ALRIGHT, JUST A BIT MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS' :

The girls came down the stairs and joined us, so pilot talk was suspended. After I made them drinks and topped up Nick’s and mine, I was about to sit down when there was another knock at the door.

“Who the hell could that be?” I said.

I opened the door to see Dick and Courtney on the doorstep.

“Hi, guys, come on in!”

After drinks were distributed and pleasantries exchanged, Dick (typically) got straight to the point. “I’ve updated the flight plan and downloaded it onto all the starships nav computers. I reset the frequency on the starship’s R/Ts to our frequency as well,” he said.

“Well done, Dick. When do we launch then?”

“Tomorrow afternoon would be perfect. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the updated flight time as well. We will arrive in Earth’s orbit sixteen days after launch and arrive back on Mars in a further twenty days. Add, say, two days for transferring the crew and their luggage on board.”

“You’re joking, mate! Five weeks to fly to Earth and back? You said it would take nine months in the Albatross! How fast is that starship?”

“I don’t know; their systems of measurement are different from ours, but obviously it’s a damn sight faster than our ship! I will say, however, that it may not be using its top speed to reach Earth and return to Mars. We could have traveled to Mars at a much greater speed than we did in the Albatross if we’d wanted to, but then, paradoxically, it would have taken longer for us to land on Mars. It’s all to do with astrophysics, theory of relativity, and other such technical stuff that I won’t bother to bore you with. If Nick is right in his assumption that the Martian crafts are in fact starships, which I happen to agree with, then they are capable of far greater speeds when traveling to other star systems. The distance to Earth from here is not that great a distance relative to that, so the speed is adjusted accordingly. Suffice it to say that they are bloody fast ships! I doubt she’ll get much above idle in the whole trip. I dare say that now the destination co-ordinates have been entered into the ship’s computers, it will take you there as fast as possible if you think fucking fast when your wearing the control headphones.”

“Well then, it’s decided. We launch tomorrow afternoon. Be on board at fourteen hundred hours and we’ll launch whenever we feel like it. Do you have any idea what the propulsion system of the starship is Dick?”

JUST A LITTLE MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS' :

“Enchantingly charming, aren’t I?”

“The jury is still out on that, but I don’t like your chances. So I can go with you?”

“Sure, why not? Go pack your bag and a picnic lunch. I’ll clear it with Nick tomorrow.”

“You can clear it with him tonight. I’ve invited them over for drinks. They should be here any minute.”

She jumped up and left to go pack her bag…and, perhaps, a picnic lunch. I went into the kitchen and grabbed my dinner, which I was just finishing when there was a knock at the front door. I went and opened it to let Nick and Sammy in with a welcoming,

“Nick, so it’s you again. I swear the property prices in this street have plummeted since you moved in. Hi, Sammy, how are you?”

“Fine thanks, Drew. Where’s Mel?”

“She’s upstairs, go on up.”

Nick followed me into the lounge area and sat in one of the armchairs as he handed me a bottle of rum. I went to get glasses as he asked,

“So, how was Mel when you got in? Not happy?”

“No, she wasn’t, but she’s OK now,” I answered.

“How did you manage to keep your hide untanned and alive?”

“I said she could go with me.”

“Oh, that’s crafty and clever. I’ve taught you well, Grasshopper! Thanks for that by the way; it reduces the odds significantly,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Now I’m only going to be outnumbered two to one. This city is big, but it isn’t big enough to hide from three nagging women,” he said in a whisper with his eyes fixed on the staircase. “Now if only Dick would take Courtney with him, Sammy and I would have the city to ourselves.”

“Now hang on just a cotton-picking minute! That means I’ll be carting most of the crew around in space with me and then the space station crew as well on the way back. And God knows how many women they have in their crew.”

“Yeah, my heart is bleeding for you. Has Dick worked out the updated flight plan yet?”

“Not yet. He was doing that when I dropped into the control center on my way home.”

“I would have thought he’d be doing that on the starship.”

“So did I, but he reckons the main computers are far more powerful and faster. He may be onto something there; the main computers should have the performance stats of the starships and use that data when calculating the flight times there and back.”

“How is he going to load the final plan onto the right starship’s nav computer?”

“He’s going to tell the main computer to download it onto all the starships’ nav computers.”

A BIT MORE FROM 'REACH FOR MARS,'

I returned to my buggy and climbed in as I looked at my watch and was surprised to find that it was 8:00 p.m. It had been an eventful day. I figured Melissa would be at home by now, so I pointed the Buggy in that direction. I pulled into the driveway and parked, walked in the front door, and heard banging and clattering noises coming from the kitchen. This worried me a little, as there were a lot of sharp knives in there.

“Drew, is that you?” Mel called out.

“No, I’m just your friendly neighborhood Martian burglar—don’t mind me, I won’t be long. You don’t have a lot worth stealing.”

