruments until you reach the actual surface, or just before. Landing on Titan is going to take all the experience you pilots have. Titan’s lower gravity also means that its atmosphere is far more extended than Earth’s and it is only around 11 percent of Earth’s or close to three times less than Earth’s moon. This means that any breeze, or any blast of whatever down there could easily blow you off the surface. But, there is water down there, and we must find water. We also expect to find Roo’s tribe down there, either alive and well or, hopefully, alive in cryonic chambers. If they could get down there astronauts, so can you. It will be mandatory to physical secure all craft and tie cords onto all external personnel down on the surface.

“The atmospheric composition in the stratosphere is 98.4% nitrogen with the remaining 1.6% composed mostly of methane and hydrogen. Methane shouldn’t be on Titan, but the planet’s atmosphere is very young, compared to other moons and planets. Energy from the sun should have converted all traces of methane in Titan’s atmosphere into more complex hydrocarbons within the suggested life history of the atmosphere around this moon; 100 million years—a very short time, a blink of an eye compared to the age of the solar system. Earth-Ex, Martin Brusk’s company has used methane as a rocket fuel. I stayed away from this gas because it is dangerous and easily combusts, but our ion drives have been switched to accept either argon or methane as backup fuels to reactor electricity. The mechanics have already made any changes necessary. Since the third gas on Titan is hydrogen, we expect to find enough to turn into liquid. The chemists are collecting hydrogen out of the atmosphere as I speak, but we know it is cold enough down there to possibly find hydrogen in ice form, like we did on Mars.

“Titan’s surface temperature is about minus 179.2 Celsius, as cold as Mars and Ganymede were on their coldest areas. At this temperature water ice has an extremely low vapor pressure, so the atmosphere is nearly free of water vapor. This moon receives just about 1 percent of the amount of sunlight Earth gets, so it is darker than what we have previously experienced. The atmospheric methane creates a greenhouse effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be even colder. Conversely, the thick layers of haze in the moon’s atmosphere contribute to an opposite, anti-greenhouse effect by reflecting sunlight back into space, cancelling a portion of the greenhouse effect warming and making its surface significantly colder than its upper atmosphere.

“Pilots, this is not an atmosphere to take for granted; it will be extremely dangerous to fly through and there are only two reasons we are going down there: to search for the gases and water ice we need and to connect Roo and Tow with their own people. Why they picked Titan to live on, I certainly don’t know other than the planet was a good source for a rocket fuel they could use. Mr. Jones, astronauts, Titan’s clouds, are probably also composed of methane, ethane or other simple organics, and are scattered and variable, punctuating the overall haze. The atmosphere contains everything explosive that you can think of except oxygen, so I believe you will be safer if you avoid flying through cloud layers if you don’t have to. And by the way, there are a couple of other moons in the vicinity that are much safer to visit. Our first objective is to land by Roo’s base on the moon and set up the same small atmospheric dome on the surface we used on Ganymede, big enough to accept the forward atmospheric cargo door area of SB-III. I hope the shield will protect Roo’s people from the elements while we dig, or rescue, or whatever we need to do down there.

“There are streaky features that have been seen on the actual surface of the moon, some of them hundreds of kilometers in length that appear to be caused by windblown particles. This shows us that there are winds, possibly strong winds, on the surface. Examination has also shown the surface to be relatively smooth. Radar altimetry suggests height variation is low, typically no more than 150 meters. Occasional elevation changes of 500 meters have been seen, especially by Voyager, and Titan has mountains that sometimes reach several hundred meters to more than half a mile in height. Hopefully, you will have visual around you by the time you reach a mile or so above the surface; if not, we then have to decide what to do.”

Throughout a working lunch for the next several hours, the flight crew picked at every problem they could anticipate. The crew could see that Ryan was uneasy about this next visit; he would have preferred to visit somewhere else, if not for Roo and Tow’s people having a base there.

It took two weeks orbiting the moon to complete all of the tests on the two craft designated to land on the surface. Wearing spacesuits for six hours a day, the mechanics went over every inch of the outer skins of SB-III and Astermine I searching for any evidence of hairline cracks. Next, they inspected the hydrogen pulse thrusters and completely overhauled the engines to make sure that they were perfect. Inside both the craft, Jonesy and Allen Saunders, the two chief pilots went over every computer, backing up memory and ensuring all commands to the computers worked perfectly.

Ryan ordered the inspections and overhauls in the last briefing. Besides extra precautions for this potentially dangerous destination, both craft were approaching 1,000 hours of flight when inspections would be mandated.

It had taken years for the dozens of top-of-the-line 3D printers in the labs to produce every single backup part, screw, nut and bolt out of the titanium and cobalt stored aboard ship; with the large supplies of the two metals from Ganymede and Europa, the printers operated 24/7 to produce parts for use or storage. There was no part that could not be made from these printers except for the outer skins.

After several extra hours in the flight simulators, the two craft undocked from the mother ship 300 miles above the moon to begin the descent to the surface.

Jonesy and Penny Pitt were flying SB-III while Allen Saunders and Max Burgos were flying Astermine One. Michael Pitt was the backup emergency retrieval pilot on Asterspace Three with Ryan himself as copilot. Over the last five years of the odyssey, pilots like Max and Ryan had had spent thousands of hours in the flight simulators and were as experienced as the others. Jonesy, Maggie, Allen, Jamie, Penny and Michael were, without doubt, the most experienced, hands-on pilots; but family issues meant that Ryan did not allow both parents of children to undertake such a dangerous mission.

VIN and Roo were aboard with Jonesy and Penny, and Allen and Max carried Fritz and Vitalily as passengers. In an emergency, all eight crew could squeeze into one cockpit, although it had never been tested. It would be like getting eight adults into a minivan.

Twelve hours later, 67 miles above the planet’s surface, Jonesy reported seeing the first cloud. “Altitude, 67 miles; forward speed, 7,000 miles an hour and slowing. Not much atmospheric drag as yet, but I’m feeling a change through the controls.” They were ten miles ahead of and two miles lower than the second craft. “A cloud, or something hazy is appearing several miles below me, visibility is 1,000 miles at least horizontally, but decreasing below us. Allen, I’m turning to starboard 35 degrees; it looks like the perimeter of this cloud ends several miles to my right.”

“How far from touchdown target?” asked Ryan on the Bridge.

“Sixty-six miles below SB-III and we will fly directly over the target, the red dot on the globe, in seven minutes; it’s about 800 miles ahead of us,” Jonesy replied. “Craft is acting a little lazy, like it is going through air, although a very thin layer of air. More like just before we left Earth’s upper atmosphere. I can hardly feel it, but we are still braking. Speed 6,840 miles an hour and slowing, so something is helping us slow down, Boss.”

The dull yellow cloud, visible in the faint sunlight, came to an end and Jonesy dipped into a large cloudless hole thousands of miles across. He directed Allen behind him, who activated the auto-pilot to follow Jonesy’s directions. Jonesy was doing all the work until it got really tight.

On the next pass, having flown through two more layers of clouds, they passed over where they expected the base to be; they were at 34 miles altitude and a slower 3,100 miles an hour.

Roo somehow knew where the base was just as he precisely located the sites on both of Jupiter’s moons. Even VIN didn’t know how he did it. Roo told the crew every time they passed as close as they would, even pointing out the direction where the base was, if they didn’t fly directly overhead.

“Layers of cloud darkening quite a bit, as we get lower,” Jonesy reported. “This is our last pass and we expect to touch down in ninety minutes.”

“You have nine hours of daylight left,” Ryan informed him. “The sun will be over the base in 70 minutes. You are two miles lower than expected on your last run. I recommend you ease the stick back a degree or so.”

“Roger that,” replied Penny, dialing in a change to the angle of descent. The computers were still flying both craft, and with one switch, flight controls could go manual, but that wasn’t necessary. Both craft were doing lazy “S” turns going through the layers of clouds.

Twenty minutes later they were enveloped in darkness. They searched for the clouds through the night vision apparatus, especially relying on the infrared scopes, which made the clouds look like vivid pink layers of gas above and below them.

At 20 miles altitude, and on the opposite side of the planet to the base, the clouds began to dissipate. At 15 miles, when they reached the sunlit part of the planet, they couldn’t see above them, but they had perfect night vision to see dozens of what looked like tornadoes, or wind squalls on the surface beneath them.

“It looks pretty stormy down there,” reported Jonesy. Radio communications had diminished considerably; they could discern only faint responses and Jonesy expected that there would be no communication when they reached the surface. He explained the situation, and that there was still no gravitational pull from the moon at all. “Ten miles to target, altitude one mile, speed 400 miles an hour. Perfect horizontal vision to the surface. Tornadoes about 200 to 300 feet high, and we just went over one. There is no cloud above it, but we did feel minor vibrations.”

“Wind force should be much less than anything on Earth, or what you encountered on Mars,” replied Captain Pete. “Less gravity and less air density mean that a 100 mile an hour wind should feel like an 11 to 20 mile an hour breeze.”

“Roger that,” replied Jonesy. “These winds look more like 200 to 400 mile an hour winds. They could overtake us if we go any slower. There’s a tornado to our right, about 15 miles away, and it stretches far above our altitude. I’d say three miles high.”

“Can you see these tornadoes or whirlwinds on any of your instruments?” Ryan asked. Both pilots stated that they couldn’t. “Go to Plan B,” he suggested. “VIN, get out with Roo and setup up the dome. Allen, you hover on the windward side of SB-III, forty to fifty miles out, or as far as you can see, as a lookout for any of the dangerous whirlwinds Mr. Jones just described. Copy that?”

Both pilots did. VIN was already in the docking port with cords, nails, and two black boxes. The nuclear battery was tight in the forward cargo compartment.

Roo pointed to the place he wanted Jonesy to touch down. Allen told him that he was in position, hovering forty miles away and at a five mile altitude. The two pilots could see each other on radar. Jonesy suggested that Allen go 20 miles farther out, so that a warning would give them enough time to get VIN back inside.

“There is an incoming funnel, about one mile high and travelling at well over 300 miles an hour,” stated Allen as Jonesy switched the craft to manual flight. “I would say that it is going to bypass you about five miles on your starboard side in about ten minutes. Other than that one, there are about 50 little ones between us, and I cannot warn you about all of them. From here, it looks like the smaller ones are approaching you at about 50 to 100 miles an hour. It’s very strange but they are not all doing the same speed. Jonesy, the big one just swallowed up a couple of smaller ones; it seems to grow as it catches up to the slower tornadoes.”

“I need minimum five minutes from ground to closing the outer hatch, Allen,” stated VIN. “That doesn’t count cutting away cords from the craft. Add another minute for that. I cannot get a tear in my suit in this soup, it looks worse than L.A. on a lousy day of smog.”

Coming around to land, Jonesy could see the telltale shaft with the melted rocks in it. Once he turned to face the wind, he could see how strong it was.

“VIN, you are not going to like this,” Penny said as Jonesy brought the craft down. “Wind over the surface is 30 miles an hour with gusts up to 50. Oops! Here comes one of those things Jonesy, directly ahead.”

“See it, will rise a few feet…” Jonesy replied, but it hit before he could do anything; surprisingly, it didn’t beat them up as much as the wind that caught them on the ground on Mars had. It hardly made a difference as they went through its center and it disappeared behind them. “I still think the big guys could really beat us up,” the pilot said, as he came back in to land again. He was surprised how little dust rose from the thrusters, and with the craft facing into the wind, the dust immediately disappeared behind them.

Within five minutes, VIN was out, and he had to hold on, as if something was trying to pull him out of the docking port. He threw out the ladder and had to wait a full minute before it floated down beside the ship on the leeward side. It didn’t even hang vertical, but at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

The wind was weird, unlike wind on Earth. At 30 miles an hour, he should have felt the air hitting him. On Mars the gusts felt the same with the added air pressure down in the crater only, but here it was like a light gust. The real problem was that he didn’t weigh very much. As he climbed out, he threw out the cords to the right side of SB-III, weighted down by having six large nails wrapped around the end. He had his Bowie knife on his belt, as well as the mallet with which he was to hammer the nails in to the surface. The cords and nails drifted down to the surface slowly, as if they were in a swimming pool, and the breeze slowly floated them away behind the craft.

To catch them, VIN literally bounced off the top of the craft to the right, doing what he had practiced to prepare for a landing. It didn’t come that quickly. Instead, he floated away behind the craft, caught up with the cords and nails, and landed gently on his feet nearly 100 feet from where he had launched himself.

“What the hell you trying to do out there, partner? We can’t see you anymore,” Jonesy said over the intercom.

“I’m on the hard surface and bouncing back to get a visual with you. Gee, this is fun. I bet I could jump over any of the tornadoes coming our way. I can hardly feel the wind, and the hardest part is staying on the ground. Even a normal walking step lifts me a couple of feet off the ground!” replied VIN.

Jonesy laughed when VIN came into view. He was bouncing high and in slow motion across the surface. Like a kangaroo, he kept both feet together and each slow-motion jump took him a dozen feet forward and at least as high. He could see that VIN wasn’t trying at all to bounce around.

“I’m trying hard not to fly; these would be only inch high bounces on Earth,” replied VIN. As he passed by the side of the ship he saluted the two pilots with one hand while holding the cords and pegs in the other.

Roo was just exiting the outer hatch as VIN returned to try to receive the nuclear battery from him. On Earth it would have been extremely heavy. On Titan it floated down like a leaf off a tree. Roo then threw out the black box which VIN easily caught in midair.

As he caught it he shouted a warning to Roo. Another of the twisters was approaching fast, bigger than the last one. VIN braced for the worst. He leaned forward and crouched down. When the twister, about twenty feet wide hit him, he felt his suit being gently plucked from his body in an upward movement. What was peculiar was that although the twister looked as though it was swirling with high winds, it actually wasn’t; however, it displaced any gravitational pull and he rose several feet off the surface to gently descend about 100 feet behind the craft, the same distance he had bounced back from. The far heavier ship did not move.

These tornadoes reminded him of waves carrying him into shore, lifting and depositing him farther down the beach. He did not want to see how far a mile-high twister would carry him, and he quickly bounced back to SB-III. With Roo’s help, he hammered four nails deep in the moon’s surface before the next even larger twister hit. When it did, the cords held down the spacecraft, and he and Roo, clutching the straps, held onto everything moveable. The twister quickly passed.

They worked quickly, having practiced connecting the black box with the nuclear battery. The build crew made a rectangular unit that held the battery a few inches above the box, and was welded directly to the outside battery casing. Within minutes, the blue dome began to expand out, covering the two astronauts before the next twister arrived.

As expected, the dome protected them from any wind from the twister. They couldn’t feel any soft breezes coming through the growing wall, and VIN didn’t get airborne as before. VIN could see SB-III’s undercarriage pulling hard at the two cords keeping the craft on the surface. Seconds after the twister passed, the dome began creeping over the surface of the shuttle.

“You had better get out of there. A big guy is coming in your general direction,” Allen alerted them. “It just passed below us, about two miles on our port side. It’s a mile wide and this one is really moving fast, I would say 700-800 miles an hour, and it reaches up about three miles. Weird, we couldn’t feel any pull from it. ETA your position five to six minutes.”

“Jonesy, I think the shield will protect the ship and us,” stated VIN. “I have the battery on thirty percent power, and will pump it up to seventy percent; it should cover you by the time the twister gets here. I can get you free, but we can’t both get inside that fast. Suggest Roo and I test the shield to be twister proof. Over.”

“Copy that. I won’t stay, thanks for the invitation. Untie SB-III and nail yourselves down. If you guys fly away, I can follow you if I’m free,” replied Jonesy.

VIN slowly walked through the wall to unpin the nails. He had hammered them in with all his strength to get them into the ground quickly, and it took all his strength to pull them out. He could cut the cords with his knife, but that was the last option. He grabbed the closest two nails one after the other and, with the added strength of his metal legs and nearly bursting a blood vessel, he pulled the nails back out of the hard ground. Without the metal legs, he wouldn’t have been able to do it, but he released the undercarriage, telling Jonesy to get out of there as he bounced back towards the shield and out of the way of the right-side thruster that pushed him against the hard shield wall, but not hard enough to cause any damage.

Roo, not as fast or as forward thinking as VIN just stood there and watched as VIN slowly entered the dome, now ten feet over his head. Roo hadn’t moved in the time it had taken VIN to release the ship. He wasn’t used to making quick decisions.

“Have the twister in sight,” stated Jonesy. “About ten miles out. You have about two minutes to tie yourselves down, partner. I have the blue dome visual, I will sweep out of the twisters way, and come in behind it.”

VIN grabbed the two lose nails and banged them hard into the ground. Then he tied a short part of the cord around Roo’s leg, and then one to his own leg.

“Roo, sit down here,” he pointed showing his friend what to do.

“About a minute,” stated Jonesy.

Roo did as he was told. He was wondering why VIN was so worried about this wind thing, but sat next to VIN. The ex-Marine had placed the nails three feet apart; they sat in-between the nails and he tied the rest of the cord across them and around the nails a dozen times before he looked up and surveyed the area around them.

The blue shield’s growth had stopped and since the battery was right next to him, he grabbed it to hold on. Then he looked in the direction of the tornado and was shocked to see a wide and powerful mass of red and yellow dust swirling around at great speed, and coming towards them like an express train.

“Hang on, Roo!” was all he could say before the moving dust cloud hit the dome with a force far stronger than the little ones. They could actually hear the tornado slap the dome with winds of up to 800 miles an hour or more, and begin grinding at the dome wall as a tornado would do on Earth.

The dust and wind surrounded them for several seconds, bits of the moon Titan flying in all directions. VIN noticed that the 100-foot cords he had left pegged down outside the shield were stretched out in nearly a straight line; at the same moment, they began hitting the outside wall of the dome as the wind forced them to begin a drum solo slapping on the shield both VIN and Roo could see.

Then it was gone, and he heard Jonesy and Ryan trying to contact them.

“Shield worked like a dream,” VIN stated calmly over the radio. “Jonesy, I’ll pump up the power again and there should be enough room for you to land inside. I’ll bring in the cords and nail them in right next to the shaft into the caverns.”

By the time a second, smaller twister hit twenty minutes later, SB-III was safely tied down inside the dome which stretched many feet over and around the craft. VIN still had the power at seventy percent, and he increased it to 80 percent to enlarge the shield to accept the second craft.

Allen came in and slowly pierced the shield. VIN and Roo then tied down the second craft. None of them would know that the next gigantic twister, larger than the first big one, was to pass within a few hundred yards of the dome. They felt nothing inside the shield, except powerful vibrations under their feet.

Within three hours, their first spacewalk time, they had 20 air tanks spewing air into the large dome. With the water collected on the Jupiter moons they had enough air to fill this big shield; it would take all of their reserves, but it was worth it to ensure the safety of the occupants underground. VIN had one spider out and digging down through the melted rock, something Roo suggested, which would save the spider having to dig through the metal wall.

What worried VIN was that the hairs on the back of his neck weren’t dancing around this time; that might mean be no one was down there.

Chapter 20

Where is the life?

It took 15 hours for the spider to pile up the melted rock in between the two craft, and the crews watched from inside. The atmosphere inside the shield was at bare minimums, and the spider didn’t need to exit the dome. With the nuclear battery inside the shield, spacesuits had to be used at all times, especially considering the minus 150 degree temperatures, which were already warming.

VIN hoped that they weren’t warm and cozy inside the caverns; the cold air would certainly change that once the spider emptied the last loads of rubble.

The spider returned to the surface its job done. VIN and Roo waited for somebody to either contact them telepathically, or at least climb out and greet their visitors. Since no one emerged, they decided to wait for a few hours, so as not to frighten the people down there.

While sitting without helmets in the mining ship, VIN asked Roo something he still wondered about, “How did you dig that toilet, and how deep is it?”

“Very deep. We don’t know. Commander Joot had machine mining down in shaft for two months before it disappeared. We think it fell out other side,” Roo replied, smiling sheepishly. “It wasn’t my father, Commander Put, but the first commander of the little planet, Commander Joot, who lost mining machine.”

“That’s what Boris and Fritz guessed,” laughed VIN. “Jonesy, don’t fly low over the other side of DX2017 when you are in orbit next time. You might fly through something that used to belong to you.” Jonesy was half asleep, but VIN’s suggestion got a slight smile from the astronaut.

“Where would your spaceship be based on this moon?” VIN asked. “Inside, underground, or in the shield?”

“That is complicated. I don’t see any shield, and the shield was to grow food and protect the ship. No ship, or shield, or signs of food, or soil here. I would not be allowed to see ship’s underground cavern, I not a commander.” Roo replied, trying to frame a logical answer to VIN’s question.

“So, if there were people here, then there should be a third cavern, and a spaceship parked somewhere?” VIN asked. Roo nodded looking puzzled, unusual for him.

Two hours were up, and VIN couldn’t wait anymore. They donned helmets and he and Roo exited the port to float down to the surface. The first reading VIN got from his suit’s external readouts was that the temperature inside the dome had not risen as he expected when warm air from below rose up the shaft.

“Jonesy, the temperature hasn’t changed. Fritz, Vitalily, wake up and get suited up, you are going to have to lower us down the shaft,” VIN ordered.

Twenty minutes later the first spacesuit exited the port of the second craft. When both were down, they setup the 100-foot cord ladder VIN handed them, prepared to help VIN descend. VIN weighed less than twenty pounds, and Vitalily actually had to put his foot on the top of VIN’s helmet to help him begin his decent.

The shaft was dark and narrow. VIN slowly descended with his left arm pointed downwards so the flashlight he held could light the shaft below. At the expected depth, VIN’s feet passed the two tunnels going in opposite directions, and he pulled on the ladder, asking the men above to stop his downward movement. Nimbly, he floated into the tunnel that would lead towards the forward cavern, gently hitting the top of his helmet on the low roof. The cord ladder disappeared and would return with Roo several minutes later.

