The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

  So far the answer was, nothing much. Raoul and Marc undoubtedly indulged in gaudy fantasy lives and masturbated often (she had glimpsed a porno video on Raoul's slate reader), but in the public areas of the hab they were at ease, all business.

  There was no room for modesty in the hab, four people in a small condo for two years. They had unconsciously adopted the Japanese ways of creating privacy without walls. They didn't stare at each other, and didn't intrude on another's private space unless by mutual agreement.

  Nobody had thought much about what the hab would be like if the newlyweds—well, it had been well over two years now, most of that time in space—got into a serious spat. Maybe on the half-year flight home they would find out. She would worry about that then; for right now—

  Viktor was already in the cabin when she arrived, fairly humming. She kissed him warmly. “I had a wonderful time in the lab. How was your day?”

  “My afternoon, you mean. You forgot we had lunch together? At newest bistro on Mars? Airbus Café?”

  “I forgeet noothing, you old Rooussian bear.” She liked to think that her accent was maybe lousy, but funny. At least he had never complained.

  She looked around the room fondly. Add a TV set, a couch, and some beer, and they could be in one of those Hong Kong stacked microapartments. It was amazing how good it felt to be working again.

  Viktor must've sensed her mood right away. “Okay. Tell me about Marsmat. What is it?”

  “I sectioned a few pieces and looked at them with every microscope I have. It's a complex biofilm, all right, with layers of different types of organisms—anaerobic one-celled organisms, I guess.”

  “Has had billions of years to work.”

  “Subsurface life on Earth isn't as advanced as this, though.”

  “Conditions different.”

  “Ummm, yeah. Here the valiant anaerobes didn't have to fight a poisonous atmosphere of nasty oxygen.”

  “How advanced is this Marsmat? Or should call Marshroom?” His eyes twinkled.

  “Leave terminology to the pros, please. The mat seems to be more advanced than a standard Earth biofilm, but maybe it only looks that way because it's bigger. There's a system of channels for transporting fluids, so even the interior cells get nutrients delivered and waste taken away. Like a communal circulatory system.”

  “Where is pump?”

  “There doesn't have to be one.”

  “How does water move around?”

  “Well, I think it moves vertically, not around.”

  “How do you get water to top of mat without pump? You said there was hundreds of meters of it.”

  “If the water column is unbroken, evaporation from the top pulls the water up. It's just like a tree. Evaporation from the leaves sucks the water up from the roots.”

  “So mat is flat tree?”

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “That's not a bad way to look at it. The channels have some kind of stiffening in them. They remind me of xylem tubes—” She stopped at his slightly strained look.

  “Am engineer.”

  “Okay. Botany lesson. A tree has a lot of narrow tubes—the xylem—that transport water up to the top—darn near four hundred feet for the tallest redwoods. The xylem tubes are dead, so the water isn't pumped up, it's pulled up—passively. Biology taking advantage of physics. It would work the same way here, only because of the .38 g's, a tree on Mars could be much taller.”

  “How tall is mat?”

  “Don't know. We were down close to one klick and the structures were getting bigger. There was mat material way up in the vent, within a few tens of meters of the top. So, it extended several hundred meters at least.”

  “Is pretty tall, even on Mars.”

  “Well, I'm just working with ballpark estimates here. Plus I don't know for sure how the water transport works. For example, there were cablelike structures running vertically and horizontally—looked like a circulatory system. Maybe they were full of water tubes. And—”

  From the kitchen came the sound of the dinner bell.

  She stopped, suddenly out of gas. “Gosh I'm hungry.”

  Viktor laughed. “Pavlov was right. Ring dinner bell, get hungry.”

  She savored the air. “Mmmm, we're having goulash. Marc spent hours picking veggies. Let's go.”

  She never got around to asking him about his day in the ERV.

  22

  MEALS AFTER A DAY OF OUTSIDE WORK WERE SERIOUS MATTERS. MARC had concocted a delicious beef dish loaded with greenhouse produce, a variant of his now-famous Mars Goulash. His original recipe had been an instant success, on both planets. Millions of people ate it regularly, and demanded more. The crew's subsequent book, Recipes from Mars, was the hottest-selling cookbook ever, part of the Mars fever that gripped Earth since their mission began. Never mind that most of the recipes were from their mothers, reworked by the NASA nutritionists.

