KR_IME

by Andrew Broderick

  Cheers erupted on board the ship, and around the world shortly afterwards.

  “Deploy the stabilizers,” Martin ordered.

  Drill bits, about the size of coffee cans, protruded from beneath the SEVs and began to bite into the dirt. These were necessary because of the extremely low gravity. They stopped once they were completely embedded; the SEVs were now held fast to the surface and were not going anywhere.

  “Time to strap on your overshoes,” Martin said. They pulled them out of their suit pockets, and fastened them onto their boots. They had protrusions resembling bottle brushes on the bottom, that were designed to dig into the soil and provide a little bit of traction. Otherwise, moving about on the tiny world would be almost impossible.

  They had drawn lots beforehand, and Alessia had won. She would dismount, and set foot on the surface first. Thus, it was up to her what the “one small step…” phrase would be.

  She eased her way off the SEV seat, and planted her boots on the dusty hilltop. She simply said, “Thanks be to the Creator of the rolling spheres, who got us here safely.”

  The world erupted in jubilation – and nowhere more so than Italy. For a country that had seen so much tribulation, to have Italian boots be the first on another world was an overwhelmingly wonderful event.

  The others disembarked. “Here we are, finally, standing on another world,” Martin said. “God bless America, and all the other nations who worked so tirelessly to get us here. Grab the nearest rock and put it in your pocket.” They did, so that even if they had to leave immediately for some reason, they would have some samples.

  * * *

  @KR_IME: THIS MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY KODAK, EVEN THOUGH THEY DON’T REALLY PRODUCE ANYTHING ANYMORE. I THINK I SAW SOME OF THEIR CAMERAS IN A MUSEUM ONCE.

  * * *

  “Let’s get a line between the vehicles,” Tung-chi said. He took a thin coiled rope from a compartment on the right-hand side of the SEV. It was already attached to his vehicle at one end. The other end had a small weight on it. He tossed it to Martin. It missed Martin, so Tung-chi pulled it back and tossed it again, this time successfully. Martin pulled it tight, and looped it twice around an attachment on the left side of SEV 2.

  “This is our main exploration zone,” he said. They would hold the rope to keep themselves steady as they moved between the vehicles. For this excursion, they would only have a ten-meter-square area of movement.

  “Don’t worry if you do happen to end up floating off the surface,” Kinuko said. “You will come back down eventually. It just might take a while.”

  “If you go too high, we can stop by and rescue you on the way back to the Explorer,” Martin joked. He and Kinuko worked their way along the rope, and met each other, sample bags in hand. They had the biggest grins imaginable. “Can you believe this?” she asked. “It still seems unreal. I am now getting a sense of how it must have felt to stand on Earth’s moon.” She looked up. The sun was now getting higher in the sky. The ship was a tiny, gleaming white line, high above, in stark contrast to the reddish-brown surface of Mars that served as its backdrop.

  The other two went in different directions to investigate nearby rocks. Tung-chi knelt down by a boulder the size of a large chair. “All the working out has paid off,” he said, as he lifted it easily. The others chuckled. “The exercise facilities on the ship are top-notch,” said Aleksandr from high above, as they watched the action from cameras deployed on masts on the SEVs.

  Alessia tried to stop by a rock to investigate it, but lost her footing. “Oh, crap,” she said. She rolled, bouncing gently off the surface, in slow motion, to a height of three meters. The others watched in horror. She floated further and further away, tumbling slowly, over the course of several minutes. In mid-float, she pulled out her rock hammer. When she eventually landed she twisted around, and drove the hammer into the dust as hard as she could. It acted as a brake, as she had hoped, carving a gash in the surface as it slowed her to an eventual stop. She had traveled forty meters down the eastern slope of Yellowknife.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s like trying to walk on the side of the ISS. Walking and microgravity just don’t go together.” She got up again, this time very slowly and carefully. Martin pulled out a much longer coiled rope, also with a weight at the end. “Catch,” he said, tossing it towards her. After three attempts, she caught it and used it to pull herself back to the others’ location.

