by Ben Bova
Amanda’s smile dimmed noticeably. “We don’t know. Not yet.”
“The Chinese robotic mission found traces of chemicals in the soil that might be prebiotic.” Before Treadway could ask, she explained, “The kind of chemicals that led to the development of life on Earth.”
Treadway prompted, “And you believe those chemicals mean that life once arose here on Mars?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out. Maybe there are still the Martian equivalent of bacteria surviving underground, living off the water from the permafrost.”
“Well, good luck searching for Martians,” Treadway cut Amanda off.
Then he turned to Connover. “And here,” he beamed his broadest smile, “is the first human being to set foot on the planet Mars, astronaut Ted Connover. A big day for you, Ted. A really big day.”
Grinning back at the reporter, Ted countered, “A big day for the human race, Steve. It wasn’t just me that set foot on Mars. It wasn’t even just the four of us. It was the thousands of people who built our spacecraft and all that went into that endeavor. It was the whole crew of engineers and scientists from half a dozen countries who guided us and monitored our mission. It was the entire human race, reaching across thirty-five million miles to extend the human frontier to another planet.”
Treadway actually swallowed visibly, looking impressed by Ted’s eloquence. “A great day,” he replied weakly.
“Damned right,” Connover said.
The wall screen that showed the interview went dark and the cameras on the floor of the studio lit up, showing Treadway sitting with his three guests.
Treadway put on his serious face and said, “A big day, indeed. But the question is, will those four brave men and women ever be able to return home again?”
Turning to Saxby, he asked, “What are their prospects, Mr. Saxby? You’re the head of NASA. What lies ahead for those four men and women on Mars?”
With a quick glance at Senator Donaldson, Saxby answered, “They have food and supplies enough to last them two years, maybe a little more.”
“Water?” Treadway asked.
“They’re going to send the water that the Fermi habitat has stored up to the Arrow, so that Commander Benson and the rest of the crew will have enough water to get back to Earth.”
“And what happens to Connover and the others on Mars?”
“Fermi has equipment to mine water from the permafrost beneath the ground’s surface.”
Ilona Klein interjected, “They should have plenty of water.”
“But their food will only last for two years?”
She nodded tightly. “That’s right.”
“And then what happens?”
Saxby said, “We had planned to send a follow-on mission to Mars next year. The hardware is almost complete. We can send a skeleton crew on that flight and bring our people home.”
Klein said, “But funding for the mission has been eliminated.” And she cast a stern eye at Donaldson.
The senator stirred himself and said, “Congress has voted to cut the funding for the follow-on mission, that’s right.”
“But why?” Treadway asked.
Donaldson unconsciously ran a hand through his dead-white hair. His face was pinched, hard-eyed as he leaned toward Treadway.
“Human spaceflight is not only incredibly expensive, Steve, it’s incredibly dangerous. We’re risking the lives of those astronauts. Haven’t we killed enough people in space? When do we admit that it’s just too risky for people to go flying off into such danger?”
Looking plainly exasperated, Saxby asked, “So you want to leave those four people stranded on Mars? Let them die there?”
“The scientists tell me that the four of them will probably get so much radiation on Mars that it’ll kill them. You send a rescue mission and you’ll find four corpses when it gets to Mars.”
“That’s not so!” Saxby snapped.
“That’s what the scientists tell me,” said Donaldson. “I’m sure they’ve told you the same thing.”
“They have not! The Fermi habitat protects them from harmful levels of radiation.”
“And what protects them when they’re outside the habitat, working on the surface? What protects them if there’s a major solar flare?”
Saxby was getting red in the face. “The radiation they’re exposed to will do nothing more than raise their chances for cancer by five percent or so.”
“So they’ll die of cancer.”
“Maybe. When they’re in their eighties or nineties.”
“If they live that long.”
“They won’t live that long if we don’t send the follow-on mission to rescue them.”
“More billions down the rathole.”
Ilona Klein raised both her hands and made a shushing gesture with them. “Let’s not lose our tempers, gentlemen.”
Treadway was delighted to see the two men losing their tempers on his show. But he nodded agreement with Klein.
“I see that we’re running out of time, people. Maybe we should just wrap up this discussion with a final statement from each of you. Senator? Your thoughts?”
Donaldson closed his eyes briefly, then said, “We’re witnessing a tragedy in the making. Those four people on Mars decided for themselves to go down to the planet’s surface. Mr. Saxby, here, and the rest of the NASA hierarchy didn’t even know about it until they were on their way down to the surface.”
Saxby started to object, but Treadway silenced him with a murmured, “You’ll have your turn next, sir.”
Donaldson went on, “Sending humans into space is expensive and very, very dangerous. We shouldn’t do it. Those four people on Mars are very brave, of course, but they’re also very foolish. The overwhelming chances are that they’ll never get back to Earth alive. Sending a rescue mission will simply endanger the lives of another group of fine, brave, but misdirected young men and women.”
Treadway waited half a second to make certain that Donaldson was finished, then turned to Saxby.
His face gray, grimacing with pain, Saxby said, “We can’t sit by and let those four men and women die on Mars. That’s all there is to it. We’ve got to save them. Period.”
