Star One: Tycho City Survival (32 page)

Standing on
the porch, he took a minute to look around. In the distance, he thought he
could actually see a small break in the gray clouds and the faint hint of a
blue sky above. Perhaps the cloud cover is finally breaking up, he thought. The
ground tremors had almost completely stopped over the past few weeks. Trace
stood on the porch for a while thinking about what was still ahead of them.

Perhaps if
things continued to improve they would be able to contact more surviving
shelters. Trace knew there had to be others. But he also recalled a worrisome conversation
he had overheard at the cape. Something about the Earth’s orbit being
drastically changed by the neutron star and black hole. He wondered what that
might mean for their future.

Trace hoped
that, at some point in time, they would be able to come out of the shelter. The
house was still intact and so were the camping trailers back behind the bunker.
It would be nice to get out of the bunker, if only for a short time. Everyone
would enjoy a little privacy, which was one of the reasons he volunteered to go
outside and check on everything. It was just a relief to get out of the bunker
even if it was only for an hour or two.

Taking a deep
breath, he went down the steps and began heading back toward the shelter. He
still needed to check the filters in the blockhouse before he went back inside.
He had promised Emily that they would all play a game of Monopoly with the
Donaldson kids later.

-

Warren Timmons
was walking down the center of the large tunnel they had built and filled full
of vegetables and other growing things. Two more tunnels were nearing
completion, and they would soon be growing enough food to add substantially to
their daily meals. He was growing tired of the MREs, and he knew everyone else
was too. Adding more fresh vegetables would be a big boon to their diet.

Looking along
the brightly lit tunnel, he saw others out walking down the narrow paths and
stopping occasionally to gaze at the growing plants. Warren wondered if he
would ever see this sight back out on the surface again.

He had spoken
to Adam Strong earlier, and the astronomer had confirmed that the Earth was
well on its way into a new orbit. As it finished swinging around the sun, it
would head out nearly to the orbit of Mars before falling back in toward the
orbit of Venus. This orbit wasn’t as severe as the one they had predicted
previously. That one, which took the Earth out beyond the orbit of Mars and
nearly in toward the orbit of Mercury, would have made the planet completely
uninhabitable.

In this new orbit,
they were going to experience a little over four months of relatively normal
temperatures, and then it would gradually get colder as they went through two
months of frigid temperatures when the Earth neared the orbit of Mars. As it
fell back toward the sun, there would be over four months of near normal
temperatures again, followed by a rapid warm up until the temperature were
nearly scorching as they neared the orbit of Venus. For two months, the
temperature on the surface would be too hot to go out during the day.

Timmons
wondered what the effects of that would be on the Earth’s ecosystem if it still
had one. Strong had also mentioned that, with the change of the Earth’s orbit,
instead of there being twelve months in a year there would now be fourteen.

“Out for a
walk, Sir?” asked Janet Reynolds, one of the communication specialists who worked
in the Control Center.

“I just wanted
some fresh air,” he responded, noticing the young woman who was standing next
to him.

“I did too,”
she replied, gazing down at a plot of lettuce. Her family had grown lettuce in
their garden back on the family farm. “We spend so much time trying to contact
other shelters and sometimes I wonder what the purpose is. Do you think we will
ever be able to leave this bunker?”

Warren hesitated before answering. “I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “I think we will
be able to for short periods eventually and hopefully, once we learn how to
adapt to the new conditions on the surface, perhaps even longer. It will be a while
before we know.”

“I would like
to go back outside,” Janet spoke in a wistful voice. “I would like to return
home someday and see what’s left.”

“Where are you
from?” asked Warren, curiously.

“Charlotte, North Carolina,” Janet replied. “My parents had a home and small farm in the
mountains and I was living with them while I was in the military. I don’t think
the flooding from the tidal waves reached that far inland.”

“Your home may
indeed still be there,” Warren replied. His own home was in Houston, but he was
not anxious to see if anything was left. There would be too many depressing memories
at the space center.