Waiting for Roo, VIN shined the flashlight onto the dull, metal-surfaced tunnels in both directions; they were identical to those on Mars, Europa, Ganymede and even DX2017.

When Roo’s small boots appeared down the shaft, VIN helped him into the tunnel and told the two helpers to leave the ladder in place for a fast exit if necessary. The temperature had risen only 30 degrees, which meant that nothing human could be alive down there.

As he turned the corner, he remembered that he had Roo to help him open the doors. Unfortunately, with no power, Roo was no better at opening the doors than VIN. The walkway around the cavern looked dark and cold, as if they were looking at a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. With no lights and an intercom that intercom didn’t work, they decided that nothing more could be done on this walk, and retreated back to the spacecraft to wait out another twelve hours.

On the next walk they would carry in a spare nuclear battery from Allen’s craft, and bring Fritz who had been taught by Igor how to connect it.

The fifth nuclear battery, the one that had powered the shield around America One before the shield was permanently connected to the ship’s reactor, was lowered down the shaft. Fritz followed with the cables to connect to the railing. Roo was just as surprised as Fritz when VIN connected the first cable to the railing, and carefully touched the railing with the second clamp. As expected, the walls began their slow glow, which lit up the cavern.

“Get it up to 40 percent,” ordered VIN, and the light increased showing them an empty, clean cavern. The door controls opened and Roo used the mirror to open the door to the first room; the only things in the room were the 24 cabinets along both side walls.

Seeing the cabinet door handles faintly glowing red, Roo stopped and didn’t enter the room.

“They are meant to glow blue,” he said to VIN.

“I haven’t seen that yet,” replied VIN. “Only red, except the special room you and your parents were in, and only two handles glowed green, or was it blue, in that room.”

Without pausing VIN opened each cabinet door one after the other. They were all empty. “Nobody in here,” he confirmed and Roo entered the room.

VIN asked Fritz to increase the power to 80 percent. With only two hours of spacewalk time left he wasn’t playing around; it was time to open the command room and the power room.

The walls began to glow extremely bright and the second door control flipped open, allowing them to enter the globe room. VIN was surprised to see two globes in this room. On Mars and the other moons, there had been only one, Earth. Only DX2017 had all five globes, and now this moon, Titan, had two.

Earth was the first globe. With the power on the metal skin around the globe disappeared and the blues, greens and browns of Earth were visible. The second planet, or moon, interested both of them, and Roo immediately went up to the second pure white globe and put his hand on it.

“You won’t feel anything with your glove on,” suggested VIN and Roo nodded and began unscrewing one glove with his other hand. Fritz shot forward and stopped him.

“These little guys don’t think as fast as we do,” he said, looking at VIN. Roo suddenly realized what he had done and thanked Fritz.

“Do you know this planet?” VIN asked Roo. Roo didn’t, but the red dot on Titan up on the Bridge was tiny and dull compared to the much larger bright red dot on the new white globe.

“But there is somebody here, or the dot would not exist,” replied Roo, and VIN knew exactly where the live person would be, and he pointed towards the door to the room where he had found Roo, Tow and Put. Roo nodded, but wanted to open the command center first. He used the mirror and the door opened easily, disappearing into the wall.

The command center was bright and Roo immediately began playing with the knobs and dials. The hologram opened up on the roof above them and he could see the two craft inside the shield. He could also hear Allen and Jonesy speaking to each other. Then Roo hit a switch and the door to the power room opened. Fritz was keen, on Igor’s orders, to find anything of value in the room, and there was one black box sitting on the same shelf where they had found the others in the other bases.

“Don’t turn it on, Fritz,” Roo said. “There is no need, we already have one shield.”

“Will you need Doctor Martin and Doctor Nancy if there is somebody in the room?” asked VIN.

“No,” Roo replied. “I don’t understand what the doctors did to help us. The system is designed to wake us up, and throw us out when we are ready.”

“Roo, what about the atmosphere and the heat inside the cryonics room?” asked Fritz.

“VIN,” replied Roo pointing at the walls, “that whole area above and below the stairs that you could never open, and that is sealed even from me, is a power system for the sleeping room and the people inside. It was sealed so that nobody could break the system except a commander, and it was made to run for many years. It will give air and heat into the sleep room for a long time.”

“Maybe not 10,000 years,” VIN replied.

“Maybe, but you found my mother and me, and we will find somebody in that room who will tell us where the others are. And, where this white moon is,” Roo replied simply heading back into the room. He pressed one button underneath the console, the only place VIN had not thought to look.

Up to now, Roo and Tow hadn’t been very forthcoming on how the command console worked. Either they didn’t know everything, or it was top secret, and nobody asked them for the information.

VIN was totally surprised when, at the push of three more buttons in a controlled order, the whole console flipped over, revealing a new set of controls. VIN remembered looking underneath the console and only seeing the metal surface.

“You can turn off your power now, Fritz, the whole base is running on its back-up power,” Roo instructed. Fritz did as instructed and returned to stand next to VIN, just as surprised, and his mouth just as open. From nowhere, in the middle of a vacuum of space, three control screens came alive and information began to pass speedily across the screen, faster than Fritz could read Matt.

“Our first commander, Commander Joot, is here waiting for my father,” Roo said. “He has a message for him. It reads: ‘The white planet is a better, safer home than here on this one, and the crew took all the equipment and the ship 300 years after you, Commander Put, did not arrive to build a second base on the moon. The white moon is eight moons closer to the ring planet than you are now standing on.’ I do not know the name of the planet in your language, but in mine it is called Geetin.”

Everybody was able to listen, the two craft above ground and those on the Bridge on America One, as Roo read the information destined for his father.

There was silence until Captain Pete confirmed the moon’s name, “Enceladus, thought to be the most habitable moon by our peers down on Earth. It has to be.”

“Maybe Geetin is the same as your moon you call Enn… ceee… lad… uus,” responded Roo. “Commander Joot will be waking up and will try to open the door, but it will not work because there is no atmosphere in here. We need to make an atmosphere in this central room, a perfect atmosphere, and one of us must stay in the room. We can close off the other rooms; his sleep suit can handle the cold temperature. You have in your time twelve hours before he will try to open the door. If he cannot open the door, he will not be alive anymore.”

VIN shouted orders to the mother ship. There was just enough air left to give one room atmosphere, and every spare bottle they had aboard the shuttle, big or small, would be needed to get the pressure and atmosphere just right. That included the three air tanks meant for the shield. The entire supply now inside the shield would be wasted, three months of manufacture; but, that wasn’t important, there was a life to save, and somebody would need to survive in the middle room to make sure the correct atmosphere was ready.

They had twelve hours to empty the three air tanks into this one room. There were three extra spacesuits aboard each shuttle, and VIN asked Roo how tall this commander was. He was a tall, five feet. The commander’s suit was not made for space walking, and the commander, Roo, and he also needed new suits to survive and then exit, as they only had four hours of time remaining in their current suits. They could survive in the spare suits from the space craft, each with six hours of life before it needed to be recharged. That was if the astronaut breathed slowly, and did not do too much exercise.

Fritz and Vitalily lowered the three bottles, then four of the small emergency shuttle-cockpit bottles of pure oxygen, and finally the six suits down to VIN and Roo. Roo explained that the door into the cryonics room would not work unless there was close to a perfect atmosphere on this side, and they didn’t even know if they had enough air.

VIN explained to Roo that two of them had to stay to help change each other’s helmets and suits. He ordered Fritz out, and once the door to the center room was closed and sealed, VIN opened the three bottles.

Light from the power system was still working, and VIN hoped that three bottles would give them enough air pressure and atmosphere inside the room, when a problem suddenly occurred to him. When the time came to change suits, the room the room would still be extremely cold and it wasn’t possible for a human body to survive very long at 120 degrees below freezing, even if there was enough air to breathe.

For the first time in a long time, VIN realized that his life hung in the balance; he had to depend on Roo, and there was nothing he could do to change matters.

VIN and Roo had only a slim chance of getting out, a stark reminder of what space was really like outside his warm suit. VIN’s eye, the one he used to open the door controllers, began to water.

Time slowed down for VIN, as he watched the air bubbles blow out of the three bottles in long lines. The room would heat up faster and faster as the atmosphere increased in density, and VIN told Roo that they would be lucky if the temperature was under minus 110 by the time they both had to change into the first suit in a few hours.

Using all the knowledge he had gained from his spacewalks, VIN figured that he had less than five minutes to change into his next suit; he had to at least get the upper body part over his chest, and that could only happen once he got the leggings on, which usually took five minutes. Because Roo was using up less air, VIN suggested he change suits first, with Roo’s help.

Over the next hour VIN mentally went over how to speed up changing his suit until it dawned on him that the bottom half didn’t need to be changed, only the top half, gloves and helmet. He laughed out loud at his own stupidity; that would certainly decrease the time needed for both of them to change. Then he realized that Roo’s oversized suits might not fit perfectly, and again he mentally went over every detail of the suit change that would save their lives.

Chapter 21

Damn, it’s cold in here!

The last hour in the warm suit was running out. VIN’s current suit was getting weak, and he was beginning to feel it. He wanted to switch on the next two suits, but the extra time would be deducted from their total time in the fresh suit. Nobody had worn the suits longer than the six-hour test period since they had been designed, and they had since proved that six hours was the maximum. VIN also realized that all the energy he and Roo had dispersed climbing down and walking around, had reduced the time they had before they needed to change.

As the atmosphere and air, now a complete bubble inside the room increased, the inner energy and atmosphere readouts on his suit bled down to less than 5 percent. The clock on his controls showed that he had been in the suit for five hours and fifteen minutes; he gently directed Roo to lie on his stomach, so as not to harm the rear working parts of the suit, relax and close his eyes. The longer they could stay in these suits the better.

For what seemed an eternity, not hearing anything through the walls, his mind wandered over his life, family, and what the hell he was doing on some moon in the far reaches of space about to freeze to death, or run out of air.

He began to dream, when suddenly Ryan’s voice over the intercom brought him back to reality. His oxygen was going, he was about to lose consciousness. He kicked Roo, and shouted through the intercom that it was time they both change. His suit readout showed five hours, fifty five minutes.

Roo moved, and VIN checked both suit’s gauges. The smaller guy still had a percent or two more than he did, and VIN immediately turned on two of the spare suits to warm up. At least the material would be warm Roo fitted the front and back to him. Roo had donned suits several times and he was pretty good at helping somebody get a suit on.

First the helmet and gloves needed to be unscrewed and then removed: one minute; then the back separated from the front: two minutes; then detach from the body and connect the new suit the same way: three to four minutes.

“Roo, can you hear me?” VIN asked and Roo nodded. “The temperature is at minus 115; we will freeze within minutes, if we don’t work quickly. We must screw off each other’s helmet and gloves to within one or two turns from detaching; then you, must get my new suit separated and laid out, upper front and back halves only. Then I will whip the top-half of my suit off, you grab the backpack, and immediately put on my new backpack; I will hold the front while you connect them up. We have under-gloves on so our hands will be a little protected, but I think I have only five minutes before I pass out, so we must be quick. First, backpack, then front half, attach, fit gloves, attach connectors, fit helmet, screw on gloves, screw on helmet. You need to hold the heavy back while I hold up the front and attach them together, understand?” Roo nodded.

“Okay, gloves and helmet first. Remember, I remove my old suit, you hold the new backpack, I hold the front, and you connect the two. Then screw on my helmet, one screw, after connecting the electrics. I put on my gloves, you screw them on, and that’s it! Hopefully the suit warms up fast. I have it at full power and then I will do the same for you. Pure team work, my friend, or I’m too dead to help you. Understand?” Again Roo nodded. “Temperature minus 114, a little warmer. Let’s go!” Roo unscrewed the helmet to the last screw while VIN flexed his hands to warm them up. He was getting dizzy.

Two minutes later Roo had the helmet ready and began working on the gloves. VIN was beginning to get really dizzy from the lack of air, he also noticed that he had beaten the six hours by three minutes of overtime in the suit, and that gave them a little more survival time at the end. He knew that the crew on the Bridge knew the exact time they did. It was simple math.

“Okay, Roo, gloves coming off, unscrew the helmet, detach the electrics,” and an icy cold air that VIN had never experienced in his life hit his warm hands and uncovered face, as if he was in the middle of a block of frigid dry ice. The pain was merciless; he felt as though he had just plunged into an icy-cold lake, even though his under-helmet cloth protector covered the top, sides and back like a balaclava.

He opened his eyes and could still see clearly, except that the liquid in his eyes immediately began to freeze, so he closed them again. He felt Roo helping him detach the two halves of the suit, and once he felt Roo begin detaching his waist connection, grabbed for the front of the suit in front of him. Within seconds Roo had the back of the suit off, the new part on, and he let the front half float away to the floor, and with his boot pushed it out of the way.

Now the cold wanted to penetrate his skin and heart. He had taken as deep a breath as the low pressure allowed a split second before his helmet was removed, and knew that getting too much cold air into his lungs would just finish the job of freezing him solid even quicker, so he held his breath for as long as possible.

VIN opened and closed his eyes rapidly to keep the liquids from freezing. He had put on suits so often that it was second nature to him. He could do it blindfolded, and not having to take off his lower suit probably kept his body temperature a lot higher.

With three minutes, Roo and he had the front and back secure, and he took his first breath. He opened his eyes again, while feeling his body beginning to shiver uncontrollably. Roo was in front of him helmet ready. He grabbed for the bottle of oxygen lying next to him. It wasn’t as cold lying under the warmer suit and he opened the bottle and felt ice cold air brush over his face. Then his lungs felt the icy oxygen flowing into his body and began to contract with the extreme cold. Still, he felt the oxygen reviving his body and then Roo attached the electronics and screwed the helmet on with one turn while VIN felt for his still-warm gloves.

The new suit’s system was already on maximum heat, and it would still take several minutes to bring the inside warmth to above freezing, but it already felt less cold and painful.

VIN blindly put his hands into the still slightly warm gloves. Through the icy window of cold around him, his brain began registering that somebody was shouting his name. It sounded like Ryan. He took his first breath of warm air from inside the suit and he felt its heat begin to counteract the cold enveloping him.

“Yes, Ryan… I’m still alive…… darn cold though. Really cold…… cold enough to freeze the frozen balls off a brass bloody frozen monkey!” replied VIN. “Roo, screw my gloves on now; the cold is hurting like hell!”

“Thank God!” he heard Ryan reply. “We have your body sensors back on. You need to move around and warm up. Your body signs are at below dangerous temperatures. Inside suit temperature, minus 47 degrees and warming. Just stay alive for a few more minutes, VIN, and you should get above freezing.”

Lastly, VIN’s helmet was screwed on tight by Roo. VIN’s fingers felt like he had frostbite, even under the inner gloves he hadn’t taken off and he tried to stand up. It was difficult; his entire human part of his body was stiff with cold. Roo helped him and as soon as he was standing he checked Roo’s readouts. Roo had only had a couple of minutes left.”

“Roo make sure your new suit is on maximum. It took me seven minutes to complete dressing into half a suit, a world record. Let me get some heat back and we’ll get you taken care of.”

VIN then began dancing around the silver room, forgot that he was in near zero gravity and nearly knocked himself out on the ceiling when his helmet collided with it hard. He quickly learned that it was even harder to run around, and get warm, as Ryan had suggested.

Once he thought he was over the worst, he began to prepare Roo. Roo was small and his new suit was adult size, so VIN decided not to undo it at the sides, but flip it straight over Roo’s head. That would save a minute or so. Then he only needed to attach the upper suit to the bottom half which would fit, barely, after making sure the protective flaps were correctly positioned inside.

Roo’s new suit, on full, was warming, and VIN felt the pins and needles of blood begin moving around his fingers again. They hurt like hell.

Once Roo told him the air was getting hard to breathe in his suit, VIN was ready and poor Roo suffered the same pain and cold VIN had been subjected to just a few minutes earlier.

VIN worked fast and within six minutes an extremely cold and shivering Earth Alien was inside the larger suit, safe and trying to exercise, as VIN had done, without knocking himself out on the ceiling.

Twenty minutes later, and with the temperature in the room still climbing, the two astronauts felt warm. VIN knew, he and maybe Roo had frostbite in their fingers, but that was a minor ailment in view of what could have happened.

Six hours later, they did the same change into their next set of suits, but at a warmer and toasty minus 50 degrees. Inside fresh and warm suits with three hours to go, VIN checked the atmosphere for the umpteenth time. The pressure was low, and the bottles completely empty. He opened two of the emergency bottles of pure oxygen. The mix wouldn’t be right, but at least the door might still open.

An hour later the small foot long bottles were empty, the oxygen level higher than normal, and the pressure still needed a boost, so VIN opened up one more bottle.

It was going to be close. The temperature was 10 degrees below freezing and was still climbing. It certainly wouldn’t be warm enough when Commander Joot stepped out of the cryonics room, if he was still alive. VIN was impressed by Roo’s complete lack of panic. He didn’t panic when they had changed suits, and he was sure that his commander, or somebody else, would step out of the room. He wasn’t worried at all, telling VIN that at any temperature above freezing with a good atmospheric pressure showing breathable air, it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Roo, we won’t have any carbon dioxide in this room when the door opens,” VIN realized, an hour before the door was due to be open.

“We can help by breathing in from our helmets and breathing out into the room,” suggested Roo.

“Actually, you can allow your exhaled air to exit the backpack,” stated a scientist from the Bridge aboard America One. “There is a breathe-out release valve on the side of the rebreathing tank.” Up to now the communications had been silent, allowing the astronauts to solve their own problems. Ryan had asked the scientist who designed and built the suits to come to the Bridge.

Under his guidance, VIN and Roo changed the system on each other’s backpack and the two astronauts began to not only increase the carbon dioxide level, but heat the room at the same time. It was interesting to see condensation blowing out from the rear of the tank every time they exhaled warm air.

Slowly the temperature crept over the freezing mark. They had a little under three hours left in their suits when they heard a rumble through the wall to the cryonics room and there was a vibration through the floor.

“Ryan we feel something. Permission to take off my helmet, or allow Roo to take off his. If some wheezy guy walks out of the room, he’ll get quite a shock seeing two alien-looking astronauts in white suits. He might retreat back in and close the door. We have three hours before we run out of air in the tanks, so breathing the new air will extend our suit time.”

“I see your point,” replied Ryan, and he gave them permission to test the air. At five degrees above freezing they helped each other off with their helmets.

This time the icy air didn’t hit VIN as Roo took off his helmet. His fingers still hurt like hell, and he kept his gloves on. The air was clean, the pressure still slightly low and VIN opened the last bottle of pure oxygen. The mix in the room was already rather high in oxygen; VIN felt dizzy struggling to suck in his second and then third lungful of new atmosphere.

He held onto the wall for support and Roo told him that this mix reminded him of their spaceships and bases. It seemed that Roo’s team preferred a higher mix to what the Homo sapiens were currently used to on Earth. In one of her many lectures about the “Green Time” in the Sahara, Martha said she thought the carbon dioxide and monoxide levels of Earth’s atmosphere were significantly lower, and that a higher level of oxygen could have been in the air at that time. Once again it seemed to VIN that she was right in her assumptions.

“How do you feel?” VIN asked Roo.

“I think it is still cold, but it shouldn’t stop the door from opening. As long as we can breathe the air, it will register as safe on the system inside the room. It will open soon; the vibrations we felt was the system opening up and pressurizing the sleep chamber Commander Joot was in. He will have suit on, but will need to put on his helmet before the door will open. It can only open from inside.”

They waited. VIN again checked the time left and readouts. His eyes needed to focus on the LED readouts as he pressed the buttons. He was still dizzy, and it was getting worse. As soon as he saw the air pressure, perfect at sea level, he closed off the small oxygen bottle and then pressed the temperature switch. It read 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the oxygen was 2 percent higher than maximum, nitrogen was also high, and carbon dioxide was just registering at a trace. He looked up to see a blue helmeted spacesuited person staring at him from the door that had opened silently.

Roo was bowing, suddenly jabbering away in his native tongue, clicks coming out by the dozens, and the short but stocky blue-suited astronaut, legs slightly apart and hands on his hips, just stared at the two white-suited, alien-looking astronauts in front of him.

Chapter 22

Commander Joot, Enceladus and two little, old people

After a few seconds, Roo stopped his incessant speech delivery when VIN told him that maybe the other guy couldn’t hear what was being said. VIN pointed at Roo, and then himself, showing the new person that the air was fit to breathe.

Slowly, the person put his hands up to his helmet and within seconds lifted it above his head, and breathed in the cold, new air. Roo’s clicking continued this time at twice the speed of sound. VIN noticed that the person, a man, looked much older than Roo. His brown, and sickly face indicated he was pretty old, maybe 100 years old, and long past retirement age rather than commander of a spaceship or base in the middle of nowhere; but that what cryonics did to everyone.

Roo’s chattering continued for several minutes, until the commander made one sound, pointed at the six-foot tall VIN Noble, and Roo shut up.

The commander clicked at a far slower rate and what he said seemed like questions or orders.

“Roo, tell your commander that we need to get out of here. Ask him if his suit is good for outer space transportation. Then we need to get out of here, like fast.”

It took Roo a few minutes before he could get a word in, and the commander seemed surprised at what Roo told him. He wanted to head for the control room and open the door but VIN barred his way. The short commander looked up into VIN’s eyes, as VIN stood in his way, and VIN told Roo to tell the commander to back away from opening the door, or they would all die. He told Roo to also tell the commander that there was no atmosphere behind the door.

That seemed to work, as the old man backed away from VIN.

“Commander Joot wants to know who you are, why you are so big, and why I am dressed in a very large spacesuit he has never seen before,” Roo translated.

