Location: The Royal Palace, Rosebush City.
Day: 21
"I think I have a solution for Timmy," said Josh. He, Justin, Mr Ages, Nicodemus and the Brisbies were gathered around Timothy's bed, its occupant lying comatose with high fever, slowly slipping away. Elizabeth sat sobbing beside her son's bed, from where she hadn't moved all night. The royal physicians and Mr Ages had explained that nothing more could be done and that it was only a matter of time now. A Rat priest had arrived, yielding a staff with a golden likeness of the Great Owl mounted on the top, to grant Timmy the last rites, causing Elizabeth to erupt into hysteric sobs, until an angry Josh had shooed him out the door. He wasn't about to let them start digging Timmy's grave while the boy was still alive! As it stood, he still had one last hope for him.
While the Brisby children tried to comfort their distraught mother, Josh called Justin and Nicodemus over to a nearby table, where he had placed his HHC. A digital graph showed a schematic of the NIMH-One in flight. Typing in a few commands, the command module separated from the rest of the ship, leaving just the tail – a rickety assembly of antenna clusters, solar panels, and the primary stage, which housed the ship's ion engines and fuel tanks that had brought it to Nimh-Beta. A secondary stage mounted on the mothercraft would normally be used for lift-off and the return journey to Earth, leaving all that useless weight behind. Josh zoomed in on what looked like a long, tube-shaped module attached to the end of the tail.
"The REMO," he said, "It's a resupply module we brought up here with us, which contains all of our gear for surface operations beyond the landing site; a pre-packaged Hab, equipment, rovers, and extra supplies, including, yes, medical supplies for a field hospital. There's got to be some antibiotics for Timmy."
"But won't it be as ruinous and ancient as your ship after all these years?" asked Justin. Josh shook his head.
"The REMO has been orbiting this planet for 2,000 years; the cold and vacuum of space should have preserved it and its cargo...theoretically. It's our best bet for Timmy. The tricky part is, of course, getting our hands on it..." The Rats exchanged glances; as far as they were concerned, reaching that resupply module was an impossible feat – unless Josh had another radical plan up his sleeve.
"Can't you...summon it down or something?" asked Justin. Josh shook his head.
"I already tried from the pod's computer; the module's guidance system is still transmitting data, but she's not responding to commands. I don't know; it could be a hardware failure, or the payload thrusters might be frozen... We have no way of knowing from here. No, the only way is to send someone up there to retrieve it."
"Well, you have a working flying ship," said Nicodemus, "You can do it, right?"
"Probably," said Josh uneasily. He didn't want to add the fact that, even with his pod still operational, space travel was no cake walk. Although rated safe for atmospheric flight, as it had been determined during the flight up into the Dark Mountains, there was no telling whether she'd fare just as well in space. Up there, any craft was subjected to intense stresses, particularly during the re-entry, and needed to be rated 100% through long procedures of careful testing and inspections, or else risk total disaster. Unfortunately, they had nor the time nor the equipment for inspections. But Josh Anderson was a daring astronaut; he'd go up at his own risk!
"This mission will require some far more sophisticated planning ahead," he told his friends, thinking, "If you chaps would like to accompany me on a short excursion to Thorn Valley, I think I've got an idea."
"I want to come with you," said Martin, who had been eavesdropping onto the adults' conversation. His little brother's life was at stake and if Josh had a plan to save Timmy, then he wanted to be a part of it, "I want to help." The Rats and Mrs Brisby seemed to want to protest, but Josh, admiring Martin's dedication for his younger sibling and figuring there was no harm in letting him tag along, overruled them.
"All right, Tiger, you can come with us – but only as far as Thorn Valley, understood?"
Josh hugged Elisabeth, who wished him luck, "By careful, Josh. Promise me you'll come back safely. And you make sure you behave yourself, Martin," she added to her eldest son, who promised he wouldn't be a burden. Josh leaned over and kissed her one last time and then, his party, consisting of Justin, Brutus, Martin, Mr Ages and Nicodemus, who also insisted on coming along to Thorn Valley, hurried out.
The trip back to Thorn Valley took much less time than before; with Josh using his pod to tow the Jeremy along and his friends riding on the glider, this time the journey went completely without incident. Josh had to admire Nicodemus' quick adjusting to flying on an open glider, despite his advanced age. An hour later, they had landed safely on the same shoreline of that large, unnamed lake in the heart of the Valley.
