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

  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 nick-named 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 cat
ch 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.