7

The Valley of Dawns

Laura looked at the image of Stickney crater broadcast from one of Elysium’s cameras. The data from all ten cameras on Phobos came back to Columbus 1; there she or David mixed them and sent no more than two full signals back to Earth, the rest going back as miniature low-resolution images. The images were broadcast onto the walls of the Cimmerium’s great room; she could touch a small version of an image to choose it for transmission back to Houston. She switched to a camera next to the airlock so that Earth’s cable audience could watch Will, Sergei, and Ethel step back inside. During the five days since completing the repairs on the two drills, the team had taken their lead from the mission’s chief geologist.

The three of them went inside and peeled off their suits. “That was great, guys,” said Laura. She could hear her voice come back a split second later; it was being broadcast over the Elysium’s intercom system. “So, six days and six seven-hour excursions outside. You’ve explored fossae, several craters, and Stickney. Does one more day look about right?”

“How are the drillers doing?” asked Sergei.

“Fine,” replied David. “Both are moving downward at full speed. Drill 1 will hit the 100 meter maximum depth later today.”

“Excellent,” said Sergei. “I wish we had the equipment to extend its maximum depth. Maybe Columbus 2 will take care of that.”

“Either way, you guys will be able to go back, pull out the drill string permanently, and roll up the extra panels,” said Laura. “Shaft 1 will be ready for volatile extraction.”

“You can’t wait to get to Aurorae, can you?” asked Will.

“Of course, we’re all bored up here!” replied Laura. “You can drive rovers around just so long. I want to feel the reg under my boots.”

“I’m satisfied,” said Will. “We’ve explored this moonlet enough to keep the scientists busy for at least eighteen months. I’m in favor of stopping here again on our way home.”

“That’s premature,” cautioned Laura. “It was originally scheduled if the two Lifters were both fueled and ready to go. We’ll see what the second lander does when it arrives in April.”

“Okay we’ll make one last excursion,” said Sergei. “Then we’ll return to the volatile processing unit one last time and head for the Phobos transfer orbit.”

“And we’ll finish mothballing this place,” added Laura. “Then we’ll head to Aurorae.”

--------------------------------

The next two days were busy ones. The Elysium flew to Phobos’s north pole for one last excursion there, then returned to the automated lander, where Sergei and Ethel removed the drill string from the completed shaft number 1. The lander’s platform had four spots around its rim where drillers could be placed; the center of the lander had the docking mechanism for the Lifters. They moved the drill to a different location so that it could eventually make a new shaft parallel to the first one but four meters away from it, then set it up and tested it. Fairly soon, a third shaft would be sunk into the moon, further increasing the quantity of volatiles they would eventually be able to extract.

When the launch window opened, the Elysium took off from Phobos, firing its engines for almost a minute under a terrestrial gravity of acceleration; the result was an orbit skimming the upper atmosphere, then rising to Phobos before dropping back to the atmosphere. One of those orbits would take them to periapsis at noon the next day right over Aurorae; it was their first landing window.

The Elysium in place, it was time for the Olympus to act. It was late morning at Columbus One and in Houston—but 1 p.m. local time at Aurorae—when the Olympus fired its engines to lower its periapsis into the Martian atmosphere. Laura watched the Cimmerium and Ausonia slowly shrink in size as the shuttle went off on its own path. She couldn’t help but wonder whether the two ITVs would be functioning alright when the six of them returned in a year and a half. The two interplanetary habs tumbled very slowly end over end, generating very slight gravity inside, while pointing their solar arrays toward the sun.

Twelve hours later, at 1 a.m., the Shuttle Olympus reached Mars atmosphere precisely where it was expected to be. In two minutes of slowly building, then slowly declining deceleration, the vehicle rubbed off half a kilometer per second of velocity. It shot back spaceward, only to fall back four hours later, when another two minutes burned off another half kilometer per second. This time it went into a nearly circular orbit, returning to the atmosphere almost two hours later, just as planned.

“Okay, here we go, folks,” said Laura, as the first wisps of plasma licked past the windows. “Hold on.” She looked down and noticed she was gripping her landing chair so tightly it made her knuckles turn white; she was nervous. She tried to let go and was amazed to see her knuckles relax, then stiffen and turn white again. It was an involuntary response.