  The first ten minutes were mostly sincere compliments uttered through mouthfuls of it.

  “Say,” she said to perk up matters, “I'm figuring out how to announce the vent discovery.”

  Marc said, “Let ol’ Axy's people handle it.”

  “Not done right, you get more woo-woo stories,” Viktor said.

  “You mean worse than that one about you?” Raoul grinned. “RUSSIAN STARTS DIAMOND MINES.”

  Julia said, “Remember that first month? ASTRONAUTS VISIT FACE ON MARS.”

  Marc added, “Followed by ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEMPLE FOUND!”

  Raoul shook his head in disbelief. “After you and Julia turned up those fossil cells, it was DINOSAUR BONES IN MARS ROCKS.“

  Viktor said, “Of course right away followed by COVER-UP OF ANCIENT DINOSAURS FROM MARS.”

  Marc said, “Those were the real woo-woo press, though. Media crap. But the Tokyo Times had that big feature SAND SKIING ON MARXIAN SLOPES, with pictures. All from a shot of me falling down! Just digitally add skis and go with it.”

  “Remember the Frankfurter Zeitung piece METEOR ATTACK! when we had a tiny hole?” Raoul said.

  “The news shows played the sound of it for days,” Julia recalled. “And then somebody changed that little whistle into a pop song background and paid Axelrod royalties.”

  Viktor nodded. “No money made from MARS QUAKES one, though. Maybe because no quake.”

  Raoul said, “The truth never stops them. You guys forgotten FIRST BABY DUE ON MARS?”

  Julia laughed. “That came right before ABORTION RIFT SPLITS MARS COUPLE.”

  Viktor added, “Then was DIVORCE ON MARS? CONSORTIUM NOT TALKING.”

  Marc said, “Hey, they didn't let any of us off easy. LOVE TRIANGLES RUMORED AT GUSEV, that was in some Chinese paper.”

  Raoul grimaced. “It never ends. This last week, my media summary had CONSORTIUM TO AIRBUS: ‘WE'LL SHOOT YOU DOWN’ and NUKE ROCKET STERILIZES AIRBUS CREW. And that was after my gofer program supposedly edited out the real crap.”

  “How can a program know nonsense?” Julia asked. “Or the public? When Marc found ice, some supposedly respectable show features BURIED ANCIENT CANALS DISCOVERED. Science gets treated like candy.”

  Raoul said, “Axelrod told me once that journalism is the first draft of history. I hope not for us.”

  Viktor said soberly, “Our world has not enough to excite it. So it makes up things.”

  Julia nodded intently. “They have the usual wars and scandals, celebs and accidents. But what's to do? Shave a fraction of a second off the hundred-meter race, if you devote your younger life to it. Be the hundredth person to climb a certain high peak—never mind Everest, the crown is a trash heap now. Most of the people in our own countries are just sitting at home and watching the twenty-first century on vid.”

  “Not us,” Marc said quietly.

  “Thank goodness!” Julia said. “Maybe being here so long makes me see it better, but geez, how trivial most lives are.”

  “Not here,” Raoul said. “Here, it's desperate.”

  �
��And now we are desperate to leave it,” Viktor said.

  They ate in silence for a while, Julia still thinking. Marc switched the music to Mozart, their signal for dessert—strawberry shortcake, her favorite. When she could tear her mind away from her stomach, she looked over at Raoul. She could tell by his drawn, solemn face that it had been a long day and he was distracted. Precisely because it was all-important, nobody had mentioned his repairs.

  As they finished up, Raoul announced, “We should all listen to Earthside's latest.”

  “Spare me,” Viktor said. “You look, I lie down.”

  “No, I replayed some of this, it's important.”

  They settled in before the big screen. She and Marc had filed the obligatory story of the first social call on Mars, with all their footage. The first item in the priority vid was a squeezed, edited, and enhanced version. Raoul wanted to speed through it but the others wanted to see how they came off—not bad, of course, with emphasis on beaming faces rather than the fuming pingos.

