10

Conference

 

The six people in the three vehicles watched the rolling rockfields of Aurorae Chaos with rising excitement. They had just covered 5,400 kilometers—a bit more than the width of the United States from Maine to San Diego—in nine days. With pairs of drivers, they kept the vehicles going at forty kilometers per hour during most of the daylight hours; at night, after docking together for supper, the vehicles separated and drove themselves at a gentle twenty-five kilometers per hour while everyone slept. Every day they stopped for at least three hours to explore or repair equipment; there were oases with solar panels, oxygen, methane, water, a landing circle, and a communications system at 25, 50, and 71 north that needed maintenance. The exploratory stops helped resolve some riddles at a few sites and tied up loose threads.

As they approached the Outpost, Will and Ethel were surprised to see two slowly turning wind turbines on top of Boat Rock. They were the first visible signs of habitation. A few minutes later the entire Outpost became visible on the northern slope at the base of Boat Rock, including the Geology Storage Facility, which appeared to have a thicker coating of reg over it than it had when they had left nine weeks earlier. The greenhouses were noticeably verdant, even from a kilometer’s distance.

The vehicles backed against three airlocks on the eastern side of the Outpost and docked to them. In a few minutes the crew exited to an excited welcome.

“Welcome home!” exclaimed Monika to Will and Ethel, as they stepped out. She gave them both a hug; Shinji was there to shake hands. Then the next airlock over opened and Armando stepped out, followed by Paul. Monika turned to him. “Welcome home, my love!” she said, and they embraced and kissed passionately. Will and Ethel were a bit startled; they had no idea there was such depth of feeling between the two of them.

Érico and Carmen were welcoming Sebastian and Roger, who were stepping out of another airlock about six meters away. Madhu was there as well; she and Roger embraced and kissed warmly. Will and Ethel walked over to the other group and Érico turned to them.

“I’m sorry I missed the rest of the trip to the layered terrain, but only so many could go. How was the return journey?”

“I’m not sure what to say,” replied Will. “Five thousand klicks is a long drive, so we’re rather tired. It’s a privilege to see that much of Mars, though it was a lot of magnificent desolation.”

“Well, it was a lot of boring desolation with moments of magnificent desolation,” corrected Ethel. “Fascinating in its own way, though. Not many people can say they’ve been from almost pole to equator on any planet.”

“Though we haven’t really been to the pole,” noted Érico. “That’s for another time, I guess.”

“This place has really developed!” exclaimed Will. “The wind turbines are really exciting to see!”

“We got them up last month,” said Érico. “They’re making only a few kilowatts, but they’re an interesting experiment. I hear you could’ve used them at seventy-six north!”

“Oh, yes! It was incredibly windy when we were there; the carbon dioxide cap was still sublimating and bulking up the atmosphere. The meteorology unit we left will soon tell us how windy it is all year round.”

“I’ve got to see that place,” exclaimed Érico.

“Some day,” said Carmen.

They all headed for the Habitat. Monika said to Paul, “So, where are my samples of polar ice and regolith filled with living organisms?”

Paul laughed. “The samples are in plastic bags inside the sample case on the portahab’s roof, where they’ll stay frozen. Don’t hold your breath about life.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied matter-of-factly. They had not yet found anything that had been alive in at least the last 2.5 billion years. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad to be back, too. I missed you.”

“A lot?”

He nodded. “A lot.”

She smiled, pleased by his answer.

“It’s true; he kept mentioning your name in his sleep,” said Shinji.

Will looked at Madhu, who was walking by. “Good to see you.”

“Oh, thanks, Will. It’s good to see you, too. Did you enjoy the trip?”

“Yes, it was an incredible experience. We’ve totally blown away the Ganges Chasma expedition of Columbus 1. This is in an entirely different league.”

“And it’s the beginning of real planetary-scale exploration,” added Roger.

Ethel touched Madhu’s shoulder. “How are the greenhouses?”

“Oh, go look! You won’t recognize them. We finally got the salts washed from the soils and the nutrients in them are balanced. The soils have healthy microbiologies established in them and are getting richer all the time. The rice paddy is very productive now, too, which means lots of tilapia. And the rabbits, chickens, and turkeys are reproducing faster than we can use them. I’ve expanded into the tunnel connecting to the Mars Life Science Facility.”

