Trapped on Venus
Authors: Carl Conrad
Trapped on Venus
by Carl Conrad
Copyright © 2014 by Carl Conrad
All rights reserved
No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews.
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 – Their
First Surprise
. 8
Chapter 3 – Exiting
the Ship
. 16
Chapter 4 – No
Communication
. 26
Chapter 5 –
Encountering Alien Life
. 34
Chapter 6 – Trying To
Communicate
. 42
Chapter 7 – Finding A
Solution
. 51
Chapter 8 – Fixing
the Ship
. 56
Chapter 9 – Rescued
In Orbit
. 67
Chapter 10 – A Change
Of Plans
. 75
Chapter 11 – Return
to Venus
. 82
Chapter 12 – Such A
Mysterious Planet
. 93
Chapter 13 – A Walk
On The Surface
. 101
Chapter 14 – We Come
In Peace
. 110
Chapter 15 – A
Strange Turn of Events
. 118
Chapter 16 – We’ve
Got To Get Back To The Ship!
. 127
“Venus Twelve? Venus
Twelve? Do you read me? This is Earth Control One. We’ve lost contact with you.
Please acknowledge. Over....”
The crackling static
of a receiver pointed into the vast, star-spanned galaxy of outer space was
unanswered. John Stimson, NASA commander of Earth Control One, busied himself
with an assortment of relays and booster switches trying to contact the silent
probe.
“Venus Twelve, do you
read me? This is Earth Control One. Acknowledge!”
John’s voice was
strained with frustration. He stared blankly at the panel in front of him,
hoping for a response, yet growing more concerned with each sweep of the long,
pencil-thin hand of the clock. Forty-seven minutes had elapsed without word
from the three man crew attempting the first landing on Venus by humans. What
went wrong, he asked himself? Where are they? Are they... His thoughts froze
for a second as he contemplated the possibility. Could they be... dead?
The crackling ceased
as the relentless search of the audio intensifier scanned the wave lengths of
outer space looking for a signal. The sound became almost rhythmical as it
ebbed and gained in volume – first soft, then loud – but there was no human
response. Only the persistent sound of static, like sand pelted against a wall
of tin, scratched through the loudspeaker and their headphones.
A hum grew faintly
from within the sound, and a voice, as if strained through a filter of vast
distance.
“Earth Con...........
read you............. but.....” The voice was interrupted by spurts of static.
“.......trouble with solar rheostat, can’t..........
get weak signa....... open chan...... Over?”
The voice, though
faint and cryptic, was that of Scott Jennings, command pilot of the probe.
Stimson responded instantly, reaching out to the panel in front of him to track
the voice of the astronaut. He slowly twisted the audio modulator to sharpen
the reception, hearing the voice waver as he twisted the dial. The signal grew
stronger.
“Earth Control One.....”
came the voice of the astronaut, “...do you read me? This is Venus Twelve....
Over?”
“Yes... yes, we read
you, Twelve. Scott this is Stimson.”
“Had trouble with the
audio relay wiring, John,” answered a calm Scott Jennings. “Couldn’t get an
open channel. We’re ok now, though. Marty got it fixed.”
John breathed a sigh
of relief. The flight and all the planning that went into it were his
responsibility. If he had lost the astronauts, not only would he have lost
three very close friends, but the future of other missions would have been
greatly jeopardized as well.
“Where are you now,
Scott? Have you achieved orbit?”
“Affirmative. Now
beginning our final checks before initiating landing sequence. All looks GO.”
The noise in the small
cabin – the reading and re-reading of endless checklists – bubbled in the
background of Scott’s voice. The sequence was readied, and Scott signaled their
intentions to Earth Control One which was the brains of the operation, located
at NASA Control Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“Everything’s GO,
here, Earth One. Beginning separation sequence.”
“We read you, Twelve.
Commence when ready.”
Inside the cabin,
Scott carefully watched the digital dial revolve in front of him as it counted
off the seconds. When the dials reached 0000, his hand pushed the palm-sized
disk on the control panel and rockets hammered him deep into his chair. His
arms were pushed forcefully against the arm rests, and his body bulged into the
thick padding of the chair from the thrust of the rockets. Twenty-three seconds
later the rockets ceased. The module twisted in space of its own power,
allowing Scott and his co-pilot, Martin Fisk, to glimpse the other half of
their craft still spinning in orbit.
“We’re clear,
Grayson,” Scott said, confirming the successful separation.
“Roger, Twelve,”
answered Colonel Thomas Grayson in the command ship above them. “All systems
still GO.”
The landing sequence
was a well-practiced, almost mechanical maneuver, performed without the
slightest deviation from flight plans. Yet, as the probe reversed its
direction, turning in mid-air to position the descent rockets to slow the speed
of the free-floating craft, Scott and Martin Fisk became the first men ever to
glimpse the planet Venus from this distance. Photographs, terrain readings,
atmospheric checks, and many other bits of information had been gathered
through the previous three years, making the mission possible; but Scott
Jennings and Martin Fisk were seeing the planet as it had never been seen
before – through the pyroplastic glass window of a space craft about to land
there.
“Thirty-seven seconds
to touchdown,” Fisk reported. “Thirty-six... thirty-five... thirty-four...”
