Glory on Mars (17 page)

The fabricator was their factory. Inside were
furnaces for baking water out of pores in the sand and electrolysis
units for converting it into oxygen and hydrogen.

"Water and oxygen have been easy to collect," Yin
said.

"It's the molecular separators that give us trouble,"
Yang said

"Our capacity for freezing out CO2 to purify the
nitrogen is low."

It was hard to think of the big box as a robot, but
it had a lot of onboard intelligence that communicated with
Governor. That was merged with Governor, really. All one AI.

"The fabricator head has a small feed bucket. The
whole assembly rides on an XYZ frame," Yang said. "The head
delivers sand to the proper coordinates and a laser sinters the
particles into place at the specified density."

They watched the head for a while but it barely moved
along the block of stone, forming one of the tabs or grooves that
locked stones together as a bay was assembled.

"Governor can run everything robotically," Yin said.
"Like your rover, the squad can perform basic operations on its
own, but when we take over, things go faster."

"We're an entire bay ahead of MEX's construction
schedule," Yang said. "Manufacturing air is the long pole in the
tent now."

"Can't really complain, I guess. Something had to be
the long pole in the tent," Yin said

"Some of the experts at Colony Mars are saying 'I
told you so.'"

There had been heated debates over where to locate
the colony. The Tharsis Plain was three thousand meters above Mars'
average elevation. That was high enough for the atmosphere to be
noticeably thinner and the regolith held less water. But the sand
was perfect for construction.

"Fabrication works better than anyone expected," Yin
said.

"The Tharsis dunes are perfectly uniform for the full
five meters we dig out to install a bay floor. We can shovel the
sand straight into the fabricator, which saves a lot of time."

"I've read all your reports. But there's one step you
slowed down..."

"Yes, when we sinter the blocks together - like
welding to seal the surface of the stone - heat builds up in the
seam. If it gets too much hotter than the rest of the block, the
stone cracks."

"We lost a few arches before we realized what was
happening."

"Yang modified the bevel where the blocks meet and we
get a better seal now, too."

Emma watched the loader's backhoe attachment extend
and dig onto the sand.

"How are the solid lubricants holding up..."

They eagerly discussed the minutia of construction.
Emma felt like her brain was fully engaged for the first time in
weeks.

"We'll do proper mining once all the basic bays are
complete and there's time to prospect for something more
interesting than sand," Yin said.

"Claude's brought some brilliant equipment for
prospecting," Yang added.

"These humongous volcanoes must have burped up some
useful minerals."

The maintenance bay was easy to spot in the early
morning. Its shadowed face was gray against the brightening orange
sand - a sharp-edged shape skirted by sand drifts. The precise
location for Kamp had been decided when the module carrying the
fabricator touched down. The other modules had landed with a
kilometer - excellent accuracy after a journey of five hundred
million kilometers. Loaders and beetle-bots had hauled their
module's equipment to the fabricator and began construction. The
maintenance bay had been their first bay, and the Pioneer jumpship
later retrieved the outlying modules.

Now those modules stood in a row at one end of the
maintenance bay - stripped and empty, waiting to be cut up and
recycled as needed.

The beetle-bots kept a parking pad clear. Emma
activated the rover's docking program and sat back.

"Welcome to Maintenance, our home away from home,"
Yin said as he led the way through the airlock.

"We spend twelve hours a sol here or in the loader's
cab," Yang said.

"Don't take off your suits," Yin said. "We'll go out
on the warehouse floor in a minute and it's not pressurized. That
roll-up door for moving the big robots can't seal airtight."

"Come on, Emma. We'll show you around."

Emma followed them up a vertical ladder, through an
oblong hatch that accommodated her suit's backpack. Up top, she
entered a narrow room with windows on one side overlooking the bay
below. Following Yin and Yang's example, she removed her
helmet.

"These are control interfaces for the bots. Life
support and a full sanitary unit are through there. Our galley is
that way." Yang pointed to the doors in turn.