Treadway saw that the floor director was frantically slicing his forefinger across his throat, the signal that their time was up.
He looked into the camera and said, “Should we try to save the explorers on Mars or would we be endangering more lives? That’s up to you, the people, to decide.
“Steven Treadway reporting.”
November 5, 2035
21:36 Universal Time
Mars Landing
Fermi Habitat
“It is much smaller than I thought it would be,” said Catherine as she stepped from the airlock section of the habitat into the living quarters that would be their home for the next year or more.
The four Mars explorers had just finished their brief interview with Steven Treadway, an awkward session made tedious by the quarter-hour lapse between questions and answers.
Now they were going into their new home.
Connover said, “Don’t forget that this is only the basic part of what’s been designed to be a modular, expandable camp. This is only the habitation module. The science modules are supposed to come on the follow-on.”
“It’s still pretty small,” Amanda said. She looked down, doubtful, the adrenaline from their landing and interview gone, spent.
They had all removed their helmets and gloves for the interview with Treadway. Now they forgot about mission protocol and moved into the living quarters still in their dust-spattered surface suits, tracking a fine layer of red grit wherever they stepped.
This central part of the habitat resembled one of the modules of the International Space Station. It was a hard-walled cylinder that contained their sleeping quarters, the galley, and the computer and communications hardware. Like the Arrow, this section of the habitat would serve as their radiation shelter; it, too, was lined with
water to absorb incoming cosmic rays.
The inflatable wings outside the central module deployed once the habitat signaled that it had landed intact. The wings, made from an amorphous material kept warm until it was deployed, hardened in the cold atmosphere of Mars, self-rigidizing so that they would not need air pressure to maintain their shape.
Catherine asked, “Ted, where do we start?”
“You three start unlatching the boxes and moving them into the wings. I’ll check out the life support, power and communications systems. I want to make sure everything’s working the way it should before we give Bee the ‘all clear’ for departure.”
McPherson nodded. “Yeah. I’d hate to find out we had a plumbing break after Bee’s left orbit.”
Amanda complained, “Ted, it’s cold in here. Can you turn up the heat?”
Remembering that Amanda had spent a good part of her career studying extremophile life forms in Antarctica, Ted grinned as he replied, “Don’t want our South Pole explorer to feel cold. The habitat’s been running on minimum power for two years. The heat will come up soon, now that the reactor’s been activated.”
Pointing to their boots, he added, “First of all, though, let’s get these boots off and stored in the airlock. See the dirt we’ve already tracked in? Somebody’s going to have to vacuum that up.”
“Not me,” Catherine and Amanda said in unison.
McPherson laughed. “A man may work from sun to sun,” he quoted the old adage, “but a woman’s work is never done.” Then he added, “Because they wait for a man to do it for them.”
Catherine gave him a fierce scowl, but she could only hold it for a second. “I’ll do the vacuuming,” she said. “This time. Then we take turns.”
Ted nodded. Home sweet home, he thought. One big happy family.
But he heard the wind of Mars sighing past outside, and he knew that once the Sun went down the temperature out there would begin plummeting toward one hundred degrees below zero. I’d better check out the heating system first of all.
November 7, 2035
16:15 Universal Time
Mars Landing Plus 2 Days
Arrow Command Center
Sitting alone in the command center, Benson watched the surface of Mars sliding beneath his orbiting ship, waiting to see the thin blue layer of atmosphere become visible just before the Sun dipped below the horizon. Thin as an onionskin, he thought, remembering that Earth’s atmosphere didn’t look much thicker from orbit.
The sight reminded him of how fragile their existence was. On Earth that thin film of atmosphere was a protective sheet that nurtured and sustained life. But here on Mars it was another part of an alien environment that could kill an unprotected human, too thin to breathe even if it was pure oxygen, which it was not. Mars’ atmosphere—what there was of it—was almost entirely carbon dioxide. Unbreathable. And too thin to protect the surface from incoming meteoroids.
Benson sighed inwardly. There was no sense denying that he was jealous of Ted for taking what was supposed to be his role. But on the other hand, he knew that it had to be this way.
In just a few days, if all went according to plan, Ted would send up a collection of rocks gathered by Hi and Catherine aboard the lander’s ascent stage, flying on autopilot. And the vital water from the Fermi habitat.
A stray thought wandered into his mind. Will Amanda find anything she’ll want to send back to Earth? Some evidence that life once existed down there?
Whatever, he said to himself, once we pump the water into our tanks and remove whatever rocks they’ve sent up, we crash the Hercules on the other side of the planet from the habitat. Give the seismologists back on Earth a sampling of data about Mars’ internal structure. If the seismometers in the habitat register any data.
And then it’s time to go home. It’s going to be a long trip, in more ways than just the number of days they’d be in flight. I hope Mikhail makes it all they way. Taki says his chances are only fifty-fifty. But at least we’ll have enough water to make it.
The Arrow was too far from the habitat to see it from orbit. I’d need a telescope anyway, it’s too small to see with the unaided eye.
