Chapter 11. New members.

The entire crew was on the command deck when the ship entered orbit around Mars. It didn't take long to locate the complex that had been created to sustain life on the inhospitable planet.

Charles turned to Hilary. "See if you can establish a communication link."

"I've been trying, but I'm not getting anything."

"Maybe their communication system is broken," Carl said.

"I guess we have no other option but to go down and check it out. Take Vicky and go down and see if you can make contact."

Carl stood up and gave him a mock salute. "Will do."

Vicky followed him to the elevator. When they were up at the hanger deck, she turned to him. "I guess he included me in case they have a medical problem."

"Or it's his way of paying you back for the invasive medical procedure."

"I don't see why that's the case," she reacted with a frown.

"Oh, come on now!" he retorted with a teasing grin. "You didn't have to check us for prostrate problems. We're too young for that."

"I was just following the medical protocol."

"Ha!" he blurted with a teasing expression. "I'll bet you didn't do that sort of thing when you examined the women."

"On the contrary," she argued, frowning. "I used a speculum to examine their privates, and I can guarantee you that they didn't care one bit for that."

Carl blew out a disgusted breath. "Okay, I take it back."

She replied with a satisfied grin, satisfied that she had gotten away with an amusing stunt and an overblown lie.

They exited the elevator and boarded a shuttle. After powering it up and waiting until the hanger deck was at zero pressure and the outer hatch opened, Carl moved the shuttle out of the hanger and began the trip to Mar's surface.

"I don't see any activity at that complex," Vicky said after the shuttle had penetrated Mar's thin atmosphere. "Maybe they've succumbed to whatever happened to us."

"We'll soon find out," Carl replied as he maneuvered the shuttle into a landing as near to the complex as was safe.

Once on the ground, Carl and Vicky exited the shuttle wearing suits and helmets that provided air and environmental protection and walked to the main module of the complex. They entered the chamber that separated the module from the harsh cold, low pressured Mars atmosphere. Once inside, they were able to pressurize the entrance chamber and enter the module itself.

At first, the silence was disturbing. Nothing suggested that there were any survivors, but as they penetrated further into the main room replete with instruments and equipment, they located three survivors. Two females and a male looked up at them from cots with weary eyes.

The male sat up. "How . . . how did you get here?"

"We came in our ship," Carl replied. "Are you the only survivors?"

"Yes, but we're not in good condition. We've had no food and very little water for several days. Our power systems have failed. We're just barely able to produce enough oxygen."

"If your able to walk, we can get you into our shuttle by moving it right up to the entrance." Carl turned to Vicky. "You see what you can do to get them ready. I'll go move the shuttle up to the entrance."

She nodded her acceptance and then got to work injecting the survivors with a revival fluid especially created for this situation. It would provide them with enough energy to get into the shuttle and return to the ship.

Carl moved the shuttle as close as he could to the entrance to the main module. He opened the shuttle's hatch and then entered the module to help Vicky get the survivors into the shuttle and strapped in seats.

Once Carl had the shuttle up out of Mars atmosphere, he could relax.

"I'm Carl Stenson, and this is Vicky Nelson," he told them.

"I'm Robert Taylor," the male said. He pointed to the two women. "That's Janice Thomas and Jill Fentor."

Carl smiled. "Welcome to the 'Lost in Space' crew."

"Are you a rescue mission?" Robert asked, squinting at him.

"Nope. We're members of a crew that went to Proxima B. We also have members from a crew that explored Enceladus." He paused before asking the big question. "Are you survivors of a mission to Mars?"

The answer was slow in coming. "Yes."

"Did you perchance experience a blackout event?"

"Yes. Everything went dark and we couldn't see anything for at least an hour or so."

Carl exchanged glances with Vicky before asking the next question. "Are you survivors of a larger group?"

"Yes. They went out before the blackout and never returned. We couldn't contact them, and we tried to report it to Space Command, but have not been able to get a response."

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but we are what's left of larger crews, and Earth is now a dead planet devoid of all life."

"What?" Robert reacted, taking short breaths as if he were going to cry. "What happened?"

"That's what we're trying to determine, but so far we're clueless."

"If Earth is uninhabitable, how are we going to survive?" Janice asked, her grimace reflecting her condition and the abysmal news she has just heard.

"Oh, that's not a problem. Our ship can provide for us indefinitely."

Silence prevailed for several minutes before Robert reacted to his statement. "I'm not familiar with a mission to Proxima B. That's a planet in the Centauri system four light years from Earth. How did you get there?"

"Our ship can accelerate to near light speed. We arrived there after five years in hibernation modules, but half of our crew didn't make it. We experienced the blackout event just as we were on the beginning of the return voyage, and it placed us in the Kuiper belt. We have been unsuccessful in trying to come up with an explanation for what happened. We rescued the survivors of the Enceladus mission, and they also lost crew members because of the blackout."

"How many survivors are there?" Robert asked.

"Three males, six females. We males are engineers. The women are scientists."

Robert smiled briefly. "It looks like I'll fit in. I'm an engineer."

Carl smiled, but he was flabbergasted that all the males so far are engineers.

"We're both astrophysicists," Jill said.

"That's probably not an accident," Vicky said. "We're also all young, at least relatively so."

"Are you suggesting that our survival is consequential?" Jill asked.

"Not really. One of our theories about what happened is that we're in the future, but we really don't have any evidence to prove it. Another theory is that we're in a different universe, but that would assume that this different universe has a solar system that is exactly like ours."

She didn't get a response from her discourse.

Carl completed the process of getting the shuttle into the hanger. At this point, he was happy that he had rescued more victims of the infamous blackout event, but he realized that this latest rescue only added to the already complicated situation.