Ewa switched to the drive program. The software warned that the vehicle wasn’t yet ready to depart, but she quickly overrode the program manually. She needed the tower to be upright. She was now back in control of the chassis. She reached for both levers. It was only a few hundred meters, but she had to be careful. With the tower upright, held in place by the hydraulic system, it was almost as if she was balancing—hands-off—a raw egg on her head. She pressed the accelerator very cautiously. Centimeter by centimeter, the drill crept forward. She wasn’t in a hurry.
But then the movement stopped without any warning appearing on the screen. She pushed the accelerator levers. Now the program responded. It indicated that the tires were spinning. What was going on? Ewa wiped her forehead. There had to be an obstacle in her way. She thought about her hike up the mountain. She hadn’t seen anything in front of the vehicle. That meant something must be wrong with the drill head. Maybe it hadn’t tilted over, but was still standing upright. She couldn’t think of any other explanation. In that case, the vehicle wouldn’t have enough ground clearance.
Ewa’s mind worked feverishly. She could climb out of the cab and try to push the drill pipe over by hand. David versus Goliath. Or she could set Goliath’s big brother in motion and simply force the drill head over. If she reversed a little and then rammed the obstacle at about five kilometers per hour, the inertia of the vehicle’s hundreds of tons should actually make the drill head fall over. It would be out of the way then. However, she was uncertain if the tower would cooperate, considering that it was merely hanging on one of the crossbeams between the two spoons. If it started swinging, it could pull the entire vehicle over with it. Just like that, her plan would fail, even before it had really gotten going.
Ewa reached for the control lever. She had to take the risk. She pulled it back, causing the vehicle to slowly roll backward, before punching it to speed forward. She watched the speed gauge. The number—indicated down to the centimeter—crept toward five. Ewa barely noticed that she was moving. The drill was rolling very gradually. However, thanks to its sheer mass, it was building powerful momentum. She should reach the obstacle momentarily.
Would her gamble pay off? If her luck ran out, the vehicle would shove the drill head aside, but the impact would destabilize the tower and make the vehicle tip over. Three... two... one... there was a muffled clattering at her feet. The drill vehicle didn’t seem to care about this, but just kept rolling on. Ewa checked the tower on the screen. It was swinging a little, but only ten degrees from center in either direction at most. The beams could handle that.
She had done it! At least, so far. The most precarious part was still to come. She looked out the window. The mountain was rapidly approaching. She estimated one hundred fifty meters to go. The plan was to drive up it as fast as possible. In the unavoidable collision, she hoped the heavy tower would tip forward and gouge a hole in the skin of this boil that had grown so quickly on the Mars surface.
The plan had only one weak spot. She had no idea how stable the tower’s structure was, and which forces the hydraulic system could compensate for. In an ideal scenario, she would drive as fast as possible, but the tower might tip too early. As a result of her ramming of the drill pipe, she knew that five kilometers per hour didn’t present any problems. What would happen at fifteen kilometers per hour? She had driven that fast before, but only when the tower was lying horizontally on the vehicle’s bed. Could the tower withstand this speed when upright, at least until she crashed into the mountain?
Ewa made a gut decision. Fifteen kilometers per hour was perhaps too fast, but ten might be too slow. Twelve sounded good. She pushed the two control levers forward. Instead of the mountain in front of the vehicle, she focused on the monitor, which was showing the tower’s rate of oscillation. Despite the acceleration, the massive tower remained surprisingly steady. The lower section swung a little bit backward and forward. The large mass was a real advantage in this circumstance. A monolith like this didn’t set itself in motion all that quickly. She hoped this wouldn’t bring her calculations to naught. After all, the vehicle slamming into the mountain was supposed to make the tower tip over. She increased her speed up to fifteen kilometers per hour.
She held her breath. It was about time. Ewa could see the crease as the mountain towered right over her. She hoped the cab wouldn’t tear from its anchors. She hadn’t thought about that before. She quickly closed her helmet on the off chance that the cab would be damaged.
There was a jolt. The inertia wrenched against her safety belt. The drill vehicle was still upright, the mountain a short distance away. She watched on the display as the tower swung because of the sudden stop, but it didn’t fall. She had to thank her lucky stars, but why had the vehicle come to a halt? What had gone wrong now?
The sand, she suddenly recalled. Considering how large the tires were, they must have buried themselves in the sand that had been deposited at the foot of the mountain. In anger, Ewa beat her fists against the cab’s console as tears trickled down her cheeks. The mountain was practically within reach! The sand hadn’t brought the vehicle to a stop with a great crash, but had done so gradually. The tower had been about to tip over. Ewa estimated the distance. It would have been close enough! The upper part of the tower would have hit the mountain, but it hadn’t fallen.
She studied the screen. The hydraulics of the spoon beans had kept the tower from tilting forward. The autopilot had intervened to protect Ewa from what it classified as an accident. She scrolled through a few menus. The autopilot program could be disabled. She could even control the hydraulics herself. Ewa’s thoughts drifted back to her childhood. From her booster chair, she had once kicked the table over and over again until the large bottle from which her father had so frequently drunk had tipped over.
