4

Caravel

Will entered the conference room in Mars Control and was immediately surprised by what he saw: Yevgeny Lescov, holding his two month old baby, Boris; Alexandra Lescov; Érico Lopes; and Louise Tremblay, their expert in the repair of shuttles and ITVs.

“Oh?” he said. “I thought this was a quick briefing about something, topic unspecified.”

“It is,” Alexandra assured him. “We know you’re busy planning for the trip to Dawes.”

“And don’t worry about Boris; he’s asleep,” added Yevgeny.

“So I see.” Will came over to look closely. “He’s so cute.”

“Isn’t he?” replied Yevgeny, smiling.

“I haven’t seen much of him. I haven’t seen much of either of you, actually.”

“You’ll see more of me from now on,” replied Alexandra. “Two months of maternity leave is driving me stir crazy. I’m now back to work, though I will be impaired a bit because I’ll have Boris with me four hours a sol.”

“Who’s taking care of him the rest of the time?” asked Will.

“I am,” replied Yevgeny. “I’ll be taking the bulk of the family leave. Exports is a relatively quiet topic right now, so I can maintain the department adequately on four or five hours a sol.”

“But you’re not taking him to Dawes.” noted Will.

“No, I’m trusting Alexandra with him for four sols.”

“And it won’t be easy!” added Alexandra.

“Let’s get started, so this meeting can be relatively short,” interrupted Louise. “Will, have you seen the new NASA specifications for the Odyssey-class exploration vehicle?”

“Yes, but I don’t recall all the details. Fairly large; they’re talking about 24 crew, right? It has to have artificial gravity, ninety-nine percent closed cycle life support, an on-board ecology, accommodation for the crew for a three to five year voyage. . . I’m not sure what else.”

“That’s basically the list,” agreed Louise. “The four of us have been chatting about the specifications for a replacement for the interplanetary habitat and annex for two months; we started the conversation in Alexandra’s hospital room after Boris was born. There are substantial overlaps between the needs of Project Columbus and Project Odyssey. Three years is a good time frame for us, since that’s about how long a round trip between Mars and Earth takes. And a four- to six-month voyage needs much less space per person than a three- to five-year voyage, so the Odyssey class vehicle can hold four times as many passengers for our purposes as for Odyssey’s.”

“I see where you’re going. We should encourage a common design.”

“No,” replied Alexandra. “We should submit a bid to build the Odyssey class vehicle as well as the future vehicles we need.”

“What?” Will was startled by the idea. “Isn’t that premature?”

“We don’t think so,” replied Alexandra. “We’ve thought about this extensively. Obviously, Mars can’t yet manufacture life support equipment, reaction control systems, avionics, pumps, or engines. But we can make the fuselage, fuel tanks, meteoroid protection system, thermal protection system, and almost all the heavy parts of a space vehicle. In fact, we already make them; our capacities to build fuel storage tanks and to make biomes are very similar. We can make kevlar, nomex, and all the other special plastics that are used in the hull. We can make nickel steel, and the cargo on its way will give us the ability to make aluminum and various aluminum alloys, such as weldalite. As of this year, we can make high efficiency solar panels. And even better, we have something lacking on Earth: a design and construction team that flies in the vehicles, so it has an intuitive sense of what works. We think with additional equipment and personnel over two columbiads we can make some very sophisticated vehicles.”

“Importing the parts we can’t make, of course,” added Yevgeny.

“Can we show you the basic design?” asked Érico.

“You already have a design? Sure, show me,” though Will still sounded skeptical.

They were all obviously pleased by his reply. Will sat while Louisa opened her attaché—which had a special large screen—revealing a presentation ready to go.

“We call this model the caravel,” said Louise, changing the image to a round, flattish object. “The word refers to a small, fast sailing ship; two of Columbus’s ships were caravels. Considering where our technology can go in the next few centuries, it seemed wise not to name the model for a later type of ship.”

“And from the shape, you can see why we’ve nicknamed it ‘the flying saucer,’” added Alexandra. “It’s basically a plate thirty meters in diameter, fatter in the middle and thinner at the edges. If the plate averaged ten meters thick, the interior volume would be seven thousand cubic meters; that’s equivalent to forty ITVs. Rotated at 4 revolutions per minute, the outer edge of the plate would have Martian gravity. If the interior were divided by floors every 2.5 meters from the edge, a saucer ten meters thick would have an interior floor area of 3,137 square meters.”

