{COMPLETE} Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus 10 Story

[Ultimate Steve]

 

Welcome to my latest mission report, Nightmares! This story is about a Jool-Sarnus 10 mission - which is like a Jool 5 but with the Outer Planets Mod - and you have to go to all five moons of Sarnus as well as the five moons of Jool. Nightmares consists of 13 different parts. There are a few other things to note about Nightmares, the biggest being that it takes place in the same universe as my other major mission report, Project Intrepid (link in my sig). Nightmares is intended to be a backstory/flashback that should help explain some things about Project Intrepid. I suggest that you read it first before you read this. But in case you can't put up with the first ten parts of PI (which are very poorly written in places) here's the gist - nuclear war irradiates Kerbin forcing all kerbals underground. 50 years later they find out that a black hole is on course for the Kerbol system and that everyone will die in 200 years. Then, KSC starts building giant motherships to attempt to evacuate the Kerbol system. Nightmares is the story of a single mission which takes place several decades before Project Intrepid.

Mod list:

Outer Planets Mod (To get Sarnus)

Kerbal Engineer Redux (Without it this mission would be basically impossible)

Kerbal Alarm Clock (Transfer windows)

HyperEdit (For testing only.)

Part list:

Spoiler

Page one:

Part I: The Chance

Part II: The Liftoff

Part III: The Flames

Part IV: The Lie

Part V: The Unpossible

Part VI: The Possibility

Part VII: The Gift

Part VIII: The Destiny

Part IX: The Survivor

Part X: The Spy

Part XI: The Anomaly

Page two:

Part XII: The Apprentice

Part XIII: The End

Nightmares: Epilogue

So, here we go!

Part I - The Chance!

Spoiler

Jebediah Kerman sat on the edge of the Vehicle Assembly Building, overlooking the abandoned Space Center. He was eating a ham sandwich, but that is not important. Jebediah thought about the future. And how it was totally his fault that the odds were - the space program would end.

It had all started one year ago, an ordinary day aboard Space Station Epic V, the largest station ever built. Jeb glanced down at a photograph of the station, taken about half way through the construction process.

And, what else was there to say? Nobody could have seen it coming. A nearby star had exploded. And the wave of energy that accompanied it traveled at the speed of light. So it was a complete surprise when it hit the Kerbol system. Effects on Kerbin were limited. But one moment SSE V was cruising along through space, and the next it was on a suborbital trajectory. And Jeb, the idiot that he was, tried pulling the lever to open the hatches to the escape pods. But he had accidentally pulled the lever that released the atmosphere into space. It replenished in a few minutes, of course, nobody on board died due to the depressurization. But they all passed out. And they only reawakened once the station was inside the atmosphere. And half of them died on impact that day.

The wreckage came down onto a supervolcano. Not a huge one, just one big enough to make that continent hard to live in. All the crops there died. The ash is still there today. And it was all Jeb's fault. Had he not made that stupid accident, the station could have steered away. And the space program would not be dead.

"Jeb?" Bill Kerman approached Jeb from behind.

"Stop doing that! You startled me so hard, I nearly fell off the building!"

"I have big news."

"Oh, joy. Another big wig determined to damage our abysmal reputation - even more."

"Jeb, seriously. This could be our last chance. If we don't file for bankruptcy within three more days, we'll be so deep in debt that the government will take the land from us."

"And this next big wig can fix that?"

"Jeb, this is Cloneus Kerman. He is so rich he has a solid gold house. If you can convince him, we could be saved."

"Isn't he the gambler?"

"Yes. The others made outrageous loan deals that wouldn't help at all, just grind us into dust even further. But Cloneus, he will probably be easier. But his terms will still be outrageous, just in a different way."

"So, Bill, when is this meeting?"

"Five minutes."

"FIVE MINUTES?!? I - I don't even have time to prepare the terms!"

"And he's our last hope. You better get down to the administration building right now, or else the space program is doomed."

"Well, bye then! Wish me luck!" And with that, Jeb ran back inside the VAB, rushed down the abandoned staircases, and outside, to where his car waited. He hopped in, and hoped that it would start. Luckily, after a round of protest, the old thing coughed to life. He stomped on the accelerator, and got to the Administration Building with just one minute to spare. He ran in, and to meeting room 2. And standing before him was an older man, who he thought must be Cloneus. He looked somewhat intimidating.

"I suppose you're Jeb."

"Yes, I am. You must be Cloneus. Nice to meet you." Jeb extended his hand, only for it to be waved away.

"Let's get down to business right away. I don't want to give you money at all. I only came here because it's a Wednesday. Nothing ever happens on Wednesdays. So I figured it would be in my better interests to come here and watch you pour your little, tiny, desperate soul out onto the table. So, you need money."

Jeb was now about to admit defeat. "Well, you said you don't want to give us money. At all. So, really, my job's done here. I'm not going to waste my energy arguing with you." Jeb turned to leave.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. I don't like it when people ruin my Wednesdays. It is in your best interests to stay here. Tell me - this large piece of land here. What will it be used for, in three days when you all die out?"

Jeb gulped. "I - I don't know."

"Well, I may not want to give you money at all. But I want that piece of land. I think a gigantic casino complex would make the place look much better."

"How much do you want for it? I can run up an estimate of our debt and  -"

"No, you stupid Kerbal. I don't want it now, I've already got ten casino complexes to tend to! In twenty or so years, when those become obsolete, I'll make an entire city right here!"

"So you want it - but you don't want to pay for it?"

"Haha, you're so funny when you're desperate. You see, the only way to ensure it doesn't fall to the government is to buy it - but I have no use for it for twenty years."

"So, you need to make a deal with me."

The wicked grin on Cloneus' face was now so wide, it appeared to take up his whole face. As if on cue, the lights went out, replaced with the creepy red backup lights. "Jebediah Kerman, I do like to see people try the impossible. No better opportunity. So, here's the deal: no negotiations. You either accept it or you don't. You die now, or die later." Jeb did not like the way this was heading. "I will pay all of your debts. All of them." It started out well. "And I will give you exactly 250,000 funds to build a rocket with. This rocket - will land on all ten moons of both Sarnus and Jool. It will return over ten thousand science points. And one Kerbal must plant a flag on all of those ten moons. You may not use any more money, from anywhere else. This rocket will return to Kerbin within twenty years. And if you do not succeed, I get the land. If you, by some stroke of luck, succeed, which I doubt you will, then you get the land. And, because I'm so sure you'll fail, you'll get twenty million funds if you do somehow succeed. Good luck. That was sarcastic by the way."

Jeb began flop sweating. At the very least, he supposed, he could take the 250k and admit defeat, move the operation to the island airport under a new name, and maybe, just maybe, get back to the Mun. Better than no future whatsoever. A Jool-Sarnus ten - half of the moons hadn't even been landed on by probes yet, let alone Kerbals! And doing it with only 250,000 funds - this was truly impossible. So there really was only one option.

"It's a deal."

"Good. Have fun failing." And with that, Cloneus Kerman left the room. Jeb waited twenty seconds, and stormed out of the rooms, past the few expectant engineers lingering by the door, holding onto hope. His face in his hands, he walked the distance to his car, and drove it back to his house. And he fell onto his bed. 250,000. An impossible number. And twenty years. The next Kerbin-Sarnus window was in only a few weeks! Nothing could possibly be ready on time, even with unlimited funding!

And Jeb cried himself to sleep. And that night, the nightmares started.

Jeb woke up screaming, in a pool of sweat. After he calmed down a little bit, he remembered that he had been dreaming about all of the ways everything could go wrong. The rocket exploding on the pad. The fairing jettisoning and destroying the transfer stage. Burning up in Tetko's atmosphere. He came slowly to his senses, and ventured outside to explain to the few staff members remaining that Cloneus had won. The KSC would vacate the land and spend most of the remaining funding on renting the island airport. They'd send a few lucky Kerbals to the Mun. And that'd be it.

What he didn't expect was the crowd of engineers at his door, calling his name triumphantly and waving blueprints at him. Startled, he ran right back into his house and slammed the door shut. He called Bill.

"Bill, what the Moho is going on?"

"Jeb, you did it! You saved us!"

"Bill, what are you talking about?!? 250,000 is not enough money for even a Duna mission! A Jool-Sarnus 10? You're crazy!"

"No, Jeb! Never underestimate the dedication of those diehard rocket scientists! They stayed up all night, collaborating in the design studio, going through endless iterations of designs! The pilots spent the whole night in the simulators!"

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Go outside and grab the nearest blueprint!" Bill hung up. With no other option, Jeb opened up the door carefully, and stepped onto his overcrowded porch, and grabbed the nearest blueprint he could find. He gasped.

"Who designed this?"

A voice in the crowd replied "All of us!"

"Yeah, we all did!"

"Do you think it's possible, Jeb?"

Jeb stood back and held the blueprint up for all to see - and slowly, carefully, asked the crowd one very important question, one that would change the fate of the universe.

"How quickly can you get this thing on the launch pad?"

The engineers looked at one another. And they all broke into grins.

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus 10 story will continue!

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Ultimate Steve
Changed "VAB" to "Administration Building"

[Ultimate Steve]

Part II: The Liftoff!

Spoiler

Jebediah Kerman was walking along the now active Kerbal Space Center with Jebediah, explaining to him the logistics of the mission-to-be.

"Okay, Bill. I think I got it. Can you skim over it one more time?"

"Sure. So, the engineers and I stayed up all of last night prototyping missions. And, well, you saw what we came up with. There's a nuclear powered mothership with one set of experiments and a small IRSU setup. The mothership has a few things docked to it, there's one lander for Laythe, one for Tetko, one for Slate, Eeloo, and Vall, and one for Tylo. The last two are identical. Tylo needs both stages of the lander, plus the jetpack to work, and the Slate lander uses the lower stage, and the upper returns to orbit to be reused for Vall and Eeloo."

"Okay. It's not like it's rocket science or anything!"

"Jeb, you and I both know that the correct term is rocket engineering."

"So what about the other moons?"

"The mothership will land on Ovok, Bop, Pol, and Hale, to refuel. There will also be a Sarnus entry probe."

"So, the price. 249,999."

"And forty cents. Yeah, we had to lose some of the fuel to make budget."

"So if anything goes wrong, we have sixty cents leftover. Enough to buy everyone an m&m to signal the end."

"And the odds are not in our favor. We are estimating, with the amount of simulations we can do before the launch window, that the odds of success will be 1 in 2."

"Great. And that's just launch."

"And that is why we're sending you."

"What? Me? Why me?"

"Jeb, you have more experience than anyone else in the program. You have a higher success rate on your missions. And you are the face of the space program. Remember when you rescued the lander for Mun base alpha? By launching the base modules to catch it?"

"Oh, that was epic!"

"And at Gilly? When you used the Scansat as a missile?"

"Okay, I get your point. I'm going. I just don't want to go insane from the boredom and loneliness."

"That's why this is a three Kerbal mission."

"What? The engineers managed to take an already minimal mission and put three Kerbals on it? Okay, we must be in command seats."

"Nope. A Mk1 pod and a crew cabin."

"Well, that's amazing! Who else is going?"

"Well, we need an engineer to work the drills. And a scientist to reset the single set of experiments. Cloneus wasn't kidding when he said ten thousand science points. Oh, man. You should have been there when he found out we were actually trying this! His face turned pink!"

"Bill? I think you should come."

"Well, once Jeb says you're coming on the mission, there's no coming back, I guess. So, a scientist. Bob's away on business. He specifically said to not call."

"So Bob's out. Do you have a list of other potential scientists?"

"Yes, I do. Hold on a second... We've got an applicant. Majored in field biology for six years. Always been obsessed with space travel, says here "would give up left arm to go to space.""

"Hmm. We'd get a few extra meters per second of -"

"Jeb! Quit being so literal!"

"Okay. So what's his name?"

"She. Her name's Angela."

"Is there anyone else?"

"Yes. Hundreds. I'll run through the list."

"Anything else I need to know about?"

"We launch in two weeks."

"What?"

"You heard me, Jeb. Two weeks. We currently have an army of volunteer engineers assembling the rocket."

"So what will it be called?"

"The rocket? Last night we worked under the code name "Octavius.""

"I like it."

"So do I. The Tetko lander will be called "Singularity" and the Slate-Vall-Eeloo lander will be called "Gatekeeper." The crew re-entry vehicle will be called "Dragonhearted." Everything else is up for grabs."

"Okay, Bill. I've got it. I can't believe it - we actually have a shot here! To save the space program!"

"Yes, Jeb. I mean, the odds for the whole mission are a hundred to one. But, yes. We have a shot."

===============================================================================

Thirteen days later, the Octavius stood on the launch pad, ready for tomorrow's launch. The inspections had been brief. Cloneus was angry. And Sarnus was zipping past in the sky, and there was nothing Jeb could do about it if they missed the launch window. Bill and Jeb sat in the astronaut complex awaiting the arrival of Angela - the only scientist applicant who was willing to go on a twenty year mission on such a short notice. And then she walked through the door.

"Hello, there!" she said.

"Hello, Angela. I'm Jeb, and this is Bill." They all politely shook hands.

"So, are you ready for tomorrow?"

"No, Bill," she replied, "I'm not going to be ready in a million years. But I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I have a few questions though."

"Anything. Although we have so much to do and so little time. Like fitting your spacesuit."

"First big thing. Who is landing on each moon?" Bill spoke up to answer.

"Unfortunately, Cloneus's terms state that one Kerbal has to land on all ten, and most of the landers are one seaters. That means Jeb will be doing the landings. However, you and I will land on four: Ovok, Hale, Pol, and Bop." Rather than disappointed, Angela looked elated.

"Wow, four moons? In all my life, I've always been told I'd never even get to space, let alone the Mun, let alone four moons of two different planets!" Her enthusiasm was contagious.

"Well, when you put it that way... I remember back when people said space travel was impossible. And what did we do, Bill?"

"We went to space!"

"Okay, second question. What's happening with the sixty cents?"

"Haha. Well, I thought we'd take fifteen flags, just to be safe, and we'd fuse a penny to each of them. We each get to keep five cents, we'll throw twenty-nine cents into Sarnus on board the entry probe, and the last cent we'll keep in the space program budget to prove we aren't bankrupt."

"Wow, you must have thought that through a lot earlier," remarked Angela.

"Nope, just came into my head right now," replied Bill.

"Last thing - for now anyway. Only a few hours until launch, anyway. My one big concern is that the Octavius does not have a launch escape system." Jeb and Bill looked at each other. Jeb spoke.

"Well, truth be told, I could give you many reasons about cost. About how the crew cabin is centrally located and in order to blast it away we have to remove the entry capsule and the landers that sit on top of it. And the fact that the crew cabin doesn't even have parachutes. But the reason I will give you is - if this whole thing explodes, we have one cent left. No hope of space travel, ever again. And I suppose, I can't speak for Bill, but I don't want to live in a world without space exploration." There was a long pause before anyone spoke again. When someone did speak, it was Angela.

"I suppose that's as good a reason as there will ever be. And this world's been so cruel to me, I don't really have anything - or anyone left on Kerbin to lose. Okay, you mentioned there being tons of stuff to do?"

"Yes. We've never had to train an astronaut in only six hours, you know? We need to get you over to the centrifuge, you need to select your favorite foods, you should probably simulate working on the science equipment, and you really don't want to mess up on your spacesuit. You'll need to use it for who knows how long."

"Well, I suppose we should get started."

=============================================================

That night, Jebediah had  more nightmares. Still about all of the things that could go wrong tomorrow. He awoke screaming, again, early in the morning. This time, he remembered, there had been nightmares of different strengths. Most of the ones he couldn't remember, he remembered their intensity being very low. But the one that woke him up screaming was very intense. He had dreamed about there being a sniper on the top of the VAB, shooting at the rocket, and making it explode. After he calmed down a bit, Jebediah decided to go on a walk. After all, it would be a long time before he saw Kerbin again - if he ever did.

He decided to walk all around the complex, the abandoned spaceplane hangar, that one tracking station dish that didn't work anymore, the memorial to the first capsule launched into space. And he found himself climbing the dozens of flights of stairs that led to the top of the VAB. He thought he would see the sunrise from there.

Jebediah walked onto the roof. And there, where he usually sat, sat another. He was lying on his stomach - aiming a rather large gun at the rocket. The same gun he had seen in his nightmare.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Jeb, pulling out the handgun he always carried around. The sniper looked over at Jeb.

"And why should I do that? I read your file, Jeb. You carry around an empty gun because you couldn't bear to kill anyone."

"I'm just saying. We had to pressurize those tanks above normal. Budget constraints, and blah blah blah. And if you pull that trigger, that thing is going to explode. And it's going to fling debris everywhere. The odds of it hitting you are very low, but you see, this building you're standing on, it is so old that it is just about ready to fall down at the first good sized piece of debris that hits it."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

"Oh, I do lie. My file lies." And with that, Jeb pulled the trigger. And the bullet hit not the sniper himself - but his deadly rifle. Right around the trigger area, destroying it, making the gun useless. The sniper grew somewhat panicked.

"What do you want from me? I'll give you money! I've got lots of money!"

"All I want from you, I want you to go back to Cloneus and tell him that your gun jammed at the last moment."

"How do you know Cloneus sent me?"

"Who else?" Jeb kicked the broken rifle off the VAB. And he walked away, he realized that his nightmare had turned out to be almost true. And he reminded himself out loud, "Once is a chance. Twice is just a coincidence. This is only two. Or one, if you count it that way. I am not going insane."

