by Jerry
FELDSPAR
Philip A. Kramer
The soft Martian regolith shifted beneath the rover’s wheels. The automated systems detected the motion and ceased all forward progression. The rover compiled a diagnostic and sent the packet of data through its antennae to a satellite above the red planet, which relayed it to a distant blue dot.
Eight minutes later, within a studio apartment in San Francisco, a computer console beeped in warning. Blake caught sight of the flashing red light out of the corner of his eye, and his stomach sank. He sprang up from the futon and navigated through the piles of dirty laundry and pizza boxes to the opposite wall.
He sat down in his black ergonomic chair and considered the eighty-five inch screen in front of him. The status window in the lower left quadrant contained a new update.
His eyes flicked to the rover’s camera feed in the upper half of the display. He let out a long breath upon seeing the desolate surface of Mars. The rover was still upright.
He rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks in thought as he skimmed through the attached diagnostic.
Feldspar, his rover, sat at the edge of a shallow depression. It wasn’t anything as natural as a crater, but a hole dug by one of a hundred identical rovers that roamed the surface of Mars. A kilometer distant, across the plane of Chryse Planitia, sat the squat shape of the MRS, the Martian Regolith Smelter, affectionately known as the Missus. The Missus didn’t allow any digging within a kilometer radius, so it was inevitable that the laziest of rover operators would travel just beyond the boundary to collect dirt. Here and there, larger holes were visible. Someone had even seen fit to print a flimsy-looking bridge across one such trench.
Project Regolith began four years ago when the MRS and its complement of one hundred rovers descended on a plume of exhaust to the Martian surface. At that moment, Mars became host to the largest sandbox game in human history.
TerraForm Games accomplished what the space industry could not by appealing to the most dedicated workforce on Earth: gamers. Gamers like Blake were willing to spend thousands of dollars on consoles and pay exorbitant monthly fees to perform tasks that others might have considered work. It may have been pocket change to some, but for Blake it had taken his entire savings to purchase the operating rights to one of the rovers.
He cracked his knuckles, and his fingers flickered across the armrest’s integrated touchpad. The sequence selector appeared on the monitor, and he scrolled through the list.
Due to the current position of Earth and Mars in their respective orbits, it took eight minutes for a transmission to reach Mars, and eight more minutes to return. The rover’s automated systems could detect, predict, and solve problems in real time, allowing the rover to operate on even the vaguest of commands from its operator.
Sixteen minutes and a slice of pizza later, Feldspar initiated the pre-programmed sequence. All six wheels spun at top speed, and with a plume of fine dust, the rover climbed free of the depression and was on the move again.
The MRS grew steadily in his field of view. It was a cylindrical structure constructed from pieces of the very booster that had brought them to the red planet.
Feldspar maneuvered up to one of the three vacant docks on either side of the structure.
Blake filtered some cloudy water from the tap in the kitchen and poured himself a glass as he watched Feldspar perform its transaction with the MRS.
When prompted, Feldspar soundlessly dumped a compartment full of rust-red dirt through a fine mesh screen and provided the coordinates of its collection. The MRS, equipped with an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, reported the content of iron oxide within the regolith a moment later.
The transaction was not over. The rover opened a second compartment, and a dust as black and fluid as ink poured out: pure, elemental carbon. It was a resource he quite literally pulled from thin air. Each rover’s AIR, Atmospheric Ionization and Recovery, module housed an ultraviolet laser within a chamber that pressurized the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. The laser reduced carbon dioxide into elemental carbon and oxygen gas. The carbon was an essential reducing agent in the smelting of iron, and the oxygen, if he chose to believe the propaganda, could eventually terraform the planet.
When the battery was fully charged, the MRS would heat the high-strength ceramic lining each of its chambers to 1300 degrees Celsius. After discarding the slag, the MRS would cast and form the metal into a spool of wire and exchange it for more regolith and carbon. The iron wire was the currency of Mars. With it, a rover could 3D print any structure its operator could conceive.
