People of Mars

by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

  His curious eyes watch me, waiting.

  “I just know he refused to abandon you. He waited many weeks and, when the launch window was about to close, he sent a last message. Then nothing was heard from him anymore. They all think he committed suicide. Certainly the Hera never left the MSS.”

  I guess I can glimpse a micro expression of sorrow in his face. It lasts just a moment. It makes me feel ill at ease.

  “You’ve built a pressurised environment around the geyser.” I hasten to talk about something else.

  Once more, I look around me, admiring as I observe all the work behind the creation of such a structure. There’s the greenhouse with its plastic covering, but they’ve added solid elements to it, to join it to the rock. It’s unbelievable that four people, with the little means at their disposal, could do so much.

  “Where do the metal sheets come from?” I ask, pointing up just over the warm pond.

  “From the wreck of the shuttle. We’ve disassembled it part by part, recycling all that could be recycled. And we’ve built our small Garden of Eden.” He laughs. His previous worry seems to have faded away.

  I can’t help but do the same, sharing his sense of enthusiasm.

  Even though Hera had been conceived as a short-term mission, the habitats sent to Mars had to be used for the future missions, therefore they were equipped to last for many years. As far as power went, they were fully independent. But in order to let people live there for an indefinite time, without external re-supplies, one fundamental thing was missing: an unlimited source of water.

  Station Alpha can make use of a sophisticated system able to extract this essential substance from the regolith, where it is only available in quite low concentrations. But nothing of that sort had been installed in the modules sent to the planets over thirty years ago, not because the technology was lacking, but because it wasn’t necessary for the kind of missions for which they were intended. Actually, the Hera had brought with her more than enough hydrogen, which together with the atmospheric carbon dioxide was used to produce water for the various needs of the crew, plus plenty of methane, employed as fuel for the rovers and the shuttles. The same series of chemical reactions allowed the direct extraction of oxygen, used both for the life support and as combustive agent, from carbon dioxide. It was a less immediate system, but one which demanded less power than the one used today.

  But once the hydrogen was over and the supplies of water and methane had been depleted, the habitat’s self-sufficiency failed.

  Having water again at their disposal reactivated the process, allowing them to produce oxygen and fuel again. This meant plants could be grown in the experimental greenhouse from the seeds stored in the laboratory, transforming it into a never-ending source of sustenance.

  “Can you produce enough food for …? I don’t even know how many you are.” Everything is much clearer now, but I still need some details.

  “We are twelve. And yes, we produce enough of it. We also raise rabbits, pigs, and chickens.”

  I frown. Where did they come from?

  Jack smiles at my reaction. “We had several frozen embryos in the laboratory inside the building. They were intended for development experiments by means of incubators. In theory, we shouldn’t have tried to produce adult animals, at least not during our mission. But, since they were there, we let them develop and breed.”

  Silence falls between us. I ponder the information I’ve received. Jack’s entire account seems perfect, almost too perfect. They were lucky to crash near the lost, still working module, not to mention a few paces from an enormous source of liquid water. What good luck.

  “Mars is a magnificent place, if you learn to get to know it for real.” His cryptic comment seems to have been said in response to my perplexity.

  A faint noise behind me, and Jack’s face appears to light up. I turn and I see them. There’s a woman with long, white hair, arranged in a ponytail; she’s a little taller than me, and has Mediterranean features. Beside her is another couple in their sixties. The man has a frizzy, grey-speckled head of hair, a dark complexion, black, lively eyes. His companion has a proud posture, ice-coloured eyes, a slender figure in spite of her age.

  It’s them, the remainders of Hera’s crew. I stand up out of respect. I’m in front of some living legends.

  The first woman moves closer to Jack, who rises to greet her as well. He links her arm. “Anna Persson, meet my wife, Elena Sernese.” Then he points to the others. “And they are Nestor Almeida and Irina Nowak.”

  I had seen some pictures of them from the time just before their mission, when I had started working at ESA. They were much younger in those images, but I’ve no doubt it’s them. I recognise them all. Like Jack, they have grown old gracefully. They don’t appear to have gained weight or become weak because of their age.

  As absorbed as I am in staring at them, I notice with the corner of my eye that more people are coming. It looks like a carefully choreographed scene: Nestor and Irina step aside, giving way to two more couples, much closer to my age.

  “You’ve already met our grandchildren.” Jack resumes speaking. “These, instead, are our children.”

  Puzzled, I look at him and Elena, then at the other elderly couple. Finally, I turn to the newcomers. Who’s the child of whom?

  As if he has perceived my thoughts, Jack points out one of the men. “This is our son, Julian, with his wife, Katja, daughter of Nestor and Irina.” Then turning to the other young couple, he continues, “And these are our daughter, Maria, and her husband, Thiago.”

  “Son of Nestor and Irina.” I finish his sentence.

  “Exactly.”

  I’m dazed by all those names, but nonetheless I can’t help but notice again that redundant perfection. The four crew members have formed two couples, in apparent harmony; each one had a son and a daughter. And the latter have created two more couples. Now that I think about it, even the children were four: two boys and two girls.

