CHAPTER THREE--'Outpost' from Tom Luong Films

OUTPOST
Chapter Three

“Mars, the ancient Roman deity of war, a god in olden times. Why not then to tread it underfoot, and end all wars forever?”
--Imbrahim Mehudi, Ph.D., US-Earth Mars Command Second-Director of Sciences, Vandenberg, CA Space-port, 2075

ROLL CALL: these are the men and women of the US-Earth Mars-Mission Space Command. Skilled, trained, brave, fearless, unwavering, and sick to death of crappy ‘McAbyss Happy Spaceman Meals’, among other discomforts.

Talk on the Earth-side US continental West-coast center for space-flight stuff had turned to an announced and scheduled all-hands conference and meeting, even for weeks prior to Guy Reisling’s ill-fated grounding and return to planet-side, from his last Mars-run. The space-program was considered both important and even vital, and a total waste of time, even among its long-term workers and students. The cost was outlandish, but given that by 2075, old-style money or wealth had become virtually meaningless, it was thought wise to remove the blockage of typical funding approaches, and ‘just do it’. Damn the financial torpedoes, we’re going to Mars, they all said. Much as kings in the ancient world could build the Great Pyramids of Egypt without regard to mathematical money, the intellectual community had revealed over many years, to the powers and authorities, that common Earth-technicians really could do almost anything, within our grasp of science and technology, with or without actual money. And this was a liberation, to be sure. But the goals, the ‘value’, the payback, the harvest or wealth, or return-on-investment, for the citizenry---this had always been a huge public relations stumbling block for the space-program, even in the old days. Without the discovery of mountains of solid gold or oceans of high-quality petro-fuel on Mars, that would enrich the Earth somehow---other goals, such as long-term species survival, seemed rather empty. Many other issues occupied the various crews and staff at the Vandenberg base from time to time, like an unusual ant-hill of uniquely-endowed ants, always busy. But the current alarm, regarding this up-coming ‘big-deal’ meeting, was much a mystery.

The Mars-Mission Fleet Commander at this juncture was a man named Winton ‘Kick’ Berle. Winton was a large-faced man, about age 52-years, with a huge jaw and ruddy complexion, seeming always to smile, but a harder smile than most. His role was to oversee all the US space-ships and vessels, related to the Mars missions and travel. All flight-travel, all traffic and coordinated navigations and plans, all equipment, gear, readiness, all the pilots and crews, and much more. It was a lot to handle, but really not unlimited. Winton was nick-named ‘Kick’ by the pilots, for a story about one of his own space-flights, as a pilot, early in the Mars program, when a small inner-ship doorway hatch was stuck, mid-way in their deep-space run, blocking the crew’s use of important life-sustaining gear, and he had to kick in the door with his foot to save their lives. He still enjoyed complaining about the consequences of a tiny metatarsal bone fracture deep within his right foot, and occasional pain, when chatting up the newbies. Winton was no longer a pilot, and was very much beloved and respected by all.

“Every damn meeting like this in the last ten years, I end up selling Mars rocks and free hot-dogs to the Japanese rocket fuel-merchants. They love the hot dogs, and re-sell the rocks for paper-weights. Go figure,” Winton complained to his secretary, two weeks prior to the event. His secretary chuckled as she always did at his colorful asides, which were never quite true.

Ibrahim Mehudi was the Israeli-born Ph.D., Second-Director of Sciences, for the entire Mars program. Male, about age 45-years, thin and dark-skinned, muscular and lanky. He had a heavy-looking brow-forehead and deep eyes, but watery and Buddha-like within. Obviously, the vast arena of sciences related to space-travel encompassed enormous knowledge and technique, from metallurgy and rocketry, to astro-physics, and including the hyper-critical area of life-support and human biology. Within the hierarchy of the program, a few select men needed to pull it all together into a cohesive, standardized whole, that all the various teams could understand and relate to in a common language focused on the task at hand. Ibrahim’s feet never left the ground, and he had never even travelled in space at all. But his mind and thoughts soared infinitely. The actual science they used was not really ‘new’. Ibrahim’s job was to channel all that info-data and technique, to the widely different critical moments that made up even a single space-flight---the launch, the trajectory, the deep-space movement, re-entry, crew-safety and well-being, and also much of the work on the actual Snikta-base on Mars itself. Ibrahim’s knowledge was truly awesome, god-like, and very valuable to every person working on the Mars program. He was also a great tennis-player.