“Tell him, he has been asleep for 7,000 years, I rescued you, we are the new species of humans on Earth, and that he must be helped on with one of our suits. I’m sure our suit will fit over his blue suit, but not his helmet,” VIN replied.

After several minutes of discussion, it seemed that Commander Joot did not want to wear the alien suit. It could be a holographic trick, Roo translated in English.

“Well, tell him we must leave,” ordered VIN. “I’m putting on your helmet, you help me on with mine, and when we open the door he is dead. Roo tell him exactly how I said it. Tell him about your father.”

Again Roo clicked at faster than the speed of sound, this time only for two minutes. There was silence, as the man thought about what this young member of his tribe told him. It seemed that he was more fascinated that this young man, who wasn’t even old enough to be a commander knew the language of this tall white alien standing next to him. From the commander’s mouth more questions came out. Roo answered them.

VIN knew little of what was being said, it was spoken too fast. Commander Joot stopped in mid-sentence when VIN clicked and slowly asked him in his own language to allow them to help him on with his suit. For several seconds the man looked at VIN, suddenly realizing that this alien-looking beast could speak his language. VIN just bowed and smiled.

From then on it was as if VIN had pressed the Easy Button. Roo undid the suit expertly, helped the commander on with the oversized legs and then boots. The poor man’s feet were only about a size six or so and would be lost in the size 10 boots. The legs were too long, but that didn’t matter. VIN made sure that the backpack was operating and that it was ready when Roo turned the commander around and VIN helped him on with the back while Roo held the front. Then the attachments were connected and the helmet screwed on. The gloves were screwed on last and then the two men again helped each other checking their helmets.

“Roo, speak to your friend,” said VIN. “Tell him we have two-way communications. Scotty, on America One, we will be ready to be beamed aboard in twenty minutes. I will head up through the shaft first, our new guest second, and Roo third. Please don’t acknowledge this. I don’t want to freak the guy out until we are through the shaft.” There was no response but a double click of a mike from the other end.

They had only an hour left when the three were ready to exit the room. VIN piled the empty tanks in one heap so that Fritz and Vitalily could retrieve them once he had the commander aboard one of the ships.

For the last time he checked all readouts from the three suits before he showed the mirror to the door opener, and the bubble of air gushed out of the room with visible force when it opened. The one room of air turned into millions of bubbles of air moving around at speed in all directions, completely lost and each would hang around inside the caverns.

With the Commander between them, VIN and Roo helped the man into the control room. The hologram was still showing, although it was difficult to see through it clearly with all the bubbles. The three astronauts saw the two ships waiting for them and Roo told the commander that the shield was in place, but there was no atmosphere until they reached the spaceships. The commander nodded that he understood.

Slowly and carefully they helped the astronaut through the shaft. He was small and fit through more easily than VIN. Commander Joot hesitated a little when he was helped aboard the mining craft with Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt flying. VIN thought that seeing Michael’s face, which was slightly darker than the commander’s, and the friendly smile of Allen Saunders, would be a better introduction to the new world order than Jonesy, even at his best. Roo entered first and then VIN helped the commander through the docking port.

He only had twenty minutes of time left, and decided to head straight into SB-III. Jonesy’s not so friendly face would be slightly better than running out of air. Once VIN was safe, Ryan ordered Allen off the planet. Jonesy was to wait for Vitalily and Fritz to collect the black box, anything else they could find, the tanks, the spent spacesuits and any cords left behind.

An hour later, SB-III left the surface of Titan and Jonesy worked hard to miss the tornadoes and clouds on the way through the atmosphere, happily telling everyone that this moon never needed to be visited again.

With Roo and Tow on each side, a fresher looking Commander Joot entered the Bridge 24 hours later. He had been checked over by both doctors, just as Roo and Tow were when they were found. The commander was still very weak, needed a lot of liquids for the first twenty-four hours, and was introduced to VIN by Roo when VIN had entered a few hours after his own arrival in the hospital to get his badly frostbitten fingers bandaged, as did Roo.

The commander did not want to believe that he had been asleep for 7,000 years. Martha estimated that it was more like 6,700 years, but a few hundred years didn’t matter one way or the other. When Tow told him that their old home was now nothing but desert, and a map and pictures were produced by several members of the crew, he began to realize that he had in fact slept far longer than he had ever dreamed of, so to speak. Then, Commander Joot was angry at Roo, asking why he and his mother had taken so long to rescue him.

He was saddened at the news that Commander Put didn’t make it; something in his cryonic cylinder didn’t work.

What made him happy was to see America One surrounded by a shield. Still wary of his surroundings, he was very reticent since boarding the mother ship, speaking only to Roo on the flight up, and then to Tow, several hours before the meeting. On Ryan’s orders Roo stayed constantly by his side.

“Good morning, all,” Ryan began to get the meeting started. He started with the usual pleasantries in English, and then used the language Tow taught him to greet the commander. Joot was extremely surprised by the greeting, and then Roo introduced everybody in the Bridge to the commander, who was able to walk, weakly, but independently again.

He was introduced to Ryan, Captain Pete, Suzi, VIN, Martha, Michael Pitt, and Petra, then to Fritz, Igor and Boris as they walked in. His first question using Roo as the interpreter was to ask what the humans ate to get so tall. Martha and the others laughed at the statement, and told Roo that it was the genealogical difference of 10,000 years and a slightly different Homo species that was standing in front of him. His second question was why the spaceship was so large and how many people were aboard. He then explained that their space craft were smaller than the smaller mining craft he had seen out of the window, and that they could only fly with 25 small passengers and two crew, or supplies, not both.

Ryan asked him why his people had moved to Enceladus, and explained that they were about to leave Titan’s orbit to travel to the white moon, which would take 14 days. Ryan had already learned that Roo’s days were also around 24 hours, as the days and nights in the Sahara region had been just north of the Tropic of Cancer, and much the same length of time throughout the year. What both Roo and Tow didn’t know was the exact position of their base in Africa. It seemed that only those who obtained the rank of Commander knew where the tribe’s original home was.

The commander easily pointed to the exact location when he was shown a map of the Sahara desert. He pointed to a dark round shape in the south eastern corner of Libya, and through Roo said their home was called “Fot Doot”. He explained through Roo, and to Martha, Petra and Fritz who were studying the map, that their home looked like the snout of a pig. In English, their African home base got the name “Pig’s Snout”; that is what it looked like on a satellite map at 2,000 feet altitude and it was in the middle of a dried up lake inside a massive high altitude crater.

“Pig’s Snout?” repeated Ryan, thinking aloud.

“Well, its 140 miles east of a small town, Al Bakki, in Libya, and about 280 miles west of Al Jawf, also in Libya. It is in the middle of absolutely nowhere,” Captain Pete related, sitting at one of the computer terminals.

“The area the commander identified as their base does look like the snout of a pig,” added Martha looking at another screen. She beckoned the commander over and he became excited, pointing at the left “nostril” or visible hole in what looked like a pig’s snout.

“That is where our home is, and it should still be active with people,” translated Roo listening to the rapid clicks of the older man.

“Now that would be a worthy find; a totally unknown human civilization still living on Earth,” Martha Von Zimmer said excitedly.

“Ja!” added Petra Bloem just as excited.

“But they couldn’t be living above ground. There’s nothing there,” observed VIN.

“No soil or water to grow food?” asked Suzi.

Roo translated the questions for the commander, who replied that the tribe must have moved underground with the loss of vegetation. There had been well over 1,000 people when he left. Roo confirmed his recollection, remembering many people there when he, Tow and his father left Earth for the last time, at least 150 years after Commander Joot had. Roo asked his mother, and after several minutes of discussion between the three, Roo told the others that he and Tow knew that a plague of some sort hit their people a few decades after Commander Joot left. Tow remembered only a few hundred people, not a thousand, when they left to connect with DX2017, and once they and 24 of the tribe had joined others on the orbiting planet, the craft returned to Earth. Then there were even fewer remaining.

This meeting was one of the most exciting aboard ship. The possibility of finding a lost civilization on Enceladus and now on Earth excited Ryan Richmond. This was as exciting as finding a new life form out in the universe. Ryan had dreamed this since he could remember: the discovery of something totally new.

Commander Joot was still weak and the doctors wanted him to return to sick bay to continue strengthening his body. The meeting resumed 24 hours later, once again on the Bridge.

It was Igor’s turn to question the commander, questions about the electronics of the systems which he still could not unravel. Unfortunately, Commander Joot didn’t know how the shields worked either, only how to operate them; it wasn’t his department. He told Igor that only the people on Earth knew how they worked.

Igor produced the broken black box for the commander. After looking at it for several seconds, he asked through Roo where they found it. Using Roo to interpret he explained to Igor that without the correct repair instruments it was impossible to repair the box and, they would only find the tools on DX2017 or back on Earth.

As the commander recovered his strength, America One neared the next moon, a tiny one.

“I hope we don’t need air to open this base,” Ryan commented to the crew at the flight briefing; the ship had just entered a 200-mile orbit around the small white moon. They had only minimal reserves of water available to produce more air. Many of the supplies found on the other moons had been used up and they would have to wait until Enceladus was reached to replenish the water supply.

Enceladus still glowed a faint dirty white in the vastly depleted sun’s rays. From their location in the solar system, the sun was only twice the size as the brightest star but still created dull shadows. The side always facing Saturn and her rings was three times brighter.

On the second day of orbiting excitement flowed through the personnel on the Bridge; a blue shield was sighted on the moon’s surface through the telescope. Commander Joot was invited to look through the telescope and amazed all present when, again through Roo, he explained that he had already been in communication with one of the people on the planet. Even Roo, who didn’t have such mature experience with telepathy, was surprised when his mother told the meeting that she too had been in contact with two of the excited tribe members on Enceladus.

Commander Joot related that there were 26 of his kind on the white moon; 24 were asleep, two were awake on guard. He also told the group that there was plenty of water, several stockpiles of what they needed, including many of the metals as well as Rare Earth metals they had collected over the centuries, and that their spaceship was in need of repair. The commander explained that their spaceships could only travel up to two months at a time, and a mechanical breakdown was the reason they hadn’t tied in with DX2017’s orbits every fifth decade. Ryan realized that the two month range on the ship meant that the people here could never return to Mars, and the crew on Mars could never have returned to Earth; the shortest flight to Earth was at least four months.

Captain Pete calculated that DX2017, which they hoped carried the needed parts, would be within three million miles of Saturn and Enceladus in about 15 months. Commander Joot was overjoyed at the information. With what he already knew about the mechanical problem, it would only take a few weeks to rectify the problem, and the needed parts were stored in the flight chamber on the little round transport planet, not in any of the rooms VIN and friends managed to open. He also explained that only Roo’s father, a commander, would have known about the third cavern; it held a complete supply ship in case of emergency and was separated from the living base, by several hundred yards.

Commander Joot, Tow and Roo were stunned and saddened when Martha and Petra showed them the array of jewelry found in the gold boxes at the end of each bed on Mars. Up to now these valuable brooches had been forgotten in the excitement. Commander Joot confirmed that the two scientists were correct in discerning that the jewelry signified rank. The only rank not there was “Commander of the Tribe”, or “Ruler” a diamond spaceship that, if it wasn’t on Mars, was still on Earth with its owner.

The beautiful eagle was handed to Tow, as it belonged to her late husband, and then Ryan asked that everything collected in all the bases be turned over to the three visitors. The items did not belong to his ship and crew.

VIN, who had attended all meetings, was dismayed that in his endeavors to open every room it didn’t occur to him that there would be third chamber, a flight control center or space port, on Mars, DX2017 and on all of the moons they visited. He was even more perplexed when he was told from Roo’s translation that there was an underground corridor that actually connected the two control systems. Again, only commanders knew how to get to these systems, and Commander Put had not told his son of the ship on DX2017 before his death.

Ryan asked the commander to ask the base what they needed. Their only request was for medical supplies; three of their cryonic chambers displayed red handles instead of the usual blue, or sometimes green, and the two members of the tribe who were guards were too old help the occupants when the cabinets opened. Ryan and the rest of his crew were astonished to learn that the two awake members on Enceladus had been on guard for close to 200 years.

Twenty-four hours later SB-III left America One for its first flight to the moon. Jonesy, Allen Saunders, VIN and Commander Joot were on the flight deck. Traveling in the forward compartment inside the crew cabin, were Roo, Tow, Igor, Fritz, Boris, Vitalily, Martha, Petra, and the two doctors, with as much equipment and supplies they thought they might need. The rear cargo bay was stuffed with as many empty canisters as they could fit; they wanted to return with as much water as possible to begin supplying the nearly dry ship.

From a 200 mile altitude it would take five orbits and twelve hours to get to the shield, which could be seen with the naked eye from the flight deck on the fourth pass.

Twelve hours earlier Ryan scheduled a meeting with the two astronauts, VIN, Igor, Boris, Fritz, Vitalily and Captain Pete.

“I know it’s stupid and disingenuous to meet these people with weapons, but I think old habits of distrust and protection die hard in us Homo sapiens,” he said. “Mr. Noble, you are in charge of security. Stay close to the commander. Carry one of the Plasma Tasers. Mr. Warner, you carry the other, and Mr. Saunders, you are welcome to belt up with your .44 Magnum. If these people are what we think they are, then they won’t know what a weapon is, and don’t tell them. If there is a problem, Mr. Noble, handle it as gently as you can.” VIN nodded.

“Other than reviving the cryonic occupants and the doctors tending to them, I will dispatch two pilots in SB-II two hours after you depart if patients need to be lifted up here. I would prefer to tend to any wounded down there and the doctors are taking down the necessary equipment to do so. It seems that there are causalities already, with the red handles on three of the cryonic cabinets. Be alert. The doctors will check their inner atmosphere for any airborne diseases, Vitalily will do the same, and Mr. Noble will be everyone’s backup. Now let us get to landing on the moon itself.

“As you have already noticed, this moon is extremely small, seven times smaller than Earth’s, but five times bigger than DX2017, and about 300 miles across, which means very low gravity. Remember astronauts, DX2017 had a powerful magnetic gravity which this moon does not have; expect gravity to be around 11 percent of Earth’s. Captain Pete believes that the gravity is about what you encountered on Titan. We haven’t done as much research on Enceladus as we have done on the other moons we were expecting to visit, but it does have an atmosphere. The 2007 Cassini flybys of Enceladus, revealed that it has a significant atmosphere compared to the other moons of Saturn, besides Titan. The source of the atmosphere may be volcanos, geysers, or gases escaping from the surface or the interior like we observed on Jupiter’s moons. The atmosphere of Enceladus is composed of 91 percent water vapor, 4 percent nitrogen, 3.2 percent carbon dioxide, and 1.7 percent methane. It should be totally safe to fly in but, Mr. Jones, heavily reduced forward speeds around Mach I will be important to compensate for possible drag from the thick water vapor. Captain Pete, your report on Enceladus, please.”

“Visual confirmation of water venting from the surface, like on the two Jupiter moons we visited, came in November 2005 from NASA images of permanent geyser-like jets of icy particles rising from the moon’s South Polar Region,” began Captain Pete looking at freshly organized notes. “So, astronauts, be prepared for more sudden geysers, perhaps as high as 50 miles above the surface. Information so far shows only permanent water jets which have floated off into orbit; scientists now believe that the outer ring of Saturn, the E-ring, was formed from this vapor. I don’t want any craft close to the south pole of Enceladus until we have tested the drag from the 91 percent water vapor. Other than that, your approaches to Commander Joot’s base on Enceladus should be as easy as Mars. Boris you have some facts as well, I believe?”

“Thank you, Captain Pete. Additional observations were acquired during a flyby on March 12, 2008. Data from this flyby revealed additional chemicals in the South Pole plume, including simple and complex hydrocarbons such as propane, ethane, and also acetylene; this means that the composition of Enceladus’ plumes is similar to that seen behind most comets. This finding further raises the potential for life beneath the surface of Enceladus. In July 2009 it was announced that ammonia had been discovered during flybys. Last, Cassini observed the presence of liquid water under the crust, which implies that there is an internal heat source. It could be a combination of radioactive decay and tidal heating, important for saving all energy bills down there. That ends my short report.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Astronauts, I believe we are subject to a greater threat from a trap, or something going wrong inside the base, than from the atmosphere of the moon itself, so I’m ordering that all personnel wear complete space suits until further notice,” added Ryan to end the meeting.

As SB-III reached the last orbit, about 40 miles above the surface, Jonesy could feel a change in the shuttle’s flight, as though the craft was being dragged forward by the atmosphere; he kept the speed down to 700 miles an hour, as ordered. As they descended, he watched as the speed dropped by several miles an hour for every mile they descended. The ride was smooth though, and the drag helped him decrease forward speed to the final twenty minutes of flight.

At less than 20 miles an hour forward speed, his thrusters on hover, he approached the blue shield. He could talk to Roo in the back, who informed him that Joot had telepathically communicated that their arrival was expected, and there was a complete atmosphere inside the shield ahead of them. His English with regard to numbers wasn’t that good yet, so he couldn’t tell the humans aboard what the temperature was. He did say that they could survive easily in it, thinking back to his and VIN’s frostbitten fingers.

Both Roo and VIN were now back in action, their fingers healed. They had been in the hospital for a couple of days during which time Doctor Rogers kept their hands well-oiled and moist to promote healing.

There was no movement from inside as Jonesy slowly penetrated the shield wall. Jonesy couldn’t see much inside the shield and on the surface, but it looked like there was soil and he thought he could see beds. He did his best to park causing the least amount of disturbance and brought his thrusters down to idle.

VIN was already in the docking port and the outside readouts showed an atmosphere rich with the right gases, slightly heavy with oxygen and helium, and a temperature of 67 degrees Fahrenheit. VIN exited and Allen Saunders helped Commander Joot, without a helmet, into the port.

Twenty minutes later both men were on the ground, the rear cockpit door to the cabin was open and Roo, also not helmeted, was about to exit the docking port in front of Vitalily and the two doctors. Fritz, Martha and Petra would be next. Even though there was oxygen and it was warm, Ryan his crew all followed orders and wore full spacesuits. Still, there were no people to welcome them onto the white moon.

Roo explained to VIN that he had been told by one of the two people awake in the underground base that they were too old to climb up the shaft; they had not left their underground base for many years.

VIN and Joot went to the shaft. It was closed, and it took Commander Joot a second to open it. Dressed in the ungainly space suit, teenager size, he descended first; rungs were already installed in the side of the vertical tunnel. Roo went down next, while VIN waited for the doctors and Vitalily to join him. When they were all together, VIN went first, then Doctor Nancy, Dr. Rogers and finally Vitalily with a large doctor’s bag.

The two tunnels leading off in the two opposite directions were exactly where VIN expected them to be. The tunnels were lit and, as anticipated, his height required him to walk stooped over inside the forward tunnel.

“Roo, where are you?” VIN asked seeing nobody.

“In forward control room with Commander Joot. Our two people are very old and scared. I am talking to our scared people.”

“Mr. Noble, crew, the commander can do as he pleases, but you are all to stay suited up,” Ryan ordered from America One.

“Roger that,” replied VIN helping the pretty doctor down into the tunnel. Doctor Rogers joined them and then the larger Vitalily and bag came into sight. Once he was helped onto the tunnel floor, the four proceeded forward, and then around the corner.

The forward cavern was exactly the same as the others, except that all the doors were open in this one. VIN walked towards the room that would lead towards the command center and caught up with Roo and Joot. The commander was tending to two very old blue-suited tribesmen in the doorway to the control room. VIN immediately noticed that the room to the power room was closed and also the door to the cryonic chamber. Joot and Roo, and the two old men were excitedly clicking to each other. VIN could hear the clicks of communication in his head, hundreds of them in rapid succession, just like rapid machine gun fire.

The two old men stared at the newcomers, and they seemed to relax slightly. They had been warned that four very tall Homo sapiens were coming.

“You need to take off your helmet,” stated Roo telepathically. “The air is totally safe in here VIN, the air is good and clean, and it won’t hurt your fingers.”

“Ryan, permission to remove my helmet. I need a wider view for our protection. Over,” VIN communicated as he walked towards his friend.

“Negative,” was the reply. “I want you to be in there a little longer before I allow the first helmet removal. VIN let Roo breathe in the cavern’s air for at least 15 minutes, and then you alone may take off your helmet. The next group of four is exiting SB-III and I want Mr. Warner and Mr. Saunders in there with Vitalily before you remove your helmet.”

This was the first time Ryan was being extra careful, and VIN knew that at worst, it could be a trap. He was 99 percent sure it wasn’t, and Tow had been ordered to stay in the shuttle with Jonesy, in case it was.

VIN watched as Roo looked up at him questioning why he couldn’t help VIN off with his helmet. VIN mentally told him that he would take it off very soon, and Roo nodded.

The two old men were calmer at seeing two of their own people. They seemed to know Commander Joot, but not Roo, who was at least a century younger, or more, than they.

“Roo, ask Joot about the cryonic chamber,” thought VIN and seemed to get an acknowledgement thought from Doctor Nancy. Roo heard him and the three old men headed for the control console. VIN knew what they would do next. Joot turned over the console to the buttons hidden underneath, and immediately the room began to vibrate and shake under VIN’s feet. He remembered the vibration, the same vibration when Commander Joot had been roused from sleep. That was one, one-minute vibration. This time the vibrations started and stopped for ten minutes, until they stopped for a longer period.

“I think people are beginning to wake up,” stated VIN quickly over the intercom “but the vibrations suddenly stopped. Ryan, crew, I think when the computer, or whatever is operating the system, reached one of the red handled doors the sequence stopped. Ryan, I need to talk to Roo and Joot. Permission for me to remove my helmet? Both Roo and the commander seem fine and are puzzled about the stoppage; they don’t understand what is happening. I think a red chamber is screwing up the system and both doctors need to be ready when the door opens in twelve hours, and our suits can only last six. Over.”

