Quest for the Conestoga (Colony Ship Conestoga Book 1) (3 page)

“Let me know when they are getting through.” 

“The first will be completed in nineteen minutes, if the process has not been modified,” the AI replied.

Jerome recalled how tedious that process was, and how physically taxing it could be.  He had been on three missions outside of the dome, and each one had its own special troubles.  Decontamination was the last step of the process, unless you counted the after-mission briefings which were basically a boring time of sitting with a Committee member and telling them what was discovered.  That was just a rehashing of what was on the data stick and transferred to the information systems.   More often than not the briefing was a mere formality.  Jerome always let the other team members relate the facts, and only responded when directly asked.

“There you are,” Cammarry said as she walked up behind him.  He was about six centimeters taller than she was, but both were lean and muscular.  Except for the elderly people who were in the senior care facility, a section not far from medical, everyone in Dome 17 was thin and fit. 

Cammarry grabbed Jerome and hugged him tightly.  “What do you think they found?”

Jerome shook his head. 

“I hope it was something very useful.  It is about time that some of these missions to the other domes revealed positive results,” Cammarry remarked.

“You are always on a quest for information.  Remember your mission to Dome 5 provided some help with sanitation systems and recycling of human remains.”

“Minimally.”  Cammarry brushed back her hair.  “We already had functional knowledge of alkaline hydrolysis for elimination of infected bodies.  Our decontamination processes are much more efficient, and Dome 5’s attempts to stem their disaster were just stupid.  They wasted water on an antique method they called aquamation.  Can you imagine wasting water?”

“No.”  Jerome kissed Cammarry’s forehead gently.  “We are learning that our dome has advanced and developed better than the others.  We adapt and evolve.  Those poor souls are to be pitied, but remember history?  Far too often humans have done incredibly stupid things.”

“Some even violate regulations and wander into restricted areas.”  Cammarry looked into Jerome’s hazel eyes and smiled.  “History is tragic, but not in every circumstance.  Maybe this team found something helpful?  It is conceivable that some other dome had a technological breakthrough.  Brink is not the only genius, although he is so very good with machines.  You are pretty good yourself in that area.”  Cammarry nudged Jerome affectionately. 

“No one surpasses Brink with mechanical items.  Willie, maybe, but he is much more utilitarian and practical.  Brink does the math.  He unlocks the arithmetic behind everything,” Jerome said.  “Willie just uses ballpark figures.”

“Ballpark?”  Cammarry asked with a grin.  “Like ricochet ball?”

“No.  You know what I mean.”  Jerome nuzzled into her face and kissed her.

“Yes, you are making reference to ancient sporting complexes where hundreds of thousands of people would gather all exposed to the environment, right?  Can you imagine that many people?”

“Not really.  I think those legends are hyperbole, however, this dome was designed to hold 10,000 people, so maybe there were big coliseums where people gathered.”

“That was back hundreds of years ago, if it ever really happened that way,” Cammarry replied.  “But back to Hobart, Ken, and Beth, what did they find?”

“I have no idea, but you can ask them.  There is Beth now,” Jerome pointed. 

Beth was just stepping out of the dilated portal which had ‘Restricted Access’ written above it.  Her almond shaped brown eyes, met Jerome’s and Cammarry’s.  Beth had her long brown hair pulled back into a bun which had a few loose strands.  She looked tired, even dressed in the new clothing which had replaced the RAM suit which had been sent for incineration. 

“Beth!”  Cammarry rushed over.

“Hello.  We made it back, but that last couple hundred meters around the dome was very difficult,” Beth said.  She usually was positive, but the exhaustion was obvious.  Looking to Jerome she said, “We did bring you back a present.”

Jerome’s face revealed his surprise. 

“Hobart can tell you about it.  I need to go and sleep,” Beth said and turned to go. 

“But what did you find?”  Cammarry asked as she walked along with Beth.  “How many people are still in Dome 9?  Is their technology helpful?”

“There is no Dome 9.  It will all be in the report at the briefing.”

“No Dome 9?”  Cammarry said as she watched Beth retreat.

“Another lost one,” Beth muttered as she walked away. 

The portal dilated and Ken stepped out.  Cammarry and Jerome could feel the air shift as it was sucked into the decontamination chamber. 

“Hello, Cammarry and Jerome.  Why am I not surprised you knew when we would emerge from that decontamination torture?”  Ken’s black hair was short and tightly twisted right near his head.  His short beard matched his head hair for color, and nearly for curliness.  His pale blue eyes looked almost as tired as had Beth’s.

“Beth said there is no Dome 9.  Was it never built or were you unable to find it?”  Cammarry asked. “What is the story?”

“We found where it once was.  Just a big hole in the ground now.  Not even much ruins around, but lots of radiation.  I am especially fond of RAM suits now.  The levels around that Dome 9 hole were twelve times higher than the lethal average background on the way there.”

“An atomic blast crater?”  Cammarry asked. 

“That is what I thought, but the Committee will review all our findings.  We did run across some relics about five kilometers away from the hole.  A small building which somehow survived, well most of it anyway.  Nothing much to it, but it was clearly from before the Great Event.  We even recovered a few items you will like Jerome.”

“Beth said it was a present for me,” Jerome said. 

