A Mars Odyssey

by Michel Poulin

  ‘’Well, we came here to do just that, Tim.’’ replied Roman, sounding happy. ‘’Peter, get us to the foot of that lava tube. We will then go out to take samples of those rocks. Let’s start selecting and unpacking our equipment, guys.’’

  Some twelve minutes later, the big rover stopped and parked a mere forty meters from the rock cliffs. Peter felt relief when he saw on his instruments that the cliff overhang above him now masked the rover from much of the cosmic radiations showering constantly the surface of Mars.

  ‘’Good news, guys: the cliff overhang we are under has cut the cosmic radiations we were receiving in the open by 74%. This spot could actually be a good one to eventually locate a mining base.’’

  ‘’That’s to my liking, Peter.’’ replied Roman, who was about to enter the airlock of the rover with his three geologists. ‘’It will also help cut on the amount of radiations we will absorb while working outside.’’

  Peter nodded grimly to that: radiation exposure was a constant danger on the surface of Mars, the lack of a magnetosphere around the planet and the thin atmosphere allowing the constant rain of charged particles from cosmic radiations and from solar wind to bathe Mars with little or no attenuation. Scientists studying that problem via explorer drones and satellites had calculated that astronauts exposed to typical levels or radiation on Mars and in space during a 880 day mission would receive a total radiation dose of a bit over one sievert, enough to increase by five percent the risk of developing a fatal cancer. For the colonists on Mars who were going to spend their whole lives on the planet, finding ways to decrease their exposure to radiations was not only important, but also vital to their survival.

  Carrying a variety of prospecting tools, instruments and sample boxes, the four geologists, led by Roman Denisovich, eagerly walked to the nearby base of the cliff, which was partially covered with dust, sand and fallen rocks. Spreading out first, in order to collect as varied a set of mineral samples as possible, the four men then started eagerly chipping away at the black rock face with their prospector picks. It took them only a few minutes before attaining a consensus.

  ‘’That’s magnetite ore alright.’’ said Frey Thorvalsson on the radio. ‘’Judging by the size of this vein, I believe that we have here at the minimum a few million tons of high grade iron ore, my friends.’’

  ‘’I believe that you can add some appreciable quantities of chromite ore to that, Frey.’’ added Yves Dorval. ‘’My laser spectrometer is reading a magmatic differentiated layer here as being made up of chromite.’’

  ‘’Hum, finding sizeable ore sources for producing both iron and chromium this early in our prospecting expedition is certainly a very encouraging thing.’’ said Roman, feeling most happy. ‘’If this vein does go deep, like for more than a few kilometers, then we will have found a most valid site for our first planned mining center. I can’t wait until cargo ships could deliver our first mining equipment set. Okay, collect and tag a few samples here, then we will get back in the rover and continue exploring the base of Olympus Mons. With luck, we should find plenty more ore deposits, both around and at the top of the volcano.’’

  The next five days of prospecting around and on Olympus Mons proved Roman correct, with multiple large ore deposits of the various forms of magnetite, including ulvinospinel, an ore containing titanium, plus many deposits of chromite and of olivine, or magnesium iron silicate, found. The prospectors also stumbled on a vein containing the gemstone form of olivine, better known as peridot, a green, translucent crystal. At the end of those five days of hard work, the team was ready to fly back to Mars Base One, where they were going to be able to make more complete analysis of their samples.

