The diagram was brought into the foreground. “What you can see,” Nichols explained, raising a hand to point out. “That is a graphic representation of a high frequency acoustic wave, so high it is inaudible to the human ear, but it’s been detected and analysed by a computer. The transmission lasts a few seconds. At first, it seemed confused, then we realised it was a series of pulses, exactly three short, three long, and again three short pulses.”
The man was smiling while pronouncing those words, but Jan had no clue as to what he was referring to. His perplexity must have been obvious, because the mission director immediately hurried to explain.
“It’s Morse! It’s the equivalent of the distress signal: SOS. Do you understand?”
He wasn’t sure he understood, but the mission director went on anyway.
“The other image.” The topographic chart enlarged. “This area has been detected by the Mars positioning satellite system. The radius runs for some kilometres including part of Ophir Planum and Ophir Chasma. The first one is a flatland; the second is a canyon belonging to Valles Marineris.” He gesticulated, more and more agitated. “Anyway the point is that the Morse transmission results coming from that area.”
Finally, Anna’s message was brought to the foreground.
Jan held his breath whilst reading those words.
JAN, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF DYING.
I WANT TO GO HOME. THIS IS WHY I HAD TO LEAVE STATION ALPHA.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU THE LAST TIME WE TALKED REGARDING WHAT WOULD ENSURE THE SENDING OF A RETURN SPACECRAFT?
IN A WAY I’VE FOUND THEM.
I LOVE YOU, A. XXX
A moment after he was laughing. Sure, he remembered her words. He would’ve never forgotten that conversation.
“Can you tell me what she means?” Nichols incited him. “These data bring us to a conclusion, even if it is theoretically impossible. The only thing we don’t understand is her words.”
The most total silence had pervaded the room. Everybody was watching, waiting for an answer. Jan laughed again. Even in such a situation, Anna was having fun with her plays, her mysteries. She hadn’t gone insane at all.
“She said that Isis mission wouldn’t include a return spacecraft, unless they found the Martians.” And he laughed again at the absurdity of it. The others were looking at him, astonished, absorbing that information.
“The Martians wouldn’t surely use Morse Code.” The sarcastic comment of Gray, who was at once much more interested in the whole matter, broke the silence.
“If my memory doesn’t fail me.” A very close voice spoke behind Jan, making him turn with a start. It was Sasaki. When had he arrived? “That is the area where a few remains from the Hera mission shuttle were located.”
“Oh, fuck.” Nichols was shaking his head. “I want an orbiter over that area, now,” he ordered Sasaki, who jumped to a workspace.
“They are all quite far,” the latter said after a while. “Anyway we have thousands of shots taken in the latest thirty years. I doubt anything has escaped us. If you like, I’ll show you the most recent ones.”
“No,” the mission director boomed. “I wanna see what’s happening there now.”
Far from frightened by the tone of his superior, Sasaki resumed working. “I’m going to reposition the nearest one, but it might take several hours before it gets over there.”
“So don’t you waste more time.”
9
Hera mission
Kurt Siedel turned his disconsolate gaze to Mars. The MSS was in an areostationary orbit just in front of Valles Marineris. He’d spent weeks fixing his eyes on the huge scar that broke the regular surface of the planet almost by the equator; he was hoping to catch sight of Shuttle One returning to the orbiting station, but was deluding himself.
The mission time had by now come to an end. The launch window to go back to Earth was closing. They had ordered him to go back on board the Hera and leave. They had said that his mates must have been dead by now. But he and the team at Houston had known about it for a long time, since when, right after entering the atmosphere, the shuttle had failed to restore the communication with them. Something terrible must have happened.
For hours, days, he had hoped for a banal radio failure. Jack Diaz was a commander on the ball, and surely had made the decision to stay in order to take some samples at least, before returning to the orbiting station. But the shuttle had never come back. Kurt had waited in vain to see her. Time and time again, he had believed he’d discerned a tiny, white spot emerging from all that red, only to have it disappear again. He had asked for the authorisation to take Shuttle Two and go down himself. His crewmates might have still been alive, but unable to communicate, to take off. But Houston had refused. No shuttle would descend to the Martian surface, before they understood what went wrong with the first one. He had discussed it, insisted on it, but they had said to go back to the ship, to leave for Earth.
Truth was that he’d been scared. Those at mission control could have never physically stopped him from taking the shuttle, but Kurt hadn’t done it anyway. Shamed, he realised that he’d felt relieved at each refusal from them. And as time passed, he’d regretted it. He had rethought again and again about taking the opportunity. But the more he thought, the more time passed and the lower the odds that he would find the other four members still alive.
They couldn’t have reached the habitat. And their air supplies must have ended by now.
They were dead.
It was his fault, too.
If only he had had a little more courage, perhaps he might have saved them. It was too late now. How could he return to Earth, look his friends’ relatives in the eye and tell them he had done his utmost? It was a falsehood. All he’d done was wait, postponing any decision. He had done nothing.