  “We’ll have to revise how we do future surface explorations,” Aleksandr said.

  They all collected samples of rock and regolith. Martin dug down thirty centimeters to get to his samples, while Tung-chi dug down sixty centimeters per the science team’s requirements. The material was stored in special sealed containers, so it would not be compromised in any way.

  “How are we for time, IME?” Martin asked.

  “Two hours of daylight left.”

  “Okay, I think we ought to wrap things up for today, while we have plenty of margin,” Martin said. “We can push the daylight window on future excursions. Come on back, people.”

  Over the next twenty minutes they made their way, slowly and carefully, back to their SEVs. The rope between the two was disconnected.

  “Aren’t we forgetting something?” Tung-chi asked.

  “What?” asked Martin.

  “We were going to put our nations’ flags here.”

  “Ah, yes, there was that, but we have plans for this site. We’re going to blast it with an impactor, so we can compare the surface layer with what’s further down. So, anything that’s left here is going to get blown to smithereens.”

  “Okay, never mind, then,” Tung-chi replied with amusement.

  “Everyone ready?” Martin asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s lift off. IME, we’re heading back.”

  “Copy that, Phobos station. We’ll make sure to keep the door unlocked for you.”

  58

  T-plus 98 days

  Martin and Emile plugged the sealed sample containers, the ones that were not slated for analysis on Earth, into their slots in the chemical analyzers. They would be baked, lased, pulverized, sliced, bathed in acids and alkalis, and subjected to just about every other test imaginable. Huge amounts of rich scientific data – measurements, pictures, and chemistry test results – started to flow to Earth. The Science Data Processing Team received it and started to parcel it out to various scientific institutions, who eagerly went to work on it.

  New discoveries were made almost immediately, and proposals for more shipboard experiments and surface excursions were submitted to the mission science team for evaluation. Of course, there were many more proposals than could realistically be accommodated, so they were whittled down and prioritized.

  The crew gathered in the hub. Martin had the remote sensing suite pointed at Yellowknife. The rail gun’s crosshairs were trained squarely on their excursion site from the previous day.

  “You know, there’s just something about shooting things,” Christopher said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Martin, as he programmed the instruments.

  “What power setting are we using?” Aleksandr asked.

  “Ten percent,” Martin replied.

  “So, one kilometer a second?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good. So no risk of blowback coming this far out?”

  “Very little.”

  “Okay.”

  “We will do more of these before-and-after tests, at power levels up to 100 percent,” Martin said, “but we’ll do them at sites that are much closer to the limb, so the debris won’t come anywhere near us.” Aleksandr nodded.

  “I think we’re just about ready,” Martin said a little while later. “Go for impact observation?”

  “Go ahead,” Aleksandr said. Martin hit a button on the remote sensing interface; the ship jerked slightly in reaction to the shot. Two seconds later, a plume of rock and dust erupted from the place where they had walked the previous day
. Most of it dispersed quickly. As they watched, the radar picked up some rocks flying upward, and instantly plotted their trajectories. All of them, save one, would eventually fall back to the surface. The other one was headed out into space, but would not come anywhere near the Explorer. The crew cheered.

  “Awesome,” Martin said, marveling at the sight. He trained the LIDAR on the site, and the contours of the newly-reshaped landscape appeared in a new window.

  “Looks like we carved out a hole about three meters deep,” he said. “I’ll pencil in a return trip to that site in about ten days, so we can get new samples. We have a ton of competing mission objectives. But,” – he paused for dramatic effect – “on the next one, we’re going straight for the bullseye.”

  “Limtoc?” Alessia asked in disbelief.

  “Yep,” Martin said, nodding slowly, with a wide grin on his face. “The vast crater within a crater.”

  “The crew for this expedition will consist of everyone who didn’t go the last time, with the exception of Martin,” Aleksandr said. “He will go as he is the Chief Scientific Officer.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t go on the last one, then!” Christopher said, in excitement.

  “Yes, and you will be piloting, too,” Aleksandr said.

  “Oh, baby! I can’t wait!”

