1.
Miners
The Mars shuttle Arsia plunged into the Martian atmosphere at 4.2 kilometers per second and within seconds the metal heat shield covering its blunt, conical base was glowing red hot. A plume of ionized gas enveloped the craft, tracing a meteor-like reddish trail across the predawn sky above the Tharsis Uplift. Inside the pilot, Emily Scoville, watched the computer closely. It maintained the craft’s lift at maximum, lengthening the glide and minimizing the gee forces on the eight human beings packed into the two small passenger cabins built into the cargo bay just above the engines. The rest of the cargo bay was stuffed with twenty tonnes of cargo: consumables, drills, solar power units, sunwings, new computer equipment. The passengers anxiously watched the television screen in front of them as they endured up to two terrestrial gees of deceleration.
Just as the deceleration waned—the atmosphere had done all it could do to slow their plunge to a mere 1.5 kilometers per second—Emily came on the intercom with the laconic announcement, “parachute deployment.” No warning was sufficient for the jerk caused by the deployment of the drogue chutes, then the violent jerk caused by the three main chutes ten seconds later. Rather than falling ballistically in a long, graceful arc toward the surface, the parachutes caused the trajectory to steepen and the Arsia to head more vertically toward the ground below.
Bang! The parachutes cut loose on cue when the Arsia was falling at a mere 700 meters per second—1,565 miles per hour, for those unable to deal with the metric system—and just 26 kilometers above and to the west of pad 7. For a terrifying split second they were in free fall. Then the Arsia’s main engines, formerly concealed behind now-open doors in the heat shield, blazed alive, expelling one hundred meters of orange-tinged blue flame. Weight returned, 1.3 terrestrial gees of it. The Arsia slowed, turned to stand vertically, then settled straight onto the bullseye in the center of pad 7, blasting dust and vaporized ice hundreds of meters across the surface. With a bump the spacecraft settled onto its legs and the engines shut off. The first eight of Columbus 6’s forty personnel had arrived at Aurorae Outpost, Mars.
Two conestogas—large, pressurized, eight-wheeled vehicles—immediately circled the newly arrived vehicle, checking for heat shield damage, venting gasses, or any thing else that was out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, inside the eight safely arrived people climbed out of their seats, put on their life support backpacks, and prepared for an EVA. Scoville gave the green light for them to begin to disembark and lowered the ramp next to the airlock. Two by two they stepped out, placed their feet on the dust of Mars for the first time, and walked around excitedly, looking at the nearby mesas known as Table Mountain and Boat Rock and staring at the hulking wall 1,500 meters high known as the escarpment, the northern edge of Aurorae Chaos a dozen kilometers away. Little was more beautiful than the Mariner Valleys, and Aurorae Outpost was built in the easternmost end of that mighty chain of crust-cracking rifts.
The all clear had been sounded; it was safe to approach the shuttle, so more vehicles arrived. Spacesuited men jumped out to shake hands and hug their new coworkers. Soon the cargo bay doors swung open as well and twenty tonnes of cargo began to be unloaded into the waiting vehicles and the trailers they were pulling. By noon, the twenty-five personnel had managed to unload almost everything. They drove back to the garage in the basement of Joseph Hall and went inside for more greetings and lunch. Then that afternoon another shuttle would arrive and they would repeat the entire exercise again. The next sol two more would land; the sol after, the fifth and last shuttle would descend from orbit.
Coordinating the entire operation from his office in Habitat 1 was Commander Will Elliott. On September 14, 2031—the sol of the Arsia’s landing—he was 45 years old and had lived on Mars ten and a half years, one of three people to remain on the Red Planet from Columbus 1. Every time an eight-person crew arrived he welcomed them all personally in the garage of Joseph Hall. By 3 p.m. on the first sol there was a slight temporary letup in his work—in addition to coordinating all Mars operations, he was also Assistant Director of the Mars Commission and therefore the number two person in the organization, and had to sit in electronically in many meetings in Houston in spite of the five to forty minute communications delay—and that allowed him to send emails to two new arrivals, inviting them to meet him an hour later. At four p.m. Bruce Curry arrived at his desk.
