4
Chryse
Four days later, Expedition North 1 set out. Roger and Paul led in a ranger; Will and Shinji followed in a ranger pulling the portahab and trailer; Érico and Carmen drove the conestoga. They proceeded at forty kilometers per hour until they reached the end of “Route 1,” which only took three hours; Columbus 1 had traveled eastward quite a long way, but had cleared only a hundred-twenty kilometers of trail to the west.
They immediately took on the procedure Will had suggested, which was also the procedure recommended in one of the technical reports: the lead ranger, which had a bulldozer blade 4 meters wide, bulldozed a trail, stopping and backing up to clear it better when necessary; the second ranger smoothed it and widened it on the left side; and the conestoga followed behind, cleaning up rocks and irregularities with its light bulldozer blade. They proceeded about the speed a man could walk. The Martian surface had very few gullies and generally consisted of rolling stone fields with scattered small dunes. The Sunwing had already photographed the potential routes at a resolution of ten centimeters and the photographs had been placed on a website, allowing a team of NASA scientists, using a program that digested the pictures and propose the most efficient route across an area, to select a route that avoided boulders, small craters, dunes, and other obstacles. The lead ranger’s passenger served as navigator, directing the driver to the right or left based on all the various proposals projected onto an aerial photograph on the screen in front of him. In an emergency a vehicle could drive as fast as sixty kilometers per hour on the trail they had already cleared, though the maximum design speed was forty. Once the trail was well photographed and smoothed, vehicles could drive themselves under software control up to thirty kilometers per hour; slower than a human driver, but they could continue twenty-four hours a day.
They didn’t stop for lunch; there was no need because each vehicle had two on board. Will had been driving, but he switched with Shinji and pulled out the sandwiches instead. At 2:15 they reached a kilometer-sized crater that had punched a hole in the sediments of Aurorae. They stopped long enough to drop off Roger, Will, and Érico; Carmen remained in the conestoga with them; Paul and Shinji continued clearing the route in the rangers.
The three men activated their helmet cameras so that anything they saw was broadcast back to the geologists on Earth, dictated descriptions of the scene around them, then trudged up to the crater’s rim, describing as they went. The hole was about the size of Arizona’s Meteor Crater and of similar depth; it had the remnants of an ancient pond on its floor, including grayish salt deposits. Will pointed. “We can get down to the bottom over there. Follow that broad slope down, past the cliffs on top; then around the next cliff; then follow that natural ramp to the floor.”
Érico nodded, but Roger kept looking, then pointed. “This is closer. We won’t have to walk half way around. The slope’s a bit steeper, but we can manage it.”
“Okay,” said Will, reluctantly.
They started down. “So, Will, how many craters like this have you been in?” asked Roger.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or twenty on Mars and a dozen on the moon.”
“I’ve been in about a dozen on the moon, also,” said Roger. “It’s possible to do more exploring here. On the moon, you can’t do anything two weeks every month, and you have to worry about radiation exposure.”
“You have to watch that here as well, but less,” replied Will, wondering why Roger was making small talk. He stopped and flipped the binoculars down in front of his eyes. He scanned the various layers exposed on the opposite side of the crater. “These are pretty standard strata. They’re basically the same as in the walls of the crater near the Outpost. This part of Aurorae was scoured pretty deeply, then back filled with flood deposits.”
“Conglomerates, arkoses, and occasional sandstones,” said Érico.
“In a few places there are interflood deposits: volcanic ash, sand dunes, and crater ejecta. But they’re rare,” said Will. He pointed. “Right there, for example; that white streak is probably an ash fall. Very rarely we’ll find interflood shales.”
“With microfossils?” asked Érico.
Will nodded. “Usually. Any standing body of water seems to have had an ecology, even if it was frozen solid most of the time. Even the flood waters had microorganisms in them. Sift through the fines in an arkose and you’ll find microfossils. We didn’t figure that out for almost a year, though; we didn’t recognize them at first.”
“Let’s check out the ash layer,” suggested Roger.
The three of them carefully walked down the slope to the whitish layer, a mere centimeter thick and about twenty meters long. In a few minutes they were able to recognize a lens of interflood deposits twenty meters long and up to two meters thick; it consisted of ash, some ejecta, a weathered regolith layer with a caliche deposit formed on top, and some eolian dust. They all dictated descriptions of the deposit, then broke off pieces, looked closely, and described what they saw.
“Nothing fancy or unusual,” said Roger in conclusion. “Let’s head to the floor.”
The three of them headed down to the floor. The lower twenty meters of the wall showed signs of erosion from water weeping from the bedrock, probably shock melted by the impact. The crater floor was a thick, hard layer of salt, polished in places by wind erosion, buried by dust in other places.