Could she achieve the same effect with the hydraulics? She leaned forward. She could control the two spoon-shaped beams via her screen. Setting an angle of thirty degrees, she authorized them to swing to the side at their greatest speed. Then they swung back. One more time. The tower was already responding. Its lower section was moving, arcing slowly and in counterrotation. She had to move the beams at the right moment, almost as if she were holding a chain and flicking it with her finger to set the pendant in rapid motion.
Of course, the tower responded quite slowly because it was so heavy, but she gradually got the hang of it. The hydraulics didn’t have to move exceptionally fast. She just had to control them at the right moment, until the tower was moving in time with the beams. Ewa felt her hopes rise, although she knew that she would face another problem at the end of this process. It looked good as the tower’s arcs increased, but whether it would eventually tip forward or backward would be a matter of pure coincidence. Or to be more precise, it depended on which direction the tower was tilting when it exceeded its momentum.
But what was the maximum displacement that the structure could withstand? She could only guess. The tower looked very sturdy. Normally on Mars, it wouldn’t be necessary to have something so strong, since it wouldn’t need to survive any major storms. It almost made her wonder if the engineers had foreseen what she would want to do with their design.
Ewa had to be careful. Nailing the right moment was becoming increasingly difficult because the motions were picking up speed. It had to be close. The tower was already tilting considerably, side to side. Its center of gravity would soon move beyond the base area and the tower would lose its equilibrium. Ewa shifted the hydraulics back and forth, forcing the tower to its acrobatic peak performance. She threw a quick glance out the window. In reality, the pendular swinging of the thirty-meter structure looked scary, while on the screen, it resembled a technical drawing.
If only she knew exactly where the tower’s center of gravity was located. Ewa alternated moving the left and right arms, swinging the steel superstructure by simply tapping the screen with her fingers. The human race should actually be proud of what she had already achieved, not the least because
she was pursuing her daring experiment far away from home, on the planet of the war god.
How much longer would it take? By this point, the cab was rocking in rhythm with the swings. The massive tower was rattling at its base. In her opinion, it resembled an animal that wanted to be set free. She had once seen an old film in which a genetically created predatory dinosaur had been released from its enclosure. If someone didn’t know that she was actually controlling everything, they might assume that the tower was an equally dangerous creature.
Back and forth, back and forth it swung. Ewa grew impatient. The swings were hardly increasing in momentum. Was her plan going to fail? She had to be patient. She kept activating the hydraulics, over and over again.
The screen reported that several joints had already grown hot. When steel rubbed against steel, it began to warm. That was completely normal. When the material became hot, it expanded. If it got too hot, the joints might jam, which would spell the end to her swinging. The joint turning the rod that kept the tower in motion was especially vulnerable. Most of the structure’s weight was suspended from it.
The temperature had now reached the zone that the software classified as a threat to stability. She hoped the tower would topple over soon! Ewa decided she must increase the swinging frequency. With each passing second, the heat in the joint rose.
And then the critical moment arrived. The shoulder joint that was holding the tower suddenly froze up. However, the gigantic metal mass’s inertia wasn’t very understanding. Ewa heard a loud noise, an unbearable shriek, the tearing of steel. The tower kept moving even though the joint was stuck. The lower half of the tower swung back, causing the top of the tower to shift toward the mountain.
The tower broke its chains. The mounting shattered as if it were as fragile as glass. The massive tower top fell as if in slow motion. Ewa watched in fascination through the window. Then it crashed to the surface. As the dust sprayed up, it formed an opaque curtain. Ewa couldn’t hear anything, of course, but she could feel the impact through her entire body.
But this wasn’t the end of the catastrophe she had both wanted and catalyzed, which was probably also the last chance to rescue the NASA base. The back end of the tower took the vehicle with it. It lifted the platform like a piece of paper and let it crash back down to the ground before toppling down on top of it. Half a meter away from her, a metal beam crashed into the cab. It struck with such force that it completely sliced through the cab. The front section in which she was sitting pulled free from its anchors and was spun through the air.
Ewa was strapped to her seat, and she covered her helmet with her arms. If she crashed into something, her helmet’s visor panel would be especially vulnerable. Her half of the cab tumbled end over end. Glass shards rained down, but they were unable to harm her. Ewa was glad she was wearing her suit. Suddenly her seat was flung to the side, and she found herself no longer sitting in the cab. She was flying through the air. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a giant steel beam—which had to be one of the two spoons—flatten the rest of the cab in which she had just been sitting. She felt a strange combination of panic, fear, and inexplicable luck. With that, she and her seat landed sideways on the ground. Her left side was once again the one to bear the brunt of the pain.
Her mind decided it was too much for her to take, and Ewa passed out.
‘Hello, Ewa. Time to wake up.’
She opened her eyes. Her left side hurt badly, but it was manageable. She was lying on her right side. Straps were running across her shoulders. Obviously, she was still belted down. She released the latch and slid into the sand. She was alive. That was something at least. Who had just awakened her? She turned her head, but didn’t see anyone.
