4
Challenges
Érico Lopes entered the new reception area and was pleased to see Huma M’barak, the new receptionist, sitting at her centrally located desk. “Good morning,” he said to her. “Welcome to the Mars Commission offices.”
She smiled warmly; she liked to flirt a bit. “Thank you. I am delighted. And so far there isn’t much for me to do. The robotic secretaries do most of it!”
“Yeah, but they need someone to watch them. I find it a bit strange calling Will’s old number and seeing the face of an imaginary secretary named ‘Anisa’ who asks me questions and sometimes even appears to take hand-written notes!”
Huma laughed. “I’m going to deactivate that feature or cut it back; Anisa shouldn’t need as much time to process your sentences as the ‘note-taking’ suggests. The notes come to me by email and they are still not always very clear; we have to tweak the software.”
“It’ll learn, too.”
“Yes. Do you like your office?”
Érico looked at the dark room to the right of Will’s office. “I suppose I will once I move in; I think I’m scheduled for tomorrow or the next sol. Is Will available?”
Huma leaned over at a screen to see what it reported. “He’s reading email right now and has no appointments for half an hour, and you can walk in anyway.”
“Thanks. Will you know what I’m doing, too?”
She pushed an icon on the screen and it switched to Érico Lopes. “It says you aren’t in the office yet, so you aren’t doing anything. That means you must have time to visit the boss.”
Érico laughed. “Thanks!” He walked across the space to Will’s office, located on the eastern end of the building. He had a pair of large windows behind him looking across the park-like end of Catalina Biome and through the dome to parts of the old outpost, then at the Martian desert beyond. The northern escarpment was just visible on the left side of the window.
“Good morning. How’s the new office?”
Will looked up. “Good sol, Érico. I think I’ll like it quite a lot. Putting my desk against the right wall means I can see the door and the escarpment, and it gives more room for a conference table. Come in. How can I help you?”
“I have some data for you from American Spacelines.” He stepped in and closed the door, which was unusual. Will came over to the table and they sat.
“What are they up to?”
“Pete and I exchanged video messages with a rep of the company yesterday. They want to expand their Mars service next columbiad. They’re proposing to fly two pairs of annexes here with 64 people on a 130-day dash to Mars. The annexes would stay here a month and then fly back to Earth in 150 days. They think they can fly people for ten million redbacks per round trip.”
“How will they get them here that fast?”
“A lot of lunar hydrogen and oxygen. The delta-v actually isn’t too bad from Gateway via a close-Earth flyby; about 3.5 kilometers per second, so the mass ratio is two. With lunar fuel down to 700 redbacks per kilo, it’s quite affordable. During the flight an ion engine will speed up the vehicles to shorten the transit time, then slow them down the last half of the trip to make the aerobraking easier. The annexes will have the new two-ring aerobrakes that were just tried out on Columbus 10.”
“That’s the only way to aerobrake at those speeds without crushing the passengers; start with a big heat shield, then fold the outer ring out of the way in the lower atmosphere,” agreed Will. “Sounds like they have an impressive plan, though the annexes will be very crowded. I suppose if the flight’s only 100 days, it’s manageable. Their plan will kill the proposal for a cycler, though.”
“Definitely; cyclers can’t go that fast and they can’t reduce the radiation exposure as much even with heavy shielding.”
“And they’re too expensive to maintain. Any indication how many tourists they expect to fly?”
“Their goal is thirty-six tourists and a fifteen million redback ticket; that would include a one-month visit to the moon and 1.5 million redbacks to us for a one-month tour of Mars. The accommodations back to Earth would be ‘luxury’; the tourists would be the only passengers.”
“Can we convince them to buy a caravel instead?”
“They’re interested, but not for next columbiad. The annexes give them more flexibility.”
“That makes sense. I suspect Lufthansa will have to switch to this faster trajectory, too.”
