America One: War of the Worlds (26 page)

“Mattville, an interesting name,” replied Martin Brusk. “I think it’s getting time for me to join you guys before I get too old for space travel. Am I invited?”

“If you deliver the thrusters for
America Two
on time, I think you can travel with us back to the red planet, and see how they operate,” joked Ryan as they headed over to the infirmary.

“What about the shuttles?” Martin asked.

“Igor, Boris and I have decided that since we might have a war on our hands when we return, we are going to leave the shuttles in the same configuration we have now,” Ryan replied. “They have proved themselves in battle, and if we add another rocket motor to their rear, it could only weigh them down in the weak Martian atmosphere.”

“And how long do I have to produce how many plasma thrusters for
America Two
, now that your order has changed?’ Martin asked as they got to the infirmary doors.

“Tomorrow,” smiled Ryan as he was wheeled into the cold air conditioning of the infirmary.

“How many plasma thrusters?” Martin asked.

“Do you want my final answer?” Ryan asked surprised to see that a very brown and healthy Dr. Nancy was shouting orders in all directions to the infirmary crew of a dozen medics.

“Good morning Ryan, as usual you look all washed out,” smiled Dr. Nancy giving her old boss a quick hug. “Martin, wheel him into the first cubicle on your right please, and lift him onto the bed. He won’t be heavy. We never are when we return from space. I’ll be in there in a minute. Kathy, you look very pale dear but looking better than your husband. Mary, cubicle two please. Ryan, I decided to combine my return to check up with my medics to your return, and to say hi. Pete is also here working in Hangar Two.”

As ordered the two wheelchairs entered the curtained off cubicles so that the returning astronauts could get a full checkup, normal procedure for every return from orbit.

“Martin, Igor Boris and I did weeks of studying the numbers you radioed to us,” continued Ryan. “We decided that due to a possible attack on our first base by
Matts
on their way from Jupiter’s moon Europa, we need to return as fast as possible, once the next Opposition window opens, in 17 months’ time. Our final number of thrusters is due to our build crew needing to fit them in a triangular configuration. We want to power the mother ship up with ten thrusters. Four, three, two and one in a triangular configuration.”

Martin helped Ryan get onto the bed and lie down on his back. Ryan wasn’t wearing a space suit, but was dressed in the usual Astermine blue flight suit.

“Since you told us nine months ago that you are already in production of Franklin’s plasma thrusters,” Ryan continued “we hope that the ten thrusters will available with separate cold fusion power plants within three months to begin installation.”

“Close, I know the power plants will be ready in Australia, and we should have the final testing done within 60 days,” Martin replied. “I assume all your shuttles will need to be docked to the mother ship for the ride? There is no way they will keep up with your
America Two
with ten plasma thrusters. What about fuel for the return flight? Are you going to take it with you?”

Ryan smiled and looked at his old friend before Dr. Nancy shuffled Martin out of the cubicle. “Martin, you don’t understand how much water we found on Mars.”

Fuel was now the least of Ryan’s worries. With the new plasma thrusters decreasing a round-trip flight time by 40 percent, even with a massively overpowered mother ship they would never have a problem again. The fuel savings on ten thrusters versus four would allow the mother ship to resupply all five shuttles on Mars for an extended time. Ryan smiled as Dr. Nancy went over his aging body.

Even though they now had unlimited supplies of water on Mars, Astermine’s need to turn it into liquid hydrogen was actually diminishing. Soon, and with the new plasma thrusters, his dream of a regular flight to Mars and back every year was becoming a reality. Ryan Richmond’s childhood dreams were becoming very real.

“I’m getting very bored,” stated Jonesy to Maggie at about the same time Ryan was having his checkup on Earth.

“Go and take a walk in the park,” suggested Maggie working hard on the bicycle above him.

“How long before we officially retire?” asked Jonesy, who had asked the same question to his wife every 24 hours for the last week.

“One day less than you asked yesterday,” Maggie replied. “I know, suit up and head over to Allen’s ship for a game of chess or something. I have a new eBook I want to read, one Allen iMailed to me from Jamie, so I can command the ship until you return.”