Thorn Valley was just as it had been on their first visit; the evidence of the carnage they'd left behind from their encounter with the Exiles was still there, the bodies of the outlaw Rats lying decomposing, their comrades apparently not having spared them a second thought, not even the decency of a proper burial. In the distance, the ancient wreck of the NIMH-One, or the Temple of the Great Owl, depending on whose point of view, loomed high above the jungle foliage.
Inside the ship, on the flight deck, the radioisotope generator Josh had restored was still online, keeping the millennia-old instruments and systems operational in standby mode. Hurrying over to the communications station, Josh wiped several screens clean of dust and got to work. Typing in a series of complicated commands on the ancient keyboard, he brought up two wireless camera feeds on screen: one from his Scout's cockpit, the other from his suit's in-built camera. On another screen, he brought up a data feedback of his suit's biomed sensors, so they could monitor his vitals while he was up there.
Moving over to the navigator's station, he punched in a few more commands into the computer, bringing up on the bridge's big nav screen a trajectory chart with an outline of Nimh-Beta in the centre, which would track the pod's course in space. On another screen, he brought up a schematic of the pod, with the computer reading the status of all her systems and instruments.
The beauty of the Nimh-One's design was that the ship and all of her pods and EVA vehicles, including the crew's space suits, were networked together, allowing multiple video, audio and data communications at all times. The ship might be thousands of years old and no longer spaceworthy, but her still-functioning communication and navigation systems could still be used to set up a barebones Mission Control for his upcoming space flight.
The Rats watched in silent fascination as Josh worked on all those strange machines, the technology of which they could hardly comprehend. Nicodemus sat calmly in one of the flight chairs, apparently confident that his new Quaestor knew what he was doing. Making sure all the systems were tuned and working properly, Josh called them over to explain his plan.
"All right, I've linked the pod up to the ship's computers," he said, "We'll be able to talk and you'll be able to see everything I do up there, every step of the way. Likewise, I'll be able to report and give you instructions down here." He pointed at the comms screen, which displayed the schematic of his pod, all of her systems reading in the green. The only malfunction was the fuel gauges, inoperative due to some minor circuit damage caused by the heat of the sloppy re-entry weeks ago. However, he could still rely on his flight computer to calculate the load manually so it didn't seem like much of a problem.
"To conserve fuel, I'll have to use the atmospheric jets to cruise up to the upper thermosphere; once I've crossed into the exosphere, I can fire up the ion boosters to escape the planet's gravitational pull entirely and achieve orbital insertion." The Rats merely nodded, struggling to make sense out of the crazy physics Josh was explaining. The man pointed to another screen, showing them a schematic of the resupply module. Her systems were still transmitting data to the ground all right, but her signal reception strength read zero.
"The REMO is locked in stationary orbit right above Thorn Valley, at an altitude of approximately 200 miles," he said, "In order to intercept it, I'll have to do what we astronauts call an orbital slingshot – circle the planet from orbit and rendezvous with the REMO on the other side. Now, once I've intercepted it, I'm going to attempt a docking." He pointed at the lower end of the REMO, where the Rats noticed the faint outline of a hatchway, "If she's still pressurised I can then climb onboard and try and repair the broken guidance system so we can bring her in to land; if that fails, I'll get the medicine for Timmy and bring it back down with me in the pod instead. Should be easy enough...assuming nothing goes wrong."
"Something you're not telling us?" asked Brutus gruffly, as if reading Josh's mind.
"It's the re-entry I'm concerned about," said Josh, "In order to get back, I'll have to plot an extremely narrow re-entry corridor to get back into the atmosphere. On my last re-entry, I almost burned up by coming in too steep without power. The heat shield obviously held, otherwise I wouldn't be here now, but was still dangerously overheated and might be damaged. If that's the case, this time it might not hold."
"And if it doesn't?"
Josh needn't bother answering him; if the pod's heat shield didn't withstand the inferno of re-entry, he'd be toast, along with Timmy's medicine. He had already inspected the heat-shield and found it was scorched but still intact...or so it seemed. But even a hairline crack, visible only by x-ray, was enough to turn Alpha Scout into a new Challenger disaster and the entire mission would be for naught. However, there was nothing they could do about it. They'd just have to chance it.
