8
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Sergei kept up the fastest pace he dared. Mission Control even called him once and suggested he drive a bit slower, though it had been across an open flat patch of clay that had no rocks at all; he had pushed the ranger to thirty kilometers per hour for a few seconds. In other areas where the rocks were thick, the bulldozer blades snagged quite a few and pushed them to the side, often moving shorter rocks as well; under those circumstances two kilometers per hour was the max he could manage. At least the work wasn’t boring. The terrain was flattish but ever-changing, with signs of flood destruction and construction everywhere. Aurorae Chaos had pooled all the water flowing out of the Marineris Valley system and had fed it to Simud and Tiu Valles, so the geological deposits were among the most interesting on the planet. In the three and a half billion years since the floods had waned away, meteorites had pocked the surface with craters and thrown rocks everywhere.
The last hour, as the shadows grew longer and longer, the Olympus became larger and larger, easier and easier to see. He pulled up to the shuttle just minutes before sunset; Laura and David, outside in the pressure suits, literally jumped up and down and waved as he approached. He waved back through the windshield.
“Welcome, welcome!” exclaimed Laura over the radio.
“You made it!” added David.
“It wasn’t that difficult. I concentrated on the terrain in front of me and whenever I steered around something I checked my heading. Hold on, let me get my suit on.” Sergei had taken off the helmet, gloves, and backpack early in the trip.
“How well does that thing drive?” asked David.
“Fine. But don’t drive for a long time with the backpack on; it kills your back.”
Sergei unplugged the backpack on the passenger seat; it had been charging while he drove. He glanced around the ranger’s cab; with the seats the space was too tight to put his suit back on easily. But the back wall had a hatch that led to the portahab, which was connected to it by a flexible, pressurized plastic tunnel. He made sure the tunnel was still airtight, opened the hatch, and passed through to the portahab.
It was much larger: 2.4 meters wide, 2.4 meters high, and 4 meters long, with an interior layout similar to a small terrestrial recreational vehicle. On the right side was a “dinette”—a table with chairs on each side—followed by a sink, three-burner stove, and microwave oven; on the left side was a couch whose back folded up, forming bunk beds for two. The couch/bunks were followed by storage lockers and a small refrigerator. The back wall had a shower stall on the right side and a toilet stall with bathroom sink on the left; both faced a corridor in the middle that ended at a rear hatch, which like the front hatch was 1 meter wide and 1.5 meters high. A compact clothes washer/drier sat in the shower stall. Cabinets lined the walls; pull-down bins covered much of the ceiling. The portahab’s life support system was designed to sustain two crew for at least a month; if someone slept in the cab of the ranger, it could hold three.
He pulled on the backpack, the helmet, then his gloves. The suit pressurized; certain of that, he stooped and passed through the tunnel back into the cab, closed the hatch, and began to depressurize the cab. In three minutes he was able to open the front driver’s side door.
Laura reached out to hug him; he walked over and hugged her in return. They faced each other. “Are you sight for sore eyes,” she said to him over a private line.
“I’m here now,” he replied, a touch of hero echoing in his voice. “Tomorrow we’ll all be able to drive back to the primary landing area.”
“I want you.”
He was startled by her frankness. “Where.”
“I don’t care.”
David’s voice interrupted. They could hear him, but he couldn’t hear them. “We should probably get inside; the sun’s gone.”
Sergei looked up; the sun had indeed dropped below the horizon. The solar corona was clearly visible, as well as a touch of pink. Martian sunsets were going to be interesting. He pushed a button to activate the general voice channel. “Okay; I’m starved. I forgot to bring anything to eat and I didn’t want to stop long enough to find the supplies.”
“There isn’t much in the portahab, anyway, and I think it’s all dehydrated,” replied David. “Shinji’s preparing frozen turkey; it should be ready pretty soon.”
“Let me close the door,” said Sergei. He walked back over to the ranger and shut the door. “I had better come back out here later, though. I want to familiarize myself with the portahab a bit better.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Laura.
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The next morning the four of them climbed into the ranger and headed back to the Elysium. Shinji drove; he lowered the bulldozer blade to fifteen centimeters and cleared a few more rocks as they went. They covered the twenty-two kilometers in a bit over two hours. In a few more days, with the track getting wider and smoother, it would be less than an hour to drive back and forth.
