Paul was instantly alarmed. “What is it?” he barked. “Something wrong with the suit?”
“No, no, nothing like that!” she hissed while waving him off. “The suit is working just fine,” she said with satisfaction and more than a bit of pride in her voice. “It’s light and not hard to move around in at all.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I feel a quote coming on!”
“A quote? Now? At a time like this?” he cackled, generating a disbelieving sigh of relief. “You had me going there for a second!”
“It’s just that all of this…emptiness…has inspired me,” she patiently explained. “A quote from one of my favorite vintage science fiction movies. ‘Another one of them new worlds. No beer, no women, no pool parlors, nothin’. Nothin’ to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and we gotta bring our own tin cans.’”
“Yeah! Cookie in Forbidden Planet!” exclaimed Daneel 2. “Love that movie!”
“Good one, Mom,” declared Daneel 1.
“It really is a great quote,” Paul admitted, shaking his head. “Come on. There’s work to be done.”
They proceeded three hundred yards further south, approaching the edge of the precipice, coming to a complete stop several yards from the brink.
“Not too close,” Paul warned.
No one else said anything. They didn’t have to. The view from the cliff’s edge was indeed stunning.
Far, far below them, was the bed of the chasma. All across the floor of the canyon, they saw drifts of red sand like waves of water on a lake, frozen in a single moment of time. A low rocky ridge in the center of the chasma stretched toward the east. Another, shorter ridge of rocks angled toward the west.
“Look, there have been landslides here,” Capie said, pointing below them.
Evidently there had been. They could see the circular pattern of sand at the foot of the north wall where it spread out across the floor of the chasma. Thousands of tons of rock and dirt had fallen there.
“We really will have to make sure this ledge is fully secured before we build here,” Paul repeated.
To the south, a seemingly incredible distance away, lay the south face of the chasma, some 35 miles distant. On either side of them, they could see the inward curving of the north walls and the rocky strata of the parapets. The view was the most magnificent natural scene that Paul had ever witnessed, easily surpassing anything he had seen back on Earth.
“View fantastic is!” approved Ariel-Leira.
“We agree!” Daneels 1 and 2 chorused.
“I can live with this,” Capie smugly concluded. “This will do nicely, Paul. Quite nicely.” And then her look sobered into sadness. “Dad would have loved seeing this.”
Paul reached out, bringing her in close, touching his helmet to hers.
“I miss him too,” he told her tenderly.
Ω
Working as a team, they hollowed out a series of large rooms underground a hundred yards back from the lip of the chasm. The excavated dirt went into the chasm, of course. By late afternoon, they finished the construction of several storerooms and space for two large workshops.
“We are going to need air soon for these rooms,” Paul observed. “Daneels, if you please, would you extract oxygen from the Martian soil and nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere for us. It shouldn’t be hard to gather what is needed. Portal everything in here.”
“Acknowledged, Dad,” Daneel 1 replied. “On our way.”
Capie was looking around at the bare red rough rock walls, which were not very aesthetic.
“Not too bad, considering the circumstances,” she said with a thoughtful expression on her face. “After all, ‘It took the Starfleet Corps of Engineers ten months in spacesuits to hollow out these spaces. What I did here, I did in less than a day.’”
Paul barked in abrupt laughter. “Dr. Carol Marcus. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. My, you are on a roll today.”
“I thought you might like it,” his wife remarked with a grin which faded quickly into a sigh. “It’s a good thing that we are not living down here,” she noted, eyeing the walls grimly. “This place is pretty depressing.”
Paul chuckled. “They’re just storerooms and workshops, CB. Now, when we get the Gathol House built, that’ll be all yours, my dear, to decorate as you please. However, right now, I think I will go create a latrine for, uh, temporary use. Later, I’ll need to design and build a working bathroom with associated plumbing.”