"Can I come too, Josh?" asked Martin eagerly, who had taken a great liking to flying and was eager for the opportunity of going even higher, but apparently not realising the risks involved, "Please?"
"Sorry, laddie, this kind of flying is not for you," he said, trying to be as sympathetic as possible. Bringing him along to Thorn Valley was fine, but a joyride into space, where anything could go wrong, was out of the question. "You'll have to enjoy the show from down here." Martin looked indignant, but said nothing, suddenly thinking up his own little plan. Making sure nobody was watching him, he turned and tiptoed out...
"If something does go wrong, what can we do to help you?" asked Nicodemus, getting them back on track. Although obviously there wasn't much the Rats could do if the mission went south, Josh had a couple of contingency plans worked out.
"If something happens to me, say I'm incapacitated or killed – you will know from seeing my vitals drop to zero –, but the pod is still flying, then you'll have to use the remote override switch." He pointed at a blinking red button on the console of his old station, "That will allow OWL to take control of the pod remotely and bring her and my body back in." Although the pod would probably crash-land if landed by remote control, at least the medicine might survive the impact, so the Rats could get it to Timmy, "You only use this as a last resort, mind you; I don't want my ship taking off without me and leaving me stranded in space!" Justin nodded.
"I'll try and remember that."
After going over the flight plan one more time and making sure everyone knew their duties as first-time rookie spaceflight controllers – Justin was assigned CapCom, Brutus EECOM, Ages Flight Surgeon, Nicodemus FIDO, and with Josh as acting Flight-Director-in-flight, who'd relay instructions to them over the radio – it was time to get this show on the road.
Zipped up in full space gear, Josh was ready to take to space once again. Justin carefully checked every inch of his suit for faults, making sure everything was in good working order; 9 hours of air left, batteries full, radio, bio-monitor, camera and nav instruments on-line, and suit integrity 100%. The tear in the suit, courtesy of Castor's knife, had been repaired with the suit's portable breach kit – a small funnel lined with some special, vacuum-freezable, super-sticky glue on the wide end, ideal for plugging any nasty air leaks in a hurry. They gave each other the 'okay' sign – or rather Josh did, whilst Justin only managed a poor imitation of it, unfamiliar with the gesture.
"Good luck, Josh!"
Shaking hands with his Rat friend one last time, Josh climbed onboard his pod and sealed the hatch, pressurising the cabin. A quick pre-flight check to make sure all systems were a-okay and he was good for ignition start. Punching in the sequence, he gave Justin the thumbs-up and motioned to him to stand clear.
The atmospheric jets roared to life, lifting the pod off the ground; she hovered high above Thorn Valley, gaining altitude like a rising helicopter. Following his checklist, Josh fired up the cruising jets; the pod shot off, climbing towards the heavens, faster than any supersonic fighter jet Josh had ever flown in His Majesty's Royal Air Forces back on Earth. He carefully watched his altitude and airspeed as he climbed.
10 kilometres... 30 kilometres... The pod felt strangely heavier than what Josh had expected. He briefly wondered what could be causing it. He crossed from the upper troposphere into the stratosphere... 50 kilometres... 80 kilometres...
In the upper mesosphere, the colour of the rapidly thinning atmosphere began to change due to the many layers of inert gasses found on Nimh-Beta. Crossing the Karman Line at 100 kilometres up, he entered the thermosphere. Up here, a lovely spectacle of atmospheric Auroras, very common on this planet due to its unusually strong magnetic field as well as its close proximity to a gas giant, engulfed the pod as it passed through, heading for the upper atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Justin had returned to the NIMH-One's flight deck, where they'd set up their makeshift Mission Control and took up his station. The ancient computers were all scrambling with incoming data, monitoring Josh's flight. Nicodemus' nav screen showed the pod following a marked, green trajectory line, heading into orbit. If that line turned red and changed angle, Josh had explained, would mean the pod was off-course and something was wrong. At the engineer's station, where Brutus sat staring dumbly at what-he-couldn't-make-heads-or-tails of, all of the pod's systems read fully functional and on-line.
So far, everything was going according to plan. Josh estimated the entire mission should take no more than 12 hours, depending how long it took to get the REMO repaired, powered up and reoriented again. If within 72 hours, which was the pod's maximum life-support limit, the REMO could not be recovered, then the mission would have to be scrubbed. Then, he suddenly noticed Martin, who was supposed to be watching the video feeds at another station, was gone.
