A Mars Odyssey

by Michel Poulin

  ‘’Hi Mary! Need help with this?’’

  ‘’I sure can, Xiulan! Take care of the cocktail glasses and I will take care of the beer mugs.’’

  ‘’Deal!’’

  Going to the small storage room at the back of the bar that contained glassware, utensils and towels, Xiulan picked up a container of beer mugs and, using the small pair of wheels fitted to one end of the bottom, raised and pulled the container, rolling it out of the storage room and near the counter, where she put down the container and opened it before taking out the beer mugs one by one, inspecting them visually for any cracks or damage before storing them under the service counter. While doing so, she couldn’t help ask a question to Mary, an Irish girl married to an hydroponics technician working on the ship.

  ‘’Hey, Mary, is it true that this spaceship will be the first place in space where alcohol will be served routinely?’’

  ‘’It is true, Xiulan. Before, alcoholic drinks were either banned in orbit or severely regulated, being served rarely and in controlled conditions. Here, we will be able to serve beer, wine and spirits to our customers at will, until they are judged to have had enough and failed the alcohol meter test.’’

  Xiulan threw a quick glance at the alcohol meter machine, standing in the middle of the counter and fitted with a quick-change mouth straw. On the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP, the maximum permitted blood alcohol limit had been set at 0.04, enough to get a feeling but too little to be considered truly impaired. Even then, the crewmembers were expected to show moderation in their drinking habits. Some non-alcoholic beverages and substitutes, like alcohol-free beer and coolers, were stored in quantity aboard but real beer, wine and hard liquors would also be served, with a fairly diverse variety available at the bar, including beer on tap. Beer on tap, being stored in aluminum kegs, weighed much less per liquid volume than when stored in glass bottles and was also much less susceptible to breakage and leaks, making it ideal for a spaceship’s bar. Beer on tap however had a shelf life of only a few months, so bottled beer with a strong alcohol content had also been brought aboard in quantity, in order to ensure a supply of beer during the whole two-year mission.

  A bit over one hour later, with the bar ready to operate, Mary and Xiulan took off their barmaid’s jacket, closed the counter’s shutters and went to the nearby cafeteria to have supper. There, they ended near the head of a growing lineup of waiting customers, with the kitchen counters due to open for service in a few minutes. Mary and Xiulan took that time to study the menu of the day, written with erasable pens on a dry white board hooked to a wall near the service counter.

  ‘’Hum, should I go for the lamb curry, the sauté chicken and vegetables or the deep fried cod in batter? They all sound good.’’ said Xiulan, making Mary point firmly at one item.

  ‘’For me it will be the deep fried cod in batter, no questions asked. The cooks in Vandenberg always managed to screw up fried cod but they do it really well on this ship.’’

  ‘’Why not try a little of everything, Mary? This mission is a great occasion to be exposed to truly international cuisine.’’

  ‘’You may be right, Xiulan. I think that I will do just that. With such good food served aboard, I will have to be careful not to get fat.’’

  ‘’Me too! Aaah, the service counter is opening now.’’

  With the lineup then advancing quite quickly, Xiulan ended up being next to be served by none other than her smiling husband.

  ‘’Hi, honey! What will you have?’’

  ‘’Gives me some sauté chicken and vegetables, along with one lamb chop and one fried fish fillet on the side. Everything looks and smells so good.’’

  ‘’Thanks! I must say that Chef Caldi is a true culinary master: he can cook about any dish from around the World that you can think of, even if his forte is French and Italian cuisine.’’

  ‘’And you, Mister Sommers? What is your specialty?’’ asked Mary McGregor, making Jack beam with pride while he started serving Xiulan.

  ‘’Me? I’m the king of grilled meat! I’m especially good at making barbecued, spicy pulled pork.’’

  ‘’Spicy pulled pork? Hum, I never tasted that. When do you expect to cook some of it on this ship?’’

