Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy

by Brandon Q Morris

  Ewa sat down at the controls and pulled up the rover’s technical data on the screen. How heavy was the vehicle, and how large was the tires’ contact area? She needed to reduce tire pressure. The settings were hidden in a submenu. Ewa selected the lowest technological setting possible.

  She then returned to the main menu. They had to drive faster to keep from sinking! The computer set the highest speed limit at 25 km/h. Ewa checked the radar images of the area. There had to be more images in here. She increased the speed limit manually, but the value immediately jumped back down to 25. Shit, why isn’t the computer obeying?

  Then she remembered. The front tires were still covered in snow chains. A speed limit for those must be set somewhere. She searched frantically through all the settings menus and deactivated all the safety protocols she found, but the rover still didn’t drive any faster. This couldn’t be happening! She stopped the vehicle so she could search for the cause in peace, but that wasn’t a good idea. Ewa noticed quickly that the rover was sinking.

  How far down would it go? At which point might the ice be stable? One meter down, ten, one hundred? She didn’t have time to figure that out. There was nobody here who could rescue her. She was all on her own. She had to stay up on top of the ice. Ewa let the rover continue to roll. The snow chains helped the tires to pull the rover out of the wells the vehicle had formed in the ice. In the footage picked up by the rearview camera, it looked as if they had just left an over-sized hares’ nest.

  Ewa took a deep breath and turned off the autopilot. This meant she had to sit at the controls. The area before her didn’t seem to hold any surprises. It sloped sharply uphill, but the snow chains could handle that easily. She increased her speed first to 30, then to 35 km/h. What would happen if the snow chains came off at this speed? At the moment, that wouldn’t be a significant loss.

  The only unfortunate thing would be if the tires got damaged in the process. They had to remain intact at all costs. Ewa listened hard, but she didn’t hear any unusual noises. If the chains were about to break, they were obviously doing it quietly. She shook her head. She shouldn’t drive herself crazy about this. She slowly increased her speed to 40 km/h. The rover was kicking up a long, white streamer of ice dust. The cold desert here was remarkably similar to the hot desert on Earth. All it lacked was sand dunes.

  Ewa’s stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten breakfast yet today. With her right hand, she felt around behind her, but nothing was sitting there. She was going to have to stand up. Ewa transferred the controls to the computer. The rover instantly slowed down, but she absolutely needed to eat something. She got to her feet and stretched out her back. In the storage compartment underneath the tiny kitchen, she found a can way at the back end that she hadn’t noticed before. She read the label. It was a German-style pea soup. Who would have ordered that? Are there any Germans among the NASA astronauts? Whatever. She opened the can, poured about half of its contents into a bowl, and put it in the microwave, which automatically recognized the substance. All she needed to do was press the start button and wait.

  The microwave display indicated 65 seconds. From where she stood, she gazed out the front window, which was actually a screen. They were driving slightly uphill. She remembered the 3D maps that they had been shown back on Earth. They hadn’t been scale models. The polar ice cap had been stuck to the bottom of Mars like a giant, flat pimple. Ewa imagined a small insect creeping over that pimple. That was her. Where was the insect going? What was it doing here? It had no business here.

  Hadn’t Friday theorized that she might find traces of the ancient Mars inhabitants here? At the moment, it didn’t look as if there had ever been any life forms down here. The area was extremely inhospitable. Ewa laughed softly. It was actually crazy for her to imagine the ice pimple as deadly. The entire planet seemed to hate living things. They never should have come here. Even Antarctica felt like paradise in comparison to this. What in the world had made humans think that they had to go to Mars?

  But on the other hand, it was only because of this great leap that any humans were still alive. Earth was silent. It seemed unlikely that there were still humans alive there. Technology is never silent. And it had been a long time since the human race had been able to manage without it. They should have picked up on one signal or another if they existed.

  The microwave pinged. Ewa pushed the door opener and reached for the bowl. She snatched her hand back immediately. The soup had made the bowl too hot. She hunted around for a piece of cloth and eventually settled on a hand towel. She covered her hands with it and reached for the bowl again to pull it out. The pea soup was a strange greenish-yellow, but it smelled good. Ewa returned to her seat at the controls. She had to be careful not to get spots on the screen.

  There was suddenly a jolt from the side. Ewa lurched. “Shit!” she shouted. Half of the soup landed on her chest. The stuff was hot, and it was dripping onto the floor. But she couldn’t tend to that right now. The rover now took priority. What had caused the jolt? She simply dropped the bowl. It clattered to the floor. They had come to a stop! Every second counted now. She swiped frantically through the control settings. The rover’s inclination sensors started to go off. The vehicle was sitting at an angle. The front part was lower than the back section. That wasn’t right! They were still driving up the mountain.

  However, it was obvious. They were going downhill even though the route was heading upward. The rover had dug itself into a hole. The material here must be extremely porous. Ewa switched the vehicle into reverse. She had to keep the rover from sinking any farther. A gray mass covered the front window, blocking all views of her surroundings. The computer switched on the cabin lights. Ewa began to breathe shallowly. It felt like she was suffocating, even though the life support system was still functioning. The combination of dust, water, and dry ice surrounded her. Mars was demanding another sacrifice. She had to calm down. Many sols had been leading up to this point. She couldn’t continue to survive in this place where nobody ever survived. Maybe it was time to give up. Couldn’t it just stop mattering to her what happened to her and to the others?