"I'm sorry, Justin, I didn't see him go," said Brutus, angry with himself for not keeping an eye on that insufferable little pipsqueak who always tended to get in everyone's way, "Where in the name of the Great Owl has that brat gotten to this time...?" It was only then that Justin happened to glance at the pod cockpit's camera feed and realised what had happened.
"Why, that cunning, little rascal..."
Josh's flight instruments automatically switched over from atmospheric-flight mode to space-flight mode, as he primed the ion boosters for ignition. The instant the atmospheric jets, unable to function anymore in this thin atmosphere of high altitude, shut down, the ion boosters took over, achieving escape velocity as per the pod's design. The Scout punched through the upper exosphere and headed out into space.
His flight computer reading safe orbital insertion achieved, Josh activated the S.C.S., locking his ship into orbit. He had done it! He was back in space! The familiar sensation of weightlessness crept through his body and he saw his pen float in front of his eyes in the zero gravity. After 21 sols on Nimh-Beta, it sure felt good to be back in his element!
Just like on the planet's surface, even out here in space, nothing looked familiar; rather than looking at the Moon, the luminous Nimh-Alpha gas giant, around which Nimh-Beta orbited, was visible in the distance, looking big and menacing. On the far side, he could make out two of the three Alpha Centauri suns; on the dark side, the third star of this solar system, the red dwarf Proxima, was visible in the baffles of Nimh-Alpha, which permanently obscured it from view on Nimh-Beta. According to the notes Dr Stetson had left behind, that red dwarf only made an appearance once every 182 Nimh-Beta years, creating a spectacular twilight night that the superstitious Rats feared as a supernatural premonition of doom, or so Josh had heard. The electromagnetic storm that had brought him here had, of course, dissipated weeks ago and Josh had no way of knowing whether it would reappear in a year's time or in a thousand years' time. Anyway, it didn't matter, since he was never going back.
With his pod safely drifting in orbit and approaching the dark side of Nimh-Beta for a slingshot around the globe, Josh took off his visor and gloves for comfort and run a checklist to see how well his ship had fared in the ascent. Hull integrity checked out fine; cabin pressurisation stable; and all instruments were green across the board. Nimh sure built these babies strong...
"Help! Let me out of here!"
Josh nearly went through the roof in shock at the sound of a strange voice coming, not from over the radio, but from right behind his seat, where the pod's rock-sample container was! That airtight box, meant to transport 500 pounds of rock and earth samples, as well as the bio-payloads, was installed on all of the Nimh-One's pods, like the boot of a car. And right now, Josh realised, there was someone hiding in there!
Sitting up from his seat and turning round, or rather floating free in the zero gravity, he hurryingly undid the latches and opened up the container. And guess who he saw?
"Martin?!" he exclaimed, pulling the young mouse out of the box by his tail. The youngest Brisby boy had a bleeding nose and looked dazed and slightly disorientated from being violently tumbled around in the box during the lift-off. This is a first, Josh thought, a space stowaway! Frankly, he didn't whether to laugh, considering how he himself had pulled a similar ploy on Commander Fitzgibbons not so long ago, or to explode at Martin's stupidity.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, "I told you not to come!" He may be more tolerant of Martin's mischief than his mother was, but this was one step too far. By stowing away up here for the sake of a thrill ride, he was adding a further, unwanted responsibility on Josh's shoulders, not to mention putting his life in danger. Space travel was dangerous and not some fun ride for children. Martin, probably realising he had crossed the line this time, gulped nervously.
"I...I just wanted to help you save Timmy..."
"I don't care, this was one bloody stupid thing to do!" snapped Josh, clearly angry, "Your mother is going to kill you when she finds out, you know that?" Martin recoiled; his mother would give him the spanking of his life when she heard he had hitched a ride up here against Josh's orders. However, there was nothing either of them could do about it now; there was no question of aborting the mission, not when Timmy's life depended on it. Martin was in for the ride and the consequences that were bound to come of it when they returned, whether he liked it or not.
"I'm...I'm sorry, Josh," he stammered, slowly realising the insanity of what he had done. Josh, despite his own anger, decided this was not the time for lectures or apologies. He had a passenger onboard and would have to make the proper arrangements for him.
There were no jump-seats on the pod, so instead he sat Martin onto his lap, where he'd have to ride on this flight, and strapped him in with a spare harness. Despite still dreading his mother's wrath when they got back, Martin was quickly starting to enjoy this strange ride he had gotten himself into.
