5

Dome

The Great Room in Renfrew Hall was full five sols later for the memorial service for Rosa and Neal Stroger’s unborn child, the boy they had named Joseph. Everyone was there except Ethel, who stayed at home to watch Marshall and Sam. At least Sam was out of the sickbay and recovering; in fact, everyone was feeling better, though many were still sick.

Rosa and Neal were Catholics and had been fairly active in their church at home. It was impossible for the memorial program to resemble a Catholic mass—Mars had no ordained priest—but Madhu and a small informal task force did their best to make the program as moving and meaningful as possible. The Great Room was decorated simply with potted geraniums—they grew very well inside the habitats and thus were common—and a simple arch of white plastic that Ethel had made once, symbolizing a portal to the next world. The program was begun by ringing the Outpost’s bell three times. A recorded hymn was played, followed by readings from the Old and New Testaments. Roger, a devoted Protestant and the only person able to give anything resembling a Christian sermon, spoke based on the texts. Two Christian hymns were sung by the audience as best they could. Then Madhu unveiled the text of a monument she had designed that she would build in the garden below Face Rock next to the monument memorializing Paul Renfrew.

It was Will’s turn next. He rose and walked to the front of the room. “Ever since the first creatures on Earth began to think, human beings have yearned for immortality. No one has found a fountain of youth yet; medical science has not banished death. But the next best thing is to be remembered, and humans have sought that honor for thousands of years. We can give that gift to Joseph, even if we never met him. Last night I sent a message to the Commission asking that the new building we are finishing be named Joseph Hall. The request was approved earlier this sol.”

Everyone applauded. Will returned to his seat and the music rose again. They stood and sang another song. Finally, everyone filed forward to give Neal and Rosa a hug in a moving display of solidarity.

The refreshments were brought out, but before anyone started eating them, Neal raised his hand. “Attention, everyone!” he said. “Rosa and I can’t express how grateful we are for your love and support over the last few sols. We’re really moved to tears.” And he paused, because tears came to his eyes. His voice quavered. “This cloud in our lives has at least had a silver lining, and if the sacrifice of our little one has brought everyone together, the loss of his life was not in vain. Thank you.”

No one was sure what to say after that. Several people approached Neal to hug him again. Will bowed his head and said a quick prayer. He was happy that the illnesses of the last week had cemented the thirty-three adults together into a community more swiftly and deeply than he could have imagined. He turned to Madhu. “Thank you for the beautiful program. I think you’ve brought closure not only to the Strogers’ loss, but to the sickness as well.”

“I hope so. I’m feeling much better and Sam’s definitely better. I guess you’re feeling better as well. And naming the building for Joseph; that’s a perfect solution.”

Will nodded. “It felt right. And now we’re all getting better as well. Shinji and Eve say the worst has passed.”

“Let’s hope a better quarantine and better vaccines can prevent this from happening again. I shudder to think what disaster could result if a plant disease devastated our greenhouses.”

“I know. We thought six-month flights provided plenty of isolation. That has to be reexamined urgently.”

“At least you’ve nipped in the bud the growing criticism of the Mars project as vulnerable to disaster and overly risky,” exclaimed Yevgeny, who was standing nearby. “But I gather, Will, that the Commission’s not very happy about your publicity blitz.”

“No, they aren’t. Morgan called me and balled me out. But they got in an argument with NASA over who would coordinate the public relations problem, and as a result both dropped the ball. Maybe I should have waited and given them more time to get their acts together. But meanwhile, the criticisms were mounting. And if there’s one rule about public relations, you can’t wait very long or the damage becomes serious. The delay becomes a second disaster. Thank you for your interviews on Russian television, by the way. Everyone says you did a good job. It was ‘on message,’ as they say.”

“Thanks; but who is ‘everyone’?”

Will smiled. “I don’t think it’s a secret that the Mars Exploration Society mobilized its various chapters.”

“I suppose not. But Will, the talking points you gave me seemed pretty sophisticated; more than anything I’ve seen the Mars Exploration Society produce.”

“How many talking points have you seen from them?”

Yevgeny hesitated. “Well, none.”

