S Morden - One Way

“The plants will help in the long term, but they’re not the solution in the short or medium terms.” She looked up at him. “What are you going to do? You’re in charge of construction.”

“I suppose I am, but the idea that I outrank Brack in any way?”

“It’s your call. But I agree that telling anyone else will just lead to panic. None of us are particularly stable under pressure, are we? Someone’s likely to do something stupid. So let’s not let that happen.”

Frank studied Alice’s face. It had been a long time since he’d been that close to another person—did Demetrius count? Their conversation was nowhere near as long, or meaningful—and this felt oddly, awkwardly, intimate.

“Fuck it. We’ll get the water maker and Zero’s plants. Tomorrow, we’ll get more habs. We’ll have to hammer this hard. We’re all going to be pushed close to the edge, and we’ll have to rely on you to keep us safe.”

“Do it.”

She pulled away and restarted her mic. Frank watched her skip back over to where Zeus and Zero were working away with the nut runners, and Declan assembling enough of the solar panels to get the air plant working.

Dee, sitting on top of his buggy, was looking at Frank, narrowing his eyes at him. Frank stared back.

“Problem?”

“No,” said Dee. “No problem.”

“Good.” Frank climbed up next to him, and opened the map. “These are our targets. We have to get them both, and get them back here. Today.”

Dee looked sideways at the distances involved. “How far is that?”

“We get to Long Beach and we split up.”

“But we’re supposed to—”

“I know what we’re supposed to do, Dee. We can be in radio contact the whole way, and you do just what you did yesterday, without the freaking out at the sand devil thing, and you’ll be fine.” Frank tapped Dee’s waist, where he wore his own tablet. “Turn it on, take a look, plot a route. I’ll meet you back at the crater wall. We’ll be apart for an hour and a half. Two hours tops.”

“I don’t know, Frank. Shouldn’t we—”

“He can hear everything we say. If he wanted to object, he would have done so by now.”

That silenced him, for a few moments at least.

“What’s changed?”

“We’re not tourists, Dee, and we’ve got deadlines.”

Frank swung himself down and mounted his own buggy. He checked his air. It’d be enough. Just.

[Internal memo: Mars Base One (Logistics) to Mars Base Knowledge Bank 5/16/2044]

Discussion re: food requirements for crew member

The minimum calorific intake for a resting male is approximately nineteen hundred (1900) calories, and for a resting female approximately fourteen hundred (1400) calories.

From arrival to first harvest from the greenhouse, we will need to provide sufficient calories for the crew member to function effectively. Note that the effects of low calorific intake can result in symptoms including irritability, low morale, lethargy, physical weakness, confusion and disorientation, poor decision-making, immunosuppression, and the inability to maintain body temperature, leading to hypothermia, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.

We propose that sufficient (daily 3600 men, 2600 women) calories are provided throughout the physically active build phase, and thereafter reducing (2800, 2100) during the test phase. It is expected that the greenhouse will begin to supplement stored food by Week 5 and by Week 12 will begin to supply carbohydrates. Protein (in the form of groundnuts and tilapia) will be available by Week 14. Vitamin supplements will be needed in addition to those derived from food, for the foreseeable future.

By unspoken consent, Alice slept on the third floor of the ship, the rest of the cons on the second, and Brack on the first. The five men in the middle had just about enough room to lie down; they snored, they turned, they talked in their sleep, they—consciously or unconsciously—were concerned about their cellies’ close proximity.

Whether anyone could have said they’d slept the whole dark night was debatable. When it had been just him and Dee, and then him and Dee and Declan, Frank had found that he could sleep without fear of accidentally touching someone else. Zeus… he was just on a different scale. He filled a space up without meaning to, and his tattoos were inherently threatening under the dim emergency lighting. And Zero twitched randomly: that was a difficult habit to get used to.

Lying there in the minutes before the alarms sounded and lights brightened, Frank listened to the sounds around him, both human and mechanical. He’d mostly tuned out the perpetual hum of the air scrubbers, and wondered if he’d notice if they ever stopped.

He was staring up at the gridwork over his head, looking at the blank rectangle of Alice’s mat. Everything would be better once they’d built the base. They’d have room to avoid each other, and they’d be busy with their own specialties. They wouldn’t have the immediate worries of whether there was enough air to breathe or food to eat. There might even be time to, what? Explore? Create? Relax? If they were making more resources than they consumed, why not? Even though they were still prisoners and everything they remembered was a hundred million miles and a rocket ride away.

He wondered what was happening back on Earth. What were they saying about the mission they were on? Mars things were the lead news items for a while, and even when they’d become more routine, they still featured. Mars Base One wasn’t routine, and neither was using convict labor to build it.

Would someone, at some point, try and force XO to reveal the names of the cons? The ACLU, maybe? Some fancy lawyer looking to make their name? What would XO do? Would their anonymity be busted, and Frank’s son find out where his father was?

While he lay there, he heard, then saw, Zeus stir. The man scratched himself, and got to his feet.

“Where you going?”

“Can,” said Zeus. “Beat the morning rush.”

He picked his way through the bodies to the tiny cubicle that served all of them. It had a folding door, but did little to mask what was going on. Zeus could barely fit inside as it was, and whatever it was they were eating didn’t make things particularly friendly for anyone else having to share the same atmosphere. Thankfully, the same scrubbers that took out the bad part of the air also took out the smells. On the whole, despite the confined space, it was anodyne, almost hospital antiseptic.

A few moments later, the lights dialed up to maximum, and the chimes sounded. Whether they were meant to be a gentle replacement for the harsh prison buzzers and klaxons, Frank couldn’t tell: they had the same purpose, and he couldn’t control them. They were therefore just as bad.

They stretched, they complained, they cursed each other for getting in the way, they hammered on the bulkhead next to the toilet to get Zeus to hurry up. Below them, Brack was already illuminated by the bright glow of the screens, and above, Alice hadn’t so much as stirred.

“Alice? Time to move.”

Nothing.

Frank reached up and smacked the flat of his hand against the underside of the grating. “Alice?”

Something fell past his face. It was tiny and white, like a snowflake. It passed through the floor at his feet without stopping on the way.

“Alice?”

Maybe it was something in the tone of his voice. The bad-tempered ruck around him quietened, and one by one, they looked up. Zeus pulled back the door to the toilet, started to say something, and didn’t get any further than breathing in.

“What’s going on up there?” called Brack.

“I’ll go,” said Frank. He scaled the ladder, quickly and fearfully, and stuck his head through the hole to the top floor. “Alice?”