Glory on Mars (12 page)

"But I feel dull all over. The meds, I guess. I can't
even work up a good sense of outrage over eating with a cat on the
table." He stroked the cat with his good hand.

"He'll get used to gravity soon." Sanni nestled the
warm pack against his side and the cat began to purr.

"I didn't have to hold him up when he used the litter
box this sol."

The door opened and Ruby hopped in. She announced
that Jumper One was back online.

"Did you fix it, or did MEX?" Daan asked. Ruby shook
her head.

"I was sitting in the pilot's seat and the displays
activated. I ran a pre-flight diagnostic and everything's
operational. It just came on."

"Are you spending a lot of time in the jumpship?" Liz
asked. "It doesn't have as much radiation shielding as the
nederzetting's modules and bays."

Ruby waved a hand impatiently.

"My medichip juices up my immune system, doesn't
it?"

Liz began to point out that Colony Mars doctors
assumed they'd spend most of their time under heavy shielding, but
Ruby interrupted.

"MEX is trying to use diagnostics to figure out what
went wrong," she said. "They've got the beetle-bots out there
imaging Luis's smashed jumpship; like that'll tell them anything.
I'm working forward, starting with the last time we used the ships
- I'll run a real-time simulation of each system upgrade we
received. It can't be a coincidence that both ships shut down at
the same time. I'm gonna find out what killed Luis."

Emma hung her head for a moment. And James, she
thought. Of twelve settlers sent to Mars, three were dead.

"Come have some supper," Melina said. She set a bowl
of buckyballs on the table and scooped some onto Emma's plate.

Emma hooked one with a fork and popped it in her
mouth. It didn't taste like much, but did feel springy in her
mouth.

She though of a favorite cafe in Noordwijk. She'd sit
in the sea breeze sipping coffee heavily cut with warm cream,
nibbling on a cookie or little buckwheat cakes dusted with sugar.
Dammit.

Ruby looked over Melina's shoulder at the food
printer and frowned.

"It takes forever to print those goofy shapes of
yours. The first batch will be cold before you're done."

"So print something else if you don't like them."
Melina said it with a sigh.

Ruby backed off with her hands raised.

"Just saying is all. Is there any hot water?"

***

It took MEX four sols to decide there wasn't enough
information to develop a new procedure to retrieve cargo from the
damaged knarr module.

"We'll have to wing it," Yang said. Yin and Yang were
experienced with surface work, so they'd take the lead outside.

"The S-3 knarr is different from previous missions,"
Emma searched for a diagram on her pad. "There's a large door
opposite the standard airlock. It's designed to drive the rovers
through. If we could get that open, we'd have good access."

"We'll have the beetle-bots cut the airlock away
first," Yin said. "And drag it to the maintenance bay."

"There's no way we'll let an airlock go to waste,"
Yang said.

"The construction squad's loader-bot has a wide
bucket attachment. It can roll the module and hold it steady."

"Then the beetle-bots can cut your garage door out of
the knarr hull."

"We'll start in the morning." They nodded to each
other. "And we'll want more open space in here."

Yin and Yang unbolted the flexion machine from the
habitat floor.

"We're going to need room for boxes more than for
exercise equipment," Yang said when Liz protested.

"Besides, no one uses it. We're never going back to
Earth, so we don't need Earth-strong bones and muscles."

Emma followed them as they dragged the machine to the
Plaza, but stopped, shivering, at the end of the Spine.

While Yin and Yang trooped back to the habitat, Emma
lagged behind in the Spine's wide aisle. She wanted to test her
Martian muscles. Walking felt normal enough, as normal as anything
could after months in space. She could move faster with a bouncy
step - not as impressive as the videos she'd watched of people on
the Moon, but Mars' gravity was more than double the Moon's.

Still, that was thirty-eight percent of Earth's. Emma
thought she'd feel more like she could fly. Moonwalkers ran with
long, slow-motion strides. Emma tried, but the hang-time between
footfalls was just long enough, and just short enough, to confuse
her brain. She felt like she'd missed a step going downstairs and
bumped into a water tank.

