12
Escarpment
For the next few weeks, everyone stuck to professional conversations. The Great Room became much quieter at lunch and supper, when Laura and Sergei retreated to her room or his, leaving the other four to socialize. Breakfasts still involved all six of them, but the conversation remained focused on the work to do that day. Laura set up a rotating schedule whereby all six of them were paired off in succession with each other on jobs they were able to do; she put it on the outpost’s website and breakfasts were time to review it quickly.
As mission physician, the work of repairing the relations fell to Shinji. He held short conversations with Laura, Sergei, and David about the psychological bases of conflict and listened carefully when everyone responded to him passionately. He filed reports with mission control and dropped the matter. He was a zero-gravity medicine specialist first and a horticulturalist second; psychiatry had never been one of his fields, and it ill-suited his personality.
In spite of the difficulties, work on the outpost proceeded well. The habitat was finished by the end of March, one month after the landing. In addition to the great room, kitchen, bridge, bathroom, and bedrooms, the geology and biology labs and the sick bay were completely set up, all pipes and wires were put in place, and the entire habitat was buried under a meter of sand.
Work on the greenhouse progressed. Regolith was sifted into a series of size fractions, the sand and dust sizes were brought inside and poured into long plastic troughs, and the future soil soaked with water to release peroxides and salts. Because the greenhouse had been inflated on a slope, water ran to a low spot, where it could be recovered and desalinated for reuse. Fans were installed and light and temperature levels were carefully monitored to make sure the greenhouse was working properly. As expected, temperatures were too low, so heat was added from the solar power unit via a seventy-meter long plastic air tube. It took four days just to dig the ditch in the rocky ground and bury the tube carefully to insulate it.
Outside, a second solar power unit was set up, giving the outpost enough electricity to meet its needs even if one unit failed. The two drills both reached the depth of 100 meters and the cabling was transferred from hole one to hole two so that it could continue down to two hundred meters; meanwhile, hole 1 became the site of an experiment with heated Martian air. The solar power unit’s 150 kilowatts of heat output was sent to the bottom of the hole in a plastic tube—they had a lot of tubing with them—and the hot air then flowed back up the hole, heating the rock and picking up water evaporating from the walls. At the surface it was cooled and the water condensed out. In the first week of operation they obtained a tonne of precious water, which was essential for the greenhouse experiment to proceed.
The team also finished unloading the three cargo landers, each of which had transported 12.5 tonnes of supplies to Aurorae Chaos. One lander just brought the 11.5-tonne habitat and a one-tonne solar power unit; another, a four-tonne greenhouse, a 3.5 tonne ranger, a 2.2 tonne pressure suit donning facility with suit dustoff capacity, and 2.8 tonnes of miscellaneous items; the third had a four-tonne portahab, two one-tonne docking units for the outpost with connecting tunnels, a three-tonne chemical synthesis unit, and 3.5 tonnes of smaller items. Each lander also carried a small rover with remotely controlled manipulator arms. The landers were completely unloaded, though their panels were left in place, since cables already carried the power to where it was needed.
The three shuttles had each transported six tonnes of cargo, half of which was food, medicines, and other basic consumables; the rest included two solar power units, two water purification systems, two plant and animal cabinets, laboratory and medical equipment, basic science equipment, three open rovers, and a sunwing. They unloaded the Olympus completely to lighten it for its hop to the outpost, but the Elysium and Pavonis were left with their supplies; by scattering their food and other consumables among several locations, they protected it from possible destruction in an accident.
By April 3, most of the set-up was finished. By then, three more automated cargo landers were closing on Mars, with one more day to go before they aerobraked into orbit. With work one day ahead of schedule and another month of drudgery ahead to unload the new arrivals, Laura decided it was time for a longer geology expedition: to Aurorae’s two-kilometer high escarpment some twelve kilometers north of the outpost. Will and David had to go, as the expeditions’ two geologists; Laura very much wanted to go; and she decided Sergei would go as well. The four of them set out soon after dawn in the ranger with a portahab attached.
Various short expeditions had already taken them nearly halfway to the escarpment with the bulldozer blade down, so they chose a track that took them close to a major canyon that penetrated the escarpment; it might eventually provide a route up. They proceeded slowly and scraped a dirt track of fairly good quality; it was worth taking the time the first time to make a good quality route because in an emergency they could get back to the habitat much faster. After three hours, they finally stopped just beyond the massive talus piles at the bottom of the escarpment.
They all pulled on their suits and stepped out. The escarpment rose to a height of almost two kilometers and the top was a mere five or six kilometers away; it was as if a gigantic vertical wall cut the surface of the planet.
“There’s nothing to compare this to,” said Will, after a moment of silence.
“It’s about as high as the front of the Grand Tetons,” replied Laura. “But of course, it’s much wilder looking.”
“I can’t imagine what the eight kilometer escarpments look like in the middle lengths of the canyons,” said David. “Can you picture something five times higher than this!”
