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  “That is true, and Meier understands that very well, which is why I would like her to lead.”

  “I don’t follow,” puzzled Bernard.

  “Markus assumes that he is the most vital part of the team. Verena assumes that the whole team is vital.”

  Verena was beginning to look forward to Mars again. The guilt and anxiety of leaving her parents was suppressed by the excitement of building the dome. In her mind she knew it would be breath-taking. She had helped to prepare photo-realistic flythroughs that all colonists had watched, as well as most of Earth. But before the visualisations were made, she had imagined it and her imagination was far more vivid than any flythrough.

  Captain Suárez spied Verena, tucked away in her study carrel, and pushed himself gently across the chamber towards her. He found her watching the vid of the flythrough again. A glittering gossamer web of high tensile wires stretched over a ripple of semi-transparent air cushions that made up a translucent skin, floating like a sky of waves above the habitat’s floor. The sun’s light streamed through the fabric laced with photovoltaic cells. Technology went hand in hand with art and the psychological needs of the dwellers beneath. Crops grew, tended by farmers, and sheltered by stands of trees that had been taken as seeds from planet Earth. Hidden around the edges of this imagined new Eden were the living quarters, carved into the rock of the vent walls to shelter people from solar flares and radiation. The same clear polymer that wrapped the dome protected the colonist’s dwellings, allowing them a grandstand view of their new domain and their future.

  “Looking forward to seeing this for real?” asked Suárez.

  Verena nodded, “I wish we could separate the location for the habitat from the space elevator though.”

  This was another key reason why the planners had chosen Pavonis Mons: it would be the base of the space elevator. Until now this had been the stuff of science fiction and was likely to remain so on Earth for a long time yet. But Martian gravity was just low enough that a cable could be strung from a geostationary orbiting vessel to a point on the equator and used to transport loads, just like a passenger lift. No more parachutes and wrecked gliders. No more risks and no more missed landing sites. The top of the lift would be the Aldrin and the equatorial anchor would be Pavonis Mons.

  “Captain Bulman insisted the two be linked,” said Suárez.

  “I still don’t understand why. You know I think its a risk.”

  “And you know Captain Bulman convinced Mission Control it was a greater risk to separate them. The more we spread out the harder it is to communicate and pool resources.”

  “Some would say spreading out means we reduce the risk of everyone dying in one catastrophic event.”

  “And what event might that be?”

  “I do not want to imagine.”

  “Sometimes we are required to imagine, in order to prevent.” Suárez let his words sink in then added, “At least the place where we generate energy will be next to the elevator. That seems practical to me.”

  Verena couldn’t deny that. The energy required to operate the space elevator would be considerably less than powered flight, but it would still be a high load for each lift. Given the fuel limitations and the huge weight of people, crops and equipment that needed to be transferred, the space elevator would be essential. The droids had gone first, dropped inside recyclable balloon clusters, and they had cleared landing strips for the gliders. No one wanted to repeat what the first team had done. No one wanted to be another Pieter Storhaug or Lal Konar.

  The Aldrin would become a permanent satellite link between the Martian surface and future missions from Earth. The carbon nanotube cable that would tether it to Pavonis Mons was a miracle of materials science, able to carry far greater loads across a thinner cable than any other material known. It all worked in theory, but so had the glider landings. Verena was relieved the elevator was not her personal responsibility, though she knew much about it because the same nanotube cable that, she hoped, would take them to the planet surface would also be used to bind the dome. If it held their weight when arriving, then binding the dome would be a walk in the sun-lit park beneath it by comparison.

  “Was there anything of use in the latest reports, Verena?”

  “The survey of the Tharsis vent has just come back. Most of the low ground is firm enough to anchor the dome cables but there is some evidence of delamination in the high rim that we would need to stabilise. I want to look at that when we arrive, but everything else is positive. The soil under the dust at the base of the vent hole, looks suitable for augmenting with nutrients for planting. And the vent walls already have habitat sized recesses and tunnels. Apart from the firmness of the ground, it’s as if this site had been made for us.”