Emma stepped to the windows, six rows of small panes
overlooking the warehouse floor below. A shaft of light from the
control room reflected off something metallic.

"It's too dark to see," Emma said. "Is something
moving down there?"

"One of the bots, using infrared to maneuver. It
doesn't need the lights and we routinely keep the roll-up door
closed. Less dust to sweep out that way."

"Yin, this bay was constructed in-situ, here on
Tharsis, wasn't it?"

"Sure. The construction squad built it before we
arrived."

"Where'd all the glass come from, then?" She rapped a
knuckle against one of the small, thick panes.

"It's a slow process, but the fabricator made these
windows."

"There's enough of silica in the sand."

"Glassmaking is one of its programs."

"You're thinking we can replace the jumper's windows.
But take a look." Yin flipped on the warehouse lights below
them.

Emma drew in her breath trying not to gasp out loud.
The crashed jumpship lay in the center of the floor, its cabin
turned towards her. The ship was tilted at a steep angle since both
engines on one side were smashed and folded inwards. The entire
frame was twisted.

"Let's go down and take a close look."

They donned their helmets and climbed back down the
ladder. Ruby waited in a second airlock that opened to the bay
floor. The airlock pumped down and they stepped out near the ruined
jumpship.

The front of the cabin crumpled inwards against the
pilot and co-pilot seats. Only the shattered screens and a few
manual controls stood between the seats and the collapsing frame.
Emma understood clearly now why James and Luis were dead.

She took a deep, shaky breath and clambered into the
cabin to open the ceiling panels. Most of the ship's control
systems were mounted in the ceiling.

"Well, this is a mess. There's no way Governor can
interface with this thing. Let's look at the engines you've
scavenged."

Nine thruster engines, salvaged from settler
transport ships, stood in a row along the wall. Emma spotted Rover
One once she was past the ruined jumpship. She stopped to examine
its track rollers, carefully aiming her helmet imager to capture
pictures to send to Earth.

"I don't see any significant damage. Can I use the
beetle-bots to pull the track chain back into place before we
leave?"

"You're the expert. You can do whatever you
want."

Emma grinned. To be welcomed by two brilliant
roboticists was all she could ask for.

Chapter Twenty-Two:
Walkabouts

Life in Kamp settled into a routine. Liz shouldered
the greenhouse tasks. Claude joined Daan and the others assembling
lighting fixtures, rewiring heaters, and catching up on maintenance
for the life support systems.

The weather remained clear in the first months of
storm season, so Yin and Yang continued fabricating building stones
and harvesting atmosphere. Ruby split her time between moving stone
with the jumpship and helping Daan's team.

That left Emma free to redesign jumpship controls.
She threw herself into the effort. Designing the interface was a
good reason to contact her father. He never mentioned their last
call on Earth and they fell into a familiar pattern. They had
something to share now and he worked on the problem personally.

She'd been worried he might object to stripping the
unit from Rover One, but instead the project excited him.
Demonstrating the adaptability of the unit was good for his
company. Critics within MEX who had argued for simple buggies had
to suspend their grumbling, since jumpships were vital to the
colony plans. He hoped to sell Colony Mars another pair of rovers
for a later mission.

"This reminds me of when we built your first servo
mechanism," he said at the end of one message.

"I kept that servo for years." Emma smiled at the
memory. It was one of the few occasions her father had spent time
at home.

She bent over her schematics until his next message
arrived. That was pretty much the way Emma and her father always
communicated and the transmission lag was too long for conversation
anyway.

It was a relief, in a way, to avoid direct
conversations with Earth, even with her mother. Her mother's
messages, which arrived at irregular intervals, were so chirpy and
so cheerful. Conversation could have been exasperating.

Design and testing took time. Emma was still immersed
when Liz brought her first bowl of beets to supper, then squash
sautéed with green onions, and later a few tomatoes. Each new
vegetable was a cause for celebration and energized Daan and
Melina, who otherwise complained they were tired all the time. Emma
noticed headaches herself, but usually shrugged them off. Just
eyestrain, maybe.