He felt useless, lost.
He recorded that video in the pathetic attempt to apologise to everyone. He knew they couldn’t ever forgive him.
He unfastened his safety belt and rose from his seat. Moving slowly, he dragged himself with his hands within the station devoid of gravity. He reached the changing room beside the airlock. With precise movements, he donned his suit, piece by piece. His helmet came last, which he fastened in position with a final click.
The air supply was for six hours. Too many.
He entered the airlock. He waited for the vacuum to be created and then he opened the exit hatch. Without hooking his safety lanyard, he pushed himself outside.
Mars was there, ready to receive him. With a steady, continuous motion, his body distanced itself more and more from the station.
He activated his spacesuit jetpack and let it push him toward the planet. With a little luck, Martian gravity would capture and bring him down and down.
He smiled to himself as he realised that he would soon shine like a tiny falling star.
A faint crackling broke the silence of the empty, orbiting station, then a rustling, finally a crackly, distant voice.
“Habitat Two here. MSS, do you read me?”
But there was nobody able to hear it, nobody able to reply.
“Mars here, it’s Jack. Kurt, tell me you didn’t go!”
***
I rise by instinct, without breaking eye contact with him. I move to meet him, one step at a time, walking around the wide, dark, warm stain dividing us.
I feel something falling on my head. I touch my hair with a hand. It’s wet. I look up and another drop lands on my face. It’s so dark over there. The plastic covering of the greenhouse ends some metres behind, giving way to something more uniform and compact.
“It’s melting ice.”
My attention returns to the owner of that voice. He is closer, but his face is still enveloped in the shadow.
“The water vapour rises, until it meets the cold metal sheet. It condenses and at night it immediately transforms into ice. But a little warmth is enough to make it melt again, and drip.” He is in front of me now, he smiles. “A
sort of little water cycle.”
“Jack …” It’s him. It’s the man I saw when I woke up, the man who saved my life. But there’s something else familiar in his face. “Diaz?”
“In the flesh.” He nods with a pleased expression. He is by no means surprised to have been recognised. “I’m happy you feel better, Anna.”
Before my eyes I have the living proof that not all the crew of the Hera is dead, that the mission hasn’t failed at all. It’s such a big revelation that I can barely contain it. I knew about that, in the very moment I understood that the transmission from Valles Marineris was an SOS. It was the only possible explanation. But being here, now, face to face with a man who has lived on Mars for over thirty Earth years, is a concept I struggle to grasp in its entirety.
“But how …?”
“It seems evident to me,” is his simple reply. He moves his eyes all around, as to show me this evidence.
I follow suit and then resume looking at the covering above us. He said it is made of metal sheets. Sure, the heat would’ve melted the plastic. But further on I can see some lights positioned on the living rock. The greenhouse is connected to a cave, a pressurised one. How big is it? I focus back on the dark stain in front of me. The cloud is clearing up and I can see it again. Hesitant, I lower myself down towards it.
“Go on,” he encourages me. “There’s no danger.”
I reached out until my fingers touch it. It’s warm, but not hot.
“You only have to descend one or two metres from the surface before you meet the icy rock, which cools the water down quickly. And this is good, otherwise we couldn’t have used it to create all this.”
I’m standing again and admiring the vegetation in the greenhouse: from small green lawns, little plants, shrubs, to large fruit trees, all so florid, but at the same time neat to the point of perfection. The plants are well arranged, nothing seems to be left to chance. Each space is used to the utmost.
I rest my gaze on Jack again. How old is he? At least sixty. No, surely more. He was the commander of the mission. His white hair and his winkles betray his age, but he seems in good shape. His body is athletic; he has got a juvenile, relaxed air. He is the personification of calmness.
“You should rest, Anna.” He lingers on my name. “You’ve risked death, out there.”
I shook my head, resolute. “No, Jack. I think you have a long story to tell me and I won’t move from here, until you’ve done so.”
***
He sensed a hand on his shoulder.
“Jack, stop for a while,” Elena said.
He had been sending the same message for hours, but hadn’t received any reply. He had tried changing frequency, increasing the transmission power. But he wasn’t sure he was actually able to do so.
When, weeks earlier, he had lost control of the shuttle, right after penetrating the Martian atmosphere, he had believed they would be dead in a few minutes. The radio had stopped working. Three of the engines didn’t respond to the controls and the vertical propulsion, which obviated the lift issues due to the low atmospheric pressure, was working erratically. Yet somehow, he had avoided crashing the aircraft.
All kinds of alarms echoed in the cabin. The pressurisation was gone for good, as they had entered at the wrong angle and at too high a speed; the fuselage had lost its integrity. They had seen a part of the rear metal sheeting flying away. The shuttle had barely managed to maintain height, but had missed the landing area altogether, and was approaching Ophir Chasma.