  ‘’Well, I will have to discuss that with the Chef: he decides the menus on a weekly basis. And what will you have tonight?’’

  ‘’I will also go for a mix, but centered on the fried fish rather than the sauté.’’

  ‘’Then, here you go. Bon appétit!’’

  ‘’Thank you!’’

  Going first to the beverage counter, then to one of the unoccupied booths lining the walled side of the cafeteria, next to a lemon tree planted between two sets of booths, the two women quickly started eating their food while glancing out from time to time at the road traffic passing by their ‘dinner restaurant’ and visible through their ‘restaurant window’.

  ‘’I nearly could think myself back in Vandenberg right now.’’ said Mary. ‘’This mission promises to be quite pleasant, on top of being an incredible adventure.’’

  ‘’The space service bonus is also quite nice.’’ added Xiulan, making Mary nod her head.

  ‘’That too! The pay me and Sean were getting in Ireland was positively meager compared to what we are making now. We will be able to put aside a nice bundle from this mission.’’

  ‘’And how are things in Ireland these days, Mary?’’

  Mary’s expression changed then, becoming somber and making Xiulan regret having asked her question.

  ‘’Not too good, I’m afraid. Floods, torrential rains and mud slides are now way too frequent around Ireland, while a number of fishing villages that have existed for centuries have been washed away by the rising sea. The changing water temperatures also played havoc with the fish stocks and catches are way down from past decades. Overall, the general standard of living in Ireland has taken a hard hit, like in the British Isles. We were damn lucky to have been selected by the ESA6 for this mission. And you, Xiulan?’’

  ‘’Me and Jack were lucky, in that he was serving at Vandenberg, which is situated high enough not to be endangered by the rising sea levels. However, before we married a year ago, I had lived many years in Los Angeles and that whole coastal strip, along with the port of Long Beach, had to be protected with long lines of sea walls and dikes. All the nice beaches that California had once been famous for are now under water, while droughts have become both more frequent and more severe every year.’’

  ‘’That is sad indeed. I hope that we manage one day to reverse this global warming and its consequent ice caps melting.’’

  ‘’Me too! Now that most nations on Earth understand fully how serious this climate crisis is and have cut drastically their respective military budgets in order to fight natural disasters, real and meaningful efforts are being done at last to reverse the situation or, at the least, stop the damage from spreading.’’

  ‘’I wish that people would have awakened earlier to all this. It would have avoided us a lot of misery and deaths.’’

  Xiulan could only nod her head to that before continuing to eat slowly in silence.

  CHAPTER 6 – IN MARS ORBIT

  08:49 (GMT)

  Tuesday, January 5, 2044

  Command center, H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP

  Arriving in low Mars orbit

  ‘’Third main engines burn completed! We are now in low Mars orbit, with a present altitude of 310 kilometers and an orbit inclination of 26 degrees.’’

  The announcement from Shen Li Yang, the spaceship’s copilot and navigator, attracted a concert of cheers around the command center and the rest of the ship. Janet Larsson took the time to exchange handshakes with her command crew before issuing a series of orders.

  ‘’Viktor, switch our nuclear engines to power production mode.’’

  ‘’Already done, Commander.’’

  ‘’Excellent! Anton, we will start regulating ou
r orbit as soon as we establish precisely the altitude of our apogee and perigee. Paul, send a message back to Vandenberg, stating that we arrived safely in low Mars orbit and that we will send them our exact orbit parameters once we will know them. Ken, how strong are the radiations outside at this altitude?’’

  ‘’Not healthy at all, Commander: I am currently reading a steady shower of 0.16 milligrays per hour of charged particles radiation. However, our shielding is more than adequate to easily absorb that amount of radiation.’’

  ‘’You reassure me, Ken.’’ said Janet before switching to ship-wide announcement. ‘’Attention all personnel, this is your commander speaking! We are going in the next few hours to regulate our orbit. Once that is done, we will start mapping and studying in detail the planet in order to confirm our choice of landing point for our lander craft. The satellite maintenance crews will now start doing an ultimate check of our various satellites prior to launching them once our orbit will have been circularized. That is all! Thank you for your attention.’’

