THE CAMBRIDGE ANNEX: THE TRILOGY Read online

  “Are you going to be using any of the oxygen you create out of photosynthesis of the plants?” she asked.

  “We’re going to try,” John told her with a nod. “But we’re not reliant on it. We’re holding liquid oxygen in pressurised tanks, and the air purification is a larger version of what was used on the ISS,” he explained. Mention of the ISS brought a momentary silence.

  “We understand you’ll be providing all the communications,” Larry said.

  Cheryl nodded. “We plan to install laser,” she explained.

  “You’re not worried about noise?” he asked.

  Cheryl shook her head. “Something to do with Slow Light, but I didn’t follow much of it. Leanne can be very obscure when she gets excited,” she admitted. The two Americans’ glanced at each other, no doubt making mental notes for later.

  “So, when will it be ready?” she asked.

  “Well, it kind of stalled when we heard the news about Michael Bennett being placed into police custody,” Larry explained. “That’s why it’s so quiet here today. Normally there are people climbing in and around the place.”

  “Well, Mr Bennett is no longer in jail,” Cheryl told them, and smiled as she walked slowly back to the Range Rover.

  “Miss Hall, Miss Hall? Will any of your spacemen be joining us?” Larry asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Cheryl told them.

  “We weren’t sure if there would be someone with one of your SUV’s there, just in case of emergency?” John pressed.

  “A SUV wouldn’t do you much good,” she frowned. “They’re limited to about 100,000 kilometres an hour. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in one of those for forty odd days, even if it was an emergency,” she told him.

  John caught up with the maths and nodded. Cheryl waved and got back into the Range Rover. She just loved taking-off when there was an audience.

  September 17th.

  Glen could tell by the man’s expression that his news wasn’t good.

  Glen was seated in the suite the ARC had assigned him, settling into life on board a spaceship and enjoying the state of the art facilities it afforded him. He had already decided that his den at home was going to have three monitors and every type of communications that existed too.

  “What’s happened? No luck at the manufacturer?” he asked over the video conference facility.

  Agent Hank Woldier shook his head. “Not with Richards Manufacturing directly, no sir. They took the NASA badge at face value and allowed the man access to the plant. He signed in as Hugh Donaldson, but Hugh Donaldson knows nothing about any trip to Richards Manufacturing and was at work that day.

  “However, Richards has CCTV covering their car-park, and though the image of the man was too blurry to do much with, we were able to clean up the car registration plate and get an ID.”

  “And?” Glen asked, beginning to get interested.

  “A rental car. It was hired out to a Mr Ian Gowen with an address in Washington DC. Both name and address are false,” the agent explained.

  Glen sighed and mentally made plans to ensure that, in future, all suppliers took more evidence from people coming to their door pretending to be NASA officials conducting spot checks.

  September 19th.

  “Come on then,” Michael told Glen, putting his tablet on the meeting room table before making for the refreshment corner to pour himself a cup of tea. Frankie reached it first and then smiled at the American as he chose to sit immediately across from him.

  “I just wanted to clarify some aspects of the Mars project,” Glen told them.

  “So Cheryl told me,” Michael nodded, taking his seat. He glanced at his watch. “What exactly worries you?”

  “Suits,” Glen began.

  “Haven’t you got any yet?” Michael asked. “You’re cutting it fine,” he suggested.

  “Perhaps we could use yours?” Glen asked nicely.

  “Quite possibly. But we have an agreement with the manufacturer and patent holder, so we’d have to levy a fee, say one million US Dollars per suit?” Michael suggested. “Rental, of course. We will want them back afterwards,” he stressed.

  Glen sighed and took notes.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “We’ll be providing a number of vehicles within the facility. We were wondering if we should reserve you a parking space for any vehicles your five designated staff might want to bring along,” Glen asked, smiling thinly.

  Michael shook his head.

  “What, you’re not bringing any vehicles at all?” Glen asked in surprise.

  “We have reserved parking in orbit,” Frankie told him. “So if something does happen to the laboratory, it won’t damage our vehicles,” he pointed out, smiling just as thinly in reply.

  “Right. I see,” Glen nodded, and made a note. “Now, what about pick-up. I assume we’ll all be travelling in that ferry you’re converting in Scotland?” he said, smiling as he divulged his knowledge of the ARC’s secret project.

  “No,” Michael told him. “There’s no way I’m going to allow anyone outside of the project to fly in it. No, your crew will come up here in one of our coaches. We can prep them for life in space, fit them with suits, and fit them with RFID capsules too, all at the same time.

  “They’ll then transfer to the Mars Laboratory for the 10, 12 hour trip to Mars.”

  “Ten hours? Is that all?” Glen gasped incredulously.

  “About that. The orbits of Earth and Mars are completely independent of each other,” Frankie explained. “And the Mars orbit is far more elliptical than that of the earth. All in all, together with the Mars year lasting nearly two of earth’s, it means the distance between the two changes every minute. However, it’s never closer than about 56 million kilometres, and never further than around 400 million.”

  “But I was told the SUVs would take at least forty days,” Glen told them.