“Really?” Will looked at Ethel. “We’ll have to take a look.”

“We’ll walk through the greenhouses on the way to Habitat 1,” she replied. They returned to the conestoga, where they had their personal possessions, and grabbed them, then headed through Greenhouses 1 and 3 to their apartment.

Greenhouse 3 had the rice paddy and they were so startled by what they saw and felt around them that they stopped after closing the airtight door behind them. Warm, humid air hit their faces as soon as they entered; it felt like the tropics. The rice paddy filled five meters of the six meter width of the greenhouse; they had to squeeze past on the right side.

“I had just finished making the liner when we left,” said Ethel. She reached down and felt the heavy plastic sheets, which she and Madhu had meticulously glued together in late May to make a series of large tarps. The rice paddy was simply a square stone wall—Will had helped pack the stones together—almost a meter high, with tarps laid over it three thick, with fifteen centimeters of soil added on top of them. The water was only twenty centimeters deep, but that was enough for rice and fish to thrive. Ten meters long, the paddy could produce two hundred kilograms of rice a year and half that much fish.

The other half of the greenhouse was planted in fruits and vegetables. Pots made of Martian plastic placed along the edge of the rice paddy held four dwarf orange trees, two lemons, two limes, two mangos, and two date palms. None of the trees were mature enough to bear fruit, but they were growing fast. The rest of the greenhouse was divided into squares about two and a half meters across, each of which had hard plastic bottoms resting on top of rocks to keep them off the greenhouse’s plastic floor, which was cold because of its contact with the subfreezing ground. The squares also had hard plastic sides holding in twenty centimeters of soil. Each had its own species; the eight of them had tomatoes, corn, cantaloupe, eggplants, peanuts, soybeans, lettuce, and cucumbers. The last meter of greenhouse before they passed into Greenhouse 1 had several tall, odiferous composting units and a slightly pungent rabbit house.

Greenhouse 1 was equally lush, but less humid and tropical. They walked down the middle between the squares of potatoes (2), wheat (2), peas, beans, carrots, strawberries, herbs, rye, watermelon, lentils, more soybeans, spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. Chicken and turkey coops lined the two ends, with grapevines growing up them and apple, peach, pear, and plum trees growing between them. Everything was growing with great vigor except the strawberries, which had finished bearing. After three months of soaking up sunshine, the strawberries would be hauled to the basement of Habitat 2, where artificial sunlight would be gradually diminished over a month and the temperature around them would drop; then they’d be covered with artificial snow for six weeks, gradually warmed and given more sunlight, then brought to the greenhouse to bear again. That way two squares of strawberries could be rotated through the same spot in the greenhouse, and they bore fruit two thirds of the year between them. Greenhouse 2 was staggered to bear fruit during the gaps.

They entered Habitat 1 and walked to their apartment. After unpacking, they headed for the Great Room in Habitat 3 to join everyone else. They passed through Greenhouses 2 and 4 to see them; they had almost the same crops and were equally verdant. They took a peek at the two-meter wide pedestrian tunnel to the Mars Life Science Facility as well; it was lined with pots full of herbs and self-pollinating vegetables, making walking rather difficult.

Érico, Carmen, Sebastian, Shinji, and Armando were already in the Great Room; the first two were busily cooking while the other three sat drinking coffee. “I take it that we have the rest of the day off?” Will said to Sebastian.

“Speak for yourself,” replied Érico from the sink, where he was running a potato peeler.

Sebastian nodded. “I didn’t say anything because it goes without saying. I’ve been thinking of declaring a week off for almost everyone, but I suppose we should work most of the next week; that’s all the time we have left until conjunction.”

“What sort of communication will we have with Earth?” asked Will.

“The ESA’s Cytheria 3 Venus orbital platform has better capacity than Cytheria 2 did during the last conjunction, but since they’re running a sunwing in the Venus atmosphere and it uses up a lot of bandwidth, we’ll be rather limited; the equivalent of one video channel. We can also relay audio and data via the Heliosat 4 solar observer unless it has to monitor a storm.”

