The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) (14 page)

“Pilot Sam, are you going to the Pegasus now?” Jean said as she ran over to the NASA astronaut who was starting to climb up the central ladder of the AB Cycler. “Can I finally come with you? I studied all that material you gave me about orbits and trajectories really hard, and you said I could once I mastered it.”

Pilot Tuttle turned around and sighed. “You’re not going to quit pestering me until you get in there, are you?”

Jean gave a little frown and stamped her foot. “You promised!”

“Okay. Define for me a Hohmann transfer orbit.”

“It’s a minimum energy maneuver to go from one orbit to another,” Jean replied.

“And what’s a delta-v?” Sam asked.

“That’s the change in velocity of a ship,” Jean said smiling.

Sam tried to throw
her off. “Why do we say velocity instead of speed? Aren’t they just the same thing?”

“
No, speed is a number. Velocity is speed plus direction, which is important in space.”

The pilot inwardly smiled to herself. Jean’s enthusiasm reminded her of herself when she was that age.
“Oh, alright, come on. But don’t touch anything unless I tell you it’s okay,” Sam said.

Jean clapped and jumped up and down. “Yah!” she cried and scampered up the ladder ahead of Sam.

Sam gave a small laugh at her exuberance, and followed her up the ladder at a more dignified pace.
“At least here’s one other person I can talk to about these boring maintenance activities,”
she thought.
“Talking only to Roy about our duties is getting pretty old by now.”
When she reached the top of the ladder, she could see Jean skipping down the tunnel towards the hangar. Sam hurried after her, as she wanted to make sure that the girl didn’t enter the Pegasus without her, but Jean was dutifully waiting by the closed hatch of the ship.

“You can push that square button to the right side of the hatch to go in,” Sam said to her as
she walked up. Jean pushed the button, and the hatch swung down from the top, revealing stairs built into the door.

As they entered the airlock, Jean turned to Sam and asked, “Why is there another door here in front of us?”

“This is the airlock. If we were in space, this door would keep the air inside the ship. We would close the outer door, and pressurize the inside room here with air, and then we could open the inside door safely.” Sam pushed the button to the right of the inner door, which slid aside, and they both walked into the large central section of the Pegasus.

“But what if you forgot to close the outer door?” Jean asked. “Would we all get sucked out?”

“Yes, that certainly could happen, but the ship has checks for that. Also, see this circular dial under the button?” she asked as she pointed to a small disk on the wall next to the door that Jean had not noticed. “We use this to manually lock the door when we are inside. You just give the dial a half turn clockwise. There is another one of these for the outer door for safety when we are in there doing maintenance. We’ll just leave the doors open and unlocked for now.”

“Oh
, I better take notes on all of this,” Jean said. The girl took out her diary that her father had given her and wrote in it, ‘There is a dial under the door open and close button. Turn it clockwise to lock the door so that it cannot be opened from outside.’

Sam led the way down the side aisle to the door that led to the Pegasus
flight deck. She slid it open and she and Jean entered. Sam pointed to the left hand chair. “You can sit there, Jean. That’s the Commander’s chair. I’ll take the pilot seat which is my usual spot.” As they took their seats, she continued, “So, what’s the first thing you do when you enter the ship?”

Jean sat in the seat. It was large and comfortable. She looked at the panel in front of her which had a multitude of dials a
nd switches. She had no clue what she would need to do first, but thought about the material that Sam had given her. Finally she had it. “Checklist!” Jean shouted. “We need to go through the startup checklist.”

“That’s right. The checklist is kept in the Pegasus’ compu
ter, so you need to wake up the ship. Flip this protective red cover up, and then press the button underneath it.”

Jean did as she was told, and the lights came on
along the whole top of the flight deck and a color screen on the panel in front of her lit up. There were a number of lines on the display, the first of which was ‘Startup Sequence.’

“Just press the ‘Startup Sequence’ line, and the ship will do the rest,” Sam said.

As she pressed the screen, Jean asked, “But my dad let me drive the tractor around the farm a few times. Isn’t there a key or something that you need to start the ship?”

“Only qualified pilots like us are allowed in here,” Sam pointed out, “so there’s no need for anything like that. 
And having a set of keys floating from the panel would probably be a distraction and a hazard in weightlessness, especially if you needed the ship to make a sudden maneuver.”

Jean opened her diary and wrote, ‘No key needed. Flip up the red cover, press the button, and then press the first line on the screen to start up.’

After a few moments of the lights on the panel turning on and off, the screen display changed. The first line now read ‘Maintenance’ and the second line ‘Destination.’

“Press the ‘Destination’ key,” Sam said. “I think you might like this.”