“Thanks, Ted,” Benson murmured. “I just hope your sacrifice won’t be in vain.”
And the Arrow slipped into the darkness of the night side of Mars.
November 8, 2035
12:10 Universal Time
Mars Landing Plus 3 Days
Mars Base Fermi
Standing in the airlock, McPherson called through the open hatch, “Come on, Catherine. It’s time to get out and collect those samples.”
He was smiling inside his suit helmet, knowing full well that he sounded like a stereotypical husband waiting for his wife to get ready for a trip outdoors. Some things remain the same, Hi thought, even on another planet. Fortunately for him, Catherine had no problem with his stereotypical behavior. She had her own stereotype.
“Be patient, mon tresor,” she replied.
McPherson’s grin threatened to split his beard. Mon tresor, he thought. She calls me her treasure.
He looked through the open hatch at the module that served as their “all purpose” room. It was here that they had spent their first two days on Mars, storing their supplies, eating, talking, and, when the cold Martian night set in, sleeping. Hi frowned when he thought about sleeping in those damned hammocks. It was one thing to put up with the hammocks for thirty days, as the mission plan originally called for. But two years? And there was no privacy at all; the four of them slept within arm’s reach of one another.
When are we going to make love? Then an idea occurred to him. Maybe here in the airlock. Close the inner hatch and it’s totally private in here. Not even a window. Or better yet, the auxiliary airlock, on the other side of the habitat. Nobody will be using that one; it’s just for emergencies.
Well, he told himself, this is an emergency if there ever was one.
Catherine rounded the corner from the right inflated wing of the habitat, in suit and helmet, with Amanda close behind her, in her coveralls. The right wing was where they had stored their food and general supplies. For some reason it seemed colder in the right wing than the left, though McPherson hadn’t felt really warm since they had landed.
Connover approached from the left wing, coffee mug in hand. Hiram had quickly learned that Ted wasn’t quite human in the morning until he’d had at least one cup of coffee. Hi hoped the supply of the stuff they had brought with them would last the whole time they were on Mars. He didn’t know if their medical supplies included caffeine pills.
“Okay,” Ted said, jovially, “now’s the time for you geologists to earn your keep. You’re scheduled for a three-hour EVA this morning. You stay within walking distance of the habitat. Then an extra hour for you to transfer the samples you’ve collected to the Hercules ascent stage.”
Standing in the airlock, McPherson thought, Tell me something I don’t know, Ted.
Connover plowed ahead. “Tomorrow you’ve got another EVA with a similar timeline. After that, Amanda and I will go out to the Hercules and prep her for launch back to the Arrow. Are you good with that?”
“So a total of six hours is all we get to collect samples?” McPherson complained. “And how much did this trip cost the taxpayers?”
“You’ll have plenty of time to go rock hunting after Bee starts the Arrow back to Earth,” Connover replied.
McPherson understood what Ted left unsaid. The rocks that go back with the Arrow have a decent chance of getting into the hands of geologists on Earth. The rocks we pick up afterward might never leave Mars.
Amanda broke into his thoughts. “Remember, you two have to wait inside the airlock while the UV lamps decontaminate you. We don’t want Earth microbes polluting the Mars environment.”
“As if they could survive out there,” McPherson grumbled. “It’s below freezing, there’s no oxygen in the air, no water.”
“Practically no oxygen or water vapor,” Amanda c
orrected. “We can’t take chances.”
“We understand,” said Catherine, as she stepped over the lip of the inner airlock hatch.
“Remember those bacteria that survived more than two years on the Moon, stowing away on board one of the Surveyor probes,” Amanda reminded them. “No air at all, no water, yet they stayed alive.”
“Stubborn little buggers,” McPherson admitted.
Waggling a stubby finger at his tall, lanky form, Amanda insisted, “Well, we don’t want any of those stubborn little bugs infecting Mars.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said McPherson, with the proper degree of contrition in his voice.
Amanda was smiling as the airlock’s inner hatch swung closed. The panel next to the outer hatch showed a green light, indicating that the airlock was filled with air at normal pressure, and a blue light which signaled that the ultraviolet lamps were on.
McPherson fidgeted impatiently.
Standing beside him in the narrow compartment, Catherine murmured, “Patience, mon amour.”
She had been trying to teach Hi some conversational French, but he was not a fast learner. He had decided, though, that taking time to learn his wife’s language was a good way to keep his mind diverted from the struggle for survival they were facing.
“Oui,” he replied.
Catherine laughed, a delightful sound in his ears. “Conversation in French. Merveilleux.”
He grinned back at her.
Then the blue light winked off and they heard the clatter of the pump sucking the air out of the chamber. The green light turned amber. The sound of the pump grew fainter and higher-pitched. Then it quit altogether and the panel’s red light showed that the airlock was now in vacuum.
Clicking off his suit radio, Hi leaned close enough to Catherine so that their helmets touched. “I was thinking,” he whispered, his voice carried to her ears by conduction, “that we could turn the auxiliary airlock into a honeymoon suite.”
She looked surprised, but then she smiled and nodded. “Tonight.”