America One: War of the Worlds (16 page)

“I think the light switched on down there when we opened the door up here,” suggested VIN.

“Want to go for a swim, Dad?” joked Mars nervously. “I heard you hate spiders. I heard you, Dad! I heard you like we used to think when I was a kid. Did you hear me?”

“Sorry, Mars I wasn’t listening. We must start work again on our telepathic thinking. I forget we used to think to each other. Everybody just talks loudly these days, and no I don’t want to go for a swim right now,” smiled VIN. “That is real space shark territory down there. We need more light to see how far the water, or the cave spreads out. At least we know that the toilet empties in a separate location and not into the water. I think the
Matts
dug down and their machine found this hole in the ground, and they somehow with that lousy air built the staircase to descend down. With what I could see in the dim light, and if this is water, we have more water down here than we could ever fly from the crater to the base in a hundred years. I can see that the water depth about ten feet out looked at least five or six feet deep.”

“And very clear,” added Mars. “My suit readouts said the air pressure was far too weak for us to survive down there for more than a few minutes, but there is air in that cavern. It must have entered with the water dropping in. I wonder how big that place is down there.”

“I got two samples, and I think the toilet is usable. The piping doesn’t connect with the water,” stated VIN knowing that it would have to be used soon by both of them.

As VIN and Mars talked about looking for a way down to the lake over an hour earlier,
SB-V
was now above the tunnels as Jonesy was heading to the Retreat.

Lunar was waiting for a radio message back from Earth. As soon as she had come into intercom contact on her last orbit, Ryan had given her Mars’ message.

“Relay it to Nevada,”
Ryan had told his daughter. “
You also have your computers to do the calculations figuring out the distance the enemy still have to travel. VIN Noble suggested that he thought the globe to be Europa, and that the ships had travelled one third of the distance between the two planets. The distance from Europa, or Jupiter to Mars is only a few thousand miles difference.”

Ryan already had his calculations, but he wanted to make sure that his agreed with the others.

Less than an hour later and on Lunar’s next orbit Ryan found that the difference in distance was much the same as his figures from her computers, as well as Earth’s. The conclusions of speed of these craft flying through space were also about the same.

All three computations put Europa approximately 492,222,000 million miles from Mars, and the incoming enemy spaceships still 281,565,980 miles from the red planet. They calculated that the craft were currently 110 days into their journey. It seemed they had left Europa when Mars was at its closest point to Jupiter.

Jupiter had a slower orbit of the sun, traveling just under 30,000 miles an hour forward speed. The red planet travelled through space on its closer orbit at its usual 54,000 miles an hour.

Arrival date on Mars: 281 days was what the computers agreed would be the
Matts
travel time to reach the red planet.

Ryan had also received some good news from the base in Nevada. One of Dr. Smidt’s team had reunited an old friendship, and the person concerned was also an old friend of Ryan’s, an ex-NASA astronaut from the old days. Franklin had been an astronaut and a physicist, and had worked with the old International Space Station, the ISS program.

Franklin and a team of specialists had developed a plasma rocket engine at the beginning of the century, once he had retired from spaceflight.

Ryan remembered his old friend Franklin well. He had nearly taken Franklin’s plasma thrusters instead of the liquid hydrogen thrusters for space travel, but the plasma engines had needed vast amounts of electrical power to feed them, and at that time Ryan didn’t yet have the Plutonium-238 from Russia. The plasma thrusters had needed nuclear power, and unfortunately by the time he had the nuclear power it was too late to change engines.

Then came the couple of decades when only the attack cubes were launched into space, and Franklin’s plasma engines, like most of the companies researching equipment for space exploration, went dormant.

Ryan chatted with Igor, also an old friend of Franklin’s, waiting for the time to pass for Jonesy to return to the tunnels. Igor and Boris were currently up with Lunar in
SB-V,
and were waiting for the next visit to get their rides back to the base.

“I was really excited about the plasma rockets,” Ryan stated over the intercom.

“We all were, especially Franklin’s paper about a possible 39-day flight time to Mars,”
stated Igor from high above.

