MARS: Renaissance

by Matthew Ellis

  The first task for the robots was the construction of a landing strip. This was so that ships would have a smooth place to land. The landing strip would later become the base of the human colony. Snicker and Skittle, the robots, brought the concrete to a relatively flat place to begin building the runway.

  Before they could mix the concrete, they needed to smooth the ground so that the landing strip would be stable. They needed to level the soil and make it a uniform depth and width. They did this with an attachment that moved the soil in front of them, similar to an earthmover. Then they smoothed the soil using their tank-like wheels. After about three days, the ground was ready for them to begin pouring the concrete.

  Snicker and Skittle used the concrete mixer that had been stored on the ship with the nuclear bombs to mix the concrete and water together. The mixer had been emptied, and the bombs were being stored in two crates until the time came to use them. The robots drove the mixer to the designated location and set it up to mix concrete. They poured the concrete mix into the mixer and hooked up the water hose to the mixer from the water supply on the ship. They allowed the mixture to mix, and then they added Martian soil. The final concrete was one part cement, one part water, and three parts soil and rock.

  After the concrete mix came together, the robots began to pour it into the channel they created a week earlier. The channel was five kilometers long, three hundred meters wide, and two meters deep. Once the concrete was placed, Snicker and Skittle smoothed it out in a manner similar to the way a steamroller smoothes out roads on Earth. Over the course of the next nine days, the robots continued to pour and smooth the concrete until the landing strip was fully formed.

  Once the strip was poured and smoothed, it needed to be striped so that ships would know where to land. The robots painted the strip with lane stripes and reference numbers to let pilots know how far down the runway they had come. The final step in the process was arranging lights every 5 meters on either side of the strip to allow pilots to land at night. Twenty-five days after the robots arrived on Mars, their first mission was complete.

  The second task that the robots were programmed to complete was the beginning of the terraforming process. The robots moved 500 kilometers southeast of the landing site. They took a drill attached to a 3000-kilometer chain. The drill would bore into the crust of Mars and continue to dig until it reached the core of the planet. The instrument was made of gold, so it could withstand extreme heat caused by the drilling, and diamond tipped for the strength to break up rocks at the core. It was powered by a direct connection to the robots’ power supply.

  Skittle and Snicker placed the drill in the ground, and steadied it while it bored into the surface. It dug into the ground quickly, and moved through the crust of the planet very easily. The hole was one meter wide, and uniform in width throughout its length. Mars is not very dense, so drilling would not take very long. After about six hours, the robots moved away and allowed the drill to do its work. They didn’t need to supervise it after this point, as the drill continually sent them information about its progress. Every ten meters of depth, however, the robots needed to remove the rock and dirt coming out of the hole. Except for the moving of dirt, the robots turned their attention to the device in the crate.

  Mars has no magnetosphere, which is an electromagnetic field around the planet. This means the planet cannot hold an atmosphere. What little atmosphere Mars has exerts very little pressure on the surface. Because of this, liquid water cannot form on the planet’s surface. A planet needs a liquid metal core in order to have an electromagnetic field to support an atmosphere. To that end, the founders of the colony decided that drilling to the planet’s core and dropping a nuclear bomb to melt it should give them the desired result.

  The robots were programming the bomb. It couldn’t be set by time, because too many variables existed for the bomb to drop in a uniform manner. So the bomb had an altimeter attached to it, and it was calibrated so that the current elevation was marked as zero. When it reached minus 3000 kilometers, the bomb would detonate. The robots needed to be about 100 kilometers away when the bomb exploded, so they would vacate the premises immediately upon release of the bomb into the bored tunnel. The robots top speed was 300 kilometers per hour, so they could easily reach a safe distance before the bomb detonated.

  The drill took ninety Martian days to reach the core of the planet. Mars’s day is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours 39 minutes and a few seconds. The robots moved the bomb into position. They sent a transmission to Earth, letting the colonists know that the plan was ready to be completed. There was a sixteen-minute wait for the message to be received by the colonists on Earth, and for a final approval to be sent from Earth to Mars. The robots waited 30 minutes for confirmation from the future residents of Mars.

  The colonists received the message eight minutes after the robots sent it. They knew that the plan was well thought out, but were not sure that this was the best way to go about making a new home.

  Scout asked, “Does everyone agree that we should continue with the plan? Once we drop the bomb, the plan is in motion and we can’t turn back. If it doesn’t work, we have completely ruined Mars for thousands of years.”

  Kathy said, “Everyone who favors moving forward as planned please raise your hands.”

  Twenty-three of the crew raised their hands, and only six people voted against it.

  Kathy then said, “All those opposed.”

  The six people who did not support this part of the plan raised their hands.

  Scout said, “Then the motion carries. We shall proceed as planned.”

  He then sent a message to the robots on Mars. The message said, “1.” That was the code to proceed. The abort code was a zero.

  Scout said, “While I have everyone assembled, I think that I should let you know how we have decided to divide time.”

  Jordan asked, “So we have a final plan?”