Josh lifted him up, leaving him floating hike a soap-bubble in mid-air. Martin's eyes went blank with amazement as he took in this incredible feeling of freedom which was the zero gravity, wondering what kind of 'magic' was doing this to him. Josh gave him a nudge, sending him spinning like a ball on the tip of his finger. The mouse boy seemed to be having the time of his life – until the space-sickness kicked in. Noticing he was turning green in the face and gagging, Josh hurryingly sat Martin down again and passed him a waste paper bag. He didn't need mouse puke floating all around his cockpit! A space-sick Martin groaned miserably.
"Oh...I'm sick. What's happening to me? Why am I floating?"
"You're all right," said Josh, laughing, "You're just weightless from the zero gravity – remember what I told you about gravity? Well, now you're in a place where there isn't any!" Noticing how sick he was and not surprisingly too – Martin would stuff his face at meal times since moving into Rosebush City, something astronauts would never dare do just before a flight – Josh reached into his sleeve-pocket and took out a box of anti-sickness pills he carried in his kit. He forced one into Martin's mouth.
"Take one of these, lad; it'll help settle your stomach." Martin, wincing at the taste, struggled to get it down. The stupid thing just kept floating up and down in his throat.
"I can't swallow!" he groaned through gritted teeth, "It won't go down!" Josh shook his head. Martin apparently wasn't cut out to be a good mouse-astronaut after all.
"It'll take a little practice without gravity, kiddo. You'll manage."
Turning back to his radio, he reported his status to the ground. He could hear his friends cheering and clapping on the other end, confirming the mission was so far going according to schedule. A routine spaceflight like any other.
"Control, be advised we're going into comm blackout on the dark side," said Josh, "Standby for reacquisition of signal in approximately 49 minutes." Josh's crew had set up a network of satellites around the planet in low orbit, but unfortunately most of their orbits had decayed over the centuries, except for the REMO, causing them to burn up in the atmosphere and preventing any global communications, "Oh, and if you're looking for a certain little stowaway by the name of Martin Brisby, be advised I've tossed him overboard!" He winked at the young mouse in question, implying he wouldn't really eject him out into space, no matter how angry he was with him. Martin pulled a face at him.
"All right, Josh, we'll be waiting to hear from you," came Justin's voice, "Good luck!"
As they orbited around the planet to intercept the REMO, Martin was able to see some things that no other mouse in living history had ever seen before. Staring out the window, he whistled aloud at the majestic sight of his first orbital view of the world he lived on. Below them, Nimh-Beta, half in darkness and half in light, the former a crater-dotted desert landscape with the occasional green and blue patches of vegetation and small seas, the latter glowing with spectacular rainbow-coloured Auroras at the North and South Poles, was quite a sight to behold.
"Wow!" he exclaimed, staring at the Auroras, "Look at that, Josh!" Josh only smiled, having enjoyed beautiful views like this one from space many times before. His mind was elsewhere, as he checked and rechecked his instruments, making sure everything was all right. His only concern was the inoperative fuel gauges. According to the calculations of the flight computer, he had enough reserve left in the cells to get him to the REMO and then make it to re-entry, as long as he didn't make too many attitude-control corrections, with a little extra to spare. Could the additional weight of Martin in the lift-off have affected those figures too much? He hoped not.
Pretty soon, they'd circled around the dark side of Nimh-Beta and were approaching the day side once again. Josh heard Justin's voice over the radio, as they came back within radio range. "...Josh, are you there? It's Justin. We're tracking you again but can't hear you. Josh?"
"Yes, Control, we're here. Everything's fine." He consulted his flight radar, homing in on a signal about 1,000 kilometres dead ahead, "We have a lock on the REMO's navigational beacon. Closing in now."
Josh manoeuvred the pod along the plotted trajectory line, intercepting the REMO's orbit and running on a parallel. His proximity radar told him he was right on target, 10,000 metres and closing. But he still couldn't see any looming resupply module anywhere out there. Contrary to popular belief, visuals in outer space weren't always as reliable as they seemed; even in the vacuum, things tended to cast shadows, so any object not sitting directly in the path of sunlight was practically invisible against the blackness of the universe.