  It’s like a scheme repeating. But it’s forced to stop now, because all the children are siblings or first cousins. The little Martian community would’ve come to the end of its cycle, doomed to extinction, if nobody had found them.

  If I hadn’t found them.

  “I’m glad you are doing better,” Julian says, coming forward together with Katja. Both smile at me. Actually, they are all smiling. I’m the focus of attention and I don’t like that at all. Once more, I feel like I’m the subject of a morbid, invasive curiosity, as has already happened with the children. I know it’s normal. I’m the first unknown human being they’ve seen in more than sixteen Martian years, over thirty-three Earth years. Yet this surreal situation distresses me. I wish I could distance myself from them, but I lack the strength to move. I cannot stop staring at them with the same inquisitive intent.

  “It was us who found you.” Katja’s voice is melodious; her words wake me up. How did they find me? Another coincidence?

  “Since we first heard you, we tried everything to contact you,” Jack says. “We didn’t know whether we had succeeded, but anyway we arranged to send at least one couple to the Ophir Planum, during the daytime, hoping to see some of you come.”

  “You heard us?!” I can barely speak.

  “We’ve picked up some radio transmissions two weeks ago. They were garbled, but it was clear they were voices. You can imagine our excitement!” Whilst speaking, he holds Elena closer to him and they both smile. Nestor and Irina do the same identical thing. Rather than excited, they seem prey to a blissful happiness. “We’ve tried to contact you, with no result. So we’ve tried to send a standard distress signal, short but with increasingly higher power, alternating various radio frequencies and repeating it at different times of the day, every day.”

  I remember my last sortie with Robert. It was the first time we’d been so far south. Perhaps they heard us, as we talked to each other by radio. And then, when I went back there with Hassan, I received their message, but I hadn’t realise
d it was an SOS.

  “Since then, we’ve planned shifts to go to the planum with the rovers. We didn’t know from where you would arrive, or how far you were, but it was worth trying anyway.”

  “So you’ve got rovers?”

  “Well, nothing special compared to yours!” Julian exclaims. “That’s hot stuff.” His eyes are shining.

  “But, how did you climb up the two thousand metres?” It seems I’m giving them the third degree, but they don’t give the impression that they’re annoyed by it.

  “There’s a slightly long path leading up, which can be driven by a rover, but you need to go about ten kilometres eastward.” Jack speaks with a much calmer tone than his son does. “Ours are small, they are equipped with just one combustion engine and small volume tanks. They don’t go that far, but they can get us to the upland plain.”

  “Once there, we did a good deal of strolling,” Julian steps in. He yearns to be the one to hold the stage. “Constantly checking the horizon with the binoculars in search of something moving. And earlier today, just when we were about to leave, we saw a strange light, an abnormal glare of the sun. Imagine our surprise when we realised that it was a rover!”

  I can’t help but smile at him. His enthusiasm is contagious.

  “But, when we got there, there was nobody. It was empty. We looked down the precipice and we saw you.” His restless gesturing makes his account livelier. “We had to hurry, the sun was setting. And we couldn’t call you to find out if you were well. With the suits, it was a waste of effort. We tried various radio channels, but we weren’t sure you received us. So I descended with a rope. You had passed out, but were breathing. I put you into a harness and Katja took us up, pulling with your rover.” He gets closer to me. “It was really tough. It was starting to get quite cold.” Then, something I hadn’t expected at all, he hugs me. “I’m really happy you are alive.”

  “Oh, me too.” I laugh.

  He releases me, and a moment after I find myself in Katja’s arms. “Welcome to Ophir!”

  One by one, they come to me, to embrace me, patting my shoulders, kissing my cheeks, holding my hand. It’s as if the ice has melted and I’m flooded by a tide of affection. I let myself go with that wonderful sensation.

  For the first time I realise that those before me aren’t simple persons. I had deluded myself about entering history books as one of the first human beings to come to Mars, being one of the first colonisers. Instead, they have dwelt here almost from before my birth. If you count the children, most of them were born and have always lived here. This is their planet, not Earth. These men and women are real people of Mars.

  10

  “Sir, we have the images from the orbiter,” Sasaki said, drawing back Nichols’s attention.

  In spite of innumerable coffees, Jan was struggling to stay awake. With the different time zone and the isolation of the control room, he had completely lost sense of time. He didn’t even know how long had passed since the last time he had eaten. For sure, he wasn’t hungry now. His stomach was closed by his tension, and the sudden agitation of the staff caused him a painful cramp. He pushed away the cup with the hot beverage and sipped some water from a bottle.

  The screen turned black. The mission director looked daggers at the deputy flight engineer, who didn’t get perturbed.

  “I’m sorry, Sir, unfortunately the sun has already set in that area. You can’t see a thing.” He didn’t really look sorry; actually he didn’t betray any particular emotion. He didn’t even look tired.

  Nichols let a growl escape.

  “And what do we do now?” Jan asked, worried.

  “We can’t do anything.” The mission director was shaking his head, showing his disappointment. “The good thing is that, including both rover and suit, Anna still has many hours of air left. We can only wait for the dawn and hope to see something. Or that she gets in touch.”