“Roger, Mr. Noble, test the air. Breathe it for five minutes. Then allow the doctors to remove their helmets. Mr. Saunders, it is going to be a long wait, you and Vitalily head back to the shuttle once everybody seems happy, and not in a provocative attitude. Mr. Noble, when the doctors are attending to the two older people, look around.”

VIN was helped off with his helmet by Roo, who was happy that he could help. Once his helmet was off, the two older tribesmen, immediately looked shocked at the six-foot monster’s white face and it took Roo a minute or so to calm them down. VIN felt dizzy from the higher than usual amount of oxygen in the air; Roo had felt the same in the lessor oxygen air of America One for the first few days. VIN tried hard to smile as sweetly as he could at the two older men, who now looked well over 100 years old without his helmet obscuring his view. Joot was telling them something, and the two old men, their faces caked with age, and their bodies wracked and bent, slowly relaxed, but didn’t take their eyes off the giant who towered over them by two feet.

“Glad you can’t see my lower half,” VIN thought as he smiled at them sweetly. Suddenly clicks went off in every direction. Crap! He forgot that they could “hear” him.

VIN breathed the oxygen rich air as ordered for five minutes, then allowed the doctors to remove their helmets. Allen and Vitalily disappeared to return a few minutes later with two more bags of medical supplies which they left at the feet of Martha, Fritz and Petra, who had just arrived, Allen saluted VIN to tell him he and Vitalily were leaving and they headed back down the tunnel. Again, clicks went off like machine gun fire and VIN turned to see why. The two old men were looking at Nancy’s blond hair as it fell out of her helmet.

“They are looking at you,” said VIN.

“So do all the old, horny men, you and Captain Pete included, Mr. Noble,” laughed Nancy helping Doctor Rogers off with his helmet. Roo spoke to the men, and VIN could hear his name mentioned as well as the names of the two doctors.

“Tell your friends that they are medical doctors,” VIN said to Roo.

“Already did,” was the reply.

“Tell them that the doctors want to check them over, like they did you and Commander Joot,” VIN continued.

“I already did,” Roo replied smiling.

“What did they say?” VIN asked.

“The two men asked if they had to be checked all over,” smiled Roo.

“I understand what you mean,” laughed VIN back remembering the checkup the pretty doctor had given him years ago in the International Space Station.

It would be nearly twelve hours before the doors would open to allow the first of the moon’s crewmembers to exit, and Commander Joot could then enter to see what had halted the system.

With the doctors walking over to the two wiry old men to check them over, and Commander Joot and Roo laughing at the men’s embarrassment at the monster white doctors about to attack them, VIN went back down the tunnel to check the rear cavern.

Fritz followed him, and they checked all the open doors to find nothing but dried food, dozens of urns of water and tons of other supplies. They found nothing of interest, and Fritz relayed the information up to Ryan who after a few new orders, allowed VIN to remove Fritz’s helmet.

Ryan ordered them to reattach each other’s helmet every hour to file a report, or he would send in the cavalry: Jonesy, Allen and Vitalily.

The lights were on, the doors open and Fritz and VIN returned to question Commander Joot; from what source did these bases obtain their power? The answer would surprise the whole of Ryan’s crew, and the answers were already down on Earth.

Chapter 23

Secrets revealed, back to Mars

Twelve hours after the first vibrations rocked the floor, the door to the cryonic chamber opened and five small figures stumbled out into the arms of the waiting group. Each wore the regulation blue suit and helmet. Three were small, really small. VIN thought they looked like children as they were less than three feet tall. One was as short as his own son Mars, who was close to six years old.

VIN and Fritz had already carried beds into the room from the dormitories above the storage rooms. There was just enough space for 12 beds outside the cryonic room and each person was laid down on a bed; IVs had already been attached to poles next to each bed.

While Roo, Tow and Joot detached their helmets, and the two doctors prepared IV liquid and food to be piped into the frightened little people, VIN pulled Fritz into the cryonic room to assist any others out. VIN was surprised to see double the number of cabinets as inside the other bases. It looked like this room had the equipment of two bases put together, two walls of 12 cabinets each. It was crammed but only the cabinets on one wall had opened.

There were still two small people trying to climb out, too weak to get themselves out of the cabinets, and VIN and Fritz each lifted one and carried him directly to Dr. Nancy.

They returned and found a larger crewmember in one of the half opened cabinets. VIN looked into the helmet’s visor and saw a very dead and decayed face. This semi-open cabinet hadn’t worked as well as the rest, even though its handle blinked green and then blue. Then he grabbed the handle to the nearest of the three still closed cabinets with red handles and pulled. It opened easily showing a body in much the same condition as the last person. Roo came in to join them and, seeing two members of his tribe dead, began a long moaning whine.

VIN grabbed the next red handle and the suit holding a short two-foot tall body looked the same. So did the small body in the third and last red-handled cabinet.

As VIN had opened the third red-handled door, the vibrations and rumbling began under his feet again, and halted Roo’s horrible noise.

“What’s wrong?” asked Dr. Nancy coming in to see what the noise was about.

“So far four didn’t make it. Their sleep system isn’t perfect, but the others in here still have a chance, and the vibrations we are feeling have started their twelve-hour defrosting cycles,” VIN replied.

“Looks like we still have 12 people to go,” Fritz added.

Nancy returned to tend her patients. She had her helmet screwed back on to ask SB-II,I still outside, to send in more bags of supplies, and that Suzi and Nurse Rogers would be needed to help tend the possible 20 patients.

Maggie flew the second shuttle in as SB-III transported two of the weaker patients and Dr. Rogers to America One; they needed intensive care but were stable and Jonesy got them back to America One as fast as he could. The two patients were the ones VIN and Fritz carried out and they were in pretty bad condition.

As Maggie landed, the cabinets to the second group began to pop open. VIN was amazed by the technology that secured these cabinets. They popped open like corks out of a champagne bottle.

The occupants of these cabinets were primarily small, more children than adults; eight were less than three feet tall. The last one, an adult, was still. VIN and Roo looked through the visor and Roo began to howl again, an expression of mourning that sounded more like a wolf than a human. He tried to console Roo, who took the deaths of his people very hard. His mother and Commander Joot were too busy tending to the living to come into the room.

It was over. Five didn’t survive, but 19 did. VIN was skeptical about the prospects of cryonic sleep, the odds to survive it did not seem very good. According to the two old guards, this group had only been asleep for 180 years. Roo, Tow and Commander Joot were really lucky to have survived centuries of sleep.

Forty-eight hours later, all 19 of the surviving tribe members were in the hospital on America One. They had all been stabilized in the cavern, then carefully carried up through the shaft to the shield and put aboard the shuttles. With the atmosphere already in the shield, nobody needed spacesuits. Ryan finally allowed all of his crew to remove their suits after VIN checked the whole base and did not find a single weapon.

Igor and Boris went down on a shuttle to take a tour of the base power system with Commander Joot. After they were shown the system in detail, with Roo doing his best to translate the scientific data from Matt to English, the two specialists were to report back to Ryan.

Boris and Igor left the moon 36 hours later in SB-III with the forward cargo bay crew cabin occupied by Commander Joot, Tow, Roo, the two old men, VIN and Fritz; no one was left on the moon. The rear cargo hold was filled with canisters of badly needed pure water.

The two old men marveled at the size of the “Tall People’s” (as they now called the white people) space ship. Michael Pitt and his son’s darker complexions provoked hours of discussion, clicking away in rapid Matt.

By now everybody was friends; even VIN, head of security, seemed relaxed around this always happy group of people. They did suffer several hours of anguish at seeing their deceased members, until VIN and Fritz took the bodies into one of the dormitories, closed the door, and Commander Joot showed them how to turn off the heat in the room.

“Cold fusion” was the topic of discussion at the next meeting for the astronauts and security on the Bridge.

Ryan asked Igor and Boris, two of the most experienced crewmembers in the field of energy, to give the crew a short description of what the bases used as a power source.

“Boris, your short report on the power system you two discovered inside their main power room and the energy source, please.”

“Thank you, Ryan. Mr. Jones, before you fall asleep and for the rest of you, I will keep my simple report down to one, maybe two minutes only. That should keep our chief astronaut from rolling his eyes. Cold fusion on Earth was a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature, compared with temperatures in the thousands of degrees for fission, or the millions of degrees that are produced through “hot” fusion. Before we left, and even before Ryan set up the airfield in Nevada in 2011, two scientists from the University of Bologna, claimed to have successfully demonstrated commercially viable cold fusion in a device called an Energy Catalyzer, or exactly what we saw powering the alien base on Enceladus. Other inventors and start-up companies made claims of inventing similar machines in 2012, however commercial devices never made it out of the labs. The Energy Catalyzer invented in Italy, also called an E-Cat, was a purported cold fusion or low energy nuclear reaction heat source, and was supposed to work by infusing heated hydrogen into nickel, both common elements, transmuting it into copper and producing heat. According to NASA, in a paper produced a year or two before we left, one percent of the world’s nickel production could meet the world’s energy needs, at a quarter of the cost of coal. NASA also mentioned in a paper released a year before we left, the lattice could be formed of carbon instead of nickel, with the nuclear reaction turning carbon into nitrogen.

“Cold fusion gained attention after reports in 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, then two of the world’s leading electrochemists, that their apparatus had produced excess heat of a magnitude that would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear reactions. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium with, on, or next to the surface of a palladium electrode. The reason I mention palladium, is that it is one of the most important metals needed on Earth, and I believe that in the storerooms of the alien base on Enceladus, we have just found 10 tons of the rare metal. I will now let my partner in crime, Igor, elaborate.”

“Spasibo, Comrade Boris,” smiled Igor bowing.

“Damn Russian,” Jonesy joked, always ready to add his two cents worth to the conversation.

“Spasibo to you too, Mr. Jones,” smiled Boris. Along with VIN and Fritz, he was one of Jonesy’s best friends. “Americans never cease to amaze me. Anyway NASA was developing cheap, clean, low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology that could eventually see cars, planes, and homes powered by small, safe nuclear reactors. When we think of nuclear power, as we have with our reactor and nuclear batteries aboard ship, there are usually just two options: fission and hot fusion. Fission is what we are using right now. Plutonium-238 creates huge amounts of heat by splitting larger atoms into smaller atoms, and is what currently powers every nuclear reactor on Earth. Hot fusion is the opposite, creating vast amounts of energy by fusing atoms of hydrogen together. When we left Earth a decade ago, NASA and most of the “cold” fusion scientists working on separate projects around the world were many years away from large-scale, commercial fusion reactors. Cold fusion is entirely different. The simpler name for cold fusion is “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction”, or LENR for short, as my colleague and fellow Russian, Professor Boris, so eloquently described. Cold fusion is absolutely nothing like either fission or hot fusion. Where fission and hot fusion are underpinned by strong nuclear force, LENR harnesses power from a weak nuclear force. Before we left Earth, NASA’s best effort involved a nickel lattice and hydrogen ions. Let me explain; the hydrogen ions are sucked into the nickel lattice, and then the lattice is oscillated at a very high frequency. This rapid high speed oscillation excites the nickel’s electrons, which are forced into the hydrogen ions or protons, forming slow-moving neutrons. The nickel immediately absorbs these neutrons, making it unstable. To regain its stability, the nickel strips a neutron of its electron so that it becomes a proton — a reaction that turns the nickel into copper and creates a lot of energy in the process, as much energy as fission or hot fusion if made to the same scale.

“To power a small-scale base like we saw on Enceladus, cold fusion is perfect for long-term guaranteed power that can be turned on or off at will. Before we left Earth, scientists were actually working on small cold fusion plants in independent laboratories. The reason for a higher content of helium gas on the base down there is that helium is one of the major byproducts when deuterium is used. Deuterium is found in two of the three energy reactions Boris and I have just mentioned, hot and cold fusion, and the reason I already knew that a working cold fusion plant could be the source of their power. Now that we have a cold fusion system made by Roo and his tribe, we can begin to rid ourselves of the more dangerous fission systems we use, i.e., plutonium-238 in a nuclear reactor, and replace it with a much safer cold fusion system by the time we find a new home to use it.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” continued Ryan. “Now, Frau Von Zimmer, Frau Bloem, and their team have a report on the stores available on the base down there. Commander Joot has asked me to take all of their people, as well as the spaceship they might have, and help them start over inside their base on Mars. I believe that it is a fantastic opportunity for our two tribes to begin to work and live together, and therefore we can empty their storage rooms of everything to take back with us. Commander Joot told me, through Roo of course, that we can have all of their supplies. I believe that their supplies will give us prime bargaining power down on Earth when we return. Mr. Warner said it is going to take us about 28 flights over several months to move all their stores to American One. When the transfer is completed we will be as full as when we left Earth five years ago. Ladies, your report please.”

“We do not have exact figures yet, but I was told by their crew through Tow that they have been collecting supplies for over 2,000 years, about the time they arrived here from Titan. Dr. Nancy will report on how they survived for so long, after I give you their stores report. That in itself is worth listening to. My report: osmium, 9 tons; samarium, just short of 2 tons; lithium, 12 tons; palladium, 10 tons; iridium, 6 tons; ruthenium, 15 tons; rhodium, 15 tons; platinum, 18 tons; silicon, 10 tons; pure aluminum, 3 tons; titanium, 19 tons; cobalt, 8 tons; copper, 13 tons; nickel, 12 tons; and gold, 12 tons. There are also numerous diamonds, dozens of urns of liquid ammonia, 3,500 gallons of pure water, several tons of frozen vegetables and 30 tons of top soil that is suspect. I don’t yet know if we will need to take the topsoil if we are returning to Earth. To return to Mars, we need minimum 25,000 gallons of water, and to Earth 5,000 gallons more. Finally, the water spewing out from the moon’s South Pole area, is good water, and is as salty as our oceans on Earth. They collected 4,000 gallons of this excellent water over 1,900 years ago, before their spacecraft malfunctioned. We can remove the salt of course. End of my report.”

“Dr. Nancy, if you please,” invited Ryan, nodding thanks to Martha.

“Dr. Rogers, Nurse Rogers and I still have enough supplies to return us all, including the extra Matts to Earth and beyond. I just love them. The medical staff and I just wish we were fluent and able to communicate on a higher level with these people.”

“I think you will be able to,” interrupted Captain Pete. “Including a schedule of six months to collect the stores, and the four years it will take to return to Mars, you will have more than enough time to learn their language.”

“Captain Pete, I’m sure we are also going to need a few months on DX2017 when she flies by a couple of million miles farther out from Saturn in seven months or so,” stated Ryan. “It appears that our odyssey is only now half complete.”

“It seems so,” added the pretty doctor happily. “I‘m having far too much fun for it to end. As you know these Homo floresiensis stayed alive through the use of cryonic chambers. What I have learned is what they have now learned through death; the body can only survive the cryonic system once. Three of the dead people tried to sleep twice, and died; one of the cabinets malfunctioned. In addition, somebody had to stay alive to make sure that the system was activated before they went to sleep. Roo and Tow told me that their species can live as long as 220 to 240 years, so about every 400 years, a new group of younger Homo floresiensis entered the 24 chambers, under the guard of two of the youngest males. For another 200 years, they lay frozen; the others died. Only during the last couple of rotations, did the system start to malfunction.

“When the two guards feared that they were reaching the end of their lives the crew were awakened, gained strength, and went about farming and growing produce as well as collecting metals. Of course they never gave up hope that somebody would find Commander Joot, who would lead them to their new home. When their spaceship broke down, they stopped gathering metals. In some areas outside the shield the ice is pure and unsalted, which they are happy to show us. They had developed space suits like ours which were stored in the third cavern, but one of their new commanders died during one of the sleep periods before he passed along that information. For the last three or four sleep periods, they did not venture outside the shield. In the period before they had proper spacesuits to venture outside, using their machines, like our spiders, to do the outside work.

“They lived and bred for two generations before the youngest and most knowledgeable of the crew, about half of the tribe, went back to sleep with two new young men to guard over them. They have been doing this for nearly 3,000 years, until we woke them from their fifth hibernation. Thank you.”

Even Jonesy was wide awake for the doctor’s short report. The Bridge was absolutely filled with the astronauts, electrical scientists, the two doctors and the ship’s officers. Everybody was astonished at what these little brown guys had done to survive, and the second to last piece of the Homo floresiensis puzzle was in place. The last piece was still to be found back on Earth.

In-depth discussions took place after the reports, and everyone began to comprehend the reasons they had disappeared. The puzzle began with DX2017 and the crew. Roo and Tow didn’t understand why they went into hibernation, probably without guards. They could only conjecture that an emergency had occurred and Commander Put determined the best course of action was for everyone to go into hibernation, expecting that the crew on a moon or a planet would save them.

Commander Joot explained that the planets normally waited for the spaceship from DX2017 to supply them, not the other way around, as they never knew what orbit the small blue planet was taking. With the crew asleep on DX2017, nobody on Mars was supplied, so they went to sleep. The same with the other moons. Only Commander Joot on Titan survived the extended sleep and was awakened when Ryan and his crew found him. Now the crew on Enceladus was safe, and Commander Joot, the leader, wanted to return to Mars, a planet considerably closer to Earth and the sun.

The only remaining question was why no other ships were launched from Earth to DX2017, where they would have found their supply system and bases in disarray.

For the next several months, a system to transport water and then fuel to the mother ship was organized. As soon as the newbies were fit and cleared by the doctors, they all participated in loading the stores in the caverns into canisters and unloading the canisters in the mother ship. The chemists worked 24/7 in their cylinders producing hydrogen fuel to get the three mining craft continuously fueled up. Each flight took 72 hours to descend, load up and then return.

In total there were ten active older members of the Matts, the new name given to them by Jonesy. Ryan explained to his people that they would be called Tall People, a term often used by the two elders, and also Roo and Tow, when describing the crew aboard America One. The Matts tried to identify the Tall People by their color, but there was too much variation. Some, like Michael Pitt and his son, were darker than even they were, so they dismissed that idea.

Finally, Commander Joot allowed VIN and several others to visit the secret cavern and view their spaceship. Seeing a new type of space craft was sure to be a grand moment. Without suits, Ryan, Igor, Boris, Maggie, Suzi, Commander Joot, Roo, Tow, VIN, Mars and Saturn Fritz climbed into the crew compartment of SB-III for the descent. The new Matts did not know anything about the second base, half a mile from where they had lived for thousands of years. The corridor had been shut and forgotten centuries earlier.

Commander Joot opened the door to the five-foot high horizontal shaft, which would take them over half a mile to the forgotten area. The Tall People struggled, bent over, to travel the long distance down the tunnel; Jonesy complained that on Mars, a height of seven feet should be mandatory for future buildings. He was getting too old to skulk around like a damn mole.

With the area lit from the plant previously inspected, they finally reached a large cavern well over 30 feet high; a small, sleek, silver space craft about the size of a small commuter jet was still on its legs in the middle of the cavern. The Tall People regarded the beautiful sharp nosed rocket with awe.

“Prettier than the Gulfstream,” commented Maggie.

“Looks like VTOL,” added VIN.

“Vertical takeoff and landing,” added Jonesy for Mars and Saturn.

“About two tons of cargo, maximum,” stated Ryan.

“Roo, ask your commander how many gallons it needs to takeoff,” asked Jonesy.

“About 100 of your gallons of what you call vodka, from here to your ship, and 500 gallons from Earth,” Roo replied a few seconds later.

“Does it have a blue shield?” VIN asked.

“Of course,” replied Roo. “Commander Joot told me to tell you that is why our spaceship uses so little fuel inside the atmosphere of the blue planet you call Earth.

“And weapons?” asked Jonesy not thinking.

“What are weapons?” asked Roo looking at the tall Jonesy, then at VIN for an answer. VIN just smiled back, not able to answer that one.

“Fueling this ship will get you on the wagon at last,” joked Maggie, elbowing her husband in the ribs.

“Daddy needs to stop drinking that horrible smelly stuff,” added Saturn, now nearly six. Her father said nothing. Maybe he had to give up something to fly this beautiful beast, and there was still beer and wine.

“Roo, ask Commander Joot if he can fly it,” asked Jonesy.

“He is the only one who can fly it,” replied Roo. “He needs to teach somebody how to help him. He needs more people to fly more machines, and he said that there is a second space ship on the little planet, and one on the red planet you call Mars. The same name of my best friend here,” he added ruffling Mars Noble’s long hair.

Both Mars and Saturn spent hours with Roo and Tow. They were still the best speakers of Matt on the ship other than the Matts themselves.

The small ship was totally dead, and Commander Joot walked over to a control console, pressed a few buttons, and the ship began to glow.

“The commander thinks that it will take several weeks before the ship has power to fly; he doesn’t think it is broken, just needs to power up and fresh fuel, and he would be grateful for 100 gallons of the liquid Mr. Jones drinks,” Roo said to Suzi, smiling.

“It will take eight weeks to make that amount, so tell him not to rush, Herr Roo,” smiled Suzi.

Without power they were unable to enter the craft. They left the ship to power up and Commander Joot said that he would return to check the ship when it had power and fuel.

Since many of the Matts were children, or at least under the age of 30, which was child age to them, they joined the other kids in daily lessons.

After Mars Noble and Saturn Jones, Fritz understood Matt as well as Roo understood English. Both men began to teach language class together, often disputing words in their different languages in front of the kids. Igor taught electronics, Martha and Petra taught astrophysics and astrobiology, and Suzi normal biology. Chemistry was also covered as were mechanics, propulsion engineering, computers and the solar system. Classes were organized by age, with about 10 students in each. Starting school at three, the kids were immediately immersed in a challenging and difficult curriculum; it was as tough as any high school, and later, university, for those over nine. They learned fast and hard.

