by Talbot, Luke
He stood up and walked over to the airlock gingerly. His helmet was sealed, but the inbuilt two-way radio system routed his voice through to the MLP’s speakers.
“OK, can you hear me?” he asked.
“Ouch! Way too loud!” she replied.
“At least when you’re out there, Jane, we will be able to turn you down for once!” Danny joked from behind her as he prepared to fit his head snugly into his helmet.
She shot him a grin and prepared Montreaux for his EVA. She sprayed an aerosol solution over the tight skin of his suit to check for leaks, before turning him around and double checking his regulators.
“You’re all set,” she gave him the ‘OK’ signal by making a circle with her index finger and thumb and waving it in front of his visor.
Montreaux returned the gesture and turned towards the door.
Entering the airlock, he looked around. There were two small benches, one on each side. On his left was the door he had just come through, leading into the MLP, on his right, the hatch that led to the never-before-walked-on surface of Mars.
For some reason he didn’t feel nervous.
He looked up at the window in the wall and saw Jane looking down at him. Every few seconds she checked a reading in front of her before repeating the OK gesture. Each time he replied in kind. Suddenly, Danny’s head appeared in the window next to her, in an EVA helmet. There was a huge grin on his face. Montreaux gave the OK sign with both hands to him, and he waved back.
Inside the airlock, he could see two lights, one red and one green. The red light was on, telling him it was not yet safe to open the hatch.
“How are you doing?” Jane’s voice came through the headphones in his helmet.
“Fine, a little cold, but I’m sure it’ll get warmer,” he replied.
Danny’s laugh echoed loudly in his ears. “Oh, yeah, I hear it’s real sunbathing weather out there: minus forty degrees Celsius. Get me some ice cream!”
Montreaux was about to reply when the green light came on. He checked his forearm, where a small OLED panel gave him vital statistics on his suit and the surrounding atmosphere. It also let him control heat, airflow, lights and a video camera mounted in his helmet. “How’s the video feed?” he asked.
“Crystal clear!” Jane replied.
Looking up at the faces in the window, he gave the OK signal one last time. “Here goes!” he said. Turning towards the hatch, he took a deep breath and reached for the handle, a recessed metal rod that lay vertically at its centre. He gripped it with both hands and turned it a full ninety degrees anticlockwise. He was rewarded with a dull clunk as the locks along all four edges of the hatch disengaged. He pushed gently on the metal and felt the outer wall of the MLP give as the hatch tore through it precisely. The hatch swung open slowly.
He fancied he could feel the cold Martian breeze against his shins as he crouched down to fit through the low opening. Ducking his head, he fixed the small ladder from the inside of the airlock to the outside of the MLP, and stepped out. He descended cautiously, and landed his left foot with a crunch, sinking several centimetres into the dust and grit. His right foot followed, and he was standing outside the landing craft. Turning round, he gently closed the hatch using the external handle. He took a step back.
He was standing on Mars.
He had practised this moment all of his life, in his head. He had always imagined that he would walk on the surface of Mars and say something monumental, something to rival Armstrong’s immortal words of 1969, almost a century earlier. An icon for a new generation: a symbol of hope.
He had practised his speech so many times that in that instant, as he took several further steps out onto the Martian plain, he completely forgot to say anything.
After a long minute, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at the sky. Not red, as his ancestors had believed, but blue and grey, like a winter’s morning on Earth. And then it came back to him, the first words that he knew everyone on Earth had been waiting for.
Over the past couple of weeks, he had played the scene over and over in his mind. Maybe he would use this chance, this opportunity to call for help, to denounce Su Ning’s murder. It would be a heroic gesture, for sure, and certainly foolish: he had no way of guaranteeing his words would ever reach Earth. His pre-written walking-on-Mars proclamation, chosen for him by a panel of experts and mission planners, was now long forgotten. He would instead use this one moment to show his defiance by not using NASA’s words, but a mixture of his own and those of a twentieth century American writer.
“Earth, this is Captains Yves Montreaux and Dannil Marchenko, and Dr Jane Richardson of the spaceship Clarke,” he said to the eight billion people he hoped were listening across the gulf of space. His breathing was all over the place with emotion as he spoke from the confines of his suit’s helmet. He looked out over the Martian plain before him, and then let his eyes return to the sky, towards home.
“We are calling from Mars, where our wonder has indeed been renewed; space travel has again made children of us all.”
Chapter 26
Martín reached for the small radio clock on his bedside table and held it a few centimetres from his face. Squinting at the display for a few moments he let his head fall back on the pillow and groaned.
Almost seven o’clock; he was late.
He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and pushed himself upwards, away from the tempting warmth of the sheets.
“What time is it?”
He jumped and shot a look over his shoulder. Seeing Jacqueline’s head emerging from under the duvet on the other side of the bed, the night’s events started coming back to him. “Late,” he managed to say.
Bringing his hands to his head, he rubbed his face with his palms and tried to piece things together. They had been drinking, he remembered, until the early hours. What had they been celebrating? The Mars landing? Captain Montreaux’s unexpected quote? Jacqueline’s plan to use Beagle 4 to spy on the mission? That and a whole lot more.