“Hold that trim,
Marty...”
“Thirty...
twenty-nine... twenty-eight.... twenty-seven...”
“Extend pod
stabilizing bars....”
“Fifteen...
fourteen... thirteen... twelve... eleven....”
“Slowing to 200 feet
per second,” Scott said, watching the steady drop of the altimeter. “One
hundred twenty... one hundred...
seventy-five... Fire secondary engines. Thirty-seven.... twenty-two...
ten feet per second... Hold her...”
The craft teetered a
moment, then settled firmly on the Venusian soil.
“Touchdown.”
The calm,
matter-of-fact tone of Fisk’s voice reporting TOUCHDOWN wasn’t matched with the
same restraint at Earth Control One, over 26 million miles away. Charts,
graphs, and even champaign corks filled the air in ecstatic jubilation. The
astronauts had made it! After four months of surveillance, tracking, and
thousands of prayers, the United States of America had finally landed two men
on the planet Venus!
Only John Stimson and
his small crew of first-line technicians were unable to join in the
celebration. They remained at their consoles having just begun the difficult
task of checking the probe systems to make certain that everything was
functioning properly. Still, a grin from ear-to-ear and the anxious movement of
his fingers on the switches and dials of his desk, betrayed Stimson’s
excitement. They had made it. After four months of waiting, the astronauts were
now on the planet’s surface, executing their duties to perfection.
Stimson turned for a
moment, looking over his shoulder at the wives and family of the two
astronauts. The women sat patiently behind the glass enclosed area at the back
of the room, staring intently and deliberately at the large monitoring board
overhead. Their children were squirming and poking at each other, barely old
enough to realize the significance of what was happening as, to them, the
reality of the mission seemed more like a gigantic electronic circus played out
before their eyes. Their father’s voices were real to them, the special
attention they received from the government aides at their sides was real, yet
the room, with its countless arrays of buttons, switches, and unfamiliar faces,
glossed the event with a kind of dull, Hollywood mysticism.
Stimson turned back to
his control panel, continuing his work. He had grown to know the men’s families
nearly as well as he knew his own, and understood what they were experiencing;
the wives with their silent scrutiny of each operation, helplessly yielding
their husband’s future to a room full of men, women, and powerful computers,
and the children whose fidgeting and awkward play was merely the release of
months of waiting. He knew they were under an enormous strain, each of them
contending with it in their own way, and he admired them for their courage.
But, because of it, his responsibilities were heightened to a level of immense
proportion. He would not let them down.
In the PROBE, millions
of miles away, Fisk could not resist a quick glance across the cabin as they
landed. Even partially hidden behind the dark glass of his helmet, Fisk could
see the smile on Scott’s face. Scott turned to look back at him, and Marty
signaled his own excitement by pointing a thumb in the air. Scott responded
with the same gesture, then turned to his console and began reading off data.
“Cabin pressure –
normal. Solar deflectors – up and functional. Communications – check. Batteries
– check. Have you got a fix on us, Grayson?”
Scott raised his eyes
upward as if he could see the command module some one hundred forty nautical
miles overhead, but he could see only swirling clouds of vapors in the stormy
skies of Venus overhead.
“Roger, PROBE. Have
you zeroed at section Baker. Looks like you’re right on target.” He chuckled.
“Not bad for a fly-boy.”
The reference to
Scott’s Air Force background was a long-standing joke between the two. Colonel
Thomas Grayson, now orbiting Venus in the command ship, was considered the
pride of the Navy’s current crop of astronauts and rarely failed to remind
Scott of it. He had even tried to persuade him to join the Navy, but found
Scott as devoted to the Air Force as he was to the Navy. Still, Scott found
himself enjoying Grayson’s remark as he continued checking the instrument
panel, finding that the familiar banter relieved some of the tension of the
moment.
“For a fly-boy?” he
answered, still busy at this instruments. “I’d like to see what one of you
air-borne ducks could do!”
“Just give me the
chance, Jennings. Just give me the chance.”
Scott chuckled,
momentarily, while still continuing with his work. There were over two hundred
readings yet to record, and any delay would only further prolong their
departure to the planet’s surface. He once again immersed himself in checking
the systems, relaying data back to Earth Control One from the countless dials
and gauges which measured everything from the outside atmospheric pressure to
today’s date. The calendar dial showed June 2nd in red, luminous letters.
Several hours later,
after completing his recordings and a rather lengthy discussion with Stimson at
Earth Control One, Scott leaned back in the thick foam of his contoured chair
and reached above him for a tube of food concentrate. He pulled an orange
container from the pinch clamps holding it in place, and snipped the top from
it.
“I think I’ll
celebrate our successful landing, Marty, with a little porterhouse steak
smothered in fried onions and mushrooms. To go with it, I thought maybe some
deviled crab on the half shell, a glass of Rosé, 1937, and for desert, maybe a
little...”
“All right, all right,
Scott. I get the message.” Fisk turned and smiled at him, then confided: “I
think the stuff tastes like paste, too.”
Both Marty and Scott
took this time to eat their awkward but substantial tubes of food, squeezing
them until all that remained were two, small scrolls of disposable plastic,
empty and crumpled. They again rocked back in their chairs to rest, and sleep
soon followed.