Blue Hope: (Book 2) (Red Hope) Page 16

  “The surface was such a strange substance. A mixture of dust, powder, gravel and large stones – we call it regolith. The red sand dunes were incredible. We drove to the alien structure and found a stone building with only one way in. It had a big round door. I’ve been told that the stone building is now being called the Mars Temple.”

  On the large projection screen behind Adam appeared a photograph of the Mars Temple. Adam turned around to see the image. In the corner of the photograph was Yeva. Adam stopped talking. His thoughts drifted for a moment as more sweat poured down his face. He slowly turned back around with a blank face. He felt Yeva looking at him from the picture. The brief pause grew into an uncomfortably long pause. Off stage, Oliver snapped his fingers to get Adam’s attention. Adam came to and located where he left off in his notes.

  “This round door you see behind me was quite the puzzle. Yeva and I dug the sandy soil out from underneath one side and the door eventually rolled open. So we went inside. It was a huge room with a smaller room off to the right side. Inside the large room was a temple to the Martian’s history. Their lives, their language, their accomplishments, and a clue to what happened to them. These Martians had invented a cure for cancer and they gave us the instructions for it.”

  More water. Adam sweated profusely now. He was starting to skip details. He quickly figured that he’d already earned about forty thousand dollars.

  “In the smaller room, written on the wall, were balanced chemical equations showing how to make this amazing cure-all medicine. The next day, Keller and I explored that room and that was when the first tragedy struck. During our process of photographing the walls, there was a small tremor, a Mars-quake for lack of a better term. The round door rolled back and trapped us in the Temple. We tried to communicate back to the Big Turtle, but the signal couldn’t get through the thick walls. We took one of our oxygen tanks and knocked the end off of it — that briefly turned it into a rocket and we used it to push the door open.”

  A murmur went through the crowd as people discussed this clever use of an oxygen tank.

  “This left us with a problem. We didn’t have enough air left for both of us. So Keller,” Adam paused. “He gave me his remaining air and told me to go on. He made this amazing decision because I had a family and he did not. I can never apologize enough for such generosity and selflessness. Keller saved my life.”

  Apologize? Crap! I meant thank, Adam thought.

  Adams collar was now soaking wet. The lies were piling up.

  “When I got back to the Big Turtle, Yeva and Molly were clearly upset about the situation. After getting sufficient oxygen supplies, I returned to the Mars Temple and recovered Keller’s body. We buried it next to the Big Turtle. Unfortunately, during this process, Molly exited the station with a flawed pressure-relief valve. She knelt down next to the grave to pray and slowly fell unconscious — before we knew it, she had passed away. Mars is more than hostile — it is incompatible with life. It was truly the worst day of my life, having lost two dear friends and coworkers, one because of an act of selflessness and one because of an accident.”

  Adam paused and put his hand in a salute position over his eyes to shield him from the bright stage lights. He scouted the front of the stage to find the stage manager. Adam pointed to his empty glass of water to signal that he needed some more. The stage manager ran off into the shadows to get him another drink.

  One thing Adam couldn’t get past was the sound of silverware clinking on the plates as his customers ate their chicken parmesan or tilapia.

  “This was about the time that we lost communication with Earth.”

  Adam was forgetting details left and right, just wanting to finish.

  “Yeva and I eventually completed most of our tests, I mean tasks, and prepared the ship for return. Unfortunately, during this phase, I somehow forgot to remove the grounding cables that we’d put down after first arriving. During our initial ascent, we were halted by the grounding cables. Fortunately we still had a remote-controlled helper vehicle on the ground and I was able to maneuver it to hit the cable at high speed. That broke us free from the grasp of Mars.”

  Adam received his new glass of water and drank it to prepare for final part of his talk.

  “We had enough rocket power to leave the surface and enter orbit. Two things happened during the ascent that forever changed our chances of surviving the trip home. First, our long-range antenna broke off. Second, during the ascent our escape hatch blew away, leaving a huge gaping hole in the ship that was supposed to transport us back to Earth. I was very scared. So the first thing we did was put a pile of blankets and metal cabinet doors to cover the hole. The blankets acted as gaskets and the metal doors provided the structure. Then we pressurized the ship.”

  Adam paused to prepare.

  “During the four-month journey home, we tried like hell not to die. This was very difficult as our systems were failing one by one. Humidity was collecting on every metal surface because we’d dropped the temperature to save energy. Only half of the Murch rocket motors were working. We were in bad shape. Finally, we reduced the oxygen in the cabin to conserve the surviving systems and resources. This was a tough decision because we knew it would make our thinking unreliable.”

  “Only a few weeks before returning, Yeva developed a bad pain in her lower abdomen. Using the emergency medical instructions, we determined that Yeva had appendicitis. Unfortunately, we’d lost most of our medical kit when the escape-hatch door blew off. I was hoping she could make it back in time for medical care here, but her pain became so severe that she was going in and out of consciousness. We had to try something.”

  Sweat poured into Adams eyes and he began to tear up.

  “We used scissors, of all things, to make the incision. It was awful.”

  Adam paused and peered out at the crowd. The clinks of silverware on the plates halted as the audience sat transfixed.