Will looked at him closely. He had wondered whether Yevgeny was receiving secret messages from the Commission, inquiring what he knew of Will’s efforts. Now he was even more suspicious. “My hope is that the Mars Commission can get control over the entire public relations process. Otherwise we will be subject to fourteen different national publicity agendas at once. That’s no way to coordinate a project so as to maximize public support.”

Yevgeny nodded. “I agree. NASA is being arrogant. I suspect everyone else will be willing to let the Commission set the public relations agenda; except maybe the French, of course.”

“Well, I’m willing,” exclaimed Will, with a smile. He turned and walked toward the refreshments, thinking about Louisa Turner and her very competent work. The Commission was already suspicious that she had been helping him; Morgan was dragging his feet about hiring her on the grounds that she was overqualified.

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

Over the next week, everyone gradually recovered and the virus disappeared almost as fast as it had appeared. Half of the Outpost had been on sick leave; now everyone was back to work full time except Rosa, who was still recovering from the miscarriage, and Ethel and Carmen, who were taking it easy because of their pregnancies. The three shuttles had brought thirty-six tonnes of consumables, machinery, and equipment from orbit. The consumables had to be stowed and old inventory destroyed or moved to other locations to serve as backup. Several people on Earth were kept busy updating the inventory databases; based on high-resolution video and computerized reading of bar codes on the video, most of the inventory work could be done remotely, freeing the Outpost personnel to do other tasks. The equipment and machinery that arrived included an expansion of the machine shop, with lathes and sophisticated metal cutting tools capable of making a wide variety of objects from weldalite, copper, and nickel-iron alloys. A new chemical synthesis unit and an expansion of the plastic extrusion unit also arrived and were installed. A larger regolith sifter and a lime-making kiln were assembled from imported and locally manufactured parts. Finally, high-quality pressure windows made on Earth were installed in Joseph Hall, allowing the top floor and the half of the bottom floor other than the garage to be pressurized properly and permanently, which meant the spaces could be finished and occupied.

Time was also taken for safety classes, extra classes about use of Mars pressure suits—which were much easier to gain experience using on Mars than on the moon, on Earth, or underwater—and several short field trips to brief the new arrivals about safety when outside and what procedures they followed when exploring. Most people were already familiar with the procedures, either from their experience on the moon or their work in mission control. Extensive training had occurred on Earth before departure, but experience had shown that training on Mars was more effective.

Almost six weeks after Columbus 4 blazed into orbit, the unpacking and setting up was complete and the training had been completed. On August 1, three automated cargo vehicles or ACVs, each with fifteen tonnes of cargo, aerobraked into an elliptical “one-sol elliptical orbit” around the Red Planet and rendezvoused with Embarcadero Station, Mars’s interplanetary passenger and cargo transit facility, where Columbus 4’s ITVs were docked. Embarcadero had two remote-controled manipulator arms able to grab cargo modules and extract them from the ACVs’ holds. Four Lifters—automated space vehicles on Phobos and Deimos, each with an average of fifty tonnes on oxygen and methane fuel—had left their moon launching pads and had flown to Embarcadero as well, where they were parked a few kilometers away.

The Outpost had been preparing for the arrival of the ACVs for months. The Pavonis had full methane and oxygen tanks—155 tonnes altogether—from before Columbus 4’s arrival, and 155 tonnes more had been stored in several experimental large metal tanks they had built. As soon as it landed on Mars with Columbus 4, the Olympus was refueled. Refueling the Hadriaca began immediately thereafter; using every spare kilowatt, it was ready for launch in forty sols. The three shuttles were loaded with Earth-bound cargo: liquid argon bound for ion engines in Earth orbit, liquid nitrogen for Earth orbit and the moon, Martian rocks for consumers on Earth, four tonnes of gold, and rock samples for scientific analysis.

