‘’That also sounds like a nice idea to me.’’ said Wang Lao Xi. ‘’We could design quite quickly a new type of cargo lander with a body section of thirty meters or less but with a length much greater, then launch it from Earth using conventional rocket-ramjet boosters.’’
‘’Decidedly, this meeting is proving quite fruitful already, lady and gentlemen.’’ said Robert while typing notes furiously on his computer. ‘’I am buying all of this but we now have to decide exactly what to send, when and how. Like the old saying goes: the devil is in the details.’’
‘’Tell me about that!’’ replied Michel Dupré, of the European Space Agency, while rolling his eyes.
16:08 (GMT)
Wednesday, September 14, 2044
Command and control section, H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP
In low Mars orbit
Janet Larsson smiled with satisfaction as she read the latest message received from Earth: it announced the launch earlier in the afternoon of the fourth cargo lander carrying Phase Two modules and equipment. Three more cargo landers had been launched during the earlier months and were on their way to Mars, carried by automated transport ships. The first of these Phase Two landers was in fact due to arrive in two months, while the one just launched would take a full seven months to do the trip from Earth, due to the fact that it used only conventional chemical rocket propulsion and because the position of Mars in relation to Earth was not optimal at this time. A lot more cargo landers were due to be launched during the months to come as part of Phase Two of the Mars Project, which had as its main goals to expand the original Mars base and to add to it fuel production and refining facilities that would help refill the shuttles visiting the base, as well as refueling the various minor craft to be used by the base. At the end of Phase Two, Mars Base One was going to be ready to expand its program of surveying the surface of the planet, in order to find other locations which would be adequate to build other bases and to find and inventory the various mineral resources that could be exploited on the planet.
Janet was about to switch to reading the daily routine internal ship reports when her intercom started beeping insistently, its red light denoting an urgent call. Switching that channel on, she saw the face of the ship’s chief medical officer and surgeon, Doctor Alexander Cranston, appear on the screen.
‘’Yes, Doctor Cranston! What is happening?’’
‘’Nothing actually grave or critical, but I thought that you would like to know that Misses Xiulan Sommers has just been admitted at the infirmary: she is showing the first signs of labor.’’
That piece of news made Janet give her full attention to Cranston: this was after all the first instance ever of a birth about to occur in deep space. The media outlets on Earth were going to have a field day with this.
‘’has her pregnancy been normal up to now, Doctor?’’
‘’I have to say that, contrary to what I was fearing, this pregnancy is totally normal up to now and has gone as well as any that I saw on Earth. Thankfully, this ship is fully equipped to deal with obstetric cases.’’
‘’Er, what about baby supplies and baby-related equipment? We did store some baby supplies before leaving Earth, if I remember well, didn’t we?’’
‘’Yes, we did, Commander. We should be okay in that aspect.’’
‘’Well, I will have our good quartermaster, Mister Kurt Müller, do an immediate check of what we are carrying in terms of baby supplies, baby food and baby clothing and various equipment. Hopefully, we will have aboard enough diapers to last at least a year or two. If not, we will be in deep shit.’’
‘’Definitely, Commander!’’ said Cranston while laughing at Janet’s joke. ‘’I will advise you the minute that Misses Sommers will have given birth.’’
‘’Please do, Doctor. Thank you again for keeping me informed.’’
Janet then closed the video link and sighed. Another four women on the ship were already known to be pregnant, while a first female member of the surface team, Gita Sukarno, had missed twice her due periods. Unfortunately, nobody had thought of packing pregnancy kits, or even condoms, as part of the supplies sent down to Mars Base One. That may just come back to bite them in the ass in the months to come.
20:39 (GMT)
Bar-lounge area, Promenade Deck of Ring ‘A’
Janet had just ordered a drink at the bar of the ship’s lounge when her wrist phone started beeping. Hoping that this was the call she had been expecting for a few hours already, she opened the link and spoke in her phone.
‘’Commander Larsson speaking!’’
‘’Commander, this is Doctor Cranston. I am happy to announce to you that Misses Sommers has given birth to a healthy baby boy at 20:32. Both the mother and the baby are doing fine.’’
‘’YES! That is great news! Talking of news, if Earth starts in the days to come to harass you in order to get details on how Misses Sommers and her baby are doing, transfer their calls to me and I will deal with them.’’
‘’That is much appreciated, Commander, as some medical specialists on Earth seemed to treat this pregnancy like some laboratory experiment. Do you intend to come visit the baby and his parents soon?’’
‘’I certainly will! By the way, what is the baby’s name?’’
‘’John, John Sommers.’’
‘’Thank you! You can expect me in the next few minutes.’’
Closing the link, Janet then turned around to face the other crewmembers present in the bar-lounge and shouted out loud.
‘’PEOPLE, I AM HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE TO YOU THAT WE JUST HAD OUR FIRST BABY BORN ABOARD THIS SHIP. JOHN SOMMERS IS HEALTHY AND IS DOING WELL, LIKE HIS MOTHER, XIULAN SOMMERS. LET’S DRINK TO THIS!’’
She immediately got a resounding roar of approval on that from the other customers.