“That’s about the size NASA must have in mind,” said Will.

“Probably a bit bigger,” continued Louise. “Their specifications call for 75 square meters per crewmember for three- to five-year voyages, including the ecology. If the saucer were six meters thick instead of ten, it’d have 1900 square meters; right for 25 crew.”

“For a trip to Mars, though, 20 square meters is sufficient, so the Caravel could accommodate 90,” added Yevgeny.

Will whistled. “How would we ever load them. Well, I suppose we could. How would it aerobrake?”

“One entire hemisphere of the saucer—the fat, rounded hemisphere—would be covered by a heat shield,” replied Louise. “And the surface area is large enough to aerobrake one hundred fifty tonnes of cargo safely.”

“It would stop rotating for aerobraking?” asked Will.

Alexandra nodded. “The outer hull with the heat shield and micrometeoroid armor would never rotate; there would be a dead space between the outer hull and the rotating vehicle inside. This means the craft could be landed on Phobos, Ceres, or wherever the gravity is very low and could resume rotation after landing, giving the explorers a habitation with gravity.”

“Clever. Propulsion?”

“They’re contracting that separately; NASA’s plans call for three VASIMR engines connected to three 5-megawatt nuclear reactors,” said Louise. “They need to know the rough mass of the vehicle at this point, since VASIMR is in the early development stage.”

“Development and construction costs?”

“That’s hard to say, at this point,” replied Érico. “On Earth, development without the propulsion system could be ten or twenty billion old dollars; I’m not sure how many bucks that is right now, the dollar’s value changes too much. I think we can manage half that. With our use of advanced plastic fabrics, we can probably manage a unit cost of two hundred million each. A lot of that is imported life support equipment, avionics, and reaction control. But our need for vehicles for Columbus, and for stations on Phobos and Deimos, more than doubles the need of Project Odyssey, reducing the per unit costs.”

“And we could send out asteroid missions with them as well, if we wanted to,” said Will. “This is intriguing. What mass are you talking about?”

“They’re big,” replied Érico. “The hull is forty tonnes, life support is forty to eighty depending on the number of passengers and duration of the mission, the heat shield is twenty to forty depending on the cargo mass.”

“How would we ever launch it?”

“The outer hull can be made here at Aurorae of advanced plastics and folded for launch inside a Hermes-class shuttle,” replied Alexandra. “It could be inflated in orbit and construction of the rotating interior structure would proceed inside. Adding the heat shield would require some new techniques. We recommend that the first one be constructed on Phobos buried under regolith to reduce the crew’s radiation exposure. It would serve as housing for subsequent construction.”

“Phobos and Deimos give us ship building sites with many advantages unparalleled by any site near the Earth,” added Louise.

“This is intriguing,” reflected Will. “Nothing will drift off of Phobos, so materials can just be landed there and put in inflatable storage modules; everything can be covered with regolith; and the moon itself can supply all the water and air the crews need.”

“Solar panels can be put on both sides of the moon so that the crew always has access to power, too,” added Érico. “Phobos has enormous potential.”

“But the costs worry me,” Will said. “Right now, we can import ITVs from Earth for a hundred million euros each and add annexes to them for less than fifty million. We have to justify spending a lot of money to be able to make something that is cost effective.”

“We’d be looking toward the future,” added Érico. “Some of the investment would be recovered later by the shipbuilding industry we launch.”

“We have to get Project Odyssey to buy into this,” added Louise. “How will they construct their exploration vehicle? They can’t build it on Earth and launch it intact; the specifications call for something too big. Even if they build a heavy booster they can only launch it in big pieces, the booster would cost an incredible amount of money to develop, and would cost a lot more per tonne of cargo than the Swift Shuttle. So the vehicle will have to be assembled either in low earth orbit, on the moon, or on Phobos. The moon would require relaunching the thing against a relatively strong gravitational field. Low Earth orbit would require construction of a large hangar, with its own solar power system, orbital maintenance system, possibly radiation shielding, and life support. Phobos provides all those things, doesn’t have the gravity of Luna, and has unlimited supplies of volatiles.”

