Search & Rescue (11.3)

Chris was sitting in a wooden chair beside Tarpin's bed in the Central Station's medical wing. Tarpin's vital signs still showed that he was in a deep hibernation mode apparently forced on him by whatever had been contained in the beanbag ball. Apparently, even the brief exposure experienced by the Star Traveler crew had been enough to knock them out as well.

I wonder when Tarpin will finally awaken.

Tarpin's eyelids twitched. Chris assumed the iguana's senses had finally awakened and were trying to arouse him out of a sleep that mercilessly held him captive. For an hour longer, Chris watched the overhead screen above Tarpin's bed as his vital signs finally reached normal levels. Fighting back the sleep, Tarpin slowly came fully awake. Chris told him everything he had found out and that the Star Traveler Crew was not responding.

"Have you tried reaching Laurie on her MTD again?"

"Yep, at least three times yesterday. I haven't tried this morning yet, though," Chris answered, taking his MTD from his belt and pressing the necessary buttons.

Once Laurie's face came onscreen, it was clear that she had placed her MTD on the ship's computer console. Laurie was looking not at the MTD screen, but at something directly ahead of her. Chris reasoned that it must be the main screen. Laurie's mouth was set in a hard line, her jaw clenched, her forehead creased in fierce concentration.

"Laurie?"

"Chris? I hear you."

"What's going on?"

"Some type of computer virus wiped out the star charts. Without a fix on its destination, and with everyone asleep, I'm guessing the ship just kept going on. The rest of the crew are still unconscious, I awoke a few minutes ago to find we were entering some type of planetary atmosphere. We are descending way too fast, and through a massively powerful hurricane at that!"

The ship vibrated from the strain, shaking Chris' view of Laurie.

"Can you pull out of the atmosphere?" He called out to her.

"Negative, still traveling too fast and there is too much wind resistance. I'm going to try to level the ship out." Perspiration beaded on Laurie's forehead as she struggled with the manual flight control.

"There," Laurie finally said, wiping her brow. It was apparent that the ship was not being buffeted around as much now.

"I managed to get clear of the hurricane. I am slowing down and I can see land from here. I am currently traveling above an ocean."

"Perhaps you could try to go back into orbit again?" Tarpin suggested.

"No, for some reason the main engines are not functioning, ugh‒ and electrical systems too." Chris could see the lights going out on the deck through his MTD screen. "The systems must have been damaged in the storm. I was reading 500 mile-an-hour gusts of wind!"

"Laurie, how can you safely land? Don't you use the engine's liftoff jets to hover slightly before setting down?"

"Yeah and I've never landed this ship without them- outside of a simulator. I'll do my best, but I don't think this is going to be pretty."

"Laurie, be…"

Chris never finished. Laurie glanced at her MTD on the console only to find their call disconnected. She returned her focus back to the main screen just as a few floating buoys passed by her screen. A voltage surge sent everything dark. Laurie's navigation panel and main screen turned completely lifeless.

Great! Now we might as well be falling in a cardboard box!

"Backup Electrical," Laurie called in trepidation, voice-activating the ship's reserve computer and electrical systems.

She let out a short sigh of relief as the overhead main screen came to life. Except now it was showing a fast-approaching green flatland, just past a rocky beach.

"There's technology here, so there must be intelligent life here. Now, to land this ship without the engines and only the guidance controls!" Laurie concentrated hard on the fast- approaching ground.

Using the MFC, she managed to give the Star Traveler a rough, grinding coast to a stop on the slightly hilly (but fortunately grassy) plains.

"Well, that was quite a roller coaster ride!" Captain Mitchell exclaimed from the floor, making Laurie jump.

Captain Mitchell got up and pressed a few buttons on the computer console.

"Ship's electrical systems show we only have an hour's worth of stored backup energy left. Computer shows engines are non-responsive. The statistics it gives me suggest that the engines' systems are toast. We need to do some major repairs just about all over the ship before we can fly again."

"Sorry about that, Captain Mitchell."

"Don't worry about it, Laurie; that landing was very unconventional in its circumstances. Any other pilot would have probably plowed us straight into the ground, and then this ship would have been good for nothing more than scrap metal," Captain Mitchell said with a smile. "This ship'll fly again for sure."

Laurie smiled back at him, feeling her worry fading. She pecked at her computer console as she checked the status reports.

"Captain Mitchell, the sensors we installed last month to read the atmospheric content of the planet's surface are not responding, probably from the earlier electrical surge. I can't tell if the air on this planet is safe to breathe. From what I know of the ship's design, some of the components of the systems we'll need to repair to get this ship off of the ground are unfortunately unattainable except from the outside."

"Yes, I know… meaning sooner or later we will have to venture outside. I am going to check the space suits or as Trib likes to call them, 'M.H.' suits."

"What does 'M.H.' stand for?" Laurie questioned, looking up from the ship's statistics.

"Mobile Habitat," Captain Mitchell answered. "The suits recreate the pressure, temperature, and air contents that we humans are accustomed to; ergo, the reasoning behind Trib's nickname for them."

"I see. Well, while you are checking the MH suits, I am going to check on everyone else's condition," Laurie replied with a laugh.

"Roger that."

Laurie gave a short salute as a joke, then turned and left the main deck. Captain Mitchell chuckled then went over to the six lockers lining one side of the deck's walls.

After checking the first two MH suits, it became evident that they were not operational.

"That's odd," Captain Mitchell said aloud to himself. "These suits run off their own battery packs. They were charged to full strength the day before we left."

"Could they have been sabotaged?" Laurie suggested. "We don't even have locks on our ship's lockers," she added, entering the main deck, the rest of the crew in her wake.

"Why would you suggest sabotage?" Dr. Smith inquired.

