AMERICA ONE - Return To Earth (Book 4) Read online

  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 ent
rance, 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.