“That’s about what we had during the last conjunction.”

“Well, you went on vacation. I figured that’s what we should do, too. But meanwhile, we need a nice, long staff meeting to evaluate what we’ve done and what we need to do.”

“Here, here,” said Roger. He and Madhu strode in and were in time to hear the last comment.

“I’d like to review our plans for the rest of the mission, up to blast off,” suggested Érico. “The nominal mission is almost accomplished.”

“There are plenty of extra accomplishments to consider,” said Sebastian. “I have an updated list from Mission Control.”

“I’d like to propose a slightly longer timeframe,” said Will. “Not just until blastoff, but until Columbus 3 arrives. Ethel and I will be here. Paul and Monika had pledged to stay before leaving Earth, so we know we’ll have four here. If we have any more, we may have a staff sufficient for exploration, and we’ll certainly have a staff sufficient for further work on the Outpost. It’d be wise to plan the next phase of Columbus 2 in the light of the phase that follows.”

Sebastian hesitated, then nodded. “That makes sense, especially after our subtle media campaign.”

“We’re definitely staying,” confirmed Érico.

“Good.” Will looked at Roger; he made no indication of his plans.

“When do we meet? We’ll be partying all of tonight,” noted Érico.

“We’ll make it an all-day event tomorrow,” replied Sebastian. “Well, by all day I mean 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. No reason not to sleep late tomorrow.”

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

They had a truly grand time that night; the most energetic celebration Will had ever seen on Mars. Madhu orchestrated an artistic program that included a skit by three of them, a dance by her, and a singalong. There was even a spontaneous creation of a song by Will and Roger,

This land is your land, this land is my land,

From Tharsis Montes to the Hellas Basin,

From the cratered highlands to the Mariner valleys,

This land was made for you and me.

Which made everyone laugh, even Sebastian. About 11 p.m. everyone headed back to their rooms. Érico headed to Carmen’s, where they often spent part of the night together. “I haven’t had that much fun in a long time,” he said to her.

“Not on the moon, that’s for sure. Four to six month stays tend to be very serious and hard working. I can’t imagine what a vacation on Mars will be like.”

“A strange idea; but we’ve been working eight months straight. We need a break.” He looked at her. “Tomorrow the first topic we’ll discuss is who’s staying an extra two years. I’d like to say yes.”

She looked at him, thinking. “I want to be with you, Érico. I like this place very much and I love my work. I love you.”

He turned to her. “I love you very much also, Carmen.” And he embraced and kissed her.

She pulled back slightly. “Yes, but you know what I mean.”

“Carmen, you know my concerns about marriage. It’s not easy for an orphan adopted into an unhappy family—”

“I know, I’ve heard this before, Érico. I know about your sad childhood. But there are millions of happy marriages, you know. Look at Will and Ethel, or Roger and Madhu. Or my parents.”

“I know, but I have to go on my experience.”

“No, you don’t! You’re one of Brazil’s top scientists, the first Brazilian on the moon, the first Brazilian on Mars. You’re a bright, capable man, and a very sensitive one. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. But I want to know I can count on you.”

“Of course you can count on me! Haven’t I been here for you for the last year!”

“Yes, but let’s see it as a commitment, a real commitment. Is that too much to ask?”

“Well, maybe not—”

“Then let’s get married.”

Érico opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. It was as if he were paralyzed; unwilling to say yes and not wanting to say no.

Finally Carmen shrugged. “What can I say. We’ve been here before.”

“We have.” He turned toward the door. “I guess we can resume this discussion tomorrow.”

“I hope so.” He headed out the door. She watched him go, feeling hurt.

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

They gathered the next morning, as planned. Sebastian invited Mission Control to attend remotely, in spite of the time delay—a round trip between Earth and Mars at the speed of light took forty minutes—and in spite of the fact that 10 a.m. at the Outpost was 8 p.m. in Houston. It seemed that every time they had something important to do that could not wait, the time was inconvenient on one planet or the other.

