Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy

by Brandon Q Morris

  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.

  “The satellite won’t show back up for several more hours. Why did you wake me up?” Mike was all cool.

  Sharon dashed right to the control center. She had to see the message with her own eyes.

  Sarah impulsively hugged him. Startled, Lance turned red. He hadn’t deserved that. On the contrary, if he hadn’t reacted so clumsily, they would already know what Earth wanted from them.

  Of course, there was a chance it hadn’t come from Earth. But if not, from where?

  Several hours later, Mike was sitting in the commander seat as Mars Express 2b climbed over the horizon. Lance, Sharon, and Sarah were standing around him, following every movement he made.

  Mike requested that the satellite resend the transmission. Everything ran smoothly. The parabolic antenna transmitted what it had received, and the computer decrypted it.

  “This is Rick Summers, the administrator of the space ship Spaceliner 1. Our task is to develop Mars as a colony for Earth. Just like us, you must now know that our home planet is no longer responding. We few survivors are on our own. In the name of our president, I would like to offer you the opportunity to join us once we reach Mars in about five months. We possess all the resources necessary to make the planet permanently habitable, and we are prepared to share these with you, if you are willing to place yourselves under our command. Please send us your decision as soon as possible.”

  The message hadn’t come from Earth, after all, Lance thought grimly. He watched as Sharon and Mike’s faces fell by the end of the first sentence. Sarah pushed the replay button. Rick Summers’s voice repeated his speech.

  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that man,” she said finally.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s the most logical thing for us to do. The Spaceliner project was privately funded, and they have very different resources than we do,” Mike said.

  “We can’t just agree to submit to them! We don’t even know who they are,” Lance interjected as he started to pace up and down the control center.

  “Lance is right,” Sarah agreed. “My gut tells me that this Summers isn’t everything he seems to be.”

  “What do you think, Sharon?” Mike asked.

  “I... don’t know. I have to admit that, for a moment, I felt real hope again.”

  “Our chances of survival would be greater if we had access to what Spaceliner I is bringing with it,” Mike remarked.

  “That might be true, but we can’t give up our independence so quickly,” Lance protested. What was wrong with Mike? Had that brief flicker of hope swept him along to the point of preferring to abdicate his responsibility? he thought.

  “We don’t have to make a decision today,” Sarah suggested. “You can formulate a polite refusal. If they land and behave themselves, we can still decide to join them.”

  “I can live with that,” Sharon said.

  “Fine,” Mike shrugged. “That’s what we’ll do.”

  He leaned over the monitor.

  “In theory, we are open to whatever your idea of collaboration might be,” he spoke into the camera as he rubbed his chin. “There are bound to be areas in which we could profit from one another’s experiences, or in which an exchange of knowledge or technology would be helpful. As a crew, we agree that the formal structures you have in mind are not necessary for us. We see ourselves as an independent operation, as our contracting authority intended for us to be, which means we are not part of the private enterprise that you represent.”

  “Perfect,” Lance was about to say, though he was able to bite his tongue just in time. Mike needed to be the one to express the concluding greeting.

  “I wish you a safe journey,” Mike continued. “Please contact us again shortly before you land. Perhaps, with our equipment, we can help you find a good landing spot.”

  Mike pressed a button. Lance followed the progress bars on the send icon. It only took a few seconds for the message to start its long trip.

  “You did a good job, Mike,” he said.

  “Thanks.” His colleague and friend’s voice sounded weary, observed Lance.

  Sol 21, MfE expedition

  “Ouch! I told you to be careful around that spot!”

  “I’m sorry, Rebecca.”

  “Man, Theo, it hurts terribly as it is.”

  “I know.”

  The insides of Rebecca’s thighs were covered in bruises. However, the raw spots were even worse. They had first appeared on her body four days ago. Theo’s had shown up two days later. He already hated what was coming next. As soon as he was done spreading medicine on Rebecca, they would have to climb back into their instruments of torture, their spacesuits. The wounds had first developed on their joints, where the fabric ridges inside the suits rubbed against their skin. As they drove for hours in the Rover, these spots were scraped raw. They were also unable to sit any longer, since blisters had now formed on their thighs and backsides—a recent development.

  He squeezed a dollop of cream out of the tube and spread it lightly across Rebecca’s skin. To reach one of the abrasions, he had to push her underwear a little to the side. However, his thoughts were occupied with their medical supplies.

  “I’m sorry that I yelled at you in the tent earlier,” apologized Rebecca. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  “No problem,” Theo replied as he maneuvered the Rover between two boulders.

  For the first time yesterday, he had shouted as well, because she had taken longer than usual to climb into the Rover. This is all normal, he said to himself. It had been days since they had been able to get away from each other. They spent their days and nights together. By this point, Theo was convinced he knew Rebecca better than he had known the three or four serious girlfriends he’d had back on Earth. At least he and Rebecca weren’t at each other’s throats—yet.

