First Landing

by Robert Zubrin

  He felt both terrified and enraged at having been goaded into reckless action. “Don’t be a sissy, eh. No problem, eh!”

  Smaller rocks, bouncing down the hill faster than the rest of the slide, pattered and ricocheted all around the vehicle. One stone the size of a softball slammed into the Plexiglas window on Rebecca’s side. A network of cracks began to spread in the window. In seconds it would shatter and depressurize the rover. Rebecca stared at it, frozen.

  “Rebecca! Quick-patch!” shouted McGee, snapping her out of it.

  Rebecca tore off her seat belt and lurched to the back of the rover, reaching behind the seats to yank open a box in the cargo area. She withdrew a square-foot sheet of translucent plastic material with an adhesive back. In one swift motion, she peeled the cover off the adhesive and slammed the sticky plastic sheet into place on the window. She turned to McGee. “That was close—Oh no, watch out!”

  McGee looked out his side window. An eight-foot boulder bounded down the hill on a collision course with the rover. He gripped the steering wheel, searching frantically for some way to avoid it. In desperation he tried flooring the accelerator, but the boulder kept pace.

  “Kevin, hard right!”

  McGee saw a steep depression in the terrain. She couldn’t mean—

  Rebecca’s arms reached over his shoulder to jerk down the wheel; he cooperated, willingly tumbling the rover into the ditch. The monstrous boulder bounced harmlessly overhead, but the vehicle kept rolling. As McGee held himself in place, Rebecca was tossed into the rear, where she desperately tried to grab the back of the seat as the rover continued spinning, crashing, rolling, over and over.

  Finally they landed miraculously upright at the bottom of the ravine. With a rushing, roaring sound, the rock slide came to a halt around them. As the dust settled, the two gaped out the windows, emotionally drained, speechless.

  “Well, you wanted to get to the bottom of the gorge,” he finally ventured. “McGee delivers.”

  Rebecca slowly raised her shaking hand and pointed. About twenty yards in front of the rover was a group of unusual-looking rocks. “McGee, look at that.” Her voice was level with authority as she started to seal the fastenings on her Marsuit. “Let’s go.”

  Still stunned by the very fact of their survival, McGee was mystified. “Go where? Rebecca, we better check out the rover for damage before—”

  “That can wait.”

  Was she in shock? McGee had no time to investigate as Rebecca reached for her helmet, apparently preparing to depressurize the rover, whether he was ready or not. He fastened down his helmet just before Rebecca opened the valve to vent the rover cabin. Then the hatch was open, and she was off, running like a mountain goat across the rocky terrain. McGee watched her go. It was hard to believe someone so graceful could move so fast.

  When he caught up to her he was panting, but Rebecca was already pouring nonstop geo-biological commentary into her recorder, snapping holograms of everything in sight.

  “Slow down, Rebecca. Those things have been here for three billion years. They’re not going to run away.”

  She turned to him. Her face was tear-streaked but never more beautiful. “Do you know what these are, Kevin? Bacterial stromatolites! See, look at this micrograph. Those rod-shaped pores in the material, that’s where the organisms actually were. Classic coccoid bacterial structural form. Look, look at this chromatograph readout! There are even organic residues in the fossil structure.”

  McGee peered at the rocks. They certainly were odd—lumpy, porous—but had they been alive? He shrugged, uncertain.

  “There was life here once!” Rebecca rejoiced. “That’s all that counts.” She hugged him in her Marsuit and started to cry, mumbling inside her helmet. “We found it, we found it!”

  McGee held her, a little bewildered to be comforting a woman who had just made the greatest discovery of her career—and who had just caused the rover to crash down a steep ravine. Over her shoulder, he saw a blue-green discoloration among some rocks farther down in the gully. He stroked her back. “Rebecca?”

  “Yes?” she sniffled, gradually emerging from her euphoria.

  “I knew the Moon was made of green cheese, but Mars?”

  Rebecca regarded him curiously. “What are you talking about?”