“Is everything alright?” he heard her say worriedly behind him. He could imagine the look on her face. They were in his flat, after their first night together. It was clear that she liked him. How would he feel in her position? He still hadn’t even looked at her properly!
“Martín, are you OK?”
Everything felt alright, aside from the obvious hangover. He’d been here before, with others, but this was different. They would both be late for work, but somehow that didn’t matter anymore. He lay back down in bed and brought the duvet up over his shoulder. Turning towards her, he found her arm under the covers, held it with his hand and smiled, looking her directly in the eyes.
“Perfect,” he said, relaxing as she melted into his embrace. “Everything is perfect.”
After weeks of zero gravity and little activity save for the treadmills and dumbbells, NASA had little requirement to tell the crew of the Clarke to start work straight away. The greatest barrier of all had been getting used to the gravity of Mars. Although only a third of that experienced on Earth, it was infinitely more than they had felt for months.
Jane had been a natural adapting to the apparent weightlessness of the Clarke, and her two male crew members could only watch in envy as she pranced around the MLP as if she had lived on Mars her entire life. It was the astronaut’s version of Jetlag, and as with Jetlag, it only became apparent sometime after landing. Montreaux had been surprised at the weight of a portable computer, which had it not been rugged would almost certainly have smashed as he dropped it on the floor. Danny for his part had already tipped his tray of food over at lunchtime, saved slightly by the fact that they were still eating from food packets from the Clarke. As a result, only his peas had fallen, and he had spent an awkward minute on his knees trying to collect them all from the grooves in the metal floor.
Their first Mars-walk had been a resounding success, Danny and Montreaux having gone three hundred metres from the MLP and completed a ninety degree arc
before returning to the lander. Their short walk took them less than an hour, but in that time they managed to walk the perimeter of an area of more than a square kilometre. The first robotic Mars rovers had taken weeks to cover similar distances, and even Beagle 4 would have taken several hours to do the same.
They had also pinpointed six successful drop sites, covering everything from food and hygiene supplies to clothing and scientific equipment. That thirty per cent of the supply drops had been successful and fallen a few hundred metres apart was nothing short of incredible, but what really impressed the astronauts was that the MLP had landed within sight of them.
During this time, Jane had already started to assemble her scientific apparatus inside the MLP, and when her two colleagues returned she was already preparing sample dishes and trays on a long trestle table to one side of the craft.
Now, four hours since the first Mars-walk had taken place, she was getting impatient.
“Right, we only have an hour or so of light left before the end of the sol.” She looked across at Montreaux, who was checking the readings on the main control board in the centre of the MLP. “We need to perform one more Mars-walk before sunset, to set up the first perimeter beacons.”
“I think that we need to wait until the morning, Jane,” Danny said, making Montreaux look up at him in surprise. Catching his candid wink, he sighed and returned to his work.
She glared at the Russian. “Danny, I don’t really care what you think. There is no way I am going to spend humankind’s first sol on Mars inside the MLP.”
“Doing the washing up?” he laughed.
Montreaux tensed and waited for the scientist’s response without looking up from the console. Instead of the expected outburst, however, he was surprised to hear her laugh. Straightening up, he turned to face her and saw that it was genuine.
“Danny, if there’s one thing that’s even more certain than the fact that I am going outside in a minute, it’s the fact that today I am so happy, not even you can wind me up!”
He laughed and walked towards the airlock and the protection suits hanging on the wall. “OK, whatever you say.”
Minutes later, as she brought down the helmet over her head and fastened the clips to the neck of her suit, she raised her thumbs at him and gave a huge grin.
Danny checked the air regulator on his own suit and returned the OK signal, before winking at her. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “As clear as day.” She turned to the airlock and opened the inner door.
From the console in the centre of the room, Montreaux caught the look in the Russian’s eye and groaned. Danny grinned in return.
“Oh, Jane, don’t forget your flag,” he said, as matter-of-factly as possible.
She ignored him and got into the airlock all the same. Danny followed and sat opposite her. From where he was sitting, Montreaux could see Jane through the open door, and as it closed behind them her eyes told him she was slightly annoyed by his joke. Smiling to himself, he stood up and walked over to the airlock to perform the safety checks.
If anyone could wind Dr Jane Richardson up, it was always going to be Captain Daniil “Danny” Marchenko.
Chapter 27
“My God!” She held the binoculars up to her visor and focused on the metallic object shining on the horizon; one of the supply drops that had arrived on Mars in the last year, it contained some of the vital life-support components for their return launcher, which would take them and the central core of the MLP back into Mars orbit. “We have to go all the way over there?”
“Be thankful we are not salvaging my beloved country’s lander, instead. At least we can see this one.” Danny said. “But if you do notice any metal objects with red flags on them, please let me know.”
The 1972 Mars 2 lander had been sent by the Soviet Union as part of its ambitious early exploration of the planet. It consisted not only of an orbiter and landing craft, but also a small rover on skis, which would explore the immediate surroundings of the landing site. Like most missions to Mars it had failed, and although the thin Martian air would have slowed it down from the six kilometres per second with which it had hit the atmosphere, its parachutes did not deploy as it hurtled towards the ground. To the best knowledge of the scientific community, it had impacted within a hundred mile radius of where the Clarke’s MLP now stood.
