4.
Settlement
The arrival of three automated cargo vehicles in Mars orbit on October 1 marked the end of the training period and the start of intense work. The ACVs were large conical capsules with a heat shield on their bottoms, able to place twenty tonnes of cargo in an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet. Three Mars shuttles blasted off to meet them, pick up their cargo, and bring it to the surface; one shuttle, the Arsia, loaded up with mining equipment, dipped into the atmosphere several times to use atmospheric drag to change its orbit’s inclination, and landed at Cassini. At Aurorae, the arrival of their last cargo for twenty-six months occupied the residents for a week, unpacking, setting up equipment, storing consumables, and learning new operations.
Before the shuttles landed at Aurorae, the largest caravan ever mounted on Mars set out overland for Cassini. During the day, one of the expedition’s three rangers was as much as thirty kilometers in the lead, checking road conditions and smoothing or widening substandard spots. The original vehicles used on the moon and Mars, rangers were 2.5 meters long, 2.4 meters wide, equipped with six independently powered wheels and a bulldozer blade, and, when towing a “portahab,” a wheeled, pressurized, portable habitat, they were able to house two crew for months at a time.
Behind the lead ranger came the expedition’s two conestogas, separated by about a kilometer for safety reasons. The first conestoga—named after the tough, versatile wagons that helped open the American west—arrived on Columbus 2. They were eight-wheeled vehicles, 2.4 meters wide and high and eight meters long, with heavy bulldozer blades and powerful electric motors. They easily accommodated three or four crew and enough scientific equipment to accomplish extensive science while plowing a route across the trackless Martian desert. They were power-hungry vehicles, though, practical to use only if a portable nuclear reactor accompanied the expedition, Both conestogas were towing trailers with eight tonnes of equipment and supplies for Cassini.
Behind the conestogas were the two mobilhabs, even larger and heavier eight-wheeled vehicles 2.4 meters wide, two stories high, and eight meters long. The name was a contraction of mobile hab and captured the vehicle’s purpose; with thirty-eight square meters of interior space, it was the size of a small apartment, able to house and provide work space for six to eight. Mobilhabs usually did not have bulldozer blades; they stayed on cleared roads. One of the expedition’s two mobilhabs pulled their third trailer with eight tonnes of supplies.
Taking up the rear of the expedition were three nuclear reactors, each rolling down the road robotically on their own rovers. The reactors, able to make 150 kilowatts of power with their stirling engines, had tanks for water, liquid oxygen, and liquid methane, and a conversion unit that took water, electrolyzed it into hydrogen and oxygen, then took the hydrogen and Martian carbon dioxide and combined them to make methane and more oxygen. They, too, were at least a kilometer apart.
There were plenty of tasks for the expedition’s eighteen personnel to do: read, play cards, watch television, talk, and contemplate the sights. Groups were always taking rangers to points of geological interest along or close to the route, then driving relatively fast—up to fifty kilometers per hour—to catch up with the others. Unlike previous expeditions, there was no continuous geological support from Earth; Mars now had many geologists and equipment, exploration had become routine, and there were many terrestrial professional geologists who applied for grants to support the exploration of specific areas. Some of their stops were in response to the terrestrial geologists’ requests.
The caravan stopped only twice a sol: once after dawn, so that the vehicles could pull up to the reactors, refuel with liquid oxygen and methane, and drop off their waste water; and once in early afternoon for a big common meal in one of the mobilhabs and to allow crews to change vehicles. Otherwise it moved forward constantly.
The expedition set out northward along the Polar Trail at 25 kilometers per hour, barely faster than a space-suited man could run, under continuous computer control. They followed the Polar Trail through the chaoslands of the eastern mariner valleys and the boulder deposits of southern Chryse, then turned right (east) and traveled almost four thousand kilometers on the Circumnagivational Trail that circled Mars near its equator, over the battered and eroded highlands, then turned left and headed northward a thousand kilometers up the Cassini Trail until they reached the crater of the same name. The “trails” were nothing fancy; bulldozed tracks with a slight ridge of displaced reg along each sides helped define the trail edge and keep the computer-driven vehicles on the cleared portion when boulders and other landmarks in their terrain mapping software were too far apart to provide meaningful navigation, or the global positioning signal was momentarily interrupted.
