Chapter 21: Out and About
Daria sat looking out the window of the rover. Her mind wandered momentarily back to when she was a child. She and her sister Quinn would ride to school in the back of her father's Lexus. Sometimes she would ride in the back of her mother's Blazer. Not all of the memories were pleasant, though many were. In some ways she missed Quinn's mindless prattle. Even as a mature adult Quinn was a woman who could go on endlessly about nearly anything. And to think it was professors who were accused of being able to talk for 55 minutes on any subject! Still, it seemed so long ago and it was literally a world away. Now they traversed a beautiful but seemingly endless desert devoid of life and indeed hostile to it.
This trip was the first major test for the new rover vehicle. The entire thing had been designed, printed, and assembled on Mars. This was another major step to being independent from resupply from Earth. With the last delivery they were now self-sufficient in food, power, and equipment. There were still a few materials – mainly refined and powdered metals plus some plastics – for the industrial printers that had to come from Earth. As the colony expanded they would need additional things, but for the current 120 people it was, at least in theory, possible to live without resupply.
An amazing feat was that the design for this rover did not rely on solar power! Indeed, some good had come from the conflict with the Groundforce robots six months ago. The new rover had essentially unlimited range. It was powered by two miniature Thorium reactors. Each reactor was about the size of what Daria's parents would have called a 'lantern battery.' Two of these miniature reactors could power a rover with ample energy to spare! This and the availability of metals and non-metals from the defeated robots had prompted development of the new rover design.
Looking around inside, Daria was glad that this 9 meter (30 ft) long rover had more comfortable seating, more storage, a better restroom, eating area, and bunks, as well as improved lab space. It could also be converted quickly for defense. There was a mount on the top for a gun and software to control it. It could even be fit with a blade and used as a bulldozer. In fact, its early use was in building some of the earthwork fortifications which now surrounded the colony. The inside joke among the Martians was that they had gone from living in a château to living in a castle. Houston didn't even know that they had this vehicle.
Staring out the window Daria watched the desert pass by. Over the past three-and-a-half years she had come to appreciate its beauty. Living nearly all her life in the Northeast United States she was used to green grass, trees, lakes, and mountains. The only areas of desolation there were parts of inner cities which formed treeless, grassless concrete jungles where the only green was from weeds growing in the cracked and heaved sidewalks. There she found no beauty – only ugliness and desperation.
Daria remembered the trip their family had taken to the Southwest United States to see the desert. She, Tom, and the three children had flown to Phoenix and rented a van. It was summer and the day they landed the temperature was 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees F). Thankfully, the rental company had their vehicles in one of the airport garages! It kept the interior from being an oven. They had stayed in a hotel that night and early the next day drove out into the Arizona desert. They planned to see some national parks on the trip and even a ghost town.
The scenery in the American desert was certainly different than where they lived. There was no green grass outside of the city and no forest. Yet, there was life. The saguaro cactus, prickly pear cactus, tumbleweeds, and other scrub plants. There was wildlife. They saw a roadrunner. Surely a coyote was around somewhere! There were lizards, snakes, and insects. So, life was different in the desert. Yet, there was still life there even if it wasn't as verdant as home. Mars was different. It was a desert devoid of life. When you got close to it you could appreciate the many colors and shapes in this alien place. Some might call it ugly due to the lack of life. Daria, however, appreciated its beauty. In a way it had become home.
Daria was shaken from her thoughts when she realized that Julie was talking to her. A week with Julie the geologist and her husband Ian, also a geologist, had not been on the top of Daria's list of exciting trips. Still, the mission was to investigate a horizontal lava tube discovered by the World Walker. It was nearly 1000 km (620 miles) away. They had extra provisions. One of the advantages of the new rover was that there was sufficient power so that it could produce its own air and water. This meant that the only real limiting factor for a mission was the amount of food they could carry!
"I don't know, Daria," Julie remarked. "I expected to see more variation in the strata of those hills. It may be that we have the theory on their formation all wrong."
Ian commented, "I'm not so sure. I think the wear patterns indicate water flow and erosion, though I admit it could be other causes as well. Maybe we have multiple forces attacking the rock."