“Bruce, welcome again to Mars.” Will rose from behind his desk and stepped forward to greet Curry, an experienced miner about fifty years of age, tall and thin, with balding grayish-red hair.
Curry offered Will his hand and they shook; Curry used a bone-crushing grip, as was his custom. He glanced at the Commander’s melanin-hued skin and slightly curly, brown hair and considered the fact that Elliott was part African American, part European American. Curry was used to traveling around the world and meeting all types, but had never gotten completely comfortable with people of mixed racial backgrounds.
“Thank you, Commander, I’m delighted to be here. It’s an incredible opportunity.”
“For everyone; for you, for Consolidated Mining, for the Commission, for Mars. We’re really happy you’ve arrived safely. How was your journey?”
Curry shrugged. “I’m still not much of an astronaut; that part of the job takes some getting used to! Columbus 5 was rather crowded, but the food was pretty good and there were plenty of training videos to watch again and again.”
“I understood you got pretty good at zero-gee volley ball.”
Curry smiled. “Now where did you hear that? I’ll tell you, we had some pretty good matches up there. Just about everyone was on an intramural team before we reached Mars. The middeck included a gymnasium twenty meters long and six meters in diameter, and the ship’s rotation produce negligible gravity on the axis. The trickiest part about zero-gee volley ball is returning the ball at all—it’s easy to jump from the wall to hit the ball more or less in the right direction, but hard not to crash into the opposite wall, let alone be ready for the returned volley. The second hardest part is shooting the ball through the three-meter circular hole in the midfield net! It’s great exercise, though it did lead to a few sprained fingers and wrists from crashing into people or walls.”
“I can imagine. We didn’t have either the space, or the game itself on Columbus 1.”
“I don’t think they even had it on ISS then! The new LEO Hilton has a nice volley ball gymnasium.”
“I heard. Now the folks at Shackleton want to invent a similar game to play in lunar gravity; they’re getting a big open enclosure in a few months. Have you been to the moon?”
“Just for two weeks, as part of our training, right before heading to Gateway Station and launching the mission.”
“Fascinating place. I suppose you’re anxious to get your crew down to Pretoria?”
Curry shrugged. “Well, we won’t get much work done here, there’s no gold at Aurorae. When will we be able to retrieve the mining equipment on the automated cargo vehicle?”
“About ten sols. All five of our shuttles are occupied right now to deorbit the Columbus 5 passengers and ninety tonnes of supplies. It takes about ten sols to refuel a shuttle, then ACV3 is our first priority.” Will leaned back in his chair. “You should have seen the aerobraking; it was spectacular. ACV3 flew right overhead Aurorae at about midnight local time and it was a mere 2 kilometers up; it had to dip quite deeply into the Martian atmosphere in order to burn off the extra speed. We’ve never had cargo arrive at 8 kilometers per second before. The flame really lit up the sky!”
“I bet. It’s a shame we had to send it from Earth so late, but Muller Mining didn’t have its act together.”
“Well, it didn’t raise the transportation cost that much, since NASA threw in the use of the solid core nuclear rocket for free.” Will paused. “I gather there was quite a rivalry between Consolidated and Muller on the flight out.”
Curry smiled slightly. “Well, let’s just say we beat them in volleyball three times straight.” Then after a pause he added, “As you undoubtedly know, we have serious concerns about security. We have proprietary technology that is not even patented because we want to keep it secret. The four of us are in charge of watching over and moving our stuff. I wish it had been possible to fly all our stuff straight to Cassini Outpost; now it has to be broken up and hauled to Cassini a few tonnes at a time.”
