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

  “I got this,” Sally declared, reaching around Adam.

  She maneuvered the geometric pieces around until they formed a square. She slid the shape mass up until it fell within the square outline etched on the wall. They felt a vibration in the floor. A transparent cylindrical shell rotated out from behind them, encapsulating them in some type of airlock. They heard the sound of gas being pumped in. Their suits went slightly limp as the pressure outside their suit equalized the pressure inside.

  “Oxygen levels at twenty percent,” Adam said.

  The platform began moving upward.

  The two astronauts saw the lights below disappear as they rose into the main portion of the Martian laboratory. When the platform eventually stopped, they were surrounded by complete darkness.

  The airlock shell rotated around, stowing behind them.

  Adam took a step forward into the blackness.

  CHAPTER 86

  Sky Turtle — Orbiting the Moon

  “Tucker, this is Fort Worth Mission Control. You should be able to see them in another 90 minutes.”

  “Understood, Fort Worth,” Tucker replied. “Hey, have you done the math on our CO2 scrubber situation?”

  The silence lasted too long.

  “We have, Tucker. It’s not good. You’ve used up more than half of the CO2 filters and all of the spares. All you have left are the ones in the Lunar Module. Right now, there’s isn’t enough to support the return trip for all three of you.”

  “Damn,” Tucker said, shaking his head. “Isn’t there some miracle contraption we could build?”

  “We’re working on it, but the prognosis isn’t good. You’ll have just enough to get two of the crew back to Earth.”

  “Just two?” Tucker asked in a somber tone.

  “Yes, Tucker. Only two — and that’s if you’re lucky.”

  CHAPTER 87

  Martian Laboratory — Interior

  Lunar Pit

  The laboratory lit up like a mid-summer day. The lights were blindingly bright. Both astronauts squinted their eyes like they’d just exited a movie theater. It would take a full minute for them to be able to see again. The walls were not transparent like the lab on Earth. Instead, it had what appeared to be traditional windows, albeit not glass – they were made from a variant of the metal used on the other walls.

  Adam walked over to one of the windows and knocked on it. “Sounds metallic, right?”

  He looked down at the data display on his wrist.

  “Sally, would you believe the oxygen is at 22 percent and the temperatures are at 20 degrees Celsius?”

  “Downright balmy,” she laughed.

  “Should we take our helmets off?” Adam suggested.

  “I think that would be another bad idea, Adam,” Sally answered. “Let’s keep them on for now.”

  Compared to the cluttered interior of the lab on Earth, this facility seemed almost barren. They stood at what would be the bottom of the long T-shape. They could see down the long corridor. Lights were blinking on in the distance and instantly becoming brilliant white.

  Adam turned to the wall right behind him at the end of the corridor. It had a tall door with a star symbol at the top. Midway up were ten keys with strange symbols on them. Having spent a lot of time playing with the TranslationTablet, Adam recognized them as the ten basic numbers used by the Martians. He tapped Sally on her arm, then pointed out the number keys on the door.

  “Look at this huge door,” Adam said in awe. “It’s got a combination lock. There’s the keypad.”

  “Ten unique numbers, huh?” Sally laughed with a mischievous smile. “Zero through nine. What are the chances they’d use a base-10 number system like us?”

  Adam held his gloves up in front of Sally and wiggled his fingers.

  “It’s no coincidence,” Adam grinned. “They started counting on their fingers just like us. After all, that’s the only reason we use a base-ten counting system. If we had a left and right flipper instead of fingers, we’d have a base-two binary counting system. And we’d be seals.”

  Adam laughed at his own nerdy observation.

  Sally pressed her glove against the door and visually scanned it from the floor to the star symbol at the top. “Something important must be behind that door.”

  “Let’s get walking down to where the T junction comes together.”

  The corridor was wide with hooks and shelves lining both sides. Various satchels and kits hung from the hooks.