“Understood. Please, don’t let me stand in your way,” she said, with exaggerated conviction. “In the meantime, I think I’ll go find something to eat. I’m starved! I wonder if there are any fresh apples in the ship’s stores.”
Ω
Paul was finished with the latrine and had started working on one of the workshops, carving shelves and tables out of pure stone when the Daneels returned. The underground chambers had been successfully stocked with a 50/50 mix of nitrogen and oxygen at 6.1 psig; thin but breathable.
That task completed, Paul sent the two Scotties off to begin unloading all of the supplies from the ship. He watched as they set up a portal from the Sirius Effort to the first storeroom and began the process of passing boxes and packages through. Then he himself returned to his work.
Tomorrow, they would begin building the house. Titanium, carbon, iron and silicon topped the list of required materials, quite a few tons of each. Deposits of those and several other minerals would have to be found and mined. Yes, sir, lots of work.
Ω
Dragging himself back to the ship was difficult. Every muscle hurt. And judging from all the aches and pains, every bone, every individual blood cell, and every hair follicle did too.
He found Capie on Deck 3, waiting with a lasagna, rolls, and salad, one of his favorite meals. After stuffing himself to the brink and then taking a warm shower, he felt a lot better.
In the meantime, Capie had turned down the bed on Deck 4, with fresh clean sheets. Dressed in a white night gown, she lay on the bed waiting for him, the stuffed puppy Patches in the crook of one arm and a sly smile on her face.
“You know I like it when you wear that nightgown,” he growled happily, suddenly feeling a whole lot less tired.
She smiled seductively and patted the bed in front of her.
“I hope you are ready to cuddle,” Paul suggested coyly.
“Just try to get out of it,” Capie purred, with lips parted.
SIX
The planet Mars
Coprates Chasma
Gathol House
Friday, 8:21 a.m. LMST
December
Day 7
There were so many things to do before actual construction could even begin on Gathol House, that Paul felt overwhelmed by it all. More geological and mineralogical surveys to find all the right ores and minerals. The mining and processing of said materials. Transporting everything to the house’s construction site. (And yes, it would help if they could find a suitably large rock somewhere in the Valles Marineris vicinity to use for magical spells!) Manufacturing building materials (sheets of diamond, titanium and iron I-beams, aluminum piping, sheets of stone veneer for the interior walls, etc. etc.) And then there were the site preparations, including the assessment of the site for load bearing strength.
After all of that, then they could start the excavations for the footings and foundation work. And for the wall anchors too, if they were needed.
When breakfast was concluded, the four of them divided up the work and headed in separate directions.
Ω
By the end of Day 20 after landing, when they collapsed in near exhaustion on a sofa in the living room, the house was essentially finished, except for some minor potential tweaking Capie planned to make in the months to come.
And it was gorgeous.
The living room, by far the largest space in the house, occupied the entire southern half of the dome. The sofas and easy chairs all faced outward, to present their occupants with
the wonderful views of the Coprates Chasma, extending from east to west, including views of portions of the north cliffs. Capie had provided the room with all sorts of deft feminine touches including paintings, decorative lamps, strategically placed end tables, knick-knacks, lacy white linens and throw pillows, polished marble and granite tiled floors, and intricately carved moldings for the wainscoted walls. The north side of the dome held the kitchen, an intimate dining room, a master suite with a palatial sized bathroom, and an office with two seemingly genuine roll-top type desks. And Ariel-Leira was prominently hanging on a wall close to the front window, giving her a preeminent view of the scenery outside.
Each room of the home had received personal attention with decorations and finishing touches that would have been the envy of Better Homes & Gardens or House Beautiful.
Paul was pretty proud of the finished product and even more proud of his very talented and increasingly beautiful wife. He snuggled closer to her on the sofa.
“That’s Phobos, isn’t it?” Capie asked him.
Paul looked up, to the west, through the diamond dome over the house. An irregularly shaped pale grayish moon was quickly rising above the Pavonis and Arsia volcanoes into the sky.
