Whoa what a busy week I just had. Only got a few paragraphs done but tomorrow is Sunday so its laundry, kitchen clean up and 'write my butt off' day.
Chapter 69
Not Much to Go On
On the 17th of March in the year 1852, an Italian astronomer named Annibale de Gasparis decided to take a look at the night sky above Naples through his telescope. He was pleased to discover great big lump of iron over two hundred kilometres in diameter, orbiting in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. This was the fifth time since April 1849 he had made such a discovery and he decided to name this one after the Greek mythological figure Psyche. Gasparis was a very accomplished astronomer and had won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1851, and had even won the Lalande Prize two years in succession.
Even though he was very knowledgeable, Gasparis had no way of knowing that over two hundred years later, the young descendant of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, sometimes known as the Dragon Master, would arrive at this minor planet with his father, his sister and a young girl who tried to act mature, but would still giggle to herself every time someone mentioned the planet Uranus.
This young girl now watched in awe as a number of cylindrical cargo pods, each big enough to fit a large bus inside with room to spare, detached themselves one by one from the interplanetary ship and began to move slowly away. Each one opened up to reveal the various robotic machines inside. Six refrigerator sized satellites were among the first to emerge; they automatically manoeuvred themselves into position before moving off into space.
"Where are they going?" Calla asked.
"Each one will go about three thousand kilometres away and begin to map the area" Luis Dias informed her. "They will send signals to guide all the Collector Units to smaller asteroids."
"Why do you want smaller asteroids when you've got a great big one sitting just over there?" Calla pointed to 16 Psyche.
"That great big asteroid is made almost entirely of iron-nickel" Luis explained "Very useful to be sure, but the others we collect will provide us with silicates, other metals, gasses and even water."
"Sounds legit" Calla shrugged as several of the Collector Units emerged from the same pod.
Luis floated down from the observation cupola, leaving Calla to enjoy the view all by herself, but every now and then she would see one or two members of the Dias family passing by beneath her as they co-ordinated the robotic ballet going on outside the ship. The machines that held her interest the longest were the ones working at the top of the asteroid. At the exact centre of what would be 16 Psyche's North Pole, a large lander had drilled into the asteroid and anchored itself into position before several others units began to assemble four arms. At the ends of these arms, curved track pieces were then put in place until a ring twenty meters across, surrounded the central lander. The ring was a circular track only a meter above the surface of the asteroid, to which four milling machines were attached.
As Calla watched through a set of binoculars, red tracking lasers flashed across the surface as the machines began to work their way around the ring and grind away at the asteroid while collecting the ground metallic swarf dust in side containers. She really wanted to see how the whole operation would progress but without the ability to hit fast forward, the procedure was becoming far too tedious for her. Instead she floated off to the centre of the MTV and began to climb down to the simulated gravity ring. To her surprise she found Blue there, looking at images on a computer screen.
"I thought you were helping your Dad" Calla noted.
"Huh?" Blue looked up, his concentration broken. "Oh... yeah but everything is pretty much on automatic now, so we'll just take shifts keeping an eye on things till it's time for the next stage."
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Calla asked as she peered over Blues shoulder.
Calla expected to see something related to the asteroid or possibly Blue's family, but instead she was surprised to see him looking intently at pictures of dragons. There were no real dragons of course but there were plenty of artworks, pictures of stone carvings and even a rendition on the side of a space capsule.
"Are you still obsessing about those things?" Calla crossed her arms and shook her head.
"I can't stop thinking about them" Blue admitted "And the more I think about what DeGroot told me, along with what I saw in the book of Gothi, the more I feel like I have to go back."
"Back?" Calla gasped "Back to Earth?"
"I really do feel like I have to" Blue explained.
"You didn't mention this when we were talking before" Calla snapped.
"Err..." Blue articulated.
"When I clearly told you I wanted to stay out here" she continued.
"Um..." Blue widened his vocabulary.
"What about your mother; don't you want to see her?"
"Of course I was gonna wait till I'd seen her first..." Blue grasped at his own thoughts.
"And then you were going to just leave and expect me to follow" Calla accused.
"I didn't expect..." he began but did not get very far.
"And you're gonna abandon your dad and your sisters; you don't think about anyone but yourself, you selfish JERK!"
Blue just sat there totally stunned as Calla stormed off to the other side of the ring section while mumbling to herself.
"I risk my life and fly into space to help that ungrateful swine save his family, and now I find out he's secretly planning to either drag me back to Earth or dump me out in deep space..."
As her voice faded in the distance, Blue noticed it sounded a little cracked and quite desperate.
"SORRY IF I'M IN YOUR WAY!" her final shout reverberated around the ship.
"In my way?" Blue was taken aback.
"Are you really leaving?"
"What the... how long have you been there?" Blue jumped in his chair at the sound of his sister's voice.
"Long enough" Abigail replied "I can't believe you want to go back."
"What wrong with everyone today?" Blue asked with genuine confusion.
"I can tell you now, Mom and Dad won't be happy to hear about this."
"If you were eavesdropping long enough, you would have heard me say I wasn't planning on returning to Earth before catching up with the rest of the family."
"Really?" Abigail crossed her arms, which was never a good sign "So it's gonna be quick hello to Mom and Saffy and then you'll be off."
"Don't be so melodramatic" Blue sighed "Calla and I were just talking and I happened to mention I'm planning on going back to Earth some day. Where's the harm in that?"
"You just changed everything without even considering how it would affect Calla... or the rest of us" Abigail pointed out.
"Affect you?" Blue protested "How about affecting me? I just spent fifteen years locked up underground and now I find out I'm a prisoner of my own family."
"Calla was right; you are a selfish jerk" Abigail snorted.
