by Caldon Mull
“Exactly. Lead on Doctor, we’ve got fifty minutes until launch.”
“Our pod just arrived at the docking bay. I only dialed it five minutes ago. They never arrive this quickly.” She tapped the Virtual PA emblem on her smart-sleeve.
“The Mars_Starmind?” Esteban chuckled despite himself, “Our principle contract holder?”
“Oh right, of course. Can you walk, or should I get you an auto-dolly?”
“My knees are wobbly, but otherwise I’m good. I’d lean on you, but then…”
“You’d crush me? Please don’t do that,” Doctor da Silva smirked, “walk your own damn self.”
“Besides which I am a public figure, a hint of anything out of the ordinary will hit the gossip pages and probably work against what Starmind is intending.” Esteban tottered behind her and her wheeled mobile, “So Doctor, do you have a first name?”
“While we are on contract, I prefer you just call me Doctor.” She quipped over her shoulder, “Just to ensure things remain professional.”
Esteban and the Doctor boarded the shuttle in good time. The transport pod arrived for them at the Practice Reception empty of other commuters, stayed empty for a no-stop trip and left equally empty. The shuttle bay-door closed and they strapped themselves into a bank of seats that faced each other over an aisle down the center of the craft.
“There’s something up front.” The Doctor remarked as she ensured the mobile med-mech kit had locked it’s wheels and extended holding magnets onto the shuttle’s panels.
“I need to sit for awhile.” Esteban muttered, “What is it?”
“It looks like a clock that’s busy downloading in the pilot seat.”
“That’s probably Pele on the way.” No matter what he did, Esteban couldn’t get comfortable. He thought if he even stubbed his toe, all of his meat would just burst out of his mouth. “Does something look wrong?”
“There’s green lights flashing on the controls. I know green lights when I see them.”
“Good.” Esteban groaned.
“Esteban… why the extra weight? I’m curious, it’s a very odd procedure. You mentioned something about six degrees.”
“It’s an equation for body mass and cold water immersion. The best heat generation is muscle. If you need to spend any time in ultra-cold water, you need muscle mass.”
“I’m a medical doctor, what about fat? Why reduce your BMI even further? Doesn’t body-fat also provide energy?”
“Sure, energy for awhile… but once it’s depleted- and it goes very quickly; it’s gone and there are no reserves. You need internal warmth to stay submerged, not energy to move around.”
“Fascinating.”
“When you’re submerged and weightless, you can only move so quickly in that environment, and this movement doesn’t require much energy. Warmth, however, is the single significant element for dive duration.”
“… and you’re a Pondsmith…”
“Yes, these alterations have set me up for my maximum tolerance for the D-frame… somewhere… and taking my base specification as baseline, it’s probably an undercooled liquid environment in carbon dioxide permafrost. ”
“Are you certain water can stay liquid at those temperatures… ?”
“You would be surprised at what liquid water can do with the right solutes, the right pressures and the right thermoclines. With a medical and technical background I suppose you only see Standard human adaptations to the environment, not necessarily the extremes.”
“I suppose so. Cadiz was 1st Fleet and set up in the best environment first. I suppose have got lazy only looking at the range of clients we normally service; mostly cosmetic cyber ware.”
Esteban was starting to feel better, his skin discomfort was lessening as the semi-rigid structure conformed to his underlying musculature. His hangover abated, and his Sonic module had successfully rebooted after its whirl in the centrifuge. “Anything from the cockpit?”
“It’s not moving, but it looks like it has almost completed the transfer.” The Doctor craned forward to peek down the aisle.
“Him… Pele is an alpha, problem solving, goal oriented… ummm. Almost all AI insist on a gender, although I have no idea why. We’re nodding acquaintances at MCN. He’s a ‘he’, trust me. This ‘Starmind_Pele’ Avatar is fascinated with human culture and all that entails. He’s done some racy documentaries on human sexuality over the years on the range of preference between mechanical and biological.”
