Keystone (17 page)

“And?”

“You know that
Beagle mission routes are planned months, even years in advance. It’s entirely
possible that the route change you requested would only be executed in the
middle of next year.
Normally
, that
is.”

 
“Normally?”

“I have just
been in contact with the Beagle control room in England, who confirm that
Beagle is approaching the edge of Hellas Basin once more. I may be old and on
my last legs,” Larue confided. “But I am not stupid. As soon as the request to
change Beagle’s route came through I understood why you had recommended it.
Putting Beagle in sight of the Mars landing will give us a direct feed, as you
say. I had no idea about the time-delay you and Jacqueline Thomas discovered,
but with this we will be in a position to prove it conclusively.”

“And then?”

Larue thought
about this for a second. “Having information like that is a risky business.
There are two schools of thought: either keep it and use it to your advantage,
or give it away to as many people as possible and spread the benefit. With the
former, you gain the most but also run a greater personal risk. With the latter
you gain the least, but you also minimise risk.”

They sat in
silence for at least a minute. The pitter-patter of rain drops began against
the triple glazed windows.

“
Risk
,” Martín said echoing Larue’s
intonation “doesn’t sound good.”

“
Absolument
,” Larue said with a raised
eyebrow. “If someone’s gone to the trouble they have to hide the mission from
us, what will they be prepared to do to protect that secrecy?”

Captain Marchenko pressed down on
the accelerator with his boot, sending Herbie forwards at walking pace. As they
crept away Dr Richardson looked over her shoulder at the open crates they had
been cataloguing the contents of.

A little over
two thousand meters away, Beagle’s mechanical arms seemed to wave goodbye to
them as the on-board computer ran through some environmental tests and
procedures.
 
It was now standing in the
same position in which it had been over a year earlier. Its missions for the
last twelve months had been far from linear, and it had frequently crossed its
own path on its travels. Each and every time it did it automatically took the
opportunity to measure any changes. The Martian weather system had done little
to change the terrain, save for few extra coats of fine dust and grit. An
examination of the ground proved that, as expected, its past tracks had more or
less been erased from the surface of the planet, unlike the eternal footprints
of the first men on the Moon.

Beagle’s five
forward-mounted eyes, consisting of one long range high-resolution video camera
and four smaller still image cameras, watched Herbie as it left towards the
horizon. After thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds precisely, the two
passengers exited the vehicle, which was parked next to the MLP. Re-focusing,
the high-resolution camera adjusted its viewing angle by a fraction of a
degree, and captured the smile on the man’s face through his visor as he
gestured for the woman to enter the building first. Zooming out, the camera
reported back to the on-board computer that the building was exactly four
thousand four hundred and six metres away. It hadn’t been there when it had
last mapped the terrain, and it duly noted the location and nature of the
phenomenon.

Beagle
retracted its mechanical arms slowly,
folding them against its smooth sides, neatly above the four rows of wheels
that had already helped the rover travel over six hundred kilometres on the
Martian surface.

The computer
had processed and stored the departure of the two people and their vehicle on
its internal drives, and had completed its assessment of the surrounding
environment.

Its current
status and environmental report had already been transmitted to a satellite
orbiting Mars, ready for its receipt by the ESA controllers on Earth.

While it
waited for their response, Beagle busied itself with some more soil samples.
The thin coating of dust that had gathered around it was new and, therefore,
interesting.

Remind me again, why did we come
here?” Danny complained as he shook the dust from his boots and placed them
against the wall of the MLP. A thick layer of light-brown powder covered the
floor within several feet of the airlock. “Atchoo!” he pretended to sneeze and
shook his head dramatically, before making his way over to the kitchen area
where Jane had already joined Montreaux in preparing the evening meal.

“Because for
thousands of years, humans have looked up at the heavens and wondered what it
would be like to be on the other side, looking back at Earth, and because we
won’t be happy until we’ve looked back at Earth from as far away as is humanly
possible.” Jane said without looking up from the tray of hydrated food she had
just pulled out of the processor. “And because the food is so good, of course.”

Danny laughed
and peered into her tray. “Tell me, Jane: how long until you start providing us
with some
real
food?”

“Soon, Danny,”
she nodded towards her experiments across the MLP. “Everything is set up.”

“Thank God for
that. Is that really what you think?”

She looked at
him strangely. “Of course, my experiments and material are all ready, so –”

“No,” he
laughed as he interrupted her. “I mean, do you really think that we came here
to simply look back at Earth?”

She shrugged.
“Why else? Firstly, we are by nature curious creatures, peering into cupboards
we’re told we can’t open, wondering where rivers start and mountains end, when
and where we came from. But despite our desire to go into the unknown and
explore, we have an overpowering sense of
belonging
;
that we come from somewhere and that in a way we are a part of that place.
Secondly, as well as being incurably curious, we are constantly trying to
better ourselves, I think to improve on what our parents achieved, to
perpetuate the advancement of the human race.”

“So you don’t
believe that we came here to find life, or advance science?”