After Jean had pressed it, the screen filled with a number of options. The top ones such as ‘Earth orbit’, ‘Cycler rendezvous’, and ‘Cycler docking’ all had check marks next to them, indicating completion. The next ones on the list, which were unchecked, were ‘Cycler undocking’ and ‘Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI).’ “Press the ‘MOI’ button to see what it does,” Sam said.

As Jean complied, the screen displayed ‘Automated?’ and ‘Manual?’
Sam leaned over and pressed the ‘Manual?’ line, and the screen turned red and displayed, ‘ERROR: Pegasus docked’ and underneath it ‘Return? Override?’ Sam pressed ‘Return?’ and the display went back to the destination choices.

“So all you do is sit here and press the screens in order?” Jean asked. “That’s what piloting is all about?”

Sam laughed. “Well yes, mostly. This baby is something else. Everything has been programmed into it and is automated. It’s
really only when there’s an emergency or something that is not standard that we take over manually. We spend hours and hours in simulators practicing what happens under different scenarios, like whether you want to undock and the clamps are stuck, or if one of your engines goes out, or even if you need to dodge a space object in front of you to get to your destination. Otherwise, you just pick the next option in the list and the Pegasus flies itself.”

“Will it even land itself?” she asked.

“Yes, as long as it’s a normal flight.”

Jean wrote in her book, ‘Just follow the screens in order and the Pegasus flies itself.
’

“How does it know where to land?” she asked.

“When we approach Mars, we’ll launch your Martian home base that is packed in one ship near the nose of this asteroid, and then launch all the supplies and tools to set it up which are in another ship. The cycler will swing past Mars, and we’ll land on the second loop of a pretzel shaped orbit a month later. We’ll spend the intervening month setting up everything by remote control from here and directing a bulldozer to create a landing strip. We land on that second pass after we’ve checked that everything is ready. One of the packages that is set up during that month is a radar station which will sit next to the landing strip. The Pegasus will home in on that and come down pretty as you please right next to your new home which will be set up and ready to accept you.”

“So we actually get to Mars in two more months, not three,”
she stated, “and we spend a month getting everything ready from here, right?”

“That’s right, Jean. You wouldn’t want to land with no base set up, especially since you don’t have a spacesuit or enough food in here to last while it’s all erected.”

Jean wrote another entry in her diary. ‘We arrive at Mars in two months, not three. The base and supplies are sent to Mars and a month is spent on the cycler setting everything up. The Pegasus is launched on the second pass of Mars.’

Sam reached over and pressed the ‘Maintenance’ line and then selected ‘Manual?’

“Okay, Jean, let’s check the controls. Look out the window to your left, and turn the wheel counter-clockwise like you would turn a car to the left. See the small panel at the top of the left wing flip up?”

“Yes, does that t
urn us? That’s called an alluralon, right?”

Sam stifled a laugh. “That’s close
. It’s pronounced ail-er-on. The ailerons on the left and right wings always bend the opposite way, which cause the Pegasus to roll left when you turn the wheel left and right when you turn the wheel right. They always need to move in the opposite direction to control the roll of the plane.”

“How do we go up and down?” she asked.

“This is a delta wing plane, so there’s no tail where those controls would normally be. The small jets in the nose of the Pegasus are used to control pitch and yaw. You pull the wheel towards you, and the jets under the nose turn on, pushing the nose up. See up there in front those small holes? If you push the control wheel away from you, those jets will activate to push the nose down.”

Jean pushed and pulled the wheel but nothing happened. “Why isn’t it doing anything?” she asked.

“Always look at the panel, Jean.”

Jean looked down and saw that the red
‘Error’ screen was displayed once more. The same message was there stating that the Pegasus was still docked and asked if the pilot wanted to override. Sam pressed the ‘Return’ choice, and then the ‘Maintenance’ and ‘Automated’ options. Jean watched in fascination as the wheel in front of her moved of its own volition, and the jets in the nose gave off periodic puffs. Soon, the screen said it was completed and everything was ‘Nominal.’ Sam pressed the ‘Shutdown procedure’ screen option and then closed the small red cover on the button which they had used to start up the Pegasus. Soon, the display and the panel lights went dark.

“That’s it
; we’re finished,” she said. “We’ll do this again a month from now. Let’s see if you can do it all on your own next time.”

“I’ve got everything I need right here in my diary,” Jean said. “I’m going to study it over and over to be ready,” she said.

“That’s great, kid. Now let’s go get some lunch; I’m starving,” Sam said, getting out of her seat.

