8

Flag Raising

Will poured over the email from Ginger Petropoulos, the Mars Commission’s director of land sales, with great care and interest. In the last week he had emailed all the directors of various departments of the Commission, asking friendly but specific questions about their operations, and much to his surprise, all had replied. Because Morgan met with them all monthly and because Will attended the meeting by video, they all knew him, and he had managed to befriend them all, in spite of the great distance and frustrating time delay. Furthermore, Morgan had cultivated a culture of exchange and openness.

As was his custom, Will scribbled notes on his attaché as he read, then quickly numbered the points he wanted to cover, which caused them spontaneously to reorder themselves on the screen. Ready, he activated a videomail and dictated a reply, which was faster and more efficient than a written message.

“Thanks, Ginger, for the report. By the way, even if it is 2 a.m. here, I’ll be up at least another hour, so feel free to call back if you want to add any comments. I know this is a good time to call Houston, so I’m up for that reason.

“I’m encouraged by the land sales. I had no idea that 25,000 people would be willing to shell out an average of a thousand bucks each to buy a hundred meter wide piece of escarpment rim! It sounds like we’ve sold practically the entire northern escarpment of Aurorae. Last week I asked Roger to look at the video that the sunwing took and he thinks we can get better quality, so I suggest you submit a request that we re-shoot it. For a few hundred thousand bucks, we can give our twenty five million dollars of customers a much sharper view of the canyon from their lots. I think we can run the sunwing right along the rim and only fifty meters above the surface, so the edge appears in the picture.

“As for corporate sales, I talked to Andries Underwood yestersol, who is our remote sensing expert here. He says he will propose several sunwing flights over Tithonium Vallis to verify the exact dimensions of several igneous layered complexes. He’s pretty sure one of them has chromium ores, which is essential for making some kinds of stainless steel. There’s also a second area with probable gold deposits. Next month I’ll be heading up the canyon with two rangers to check out three mineralized zones, and we’ll schedule some photo opportunities so that your people can make sales videos. I’m thrilled to hear that Muller Mining AG is interested in investing here. A one hundred million dollar sale of mineral rights would be good for us and eventually the company would recoup its investment, though I suppose it’ll take at least twenty years! It sound like Muller is more concerned with supporting the exploration of this world anyway. Give me his contact information if you want, and I’ll send him a message of appreciation.

“So it sounds like we can raise $125 million in land sales! I can’t believe it. That’ll almost support a full-time position for mineral extraction and export, which means the position can pay for itself and justify the investments. Let me know what else I can do to help. Bye.”

Will sent the message, copied Morgan, and turned to his next issue: recruiting nations to send people to Mars. Morgan himself handled that matter, so Will read through the latest report about recruitment efforts, organized a quick outline, and sent a videomail to the boss. “Doug, I’m very excited about the response your team has received for Columbus 6. Thank God the Swift Shuttle and tourism to low earth orbit has lowered launch costs so much, though I suppose it also lowers the revenue we can earn by selling argon and Phobosian methane. At two hundred fifty million bucks per passenger, there are a lot of countries that can afford to send one, and a fair number who should be cajoled into sending two! We might even have trouble figuring out how to use them all here! If you need any of the Spanish-speaking astronauts up here to talk to Argentina, you can be sure it’ll be done in twenty-four hours. Érico has asked whether he can contact some friends in Portugal and you can count on his help. I’ll be happy to call the Iranian Minister for Space Exploration myself. Don’t sell Iran short; they have some pretty capable scientists. They may still be anathema to NASA, but it seems to me they can’t be to the Mars Commission. Once I have that experience under my belt, I can call Turkey and Pakistan as well. I’m surprised Pakistan hasn’t been clamoring to send someone, since the Indians are well represented up here. If you want me to call Korea and Australia, just let me know and send the talking points. I’ll flesh them out and send them back, you can look them over and comment, then I’ll make the call. I know you don’t need my help with Belgium, Italy, Hungary, and Morocco.