"Chris was able to tell me over the MTD video phone that it was the beanbag we batted out of the ship that made us fall unconscious‒ the same thing happened to Tarpin when he caught the bag as it fell. My gut tells me that incident and the computer virus that wiped out our star charts may not be matters of coincidence."

"I agree," Captain Mitchell answered, opening the circuitry panel in the back of the suit. "It does seem to look like sabotage. See? Here in the back of the suit, some of the wires are cut and the circuits are jarred out of their housings."

"Are we stranded here?" Gorioshi asked.

"For the time being, yes," Captain Mitchell replied. "The MH suits are not operational."

"MH?" Gorioshi questioned.

"Mobile habitat," Eli replied, smiling.

"What about the rebreathers that Trib's friend Granel made us?" Dr. Kingston asked.

Laurie flung the lockers open one by one, checking each belt hung inside for the pouch containing their rebreather device.

"They are all gone…Yeah this isn't suspicious at all. Feels like someone doesn't want us to leave the ship!" Laurie commented.

"Have we tried calling Exandra, or Earth for help?" Dr. Kingston asked.

"I haven't… yet," Captain Mitchell responded.

Dr. Kingston retrieved her MTD from her belt. Upon opening it, she discovered that it refused to transmit any calls.

"Something is interfering with the MTD's ability to send out a signal. Chris was on the video phone shortly before I tried to land the Star Traveler," Laurie stated, "as I neared the surface we must have entered some type of frequency jamming field. Chris's video feed was cut off. The ships main electrical systems were disabled by some sort of floating buoy system in the clouds, they hit us with a rather large electrical surge. Backup electrical is all we have for now."

"Yeah, as for that, I think it'd be best if we shut down the backup electrical systems until we need them. They need to last until we get off this planet."

"We can't get off the planet until we fix the engines," Laurie added, filling the rest of the crew in on the ship's condition.

"Hold on," Gorioshi interjected. "If the ship's engines are not running life support and everything else that needs electricity, we won't have life support once we shut the backup systems down. It seems to me, the best thing to do first is to get the engines running."

"That's why we're shutting the backup systems down‒we won't need them outside of the ship. Going outside is the only way we can access and repair the engines' systems that were damaged," Captain Mitchell stated.

"Do you have any suggestions, Laurie, about the possibility of fixing the suits? Electronics is your area of expertise, after all," Captain Mitchell asked as he turned to Laurie. She studied the exposed panel deep in thought.

"In order to repair these suits, I would need to rebuild most of the circuits and, as all of the suits are probably in the same condition‒ Laurie looked to Dr. Smith who was checking the rest of the suits still in the lockers and shaking his head‒ it would most likely take a few days to get them up and running," Laurie said. "Days we don't have. We have less than an hour of backup energy left and we are on a rescue mission."

"Noted," Captain Mitchell replied grimly.

"I just don't understand, we were in that field long enough for it to hit us again and knock out the backups too." Laurie mused.

"Maybe someone wanted us to crash and, yet, to still survive." Dr. Kingston said. "We would have been killed if the backup hadn't worked. Laurie wouldn't have been able to steer or land the ship, never mind see the ground outside on the viewscreen to steer by; there wouldn't have been electricity to enable any of those things to operate."

"It does seem like a set up," Eli stated.

"But to what end, and by whom?" Dr. Smith questioned.

"Well, whatever is going on, we should all be careful and ready from here on out. There's only one solution I see to getting off this planet—we're going to have to go outside without our suits to repair the ship," Laurie said.

"The air and atmospheric pressure may not be of the right conditions for us to survive," Dr. Kingston reminded. "We can scan it with our MTD's to check but by then we will already be exposed.

"Meaning we may either be crushed or suffocate on the surface of this unknown planet, if we step out of the ship," Gorioshi responded.

"Possibly, but that is our only option. We can stay here and wait until the oxygen is depleted in here and die, or we can shut down the backup system to conserve our remaining power and venture outside and try to get out of here so we can finish our mission," Laurie reiterated.

"What if one of us volunteered to go through the cargo bay. It functions as an airlock for the escape shuttles right?" Eli suggested.

Dr. Kingston looked at him in shock.

"Dad," Laurie murmured sadly. "I didn't mention that option because the mechanisms for the hanger doors are most likely buried from the crash. We'd never get them open."

"Laurie's previous suggestion contains sound reasoning; we either stay in here and die eventually, or go outside and try to get out of here," Dr. Smith echoed, turning from the lockers to Captain Mitchell, who was deep in thought.

"Hmm…yes, I quite agree-- shall we go then?" Captain Mitchell asked, looking at each of the crew in turn.

Captain Mitchell walked over to the main console and, while Laurie picked up and put away the MH suits, he shut down the reserve electricity systems. The crew then walked down the darkened hall to the main hatch.

Captain Mitchell and Eli manually turned the hatch wheel, while Gorioshi closed his eyes and prayed silently for their safety.

"3, 2, 1...," Captain Mitchell counted while he and Eli braced themselves against the hatch, "open!"

Eli and Captain Mitchell pulled hard on the hatch. A burst of air was heard as the Star Traveler de-pressurized. Captain Mitchell swung the hatch open on its hinges. To release the entry ramp, Captain Mitchell pulled open a panel in the wall beside the door. He reached his hand inside the mechanics and manually released the hydraulic system. With the hydraulics released, the ramp then lowered down to the grassy ground, allowing sunlight to pour into the Star Traveler.

"The air seems safe to me," Dr. Kingston stated, taking a deep breath of the cool, spring-like air.

Captain Mitchell and Eli were the first to step out unto the gangplank, followed by Dr. Smith, Dr. Kingston and Gorioshi. Almost at once, everyone froze. Laurie, puzzled, threaded her way up to Captain Mitchell and her father, craning her neck to see what had frightened the adults.