  Then came an anxious Axelrod. His yachting jacket was a bit rumpled and he looked worried.

  “Your coverage was aces on the Airbus meeting. Got to let you know, though, that all of us here want to get your impressions of what they're planning to do. Any chance they'll finish their recon in a few months? I mean, and get all that ice melted and into their tanks? Raoul, Viktor, the engineers here need your assessment of their capability.”

  “How can?” Viktor talked back uselessly to the screen. “We see no gear, no hoses or mining equipment.”

  “Tell him to ask his spy guys for that,” Marc joined in.

  “—and keep track of how they're setting up. I mean, are they uncorking one of those inflatable habitats we heard about?” Axelrod flashed on the screen photos of trials done with blowup habs, one deployed in orbit.

  “Never get me in one of those,” Raoul said. “No radiation shielding.” He had been strict about sandbagging the hab roof on the first full day after their landing. He had even strung more over the lip, to get more coverage. Viktor had remarked to Julia that after all, Raoul was hoping to have more children.

  “—and their supplies. Point is, my guys, we're wondering down here if Airbus would maybe do an end run around you. Take off maybe a month or two after you do, but catch up on the return. With enough water, the engineers tell me, they could.”

  “Impossible,” Raoul said. “They might have the tank volume, but mining that ice, no. It's a big job.”

  “—so we're depending on you to fill us in on everything you see. Go over there, sniff around. Invite them to the hab, big dinner and all. Maybe give them the rest of your booze, see if that loosens some tongues. I'd say, get them off by themselves for that, so they're not under Chen's watchful eye alla time.” Axelrod smiled shrewdly. “See, we're putting out the story that we welcome these latecomers and all. But I smell a rat.”

  “He's off-base,” Raoul said.

  “True,” Viktor said. “They cannot do all the Accords want, plus make their water reaction mass. Not in few months.”

  But Axelrod wasn't nearly through. On the screen popped the “pork chop” plots that showed the orbitally ordained launch windows. A big broad spot at the center was the minimum-energy zone. The window was broad, but its edges steep. Just above the spot was a high ridgeline when the energy costs became huge.

  A glance told the story: Leave Mars between late January and late March, the dates laid out at the bottom. For these there were orbits for which the energy required to reach Earth was at the absolute minimum. On the left-hand axis were the arrival times on Earth.

  “Now, I know you got all this in mind, Viktor, but just lemme see if I'm right here—”

  Deciding on a trajectory was in principle simple. Pick a launch date, draw a straight line up into the minimum-energy spot. Depending on exactly which long ellipse Viktor chose, there were different arrival dates at Earth. Draw a horizontal line across the contours to the left-hand axis, tell your loved ones when to expect you in their sky.

  “—if I'm readin’ this right, you guys could launch right now and hit damn near the minimum. The contour at January 22, in a couple days, is just a bit higher than the absolute minimum. I read it to be eight kilometers per second of velocity needed. That's versus waiting for the bargain rate on March 14, uh, 6.1 kilometers per second. Now, I know that's not a minor difference. My guys tell me so we're talking maybe seventy-five percent more fuel needed. Not a small order.”

  “Energy goes as the velocity squared. You bet is not small,” Viktor said.

  “Impossible,” Raoul said flatly.

  Axelrod came from a business culture where much could be bought with smiling self-assurance, Julia realized. He was emphatically not a scientist. Deep down, she suspected, he believed that nature could be cajoled into behaving differently if you just found the right approach. He looked grave, then earnest, then respectful—the same sort of lightning-quick repertory she had seen from him in their first solo meeting. She did not doubt that he genuinely felt all those things, either. She had watched him carefully for years now, under the unique need to fathom his true meaning when she could not immediately interrogate him.

  Finally, he beamed with renewed confidence. “But somewhere between now and March 14, there's a place where you guys can launch. I dunno where. I leave that to you.” He leaned toward the camera, arms crossed. “But as soon as you can get off, do. Beat Airbus back, if they're planning to try a smash-and-grab operation. Hell, you get home quicker, anyway!”

  Raoul froze Axelrod's confident smile. “So he has learned some orbital mechanics.”

