A Mars Odyssey

by Michel Poulin

  CHAPTER 10 – A HUGE FIND

  11:03 (GMT)

  Monday, May 2, 2044

  Biochemistry laboratory module

  Mars Base One, Melas Chasma

  Mars

  Alerted via intercom, Denise nearly ran down the central hallway of the base to get to the biochemistry lab module, some eighty meters down from the command and control module. When she entered the lab, it was to find Kwang Tse Jing standing with Nadia Gorushkova and Tomonaga Masaki beside a large sterile work box. All three present were harboring happy smiles, helping Denise guess what had happened.

  ‘’You found traces of Martian living organisms, Jing?’’

  ‘’Yes, I did, Denise, but this time I am positive. Look through the microscope of this sterile box.’’

  Sitting at the chair placed in front of the said microscope, Denise looked through the binocular lenses of the powerful optical instrument, her heart beating faster now. Her heart accelerated further when she saw in the lenses a sort of assemblage of small globes with tinny short ‘hair’ around the surface of the globes. Then, a group of globes moved while staying glued to each other. Fascinated, Denise examined the globes move for a few seconds, then gave an awed look at Jing.

  ‘’The first living organism to be found beyond Earth… This is big, Jing!’’

  ‘’More than big, Denise.’’ said Nadia Gorushkova, the medical doctor and surgeon of their team. ‘’It makes us wonder what other forms of life could be found on this planet. Since this multi-cellular organism was found in an underground aquifer layer, maybe that same layer houses fish-like creatures that we may encounter in the near future. We will also have to be even more careful now not to contaminate the local fauna with our own microbes.’’

  ‘’Er, right! Jing, prepare quickly a preliminary report on your discovery, then transmit it to the FRIENDSHIP, which will then retransmit it to Earth.’’

  ‘’My report is already written, Denise. I just need to transmit it.’’

  ‘’Then, do it! This is the kind of news that can’t wait.’’

  As Jing sat down at her nearby computer, Denise looked at Nadia, this time with a sober expression.

  ‘’Nadia, could this Martian microbe be toxic for us?’’

  ‘’The possibility is always there, Denise, but I will have to run some extensive tests and analysis before I could give you a definite answer.’’

  Denise’s next question was for Tomonaga Masaki, their agronomist.

  ‘’Masaki, how salty exactly is the Martian water? Can we use it to grow plants in our hydroponic gardens?’’

  ‘’The Martian water is nearly like brine, but this was expected on Earth and we thankfully have aboard our landers a number of water osmosis separation units that are easily able to extract pure potable water from Martian brine. In fact, we have been separating potable water from Martian brine since yesterday and have already stored over 4,600 liters of potable water in our tanks, enough to cover the basic needs of our base. Teerapat told me that, now that we have been able to analyze in detail the Martian brine and have found no component in it that could damage or clog our water plants, he was going tomorrow to put online all of our osmosis separation units. Then, I will have plenty of water to start operating our hydroponic gardens.’’

  ‘’And what about the salt separated from the brine?’’

  ‘’We are storing it for the moment in large canvas bags kept outside of our base, until some use can be found for it. About that, Jing told me that this extracted salt, once cleaned and refined, could be safely used by us as table salt, if you don’t mind using pink salt. It has the same chemical composition than sea salt on Earth, except for a tinny proportion of iron particles in it.’’

  ‘’Pink salt?’’ said Denise, smiling. ‘’Well, we will have to find a brave volunteer to try it at supper time, I suppose.’’

  18:41 (GMT)

  Lounge/cafeteria module, Mars Base One

  Denise, seeing Viktor Ponichnikov already seated at one table of the lounge/cafeteria module, decided to go sit opposite him at that table. Denise liked the Siberian nuclear engineer for his jovial attitude and honest, open mind. He was also a fit, vigorous man who took his fun seriously, like Denise did. Putting down her food tray on the table, she sat across from him while giving him a big smile.

  ‘’Hi! Do you mind if I ate with you, Viktor?’’

  ‘’And why would I be dumb enough to refuse a place at my table to a nice blonde like you?’’

  ‘’Well said! So, any problems yet with our nuclear power plants?’’

  ‘’None, thankfully. With luck, we should be able to go back to the FRIENDSHIP in thirteen months before we start glowing in the dark.’’

  Denise strangled a giggle before throwing an amused look at him.

  ‘’Wow! I really like your optimism, Viktor.’’

  ‘’Hey, Russian nuclear engineers are known for their bad, sinister jokes. I can’t help it!’’

  Shaking her head in amusement, Denise was about to attack her meal when Kwang Tse Jing came to their table and put down a salt shaker in front of Denise’s food tray.

  ‘’Here, Denise! I couldn’t find a single ‘brave volunteer’, so you’re it! Call it ‘command privilege’.’’

  Denise, like Viktor, eyed with curiosity the salt shaker: the grains inside were white, but with a slight pinkish color to them.

  ‘’That’s Martian salt?’’

  ‘’It sure is! I purified and ground it myself. You just need to tell us now how it tastes.’’

  Despite Jing’s assurances, Denise hesitated for a moment, long enough to have Viktor grab the shaker with fake frustration.

