Mission Futura E-Book

Angie Schneider

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 162

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The year is 2077. Lukka, twelve years old, lives with her parents on Mars. Born on the Red Planet, she only knows her habitat and the nearby spaceport. Together with Jen and Loran, the only other teenagers who were born on Mars like her, she forms an inseparable unit. But when two new inhabitants arrive, their previously quiet life changes dramatically. Lukka discovers that her world is much larger and more mysterious than she ever imagined. Together with her friends, she sets out to solve the riddles and secrets surrounding her community. Suddenly, the children find themselves on an adventure that takes them to the limits of their imagination and beyond.

Leseprobe

Remark

Mission Futura

(This is the name of the Mars mission in 2051, that brought today's settlers

of Habitat 2 to Mars)

On Behalf of the IMA

(International Mars Authority)

In the year 2077

The journey to the red planet

For months, the spaceship has been flying calmly and without even the slightest deviation towards its destination: a shining point where the horizon should be. But there is no horizon in space. There is no up and no down and time doesn't seem to exist either. It is difficult to tell whether it is day or night, the sun is non-stop shining through the darkness of the galaxy. Only where it hits a celestial body does it conjure up day on one side and night on the other.

In addition to the four-man crew, there are six other people on board the spaceship: four technicians and programmers to maintain the robots and machines in the industry area, as well as a young couple, a pilot and a biologist.

They will be on their way for another ten Earth days before they finally reach their destination: their new home, the red planet Mars.

The International Mars Authority project began in 2034, when a crew of robots landed on Mars and set up the Erebus H1 space station. A small, rock-protected valley in the Erebus Montes ,in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, was chosen for this purpose. There is frozen water in the ground, which is basic for the later settlement. There were repeated breakdowns and setbacks and the preparations took longer than planned.

It was not until six years later that the first seven astronauts flew to the Red Planet and remained there for almost two years. The spaceport around H1 was expanded and Habitat 2 was built two kilometers away, to become the main settlement in the Erebus Montes. Two years later, six more people came to Mars and two returned to Earth.They began mining the mineral resources that were to be brought back to Earth. About a hundred kilometers away from the spaceport, the industrial area Erebus H3 was under construction.

In 2045, the first settlers arrived on the planet. They had chosen Mars as their new home and would never return to Earth. They expanded and embellished Habitat 2 so that they could live there comfortably.

At the same time, a rich visionary began to build a city on the other side of the planet. An insanely huge project that would soon accommodate thousands of settlers.

However, the political unrests on Earth continued to worsen and terrorist attacks put an end to the large-scale project for a long time.

In 2051, the last rockets of the International Mars Authority were launched. On board were fifteen very young scientists who wanted to explore Mars and saw the Red Planet as their new home.

Another world war was raging on Earth and contact with the home planet was lost. The settlers were without news for almost a year.

They had to manage on their own. Earth's rocket bases had been destroyed and it was almost ten years before another Earth cargo ship landed on Mars.

During this difficult time, the settlers in Habitat 2 had grown together into a solid community with its own council and its own rules, and they no longer wanted to be ordered around by the humans on Earth.

This inevitably led to conflicts with the International Mars Authority.

Erebus Montes

Everyday life in Habitat 2

Lukka, Jen and Loran take off their VR goggles and switch off their learning programs. Enough school for today !

"I don't like higher math," Lukka moans, making a tortured grimace. "Why do we need that? There are calculators we can use!"

Jen just laughs. "It was easy. I love math."

He pulls the girl up from her chair and tickles her tummy to cheer her up.

"Come to the training room for a round of boxing!"

"Oh, no!" Lukka moans. She would rather have her peace and quiet now.

Jen, Lukka and Loran are Martian children. They were born on the red planet.

Linda, who is in charge of the children's education, has just come out of the control room.

"Put your things away before you go to the gym. And don't take too long, you've got astronaut training later."

