The Far Shore

by Glenn Damato

  “You and Cristina can do that. Shuko and I rig the crane.”

  Senuri and I cycle out. Before getting into the airlock we check the power panel for the battery state of charge: 841 kilowatt-hours, ninety-one percent capacity. Almost a tenth discharged over the thirty hours since we separated from the TMI.

  “Big power loads coming today,” Senuri remarks.

  The suit pinches are milder. Jessica had said the actuators sense swollen tissue and modify the pressure profile over time. Pinching or not, the slight discomfort is worth it to escape the cramped and stinky control center.

  Liberty’s lower two meters consists mostly of cargo compartments. Bulky equipment can be unloaded directly to the surface. I carry the drill tower fifteen meters as measured by the compressed gas hose. “Mikki, is this spot okay?”

  “As good as any other. Jürgen doesn’t think the ice is deep here, but there’s no way to know until we drill a pilot hole.”

  It takes an hour to set up the tower because it needs six anchor spikes driven into the surface at an angle. By that time there’s working gas pressure in the hose. I switch on the drill motor and a faint purr comes through the thin atmosphere. The pilot drill is small, five centimeters across, only intended to explore and make sure we have the right spot for the full-sized hole.

  Our first setback comes just after noon. The problem isn’t the drill itself but what it’s drilling into. Ice, too much of it. Our landing zone was considered unlikely to be over a glacier. Therefore, there shouldn’t be more than ten to fifty centimeters of ice or permafrost under the surface. The pilot hole finds ice pockets down to three meters.

  Jürgen comes out to investigate. He walks a circle around Liberty while studying the ground.

  “We’re not on a glacier. Probably just hit a local deposit. Can’t bury the reactor in ice. Let’s try the other side.”

  Less than six hours before sunset.

  Mikki faces Jürgen. “If there’s ice over there too, should we start the fallback option? Surface install with regolith shielding?”

  “Let’s try at least two more locations first. An underground installation means better radiation shielding. We can extend the cable ten meters further out.”

  He trudges back toward Independence and his Discovery Team briefing thing. Is Ryder following what’s going on with the reactor installation?

  I’m hot, face-dripping hot. Minus nine degrees, but between the thermals and the sun and the lack of thick air to conduct away body heat, the sub-freezing temperature doesn’t matter as much as it would on Earth. The fan that’s supposed to circulate Mars air under the thermals isn’t working right, filter probably needs cleaning.

  Moving the tower, anchoring it, and drilling another pilot hole will take how long?

  “Mikki, I’m going inside to clean my cooling filter.”

  “Yeah, but start the second hole first.”

  “There won’t be a second hole if we pass out from heat stroke,” Senuri tells her. “Alison and Paige can come out and move the tower later. You and Shuko can cool off in the shade.”

  The sweat on Mikki’s nose glistens in the sun. “Not even two hours, and you’re crying to go back in?”

  Senuri walks toward Liberty. “This is not a comfort issue. My heart rate is one fifty-five.”

  My visor shows HR 153. “Mikki, you’re in charge of the reactor, but I’m flight director aboard Liberty.”

  “Flight director. As in, for the flight. Did you notice we landed, genius?”

  Mikki pulls up tower anchors while Senuri and I cycle back in. The equipment bay is so packed with hoses and tanks the inner hatch is blocked from opening all the way. Paige says, “We’re ready to start the hydro test. Once we get this sweetheart going it’ll warm this place up.”

  The irony! She’s inside and chilly, we’re outside and sweating. “We need to re-drill. Before you cycle out, make sure your cooling air filter is clean, or you’ll stew in your own juices.”

  I need to sit. Twenty minutes to rest, drink, dry off, and visit the pit. Senuri agrees that Paige and Alison will continue the equipment tests and rotate outside in a couple of hours.

  After we cycle back out, Mikki and Shuko resume attaching the wire mesh tires to the truck. I drag the compressed gas hose to the other side of Liberty.

  Constitution reports rock, sand and ice down to four meters. I start the second hole. It doesn’t take long for the first material to ooze from around the spinning shaft—dark gray mush, like mud, steaming wisps of vapor.

