The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) Page 7

  After a minute, the rover suddenly stopped. Thirty seconds later, the scene tilted sideways. It was obvious that the rover had fallen over. Five seconds later the video went dark.

  “Wait, go back, pause the video and get a timestamp from when the rover abruptly stopped,” Charles said. “Then pull up the telemetry for that moment. Maybe something happened we can’t see. Perhaps we hit a sinkhole or something similar.”

  Brad the geologist snorted. “There are no sinkholes on Mars, Chuck. It’s not Florida.”

  “Well, do you have a better explanation?” Charles retorted. Brad shook his head negative.

  Sergey tapped the keyboard and pulled up a set of numbers on the monitor. “This is most strange. The instruments report that the treads were still moving, even though the rover was not making progress. Perhaps we hit a sand pit and dug out one side, causing us to tip.”

  “I wouldn’t think the treads on one side could dig a hole deep enough to tip the rover in thirty seconds, but at least that is remotely plausible,” Brad said. “I guess that’s our best theory for now.”

  Sergey tapped the keys, more insistently this time. “Bah, it is totally dead. I cannot revive it.”

  Grant decided it was time to invoke his commander privileges. “We’ll need to go out and retrieve the rover using the MMTV.” He was referring to the Mars Manned Transportation Vehicle, a pressurized bus-like conveyance that allowed the astronauts to drive around Mars in a comfortable shirt-sleeve environment. “Chuck, you and I will go out and retrieve it. Serge, you forward the rover’s coordinates to the MMTV and then keep trying to resurrect it. Brad, transmit a status report to NASA as well as the video and telemetry. Let’s see what they make of this, and whether they can come up with anything that we haven’t already thought of. Chuck, we leave in ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Chief Scientist Li Julong supervised the loading of the first Mars refueling cylinder into the launch cart. “Be careful,” he admonished the two North Koreans who were in the forklift carrying the payload. “This is the fuel that you’ll need once you reach Mars. It has the furthest of the fuel packages to travel, and any mistakes mean that you will be stranded in Mars orbit once you arrive.”

  He had been surprised that the steering rockets and electronics received from Earth were properly designed and had attached perfectly onto the fuel cylinder. “The military must have been planning this for quite a while,” he thought. “They could never have created this so quickly otherwise.”

  Julong turned on the diagnostics display panel. “Come down here and watch closely,” he said. “You will need to do the same before refueling in Mars orbit. First, check the fuel amount and pressure shown here.” He pointed at the indicators, which displayed that the cylinder fuel was at a hundred percent, and the pressure was in the green range. “If for any reason the pressure is below the green, you will need to turn on the auxiliary pump in order for all of the fuel to load into your craft.” The two Koreans nodded in unison, watching the scientist’s movements closely.

  “What if the fuel is not at a hundred percent?” one of them asked.

  “That will be normal. Some will bleed off during the long voyage to Mars, so expect it to read at about ninety percent. We are providing you with a large margin of error. Anything above fifty percent will be plenty. Plus, you should arrive with extra fuel in your tanks if you refuel at every point along the way and do not miss any of the packages. Do NOT miss any of the packages. As you can see, we are taking every precaution for a successful attempt,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Alright, everything looks good. I have turned on the package’s launch computer so that it will engage its rockets once it detects launch acceleration has completed. Let us send it on its way.”

  The chief scientist and the two Koreans retreated to the command booth. After closing the booth door, Julong turned on the mass driver diagnostics. Up came an image of a long straight line composed of green dots. One of the dots in the middle was yellow, and one near the end was red. “Look here. Superconducting magnet twenty-seven is at half power, and magnet fifty-eight is down completely. The other magnets are still more than enough to achieve the Moon’s escape velocity, but I want you two to put on spacesuits and get out there afterwards and replace those magnets. We’ll have more launches to perform, and I want the driver systems at full capacity.” The Koreans both nodded once more.

  Julong pressed the switch to open the bay doors. From the booth behind the cart, he could see the twin tracks going out of the bay and straight out for four miles onto the lunar surface. In the far distance, he could see the tracks going up the small mound at the center of the crater and then up an extension ramp at the top. He looked at the remote diagnostics of the package’s steering computer. “Everything is still in the green. Initiating launch.”

  The cart disappeared from the bay almost immediately, accelerating away at the tremendous rate of forty-five G’s. It would need to accelerate at that rate for the entire four miles of track in order to reach the Moon’s escape velocity of slightly under a mile and a half per second. The scientist had not exaggerated to the general when he had said that they could not use this system to launch people. No human could survive such sustained acceleration and be of any use afterwards. “If the package electronics survive, I’ll know this is hardened military hardware,” he thought.

  A mere five and a half seconds later, the scientist and the Koreans saw the small dot of the cart shoot up in the distance. The fuel package separated from the cart and, having detected that the acceleration had stopped, ignited its engines. It was on its way to Mars.

  Li Julong stared in amazement at what he and his team of Koreans had created. This had been written about in science fiction for ages, and here it was in reality. He had truly opened up the solar system for China. He could only hope that it would be used wisely.