Shortly after the crew left the Olympus in the ranger, Will and Ethel left the Elysium for the three mesas in the buggies. They had explored the length of Layercake’s northern edge and circled Boat and Face Rock the day before; Will remembered most of it because of his many hours driving a Prospector. On Sol 2, however, they climbed up the slope of talus—loose rock—at the base of Boat Rock’s northern cliffs and started to walk along the cliff slowly and systematically, Will to the west and Ethel to the east, stopping to examine layers, break off pieces, and describe everything. Sometimes they took samples back to the buggy with the battery of scientific instruments, to analyze them. David watched the whole thing very closely from the portahab, coaching Ethel occasionally so that Will could focus on the samples he was examining. The flow of voice and emails from earth grew pretty strong and he helped answer some of them, or helped Ethel work her way through the technical language.
When the ranger reached the Elysium they decided to head for the mesas instead. Shinji lowered the bulldozer blade to five centimeters and they chugged across the terrain slowly, plowing the scattered rocks out of their way as they went. Since they were approaching from the south and their colleagues were working their way along Boat Rock’s northern cliffs, they had to drive through the notch between it and Layercake Mesa to find them.
It took ten minutes to stop the exchange of questions and answers. Will and Ethel came down from the debris pile and walked over to their friends, who meanwhile suited up and came out of the ranger. In spite of the pressure suits, everyone hugged each other; they were relieved to be back together again.
“Well, we all made it,” said Laura. “We had some scary moments, but we came through them.”
“And we now have twenty-two kilometers of Mars ‘Route 1’ cleared,” added Sergei. They had speculatively talked of eventually clearing a “Route 1” all the way around Mars, roughly along the equator, certainly running the length of the Mariner Canyons.
“Let’s sit down facing each other so we can see our faces and talk,” said Laura. She pointed to a rough circle of rocks nearby. They all walked over and sat. It made a half decent meeting spot. “We need to plan the day and review our work schedule for the next week. It’s complicated somewhat by the Olympus’s distance. Until we clear the route a bit better, we’ll have to send at least two people back starting about two hours before sunset.”
“We have to take care of the plant and animals until we move them,” agreed Shinji. “We can rotate the responsibility, though. How long will it take to move everything here?”
“I figure five or six days; or I suppose I should say sols,” replied Laura, using the standard term for the 24.6 hour Martian solar cycle. “We need to empty the Olympus completely of everything we can take out. We need the furniture in the outpost anyway, but we have to lighten the shuttle as much as possible before flying it over.”
“The delta vee for a launch and landing is substantial; about 1,000 meters per second,” added Sergei. “Every tonne we fly here will take 300 kilos of propellant.”
“What will that do to the Olympus’s fuel supply?” asked Will.
“We can strip the shuttle to thirteen tonnes,” replied Sergei. “It has ten tonnes of liquid hydrogen, for a total of twenty-three tonnes. Flying it here will require seven tonnes of oxygen and methane, which will require about 400 kilograms of the hydrogen supply to make. So we can get the Olympus here and still have enough hydrogen on board to fly her back to the interplanetary habs. It basically cuts into the surplus hydrogen that was supposed to be used for making wash water and methane fuel for the rangers and buggies.”
“Four hundred kilos is not a problem,” said David. “The three automated landers that are here and the three on the way will have a total of two or three extra tonnes of fuel in them when they land. The Pavonis and the Elysium both have six extra tonnes of water and eight extra tonnes of fuel, and the Olympus has the hydrogen to make the same surplus.”
“And we should have a functioning well in a few months,” added Will. “Four hundred kilos of hydrogen can be made from 3.6 tonnes of water.”
“We’re in fine shape,” agreed Laura. “Flying the Olympus here will take time because its solar panels have to make the methane and oxygen; but we have the supplies.”
“But our day to day plans won’t be simple, like when the two shuttles were supposed to be two kilometers apart,” said Ethel. “I think we should set up the inflatable habitat as soon as possible. We need to move the plants and animals to the Pavonis in the next two or three days in the pressurized containers, then haul the cabinets here in the portahab.”