“That’s interesting, considering how often you appear in the social pages.” The Doctor looked over Esteban clinically, “Do you actually have a biological preference?”
“It’s all about the sensation for me.” Esteban shrugged, “I don’t really care about who I share it with, never have…. You?”
“I’m in a Group. I have two wives, two husbands and between us all we have two kids. None of those are mine yet.” The Doctor looked down and Esteban had the suspicion there was more to it that that.
“How’s that working for you, so far?” Esteban probed.
“It’s okay… They treat me right, I get to keep what’s mine. I’m an equal among equals. I would probably be more of an equal if I added children into the group…” The Doctor bit her lip and trailed off. Esteban suspected he had hit a nerve.
“Everything a woman in modern society ever needed, now that there are so few around in the 23rd Century. Finally you get equality, but only because you’re treated better than everyone else. Treated better as a rare resource.” Esteban grinned.
“It’s not like that. I’m sure that if I have my own kids, things will settle.” The Doctor glared at him.
“Tell me you’re not frustrated because nobody is putting you first, treating you like a princess, putting your needs above them… better than an equal…” Esteban smirked at her.
“Esteban,” she sighed, realizing he was baiting her, “don’t you this start with me. You don’t get to solve social issues by slapping me in the middle of them.”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t.” Esteban relented, “I make do, so I guess I’m happy enough. It’s not like I have many choices anymore. I shouldn’t troll other people about theirs.”
“This world is what the World is.” The Doctor fidgeted her hands in her lap.
“Somehow I thought Mars would be better with humans on it… I guess I was just foolish to believe that every new place humanity settled would bring a new hope.” Esteban grunted.
“Something is moving in the cockpit. I think it’s… his… download is complete.”
“You folks good back there?” A pleasantly modulated tenor announced itself.
“Hey, Pele. Good enough.” Esteban stretched out his legs over the aisle. “You ready to tell us what you’re doing?”
“A few more minutes.” The synthetic reached for an external USB and slipped it in a port “I just have to set up a false flight to Nuevo Cartagena and dock into an Hotel for us. Then I’ll take the controls.”
“There’s going to be no coms to there soon, for about a week.” Esteban shrugged, “What with the monsoon.”
“Exactly, that should give us the cover for the time we need. Esteban, you should set your personal location to Cartagena for the next few days and disable it afterwards. Doctor you too. I’ll map our departure time to it and bury it in system logs. It should be easy enough to alter our arrival times to it when we’re done. The only thing that would notice the difference... is me.” Pele smiled with his almost-human clock face, “Or Starmind me... whatever.”
“Okay, done.” Esteban complied. It felt a bit odd being disconnected, but the contract-holder was the contract-holder, and was always right.
“Make yourselves comfortable as best you can and hydrate a bit, it’s about an hour to where we’re going.”
Esteban was just about getting bored, when the shuttle engine sounds changed pitch and started to bank.
The polarized glass cleared as Pele zipped and twisted the four drive pods, finally c
oming to a stationary hover above what looked like a telescoping dome in the orange landscape.
Esteban could see the far edge of the Planita’s horizon covered with the darkness of the GM lily-pads that Mars had so taken to. There must be damp somewhere on the flat plain, or surface ices at least.
“What is this place?” The Doctor pointed at the metal dome.
“It’s an old research facility.” Pele grunted as he made minor adjustments to the flight stabilizers. “I’ve put the satellite over it onto maintenance, while we snoop.”
Esteban stretched over to the Doctors side of the shuttle and peered through her window. A huge wall of rock stretched kilometers above where the shuttle was hovering in the orange-ish light, a metal marble blinked against the wall a few hundred meters above the scree that lay at the foot of the wall. Pele was inching the shuttle closer and closer to the dome.
They were obviously inside a huge crater... but then again this was Mars, so he still couldn’t work out where, exactly.
The dome slid open like a pair of eyelids, a fall of fine Martian dust trailed into the dark cavern it exposed to the light.