Jen quickly puts everything away. "Are you coming?"

Loran nods enthusiastically, but Lukka shakes her head.

"I don't feel like it and I'm hungry. I'd better get something to eat and get some rest."

"Whatever you want," Jen answers with a shrug and leaves the common room with Loran.

Lukka now strolls through the hall to the living area, puts her hand on a bright green panel on the wall and the door to the apartment slides aside. Her mother is not there.

She steps up to the dispenser and presses her code. The machine only dispenses the food that she is allowed to eat now, unless the thing is broken.

"You're entitled to a portion of muesli and a portion of snack balls today," says the voice from the machine.

"Muesli is fine," Lukka replies and the flap opens immediately afterwards.

"The food is ready! Enjoy your meal!"

"Thank you, dear machine," Lukka laughs, thinking of Marty, who prepares everything in the kitchen, feeds the machines and programs them.

Then the young girl makes her way to a secret place she has recently discovered.

In the sports room, the two boys are fighting on the trampoline. Jen is a bit older and much bigger than eleven-year-old Loran, but that one wriggles around faster and Jen just can't get hold of him.

"How do you do it?" Jen asks, gasping for breath. "You always know where I'm going to attack. Can you read my mind?"

"I only need to look at you. Your expressive looks always give you away!" says the little one, laughing.

Jen frees himself from the rubber bands in which they are hanging and climbs off the trampoline.

"I can't take any more," he gasps. "And we're supposed to go over to Linda's too."

Lukka has closed her eyes and is breathing in deeply. The air is exceptionally humid and smells strange, like plants and vegetables. Then she looks around. Long fluorescent tubes bathe the entire greenhouse in a pink light. Only at the far end of the tunnel-like room is there a window from which you can see out.

Only a few people actually have access here, but about two weeks ago someone must have forgotten to close a door and it has remained open, unnoticed ever since.

Lukka is sitting in her new favorite secret spot, in the far corner of the greenhouse, where thick perennials and hanging tomatoes provide a good hiding place. She looks out through the multi-layered plastic window at the stony, barren landscape of her home planet Mars.

The girl is about twelve years old and lives in Habitat 2 with her parents . The habitat also known as Erebus H2, is a settlement on the planet Mars, the fourth planet in the solar system at the edge of the Milky Way.

Dreamily she lets her gaze drift over the red, barren rocks. A dust storm is brewing. She recognizes it by the reddish-brown dust clouds blowing gently over the rocks and the huge wave of dust piling up on the horizon.

Dust storms are not uncommon and can last for a few days, sometimes even months. The air on Mars is very thin and there is little wind, but the dust is very fine and settles everywhere. She won't be able to see very far for days.

Mars is a very hostile planet, very cold, irradiated and with a very thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. These conditions are absolutely deadly for living beings such as humans.

And yet this is the world into which Lukka was born.

At the window

Her young life takes place exclusively inside this station. Here she lives in a small community of Martian settlers with her parents and two other young people who, like her, were born on Mars. There are no other children.

Sometimes the curious girl asks herself a few questions. Why isn't this small community getting bigger and why are Loran, Jen and herself the only children there? But the adults can't or won't really answer her questions. They are always cleverly evasive or give strange and illogical explanations.

Outside the window, she sees footprints on the sandy ground. "They must be Linda's," she thinks. The woman, her mother's age, is in charge of the control room and the nearby outdoor area of the station. She also takes care of the children's training to become astronauts. And now they are finally being prepared for their first walk outside.

The girl waits impatiently for the day when she can leave the station as an astronaut and finally set foot on the planet herself.

She lets her gaze glide over the rocky horizon for a while longer. In the distance, the red dust is already rising higher, soon it will be dark. The rays of light from the distant sun are too weak to penetrate the fine, red sand.