============================================================================

The "launch support gantry," which was in fact just a firetruck with a really long ladder, had been driven away. The three crewmembers of the Octavius mission were strapped into their seats in the ramshackle rocket. Jeb had decided not to tell anyone else about his nightmares, or about the sniper. T-five minutes.

"Okay, control, this is Jeb from Octavius. Give me a go/no go for launch!" Gene Kerman in mission control began giving the polls.

"Booster!"

"Go!"

"Guidance!"

"Jeb's controlling the thing, so, Jeb?"

"We're go!"

"Life support!"

"Go! Angela picked some pretty weird meals, but we've managed to pack twenty years worth in the return capsule!"

"Nuclear systems!"

"Go!"

"Lander systems!"

"Dragonhearted is go, Singularity is go, Gatekeeper is go, and the other two are go!"

"Dramatic music?"

"Hmm. Would you rather hear "The Final Countdown" or "Also Sprach Zarathustra?""

"Let's go with the latter for now. We can use the former for when we land on Kerbin!"

"Go!"

"Comms?"

"Go!" The list went on and on for several minutes, until the final item had been reached.

"Crew?"

"Jebediah is go!"

"Bill is go!"

And Angela took a deep breath, and said, "Angela is go!"

"Okay, we are go for launch! Initiating terminal countdown!"

"Hmm. Maybe we should have used "The Final Countdown" first."

"T-60!" Jebediah sat in the Mk1 pod. Bill and Angela sat in the movable seats of the Mk1 crew cabin. The engines began warming up.

"T-50!" Angela began breathing faster and faster. Bill looked out the window of the crew cabin - and through the small window in the fairing. There, he could see home. Kerbin. In his gloved hand, he held a vial of dirt. Dirt from Kerbin. Sterilized, of course, but he would give some to Jeb to place on every moon - provided they all survived launch.

"T-35!" Also Sprach Zarathustra began playing. The KSC staff had pleaded with the copyright offices forever to let them use it.

"T-29!" Cloneus sat in front of his solid gold television, fully ready to watch the fireworks. Jeb sat in his pod, his heart beat faster and faster. Bob sat halfway across the world, staring at his TV in anticipation. Jebediah firmly clicked his helmet into place.

"T-18!" Sparklers on the pad erupted into fire. The turbopumps in the first stage engine began spinning.

"T-10!" Bill cried. "9!" Cloneus sat back. "8!" Angela looked out the window. "7!" A Kerbal on the other side of the world launched a model rocket while watching the broadcast of the launch. "6!" The four nozzles of the engine came to life, mixing their fuels. "5!" Jets of flame erupted from the nozzles. "4!" Jeb closed his eyes. "3!" Gene ran outside to watch the launch in person. "2!" Also Sprach Zarathustra hung dramatically, the climax a second away. "1!" Jeb's eyes sprung back open, a look of sheer determination on his face.

"Zero!"

"And we have liftoff of Octavius!"

The rocket shook, vibrated, and oscillated. Jeb began pitching over. Angela whooped.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW!"

The giant cylinder of metal and fire rose above the building tops and began its graceful arc across the blue sky. Blue faded to dark blue. The buildings that had once seemed majestic now shrunk by the second.

A minute or two in the flight, the first stage ran out of fuel.

Cloneus, thinking this was a problem, because he knew nothing about rockets, whooped in Joy. He whooped even further when the rocket appeared to break up into two pieces. And then an employee sitting near him told him that this was just the separation of the stages.

Needless to say, he was fired before the second stage ignited.

"THIS IS AWESOME!" shouted Angela over the noise of the second stage engine.

"RIGHT! NEVER GETS OLD!" replied Jeb.

"WHERE ARE THE BARF BAGS?" announced Bill.

"YOU'RE WEARING A HELMET! BARF BAGS ARE USELESS!"

Fortunately, Bill did not need one. Not that they had any, they cost exactly 61 cents.

And then, the engine stopped. And they were all in space. Angela released her seatbelt.

"Angela, we're burning again in about a minute to get to orbit. I wouldn't do that." Obeying Bill, she got back in her seat. The dirt in Bill's vial floated around the tube. The engine reignited, boosting the Octavius onto a trajectory where it was falling so fast that it would never hit the ground - an orbit.

"Major Jeb to ground control - the Octavius is in Orbit!" Cloneus threw his solid gold chair into his solid gold television.

"Roger that, Jeb, we're working on plotting your burn right now. The high energy transfer one, so you won't spend ten years just getting there."

"Okay. Angela, grab some Kerbin orbit science, you should probably get acquainted with -" Jeb stopped abruptly when he saw her staring out the window at the planet below. He decided to leave her alone. He remembered the feeling, when he was in space for the first time. He was so mesmerized by the sight that he almost forgot to open the parachute!

"Jeb, we've got the burn profile!"

"Thanks, Gene!"

"Now, you might need to split it up into several kick burns and - "

"Nope. I'm burning now!"

"Wait! The estimated burn time is for stage two, not the nuke!"

"Then we do a correction burn later! We've got boatloads of Delta-V!"

"And you'll need it later!" Jeb turned off the radio - and stared at the planet silently, and punched the throttle.

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus 10 Story will Continue!
 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Part III: The Flames

Spoiler

Jebediah woke up screaming.

And this wasn't because he needed to do two colossal correction burns because of his haste as he left Kerbin. It wasn't because Cloneus had found a way to destroy the launch pad and come out looking innocent. It wasn't even because he had been trapped in a tiny command pod for the past three years with nobody to talk to in real time except for Bill and Angela. No, he had another nightmare.

Jeb recalled that his nightmare was one of the same magnitude that happened before the sniper. How recent it seemed, yet it had been three years, which was actually a short amount of time for a trip to Sarnus.

In the nightmare, Jeb had seen the Octavius hit Slate. Really really fast. At the last moment. And that really scared him. The current mission profile involved a Slate assist to enter Sarnus orbit, since they no longer had enough fuel to do it the normal way, thanks to the two expensive correction burns.

"Hey, Jeb! stop with the screaming! I swear, you've been screaming all the way since we left Kerbin."

"Sorry, Bill. Ugh. I swear, these nightmares are driving me insane. Well, we packed those earplugs for a reason."

"I'm willing to overlook it. We are now officially the first Kerbals around Sarnus. Also, at this rate we're going to run out of earplugs in a few months."

"Seriously? I missed the Sarnus entry while I was asleep? Darn!"

"Ehh, if it's any consolation, Angela missed it too. She even slept through your screams."

"Hey, Bill? Can you do me a favor?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't report this to KSC, but could you check out periapsis on our Slate flyby again?"

"Sure thing. Let me see... no change. Still forty-odd kilometers."

"Good."

=================================================================

Twenty days later the crew of Octavius was about to cross into Slate's sphere of influence.

"Are we go for the retroburn?"

"Yes, Jeb. We've been over it ten times. But, uh, something's come up."

"What's wrong, Angela?"

"Uh, remember that gravity wave from the star exploding? The one that took down SSE V?"

"How could I forget it?"

"Well, I did some scans on the gravioli detector. I've been picking up small waves from the area around that star. And they are remarkably similar to the ones found in earthquakes."

"Your point?"

"Earthquakes have aftershocks."

"Ugh, that's the last thing we need. How powerful are aftershocks in earthquakes, usually?"

"Basically random."

"So you're saying that any moment a gravity wave from that star could push us off course?"

"And the odds of that are very low. It could happen in eight years, it could happen never. It could happen in four seconds. I just wanted you to know that we -"

And then the ship was flung violently to the side. The crew hit the walls hard.

"Aagh! We're spinning!"

"Oh no. It happened!"

"Relax, Jeb. As far as I know, that one was on the small side. We should still be going in the right direction."

"Well, check the trajectory, and I'll stop this spin!"

"Roger!"

And about ten seconds later, the spin stopped. Thankfully, the fragile ship was not damaged.

"Uh, Jeb?"

"Let me guess, Angela. Bad news."

"We're on a collision course with Slate."

"And three times is a pattern."

"What?"

"Long story. No time!"

"Jeb, can we avoid impact?"

"Only one way to find out! I'm punching the throttle!"

Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, Cloneus Kerman had set up a few bugs in the KSC's mission control, to hear what they wouldn't put on television. His evil smile grew back when he heard about the "aftershock" of sorts. And then, after a tense five minutes, he tossed a solid gold chair out of the eighth story of his mansion, kicked the walls, and fired the next twenty people he came across.

The Octavius had missed Slate by no more than one hundred meters.

"Well."

"Yeah. That happened."

"So. Status report."

"The outlook is not good, Jeb."

"I knew that, Angela. But the Delta V budget. How is that doing?"

"Well. Luckily, we are actually are in an elliptical Sarnus orbit, somehow, but we do not have the fuel to get to Hale or Ovok to refuel our ship."

"What about another Slate assist?"

"If we do nothing in two orbits, Slate will be available, but it will either fling us out of the system or into Sarnus."

"That is not good at all."

"So, Jeb, I guess we're stuck here. We're stranded in deep space." The ship was silent for a full minute, barring the life support systems.

"I'll tell KSC."

"No need for that, Jeb. They can already hear every word." More silence. "So, you're the commander. What do you suggest that we do?"

"Well, there's no hope for a rescue mission. One of Cloneus' terms was that we don't accept any other funding for another seventeen years. And we have food for seventeen... but that's for three Kerbals... maybe if there were only two... I could fly one of the landers into Slate and-"

"Jeb! Don't even think about that! We all die, or we all not die!"

"Y-you're right. But we have a duty to fulfill. The landers might have enough fuel for a one way trip to a few of the moons. Have you ever wanted to go to Tetko, Angela?"

"Oh sure, why not. Bill?"

"The rings must be spectacular from Hale. I could use the mothership in conjunction with the Laythe lander to land there."

"And I'll have the Tylo lander to go to Slate maybe. Or Eeloo."

"So this is how the mission ends."

"Well, we will certainly be remembered." This time, the silence lasted at least four minutes.

"And there's still the Sarnus Entry Probe."

"Well, let's send it into Sarnus and see what happens."

"Atmospheric entry in 3... 2... 1..."

"Huh. These readings are weird."

"Yes they are, Angela. Sarnus is cold."

"I'm going to try resetting the thermometer. And the barometer. The atmosphere can't be this thin..." Minutes passed.

"It's slowed down dramatically. We barely even cooked the shield! I don't think we even needed a shield!"

"Transmit the data, Angela." And so, she did. All the way until the cameras gave out to black plane syndrome.

All the way until the altimeter went negative.

All the way until the Sarnus Entry Probe was crushed by atmospheric pressure.

As the Octavius sped away from Sarnus, the crew prepared to say their final goodbyes. Angela had already boarded the Tetko lander. Jeb was ready to EVA over to the Tylo lander. And Bill was compensating for the shifting mass.

"Bill, Angela, it's been a pleasure serving with you."

"Goodbye, Jeb. Goodbye, Bill."

"Goodbye, Angela. Bye, Jeb."

"I've been scrutinizing the data from the entry probe. Funny, Sarnus's atmosphere is so strange. We could have saved a few hundred funds by not having a shield. Oh, well. Better keep looking at the data while I still can. Not much time left to do that." By this time Jeb was in the command seat of the Tylo lander.

"Good work, Angela. I'm ready to decouple from Octavius."

"Go ahead. If only we hadn't taken the shield. Maybe we would have saved enough Delta V to live through this mission. Maybe if we had built the ship to do an aerocapture..."

"Goodbye, crew. Detatching in 3, 2, 1,"

"WAIT!"

"What is it, Angela?"

"What if - " Angela spoke very quickly - "what if we aerobraked into a lower Sarnus orbit? Then, would we have enough fuel to land on Hale to refuel?"

"Hmm. I guess it's better to try that than to die on separate moons. Bill, Angela, abort the single missions! We could be back in business!"

"Okay. Phew! I'll plot the retrograde node."

"Don't relax yet. We're not only about to attempt something nobody has tried before - it's something that the people building this thing never even remotely considered."

"Isn't that your job description?"

"Yes. Yes, I suppose it is."

==============================================================================

Jeb had more nightmares that night. Burning up in Sarnus. A surprise Slate encounter throwing them out of the system. Even colliding with the rings. But none of them seemed like major ones. He decided to take that as a good sign.

"Now that's a majestic ball of gas!"

"A ball of gas and a swirling disk of dust."

"Yep, can't forget the space dust. Bill, retract the solar panel."

"Sorry, Jeb. I'm afraid I can't do that."

"What? Why?"

"Budget constraints. We had to go with the non-retractable model."

"But that's our only solar panel."

"And we have an RTG plus a fuel cell."

"Guys! Stop worrying about the stuff that can't be fixed! We're entering the atmosphere!"

"She's right."

"Entering atmosphere in 3... 2... 1..."

"Hmm. Lots of flames. LOTS of flames. Yet nothing is melting. What's our Apo, Jeb?"

"Dropping, Angela! Great idea, the aerobraking!"

"Gravity! Finally!"

"Not gravity. Just deceleration."

"Good enough for me! We're rising back up!"

"Great! What do you think Cloneus is doing right now?"

"Well, there's the signal delay. Probably thinking that we're all going to die."

Well, Angela was right. Cloneus grinned. And then he heard the news that Octavius had come back up out of the atmosphere. And he threw another gold chair out of the window.

For completely unrelated reasons, the job market for window makers was increasing.

"Okay, now we have a Hale encounter. We might actually have a chance here!"

"Can I go "Phew!" yet?"

"No. The Delta V margin will be very tight."

"Also, on the plus side, we didn't even lose the solar panel! Sarnus is very aerobrake friendly!"

"I'm sure the KSC will keep that in mind for future missions. If there are any future missions."

Jeb did not allow himself to sleep that night. He couldn't bear the nightmares any more. If anything else could go wrong, he didn't want to know about it. Especially if it meant having to tell the crew with absolute certainty that they were all going to die. It was a long night for Jeb. Well, it wasn't really night...

He lost himself looking at the majestic rings of Sarnus.

Only when the ship was plunged into shadow did he snap out of it and realize he missed the node by a full minute.

"BILL! ANGELA! WAKE UP!"

"Wha - oh. Hale!"

"Can you make it, Jeb?"

"I don't know! I missed the node by a whole minute!"

"Oh. If the fuel margins weren't already tight, they are now!"

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, captured. We are now in a suborbital trajectory over Hale."

"So, we're basically safe, right?"

"Forty-two."

"What did you say, Bill?"

"I said, forty-two, Angela. That's how much delta-v we have left."

"Well, Hale is small. We can manage. It's even smaller than Gilly! If we had more fuel, I'd burn toward it. It'd take to long to fall. In fact, we have a full half hour to either worry or stare at the majesty of the huge snowball below us. Anyone want to join me at the latter?"

=================================================================

"Commencing landing burn in 3... 2... 1..."

"Thirty meters per second."

"This will be close!"

"Twenty!"

"Agh, I can't land here! Rock! I'm going sideways!"

"Roger that, Jeb!"

"Fifteen."

"Here is as good as it's going to get!"

"Ten!"

Cloneus Kerman sat in his seat, overlooking his room of code monkeys scouring the servers of KSC for new transmissions from Octavius. He awaited news of the Octavius crashing on Hale with an evil grin on his face. And then a photograph was projected onto the main screen. He stood up. His grin turned into shock. His shock turned into anger.

Thankfully, someone had the sense to bolt down all of the chairs in the room. That didn't stop Cloneus from throwing his computer out the window and leaving the room, firing everyone in it. The image remained projected on the main screen for several hours. And if you were to sneak into the building - this is what you'd see.

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story will Continue...

 

The real story: I time warped too fast into Slate's SOI and the trajectory jumped.

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[max_creative]

Jool-Sarnus 10...  

May the force persistence be with you...

[Ultimate Steve]

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2016 at 0:13 AM, max_creative said:

Jool-Sarnus 10...  

May the force persistence be with you...

 Just saw Rogue One.

Episode Part IV: A New Hope The Lie

Spoiler

Gravity. Even if it was only a fraction of a fraction of Kerbin's, Angela, Bill, and Jeb had gravity.

They also had space to move around. That was important. Especially after being in a cramped spaceship for a few years on end.

And most importantly, they had hope. Hope of continuing their mission. Hope of actually saving the space program. Hope of not dying.

Bill had something to do: work the drills. Bill figured out that the solar panel plus the RTG could only power one drill plus the ISRU, the second drill would remain a backup.

Jeb had something to do: simulate the Tetko landing. The only problem was that nobody really knew for sure what Tetko was like. Luckily, the lander had been overbuilt a little bit, hopefully enough.

Angela had a lot to do: analyze all of the data from the mission so far. She had already gone through the Kerbin and Sun data, but now she had the Hale and Sarnus data to work with. And if her position as the only scientist for millions of kilometers wasn't enough, she had the majestic rings of Sarnus above her. A sight that only three Kerbals have ever seen.

"Okay, Jeb! I'm ready for the altitude acceleration test!"

"What's this for again, Angela?"

"In case the accelerometer is slightly off."

"I call it an excuse to see how high you can jump on Hale."

"Guilty as charged, Jeb. WOOOOHOOOO!"

"There she goes! Bill?"

"Yes, Jeb?"

"How are the drills coming?"

"We should be ready to leave Hale tomorrow!"

"Unless Angela here jumped to escape velocity. Then we'd have to leave right now to go rescue her!"

