America One: War of the Worlds (50 page)

All the pilots seemed to know each other and were old friends. They often called Vitalily, Grandpa, and soon their numbers increased when Martin Brusk’s three large mining vessels arrived a week later, also with commanders whom many of the first astronauts knew.

Ceres was a really busy base, far nosier than Mars would ever be, apart from “The Martian Club Retreat”, and you never knew who you could meet drinking at “The Ceres Bar and Grill.”

Vitalily, did receive his medal when he returned to Earth for his one and only vacation. He also fished for a few weeks with the ever-growing fishing fleet out of Australia, and he had asked, when the time came, to be buried next to his best friend Max.

He was buried a few months after Max had checked in. An unknown spaceship, very modern and very fast, carried his body, and the bodies of his crew members, one by one, to the famous and beautiful burial site, nearly as famous as Arlington in Virginia.

Base Nevada

Astermine and crew continued their design and development in Nevada once Ryan and his wife retired.

Dr. Smidt had as much work to do as before his boss’s retirement. The good doctor did not enjoy fishing, got sea sick at the mention of a boat, but like many had been happiest flying in the comforts of zero gravity.

But, he had a job to do, and as a German he wanted to finish a lifetime’s work before he passed on. Dr. Smidt was quickly becoming the oldest member of the crew. Many of his teachers and mentors had passed on, and he wanted to finish their work too. Now that Mars and Ceres were bases to be built, he talked to both Max and Vitalily daily to get new ideas and designs drawn up for what the two men needed.

Ryan had left the running of Nevada base to Dr. Smidt. Igor and Boris, who like the doctor weren’t that excited about fishing, or sunbathing on an empty island somewhere, and all three got down to work. They didn’t know anything else, and they had been given to reigns to run the whole conglomerate called Astermine Co.

Base Nevada grew rapidly once
America Two
arrived back with its first cargo load of ingots. New machine shops grew out of thin air. New designs for new ships sprung off the drawing boards, and were within a few years, real ships.

The designs of tiny
Astermine I
and
II
were bettered and new self-contained long-term livable mining ships came to fruition. Even larger ships would be their resupply vessels for the manned mining ships, and nearly everything in supplies was robotically flown. New Astermine shuttles were designed and became the robotic fighters of space. The larger shuttles Martin Brusk’s company built became robotic cargo haulers or robotic fighters, as needed.

Also Franklin’s fuel efficient plasma thrusters were produced for the next decade by the hundreds, as fast as Astermine’s development needed them. Astermine and Martin Brusk had exclusivity for these engines for 25 years, and no other space company could build ships that were a third as fast or as fuel efficient as Astermine’s

Within four years of Ryan’s and Kath’s retirements, there was not one area of free ground left on Base Nevada Dr. Smidt managed to complete most of his work before he was buried next to his friends in the famous cemetery fifteen years later. He often visited The Martian Club retreat, his favorite place for “ASS” team poker and “The Ceres Bar and Grill” three times to captain and compete with the Earth “ASS” poker squad several times, often riding in the “ASS” Chairman’s private space shuttle.

By the time he retired at 94, there were many of his old friends already in attendance at the beautifully designed and laid out underground cemetery on Mars.

Ryan and Kathy Richmond

Ryan never went into orbit again. As he said himself, he was too old, he had done his time in zero gee, and the door to the solar system was open for everyone. He and Kathy wanted no more space travel. Together they had flown several billion miles, and had, had enough.

The island in Australia was where Ryan and Kathy relaxed. They had everything they wanted, thanks to the Australian Government, which received its fair share of cargo arriving every couple of years from Mars, and then from Ceres once Astermine began to purchase the raw asteroid ore from the two private companies on the planet who only had an interest in mining for money, and not the metals.

On every second flight to Mars,
America Three
joined her sister since there was far more cargo to return from Mars than Ceres, and under command of the Richmond sisters and their husbands, both ships travelled with full cargo holds to the red planet and back returning with thousands of tons of fine treasure.

