As if on cue, he heard the airlock recycling the air, so went through into the lobby to greet his visitor.
Once the caller had removed his helmet, Mel realised it was John-Joseph Bowker or “JJ”, who had worked with Mel from time to time in the past.
Mel greeted his colleague “Hi JJ, how was the journey over? Did you manage to bring everything I asked for?”
As John-Joseph put his helmet on the vacant hook in the lobby, he said “Yup. Just hope it covers everything. We need to get it over together, though, as there’s way too much for me to manage on my own.” With that, he strolled across to the doorway leading into the comm room. “Wow, what a mess. I can see why you think you need as much as you do, now. Sod’s law has meant that, with this place going down, some of our emergency backups elsewhere needed to be brought online and are proving less than reliable. I need to get out of here ASAP, so I can take a look at a problem that’s appeared over on ‘Roid 4. It only affects three of the news channel info. feeds at the moment but the news channel bosses are getting uppity about the loss of service. Did the cops ever get back to you about Will?”
“Not so far. It’s all a bit of a mystery as to where he’s got to. It’s not as if he could just walk out of here. Give me a couple of minutes while I suit up.”
An hour later, an exhausted JJ put the last of the boxes of spares onto the pile of crates and boxes now filling the lobby. Whilst the pile wasn’t massive, the lobby wasn’t all that big. What had taken the time was that the ship and base airlocks had to be negotiated, which was quite a slow progress when several trips were required. Fortunately, whilst they were on the surface of the ‘Roid, there was next to no gravity to fight against, although this changed once they were in the artificial gravity area of the station, making everything much heavier.
“Right. Now you’ve got everything, I need to get off to ‘Roid 4. If you need any more help, don’t call me, call HQ.”
“Thanks, JJ. Much appreciated. Looking at this lot, I’m going to be sleeping in the ship for a few more days before I can get this place fully operational. At least you can see what I’m up against.”
With a cheery wave, JJ re-entered the airlock and said “Good luck. Rather you than me. Hope they’re paying you a lot of overtime for this one.”
“They’d better be! Safe journey.”
Alone again, Mel decided that it was time for a meal, so went into the comm room, so that he could find something he fancied to eat.
After he had eaten, he felt like starting up again, sighed deeply and stood up. “Oh well, the sooner I start, the sooner I’ll get out of this place” he said to the room.
Having had JJ’s company for a short while, he was starting to feel a little lonely, so turned on some music. The air was filled with the heavy guitar playing of “Moon rock” by Phantom Heads, before their mezzo-soprano singer started singing the ballad of a lovelorn spaceman. As he started to work, Mel began to sing along to the symphonic metal band, a favourite of his.
Mel realised that, whilst he had all the equipment he thought he needed, the speed with which JJ had to get away meant that there was no logic to the way in which the stuff in the lobby was arranged, so decided that the first job was to get the various circuit boards and boxes into the area where they would be needed.
Much box shuffling later, he decided that the spares were in the best places he could manage at this stage. He looked at the clock and realised that it had been over twelve hours since he had been left by Bridg and Aurelius, so decided to call it a day.
As he entered the airlock of his ship he realised just how tired he was. He stripped off his spacesuit and went to lie down on his bunk, with the intention of having a short rest before he had something to eat and drink. Whilst he was hungry, he fell into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
As Will’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he realised that there seemed to be a low building a hundred metres from the antenna.
“It looks like there’s a building over there” he said pointing in its direction.
“You’re right. I thought this place was unoccupied. Obviously wrong, there. In this light I’m surprised you could see it, as there’s no heat being radiated from it and it’s trying to hide in the rocks. We might learn something from it. If nothing else, we’ll see where the signal is being sent” he said, turning in the building’s direction.
A few minutes later they were standing in front of a drab-looking building, the rear of which was hidden underground. It looked like it had been made from some form of concrete, topped by a pair of sloping roofs. It had a large, obviously heavy door running most of the building’s width. They noticed, however, a small access door to the left of this large door and headed towards it.
“Don’t you think we should wait for Security to turn up?” asked Will, feeling slightly nervous of entering the building, fearful of what might be in there.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere. What could go wrong?”
“Just saying. If nothing else, they ought to know there IS a building here. Whilst they can find the ship, they might not spot this place.”
“Good point. OK, I’ll give them a shout.” With that, Will changed the frequency of his suit radio to that used by the local police and told them about the building and the direction of it with respect to the ship.
“They have a cruiser on its way, which has five personnel on board and should be here within the hour. Right, let’s see who or what there is in there.” said Billy, turning to the door. A few seconds later, Will and Billy were inside.
“Odd, I would have expected an airlock” said Billy.
Whilst their suits were equipped with head-height lights, they did little to dispel their first impression that they had entered a very large space. Will looked around the door, to see if there was something that resembled a light switch. A few feet from it was a grey circular knob that seemed to be what he was looking for. As he turned it, a number of lights flickered on. Around the sides of the large space were a number of work benches and racks. At the far end was another large door, similar to the one they had passed through on the way in. What dominated the space, however, was a pair of large navy blue spaceships. “Wow, this place is HUGE” he exclaimed.
“I’d like to have a closer look at that ship” said Billy, pointing towards the nearest. “I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“No, neither have I. But then again, I hadn’t seen anything like your ship either until today. What I can say, though, is that this is not something that a hermit is going to use. They look like they can carry a few hundred people, at least” replied Will.
As they moved round to the side of the ship, Billy saw an image of a pale blue circle, with two planets enmeshed within it, with some large white lettering running around the outside, saying “PROMETHEUS” on the side. Along each side and on the nose were what looked like weapons, although neither had any ideas as to what they were, never having been this close to a military spaceship before.
Towards the rear of the ship was a ramp, at the top of which was a massive airlock that looked like it could accept up to fifty people at a time. As they approached the top of the ramp, they could see, next to the inner door, a sign above a large red button, which said “PREMU POR COKLO AIRLOCK” that they took to be the button for closing the outer door.
As the inner door opened, Will suggested that they try to find the cockpit or, judging from the size of the ship, the bridge. Fortunately, the ship’s systems seemed to be automatic and the lights were illuminated, so they didn’t need to use their suit lights.
The airlock seemed to have been cycling air, so Billy announced “I’ll just see if the air’s breathable in here. It will save our own supplies” then, checking the gauge on his left wrist “Looks good. We can take our helmets off. We’ll be able to see better as well.”