Glory on Mars (18 page)

"Robotics is my field."

Ruby looked satisfied as she started the engine
diagnostic.

"I've always liked working out here. I can really
concentrate."

"I'm glad we're working together on this," Emma said.
She hesitated before going on.

"At our course-correction party, and then later in
orbit... I'm afraid you and I got off on the wrong foot
somehow."

"Yeah, well..." Ruby continued to monitor the
read-outs. "I heard some rumors that put me off."

"Rumors?"

"Well - donations soared after Ingra died. What if
they want to see something... I don't know. Something dramatic.
Again."

"'They' who? Who told you that bullshit?"

Ruby shrugged. "It sounds like bullshit to me now,
too."

"So you and me - we're good now, aren't we?"

Ruby finally looked up and smiled.

"Yeah, we're good. But I still say we've got to be
independent. The Colony Mars outfit won't be there forever. We
can't depend on them to call the shots."

"Is that why you're here?" Emma asked "To make sure
Mars stays independent?"

Ruby snorted.

"I'm here to fly into space. I wasn't going to make
it on Earth - a girl from the wop-wops of nowhere. I may only take
a jumpship into orbit once a jaar, I may die on one of the hops,
but the trade off's worth it."

***

In mid-season Governor relayed an alert from the
weather satellites - a vast cloud of dust was emerging from the
Hellas Basin. The storm was forecast to spread rapidly north and
west towards Kamp. They'd be engulfed in a few hours and the storm
would continue for weeks.

Yin and Yang sent the beetle-bots scurrying to drag
up nitrogen and fuel tanks - the fabricator had been harvesting
atmosphere. The bots released the gases into the nederzetting
before retreating to the safety of their maintenance bay.

Jumpship work was on hold again.

Two walkabout suits still lay in the north docking
module. Emma had resisted the temptation to unpack them, but now
she had time.

"Want some help?" Claude asked as they cleaned up
after breakfast one morning. "I could use a break from the repair
bench. Mounting all these little god-damn-it parts gives me a
headache."

"What do you think of exploring in robotic suits?"
Emma asked. Claude had never said much about the walkabouts and
she'd bumped up against enough skeptics at Colony Mars to be
defensive.

The idea, her father's romantic idea, was that
settlers should venture across the Tharsis Plain on solitary
multi-sol expeditions. Like Daniel Boone or Davy Crocket, he'd
said. The walkabouts were robots you crawled inside, rovers you
wore, pressurized exoshells to enhance human speed and strength.
Emma's personal expertise was the tail design. Walking on loose
sand required a third leg for stability and the suit needed a
counterbalance when traveling at high speeds, so it had a tail.

"I think exploring is essential." Claude said.
"Prospecting is what brought me to Mars."

Claude paused with two bowls in his hands, the
muscles in his jaw tight.

"When I was young I had ambition, and potential. But
what did I accomplish? Teaching others to go out and do what I
didn't. There's nothing sadder than thinking about what might have
been."

He barked a short laugh

"Once I get out on the surface... In a month of solid
field work I can learn more about Mars than any expert knows today.
That's what makes all this..."

He gestured to the pile of lighting fixtures piled
against the habitat wall.

"Tolerable."

That was how Emma felt.

"Yes. I'd love some help."

"If I wait too long, we'll be preparing for Settler
Four's arrival," Claude said. "I'll be stuck for another two
years... Excuse me, another jaar. I didn't give up so much to spend
the rest of my life living like a rat in a culvert."

"I'm alive. I've got to make that count." He held up
his truncated hand with two joints missing from the last two
fingers, one from the middle finger.

"There are times I think I made a mistake coming to
Mars." Emma let out a long, slow breath.

"I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what
the hell I've done."

Emma felt tears behind her eyes and berated herself.
She'd never said that to anyone, not to Governor's psychology
program, not even to Liz.

"No one else acts like they gave anything up. I
wonder if I belong here."

"I gave something up," Claude said. "My career, my
home..." He looked down suddenly.

Emma completed the thought to herself - your
wife.