Apart from one other ship, they were the only ships allowed to return with mostly the Rare Earth metals, and lesser amounts of gold. The silver metals always went up in value, but more than 40 tons of pure gold imported at any one time reduced the world’s value of the yellow metal down by sizeable amounts.

Kathy refused to travel anywhere apart from into retirement, and made sure her husband did the same. It took a year of planning and giving out Ryan’s workload to others, but a year after they had lunch in Washington, they made their home in a beautiful new house on Astermine Island.

Ryan headed back to Base Nevada every now and again for the second year. His last visit was to see the shuttles bringing down the ingots of metal from Mattville II. Martin had joined him on the trip, after Ryan was flown in to Tel Aviv by his new robotically flown private jet.

Like many of the OldGeners, Ryan and Kathy also retired from flying. Even VIN who was far younger than Ryan believed that he was too old to fly, and this job was left to the NextGens.

With Ryan and Kathy went many others of the old crew back to the island. Ryan had again handed out retirement packages, the rest of the diamonds and gold from the cavern below the airfield, and payments from the ingots they had brought back.

Only the very large basketball diamonds remained in the near empty secret cavern underground. There was no market for these, and unbeknown to Ryan would become very valuable sometime in the distant future.

Ryan and Kathy spent much time with the OldGeners as each one decided in which direction to go for retirement.

Bob Mathews was now in his last year or two of fishing. So were Beth and Monica and Bob always joked that his boat was full of geriatric fossils wanting to catch the next big one.

Jonesy and Maggie built a new house on the island. So did VIN and Suzi, but fishing had been their wanted retirement hobby for a few decades now and once Jonesy got what he wanted out of his old boss over a dozen private meetings, headed out with Maggie, VIN and Suzi to plow the fishing grounds shown to them by Bob and his crew.

In their third year of retirement they returned just once to Nevada, were shocked at the growth the base had seen. It wasn’t recognizable anymore, and they scampered back to the peace and quiet of the island. They had left the growth of Astermine to Dr. Smidt, Igor and Boris, and they never went back to space, until both were ready to visit the place on Mars people were dying to get into.

Lunar flew five more flights to Mars and back before she retired at the grand age of 41. Lunar Richmond and her husband returned to the island to spend time with her aging parents. Her husband, Michael Price was also close to his family. Lunar’s son James Richmond Price became
America Two’s
second commander.

Pluto Katherine and Gary Darwin lasted 6 flights before they retired to the island and allowed Lunar’s second son Mark to become
America Three’s
Commander for the next twenty years, until both ships were taken out of service due to new, faster and larger ships supplying the ever-growing solar system.

Like their grandparents and parents, a special place on Mars became their resting place many years later, transported there by their sons and daughters. The Richmond family had their special family area in the resting place of all past, present, and future Astermine Astronauts.

The Astermine Crew

With the return to earth, the end of the war of the worlds, many of Astermine’s crew called it a day going to space. Only the dedicated astronauts, astro-biologists and physicists, and others who liked zero gee kept launching into the large black vacuum of a growing society.

Pluto Jane Saunders loved teaching and became the Director of the Astronaut Training School on Nevada Base. Her best friend Hillary Pitt flew with
America Two
a few times with her friends Lunar and Michael, then joined Pluto Jane to teach.

With the two very competent astronauts in command of the “The Astermine Astronaut Training School” several years later, commissioned many new astronauts every year from many different countries.

Penelope Pitt retired from politics and spent the rest of her life with her family in California where she kept in contact with her old friends and was one of the few who was buried on Earth. She and her best friend’s sister Shelly Saunders purchased a wine farm, and often had competitions on which planet produced the best wines.

Dr. Rogers and Nurse Martha spent the rest of their lives together lecturing about space-medicine at John Hopkins University before joining Ryan and Kathy Richmond on the island for a peaceful last few years.

