I don't own Space 1999.
Making the Beginning… in Space.
Commander John Koenig took a deep breath as he walked into the conference room connected to his office. As he stepped inside the office, John saw every single member of his command team inside, sitting and waiting for him. Also, present and seated was Commissioner Simmonds, and after the way the man had lied to him and caused small, petty problems since his arrival on Alpha, Koenig was not looking forward to any input he might have.
He was not looking forwards to this meeting, but it needed to be done. The future fate of the human race rested in this room, and the long-term decisions they were going to make here would have vital repercussions in the future.
Placing the files on his slice of the desk, Koenig looked at everyone in turn. Everyone's faces were grave and concerned and also shaken by what had happened when the wormhole tore them out of Earth's orbit. Their expressions were understandable; even for a trained veteran astronaut like himself, Koenig was amazed by everything that had happened; the discovery the astronauts who were training for the Meta mission were being struck down by surges of the exotic matter before the wormhole tore them out of orbit, but all of it went out of Koenig's experience as it did for everyone else.
"Thank you all for coming," he began slowly. "I scheduled this meeting at this time to give you all time to adjust to what happened with the wormhole incident, and to give you all a chance to go through the reports of what the state of Alpha is, and what our supply situation is, and work out where to go from there."
"Shall I make a start, Commander?" Helena Russell asked politely.
"Please do."
"Sickbay is jam packed with personnel," Helena began. "The good news is many of the injuries are just concussions, broken bones, and injuries you'd expect from high-speed impact, but fortunately there haven't been any more deaths."
"That is good news," Koenig nodded. "What are our medical supplies like?"
Helena checked. "They appear to be holding up; one of the experiments on Alpha was to use the hydroponic gardens and the microbiology labs to create herbs and moulds to create drugs. Space medicines it was all called. And there were those experiments where scientists and doctors created new medicines by bringing the diseases up here, to the moon, so the low gravity environment could be used as a benefit. They've worked a treat, but I don't see why we can't still use them now."
"No, neither do I. But do they have limits?"
"Yes, they do. We don't have the means of creating drugs and medications on a large scale, and we don't have the resources needed to make scientific tests to make sure they're safe."
Koenig sighed as his mind raced as he tried to think of a decent solution to the problem but for the moment his mind was blank as he had many more things to worry and concern himself about, but the medical situation was vital since everyone needed to be healthy.
"You could test them on vials of human blood," Victor suggested. "That might be the logical solution."
"Sounds good, but sometimes the best effects are those which you do see; coughing, pale skin, perspiration. That kind of thing, but it's a start," Helena said. "Aside from that our medical situation is good."
"Computer?" Koenig asked.
The Kano twins looked at one another before Dashka piped up. The twins were alike in many ways with the only thing differentiating them was their genders, habits, and many of their interests.
"Computer has recalibrated from the wormhole, so that's okay. We've even got a fix on the location of the moon," Dashka said.
"The only problem is the size of Computer's memory. If we're in space for long periods, we will be collecting valuable information about the space we're passing through," David Kano added, receiving a nod from his sister and making it appear as more of a double act.
Koenig rubbed his face. "Is it an immediate problem?"
"No, not right now. We do have a few ideas, a few solutions but we'll need to test them later," Dashka smiled.
Koenig smiled back. "Okay, keep an eye on it. Right, Paul. What are our supplies like?"
Paul gestured to the folders in front of him. "Alpha received an expansion in the hydroponic sections eight months ago, and we received many more plants, including fruits and vegetables the hydronic section has painstakingly cultivated; we have ryes, wheats, corns, among them so we can make some basic breads and cereals, and soya beans added along with many other fruits and vegetables along with other plants which create enough oxygen. We also have algae and phoedex plants in the section."
"Phoedex?" Alan asked.
"It's a rare plant that grows in the Amazon. Rarer now. It was discovered to have many nutrients, proteins, and carbohydrates. Scientists have been experimenting with it for a while, but it allowed us to make diverse foods, so its presence on the moon is a welcome one," Victor explained.
"What's the rest of the supply situation like, Alan?" Koenig asked.