Other than Mr. Rose and Fritz, there were only two single crew members among the Tall People and five single adults over 40 among the Matts. Among the children there were an equal number of Matts to Tall People, and luckily, the Matt children were predominately boys and the Tall People girls. Somebody in the solar system had worked hard to unite the two races.

It was a day of celebration when the first tots of vodka were again available to the crew because it meant there was also fuel available for Commander Joot’s ship.

A huge door in the roof of the cavern opened above the sixty-foot long craft, the inner atmosphere was released, and the commander, wearing a teen-size spacesuit, rotated the spacecraft to exit the base on Enceladus for the last time, closing the cavern behind them. Much of the pure alcohol fuel produced for the launch was made up in America One from the Matts own still, but with Suzi’s produce.

VIN was also suited up and watching the launch from the shield on Enceladus; he and three other crew members were loading Asterspace Three 800 yards away. He couldn’t believe that a door so large could slide open. It looked like something out of a James Bond movie when the small ship rose from beneath the surface of the planet.

Captain Pete, watching through his telescope half a mile away, described what was happening to VIN. VIN was right about the Bond dramatics. Pete told him that a 75-foot square slice of surface just disappeared underneath the adjacent ground like a sliding door, the craft exited, and then it closed. Any loose debris on the door’s surface had been displaced, so he could just see the outline of the cavern roof. He also told VIN that there was no way he could ever have seen the door on the surface. VIN and Commander Joot had actually searched for the roof door days before the launch, failing to find any clues that they were standing on a massive sliding door.

Jonesy, also suited up and squashed up tightly in the rear copilots seat, was surprised by how simple the spaceship was to fly. Like a commercial aircraft, it was all “fly by wire” and controlled by one side joystick on the right side of each seat. Although it was slow, and not very powerful compared to his shuttle, it slowly rose out of the moon’s atmosphere, and began orbiting to gain height to reach America One.

Even though Jonesy had the controls for a full two-hour orbit of the twelve hour flight, he still didn’t know how the craft flew. It had no auto-pilot, no weapons, few controls on the console in front of him, no heads-up display like he had on all Ryan’s craft, and it flew slow, very slow, more like an old vintage car. Jonesy thought it looked more beautiful than powerful.

It also didn’t have a docking port but Commander Joot deployed its shield before they left the moon’s surface and was able to stick the ship to the inside wall of America One’s shield. Hans the German had to retrieve both men by spacewalking to fetch them out of the ship’s cargo bay, as there was still no atmosphere inside the shield around the mother ship.

They always had shields with atmosphere to exit and enter when traveling, which is why the Matts didn’t have full spacesuits.

Ryan had learned that the shield and an atmosphere were always placed on each base before it was built, so that the builders in charge of their mining machines could work without suits.

Enceladus was totally empty a month after Joot’s ship was docked. The only remaining item was the black box that would keep the shield and atmosphere inside for as long as it had power. Commander Joot assumed that the shield would still be working for another 2,000 years at least. It had already worked perfectly for that amount of time. Igor expected the cold fusion plant down there, would last even longer.

They left the soil behind, as well as an ample supply of frozen food and 100 gallons of water in the event anybody returned. In addition, 50 gallons of fuel were left, much to Jonesy’s complaints, just in case. The life span of the fuel and food was unknown, but records were kept for future travelers.

For another two months, the crew worked on the area of the planet that had the water ice and filled every canister, twice over.

The Matts seemed happy aboard ship. They blended in well with the routines and didn’t seem unhappy to see Enceladus, their home for several generations, disappear behind the ship as it headed towards where DX2017 would be, just over 3 million miles away, and farther out in the solar system. The little blue planet was being turned by Saturn’s gravitational pull, and the two planets were about as close as they would be every fifty years, heading in the same direction. Captain Pete calculated that they would fly in formation for about six months, before the faster moving DX2017 turned inwards towards the sun, cut across Saturn’s orbital path, and began its journey back towards Earth and Mars.

Three months later and two months before Mars Noble’s sixth birthday, America One went into orbit around the familiar small blue-grey cannon ball. The surface of DX2017, or “Dook” as the Matts called it, wasn’t blue anymore but nearly black, due to the loss of sunlight. Also, the temperature on its surface had dropped 30 degrees to minus 197 degrees Fahrenheit.

The shield could be seen from the mother ship’s orbit, and it stood out brightly, a pin prick on the planet’s surface.

Commander Joot, Roo and Tow were thrilled to see their old supply ship. The commander had spent a lot of time with Ryan and Captain Pete on the Bridge, and was as fascinated about how America One was operated, as the two men were about how his systems worked.

The globes on the planets were directional beacons, and Jonesy explained that even without auto-pilot the Matt ship flew itself in outer space. Commander Joot had allowed the ship to head towards the beacon taken from Mars; he had repaired the globe after a few months of work and it was live on the Bridge of America One. Igor had tied the power delivery systems into the ship’s reactor.

VIN, Fritz, Roo and Commander Joot were the first to be transported down to their old home by Jonesy and Maggie. Saturn Jones, also nearly six, had entered Second Grade aboard ship, and would be under Suzi’s care while her astronaut parents were away.

They planet was the same as when they left, although it was cold and wintery inside the shield. The atmospheric temperature inside the shield had decreased to 46 degrees.

“Too cold to grow much,” relayed Suzi from above.

The atmosphere inside the docking port was still closed and separated the above and below ground atmospheres; temperature below ground was 61 degrees, cool, but not uncomfortable. In addition, the air cleaning systems below had rectified the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels; the atmosphere and pressure was high in oxygen, but still perfect for their arrival.

VIN opened the docking port to allow the warmer air out. They weren’t staying long, a week at most, but at least the shield could be warmed for its colder path through the solar system. Captain Pete wanted to set course for Mars, which was getting farther away by thousands of miles per day. Saturn and DX2017 were still heading away from the sun at a diminishing angle.

Commander Joot saw the damage VIN had done to get Roo and Tow out of the system and was still amazed that the two Tall People doctors had been able to revive them without the machines designed for the procedure. He turned the control console upside-down showing the cryonic controls, and VIN shrugged his shoulders, now knowing how to work the system.

“Remember VIN, we Matt People cannot use the sleep chambers since all of us have already been asleep, except the guards Dot and Sew, who we will send to sleep tomorrow. Only a new Matt generation can use them. But 12 of you Tall People can use the sleep chambers here in an emergency; Roo and I will be your guards whenever that happens.”

VIN nodded. The two old men who had stood guard for the others decided to go to sleep on DX2017 with two young guards of their own, a very high privilege for a young Matt, until the cannon ball arrived close to Mars in about eleven and a half years. The two old men expected to live another 20 years and wanted to enjoy retirement on Mars; they would save the four years it would take to get there on American One.

Two of the Matt boys, Fot and Kat, were being prepared by the group for the eleven-year guard duty; they would be equipped with sufficient supplies and Suzi spent the 48 hours before they departed to teach them crop production. They would also be left with their gold boxes, and enough knowledge to survive the short duration.

Joot opened the dimly lit passage to the flight cavern so he, VIN, Roo and Fritz, all fully suited up for protection, could do through to the other side which had little to no atmosphere. They managed to open the door, enter, and quickly close it before too much air escaped. Hunched over, VIN and Fritz and the two shorter Matts headed along the passage to see if the spaceship was operational.

The same alcohol was there, but there was only ten gallons of it and it was useless fuel.

“We should have brought Jonesy to sample this ancient stuff,” laughed VIN “but he didn’t want the backache from walking through the tunnel.”

“I still can’t understand… So many of you people drink our fuel,” replied Commander Joot, his English getting better every day. “I can understand why your Chief Astronaut Jones go crazy, and always has bad vibrations. We never drank the fuel, but what interests me, Astronaut Jones not drink the liquid fuel you use for your ships. Maybe this little fuel on planet cause for Commander Put’s problem. Maybe the start of all our problems. Maybe not enough fuel made on blue planet. Maybe why big Matt problem and death, no more fuel from Earth. We cannot make fuel in space. Fuel making equipment never used on white moon. Big problem!” Roo nodded at what his commander was saying and VIN began to see the whole picture.

“A little too cold to drink liquid hydrogen at minus 180 or so degrees below freezing, even out here in space,” laughed VIN.

“I’m sure a little too cold, even for Jonesy, but, he would try if there wasn’t anything else!” smiled Fritz.

The commander could fly this ship out this time; it was still powered up, and when they returned with 100 gallons of freshly made fuel a few days later, Jonesy, VIN and Fritz watched as the cavern roof opened sucking out the remaining atmosphere, the cold air blasted in, and the craft exited vertically and then towards the blue shield half a mile away, where Asterspace Three was being unloaded with fresh supplies for the two remaining Matts on guard duty.

The roof door closed above VIN’s head and he and Fritz walked the painful distance through the corridor to return to the first base.

America One’s accommodation units were pretty full with the visitors. However, with four of the Matts disembarking, there would be more room for the longest leg of the odyssey back to Mars, and finally mother Earth. Many wondered what was going on inside and above the atmosphere of their old home. Even the Matts wondered. Many of the Tall People began to ask themselves if they would want to stay when they reached the blue planet, home.

They were just over halfway through the odyssey, at their farthest distance from Earth, and they hadn’t heard from Earth for a couple of years. Captain Pete heard odd, unrecognizable chatter coming from the direction of Earth a few times, but it was intermittent and usually only lasted for several hours. Only one or two words were clearly understood. One three letter word, war, was heard a couple of times, but that didn’t surprise anyone aboard; it was one of the most commonly used three letter words on Earth.

The two old men were sent to sleep. The doctors and several others were in attendance at the freezing of the two, a more rapid two-hour process than the twelve-hour period it took to defrost the sleepers. The system worked perfectly. The planet’s cold fusion unit was up and running, the second Matt ship inside America’ One’s shield was somehow tied to the first one, and the crew prepared to leave DX2017’s orbit.

One day later than Captain Pete wanted, they finally saw the little planet disappear off the radar. The ship’s nose was facing directly towards a bright star called the sun and the four Matts and tons of supplies were left behind in the desolation of outer space.

Chapter 24

Mars

Halfway into the odyssey, the crew had developed specialized teams to keep the 400-ton life support system around them, America One, working. It didn’t really matter whether they were orbiting a moon, a planet, or travelling in a straight distance, life aboard had to be monitored every second.

Seven more children were delivered by the doctors, completely filling the family accommodations. Three marriages took place, the most significant of which was the first union between Matt and Tall People; a tall Fritz Warner and a diminutive Tow married the second year into the return journey. The seventh child—and sixteenth baby girl—joined the crew two years later when Tow delivered the first Homo floresiensis/sapiens baby. The birth was celebrated for days.

Kathy and Ryan had a second baby girl, Pluto Katherine, in the third year and five other couples had daughters in the fourth. There were no other Matt babies born on the flight to Mars.

Two of the young Matt men became Elders, the third highest rank in the Matt system and the most important day in the life of a young male. Roo was the first to be promoted by Commander Joot to Elder status, Elder Bon the second. Attainment of Elder status accorded the two young men the opportunity to choose wives and start families. A third, Elder Doo, had been in command of the base on Enceladus, and Elder Bon became his second in command.

Elder status also opened the way to possible Commander status, but only Elder Roo was interested in achieving this most difficult rank which would take ten years of concentrated study directly under Commander Joot.

Even though there were more females on board than males, none of the young Matt girls were ready for marriage which required that they be at least 35 years old, and the older generation was too old for the boys to marry. Of course, there were dozens of young Tall People girls, but the eldest was only 15, too young to be considered.

Out of respect for his new rank, Elder Roo was permitted to enter the Bridge alone. Until then, only Commander Joot and Tow had been given the privilege of walking onto the Bridge at any time.

Research and experiments into new sciences continued, often with the older more knowledgeable Matts assisting in their areas of expertise. However, only the highest ranked males received the advanced education necessary to understand how some of their systems worked, a rank held only by Commander Joot. Joot had promoted a very old and feeble temporary Commander Get to be in charge of the new base on Enceladus, but the man died within the first month.

Commander Joot enjoyed teaching, and Roo joined his daily two-hour class with Igor, Boris, Ryan, Martha, Petra, and the heads of the ship’s other departments. Igor was disappointed to learn how little the commander knew about the shields; he seemed to know as much as the commander did.

Everyone on board became fluent in English and Matt within the first year of travel. Many Tall People had difficulties with the numerous clicks used in Matt, and the Matts struggled with several sounds in English. Used daily, however, difficulties with a second language dissolve, and a few Matts, including Commander Joot and Elder Roo, began to learn German and Russian as well.

Four years, and 118 days after leaving DX2017, the crew on the Bridge saw the red planet of Mars appear on the radar screen 300,000 miles ahead of them. They were traveling at 60,000 miles an hour.

Ever cautious, when the ship entered the millions of miles of the asteroid belt, Ryan decreased speeds to less than 20,000 miles an hour. The slow progress added 100 days to the four-year journey.

The worst accident occurred when they were traveling through a particularly dense section of the asteroid belt; radar alerted those on the Bridge to a ten-mile wide asteroid cannoning into other asteroids a quarter of a million miles away.

It passed harmlessly behind America One two hours later, speeding out of range, but not before smashing into hundreds of smaller asteroids which in turn collided with others. Like balls on a pool table, there were so many asteroids careening out in different directions, that SB-II and SB-III were launched out of the cocoon of the blue shield around America One.

Both craft lowered their shields to uncover their frontal lasers and for several hours VIN and Jonesy in SB-III, and Fritz Warner, Allen Saunders and Michael Pitt in SB-II, blew up any asteroids larger than a basketball before they got within a hundred miles of the mother ship.

Over a hundred asteroids of different sizes were demolished or angled away with the lasers. One house-sized asteroid, which must have been made of materials similar to DX2017, was not affected by the laser barrage coming from both shuttles. Glancing off the shield of the mother ship, it went speeding off in a new direction, missing Jonesy by less than a hundred yards. Ryan couldn’t understand why two of his most powerful lasers didn’t change the direction of this smallish asteroid one degree. Afterwards, Boris told him the asteroid must have been pure metal, as the dozens of laser bursts did absolutely nothing. Commander Joot, who was copilot in SB-III, was dumbfounded at what these light beams could do, and then at what the shield did.

Captain Pete, Ryan and several others watched from the Bridge as the incoming asteroid became visible through the blue wall of the shield. A call to “Action Stations” resounded over the intercom several minutes before impact was certain. All the emergency doors at the ends of each cylinder were already sealed by the crew, the elevators stopped, and all personnel moved towards the central cubes for protection.

Observed through the telescope, the asteroid was approaching like a bowling ball at a tremendous rate of speed and video of the incoming rock was shot through the telescope before it glanced off the shield.

The shield didn’t break but, like a water or air bubble on Earth, it took the brunt of the blow by bending around the asteroid. The rock changed direction slightly, angled off the shield, and sped away towards SB-III.

Ryan and the crew on the Bridge watched as the wall of the shield deflected inwards and forcefully struck the top rear cylinder, which immediately bent nearly ninety degrees. The walls of the cylinder opened where it had been kinked and the crew saw thousands of small cartons of supplies float around the inside of the shield in every direction.

The shield wall rebounded, still vibrating and emitting a deep humming sound that was audible throughout the ship. It gradually regained its original oval shape.

“I see frozen chicken, rabbit, containers of frozen vegetables, canisters of water and tanks of liquid hydrogen from one of the emergency supply pods to be used for evacuation,” Captain Pete reported. “The broken cylinder is Cylinder 19, Astermine II’s emergency escape pod and one of the ship’s long-term storage units. No accommodation units, but valuable supplies are now floating out there. All spacewalk personnel not in build crew suit up immediately!”

“America One has passed the asteroid danger with minor damage,” Ryan announced over the intercom. “Cylinder corridors 1 and 3, mid-and upper levels can be taken off emergency status, and all the doors unsealed. Corridor 2, both upper and midlevels must be fully inspected for structural damage. The rear elevator on Corridor 2 will be kept sealed until the mechanics wearing full suits inspect the upper cylinders for damage or leaks. All mechanics, please suit up. Build crew, we need to gather debris and supplies floating inside the ship’s bubble before any damage occurs to the ship’s outer skin. Close down rear thrusters. Shuttles, stay out there until further notice,” ordered Ryan.

“Report, Jonesy in SB-III, it must have been close,” Captain Pete requested.

“Missed us by a few feet. It was quick, but zero damage here, Captain,” replied the lucky astronaut.

For the whole of the next day, and with at least one shuttle out on patrol at all times, several of the crew floated around inside the bubble collecting anything not tied down and sending it through the freed up docking port. From the Bridge it was like watching a computer game with spacesuited individuals springing off parts of the ship as if they were diving into a giant swimming pool to capture hundreds of cartons and sealed silicone bags of supplies that were gently bouncing off the shield walls.

That was the only problem they encountered going through the asteroid belt. It was up for debate if travelling through at a higher rate of speed might have been safer than slowing down and spending more time in the danger zone. Ryan was aligned with the latter, and believed that the incoming asteroid could have proved a danger inside, or outside the belt.

Weeks later, the densest section of the asteroid belt safely passed through, the journey returned to the usual daily grind aboard ship.

Over the long non-stop journey, younger crew members were growing up and adults were beginning to show signs of age. Grey hair started to appear on several of the men and women; hair coloring had not been included the cargo manifest.

Jonesy was one of the first to have it pointed out to him—by his wife—that his hair was beginning to grey at the temples. Captain Pete and Mr. Rose also noticed changes when they looked into their mirrors to shave.

Even Ryan, now over 50, could see signs of age, and was unceremoniously informed of the changes by older and smiling crewmembers. Only VIN, still in his forties, was young enough to forestall the telltale appearances of age like the older men.

Few diseases affected the crew. There was no obesity or diabetes aboard ship, except two of the adult scientists who were already taking daily doses of insulin before leaving Earth. The children grew rapidly and all were thin and healthy.

Three of the older scientists passed on, two from the chemistry department and one from Suzi’s biology department. The popular final request aboard ship was to copy naval funerals. A couple of the older scientists had prepared Last Wills with the Captain, the most senior law official. They wanted to be sealed in silicon coffins, and sent out into space, much like sailors had been buried at sea for centuries. The biologist wanted a funeral and burial on Mars, and the two chemists wanted to be set free into the universe.

Ryan agreed to the requests to be “buried” in space. The only accommodation aboard ship was to deep-freeze the remains for burial back on Earth and, not many crew members retained close ties to family on Earth which would necessitate taking their bodies home.

Everyone, including the Matts who were all now considered members of the crew, had a choice of three daily menus: meat, vegetarian, and vegan. The Matts did not eat meat or drink alcohol, “rocket fuel” as they called it, but they loved fresh eggs, cakes, and anything sweet. Any frozen fish aboard ship was long gone, just a memory in the minds of many, especially VIN and Jonesy.

Several of the crew still ate meat. Jonesy, Maggie, VIN, Suzi, Captain Pete, Ryan’s wife Kathy, and most of the ex-military personnel still enjoyed the chicken and rabbit, and a few had meat with every meal. There was plenty for them, even though the animal breeding program had been reduced by half.

The scientists and Ryan had decided on vegetarian diets. The kids were given freedom to choose and the two boys opted for a meat diet while most of the girls did not. Only Saturn Jones and Lunar Richmond ate meat, even though they spent a lot of time tending to the animal population with Suzi and her team.

“Compute a 75-mile orbit, Captain Pete,” Ryan ordered as they edged closer to the red planet a year after leaving the asteroid belt. Finally, the crew on the Bridge had something to look at out of the windows, for what had seemed a lifetime.

The water supply was depleted. Martha Von Zimmer, her hair now totally white and called Grandma by the also aging Jonesy, already had plans afoot for her enemy (Jonesy), to fly down to the dangerous watering hole to begin refilling supplies for the next leg of the odyssey, the 12-month flight to Earth.

One hundred days behind schedule, Mars had passed the opposite side of the sun to Earth, with Earth catching up to the slower orbiting Mars. The longer they stayed on the red planet, the shorter the last leg would be.

Nobody knew what to expect down in the Matt base on Mars. Most, if not all the crew had already been found dead. Commander Joot hoped that the unopened cryonic chamber still held life. Other than on their home base on Earth, the Matts had little chance of finding more of their tribe.

Water supplies and liquid hydrogen fuel were at dangerous minimums. America One had used up all 30,000 gallons of water collected on Enceladus during the four year journey to Mars.

Within three days of going into orbit around Mars, SB-III and Asterspace Three flew down to the crater to clear the red dust and see if the dry ice cap was still there to land on. It was a better, warmer alternative to heading to the colder area around the pole to gather frozen water ice. Aboard the mother ship, there was a mixture of 80 percent alcohol/20 percent ethanol for Commander Joot’s ship, as they had water to turn into hydrogen fuel; he and Elder Roo followed in their ship to see where this valuable water supply was.

Jonesy directed all three ships down on the computer readouts from the previous visit. VIN and Fritz were aboard sitting in the jump seats while Maggie worked up front with her husband. Asterspace Three had Michael and Penny Pitt flying, and Vitalily and Max Burgos to help with the water collection. Recalling how Martha nearly got herself killed on the last visit, Jonesy made sure that she wasn’t allowed to be part of the flight this time.

The kids, all now around eight and nine, watched from the Bridge as their parents flew away from the mother ship. Saturn Jones had been caught twice trying to sneak aboard SB-III and was under guard in the Bridge. Ryan observed that old habits seemed to die hard in the Jones family. Saturn Jones was to begin simulator flight training under her parents’ guidance on her tenth birthday in a few weeks, and Mars Noble would certainly do the same. He never left her side.