Dr. Nancy and Captain Pete enjoyed their island home, theirs the first of 37 houses on Astronaut Avenue, which grew around the hill overlooking the main beach of the island and just south of the marina.

Captain Pete gave up trying to produce the world’s first blue shield. It took Homo sapiens another decade after his death to finally achieve the captain’s work. Dr. Nancy visited the Nevada Base Medial Center a couple of times, and was a guest lecturer at John Hopkins a few times. Other than that, they enjoyed each other’s company, their neighbors and were of the many who one day retired to another planet, laying with the Rogers at the Retreat.

Bob Mathews went to space on his last flight and beat Beth and Monica to their resting places on the red planet by a decade. He was taken up by the son of a good friend and placed in his resting digs by a couple of youngsters he had helped teach to fly.

Igor and Boris did not outlast Dr. Smidt, and they were taken up to the red planet aboard the mother ship they had helped design as young men,
America Two
. They died within a year of each other, and headed up on the same flight. They were some of the early colorful holograph residents outside The Martian Club Retreat. They helped build Base Nevada to become the largest space technological center in the world, and enjoyed what they were doing to the very end.

The Pig’s Snout became a retreat for
Matts
returning on the flights to vacation on Earth. Ruler Roo’s mother looked after the temple long after her husband’s death, and was buried in the same place she was born, many centuries later. She lived longer than all of the Homo sapiens she had met on her travels.

Roo, Joanne and the boys visited her twice before Joanne joined the gang at the Retreat.

The
Matts
lived longer than the
Tall People
and Ruler Roo ran Mattville until his son took over from him a century after the launch of the base. He lived out his years teaching young
Matts
about Homo Floresiensis and Homo sapiens, Earth
Matts
and Europa
Matts
, and making sure that the history of the Earth
Matts
was never forgotten.

Mattville changed much over time and during Ruler Roo’s later years. He saw many come and go. He watched as generations of NextGeners became adults and commanded expeditions and odysseys deep into the solar system. Roo made many pilgrimages to The Martian Club Retreat to visit his old friends, and play poker, and saw much of the new world where people travelled the entire solar system, fought new wars, met old adversaries, and made new friends, but that is another story.

Jones

It took Jonesy a year before he got comfortable walking around like his partner. With Maggie’s help he was pretty confident standing when the President of The United States pinned the same medals on him that he had received from an earlier President.

Jonesy told the Vice President that day that he and Maggie were retiring from running around the solar system without alcoholic beverages, and that the Vice President should retire and spend the rest of her life with her family. That was something Penelope’s parents Michael and Penny Pitt would have liked, and he had a great plan for her in California.

Maggie described how proud her parents were of Penelope, and her sister, as Allen and Jamie were proud of their daughters, and when the Vice President asked about Saturn’s future, the Joneses replied that she was already extremely busy, and that was all they said.

The Gulfstream was put into the Astermine Museum in Nevada. Nobody flew such antiquated aircraft anymore, and the yellow aircraft was placed under the wing of the still white “Dead Chicken” each aircraft having the names of its pilots on a plaque for visitors to see. There were also red and silver vintage cars in perfect condition in the museum, old military vehicles, and whole and parts of famous spaceships, returned from space.

As it grew, decades later the large establishment where Hangar Two once stood, became a well-visited museum which held extremely valuable antiques.

Fishing was the order of the day once Jonesy had a dozen very long orderly chats with his old boss back on the island. Over drinks, and as usual General John Jones demanded this and that, and many which made Ryan smile and feel young again. Life without Jonesy would have been very boring in space.

Ryan didn’t really care anymore, his daughters and trusted employees ran Astermine, and he granted Jonesy all his wishes. He signed any papers Jonesy wanted from him, and as he left the last discussion, he watched and smiled happily, as his mischievous ex-Chief Astronaut walked out on the latest robotic legs headed over to continue his discussions with Saturn and Mars Noble, and had a solar system-sized plan ahead of him.