by Talbot, Luke
“I found myself reading stories about Russian politics, despite the fact that in Russia I do everything to avoid them,” he said.
“I personally find that when I am abroad, I am always listening out for any mention of America. But in the absence of America-related subject matter, I casually introduce trivia into conversations,” she admitted. “I don’t do it consciously, I just do it. It usually starts with the sentence ‘In America…’ and then I’m off. And do you know what I think?” She didn’t leave time for an answer, although Danny seemed ready to give one. “I think it’s because as humans we constantly act as advertisers for our homes, towns, counties, nations, beliefs. You name it, we advertise it. When we go somewhere, we are obsessed with knowing what people think of where we came from, or what we represent. If we don’t receive that input, I’m sure that we are predisposed to plant knowledge, spread the ‘good word’, so to speak, so that when the next person like us arrives, their curiosity is more satisfied.”
He looked down at his plate of unappetising food. “And do you not think we might do this to simply make these foreign places more like home, so that they seem less alien to us, eventually expanding the circle of what our unconscious mind defines as home until it includes the location in which we currently find ourselves?”
Captain Montreaux looked at the Russian and smiled. “Like the first settlers in America. They built themselves a little Europe, changing the plants, animals and even soil, until they no longer found themselves in the New World, but in a carbon copy of the old one.”
“Which is why Jane would like to plant a nice flag on Mars, isn’t it?”
“No!” she said indignantly. “I want to put a flag on this planet to prove our achievement. And I think that whilst there may be some truth in your argument when talking about moving home permanently, the root of our desire to go anywhere is to witness what our homes look like from outside our normal viewpoint. On the smallest scale like a carpenter standing back and admiring his new table, or a builder standing back and looking at the house he has finished, and on the largest scale like a mission to Mars looking back at a reassuring light in an alien sky.”
“You said reassuring. Does that mean you feel insecure?” Danny smiled.
Captain Montreaux shook his head and decided to concentrate on his meal.
Jane opened her mouth, and Danny saw from the look in her eyes that it was time to get back to his original point. “Anyway,” he started, noting the frustration on her face. The word ‘anyway’ could at times be the most annoying in the English language, and Danny always used it to great effect. “I think that covers why we came to Mars, but why we came here precisely. To this exact geographical location on Mars” He gestured vaguely to the outside world behind him. “Dust, rock and more dust, not forgetting the rocks and dust.”
“Is there much else on Mars?” Montreaux asked.
“We are here, precisely, because of the water, Danny, because Beagle 4 kindly confirmed the presence of water for us, and because had we landed anywhere else in the hope of finding water and had not actually found any, we would at present be the first human beings likely to die on any planet other than Earth.” Dr Richardson said.
“Which wouldn’t have been very reassuring,” he joked. “I know we came here for the water under our feet, not to mention the gigantic, geologically fascinating impact crater a few kilometres away. I’m just annoyed by all of this dust.” He rested his head on the back on his chair and closed his eyes.
Montreaux turned to look at the Russian.
“You’re tired, Captain Marchenko, have something to eat and get to sleep.”
Danny opened his eyes and looked at him lazily. “I’m mostly tired of the dust. The dust is everywhere! I wear a suit out there, but I feel I have dust and grit in my hair! How can I have grit in my hair?”
“Because over the past two weeks, we have managed to bring the outside world in, despite the airlock.” Montreaux said. “I guess we have to be thankful that dust and grit is all that we’ve brought with us.”
Jane scoffed. “And the jury’s still out on that one.”
They fell into silence at the thought.
If life existed on Mars, it was most likely in bacterial form beneath the surface, which was exactly where they had been extracting their water supply from. Every precaution had been taken to prevent possible contamination, but they all knew that even the smallest amount of the wrong kind of alien bacterium inside their habitable compartment could spell disaster. The headlines were easy to imagine: “Life on Mars! Kills crew!”
So their scientist took samples of the dust every day and screened them for any signs of life, and was convinced that it was not a matter of if she found something alive rather than when.
During the first few days, they had managed to keep the MLP absolutely spotless, using the airlock to clean and decontaminate their suits as it had been designed to do. But slowly, inexorably, as the days went on and the number of EVAs increased, a fine Martian dust had begun to settle inside the craft, for obvious reasons mostly around the airlock.
No matter how many times they cleaned, the dust would continue to appear; Danny’s frustration notwithstanding, they had more or less accepted it as part of their lives on Mars, like sand in a beach house.
“Of course,” she broke the silence, “if we do find anything harmful out there, or in here, the chances are that our bodies would be so totally unprepared for it that we wouldn’t stand a chance. And given that we cannot sensibly stop the dust from entering the MLP, we may as well stop worrying about it.”
They both looked at her, stunned.
“Great!” Danny said throwing his arms in the air. “The only doctor on board thinks that we’re going to die here no matter what! I may as well go out there without my suit next time!”
She laughed, tossing her food tray onto the table and sitting down on a stool. “I would imagine that we’re all more likely to die of food poisoning anyway, at least until my experiments bear fruit.” She nodded towards a table at the far end of the MLP, covered in small trays with clear plastic lids.
