by Talbot, Luke
Martín looked at his watch quickly. It was already happening. “I’ll have all my ears to the ground, Monsieur.”
Chapter 24
Richardson, Marchenko and Montreaux reclined in their bucket seats in the MLP, strapped down by four thick belts over their shoulders and round their waists connected by a large metal buckle that nested comfortably on top of their breastbones. Their legs were supported by foam padding that extended from the bottom of each of the chairs. It looked like a busy dentist’s surgery, and the patients were nervous.
The single empty chair stood out like a sore thumb.
“It’s been good knowing you all,” Jane half-joked.
“Let’s hope the computer gets it right this time.” Marchenko was deadly serious.
“Danny, please!”
“Sorry, Jane. I am sure everything will be fine. The nanostations are not allowed in here.”
“Captain Marchenko, please refrain from that subject, it is totally inappropriate,” Montreaux warned.
“It’s OK Yves, he’s only kidding,” said Jane.
The Russian bent his head sideways to look at her. “No I am not,” he said, before grinning.
“Ten seconds to launch,” advised the computer.
“Good luck, everyone,” Montreaux said, gripping his arm rests tightly. “Good job so far, let’s make sure we finish it off well down there and get home in one piece.”
Dr Richardson and Captain Marchenko nodded their agreement.
“Four… Three … Two … One … Launch! ”
They all tensed for the expected jolt that they had experienced in training simulations. It was the moment they had been waiting for ever since they had first floated into the Clarke nearly four months earlier.
A light thud was all they heard. The MLP barely moved.
After the initial shock of the anti-climax had worn off, Montreaux checked his instruments carefully. Had the release mechanism failed?
All of a sudden, they heard the lateral boosters of the MLP releasing jets of compressed air into space. The landing craft was now being manoeuvred into a trajectory that would take it into the Martian atmosphere.
“We have left the Clarke,” Dr Richardson said in disbelief. “I hardly noticed!”
“We are in a declining orbit, entry in twelve more revolutions,” Marchenko confirmed.
Montreaux looked at the control panel in front of him. Millions of calculations a second were being performed by the MLP’s on board computer, which would control every aspect of the landing.
As their decreasing orbit drew them closer and closer to the planet, there was nothing they could do but watch and hope.
Half an hour later, the MLP shaved the outer reaches of Mars’ thin atmosphere and gently forced its way through. The trajectory had been calculated to the last millimetre, to ensure that their entry was successful. A few degrees out either way would have resulted in the craft either disintegrating, a bright shooting star against the Martian sky, or bouncing off the atmosphere and into the depths of space.
The underside of the MLP was coated in ceramic heat resistant tiles that would have been quite happy sitting on the surface of the Sun. As the friction of the air against the tiles grew, they began to glow white hot. The heat caused the passing gas of the atmosphere to combust, shooting yellow and blue flames several metres long up above the leading edge of the MLP as it cut deeper and deeper into the Martian atmosphere.
Inside the landing craft, the tranquillity of space had been brutally cast aside as everything began vibrating wildly, jostling the three astronauts against the bucket-sides of their chairs. A combination of forces assaulted them: the downwards force of returning gravity, a third of Earth’s but still a feeling they had not experienced for a long time, coupled with the upwards force of the plummeting craft, pulling them towards the ceiling.
And then that returning sense of direction. There was an up, and a down. There was most definitely a down.
“Aaaahhhh!” cried Dr Richardson.
“You’ve done this before on Earth!” Montreaux shouted above the noise.
“I haven’t fallen from anywhere for nearly half a year!” she screamed.
Marchenko managed to reach over and put his hand on hers as she gripped her armrest firmly. “We will make it, Jane, trust me.” He tried to laugh but the air was being forced out of his lungs, resulting in a strange scoff. “The chutes were designed in Russia!”
She released her grip and took his hand thankfully.
“We’re almost through!” Montreaux shouted, reading from the instrument panel.
As suddenly as it had begun, the shaking and roaring of the passing atmosphere outside stopped. It was replaced by a gentle hissing, and the occasional shake.
“We are in the skies of Mars!” Marchenko cheered. “Nearly time for our Russian chutes to deploy.”
They sat in silence for several long, anxious moments before Dr Richardson could wait no more.
“How long?” she cried.
“Thirty-six seconds” Marchenko replied instantly.
They all counted it down in their heads.
Montreaux reached zero and continued down well into the minuses. He had reached minus fifteen, and was about to mention that fact, when a sharp jerk crushed him against the padding of his chair. The MLP listed backwards and forwards, so that he had the sensation that his chair was alternating between being on the ceiling and on the floor
“The swinging will stop shortly,” Danny reassured them. “It is our momentum carrying us through, we are like a clock’s pendulum, hanging from the chutes above us.” He was obviously proud that the parachutes had deployed as planned, while the others just looked relieved.
The MLP’s on-board computer was already plotting the ground beneath them, mapping every square metre of the surface as it went. As it approached the vicinity of Hellas Basin, it closed in on its homing signal, and small motors began winding in and out the parachutes on each edge of the MLP, guiding it towards its destination.
