Tuesday 31 May 2016

A PAGE OR TWO MORE FROM 'REACH FOR MARS':-

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The remote ships were designed primarily to carry much larger payloads of cargo than the Albatross. They were flown via remote control from Earth and therefore designed to be unmanned. Consequently, unlike the Albatross, the cargo bays filled a much larger proportion of the remotes’ hulls. They were, however, also designed as ERVs (Earth Return Vehicles) in case, for some reason, the Albatross was incapable to make the return journey to Earth. Thus, they were fitted with flight decks and crew habitation quarters, albeit much smaller than those on the Albatross. However, with two pilots in our crew it meant that two ERVs could have been piloted back to Earth with three crew members on board each if necessary, making the return journey to Earth less cramped and uncomfortable for the crew.
All of this meant that I should have had no trouble firing up the ERVs and piloting them to their new parking area. And yet I did. When I got to the first ERV, the damn thing wouldn’t fire up. It would burp, and it would fart, but it would not start. Eventually, I opened the hatch and marched down to the tail of the ship and looked up the tailpipes of the thrusters; wondering if perhaps they were blocked by Martian dust. There was some in there, but not enough to make any difference. I looked up at the sky in the direction of Earth and yelled,
“Drew, get your ass down here! I can’t start this bastard!”
I angrily marched back into the ship and punched the button to slam the hatch closed (which, of course, it didn’t—it just slid slowly closed as it always did). This infuriated me even more, so I threw myself into the launch chair and glared at the control panel for a long time. That didn’t magically make the engines start either, so I reached forward and hit the oxygen feeds to the engines to blow the dust out of them and shut them down after a few seconds.
The ERVs had been parked on Mars for at least eight months, which meant that the last time the engines had been fired up was at least that long ago, and during that time they had been exposed to all the sudden and erratic temperature changes and storms that Mars could throw at them. I suddenly sat bolt upright in the launch chair as I suddenly remembered a trick Drew had used a few times when he couldn’t get one of the thrusters to fire up.
Now how did he do it? Pushed the throttles to 25 percent and then hit the ignition buttons and hold for a few seconds…then push the throttles to the gate, hit the ignition buttons, and hold. With a burp and a fart, the engines finally did start. I did not cut back on the thruster throttles fast enough and was hurled back into the launch chair and pinned there as the ship scated and bounced while rapidly accelerating across the ground. I tried pulling back on the joystick but got no real joy from it; I got the nose off the ground but the ship was still being bounced around by the rear landing skids as they skidded  across the rough terrain of the plateau. I increased the landing thrusters to maximum, but before they had time to make a difference, the ship skidded off the end of the plateau and plummeted toward the floor of the crater far below.
I noticed as I fell toward my death that the thrusters were still at 100 percent power. I pushed forward on the stick, thereby lowering the nose of the remote. The ship was carrying a total weight of well over ninety tons including its own weight—a very heavy inertia to overcome and control—but the thrusters were very powerful and were already pushing the ship forward rapidly. She started to rise from the canyon when I again pulled back on the stick and luckily I flew upward and away from my death.
Once I reached the altitude I had planned for in the first place, I leveled off and cut the throttles back to 5 percent power while cutting the landing thrusters back to 50 percent. I then floated across the Martian landscape toward the plain. When I reached it I set up for a landing and dumped the ship heavily onto the ground. I didn’t care—I was still angry and shaken and had had enough for one day. After shutting down all flight systems, I went through to the cargo hold, unstrapped the buggy, disconnected the cables and hoses, and drove toward the city. I stopped the buggy before I entered the ramp leading to the city and looked up at the sky toward where I knew the Earth would be.
“Thanks Drew,” I said, “I owe you a brew, or at least a shot of rum or two.”
Of course, I knew there was no way Drew could have possibly heard my offer, yet I was certain that, one way or another, he would hold me to it when he got back.
The next day was quite a bit easier for me. I was able to use what I had learned the day before to start up the second ERV with relative ease and so, without any of the drama of the previous day, was able to fly it to the plain and land it before midday. I decided that instead of driving back and flying the last ERV over to the plain, I would spend the rest of the day unloading some of the supplies from the two ERVs and stow them in a corner in the city where they could be sorted later when the rest of the crew returned.
For the next week, I unloaded supplies from the two ERVs until I decided to go get the last ERV and bring it in to join the rest on the plain. Once I completed that mission and the three ERVs were parked on the plain I spent my days unloading ERVs and helping Sammy in the terrarium and the labs.