  Suárez smiled and stroked his manicured beard. “Hmm, it would seem that some things are going our way at the moment: a supply of local ores for extraction and a suitable building site.”

  “You sound as if you think this is a temporary break of good luck.”

  “Not good luck, good planning. We planned this mission, and we based our plans on surveys, logical assumptions, and probabilities. At least some of our assumptions are being proved correct, for now. The law of probability is that some of our assumptions will be wrong. That is when we will be tested.”

  “You think that something else will go wrong, then?”

  “Of course. This is space exploration: we are travelling into the unknown. We are not stupid, we have found out everything that we possibly can before we go, but we will find something unexpected and that is what makes our lives interesting.”

  “It sounds as if you are almost looking forward to that.”

  “Perhaps. Have you ever considered all the reasons why you are coming to the building site?”

  “Because every site is unique. Every building design is unique, especially this one. You cannot possibly design everything in advance and so I want to be there to understand what we find and keep modifying the design until it works.”

  Suárez smiled again: a shrewd and thoughtful smile that hinted at a great intellect, always asking questions, and always considering likely answers in advance. “Just so. And, judging by the beautiful sketches I can see in your notebook, I expect that you relish it: new problems, new ideas, new designs.”

  “Yes, I do. I enjoy drawing. I solve problems by drawing.”

  “And I too am someone waiting for new problems so that I may help solve them.” Suárez gently pushed against the floor of the cabin and floated away, moving effortlessly towards the hatch for the next chamber. He already looked like a zero-gravity pro and now, more than ever, Verena appreciated why he was captain.

  Stefanie van Rhoon, the pilot, leaned across to Verena, “I wish Suárez had overall command on Mars, not equal status with Bulman.”

  “You know they wanted Bulman to lead because he has more experience in hostile environments,” said Debbie Starczewski, floating past.

  “That may be why he was selected as captain of the first team,” argued Stefanie, “but I still don’t see why that should give him equal footing with Suárez, or the third team captain, Huynh, for that matter.”

  “Well at least they’re supposed to start making decisions by consensus when Suárez and Hannah Huynh arrive,” Verena observed.

  “And ask us to elect a board of seven colony supervisors,” added Cathal, joining the debate. “Though after Bulman has been in charge there for half a year already, I wonder whether he’ll share gracefully. From what I’ve observed he’s the autocratic type.”

  “Mission Control have given orders on how we start up,” said Debbie.

  “Mission Control will be more than fifty-five million klicks away,” said Cathal. “What matters will be who has control on Mars.”

  “I heard that Bulman kept ignoring advice from Suárez and Huynh in the joint team simulations,” said Stefanie.

  “Not quite true,” said Cathal, evenly. “He listened, but if he thought his ideas were bet
ter, he would pressure the other two into agreement.”

  “Sounds like the same thing to me,” said Stefanie.

  “All the simulations run with Bulman in charge ended successfully,” said Debbie.

  “But usually with several of the team seriously pissed off,” grumbled Stefanie.

  “I had several discussions with Commander Bernard about the threat Bulman might pose to team coherence, but he overruled me every time,” said Cathal. “He just kept saying that Hal Bulman got the job done. I argued that our job was to build good relationships across a colony, but he told me that was a bonus. He told me our job was to survive.”

  2

  Survival

  Sol 95, Pavonis Chasma – J. Wojcik

  Silence.

  Jan knelt inside the biodome where Pieter, Keki, Louis, Lal, and Sun had been buried. The microbes that had been carefully stored on board their ship and released into the newly augmented soil were already busy, breaking down their bodies into the useful raw materials of new life. Nothing wasted, everything re-cycled and re-used. There was no sound in the pre-dawn except for Jan’s breathing. No light except for what glowed from his EVA suit. He prayed.