“But has a long time delay because of remoteness, even if we run two cargo flights every two years. You’re right, we could be competitive. The big unknowns are, how much work would we do, versus terrestrial manufacturers? And how much will it cost for us to do our share of the work? Surely, Alexandra, we couldn’t make caravels right now.”

“No, we could, but it would leave us with inadequate construction capacity to build biomes and additional housing. This project would tie up maybe seventy worker-years per vehicle for making the structure and another thirty or so to integrate terrestrial equipment. So we would have to expand our human resource base. Columbus 9 is flying 100 more people here, so some of the resources will arrive then, and more could arrive on Columbus 10.”

“If we initially acquire the ability to build one caravel every two years, the human resources outlay would be modest,” added Yevgeny quickly. “It would mean we could fly one hundred more people to Mars every columbiad, which is all we can handle right now anyway. Project Odyssey would have the option of buying one of our caravels and adapting it.”

“Ah, that makes sense as a strategy,” said Will, nodding. “If we are creating a capacity that has a guaranteed customer—us—we eliminate unknowns. We don’t want to have unemployed construction workers up here, after all. And if we are building something for ourselves, we can afford a small amount of extra cost as we build a new capacity. I think we should take that approach for now, especially in public. We can negotiate with Project Odyssey in private, and when they issue a call for bids we can submit something. But if we start bringing one hundred, two hundred, four hundred people here every columbiad, we’ll have enormous supply headaches.”

“Getting the stuff to Earth orbit and back to the Earth isn’t a problem; the Swift shuttles are flying more and more every year, and both Boeing and the Chinese plan to manufacture a competitor. Getting from Mars to Mars orbit and back will be handled by the new Hermes-class shuttles. In between, we favor either ion tugs all the way to here or ion tugs to a medium Earth orbit—two or three thousand kilometers—and solar sailing vessels to Mars.”

“Of course, the Mercury Project has hit some snags with deployment of their first kilometer-square sail,” noted Will.

“Serious problems,” agreed Yevgeny. “But nothing they can’t solve. Solar sails could eventually lower the cost of transport between the Earth and Mars orbit to about $100 per kilogram.”

“Have you talked to Pavel?” asked Will. Pavel Rudenkov was the Commission’s Director of Construction.

Alexandra shook her head. “Not yet. We wanted to talk to you first.”

“My feeling is that he will oppose this,” added Yevgeny.

Will nodded. “Maybe. He’s thoroughly devoted to surface construction and wants us to tackle some ambitious projects, like the hundred-meter biome. But if we do this, it’s a pretty exciting project as well. We’re already building housing for almost one hundred people every columbiad; now we will be building them two types of housing, one for space and one for the surface, using very similar materials and equipment. It’s complementary.”

“It’s even synergistic,” added Alexandra. “Because right now biomes don’t have a single life support system, but multiple systems for each housing unit. It works, it’s what we have to do because of the separate equipment flown here for each ITV and annex, but it isn’t ideal. Larger biomes require larger life support systems, and those systems have to be flown here as single large units, so they need to service a large spacecraft.”

Will nodded. “That makes sense. The Project Columbus equipment was designed over twenty years ago and was meant for flying four people here at once. We just used the equipment to fly ninety people here; it works, but the system is complex and less safe. We need a larger vehicle. A single rotating plate that is the minimum size for Martian gravity is the next logical step up. I want a proposal I can take to the Commission senior staff, one that with modifications can be published. We need steps, costs, and a rough timetable. When can you have that?”

The four of them looked at each other. “Two months?” suggested Alexandra.

“If we have support staff,” agreed Louise.

“We can delegate two dozen folks in Houston, Moscow, and Paris to help, and maybe three or four up here,” said Will.

The four nodded.

“Good. I look forward to the result.”

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

That evening, Will, Yevgeny, and Ruhullah boarded a Sunwing-E for a fifteen-hour flight to Dawes. It was the latest model aircraft to be flown on Mars and they were anxious to try it out. The fuselage, a cylinder two meters in diameter and fifteen meters long, could accommodate 1,500 kilograms of cargo or up to twenty passengers. The front of the fuselage spouted biwings, a pair mounted on the top of the fuselage and another pair two meters above it, with a wingspan of sixty meters and a width of five meters, gradually tapering in width toward the tips. The upper set of wings had ten high-speed propellers, five on each wing, with fuel pods built into the wings able to hold 1,000 kilograms of silane, a silicon-hydrogen compound that burns in carbon dioxide. Half-way back, the fuselage sprouted a pair of wings mounted near the bottom with deployable landing wheels. The rear of the fuselage sprouted a fourth pair of wings mounted at medium height. Altogether, the four sets of wings provided the aircraft with nearly a thousand square meters of lifting surface, and since the entire upper surface was covered with high-efficiency solar cells, the wings could make as much as 150 kilowatts of electricity during the day.