Shortly before noon on sol eleven—October 16, 2031—the caravan rolled up to the future site of Cassini Outpost. Bruce Curry and Gerhard Bach headed to Emily Scoville’s temporary office on the front of the second floor of mobilehab 1 right away.
“Do we really need to stop here?” asked Curry. “It seems to us there are two priorities: preparing the spaceport for the arrival of the Arsia and getting the mining equipment set up. The former task needs two personnel in a ranger. The latter requires everyone else. The tasks are thirty-two kilometers apart as well.”
Emily was not to be intimidated. “First priority is setting up the two building bubbles so that we have pressurized space and life support redundancy. Yes, we’ve managed over ten sols without them; but that doesn’t mean we forsake the extra safety now. With the rangers and conestogas working on the site, we’ll have them inflated tonight. Tomorrow we’ll get the spaceport set up; I suspect that means the shuttle will land before sunset tomorrow night, because the spaceport requires very little maintenance to be ready. The shuttle landing will require all vehicles to be on standby in case of an emergency. Each of you will have all of tomorrow morning and half of the afternoon with your three other people and three of my people to start your setup. Then the next sol, once the shuttle arrives with six more folks, you’ll have four of my people each. I’ll have myself and seven folks. I may consider assigning you each one more person if the setup work gets off to a good start.”
“The sooner we get started, the sooner we dig gold,” said Curry.
“I know. If you want to dig gold, help my people right now on site preparation.”
“Aye, aye, Commander.” Curry was unhappy, but decided he wouldn’t argue further. Scoville turned to the work routines she had extensively defined and emailed them to everyone. Within half an hour everyone was outside and gathered around her. She had the work assignments in hand.
“Okay folks,” she began. “The ranger 1 people head for the red stakes.” She pointed to an area that already had red stakes when they arrived. “That’s the site of bubble 1. We need all rocks and gravel removed, the plastic tarp placed and anchored. You know the drill. Team gold, you’re responsible for unloading and setting up bubble one, including its life support. The equipment goes next to its personnel airlock, which will face north. Ranger 2 and team silver, you have the same responsibilities with the green stakes and bubble 2.” She pointed to another area adjoining the first. “Keep in mind that the biome will go over there, at the base of the southern side of that low hill; we’ll be excavating its foundation in two sols. Teams blue and purple and the team with the conestoga will start preparing the ground for the solar power units over by the blue stakes down there, a kilometer west of here on the edge of the floor of Cassini.” She pointed. “As you can see, we already have three SPU pads down there; we’ll need three more. Team red will take mobilhab 1 and head for the spaceport to check the methane and oxygen tanks, blow dust off the solar panels, and check the electrical problems at pad 2. You’ve been reviewing the anomalies for the last ten sols, I hope. Team orange heads to the well by the spaceport in mobilhab 1 to thaw a frozen pipe and get water production restarted. Mobilhab 2 stays here as backup. Questions?”
“Will we get a good shower tonight?” asked Eliseo Andaluziano.
“If we can get the water from the tank next to the well, we’ll be able to take unlimited showers; we can waste some of the water if we have to. Anything else?”
There was nothing. “Good, let’s get started,” she said. Everyone dispersed to their areas to get started on the work, work that would have taken a week if only two or three people had been available.