  “Do you find it unnerving that none of these things has even a sprinkle of dust on them?” Adam asked.

  “Maybe the Martians were clean freaks.”

  “Maybe the Martians are clean freaks,” Adam replied.

  Sally rolled her eyes.

  The two astronauts walked steadily, but slowly, down the corridor. When they arrived at the T-junction, they stood in a large room with the branches of the T going off to the left and the right. The floor and ceiling had the same matte silver tiles. At this end of the corridor they heard a loud humming sound.

  On their left was what looked like an office area. A stainless steel desk of sorts – really just a desktop, cantilevered from the wall (sticking out of the wall with no visible support).

  To the right was an area with four circles on the floor. Hovering above each circle was a chair of some sort. They looked like very robust wheelchairs without the wheels. However, each of the chairs was levitating!

  Adam and Sally were drawn to the chairs like moths to a flame. They pushed on the chairs and they moved slightly, but never drifted away from the circular platforms.

  “See, I wasn’t lying about the anti-gravity cube,” Adam said with vindication.

  Sally stood back and grabbed the camera from her suit pocket. She began taking pictures.

  “This is fascinating,” she said with amazement.

  Adam waved his hand underneath the chairs to show Sally the “no strings attached” implication.

  “We’ll come back to these in a minute,” Adam said. “But let’s look around some more.”

  They returned to the T junction area.

  “And then there are those things,” Adam said, pointing to the three huge orange doors. They looked just like garage doors and were numbered left to right using the Martian symbols for 1, 2 and 3.

  “Door number one?” Sally asked. She reached up to push a big green button next to the door frame.

  Adam grabbed her arm. “We didn’t find any Martians on Earth. Presumably they are here. And they haven’t given us a welcome party.”

  “Adam, they’re two hundred thousand years old,” Sally explained. “They’re dead.”

  Sally finished reaching and pushed the green button. The orange door rose up with a clatter – it sounded like a hydraulic lift kicking into action on the other side of the door. Fog poured out from under the door, just like you’d expect from opening a freezer. The room behind the door remained a dark secret until the door reached maximum height.

  The lights flashed on, lighting every nook and cranny. This time, all white walls. In the middle of the room was a long platform roughly four feet wide. On top of it, frozen in glorious fashion were two large tigers, each roughly seven feet long. They had impossibly long fangs.

  “Whoa,” Sally said. “Saber-toothed tigers?”

  “Whoa is right,” Adam said with awe.

  The two astronauts wandered around opposite sides of the display. A skin of ice, roughly one inch thick, coated both specimens.

  “Looks like…,” Adam ducked down to look at the bottoms. “One male and one female.”

  “For breeding?” Sally asked.

  “Maybe. Perhaps they were looking for a food source,” Adam said.

  “But you’d think they’d go for big herbivores,” Sally suggested. “That’s what humans did.”

  “Yeah, that would make more sense. But farmland was getting scarce for them as their population exploded. Maybe they couldn’t spare the land for grazers?”

/>   “Why don’t you ask the Martian standing right behind you?” Sally asked.

  Adam spun around and saw nothing, but he did hear Sally laughing.

  “Okay…,” he said. “You got me.”

  “Let’s get back to exploring,” she said, lifting up her camera.

  Sally and Adam both took pictures of the saber-toothed tigers. They were too busy to see the drops of melted ice falling from the corners of the frozen specimens.

  Adam lowered his camera.

  “We gotta try door number two,” Adam said.

  Sally left the room, walking backwards, still taking pictures. Just beyond the door frame, she pushed the green button and the door dropped down, closing off the room again.

  They found themselves standing next to the big green button for door number two.

  “Here goes nothing,” Sally said.

  She pushed the button in. Fog rolled out from the growing gap. When the door reached maximum height, the lights came on.

  “What is that?” Sally asked in wonderment.

  “That is the biggest snake I’ve ever seen,” Adam said.

