Making a Dollar or Two- BOOK THREE

[Confused Scientist]

Intermission- Author's Note

Reeeeeal quick...

This is one of those times where there's not going to be another chapter for a month. The exciting part is, I have an excuse this time! Hooray! To make a short story slightly shorter, about three hours ago my laptop screen went blank and started flickering and flashing with all sorts of lines moving across it. After a panicked hard reboot, I was able to log in but the screen was still flickering pretty bad, in a way that I could tell was about to give me a migraine. Even though I have an automatic backup, I got a flash drive and copied over six files I decided were really important- and the Making a Dollar or Two Word document was one of them, so hooray! Unfortunately, the computer I'm using now... really hates me. For example, whenever I put in an SD card, the keyboard stops working and I lose all Internet and Bluetooth capabilities, problems that can only be solved by a reboot. I know that if I actually opened that Word document, some kind of awful thing would happen to it, and neither of us would ever see it again. So it's just sitting on my desktop while I diagnose whatever kind of terrible seizure my regular computer's having. Luckily, since I only got it two months ago, HP better believe it's still in warranty. Also, everything except the screen looks fine, so if I turn the brightness way down it's still usable in a pinch. I only bring it up because I'm so excited that I finally have an 

--> !!! EXCUSE !!! <--

for forgetting this thing exists. To be fair, if my laptop was in perfect working order, I would still be watching Stephen Colbert monologues from two years ago instead of doing anything productive, but once I do start writing, I really do remember why I stick by this fanfiction at all instead of abandoning it: Because this is the nicest corner of the Internet left and because I really enjoy having endless characterization to play around with (I definately wouldn't be writing this if Squad had given Jeb or Val any kind of in-game backstory, that's for sure).

 

Anyway! Enough of that tortured rant! Since you sat through it, you deserve some kind of... narrative thing, with jokes and stuff. Remember when I used to put jokes into my story? I don't. Also, as you read, keep in mind that Bob is in a coma on the Mun. Okay! That about wraps things up! Author out!

 

 

Bill's Guide to Computer Repair

If you are a senior citizen or are middle-aged, locate a young person. If you do not mind sitting through an extremely patronizing discussion, where said young person assumes that you have replaced all of your system files with pictures of other people's children from Facebook, he or she will almost always be able to fix your computer problem. If they cannot, they are bound by a strict young person code of honor to run away as far as they can to avoid admitting they don't know what they're doing.

If you think you know something about computers, close the laptop's lid and back away slowly. Even if you are using a desktop, grasp the monitor firmly in both hands and push it down against your desk so that you can no longer see the screen. Then locate a young person.

If you are Jeb, it would be best to call the bomb squad at this time. Otherwise, if you still insist on trying to solve the problem yourself, consult the guide below:

 

The worst-case scenario for this sort of thing is that you brick your computer while you're attempting to fix it, so before you start any troubleshooting, back up anything important that you might need. For example, if you're an engineer, you should locate the diagrams from any projects you're working on at the moment and put them onto a flashdrive. If you're an author you should comb through your documents folder, locate everything you've been working on in the last few months, and just so you always have a copy I'd reccomend copying and pasting all of the text from important drafts into an online platform such as Google Docs. If you are a politician, locate all of the classified information on your computer and upload it to the cloud by putting it on Twitter.

Now that you've prepared yourself to destroy your computer and eradicate all of the data on its hard drive, you may now attempt to fix it. You should start by diagnosing whether your problem is being caused by hardware or software- if you are recieiving second or first degree burns when you touch your computer, the problem is probably hardware; if there is any type of spinning circle, pinwheel, disc, sphere, axle, or flywheel on your screen, the problem is probably software.

If it's a software problem: I'm assuming you've already tried restarting your computer, so let's go into your BIOS. First, go into the Start menu (if you're using an Apple device, Steve Jobs' ghost would like to remind you that the best way to fix it is to buy a new one) and select the option to restart your computer. After the screen goes blank, all you have to do is hold down shift, alt, ctrl, space, and the windows key while pressing f9 once every half-second, f10 every fifth time you press f9, and f11 whenever the sum of the number of times you've pressed f9 and f10 is a prime number. It's that easy! Now that you're in, mess around with stuff until you've been able to determine that the problem is caused by ghosts or until you brick everything. I can take you no further.