“Of course we
did. We have a scientific role to play, a mission that is well defined and
thought out, the result of decades of research and theorising by the best minds
on Earth. But I believe that is our secondary goal. The underlying reason we
came here is to gain a different perspective of our home.”

“I don’t agree
at all!” he exclaimed. “You make it all sound so futile and superficial.”

“Captain
Marchenko,” Montreaux interjected. “When you were a child, did you ever play
outside?”

“Of course,
everyone does.”

“And when you
ventured further away from your home than ever before on your own, did you look
behind you to see how far you had gone?”

Danny thought
for a moment. “Yes, I guess I did. But I wouldn’t say I was inherently
interested in what my home looked like from the top of a hill, I was probably
more nervous about knowing how to get back and wanted to make sure that I
didn’t go too far.”

“Yes, you are
right about that, and there’s an element of that when we look for Earth in the
Martian sky that comforts us when we find it twinkling above the horizon,” Jane
agreed. “But I am sure that the desire to look back at your house is not just
fuelled by concern, but by interest also. When you first visited the United
States, did you feel that you had an increased interest in anything to do with
Russia, sometimes even in things that you would not normally express an
interest in?”

“I found
myself reading stories about Russian politics, despite the fact that in Russia
I do everything to avoid them,” he said.

“I personally
find that when I am abroad, I am always listening out for any mention of
America. But in the absence of America-related subject matter, I casually introduce
trivia into conversations,” she admitted. “I don’t do it consciously, I just do
it. It usually starts with the sentence ‘
In
America…
’ and then I’m off. And do you know what I think?” She didn’t leave
time for an answer, although Danny seemed ready to give one. “I think it’s
because as humans we constantly act as advertisers for our homes, towns, counties,
nations, beliefs. You name it, we advertise it. When we go somewhere, we are
obsessed with knowing what people think of where we came from, or what we
represent. If we don’t receive that input, I’m sure that we are predisposed to
plant knowledge, spread the ‘good word’, so to speak, so that when the next
person like us arrives, their curiosity is more satisfied.”

He looked down
at his plate of unappetising food. “And do you not think we might do this to
simply make these foreign places more like home, so that they seem less alien
to us, eventually expanding the circle of what our unconscious mind defines as
home
until it includes the location in
which we currently find ourselves?”

Captain
Montreaux looked at the Russian and smiled. “Like the first settlers in
America. They built themselves a little Europe, changing the plants, animals
and even soil, until they no longer found themselves in the New World, but in a
carbon copy of the old one.”

“Which is why
Jane would like to plant a nice flag on Mars, isn’t it?”

“No!” she said
indignantly. “I want to put a flag on this planet to prove our achievement. And
I think that whilst there may be some truth in your argument when talking about
moving home permanently, the root of our desire to go anywhere is to witness
what our homes look like from outside our normal viewpoint. On the smallest
scale like a carpenter standing back and admiring his new table, or a builder
standing back and looking at the house he has finished, and on the largest
scale like a mission to Mars looking back at a reassuring light in an alien
sky.”

“You said
reassuring
. Does that mean you feel
insecure?” Danny smiled.

Captain
Montreaux shook his head and decided to concentrate on his meal.

Jane opened
her mouth, and Danny saw from the look in her eyes that it was time to get back
to his original point. “Anyway,” he started, noting the frustration on her
face. The word ‘
anyway
’ could at
times be the most annoying in the English language, and Danny always used it to
great effect. “I think that covers why we came to
Mars
, but why we came
here
precisely. To this exact geographical location on Mars” He gestured vaguely to
the outside world behind him. “Dust, rock and more dust, not forgetting the
rocks and dust.”

“Is there much
else on Mars?” Montreaux asked.

“We are here,
precisely
, because of the water, Danny,
because
Beagle 4
kindly confirmed the
presence of water for us, and because had we landed anywhere else in the hope
of finding water and had not actually found any, we would at present be the
first human beings likely to die on any planet other than Earth.” Dr Richardson
said.

“Which
wouldn’t have been very reassuring,” he joked. “I know we came here for the
water under our feet, not to mention the gigantic, geologically fascinating
impact crater a few kilometres away. I’m just annoyed by all of this dust.” He
rested his head on the back on his chair and closed his eyes.

Montreaux
turned to look at the Russian.

“You’re tired,
Captain Marchenko, have something to eat and get to sleep.”

Danny opened
his eyes and looked at him lazily. “I’m mostly tired of the dust. The dust is
everywhere! I wear a suit out there, but I feel I have dust and grit in my
hair! How can I have grit in my hair?”

“Because over
the past two weeks, we have managed to bring the outside world in, despite the
airlock.” Montreaux said. “I guess we have to be thankful that dust and grit is
all that we’ve brought with us.”

Jane scoffed.
“And the jury’s still out on that one.”

They fell into
silence at the thought.

