Blue Hope: (Book 2) (Red Hope) Read online

  Alexis laughed and put her hand on Chris’s arm.

  “I am so glad I kept you on the payroll after all.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Conference room

  NASA Jennings Manned Spacecraft Center

  Fort Worth, Texas

  (Two hours later)

  Alexis Tankovitch walked over to the doorway and looked outside for stragglers. The hallway was empty – she closed the door and turned around to face the group of engineers and managers.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here on short notice.”

  The conference room was perfectly square with walls made from dry-erase boards floor to ceiling. In the middle was a U-shaped oak table and a TV screen hanging on the wall — messy cables ran over the floor under the desk. On the screen were four somewhat pixelated faces from remote sites. In the room were ten people all sitting around the horse-shoe shaped table. Some wore military uniforms. Some wore polo shirts.

  Alexis walked into the open central portion of the table and proceeded to look at every person’s badge, one by one. Midway, she found a man whose badge did not have the telltale red stripe on it.

  “You don’t have a Secret clearance, sir.”

  The man fidgeted, suddenly anxious.

  “I know I don’t, director Tankovitch. But I’m a telemetry engineer. Mr. Spinks asked me to attend this meeting in his place.”

  “You don’t have the clearance,” she said with derision. “Get out. Tell Mr. Spinks I made a mistake hiring him.”

  The man gathered his notepad and trudged out of the room. Alexis waited for him to close the door.

  “Okay, folks, I have bad news and good news.”

  Alexis walked back around the table and sat down in the lead chair. She swiveled back and forth slightly as she spoke.

  “As you know, early on in the Mars mission our paleographers deciphered most of the inscriptions from the Martian temple.”

  “Temple?” a red-headed engineer asked.

  “We’re calling it a temple for now. It’s a stone building created to last eons. It contains a history of a long dead culture and it contains a gift to us. So, temple it is.”

  She stared into the red-headed engineer’s eyes. She squinted. He looked away.

  Chris, now the director of vending machine services, piped up with a softball question. “Can you give everybody a synopsis of what we know so far?”

  She smiled at the simplicity of his question.

  “Sure. The Martians had a thriving modern culture similar to our own. They invented something that lead to their destruction.”

  Chris added, “And do we know what that is now?”

  “We do,” confirmed Alexis Tankovitch.

  The rest of the people in the room looked at each other in anticipation.

  She continued. “On the screen is a man named James Stimple, the head of the NSA paleography group. They’ve finally deciphered that portion of the message.”

  One of the glitchy faces on the TV screen came to life. The man started to move his mouth, but it was quiet.

  “James?” Alexis interupted. “I think you have mute on.”

  The man looked down away from his camera, smiled, then said, “Can you hear me now?”

  Everybody in the room nodded.

  “Okay,” he continued. “It took us a long time to figure that part because it wasn’t a language really, but it was a set of chemical equations.”

  “You mean chemical formulas,” the red-headed engineer interrupted again, with an overwhelming arrogance.

  The man on the screen was caught off guard, but then he smiled.

  “The term formulas is what they use on late night infomercials. Chemical equations are what chemists use to write down stoichiometrically balanced chemical reactions. It’s what we learned in high-school chemistry class.”

  “Mr. Stimple,” said Alexis. “Please ignore our red-headed engineer. He keeps validating my poor opinion of him. Continue.”

  The man on the screen took a drink of water before continuing, holding his pointer finger up as a pause.

  “What the Martians gave us was a chemical equation for the production of a medicine that controls cell-growth rates. We can create customized rates. Up or down. It’s quite groundbreaking.”

  The head of aviation medicine spoke up, “Are we talking about controlling cancer cells?”

  Mr. Stimple nodded his head. “Yes, indeed.”

  Everybody looked at each other to acknowledge the weight of this information.

  “The timing couldn’t be more perfect with cancer rates going through the roof,” Alexis said.

  Mr. Stimple added, “That’s correct, but we must be careful. Keep in mind that this is what ultimately spelled their doom.”

  Alexis sat up in her chair and put her elbows on the table.

  “How is that so?” she asked.

  “Unintended consequences,” Mr. Stimple replied. “Suddenly, their death rates plummeted. People started living much longer. Mars is much smaller than Earth and it couldn’t keep up with the sudden demand on food production.”

  “Do you think that would happen here?” Alexis asked.

  “Well, good question. I don’t think so,” Mr. Stimple answered with some doubt.

  Chris leaned forward to speak.

  “Logistically, are you manufacturing this by the ton right now? We need it immediately.”

  Mr. Stimple shook his head. “No, this chemical, what we’re dubbing Blue Hope, can’t be produced here on Earth. Not yet at least.”

  “Let me guess, it has to be made on Mars?” Chris asked.

  “No sir, not even on Mars. It requires a low-gravity environment.”

  “Low gravity?”

  “Yes, many of the experiments on the Space Station taught us that certain chemical mixtures, er, solutions, can react very differently in zero gravity situations. The Martian inscriptions describe this along with the actual chemical equations. It added to the complexity of deciphering their messages.”