“I know with the increased Russian commitment and the steady American and European commitments, we’ll have more than eighteen for Columbus 6. Doug, let’s crank up the total to thirty. The Commission can fly six ITVs with five on board each, and two shuttles. They can fly as two complexes and they could dock together periodically. We’re talking about a billion in added equipment costs and another two hundred million in added cargo transport costs, but twelve more people. The projections indicate that ground support costs increase only modestly. The shuttles can handle the additional flights. So the expansion can pay for itself at $250 million per berth. We may find ourselves at a point pretty soon when countries will rush to send someone because it’s cheaper, and the rush will make it even cheaper and make the rush bigger.

“Anyway, let me know if you want me to make the calls. Bye.”

He sent the message, pausing briefly to wonder whether the plea for expansion would do any good. Then he turned to message number three: Pavel Rudenkov’s final plans for their next construction. The construction coordinator for Columbus 3 had spent six months on the moon overseeing construction of their first building made largely of local materials, then had returned to Moscow to become the terrestrial coordinator of construction on both Mars and the moon. His experience on both worlds made him incredibly effective. Will reviewed the sophisticated new design: a three-story building to enclose the space already half-enclosed by the Renfrew and Joseph buildings, which were at right angles to each other, twenty and thirty meters long each. The new building—tentatively named Lassen after the NASA director of the Columbus Program, recently retired—would be semicircular, allowing a dome to be erected over the space the three buildings enclosed. Renfrew and Joseph would have to undergo minor modifications to support the circular edge of the dome, but they did not appear to be extensive.

Alexandra Lescov, however, had been actively resisting the design, much to Will’s chagrin. He wondered whether Rudenkov could help. “Pavel, I’m pleased with the design,” he began. “It’s a pretty big building; I’m concerned that we won’t know what to do with 3,000 square meters of pressurized floor space. At our current habitation levels it would accommodate sixty or seventy people, after all! On the other hand, if we can pull this off, we’ll have the ability to enclose just about all the space we’ll ever need, and we won’t have to import housing from Earth ever again. So I’m in favor. But I’m sure Alexandra is opposed; she favors remodeling our existing space first to accommodate Columbus 5, then slowly and systematically looking at our plans in order to improve them. I admit, her approach to remodeling the habitats has been successful, and her mechanization of the manufacture of housing materials has been remarkable. I just wish she’d make up her mind about the next phase. Can you talk to her? I’d like to get the Lassen Building moving. Time’s flying; Columbus 5 arrives in fifteen months. Let me know the result. Bye.”

Will sent the message and turned to a videomail from Louisa Turner. But as he was about to read it, he heard footsteps. Martha Vickers was walking by the bridge. “Why are you up?” she asked.

“Someone has to be in the bridge at all times, and late at night is the best time for me to get some of my videomails done, especially right now when our clocks are out of synch with Houston.”

“But still, you don’t make up for it during the day, Will. You work too many hours.”

Will shrugged. “We all work a lot of hours.”

“And some work more than others. You just gave a very popular speech a few weeks ago called ‘Living Well on Mars’; remember it? These kind of hours are not ‘living well,’ if you ask me.”

“Martha, then what are you doing up?”

“I just had to meet with someone who has insomnia. This person has a persistent problem right now. I’m afraid it relates to the longer day-night cycle here; this person has not successfully adapted, I think.”

Will suspected he knew who Martha was referring to, but he did not want to violate the psychiatrist-patient privilege. “Several people on Columbus 3 had a difficult adjustment. I think I had trouble; I didn’t sleep really well until almost a year after leaving Earth.”

“That’s possible.” Martha sighed. “We’ve got several problems of this sort right now. I’m counseling one couple about pregnancy—one spouse in favor and one against—and trying to hold together the marriage in another case. Several other people are homesick or just want to have a companion.”

“Have you tried matchmaking?”

Martha hesitated. “I’ve considered it, but it’s questionable professionally. On the other hand, this is a small place.”

“We need to learn how to be each other’s keepers when we’re the only humans in tens of millions of kilometers.”

“Back to ‘living well on Mars.’ Was that your idea, Turner’s or someone else’s?”

“Frankly, I’m not sure any more. I think the phrasing was mine, but the idea was Turner’s.”

“If you think that, you’ve obviously forgotten that ‘living well on Mars’ has been a theme of yours for about four years.” Vickers looked at him. “Say, I think we need to take the concept more seriously in some very practical ways. Why not get the entire crew together for a sol, or half a sol, and talk about the quality of life here, with the goal of improving it. We’re in good enough shape so that the meeting won’t degenerate into a gripe session.”