“It would have been quite difficult for some shuttles to land at Cassini while others landed here,” replied Will. “It would have meant that different Interplanetary Transit Vehicles aerobraked into orbits with different inclinations, which would have required several aerobraking passes and would have made any emergency rescue efforts complicated. When everyone brakes into an equatorial orbit and heads for Embarcadero Station, its resources are immediately available if there’s trouble, not to mention resources on Phobos and Deimos. Besides, we want everyone arriving at Mars to start here. We are part of one big team, and no one will feel that or understand that if they never come to Aurorae when everyone else is here. No, for now Aurorae is the point of entry for personnel.
“But the cargo on ACV3 will be delivered to Cassini directly. ACV3 aerobraked into an orbit with a 28 degree inclination, the latitude of Cassini Outpost. The shuttle picking up the cargo will be controlled robotically, so rescue is not an issue.”
Curry listened impatiently. “I understand basic orbital mechanics, even if I am a rock miner, Commander. I suppose another way of saying what I meant is that I hope the time will come when our orbital facilities will be sufficiently robust to allow humans to travel in non-equatorial orbits around this planet. The new Sunwing model 3 won’t be put together for a few months, if the work schedule holds. That means eight tonnes of cargo for Consolidated has to be hauled overland in trailers some 6,125 kilometers over dirt tracks to their destination.”
“We might fly them by shuttle. But if we do have to drive them, it probably won’t be as difficult as it sounds. One conestoga can pull a nuclear reactor and a trailer with eight tonnes of cargo at fifteen kilometers per hour, twenty-four point six hours per sol, over the trail, all by itself. We haven’t tried automated cargo transport yet, but it’s theoretically possible. It’ll deliver cargo to Cassini in two and a half weeks. We just finished widening the Circumnavigational and Cassini Trails so they can accommodate automated driving more effectively. If you’d like your team to go along, we can send a ranger as well and the four of you can sit, play cards, and watch tv while you roll to your destination.”
Curry scowled and was about to respond when they saw another man approach Will’s office. He was a bit shorter than average, in his early forties, with a thin mustache. Will smiled and stood. It was Gerhard Bach, the head of the four-person mining team from Muller Mining, A.G.
“Gerhard, welcome to Mars!” said Will.
Bach saw Curry and they both momentarily stared at each other. It was clear they were uncomfortable with each other. Then Bach entered Will’s office. Will came out from behind his desk again to shake hands with the German national.
“Thank you, Commander,” replied Gerhard. “And it has been quite a welcome.”
“I trust you had a comfortable voyage?”
Gerhard nodded slightly. “Reasonably so. We tried to keep ourselves busy while coasting between the planets. This is quite an impressive facility; so much larger than Shackleton.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Shackleton doesn’t have thirty vertical meters of airspace, but the square meters of floor space is about the same.”
“Perhaps it’s the parkland and trees that gives this place a different feel.”
“Have either of you seen Catalina yet?”
“No,” both men said simultaneously.
“I didn’t think so. Building 1 is completely purchased by folks arriving on Columbus 6, and none of your people bought in. Building 2 still has to be completed. Let me show you.” Will pointed to the door. Curry and Bach reluctantly followed him. They crossed to Habitat 2, where sick bay and the medical science lab was located, then took a tunnel to Habitat 4, which housed some of the new arrivals. From there they crossed Clarke Dome, an experimental thirty-meter in diameter pressurized space, at first used for recreation but now serving as an agricultural area. That led them to Yalta Biome, a forty-meter dome with two buildings on the northern and southern sides, respectively; their roofs were covered by lush agricultural areas while the “yard” between them was planted in clover, flowers, and fruit and nut trees. From there it was a quick walk via another pressure tunnel to Catalina Biome.