  Chris was confused, “Why would gravity matter?”

  “Well, there are certain chemicals with very different densities that will not mix properly in the presence of gravity. Just as helium likes to float, lighter liquids also like to float. The Blue Hope medicine requires a mostly homogenous mix, but the components don’t mix at all in the presence of strong Earth-like gravity.”

  The head of aviation medicine chimed in, “Look, we can’t just sit on this information. We need to launch a rocket into orbit to start making this so-called Blue Hope.”

  Alexis piped in, “Well, Mr. Stimple hasn’t told you everything just yet.”

  “You’re right, Alexis. It’s more complicated. Blue Hope doesn’t need zero gravity either. In fact, that’s just as bad as mixing it here on the Earth’s surface. Blue Hope needs to be produced in an environment that has between ten and twenty percent of Earth’s gravity to get the buoyancy mix just right – it’s such a fragile process. If done correctly, the chemical still separates, but into very subtle layers – think of it like how crude oil is separated into various useful components in a distillation tower with gasoline near the top and asphalt materials near the bottom. Not the same process, but you get the idea.”

  While Mr. Stimple spoke, some members of the crowd Googled crude oil and distillation towers.

  “So we couldn’t even use a rocket if we had it,” Chris said with disappointment. “Or even the Space Station.”

  Alexis felt the room develop an all-is-lost feeling. She stood up and walked toward the dry-erase board wall.

  “There are two options,” she said, grabbing a dry-erase marker and writing 1 and 2 on the marker board.

  “As you know, right before our crew left the Mars site, they discovered an anti-gravity cube inside the Martian temple. We believe that was a gift to any future explorers because it gives us an idea of how to manipulate, at least locally, gravitational fields. That’s the technology that the Martians must’ve b
een using to produce the chemical. Think about it. They couldn’t mix the Blue Hope on Mars either – they must’ve had laboratory facilities with customized local low-gravity fields.”

  She wrote “Anti-gravity cube” next to the number 1.

  “What about sub-orbital flights?” Chris asked. “We can tailor those to any acceleration level we want. We could borrow the Vomit Comet or use the Burt Rutan ship.”

  Alexis pointed the marker at him, implying a good point.

  “The problem with that, mister Tankovitch, is that sub-orbital flights can only provide that low level of gravity for a minute or so at most when they fly their parabolic arcs. Blue Hope requires a slow steady cylindrical mixing for at least one hour.”

  “Do you have any good news for us?” asked the red-headed engineer.

  “I’m getting to that,” she assured him. “I have huge news to share with you. We now have evidence that the Little Turtle spacecraft is not far from Earth.”

  A murmur went up among all of the people in the room.

  “It’s true,” she said. “We’ve acquired a beacon signal from it. We suspect that it’s less than ten days away from rendezvous with Earth.”

  “Are they alive?” yelled somebody on the TV screen.

  “We don’t know. The communication channels are dead. Only the automated beacon signal remains. However, if our astronauts managed to get the anti-gravity cube on board, then they may have just saved mankind from the dubious actions of our,” she paused for effect. “Previous president.”

  “And what if they didn’t get the anti-gravity cube on the ship?” the red-headed engineer asked.

  “That brings me to option number two. There’s only one place we could even conceive of going that would provide that constant low level of gravity.”

  Alexis uncapped the marker and wrote two more words on the dry-erase board: “The Moon.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The president’s office

  New White House

  Reston, Virginia

  Chris and Alexis were the only two people in the room. They occupied opposite ends of the sofa. Chris nervously checked his watch wondering just how late the president would be. He stood up and walked over to the front of the grand wooden presidential desk. He’d heard rumors that the front contained a trap door – he nudged it with his foot.

  Nothing.

  “You know,” Alexis said. “That’s not the real desk. The White House was damaged in the attacks. I assume they got a replica.”

  Chris frowned and nodded his head.

  “Alexis, I honestly don’t think the president is going to go for it,” Chris said.

  Alexis gave a look of incredulousness.

  “I don’t agree. She’s being handed the keys to the greatest cure in human history. She’ll go for it,” Alexis said with an assuring tone.

  The door to the office burst open. Chris turned around. President Bexar and two of her assistants walked in. Alexis and Chris both stood up to shake her hand.

  “Sorry for the delay,” the president announced. “It’s been crazy today. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No thanks,” they said.

  “Well I certainly do,” the president replied.

  The president grabbed a cup of coffee and gulped it down. She motioned for her guests to sit back down. She followed and sat down across from both of them.

  “Your note said you had exciting news,” President Bexar said with anticipation. “I could use some good news for a change.”

  Alexis straightened up and cleared her throat.

  “Yes, in the last forty eight hours we’ve learned of some significant developments and wanted to tell you in person.”

  “That’s awfully brave with the current state of the airlines.”

  Alexis nodded her head, “Yes, it was difficult to get here, but it was worth it.”

  The president sighed, ready to be amazed.