  Mikki examines the new hole. “Fuck. Ice. Fuck me.”

  Four hours before sunset. I should have scarfed down a food bar before cycling out.

  Darien and Indra report the same, but the ice stops at two meters. I ask Jürgen, “What’s the max allowed?”

  “Half a meter is the recommendation.”

  So maybe we landed in freaky ice zone. “If we need to, how long would it take to switch to the above-ground method?”

  “I want to try more holes before we consider that.”

  The sun is low in the west by the time the tower is ready for the third hole. Hunger pangs gone, replaced by cold jitters. At least the crap coming up the hole is different this time, crumblier, not steaming.

  Mikki bends over the hole with a measuring stick. “We bury it here.”

  The nuclear reactor is a silver cylinder maybe fifty centimeters wide and a meter tall. Fins around the edge make it look larger—excess heat radiators, according to the manual. The reactor can generate forty kilowatts of electricity non-stop for thirty years.

  Senuri and Mikki rig two cables and winch the small but massive device from the cargo compartment. The nameplate reads: GE-Hitachi 4FTD Fluoride Thorium Generator 40kwe 115v 60 Hz AC APR2048, followed by Japanese letters. A yellow and purple label warns: RADIATION HAZARD.

  Mikki fastens the bottom to the base while Shuko connects a three-meter tube to the top, the refueling port. Senuri and I mount the winch on the truck and lower the reactor assembly to the bottom of the hole. Paige rigs the power, control, and monitoring cable so it can be connected before everything except the top of the refueling port is covered with rock and sand.

  Mikki declines a chance to go inside. Doesn’t she need to piss? Alison hot-swaps the compressed oxygen canister in her backpack.

  Are we done? Not a chance. I help Paige set up bladders to hold the methanol as it comes out of the catalyst tank. Two rectangular areas four meters long have to be raked clear of rocks and pebbles. We do this on the south side of Liberty so sunlight can warm the meth and make it less likely to freeze overnight if the temperature dips below minus ninety-seven degrees.

  We lay out the bladders inside the raked areas. They’re black and made of heavy flexible polymer stamped 1000 L in the center. Just as we finish, a biting chill soaks through my BioSuit.

  Mars: too hot or too cold.

  Ten minutes after sunset, Mikki and Shuko are still huddled over the conical dirt pile around the refueling port. Everyone gathers by the control center window to watch them finish. They insist on completing the work themselves. “Put your thermals on over those flight suits,” Senuri tells them. “Temp is minus thirty and falling rapidly.”

  I can barely decipher Mikki’s response. “Don’t you think we know it’s fucking cold?”

  She’s fixated. “Mikki, the BioSuits have no insulation. Watch your fingers! Without the sun, your whole body’s shedding heat via infrared. The manual says at night hands without thermal mitts can be frostbitten in minutes.”

  “Fuck your manual. We get this done.”

  Shuko has nothing to say?

  A dark figure approaches from the direction of Independence. Ryder! He sees them and pulls them both from the dirt pile. No words on the com—did they switch to the private channel? Someone shoves someone else. No need to guess who’s doing the shoving.

  Mikki and Shuko tumble from the airlock shaking violently. Senuri and I back Mikki against the Sabatier tank, pull he
r flight suit below her waist and detach the BioSuit collar and front seam. I clasp her cold fingers in my palms. “Can you feel this? Can you move them?”

  She splutters, “Done . . . with reactor.”

  Shuko drops to the floor. Is the imbécil actually smiling?

  Dinner is quiet. The cold creeps inside bones and most of us order some kind of hot soup. Ryder spoons the last of his and tells us what we’ve already guessed. “Andre stayed aboard Independence to finish the reactor startup.”

  “Their first hole was dry, wasn’t it?” Mikki asks. “He got a couple hours jump on me.”

  Ryder raises an eyebrow. “Mick, who said it was a race?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  A longer, calmer, darker, better night. The sleeper is plush compared to a blanket on the floor, even if the cushion is just a few centimeters thick.

  Already after nine! Paige says, “I don’t want to rush you, but we need water, as much as we can get, as fast as we can get it.”

