Red Hope (19 page)

Suddenly there was silence.

The rockets stopped; the ship was in orbit. Everything
that had been pinned to the floor was suddenly floating weightless around the
cabin interior. Hundreds of loose checklist pages floated haphazardly around
Adam and Yeva brushing against their visors. If the flight control computer was
still functional, the MM10 engines would kick in soon and start pushing them
toward Earth.

Adam would not let go of Yeva’s hand. The
communication headsets weren’t working anymore. He pulled her toward him and
swiped the floating papers out of the way so he could see her face. She had
blood pooling around her nose, but there was nothing she could do with her
helmet on except wait for it to clot.

Pages from the manuals and ice crystals were floating effortlessly
out the open door. The Sunrise peaked over the horizon illuminating the ship
exterior like a flare. A bright beam of sunlight barged in through the missing
doorway. It tried to reach the two astronauts, but there was too much floating
clutter protecting them. The dancing papers and ice crystals created a swarm of
shadows and sparkles. Adam squinted as the bright light finally pierced his
visor. He looked at Yeva again, but all he could see was the reflection of his
own panicked face in her visor.

“It’s all you now, kiddo! Push the pedals!” yelled Connie as she let go
of her son’s bicycle. Young Cody pedaled hard. The bike rattled loudly every
time the wheels jolted over a dirt clod.

Connie could now run easily next to his bike just like
Adam used to. Cody coasted for a few feet before slowing down. The front wheel
wobbled left and right before the boy and his bike fell over together. Connie kneeled
down next to him.

“You did so great honey. I bet you go even farther
next time. I’ll be right next to you. I won’t let you get hurt.”

Cody looked up at his Mom and grinned with a smile,
now displaying his two new front teeth that had finally grown in.

“I know, Mom. Let me try again.”

A
large black sedan turned off the main road and lumbered into the parking lot.
It crunched over the gravel and pulled up next to Connie's minivan. She looked
up toward it. A slow smile swept over her face as she walked back toward the
parking lot. Cody wheeled his bike behind her. A familiar man exited the car
and started walking toward them.

“Hey
Connie!  Hi Cody,” said the man in a friendly tone.

“Long
time no see, Chris. Cody, you remember Mr. Tankovitch, right?” asked Connie.

Chris
leaned down and shook young Cody’s hand.

“Young
man, I bet you’re a bicycle expert by now. NASA may need you in the astronaut
program when you grow up.”

The
little boy smiled politely as he shook his head side to side; he wanted nothing
to do with space travel.

“Mommy,
can I go play with my Rescue Bots?”

She
leaned down to look at Cody in the eyes.

“Sure,
and go ahead and put your seat belt on too.”

She
patted him on the head as he put the bike in the back of the minivan.  Then he
climbed in over the bike and crawled through the interior before finally
flopping down into the back booster seat.

Connie
crossed her arms and let out a sigh.

“So
what brings you all the way out here today?”

Chris
smiled and said, “A lot has happened since we lost contact with them a few
months ago.”

"That's
quite the understatement," Connie replied.

"From
the way you were running with Cody, can I assume the experimental back surgery
worked?" asked Chris.

"Actually,
it's all healed.”

She
did a slow pirouette on the gravel to demonstrate how her spine operation had
succeeded.

Chris
laughed and said, “That’s fantastic. I’m glad it worked out so well. I know
Adam really wanted that for you.”

A
somber silence rose up between them.

“Chris,
I’m sorry that you lost your job at NASA. I know you were such a hard worker.”

Chris
chuckled.

“That’s
just the way it works. A new president gets elected and they clean house with
the government appointed employees. Besides, it’s nothing compared to the
devastation in Los Angeles, New York and Houston; I mean, the bombs wiped out
all of our satellite communication antennas too. I made out pretty easy if I
may say so.”

Chris
moved some gravel around with his foot to avoid what he had to say next.

“Some
of my friends still inside NASA have given me information and I wanted to share
it with you before the media got ahold of it. This is strictly confidential,
okay? It’s serious stuff.”

