11
Greenhouse
Shinji and Will slowly, almost gingerly opened the airlock door between the cubical docking unit and their newly inflated greenhouse. They peered into the long cylinder of transparent plastic.
“There’s no reason to stand here,” said Shinji, and he strode in. Will followed. They walked the length of the greenhouse in silence. Will stopped to touch the transparent plastic structure; it felt thick and stretched taut to the fingers. The plastic was so thick it distorted the outside a bit and made everything a look darker than it really was.
“How much light passes through?” Will asked.
“Seventy percent. Of course, a lot of the light that’s stopped is ultraviolet, and that’s necessary.”
“It makes the sky outside almost look red!”
“It absorbs some of the blue light coming in as well,” replied Shinji. He pointed to the silvered quarter circle covering the eastern side of the cylinder. “The silvering makes up for the absorption, though, by reflecting downward a lot of sunlight that would otherwise pass over the plants. In the morning the silvering covers the western side, of course.”
Will nodded. “I knew that. The cylinders on the moon make enough food for and recycle the wastes of two people, if I remember.”
“Ideally. It should do the same here, if we plant it right.” Shinji admired the structure and smiled. The cylinder was twenty meters long and eight wide, but the curved, semicircular cross-section of the floor had a width of ten meters. The axis was oriented north-south so that the sun swept across the cylinder instead of along it, with the habitat on the south side. The cylinder sloped downhill to the north.
“Any data about trace elements in the regolith?”
“I’ve been doing tests. So far, we haven’t found unusual concentrations of arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, selenium, or anything else that could poison us.”
“That’s good. I bet you’re happy to see this place set up.”
Shinji nodded. “Thrilled. I’m a biologist and a physician, not a geologist or mechanic. Work like this is why I live.”
“How long will it take you to set up?”
Shinji shrugged. “If it were just a matter of hauling in reg, we could be set up in two weeks. But the reg has to be desalted somewhat—that’s not an issue on the moon—and it has to be given some organic content and fertilizer. Twenty tonnes of sterile clay does not make a good agricultural soil. Each shuttle brought fifty kilos of living soil, and our plant cabinets can make about fifty kilos of waste plant matter per month. The chickens and rabbits convert most of it into manure. If we’re skillful, we can double the amount of living soil about every two months. We’ll have twenty tonnes of living soil about the time we have to leave.”
“But we’ll have two greenhouses.”
“Yes, we’ll need forty tonnes, but another two months will get Columbus 2 there. That’ll basically happen while the outpost is mothballed. We’ll plant some soil-enhancing crops while we’re away and the soil should be really good when Columbus 2 arrives. The soil really won’t be mature and rich for a few years; even with advanced techniques, it takes some time.” Shinji smiled. “Once we’ve got three of these things functioning, we’ll have good redundancy. Each one eliminates the need for about a tonne or a tonne and a half of supplies per year.”
“Once we’ve got Martian water, this place will be in good shape.”
“How’s that going? I could really use more water for the greenhouses.”
“I know; your allocation isn’t great. We’ve been drilling five days and we’re down almost fifty meters. The pore water isn’t quite as good as predicted, but it’s still about ten percent by volume and almost five percent by mass. When these holes are down two hundred meters, they’ll have about fifteen hundred tonnes of water within six or seven meters of them; over a few years we can heat all that rock up and drive off most of the water.”
“That’s good news, then. We should have plenty of water.”
“Yes, and if we need more, we’ll just drill another pair of holes nearby. At the rate things are going, Columbus 2 won’t have to haul any hydrogen at all and only half of its food!”
“That’s right. That means we can expand the capacity of the transportation system, too. And Mars will have more than six inhabitants.”
“Of course, now the question I’d like to consider is how to make the six of us get along better.”
“Hum.” Shinji paused. “I think we get along well enough for this mission, and I am not sure we need to build better relations. If you want my suggestion, I think Ethel should stop bothering Laura about her relationship with Sergei. It’s not something she can change.”
“She knows that, I think.”
“Good. Leave it to mission control.”
“I gathered they’re ignoring it, though?”
Shinji shook his head. “I don’t know why you think that. But frankly, I think they should ignore it. If you’ve got six or eight people on the moon for four months, they should be professionals, act like a team, and get the work done they’ve been sent to the moon to do. Romance can interfere in that. Besides, most of us are going home to spouses and families. And NASA can’t afford Shackleton Station to get an unsavory reputation. But Mars is an assignment lasting almost thirty months. That’s a very different situation.”
“Yes, but it also means this place is more intense and more of a life and death situation. We can’t afford favorites or jilted lovers.”
“Yes, we’re pretty small for that situation.” Shinji shrugged. “Let’s hope nothing happens.”
“Yes, let’s hope.” Will was disappointed by Shinji’s ostrich-like approach to the matter. “What movie would you like us to see tomorrow night?”
“Movie? We’re seeing a movie?”
“That’s the idea. I’m cooking a dinner for 7 p.m., then we’ll watch a movie. I’m downloading it tonight when we’re asleep.”
“I see. You know what I haven’t seen for years?”
“What?”
“Gone with the Wind. I remember when I first came to the United States I was visiting some fellow students and we watched it together. I was so impressed by it!”
“Okay. That’s a great film; I’ll see whether I can get it. It’s a good suggestion.”
-------------------------------
The next sol was Satursol and they all worked the afternoon. While David and Ethel set up a second solar power unit, Will and Shinji prepared steak, vegetables, and pasta, and Laura and Sergei made a geological excursion to a catastrophic flood deposit on the route to the Olympus for geologists in Moscow and Tokyo—it was the wee hours of the morning in Houston—and visited the shuttle to check out a sensor. Will watched on two tv monitors while he cooked and occasionally offered clarifying questions or interpretations to them, but otherwise their geology was excellent.
Everyone was back inside at sunset; most took a quick shower to clean up, then sat for dinner. It was another grand success, capped again by a bottle of wine—everyone wondered how many Sergei had—then the movie. They all sat together to watch Gone with the Wind, which Sergei and David had never seen before.
Several times, Laura seemed to get agitated. She filled her glass with wine each time. She hurried to the bathroom as Atlanta began to burn, then sat moodily through the rest of the film. Ethel began to watch Laura as much as the movie as the latter drew to an end.
“That movie is just as good as I had heard it was,” said David with a smile as the credits began to roll. He stood up to stretch.
Laura glared at him. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
David was startled. “What?” He sounded defensive; ever since he had seen Laura naked, their relationship had been uneasy.
“Well, I may be from Atlanta, but I’m not Scarlett O’Hara!” Laura rose and stormed out of the room.
David looked angry; Will was shocked; Sergei confused. “Why would you do such a thing?” asked Sergei.
“We didn’t!” exclaimed Will. He raised his voice; he was now angry. “This never occurred to me.”
“Nor me,” added Shinji. “I suggested the movie because the first time I came to the U.S., I saw the movie with a bunch of fellow Stanford students, and we really had a good time together.”
“It wasn’t my idea at all!” added David, angry.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” said Sergei. He followed after her.
Ethel looked at Will and David, then Shinji. “I’m sorry, but this confusion never occurred to me, either. One could see Laura as Scarlet and Sergei as Rhett Butler.”
“Only a little! And what does that make me? Ashley?” Will was indignant.
“I suppose I’d be Mamie, then,” growled David. “I hope she plans to apologize.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” said Shinji.
“I guess I won’t.”
Will looked at Ethel, who looked back at him.