  After landing on the open canyon floor of Melas Chasma, outside Mars Base One, the team’s flying rover rolled up the access ramp built a year and a half ago and drove down the tunnel leading to the rotunda sheltering Mars Base One. However, the rover had to first cycle through a giant airlock before it could enter the rotunda. The recently completed airlock, along with four more airlocks plugging the ancient lava tubes connecting with the huge underground dome of the rotunda, was designed to be large enough to let pass craft as big as cargo landers, manned landers and heavy orbital shuttles. With those multiple airlocks in place, it had then become possible to fill and pressurize the rotunda with breathable air, which had been heated to a most tolerable 22 degrees Celsius. Now, the Martian colonists were finally free to walk around the wide rotunda without having to wear a spacesuit. That had constituted a vital, crucial step in making the colony more livable in the long term. To help fully take advantage of that huge step, the colonists had brought in from the outside large quantities of Martian soil, then had spread the soil in a thick layer over the rocky floor of the rotunda. In about a month, a number of cargo landers were due to bring in hundreds of young trees, which were then going to be carefully planted around the rotunda, where they would grow to eventually become the first forest on Mars.

  After emerging out of the entrance airlock of the base, the flying rover turned left and followed a wide paved surface roughly following the southern wall of the rotunda, until it stopped on the refueling pad of the base. There, four technicians who had been waiting for the MCC 001 came forward and, using electrical elevating chariots, plugged two liquid transfer hoses to the tanks of the flying rover: one for the N2O4 oxidizer tank and one for the MMH fuel tank. Refilling the tanks of the rover took only minutes, after which Peter Walsingham made his vehicle roll to its assigned parking spot along the southwest wall of the rotunda, next to the already parked MCC 002. Yves Dorval couldn’t help hesitate for a second before opening the visor of his spacesuit, once he was out of the rover with his five companions: the time when you had to go around the rotunda with a sealed spacesuit was only a month ago. He then looked around and up at the powerful floodlights installed around the upper levels of the rotunda in a manner to provide indirect light to reflect against the ceiling of the cavern. Also installed around the rotunda were water sprinkler systems meant to wet and irrigate the new soil cover, which had been planted with grass seeds and a number of potted plants, berry bushes and small fruit trees.

  ‘’I hope that we will find a lot more such underground caverns that we could pressurize and landscape like this one: they make the perfect locations for our future cities. Too bad that we found up to now only one similar cave with access to water.’’

  ‘’Oh, I am confident that we will, Yves.’’ replied Roman. ‘’The morphology of Mars points to the probable formation of many such underground domes and I would in fact not be surprised at all if we found an underground rotunda under the slopes of Olympus Mons, or under one of the three volcanoes of the Tharsis Rise. Well, let’s hop on that electric cart and go to the main habitat: I am getting quite hungry.’’

  ‘’I’ll second that!’’ added the big and powerful Frey, who had a legendary appetite. Acting on that, the five men put their precious samples boxes in the back of the cart, then sat in it, with Peter then starting to drive it towards the original complex of pressurized habitat modules built some eighteen months ago.

  Their first concern after taking off their spacesuits in the dressing room module of the base and putting on their ‘fat suits’ was to go secure their sample boxes inside the geology lab module. As soon as that was done, Tim Garland excused himself with the others while walking out of the lab in somewhat of a hurry.

  ‘’Please excuse me for leaving this quickly, guys: I really missed my little Jason during those five days.’’

  His companions smiled in comprehension at that: Tim was the proud father of a six week-old baby boy, which he had conceived with the pretty Jodi White, a New-Zealander agronomist who had arrived at the base some ten days after the initial surface team.

  ‘’Smooch him for me, Tim!’’ nearly shouted in response Peter Walsingham before thinking out loud to himself. ‘’Damn, I better get myself a nice woman before I become too old to make kids
. Maybe I should start using my charms on Layla.’’

  ‘’Naah! Too late!’’ retorted Frey Thorvalsson. ‘’She is already taken.’’

  ‘’Taken? By who?’’

  ‘’By me, of course!’’ said Frey with a big grin. ‘’You think that I would have let such a pretty woman walk around without noticing her? More importantly, she noticed me: us Nordic hunks always have a big effect on women.’’

  ‘’Yeah, the old Viking effect indeed: they invaded other countries and took women there because their own women were tired of their big hunks.’’

  While Frey made a falsely indignant face at Peter’s retort, the three other men burst out into laughter at that barb from the British pilot.

