“What is it?” he asks, listening intently.
“Nico and I souped up some of the telerobots so they can do all sorts of new things. I changed one in a way that I think will make it possible to use to clean off the radiators!” you answer.
“Hmm. That’s not a bad idea,” says Commander Wen. “Quick, can you show me what the robots can do? We don’t have much time!”
You both rush to the warehouse dome, where the telerobots are housed, and you show him your robot’s latest moves, while he watches, impressed.
“I knew you were working on something, but this is really incredible!” he says. “I think it’s worth a shot to use your robot to clean the radiators. Do you think you can operate it?”
“I think so,” you reply, feeling the weight of the controller in your hand. “This is one time all my valuable experience playing video games will come in handy,” you joke, trying to lighten the mood.
Commander Wen takes the telerobot outside and sets it about twenty paces from the nuclear generator. You are inside the warehouse, watching a computer monitor that shows the images from the video camera attached to the telerobot. With sweaty palms, but steady hands, you use the controller to drive the robot over to the generator. So far, so good. A crowd slowly gathers behind you, once they hear what’s going on, but everyone is so silent, you don’t even realize they are there.
Everyone watches, breathless, as Commander Wen tries the wipers again. They start swishing just like they are supposed to.
“Whoo-hoo! You did it,” Aneesa says, throwing her arms around you in a big hug. Everyone in the room congratulates you and embraces each other.
“We were so nervous!” says Julie, coming up to you and giving you a high five.
“Excellent work!” adds Commander Wen. Within fifteen minutes, the reactor’s warning signals are all gone. Just like that, everything is back to normal.
You’re feeling pretty good about yourself, and are glad that you were confident enough to suggest using the robot. Now, once you see the rescue team get back safely, you can relax and get some sleep. You sit in a chair at Central and wait for your friends, and think about the goals of your mission.
The food supply is growing nicely, the base has been expanding, and the expeditions have resulted in good discoveries of minerals and other fuel resources. You can already imagine the future of the planet, fully colonized one day with neighborhoods and schools, telerobots running around taking care of things, and lots of recreation domes where people can learn to fly.
Although it’s risky, you’d like to get back out into the Martian frontier and keep exploring. There’s a lot out there waiting to be discovered, maybe even evidence of past life on Mars. But in the meantime, thanks to you and your crewmates, there will be many more people heading to Mars to build their lives here in the near future! You can’t wait to share this amazing planet with your friends and family—it’s been something you’ll never forget!
An hour later you awake from dozing when you hear Nico’s voice booming.
“There’s the hero of the day!”
You look up and see Nico wearing the biggest grin you’ve ever seen, along with a tired but smiling Victoria. The two of them are helping Cooper stand up. You see a temporary cast on his leg.
“Hey, superstar! We hear you not only got the rescue team to us, but that you saved the base from losing power,” Cooper says. “Not bad for one night’s work!”
“I hope you don’t mind that I used the telerobot without your permission, Nico,” you say with a laugh.
“My permission? You’re the telerobot master now!” Nico replies.
“We all owe you a huge debt,” Commander Wen announces, speaking loud enough so everyone in the room can hear. “All of our astronauts are extraordinary individuals and make tremendous sacrifices for this program. But you’ve gone above and beyond what anyone has done on many occasions. I’m honored to be your commander and to recommend that the Junior Astronauts program be extended to other rising stars like you.”
You feel your face flush as you turn red from the praise. It’s an amazing feeling though—to have helped your friends, who are truly like family to you now, and to have used your skills and training to make a real contribution to the Mars Program. Plus, you’ve made it possible for more kids to follow in your footsteps.
“Three cheers for the superstar!” Cooper shouts, thumping you on the back. You see the smiling faces of your friends and enjoy the deafening cheers and big round of high fives.
And many months later, when it’s time to head back to Earth, this moment is still fresh in your memory. You accomplished everything you set out to do, and more. Not only did your contributions get the base ready for permanent colonists, but you actually saved it from a major disaster!
As you look out the window of Fire Star, back at the beautiful rusty red globe that has been your home for a year and a half, you think, I want to come back someday.
And maybe you will!
You put your head down and keep walking. You don’t want to waste daylight hours sitting around behind a rock when you could be getting closer to your goal. As you’re moving along, the wind continues to pick up, and you have to use a little more energy to keep going in a straight line. Then, you look up and your mouth actually drops open. You see a massive dust cloud—one of the most terrifying things you’ve ever seen—heading toward you. Oh no.
You look for something to take cover under, or behind, but there is nothing around. The cloud is moving toward you at amazing speed, and you know you won’t be able to outrun it. Your best bet is to try to let it pass over you, so you drop to the ground and curl yourself into a ball. Even through your space suit, you feel the roaring wind pounding your body with dust and pellets, and as an enormous sand dune is moving toward you, you close your eyes. Hours later, when the storm is over, the rescue team will pass right by where you are hidden from view, blended into the Martian scenery…forever.