  “Keep in mind the only medicine we had was Tylenol and a few anti-anxiety medications. Yeva was a trooper, though. I was able to remove her appendix, but we couldn’t stop the bleeding completely. She grew more and more faint and she was in so much pain. I was quietly hoping she would pass on during one of her bouts of unconsciousness. However, during one of her conscious moments, Yeva asked for one of our last two remaining Red Hope capsules.”

  You could hear a pin drop. The only sound was the air conditioning powering on.

  “What I’m about to tell you was considered top-secret, but a lot has changed and I don’t care about that classification anymore. I want to tell you. Our spacecraft was equipped with four small vials of poison, only to be used in a catastrophic situation when all hope was lost. The code name was Red Hope. I gave her one and she drank it and… she began foaming at the mouth, but it didn’t work. She didn’t die. She was shaking terribly. She asked for the second one, but was shaking too badly to take it. So I helped her. I held it as she drank it. I helped her pass on to Heaven.”

  Adam stopped and looked down.

  “The woman that I trained with. The woman who trusted her life to me, in the end, had to rely on me to make her pain go away.”

  Waiters were flooding into the room to clear plates, making space for delivery of the desert dishes. Adam had to speak up over the noise of ceramic plates clinking.

  “This mission had an enormous cost. America lost two great individuals. Russia lost a great scientist. Now, I don’t know what ultimate good will come from this mission, but I hope that it won’t be in vain. I hope that we will be able to find that cure for cancer – the gift that the Martians gave us. Thank you for listening and God bless you and your families on this beautiful evening.”

  The audience stood up and clapped loudly. Adam nodded to thank them, briefly forgetting that that he’d just made $150,000.

  The banquet hall manager came up on stage, signaling for the lights to be brightened a little. He shook Adam’s hand and lowered the microphone to his own short stature.

/>   “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I know I’m tearing up right now, but Captain Alston has agreed to have a few questions. First is you, over at the blue table.”

  The banquet manager pointed to a teenager standing at a blue-draped table. The kid was wearing a suit that was way too big, hanging off his shoulders. The teen spoke loudly.

  “Hi, Captain Alston, I have a question and I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything, but why did you bury Mr. Murch and Ms. Hemphill on Mars instead of bringing them with you and, well, what happened to Yeva?”

  The banquet hall manager covered the microphone and whispered to Adam, “Are you okay with answering that?”

  Adam whispered back, “Yes, it’s okay.”

  Adam cleared his throat and raised the microphone back up to his height.

  “That’s a fair question. We didn’t have provisions on board for transporting their bodies on the ship. Our problem was very similar to what the early ocean explorers ran into when a crewmember died during a voyage. Because of the potential for disease, they would have a quick ceremony and dump the body overboard while they were at sea.”

  “And what about Yeva?” the teen asked again.

  “Well, that was a special situation. We were so close to Earth and I didn’t want to dump her overboard so to speak. I put her in her space suit and then I put on my own space suit and I essentially tethered her outside the ship. I opened the main door and used a nylon strap to keep her attached to the spacecraft. Her body would freeze in that situation and stay preserved so that she could have an honorable burial when we returned.”

  “She was just dangling behind the ship?”

  “More or less, yes. I realize it’s a terrible thing, but keep in mind that I couldn’t keep her inside the ship.”

  The teenager sat down.

  Adam added one more detail.

  “Just prior to atmospheric re-entry, I brought her back in and belted her down using seatbelts. Unfortunately, the Little Turtle broke up during the final phase and most of the things inside the ship, including Yeva, were lost.”

  Adam was clearly becoming emotional and held his hand up.

  “I realize I promised you a good question and answer session, but I think I have to stop. I’m sorry, folks.”

  The banquet manager patted him on the back and said, “Adam, I think we all understand.” He turned to the crowd and said loudly, “Let’s give him one more round of applause.”

  Adam received his second standing ovation of the night. He nodded his head in thanks and turned to Oliver who was still standing off-stage. Oliver gave him a thumbs-up sign. Adam walked toward the stage curtains and disappeared.

  “Well, Adam, that’s one down, thirty to go,” Oliver said, shaking his hand. “The next one in Chicago pays even more.”

  “That was rough,” Adam admitted. “I hope I can keep up the pace you’ve got scheduled.”

  Oliver laughed.

  “This might make it easier.”

  He handed Adam a piece of paper. It was a stub from a check for $150,000. Adam stared at the impossible number.

  “It’s not a real check,” Oliver said. “Just a stub. The payment has already been wired into your account. Congratulations, you’re rich. You’re welcome.”

  “I can spend this?” Adam asked incredulously.

  “Absolutely, buddy,” Oliver said. “Go splurge. Tomorrow. Go splurge tomorrow. It’s too late and you need to get some sleep.”

  Adam stared at the paper and then looked up at Oliver.

  “I know exactly what I’m going to buy first thing tomorrow. And I want you to cancel all of my airline flights.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Office of the administrative director

  NASA Jennings Manned Spacecraft Center

  Fort Worth, Texas

  “That’s a nice desk,” Chris said. “It’s oak, right?”