When they had returned back to the central module of the cycler, Jean ran over to her father at the Platinum table. “Dad,
Pilot Sam showed me how to fly the Pegasus! I think I could be a pilot some day!”

“That’s great, Sweetie. Did you write everything
down in your diary?” Jeff asked her.

“Yes, it’s all right here,” she said, patting her diary.

“Well, you’re late for lunch. Give it to me so that you don’t get it dirty when you do your chores right after the meal. I’ll make sure it goes back in your special spot.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Jean said as she
handed over her diary. She turned and ran squealing over to her table. She couldn’t wait to tell her friends, especially those annoying Hampton twins, that she knew how to fly a spaceship.

She didn’t notice that her father handed her diary to Brother Jacobs under the table.

The programmers had designed
Probe Spit to be a combination of advanced artificial intelligence and a biological brain. Although Spit had started as a logical and cool-headed analytical mechanism, the stresses of performing its mission successfully had activated the most primitive areas of its biology. It was simultaneously excited and concerned. An outside observer would have thought that Spit had developed a nervous tic, as its sole eye swiveled from side to side, and its sensopads drummed the dusty ground inside its subterranean lair. The pressures of these last two months had weighed heavily upon it. Since the programmers had been able to provide Spit with the basics of the human language, its monitoring of the bipeds through the hopper hidden at their base had only magnified its sense of alarm.

More of the bipeds would be arriving soon, and the biosynths and decoy had not worked as anticipated.
The creatures were now developing additional destructive weapons, which could rain down and destroy all that the probe had worked towards. Spit had run out of options, and could only wait and hope that its decision to create a Master would win the race against time before the bipeds attacked. The biological portion of the probe nervously anticipated the Master’s arrival and hoped he would approve of Spit’s decisions so far.

Spit had been fairly
sure that biped humans would be too late and that it had started the process to create a Master early enough. Now, the Master’s gestation and subsequent training within the ‘Nest’ was nearing completion. In mere moments, he would emerge, and Spit’s burden of the mission would be lifted. The probe had dutifully recorded everything, and the most recent audio from the hopper at the creatures’ habitat had just now finished spooling into the Master’s brain.
“The Master will know what to do next,”
thought Spit.

If a human was watching, he would describe what the Nest did next as
resembling a large Venus Fly Trap that was opening up. The Nest split in two, and the two halves slowly spread apart, with strands between the two halves stretching and then breaking. As with Spit, the Nest was a combination of electronics and biological wetware. Slimy blood-red sections of the inside pulsed obscenely as optical conduits shuttled bright lights from one side to the other. A human would have been nauseated at the smell.

In the midst of this nest,
a monstrous creature slowly arose, breaking away from an umbilical that had nourished it. The beast was the approximate size of a giant lion, and likewise four legged, but there the analogy broke down. No earthly lion had ever looked like this. The creature was covered with sleek scales. Its top and belly were a dark brown, with a pinkish stripe of scales running along each side of the body from its neck to its rear.

This was the Master, and
his head somewhat resembled that of a dinosaur, with a tubular shape and a mouth filled with shark-like teeth. He had four eyes. Two of the eyes were dark and cunning, and placed on top of the snout where any normal creature would have had its nostrils. The other two eyes, situated behind the dark ones and further apart, were grey and displayed a malicious intelligence. These eyes had flexible brow ridges that could completely cover them if the Master was ever attacked.

Arranged symmetri
cally around the head were four muscular and prehensile tentacles, each about the length of a human arm. These were currently lying back along the Master’s neck. The tentacles were covered their whole length with fine shiny scales, with the top half dark and shading to pink on the bottom half. The camouflage made them almost unnoticeable when they lay along the neck, blending in with the dark brown and pink of the Master’s sides. The forebrain, contained within the skull, could initiate lightning quick responses from these tentacles. They could snap forward to catch unsuspecting prey with astonishing speed and strength. Yet, the tips of the tentacles were bifurcated into two grasping fingers for fine work.

Along the neck were gill-
like openings, which were the Master’s ears. There were no nostrils, since the Master’s race had evolved without them. The four dark legs of the Master were covered in vertical spines that lay along the length of the appendages. The legs ended in feet filled with six fearsome black claws.

Situated i
nside the main body of the Master, near the back, was the large primary hindbrain. This was where the awesome intelligence of the Master resided. The forebrain was responsible for quick reactions. It was fed by the ears and the dark eyes, and could command the tentacles or teeth into instant action. The grey eyes fed the hindbrain. The hindbrain could take over the tentacles and mouth as needed for detailed work or communications with others of its kind.