"Ehh, she has her jetpack. She'll be fine! What moon do you think we should go to next?"

"Hmm. Tetko makes the most sense. It's the furthest out, and we could start there and work our way inwards. Plus, the lander is the second heaviest after Laythe. We'd get rid of all that mass."

"Sounds good! Could you watch the drill for me for a little while?"

"Sure! Why?"

"I'm going to go see if I can't beat Angela's world record for Halean high jump!"

"Hey! I heard that!"

============================================================================

As it turned out, you can jump several hundred meters on Hale. But the two were having so much fun that they forgot to check their altimeters, so all we'll get for now is an estimate.

============================================================================

"Is everyone ready for takeoff?"

"I'm ready, Jeb. You've asked me, like, ten times now."

"I'm ready."

"Okay. Are the drills retracted?"

"Yep."

"Well, then. Onwards to Tetko! 3! 2! 1! Engine ignition!"

"Huh, our TWR is very low here."

"Hmm. Let me check the wiring. Ah, that would explain it. The engine circuits aren't all on! Only one out of a dozen!"

"Engine circuits? Oh, those engine circuits. Turn them all on for me, please."

"Roger that, Jeb."

"Wait, why is the -" And then the crew felt a sharp blast of deceleration, and the surface grew rapidly in their windows."

"YOU TURNED ON THE RAPIER!"

"YOU TOLD ME T-"

*Ka-BAM!* The Octavius hit the surface of Hale and exploded into a million pieces. What was left bounced and spun.

"Angela?"

"Bill, Angela is - "

"Don't say it. Don't you dare say it!"

"Angela - she's dead."

"Jeb?"

"Oh no. She's a ghost!"

"Jeb?"

"What is happening?"

"Jeb? WAKE UP!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

"I take it you had another really bad nightmare."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

=============================================================================

"Okay, we're leaving Hale. Say your final goodbyes! Are you all ready?"

"I'm ready, Jeb!"

"Yeah, we said our actual goodbyes an hour ago when we stepped off the surface and back into these cramped quarters."

"Remember, Bill, these cramped quarters are the only thing keeping the space program alive."

"Fair enough."

"So, is everyone ready?"

"YES, Jeb. We're both ready."

"Goodbye, Hale. Are you sure you didn't leave anything on the surface? Wouldn't want to leave anything behind besides flags, footprints, and really hot hydrogen."

"You can stop asking that, Jeb. We're all ready. You've asked me like, 10 times."

"I'm ready."

"Okay. Are the drills retracted?"

"Yep."

"Well, then. Onwards to Tetko! 3! 2! 1! Engine ignition!"

"Huh, our TWR is very low here."

"Hmm. Let me check the wiring. Ah, that would explain it. The engine circuits aren't all on! Only one out of a dozen!"

"Engine circuits? Hmm. Angela, how many exactly are there?"

"I can't tell. They are all in a jumbled mess. Do you want me to turn them all on?"

"No. Whatever you do, do NOT turn on those circuits!"

"Why?"

"Just... trust me."

"Angela, as chief engineer, can I take a look at those?"

"Sure, Bill."

"Hmm. Good thing you didn't turn them on! These are the circuits for all of the engines on the ship! Had you activated them we would all have died! The RAPIER on the Laythe lander we would have ignited and pushed us back into Hale!"

"Four times. What is four times?!?"

"Four whats, Jeb? You look a little pink."

"No, I'm fine, Angela."

"You look a little sleep deprived. After you finish the Tetko burn, why don't you let me take command so you can sleep a little?"

"No. NO. Absolutely not. Sleep deprived? What are you talking about?"

"Is this about the nightmares?"

"No," lied Jeb.

"Okay. I believe you. It's not as if we would lie to each other. Lies complicate things. If you don't mind me asking, what are your nightmares usually about?"

Jeb looked away from Angela and to his console, focusing on the direct burn from Hale to Tetko. "I, uh, I've had a very bad history with cake. Without going into too much detail, I'm scared halfway to death of cake, and I seem to get nightmares about it a lot," lied Jeb.

"Oh. That must be hard. I can see why you wouldn't put that in your file."

"Yeah. Don't tell, all right?"

"Got it. If everyone knew my biggest fear, I'd freak!"

"I assume that's not in your file either."

"Yep. Hehe."

 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

"Wow, more evil space cakes attacking your dreams, Jeb?"

"*gasp* yep. Yep."

"I'm not going to ask, but that must have been one terrible experience with cake in your childhood for you to have that many nightmares. Also, we're orbiting Tetko now."

"Uh, yeah. Don't really want to tell. At all." Last night Jeb had many separate nightmares, all about the Tetko landing. Coming in on a 70 degree slope. Burning in the atmosphere. Landing in the oceans of unknown composition. The biggest of all - having the parachutes melt and coming down headfirst - and crashing. He made a mental note to not do any of those. Or at least try not to.

"So, are you ready for the Tetko landing?"

"Yes." Lying again.

"Okay, then. Good luck. Don't forget to grab all of the science and switch on the audio recorders. The lander doesn't have an antenna for live communication."

"Got it. See you in a day or two."

"If everything goes well."

"And for the space program's sake, I hope it does. And Angela?"

"Yeah, Jeb?"

"Don't tell anyone about the cake."

"I wouldn't in a million years," lied Angela.

The Tetko lander was simple. Mostly. It was a pod with a tank, two small engines, two drogue chutes, three cheap fins, three landing legs on decouplers, a battery, and a docking port. Oh yeah, it had a thermometer, a barometer, and two ladders as well.

"Bill, I've undocked and I can see the exterior of the ship. What's with the radiators?"

"The radiators?"

"Yeah, they're glowing like a Christmas tree. Or glowing like your face way back in high school after you tried to -"

"Yes, I get your point. Are you going to land or not?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to let you know. You know, we should really make a rule about reporting stuff we see."

"Jeb, you've been reading that one graphic novel too much."

"What else is there to do out here? And I know for a fact you read it to, because you knew that reference. Just try and fix the radiators, okay? I know that's not normal."

"Roger."

"Do you have any idea what is wrong with them?" Bill nervously watched the temperature gauges slowly rise.

"Yes, I know exactly what is wrong with them," lied Bill.

"Good. I'm de-orbiting now. See you in a bit!"

"The recorder is on! Or at least I think it's on... the red light is blinking. Here we go. Okay, this is Jeb. Speaking to nobody, yet everyone at the same time. But I'm speaking to the future... hmm. If you're in the future listening to this, and have invented time travel, please give me some visual confirmation that my mission will succeed." In the distance there was a bright flash. "Hmm. Okay, then. Atmospheric entry in five seconds... the lander - oh, shoot, what was its name again? Singularity, yes. The Singularity has entered Tetko's atmosphere."

"Hmm, that's odd. No flames whatsoever. Just tons of deceleration. Activating experiments for the upper atmosphere. Tetko's atmosphere must be way thicker than we thought it was."

"Everything is turning dark green. Why did I have to land at night? Wait... is it night? The atmosphere is so thick I can't tell. I'm falling really slowly, and slowing down as the atmosphere thickens. I just passed 1 ATM. I'm going to try using the ship as a wing so I can get samples from that lake over there as well. To fly over to the lake, I mean. Sheesh, commentary is hard when you have nobody to talk to..." There was a few minutes of silence as Jeb fell through the atmosphere.

"Everything is turning green. Even the white parts of the parachute look more green than white. 1000 meters above surface. It looks flat, but I thought that earlier and look at that huge mountain over there!"

"Okay, my gear is down. 200 meters. Checking slope..."

"By Moho, that is a steep hill. Preparing for abort to orbit if things don't go well. Starting engines... There's the smoke cloud... hovering... and..."

"That was quite a jolt! Ladders are deployed. Oh my Bop - I'm on Tetko! I really hope I don't tip! Okay, I'm exiting the hatch."

At this point, Jeb realized that he had given no thought to what the first words spoken on the surface of Tetko would be - the first words in a spacesuit on the surface. Not the actual first words. "That was quite a jolt!" certainly did not count. Whatever he said was going to be totally right off the top of his head. But really, anything would be better than Bill's "Wow, that ice is slippery! Can someone help me up?" on Hale.

"Here goes nothing!"

"In your face, Cloneus! I just stabbed a gigantic space rock with a flimsy metal pole that came from another space rock from far, far away! And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it! I do this For Kerbin! For the KSC! For the future of Kerbalkind! Oh, and in case you're listening to this, Val, you might want to go talk to Hudson about his position in the USKN. And, hello, any aliens from the future, who might be reading about this moment somehow, or listening to the probably ancient audio file. And remember, all of you, that rockets were meant to be launched. You don't build rockets for them to sit in hangars their entire life. You build them to fly! Likewise, lives are meant to be lived. So do me a favor - go out - and live yours."

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus 10 Story will Continue...
 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

Part V: The Unpossible

Spoiler

Jebediah grinned. Not that there were any cameras watching. He relished a few more moments of holding the flagpole triumphantly, and then felt something pressing on his back.

"AAAAH!" He turned around and dove for the ground. "Oh. Not an alien or anything. Just the lander, slowly sliding down this slope. One of the legs just hit me. Not a huge problem, but still a problem. I don't think it will tip... Okay, there's science to be done!"

And so, Jeb climbed back up the ladder, so he could grab the upper atmosphere science still in the experiments. He then took temperature and atmospheric readings from the surface. He stored the science in the command pod and set foot on the surface once again. It was windy on the surface. Very windy.

"This is Jeb, reporting that it is very windy here. I'm going to try to get to that lake down there, to get a sample of whatever that black liquid is. I'm also going to test the jetpack..."

"Yep, the jetpack works. Heading for the lake." Jeb turned towards the lake and thrusted forward. After a few seconds, he hit a roadblock. "Jeb again. The atmosphere here limits the terminal velocity of the jetpack at about eighteen meters per second. I should have enough fuel to get there, but I might have to walk back. I'm really glad I don't have to fly into the wind..." Jeb flew for quite some time before he set down right next to the lake of mysterious black stuff.

"I'm out of fuel. I will have to walk back... but looking at this stuff it appears nearly static, pitch black, and I feel a little heat rising up from it. I'm going to toss a rock in... okay, it sunk. But it didn't explode or anything. Sheesh, I hate being the scientist. If only Angela were here. I'm taking a sample now. Strange... it's about the same density as water. And it is warm... probably because this stuff absorbs and retains the light from the sun very well. What's the word for that? Specific heat? I forget. Been forever since college. Temperature is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 26 for all ye metric users. The land is at about negative two hundred! And the atmosphere is around negative forty... Which is the same no matter which scale you favor...  Hmm. I have a scientific conclusion: Tetko is a really weird moon." Jebediah stepped into the substance.

"Woah! It's clear after about three inches! Just an entirely different liquid!"

"And you can see through the black layer from underneath!"  Jeb continued doing his version of "science" for a few more hours before remembering the vial of dirt Bill had given him. He gently opened it and placed a little bit about twenty meters back from the sea line. And he had determined that it was night. So, he decicided to rest for a little bit.

He slept soundly. No nightmares whatsoever.

He awoke to the sight of the sun shining through the thick atmosphere of Tetko.

 
And then he discovered that he had to run six point four kilometers to get back to his lander. He could have said "Ugh, I have to run several kilometers!" But then he remembered that he would not get many more opportunities to run several kilometers for the next seventeen years. And that was if he survived the mission.

The record for a 5k on Tetko to this day remains about 37 minutes. The fact that Jeb was wearing a spacesuit was balanced out by Tetko's low gravity - leading to an about average time.

About 200m from the lander, the exhausted Jeb decided to carve an image of himself into a rock. He didn't get very far before breaking his tools. So he stopped carving and painted what he had gotten done.

"Okay, Jeb here again. Who else would it be? I'm in the lander now. Days on Tetko are really long. The crew is probably expecting me. I don't get any orbital telemetry down here, the atmosphere is just too thick. And the fact that I have no antenna, so I have to speak into this recording device all day long. So because I don't have any information on the launch window - you get the gist. Who cares about countdowns? 7! 98! 3! 75! 893! Zero!

"And we have liftoff of Singularity! The legs jettisoned perfectly. Nothing like an explosion to kick off a launch!"

"Grabbing low atmospheric science because Angela would kill me otherwise... turning to correct orientation and - wow." Jebediah Kerman saw Sarnus poking over the horizon.

Jebediah stayed silent until an alarm went off reminding him to pitch over.

*BEEP*

"Ah! That startled me a little bit. Pitching over... 0.8ATM external pressure."

"Singularity has entered space. Again. You know, I've been thinking a bit. We would really get further along in space exploration if there were no politicians. But that's not going to happen. So, I've been thinking: Would it be better to leave the politicians behind on Kerbin - or send them all to Tetko orbit so they can realize how stunning the visuals are up here? And then they can give us unlimited funding because we changed their lives?" Jebediah kept mumbling to nobody in particular about how the politicians, news networks, and fanatics were ruining everything on Planet Kerbin. And about fake news. And clickbait. And how he wished he could move all of the people who shared his view to Laythe and create a utopia there. This rambling lasted until the Singularity reached its apoapsis.

"And you know what? I think that a huge Kerbin threatening disaster might even be beneficial to the welfare of the planet at this point. A common cause: save everyone. This is Jeb. I'm approaching Octavius. Signing off. Goodbye." As he turned off the recorder, he saw another bright flash in the distance...

"Octavius, this is Jeb. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can hear you, Jeb! Welcome back! You were gone, like, six days! We almost thought you were dead!" said Bill.

"Well, I'm not!"

"Did you remember the dirt?"

"Yes, I did! But first thing's first. I'm running out of power fast. So what's our plan for balancing stuff?"

"We're going to move the Laythe lander to the central node and put the Klaw with one of the two landers on the port that the Laythe lander came from."

"Sounds good! But I thought you had the radiator problem sorted out."

"Uh... yes. We just recently converted the rest of the ore to fuel, so the radiators are a bit hot." It wasn't totally a lie. Bill had, in fact, converted the ore to fuel, but he had also passed most of their water supply over the radiators to keep them from melting. That had worked until a few hours ago, until the water had nearly reached its boiling point. Since then, Bill had nervously watched the temperature gauges rise. They were currently at 86%.

"Okay, then. I'm coming in."

"Okay, we're ready to go! Seriously, is there anything wrong with the radiators?"

"Nope. I, uh, left the ISRU on by mistake," lied Bill.

"Okay. The data and audio logs are stored on board, plus a few pieces of decouplers that will make great collectors items assuming we get back. Permission to do something really awesome?"

"Is it awesome and dangerous?" asked Angela.

"Yes."

"Then go for it!"

"Igniting engines!" The Singularity's engines spun up and ignited, pushing the ship retrograde. Jebediah bailed out of the still moving ship after about two seconds and spun around for a bit before regaining control of his spacesuit. He began moving back to the Octavius.

"Jeb, weren't we supposed to leave it in orbit?" asked Angela.

"Ehh, we wouldn't have been able to reuse it anyway."

"Wait, you were in that capsule at one point. Technically, you might have just introduced bacteria from Kerbin to Tetko."

"Hmm. The odds of one of them surviving are fairly low, though." stated Jeb.

Bill's eyes remained glued to the temperature gauges on the radiators. "Is it just me, or is it getting a bit warm in here?" asked Jeb. The gauges were at 98%.

"Jeb, how soon can we get to the next moon? And what is the next moon?"

"Hmm. I believe we go to Slate next. And the transfer window, I think is right now. Is everyone ready for the burn?"

"As ready as we'll ever be!" Bill and Angela strapped themselves in.

"Oh, and happy birthday, Angela!" Jeb passed her a small green rock.

"Thanks! You remembered!"

"3! 2! 1! Burning for Slate!"

Bill held his breath as the radiators passed the 99% mark. And then they stopped. And fell dramatically down to normal as the Octavius rose further from the strange moon.

"Note to self:" Bill whispered. "Tetko is seriously hot."

"You find moons attractive?"

"Not that kind of hot, Angela!"

==============================================================================================

(Author's note: I really have no idea why, but my radiators really acted up around Tetko.)

=================================================================================

"Alright, everyone, welcome to Slate orbit! Angela, why are you laughing?"

"Sorry, Jeb. It's just, Gene sent us Cloneus's reaction video to the successful Tetko landing."

"Oh. That would explain it! How many people did he fire this time?"

"Hmm... a lot."

"A lot as in too many to count, or as in nobody knows?"

"Haha. Ready to land? Better to do it sooner than later. Remember, ideally you only have enough battery for about an hour on the surface. And in that time there is only one window to rendezvous with Octavius."

"Question. If I had to stay for two orbits, could I?"

"Hmm. I suppose, if you used hibernation mode, you could. Why do you ask?"

"No reason." Another lie. Jeb's recurring nightmare from the Tetko-Slate voyage was being caught - halfway through ascent - by a sudden meteor shower. He figured if he delayed the ascent by a half hour he'd miss the shower - and live. He knew for a fact that he was going insane. His nightmares were either the universe's biggest coincidence - or glimpses into the future.

"Okay, then. You better be off! The landing site's coming up!"

"What landing site?"

"Haha. Land where you want to, but the day side of the moon is coming up."

"Well, I wouldn't want to try to land there in the dark!"

"They call it "Mini Tylo" for a reason!"

"Okay, I'm boarding Gatekeeper now!"

"Good luck, Jeb!"

"Thanks. I'll probably need it."

"Okay. I just noticed a way we could have saved a few thousand funds."