“Hum. . . ” Will thought about the idea. “You know, that would be a good idea. We still have time to make changes in both the cargo manifest and the passenger manifest, so the fruits of the meeting could have a concrete impact in about a year.”

“I’m thinking I could call up a few psychology friends and ask them to give us a few canned video talks—maybe ten or fifteen minutes in length—about living well. We could ask questions of them, then have a discussion about life here and how to improve it. We might be happier as a result, and it would reinforce the theme of your public relations campaign.”

Will nodded. “It’s a win-win idea. Can you give me an email about it? I’ll route it to Morgan. I’m trying hard to keep him in the loop.”

“I gathered. I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Martha started to go, but then stepped back. “And Will; get a good night’s sleep.”

He smiled. “Okay. Érico will be here at 3 a.m. to relieve me. After the kids go to daycare, I’ll plan to take a nap.”

“Good!”

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

Will barely heeded Martha’s advice; messages and responsibilities allowed only an extra hour of rest on top of the four the kids let him get. He devoted the rest of the morning to the greenhouses. Lisa Kok was concerned about the microflora in the soil of Greenhouses 6 and 8; some microorganisms were out of balance and their population explosion was producing excessive quantities of nitrogen oxides in the air. Will listened, followed the problem as well we he could, and recommended a few people to consult with, which satisfied Lisa. The outpost’s sixteen ecologies and six buildings required four people full time to maintain.

Will spent the first two hours of the afternoon washing the floors in habitats 2 and 3 because no one else had done so. He had just finished and returned to his office when Alexandra Lescov stopped by.

“Will, I really don’t appreciate it when you ask Pavel Rudenkov to speak to me about something you want to talk to me about,” she said. There was anger rising in her voice.

“Alexandra, we need to talk about construction. I’m trying to talk Morgan into planning a larger Columbus 6; one with six ITVs and thirty people on board. Construction here is essential for that plan. Otherwise we have to import 150 tonnes of stuff for those new arrivals, and that’s just too much.”

“So is the plan to build the Lassen Building. It’ll take ten persons over a year to build half the building and ten more another year to build the other half. That’s an incredible commitment of time. Basically, the time the new arrivals would give us for a year will be completely consumed. You’re talking about moving twenty thousand tonnes of reg with our existing construction equipment, which could exhaust their design lifetimes. You’re talking about hauling in ten tonnes of building materials, too.”

Will shrugged. “You still don’t have a better plan. Alexandra, we’re growing by ten to fifteen persons in fifteen months, and maybe by thirty more two years after that. This place may have to more than double in size in three years.”

“Will, I do have a plan; almost. I’ve been talking to various companies on Earth, exploring options. I need a bit more time.”

“A bit more is all you can have, I think; celestial mechanics cannot be delayed. We have to finalize the cargo manifest in a month, maybe six weeks at most.”

“Okay, give me three weeks, and I’ll have a plan you’ll be fascinated by. I promise.”

“Fine; three weeks it is,” agreed Will.

“Thanks.” Alexandra turned and headed back to work.

Will turned back to his work as well, but not for long; he had to get to the great room in Renfrew early that evening. When he arrived he found that everyone had arrived early for supper. The crowd stayed on, too, because a quarter of the planet west, Roger Anderson was leading an expedition of two rangers and a conestoga to the top of Olympus Mons. It had been a long, tough struggle to roll over thousands of kilometers of rough lava flows, steer around great fissures in the ground, surmount the mountain-ringing escarpments, and make dozens of field trips to impact craters, cinder cones, and flank eruption sites, all the time watching the atmosphere thin around you and soon almost disappear into a vacuum. The Martian volcanoes stuck up above nine tenths of Mars’s blanket of air; they practically poked up into space.

The scene from the cameras mounted on the front of the leading ranger, and later from the helmets of the geologists, was spectacular. Except for the clinkery rubble and lack of fine-grained regolith, the scene could almost be a moonscape; it was dominated by grays, not oxidized russets, and the sky was black rather than a dusty pink. The meteorology instruments measured a wind of about one hundred kilometers per hour as they reached the summit, but no one could detect the slightest trace of the gale outside, for the air was too thin to disturb anything.