  “The next daylight window will open in about six hours, so if it’s okay with you, Alex, let’s go then,” Martin said.

  “Let’s do it,” Aleksandr replied. “We can sleep when we’re dead. Right now, I want to squeeze in every expedition we can get.”

  * * *

  @KR_IME: WHAT’S UP, EARTH?

  [Attachment: a picture of an astronaut outside, “throwing horns” towards the camera. Mars, and part of the SEV bay door, were visible in the background. Their name tag was conveniently blurred out.]

  * * *

  Lesley Jones buried her forehead in her hand, and let out a sigh. She had hoped that KR_IME would be too busy to make any more posts now that they had arrived.

  59

  Aleksandr and Nikita had arm-wrestled to see who would get to fly the SEV to the surface. The result was a comical mess of twirling bodies.

  “If I’d lost, I’d have just pulled rank on you anyway, Comrade,” Aleksandr joked.

  “If you’d lost, I’d have let you have it anyway,” Nikita replied. “I know how much you want to do some real piloting again.”

  “Yeah, and I’m definitely going to be doing some piloting,” Aleksandr said, with a sly grin on this face. “Well, it’s about time we suited up.”

  An hour later, they had done the systems check and were ready to go. Nikita sat behind Aleksandr on SEV 3, and Martin sat behind Christopher on SEV 4.

  The shadow of Stickney Crater's eastern rim moved, slowly, across the floor of the crater. As soon as the center was illuminated, they could go.

  “Return your tray tables to the upright position,” Kinuko said. “Five minutes to go.”

  “Do we have everything we need?” Nikita asked, as they waited. “Namely, the soccer balls?”

  “They’re in the rear compartments on both SEVs,” Martin said.

  The soccer balls were their affectionate names for microgravity surface-traversing probes (MSTPs). They were rubber balls, about twenty centimeters in diameter, with spikes on the outside. The insides were packed with sensors, electronics, batteries, and two reaction wheels. They would measure surface consistency and chemistry, and then start to roll. Since the gravity was so low, they would bounce and skip across the surface before coming to a stop and taking more measurements. (If they bounced off a hill, they could potentially fly several kilometers). The process was then repeated. In this way, many more points on the surface would be measured than was possible by other means. The probes would be dropped, like an aerial carpet-bombing raid, as they crossed the surface of Stickney.

  While they waited, Martin said, “There are going to be some really exciting excursions coming up. After a month or so, we’re going to start circumnavigating Phobos completely. We’ll follow the daylight around it, with stops at various points along the way.”

  “That’s gonna be cool,” Christopher replied, “although, with an eight-hour trip, we’re going to be pushing it with only about ten hours of suit oxygen.”

  “Okay, your destination point is illuminated,” Kinuko said. “You’re go to undock.”

  “Ready?” Aleksandr asked.

  “Ready.”

  “Undock.”

  They released the clamps, and drifted gently upwards before applying some thrust to get moving. The flip maneuver was completed, so that Phobos was now below them. They coasted more or less straight down, even though the rim of Stickney was a couple of kilometers to the east.

  “Let's stop when we're about 100 meters above the surface,” Aleksandr said. They continued down and then stopped as planned, floating close to the site of their previous excursion. Phobos’ dark, irregular surface continued out to the horizon.

  Aleksandr looked over at the other SEV, floating about ten meters away. “Ready?” he asked.

  “For what?”

  “To gun it to the rim, of course!”

  “Seriously?” Christopher thought for a second. “Okay, you're on!”

  “Fifty meters a second! Let's go!”

  They pushed the forward thrust sticks as far as they would go. The SEVs leapt forward like horses out of the starting gate. “Make sure your camera's rolling,” Aleksandr said.

  The surface seemed to flash past. “Woohoo!” Christopher shouted.

  “What on earth are you guys up to?” Kinuko asked, as she watched their onboard video feeds. “This isn't Tokyo Drift or something!”

  “Twenty seconds to the crater rim,” Aleksandr called out.

  “Ten seconds. Lord, prepare us for what we are about to receive!”