  “Mind if I eat first?”

  “I’m not stopping you. Just saying, once we get the Sabatier going we can all take a real shower. Nothing fancy. A couple of liters each. Wet down, tiny bit of soap, rinse.”

  Alison says, “I forgot what it’s like to be clean!”

  Ryder, Senuri, and Shuko are outside working. In brown coveralls? No, their thermals are covered with reddish-brown dust. They dig up chunks of ice and toss them somewhere out of sight.

  I ask, “We electrolyzing water yet?”

  “Started two hours ago,” Paige answers. “It has to be melted in the hopper, filtered, put through the reverse osmosis purifier, then deionized. Slow going. We topped off our own reserve and I’m filling the truck’s oxygen tank as fast as the compressor allows.”

  “Topped off what reserve, water or oxygen?”

  “Both.”

  “Wait. You put sixty kilos in the big tank already?”

  She folds her arms. “I topped off the reserve tank, the ten kilo reserve. What tank are you talking about?”

  “The big spherical helium tank. We don’t need the landing fuel pressurized, so we vent it and fill it with oxygen.”

  “That’s not what Tess said.”

  Should have seen this coming. “Don’t you remember this discussion? We reach full life-support reserves before we make fuel for the trucks.”

  “They told me to make a specific amount of methanol by six tonight. Twenty liters minimum. I might be able to do it if I can get this shit going by ten.”

  Jürgen broke his word. Or delegated that job to Tess. Do the Articles require the captain to be honest? We forgot that part. So promises don’t matter if the captain says they don’t.

  “Put the first sixty kilos of oxygen in the big reserve tank. I’ll vent it and line it up.”

  Paige shakes her head. “I’m not going to let everybody think I’m an idiot because we’re the only ones who couldn’t contribute our share of fuel.”

  Mikki hunches over the power panel with a mug of tea. Battery state of charge stands at 762 kw-hours, eighty-three percent capacity. Lower than yesterday morning. That makes no sense. I ask her, “There’s a delay in the reactor start up?”

  She jerks her head from the panel. Her eyes are pink. “Not really. What makes you say that?”

  “The batteries are down compared to—”

  “Yeah. Drew two hundred amps to start the thing. There’s a plug of thorium salt that had to be melted from minus thirty degrees, and a CO2 loop and a thermionic generator to be brought to operating temperature. All that takes power.”

  “I understand. But we’re producing power now. Shouldn’t the batteries be charging?”

  “That almost got me too, but Eric cleared it up. Between melting ice, the electrolyzers, deionizers, three compressors for CO2, hydrogen and oxygen, plus hotel loads, there’s a massive drain on the bus and that shows up as a low state of charge.”

  “So we’re charging the batteries?”

  “Yes. But with a big current deficit.”

  Must have happened late. Was Liberty first on line? Her eyes say no. “I did the startup without any help from Eric,” she adds. “He’s not as essential as people assume.”

  She hasn’t been to bed at all.

  “Was there a problem starting up?”

  “Not really. The internal sequencer brings everything to operating temperature, then I had to manually run a script. That’s to make sure the thing never starts itself. There were some issues with timeouts. After I learned to read the TRAC, I realized it was already running.”

  “Read the what?”

  She yawns. “Transient Reactor Analysis Code.”

  Complicated. But it’s running.

  A late breakfast, then Alison and I cycle out to assist gathering ice. Ryder greets us with, “Welcome to the ice mines of Mars!”

  The ice just under the surface varies in thickness and clarity. Some of it’s milky white, but the rest is full of pebbles and sand grit. Unfortunately, the cleanest ice tended to be only one or two centimeters thick.

  Shuko uses a shovel blade to uncover patches while Ryder smashes with a pick. I copy Senuri, tossing ice chunks into a square metal hopper just inside the cargo compartment. A gravity-fed mechanism crushes the pieces before they drop into a heating chamber.

  Ryder leans on his shovel. “By this time next year we’ll have three or four Jacuzzis going.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” responds Shuko.

  I point to my helmet, meaning my brain. “You have to see it here first. That’s the first and hardest step.”