  CHAPTER 13 – VACATION TIME

  07:25 (Jakarta Time)

  Sunday, June 19, 2050

  Soekarno-Hatta International Airport

  Jakarta, Island of Java, Indonesia

  The Indonesian customs and immigration officer working at one of the international arrivals control booths of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport gave back to the Australian tourist his passport after stamping it.

  ‘’Thank you and have a good time in Indonesia, sir. NEXT!’’

  The couple in their mid to late thirties with a young preteen girl could easily have passed as Indonesians at a quick look. The woman, a very pretty and graceful one, proved effectively to hold an Indonesian passport, which the officer quickly sifted through, before stamping it.

  ‘’Welcome back to Indonesia, Miss Sukarno.’’

  Next, the officer took the man’s passport, a Thai one, and opened it.

  ‘’Are you married to Miss Sukarno, Mister Batrang?’’ asked politely the customs and immigration agent, making the man smile.

  ‘’Yes, I am, Officer. We came with our daughter May to visit my wife’s parents.’’

  The officer nodded his head and stamped Teerapat Batrang’s passport, giving it back to him before smiling to the young Asian girl holding the hand of her father.

  ‘’Hello, May! May I have your passport for a moment, please?’’

  ‘’Here you are, mister.’’ replied the girl, who had to be around five or six but who also was quite tall for her age, with long, fine legs. The officer took the passport she presented to him and was about to open it to stamp it when he froze in confusion and surprise before looking up with some irritation at her father.

  ‘’Is this some kind of a joke, Mister Batrang? A Martian passport?’’

  ‘’Look, Officer, this may appear strange and most unusual to you, but our daughter was actually born on Mars and has lived there for all of her five years. Me and my wife are astronauts and are part of the Mars Home Project. This is the first time that we have returned to Earth since the start of our mission in 2043 and we are on a three-month vacation, at the end of which we will be returning to Mars. Three other children were born on Mars, like May, and Mars is their official place of residence, as certified by the United Nations.’’

  ‘’Uh, just give me a moment, please.’’

  The Indonesian official then picked up his telephone and did a quick call before looking again at Gita and Teerapat.

  ‘’My supervisor is coming to this booth and will bring you to a private interview room with your daughter. Don’t worry: it will not be the kind of interview room where they bodily search you.’’

  Another Indonesian customs and immigration officer, this one with graying hair, effectively showed up within a minute and smiled to the couple after a quick glance at little May.

  ‘’If you may follow me please.’’

  Still a bit worried, the couple followed the official while both holding the hands of May. Passing through a glass door marked as reserved for airport staff, they finally ended up in a small, windowless room, where they sat on chairs opposite a table, behind which the official sat. Teerapat’s eyes didn’t miss the discrete camera fixed to one corner of the room’s ceiling. However, the official kept a polite, friendly tone then.

  ‘’Could I see all of your passports, please?’’

  Teerapat quickly collected the three passports of his family and then put them on the small table.

  ‘’Here you are, sir.’’

  ‘’Thank you!’’

  The official scrutinized the passports for a moment, then started punching the keyboard of the computer integrated to the table. He apparently visited a couple of Internet sites and read a number of articles online, then looked up from his computer screen and smiled to Teerapat and Gita.

  ‘’Well, it seems that your story is a true one. To be frank, while I heard before about children having been born on Mars, I was kind of expecting those children to show some visible differences, due to the different environment of Mars.’’

  ‘’Oh, Mars is certainly quite different from Earth, sir.’’ said Gita, who was secretly blowing air in relief. ‘’However, we did everything to make sure that May stayed as similar as Earth children while growing up. The astronauts and their children living and working on Mars routinely wear what we call ‘fat suits’, coveralls weighed down with weights in order to make them exert the same physical efforts they would have to on Earth, despite the weak gravity of Mars, which is equal to 37% of Earth’s gravity. As a result, May has the same muscular strength, bone resistance and cardiovascular capacity than any other child of her age. The only difference noted up to now is that she, like the other Martian children, has a bit longer legs than usual, probably due to the fact that we take off our fat suits before going to sleep, thus spend seven to nine hours a day in reduced felt gravity.’’