  Jan’s stomach contracted again. Continuing to wait was a nerve-wracking prospect. He would’ve liked to shout, given that he still had the strength.

  “Wait a moment …” Sasaki tilted his head to one side, staring at the screen. “Do you see it too?” Moving a hand in the air, he delineated a square on the picture and centred it. A tiny bright spot within it shifted as well.

  “What the …?” Nichols murmured, but then stopped.

  Sasaki joined two fingers and as he separated them the square enlarged, occupying the entire height of the screen. And the tiny bright spot expanded in a diffused glow, with lighter and darker zones.

  “Show me the matching topography,” the mission director ordered, but couldn’t complete the sentence when a map appeared superimposed. The bright area was precisely in the middle of the canyon. “Well, I’ll be damned … that’s artificial illumination.”

  “Holy shit.” Gray’s voice emerged from the general chatter, shutting up everybody again. “It’ll turn out that those from the Hera are still alive.”

  “It’s impossible!” Nichols thundered.

  “But it’s the only explanation occurring to me,” Sasaki commented. A drop of sweat trickled down his temple. So, in the end, even he had emotions. Jan couldn’t hold back a half laugh.

  “We have plenty of images from that area,” the mission director insisted. “How can that have escaped us?”

  “Because they are diurnal footage, Sir.” The Japanese wasn’t frightened by that authoritarian tone. “Being able to distinguish something so small in the bottom of a canyon under the sunlight is like distinguishing a single drop in the sea. All the more so as we weren’t looking for it at all.” He stopped briefly and shot a reproaching glance toward Gray’s workspace, where he was now busy in an intense and noisy discussion with another colleague. “But in the dark, it’s a quite different matter. Usually we don’t do night filming of Mars.” He took another pause before clarifying the concept. “Because there is nothing to see.”

  “That’s a good one,” Jan exclaimed, giggling. “You wanted to colonise Mars and, instead, it turns out that you’ve already done that for thirty years!”

  Nichols didn’t appear to appreciate his witty remark. He was about to say something.

  “Sir.” Gray stopped him, drawing his superior’s attention onto him. Now, he looked just a little more nervous than usual. He had even abandoned his sandwich halfway through, which wasn’t like him, given that he had spent the day fully relaxed, drinking and eating while working. “I’ve just being informed about a problem at Station Alpha.”

  “What the hell is up now?”

  The man beside Gray intervened. “Qabbani skipped the report at twenty zero zero.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Sir. It’s the first time something like this has happened, and therefore we got worried.” He took the control of the screen, and a room with various equipment and a few seats appeared on it, an empty one. “These images are coming in, in real time, so they are about sixteen minutes old. If you rewind the recording, the room remains empty until the previous transmission, the one at eight a.m. Then we lose track of Qabbani, after he exits the room.”

  “Access the real-time footage from the other environments of the station and play the recordings,” Nichols ordered.

  “That’s exactly the problem,” Gray said. “We can’t access the main server. We can only see the communications room and the greenhouse, which are also connected to the emergency system, also controlling the life support. As for the rest, we are blind and deaf. I can only tell you that Qabbani and Green haven’t been in one of those places or in the rover in the latest twelve hours.”

  “Aren’t we able to find out what they are doing in any way?”

  The other technician took the floor. “Since we could rely only on the life support sensors, we tried to locate them based on carbon dioxide’s peaks in each room.” He reached out to access Gray’s workspace again; his colleague moved out of the way to let him. A floor map of the building appeared on the screen. Some areas were blue-colour
ed, with different shades. “Here’s where we have detected the peaks in the hour after Qabbani’s last communication. It’s difficult to define their movements exactly, because the anomalies in the chemical composition of air depend on the kind of activity performed, for instance, if you speak or walk or do some work, you’ll use more oxygen than that of someone who is still, seated. Do you follow?”

  Nichols nodded.

  “Moreover, the peaks persist even thirty seconds before the life support cancels them, therefore I cannot say who was in these environments and for how long. I can just suppose that at a certain point both were here.” The bright spot with the darker blue shade occupied a small area in the room with the label ‘Laboratory’. “Because this is where we’ve detected the highest peaks.”

  “And where do you detect them now?”

  “We don’t detect any, Sir.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Any anomaly disappeared over eleven hours ago.”

  “There must be a problem with the sensors. They can’t be evaporated.”

  “That’s what I’ve thought as well, Sir. So I’ve tried to alter on purpose the gas concentrations in an area where we have never detected anomalies, to see whether the sensors would report these changes. And they did it punctually after sixteen minutes, so the sensors are working to perfection.”

  “I guess Bradley’s analysis is correct,” Gray confirmed, laconic; a moment earlier, he had been very busy messing about with his touch-screen.

  “Where the hell have they gone? They haven’t taken the rover!”

  “I don’t know, Sir,” Bradley replied. “I’m just telling you what I see, or better I don’t see.”

  “Are you telling me they exited Station Alpha over eleven hours ago? They wouldn’t have enough air in their suits!”

  “No, Sir, I’m telling you that, if they are still in there, they haven’t been breathing for at least eleven hours.”

  ###

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