Analog SFF, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  All these made it possible to establish a mine on Mars. Energy for operations would come from sunlight—photoelectric panels and/or solar heat collectors. Also, perhaps, wind driven turbines if a windmill able to draw power from Mars’ thin atmosphere could be designed.

  Given these developments, a mineral deposit on Mars could be worked and could deliver its product to Earth at a cost competitive to a deposit in some remote corner of Planet Earth itself. This was especially true if, on Planet Earth, the business of extraction was hobbled by problems of pollution or other damage to the environment, legal ownership of the land and/or its mineral rights, relations with local (and frequently greedy) political entities, and the purely aesthetic desire of troublemakers to preserve the site's natural beauty, if any.

  But ... a mineral deposit on Mars? Once, long ago, Mars was geologically active, creating such spectacular features as the chasms of the Valles Marinaris, shield volcanoes big as Texas, and vast river channels that, at flood, would have made Earth's Amazon a trickle by comparison. That episode, however, was brief and early in the history of the solar system. The consequence: with one major exception, few mineral deposits could have developed to the point where a mine would make sense. The exception, though, was huge.

  Petroleum.

  Not oil in the truest sense, it should be understood. On Mars, with its largely depleted atmosphere, nearly all volatiles had escaped from the tarry substance left in the ground. That was all right. The easily vaporized fractions, once used primarily as combustible fuel, had been replaced in earthbound technology by electrical charge storage systems. All major deposits of terrestrial petroleum having been exhausted—wasted, some would maintain—what little still could be extracted at a reasonable cost was too valuable as a feedstock in chemical industries to be wantonly burned. Therefore, the deposits discovered on Mars promised almost at once a potential bonanza. Only engineering problems stood in the way.

  Tremendous investment and years of dogged work would be required, of course, but ultimately the patient investor would have his reward. Meanwhile corporate shares could be issued, sold, and traded endlessly. As the project advanced and its prospect brightened, the market value of a share bought early could be expected to increase beyond one's most sanguine calculations. Money waited to be made!

  Therefore, out of enterprise and cynical calculation, Mars Petro, Inc. was born.

  That Mars might possess so much as a gram of petrochemical matter, let alone vast deposits, came as a surprise. In hindsight it shouldn't have, but hindsight always functions with a sharper eye. As early as the latter half of the twentieth century, robot survey instruments saw dark material apparently emerging from deep-buried strata in a portion of that monstrous gash across the planet's face, the Valles Marinaris; taking note of this feature, one investigator writing in a scientific journal proposed it was evidence of ongoing volcanic activity, even though it resembled earthbound volcanic activity remotely at best.

  Forgive him. He could have been led astray by a suggestion published some years previous that dark features telescopically observed on Mars might be ash from furiously active volcanoes, continuously deposited in regular patterns by prevailing winds. Quickly dismissed—terrestrial volcanic ash was well known to be light in color—the idea of Martian vulcanism could have subconsciously lingered, only later to be massively reinforced by the startling first images of Olympus Mons and its lesser siblings.

  Sometimes great discoveries are delayed by such missed chances.

  By early in the twenty-first century, a number of other dark seeps from less deeply buried strata had been noticed. Traces of methane—natural gas!—had been detected in the atmosphere and an astronomer known for his fearlessly wild but sometimes correct speculations had proposed that at least some of Planet Earth's natural gas was primordial, having been trapped within its solid body as it created itself from the dust and gasses that swirled around the newborn sun; a test of his proposal by deep drilling into precambrian rock failed to find confirmation—the methane leaking out was synthesized by more or less common bacteria—but the basic hypothesis was not firmly disproved. Meanwhile, the distinctive spectra of complex hydrocarbon molecules had been identified in the radio waves coming from gas clouds outside the solar system, meteorites of a type believed to have formed in the cloud of matter from which the solar system evolved had been found to contain large, complex hydrocarbon molecules, and the surfaces of several moons of the outer planets appeared stained by some indefinite but probably complex hydrocarbon material. Saturn's moon Titan was well known to have a hydrocarbon atmosphere and pools of hydrocarbon on its surface. To suggest that Mars could have been similarly implanted was not preposterous.