She
answered in a worried tone, “Yes, of course.”

“Okay.
So, some of the surviving engineers at NASA finally got the antennas back
online last week. Yesterday, the new Mission Control Center reported getting a
beacon signal from the Little Turtle.”

Connie
looked confused and said, “I don’t know what a beacon signal is, but does that
mean that the ship started working again? The signal is coming all the way from
Mars?”

Her
expression turned to one of hopefulness.

“Not
exactly, the beacon signal is a simple data stream that the autopilot sends out
as it gets
near
Earth. It uses a short-range transmitter on the Little
Turtle. The main purpose of the beacon signal is to help Mission Control lock
in on its position. It's a bit of a last minute duct-tape fix to a design
problem we thought might pop up.”

Chris looked
over at the minivan and then back at Connie.  He continued, “The Little Turtle
is notoriously hard to track with radar because the faceted side is always
facing Earth. By complete accident, it’s very
stealthy
. Normally, the
long range antenna makes it light up like a Christmas tree on radar. Not this
time though. The beacon signal caught them all by surprise.”

Connie
questioned, “But there’s no way it could’ve lasted all these months, right? 
What does it mean?”

Chris
looked over the top of his glasses at Connie.

“It
means the
ship
is still alive. It means the crew was able to at least
launch off the surface of Mars. It means that Little Turtle is coming back
home.”

Connie’s
eyes welled up with tears. She said, “You mean, somebody on board is still steering
it? Maybe? Possibly?”

Chris
shook his head side to side.

“No.
Well, there’s a remote chance…,” stuttered Chris.

He
looked down to search for the right words.

“There’s
no chance they’re still alive. It’s most likely been on autopilot for the last
few months. I doubt the crew could’ve lived this long with the three of them
onboard. Besides, the beacon signal says that only one emergency life support
system was activated after takeoff. Whatever happened wasn’t good. I wanted to
tell you firsthand before this hits the newspapers. I don’t want to give you
any ideas that Adam is coming home alive. It’s just not in the cards.”

Connie
was rocking side to side and crying. Through the tears, she said, “But there is
a chance? Some hope?”

Chris
shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Connie
brought her hand up to wipe away some tears that had crowded on her cheeks.

She
looked down unable to make eye contact and said sadly, “Okay, I gotcha. I
understand.”

Connie
suddenly looked up at Chris and asked, “Do you think he died a foolish death?”

Chris
didn’t expect a question like that.

“I’m…”
he said before pausing again for several seconds.  Connie could tell that he
desperately wanted to tell her something.

“I’m
not supposed to tell you this, but we finally figured out what that early Mars
culture discovered that ultimately brought down their whole society. The
translation was very difficult because it used chemical equations that our
chemists didn’t understand until just recently.”

Chris
paused. His mind searched for the right words.

“So,
you might think that an advanced culture like theirs would’ve toted
interplanetary space travel or anti-gravity as their quintessential
achievement, but most of the walls in that room were a presentation of a
chemical equation and how to manufacture it. Our own chemists are trying to
synthesize it here on Earth right now. The Martians invented a way to control
cell growth rates. They could slow it down, speed it up, or maybe even stop
it.”

Connie
furled her eyebrows in confusion.

“I
don’t get why that's important Chris,” said Connie as she wiped some hair from
her face.

“Being
able to control cell growth rates has
far reaching
consequences. In
addition to slowing down the aging process, they essentially cured cancer and
any other disease that has to do with uncontrolled cell growth. To them,
treating cancer was probably like we treat heartburn today. Take some medicine
and the cancer goes away. They didn’t have to worry about exposure to
carcinogens or radiation because, well, anybody who got cancer could be cured.
They were smart enough to know that their greatest achievement was something
that would save the lives of so many people. Not interplanetary flight. Not
anti-gravity. Just a cure for something that has dogged us since the dawn of time.”

Chris
crossed his arms and continued explaining.