“We may have to as well, since it allows a round trip; that’d utilize our equipment more efficiently. We’re studying options that send passengers or cargo to Mars via Mercury in eight months, then back to Earth in time for the next trip before opposition.”
“Good; with better ion systems and cheaper chemical propellant, we can pursue options that used to be too expensive.”
“Exactly. Some of the analysis of trajectories we can follow in the asteroid belt will be relevant. And speaking of the asteroid belt, is it true you’ve offered Langlais a position in connection with asteroid exploration?”
Will sensed that was really why Érico had stopped by. “It’s not public, yet; what did you hear?”
“Maybe it’s more public than you think. There’s a story on the web that you and Sebastian are starting an Asteroid Belt Commission; that he’s contacting governments with the idea.”
“Really? I suppose the leak came from a national space agency official. It’s basically true. Sebastian has incredible contacts in the various national space agencies; there are thousands of people who know him well, face to face. He’s the logical person to break the ground and propose an Asteroid Belt Commission, which we’ll initially run through the Mars Commission.”
“Who’s going to run the Asteroid Belt Commission?”
“I’ve. . . offered that job to Sebastian as well. Of course, it isn’t up to me to decide. The ABC will have a Board of Governors consisting of national representatives and a Mars Commission representative; they’ll decide who directs it. But Sebastian will be acting director until the Board is formed and can meet.”
Érico nodded. He hesitated; there clearly was anger on his face. “And why did you give the job to Sebastian without consulting anyone else or considering alternatives? The asteroid exploration project has been basically part of the spaceport for the last few years, so it’s been one of my responsibilities. Will, I can’t begin to tell you how angry this makes me. I told Carmen I thought it was time for us to consider retirement and moving back to Earth. She calmed me down, but Will, we’ve been friends a very long time; seventeen years. I’ve been running the spaceport and near-Mars space for fifteen years. I enjoy the work, but it’s also a long time to be doing the same thing, even if the tasks have expanded about twenty fold in that time. I think you—”
“Érico, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
“Didn’t know? Well, I guess I know you don’t know. First Ruhullah comes along and you bypass me to give the number two position to him. Then Pete comes along and you give him interplanetary transportation instead of me, and it would have been a perfectly logical expansion of my role—”
“Érico, I’m sorry. Ruhullah asked for responsibility and I asked him to be my assistant. I don’t think you would have enjoyed that job; he was essentially my gopher. And he was incredibly good, so when my responsibilities shifted toward the Commission it made sense to expand the responsibilities he already was exercising. As for Pete, the most important tasks he had to handle involves face-to-face relations with people on Earth, and by definition you can’t do that here. Furthermore, people there knew him; their contact with you was much less. The same applies to Sebastian; people on Earth know him very well.”
“Will, all these jobs can be conceived two ways. One way involves very skilled and experienced assistants on Earth who have contacts. Louisa Turner does that for you, and we have other people with similar skills.”
“Perhaps that’s true sometimes, but there are some situations where the person in charge has to close the deal.”
“And how have you been doing that in the last five years?”
“By videophone with people who have gotten used to working with me that way.”
“A lot of people have gotten used to working with me that way, also.” Érico leaned back in his chair. “Will, I think you have a prejudice against Mars employees. The Earth employees are seen as more experienced and able to get the work done.”
Will was startled. “Érico, that isn’t true. Alexandra’s in charge of construction on both worlds. Lisa’s in charge of ecology. Yevgeny’s in charge of exports.”
“Then maybe your prejudice is against me.”
“Érico, I have no prejudice against you, and I’m very sorry if you feel slighted. I really do, and I apologize. It was not intended.”
Érico looked at him long and hard. He had always had a certain level of insecurity, but Will hadn’t seen it since Érico had decided to get married some fifteen years earlier. He had forgotten about his friend’s feelings. “Okay,” Érico finally said. “Thank you.”
“Look, let me think about the situation. There must be something new we can give you. I agree, after fifteen years even an exciting job gets stale. I don’t think I’d still be Commander of Mars right now if I hadn’t been promoted and become head of the Commission. It was beginning to wear me out. This place is twice as big and complex as it was just five weeks ago. Let’s both think about the issue and talk tomorrow or the next sol.”
