Colony

by Leigh Matthews

  Silver had driven the SEV to the biodomes countless times to deliver and retrieve supplies. She knew the best route up the crater, taking advantage of plateaus and steppes hewn into the rocks over millennia by whistling winds swirling with abrasive dust.

  Silver rarely lingered in the biodomes, but she knew that Aliyaah spent a lot of time there. Even when she wasn't working in the dome, she would head out there to sit among the plants. Some of the other crew did the same, even if they weren't part of the botanical team. The biodomes had a carefully controlled environment, and the impact of off-duty visitors had been factored into their management. NASA planners had anticipated the need for greenspace in the colony, especially amid the harsh, dusty sandstorms of Mars and the uniform, narrow, grey corridors of the station.

  When Aliyaah was twenty, she had been part of a team of chemical engineers experimenting with plant nanobiotics. The idea was to insert carbon nanotubes into the vascular system of plants and use these to detect a variety of chemical compounds in the groundwater or air.

  Originally, the project had focused on developing spinach plants that could detect aromatic hydrocarbons. These plants could then be used to indicate the presence of landmines or other explosives. Aliyaah quickly realised the potential for these plants to be used in space stations, rockets, and on the surface of other planets as a way of monitoring and searching for select compounds.

  Aliyaah had been on one of the first short missions to Mars, and in the single sevensol she spent on the planet, she had planted several of these nanobiotic plants and established an automated irrigation system using recycled water. The lack of surface water on the red planet meant that they had to develop large scale technologies to allow for an almost one hundred percent water reclamation. The rocket that brought the astronauts to Mars had an eighty-five percent reclamation rate, which could sustain them only for the five-month journey from Earth. Once they landed, they established a dozen ground wells, but it had taken several sevensols to determine the safety of the deep subsurface water table. As their water supply decreased, they'd had to make cutbacks, including restricting the crew to one short shower every five sols. This placed even greater pressure on the team tasked with approving the use of well-water for the station.

  Biodomes One and Two had been the first parts of the colony to switch to Mars groundwater, and had been operating on a closed system for more than a hundred sols. They took in carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere, which accounted for over ninety-five percent of the air, and effectively used the plants to create oxygen. Specially designed oxygen scrubbers then collected the gas, which was stored for use on Octavia for their journey home. Five sols before the accident at the quarry, the crew had celebrated as Octavia's oxygen tanks had finally been refilled. The oxygen produced at the biodomes had begun to be transported for use at the quarry, and a newly laid pipeline had begun to feed oxygen into the station's climate system.

  Silver thought about the biodomes and the recent changes in the colony as she carefully guided the SEV over the rocky terrain. Aliyaah was checking in with Hadley, using a secure channel so she could update him without causing mass panic among the survivors. As Aliyaah spoke, Silver realised that this was how she had begun to see them: as survivors.

  Hadley had already contacted Mission Support to brief them on the situation. They hadn't yet had a reply, but this was expected; communication between Mars and Earth was currently delayed by sixteen minutes due to the planets' orbits.

  Command personnel on Project Arche had been chosen specifically for their experience and were imbued with the authority to make autonomous decisions, given this delay in communications. The Chief had led over a dozen space missions, as had the Commander. Hadley came from a military background, and had offered the station's inhabitants an approachable alternative to the Commander. Given the Commander's death, Silver wondered if Hadley might deem it necessary to adopt a more aggressive leadership approach to hold the crew together during the crisis. So far, he was listening to the Chief and following her lead.

  Like all personnel on Mars, Hadley had received rudimentary training on all the systems used at the station, including the biodomes, rockets, rovers, and refiners. Those in senior positions had also learnt about the planet's quirks: its atmosphere, groundwater, and mineral make-up, as well as the minimal magnetic field. As Aliyaah explained her theory about the chemotrophic life-form that had ravaged the west wing, Hadley listened quietly, asking questions only when he needed further clarification.

