Since his youth, he aways wanted to be an explorer. Not just any explorer but an astronaut. One who would travel the cosmos circled by blackness and having just the guiding light of the heavenly stars before him to travel by. He was now heading back from earth from Mars. He had lost contact with the earth relay station over a two years ago. Mission protocol is to stop all scientific activity and to return home if the communication link is malfunctioning or there has been no communication from earth.
He has been in his deep sleep chamber for over a year and was awaken when a deep space sensor on the spaceship had picked up an astroid that was heading towards his spacecraft path back to Earth. There was a total of two crewman and the other individual was still in deep sleep. The computer only awoke one person from deep sleep to save overall useable resources on the important trip back home to Earth.
The commander slid into the control module of the spacecraft and turn on screens to see what was being picked up and tracked on radar. The astroid was still to far away to get a good visual image of it. What ever it is, it looks large and coming directly into their path.
“Good day Commander”, said the voice through the computer intercom. “Good day to you”, said the commander. “Next time don‟t wake me up from deep sleep until we are close enough to see an actual visual of what is actually occurring within our mission.”
“Sorry, Commander”, “I will make a note of it in the ship‟s log and update security protocols.”
He made the correction to the navigational system to make sure that the spacecraft would not get to close to this unknown object‟s path that was coming straight towards them, but still close enough to see what it actually was.
He opened up the deflection shutters to the main observation windows. He could see some distant stars but most everything was pure darkness. A few of the crafts tracking lights were reflecting off the multiple solar panels of the craft.
“We humans are still just a bunch of lonely sailors”, he said to himself.
“We have our spacecrafts like the sailing ships of old are still guided by the North Star. I wonder how Earth has changed. It has been frustrating not have received any recent messages from Earth or Mission command at all.
He doubled checked his communication log and still no messages from earth. The last message was that everything was fine and not to worry. Its not what you know that has you worry while on a mission, but what you don‟t know or have no control over.
He has been in the military way too long to know that home base only feeds you information that they wanted you to know about and not what you really should know about for the mission. He knew that his mission to Mars was to conduct the necessary surveys to enable the global economic industry to start exploiting the Mar‟s planet of its rich resources. He knew that he was the most expendable part of the mission. They had another team already trained and set to go if for some reason they would not be able to complete the mission.
He got out of the commander chair and went to the cafeteria unit. He felt dehydrated since waking up from deep sleep, so he grabbed a couple of orange juice fortified pouches to drink. He looked at the day on his watch. It was March 17th, St. Patricks day.
“May the luck of the Irish be with you‟. It‟s good to be Irish today and maybe some luck will actually come my way after all.
Suddenly, all the alarms went off at once is the spacecraft. “So much for my Irish roots”
He went to the nearest command computer interface screen. It had touch screen control.
A grid appeared on the screen showing that there was a small oxygen leak in the storage unit area near the back of the spacecraft.
It looks minor enough, but just to be on the safe side, he put on his exterior space suit. He started his way back into the storage area. The alert stated that it was in area AB of the storage container unit.
There were large containers in the storage unit that had special material samples from the Mar‟s survey. Everything seems normal. He then saw movement from the corner of his eye, or what seems to be just a shadow from his light. He then saw what looked to be a small fracture on the inner hull. He took out his soldering tool and pour liquid metal into the small fracture. The metal sealed the fracture and the alarm went away. “ Peace and quite again, this bloody tin can better stay together until we make it safely home.”
I better check the sleeping unit chamber of my partner, who was in deep sleeps still.
He walked to the sleeping unit and there she was still in her unit safe and sound. Her hair is cut by a small robotic unit inside the chamber. While he was looking at her, the image of snow white came to his mind. “We just need the twelve dwarfs to appear, and we could all be set for a happy ending back on good old mother Earth.”
He crawled back to the command unit of the craft. He put in an old western movie with John Wayne. Now this big guy knew how to take care of a situation, and no one, I mean no one was going to get in the way of the Duke. The commander had a deep love for the wild west. It was one of the last frontiers that humans explored on Earth. He saw about a third of the Western movie that was filmed just outside of Tucson, and then faded into a deep sleep. The commander slept peacefully for hours and then was awaken by the alarms, and lights were flashing on the command control pads in front of him.
The ship was now coming up to the astroid, but it wasn‟t an astroid at all. “All my God,”
he said to himself. He just saw what looked like a human skeleton floating in front of his spacecraft. He look at his monitor to get a better look. The large item that the computer sensors had picked up were large pieces of what once was the International Space Station that had once been in a secure orbit that circled around earth, but now was floating in space.
The pieces look like there had been some type of impact explosion that occurred to the station itself. He made sure that the images where being recorded by the spacecraft‟s exterior cameras. The craft was now moving past of what was left of the international space station. We must still be at least a week away from earth‟s orbit.
How did the space station exploded?, and how did it‟s remaining pieces get into deep space as far as it did?
All different scenarios was now running thorough the commander‟s very logical mind.
He mind was having a difficult time grasping what just occurred. The commander thought it was time now to wake up his second in command,Jody, who was still in the deep sleep chamber. He went to the monitor that was controlling the chamber and put in the activation code numbers to start the awakening process.
It will take a few hours for her to be fully awake, so he went back to the control module.
He went carefully over every recorded pictures of the broken pieces of the space station that was taped. His analytical mind trying hard to figure out what really happen. Was it an internal explosion?, or some type of astroid impact to the station? Was it because of some type of aggressive activity of one of the rebel states back on earth?
It wasn‟t difficult to take the next simple leap in logic that if this happen to the space station then what had happen back on earth. He started nervously to play with this celtic cross that he had around his neck since his very first mission.
Jody was now awake and was debriefed by the commander. Jody was the scientist on board of the mission and was very concern about the news of the space station. She asked if it would make sense to go back to the station to retrieve any recordings of what happen.
The commander said that there was too much damage, and pieces were floating in every direction. They also couldn‟t use up any more of their resources for they were already marginal with their total energy reserves in getting back to Earth.
Jody went to the communication station and try sending a message back to earth. The equipment indicated that the the message was sent, but only static being returned back.
She then played with the frequencies of the radio receiver, and still there was no hits. It was a total black out and they now were going back to Earth with more urgent questions than the answers that they found on Mars.
She put on some soft music to try to smooth and calm her nerves when the commander came around the corner. He asked if there was any success to report from her communication attempts to Earth. She said, “unfortunately nothing to report Commander.”
The commander just nodded trying not to show his grave concern of what the near future will bring for them. “Please notify me at once if any contact is made”.
The commander looked at his navigational settings and the time of arrival to Earth was still counting down on the mission clock in weeks, days, minutes, and seconds: 4 weeks, 3 days, 32 minutes, 22 seconds.
“How I wish I had a cold Irish Beer”, the commander said to himself while looking into the emptiness of space before him.