by Jim Melanson
The mechanics of walking was simple. Lower one of the legs on each corner to raise their respective assembly to an individual height that would keep the L-Hab relatively level. Then move each legs paired leg, so that it was 10 centimetres higher than the first leg. Next, activate all four ground-contact leg swivels, through a simple series of pneumatic pistons so that the L-Hab would appear to be falling forward on those legs. They moved slowly but faster than you would expect as stopping in mid “fall” could severely damage the walker mechanism. As the L-Hab “fell” forward, it came to rest on the legs that were a few centimetres shorter. Next, retract the legs that had just walked, extend the resting legs to the proper height, reset the tilted legs to upright orientation, and set their height to 10 centimetres above the now supporting legs. Then the process repeated. After the legs were lowered in initial position and had taken the weight of the L-Hab, I sent the command to raise the landing struts. Then I began the not-as-slow-as-you-would-think process of walking the big Habitat structure a short distance across the surface of Mars.
We kept going on like this for several minutes. At some point it was going so fast and flawlessly I started humming a tune and thought to myself, “Yep, we’re really ‘Walkin’ the Casbah’ now.” Gotta love those German engineers.
Each walk cycle took about three minutes to complete and moved the L-Hab about 8 centimetres. I could have taken bigger steps, but I preferred, after the day I had already had, to play it slow and safe. In between each walk cycle, the procedure was to examine the footing in “front” of the legs to make sure there was nothing that would appear to make the next step unstable. The legs had 10 centimetre square solid titanium shoes to distribute the weight and not sink too far into the regolith. The “walking” procedure made each step in the walking process about five minutes long, including the actual walk cycle. It took a little over an hour to move the L-Hab the five feet that brought it within five feet of the W-Hab. The pneumatics were, by nature, sealed systems, but I had expected to hear some sound. Mind you, the little sound it did create, was hard enough to hear within the thin Martian atmo to begin with. Compound that with the insulating properties of the Activity Suit, and it was like watching a TV show with the sound turned all the way down. I didn’t even feel any ground tremor at my feet. I turned on the external microphone on my helmet and then I could hear it. It wasn’t very loud at all in the thin Martian atmo. It took almost fifteen full minutes to lower the train wheels, lift the walker legs and orient the axis to align it with the W-Hab. Then it took just over another thirty minutes to walk the L-Hab relatively “sideways” to put it in final alignment. That final movement was very fiddly and precise, so each step took longer.
Achael HofPin
Her name was pronounced with soft sounds. The “h” in her name was very soft; more like a gust of breath, a breathy “uh” sound. The “ch” was soft as well, throaty, like in the word Chanukah or the German word, Achtung. Ah-ch-hail. The capital “P” in her last name had a soft “sh” sound in front of it. HofPin (Uh-off-shpin), was a hereditary Eben family name. It meant “daughter of Hof”. If she had been a boy, her family name would have been HofPen (son of Hof). It has often been noted that listening to the Eben speak in their native tongue is like listening to people whispering in another room
She leaned back in her chair, short legs and long arms stretching. She rapidly blinked her very large, by human standards, oddly shaped eyes. Eyelids fluttering, she yawned and then rubbed her neck as she sat upright again. The bangs of her jet black, soft yet thick, straight collar length hair fell into her eyes. She jutted her bottom lip outwards and blew upwards a few times to move it out of the way. She had more success in tickling her human shaped nose, than moving the hair, so she used her hand to brush the bangs aside and scrunched up her face to stop a sneeze from happening.
She was watching the monitor with the co-opted Mar-Sat video playing (“pirated signal” was such a nasty phrase for this situation). She suddenly furrowed her brow and looked closer. “Oh, wow. That’s cool.”
Her sister, Hlef HofPin turned from her workstation and said, “what you got there sweetie pie?” (Same breathy “uh” sound, Uh-oo-Lef. The extra vowel sound, because the “H” was the first letter, and was followed by a consonant. Eben pronunciation rules are very complex … and meaningful. Calling her Oo-Lef would get you a punch in the face.)
