America One: War of the Worlds (15 page)

“Why didn’t they develop a better connection? I’m sure NASA had a faster way to remove their helmets?” Mars asked.

“Time was not on our side, plus NASA and all the other space agencies were either closed down, or not talking to Astermine. There were little international communications after the nuking of the asteroid blew everything in orbit into little pieces. We had hundreds of modifications to work on and unscrewing ones helmet was more to the back of the queue. So I know that my suit has an added ten minutes of power, and air support, plus Ryan was adamant that 180 minutes was maximum for a spacewalk. He was right. Nobody had really pushed the limit yet, and nobody really knows how much more cosmic radiation will enter our suits during a fourth hour. The three hours on, three hours off maximum work schedule has been safe and has worked well, so there was no need to fix it. I had enough time in my suit to get back to the shuttle and being inside the confines of the tunnel was helping decrease the cosmic radiation. Now let’s look at your suit, and figure out what to do next.”

Carefully, VIN inspected Mars’ suit. The rear box had taken the fall badly, and had been split open. It was much the same problem he had gone through years earlier, and he noted that the suits be made in the future with stronger materials. It was cold inside the suits since they were switched off, and they decided to leave the suits on for the time being. At least Mars’ suit would protect his body when the door was opened.

They waited 45 minutes, then VIN moved the recharger to Mars’s suit. It might work.

Mars spent the next several minutes helping VIN on with his helmet. It was semi-recharged, enough to breathe and listen to what was being said. VIN heard and responded to the updates on what was happening, then needed his helmet off again. Mars unscrewed it for him.

“Look like we are here for a little while longer. They are hauling down supplies from the shuttle outside, as well as from the shuttles in space and from the Retreat. We could find a dozen
Matts
, or even more asleep down in the chambers.” VIN told his son.

“Remember the door to the cryogenic chambers on DX2017 took 12 hours to open once we pushed the “open” buttons. Dad, we could see if these work the same way. If so, we could then check out the rest of the cavern. I want to show you the globes, and see where that stream goes to. I reckon we should open up the lower level in the cavern, and check that area out. It should be safe for me, I have my suit on and air in the emergency tank. Got any food?”

“Actually I have, son. Thanks for reminding me,” and VIN opened the outer flap of his suit’s leg pocket, then the anti-radiation flap and finally the thick zipper to his suit’s right leg pocket to the inside of his suit. He pulled out two sachets of scrambled eggs, and handed them over to his son. “I have two Aussie chocolate bars, one for each of us for later. It seems we have enough water.”

Once they had eaten the two sachets, and placed the empty sachets back in their leg pockets, they both got up and VIN pushed the red panel to the cryogenic chamber. Nothing happened except that the same hissing sounds they had heard on DX2017 could now be heard deep beneath them. The system would increase the temperatures inside the chambers and the room, and in about twelve hours, the door would open.

There was nothing else to do but wait, so VIN opened the door to the Globe Room. He breathed in to check the pressure. It was a little harder to breathe in the Globe Room than the command center but it was safe for them to breathe.

“Europa I believe,” stated VIN looking at the globe. “It must be. That is a long journey for these
Matts
to travel, but they got to Mars and back from Earth, and the ships they attacked us with are certainly big enough for the small guys to spend a year or so in space.”

“Maybe that’s why it took us so long to see them again, Dad?” suggested Mars. “Look at how the three globes are lit up differently.”

“Earth is dark. It means that they have no ships or crew on Earth, I reckon,” replied VIN. “Mars has two small pricks of light. Right here, and they are side by side. I would bet my bottom dollar that there are either ships, or people right here, and it tells us that the other end of the tunnel in inhabited.”

“If it is Europa, it is certainly lit up,” added Mars. “I counted twelve lights in all. Six sets of two lights, like the two here on this planet.”

“And the lights are brighter, far brighter on the white planet, which means to me that the third planet is their main planet, their headquarters, and there are a lot of bases there, at least a dozen.