“This outpost has evolved through various stages,” Will said as they walked. “When we first arrived here, we brought Habitats 1 and 2. Of course, they’ve now been extensively refurbished to make them more comfortable; walls of sheet rock are stronger and more sound proof than a thin plastic fabric wall with flimsy Martian plastic panels glued on! Habitat 3 arrived with Columbus 2 and Habitat 4 arrived with Columbus 3. The latter was better designed and had a lot more usable interior space; it’s set up to house twenty people, and the dorm rooms can be used as offices and meeting rooms at other times. Clarke Dome arrived with Columbus 4 as well and was an immense relief; it gave us a big interior space, which we had never had before. During Columbus 4 we experimented with duricrete and iron construction; Renfrew and Joseph Halls resulted. They’re solid, reliable, safe, but have tiny windows and feel hulky and oppressive. So then Alexandra Lescov, the director of construction here, experimented with various other approaches and eventually settled on the biome concept; rather than importing greenhouses and inflatable plastic habitats, we import a big plastic enclosure for the agriculture and build housing inside smaller bubbles within the big one, so that our housing looks out on greenery. The resulting construction is lighter, more airy, and much more appealing.” Will opened the final airlock door and led them into Catalina Biome. Like Yalta, it was forty meters across and had a northern building and a southern building, with an east-west trending yard between them “The sun floods the yard with light all sol,” Will added, pointing to Catalina’s yard, which was still underdeveloped, with saplings, scattered clover plants, and rather thin flower beds. “We’re almost on the equator here, so when the sun is in the northern hemisphere the south building’s north-facing windows get oblique sunlight at midday; half an annum later, the north building’s south-facing windows get it instead. The buildings have overhangs that stick out two meters, providing shade and radiation protection to anyone staying close to the building.”
“What’s the radiation exposure inside the building?” asked Gerhard.
“About one rem per year; the two meters of wet soil filling the rooftop farms provide quite robust shielding. Out here in the yard you’ll get seven rems per year, and in interplanetary space about twenty. The recommended max of fifty rems per lifetime will be exceeded by anyone living here, but with good medical care it can be managed fairly well. At least that’s how it looks right now.” He pointed to building 2. “Come look.” he led them over to building 2 to a large window in the exterior vinyl siding. They looked inside and were surprised to see a huge, cavernous, empty space.
“That’s right, you don’t have a building bubble in this one yet,” noted Gerhard.
“We used this bubble to build the dacha, our vacation spot up on the escarpment overlooking Valles Marineris. But an extra bubble arrived with the shuttle this morning. Its mass is only one tonne. We’ll put it inside here and inflate it; it’ll fill the cavernous space exactly. Then we’ll install the airlocks and move inside to build the building within out of nickel-steel frames and sheetrock wall units. The Yalta buildings were constructed in place in a more traditional manner; we welded and riveted the nickel-steel beams together in place, then bolted on the sheetrock, installing insulation, pipes, and wires as we went. It was basically the old fashioned two-by-four and plywood system, but with materials we could make on Mars. But building 1 and this building were manufactured panel by panel in the top floor of Joseph Hall, which we’ve now converted into a construction area. The panels come in certain standard dimensions and every wall in here has been designed to use one of the standard panels. Because we have access to industrial-sized airlocks, we can even weld the steel frames in standard sizes up to four meters by three. And the robots that arrived with Columbus 5 are now set up and we know how to use them fairly well. So most of the manufacturing is now semi-automated; one person can supervise three robotic welders or three robotic bolting machines at once, for example. Yalta’s building 1 took three months to assemble, but Catalina’s building 2 will take half as long because completed walls will be lifted in place by crane and bolted down in a few minutes.”
“Very impressive,” said Bruce. He stared inside. “I suppose the logical question to ask, then, is when Cassini will get a biome?”
“That’s certainly an excellent question,” Will began, trying to think through a simple and persuasive answer. “Columbus 6 is bringing three biomes. While Cassini theoretically could have as many as sixteen residents, we are recommending that the population be kept as small as possible; a maximum of six, with frequent crew rotations. The equipment can be run from a control room here just as easily as from a room in Cassini several hundred meters from the machines. People are needed principally for maintenance purposes. We already have extensive facilities for controlling telerobotically operated vehicles here and can easily build more. This is a much more comfortable place to live, too, with a cafeteria and a social life lacking in Cassini—”
“Commander, I’d prefer to have my entire team in one place, not two,” replied Bruce strongly.