“Yes, that’s Phobos. Compared to our moon, it’s sort of weird,” he commented reasonably.
“I remember Edgar Rice Burroughs called it Thuria in his Barsoom books. Hmm, I also remember its only 14 miles in diameter,” Capie said. “And it orbits a lot closer to Mars than the Moon does to Earth. In fact, it probably can’t be seen from the northern or southern latitudes at all.”
“I believe you’re right,” Paul said with a smile. “Not exactly a lover’s moon, is it?”
“No, but I’m glad we can see it from our house. It adds to the scenery,” she said, approvingly.
Paul smiled casually. “I’m glad you like it.”
She glanced around. “Where are the Daneels?”
“In the workrooms,” Paul replied with a yawn. “They are doing more excavation work for me, expanding the storage areas, making room for the raw ores we will need for the Scotties and chutzpahs. We will need quite a bit of work space for all the fabrication processes for the Scotties, especially. And the circuit boards, CPUs and other hardware. Oh, and more laboratory space for you and your Magic Bullet Elixir project.” He yawned again, this time longer than before. “Now that the Gathol House is done, tomorrow we will start mining the minerals for the fab of the new Scotties. Silicon, copper, gold, platinum, germanium, iron…”
“I got it, dear,” Capie interrupted him, leaning closer to put her head against his chest. “Now, to change subjects on you, I would like to ask you for some additional help in keeping this house clean. It won’t take long, not if we stay ahead of it. ‘I will clean the house on even days and you will clean it on the odd days.’”
Paul chuckled quietly, quoting the next line. “‘We’re going to clean the house every day?’”
She grinned mischievously. “‘No, only on the odd and even days.’”
“Nog and Jake Sisko,” Paul responded, correctly identifying the source of the quote. “Star Trek Deep Space Nine. For a Star Trek series, that ended a little odd, don’t you think?”
“It did. Much different than The Next Generation or Voyager,” she agreed. “But don’t change the subject. You have the odd days, I have the even ones. Right?”
When he failed to respond, she turned her head and looked over at his face.
He was sound asleep.
“Hmm.”
Ω
Day 23
“So we are only fabricating the hardware for twelve new Scotties?” Daneel 1 asked with sincere surprise.
Paul and the two Daneels were in the workshop dubbed as the Hastor Room (from Burroughs’s book A Fighting Man of Mars), examining the cardboard boxes on the workbench, each one loaded with a variety of electronic components, from resistors up to integrated circuits, all purchased on Earth and transported to Mars in the storage hold of the Sirius Effort. Indeed the only missing components for the new Scotties were the printed circuit boards, the CPUs, and various hardware pieces and mounting brackets.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Paul admitted, a bit embarrassed. “Did I forget to mention that before? Sorry. I’ve been sort of busy. To be sure, in the not too distant future, we will need the hardware for lots of Scotties. And we’ll need to foster forty-nine new lines of Scottie progenitors as well. So what we need is a nice efficient production schedule to accomplish everything in the shortest possible time frame.”
“All of which makes perfect sense, Dad,” Daneel 2 observed thoughtfully. “So why twelve…oh wait! I get it. That’s how many spare Oni talismans we have. Duh!”
“Right. The fastest way to get more Scotties online is to clone the two of you. That might take us a couple of weeks. On the other hand, it will take ten weeks to nurse new progenitors to adulthood and then start cloning them.”
“Got it. So all twelve of the new Scotties will be Daneels?” Daneel 1 asked. “Yes that makes sense as well. With fourteen of us operational, the work will go a lot faster.”
“Exactly,” Paul agreed as he rubbed his hands together, smiling. “We’ll split the fourteen Scotties into teams. A team to continue mining raw materials, a second one to process them, another one to assemble the new Scotties, and the last one to make new talismans.”
“Talismans?” Daneel 1 asked. “You aren’t going to make chutzpahs?”