A few centimeters of wire jutted out of a port on the MRS. Feldspar’s manipulator arm, complete with pincers, latched onto it and guided the wire to a similar port in the rover’s side. After the wire was completely spooled within Feldspar, the rover backed away and waited for Blake’s command.
Blake directed Feldspar to the mountain of slag that had accumulated near the back of the smelter. The heap glittered in the sunlight. The slag consisted of many minerals, silicates and other components of Martian soil, which the MRS discarded after the smelting process. Most gamers considered it useless, but he always made a point to grab a few kilograms every time he visited the smelter.
The MRS didn’t allow any rover’s arms to descend lower than wheel level within the area in an effort to minimize digging in the kilometer radius, but the pile of slag stood much higher. The pincers at the end of Feldspar’s manipulator arm turned 90 degrees to expose a much flatter, shovel-like edge, and the small rover began to fill the regolith compartment with the flaky slag.
It took some time to fill the compartment, during which Blake scanned the various feeds he’d followed over the years. There was one missing from the list: NASA’s live feed of the Eos mission.
They’d probably found another vaguely bacteria-shaped formation and were preparing a press release, Blake thought as he rolled his eyes.
Six months ago, Blake had positioned his rover to watch the fireball entering the atmosphere as the Eos crew arrived. Watching the live feed had been surreal as humanity made its first footprint in the Martian dirt. The fascination soon wore off as they made their base and engaged in months of monotonous tests and maintenance. Part of his loss of interest was due to their repetition of things he had been experiencing for years. Yes, it was pretty during sunset, and yes, the regolith was annoyingly fine and clingy. He had been there long before they had.
Blake programmed Feldspar to return home once it completed its collection. At top speed, the rover could barely reach five and a half kilometers an hour. It was about fifty times faster than the first Martian rovers, but still barely walking speed. It would take just over five hours to cover the 28 kilometer distance. The route was anything but direct. The downside of a planet covered in soft regolith was the tracks the rover left by his passing. In order to keep his home hidden from other rovers with vandalism or theft in mind, he spent much of his free time backtracking and taking circuitous and misleading routes.
His secrecy and protectiveness left little room for friends on Mars, though he could say the same about Earth. He was pretty sure this made him the loneliest guy on two planets.
It was just after two in the morning in San Francisco, but it was only midday on Mars. His day was just getting started.
He shrank the rover feed to a small corner of his display and pulled up his design software. He was currently designing a parapet for a castle. Other rover operators were some of the biggest buyers of his designs, all eager to spend months printing structures that would serve no practical purpose on a lifeless planet. He was not so shortsighted.
Blake fully intended to live on Mars one day.
Hours later, the rover’s camera feed drew his eyes. Usually Feldspar was able to detect and navigate around any obstacle in its path, but it appeared as though the rover was headed straight for a series of rocks. When Blake maximized the fee
d, he saw that they weren’t rocks at all, but depressions in the soil. They were staggered, but spaced linearly.
It took a moment to realize what they were, and when he did, he froze.
Footprints.
He ordered the rover to stop, but the command didn’t register in the feed until sixteen minutes later, long after Feldspar had left the tracks behind. Blake, used to the delay, had already keyed in commands to backtrack for eight minutes and take a panorama.
During the transmission time, he’d begun to doubt what he’d seen. The Eos Base Camp was over 150 kilometers away in the mouth of Valles Marineris, a place of ancient glacial activity where astronauts had access to sub-surface water. Why would they come to the edge of their exploration zone? Chryse Planitia, where Project Regolith operated, was comparably barren and flat. There was also no logical reason to travel by foot. The vehicles they had at their disposal were many times Feldspar’s size and could easily outpace him.
Just as he convinced himself the footprints were instead a natural formation, the rover’s panorama arrived. Zooming in on the image, he saw the pristine impression of a boot. They were, without a doubt, footprints. It was impossible to say how long they’d been there.