  A snake was coiled up into a pile, twelve feet tall, nearly touching the ceiling. At its thickest, the snake’s body was about two feet in diameter. It had a thick coating of ice similar to that of the saber-toothed tiger.

  “Probably a Titanaboa,” Adam declared casually.

  Sally looked at him with skepticism.

  “How would you know that?”

  Adam sported a devilish smirk.

  “I’m wicked smart,” Adam joked. “But really, my kids love dinosaurs and strange animals. They watched a movie on the mighty Titanaboa — they told me all about it.”

  “Nice,” Sally said.

  “Except Titanaboa lived in South America,” Adam said with a puzzled look on his face. “Not sure how the Martians would’ve gotten this. I presume their specimens came from Africa?”

  “If those floating chairs are just an inkling of their transportation technology, they could’ve traveled far distances from their laboratory at Zhuvango Falls.”

  “Good point,” Adam replied.

  “They have two tigers, but only one snake. I wonder why?” Adam asked.

  “They might’ve had two at some time in the past,” Sally explained. “That long scary skeleton outside looks like it might’ve been the other Titanaboa at one time.”

  “Good observation,” Adam said, nodding his head.

  Once again, the cameras came out. The two astronauts buzzed around the massive snake, taking picture after picture.

  “I think you know what we have to do next?” Sally asked.

  Adam looked at his wrist-mounted suit display. “We only have thirty minutes, so we better go fast.”

  The two of them backed out and shut door number two.

  Adam pointed to the green button on door number three and said, “After you…”

  Sally leaned in and pushed the green button to open door number three.

  Nothing happened.

  She scrunched her forehead in confusion. She pushed it again.

  Nothing.

  She pushed it five more times. Five more nothings.

  Adam examined the door edges to see if there was an obvious problem.

  “I see hydraulic hoses, but we don’t really have time to take it apart to fix it,” Adam said with disappointment.

  The two of them moved over to the office area and admired the desk. It had a few more logbooks on it. Adam opened it, but it proved hard to leaf through the pages with his gloves. He saw a few more color photos of early humans on Earth and what looked like photos of the Martians trapping both the tigers and the Titanaboas.

  On the desk was a plain metallic box, roughly one foot wide and one foot tall. For some reason, the corners were painted blue. The front of the box had buttons on it and a dispenser.

  “Is that their coffeemaker?” Adam joked.

  “Hah, I somehow doubt it,” Sally said.

  In the middle of the office area was one of the Martian levitating chairs. Sally climbed onto it. The large chair made her look like a child in a big rocking chair. The armrest had a joystick on it. She pushed it forward and the chair moved toward Adam.

  “Watch out!” she laughed with fake alarm.

  A crackle came through their communication headsets.

  “Are you having a party down there on the Moon?” the familiar voice of Tucker said.

  Sally smiled. “We’re inside the laboratory.”

  “Are you playing chess with any Martians?” Tucker joked.

  “No sign of them,” Sally replied. “They have some amazing technology, though.”

  “We have to discuss something and quick,” Tucker said, suddenly serious. “We don’t have enough CO2 scrubbers for the return voyage.”

  “So what’s the Plan B?” Adam asked. “Has Fort Worth given you any quickly assembled solutions?”

  “Guys, this isn’t as simple as fitting a square peg in a round hole. Did you already get rid of the cooler and the dry ice?”

  “Yes. It’s now litter on the Moon,” Adam confirmed.

  “Good. Fort Worth told me they think there’s enough CO2 scrubbers to support two people on the return trip.”

  Sally laughed incredulously.

  “Wait a minute — just two?” she asked.

  “What if we promise to breath really slowly?” Adam asked, trying to insert levity into a desperate situation.

  Humor failed.

  “Adam. Sally. We’ve got to make a very serious decision when you two get back up here.”

  “Roger that, Tucker,” Adam replied.