  When the presence of large molecule hydrocarbons on Mars was confirmed, it was tempting to suggest that Mars had once harbored life. Possible, yes, but proved it was not. Under primordial conditions, light hydrocarbon molecules such as the radio spectra had shown in interstellar space could have undergone numerous combinations and recombinations without activity by a living thing. To hypothesize biological forces was therefore a complexity not required by the facts. Neither did analysis of samples returned to Earth by a manned expedition answer the question one way or the other. Though in aggregate a solid, or nearly so, the molecules had evidently migrated into the strata in which they were found from someplace else. Over cosmic stretches of time many things can happen, during which information can be confounded or lost.

  Also, the rules of human discourse can confuse an issue. Sometimes the unlikely, and therefore doubtful, turns out to be true.

  To Don, it seemed he'd been hearing about Mars Petro most of his adult life, but it had been blue sky stuff. The first magnet ship was constructed. It began its first flight. A founding module had been placed in Mars geosynch orbit. On and on. Meanwhile he was trying to figure out how, and how to prevent abrasive sand grains getting into the bearings of windmill turbines in the hills of Mauritania, even though, at seventy five meters above ground, the turbines stood above ninety eight point three percent of the airborne sand measured at that location. What was happening out around Mars was background noise.

  That was before George Jongue, personnel vice president of Mars Petro, knocked on the door of the camp trailer in which he lived.

  He'd been almost a year without work, so he listened. The first cable strand from Mars Synch had been put down and anchored. Work to complete the elevator system was under way. To establish the toehold station and mine, an energy acquisition field would be needed. Acres of photoelectric panels and/or solar collectors. Possibly wind turbines, also. Don Tenbrook, they'd decided, was the man who could do it. They offered good pay, stock options, and full benefits.

  Don wiggled the numbers, both the set Mr. Jongue supplied and a few other sets he pulled out of the web. With a few finagle factors, yes, it could be made to work, but he said he wasn't interested. It was too far from home. Also, while the technology of contained ecologies had been thoroughly worked out at the lunar stations, a station on Mars still sounded farther out on the edge than he cared to try. Neither did he need another fiasco like Antarctica in his history. Mr. Jongue doubled the pay offer. Upped the stock options. Benefits, which included tax exempt contribution to his pension fund, were already at the hundred percent mark. Three year contract on site, plus a year or so traveling to and from. Four years total.

  Well...

  Don Tenbrook would have final say, all specifications. Same for suppliers. Quality control on the hardware. He'd be in charge.

  He'd heard those promises before. They only held until the bean counters punched their time clock.

  They'd be in his contract. Ironclad.

  Don needed work. Engineering had always meant a compromise between perfection and the practical. He said he'd think about it.

  * * * *

  VIII

  “So you felt nothing romantic about going to Mars,” Scarborough said. “It didn't excite you?”

  �
��I'd seen deserts. What I knew about Mars, it was more of a desert than most. What's to get excited about?”

  “There was a time...” Scarborough said, but let it go.

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” Don admitted. “It's salesman's talk. Engineers don't think the same.”

  “But anyway you went.”

  It took some thinking back, what had tipped him one way or the other. “It's not like I was headed anywhere in particular,” Don said, and only in that moment realized that if things had gone different with Jeni he'd never have gone. Grimly he smiled. Lot of places he wouldn't have.

  Scarborough ticked a note into his unit. Then he paused.

  “Now,” he said. His inflection declared the pause had not been only for breath. “This is something we've never understood completely. According to the records, Peter Ballard was the on-site manager. Then, abruptly, you were manager—”

  “Acting manager,” Don said. “Nothing official about it. Ever.”