The next birth aboard the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP happened barely two weeks later, on October 2, with Sean and Mary McGregor becoming the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl they named Diane. Then, a mere eight days later, Miki Nakamura was born on October 10. While these births added to the list of worries that Janet Larsson had to deal with, the atmosphere and morale on the ship, which were already high, increased further, with the three babies being pampered wherever their parents brought them. As a direct consequence of the births, Janet had one private interview room on the Promenade Deck of Ring ‘A’ remodeled and refurnished to become the ship’s daycare center, all the while hoping fervently that she was not going to face a population explosion while in orbit around Mars. Her hopes were however dashed when Suzanne Bonnet came to the World on November 28, with little Xu Ling Lee following on January 19 of 2045. With three baby girls and two baby boys now growing up quickly, the new daycare center soon became quite crowded. Thankfully, that problem was partly resolved by various crewmembers volunteering to play nanny at the cabins of the parents when both parents worked.
Then came the birth on Mars of the very cute May Batrang-Sukarno on April 25 of 2045, the same day that Mars Base One received the last scheduled cargo lander of Phase Two of the Mars Project. By then, two other women of the surface team, Denise Wattling and Nadia Gorushkova, were visibly pregnant and proud to be so.
14:16 (GMT)
Sunday, April 30, 2045
Ares Park, Mars Base One
Underground rotunda (‘The Nest’), Melas Chasma
Valles Marineris, Mars
Teerapat Batrang, like his wife Gita Sukarno and the other members of the Mars surface team, looked around with an enchanted smile at the fifty meter-diameter dome of ‘Ares Park’. Little May, all of five days old, however missed the excitement, being asleep in her makeshift baby stroller, built out of a used rations containers and a few metallic parts recuperated from one of the nineteen cargo landers now lining the sides of the giant rotunda which had been named ‘The Nest’ by the astronauts. The dome of Ares Park was like many parts of the base an inflatable structure made of transparent plastic, which had
made its installation and erection a cinch. Teerapat then looked and nodded at Frey Thorvalson, Jason Terlecki, Roberto Calderon and Peter Walsingham, who were finishing to distribute and install the few pieces of furniture and potted plants meant to make the new park a relaxation place for the astronauts.
‘’This is really great, guys. Thanks for all the work you have put into this.’’
‘’Hey, I did it partly for selfish purposes, Teerapat.’’ replied Jason Terlecki with a smile. ‘’I myself wanted badly such a large volume place where we could feel more at home.’’
His reply made Gita Sukarno stop and think for a second.
‘’Well, isn’t this our new home now? Me and Teerapat have discussed about that subject and agreed that we will want to stay on this planet at the end of this tour, which is due in barely a month.’’
The four men who had been working on the dome’s facilities all stopped working for a moment then, Gita’s words having touched on a subject that had been discussed with passion during the last few weeks. Jason then spoke up, a dreamy expression on his face, while leaning on the shovel he had been using to distribute Martian dirt around a children’s playground.
‘’You know what? I think that I will also stay here at the end of our official tour. There is so much building and landscaping to do here in order to create a Human colony on Mars. Also, I can’t think of a better professional accomplishment than the building of our colony. Besides, conditions on Earth, despite all the efforts to reverse the effects of this catastrophic global warming crisis, keep getting worse, not better. Gdansk, my home town, is already under water and uninhabitable. No, my life is now here, on Mars.’’
The others present mostly nodded in agreement at those words. Roberto Calderon then looked down at May in her stroller, admiring the Asian baby girl as she slept. May was wearing one of the purpose-made baby outfits that had been sent from Earth on the last cargo lander, along with a whole lineup of spacesuits/portable space shelters of varied sizes designed to accommodate children from the ages of one month to five years. May was now wearing a royal blue, one piece baby coverall decorated with embroidered patches of the Mars Project Mission, including one marking her as a ‘mission specialist in child space studies’.
‘’And what about your cute little May, Gita?’’
‘’We intend to raise her here, at Mars Base One. As the first ‘Martian’ born here, this is her natural home. Me and Teerapat will however make sure that she wears regularly her own fat suit, so that she will be physically able to visit Earth one day. Thankfully, Viktor and Thor did their part in helping to get two future playing companions for May on the way. In a couple of years, this park should be crawling with kids.’’
CHAPTER 12 – PHASE THREE
10:18 (GMT)
Tuesday, November 21, 2045
MCC (Mars Colony Craft) 001 flying rover transport craft
On approach to Olympus Mons
5,800 kilometers west-northwest from Mars Base One
‘’We are on final approach to Olympus Mons, guys. Do you want me to land in a specific region of the volcano or do you want us to first overfly it, Roman?’’
Roman Denisovich, who was leading this prospecting expedition, thought for only a short moment before pointing the ridges marking the south and southeast limits of the huge extinct volcano to the pilot of their craft.
‘’Land at the western extremity of those southern cliffs, Peter. They mark the limits of where the crust sank below the mountain’s base due to the weight of all that old lava. The cliffs should tell us a lot about the kinds of minerals that are contained in Olympus Mons. Also, our unmanned drones indicated that there was a significant magnetic field emanating from that area.’’