"Yes, Jeb?"

"Some idiot put two sets of experiments and batteries on this lander! Can you check the other lander?"

"Bill here. I can confirm that the other lander does have two barometers, thermometers, and batteries. It's almost if someone forgot they already put a set on."

"Welp, nothing we can do about it now. Igniting engine!"

"Jeb, you're losing altitude!"

"Yes, I am. I know. just getting down lower."

"No, you're losing altitude FAST. Pitch up a bit."

"Roger that, Angela. Correcting. External fuel tank nearly depleted. Jettison in five seconds."

"Jettisoned. Velocity six-hundred."

"Are your first words going to be more dramatic this time?"

"I haven't really been thinking about that very much."

"Well, Bill did send you a list..."

"And he'll have a chance to use it. He'll be the first one on Bop. We all stepped off the plate on Hale at the exact same time - although Bill said the first words, which weren't very good ones."

"Yes, I know. That was why he wrote the list. Remember to pop the science experiments before you get to the surface!"

"Got it! Velocity 200... Velocity 100..."

"Dagorlad region. Ominous name, isn't it, Jeb?"

"Yes, Angela. Who made you the Capcom? What's Bill doing?"

"Sleeping."

"Well, wake him up! It isn't every day you get to witness the first landing of a Kerbal on another celestial body!"

"Velocity 50. Pitching upwards. Altitude 50... 40... Velocity 20... Altitude 30... 20... 10... 5... Velocity zero."

"Octavius, Gatekeeper has landed on Slate." Jeb grinned. Two seconds later Angela grinned. Followed by Bill, who had woken up just in time. Half an hour later, most of the Kerbals on Kerbin would grin. Except Cloneus. He would probably fire a bunch more people.

"No ladder this time - just stepping right off. You know, this lander is the size of a piano, actually. What if I took a piano into space sometime? If I ever get back to Kerbin, remind me... Anyway. Dramatic words. 3... 2... 1..."

And then Jebediah Kerman was silent for a few minutes, thinking - or perhaps admiring Slate. So, what did he say? He said something about not being able to think of anything - but he said it dramatically.

"The beauty of this moment - is that Kerbalkind has now accomplished a feat so amazing that there are no words able to describe how nearly impossible it is. And there are those out there who said doing this - doing a lot of things - would be impossible. And I just proved a few of those people wrong. Nothing is impossible. All things are simply unpossible - until someone does it. So - go out and do it. Do the unpossible - and have fun doing it. Hey, you guys! Yes, you! All ye people of Kerbin! Tell those dictionary guys to add "unpossible" to the dictionary! Okay? Good. Welcome to the future."

 

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story will Continue...

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[rlin]

Those nightmares are prophetic.

[Garrett Kerman]

Great story! If you could actually pull that off with 250,000 funds, I would be very impressed.

[Ultimate Steve]

On ‎12‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 11:13 PM, rlin said:

Those nightmares are prophetic.

Yep! And we'll find out why... soon^tm.

22 hours ago, Garrett Kerman said:

Great story! If you could actually pull that off with 250,000 funds, I would be very impressed.

Thanks! We'll see...

I wrote 90% of Part 6. And then a weird thing happened and I deleted a sentence. So I pressed Ctrl+z. And it deleted 70% of what I had written. Redo did not work...

Spoiler

 

[max_creative]

1 minute ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I wrote 90% of Part 6. And then a weird thing happened and I deleted a sentence. So I pressed Ctrl+z. And it deleted 70% of what I had written. Redo did not work...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Okay. Part VI: The Possibility

Let's hope it doesn't delete itself again. Also, it probably won't be as good as the first time I wrote it, so this might be one of the worse chapters. Sorry for the weird font, I'm copy-pasting the part that didn't delete from google drive. And the font won't un-bold for some reason. And the images are super small. And the spacing is really weird.

Spoiler

Jeb set out onto the surface of Slate. He knew he could not stay long, however, as the battery of the lander was slowly draining (even though he had put the core on "hibernate" although this would mean he couldn't talk to his crewmates who were in orbit) and his oxygen was slowly being depleted - although he had enough of that to last several days. He was only supposed to stay on Slate for an hour - the time it took for the Octavius to make one orbit. However, yielding to his creepily prophetic nightmares, Jebediah opted to stay for two. He just needed a cover story.

 

And he got one. He had walked hundreds of meters from the lander before coming the conclusion that there was no random rocks lying on the surface of this region of Slate. So he had to get out his tools and try to mine out a surface sample. But the Surface of Slate turned out to be really, really hard.

 

So an hour had passed and he barely had the experiments done. The time for the first launch window had come and gone. By now, Cloneus would have seen the video of his first steps on Slate. Jebediah decided that if a giant meteor shower fell in his launch path, as had happened in his nightmare, he would start viewing his nightmares as possible futures instead of extreme coincidences.

 

And sure enough,

 

 

A gigantic meteor impacted the mountain range on the horizon. Jebediah was almost sure that the nightmares had to be caused my someone - or something. He dare not say anything about it out loud - everything he said and did was being recorded and some people might think him insane. So he thought about it while he wandered around documenting geographical features and snapping pictures. Could it be aliens? An enemy of Cloneus who implanted a dream generator in me? Time travelers who want to change their future?

 

The possibilities were endless, he concluded. For now he would use them for his benefit - staying alive.

 

Another half hour passed. By now he had wandered back to the lander, and placed another sample of Bill's dirt down. When he had opened the vial, a little bit of Tetko's atmosphere came out of it - where it had last been opened. Jeb boarded the piano sized lander and began the startup process by turning off hibernation. As the lander booted up, he surveyed the brownish surface that laid around him. He briefly wondered if he would be the only Kerbal ever to walk on Slate. He dismissed the thought. Barring a planet killing disaster in the next century, Kerbalkind would probably land on Slate again.

 

"Hello, this is Jeb reporting to Octavius. Anyone there?" He waited a few more seconds and tried again. Only after the fourth time did he get a response.

 

"Jeb?" It was Bill. "Good gravy! We thought you were dead!"

 

"What? No, I'm perfectly fine. Why would I be dead?"

 

"Well, you didn't phone in last orbit and then we saw that huge meteor impact, and well, we thought you had died!"

 

"So Angela didn't take my suggestion of staying two orbits literally?"

 

"Seems not. Did you remember the dirt?"

 

"Yep. Quickly, though. The launch window is in about twenty seconds. Do you have time to run any checklist of any kind?"

 

"Hold on, I'll check." There was a pause. "Okay, I've got the, uh, basic checklist. Did you leave the seismic indicators?"

 

"..."

 

"Jeb, don't tell me you launched already!"

 

"Sorry, I can't hear you over the giant engine pushing me into space!"

 

"AAGH!"

 

"What, did I forget something?"

 

"Oh, too late! But when you do your ascent science, make sure you do it over the meteor impact area! Angela mentioned she would like to investigate!"

 

"Does she even know that I'm alive yet?"

 

"She fell asleep!"

 

 

"Velocity 500. Accelerating to Orbital velocity!"

 

"Jeb?"

 

"Angela?"

 

"You're alive?"

 

"Long story. Popping science experiments over impact zone... now."

 

"Do you notice anything about the impact zone?"

 

"Yes, I'm flying through a dust cloud. It's almost like a mini atmosphere in a hail storm. Switching EVA lights on... Altitude ten kilometers."

 

"How much battery do you have left?"

 

"Um, ten?"

 

"Is that enough to make it back to the ship?"

 

"Probably."

 

"How do you know that? It takes nearly a whole orbit to do a rendezvous!"

 

"How do you know that? There's a such thing as direct rendezvous. Altitude twenty K."

 

"Still, you have ten units of charge left! And you know how difficult it was to get that lander Klawed earlier!"

 

"Nine." Jeb and Angela half-argued for another five mintues or so until Jeb won.

 

"Jeb, do you know how hard it is to do a direct rendezvous within half an hour or less?"

 

"Yes, I do. I just did it. Hi!" Jeb waved at the Octavius.

 

 

"You win. Preparing to Klaw..."

 

 

"Okay, so we go to Eeloo now? And then Ovok to refuel?"

 

"Correct, Jeb. Slight problem."

 

"It's the fuel again, isn't it?"

 

"Bingo."

 

"As in, I'm right? Or as in we have bingo fuel?"

 

"Both. Although Bingo Fuel isn't really supposed to be used as an actual term."

 

"So, what's the situation?"

 

"We have enough fuel to get to Eeloo orbit, but it must be very elliptical. Right after out projected arrival time there is a transfer window to Ovok."

 

"Okay."

 

"But I mean right after. Half of an orbit later. Your time on Eeloo will have to be less than fifteen minutes or else we're stuck in orbit for another  two months. And we don't want to miss the Jool window."

 

"Okay, then. Fifteen minutes, I got this."

 

 

"You're cool with that?"

 

"Yep. I'm cool."

 

"Really? Fifteen minutes down from a-"

 

"A two hour mission. Same as Slate. Two hours, fifteen minutes. Both short missions. Short either way." The real reason Jeb did not want to stay for long on Eeloo was another nightmare he had earlier - he did not see the end of it, he woke up, but it happened after he fell asleep on Eeloo. And somehow, that killed him. Less time on Eeloo was less time to fall asleep.

 

*Note: This is where I started rewriting from.

 

"Okay, then. If you insist... Onwards to Eeloo!"

===================================================================

"Whose idea was it to go into a polar orbit?"

"That's a really long story, but a short version is that not doing a plane change actually saves us fuel in this case."

"Okay, when am I landing?"

"Now. Get into the Gatekeeper."

"Okay, I'm EVA-ing now."

"We need to do the Ovok node in about a half an hour. If you follow the trajectory I uploaded to your lander, you should have fifteen minutes on the surface before you need to leave. So, un-klaw and burn downwards."

"Already on it, Angela! Wow, it's a night landing? I really hope the radar altimeter works properly."

"Uh, I took that picture and then the camera broke."

"Gah! We won't have any shots of the landing!"

"Oh, relax! The only people who will be upset will be the Flat Kerbiners and the people who make the image montages."

"How do the cameras work anyway? I never really wondered before."

"Well, the parts used to build our rockets are really heavy. This is because they all have a lot of magnetic material in them. This creates a magnetic field around the entire craft, sheltering it from cosmic radiation."

"How is this related to cameras? And shouldn't you be landing, not talking?"

"It is, and yes I am. I multitask. Altitude ten kilometers. So, one day, a genius figured out how to make incredibly small cameras - and another genius figured out how to manipulate magnetic fields with submillimeter precision."

"Okay."

"And another genius made these cameras magnetic - and the result is that now the magnetic fields around spaceships are filled with nanocameras."

"That's interesting!"

"Two kilometers. Suicide burning now!" Bill, Angela, and Jebediah held their breath."

"Don't forget dramatic words!"

"Sorry, sort of pressed for time here! It's probably not going to be dramatic at all - and, oh. Gatekeeper has landed!"

"Bravo!"

"Okay, Jeb. You need to get the samples, fix the cameras, plant the flag, leave the dirt, do the science, and think of dramatic words in fifteen minutes. Ready? Go!" Jeb jumped off of the Gatekeeper.

"Four down! Six to go! For Kerbin!!!!" And with that, Jeb stabbed the oblate spheroid with a flimsy metal pole that had come from another oblate sphereoid. He fixed the cameras in one minute and spent another minute composing the mission picture.

"Wow, this ice is slippery!" Jeb did the science experiments and set up a minidrill - to hopefully dig into the ice and find out if Eeloo really did have an ocean. It would only have ten minutes to run, but that was better than nothing. Five minutes in Jeb gently set Bill's dirt down next to the flag pole and began wandering around snapping pictures. Eight minutes later he had finished planting the seismic sensors and grabbed the first complete meter of core sample from the minidrill. He boarded the lander.

"Octavius, this is Gatekeeper. I am ready for takeoff!"

"Okay, Jeb! Did you remember the seismic sensors?"

"Yep! And I'm ready to - wait a second."

"What?"

"The dirt - it's gone. There's just a steaming hole where I put it down."

"What?"

"You heard me, a hole! It's venting something - Oh my Bop! It looks like water - simultaneously freezing and boiling!"

"Eeloo has an ocean?"

"It would appear so - but what made the hole?"

"Get the samples to me and I'll see if it was a reaction between the dirt and the ice - although that seems unlikely. Forty seconds." It was at this point that he noticed the minidrill's next core sample tube was full - of a liquid that looked very much like water.

"Angela, I'm getting the next core sample." Jeb jumped off the lander towards the minidrill again.

"What? Jeb, you have thirty seconds to launch! Get back in the lander!"

"No can do, this could be the scientific discovery of the century! If this is water - "

"Twenty three seconds!" Jeb slid past the minidrill, grabbing the meter long tube, and struggling to reverse direction on the slippery surface. "Eighteen seconds! Jeb, what the Moho are you doing?"

"It's a long story!" As he ran back towards the lander, a geyser of water - boiling and freezing at the same time - erupted out of the spot on the ground the minidrill had occupied. "AAAAAA-"

"What's going on down there? You have ten seconds until you can't reach us before the burn!" A second geyser erupted out of the spot the dirt had occupied. Jeb leapt aboard the lander and shoved the throttle lever all the way forward.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Five minutes later, Jeb was nearing the Octavius.

"I'm serious! Geysers! Where the drill and dirt were! Geysers!"

"It's not that we don't believe you, Jeb, it's just that the cameras failed at that very moment."

"I have samples! Analyze them!"

"And we will. I don't have much of a laboratory up here. No space, no funding. I'll try analyzing half of them here, onboard the ship, but the other half will be stored in the return module for now."

"Okay, we'll deal with this later. For now, we Klaw and burn. You only get one attempt to Klaw me, otherwise we won't have time."

"Okay - forward a bit - to the left -"

"Burn!"

"Engine on. To Ovok!



"Okay, I'm still outside on the Klaw here... I've got the best view ever!"

"Engine shutdown. We are on our way to Ovok!"

=========================================================================================

"Jeb, we have a problem."

"Yes, Angela?"

"Actually we have several problems."

"How bad?"

"Tiny to moderate, with a 0.001 percent chance of planet killing disaster."

"Woah, that escalated quickly."

"I analyzed the dirt and ice. Nothing in those two would react under those conditions. I even took a miniscule sample of each and combined them. Nothing."

"So, what is the liquid?"

"It is mostly water. Naturally, I had to do the analysis in a sterile environment - I took the sample on EVA and used that fuel cell we never use as a lab."

"And?"

"80% water, 18% carbon dioxide, 1.8% methane. 0.18% miscellaneous."

"What is the 0.02 percent?" Angela took a deep breath and told Jeb.

"I don't know. I do not have the right equipment up here. But there is a ten percent chance that it is organic material."

"What the - "

"A ten percent chance. But enough for me to eject the part of the fuel cell I used, along with the exterior coating of my EVA gloves, and the rest of my half of the sample."

"What? You ejected the first sign of extraterrestrial life into deep space?"

"Calm down, we still have half of the sample. That will remain in the return capsule - Dragonhearted - until we return to Kerbin."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Tell KSC! Let's refuel on Ovok and go back to Kerbin now! This is big enough news to save the space program without Cloneus's help!"

"No. There is a ten percent chance that sample contains life. If it doesn't, we failed and the program is doomed. If it does, nobody will let us come down to Kerbin for fear of infecting the planet."

"Haha. What a load of baloney."

"Exactly - but most of the politicians in office have zero knowledge of space travel. They would force us to die up here. And there is a real threat - even if it is only the 0.001 percent chance I mentioned earlier - that such life would be able to destroy all life on Kerbin if released."

"So that leaves us two options - keep it a secret, or jettison the core sample into Sarnus."

"Yes. I am a scientist - so I say we go with the former."

"Agreed. Although we'll only be able to do that until we reach Kerbin - all of our audio logs are made public."

"Solution: learn sign language."

"Haha. Although seriously, Angela, I can already see how this will spawn a horror movie!"

"Two things: Yes, and there is already going to be a movie about this."

"Really?"

"Yes! We are planning on selling the rights - in sixteen years, of course - to Year 21 Coyote."

"Hmm. This could go to ways."

"Are we going to talk about this all the way to Ovok?"

"Probably."

===============================================================================================

"How are we not in its sphere of influence yet?"

"Ovok is smaller than Gilly - and in a deeper gravity well. Are you ready to begin burning, Jeb?"

"Yes. Engaging orbital capture - now." The crew felt a few minutes of deceleration.

"Crew, we are in a suborbital trajectory over Ovok."

"Now, we wait for three hours."

"Three hours?"

"Yeah, the gravity is pretty low here, and we shouldn't waste fuel burning down - we only have dozens of meters per second of Delta V left. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to take a nap."

"I'll run the experiments."

"I'll check the drills."

Three hours passed. Jeb woke up screaming. But he was glad for it this time. In his nightmare, he had seen the Octavius plow into Ovok at about twenty meters per second.

"Ready for the landing, Jeb? Five minutes. We were just about to get you up."

"Ready!"

"I'll be reading out the timing on the suicide burn to you."

"Got it, Angela. Can you double check your math on that burn real quick?"

"Are you questioning my math? I was valedictorian in high school! I got all A's in college!"

"Okay, I wasn't trying to be hostile or anything." A few minutes passed.

"Suicide burn in fifteen seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Si-"

"Burning!"

"Hey, is that a floating rock?"

"Jeb! You went five seconds early!"