They took off away from the lowering sun and rose quickly to cruising altitude. By then the sun was gone, but the plane had plenty of silane for high-powered flight all night. The three men ate a comfortable dinner, chatted, then set up hammocks and slept in and around the tonne of cargo occupying much of the cabin. They ate breakfast the next morning, then enjoyed the view out the window while the plane, with a much lighter silane load, flew on solar power. A bit before noontime Érico took over the controls and brought them in for a landing at Dawes, where a ranger met them and brought them to the outpost.

“Did you have a good flight?” Feodor asked them as they entered Orinoco Biome.

“Yes; the Sunwing-E is quite comfortable and spacious,” replied Will. “I feel like air travel has arrived. I should have brought my son along.”

“He would have loved it. Did you see the trail?”

“Yes, it was right below us the entire way,” said Will. “It’s very distinctive from 5,000 meters. This morning we spotted two of the oases, too.”

“It’s pretty easy to see from the air; they say it should be visible to the naked eye from Phobos. Well, come this way to the meeting. Gerhard and Bruce arrived this morning by ranger and we’ve been waiting for you ever since.”

Feodor led the three of them down the middle of the yard, then into the biome’s south building. They took the spiral ramp up to the top floor, where a conference room had large windows overlooking the yard and giving a view of the Martian terrain outside. Gerhard Bach and Bruce Curry, respective heads of the operations of Muller Mining and Consolidated Mining, rose.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Commissioner,” said Bruce. “I hope you had a good flight?”

They shook hands. “Yes, quite comfortable; probably more comfortable than two days in a ranger.”

“No, just a sol and a half,” corrected Bruce. “The new trail allows eighty kilometers per hour in most places, especially with a ranger.”

“But the sunwing would be much more comfortable; Bruce drives like a fiend,” replied Gerhard, extending his hand. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Commissioner.”

“Please continue to call me Will. We’re a small and informal operation up here.”

“Thanks, Will. How’s the experience been?”

Will smiled. “I was acting Commissioner for a year, so in some ways nothing has changed much. Ruhullah is Commander of Aurorae Operations, as you know, and is also Borough Clerk, and last month he was elected First Minister by the Mars Council at its meeting, so he handles a lot of the tasks that I used to handle. I’d say the big difference is the spirit of my team up here.”

“How so?” asked Feodor.

Will looked at Ruhullah and Érico. “I’d say my people up here feel liberated to be creative in ways they weren’t when everything was run in Houston.”

Érico nodded in agreement. “It’s easier; the boss is down the hall.”

“The trick is to make sure the folks on Earth still feel creative, too, so I have to be in daily contact with the heads of staff down there,” noted Will. “I just got a very exciting proposal yesterday that could revolutionize our life up here; but you’ll hear more about that by and by, when it’s ready to be released. Let’s sit down. What’s the news from Cassini?”

They all sat at the conference table. “The news is dominated by work,” replied Bruce. “We’re dealing with poorer gold deposits than two years ago, but with an additional four people on my team, four more support staff provided by the Commission, and another twenty tonnes of equipment, we’re beginning to pull the gold output back up to earlier levels.”

“Same for the Muller Mining Team,” added Gerhard. “We have twelve folks at Cassini and four here at Dawes. With the new deposits we’re chasing here and the new equipment we imported, our gold output has hit 4.5 tonnes per month.”

“I have a question,” said Bruce. “This new arrangement with the U.S. government that’s taking shape; will it result in a permanent nuclear reactor at Cassini? Because we need more power, and we’ll need even more in two years when the supercritical carbon dioxide extraction unit goes on line. It’ll consume huge amounts of power.”

“But extract a lot of gold, silver, copper, and other saleable elements,” added Gerhard. “Muller Mining will import a supercritical CO2 extraction unit as well.”