Their weight began to build up. There was no turning back now; they were committed to the surface. Laura soon found it hard to move her hand. But a glimpse at the landing profile showed that they were right where they were supposed to be, seventy kilometers above the surface and seven hundred kilometers from their destination. Their orbital velocity—four thousand meters per second—rapidly decreased as the Martian air rubbed it off, converting it into heat. The shuttle’s metal aeroshield began to glow red hot; its engines, secure inside closed bays, were safe.

Deceleration built to a peak of about two terrestrial gees, then began to slacken. The flames diminished and they came out of the hottest phase of entry. The Olympus’s velocity cut to a bit over 1,500 meters per second. Altitude and range from their target dropped fast; landing—a soft landing—incredibly was just over two minutes away.

One of the screens in front of Laura beeped. “We’ve acquired the landing beacon,” said Laura. “We’re out of the atmospheric entry phase. Deployment of the drogues will commence in six seconds . . . five. . . four. . . .three . . . two . . . one. . .. here we go!”

There was a bang as the mortar in the shuttle’s nose fired the drogue parachute upward. The shuttle jerked as the drogue opened in the supersonic airflow and weight sharply increased again. Their velocity dropped further. Then twenty seconds later the main parachutes were pulled out by the drogues and opened as well. The shuttle shook twice as two of them popped open.

And then alarm bells went off. The shuttle had three main parachutes, not two; all three should have opened. Laura leaned forward, in spite of the gee force pulling her backward, to look more closely. It was clear in an instant that they had not gotten all three to open; deceleration was less than predicted. “We’ve had failure of one of the main chutes,” she reported calmly. “We are compensating.”

The control computer immediately sensed the problem and assessed the fuel reserves. Landing was still possible; their reserve allowed an emergency landing on one chute. But it was risky and could not be pinpoint. They’d overshoot the landing zone by at least fifteen kilometers.

The shuttle bounced around as a result of the partially opened chute; Laura held it as steady as she could. Then the chutes detached and for a split second the weight went away completely and they were falling. Then the main engines all roared alive, building quickly to full thrust and gravity returned. She looked at David and Shinji, who looked much more alarmed than she, and nodded assuringly.

The shuttle turned closer to vertical and the ground appeared in the windows in front of the pilot, surprisingly close and blurred from the speed. Dawn sunlight cast huge shadows, revealing a land of rocks; Mars was a giant stone field over much of its surface, and Aurorae Chaos away from the landing zone had its share. Laura saw a big boulder, about three meters in diameter, ahead of them and steered the shuttle to the right of it; but there was another good sized rock to the right as well, so she had to bring the vehicle back to the left. Deceleration waned to Mars normal as the vehicle’s last remaining extra speed blasted away. The Olympus was now ten meters up and descending at three meters per second, which dropped to two meters per second at an altitude of eight meters, then one meter per second at five meters. She adjusted their position slightly to avoid a rock that would tilt a landing pad, then brought the shuttle down. Four meters. . . three. . . . two. . . one. . . she cut off the engines and the shuttle fell the last half meter. With a thud they landed at a slight angle, followed by a second thud as one landing pad pushed a rock out of the way and the shuttle righted itself.

She looked at David and Shinji. “Whew!” she exclaimed. She glanced down at her hands; they had a slight shake to them.

“Good maneuvering, Commander,” said David appreciatively. His voice quavered a bit from the stress.

The radio crackled. “Olympus, are you down?” called Sergei, sounding a bit frantic. “Olympus, please copy!”

Laura smiled slightly; everyone was nervous. “We copy, Elysium. The Olympus has landed on Mars and we are safe and sound. It’s quite a view outside! We’re facing east, as planned, looking at the early morning sun. We’ve got a grayish pink sky and a terrain covered with lots of rocks!”

“But where are we?” asked David.

“We’ve overshot,” replied Laura. She pushed some buttons and called up the global positioning system; Mars had enough satellites in orbit to provide good coverage. “We’re. . . twenty-two point three kilometers east of the automated cargo landers.”

“That’s a long way,” observed David.

“Olympus, this is Elysium,” exclaimed Sergei. “We are coming up on the time of our emergency landing burn. Shall we come down right away?”