Captain Montreaux reiterated his desire for Captain Marchenko to get some rest, before sitting down in his chair and opening his book. He was on his second read-through of The Martian Chronicles, and it was making a lot more sense to him this time round.
The Russian made his way to his bunk and lay down, looking at the ceiling. “So we have to hope for a combination of friendly Martian bacteria and your very successful green-fingers, I see.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “We’re doomed.”
The next morning, Dr Jane Richardson was alone in the MLP. Strangely, she had never felt more at home than right now. Surrounded by experiments in the middle of the most unexplored environment humans had ever set foot on, she was the first scientist to touch Martian soil outside of a Petri dish, and despite the dangers it presented, she was enjoying every minute of it.
As far as she was concerned, if things stayed as they were and with enough water and food, she could quite happily stay on Mars for the rest of her life.
She prised the lid off a small plastic container and poured the liquid contents into a large, shallow metallic tray. The transparent, clear substance settled evenly at the bottom of the tray, a small bubble bursting on its surface. She tilted her head to one side slightly, as if listening to it, before putting the lid back on the small container from which it had been poured.
Nanoplasma had been the crowning achievement of her work on Earth. The result of five years of her own research and development, she was the first to admit that she stood firmly on the shoulders of giants, and would not have been able to succeed without the hard work of the pioneers of the ‘Nano-age’, as it had been dubbed by the media back in the 2020s.
The nanoplasma itself was comprised of two main elements: nanocapsules and organic plasma. The minute capsules, each one less than twenty nanometres wide, contained either flavours, colouring, or any other active ingre
dient that may be needed, and could be opened by stimulating them with very specific subsonic frequencies. By subjecting a capsule-filled solution with carefully controlled frequencies, it was possible to recreate any number of flavours, whilst at the same time filling the solution with vitamins and nutrients as desired. Nanocapsules had been introduced over thirty years earlier to the mass market, and had revolutionised the soft drink industry.
Almost overnight it became possible to buy one drink with multiple flavours that could be switched at will simply by depressing a button on the neck of the bottle. Any capsules that were not required by the consumer would simply pass through the digestive system intact, meaning that a wide variety of flavours could be contained within the same bottle without affecting each other.
Jane had not invented nanocapsules. That achievement had been slightly before her time. Instead, she had successfully combined them with a plasma solution, made from a fibrous breakdown of plant-matter, in an effort to replace what had been a staple food of human beings for thousands of years: meat. Her theory came from the simple fact that if the digestive system of an animal could break down organic matter, for instance grass, and turn what it needed into animal matter, then it must be possible to recreate this process in the laboratory.
Her aim had not been to just provide a substitute for meat; vegetarian products had been doing that for decades. She wanted to literally create a single product that could be transformed into any meat-based product. Indeed, to recreate the texture, taste and nutritional properties of animal meat, with none of the ethical or environmental ramifications.
She picked up a small pen-shaped instrument and placed its pointed end in the metal tray of nanoplasma. Turning a small wheel on the side of the pen, she selected ‘Rump Steak’ and pressed a red button. Within seconds, the nanoplasma had visibly changed, becoming more viscous and opaque. After about a minute, she pulled the pen out of the tray and looked at her work.
Now looking at a perfectly rectangular rump steak, she picked up a scalpel from the table and made a small incision across the middle. Prying the cut apart to reveal the bloodless cross section, she nodded approvingly and used the scalpel to cut the slab into three equal parts, before stacking them on a plastic plate and placing them in the sample fridge under the table.
“As soon as I make a steak-shaped receptacle, it won’t look like I just slaughtered a square cow,” she muttered under her breath.
She walked to the MLP’s communications console and depressed a button at its centre, before speaking into the microphone stalk.
“Hey guys, while you’ve been out there playing in the sand, I’ve been preparing this evening’s meal. How does rump steak and mash sound?” she said cheerfully.
There was a short wait, during which the Martian static undulated out over the MLP’s speaker system. The Russian replied, fainter than usual.
“That sounds great, Jane. Any way you can make a couple of cold beers using that nano-stuff of yours?”
“I second that,” Montreaux laughed.
She smiled and pressed the com button once more.
“Hey, as soon as I develop a nanocapsule that adds a kick, no problem. In the meantime, we’re going to have to make do with alcohol-free, if that’s alright with you?”
Captains Montreaux and Marchenko had driven Herbie to the very edge of Hellas Basin about two and a half kilometres from the MLP. Exiting the vehicle, they walked to the cliff apprehensively. They instinctively stopped two metres from the edge, and Montreaux let out a gasp.
The view they beheld was simply astonishing.
Hellas Basin was a crater, the largest visible asteroid impact crater in the Solar System, with a diameter of over two thousand three hundred kilometres. It had been created nearly four billion years earlier, and the debris field of the impact covered almost a third of the planet. The main bulk of the debris had formed a sloped rim of rocks and sand more than one hundred kilometres wide around its circumference. The MLP had landed on this rim almost three kilometres from the crater, but it was only when they stood at the very edge and looked back towards their landing site that the gentle slope down to Martian ‘sea level’ could be fully appreciated.
