The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) (19 page)

“Sam, turn up the flow valve on the blowtorch a bit more,” Roy said over their private radio channel. “This stuck lockdown clamp just doesn’t want to budge. The Star-Kissed habitat is relying on this supply rocket, especially for the bazooka tubes, and we need to get this baby launched.”

The two astronauts had switched to their private channel while working on the final supply rocket so that the colonists could not listen in on them. However, as a result, the Commander and Pilot were unaware of the commotion occurring just a few meters beneath their feet.

“There, finally,” Roy said as the frozen bolt broke loose.  “You can turn off the blowtorch now.” As Sam complied, Roy placed a new bolt into the clamp to replace the one that had become stuck.

“Do you think the guys at the
base have actually made rockets as weapons?” Sam asked. “That seems pretty dangerous, making explosives while in the habitat. I sure hope that we don’t arrive only to find the whole hab blown to bits. I wish NASA had given us more information, but they haven’t said anything since the last transmission.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Right now we have to just concentrate on getting these supplies to them. It looks like this is now read
y. Let’s move back and give the launch another attempt.”

The two astronauts retreated, taking the now silenced blowtorch with them. Sam approached the launch panel once more and waited for Mars to be optimally positioned.
This time, the rocket’s clamps released, and the supply rocket drifted away. Roy watched as the engines ignited, sending the supply ship to the NASA base.

Behind him, he heard Sam say, “Holy Mother of God!
The Pegasus; it’s leaving!”

Roy turned around to face the back of the asteroid cycler. There, a few hundred meters back, the Pegasus had emerged from the
hangar and was drifting away. The Commander watched in astonishment as its twin rear rockets ignited for a few seconds and then abruptly cut off, sending the winged craft dwindling into the blackness of space. He quickly changed his radio frequency to the Pegasus’ radio channel.

“Pegasus, this is Commander Roy Olstein. What the hell are you doing?”

The voice of Brother Jacobs came back to him. “Ah, Commander. You and your NASA friends thought to deny us our destiny. We are leaving. Enjoy your ride back home on the asteroid. I suggest you hurry. A fire is raging below you. There is still time for you to put it out.”

Sam had also switched frequencies and heard the exchange. “You idiot. You’ll never make it,”
she said.

“Oh, and why is that?” Brother Jacobs asked.

“Because,” Sam said, “you don’t have any fuel for the deorbit burn!”

Li Julong sat at the command console and initiated the transfer of fuel from one tank to the others in order to empty it. The empty tank would be replaced by the fuel pod that they had just rendezvoused with. When he had finished the transfer, he went to the window of the Chinese spaceship. Sergeant Wong and two of the North Koreans floated outside. Each of them had long tethers clipped to their suits which extended back to brackets on the Moon ship. The NCO was carrying what looked like a large inflatable mattress.

The scientist knew that they were approaching the most dangerous part of the refueling task. None of their spacesuits included the emergency jets that all NASA suits contained in case of a tether failure.

As he listened over the ship’s radio, the chief scientist could hear the NCO directing the Koreans. The three of them had just finished floating to the nearby refueling pod and grabbing onto handholds protruding from its sides. Sergeant Wong then clipped the mattress onto the front of the pod.

“Good. The cushion is
inflated and attached. I’ve checked the outside display, and the pod is at eighty-six percent full, which will give us more than enough fuel for our landing. Now attach yourselves to the pod with your suit clips,” the military man was saying. “Give one tug each on your tethers on the count of three to get it moving towards the ship. Only one tug, or it will move too fast and crash into the ship. One, two, three!”

The two Koreans each pulled on their tethers and the pod started to slowly approach
the ship. Sergeant Wong was kneeling on the back of the pod. Julong had a brief memory flashback of Slim Pickens riding the bomb in
Dr. Strangelove
, and then wondered how the NCO had managed all of this by himself on the trip from the Earth to the Moon. But then the radio with the sergeant’s voice brought him back to reality. “Quick, unclip yourselves from the pod,” the man was directing. “You do not want to get crushed when we reach the ship. If you puncture your suit, you will be in big trouble. We do not have patch kits out here, and unlike the Americans, your suit will not automatically close off.”