If it's a hardware problem: Your computer's warranty expired three days ago- learn to live with it!

 

If you are a young person who just messed up some older person's computer, you can find some great deals on transcontinental flights if you're willing to shop around a little, but remember to give yourself plenty of time to make your connection if you choose to fly on Allegiant, Spirit, or Frontier as they only operate a few flights a week to some destinations and if you miss yours you may have no choice but to return to the older person's computer and admit you don't know what you're doing.

 

I hope that helps! If you have any questions, feel free to stalk Bill Gates and ask him personally if you manage to evade arrest. After all, this is his fault, not mine.

-Bill

Edited February 21, 2020 by Confused Scientist
Eleven pages! Yay!

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 17- Satellite of Love

“T-minus twelve, eleven, ten…”

In the streets, heads turned. Buses stopped; at the light rail station on Central Avenue, the display board simply read, “Emergency Service Suspension- 24 HR DELAY.” With low cloud cover to the west of the coast and thunderstorms to the south, normally the range safety officer would have demanded the countdown be halted until the skies cleared up, but there was no delaying today’s launch. Once the engines lit up, the sound would be reflected onto the city: Windows would be broken, but that was an acceptable price to pay for the lives of three kerbals.

“…nine, eight, seven, six…”

The voice came from everywhere. The emergency warning sirens, silent since Hurricane George had made landfall two months earlier, had switched over to the live feed from Mission Control; the last time the sirens had spoken in clear weather, they had warned frightened kerbals to stay indoors, and to seek shelter in their basement, and not to go out in the radioactive rain that fell in the streets and washed into the gutters.

“…five, four…”

The air began to scream like it had been set aflame, and the streets themselves began to shake. Somewhere, beyond the horizon, the Moa had just lit up. It was straining against its hold-down bolts, lurching ever so slightly in preparation for its voyage.

“…main engine start…”

But Juno’s Landing had survived much worse. Even the four rocket engines, screaming and shaking as they throttled up to full power, were barely a blip on the screen compared to the endless hurricanes and storms that slammed into shore: By now, every window in every house was shatter-resistant, and no rocket could shake the space coast after four decades of launches. Juno’s Landing reached for the stars…

“…three, two, one…”

And the stars had moved to Cletroit.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Capcom: Liftoff of the Shackleton spacecraft! We have liftoff, we are committed.

Jeb: Copy, launch commit. The clock has started and we’ve passed the tower.

Bill: Beautiful day, hope we didn’t shake things up too bad back in town… roll program.

Capcom: Passing one kilometer, Shackleton. How’s everything feel so far?

Bill: Pretty good, Val. They said that since we’re not going to wait in LKO but go straight for the trans-munar burn during the launch sequence we won’t be pitching over as far. I can’t really feel it so far-

Capcom: Fifteen kilometers, about ninety seconds left on the SRBs.

Jeb: Whoa! That’s a pretty steep ascent!

Bill: I can report at this time, just prior to the max g-loading, that our cargo in the engineering bay is holding steady. The rover’s still behind us, and it looks good.

Capcom: Copy, Shackleton. We’ll be wanting a full report on that stuff as soon as you get into orbit. SRB burnout in three, two, one…

Jeb: Pretty good kick when they detached just then. Normally we’re nearly horizontal, and you don’t notice as much.

Bill: Real smooth launch except for that, really. Coming up on first stage burnout… there it is. Bit of a flash right there when we separated.

Jeb: Here it comes now… second stage online.

Capcom: Good. Unless you start to wobble around a bit and lose your vector, we’ll want you to burn up all the fuel in this stage. The more kick we can get out of the second stage, the less fuel we need to use up from the service module and the more fuel we can save from the service module the softer the crash landing’s going to be on the Mun.

Bill: Cletroit, we copy. Will report after burnout.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Three, two, one… burnout!”