Lunar Richmond also wanted to be part of flight training; it was certainly better than boring school. Several of the other children thought so as well.

“My kid still on the Bridge?” asked Jonesy as he began to lose altitude and the mother ship disappeared behind them.

“Unfortunately, Daddy,” replied Saturn into the mike Ryan handed her. “I don’t see why I can’t come. I could have helped you fill the canisters with water. I am became spacewalk certified last year, if you can remember that far back!”

“Soon, soon,” replied a smiling Maggie. “Just wait until you are a little older, pumpkin. Remember, it is dangerous out here, and we don’t want the whole Jones family to be in the same place at the same time. Your grandparents might still be alive on Earth and will want to see your pretty face one more time.”

“I promise you will fly as well as I do when your training is finished. Watch your manners and listen to the bosses up there while we are away, young lady. We should be back within ten days,” added Jonesy.

It took several hours of blowing dust with the thrusters to clear the thick layer and reveal the white, dry, ice pack beginning to show. The clouds of dust went up for miles. Jonesy allowed Michael Pitt, in the lighter mining craft, to land on the ice first; next he showed Commander Joot where to park and then finally came in himself. The ice didn’t budge and the wind was just a light breeze.

They were all were surprised at how bright the sun was, which was directly overhead. Compared to the last seven years of travel the difference in the light from the sun was literally night to day. VIN hopped down the last step; life on the ice was nearly as good as being back on Earth. He was looking forward to see what trouble his old pal Opportunity Rover got into while they were away.

Nothing had changed. The canisters were offloaded out of both craft, and the two Matts enjoyed their first real outer space walk on a planet. Up to now they had always gone from atmosphere to atmosphere without the need for full spacesuits. They had completed spacewalk training with Saturn, Mars, Lunar, and several of the other kids a year earlier. The final course requirement for new spacewalkers was to float up and through the now permanent blue shield wall and spend an hour in outer space, secured to the mother ship by several cords.

Mars Noble was the only one to master the rear suit jet pack, which was only fitted to a few of the suits. VIN wanted to make sure his son could one day walk cordless in the blackness of space as well he could.

Two dozen canisters were filled in seven days of perfect weather by the entire crew, with the exception of one astronaut who remained in each craft prepared ready to launch at all times.

Captain Pete was more experienced about the speed of the wind storms across the 14,000 mile crater than previously, and alerted them to an approaching storm on day seven. The crew on the ice pack was surprised to get the warning; it was as peaceful as a summer’s day on Earth; sunny, warm at minus 10 degrees, with zero wind.

They loaded the remaining three canisters they were filling as fast as possible. By the time Jonesy, left the ice pack last two hours later, SB-III was nearly swept backwards off the pack with the first 100-mile-an-hour gust of wind.

Commander Joot couldn’t understand where the storm had come from; nothing had changed, but the dust storm was suddenly visible, coming over the horizon seconds before he took off.

At 15,000 feet, as high as the surface of the massive crater walls and in formation, they returned to America One.

A week later four of the ships left their docking ports, extinguished their blue shields, and descended to Endeavor Crater to open up “The Martian Club Retreat”, as they called their new base.

It took all the fuel they had to supply three of the ships for a roundtrip journey. The chemistry department needed another month to produce enough fuel for a second trip to the surface, as they had to begin stockpiling fuel for the return flight home to Earth in 310 days. Jonesy would have to make two more visits to collect water to quench the thirst of the chemists.

VIN was the first to see Rover Opportunity; he and Mars Noble were the only crewmembers looking for it. “There, there next to that large rock!” A helmetless VIN excitedly directed his son’s attention to a small black dot on the edge of the crater wall several miles from where he last saw it. Opportunity had travelled around the lip of the crater and looked like it was peering down onto the empty ledge. VIN suggested it had moved to tell Earth of returning visitors. “Should we check to see if Opportunity has enough juice to spy on us?” he asked Ryan, on the Bridge.

“I think that’s a good idea,” replied Ryan. “I don’t want anybody on Earth to know where we are. We haven’t heard from them for seven years. War mongering SOBs could be back in control of the U.S., NASA, the NSA, or even China, if any of them still exist.”

Once they had screwed on each other’s helmets, VIN and his son exited the docking port after Jonesy and the other three craft landed on the surface a couple of hundred yards behind the Rover.

“It looks dead to me,” VIN said, staring down at his old friend. “The red light is not operating and the wheel tracks don’t look fresh. There has been a wind storm since it moved here; the tracks are partially hidden under dust. It’s probably been at this location for a couple of years.”

“Is Rover looking rusty yet?” joked Jonesy. “Partner, offer it a bone, maybe it will wag its tail.”

“It is not a dog, Mr. Jones,” retorted Mars Noble. “Also how could it get rusty with no oxygen, Dad?” asked the young spacewalker looking up at his father’s visor.

“Don’t listen to Jonesy, son, unless he’s flying. Some day he might also tell you about all the space sharks flying around the solar system,” replied VIN smiling. “When he does tell you about sharks, tell him that it is not the solar system they are flying around in, but the empty cavity called his head.”

“Real space sharks?” exclaimed Mars Noble.

‘Don’t you answer that, partner. I need to keep my son sort of sane out here,” replied VIN. Jonesy just smiled.

He and his son turned the Rover towards the rock it was trying to hide next to; a video picture of clear rock face would certainly puzzle the controllers on Earth for a while, if the Rover was still operational.

Once the “spy” had been taken care of, VIN and Mars Noble climbed back on board SB-III to fly over the lip and down to the ledge. The completed glass house they had built was still standing, looking lifeless and desolate without a shield. They had taken the Mars shield with them after their last visit, and the quiet sunlit, yellow ledge looked like nobody had interrupted the tranquility of the place. There weren’t any footprints in the thin layer of dust, and Jonesy, still hovering fifty feet above the ledge lowered the shuttle and expertly cleared the dust off the ledge with his thrusters.

One by one the other craft came in. Commander Joot and Elder Roo were next, and since, in theory, they owned the base, they parked as close to the glass house as possible. Next came Allen and Jamie in Astermine One and finally Michael and Penny in Asterspace Three, both craft full of food, drinking water, daily supplies, and the first ton of top soil for Suzi to begin a garden in the outer area of the man-made glass house.

There was still a decent atmosphere inside the glass chambers as they entered, except it was a cool, minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. When VIN entered the docking port between the outer area and the tunnels, the readouts on his sleeve showed the temperature to be a warmer 39 degrees, and inside was still a perfect blend of atmospheric gases. He waited for his son, then Commander Joot and Elder Roo, before he gave them the okay to remove their helmets. The air was cold on their faces, but still felt pleasant.

Commander Joot already knew that there was only a slight chance of finding any Martian members of his tribe alive. He had been given all the gold boxes found in the dormitories. He knew that the Base Commander, a man several thousand years younger than he, was one of the dead; the beautiful Eagle broach told him so. So were many, if not all of the Elders of the base. The number of gold boxes matched the number of bodies found, and he doubted that there were tribe members asleep in the cryonic room.

When they reached the tunnel area where it split in four directions, Commander Joot opened a small control flap in the wall, and turned the one switch behind the flap. The metal walls began to glow and the regular hum of power could be heard without the helmets.

The Commander immediately headed towards the forward cavern. VIN was the only one who had to stoop inside the tunnel; a growing Mars Noble was now as tall as Elder Roo. Within a minute Commander Joot had the door to the command center open, and admonished VIN for all the destruction he had made getting into the rooms. Even VIN agreed, after seeing how much damage he had actually wrought.

VIN knew what the commander would do next; he turned the control console over and pressed several buttons. He felt the same vibrations and heavy deep noises in the floor and walls around them for close to a minute as on Enceladus.

“I have activated the power unit to full power and activated the warming of the sleep room,” Commander Joot said to VIN in perfect English. “A few of the sleep cabinets are active, or we wouldn’t have heard the noises; I believe we might see some of our people walk out of there. Friend VIN, I think you should get Nancy and Martin down to get ready to tend to our people. Like me, they might have been asleep for a long time, and we still have twelve hours to wait.”

VIN had his son connect his helmet and through it relayed the information to the Bridge. The two doctors, Martha Von Zimmer, Petra Bloem, and Lunar Richmond were ready in Astermine Two. They would be transported to the ledge by Kathy with her now experienced husband as copilot. The first Richmond family journey outside of America One.

During the wait, the four helmetless astronauts checked out both the forward and aft caverns, VIN showing Commander Joot where they had found the bodies and where they had found the supplies they took with them. Then Commander Joot activated the new shield he had brought with him and placed it in the power room, which would be partly filled with the first cargo of new atmosphere arriving with the next craft.

From the water from Enceladus, they had made enough atmosphere for one shield only, and Ryan made the decision to use the valuable air on Mars, and not around the mother ship. That could wait another year or two.

With helmets reattached, the three went out to help unload the two mining craft while the shield steadily increased in size; it could be seen from Astermine Two on its third and final orbit overhead.

Kathy Richmond brought her ship into the dock area Allen Saunders had vacated an hour earlier. Astermine One, unloaded, was already going back up to get the rest of the shield’s atmosphere, once there was enough fuel to fill his liquid hydrogen tanks. That would take another week, but at least the doctors had arrived. They had thirty minutes to get out of the docking hatch, helped out of their spacesuits in the inner chamber, which was now warm, and attend their patients.

Together, both Nobles maneuvered the canister of medical equipment into the inner chamber, down the corridor and into the forward cavern minutes before the cryonic door opened.

The whole crew minus helmets waited for the door to open. It was a tense scene. With so many of their tribe already dead, the Matts were desperate for more members to be able to continue their species. Everyone was relieved when one taller and three very short Matts in blue suits and helmets were seen lying on the floor when the door opened.

They were alive! The team scrambled to remove their helmets while the doctors readied the stands holding the IVs.

“One adult female, the other three, all children, boys,” stated Commander Joot as the last helmet was removed.

“I also see three boys,” added Elder Roo. “Not more than ten or fifteen years old.”

The three children were semi-conscious and the doctors got to work pumping fluids into the three small bodies. The adult was sitting up, looked sick and puked on the floor. It was quickly cleaned up by Kathy and Martha while the doctors got fluids into the ashen patient.

As soon as the fluids, mixed with a pain reliever, a relaxant, and nutrients, entered their bodies, they fell asleep and would be at rest for several hours. Dr. Rogers determined they were strong and healthy enough not to need immediate transport to America One. The four new members were left on the warming floor and rolled into blankets. The temperature in the room was climbing.

VIN entered the Cryonic Room and checked the other cabinets. Only two contained something, and neither held a body. In one was what looked like stacks of papyrus leaves with the usual squiggles written on them, and in the other, the four gold boxes belonging to the four occupants.

“It seems that this could be the dead Commander’s wife and children, their personal belongings, and the written history of Base Mars,” Commander Joot said, looking through the cabinet contents with VIN.

“Why would he have not used the extra cabinets?” asked VIN. “Less of his people would have died.”

“With our system, the whole unit works together,” replied Commander Joot. “These four people and these leaves they brought with them, were frozen before the others died. Once the system was in action, it couldn’t be stopped, or these four crew could not use the freezing again. I believe that the Commander had no other options left when the end came. I’m sure these people can tell us their history once they wake up and if there are people remaining in our base on Earth.”

Three days later the new members told Commander Joot everything they knew. Yes, she was the mate of Commander Doe, one of the dust bodies found by VIN. The children were hers, and they had been made to enter the chamber and go to sleep when the 20th supply ship had not arrived. Their ship was out of fuel and they had waited in vain, generations of Matts, until the fifth Commander, her husband decided that his family be spared the pain of a slow death sometime in the future.

The four said goodbye to all of the crew, none of whom wanted to leave their commander, and they went to sleep; they woke to see many new people looking at them. Martha Von Zimmer was already taking strands of hair to analyze the DNA and determine the time difference between the piles of dust and the members who had not died.

A few weeks later she and her team concluded that the four Matts had been asleep for 5,000 years, which coincided with the bodies of dust she now calculated were only 4,900 years old. It appeared that the Commander and crew waited for several more supply ships before lying down to die.

A month after regaining life, the four fit Matts were transported up to America One with their new friends, Saturn Jones and Lunar Richmond, to meet Tow, who did not yet want to fly down to the planet.

Six months after returning to Mars, Suzi, Mr. Rose and their team had healthy crops growing in the outer glasshouse, as it was now called, and the atmosphere in the shield enabled plants to grow outside and around the landing zones.

Jonesy and others visited the ice mound three more times. With full tanks on the surface and enough fuel being produced in the mother ship, the crew on the Bridge began planning their journey to Earth.

Rover Opportunity had not moved once during the six months the crew worked on perfecting the base for permanent habitation. Compared to the rest of the solar system, the base on Mars was warm, bright, sunny, and not a bad place to live—if one could get living on Earth out of his system.

A month after VIN recharged his old friend for the umpteenth time, Rover Opportunity’s light came on; it moved erratically and, without anybody noticing, unceremoniously fell over the lip of the crater to crush itself on the rocks seventy feet below. VIN was sad to see the end of his Mars buddy. So was Mars Noble. It was VIN’s 45th birthday.

Chapter 25

Sad farewells

“Who wants to stay and work the new base, and who wants to return to Earth? Those who do not want to visit Earth may leave the cafeteria.” Ryan addressed the overflow crowd in the cafeteria of the mother ship. Everyone on board was in attendance. There were 96 crewmembers, of which 29 were children under 15 from both tribes, and 23 adult Matts. Commander Joot repeated the question posed by Ryan to his tribe; only the new additions from Mars couldn’t speak English.

Ryan was surprised by how many people began to leave; more than half of the group at the meeting filed out. He knew Mr. Rose was not interested in visiting Earth, he was happy in the cubes and tending his beloved plants down in the shield. Many of the biology team joined him. All the Matts wanted to stay. Children of the Tall People would go or stay with their families. One had to be 18, an adult, to make a decision. All the astronauts stayed. They knew their services would be needed to fly to the surface and back. VIN wanted to visit, and so did Suzi. She could leave the vegetation in the capable hands of Mr. Rose and her crew. Ryan knew that Commander Joot and Elder Roo wanted to see the Sahara desert, and watched as Roo’s mother Tow, Fritz and their new baby Yoyo exited the room. Of the Matts, only Joot and Roo had any interest in returning.

When the room quieted down, there were only 32 crewmembers left: the two Matts, the Jones family of three, the Noble family of three, his own family of four, the Saunders and Pitt families both now four, Captain Pete, Igor, Boris, Max Burgos and his family of four, and Vitalily and his family of three. Finally, one of the younger, single German chemists said he wanted to return to Earth to find a wife, any wife. Ryan didn’t really want to return to Earth. He knew quite well the politics and politicians waiting for him, but understood that he had no choice.

The date was set for 30 days from the meeting. Now that the fuel was being replenished at a decent pace, they could leave the planet earlier than expected. Their last mission was to transport as many crops from the cubes as possible down to the red planet.

Ryan had seven black shield boxes available for use, collected from all the bases visited. He would need all three shuttles and at least the two mining craft to transport supplies hidden underground at his old base in Nevada, if the secret stash still existed.

He decided to leave Asterspace Three and its large cargo bay as an escape ship for the planet if anything happened to America One. There was still one complete accommodation cylinder that had been a sleeping camp on a few of the moons and planets. The other had been used to repair the rear cylinder hit by the asteroid. He gave orders for it to be cut and retrofitted for Asterspace Three’s cargo bay; it would provide around 60 adults an escape route back to Earth if America One never returned. Asterspace Three could enter the atmosphere of Earth once only, and land on a long runway, like the old NASA shuttle, but the food and water supplies aboard would only be enough for sixty people on the four-month journey from Mars to Earth.

As the fuel supplies increased in quantity, daily flights to the new base left the mother ship. Supplies were taken down by the ton. Many of the complete laboratories, especially the biology and chemistry labs with all their equipment took six flights to get down to Mars. With Asterspace Three staying behind, a second black box was taken down and positioned at the edge of the ledge. The first shield covered the inner half of the ledge and the second box made it possible to unload the twenty tons of top soil supplies out of the mother ship; it was transported down in four-ton increments to the larger farm made possible by the second shield. The air tanks for the second atmosphere took two more loads, and then most of the medical supplies, the entire hospital, and all of the medical machines and equipment; the doctors kept enough necessities for a simple sick bay for the short flight to Earth and back. Dr. Nancy was persuaded to join the Earth mission by Captain Pete.

America One became empty of equipment. Four of the five remaining escape pods were separated from the mother ship and flown down to the planet. Jonesy had to return to “The Oasis” the name given to the watering hole to collect an extra 5,000 gallons of water. This would be sufficient to replace the air needed for the second atmosphere on the ledge, as well as to begin the atmosphere around America One.

Within 30 days, their new permanent abode was supplied with 120 tons of everything the remaining crew and the returning crew would need to survive, hopefully, forever.

It was noted that Commander Joot and his tribe had not supplied their bases around the solar system with one or two vital necessities: production machinery to produce parts, or better machines to do the work, and also spacesuits to collect water by hand if necessary. Their water collection system, to program their spiders to go outside their spacecraft and fill smaller urns with ice, had not proved very effective.

The biggest problem, and the real demise of the Matts, was that they couldn’t produce alcohol in space. They had done so on Earth, but something had gone wrong on all the space bases, hence their lack of transportation, and limited survival.

Most of the fuel and air-producing equipment aboard America One had taken a decade, but the equipment was duplicated. The second generation was more modern and worked faster, and had been designed and manufactured aboard the mother ship using only 3-D printers. In the near future, the base on Mars, and the original systems aboard the mother ship could produce twice the air and fuel produced during the odyssey.

The last flight transported the remaining mining spiders to the planet. When America One’s crew went down with them to say their goodbyes, they noticed that every inch of space, other than the living areas, was stocked high with supplies. The whole base looked like a Walmart Superstore with a gardening section outside in the first shield. A superstore for just 64 inhabitants.

In his goodbye message in the forward cavern, Ryan told the new inhabitants of The Mars Club Retreat to expect them back in about 24 to 30 months. The flight to Earth would take seven months, he wanted to spend no longer than a year in orbit around the home planet, and the return journey should be even shorter. He also mentioned that if they couldn’t get down to the surface of Earth, and there was nothing the new retreat needed from planet Earth, they would return earlier, until Jonesy shouted out “fresh fish.” Suzi shouted back saying that she was working on a plan to start a fish farm on Mars, if Herr Jones could be a little patient, however, while he was on Earth he could catch some fresh fish for her farm.

Amidst laughter and tears, friends said their farewells, and also gave secret shopping lists to the Earth-bound crew who could visit a real Walmart, or whatever the shop was called in their country.

A couple of hours later SB-III, its crew cabin full of contemplative passengers, left Mars to return to a very empty mother ship. Seven cubes still contained growing produce which Suzi would attend to, and the ship’s cargo cylinders held all of the valuable metals mined from the moons and planets they had visited. The metals would be used to barter down on Earth.

Igor and Captain Pete studied the metal and diamond cargo manifest for days, and inventoried more than two billion dollars of the rarest and most valuable Rare Earth metals alone; nearly every large first world country would be happy to kill them to gain possession. These numbers didn’t include five tons of pure gold, several hundred diamonds larger than tennis balls, a ton of pure platinum, the same of titanium, and excess cobalt, all pure and ready to be sold to the world markets.

For days Ryan pondered what they were going find at home, while Captain Pete, Igor and Boris, set all the computers to listen for chatter on the thousand or more radio frequencies they had used before leaving Earth nine years and nine months ago.

They received the first chatter four months later, halfway to Earth.

Chapter 26

Earth

“What is that noise?” Ryan asked one morning walking onto the Bridge and heading straight for the coffee machine.

“Ten years and you have forgotten,” replied Captain Pete. “That faint, eerie wailing noise you hear is the emergency notification from the federal government that was transmitted as a test over all television and radio frequencies. It’s been on continuously since we picked it up about two hours ago. I think the old record must be stuck.”

“Why would it be a continuous message?” asked Ryan. “It was hard to listen to for the 30 seconds they transmitted it every day.”

“Well, we did pick up a scratchy Chinese message, or shall I say, a message in Chinese about an hour ago,” Igor said. “It has been recorded, but I don’t believe we have anybody to decipher it perfectly. Fritz normally did that and he is back on Mars.”

“I understand a bit,” added Boris, “but not enough to decipher the whole message. I believe it was to a Chinese astronaut, or aircraft pilot, telling him to launch his cubes, or rockets at something.”

“Are we close enough to send out a message on the frequency the old president gave us, the one coded with the three children’s names in correct order, which we stored in the computers to let him know that we are back?”

“I think sending that message out in another few weeks will be a better bet,” replied the captain. “We are still over ten million miles from Earth, and we are getting just bits and pieces of scratchy messages here and there. I cannot figure out how that Chinese message, not directed at us specifically got this far out into space, unless the Chinese have a really powerful radio transmitter back in orbit. Hopefully, it is a happy, peaceful and thriving community down there.”

“Yeah, right!” replied Ryan cynically. “I really hope so too but, would you like to make a wager about peace on Earth, Captain Pete?” The captain smiled, not really interested in betting.

A month later, America One began sending out her arrival message, still millions of miles from Earth. Nothing happened for two more weeks, and then they finally heard a weak message in return. It was a voice Ryan knew well, his friend, the former President of the United States of America, and it was repeating itself once an hour. Ryan mentioned to Captain Pete that the message could have been going out since they left a decade earlier. The ship’s message went out with the scrambled codes to identify it as being sent by Ryan and his crew. Not much happened for the next several days.

It was the day Captain Pete began slowing the mother ship down, two million miles out from Earth’s orbit around the sun, when the message, arriving every hour gradually got stronger and changed.