  "So, if your reasoning is correct, this thing won't have been able to get through the seal between the west wing and the central hub of the station?"

  "It doesn't appear so, no."

  "So how did it get into the west wing in the first place?"

  "It's possible that it wasn't detected in the recycled air from the biodomes when we switched to the new system. Or it could have entered through the groundwater or hitched a ride on someone's suit. With dust as fine as smoke, it wouldn't be surprising, no matter how careful we are about decontamination."

  Hadley was quiet for a moment and then confirmed with Aliyaah something that Silver had been trying to figure out for the past few minutes. The east and west wings had been gradually switched over to a water supply from groundwater wells, and oxygen from Biodomes One and Two. The Civilian wing was still on a closed system using the supplies brought from Earth, with a separate oxygen filtration system created using plants brought with them on this mission.

  "So, the Civilian wing is the only structure we currently have that is likely to remain uncontaminated, assuming this chemotrophic organism is in the water or air?" Hadley asked.

  "Not quite," Aliyaah said, hesitantly. "The Civilian wing draws some gases from the planet's atmosphere, so it's possible that it's also contaminated." She paused, then added, "there is one area that may be unaffected. It's on a separate system. That's where FE Antara and I are headed now, Sir."

  "Where is that, Chief?" Hadley asked, as Silver finally realised why Aliyaah had suggested Biodome Three. In addition to the biodomes, there were several solar storm shelters scattered across the planet's surface, designed to harbor any astronauts out in the field and away from an armored vehicle when a solar storm hit. Feasibly, any one of these could have been the supposed safe zone.

  "Sir, I'm sorry, but I'm not able to disclose that information," Aliyaah said firmly. Silver glanced over at her as she continued. "Article seven point five expressly states that in the event of an emergency like this the two senior officers should attempt to restore safe operational control from distinct locations."

  Hadley paused for a moment, then agreed. "You're right, of course, Chief. Let's liaise remotely until we have a better handle on things and can be certain we're both of sound mind."

  Silver wanted to look over at Aliyaah to read her expression, but she needed to focus on getting the SEV down the last section of the crater's wall and onto flat land. With the lower gravity on the planet, it was harder to rely on physical cues and she had to focus on the sensors to determine the SEV's pitch. While she steered the SEV, Silver thought back to what Aliyaah had said about the quarry, and the Commander. To blow the quarry remotely, the Commander would have needed codes from Aliyaah, Chief Frederickson, or Hadley. It worried her that Hadley and Aliyaah had basically just admitted that they weren't entirely sure they could trust one another.

  They were all silent for a few seconds, then Hadley said in a calm voice, "Did you deactivate the SEV's tracking system, Chief?"

  Aliyaah confirmed that she had as soon as they had gotten into the SEV. Silver hadn't noticed her disarm the tracker, but she saw now that the system was, indeed, disabled. Neither Hadley, nor anyone else, had any way of confirming where Aliyaah and Silver were taking the SEV.

  fifteen

  Biodome Three was one of the most recently completed and impressive structures on Mars. Construction had begun at the same time as the two larger domes, but had been delayed by dust storms tha
t gathered at the crater's edge, creating shocks of heat lightning. As the other biodomes were completed, sol after sol passed with little progress on the smaller dome.

  Once Octavia had landed safely on the planet, a specially assigned team had worked quickly to get Biodome Three up and running. The delays had set them back in terms of oxygen production, but there was a silver lining to the enforced downtime; engineers on Earth had designed a new kind of air and water filtration system, which the Octavia team had summarily installed.

  Biodome Three's closed system was not the only thing separating it from the rest of the colony; its location beyond the ridge of the Schiaparelli crater had the effect of putting it both out of sight of the station and a little out of mind. As a result, Biodome Three had become something of a haven for a handful of personnel.

  Biodomes One and Two each covered almost three acres of land, and their huge curved walls rose to over seventy feet tall. In contrast, Biodome Three stood at a height of just thirty feet, covering an acre and a half. The smaller dome felt more intimate, like a walled garden rather than a research facility. Sitting in the middle of Biodome Three, surrounded by greenery, you almost had the sense of being in a desert oasis.

