“Everything’s good,” Sharon said as she stepped out of the airlock behind Guillermo and noticed Lance’s expression.
“Lance?” Ellen asked. “Please excuse this surprise. I brought Guillermo along on purpose because he would like to apologize face to face for what he did to you.”
Lance relaxed. Either Guillermo had really lost control at their last encounter, or Ellen had her people solidly under her command.
The man removed his helmet and stepped toward him. “I would like to apologize,” he said. “I was a real asshole out there. I didn’t even realize it, which was the worst part. I always thought I had some kind of moral compass, but over the past few weeks, it seems to have become quite skewed. I was only thinking about ourselves and our mission, something that Ewa had sold us on hard recently. But that’s not really an excuse. I’m glad that Sarah was able to put me out of commission. Where is she?”
“Thank you,” Lance said, taking Guillermo’s proffered hand. He still wasn’t completely won over, but the apology seemed sincere. “Sarah should be coming through the airlock right behind you.”
Guillermo turned toward Sarah. He waited until she had taken off her helmet. “I’d like to thank you for your literal kick in the pants out there,” he said. “I really deserved it. In a way, you saved my life. I don’t know how I could’ve kept living if I had actually harmed you.”
“Gladly done!” Sarah replied. “If you ever need a kick like that again, you know where to find me. How’s Shashwat doing?”
“It was a clean in-and-out shot. The wound is healing nicely, but the drive down here would’ve been too much for him.”
“Could you all make a little more room? Ketut will have to stay in the airlock if you don’t,” Mike pointed out. He moved closer to Ellen to help unfasten the sections of her suit. “That’ll help us maximize the space.”
Lance noticed that Mike could hardly take his eyes off the young woman. Poor Sharon’s chances were shot to hell now. Ellen was about Mike’s age, and Lance had heard that she had even more Ph.D.’s than Mike did.
“Please move aside!”
Lance didn’t recognize this voice, which meant it had to be Ketut who was still stuck in the airlock. Lance now realized why. The MfE member was carrying a stack of five-sided somethings. The material couldn’t be all that heavy, though, since it was taller than Ketut’s head.
“This is our hospitality gift to you,” Ellen said. “These are the remnants from the large dome we’d planned to build over our settlement. Please set the pile on the floor, Ketut.”
Ketut knelt down, which wasn’t all that easy in his suit, and placed the honeycomb-shaped stack on the floor. It swayed slightly. Ellen reached for one of the thin, transparent panels at the top.
“This is Kevlar fabric, under one millimeter thick. We intended to build our dome out of these, but unfortunately, this was the only stack we could save from the Santa Maria. The rest of the panels are flying around the sun in our shipwreck. However, this material should be enough to construct a smaller dome. Or you can cover a garden with it.”
“Thank you very much,” Mike said as their official spokesperson. “I have a great idea for what we can do with these. But now it’s time for you all to freshen up, and then we can eat.”
Sol 88, NASA base
The project was slowly taking shape. First, the robotic drill had dug a circular hole into the ground, as Lance stood nearby and supervised. The walls were already hardened. The hole measured 1.2 meters in diameter and was four meters deep. A ladder would provide access for a person to climb up into the new section.
They were now in the process of digging a passageway from the base to the lower edge of the hole. Lance had spent the entire previous day shoveling, but the others were taking their turns today. He could hear the sound of their axes and spades underneath him. Unfortunately, the robot was unable to drill around corners, nor could it fit through the base’s airlock. This was why they were having to dig the corridor by hand. At least they were being energetically assisted by the three MfE guests.
Lance’s task today was to tend to the robot. It was busy digging a round trench around the hole. The channel was about a meter deep. The lower end of the dome would be anchored, sealed, and stabilized in this trench. They were making good progress. Occasionally, the robot sucked up an especially hard stone and needed Lance to dislodge it with a crowbar, a mechanical version of the Heimlich maneuver. These occurrences were far enough apart to leave him with ample time to study the landscape.
After they’d landed, Lance had thought the scenery was monotonous. He had been mistaken, he now acknowledged. The landscape had simply needed some time to reveal its intricacies. Or was it perhaps the humans who took longer to value Mars’s simplicity, because of their acquired tastes and customs? For example, the hill to the north—Lance enjoyed watching it through a telescope as it changed with each passing day. In the mornings, it sometimes glittered because water or carbon dioxide ice crystals had settled on its surface the night before. A week ago, he had even spotted a trail leading down from the ridge of the hill to the bottom. Sharon guessed that a piece of carbon dioxide ice had slid all the way down before literally evaporating—technically, sublimating—into thin air once the sun rose.
Lance had to chuckle as his mind wandered. Sarah had recently started acting a little strangely. She lost her temper more easily, or burst out crying at the slightest thing, but thirty minutes later, there was nothing left of the odd mood.
The robotic drill beeped, having finished its task. Lance checked the trench. He used his spade to shovel out rocks from two different spots where they must have fallen once the wall had been dug. Tomorrow the robot would start digging a new garden plot. Sarah wanted to try out a few new techniques. They had come to the conclusion that their current methods were still consuming too much energy. If they hoped to someday be able to meet all their food needs through their own cultivation, they wouldn’t be able to continue using their present techniques.