Laura looked at the others in the shuttle and then at the controls. All systems were nominal; there was no emergency, strictly speaking, except for the fact that they were twenty-two kilometers from their supplies. The shuttle had all the food they needed for the mission and its cramped quarters could keep them alive for several years; the buggy could be deployed and take them to the automated cargo landers two at a time. But this was not how the mission was supposed to go. The Elysium was in an orbit that allowed a landing only once per sol. The emergency landing window was about to open; normally the Elysium would skip it and come down the next sol, partly to decrease the stress of two back to back landings, partly to eliminate a media event that would compete for television time with their first steps outside.

The situation was ambiguous. “Affirmative, Elysium,” Laura replied. “We’re fine, but if you land in the nominal landing zone you can drive over in the ranger.”

“We copy. That makes sense, Commander. We’ll prepare for the landing burn, subject to Houston’s final approval.” That approval was likely; Houston was too far away to maintain a hands-on control, much to its occasional distress.

“We copy,” repeated Laura. She turned back to the controls. The engines were going through an automatic deactivation sequence.

“Is there enough fuel to fly us back to the landing zone?” asked Shinji.

David shook his head. “Negative. But after we unload the cargo and convert some of our hydrogen feedstock into methane and oxygen, it’ll be possible. It’ll be a month or two, depending on available power.”

“We’re not going to plug into the landing zone’s grid; we don’t have twenty-two klicks of cable,” said Laura.

“The Olympus’s own solar array is sufficient if it doesn’t have to power anything else,” replied David.

“We should get outside and inspect,” said Laura. “We can’t deploy the solar arrays until we move any rocks that might be in the way.”

She unbuckled her belt and rose; she was surprised to find that she was stiff and clumsy in Martian gravity. David pulled Laura’s pressure suit from the storage locker and handed it to her. He and Shinji had been wearing their suits, complete with helmets and gloves, throughout the landing, so that both of them were in the position to survive some types of crash landings. But Laura was first diverted by Shinji, who opened the animal locker in the bottom of one of the plant growth cabinets.

“The poor rabbits; they’re scared half to death,” he said.

“Let me see,” said Laura. She walked over. They both took an animal—each shuttle carried a breeding pair—and comforted it. It was not altogether clear who felt more comforted; the landing had shaken them all up. David had to content himself looking in on the rooster and two hens in another animal locker.

Then Laura retreated into the bathroom area to pull off her clothes and put on her suit. The adrenaline shake in her hands was less. About the time she had her torso in her suit, the radio crackled and Houston’s message congratulating them on a soft and safe landing reached their ears. They were already reviewing the telemetry to determine the cause of the parachute failure. A minute later came their confirmation that Elysium should plan an immediate landing; they tactfully avoided the word “emergency.”

Shinji and David donned their Mars packs, backpacks with eight hours of oxygen plus a small hydrogen tank and fuel cell to make heat and electricity. The suits allowed direct voice communication with Earth, if necessary. Even in Martian gravity, they were heavy. Laura hurried to catch up with them; according to protocol, she was to be the first human to step onto the surface of the red planet. The anomalous situation, however, had drained the event of the excitement she had expected to feel.

David helped her with her suit. They were ready to enter the airlock about forty-five minutes after landing, but it seemed like a few minutes only. She grabbed the flags they had stored next to the airlock and entered; David squeezed in behind her. Shinji closed the door and latched it firmly behind them. Laura pressed the “depressurize” button and looked at David expectantly. He smiled back excitedly.

The air in the airlock hissed away and the suits responded. The innermost layer consisted of strong fibers that relaxed when a slight electrical current was applied to them; as the air pressure dropped the electrical current was reduced and the fibers tightened, squeezing on their skin to counteract the air pressure inside their bodies. The resulting suit was very flexible; it didn’t feel like one was walking around inside a pneumatic tire. Their skin was sufficiently airtight when counterpressure was applied; the suit didn’t have to be airtight, so accidental punctures were not a danger. The Martian cold was compensated for by wearing insulated clothing over the suit. Hand dexterity in particular was excellent.

Finally, a green light came on; the outer door could be opened. Laura pulled a lever to unlatch the door and it swung outward.