After setting off in the direction you chose, you walk under the stars until you just can’t go any farther. You’re going to have to try to get some rest.
You manage to survive a long, cold night on the Martian frontier. Lucky for you, you had an extra battery to juice up your space suit, so you were able to crank up its internal temperature and stay warm enough not to freeze. But you were still shivering in your suit and, every couple hours, got up to dance around to get your blood pumping. The last thing you wanted was to be found as a human popsicle! It was also hard to get any sleep because of the spookiness of the Mars frontier by night. Morning couldn’t have arrived soon enough.
You set off to trek toward what you think is base, still hoping for the rescue team to drive by and spot you. After walking for a while, you come to a cliff. It’s really wide—about the length of ten football fields. And maybe a couple stories deep. Going around it is going to take a really long time. But going down may be slippery. You aren’t thrilled about either option, but you have to choose one way to go.
GO AROUND THE CLIFF.
GO DOWN THE CLIFF.
You carefully slide down the side of the cliff, easing your way over rocks and making sure to step carefully. It’s not that steep, so you get to the bottom pretty quickly. The crater floor is much smoother than everywhere else, so you make good time getting to the other side. Then you start the hike out of the crater. Even though it’s a simple climb, you can feel your muscles burning. You are completely exhausted.
And then you see the lights of the base. At first, you think your eyes are playing tricks on you, like an oasis mirage in the desert, but as you walk on, you realize it is real. Thank goodness!
You stumble along, and in your haste, miss a step and CRRRRACK! Your ankle! A searing pain that almost makes you pass out rips through your leg.
Over the next hour, you manage to drag yourself back to base. It’s painful every step of the way, but your determination to get there keeps you going.
Finally, you arrive at the c
entral dome and crumple in a heap at the entrance. Aneesa is there, and rushes over to you.
“Oh my gosh! I can’t believe you made it back!” you hear her say.
And then you black out.
You wake up in a hospital bed. There’s an IV line in your arm, and your leg is in a huge cast that comes up past your knee. You feel like you’ve been hit by a train. You look around and see an attendant.
“Where am I?” you ask.
“You’re in the clinic section of the central dome.”
“Did they rescue my team?” you say.
“Yes, don’t worry. They were found before you got back here, and they are doing fine.”
Phew. You feel a flood of relief. Your friends are okay, and you survived your trek! But the good feeling doesn’t last long. You find out that your ankle has been badly broken. It looks like nothing for you but a long period of slow and painful rehabilitation over the next couple months. After that, you’ll still be unable to go on expeditions, or do most of the hands-on work for the mission. Instead, you’ll get to do busy work on the computer. And then it will be time to go home. The good news is that, when that time comes, at least you’ll be able to walk onto the spacecraft back to Earth without your crutches!
“I’d really like to try working on my own design ideas,” you say.
“I think they could help make the robots even more useful.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want,” Nico says, hiding any disappointment he might be feeling. “I’ll be over here working on my project if you need my help.”
You should have known that Nico is too good-natured to mind you disagreeing with him! For the next two days, you devote yourself to working on your design changes, which include adding an extra joint to the telerobot’s arms so they can move in more directions. You also figure out how to reprogram it, so the robot can use its newly improved arms to actually climb up a wall. It’s pretty awesome! When he sees your robot in action, Nico is impressed. “You might put me out of a job!” he tells you. “You’re right, the robots should be able to do a lot of cool things with your design changes.”
“Thanks!” you say. Just then the phone rings. Nico picks it up. “Hey, it sounds like your expedition team is heading out in the morning,” Nico calls to you, after hanging up the phone. “You better go check in with your group. I’ll finish up in here.”
You are finally going out on an expedition! You rush back to the central dome, and there you find Commander Wen with Victoria and Cooper, who will be joining you.
“Glad you’re here. We’re ready to go over the details of your expedition,” Commander Wen says as you come in.
He explains that the purpose of your field trip is to scout for alternative power sources, and that you’ll be traveling in a non-pressurized rover, which means that everyone needs to wear their space suits. You can’t wait. You’re going to head into the great frontier of Mars for the very first time!
Morning doesn’t arrive soon enough. You spent the night before preparing for the expedition, and you are now suited up, ready to head out. Cooper drives you and Victoria in the three-person ground rover, which looks like a high-tech golf cart with jumbo wheels. As you leave the settlement behind, you are impressed by the panoramic view of what has already been built. The series of domes, all connected by covered walkways, has the real feeling of a tiny city. And if your team can find geothermal power sources, which will be used to fuel more domes, it’ll help the settlement expand further.
“We’re going to head in the direction of the Valles Marineris,” says Cooper, referring to the largest canyon in the entire solar system. “Keep your eyes open for craters!”
The surface of Mars is super-rocky, and everything is covered in a fine rust-colored powder, which is actually iron oxide. Because it never rains, the dust is always there, hanging in the air and adding to the reddish color of the sky.