What had she left behind? Her father... she could
message with him like she always did. Her mother... there was an
annual visit where she was dragged around to poetry slams and art
exhibits and talked to people she didn't understand.

I could have looked harder for people I did
understand, she supposed.

There was terrific work being done in robotics for
private homes, farming, and manufacturing. That work hadn't grabbed
her. Maybe she'd been too hasty, too narrow-minded. Racing across
the surface of Mars wasn't the only way to blaze new trails.

She turned away from Claude and sniffed hard. This
was a worthless train of thought, and she refused to be
self-indulgent. That's what grit's all about. Discipline and
self-control. Stick to the plan. It's why I'll get to stride across
the surface of Mars in a robotic suit. Thousands, maybe millions,
of Earth-bound people envy me.

"You and me, we're in the same boat," Claude
said.

"And Daan."

"Daan's a rat in a culvert." Claude shook his head
derisively.

"No. He wants to climb Mount Olympus."

"I don't know what he wants. Neither does he."

Building a safe home was indisputably their priority
- Emma knew that, she'd trained for that. They all had. But it was
so tedious.

"Yesterday, I carried a roll of wire to the new
garden bay..." Claude looked over his shoulder and leaned
closer.

"It's so dark and cold, I started to shiver. Suddenly
I couldn't breath - I felt like I was choking. I ran and hid
between the Spine tanks till my heart stopped pounding in my
ears."

Emma blinked at him, stunned.

"Could there be an air leak?"

"No." He shook his head. "I checked later."

"Did you tell Liz? Or talk..." She paused. "You could
talk to Governor's psych program."

"I told Liz about the heart rate. She couldn't find
anything wrong."

Emma frowned with concern.

"Hey, it's nothing. I don't know why I mentioned
it."

Claude stepped into his bunk and came out holding his
rock pick.

"How well can your walkabouts manipulate this?"

Emma smiled, relieved to be back to work.

"That's one of the first things I want to find
out."

The crash had damaged the lower half of the knarr,
but the walkabouts had been stowed in the top layer and were
intact. Emma and Claude cut the bands and the capsules fell open
like clamshells. Each suit lay on its belly, arms close to its
sides and tail folded up. They were bright blue like the
rovers.

"Governor. Send the activation codes," Emma said.

With a faint hum, the suits seemed to relax. The
rigid arms slumped.

"Are you in contact with the suits' AI? Go ahead and
merge."

"So, Governor will be able to operate the suits?"
Claude asked.

"For basic programs, yes. Just like the rovers. I'll
show you. Governor, when startup diagnostics are complete, stand
the walkabouts up."

Emma and Claude stepped back. The walkabouts, side by
side, moved in unison like soldiers. They pushed up onto hands and
knees. Their hands telescoped out, tipping their shoulders upwards.
Each tail swung out behind, each right hip and knee bent to bring a
foot against the floor. They stood. The hands retracted and the
tails stiffened, leaving a curl of a half-dozen joints on the
floor. They stood like three-legged stools.

"They look so big," Claude said. "And strange."

"Governor can operate the access hatch, or you can
open it manually like this." Emma flipped up the cover over a
button on the suit's left shoulder and pushed. There was a whir of
motors and the life support backpack disengaged with a clunk. It
hinged upwards revealing a door in the back of the suit. She spun a
small wheel until another click indicated the latch was free.

"You can twist around and get a hand on the inside
wheel, but it's easier to have someone help you in and out of the
suit."

She pulled the door open and leaned in, checking the
heads-up display.

"Use these handholds and slide your feet in first.
Feel for the stirrups in the lower legs - they adjust
automatically. And the control gloves in the arms for operating the
claws."

"What happened to the 'keep technology simple'
mandate?" Claude asked. "This thing must have more sensors and
motors than the whole Spine."

The walkabouts are absurd, Emma thought happily.
Absurd and beautiful. She wasn't sure how her father had sold them
to Colony Mars, but unexpected robots were definitely the most
satisfying to build.

This was why she was here, why her father had
encouraged her to come to Mars. With the walkabouts she would shake
off her malaise and claim the Martian surface as home.