The crew could play chess, or a hundred other games through the ship’s computers, but being together and playing a chess game on a real metal-surface board with metal pieces was far more fun. Also Maggie was the best chess player in the company, and Jonesy could get some practice in with the boys.

“Allen, Michael, I’m heading over once I’ve suited up to beat you guys in a game of chess,” stated Jonesy over the intercom.

“Beat us at chess?”
laughed Michael.
“We can both beat the crap out of you blindfolded and with our hands behind our backs.”

“Actually Michael, not with our hands tied behind our backs, Jonesy will steal all our liquor,”
joked Allen, and which made Maggie smile.

“Want a wager?” Jonesy asked seriously.

“Of course Mr. Jones,”
quipped Allen
. “Bring over one of your bottles of bourbon or vodka. We’ll be happy to drink it for you.”

“I hope one of you will be a designated driver,” added Maggie. “You know how tough these solar system speed cops can be.”

“Maggie you have Flight Autopilot on command on your ship,”
replied Michael.
“We don’t need to drive, we just need to follow you.”
Maggie responded.

“And what happens if a piece of rock attacks and I need to separate us. You guys will not be much good at getting out of its way.”

“Hopefully we won’t care,”
added Jonesy smiling and getting ready to climb into his suit.

The computers on board
SB-III
, which were controlling both craft on autopilot were always moving them around objects that placed themselves on the radar monitors. Often they were straight ahead and moving slowly, or rapidly coming in at an angle. Nine times out of ten sightings, the computers could control the situation.

About one a week a really fast asteroid caused the computers to set off the alarms where they might need human intervention to dodge the bullet. Since both radars monitored out 400,000 miles, it took a really fast asteroid or piece of rock to set off the alarms, but usually the crew had several minutes to divert around the incoming missile.

Only once had an asteroid, the size of a house, entered their screens so fast that they had less than a minute to react, and even then, a change in direction at 72,000 miles an hour by a hundred feet took less than a second. Only once in thirty years of flying, and that was aboard
Astermine II
on the second asteroid mission to DX2014.

“What stocks do we have? What should I take as a bet?” Jonesy asked his wife.

“Well, I have only three pouches of Mars wine left. We have two bottles of vodka, and a bottle of bourbon. I think it not wise not to take a bottle with you. You are going to lose it and then you’ll be grumpy for the rest of the flight.”

Jonesy thought as he was putting on his suit. “What is worth more on this ship than bourbon or vodka?” he asked Maggie, smiling.

“Water,” she replied.

Her husband nodded in agreement, and searched for the empty bottle of vodka they had finished the week before. Maggie watched as her husband pressurized in water into the empty vodka bottle from their reserve and twisted its cap back on.

“A good idea my darling, you are going to tell them that its water, not vodka in that bottle?” she asked skeptical of her husband’s honestly. Jonesy smiled at her, said nothing and continued to put on his suit. “Don’t tell me you are going tee total?” Maggie asked, a very weird thought coming to her.

Still smiling he handed her his helmet to crew on. “I do hope we get better helmets for the next flight,” he stated pulling “a red herring across the trail.”

“What next flight, you are retiring right?” Maggie asked.

“Oh yes! I forgot that we do have a life other than sitting in these tin cans,” remarked Jonesy as she slipped the helmet over his head.

Maggie shook her head. Her husband was starting to lose it in her book, and she must remember to ask him about this “ASS” society the others had mentioned. As far as she was concerned, the ASSs in this crew were the male astronauts. She was so right

Twenty minutes later, she watched out of her side windshield as her husband jetpacked over to the other shuttle. “I think the time has come General John Jones to put you out to ASS pasture,” she stated loudly to herself, and tied herself down to do some reading.

“This isn’t vodka!”
shouted Allen Saunders over the intercom a week later, and after both men had beaten Jonesy in all of the six chess games played.