“There is no God in space-travel. No Jesus, no Spirit. No Space-Ghost. You understand this? It’s a no-no,” Ibrahim said to his wife, at their beach-front California home one afternoon. He was also making preparations for the meeting planned for the base. Ibrahim was one of those who actually knew what the meeting was really about, and the important announcement they were releasing for the entire Mars program staff and crews. His wife was not ignorant of all this as well.

“But Ibrahim, my husband,” she said over their wine at dinner, in complete privacy. “The destruction of the planet, the end of life on Earth, a huge meteor that will wipe us all out. Surely the Supreme Being should at least be consulted? A thing like that!”

“Not for many years, Golda. Not for many years.”

Branson Porter had a pretzel-logic job or role among the higher-up’s in the Mars-mission Space-Command. Porter was male, age 45, a Texan. Not much to look at, tough-as-hell. The program really had no military aspect. Space-travel was considered to be research-oriented and pure science, and the militarization of the space-program had been a hot debate many years past. If the program went to military purposes, it would be exploited for typical Earth wars, deaths, powers, wealth, conquest and control, with potentially gigantic damage, because of the advantages. Bombs on orbiting platforms, or weapons launched from the moon, would be a ruin, and a waste. On the other hand, the program included very high-tech, controversial, costly, and safety-specific bases, gear, equipment, satellites, communications, ships, and people---very similar to any modern military effort. And all that had to be protected. This was Branson’s main gig: Mars Mission Security Command. And any attacking alien armadas of trans-light speed space-ships who wanted to swipe a Mars transport ship for study or to melt down for cheap fuel, would have to go through Branson and his security crews first. And Earth-types, too.

“I hope they’re going to war with China from the Molinari Space-Dock so I can try out my ship-side EMP emitter-arrays. 50-million watts of radio-energy at a high enough frequency to toast every PC in Hong Kong from orbit in about an hour. And I never even get to play with ‘em!” Porter was bragging that same night, at a beer-bar in Santa Barbara, near Vandenberg, concerning the up-coming meeting at the base Conference Center. “Not that I have anything against the Chinese, of course.” He and his Security-type buddies kicked back a few Millers, with sports-shows on TV at the bar, speculating about the Mars program and the meeting. But no one really knew anything.

Karen Tutturo was on her way to Mars within only two weeks, on a completely different job-assignment, that had very little to do with any big-deal announcements or meetings. Or so she thought. A science-type, or high-tech worker-bee, Karen was about age 42, female, very attractive and intelligent, with a somewhat big build physically, or slightly ‘butch’, appropriate for space-travel in a woman. Karen was a Communications Systems-Specialist, and a citizen of the UK. The base on Mars was designed with a very sophisticated deep-space radio-communications system that could link voice-chatter, and tech-commands or tech-instructions, Earth-to-Mars and Mars-to-Earth, far faster than any ship. Unfortunately, now ten years into the Mars-base success story, there were problems with the links and system. So Karen was on her way to the Mars base, supposedly to do the needed ‘fixes’. She had of course studied the system and knew all about it, how it worked and what it was made of. But it was her first trip into the Abyss, and she was pretty nervous about it all. The up-coming meeting at Vandenberg everyone was talking about meant very little to her.

“It’s always the end of the world somewhere,” Karen told one of her girl-friends, as a joke, driving up the coast highway in the heat and sunshine, on another day. Karen’s voyage to Mars was scheduled far in advance, and of course she was preparing. Her road-car purred with hydrogen-fuel efficiency, a blur of motion in the wind and fresh air. But her heart was full of butterflies about the whole space-travel experience. Nevertheless, as part of the Mars program, if her skills could restore the Mars-base communications to full working order, she had to do it, she had to go, she had to be strong, she had to face her fears. And she knew she would.

Transport space-ship pilot Guy Reisling’s Second-Pilot was Rob Cowan, an experienced space-flight veteran, age 45, lean, lanky, athletic, Caucasian. The Penelope’s Fuel-and-Propulsion Technician was Herbie French, age 35, an Egyptian-born US citizen and student of rocketry, very skilled with that tech. Of course on Guy’s runs, their lives depended on their knowledge and hard work and attention. It wasn’t just ‘one mistake’ that would kill them, out there. It was attitude, focus, alertness---and errors, too, if any were made. Errors to space-men on these flights in 2075 were like tiny sparks of static-electricity in a dry forest or in the grassy brown California hillsides in the hot summers, when wild-fires still destroyed homes valued at multi-millions of dollars, and took lives as well. Errors add up, and then---shit happens. Guy trusted both these men and they trusted him. They all knew the up-coming meeting would probably affect them somehow.