  Alexis nodded her head, confirming Chris’s suspicion.

  “Must be nice. My desk in Houston was just a stamped metal government desk. Hadn’t changed since the 1970’s.”

  “Neither have you,” Alexis joked, leaning her head slightly.

  “Nice,” he said sarcastically. “When’s the president’s press conference?”

  “Right about now.”

  Alexis walked over to her conference table and turned on the office TV. The big three networks were already broadcasting from the new press room at the replacement White House. Chris and Alexis watched as the president entered the room quickly and adjusted the microphone.

  President Beatrice Bexar began speaking.

  “My fellow Americans. I have an announcement and I’ll make it short. Our folks at NASA have been hard at work translating all of the findings from the Martian temple. Their latest discovery is that the Martians built a laboratory here on Earth roughly two-hundred thousand years ago. They even gave the coordinates, but of course, there was a catch. The Martians did not state clearly what their starting longitude line was — those are the vertical lines that slice the earth into 360 so-called orange slices. NASA’s investigation found that Mount Everest was the starting point. We are assembling a team to go to this laboratory, but now, for their safety, we are not releasing the actual coordinates. Not yet.”

  The journalists in the press room went wild, hollering for attention to ask questions. The president would have none of it.

  “Thank you for coming here today. I realize I haven’t given you much to go on, but our people at NASA need some time to organize things before they release anything else. I will not be taking questions today.”

  The president left the room just as quickly as she entered it. The reporters all looked at each other with a sour smirk, as if they’d just be admonished by a teacher. There would be no coordinates for them today.

  Back at NASA, Alexis breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she said. “I’m so glad the president followed our recommendation and kept the coordinates secret.”

  “Well, it’s only a matter of time before they get leaked,” Chris saids. “Are you assembling a team?”

  “Yes. We’ve contacted the team that runs the Deep SEAK Explorer ship – that’s the one that went down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in a three-man sub. They are already booked, but I’ve asked them to reconsider. This is the US government after all. I told him it was their patriotic duty. Right?” Alexis said, laughing.

  “Okay, well please keep me informed,” Chris said. He stood up, straightened the pleats in his pants and walked out the door toward his new office.

  No longer the vending machine manager, Chris was down the hall from Alexis, acting as her unofficial deputy director. His official task was overseeing the re-establishment of ground-based communications to all of NASA’s satellites and deep-space exploration vehicles. It wasn’t the same as being the director, but it sure beat fighting with engineers about broken coffee makers.

  The job wasn’t the only new development for Chris. As a man who’d always done the right thing and planned for the long term, he did something unexpected and irresponsible. Several weeks earlier, he cashed in a major portion of his retirement account to buy a house. Not just any house, but one of those modern houses perched up on the mesa overlooking Fort Worth. He called the neighborhood Mount Olympus.

  It was a gated community with a guard during the day. The roof of his house had red ceramic tiles and the outside was covered in beige stucco. On his first trip to Fort Worth, he’d seen this mesa-top neighborhood from the freeway and was jealous of the people who lived there. He wondered how they paid for it. Now he knew. They paid through the teeth.

  Every afternoon, Chris would sail past the guard and wave at him, pretending that he himself was part of the idle rich that made up his neighborhood HOA meetings. Then Chris would cruise around the mesa top, going out of his way to view most of the streets. Finally, after arriving home, he would grab the mail before going inside his house — the smallest mansion on the hill.

  As a new homeowner, his m
ail consisted mainly of junk. Three days after the president’s press conference announcing Mount Everest as the reference longitude line, a plain white envelope showed up in Chris’s mailbox. The return address simply read:

  DMITRI STALOV

  WINSLOW, AZ

  Chris opened the envelope and found a single sheet of folded paper. The message was typed using an old mechanical typewriter that left subtle imprints in the paper. It read:

  “Dear Director Tankovitch,

  You will always be my favorite NASA administrator. I am writing to tell you that NASA has chosen the wrong reference line for longitude. They have the right idea, but the wrong starting point. They will be looking in the wrong place and delaying the cure for cancer, which is what I assume this treasure hunt is all about. Please come visit me for a chat next Tuesday at noon. If you don’t know where, ask your American friends. I do love this country. Your discretion is appreciated.

  Sincerely,

  Dmitri Stalov

  PS. I invented the CommKnock missile system.”

  Normally, Chris would’ve written this guy off as a crackpot except for one word — CommKnock. That name was top-secret, known only to the upper echelon of the military and the scientists that helped work on the rocket launch platforms. Chris fell into the latter group, having worked on rocket propulsion for his PhD dissertation three decades earlier.

  Wow, this guy is willing to go out on a limb and put that term in a written letter, Chris thought.

  Without anything other than a name, Chris was at a loss as to how to meet the so-called Mr. Stalov.

  Chris wondered, Why should I ask my American friends?

  CHAPTER 37

  Porsche Dealership

  Cleveland, Ohio

  Adam stood in front of a Porsche, admiring the flawless candy-apple red finish. As he ran his fingers along the roofline, Adam saw in the reflection an image of a vehicle approaching the front gate to the dealership — he turned his head to look.