4

New Directions

A Sunwing-D carefully, deliberately approached the end of Aurorae’s three thousand meter east-west runway. Its front pair of thirty-meter wings, sprouting from the top of the fuselage, had all eight of its propellers turning at maximum speed, supplementing the fading late afternoon’s solar power with energy from its silane engines. The central pair of wings, sprouting from the bottom of the fuselage half way back to the tail, had four landing gears deployed, ready for touchdown. The rear pair of wings, half way up the fuselage from its bottom, had wide flaps extended fully to maximize lift and minimize ground speed in the thin air. Flaps extended from the other wings as well, temporarily doubling the wing area of the aircraft.

Dust rose from the wheels as they touched down on the clay landing strip. The pilot cut the engines and applied the brakes gradually, allowing the plane to slowly come to a stop half way down the runway, where a conestoga awaited them. They rolled past shuttle pads, most of which were occupied by space vehicles, as they came to a stop. Then the conestoga crew approached, placed wedges under the wheels, and attached a flexible plastic tunnel to the sunwing’s rear door. Once it was pressurized, the passengers exited: Vanessa Smith, John Hunter, their son Maaka Hunter, and Nigel Stanfield.

Fifteen minutes after touchdown, the passengers were able to exit the conestoga with their luggage at the main arrival hall of Aurorae Outpost. They said goodbye; the Hunter-Smith family headed to their flat in Shikuku Biome, while Nigel walked to his small flat in Columbia.

He tried to hurry and avoided areas of heavy foot traffic; it was 4:30 p.m. and some people were already coming home from work. Fortunately no one spotted him as he approached his flat in Columbia’s cylinder 4. But as he was about to enter the cylinder’s main door, someone exited from the main door of cylinder 3. It was Brian Stark, whose flat and offices were in cylinder 3. “Hey, Nigel, welcome back to Aurorae! I didn’t know you were coming back.”

“Well, Brian, last week we hit Noachian bedrock, so the deep drilling project stopped, at least for a few months. We might reenter the hole next year and try for another thousand meters. So I’m taking a bit of a break.”

“Good. How deep did it go?”

“Forty-three hundred meters; dirty snow on top, dirty ice underneath, then icy sediment—eolian and crater ejecta—for 1500 meters, then finally basalt.”

“Wow, in what; four and a half months?”

Nigel nodded. “Yes. We’re staying at the pole another three or four months, then we’ll be back here for a few months, and after the equinox we’ll head for the south pole and another drilling project. Say, how’s the nuclear facility?”

“I’m sure you heard the Mars and Aurorae Councils approved the plans in mid July. It took a bit longer than expected, but the consensus we built among the public here was worth it, I think. In the three and a half months since we’ve started on Hanford Dome—it’s one of the new B-160s—and in the last week we’ve inflated three building bubbles, tested them, and started interior construction. We hope to start uranium separation in the spring.”

“Good. I’ve heard a rumor that you plan to refuel the oldest reactors here?”

“Yes, the oldest two have stopped making significant power and the vessels are still fine, so we plan to use our robots next year to remove the spent fuel. It’ll be at least eighteen months before we can refuel them, but then they’ll be able to make significant power again. The spent fuel has plutonium and all sorts of useful isotopes. We’ll have recovery ability in three or four years.” Brian looked toward the exit from the biome. “I’d talk more, but I will soon be late for an appointment. Tomorrow night there’s a big party in the Patio for the return of the Ascraeus from 2011BA14 ‘Amigo.’ Sit with us and we can reminisce about the flight.”

“Yes, and commiserate about the election.”

“Oh God, yes! It’s beginning to look like a total disaster.” Brian shook his head in disbelief.

“I think it may be the worse midterm election showing of a sitting President in American history.”

“White should have resigned and let Hamlyn serve as President. Even if he is gay, he would have kept the evangelical base and his more moderate positions would have generated more support from the mainstream.”

“That’s true. It’s sad. The party won’t win back the Senate and House for many years, maybe a decade; until the Dems gloat too much and create a disaster of their own, that is.” Nigel lowered his head.

“I know. Watch out; ninety percent of the folks here hated White’s guts and they’ll be gleeful, once the election returns are final in another hour or two.”