  Jan was careful to pray in private, it being the late twenty-first century. His grandparents were Polish Catholic immigrants who settled in Nottingham and his mother had taught Jan to honour God. Despite the growth of atheism, and outright hostility towards Christians, Jan was glad of her teaching. He saw no need for science and faith to compete. In his mind one expanded the appreciation of the other, the more he knew about the geology of Mars or the technology of his AI assistants, the more he marvelled at what his God had achieved. Most people saw it as a binary choice and could not understand such a catholic approach and so Jan prayed alone, out of sight. He gave thanks for Pieter Storhaug’s life, for Keki Goswami, Luis D’Souza, Lal Konar, and Sun Qian. He prayed that they would be at peace, that their loss may have some meaning, beyond the nutrients their empty bodies would offer. That the rest of the colonists may survive, no, more than survive, live.

  Jan stood and left the biome through the airlock, heading for the mine. Each time he lifted his feet he could feel the lightness of his body, and each time his boot touched the ground it was cushioned by thick dust. Jan lengthened and slowed his stride, tuning his body to a natural rhythm. The suit rustled gently, a cocoon around him. No comms, he had switched them off. No warning alerts, he had switched those off too, and no people to crowd his peace. Jan closed his eyes and revelled in each ascending stride and each gentle touch of the ground, imagining the plumes of dust rising in small eddies behind and the imprints of ridged soles on virgin sands, like Crusoe’s first expedition across the beach. Of course, had Jan looked, he would have seen other prints and the silhouettes of manmade structures against the starlit sky, but he was lost to his other senses.

  When, eventually, Jan opened his eyes again he detected a faint magenta glow in the sky. The stars were fading, though he could still make out the swathe that defined the sweep of the galaxy. The brightest star shone like a clouded sapphire. It looked beautiful. Some of the others made a point of not looking at it, but Jan often stared at that point of light and thanked God that he was here and no longer there, on Earth. He did not miss the rain, nor the fumes and overcrowding. Poor Earth was mostly wrapped in cloud and only those near the poles ever glimpsed a blue sky now. Centuries of fossil fuels had melted the ice caps and tipped Earth into a vicious cycle of evaporation and deluge. If someone from the twentieth century looked down on Earth and could have seen through the thick belts of rainclouds, they would have taken a long time to recognise it. The age-old edges of the land masses that used to orientate them would be so eroded by rising oceans that they would have been lost. The coastlines of Northern Europe had fragmented into a chaos of islands. The ying and yang of the South American and African land masses no longer looked as if they had ever been Pangaean neighbours. Like a living organism ejecting a parasite, the Earth was making human life intolerable and forcing us to either change or leave. A few had started to change. Jan, and forty-nine others, had left. Forty-four others now, he reminded himself sadly. Their first ceremony on Mars had been a funeral. The second was founding the temporary habs at Pavonis Chasma: not the order they had planned, but then you cannot plan everything, especially on a planet that tries to kill you every day.

  The edge of the chasm was slowly sharpening, defined by the light behind it and the shadow within. Jan felt as if he were skimming the edge of some ancient sea. Perhaps a few hundred million years ago he might have been? There was no doubt he was walking towards the base of a long-vanished glacier. The geologist, Einarsdottir, had suggested to him that some of the ice may have found its way down, through porous rock to strata deep below. That was where he would look again today. But there was precious little sign of that ancient glacier now. What once would have been strewn with rocks carried by the ice was now blanketed by soft dunes of iron-oxide dust. Jan focused again on his gliding strides.

  The glow was growing stronger. He saw the dawn coming and so shortened his steps, drifting to a halt so that he could stand and watch. A bright line of fire lit the far edge of the chasm followed by a small yellow disc that climbed above the dark crags. It would take a while to get used to seeing the sun from so much further away. A giant shadow leapt from the chasm wall, edged by hundreds of smaller ones thrown by the dunes and boulders in front of Jan. The ground appeared to vibrate with a deep crimson hue. He knew the air was well below freezing, but he imagined the beginnings of warmth, early in the morning in a desert.