“I know,” said Will. “It’s a wonderful technology, and relatively cheap to use here because CO2 is free. We’re counting on it to concentrate aluminum oxide so that we can start aluminum production. The answer is that the first reactor will be sited at Aurorae; it’s still the biggest power consumer. But we’ll be in the position to ship a lot more solar power units, solar arrays, and wind turbines to Cassini and Dawes, so your power output should increase sharply. It has to; we need the supercritical CO2 facility, too.”

“I see,” said Bruce, scowling. He was always pushing for something new at Cassini.

“Okay, let’s get to business,” said Will. He unfolded a very large piece of electronic paper; a meter square. He pushed a button and a map of the Meridiani region appeared. “Here we are. Note the eight auriferous zones: Ashanti, Deadwood, Tanana, El Dorado, Kalgoorlie, Frasier, Dahlonega, and Kootenay. The first three are close together and could be served by a common outpost; El Dorado is a thousand kilometers west and could support a small outpost; the other four require mobile extraction.

“Your companies put in their bids a month ago and all three of you have mobilhabs exploiting gold at Kalgoorlie so your teams can become familiar with the area. I was hoping that the bids would be such that all three companies would get all or part of a zone near Ashanti, but of course it wasn’t that simple. Since the bids are complete and the results are to be made public, let’s take a look.” Will pushed another button and the bids popped up in three columns. “All three companies bid for Ashanti, Deadwood, Tanana, and El Dorado. Muller Mining has the highest bid for Ashanti and Deadwood; Consolidated the highest for El Dorado; and Sibireco for Tanana. We had no bids at all for Dahlonega and Kootenay and only two bids on Kalgoorlie and Frasier. What I’m wondering is whether we can make an arrangement to split Ashanti, so that all three companies can work out of a single outpost. Comments.”

The three company men were silent for a moment. They looked at each other. “We do want El Dorado,” said Bruce. “Our analysis of the geological data, especially the orbital data, suggests that it’s probably richer than indicated, and it appears to have some excellent concentrations that will help an operation start up. It’s on the Meridiani Trail, so there’s excellent access. We can reach Kalgoorlie from there; it’s 350 klicks. That’s why we bid high on it as well.”

“So, you don’t want to operate from the Ashanti-Deadwood region?” asked Will.

Bruce shook his head. “Not really. We’re doing well at Cassini and the reserves there get bigger every time we reassess. El Dorado has a good water supply, too.”

“You realize it’ll be a strain to support both locations safely?” asked Érico. “They’ll both need two biomes, redundant life support systems, communications systems, and power systems. Both will need runways and additional roads. We’ll have to plan for medical emergencies differently.”

Bruce was unimpressed. “There will be another outpost with a biome a thousand kilometers away; that’s a fourteen-hour drive on Meridiani Trail. We’ve never had a biome failure and I don’t know how it could happen unless someone deliberately drove a conestoga into it. If that happens, we can all drive to Meridiani. If someone is injured and you have to send a sunwing or a shuttle, does it matter whether it flies to Meridiani or to Ashanti? Your guys built the Thymiamata Oasis in a month; they could move it 125 kilometers to El Dorado in a month. If I were you, I’d relocate the next two oases as well, to Kalgoorlie and Meridiani. Two outposts on the trail makes it safer.”

Érico looked at Will, dumbfounded. The Commissioner turned to the others. “Gerhard, what are your thoughts?”

“Well, Muller Mining does want all of Ashanti. That’s why we bid what we bid. We would not have offered to split it with Consolidated. My company is pleased with Cassini, but we want to diversify across the Martian surface to other mineral locales as well. And we’re happy to work with Sibireco to locate an outpost that can serve their gold extraction from Deadwood, if they want to cooperate with us.”

“Which we do,” said Feodor. “We’re satisfied by the location proposed by Lal Shankaraman.”

Will looked around the room. He was surprised by both the result and the swiftness at which it was reached. They had come to Dawes for three or four sols of negotiations, including visits to the proposed outpost site. “Shall we visit Meridiani?” he asked.

“I don’t know that there’s anything we can accomplish together there,” replied Feodor.

“So, we’ll have two outposts, then,” exclaimed Bruce. “Do we have two boroughs also? A borough is usually less than a thousand klicks across, and the outposts are a thousand klicks apart.”

“Two, I guess,” replied Will. “One’s east of the meridian and south of the equator, while the other’s west and north. But I doubt they’ll have many residents.”