With less than 1,000 metres to go and with his proximity warning alarm buzzing red, he fired the reverse thrusters, gradually slowing down, to avoid a collision. Then, suddenly, he saw it; dead ahead, a curiously shaped patch of starless horizon indicated its presence. Then, the pod's lights were reflected off one of the module's fixed solar panels, illuminating the scene.
"Control, we have visual on the target."
A brief visual inspection of the REMO confirmed she was still intact; the surfaces appeared almost pristine even after all these years, with no signs of corrosion anywhere because of the vacuum of space. Behind the module was also the gigantic quartet ion-booster assembly that once propelled the NIMH-One. However, those engines were long dead, their fuel cells spent, reducing them to a mass of elaborate space junk. A twin array of winged solar panels on either side provided power, and a pair of antennas, one for transmissions, one for receptions, allowed communication with the ground.
Although the structure had fared remarkably well after 2,000 years, space had still taken its toll on the REMO. Most of the fragile solar panels were riddled with bullet-like holes, which Josh recognised as micrometeorite strikes, a common occurrence in space. The reception dish, he also noticed, was ruined, sporting a big meteorite hole in it, which explained why the module wasn't responding.
"So how to do we get to that...thing, Josh?" asked Martin, who was looking wearily at the distance between the pod and the REMO and the planet's surface 200 miles below them. There was no apparent bridge or walkway to cross over from, "We have to go outside? We'll fall!"
Josh chuckled, "No we won't; you're in space now, you can't fall. Step outside and you drift along at the exact same trajectory as the ship. Worst that could happen, you'd drift away from the side. But we'll avoid that altogether by using the sleeve. That thing there." He pointed at an accordion-like structure called the sleeve, circling the module's hatchway – this device allowed one of the ship's pods to dock with the REMO, saving him the trouble of having to go EVA.
Rolling his ship sideways, so that the overhead hatch was facing the sealed hatch of the REMO, using the onboard laser-sighting relicle, Josh slowly brought the pod in for docking. Using tiny bursts from his R.C.S. thrusters to keep the pod aligned with the target, a procedure he had practiced thousands of times before in training, Josh inched the pod closer and closer, preparing for docking. Then came the hard part; in order to dock safely, he would have to align his pod's hatch precisely with the sleeve, so that the six hydraulic attachment clamps on the collar would simultaneously insert and lock into their sockets along the pod's hull. If he missed, he could get a faulty and potentially unsafe docking, or even damage the clamps, making any further docking attempts impossible. And spacewalking over instead wasn't an option, not with Martin onboard; he couldn't depressurise the cabin without killing the boy and there were no spare suits onboard.
Nice and easy, watching his indicators as he went, he manoeuvred the pod into position. The clamps slid into their docking sockets. Josh activated the G.D.C., confirming they were all properly aligned. He threw a safety switch on the console. The indicators all turned from red to green, confirming the clamps had locked. They had good capture.
"Control, we've got the REMO!"
Over the radio, the sounds of applauding from the Rats watching their progress via camera feed made Josh blush. Even Martin was applauding him, excitedly whistling at his success. So far, the mission was going like clockwork. Now, it was time to get what they'd come up here for.
Sitting Martin in his seat and making sure he was tightly strapped in, in case they lost pressure, Josh, his suit pressurised again, reached for the overhead hatch. Flipping a switch, he pumped air from the pod's reserve tanks, pressurising the interior of the sleeve. An indicator beside the switch showed they had a stable atmosphere. Grasping the latch, he took a deep breath and popped the hatch seal. If that indicator was wrong and the sleeve was a vacuum, both he and Martin would be instantly sucked out and killed. Then, the hatch opened, revealing the dim interior of the narrow sleeve, about one meter in length and another wide, the closed hatchway to the REMO on the other end. No signs of breaching and no hissing noises of air escaping from anywhere. It was safe.
"Control, I'm boarding the REMO now," he announced over his radio, "Switching over to suit camera."
Motioning to Martin to stay where he was, Josh slid along the sleeve like a snake in its hole, towards the inner hatch. The pressure indicator on this one was off-line. It didn't surprise Josh; half of the module's solar panels were trashed after all. Still, without power to the sensors, he had no way of telling whether there was still pressure on the other side of this hatch, or whether the air was contaminated after all these years, at least not until he'd opened it and found out.