“Nobody said it was,” smiled Jonesy from the bicycle back in
SB-III
. He was about finished for this period’s exercising, and Maggie was below him getting ready to listen in to the usual traffic. It was morning in Nevada, the weaker sun had just set at both bases on Mars, and to the crew in both shuttles it didn’t matter what time it was. They had no sunsets and sunrises, just 24 hour periods that never changed.

Michael Pitt was asleep, Allen Saunders had finished his workout, completed a bag bath, supper and he was also checking the radio for the timed incoming messages from both directions. It was time to have his first shot of his winnings, won by easily beating Jonesy in three games of chess. It had only cost him and Michael two thirds of a bottle of their vodka between the three of them while they had played the six games to win the whole bottle from Chief Astronaut Jones.

Allen Saunders had sat back, smiled at his remembrance of Jonesy’s face, which looked pained as he had handed over the vodka bottle, Allen had felt superior in chess, and was winning something that really hurt his friend. He opened the bottle and took a swig.

“What do you mean it isn’t vodka? I beat you in chess to win this bottle,”
Allen replied, waking Michael Pitt.

“I told you never to trust that SOB,”
stated Michael, the other shuttle could hear, and Michael headed back to sleep.

“I never told you it was anything but a bottle,” stated Jonesy untying himself from the bicycle, and floating down to his seat.

“But, but…”
replied Allen as Ryan’s voice over the radio shut him up.

“Nevada Base to The Martian Club Retreat, and Mattville, do you copy. Nevada Base to The Martian Club Retreat, and Mattville, this is Ryan Richmond, do you copy, over”

“I won a bottle of vodka fair and square. I actually won vodka, not damn water whipping your ass in three games,”
continued Allen Saunders knowing that replies to Nevada’s outgoing message would take about 7 minutes, or minimum 210 seconds each way before it would pass them by in the opposite direction.

“I bet you a bottle to beat you at chess. I didn’t say what was in it,” Jonesy replied smiling to himself.

“Crappy cheater,” remarked Maggie to her husband from the right hand seat. “Allen, I will suggest that in future, you check the merchandise before you accept any bets from my husband. I know he will never lie, but bend the truth, yes, and you and I both know there is something that doesn’t tick properly in his brain.”

“And that lousy malfunction is sure getting worse
,” laughed Michael Pitt as he floated into his right hand seat for the radio conversation.”

“I’ll never trust that guy again,”
replied Allen Saunders knowing that he should have known better, and began contemplating what he could do to Mr. Jones to return the favor. Silence reigned on the two shuttles 100 million miles from earth, as they waited for the radio acknowledgements and reports.

“Martian Club Retreat to Base Nevada,”
was the reply from Vitalily, another of Jonesy’s friends who fallen for the same trick two decade earlier on board
America One
returning from Saturn to Earth.
“Night has fallen. Temperature outside is minus 112 degrees Celsius. Zero wind, a clear day with nothing moving outside. We have cleared the last of the topsoil from the outer plateau, and expect to close down the last shield when the time comes. It is still a blessing to have the shield, we all enjoy walking and sitting outside in the shield and will miss it when we need to take it down. We have nothing much else to report. Our captive is becoming friendlier, and we are working all angles to see if we can get more information out of him. He and I were talking earlier, and he finally decided to try our latest batch of red wine. Much unlike Ruler Roo in Mattville, the commander still dislikes rocket fuel,”
joked Vitalily knowing that Ruler Roo was definitely listening in the other base, everybody was.
“What was interesting was that glass of red wine loosened his tongue, like it does to the Chief Astronaut.”

Maggie smiled at her husband, whose face muscles didn’t even flutter at his mention.

Allen Saunders raised a real shot of vodka at that remark. This time his shot glass had been filled from their last onboard bottle. Thanks to Jonesy, their ship would be totally dry in ten days as Michael and he usually enjoyed two shots each per day.

“His only remark that was new”
continued the radio message
“was that if we wanted to see more about his old base that we should swim in the lake under the river. I believe he said that to kill us with the cold, as a sort of joke,”
added Vitalily.
“Message to Max, I think that you should try and build a canoe or boat or something, and look further into the underground lake of yours. Something about the way he said it made the hairs on my neck stand up. That is end of my message, over.”