Mars spread out before her; a rolling land of reds, grays, pinks, and browns, and above all, rocks, all the way to the horizon. They were facing north and that horizon was dominated by the impressive mile-high cliffs marking the edge of Aurorae Chaos; “Aurorae Valley” or the “Valley of Dawns” as NASA had dubbed it, because it sounded better. Layers could be seen in the cliff distinctly even though they were twenty kilometers away. The cliff face was scalloped by landslides and great debris piles rested at its base, invisible over Mars’s horizon. The crest was an irregular line, incredibly distant yet sharp in the clear air.

She looked down; they had earlier deployed a ramp that had been folded up against the airlock, forming the shuttle’s outer skin. It was short and steep, descending a meter to the ground. She stepped onto it, grabbing the deployment cable on the right side, which served like a railing. In a few steps she was down. She stepped onto a round, flat rock that was conveniently located at the end of the ramp, then from there she put her foot into a small dust drift.

“With this step, humanity attains another world,” she exclaimed. “May it become a second home for our species.”

She turned to watch David descend next, giving a bit of ceremony to his first step. “Bismullah al-rahman al-rahim,” he whispered as he started down the ramp. He touched down onto the rock as well. “L’exploration de Mars commence,” he added, then in English “The exploration of Mars begins.”

Fully aware of the fact that about four billion people were watching them, they circled the shuttle while awaiting Shinji’s arrival. Built into the shuttle’s base were three telescoping solar arrays, each two and a half meters wide and twelve meters long; they could deploy automatically in space, where their thirty square meters each could make 3 kilowatts of electricity. On Mars, gravity pulled them downward and they could snag on rocks. Each would have to be deployed by hand to ensure their safety.

The airlock opened and Shinji stepped out. He came down the ramp as well, speaking in Japanese, then repeating in English “May this world symbolize peace for all mankind.” He leaped onto the flat rock as well, then down onto the ground.

“Here, here,” agreed Laura. “The nations of the world can cooperate to send people here; so they can cooperate to solve their problems on Earth as well.”

“Mars is the god of war, traditionally,” added Shinji. “It is true in many of our cultures; the red has come to symbolize the blood of conflict. But we will make this the first world where humans live without warfare.”

“Let’s deploy the flags,” said Laura.

There was a spot about ten meters from the shuttle that was flattish and had a deposit of wind-blown drift; perfect for erecting flags. They walked over to it. The protocol had been carefully negotiated on Earth months ago. Laura first pushed the flag of the United States into the ground, and they all saluted it; then David deployed the flag of the European Union, which they saluted; then Shinji planted the Japanese flag and they saluted. Finally, all three of them erected the flag of the United Nations together. Singly and together they posed with the flags.

That done, it was time to get to work, deploying the solar panels, deploying the buggy, and doing some preliminary surface science.

Meanwhile, in orbit the Elysium was cruising toward its own encounter with the Martian atmosphere. While Sergei piloted, Will checked out Aurorae’s ranger remotely. The six-wheeled vehicle was a bit larger than a humvee. The pressurized cab was 2.4 meters wide—spacious enough to seat four—and 2.0 meters high, enough to stand in while wearing a pressure suit. The cab was 2.4 meters long as well, leaving a 1.2 meter space behind the seats for storage or sleeping. Built into the chassis was an array of methane-oxygen fuel cells and batteries; each of its six wheels had its own electric motor with regenerative braking. Rangers had first been used on the moon. One had been on Aurorae’s first cargo lander and had been deployed right away; its bulldozer blade had moved rocks so that the lander’s solar array could unroll safely. The ranger had then been driven by remote control to the second lander, clearing a crude track through the gravel and rocks, and had prepared the ground there for its solar arrays; then it had continued on to the third cargo lander and ultimately to the shuttle Pavonis. Golf cart-sized buggies, driving along the track it had cleared, had stretched electrical cables between the vehicles and plugged them together so that all their power could be routed to the Pavonis and its equipment for making methane and oxygen fuel from imported terrestrial hydrogen and Martian carbon dioxide. The entire process had been incredibly slow because of the delays built into communication between the planets; it had taken almost a year to deploy the solar arrays and hook them together into a power grid. The ranger had functioned supremely well the entire time. Last week the crew had used the ranger to pull the portahab—an inflatable wheeled habitation about the size of a terrestrial camper—out of the third cargo lander. It was hitched to the ranger and located in a safe place to watch the landing and be available in emergencies.