“Of course, you often can’t get this close,” added Will. “Because there are landslides that roared down the escarpment and spread fifty kilometers across the canyon floor!”
“Well, someone else will see them,” said Laura. “Sergei, you pull out the laser and set it up. Just make sure you’re aiming it at rocks well above our heads!”
“At some point, I should probably zap that house-sized white boulder,” said Sergei, pointing. “It’s probably tuff.”
“It’s from that layer,” said Will, pointing to a prominent light gray band crossing the escarpment half way up. “So zap the rock after we come back for lunch, and zap that layer while we’re exploring. We can probably confirm its chemical similarity to the stratum that way.”
“We’re going to have communications problems in those rocks,” said Laura. “We have to bring the relay unit.”
“We can probably climb on top of a big rock and set it up,” said David. “The buggy will be here in another few minutes, too; we can park it over there.” He pointed to a spot where the debris slope had few boulders. “It can relay as well.”
“I’ll tell Ethel to drive it over there,” said Sergei. Ethel was sitting in the habitat playing a support role.
“Good. Let’s go,” said Laura. She and the others activated their helmet cameras so the geologists on Earth could see anything they saw in color, ten frames per second. The signals, however, had to be relayed to the ranger or the buggy, which transmitted them to communications satellites in orbit. Their suits could support only a much lower transmission rate to Earth.
They loped over to the talus, moving quickly in the low gravity. The three of them spread out quickly, following their usual procedure of stopping in a spot, describing everything thoroughly, answering questions about it, then moving on. Millions watched on cable channels, and sometimes they emailed questions of sufficient intelligence to be transmitted to the three of them.
They were looking for as many kinds of rocks as possible. As they picked up pieces, photographed them, described them, and took samples, Sergei was using the laser to determine the mineral composition of the different strata; the laser could later be used on the samples, allowing the samples to be linked with the layers they had fallen from. Most of the escarpment was a mix of conglomerates, poorly sorted arkoses, dune sandstones, and occasional quiet water sandstones and shales, mixed with volcanic tuffs and basalt flows, with thick, irregular deposits of crater ejecta abruptly interrupting the sequence. It was amazing to think that in the Noachian era of Mars—the first half billion years of the planet’s history—the area had accumulated 2,000 meters of volcanic and sedimentary deposits. And all that had occurred before the formation of the Mariner Canyons. Mars clearly was far more active geologically in its youth than now.
Anything that formed in water, Will looked at with especial care. But there were no fossils to be found. This was the enigma of their work: clearly Mars had been a relatively wet, active world, but so far it appeared to have been lifeless.
Will worked his way up the debris slope and in 90 minutes had almost reached the canyon mouth. He stopped to look at a deposit of water-washed sediment; as he suspected, the canyon had once had an intermittent flow of water cascading down it. At that point Laura caught up with him. David headed across the slope toward a bedrock outcrop across the slope about a hundred meters to the west.
Laura tuned into Will’s description of the alluvial fan, which clearly was deposited on top of most of the talus and therefore was younger; millions of years of age, rather than billions. She sat on a rock nearby and rang him up on his private number. “You sound thrilled, Moon Man,” she said.
“Oh, I am. Thanks for proposing that we come here, Laura. I’ve been itching to explore the escarpment ever since we arrived.”
“The geology here is incredible.”
“Yes. Rich. It’ll take months to exhaust it all.”
Laura looked at the canyon mouth ahead of them. “We won’t get much farther today; our oxygen’s too low. How far up the canyon can we go?”
“Orbital photography really can’t show much because the canyon’s narrow and filled with shadows. One or two spots appear possibly to be impassible, but we’d have to try to find out. It’s about fifteen kilometers long; we’d have to pack in oxygen tanks, set up at least one staging camp, then push to reach the end and back.”
“It’d be the equivalent of hiking from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top in a pressure suit; I’m not sure I’d want to try it.”
“Me either.” Will walked over to the rock where Laura sat and joined her. He put incoming messages from Earth on hold. “I could use a rest, too. These vertical climbs are a lot of work in a pressure suit, even in the low gravity.”
“It makes you feel your age.”
“It makes me realize I’m not 25 any more, that’s for sure! I wish we could find some fossils.”
“You yourself said this isn’t the place. We’re in a net erosional environment; we have to find depositional environments instead, like in Gangis Chasma.”
“And parts of western Aurorae Chaos. I suppose there will be time to visit some of those spots later in the mission.”
“I’m working on arranging it. Mission Control is conservative; they want to keep us safe.”
“Of course. I appreciate your intermediary role, Laura. So far, you’ve been pretty persuasive.”
“Thank you. I didn’t know there was anything I had done for this mission that was appreciated.”