Forcing the latch, frozen stiff after all these centuries of disuse, over, he opened up the REMO's hatch. A gust of frozen air, which no one had breathed in thousands of years, hissed out, clouding up his visor plate. Using his suit environment analyser, he tested the atmosphere. It was a freezing 120 below zero in there, but oxygen levels were normal. No contaminants of any kind. Opening up his visor plate, his breath misting up the cold air, he smelled the familiar odourless atmosphere of a spacecraft. The REMO was safe and accessible.
The resupply module's interior was cluttered with containers of all shapes and sizes strapped to the walls with strong nylon straps. Further down, another closed hatch led to the module's next segment, which were all connected together like cars on a train. Losing all of this precious cargo because of the resupply module not surviving re-entry was unacceptable, so NIMH had built it to split into a dozen segments that automatically separated before coming in to land by parachute. This way, if one or two of the containers didn't make it, there would still be enough supplies for surface operations. The cargo's pristine state of preservation after more than two millennia in space was unbelievable.
A drinking-bag floated aimlessly in the zero gravity, where someone had tossed it, its clear liquid contents surprisingly not frozen in the sub-zero temperatures. Curious, Josh grabbed it and took a sip from its straw. It wasn't water at all. It was vodka!
Lt Stacy, you dear gal, I knew you had too much of a heart to deprive your boys of their drink...
So this was where the illicit moonshine Dr Schultz had made had ended up. Lt Stacy, although a stern woman, rather than discard it, must have hid it onboard the REMO, so that her crew would have a chance to enjoy a drink in secret over at the Hab once it was set up, away from Fitzgibbons' acid tongue. And here it had remained forgotten for the last 2,000 years. Ironically, Josh would now get to keep everyone's shares for himself. But right now, there were more important things to get off of the REMO than vodka and time was running out. First, there was Timmy's medicine.
None of the REMO's cargo was labelled; only a series of numbers and letters marked each container. For a layman, it would take hours, if not days, to find anything in here. But Josh, a trained astronaut, could read space code-labelling as well as he could read simple English. Remembering from the manifest, he reached for a locker, containing seven astronaut-style backpacks.
Made of the same airtight canvas as his spacesuit, these were the Nimh-One crew's surface operations kits, each of them equipped to suit the specialty of its owner; an astrobiology kit for Dr Schultz, astronomy for Dr Stetson, a space toolkit for Colonel Strauss, geology for Lt Stacy, who was another mission specialist in addition to being the pilot alongside Commander Fitzgibbons, and finally a full medic's kit for Dr Boniface.
Bingo!
Josh excitedly opened up his old colleague's kit and was overjoyed by the lovely sight of medical supplies within; minor surgery equipment, dressings, antiseptics and plenty of first-class antibiotics, enough to set up a field hospital inside a Rover during an EVA. If the contents of this box didn't save Timmy, nothing would. He swung his prize over his shoulder. He also took Strauss' toolkit, which contained all the tools and spare parts he needed for his equipment. Finally, as an afterthought, he included Dr Schultz, Dr Stetson and Lt Stacy's science kits to his collection. These could be useful in his future projects for Nicodemus. Too bad there were no weapons onboard the REMO, but he could still manage without them. The drinking-bag of moonshine vodka completed his take.
Obviously, there was no way of getting the rest of this stuff down in the pod; he could only take as much as he could cram into the pod's rock-sample container. Like a castaway salvaging from the wreck of his ship, he'd have to settle for the bare essentials only. The rest of this treasure trove would have to be brought down onboard the REMO, assuming he could get her going again. That would be his second mission objective.
Passing the kits down the sleeve to Martin, who stowed them inside the rock-sample container for safe transport, the astronaut turned to examine the derelict module's guidance system. Flipping a switch on a small panel, he turned on the module's interior lights. The fluorescent lights flickered back to life on low voltage. Good, there was still some reserve power to get the guidance system going again. Opening up a service panel on the overhead bulkhead, revealing a knotted pasta salad of wires and circuit boards within, he got to work, cutting and splicing the circuitry.
With the inception dish trashed and with only limited power from the remaining solar panels, they had no way of uploading the flight data needed to plot the re-entry corridor. However, Josh had a way around this problem. Taking out the makeshift radio he and Jonathan had built from scavenged parts of the TEM-One up on the mountain, he hotwired it to the REMO's guidance system, bypassing the damaged antenna and allowing the module to regain contact with the ground. A blinking green LED light on the radio confirmed he had established connection.