  Scout replied, “No, just the beginning has been decided.”

  Lane asked, “So what did we decide?”

  Scout said, “We’ll use a 25 hour day. Every hour will have 58 minutes and 30 seconds.”

  Jordan asked, “Won’t that be confusing?”

  Scout answered, “At first, but the clocks will all be programmed to keep time that way. We’ll all just get used to the last minute of every hour only having 30 seconds.”

  Kathy said, “I think we’ll all adjust more quickly than you think.”

  Thirty minutes after Skittle and Snicker sent the original message, the “1” was received. Skittle placed the bomb on the edge of the hole. Snicker performed one last inspection before Skittle pushed the bomb with her hand attachment. The robots then pushed their motors to the limit to escape the area before the bomb exploded at the core of the planet. They couldn’t feel fear, so they were not afraid. However, they knew they could fail because their mission was not complete yet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Heath Goodbar

  The android inspected the ship after the robots unloaded it. He made sure that every square millimeter of the ship had been unloaded because the ship needed to be as light as possible for the return trip to Earth. Although the ship was powered by solar and cosmic electric power while in space, the takeoff and escape from either planet’s gravity required large amounts of actual fuel. There was no petroleum left on Earth, so humans had turned to ethanol and methane for fuel. It required three times as much ethanol as petroleum to fuel most vehicles, or about twice as much methane. The ship conserved fuel by not burning it while in space.

  Heath completed his search of all three decks, and found that the ship was completely empty. The takeoff sequence could now begin.

  He sent a message to Earth: “Request permission to return to base. The ship is empty and has enough fuel.”

  He waited sixteen minutes for a reply.

  The return message said, “Check safety systems. If they’re okay, then proceed.”

  Heath che
cked the safety systems. The sensors were in working order, and they were recording the movements of the robots as they set up the mixer. He ran a diagnostic on the failsafe systems in both the navigation controls and the propulsion systems. The navigation failsafe checked the course and autocorrected any time the ship deviated from it. The propulsion failsafe detected fuel levels, and toggled between available power supplies if one or more failed. Both systems were working properly. Heath checked the restraints on the ship. He checked to make sure that no belts were torn or otherwise compromised. Everything was in working order and secured properly.

  Heath started the engine, and drove the ship down the smoothest piece of land he could find. He accelerated the ship to takeoff speed. In a few moments, the ship escaped the gravity of Mars and left the robots behind to complete their work. The next time Heath arrived on Mars, he would find a very different landscape than the one he had just left behind.

  Three months in space may not seem like a long time, but it can be very boring. There is no scenery for long periods and no chance of rescue if something goes wrong. That's why the colonists decided to have an android do the setup work. They didn’t want to spend months at a time in space, and then return to Earth only briefly before even more space travel. Fortunately, Heath didn’t have any perception of boredom or fear, so he didn’t care about any of the things that prevented the human crew from venturing out into space before the time came for them to begin the colony.

  The first month passed, and Heath mostly stared quietly out into the blackness of space. He’d been instructed not to look directly at the sun, as the extreme heat and brightness of direct sunlight in space could adversely affect his android sight circuits. He also kept the ship’s windows and sensors out of direct solar light. They were not immune to the sun’s damaging rays either.

  The only thing a human would have found interesting during the second month was a comet passing within 50,000 kilometers of the ship. Heath’s only concern was keeping the ship out of the path of the passing comet. It was a glorious sight that any human would have loved to see. The dirty ice chunk flew within plain view of both the sensors and the windows, and it began to warm up. The comet formed a tail in full view of the ship. By the time it was visible from Earth (without a telescope), the tail was fully formed. Heath achieved his goal of keeping the ship clear of the passing comet, and transmitted the video of the comet to the colonists back on Earth.

  At the beginning of the third month, Earth’s moon became visible from the ship without any instruments. Heath confirmed that the ship was on the correct course, and now had a visual reference to check his progress. Once the ship passed the moon, the journey home would take only a few hours. The colonists saw the ship returning, and began to prepare for the next phase in the mission. Heath simply continued toward his programmed destination.

  Six months after the Renaissance left the Earth, it returned to the spaceport in the New Mexico desert. The colonists were there to greet their android and load the ship again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Magnetism

  The bomb was dropped into the hole and fell 3000 kilometers. The robots moved as quickly as they could away from the blast zone. The group had programmed them to preserve themselves, because the colony could not afford to lose equipment unnecessarily. As the bomb detonated, the robots were arriving back at the base camp. The detonation caused the ground to shake beneath the robots. The landing strip cracked in the “Marsquake.” No one on Earth had any idea that this kind of thing might happen.

  On the other side of the planet, a massive volcano erupted for the first time in millennia. The huge volcano spewed vast amounts of molten rock into the atmosphere. The air got thicker, and the sky grew dark with the ash from the volcanic eruption. The ground continued to shake, and the robots sent messages to Earth telling of the Marsquake. The colonists on Earth sent instructions to fix the structure as soon as the ground settled down. That didn’t happen for three hours.