Chapter Twenty-Three:
CO2

"I need help in the greenhouse," Liz said to Emma one
morning while the haboob still trapped them inside.

"Sure. I've left you with all the chores lately...
Sorry." She smiled apologetically.

"It's not that. I want your advice on something."

Inside the greenhouse, Liz led the way to a bed of
beans.

"These are my Type Two pintos. Like the experts
predicted, they won't need to be staked in Mars gravity."

"Yeah," Emma said. "They look fine."

"Not so fine." Liz pulled a tape measure from her
pocket and held it against the nearest plant. "Compared to our test
gardens on Earth and Lunar Base, these plants are half the size
they should be."

Emma had sudden visions of starving. She dropped to
her knees in the aisle and looked closely at the plant.

"I'm pretty sure I know what's wrong," Liz said. "The
carbon dioxide level in here is too low."

"We've outsmarted ourselves." Emma nodded as she
realized the problem.

"We sealed the greenhouse to keep in heat and
humidity..."

"And sealed out the carbon dioxide we exhale. You,
me, and the fish breathing in here don't provide enough for the
plants."

"No problem. Yin and Yang can bypass the separators
and compress surface atmosphere directly. It's ninety-five percent
CO2, and the traces of other gases won't hurt a thing. Drag their
cylinders in here and release all the CO2 you want."

"Good, I was hoping you'd say that." Liz sat on the
edge of the bed. "Isolating the greenhouse also means the Spine's
air sensors don't help me track levels in here..."

"Also no problem. Governor, send Yin and Yang a
summary of our conversation. Daan, too - tell him we need a
portable CO2 sensor. Oh - say - when he has a minute."

They fed the tilapia as they waited for replies,
including one fish in a nursery pond.

Emma's shadow fell across the pond and tiny babies
dove for safety in momma's mouth. Emma stood still until the fish
opened her mouth and released her fry back into the water. Liz
beamed as if she were the mother herself.

"I love how tilapias guard their babies."

The fry circle close to their mother. She flicked her
tail to stay in place, occasionally showing red-rimmed fins. Soon
she wouldn't let the babies back into her mouth and Liz would
return her to the breeder pond. Just like babies everywhere, Emma
thought, they have to go their own way.

"Hey, ladies," Yin's voice - or maybe it was
Yang.

"We'll bring you a cylinder of good old Martian air
as soon as the dust clears."

"Excellent. Thanks."

She turned to Emma. "Actually, I hate to wait."

"What have we got to burn?" Emma asked. "Maybe
packaging from the knarr?"

"Fire? Inside the nederzetting? Isn't that against
Colony Mars rules?"

"Against their guidance, sure, but I think we've got
a good reason. We can light small piles in the center of a bed.
Move the lights away if we need to. I'll talk to Daan when he
calls."

"While we wait..." Liz's worried expression cleared.
"I told you I got something special the other day. Come see."

Emma spotted stalks of tiny yellow flowers in a
lettuce bed - for seed that would guarantee their next crop - but
Liz led farther down the bay.

"Here it is." She led Emma to four irregularly spaced
sprouts, each with a half-dozen leaves.

"Liz, is that cannabis?" Emma said. She laughed.

"We say 'the purpose of humanity is to nurture
life.'" Liz laughed with her. "And this life will nurture us in
return."

"You're the farmer. But won't MEX object to stoned
settlers?"

"Not when they see the Earth Scan sphere blossom with
approval. We need to relax, to unwind, and improve everyone's
appetite. Besides, this is a mellow strain."

"Smoke's not good for the lungs."

"Yeah, no smoke. But the spring equinox - Mars New
Year's Eve - is a great time for a party. There's a traditional
spring drink, a milk tea of cannabis with spices. I'll make
that."

Squash vines in the next bed rustled.

"Where's the cat?" Liz looked around. "I like to keep
an eye on him."

"There he is." Emma dove into a squash vine.

The bay door opened as they searched. Daan stuck his
head in.

"Hey there. I've got your sensors." He hefted a
surface suit backpack on one shoulder.