  McGee pointed to the blue-green smear. When Rebecca saw it too, she stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. She moved toward the rock slowly, almost as if stalking it. Finally she knelt, and McGee followed, leaning over her shoulder.

  “What is it, Rebecca?”

  She was very cool and deliberate now, completely composed. “I’ve never seen a mineral like this before.”

  She focused the holocamera on the mineral, scraped a little off into a sample bottle, photographed the rock again, and began a round of clinical description into the recorder. She went on for some time, sampling, photographing and recording, clambering all over the rock, paying no attention to McGee. Then she saw something and started to push madly at the boulder, trying unsuccessfully to tip it.

  “Help me, Kevin! I’ve got to get under this rock.”

  “What? Whatever for?”

  “This stuff up here is dead, but maybe only for a few hundred thousand years. What’s underneath might be much better preserved. I’ve got to see.”

  McGee looked at the big boulder. He might be able to roll it under the low Martian gravity, but if it should slip it would have more than enough mass to crush Rebecca. “And you want me to lift this rock so you can crawl under it? Why not jack it up?”

  She turned to him, her eyes bright with tears, her voice urgent. “There won’t be time! If anything is alive, the current Martian environment will destroy it in seconds, minutes at most. You’ve got to lift the rock, and let me scramble under and grab a quick sample. That’s the only way.”

  “Do you know how dangerous that could be? Houston would never allow it, Townsend would never allow it.”

  “They’re not here, we are. We might never get another chance like this.”

  McGee looked up the treacherous scree slope. “This whole hillside is nothing but avalanche debris. The neighboring rocks could give way in a second when I lift this boulder and you’d be crushed. I could never forgive myself if—”

  “Please, Kevin, it’s my life, and I’m willing to take the risk. For this.” Again, the bright eyes, the pleading yet courageous voice.

  McGee looked at her, then at the hillside. “Okay, but move fast. I’m not Superman.”

  “I’ll be faster than light!” she cried happily.

  McGee wedged his shoulder against the huge rock. “All right, then brace yourself here with me. I’ll need your help to roll it up initially. When I think I’ve got its weight under control, I’ll give you the signal—then you go like hell.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, heave!”

  “We can do it!” she cheered, then gasped with the effort. The rock began to rise, ponderously opening a gap about eighteen inches high at their knees. McGee straightened himself to form a rigid support where he could hold it himself, at least for a short while.

  “All right, I’ve got it. Go.”

  Rebecca ducked under the rock, disappearing from the waist up. McGee strained to keep the boulder in place but the nearby pivot rocks restraining it from behind began to wobble.

  “What’s taking you, Rebecca! Get out of there now!”

  “Just a minute.” Rebecca’s voice sounded husky in his suit radio.

  McGee felt a stab of cold in his hands. The rock had pierced the insulation on his glove. “Rebecca! The cold’s getting through. I can’t hold it much longer.”

  “Just hold on a bit more.” A bit. The cold seared his hands, penetrating his bones. Agony.

  Finally, Rebecca backed out and McGee let go, the boulder collapsing back into place, missing her helmet by seconds. He stood with his fingers stretched out stiff and throbbing.

  “Let’s see those hands.” She rubbed McGee’s
gloved fingers in hers. Then she slapped them together. He winced. “You feel that?”

  “Ouch!”

  “Good, then there’s no frostbite.” She smiled.

  “Dr. Sherman, you really need some work on your bedside manner.”

  “Kevin, you and I have to get back to the Beagle at once, so I can examine these samples with the electron-scanning microscope and high-grade opticals.”

  She began marching back to the battered vehicle. McGee watched her for a moment, shaking his head in bewilderment, then finally followed.

  When McGee examined the scraped and pummeled rover, he realized that getting back would not be easy.

  In the first place, the vehicle obviously could not climb back up the loose and treacherous slope it had descended. “We’ll have to drive for miles along the base of the ridge, after which we’ll need to cross a hundred miles of bare planitia to get back to the base. If we can find it.”

  Ordinarily, that would not be a problem. However, in its tumble downhill, the rover had snapped off the antennas needed by both the over-the-horizon radios and the satellite navigation system. Without these, they could become fatally lost on the featureless plain.

