Tom’s mind began to swim, as this new revelation sank in. ‘So, that’s why Morgan was so gung ho about us aborting the mission and returning to Earth. He must have been behind this plot from the start, or at the least, approached very early on. Ty’s message referred to murder. Had Morgan been party to a plot to kill Ty and Claire, and possibly Penny?’ Tom considered the notion, horrified. And the more he thought about it, the worse he felt. He could sense his face reddening and his heart thudding harder.
“How’s our time?” he asked of Carl, in a raspy voice.
“We have twelve minutes until we can fire the retros for atmospheric entry,” Carl replied, calmly.
“Then, let’s get ready to land. Brandon, as soon as we take delivery of that message and I send an acknowledgement, I’ll give you a cut off signal. Then I want you to kill the microphone and telemetry. We’ll keep the comm. open so we can receive, but activate those firewall rules you wrote to block all outgoing traffic. Carl, start reeling in the tether now. That way, when we fire the explosive bolts on it, it might appear as a malfunction. To repeat, when I give you the signal, then I want you to cut mic, telemetry, blow the tether and the solar panels, all at once. We’re gonna make it look like Bolo One blew up and hopefully, we’ll be down into the atmosphere before they can get a satellite view of us.”
“That should work,” Brandon remarked as he checked the radar screen for any satellites in their area. “And the good news is, we’ll be on the ground a couple of hours before they realize we even left orbit. No blips on the screen,” he added for good measure.