Over the weeks that followed I often caught myself looking up into the Martian skies toward the area I knew was where the starship would be making its reentry into Mars Atmos(phere). I always found myself disappointed when the skies remained empty. 

Monday 23 May 2016

A COUPLE MORE PAGES FROM 'REACH FOR MARS' :

I stood at the control panels watching our approach toward the ISS through the bridge windows with growing apprehension. This was going to be an extremely difficult task to execute. As this was an alien ship, its hatches were designed differently from the space station’s, so we wouldn’t be able to latch onto and dock with the space station as the space shuttle or the Albatross would have been able to. Instead, we would have to fire lines across to the space station and then once the lines were secured, transfer the supplies, baggage, and then the crew into our ship while trying to match their rotation and keep the lines tight for transfer.
As the ship approached the space station, I conformed its flight path to the rotation of the space station so their entry hatch was continually lined up with ours. (God, I loved this ship!) Then I ordered the ship to move in closer so that Dick could fire the lines over to the space station. Their crew caught them and belayed them to mounting points in their airlock. I then ordered the ship to move away from the station until the lines were tight and hold that position. The transfer worked quite well, and it wasn’t too long before it was completed. When I got the word from Dick that the transfer was complete, I told him to release the lines and batten down the hatches. When he had reported back to me that we were free and clear, I directed the ship away from the space station, and then when I judged that we were safely far enough away to turn, I told the ship to head home to Mars. It turned away from the ISS and punched in its engines, and we were away at breathtaking speed. I looked at one of the rear viewing monitors and watched in awe as the Earth and its moon shrank so swiftly in our wake. We were now blazing through the galaxy at an unbelievable rate of speed, heading rapidly toward home. Satisfied that the ship knew where it was going, I removed my headset and put it back on its standby rack. With a last glance at the monitors, I turned, left the bridge, and headed down the stairs to meet the crew we had just pulled off the ISS.



Chapter 24

Back on Mars with Nick;
After signing off from Drew, I replaced the mike on its mount and stared out the windows at the alien starships parked below, lost in my thoughts for a while. As much as I hated to admit it to myself I missed Drew and was looking forward to his return. It was always entertaining when Drew was around; he always rose to the bait when I stirred him up and his reactions were usually quite amusing. I was missing the entertaining exchange of insults and jibes that followed as a result, (Some might call it intellectually stimulating repartee although I very much doubted that it could truly be called that). But it was highly entertaining just the same.
I realized with a sudden shock just how many years we had flown together, fought together, and been each other’s wingman, both in the air and on the ground. Hardly a day had gone by in all those years that we had been separated for any length of time. We were certainly separated now, however, by millions of miles of space! I was worried about Drew and the rest of the crew aboard that alien starship as they flew through space to pick up the six stranded astronauts from the ISS and return to Mars. I knew only too well the dangers they would be facing on a mission such as this, and I wished them the best of luck and Godspeed for a quick return to Mars.
As captain of the Albatross and commander of the Mars mission, I technically had the power to refuse to allow them to attempt such a perilous and foolhardy mission. I would not, however, in all human conscience and decency attempt  to do something so cold and heartless. As the last survivors of the human race we were duty bound to try all avenues to rescue other survivors if at all possible.
It was like the Law of the Sea: all seafarers in a position to give aid must answer an SOS distress call, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous it may be to do so. And after all, we also call our craft, ships.
It was all an academic argument anyway. Even if I had forbidden them to go, they would have simply ignored me and gone anyway. There was no government here on Mars…certainly not like anything back on Earth. Every crew member was master of his or her own destiny, with total freedom of choice, as long as their choice did not adversely or dangerously affect any other crew member or the crew as a whole, of course.
So I had neither the right nor the power to stop those crew members if they decided to take one of the starships and fly off to Earth to pick up six stranded astronauts and bring them to Mars, nor would I have attempted it. I shook myself out of my reverie and stood up with a stoic,
“Fuck it! There is lots to do and this isn’t getting any of it done.”
With a last glance at the radio, I turned and left the flight-control room and took myself up to the terrarium to help Sammy. We toiled there until the sun was disappearing below the horizon before we decided to call it a day, since the sun was calling it a day too. Just before I left the terrarium, I caught myself glancing up at the sky in the direction from which the starship would be coming in from Earth. There was no sign of it yet, as I knew there wouldn’t be, but still I looked. I would find myself doing that a lot in the weeks to come.