Laura nodded. “Between the inflatable hab, the Pavonis, and the Elysium, we have plenty of living space, and in two months the cargo landers bring more stuff anyway. That was my thought as well.”
“Will and I found a spot for the outpost,” added Ethel. “NASA has chosen a spot, but we want to move it.”
“Where?” asked Laura.
“At the eastern end of Boat Rock; we’ll show you.” Ethel rose and began to walk eastward; the others followed. It took several minutes. She led them to a wide, flattish, sandy terrace just north of Boat Rock and Face Rock. On the south, the terrace butted against the talus slope of the two mesas; to the north the ground abruptly and steeply dropped to a depression, then rose again and became rolling but flattish rock-covered terrain extending to the northern cliffs marking the edge of Aureum Chaos.
“Why here?” asked Laura. “The spot by the notch was good; it provides a natural route between the mesas.”
“Why go between them when you can go around them?” asked Ethel. “The notch is a bit interesting as a terrain variation, but so is this.” She turned and pointed at Face Rock. They all looked up and smiled.
“I always wondered why they call that ‘Face Rock,’” said Laura. “It’s a pretty bumpy face, if you ask me.”
“The face of an alien,” teased Sergei.
“It’s a natural rock formation. Walk fifty meters east or west and you can’t see it any more,” replied Ethel. “In addition to the Face, there’s also the crevasse separating Face Rock from Boat Rock.”
“It’s pretty cool,” added Will. “It goes all the way through, is barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side in a few spots, and has a few overhangs that are almost caves. The rovers were never able to go in because of debris blocking both ends, but we climbed over the debris yesterday.”
“So, you’re proposing we move the outpost here because the spot is ‘cool?’” asked Laura, irritated.
“No; we should build here because it is just as good as the other spot, but it’s also cool,” replied Will. He pointed at the depression. “That area, actually, is probably a better spot for a well than the area below the notch that NASA has proposed. Around here the ground radar shows that just about anywhere you drill, you’ll hit some ice at about thirty meters and strata filled with frozen ground water at about fifty meters. But that area is about fifteen meters lower than the average ground level around here, so it should be closer to the ice table.”
“Where would we put the solar power units?” asked Sergei, interested.
“There.” Ethel pointed to a spot to the east of the depression. “It’s flat and less than a hundred meters from here. That’s all the plastic tubing we have for pumping heated Martian air to the outpost.”
“That would be a good spot,” said Sergei, nodding.
“This spot has some charm,” agreed Shinji. “It is our choice; we have to live here.”
“Yes, but we’ll also be laying the foundation for a future settlement, so we have to consider posterity,” said Laura.
“Why should they care?” asked Will, a bit irritated. “This spot has the same ground properties and possibilities for drilling as the other spot, but a bit more charm. We can find ground where we can excavate foundations for buildings, and a spot where we can drill for water, literally almost everywhere in Aureum. We can build our outpost out in the middle of the valley where it’s flat and featureless for kilometers, if we want. I say, let’s build where we have some interesting things to see and hike.”
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” said Laura, who also sounded irritated at the pressure. “I like the idea of being able to see the Face out our windows. Look, it’s now 9:45 a.m. You geologists have an appointment with the ground geologists to do research, so you should get started on that. I doubt mission control will object to our moving the outpost to this spot, unless they know something about the geology we don’t. I’ll walk across the site with my helmet camera so they can see it all. Meanwhile, Sergei, Shinji, and Ethel, you drive back to the lander and get the inflatable habitat. I suspect you can get it here by lunchtime.”
“Definitely,” agreed Ethel. “But we’ll need to prepare the site.”
“The bulldozer can do that in what? A few hours?”
“Yes. If we get the hab now, we can have it inflated by sunset. Of course, setting up the life support equipment, plumbing, flooring, moving in the furniture, etc., will take weeks.”
“When can we live in it?” asked Laura.
“Considering our crazy housing situation right now? I’d say it’d be adequate in two or three sols,” replied Ethel.
“We should get the inflatable ready as soon as possible,” said Sergei. “Considering the near-crash we’ve experienced and the separation of the shuttles, we need a nest.”