The whole ensemble slowly drifted out of Julong’s sight
to the rear where the fuel tanks were located.
“This is good,”
the scientist thought.
“With this last pod, we will have enough fuel to not only land, but also to launch a ship back to the Moon if we collect any Martian specimens.”

# # #

Someone at JPL had a sense of humor when he had programmed the emergency voice override for the Pegasus in case an astronaut ever found him or herself outside the ship with no way in. It was simple for everyone to remember, as it was the command given to Robbie the Robot in the old movie,
Forbidden Planet
.

“Pegasus, emergency cancellation Archimedes!
Override, my voice only!” Sam yelled. “Bring up ship status! Initiate return to Cycler!”

The inside of Sam’s helmet displayed the command console and the current state of the ship. ‘
Previous action terminated’ was displayed at the top, and underneath it the words ‘Invalid current action.’

“Fuel status,” Sam said
urgently. The gauges popped up on her visor and indicated zero fuel for the main thrusters. “That’s it, we’re screwed,” she said to Roy. “We used up almost all the fuel in the Pegasus when we had to perform that extra maneuvering with an engine out to reach the AB Cycler. The last of it was used when the Pegasus tried to initiate Mars approach just now. I can’t order it to return as there’s nothing left.”

Brother Jacobs, who was still on the same radio frequency said, “How were you going to land us on Mars if there was no fuel?”

“Our last task as we swung around Mars for the second pass was to refuel the Pegasus, just like we fueled the supply rockets,” Roy stated. Then, a statement that Brother Jacobs had said earlier finally registered. “Wait, you said that there’s a fire in the cycler modules? Is that why you left?”

“No, dear Commander, that is not why we left. We saw the video of your fellow astronauts on Mars fighting with
the emissaries of the Great Consciousness. We heard how you are making weapons to destroy our sole purpose for this trip. And we learned that the Chinese are attempting to be the first to greet Him, and this we cannot allow. We could not wait; we must arrive before this one chance is destroyed. Goodbye, Commander. You had best go put out the fire if you are to make it back to Earth.”

“Without fuel, you’re just going to become a flaming meteor,” Sam said. “
The deorbit burn has to occur to slow you down enough for the Pegasus to survive passage through the Martian atmosphere.”

“The Great Consciousness will cradle us and deliver us to Him,” said Brother Jacobs. “I have no worries.”

“Great, he has no worries. I’d let him fry if it wasn’t for the children who will go down with him,” Sam said in disgust. “I wish our emergency backpack jets were powerful enough to catch them! But even if we did, I don’t know what we could possibly do to save them.”

“I h
ave an idea,” Roy said. “Here, carry the blowtorch and the tethers and follow me. We have to get back inside.”

The two astronauts quickly worked their way across the webbing and back to the airlock. Roy punched the airlock open button and they pulled themselves in.
As soon as Sam had hauled the torch and tethers inside, Roy initiated the repressurization sequence. “Keep your helmet on,” he said to Sam. “There’s no telling how bad it is inside.”

Sam was sur
prised when the door opened and everything looked normal, but then realized that the hatch at the top of the ladder leading to the main module was closed. It was keeping out any flames or smoke. She saw Roy rush up the ladder, and tentatively push the hatch up a few inches. Dark black smoke came cascading down, but no flames.

“I’m going to take a peek,” Roy said. “Stay clear of the ladder in case I need to drop down quickly.”

Roy lifted the hatch further and stuck his head into the main central module. He could see flames all along one wall and the ceiling, but it had yet to spread to the floor or the other wall. His suit protected him from the intense heat. “Leave all that stuff,” he yelled to Sam, “and come up here. It looks like we might be able to put out the fires if we both get to the extinguishers. Hurry!”

Sam worked
her way up the ladder as quickly as she could as Roy disappeared through the hatch. When the pilot entered the main chamber, she saw that Roy had taken out the extinguisher from the nearest emergency box. “Here,” Roy said. “Take this one. I’ll use the other extinguisher located here. When these run out, we’ll get the ones in the emergency box at the other end of the room.”