“Unfortunately,
their culture wasn’t ready for their good fortune. Mars is smaller, so their
food resources couldn’t keep up with the exploding population. They destroyed their
planet by trying to keep everybody fed. Our experts are sure that Earth is
different. We can absorb that kind of population growth. That’s what they say
anyway."

Chris
pointed his finger up in the air to highlight his next point.

"We're
not there yet though. Part of the manufacturing process requires the use of
anti-gravity and, unfortunately, that information is either still on Mars or,
if we’re lucky, inside the Little Turtle. That's the missing vital piece. And I
hope to God Adam put it on that spaceship.”

Chris
walked closer and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Connie,
your family’s sacrifice will ultimately save the human race from infinite
misery. Now, incidentally, there were some
other
things in that pyramid.
One part was a map of other sites and the Curiosity is on its way there right
now.”

Chris
paused and then finished his thought, “Rest assured, Connie, Adam did
many
great things.”

Connie’s
eyes started overflowing with tears.

“Yes,
but I still miss him so much,” she cried as she hugged Chris. She asked, “It
sounds like he went there for a good reason then?”

“Yes,”
answered Chris.

“He
went there for the
best
reasons.”

Connie
nodded her head and stood back, wiping her eyes.

“Okay,
Chris. Well, thank you for coming all the way out here. I won’t tell the kids
about it; I don’t want to give them false hope.”

She
walked to the minivan and opened the door. Her head tilted up and she looked
over at Chris who hadn’t moved. She climbed into her seat and sat there
silently while Cody played with his robot toys in the back seat. She started
the engine and drove down the road. Connie was gone.

Chris
stood there a long time reflecting on what had taken place; his journey all the
way from visiting Keller Murch's beach house to getting a team of astronauts to
Mars. He knew so much more about what Adam had done on Mars, but he would
never
tell Connie about it.

Chris
started walking toward his car. He changed direction and instead meandered down
a dirt bike path that ran near a casting pond. There was no bench nearby so he
sat down in the inviting grass and enjoyed the quiet solitude. He had a
peaceful view of the calm water right in front of him.

Birds
flew overhead as Chris watched the setting Sun through purple clouds. The
sunsets had been brilliant since the bombs dropped. The strong smell of freshly
cut grass

wafted by and reminded
him of that night spent observing Halley’s Comet with his dad. Chris looked to
his left and then to his right. Then he looked straight up at the turquoise sky
and said out loud, “Show me a miracle, Adam. Make me a believer.”

Halfway
between the Earth and the Moon a ship raced home, still several days out. The
spacecraft closely resembled a haggard and fragile turtle shell. The escape
hatch door was gone. In its place, the opening was now covered by a stack of
metal cabinet doors located on the inside and held in place with air pressure
alone. Only half of the MM10 motors were operating. Trailing behind the ship
was a long nylon strap. The far end of that strap was wrapped around the waist
of a very still space suit.

The
porthole windows around the ship were cracked, but still in place; all fogged
except for one. Barely visible behind that window in the dark cabin was a
solitary set of green eyes staring outward through the glass. Bloodshot and
barely blinking in total silence, they were transfixed on the bright blue
planet they had desperately longed for across an ocean of time and space. The
eyes were exhausted from the worry of not knowing the right thing to do for so
long. Now they trembled with blue hope.

This book was written with the support of many helpful
people. I am forever grateful to them.

My wife Lee supported this
project in many ways including read-throughs of the final drafts. Jason
Defenbaugh has been an editor from the very beginning when the book consisted
of one chapter. Yulia Gaydutskaya helped make sure the Russian names were
realistic. Elena Greer read the rough draft and taught me the importance of
character dialogue. She also used her skills as a professional artist to create
the fantastic cover art. Jan Batts is an author and journalist whose contagious
enthusiasm inspired me to follow through on this story. Chris Sideroff shared
some of his wit and funny stories. Jason and Estee Valendy helped clarify part
of the story that needed to be just right. Last, but not least, is Kurt
Chankaya. His stories about the scientific exploration of Mars were my first
real introduction to the idea of manned missions to the Red Planet.

Thanks everybody. Enjoy.