The last kilometer—to the top of a peak along the edge of the central caldera—had to be reached on foot. The six astronauts struggled up the slope in their spacesuits, carrying the equipment they needed, chatting and joking in spite of their rapid breathing. The great room was silent and even the small children sensed the importance of what was happening.

“Come on, Lal,” Roger urged, as he approached the summit. He paused to let Lal Shankaraman catch up to him, and the two of them waited for the other four. Then the six of them stepped up the last few meters where the cinder cone flattened out on top.

“We made it!” exclaimed Jacques.

“We did,” agreed Roger. “Lal, the flag.”

“Just a sec.” Lal pulled the pieces of flagpole from his backpack and assembled them together, then mounted a United Nations flag on top. Will was startled to see which flag was going up on the top of the mountain. The American flag had been the one erected when they first landed on Mars. The other flags followed.

“Will Roger let him set up that flag?” asked Érico, thinking aloud. He was startled when he saw Roger had taken the U.N. flag without any comment or hesitation.

Roger wiggled the bottom of the flagpole into the cinders. Slowly and deliberately he set up the flag. “The six of us have come to the top of the solar system’s highest mountain as representatives of all of humanity,” he said. “We come here in peace and in collaboration as brothers and sisters. Our expedition is dedicated to show the way to human unity and solidarity all across Earth, and we dedicate this trip to it.”

“Did Roger tell you he was setting up the U.N. flag?” asked Martha.

Will shook his head. “This will cause a stir in Houston.”

The six astronauts move into a line facing the flag and they saluted it together. Then Lal started singing.

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.

He had gotten only part way through the first verse when the other five astronauts joined in. Will felt a swell of pride as he watched. Then Érico began to sing the song as well, and everyone in the Great Room joined in. The astronauts on Olympus Mons heard them singing in the background and hesitated a moment, but then sang the song again. The entire Great Room joined them.

When they finished, everyone looked at each other, smiling, almost embarrassed. “I didn’t realize we felt this way,” Will said to the others. He leaned close to the microphone that was near him. “Greetings, Olympus Mons expedition from Aurorae Outpost. Congratulations, folks, you’ve accomplished quite a milestone.”

“Thank you,” replied Roger. “Oh, you should see the view! Here!” He walked toward the edge of the cinder cone and suddenly an immeasurable immensity opened up before their eyes. The mountain’s central caldera was over a hundred kilometers in diameter; the planet’s curvature could be clearly seen all the way around to the opposite side of the pit. The floor was six kilometers below them and had wispy streaks of dust across it.

“Amazing,” exclaimed Ethel, and others repeated similar remarks.

Several astronauts had cameras; they did a close-up panorama of the view all the way around. “So many small craters,” noted Will noted. “I see some just a few meters across.”

“Yes, the Martian atmosphere doesn’t stop them, like it does at the Outpost,” replied Roger. “We’re at the edge of space here, above all radiation protection.”

“And we can’t stay long; we have work to do,” added Lal.

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

The expedition spent the rest of the sol on the edge of the caldera. The people in the Outpost went to bed several hours earlier, since they were six time zones to the east of Olympus Mons.

Reaction to the use of the United Nations flag built overnight, but there was no time, the next morning, to pay attention: another Olympus, the shuttle Olympus, had completed three weeks at Deimos and was scheduled to return to the Outpost. The door of engine bay number three had been closed tight and tested several different ways, including manually. Nevertheless, everyone worried about it. The Olympus fired engines one and two in order to head down; it left engine three closed up and silent. Tensions mounted as the shuttle approached the atmosphere. But engine 3’s bay door remained closed tightly through entry and opened on queue when the shuttle’s engines had to fire in the last minute of the flight. Shuttles can land on two of their three engines, so there was no danger. The Olympus made a perfect landing on pad 3. An hour later the crew of four entered the Outpost to the applause of everyone present.

