A Colony on Mars (6 page)

“There is one more but it really isn't a sport, it's low stakes poker, which is a very popular pass time. We started out playing no limit games but things got out of hand because everyone here has so much money. Some people were getting hurt badly at no limit poker so we set a five dol ar limit on any bet. It is enforced on the honor system but I have heard that higher stakes games stil go on. If caught playing in a game that allows higher stakes you could be facing a $5,000.00 fine. If anyone was actually fined the money would go into the recreation fund.”

“Now if you wil please fol ow me and I wil take you on a brief tour of the facility,” said Walter. The Government facility was quite large, about 320 acres, or about the size of six tournament golf courses on Earth. There were several hundred cement buildings, of various bright colors, some bore signs declaring their purpose, others just numbers, “Look at that Carla they even have street addresses.” “Watch out!” Carla yelled and yanked Tim aside, as a man in his thirties skipped by.” “That is what I have been interested in seeing and trying as soon as we got here,” Tim said, “We learned about it in class and I can't wait to find my own gate.” As they looked at the people moving about in the clearing they noticed that no one walked as people did on Earth. They each seemed to have developed their own way of moving along. Some skipped, some hopped like a rabbit. The kangaroo gate seemed to be popular but they were all moving about as fast as an athlete could run on Earth. “I meant to tell you folks about getting around down here, it is different than on Earth there are things you can do here that you can't do there and visa versa. Here it is easy to jump up but you must be careful not to injure yourself when you come down. My advise is to just cautiously experiment with moving around until you find out just what your capabilities are and what works for you. If you jump down off of something you don't land as hard as you would on Earth but it is easy to fal into the trap of thinking you can jump down from three times the height that you could on Earth and you can but we do get a lot of serious sprains and broken bones that way. Here you can jump high enough to be pretty certain that you are going to injure yourself on your landing. The human body was designed to move around safely in one g of gravity. Here things are different, all things considered I think I like this atmosphere and gravity better but it takes some getting used to. For the first month you are liable to accumulate quite a few black and blue marks from bumping objects too hard. Watch how other people, who have been here a while are moving and then try some of the maneuvers you see them performing. Whatever you do don't hit anyone else and don't try any Martial Arts moves on anyone else. Serious injury is inevitable if you do. Just be vary cautious while you acclimate and you will do just fine.”

“Over here we have our gym, I am told that you were introduced to the gym routine while you were on the ship. I just can't over emphasize the importance of your daily workout, taking the vitamins you are issued daily and getting your shot monthly for as long you remain in low gravity. The gym that we have here is the same as the gym you were working out in while you were on the ship. Our classes start every hour on the hour from 0600 through 1800. You wil have to sign in. If you miss a day of taking your vitamin supplements or doing your exercises then it wil be necessary for you to seek medical attention.”

One member of the group asked “I was told that you had a cavern for The Company employees all sealed and pressurized, could you show us our new home?” “Sure just follow me and try to keep up, I'l go slow so as not to run away from you.”

They came to a tunnel entrance on the right side of the Government cavern. The tunnel was approximately fifteen feet high and twenty feet wide. They followed it for about fifty yards into a three times the size of the government cavern. “I want you folks to know that everyone at this station has been working their buns off getting this place ready for you. We even leveled your floor which I didn't think we could get done but we did. The Government handles the administration of this facility and the research but Mars Colony, Inc. is the prime contractor. The Company is responsible for facilities management. If there is any plumbing or wiring or building to be done you are the ones who wil carry out the tasks. You will be responsible for facility development and maintenance. The Government takes care of the atmosphere, I am sure you have already been briefed on your responsibilities and project objectives. The Company plans to send as many new employees as possible for the next three years. I am sorry that we were unable to do more for you but we did all we could. The Company had only one crew here until your ship docked. I think Thelma has some plans drawn up for what will go where in this cavern but they are not written in stone and certainly subject to your input.”