“Do you realize what it means to build a biome six thousand kilometers from here? Spacesuited workers have to lay a foundation of duricrete, with steel pilings to support the buildings. Otherwise the mass of the building could deform and puncture the airtight enclosure. That task takes months. And while each building involves only a one tonne bubble and three tonnes of life support equipment imported from Earth, the interior walls of sheetrock, nickel-steel, insulation, pipe, and wires have a mass of seventy-five tonnes. The exterior vinyl walls and steel beams to support the rooftop farms mass another twenty-five tonnes. The interior of this biome has three thousand tonnes of regolith materials. It takes many tonnes of equipment to do the construction and tonnes more to sift the regolith, transport in the right size fractions, fertilize them, and get life started in them.”
“Commander, let us start thinking about a way to do this, even if it is almost a third of the way around this world,” agreed Gerhard. “I agree with my colleague. My people didn’t come here to buy flats in Yalta or Catalina or vote in Aurorae Borough elections; they came here to earn maximum bonuses for themselves and maximum profits for Muller Mining. They need to be in Cassini running and maintaining equipment. I have no problem with some of my people being here or working here; especially relaxing here. When we come here, we’ll probably want to stay at the Dacha. But I want them in Cassini most of the time.”
“And the contracts call for you to supply four people to each of us to provide support,” added Bruce. “That’s sixteen people in Cassini. If you put them in Mobilhabs and conestogas, they’ll tie up a lot of your transportation. Cassini’s not just a little temporary stop in the desert, Commander. It’s Mars’s gravy train. I don’t know about my competitor here, but my goal is to dig at least a billion dollars of gold in the next eighteen months. If Cassini’s going to produce wealth like that, it deserves a biome, even if the people are rattling around in it.”
“I believe both of you saw the proposal we sent your companies; we copied you. It called for Cassini to have six to eight people at a time; two from each of your teams and two to four people assigned by us to assist and provide support services like food and life support. That’s two Mobilhabs for now, and a building bubble without an enclosure later. Cassini will get a biome during the next columbiad, which gives us time to figure out how to get everything there and set it up. A biome requires up to a dozen construction workers at a time; where will we house them and your people?”
“Set up a bubble or two to house them temporarily. Those are details for you to work out, Commander, not us,” replied Bruce.
“I suspect our companies will cooperate on this particular matter,” added Gerhard, looking at Bruce. “I know I sent a memo of concern to Muller himself, and I was under the impression he wrote the Commission.”
“Perhaps he did, and the memo never got to me. I’ll talk to Alexandra and see what sort of acceleration to the construction schedule is possible. But I can’t guarantee anything,” Will replied. He turned away from building 2 and led them back into Yalta Biome, which was now teeming with people. It was getting close to suppertime and many were seated at tables, waiting for the food to be put out; the kids were in the yard, playing until their parents arrived to greet them. It was a noisy, busy scene. Will led the two men through Joseph Hall—named after an unborn child, victim of their flu epidemic four years earlier—showing them the materials production and fabrication facilities and the construction manufacturing area. They passed through Renfrew Hall—named after Paul Renfrew, the only astronaut to die on Mars—which now housed Martian biological research facilities. They passed through the Geology building, their first duricrete construction and now overcrowded with machines and samples. Finally, they walked through a few greenhouses and through the old industrial and biological facilities, now used for storage and crafts manufacture.
Will attempted conversation about other matters—the men’s lives, their children—but didn’t get much. “I’m committed to two columbiads,” said Bruce at the end of the tour, in response to Will’s question about their future plans. “If they offer a million or two as a signing bonus, I might stay another columbiad.”
“My time here has a lot to do with my older son,” added Gerhard. “My wife and I divorced ten years ago and my daughter got married just before I flew out. My son might want to come here in a few years after he finishes university; if he does, I’ll stay.”