“I know. The party never should have embraced him, Brian; he was too extreme. People here are right; the Republicans have to get passports and go see the world, rather than thinking the United States is the only part of the world that counts. That thinking led to a disastrous war, a monstrous act of terrorism on U.S. soil, trade protectionism that ruined the economy and cut the value of the dollar in half, astronomical oil prices, a vast deficit. . . it’ll be a while before anyone can pick up the pieces.”

“True enough, but now the Dems will have the responsibility for picking up the pieces and we’ll blame them when they have trouble. Let’s just hope they preserve Odyssey.”

Nigel shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“Well, I have grounds for optimism.” Brian smiled. “Maybe I can tell you a bit more tomorrow, Nigel.”

“Okay. See you at the party.” He gave Stark a salute and walked inside the cylinder.

His flat was on the second floor. He went up the stairs and ordered the door to unlatch, which it did. He pushed it open.

Dust everywhere. It wasn’t too bad; the air was well filtered. But he hated it when a place was so dirty he could feel the finest layer of grime on horizontal surfaces.

He walked to the windows and raised the blinds. He had a one-room efficiency, which was all he needed; it consisted of the western half of the ten meter cylinder. A bathroom occupied the rear corner of the space, and a simple kitchenette covered the wall between it and the rest of the space. Then he had a bed going across the room; he could pull a curtain to separate off the front half if he wanted, where he had a small couch, two easy chairs, and a rug. The floor was tile made to resemble wooden parquet. The walls were bare because he hadn’t been on Mars long enough to decorate the place.

He put his suitcase on the bed and set up his attaché on his desk. He collapsed into his chair, depressed. He had an appointment with the Commissioner the next sol and it was going to be difficult. He really didn’t want people to know he was back because they’d ask why. The election disaster soured his mood even more; it threatened his entire work. It would be a double disaster if the funding for his polar research was cut, leaving him stuck on Mars with no money to continue.

It was quarter of five. He didn’t want to go to the Patio for supper. He got up and checked the cupboards; they were bare, as he knew they would be. So he sat at the attaché and pulled up the Patio’s supper menu; they had a vegetarian lasagna that sounded good. He ordered a meal and was pleased to see a robotic vehicle would be able to deliver it at 6:45 p.m. An extra hour of hunger would be worth the wait.

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

John and Vanessa couldn’t wait to go to the Patio and see their friends over supper. As soon as they arrived, friends swarmed around them, shaking their hands, hugging them, asking them how they were doing. They were particularly happy to see Helmut and Clara, who had returned to Aurorae in early September when Clara’s pregnancy had advanced into the last two months. Their baby, Charles, was almost a month old and still sleeping a lot, though only during the day.

Once conversations swung away from the last six months of exploration and to the nidterm elections—the results were now final—and other matters, Vanessa rose from table to get some coffee. On her way back she stopped by the Commissioner’s dinner table, where Will and his family had arrived. “Welcome home!” said Will. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, well worth it. Maaka did fine; the two mobilhabs and the oasis habs provided him with plenty of space to run around in, and I was able to work with the sediment cores closely every sol.”

“Yeah, you got down to the Noachian.”

“We sure did! All the way to the bottom of the polar deposits. I’m pretty sure we’ll have solid evidence for a polar ocean in the first few hundred million years, and the sediments will trace the evolution of prebiological chemicals, then the rise of life on Mars.”

“We’ll have the whole story?”

She nodded confidently. “I’m pretty sure. We could use a few dozen more cores to flesh out the story, but we will have the basics.”

“I hope your team gets the Nobel Prize for that! You’ll deserve it.”

“Thanks, Will. And thanks for the support.” She didn’t mention Nigel, but he understood the allusion.

“Oh, of course. We’ll see how the story ends. How’s Maaka’s health?”

“We’ll be sure after he sees the doctor on Monsol. He won’t like it, either; he has to give a lot of blood. But his radiation exposure was pretty low because of the ice cover over the hab. This won’t give us a true measure of life in a mobilhab.”

“That may be just as well; I don’t like the medical experimentation aspect of this new policy.”

Vanessa looked at Marshall. “Speaking of biology; I understand your son brought good luck to two field geology classes!”

Marshall smiled, embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t do anything!”

“He was a good boy on the Gangis trip, so we took him and Sammie to Aram in early September,” said Will.