“Watch this. He’s making that structure move with the leg supports, like it’s walking”, she paused then said again, “That’s so cool.”
“TransMat would be easier,“ Hlef commented as she squinted at the screen. It really was kind of cool, she thought as well. She just didn’t understand why her sister was so interested in this human idiot who, of all the stupidity in the Verse, came to Mars alone. “I still think he’s an idiot,” she said as she turned back to her own work, never one to mince words. “You don’t really think they’re going to let him live do you?” Achael knew she meant the Eridani, she certainly didn’t mean her own people.
The term sister was complicated. They weren’t actually born to Hof. His sperm, which is almost identical to human sperm, was used to fertilize human ova, which produced quintuplets, in a test tube. After millennia of cloning, it was only relatively recently that the Eben had begun playing around with (and quite successfully I should note) hybridization of Eben with other species. Technically it was just cross breeding, but hybridization sounded more sexy. The human eggs they fertilized in this, the fifth iteration of the experiments, resulted in Achael, her fraternal twin Hlef, and three brothers. They were then grown in laboratory conditions. Soon after the initial conception, they were transferred to purpose-centric, Eben-designed, gestation tanks. They were officially born on Earth date August 31st, 1979. The five of them had recently turned 39 Terran years old, but were still considered adolescents by the True Blood Eben. All five that had been born that day had been raised as a family unit, and knew each other as family. Since the sperm was from the same Eben male and the ova were all donated willingly by the same Terran woman, the five were in fact all brothers and sisters by any biological definition. The only difference between normal births (human or Eben) was that they didn’t share a womb.
The birthday party thrown for them last year had been nice. A few of the humans from Earth had imported the decorations, and they took care of the music and booze. The Base Commander, a human dominant hybrid like Achael and Hlef, had insisted on bringing out his karaoke machine, despite everyone’s assurance he really didn’t need to go through that effort. However, he was the Base Commander and he insisted it was absolutely no bother at all, no matter how much they protested.
Their three brothers, who were also turning thirty-nine that day, had gone to great length to prepare authentic spicy food, from what they all thought of as their “authentic” homeworld. While the two sisters were both human dominant hybrids, two of the brothers were Eben dominant. It had long been known by the humans that were aware of them, no one could party like a Human-Eben hybrid. They drank like fish and owned the dance floor, especially Hlef.
“He’s got balls,” Achael muttered. “And he survived the attack on the ship he arrived in.” She thought for a few moments watching the third walk cycle start, “I wouldn’t count him out just yet”.
Yeah, right. Hlef kept the thought to herself for a change. Achael could be real sensitive when it came to pets and simpletons. One well-placed pulse sabot, and this lunatic’s living space would be a charnel house. She shook her head and wondered why the Eridani commander hadn’t finished him off yet. For that matter, why hadn’t he finished off the other ship that had also just landed?
Meanwhile, Back At The Hab …
Once in the proper place, with the proper orientation and axial alignment, I lowered all eight legs and levelled the L-Hab. The final step was a few small adjustments to make the floor of the L-Hab exactly the same height as the floor in the W-Hab. Once this was done, I lowered the landing struts again and locked them
in place. They would give lots of lateral stability, especially when the winter winds hit the Chasma.
I walked around to the actual rear of the L-Hab to re-adjust the solar collectors, but I saw that Little Dawg was already on the job. Two of the five collector strips had been adjusted and he was on his way to the third one. “I love you Mission Control,” I muttered.
I turned around and continued what I was doing. I had seen Big Dawg sitting back from the action, near the solar collector for the W-Hab. He was pointing straight at me. Its head, made up of the mast camera and atmo-sensor, was going up and down just like it was nodding, and its manipulator arm hanging slack in front of it. I guess Mission Control was sending their approval. As I had not yet got the full W-Hab COM system up and running, I could not receive messages on my HUD. I guessed one of the Mission Control techs had put Big Dawg in a position to get some video of the walking process. I wondered for a moment if it was Carrie. I shook my head after a moment, “no sense thinking about the impossible.”