A major haboob storm soon ended construction. As soon
as the weather alert sounded, Yin and Yang told Governor to stash
the squad in Maintenance. Governor calculated the best orientation
to fit the rovers in with the bots. The fabricator lumbered slowly
across the sand on its wide treads as the eastern sky turned into a
boiling mass of deep red clouds. The warehouse door rolled closed
and the bots shut down.

Liz harvested the first batch of potatoes as
compensation.

"No more of that macronutrient sludge," Melina said
as she raised a boiled potato on her fork.

"There're a few more servings in your future," Liz
said. "I dug these as soon as I as reasonably could. The rest of
the crop should stay in the ground for another month."

"We stacked cylinders in one of the airlocks and
turned off the heater," Yin said.

Melina sighed.

"Don't spoil this moment with talk."

The arrival of the first planet-wide storm was
disheartening. Even though the habitats' temperature and lighting
levels never varied, the sols seemed darker.

***

Liz stepped through the doorway, the cat in one arm
and a bag of squash under the other. A cat didn't mix well with
tiny electrical parts so Liz kept him in the greenhouse during work
shifts.

She had to drop the cat to close the door.

"Will you get that cat out of here," Claude said. He
was staring fixedly at a wire dangling from the fixture he was
assembling.

"Damn." The cat leaped at the wire and pulled the
fixture to the floor. He streaked away as it landed with a
crash.

"Don't yell at him." Melina followed the cat to her
bunk. She usually left her privacy flap open at the bottom to lure
him in and kept a handful of mealworms along with his toys from the
Moon.

"Time to clear the table for supper anyway," Sanni
said.

"Good. I'm tired of this." Claude rubbed his eyes
with the heels of his hands.

"You'll notice MEX hasn't been bothering us about
live feeds," Ruby said, swinging her hand over the little boxes of
diodes. "No one wants to watch this piss awful work."

"I've got the latest engine test results from MEX,"
Emma said to Ruby.

"Let's skip meditation tonight. We can work in the
south habitat after supper."

After spending an hour with Ruby in the south
habitat, Emma walked through the Plaza to her north habitat bunk.
It wasn't that late, but she felt tired and had a dull headache.
Something caught the corner of her eye. A chill ran down her back -
something was following her. Emma turned and stared at the ice, a
decaying glacier of fissures trickling with meltwater thanks to the
rising temperature.

"Cat? Kitty-kitty-kitty?" Nothing.

Inside the north habitat, Sanni had the cat on her
knee while Melina dangled a string. He batted at it
frantically.

"I'm glad the cat's here," Emma said. "I thought he
got left out in the Plaza."

"Why's that?" Sanni asked.

"I could've sworn I saw something by the pond. I
thought maybe it was the cat. Just a shadow, I guess."

Melina lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head
towards Sanni. But Emma was too tired to worry about them. "I'm
going to bed."

***

A couple sols after the haboob cleared, Yang declared
the dust settled enough to use a rover. He woke up the construction
squad but only moved the fabricator a little way out of
Maintenance, ready to retreat if another storm approached. The
beetle-bots used shovel tips on their limbs to scoop drifts away
from the docking airlock and into the loader bucket. The bots
carefully cleaned the outer surface of the airlock and resumed
fabricating stone.

Emma immediately told Governor to bring a rover to
the docking module. She and Ruby were anxious to mount the
transport engines on Jumper One.

They drove Rover Two to Maintenance every sol for a
while, wringing out systems and dry-fitting components. The more
time they spent together, the better Emma and Ruby
collaborated.

At the end of one morning, Emma and Ruby were in the
maintenance bay's narrow control room, watching the read-outs as a
bot ran cables from the jumpship cabin to the scavenged engines.
Emma made notes on an intermittent reading.

"Your system design is going to work," Ruby said. She
nodded her approval.