  McGee fiddled with his jury-rigged antenna, trying to make it work. From inside the rover came Rebecca’s voice. “No luck. Nothing but static. Kevin, we’ve wasted precious hours trying to fix this thing. I’ve got to get these samples back to the lab for immediate analysis. Let’s just bag the repair job and get going.”

  McGee groaned. Rebecca was so obsessed with her potential discovery that she was oblivious to their plight.

  “Rebecca, I don’t think you get it. Without the nav system, the odds of our finding our way back to the Hab are low, even in daylight. At night, it’s going to be nearly impossible.”

  Rebecca exited the rover and joined McGee outside. She examined the repair job. It seemed like it should work. In all probability, a good mechanic could get the system functioning within minutes. Unfortunately, the nearest such person was over a hundred miles away, and without their radio, they had no way to call for help. Mars’ weak magnetic field made compasses useless; they needed the satellite nav system to guide them home.

  Rebecca stared bleakly at the wiring, then at the crumbly slope they had just descended. The avalanche had exposed bare and broken rock everywhere—Mars rocks free of deposited dust. They looked quite unusual. For a moment, the thought crossed her mind that she should photograph the slope for Luke. The fresh, raw image might have some geological value.

  No, rocks could wait. She had to get back with her samples.

  Rebecca looked to the west. It was a very clear evening, and the Sun was just going down. With no dust in the thin air, there was virtually no sunset, and no twilight. Instead, deep night fell like a thick curtain.

  Suddenly McGee cried out. She turned, amazed at what she saw. The entire slope was glowing: soft pinks, greens, blues, violets, like an enormous mountain of iridescent jewels. It was eerie and beautiful—one of the most magnificent sights she had ever seen. For several seconds she couldn’t breathe.

  “Can you explain it, Rebecca?”

  McGee’s question broke her reverie, and her analytical mind switched into gear. “Phosphorescence, I think. The ridge is covered with calcite and fluorite, and other phosphorescent minerals. The avalanche exposed a lot of virgin surface, which is glowing due to excitation from solar UV. I don’t think it will last long.”

  Sure enough, within less than a minute the glow faded, leaving the two explorers in a darkness lit only by a magnificent canopy of stars.

  With the fall of night, the temperature, which had been descending all afternoon, started to drop fast. The two spent a few moments admiring the constellations, then returned to the rover cabin for warmth. But McGee now had food for thought.

  Inside the rover, he pulled off his helmet and waited for the doctor to remove hers. “Rebecca, I think I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” She asked with a trace of hope.

  “The stars. We can navigate home by using the stars to provide direction, and the rover’s odometer for dead reckoning against our maps.”

  Rebecca’s expression brightened, then exploded into sunshine. “That’s great! That means we can make it back tonight! Kevin, you’re a wonder.” She paused. “But we need to know the location of Mars’ north celestial pole. It’s not Polaris, I’m sure of that. Let’s see: Mars’ vernal equinox points toward Gemini, and tilts at twenty-four degrees. But to calculate the location of the pole we need to know—

  McGee cut short her calculations. “Rebecca, I know the answer.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Mars’ north celestial pole is located about halfway between Deneb and Alpha Cephei.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “It says so right here.”

  Rebecca looked over at the text displayed on McGee’s electropad. It had been many years since she’d first read it, but she recognized the passage instantly, from The Case for Mars, published in 1996.

  Rebecca grinned. “Leave it to you, Kevin, to keep classics in your pad memory.” She pointed out the window, “There’s Deneb, Cygnus the Swan’s tail, and there’s Alpha Cephei. We’ll lose them when we cross the equator, but if they mark north,” she turned to look in the opposite direction, “that constellation will give us south.”

  Rebecca turned to McGee and smiled. “It’s Vela, the sails of the Argo.” She switched her penlite to illuminate her map. “So, to keep it simple, all you need to do is travel forty-four miles at bearing 090 and then head down at bearing 150 for another 115 miles—and we should hit it on the nose. It’s all flat and level. At top speed, we can make it back in ten hours. Step on it.”

