“But?” he asked.
“I would like to take a little drive westward.”
“According to the theory, our chances of finding ice should be greater if we keep heading north.”
“That’s true. But I caught sight of a crater on the map with a southern edge that looks shadowy.”
“You mean the sun never reaches the bottom of the crater on that side? The edge of the crater has to be fairly steep, then. Craters like that are rare.”
“Yes, it must be fairly young. That makes it a potential location for ice. The impact of the meteor removed the top layer of dirt, and the reduced exposure to sunshine might have caused the ice to last longer in there.”
Theo gave this some thought. There was no reason not to give this a shot. Odds were odds. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll head that way.”
With a groan, he resumed his seat in the Rover. He gritted his teeth, since the new sore on his left buttock was pressed right against the edge of the Rover’s seat.
“Ready?” he asked.
Rebecca moaned quietly.
He turned back to look at her. She was still trying to find a bearable position.
“Ready,” she finally said.
Theo turned the ignition and pressed the pedal. If he stood up, his suit would chafe other spots. They were rubbed raw, too, but not as severely as the skin on his inner thighs.
They were approaching their destination from the east. The map had been excellent. The crater was located precisely where it was indicated. They arrived at noon, when the sun was at its zenith.
Theo parked the Rover. They climbed out and began to carefully scale the eastern crater wall. It was about eighty meters high and littered with loose gravel. “Watch out,” Theo said. “With the low erosion-rate here, there could be larger boulders just waiting for the right vibration to roll down on top of us.”
“I can just imagine,” Rebecca replied.
Theo quickly grew short of breath. Rebecca passed him, climbing with considerable skill. It looked as if she hardly broke a sweat as she did so. Theo trudged laboriously, step after step up the incline. Considering the low gravity, he had assumed climbing uphill would be easier than it felt.
Rebecca made it to the top. She stood on the ridge and waved at him. “Looking good,” she called.
He finally made it to the crest of the hill. He felt dizzy, but Rebecca noticed and caught hold of him. The ground fell away again, right at his feet.
“It’s only eighty meters,” she said soothingly.
“Eighty?” He could hardly believe it. Thanks to the unaccustomed exertion, Theo felt as if he had climbed a kilometer.
“Do you see that?” she said, pointing at the shadow.
His eyes followed Rebecca’s arm. The southern crater wall threw a 150-meter-wide shadow into the crater, and this was at noon when the sun was at its highest. Fortunately it was fall, not high summer, but even in the summer the shadow had to be at least 100 meters wide, creating a perpetually dark area in which the temperatures presumably never rose much above minus 50.
“We need to take a closer look,” Rebecca said as she started to descend the other side.
“Wait. We need the radar, but it’s too heavy to carry.”
“Maybe the ice is sitting right below the surface, and we’ll be able to see it.”
“But it might not be.”
Theo pointed at the north wall of the crater. At that spot, the wall gradually sloped off until it met the surface. “We can drive the Rover in through there,” he said.
“But that’s so far out of our way.”
“Forty kilometers. We can manage that.”
“If I keep climbing, I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rebecca assured Theo.
“No solo expeditions, Rule Number 1,” he reminded her.
She nodded, then said, “I’m coming.”
It took them twenty minutes to reach the Rover and another two hours to get to the northern access point to the crater.
“If we end up building our settlement here, it would be easy to defend,” Rebecca said.
“Against whom?”
“Who knows?”
“You’ve seen too many action films.”
The Rover reached the shadow. It was now two-thirty, which meant the shadow must have lengthened some. They drove an additional hundred meters. Theo checked the thermometer on his suit.
“Minus 65,” he said before bringing the Rover to a stop.
Rebecca climbed down from her seat and moved forward a few steps. It wasn’t completely dark because the hazy sky was illuminating the landscape. She pulled out her flashlight anyway.
Has she found something? Theo wondered. Rebecca walked a little farther, knelt down, and moved her hands across the surface. What is she doing?
Theo watched her. The ground where he was felt harder than usual. His thoughts wandered to what it must have been like here when the crater was formed.
At some point, one of the countless asteroids must have entered Mars’s gravitational field. The thin atmosphere had heated it, but not to the point of causing it to burn up. And then the chunk of stone had crashed into the surface at a sharp angle. The crater had a circumference of about ten kilometers, reflecting a relatively minor impact.
Rebecca was thinking too. What happened to the water that would eventually have collected in the bottom of the crater? Either the heat evaporated it—or the meteorite had gouged away enough of the surface area so it could... “Theo, come here! Quick!”
“What?” He began to run despite the fact his pain increased as he did.
Reaching Rebecca, he knelt beside her. She was rubbing her glove back and forth across the surface, which was covered by a thin layer of dust. Rebecca picked up some of the powder and illuminated the sample with her flashlight. “Look,” she said.
Theo studied her palm. In the beam of light, little crystals glittered in between the small mineral grains.
“Are they ice crystals?” she asked.
“They do look like it, but they could also be just some other glittering material.”