Daria deadpanned, "You know this is not my field. I really can't be of much help on erosion patterns. Though I have to admit to being interested in seeing the inside of this horizontal lava tube to compare it to what the inside of our colony's vertical lava tube looks like. I am hoping the floor is at least mostly smooth and level given what we are carrying."
They had a second mission as well. Stowed on top of the vehicle was an inflatable habitat module. It had more space than a hooch, but was supposed to be easier to erect and use. It could even be broken down and relocated. The unit was an advanced version of a design that had been around for about 40 or so years. It had arrived with the most recent supplies. They would be installing it, preferably inside the lava tube.
Daria went back to looking out the window and thinking about recent events. She and Tom had received and responded to videos from each of the kids over the past week. It was nice to see the grandchildren. They had grown so much in just over a month! They explained to each that they would be returning to Earth at the end of their current contract on Mars. They both liked Mars, but it was too far away from family to stay for another five years. They had also told them about this little expedition to the lava tube. This was universally the point that they lost the grandchildren. For some reason these kids were not excited about geology and portable habitats. Jane was much the same way. Well, Daria did not want to sound like Julie.
21.2
It was late when they stopped for the night. Each one of them had driven the vehicle for four hours that day. This was a new record as well. They had driven over 600 km! (372 mi) This was thanks in large part to following the known path of the World Walker and the unending power from the thorium reactors. Every rock and boulder was well documented and they had been able to follow a path which avoided difficult objects and geological features. Daria thought that it wasn't quite a road, but maybe it would at least count as a blazed trail!
Dinner was beef beef stroganoff and green beans. There was a salad and dressing to go with it as well as apple pie for dessert. Daria's mind wandered as the dinner conversation was mostly Tom and Ian talking about how to deploy the inflatable habitat. She thought about how far Martian agriculture had come just since they had arrived. The reason that they had the beef is that the meat growth vats grew it. Mars now grew New York strip steak, chicken breast, salmon, shark, and sea bass. Vegetables, fruits, and grains all grew under the agriculture domes – the first use of inflatable structures on Mars. Now they even had their own "food vault," which kept seeds, roots, meat samples, and even earthworms and soil bacteria safe from any radiation or other event that might wipe our their food supply. In such an event they could restart their systems and be eating their first new food in about three months. The Mars colony now kept food reserves as well to hedge against just such an event.
After dinner and doing the dishes it was time to go to bed. Daria and Tom took the bunks above the cab. Ian and Julie took the bunks above and across from the dinette. Sleep came quickly and they had planned a full 8 hour sleep period.
21.3
It was about noon when Ian shouted out, "Look, Herman is over there!"
The startling sound of his shout just about made Daria jump out of her skin! So much for reviewing archivable materials from yesterday.
"He seems to be signaling us that he wants to communicate over the radio," Ian said with great excitement.
Tom switched the radio from the base frequency to Herman's. That is when they heard, "I have found the indicated cave. Come in my direction and I can assist you with backing into it so that you can deploy the shelter. No danger detected."
Daria used the external camera to take a photograph of Herman. Herman was the result of much intensive work over the last six months. This was his first time out on his own. Herman was basically a modified Groundfighter robot. The Fabrication Department and the Exploration Department had brought up the idea. They wanted to take parts from the dozen destroyed Groundfighter robots and build one which could assist in the colony's exploration mission. In other words, one which would be constructive not destructive. The Fabrication Department believed that they could do the job of building such a robot.
The easy part of the job was building the robot's structure. They started with the limbs. First they had to fabricate hands which would replace the weapons that the Groundfighters had carried. Then they had to run the wiring up to the shoulder and construct the movement hardware for the hands and joints. Likewise, they had to put a pair of legs together that could be used for walking. All of these connected into the torso, which housed the power source and computers.