Val smiled. “Congratulations, you two,” she announced, “you’ve just set a new speed record.”

At the flight controller’s station, Gene turned and slapped Wernher on the back. “See? I told you the launch would go fine!”

“Yes, but… if there had been an abort, the crew would have been killed. The escape system wasn’t designed to work when the rocket pitches over so shallowly.”

Gene shrugged. “But they didn’t abort. Uh, let’s see… GUIDO, double-check their trajectory and make sure they’re still on course to be re-captured into Kerbin orbit during their Mun flyby instead of getting slingshotted out into deep space. EECOM, get ready to walk them through the EVA.”

Ten thousand miles from Cletroit, and growing more distant with every passing second, Jeb and Bill double-checked the seals on their helmets and their gloves. It would take them barely five hours to reach the Mun at the incredible speed they were going, and before then they would have to inflate their shelter, program the Raven to do a course correction after they cast off, and secure the payload for the crash-landing on the Mun. Assembling the Raven’s collapsible airlock would eat up over half of that precious time, so they would have to do their spacewalk the same way they did back in the ‘60s: straight out the hatch, with the entire capsule exposed to hard vacuum.

Bill glanced down at Kerbin, the faint blue glow of the planet reflected in his visor, and for a brief moment thought that if he let go of the hatch he might fall back to the surface. Then he shook his head and glanced up at the Raven’s docking port and, past that, the Mun. “Cletroit, I’m stepping through the door.”

In the engineering bay, Jeb grabbed the inflatable shelter. “Here’s the lifeboat,” he told Bill. “You take it up to the docking port and I’ll hold the ship steady.”

Bill grabbed the shelter in one hand, and with the other pulled himself up the afterbody towards the top of the capsule. The lifeboat was an awkward package; only about a foot tall, it was the same diameter as the Raven’s docking port, about twice as wide as Bill. After a few minutes, he managed to bring it up to the top of the afterbody, and peered into the capsule through the docking window, watching as Jeb waved at him.

“Okay, arm the port.” Bill turned as the docking latches unfolded and hefted the shelter above his shoulder. “I’m thinking I shouldn’t try to shove it in myself,” he told Jeb. “I’ll just kind of line it up above the docking port, and then you can just give me a bit of forward translation on the RCS, okay?”

“Got it,” Jeb replied. “Tell me when.”

“Okay… ready.” The spacecraft lurched a bit, and then the shelter floated into the docking collar. “Soft dock, probe retract… hard dock.”

Bill patted the shelter and made sure it had made a good seal with the docking port. “Looks good. What’s next on the checklist?”

“Let’s see… open the docking port bleed air valve, then repressurize the capsule.”

“Guess they’re assuming I’ve come back inside first… okay, the hatch is closed. Cletroit, we’re starting to inflate the shelter now…”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“About two minutes,” Harbrett said. “Do you think we should go inside the Phoenix or something?”

Alice shrugged. “No point. If the Raven comes down right on top of us, we’ll be burned to a crisp by the braking motors and then we’ll be crushed.”

The Mun, she was beginning to realize, was not just some cold desert. She had been taken to some canyon about forty miles from Los Ruidos for her geology training before the flight, and she remembered that crows flew overhead during the day, and crickets chirped at night, but nothing moved on this plain. She and Harbrett were the only living things on an entire world.

No, she reminded herself. Bob is still alive, and we’re going to take him back to Munbase, where other people can help him stay that way.

“One minute. See anything yet?”

Alice raised her sun visor and looked up at the sky. “No, no I… wait. Yep, I see something moving.” The Raven grew from a faint star into the fuzzy outline of a capsule, and then a huge spaceship coming down impossibly fast, zooming over their heads, lighting up like another sun as the braking motors in the afterbody fired, and then it had vanished in a cloud of dust. Harbrett and Alice didn’t hear the explosion, but they felt it rumble through the regolith and up their boots.

Harbrett swore. “You really think the rover could’ve survived a crash like that?”

“I think so,” Alice told him. “The Raven is the most durable ship ever built. Even when the spacecraft's been destroyed, her cargo still survives, whether you’re talking about kerbals or machines.”