“Okay. I appreciate that, Will, I really do.” Érico rose. “Maybe I can write up something for you to share. In and around everything else, of course.”
“Yes, the first ACVs arrive tomorrow. This is as urgent as you want it to be. I need a sol or two to think about the problem.”
“Alright. Thanks. Have a good sol; maybe tomorrow afternoon when the ACVs are safely in orbit.”
“Good.” Will watched his friend open the door and go out. Once Érico had left, Will looked out the window at the escarpment. Maybe he did have a prejudice for terrestrial employees. He’d have to think about that. He’d also have to think carefully whether something new could be given to Érico without offending Ruhullah or the other senior staff, all of whom yearned for promotion.
The worry agitated much of his morning, but he had a lot to concentrate on: it seemed that half of the arriving employees of the Commission wanted to change their work assignments in some way. Some hoped to get out of kitchen or agricultural work, traditionally viewed as the lowest skilled, in favor of more prestigious occupations. Others had fallen in love or had a falling out with someone and were anxious to be reassigned to a different outpost; the other four outposts together had less than half the population of Aurorae, which meant the shopping and the social life were much less interesting, but the possibilities for promotion were sometimes greater. There were a few requesting transfer to or from a mining company as well; some liked the 1.5 million redback annual salary, while others resented the seventy-hour work weeks. As long as the traffic in both directions was equal, it was easy to approve.
Then it was time for lunch. Will hurried to the Patio and braved quite a crowd to get his food. It was hard to find Ethel and harder to sit with her. The kids preferred to eat lunch with their schoolmates, so the best Will managed was to wave quickly to his offspring. A constant stream of visitors to his table made eating difficult as well. Stirring the conversation were flyers—made of real paper!—on each table announcing the opening of Deseret, a “hypermarkette,” Satursol at noon. Many asked simply what a hypermarkette was and how they had missed the term on terrestrial television.
Will ended up coming back to his office early. There were two urgent messages from Lisa Kok. “Will, call me as soon as you can. The Green World Community has been setting up its own agricultural area in Bangalore on land it rented from us. That’s not a problem, but we just found out they violated quarantine and imported their own seeds to plant there. I think we’ve stopped them in time. I anticipate a lot of trouble. Bye.”
“Anisa, open a line to Lisa Kok,” he said. A moment later he heard a dial tone, then ringing.
“Kok.” There was no video, which meant she wasn’t at her desk.
“Lisa, it’s Will. Shall I come down?”
“Yes, to Bangalore. I’m almost there and the Green World folks know I’m on my way.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.” Will closed the line and grabbed the attaché, then dashed out of his office.
Bangalore was not next door; there were three biomes in between, big ones. He started to lope, a sort of running hop, which was the fastest way to make one’s legs move in Martian gravity; the pattern of locomotion was also less energy-intensive than running. Even so, in the thin air—the outpost interior had the same oxygen level as the Earth’s atmosphere at two thousand meters altitude—he was panting when he arrived.
He blinked for a moment when coming into Bangalore. It was 2 p.m. and the silvered insulation blanket had gone up part of the eastern side of the dome, reflecting brilliant sunlight downward onto the plants and habitats. The crowd gathering in the western end was quite unmistakable. They cleared to let him in as he approached.
“Dr. Elliott, we have a signed contract to plant 400 square meters of ground here,” insisted Dr. Rivers. “And we demand the right to fulfill that contract.”
“No problem,” replied Will. “As long as the things being planted don’t violate the quarantine. Any agricultural materials brought from Earth must go through rigorous examination and screening before use. Have the materials gone through such screening?”
“We have very high organic standards of quality of our seeds; no genetically modified species, no diseases, no stray species—”
“Are your standards the same as ours?”
“We have our own standards of quality and they are higher!”