I haven't had enough time to adjust since we landed,
she thought. Maybe it will make sense outside on the surface, where
I'll have more room to maneuver.

***

Yin and Yang made slow progress. At first, the
beetle-bots could reach inside and lift items out. Then Yin and
Yang suited up and took turns stepping inside the tilted module,
dragging out boxes for the bots to carry to the north airlock.

"Can you tell yet if the macronutrient cylinders are
intact?" Sanni asked at the end of one sol. "Working in the cold
and dark is bad enough. I don't look forward to starving."

"I hope we can avoid that," Liz said with a worried
look. The cylinders in the habitat were almost empty.

"I'd love something that isn't extruded through that
food printer. Something fresh. Can we eat a few of the fish?"

Liz shook her head. "Those are the breeders. We can't
risk eating any of them until the next generation is safely
hatched. We'll have mealworms and potatoes before fish."

"You've got the cases of seeds," Melina said. "Why
haven't you planted anything yet?"

"I need to dig the organic sludge into the sand or
nothing will grow. Maybe you can look for the tools in the
knarr?"

The macronutrient cylinders had to be removed first,
dozens of them - twenty per settler, each taller than Emma and too
wide to get her hands around - occupying over half of the knarr's
lower level. They'd be awkward to move, even in Mars' low gravity.
Not only did each one contain textured nutrients, but the cylinders
themselves were heavy-walled to withstand pressurization into the
food printer.

But when Yin and Yang reached the cylinders, they
didn't bring any inside.

"Why not?" Melina asked.

"They're all in rough shape," Yin said. "It's pretty
obvious they won't connect to the printer."

"Valves broken off, dented and split," Yang said.

"They're safe enough, frozen, outside, but I don't
know how we're going to print meals."

"I'm glad Colony Mars didn't pack it all as powder,"
Liz said. "They weren't expecting a crash, but if it's frozen it
can't blow away."

"It'll be freeze-dried soon enough," Yang said.

Melina looked strickened.

"Remember the backup plan," Emma said. "The
beetle-bots can cut a cylinder into sections - the nutrients are
frozen solid. Bring in a section at a time so it won't spoil. We
can't print fancy shapes, but we can scoop out a meal. Just be
careful of metal chips from the cutters."

"Better than starving," Sanni said with a grim
smile.

"I'm sick of this stuff," Melina said. "Why did
Colony Mars plan gardens of sand? Hydroponics would grow more,
faster, in the same space - wouldn't they?"

"But we'd need more pumps and filters, more tubes and
fittings, and more spare parts for everything. We'd be chasing our
tails trying to keep up with the cargo requirements on each
mission," Emma said.

"We're here for the long haul," Liz said. "The
gardens may take longer to establish, but by the time the cylinders
are empty, we'll be producing enough fresh food to live on."

"I really hate the nutrient stuff."

"You're forgetting something." Yin said. "There are
holiday supplies still to unpack."

"We're halfway across the knarr. We should find them
soon," Yang said, brightening.

"And find something worth eating."

The next sol they brought in boxes of clothes,
blankets, filters, gasket sheets for making seals - and the holiday
boxes.

"Hurray, shrimp cocktail for supper." Ruby held up a
handful of freeze-dried bags.

"Berries." Sanni happily tipped out another box of
vacuum-sealed packets.

That night was an impromptu party with no printed
pseudo-pastas of any shape.

It was a little scary to think of freeze-dried shrimp
being so important to anyone, Emma thought. How long would it be
before she felt the same way?

Chapter Sixteen:
Construction

Emma watched as much of the unloading operation as
she could through the docking airlock's tiny window. Yin and Yang
worked smoothly with the bots, like a well-practiced team.

"You're great roboticists." Emma said one evening as
she lifted boxes onto the flatbed. She was recovering from the long
journey in zero-g and at times felt normal.

"We've been running the bots for a couple jaars, now,
love. We're hand-in-glove with them," Yang said.