She looks around because she doesn't want to get caught. Nothing is moving. Only the small robots clatter through the long rows of the vegetable plantation. She slowly stands up and glides unnoticed along the lettuce beds, ducks under the hanging strawberry plants and looks around again. No one is there. She scurries behind the blueberry bushes, then she walks between the low fruit trellises, up to the gate and enters the community garden inconspicuously.

She no longer needs to hide here, because this is the place where the residents can go for a walk, breathe fresh air, lie on the sunbathing lawn and listen to the water splashing at the fountain.

Most of the residents are older adults who came from Earth 26 years ago and seek a little closeness to their home planet here in the garden every day.

Lukka sees her mother, hesitates for a moment and decides to sit next to her for a moment.

"Were you at the window again?" her mother asks gently. Her eyes are always so sad.

Lukka doesn't answer, but smiles sheepishly. Her hand gently touches the flowers in the bed next to her. The fountain gurgles quietly in the middle of the garden and provides some humidity. A beautiful place for her, who has never seen anything else.

But her mother is always telling her about the earth, where flowers grow wild, water flows in streams and rivers and tall trees reach for the sky. Where the rain, the sun and the wind touch the skin.

Lukka has often seen pictures of the Earth, but she can't really imagine it. She has never been there herself. Since she was born, the girl has only known the Habitat 2 station, the view of the red, rocky desert around her and the distant Blue Planet, which shines as a very bright star in the night sky.

Her mother is homesick again and Lukka doesn't know what she could say to cheer her up a little.

"I have astronaut training now," she whispers and presses a kiss to her mother's cheek.

Then she gets up and leaves the garden without a care in the world, skipping through the archway to the hall, then through the second tube on the right to the igloos. That's what they call the small living areas where the bedrooms are located.

Lukka's father rarely comes home. He works about a hundred kilometers further north in Erebus Industry H3, another station where water and mineral resources are extracted from deeper layers of soil. He is often away for weeks at a time.

Lukka and the other children are now old enough for the second learning level. They started space training a few weeks ago, which means that they will soon be allowed to leave the station in a protective suit.

She places her hand on the sensor in the wall and the door to her living area slides aside with a whirring sound.

Hungry, she goes back to the dispenser. She presses a few keys and hums this Far Eastern melody that she must have picked up in the garden.

"Food's ready!" the friendly voice sounds again from the vending machine. Lukka takes the container, sniffs her food, pulls out one of the green balls and pops it into her mouth. At the same time, she changes her clothes. She swaps her light, dark green trousers and sweater for a tight-fitting turquoise combi suit.

Then she walks back to the hall and almost falls over one of the small cleaning robots that are constantly mopping the floor. Then she stops briefly in front of a closed door. She puts her hand on the glowing green panel in the wall again and the door opens.

The room behind it is bright, machines are humming and little lights are shining everywhere. It is the control room and behind it is the gateway to hell, as the exit is called here.

There is a connecting door to the common room on the right-hand side. It is usually open.

Spacesuits of various sizes hang on the wall straight ahead. Behind them, a staircase leads up to the dome. From there, you can see as far as the spaceport, two kilometers away.

"There you are. How are you?" asks a friendly voice.

It's Linda, a slim but by Martian standards well-trained woman, about the same age as her mother and who has been on the station for just as long.

Linda picks out Lukka's suit and helps her get dressed.

"You're late," she says, "the two boys are already inside."

By 'inside' she means the space in between, not inside and not outside, which is also used as a training room for the budding astronauts.

"Come on, I'll help you get dressed."

First the instruments are checked, just like a real exit. The massive package on her back contains oxygen and equipment she needs to survive outside. The temperature is regulated in the suit, because it is bitterly cold on Mars. She also needs special protection against the cosmic rays. Pressure in the suit is necessary, because on Mars there is not even one percent of the air pressure on Earth. Without the spacesuit, she would die immediately outside.

Lukka can barely move. She slowly walks to the exit at the other end of the room. The sliding door opens and she steps into the darkened training room. The floor here is sandy and uneven and she struggles to keep her balance, so as not to tip over.