  McGee glanced out the window at the two stars. At bearing 090, all he would have to do is keep them directly to his left. Easy enough. “Aye, aye.” He hit the starter.

  And the two of them made it to the Beagle in eleven hours and forty-six minutes, guided by the light of the Martian stars.

  CHAPTER 8

  OPHIR PLANUM

  DEC. 17, 2011 21:45 MLT

  EVERYONE EXCEPT REBECCA was seated in the Hab’s galley. Colonel Townsend surveyed the assembled group. Immediately upon her return to the Beagle, the biologist had locked herself in the lab. She had been in there for the past sixteen hours, refusing to speak to anyone. It was time to resolve the situation.

  Townsend turned to the historian. “Do you think it was a loss of judgment to abort the rover excursion, McGee? Those stromatolites were a real find, everything she was looking for. And now . . .” He gestured at the locked lab door.

  “I think she’s cracked,” Luke interjected.

  Well aware of the rivalry between the two scientists, Townsend said dryly, “Thank you for your insightful contribution, Dr. Johnson. Please allow me to proceed in getting the facts of the case.” He continued to study McGee.

  The professor appeared miserable. He was obviously soft on Dr. Sherman. Another problem to look out for. “I don’t know. She examined the green-veined samples with the microscope in the rover, and they revealed no biological structure. But she said its magnification was too weak, and that she needed to use the more powerful microscopes in the Hab. She said she had to do it before the sample could die.”

  “Die? Rocks don’t die. You mean she thinks the green stuff is alive?”

  “That’s what I think she believes.”

  Luke slapped the table. “Well, I’ll tell you what I think—that little lady is off her little rocker.”

  Townsend winced. “I don’t need to be lawyered on the subject, Luke.” And I don’t need crew members trying to backstab each other.

  Gwen shrugged and looked at the sealed door. “Colonel, if you want, I can disable the lock so we can get her out.”

  Well, at least that was a positive suggestion. He could withhold judgment until he spoke to the doctor himself.

  “Why don’t we give her a little more time?” McG
ee pleaded. “Especially when we might have an answer one way or another any moment and end all this arguing.”

  “Your loyalty to your crewmate is commendable, Professor,” Townsend said, “but I don’t see the point. She’s had enough time. Get your tools, Major.”

  Gwen got up, but before she could exit, the lab door opened and Rebecca appeared.

  What a mess, Townsend thought. She looked completely exhausted, totally spent, played out. Hardly the composed scientist he knew from just three days ago.

  Rebecca staggered into the room, clutching an optical disk. Townsend helped her to a chair, into which she collapsed. She handed the disk to McGee and motioned to the video player. McGee put the disk in the slot, and a blue-green background filled the TV screen.

  “Okay, Doctor,” Townsend said, his voice flat and deliberately neutral. “Let’s see what you’ve found.”

  The whole crew watched as the TV showed the images, with a recording of the doctor’s voice providing narration. “This is sample 12/16/11-9, series G, number 41, imaged optically under soft ultraviolet light at three hundred times magnification, with enhanced simulated color restoration. No biological structure is in evidence.” Rebecca’s recorded voice sounded ever more exhausted as the video proceeded. “This is the same sample imaged at one thousand times magnification. No biological structure is in evidence. I have now increased magnification to three thousand power. Again no biological structure is in evidence, however there is some indication of crystalline regularity to the substratum.”

  The video showed hints of tiny hexagonal patterns of shading within the blue-green background. Looks like blue honeycomb, Townsend thought.

  “That’s an inorganic mineralogical microstructure typical of cuprous silicates,” Luke commented. “They’re turquoise in color, too.”

  “But those shapes in the upper left of the screen seem rather odd.” McGee offered.

  Luke chuckled. “Those are fracture patterns, just like the ones that fooled people into thinking they were seeing fossils in Martian meteorites back in the 1990’s. What you are looking at, Professor, is just a good old-fashioned rock.”