7
A Contribution
The five people at the Outpost put in a very dedicated and hard-working seven weeks. With Madhu and Monika helping with the manufacturing facility, iron and plastic parts steadily poured out for the construction. Armando helped will keep the geology lab running. Will, Ethel, and Monika logged over forty hours per week in their pressure suits and often worked half a day on Sunsol.
But the effort paid off. At the end of the first week the foundation area was cleared and leveled and a trench for the walls had been excavated by the “reg blower,” a device with spinning toothed wheels that accelerated sand and gravel up a chute and threw it, rather like a snow blower. A duricrete-making system had been put together from various parts. A plastic tube was run from the solar power units to the construction site immediately east of Habitat 3 to bring 150 degree Centigrade Martian air from the solar heaters to the site.
On Monsol of the next week they completed the first form—a metal-framed box five meters long, sixty centimeters wide, and two and a half meters high, with plastic walls on the inside. It ran from one nickel-iron reinforcing pillar to the next, with a woven curtain of thin nickel-iron bars joining them together. In a marathon sixteen-hour session that they completed under floodlights, they blew eight tonnes of eolian dust into the form, accompanied by two tonnes of water, and added heat all night. The next morning the duricrete was rock hard. It was a success!
But the Geological Storage Building required sixteen such sections. Making and weaving together the nickel-iron bars for each pillar and the curtain connecting them to the next pillar took two days. Hauling eight tonnes of eolian dust to the site took most of a day. Assembling everything inside the form took a day, and filling the form took a day. The first week, they barely poured a second section and felt very frustrated by the slowness of the work. Sebastian called to complain that nominal work was falling behind.
The second week, however, went better. Hauling the dust took one person—Will—so the pillars and rebar curtain manufacturing work could proceed simultaneously. Will could do most of the set-up work by himself as well. On those days, the work manufacturing bars and assembling them could be done inside by Ethel and Monika. The second week, they managed to create and pour a section every three days. The next week—working from Sunsol to Sunsol, so they had seven and a half days—they almost completed work on three sections.
Then the Sunwing returned to the Outpost with Paul; Sebastian had given him a two-week rest. By the next morning Monika had him recruited to assist. The fourth week saw them complete three sections more and almost a fourth as well. They were finally rolling along. When Paul left at the end of week five, fifteen of sixteen sections were finished. By the middle of week six, the walls were finished; all eighty meters of them. By the end of that week the five support pillars along the middle of the building had been poured as well, and half the metal sheets for the roof had been made.
Week seven was a race against time. Metal beams had to be riveted together in the suit donning area, carried to the building, and welded in place; then metal sheets had to be laid between the beams and welded down by a worker in a pressure suit. The metal beams had to be welded to the support pillars in the walls and in the middle of the building as well. They managed to complete the roof just a few hours before the Sunwing bearing Sebastian and Roger landed at the Outpost. There was no time to manufacture or install the heavy metal pressure doors, run electrical wiring, or manufacture and spray on plastic sealant. But at least the shell was complete.
Surprisingly, Sebastian was quite interested in the building. He stretched his legs by walking around the outpost, passing through every habitat and greenhouse in the process, then called Ethel and Will to ask for a tour. The three of them suited up.
It was a mere three-meter walk from Habitat 2’s airlock to the entrance of the Geology Storage Facility. Sebastian walked in with Will and Ethel following. He strolled slowly and looked around. Daylight poured in through four doorways, one in each wall, but not a ray of light penetrated through the metal roof; it was tight and reflected sunlight off its shiny, slightly silvery surface. “Orange-red walls; orange-red duricrete,” Sebastian said. “Not my favorite color, but I suppose it’ll grow on me.” He reached out and touched a pillar and ran his gloved hand over the smooth surface, admiring the work. He stepped back to the door and felt the width of the duricrete. “My congratulations; you really exceeded anything I thought you could do. This is very impressive. Very, very impressive.”