“Fascinating,” exclaimed Érico. “Nothing like this on the moon.”
“This is uniquely Martian,” replied Will. “Actually, this crater almost represents one of the ideal types. In this area, the bedrock is pretty dry down fifty meters and is still too dry for water to flow until about one hundred meters. Craters that punch much deeper than this end up with deposits of sediment mixed with a little salt on the bottom. Shallower craters have dry floors. But this crater punched just a bit below the ice table, so the water seeped in slowly and gently, carrying almost no sediment. So we have a deposit of nearly pure salt.”
Roger reached down and looked closely at an area that had been polished by the wind until it looked almost like ice. He pulled out his rock hammer and a chisel and carefully cut out a large piece. Then he lifted it out.
“What’s that for?” asked Will.
Roger sounded a bit embarrassed. “Madhu wants a collection of particularly beautiful samples, and this is beautiful. She wants to do some art work using Martian materials; maybe a mosaic.”
“Really? That’s a great idea,” said Will. “The Outpost could use some artwork.”
“We think so. Sebastian’s too pragmatic, sometimes. But I think he’ll like what he sees once she has the materials to make something small.”
Will reached down and picked up the scattered, broken pieces of halite. They were unusually beautiful, with a slight yellow or tawny brown tint to them. He put them in a pocket. A chemical analysis of them might be useful.
The three of them headed back up to the rim. Roger led them up the route Will had recommended, which seemed like a small concession to him.
They spent a half hour walking the crater’s ejecta blanket, picking up samples, and reconstructing a bit of the impact history. A few small bits of meteorite were found, indicating that the impactor had been chondritic. Then they entered the conestoga and drove down the trail, clearing it one last time. They caught up to the two rangers just before sunset.
Ranger 1 backed up and docked to the rear of the conestoga. Shinji released the trailer, backed up his ranger, and docked the portahab to the conestoga’s other airlock, next to the driver’s seat. Paul popped frozen dinners into the microwave and soon the six of them sat to eat.
“Well, we had a good day,” said Roger. “We cleared twenty-six kilometers of trail and explored a good geological site. And tomorrow we’ll have at least two more hours for bulldozing. So it appears we can follow the strategy Will suggested; thirty kilometers a day of cleared route and at least three hours of EVAs.”
“A few more days, and we’ll know whether it’s too much for us,” said Will.
“I don’t see a problem,” said Érico. “There should be enough time to record and stow the samples, too.”
“This is quite exciting, I think,” added Carmen. “I’ve been bitten by the bug! Who would have thought six people could just drive across Mars?”
“We’ll see whether the fuel supply holds up,” noted Will.
“And whether the vehicles remain reliable enough,” cautioned Roger.
The conversation paused while everyone considered the hidden dangers of their effort. Finally Will said, “So, Madhu is an artist? Does she paint?”
Roger smiled. “Paint? Yes. And she dances; you saw her classical south Indian dance at the arrival dinner. She plays the flute and sitar as well. And she does ceramics; she hopes she gets the chance to make objects of Martian clay while she’s here.”
“And mosaics?”
“Probably she’ll try mosaics on the ground, outside, where there’s room. Between the greenhouses there’s a big strip of ground and it’s easy to see, so she might beautify one of those areas. Or maybe she’ll make a rock garden near the base of Face Rock. It’s too soon to say.”
“That would be great,” said Carmen. “I’d be glad to help her.”
“Me, too,” added Will. “I know where we saw various rock deposits and can help supply her with different colors, if she wants to make mosaics.”
Roger smiled. “That would be great. If she had dozens of kilos of stuff—black basalt, orange eolian dust, white salt, yellow sandstone, brown shale, greenish and bluish copper ores, black and reddish hematites, silver and metallic nickel-iron meteorites—she could make some pretty big mosaics. Once she has a design, she can execute it pretty quickly; I’ve seen her work.”
“We should make a list of good materials as we find them and pick them up on the way home,” suggested Paul. “This world has an amazing range of rock colors.”
“It’s not just lunar gray,” agreed Érico.
“Then let’s do it,” said Will. “It won’t take us much time.” He turned to the Brazilian. “Érico, I still know very little about your background.”
Érico was surprised and a bit defensive. “Well, there’s really nothing to tell.”
“You’re a geophysicist, I know, and you’ve spent time on the moon; where did you get your degree?” Will asked, oblivious of Érico’s reaction.
“The University of Fortaleza; it’s a major scientific and technical university in Brazil,” he replied, looking more relaxed. “I was very fortunate that my country wanted a presence on the moon, then Mars.”
“He’s too modest,” exclaimed Carmen. “He’s really brilliant.”
