Jordan said, “The other day I found a blue piece of concrete near the electrical equipment. I took that piece of concrete and analyzed it.”
Scout said, “I remember that. You thought it was algae.”
Jordan said, “It was algae. It still is. The algae must be from Earth, but how is it spreading to the rivers?”
Scout said, “It must be airborne, and travelling in water clouds.”
Jordan said, “There haven’t been any water clouds here since we arrived. How could they have moved?”
Kathy said, “Perhaps the planet’s soil is not as dead as we thought it was.”
Jordan said, “It must not be. There should be no way for the water in the rivers to support life. It was thought that the ancient oceans and rivers were too salty and acidic to support terrestrial life.”
Scout said, “But we clearly have algae growing in the rivers. How’s that possible?”
Jordan said, “Perhaps we should send the robots to investigate the water in those rivers.”
Scout said, “That’ll take a long time. Do we really want to sacrifice everything the robots can do for us?”
Jordan said, “The only other alternative, if we want to investigate this phenomenon, is to send a team to go to the rivers.”
Scout said, “We can get there pretty quickly with the trucks. The terrain along the path to the nearest southern river is pretty smooth.”
Kathy said, “There’s a path?”
Scout said, “Not an actual path, but some smooth terrain that can be followed to the river.”
Lane asked, “Can I go on this mission?”
Scout said, “I’ll actually need three people to go. Are there any other volunteers?
Becky said, “I want to go.”
Scout said, “I need you at the refinery. You can go on a future mission.”
Kathy said, “I think that the Blacks should go. They’re the closest things we have to biologists.”
Leona said, “I’m a psychiatrist, not a biologist.”
Scout said, “But you and your husband both had to study biology in depth to get your medical licenses.”
Leona said, “That’s true. We’re probably your best bet.”
Scout said, “Okay, the three of you go and investigate the southern rivers. I want a sample of the water while you’re there as well.”
Jordan asked, “Is it for testing the algae or the safety of the water for domestic uses?”
Scout replied, “You should bring me back two samples. I need one sample for algae research and one for testing the safety of the water.”
Leona asked, “What do you want us to bring the water in?”
Scout said, “Use the five liter buckets that the filters came in.”
Jordan asked, “Are they safe for water, or do we need to sterilize them?”
Scout answered, “They were for water filters, so they’d better be safe for water.”
Jordan, Leona and Mark got into a truck and headed south. They relied on the global positioning system to keep them from getting lost on this alien world. If they got lost, it might take the rest of the team a long time to find them. They drove in shifts so that the journey could be as short as possible. The total driving distance from the town to the southern rivers was 7200 kilometers, so they needed to keep moving to keep it under a week.
The first day passed very quickly. Freedom faded in the rear view mirrors as the group headed south. Lane brought a video screen to keep the group entertained during the long trip. They watched old movies and news feeds from Earth via the internet.
The second day seemed to last forever. Every kilometer felt like it took an hour to cross, even though the truck was travelling at 120 kilometers per hour (Earth hours, because the speedometer had not been calibrated for Martian hours yet.). The videos and music from the truck’s radio were little help to distract them from the desolation and loneliness of this strange new world.
On the third day, the group took to talking to each other to pass the time. They were the only reminders that each other had that they were not alone on this alien world. They had traveled 6004 kilometers by the sunrise of the third morning. They had almost not needed to stop for anything because they had brought food and water along on the trip.
The truck ran on solar power, so there was no fear of running out of fuel, even at night. The solar panels had the ability to store up to ten hours of solar energy for later use. This enabled the crew to drive continuously regardless of the time of day. There were no clouds in the sky for the first 6000 kilometers, but they were starting to become visible, as they got closer to the river.
Lane said, “I see clouds.”
Leona said, “That’s no big deal, there’s always carbon dioxide clouds near the town.”
Lane said, “These don’t look like those clouds. They look like the clouds back on Earth.”
Leona took a closer look at the sky. She could see that these clouds were the white, fluffy variety that was so common back in Portland.
Leona said, “I think those are water clouds. What does the odometer say?”
Lane said, “The trip odometer says we’ve gone 6200 kilometers. We must be close.”
Leona said, “Scout said that the rivers were 7200 kilometers away from the town, so we’re nearly there. I wonder why the clouds are visible so far from the rivers, though.”
Lane said, “It has been getting warmer. Maybe it’s almost spring. On Earth, spring means that the clouds are more active as the planet’s water is warmed up.”
Leona said, “So maybe the rain will fall farther to the north than just at the rivers.”
Jordan said, “Or maybe the rivers will begin to flow farther north.”
Leona said, “That’ll be nice, especially if the water is suitable for us to use.”
Lane said, “Have you noticed that we barely had to use our life support system the whole trip.”
Leona said, “I noticed that I could breathe normally. It’s weird how much oxygen is here. Even if there’s algae, the rate of oxygen release should be much slower.”