Carrie and I had grown quite close for a time; and it was the first time I had grown close to someone since Loreena. I think part of my mind knew it could never turn into anything, not with me going to Mars, and that made it okay. It was dishonest of me; and it was unfair to Carrie. I ended things as nicely as possible. Carrie had her own misgivings anyways. She was growing close and so were her boys, totally irresponsible of the both of us. She was glad when we had “the talk”, and I think, relieved that I had been the one to bring it up. I stayed friends with her boys, and I stayed friends with Carrie as well. We never stopped caring, but it could be nothing more. It wasn’t Mars that would have eventually kept us apart. Love could never be fully in my grasp until I let go of the past that I didn’t really want to let go of it.
All totalled, moving the L-Hab was about three hours work, probably the easiest thing I’d have to do in the coming months. I smiled to myself at the thought that I had just moved a seven tonne Habitat using just a small remote control hanging around my neck. It was about this time the thought struck me that here I was, on Mars, living in a mobile home much like I had many years before on Earth. The laughter came in waves. It lasted a couple minutes before I could continue. I made a mental note to check the CO2 filter on my Activity suit. The big job left after moving the L-Hab into position was re-attaching the skirting; but I was tired, and I was gravity fatigued. I was hungry too. I decided to re-attach the nacelle skirting in the morning. Right now I needed food and oh, yeah, sleep!
I disconnected the USB connection for the walker controller, closed and re-bolted the covering panel on its housing. The last step in the process that I was going to complete before some sleep was the easiest part of the whole thing. I uncoiled the umbilical cables and hoses, all wrapped in armoured sheathing, that I had tossed out from the airlock. I opened the access panels on W-Hab and L-Hab, making sure I had the colours right (blue connected on W-Hab, and yellow connector on L-Hab - matching the interior colours of the connection boxes); I then attached the umbilical cables and hoses that would feed power, water, and breathable atmo from the W-Hab to the L-Hab. There were also a few fiber optic connections that tied the two structured computer systems together and allowed direct access to the COM equipment and array from the L-Hab.
The three COM array dishes were on the roof of the W-Hab, as well as the UHF and VHF arrays, and the two, four axial-mode, Helical Hi-Gain antenna arrays. One hi-gain was pointed towards Mar-Sat, one was a dedicated and undocumented link for the Jalopy-Sat. It was possible to communicate with Jalopy-Sat directly from a suit COM unit if you had a line of sight, after the suit COM unit had been authenticated. The day-to-day Activity Suit had miniature helical hi-gains built into the top of the helmet. So long as there was no obstruction, this miniature antenna could provide a clear communication channel with the Jalopy-Sat. I hoped I never had to utilize the full capabilities of the Jalopy-Sat, just like I hoped I never had to use the pulse-energy weapons I had stored in the airlock secret compartment. The image of a bloodied face popped into my mind.
I had found the guy in the car-park beating his already bloodied girlfriend. Normally a pacifist, I interceded, aggressively. He was in the hospital for two weeks. I eventually beat the criminal charges based on the woman’s testimony and some fancy footwork by the Corporation’s legal team. Thankfully the victim had stepped up when it was necessary, they usually don’t. I abhorred violence. I was a very peaceful person. In all my years with the Police Service I never drew my weapon once. I didn’t want to break his nose, eye socket, cheekbone, and left arm; but he kept coming at me. It turned out he was on crystal meth at the time, so he didn’t feel the beating until much later. I knew I would step up and do what was needed to defend others. I knew I was capable of doing it. I just didn’t like it very much. I stood looking towards the ice-wall in the distance, through the ultraclear Martian atmosphere. I couldn’t foresee today that those hopes of non-aggression on Mars would not be realized. They would not be realized sooner than I would ever have contemplated.
I picked up the walk controller, put the universal wrench back in the tool bag, took one last look around, and then headed back to the airlock. Climbing the ladder, I just had to hit the dimly lit green button and confirm low-pressure interior. I reached up higher and moved the locking arm clockwise (which had been closed by servo mechanism when I exited earlier, testing the auto-close system), and then climbed in through the hatch.