The lighting in the empty cavern was very dim but you could make out all of the walls. The nice thing Tim Noticed was that there was a small river or stream, that ranged from fifteen to twenty feet wide, that meandered through the cavern dividing the front two thirds of the cavern from the back third. There was even a water fall where the stream entered. It flowed into a small lake that covered about ten acres. The river ran out of the far side of the lake for about ninety feet before disappearing through the far wal .

Carla commented, “I am sure glad the ceilings on these caverns are so high it keeps me from feeling claustrophobic. That is something I was worried about.” Walter overheard Carla's remark and responded,“ The average ceiling height in these two caverns is 254 feet. The highest point is 412 feet and the lowest 196 feet,” just for your information.”

Tim noticed that the water coming down the fal s was liquid but along the edges of the stream there was a two Inch thick crust of ice and there was a layer of ice about one Inch thick on the surface of the lake that covered about five feet out, around the bank. “Why is there ice in the lake and river but not on the fal s and the river above the falls,” Tim asked Walter. “I asked that very question of one of the geologists, Tim and he told me that the water above the fal s is only 31 degrees but because it is in an unpressurized atmosphere it remains a liquid, once in enters this pressurized cavern it starts to solidify. If we don't do something to warm this water, at least a little we wil end up with an ice skating rink instead of a stream and a lake in a few weeks. decreasing the pressure raises the freezing point of water. That is why the water in the unpressurized river was below 32 degrees but was not frozen when it entered the cavern but began to freeze once it was exposed to this pressurized environment. “That is interesting, I thought water always froze at 32 degrees.”

Note that we have installed a concrete plug at the river entrance and another at the river exit. You can see that water flows beneath the plug, that is so our precious atmosphere does not escape.”

“By the way how deep is the stream but more importantly how deep is the lake?” “The stream is pretty shallow, only six foot at it's deepest point but this lake is twenty foot at it's deepest point. The engineers tell me that it would be easy to make the lake larger or smaller depending on our needs.

“That is a beautiful little stream but the water is very cold. I'm afraid we won't be able to go swimming until we have geothermal heat installed. We hope to, one day, be able to raise catfish in the lake as a food source. The water is just a little brackish but very usable once you filter it through a reverse osmosis system. Do not however drink it or bathe in it until it is filtered. We have done so with no il effects but it is taking a chance, we don't know where it has been. “We do know that it contains unknown strains of bacteria and algae. What we have tested is harmless but new strains of bacteria keep appearing. There are Martian fish that occasionally seen swimming through. Some of the fish are edible but they are like mushrooms, some are harmless and some are lethal. One of your early projects wil be to install a fish trap below the fal s to catch any fish that enter the cavern. New varieties of fish keep showing up also, so it is best that you do not touch any of them, and certainly don't eat any of them until we know more about them. Once we can positively identify the edible ones we could begin raising them as a food source, the ones we have dissected are pretty bony and don't appear to have much meat on them. It might be better to bring fish in from Earth and try raising them but first we have to prepare the ponds for them. Probably the next ship to arrive wil carry some fresh water fish, some salt water fish and fish food. I sure hope so, our diet here is a little monotonous. Fish and Chips would sure be a welcome improvement.”

“For the moment you new arrivals wil be issued some basic necessities and invited to put your air mattresses anywhere you can find room. We are going to offer meals at our mess hall doubling the hours for all three meals. Your kitchen staff wil work with the present staff. Until your field kitchen is set up we won't have enough cooking capacity to offer more than one hot dish per meal, so get ready to eat some cold cuts for a couple days.”