"We should be self-sufficient for a while, Commander, but we will need to recycle water for a while although we do have the means of creating it thanks to the elements found on the moon; the only problem is collecting and refining it; we only have a small facility."
"Could we make it larger?"
"Perhaps, but it will take us time to get that far," Paul replied.
"Mm, can we make copies of the same technology using what we have and then see if we can make it larger? Or better yet find a part of the base which is rarely used, and then mass produce it from there?" Koenig asked.
"I suppose it could be done, sir," Paul made a note on a pad.
"How is our Eagle fleet?" Koenig turned to Alan.
Alan sighed. "Not good," he replied grimly. "We were in the middle of an evacuation when the moon was torn away by the wormhole; many of the ships were crashed on the lunar surface, others I don't know; it's possible they were destroyed, but I don't know for sure. We have a small fleet of them left; 19,22, and 23 ships, and there were some left littering the lunar surface. I've already got teams out there, salvaging them. Any that are reparable are to be brought back here, the rest will be salvaged and cannibalised. But that kind of maintenance only goes so far. I think we'll need to keep watch for asteroids and other moons for mining."
Koenig wrote down the note. "Right. What about the Meta probe ship? Is that salvageable?"
"Some of it is; we've brought it to Alpha, but the Queller drive is fried to pieces but some of the other components and hull sections are intact for us to work with, so they can be salvaged."
"We should be rebuilding the Queller drive to get us back home," Simmonds suddenly interrupted. "It's the only practical solution. We can't stay out here. We have to get back home!"
"We can't, Commissioner. Even if we could get the Queller drive working and installed on what's left of our Eagles, we would need to put everyone in suspended animation and we don't have the resources for either of them. And even if we built some kind of colony on Meta, we would never be able to build a ship or a fleet of ships that could get us to Earth without years of study and work."
"What do you mean, years of study?"
Koenig rubbed his face.
"Commissioner, do you know how many years went into the Meta probe launch?" Dashka asked pointedly.
"10."
"10 years of research into materials, propulsion, the astronomical fixing and the technology needed to keep the crew in suspended animation. They had access to the best technologies on Earth to help, but we don't. Alpha was never designed with those facilities in mind; it was only designed as a research colony. We have nothing here to train astronauts, to manufacture Queller drives or calculate the amount of power they would need to us," Victor pointed out. "To conduct that kind of research, we would need a planet and time to build industries, observatories, and satellites to help with astronomical fixing. That would take time. Years."
"And the only way of building and launching a ship would be to find a planet we could colonise," Alan said. "We would need to build the colony first and then mine the minerals, and then we'd have to train new astronauts. That takes time and years of work. So many things could go wrong since we'd need to train our Eagle pilots in a new ship. That takes time and many problems could come out."
"But surely we have gathered enough information about the wormhole, Professor?" Simmonds refused to give up.
Victor sighed. "Commissioner, until now I didn't expect to see exotic matter in our lifetime. And even then, I don't understand it. I don't know how it's created. How our nuclear waste was transformed into exotic matter in the first place Our instruments are not designed to study or understand it. And as for the wormhole, we did get scientific data on it, but not enough to understand how exotic matter works, or how it folds space/time. Worse, we have no idea how the exotic matter is produced. We can't do it."
As the meeting dragged on, the Alphan senior command team debated and agreed to ration the Earth foods and focus instead on eating hydroponically grown foods while they kept watching for mineral baring asteroids for metals and chemicals, but one of the biggest problems they had was water and how they could resupply the moon. The only suggestion that made sense was the earlier idea, so it stuck. They'd look for places on the base where they could quickly mass produce water in larger quantities, and then refine it for use.
The meeting went on for an hour before Commander Koenig closed it. "I think we're done for now," he said quietly in thought. "We will need to ration everything when needed and keep watch on the supply situation and focus on looking for a new world. Wait," he held up his hand when Simmonds went to protest again, "I would like to return us to Earth, but I can't see any way of doing it in a practical means. We can't produce a wormhole, or any other kind of faster than light drive, or a Queller drive with our current resources, but we can settle on a planet and turn it into our new world. I think that is the best solution, and from there we can look into taking our space technology to a new level when we have the right resources. Right now we need to make a new beginning in space."