“Look, Dad,” stated Mars peering at the globes very closely and very carefully. “Is it my eyes going wonky, or are there also lights in between the two globes Mars and the white planet? They are so small, it could be my imagination.” VIN bent over and looked at the globes very carefully.

“Well, strike me down, I think you are right, there seems to be tiny lights in between the plants. Mars, I’ll douse the wall lighting,” and he headed back to the console and turned down the heat.

With the heat turned down, the walls dimed and he knew it would get colder in here over time, but a few minutes didn’t matter.

“I see them, Dad!” shouted Mars from the next room. “I count about sixteen tiny lights. There is a pin prick of single light and then seven lights behind it. About an inch behind the seven lights is another 8 lights in the same configuration.”

“Formations of spaceships. The
Matts
seem to work in sevens. Maybe two of the ships are command or supply ships or something. Damn! How far is Europa from Mars? I’m sure it is Europa. We didn’t visit that planet on the odyssey. I’ll have to get Lunar to notify Nevada and give us an accurate distance. They might be coming to attack us, or replacing the numbers you guys destroyed on your last visit. Nothing moves fast across the solar system. They have an asteroid belt to get through between the two planets. I think we have lots of time before they arrive, so help me on with my helmet again kid.

Ten minutes later, and with Mars studying the three globes, VIN tried to get in touch with Lunar Richmond aboard
SB-V
. He only got Ryan in
SB-IV
down on the surface. Ryan told VIN that the orbital shuttles were flying together and one was moving equipment needed for delivery to the planet’s surface to the other, and both not in radio range.

VIN told Ryan of what he had seen, and Ryan stated that he would get the information back to Lunar and Base Nevada, and he immediately began working on solar system distances on his shuttle’s onboard computers.

VIN and Mars studied the planets carefully for a few more minutes before heading back to where the stream was.

“The water or whatever it is, is very cold, Dad, be careful,” Mars stated.

“I brought a test bottle to get it tested back at the base,” his father replied. “I don’t think we have anything to test the liquid here on the shuttles, but if it is in fact water, it looks very clean.”

“I checked the wall it is coming out from. The
Matts
have a tiny hole where the water exits from the side wall,” added Mars. “The liquid sort of oozes out of the hole like syrup. To me it looks like water. I felt it with my finger and my finger hasn’t fallen off yet, nor does it hurt. The wall is solid where the water comes out of, it flows down the stream in a lazy way, then disappears into another tiny hole in the floor there. It must take atmosphere with it, so the air systems are replenishing what the water takes with it down the hole.”

VIN looked first and then tapped the wall where the water came out of. Then he followed the stream with his eyes until the water fell into what looked like a tiny bath plug and disappeared.

“You can sure find interesting stuff,” remarked VIN to his son. “The wall is solid and certainly not hollow. What is fascinating is that this whole water drainage thing reminds me of the old bathtubs we had in North Carolina when I was a child. The water flows out of a tap, then down the drain once it has been used. I’m sure that they must have gone down another level to see where the water went. I want to check the
Matt
toilet, they might have connected its outflow to whatever is underground.”

The door to the chamber they had entered into the base from the tunnel opened on VIN’s touch. He thought for a few seconds then spoke.

“Mars, the Earth Matt bases had the tunnel to the forward and rear caverns. Here the nasty
Matts
have a door, and the tunnel to the rear area is much larger, and the doors over 6 feet. The tunnels everywhere are 5 feet tall, yet in here you and I can stand, and the caverns are the same, with the same height of the roof. I know what is missing. The stairs going up to the second level in the forward cavern. This cavern is different to the Earth
Matt
bases, and the tunnel system is also different.”

“Why, Dad?” Mars asked.

“Well, remember how the
Matt
Inventers at the Pig’s Snout invented things?” Mars nodded. “I will bet my pay that all the information given to the inventors originated from these space
Matts
who visited them what, 10,000 years ago. The globes are the same. The bases are much the same. Every room in this base is as it was on DX2014, and the other bases we visited. I think the inventor Earth
Matts
changed the designs over time, or parts were copied wrong when they were handed down the generations. I bet the toilet is in the same place though. Let’s look?”

