First Landing

by Robert Zubrin

  Rebecca wished the two women were friends. It was too bad that Gwen hated her guts.

  “You did real good today, Professor,” Gwen said to McGee. “I didn’t think you had it in you.” She gave him a little salute and slapped him on the shoulder, causing him to grimace; then she strode off.

  McGee looked sheepish, and Rebecca suppressed a giggle. “So, Kevin, looks like you really scored with Red Wing today.”

  “Yeah.” McGee rubbed his shoulder. “Ouch.”

  Their attention was suddenly drawn to Townsend, who stood and stretched in his bomber jacket and peaked hat, the apparent lord of all he surveyed. Something about the colonel’s macho appearance made Rebecca laugh. She nudged Kevin. “Can you believe that guy? ‘The Beagle has landed.’ Now, really!”

  OCT. 26, 2011 15:50 CST

  LAFAYETTE PARK, WASHINGTON DC

  On all four corners around the White House, a huge celebratory demonstration filled the streets and sidewalks. People waved flags and held up newspapers with quarter-page banner headlines.

  Behind the stone and wrought-iron fences of the White House grounds, a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties strode arm in arm with a stylishly dressed blond woman in her early forties. Eight secret service agents flanked them as they approached the gate, smiling.

  As the President and First Lady emerged from the gate, the crowd greeted them with an enormous cheer, which they returned with hands raised, forefingers pointing to the sky in an “Onward!” salute that had come to symbolize the Mars program.

  The crowd increased its cheering, and the President and First Lady smiled and beamed, basking in their unearned applause.

  CHAPTER 4

  OPHIR PLANUM

  OCT. 27, 2011 07:10 MLT

  TOWNSEND LOOKED OUT the cargo bay window at the dawn of a new day on Mars. The sky showed bright pink in the east, and the rising limb of the Sun cast long shadows on the rapidly brightening but dark-red ground.

  The crew had spent a restless evening checking the Beagle for damage after the hard landing, following which the commander had ordered a full night’s sleep before the first sortie on the planet’s surface.

  Now it was time: Soon the first human footsteps would be made on Mars.

  Townsend turned to face the crew. They were all outfitted in Marsuits with their helmets off, looking uneasy. Strange, the way people reacted when they knew they’d be participating in a historic moment.

  He rapped on a crate to attract their attention. “Everyone ready for a walk outside? Time to make a few footprints where no one has gone before.”

  No answer. They all shuffled nervously, looking at their feet.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, is there some kind of problem?”

  He might as well have been talking to statues. Finally, Kevin McGee looked up and met Townsend’s eyes. “Why don’t I just slip out first, Colonel, to set up the camera and record your step onto the surface? You can be the official first man on Mars, I’ll just be the anonymous cameraman there ahead of you. Nobody needs to mention it in the documentation.”

  Townsend couldn’t believe his ears. But he had no time to react before Luke drawled, “I should really test for soil toxicity first, Colonel. We don’t know for sure if superoxides on the surface are hazardous to the EVA suits. Those Viking landers indicated pretty exotic chemistry from all that solar ultraviolet zapping down on the regolith, and the products they found didn’t exactly meet Environmental Protection Agency standards . . .”

  As the geologist droned on, Dr. Sherman stepped forth, beaming. “How about ladies first?” she asked sweetly.

  Major Llewellyn didn’t miss a beat. “Ladies first? I guess that means me.”

  This was ridiculous. Townsend rapped the crate again to shut them up.

  “Enough!” he said, in his most commanding tone. “The descent will be in order of rank. I will be first, followed by Major Llewellyn, then Dr. Sherman, Dr. Johnson, and Professor McGee.”

  “Now just a gosh-darned minute,” said Luke. “Since when does Rebecca Sherman outrank me?”

  More bruising for a delicate ego. Too bad. Rank had its privileges, and the geologist would have to get that straight. “She’s ship’s doctor, which makes her essential. You’re just a researcher. In my book, that means she outranks you.”

  Luke started to talk back, but apparently thought better of it and glared instead at Rebecca, who further silenced him with a devastating smile of superiority.