“Virtually no cross winds,” Montreaux marvelled at their timing. “We’re sailing down perfectly, with a bit of luck we’ll be within a few hundred yards of the target.”
A control panel in front of them began to beep repeatedly. Leaning closer, he read the display and tensed.
“Two hundred metres to touchdown,” he said matter-of-factly.
The beeping increased in frequency as they descended.
“One Fifty.”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven…” Jane began to say under her breath.
“I thought you were a scientist?” Danny joked, squeezing her hand.
She smiled and continued her prayer. “… hallowed be thy name…”
“One Ten.”
“…Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done…”
“Ninety.”
“…On Earth as it is in Heaven.” She stopped. She didn’t know the rest of the words from memory. “Shit!” she cursed herself for forgetting.
“Seventy. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses,” continued Montreaux. “Fifty. As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not unto temptation, Thirty, but deliver us from evil.” The beeping was now so fast it created a continuous pulsing tone. “For the kingdom, Fifteen, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever, Five –”
The MLP touched the ground and bounced gently like a skipping stone on a pond, its self-inflated underbelly taking the remaining force of their parachuted descent. After the first bounce the bags began to deflate, letting the MLP slide for a few metres along the smooth, sand-covered plain before coming to rest a few centimetres away from a large, round boulder.
Inside, the three astronauts lay in total silence for a whole minute before Captain Danny Marchenko whispered under his breath: “Amen.”
They had landed on Mars.
Martín leant back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what was happening on Mars, sixty million miles away.
“They will have landed now,” Jacqueline said, sipping from her coffee slowly.
And we are the only ones outside NASA who know, he thought.
“It’s sickening,” she went on. “To think that the world will be watching in over an hour, thinking that they are watching it Live.”
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was dying to tell someone what they knew. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” he checked.
“No! You asked me not to!” She sounded hurt.
He opened his eyes and looked over at her. They were in the coffee room of her floor in the ESA Headquarters, where they had started meeting up during working hours.
“I’m sorry, I know you wouldn’t do a thing like that.” His voice was soft and apologetic.
She smiled and shrugged it off. “I found something this morning that might help,” she said. “The feed we were watching that night, the live feed, I think I know how to get it back.”
He sat up and put his hands round his drink on the table, heating them up on the warm Styrofoam surface. “Go on.”
“Well, you know that we can’t intercept the feed coming from Clarke to Earth, and as the feed from Mars is going through Clarke, we have no hope. They’ve put some kind of encryption on the transmission that I can’t crack, and since our night of hacking,” she whispered the word, though the room was empty aside from themselves, “they’ve clearly upped the security level on everything.”
Martín nodded, they’d been over this a thousand times. What they really needed was to capture a feed that NASA then withheld from the public; that would be their proof that NASA was screening what the other agencies saw. Unfortunately, during their night’s investigations, all of the live data they had recorded had subsequently been aired uncensored. They had been unable to prove a thing.
“OK, so we cannot get a direct feed that way.” She had a smile on her face as she looked at him. “But can you think of one reason why the Mars mission landed where it did?”
He thought for a second before replying. “It’s an interesting geological site?” he said.
“Another reason.”
“It’s got a temperate climate close to the equator?”
She punched him in the ribs. “One more try!”
He thought for a while longer before it dawned on him. “Beagle 4.”
“Exactly. Our lovely little rover proved the existence of liquid and frozen water, in abundance, near the impact crater. It’s essential not only for the crew’s survival, but also for fuel for taking off from Mars in four months.”
“Where is Beagle now?” he asked, suddenly alert.
“Luckily, its current mission plan has it running extended sampling of the Martian soil quite close to the Crater; it’s still only a little over thirteen kilometres from the lander site. I’ve done some calculations; at full speed we can have it within three kilometres of the lander in four days. We will be able to spy on the Mars mission, and send everything back to ESA headquarters directly, via our own encryption.”
He looked over at Jacqueline and grinned. “You’re great!” he exclaimed.
“Calm down,” she said trying to hide her blushes. “We still need to get it there. Larue needs to sign this off, and then it needs building in to the Beagle routes.”
“Put the request forms in for re-routing Beagle, and I’ll make sure they get approval. From there, we just have to hope it gets done sooner rather than later.” He got up quickly, throwing his half-finished coffee into the bin and kissing her on the forehead.
As he pulled away from her she caught his cheek with her hand and pulled him closer again, reaching up with her mouth at the same time. Their lips met and Martín’s resistance ebbed away as she held him more closely. After several seconds he pushed her away and looked her in the eyes. Her bright-red lips were swollen with passion and she had a playful look in her eyes.
He sat down next to her and put his arm round her waist. Drawing her body against his, he kissed her again, more passionately.
Mars could wait, for a little while at least.
Chapter 25
There was more to the Mars Landing Pod than first met the eye. It had been motionless on the surface of Mars for over three hours, and the dust had finally settled in the thin air, when the top half began to move upwards.