Janet nodded. There
was no doubt in her mind that someday she would return home. Then, nodding at
Timmons, she turned and began walking back toward the main part of the bunker.
Her duty shift began in a few more hours and she needed to eat and get ready.

Warren watched her leave. It was becoming more difficult every day to live in the bunker.
People were meant to be out on the surface of the planet. He just hoped the two
new tunnels would help. With a heavy sigh, he turned to follow Janet. He had
some reports to go over, and then he needed to speak to General Mann as well as
Mase Colton.

-

Beneath the
shuttle, the rugged lunar surface looked more desolate than ever. The volcanoes
had stopped erupting, but the lunar quakes and eruptions had only added to an
already scarred landscape.

The shuttle circled
Tycho Crater, then flew high above the massif, and Mase looked down at the
damage done to the small communications outpost. Steffan Darrow had already
sent a crew to begin repairing the antennas and all of the damage caused by the
lunar quakes. The small control building was still intact, but Steffan’s people
would be giving it a close inspection before Mase agreed to send people back up
to it. They hoped by getting the big antennas back up they could communicate
better with the surviving shelters on Earth.

From above
they could see that several of the big antennas had collapsed, and others were
leaning at precarious angles. A shuttle was currently parked on the massif’s
landing pad, and a crew of eight were already busy with repairs.

“Everywhere
you look, there is damage,” Anthony commented as he adjusted the shuttle to fly
back over Tycho City. “I guess all things considered we got off pretty
lightly.”

“It could have
been worse,” Mase agreed as he looked down.

The shuttle
was passing over the landing pads, and Mase could see several small fissures
that ran dangerously close to one of them. A construction crew was out, and they
were using several of the enclosed Moon bulldozers to push dirt into the
fissures to seal them back up.

“Do you think
we will ever be able to make trips back and forth between the Moon and the
Earth?” Anthony asked as he glanced up at the distant planet that was just
above the horizon.

“No, at least
not for a long while,” Mase responded with a sigh. “We can launch a shuttle and
possibly land it on Earth, but there is no way to launch it back. All three of
the shuttle launching sites have been destroyed. There is no way to fuel a
shuttle or attach SRBs even if we had them.”

The shuttle
arrowed back up toward space as Anthony gained altitude and he set a course for
Farside. “I was pretty sure that was the case,” Anthony said disappointedly.
“Do you think the survivors on Earth will be able to make it?”

Mase looked
out the cockpit window at the pockmarked surface below. He knew in some ways
Earth probably resembled the Moon now, particularly after all the volcanic eruptions
and the ash that had settled everywhere.

“I don’t
know,” answered Mase. He had spoken for quiet sometime with Warren Timmons and
General Mann about this very thing. “It depends on how well the Earth’s
atmosphere clears up and how the new orbit affects the Earth’s ecological
systems.”

“What
ecological systems?” asked Anthony, raising his eyebrows. “It’s dead isn’t it?”

“The oceans
may not be,” Mase replied. “Some of the scientists think the deeper parts of
the ocean may have come through pretty much intact.”

“I guess there
would still be some seeds in the ground that would germinate under the right
conditions,” Anthony added thoughtfully.

“Perhaps,”
Mase answered. “We will just have to wait and see.”

The two were
quiet for a while as the shuttle continued on its flight. Anthony made a few
adjustments on the control console, and soon the shuttle began to descend. In
the distance, the massive dome of the Albertson reflector was visible. As they
approached, the numerous dish antennas could be seen. Some of them looked
perfectly normal, still pointing up toward space where they had last been
focused. Others were bent or had toppled to the ground in the quakes.

“I’m glad Pierre didn’t have to see this,” Mase spoke quietly, thinking about how heartsick LaRann
would be to see his life’s dream in ruins.