Edited March 14, 2020 by Confused Scientist

[Tsar_bomba]

On 2/27/2020 at 5:25 PM, Confused Scientist said:

In the streets, heads turned. Buses stopped; at the light rail station on Central Avenue, the display board simply raid, “Emergency Service Suspension- 24 HR DELAY.”

Hey, I just noticed, but you said raid instead of read. Just trying to help.

[Confused Scientist]

 Chapter 18- Near Wild Heaven

Bob took a sip of coffee and reached into his filing cabinet, leafing around until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a manila folder, half an inch thick, and opened it up to a page near the back. Sighing, he began to read.

 

Val: Getting some plasma now… about halfway through the first S-turn.

Alex: Starting to look like we might survive this thing.

Val: Yeah, well, there’s no way we’re going to be able to land. As soon as we’re subsonic we bail out, that’s an order.

Bob looked up as he heard a knock on his door and saw Jeb leaning over his walker, halfway through the threshold. “Mind if I come in for a minute?”

“Sure,” Bob said, and glanced back at the folder as Jeb shuffled over to his desk.

 

Alex: Coming over the western coast of Tlaxcala right now…  I think that’s Los Ruidos off over to the left.

Capcom: Magellan, you’re over Orchidian territorial waters in the Gulf of Gadsden. Welcome home.

Val: Don’t say that until you see us back in Juno.

 

“So,” Jeb said, “you’re a biochemist by training.”

“Mhm.”

“Look,” he admitted, “there’s something you should know.”

Bob glanced up from the folder. “I’m all ears.”

Jeb was quiet for about a minute, and Bob kept reading.

 

Capcom: You’ll be passing due south of Crystal City in about fifty seconds.

Val: Copy, Cletroit, we’ve just passed through thirty-five kilometers. I’m definitely starting to feel the wings start to get some lift. Looks like the engineer’s have taken Edsel’s back-of-the-napkin sketch and kept it from disintegrating this far.

Alex: Whoa!

Capcom: Magellan, report!

Val: Hydraulics in the starboard wing all off-scale low!

Alex: Prep for abort?

Val: Yeah, Cletroit, we’re going to separate the cockpit from the service module. I’m arming the abort motors now…

 

“I ran out of staples yesterday,” Jeb told Bob, “and I looked in your desk. I found a bottle of Electron Blue.”

Bob leapt up from his chair. “I’m not going to ask why you kept it a secret,” Jeb continued, “but I was just wondering if, uh, you’d let me just take one pill so I don’t have to keep going to physical-”

He was cut off by Bob shoving him against the wall. “Listen,” he whispered, as Jeb’s walker fell to the ground, “we can’t talk about this here. It’s not safe.”

 

Val: RCS set to abort stabilization, firing the motors on my mark. Three…

 

“What… do you mean?”

 

Val: Two…

 

Bob glanced over at his desk, the one he was now sure was bugged.

 

Val: One…

 

“Because,” he said, “Val found these pills two weeks before the Magellan launched...”

 

Val: Mark! Capsule sep-

 

“And,” Bob continued, “I’ve been looking over the flight logs…”

 

Alex and Val, together: [CENSORED]

 

“I think the Magellan accident wasn’t an accident.”

 

Capcom: Magellan, Cletroit, comm check.

[Static]

Capcom: Magellan, Cletroit, UHF comm check.

[Static]

Capcom (faintly): GC, Flight… lock the doors.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two years earlier…

“I wish Kerbin would just set, you know?” Alice told Mission Control. “Just set instead of staring me in the face.”

In Cletroit, the Mark Kerman sighed as he entered his fifth hour of the night Capcom shift. “Uhhh…”

“Yeah,” she said. “All these miles rolling by, and we’re only, what, halfway to Munbase? I wish there was just one straight shot through all these craters, and I could just set cruise control instead of driving around each and every one. And then I could close my eyes for a while… I haven’t slept in two days. Harbrett’s sleeping right now, but I have to keep staring at Kerbin, and I can see Cletroit right now. I can see lake Pontchartrain, and I think I can see Cletroit.”