“For a while, yes,” agreed Bruce. “Note that Kalgoorlie is east and north; is it a borough as well?”

Will scowled at him. “It ain’t anything until it’s actually settled.”

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

The meeting continued another hour, then the men adjourned. Will did office work for the rest of the afternoon, then went to supper. Érico arrived at about the same time. “I don’t know about you, but I’m furious.”

“We did waste some time, didn’t we?” agreed Will. “Maybe we should be relieved we’re heading home sooner.”

“I am. We’re going to be occupied building their infrastructure for months, though. We’ll need two biomes right away.”

“I bet Curry asks for a third one at Kalgoorlie as well. Wait and see.”

“Yes, he wants to increase the boroughs from three to six, I think! And they’ll all be tiny.”

“Well, we can’t give them three biomes; in fact, we can’t give them two right away. Those boroughs, whether there are two or three, are getting one biome per year. Meridiani Outpost will be first because it’ll be bigger and involves two mining companies. El Dorado—I guess it’s Thymiamata Outpost—gets its biome in early to mid 2037; Curry’s crew will have to operate without one until then.”

“I think that’s pretty generous of you.”

“No, not really. We can make biomes a lot faster now than we used to. We’ll move Thymiamata Oasis to El Dorado and add a second shelter, so Curry’s people will have them for support. I suspect life support will have to run open loop because there will be too many people, but that’s possible; there’s plenty of water underground, and they can store the waste water for now and recycle it in a year or two. We’ll ship them an extra solar power unit to power the systems.”

“So, do you think Curry’s trying to pack the Mars Council?”

Will shrugged. “Who knows. If so, it won’t work; based on the fundamental law, each borough will get one representative, and the Council will have to decide whether Kalgoorlie is a borough.” Will saw that someone was approaching the food line; he and Érico fell silent, as their privacy was ending.

As they left the food line, Will spotted a friendly face in the crowd eating. “Hey, Helmut!” he said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yes, for the last month.” He pointed to his companion. “Do you remember Clara Forsyth?”

“Yes, I do! You arrived on Columbus 8. How are you enjoying Mars?”

“Quite well. Helmut and I were both on the Meridiani Trail project, and now we’re here as part of the team clearing some new roads for the new super-heavy equipment. We’ll be back at Aurorae next month.”

“Good, it’ll be good to see both of you again,” said Will. He noted how closely they were sitting together. “In the meanwhile, best wishes with everything.” He continued on to the next table, since Helmut and Clara were seated at a table for two.

“‘Best wishes with everything?’” Clara said to Helmut, afterward.

Helmut laughed. “They say Elliott is an incurable romantic. He encourages marriage whenever he can.”

“Oh? So he was referring to that?” She chuckled.

“I think so. How often do you see two people sitting on the same side of a table for two?”

She chuckled again. “I suppose that is a give-away. But I still haven’t heard any sort of question from you, and here we are living together for three months, now.”

“Oh, Clara, you know I love you! Besides, I want to put in for all sorts of asteroid missions in the future. I could be away three or four years. Do you want to be married to someone who’s flying through the asteroid belt?”

“Maybe! I might even apply for the same mission!”

“Oh. . . that’s an interesting thought, you and me flying to Ceres together.”

“Why not? I’m a damn good systems engineer, and now I know geology and road clearing as well. Don’t assume you’re the only ambitious astronaut on Mars.”

“Oh, I don’t. I really do feel torn, though. I’ve seen a lot of marriages break up because of space flight. My mom and dad barely managed to stay together; sometimes I think it was just out of force of habit. He was on the moon six months of the year.”

“I’ve seen that, too. At least here there’s a high probability we can get assignments in the same place if we’re married. We could fly to Phobos or Deimos together, for example.”

“That’d be fun. I’d still like to apply for a trip to Venus or Mercury, some time. Venus now has expanded to six people, and the Mercury plans call for the outpost there to grow to eight, then twelve over six years.”

“I’ll apply with you. I bet Marsian astronauts have a chance; we have a lot of experience. We might be able to get a group of us to apply together and maybe a separate flight from Mars to Mercury could be arranged.”

“I wonder whether that would be possible?” Helmut thought about her idea. “Come on, let’s walk for a few minutes.”