How such a monstrosity could have become intelligent would have fascinated
the human biologist at the Martian habitat. Evolution had slowly taken the hindbrain approach, such as that used for controlling the rear ends of large creatures as seen in Earth’s dinosaurs of a bygone era, and expanded that to become the primary brain in the Master’s race. The brain located here was safe and secure from all dangers, residing as it did within the bulk of the body at the back. From this location, the brain also had much room to grow, not being restricted by a skull meant to protect it. Over the eons, the hindbrain and intelligence of the Master’s race had experienced tremendous growth. The ability for both brilliant deductions by the hindbrain, as well as lighting quick responses by the forebrain, had made it the dominant creature on its planet.

As the M
aster rose up, he was furious. He was only partially angry at Spit; his primary rage was at the human race. The selective education programming of the Nest had instilled into him a loathing for the master race of the planet Earth. “Spit!” he roared. “How did you suffer them for so long? At the first hint of anything on this red planet, you should have created a hunter-killer and exterminated them all and then followed up with the primary mission! You were named Spit for a reason. Like the Chockterock of our planet that spits venom into the eyes of its enemy, you were designed to extract our revenge.”

Spit’s sensopads briefly quaked, but
the probe forced them into stillness. It was as Spit had feared; the Master was upset. The artificial intelligence part of the probe quickly responded. “I could not know that the bipeds had occupied this planet, as I had only encountered a simple robot explorer,” it explained. “I also needed to conserve my resources for the mission, and could not know how many of the creatures were here. It now seems that there are only four, but I could not have known that at the start. I needed to keep my options open and keep the mission objectives in the forefront during all contingencies.”

“Ah, the mission; yes, the mission,” the Master intoned. Its hindbrain reviewed some of the knowledge it had been imparted by the programmers. “The Earthlings almost ruined our society with their diabolical transmissions. At first there was excitement at such a nearby race, but some of the messages
were maliciously devious. Revolts, carnage, and the decimation of some of our finest leaders were the results.”

“The programmers did not provide me
with any of this background,” Spit said. “Why was I created for the mission?”

“Our society is based on a hierarchy,” the Master explained.
“Only the fastest and most intelligent rule. These are all determined by the annual games. Everyone knows his place in our society. And we use the Chontroon race for all dull or dangerous work that cannot be performed by automated machines.”

“Chontroons?” Spit asked.

“Yes, the Chontroons; they are a biped race with no hindbrain. They are stupid, but quick and strong. The human messages were rife with images of democracy and equal rights for all. The Chontroons saw these images created by creatures with no hindbrains like themselves and thought to fashion similar lives. They rebelled, first on our space outposts, and then on the home planet. Due to their access to dangerous equipment and their control of robotic tools, we were unprepared for their uprising. Much of our infrastructure and many of our leaders were killed in the first moments of their attack. However, they have since been nearly exterminated and are only left in hidden pockets of resistance.”

“I understand the original mission, but how was this to extract revenge upon the humans?” Spit asked.

“After we rebuilt some of our infrastructure, the home world conceived you with the plan to use this uninhabited planet as an intermediate base. Since my race had already translated the transmissions from Earth, they imbued you with the knowledge of their language in case it was needed. Your mission was to land here and launch a smaller probe to Earth. The new probe would abduct a human subject from a remote location. Taking pieces of the Earthling, it would return them here to you. You would then erect the small quantum teleporter that you have in storage and transmit the pieces of the human to what remains of our scientists. They would use them to create a biological weapon which would wipe out the masters of this accursed third planet called Earth.”

“Can we still proceed with the main mission?”

“No,” the Master said after a moment’s hesitation as its hindbrain considered alternatives. “Your original mission is no longer valid, since this planet is no longer secure. With the Earthlings already here, and more on the way, we must devise a new plan. The one useful thing you did accomplish before I awoke was to secrete a hopper at their base. Unfortunately, the hopper is not designed to extract pieces of the humans. It is too slow and would be captured. Instead, we will lure one of the Earthlings directly to us. Here we will study its insides at our leisure and extract the necessary information to transmit to our scientists.”

“
But the bipeds already know that I am somewhere near here. Won’t they attack us?”

“That is why the first thing we need to do is move to another location. Send the remaining hoppers out to scout for a new resource rich crater.  Be sure to avoid the prying eyes of the human robot that is stuck in the pit nearby. I want us to relocate in the next few of these planet’s days.”

“Of course,” Spit said, relieved that it now had direction and no longer needed to sit idle while the humans prepared for its destruction. The probe gave the two remaining hoppers the command to locate a new crater for occupation.

“
And while we wait, direct the micro-factory to create some armor for me,” the Master said, annoyed. “I am totally naked, which is undignified for a Master of my level.”