On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (18 page)

Getting On, With Getting On

I needed time to think, after my close encounter of the first kind. So much had happened in such a short time; and I still had so many things to do. I had only been on Mars one full day and a bit. I didn’t need such a damnable distraction.

I finished responding to the messages I needed to, including one to my son, and one to Mary. I hit the Head, and then went to the lower level of the W-Hab. Entering the airlock, I unpacked my every-day Activity Suit and outer jumpsuit, inserted full air bottles in the harness, hooked up all the connections, and ran a full diagnostic. This all took only a half hour. I left my transit Activity Suit and outer jumpsuit hanging up in the corner, covering the secret weapons locker.

The Activity Suit had four main components to it. There was the mechanical suit itself that I wore over thermal underwear after taking off my indoor coveralls. This Activity Suit had been developed by MIT and was called “mechanical” because it used the mechanical strength of the fibres to hold my body intact in low vacuum. It could even function in the total vacuum of space if necessary. The suit had a hard seal with the helmet which was a bit bigger than you would expect because of the tech loaded into it. The gloves, boots, and helmet were all pressurized as the nature of those parts of the body would not be properly protected by the mechanical suit. The boots secured with pressure clasps, like ski boots. They were steel toed, and built to withstand anything, environmental or chemical.

There was a small life support system interface on the lower back of the Activity Suit. Over the Activity Suit I put on what was basically a one piece cover-all or jumpsuit. It was made of five layers of carbon nano-tube reinforced Kevlar. Even in low Martian gravity I could still feel the reassuring heft of the outer jumpsuit. The helmet and jumpsuit were jet black. Once suited, I slipped into the harness that held the two air bottles, emergency bottle, re-breather scrubber, suit heater, and systems regulators. Two small reinforced tubes from this system entered the outer cover-all through a small connection point in the right side of the suit, just above my hip, where it connected with the systems interface underneath the cover-all.

There was a COM unit that connected on four points on the air bottle harness, across my chest. It had the interface for the COM unit, an LED light pack, and at my insistence, a hardened, removable iPod that had been preloaded with my entire music collection. The outer-shell, the jumpsuit, I had been tempted to call the SOMP (suit of many pockets), because there were pockets all over it for everything. A set of emergency suit repair patches, signaling flares (although no one ever specified who I was going to signal with the flares, being that I was all alone on Mars), a signaling mirror, a hand sized emergency ratchet wrench, and a small suit repair toolkit were just a few of the many items. I had more than I would ever need.

After a low-g sprint up the staircase to pair the suit’s COM unit with the W-Hab’s COM system and to grab one item, I was back in the airlock and suited up in no time. With a bit more practice in the coming weeks, I would be able to be suited and sealed up, ready for outdoors, in under two minutes. The item I had grabbed upstairs was my K-Bar. I put it on the utility belt of the Activity Suit, around the right side and back by the air tanks. I had decided that I wanted it with me. Not that it would be any defence against guns, ray or otherwise; I just wanted it there to feel … capable of defending myself I guess. I also grabbed one of the pulse-energy weapons from its hidden compartment, along with both spare charge clips and then slung the weapon over my shoulder. Taking the weapon wasn’t a last-minute thought. I had been arguing the idea with myself in my head while I had been prepping the suit.

After shutting the airlock hatch behind me and descending the ladder with another Navy slide, I took a slow walk around both Habitats, to clear my head. I kept looking up at the sky. I kept looking over my shoulder. I had no idea where that thing had gone, but I refused to be controlled by the fear it generated. I had to set up the AtmoGen, and I needed to inspect the supply drops that were lined up just south of the Habitats. However, I looked over at the debris field from yesterday’s Lander explosion and decided to start there. The debris field was an eyesore. Cleaning it up would be a statement to whatever had been watching me, and to those back on Terra. So this was how I spent the rest of my first full day on Mars: picking up garbage. The weapon kept falling off my shoulder, and although it was a nuisance, it was a comforting nuisance. I was glad to have it with me.