Scoville herself was on team gold and was soon busy preparing the ground for bubble 1. But she did take a little time to look around. Even though she had explored the area in virtual reality several times, the actual feet-on-the-ground experience could not be captured fully by a computerized image. The site chosen for Cassini Outpost—a terrace fifty meters above the crater’s floor clinging to the inner foothills of its eastern rim—was quite beautiful. Cassini’s jagged, mountainous rim was a wall blocking the eastern horizon and extending its embrace to the northwestern and southwestern horizons; the opposite side of the crater was so far away that it was out of sight. The original mountain ridge was broken in many places by gaps that often led to canyons and arroyos running to the crater floor, which was covered by alluvium and dune deposits. Cassini Trail crossed the northern and southern rims of the crater and hugged the inside of the eastern rim. The Pretoria Trail ran from the spaceport—built out on the central plains of the crater six kilometers to the west—past the Outpost where it crossed Cassini Trail, up a canyon cut in Cassini’s rim, through Deadwood Pass, and down the outer rim to Pretoria and Joberg, two major gold concentrations found along an ancient river valley thirty kilometers to the east. She couldn’t wait to drive up to Deadwood Pass, where the view was the best and where they would eventually site a dozen wind turbines to supplement their power supply. The work that had to be done at Cassini longterm was daunting, and as she looked at the site all the possibilities rushed back at her. Everyone said an electrical relay system would be needed so that power produced at the Outpost, the spaceport, the wind turbines, and the gold recovery facilities could be redistributed. They were scheduled to build a microwave relay system involving two towers; if it didn’t work for some reason, they’d have to manufacture and lay fifty kilometers of wires. Cassini Outpost needed several kilometers of insulated pipes so that the water wells out on the crater floor could be warmed by the spare heat of the solar energy units and pumped up to the Outpost, bringing it water and needed heat. Near the wells was a small, deep crater that had filled with water several times and had a good deposit of calcium and other sulfates, essential for making gypsum wallboard for interior construction. The Outpost itself occupied a terrace four kilometers long and half a kilometer wide; theoretically it could accommodate 800 biomes and 16,000 people. There was a constant debate among the residents of Mars whether, fifty years hence, Aurorae, Cassini, or some other as yet unbuilt outpost would become Mars’s largest city, capital, and cultural center. Perhaps several important cities would emerge. Or perhaps Mars would never get beyond the outpost stage.
In two hours the sites for the two bubbles had been leveled and smoothed by the rangers. A dune of wind-blown dust nearby was bulldozed over to the sites and spread widely but thinly; having the consistency of talcum powder, eolian dust made an excellent insulator and cushion. Once it was spread, heavy plastic tarps were rolled out over the site and metal stakes were driven into rings in their edges to hold them down. Meanwhile, the life support equipment—three tonnes of oxygen, methane, and nitrogen air tanks, carbon dioxide scrubbers, pressure regulators, fuel cells, power transformers, water and sewage storage tanks, water treatment units, water heaters, and related items—were unloaded from a trailer and lined up so they could be hauled inside the airlock and set up.
It was mid afternoon when the two bubbles were brought out, placed on the tarps, and unrolled. Transparent plastic sheets were laid on top of them; once the bubbles were inflated, the sheets would be staked down to protect the bubbles from the dust and wind. Then they began to inflate the bubbles, which were shaped like croissants with their two ends cut off; they were thirty meters long and six meters wide at their ends, widening to twelve meters in the middle, with an average width of about ten meters. They were eight meters high; enough to accommodate three stories. The bubbles were made of tefzel, teflon FTP film, and other plastics in layers, each layer serving a particular need, with translucent kevlar reinforcing cables running through it for strength greater than steel. The bubbles took their final shape very quickly, but filling each with about a tonne of oxygen and nitrogen would take many hours. Fortunately, the caravan had access to plenty of gas; there was a storage tank down by the spaceport.
Once the bubbles were fully shaped, some workers began to move the three tonnes of equipment inside, along with another tonne of portable items: two portajohns, two portable showers, and housing that could be set up, known as “tents.” They started to work in their spacesuits while others, outside, drove stakes into the rings on the edges of the plastic cover sheets. The two bubbles were connected together via an inflated tunnel. Once the inflation was finished, about bed time, the eighteen residents of Cassini would have six hundred square meters of living and play space; much more comfortable than the mobilhabs, which they planned to strip of furniture and such items as stoves. In fact, they would be more comfortable than the early population of Aurorae Outpost ever had been.
About sunset they all went inside the mobilhabs for supper. There was an excitement in the air; they had reached their destination and their temporary housing was taking shape rapidly. After supper the mobilhabs undocked from each other and maneuvered into place against airlocks that connected them to the bubbles. The oxygen pressure was 0.12 atmospheres; enough for people to walk around without a space suit, though not for long. Emily led the crowd in mobilhab 1 into building 1.
Flashlights and the pale light of a half-full Phobos illuminated the bubble in a ghostly fashion. The eastern rim mountains were a dark presence against the stars, which shone brilliantly through the transparent bubble. After eleven sols of confinement in vehicles or space suits, the freedom of the bubble was exhilarating; a few started to sing and dance. Emily watched with a smile, amused.
“Don’t overdo it; the air’s pretty thin!” she reminded them.
“We should finish the set up,” added Bruce. “We’ll need our energy tomorrow.”
“Oh, you worry too much!” replied Emily. “Let’s enjoy the space! The gold won’t go away.”
“The more we dig, the more money we all get.”