"Check your math!"

"My math is perfectly fine!"

"Then why is this a perfect suicide burn?"

"I don't know what you're - oh. I still had the gravity numbers for Hale plugged into the ship's calculator. It has slightly higher gravity. Oops. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it! We're making history, we shouldn't be concerned with miscalculations right now!"

"Ten meters, Jeb." There was a dramatic pause, and then the engine shut off.

"We bounced... those shock absorbers are a bit too powerful."

"Calculation: It will be another ten seconds before we touch down." The crew tensely waited ten seconds.

"And, we have landed on Ovok with about a dozen meters per second of Delta V left. Who's turn is it to go first again?"

"I don't remember. Bill can do it, though. I'll take Bop, and we'll worry about Pol when we get there."

"Okay, then. Bill? You got your words ready?"

"As they'll ever be! I've got something funny for the nerds out there which actually doubles as a semi good dramatic quote."

"Okay, then. Ready?"

"Sarnus five shall be completed." Jeb exited the hatch and stood on the lander, followed by Angela who worked on the experiments. Bill stepped out of the hatch, took a deep breath, and then walked off of the fuel tank. He fell for at least half a minute - and he said the words "I C you now, Ovok," while falling.

And then his boots softly impacted the icy, powdery surface of Ovok.

"Hello, world!"

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story Will Continue...

 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[max_creative]

26 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Let's hope it doesn't delete itself again. Also, it probably won't be as good as the first time I wrote it, so this might be one of the worse chapters. Sorry for the weird font, I'm copy-pasting the part that didn't delete from google drive. And the font won't un-bold for some reason. And the images are super small. And the spacing is really weird. 

I write all my stuff in Word before I post it. When your stuff deletes itself it's really annoying. Also, when your pencil sharpens the wrong way it can really make you decide what you were writing wasn't important. 

Oh well. Good job Ultimate Steve! I'm reading and I wonder "Hey, is it just me, or does the font and spacing look slightly different here?"  

Edited January 3, 2017 by max_creative
Error: 404 Not Found.

[MinimalMinmus]

You realize you confused Ovok (the ovoid, smooth one you just landed on) and Hale (the tiny sheperd moonlet with an uneven surface) all along?

[Ultimate Steve]

11 minutes ago, MinimalMinmus said:

You realize you confused Ovok (the ovoid, smooth one you just landed on) and Hale (the tiny sheperd moonlet with an uneven surface) all along?

Oh.

Oops.

Correcting now! (This is going to take a long time.)

EDIT: Fixed! How in he world did I get them confused in the first place?

Edited January 4, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

Part VII: The Gift

Spoiler

You can jump 278.4 meters on Ovok.

Ovok has a high concentration of some unknown particle that makes rocks float.

And the only three Kerbals that had ever bothered to give Ovok a visit were preparing to leave - after a few months on the surface to mine, explore, and wait for the transfer window.

"But, Jeb! That's the problem! There isn't a transfer window!" explained Bill.

"Why exactly, has nobody checked that? I mean, It's been, what, four or five years?" replied Jeb.

"Okay, cutting to the chase. We can get to Jool. Unfortunately, not in a timely manner. Angela?"

"I did the calculations. If we leave soon, we will almost have enough Delta V to get to Jool, and enough time to explore the moons, as well as having a transfer window to Kerbin in time to get back home and save the space program."

"Okay, Angela," remarked Jeb, "but you lost me at "almost enough Delta V." Explain, please."

"Well, we don't have enough Delta V fully fueled. Even with the ore tank full."

"So we're stuck here?"

"No, I didn't say that! You know that oxidizer that we've been carrying around since we left Kerbin?"

"Yeah."

"If we burn it off and then fill the fuel tanks with fuel again, and leave the oxidizer tanks empty, we will have enough Delta V."

"I see where this is going! And then we refuel at Bop!"

"Err, no. We won't have enough Delta V to reach Bop. We're going to have to go for Pol instead."

"Okay. Just a simple switch. So, Angela, how long will this transfer take?" Angela froze for a bit. "Angela?"

"You don't want to know."

"Okay, then. I probably don't. Burn the oxidizer!"

And so the oxidizer was burnt. And the liquid fuel mined. And then there was many goodbyes said to the lonely moon. As the Octavius lifted off, a thought struck Jeb. What if nobody ever came back to Ovok? Ever? What if the Octavius was going to be the only mission ever to visit Ovok? The thought filled him with a sense of loneliness. What if Ovok was struck by an asteroid and was never set foot on again?

And so Jeb watched as Ovok got smaller in his window.

Jeb watched until it disappeared. And so Bill watched as Slate grew bigger and then smaller on his screen linked to the cameras.

Bill watched until Slate became smaller than one  pixel and could not be viewed. Angela, commandeering the command pod from Jeb, watched Sarnus. The magnificent ball of gas, ringed by dust. It grew smaller, until she could block it with her hand. Then her thumb. And then she could make a mark on the window and it would be gone.

And then one day she woke up and found herself unable to distinguish Sarnus from the stars out in space.

And so they traveled across the sky.

=============================

One (Jool) year later...

=============================

Cloneus Kerman sat in his office, at his solid gold desk, in his solid gold chair, awaiting a status update with his assistant. A few moments later, the aforementioned assistant walked through the door and sat down across the table at another chair (this one solid silver).

"Hello, Cloneus."

"Dave. I assume you have the updates ready?"

"Same as every Thursday, boss."

"Shoot."

"The omega device is nearly finished."

"Oh, that! Haha! It sounds super dramatic and scary, but wait until the public finds out it's really only an expensive laser pointer! Continue, Dave."

"Casino revenue is up two percent. Mostly because we aren't paying those bartenders any more, since you replaced them with robots."

"Do you think I hold the record for most people fired?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe? How dare you?"

"Uh, I mean yes! You most certainly hold the record, boss, and you need not extend your tremendous lead any more!"

"Perfect. And the Molossia site?"

"Well, we're having a tough time fitting it in such a small space, and the revenue will be abysmal, but it is about a third built. The Septagon is almost operational."

"Good. Anything else?"

"The Octavius has entered Jool's sphere of influence."

"Octavius?"

"Octavius. You know, that space mission you funded, like, a decade ago..."

"Oh, that one. It's been so long I almost forgot about it! Any setbacks on their part?"

"No, although some doubt they can make it back on time."

"Drat! Get our engineers to work on anything we can do to stop the Octavius from returning to Kerbin. Their mission has been very successful, and if they do succeed, I lose a prime piece of land as well as twenty million funds!"

"Priority, sir?"

"Alpha-Alpha-Alpha. Code Nelson."

"Code Nelson, Sir?"

"Yes, did you not hear me?"

"I heard you. I was just making sure that you -"

"I am sure, you imbecile! Any problems are on your end, not mine!"

"But, sir? Code Nelson? Code Nelsons are dangerous."

"Yeah, I know. Do you happen to have any ideas on harming Octavius from millions of kilometers away?"

"Well, we could transmit a virus onto their system, triggered by a landing, maybe. The virus would corrupt the antenna program and emulate a loss of contact signal before burning the extension motor out, melting the boom, making everyone think the Octavius was destroyed upon touchdown."

"Good work! Get the engineers to work on it, right away!"

"One more thing, sir. We've finalized the plans for the KSC casino site. Thankfully, we already had some buildings to work with. I think we'd go with a theme of some sort."

"Oh, no. Not clocks again like the other time we tried it! That was a disaster! I had to shut it down! And blow it up!"

"No, sir, it's not clocks, I promise you. We have alternate blueprints, but the theme could be "Out of this world!" or something like that."

"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard!"

"I think we should make a casino restaurant mini golf dinosaur chain on the surface of the sun made out of plutonium shaped like unicorns."

"What?"

"Out of this world is no longer the dumbest idea you've ever heard." With that, Cloneus's assistant left the office. Cloneus resumed his work, or at least tried to. The assistants last words remained in his head. "Out of this world." For most people that was just an expression. For the super rich... But he had issued a code Nelson - which made his order to hinder Octavius irrevocable. But, really? Who needed the space program anyway?

Cloneus did not sleep well that night.

================================================================

Eleven years, cramped on a spaceship. Eleven years. Eleven years in the same three cubic meters of space. Eleven years crammed into a tin can with the same two others Kerbals.

Unlike the first three years they were far away from Kerbin and the sun was no longer bright enough to light the capsule. Unlike the first three years their personal snacks were all gone, except for Bill's last M&M. Unlike year four, they did not have any moons to land on for the eleven.

Almost fifteen years straight in space. Jeb was glad they were finally nearing Jool. Fortunately for him, the eleven years was without nightmares.

"Okay, Angela. Ready to be the first Kerbal on Pol?"

"Sort of. I'm still trying to work on the words."

"Well, I'm nearly certain that it'll be better than Bill's words on Hale."

"Haha. Someone should make a quotes montage of this mission."

"Yes. So, the risk assessment?"

"We've done remarkably well so far. Loss of ship on Pol is around 1 in 7. Loss of lander on Laythe is 1 in 3. Loss of lander on Tylo is also 1 in 3. Vall is 1 in 12, as it is basically the Mun, Bop is 1 in 52. The journey home is about 1 in 50. And re-entry is impossible to tell without knowing how well the heat shield has held up."

"Great work. 1 in 3... Hmm."

"Yeah, the Laythe lander is just plain weird. And the margins on Tylo are super duper slim. Very, very slim."

"So, once we pass that, the mission is mostly straightforward from there, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it would be! And then we'd save the space program and go down in history!"

"Well, we'd go down in history either way. What about the 10,000 science point requirement? How much do we have?"

"I've been afraid to count, but we have nearly 100 experiments stored in the return vehicle, which is running low on supplies."

"Well, the mission is about 75% over with. So, I guess it's all right."

"Jeb, the insertion burn."

"Right!"

"It's so... green."

"Yes, I suppose it is, Angela. Not quite Sarnus, but still majestic."

"But more threatening."

"Yes, I suppose. We get to Pol in 50 days."

"Fifty days?"

"Well, after the tenth year time stopped mattering to me."

"Jeb? Can I tell you something?"

"Yes."

"I'm worried for Bill."

"Yes?"

"He's lately been so absorbed in his work that he'll spend days without eating or drinking, and look up and wonder how many minutes have passed. And his work - he keeps shoving it into his personal drawer whenever I glance over, like he's hiding it."

"Well, he's Bill. That's what he does. I've known him since the second grade, he'll pull through, as long as he has something to do. And besides, the eleven years of boredom are over! We're at Jool now!"

"Still, I'm concerned. He'll talk to himself. Talk for days on end. About absolutely nothing whatsoever!"

"Okay, that's not Bill." At that point, Bill, who Jeb and Angela thought was sleeping, joined into the conversation.

"You want to know? Figures. Are we at Jool yet? Never mind. It's just that, at around year six I realized I did not pack enough colored pencils to last the whole journey. And if you really want to know, I am an artist. My art teacher said I was the best in the whole school. But, as Jeb knows, at that school talent makes you a target rather than special. Do you want an answer? Well, it's a long story."

"Oh. Sorry, Bill. We didn't intend to intrude on your privacy. You don't have to tell us."

"Too late. Anyway, my fellow students used to take my art and shove it down the toilet. Which was fine once I stopped taking my art to school and staying late to not run into them. Oh, the look on their faces that day I made fake art that said "Whoever shoves this down the toilet is a self declared idiot!" That was probably my high point, besides the space stuff. But, then it happened."

"Seriously, you don't have to tell this story again," said Jeb. "It makes you sad and depressed every time."

"Jeb, you guys want an answer, and I have to give you the long story or it will not make sense!" There was silence. "It was Valentine's day. Freshman year. And, well, you know how it goes, why I had to take that drawing to school that day. For her. I spent three hours, every night, restarting half a dozen times when the eraser marks wore holes in the paper, for a whole two months, working on that drawing. A humongous piece of paper. And I took every precaution imaginable, but they still find me. Not even a minute before I was to give it to her. And, well, they burnt it. Right in front of her face. And at first she gasped in horror. And then, one of those jerks asked her to the dance that night. And then the laughed along with them. I think that was the only week I voluntarily skipped school, and the only reason I was not valedictorian - missing that week." There was silence for a few minutes. Then, Angela spoke.

"Bill, I am so sorry to hear that. It's worse than my own childhood was - and mine was pretty bad. But how does this explain your strange behavior?"

"I was just getting to that. I just needed you to see how much I care about my art. And now, because of that, I hoard it from everyone. Ever since that day, I've stayed out of art classes, taken down all of the art I had on display, and kept it locked in a box. No such luxury up here. And with the fourteen years spent up here, it just got to my head... just, stay out of my personal drawer, okay? I'll try to stop acting like a dragon guarding his hoard. And maybe I'll show you some of them sometime."

"So, the point?" Bill opened his drawer and pulled out one blank sheet of paper and one small plastic bag.

"In my personal mass budget I left room for 64 colored pencils, among my other art supplies, which would be a few black pens, four colors of smearing clay, 200 sheets of paper, which was the real whopper, two expo markers, gold, silver, and green glitter glue, as well as four pencils and one pencil sharpener."

"Sorry if I'm throwing you off track here, but what do you use all of the other stuff for? I get pencils and paper, but glitter glue and clay?"

"It's my style - the definite objects like houses, rocket parts, etc. I outline in pen and color in. The expo markers are used for stark black space. The glitter glue - gold, silver, and green, are for stars. Yes, I add green stars. Long story. The clay, though, is what really defines my style. A long time ago I discovered that a certain brand of clay makes an excellent covering for colored pencil - it makes nature look, well, smooth. And natural. And it looks absolutely amazing on sunsets."

"Okay. That sounds amazing. I'd bet it looks amazing, too."

"I don't know about that. The last person to see any of my drawings besides me was Marie Kerman as it burned before her very eyes. Some days I feel sorry for Marie more than I do myself. Sometimes I even feel sorry for those guys who burnt it... Any way, I'm getting sidetracked. The point is - I packed a fifty pack of colored pencils, plus a twelve pack and two extra blacks because I draw space a lot - black runs out fast. The markers went pretty quickly. Soon after that, the glitter glue. Pen 1 failed after two years, number two on year five, number three on year eight. The fourth one I save and use very carefully. I started running out of colored pencils after year two. The first one to go was the first of two blues. I can deal with that, I've got, like, seven shades of blue. After that, other colors got used up. By the time we left Sarnus I was already running into problems - but, I can get by without a pine green or a mahogany. The first color that I had two of to run out was blue, followed shortly by green. Well, I do draw Kerbin a lot. More colors were used up, and by year six I had less than twenty. My clay supply was running short as well, and long since I've run out of eraser - all mistakes are permeant. So, this is year fourteen." Bill held up the bag in his hand. "This is what I have left." In the plastic baggie there was an inch of black colored pencil, a few lumps of clay, and sections of different colored pencil lead each less than a centimeter long, no wood to encapsulate them. "I have only jade green left, a bit of purple, a tiny bit of Minmus color, along with pale rose, sand, taupe, cool grey, and I still have barely touched the white colored pencil. The lack of color is not the problem, however. I can make a perfectly good drawing out of those colors if I use the clay. But do you want to know the real problem?" Bill held up the piece of paper. "I have drawn one hundred and ninety nine drawings in my fourteen and a half years up here. I have one piece of paper left. It has been that way for an entire year. I can't explain it, but I just have this feeling that whatever I draw must be my best drawing ever. Otherwise, I don't think I could live with the agony of not ending on a high note. So I've been talking to myself a lot, in code of course. And I could never top my best drawing ever. And there you have it. That's my story." The trio floated in silence across the great void of space, towards their Pol encounter, fifty days from now.

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Bill. I know people must say that all the time, but please understand. There are no words that can express how, uh, sorry I am for you. I mean, I can't even - oh, shoot."

"It's okay, Angela. I feel you. I believe you. There really are no words, are there?"

"Well, we can pull a Jeb and invent one!"

"Hey!" Jeb interjected. "Just so you know, guys? "Unpossible" has been in my head for several decades now."

"Haha. How about kasjunsalaoe?"

"Well, it's as good a word as any."

"But I don't want it to be a sad word."

"Well, let's make it so that it means both sympathetic and "thank you" or something like that!"

"Hmm, good idea! Wait, if it means thank you, then, kasjunsalaoe for kasjunsalaoe!"

"Hehe. Yep!"

Later on that day, Angela took a look at the calendar - and when she found the day that the Pol landing would take place on, she grinned.

=====================================================================================
Fifty days later the Octavius was on a suborbital trajectory over Pol.

"Bill, do the drills still work?"

"I ran a test last week."

"Good. Angela, the experiments?"

"They are still functioning."

"And your first words?"

"I've decided to make them up on the spot. A bit."

"Well, I don't know what you're doing, and at this point I'm busy landing this thing. Ready, everyone?" Jeb strapped himself into his seat. Angela clicked her helmet into place. Bill gripped the vial of Kerbin dirt in his left hand and locked his personal drawer.

"We're all ready, Jeb!"

"Engine ignition... Now!" Minutes passed until the Octavius was really close to the surface.

"Gravity... we're going to have gravity again!"

"And more than three cubic meters of space!"

"And a horizon line!"

"Legs deployed! One hundred meters... Fifty... Twenty five... Twelve... Six..."

"Octavius has landed. Wait a second, why do we only have five landing legs? Oh, whatever. We're on Pol! Ready, Angela?"