Their hosts then lead them back through the tunnel to the Government cavern where Thelma pointed out the supply building. She instructed them to return to this building later in the day for their necessities. Each of them would be issued an air mattress and a blanket. Hopeful y tomorrow we will have the rest of your equipment available but some of it you may have to wait a week to get as it wil take that long to unload all of the freight from Mars Supply Two, which we frequently refer to as MS2. They were then given a phone book containing over six hundred names fol owed by six digit numbers. Carla noticed that all of the numbers started with 000. “What are these phone books for?”

asked one of the newcomers. “That is the Mars phone book my friend, it contains the phone number of everyone living on the planet. On the front page you will notice a special listing of important service numbers, we even have 911 service for emergencies.” “That's all well and good one newcomer responded but we don't have phones.” “You will have as soon as your ship is unloaded which could take, as I said before, anywhere from a day to a week and another couple days to get them activated and programmed.”

Walter interrupted,“Now I have some other very interesting things to show you.” He lead them to the other side of town where he pointed out a building bearing a sign that read MARS-TV. Yes we have our own live TV news twice a day, there is occasionally other live programing, the rest of the time they show recorded video . They operate five channels during prime time but at least one channel 24 hours a day. Al of that is complements of the five major Networks. In addition to the Government and Mars Colony, Inc. the networks have a dozen employees here in the colony.

At the moment you are standing in Colony City, the capital city of the Mars colony. And we are standing at the corner of Front Street and Colonial Parkway. The other three streets are Main Street, Broadway and Industrial. I am now leading you down to the equipment storage and supply lot at the end of Industrial.”

“Here you will find all of the tools and equipment that you will be using. On the other side of the lot is where we store all of our material's. A lot of our equipment is old and due for replacement. Thanks to Jake, our motor pool genius, most things are usually in working order. There is supposed to be a lot of new equipment arriving on the Mars Supply Two that you arrived on. Even more is expected when Mars Supply One comes in about four months from now.”

“You folks just make yourselves at home and look around at anything that interests you. The only restricted area is the observatory, to go there you must be accompanied by an authorized employee. If you would like to visit the observatory just flag down someone wearing a blue and white ID card pinned to their jumpsuits. You are welcome to explore anywhere else in the city but it would stil be impolite to enter someone's home unless you were invited in.”

As promised lunch was mostly cold cuts and a bowl of soup. There was a large bowl of pickled mushrooms on the chow line as wel . “Where do the mushrooms come from” Archie ask one of the cooks. “Mushrooms are the only food that we currently produce here on Mars. We have a walled off room at the back of this cavern that receives little light. We had some steer manure and straw brought up from Earth a while back and the mushrooms thrive in it. You wil eat a lot of mushrooms while you are here.

Some of the scientists are raising a test vegetable garden under grow lights but so far without much success, It takes so much electricity to power the grow lights that it is cheaper to bring canned vegetables in from Earth. It would help more than you could imagine if we had plenty of electricity. The kitchen staff could recognize the members of our kitchen staff by their white work clothes. Our kitchen workers were collared immediately and put to work. There were about eight of ours already on the planet the rest were stil on the ship, or en route to the planet in one of the Shuttles. There are three Shuttles but Shuttle three is already moving cargo from the ship to the elevator pad which crossed through a double air lock to ground level where men with electric fork lifts were removing pallets and placing them in a preprepared area of the supply yard. As the fork lift drivers placed the pallets in the holding area they spaced them out so workers could see and get at the contents of each pallet. Tim found the foreman and was put to work unpacking crates. “Lumber here is a precious commodity so we are very careful in dismantling the wooden packing crates and the pallets. Everyone wants wood to construct furniture and construction crews have an insatiable appetite for wood for all sorts of things. We even straighten the nails and save the screws and binding strips for future projects, so take your time and stack the material that they contain so that people seeking that particular item can easily locate it. Sort the lumber and nails and screws and put them into inventory in those racks and bins over there.”

Tim had only unpacked a few things when he noticed it was almost dinner time. He went to the mess hall where they once again had soup and sandwiches. While he was eating, an ordinary house fly lit on the half sandwich lying on his plate. Casually and without giving it a thought he shooed the fly away, then it occurred to him, This is Mars, what are flies doing on Mars. He asked Carla Later and she said “Oh, yeah, we see them all the time in the kitchen, kinda reminds you of home doesn't it?”