She came into the hallway, thankfully not carrying any sharp knives, and gave me a hug and a kiss. Then she said over her shoulder as she went back to the kitchen,

“Make me a drink, please. I’ll be back in a minute.”

So I made her a drink, and she was back in a minute.

“Sorry, it may be a little strong on the rum bit,” I said as she sat down and tasted it.

“No, it’s OK. Now, I have a bone to pick with you.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t discuss this mission with you first, but it all happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance.”

“Yeah, I understand that, but were you going to ask me to come with you?”

“You want to come with me?”

“I’d like to be asked!”

“I think, in the overall scheme of the conversation, I sort of just did.”

“What, just like that? No macho, fighter-jock speeches about the danger involved and how you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the mission at hand unless you knew that I was safely back here?”

“No. I know you couldn’t live without me if something were to happen to me on this mission, so I may as well take you with me.”

“How romantic you are, as usual,” she said with a smirk.

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Back on Mars… with me,

After I signed off, I shut down every system on the ship except the two-way R/T, and then I shut off all the lights as I left the Albatross and jumped into a buggy to go in search of Melissa and Richard. I drove over to the control center, as it occurred to me that I would most likely find Richard where all the computers were. I found as I walked into level four that I had guessed right when I saw him sitting in his chair surrounded by flashing computer screens. I walked up and stood beside his chair.

“Greetings, Richard, what are you up to?”

“I’m recalculating the flight plan for the rescue mission so that I can load it onto the starship’s navigation computer,” he answered.

“Shouldn’t you be doing that on board the actual starship?”

“These computers are far faster and more powerful than the shipboard computers; they also know the performance specifications of the starships, so they will formulate that into their calculations. They should be able to give me the top speed of the craft, the time to Earth’s orbit, and the time for return. Once the computer has calculated the updated flight plan, I will tell it to download the plan onto the starship’s computer.”

“How do you know this computer will download it onto the right starship’s computer?”

“I’m going to tell the computer to download the flight plan onto all of them,” he answered.

“OK, fair enough. Could you also set the starship’s radio on our frequency so I can communicate with the ISS and the city during the rescue flight?”

“Yes, I will do that as soon as I’m finished with this.”

“Great, thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey, Drew, when are we going to launch?”

“Ask the computer. Till tomorrow then.”

SOME MORE FROM 'REACH FOR MARS' :

“They estimated two months if they were flying the Albatross, but it turns out that they won’t be flying the Albatross. They will be flying a more powerful, technologically superior alien spacecraft they found parked on Mars and learned how to fly. They don’t know the cruising speed of the craft, but Drew told me they wouldn’t be surprised if they were in Earth’s orbit to pick us up in as little time as a month.”

I then sat down with a coffee. The rest of the crew took it to mean that I had finished speaking, and all of them started talking at once. I sat quietly and listened to them. I could not have asked for, or expected, a better reaction from my crew. For the first time since the Nuclear holocaust, I heard tones of excitement, hope, and even optimism in their voices as they spoke. I was truly grateful for that; they were a good crew and they had all become close friends during our time aboard the space station. I marveled at the fact that a small crew we had never met could make such an uplifting difference so quickly to my crew, simply by offering and extending a helping hand across millions of kilometers of space. When I had finished my coffee I stood up and leaned forward to rest on the table with my hands. The crew fell quiet and waited for me to speak. I straightened and started pacing again.

“We will need a twenty-four-hour radio watch in place immediately for when the Albatross calls again. I will stand the first watch; Yelena will spell me in four hours’ time. By then I will have worked out the rest of the schedule and will let the rest of you know when your shifts will take place. In the mean time, you’d better start packing your bags and any of the supplies and other sundries you think we should take with us. This is a full space station evacuation—you all know the drill.”

They quickly left the room to start packing, except Yelena, who remained behind and put her arms around me and hugged me. “I cannot believe it; how on earth did you arrange it?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it; it was Drew who came up with the idea and pushed for it.”

“What is he like, this Drew?”

“He seems very capable; I’ll bet a pound to a pinch of salt that he was the one who convinced the rest of the Mars crew that a rescue attempt was worth the risk and insisted that he lead it. I’ll bet a year’s salary that he’s the commander of the Mars crew. He is definitely a man who is used to getting his own way.”

“Hmm! I think I know someone like that,” Yelena teased.

I laughed and kissed her,

“Go get some sleep, my love. I’ll see you in four hours.”

I then headed back to the radio room.