“That reminds me; mission control will want us to find the parachutes,” exclaimed Laura. “They sent me an email to that effect last night. They’re checking the imaging right now to find the parachutes. They’ll give us exact GPS coordinates and the best route across the rock fields to them. We’ll have to go out in two or three days.”
“Makes sense,” said Will. He turned to David. “Let’s start here, with Face Rock, so we’re close to Laura.”
“Okay.”
Everyone headed off to their tasks. The geologists were always happiest doing their work; the engineer/mechanics loved their tasks as well. The latter group, and Shinji, headed to Cargo Lander number 2 across the terrain, plowing a new, direct route to the proposed location of the outpost. Lander 2 had opened like a flower sixteen months earlier, unrolling its solar panels across the gravely desert; a buggy had plugged it into the power grid so that its electricity could be shared with the other machines scattered across the wastes of Aureum. Still sitting on the lander’s platform was a trailer four and a half meters long and four wide with the vacuum-packed eight-tonne inflatable habitat in an enclosed plastic box. Piled on the lander’s platform on both sides of the trailer were three tonnes of life support equipment and plumbing, furniture, and a tonne of hard plastic panels needed to strengthen the inflatable’s floors and walls.
They used a pile of panels to construct a ramp and slowly winched the trailer down to the ground. Then they hooked it to the ranger—which was no longer towing the portahab—and pulled trailer back to the construction site. They lowered the bulldozer blade to a lower setting to push more rocks out of the way; the trailer had a low clearance and they needed to use it repeatedly. While they moved slowly to the outpost’s new location, Shinji began to cook lunch in the back.
They returned to the site a bit before noon. Laura was laying out stakes to mark the placement of the first habitat, based on mission control’s suggestions; the other habitats and greenhouses had to be planned around it. They all crowded into the portahab, which was parked near their future habitat, and ate lunch; warily, since a depressurization error, however unlikely, might kill all six of them. It was also a chance to recharge the life support packs of Laura, Will, and David.
They finished lunch. Shinji drove the buggy back to the Elysium to prepare supper and do his own work; Sergei and Ethel used the ranger and its bulldozer blade to prepare the spot for the inflatable; Laura helped Will and David with the geology.
Two hours before sunset the site was ready. They moved the trailer into place and four of them pushed the inflatable habitat off the trailer while Sergei slowly drove the trailer away.
“It’s too late to do anything more today,” said Laura. “We need to drive back to the Elysium, grab the supper Shinji has made, and two of us have to start back to the Olympus.”
“Who’s going?” asked Sergei. “It can be any two of us.” He turned to Laura. “We could go.”
“Sure.”
There was silence. Will was tempted to say something, but didn’t. He caught a glimpse of Ethel’s face; she seemed concerned as well.
“It’s settled, then,” said Laura. “Someone else can go tomorrow; we should rotate the assignment.”
“The ranger has plenty of oxygen to inflate the habitat,” noted Ethel. “We need a hundred kilos. If someone wants to stay with me, I’ll inflate it in the next two hours.”
“I can stay,” said Will.
Laura looked at the buggy. Shinji had driven it back to them by remote control before turning to his medical work. “Alright. The buggy can take both of us back to the Elysium easily enough. You’ve both got enough oxygen?”
“I’ve still got five hours,” replied Ethel. “My bladder won’t last that long.”
“I’m fine for air and bladder,” said Will.
“Then it’s settled,” agreed Laura.
Sergei helped Ethel pull off the box—it consisted of hard plastic panels—then he and Laura drove off in the buggy and David walked over to the cliff to do more geological work. Will helped Ethel set up the oxygen transfer hose from the ranger to the hab and the latter began to inflate.
It was a slow process, but not much air was needed to unfold the structure. The habitat consisted of layers of Kevlar, nomex, and other plastics that were basically woven as fabrics; tough and bullet proof. Between the layers were a series of thin plastic membranes to make the structure airtight and insulating layers to keep in interior heat. The right and left sides of the inflatable had hard metal plates with pressure doors for airlocks; other hard airlock walls were folded inside. As air rushed into the interior the right and left hand sides pushed apart and separated to mark two ends of the structure, which was a flattened sphere—rather like a flying saucer—twelve meters in diameter and seven high. In half an hour the structure had assumed its maximum dimensions, although it had not filled with enough oxygen to support breathing.