  Typing a command on the computer screen attached to the right arm of her seat, Janet then reviewed the list of satellites stored aboard her ship, along with their intended order of launch and their planned orbital parameters. The H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP carried in a number of hangars inside the outer edge of the disk section a total of thirteen satellites and two drone explorer craft meant to help map and study in unprecedented detail Mars and its surrounding space. Some of those satellites would also serve as communications relay satellites, in order to keep a permanent link between the ship and a surface crew, while other satellites were going to be used as global positioning satellites, to provide at all times an accurate position to surface team members and rovers. Larger hangars in the bow of the ship and around the disk section housed the main Mars manned lander, four Mars lander cargo ships, a planetary shuttle, a mini-orbital shuttle, a space tug and four flying maintenance boats. All these were lessons from the tragedy of the Mars One Mission, which had failed mostly due to undue haste and lack of support to its lander team. This time, the first Humans to land on Mars would do so only once various satellites and the sensors and telescopes aboard the FRIENDSHIP would have studied in detail the red planet, helping to select an optimum landing point. Once that point would be chosen, the two drone explorer craft would go down and let out remotely-piloted mini-rovers, to explore from up close and on the ground the chosen landing area. With luck, those mini-rovers were going to help find the perfect location for a fixed Mars base, one which would offer good protection against the radiations that constantly showered the surface of Mars and, if really lucky, would be near a significant source of water. For these two reasons, any cliff-side cave or old lava tunnel would constitute prime targets for the mini-rovers. Only once such a location would have been found would the manned lander go down with its crew of sixteen people. As for the four lander cargo ships, they would be sent down afterwards to the site of the fixed surface base, to provide it with extra supplies, construction materiel and heavy machinery. If more equipment or stores were still needed after that, the planetary shuttle would be able to bring those to the surface, while bringing up to orbit any ground samples deemed of interest. Janet was extremely proud to command such a ship as the FRIENDSHIP, which was in effect the first true interplanetary spaceship, able to fly return missions to the most remote planets of the Solar System. In fact, the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP was probably going to fly one day to Jupiter and Saturn, to study the prospects for establishing human colonies on selected moons.

  Five hours later, with the ship’s orbit regulated to a very low eccentricity ellipse, Janet gave the order to launch the first satellites. The first to come out of its hangar was the Mars Polar Eye One, or MPEO, a large satellite with a battery of multi-spectral sensors, including cameras and radar antennas. Once freed from the ship, the MPEO took some distance before its chemical rocket engine was fired up, pushing it into a low polar orbit around Mars. As the MPEO proceeded to establish itself in a stable polar orbit, a constellation of four geostationary communications satellites deployed out of the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP and flew to positions high over the Mars equator, where they were going to be able to retransmit any signal between the surface, the ship and Earth, thus ensuring permanent communications links. The sixth satellite to be launched was maybe the most important one, as the MEHRI (Mars Equatorial High Resolution Imager) went to take a very low equatorial orbit with an inclination of thirty degrees around Mars. Its altitude of merely 150 kilometers, its large aperture cameras and its powerful, high resolution mapping radar were going to combine to provide the most detailed and accurate maps to date of the surface of Mars, maps that would prove crucial in helping to choose a final landing point for the manned lander.

  On the ship itself, a team of astronomers, planetologists and geo-physicists, assisted by sensors specialists and geomaticians7, became quite busy, using the powerful telescopes, cameras, spectrometers and radars of the FRIENDSHIP to start to study in exquisite detail the surface of the planet. Within another day, those scientists and geomaticians became even more busy, as they started receiving and analyzing massive amounts of data from the satellites now orbiting Mars. As for the rest of the crew, it fell into an orbital maintenance and support activities routine, a routine much less glamorous than that of the scientists but one which was as important for the good functioning of the mission.