While the airlock was re-pressurizing, I put the tool bag and controller away. I had the binding from the umbilical cables bundled up under my arm and looked around but there was no trash receptacle in the airlock. Damn. I stuffed the strapping refuse in one of the under-counter cabinets and promised myself I’d do something with it, sometime before Colony-1 arrived. “Why do today what you can put-off until tomorrow,” I chuckled to myself. Procrastination was so not in my nature … not since being selected by the Corporation. I was just too frakin’ tired to care at the moment. I got out of my suit, plugged the environment pack into the maintenance port so it could recharge the batteries, and then I swapped out the nitrogen bottles (I had to, sorry) so fresh ones would be ready to go. Finally, I set the suit computer to perform a full diagnostic. Tomorrow I would unpack and charge up the primary Activity Suit and fill its air bottles. The one I had been wearing was the flight model, with the pressure system for g-forces. My primary Activity Suit did not have the pressure system, so it would be a bit more comfortable and easy to move around in.
I looked at the amount of dust on the exterior jumpsuit I had just removed. I could feel some sand on the deck under my feet. I walked over to the vacuum system and pulled the plastic wrapping off. I picked up the hose and turned it on. It worked like a charm. I spent a few minutes vacuuming Mars dust off my Activity Suit, something I would need to do almost every time through the airlock. I also vacuumed up all the red dust and sand that was on the floor.
Leaving the airlock, I slowly climbed the spiral staircase to the upper deck. Climbing the stairs was almost effortless in low-g unless you’re as tired as I was. Today had been my first gravity of any kind in months, and my energy was draining fast: I needed rest. When I got to the upper deck, I grabbed some more water to drink, and another couple of meal replacement bars from the dwindling stash in my duffel bag. I was preparing, in my head, what my video report was going to say as I slowly chewed the first bar when I glanced over at the Habitat Environment Control (HEC). I did a double take. The W-Hab batteries were at 86%, but the rate of charge read zero. That meant the battery charging system was getting no juice. I went to the rear portal to look out at the array.
There it was, all laid out. The solar collector strips making up the array started about forty feet from the Hab units, and stretched almost one hundred feet; anchored every ten feet with metal pegs installed by Little Dawg. I had checked the power lead connection on both Habitats while taking a wee break during the L-Hab walk. I knew there were some mini-binoculars packed away somew
here in the room, but didn’t have the urge to go looking for them. I’d have to go out and do a visual inspection. Big Dawg was sitting there by the power harness, still nodding its head unit up and down.
“Fraking moron.”
There were messages waiting for me from Terra, but I decided to get back to them after I investigated this situation. I was getting a bit bleary-eyed at this point in the fatigue, but if I didn’t take care of this right now, I could be in a real spot of trouble. I recorded a quick report for Mission Control regarding the L-Hab walk and the power situation. I reported that I was not going to activate the feeds to the L-Hab until I had investigated and hopefully corrected the power issue.
I sent the message and finished the second meal replacement bar as I thought about all the things I needed to do. Reinstall the L-Hab nacelle skirting; connect the two Habitats’ Breezeway; install the steps and landing outside the W-Hab; unpack and install at least four of the wind collectors; set up and activate the AtmoGen connections; inventory the smaller items of the supply drops; unpack food supplies; unpack and install the computers in the W-Hab; boot up the Habitat servers; unpack the kitchen and living areas in the L-Hab; unpack my clothes; have a wash-up; and make my bed … the list was almost endless. I downed the last of the water in the tumbler and headed to the airlock to suit up again. I was tired as heck. I had been going non-stop for fourteen hours on a day I should have been taking it very easy to get reacquainted with my old friend, gravity. The only rest I’d had was when I was unconscious in the airlock wreckage. I was super tired, I was so tired I wanted to cry. I felt nauseous, my arms and legs were aching, not to mention my back. I just wanted to fall down, and fall asleep.