“In a way.  For our archives anyway.  We found twenty-seven paper bound books in that old building. Yes, paper that survived. We scanned them all into the data stick, and that information is being transferred to the archives.”  Ken smiled a thin smile and nodded.  “You can read them after the Committee reviews the information.  Looked like old and meaningless stuff, but what do I know of obsolete writings like that?  Relics are more your hobby, right?  Kind of a wonder that the little building survived all this time.  Some old and bulky appliances were in that building as well.  One for heating, as if the outside needs to ever get hotter. It was rather strange.”

“From before the Great Event?”  Jerome said.

“That is what they appeared to be.  The paper in the books was so brittle and delicate it did not survive the scanning, but we got a majority of the information, text and images.”  Ken stretched his back and yawned.  “I recorded and invoiced all the appliances, but what would anyone want with antique designs?  Maybe Willie or Brink will enjoy seeing the schematics, but it was all old technology with integrated circuits, silicon, germanium, and direction contact electrical relays.  Really old stuff.   Dome 9 is just a crater.  No help for us there.  Basically we just found old-style junk and some books.” 

“No billiard balls?”  Jerome spurted out. 

“No balls of any kind,” Ken replied in a puzzled way.  “You and your old metaphors.”  He then summoned his personal artificial intelligence system and was asking it questions as he walked away.

“That is really disappointing,” Cammarry said turning to Jerome. “To think of Dome 9 as being destroyed is tragic. I wonder if we ever will get to know why a thermal nuclear detonation took place?  We know fusion power as we have here in Dome 17 is safe, but we have been refining our power system for 100 years. You think Dome 9 personnel did that or not? Would people refuse to refine and update and improve their own technology? After all, refinement of technology is our future, right?”

“Fusion technology is not an abacus,” Jerome said.  “Those who fail to adapt fail to survive.”

“Here comes Hobart,” Cammarry observed. She looked toward where the doorway had dilated open.

The large man stepped out.  He had to turn sideways a bit as the dilated doorway looked almost too small for him.  His hair was nearly the same color as the white clothing he had just put on in the decontamination process. His very pale blue eyes looked to Cammarry and Jerome. His pleasant personality shone out through his gaze even though his eyes showed extreme weariness.

“We made it back. We actually even found a surprise!  We stumbled across something we were not expecting,” Hobart said with a smile. “Jerome my friend, you will be very pleased with what we found.”

“So I have heard, from your colleagues.”

Cammarry interrupted. “You actually found a structure from before the Great Event? With paper books? Machines?  What will they reveal?”

“One never knows,” Hobart said with a tired smile.  He was a generally happy man with a large voice, but even he was showing the exhaustion from his mission. “Dome 9 was a complete loss. The mission briefing will be mostly about how we found the structure and the documents we recovered.” Hobart walked over and put a hand on both Jerome’s and Cammarry’s shoulder. He nodded at them, gave a grin, and walked away.  “Also, there was an unexplained failure in the fusion truck.  That will need to be thoroughly investigated.  Fortune smiled on us, the failure happened on the way back, just before we got here.  And someone even turned on some lights for us, just at the right moment.”  Hobart winked at Jerome.  “If I knew who did that, I would be so thankful.”

Jerome blushed a trifle under the intense gaze of Hobart.

“Well a good deed done, anonymously, is still a good deed.”  Hobart smiled.  “May fortune smile on the other team as well.” 

Cammarry and Jerome stood in silence for a moment. They were both pondering their own last missions outside of the dome, and were wondering when the other team that was deployed would return.

“Will Karen, Jamie and Paul have a similar problem with their fusion truck?”  Cammarry asked.

“I really doubt it.  This was probably an extreme fluke,” Hobart laughed a bit.  “Yes, fortune was good to us.  The fusion truck did not playout around that crater.  That would have killed us all.  I guess the extreme radiation at that site could have been a factor in the fusion truck’s eventual failure.” 

Jerome pondered what he had observed of the fusion truck.  Their very best technology, and it failed them.  The find of books was intriguing, but not at the expense of someone’s life.  So far the dome exploration missions had not given any serious hope for the future.  Not even one other functional dome had been found.  Yet Jerome said nothing about that.

Cammarry turned to Hobart and reached out and grasped his hand. “Finding actual paper books is amazing. The tragedy of another lost dome however, is not really a surprise. I do wonder what their story was and how they ended up as just a large radioactive crater.”

“Yes, my dear Cammarry, you are always on a quest for knowledge.  What might be truly amazing is if those paper books that were scanned have information that is not in our current archives. That would be really amazing. So much was lost in the Great Event and in the times after that,” Hobart signed in weariness.

“I wonder when those documents will be ready for viewing?” Jerome said with a touch of awe in his voice. 

“Thanks for meeting me on my return.”  Hobart gave them a huge smile and left.

Turning back to Jerome, Cammarry said, “They might just be copies of things we already know, and it is highly doubtful anything from that era will be technologically more sophisticated than what we have now. Although I guess there are some people who theorize that there were technologies before the Great Event that may have surpassed our own.  But I know you, Jerome, you will probably find some figures of speech, idioms, and cultural expressions that were relevant to those times but have no correlation to our modern world.”

“That very well may happen,” Jerome said as they walked along.