“A few hours is a few grams. We can afford it.”
“How long will it take to complete the biome?”
“Phases one and two, six months.”
“What about phase three?”
“Ask Will. The construction personnel will be needed elsewhere by then.”
Bruce shook his head. “When will you all ever take this project seriously!”
----------------------------
Will hurried to get to his office. Usually he had no difficulty arriving by 8:30—day care opened at 8 a.m., and Marshall was supposed to be in his classroom by 8:30—but that sol had been unusual. Habitat 1 was already humming with activity when he walked in. The original wall that had bifrucated the twelve-meter circular area in two had been removed several years ago, the former bedrooms along the southern outside wall had been converted into work stations for driving Prospectors—telerobotic rovers—and controlling equipment, and the old great room that had occupied much of the northern half had been divided, part becoming Will’s office, part becoming an expanded bridge that was staffed constantly. The result was a communications and control nerve center that could run every piece of equipment in Mars space, from shuttle engines on Deimos to fans in life support systems in one of the biomes. Indeed, they had occasionally taken contract work to monitor and control robotic explorers in the asteroid belt or help control errant satellites orbiting Neptune.
Will was surprised to see Kent Bytown, looking a bit bleary-eyed, still sitting at his desk in the bridge. “Good morning! I thought you would have left for breakfast an hour ago!”
“I was waiting to give you a report.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry I’m late. I took Marshall and Lizzie to their classes and just as we arrived, Lizzie had an accident and peed all over her dress. So I sent Marshall ahead to his classroom and took Lizzie home to change her. And wouldn’t you know it, the cleaning robot had just let itself into our flat and had started vacuuming Lizzie’s room. So she wouldn’t go in for a while—she’s scared of the thing—and then once she got used to it, she insisted on staying to watch it pick up things, put them more or less where they belonged, and vacuum. I finally had to drag her away.”
Kent smiled. “Miranda and I wonder how people manage to get things done and raise kids. I suppose we’ll find out, soon enough. Anyway, I’ve been here since 10 p.m. last night. There’s not much to mention. We’ve got a slow leak around one of the pipes running between Yalta and Catalina; I’m not sure exactly where, but I managed to isolate it enough to turn in the repair report to Karol, and he’s devoting the morning to finding and sealing the leak. The oxygen loss is pretty slow and it’s into the outer envelope anyway, where we can pump it back in. As a result, I had to postpone some routine work for Muller Mining, so you may get a complaint from Bach later this morning. I was supposed to be running the centrifugal separation unit; they had loaded up the hopper with fifty tonnes of rock, enough to keep it going all night. But rather than focusing on the separator until 2 a.m., which is 7 a.m. at Cassini when someone there could take over, I felt I had to give priority to the leak.”
“Okay. I agree with your judgment call. How long was the separator down?”
“Maybe forty-five minutes. I let it run while I focused on trouble-shooting the leak, but the crusher got stuck and shut down, and I didn’t want to stop the search for the leak to unstick the crusher. They didn’t lose much production. Then about 4:30 a.m. a couple in bathrobes who will remain nameless appeared at the swimming pool in Yalta to go for a dip together. Before they got the covers off the pool, I switched on the intercom and reminded them that the pool was off limits at that hour. Practically scared their bathrobes off of them!”
Will chuckled. “I suppose we should enforce that rule.”
Kent nodded. “It’s still public space, even at that hour. It’s amazing how many people are up and walking through the biomes, even at 4:30 a.m. Besides, the irrigation system was due to go off at 5:30 a.m. and that would have surprised them anyway.” He picked up his coffee cup. “Well, I’m going to retire for a few hours. Miranda and I plan a long lunch together, then I’ll rest this afternoon some more. I’ll be back at 10 p.m., as usual. Tonight I’ll be checking the control interfaces for some of Consolidated’s new equipment. That’ll take much of the night.”
“Good. Who’s the day officer?”
“Zach; he’s in cubicle number one running a Prospector until trouble comes along. We’ll have three folks running Prospectors until suppertime, then two until midnight, and they’re all certified to run the systems.”
“Good. I’ll be in my office all day, as usual. Have a good rest.”
“Thanks, have a good sol.” Kent rose and headed toward his flat in Catalina. Will walked into his office to get started.