“And the class discovered two new species on each trip!” added Vanessa. “I would have enjoyed that!”

“It was exciting,” agreed Marshall. “The Gangis strata were from a late phase lake; it was upper Hesperian. The Aram strata were middle Hesperian.”

“They help to fill in some gaps,” said Vanessa. “I saw your name on the author list in Nature.”

“That was exciting,” agreed Marshall. “Even if I was sixteenth!”

“His first publication,” added Will, with a smile.

“Well, I’ve got to get back. Clara said I could hold Charles.”

“What a beautiful baby,” said Will. “They’ve been blessed.”

“Yes, they have been, and they’re very happy. Bye.” Clara headed back to the table.

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

The next morning, Nigel emerged from his flat at 10:55 a.m to walk to Elliott’s office for his 11 a.m. appointment. Will was waiting.

“Good sol, Nigel. Come in,” he said, rising from his desk. He pointed to the table in the front of the office, where they could sit together. “I trust you had a good flight?”

“Yes, it was the usual. Thank God we had space to stretch out.”

“Those sunwings are impossible if the flight is long and the cabin’s full. We may get something bigger and more powerful in four years if the research funding continues. There’s not much money in Martian aviation, unfortunately. And you hauled back some of the cores?”

“Yes, 600 kilograms from the lower 300 meters of the shaft. The analysis has already started.”

“I’m sure.” Will leaned back in his chair. “Well, we’re not here to talk about travel or science, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately. Commissioner, I have always been a frank man, and that has often rubbed people the wrong way. The last six months have been difficult; the crew did not gel very well, we were in confined quarters with a loud child, we faced some serious technical challenges to get the driller to work properly, and we had some major differences over exploration strategy. I did my best.”

“Nigel, frankness can be a strength, but it can also be a weakness. In this case, near as I can determine, you managed to rub everyone the wrong way. The Chinese were alienated early, and they eventually complained to Beijing, so I heard about it from there. When I asked you about the matter, you weren’t very forthcoming. Your comments about women did not sit well with some of the women. Your treatment of the drilling crew has been called ‘imperious.’ There were probably strategies that could have produced compromises on the exploration goals, but they were not pursued. I gather at least one more expedition might have been possible. When I sent Martha and Enlai down, you rebuffed them and made their efforts difficult. As a result, Dr. Tan is now in charge and you are here.”

“It sounds like you’ve already tried and sentenced me.”

“No, I want to hear what you think of all this.”

“What do I think? Shit, in retrospect, I wish I had used more honey and less vinegar. But that doesn’t come to me naturally, I guess you could say. And my approach gets results; if I hadn’t balled out the drillers a few times, we’d still be in the lower Amazonian deposits.”

“An extra month of drilling wouldn’t have done any harm and might not have been necessary. As I see it, right now we have three choices.”

Will paused and waited for Nigel to respond. “Okay. . . “ he finally replied.

“One, you stay here and do our research from Aurorae. That doesn’t seem very practical or a good use of your time.”

“We are agreed on that, Mr. Commissioner.”

“Two, you return to the station and work there under Dr. Tan. You would get your research done, but the results may be a bit humiliating.”

“Ah-hah.”

“Three, you take some courses here on personnel management and communication. Martha Vickers runs them; they use video and computer assisted learning, with her assessment of the results. Then you go back as commander in three months.”

“That long?”

“Let’s see how Tan does as Commander. I think we’ll be pleased. You’ll be there for wrap-up and close-down of the facility, and will head the South Pole expedition shortly thereafter, unless you screw up again or Tan does very well. In the latter case, command will be rotated.”

“Mr. Commissioner, this is no way to treat me. I think I had better make a few complaints of my own, to set—”

“You are free to do so, and remember Columbus 9 returns to Earth in August 2039; that’s nine months from now. I’m not sure how that will look on your record.”

Nigel opened his mouth, then closed it. “Very well. I’ll call Vickers this sol.”

“Good. Nigel, you have done incredibly good science in the past and I know you will in the future as well. But you’re moving beyond science and into management. The mission to Callisto will demand close cooperation by a small crew that likely will be diverse. This is an opportunity, not a punishment.”