  No, that would be wrong. She had to fight. She refused to sink into this hole. She tried to set the vehicle rocking by making it accelerate forward, then backward, over and over again. But that didn’t do anything. The material over the front window was now black. How far could the sunlight penetrate the ice cap? Regardless, the rover had sunk too deep for it. What could she do? Had she missed something? She checked the radar imagery. It didn’t show any recognizable structures. The ground had to still be far away, otherwise the radar would show the transition to stone. She was in no man’s land, floating between life and death. She had run out of options.

  “Friday? Any ideas?”

  ‘I don’t see any options.’

  “What if I let you take control of my body?”

  ‘That is a tempting offer, but it would not save us.’

  She had to hand it to Friday for being frank. “We’re going to die,” she said.

  ‘That is possible. Since our departure from the base, that possibility has been greater than thirty percent.’

  “Why didn’t you warn me about that?”

  ‘Would you have listened to me?’

  “No. Besides a seventy-percent chance at success for our endeavor would’ve been high. I’d have accepted the thirty-percent odds.” It felt good to chat with Friday again. She hardly registered by this point how strange these monologues would have looked to other people.

  ‘Seventy percent? Not by a long shot. The likelihood that our attempt would succeed was never more than ten percent.’

  “You never tried to convince me to abandon the idea, Friday.”

  ‘I know you well by this point. You would have set off even if the odds had only been at one percent.’

  That was true. Friday really did know her better than anyone. But was that really so surprising? He was sitting inside her mind.

  The rover sta
rted to tilt to the side. Ewa braced herself against the microwave until the movement stopped. She needed to clean her suit. The thought sounded absurd.

  She was going to die soon—did it matter if she had pea soup sticking to her torso? Yes, somehow it does, she thought. We humans are strange creatures.

  Sol 346, Mars City

  “Someone’s out there, someone’s out there!” Andy shouted down the corridors.

  Lance strode around the corner. “What did you hear?”

  “Someone just knocked on the airlock.”

  “Knocked?” Lance didn’t believe him, as his face made very clear. He didn’t think it was necessary to check the surface.

  This wasn’t the first time that Andy had heard sounds from up on the surface. Nothing had ever come from those times. Even that word, ever. As if they had been trapped down here forever. It had only been four sols. Maybe Lance had a right to feel skeptical, but the sound had been clear as a bell. “Yes, I’m very sure I did,” Andy said.

  “But it’s stopped now.”

  “I’m sorry, Lance.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” Lance turned around. He was going back to the bridge.

  Bam Bam Bam.

  Andy felt hyper-alert. Was that his imagination again?

  Lance whipped around. No, he had heard it, too. This time it was louder than before.

  “It might be someone from the MfE,” Andy said.

  “Or from NASA. It could be Sarah,” Lance said. His eyes grew dreamy as he said it. Lance yearned for his family.

  Andy was sometimes glad he wasn’t in a relationship, but at the same time, it would have been nice to have someone to share his fears with. Or his observations that nobody wanted to believe.

  Lance walked over to the inner airlock door and shook it. “Nothing. It’s still sealed.”

  “We’ll have to force it open eventually.”

  “You know what’ll happen then, Andy.”

  If they destroyed the airlock, the quarters would experience a drop in air pressure. The pressure doors around the airlock area would react and automatically close. That was an important safety measure. If one of the pressure doors was destroyed, another one further inside would close. The technology would effectively protect the residents from suffocating.

  But whoever exited through the destroyed airlock would be shut off from the others after that. There was no way back. And they didn’t know what was going on up on the surface. Was there another point of access to the Spaceliner rockets? Was there an enclosed rover out there in which someone could survive? A suit’s air supply wasn’t sufficient for a trek to either the MfE or the NASA base. Thus, there were a lot of risks for anyone who wanted to reach the surface through a destroyed airlock. As they had already discussed, it was only worth taking those risks once the resources down here had been almost depleted—in two or three months, perhaps.

  Andy was listening. Lance had also heard it, which meant he wasn’t crazy. Someone was up there. If only they could do something to show that they were down here! However, the subterranean areas were so well insulated against radiation that there was no way any sounds could be heard outside. And the spaceship’s bridge had stopped forwarding their calls. In fact, it had stopped responding altogether.

  Four days ago, the airlocks had all locked down and stopped functioning. They had spent a long time discussing what might be behind this. Was it some kind of emergency lockdown for their own protection, or was there something more to it? The life support system for the underground station was independent. It had been designed like that from the beginning, since at some point, both spaceships would eventually launch again. The administrator had ordered that the airlocks be connected to his bridge to achieve better control over them.