“Alice,” Mark said, “the flight surgeon’s here. He thinks you should wake up Harbrett and let him drive the rest of the way to Munbase. He’s got a few hours of sleep, so he’ll drive better. We can’t let you risk crashing when you go down into Devon’s Crater.”

Alice nodded and tapped Harbrett on the shoulder. “Get up. It’s your turn to drive.”

Harbrett moaned and raised his sun visor. “How far are we?”

“About halfway. Come on, let’s switch seats.” Alice stood and walked to the back of the rover. “Looks like Bob’s still out cold… just let me swap out my carbon dioxide scrubber and then we can get back on our way.”

Harbrett sat down in the driver’s seat and buckled himself in. “Ready?”

Alice sat down next to him and leaned back. “All set.”

“Okay. Try to get some sleep.” Harbrett switched off the local channel and floored the accelerator. “We’re really moving now, Cletroit. How are things doing at Munbase?”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chris: I’m going to start off by reminding everybody that I’m recording this discussion for the accident investigation board, so remember to speak clearly.

Alex: Yes, commander.

Beth: So, what’s the latest ETA on the Ozymandias crew?

Chris: About four hours. Cletroit’s sent me a list of things we need to get done before then. First, we need to start preparing a Phoenix for an emergency liftoff. Obviously, since Bob and his crew took Ozymandias, and then it crashed, we need to decide whether to let them have our spacecraft or to give them the backup.

Alex: The backup Phoenix… how long has that one been sitting on the surface?

Chris: About two years now.

Alex: Then I think we should give up Bluejay, since we brought it with us a few months ago. It’s newer, so I’ll be able to get it up and running sooner. Then I’ll start a full hardware check on the backup and make sure nothing’s broken so that we can still use it to evacuate in case of some catastrophe, like a pressure breach. If we need to, I can request spare parts to be sent on the next mission.

Chris: Next, we have a harder problem… Bob needs a doctor. We need to get him back to Kerbin as soon as we can, but before that he at least needs blood transfusions and we can at least sew him back up even if we have no way to deal with the, uh, massive internal hemorrhaging.

Beth: That might cause problems. We do have a sick bay, but it’s also the chem lab. It’s just not meant for any surgery more technical than an appendectomy. But, if we just need to stabilize one patient to send him back to Kerbin, that may be doable. Chris, you’ll need to put all of your chemicals away while I prep for the operation, and then since it’s not a sterile area we’ll need to wipe down everything with an alcohol solution-

Chris: Okay.

Beth: And then expose the entire lab to vacuum for five minutes.

Chris: Oh, wow, okay. I guess I’ll need to move some chemicals to another part of the base, but I after that I can give you a hand with-

Capcom: Cletroit calling, we have an update on the situation…

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“That’s great! It starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes, an airplane…”

In Mission Control, Mark laughed. “Yeah, you’ve definitely got a real, uh, distinctive singing voice there, Harbrett.”

Harbrett rolled his eyes. “Oh, keep your opinions to yourself. At least I switched off my local channel so Alice can sleep.” He cleared his throat and started singing again. “It’s the end of the world as we know it… It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

Alice coughed. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

Alice burst upright and began to shake, convulsing with deep, hacking coughs. “Oh, man,” she gasped, “I can’t breathe…”

“Alice!” Harbrett shouted. “What’s wrong?”

“Some kind of fumes in my suit!”

“Okay, okay, describe what you feel.”

“Tears in my eyes, burning in my throat…”

“Sounds like ammonia inhalation. But… oh, no.”

“What?” Alice asked.

“The carbon scrubbers,” Harbrett explained. “One of the boxes with all the scrubbers came open when the Raven crashed. But a coolant line also broke upon impact, and it must have sprayed the scrubbers with ammonia!”

“How… many scrubbers?”

Harbrett bit his lip and added it up in his head. “Around half our supply. We only have about two hours left per person now.”

“And how far to Munbase?”

“Three hours.”