“Let me run through a rough agenda,” Sebastian began, as they all settled onto couches and chairs moved into Habitat 3’s Great Room. “First, we need to ascertain the human resources we’ll have here from the launch of Columbus 2 back to space until the arrival of Columbus 3 nine months later. Second, we need to consider what we’ll do from January 15, 2024—two weeks after conjunction, when our communications return to normal—until August 16, when trans-Earth injection is scheduled. Third, we’ll quickly outline tasks for the mission extension, from August 16, 2024 until Columbus 3’s arrival, scheduled for May 15, 2025. Fourth, we’ll consider cargo and staffing recommendations for Columbus 3, based on our experience and plans over the next year and a half. How does that sound?”

Everyone nodded. Sebastian looked around. “Okay, who’s staying? Let’s start with our oldest residents: Will, Ethel, and Shinji.”

Will nodded. “Ethel and I have decided to stay.”

Sebastian turned to Shinji, who shook his head. “I’m planning to return to Earth on Columbus 2.”

Will and Ethel looked disappointed, but they were not surprised; Shinji had never expressed a wish to stay a third cycle. Sebastian turned to Paul and Monica. “Back on Earth both of you made a tentative commitment to stay, when NASA asked all of us for volunteers.”

Paul nodded. “I made the commitment, and my time here has reinforced it. I’m staying two more years.”

“Me too,” added Monika. “We haven’t found life yet; maybe another two years is all we need. I want to keep looking. We’ve identified ten possible species of microfossils. More importantly, we’re looking at an era in the evolution of life that has been completely erased by geological processes on Earth. This is eobiology: it’s a whole new field. This is some of the most exciting research of the century. I’m planning to stay.”

“Alright,” said Sebastian. “I’m planning to leave; I have a family that needs me on Earth. It’s not practical for me to stay any longer. Armando?”

“I’m in the same situation. My wife can tolerate one cycle, but not two.”

“Érico?”

The Brazilian paused to consider his words carefully. “I think what I want to do is stay two more years and marry Carmen.”

Carmen’s jaw dropped. Others expressed astonishment or surprise. “Marvelous; you are welcome,” said Will.

“We need you here,” echoed Ethel.

Carmen looked at him directly. “Do you mean that, Érico?”

“Of course I mean that. I stayed up all night thinking about it.”

She had been sitting on the next couch over; she rose and walked to him, and they hugged and kissed.

“So, Columbus 2 will have a wedding as well,” said Sebastian. “This is becoming a trend. Carmen, I take it you’re staying as well?”

“Of course!”

Will rose and walked over to shake hands with both of them. Everyone else followed and business was suspended for several minutes. Everyone was very happy about the announcement; most knew Carmen wanted to marry him, but he had been holding out. Finally Sebastian said. “Let’s plan to have a special dessert and a bottle of wine at lunch, shall we? Meanwhile, we need to return to the subject at hand.”

Everyone returned to their places. Roger got up from the couch where Madhu and Érico were sitting to make room for Carmen. Sebastian turned to Madhu. “What are your plans?”

“Roger and I talked about the matter for about two hours last night. I have really enjoyed my horticultural and dietician’s work, and Roger has been in geological heaven. Another two years will allow both of us to solidify our contributions to this place and return to Earth with valuable experience. So we want to stay.”

Sebastian was surprised. “That means Columbus 3 will return to Earth with only three crewmembers! The Outpost will have a staff of eight while waiting for Columbus 3’s arrival!”

“That’s enough to carry out a substantial exploration and industrial schedule,” noted Will. “The nine months will be as vigorous a period as the eighteen months when Columbus crews are here!”

“This raises the issue of visiting Deimos, though,” exclaimed Sebastian. “We’re scheduled to spend six days there, doing routine maintenance on the fuel making facility and collecting samples.”

“I was thinking about that, because I’d like to see Deimos,” replied Roger. “There are four Mars shuttles here. Two could fly to Deimos, then rendezvous with the ITVs; then one could return here with those of us wishing to remain.”

“That’s possible. It’s dust storm season, though; we’ll have to be prepared for delays in landing.” Sebastian considered. “We have three ITVs in orbit, and NASA’s counting on two returning to earth this time. I guess the three of us will rattle around in two ITVs for six months.”