Will wasn’t sure what to make of Sebastian’s compliment. “It’s built a bit like a bunker.”
“I suppose that’s unavoidable, especially when you did all the extra work to make it pressurizable. How long will it take to build the shelves?”
“All of them?” asked Ethel. “Probably four weeks, maybe five. We have to make the metal supports, the metal nuts and bolts to hold everything together, and mold the plastic shelves. The shelves have to be pretty strong, too.”
“Not something you can do before you go to the expedition, then,” said Sebastian. “Well, that’s alright. The shelves can wait. We don’t have a huge pile of samples to store on them, yet.”
“Actually, we do,” replied Will. “The basement of Habitat 2 is full, and there’s a tonne of bagged samples in Chryse to fly up here.”
“We can accommodate them on various places for now; if nothing else, we can leave them in the Sunwing hanger. When you return from the expedition, you can build the shelves then.”
“We were hoping to have a few days off before flying down,” said Will.
Sebastian shook his head. “I’d be willing to be flexible normally, after seeing such a magnificent effort, but in this case you really didn’t have my permission to build this. Before I left, I told you that this should be a building for outdoor use. Instead I got a building that could be pressurized, which took about twenty person-weeks of extra work. You all got the nominal workload done, and I commend you for that; but usually we get about twenty-five percent more work done than in the nominal schedule. So while you all were busy building this place, I was dealing with complaints from the scientists that our Prospector exploration and scientific analysis of samples had slowed down. I also had a complaint about all the overtime the construction consultants put in.”
Will was surprised. “Perhaps, then, you should have called us up about the matters. We were unaware of the complaints.”
“Well, I suppose you were. But you still went against my order. So I’m docking both of you two weeks of vacation.”
The last words echoed over the earphones. Will and Ethel both looked at Sebastian, shocked. He shrugged. “Remember, I’m in charge of Columbus 2, not the construction consultants in Houston. Will, you were on the moon in the early days. NASA learned the hard way that the person in charge of a mission should be its Commander. Even the people in Houston work for him, not the other way around. Otherwise you have inefficiency on the moon or Mars, which is the place you can least afford it.”
“Sebastian, if you want to talk about efficiency, by your own admission we just managed to accomplish about sixty percent more work in the last eight weeks than nominal. That’s a lot more than the usual twenty-five percent extra.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but the job of inspiring the extra work is mine, not yours, Will.”
“Then maybe you should start,” replied Ethel.
Sebastian turned to her, angry. “I’d advise against insubordination.”
Ethel looked at him, angry, then turned away.
“Well, I guess the tour here is over. Do you have any other questions about the building?” asked Will.
“No. Tomorrow’s Sunsol; I suggest you get a good rest. You’ll have half of Monsol morning to pack for the flight to the expedition. It’s now a long twelve to fourteen hour trip.”
“Okay. I assume you’re going in this airlock? Then Ethel and I will go in the other; it’s closer to Habitat 1.”
Will and Ethel walked away from Sebastian as fast as they could and headed for their room.
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They had a very unhappy evening. The dinner in Habitat 3 was big and pleasant enough, but they refused to speak to Sebastian, and the tension was felt by everyone else. It was pleasant to see Roger, by comparison; because Madhu had become a friend of Will and Ethel, Roger was drawn into the circle of friendship somewhat as well. Armando, sensing that something had happened, asked what was wrong, and Will told him a short version of the events that had transpired.
The next morning, they went to breakfast early. Armando and Monika were there; they were early risers. “I can’t believe Sebastian docked you guys two weeks of vacation and ordered you to the expedition!” exclaimed Monika. “He can be crazy sometimes! Crazy and arbitrary.”
“Maybe we’ll appeal to mission control,” said Will. “It’s a possibility.”
“This is the first time we’ve felt like we should just leave and go back to Earth,” added Ethel.
“Of course! Yours was a labor of love!” exclaimed Armando.