"All right, Justin," he called over his suit radio, "Upload program now!" He switched the radio over to data transmissions, waiting for the upload.
On the ground, at Mission Control, the Rats were hard at work. They had been watching Josh's flight into orbit and the subsequent boarding of the REMO for the past hour with amazement, confirming their human friend's story that travelling into space was indeed possible. Mr Ages in particular, was ecstatic at the so far positive outcome of this mission. Someday maybe, after they'd found the last fragment of the Stone and with Josh's help, they could make it possible for their own people to journey to other planets just like humans did.
Following Josh's instructions over the radio, Justin, feeling extremely out of his element with all this elaborate human technology, hit the necessary controls on the panel, uploading the pre-prepared re-entry flight plan into the REMO's computer. The process took much longer than expected because of the smaller radio, but it worked.
With the new flight data uploaded, the system automatically run a series of diagnostics checks, confirming all of the REMO's systems were operational: R.C.S. fuel, thrusters, parachutes, navigation unit, payloads, everything came up a-okay. The Rats watched on the nav screen as the revived REMO automatically jettisoned itself from the booster stage, using its attitude-control thrusters to accelerate forward, leaving the ship's spent engine module behind, to its eternal orbit around Nimh-Beta.
Now, with the pressing of a single key, the guidance system would initiate the second sequence and bring the REMO in for re-entry and landing. Rather than select the grid where Rosebush City was, Josh had instead plotted the flight plan to drop the pre-supplies in the vicinity of Thorn Valley instead, where they'd be safe from looters. Justin's finger poised over the execute key on the keyboard, waiting for Josh's next command.
"All right, prepare to execute program. On my mark; three, two..."
But then, suddenly, without warning, all hell broke loose up there...
Space is totally silent; no noise carries in the vacuum. If it did, then someone might have heard the faint hissing sound of air escaping, which, in another instant, became a violent explosion as the REMO and the pod violently detached. What had happened?
The sleeve had been built in one of NIMH's many factories in the US; after careful inspecting and testing, it was delivered into orbit, where the NIMH-One was being constructed. However, no one had noticed a tiny imperfection in one of its clamps, which, under normal mission circumstances, would have probably been insignificant. When the ship fired up its ion boosters, embarking on her mission, the clamps had held as per their design specifications; for the next four-and-a-half years, the locking mechanism on the sleeve held perfectly.
After the NIMH-One had arrived at her destination, jettisoned her tail and gone in to land, leaving the REMO behind, the sleeve had remained there, waiting silently for 2,000 years. The structure was baked by solar radiation and frozen by the planet's shadow millions of times over, causing the metal to contract and expand rapidly, creating severe metal fatigue. Eventually, the defective clamp was no longer safe.
Then, a lone astronaut had finally emerged from the planet's surface to recover the REMO. During the docking, the broken clamp had successfully slid into its socket but hadn't locked properly. However, the misleading indicator couldn't tell that. Although the other five clamps had locked securely, keeping the sleeve attached, the intense pressure of atmosphere on the inside was putting too much strain on the collar, slowly causing it to buckle and peel away.
A tiny streak of white mist, which was air escaping into the vacuum, appeared on the rim of the collar, where the loose clamp was. Just a tiny burst, not enough for the pod's sensors to detect a pressure drop and sound the alarm. Finally, the other clamps, unable to hold it anymore, gave way in a disastrous domino effect.
It all happened it the fraction of a second; the clamps were torn clear from their sockets as the sleeve was ripped apart. The REMO and the pod were no longer connected. Both spacecraft violently separated, masses of atmosphere escaping from their open hatchways. The explosive outgassing knocked both spacecraft off balance; the pod, the smaller of the two, was sent tumbling away into deep space, its R.C.S. thrusters all firing at full blast automatically, in an attempt to correct this dangerous attitude at which the ship was moving.
Inside the REMO, Josh never knew what hit him; without warning, he was suddenly swallowed up by that massive suction and ejected out into space. As he was sucked out the hatch, he bumped his wrist against the bulkhead, shattering his suit radio that relayed his transmissions and bio-monitor's readouts to the ground. The last thing he saw before he was shot out into the deadly vacuum of space like a human cannonball was Martin's terrified face staring in terror at him being sucked out to his death…
Author's note: My apologies for the delay but this chapter took forever to finish. Merry Christmas and please don't forget to review!