  There was a huge presence at the edge of his sight. It was difficult to gauge its scale because it sloped so gently: the top was over a hundred kilometres further away than its base. Taller than Everest yet no steeper than a rolling foothill, Pavonis Mons glowed a rich ochre-tan in the first light of the sun. He could not see the rim, it was so far away, only the arc of its dead base. This world had been seismically dormant for a very long time, but the threat felt strangely imminent, as if staring at the barrel of a gun. The thought excited him.

  Only here could Jan expect to be greeted by clear skies almost every day. Only here could he look out on a truly untouched landscape, yet to be soiled by humans. Only here did he feel like he had a future. Jan may be a miner, but he enjoyed nature’s beauty. The more he burrowed into the ground the closer he felt to the beating heart of a world. It also took him further away from those who would spoil its surface. Already they had started with the air scrubbers, hydrogen power cells and manufactories like warts on the rockface. People and their machines drifted across the land like empty wrappers caught in the wind, and they were already arguing. ‘This is my pod; you shouldn’t be here!’ ‘Don’t eat more than your rations, we’ve only just started growing crops.’ ‘How long have I got to drink this distilled piss, I thought we were going to find ice?’ Maybe the deaths had put everyone in a bad mood. Maybe the lack of ice worried them. Maybe they just brought their grim thoughts with them all the way from Earth. That was why Jan got up early to go and watch the sunrise. It was also why he worked alone, well away from other humans.

  He neared the edge of the chasm wall, now revelling in the butterscotch sky and the fast-fading stars. There, shaded by the mouth of the tunnel, stood the three Beta droids and the walker. They had arranged themselves in a loose circle around the induction charger, just the same as he had found them every morning. The first time Jan saw it, they looked as if they were talking, their stillness seemed to imply a conversation without words, being communicated on a deep sub-conscious level. Some called it spooky. It made Jan smile that the sub-AIs should face each other for mutual company, like lost children. When he approached, they looked up as if they had been waiting all night for someone to come and greet them. Jan felt responsible for them.

  This morning would be special. He had been looking for it and everyone knew it was probable given the location, the reconnaissance surveys, and the geological evidence.
But it was special because it had taken so long.

  Jan climbed up into the grubby yellow walker, clutching the aluminium rungs that spanned the machine’s back and lifted the dusty polymer dome to get in. Having wiped the dome clear and locked it, he released the pressure seal at the neck of his suit with a hiss and pulled off his mask. Jan liked being in the walker cabin: he had freedom of personal movement as well as being free to ‘walk’ outdoors, however it was not nearly as much fun as treading the rusty dunes. He sat astride a saddle, like a bicycle, and rested his feet on the pedals. Then he placed his arms into the light plastic motion-capture hoops that hung either side of him, brushing off the red dust and touching the far pads with his fingers. Jan waved his right arm experimentally and was reassured to see the right arm of the walker wave and flex its claws. “Come along lads,” he called, and entered the cave mouth that led to a warren of natural tunnels beneath the extinct volcano of Pavonis Mons.

  The sensors noted their movement, and a string of LED lights came to life ahead. If Jan turned around, he could see a rough circle of orange light coming from the mouth of the tunnel, but as he walked on the lights behind turned off again, so that a bubble of light accompanied them through the tunnel. Beside him ran a smooth worn furrow in the floor of the tunnel where the droids had rolled barrows full of ore to the pallets and onwards to the extraction plant. Finally, he arrived at the work face where an array of drills and pneumatic hammers awaited. On Earth the work would have been deafening and sweaty, but here the thin air muffled any external sounds, and the temperature was carefully controlled by the walker. “Ok, get digging boys.” The droids picked up their tools and resumed their assault on the pitted wall of rock. Jan stooped the walker and started picking through the debris behind them, separating useful ore from basalt and throwing them into different barrows. Unlike the surface, the igneous rock in the mine was largely grey or almost black. There was no red iron-oxide down here.