  ‘’Come on, Denise! I thought that you were more adventurous than that.’’

  Viktor then put a fair dose of salt on one piece of his pork cutlet before grabbing his fork and putting the piece of meat in his mouth. Denise and everybody else present in the lounge stared at the Russian as he chewed on his piece of meat.

  ‘’Hum, not bad at all! There is definitely a difference in taste compared to Earth’s sea salt, but it is actually a pleasant one. Maybe we should…’’

  Viktor suddenly stopped speaking and chewing, while his eyes opened wide. His hands then started to shake and he reacted like someone choking on something. An alarmed Denise, getting up from her chair, was about to call for medical help when Viktor’s expression changed completely and he broke out into laughter, prompting an indignant remark from Denise.

  ‘’You clown! You scared me for a moment!’’

  ‘’Just for a moment? I was going to play the stomach burster scene from that old horror science-fiction film if this didn’t work.’’

  ‘’So, seriously, how does this Martian salt tastes, Viktor?’’ asked Jing, who was still going over her momentary fright.

  ‘’It is actually really good, Jing. You all really should try it. Go ahead, Denise: have a bite!’’

  Sitting back down, Denise salted one piece of her fish, then tasted it. Jing also tasted the salt, using a small piece of vegetable from Denise’s plate. The six other team members present then came to their table to also try the Martian salt, putting a few grains on a fingertip and licking it. All of them nodded their heads in approval after a few seconds.

  ‘’Not bad at all!’’ said Steven Merrick. ‘’In fact, it has a small aftertaste that is quite interesting.’’

  ‘’Hey,’’ exclaimed Viktor, waving his arms around, ‘’we just found the first Martian export item for interplanetary commerce. We are all going to get rich!’’

  What he couldn’t know then was that Martian salt would effectively become a prized import commodity on Earth in the years to come, with most rich snobs insisting on having Martian salt served to them in restaurants.

  10:05 (GMT)

  Wednesday, May 4, 2044

  Lava tube connected to underground rotunda of Mars Base One

  Jaso
n Terlecki, looking through the ice covering the top of the water filling the nearly vertical part of this lava tunnel, estimated its thickness at about no more than two meters: a workable thickness to deal with this morning. He, Frey Thorvalson and Sergei Krulov had driven an ATV to the end of this lava tube, some 700 meters away from the underground rotunda containing their base, with the goal of drilling a hole in the ice. They then intended to sink a small mobile sonar unit down the inundated part of the lava tube, which twisted down to near vertical at this point, to map the inundated tunnel and see how far down it went. As a mining engineer, Jason had plenty of experience dealing with water-logged tunnels and underground chimneys on Earth.

  ‘’Alright, guys, be ready with the heating rods: I am going to activate our thermal cutting shield.’’

  Taking a few steps back first as a precaution, he then pressed the button at the top of the small command box he held in his gloved right hand, lighting up the pyrotechnic mixture contained in the round shield-like thermal cutting board he had put down on top of the ice surface. The mixture, quite similar with the old thermite powder, ignited with a short flash, then burned fiercely with temperatures high enough to melt steel in a few seconds. The thermal cutting board quickly melted the top of the ice and started sinking down through the ice as it melted it. When the thermal board was down past one meter of ice, Jason looked at his two companions.

  ‘’Start approaching your heating rods from the hole: we don’t want to give a chance to the ice to reform.’’

  Both geologists nodded their heads and grabbed the semi-circular frames they had brought with them, which supported vertical heating rods connected to a portable fuel cell power unit transported on the trailer towed by their ATV. Walking up to the edge of the 1.2 meter-wide hole now formed in the ice, the two men started dipping the ends of the heating rods in the water, holding their support frames high and keeping the rods close to the edges. After going through approximately three meters of ice, the thermal cutting board finally reached liquid salt water and sank quickly out of sight. Frey and Sergei then lowered their heating rods until they were completely submerged in salt water and turned their rheostats to maximum, making the rods heat up to their maximum. Now pretty sure that the water in the hole was not going to freeze on them while the sonar fish was down, Jason went to pick up the small, torpedo-like device, which was resting on the ATV’s trailer, and picked it up with some effort before walking back to the hole in the ice. Normally, he would probably not have been able to carry alone the 170 kilo sonar fish but, here on Mars, it felt like a 63 kilo object to him. Putting down the sonar unit near the edge of the hole, Jason then went back to grab the command and display unit, while Sergei unrolled in advance a long section of command and power wire from a large spool sitting on the trailer. This was all part of a long planned experiment conceived on Earth and was no improvised system. If all went well, the sonar fish, swimming around the inundated lava tube, was going to tell them how far and deep it went and, hopefully, tell them as well how large this underground aquifer layer was.

  Jason was about to slide the sonar fish in the water when he hesitated and gave a sudden order on the radio.

  ‘’Quick, guys, switch off your helmet lamps!’’

  He did so himself at once, with his two companions obeying after a slight hesitation.

  ‘’Is there something wrong, Jason?’’ asked Sergei Krulov, concerned. Jason shook his head in response.

  ‘’No, but I believe that I saw a kind of tiny light down in the water.’’