  Once the ground stopped moving, the robots prepared more concrete to fix the landing strip. The repairs took about six hours. As they worked, the temperature rose by 5° C. Water began to flow from the polar ice caps into ancient riverbeds, but they didn’t flow very far. The atmosphere had been recharged, and the magnetosphere had been replenished, but the process was still in the very early stages. Water flowed for about two kilometers before the solar radiation boiled it. It did not, however, escape the gravity of Mars. The newly created magnetosphere kept the water in the atmosphere, and rain clouds began to form. The wind pushed the clouds back to the polar ice caps, and the rain fell back to the surface. It was the first rainfall on Mars in eons.

  As a new magnetic field began to form, the atmosphere and the ground became charged with electricity. Lightning struck the ground and charged it with nitrogen. Thunder sounded in the air for the first time as storms raged near the polar regions.

  More volcanoes erupted over the course of the next two weeks. Every eruption sent particles into the atmosphere, replenishing elements that are vital to life such as oxygen and nitrogen. These elements fell to the ground and began to charge the soil of Mars with life giving nutrients. The shaking seemed to have stopped, as it was a temporary effect of the detonation of the nuclear bomb. Only time would tell if the new magnetic field would be sustained.

  The robots reported hourly to the colonists on Earth on the changes in the atmosphere. The first month looked very promising. As the robots constructed the first buildings on Mars, the temperature of the daytime air rose by 30°, the nighttime temperatures gave back 50% less energy, and the atmosphere became 45% thicker. The oxygen content of the atmosphere rose from 0.13% to 3%, and the atmospheric pressure rose by 70%. The results were looking very good.

  The robots completed the hangar for the spaceport, along with the repairs to the landing strip during their fourth month. Then they built most of the biodome, which would occupy the center of the first colony. They spent weeks building more roads for the colonists to use once they arrived. The robots never got tired, but they could only work during the day. It was still too cold to build things during the frigid night. If the time grew too short, the robots would retreat into the hangar for the night.

  The explosion that caused the planet’s core to melt would be repeated every time the core’s temperature cooled to 200°. This ensured a long life for the newly repaired world. The MACABRE bomb was a very good investment.

  Chapter Twenty

  General Rich

  General Rich called three operatives into his office. He had chosen these men because they were the absolute elite under his command. He needed them to accomplish an important mission.

  Two days earlier, he heard a rumor that the group led by Scout Ellison was beginning a trek to the spaceport in New Mexico. They were attempting to steal Earth’s resources and relocate them to Mars. He had to stop them. The way of life that the early 21st century men fought and died to preserve must not be allowed to end. That is what Scout represented to Rich, an end to civilization as he knew it.

  The lead operative walked into the office and said, “Operatives reporting for duty, sir.” They walked into the General’s office and closed the door.

  General Rich responded, “I need the three of you to join me on a very dangerous mission. This is your only chance to redeem yourselves for the debacle back at the rally. You’re to help me prevent that radical from leaving the planet."

  The lead operative said, “But we’re not NASA or even Air Force. We have extremely little training on planes.”

  Rich said, “Then you’ll have to learn quickly. Consider this your trial by fire.”

  The lead said, “Yes, sir. We won’t let you down. What is the plan?”

  Rich said, “They’re driving to New Mexico right now if my sources are correct, and they’re very rarely wrong. So we’re going to stop them while they’re still on the ground if possible. If they’re already up, we’ll knock them out of the sky.”


  “What if they are already headed to Mars?” asked the lead operative.

  Rich answered, “Then we’ll fire our rocket propelled missiles at them. Unfortunately, once they get past the moon, there’s nothing we can do. NASA won’t allow anyone to follow a research vessel past that point.”

  The lead said, “But they’re not in a research vehicle.”

  General Rich said, “But they’ll say that they are. That’s the only way they’ll be able to take all of their equipment to Mars. Then they have ten years to return to Earth. When they don’t return, we’ll go and retrieve them.”

  The lead operative said, “Won't that cause a war?”

  General Rich said, “They’re nonviolent peaceniks. They won’t fight. They probably won’t even have an army.”

  The General and the three operatives loaded their plane and headed for Albuquerque. They figured that if they landed in a major city and then raced to the spaceport, then almost no one would see them. They arrived in Albuquerque two hours after leaving Eugene, and got into a Jeep. They then drove to I-25 and headed south toward the spaceport.

  General Rich thought, “I’ve got them this time. There’s no way they’re escaping. They’re mine.”

  The lead operative drove as fast as the Jeep would go. The rest of the crew was very eager to disrupt or even destroy Scout Ellison’s group. They arrived at the spaceport after traveling through the Rio Grande Valley for less than two hours.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Packing

  March 1, 2087 was well ahead of Scout’s schedule. Nearly two years earlier, he held a rally in Portland, Oregon to convince people to leave the Earth to form a new society. Mars had been prepared, and was now ready to receive the terraforming team. The team consisted of 18 people, led by Scout and his fiancée, Kathy Jones.