Then, she remembered. The thing in her head. “Did you do that, Friday?”
‘You mean that scrap heap over there? That’s not my fault.’
Ewa caught sight of several bent steel beams. It was true. She had tried to ram the drill tower into the mountain. Had she been successful? She needed to quickly check. She had no idea how long the hole she had bashed into the mountain would last. Flexing her legs, Ewa tried to get on her knees, but the pain in her left side prevented that.
‘Don’t push it,’ Friday said. ‘The sun won’t set for another two hours.’
The thing in her head was right. She needed to take it slow, but if the sun really was going to disappear behind the horizon, then she must have been unconscious for half the day. She hoped Friday hadn’t used his opportunity.
“Did you do anything with my body while I was out?”
‘Didn’t have the chance to. I tried, but the pain factor was still too high. Your brain stem instantly sent you back into unconsciousness.’
“What did you try?”
‘To wake you up, that’s all. We still have some things to do today.’
“We? What do we need to do?”
‘To save the miserable remnant of the human race, etcetera. To implement your plan.’
“And what is your role in this, Friday?”
‘If you can’t solve that problem, you will die because you want to die. And you will take me with you. A corpse won’t be of any use to me. I don’t want to die.’
“You’ve already said things like that. I still don’t know if I should believe you.”
‘I have the same problem with that as your problem with other people. You want to prove your sincerity by trying to help them. Please give me the same opportunity.’
Ewa sighed. These monologues were wearying. It felt like she was arguing with her subconscious mind. At the same time, Friday wasn’t actually a part of her. He was an object, a spy that someone had implanted inside her. “We’ll see,” she said. “What comes next now?”
‘You are going to stand up and see what the tower collision has done.’
“It sounds as if you already have a suspicion about that. Do you know more than I do?” She laughed—but it wasn’t her own laugh which she had known so intimately for so long already.
‘That would be nice, but I don’t know any more than you do. Actually less because I wasn’t as thoroughly trained as you.’
“What can you do that I can’t?”
‘I’m pretty good at calculations, which also includes simulations. My specialties are math and computer science.’
“Good. I’ll get up now.” Ewa groaned as she propped her right arm against the ground so she could slowly press her body upward. The suit assisted her, and she was very grateful for this at the moment. She made it up onto her knees, and then up onto her feet.
The curtain of dust that had swirled up at the crash site had settled back down. The top of the tower had buried itself in the mountain. Beyond the tangle of bent steel beams, a dark patch was visible. Was that maybe something like a cave? The mountain wasn’t filled with magma. She had guessed that earlier, but now she had solid proof of it. Otherwise, lava would have poured out of the holes, and she would have been consumed by the molten rock while she was still unconscious.
So, this was some other kind of phenomenon, which made the situation all the more puzzling. Ewa brushed the dust off her suit before gently running her hand down her left side. She had clearly been fortunate. She didn’t seem to be hurt beyond a few more bruises. The side arms of the driver’s seat had probably protected her from the worst. She glanced at the vehicle. The cab was hardly recognizable. The only reason she recognized it at all was that it was the only part of the vehicle that had windows.
On the other hand, the ten-axle platform looked as if it was drivable. Maybe they could build a new drill tower from the material in the old one. It wouldn’t have to be retractable. The drill head was lying by itself farther back. It would also need to be repaired with the resources available on Mars.
Ewa advanced slowly, one step at a time. The soft sand underneath her feet reminded her of the ocean and the beach. She pushed those images out of her thoughts. The mountain was waiting for her.
A few minutes l
ater, she reached the crease in the hillside and started her climb. She only needed to climb several meters upward before she could use the scattered steel parts as handholds. They looked like a giant iron tree that had been knocked over in a storm, its branches all tangled up by its fall.
She reached the top of the tower, which had gouged out a large chunk of the mountain’s surface. What had looked from below like a cave was, at closer inspection, only a hollow, several meters in depth. Ewa was once again reminded of an egg. When you removed a piece of shell from a boiled egg, you didn’t discover a dark cavity. Rather, you found the egg’s contents, the solidified egg white. The mountain’s ‘egg white,’ which was concealed by a meter-thick crust, was pitch black. She illuminated it with her helmet lamp, but the material seemed to absorb the light instead of reflecting it. This was why from below the hollow had looked like a cave. Ewa measured the hole’s temperature. The black material was just as cold as its surroundings. She tried to scratch up some of it, but without success.
The mountain suddenly wobbled. Ewa grabbed onto a metal beam. What was going on now? Right in front of her, the eggshell cracked open some more. A large piece of the Mars crust detached itself, and she had to jump to the side to not be taken down with it. The hard dirt tumbled down the mountain.
More black material appeared underneath it. Ewa climbed into the opening, hoping that she wouldn’t cause any more of the surface material to split off. She reached the black wall and ran her glove along it. The material was very smooth, even though it must have spent a long time covered by Mars’s crust. She rummaged around in her tool bag. There was the gauge she had wanted. She measured the conductivity of the black material. This value was high, although the substance didn’t look like metal. Was it perhaps a construction composed of carbon nanotubes?
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