The complicated door to the toilet was exactly where they expected to find it: in the hallway just passed the rear door to the tunnel. As usual they looked into the cavern, and saw no sign of movement.

“There should be the three usual storage rooms the wall in-between the front and rear caverns,” stated VIN. “I only see one door in the wall. That’s weird.”

The musty toilet, or the seat above a deep hole in the planet was exactly the same. There was little smell, and it hadn’t been used in a long time. VIN looked into the system. The hole was there when he pushed the only lever and the bottom area beneath the toilet opened.

“Well that goes somewhere under here, and it doesn’t stink. I might have to use it soon.” stated Mars.

“Let’s try the storage door first,” continued VIN. The way down might be behind that single door. We need to see if the water and the toilet outflows are connected.

“This time the door didn’t open to VIN’s hand’s warm touch.

“We’ll be in trouble if either of us lose our only remaining hand,” Mars suggested smiling.

“I never thought of that,” smiled VIN as he bent down to use his eye. The usual bright light blasted back at his eye and the door opened. “At least we know there is some sort of an atmosphere behind the door when it opens.”

The air rushing out of the door immediately made them very dizzy, so VIN shut the door.

Its cold down there, and there is real weak air,” stated VIN having to hold onto the wall. “I saw a staircase. I’ll get my helmet on, you leave your helmet off and breathe from the air tank. Let’s see where it goes, then we come straight back up and close the door.”

Twenty minutes later they were ready, and Mars opened the door this time with his eye, as his father already had his helmet on. It took Mars several seconds to get his sight back in the one eye, and with his father looked into what he thought should be a storage room full of food or water. Instead it was nothing more than a five-foot high hole in the rock, and a stairway leading down into a dark hole.

“I’m starting to feel like Indiana Jones again,” stated Mars hesitantly staring into the hole.

“I hate spiders,”
stated his father jokingly to himself as they couldn’t hear each other, and Mars thought that he had heard his father’s thought.

“What’s wrong with spiders,”
Mars thought back, but he didn’t get an acknowledgement.

Gingerly VIN bent down, jammed the hammer he was carrying to stop the door from closing, and began to go down the stairs. Mars followed.

As Mars put out both hands for support he noticed, with his father, that there was a red panel on the outside of the door in the rock wall, and there were no staircase to hang onto.

The tunnel darkened and Mars counted the steps. He had counted 20 when the tunnel’s light from the still partly open door above them disappeared and he was in total blackness.

“I think I see light bouncing off the one side,”
thought VIN. Mars, for the first time in a long time, knew for sure that he had heard his father’s thought. The staircase had gone around in circles and Mars reckoned that they had made at least two circles.

“We have completed 30 steps, Dad,”
he thought hard, but didn’t get a response. They had thought together years earlier when Roo and Commander Joot had taught them to telepathically think with them.

Mars worked out that each step was about six inches high, and then he also began to see a dim light flickering on one of the walls by his feet. They continued, and Mars noticed that the air on his face was getting colder.

A circle later and on his 50
^th
step, his feet showed shadows. He continued down the spiral staircase and saw below the level of a roof and into a new chamber.

VIN was still standing on the last step, and Mars stopped two steps behind him.

For a very long minute, both men just looked. There was a dull but see-able light, and they were standing in what looked like another large underground cavern. The light above his father’s helmet was much like a single earth light bulb, and showed less than ten feet of light round them.

Mars looked at the ledge his father was about to stand on. It was only three or four feet wide, and it gently dipped down into liquid, the same clear liquid as they had seen above.

The lake, or whatever it was, disappeared into the darkness and he could see at least 10, maybe 12 feet over the water before it disappeared. The light certainly wasn’t very strong.

VIN motioned Mars to head back up. VIN quickly filled two sample bottles and carefully they retracted their steps until the door closed behind them, and they were back in the
Matt
base. There Mars helped his father off with is helmet.