The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

  38

  FEBRUARY 5, 2018

  THEY MADE A LITTLE PROCESSION, A SHORT CORTEGE, SHE THOUGHT, following the dune buggy and its burden to the site.

  With unspoken agreement they walked slowly up a low rise. A crimson sunset spread across the sky. Raoul brought the backhoe down the slope below the stone cairn they had erected early in the mission, at the christening of the base.

  Julia glanced up at Claudine walking ahead, her suit still a deep blue, barely dusted with the pink stain of Mars. She walked tentatively, bouncing, uncertain.

  They came upon the little perimeter circle of rocks. In the ensuing months, small pink sand dunes had invaded, piling up skirts on the lee side of the cairn. Raoul dug a pit with the backhoe on the buggy's rear. Viktor and Marc picked up some nearby rocks and started building two more cairns. As they worked, Julia recorded the scene on vid. No one spoke.

  She thought about all the little outposts on Earth, each with its tiny cemetery. Cemeteries behind ghost towns, underground catacombs dug out of rock, mummies in desert caves, single graves lost forever in the wilderness.

  The act of remembering their dead connected them to all the rest of humanity, down through uncountable myriad millennia and across a vast black star-studded void. How long had people been doing this? she wondered. From before we were fully human. Neanderthals, unnamed, lost hominids …

  This mission, cloaked in technology and driven by both greed and desire and something as old as the species—it, too, was part of an unstoppable exploring impulse that had conquered an entire planet, and now was starting on a second one. “Wagon Train in Space,” some wag had described an old sci-fi TV series. An apt description for them as well.

  They were starting the cemetery behind Mars City.

  Boot Hill.

  The cairns were nearly complete. Raoul finished and they laid the bodies to rest, wrapped in white parachute fabric. They stood and watched the backhoe push the ruddy dirt over the first humans to lie beneath the soil of another world.

  When he was done Raoul handed two flat rocks to Claudine, who placed one at the top of each little tower. Through her helmet plate she looked dazed. She was probably cold, too. Cold, and in shock. As she stood up the sun slid below the sharp horizon. A dust devil churned across the dunes to the north. Mars went on in its endless cycles.

  They all stepped back and tidied up the rock circle. Marc put a hand on Claudine's shoulder. “Come on, let's get something hot to drink.”

  “I have something hard, too,” Viktor said. “Right time for it.”

  They returned to the hab, showered down, dressed warmly in cotton sweats, and headed for the round metal table in the common room. Raoul and Marc were the first there, preparing five mugs of steaming cocoa. They all knew what was coming.

  Julia relished the comforting sweetness of cocoa. They had sat here hundreds of times, eating, working, talking, arguing—even making love when Raoul and Marc were away in the rover, she recalled somewhat guiltily. Now suddenly she was aware that it was all coming to an end, that this was one of the last times they would be here. Already the feeling had changed, with the addition of Claudine. Soon this whole immense experience would all be reduced to memories.

  Viktor stared at the steam lazing up from his mug. “Well, what next, eh?” He gave a short sharp laugh. “Mars is full of surprises once again.”

  Marc looked solemn. “Right, what happens now?”

  Claudine shook her head. “I'll have to return with you. Forfeit the prize, of course. Airbus has lost.” She spoke slowly, struggling to control her accent.

  They exchanged glances as a pause extended itself.

  Raoul was tracing imaginary circles on the table with his fist—somber, even grim. Julia saw that he took the ERV failure as a deep personal rebuke and was too embarrassed to speak.

  Claudine sat woodenly.

  Julia tried to assess the extent of her shock. She didn't seem to be grasping the situation very well. Had she forgotten that the ERV couldn't fly?

  “Bottom line is, we can't lift off, you can't crew nuclear rocket alone,” Viktor said carefully. “No mission is going home.”

  “Yeah,” Marc said wryly. “A real Martian standoff.”

  There was another pause. They looked at each other around the table: dusty, worn, ragged, all.

  It came to her in a flash, then. “No, not a standoff, a Martian solution. We have to combine forces.”