The Pavonis blasted off first, uncrewed, followed by the Olympus a sol later. In a mere three and a half minutes each accelerated to 5.4 kilometers per second, the velocity necessary to fly to Embarcadero, arriving in two sols. The Pavonis approached Embarcadero’s first remote controlled arm and opened its cargo bay doors; controlers at the Outpost grabbed the earth-bound cargo pallet inside and pulled it free. Then the Pavonis flew to the second arm, already holding the first ACV’s Mars-bound cargo pallet, and controlers transferred it to the shuttle’s cargo hold. The ACV that had brought Mars its cargo then flew to the first remote-controled arm and received its Earth-bound cargo. The procedure was repeated for the Olympus and the second ACV. Lifter 1 refueled the shuttles so they could return to the Outpost. Lifters 2 and 3 docked to the two ACVs, fired their engines, and pushed them on a seventeen-month trajectory to the inner edges of the asteroid belt, then back to the Earth, where the ACVs and Lifters would aerobrake into Earth orbit, the ACVs with thirty tonnes of spare methane.

Seven tense sols of precise, slow, patient maneuvers were necessary to complete the procedures. Only when they were finished was the Hadriaca launched, for if it had been necessary it would have been launched with a crew to go up and repair equipment or force balky docking apparatuses to function correctly. Using Embarcadero’s arms, it transferred its cargo to ACV3 and received ACV 3’s Mars-bound cargo pallet. It refueled from Lifter 1, then Lifter 4 pushed ACV3 back to Earth. Finally, Lifter 1 returned to Phobos to refuel and the Hadriaca landed at the outpost.

The shuttles returned to Mars at the cautious rate of one per sol. There was celebration on Mars when the last one landed safely, for it had demonstrated their new automated cargo transfer and refueling procedure. The shuttles brought goodies of immense importance: two more rangers, another conestoga, three more greenhouses on top of the four brought early by the crew, a new and larger sunwing model-B, two more nuclear reactors, scientific and medical equipment of all sorts, spare consumables, medicines, and other essentials.

But most important, at least to Will and the other veterans who had been on Mars several years, was the ‘Mars Dome’ privately funded and launched by the Mars Exploration Society. The private non-profit organization had spent fifty million dollars on the design and construction of the dome and fifty million to get it from the Earth’s surface to Mars orbit. It planned to recoup most of the expense through the sale of twenty-five tonnes of Mars rocks that were being flown back to Earth on the ACVs. The dome, thirty-two meters in diameter and twenty high, transparent to ninety percent of the visible sunlight that fell on it, could be safely pressurized to as much as half an Earth atmosphere of pressure. It had four airlock openings built into it, two of which were wide and high enough to accommodate rangers. One of the tasks at the Outpost over the previous nine months had been to make the metal sides and doors of one such airlock, and two more, smaller airlocks for the use of pedestrians. The very sol the Pavonis landed with the Mars dome a team of workers hauled it to the shallow excavation they had already made for it and began the long, slow process of inflating it, for it required about five thousand cubic meters of air, a mass of 1.5 tonnes of oxygen and 300 kilograms each of nitrogen and argon. When the inflation was finished the dome’s Kevlar sides rested inside the metal airlock shells that had already been welded together. In two sols the dome was glued, clamped and bolted in place against the airlocks, allowing them to be used.

Will was walking to the dome to be part of the party entering it for the first time when his attaché beeped. It was a call from Morgan. He looked around for a place to take the call, and not seeing one he turned around and headed back to his room. He was expecting the communication and didn’t want others to hear. Yevgeny and Alexandra were a bit ahead of him and Roger and Madhu were following him, so he couldn’t just stop where he was.

Once in his apartment, he sat on the living room couch—home made and shabby—and activated the message.

“Good sol, Will. Congratulations about the dome. I can’t wait to see the video. Be sure to get someone to do a walk-through every day, so we can load the imagery into the virtual reality. There are twenty thousand Mars Exploration Society members who can’t wait to take a look.

“I’m sorry the question of employing Louisa Turner has been dangling for almost two months now. But as you know, she has become controversial. Everyone knows that, frankly, she’s too smart for the job she would be hired to do. It is widely suspected that she was the mastermind behind your media blitz, and while I secretly admire what you did—the tone was well done, you stayed on message, and you probably saved a lot of funding for us—nevertheless everyone agrees it wasn’t the job of the Commander of Mars operations to plan and execute a media strategy. I suppose I should apologize to you for a few of my harsh words. As you can imagine, there was a move afoot to fire you, even though the media blitz gave you popularity and sympathy that would have made such an action look petty, even mean.