  ‘’A tiny light? Could it be a remaining particle of thermite mix still burning?’’

  ‘’I don’t think so. THERE IT IS, SOME FOUR METERS OFF THE HOLE AND DOWN. IT IS MOVING, FOR GOD’S SAKE!’’

  ‘’Moving? But, that’s impossible!’’ said Krulov. However, after looking down the melted water of the hole for a few seconds, the Russian had to agree with Jason.

  ‘’You are right: something is moving down there and it is emitting a faint glow.’’

  ‘’It still could be a particle of hot thermite mixture floating around in a water current.’’ suggested Frey Thorvalson. Again, Jason shook his head in denial.

  ‘’If it would be pushed around by a current, it would go mostly in a straight line, Frey. Instead, it just did a complete ‘U’ turn.’’

  A sudden thought then came to Krulov, who opened his eyes wide.

  ‘’A fish? Could this be a Martian fish?’’

  ‘’Hell! That is one possibility that we can’t dismiss without more investigation. Let’s put our sonar unit in the water: with luck, its frontal camera could capture pictures of whatever is down there.’’

  The three men then joined their efforts in sliding the sonar fish into the melted water of the hole in the ice, where it stayed afloat thanks to its dorsal air bag. Grabbing the remote control unit of the sonar rover and setting it on its folding, telescopic tripod, Jason powered on the rover while talking to his two companions.

  ‘’Be ready to feed the rover’s control wire into the hole, guy: I am about to make it dive down.’’

  ‘’We are ready.’’ said in response Frey. Doing a short initial check of the rover’s systems first, Jason then made its dorsal air bag deflate, a pump inside the rover transferring its air into a small pressurized tank. As the rover started sinking down the inundated lava tube, Jason powered the high frequency, high definition sonar transducer of the rover while also switching on its frontal camera and its positional red blinking beacon. He however selected the low light mode of the camera and lit the infrared projectors of the rover instead of the white light ones, not wanting to scare away whatever there was down there by using bright light beams.

  ‘’You have put the rover’s sensors on ‘recording’ mode, Jason?’’ asked Sergei, making Jason nod his head inside his helmet while he kept his eyes and hands on the remote control unit of the rover.

  ‘’That was one of the first things I did, Sergei: we sure want to have recorded proof if we see anything down there. This could be our biggest find yet on Mars.’’

  The three men then kept silent while Jason piloted the sonar rover down, concentrated on the visual and sonar pictures he was getting back. The inundated lava tube, which started with a steep down angle from their position, quickly became vertical, while it gradually widened in diameter. A sonar depth reading soon made Jason exclaim himself.

  ‘’Hell, the rover is now reading a depth of 460 meters! The tube is also widening with the increasing depth and has a diameter of about 55 meters at a depth of 35 meters… Now at a depth of sixty meters, with a tube diameter of seventy meters. At that rhythm, we are…WOAH!’’

  The shout on the radio by Jason made both Frey and Sergei hurry to him to look at the display screen of the rover’s camera. What they saw made their blood rush to their heads: a sort of semi-transparent fish with an enormous mouth and big teeth was attacking the rover, apparently targeting its blinking red beacon light.

  ‘’It is attracted to our beacon light.’’ said Frey. ‘’Switch it off, quickly, before that thing could cut off the rover’s wire!’’

  Jason did so, which seemed to either calm down or confuse the Martian fish. That gave the camera of the rover a chance to film in detail the creature as it took some distance and swam around the rover.

  ‘’Look at that sort of appendage with a glowing dot attached to the head of that…fish.’’ said Jason. ‘’That is the light I saw through the ice. This thing actually looks a lot like the fish found in abyssal trenches at the bottom of Earth’s oceans.’’

  ‘’Yes!’’ approved Sergei. ‘’Same function and conditions, nearly same forms. HEY, I SEE ANOTHER LIGHT DOT APPROACH!’’

  The three men, fascinated, watched on as another Martian fish, this one radically different in shape to the first one but also semi-transparent and with a glowing appendage, approached the rover. It actually had a long, heel-like shape but its long, pointy mo
uth and rows of sharp teeth clearly marked it as a predator. The first Martian fish decided to try to swim away at its approach. However, the newcomer was apparently a faster swimmer and caught it in its jaws before it could escape. The heel-like fish then proceeded into devouring the unfortunate first fish, right on camera.

  ‘’Gee! That thing looks murderous as hell!’’ exclaimed Frey. ‘’It also looks to be quite big.’’

  ‘’Well, the short range Lidar8 makes it to be about ninety centimeters long, while the first fish measured about thirty centimeters in length. This video will be like dynamite when we will show it to the others. Well, the heel has finished its feast. I will resume the rover’s dive now.’’

  Piloted cautiously by Jason, the sonar rover resumed its descent, soon passing a depth of 120 meters. By then, the lava tube’s diameter had grown to over 170 meters, with the tube apparently getting even larger deeper down. That was very encouraging for the astronauts of the Mars mission, as this meant that they had access to an abundant source of water for their base. How abundant became even clearer when the rover passed a depth of 340 meters. The sonar readings then made Jason exclaim himself on the radio.