The duo blasted the base of the
flames, and then the walls. Luckily, they managed to extinguish the conflagration in the main chamber with only the two fire extinguishers, although black soot continued to swirl everywhere. “I’m out, and it looks like the fire’s also raging in module three,” Sam said. “Let’s get to the other fire extinguishers and see if we can take care of it.” She rushed over and opened the red door near the tunnel leading to the residence chambers in order to reach the other fire retardants. The flames were licking out through the tunnel opening next to her. “Roy, you spray the tunnel, and I’ll go through. Hopefully I can make it and douse the flames from the other side to allow you to get in also.”

“Be careful,”
Roy said. “These suits are fire retardant, but not flame proof.”

“Just be ready to grab my feet and pull if I start yelling,” Sam said
as she dove head first into the tunnel. Roy sprayed the extinguisher at his partner from behind, and soon heard Sam say, “Come on through. The corridor is clear except for the cabin on the end.”

When Roy emerged into the tunnel, he saw his partner kicking
in the door at the end of the hallway, followed by her rushing into the room. The whole cabin was aflame, but between the two of them they managed to stop the fire.

“What a mess,” Sam said. “It looks like our friend Brother Jacobs didn’t like his accommodations. The maid’s going to be mighty mad at him when she sees this place when it gets back to Earth.
” Then looking at all the smoke and waving her hand she stated, “It will take a week for the air scrubbers to clear out all of this stuff.” She looked over at Roy. “And you look like Wiley E. Coyote after a failed attempt. Your suit’s all black.”

Roy looked down at his arms and body. He was covered in soot.
“Very funny, Sam. We need to get going.”

“Going? You mean t
o the Pegasus? How?”

“I was planning on using the extinguishers for a
n extra boost to catch it, but we used too much fighting this large fire. The majority of the propellant is gone. But there’s another way. Follow me.”

Roy and Sam stood at the closed door leading to the hangar. Roy had pulled the tab on his suit to deploy the small arm with the joystick that controlled his emergency backpack jets. A tether trailed behind him, with the blowtorch attached at the other end.

“Are you sure about this, Roy?” Sam asked.

“It’s the only way to get up enough speed,” Roy stated. “I’ve opened the hangar door to evacuate the chamber. When we open this door leading to it, the violent decompression will blow us all the way across the hangar and out the other end. The Pegasus went straight out that way, so we should be going in the right general direction. We’ll fine tune our trajectory and slow down using our emergency backpack jets.”

“What’s with the blowtorch?” Sam said, pointing to the canister lying behind them in the corridor.

“We may need a weapon with which to threaten Brother Jacobs when we get there,” Roy said. “He didn’t sound like he would appreciate any visitors.”

“Just let me have the first crack at him. I would love to punch his smug face.”

“Let’s worry about that later. You left all of the doors and hatches open inside the modules, right?”

“Yup.
I double checked.”

“Good. That will let th
e entire cycler empty of air so that no lingering sparks reignite after we leave. Now, clip onto me chest to chest.”

“I really don’t like this. What if we smash into the wall at the far end of the
hangar?” Sam asked as she clipped onto Roy.

“It’s a big exit door. Don’t worry. Here goes.”

“Wait, you don’t want a kiss for good luck?” Sam said, looking closely at Roy since they were now face to face with their helmets touching.

“Oh shut up,” Roy said as he punched the emergency open button.

It felt like a giant hand had swatted Roy from behind. The two astronauts went flying head over heels across the hangar and out the other side, with the blowtorch on the tether dragging straight out behind them.

Sam watched over Roy’s shoulder as the stars wheele
d around. “Whoa, what a rush,” she said.

“Stabilizing us now,” Roy said as he tugged on the joystick, causing his backpack to emit tiny puffs of nitrogen gas. In a few moments, the stars slowly stopped
spinning around them. Sam looked to her right and could see the AB Cycler dwindling in the distance. The tether was pointing directly at it with the blowtorch still attached. She turned her helmet to the left, looking for the Pegasus. All she could see were stars and the large globe of Mars hanging there.

“Uh oh,” Sam said. “Where’s the Pegasus?”