Some of you may know that I've been writing a sci-fi series. I have nine book outlined and some excripts from the first book can be found at:
The Birth of the Future
Well, inspiration is a strange and confusing thing. I try to write in the first book and all I can think about is the second book. So I figured I should write it down while it was still in my head and here is an excript from the second book. The working Title is "The Future Reaches Out."
While the protaganist of the first book is Gary Moss, Gary Moss has passed on at the onset of the second book. So the protaganist in this book is his son, John Moss. An ambassador of the United Worlds of Sol, a nation made up of cities on the moon, Mars, Ganymede, and Titan.
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“I said you needed to take a break from your work.” Larissa argued, “You need to take a vacation.”
“That is what I am doing, Lara.” John replied.
“Making a topographical survey of the surface of Pluto for planning of a future colony is not my idea of a vacation.” Larissa shot back.
“It is to me. I get to take a break from talking to all those diplomats on Earth and at the same time, help to further my father’s dream. Besides, the 21-hour trip will give me more than enough time to relax.”
“Why can’t you just go to Titian city and relax beneath the rings of Saturn, like most people?”
“Because, I’m not like most people, Lara. You of all people should know that.” John looked into Larissa’s eyes, “I want to do this. Now relax, I’ll be fine. Just make sure Michael does well in his classes and I’ll be back in a few days.”
Larissa let out a sigh. She knew John wasn’t going to change his mind. She returned his gaze before speaking, “Ti sumasshedshiy. You know that, right.”
John smiled back at his wife. He loved her use of Russian. “Of course I’m crazy. We all have to be a little crazy in order to keep our sanity.”
Larissa smiled, “I’ll be expecting you back. U tebya lyublyu.”
“U tebya tozhe lyublyu.”
I love you, as the words repeated themselves in his mind, John brought his arms around Larissa and kissed her goodbye.
After breaking from the kiss, John picked up his suitcases and stepped into the airlock. The door closed behind him and almost immediately afterwards, the bay door opened up. In the middle of the landing bay sat a thirty-meter Long-Range Craft, with crews buzzing around it making sure the final checks were completed before liftoff.
John approached the starboard side of the spacecraft and opened up the access hatch on that side. He quickly stepped inside and dropped off his luggage, then stepped back out and approached the crew manager.
“How’s everything checking out?”
“She’s doing great Ambassador. We just finished the final ground checklist and the LRC-341 has a go. All you need to do is run through pilot preflight checklist and get the final launch approval from control.”
“That’s great. Start clearing your guys out of here so we can depressurize the bay.”
As John began walking back to the spacecraft, an alarm buzzed and was immediately followed by a computerized voice that boomed through the bay, “Depressurizing bay in T-minus five minutes.”
The crew manager’s voice followed the computer’s, “Alright everyone. You heard the warning. Evacuate the bay!”
As John stepped back into the spacecraft, the ground crews were all scurrying towards the airlocks. Once John had closed and locked the hatch to the spacecraft, he made his way to the flight deck and powered up the control panel. While waiting for the bay to depressurize, he worked through the preflight checklist, powering up systems along the way.
After a few minutes, he checked the pressure outside the spacecraft. The instrument read zero. John tapped on the communications panel to activate it and began broadcasting. “This is John Moss, pilot of the LRC-341 to control. LRC-341 to control. Come in Control.”
A face appeared on a monitor to the side, “This is control, we read you.”
“LRC-341 requesting clearance for departure. Bay pressure is zero.” John replied.
“LRC-341, we read your bay pressure and you have clearance to depart. Opening bay doors. Standby to activate your engines on our mark.”
“Roger that control, standing by.”
Light from the sun flooded the bay as the massive doors overhead opened up. Once the doors stopped moving, the floor of the bay began moving up towards the surface of the moon.
Moments later John was staring out at the black lunar sky. “Control to LRC-341, activate your antigrav system now.”
John’s hands flew across the control panel and a low humming sound could be heard in the floor. As the humming noise reached a constant tone, the spacecraft began lifting off the ground and levitated about a meter above the ground.