  “In effect, for all intents and purposes, manager,” Scarborough said. “The man in charge. Suddenly, there you were. And when it was questioned—several times, the record says—all that came back was that Ballard had died. Requests for details never got a reply.”

  Long ago, Don thought. Funny how some things stuck in the memory while others took work to retrieve. Several heartbeats passed while he put the scattered pieces together.

  “Communications were a muddle, just then,” he said finally. “Our primary link had been by way of the synch station, which we didn't have anymore. Also, it happened when Earth was one side of the Sun and us on the other, so all we had was relay through a couple/three of the magnet ships with a transmitter never built for it. And just about then Petro went for bankruptcy. Some stuff got through and a lot didn't. Both ways, I guess. We had to concentrate on what mattered.”

  “That's not really an answer,” Scarborough said carefully.

  “What do you want?” Don asked.

  “A full account. Ballard was thirty-nine, no health problems we know about, so how did he die? How did you take his place?”

  Don took a deep breath. He'd always known, if he lived long enough, the question would come.

  “He went for a walk,” he said. “Outside. Without his suit and bottle. Air bottle, I mean. Made it something like sixty meters. Crawled the last five. Later, we had a few others do it, but he set the record. We didn't like to think about it. Took to calling it taking a walk.”

  It silenced Scarborough for a while. Finally: “Suicide, you mean.”

  “He was a personnel man,” Don said. “Work schedules and so forth. Need a man for a job, he'd give you the right man—well, the best available—every time. Suddenly that wasn't what we needed.”

  “I'm not sure I follow,” Scarborough said. “He wasn't the man for his job anymore,” Don said, but knew it sounded not right. “I'm probably making it sound more logical than it was. Things like that never are.”

  Scarborough took a while to work it out. “So he appointed you?” he finally asked.

  He wasn't explaining well. “Maybe we need to back off,” Don said. “You probably know more than us about what took the synch station out of orbit. What made the skein come loose. All we knew, we stuck our heads out one morning and it wasn't there. Some of the cables may have wrapped all around the planet, or maybe they burned up when they hit atmosphere. We found some strands that reached from here to there, but our machines didn't have the range to trace the whole distance. The anchor pier was a wreck, of course.”

  Scarborough consulted his unit. “Yes. We have all that. Go on.”

  “It took us a while to find out things. To begin with, our beam wasn't on the station because the station wasn't where we thought. Tumbling, besides. And some of the time it was all the way the other side of the planet. And the crew up there was busy trying to make it stop tumbling and to talk to the Bradbury—I think it was that one—the magnet ship that was scheduled to dock something like twenty days forward. That was because, the orbit they'd dropped into, they'd impact atmosphere thirty or forty days up the line. The only chance they had was if the Bradbury could dock and take them off.”

  “Which it did,” Scarborough said after a spell with his unit. “But what has that to do with...?”

  Don plowed ahead. “So the first day or two, we just went on with operations like normal. The miners dug product and loaded another lift capsule, and we did the habitat chores and so forth. Didn't know what to do about the skein, so we didn't do anything. Then, when we did find out what happened to the synch, took us another two or three to realize how much trouble we were in.” He paused. “I guess we didn't really want to think about it, Peter maybe more than the rest of us.”

  He discovered he really didn't want to talk about this. Ancient history, sure, but still it had a lot of weight. “Go on,” Scarborough said.

  “The skein was all that connected us to the rest of the world,” Don said. “Everything we lived on had to come down that string, only now we didn't have it. And Peter, he needed a new work plan—how to deal with the situation—and he wasn't doing it. Spinning his wheels, I guess, and not talking to us. Didn't know how to start. That went on three, maybe four days.”

  “Not sure I understand,” Scarborough said.

  “Peter was first rate if you gave him a project, but he had to have a work plan. Suddenly he didn't. Didn't know where he was or where to start. And, stuck there like we was, he couldn't just quit, either.”