Alice nodded and turned around to take the carbon scrubber out of her suit. “In that case,” she suggested, “I suggest you make good time to Munbase and I’ll try to take shallow breaths.”

Edited April 11, 2020 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 19- NH₄

Bill groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Oh, man, I did not sleep well.”

“Yeah,” Jeb replied. “This place is like a phone booth with worse air conditioning.”

Bill opened his eyes. “Thanks for, uh, curling up into a fetal position for the last five hours so I could straighten my legs out.”

Jeb shrugged. “Eh, I sleep easily. What do you want for breakfast?”

“What do we have?”

Jeb opened up a duffel bag that was floating near his feet. “Nutrient bars. Five hundred calories’ worth of peaches compressed into a convenient bar.”

Bill took a bar from Jeb. “It’s, uh, still a little weird.”

“What is?”

“You know,” Bill said as he bit into a bar. “Ugh! What is this stuff? Anyway, you know, this has got to be the weirdest spaceship ever flown, before or after the war. The Kraken’s Spit had, er… character, that’s for sure, but I don’t exaggerate when I say that this thing is a big plastic bag with an EVA backpack and a radio taped to the inside.”

“Well, we build what works.”

Bill nodded. “Indeed, we do. So, uh… have you found a place yet?”

“A what?”

“Are you still living in that hotel in Cletroit?”

Jeb shook his head. “No, I found a house in Rockville, up on Allison Road. It’s about a block away from where you moved in, I think.”

“You mean that huge colonial? Seems pretty excessive.”

“No, I got a big deal on a one-story down the road. Got a pretty good deal on it, since I waited until everybody else from Juno’s Landing was already moved in. There’s a good-sized basement, so I can set up a workshop in there.”

Bill grabbed a packet of orange juice. “You know, I heard that place was haunted,” he said, before taking a drink.

Jeb shrugged. “Well, we deal in science. No need for superstition here.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chris grabbed a pair of binoculars from the geology locker and put them into a pouch in his suit. “Okay,” he told Alex, “I want you to wait outside the airlock with a suit assembled so you can be ready to assist me on the surface, but if I don’t need help then Harbrett and I will carry Bob in ourselves. We will put him in the airlock, close the outer door, and then you must equalize the pressure and bring him to the sick bay.”

Alex nodded. “Okay. Should I take his suit off?”

Chris shook his head. “I have no idea. You just do what Beth says, okay? She’s the doctor here and we’re just here so she can get to work.”

“Got it.”

“One more thing. Bob’s suit is going to be covered in Mun dust. I want you to skip the cleaning procedures and pull him in right away, as soon as the airlock’s up to the same pressure as the base.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “You sure? That’s against protocol, and-”

Chris grabbed Alex’s shoulder. “Listen to me. Bob is a kerbal on the brink on death. Get a mask from the sick bay and some goggles from the chem lab so you don’t breathe that stuff in or get it in your eyes, but we’ll let the air filters deal with it just this one time. We have bigger problems.”

“I understand, commander.”

Chris smiled just a little, his brow tensing up as he tried not to think about what kind of shape Bob would be in. “Okay. I want you to get me a helmet and then I’m going to go out and wait for the rover.”

Alex walked over to a shelf. “Is this one okay?”

“No, get me the one above it. That’s my lucky helmet.”

Chris sighed. “Now, luck is all we have.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Harbrett blinked and tried to get his eyes to focus on the mysterious region beyond his faceplate. His hands had gripped the rover’s controls for so long that he feared that now that he was finally closing in on Munbase he might not be able to let go. Shaking his head quickly, he let up his left hand’s grip on the wheel and tuned his suit’s radio frequency onto the Munbase local channel. He remembered switching it over to Ozymandias’s channel when he left Munbase four days ago, and never thought he’d need to touch that dial again.

“Harbrett. This is Chris. If you can hear me, you must be within a few kilometers of Munbase. If you turn on the rover’s radio to the Ozymandias channel, you will be able to get a homing beacon to guide you the rest of the way to the base.”

Just then, the rover went over a rise, and Harbrett could see the glint of sunlight off the solar fields. “No need, Chris,” he replied, smiling at long last. “I’ve got you in my sights and will meet you outside the airlock.”