“I actually studied all I could on the plasma engines during the odyssey,” added Max Von Braun sitting in the cockpit with Ryan, and waiting for his next trip down the tunnel. “Actually, Vitalily’s crew and my crew wanted to build a replica during the long days of the odyssey, but we couldn’t find any designs or plans in the information storage units.”

“Well, if you remember boss, I was with you when you met Franklin in Texas,”
added Boris.
“How old is Franklin? It’s a miracle he is still alive.”

“I reckon he must be in his early nineties,” suggested Ryan. He was older than all of us, by at least a decade.”

“And we now have 14 extra years on the man,”
stated Igor.

“Well, the secure iMail message I received from Dr. Smidt’s number two, Dr. Geiger states that Franklin’s company is now run by two of his sons-in-law, both plasma physicists who never stopped working on development,” continued Ryan. “He sent me a three page iMail on this new and exciting project. “Dr. Geiger wrote that very little new hardware production had taken place in Franklin’s company since 2018, due to a lack of materials. It seems that that a lack of materials didn’t stop their research though. Franklin has been in contact with Martin Brusk and other companies over the last two decades, and Martin took an interest in the plasma engine early on. Martin has even begun production of plasma thrusters in a new location in the old Silicone Valley area.”

“Weren’t the original plasma thrusters for the International Space Station in around 2015-17?” asked Max. “That was the most recent press release we had aboard
America One
.”

“Yes,”
added Igor.
“Two hundred kilowatt thrusters that could reduce the fuel usage of the station by 95 percent annually. The thrusters gave out about 6 Newtons of thrust. They even tried a solar powered support system on the ISS, but never got it up and running. Just not enough power. They don’t run in atmospheric conditions.”

“Well, 200 kilowatts is nothing for us today with our cold fusion power units. Our smallest unit now puts out 30 Megawatts,”
returned Boris.

“That tiny motor wouldn’t get any of our ships moving very fast,”
added Vitalily from
SB-V
.

“That’s the exciting part,” continued Ryan. “It seems that their research over the last two decades has been a 50 Megawatt thruster size unit, 250 times more powerful. Martin Brusk is working on it, and has been without our knowledge for 9 months, and with what Franklin’s company manufactured 25 years ago, it won’t take long for Martin to redesign the new possibilities into a test engine.”

“Why did Martin Brusk get involved?” Max asked.

“Martin Brusk is the best businessman I know, always looking out for new ideas. I’m sure he and Franklin had first met around the time I was moving into Nevada,” Ryan answered.

“Maybe that’s why he designed that hybrid electric aircraft, your old Gulfstream, Commander,” Saturn suggested sitting next to him over the open conversation.

“Of course,” added Ryan excitedly. “Saturn, you are as clever I think you are. You hit the nail on the head. Mate the cold fusion plant and his hybrid aircraft system for atmospheric flight, to a plasma thruster for space, and Martin’s company Earth-Exit will have an atmospheric hybrid ship that can head into space and whizz around the solar system as fast as his Teslas. Amazing! ...and well thought out young Saturn.”

“Wow! That Martin is sure a sneaky devil,”
joked Maggie listening in.
SB-III
had just come over the horizon and was listening in to the conversation.

“Plasma thrusters huh! I know that the Air Force was doing research on them as well around then, but their ideas was nothing like those guys in Texas,”
added Jonesy far below his wife.

“How long before testing?”
Igor asked.