He sat and activated the attaché on his desk. He was pleased to see that he had received a message from his old friend David Alaoui. He and David had been old friends on the moon, where Will had possibly saved David’s life when the latter had fallen down part of the rim of Tycho crater. Later, they had both been members of Columbus 1 and had explore Mars together. David had returned to his family on Earth while Will and Ethel had stayed on Mars and eventually started a family there. Then David had the opportunity to command the first mission to Venus orbit, run by the European Space Agency and heavily funded by France. That mission had just reached a successful conclusion.
Will clicked on the icon, activating the videomail. He was surprised to see that much of David’s hair was now streaked with gray and that his friend looked older. He had to wonder whether stress or radiation was responsible.
“Good sol, my old friend,” said David, and his voice and face carried the energy and enthusiasm Will remembered so well from early times together. “I suppose you watched the live broadcast of our aerobraking into Earth orbit thirty-six hours ago. It’s been a crazy day and a half since then, as I’m sure you can imagine. After docking the Amazonis to ISS2—she won’t stay there long, she’s scheduled to be lifted back to Gateway in just two months—we transferred to a Swift shuttle and headed down to Kourou. Now we’re on a jet bound for Paris, where there’s a big parade planned.
“I’m still not sure how I feel about being home. I missed my wife and kids, of course, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them again. I missed the Earth, too. I had missed it when we were on Mars and during the flight home, of course, but this time it was noticeably different. I suppose it’s because Magellan 1 was such a cramped place. At least on Columbus 1 we could get in a spacesuit and go for a walk. But the Guineviere and the Amazonis were our entire world, in Venus orbit. Even with daily virtual reality on the Venus surface, we were going crazy in orbit the last few months. At least Magellan 2 will have three ITVs instead of two; that extra bit of space really will help a lot. I plan to push for Magellan 3 to fly to Venus with a forty-meter inflatable sphere, complete with ropes and maybe even thin plastic hiding places or a three-dimensional maze. We needed something like that; we needed the chance to get outside and wander around! What we really need is a captured asteroid, an artificial Venus moon. But that’ll be decades away, if ever.
“The other thing that surprises me is that I miss Venus. When I dream every night, I still see the beautiful, swirling clouds of her atmosphere. After a while the possible fate of falling into that hellish place ceased to trouble me. And I dream of walking around; those Prospectors sent back very realistic imagery of the surface and I can still clearly see areas I drove the Prospectors around. I suppose I always will, just like I can close my eyes and see the escarpment near the Outpost, or the fossiliferous shale outcrops at Gangis. Four worlds are now a part of my consciousness; it’s an incredible privilege.
“And then there’s the question of what to do next. I’ll be 47 pretty soon, just like you; it feels too soon to retire, even if my family is grown up and I’m set financially for life! Sebastian invited me back to the moon to serve as an assistant commander. The Lunar Commission will need a new Commissioner pretty soon and the rumor has it he may move up and become Commissioner; I think it’s fantastic that the organization coordinating lunar exploration and development is now appointing its leadership from among the people on the moon who actually do the work! I see the Mars Commission is appointing more and more departmental directors from among the folks who have returned from Mars, which makes eminent sense.
“I have no idea whether you have any advice or not. It might help, my old friend. One can be too successful, after all. Some alternatives, such as politics—either in France or Morocco—somehow don’t appeal. With the possibility of Russia joining the European Union and the prospect of a ‘cold peace’ between the United States and Eurorussia, or even competition to see who will emerge as the world power, politics is looking pretty complicated.
“One last image for you: I held a chunk of Venus in my hand. Admittedly, I was wearing gloves; but this was a two kilogram chunk, not a little, smashed fragment recovered from the surface of the moon. It was really cool piloting the little Phoenix airplane down to the rover to recover its sample canister, then landing the Phoenix on the Samandar Sunwing and running the sample through the automated laboratory, then loading it on board the sample return rocket and seeing it launched into Venus orbit, then finally overseeing the rendezvous of the sample return capsule with the little ion tug that pushed it up to Magellan. So many steps, and they all went flawlessly, and now we have a sample of Venus from the earliest period before the runaway greenhouse. It even shows the chemical traces of an ancient Venus ocean. I’ve been haunted ever since by the idea that life originated on Venus and was blasted off of it by a planetesimal, which launched the debris on a collision course with our own cold, sterile Earth. Maybe someday we’ll know! The eobiologists have made a lot of progress in the last decade, thanks especially to Mars’s early crust.