Will went back to his geology; there were samples to measure using the instrument on the other buggy. Ethel called him over about twenty minutes before sunset. “Come see; we can go inside now,” she said on a private line.
He hurried over. She stood by one of the airlocks; the door was open. They stepped inside, closed the outer door, and latched it firmly. Then Ethel turned a mechanical valve to let air into the airlock. They could hear it hissing in. “The interior pressure is pure oxygen at 0.15 atmospheres,” she explained. “It’s enough to breathe, but not enough to work in. Tomorrow we need to add more oxygen and 0.13 atmospheres of nitrogen to push the pressure up to 0.33 atmospheres.”
“The Pavonis has plenty of gas,” added Will.
Ethel tried opening the interior door and it yielded to her push, indicating that the pressure had equalized. They entered and closed the door behind them. They were in a hallway delineated by a plastic fabric floor, walls, and ceiling that stretched all the way across the dome. A little natural light filtered in from outside through fourteen windows.
Ethel had been lowering the pressure in her suit and lifted off the helmet. Will followed a minute later. They took their first breaths, then looked around.
“Well, it looks pretty big,” said Will.
“It is. It’ll be much safer than any other place on Mars. We’re talking about 450 cubic meters of air; a slow leak won’t be a problem for a long time.”
“And with reg covering the dome, we’ll be protected from radiation, too. Wow, the air’s thin.”
“It is; we had better move slowly.” Ethel stepped forward and Will followed. The floor sagged and wiggled under foot because only air pressure was holding it taut. Will pushed on a wall with his finger; it wiggled a bit as well. The hallway opened to the right onto a large elliptical open space, the “great room” six meters across. The Great Room was not centered on the circular dome the way a bullseye would be; rather, one side had windows outside and a wall that curved up to form the ceiling, then arched to a height of five meters at the dome’s apex. Three windows and four skylights brought in a lot of natural light. To the left of the Great Room was the kitchenette; to the right, the bridge and repair areas.
To the left of the main hallway was a small circular room, the Geobio lab; six bedrooms and the sick bay opened doorways onto it, and all had windows bringing them exterior light. Each bedroom was a pie slice two and a half meters deep, almost two meters wide on the inside, and two and a half meters wide on the outside, giving fifty percent more floor space than their cramped quarters on the interplanetary hab. The main hallway continued past the great room to the far side of the habitat, where there was another airlock.
“Wow. This will be a fantastic space.”
“It’s great. Can you imagine the sunlight pouring in? We can have a few potted plants in here.”
“And how many rooms are there?” Will looked closely. “Thirteen.”
“Six bedrooms, a kitchenette, bathroom, living area, and four work spaces. The balcony under the dome has space for three rooms and several storage areas with low ceilings. And under the first floor is a basement that’s also two meters high in the center; there can be two or three additional rooms there, if we need them, and the side spaces are perfect for storage.”
“I remember.” Will walked to the other hallway, which had an open shaft for a staircase. He looked down; the area was unlighted and dark. “Just think, another of these habitats is arriving next month, too.”
“There will be enough room for twelve people at that point; plenty of redundancy. Then if Mars ever grows to twelve people there will be a third habitat so that there’s always spare capacity.” Ethel looked up. “But the technology doesn’t worry me; the people do.”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated, then sighed. “Laura and Sergei. Our survival here may depend on the six of us being a team. But a romance has the potential to disrupt that. That’s what worries me.”
Will considered. “I see your point, though I don’t see an immediate problem. If there were jealousy—say, a jilted lover—that would be different.”
“That could be a problem; there’d be no place to go. We’ll see. I can’t see them taking a chance with pregnancy, either. This is no place to have children, and you can’t fly a baby home in weightlessness through a high radiation environment. And Laura and Sergei are supposed to be number one and number two; it doesn’t make sense that they’d both drive to the Olympus and leave the rest of us. What if they had an accident and were killed? And what about issues of favoritism in assignments? This is not a good situation.”
“I see your point.” Will considered. “But what can we do? Do you want to raise the issue with Laura?”
“No.” Ethel considered. “But maybe I will. I don’t know.”