“You might be our first father-son team,” noted Will.
“I’ve got to finish moving our equipment to our secure location,” exclaimed Bruce. “Thanks for the tour, Commander. It’s an impressive facility. I hope I see Cassini get this big.”
“Good to get to know you better, Bruce.” Will waved slightly; Curry waved back, turned, and headed back to Joseph Hall.
Gerhard watched him go. “A difficult man to deal with,” he said. “Did you know, Commander, that all four of the staff of Consolidated are Southern Baptists; fundamentalists who reject the theory of evolution?” He laughed. “They can accept the science behind flying to Mars and building gigantic gold processing machines, but not the same science when applied to the development of life!”
Will shrugged. “People are funny, aren’t they? Sometimes I wonder whether Mars would have been more effectively explored and developed without them! But since we’re all here, Mr. Bach, we have to cooperate closely and preferably become collegial with each other. It isn’t just a question of professionalism; it’s what we expect here on Mars.”
“That will be difficult, Commander, but I understand your point. Well, I have to check our equipment as well; we have a lot of proprietary technology and we’re very concerned that our competitors will spy on us.”
“I understand. See you around the Outpost, Gerhard.”
“Thank you. Good sol, Commander.” Gerhard turned and headed on his way.
Will walked back to his office, wondering how the bosses of these two teams would ever cooperate in a small outpost 6,000 kilometers from “civilization.” When he got to his office, he called Alexandra.
“Hello Will,” she replied. The screen on his attaché—a flat object the dimensions of a clipboard but a bit thicker, which served as a computer, videophone, and message center—had no picture on it. “I’m outside supervising the transport of the new bubble for Catalina building 2. How can I help you?”
“I just met with Bach and Curry, and as expected, they both insist that Cassini get a biome.”
“Who do they think they are?” Alexandra sounded disgusted. “We don’t exist just to serve two small mining teams in Cassini. We have a lot of work to do here at Aurorae as well. I think you had better get the Commission involved in this. Building a biome at Cassini will be immensely difficult. We’ll have to prepare everything here and haul it six thousand klicks; twenty tonnes for the biome foundation and a hundred tonnes for each building. That would require about eleven shuttle flights, which would use up all the flights of two of our five shuttles and would consume half of our electrical output for over a year. We don’t even know we can run automated cargo caravans, but if we can, at ten tonnes per trip, one round trip every month, it’ll take twenty-one round trips and twenty-one months, and will use up ten percent of our electricity. And a biome takes fifteen person-years of work to manufacture the parts and put them together.”
“I know, Alexandra. I’ll talk to Morgan. But keep in mind that three biomes have arrived on Columbus 6 and putting them here will take fifteen person-years of work as well. Each team wants to export a billion dollars of gold in the next twenty-six months; that’s 200 tonnes of gold that will have to move from Cassini. If we send construction materials to Cassini by shuttle at forty tonnes per launch, then move gold to orbit at forty tonnes per launch, then land the shuttle back at Aurorae, we’re talking about half as many shuttle flights as you objected to, and if we haul the gold overland that means the automated cargo caravans have something to bring back here on every round trip and we’ll still have to launch the gold into orbit. We’re going to have to build a biome at Cassini eventually; in fact, we’ll probably have to build two so that there’s redundancy. Cassini’s going to grow whether we like it or not because it’s where the gold is.”
“And we may have to build a biome or two at Dawes too, if gold is found there. Your argument is taking us down a very complicated and difficult path, Will.”
“It’s not my path; I’d rather avoid it. But all we can do is postpone it, Alexandra.”
“Well, do your best to postpone it! We have to build Catalina’s building 2, assemble biomes 3 and 4 from scratch—by the way, I’d like to call them Riviera and Shikoku—build a biological waste recycling facility, refurbish the Geology Building, build liquid oxygen and methane tanks, and accomplish a dozen other smaller but equally vital tasks.”
“I know. I’ll talk to Morgan. But be prepared, Alexandra.”