THE HOPE SLOPE

 

THE HOPE SLOPE

 

“This isn’t good.  I don’t like this,”  Mokey, my flight engineer, moaned.  He passed his hand across the vent of the afterburner.  “There’s nothing coming out.  Not even air.  There’s no power at all.  The engines never kicked over.”

        “So, what do we do now?”  I asked calmly. 

“We die,” he said. 

“But, Mokey, I want to go home.  The kids will be decorating the tree this weekend.”

Mokey shook his head glumly.  “Don’t you understand, Captain?  There’s a fracture in the ignition panel.  There’s no way to fire the fuel pellets.  We can’t boot the engines.  We’re doomed.”

“We’re not doomed.  There’s always a way,” I rebuked him.  “We’ve got twenty passengers and a crew of six.  We’re responsible for their lives.”

“We’re doomed,” he replied mournfully.

I stalked away from Mokey and went around to the front of the space bus. A few feet ahead was the Hope Slope, which leveled downward for almost five miles.  The slope had been named by the astronomer who had discovered this planet, and which she had named Gemini.

  The planet Gemini is only about the size of the six New England states.  It has an atmosphere comparable to Earth’s, and although it shares the same sun it has only one season.  It is always winter on Gemini, and there is snow on the ground all year round.  Even though the planet appears to have no life species of its own, it is habitable for Earthlings.

 Gemini’s habitability, and especially its several steep and lengthy slopes that are always blanketed with snow, was what motivated our twenty passengers to travel to this recently discovered planet.

 All of our passengers owned and operated ski resorts back on Earth, but warmer winters and the rising costs of making artificial snow was melting their profits, and the ski seasons were getting shorter and highly unpredictable.

Thus, they had all decided that here, on this perpetually cold planet, magnificent ski    resorts could be developed to accommodate ski buffs all year round.  Resorts that would be coveted as exotic vacation destinations.

 I was speculating about that ambitious enterprise as I stood in front of our crippled space bus and looked downward on the Hope Slope.  I visualized hundreds of excited, happy skiers zipping through the snow.  It was a much more pleasant vision than that of twenty-eight doomed Earthlings entombed under the snow to spend eternity on a foreign planet.

And then I suddenly had an inspiration.

I turned to rush back to Mokey, almost slamming in to him as he was approaching me.

        “How many snowmobiles did we load on board?”  I demanded.

        “Snowmobiles?”  he shrieked.  “What the hell does that matter now?”

        “How many?” I said fiercely.  “How many?”

        “Okay!  Okay!  There are four.  All of them two seaters.”

        “Good.  That’s eight people.  We’ll need eight of the strongest men or women to come outside to push the space bus over the slope.”

        Mokey gaped at me.  “Excuse me for saying so, Captain,” he said, “but have you lost your mind?”

 “Just listen,” I snarled.  “Here’s the plan.  The engine activator pedal just might function like a clutch in an old-times automobile.  That is, we may be able to use it to bypass the ignition mechanism.

“The first car I ever owned, back in the dark ages, had a standard transmission.  There was a clutch on the floor which you pushed in when you wanted to shift gears.  But there was also a way to use it to start up the car when the battery was too weak, or there was something wrong with the ignition.  What you did was get a couple of guys to make a running push on the car while the driver held down the clutch, and when it was rolling fast enough, the driver would let out the clutch, and bingo, the engine would kick over.  I’m thinking maybe the activator pedal could work the same way.”

Mokey shook his head vigorously.  “No.  No. No.  That could never happen.  You’re comparing technology that’s generations apart.  It would be taking too big a chance.”

 “What chance?  There is no other chance?   This is what we have to do.  So get those people and the snowmobiles out here right now.  And that’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.  And then what do we do?”

“We get back in the cockpit.  They push the space bus over the slope, the bus speeds down the slope, and when it’s moving fast enough I’ll let the activator pedal pop up, and hopefully the engines will kick in and roar to life.  The pushers will then follow us down the slope in the snowmobiles.  We load them and the snowmobiles back into the space bus, shift into launch mode, and head back to Earth.”

“It will never work, Captain.  The space bus is too big and too heavy.  Eight people pushing it can never get enough traction.” 

I bent down and scooped up a handful of snow, and held it out to him.  “Mokey, you ought to know that the snow on this planet is slicker than melted butter.  Haven’t you been dumped on your bumpers three times since we’ve been here?  Of course it will work. Now get your bumpers in gear, so we can all be home for Christmas."

 

The pushers, grunting and groaning, had to push the space bus more than ten feet to get to the tip of the slope, and when the bus did drop over the side and zoomed down the slope, I removed my foot from the activator pedal, it popped up immediately, and the engines roared to life.

        I blew out the breath I’d been holding, and looked at the rear-vision telescreen.  I saw pinpoints of deliriously flashing lights and  knew that our heroic pushers, ripping through the snow in the skimobiles, would also be leaning on the horns and wailing a staccato of joy.