“Anyway, I’m rambling; maybe it’s old age, or maybe it’s jet lag! Entertain me with a story. Bye.”
Will had to smile at David’s last comment. It was vintage David; introspective, yet humorous. He glanced at his shelf of samples, which included many thumb-sized fragments he had found on the moon. He walked over and picked up the probable piece of Venus he had collected, one piece of hundreds the lunar explorers had found, and rolled it around in his fingers. It was grayish, dominated by wollastonite, a calcium silicate mineral that formed under the hellish temperatures of the surface. Then he went back to his desk and hit reply.
“Hey, David! Maybe I should start calling you Venus man. You’re privileged, my friend. Why not consider Mercury? The rumor is now floating around that ‘Eurorussia’ wants to cement their space prestige by launching a mission to the innermost planet. People say the technology is now fairly mature, too; between the exploration of the lunar poles and the exploration of Mars, the surface equipment has been designed, and the American solid-core nuclear engine provides the needed propulsion. I suppose they’ll need to land robots at the Mercury north pole for at least a decade, though, before the infrastructure to support people is ready.
“If not Mercury, please come back here for even two years. It’d be good to see you again. I don’t know whether Ethel and I will ever return to Earth. We keep talking about it, but we really can’t go until the kids grow up, and by then we’ll be pushing sixty. If Marshall and Lizie decide to stay, we might as well retire here. By then, at the current rate of growth, we’ll have five hundred or more folks up here, too; we’ll be getting beyond the village stage and will begin to feel like a small town. So there won’t be a need to leave, and after twenty years our social and family ties with Earth will be all but broken.
“So, you want a story, huh? I’m not sure I can offer much of one. My life is much more hassle-filled than yours, right now. Hassle is a four-letter word that is spelled G-O-L-D. Rather than clearing trails to promising fossil localities, and drilling areas to search for the origins of Martian life—or evidence of contemporary life—we’re examining auriferous units, flying sunwings over them for detailed reconnaissance, dropping Prospectors on them for exploration, planning trails to them, writing up the details to a commercial world eager to make a new deal with us and ultimately to haul in a big profit. If Consolidated and Muller Mining do well by the time Columbus 6 departs, tens of billion of bucks will be beating down our doors. Even now, when no one wants to make a commitment, the line of would-be suitors is amazingly long. And some of the folks in Commission headquarters seem to regard this as a big money game; the fact that it is for the purpose of developing another world sometimes seems lost on them. Maybe we need to have more folks here go home and take up work in the H.Q., so that the reality on the ground here won’t be forgotten.
“So that’s a big discouragement for me. The hardest part is to try to play the role of a bridge between positions, supplying resources to the gold exploration and recovery efforts without dismantling our other efforts, conserving the exploration and science programs and making sure they grow, but not as fast as they could have this columbiad. The problem with being a moderate, or a bridge, is that both sides accuse you of weakness or compromise. So I’m under a lot of stress right now.
“But there are bright sides. Marshall’s in first grade; we actually have an institution called ‘Aurorae Elementary School’ with a first grade now. Lizzie turned four last week and is developing very fast. The other sol Cornelius Beyer and Tatiana Gavrilova stood up at supper and announced they plan to get married in December; they’re the first marriage from the ‘love boat,’ as someone called Columbus 6. We have a few more marriages being contemplated, and some sparks are appearing between some of our older, unmarried residents and some new arrivals. As the hopeless romantic that I am, these developments really warm my heart. The Deschanels have announced that they’re expecting a child in May, who will be number fourteen if all goes well. This is good news because we now know for sure that child number thirteen will have Down’s syndrome. That discovery and Madhu’s cancer have caused quite a ripple of concern up here about the health effects of living on Mars, with some worrying about every rem of radiation and others dismissing the entire issue almost fatalistically.