The two boys are already in the room. There's Jen, just a few weeks older than herself. He is clumsily trying to climb a small rock. With the huge tank on his back, he looks like a snail on legs.

Slowly, she puts one foot in front of the other. There are stones on the ground before her. She goes for the safer option and starts walking around the obstacles.

"Climb over it," says the soothing voice in the helmet. "Sometimes you have no choice out there, then you have to step over it."

Lukka hesitates, then lifts her left foot and begins to stagger.

"I can't!" she whispers anxiously. She doesn't want to stumble or lose her balance.

"You want to go outside at some point, don't you?" Linda says. "Then you'll have to make a bit of an effort now. And if you fall down, you'll just get up again."

At that moment, Jen rolls off the rock. It's not particularly high, but he's now lying on his oversized backpack and rowing with his arms.

Linda helps him to his feet and calls the giggling girl to the spot.

"If that happens outside, it can be life-threatening. Look at the tank. Is it intact? Are there any cracks in the suit?"

Everything seems to be in order.

Loran, the youngest of them, also wobbles unsteadily out from behind the small rock and joins them.

After Linda's safety instructions, the three space students continue. They have to climb over stones several times and pick up objects without losing their balance. Linda has prepared a real obstacle run for them.

Lukka has to pack rock samples into a box and take it to the spaceship. It sounds easy, but the stones keep slipping out of her hands and she ends up falling backwards over the box.

It looks so funny and the boys are doubled over with laughter.

They slowly learn how to move safely in the heavy suits and perform small tasks skillfully. The wi'll soon get the hang of it.

Linda finally calls them back to the control room to take off their suits and hang them up to be cleaned. She also wants to talk to her students about what they have just learned.

They do this sitting in the upper dome, with a view over the beautiful Martian landscape. The day is getting old and the blue sunset is clouded by the approaching storm. Large clouds of dust engulf the mountains and rocks around them. Soon it will reach the station.

Lukka's mother Karen is sitting in her workroom. She is a psychologist and is responsible for the mental well-being of the crew. She feels the melancholy rising again and can't helpherself. She misses the Earth so much, it hurts. Again and again, the pictures of her happy childhood come unbidden into her head. She tries to talk about it with others and distract herself with positive thoughts, but she's longing for the nature of her home planet, the walks in the woods with her dog or sitting outside by the fire with friends, swimming in the sea, lying in the sun. She misses the cool rain and the warm sunshine on her skin. And she misses her family and former friends.

Sighing, she gets up, it's time for dinner.

They gather for the meals twice a day, as a remedy against loneliness, says Karen.

The residents of Habitat 2 have become one big family. They help each other and try to solve problems together.

The communal room, where meals are also served, is, alongside the garden, the ward's largest common area. This is also where people play games, watch TV and sometimes even dance in the evenings.

Lukka slumps down on the chair and looks hungrily at the containers of food.

Today there is a piece of pâté, a protein-rich mass made from meat cells or mushrooms that come from a strictly controlled cultivation somewhere in a greenhouse. Lukka has never been in the laboratory, the door is always locked and only a few people are allowed in.

Every day we have fresh cooked vegetables, today it's zucchinis.

Lukka eats hastily, she is very hungry.

Leo looks at her questioningly. "Are you getting enough to eat? You've growing up and you move around a lot. Should I increase the amount of your daily food?"

Leo is one of the two doctors on Erebus Montes. He carries out regular tests on the residents, checks the food and treats minor wounds.

There are no pathogens on Mars like on Earth, nobody has the flu or other infectious diseases, but some die of cancer due to the high radiationexposure. And if someone has an accident outside, Leo usually can't help either. They die very quickly or are taken to Dr. Tann on the space station.

Lukka smiles at him. "Oh yes, please. Breakfast is definitely not enough and the afternoon snack could be more. I'm almost starving."