  He turned and surveyed the two Koreans, who in a few short months would be heading to a new planet, taking half of the time that it took the Mayflower to reach America. They were both dressed identically. They both moved identically, and hardly ever talked. “I hear they are always worried about spies overhearing them, even within their own families,” he thought. “Any misstep and two generations of family are sent to the prison camps. No wonder they are jumping at the chance for this trip.” Julong almost wished he could go with them, but he had a wife and grandchildren back on Earth to think of. “Ah, but these Koreans have families also. They probably will never see home again,” he thought sadly. Then, to hide his feelings, he said gruffly, “Well, what are you two waiting for? Get out there and fix those two magnets. Your lives will depend upon it.”

  # # #

  Bonnie was lying in bed when the door to the cabin banged open. “How could you embarrass me like that?!” stormed Jeff. “There I was, assigning critical functions to everyone, and my wife just runs off. Don’t you know how that makes me look?”

  Bonnie sat up, flabbergasted. She didn’t know what to think. “But, I was sick,” she started to say.

  Jeff stomped over and grabbed her and shook her. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. Get out to the kitchen right now and start cleaning up. I can’t have people thinking that I’m giving you preferential treatment.” He gave her a big shove towards the door. “And don’t come back until you’ve apologized to everyone else cleaning up. Make sure you tell them that I’m treating everyone fairly, too!”

  Bonnie ran down the corridor with tears in her eyes. Just when she thought things were getting better, she had discovered that her marriage to Jeff on this voyage would follow the same pattern as before. As she crawled through the tunnel to the central module, she wiped the water on her cheeks. “I can’t let them see me crying,” she sobbed to herself. “That will only make Jeff madder.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Commander Grant Styles and Biologist Charles Winston had been driving for over three hours in the MMTV across the Martian surface. The Mars transportation vehicle was simply a
large horizontal tube with six wheels, but it was fairly comfortable. It was pressurized, thus allowing both Grant and Charles to drive long distances without needing to be constantly in their spacesuits. Behind the vehicle, they were towing a small open flatbed, which would be used to transport the retrieved rover.

  Charles could see off in the distance a huge dust devil dancing across the landscape. These were fairly common, but could safely be ignored. The low pressure of the Martian atmosphere meant that, even if they were caught in one, it was hardly felt. All they would need to do would be to stop and wait for visibility to clear as the vortex passed. Since the commander was driving, Charles had time to reflect upon what he was seeing. “I understand perfectly why Buzz Aldrin called the Moon ‘magnificent desolation,’” he mused. “So far it’s been a whole planet of dust and craters. There’s got to be some life here somewhere; there simply must.”

  His eyes traveled back within the cabin, returning to the task of riding shotgun. “Coming up on the rover, Commander,” Charles said as he looked down at the radar and GPS systems on the dashboard. “It should be just over that rise ahead.”

  As they topped the small hill, Grant stopped the vehicle. About a hundred yards ahead, he and Charles could see the rover. It was lying sideways in the Martian dust. It was too far away, however, for them to see any details.

  “Well, at least it didn’t drop into a hole,” Grant said. “I’ll pull up next to it.”

  As the vehicle came to a halt, they walked to the rear to reach their click-suits, which were built into the back of the MMTV. These were ingeniously designed spacesuits which allowed the astronauts to simple step into and then seal up. Once they were sealed inside the click-suits, a panel inside the transport slid down and depressurized the small space between it and the back of the suits. The astronauts then simply walked away from the back of the transport vehicle, which remained closed behind them. When the astronauts returned, they would back up and ‘click’ back in. The separating transport panel would repressurize the small space, initiate a leak check, and then open, allowing the astronauts to step backwards into the interior of their transport. This design kept all the Martian dust out of the inside of their conveyance, as well as not requiring the pressurization and depressurization of the interior.

  Grant exited first, and turned around. The rover was only a few feet away. As he walked over to it, Charles stepped up beside him. “Wow, look at that,” Charles said. “The tread on this side broke off.”

  Grant knelt down and ran his hand over the sand. “It seems no deeper than the normal sand we’ve seen so far, so the rover didn’t get stuck in a sandpit,” he said. “And there are no sharp rocks here that I can find that could have sliced up the tread.”

  Charles picked up the piece of tread that had fallen off. “Hmm, it has a bunch of holes in it. Are you sure there aren’t any small abrasive rocks down there either?”

  Grant ran his hand back and forth, and then dug a small pit. “Nope, nothing.”

  Charles looked at the wheels the tread normally encompassed. “There are no burrs on the wheels either that could have done this. You know, it almost looks like it had been chewed by something.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Charles. You’re not going to discover any Martian sand sharks, you know.”

  “Sand sharks?”

  “You know, like from that old science fiction TV series, The Outer Limits. The second voyage to Mars is sent to find out what happened to the first expedition. There’s this area of totally smooth sand with no rocks that the sand sharks live in. One astronaut gets trapped on a lone rock with the sharks circling and…” Grant looked at Charles’ puzzled face. “Oh, never mind. Let’s tip the rover over and look at the other tread.”

