“Your figures are right, Lance, but you’re looking at all of this pessimistically. These are solvable problems,” Mike said.
“Ones we wouldn’t have if you hadn’t—”
“Lance, I have to cut in,” Sarah said quietly. “Whether we give them away or not, our provisions will eventually run out. That’s a given. We have to find ways to replenish them, faster now than before. We can do it.”
Lance scanned the group. Sharon was nodding in agreement with what Sarah had said. Maybe she was right after all. However, the time pressure that Mike’s decision had put them under really rankled.
“Okay,” Lance finally said, his anger spent. “Then we should get started working as soon as possible. As I see it, our main problem is energy. If we have enough of that, we can produce enough oxygen and water.
“Food cultivation is a close second,” Sarah replied. “As the biologist, I’ll take this piece. Lance, you should take charge of the power production. Do you have any ideas?”
“Absolutely. I’d like to build some turbines.”
Sol 12, MfE expedition
“Theo, it’s good to see you.”
It was so dark in their bubble that the screen was blinding them. Theo dimmed the brightness to keep from waking up Rebecca, who was still asleep.
“Hello, Ewa,” Theo said softly.
“Are you making good time?”
“Very good. If we can maintain our speed, we’ll reach our destination a day early.”
“Don’t forget that you should start searching for ice before then. It’ll just be at a greater depth.”
“Of course. But I suspect you haven’t called before dawn in order to remind us of that?” Theo felt hope flicker up briefly. Have they perhaps made contact with Earth again? he thought.
But he was wrong.
“You’re right, Theo. I wanted to warn you that the satellite has detected a dust storm heading your way.”
“When?”
“The highest wind speed should reach you in about four hours.”
“Thanks for the warning. We’ll set off anyway.”
Ewa laughed. “I thought you would. That’s the Theo I know. Good luck!”
She ended the transmission.
Theo decided to awaken Rebecca. There was a chance they would lose some time today, so it would be best for them to set off earlier.
His colleague was sleeping on her stomach, her head propped on her arm. This only left him one-third of the mattress, but since he had to sleep on his side, it didn’t bother him.
“You blow on my neck during the night,” Rebecca had declared on the second night.
“I can turn and sleep on my other side,” he had replied.
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t bother me. I actually find it somewhat comforting, as if someone is taking care of me. When I was a kid, I had a dog that always slept next to me in my small bed. I fell asleep to the sound of its panting.”
A dog. Theo had laughed aloud at the thought. However, if it helped her to fall asleep, he would be a dog. He had probably been smelling like one for a long time already, anyways. The opportunities for them to wash up during their camping trip were quite limited. The methanol fuel cell produced water they could use to wash, but the amount was limited, and they refused to squander the drinkable water they had brought along.
“Time to wake up,” he said, tapping her leg.
Rebecca moved slightly, but she seemed to still be dreaming. She turned over on her back but didn’t open her eyes. A crease line ran across her right cheek, which had been resting on her arm.
“I’m sorry, Rebecca, but we have to get going,” he said louder.
She opened her eyes. “Oh, is it morning already?” she asked, her voice sounding soft and a little husky.
“Almost. A storm is heading our way, which is why we have to set off earlier.”
“Okay, give me ten minutes.”
Theo turned around. He spooned instant coffee powder into the water kettle, added water to it, and set it on the warming plate. The drink was heated to precisely 37 degrees. The brew’s taste was far from real coffee, but the caffeine never failed to have its effect. He cranked the clasps to the right on the aluminum cans containing the bread dough. The contents were heated chemically. After forty-five seconds, he could open the cans all the way. The clumps of bread that he dumped out of them looked like rolls. They were warm, but not crusty.
“Jelly or chocolate spread?” he asked.
“Jelly. Strawberry,” Rebecca replied.
He cut her roll in two against the edge of the can and drizzled a tube of red cream on it, before pressing the two halves of the bread back together. He spread a brown cream onto his own roll.
“Ready,” he said.”
“Me, too,” Rebecca answered.
Theo turned back around and held out her roll and coffee. Only then did he begin on his own breakfast.
The sky was behaving strangely today. Theo would have been worried if he hadn’t known what was coming. He hadn’t seen the sun come up. It was already a washed-out spot in the sky when they emerged from their tent balloon. Although it was now eight o’clock, it was difficult to judge direction by the brightness of the sky. It hadn’t grown brighter over the past half hour, it had actually become darker.
“Shouldn’t we stop somewhere and take shelter?” Rebecca asked from behind him.
“That won’t be necessary unless our visibility gets too bad,” he replied.
Ewa radioed in. “Are the two of you all right? The satellite has reported that the storm has almost reached you.”
“It’s only gotten a little darker,” replied Rebecca.
“That’s the dust floating in the air,” added Theo.
“Why hasn’t it hit you?”
“It’s coming up from the South, and we’re directly north of you,” said Theo.
“You’re forgetting the rotation of the planet. It disrupts the airstreams,” Rebecca noted.
“That’s right,” Theo said. “I should’ve thought of that myself.”