HERE'S A LITTLE MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS' :

I suppose that  I will never know how my previous radio transmission had reached Mars. The ISS’s R/T was normally only powerful enough to communicate with Earth or maybe as far as the moon in the right conditions. To reach Mars would have been impossible, I would have thought, until it happened! I actually wasn’t even sending a message to the Albatross, in fact. Although I knew the Earth and our fellow humans were finished, I still tried to raise Flight Control on the radio from time to time. It was the last such message that Albatross had intercepted and replied to. I had sat there waiting for a reply for fifteen minutes—as I always did—when I received one from a totally unexpected source. A glimmer of hope appeared on my horizon until Drew told me that they had touched down on Mars months ago. That glimmer of hope was suddenly snuffed out like a weak and sputtering candle in a hurricane…until Drew’s last message had come through. What a wonderful surprise—I could scarcely believe it. They were going to risk their lives on a foolhardy, extremely dangerous journey in which Drew and a crewmate would pick us all up and take us back with them to Mars. And in an alien ship they had found on Mars, no less! If Drew could pull this off he would be giving my crew a chance at life and a future, instead of dying in six months time in a tin can orbiting around a dead planet in the dark coldness of space. I fully realized how hard a life it would be fighting for survival on a hostile and alien planet, but I had never shied away from a difficult task, and after all, this was a chance to live. I silently wished Drew and his crew Godspeed and the best of luck. I thought of actually transmitting this message but knew that Drew wouldn’t hear it, as he would be busily preparing for the mission. I then suddenly realized that I needed to advise the rest of the crew of the latest developments. I hadn’t told the crew of my radio contact with Drew on board the Albatross yet as I didn’t want to raise their hopes only to have them dashed. Now seemed like a pretty good time to let them know so I switched the radio to the ship’s intercom channel and then looked around for the mike before realizing that I was still holding it.

“Attention all crew, please meet me in the common room as soon as possible. I have great news.”

I then hung up the mike and rose to leave, pausing long enough to switch the radio back to two-way R/T communications before heading to the common room.

I found that the rest of the crew had already assembled and they looked up at me expectantly as I walked into the room. I started pacing back and forth as I spoke.

(Drew and Nick would be very surprised when they met Vladimir because he possessed many of the qualities and personality traits of their old friend Holly.)

“Thank you for being so prompt. In the last twelve hours I have been in radio communications with a member of the Albatross crew on Mars, a man by the name of Drew.”

I paused as the sound of a huge, communal intake of breath filled the small room; then I held up my hand to still the fusillade of questions being fired at me by the crew. I went on to tell them of the series of occurrences that had led to that amazing contact.

“The Albatross landed on Mars two and a half months ago,”—the crew’s previous communal intake of breath was now expelled as a communal groan—“but Drew has consulted with the rest of his crew and they have agreed to mount a rescue mission to pick us up and take us back to their base on Mars.”

I raised my hand once more to silence the crew so I could finish telling them all of it.

“Drew and another crew member will be launching from Mars in the next two days and heading our way.”

I paused to allow a question from Yelena. “How long will it take them to reach us?” she asked. 

A TAD MORE:

On board the International Space Station… with Vladimir,

I sat in the radio operator’s chair deep in  thought for quite a while after Drew had signed off. I was still shocked by all that had happened in the last six months, as was the rest of the crew of the ISS. We had watched in helpless horror as our home planet was destroyed beneath us. We had had front row seats for that holocaust. We all had feared and subconsciously known that the conflagration below us would have wiped out most, if not all living creatures down there. Some of the mushroom clouds bursting up from the surface below seemed would engulf us. We knew in our hearts that if there were any survivors of the explosions and exposure to the huge doses of radiation, they would have perished from the nuclear winter that followed, caused by the radiation clouds that covered the Earth for so many months afterward, preventing the sun’s life-giving rays from reaching the Earth’s surface. When the clouds finally started to dissipate gradually as the radioactive dust sank back to the Earth, our fears were confirmed by the sight of the charred and blackened surface of the planet we once called home. The whole crew was totally devastated by it all, but it grew worse as the realization sank in that we were stranded in an orbit around a dead planet until we died, which would occur in the very near future. With no hope of resupply or rescue and nothing we could do about it, We were destined to follow our comrades on Earth in four to six months when the last of our supplies were exhausted.

I was amazed at the vagaries of fate and luck that had worked together to put in place a staggering series of events that hopefully would lead to our eventual salvation. We had all known about the launch of the Albatross, of course, as it was big news in the media for weeks before the ship actually launched. We also shared the same radio frequency with Flight Control, so on the day of the launch we watched the television coverage while listening to the actual transmissions between Flight Control and the Albatross. We actually watched from our perch in space as the Albatross blasted out of Earth’s gravity and into space on its way to Mars with all its engines at full thrust and fully lit. It was a moving and inspiring sight that moved me to radio a congratulatory, best of luck message to them. As I never received a reply, I assumed that they either never got it or were too busy to reply. We watched until the ship’s tail fire had dwindled into the distance and was lost among the stars before we went back to work.