  Silver had heard from Hardeep that for some of the crew, Biodome Three had gained a reputation as an ideal spot for romantic trysts, especially late at night for a little stargazing. It was funny how photographs taken from the surface of Mars seem to suggest that you can't see stars from the planet. Silver, Hardeep, and anyone else who had landed on Mars knew better. The lens exposure needed to capture the details of the biodomes, station, or an astronaut on a space walk on Mars meant that the stars remained hidden for the most part, lost in the vast, inky blackness of space. At night, however, when the lights were off at the biodome, anyone gazing up through the clear panels of the sloped roof would be rewarded with a stunning view of the great expanse of star-filled space, as well as the sight of the two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Phobos raced west to east across the sky, while Deimos, the smaller of the two moons, made its way slowly from east to west. Astronauts working at night on Mars had marvelled at first at how Phobos would rise and set twice in an evening. But, as with many things on the planet, even this magnificent sight quickly became routine.

  One afternoon, while Hardeep and Silver were listening to Dance Gavin Dance, he had mentioned that he and a miner had spent a night under the stars in the biodome. They had seen Phobos eclipse Deimos, and Hardeep asked Silver if she thought it was a sign that the relationship wouldn't work out. Silver had laughed, reminding Hardeep that she much preferred astronomy over astrology.

  Silver was tempted to tell Hardeep that the moons were named for fear and panic, after the two sons of the Roman god Mars, but she had kept quiet in the face of his new infatuation with the miner. Now, it seemed awfully apt that panic was pensive in the sky, while fear raced overhead.

  As Silver contemplated the fates of both the miner and Hardeep, Aliyaah interrupted her thoughts.

  "Without the laboratory, it's going to be difficult to get a clear sense of what's happening with those crystal formations. Aragonite wouldn't crystallise that quickly from that kind of… substrate. It has to be something else: some kind of microorganism with rapid cell division."

  Silver grimaced, then asked Aliyaah what she thought the organism might be.

  "My guess is that it's something akin to Thiomicrospira crunogena. It probably came up in the groundwater and somehow bypassed the filtration system."

  Silver tried to remember back to her biology classes, but came up empty and looked over at Aliyaah blankly as she pulled off her suit in the airlock for the biodome.

  "T. cru: It's an extremophile that lives in deep ocean hydrothermal vents. It grows rapidly and feeds on carbon dioxide and sulfur. Whatever this crystal-producing organism is, it might be similar to T. cru. It could be feeding on carbon dioxide and sulfur and other elements." She paused and then added with a grimace, "Basically, I think that whatever this microbe is, the human body may be an ideal food source."

  Silver swallowed, thinking back to the crystalline gravesite they had just escaped. She took extra care as she went through the decontamination procedures. When Aliyaah joined her on the other side of the airlock, Silver asked, "So that's why there was such a massive formation of crystals back there; as our people all scrambled to get out after hearing the blasts it must have been like a feeding frenzy for this thing."

  Aliyaah nodded, not meeting Silver's eye as she began the process of getting into a similar suit to the one she had just taken off. They didn't normally wear suits inside the biodome, but Aliyaah wanted to be sure the biodome was safe before letting down her guard for even an instant.

  "How do we stop this thing?" Silver asked as they suited up.

  "I don't know. When the Commander destroyed the lab, he destroyed our best chance of figuring this thing out."

  Neither of them voiced their suspicions about why the Commander may have taken the actions he did. Just thinking about all those lost lives made Silver nauseous, which reminded her that she had been violently sick earlier in the night, or yestersol perhaps. She was no longer sure of the time or sol, and the unsettling feeling brought on a wave of exhaustion. She needed to take extra anti-radiation meds, as did Aliyaah, but even those might not be enough to counteract any damage done by the radiation around the crystal formations in the west wing.