“I concede your point. I’m not sure I can say thank you, but who knows, maybe I will be able to in the future.” Nigel sighed. “Anything else?”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Nigel saluted Will, then rose from his chair and walked out the door.

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

That evening, the Patio filled early for the celebratory dinner. The Ascraeus had landed safely at 8 a.m. that morning, and the crew was now rested and ready to be welcomed home in grand style. Quite a feast was laid out on the buffet tables, and it was free, so everyone filled up.

“I just wish you had sent me out on a more ambitious mission,” Johnny Lind said to Will as the dinner came to an end. “Amigo was pretty small; a fast target to explore. It seems like we barely left Mars space.”

“Oh, I don’t know; three months is no quick jaunt, Johnny. Amigo may have been only a hundred fifty meters by eighty, but we now can say where it came from in the outer asteroid belt, which class of objects it’s a member of, when that class was created through destruction of the mother body, and what the class is composed of. Not to mention the Prospector-class rover, drill rig, solar array, fuel synthesis unit, and lifter you left behind. Who knows what probe or spacecraft will rendezvous for refueling or whether it will assist a future Columbus mission in trouble. Don’t minimize your achievement.”

“I wish I could have swapped missions with Emily; hers seems much more exciting! Keep in mind that I’d love to participate in a mission to Ceres, Pallas, or Vesta. The opportunity would be quite exciting.”

“I’m sure. Who knows whether we’ll have any say, though; you’ll have to apply to NASA.”

“And with the election, no one can predict when a mission to the asteroid belt will be launched.”

“Exactly right. The results are probably much better for Earth, but not for us.”

“Any idea what NASA will do?”

Will shook his head. “But we’ve been considering the choices for months. Our NASA subsidy appears to be safe, since it was negotiated twelve years ago when costs were much higher. They even paid us the subsidy they withheld three years ago.”

“Is there any possibility I can participate in the Mercury support team?”

Will thought carefully. “Sure. We’re trying to provide as much support as we can after hours, but we have some people here temporarily working full time for the Mercury-Venus Commission. Not for more than a few months, though.”

“Thanks. Mercury’s volcanism has some fascinating parallels with Noachian volcanism. They’ll have that planet covered with Prospector automated rovers in a few months.”

“Exactly, since they can’t stir from the outpost very much. It’ll be the first world mostly explored live by rover.”

“Yeah, Venus is getting explored that way, but incredibly slowly because of the heat, and Titan and the Galileans are glacially slow because of the tine delays. We need people out there!”

“Well, we’ll have them pretty soon, won’t we?” said Will with a smile. He rose. “Coffee?”

“No thanks, I’ll get some in a few minutes.”

Will nodded and walked to the coffee. While filling his cup he felt his attaché, which was attached to his belt, vibrate. In his earpiece he heard an automated message, “urgent videomail from Louisa Turner.” He walked to a corner of the Patio, raised the attaché with one hand so he could see the screen, and pushed the play icon with his thumb.

“Hi, Will. Sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I just got a tip from a friend inside NASA headquarters that in a few hours they plan to announce a change to Project Odyssey. They will drop the asteroid component entirely and head straight for Jupiter. That’s all I’ve heard, but if I get anything else I’ll let you know. Bye.”

Will glanced at the time at the bottom of the screen; it was 4 a.m. in Houston. He headed to the table where Alexandra and Yevgeny were seated, then beckoned to Ruhullah. The four of them huddled against the wall, out of earshot. “Louisa just called with a hot tip. In a few hours it’ll be morning in the U.S. and NASA will announce that Project Odyssey will skip the asteroid belt and go straight to Jupiter.”

Alexandra recoiled backward. Ruhullah whistled his surprise. “The SOB’s,” said Yevgeny. “Do they think we’ll do that ourselves, without them?”

“They probably surveyed the American public and found no one cared about the asteroid belt,” added Ruhullah.

“The Chinese will beat them to Jupiter otherwise,” added Will. “I think that’s the reason, and the fact the new administration won’t spend as much money.”

“Give the billions to us and we’ll get more done with it,” replied Alexandra.

“What do we do with the Ceres probe?” asked Yevgeny.

“That’s why I gathered you all together. It’ll be launched on a free return trajectory that will bring it back here in two annums anyway. The rovers can explore the surface, the fuel making equipment can refuel the launch vehicle, and the habs and conestogas can sit there a few years, or can be launched back here eventually. NASA may reconsider.”