“And of course, you wouldn’t recognize this place if you came back. Catalina Biome’s inflated and building one has people living in it; building two is slated to be completed in early January. The excavations and foundation work has started on Riviera Biome, which will be completed before the end of 2032. Cassini’s Biome will be inflated in about a month. Shikoku is scheduled to be finished by mid 2033; then we’ll have four biomes at Aurorae! Over the summer we built a dozen metal storage tanks, all of which can fit inside a shuttle’s cargo bay in pieces; once they’re welded together, they’re 5.8 meters in diameter and 2.3 meters high and have an interior volume of sixty cubic meters, which can hold almost seventy tonnes of liquid oxygen or almost thirty tonnes of liquid methane. We’ve flown a pair to Phobos, another pair to Deimos, a pair to Embarcadero, we drove a pair to Cassini in July, and the other four are set up here at Aurorae; with ten centimeters of spray-on foam insulation and a meter of eolian dust over them, they’re well insulated and hold cryogenic liquids very efficiently. As you can imagine, the energy and fuel storage has made life much easier here; we can refuel two shuttles in two sols, rather than waiting three months, and we have reserve energy for dust storms.
“I suppose these are little things, but they are material milestones for this place, and milestones are always exciting. We have 96 human beings here less than eleven years after the first landing! It boggles the mind. It’s compensation for all the b.s. I have to put up with. Your calls help, too; they’re encouraging even when they aren’t meant to be. So I guess that’s not a bad story to give you. Bye.”
He sent the message off to David. Then he couldn’t resist firing off a video message to Sebastian Langlais as well. While Sebastian had commanded Columbus 2, he had been a pain and something of an adversary; but they had become friends, and now they were colleagues. Will checked the time at Shackleton Station, then recorded a message.
“Good sol, Sebastian! Say, what’s your advice about handling contractors. We have two up here, and each is determined to haul a hundred tonnes of gold back to Earth in eighteen months. Never mind that we’ve already walked the ground and picked up everything that’s loose and have already blown up and picked through the really rich spots, thanks to the neutron activation instrument we were able to juryrig. They’ll be lucky to find 200 grams of gold per tonne of rock. I will say they’re working about eighty hours per week, but they’re driving my people crazy with support requests and unreasonable demands for biomes, reactors, rangers, mobilhabs, etc.
“But in spite of the stress, everything is basically working out pretty well up here. The two biomes are developing very nicely and give us much more space than we’ve had before. The canaries have escaped in Yalta and sing from the trees; a nice touch, though we would like to recapture them! The biomes now have butterflies as well, and we just got coffee and chocolate plants. Columbus 7 won’t be importing practically any food at all; we may even export Martian steak for the low earth orbit tourists!
“I hope everything is well there. I hear Shackleton can now accommodate twenty tourists. The big radio telescope construction project sounds exciting; I hope the rumor’s true. The Imbrium Drilling Project should be very promising. Let me know how you juggle everything. Bye.”
Will sent the message and turned to his other messages. Sibir Resources Company, or Sibireco, was pressing to bid on the gold deposits in Dawes Crater, in spite of the uncertainties about the success of such efforts. Sibireco had lost out in the last round of negotiations, but now they had a U.S. subsidiary that considerable expanded their capacities, not to mention their political clout. Will sent a video mail back to Mich Dvorkin, the Mars Commission’s Director of Exports in Houston, begging him not to arrange a contract that specified the establishment of a Dawes Outpost; not before Columbus 8, anyway, because the work of setting up such facilities was extremely taxing. Louisa Turner, the Director of Public Relations, was asking whether video resources on Mars could be made available; Skip Carson, a major Hollywood movie director, was considering a flight to Mars on Columbia 7 as their first tourist wanted to have some Martian scenes filmed. Will emailed her and questioned the wisdom of such a proposal.
Then the replies came back. He dropped everything to see what David had to say.
“Hi; thanks for the advice. No, I don’t think Mercury’s in my future. I wouldn’t be surprised that the rumor is true; I think Eurorussia will want to flex its space muscles. The rumor is of a race, even, between them and the U.S. But the limit is propulsion, not life support, and I doubt the propulsion systems will be mature enough for another decade. I doubt I’ll want to go to Mercury by then; I doubt anyone will want to send me, either! Once the propulsion systems are developed, though, they’ll open up the Jovian system and the possibility of an Outpost on Callisto. We’ll live to see human beings there, I think. But I never would have predicted it ten years ago.
“I doubt I’ll be returning to Mars, either; it’s a shame, I may never see you in the flesh again. But my oldest son, Zekaria, wants to go; you may see him in three or four years. He may be one of those five hundred you may see in your retirement. I bet the gold is a huge hassle; I’ve been following the situation as well as I could. But what can you do, money makes the world go round. Justifying Mars exploration is always the hardest part. Just hang in there; everyone says you’re the key to making Mars grow and that without you it’d still have a dozen personnel in a collection of tin cans. One person can make a difference, Will. You’re the proof of it. Well, I had better catch a bit more sleep. Bye.”