“Then don’t plant your seeds in here; there are genetically modified species in here that can contaminate their genes. And we must be absolutely assured that your seeds have no stray bacteria, viruses, and other undesirables. A microscopic examination of each seed accompanied by special surface sterilization techniques and spot examination by scanning electron microscopy will guarantee the safety of our ecosystems.”
“There’s no time. We have contracts with Deseret to supply vegetables and other foods.”
“That may have been premature. Lisa, how long will the seed screening take?”
“We can assign a team on Earth to assist with the imagery. We can get some seeds through the process in four sols. Screening all of them depends on how many there are.”
“We’ve got fifty kilos of seeds,” replied Rivers.
“That’ll take weeks or even a month or two to screen, and will cost a lot of money,” said Kok.
“It’s a shame we didn’t have the entire flight out to do it,” said Will.
“Dr. Elliott, it won’t be necessary to screen all fifty kilos because we plan to use most of the seeds at Aram, not here.”
“Then we have to worry about agricultural products from Aram bringing contaminants to Aurorae,” replied Lisa.
“It all has to be screened,” repeated Will. “That’s the regulation. Lisa can tell you exactly how many species of terrestrial life can be found here. She can show you a list. She can tell you which were intentional transports and which were accidental contaminants.”
“And I can tell you how many terrestrial species we have found outside,” she added. “The spores were dormant, by and large, but they were there, carried out by boots or contamination on the surfaces of pressure suits.”
“Do any terrestrial life forms grow outside?” asked Victor MacLeod.
“Of course,” replied Lisa. “Around Aurorae the humidity is higher because of pollution from the biomes; there’s some frost at night. There are some uv-resistant species out there slowly growing. And there are a dozen species at the Hellaspontus fumeroles that have been there for seventy million years.”
“Dr. Rivers, we’ll get you your first batch of seeds on Wednesol next week,” concluded Will. “You can start planting then. That isn’t much of a delay.”
“Whatever you say, Dr. Elliott,” replied Rivers with a slight growl.
------------------------------
The next morning—Frisol—a few people gathered on the Patio at 6 a.m. for a very early breakfast before the sun rose. The lights on the Patio were kept low and the silvered blanket on the dome was rolled back because the first automated cargo vehicle was scheduled to aerobrake into Mars orbit at that hour. It was a fairly spectacular event; the vehicle hit the Martian atmosphere at six kilometers per second, enough to make the heat shield blaze brightly within seconds. The atmosphere being as thin as it was, the ACV had to dip within fifteen kilometers of the surface to encounter dense enough air to decelerate significantly; it then flew back out of the atmosphere in a matter of two minutes. Embarcadero was a bright star moving overhead at the time; it circled Mars on a highly elliptical orbit once per Martian day, and its low point occurred just before dawn over the cratered equatorial highlands just north of Aurorae Outpost.
When the ACV began to glow like a meteorite, someone shouted and everyone stopped eating to watch. The kitchen staff turned down the patio lights so they wouldn’t wash out the view. The cone-shaped ACV moved quickly across the sky like a meteorite, west to east, leaving a faintly glowing trail behind it.
When the vehicle was high in the northern sky and apparently at its brightest, it began to pulse. “Oh oh; trouble,” exclaimed John Hunter, snapping alert over his cup of coffee.
“I think it’s tumbling,” added Vanessa.
“Yes,” agreed Kurt Hollingworth. He stood up to watch it.
The course bent northward and sparks seemed to break off the ACV, leaving a trail of sparkles behind it. The brightness greatly increased as the ACV fell into deeper air than expected and its entire velocity rubbed off. The vehicle began to fade in brightness as its speed decreased to a mere two or three thousand kilometers per hour; not enough to keep the heat shield hot. The faintly glowing vehicle continued to head for the ground north of them. Then it was gone.
“Oh, shit!” said Kurt. “Forty tonnes of cargo, smashed into the Martian desert.”
