Chapter 5
It was the smell of the coffee that woke Foreman up.
'Hello,' said Monkley, passing him the mug.
'Hey! You, pal, are a real gentleman. Thanks.' He sipped the coffee. 'Perfect. How are you this morning?'
'Happy.'
When it came to words, Monkley was a one size fits all kinda chap.
'We're alive, which is the main thing. We should do something, you know, about our buddies. Mark their passing, somehow. I'll think of something.'
He went to the bathroom and ran the shower. He knew all the water would be filtered and sterilised. It was the same for any waste water. Solids would end up being used as fertiliser for the plants. Nothing was ever wasted in a facility like the base. Drying himself off, he found a coverall that fitted. The kitchen had a storeroom filled with enough vacuum packed food to feed four people for a year. Maybe not the finest dining experience, but nutritious and sustaining. Finding some tomato filled dough based thing, he zapped it in the microwave and sat at the table to eat. The meal was okay. Adequate. It would keep him alive. Another coffee hit the spot.
He left the kitchen after washing up his coffee mug, and went out to try the radio again. With his mind rested, he figured he stood a better chance of making contact. After half an hour of nothing but static, he gave it up.
'Hey, Monkley. Where the hell are you?'
There was a rustling as Monkley bounded athletically from branch to branch, landing perfectly by his side.
'Are you going to dress today?'
Monkley shook his head. 'Happy.'
'Fair enough. I tried calling Earth. I didn't get very far. You and I still have a job to do, you know? We gotta check out the systems, make sure it's all in good order. You need to stick by me, learn a bit. We have to go to the control room. Come on.'
The nerve centre of the base was at the far end of the accommodation units. A light came on as they stepped inside.
'Ah! This isn't good, pal.' He knew he had left the radio on. Now, however, it wasn't lit up. 'Probably a loose connection.'
Monkley jumped up onto the bench and watched Foreman at work. Checking the cables and power supply, he determined the problem, if there was one, was with the radio itself. 'Maybe its on some sort of timer. Yeah. Makes sense. Conserving power.'
He flicked every switch, turned every knob, poked all the buttons. Nothing. 'Gotta be some kinda manual for the damn thing.'
Monkley was holding a thick instruction manual in his hairy hands, turning the pages. This would have been impressive, had it not been upside down.
'You ain't fooling nobody, pal. Hand it over.' Monkley passed it to him. 'Shit! This is ridiculous,' he said feeling the weight. 'You make yourself useful and make me a coffee while I get my head around this.'
Monkley jumped down and ran out of the room as Foreman made himself comfortable in a chair, his feet up on the bench. Five minutes later, Monkley returned with the coffee in one hand and a banana in the other. Jumping back up on the bench, he ate the banana as Foreman studied the manual. 'I got to page ninety seven and it still ain't told me how to turn the damn thing on. What is it with geeks? They got this peculiar way about them, using a thousand incomprehensible words when one simple word would do.'
He tossed the manual on the bench and stared at the radio. Despite the technical ramblings of the manual, it looked quite basic in design. It served two purposes, he knew. Internal base communication including with anyone outside performing missions, and communication with either Earth, or anyone on their way from Earth. That was it. It would of course, ordinarily be operated by an expert, but the expert was Science Officer Elizabeth Mauler. She'd have had the thing fired up and dancing the bossanova in seconds. Mauler being dead was a huge obstacle in her being able to do that, however.
'I need a crap,' said Foreman.
On his way to the bathroom, he marvelled at the base. He was impressed with its simplicity. One huge Luxotral construction, self supporting with no internal pillars, capable of withstanding small meteor collisions. Not that that was likely. Mars had two distinct areas, one a heavily pockmarked battered side, ravished by time and meteor bombardment, and the rest of it, smooth and relatively unblemished. Nobody really knew why that was. The base site had been chosen using the Olympus Mons mountain as a marker. Near the equator, surrounded by a vast crater, the extinct volcano measured an impressive eighteen miles in height. The bordering plateau was where the bore for the water had been drilled. Impervious pipes made of Luxotral were used to get the water to the base under natural pressure. The people building all this would have tossed the geek instruction manuals into the trash and just got on with the job.
Not one ounce of material had been wasted. There was nothing used in the project that didn't need to be there, and considering it was a joint effort between many nations, it all went amazingly well. The toilet was a self cleaning, self flushing design, recycling waste material for the compost for the plants. All the packaging for the food was a biodegradable material, organic based, that broke down into compost. Having finished his ablutions, Foreman returned to the control room, to find an excited Monkley talking into the lit up radio.
'...Space Federation communications centre. I repeat. This is Cadet Nathan Farley, of the International Space Federation at the communications centre. Can you hear me?'
'Happy. Monkley happy.'
'Holy crap.' Foreman stared at the GenMop in amazement. 'Cadet Farley. This is Andrew Foreman. Can you hear me?'
Farley wouldn't hear that for a few minutes, so continued introducing himself. After a long pause Foreman got his reply.
'Yeah. I got some nut-job on before, going on how happy he is.'
Allowing for the pauses, the dialogue continued. 'That's Monkley. The GenMop. You say you're just a cadet?'
'Yeah. I can hear you. We're in the middle of an evacuation. Big shit going down.'
'Evacuation? What the hell is going on down there?'
'Terrorist strike. Bad shit going down all over the damn place.'
'But I...everything was peachy when we left. How come...?'
'I can't stay long, sir. I was just passing the communications centre when I happened to hear the transmission.'
'Farley. Listen carefully. The ship went down. Me and the GenMop are the only survivors. We are in the base and...'
'Glad you made it, sir. Look. I gotta go.' There was the sound of an explosion. 'Shit. Good luck, sir.' There was another explosion and the radio went dead.
'Farley? Farley?'
Foreman stared at the radio. 'Damn. Turn my back for five damn minutes and it all goes to pieces.'