  Silver asked Aliyaah if there were extra meds kept in the biodome and Aliyaah directed her to a workroom to the right of the temperate zone. "See if you can also find the M-Lab. It should be in there, unless one of the team was using it in a different dome." The Mobile Laboratory offered their best chance of examining the crystal in a contained environment.

  "Where will we get a sample?" Silver asked. "We can't exactly ask Hadley to send someone to us, not without compromising our location."

  Aliyaah frowned and said, "Our location may already be compromised. There may be crystals here that we can examine." She gestured toward the control panel on the exterior side of the inner wall of the biodome. "I'm going to run a full sweep before either of us enters the inner dome. Go get the meds and the lab and get back here as soon as you can. And keep your suit on, Sil."

  sixTeen

  Silver walked past the doors to the temperate zone and entered the code Aliyaah had given her for the workroom. Inside were empty lab benches and random supplies, including fertilisers and various hand tools for maintaining the gardens. It was exactly what Silver imagined a Martian gardener's shed would look like. Sadly, that didn't give her any clues as to where she might find anti-radiation meds.

  A shelf laden with boxes in one corner looked promising, and Silver began to run her gloved finger down the labels. The boxes contained a variety of chemicals that Silver guessed were being systematically tested on the Martian soil to see if they enhanced crop yields. She moved to the second shelving unit and saw a first aid kit. She pulled this off the shelf and found a stash of meds behind the kit.

  Silver strapped the first aid kit to her suit and considered taking off her helmet so she could pop a couple of anti-radiation pills. She knew she needed to wait for the all-clear from the Chief, but she was painfully aware both of how long it had been since her normal dose and how this was far from a normal situation.

  After stuffing the meds into the top of the first aid kit, Silver spotted a promising looking container. She picked up the box, which held several anti-rad cartridges. They could plug these directly into their ports to inject anti-rads, avoiding the need to compromise the integrity of their suits. Silver opened the seal on one of the cartridges and gave herself a shot. She added the other cartridges to the kit and relaxed a little, relieved that she was once again protected from the worst of the radiation.

  Next, Silver looked around for the M-Lab, which was housed on what looked like a glorified dessert cart. After a few minutes puzzling over how it could hide in a room this size, Silver finally located the M-Lab behind a sta
ck of totes in a far corner.

  As Silver moved the totes out of the way, she felt a sudden wave of heat rush toward her. A side effect of the anti-rad shot, perhaps? She preferred taking the pills, and only used the shots when she had no other option, such as on a long space walk where she would be in her suit for hours at a time. If it wasn't the anti-rad shot, it could be a hot flash, she thought with annoyance. She'd had a few hot flashes recently, and remembered now how her mother had gone through menopause early. Silver checked the temperature dial on her suit, in case there was a malfunction, and was shocked to see that it wasn't the anti-rads, menopause, or anything endogenous; the room was getting warmer, and rapidly.

  Silver looked around with a growing sense of panic, but saw no reason for the temperature change. She grabbed the M-Lab and yanked it across the room to the door. When she was back out in the corridor, she ran a few metres back in the direction of Aliyaah before stopping and checking the temperature again. There was a massive difference between the workroom and the corridor. Something in the lab had caused that rapid increase in temperature.

  Leaving the M-Lab where it was, Silver stepped back toward the workroom, unable to suppress her scientific curiosity. When she reached the door, Silver looked through the window, and saw a figure emerge from behind one of the benches. She jumped back as she saw the figure scurry toward the door. The hunched over man was dressed in white, and had raised his head briefly, giving Silver a glimpse of his face, his pallor deathly grey and shiny. His skin was almost iridescent. She backed away, expecting the man to fling open the door. Silver wasn’t at all sure what she would do when confronted with the unidentified scientist. The door remained closed, however, and all that happened was a peculiar change in the light emanating from the room. Silver held up a gloved hand to her visor to shield her eyes from the light, then stepped forward again to look through the window.