“It’ll give you plenty of living space,” replied Ethel.

“One problem I can see,” noted Shinji. “The Outpost will have eight crew, but no physician. But all of you have emergency medical training.”

“And we have the equipment to provide the data to doctors on Earth,” added Ethel. “We’ll be able to set bones and provide medicines. As long as no one needs an appendectomy, we’ll be okay.”

“Everyone get their teeth cleaned and checked before Shinji leaves,” suggested Roger.

“We’ll have to check the inventories carefully; we may have some shortages to anticipate and avoid,” said Sebastian. “Direct radio contact with earth ends in five days and resumes four weeks later. How will we spend seven months of 2024, before three of us head for Earth?”

There was a pause, then Érico spoke up. “I’d like to see us return to the north, at least for two months, to explore the layered terrain more, initiate drilling, and reach the North Pole itself. The latter would be quite an exciting and historic achievement.”

There was silence for a moment. “It sounds good, but it has too many practical difficulties,” said Roger. “We’ve found that between the low sun angles and the dust, solar panels and solar power units don’t work well at all up there, and the conditions may continue to be too windy for sunwings to land north of 71 north. The autumnal equinox is mid February; conditions at the pole will be deteriorating by the time conjunction ends and by the time we reach the pole it’ll be sunset. Then remember that the pole has no communications or navigational signals. We’d have to guess on the pole’s location. Finally, the polar layered terrain is too rough for easy travel.”

“We headed north just before the summer solstice, in late spring, and used up the entire summer season reaching the polar region and exploring it,” noted Will. “That’s really not bad.”

“Maybe in another Martian year we can return,” suggested Roger.

“Okay, so I take it that’s a consensus,” said Sebastian. “Which way do we go next? West?”

“That’s Will’s suggestion,” said Roger. “And I’d support it.”

“I’d like to see us clear a route the length of the Mariner Canyons, all the way to Labyrinthus Noctis,” said Will. “That’s almost as far as the northern polar terrain. It’s pretty rough, with lots of landslide deposits and boulders in places. But there are places the Martian crust has been gashed open for six kilometers of depth, and since we’ll be traveling along the bottom of the wound, we can retrieve samples from the talis piles at the base of the escarpment from the entire exposure. The sunwings have already been photographing the canyon walls in detail and making laser reflection studies of the rock composition. We also know of several major sedimentary deposits that probably have lots of microfossils.”

‘That’s a good argument,” agreed Roger. “The only modification I’d make is that I’m in favor of a penetration of the southern highlands as well, and clearing a route that will eventually reach the Martian South Pole. And once the autumnal equinox passes on February 10, we’ll have about forty days before the dust storm season begins. I’d rather see us head south first, then return here if the dust storms break out.”

“That might be wise,” agreed Will. “In forty days we can penetrate about 1,200 kilometers, and with relatively little refueling we could return straight here on full tanks. It’d let us explore much of the Great Southern Waterway. If we pushed 2,000 kilometers southward, we’d follow it through the Argyre mountain ring, which has some of the planet’s oldest crust, and onto the Argyre Basin, which had a sea and then glaciers. From here, we could make a similar trip eastward in spite of the dust storm.”

“We could even try three or four shorter trips from here, including one to the east and one to the south,” added Monika. “The chaotic terrains east of here need study; they have some ancient lake deposits and some recent channel deposits.”

“Mission control recommends all three of those possible routes,” agreed Sebastian. “I’m in favor of partial explorations along all three, also; during dust storm season you have to stick close to the Outpost.”

“I agree,” said Will. “If the sunwings can’t take off or land, we have no emergency resupply capacity or emergency evacuation capacity.”

“Ethel, how are the vehicles doing, anyway?” asked Sebastian.

“Not bad,” she replied. “We need to spend about two or three days doing routine maintenance on each of them, but they’ve come through the ordeal well. I had to replace a total of four fuel cells—each has twelve—and three motor and braking units.”

“So, we have plenty of spares.”

She nodded. “The motors we removed can be repaired, too. The fuel cells sometimes can, but we can always fix them up to supplement energy resources here, and shift the good fuel cells here to the rangers.”