“Okay, but remember Elliott’s speaking in another fifteen minutes or so.”

Helmut nodded. They picked up their trays and took them to the dishwashing machine, where they sorted everything and prepared it for loading. Then they walked to the south building and took the spiral ramp to the roof, where they could walk amidst the garden. Other than a Spider-15 agricultural robot patiently picking tomatoes and cucumbers, they were alone. They were high enough to see outside; the three craters south of the outpost were pretty in the golden light of the approaching sunset. They leaned against the railing and against each other and looked out.

“This is a beautiful place,” Clara said.

“Yes, though I miss the escarpment at Aurorae.”

“And the dacha. We’ll have to go there after we get back. Oh, by the way. There’s a potential adventure for us in October.”

“Oh? What?”

“Well, it’s exciting and tedious at the same time. When Adam Haddad arrived here yesterday on his way to Cassini we got to talking, and he told me that in October he has to drive from Aurorae to Elysium with a bunch of heavy equipment. He has to go to Elysium via Dawes because the equipment is too heavy to pull up the steep grades from the floor of Marineris to the Tharsis Plateau. Then the fastest, safest way back is via Marineris.”

“So he’d be driving all the way around Mars on the Circumnavigational?”

Clara nodded. “He needs someone to go with him. I was thinking that we could take some vacation time and both go with him.”

“Great idea!”

“The driving alone will take three or four weeks. He’s taking a nuke and an emergency shelter along; only one pressurized vehicle, which is another first, because of all the trailers he has to pull.”

“How do we sign up?”

“I’ll arrange it,” said Clara.

Helmut looked at her. “So, would you like to go to Mercury and the asteroids?”

“Yes, I would. I applied for Mars because I wanted to be part of the wave of human expansion. At the time, I didn’t take seriously the idea that Mars personnel would be involved in exploration elsewhere, but that has happened. Do you think they’ll let you go on another expedition soon, though?”

“I don’t know. I was chosen randomly for the Gradivus mission; literally, it was a random draw for the position, and even then I was a last-minute replacement when Andries Underwood broke his leg! So many qualified people want to go that they chose a few positions randomly. Maybe it’ll be ten years, who knows.”

“There is plenty of exploration to do up here, meanwhile.”

Helmut nodded. “As we’ve seen.”

“Do you want to have children?”

He pondered the question. “Yes, I think so. This place is a funny contradiction because there’s a lot of emphasis on family life, but anyone exploring has to be away from their family for months.”

“I think the time has come to modify those policies,” said Clara. “Mobilhabs are so big and reliable, one could take care of a small child in one.”

“But what about radiation?”

“Add a tonne of shielding to one section of the mobilhab; it won’t add that much to its total mass. It would reduce everyone’s exposure. I’ve been thinking of talking to Vanessa about this; she’s really restricted in what she can do.”

“So I gathered. That’s why I feel torn about children. I was raised in a family where dad was away a lot. He was on a Mars expedition thirty months.”

“But you managed okay, and here you are following in his footsteps.”

“True.” Helmut was silent a moment. “I guess part of the problem is loneliness. In a family, you’re never alone. But I was terribly lonely for the first two years here. I wasn’t completely aware of it, or maybe I should say being with you for the last three months has made me realize how lonely it was.”

“Why didn’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Because the women intimidated me; I was three years younger than any of them. Because they were looking for husbands and I had my doubts about getting married. I was the youngest adult up here, and one of the few without a Ph.D. It was hard. That was one reason Skip Carson, Brian Stark, and I stuck together, even though our politics were radically different; we all felt like outsiders.”

“But you aren’t an outsider now.”

“No, things feel better now because I’m two years older, I’ve got more experience, and because there are ninety people here who arrived after I did. And you have been incredible, Clara. I feel so much more. . . whole. . .”

“You’ve been incredible for me, too.” They pulled closer together. “I want to be with you forever.”

“I want to be with you forever, too.” They kissed, long and passionately. “So, shall we get married?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’ll marry you, but you have to give me a ring, don’t you?”

“Yes. I guess that has to wait until we can get to Silvio’s.”

“Elliott, Lopes, and Islami are flying back to Aurorae tomorrow, and Adam drives back here in two weeks. We could ask for some time off.”

Helmut laughed. “You always surprise me! Let’s do it!”

HOME PREVIOUS NEXT