“Something went wrong,” agreed John. “The long-range cameras should have caught the whole thing.”
“Mars Control must be going crazy,” said Kurt. “We better get the big screen t.v. back on.”
In Mars Control, alarms had gone off as soon as the ACV entered the Martian atmosphere. The computer called Will immediately; he was in the control room in his pajamas not long after the ACV smashed into the surface. Within five minutes the emergency backup crew had arrived as well. The dozen personnel immediately began to analyze the scanty telemetry that had gotten through the plasma sheath surrounding the vehicle.
By 9 a.m., Forest Rivers and Yoshiyaki Suzuki were in Will’s office. “We still can’t tell you what happened,” Will began. “We’ll probably figure out the anomaly in a few sols or weeks, though. We can tell you that the ACV lost control over its orientation and tumbled, which probably caused the fairing to disintegrate. Most likely some of the cargo blew off the vehicle and was scattered across the desert. The rest impacted about three hundred kilometers southeast of here at about three thousand kilometers per hour; that’s about 850 meters per second. We can assume a total loss of contents.”
The other two men were silent a moment. “I see why you recommend spreading out one’s cargo among as many vehicles as possible,” exclaimed Forest.
“I’m very sorry for both of you and your operations. The loss of this ACV represents only a tenth of the total cargo, but I gather it’s two thirds of the Green World Community’s and half the monastery’s. Did you both have insurance?”
“Of course,” replied Yoshi.
“Cargo and vehicle,” agreed Forest. “Not that it will do us a lot of good for the next two years.”
“On the contrary,” replied Will. “First, you’ll get your money back. Second, the insurance company will conduct an investigation of the loss, so that means we’ll be pretty sure what happened. If the Commission is liable, we’ll pay.”
“It may be Lufthansa Space Express, too,” said Forest, “It was a used ACV, and I always had my doubts about its reliability.”
“They should be reliable right now; Lufthansa’s rebuilding its reputation after some scandals three years ago,” said Will. “Third, we’re all in this together; there are only 600 of us on Mars, so we can’t just say ‘sorry, too bad.’ We pull together. The loss represents ten percent of imports, which in turn are much less than half our total assets, so this is a loss of three percent of our infrastructure. I don’t remember the details, but the various cargo vehicles, based on our formulas, should have six mobilhabs, ten conestogas, and eight rangers. I think we also flew up two mobilhabs, two conestogas, and four rangers as replacements for vehicles that are wearing out; our current fleet includes six, ten, and twelve respectively. The Green World Community had one of each, if I recall, and the monastery had two conestogas, one of which is coming on an ACV next week. I am sure we can get Green World at least three vehicles, reliable new ones, because I know you’ll need three in Aram. We can probably can get you one of each kind. Yoshi, I’m thinking maybe we can rent you a second vehicle during your construction phase; possibly a third one as well. Since you’ll be just a few kilometers away, if anything breaks we can fix it quickly, so we’ll all have pretty good flexibility. Possibly you won’t need two conestogas once you have everything set up.”
“I think you are right, but we will have to look at schedules,” replied Yoshi.
“Thank you, Dr. Elliott, you’ve relieved my mind,” added Forest. “But we have some items that will be difficult to replace. Lathes and metal working equipment, for example. Agricultural equipment.”
“Discuss the list with Alexandra and Lisa. No one person will know what we have, but they’ll have a pretty good idea between them. We can get the inventory people on Earth involved as well. Humans have been here on Mars for nineteen years and in that time we’ve imported equipment, used it up, and either stored it or tossed it in the dump. If there are salvageable things in the dump, they’re yours for free. Outside nothing rusts or goes bad; it just gets cold and dusty. Reverend Nah has already had his people combing the dump and they’ve been rescuing old stuff we tossed and figuring out how to reuse it. Other equipment is used and sitting in storage at the western ends of our two long underground corridors. Yet other things have been sold to individuals for their small businesses and if the price is right, they’ll sell them to you. Let’s get a list of the lost items up on the website. There are even folks on Earth who follow us really closely and remember reading about equipment we once had. I think we’ll manage to replace a lot of the equipment.”