“But be careful anyway!” Ewa advised.
“Of course,” they both responded at the same time.
He terminated the connection. Theo’s thoughts drifted to his childhood. Whenever they had driven home from his grandmother’s house at night, white walls of fog had often blocked the streets. His father had driven straight through them with no hesitation. That had always impressed him greatly as a child. Another world is hidden inside the fog, his child’s mind had thought. Will we be able to find our way back out again?
He had imagined dust storms on Mars to be like that, but of course, they weren’t similar at all. The visibility was definitely limited, but he could still see for at least 150 meters. This was why he hadn’t dropped his speed even a little. The dust seemed to be swirling above their heads primarily. However, that was an optical illusion. When he glanced upward, he could see a brownish wall, actually a thick layer of dust, many kilometers in depth. The illusion didn’t function on the ground level because the scattered boulders provided a sense of perspective.
“It’s rather unnerving, that wall above us,” Rebecca said.
“The air isn’t any thicker than it is down here.”
“I know,” she replied.
But she was right. It was as if they were driving underneath a gigantic boulder that was gradually descending on top of them. In the direction they were driving, their perspective caused the boulder to look like it was sinking closer and closer to the surface, and yet the farther they actually drove, the higher the boundary between sky and surface seemed.
Theo glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. “It’s nine-thirty,” he said. “This is the worst of it.”
The Rover’s gauge indicated that the wind speed was about 80 kilometers per hour. Since they were driving in the direction the wind was blowing, the storm seemed to be blasting them at 60 kilometers per hour, but at most, it felt like a gentle wind on Earth. He really hadn�
�t needed to worry. Next time, he’d let Rebecca sleep in. A thin atmosphere had its advantages.
Theo was glad that the storm hadn’t stalled out somewhere else. The atmosphere was hypnotic. He was no longer on Mars, but rather, caught in a painting by an Expressionist painter. He would now steer for eternity toward a destination that sat just beyond the edge of the picture, while a giant tried to squash him under his foot.
Sol 19, NASA base
Due to the dust floating in the air, it hadn’t really grown any brighter since they’d awakened. That was normal for this time of year. Sharon, the trained meteorologist, called it the northern Autumn. As the southern region, where significant deposits of frozen carbon dioxide gathered during the chilly winter, gradually grew warmer, here, north of the equator, it was slowly becoming colder. The temperature extremes were equalized by the airstreams that carried the dust with them.
Lance gazed up. If the sun remained missing for yet another day, his depression would deepen. But his project was even more critical. The solar panels they had brought with them had only produced half of their typical output for days now.
Today there wasn’t even a little breeze. It was a strange atmosphere, like before the onset of a storm. If only it would rain! Lance imagined how the raindrops would scrub the dust out of the air. The sky—how he missed the blue on Earth!—would be clearer than it ever had been, and once the storm had passed, a rainbow would stretch across the horizon.
Lance sighed. He would never experience rain again. Even if they managed to change Mars’s climate, there wouldn’t be rain on this planet for another thousand years.
He was making decent progress with his turbine. Because of the low dynamic pressure that the wind here generated, he couldn’t build a machine with massive propellers, like on Earth. He had based his design on memories of a childhood toy. His pinwheel had consisted of paper blades folded into a common center, their points secured—with a sturdy pin—to a stick. They maintained their form as a result of the material’s internal tension. And since they were so lightweight, even the mildest breeze had set the pinwheel in joyous motion. To young Lance, that had seemed so magical. If you stared at the spinning blades, the colors would suddenly start to blur. He had always hoped that the enchanted process would lead to something new and wondrous, but the pinwheel had eventually come to a stop, every time.
He wasn’t working with paper in this case. For the dimensions he needed, it wouldn’t have been stable enough. Along with Sharon, he had worked in the new lab and synthesized a soft plastic that met the requirements for his endeavor. They had used methanol as their base material, since they could produce an ongoing supply of this from carbon dioxide. How many times had they had to start over again? Many!
The material had to be stable, and had to bear up even when shaped into a surface area of ten square meters with the lowest wall-thickness possible. It wasn’t enough to make it as pliable as a sheet of paper, whose lower edge you could curve and attach at the top. It was on this point that they almost failed, until Lance started to experiment with actual paper. The paper proved to be less pliable if you bent or rolled it up beforehand. That was the moment he altered the form of his turbine. It would now consist of two curved, U-shaped plastic elements. They would each be five meters long, and along two sides they would be mounted to a pivoted mast. A generator would be located at the foot of the structure. He had already repurposed an electric engine, the spare for the open Rover, into the generator.
Now he was in the process of attaching the blades to the metal pole. They had constructed it from various replacement parts and fused them together. Once that was done, he had cut slits into both sides of the pole into which he was now slotting the plastic blades. Lance had thought up a trick to keep them from working their way loose. Thin wires were running through the pole, and he would send an electrical current through them. When they grew hot, the plastic touching the metal pole would melt a little and weld onto the metal to keep the blades from slipping out.