  “My readouts up here in the Sky Turtle are showing me that the Ascent Module is leaving the Moon with or without you in twelve minutes. Better hustle. I’m about to lose visual con —,” Tucker’s voice cracked up as he left their line-of-sight for communications.

  Sally stared at Adam, but didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s get going,” Adam said.

  Sally picked up the alien logbooks and stuffed them into collection pouches that were sewn into the leg of her suit pants.

  They walked to the T-junction area and turned down the long corridor, heading toward the door with the big star symbol on it. They eventually reached the end and stood on the circular platform.

  “Ready?” Sally said.

  “Yes.”

  Adam reached over to the wall and pushed the lower of two buttons there, very similar to the lab on Earth.

  The cylindrical shell wrapped around them and the platform lowered back down. In less than thirty seconds, the two astronauts were standing in the hallway under the laboratory. They climbed up the ramp and started off toward the Lunar Module. Adam pulled a bag out of a pocket on his pants and began collecting Moon rocks. If all went well, they would leave the Moon with a fresh mixture of cancer-killing Blue Hope and a big bag of Moon rocks. Quite a valuable stash for just one trip.

  Sally grabbed the bag of Moon rocks from Adam and climbed up the ladder, opening the hatch. She maneuvered through the door and looked at the Hope-A-Matic. Sitting in the bottom of the machine was a large volume of glowing turquoise liquid.

  “Hey Adam, I’d say the Blue Hope is all done cooking. What do you think?”

  Sally did not hear a reply.

  “Adam?” she asked.

  Sally turned around and saw him standing on the Moon surface near the bottom of the ladder. He had a humble smirk on his face.

  “I’m going to make the decision easy for everybody,” Adam explained.

  “Wait, no, no, no,” Sally admonished Adam. “We’re both going back up to the Sky Turtle to make a decision like rational professionals.”

  “And then what?” Adam asked. “Rock paper scissors to find out which one of us gets shoved out the hatch?”

  Sally sighed. She was crushingly relieved and felt terrible about it.

  “Besides,” Adam said. “We don’t know if the ascent-stage rocket has enoug
h fuel to get us both out of this lunar pit. We didn’t plan to land several hundred feet below the target landing zone. There’s no reason to risk neither us nor the Blue Hope getting back up to Tucker.”

  “Well….” she trailed off.

  “Just do me a favor,” Adam said. “I wrote a letter to my wife and I gave it to Tucker right before we disconnected from the Command Module. Please make sure she gets it.”

  “I…” Sally felt an uneasy lump in her throat and didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ll make sure she gets it,” Sally said. “I promise.”

  “Good,” Adam replied. He climbed up the ladder and reached his glove through the door.

  Sally reached out and shook his outstretched glove.

  “Sally, it’s been an honor to work with you.”

  “Likewise,” she replied.

  “Give my regards to Tucker,” Adam said solemnly.

  Adam closed the door. He turned around and hopped down, landing on both feet, just a bit wobbly. He turned and waved to her. Then he began walking back toward the Martian laboratory. It was a lonely walk. Each step was confirmation that he’d never see his family again. The ramp came sooner than he expected and he descended down below the Martian laboratory. With a slight reluctance, he stepped onto the circular lift platform.

  Adam sighed and stood there for a moment. He reached over and organized the tangram pieces. The cylindrical airlock shell enveloped him and it took him up to the laboratory. It was still lit up, but it was much lonelier now without a friend nearby.

  Adam wanted a front-row seat to watch the ascent-stage of the Lunar Module carry Sally up, up, and away. He trudged down the corridor and turned toward the office area. With nothing to lose, Adam closed his eyes and took off his helmet, setting it down next to the metallic box on the counter. He took a deep breath and paused, waiting to die from some horrible foreign bacteria.

  “Not a bad smell,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. With the oxygen, temperature and pressures similar to Earth, he was able to breath just fine. Adam climbed onto the floating oversized chair in the office and used the joystick to maneuver himself closer to the window. He stared out at the Lunar Module.