Sarah began a real campaign to make contact with someone on the ground. She was trying all the frequencies that made sense to her including those once used by NASA, by the Russians, the Europeans and even the Chinese. She sat at the radio console, running up and down the frequencies, making calls and listening for a response, or just listening for other messages so that she could break in. She ate there and we had a tough time convincing her to rest.
In the end, it only took about fifteen hours before she made her first contact with people in Cedar Rapids which had once been the home to Collins Radio Company and Rockwell International who had been into all sorts of communications. Back before the Second World War, while men were still experimenting with aircraft and trying to reach the poles in one way or another, Cedar Rapids teenager Arthur Collins with his homemade radio was able to do it when the experts had failed.
Collins Radio expanded until it was providing avionics to everyone and its equipment was considered among the best. One of the things that Collins had done was encourage amateur radio so the equipment there was the best. And Sarah was able to talk to them first.
I was standing near her when she succeeded. She seemed as if she didn’t hear the response, hesitated and then said, “Please say again.”
“This is Jerome March of Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Where are you?”
She turned and grinned broadly. She said, “This is Sarah Johnson and I’m on board the space station and I am so glad to hear your voice.”
“The space station?”
“Yes, I’m here with two others, Sheila Davis and Michael O’Neal. David Jennings has died and we lost Jason Kittredge several days ago.”
“The space station? You’re on the space station? You have survived?”
Sarah couldn’t keep the laughter out of her voice. “Yes, we have survived. And so have you.”
“Yes. Yes. Is there anything that we can do for you?” he asked.
Sarah said, “Yes. We are running short of food here and we need to return to Earth. Can you help us?”
I knew what the answer to that was going to be. Of course they couldn’t. There were no launch facilities in Iowa. There wasn’t even a large military presence, just National Guard and Reserve. There had been space research done at the universities and Collins had provided equipment for the space program. But there was nothing they could do for us. At least that was what I believed.
The signal broke up and then the voice was back strong. “We have talked to the Europeans and the Russians and some of their launch facilities have survived. I don’t know what they have available, you’ll have to give us some time.”
Sarah stood up, jumped up really and said, “We have four months. Maybe a little less. Can you help us?”
And then, in an answer that told us that the impact had not been as bad as we thought, that the destruction wasn’t as bad as we believed, that civilization had fared better than we hoped, he said, “Yes. I think we can.”