America One: War of the Worlds (17 page)

“Ruler Roo, you have to do what you have to do, but after what Joanne has gone through running Washington, I reckon she should have first dibs on your alcohol ration,” added Maggie. Jonesy looked at her from the corner of his eye, but said nothing.

“I see you on radar, Dad,”
stated Saturn from the tunnels in front of them.
“What altitude are you cruising at? My screen should have picked you up far earlier.”

“Just checking up on my ex-student,” replied Jonesy smiling.

“Darling, we are nearly rubbing our behinds in the dirt,” added Maggie. “Any lower and we would need rubber tires, or a submarine. Your father is in one of his moods, darling. Just ignore him, ETA to you in seven minutes, over.”

Jonesy brought the smaller shuttle in perfectly, and landed in the exact location he had taken off from the day previous.

“A nice landing Mr. Jones,” remarked Ryan from the co-pilot seat in
SB-IV
as the dust storm covered them over as it always did.

“How long has VIN and Mars been in the safe cavern?”
asked Maggie.

“Maggie, VIN has been there for several hours. We have still 190 minutes before we expect the cryogenic chamber door to open. Mars has been in there for 11 hours now,” Ryan replied.

“I have a few food items ready for them,” added Saturn.

“We have a few chocolate bars and snacks for them as well
,” remarked Maggie.
“Who is heading down the tunnel, who needs to get helmets on?”

“Ruler Roo, Joanne and your medic Patricia, and Max and me from this ship,” replied Ryan. “Max believes that two of us can fit on the train with only one canister. Everybody else can begin walking down the tunnel and rolling the canisters to help save time. The shortest will be picked up last. We all have to enter the cavern at the same time. Max reckons that working fast, he can do a round trip in 20 minutes or less each time if we walk, and if he drops us all the fork. Max and Joanne will head down first with the medical equipment, food and water in the first canister. We can fit only one of the bigger suits inside a canister, so we will take the balance of the suits down as we need them. One of the adult suits will be packed into the second canister for Mars. Two teenage suits will be packed into a third canister. Mr. Jones, you will be in charge up here while I’m down there. As we have heard, we have excellent communications once we are in the area with an atmosphere. Crew we will ride this mission as we see it, out.”

Twenty minutes later, the five crewmembers entered the tunnel rolling three canisters, all they could maneuver at this time, and Max readied the train for its first journey. Dusk was settling in and nobody was expected to return until at least daylight. Also, it would be the longest time many of them would be outside a base or a shuttle in space. They had three hours to enter the cavern where VIN and Mars were safe.

Chapter 8
 
Oh Hi!

“It is going to be tight to turn the carriages around inside the tunnel,”
Max lectured the crew on how to turn them around. The two carriages had been built at the retreat purposefully to fit inside the tunnel, and be turned around in the tightest situation. There was less than an inch either end of each carriage inside the tunnel, but with two people working, it was possible.

Once the demonstration was done he continued.
“I will take Joanne down to the fork. The fork is about 400 to 500 feet from the cavern entrance we will use. Joanne and I will turn the carriage round and I will leave her with the canister. Joanne, it will take me about 20 minutes to get back to you with Ryan and the next canister. I will pick you up, Ryan, as you are the next tallest, and your back will be hurting by then. Then, once I return on my second trip I will pick up Patricia, then Ruler Roo, and we will go from there, understand?”

Joanne gulped. She was to be left alone in the middle of space-nowhere, down a tunnel that looked like a mining tunnel, and she wondered what Washington would have said about her future demise. She then smiled, it was good to be back with the crew.

The journey down was fast. Max had done this journey enough times to get it right, and he applied the brakes on the rear carriage and brought them to a halt a foot past the fork. He and Joanne turned the carriage around the fork gave them ample room to work. He showed her where to wait with the canister and headed back up the line. Max’s light quickly disappeared and Joanne was left alone.