  Suddenly, the ground dropped sharply away beneath them, into a chasm three kilometers deep. “Oh, my God!” Christopher exclaimed. Nikita repeated the same thing in Russian, as he was momentarily too stunned by the stupendous sight to find the words in English. The far wall was over ten kilometers away.

  “Okay, you guys commence your bombing run, and we'll meet you one kilometer above Limtoc,” Aleksandr ordered.

  “Why, where are you going?”

  “We'll be back. Nikita, make sure your lap belt is fastened tight!” Aleksandr pitched the SEV forward, and they were suddenly going straight down the almost vertical face of the rim. They would have been flung from their seats had it not been for the belts. He then gunned the forward thrust again, increasing their speed further. “One hundred meters a second, baby!”

  “Alex! You're going to kill us!” Nikita exclaimed in panic as they plunged straight down towards the crater's floor.

  “What the…?” Christopher exclaimed, as he looked over his left shoulder at the already-distant SEV heading vertically down, while they continued their horizontal course towards the center.

  “Yeeehaaaw!” Aleksandr shouted, as he pulled up, out of the dive, and then turned left, flying horizontally, to skim the crater’s wall. They banked almost ninety degrees, and Aleksandr applied even more forward speed. The rocky wall flashed past at 400 kilometers per hour.

  “I can't even see you guys anymore,” Martin said.

  “Alex, you gotta watch your fuel!” Christopher said, alarmed. “These things only have enough for about 500 meters a second, total.”

  “Da.”

  Christopher shook his head in both amusement and disbelief. He liked to think that he was “out there,” but nothing he’d done had even come close to Aleksandr’s current antics for sheer audacity. He was seeing a side of his commander that he'd never seen before.

  “Mission Control is gonna have your head on a platter,” Martin said.

  “They won't even find out until it's over. Wasn't it one of your generals that said you're remembered for the rules you break, not the ones you follow?” Aleksandr replied.

  �
�Yes – MacArthur.”

  “Do you have someone lined up as a second-in-command? You know, just in case?” Christopher asked, only half-jokingly. Martin opened the compartment below his seat and started tossing the soccer balls over the side. They drifted away slowly, rather than falling. They would eventually come to rest somewhere on Phobos, even if it happened to be when they hit the opposite wall of the crater – now eight kilometers away – and bounced.

  Aleksandr and Nikita had raced a quarter of the way around the crater's edge by this time, and were not slowing down. Nikita kept his eyes closed most of the time, and held on for dear life.

  “I can see Limtoc now,” Christopher said.

  “Yep, there she is,” Martin replied, marveling at the sight.

  Suddenly realizing something, Christopher said, “You guys are going to be out of radio comms range pretty soon. You'll be over the horizon from us. We'll never know if anything goes wrong. When it goes wrong, I should say.”

  “I already set up a relay between you two,” Kinuko said, from high above. “The ship will still have a line of sight to both of you.” She’s always the sensible one, Christopher thought to himself.

  Aleksandr continued their tear around the rim. He didn't have to apply any more forward thrust, as inertia kept them going. He just applied intermittent bursts of side and upward thrust, to keep them from crashing into the vast crater wall that curved around to their left.

  “This place is just spectacular,” Nikita said, when he opened his eyes long enough to look towards the center. He had to look almost up, instead of sideways, to see it – such was their angle to the surface. “It must have been a heck of a blast that carved it out.”

  Presently they reached the eastern edge, diametrically opposite to where they had made their death-defying plunge. It hadn't taken long.

  “Okay, the party’s over,” said Aleksandr. They peeled away from the rim on an arcing trajectory, heading in towards the center. They were still going at a blazing speed, but it was far less scary now that they were traveling a kilometer above the crater floor instead of right next to a rock face. For the first time, Aleksandr was able to take a good look around at the vast expanse before them, as he no longer had to concentrate with laser-like precision. He smiled, feeling rapturous, as the adrenaline wore off and endorphins flooded his brain. “It doesn't get any better than this,” he said.