| DSX-9: Voyage to Deimos !! *~V8~*+ |
| Know then, that it is the year 2069, Earth has been ravaged by the third world war. Regions of her atmosphere are so contaminated with radioactivity that only a narrow strip of earth's equatorial lands are safe for human habitation. A nuclear winter has set in so that even at the equator temperatures often plummet to below freezing. Fossil fuel supplies have been depleted or are inaccessible, buried beneath the advancing ice sheets of the polar caps. Much conventional warfare was waged before the superpowers, desperate for victory and an end to the carnage and bloodshed, finally resorted to the use of nuclear weapons. As a result of the close combat by infantry troops and foot soldiers, women now outnumber men by a ratio of 200 to 1. The few remaining scientists and engineers on earth have designed and built a state~of~the~art space craft for searching out new worlds capable of supporting human life. The DSX-9, code named, Seed Pod, is the most technologically advanced space exploration ship in the entire history of mankind. Manned by a crew of three, the prototype had to be launched for her first spaceflight as an official mission because there was not the time nor were there the resources for extended trials and testing. And so, our story begins............. The DSX~9 experimental space craft was the 21st century engineering marvel that was to finally take man to Mars and beyond, but something went wrong aboard the DSX~9 during Mars final approach and she crash landed on her maiden voyage, stranding her crew of three on Deimos, one of the two desolate moons of the Red Planet! Deimos, rocky and barren. A dry crust of carbonate and silica beneath which unknown alien life forms may lurk! Deimos, a Greek name which means DREAD! The three marooned space travelers, pilot of the DSX~9, captain Ridley Stovall, the navigator Channing Griggs and the ship's communications officer, Terrence Conroy, lay unconscious for hours, strapped in the seats of the cockpit. The quiet calm of the Deimos night surrounded them in purple, starry darkness. Some time later, during the Deimos sunrise, gale force desert sandstorm winds begin to build in the convection currents of thermal updrafts generated by the rapid heating of the dry, hard, heavily metal~laden surface of the barren moon in the thin Deimosian atmoshpere. The powerful winds blast by outside the thin thermal glass canopy bubble of the downed craft. Inside, the earthlings still lay in the oblivion of unconsciousness, cocooned in their flight suits; defenseless. Midday and the inhospitable landscape of Deimos is a broiling frying pan of solar radiation. The raging winds always come to a complete standstill at noon on Deimos. The calm before the storm, as the afternoons bring a return of the violent squawls and walls of stinging, flying sands. During the temporary stillness of high noon and high heat on the desolate Martian moon of Deimos, Captain Ridley began to come to, regaining consciousness just long enough for a quick look around, before passing out again. Late afternoon, with the dark Deimos night of freezing temperatures closing in, a red light begins to flash off and on on the control panel of the downed DSX-9! A warning light accompanied by the ship's computer generated voice (a voice designed by earth scientists and engineers to sound feminine, the idea being this may be a comfort to three lonely men far away from earth in deep space). WARNING: OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICALLY LOW! WARNING: OXYGEN LEVELS APPROACHING CRITICAL! Still, the 3 crew members of the crashed earth space exploration craft lay in the helplessness of unconsciousness. Unaware of the impending doom closing in all around them, navigator Griggs begins to stir. Moving slowly and in great pain due to a fractured arm, Griggs gains enough conscious awareness to assess the danger! Immediately he begins shouting and vigorously shaking the other members of his flight crew in a desperate attempt to wake them all and save their lives somehow! "Captain!" Griggs shouts, "Officer Conroy! Wake up! Wake up! You must wake up, we are running out of oxygen! We must take emergency action immediately or we shall all die!" With similarly aching bodies, for they all have suffered deep bruising and fractures due to the violence of the crash landing, Captain Stovall and Communications Officer Conroy begin to awaken. "Alarm!", shouted the captain," Oxygen levels critical! We must switch to emergency back~up oxygen supply!" "The tanks were ruptured during crash~down, captain!" shouted Griggs in a voice of genuine panic, "We have only one tank remaining!" "How long shall that sustain us, is it six hours? I can't seem to think clearly......my mind is......I'm dizzy!" "One tank provides oxygen for 6 hours, for 3 of us, longer for only two or one of breathing it!" "Our flight suits are equipped with enough oxygen for 6 hours per man, if we combine the two oxygen supplies, we have a total of twelve hours for the three of us!" gasped communications officer Conroy in a rising voice of dire concern for the desperateness of their hopeless situation! "Do we have a reading on the composition of the atmosphere outside the DSX-9!?" shouted the captain. "I'm punching in an special access code right now, captain! The ship's electronics were damaged along with just about everything else, so the onboard computer has me locked out!" "Locked out?" shouted the captain in dismay. "Yes~sir," Conroy replied,"It's a safety feature programmed into all onboard electrical systems in case we are attacked by hostiles from outer space!" "Of course," said the