Érico put his hand on her hand, but looked slightly embarrassed. “You may not know that Brazil now has the world’s eighth largest economy; we’ve surpassed the United Kingdom and our economic output is approaching that of Italy and France. So I think Brazil’s presence here is permanent.”
“Excellent,” said Will.
“This is what we need more of,” commented Roger. “If more countries made permanent commitments to send one or two astronauts here, or even three, this place would gradually expand.”
“I think Canada may make a commitment,” replied Paul. “It sounds like we’re about to make a permanent commitment to keep one astronaut on the moon.”
“I’ll have to go to Shackleton’s website some time,” exclaimed Will. “I know they’ve added habitats and industrial facilities since I was there three years ago, but I can’t picture the place.”
“It’s a bit bigger than the Outpost, but more crowded,” replied Érico. “It has four habitats strung out along the crater rim, and generally there are eighteen people there. But it has only two greenhouses, and they’re buried to protect them against micrometeorites and solar radiation, with mirrors to reflect sunlight inside. We’re in better shape here, I think. They also have less plastic and chemical manufacturing equipment because there’s so little carbon in the volatile deposits.”
“I heard that the human waste on Columbus 1’s ITVs went to Shackleton,” said Will.
Carmen nodded vigorously. “The carbon and nitrogen, of course! They ship it up from the Earth orbit, too. The oxygen and hydrogen is used for fuel.”
“Exploration is also following a different strategy,” added Roger. “While they’ve finally cleared the Shackleton-Aristarchus Trail, it’s not used much because it takes four days to drive it; the round trip takes up more than half of the lunar dayspan. So most of the time expeditions set out by lunar hopper, which can fly them anywhere on the moon in about an hour. A pair of hoppers can deliver two conestogas and four crew, they explore for two weeks, then fly back to Shackleton for nightspan. The result is good coverage of the moon, but creation of very few permanent routes.”
“That’s changing, though,” disagreed Paul. “The Lunar Commission is planning to clear a route all the way around the lunar equator, and two more connections to Shackleton via the far side and Nectaris. That way automated fuel and supply vehicles that can drive during nightspan can be positioned at the landing site when the hoppers arrive.”
“I’ve heard about Lunar Route 1,” agreed Will. “I wonder whether we’ll build Mars Route 1 first?”
Roger laughed. “I doubt it! We won’t circumnavigate this world for a few decades.”
Will frowned. “Why do you say that? We explored thirty kilometers today, and we have solar power units to make our energy. Mars is 21,000 kilometers around the equator; at 30 per day, that’s 700 days.”
“But I doubt you think we’ll clear the route in less than two years!”
“No, but I think it’ll be done in less than a decade.”
“Maybe.” Roger shrugged. “Of course, if our President continues to get his way, Columbus 3 will bring two nukes. Then a shuttle could fly to any spot on Mars with a nuke and a couple tonnes of water and make all the fuel it needs to fly home a month or two later. At that point we’ll be freed from dependence on trails as well.” He referred to “our President” deferentially, which made Will uncomfortable and Érico visibly irritated.
“Assuming we need nukes,” replied Carmen. “So far, Mars has done fine without them.”
“So? We do need them! We can use these SPUs in the dust storm season. Why should we be setting up and taking down a big, bulky solar power unit when a 1-tonne nuclear reactor on a cart can do the same thing with less hassle?”
“Because nuclear power’s a risk to the Earth during launch, a risk to our health here, and a risk to the Martian environment as well,” replied Érico.
Roger scowled. “They can design nukes to survive launch accidents just fine, if we follow procedures the nukes are no danger to us, and Mars doesn’t really have an environment.”
“Spoken like a right winger, just like your President,” complained Érico.
There was silence; no one dared get into a political argument in a small space, especially since it was clear that Érico had was a left-winger, Will was on the liberal side as well, and Roger was conservative. Finally Shinji turned to Paul and changed the subject. “So, you plan to stay two cycles?”
Paul nodded. “I made the commitment. So has Monika. Are you planning to stay a third cycle?”
Shinji shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“I could be convinced,” said Érico.
“Really?” said Carmen, surprised. She sounded a bit worried.
Érico nodded. Will smiled. “The place grows on you. Ethel and I may stay longer, too. We like this assignment.”
“Really?” Roger was surprised. “I think I’ll like Mars, but I want to go back to the moon after this. It’ll bring a whole new perspective.”
“It will; but I’ve decided that my marriage is more important,” replied Will. “Here Ethel and I won’t be separated for six months at a time. That’s the main reason we’re staying; we can do our work and build a happy marriage at the same time.”
Roger looked at Will, surprised, then pointed a finger at him. “That’s the first time I’ve heard a good reason to stay here!” he exclaimed.