“It is inevitable, therefore, that everyone agrees you should at least be denied smart assistance from Earth. Look, Will, you can’t blame them. Next time you want to act without my official permission because of political limitations on the Commission, can we please talk about your strategy first. That way your action doesn’t make me even more powerless. At least I’ll feel less impotent because I’ll have had a hand in what you eventually do, and my people will be in the loop. Yes, our involvement will leak out, but I suspect when international media coordination is needed, no one will seriously complain when we do it without their permission.

“We can’t hire Turner. I’m sorry about that. Maybe that will change later on. I assume you’ll tell her. Bye.”

The screen went blank and Will stared at it for fully a minute, trying to figure out what it meant. Was Morgan’s apparent frankness real? He was a frank person, but Will had had enough dealings with him to know he could hold his cards very close to his chest. And Will suspected Morgan was a bit of an actor.

He had to wonder whether Morgan’s plea that he consult with him first was a ploy to stop Will’s collaboration with Turner. Perhaps Morgan knew plan B: to employ Turner through the Mars Exploration Society. Will and Ethel could give the MES a large personal gift to cover the salaries and benefits of Turner and her assistant. After six and a half years on Mars, the two of them were worth twelve million dollars, and they had very little to spend it on.

But this was no time to worry about a temporary setback; on the contrary, it now cleared obstacles from the path of employing Turner through the MES and working with her. Will put the attaché back on his belt and headed for their new, very special, dome.

Roger, Alexandra, Yevgeny, and Madhu were waiting when he arrived. He apologized for the delay and they entered the airlock. When they opened the inner door of the airlock they were hit in the face by a wall of hot, dry air. But they ignored that and entered the space slowly, marveling at its seemingly enormous size.

“My God, this place is huge!” exclaimed Will.

“I wouldn’t call it huge,” replied Alexandra. “But then, you’ve been stuck in habitats or greenhouses for over six years, now.”

“You can say that again!” exclaimed Will. He walked across the bowl-shaped floor of thick, black plastic. His footsteps made rustling noises on the plastic that echoed in the cavernous space. He reached down to feel the floor; it was icy cold to his touch, since it was in contact with subfreezing ground.

“It’s one hundred feet across,” added Roger, as he walked across. “That’s a measurement from my childhood; it carries emotional weight. When I was growing up our house had a back yard about this big.”

“It’s bigger than our back yard, I’d say,” replied Will. He looked up and shouted “Hello!” and a look delight crossed his face when the echo immediately came back to him.

“Imagine what this place will be like with plants,” added Alexandra, a bit embarrassed by her boss’s exuberance.

“We’ve been preparing trees for it, too,” added Madhu. “We have quite a few fruit trees that are getting too big for the greenhouses. If this thing hadn’t arrived, we would have had to prune them back rather severely. The trick will be to get them through the buildings and airlocks, but once they’re here they’ll be able to grow very nicely.”

“A place where the kids can climb trees,” added Will. “We’ll have to build a swing set, too.”

“I hope we don’t fill the space up completely,” observed Yevgeny. “We’ll need a place to gather in the open air, as it were.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” replied Madhu. “The trees will be in very large pots on little wheels. We’ll normally leave them spaced out to maximize their exposure to sunlight, but if we need open space, we can roll them close together temporarily, which will make a rather thick forest. That will be fun as well.”

“Can we actually hold a picnic in here?” asked Yevgeny.

‘We can have a barbeque!” replied Will. Yevgeny laughed, but Will was serious. “You should check out the stats for this place. The quantity of air in here is so large, we can burn three or four kilograms of wood quite safely. The smoke will be noticeable, but it’ll clear up in a few sols by natural means.”

“That’s one advantage of large spaces like this,” agreed Madhu. “If the plant species are carefully balanced and maintained, they require something like a tenth as much environmental maintenance equipment per cubic meter of air as the greenhouses. This thing will be a boon to our environmental control equipment because it’ll double our volume of interior air, and thus give us a much bigger reservoir to dilute waste gasses in.”