"I'm ready!" Angela said as she carefully placed a wrapped package into one of her spacesuit's many storage compartments and stepped out of the mothership and onto the platform she would be jumping off of. Bill and Jeb followed, the three standing in the Pol gravity. This was Angela's moon. This was Angela's moon. This was Angela's moon. But she almost didn't want it to be. She almost didn't want to keep it to herself.

"I'd like to say a few words before I step onto the surface. I'd like to let you all know that this is completely off of the top of my head, and I do this sometimes. Spontaneously talk in poems -"

"You're doing a poem?"

"Uh, yeah. Here goes nothing.

 

As I survey the land spikes around me,

I gaze at the stars, the view all can see,

Wondering if we will all come back,

Unfortunately, our funding does lack.

 

Nothing but one takes my eyes away,

But I do not look at this in dismay,

This is my moon, this is my time,

Frantically trying to find things that rhyme.

 

Here I am now, about to make history,

But part of me this moment I want to flee,

I don't know if I'll take it, don't know if I can,

All that I do, I do without plan.

 

Up here, now, separated by just

Ten meters of space before I'd hit dust.

But all that I'd really want to do today?"

 

Angela Kerman picked up Bill Kerman by the back of his spacesuit and thrust the carefully wrapped package into his arms - and tossed a startled looking Bill over the edge of the lander, onto Pol. He hit the surface with a puff of dust and became the first Kerbal to set foot - or rather, his arm hit first - on Pol. And he stood up, and looked up at Angela and was about to say something like "Why in the Moho? You startled the living daylights out of me! Now I have to clean my suit!" but he held his tongue. He didn't want to make this a repeat of Hale. He then noticed the package sitting in his hand - given to him by Angela. He opened it carefully.

Inside was a simple notebook, a green one, along with twelve colored pencils.

 

"Bill Kerman, happy Valentine's day!"

"Thank you. Angela, there are no words - well, there is one." And the two said it in unison.

"Kasjunsalaoe."

 

===========================================================================================

Cloneus sat watching the news, of which the main attraction was Angela's poem. He caught himself smiling - in the fifty days that had passed he had finalized his secret idea. It would never, ever work. Ever. Especially with the code Nelson looming over him. He wished to himself he'd never enacted it - now the survival of the crew rested solely on his entire staff not being able to cripple the ship all the way from Kerbin.

And the strange thing was, he actually found himself caring for the crew of the Octavius - and hoping they would get home alive.

Nonsense, he told himself. He'd continue with his plan of taking the KSC's land. the other part of him argued that his secret plan would be way more fun - and he'd go down in history if it worked, but it almost certainly wouldn't work. So, he made a bet with himself: if he saw some sort of sign, he'd attempt to do his secret plan. Otherwise he'd continue with his normal plan - making KSC into a casino.

Just then, the doors to his office swung wide. One Kerbal entered - and spoke.

"Hello, are you Cloneus? I'm here to see you about a job here. My name is Marie Kerman - I went to school with Bill and Jeb, you might have heard my name on the news recently."

 

And because he had managed to rip one audio file off of the ship, Clonues knew the whole story.

 

He supposed it counted as a sign.

 

 

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story Will Continue...
 

 

Edited January 7, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[Garrett Kerman]

I know what Cloneus' secret plan is! He wants have the KSC build a space casino for him if they win the bet.

[Alpha 360]

Can't help thinking, Cloneus will be merciful because he is kerbal. Wait! Bill's last picture will convince him to fund the program! Yes, I quite sure I figured it out. They will arrive late, maybe losing Bill or Angela, Cloneus will be merciful. Also, if Bill DOES, survive, will he marry Marie? Also IF is the program goes bankrupt, what would Bill, and Angela do?(Jeb has a junkyard, so he's fine). Next off, what is Code Nelson, is it a Time Machine that Marie hijacks to give Jeb his dreams to save them? I got several plot lines running through my head and chances are, one of them is right.  

Edited January 8, 2017 by Alpha 360
"Kouston, we have several problems, but that doesn't matter so we want to continue on with the mission."

[Ultimate Steve]

22 hours ago, Garrett Kerman said:

I know what Cloneus' secret plan is! He wants have the KSC build a space casino for him if they win the bet.

You're partially right on that...

10 hours ago, Alpha 360 said:

Can't help thinking, Cloneus will be merciful because he is kerbal. Wait! Bill's last picture will convince him to fund the program! Yes, I quite sure I figured it out. They will arrive late, maybe losing Bill or Angela, Cloneus will be merciful. Also, if Bill DOES, survive, will he marry Marie? Also IF is the program goes bankrupt, what would Bill, and Angela do?(Jeb has a junkyard, so he's fine). Next off, what is Code Nelson, is it a Time Machine that Marie hijacks to give Jeb his dreams to save them? I got several plot lines running through my head and chances are, one of them is right.  

Well, most of those have some grain of truth to them...  But I'm not going to spoil anything, you'll just have to wait and see.

But just to clear things up, a Code Nelson is a command issued by Cloneus that can never be revoked - like if I said "I want nachos! Code Nelson!" I can no longer refuse the nachos, no matter what.

Oh my, my story has gotten big enough that people are trying to predict the future!

Part VIII: The Destiny

Spoiler

Back on the surface of Pol a few days had passed. Angela had completed her science experiments. Bill had refueled the ship. And Jeb, well, he was being Jeb.

"I have one question for you, Angela," said Bill as he drew in his new notebook. "Where did you get these? You had to have had them all along, but why haven't you used them?"

"Oh, the notebook and pencils? Well, I didn't have a lot of personal possessions before I went into space, and what little I did have mostly fit into my personal mass budget. I had some room left over, and decided to go out and buy them, thinking they'd come in handy some day. I never knew you were an artist before you told us, though. And I guess they really did come in handy."

"Seriously though, Angela, I cannot thank you enough!"

"Really, it's no problem. I wasn't going to use them anyway, so I'm glad someone got to use it!" Bill was about to say something else when he was cut off by Jeb, who had just entered Octavius.

"Okay, crew! Where to next?"

"Well, um, not Bop. That will be our refueling stop. Laythe gets rid of the most mass, Tylo the second most, and is the most dangerous, and Vall? Eh, not Vall probably."

"So it's between Tylo and Laythe. Tylo's closer. Let's go to Tylo!"

"Actually, Laythe would be more logical than Tylo. From there we could work our way outwards and maybe spend less Delta V."

"Nope, Tylo!" Jeb had another reason for wanting to put off Laythe for as long as possible: you guessed it, the nightmares - most of which were about Laythe. The Laythe lander was just plain weird - unorthodox and extremely dangerous.

"Well, if you insist. I'll calculate the transfer window..."

"Who cares about a transfer window? Bill, did you remember your dirt?"

"Yes, but -"

"THREETWOONEGO!"

"Bye, Pol!" shouted Jeb.

"Actually, do you want to see the results of the moon poll?" asked Angela.

"Oh, that? Where we asked all of Kerbin what their favorite moon was?" replied Bill.

"Yeah, that! Laythe came in first, then Tetko, then Hale, Vall, Eeloo, Tylo, Slate, Ovok, Bop, and Pol," listed Angela.

"Pol came in last?" replied Bill. "Aww. I actually like Pol. It's sort of like Dres - forgotten but loved by many."

"Yeah."

The Octavius sped on away from Pol and soon was on a trajectory to intercept Tylo.

And weeks later, they arrived.

"Okay. Let's do this. Are you ready, Jeb?"

"As I'll ever be, Angela. Have you done the science yet?"

"Thanks for reminding me!"

"I'm going to the lander now. See you later!"

"So, Jeb. Remember, this is probably the hardest moon in the entire solar system to land on - no atmosphere and nearly the size of Kerbin."

"Ehh, it's just a bigger version of Slate."

"Actually, Slate is a smaller version of Tylo."

"How bad can it be? I'm Jebediah Kerman." Strangely, he had no nightmares about the Tylo landing.

"Don't get too macho for your own good. This is for the space program, not for you."

"Good point. Decoupling now."

"Wait! We need to name the lander!"

"Hmm. I don't know what to call it, though! I mean, I haven't really thought about it before." The crew spent most of the next orbit trying to figure out what to call it. Then Bill got bored and got out his notebook and began drawing again - although more carefully. The twelve colored pencils still needed to last him five years.

"Bill, did you title your notebook?"

"Yeah, I did. I decided to call it "The Green Notebook of Destiny!" after a gimmick Jeb and Val came up with when we were all in school." Jeb immediately jumped out of his seat - which turned out to be a bad idea because his seat was located outside the spaceship.

"That's it! Destiny!"

"What?"

"We'll name the lander "Destiny!" It's perfect!"

"Well, okay, then. Come back in and refill your oxygen and RCS. It's been a whole orbit and you need as much EVA propellant as you can get, because your jetpack is the final stage of the Destiny."

"Good point." Jeb briefly re-entered Octavius and refilled his oxygen and RCS. He went back to the lander and detached.

"See you soon, Bill! See you soon, Angela!"

"Don't die, Jeb!"

"It's my number one goal!"

Although he didn't show it, Jeb was scared. Not of Tylo, but of Death - and Tylo had the potential for it. The fuel margins on the Destiny were about as slim as they could get - he would have to complete the ascent with his EVA pack.

He lowered his periapsis to around seven kilometers and then waited for half of an orbit until he was there.

Then he began burning fuel to slow down and lose altitude a little bit - he got down a few more kilometers and then began juggling his pitch angle to maintain altitude. The auxiliary fuel tank was emptied surprisingly early in the descent. That worried him a little bit.

Jeb glanced at the mirror implanted in the battery pack. The surface was near. He dodged at least three mountains before his velocity meter ticked down to zero. He was hovering fifty meters above the surface of Tylo. He lowered the throttle and he dropped - and hovered for a few seconds at the final meter - and cut thrust.

Jebediah Kerman was on Tylo.

Unfortunately, the Octavius had long since passed the horizon line and communication was impossible. He briefly checked that his voice recorder was on, and then stepped onto the surface of Tylo.

He thought about what to say. Something about Destiny? About exploration? About Cloneus? About his mom? About Tylo? He already had done first words three times on this mission. After a while he would run out of ideas. So he said the first thing that came to him.

"Mission control, there is life on Tylo. I repeat, there is life on Tylo. An alien has landed here! I repeat, an alien!" He couldn't keep it up, and giggled. "Sorry, sorry. I am the alien here, so I technically didn't lie!" Jeb got to work taking samples and admiring the view - enjoying near Kerbin gravity for the first time in a long time. He wondered how things were back on Kerbin, he wondered where all of his old friends were now.

In fact, Valentina, Jeb's sister, was at home sleeping, Bob Kerman had traveled to Ussakria for a new job, Degrid, the hero of the early days of Munar exploration was driving down the freeway at fifty meters per second, and his old friend Kirrim Kerman? Well, that was classified.

About half an hour later the Octavius came over the horizon and Jeb could talk to his crew.

"Jeb, this is Bill. How is it down there?"

"It's fine down here, how is it up there?"

"Oh, same as usual."

"Do you miss me yet?"

"Well, that's a complicated question! Upload the readings, Jeb."

"Uploading now."

"Wow, you used a lot of fuel on the landing."

"Don't tell my I'm stranded!"

"No, you're not. You're just going to be in a lower orbit than planned. We'll come get you. You should have plenty of time - you remembered to take the extended duration oxygen pack?"

Drat. Jeb knew he had forgotten something.

"Uh..."

"Agh, Jeb! You only have an hour of oxygen left! You need to get back to orbit as soon as possible!"

"Okay, then! Launch window?"

"Hold on a second... we don't know how high of an orbit you can reach, so get into orbit and then we'll come get you! We've got several hundred meters per second extra, we'll come get you! The sooner you leave, the better!"

Jeb hopped back into the Destiny and pointed it eastward.

At the last moment he remembered Bill's vial of dirt and tossed a little bit to his right side and then ignited the engine.

He immediately pitched over to an angle just above the horizon.

Jeb now had two things to worry about: The fuel margin - and his own stupidity. He had forgotten one of the most important things - and he had barely fifty minutes left of oxygen before he suffocated above Tylo. He tried to calm himself to conserve oxygen, but that was rather hard to do when a surface of rock was passing fifty meters under his feet at over a kilometer per second. He pitched up a little. And then the engine gave out. He was out of fuel. So he jumped out of his seat, still on a suborbital trajectory, secured all of the science, and then jetted forwards and upwards.

His speedometer increased to 2 kilometers per second. His fuel gauge fell - all the way to one unit before he had a suitable apoapsis. He waited for another fifteen minutes before he jetted forward again - his fuel was down to 0.18. But he was in orbit.

Now he just had to wait. He turned off the unnecessary systems, including the suit heater, to conserve power, which he was running dangerously low on. He disabled his jetpack and closed his eyes - and tried to sleep.

The Octavius, piloted by non-pilot Angela, began to burn towards Jeb, who had a little over thirty minutes of oxygen left at this point. The sense of urgency was top notch - even on Kerbin, although the planet would not know the outcome for another half hour because of the speed of light.

After an intense burn the Octavius came to rest about fifty meters from Jebediah Kerman.

"Okay, Jeb," announced Angela, "You have 0.18 units of EVA propellant left and fifty meters to go. Can you hear me?"

Jeb's voice came back weak and distorted. "I hear you." He gripped the controls of the jetpack with his nearly frozen hands - this took a great effort. He did not have much oxygen left. "Thrusting forward." At this point, Jeb's radio cut out - the only sign of electrical activity was the transmission of the fuel level to the Octavius - the EVA lights did not count, they were just over engineered glow sticks, not electric lights.

"Do you think he'll make it, Bill?"

"I sure hope so. He's at 0.10. he's thrusting to the side, correcting, down, 0.8."

"I'm going out to help guide him in!" Angela suited up and exited the hatch.

"0.6."

Jeb's frozen hands twitched more and more and more. Dark spots clouded his vision. The twitching led to fuel being wasted, expelled into the depths of space.

"He only has 0.3 units!" Jeb trusted forward with his last bit of strength. "He's out of fuel!" Jeb careened toward the hatch of the Octavius and reached out for one of the ladder rungs. "Angela, can you help him at all?"

"Negative. My pack has jammed! Jeb!" Jebediah Kerman struck the fuel tank directly below the command pod and bounced off, lifeless, into a perpetual Tylo orbit.

"Jeb?" Angela shook uncontrollably. "JEB?"

Jebediah Kerman was dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jebdiah Kerman woke up fifty meters away from the Octavius. He was screaming.

"Okay, Jeb," announced Angela, "You have 0.18 units of EVA propellant left and fifty meters to go. Can you hear me?"

It had just been another nightmare, and yet his voice came back seemingly weaker and even more distorted. "Yes. My comms-" there was static. "No pow-" "dbye." His radio cut out.

Attempting to control his last bursts of strength, he ordered his frozen hands to move to the controls of the jetpack - and he tried to move forward.

He had 0.05 units of EVA propellant left. He moved right slightly. 0.4. Not enough - he moved right more. 0.3. Dark spots began clouding his vision - as they had before in his nightmare. Angela exited the hatch - her EVA suit would jam! He couldn't tell her - he could only hope it wouldn't this time around. To the left. 0.2 units. One last burst forward. He felt unconsciousness pulling on him, willing him to sleep. Out of fuel. It was all he could do to reach his arm forward and grab onto the handle of the capsule.

And that was the last thing he remembered until after the Octavius had left for Laythe.

He finally awoke with a groan a few days later.

"Oooohf."

"Jeb?" said a surprised Angela.

"Angela?"

"Bill, Jeb's alive!"

"He came to? Yes! Finally!"

"Wha?"

"We were in Tylo orbit and you almost died. Remember?"

"Oh."

"Don't strain yourself too much. You still need a while to recover."

"Mff."

"We're on our way to Laythe, now."

"Laythe?" Jeb's voice was still somewhat hoarse.

"Yes, Laythe. Bill, notify KSC that Jeb's awake, okay?"

"Got it."

"How's Kerbin?"

"So-so. Still the mess of politicians and corrupt leaders, as usual."

"Ha-half of me wants to get back. Half of me wants to stay up here forever. I'm not sure which half is the true me."

"Jeb, both of them are you. That's what makes you unique."

"Th-thanks."

"Now, you might want to rest up before Laythe." Jeb thought that this was a good idea, not only because he was still terribly exhausted from his near death experience (He was probably up to a dozen of those now) but also because of the nightmares - which would tell him exactly what he should not do. He wanted to get Laythe over with, and then the worst of this mission would be over. Just Vall and Bop would remain after that.

And, really, what could go wrong with Vall or Bop?

===========================================================================

Cloneus stood on the one hundredth floor of one of the many skyscrapers that dotted Kerbin, this one overlooking Kerlington, the capital city of his country. He awaited news on Jebediah's status - Cloneus hadn't slept in days after the unfortunate accident that occurred during the Tylo landing. His men working under the Code Nelson command (which he regretted issuing deeply) had put together a loss-of-vehicle emulation program triggered by Bop, and were preparing to upload it secretly to Octavius. He could not let it show to his employees, but he wanted them to stop. Why had he invented Code Nelsons in the first place?

The phone on his desk rung for half of a second before Cloneus answered.

"How is he?"

"He is okay. He needs to rest, but he will be fine." Cloneus wanted to breathe a sigh of relief - but he could not in front of his employees. Going against his own Code Nelson was grounds for him losing his company. Why did he make that stupid rule?