  “Okay,” Townsend concluded with a knowing smile, “let’s go.”

  The crew put on their transparent helmets and tightened them. They stood in silence for a minute while the humming pumpdown units did their work. Then the outer airlock door opened, revealing a spectacular sunrise over the red desert landscape. The Beagle’s ramp lowered and Townsend descended, the rest of the crew following one at a time.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Townsend felt a thrill run up his spine as his boot crunched down in its first step on the dry Martian soil. The first human footprint on Mars, and it’s mine. Am I supposed to say something historic now? “One giant leap” or something like that? No, I’ll wait until we raise the flag. He scanned the horizon. Red sky, red cliffs. Impressive. The wind caused a faint low-pitched whistling sound in his helmet. The sound of Mars, Townsend thought. Not unpleasant. Then he heard metallic sounds, crunching sounds: the rest of the crew coming down the ramp.

  McGee moved out and set up his video camera on an autotracking tripod, then ran back to join the rest of the crew flanking him on either side. “Okay, everyone,” the professor said, “face the camera and smile.”

  This would be the photograph for the books, Townsend knew. Not the first man on Mars, but the first team. His team. Townsend felt a surge of pride. He turned and faced the camera, giving it a cocky fighter pilot’s thumbs up, knowing as he did so that he had just created an image as immortal as Washington crossing the Delaware. He thought briefly of his wife and kids. Hey, Karen, how’m I doin’? Hey, Mike, Petey, look at your daddy now!

  Now for the flag. He indicated a hillock thirty yards off to the right. That would do nicely. Gwen climbed the slope carrying an aluminum cylinder, which she opened to reveal a telescoping flagpole that bore a wire-stretched American flag.

  With a glance at the mission commander for permission, Gwen planted the pole, throwing Luke one of the stays while she spiked down the other two herself. Townsend frowned as Dr. Sherman ignored the ceremony preparations, instead stooping to examine a rock. There’ll be time enough for that, Doctor. First things first.

  Finally the flagpole was ready; Gwen grasped the hoist.

  “Crew, attention!” barked Townsend.

  All stood, although not really in the military pose of attention. Townsend signaled with a chop of his hand, and Gwen slowly raised the flag. As she did, Townsend switched on a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which played inside everyone’s helmets. As the long anthem played out, Townsend and Gwen stood with respect, overcome with the moment, but the attention of the rest of the crew began to wander. Rebecca surreptitiously resumed her examination of the rock in her hand, while Luke started scanning distant cliff faces with binoculars.

  We’ll be here for a year and a half, Townsend thought, wanting to scold them. There’ll be time for all that later.

  McGee kept his camcorder focused on the ceremony, but his eyes wandered to the other members of the crew. He muttered into his personal recorder: “The Stars and Stripes now wave over Mars. For our officers, this moment is the climax of the mission. For the scientists, it is an irrelevant delay that must be endured before the real mission can begin. Which of them is right? Let history judge.”

  When the music ended, Townsend began his prepared speech. “Four hundred years ago, the first pioneer settlers arrived on the eastern shores of North America. Together with those who came later, they turned a wilderness into the greatest nation on Earth, a beacon of hope and a temple of liberty for all mankind. Today
we have brought the flag representing everything they fought for, hoped for, and died for to a distant place, so that this planet, when peopled, will also be a land of the free. And so, with both humility and pride, in being the bearers of so great a symbol, carried by our ancestors over the fields of revolution, 1812, Mexico, and the South, carried by our grandfathers through the bloody trenches of World War One, carried by our fathers to the cruel beaches of Normandy and Tarawa, carried by our brothers through the jungles of Vietnam and the deserts of Iraq, we . . .”

  Something was wrong, or missing. The speech was dull, rambling. Townsend paused, letting his eyes flicker over the vast windswept landscape, the distant cliffs and towering mountains. He was finally hit by the spectacular reality of it all. “My God, this is a whole new world we’re on now!”

  Rebecca murmured sotto voce to McGee, “About time he noticed.”