‘’You’re the boss, Roman.’’ replied Peter Walsingham, who played with the flight controls of his craft to both slow it down and to cut their descent rate. Their flying rover transport craft could have been mistaken for a simple but large wheeled rover vehicle if not for the chemical rocket engine with pivoting gas exhaust nozzles and large fuel tanks attached to its back. It couldn’t be said to be aerodynamic for one penny and overall was rather ugly, but it was in Walsingham’s opinion a well-designed and eminently useful and versatile vehicle for the Mars astronauts. The two recently-delivered craft had quickly received the nickname of ‘grasshopper’ from the colonists, because of their ability to both roll on the ground for long distance, thanks to their ten large wheels, and for their ability to rocket their way around Mars in elongated ballistic trajectories with the help of their rocket engine with vectoring exhaust nozzles, which made possible vertical takeoffs and landings. With Mars Base One facilities now including operational chemical production plants using only local minerals and water for the local production of N2O4 oxidizer and of MMH rocket fuel, the colonists could now refuel at will their new vehicles without having to wait for rocket fuel coming from Earth at tremendous transportation cost and time. With such vehicles now at hand, along with a number of much smaller flying scooters, the colonists were now free to roam most of the planet in order to find mineral deposits that could ensure the long-term viability and self-sufficiency of the colony. Mars Base One was already self-sufficient in terms of potable water and oxygen extracted from Martian brine and could already provide for a sizeable proportion of its needs in vegetal foodstuff, on top of having a very productive poultry farm that now provided a steady supply of fresh eggs. The one area where the colonists were still having problems was with the production of fresh milk and meat. The two attempts to date to bring to the surface of Mars at least a couple of dairy cows had ended in failure, with the poor beasts dying during transport due to the rough conditions during shuttle atmosphere reentry.
Checking his descent rate via his instruments, Peter Walsingham made his craft perform a ninety degree turn eastward, then rotated downward his rocket engine nozzles to slow down his craft’s fall. Two minutes later, the ten large wheels of his vehicle, mounted on independently sprung suspension arms, touched down on the thick dust and sand surface of the planet. Peter didn’t lose a second and switched on at once the geared electric motors incorporated into each of the ten wheels, making the rover roll forward at a speed of about twenty kilometer per hour. As the rover rolled past the six kilometer-high cliffs, keeping a rough separation distance of 500 meters with them, Roman and his three geologists eagerly examined the rocky walls of the cliffs with the help of their binoculars and of the powerful optical telescope attached to the swiveling camera mount fixed above the crew compartment, in the nose of the rover. Roman spoke with near glee as he looked at the near vertical walls of the cliffs they were passing by.
‘’With so much lava having flowed and accumulated over and under the slopes of Olympus Mons, there should be a treasure trove of useful ores here, ready to be exploited by us. In fact, much of this planet’s surface is made of igneous material disgorged by old volcanoes like this one. While we already found numerous large deposits of aluminum, magnesium and titanium ore around our base and Melas Chasma, we should find here plenty of iron ore deposits worthy of exploitation.’’
Peter Walsingham, who was periodically checking the sensors readings of the rover, then made a remark that made the geologists glanced at the rover’s magnetometer.
‘’Well, I would say that we are getting close to one big deposit right now, Roman: our magnetometer is starting to become crazy.’’
Excitement mounted suddenly in Roman as he looked at the magnetometer’s readings.
‘’That magnetic field seems to come from around our ten o’clock. Turn in that direction and get as close as you can to the base of the cliffs, Peter.’’
As the pilot obeyed him, all the geologists pointed their binoculars in the said direction.
‘’That part of the cliffs stands at the end of a large trench complex formed on the volcano’s slopes by a collapsed network of underground lava tubes.’’ said Yves Dorval while scanning visually th
e surface of the cliffs dead ahead. ‘’This would be the ideal kind of terrain to find big ore deposits. From the strong magnetic signature we are getting now, my bet is that we are heading towards a significant deposit of magnetite.’’
‘’I concur!’’ replied Frey Thorvalsson, who was a volcanologist on top of being a geologist. Being highly concentrated on visually examining the rocky cliffs ahead as the rover kept approaching them, he was the first to notice a particular area at the base of the cliffs. It appeared to be the denuded end of an old lava tube filled with solidified magma and it was huge, measuring a good three kilometers in width and over two kilometers in height in its part emerging from the dusty ground at the base of the cliffs. It was distinguishable mostly thanks to its deep black color. What was however truly attracting Frey’s attention was the fact that the low Sun’s rays reflected on many parts of the rock surface with a kind of metallic luster. A big grin then came on his face.
‘’Guys, I believe that we are now approaching one hell of a huge deposit of magnetite ore filling that old lava tube dead ahead.’’
The three other scientists, on hearing him, immediately concentrated their attention on the said lava tube, taking only seconds to agree with him.
‘’Damn, you are right, Frey!’’ said Tim Garland. ‘’From the color and degree of light reflection, I would add that this looks like an ore vein with a very high concentration of magnetite. If so, this could become a prime location to mine iron for our nascent colony. I can’t wait to go collect samples from that rock face and analyze them.’’
A Mars Odyssey Page 16