“So you say, launch anyway?” asked Alexandra.

Will nodded. “I think so.”

“Are you thinking we can launch a caravel with crew to Ceres without NASA?” asked Alexandra.

“I wonder. The biggest cost is building the vehicle. Fuel to send it to Ceres won’t be much, and ground support isn’t that much with all the automated systems we have now. We can approach nations for sponsorships to cover the cost of any of their citizens on board.”

“You’re thinking about chemical rockets and solar power, then,” said Alexandra.

Will nodded. “The solar power would need special concentrators, but the central asteroid belt still gets ten percent the sunlight of Earth, which is manageable.”

“The biggest problem is that right now two caravels would need 40 to 50 crew, which is almost twenty percent of our adult population,” said Alexandra. “But we won’t send anyone for two or three years, and by then we’ll have over 500 adults here.”

“We need to think this through carefully, but Mars is the logical center for exploring and developing the asteroid belt,” noted Will. “We need five-year missions; the caravels would go to an asteroid, explore and refuel, then move on to another asteroid and repeat the process until they worked their way back to Mars. But a five-year mission means married couples will go, and ideally children as well.”

“We’re a way from that goal,” said Alexandra. “Radiation dangers are still too great.”

“Figure out the effect of methane and oxygen tanks on the top and bottom of the caravel,” exclaimed Will. “We can afford to haul extra water along as well, for life support redundancy and radiation shielding. Let’s get the Commission’s formidable resources examining this matter.” He looked around. “And I had better make my comments; everyone’s done eating.”

Will headed toward the stage. On his way he passed Emily Scoville Rahmani. “Are you ready to go to 2010KZ?”

“Absolutely. Thanks for giving me a leave as commander of Cassini to do this.”

“Well, we’re grateful to your family to let you do this.” Will nodded to her husband, Muhammad, and their four year old daughter, Amina. Then he headed up to the stage.

“Good evening everyone,” he said, and waited for the crowd to quiet so he could continue. “We are gathered here to welcome the Ascraeus back from a quick but significant mission to an asteroid we have named ‘Amigo.’ Amigo flies from a bit outside the orbit of the Earth to slightly outside the orbit of Mars; in short, it flies along a path very similar to the Columbus spacecraft. Some day a Columbus flight may parallel Amigo for several months on its way to Mars. Our rendezvous with it was an opportunity to practice a deep-space rendezvous with a Columbus vehicle, which might be necessary in a future emergency situation. Amigo now has a small, inexpensive fuel making system on it, which is accumulating water, oxygen, and methane. In a few years we might fly the fueled plant back here for maintenance, or we might fly the booster somewhere, or a vehicle may stop at Amigo to be refueled. Next month there will be a meeting of national space agencies to discuss the establishment of a network of emergency stations on asteroids, and our work on Amigo will serve as an example.

“Our team also did some very important science that will help us understand the origin of chondritic bodies in the outer asteroid belt. Could they please stand up now to receive our thanks. Johnny Lind was Commander; Johnny, introduce everyone.”

The six crew members rose and everyone applauded for them. Johnny introduced them, then they sat.

“In six weeks—mid December—Emily Rahmani will lead another crew in the Hadriaca to 2010KZ, a stony body about 300 meters across that will pass about ten million kilometers from Mars. Could they stand to receive our appreciation as well.”

Emily and her crew stood as well and everyone applauded them. “Thank you ahead of time,” Will said to them. “The Hadriaca mission raises the number of asteroids the Mars Commission has visited to nine, crews have flown past seven more, and we have sent out automated probes that have visited five more. In contrast, Project Argo has taken astronauts to six, the Chinese have landed on three, the Russians have visited three, and the Venus-Mercury Commission has flown by two. In short, we have landed on or flown by more asteroids than everyone else combined. We are practically the Mars-Asteroid Commission. If the asteroid belt is ever settled, it will be settled from Mars, which will provide supplies to most exploratory missions there. We will launch a major automated mission to Ceres in two weeks regardless of the decision NASA makes about sending an Odyssey crew to that world. That launch symbolizes our commitment to human exploration of the asteroid belt.”

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