Looking the other way, towards the centre of the Basin, was a truly terrifying experience. From the very bottom of the crater to where Montreaux and Marchenko now stood was a height difference of almost nine kilometres. If Mount Everest had been placed in the centre, they would be looking down on its peak. As it was, they were looking down a steep slope, and across a wide expansive plain larger than India. The crisp Martian atmosphere gave them near perfect visibility, and only the curve of the horizon prevented them appreciating the crater fully.
In the distance, they could easily see the brilliant white reflection of frost that covered most of the floor of the crater.
Emboldened by curiosity after his initial shock, Montreaux edged closer to the precipice and looked down. Contrary to his initial impression, instead of a sheer drop, the crater sloped away from him, not as gently as the debris field behind him, but certainly not vertical either. He found himself comparing it to a tough ski slope: potentially deadly if he’d had skis on and it was covered in snow, but quite possible to clamber down given the circumstances. What did impress, however, was not the incline of the slope but its scale. Whereas on Earth he would have expected the drop to end after at the most a few hundred metres, the wall of the Hellas Basin did not. It continued on its way down, gradually levelling out as it neared the bottom like the inside of a soup bowl, until he imagined it must merge with the crater floor kilometres below. He had to ‘imagine’ where it met the bottom for two reasons, he surmised. Firstly, he calculated that with the depth of the crater and gradient of the slope, the intersection of ‘floor’ and ‘wall’ of the crater had to be at least fifteen kilometres away from him, and his ability to define accurate shapes at such distances without visual aid was quite low. This was in no way helped by his second reason, which was that as far as the eye could see, all the rocks and debris looked the same.
Looking to his left and right, he saw that from a distance, the crater rim looked like an unbroken ring of mountains, imprisoning the plain below.
The slope was made up of a mixture of varying sizes of rock and Martian soil. Almost everything was the same colour, a pale shade of orangey-brown. Occasionally a particular rock would be slightly darker or lighter, but there were few obvious geological variances, at least to his untrained eyes.
He looked over at Danny, who was kneeling at the edge examining a small spherical rock about the size of a baseball.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” he said.
The Russian looked up across the plain and nodded slowly before standing. He wrapped his fingers around the stone and bounced it in his palm a few times, getting a feel for its weight and balance. Without a word he stretched his arm back fully before sweeping it forwards in a flash, releasing the stone mid-swing. They watched the stone fly forwards at least a hundred metres before gravity started to bring it down to the ground.
The low gravity made for an impressive pitch indeed.
Because of the incline, the stone continued to fall for about three hundred metres before finally striking a large flat rock jutting out from the cliff-face. A small cloud of pale orange debris was thrown up from the rock as the stone bounced off and disappeared below.
“See if you can beat that,” he grinned and looked at Montreaux.
But Montreaux wasn’t listening. He was still looking down at the flat rock that the stone had struck; the dust had now settled and despite its distance, it was obvious that there was a striking difference in colour between the surface dust that had been disturbed and the rock beneath. It was jet black.
“Captain Marchenko, pass me the binoculars, please.”
He focussed the electronic device on the stone below. After several long minutes, he passed the binoculars back.
“Look at the flat rock you just hit,” he said, seriously.
Danny’s first instinct was to be sarcastic. He felt like saying that he was sorry he’d damaged a Martian rock, but that there were billions more identical ones where that came from. Instead, he took the binoculars and steadied the image on the flat rock.
“What do you think it is?” He didn’t move his eyes from the binoculars, but instead zoomed in further to examine the small patch of jet black stone that had been uncovered. They had spent days picking up rocks and digging test holes in the soil near their base, and had never seen anything like it.
Montreaux had already been thinking about his answer, and had remembered some basic facts from his early days at school. “Well, on Earth, a black colour in stone often comes from carbon.”
Marchenko pulled his eyes away from the binoculars and looked at the American.
“Carbon? From plants and animals?”
“Yes, I think, although I don’t know if it can be naturally occurring too.” He thought about this for a moment. “In any case, we’ll never know until we get down there to look at it. We’ll need a sample to take back to Dr Richardson.”
“Wow! That was one lucky throw!”
“It certainly was. Now, I propose that we climb down together, but first, we need fresh air, I only have half an hour’s worth left.”
They climbed down the cliff in parallel, connected by a thin strand of synthetic rope for safety. It was by no means a dangerous climb, and on Earth could certainly have been attempted with barely a second’s thought. But on Mars, the combination of reduced gravity and airtight suits made for a nervous descent for both men.
As they came within twenty metres of the flat stone, Montreaux paused and turned his upper body round to face it. He tugged sharply on the safety line to get Danny’s attention and pointed down at their goal.
“It’s definitely not your standard Martian rock formation, is it?” he said, out of breath.
“There’s something out of place about it, definitely. Something –”