The Elysium hit the atmosphere with more force than the Olympus because it was aimed to bite deeper; they were making only two aerobraking passes. When it came out of the atmosphere it was in an orbit that would bring it back in about an hour. The metal heat shield had barely cooled off when they encountered the atmosphere again, and this time they were heading down. The drogue and main parachutes deployed normally; Sergei had much easier work to do than Laura. When they had slowed to 500 meters per second, at an altitude of 1,000 meters and a downrange distance of 10,000 meters, Sergei detached the parachutes and fired the engines. He brought the Elysium down right in the middle of a rock-free circle fifty meters in diameter that the ranger had cleared for it. The landing was barely noticeable as a slight bounce, then the engines shut off.

“Wow, Sergei; congratulations!” said Will looking out the window in awe.

“Everything went perfectly. The site’s wind radar gave us all the data we needed to compensate for the winds. Under those circumstances, landings are pretty easy,” he replied. “What’s the local time?”

“A bit after noon,” replied Ethel.

“Check the animals, then let’s suit up,” said Sergei, pushing some buttons to shut down the engine controls.

“Congratulations, Elysium,” exclaimed Laura over the radio. “We watched you land from here. Even twenty-two kilometers away, it was pretty spectacular.”

“Thanks,” replied Sergei modestly.

Ethel checked the rabbits and chickens while Will and Sergei ran through a checklist. Then they began to suit up. Houston’s words of congratulations arrived as well.

“It shouldn’t take me too long to drive over to the Olympus,” commented Sergei to Will as he pushed his right and left arms into the top half of his suit, then began to zip up the front. “I see there are some smooth spots.”

“Yes, if you bend slightly to the south of west you’ll follow the main flood channel, and the last flow through it carried sand and gravel, so the route should be faster. But it’ll take you until sunset, Sergei.”

He shrugged as Will helped him zip the top and bottom halves of his suit together. “With GPS I can’t get lost and the portahab has enough supplies for weeks.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to pick my way through a boulder field after dark, and the Olympus is in a bad spot. It’d be better if I went along, to navigate.”

Sergei shook his head. “You stay here with Ethel; I’ll manage.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Will opened his mouth to say something else, but Ethel, who had come over now that Sergei was suited up, touched his sleeve and shook her head. Will looked at her, surprised, then dropped the matter. He began to put on his life support backpack.

He and Sergei squeezed into the airlock together, closed the inner door, and began to depressurize it. In two minutes it was at Martian pressure; Sergei opened the outer door. Mars spread out before them, in richer detail and color than any video or virtual reality they had ever seen. They paused for a moment to look at the world in front of them, struck by its variation and stark beauty. Then Sergei walked down the ramp and stepped onto the ground. “May many footsteps follow these,” he said in Russian, not bothering to translate into English.

Will followed. He felt the reg yield under his boot; it crunched slightly because the dust and clay was held together by a duricrust. He looked around Mars in wonder, amazed to think that he had just set foot on the Red Planet. “A world of wonders awaits us,” he said. It was the best he had been able to think of, but in the context it wasn’t bad.

Then his training kicked in., He reached down and picked up a rock. He could feel the cold through the thin, flexible gloves, but it didn’t matter. He began to dictate a description of the sample to the geologists on Earth.

“Will, how much should I raise the bulldozer blade?” asked Sergei.

Will looked up. Sergei had walked over to the ranger and attached portahab, which had been parked about six hundred meters away for the landing and which David had driven by remote control to within thirty meters of the shuttle while they suited up. Will jogged over, careful not to lose his footing in the strange gravity and the still-unfamiliar suit.

“The dirt track clearing standard is to keep it five centimeters above the ground the first time and scrape the ground the second time. But a ranger can advance only about two kilometers per hour that way, and you need to go at least five to get to the shuttle before dark. I’d raise the blade so that it’ll deflect any big rocks you don’t want the tires to hit; maybe twenty centimeters.”

He nodded. “Yes, that sounds about right. We can take our time tomorrow and clear the track better.”

“We’ll be making many round trips, so we can improve the trail gradually,” agreed Will. “Just be careful! This is our only ranger. It’d be hard to rescue you with the buggies if you break down in between. Rocks are an enemy, remember.”