If life existed
on Mars, it was most likely in bacterial form beneath the surface, which was
exactly where they had been extracting their water supply from. Every
precaution had been taken to prevent possible contamination, but they all knew
that even the smallest amount of the wrong kind of alien bacterium inside their
habitable compartment could spell disaster. The headlines were easy to imagine:
“
Life on Mars! Kills crew!”

So their
scientist took samples of the dust every day and screened them for any signs of
life, and was convinced that it was not a matter of
if
she found something alive rather than
when
.

During the
first few days, they had managed to keep the MLP absolutely spotless, using the
airlock to clean and decontaminate their suits as it had been designed to do.
But slowly, inexorably, as the days went on and the number of EVAs increased, a
fine Martian dust had begun to settle inside the craft, for obvious reasons
mostly around the airlock.

No matter how
many times they cleaned, the dust would continue to appear; Danny’s frustration
notwithstanding, they had more or less accepted it as part of their lives on
Mars, like sand in a beach house.
 

 
“Of course,” she broke the silence, “if we do
find anything harmful out there, or
in
here
, the chances are that our bodies would be so totally unprepared for it
that we wouldn’t stand a chance. And given that we cannot sensibly stop the
dust from entering the MLP, we may as well stop worrying about it.”

They both
looked at her, stunned.

“Great!” Danny
said throwing his arms in the air. “The only doctor on board thinks that we’re
going to die here no matter what! I may as well go out there without my suit
next time!”

She laughed,
tossing her food tray onto the table and sitting down on a stool. “I would
imagine that we’re all more likely to die of food poisoning anyway, at least
until my experiments bear fruit.” She nodded towards a table at the far end of
the MLP, covered in small trays with clear plastic lids.

Captain
Montreaux reiterated his desire for Captain Marchenko to get some rest, before
sitting down in his chair and opening his book. He was on his second
read-through of
The Martian Chronicles
,
and it was making a lot more sense to him this time round.

The Russian
made his way to his bunk and lay down, looking at the ceiling. “So we have to
hope for a combination of friendly Martian bacteria and your very successful
green-fingers, I see.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “We’re doomed.”

The next
morning, Dr Jane Richardson was alone in the MLP. Strangely, she had never felt
more at home than right now. Surrounded by experiments in the middle of the
most unexplored environment humans had ever set foot on, she was the first
scientist to touch Martian soil outside of a Petri dish, and despite the dangers
it presented, she was enjoying every minute of it.
 

As far as she
was concerned, if things stayed as they were and with enough water and food,
she could quite happily stay on Mars for the rest of her life.

She prised the
lid off a small plastic container and poured the liquid contents into a large,
shallow metallic tray. The transparent, clear substance settled evenly at the
bottom of the tray, a small bubble bursting on its surface. She tilted her head
to one side slightly, as if listening to it, before putting the lid back on the
small container from which it had been poured.

Nanoplasma had
been the crowning achievement of her work on Earth. The result of five years of
her own research and development, she was the first to admit that she stood
firmly on the shoulders of giants, and would not have been able to succeed
without the hard work of the pioneers of the ‘Nano-age’, as it had been dubbed
by the media back in the 2020s.

The nanoplasma
itself was comprised of two main elements: nanocapsules and organic plasma. The
minute capsules, each one less than twenty nanometres wide, contained either
flavours, colouring, or any other active ingredient that may be needed, and
could be opened by stimulating them with very specific subsonic frequencies. By
subjecting a capsule-filled solution with carefully controlled frequencies, it
was possible to recreate any number of flavours, whilst at the same time
filling the solution with vitamins and nutrients as desired. Nanocapsules had
been introduced over thirty years earlier to the mass market, and had
revolutionised the soft drink industry.
 

Almost
overnight it became possible to buy one drink with multiple flavours that could
be switched at will simply by depressing a button on the neck of the bottle.
Any capsules that were not required by the consumer would simply pass through
the digestive system intact, meaning that a wide variety of flavours could be
contained within the same bottle without affecting each other.

Jane had not
invented nanocapsules. That achievement had been slightly before her time.
Instead, she had successfully combined them with a plasma solution, made from a
fibrous breakdown of plant-matter, in an effort to replace what had been a
staple food of human beings for thousands of years: meat.
 
Her theory came from the simple fact that if
the digestive system of an animal could break down organic matter, for instance
grass, and turn what it needed into animal matter, then it must be possible to
recreate this process in the laboratory.

Her aim had
not been to just provide a substitute for meat; vegetarian products had been
doing that for decades. She wanted to literally create a single product that
could be transformed into any meat-based product. Indeed, to recreate the
texture, taste and nutritional properties of animal meat, with none of the
ethical or environmental ramifications.

She picked up
a small pen-shaped instrument and placed its pointed end in the metal tray of
nanoplasma.
 
Turning a small wheel on the
side of the pen, she selected ‘Rump Steak’ and pressed a red button. Within
seconds, the nanoplasma had visibly changed, becoming more viscous and opaque.
After about a minute, she pulled the pen out of the tray and looked at her
work.