  Their routine might help with that. Theo valued sticking to their plan. They set off at the same time every day, reset the ground-penetrating radar every ten minutes on the dot, and never stayed more than ten hours in one spot. They should’ve already located ice four days ago. They had driven over 2,000 kilometers northward, even though they had only figured on 1,500. They would eventually have to call it quits.

  “Rebecca, I think we need to give some serious thought to whether or not we should turn back,” he said.

  “If we do that, Mars for Everyone is finished,” she replied. “Is that what you want?”

  “Ewa thinks we can find another way to procure water.”

  Ewa had already started advocating for their return three days ago, but he had been against it. He was now wondering if he had made the right call. Maybe Mars doesn’t want to make it so easy for us? They had trusted one specific theory, perhaps too much—underground ice could exist around the 40th parallel. However, that didn’t mean that it had to.

  “You can do the math yourself, Theo. Extracting water from minerals requires way too much energy input. We’ll be suffering from a chronic energy shortage as it is, a decade from now at the latest, once the KRUSTY the NASA people plan to give us runs out of fuel.”

  “Ten years is a long time. We’ll find alternatives by then.”

  “By then we might have moved our settlement, which won’t be cheap. Let’s stay around here for another few days.

  “The farther north we go, the colder the winters will be, and that will cost more energy and decrease even more the efficiency of our solar panels.”

  “Only a few percentage points. We’d be able to recover the loss if we found an ice deposit.”

  Rebecca was right. If they failed to locate any ice deposits, the previous plans for their settlement would be obsolete. They might have to find some way to remain with the NASA people in that case.
Wouldn’t that be the wiser course anyway? Did they really have to build their own Mars for Everyone settlement? Who was the Everyone if Earth remained silent?

  “Our medical supplies won’t last for the entire return trip. The last days will be hell,” Theo declared.

  “We’d get through it, if we have a good report to bring back.”

  “And if not?”

  “Oh, Theo, I’ve never heard you so pessimistic.”

  “I start every morning by staring at the open sores on your backside.”

  “I can promise you that, although I can’t see them, I feel them with every bump in the ground.”

  “And you really want to keep going?”

  “Give us three more days, alright? Then we’ll head back.”

  “Two days, as a compromise?” Theo offered.

  “Agreed,” said Rebecca with a sigh.

  Sol 22, MfE base

  “Have you seen what the NASA people sent over?”

  Gabriella was sitting in front of a monitor in the Endeavour’s command center, her eyes on Ewa, who had just climbed up the ladder.

  “I just woke up,” Ewa replied. She hadn’t slept so poorly in a long time. Why aren’t Theo and Rebecca finding the ice? As a group, they had discussed this for a long time. It could just be dumb luck, or the lack thereof. There might be giant ice deposits on either side of their route, but not directly on their way. Or the models generated by the planetary scientists had simply been wrong.

  “They’ve received two messages from Spaceliner I,” Gabriella said.

  “That American multimillionaire’s privately funded ego project? What was his name?”

  “Yep, that’s the one—I don’t recall the guy’s name. Spaceliner I will be here in five months.”

  “Well, hopefully, not right here. They must have launched before Earth went silent.”

  “Looks that way,” Gabriella said. “It sounds like you have something against them.”

  “What they’re doing is the complete opposite of what we imagined for our settlement of Mars. They want to build a colony that will function according to economic considerations.”

  “Considering there might not be any more assistance from Earth, isn’t that perhaps the model which will ensure the highest likelihood of survival, even if it isn’t the better concept?”

  “You can’t be serious, Gabriella. But what did they have to say?”

  “In the first message, they offered to formally incorporate us into their endeavor. You’ll especially like the second one, though. Just a sec.”

  Gabriella pushed a few buttons, and a thin face appeared on the screen. The man had to be in his late thirties. Ewa based this estimate on the few wrinkles she thought she could make out on his forehead. His clean-shaven face made him seem younger, though. His ears stuck out a little. The speaker introduced himself as Rick Summers, administrator of Spaceliner I.

  Gabriella turned up the sound. “I meant this part,” she said.

  “You might be interested in this offer I’d like to make,” Summers began. At this volume, his voice sounded unpleasant.

  “If any one of you agrees to support our mission, I will name you my non-terminable representative. If you would prefer, you don’t need to tell anyone about your decision. It can remain between the two of us. All I require is your loyalty, and you won’t regret this decision. Take all the time you need to consider your response. However, you should understand that I can only keep this offer open until I receive the first positive response.”

  Ewa laughed. The man is obviously seeking a spy among my crew, she thought. His gall impressed her. It wasn’t coincidental that Summers was in charge of a private spaceship. Whatever his specific function, it seemed to come with a certain amount of power, as otherwise he wouldn’t be in a position to make such enticing offers. Ewa’s first impulse was to have Gabriella delete the message, but that would indicate that she didn’t trust her crew.