Over seventy years later, it was unlikely that much remained of the ill-fated mission.
“OK, no problem, I’ll keep my eyes open for it,” she replied.
The Russian flipped the lid of a large metal crate and peered inside it. “Besides, we don’t have to walk there.” He pulled a wheel, forty centimetres in diameter, out of the crate and rolled it towards her, its tread leaving a shallow imprint in the ochre soil. “We can go there in style!”
It took two entire days to assemble the Clarke’s manned buggy, affectionately nicknamed ‘Herbie’ by the media; because of the curved enclosure where the two occupants would sit, it bore more than a slight resemblance to an old VW Beetle car. Its power came from two electric engines, each taking charge of a row of three wheels on either side. Fuel came in the form of eight battery cells, which would be charged using the MLP’s generator. In turn, the MLP got its energy from solar sheets, which had been unrolled from the leading edges of the MLP and fastened to the ground. From above, they made the MLP look like some bizarre kind of flower.
In case of emergencies, the MLP had been loaded with three more sheets that could be placed anywhere within a hundred metres. Additionally, Jane was to assemble three wind turbines, especially suited to the thinner atmosphere of Mars, as a secondary source of electricity.
It took another three days to fully charge Herbie, during which time the crew busied themselves collecting the rest of the crates from the surrounding area and setting up four signal boosting beacons around the MLP.
After a short test run, Danny triumphantly declared that Herbie was at last ready to drive.
“He’s a better ride than most of the cars I’ve been in on Earth!” he exclaimed.
“You mean she,” Montreaux corrected him.
Danny looked at him sideways from the driving seat and shook his head. “No, it is definitely a he. Herbie is a boy’s name.”
“All cars are female, Danny, even the ones with boy’s names,” Jane’s voice came over the radio from inside the MLP. “It’s just the way it is.”
He thought about this for a moment and then laughed. “You are right; in Russian mashina is feminine too. I guess it makes sense,” he mused, “because –”
“Don’t even go there,” she warned him.
Montreaux laughed out loud as he loaded four spare compressed air packs onto Herbie’s back. Herbie wasn’t an airtight craft, the thin cabin was designed only to save the occupants from the worst of the Martian weather, and so they would have to use their suits’ air supplies throughout their drives. With just over two hours per pack, they would have a maximum six hours round-trip to where the silvery crates lay on the horizon. They would need to keep a constant eye on the time; it would certainly take more than one trip.
“OK,” he said securing the air packs and turning towards the MLP. “Time for dinner. We’ll set off first thing tomorrow.”
Chapter 28
Larue put the phone down and smiled. It was his first for some time.
Sitting back in his chair, he surveyed the view from his office. His smile grew as he took in the sunshine, Paris’s first for weeks. The windows of the ESA headquarters let the day’s warmth seep in gently, leaving the bitter wind and traffic noise outside. As a young man, he had worked for a short time in the Tour First, Paris’s tallest skyscraper, and had been impressed at how the sounds of the city were silenced when looking down from the top floors. On his arrival at ESA headquarters years later, it had amazed him even more that the triple glazed windows of his third storey street-facing office were just as effective. Occasionally a siren or beeping horn would make its
way through the panes and remind him he was working in a sprawling metropolis of over fifteen million inhabitants.
He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a small wooden box. Opening the lid, he perused the contents for a few moments, inhaling the deep sweet smell of the fine Cuban tobacco before closing it and putting it back in the drawer with a shake of his head. It was a good day, but not yet that good. He brought his gaze back to the blue sky outside, and closed his eyes.
A knock at the door brought him back from his reverie, and he sat up with a start. Looking at his watch, he sighed to himself and tapped the spacebar on his keyboard.
“Come in,” he said.
Martín entered the room. He had a huge smile on his face.
“News travels fast, I see,” Larue said casually.
Martín frowned in response. “Monsieur?”
“I take it from your smile that you have heard the good news?”
“No, I have not heard,” Martín said, confused.
Larue eyed him cautiously. “So why the big smile, Martin?”
Martín felt himself blushing; the past week with Jacqueline had been incredible, giving him plenty to grin about. Not that any of it was Larue’s business. He cleared his face before continuing. “Monsieur, a while ago you asked me to keep my eyes open regarding the Clarke?”
“Yes?” he leaned forward in his chair expectantly. He had almost stopped hoping, after so many weeks without any news. “Have you found something?”
“Not yet. But soon, we probably will. For some time now we have been unable to see any direct feeds from the mission. Whilst on board the Clarke, this was frustrating, but now that they have landed on the planet, it is even more so.” He paused, still unsure of what he was about to say. Telling Larue about the time delay wasn’t easy, but something he felt he could do now that they had a chance to prove it using the feed from Beagle. Nonetheless, he was still slightly nervous that he would be in trouble for hiding this information from his boss for nearly two months.