“Crap!”
she said to herself aloud as nobody could hear her.
“I never wanted to be a damn miner!”

All she had was her helmet light and a flashlight to see around her. Other than that it was totally black along all three of the tunnels as night had fallen outside. If there had been light, there wasn’t any now.

What seemed like forever, a faint light could be seen shinning differently on the tunnel wall in the direction of the exit. Max and Ryan returned like an underground train coming into the station much to her relief.

Ryan got off with the second canister and Joanne watched as the two men turned the train around, and Max again headed back up the steep slope of the tunnel. She was quite shocked to hear voices again as they worked.

Ryan put his canister on its side and sat down.

“Gee, my back hurt quick,” he told her. “We had crept along about 600 feet before I needed to sit and straighten my back. I don’t know how young Mars got down all the way the first time.”

“Who is taller?”
Joanne asked.

“I think me by an inch or two,”
replied Ryan.

Again the light of the helmets on the train appeared. Max dropped off Patricia, the second medic and her canister. She was only a few inches shorter than Ryan.

Ryan checked his suit readouts for the umpteenth time as Max disappeared back up the tunnel.

“Any change?”
Joanne asked.

“Nope”
replied Ryan nodding his head
“except the temperature has dropped a few degrees. I can’t understand the difference. When Max returned to us, the temperature closer to the exits was 30 degrees below zero Celsius, and dropping like a rock as it usually does. Here it is only one degree below freezing Celsius. I believe there must be some sort of heat in this mountain, or whatever we are in. It can’t be the Matt power systems. They wouldn’t change temperature so far from the base.”

“It could be a volcano, or there could be lava underground, like Earth?”
suggested Joanne.

“Could be, but there has never been a mention of possible lava, or a hot center on Mars before, but with this heat, it could be possible,”
replied Ryan.

“Will the Matts just walk out once the door opens
?” asked Patricia.

“There are two systems we have found so far,” replied Ryan.
“On DX2017, both times, we had to enter and actually release the chambers one by one.”

“Yes, I know I was there for the OldGeners release, but VIN told me that on Titan, or one of the moons, I can’t remember which, the Matts just walked out when the door opened,”
replied Patricia.

“I can’t remember either”
replied Ryan
“but it seems for some unknown reason, the Matt cryogenic systems are built differently in different locations.”

“Maybe an advance in technology?”
suggested Joanne.

“Well, I would assume that this way, the system we are about to work with, is the real way Roo and the Matts were taught,”
stated Ryan as the light of Roo’s helmet lit up the tunnel in the direction they were coming from.
“Whatever happens, we must be ready if there are Matts alive in there.”

For the fourth time, Max returned with Roo, who at five feet tall had managed half a mile before Max had returned to pick him up.

They turned the train around, left the train and rolling their canisters headed up the rear tunnel. Max stopped them at the see-through door, and they all saw VIN and Mars sitting next to a real river, and a real old-looking tree and chatting. Max hit the wall hard with his hammer and both men suddenly looked at them then Mars proceeded to help VIN on with his helmet.

“Can you hear me?”
VIN asked several minutes later, once his suit and helmet were working.

“Just,” replied Ryan.

“OK, Mars must head into the command center and the door be closed before I open the outer door,”
continued VIN from inside.
“Max, I will hit the door three times, you fill the extra helmet that is on the floor with air, and place it on the outer panel. Hit the door three times Ryan, and I will open the door. There will be the usual powerful gush of air and bubbles, and you all must enter this cavern as fast as you can. Max will then remove the helmet from the panel, the door will close quickly, then Max you must head back up so we can communicate with you from inside the shuttle.”

Everyone nodded, they were all experienced, and they readied the canisters and themselves to enter an alien base.

The door opened as it had the last time, and VIN held onto the wall so that he wasn’t pulled into the way of the incoming crewmembers as they worked their way inside the cavern. Max pushed two of the members from the rear, and within 20 seconds they were in, four crew and three canisters, and as Max removed the helmet full of air, the door closed rapidly.