  Embarrassed by his outburst, Townsend said, “Oh well, there goes my chance for rhetorical immortality. Why don’t each of you go before the camera and make your own speech? Major, you first.”

  Gwen took a step forward and then turned to face McGee’s camera.

  “This is Major Guenevere Llewellyn, the first woman to set foot on another planet. God created the planets and the Earth, and has now seen fit to show us, His chosen creatures, some of His handiwork. The heavens tell the glory of God, says the Good Book, and this place shows the wonder of His work. Let us give thanks to God for bringing us safely here and pray that we prove ourselves worthy to be the instruments of His divine plan, whatever that may be.”

  As Gwen concluded her speech, she glanced momentarily at Rebecca. Townsend noticed the gesture. Was she trying to get a rise out of the secular biologist? “Dr. Sherman,” he intervened, “your turn.”

  Rebecca took a deep breath. “We came here from an ecosphere teeming with ten million species of life. We have journeyed to our seemingly barren sister planet in hopes of discovering life that once was, or perhaps life that never quite began. If Mars has life, either in fossil form or still existing, this will strongly suggest that life must abound in the universe, and that the billions of stars we see on a clear night may mark the home systems of lush worlds too numerous to count, which harbor species and civilizations too diverse even to catalog. Knowing they exist, the human race can find its place among them, as true citizens of our galaxy.

  “But if we find no clue of life here, then we ourselves must become the first Martians. Here, we shall replicate the terrestrial biosphere and help Mother Gaia herself give birth to a second living world.”

  Townsend smiled, but felt inwardly annoyed at the deliberate mention of a pagan goddess, sure to irk Major Llewellyn. Sherman’s scientific rationalist pose had already caused enough friction with the other woman. The doctor might be a famous genius, but apparently lacked something in the common-sense department. Why doesn’t anyone on this mission besides me ever think about maintaining group cohesiveness? “Well said,” he pronounced thinly.

  Inside her helmet Gwen whispered, “For a flake.”

  Luke Johnson scooped a soil sample into a screw-cap vial and then advanced to take his turn before the camera. “From the surface, a geologist can find truth. From orbit, this planet resembled our Moon, but from this perspective, Mars is clearly different. There are obvious water erosion features, yet it’s totally dry now. With no hydrological cycle, the whole surface is fossilized as it was three billion years ago.” The geologist paused for a moment, then startled everyone with his shout. “I’ve never seen anything like this in Texas. Yeeeehah!”

  “Ride ’em cowboy,” Rebecca commented to herself. “Apparently not only Mars is fossilized.”

  Townsend turned to the professor. “Any words from our historian?”

  McGee walked a few paces, and then turned to face the tripod-mounted camera. “We who are here today are fulfilling what has been a dream of humankind since before the dawn of history. The drive to explore has always been fundamental to the human psyche. It has taken us out of Africa, across rivers, mountains, deserts, and oceans. New lands have always given rise to new cultures, and human civilization has grown and become enriched. But always, before the reality, must come the dream.

  “It is the dreamers, not the explorers, who are the greatest heroes of progress, because they can see with their minds what the rest of us can only see with our eyes. A century ago one dreamer who led us to Mars was Percival Lowell, a scientist who thought he saw canals spanning this planet, bringing water from its poles to a thirsty civilization.

  “Our cameras looking down from orbit showed no canals, no civilization. But standing here today, I think I can dimly see what Lowell saw—there will be canals here someday. Cities will rise, proud towering cities, perhaps with names like those Edgar Rice Burroughs coined in his wonderful, imaginative novels: Helium, Ptarth, Manator.

  “Perhaps in the future some John Carter from Earth will come here to find love in the eyes of a Dejah Thoris, his beautiful Martian princess, and sing her praises under the hurtling moons of Mars. Stranger things have come to pass. For ourselves, who have yet to face the rigors of mankind’s first five hundred days on this still cold and desert planet, I can only hope that we do as well as Lowell’s explorers did: ‘We were not frostbitten for life, nor did we have to be rescued by a search party. We lived not unlike civilized beings during it all, and we actually brought back some of the information we went out to acquire.’