  “Not very well,” Viktor said. “Those total flight lengths, the diagonals—they show even Axelrod that if we leave earlier, we take more time.”

  Marc chuckled. “Maybe he thought we wouldn't notice?”

  “No, I doubt that,” Julia said. “He's not a detail thinker.”

  “You got it,” Marc said.

  “He's hiding a lot of anxiety,” Julia said.

  “Has thirty billion dollars on the table,” Viktor said.

  “So he probably figures the earlier you leave, the sooner you get there,” Raoul said. “He didn't notice that the earlier launch dates are all further above the ‘200 DAYS’ diagonal.”

  “We leave earlier, take longer, arrive little earlier,” Viktor pondered.

  “How's our incoming velocity?” Raoul said. “Can't read that from these pork chop plots.”

  “Will have to check,” Viktor said. “All would bring us in with small speed. Between them all, is maybe one kilometer per second difference.”

  “Any trouble with our aeroshell?” Raoul pressed him.

  Viktor shook his head thoughtfully. “No, is rated high. We can burn off the delta vee easily. Like coming back from moon almost.”

  “Okay then,” Raoul said decisively. “We can do what he wants.”

  “Not so fast,” Viktor said. “Matter of margin here. I like to have extra fuel, maybe twenty percent.”

  Raoul said, “That's a lot—”

  “For ship standing on Mars for years, not so much,” Viktor shot back.

  Raoul glanced at the others. “We could drop our mass load some.”

  “Not much,” Marc said. “It's just food, water, mostly.”

  “Personal effects, it's maybe enough to make a one percent difference,” Raoul said.

  “If drop all, could be,” Viktor said.

  Julia could tell Viktor was sitting back, letting the talk run to see what would come out. Even she could not read him all the time. Maybe that was the signature of a good captain. “I've got very little disposable.”

  “The most we have, masswise, is Marc's samples,” Raoul said, not looking at Marc.

  “Hey, the Mars Accords require those,” Marc said.

  “Not all of them,” Raoul said.

  “Damn near.” Marc stood up. “I'm not compromising—”

  “No point to argue,” Viktor said smoothly.
“I set safety margin. Marc, I need the total mass you're carrying back anyway.”

  Marc bridled. “You're not thinking—”

  “Right, am not thinking. Just counting. Let me see total mass from everybody.”

  “You're going to shave the margin that close?” Julia asked wonderingly.

  “I think about it.”

  “Next we'll be discussing Raoul's big old coffee mug,” she said in an attempt at lightness.

  It failed badly. Raoul's face clouded.

  Julia said, “Just kidding. What bothers me about this talk is that I've got plenty to do on the vent life. I need a month, easily, to—”

  “Plenty of time to do that on the trip home,” Raoul said.

  “I can't, not and keep to the bio protocols. I'd have to work in the little onboard glove box, and there's not nearly enough room in there to carry out my experiments on—”

  “Science isn't the issue here,” Raoul said. “Let ‘em do that Earth-side, then.”

  “The samples will die! I don't know if they'll even survive tonight—”

  “If they don't, that settles the issue, then,” Raoul said.

  She made herself take a deep breath. “It does not. I might want to go back down there, do more—”

  “No more trips,” Viktor said. “Raoul is right, science over.”

  “It's too early to say that! I—”

  “It is too late,” Viktor said calmly, turning to her. “Game now is get back fast.”

  “If we leave the big questions unanswered—”

  “Airbus can answer,” Viktor said. “They have time.”

  “But, but—” She could not see a way around him. “Look, let's hear the rest of Axelrod's message.”

  This was pretty transparent, but then, they did not know that she had specifically sent Axelrod a quick question about when to announce her discovery, tacked onto the Airbus reception footage.

  Sure enough, Axelrod quickly moved to answer. After a little cheerleading, he said, “Oh yes, Julia. I'm not going to go anywhere with the life story. Sure, it's huge, but I've got lawyers on my tail here. The Planetary Protocol people, they'll go ballistic when we announce. I want to do that after you guys have lifted off. No stopping you then—and I think that's what's at stake here. Somebody—hell, maybe the Feds—will slap an injunction on me, try to stop you coming back at all. I mean it. You got no idea what this circus is like, back here.”