  ◆◆◆

  Going full-blast, the Sabatier chamber heats Liberty nice and toasty, just as Paige promised. But there’s a price: the din from the associated pumps, regulators, and fans combines into a constant rumble-whine. Noise for warmth, a fair trade-off.

  “Sweet, sweet methane,” Paige announces. “Next is the tricky part, single-stage oxidation to methanol. The Sab condenser recovers most of the water we electrolyzed. It’s pure, so I’m sending it straight to the potable tanks. No more drinking purified piss.”

  Ryder yells from the control deck, “I’ve grown to prefer the subtle flavor of purified piss.”

  The frequent cycling in and out of the airlock spreads fine brown dust everywhere. It stinks like burnt toast. We try to keep all dirty boots, thermals, and coveralls in the equipment bay, but in practice there’s no place to hang everything.

  “Nasty stuff!” says Alison. “Impossible to brush out. Hair’s turning orange.”

  Mikki sniffs mockingly. “Poor baby.”

  “At least there’s only a trace of perchlorates,” Senuri informs us. “Irritating but not dangerous. Like a lot of things, we’ll have to get used to the feel of it.”

  The first batch of methanol doesn’t go to the bladders. Alison prints two ten-liter containers with handles. Jürgen wants the stuff ready to go before nightfall, so Paige babysits the slow stream as it fills the first container. She measures the depth every few minutes and pleads with Ryder and Alison to stay outside and keep the hopper filled with ice chunks

  Always calm Senuri screams and points out the window—a moving truck! It’s kicking up dust, rolling along at the speed of a fast bicycle. The sight of it makes my skin tingle. Plus, we get to see a new person face-to-face, a rare event.

  The driver turns out to be Darien. I climb down into the equipment bay as he steps through the inner hatch. But he’s not interested in me or anyone else. The instant his helmet is off his eyes turn to the power panel. State of charge: 727 kw-hours, seventy-nine percent capacity.

  Small talk can wait. I tell him, “Our loads seem to be exceeding the reactor power output.”

  He examines the data and strokes his faint golden mustache. “Eric says this is fine, exactly what he expected.”

  I want to stick to this subject. “I don’t understand why total charge is still going down. At this rate we’ll be discharged in a few days.”

  �
��Eric’s modifying the software.”

  “Software? But this is a power—”

  “It has to do with measuring the state of charge.”

  “So when he fixes it we’ll see an accurate charge?”

  Darien lowers his eyes. “I don’t know. We got five battery packs, one on line and four charging. Eric says once his fix is complete we’ll have a better indication of total power.”

  Jürgen gets his compressed oxygen and methanol truck fuel. Not enough to go far, but enough to go somewhere. The first Discovery Team expedition needs just two trucks, and they’ll stay close in case a breakdown make it necessary to walk back.

  “Tomorrow’s expedition will cover a thirty-six kilometer circuit,” Jürgen reveals during his dinner speech. “Six planned stops, each one with a different scientific purpose. We’ll also start to map out the distribution of nearby mineral resources.”

  Eric offers his own contribution. He designed an alarm system to watch for solar flares “A big flare can deliver enough radiation to kill an exposed person,” he informs us. “The good news is, as long as we know about it, we’ll have one or two hours’ to get inside our hygiene compartments so we’re shielded from protons. Trouble is, Discovery Teams will be out of VHF range all day. So my idea is to shoot a small rocket about a kilometer up so it can broadcast a radio alarm.”

  We applaud Eric’s little black rocket, and he smiles in satisfaction.

  “The first humans to explore another planet!” Jürgen reminds us, as if we forgot. “Imagine what any scientist in history would’ve given to be in our place.”

  Ryder does come back from Independence, and promptly vanishes into his sleeper—alone, for once. Wake-up time is five, expedition to depart at dawn.

  Battery charge down another ten kilowatt-hours since this afternoon. Eric says don’t believe the indication, but what if it’s accurate? Except for fans, the Sabatier tank consumes no power once the exothermic reaction kicks off. Shouldn’t that lower the rate of battery discharge? And why is the indicated charge wrong, anyhow?