“America One, America One, do you copy? Over.”

“This is America One, we are picking you up, but the message is very weak. We can just understand what you are saying. Over,” replied Ryan. It seemed that the return message wasn’t getting through, as the same new message was repeated once an hour.

It took another two days before the spacecraft received a new message.

“America One, this is Montreal, Canada. We copied your incoming message. Please give us your whereabouts. Commander, your old friend has been alerted and we will have a link patched to him ASAP. Danger, danger. Do NOT come within 20,000 miles of Earth. Do NOT come within 20,000 miles of Earth. You will be destroyed. You WILL be destroyed. Please reply that you have received this message. Over.”

An hour after Ryan’s reply went back stating that he had received the message, a familiar voice returned to the airwaves. It was a voice he easily recognized.

“America One, this is the person who has been waiting for you for a decade. Please transmit the code I gave you before you left. I need the three words in order. Over.”

Since the message was in the computer, and had been scrambled a decade earlier, Ryan knew that the president would receive it. Within 30 minutes, the reply came back, the radio now reasonably clear with less static and the words could be understood.

“Codes received and approved. Ryan we are on a scrambled top secret frequency. I have sent up a new app to give you our new scrambling parameters. Download them, and send me a signal in 30 minutes. Out.”

Captain Pete and Igor received the app, cleaned one computer of all information, and downloaded the new scrambling app into it. Not linked anymore to the dozens of others aboard ship, or to the intercom system, the computer could not be a danger if hacked. Any messages would be checked for viruses, and then transferred onto a second computer by thumb drive. During the changeover, the astronauts, VIN and Suzi, were called to the Bridge, with an order for a fresh pot of coffee which took twenty minutes.

When everyone arrived Ryan told them that they were in contact with Earth. There was a buzz of excitement from the astronauts. Jonesy even did a sort of dance, but more like a circle around a non-existent totem pole.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are nearly home,” smiled Ryan at his flight and security crew. “Our old friend will be live on the radio for all of us to hear the latest news. I hope his position is secure and he is free to speak, but one never knows. We will hear him out. As a crew we still have two weeks before we go into orbit around Earth. It doesn’t sound like this radio transmission is coming through a satellite, but from Montreal, Canada directly. We have been warned that there is a war going on in space, but I’m sure we will be given more info. Igor has given me the nod, so here goes.”

Ryan was quiet for a few seconds and then began. “America One to Earth, we have our system now scrambled and operational. We have taken precautions to make sure we cannot be hacked into, and we are ready to get news from Earth. Over.”

“Ryan, glad to have you back. Many of us have been waiting for your return. First, the most important news: Do not enter to within a geo-stationary orbital distance from Earth. Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, Russian and U.S. laser cubes will destroy you immediately. Please confirm that you understand this message. Ryan, please confirm.”

“I heard that cubes in outer space will attempt to destroy us. Is that correct?” Ryan replied. Two minutes later a response arrived.

“Ryan, it seems that you are still some distance from Earth. We have a 230 second delay on messages returning, that is if you replied immediately.”

“Roger that,” replied Ryan. “I’m sure your gurus at NASA can compute our distance, Mr. President.”

“Correct, they are doing that now, and its ex-president for the second time. We have had a new president for six years and, unfortunately, from the other party. Not a bad guy, but no better than me and the last dozen U.S. Presidents. I include myself in that group. I am speaking to you from Montreal, Canada. I am persona non grata in the United States, also for the second time, and now too old to fight back. I moved to Canada to be able to do what I’m doing now, speak to you. I have been forbidden to speak to you while in the United States. The NSA cannot listen in to this channel anymore. They cannot get through the scrambling system made for me by a friend in Israel, now also an enemy of the United States. Unfortunately, the current administration let them down badly and the Israeli’s did not forgive them. A long story and I’ll tell you more when we meet.

“So the Israeli’s are listening in to our conversation?” Ryan asked.

“I would assume so,” replied the man on the other end. “But better them than the rest of the world. I’m sure I have only a few minutes before we are interrupted by unfriendlies trying to halt this communication, so I will be brief. Ryan, most important, there is a war in space, but not on Earth. Nobody down here has the money or modern weaponry to commit to a land war. First, space. Several countries, and you can guess which ones, and include the USA, have produced thousands of cubes, the same cubes you saw when you left. They are space drones, normally a few feet square, with as much laser power and plutonium as the country can send into space. The most deadly are the Chinese, U.S., North Korean and Iranian cubes. They attack anything, even each other, and have one word programed into their drone brains, ‘Destroy’. These drones got bigger and bigger until about four years ago, when all the countries sending them up realized smaller is better. Now they are as small as can be. Also, since the North Korean and Iranian drones attacked everything floating in space, all the other countries did the same. An easy task when several drone replacements are launched daily. Current estimates are the drones, or cubes, have a lifespan of about two months in space at varying orbital heights before they destroy, or are themselves destroyed. We estimate about ten thousand drones are up there at any one time buzzing around the planet looking for an enemy. They find their enemy by radio, infrared, heat sources, anything possible, and once they latch onto a target, or are latched onto themselves, they zero in for battle at full speed and commit, until one is destroyed. Ryan, you and your large lasers are no match for thousands of these little bastards. They will quickly see your approach, and attach you by the hundreds. Did you copy that? Over.”

“We copied that,” replied Ryan and had to wait for the message to continue. Ryan could see VIN already eyeing the hardly used ship’s laser console with anticipation. “Guys, remember we still have enough shields for every ship, and there is no way those laser beams, or little cubes will penetrate the shields on full power. The harder they attack us the better.”

“I’m glad I got that message across, Ryan. Life down here on Earth is more like a stalemate in chess. Nobody can afford to go to war. The North Koreans try every once and awhile, but their missiles are quickly shot down. We perfected our own ‘Iron Dome’ project, with the help of our Israeli friends, under my command, three years and nine months after you left. There is no way a missile can penetrate our defenses over the entire United States. Nor can your spaceships enter the atmosphere 60 miles above the United States without automatically being fired upon. The system cannot be turned off, that is the key to it, so be warned. When the new administration took over, after a fair election, the concept of peace in the U.S. changed. Our government finally had a comprehensive defense system in place, but the new administration decided not to pay the Israelis the money owed for their assistance in building that massive project. They invested 950 billion dollars into our system was extremely close to bankruptcy. To solve that problem, they began selling the same system to other countries. It took China and Russia three more years to complete their projects, and we are now defensible against each other. Of course, Israel became wealthy again once several countries in Europe got their defenses up and running. Today there are twelve countries with extremely modern and dangerous ‘Iron Dome’ defense systems, ten times more powerful and accurate than the system they had in Israel when you left.

“There was nothing I could do. After trying to fight it, I realized that even with your help, I had alienated my only backup with our new defense system, you and your crew. Therefore, I befriended my old contacts in Israel and they helped me setup a base here in Canada five years ago.”

“Let me guess,” answered Ryan, taking notes. “Israel, the U.S., Canada, Russia, China, Germany, Great Britain, France, maybe Brazil, Iran, and, I’m at a loss for the others who have a defense system.”

Two minutes later he received his answer.

“Right on most. Canada only had limited funds for its major cities. The Canadian rural areas are not protected, the country is too big. Same with Russia, only half of its territory including its major cities. China managed to include their whole country, so did the smaller European countries; including Brazil was correct, but again, only its major cities. Japan, South Korea and North Korea are the three you missed. Japan and South Korea, like the European countries, are small enough to afford full protection. North Korea and Iran have about half of their areas covered. North Korea sends missiles into South Korea every once and a while, the South Korean system destroys them, and South Korea flattens few small unprotected government buildings every now and again. As I said, here on Earth, it is a stalemate, and these new defenses also destroyed good relations between all the countries, and that destroyed all the world’s trade. Everybody is stone broke down here because international trade has decreased between continents by 95 percent since you left. In many ways………” and the voice of the man Ryan knew went off the air for several minutes. It returned but for a short period. “Sorry about that Ryan, Chinese intervention, then an attack by North Korea on our radio frequency. They don’t want me to communicate with you and a warning from Beijing has already been sent to the Canadian Government……” Again he went off and returned a minute later telling Ryan to change to a new radio frequency through a ten-year old code Igor had to search long and hard on the computers to locate. “That was a U.S. attack on our transmitters from Langley. I believe I have a minute or two on this frequency before the next attack…… Ryan, the Canadian government has asked me to halt my transmissions, but before I do let me finish. If you enter any country’s airspace without permission, I don’t believe your lasers can protect you. You can only enter with prior permission. Now, I want to give you coordinates of the missile bases of the most powerful nations. You destroy these, and you destroy 30 to 60 percent of their Iron Dome control systems, temporarily. Temporarily means about 24 hours.”

For two minutes, computerized information was transmitted from Earth to the lone computer communicating on the Bridge. Then the voice returned.

“I have given you U.S. coordinates as well, but most of them are Chinese and Russian, North Korean and Iranian. You could destroy the much weaker North Korean systems, and destroying them could anger China, but allow you to befriend the U.S. administration, who by the way also wants to destroy you as soon as you arrive. They are worried that you could upset the stalemate, unless it is in their favor of course. The reason there is no trade is because only small jet aircraft can travel between countries, and far less frequently than when you were last here. Since the airwaves are fully utilized by the ‘Iron Dome’ systems, any aircraft traveling between countries are radio silent. As soon as they transmit, somebody gets a bead on them. All large ships are destroyed immediately, so most sea trade between countries has come to a grinding halt. You have seen the attacks on my radio transmission. China is now the most powerful country in the world. They have the smallest, fastest, most sophisticated long-range missiles in the world today and they have seriously diminished the might of the U.S. armed forces. Most attacks around the world are from Chinese missiles destroying ships, aircraft, or anything else they see moving. They even have stupidly destroyed their own ships and aircraft on many occasions. Any ship larger than 100 feet is a likely target. Most ships still floating are 40 to 50 foot vessels; only submarines can still play powerful roles. We are having interference again. I will communicate same channel, same time tomorr………” The voice did not return.

Nobody said a word about what they had just heard. The voice on Earth had given them adequate information for day one as well as the knowledge that Ryan and his shuttles could easily change the stalemate, and instigate a full scale world war.

“Ideas on why we need to head back to Earth, everyone,” Ryan requested as the third pot of fresh coffee arrived, and his daughter, the coffee carrier, left. “Here are mine. First, I want some of the equipment stashed in the cavern on my airfield in Nevada. I might never drive my Tesla, or Audi on Mars, but they would look good as part of the furniture.” VIN agreed with him. “Second, I would like to see the hot Nevada sun for the last time. Third, I want to get Commander Joot down to the Sahara and see if there are any more of his people asleep down there. I also want to make sure that none of their technical knowledge will ever be found by other warlike humans, who might rise up to destroy us on Mars. Last, I promised that anybody who wants to go back to Earth can do so. I want to keep my promise. Those are my reasons for returning to Earth. You may all state your wishes. Let’s start with Igor.”

“I think it is urgently important to find out how these amazing Matt shields work,” stated Igor. “Commander Joot doesn’t know, we have so far learned nothing, and if there are any descriptions on how they work, I believe it will be in their base in Africa.” Boris and Captain Pete agreed with Igor. There wasn’t anything else they wanted on Earth. The room was silent, until the usual suspect opened his mouth.

“Maggie, Saturn and I would like to spend some time on Earth. I would like to see my parents one more time and, with my partner here, spend a year or so fishing, maybe with Bob Mathews. Ryan, I think that we should leave my shuttle, SB-III, and the crew compartment, in a secret location, unarmed, for anybody to join us on an exodus at a later date, maybe a year or three after we arrive. From what the president told us, we should be totally immune to drone, cube or rocket strikes while inside the shield, even when we lift off through the Earth’s atmosphere. Fully fuelled with extra fuel in the rear cargo hold, SB-III should be able to get to Mars if you leave the last supply pod a few hundred thousand miles out of harm’s way. What do you think?”

Ryan thought about what Jonesy suggested for a few minutes. He somehow knew that Mr. Jones would come up with something exotic, and he had known for quite a while what it might be.

“Not an impossible idea, Mr. Jones,” replied Ryan. “A little James Bond-ish for me, but I’ll open Mr. Jones’ idea to you all.”

“I think it has merit,” stated Allen Saunders. “I’m sure there are a few people who might like to visit family if they are still alive.”

“What about the dangers of an elite military tactical force capturing your ride home, Mr. Jones?” asked Ryan. “I would certainly leave an explosive device aboard, so nobody could obtain any of our flight technology. I know they will catch up to us in the future, but we will continue to advance on Mars and, hopefully, stay one step ahead of the pack. If they find SB-III, your transportation back to Mars is history. What about that scenario, ladies and gentlemen?”

“It’s risky,” responded a couple of the crew. After much discussion, all the astronauts, except Michael and Penny Pitt, wanted time on Earth. Even his wife Kathy wanted to return for a short while, a dilemma Ryan knew he would have to face. Captain Pete, Dr. Nancy, Igor and Boris did not want to return, but that didn’t solve his problem of only having two fully experienced flight astronauts if the others couldn’t return. He, Max Burgos and a couple of others could fly, but certainly not as well as Jonesy, Maggie, Allen, Jamie, Michael and Penny.

The next day they met at the same time, to see if the voice from Earth could contact them again. During the last 20 hours, Captain Pete, Igor and Boris went over the base locations transmitted during the conversation. There were a dozen bases in North Korea, Iran, and several of the European countries. There were three bases in Israel, although Ryan was sure the Israelis had dozens more in that small country. Each of the larger countries had at least 100 bases or more. The U.S. alone had locations at every air force base. Jonesy could decipher them, and shocked Ryan when he told him that his own private base in Nevada was one of the locations.

The President’s voice returned for two short minutes before being cut off. This time a voice with an American accent ordered the ex-president, by name, to stay off the air, or there would be repercussions between the United States and Canada. No more was heard from Earth, but the radio frequencies used by many of the world countries had been transmitted in a quick file. Now Ryan, aboard America One, could speak to anybody he wanted to contact.

Nothing more was said by the ex-president that Ryan and his crew hadn’t already figured out. They had two weeks to prepare to enter orbit around the blue planet cocooned inside their blue shield.

The pretty home to all the adults aboard grew larger and larger in the Bridge windows. First the moon was just another star, then it also grew into a moon as Earth increased in size. Ryan could now understand why several of the crew wanted to return. Pleasant memories of Earth drifted through his thoughts continuously while he was awake, and even when he dreamed.

The growing children who could not remember what the blue planet looked like were allowed on the Bridge to look at the beautiful sight, and wonder about the planet their parents called home.

“Commander Joot, Elder Roo, we need to ready ourselves to enter an orbit of Earth,” stated Ryan ten days later, and 100,000 miles from Earth.

“Why do we need to prepare ourselves to enter our old atmosphere? Nothing has changed on Earth for 10,000 years,” the unknowing Commander replied.

For the next several hours, the two Matts learned for the first time, how warlike people on Earth had stopped the world’s advancement of their planet, as well as outer space. Ryan wasn’t kind to his species, and both Jonesy and VIN noticed a change in their boss. He would certainly not take any of the bull crap this time.

The two Matts looked at Ryan as if he was telling them a fictional story. All this “war”, whatever that was, killing your own tribe, made absolutely no sense to them. Once Ryan had done his worst, Captain Pete continued, then Igor, and finally VIN and Suzi who spent hours trying to explain how the most intelligent species on Earth was the most destructive to the whole planet, and to each other.

Slowly, and over the last couple of days before reaching the 20,000 mile barrier, the Matts prepared themselves mentally for Armageddon, while the Tall People went over ideas and strategies to get what they wanted down on the pretty, innocent-looking mother Earth growing back to normal size below them.

“Tiny blips by the hundreds, incoming from every direction; closest blip is at 3,000 miles and closing,” stated Captain Pete twenty-four hours later. The ship had just passed through the 15,000 mile barrier and was about to go into a high orbit to give the arrogant Earthlings below a chance to see that “Big Brother” had arrived and was watching them.

The crew had all agreed that strong arm tactics would be necessary once they had cleared space of all these little cubes. Phase One was to survive the initial attacks, maybe several of them, without firing a shot. They didn’t have to wait long for the radar screens to fill with piranha-type drones wanting a bite out of them. Phase Two of the plan was to halt all daily launches by destroying their launch bases. Ryan was sure there were confident smiling faces down there, dozens of them, ready to eliminate the returning enemy. He explained to the Matts that Astermine Inc. and America One had “owned” the area of space above the planet before they left a decade ago, and he was sure he had metaphorically kicked many powerful men where they hurt. These men had a desperate need to even the score.

“Reminds me of the movie, ‘The Matrix’,” said VIN, unhappy that he wasn’t allowed to shoot back. He, Ryan, Jonesy, Allen and a few others were on the Bridge to see the action. The shield around America One was on full power. Ten percent of the nuclear reactor power was being fed into the one shield.

Each of the craft inside the shield, the three shuttles, the two mining craft, and the remaining personal craft of Commander Joot positioned with a newly attached docking port and connected to the mother ship on Asterspace Three’s port, also had their shields up to protect each ship in case something happened to another.

“Why the ‘Matrix’?” asked Ryan.

“You know, when all those steel attackers attacked the ships. They were controlled by a single source. These blips, you can see are not. They are taking out each other as the close in on us. They are feeding off each other, the stupid cubes. Watch them explode. Look there goes another, there,” he stated pointing at a minute explosion out in space and then one blip disappeared from the screens.

“ETA, two minutes,” stated Captain Pete. “Incoming at about 25,000 miles an hour.”

Staring out towards Earth, VIN could see that the ship was changing course and about to go into orbit. The planet was about to disappear underneath them, until Captain Pete began turning her very slowly to face the brightness of the planet. It didn’t matter which way they faced, the cubes were coming in from a hundred different directions, and were still beating each other up as they closed.

Suddenly, the first tiny explosion flashed against the shield. It was so small that it looked like a mosquito had exploded. Then there was another, and then the entire shield around them began to light up as thousands of tiny insects exploded against the impenetrable blue wall.

“They could all get through and terminate us if they went slow enough,” stated VIN watching the free fireworks display.

“Are they so stupid on Earth?” Young Mars Noble asked the group watching.

“Do you know how these shields work, Mars?” his father asked. Mars shook his head back and forth that he didn’t. “Well nor do they, and nor do we,” smiled his father not taking his eyes off the machine massacre.

For an hour the shield lit up like a fireworks display, then it slowly decreased in hits, until it finally stopped altogether.

“Head down to 10,000 miles altitude, Captain Pete,” Ryan ordered. “I think we left a complete ring of debris behind us.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” responded the captain and directed the ship, still travelling at 19,000 miles an hour, into a steeper dive to get to the lower altitude.

Twelve hours later a hundred or so more insects took the bait and a second layer of debris was scattered at the new level. The same happened at 5,000 miles, then 2,000 miles, and by the time they reached a low-altitude orbit four days later, there wasn’t one speck on the radar. They were totally alone in orbit around Earth, until the next day’s insects were to be unleashed.

The crew counted 35 hits the next day at 1,000 miles altitude, and the same amount the next day at 200 miles. The Bridge now had ten coordinates of the bases these daily gnats were launching from. Five were in China, two in the United States, one in North Korea and two in Iran.

On the seventh day and at 150 miles altitude, they were again hit by nearly 60 cubes, and most were from the same locations. It seemed to Ryan that four countries had increased launches of the cubes to try to destroy the incoming spaceship. He wondered if the people on the ground knew that every cube in orbit had been destroyed. He hoped they did.

An hour after the larger cube attack on the seventh day, he began to get angry, it was time to hit back. This time, and after a briefing with the astronauts, the three shuttles gently moved out of the main shield, and decreased the size of their shields so that each of their front-facing lasers stuck out of the shield by inches. Three quarters of each shuttle was still protected by the shield and they fanned out.

Ryan and Captain Pete had recorded the launches from the countries dispatching daily cubes. It took about 12 hours for the cubes, using all of their fuel he assumed, to attack them. So far Russia, the whole of Europe and Australia had not launched one cube, and he was sure every important person around the planet knew they had returned. So far nobody had tried to communicate with them, and he had not tried to communicate with Earth. This was totally silent warfare.

Jonesy had VIN as gunner and VIN was itching to get started. “Three hundred miles off your starboard bow, Boss, and decreasing altitude through 140 miles. I expect to be at 120 miles within three hours. Allen is in line 100 miles behind me and Michael likewise,” Jonesy reported to Ryan. They were not worried about using radio. There was nothing left to attack them, yet!

All four craft were directly over North Korea when that country released the first cube a couple of hours later and all three craft spent the ten long minutes before they headed over the horizon blasting the launch site and the ten-mile square military base. VIN could not see much except massive fireballs and explosions as the lasers went in and destroyed everything bigger than a small rock on the base. At 120 miles above the country it was easy pickings, and through the powerful cameras, he and the other gunners, Boris in SB-II and Igor in SB-I, could see much of the damage they were inflicting on the base.

Since the shuttles had 12 hours before the cubes became dangerous, they could relax and fire at will.

Twenty minutes later the first cube lifted off from Allen’s old base in Las Vegas and surprisingly a second cube from Ryan’s home base.

“One incoming from our old airfield,” VIN reported to Ryan.

“Can you see where the launch pad is?” Ryan asked VIN. Jonesy had decreased the shield so that the cameras were also out in the blackness of space, which helped tremendously.

“Yep! About 800 yards south of the runway. Nothing much has changed down there. I wouldn’t have seen the launch pad if the rocket hadn’t fired. I saw its heat impact on takeoff. Actually there are three launch pads in a line about half a mile south of the runway, Boss.”