Dr. Geiger said that the new engine could be tested later this month,” Ryan replied. “What really changes the playing field is that even though these engines are useless in atmospheric conditions, during long distance space travel, our fuel usage could decrease by more than 75 percent at current speeds. I did some calculations an hour ago, and worked out that one 50 Megawatt plasma thruster would be perfect for the smaller shuttles, two thrusters for the larger shuttles, and eight thrusters could give
America Two
a far quicker journey through space to Mars. Franklin designed these thrusters to work like Ion Drives, constant thrust throughout the journey for acceleration and then braking. I believe that our ship’s design might have to be changed as it needs to be turned around for braking, just like our shuttles do currently. Four engines will equal our current thrust. With 8 engines and 12,000 Newtons of forward thrust instead of 6,000 Newtons, the mother ship will accelerate as fast as the shuttles in a shorter time to a far higher cruise speed very rapidly with their massive amounts of power, and we could coast the mother ship for about 50 percent of the journey. Heavy acceleration and coasting with 8 engines could actually use less fuel than a 4-engine constant burn. I have Nevada working on the scenarios right now, and need to get our fuel usage down to 20 metric tons for each return trip. The old NASA shuttles had rocket fuel tanks that ejected once the Karman line was reached. Those tanks held 12 to 15 metric tons. That is the size of the two fuel tanks needed aboard
America Two
for a round trip journey to Mars, or we have to rebuild the ships and make them larger.”

“Going onto long finals into the Retreat,”
stated Jonesy.

“Let us all get back to our current situation crew,” added Ryan.

The shuttle landed and crew exchanged places. Ruler Roo and Joanne were ready with medical equipment, food, water, and four other crewmembers loaded in the equipment then got in themselves. Jonesy’s shuttle still had quarter tanks, which was enough for two flights to the tunnels and back.

Equipment and supplies were unloaded, then loaded, and it wasn’t long before the shuttle was ready to launch out of the shield and head back to the tunnels.

VIN and Mars rested for a while figuring what to do next. Once they had returned to the upper level, and chamber, they had checked every corner of the base. It was clean, as clean as a bank vault, and all they could do, was to wait for backup, and for the cryogenic chambers to open. They had seven hours to go and it was time for a chocolate bar, all the way from Australia.

Jonesy had his new cargo and crew aboard and was climbing way from the crater.

“A vastly different sky from when I remember us being trapped by the storm,” stated Ruler Roo from the jump seat behind Jonesy.

“It’s been awhile since you have been up here on the red planet, Roo?” replied Jonesy, as he swung the shuttle’s nose round towards Lookout Peak on Lookout Mountain, which would creep over the horizon in ten minutes or so.

“Yes, I am so happy to be back,” Roo replied. “I am ready to lead my people like my wife did back in the United States.” To Jonesy it was funny to hear an alien to the Homo sapiens world, describe his birth country as if he had always lived there. “I did not like living in Canada, it was too cold,” Roo continued.

“Want to feel the temperature out there?’ Jonesy interrupted the smaller man, smiling. “It is colder than frozen vodka out there, Mr. Ruler Roo.”

“Yes, but we are always warm in the base, and the gravity is not so harsh,” Roo replied.

“I think the opposite of course,” added Joanne sitting next to her husband on the same jump seat. A second crew medic and one of Max’s build crew were sitting on the other jump seat. Maggie had rejoined her husband from the Retreat, and was again his co-pilot.

All the crew had spacesuits on, and inside the forward cargo hold, where the gold had been removed up in orbit, were seven spacesuits of different sizes and helmets, all the extras on the planet.

Two were teenage suits, two were kid suits, and the smaller suits would fit a smaller
Matt
very well, but the remaining three suits were full size, and Joanne hoped there were a few larger
Matts
, than the usual five feet tall.

“Talking about frozen vodka, Mr. Chief Astronaut Jones,” replied Roo, and then paused to figure out if Jonesy was using his sense his humor or not. The
Matts,
when they had been found, were a humorless group of people, but Jonesy and a few others had shown the
Matts
that it wasn’t very difficult to learn how to find, and then use a sense of humor. Naturally, with Jonesy teaching them what was funny and what wasn’t, the
Matts’
new sense of humor was more of a sarcastic nature. “Now Chief Astronaut Jones that I am the official Ruler of the
Matt
base here on Mars, I will have to refuse any beer or vodka you offer me. Of course, my wife can partake if she wishes.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day, Maggie,” replied Jonesy winking at his wife in the co-pilot seat. “It certainly wasn’t a good idea to teach you
Matts
how to drink. Less booze for the rest of us. Lookout Mountain will pass on our starboard side,” continued Jonesy trying his part of being a tour guide. Since everybody, bar Joanne and Roo had seen the mountain before, his comment caused little reaction.