“We’re all proud of you,” Will said a few minutes later to the crowd gathered in the great room. “This is the first time a space flight has taken off from a place other than Earth, gone to another world, and returned to its departure point. And you went not to one other world, but two! We had a few complications, but the mission was a great success. The amount of time humans have been on Phobos was almost doubled; the amount of time on Deimos was more than doubled. The water and fuel production capacities of both moons have been boosted and made more efficient. Both moons have now been thoroughly explored and several mysteries have been at least partially explained. The ground is prepared for erecting temporary shelters on both moons. Finally, fifteen tonnes of fossiliferous rock and gold are on board the Ausonia and are on their way to Embarcadero. We owe Yevgeny and his team a debt of gratitude.” Will raised his hands and began to applaud. The others followed his lead.

Yevgeny stepped forward. “Thank you. All I can say is that we hope to go again. The Mars shuttles have been gradually proving their capabilities; we know they can go to the moons and return safely. I hope the moons will now be visited three times per columbiad; once when a mission arrives from Earth, once when a mission returns to Earth, and at least once in between. If we raised the number of trips from three to five, there would be a flight every five months and we could permanently staff the moons. Maybe as the Mars facility continues to expand, that will be possible. As an interim step, let’s at least extend the length of the next visit to four or five weeks per moon. As long as we can stop at an ITV to have access to gravity for a week or two in between, we should be fine.” He turned to Elliott. “Thank you, Commander, for arguing successfully for this mission. I know you had to back down when it was planned for Columbus 3.”

Will nodded. “That’s true, but we have more reliable shuttle technology now, and better support and rescue capacity. One issue we will have to resolve is whether a crew is needed full time on the moons. Right now such a crew would have little to do, though four visits of a month each could be justified. And there’s a quality of life issue; even if Columbus 5 delivers crew modules to each moon, they won’t be pleasant places to stay.

“And that brings me to an announcement. Martha Vickers and I have been talking to several experts in the Commission about quality of life issues here. In the last few months, as you all know, we have been selling Mars as a place with a high quality of life at least from a social point of view. It occurs to us that if we plan to take the quality of life here seriously, we need to talk about it. So I’m calling a one-sol conference for mid May, when all of us can get together. The Tharsis Trail crew is scheduled to be back here by then. The Pisces Trail crew will attend by video. We’ll be hearing from some experts, then we’ll brainstorm about ways life can be improved here. If some of us plan to stay long term, we have to ensure that life here is reasonably happy and successful. Furthermore, we are a large, and growing, international team. With all the unrest and instability on Earth recently, we owe it to our nations to serve as a role model for peaceful, multicultural collaboration.”

Will’s announcement was greeted with some surprise and no spoken comments. He was surprised no one asked a question; discussion was pretty informal on Mars and everyone felt free to speak their mind. Since no one spoke, Will pointed to the buffet table and stepped down. Everyone headed for the food.

“Quality of life, huh?” Andries asked him over dinner. “Do we even know what that means?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Will. “The experts can advise us. The exact theme will probably be ‘living well.’”

“Living well?” asked Roger. “I’d define that rather religiously, you know. To live well is to accept Jesus Christ as one’s savior and shape one’s life accordingly. That can be done here on Mars as much as on Earth.”

“If nothing else, we can exchange our visions of living well,” replied Will. “I agree, it will be hard to promulgate a definition of the good life that everyone will accept.”

“Impossible,” replied Roger.

“I have a simple and practical concern,” added Enrique Delrio. “Here at the Outpost, the good life is defined as being married and planning to start a family here. I will probably stay, but I have no plans to get married.”

“That’s very true,” agreed Kevin Dunbar, who was separated from Jennie.

“That’s another topic to talk about,” agreed Will. “And it isn’t clear to me that a simple resolution is possible.” He glanced at his watch. “You must excuse me; I have an urgent matter to deal with.” Will pushed back his chair, glanced at his watch, and looked at Ethel. She nodded; she knew he had to go. The reactions against the raising of the U.N. flag had been growing and needed his attention.

Will listened to his attaché reading emails to him via his earpiece while walking to his office. Douglas Morgan’s first message asked for ideas and cautioned him not to act without discussing things with him first; Louisa Turner had dozens of ideas for him based on brainstorming in her office. “We need to stress the international nature of Mars exploration,” she said in summary. “That Mars is a laboratory for international cooperation and living and a place to create an international culture that can help everyone on Earth to live together peacefully. The articles and interviews I’ve listed will do that. The talking points follow from the main points; take a look.”