  Would any of them actually fall for this primitive manipulation? she wondered. They were all caught in a state of relative emergency, but Ewa had never once thought that the crew’s loyalty to the mission had suffered as a result of it. And yet, she felt uncertain. Most of them would reject the offer flat out. But hard times were coming, without a doubt. Over time, Summers’s offer might sink into the crew’s thoughts like a slow-acting poison. Ewa shook her head. Her questioning of the other crew members simply made Summer’s work easier.

  “Go ahead and play it for the others,” she told Gabriella.

  “Shouldn’t we vote on our response? The NASA people already sent Summers their refusal.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. But if anyone on the crew thinks differently, we can certainly take a vote. I think the outcome would be quite clear.”

  Sol 22, NASA base

  “You promised to help me with the gardening.”

  Lance glanced up at Sarah from his monitor. He had just been planning his first wind farm. The turbine he had set up was producing less than 30 watts on average, which was only enough to power a single LED panel. But with one hundred turbines they could generate three kilowatts, which would be enough to actually do something significant. However, Lance was facing two problems.

  He had to raise enough for the initial investment. The methanol that they were processing into the plastic for the turbines required a significant energy input for its production. He also needed a large number of pipes, as lightweight as possible, to set up the mini-power plants, as well as several generators that could take the angular momentum and convert it to electricity. He was using his computer to experiment with how to lay out a hundred turbines so that they wouldn’t negatively impact each other. This was where Sarah’s request cut in.

  Biting back a groan, Lance stood up. He had indeed promised to help with the gardening. Sarah smiled, and Lance suddenly realized that maybe he didn’t mind working in the garden.

  “It won’t be all that much fun,” she cautioned.

  “I bet that’s not true,” he answered. “After all, you’ll be there.” He instantly turned as beet red as a schoolboy, but Sarah seemed to be flattered by this awkward compliment.

  “Then, come on.”

  Sarah led the way to the greenhouse. It was located beyond one of the airlocks. Before stepping inside, Sarah pressed a breathing mask into his hands. “Because of the special atmosphere,” she said.

  Though the explanation was unnecessary, Lance nodded anyway. The plants they had brought with them thrived especially well in carbon dioxide-enriched air.

  Sarah also pulled on a mask before climbing down the three steps to the airlock and continuing on her knees. He followed her. The airlock’s ceiling was low, which was why they couldn’t walk upright. The greenhouse was also less than adult height. Lance could only work there by ducking his head. A cloud of foul-smelling gas was waiting for them beyond the airlock door.

  Sarah pointed at the mask, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, unfortunately, it doesn’t hold the scent molecules at bay. At least, they’re not toxic,” she said.

  It smelled like feces, and Lance could guess why.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Sarah said, “we didn’t have enough dirt for the spores we brought along.”

  Lance caught sight of a giant four-shelf unit. Each level held a thirty-centimeter thick layer of reddish-brown material.

  “That is Martian dirt,” Sarah explained. “I’ve injected it with the spores to help enrich it. However, our greenhouse is larger than planned, which is why I have to avail myself of the life support system.”

  “You spread our shit across the beds?” Lance said, laughing.

  “No, not directly. First I dried it and ground it up. That way I could distribute it more systematically than if what I had was thick chunks of it.”

  Sarah held a bag out to him. “What does it look like?” she asked.

  “Coffee grounds?” was Lance’s best guess.

  “Then, bon appetite. This i
s the result of your time on the toilet yesterday.”

  “Great. What would you like me to do?”

  “I’ve prepared something for you over there to the side.”

  “Almost sounds like a cooking show.”

  “Haha! I injected this dirt two days ago. I need you to take a series of samples and analyze them.”

  “I have no idea how to do that.”

  “You insert the samples into that tube there and the machine will do the rest.”

  “And how many samples do I need to take?”

  “Do you see the little sprouts? They’re all cataloged on the computer. You should take a sample from each plant, and this will help us determine the optimal growth conditions.”

  “Not just warm and damp?” Lance asked.

  “No, we want to produce as much food as possible with as little energy input as is necessary. Back home, the best results were 420 grams per kilowatt-hour. The better my values are, the less electricity your turbines have to produce.”

  “Interesting. I didn’t know that you worked with values like that. In other words, for each four-kilowatt hour, I could cover a day’s rations for one crew member?”

  “Only if we want to eat Rambo radishes and nothing else. Watercress, carrots, and lettuce aren’t nearly as efficient, the grains even less so.”

  “That has to be linked to the least-consumable components of the plants.”

  “At least in terms of the grains. But we can also eat cooked radish leaves, and they’re high in nutrients. Plants benefit the most from strongly carbon dioxide-enriched atmospheres.”

  “Good. Well, should I go ahead and start?”

  “Yes, thanks. I’ll be on the other side of the shelves. I have to prepare ten square meters of dirt today so that I can plant some carrots tomorrow.”

  Sol 23, MfE expedition