  Viktor looked skeptical but supported her with, “Is obvious, yes, but how?”

  “Well, for starters, at least one of us has to stay here,” said Julia.

  “What!”

  “No.”

  With a waving hand she cut off the beginning protests. “There's no other way and we all know it. We're still too many for the available transportation.”

  Claudine looked alarmed. “But what about food?”

  “There are more than enough supplies—the ERV is fully stocked for six people for a return trip of seven months. And there are two extra people's supplies on the nu— on the Airbus ship.”

  Claudine cut in, “Gerda's and Chen's.”

  “Right, in your larder. We even have all their extra gear. So no problem there.”

  Claudine said slowly, “Sums to … forty-two person months of supplies on your ERV, plus twenty-four person months on my ship. Which we use if three people return.”

  “But you said one person has to stay,” said Marc.

  “One person is too vulnerable.” Julia looked around the table.

  “I agree,” said Claudine. “One, he would die out here.” She said slowly, “But how long do they have to stay?”

  “Until a … a rescue mission reaches them.” Viktor was not liking the idea any better this time.

  Julia took a deep breath. “Earth can launch another ERV in three months. It can be here six months later with fresh supplies—if needed.”

  “Will need,” Viktor said. “Stuff wears out.”

  “Right. But we can't lift off for Earth for another twenty-six months from now, at the next minimum fuel window.”

  Raoul said sourly, “Hell of a note. The rescue ship is too small to carry the survivors.” He laughed mirthlessly, a sharp, dry chuckle.

  Claeudine looked up sharply. “You know all that was not our idea. We were never a rescue mission, never wished you to have trouble. Maybe some at Airbus, but”not us. No one asked the crew before … before somebody started that idea. It was Airbus managers talking, and maybe not even them. They claim not to know who started it.”

  “Well, they were right after all,” said Julia. She looked deep into her empty mug, as if the solution could be found there.

  Finally, Marc said slowly, “I accept your argument. Three go back, two stay.” He looked around the table. “How does anyone else feel about this?”

  She could see a growing acceptance in their faces.

  “It's not all bad, this solution,” she said. “For one thing, it forces Earth to launch another mission. That's what we all want, isn't it? Not to abandon another planet, like we did the moon, after a brief fling. But to move toward colonization.”

  Marc nodded. “I'm not sure we thought of ourselves as the colonists.” He paused. “I sure didn't.”

  “Neither me,” Viktor said.

  Marc continued, as if provisionally trying out the idea, “So how do we pick? Short straws again? Volunteers?”

  “Should be captain's orders.” Viktor spread his hands.

  “True,” Julia said, letting him feel his way through this.

  Viktor shook his head slowly, staring straight ahead. “Decision is too hard.”

  Claudine nodded without speaking.

  As if from a great distance, Julia heard herself saying, “I'll stay.”

  Viktor was stunned. “Why would you …?”

  It was suddenly so clear. “Random picks won't cut it. We have to have the best team possible to both go and stay. Claudine has to go back, she has the only experience on
the nuke. Learning all those systems will be hard enough for us.” She paused. “I suspect Raoul is too valuable not to have on the ship.”

  Raoul started, “Thanks, but I screwed this up and—”

  “No, you're essential, is true,” Viktor said.

  Julia rushed ahead. “And besides, he has a new family waiting for him. After that…” She shrugged. “But look, I can't make any decision except for myself.”

  “Why would you want to stay?” asked Marc. “Your Marsmat?”

  She frowned. “I guess so. I don't think I'm ready to never see it again. And I got a funny feeling up at the … the cemetery this afternoon. I suddenly felt like a resident in a frontier settlement, not an astronaut on a space junket.” She looked at Viktor. “Sorry, I should've said something to you first.”

  “Maybe we should all think about this some more before we make any final decisions,” said Marc.

  “We don't have time anymore,” said Raoul.

  “We should inform Earth, at any rate. Maybe they'll have an idea,” said Marc.

  “Earth can suggest, but we decide. New law of space,” said Viktor.