For this final step, he needed help, which was why Sarah was on her way. In exchange, he had promised to water their first garden beds.
“Tell me what to do.”
Oh! She’s already here. Lance wiped the dust from his helmet window.
“You need to pick up the end of the pole and pull the wire inside it taut. Just a sec. Not until I say when.”
He leaned down and lifted his end of the pole. “Now.”
They lifted it simultaneously.
Lance felt Sarah start to pull on the wire. “That’s just right,” he said. “I’ll now send 330 volts through the wire.”
The wire twitched in his fingers. His announcement must have startled Sarah.
“The charge won’t do anything. The resistance in your gloves is too high for you to feel anything. At most, the wire gets a little hot, but I’ll turn off the electricity after a few seconds.”
“Got it,” he heard Sarah say over the helmet radio.
“Alright, now.”
This time, the wire remained still. Lance pushed the power switch on the mobile methanol generator with his toe. He couldn’t see anything, which meant he’d have to guess. How long would the wire need to heat up and melt the plastic?
Exactly this long, he decided as he cut the power back off. If that hadn’t been long enough, he could always heat it for longer.
“You can put the pole back down.”
Sarah carefully set the pole back down on the ground.
“Still need me for anything, Lance?”
“Let me just check quickly to see if it worked.”
He walked along the pole and tried to tug the plastic blades out, but they didn’t budge. His plan had worked. He stopped right in front of Sarah, who was gazing toward the East. He followed her gaze, which was when he noticed it—a flickering reddish light up in the sky.
“Do you see that?” he asked, pointing toward the light.
“See what?”
“There was a light over that way.”
“A light?”
He didn’t reply, but then the light reappeared.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe you were joking.”
“Is that a polar light?” Lance asked.
“The magnetic field on Mars is much too weak to produce a polar light.”
Lance radioed Sharon back at the base. “Do you know what’s glowing out there on the horizon?”
“The red lights?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“It’s a storm. Or the Martian version of one.”
Lance cranked his external microphone up all the way. He heard his feet crunching through the dust, which he had never noticed before. However, no sound followed the next flash of lightning.
“It’s a shame there’s no thunder,” he said.
“There’s a little, but the atmosphere is so thin that it seriously dampens the sound,” Sharon explained.
“Pity,” Lance replied.
“That doesn’t matter. We’re probably the first people to observe such red discharges in the sky from the Mars surface. I think it’s quite romantic,” said Sarah.
Lance wanted to say, ‘You’re right,’ but the words, which felt both stubborn and unwieldy, did not cross his lips. He would have liked to slide his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, but what if she didn’t want to be touched? Wouldn’t that make working together awkward? he thought with a sigh.
“Go ahead and do it,” Sarah said.
Uh, what? He was stunned. Had she just read his thoughts? He cautiously placed his right arm around her shoulders.
Sarah started to laugh.
“I was actually talking to Mike,” she said. “He wants to come out and watch the weather. But this is very nice. Don’t stop.” She carefully leaned back until he was supporting her.
Sol 20, NASA base
The night shifts were stressful. Lance was supposed to spend eight hours watching something that had never failed because it had been designed for long-
term functioning without supervision. The base had been here long before they had arrived, and after their departure, it would... No, they wouldn’t be departing, at least not as they had planned. How could he have forgotten that for even a moment? Was it normal that he had adjusted so quickly to this situation, or was he still in some state of denial?
Lance turned onto his side in the seat. He had reclined the back as far as it would go. It wasn’t a completely flat surface, but he slept even worse sitting upright. He had tested that theory on his last night shift. He pulled the thin blanket over his body and closed his eyes. His girlfriend materialized on his mental movie screen. He still remembered how sweet her face had been. Sweet—that was what came to his mind. But he couldn’t recall the color of her eyes. Don’t worry, he thought, you just need to take a look at one of her photos, and then everything will come back.
But he didn’t listen to his own advice, and his memory dissolved. This hadn’t happened even once during their six-month flight to Mars, but now it was starting. What does this mean? Don’t I still love her? Yes, I do. Just the thought of Freda made him feel warm.
Something began to vibrate suddenly. Lance jerked, and his right foot brushed against the control panel. He leaped up. ‘Transmission declined’ stood in red letters on the screen. His foot must have touched the transmission button. Lance quickly pulled up the details. Mars Express 2b, which had been orbiting the planet for the past ten years, was notifying the base that it had received a signal. It wasn’t from NASA, but from a distance that corresponded with Earth’s location. The signal strength indicated that. Is it back again? Has everything just been a mistake, an experiment, a disruption? Freda has brown eyes, he suddenly remembered. Or does she? Lance tapped at the screen wildly. He had to countermand the dismissal! But it was too late. The satellite was just sinking below the horizon. They would have to wait until it reappeared over this hemisphere.
Should he wake the others up? Absolutely. Regardless of what Mars Express 2b had picked up, it was something relevant to all of them. Lance left the control center. He needed to deliver this news in person. He woke the others up gently, starting with Mike as the commander.
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