“LRC-341 to control, antigrav system is operational. Request permission to fire the engines.”
“Roger that LRC-341, you have permission to start your engines. Once they’re activated, proceed to runway zero nine and await further instructions.”
John initiated the antimatter reaction that started the engines. He sat there for a minute waiting for the engines to heat up, and then slowly taxied his spacecraft out to the runway he was instructed to and brought the craft to a halt.
“LRC-341 to control. Standing by at runway zero nine.”
“Control to LRC-341, the skies are clear, you are number one. You have a go for liftoff. Godspeed John.”
John brought the engine controls to maximum and closed the forward engine valves sending the exhaust out the rear of the engines. The spacecraft quickly began accelerating down the runway and began rotating toward the black lunar sky. As the rotation completed, the spacecraft had no trouble with the lunar gravity as it shot out toward space.
After about ten minutes of climbing, John called up the navigational computer and found Pluto’s position relative to Luna. A few minutes later the computer calculated a course to Pluto and John fed it to the autopilot and brought his speed up to one-fourth light speed before making his way to the crew deck where he opened the food storage unit, pulled out a tray and slid it into the microwave.
As the microwave was cooking his dinner, he pulled out some topographical maps of Pluto and began looking over them.
“Bo-bo-beep.” The computer chimed.
John recognized the chime and put down his book, “At last.” He muttered to himself. John got up from the bed in the back of the crew compartment and on his way to the flight deck, he grabbed a couple of topographical maps. At the flight deck, he threw them down into the empty co-pilot’s seat and ran his hands over the control panel as he disabled the autopilot.
Looking out the window in front of him, John could barely make out the dark mass of Pluto against the black background of space. Realizing that the sun was too distant to shed any significant light on Pluto, John looked down at the instruments to determine his distance from the planet.
As the spacecraft approached the planet, John began making course and speed corrections in order to put the craft into a low orbit. Once the spacecraft was beginning to establish its orbital trajectory, it slowly made its way around to the far side of the planet.
John grabbed one of the maps in the seat next to him and began entering coordinates into the sensor controls. He glanced up for a moment and then looked back at the map before he got the feeling that something out of the ordinary had just happened and he looked back out the window, dropping his jaw and his map.
Sitting out in space, was a large metallic object with lights. John stared at it for some time before realizing that it was a spaceship. Quickly he focused his craft’s sensors on the ship and began scanning it. As he was waiting for the results from the scan, he noticed the “incoming message” light blinking. John reached over to the comm. panel on his left and touched the light.
Instantly, on his screen, a face appeared. The face was similar to that of a human, but with a noticeable ridge above its eyes where eyebrows should be. There were also several smaller ridges on its forehead. The smaller ridges curved downward at the center of the forehead and created a valley down the middle of the forehead, ending just above the bridge of the nose. The primary ridge over the eyes continued around the side of the head and disappeared into hair as it went above the ears.
“Hello,” The face said. “I am Ambassador Shyaln’tal of the Tellen Confederation. We have waited a long time for this moment.”
John was in a dream state. His mind just couldn’t wrap around what was happening. He tried to say something in response, but his mouth just didn’t seem to respond.
After a couple of seconds, John managed to mouth a few words, “Y-y-y-you can speak English?”
“Yes, we have studied your people for a long time. As I said, we have been waiting for this moment. In fact we didn’t think that this would happen so soon, we were very surprised when your craft came around the planet.”
John was still having trouble comprehending what was happening, but he was beginning to find it easier to speak, “Well, I didn’t expect to see anyone else orbiting this planet.” His diplomacy was beginning to kick in, “Forgive me for not introducing myself, I’m Ambassador Moss of the United Worlds of Sol.”
“Pleased to meet you Ambassador Moss.” Shyaln’tal smiled, “I find it interesting that an ambassador has traveled all the way out here by himself.”
“I’m on vacation.” John’s mind finally caught up with the situation and began to overwhelm him. “Excuse me,” he said.
John felt light headed as his vision began to go black and the last thing he remembered was a loud thump as his body hit the floor.