S Morden - One Way

“It doesn’t look good,” said Dee. He lifted a flat shard and shook it free of dust. It was part of a solar panel, black and shiny. “We probably needed this, right?”

As much as he didn’t want to talk to anyone in the ship, Frank felt he had no other choice.

“Alice. Is Declan awake enough to answer some questions?”

“Just about. Hold on.”

He heard some scratching and scraping, then: “Yeah. OK. I’ve been asleep for a year, so don’t expect much sense.”

“The supply ship containing our solar farm managed to smash itself into the ground. Not crater-hard, but we’ve probably lost, I don’t know, a third of it, maybe more.”

Frank could hear Declan’s breathing. “Which third?”

“It’s a crap shoot. Do you want me to bring it in anyway and you see what you can do with it?”

“I’ll get a feed off your suit camera. Give me a second.”

“Hey,” said Dee. “We’ve got cameras?”

“Jesus, Dee. Pay some fucking attention once in a while, will you?” Declan sighed, and fell silent as he assessed the grainy pictures. “OK. Fuck my life. That’s not what I wanted to see.”

“Sorry about that.”

“We need to get some sort of power generating system set up. Those glorified golf carts you’re riding around on aren’t magic, and they’re going to run out of juice soon enough. Let’s have a look at the map.”

The airwaves went dead for several seconds, during which Dee started picking up random crap off the ground, shaking it and dropping it again. Frank scowled at him.

“Dee. Sharp edges. What happened last time?”

“OK,” said Declan, “I’ve found it. It’s another eight miles, east of where you are now. It’s the RTG we were going to use as the base load, when we’d got everything set up. But we can use it now while we see what’s left of the solar array.”

“What do you want us to do with this stuff?”

“Load what you can. Especially cables, regulators, switch boards, everything except the obviously trashed gear. Then get the RTG and bring it straight back. And… if that happens to have plowed a hole in Mars, remember it’s basically a big bucket of radioactive metal and you’re going to die if the casing is ruptured. Got that?”

“Sure. We copy that.”

Frank checked his suit readings, and made sure Dee did the same.

“You heard the man. Let’s load it up.”

[Internal memo: Mars Base One (Logistics) to Mars Base Knowledge Bank 5/12/2042]

Notes regarding the ongoing supply of the Mars base

It would be more cost effective to wait and find out what the requirements are, and then send that, than guess what might be required and oversupply. Each pound of payload costs in the region of eighty thousand (80,000) dollars to get to Mars. One ton of supplies will therefore cost in the region of one hundred and sixty million (160,000,000) dollars.

It takes a rocket on a standard transfer orbit on average two hundred and sixty days to get there, with shorter or longer journeys possible on specific launch windows and delta V requirements. We now envisage a two-staged launch, with the initial base and infrastructure cargo leaving Earth between the months of December 2045 and April 2046, and the NASA specific equipment leaving early in 2048.

We will know by the second round of launches what has failed to arrive on the surface. Transponder/orbital photography data will clarify the position by November 2046: early enough, in the event of mission-critical failures, to advise the NASA mission at that point. We will resupply as necessary at our cost.

They had power. The RTG sat on the sand outside the ship, as far away from it as the fat electrical cable snaking from its mid-section would allow. It looked like a squat Angel of Death, its wings radiating so much heat that the air above it—what there was of it—shimmered.

Declan was outside, trying to piece together what he could of the solar array that was supposed to provide them with the rest of their energy. The greatest damage had been done to the panels themselves, and there weren’t many workarounds for that. New ones would have to be sent from Earth.

What power they had was going to have to be rationed, at least to start with. They had only enough to work a domestic water heater, but a lot of the systems were designed for low energy consumption. The ship had its own generator that was nowhere near as powerful, but still potentially useful, if everything was combined.

Brack had nixed that idea almost as soon as the words had left Declan’s mouth. The ship stayed intact. End of.

The next priority was air. The air plant would need electricity, which they didn’t have enough of, to produce oxygen, which they didn’t have enough of either. With five of them now awake, they were getting through the stores faster, and it seemed that XO had neglected to pack any spare in case of emergency.

The buggies needed a full half-day plugged in to strip the water back down into its component gases, ready for the next mission, but the air plant also had to refill the oxygen tanks in their suits’ life-support systems.

Frank didn’t like the sums either, especially when other necessities like water and heating and light were factored in. They were always going to be short, having to choose which things to turn off if they needed more elsewhere.

“That’s over your pay grade, Kittridge,” said Brack. “You need to concentrate on getting everything back here and working.”

He debated whether saying anything more would help, and eventually decided, almost solely because of the expression on Dee’s face, to speak up. “And what if we can’t? What if we don’t have enough kit to make a viable base out of what’s reached the surface in one piece?”

“Have we not got an atmosphere in here? Are you struggling to make out my words?”

“What’s our contingency? What’s the fallback position?”

Alice reached out to put her hand on Frank’s shoulder, and he shrugged it off, almost instantaneously. There was no space on the lowest level to escape from anyone. They were face to face, whether they liked it or not.

“You have one job here,” said Brack. “One job. To get the base up and working. If you don’t like it, there’s the airlock. Go find someone to complain to.”

Frank could feel uncharacteristic heat rise inside him. All he had to do was hit Brack first, a good solid punch to the head so that he smacked him against the ladder as well. What did the man actually do but just breathe and eat and drink, without contributing anything?

But there was the promise: if they lived—if they both lived—they’d both go home.

“No one’s explained to us why we don’t have enough food. No one’s explained to us what happens when we run out of that, or water, or air. Maybe if we knew what was going on…” He crushed his emotions. “What else can we get while we’re out there?”

“Better. We can’t keep on drinking our own piss indefinitely, but we can manage for a while. We’re going to run out of food before we run out of water. Get a hab module. Next run out after this will be the hydroponics.” Brack stood there, hands on hips. “So what are you waiting for? You and Stutter-boy need to suit up and head for the hills.”

Alice retreated to the place they’d all started calling the ice-box, even though the crew in storage were only cool, not freezing. Frank checked over his suit, and encouraged Dee to do the same—the boy had a strangely lax attitude over something that was only going to preserve his life if it worked perfectly, each and every time.

He checked his tanks, his scrubber, filled up his water supply and put a fresh energy bar into the holder, and watched while Dee happily played with the chest console, tapping buttons and scrolling through the menus.