The torso was a story unto itself. No Groundfighter had avoided damage to its torso. In order to take down the robots, defenders' shells had had to penetrate the torso and knock out the computers. Thus, all torsos had holes and the computers inside had sustained massive damage. The best torso had six holes in it. The fabricators had taken pieces of torsos without holes in those specific spots, cut out replacement sections, and then welded them to Herman's torso. Finally, the welds were all ground down and the torso painted with yellow reflective paint. Herman's power source was a thorium reactor taken from one of the other Groundfighters. A "bubble" on top of one torso was also salvaged and reconstructed – another difficult task given that all were severely damaged. Sensors were fabricated, reinstalled and retuned for exploratory rather than military missions.
The really hard part of the project was building the computers capable of controlling Herman. Every electronic component going into Herman which was salvaged from another Groundforce robot had to be carefully checked. Clearly, the colony did not want a device which might have a buried program to reload and execute its original programming! In the course of examining the components such routines were found in two different and unrelated components! Everything had to be totally wiped clean and reprogrammed. A new central processor had to be fabricated as well, because that was where one of the reset routines was hidden in the hardware. A new motherboard was needed, since all of the others had been destroyed during the battle. Herman was completed after 18 weeks of hard work. Daria was just glad she just did some of the welding and didn't have to do any of his programming!
Tom maneuvered the rover so that the rear was centered on the cave entrance. Herman had gone inside of the cave – really a lava tube – and then linked his sensors to the rover. Once Tom had the rover in place Herman took over and backed the vehicle into the cave. This ensured that none of the external hardware on the rover came into contact with the walls or any objects in the care. Herman did a perfect job of parking and the rover was in the proper position to unload and install the inflatable habitat unit.
"OK everyone," Tom ordered. "Get your surface suits on and lets get out and get this habitat unit put together. Once that is done we can call it a day, have dinner, and then get a good night's sleep!"
Compared to building a hooch, the inflatable habitat was a breeze to put together. It took about an hour to unload the unit from the top of the rover. Then about another two hours to have it up, sealed, and pressurized. Finally, an hour was required to move the equipment in that would make it run like a hooch. A total of four hours as opposed to several days. Tomorrow they would install the equipment and then they could move out of the rover.
Daria thought that if this inflatable unit was really a viable alternative, then Mars had a new design for satellite habitats! The direct seal with the rover's airlock was especially useful. They could easily go back and forth in a shirtsleeve environment. The habitat's main airlock faced back into the cave. There was also sufficient room to go around both the rover and the habitat.
Once all of the work was done Tom stated, "Now we can remove our helmets and surface suits. I am sure everyone could use a restroom break. Also dump any waste in your suits so that they are ready to go. After that let's have some dinner!"
It wasn't long before everyone had themselves and their suits all set. Daria and Ian began making dinner while Tom and Julie each took care of other responsibilities. Tom instructed Herman to explore the lava tube overnight and report back by 8:00 am the next morning. Herman was to make a detailed 3-D map of the system up to 2 km (1.2 miles) from the opening. Tom wanted to take a virtual reality tour of the cave before they spent any human time exploring it. Tom ordered Herman not to endanger himself in any way and he was to use waymarkers every 100 meters so that if he somehow broke down the others could retrieve him by following the markers.
Julie spent the time before dinner cataloging images taken of the rock formations they had seen during today's driving. There were some very distinct differences between this volcanic landscape and the one where their base was located. What was particularly interesting was the number of large square and rectangular formations that were seemingly hollow. They had passed close to a square one and detoured over to it. She and Ian had taken an hour to catalog the object. The inside was quite smooth and there were definitely at least two tubes radiating sideways from the bottom. They would clearly spend considerable time trying to understand how volcanism and possibly wind erosion had created such features!
Finally, the explorers sat down to a near miracle out in the bush like this – a cooked dinner! Daria and Ian had prepared pork loin medallions with brown and wild rice, a fruit sauce, and fresh asparagus. Hot tea was served with the meal and dessert was white cake with lemon frosting. (They had brought the cake with them rather than cooking it on-site.) The four sat, ate, and talked about their experiences since the Martian New Year.
It was actually rather late – nearly midnight – when Tom stood up and stated, "Well, we all should get some sleep. We have work to do in the morning and we should be fresh. Let's get to bed!