“We also had inflatable shelters on the ACV,” noted Forest.
“We can sell you replacements that are locally made and not as sophisticated, but will be cheaper than an import anyway. You already had planned to purchase an oasis from us. Now you can buy two or three.”
“When can we get them, though? We’d rather not wait a year.”
“Forest, this isn’t like buying a B-160 from us that takes time to make. We manufacture oases almost continually and we always have some in stock. You can have two oases tomorrow and vehicles to move them in a week or two.”
“That’s very generous; I’m relieved, after the dispute yestersol.”
“Whatever you want to call it, the principle yestersol was agreed on by everyone: we protect our ecosystems from contamination. This sol is another sol, and the principle we agree on this sol is that we pull together.” Will shrugged. “That’s the way it is here.”
--------------------------------
The residents of Mars talked about little else the rest of the sol; Mars This Sol, their multimedia web site, based in Houston, covered the ACV loss almost continuously. The next morning—Satursol—a second ACV aerobraked safely to everyone’s relief. By noontime, when everyone was ending their work, a team of two conestogas and eight personnel were approaching the crash site.
But few were waiting to hear the results over live television; they knew nothing of any size would be found on the bottom of Mars’s latest impact crater. Attention shifted to the Deseret Hypermarkette, which was opening that afternoon in Cochabamba Biome.
“I feel a bit guilty going to their opening,” said Ethel. “I feel we should be loyal to Silvio.”
“He’s run a good store for a number of years and I’m sure he’ll continue for years more,” replied Will. “But now there’s competition, that’s all.” He pushed open the airlock door and the family entered Cochabamba.
There was already quite a crowd, and it was growing fast. As they entered, the Cahills walked by. “Hi Tabitha!” exclaimed Marshall, excited to see the older girl. She turned, smiled, then turned away without speaking to him.
“Well, at least she smiled at you,” said Ethel.
“I guess,” Marshall replied, disappointed.
“You see her in school every sol,” said Will.
“She and I are in the same English literature, geology, and algebra classes, but even though the classes have four or five students she never speaks to me.”
“There’s an older boy in your classes too, right?” asked Will.
Marshall nodded. “Ron; he’s in lit with us. He takes his science and math at MarTech instead. Sammie says he’s seen them walking together and that she has a crush on him.”
“There you go; that’s the problem,” replied Will. “Don’t worry about it.”
Marshall nodded, discouraged. Will looked at his lanky, pimply son and had to smile.
They approached the tent. There hadn’t been adequate space to rent anywhere in the Outpost—housing would be short for several months because of all the arrivals—so the business group had set up a tent instead and had spread carpets out over the grass. The store extended into two courtyards between housing cylinders as well.
“Toblerone!” exclaimed Will, surprised by a candy display nearby. “I haven’t seen or eaten any in twenty years!”
“Five hundred redbacks for 350 grams; how can they sell them so cheaply?” asked Ethel, surprised. “Oh, I see; they’re on sale.”
“It looks like most things are!” added Will.
They wandered into the store further. The perfume section was nearby and Ethel was startled to see so many fragrances.
“I haven’t heard of half these colognes,” noted Will.
“They’re counting on the women to buy the colognes for their men, dear,” replied Ethel. Her eyes lit up. “My God, look at all the cosmetics, Lizzie!”
“Let’s take a look,” said the twelve year old. The two females headed for a series of shelves packed with lipstick, eye shadow, facial creams, and related materials. Will looked at Marshall, slightly mystified.
“Dad, they have basketballs,” said Marshall. He pointed. “Can we buy one?”
“Let’s look.” They walked over and picked up one. Will hefted it. “God, it’s been so long, I can’t tell how this feels. It must feel too light.”
“Dad, it’s only five hundred.”
“Only! I can see I’ll be spending thousands this sol.”