“Come on, let’s test them.”
Rebecca closed her fingers around the small pile of dust and led the way back. He could guess where she was going. The Rover’s engine still had to be warm. Theo jogged behind her, panting. She waited for him somewhat impatiently. There was a small, level surface on the side of the Rover, a projection of the engine cover.
Somewhere along the way, although Theo could no longer recall which day, they had melted carbon-dioxide snow on it. They had found that sort of snow one morning in the shade by the side of their track. The snow had instantly sublimated into gas. Rebecca held her fist up over the same place and slowly opened it. Theo held the flashlight steady. The mixture of dust and crystals slowly drifted down. Theo had yet to get used to how long it took things to fall here. He wished he could hurry it along.
“Hold the light on it,” Rebecca said.
He pushed the power button, and the beam lit up the engine surface. Before their eyes, the small crystals turned into tiny droplets.
“We found ice!” Theo shouted. He dropped the flashlight and hugged his companion.
Of course, a few ice crystals weren’t proof of anything. They could have been created by the water vapor-saturated air, similar to the condensation of dew on Earth. If the water vapor settled on shaded ground that the sun never reached, it would remain as ice crystals. In the crater’s shadow, the crystals would eventually form a thick layer of snow as the centuries passed. Or not quite, Theo thought. Since the wind would constantly blow the dust around, it would produce a dust-snow mixture. They wouldn’t be able to adequately provision their settlement in the long term with just that.
“We need to check it with the GPR,” Theo declared.
“Sure—this might be no more than a layer of dust-ice,” Rebecca replied.
“Can you read minds?”
“No, but I can think.”
Score one for
her. He had to stop underestimating her just because she was the younger of them. Theo walked over to the center section of the Rover where the GPR unit was stored in a crate. It had its own four-wheeled base that was propelled by a battery-powered electric engine and operated by a separate handheld controller. This feature allowed them to take measurements without needing to put themselves at risk, an important consideration if they eventually ended up on the North Pole glaciers.
Theo liked to run the radar as he walked along. He had a remote control which enabled him to operate the detector like the remote-controlled car he’d had as a kid. In theory, they could send the device out on its own to search for water without accompanying it. The radar could cover about six kilometers on a full battery.
“Do you mind?” he asked, waving the remote that was already in his hand.
“I know how much you enjoy driving that thing, even if I don’t really get why,” Rebecca said. “I’ll watch on the monitor.”
The screen sat on a small console next to the transport crate, ready to display what the GPR transmitted.
Theo drove the small buggy he had dubbed ‘Husky’ to the area where Rebecca had discovered the crystals. “Can you start the readings?” he asked.
“Right away.”
The box-shaped device sent radio waves into the ground that then bounced back to varying degrees when they encountered some kind of boundary, such as the transition between two unique substances whose distinctive characteristics had different influences on the radio waves. For example, this might be the spot where granite transitioned into basalt, a boundary between layers of varying depths, or a foreign element of some kind, or even a transition from ordinary Martian ground to a concealed layer of ice, a remnant from the time when giant oceans had covered Mars.
Theo had never waited so patiently. It took a while for the receiver to pick up enough reflected waves. So much hinged on the results of this measurement. Would they finally be able to return to the base? Would this moment mark the starting point for the Mars for Everyone Initiative as originally planned?
“Do you see anything yet?” he asked. “Should I take Husky somewhere else?”
“Just wait. Don’t rush me,” Rebecca replied with a laugh.
Is that a good sign? The image would be building slowly in front of her. She wouldn’t laugh if there was nothing to see, right? he thought.
“It looks alright,” she finally said.
She sounded extremely cautious. Why isn’t she shouting for joy? “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Spit it out.”
“Drive Husky fifty meters farther.”
“I’ll do that. But first, talk to me—why are you torturing me?”
“To be honest,” Rebecca said, “the results are better than okay. They’re almost too good to be true. I don’t want us to celebrate winning the jackpot until we know for sure the lottery ticket is in our wallet.”
“‘The jackpot?’ What do you mean?”
“The layer I see on the radar images is very, very thick. The radar isn’t picking up its edges, even at the highest sensitivity setting. That means it’s at least a hundred meters thick. If that’s really ice, we’re sitting on a ‘gold mine.’ We’d be able to provide water for our children’s children.”
A shiver ran down his spine. Could they really be that lucky? But wasn’t it about time for the tide to turn after the loss of their five crewmates and practically all their equipment, as well as Andy’s accident?
“It’s good to be careful,” he said. “Let’s check out the entire area before we draw any conclusions.”
“I would prefer to take a look myself. That’s the only way we can make sure the radar isn’t malfunctioning.”
“Good idea. How deep do we need to dig?”
“The upper edge of the ice layer should be a meter below the surface,” Rebecca said assuredly.
It took them an hour to finish mapping the area under the surface. In the permanent-shade area, the ice layer started a meter below the surface. In those places touched by the warming sunbeams, the ice appeared to be at a greater depth. Perhaps the models by Mars researchers were incorrect. However, the ice layer appeared to resume a short distance from there, underneath the crater’s edge. If they could access the directly reachable deposits, they could extract even more water through mining.