Blake smiled and saved the panorama. It was not perfectly composed, but still breathtaking. He could probably sell it for a substantial sum.
He needed to move. The astronaut could return to his rover at any moment with samples, or whatever it was he had come all this way to collect.
Blake bit his lip in a moment’s consideration and then began to tap away at his touchpad. He programmed Feldspar to follow the tracks and take high-resolution panoramas every dozen meters. If a picture of some footprints was worth something, a picture of a member of the Mars expedition team doing field research would earn him a small fortune. With any luck, the astronaut would be just as surprised to see him and pose for a shot or two.
His hopes high, Blake sat glued to his chair and stared at the display. He hadn’t felt this much excitement in years.
As the tracks began to disappear beneath the rover, he wondered how far the astronaut had walked. He couldn’t see them or his vehicle in the panorama, despite the area being relatively flat.
Another detail drew his attention. The impression of the left foot was consistently shallower than the right, and was smeared in many cases, as if the astronaut had drawn his foot along the ground.
His grin faded and a chill prickled along his skin.
Was the astronaut injured?
This terrifying notion became all the more plausible when he recalled the NASA feed. Of course they would take the feed offline if one of the Eos crew was injured, he thought. The five other crewmembers were probably staging a rescue mission in a backup rover at that very moment.
He continued forward, unable to ignore such a crisis, yet petrified by the prospect of interfering with NASA in any way. Historically, TerraForm Games and NASA were on friendly terms. Much of the data the rovers collected had convinced NASA of the area’s suitability. But if one of Project Regolith’s rovers complicated an already life-threatening situation, Blake would incur the full wrath of everyone involved. The alternative was to let an astronaut go unaided in his time of need.
It soon became apparent that the astronaut was not as far away as he had feared. Feldspar climbed a very shallow incline and saw the tracks end at a large boulder in the distance. At second glance, it was no rock, but the astronaut sitting flat on the ground and facing away from him.
Blake’s stood from his chair and approached the display. Leaning close, he could see why he had mistaken the astronaut for a boulder. The red dirt clung to every surface of what had once been a pristine white spacesuit. The bulbous helmet was sagging forward, as if the astronaut had fallen asleep while sitting upright. A large pack, probably full of radio and life-support equipment, was lying on the ground next to them, a long crack running down its center. The sight did nothing to reassure him, and he bit his lip as Feldspar drew nearer.
When the rover detected the obstacle in its path, it slowed and began to circle. The wide-angle camera quickly brought the side and then front of the astronaut into view.
The astronaut was leaning forward and wrapping his calf with a roll of white tape. He had no way of hearing Feldspar’s approach. The astronaut’s helmet jerked up as the rover rolled to a stop, and he went rigid.
Blake could only guess at his expression. A gold, reflective surface covered the glass face of the helmet, blocking out all light.
The astronaut appeared to stare for a long moment and then looked around.
Feldspar’s camera turned in a slow circle, and momentarily, the astronaut disappeared from view.
A diagnostic, status update, and high-resolution panorama loaded on his screen within a few seconds of each other.
The picture was something to behold: a member of the Eos crew, sitting alone and injured on the barren surface of Mars. It would appear on every news site in the world. It would make him rich.
His gut twisted into knots, and nauseated, Blake sat down and minimized the panorama. He opened his communication window, and a hiss of static issued from the speakers on either side of the display. Occasionally, the voices of distant rover operators would crackle into life and then fade. It was pointless; NASA would be using its own private channel.
Communication was going to be difficult.
His design software was still open in the background. He discarded his previous project and started another. His fingers danced across the touchpad. He typed in the text, converted it to a series of paths and vertices, and selected the plane of the sand nearest the rover. He disabled the print function and then sent the command.