Just then Madhu entered the room. “Good sol,” she said.
“You’re up early,” observed Monika.
“Roger’s hungry, and he wants me to bring him breakfast in bed! I reminded him it’s supposed to be the other way around, but he just laughed.”
“You’ve been here all this time, and he’s been in the field instead,” replied Ethel.
“I suppose.” Just then Sebastian entered the room. Madhu looked at him and nodded a good sol, then looked back at Ethel. “I’m surprised you’re up so early. Sunsol is your day of rest.”
“Not this sol,” replied Ethel. “Will and I have one day left before flying north to the expedition, and it’s our sol off, so we decided last night that we would dedicate it to completing the Geology Storage Facility.”
Sebastian looked shocked. “No, you can’t do that.”
“Why not?” asked Will. “It’s Sunsol. This sol’s our sol off.”
“But you should be resting for the trip.”
“We’ll rest on the trip,” replied Ethel. “What else is there to do in a small cabin for fourteen hours, but sleep, read, and watch television?”
“But I don’t want you to work on it any more.”
Will looked at Sebastian. “Look, it’s our sol off. Our time is our business, not yours. You can’t order us not to work on the building.”
Sebastian scowled. “What’s wrong with you, Will? We’re here to do science and explore. That’s the great human adventure, not building buildings.”
“What’s wrong with you, Sebastian?” retorted Madhu. “Can’t you see love of a project when you see it? Don’t you think love of this place has to be tapped and directed instead of defeated or ignored? Your problem is that Will and Ethel love Mars, and you don’t understand!”
Sebastian was startled by her comments. He turned to her. “No, I don’t understand love of this place.”
“Fine,” said Madhu. “I happen to love Mars, too, though. This is a fascinating place, and this Outpost is Mars’s future village, town, city, capital city. But I suppose you can’t see that.” She turned to Ethel. “Roger and I will be out to help in about ninety minutes.”
“What?” said Sebastian, startled.
“You can count on me, too,” said Armando to Will.
Monika nodded. “Me, too. I’ll devote this sol to finishing the building. With six of us working, I think we may get the roof covered with reg by sunset.”
Sebastian looked at them, shocked. “This is crazy!”
Armando looked at him. “Yes, it is pretty crazy. But we’re not just building a building, Commander; we’re making a contribution to this place’s future, something that will stand long after all of us leave Mars.”
Armando picked up his cup of coffee and sipped. Sebastian looked at them all, one by one, astonished. Then he took his breakfast and walked back to his room.
Once they finished their breakfast, Will and Ethel suited up and headed outside. They began to run both reg blowers, kicking regolith onto the metal roof and a great cloud into the air; fortunately the wind blew the cloud eastward away from most equipment. With any luck, by sunset they’d have about thirty centimeters of reg in place, the minimum amount for adding water.
Armando and Monika soon joined them and began to string electrical lines along the roof’s metal rafters. Periodically they wired in a power cord that dropped down along the wall to a dozen centimeters above the floor, where a plug would be put later.
Madhu and Roger made their appearance next. They drove off in the two buggies to get eolian dust from a nearby drift; mixed with warm water, it would make a smooth duricrete floor for the inside.
Then, to their surprise, another figure came out of the Outpost. It was Sebastian. They all stopped work to watch him approach. He switched to the common frequency everyone’s radio was tuned to. “Look, I’m sorry,” he began. “I had no idea this building meant so much to everyone. I can understand the idea that people want to make a contribution to this place, in addition to contributing to humanity’s knowledge. That’s not a foreign idea to me. So. . . what can I do?”
Will was surprised. “Well, we have a third reg blower; you could operate it.”
“Good.” Sebastian looked around until he spotted it. “Okay, I can do that. We’ll work this sol until sunset, then we’ll rest tomorrow. The Sunwing flight can be delayed until Wednesol; that’ll give you an extra day off.”