Will had to smile at his friend’s kindness. Then he activated Sebastian’s message.
“Good sol, Will. Yes, the news from the moon is good. Shackleton proper can now accommodate 110, and the Chinese station can accommodate 21, so we have quite a large capacity up here. A side note: as of next month, the Chinese clocks are changing to match ours. It’s more convenient for them to be on U.S. Central time and visit us than it is to be on Beijing time and talk to mission control there.
“As for the radio telescope rumor, no, it isn’t true. That contract’s going to low Earth orbit; the scope will be located at the Earth-sun L2 point, and it’ll be designed to be expandable. By the way, the new shuttle repair hanger is really incredible; go take a virtual reality tour on our website. We have the contract to refurbish the Mars shuttles now.
“Contractors: I guess you just have to be firm and make sure everything possible is specified in writing, otherwise they’ll take advantage of you. I suppose we have a certain advantage over you. Lunar ice production is geared at $500,000 per tonne in terms of costs, with sales running $650,000 per tonne. That’s a lot less than the ten to twelve million per tonne you can make. Ice production’s cheaper; we only go after deposits that are more than three percent ice. Total sales outside the lunar transportation system are running about five hundred tonnes per year, or $350 million. Our big income now is tourism; they’re spending 3 million bucks each to fly to the moon and back and this year we’ll have 240 of them. They have to be babied, too, so that’s our big test! I think I’d prefer your problem. You may be blessed by your isolation; you won’t have tourists any time soon. Our new challenge is competition from LeMonnier Station; they plan to offer a two-week stay for 2.4 million, including a visit to the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites, where they plan to build boardwalks, so we’ll have to lower prices and cut costs somehow, while being even nicer to them when they come. One third of my personnel support the tourist business directly or indirectly.
“So my advice is, be hard nosed, be thankful for your isolation, and look to the advantages of your situation. You have an atmosphere and biomes; we don’t, and we miss them. Keep in touch. Bye.”
Fortified by the encouragement, Will plunged back into his work. There were several emails to deal one. One was from Chester Stoughton, one of Consolidated’s workers, complaining about Bruce Curry’s slave-driving ways. There wasn’t much Will could do about that; he had no jurisdiction. He videomailed Stoughton to that effect.
He was wrapping up work just before lunchtime when his videophone buzzed with a live call from Michiko Suzuki, their meteorologist. Will’s heart sank when he saw her name on the caller identification; the dust storm season had just begun. “Is it bad news, Michiko?” he asked, answering the call.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad forecasts, but don’t shoot the messenger. The long-term, ten-sol forecast shows a regional dust storm developing in this area and lasting about a month. It’ll be category 2 or category 3.”
“That’s an important difference. Category 3 triggers a lot of restrictions that category 2 doesn’t.”
“I know. The new meteorology satellites give us a lot of new data; about fifty times more than we had last columbiad. The supercomputer outside of Paris does some very sophisticated crunching. The ten sol forecast is seventy percent reliable.”
Will pondered. “That means there’s a thirty percent chance the storm could be worse; or better. That’s not good.”
“In three sols, the seven-sol forecast will be eighty-five percent, and we’ll be a lot more certain about the options.”
Will nodded. “Okay. Then we had better use the three sols to educate people about the options. The miners will be the toughest. Even category 2 means no sunwing landings or takeoffs at Aurorae; that means shuttles or robotic trucks, both of which use nuclear reactors for their power sources. We can’t spare energy for them.”
“Cassini’s forecast is still good. It isn’t in an area prone to storms, unless we get to category 4 or 5 conditions. Maybe you should ship our solar power units there and bring their reactors here.”
“That’s a good idea, if I can convince them. We’ll also have to call back the scientific expeditions, since they need reactors. Aurorae ideally needs 1,000 kilowatts when it’s in fabrication and construction mode. That requires all six reactors. If we have four reactors, we’ll have to slow the construction efforts. Can you send me the detailed forecast as an email; I’ll send it out to the heads of staff, and we’ll figure out how to reallocate resources.”
“Okay, right away. Sorry to make your life that much harder, Will.”
“Thanks, Michiko. We’ll all
survive, though.”
© 2004 Robert H. Stockman