The astronaut did not sit idle during the sixteen minutes it took for the signal to reach Mars and return. He finished wrapping his lower leg with tape and awkwardly came to his feet, testing his weight. He appeared to ignore the rover, perhaps disconcerted by its blank and prolonged stare.
The smaller, more fragile printing arm unfolded from the rover’s side and began to write in the sand. As soon as the arm began to move, the astronaut’s head swiveled to look. He took two hobbling steps forward to observe.
Frequency?
The astronaut considered the word for several moments then waved a hand as if to gesticulate some point. He was talking to someone on the radio, Blake realized.
Eventually, he knelt awkwardly to the ground a few yards in front of the camera, in an area of regolith that was undisturbed, and drew his finger through the dirt.
Here they were, two entities meeting on a distant world, drawing in the dirt in an effort to communicate. Had the circumstances not been so dire, he would have paused to appreciate it. Instead, he leaned forward and squinted at the display. He recognized the first number as the frequency, 403MHz. In much tighter spacing was a series of 32 numbers. It was a 32-bit encryption key, he realized. He guessed anything larger was pointless. Radio privacy was implied when on a barren rock currently 144 million kilometers from the rest of humanity.
He opened the channel and placed his finger over the transmit button. He paused. What would he say?
He tested his seldom-used voice in the quiet of his apartment and then pressed the button.
“This is the Project Regolith rover, designation Feldspar. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Shortly after opening the channel, voices began to emerge from the radio.
“Kate, be advised. NASA has informed me that giving a civilian access to a proprietary frequency is a federal crime.”
The astronaut shrugged, and then a woman’s voice sounded over the radio.
“Well, Ryan. Given the circumstances, I decided to take a risk. You can tell NASA to lock me up next time they see me.”
Blake’s eyes widened. The astronaut standing before him was Kate Winship, the Eos team’s geologist, and one of two women on the six-member crew.
“You really think it’ll help?” Ryan asked.
“These things are driving 3D printers, right?”
“It can’t exactly replace the rover you broke.”
Kate sighed.
“No, but I’d settle for a crutch.”
“That’s assuming he has the material. These things spend all day collecting dirt for a little over a kilogram of metal wire. I had a friend who used to play. It’s monotonous work.”
“It won’t hurt to ask. He’ll probably tune in soon, right? What’s the time delay? Eight minutes?”
His transmission, as premature as it was, was already speeding through space toward them. That didn’t mean he had to wait for her to ask politely.
His frayed nerves made his fingers shake as he pulled up Kate’s profile on the NASA website. She was a few years older than he and a good deal more attractive than the last woman he’d ever worked up the courage to speak to, with flashing blue eyes, high cheek bones, and short-cropped, blonde hair. Perhaps it was for the best that he couldn’t see her face, or else he’d become a blabbering idiot.
The website listed her as 175 centimeters tall. He did a quick estimation and guessed a crutch length of about 130 centimeters should do. He sketched out a cylinder about 1cm in width. He knew the tensile strength of iron well, and that width would be more than suitable to support the weight of her and her suit in Martian gravity. It would even leave him with some wire to spare. He also attached a flat base to the cylinder to prevent it from sinking too far into the dirt. On the opposite end, he added an oblong piece to support her under the arm. He then set a small rod into the main shaft to serve as a handgrip.
He reviewed the design twice and then sent it.
A moment later, his voice crackled over the radio.
Kate, who’d sat down again to return the tape to her pack and reconnect some hoses, looked up.
“Feldspar, is it? I’m glad we crossed paths.” She paused. “Ryan, he can hear me, right?”
“That’s affirmative.”
“Well, Feldspar. I find myself in a bit of a situation,” she said. She lifted her left foot a few centimeters off the ground and waggled it in emphasis. “I think I sprained something when I crashed. I’m not used to sharing the land with you rovers, so didn’t think to keep an eye out for potholes. It turns out my rover is capable of some unique things too, like somersaults.”