“So, with Mike being held captive, Emma and Mary are very likely safe for the time being. Let’s work on getting Mike rescued. Then we can see to the safety of Emma and Mary.”<\/p>\n
Carl positioned at the control console, nodded slowly as his concern for Mary eased slightly. He was closely scrutinizing the monitors and gauges. “You’d think that if it’s someone with any clout, they could just come up with a good excuse and order us to abort. But anyway, the latest readings from the satellite feed indicate dwindling activity of the dust storms and the atmosphere will be almost completely cleared over the next forty-eight hours,” He reported. “We may actually have an opportunity to land, at that point.”<\/p>\n
“But if we touch down, they’ll kill Mike!” Jackie interrupted Carl with a loud wail and began weeping, once again.<\/p>\n
Valerie leapt into the conversation, “Ok, we need to get busy, quick. Brandon, send an urgent note to Ty. Fill him in on everything that has occurred up to this point and give him Jackie’s address, if he doesn’t already have it. Make sure he knows damn well that this is reconnaissance only, until Steve can arrive with his team and relieve him. We don’t want him getting himself killed. Don’t mention our speculations about Claire or that this may be connected to his accident. I’ll contact Steve and have him get there as quickly as he can. I’m simply afraid that if we land they will murder Mike, but if we abort the mission they might take his life anyway, no longer needing him for insurance. So for now, we have to hold orbit and stay where we are. I’m going to e-mail Dr. Willis too, and suggest she put a hold on any email reports about these messages for a few days. I’ve known Pam since grad school and she is the one person I am sure we can trust.” Valerie was unaware of the psychologist’s revised reporting schedule to Commander Lewis, and that she wouldn’t see any message for several days.<\/p>\n
“Good plan,” Brandon observed. “Except for one little problem. Our fuel situation is becoming critical. In about four or five days, we will have to land or fire the thrusters for the trans-Earth trajectory anyway. Spending so much time in orbit was anticipated, due to the dust storm season when we arrived. But the asteroid impact and having to slow our rotation for the repairs and speed it back up again, used a lot of fuel. So, it’s forcing us to make a decision one way or the other. We can’t hold in orbit for very much longer than\u2026 perhaps five more days, six at the very most.”<\/p>\n
“Then, let’s get busy,” Valerie declared, moving from her place near the control console.<\/p>\n
“I’ll run the numbers and try to pin down a more accurate time-line for fuel consumption and landing,” Carl volunteered, turning back toward the computer screen. Sally went over and pulled up a stool next to Tom, sat down and draped her arm around his shoulders, then squeezed him slightly.<\/p>\n
“We’ll get this thing figured out,” she promised him.<\/p>\n
“I know that. It’s just going to take so much time.” He sighed quietly, leaning over and momentarily resting his head on her shoulder. Carl was busy at the console, Valerie and Brandon were heading off to start sending their emails, and Jackie was proceeding back up the ladder to fix another cup of tea and try to get some much-needed rest. Sally reached across, gently placing her hand on Tom’s opposite forearm, and lightly kissing the top of his head.<\/p>\n
“I’m here if you need me,” She quietly whispered. Tom glanced up at Sally and gave her a tired smile; gratitude clearly etched on his features as he placed his hand atop hers and affectionately squeezed it.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
A few hours later, Carl was number crunching with a program written in “R” that he quickly hacked up, when Brandon stepped out of the ladder-well.<\/p>\n
“Well, I’ve drafted the note to Ty and made sure he had all of the facts he needs and none that he don’t. It’s on its way, now. What’s the verdict on your end?” he questioned.<\/p>\n
Carl replied, “I’ve given the situation a lot of thought and gone over these numbers several times. If, whoever it is in Mission Support, believes Jackie has sabotaged the ship, that might buy us a little extra time. So here’s what I came up with: If we can pump the fuel from one of the almost empty fuel tanks into one or two of the remaining tanks and then jettison and blow the empty one, it will create quite a good sized response on the sensors. Of course, we can pump some of the liquid waste into that tank to dampen the explosion, but this will give the impression of a lot more damage and loss of fuel than there actually will be.<\/p>\n
“When Mission Support contacts us about the explosion, we tell them that we may not have sufficient fuel to execute an atmospheric entry and barely enough to operate the escape thrusters. We report that we will have to head back to Earth, but it will be another twenty-four hours until we line up for the maneuver. I think whoever is involved in engineering this plot will back off and put a hold on killing Mike, waiting to see if we really do perform the maneuver. Do you think they’ll buy it?”<\/p>\n
Brandon thought about it for a moment before replying, “That’s a fairly risky plan, but I like it. However, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over those numbers of yours with Tom. What may initially appear to be a lot of damage could actually wind up being a lot of damage, if you know what I mean.”<\/p>\n
Carl smiled and replied, ” I’d have said the same thing if one of you had come up with this crazy proposal. I understand completely. Just so we’re clear on what will happen. If and when we blow the tank, some time in the next forty-eight hours, Mission Support will be expecting us to fire the trans-Earth thrusters, right around twenty-four hours after that. This is all based on my calculations concerning the amount of fuel we will have supposedly lost. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that. In reality, we’ll still have only about seventy-two hours to make the decision about whether to land or not.”<\/p>\n
“Then we’d better marshal the troops and produce a consensus,” Brandon resolved. Carl turned back to the console. Considering Carl’s plan, Brandon smiled and thought, ‘Carl’s really come a long way, and not just in astronomical mileage. This kid’s gonna do all right.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“So, with Mike being held captive, Emma and Mary are very likely safe for the time being. Let’s work on getting Mike rescued. Then we can see to the safety of Emma and Mary.” Carl positioned at the control console, nodded slowly as his concern for Mary eased slightly. He was closely scrutinizing the monitors and gauges. “You’d think that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}