Glory on Mars (20 page)

***

When Claude opened the module door Emma was watching
fish snap and splash as she dropped in mealworms.

"Close the door behind you," she said when he started
towards her. "We need to keep the heat in."

He shoved the door closed without looking back and
plugged his pad into the first outlet he saw.

"Look at this." He opened a weather satellite image
centered on the Tharsis Plain. There was a fuzzy blob of beige east
of Kamp.

"That's a funny looking storm," Emma said.

"Ah ha, because it's not a storm. The satellite
issued and canceled an alert so fast you probably didn't notice it.
This is something else."

"You look happy, so I guess it's a good thing?"

"Meteor strike."

Emma gasped despite Claude's satisfied grin.

"Oh, come on, it's no surprise. Thousands of tons of
micrometeors fall on Mars every jaar. Something as long as my
forearm hits every sol, just like on Earth."

"A cloud this size must be from something
bigger."

"A once in a century meteor." Claude waved his free
hand in excitement. "I bet it's gouged out a crater fifty meters
across. And deep. Deep enough to expose whatever's under all this
sand." His face radiated enthusiasm.

"I've got to go out there. MEX gave us standard
procedures for prospecting and the rovers are ready to roll. It's
time the Explorers Mission went exploring."

"You want to try your swarm-bot drill?" Emma
asked.

Claude beamed.

"Absolutely. Let's put it to a vote." He opened the
prospecting procedure on his pad.

"I'm sending the satellite images and drill procedure
to everyone. I'll need to run the startup sequence and find some
place to drill a test hole before leaving Kamp."

"How about the warehouse floor in Maintenance?" Emma
asked. "From there we can load the drill onto a rover."

"I'll ask MEX if they have any problem with that,"
Claude said.

"I'll be your driver." A tinge of excitement colored
her usual fatigue. The prospecting procedure called for a crew of
two. They'd need a rover to haul the drill to the crater, and they
could test an inflatable habitat, too.

Replies to Claude's request came in quickly.

"Claude's drilling doesn't interfere with my
construction," Yin said. "I vote yes."

"I'd like to see the rest of you have as much fun as
Yin and I do," Yang said. "So, yes."

"It's good to see you enthused, Claude," Liz said.
"Get out into the sunlight; do what you came here to do. 'Yes' from
me."

"That's a majority," Claude said, yanking out his
pad's plug.

A familiar tingle of excitement, missing for too
long, ran up Emma's spine.

***

At lunch, Claude talked through his plans.

"Why didn't we get a warning from MEX?" Ruby asked.
"Didn't they promise the Near Earth Object network would pick up
threats to Mars, too?"

"I've messaged with Filip about that," Claude said.
"The network scans for objects in the planetary ecliptic plane.
This meteor came from above the plane, nearly straight down onto
Mars. It's probably from outside the solar system." Claude smiled.
"It's a great piece of luck."

"It's a piece of irony," Sanni said.

Liz nodded.

"People want Kamp to be a backup plan for humanity,
in case an asteroid hits Earth. Instead we almost got nailed."

"So back to my proposal. So far, five of us said yes.
Do the rest of you see potential problems?"

"You'll be all alone out there, exposed on the
surface," Melina said. She bit her lip and looked around for
support. "I vote no."

"I go into space alone," Ruby said with a shrug. "I'd
be brassed off if you told me I couldn't take that risk. So it's
okay with me."

"If I'm going to climb Olympus some sol, someone
needs to get out on the surface," Daan said.

"And Claude won't be alone. He'll be with me." Emma
grinned. Prospecting was one justification for the walkabout suits
- they made equipment set-up easier. She tapped out a message to
her father, letting him know the walkabouts were about to get their
feet on Martian sand.

***

Setting up for Claude's drill test required shuffling
equipment around. Yang docked Rover Two at the south module while
Emma slid into a walkabout and crawled it out the north airlock,
listening carefully to the soft whir of motors and hum of the life
support pack.

She lowered the suit's tail and shifted her weight
from foot to foot, then made little hops.

