S Morden - One Way

The thought that a stray spark could immolate him and potentially burn the entire base to the ground in a matter of seconds should have kept him frosty enough, but it was easy to forget. This life was now normal. As normal as being ruled by buzzers and bells and the sound of cell doors slamming, and he’d surprised himself how quickly he’d got used to that.

He was about to leave the hab himself, when he got curious about what Brack had been doing there. He looked up at the camera. He could go and check the boxes and try to work out what had been disturbed. But then Brack might be able to observe him while he did. What was he going to do?

Frank left the boxes alone for now and climbed the ladder.

Dee was in the Comms room. Frank looked in and nodded. “Brack?”

Dee gestured below. Control wasn’t out of bounds, but that was where Brack spent most of his time. None of the cons wanted to share a space with him, and it was unfamiliar territory to all except Dee, who’d had the job of setting all the consoles up.

“I’m pretty much done with the transmissions for today. Data’s loaded up. New pictures of Mars. Looks big.”

“Because it is big. Can you give me a hand? Need some help shifting things.”

Dee pushed back his chair—they had chairs now, formed from one piece of cast plastic, lightweight and disturbingly flexible—and followed him from the room. They crossed through the yard and the galley to the connector, then into the med bay. Frank slid down the ladder, stepped back, and Dee joined him in the gloom, surrounded by boxes.

“What needs doing?”

“Just start moving these around.” He gave a box to Dee, and under the cover that gave him, he quickly checked the crates where he’d first spotted Brack. Most were still sealed. Two were not.

“What’s going on, Frank?”

“There’s some weird shit going down.” Frank was going to keep Declan’s name out of it for the moment. He casually flipped up the lid of one of the crates and peered inside. “Someone’s been taking the buggies for a ride. I need them to stop, because the heat’s coming back on me.”

He had no idea if it was Dee, but he’d have the exact same conversation with Zeus and Zero, and warn them all off.

“And you think I know something?” Dee glanced at him, then went to pick up another box.

“I don’t know. I sleep hard at night. Maybe you don’t, and you’ve woken up because of something.” Frank was looking at blister packs of pills, all different shapes and sizes. OK, that was interesting.

“They’re doing it at night? Are they nuts?”

“It’s possible. It’s also the last thing we need, because if someone busts one up, we’re half-screwed. Anything you might have seen, heard?” Frank flipped the lid shut again and moved the container over to the opposite rack.

“I… no. I can’t think of anything.” Dee put his box down on the shelf and slid it along. “Does you-know-who know?”

Frank shook his head. “Don’t know. But we need to sort it first.”

“I’ll be your crow.”

“Thanks for your help,” he said, loudly. “I can take it from here.”

Dee stopped moving cargo, and Frank got on his hands and knees to shift a newly exposed floor panel. He peered into it, and extended the nut runner into the void.

“I’ll go then,” said Dee.

“Thanks again.”

That was always going to be the problem with a bunch of cons. Trust, that had been difficult to build up, was so easy to destroy. Drugs. Joyriding. Just when everything seemed to have settled into a decent, quiet routine. Whoever was responsible, Frank wasn’t going to risk them jeopardizing his ride home.

[Internal memo: Mars Base One (Power) to Mars Base Knowledge Bank 10/20/2038]

Power team

Just to confirm the power inputs with everyone.

The base load will be provided by one (1) RTG, producing three kW (3000 W) of continuous power. This value is not expected to fall below two point eight kW (2800 W) for ten (10) years.

Variable load will be provided by three (3) twenty-four kWh (rated at 2,000 W) closed-cycle fuel cells.

The fuel cells will be recharged during the twelve (12) hour Martian day by a solar array capable of operating at fifteen kW (15,000 W).

The total power consumption of the initial base is not to exceed ten kW (10,000 W). Extra solar units and fuel cells can be integrated as the power requirements increase, and aresthermal sources (boreholes/heat pumps) come online.

Note that the RTG will provide power for the minimum LS—base heat and atmospheric CO 2scrubbing—indefinitely, but will not provide for full functioning of environmental factors. RTG cannot be used to charge fuel cells without degrading LS.

We do have a problem with the build phase, though. The specs on the assembly robots indicate that their daily power expenditure will exceed the initial base power budget by a factor of three. We need to be able to supply some thirty kW (30,000 W) continuous load in order to keep all of the machinery running. This will require an additional sixty kW (60,000 W) of solar array if all applications are to be run simultaneously: the battery packs for each robot are internal, so no additional fuel cells are required.

That someone was using the buggies without telling Frank was such a little thing. The power consumption was low, and Declan had managed to cobble together another couple of panels from the broken pieces, which gave them most of a kilowatt extra. It wasn’t really an issue of balancing those needs any more.

He’d discovered that Declan had been right by logging the gas and water volumes in the fuel cell, and they’d shown slight differences more than once, indicating that the distances involved were small. He’d also drawn thin lines in the sand behind each wheel, which were impossible to spot in the utter darkness of the Martian night.

Each morning, the marks had been smudged, and were no longer in position under the buggy. He’d scuff them out, and think back to the night before, trying to work out if any of the noises aside from the creaks and groans of contracting metal could have meant anything. This had gone on for a week now.

The buggies had no keys, no locks. They were company property, just like the crew. No one had any need to sneak around, and yet they were.

He’d had a quiet word with everyone. None of them had felt the need to own up. Or stop, for that matter. There were a limited number of possibilities. Someone suiting up and driving around in their sleep was one he’d considered, and discounted.

Brack was another. And it was the one he kept on coming back to.

Because there was literally only one place to go to. The ship. There was nothing else for miles around, and as the numbers on the dials showed, the mileage wasn’t anything extraordinary. A couple of miles across the Heights and a couple of miles back would account for most of the consumption. The cold—he hadn’t tried it himself—might account for the rest.

He didn’t think there was anything in the ship that any of the cons needed. So, if it was Brack, what was it that he did there, secretly, that he needed most nights to do?

The drugs? That bothered him a whole lot more. There was a whole pharmacy just lying around that any one of them could help themselves to. To the best of his knowledge, no one had inventoried the medical supplies. Alice would have done it, if she hadn’t sampled some of the wares. Zeus was Alice’s second, but he hadn’t had the time, or the inclination, for such a tedious, persnickety task. So the pills had been just left there. And someone had, at the very least, opened up two of the sealed boxes. If they hadn’t then gone on to pocket some of the contents, then Frank would color himself surprised.