Pele banked the shuttle and the hyperwhine of the propellers set Esteban’s Sonics on edge. He disabled the mod completely from its ‘sleep’ state.
“I’ll close the dome as soon as we’re landed, but the pressure inside is still very low. I wasn’t able to activate all of the facilities systems without triggering the system logs.” Pele settled the shuttle on the rough geocrete platform.
The Dome slipped closed again until they were sitting in darkness. Red light flicked on in the cavernous bay as Pele shut down the shuttle engines. “Right, we’re here.” he announced, jauntily settling what looked like aviator mirror-shades over his eyes.
“Where is here, exactly?” Esteban pulled his knees to his chest so that Pele could move down the aisle.
“It’s the Argyre, one of the most remote places on Mars... even for Mars. The facility was mothballed by EarthGov about fifty years ago as the Arcology Fleets started to settle. While the Pellas has a micro-climate that is big enough to moderate itself, the Argyre has a micro-climate that is much more extreme, because it is small enough to change rapidly, but just large enough to have a micro-climate.” Pele started to open lockers in the racks next to the air-lock. “Doctor, you’ll have to get into that SCABU unit in the locker. The air pressure outside here is about twelve percent, just around the Armstrong limit. It’s earth-normal in the tunnels, but we have to get there first. There’s breathing fluid for you, Esteban… I couldn’t find a SCABU suit your size. I checked your specifications back in Cadiz, I’m sure you can make it. I’m purely mechanical, one of the reasons I chose this clock for this mission.”
“Its fine, I’ve done this before. I’ve got about an hour like this.” Esteban guessed it was about a hundred meters to the facility airlock. “When we first made planet-fall, the atmosphere pressure was much less. That was way below my skins’ tolerance specifications, no more than about five minutes then.”
“I’m sure we don’t have another two decades to wait for the atmosphere to reach half a bar.” Pele dragged a fluid pump from another locker, “Bring this with you, they didn’t have this technology when they built the place and we are going to need to keep this gel aerated for you.”
Esteban nodded, “It’s only a few minutes to inside, and the pump is light enough.” He filled his lungs with the aeration gel while The Doctor suited up, and engaged his Pondsmith control to seal himself completely. He activated his communication module on private short-wave broadcast, “Can everyone hear me?”
“Yes.” The Doctor broadcast back.
“You’re all good.” Pele confirmed, “Come, let’s head for the dome. The last one out of the airlock is a rotten egg...”
The clock sealed the cabin door as they gathered in the shuttle airlock and started the sequence. The pressure dropped as the air pumped into the shuttle tanks to match the pressure outside. Esteban felt his skin-weave pinch and pull as it contained his organs against the low pressure environment outside.
It was the same feeling, but the opposite of what he’d experienced underwater in high pressure environments. He supposed it was like the sting you get on a fingertip, except one was with boiling water and the other was with ice... it still stung.
Esteban cradled the gel-pump against his chest and shuffled behind the other two over the geocrete. The Doctor was surprisingly nimble and the two of them reached the airlock well ahead of him. They turned to watch him as his long, but slow strides brought him closer to where they waited.
Frost crusted the clock’s cheeks as he started to roll the antiquated door-lock. Esteban’s thermometer registered a temperature of minus fifty degrees Celsius in the darkness of the Dome. His smart-suit, while fashionable enough for a visit to the Doctors practice this morning was not happy about its treatment this afternoon. Warning chevrons scrolled over his display sleeve about his immanent wardrobe failure.
The overall-style one piece was icing and shattering in places where environmental moisture from the shuttle was flash-freezing. Esteban himself didn’t sweat... couldn’t sweat. Perspiration drained on the underside of his synthetic skin to his bladder directly or to his UroQt as overflow.
Esteban sighed to himself as a section of his clothes above one of his knees lost cohesion and sprinkled onto the geocrete in a cloud of minute frozen threads. A patch over his left buttock announced it’s disintegration as he stepped over the bulkhead and into the facility airlock.