The women returned a few minutes later. Marshall frowned. “What do you call that wagon?”
“It’s a ‘shopping cart,’” replied Ethel. “It’s not quite as nice as the ones on Earth, but it’ll do.”
“Silvio doesn’t have anything like that,” said Marshall.
“I don’t know how they made these,” said Ethel. “I’m surprised.”
They walked deeper into the store. The dress rack tied up the women for fifteen minutes while Will and Marshall looked at golf clubs, the three bicycles available, and microwave ovens. Then they all walked into the restaurant area filling a courtyard, where a snaking line of tables was already crowded with customers. Two cooks cooked the orders behind the tables.
“Wow; a tilapia, rice, and vegetables special for 42 redbacks; that’s a deal,” said Will.
“With fresh apple pie! Let’s eat!” said Marshall.
“Okay,” agreed Will. He pointed to a tangled mass of shopping carts. “We can park our thousands of redbacks of stuff right here.”
They went through the line, then hunted for seating. Henry Smith, who was running the whole operation, saw their dilemma. “Over here, Dr. Elliott,” he said. “Four seats have opened up.”
“Thanks. And we can leave the shopping cart there?”
“Of course, that’s what the space is for. And push the cart home with you, in order to get your purchases home. Anyone who pushes one back gets a five redback credit.”
“Really?” said Marshall, surprised.
“Sure. In fact, we’re looking for help; are you interested in a job? We need people to wait on tables, help at the check out, greet people arriving, and return carts here.”
“I’ve already got a job at the Patio kitchen.”
“Good, you’ve got experience. How much do they pay? We’ll pay fifty an hour.”
“Fifty! I’ll think about that! The kitchen pays me thirty!”
“There you go,” said Smith.
“It looks like business is booming,” observed Will.
“Yes, we’re having a great opening sol. It was worth waiting a month and making sure we were ready. The inventory’s going fast, but we have some on every single ACV that arrives, so we should be set for the rest of the columbiad.”
“I think you did some excellent marketing research; the choices of products are new and exciting.”
“We put a lot of thought into it. The cosmetics are flying off the shelf, as we thought they would.”
“Your facility’s working out adequately, also. I’m sorry no rental space was available.”
“I don’t think we could have managed an opening sol like this inside anyway. The cylinders are so small and confined, and I wouldn’t want to have hundreds of people in them; too complicated in terms of life support. Cochabamba’s one of the few biomes that can handle a crowd of this size safely, and the outdoors has an airiness and brightness. I wish we could get the borough to define fire regulations, though. The tent’s flammable.”
“They’re working on regulations. Clearly, you’ll need a special building.”
“Exactly, and we’re working to design one.” Smith smiled. “Thanks for coming.”
“Thank you,” replied Will. And the four of them walked over to the four seats Smith had identified for them.
“Silvio’s in trouble,” said Ethel, looking around. “This is a scale and sophistication he can’t match.”
“There are six of them working on this operation; he has no one,” replied Will. “It’s as if someone dropped a mall on Mars.”
“Well, it isn’t that big; this is a ‘hypermarkette,’” noted Ethel. “But it will have the scaled down equivalents of a department store, a supermarket, and a restaurant.”
“They already have jams and containers of tea for sale!” said Lizzie. “And I guess they’re making new products all the time.”
“I figure we have almost 10,000 redbacks of stuff in our shopping cart,” said Will. “That’s 2,500 per person. Let’s assume the 500 people here in Aurorae all spend 2,000 this sol. That’s a million redbacks in one sol. Let’s say they manage a quarter of that in a typical week; that’s twelve million per year. That’s actually not much money; they’ll be lucky if a quarter of it’s available to cover salaries, a mortgage on a space, electricity, water, etc.”
“Sounds like a lot to me,” said Marshall.
Ethel shook her head. “And consider that the food sold here and a lot of the clothes are Mars made, so they’re a fifth as expensive and generate much smaller profits. I can see why they like the cosmetics; small, complex, have to be imported, brand recognition. . .”