  Both Michael and Frankie laughed, glancing at each other with the realisation of where Glen was getting his information. “The SUVs, because of their size, can’t travel as fast as the ferry, or the Mars Laboratory. So you’re quite right; the SUVs would take approximately forty days to get back to earth from Mars, depending on their orbits. The Ferry though, and the Mars Laboratory, they’ll be travelling a lot faster.” Frankie assured him.

  “Does that cover it?” Michael asked.

  “Just one more item, and it’s related to Mars, but not really about the Mars Laboratory,” he explained.

  “Back in 2004 we landed two robotic rovers on Mars; Spirit and Opportunity,” he began to tell them, stopping for a moment as both men nodded.

  “They operated for years, didn’t they?” Frankie recalled.

  “Spirit stopped transmitting in late 2011. Opportunity stopped two Martian winters after that, in 2015.” Glen agreed. “They became heroes, in a way. They outperformed, beyond anyone’s expectations. The original mission was only 90 days.”

  “You want us to return them to you,” Frankie asked.

  “Would it be possible?” he asked.

  Michael looked towards Frank with an air of incredulity. “You’re not actually thinking of doing it, are you?” he asked.

  Frankie traded looks with Michael for a few moments. “Financially, what’s it worth to you?” he asked Glen.

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, there’s no budget or anything,” he shrugged.

  “How many billion are we saving you by taking you to Mars?” Michael asked.

  “How much were you thinking of?” Glen asked Frank with a sigh of defeat.

  “A hundred million US Dollars,” Frankie answered.

  Glen made a strangling noise in his throat.

  “And I’ll let Jerry come along. Jerry Mathers. He can be the first man to set foot on Mars,” Frankie added.

  “Done!” Glen said immediately, and held his hand out for Frankie to shake it. Michael meanwhile was leaning back to howl with mirth.

  +++++++++++++

  Glen had le
ft the room, no doubt to tell his President that he had just ensured that an American would be the first person to stand on Martian soil, and what better way to do it, than in a rescue mission that would bring home two iconic robots.

  Michael shook his head and chuckled, then looked towards Frankie. “That buys you your own ship,” he noted.

  Frankie agreed by just nodding.

  “What, six months from now?” Michael asked.

  “Could be,” Frankie agreed.

  Michael tried smiling. “Somehow I felt you would be here longer,” he said.

  “We’re not abandoning the ARC, Michael. We’re just buying our own home. We’re still going to come to work and what have you. Novices are still going to have to come to school,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but it won’t be the same, Frankie,” Michael told him, standing to put his cup in the bin.

  +++++++++++++

  “So, how’s the hunt for our saboteur coming along?” Michael asked, bumping into Glen in the lounge, both preparing themselves drinks from the dispensers.

  “Not too well,” Glen sighed. “We know how it was done; by someone impersonating a NASA employee doing spot checks for quality control. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good enough facial image to run him against our image database, and the name he gave to the hire company was bogus; Ian Gower,” Glen explained, and stopped as he sensed Michael was no longer following him towards the seating area nearby.

  He turned and saw Michael had stopped, a strange expression on his face. “Ian Gower? You’re certain?” he asked, pulling out his tablet.

  “Sure I’m certain. You know the name?” Glen asked.

  “Stan?” Michael cried, not in the least sorry for having woken the man up.”Ian Gower has turned up,” he grinned.

  September 20th.

  Cheryl entered the dry dock and grinned at the craft that stood there, metals of various hues welded together into a seamless whole, its shape not quite like that of a ship, but not quite that of an aircraft fuselage either. For the moment it was unique, and she had to smile with satisfaction as she thought of her role in making it what it was.

  The outside was complete now, but for the rubber coating that was to be sprayed onto it, a full 50 centimetres deep. That would be done after the HYPORT has been wired in, when the craft could be lifted free of its supports and sprayed more easily.

  The work was now concentrated on the interior where most of the structure was still bare steel and aluminium. One of the army engineers had been going round sticking a label on each space, identifying it for everyone. Not that anyone from the ARC needed such reminders, but for many of the army engineers, what they were building was still completely alien to them.

  They couldn’t clad the bare structure until Leanne had approved all the cabling, and she couldn’t do that until Allan had approved all the systems. Now that the generators were on board, he could begin. He was now in charge; directing the teams to the area he was testing, checking it through its various stages before signing off on it to move onto the next. Five down, just 634 to go, twice as many as the ARC had at launch. Such was the learning curve the ARC had imposed.

  +++++++++++++

  Samuel Jenkins finished his tour of the kitchens and thanked the staff for doing such a wonderful job. Once again, there had not been one complaint regarding the food or the service, and he complimented them with genuine respect for their diligence.

  The staff glowed, grinning at one another, some slapping palms together in the High-Five salute.

  He had also introduced a questionnaire in all the suites, so that now the first thing to appear on their screens in the morning was a very brief request for feed-back on four items regarding their living quarters. The four questions changed every day and were rarely in the same group when next asked. That way, the questionnaire was always different. However, Tony had helped with the logic, so each small group of suites had all the questions answered on the same day, and Samuel could then trace that back to individual working parties. It was working well, with an improving score. The staff liked the idea too, as it gave them a clear goal to achieve and helped build a team spirit.