“Copy. Will you be able to help me take Bob inside?”

“Yes, I will.”

Chris nodded. “Good. And how’s Alice doing?”

“She’s unconscious,” Harbrett replied. “Can’t tell if it’s CO₂ buildup or ammonia poisoning.”

“Hopefully it’s just carbon toxicity; Beth can take a moment away from Bob to take a look at her at some point.”

Harbrett steered the rover around the blast crater left from Ozymandias’s ascent. “You won’t be able to see me just yet,” he told Chris. “I’m coming around the southern hab now.”

The rover closed the last few yards to the base of the airlock and Harbrett lifted himself out of his seat. “Cletroit,” he said, “this is the Ozymandias crew. We have returned to Munbase; will report when through the airlock.”

Chris stepped over and gazed down at Bob, cringing at the sight of his mangled suit and the blood splattered on his faceplate. “Let’s get him inside,” he said.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb: Truth or dare?

Bill: Dare.

Jeb: I dare you to, uh… go over there and, er… touch that wall?

Bill: Wow. How exciting that was. I can’t believe you made me touch that wall.

Jeb: Look, it’s not easy finding things to do in this phone booth of a lifeboat we’ve got here.

Bill: Yeah… at least we’ll be getting picked by our rescue mission tomorrow, and then we’ll be at Cuyahoga, and we’ll have all the space we could want.

Jeb: Mmm. Hey, what’s the name of our rescue ship?

Bill: Their capsule’s called Enza. Kind of boring, I think… I think we should call this lifeboat Wandering Star.

Jeb: Ooh, I like that.

Bill: I guess it’s all right… truth or dare?

Jeb: Given how lame these dares have been, I’ll pick truth.

Bill: What is your greatest fear?

Jeb: That I will die of a rare disease that causes your lungs to crawl out of your mouth, wrap around your neck, and strangle you.

Bill (laughing): No, seriously.

Jeb: Yeah… what?

Bill: Your actual greatest fear.

Jeb: For real.

Bill: Yep.

Jeb: You’ll leave.

Bill: What?

Jeb: You wanted to know what I’m most afraid of, and I say that what keeps me up at night is that someday you’ll look at me, you’ll realize how self-absorbed and maniacal I am, and you won’t want to be my friend anymore.

Bill: Oh…

Jeb: Or maybe you’ll get into a car crash. I’m not sure which one would be more painful. I remember, a long time ago, when we were in school, I was afraid of a pandemic… but then one came, and we were stuck at home, and we survived that. Then I was afraid of a nuclear war… but then one came, and it killed everybody else in Los Ruidos, but you and I, we survived that. And now I know the things that hurt me the most have been the little things, all the people I used to know, and now I have no idea where they are.

Bill: I won’t leave.

Jeb: Don’t promise me that. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Bill: I’m your best friend. I’ll always love you in some way.

Jeb: Do you remember Nathan Engels?

Bill: Who?

Jeb: My best friend in elementary school. You probably don’t even remember that we didn’t really know each other in elementary school, but I guess you could say Nathan was the brother I didn’t have. After school we’d go out on the mesa, or up into the foothills, and just look around the place and see what we could see. We built go-karts, we wrote songs, and we fired off model rockets. We both swore to each other that we’d grow old together… and then in middle school, he just left. I don’t know if Nathan thought I wasn’t cool, if I was a loser… I know I felt like one. I guess Nathan was kind of superficial. Maybe I was just amusement to him.

Bill: But I’m not… I couldn’t do that.

Jeb: You say that, but there’s no way for you to know if you mean it. We could get back to Kerbin and Edsel could transfer you to, I don’t know, Crystal City or someplace, and you’d just be gone. Maybe one day I’d pass you on the street, and I’d say, “Do I know that guy?” but I’d never be sure. And then I’d just keep walking.

Bill: Yeah. That is a scary thought.

Jeb: And with that in mind… Do you think we can do it? Save Bob?

Bill: I can’t promise you anything, Jeb.