"Well, find some way to kill him for good!" and Cloneus hung up. He felt overjoyed that Jeb was alive - he'd need him for his plan.

==========================================================================

Bill sat in the back of the Octavius, going through his drawer full of drawings - flipping back to the very first one. He smiled. He pulled out his notebook - given to him by Angela - and flipped through it, and paused on the next open page. He blinked and a photograph popped into existence before his very eyes.

"Not possible!" The photograph had just appeared in his notebook! It was a massive ship, bigger than anything the KSC had even dreamed of - besides Space Station Epic V, of course. It appeared to be orbiting Duna - but  - how did it get into his notebook? He set it aside and then called out to Angela.

"Angela?"

"Yes, Bill?"

"Who owned this notebook before you?"

"I bought it at the store a day before the mission started. Why?"

"An image appeared in it just now! I didn't put it there!" Bill re-opened the notebook and tried to locate it again - it was not there. On any of the pages.

"Bill, you aren't going crazy up here, are you?"

"I sure hope not." Bill held the notebook in his hands. Yet another mystery he would probably never solve. But somehow, the ship seemed familiar to Bill - he had a sense of Deja Vu. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, but he felt as if he - belonged there, somehow. Like he had been there before.

But that was surely nonsense, he told himself.

Right?

 

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story Will Continue...

 

[Ultimate Steve]

It's been a busy week, so I didn't have much time for this, but I got another part done!

Also: Kerbals do not have noses, but just assume they can smell somehow.

 

Part IX: The Survivor

Spoiler

Jebediah Kerman burned up in Laythe's atmosphere.

Jebediah Kerman landed and then found out he had no ladder.

Jebediah Kerman splashed down hard and was destroyed.

Jebediah Kerman drowned.

Jebediah Kerman's lander tipped over.

Jebediah Kerman woke up.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

"Good morning, Jeb! I take it you didn't have the best sleep, as per usual?"

"Ah. Good morning, Angela. Who's flying this thing into orbit?"

"I am."

"Well, I guess my piloting skills rubbed off on you a little bit, you scientist!"

"I'm just glad that the almost dying several times skill did not. Are you ready for the landing?"

"No."

"No?"

"Yeah, this one is probably the hardest one to pull off."

"I'm not going to argue with you on that."

"I have to land in water but near land. The legs are just there because they help with the buoyancy and keep the lander upright in the water. But that might not work. I have to land close to land, because I have to swim there to plant a flag. I don't really want to burn up in the atmosphere. This one is going to be so difficult!"

"But not impossible."

"Well, yeah... Unpossible."

"Oh, that reminds me! The dictionary guys actually made that a word!"

"They did?"

"Yeah! Hold on a second..."

Un·pos·si·ble

/ˌənˈpäsəb(ə)l/

adjective - A task that has been accomplished that many thought to be impossible.

noun - A series of experimental boats built by Kerlington College (Unpossible I - Unpossible XIII)

"Wait, boats?"

"Long story. We are now in orbit of Laythe! I'm going to go work the science equipment, I'll get the science!"

"Wait, why are we in a very elliptical orbit?"

"It's a fuel problem."

"Wait, so I have to enter Laythe's atmosphere twice as fast? The margins on overheating are already borderline!"

"You don't need the docking port anyway!"

"But still, I am really worr-" Angela turned her radio off and continued gathering the science, until Jeb got in the Laythe lander, named Star Machine. He undocked a few minutes later and did a small de-orbit burn.

A few hours later, Jeb hit the atmosphere.

He wanted to scream to his crewmates but he couldn't - he was entering an atmosphere and the communications had blacked out. So he screamed to himself.

"AAAAAAA-"

*BANG* The docking port exploded.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA-"

And then he remembered: He was Jebediah Kerman, halfway between a stuntman and an evil genius. He didn't scream in terror!

"WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!" Jebediah began to turn the "Star Machine" towards the mass of land that laid ahead of him. The Star Machine began decelerating, and the shock heating stopped.

"Octavius, this is Star Machine. Come in, Octavius."

"Phew! That was stressful! I thought you burned up!"

"You think it's stressful? Well, Bill, imagine what it was for me!"

"Also, we got a message from Kerbin. You might want to -"

"No distractions! I have to land this thing!"

"Jeb, this is important."

"Unless Kerbin just exploded, it can wait! Altitude three kilometers."

"Jeb,"

"Did my mom die?"

"No!"

"Did my dad die? Wait, don't tell me until after I've landed. I don't want to know!"

"It's none of that, Jeb!"

"Chutes have fully deployed. Warming up engine."

"Jeb! Cloneus-"

"I don't care about Cloneus Kerman!"

"Twenty, ten, five."

"Star Machine has splashed!"

"Jeb! Cloneus has been secretly hiring a whole bunch of people who have backgrounds in aerospace engineering."

"What?"

"Cloneus Kerman is starting his own space program!"

"Is it April fools day back on Kerbin? Has it really been two months since Valentine's day on Pol?"

"No, I'm not messing with you!"

"Well, he'll fail."

"How are you so sure?"

"Only maybe one thousand Kerbals enter that field of study each year with the goal of working for a space program. Half of them pass. They work for an average of, say, twenty years if we're lucky. So there's 10,000 Kerbals out there with the right degree to work. 25% of them have a job elsewhere doing something else. 7,500 are left. We employed about five thousand, but they sort of work on a volunteer basis now that we have nothing to pay them with. So, really, we only truly employ about five hundred now, the others got other jobs. Kerbankaeur employs two thousand. The USKN is gathering an army of them, three thousand, although they haven't launched anything yet. Are you following along? That's two thousand left."

"Yes, but-"

"Shush. The amateur space agencies out there who fly suborbitals takes up another thousand. CubeCo has a workforce of about 500. 250 work for random space agencies that do nothing, leaving about two hundred and fifty Kerbals left."

"250 is plenty for a space program! When we first launched you into space, we had barely 50!"

"Okay. My point is, out of the 7500 Kerbals, we cherry picked our staff. So did the other agencies. The 250 that are left nearly failed their courses. Cloneus shouldn't have any problem hiring them, he can pay them well. But as far as getting something to the Mun? I doubt it."

"Calm down, Jeb! We can do this later! First words!"

"Uh..."

"I think it might be a little bit too late for that!"

"Jeb!"

"Hey, it's okay! I technically didn't set foot on Laythe yet - this is just the ocean!"

"Grr."

"Okay, I'm going to start swimming now!"

"I'm going to have to argue with the board for a few days to prevent those from being the first word spoken on Laythe."

"Yes, I owe you one."

"The lander tipped over, Jeb!"

"I noticed. I couldn't have gotten back in anyways."

"How will you get it upright again?"

"I'm just going to cross that bridge when I come to it, okay?"

"Fine."

About a quarter of an hour later, Jebediah was nearing the shore. However, a few minutes earlier a problem had appeared.

"I'm sure of it now. My suit is leaking."

"Can you reach shore in time?"

"I'm not sure! The left leg of my suit is now filled with whatever Laythe's oceans are made of! It's cold!"

"Whatever you do, don't panic!"

"Angela, if you tell me to not panic, what do you think I'm going to do?"

"Okay, uh, just keep moving!"

"It's spilled over into the right leg! Brr, that's cold!"

"About ten degrees Celsius, fifty Fahrenheit."

"Not helping! I'm about a minute or two from shore... Agh!"

"Hmm. Does it feel like water?"

"How should I know? It's been a decade and a half since I went swimming!"

"Do you have a patch kit?"

"I have no idea, Bill packed my pack!"

"Okay. In the interest of science, what does it smell like?"

"Is this really important right now?"

"Well, if nobody ever goes to Laythe again, I would like to know!"

"It smells like dead fish - wait, could there be fish on Laythe?"

"No, that's the smell of ammonia! And it hasn't killed you yet, so the concentration must be low-ish? I'll look up the lethatlity tables. How is ammonia even liquid at these temperatures? Fascinating..."

"It's up to my chest now! My mouth is burning!"

"Uh, okay. The ammonia in the oceans might be boiling off into your helmet. Let's see... anything below 30ppm is not lethal. You know it's lethal if you're coughing."

"Good thing I'm not - *cough* *cough* Oh, Moho. Where's Bill?"

"He's on EVA repairing the radiators again!"

"I'm about fifty meters from the shore!"

"Listen, when you get to shore drain your suit immediately!"

"*cough* It's at my shoulders and spilling over into my arms! I might not make it to shore at *cough* all!"

"Jeb, you can do it!"

"I was a nerd in school just like Bill! I never did any sports! *cough* *gargle*"

"One arm in front of the other! You're almost there!"

"Am I going to die by ammonia poisoning *cough* or drowning *cough* or hypo-*cough*-thermia first?"

"Jeb, you are not going to die! Just a few more meters!"

"I *gargle* can't its up to my - *gargle* goodb- *sputter*"

"Jeb?"

"JEB?"

 

...

 

"JEB?!?!?!?"

 

 

...

 

 

 

"Bill?"

"Angela, sloshing sounds were the last thing we heard. Then it went dead. He was already physically exhausted, half frozen to death, poisoned, and half drowned."

"But - but  - we came so far! We landed on eight moons! Only to have Jeb drown on Laythe!"

"He - he's dead."

"You had to say it, didn't you? We came so far... this close to pulling off the greatest mission in history! And some worker on Kerbin messed up a stitch in a spacesuit and ruined it all!"

"Calm down. It's certainly not his fault - to make mistakes is only Kerbal. He couldn't have possibly known, and -"

"Why? Why did it have to happen this way? I mean, we had a 1 in 2 chance of getting home from here, but couldn't we have exploded on Bop? Give history a moment more dramatic than - oh my." Angela began crying. Sobbing. She moved to the front end of the Octavius and stared at the speakers - still silent. Bill came in and rested his hand on her shoulder.

"I know it's not my fault - but I am as sorry as I can possibly be."

"So, it's like kasjunsalaoe?"

"Yes. Exactly like kasjunsalaoe."

"Which definition?"

"Both." Bill and Angela sat together in the capsule for a few more minutes, the cabin deathly silent barring the ever present hum of electronics and Angela's crying. Finally, Angela spoke.

"So, what do we do now?"

"I - I don't know. We can still go to Vall and Bop, but it would be pointless. Cloneus would get the land, the same Kerbal had to plant a flag on all ten moons. That's impossible now. The space program is dead now. We lost." The silence lasted a few more minutes. Angela looked up at the radio again and burst into tears.

"Jeb, come back. Please."

 

 

 

A few more seconds passed. Then, the radio clicked. Then it clicked again. A feedback loop started and abruptly stopped. Bill and Angela looked up at it, shocked with newfound hope.

"Octavius, this is Jeb. I am alive. I repeat, I am alive!"

"Jeb?"

"Angela, did I miss anything?" Angela and Bill grinned and began laughing in relief.

"Well, that's what? Twenty times you've almost died now?"

"Haha! I've lost count now!"

"Well, this would be the point where mission control explodes in shouts and hand clapping! But they won't know for another hour!"

"Well, I'm on Laythe! Woooohooo!"

"So what happened? How did you live?"

"Well, uh, my helmet filled up most of the way, but my feet touched the ground at about the same time I would have started sinking. So I managed to pull myself onto the land, but I was running out of breath and my suit wasn't draining fast enough."

"And let me guess. You did something completely reckless on a 1 in 10 chance that it would work."

"I, uh, took my helmet off to drain the water-ammonia mixture."

"Jeb! Laythe's atmosphere is poisonous!"

"Well, yeah, but not enough to kill me in five minutes. I mean, there's oxygen, nitrogen, and, yes, ammonia, and some others I don't know about."

"It could have been corrosive!"

"Well, yeah... but it was nice to have my helmet off for a few minutes."

"And there's the radiation from Jool!"

"Okay, relax! I'm alive now! And I'm on Laythe!"

"What were your first words?"

"Well, they weren't recorded, but it went something along the lines of "Holy Moho, I'm alive! How the Bop is Laythe's atmosphere not poisonous?" but I don't remember the exact words."

"Ha! Better than Bill on Hale!"

"Hey, I heard that!"

"So, what now?"

"Well, Jeb, you've got a bit more than two days until you run out of oxygen. In that time, I suggest you patch your suit, find a dramatic place to plant the flag, and do the science!"

"Don't forget my dirt!"

 

======================================================================

"Sir?"

"Marie, I'm busy, can't you see?"

"Sir, I just wanted you to know that Jeb lived."

"I heard already, Marie."

"Cloneus sir, we should be ready to launch the TS-1 tomorrow, if everything goes according to plan."

"Good. Chance of failure?"

"40%. If you don't mind me asking, sir, what does TS stand for?"

"Top Secret."

"Haha. It reminds me of something Bill came up with a while ago. He called his model rockets "NEOT-B." No-Eyes-Other-Than-Bill's."

"Any problems come up with TS-1?"

"Well, one of the boosters is slightly corroded and the antenna sometimes sticks, but it should be okay. It's not like we're publicly announcing this launch, right?"

"No, Marie. Not at all. When is the soonest we can launch?"

"Two hours, sir."

"Good. I expect a full report in two and a half."

 

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus 10 Story Will Continue...

 

 

[Garrett Kerman]

Yay! Moar!

[Ultimate Steve]

Wow, this has been a crazy week! Skipping the long story, here is part 10:

Part X: The Spy

Spoiler

"T minus three minutes," announced the announcer, whose name remained strictly top secret.

About fifty Kerbals were gathered in a small bunker known to them as "Mission Control." No more than two dozen actually had stations there - the rest were friends of Cloneus, and employees of the CAKE - the Cloneus Aerospace Kerbal Establishment.

"First stage propulsion - Propellant."

"Go."

"Oxidizer."

"Go."

"Boosters."

"Slightly corroded, but go."

"Twitch systems."

"We are livestreaming to Cloneus and Cloneus alone."

"No, you idiot! The engine! Not the livestreaming service!"

"Oh."

"Go."

"Tank pressurization."

"Go."

"Second stage systems - Reaction wheels."

"Go."

"Power supply."

"Go."

"Avionics."

"Go."

"SAS."

"Uh, I think so... this panel is broken."

"*SIGH* Stage 2 propulsion."

"Go." The list continued on until the fifteen second mark.

"We are mostly go for launch. Ten seconds." Marie stood right at the front of the crowd of Kerbals - at one of the small windows at the front of the bunker, staring at the TS-1.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

"We have liftoff of the TS-1!" Marie followed the rocket upwards. A few seconds in the boosters burnt out.

"Ten seconds in and all systems are go! TS-1 is on its way to orbit!" Marie rushed outside the underground bunker along with about twenty other Kerbals to see the ascent with her own two eyes. By this point the TS-1 looked like a very large, moving star. All of a sudden Marie tripped over something and fell face first on the ground.

"Hey!"

"Oh. Sorry! I really didn't mean to trip you!" Marie lifted her face from the ground and turned to face the one who had tripped her.

"Protip: Trip me any other time. This is history being made, I want to look at it!"

"Well, not huge history." The Kerbal held out his hand, as if to help her up. Marie took it.

"How so? My name's Marie, by the way."

"David. I can't believe I'm the only one who noticed we basically made a replica of an old Raven 5."

"Well, David. I can't believe that we would -  wait, what's going on with the rocket?"

The point of light was now moving sideways and shaking erratically.

"This is mission control We have had an anomaly on the launch vehicle. The Stability assistance system has failed and the thrust on engine three appears to be fluctuating."

"That's not good!"

"No kidding, Marie!"

"It looks like it's falling."

"That's the understatement of the century."

"Oh no."

"Sheesh, it's just a rocket that had a 50/50 chance of failure. Nobody will know!"

"David, do you have to give a report on this to Cloneus? I am allowed to panic here! I needed this job!"

"Well, then. Good luck not getting fired."

"AARGH!"

"This is mission control. First stage separation will uh, oh. We have lost communications with the vehicle." The bright dot in the sky flashed and seemed to separate into a few pieces.

"Great! Just great! Now I'm going to get fired!"

"Marie, I think you're overreacting. Cloneus doesn't care about this rocketry experiment! He probably got bored and decided to do this."

"He does too care!"

"How do you know? And why does he care?"

"That information is classified."

"Classified, huh?"

"As in "I don't know," not "I won't tell you." He specifically told me it was classified."

"Well, you're going to get fired."

"Control here - we have reestablished communications with the satellite."

The white dot continued falling towards the ground until the mountains blocked all viewing. A few seconds later a small explosion resonated through the hills, triggering at least two avalanches.

The ill-fated satellite landed just meters away from a very startled mountain lion.

"Well?"

"I've got to go tell Cloneus now."

"Didn't we livestream it to him?"

"Don't you remember? The cameraman dropped his camera two seconds after the launch. All Cloneus has seen for minutes now has been a close up view of the floor of Mission Control." Marie began walking to her car.

"So, why did you need this job so much?"

"Nobody wants to hire me. I've been bouncing between jobs for over a decade now. I need every job I can get - and I've already tried most of the employers in my region."

"Well, whether you get fired or not, good luck." The duo arrived at Marie's car. The windshield was completely shattered and the hood dented and smoking.

"And now this! Some idiot probably smashed it!" Marie opened the door, and in the driver's seat sat a glowing hot piece of metal shaped oddly like a rocket nozzle.

"Well, depending on how you look at this, you're either unlucky enough to have your car hit by rocket debris -"

"Or?"

"Or lucky that it wasn't you."

"Ugh."