"You've got it all wrong; I never said I was going to leave straight away, but I know I'll have to return to Earth someday and when the time comes, Calla can choose for herself if she wants to stay out here or come back home."
"And what if she'd been planning to stay out here... with you?"
The Barn Owl of Slow Realisation often felt underutilised, so it was good to have a task to do at last. Unfortunately Blue immediately rejected what his sister was telling him in favour of something less confronting.
"Look Abigail, she may not be trying to kill me anymore, but it's still obvious to me by the way she acts that Calla wants me to give her a lot of personal space. If I go back to Earth, she can have two hundred million kilometres worth."
"You really are an idiot" Abigail noted; and she was not smiling when she said it.
If the first week of April's Enquiry into the Deep Council was any indication, it was going to be a long slow process. It had been decided that the two Mars citizens sitting with April on the panel, should represent both the people who came from Earth as adults, as well as those who were raised on Mars. Sierra Corbin may act a little frivolous sometimes but she had a very analytical mind, so April was glad to have her on the panel. The selection of the second member proved to be a much more difficult process. Everyone feared that because the Deep council was still so cloaked in secrecy, there was a possibility they would try to put one of their own members on the investigative panel. In the end Klein and Topolski agreed to break their silence only to confirm the man chosen was clean; and so Victor Kittredge became the final panellist.
Each Deep Councillor used a code number when they made contact with the investigators over the comms system allowing them to give testimony and be cross examined without yet being identified. It was all very messy and April was filled with doubt about how successful the whole process would turn out to be. She began the first day by setting some ground rules for the Mars citizens input into the proceedings, but it all fell apart before lunch. Every question answered only prompted dozens more questions both from the gallery of people and from those watching in their homes. Everyone on Mars knew they had the right to participate but two thousand people were far too much for three investigators to co-ordinate.
On the second day April took proceedings in a completely different direction. She put all questions aside and asked each Deep Council member to give a personal account of how they were recruited, what policies they were involved in implementing, and what testimony they could give about the other members. By the end of the week, she was ready to tear her own hair out.
"I knew this would happen" April growled at Marshal Baron "And I'll bet the Deep Council knew it too; and that's why they wanted this whole enquiry."
"I'm beginning to think I'm going to spend the rest of my life constantly repeating the words Calm Down April" Marshal sighed.
"She may be a tad tense" Sierra Corbin admitted "but you have to admit she had good reason."
"But everything is going so well" Marshal Baron disagreed "We're getting a lot of testimony which will lead to..."
"Don't be ridiculous Marshal" April snapped "There is absolutely nothing there of any use at all. Each and every member of the Deep Council has managed to find a different way of saying exactly the same thing. They didn't know what they were getting into and ended up being trapped with no way out. They were not responsible for the operations of the Council, but they don't believe it is up to them to point the finger at those who were responsible."
"Yeah that pretty much sums up everyones testimony" Victor Kittredge agreed.
"But each one took several hours to say it" Sierra added.
Deep in thought, April paced towards the far wall before turning back to Marshal Baron.
"I went along with this farce in the hope it would achieve something worthwhile, and do so before Luis and the kids completed their quarantine period" she insisted "But now it appears to be going nowhere and won't be done till I've had this baby, raised it and sent it off to college. I'm going home to write some new demands and guidelines; and if what I come up with dosen't upset every last member of the Deep Council, then I haven't gone far enough."
"April wait..." Marshal began but she was already half out the door.
By the time April reached the first turn in the corridor, it became very clear that she was being followed.
"WHAT?" she shouted bluntly as she spun on her heels.
To April's surprise, it was not Marshal Baron trying to get her to return, but Talon Descott who almost ran into her.
"Uh... sorry Mrs. Dias, I was just trying to keep up" he stated.
"No I'm sorry Talon I thought... never mind, how's the nose?"
"Still a bit sore but getting better; your daughter has quite a fist."
"Yes I'm sure Luis would say she takes after her mother; now why are you following me?"
"I've been assigned to protect you Mrs. Dias" Talon stated proudly "I've been made a cadet in the new Mars Security Force."
"Mars Security For..?" April's eyes almost fell out of her skull as she temporarily lost the power of cognitive speech.
"OH HELL NO!" her voice quickly returned and she stormed back the way she had come.
"Wait for me" Talon called before April suddenly stopped again and stared the young man down.
"STAY!" she stated bluntly.
"I... I'll wait here then" Talon agreed.
Sierra and Victor were mildly surprised to see April step back into the room, but not Marshal Baron for he knew exactly what was coming.
"It had to happen sooner or later and the Mars Citizens Council decided now was the right time."
"What had to happen?" Sierra asked.
"GO ON... TELL HER" April demanded as she shook her fist "THEN HOLD STILL SO I CAN DECK YOU!"
"It's not what you think April" Marshal protested.
"Apart from this whole Deep Council business, how many crimes have been committed on Mars lately?" April said accusingly.
"Apart from the Deep Council?" Marshal thought "Only the ones you and your friends are responsible for, but no charges will be laid over them."
"ME!?" April gasped.
"Fraud, deception, an unauthorised takeover of base communication..." Marshal stated.
"I had to do all those things to expose what was going on around here" April defended herself.
"And that is why we will NOT be pressing charges against you" Marshal smiled.
"Do you expect me to be grateful about that?" April said through gritted teeth.
"SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT HAS HAPPENED!" Sierra cried out.
"Mars has become a Police State" April revealed.
Although this chapter is nothing like 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe', I was inspired by the words of Zaphod Beeblebrox when he described their meal time as "Food, wine, a little personal abuse and the universe going FOOOM!" It pretty much describes what is going on in the minds of April and Calla, but without the food and wine.