I looked around for Big Dawg, and then remembered where he was. I walked to the rear of the Habitats, near the solar collector connection point for the W-Hab. I had left him sitting there in hand signal mode, with no hand signals to follow. I gave the hand signal recognition command and then the hand signal sequence for “follow me”. I headed back towards the debris field.

I used Big Dawg’s cargo deck as a poor Martian’s pickup truck. I used it to transport debris as I walked along. There were small posts around the cargo deck that could extend upward about 20 centimetres. These were for keeping larger objects from rolling off the flat surface, like pipes and poles. I extended these small posts, and lined the edges of the three 100 x 130 centimetre cargo deck with larger pieces of metal ejecta. It wasn’t a good ol’ hillbilly pickup, but it was indeed a good ol’ redneck mock-up for the job at hand. My redneck heritage finally became useful to me.

Most of the debris from inside the Lander, the lighter stuff that was blowing around, I walked around tossing it towards the center of the blast zone. You could get some good arc on thrown objects in low-g. A football game here would certainly be interesting; CFL of course. Bigger pieces went into the “pickup truck”. The wind was at about 20 km/hr, and picked up to about 25 km/hr by the time I was done. I did have to worry about tossing larger pieces of the soft debris, and having them become sails in the wind. All of what I considered the “soft” debris was the fabric bag transport units, small boxes, and lockers, etc. I managed to cram into the mangled remains of the airlock, and the Lander’s small toilet. I also got a fair amount of smaller pieces of metal in with them. These two pieces of the ship were still intact enough to act as garbage bins. The “hard” debris, the larger parts of the Lander itself, I dragged and carried back to the downwind side of the airlock wreckage. There wasn’t actually anything left big enough that I couldn’t move on my own, other than the Head and the Airlock. Downwind was south and west in this area, so despite my efforts, I would be looking at the debris for a long time as the Habitats were south and west of the about to be named, Cortés Crater. I’d also be picking up bits and pieces of memorabilia from yesterday’s events for years to come. The tiny pieces were spread far and wide; and I was only one person. I was only really worried about the bigger stuff anyways.

During these efforts, I would stop every few minutes, scan the horizon, turn three hundred and sixty degrees scanning slowly. I saw nothing. Every once in a while I would lean back and look straight up into the sky, still nothing. Early in the local evening time, I got a priority message from Hans on the HUD interface. I decoded it and played it back in-suit, something very handy that I could do, now that I had a paired COM unit. Hans was reminding me that the PDV was due to arrive tonight, in about six hours. This had been on the work manifest for the day, but Hans rightly guessed I had forgotten all about it. I didn’t actually have to “do” anything for the arrival of the PDV; but since they land so close to the Habitats, the protocol was that I had to be suited up during the final few minutes of the touchdown, just in case. This was the PDV my Lander had hitched a ride on top of while leaving Earth. If my Lander had been sabotaged, then perhaps the PDV had been sabotaged as well. Even though it had departed orbit slightly ahead of me, it was actually just a fraction slower. Due to its mass, it started braking before it was even in orbit. That was why it arrived after me, and not before me. As well, the PDV was using a direct atmospheric insertion approach. It would give a massive burn of its first of five RAD engines just as it reached Mars’ atmosphere, hence the need for its slightly slower initial entry velocity. It would then drop right into the atmosphere to begin the atmospheric braking, before it had a chance to pick up speed, as it would in a typical orbital insertion.

Carrie checked in with a message about her video research a couple times, nothing significant found. I think she was just worried. I recorded an “in suit” video for her, full of smiles and a bit more good natured than I was feeling at the moment. I knew it would set her mind at ease. Jayden sent a message that expressed his concern and his happiness that I was okay, and hadn’t injured myself when fainting. There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice, but I ignored it. Heavens only knew what he was dealing with right now. My son and some friends sent messages through the private channel they had access to. Every once in a while, I would take a wee rest break and troll some of the messages in the public channel. All mostly the same thing, how did I feel, was I scared, have I seen anything else, blah, blah, blah. Of course, there were a few requisite messages from the nut-bars and from some conspiracy theorists. I actually re-read the conspiracy theorists ones a couple times, and saved two of them for later perusal. The authors’ names had become familiar to me over the last few months as they kept emailing me like we were old friends, even though I had not once responded to them. Perhaps tonight I might take the time to compose a short response or two. You never know when those guys were going to come up with a gem of truth.