Will wondered about that. But after he sat at his desk, he watched Morgan’s latest videomail. “Increasingly, this looks like a tempest in a teapot,” he said. “I’ve called some friends in Washington. The flag raising has been a lightning rod for a small group of ultra-conservative types. Note that the only Senator who has spoken up is Longstreet; I think you know his politics. The websites and magazines with editorials have been very conservative as well. It’s beginning to look like an effort to get attention, Will. If we react, the controversy will grow, not shrink. I know your crew on Mars will be insulted by the arrogance of the American nationalism and patriotism that has been expressed. The U.S. is paying for half of the Mars project and only gets about a third of the slots. A call for recognizing the international character of Mars could jeopardize U.S. funding. Our advice here is, bite your tongue. And definitely don’t raise the U.N. flag over the Outpost. I gather that’s an idea someone suggested. That could be a very serious problem.”

Will hadn’t heard that suggestion, though it had occurred to him. He thought about Morgan’s position, which was based on the Washington inside talk, and Turner’s approach, which was inevitably tinged by the utopianism of the Mars Exploration Society. The articles that had been sent to him, by and large, were fairly conservative. Notably, they were all American.

He began to scribble points, arranging them, ordering them, clarifying them as he went. The time delay had real advantages, if one utilized them. The video message he recorded was for Morgan, but he blind copied Turner as well.

“Doug, thanks for the information from your Washington insiders. I just skimmed the articles sent to me, and earlier I looked at all the video clips that have been sent to me by various persons. I agree, the reaction against the flag raising has all been from right-wing America-first groups. The mainstream media has not picked up on the reaction much. If we react, we may make the issue much more visible. Right now, Earth seems to be in a quiet time where news is concerned, so there will be even more attention is we say anything.

“So I agree with you; this is not the time for us to react to the criticism. Any effort to stress the international character of the Mars project will be obvious to the folks overseas and will stir more reaction in the United States. Instead, I propose that the time has come to stress our plans for the ‘Living Well’ conference. That conference will concretely assist all of us here on Mars to live better and will help us relate to the majority of people on Earth. And inevitably, the international character of the place will be an undercurrent.

“If a need to respond develops—and it might if this controversy expands—I suggest we ask Roger Anderson to handle it. He raised the U.N. flag on Olympus Mons, he’s a Republican, and is a political conservative. He has a lot of friends in Washington. And I think I could talk to him about what he might say.

“Inevitably people will ask me about the matter, but I can change the subject and talk about the conference instead. The conference has the ability to energize our supporters, too, because of its utopian nature. What do you think about that? Bye.”

Will sent the video message, satisfied that he had possibly cut a Gordian knot. He had feared that he would tied up with the matter for several hours; it was now resolved if everyone else agreed. Will turned to his other messages. David Alaoui wrote him from Paris with the latest news about the Venus Orbital Station, which the French had scheduled for the next year. Sebastian Langlais had updated him about the Helium 3 extraction project on the moon; it was working well. He also had a series of questions from his fan mail response center to answer; he tackled most of the questions. Then responses arrived from Earth.

“I’m surprised, Will, but I see the wisdom,” said Turner. “I know a lot of people here want to take on the excessive nationalism the controversy represents, and I suspect there are quite a few people up there who feel the same. But your instinct is right: we need to focus on a positive message, one that keeps our priorities on top. The conference is the way to do that. I’m surprised I didn’t think of that. I’ll draft some transitions that will take attention from the flag to the conference. Bye.”

He immediately hit reply. “Thanks for your help, Louisa. If I have any p.r. instincts at all, it’s because of your advice for the last six months! This incident makes me wonder whether we might be able to develop a message with a series of themes and try to stay on-message all the time. Maybe Mars is important enough to keep itself in the limelight without accidents or incidents. We may want to move the conference up a bit so as to keep up the momentum. If we did that, could you design a plan we could use over four to six weeks, with follow-up afterward? Bye.”

Morgan had responded as well. Will played his message back. “Will, I am delighted. Yes, the conference is the way to go; it’ll turn the attention to something positive and will take the wind out of the sails of our critics in Washington. I really appreciate your thinking on this issue. I agree that Roger should comment briefly if the controversy continues, but I think it won’t. This may work out quite well for us. Bye.”

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