Lane said, “It’s almost like there are plants that we don’t know about releasing oxygen into the atmosphere all over the planet.”
Mark said, “Well, we have plants in the biodome, and we’re deliberately allowing them to breathe the native carbon dioxide atmosphere. We’re also releasing oxygen from the biodome.”
Leona said, “But even with the release of the oxygen from the biodome, the levels are too high all over the planet. We should only have a localized effect from the biodome, but we have a global one. Something strange is going on here.”
Lane said, “Well, let’s get to the river so we can find out what it is.”
The last 1000 kilometers seemed to fly by. The anticipation of the discoveries they would make grew more intense with each passing meter. All three of the truck’s passengers were wide-awake and hardly able to contain their excitement. At noon on the third day of the trip, they reached the beginning of the river.
Lane said, “Well, there’s the base of the river. I don’t see anything unusual about it. It’s just water flowing in a basin.”
Leona said, “Let’s go a little farther. Maybe we’ll discover something a little farther down the line.”
Lane drove the truck along the bank of the river for about fifty kilometers when he found something strange. There was a bush on the riverbank.
Lane asked, “How the hell is there a bush here?”
Leona said, “It looks like it’s been here for a while, too. I’d say at least two years.”
Lane said, “So the robots must’ve somehow brought the bush with them.”
Leona said, “They only brought our supplies with them. There were no seeds or bushes.”
Lane said, “Then they must’ve come over attached to something. Let’s keep going and see if we see any more signs of life.”
They continued to drive, and in twenty kilometers, they came across a small gro
up of bushes. Then they found the groups of bushes growing closer together as they continued to travel south. Eventually the groupings became a small forest.
Mark asked, “What kind of bushes are those?”
Lane said, “We’re going to have to take one with us to find out what it is.”
They got out of the truck and gathered a bush to take back to the town for analysis. They also took samples of the water to analyze it back in Freedom. They did see algae growing in the water, and a lot of it.
Lane said, “Even all of the rivers on this planet being covered in these algae wouldn’t cause the air to become so heavily saturated with oxygen. These bush forests must exist all over the planet.”
Mark said, “If you suggest that, Scout will have us investigate the other rivers.”
Leona said, “No, I don’t think so. It stands to reason that if one river has these bushes along its banks, then other rivers must have them too. I just wonder where they came from.”
Once the bush and water samples had been collected, the group placed them in the back of the truck and headed back to Freedom. The trip was uneventful except for the constant discussion of what the plants could be. They didn’t look like any bush that anyone had ever seen on Earth. It appeared to be a new species of plant, and the group had no idea where it came from.
The group reached the town in three days, and it was very early in the morning when they returned. Since it was still dark, they decided to sleep for the rest of the night and take up the issue when the rest of the crew awoke after the sun came up. They slept for four hours before the daily briefing.
At the daily briefing, Scout asked them what they discovered.
Lane said, “We found a strange bush. It’s in the truck.”
Scout said, “Get it for us.”
Lane went out to the truck to retrieve the strange bush. He brought it into the meeting, along with the water samples.
Lane asked, “Has anyone here ever seen this type of bush?”
Kathy said, “It looks like a bush that went extinct on Earth right after the last ice age. It was believed that this bush couldn’t survive in conditions which were not arctic.”
Lane said, “But the Earth didn’t completely become warm. Some portions are still arctic now.”
Kathy said, “This particular bush only lived in the tropics. There were none of them farther south than the Amazon basin and none farther north than Florida. The current arctic zones don't have any of this particular bush. There weren’t even any seeds or preserved DNA to extrapolate a bush from.”
Scout said, “Then this is an Earth plant?”
Kathy said, “I believe it is.”
Mark said, “Then how the hell did it get here? It’s been extinct on Earth for thousands of years.”
Leona said, “Maybe an impact on Earth caused some genetic material to land on Mars. It would have been preserved by the extreme cold for the past few thousand years.”
Mark said, “Then that’s amazing.”
Lane said, “There are hundreds of them along the riverbed we examined. We assume other rivers have them along their banks, too.”
Scout said, “We’ll have to do a high resolution scan to verify if there are other pockets of these plants on the planet.”
Leona asked, “You mean that you didn’t have to send us all the way to the river basin? We could’ve gathered the same data with satellite scans?”
Scout answered, “We needed to know what we were looking for first. We couldn’t have known what to look for if we hadn’t sent a team to the basin.”
Kathy said, “I’ll run a test of the water to determine if it’s safe to use.”
Kathy ran the water through a separator to analyze the contents of the water. The results were shocking.
Kathy said, “This water has a salt content of 9.8%. Nothing should be able to grow in this water. The algae must be very salt tolerant.”
Scout said, “They must not be Earth algae. Algae on Earth can’t live in such a high salt content. There must’ve been life on this planet in the distant past.”