"Do you need a ride? I mean, you probably don't want to drive that very far in the condition that it's in..." As if to emphasize the point, one of the mirrors fell off.

"Well, sure. It's not like today can get any worse."

=================================================================

Meanwhile, Jebediah Kerman was arguing with Angela over the radio.

"Jeb, all I'm saying is, aliens! Life on Laythe! You never know!"

"Relax, this is just like Eeloo!"

"Jeb, on Eeloo, you didn't nearly drown. You weren't exposed to the potential life forms. Here, things are different!"

"Exactly, things are different! Here, nothing can live due to the immense radiation!"

"But there is oxygen and liquid water!"

"So, same chance!"

"Except you were exposed!"

"So, what's your point, Angela? Do you want me to stay on Laythe until I die?"

"No! I, just, well, try not to bring any of it back with you. Except in the samples."

"Sheesh, fine. It's probably all dead anyway, because of the whole no water no food thing."

"Just, be careful."

"That's not me, though, and we've got bigger problems right now."

"Like what?"

"The lander's sideways."

"Oh. Right."

"Does Bill have anything to say about this?"

"Hold on a second, I'll get him..." There was a brief pause while Bill took Angela's place at the comms station.

"Jeb? You there?"

"Yes, Bill."

"Okay, remember how we did that science fair project? The one about electrolysis?"

"Nope."

"Well, if you open all of the channels, uprate all of the fuses, dramatically increase the ampage, and run a wire to the intake basin, place copper panels over the intake, wire it up to the auxiliary combustion chamber, electrolyze enough water, you could theoretically run the other three combustion chambers below sea level and pitch upward, lifting out of the water!"

"English, please!"

"If you zap the water enough, it will split into oxygen. If you store that in the auxiliary combustion chamber and pipe it to the other three, you should be able to create oxygen to run the engine underwater for long enough to porpose out of the water semi-vertically!"

"That was closer. Speak Jeb to me!"

"If you zap the water it will turn into burny gas that you can use in the engine and run it underwater to take off."

"Okay. But if we're going to electrolyze water, we don't need to be able to run the engine underwater indefinitely! Why not just store it in a pressurized container? Actually, why not get the oxygen from the air? Remove electrolysis all together? Actually, why not use some of the liquid oxygen we already have an board? Now that I think about it, why don't we just run the engine in closed cycle mode for a few seconds?"

"...I hate you."

"Is it still technically called a liftoff if we launched from water?"

"Focus, Jeb! You need to pull up a bit, you're going to hit the land!"

"Roger that. Pitching downwards."

"What? You could crash!"

"Exactly!"

"You're almost dying on purpose?"

"Yeah! Remember the Munscraper 405 mission?"

"Yeah, I was there!"

"That one video showing us orbiting centimeters above the surface restored public interest!"

"The only difference is that you forgot to turn the GUI off!"

"Nevermind. Accelerating!"

"This is Star Machine, we are supersonic!"

"Okay, Jeb! Pitch up some more, we don't want to be in the super dense stuff with no nose cone."

"Roger!"

"Oh, new message from the KSC..."

"Really? Nice timing. It must be important, if they sent it now."

"Do you want me to read it to you, Jeb?"

"I can multitask!"

"Well, if you insist. You know that space program Cloneus started?"

"The one I said would never get off the ground?"

"They launched a few hours ago."

"What? Already? Details!"

"It was a two stage orbital cubesat launch vehicle. From the few pictures we were able to obtain, it looked like one of those old Raven 5 520-4's."

"The RavenCorp launch vehicle? The second one?"

"Yeah. That ancient piece of hardware, probably bought out of a museum!"

"Was it a "B" model?"

"Not that we can tell - this was an original. And anyway, the SAS failed and it crashed, causing at least two avalanches, causing a herd of mountain lions to stampede into a chapstick factory, and heavily damaging one car."

"How do we know this? Aren't all of their operations supposed to be a secret?"

"Well, uh, we have a spy."

"Really? Who is he?"

"Shush! Everything we say is being recorded, remember?"

"Haven't forgotten. How big is the size of the file, anyway?"

"I did the math a few years ago. Exactly 126.816165 Terabytes."

"That's a hefty file."

"Well, it is twenty years worth of audio data."

"Also, I'm in orbit now."

"Great! Do you have enough Delta-V to reach us without us coming to get you?"

"No - wait, I mean Yes!"

"Jeb, what are you planning?"

"Intercept in one minute!"

"You launched from Laythe, underwater, to an intercept trajectory?"

"You didn't notice?"

The Octavius zoomed past the Star Machine."

"Out of fuel. Staging."

"Staging? What do you mean? It's an SSTO!"

"Oh."

"Hey, Bill! So, we're going to Vall next?"

"I can see why you were voted "Real life Superhero/Stuntman/Idiot" four years in a row."

===========================================================================

================================================================================

"Well, uh, we have a spy." Cloneus Kerman replayed the audio file dozens of times, growing angrier each time. His reputation was going to take a big hit when the world found out about his failed launch. Suddenly, His door opened. He quickly closed the audio player and looked up to see Marie Kerman enter his office.

"Where'd all of your solid gold chairs go?"

"That is an odd, unimportant question. And you are here, because?" Truthfully, Cloneus had used them to quietly buy the South Kerbanian Space Exploration Museum, which had unrelatedly been closed and demolished the next day...

"You asked for the report on the launch."

"Oh. I, uh, heard about that already."

"You did?" Cloneus only knew from his stolen recordings from the Octavius.

"Yes. I heard already."

"From where?"

"Where is not important. But I can say that we are all very disappointed by the outcome of the launch. Marie? I have a new job for you."

"A new job, sir?"

"Yes. In the space program. You majored in engineering, right?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. You are to work undercover as a thermal engineer."

"Undercover, sir?"

"Yes. Apparently, we have a spy in our midst. And it is of utmost importance that we find him - or her - immediately. We can't have spies running around, blabbing all our plans. So, are you in?" Marie hesitated a little bit before answering.

"Yes, sir. I'm in."



Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story Will Continue...
 

 

[Squidiness]

Much rocket so space wow 

^ Added emojis for extra cringe

 

Edited January 23, 2017 by Squidiness
Now with 50% more emojis!

[Alpha 360]

The spy is Maria, right?

Edited January 23, 2017 by Alpha 360
"Kouston, we have several problems, but that doesn't matter so we want to continue on with the mission."

[MinimalMinmus]

Spyception!

I'm really longinf for the landing on the "zombie mun" (Can you guess why I call Vall like this?).

[Ultimate Steve]

On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 9:57 PM, Squidiness said:

Much rocket so space wow 

^ Added emojis for extra cringe

 

"Now with 50% more emojis" I laughed out loud at that!

On ‎1‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 1:50 AM, Alpha 360 said:

The spy is Maria, right?

That is top secret information. Not revealing who it is just yet.

On ‎1‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 2:12 PM, MinimalMinmus said:

Spyception!

I'm really longinf for the landing on the "zombie mun" (Can you guess why I call Vall like this?).

"Zombie Mun." I have absolutely no idea, except maybe the reduced lighting?

So, here's the next part!

Part XI: The Anomaly

Spoiler

"Octavius, this is Gatekeeper. I'm coming in over Anomaly One."

"Roger that, Jeb."

"It just looks so weird, Angela!"

"That's why we call it an anomaly!"

"Okay, I'm coming in lower. It looks - oh my. It looks like the terrain has just ripped apart!"

"Focus, Jeb. Just set down near it, you can investigate later. Your number one priority is landing with as much fuel left as possible."

"Yeah, I get it! Stop bugging me about the fuel budget! It's not my fault that Anomaly One was located directly over the south pole!"

"Jeb, what are you seeing?"

"The terrain... it just stops! I can see through the anomaly!"

"Jeb, are you feeling dizzy at all?"

"Now that you mention it, yes. I am. And I'm going to go in closer."

"Jeb! Stop!"

"I am getting dizzier and dizzier the closer I get to it!"

"Jeb, an old colleague of mine once theorized that at the poles of celestial bodies, spacetime warpage could occur! I think he was right!"

"I can see straight through the planet!"

"Jeb, get out of there! Now!"

"Oh my Bop - It's full of sta- "

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Jedediah Kerman had woken up. And Angela was annoyed.

"Jeb, we need to talk."

"What ever about, Angela?"

"I think you're lying to me." Jeb began sweating a little bit.

"Lying? About what?"

"Your bad dreams - they aren't about cake. They can't be."

"You don't know what happened to me - "

"I'd love for you to prove me wrong here, but I am pretty sure there is no childhood disaster possible that can make you that terrified - "

"Terrified? No, it's really more of - "

"Stop lying to me! Every time you wake nowadays, you just about shake the ship apart with your screaming! Cake can't possibly do that!"

"It's not - "

"Jeb! Every time you wake up you look as if you'd just nearly died! And half the time you change some part of the mission profile almost as if you were seeing a possible future... Wait."

"Okay, I give. You figured it out. But I swear, I have no idea why it's happening!"

"So you really see the future?"

"Sort of."

"Are you going to tell me the whole story or not?" Jeb hesitated, and then spoke when he realized it would be pointless to try and keep his prophetic nightmares a secret any longer.

"The day of the launch, all those years ago, I had a nightmare that there would be a sniper on the roof of the vehicle assembly building. And I decided to go for a walk that morning, and sure enough..."

"But that wasn't in any logs!"

"I decided not to worry you and kept it to myself. Anyway, when we got to Sarnus, I started having more. We crashed into Hale, I got crushed by a meteor shower on Slate, I drowned on Laythe. That's just three of them. And so far, we did almost die on Hale. The meteor did hit Slate. I nearly did drown on Laythe. My nightmares show a possible future." There was silence for a few seconds.

"Well, I don't blame you for lying about it. If I had something that freaky happen to me, I'd never want to tell anyone. It must be useful, seeing the future."

"Useful, yes. Terrifying, also yes. I must have avoided death two dozen times on this mission."

"So, what was last night's, uh, prophetic nightmare about?"

"Without going into too much detail, I do not want anything to do with Anomaly One. We need to switch the landing site to Anomaly Two."

"What exactly was Anomaly One?"

"Well, err, you see, it was a giant mountain."

"We knew that much."

"And near the pole, I started getting sick. The closer I was, the sicker I got! And the terrain - it just looked like someone had ripped Vall open!"

"That reminds me of a theory an associate of mine came up with."

"Yeah, you said that in my nightmare."

"I did? Hmm. I'm glad Bill's not awake. If he knew, he'd probably freak." And then, Bill spoke.

"Uh, well, I have sort of been awake this whole time."

"AAAAGH!"

"I promise not to freak out, though. There must be something wrong with you in order for this to be happening!"

"First off, both of you, promise not to tell the KSC!"

"I promise."

"Me too."

"Bill, ready the Gatekeeper. Angela, check my medical logs to see if anything changed right before the launch."

"Roger."

"Got it." And so, with the biggest secret onboard the ship having been revealed, the crew set to work preparing for Jeb's upcoming landing. A half hour later, Jeb was ready to begin his de-orbit burn.

"Ready, Jeb?"

"Can anyone ever be truly ready to ride a piano sized, slowly exploding bomb down to the surface of a ball of rock so big that it has its own gravity well?"

"Good point."

"Angela, did you find anything?"

"No, nothing. Nothing at all that would cause your, uh, condition, Jeb."

"Angela, we don't know what we're dealing with here. Anything at all, even if it could be a coincidence."

"Well, your overall stress levels went up after the launch, your happiness as well, but that's because you're in space. Uh, your taste is off, but that's from eating twenty year old food. A few other minor things."

"Are you sure there isn't anything else?"

"Well, our ship for some reason is emitting a higher level of negative gravioli particles than any other ship, but they're basically harmless!" Suddenly, a revelation dawned on Jeb.

"Angela, do a gravioli scan now."

"Done."

"I'm off the ship now. Scan again, please." There was a slight pause.

"Oh my... It's less! Jeb, you're emitting negative gravioli particles!"

"Is that good or bad?"

"High doses have been known to disable Kerbals, the same way cosmic radiation does, but we've fixed that. But sometimes Kerbals have received doses millions of times higher than the lethal limit and returned unscathed! Nobody has found a way to harness the particle, but what if someone... or something... has? And is controlling your nightmares? Warning you about the future?"

"That's preposterous!"

"Do you have any better ideas?" A heavy silence spread over the Octavius and the Gatekeeper.

"Well, whoever this "grand controller" is, he, she, or it has not killed me yet, in fact, he, she, or it, has helped us through man dire situations.

"Or it could just be a big coincidence," offered Bill.

"The odds of that being a coincidence, Bill, are about the same odds as a toddler making an efficient algorithm to solve the travelling salesman problem."

"The what problem?"

"Just google it!"

"The internet is millions of kilometers away! It's slower than dial up!" While the crew theorized, the Gatekeeper performed its de-orbit burn and began its descent to Vall - and Anomaly Two.

The argument was finally broken up when Jeb reported that he had a visual on Anomaly Two.

"Octavius, this is Gatekeeper. I have visual on Anomaly Two."

"Really? What does it look like?"

"I can't tell from this distance! I'll land closer. Fuel is looking mostly good, but I'll probably have to use the jetpack again a little bit... I've been doing that a lot lately..." Bill and Angela held their breaths while Jeb got closer and closer to the anomaly.

"It looks like a cluster of buildings! Like, monoliths! But smaller, and taller!"

"Any possibility of it being a natural structure?"

"No possibility at all. This is a localized effect - nowhere else on Vall is it found. Anywhere. Unless an asteroid hit right here and produced these spikes! But the odds of an asteroid creating this..."

"Right, Jeb. We're analyzing the photos. Do you know that computer game, Human Space Program?"

"The one with that humongous extended universe?"

"Yeah, that one... it sort of looks like Stonehenge! You know, from the extended universe!"

"Now that you mention it, it sort of does!"

"I move we name it Vallhenge."

"I don't have any better ideas. But, Angela - this could be, no, it is - evidence of intelligent alien life!"

"Aliens! We already had Eeloo and Laythe aliens! What next?"

"The Eeloo aliens were just probable, Bill. The Laythe aliens probably did not exist. But, this... Jeb, your first words."

"I may be the first Kerbal to have set foot on Vall. But I am not the first intelligent life form to have done so - or maybe I am. Maybe that thing over there is just a coincidence. But, for the first time in history, Kerbalkind has discovered a potentially alien artifact on a moon of another planet! Look! Over there! That could have been built by an alien!"

"No kidding. Get over there, now!"

"Okay, I'm getting closer..."

"It appears to be made up of sixteen towers - five triangular ones, in ascending height, with three identical rectangular ones surrounding the center one. Those are ringed by eight identical monoliths, spaced in groups of two. The tower - No! The five ascending towers - they point to the orbital plane! If I waited long enough, I could look down them and see Tylo and the sun!"

"Woah! You have got to leave a camera there!"

"No kidding! Okay, I'm going to try to land on one and maybe get a sample. We still don't know what these things are made of!"

"They are massive when you stand next to them! This might even be taller than the Octavius!"

"Stop that thought right there! We are not bringing her down to check!"

"I wasn't even thinking about it! But now that you mention it... the TWR might work..."

"Focus! Alien artifact!"

"It's really slippery. It really is a four sided shape, but it has eight to soften the transitions."

"Hmm. Curious. Is it indestructible?"

"It almost seems like it! Nothing is indestructible, though, except Vabolarchium. And that isn't common."

"Are you suggesting we've found another object made from Vabolarchium?"

"Yes. And this one is probably not natural, like the Mun arches. Which means that a race of aliens out there - they figured out how to make Vabolarchium!"

"And didn't live to tell the tale, I suppose. This may be the only thing that remains of them."

"Okay, guys. I have reached the top of the tallest spire. Uh, there's a small hole here. It almost seems meant to be. I can't resist!"

"What a coincidence!"

"The universe if full of coincidences. It itself might even be a coincidence."

Jebediah Kerman took Bill's vial of dirt and emptied half of what remained onto the base of the nearest monolith. He set up a few cameras, did some science, and gazed at Tylo. And, all too soon, it was time for him to leave.

He did have to use his jetpack.

The Gatekeeper, which had still been on a suborbital trajectory when it ran out of fuel, fell back onto Vall.

The Octavius used some of its fuel to rescue Jeb yet again.

Orbital mechanics happened.

Jeb took a photograph that would later be printed on the side of a building.

And Jebediah Kerman boarded the Octavius.

When he got back inside he greeted his crewmembers.

"So, aliens!"

"Nice to see you too, Jeb!"

"Come on! You're as excited as I am!"

"I wish I could have been there!"

"Maybe someday! When we get back home, we'll usher in a new era of exploration! You could move to Vall if you wanted to!"

"If we get home."

"No, when! Seriously, seventeen down and one to go!"

"Wait, what?"

"Oh. Sorry. Where'd that come from? I meant to say, nine down, one to go."

"That's odd."

"What?"

"As you said "seventeen down, one to go" there was a huge spike in negative gravioli particles!"

"Yet another mystery we'll probably never solve. So, Angela, are you read for Bop?"

"I - well, as you said, you can never really be ready to land on another celestial body."

"Well, it is Bop! I mean, really? What could go wrong?"

As it turned out, many things could have gone wrong. And very few things did go wrong. But the thing about failures? It only takes one thing going wrong to cause one.

 

 

 

Nightmares: A Jool-Sarnus Ten Story Will Continue...

 

 

*DRAMATIC*