Chapter 31: Rescue

As a safety precaution Daria, Shamus, Anton, and Darren had brought with them "rescue balls." These were inflatable containers that could hold about two hours of air. In the case of a major suit breach or other emergency they would be able to crawl into the balls and breathe. Then a rescuer would attach a line to the rescue ball and haul it to safety. They now planned to use these with the newly awakened aliens.

Arnison was now joined by a female alien, Jaricon, and another male, Sazer. The four astronauts and three aliens just stood there and looked at each other. This lasted almost two minutes before Shamus engaged his translator. This next conversation would be well beyond his minimal grasp and vocabulary in the alien language. The translator was an application derived from the phone translators on Earth where one person could speak, for example, English on one end and the other person would hear it in their own language, say Russian. These programs had been introduced in the mid-2020's and had spurred international commerce. Marcipor had assisted with programming this one. Fortunately, there were a few phones on Mars, which people had brought with them.

"My name is Shamus," Shamus began. "As I am sure you can tell, we are humans from Earth. We now have a colony on Mars. We discovered your base on Mars and appreciate the technological help that your artificial intelligence has provided to us. We spotted your wreckage while testing the warp drive. Now we would like to take you back to Mars. We have emergency rescue equipment that will allow us to transport you back to our ship."

"I am Arnison. Chief engineer. Before we go," Arnison said. "We must be sure there are no living people on the ship. Since there is no main power, then anyone surviving like us must be in a sleep drawer. There are several chambers similar to this one. There it would be possible to enter the sleep state and extend one's life. Also, I need to download the ship's memory to try and determine what happened. The entire incident lasted only a very few minutes!"

"Very well," Shamus replied. "However, we have at most two hours before we must load you into the rescue devices and have a safety factor while taking you back to our ship. Also, we can fit the three of you into our craft. If there are more, then leave them sleeping and we can return to get them later."

"Before we use your rescue devices," Arnison said,"We should see if our own spacesuits are functional and will hold pressure. If so, then it may extend our time to search this ship."

Shamus stated, "Agreed. Tell us how we can assist you."

Over the next hour the seven people worked on locating and testing alien spacesuits. Through the translator in Shamus' suit Anton asked many technical questions. Anton's main motivation was to determine whether or not weapons were integrated into the suits. Arnison answered most of the questions. There were no weapons and the suits did not appear to amplify the strength of the wearer. Anton was satisfied that the suits were safe to bring aboard the Explorer. He was also pleased that all of the power systems on the ship appeared to be dead. He was happy to rescue these aliens, but Anton wanted no surprises.

With the aliens now in their spacesuits, it was time to search for other survivors. The fiber optic cable from the probe was used to hold a conference call with Tom and Darren aboard the Explorer. It was decided that the search would be conducted by two teams. Each would have one alien and two humans. The remaining alien, Jaricon, would stay in the chamber where the aliens were found and monitor communications within their ship, and get help from the Explorer if needed. The search would have to end in two hours and everyone would then get aboard the Explorer. There were six chambers to be searched.

31.2

Daria thought she could feel every hair on her body stand as they walked through the levels of this ship. In a word, it was creepy. The only light was from either the helmet mounted lights on the humans' spacesuits or the handheld lantern carried by Arnison.

Springing to her mind was the night back in high school when she walked over to Jane's house with aliens on her mind. She remembered seeing the strange lights in the park across from Jane's house. She remembered being scared out of her wits when Arnie the pizza delivery guy came to the door with a pizza that Trent had ordered. Wow. Arnie. Arnison. Was there a connection? Was that creepy ginger guy just an alien with good makeup? If so, then why was he delivering pizza? Besides, by that point the aliens had been floating out here for over 900 years. This assumes, of course, that they had not left a colony on Earth! But then, they said that they had all left. Too bad she couldn't talk to Jane about this – at least not right now.

Daria realized that she was straggling a bit. So she picked up her pace. The gravity covers for their boots that Marcipor had showed them how to fabricate were very handy. They produced only about five percent of Earth gravity, but that was enough that with careful footwork they could walk along these corridors in the ship and not have to worry about floating off somewhere. The main thing was to move foot to foot without pushing off using too great a force.

As Daria hurried along she suddenly felt something hit her from behind. Spinning, she used just a bit too much force and floated up. As she made a half circle she came eye to eye with a dead alien. The alien's eyes were frozen wide open and stared lifelessly into Daria's helmet. The face showed the distinctive checkered pattern of death from decompression.

