Sunday, 18th May 2008: The crew was strapped in the command module of the spaceship and the ship was in launch sequence sharp at 0900 hours. The commander and mission control collaborated by a final systems check. The systems were a go and the final countdown began. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 We have lift off…
The largest possible rocket thrusters filled with aviation fuel spurred to life and with a dense cloud of exhaust gases, the spaceship was launched towards outer space. When they reached the outermost layer of earth’s atmosphere, the rocket’s parts were slowly detached from the ship and finally after the detaching sequence, the ship was functional on its own power source.
The ship had been launched into the correct path towards the Alpha station which was the first quarter of the mission. Everyone unfastened their seat belts and could finally move to their stations. The ship specialists ran their routine checks. The mission specialists were debriefed by David and Linda on the final mission plan. On the night of 19th May, all the crew members except David and Linda (who were talking home via the secure communications channel that now came standard with every space travel machine) were sitting together in the command module and talking to each other about previous missions.
All of them knew about the tragic death of Major Daniel but only some of them knew that David, Linda and Sarah were on that mission with Daniel. Deborah was one of them so she asked Sarah about Daniel’s death. Sarah told everyone about the tragic incident.
You are currently reading the second chapter. Go to Vacuum for a chapterwise listing…
So David, Linda, Daniel and I were on a mission to Alpha during the early stages of its assembly. It was a simple undock and dock mission. We were given the carrier that we are going to fetch tomorrow and we were supposed to attach it to the rear end of USOS. Daniel and David went out in their space suits to do the docking manually because there was some mechanical failure in the arm.
They had attached the carrier and unhooked it from our ship but when they were retracting towards the ship, Daniel’s suit ruptured due to some tiny debris that was invisible to the naked eye and to save the ship from contamination, David had to make a tough call. He quickly locked the door after he stepped inside due to which his suit also got detached from the ship and Daniel got exposed to radiation which brutally killed him. His suit was never recovered as it kept floating in the vacuum. Sarah loved scaring people, so she came up with an idea.
She continued, Daniel died on May 20th and after his death, tomorrow would be the first time anyone tries to use the carrier. Due to expensive work done on Nautilus we have been forced to work with this carrier only as we are short on budget. Tomorrow on his death anniversary, the gates of the carrier would be opened again. Who knows what would happen!
David walked in and said, “Sarah, stop scaring them and get to work!”
“Alright alright”, said Sarah and the whole crew got scattered.
Tuesday, 20th May 2008: Nautilus reached the Alpha station right on time and with the correct speed. The pilots corrected the positioning and the computer automatically docked into the rear of the carrier. Someone had to go to the other side and undock it from the Alpha station. This was because it was an old carrier
Ship specialist Edward and Mission specialist Linda were tasked with doing this. They suited up. Then went through the old carrier to the front end of the carrier that was attached to the Alpha station. Edward uncoupled the docking arm from the Alpha station and Linda reinforced the lid of the carrier.
The carrier was successfully docked to their ship and they were read to boot out. The pilots readied the engine and launched them into a calculated amount of thrust into the orbit of the moon so that they land on the dark side as planned. Linda and Edward started moving back to their ship when suddenly commander David said that the lid of the carrier wasn’t reinforced properly.
Linda was completely bewildered by that as she herself closed it. Both of them turned around and saw that there was something blocking the lid. Edward pulled whatever it was back in. It was a space suit. Linda closed the lid and double checked whether it was reinforced. As the lid closed the carrier’s systems came back online and were now centrally controlled by the ship’s computers.
Something Unexpected
Slowly air and gravity systems came online and they were free to remove their space suits. Both of them removed their caps and tried to read the rusty name on the space suit. Both of them in unison said, “This can’t be. This is impossible!”
David asked on the comms, “What happened?”
Linda’s answer dumbfounded each and every crew member. “Something was blocking the lid, it was a space suit… the space suit of… Major… Daniel… Young…”
Stay tuned for more crisp…