“Cut-backs,” Herbie chimed in, back at the base, in a locker-room area, where they had run into each other, now ‘out-of-service’ as a working transport crew, given Guy’s punishment and flight-ready demotion by Commander Okman. They hadn’t forgotten. But like Guy, it wasn’t half-bad at all, and his crew was enjoying the break. They had months between voyages anyway, on their return. Like the rest, they just figured the Mars Program was going through some changes, and the leadership wanted everyone to be informed. The transport guys were not all that important or glamorous.

The US Mars Mission Commander, known to the lower-level types, and other higher-up’s, as ‘The Queen of the Galaxy’, or alternately, ‘Commander of Angels’, was a formidable woman named Lynn Rodgers-Smith, Ph.D, about age 60 years. Lynn was a Texan, like Branson Porter, and of course Texas had a long history with the US space-program. If there was a single person who had the final word on choices and decision for the Mars program, it was Lynn Rodgers-Smith. But there really was no single individual pulling all the strings, no Commander-in-Chief approach. Much of a bureaucrat, Lynn was also very experience and knew all the ins-and-outs of the program, having worked with the crews, even on some flights, and deep into the science-tech side as well, in the past, prior to recruitment as a ‘desk-jockey’, and then to the very top. She was a short woman, busty and brassy, and she could command a room full of astronauts with a hard whisper, much-respected as ‘knowing’. She loved to cook and also made home-brewed wine and beer. For the Big Meeting they were all anticipating, now only a week away, Lynn was reflective as they all were, intending only to rise-to-the-occasion once again, mother-to-millions in her way, but humble and careful on all points.

“We need to be very clear about the data and info on the meteor,” Lynn said to her immediate peer, a man named Willy Atta-Bowman. Bowman was a specialist, brought in for only this meeting, rather as the Explainer-in-Chief, who would bring down-to-Earth for the three-day conference, what they needed to share. The two of them were in the office complex where Lynn held court, private and removed from other chores at the base. Bowman was 52 years-old, an educated science-and-space University teacher, who was in charge of the meeting, and would make the presentations to an assembly of about 300 people at the Conference Center, next Wednesday (including the Japanese rocket-fuel merchants, who were invited out of habit more than need). Of course Bowman also had a staff and assistants for the work involved.

“It’s not hard to visualize, just hard to prove to a room full of Ph.D. astro-scientists,” Bowman said. “They tend to be picky about fact vs. fiction where giant meteors are concerned. But---we know what we know. That’s the thing. Given another six years, there will be no doubt whatsoever. Now is the time to bring this out with your Mars program people, so needed changes and decisions can go forward immediately.”

“And your researchers still feel the Ukrainian space-program is hostile to our interests?”

“Well---researchers, or, you might say, good old-fashioned spies. But yes, in a way. We’ll get into all that. Bottom line though, if the Russian Space-Program really does want the Mars base, in the next year or so, and if they have plans to take action, the new data on the meteor will set things in place for some kind of showdown, either formally or informally. And we feel they do want the Mars base, as a safe-haven if the meteor hits. We also feel they have the same data we have, and have been making these kinds of plans,” Bowman said, with a heavy sound in his voice.

The so-called Queen of the Galaxy, Lynn Rodgers-Smith, present Commander of the US-Mars Space Program, for the year 2075, leaned over in the chair at her large oak desk, spitting out her chewing gum unceremoniously into a trash-can, with a tiny ‘plink’ sound. Her thick pink fingers ran across her face nervously, looking back at Bowman.

“So ten years into the success of the Mars base, we’re now talking about some kind of a conflict for control or occupation of the Mars facility, with Russian or Ukrainian Space-forces, or even military, because of a meteor approaching the Earth, which is not scheduled to even come close to the planet for about another ten years,” she said. “Is that correct?”

“That’s about it,” Bowman responded. “Yeah.”

Lynn paused. “Well, we need to be very clear about the data and info on the meteor, that’s all,” she said. “One damn thing at a time.”

---Julian Phillips
For Tom Luong Films
Oct. 13, 2009