After a full day of work, only going back inside to change air bottles once but not stopping for food, I had all of the soft debris I could find tidying up; and most of the hard debris gathered up as well. There were a few pieces still too heavy for me, even in low-g. I’d have to get Big Dawg to help me drag those, but not today. The Lander airlock and toilet, my makeshift garbage bins, were full. I bent, banged, and twisted metal over the openings to keep the contents inside, despite the building Martian wind. The wind always ramped up slightly in the evenings, just like on Terra, according to our historical readings sent daily by Big Dawg. The only difference was that after dusk they died down on Terra. Not so much on Mars, not at this latitude anyways.

I gave Big Dawg the recognition command, and then the “follow me” command. The recognition command was simply holding your fingers out straight, and holding your thumb at ninety degrees to your fingers, then chopping your thumb closed and open once. The recognition command indicated to Big Dawg that an actionable hand signal was going to be given. The recognition command was good for ninety seconds, any number of hand signals could be given before the next recognition command had to be given. The “follow me” hand signal was simply holding your hand out flat, palm down, then flip your palm upwards, and beckon with your fingers twice. Travel commands were good for five minutes. If no other hand signal was received within the five minutes,
and
the IFF of the issuer was not within 100 metres, then the rover would stop. This was a safety so that it wouldn’t accidentally drive all the way around the planet … or off a cliff.

The only hand signal that did not need to be preceded by a recognition command was “stop”. However, if there was no recognition command given with it, only the person who had issued the last hand signal could issue the “stop” command. More accurately, only the person with the same IFF signal could give the “stop” command without the recognition command.

I dragged my tired ass back to the airlock ladder, then stopped Big Dawg. I gave it the “release hand signal”, the hand signal to put him back in normal operating mode. Big Dawg quickly turned away, and went about inspecting some items that had built up in its own work manifest. Since we were still in the land of the midnight sun and would be for another month or so, the rovers didn’t need to go dormant at night. When winter hit, that would be another story. When we reached total darkness for the day, mid-winter, they would have entered hibernation mode had I not been there. However, one of the supply drops contained an upgrade that would allow both Big Dawg and Little Dawg to recharge themselves directly from the Power Aggregator on the Wind Farm Energy Distribution System (EDS for short), after I got it set up. This would allow them to be operable through all but the worst of the winter storms I would face in the months ahead.

Back in the airlock, brushed off, de-suited, suit and floor vacuumed, everything was finally plugged in and charging. I decided to take a moment and set up the air bottle system properly. Until now, there were only four bottles hooked up, and they had been hooked up since the whole contraption left Terra. I pulled the transport straps off the other twenty bottles. The bottle rack had three columns of eight bottles. It was on the left side of the suit racks, left of the secret compartment, and below the deep shelves for the helmets and gloves. These bottles were stored nozzle outwards in the angled racks. I took each bottle out of its rack, flipped it over, and slid it back in. When they made contact at the back of the rack, I pushed and turned to the right ninety degrees. This hooked them up to the W-Hab’s atmo processing, and they would be automatically filled up. The bottles were full to begin with; this would just balance the pressure in them and top them up minutely. In future, all I would have to do with an empty bottle was return it to the rack and give it a twist, it would refill automagically.

Back upstairs, I had a protein shake and then checked the messages from Terra. Thankfully the ones from Mission Control didn’t make too much more fuss about the grey ball thingy and got on with business. I complied with some system maintenance reading requests, installed some updated software in the COM unit itself, and did some climate readings for the peeps that cared about these things.