  He had envisaged the craft bringing many surprises, and yet the largest surprise had come not from the maintenance of the craft and its systems, but from his spiritual beliefs.

  Although the ship represented possibly the highest accumulation of intelligence and talent on earth, the people on board were still generally young adults who had rarely been away from home for long, or indeed to such a remote location. And while many could have ignored the risks inherent in being in space, five hundred kilometres above earth, the recent demise of the International Space Station had made more than a few students just a little apprehensive, if not actually nervous. Added to which the constant pressure from loved ones back on earth to communicate regularly and frequently. They weren’t necessarily clear about who or what was in the Chapel, but they sought spiritual comfort from that source, just as they would have done back on earth.

  For Samuel, prayer had always brought calmness. Although prayer on earth had tended to be a solitary practice, on the ship, as he instructed students in how to pray, he naturally prayed himself too. So soon, without intending to, he had a growing number of students, professors and travellers who joined him for one or more of his prayer sessions.

  It was almost a natural progression that from prayer came questions regarding his faith and the meaning of life.

  September 22nd.

  Workers at the shipyard had got used to seeing vehicles descend from the sky, slowing with soundless grace just feet from the ground, to softly place their wheels or skids on the ground. They were not used to seeing anyone in the full garb of a spaceman drop from the high cab of the SUV, who then waved towards one of the cameras over the cab of the vehicle to signal it to take off again, leaving him on the ground.

  His skin tight suit suggested he was both lean and strong, the intricate tattoo visible when he pulled the suit’s cowl back immediately identifying him as Frank Hill. There weren’t many people on earth who would not have recognised the man by his tattoo pattern alone.

  A sergeant ran over to him and nodded a greeting. “Was there someone you wanted to see, sir?” he asked.

  “Frank or Frankie,” Frank told him, wincing at the title. “David and Thomas?” he asked.

  The sergeant pointed towards a group of pre-fabricated buildings. “In there, sir,” he told him.

  Frankie strode off and knocked on the first door he came to before peering inside.

  “Frankie!” the boys cried, smiling in unison as they looked up from the diagram they’d been poring over. They shook hands and got him a cup of tea.

  “I hear everything is coming along well,” he told them. “You both look well,” he added.

  “Gail’s extended her Area of Influence to cover the dock and everyone working there, on the premise that ,where ARC personnel are working, then they need to follow a healthy regime,” they explained with lopsided grins. “I think the UK forces have finally met their match,” they chuckled.

  “What brings you here?” they asked.

  “I need to get to Mars,” he told them, and explained his agreement with the Americans to pick up their two exhausted robot rovers.

  “A worthy cause,” they agreed. “Those two rovers provided so much detail. Even when breaking a wheel, they discovered new things we didn’t know before,” they told him.

  “So, what do I need in the way of HYPORT and electricity to let me get there and back as quickly as possible? he asked.

  “A 400 kilowatt generator,” they told him.

  “Those rovers weren’t particularly small, as I recall,” one of the twins told him, going across to a terminal to do a search for one. “You’re not going to get the two of them into a box van. What sort of vehicle were you thinking of using?” he asked.

  “A 40 foot trailer,” he suggested.

  The twins nodded. “Why don’t you involve
some of the students and see what solutions they come up with? There’s a new student studying Mechanical Engineering, Astrophysics. He’d be really overwhelmed by being involved, but he’ll come up with good ideas, I can guarantee it,” they told him.

  “A student?” Frankie asked with a little cautiousness.

  The twins laughed. “He’s alright,” they told him. “He’s provided some good work for us on the ferry. Give him a go and see what he comes up with. Can’t hurt,” they teased.

  +++++++++++++

  It was 7 o’clock on the ARC when Frankie returned, thanking Brendan for the lift. The sour man had lightened up a lot since Paddy had departed. Frankie hoped it would continue as he took out his tablet to search for the student the twins had been talking about.

  Frankie had to laugh at himself. Just six months exposure to the university students and he was operating a tablet as if he’d been born to it, flicking through the student database to find the name of Richard Williams, the one student enrolled in that particular subject. Having placed his icon on the screen, he saw from his RFID that he was in the lounge. Which implied that it was 7 in the evening for him.

  Frankie shrugged. He could do with a cup of tea, and no one had ever said you only talked business in business hours.

  The lounge was full of university students, most in groups of four to six, most looking happy with their lot, some casting him a long glance. He was still in his suit.

  Frankie knew he should persevere with the tablet, but there was a quicker way, and he was all for the quicker way if it served his purpose.

  “Richard Williams!” he shouted loudly.

  The room fell silent, heads turning, so he tried it again, less loudly. “Richard Williams?” he called, and looked about him.

  A hand rose hesitantly from one side of the lounge. Just him and a female student, a young girl who looked ready to run if he said ‘Boo!’

  He walked over with his tea and dragged a free chair over to join them. “Sorry to interrupt,” he told them, “but I need a spaceship to take me to Mars and back really quickly,” he explained.