After this, they wanted to start in on the deep drilling project. But they would have to convert the robotic drill in order to do that, so they needed to first wrap up their current projects.
“Heads up, Lance,” Mike radioed in.
“What’s going on?”
“According to my data, we’re about to break through.”
“Alright. I’ll set the cover in place and watch.”
Lance walked over to the deep hole at the center of the round trench. He pulled out his flashlight and shone it inside. Everything looked the same as it had before. He took a couple of steps to the side to where a transparent panel that was larger than the hole was sitting. He picked it up and covered the opening in the ground with it. He sprayed its edges with repair foam. That should suffice as a temporary isolation method. As a security measure, he set two heavy stones on top of the panel to make sure that the air pressure wouldn’t lift it even a little.
“Alright, you’re on!” he called.
His friends down below were probably now hammering like crazy on the stone in front of them. He then saw a rock from the wall tumble onto the floor of the hole. The beam of his flashlight fell onto shining metal behind the rock’s former location. The connection to the base was almost complete!
Sol 92, NASA base
The seven of them were standing around a small table and toasting each other with champagne, except for Sarah, who had opted for water. The panorama was marvelous. The Mars surface was underneath them, but when they lifted their heads, they could gaze into the grayish-brown sky. The sun had almost reached its zenith. They were wearing neither spacesuits nor breathing masks since the tent of transparent Kevlar panels guaranteed them a breathable atmosphere.
Lance took a sip. Ellen was talking, but he wasn’t listening. Too much had happened! The sheer fact that they were standing here, protected by less than a millimeter of Kevlar, was a miracle. What would it look like in a year? In a century? Would green someday be part
of the Red Planet’s palette?
It was a given that they would continue to make mistakes in the future. That was the nature of humans. The small table counted as one. None of them had thought about the fact that they could only easily transport into the dome those items that fit through the narrow corridor from the base. They should have built some furnishings beforehand. Lance, however, had sworn that he would somehow manage to bring a comfortable chair up here. No, make that two of them, even if he had to completely dismantle them and rebuild them inside the dome.
“I propose that we sign the document now,” Ellen said.
Sarah clinked her glass against Lance’s.
Right, thought Lance, the official part still has to take place.
Over the past few nights, Mike and Ellen had prepared a Declaration of Independence that would also function as a kind of constitution. They had discussed every aspect of it for a long time. Ellen had let the entire MfE vote on it, and they had all agreed to sign it.
Lance thought it had turned out as a nicely blended document that could be summarized as Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. They had deliberately left out concrete structures, such as governmental frameworks. The NASA expedition and the MfE initiative would continue to make their own decisions, but would take the other group into consideration. They had also discussed how cooperation with the crew of the private Spaceliner I might look. However, since the ship wouldn’t land for a few months yet, they had decided to put off any resolution on this until later.
“You’re up,” Sarah said, handing him the pen and the document.
Lance signed his name. The two words, ‘Lance Leber,’ looked odd on the paper. He couldn’t recall when he had last signed his full name anywhere.
Guillermo and Ketut were the next in line. Lance had spent two days toiling in the base passageway with Guillermo. The Mexican really did seem to be a reasonable person.
“Mike, Sharon, Sarah, Lance... I would like to thank you once again in the name of the Mars for Everyone Initiative,” Ellen finally said. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
“And we’d already be bored out of our minds without you here,” Mike replied. “There’s really nothing worse than boredom on a lonely planet you won’t ever be leaving.”
They clinked their glasses again.
“To the Mars Nation,” Mike said.
“To all of us,” Ellen replied.
“There is one more bit of exciting news,” Sarah said. They all looked at her.
“Lance and I,” she took his hand, “are going to be parents. The first native-born Martian is on its way.”
As the others clapped, Lance felt a strange feeling churn inside him—a combination of anticipation, pride, and fear.
Sol 99, NASA base
Tomorrow was going to be a red-letter day. Sol 100! They had spent 100 Martian days here already. MfE and NASA had decided to celebrate the day together. They were spatially separated, of course, but they would set up cameras and screens, and play the same music—a virtual party of sorts. Lance was in the process of clearing some space in the conference room to create a small dance floor. We definitely need more storage space, he thought, especially if we want to scavenge the other old NASA probes over the coming weeks. This time there wouldn’t be any fights. The MfE people were now concentrating on the materials that all the other nations had shot up to the planet. That was a fair division since NASA had ultimately been more successful with their probes than the other space agencies.
“Lance, could you come here?”
Sharon was calling him from the command center. What could be going on now? He moved one more chair before doing as she asked.
“I’ve received a strange signal,” she said as he stepped into the room.
“Don’t tell me—it’s coming from Earth?”
“It is.”
Lance sighed. Over the past three days, there had been numerous false alarms because one of the Mars probes was going berserk for some reason. Mike was still trying to figure out what was causing the problem.
“Has Mike finished his analysis yet?” Lance asked.
“I don’t think so, but he’s still asleep. Should we wake him up?”