  They both grabbed the ‘neck’ of the rover that telescoped above the main body and pulled. In a moment they had managed to right the machine. Charles whistled. “This tread has a bunch of holes in it too, although it didn’t detach from the rover.”

  “Well that’s weird. But maybe it was just accumulated wear as the rover traversed multiple sharp rocks at other places before it got here. Maybe this is just where the tread finally failed.”

  “But look here. There are scorch marks on both the front and back of the rover,” Charles observed. “I could understand the front, but there are no electronics in this rear section.”

  “I guess the rover’s falling must have caused a major electrical short that arced across the whole machine. It’s no wonder that Serge couldn’t revive it.”

  Charles was getting a creepy feeling from all of this. He looked around the Martian landscape. Nothing seemed to add up. There was nothing in the Mars sand that they had ever discovered that could have caused this much wear, and the scorch marks on the back didn’t make sense to him. From the corner of his eye, he saw a small flash of light in the distance, and turned towards it.

  “C’mon, Chuck. Let’s haul this into the MMTV’s storage section and get it back to Serge for diagnosis.”

  “Wait, Commander. I saw a glint of something from just over there,” he said, pointing. “I think that’s the crater the rover was heading for. Let me take a quick look and see if there’s that meteor that NASA wanted us to find. Plus, Brad will have a conniption if there’s something there and we don’t at least check it out. I saw a small light reflection which might be caused by some sort of mica. I know Brad has been looking for that. He keeps muttering on our past rover trips ‘quartz feldspar pegmatite has to be here somewhere.’ He’s drilled it into me to watch for any light reflections in our surveys.”

  “Okay, fine, but make it quick. I’ll go get the tow winch out and hook it to the rover while you’re doing that.”

  “Aye, Aye, Captain. I’ll be right back,” Charles quipped, turning for the lip at the top of the crater in front of him. He set off using the modified kangaroo lope they had all developed for moving quickly across the Martian sand.

  # # #

  “Warning, Warning, Proximity Alert!”

  Probe Spit shut down Hopper One’s alert mechanism. It had been monitoring the situation with alarm. First, a giant six-wheeled conveyance had appeared. Then, it had disgorged two bipeds. The new creatures seemed to be sentient biological entities, since they had methodically surveyed the incapacitated robot and tested the nearby ground.

  “This is most unusual,” it thought. “There should be no large organisms on this planet.” Spit’s instructions had not accounted for this. The programmers had been negligent, astounding as that seemed.

  As it watched Hopper One’s feed, it saw one of the entities leave its companion and start approaching straight for the hopper! In a matter of moments, the biological would be upon it!

  Spit’s emergency protocols kicked in. It withdrew all protruding appendages underground, including its eye. It instructed Hopper Two, Three and Four to do likewise. Hopper One was expendable. It was too late to have it disengage undetected, so Spit gave it the command to disintegrate.

  Probe Spit decided it would monitor the situation using its vibration sensors. It briefly considered whether to put the electro-biosynths, which were now lying next to it, on protect mode. “They could possibly be able to eliminate the approaching entity, but then the other biped would escape and this would be unacceptable,” it determined. “I will use the biosynths only if discovered.”

  Spit would not move until it had determined through its ground sensors that the entities and their vehicle had departed. Discovery this early in its mission would be disastrous.

  # # #

  “There it is again!” Charles thought as he went up the slight rise towards the crater lip. “There’s definitely some sort of reflection from that little rock right there just to the right. Just a few more meters.”

  Charles stopped at the top of the crater rim, looking down at his feet. The rock was moving!

  Quickly he knelt down to get a closer look. The rock was slumping down, almost like it was melting. Little bits of Martian sa
nd were sloughing off as the thing slowly flattened. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a small container which looked like a thermos. Putting it on one side of the rock, he used his other hand to push it into the container. “I’d better get some of the sand that came off of it, too. We’ll need to examine this back at the habitat. Perhaps there are some microorganisms in here which caused the rock to do that. Or maybe it had some dry ice that evaporated in the sun, causing it to fall apart. Brad will be excited if there’s some mica in here which caused that reflection. This could tell us more about the early conditions on Mars.” He brushed some additional sand that had fallen off of the rock into the container, and then twisted on the cap.

  Charles stood up and looked at the inside of the crater that was the original target of the rover. The crater was not large, and he could easily see the whole interior. He could see nothing but sand and numerous small rocks. He loped down the small slope and towards the center.

  “Hmm, no indentations, and no meteorite that I can spot,” he mused. “I wonder if Mission Control gave us the right coordinates. The meteorite would have to be fairly big for NASA to send us over here to investigate.” Charles walked around a bit, nudging rocks here and there to see if any others would fall apart. He pulled out a small pick and poked a few apart also, looking to see if there were signs of life inside any of them.

  Suddenly he stopped and looked around. He was in the center of the crater. “Well this is most peculiar,” he thought. “There aren’t any rocks in a circle all around me, and the sand here is totally smooth. Maybe the meteorite buried itself?”