“We need at least thirty minutes for the pressure to build up,”
VIN stated loud and clear to the others again.
“Max can you hear me?”

“Just,”
was the faint response.

“How much air did we lose?”

“About the Nevada base’s swimming pools worth,”
Max replied.
“It is dissipating along the roof of the tunnel. It was down to my waist a few seconds ago. I’m out of here. Talk to you in 40 minutes from SB-III, out.”

VIN looked at the others, then at his readout. Being the most experienced spacewalker in Astermine, he was naturally the person in charge. Ryan had less than half the number of hour’s spacewalking VIN had.

His readout showed that the air pressure was dangerously low, this time well below the borderline of 500 millibars, the temperature had dropped from 56 degrees to near freezing, and they had no choice but to wait. He had checked the time the door would open, and they had 34 minutes before they needed to be inside the command center when the door to the cryogenic chamber was scheduled to open. That was of course if it opened as the previous doors had done. Also, since Mars didn’t have a workable suit and helmet, it wasn’t possible to speak to him.

Ten long minutes passed, and VIN and Ryan helped the two medics to ready the equipment. The four IV’s were setup on their legs. The medical tools to insert the needles and all the other equipment were laid out on a solar blanket that had been placed in the medical container to keep a patient warm.

“Ten minutes are gone, and the air pressure is at bare minimum, temperature ten degrees above freezing Fahrenheit. Mars does have an air bottle with him, and three beats on the door will get him ready to breathe,”
stated VIN. With his hammer from its clasp on his leg, he wacked the door three times, and seconds later got the same response from the other side.”

VIN pushed the panel a minute later, but the door still didn’t open.

“This door will not open until its safe on both sides, and Max has the only extra helmet. I think we need another 15 minutes before we try again. At least we know Mars is still alive,”
continued VIN who didn’t know what was happening on the other side of the door.

Unknown to the rest of the crew, the door to the cryogenic chamber had already opened. It had opened as the outer door to the space vacuum inside the tunnel had been opened by Max. Somehow something had prompted the door to the cold room to open, and Mars was lucky he was wearing his suit.

Although his suit was off, the suit itself still protected the young man from the blast of sub-zero air that gushed out of the cryogenic chambers as he sat on the opposite wall looking at the door. It nearly scared the bejesus out of him as this thick cloud of icy vapor, due to the lower than usual air pressure in the command center, suddenly swirled around him.

He instinctively turned on his suit, but it was virtually lifeless, apart for his readouts, which began to flash.

“God, it’s got cold in here!” he stated loudly out of shock than anything else. He looked down at his left forearm, where his computer was situated and saw the reason why. “Crap!”

The air in the command center had gone down in a split second from 56 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 65 degrees. His inner suit although warmer at 38 degrees, was rapidly slipping down the scale, and he squeezed the soft part underneath his helmet ring with both hands to seal it off. His breath, even though the pressure was climbing back to normal hurt his lungs it was so cold. He let go of his throat, grabbed his helmet and placed it over his head. He knew that his suit and helmet had air in it, and at least he could breathe a few breaths of warmer air escaping from his suit once he had the two connected.

After he had turned the first rotation of the helmet, warmer air filled his lungs, and he knew that if he was struggling with the temperature, so was every other living person in the room. He still couldn’t see much, as he was sitting in a dense fog.

He sat there for several minutes, until the air in the suit and helmet got harder to breathe and he was getting very dizzy. He needed to take off his helmet, so checked his readouts. The temperature was rising, albeit very slowly. It was now a warmer 50 degrees below zero.

Suddenly he heard three taps on the door to his right. He had just removed his helmet.

“Oh! I suppose it’s time to breathe in cold mountain air and go skiing, or something those people did on the icy mountains on Earth,” stated Mars to himself, got up, skid over to the door, and whacked his helmet on the door three times.