“No, it’s not worth it. I’m sure it’s another of those error messages.”
He replayed the signal. It wasn’t coded in NASA standard language. All he could hear was a whooshing sound. He changed the code filter, and suddenly the noise vanished.
“Wǒmen yāoqiú liánxì.”
What language was that? He thought it sounded like Mandarin. Luckily, the speaker switched to English.
“This is the spaceship Long Trip 2, seeking contact.”
“Whoa! I’ll go wake up Mike. Could you notify Sarah?” Lance called as he hurried off to fetch their commander.
It turned out it was Mandarin. The Chinese ship was still too far away for an actual conversation. They would have to wait 40 minutes for each reply to reach them. The crew had also indicated that they needed to conserve energy as much as possible. Apparently their launch hadn’t gone as planned, and there were six people on board instead of the intended four.
“Can you tell us anything about what has happened on Earth?” Mike asked before sending off his reply.
Over the coming days, they waited in vain for a response.
Mars Nation 2
Sol 63, Mars surface
Ewa stared at the sky. The view was poor. It was early afternoon, and somewhere up there she should have been able to see a somewhat paler spot behind which the sun was hiding. Is that it there, or am I just falling victim to an optical illusion? She needed the sun’s position to get her bearings. She had made up her mind to head south.
But did that really even matter? She was going to die out here, and she deserved that. The evidence was straightforward. She had sabotaged the mission from the very beginning. It was a strange feeling to admit that to herself, since that hadn’t been her conscious intent. She had always wanted the ‘Mars for Everyone’ mission to be successful. She had done everything within her power to achieve that. These were the moments that stood out in her memory: the shock she’d felt over the five people who had died in the command module; the feverish efforts alongside Theo, who had worked frantically to uncouple the ship’s sections; the struggle with the NASA people for the resources MfE needed; the bewilderment caused by Andy’s accident. All of that had been real. It had to be real, because the pain she still felt in her heart was definitely there.
And yet there were the other images. They were running through her mind sort of like a silent film. There was some sound with them, but the pictures lacked the feelings associated with actual memories. They were like scenes from a nightmare that she had long believed to be nothing but a dream. She watched as a stranger tampered with the system software and set the stage for the ‘accidents’ that would eventually lead to the failure of their mission. She experienced a metallic taste in her mouth whenever she thought about these scenes.
Ewa felt unable to accept them as memories, even though that was obviously what they were. After all, what are memories if not the images preserved by our minds? Was it her guilt that was preventing her from accepting these scenes as authentic and making her feel that the person in these pictures wasn’t actually her? But she wasn’t a murderer! And yet the evidence gathered by Theo and Andy, as well as her own memory, unequivocally pointed in that direction. The scenes she was conjuring up fit all too neatly with the proof for her to just write them off as the figment of a sick mind.
Gabriella, the doctor, had theorized that she might be schizophrenic. The illness would be a welcome rationalization for her behavior, but even if she was in fact schizophrenic, the evidence disturbed her. She now knew what she was capable of. How could the others keep her from killing again in the future? They would have to lock her up behind bars like an animal. It would have all come down to a sheer waste of resources.
Ewa was grateful to the others for voting in favor of her
banishment. It was good that she had convinced so many of them by her performance. Winning people over to her side had always been one of her strengths. She wouldn’t be able to mobilize them anymore, though, now that she was alone.
Ewa studied the spot in the sky again. It was still in the same position, so it had to be the sun. She glanced at her watch. She now knew which way was south. She set off toward the horizon, which contrasted sharply with the reddish Mars surface. She would walk as far as possible. That was all she could do.
5/22/2042, Pismo Beach, CA
“Young man, what can I do for you?”
The old man behind the counter in the Scorpion Bay Café smiled, although he didn’t know him. Shouldn’t the guy at least wait to see if the newcomer pulled a pistol out of his pocket to empty the café’s cash register? There wouldn’t be any witnesses even if he did. Rick glanced all around, checking out the ceiling, too, as if he really did plan to hold up the café. No, the surveillance camera would be witness enough. That still wasn’t a reason to feel all that safe.
“I... I’d like a cup of coffee. No, make that a cappuccino,” he said.
“Dark or light roast?”
How should I know? But dark sounds good. Rick nodded, but then it occurred to him that the man couldn’t read his thoughts. “Dark, please.”
He had to pull himself together. If he didn’t keep his anxiety under wraps, the people here would remember him. He didn’t want that to happen. He was a stranger whose face would fade from everyone’s memory. To be on the safe side, he had checked into a cheap hotel that didn’t require him to present any ID.
“Anything else? The muffins are fresh.”
Upselling, Rick decided. The man was trying to increase his revenue by selling things that fit well with the fairly cheap coffee. Business probably wasn’t all that great these days. The old man looked as if he had spent the past fifty years standing behind this counter, and might’ve even been born there. His skin was pallid, an unusual quality for a resident of the sunny central California coast. That might be because the business was open every day, and the owner couldn’t afford to hire any help. Couldn’t he paint the facade a more welcoming color? The only reason the dark brown had drawn him in was because he had a somber task before him.
Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy Page 28