Will looked at her. “I’m sorry if I’ve said anything that was misunderstood. I think you’ve done some excellent and highly effective things as Commander. You’re decisive, you have excellent vision for what we can do, you’ve proved persuasive with Mission Control, and we’re a bit ahead of schedule in outpost setup because you made some clever resource allocation decisions.” It was all true; Laura, in spite of some shortcomings, also had many strengths.
“Thank you.” She sounded impressed by Will’s list. “I’ve done my best.”
“And I’ve done my best to bring the six of us together, rather than leave us as six autonomous individuals on this vast planet. I haven’t tried hosting another dinner party recently. Do you think I should?”
She considered. “Why not this coming Satursol. We’ll have received two cargo landers by then and we’ll be pretty busy. At that point, we could use a break.”
“Good idea. We could try a movie as well, if you think that might be fun. This time we should let everyone add to a list of movies and scribble notes about whether they like the movie or not. Shinji really meant no harm by proposing Gone with the Wind.”
There was a pause. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s true.”
Will looked at her. “I hesitate to suggest this because I know it is difficult. But if you could find it in your heart to apologize to David, it would make him feel much better. He really was innocent.”
Laura looked at him, pensive. “I really have had a problem with him, for some reason. Not sure how it got started, either. I guess it’s personal chemistry.”
Will shrugged and smiled. He wasn’t going to speculate about David’s French and African ancestry, his darker skin—darker even than Will’s—and other traits that might have triggered some sort of reaction in Laura. He just tried to be supportive.
“Okay, I’ll try,” she said. She stood up and began to walk toward David.
Will watched her go. Then he rose and reactivated the voice and emails from Earth. There were quite a few to deal with, and many ideas to try or explain why they couldn’t work.
Laura took her time walking across the loose scree, aware that she might accidentally trigger the area’s first landslide or rock fall in ten million years. David had stopped to describe a basalt flow. The base of the ancient lava flow had streaks of green in the rocks; malachite, a common copper ore. The quantity was far too small to be of any significance, but its presence indicated that larger deposits were possible.
She felt his excitement and got excited as well. This was a significant find; not as important as fossils, but important. He had found a few samples that were a significant percentage of copper carbonate.
“Congratulations,” she finally said to him, after he finished dictating his description. “This may be our big find of the day.”
“Maybe. I figured you and Will had listened in and come over; where’s Will?”
“He’s exploring an alluvial fan deposit that came down the canyon mouth and spread out on top of the talus.”
“Wow, that’s pretty important, too.”
“Yes. This has been a day full of surprises.” She looked at the status of her connection with David; she had called him on a private line, but he was replying on a public line. “Actually, David, I came over to apologize for accusing you of trying to embarrass me with the movie feature, a few weeks ago.”
He was startled. “Pardon?”
“I said I came over so I could apologize to you for accusing you of trying to embarrass me,” she replied patiently.
He immediately switched to a private connection; no reason for the entire world to hear about their problems. “Thank you, Commander, I appreciate that.”
-------------------------------
They explored until oxygen ran low, then went back to the portahab for food and recharging of their backpacks, then back up the slope until afternoon shadows grow long. All four of them went up in the afternoon; Will and David managed to get a kilometer up the very narrow and steep canyon—they called it ‘Little Colorado’ in honor of the Grand Canyon—at which point they lost all radio contact with the outside world. They would have to try again at a time when a communications satellite was looping overhead, or bring along a few communications relays. Will was comfortable with a half hour or so of radio blackout, but no one else was, and it made it impossible for him to interact with terrestrial geologists.
They returned to the habitat very tired but very happy. The energy was different; Ethel felt it right away. “What happened out there, today?” she whispered to Will as she was approaching to the bathroom and he was walking away from it.
“Laura and I had a heart to heart talk, and she apologized to David,” he whispered.
“Really? How did you do that?”
“I’m still not sure.”
“Congratulations!” She leaned over and kissed him on his ear; a playful, funny gesture. He laughed.
He walked back to the table. Shinji had cooked them a pretty good meal; he had taken much of the afternoon and baked some bread. They were all sitting around the table in the great room, relaxed, talking about the rapidly deepening global recession and its implications for the space program, if any.
Ethel returned from her visit to the bathroom. Laura raised her coffee cup and drained the last drops from it. “Okay, folks,” she said. “We all know what tomorrow is, don’t we?”
“Tomorrow everything starts all over again,” replied Shinji. David smiled.
“I suppose you could put it that way,” said Laura. “Cargo Lander 1 is cleared to land at 6:45 a.m. at landing zone 5.”
“It’s got ranger 2?” asked Will.
Laura nodded. “And surface exploration equipment, and the sunwing. If we start unloading it by 8:30, we can probably finish by sunset.”
“And the next day we get habitat 2,” exclaimed Sergei. “Followed, the day after, by greenhouse 2, the second portahab, and more chemical and metal fabrication equipment.”
“And four or five weeks to set them up,” added Ethel. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”