Actually it was the two thousand metre altitude gap that prevented her from disintegrating on the planet’s surface. Jack held his hand steady on the controls and, while the on-board computer kept spitting useless data, he succeeded in manoeuvring the aircraft into the canyon, down and down, to its deepest part, where he had located a flat strip of land. There wasn’t much room, but he had no other choice. As the undercarriage touched ground, the right wing hit against the rocky wall, breaking and causing an explosion, which was immediately suffocated in the oxygen-free atmosphere. The shuttle skidded to the left, tilting on her side and starting to slide on the other folded wing and the fuselage itself at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Then she slowed down. In the end, she stopped.
The crew was frightened, but alive. The shuttle was a wreck. The radio wasn’t working anymore. At most, they could count on a few hours of air in their suits.
When they saw the Habitat Two just a few hundred metres away, apparently intact, they couldn’t believe their eyes.
It had been considered lost by NASA, because it had stopped transmitting, after ending up into Valles Marineris. When they reached it, they found that only the communication system had been damaged by the impact, the remainder of the habitat was operational. The photovoltaic system was working perfectly, the life support was active, the reservoirs were full of water, the pantries had plenty of food.
They were safe, but they had no way of informing mission control.
They had worked for weeks to repair at least the radio. The satellite antennas were destroyed, useless. But they could try a short-range communication. Their only hope was to contact the orbiting station, which should be exactly over their heads.
When they had finally believed they had done so, nobody had replied.
“I’ll rest when somebody replies,” Jack retorted.
“Maybe the MSS isn’t in a stationary orbit anymore.” Elena didn’t look scared, but he knew she was. She, more than anyone else, had been the one keeping the crew’s morale high, but despite all she’d done, it had slipped lower and lower as the days passed.
When the transceiver had started working again, a sense of relief and enthusiasm had spread among them, but it hadn’t lasted. Now, there was nothing to hope for. If they didn’t succeed in communicating with someone, nothing could save them.
“Stop at least for the night. You are consuming too much power. We don’t produce it in the dark and we need it for the life support.”
He rudely removed her hand. “What’s the use of keeping us alive? The water supplies are nearly finished. If we can’t use the remaining power to communicate to Kurt that we are alive, we are just postponing our death!”
Elena lowered her eyes and moved away from him. Of course, she knew that. Jack regretted addressing her that way. Fighting was equally useless.
“Forgive me …” he murmured. He left the radio and reached for her. Only now he realised she was weeping. “Forgive me,” he repeated. He hugged her.
There was a distant rumble. Jack knew that kind of noise well. He had experienced it many times, when he lived in California as a child. In response to a reflex well rooted in his mind, he grabbed Elena by the waist and dragged her under the doorframe, while a strong shake coming from below ran through them. The room started vibrating with violence. Objects of various sizes began to fall. A cabinet tilted dangerously forward.
Then everything stopped.
After a moment, there was a loud puff. Some shouting, agitated footfalls in the corridor.
“Guys!” Nestor burst into the room, overexcited. “Hurry! You must see this. It’s something incredible.”
They ran to the observation room on the upper floor. The glass was partially dimmed during the day, to protect the interior from ultraviolet radiation, but it provided a perfect view on a wide area adjacent to the habitat.
Irina was leaning against the glass wall with both hands and staring outside, astounded. “Is it snowing?”
Perplexed, Jack looked at her. What the hell was she saying?
“It’s a miracle …” Nestor whispered, while making the sign of the cross.
Following the line of their gaze, Jack turned. A longitudinal portion of rock, not very distant from the hab, had subsided at least five metres. It had happened a few steps from a rocky wall, which was partly dragged down creating a little cave. A sort of whitish cloud covered the entire area, but not so thick as to prevent him from seeing a high-pressure water column rising for many m
etres and then collapsing. In the icy air of the late afternoon, aerosol drops were freezing; floating in the breeze, they fell down little by little as snowflakes.
***
“As night arrived, the fissure had been sealed again by the ice.” Jack continues his narration seated on the lawn. I’m beside him with my legs crossed, being careful not to miss even the slightest detail of his story.
“But we knew there was water, just a few metres down. It was thermal water imprisoned inside the rock. A proper underground lake, which remained in a liquid state thanks to the high pressures generated by the vapour and counterbalanced by the lithostatic pressure. If the water had escaped, it would’ve solidified during the night, but in the daytime, with the higher temperatures, it would’ve evaporated, without giving us the chance to use it.”
“The ice cap prevented that from happening,” I suggest.
“Just so. We saw the opportunity in the situation. We could go on and on trying to communicate with Earth or roll up our sleeves and take advantage of it. And live. We opted for the second choice.” He adds a smile to these last words. “After all, we couldn’t really believe that Kurt had waited for us after all those weeks. It was a feeble hope anyway.”
Of course, he can’t know. “Siedel never returned to Earth.”
Jack’s eyes become gloomy. He seems surprised rather than grieved, as if that information disoriented him. “What happened to him?”
I shrug. “I have no idea. I just know about the rumours circulating NASA during the training. I was just a baby when it happened.”
People of Mars Page 14