If it was actually water that was down there. Everything seemed to indicate this, but only direct evidence would dispel the last doubts.
Theo packed the GPR back into its crate while Rebecca busied herself with the drill. It had a 150x15-centimeter drill rod, the function of which wasn’t immediately obvious.
Rebecca set it down on a randomly selected spot close to the place where she had found the crystals. “Start the drill,” she said.
The term ‘drill’ had taken root among the crew, although technically speaking it wasn’t a drill, but rather a kind of hammer. The chisel-shaped head didn’t bore into the substrate with a circular motion, it was instead repeatedly rammed into the surface by force, similar to a jackhammer. Theo could feel the vibrations of the rapid hammering under his feet.
Rebecca did not need to hold onto the rod once it had reached a depth of 30 centimeters. It took 20 minutes for the drill rod to achieve the desired depth. Now only a small piece of the rod was visible. At that point, the drill head was given a little rest to let it cool down. Then tiny, electric-powered shavers began to gather material from the area immediately around the head. This process lasted an additional ten minutes.
“We have a sample,” Rebecca said.
“Let’s pull it out.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Rebecca pulled the bar out of the substrate. She unscrewed the sample container, which was sealed and airtight, before carrying the rod and sample to the Rover. Hopefully, the mobile lab would provide them with the desired answer. Rebecca screwed the sample container into the lab’s filler neck until the material fell into the analysis chamber.
If only the lab could know how vital its actions are, Theo thought. He balled his hands into fists. Four eyes stared at the weakly-glowing line that still bore only the word ‘PROCESSING.’
But then the display changed. The first information the machine provided was the fact that it had not found any sign of life. This was because the device had been primarily developed to help search for life forms. It then supplied the percentage of organic and inorganic combinations, classified by physical states and pH values.
Only at the end did the machine produce a complete list of all discovered chemical combinations. It reported ‘97.2 percent H₂O.’
Rebecca processed the information faster than Theo did. She was already wrapping her arms around his neck while he was still registering what this meant. “Water!” Rebecca cried. “We’ve found water!”
It was a strange feeling. Theo had forgotten what such pure, unadulterated joy felt like. They had found water. Hurrah! He murmured incoherent sounds and danced with Rebecca across the crater that would soon become their new home.
Sol 24, MfE base
It was unbelievable. Theo and Rebecca had finally succeeded. The entire crew was ecstatic. They had all needed this good news. The expectations were obviously high now.
Ewa rubbed her temples. She had to present the crew with their relocation plans, which had to remain realistic while also bringing the establishment of their settlement within arm’s reach. Without the NASA building robot, for example, those plans wouldn’t come to anything, so for the time being they would need to wait until the NASA people were done with it. Then they would have to transport their equipment about 2,000 kilometers to the north. How would that function when the enclosed Rover could only drive a distance of 500 kilometers at a time?
Ewa wished that Theo was already back. He would have had a suggestion ready to go. Ellen helped Ewa with the day-to-day details, but she seemed to lack the talent to think outside the box. Unconventionality was the o
nly way for them to make any headway in this tricky situation.
Could the Rover’s range somehow be increased? If they carried along additional methanol, the available load quantity would be the limiting factor. Unlike the distance to the landing module, which they had needed to cover twice, they would have to travel back and forth across those 2,000 kilometers at least five times. If they could reach 25 kilometers per hour... no, that was utterly unrealistic.
What would Theo suggest? Ewa wondered. He would be spending at least ten more days in the open Rover, so he wasn’t available as a discussion partner. But wait a moment. The open Rover had already driven the distance to the crater once. Although the vehicle had the necessary range, it wasn’t suitable for transporting fragile cargo, among which Ewa included the still-unconscious Andy. Or should they leave him here? Couldn’t the NASA crew take care of him? It would be a practical solution since, objectively speaking, he would be a hindrance when it came to building the settlement. However, the MfE crew would probably see it differently.
Maybe they could use both the open and the closed Rovers! The open one could simply tow the closed one behind it, conserving most of the fuel that would have been consumed by operating the closed one independently. Their speed would presumably be reduced, but this solution would make the move realistic, though tedious. If only they could snap their fingers and transport everything straight to the crater, Star Trek-style!
They must be jinxed. Ewa tried to sort out her thoughts. Then it occurred to her. They really could snap their fingers—so to speak—and the Endeavour, their current abode, would rise into the air. They wouldn’t have to reach orbit. A suborbital route to the crater wouldn’t consume much fuel. The entire move could be accomplished within a day! The perfect solution... except for one small glitch. The Endeavour didn’t belong to them, and it was doubtful that the NASA crew would give them permission for this. Ewa, Ewa, she thought. Your creative solutions are going to land us in a huge mess—or else enable us to cover the 2,000 kilometers to the distant crater with its giant ice deposits in the matter of a few minutes.
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