  Heads nodded. There was a little pause. Julia felt curiously light, but she could almost see the stresses coursing through the others.

  “I'm curious about one thing. Why did you say you had a Martian solution?” asked Marc.

  She was relieved at the chance to talk about science for a bit. “I'm just feeling my way through this, but I think the Marsmat is not a single organism at all. It's a cooperative community of different kinds of single-celled organisms. Like a stromatolite, maybe, or a primitive jellyfish.”

  “Remind me about stromatolites,” said Raoul.

  She was surprised at such a question from Raoul, who was never much interested in biology. She guessed he needed a break from the intense conversation they were having.

  “Stromatolites are huge living mounds, basically layers of blue-green algae and silt. As a life-form they're very old, maybe three billion years. At least there are wavy layers in rocks of that age that may be their fossils.”

  “Earth's past is Mars’ present?” asked Claudine.

  “Oh, they're not just fossils. I've seen living ones on the west coast near Perth, just off the beach in the shallows of the Indian Ocean.”

  “They've been around for three billion years? Mon Dieu. I had no idea.”

  “Well, my point is not their age, but how they survive. Anaerobes with different metabolic requirements can work in tandem, one thriving on the output of the one before it. It's a community survival strategy.”

  Raoul asked, “Adopted because Mars was under stress from its beginning?”

  “Makes sense. In a way, it's the old Earth solution too. Before the oxygen-using multicellular forms raised the competitive stakes, the anaerobes used a different system. Well, in fact they still do. Bacteria faced with a poison in their environment don't have to wait around for a random mutation that would help them out. They just pick up a useful gene from another bacterium. And not just other strains of the same kind, but even species not closely related. That's why antibiotic resistance spreads so rapidly.”

  The others looked a bit blank, so she finished up hurriedly, “I'm just saying that the anaerobes work together instead of at cross-purposes. Instead of competing with different organisms in a race to get ahead, they all move forward together. I think that's what the Marsmat has done. That's what we're doing too.”

  “An incredibly positive spin, that,” said Marc, smiling. “You've learned a lot from your trivid career so far.”

  “That's not what I was trying to do, sugarcoat it.” Julia looked at him sharply. She glanced over at Viktor. His face was unreadable.

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but we're up against the wall here. What other choice do we have?” asked Marc.

  Raoul looked up. “Yeah, but who's number two?” He gestured with his head at the Earth-Mars chronometer mounted on the wall. A long, tense silence. “Anybody volunteer?”

  Around the table Julia saw compressed lips, worried eyes.

  Raoul pressed. “This is bigger than us, y'know. Anybody wanna call Earth?”

  Marc nodded. “Can't put it off forever.” He started to get up.

  “Before we call we should have the solution,” said Viktor. “I have decided. Captain should stay with his ship. Claudine leaves with hers, I stay here with mine.”

  “You sure?” Raoul gaped. “We could find some other way to decide.”

  Viktor shrugged. “Besides, someone needs to keep Julia out of trouble.”

  Julia's heart soared. Quick tears stung her eyes, spilled over and started down her cheeks. She bent her head and furtively brushed them away with her napkin. She desperately wanted to rush over and hug him, but made herself sit still.

  She really was going to stay. Another two years! Until this moment the idea had seemed remote, unreal.

  “Okay. Are we agreed?” Marc looked around the table. Heads nodded in assent. “Then let's call Earth.”

  The others walked to the comm center. Julia and Viktor stayed. She took his hand, pressed it to her cheek. It felt so good to touch him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? I didn't mean to maneuver you—”

  “You wouldn't come here without me, back on Earth. How do you say it? Is payback time.”

  “Is that your only reason? You don't want to stay even a little bit for Mars?”

  He shrugged, then smiled. “Is only a little worse than Siberia in winter. We belong together, in Siberia or Arctic or Mars.”

  She looked at him. “I didn't want to stay without you.” She realized her cheeks were wet again.

  The moment stretched between them.

  “Is truly settled then. We stay.”