“VIN, take out all three. Boris, Igor, you clear the launch site around Nellis Air Force Base. Anybody down there on my old base, or Nellis Air Force Base, better get away from those launch pads. Gentlemen, commence firing,” Ryan ordered, and the sites exploded into twisted metal in minutes.

“Launch from Andrews on the East Coast,” Captain Pete reported.

“Got it!” stated all three gunners and as they passed over Kansas a large open area of Andrews Air Force Base became history. Still, apart from Ryan warning the people below with his radio communiques, no one had spoken a word over any radio frequency, and the ships were monitoring hundreds of frequencies.

Three launch pads were destroyed in Iran fifteen minutes after leaving the U.S. East Coast; the heavy work of the orbit was in China, where several pads were terminated. North Korea tried for a second time from two new sites as they flew over, and these were terminated. The U.S. seemed angry now and a dozen sites across the U.S., all Air Force bases, had a hundred square feet of structure bent and twisted with dozens of explosions on the second round. Iran tried with two more and then China wanted to show its mighty power. The gunners worked up a sweat firing their guns at over 20 launch sites, flattening the direct areas around them.

On the third pass, five hours into the mission, they worked hard as Earth and its people seemed to throw everything they had at the visitors from outer space. VIN had never had so much fun in his lifetime. Even Russia ignited with 12 sites on this pass, and Boris and Igor laughed because they knew from where each cube was launched.

On the fifth pass they flew completely around the planet without seeing one launch. The leaders of the countries on Earth wanted to witness the destruction of the alien enemy, however, they were going to be disappointed.

When they had incoming, the three shuttles increased the size and power of their shields to full, and the attacking cubes beat themselves to death against their shields.

Twenty-four hours later, when the last of the cubes had attacked, Ryan issued a broadcast over as many frequencies as the mother ship could relay through the shuttle radio systems. The shuttles, several thousand miles apart, were in a line around the planet.

“America One to planet Earth. We here in space have seen how you welcomed our return to Earth. In forty hours my crew have destroyed 12,114 of your little attackers, whatever they were. Please believe me, except for any new launches in the last hour, America One is the only piece of metal up here. Earth does not have one satellite or cube, or whatever you guys launch into space in orbit. I now control all of space above the Karman line, and my ship will rain down destruction if you cannot figure that out. There is one great service you have done though, and I thank you for that. The space junk in lower space orbit is virtually non-existent since we left a decade ago. Thank you for cleaning up my territory.” Ryan paused to allow anybody to respond, nobody did.

“As you may have figured out, we have been busy since we have been away. We were not on vacation, and new technology defends us from your attacks. We will continue to level your launch pads until……”

Suddenly several much larger missiles were launched out of silos around the world. “Gunners take out those bases, every damn inch of structure is to be destroyed, now!” ordered Ryan angrily. America One was over the United States, and three of the missiles came up from bases across the country. VIN was closest to America One, 3,000 miles behind, and Vandenberg Air Force base in California was the first to feel the blast of his laser. Then he hit a base in Kansas, and finally a base in Maryland before heading over the horizon ten minutes later. The smoke rising from the U.S. bases could be seen from space with the naked eye.

Two of the incoming missiles were Chinese, from the same base, and Igor began leveling that site. One missile was from the government headquarters in Pyongyang, and Boris happily began destroyed the large stone government buildings, floor by floor. The Iron Dome systems had no response to the lasers.

They had several minutes before nuclear missiles, or whatever the much larger titan-size rockets carried, gained enough altitude to be fired upon.

Igor took out the Californian missile first as it reached a 100-mile altitude as he passed over the Chinese east coast.

It was harder to blast at rising missiles below them, but once they reached a decent altitude, they had their lock-and-shoot aimers catch the target, and they disintegrated within a minute or two. Many of the missiles’ nuclear warheads weren’t armed yet, except the North Korean missile which exploded on impact, lighting up space for a hundred miles around as VIN took it out 300 miles ahead of him.

Two hours after the launches, space was once again quiet, until Ryan’s voice calmly went over the airwaves.

“Again thank you for your welcome. Now I am going to destroy the thousands of ‘Iron Dome’ protection sites each of your countries have. I know many are mobile, but believe me, once you have witnessed the destruction of your launch sites, you might be a little friendlier towards our return. China, the United States of America, how about if I destroy your protection first and let the rest of the world attack you like a bunch of hyenas. Mr. President, I hear that Israel might be the first to want a piece of you; I understand you owe them some money. China, I’m sure South Korea and Japan would love to retaliate for the way you bullied them over trade policies for the last few decades. I suggest you reply by radio, and not by launching missiles, within 24 hours, or I am going to get really angry. How would you feel about such a welcoming party? And, you may not believe it, but I was returning in peace,” Ryan added sarcastically. “That policy has now been suspended because of the stupidity of launching your useless and obsolete weapons. I haven’t even started to unleash my new firepower yet; you won’t believe what is physically possible.” Ryan smiled and winked at Captain Pete who was smiling back. There was nothing better than a good bluff at the poker table when necessary.

It took an hour before the radios aboard America One squawked. One by one the countries asked him what he wanted. The United States was first. It seemed that they had more to lose than the rest, and offered Ryan whatever he wanted. His reply was that he wanted the U.S. off his property, his airfield security back in place, several truckloads of liquid hydrogen, the free use of the Dead Chicken, if it was still in one piece, and something the U.S. government didn’t expect; a mile long new tarmac runway slap bang in the middle of the Sahara Desert, right in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

When they asked why, he promptly replied that he was moving out of the U.S. and setting up a new base of operations in a place it would take incoming rockets from the more powerful countries several minutes to get to.

That seemed to appease them, especially when Ryan told them that he was expecting to pay them for their services with Rare Earth metals, the resources they desperately needed to build more modern electronics for their weapons. Ryan knew the reason China was more powerful than the U.S. was because they held most of the world supplies of the rarest metals used for advanced weapons. All modern weapons needed the Rare Earth metals and Ryan was prepared to barter them for freedom to travel on Earth.

Once the American government knew that they were going to be the major recipient of the valuable resources it took them only hours to deploy military engineers and the equipment needed to make runways aboard heavy military aircraft ready to leave for Libya. The valuable metals would enable them to continue making arms and weapons, and they would not be attacked anymore by other countries on the old air routes,

The Dead Chicken landed at Ryan’s airfield 73 minutes after he ended his transmission with the American government, and after asking them for a radio frequency to connect with the Libyan government. If the madman wanted to be in the middle of a desert, so be it, they mused to themselves.

North Korea was second on the line and Ryan simply told them to stand down, stop firing any missiles, or else. He said the same to Iran, telling each country that if they tried a surprise attack on any of his ships inside Earth’s atmosphere, or fired on any land or sea target, heavy retributions would blast down at them from the heavens. America One and dozens of her ships would be orbiting ready to repel any attacks.

It took the Chinese another two hours to call. They must have been sizing up the contestant to their throne as the world’s new powerhouse. Besides that, their country was in disarray, more so than the other world powers. Ryan realized that after pondering the information his friend in Montreal had given him. The entire growth of China before he left was due to exports and trade with the rest of the world. It was quite simple; losing all that trade must have been disastrous for the Chinese government and its economy; much of the country would have had to return to subsistence production and farming to survive.

The call didn’t take long. They were not polite, bluntly asking him what he wanted. He told them that he wanted to be left alone, and that they would suffer even more if any attacks were made against him. That was the last he heard from them.

Now that Ryan had assumed world control, several other countries flooded him with warm welcomes, thanking him for making the major powers back down, and offering help in any way they could.

Ryan’s last call was to a new government he hadn’t heard of in Tripoli, Libya. His simple request was to build an airfield, allow U.S. military trucks to enter their country to build a dirt road, and lease part of a desert for a year, a part they considered to be of no use whatsoever, for a large diamond worth a billion dollars. They rubbed their hands together and happily agreed.

Two days later Jonesy, Maggie, Ryan and VIN, entered Earth’s atmosphere. Allen Saunders, was above in SB-II, Michael Pitt was flying SB-I, 5,000 miles behind him. America One was prepared to draw back its shield and unleash the more powerful laser if necessary. All the craft had dropped down to a lower 120 miles altitude, the lowest height they could destroy attacking nuclear missiles before they were in danger. All three craft could be seen slowly orbiting on thousands of radar screens worldwide as they rounded the planet, with one ship above the most dangerous places at all times. Commander Joot was asked to participate using his spaceship with Elder Roo as copilot, to make it appear that four spacecraft were looking down on Earth. Even Suzi and Kathy took flight in the two mining craft to increase the orbiting craft to six for a few orbits. Always changing the numbers, the enemies on Earth didn’t know how many craft Ryan actually had; they automatically assumed they were all armed, and Ryan could have dozens more. They were a powerful force, not to be underestimated,

The security crew were back on the airfield within two days. They had been thrown off the base several years ago by the NSA and returned with several doctors, wheelchairs, sunglasses, blankets and hats ready for the incoming astronauts. Jonesy, a little rusty in Earth landings, sweated as he brought SB-III into the hot Nevada desert. He was sweating because he was already tasting Budweiser, whiskey, fresh fish, burgers, and fries, and he was trying to fly at the same time.

Even though he was rusty, and his trusty wife was egging him on, he completed a perfect landing on an airfield he knew well. The tail of the Dead Chicken could be seen waiting for him as they passed behind the hangars that had been replaced the last time. It was 10:00 a.m. on the morning of June 9th, 2027.

They had been away from Earth for ten years, 2 months and seventeen days, and had travelled half a billion miles.

What they all noticed was that the gravitational pull was suddenly like a brick in the pit of their stomachs as they slowed down the simmering runway. Although fit and having trained for this return to Earth for a few weeks, they were not prepared for how strong the gravity on Mother Earth actually was.

“Hope the pool is cool,” Jonesy said as they waited for the tow truck to take them back to the hangar.

Lieutenant Walls, driving the tow vehicle, circled around them once smiling at the cockpit and raising his cap in welcome. He and an older looking Sergeant Meyers connected the tow arm, and they turned around and headed back to the coolness of the hangar while Jonesy and Maggie closed down the ship and completed their final checks. The crew let Ryan ceremoniously leave SB-III first.

“Welcome, Mr. Richmond,” stated the two grey-haired soldiers together as they helped the pale, thin and very weak old-looking man out of the side hatch. They were not expecting to see how much he had changed and how much older he looked with his greying hair. Ryan struggled to stand, and was immediately helped into a wheelchair.

Two pretty uniformed air force nurses put a wide brimmed hat on his head, handed him sunglasses, wrapped a blanket around him, and wheeled him out of the hangar towards the medical bay. The sun hit Ryan hard, its heat wanted to cook him alive, and now he knew what it felt like to be placed inside a hot oven; his skin wanted to melt off his body. The other three were affected the same way.

Ten hours later, after a nap in a cool hospital ward and the sun down, they were wheeled out towards Jonesy’s favorite pool. A spread of luxury food items had been placed on the porch by the clean pool, and bottles of champagne, beer, juice and soft drinks awaited. Each of them were helped into the warm water, which immediately relieved the painful gravitational pull on their weak bodies, and bottles of refreshments were opened; Jonesy immediately got the two tanned men to get the filets of salmon he had seen on the barbeque.

Lieutenant Walls and Sergeant Meyers had purchased the welcoming supplies themselves. The torn-apart Nellis Air Force base had loaned the airfield its medical crew, and the U.S. Government had offered nothing. That for Ryan was perfect, as he didn’t want to see one government official during his last visit to his homeland. Ryan wasn’t as nice this time. He had learned well, and had ordered the government to leave him alone.

The airfield had changed slightly. Just after sunrise the next morning, he was driven out to see the destruction his lasers had done to the missile sites. VIN had been accurate; they were closer to 1,000 yards south of the airstrip and must have been a hundred or so feet high before the launch systems were turned into twisted metal towers. The area looked like a blackened and still smoldering battle zone. The three launch areas were nothing more than mangled metal on broken and cracked concrete slabs that could never be used again. Now he knew what the other sites around the world they had hit would look like, and he also knew by the simplicity of the launch pads, that thousands more still existed. He knew his freedom would only last so long in the Northern Hemisphere. He wanted to be out of this country, ASAP.

During the heat of the next day they were brought up to date by the security detail, as well as the friendly doctors and nurses attending them.

The U.S. was in a bad way. So was the rest of the world before international communications had come to a grinding halt. Now only governments and banks talked to each other. It seemed that the major banks around the world had as much power as the governments did, before the communications shutdown, and then the trade shutdown. All continents had become closed off areas from each other; it all happened in 2020, two years after the new U.S. administration came to power. At the same time the Chinese government had become less friendly to the rest of the world, and the two major powers stopped talking and then trading with each other. The North American continent, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, was not first-world anymore, and the people struggled. With massive unemployment, and unabated crime in civilian areas, nobody in the U.S. knew what was going on in the rest of the world. Ryan didn’t want to hear any more. He knew that he didn’t want to stay in the U.S.

Captain Pete interrupted the discussion with a radio call down to the airfield, telling Ryan that Bob Mathews had been found in Australia, and that he was ready to patch the pilot through.

“G’day, Ryan, great to hear that your trip was successful, mate,” stated Bob once he was through to Nevada.

“What are you doing in Australia, mate?” Ryan asked, smiling at his pilot’s new accent on speakerphone once the others had contributed their greetings.

“The northern arguing and fighting got worse and worse over time, mate, and the fishing better and better as we cruised south,” replied Bob. “The two girls and I have fished the whole world, and now the best in life is here, Down Under, mate. Australia and New Zealand have stayed out of the conflicts and it’s now the best place on Earth. Africa is rundown with half the continent dying. So are parts of Asia. The new U.S. and Chinese governments are weak, self-centered, and the worst we have ever had. At least your old buddy in Montreal kept things together as long as he could. He and I speak every now and again. He always wanted to know if I had heard from you. Anyway, come on Down Under, mate, you are welcome here. Several of the top guys running the country are now pals of mine, thanks to my old Astermine contact, you, and they told me to tell you that you can move your base down here, and they will build or supply anything you want in return for your friendship, nothing more. And, I’m sure you are going to find out soon enough, Ryan, five years ago the banks confiscated all private accounts worldwide that hadn’t been used for 24 months or more. They cleaned out my Astermine account. I was told yours was one of them as well. All non-used accounts were cleaned out and closed. I can get you the phone number of our old bank’s CEO if you want. I bitched at him often for my 100 grand. He is still in New York and seems far too friendly for someone who can’t help you. Know what I mean?” Bob gave him the New York number.

“Thanks, Bob. Get yourself and your crew a flight back here within the week. Air routes are safe again. Tell your friends I’m interested. Tell them to fly you over. I need your services for a few “Dead Chicken” flights, and we will have the two Gulfstreams airborne and fueled before you arrive,” returned Ryan. After hearing about Australia, Ryan thought out a new plan.

Ryan had direct contact, through the spaceship when overhead, to the U.S. military engineers already setting up camp at Sabha Airport in the middle of the Libyan Desert. The U.S. government, with Libya’s permission, had flown in 300 of them, another 300 troops for protection, jeeps, helicopters and armor, and twenty flights of earth-moving and runway-making equipment from Italy.

Three days after their arrival Ryan was told that his runway coordinates were atop an old volcanic crater a thousand feet high. The crater was about three miles wide, 200 feet deep, and had a sandy surface. After flying over the crater, the engineers told him that it looked like a pig’s snout, where he wanted them to build his runway, and there was no way they could build a landing strip there or a supply road up into the crater. Fortunately, there was a decent desert-dirt road they could use. It passed within 30 miles of the crater.

The chief engineer, a colonel, suggested that they widen a flat part of the road closest to the crater, tarmac a runway, and then chopper in whatever Ryan wanted up into the crater from the new airfield.

Ryan didn’t know what Commander Joot would want in the crater, but he agreed to their plan. Anyway, this runway was only to find out what remained of the Matts home base. He also asked the colonel for accommodations, generators, fuel and water; a complete forward military base for about a dozen people right next to the airfield.

The colonel told him that the runway could be ready in a few weeks. The road was good enough to get immediate flights of equipment into the area, and that he would get several military high-lift helicopters flown over from the old U.S. base in Italy.

Ryan’s next job was to see if his underground cavern was secure. It was, and still fully powered up. He and VIN headed down to stroke their sports cars, and he did a complete survey of the stores down there to figure out what would be the first load out of Nevada. His large tank of pure alcohol, fuel for the vehicles, including the two fully armed Bradleys, was still good, all 30,000 gallons of it, and he asked the air force to fly in smaller fuel tanks, which could be fitted aboard the Dead Chicken. He wanted a ton of the alcohol to be launched up for Commander Joot to test with the new supplies that would be arriving for launch in a few days. And he had already spoken to his old bank CEO.

The CEO, still based in New York was quite surprised when Ryan himself called him on a landline. As an experienced bank manager the man kindly explained to Ryan that the bank had changed its policy of banking, as it was allowed to by the federal government, and yes, the $3.2 billion dollars in Ryan’s account had been removed, and his account unfortunately closed for lack of use.

Listening to Ryan’s growing anger, he continued in a kindly way that, no, the bank would not give him his money back. The friendly, but unfortunate CEO sitting atop his tall bank tower in downtown Manhattan was as charming as possible until Ryan threatened him. Then he made the mistake of ending the phone call from his ex-customer.

Several minutes later, a hole was blasted through the roof of his expansive top-floor office; the walls, roof and floor began exploding as a powerful laser began eating through the steel supports of his building. He watched in horror as a hole in an outer wall of the building began to grow as sparks and smoke filled the room.

Then his phone rang again and through the dust cloud swirling around him he managed to find it.

Only when he agreed to demands that all Astermine staff accounts, including Ryan’s, be reopened and their balances returned, did the destruction of one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan cease, as the entire outer wall of one side of his large office collapsed and the unfortunate man was about to be swept out through the hole. The CEO of the world’s largest bank was thankful to have escaped with his life, and the world’s banking laws changed yet again.

The crew on the airfield became stronger, and a week later Jonesy and Maggie flew back up peacefully to rejoin their daughter on America One. Saturn Jones was surprised to see how reddish brown they had become. They looked more like Elder Roo’s color than they did the Tall People, and both had put on a little weight.

The shuttle carried a ton of fuel for the Matt Commander’s spacecraft, several of the latest computers, spares from the underground cavern, and luxury items the crew aboard had longed for.

Allen Saunders landed SB-II on the hot runway a day later with his wife Jamie as copilot, Commander Joot, Igor and Boris. Once again the security and medical personal were ready and a fully spacesuited Commander Joot, with helmet on, was wheeled into the medical ward; his helmet and suit were removed only with America One personnel around him. The white, pasty crewmembers were weak, and surprised at how quickly their fellow crewmembers that had been there a week had filled out and their color had darkened into tans.

There was no real need to fly up hydrogen fuel and many other products, as the mother ship was now a self-sufficient entity; only spares, clothing, and Earth items of luxury were transported.

SB-III was refueled with just enough liquid hydrogen to return to Earth. It entered Earth’s atmosphere with its crew cabin full of 12 happy, excited, and pale tourists. It was a dream for many to be back on Earth, and a wonder for several of the younger crewmembers. They could all feel the strong gravitational pull, and each one was bundled up and wheeled over to the waiting doctors and nurses.

Hand in hand, Jonesy and Maggie walked across to the medical bay to be with their daughter. Like two aging fighter pilots, they walked slowly across the hot apron with their helmets in their free hands. It was nice to be home.

Books by the Author

The Book of Tolan Series (Adult Reading)

Banking, Beer & Robert the Bruce – Hardcover and eNovel.

Easy Come Easy Go – Hardcover and eNovel.

It Could Happen – eNovel.

AMERICA ONE Series (General Reading)

AMERICA ONE – eNovel and Paperback.

AMERICA ONE – The Launch – eNovel and Paperback.

AMERICA ONE – The Odyssey Begins – eNovel and Paperback.

INVASION USA Series (General Reading)

INVASION USA I – The End of Modern Civilization – eNovel.

INVASION USA II – The Battle for New York – eNovel.

INVASION USA III – The Battle for Survival – eNovel.

INVASION USA IV – The Battle for Houston … The Aftermath – eNovel.

INVASION EUROPE: The Battle for Survival – 2014

INVASION USA Series: Paperback Editions

INVASION USA I – The End of Modern Civilization

INVASION USA II – The Battle for New York

INVASION USA III – The Battle for Survival

INVASION USA IV – The Battle for Houston … The Aftermath

INVASION EUROPE: The Battle for Survival – 2014

THE BANKERS CLUB Series (General Reading)

THE BANKERS CLUB I: Defaults – 2013

THE BANKERS CLUB II: Acquisitions – 2014

THE BANKERS CLUB III: Withdrawals – 2014

About the Author

T I WADE was born in Bromley, Kent, England in 1954.

His father, a banker was promoted with his International Bank to Africa and the young family moved to Africa in 1956.

The author grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and his life there is humorously described in his novel EASY COME EASY GO, Volume II of the Book of Tolan Series. Once he had completed his mandatory military commitments, at 21 he left Africa to mature in Europe.

He enjoyed Europe and lived in three countries; England, Germany and Portugal for 15 years before returning to Africa; Cape Town in 1989.

Here the author owned and ran a restaurant, a coffee manufacturing and retail business, flew a Cessna 210 around desolate southern Africa and finally got married in 1992.

Due to the upheavals of the political turmoil in South Africa, the Wade family of three moved to the United States in 1996. Park City, Utah was where his writing career began.

To date T I Wade has written eleven novels.

The Author, his wife and two teenage children currently live 20 miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Thank you for reading the America One Series.

It you would like to ask the author a question about the series, or make a suggestion, please email the author at tiwade007@yahoo.com

The author will respond personally as soon as he can, to answer your email.

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