[Confused Scientist]

 Chapter 20- If it Kills Me

 

What we do here is redefine the impossible.

            -Bob Kerman, during his commencement address to the University of Pascua Class of 2992.

 

 

Beth stepped out of the medical bay and glanced at her crewmates before pulling her surgical mask down from over her mouth.

“Well?” Chris asked, worry written in his brow.

Beth wiped a drop of sweat from her forehead and looked over at Harbrett. “You need to get back to Kerbin immediately, if not sooner. I’m afraid that although most of Alice’s symptoms were from CO₂ poisoning, she has suffered some ammonia inhalation. I sent her to her bunk and gave her an oxygen tank to draw off of when she gets short of breath. She might have to get on a respirator for a few days when she gets back to Kerbin, but if she ups the O­₂ concentration in her suit on the way home she’ll probably be fine. Harbrett is even better; he just has a chipped tooth that will just need a quick removal back home. I’d say it’s impossible not to have any other injuries from a crash like that, but he won’t even need to go to the hospital.

“Bob is… not well. All I could really do for him was give him some weapons-grade painkillers, start a blood transfusion- by the way, we’re out of B-positive and I dipped pretty heavily into the O-neg reserve, so please remind me later to ask Cletroit for some more shipments of both of those on the next mission- and then I started the surgery. I was able to evaluate his condition, but since all I really have the ability to do here at Munbase is slice into his abdomen and take a look around, I couldn’t help him much.”

Beth opened a notebook she had been carrying in her pocket. “I’m a worried about his stomach; it’s hemorrhaging in a bad way, but it might be a relatively simple stich-em-up job back on Kerbin if he’s lucky. The rest of his GI tract, though… it’s just pulverized, and I mean that literally. I mean, normally I’d say it’s impossible for him to even be alive at this point. It’s almost like there’s some kind of magic force keeping him from going into shock. He’ll need a new liver and quite a bit of small intestine. If something goes wrong during entry and the g-loads get too high, I also wouldn’t rule out a new stomach.”

Harbrett’s eyes were wide. “If we were on Kerbin, and Bob had gotten to a hospital three days ago, would he be this bad?”

“If we were on Kerbin,” Beth replied, “Bob would have been killed when the ascent module fell on him. Now get to the Phoenix and get him home!”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Harbrett glanced to the other side of the ascent module, counting off the last few minutes to launch in his head. His commander lay to his left, wearing only a hospital gown and thick bandages under his flight suit, and Alice sat to his right, resting atop a crate of antibiotics and painkillers.

Alice looked up at Harbrett, lifting her gaze past the oxygen mask she held against her mouth. “Harbrett,” she whispered, “I still don’t feel right. I definitely breathed some ammonia.”

Harbrett sighed. “Oh, man, I feel so bad that you two have almost been killed and I just got away with a broken tooth.”

Alice shook her head. “Jeb and Bill and their recovery team just docked at Cuyahoga. Some of the Minnmus crew will stay at the station for a while longer so that Jeb and Bill can be back on Kerbin for our splashdown. They’ll get back about nine hours before we do. If we get Bob back home, it’s all worth it.”

Alice paused for a moment as some chatter came over the radio: “Endurance, ninety seconds to liftoff, everything’s go down here.”

“Same here, Cletroit,” Harbrett said.

Alice smiled. “Sounds like we’ll be on our way soon. Harbrett James Kerman, under my authority as commander of this mission, I designate you the new commander of this mission.”

“Thanks, Alice.” Harbrett looked out the window as the engine lit up, and dust was kicked up all around the ascent module, and Munbase disappeared from the bottom of the window, and the crash site passed beneath them unnoticed, and then they were docked to the Raven and they took the speed record back from Jeb and Bill as they set their course back home.

Kerbin was twelve hours away.

[Misguided Kerbal]

yay

[Tsar_bomba]

I’m back from what I like to call the big blockining where everything on my schools network that wasn’t needed for school was blocked, including this site. I still can’t even get to cool math games. Good to see you didn’t just give up and use modern problems as an excuse.

[obnox twin]

When next Chapter no rush if you can't post one