She'd piloted a prototype suit across an arctic
island in Canada - a stand-in for the Martian surface. She'd run
this walkabout - this very unit that encased her now - on a
treadmill in a virtual reality room, suspended by a harness that
carried two thirds of its weight to simulate low gravity. But this
was real. This was Mars.

After months of confinement, the expanse of Tharsis
Plain was endless, the horizon a brown band between the dull orange
sky and terracotta dunes. Her heart pounded in her ears.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. It was
important to observe the suit's performance calmly.

She leaned forward to raise the tail and took a few
short hops.

To hell with calmly.

"Yee ha." Emma kicked off hard with both feet and the
walkabout soared, landed with its feet together, knees absorbing
the energy and feeding it back into the next hop. The plain rushed
by in a blur as she flew along the meandering base of overlapping
dunes, like a dry river flowing through barren fields.

The tail balanced automatically, the motors whirred
pleasantly.

"I know you're having fun, Emma, love." It was Yang,
or maybe Yin, on her suit's comm link. "But come back and close the
airlock door. You're letting dust seep in."

That jarred her.

I don't make mistakes like that, she thought.

She hopped up the side of a dune, slowed by sand
shifting underfoot, and circled back. The nederzetting was a
collection of humps and ridges blending into the dunes. She'd
traveled farther than she realized.

With the airlock secured, Emma hopped sedately to the
southern modules where the rover was docked and backed the suit
into position.

"Governor, reel me in."

The AI raised the suit's pack, cutting off air
circulation, and the helmet fogged with her first breath. It
deployed the rover's roof crane, grappled hold of the suit, and
lifted it against a walkabout access port. Emma slid out to find
Yin, Yang, and Claude waiting for her.

"The walkabout's functioning perfectly." She did a
bouncy jog through the nederzetting back to the north habitat to
move the second suit.

Rover Two met her at the north dock. Claude's drill
rig waited in the north airlock, so Emma crept through in the
second walkabout and loaded the drums on the rover's rear cargo
bed.

"I'm going to hop down to Maintenance," Emma said on
the rover channel. "You need the practice, Claude. Get into the
other suit and come with me."

They followed as the rover rolled to Maintenance. The
sand was smooth and packed, providing a perfect test route for the
walkabouts. Emma bounced from foot to foot, watching Claude's
cautious progress.

"This is great," she said. "How are you doing,
Claude?"

He grunted breathlessly.

"You're working too hard. Relax and ride the suit.
Look around, enjoy the view."

Claude only grunted again. He'd never spent more
Earthside training time than required in a walkabout and, Emma had
to admit, the suits moved differently in Mars gravity.

"Lean forward and kangaroo hop - both feet together.
It's easier."

Yin called ahead so the beetle-bots had the bay door
open. With the robot squad back at work along the trenches, the
center of the bay was clear. Emma and Claude rolled the drum inside
and plugged in a power cable. While Yin and Yang rode the rover
around to the usual airlock, they opened a view-port in the
waist-high drum.

The drill was a robot swarm, thousands of ant-like
microbots. The bots would burrow straight down through a fitting in
the drum's bottom, passing grains of sand from bot to bot and
sintering the walls of the finger-wide borehole as they went. If
they encountered rock, there were dozens of drill bits bracketed to
the drum's inside. They'd pass a bit down, anchor it to the
borehole wall, and twist it slowly into the stone until it dulled.
On the surface, a small power receiver would keep them energized,
and they could pass an electric charge down, bot to bot, by tapping
their butts together. Not very fast and not a very big hole, but
the lightweight rig was easily shipped to Mars.

"I worked with microbots in school," Emma said,
watching the bots began to move as they charged.

"There's a practical limit to how deep they can
drill, which is why the bottom of a new crater is perfect," Claude
said. "Natural channels cut into the surface are another promising
spot, or higher on the volcano, above the plain, where it's fairly
free of sand."