Daria screamed. Her thought, just before bouncing off the ceiling, was that she was glad that there was a highly absorbent pad in the suit. She came down onto the deck without much force, but enough that she felt it as she landed on her hands and knees. At least her feet were again in contact with the floor, so she could get up.

Hearing Daria scream and seeing her hit the floor Anton shouted, "Daria are you alright?" He then rushed over to help her. He gave the dead alien a shove and it floated back down the corridor.

"I'm fine, though I will probably need a couple of painkillers to sleep tonight. And this suit will need a new pad. Even in zero gravity a fall can be uncomfortable. At least I didn't break a hip!"

"Thank God for that. Come on, we have one more room to check. Then we can start back to Explorer."

Anton walked over to Arnison, who had just opened the door to the room possibly containing survivors. The two walked in together while Daria stayed outside. The procedure was that one person would remain outside each room, just in case the others would become trapped. Someone was available to go for help. In this group's case Daria had her portable cutting torch with her.

Upon entering, Arnison immediately walked over to the bank of sleep drawers. Turning to the others he said, "These are all empty. The only one with someone in it is Kazira's. I assume it is her, since she clearly wired the power units from three other chambers into hers."

Daria looked at the other aliens. Nonverbal communication was critical among humans. She had not known whether this was true among other intelligent species or not, in particular these aliens. Arnison's last statement answered her question. she saw Sazer roll his eyes. Maybe some forms of nonverbal communication were unversal in the universe!

Anton turned to Arnison, "Unless you have another way, we will need to establish a pressurized space before you wake your colleague. That will take time and we will have to return to our ship in order to resupply our suits and get additional equipment."

"Agreed," Arnison replied. "Let's go."

Daria noted that Sazer nodded 'yes' very quickly when Arnison said, 'Let's go."

Both search groups made their way back to the entry spot and Jaricon joined them. They then followed the tether back to the Explorer.

31.3

It was a bit tight aboard the Explorer. Everyone managed to sit around the small table. Tom had prepared some dinner, as soon as he had quizzed the aliens about what Earth foods they could eat. Everything they had could be eaten by the aliens, so Tom had quickly whipped up pasta and meatballs in a tomato sauce covered with cheese. He also had made rolls. They sat and conversed with the aliens through the translator and Arnison.

Darren remarked to Anton, "We can get through tomorrow, but by adding a fourth person the following morning we will run out of food. More importantly, we are down to two days of air and water. So, anything you want to do you need to do tomorrow. With that fourth person we will have to leave after breakfast the following morning. We should be back on Mars by lunchtime, but oxygen and water will be quite low. Certainly less than we allow as a safety margin."

"We would like to complete our task and leave as soon as possible," Arnison said.

Daria asked, "So what is it about you colleague Kazira that you do not like?"

Arnison looked at Daria and replied, "Kazira is a fine colleague and member of the crew. She is a hard worker and very intelligent."

For the first time Jaricon piped up saying, "It's just that she never, ever shuts up! Her mouth is always running. She talks to herself when she is thinking. She talks to herself whenever she is engaged in a task. She even talks to herself when she eats! Then there are the times when she talks to the rest of us. If you are working with her on a task she is always talking! If it was up to me I would leave her asleep, though she is probably talking even in her sleep!

Now Sazer spoke, "You exaggerate Jaricon! She doesn't talk while she is asleep."

Jaricon interrupted and looked at the humans around the table, "Maybe we could use one of your rescue balls and just leave her in there!"

"You two both exaggerate," Arnison said. "You will give our rescuers the wrong impression about someone they have not even met!"

The humans couldn't help but laugh at this interchange. Anton was the one to say, "We have all known people like that too. I hope that it is an indication that maybe our species are not so different from one another."

Looking at Anton, Arnison stated, "We are alike in many ways, though we are not as well developed or talented in the arts as you humans. We tend to be very simple and utilitarian. Your writing, music, and graphic arts are things we much admire. We wish we were so creative in that way."

"Thank you for the compliments," Tom said. "We are impressed by your technology and advanced artificial intelligence. Perhaps as we clean up after dinner and make sleeping arrangements we should play some music that is considered high art on Earth. It came about 700 years after you left."

"That would be very welcome," Arnison replied.

Looking up, Tom said, "Explorer. Play Mozart's Jupiter symphony."

A disembodied voice replied, "Playing Mozart's Jupiter symphony." Then the music started.