“Good profits,” agreed Will.
They ate their lunch and talked among themselves and with their neighbors; Marsians loved to talk to anyone, since it was a small, safe society and everyone knew everyone or at least had mutual acquaintances. The buzz about the store pushed the ACV crash from everyone’s minds.
Then Marshall stopped listening and stared. Tabitha was walking from table to table carrying coffee and tea pots, offering free refills. One never saw that at the Patio, where there were practically no employees and everything was self-service. When she came to their table she smiled at him. “Do you want more coffee or tea?”
“Sure, I’ll have coffee,” said Marshall, pointing to an empty cup in front of him. He had wondered why the cup had been there; he almost never drank coffee.
“Here you are.” She smiled and filled the cup, then refilled Will and Ethel’s cups as well. She headed on down the table, Marshall’s eyes following her. Will tapped his son on the shoulder.
“So, are you taking up the job offer?”
“I think so!”
Will chuckled. “Good.”
-------------------------------------
Monsol morning, Will was late to his office. Érico was already in his new office looking at a video of the crash site. Will stuck his head in to say hello and entered to view the images.
“There’s nothing left.”
“Nothing,” agreed Érico. “The ACV made a crater three meters deep and ten meters wide. The biggest fragments are about six centimeters across.”
“Mars has a new meteor crater, basically. When does the emergency team come back?”
“They plan to spend another sol at the impact point to pick up some pieces, then find the heat shield fragments so we can determine why the shield peeled off. It looks like negligence to me, but it’ll take a few months to be sure. The trajectory was spot on and the density of the upper atmosphere was predicted correctly, so it isn’t our fault.” Érico looked at Will. “Needless to say, this weekend I haven’t had more time to think about our conversation or write up any ideas.”
“I’ve had a little more time than you to think about it, and I have a proposition for you,” replied Will. “The operation here has doubled in size. That means almost permanent occupation of Embarcadero Station and frequent visits to Phobos and Deimos. There are now six outposts on the Martian surface, which means more oversight and coordination. Once upon a time there could be a single Commander of Mars operations who was also commander of Aurorae Outpost. We now have an appointed Commander of Aurorae and an appointed Governor of Mars. Ruhullah Islami started out as my assistant when I didn’t have time to be full-time Commander of Aurorae, then became Commander of Aurorae. Maybe the time has come to appoint a Lieutenant Governor of Mars Operations to assist me as Governor.”
“So, what would the Lieutenant Governor do?”
“Coordinate anything the Governor asks him to coordinate. I was thinking of the following: first, coordinating a new Mars Spaceport Authority, which will run Aurorae Spaceport and establish spaceports at Dawes and Cassini; second, coordinating Mars space, which means coordinating Embarcadero and the moons; and third, maintaining the system of trails and airports and regulating interoutpost commerce. The other responsibilities I have as governor are the health system and the university. I plan to retain the development and coordination of the outposts, which means establishing environmental management regulations and oversight in particular. That’s the other big new task that needs to be done.”
Érico thought about the idea and smiled. “It’s basically a promotion and expansion of my existing responsibilities.”
“It’s a rethinking of it. The Coordinator of the Spaceport currently runs Aurorae, Embarcadero, and near-Mars space, but has no responsibility over Dawes and Cassini. Both need spaceports and the outposts themselves have started to develop them. There’s a turf battle to fight there. I think it’s better that all spaceports be coordinated nationally, as it were, rather than locally. The time has come to establish an Airport Authority, a Trail Authority, and an Oasis Authority to maintain and expand those aspects of our infrastructure as well, and that will keep the Lieutenant Governor busy for a while. The oasis authority will also involve a turf battle, since it falls under Roger Anderson and the Exploration Department right now.”
“It sounds like we’ll have to have some meetings,” said Érico.
“Yes. So you’ll take it?”
“I will. And thanks, Will. This is exciting.”
© 2005 Robert H. Stockman