There was indeed much to do in the weeks ahead. I was sure that Drew would be very happy to learn on his return that I had discovered an exit ramp from the access tunnel that led to a wide open and flat plain on the surface. We would no longer have to use the goat track up the side of the crater to access the planet’s surface. There was also an added bonus: the plain was flat enough and large enough to park all three remote craft on it, thereby drastically cutting down the travel times to and from the remotes to move supplies to the city. I decided that I would drive over to one of the remotes, fly it over to the plain, and park it a short distance from an exit/entrance ramp the following day.

Sunday 15 May 2016

MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS:

Even sooner than expected, the day came—or maybe it was night; there really is no difference in space—when I sensed and then felt changes in the flight characteristics of our ship. I was awakened out of a deep sleep by my pilot’s subconscious, which had detected those changes. I pulled on my jeans and entered the bridge as I zipped up my fly. It was then that I realized the ship had been slowing down, and I started checking the monitors. We had indeed been slowing down, and I checked what I was pretty sure was the long-range radar screen, which showed a large planetary body and a moon ahead of us on the outer circle of the radar’s sweep. I looked at another monitor, which I was pretty sure told me that we were only 1.6 million kilometers from our target. The ship continued to slow as I stared out of the bridge windows trying to see the Earth and the moon.
I could see the moon out there in the distance, but I couldn’t see anything that resembled the Earth, which was a bit disturbing. From this distance I should have been able to see it quite clearly. On close scrutiny of the area around the Moon, I thought I could see a larger spherical shadow, which may have been blocking the stars behind it, but at this distance I was not sure. I sensed movement close to me and turned to find Melissa standing beside me.
“What’s going on?”
“The ship is slowing down as we are approaching Earth. We are approximately 1.6 million kilometers from it at the moment, I think.”
“Why can’t I see it?”
“I’m not sure. We should be able to see it by now. Can you see our old moon to the right side of the windows?”
“Yes, I can recognize it. So where is the Earth?”
I suddenly had a revelation. I grabbed a set of headphones, put them on, and told the ship to extinguish the bridge lights. Then I told Mel to close her eyes and count to thirty before opening them again as I did the same. When I opened my eyes I was shocked, not only because of the difference it made, but also because of what was revealed by it. I heard Mel’s sudden intake of breath and the heartrending sob that expelled it, put my arm around her shoulders, and hugged her tight.
Our eyes were now acclimatized to the starlight outside as we stood in the darkness of the bridge. We could now clearly see the Earth ahead of us, a blackened and burned spherical lump of charcoal suspended in space. I realized that we couldn’t see it before because it now absorbed sunlight instead of reflecting it. Our Earth—once green, blue, and brown with wispy, white clouds as viewed from space—was now a black, lifeless grave. I opened the R/T channel to the ISS.
“This is Drew Hunt from the T2 calling the International Space Station; are you out there? Over.”
I received a reply almost immediately. “Hi, Drew, Vladimir here. Over.”
“Just a courtesy call to let you know that we are approaching you and should be in LEO with you in thirteen to fourteen hours, give or take a minute or two. Over.”
“We weren’t expecting you for another two days, but we are ready to go. The crew will be suited up and ready for you in the docking bay when you arrive. Over.”
“No worries. Don’t be alarmed when you see us coming toward you from the stars. We are in an alien spacecraft, but I am driving it, so we are relatively friendly. I don’t suppose you would have ever seen a TV series called The Thunderbirds in Russia. Over.”
“Yes, I did, actually. I used to find it quite amusing and entertaining. Why do you ask, Drew? Over.”
“Our ship looks very much like Thunderbird Two, but it’s white and much larger and sleeker. Oh, and we don’t wear wooden expressions with weirdly spinning eyes…well, most of us don’t. We’re quite normal, usually. Over.”
“Thanks for the heads up; I am still looking forward to meeting you. Over.”
“Good; we’ll be coming up on you soon. Over and Out.”

I then decided to go back to bed and grab a few more hours of sleep before we arrived at the space station. I was back on the bridge six hours later with my empty coffee mug in hand. After checking all of the monitors and noting that there were no flashing red symbols showing on any of them, I dropped down to the cafeteria and got myself a coffee before returning to the bridge.