  “In short, our Mars crew is coming back.”

  The presidents jaw dropped open.

  “Well,” Chris corrected. “We think they are. We’re receiving a communications broadcast from the Little Turtle spaceship. It’s barely functioning, but we think they may still be alive.”

  The president smiled with hope. “This is fantastic news! Our country is in a rut and we really need something positive like this.”

  Alexis nodded.

  “Agreed, but we also have more information. Our scientists have deciphered another part of the message from the Mars Temple. It’s a chemical equation that describes how to make a medicinal compound that can effectively cure cancer.”

  “This just gets better and better!” the president said with excitement. “I’ve been getting reports, secret reports, that the cancer problem is much worse than the public knows about. And it’s only going to accelerate. This new development couldn’t come at a better time.”

  “There’s a catch,” Chris said.

  “Oh, there’s always a catch,” the president laughed, rolling her eyes.

  “The medicine requires a mixing environment with very low gravity. Fortunately, the Martians left a physical example of how to manipulate gravity. Inside the Temple, they left a cube that, from what the astronauts said, defied gravity. We can study this and figure out how to make local variations on gravitational fields, inside the laboratory. We hope the astronauts have that on board.”

  “What if they don’t?” the president asked, suddenly very concerned.

  “Then we’ll have to think of something, or somewhere, else.”

  “Somewhere?”

  “Realistically, if the returning ship doesn’t have the anti-gravity cube, the only place we could mix the chemical would be on the Moon.”

  The president stared off, trying to run the numbers in her head. She looked them dead in the eyes.

  “This is the greatest news I’ve ever heard, but right now there is no budget for any launches and the rocket industry is in shambles.”

  Alexis chimed in, “We know, but with proper budget incentives, we can get somebody like Whittenberg Space Launch Systems back in business.”

  The president nodded her head. She opened her mouth and paused, waiting to share some private information.

  “Mr. Whittenberg is retired. He told me that he holds himself partially responsible for the Mars mission disaster and wants nothing to do with aerospace anymore.”

  Alexis and Chris both looked defeated.

  “Is there anything else?” President Bexar asked.

  “No,” Alexis said. “That’s everything.”

  “Don’t look so sad,” the president said. “Our crew is returning from Mars – this is incredible news. This requires a press conference immediately. I’ll hold back on the announcement about the anti-cancer medicine until we find out about the anti-gravity cube.”

  The president stood up.

  “Thank you for coming all this way. My assistant will show you out.” Then she left the room.

  Alexis and Chris looked at each other in silence. They stood up.

  “Follow me,” the presidential assistant ordered.

  The two NASA personnel followed the assistant out of the room and through a series of hallways. They picked up their jackets and cellphones near the front lobby. As they walked down the stairs, Chris sighed, now having met with two Presidents in his lifetime to announce a surprise astronautical discovery.

  A limo slid up to the stoop in front of them. The driver got out and opened the door for them, only saying, “Hello, ma’am.” They climbed in and sat across from each other. Chris turned on the radio, searching for the local news. He put the volume on low. The limo accelerated away from the new White House.

  Chris stared at Alexis who somehow looked completely rested and ready to go, even after a long day of travel. The low hum of the radio news mumbled into the limo cabin like white noise.

  “Why’d you make me split the pennies?” Chris asked.

  “What are you talking about?”
>
  “In our divorce settlement, you required me to split the penny jar in half,” Chris said solemnly. “It’s a question I’ve wanted to ask for years.”

  “It’s not like I made you count them. I told you to just divide it in half by weight.”

  Chris nodded.

  “Yeah, I know. I still counted them. I wanted to be maliciously compliant.”

  Alexis shook her head.

  “That was foolish, Chris. I wasn’t being mean. We just… grew apart. It happens.”

  He obviously had a thought on his mind.

  “Do you ever look back and think, perhaps, if we just started over, but with the right mindset….”

  “No,” Alexis interrupted him. “Never. Nada. You. Me. Never again in that respect. But I’m happy to be your boss.”

  Chris looked out the window as all expression melted from his face.

  “My fellow Americans…” echoed from the radio speaker. The president was already giving her news address about some of the information from Alexis and Chris’s visit. Still keeping it close to her vest, the president only released the news about the Little Turtle spaceship returning from Mars. They listened as the buildings of Reston, Virginia slid by outside the limo.

  Alexis’s phone rang. She answered it and put it on speakerphone.

  “Hi, NASA folks, you’re on speaker phone with Chris and I. What’s going on back in Fort Worth?”

  A tinny voice rang from the phone.

  “We’ve finally completed all of the Martian temple deciphering. Are you ready for something crazy?”

  “I’m always ready for crazy,” Alexis laughed, rubbing her sore heel.

  “Okay. It says they had a base here on Earth and they even gave the location.”

  Alexis looked stunned.

  “They give you the location?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said the cellphone voice. “It’s complicated. They gave us coordinates, but obviously they are a unique system, to say the least. The cartography team has spent the past twenty four hours trying to interpret them.”