“We should be able to reach Nirgal Vallis, at least. That means crossing the chaotic terrain south of here, the transition area, crossing through Holden Crater and its lake deposits, and making detours into the unmodified highlands. We still have no data on the cratered highlands, so a mission of that sort is very significant,” said Will.

“I agree,” said Roger. “That’s doable before the dust storms start.”

Sebastian looked around. “So, any objections?”

“Fine with me,” said Érico. The others nodded.

“Okay, we have an exploration plan to propose to Houston; head south as far as Nirgal, and maybe as far as Argyre; then head west toward Noctis Labyrinthis. What do we have to do around here?”

“We have an oxygen surplus problem,” said Madhu. “I hate to vent it into the atmosphere. The greenhouses are now very productive and they make a lot of oxygen. We need a tube to the well, so we can pump it underground. The estimates are that we can recover eighty percent of it.”

“Mixed with CO2, right? Useable for what?” asked Sebastian, skeptically.

“Heating. I can put only so much organic material into the soil. The rest we throw away. But during a duststorm we may need extra heat, so we can pull the oxygen out of the ground and burn the organics. The fact that the air coming out of the ground is 25% carbon dioxide doesn’t matter, for that purpose.”

“How ready are we for a big duststorm?” asked Armando.

“No problem,” replied Sebastian. “The wells penetrate several tens of thousands of tonnes of porous rock, and it’s been heated as high as one hundred twenty centigrade. We’ve been pumping hundreds of kilowatt-hours of heat into the rocks every day for two years and most of it can be pumped back out; plenty to keep the outpost warm for months. So I’m skeptical about pumping oxygen into the pores in order to burn ten or twenty tonnes of leaves and stems. I think we should do it as an oxygen reserve, though. As for electricity, we have four shuttles with 150 tonnes of oxygen and methane, and each tonne can make 4,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity and 1,000 kilowatt-hours of waste heat. We can run the Outpost on six hundred kilowatt-hours per day, so a tonne can run the Outpost about a week.”

“We have almost two years of emergency electricity, then,” said Armando, nodding.

“And we don’t yet have capacity for more than a tonne of oxygen underground,” pointed out Will. “Twenty cubic meters of rock has a mass of sixty tonnes and has about one cubic meter of pore space filled with ice. Heat the rock up and you can extract a tonne of vaporized ice, but the cubic meter of pore space can only hold about a kilogram of gaseous oxygen. We haven’t yet extracted a thousand tonnes of water from the ground. Of course, the rocks have pore space that never had water in it, so we can probably store two tonnes of oxygen underground right now.”

“But you’re storing the oxygen under low pressure; we can compress it,” noted Madhu.

“We need equipment from Earth to do that first,” replied Ethel. “Will was assuming storage at a tenth of an atmosphere of pressure. With better compressors and sealing of the shaft, we could store the gas at ten times as much pressure; maybe twenty times as much.”

“What I’d favor is construction of a water storage facility,” suggested Will. “It doesn’t have to be fancy; we can bulldoze a berm of reg in a square and cover it with plastic to suppress evaporation. We could extract the water from the ground and store it in a frozen pond. That frees up lots of pore space underground and would allow us to store more oxygen there.”

“A second well a few hundred meters away could store methane,” added Paul. “It’d take years to build up substantial underground storage, but it would cost nothing.”

“Better to store ethylene than methane,” replied Ethel. “We can pump liquid carbon dioxide into the ground first to cool the rock down somewhat, then pump liquid ethylene down. When it boils, we can reliquify the gas and pump it back down. We can store 800 kilos per cubic meter of pore space, which is much denser than gaseous methane.”

“The Sabatiers can make ethylene fine, too,” noted Paul.

“I have another idea,” added Madhu. “If we make a pond, as long as it’s capped by two meters of ice, it could have plankton and fish.”

Sebastian raised his hand. “Hold on, we’re racing ahead. All these ideas are on the website, right?”

“Yes,” said Paul and Madhu almost simultaneously.

“Good; they’ve been studied. Routing oxygen underground can be done pretty easily, right?”