  She nodded. “Mars City.”

  “Now comes hard part. We have to convince Earth.”

  “You thought this was easy?” She blew her nose.

  “No. Was not easy. But Earth will be harder. You'll see.”

  Viktor was right. Axelrod demanded that “his” crew commandeer the nuke so the Consortium could win. His battery of lawyers would argue that it was like marine salvage, he said.

  When the crew resisted he became infuriated. Claudine relayed this to Airbus, who called it the first instance of Martian piracy. They argued that it was the reverse, and the Consortium had lost.

  Legions of lawyers began arming for their paper wars.

  All five were stunned, debating over a long dinner how to handle it. Julia argued forcefully that they reject all “Earth way” solutions with only one winner, and propose the “Mars way”: cooperation. But they couldn't just ignore Earth's wishes. Someone had to send a rescue mission.

  They told Axelrod to find some angle in the rescue trip to profit by.

  “More drama,” Marc said dryly. “Gotta sell.”

  Finally, they got Axelrod and Airbus to understand that the Consortium crew couldn't fly the nuke alone, but neither could Claudine. Both teams would lose without some middle ground. Axelrod and Airbus had to work things out amicably.

  Then, in a daring trivid message, all five announced their solution to Earth, and declared that the true Mars Prize was the cooperation. Through this they hoped to appeal directly to the public.

  They broadcast a little ceremony of them rechristening the nuke The Spirit of Ares with melted water from the pingos, in Viktor's used vodka bottle. It seemed to work.

  But they needed an end run. Through her father, the one route Axelrod could not “creatively edit,” Julia got to the Mars Accords board. She explained the compromise in detail: It was truly a joint mission coming home.

  Two days on tenterhooks followed.

  Then a U.N. emergency panel agreed to help sponsor the rescue mission.

  Once more, Viktor turned out to be right: What seemed so logical and neat on Mars, amidst the stark desert isolation, turned out to be horribly complicated in the festering media-driven swamp of Earth.
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  Mars had become a Rorschach test. Every faction with the most tenuous axe to grind instantly jumped into the fray. Religious leaders decried three unmarried people alone in the return ship. The Mars Protection Society, a Mars faction of the animal rights lobby, demanded they sterilize their landing site and leave immediately. The Terraform Today Society wanted the Marsmat destroyed. Two cult groups—one in India, the other holed up in Montana—tried to commit mass suicide to avoid the incoming Mars plague.

  “Let ‘em,” Marc said.

  Media bloomed with florid discussions between completely uninformed people about every detail imaginable. Their entire lives were dissected, their predicament analyzed, philosophized over, chewed at.

  Julia came to believe in the ensuing weeks that she and Viktor had, in fact, chosen the easy way out. They would just hang out quietly on Mars while Claudine, Marc, and Raoul took the brunt of the hysteria on their return.

  39

  IT HAD BECOME SO SIMPLE, MUSED JULIA, ONCE THEY HAD UNDERSTOOD the Mars way.

  They were now a crew of five. Claudine was incorporated smoothly and as a whole they prepared for the departure. Cooperation ruled. They'd swapped expertise for space, and everybody won.

  Just like the Marsmat. Just like bacteria on Earth.

  You want antibiotic resistance? Swap with another bacterium and get the gene you need.

  The vexing part was that this kind of solution had been available to them all along. Nobody had to die.

  But Earthside was aboil with negotiations between the Consortium and Airbus. Lawyers angrily slapped writs on each other, over fuel and ships a hundred million miles away. Airbus argued that the Consortium team failed if it could not get home without Airbus help: they should at least split the $30 billion prize money.

  This provoked a brief flurry within the governments who had to pay the bill. The Mars Board announced that the terms of the contest specified only that the first team returning successfully from Mars would be the winner. Anything else was between Airbus and the Consortium. Politicians carefully tiptoed away from the problem.

  Intense public interest greased the negotiations. Airbus couldn't refuse the team their only chance to get home with the whole world watching. And none of the negotiators could have stopped the crew from taking the ship anyway.