“It’s hard to believe that Mars is so similar to Earth in many ways,” Victoria says to you and Cooper as you make your bumpy journey over the rocks, leaving rover tracks in the dust. “Mars’s days are about the same length as Earth’s, and it has almost the same tilt of its axis. It also has an atmosphere, different seasons, and polar caps like our planet.”
“Yeah, but a year is twice as long here on Mars—and it doesn’t get down to negative 90-degrees Celsius at night on Earth, lucky for us!” Cooper adds.
Even though you are in a climate-controlled space suit, you shiver to think of the incredibly cold temperatures on Mars.
For the next several hours, your team surveys the land and makes stops and takes samples where the prospect for geothermal power is likely. Then you hop back into the rover and keep going. It’s tiring to be in your stiff space suit for so many hours, but it feels good to be out under the Martian sky. As he gets more comfortable in the rover, Cooper starts to push the vehicle faster and faster.
“Here we go, everyone!” he whoops.
Soon he’s driving like a stuntman, flying over rocks and laughing as you cling to the handles.
“Whoa!” you yell as you land hard in your seat.
“Let’s see how fast this thing can go!” Cooper says, ignoring you.
“Look out for that big crater!” warns Victoria as your rover approaches a large hollow in the ground.
When the rover finally comes to a stop, you’re amazed to discover that you’re okay. A little bruised, maybe, but nothing you can’t shake off. Your crewmates, however, weren’t so lucky. Cooper is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, and Victoria is nowhere to be seen.
“Victoria!” you yell.
For a terribly long moment, you don’t hear any response. Then you hear a quiet moan and know, to your great relief, that Victoria is still alive.
“Cooper! Where are you hurt?” you call out next.
“My leg!” Cooper moans. “I think it’s broken!”
You scramble out of the rover and try to reach Victoria on the other side. Your heart races when you see her crumpled on the ground. Could she be paralyzed?
“Can you move, Victoria?” you ask.
“Yes,” she replies in a weak voice. “I’m okay, but I hit my head pretty hard. I think I blacked out. I’m lucky my helmet didn’t crack!”
“We need to get you both back to base,” you say.
The rover is a complete mess and isn’t drivable. Your best bet is to call Central and wait for a rescue team. But, as you send distress signals through the rover, you don’t get a response. The communications system, like every other part of your smashed rover, is not working.
“Where’s the com cell?” you ask.
Every team that goes out on a mission is given this communications device. It looks like a big cell phone.
“It’s not in there?” mumbles Cooper. “It was on the floor in the front, wasn’t it?”
You start digging through the wreck of the rover. Where could it be? You search all over the crash site, and you can’t find it. Could it have gotten tossed out of the rover on one of Cooper’s crazy speed jumps? You start to think so.
Yikes. What now? You try to clear your head and think through your options. When your team doesn’t get back in a couple hours, Central will send a rescue team out to look for
you. They should be able to find the vehicle using satellite locators. You’ll just have to wait and help Cooper and Victoria the best you can until then. The problem is that it will be getting dark in a couple hours, and the temperatures will drop the later it gets. If the rescue team doesn’t get to you soon, you’ll have to get through the frigid Martian night.
Unless…what if you try to make the hike back to base on your own? You’re pretty far from there, but luckily you aren’t hurt. You have good survival skills and have trekked through mountains before. The tracks of the rover have left a clear path in the Martian dust that you can follow. And that way you can make sure a rescue team gets to the rover. Then again, the harsh Mars landscape is threatening, and you’d be alone.
WAIT FOR HELP TO ARRIVE.
MAKE THE HIKE BACK TO BASE.
You scramble back to the service module and seal off all doors leading to the habitation module. You signal an alarm so your crewmates know there is a problem and to stay where they are. Aneesa turns a valve to vent the burning compartment, and the two of you watch in silence through a window as the fire is gone in an instant. Phew! Looking at the burned control panel and singed aluminum walls of the module, you realize what an incredibly close call that was. If you had waited even a few more seconds to get your crewmates, the fire would have easily melted a hole in the wall. And you don’t want to think about what could have happened if the fire had spread further.
“That was really scary,” Aneesa says, her voice shaky. “Good call with the venting.”
“Thanks,” you reply.
You look at the burned module and wonder how you’re going to get the rest of your crew out from the command module, where they are stranded. They don’t have access to food or drinking water where they are, and they’ll start to get pretty uncomfortable soon. Plus, with the communications system down, they don’t even know what’s going on. The alarm you sounded before sealing the doors warned them not to come out of the command area, but that’s about all they know.
Lucky for you and Aneesa, you are on the side of the spacecraft with all the survival essentials you need.
Aneesa is thinking the same thing. “We have to repressurize the hab module as quickly as we can,” she says. Once the module is repressurized and filled with breathing air, you can unseal the doors, and the crew can safely come out.
Ultimate Adventure Novel: Mars Page 7