“A day or two of work for one person,” agreed Paul.

“And the berm?”

“Depending on its length and height, it would take a ranger with a bulldozer blade maybe a week,” said Will.

“What about plastic sheeting for a ceiling?”

“I can make it in a few days,” replied Ethel.

“Not a lot of time, then,” concluded Sebastian. “The drills are working fine, too. We should start that second set of shafts, where we can store ethylene some day.”

“That won’t take a lot of staff time,” said Will. “An hour every day or two. But the shafts will take six months.”

“We can get them started now,” said Sebastian. “This is the sort of work that can be started and stopped depending on other priorities. What else? Do we need to do more chemical, plastic, and metal work?”

“We’ve carried out most of the experiments,” replied Ethel. “We use the equipment when we have to make things for expanding the facilities here.”

“If there’s any expansion we need to complete, it’s the Geology Storage Facility,” said Will. “We need to manufacture and install the doors and see whether we can pressurize it. If we can pressurize it with Martian air for six months and it holds the air adequately, then we can use oxygen and nitrogen.”

“Alright,” said Sebastian, nodding. “It sounds like the Outpost will need all the space it can get, if it’ll have sixteen personnel pretty soon. The Geology Storage Facility needs to be our priority during conjunction. What else?”

“We have to check the shuttles again,” noted Ethel. “The rangers and the conestoga will take two person-weeks to maintain, including repair of parts we’ve removed.”

“There’s one other thing I’d like to devote time to,” said Madhu. “I want to lay out a large rock design between the greenhouses. I’ve got the materials and I have a design in mind.”

Sebastian was surprised. “This isn’t something you can do on your vacation?”

“Sure, partly. But I’d like to think that art is worthy of more than a volunteer effort.”

“Hum.” Sebastian considered. “Okay, we’ll schedule it in as well. What else?” No one had other suggestions. “Alright, let’s turn to the mission extension, if there’s anything specific to say about it. I assume anything we’re planning for the next eight months applies to the extension as well.”

“One priority for the long term is finding a route from Noctis Labyrinthus up to the Tharsis Uplift,” said Roger. “We need to devote some Sunwing time to high-resolution photography of that area. There should be a route we can clear for the vehicles.”

“And eventually to the South Pole,” added Will. “After that, we’ll need to consider routes eastward across the highlands to Isidis, Hellas, and Amazonis.”

“It’s strange to think that in the third year of exploring this world, we’re talking about the circum-equatorial route,” said Ethel. “Didn’t someone predict that was a decade away?”

“Columbus 3 will speed everything up if it brings those reactors and additional vehicles,” said Roger. “Are those still set?”

Sebastian nodded. “The two reactors are being manufactured now. The rangers and the second conestoga will incorporate a lot of improvements based on our experience here, and the spare parts will improve the other vehicles as well. Columbus 3’s cargo will include another habitat and two more greenhouses.”

“I’d suggest they send four more greenhouses,” suggested Madhu. “We’ll have the crew to support them and the bigger crew will need more food.”

“They will have to rethink Columbus 3,” agreed Sebastian. “If there’s something I’d recommend to them, it’s that they send more younger persons. The eight people here will have seniority, and that means the newcomers have to stay and work their way up.”

“Thank you!” replied Will.

“They need to send people who want to stay, and for that, couples are better than singles,” added Ethel. “They need to rethink the entire plan for the Columbus missions, in fact.”

“We are moving things along much faster than expected,” agree Will.

“As you probably know, Columbus 3 is being actively reconsidered,” said Sebastian. “It looks like more nations want to send astronauts here than the ihabs can accommodate. Twenty nations have now sent astronauts to the moon and they are ready for a new measure of international prestige.” He looked at the others briefly, as if he were about to reveal a secret. “I was told last week that NASA has set a price for participating in Columbus 3: two hundred million per person.”

“That’s about half the cost of Columbus 1,” noted Will, impressed.

“The possibility of finding life here is enticing more participation,” added Monica.

Sebastian looked at his attaché. “It looks like we have five video messages from Mission Control. Let’s turn to them. I bet they’ll have lots of comments about our ideas.”

 

 

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