  ‘’Fascinating! Well, I see no reasons to further delay your vacation. I will now escort you back to the entry registration booth, so that your daughter’s passport could be stamped.’’

  ‘’Thank you very much for your understanding, sir.’’ said a pleased Gita. ‘’We are so anxious to bring May to a beach, so that she could swim in the sea for the first time.’’

  ‘’I can understand her: not being able to enjoy the natural beauties of Earth for so long must be hard.’’

  ‘’True, but how long will we be able to enjoy those natural beauties at the present rhythm?’’ replied Teerapat, most serious.

  Some 25 minutes later, after collecting their luggage and clearing the customs checks, where the official that had interviewed them made sure that they went through without further delay, the small family took place in a taxi in order to get to downtown Jakarta, twenty kilometers away to the Southeast. All three sighed with relief as the vehicle’s air conditioning system helped them cool down a bit. The oppressive humidity and heat of the local climate had hit them like a hard slap in the face when they had walked out of the controlled environment of the airport’s terminal building. Even Gita, who was born in Java, vented herself.

  ‘’Ooof! I didn’t remember Jakarta being this hot and humid.’’

  The taxi driver, on hearing her, smiled to her via his rear view mirror.

  ‘’How long has it been since the last time you visited Jakarta, miss?’’

  ‘’Over six years. Why?’’

  ‘’Well, the local average temperature has climbed by nearly two degrees Celsius in the last six to seven years, miss, and they predict that it will continue to rise at the same rate in the next few years.’’

  ‘’A rise of two degrees in six years?! But, Indonesia will quickly become too hot to live in, if this is allowed to go on.’’

  Those words made the taxi driver nod his head grimly.

  ‘’That is what many people around here are afraid of, miss. With the rising seas and increasing temperatures, Indonesia may just end up like Bangladesh within a few decades. Fortunately, Jakarta is situated high enough to avoid for the moment the fate of New York, which had to surround itself with flood protection walls.’’

  Gita and Teerapat exchanged a quick, silent glance then: if they needed a reason to believe in the Mars H
ome Project, this was certainly a good one.

  Some 25 minutes later, the taxi dropped them at the foot of a residential tower surrounded by similar towers and situated in an apparently well-to-do district of Jakarta. Leaving with regret the air-conditioned environment of their taxi, the small family hurried inside the reception lobby of the residential tower, where they found themselves back into fresh air. Little May wiped away with one hand the sweat running down her forehead and looked up at her mother.

  ‘’Is it always this hot here, Mother?’’

  ‘’I am afraid so, darling.’’

  Holding May’s hand, Gita went to the banks of elevators of the condo tower and called a cabin, watched by a private security guard sitting at the reception desk of the lobby. Teerapat noticed the man’s pistol before entering the elevator cabin behind Gita and May. The ride up to the eight floor proved smooth and quick and they soon were knocking on a door along the main hallway. A man in his sixties opened the door after a few seconds and, on seeing Gita, shouted with joy.

  ‘’GITA!’’

  The man then pressed her in his arms while she also hugged him. They finally separated, with the man looking at Teerapat and May.

  ‘’And this must be your husband, Teerapat, and your daughter May. May is absolutely adorable, I must say. Can I hug her?’’

  ‘’Of course you can, Father! May, this is your grand-father Angga.’’

  May timidly approached the graying man and shared a hug with him before Angga straightened up and shook hands with Teerapat.

  ‘’So, you are the man who had the luck and good taste to marry my daughter?’’

  ‘’Guilty as charged!’’ replied Teerapat, grinning. Angga then showed them inside his condo.