  And yet he had hardly left the city before the airlocks had turned against their inhabitants. Andy pressed his ear against the inner airlock door. Would the visitor try to establish contact again? But he couldn’t hear anything. Jean, the former captain, had theorized that a failed revolt had taken place. Someone on the bridge might have attempted to seize control during Summers’ absence. That person might have found themselves up against one of the security systems that the administrator had installed, and the result was the standoff they were now experiencing. This problem could be solved by the administrator’s return, but he was already at least two days late.

  Lance put a hand on his shoulder, and Andy pulled his ear away from the door. It was a nice gesture. It probably meant something along the lines of, ‘It won’t help.’ Lance straightened up, turned around, and started moving toward the bridge. ‘Wait, Lance,’ Andy wanted to say, but he knew there would be no point to that.

  Whoever had knocked didn’t have any more options than those of them locked down here did. Otherwise the airlock would have already switched to green long ago.

  Sol 347, Planum Australe

  “What happened?” Ewa asked. A dull pain was throbbing in her head. The air smelled of pea soup. It reminded her of something, though the memory was playing hide and seek with her.

  ‘We broke through,’ Friday replied.

  “Broke through? Through the ice? Did we drown?”

  ‘Ewa, you’re alive. You might have a few aches and pains...’

  “Oh yes, I have plenty of those.”

  ‘Those are just a few bruises. You were tossed around in here, although I held onto you.’

  “Held on to me?”

  ‘Yes, you were unconscious, so I held on to you.’

  “And where are we? Don’t say in the rover.”

  ‘We’re in some kind of hall.’

  Friday was insane. They had been close to Mars’ South Pole, where they had been driving on top of a fairly thick wart composed of water ice and dry ice. Where had the hall come from? “You must be wrong, Friday.”

  ‘Look out the window.’

  Right in front of her was the driver’s cabin. The rover’s headlights illuminated a wide plaza covered in all sorts of junk, the nature of which she didn’t recognize. Everything was tilting. No, the vehicle was leaning. “I see a predominantly empty area,” Ewa said.

  ‘Then use the radar.’

  She got to her feet with a groan and walked over to the control panel. Her hip hurt. The old pain or something new? It didn’t matter. She gritted her teeth and activated the radar. A structure appeared on the screen. Friday had been right.

  “That’s insane,” Ewa said. The hall was oval in shape. The radar measured its longer semi-axis as 1.3 kilometers, and the space was 90 meters tall. “How did we get here?”

  ‘Zoom in on the image. You’ll find a small hole in the chamber’s ceiling.’

  “You have already seen everything?”

  ‘I used the time while you were unconscious.’

  “You could’ve woken me up earlier, Friday.”

  ‘I wanted to let you rest.’

  “But you used my body anyway.”

  ‘It’s doing just fine. Your body needs to rest.’

  “Fine. And how did we make it down here in one piece?”

  ‘The rover is over there. The chassis is totally destroyed, but the cabin survived the collision. And I held onto you hard.’

  Ewa moved her arms and sensed how much her muscles ached. “You saved me.”

  ‘Us. What could I possibly do down here without you?’

  “I love you, too. Now what?”

  ‘We’ll keep going, Ewa.’

  “You’re right.”

  Ewa took a deep breath. Her rib cage hurt. She probably had bruises everywhere. She studied the radar imagery again. It was insane. Who had built this hall? The creatures she had seen in her dreams? In the opposite corner lay something that resembled a sleeping giant from here. She needed to climb out of the cabin and check it out.

  Her spacesuit was hanging neatly in the locker. She grabbed it. To get her LCVG on, she had to take off her clothes. Ewa felt cold. Apparently, the life support system had stopped working some time ago. S
he examined her bare skin. She didn’t have all that many visible bruises. The LCVG began to heat up. It felt good. She pulled on her spacesuit and donned her helmet.

  It was easy for her to say goodbye. Was that because the rover was now a pile of scrap metal? Or was it because she had been secretly considering herself dead since yesterday? The hatch stuck, so she had to force it open. She tumbled out as the metallic cover fell to the ground.

  “What was that?”

  ‘The crash? You just dropped the cover, Ewa!’

  “I shouldn’t have been able to hear that.”

  ‘That’s true. Apparently, the atmosphere here is thicker than it is on the surface.’

  Ewa checked the composition of the air on her universal device. It was almost 100 percent carbon dioxide mixed with water steam. Was this possibly melted dry ice? She couldn’t breathe this air, but the air pressure was ten times as high as up on the surface. Had something survived down here? “Are we alone here?” she asked.

  ‘Yes, for the past three billion years,’ Friday replied.

  “Too bad.”

  ‘How would you respond if someone destroyed your house? Would you greet them cordially?’

  “But we haven’t destroyed anything yet.”

  ‘You said yet. Besides, that isn’t quite true. The air pressure is dropping.’

  Ewa glanced at the screen on her arm. The pressure really was dropping slightly. “Our tiny hole up there?”

  ‘One of the tires is also losing air through a small hole.’

  “Okay. I’m glad we’re alone.” Ewa turned back toward her rover. It looked like a squashed tin can. The chassis had broken in two. It seemed to have sustained the brunt of the impact. She sighed. Everything she ever touched was eventually destroyed. It was like a curse.