“Can we eat first?” Sebastian said, and he and his men laughed.
“What did you bring us to eat, Doc?” Collins asked Ellenshaw.
“Beans and rice,” he said, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
Jack and the others looked at Crazy Charlie and didn’t say a word.
“Hey, it’s not like they have a McDonald’s on every corner in Ecuador.”
Will and Jason eased themselves in through the five-foot round hatch. It had been several hours since they had not felt the free-falling weightless phenomenon known as the “floats.” The condition is relatively short-lived and the stomach usually falls back into its normal pattern after some time in the weightless world of space. As they entered the American laboratory named Destiny, they saw that Sarah was busy working with something she had carried in a small case the entire time they had been away from the Event Group complex.
“The colonel says we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.”
Sarah looked up without really seeing Mendenhall.
“Hey, you with us?” he asked, looking from Sarah and then back to Ryan, shrugging his shoulders.
“He says we’re ready for that slingshot thing around the Earth,” Ryan said, watching her closely. “Hey, wake up,” he finally said.
Sarah blinked her eyes and then saw that Ryan was shaking her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said finally, smiling. “I was lost there for a minute.”
“Playing with rocks will do that to you,” Will said as he reached for the meteorite Sarah held in her hand. She pulled it away from him.
“Don’t do that,” she said, her face etched in seriousness. “We’re in an almost pure oxygen environment.”
“Hey, that isn’t one of those Pop Rocks, is it?” Ryan asked as he floated backward.
“Yes, but unless you get it wet, it’s pretty safe. Sorry, Will, but if you had sweat on your hands… well, I don’t know if it would have set off the chain reaction, but being we’re in outer space and all…”
Mendenhall looked from the stone in her hands to her face. “Don’t worry about it, but we better get moving.”
Sarah closed her eyes and nodded. “Right, the old slingshot-around-the-Earth thing. Can’t wait.” She placed the meteorite back into its Styrofoam-encased box and then placed it in her jumpsuit. She pulled her Velcro-covered feet free of the floor.
“What were you thinking when we floated in here? It was like you were in another world,” Ryan asked, following Sarah out of the laboratory.
“The mineral-we’re overlooking something fundamental here and for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.”
“Well, you’ve got two days to figure it out. The colonel has decided on a straight-in approach to the Moon, following the same path as Astral. One orbit and then bam, we hit the surface.”
Mendenhall nudged Ryan. “What do you mean, bam?”
“You know, land,” Ryan said with a wink.
“Have you heard anything about the Chinese?”
“Eighteen hours till they land,” Ryan said, as he slowed and waited for Will to slide by him in the companionway.
“Jesus, we’re so far behind,” Sarah said as she pulled herself into the exercise module where the rest of the crew was waiting.
“Next time I’ll just close up that hatch and leave you three here,” Colonel Kendal said as he stood poised beside a map of Shackleton Crater.
“Apologies, I was making some last-minute spectrographs on the mineral.”
“No excuse. When I call a meeting that means come running.” Kendal’s demeanor softened and he shook his head. “Now, with the docking procedures completed, and Altair joined with the Dark Star 3 crew module and capsule, we’re finally ready. You’ve all had a great meal of MREs, freeze-dried though they are, so we’ll leave now while we have a favorable launch window. In two days we’ll be where we want to be. Sergeant, are your men ready for whatever we may run into?”
“I believe so, sir. The Chinese, if it comes down to it, can’t be that much more prepared than ourselves. Loaded onboard the Altair we have ten compressed-air M-39 rocket-assisted projectile weapons. We are not carrying any explosive ordnance due to the instability of the mineral. Intelligence reports state that the Chinese forces, like the ESA team and the Russians, if they ever get there, will be armed with basically the same weapons.”
Sarah thought the Special Forces sergeant looked extremely young. But then again so did Will Mendenhall. She half smiled at Will when he gave her a sad look.
“That makes the odds pretty much even if the Chinese turn out to be unfriendly. Well, we do have one advantage. The Chinese have made their own mistakes. They cannot adjust their orbit because of fuel loss. So that means they have to land over a hundred miles from Shackleton. That gives us a fighting chance at getting there first. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to land two hundred feet from the edge of Shackleton. Dangerous, but I think my copilot, Mr. Ryan, and I can do it.”
Ryan looked over at Will and Sarah and then smiled broadly. They knew that look as the we’re all going to die look from years past.
“Okay, the Russians have their systems back online, but they won’t be able to launch for another twenty-four hours. So, that leaves us the damaged Astral lander of the European Space Agency, and the Magnificent Dragon to contend with. I believe our Altair is the best craft running this little race. I know we can do this. So, let’s go to the Moon.”
As the flight team started to file out toward the docking collar, Sarah floated aside to let men and women pass her. She started thinking. She felt the small box with the meteorite inside and then she looked out of the small porthole. The Earth was there, and she could even see South America. She said a prayer for Jack, Carl, and the others. Still, the thought of the small rock she carried bothered her. The keyword she knew was “meteorite.” She said it over and over again. Then, Will Mendenhall pulled on her sleeve.
“Hey, you want to get left behind?” he asked.
Sarah didn’t say anything. She just floated by Will and into the sleeve that connected the ISS with the crew module of Dark Star.
“I was hoping you were going to say yes, because I would have stayed with you.”
Will watched as Sarah went inside. He grimaced at the thought of leaving for the Moon.
“Nobody ever listens to me.”
The hotel was virtually a fortress as the security element of Faith Ministries moved in. All sixteen floors were occupied by men paid half of what they were owed. Five hundred mercenaries from every continent on the globe had been assembled to augment the security force already in place. The Ecuadorian Armed Forces were still on the fence about falling in line. The president of the United States was bringing pressure to bear on the leaders of the small country through the Organization of American States to open up the mine for general inspection. Since the mine was privately owned by a German firm and another firm registered as an Ecuadorian mining concern, the legalities were such that Ecuador could debate the problem for years and still not come to a final legal determination of the rights of the owners. Little did anyone know the owners were inside the hotel and weren’t about to give up any of their rights of possession.
Samuel Rawlins, replete with white scarf, jungle boots, and tan working clothes designed for him by a prestigious tailor in New York, paced the large suite on the topmost floor of the Ambassador. He knew the time would come when he had to relinquish all his holdings, including Faith Ministries; he just never thought it would happen so suddenly. After seventy years of hiding the artifacts from the world, all of his work and all of his father’s work before him had unraveled so fast that he was having a hard time believing it had happened at all.