captain,"Now I remember.....as I said, the low oxygen levels are affecting my concentration." "I have switched to emergency back~up oxygen supply, captain!" said Navigator Griggs in a somewhat calmer voice which still resonated with the urgency of their plight, "You should begin feeling increasingly coherent as your body metabolizes the new, clean oxygen!" "Thank you, Griggs, I think my head is starting to clear now. What about those atmospheric readings, Conroy?" Communications Officer Conroy, who doubled as the mission's science officer, was furiously punching keys on the flashing control panel of the DSX-9. "I had to bypass the normal routing of input data, but I think I have a linkup with the ship's external sensors now! I'm having to use machine code to enter commands, but we should have a reading momentarily!" Just then, another red warning light, this time with a loud buzzer sounding, began to alert the worried crew of the DSX-9 that a leak had been detected in the radiation shield of the DSX-9's nuclear power cells. "What now!?", cried the captain, rubbing his head to try and regain full clarity of thought. "It's a leak in the nuclear fuel radiation shield! We must evacuate the ship now or we shall all be contaminated with lethal doses of radiation in minutes!", shouted Griggs in another burst of raw panic! The captain, white faced and wide eyed, now shouted even louder,"Conroy! Have you got a reading on the Deimosian atmosphere yet!?" "One moment, it's coming, I think I'm getting it!" "Forget the reading!" blurted Griggs, "Let's get out of here now! We can put on our space helmets and survive in our space suits until we can figure out what to do about the leaking radiation from our fuel cells!" "Got it!", shouted Conroy, "The atmosphere is breathable! It's a thin atmosphere, like being high up in the mountains on earth, but it is an atmosphere capable of sustaining human life!" "Everybody out!" roared the captain! Griggs, who was sitting in the middle, lifted Conroy out of his seat inspite of the agonizing pain of his fractured arm. Conroy stumbled out onto the hard surface of Deimos and turned back to assist Griggs who was falling out onto the ground,holding his fractured arm to prevent a full breakage. "Help!" the captain shouted,"I'm stuck!" "I'll get him Griggs, you stay here! We don't need you aggravating that injury to your arm! I'm coming captain!" shouted Conroy as he clambered over the side of the DSX-9 to assist his captain to escape before the rising radiation levels in the immediate vicinity of the craft reached lethal levels. "Captain! Take my hand! Pull, captain, I've got you, now pull and we'll get you out of here!" "I can't, Conroy!, It's the canopy, it must have been damaged in the crash, because when I released my seatbelt, the side of the canopy fell in upon my left leg and I can't move!" "Don't worry, you are my captain! I shall get you out!" shouted Conroy as his mind raced for a solution to the new doomsday scenario delema which now faced them! At last, and with radiation levels now arriving at dangerously high levels, Conroy shouted at his captain like a coach to his team,"Captain, I want you to lean toward me as far you can and close your eyes!" "What are you going to do, Conroy!? Radation levels are now at lethal doses! You must abandon the craft! Go, Conroy! Leave me here! It's too late for me! Save yourself! That's a direct order, Conroy!" "No sir, and you can have me up for courtmartial on insubordination charges later! I'm not leaving my captain! Stop talking and lean hard toward me! I'm gonna blow the explosive blots to jettison the canopy! Lean as far as you can toward me or we shall both be torn to pieces!" The captain pulled with all his strength on Conroy's arms just as Conroy hit the emergence release and the canopy launched upward from the cockpit as the explosive bolts did just what they were designed to do! With a powerful, almost super~human tug, Conroy heaved his captain from the cockpit and they both landed in a thud upon the hard Deimosian surface! Griggs helped them to their feet with his one uninjured arm and the three of them fled to a safe distance from the now lethally dangerous radioactive DSX-9! Now that the 3 stranded space fliers had all escaped the immediate danger of the banged up DSX~9 after their emergency crash landing on Deimos, they began walking around on the moon's rocky surface seeing strange sights! Undisturbed by the blowing sands, bizarre rainbow colored beetles as big as rabbits were crawling along white lines in the moon's surface and huge, prehistoric looking flowers were somehow growing the dry, desert environment of the Martian moon called Deimos! Waving in the gale force blasts of piercing sands, the giant flowers had their petals closed and their leaves pulled in close to their stalks. The first creature of intelligence the three marooned space fliers encountered was Spizod the Space Priest when they happened upon his great temple built atop a high hill overlooking the only body of drinkable water anywhere on the entire moon of Deimos !! *~V8~*+ Spizod the Space Priest looked at the three tired and ragged space fliers with sinister, distrustful eyes that seemed to hide some dark secret which Spizod the Space Priest didn't want Captain Ridley, Navigator Griggs and Communications Officer Conroy to discover! The 3 earth men sensed danger as they approached the long flight of steps which led up to the entrance of the ancient stone temple of Spizod the Space Priest of Deimos !! *~V8~*+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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to be continued............