The robotic construction squad had landed two jaars
before any settlers left Earth. The bots built the maintenance bay
on their own as the final proof of construction techniques on Mars,
which included baking water out of the regolith. That supplied
water for the nederzetting and, through the fabricator's
electrolysis units, hydrogen and oxygen to fuel the jumpship - not
an especially high specific thrust fuel, but one the settlers could
manufacture from the deep dunes of Tharsis Plain.

Once Yin and Yang arrived on the Pioneer mission,
construction accelerated. Emma read all their reports. They jumped
on primary and secondary faults, cleaned and lubricated joints, and
watched for heat buildup in the motors or degradation in range of
motion. The construction squad's productivity had sky-rocketed.

"Quick response is the key," Yang said when Emma
asked him about their strategy.

"We're out with the squad every sol," Yin said.

"That's more exposure than you should be getting,"
Liz said. "Radiation level out there is eighty times Earth's
average. Our medical projections are based on an hour a sol on
average."

"Yes, we do miss Earth's magnetic field."

"And atmosphere - and not just for breathing."

"I'm just talking about routine cosmic and solar
radiation," Liz said. "If there were a high energy event - that
would be different."

"We try to reduce exposure - we spend a lot of the
time in the Maintenance Bay, where we're close to the bots but
shielded."

"That's not exactly how they briefed us in training,"
Emma said. "The bots are supposed to be autonomous."

"The squad is smart alright, but we're smarter." Yang
grinned.

"Supervised autonomy is the key to productivity.
Another trick is using the jumpers to move stones."

Liz scrunched her eyebrows together.

"I can ask Governor to calculate your doses, but I
bet you're exceeding. Your risk of cancer will go sky-high."

"Not to worry, love."

"When the hospital equipment arrives, you'll be able
to treat cancers, no problem."

"No one dies of
cancer
anymore."

"We didn't come to Mars for our health," Emma said,
giving Liz a pat on the arm. "I've got to get out there with you
guys. I'm recovered - I'm ready to go outside."

"That's good because we're gonna need you."

"Once the lower knarr level's been emptied, you have
to help us figure out how to unload your rovers."

"We'll start in two or three sols, tops."

"In the meantime, here's that box of garden tools Liz
was on about."

Liz started the gardening immediately and Emma joined
in. It was hard work driving a spading fork into the regolith sand
and Emma was happy to have Daan's help digging the organic sludge
into the sand. He was spending afternoons in the greenhouse.

"These stiff shoes were annoying in space," Emma
said, pushing the fork into the sand with her foot "Now I'm glad
the soles are so thick." She stopped to wipe her face and let a
spell of dizziness pass.

"This zero-g funk hits me every now and then."

"Partly, it's the thin air getting to you," Daan
said. "Manufacturing air turns out to be a slow process. We're
having trouble harvesting nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere. The
freezer unit doesn't separate CO2 as well as expected, so we have
to rerun batches. A third of this is argon." Daan waved a hand
through the air. "Which is fine, of course. We just need more of
it."

Emma took a deep breath.

"The nederzetting is like a high mountain top now,"
Daan said. "I climbed mountains on Earth, so I know about
acclimating." He stopped to lean on his fork.

"Climbing mountains? Sounds like nice work if you can
get it."

"I used to write travelogues for a living, so I'd
arrange to be at the base of a mountain whenever I had enough money
for an expedition. I've climbed in the Himalayas, Alps, the High
Atlas..."

Something in Daan's voice changed and he stared
intently down at his spading fork.

"My sister died on Mount Rainier. An avalanche. There
was a crack and a snap, and a wall of ice roared down."

"That's horrible." Emma looked at Daan but he kept
his eyes down.

"It changed my life. That's when I realized, I was
taking a lot of risks to do things others had already done,
probably better than me. If I'm going to risk my life, I want to
see the Sun rise over a new horizon, in a completely new sky." He
jammed the spading fork into the sand.

"Mars sure qualifies."

"We've got to get the nederzetting established first.
But I hope, someday, to see the Sun set from the top of Olympus
Mons. The tallest mountain in the solar system - think what that
will feel like."