Looking like two soup bowls placed one on top of the other, the thirty-foot wide MLP had caught the imagination of the public on Earth as the closest thing yet to a Flying Saucer. They had quickly overlooked the fact that it could not possibly fly; floating down to the ground suspended by parachutes was the best it could do. They had also overlooked the fact that it would only look like a flying saucer for a short time once on Mars.
As the top half of the MLP began to separate from the bottom, which remained firmly on the ground, a thin rubber-like membrane extended in the increasing gap in-between. The top continued to lift until the MLP stood fourteen feet high. The flat rubber walls shook for several minutes, and then stopped as they became taught.
Deployment of the MLP had been completed.
Inside, Captain Montreaux wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I don’t care what the mission planners say; even at a third of Earth gravity it’s still damn heavy!”
“I didn’t think the support on this side would click for a moment,” Jane laughed. She was standing next to the newly extended rubber wall of the MLP. In the gap between the bottom and top halves they had placed a series of titanium supports, about an inch thick, each slotted neatly into two small holes at the top and bottom. “I haven’t had this much fun since I last went camping!”
“I agree, it is a bit like a hugely expensive and advanced camper van, isn’t it?” Montreaux laughed.
“I think you two should see this,” Danny Marchenko said quietly from the other side of the MLP.
Fully deployed, the vastness of the MLP was striking. It was larger than the average one bedroom apartment, at thirty-feet in diameter and with ten feet of internal height. It was difficult to believe that they were on Mars.
They looked over to Danny, who had his head pressed against a transparent segment of the rubber wall. The six windows had been placed at regular twelve feet intervals along the MLP’s circumference, and they each went to the closest one.
Outside lay the cool grey dawn of a Martian sol. A slight orange hue from the soil was the only sign that they were on the Red Planet and not in Arizona, USA. On the horizon, light wispy clouds of dust drifted gently from left to right, the tail end of the storm they had been waiting out.
The fantastic reality of their situation hit them simultaneously, affecting them all differently. For his part, while the Russian and the scientist celebrated behind him, Captain Yves Montreaux could not help himself from shedding a silent tear. Despite his excitement, the fulfilment of a life-long dream of visiting Mars, the only thought in his head was of Su Ning, and the secret she had taken with her.
It took them two hours to assemble the airlock. It was in kit form, and they had fun putting it together and arguing over which bits should go where. It had all been good natured arguing, as they were all fully trained in how to assemble the vitally important apparatus.
Despite his initial emotions, it had not taken Montreaux long to be caught up in the moment. They had landed on Mars successfully, and were preparing for their first Extra Vehicular Activity, or EVA.
Their landing had been incredibly well executed by the on-board computer: Jane had already noted that within fifty metres of her window she could see a small metal crate, the deflated airbags that had protected it on its descent just visible in the layer of dust and sand that covered everything around them. Danny commented that being so close to the previous drops could be interpreted as very poor landing; a bit to the left and they would have landed right on top of the metal crates. Not only would it have been inaccessible to them, but the damage to the MLP could have been catastrophic.
Their first directive during their EV
A would be to perform an exterior status check of the MLP, followed by a quick reconnaissance of their surrounding area. The crate seemed like a perfect place to start.
“There, all done,” Danny declared triumphantly.
The airlock stood six feet tall and five feet wide, to one side of the interior of the MLP. A large round door gave entry to the airtight chamber inside, which could be seen through two small windows. The status of anyone inside the airlock could be visually monitored from there. The sides of the MLP were pre-equipped with three ready-made hatches, one of which the airlock had been placed against. It had been designed so that it could be placed on any side of the MLP, an important contingency in the event that they should incur any damage on landing, or land next to an immovable object, such as a boulder or cliff. The outer door of the airlock lay flush with the rubber wall of the MLP. Opening the door for the first time would pierce that thin membrane and lead on to the Martian surface.
“OK, I think that it needs a road test!” Jane said.
Montreaux was already putting his EVA suit on. “Is everyone alright with the mission plan?” he asked as he zipped and sealed his left boot.
Danny and Jane looked at each other and smiled. “Absolutely, Captain,” they said in unison.
The Russian sat down on a small bench next to where his EVA suit had been put, hanging from the wall lifelessly. He unhooked it from the wall and started to unzip the front of the jacket and trouser combination, ready to step into it. “I will follow you once you give the OK.”
“And I will stay here like a lemon and make sure that you are both having as much fun as possible!” Jane said, pretending to be hurt.
Montreaux had finished sealing his boots, and the scientist helped him with his gloves. The atmosphere of Mars, and similar pressure to Earth, had meant that their EVA suits could be designed very differently from traditional suits used on the Moon and International Space Station. Consequently, they looked more like divers than astronauts, the skin of the suits hugging their bodies closely. This also improved their effectiveness during EVAs. Although it was not encouraged, it had been possible during testing to run at quite some speed in the suits, and the close-fitting gloves even made it possible to grip certain types of pen or computer stylus and write with a degree of accuracy.