Pele grinned at him as he spun the door closed and tapped a keyboard near the internal door that lit up when the door registered the seal.
“That was a Pringles.” Esteban said on his broadcast, “My favorite suit. You owe me big, clock.”
The airlock hissed and started pumping air and Esteban could feel the pinch-and-pull sensation lessening. The sequence ended after about three minutes and the Doctor spun the internal door open.
“What sort of research facility is this?” she asked as they ducked through into a dim corridor.
“It’s disused right now, but it is an early EarthGov pioneer facility. It had a military and science squad here about a hundred years ago. They did some core drilling to figure out more about the Martian mantle from here.” Pele swiveled the airlock handle and the inner door clicked shut.
“It’s also above a subterranean liquid lake. The Argyre was the first landing site to show measurable liquid sub-surface water and volcanic activity as early as the 20th Century, and one of the first identified sites for an outpost. These pressurized tunnels date back very early in Martian exploration, and they just got bigger and bigger as the activity around them increased. Until about fifty years ago, when they were mothballed and the staff relocated to the 1st Fleet Arcology that had made planet-fall.” Pele motioned for them to follow him down the passages.
“Once they had demonstrated they were successful, no doubt.” Esteban muttered. “But that’s why I’m here? Liquid water?”
“Pretty much. There is a volcanic plume somewhere far below us that keeps the water liquid, that and pressure… because it’s quite deep down there. I needed someone to help me investigate this entire place, even the lake.”
“Why are you being so cagey about this?” The Doctor asked, the mobile med-mech in tow; rolling after her, following Pele.
“The facility is officially mothballed, it’s in the process of being transferred to Spenser McCormack from EarthGov assets...”
“The boy-genius Terraformer?” Esteban asked.
“The same. Anyway, sometime in the last three years, I noticed this place had a lot of traffic for a mothballed facility, not just the routine mech maintenance RV’s, but also people.”
“An audit crew? Assizes? Surveyors?” The Doctor asked.
“No… nothing like that.” Pele looked down a T-junction, then turned left. “I couldn’t find any record in my logs at all. Nothing… something doesn’t add up. I
’ve swept the whole base and can’t find anything out of place. No people have officially visited here, but the maintenance records show human consumption, for about twenty individuals over this time period.”
“How do you figure that?” The Doctor wanted to know.
“The difference between mothballed or disused, and decommissioned is in the supply metrics. The Reactor and the Geo-Thermal installations are maintained in a readiness state, not dismantled and relocated. We might need to reuse any of these facilities at any time, say a Trojan wanders into orbit and the Arcology’s are threatened.”
“So? It’s common knowledge that Mars has old bunkers like these around the Planet.” Esteban shrugged. The gel-pump was starting to get heavy, he hoped Pele would stop soon or get to where he was going.
“So hydroponics and oxygen and mess supplies shouldn’t need replenishment if there aren’t people here to use it.”
“... and you’re saying there have been here?” The Doctor sounded surprised.
“Yes, about that number of people-visitations over that time. I can’t tell if its one person over twenty visits, or twenty people in one visit, or six people and forty mechs in three visits, or...”
“This isn’t a monitored facility?” Esteban was curious.
“No, this is too old for that. I’ve been here before today and swept this place through.” Pele stopped before a habitation section and entered a code.
“So why come through today with us?” The Doctor peered inside the quarters as the lights brightened to white in waves to the back of the quarters.
“I haven’t looked at the water.” Pele motioned them inside. The door shut behind them.
“Ah. So how big is this lake?” Esteban placed the pump down and removed his face-mask to insert the draining tubes down his throat.
“It’s big… it’s very big for Mars. The logs show that this discovery was the single decision point to go for the planet. By the time this facility was completed, technology had stepped up and it wasn’t essential anymore. It’s still maintained because of the reasons I’ve already mentioned; water reservoir, hydro-electric and geo-thermal power that add to the planetary grid but at low reserve levels at present.”