Kathy said, “And we’ve resurrected it. I hope that we haven’t caused our own destruction,” as she continued to test the water by filtering it and taking more readings.
Scout said, “I doubt that. The oxygen is rising, and the carbon dioxide is declining. Even the nitrogen levels are climbing. I think these plants and algae are going to be very beneficial.”
Jordan said, “What if the oxygen levels continue to rise?”
Scout said, “As long as they don’t reach 40%, we should be fine.”
Jordan said, “Is 40% when the air would become combustible?”
Scout said, “It’s the low threshold for that. Luckily, there’s no lightning on this planet yet.”
Kathy said, “The water is perfectly safe once you filter out all of the salt and silt. Once the salt is taken out, the water is just plain water. If we could find a way to filter the rain water and channel it to us, then we would have an unlimited supply of fresh water.”
Jordan said, “I think we should bring the water here, and then filter it in our own desalination chamber.”
Kathy said, “The desalination tank is only designed to handle 4% salt. I don’t think it could handle the higher salt content of the native water.”
Lane said, “We could run it through the system three times. Then it would be clean and clear. We just need to bring the water to us.”
Scout said, “The only way I can think of is the hard way. We could build a channel from the river basin to the town, but it’s a lot of digging and laying concrete.”
Jordan said, “That sounds like a job for the robots. It could take years to build a 7200-kilometer long trench and line it with concrete. I’m pretty sure it would be the longest channel in the solar system.”
Scout said, “I don’t know about that. There are some pretty long artificial channels on Earth. North America has some very long water diversion channels.”
Jordan said, “I don’t think any of them are 7200 kilometers long.”
Scout said, “We’ll start work on this project next week. We’ll assign Skittle to begin work after we program the details of the channel. Did one of you make a map on your journey?”
Mark said, “I video recorded the whole trip, so we have a visual map to program into Skittle’s operations system.”
Scout said, “The rest of the ditch digging crew will be Lin, Lonnie and Notah. That group can start today. Once the ditch is formed, you’ll put a pipeline in the ditch. We’ll get to work making the pipe in the next few weeks. The rest of you already have your instructions for your projects.”
The ditch crew got to work digging the ditch. They were outside in the sun, but it wasn’t hot. They were still sweating because they were working very hard. They would continue this work for the next two years, even after the colonists arrived.
Chapter Forty-Six
Supplies II
On August 1, 2089, the second supply ship arrived on Mars. The crew stopped using the Earth calendar and clock, but they needed to reference it in cases where transactions took place with people on Earth. This would be the last set of supplies that the crew would ever receive from Earth, unless they could reach a trade agreement with one or more of Earth’s nations.
Heath Goodbar landed the ship at the Freedom spaceport, and the crew went to work unloading the ship in the same way they had done the last time it brought supplies to the colony. As they worked, they noticed that certain parts of the first deck didn’t feel as stable as they previously felt.
Scout commanded, “Someone check the ship’s records, and run a check on Heath’s memory.”
Jordan moved into position to check the ship’s records while Kathy retrieved Heath to run a check on his memory. Meanwhile, Scout, Lane and Becky performed an inspection on the ship.
Jordan accessed the ship’s records and was stunned by what he found. He saw the video of the attack, and he called Scout.
Scout answered, “What’s up, Jordan?”
Jordan replied, “There was an attempt to destroy the ship. It looks like one of Rich’s goons attacked the ship and took out a big chunk of the hull.”
Scout said, “Compare that with what Kathy finds and keep me updated. Do you know what section of the ship was damaged?”
Jordan replied, “The underside of the ship has heavy damage to the first two layers of the hull. It looks like it was attacked by a tracer missile.”
Scout said, “We’ll have a look.”
Scout hung up the phone and motioned to the others with him to follow him. They went to the underside of the ship and inspected the hull. They found a gaping hole in the bottom two layers of the three-layered hull.
Scout ordered, “We need this fixed now. Do we have any sheet titanium?”
Becky said, “I don’t have very much, but I think there might be enough to patch the hole.”
Scout ordered, “Go get it, and bring it back here. We need to get this fixed as soon as possible.”
Becky and John went to the refinery to fetch the sheet metal to repair the ship. They drove there in Becky’s truck, and John couldn’t keep his eyes off of his girlfriend.
She said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
John said, “Because you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Becky said, “Well, stop. You look like a serial killer, and it’s freaking me out. Besides, we have work to do.”
Kathy plugged Heath into the ship’s processors and accessed his memory banks. She saw the full battle in text format, and she saw that while the battle had not gone as well as it possibly could have, it could have been a lot worse.
She called her husband and said, “Babe, I have news about Heath and the ship.”
Scout said, “Let me hear it.”
Kathy then said, “The battle was fierce. Rich and his people have a super-fast ship, but it’s not very heavily armed. The records show speeds of over seven million kilometers per hour.”
MARS: Renaissance Page 33