“Are we going to grow food in here?” asked Alexandra.

“Some,” replied Madhu. “With seven new greenhouses, we now have sixteen, enough to feed twenty-four people under emergency circumstances. This dome has enough space to feed seven people. We have thirty-seven residents, including the two babies and the two unborn children, and enough food from Earth to cover half our needs. So we don’t need the dome for agriculture. But if we use some of this space for agriculture we can improve the range and quality of our food and we can build up our surplus supply. Either way, we reduce our dependency on imported consumables.”

“Well, as long as we keep as much of this space for recreation as possible,” commented Yevgeny.

“Look at the website. We’ve been making big plastic growing trays that can be lifted, moved, and stacked by two people using metal beams. We’ll be able to cover this floor almost completely during the day with vegetables and fruit trees, then clear sections for recreational use on nights and weekends. It’s a pretty good plan.”

“That sounds clever,” he replied.

“I suppose my concern is the heat,” said Will. “We should remove the infrared screens and let as much heat out as we can.”

“They’re already removed,” replied Madhu, pointing to two lines of small boxes that ran vertically from floor to apex. Inside the boxes were several different “blankets” that could be pulled up along horizontal tracks around the dome. “Right now the sun is shining in with three hundred fifty kilowatts of light and the black floor is converting most of it to heat. But there isn’t much in here to heat up; just air and a thin dome. So it rises to a pretty high temperature. By late afternoon it’ll be sixty Centigrade in here, then it could fall below freezing at night. If we add several tonnes of plants and dirt in containers, the temperature swing will be buffered.”

“At least that’s what we hope,” added Alexandra. “This dome couldn’t be completely tested on Earth because of heat loss through conduction to the Earth’s thicker atmosphere. The computer modeling is approximate, even incorporating our experience with the greenhouses. We’ll probably add a water tank or cover the floor with a layer of rocks a half meter high with a plastic sheet over them, in order to add a few tens of tonnes of heat reservoir.”

“We need to store the heat for nighttime,” said Will.

“No, that’s not as serious a problem as dust storms,” replied Madhu. “If we have six to nine months when the insolation is reduced to as little as one tenth of normal, we’ll need a big source of heat to prevent everything in here from freezing.”

Will’s attaché beeped. He looked; it was a call from Ethel. “Hi,” he said.

“Say, can Marshall and I come in? We’re walking around.”

“Sure, why not? It’s hot in here; maybe 40 Centigrade. But the air is breathable and there’s no humidity, so it’s tolerable.”

“We won’t stay long. Bye.”

Will put his attaché back at his side. They all walked around the open space. The dome had a pretty good view, too; the berm of reg and ice outside the plastic was about waist high, and was there to keep vehicles away from the dome.

A minute later there was a sound at the airlock. It opened and from the far side of the dome Will saw Ethel and Marshall. The little boy looked wide-eyed at the big open space and the bright sunlight. Then he shouted with glee.

“Marshall!” exclaimed Will.

“Daddy!” he replied, and with a laugh Marshall ran across the space to his father. Will watched him coming, then dodged to the side and began to run around in a circle. Marshall laughed and chased Will, who was careful not to outrun his son too much. Finally Marshall caught him, at which point Will turned and began chasing his thirty-month old son.

Everyone laughed to watch the antics. Roger got on his attaché and called Érico. He arrived with Carmen and four others he had intercepted on the way and brought a baseball with him.

“Where did you get that?” asked Roger.

“Oh, I had it all along,” replied Érico. “Here, catch!” He tossed it to Roger, and a four way game of catch quickly developed in the dome.

Ethel looked at Will, who was now sweating as he ran around with his son. She picked up his attaché, which he had put down on the floor. “I’m calling Francisco; he’s in charge of lunch this sol. Shall we make it a picnic in here?”

Will nodded. “Yes, that’s a great idea. The life support equipment isn’t installed, yet, but this place is so big, we can all be in here for an hour and not effect air quality noticeably.”

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