But Paul just shook his head. “Not at first, no. The isotope conversions would take too long. Later, when we have a lot more Scotties up and operational, we’ll invest the time. But right now it’s more important to have as many Daneels as we can get, even if all they have are standard talismans.”
“We have almost all the hardware we need for twelve more Daneels,” Daneel 2 pointed out, waving a hand on his monitor screen at the workbench. “Except for the CPUs, some hardware and the printed circuit boards.”
“I suggest fabricating the CPUs first,” recommended Daneel 1. “And for that, we need a clean room.”
Paul smiled and nodded pleasantly. “I agree with that. Fortunately, that isn’t too difficult.”
With a wave of his hand, the walls, ceiling and floor took on a glazed look as Paul fused their surfaces, preventing them from contributing any further dust or dirt particles into the air. Then he cast a second spell that condensed all of the particulate matter and water vapor in the air down to a single small ball of mud floating gently in front of him. With a twitch of his finger, it was hurled into one of the adjacent workshops.
“I’ll take care of it later,” Paul asserted with a negligent wave of his hand.
“That’s the problem with housekeeping on Mars,” Daneel 2 whimsically complained. “Not a rug to sweep dirt under on the whole planet.”
“The CPU templates are still packed away in the Astok storeroom,” Daneel 1 said.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Paul admitted with a thoughtful frown. “You remember how much trouble we had with the original designs. Especially the heating problem and the data bus sync issues. Well, I have a couple of ideas for improvements in mind—”
“‘I know engineers! They LOVE to change things!” Daneel 1 said, quoting McCoy in Star Trek The Motion Picture.
“Indeed,” Paul responded, doing a fairly credible effort of mimicking Teal’c from StarGate SG1.
Ω
Day 28
Paul was in the Talu Workroom (from The Warlord of Mars), watching the fabrication of the first of the CPUs for the new Scotties when a six inch hologram of Capie appeared in midair in front of him. “Dinner is almost ready,” she announced.
“Hey, that’s great news,” Paul said with a grin, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of one arm. “I’ll be right up.”
The hologram smiled impishly. “I did a little improvising. It turned out pretty good, too, if I say so myself. I hope you like spaghetti?”
“As a matter of fact, it is a f
avorite of mine,” Paul replied with a chuckle. “I’m on my way!”
Their dining room table settings were most impressive. Silver plated dishware, diamond drinking glasses and titanium flatware. Synthetic flowers sat in a china vase in the middle of the table. An embroidered tablecloth sported intricate floral designs. Red and white checkerboard placemats with matching napkins lent a hint of Italian ambience to the room, not to mention the soft Italian music playing in the background.
Paul nodded in approval. “Outstanding!” he told her. “First class. From this point forward, you are the official interior decorator and chief cook!”
She bowed. “Thank you, kind sir.”
Paul held out the chair for his wife, then eagerly grabbed one for himself. He was enough of a gentleman to serve her plate first but he doubled the amount on his plate and dug in with gusto, twirling the noodles around his fork before stuffing his mouth full.
“Hmm,” he hummed, his eyes closed as he savored the flavor.
Capie grinned as she ate a bite. She didn’t say anything, just watched her husband as he ate in enjoyment.
After a few minutes, Paul slowed down a bit and grinned his appreciation at his wife.
“Best spaghetti I’ve had in ages. Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.
Paul noticed that the music was playing an Italian song he actually knew.
He hummed to it. “When the Moon hits you eye, like a—”
“You should ask for your money back,” Capie advised him.
“My money?” Paul asked, as he stuffed a roll in his mouth and chewed. “What money?”
“For your singing lessons, CR,” she replied, with a smile. “Well, I guess my husband can’t be perfect in all things.”
He gave her a mock glare. “Oh, it’s that way now, is it? Not perfect, heh? I was just getting warmed up. Listen to this!”
And he cast a small spell, changing the tune being played and then another spell aimed at his vocal cords, before letting it rip.
The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War Page 6