"I'm sure the lithology is interesting..." Emma had
never been especially interested in rocks. "But we need metals to
fabricate spare parts and build new equipment. To grow. Won't ores
be deep?"

Claude sighed.

"Perhaps. That's a chicken and egg problem. Our
construction bots aren't designed to dig very deep. We need metals
to build more machines, and we need more machines to dig deep ores.
But we may get lucky. On Earth there are ore bodies where copper
sits right on the surface. Gold rush miners picked nuggets out of
streams, and there should be iron and nickel meteorites. There're a
lot of possibilities. We just need enough to get started."

Once the drill was set in place on the bay floor,
Emma and Claude hopped out the rollup door, around to the rover to
dock the walkabouts, and hurried through to the Maintenance control
room. Yin and Yang were monitoring the construction bots.

"Okay to leave you two here?" Yin asked. "Yang wants
to take the rover out to a loader for a few hours."

"No problem," Emma said.

Claude focused intently on the drill's progress. His
malaise had disappeared. The excitement of hopping the suits across
the Martian surface was over, but Emma smiled every time she looked
at him.

She had never thought about rocks much, but rocks
justified migrating to Mars for Claude. He was enjoying himself for
the first time since they'd landed.

Emma moved to sit next to Claude and watch his pad.
Without looking up he pointed out the depth bar, the chart where
cutting samples would be logged, and the power consumption curves.
Crisp, clear, and engaging.

I bet he was a good teacher, she thought. I wonder if
he's still running that site for his old students.

***

The next morning, everyone crowded around to see them
off. Liz waved as the airlock closed and Emma waved back like she
was off for a holiday weekend.

Her stomach was tingling right up into her chest and
she couldn't wipe the grin off her face. She took several long,
slow breaths and heard Claude do the same.

"I'm activating the GPS beacon. Governor, are you
getting positive tracking from the satellites?" They were taking
the rover with telepresent controls. Yin and Yang would get
practice driving Rover One while they were gone.

"I'm tracking you, Emma."

Emma sat back in her seat.

"Aren't you going to keep your hands on the
controls?" Claude asked. "Governor hasn't been across the plain
before. It could drive this rover right into a crater."

"It uses the rover's forward imagers for guidance,
too. It'll stop if it needs me - the flexible human component."
Emma grinned.

"Engage route Claude-One."

The rover trundled away leaving ladder-like tracks in
the sand.

Chapter Twenty-Six:
Crater

The meteor strike had been a near-miss. They were
only going fifty kilometers northeast of Kamp to reach the crater,
a hair's breath compared to the size of Mars, but far enough to
move off the deep sand and reach the first volcanic outcroppings on
Peacock Mon's flank. It was far enough to confirm the satellite
system orbiting above could track them and accurately beam
microwaves to the rover's power receiver. Emma used GPS data to
plot a route as smooth and level as possible. The trip wasn't
intended to be thrilling, but she wriggled in her seat like a
kid.

Claude stared intently through the cabin windows.
He'd been inside the nederzetting his whole time on Mars aside from
the short hop to Maintenance when, he admitted, he'd stared at the
walkabout's feet. This was his first leisurely view of their new
world.

As the rover cleared the modules, his head jerked
towards Peacock Mons. The mountain rose in a gentle shadowed slope
towards a peak a couple hundred kilometers away, higher than any
mountain on Earth, ringed by cliffs like a delicate gold necklace.
For a brief time, the surface blushed pink until the Sun rose high
enough to color it burnt orange.

"I've spent way too much time living inside a
glorified culvert," Claude said after a few moments gazing at the
dead volcano.

"Governor, are you listening?"

"Yes, Claude."

"Post this to all settlers - Let's ask MEX to design
an observation bay for the nederzetting - something we can build
with current resources, with windows so we can see Peacock
Mons."

"Governor, log my 'yes' vote," Emma said. "Colony
Mars picked an especially dull landscape for Kamp. We'll have to
develop appreciation for rippled dunes and that hump of a
mountain."

"The satellites provide excellent images of Peacock
Mons, Emma."