  19:45 (GMT)

  Saturday, January 9, 2044

  Bar-lounge of the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP

  In low Mars orbit

  Xiulan looked with concern at Julie Deloncle as the 48 year old French geomatician sat down wearily on one of the high stools of the bar counter.

  ‘’My poor Julie! You look exhausted!’’

  ‘’I am! The amount of planetary data that we are receiving constantly from our various sensors and satellites is staggering. Even with working twelve hour shifts, my mapping specialists and our astronomers and planetologists can barely cope with that mass of data. The one good news out of that is that we are in the process of producing by far the best and most detailed maps of the surface of Mars ever compiled and assembled. I however decided that me and my team had to slow down a bit, in order not to burn ourselves out early in the mission, so I came here for a nice, refreshing drink.’’

  ‘’A good decision, Julie. How about a nice, cold cup of Vino Verde wine?’’

  ‘’I see that you know about my favorite refreshment already, Xiulan. I will gladly have a cup, please.’’

  ‘’One cup of Vino Verde coming up!’’ said cheerfully Xiulan before fetching a short, fat bottle from a refrigerator under the bar. She then opened the already half-empty bottle and filled a cup before putting it on top of the counter in face of Julie Deloncle, who grabbed it thankfully. Xiulan next presented to Julie her portable fingerprint teller terminal, so that the French woman could put her thumb on it and debit her ship’s account to pay for her drink. While alcoholic beverages were served on demand on the ship, they were not free and there were limits to the amount one could consume before being told to cut it. In case of doubt, Xiulan had the authority to ask a potential customer to blow in the alcohol meter of the bar, to see if that person had reached the maximum allowed limit of 0.04. If so, Xiulan would then have no choice but refuse to serve that person. Thankfully, she had not had to do this yet during the past nearly three months since her arrival on the ship.

  Xiulan was bending down to put the bottle of Vino Verde back in its refrigerator when a wave of nausea hit her and she nearly let the bottle drop from her hand. Another bar customer, a hydroponics technician, saw her stumble behind the counter and got half up from his chair, concern on his face.

  ‘’Are you okay, Xiulan?’’

  ‘’I…I think so.’’ said weakly the barmaid. However, simply saying those words only intensified her nausea and she had to hurry to the waste basket set behind the bar counter, arriving just in time to throw up in it. Julie Deloncle, seeing tha
t, jumped off her high stool and went around the counter to go help Xiulan, imitated by the hydroponics technician. Xiulan tried to wave them off, pretending that she would be okay.

  ‘’No…no need: it was just a passing thing.’’

  ‘’The hell it was, Xiulan!’’ replied Julie. ‘’You are pale and sweaty. I’m bringing you to the infirmary. Mister Alvarez, find me a bag or something that she can use if she needs to throw up again.’’

  ‘’Right away, Miss Deloncle.’’

  The technician soon found an unused plastic bag and handed it to Julie, who in turn gave it to Xiulan before helping her get up.

  ‘’Here, keep it under your mouth, in case you feel like vomiting again. I will support you on the way.’’

  ‘’Thanks, Julie.’’ replied in a weak voice Xiulan, who didn’t feel well at all now. She let the geomatician guide her around the bar, then walked with her down the promenade strip towards the ship’s medical center. When they entered the reception room of the medical center, the nurse on duty rose at once from her chair and came to help Xiulan sit down.

  ‘’What happened, Misses Sommers?’’

  ‘’I…I was working behind the bar and was bending down when I suddenly felt nausea and vertigo. I threw up a couple of times.’’

  The nurse touched Xiulan’s forehead with the back of her hand, then took her pulse and her blood pressure while asking her a few questions.

  ‘’Have you had those symptoms recently before?’’

  ‘’No! This is the first time I felt like this.’’

  ‘’When did you eat last time and what did you eat?’’

  ‘’I ate a fresh salad and a chicken and noodle soup two hours ago.’’