  “So he went for a walk,” Scarborough said.

  “That was step two. Or maybe three. Before that, I got to talking with Dick Bender—he was habitat maintenance—and Brian Schedrin—the mine boss. Maybe some others. And—we'd been sort of numb—we finally got it. We were like Eskimos on an ice floe that broke off from shore, and too much water in between.”

  “Umm,” Scarborough said. So perhaps he understood.

  “So we cornered Peter. Told him how we figured it. And he put on his top boss face—except I think it was just a bit more of a mask than most of the time—and he told me to work up an estimate. Where we stood, sort of.”

  “So he did appoint you.”

  “Just to work up an estimate,” Don said. “And I went and talked to everybody and collected inventories, everything we had, and crunched the numbers. They didn't come out too good. We'd have water for a while, except there'd be loss and what we didn't lose would degrade. Repurification would need consumables—filters and sequestrants and such—that would run out in about a year. Oxygen production, the algae tanks were pumping it out all right, but the die-off rate said we'd be breathing more than they'd replace in fifteen months, give or take. Food stocks, normal consumption, would last about seven months. Half rations would stretch it to twelve or thereabouts, but after that we'd have to start eating each other. Then there'd be attrition on equipment—disposables plus parts gone bad—but that would take longer unless some keystone item went, so not to worry, that department. Air, water, and stuff to eat would get us first.”

  “So you could make it for about a year,” Scarborough said, and fiddled with his unit. “Petro's operational plans aimed for that number. The maximum survivable interruption of supplies.”

  “I never knew that,” Don said, and remembered the bleak horror he'd felt back then. “Well, I showed my numbers to Peter, and he knew as well as I did it took something like fifteen years to make the synch and cables, just from when the first module got put in orbit. That meant likely it would take about as long to do it again. Well, he said something about he'd have to think. Next morning, couldn't find him anywhere until somebody looked outside.”

  “So you took charge.”

  “Not exactly,” Don said. “There I was with my numbers, so I got together the other section heads and the senior people from the science guests—that's what we called them—and laid out the situation. And I said something about it being an engineering problem. Any ideas? Right to start, they didn't. I told them go, wa
lk around, think, and talk to people. After a while, they started coming back.”

  “You took charge.”

  “I never asked for it. I got them together again to talk about some of those ideas, and somewhere in it I said something about we needed somebody to decide things. Dump the bad ideas and pick out the good. I sort of hoped somebody would take the bait, but they just looked at me and finally—I think it was Walt Burstein, the atmosphere studies guy—said it looked like we already had one. So there I was.”

  IX

  Crisis management, that guy up at Brazil Synch had called it. Nonsense. Crisis was when time ticked swiftly down toward utter disaster and panic yelled as it slid toward the edge. Up there on Mars it had not been like that.

  Rather, it had been the slow, downward slant of a graph toward a foreseeable breakpoint and extinction. The laws of thermodynamics enforced, like all natural laws, with pitiless exactitude. Against it, fingers in the dike. Firebreaks carved against relentless flame. As a closed system, ultimately hopeless, but time gained would be time forever had. And as Max Litvinov, the senior geology guy, pointed out, in the universe as a whole no lesser system is truly closed. Also, you could argue about what composed the universe as a whole.

  And, said another man—was it one of the science guests? Herman Prekates, perhaps?—the synch and cables might be gone, but technology had existed since the twentieth century for landing a package—say, a cargo pod—on the Martian surface, close enough to Toehold that it could be retrieved.

  Relayed past the obstructing sun by the Bradbury and, farther back from Marsfall, the Lowell, the appeal was beamed. Help needed. Don laid out his numbers. They allowed something like a year, Earth time, before the situation would crumble irreversibly. The laws of celestial mechanics dictated, therefore, that a resupply effort should begin at once. Almost an afterthought, to make it look businesslike, Don put his name on it: Acting Manager.