  “Thank you Lowell, and Burroughs, for bringing us here; thanks to all the dreamers. Humanity owes its new world to you.”

  Luke touched his helmet to Gwen’s and whispered, “And thank your partner on the White House staff for sticking us with you.” He rolled his eyes. “To think we gave up our chemist for this blabbermouth.”

  Gwen didn’t respond. Sure, the professor might be a bit loose around the edges, but there were worse sorts.

  “Since that concludes the landing ceremony,” Townsend declared crisply, “I suggest we all return to the ship. We have much to prepare before exploration operations can commence.”

  As they trooped back to the Hab module, Rebecca commented to McGee, “The American flag on Mars. What an anachronism.”

  Gwen overheard. That got her mad. “Now there’s a fine example of modern liberal thinking,” she fumed. “Sometimes I wonder where they find people like you.”

  Townsend observed the interchange, but said nothing. He would definitely have to keep his eyes on those two.

  The hard work went on for hours as the crew unpacked the exploration gear from the Beagle. First they brought the pressurized rover out of the lower deck cargo compartment. Powered by a methane-oxygen combustion engine, the vehicle was designed to range as far as three hundred miles from the base at travel speeds of up to twenty-five miles per hour over the rough Martian terrain.

  Then came the reserve-power solar panels and the inflatable experimental greenhouse. The unloading job wasn’t easy. At three-eighths of normal gravity, each person was able to carry significantly heavier loads, but the inertia of each object was the same as on Earth. Most of the real work was done by Townsend, Luke, and Gwen. McGee’s injured shoulder slowed him down considerably, and Rebecca was not a heavy lifter. But all five pitched in as best they could, and by evening the job was done.

  Townsend surveyed the scene with some satisfaction. Boldly emblazoned with its flag-waving Snoopy mascot symbol, the Beagle would now serve as their base of operations, and as their home for the next five hundred days. Indeed, with the module’s flying career over, the crew had already stopped referring to her as a “ship” and instead called her the Hab, a 38-ton living-module that resembled a huge drum twenty-seven feet in diameter and ceiling sixteen feet high. With two decks and a total floor area of 1,100 square feet, the Hab was large enough to comfortably accommodate the crew of five.

  During the outbound flight, the lower deck had been crammed with cargo, and only the upper floor, divided into staterooms and function rooms, had been av
ailable as living space. Now that the unloading was complete, a significant part of the lower deck space would become available for human activity, providing the crew with a small workshop.

  The added space also provided easy maintenance access to all systems necessary for surface operations. The Hab’s closed-loop life-support system was capable of recycling oxygen and water, but successful, fully autonomous operation of such complex units for a year and a half was doubtful. However, with hands-on support to fix problems as they developed—especially with a mechanic as able as Gwen—the system could be considered nearly bulletproof.

  The lower deck also featured an enclosure surrounded by the bulk of their food reserves. This pantry, which contained whole food for three years, also did double-duty by serving as the crew’s shelter in the event of solar flares.

  The work done, Townsend radioed a general recall and watched as his suited crew trooped back to the Hab, tired but in high spirits. Soon they would all be celebrating, perhaps passing around a tiny airline bottle of cognac and making mawkish toasts. For the moment, at least, their differences had been forgotten. The five shared the bonded friendship of climbers at the peak of Mount Everest or veterans of the same combat unit. Physical labor, done as a team, had brought them back together. That was a relief. But how long would the good morale last?

  Morale was everything. As a former combat officer, Townsend knew that with high morale, everything was possible; without it, nothing was possible. Napoleon had put it well. “In war, morale is to materiel as ten is to one.”

  The NASA mission planners had shown a poor appreciation of that fact when they’d chosen an awkward Opposition-class trajectory for the outbound leg of the mission. As a result of that decision, the crew had been cooped up for ten months as the ship looped into the inner solar system on a Venus flyby in order to reach Mars the long way. That had been done so they could get to Mars in time for the November mission-abort launch window back to Earth.