Anthony looked
down at several dish antennas that lay shattered on the ground. He could well
recall his flights with the brilliant scientist as Pierre went on and on about
all that would be discovered when his array went online. It was hard to believe
all that had happened since then.

Looking out,
Mase noticed with concern several large fissures that had come uncomfortably
close to the Albertson reflector. One was within a few hundred yards of the
dome. He would have to get a crew out here to begin filling the fissures up.
There was a lot of lunar soil that would need to be moved. He also wasn’t happy
with the fact that Adam Strong had never mentioned how close the fissure had
come to the dome.

Anthony
brought the shuttle to a point just above one of the landing pads and gently
set it down. He was still the best pilot on the Moon and he took pride in
keeping that title. Looking over at Mase, he suspected that Adam was going to
get a big ass chewing for not mentioning the fissure. But Anthony knew that
Adam had been afraid that if he mentioned it Mase would shut Farside down
completely. Anthony heard the docking port connect and, glancing down at his
instruments, saw that it was showing a smooth seal.

“We have a
good seal,” he reported, looking over at Mase.

Mase let out a
deep breath as he stood up and moved toward the hatch. After this inspection,
he had a meeting with a group of scientists about the new orbit of the Earth as
well as the Moon. Mase knew that the Moon, at the most distant part of its
orbit, was now an additional fifty five thousand miles farther out from Earth.
The hatch opened, and Mase stepped out into the docking tube. Walking its
length, he entered the underground section of the complex.

-

Adam Strong
braced himself for the upcoming meeting with Commander Colton. He knew he would
get chewed out over the fissure outside the dome. When it had occurred he
thought they were going to lose the reflector, and they had been forced to ride
the lunar quake out in the big underground bunker. Luckily, the dome had
survived intact. Now Adam just hoped that he survived intact. Adam let out a
deep breath. It had been his decision, and he would live with it.

Several more
months passed, and the Earth began to move out toward the orbit of Mars. On
Earth, the earthquakes continued to subside even though there were many more
now than in the past. Volcanoes continued to erupt, hurling poisonous gases and
ash up into the atmosphere, but even these were fewer than they had been a few
months back. Storms began to lessen, and hurricanes and typhoons were now very
seldom above a category four or five.

There were
actual days now where sunlight would break briefly thorough the clouds and
things almost seemed normal. However, one look at the desolate, ruined
landscape on humanity’s home planet made one wonder if they were on an alien world.
Nothing was growing, the trees were dead, and there were no birds singing in
the air. The quiet drone of insects as the sun went down was also missing, and
the only sound was the wind rustling the few dead leaves that remained hanging
loosely on the trees.

The world was
a place of the dead. The constructions of man had largely been erased due to the
floods, the earthquakes, volcanoes, and the high winds. In places, it looked as
if the constructs of man had been swept bare. Building foundations and
occasional stonewalls were all that remained. Only in the mountains and other
sheltered areas were there still buildings standing intact. In a few areas,
small groups of survivors dared to venture out to see what remained of their
world.

-

Trace Lewis
was standing outside of the bunker with his father, Cole Kingston, and Phillip
Galleger. For several days now, the weather had steadily improved, and Trace
firmly believed it was due to the high-pressure system that normally took up
residence over the state during the hot summer months.

“The sun’s out
again today,” James said, looking over at his son. They were all standing
outside without breathing masks. There was still a slightly foul odor in the
air similar to sulfur, but they were able to breathe without a problem.

Looking around
in the sunlight, Trace noticed that the majority of the trees in the woods
nearby had fallen. In some areas, it looked as if an explosion had gone off and
leveled everything. “Let’s walk down and check on the house and barn,” Trace
suggested. This would be the first time he could actually look at everything
with the sun out.

The four began
walking along the trail that led to the house. It had been raining less
frequently recently, and the ground was partially dried out. As they neared the
house, they noticed that a layer of thick volcanic ash was prevalent in many
low-lying areas.