“I know. This isn’t that different from driving a ranger on the moon.”

“Yes it is. The moon isn’t as rocky as Mars.”

“Okay, I concede that. I had better go; it’s after one.”

“I know.” Will reached over and pulled open the ranger’s door. The cab, though filled with oxygen, was at the same pressure as the Martian exterior. Sergei climbed into the driver’s seat, which he pushed backward all the way so that the seat could accommodate his backpack as well. Then he closed and latched the pressure door on the driver’s side.

“I’ll start driving now and stop to take off the suit once the interior is pressurized,” he said.

“Good plan. Take care.”

“Thanks.” Sergei waved, then closed the door. A moment later he activated the ranger’s six fuel cells, raised the bulldozer blade in front to twenty centimeters, and fed power to the six wheels. It began to roll forward. Sergei headed down a dirt track leading to one of the automated cargo landers, which had landed east of the shuttle.

“I dedicate the next eighteen months to exploration of this world and pursuing ways of strengthening international cooperation through it,” exclaimed Ethel. Will turned and saw that she had now stepped onto Mars. She took several steps, then reached down to pick up a small rock.

Will walked over. “Today is not sol 1 for us, so we have no official work.”

“The emergency has blown it away anyway. I suppose we should start by deploying the solar panels.”

“Yes.” Will nodded and the two of them walked to the shuttle. Ethel pulled out a screwdriver and used it to unlatch the end of a panel manually. Will helped; the base of the solar panel array was over her head. A square of the outer hull a meter high and two point five meters long popped outward. They grabbed it and began to pull, unfolding and stretching flat an accordion of solar panels. Soon they had it extended its full twelve meters and deployed a pair of metal legs that supported the end a meter above the ground. It was able to make 18 kilowatt-hours per sol on the Martian surface.

They pulled out and deployed the other two as well, a fairly simple and straightforward task. Will walked eastward toward the dirt track there and found the electrical cable that had been extended from the nearest cargo lander; he pulled it to the shuttle and plugged it into the electrical box. The Elysium was now part of the electrical grid and had access to over a hundred kilowatts of power. At that point David called Will on a private line—each of them had essentially a cellular telephone number that could be called for private conversation.

“Do you want me to activate the Sabatier on the Elysium?”

“Sure. Where are you; inside?”

“For now. We came back in for lunch. You guys will get pretty hungry.”

“We’ll manage. Sergei will be pretty hungry when he arrives over there, though.”

“When he gets here we’ll celebrate with a big meal. Tomorrow night all six of us will celebrate together, too.”

“Yes. We did it, Daoud! We’re on Mars!”

“I know! It’s so hard to believe. It’s quite a place, too; fascinating.”

“It is. It’s growing on me already. But I’ll feel a lot better about this place when we’re all together.”

“I agree.”

Will’s phone beeped. “Oh, Ethel’s calling, so I had better talk to her instead. We’ll talk again later.” Will pushed a button to switch to her. “Sorry; I was talking to David.”

“That’s okay. Can you help me with the buggy?”

“Sure.” The shuttle came with a 250-kilogram buggy about the size of an all-terrain vehicle. It was designed to transport one person but could accommodate two in an emergency; it also could tow a trailer or a disabled buggy. Like the ranger, it had multiple fuel cells and methane and oxygen tanks; the four wire mesh wheels had separate electric motors of the same sort as the ranger. It was solidly reliable and nearly indestructible.

The two of them went back inside the shuttle briefly to detach the buggy from its straps and push it into the airlock, then down the ramp to the surface. They checked it out and fueled it with liquid methane and oxygen from the shuttle’s tanks. Another buggy was nearby; it had arrived on the second cargo lander and had a built-in science lab for studying rocks.

“Let’s drive over to the mesas,” suggested Ethel.

“Good idea,” said Will. “They’ve got the best geology around.”

“I wonder how Sergei is doing,” added Ethel.

“We can still see him.” Will pointed east. “He’s making good progress.”

“I interrupted you because I sensed Sergei had to do this trip himself.”

“Why?”

“I think in his mind he’s rescuing Laura.”

“Oh? You’re probably right; and I think she wants him to rescue him, too.”

“You’re probably right about that as well.”

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