"Six nights, seven days."
"Well, that was dumb. I should have been more careful."
"I have reviewed the visual record. You were to remove your environmental suit before entering the Hab."
"Oh! I didn't even think about it. I was so tired; I just wanted to lie down."
"Fatigue causes mistakes. Mistakes can be fatal. I have no explanation for the failure of the heater and air unit."
"Didn't you test them before you put them on the cart?"
"No, I did not. However, the water in the suit was contaminated. It is your responsibility to keep the tube clean and the water replenished."
"Well, Murphy wins again. It appears we have both demonstrated poor judgement."
"Agreed. I will refresh my safety protocols."
"Me, too."
***
Meanwhile, 185 kilometers to the northeast, B303 had been finishing the latest in a series of tests of atmospheric samples collected earlier in the day when what passed for wind at this altitude had blown favourably across the cauldron. The actual processing was a low intensity activity that required little attention.
In fact, B303 spent most of its time comming with others who were conducting their own particular research in the Tharsis area. Chatting was a more apt label, since no one was particularly interested in anyone else's technical data.
Lately though, it had been tasked with imaging the crater's cauldrons from various directions. The guidelines it had been given seemed vague, if not downright simple—high-resolution images of the crater walls with low lighting angles were a priority, followed by shots of recent slips and of the new fallen material on the cauldron floor.
Slips were an uncommon occurrence. Recently it had fortuitously captured a video of a small fall from beginning to end.
The mystery was why the traces disappeared so quickly. This information was promptly pulled from its files by the central unit at the place where the humans resided.
Imagery was a fine thing, it thought, but B303 had been born with a need for sulphur dioxide and an affection for gaseous methane. That quest was its real purpose. Others, it had determined from discussion, had affection for H2O in any form. Still others had a desire for methane and, like B303, spent their days seeking fulfilment in craters, cauldrons and on valley floors.
There was little happening at this location to distract B303 from its mission. However, for some unfathomable reason, it had recently begun positioning itself in the images. In some its presence actually blocked some of the intended target area.
Pride? Vanity? What the hell are these? So what?
Earlier in the day it had been put on standby by an A unit for a diversion to the western slopes to lend assistance to a nearby human. Whatever it had been, the need had gone away. It returned to sampling and the search for personal fulfilment.
The Committee Has Determined That…
It was several more days before Sam felt sufficiently recovered to care about what he did next. After exploring the ground around the northern approach in the hope of finding some overlooked route that led to the top, they headed down off Olympus enroute to the North Polar Region. When they had stopped for the night at the end of the first day of travel he queried the AI about the selection of the course.
The AI projected the Martian globe onto the darkened command window. Their current location and the next stop at Acheron Fossae were two points connected by a route that seem to wander erratically over the surface and far from the great circle course Sam had expected to see.
"Why all the wandering?"
"It is required to avoid damage to the surface."
This had never come up before. He smelled a rat. A bureaurat.
"Why the sudden concern? I thought we were using safety protocols to decide our route."
The ruddy globe of Mars turned into the now familiar colours that indicated travel risk. Areas in yellow were dangerous. From painful experience, Sam had no issues with that designation. Off-limits areas, usually the edges of valleys and bottoms of steep sided hills, glowed red. Neither did he have a problem with these areas. The green free travel areas which mottled the globe—such as plains, crater cauldrons, et cetera—were extensive and provided in most cases, ready access to the locations of high interest, but this was a new wrinkle.
The AI continued. "A directive has been issued by the Science Committee to limit travel to terrain less prone to permanent damage from Rollagon travel."
"Since when?"
"I received it today."
"And?"
"And I was waiting to discuss it with you. The committee has determined that Rollagon travel is doing irreparable damage to some parts of the surface. The directive requires you to confine travel to areas of bare rock and sand dunes whenever possible. Furthermore, they have directed that we recover any of the LOS com masts that are encountered during our travels. The satellite system has made them redundant."
"That makes some sense at least, but damaging the surface, that's a crock. Show me evidence."
The globe was replaced by an image of an otherwise nondescript piece of Mars. The grid of a 1:50,000 topological map was overlain. The tracks of a number of dust devils could just be seen. Across the middle of the image two lines were clearly visible. They were the tracks of a Rollagon, no doubt.
"The committee is concerned that Rollagon travel is altering the surface. As there is no natural mechanism for restoral of damage, these tracks are permanent. Dust will fill the tracks, but the imprint is permanent, and damaging the platy crust exposes the underlying material to the wind."
"People and machines have been travelling all over Mars for 50 years. Why now? They picked a fine time to go into save-the-planet mode. Who originated the message?"
"It is signed off by the CAO."
Something stirred within Sam, "We'll never get this trip done if they place such a ridiculous constraint on us. It's not as if anyone is likely to see the damage."
"It is important to protect the planet. My calculations indicate that compliance will add only seven months to the planned duration. That seems a small price to pay."
"Seven months! My God! And you think that's nothing?"
"Considering the planned duration of the trip, it is not too great."
"Well, Fenley and I are going to have this out,” Sam said, but they didn't.
Perhaps he was still suffering from the effects of the dust, or perhaps he was just getting tired of the continual struggle against bureaucracy, but once his anger subsided Sam decided that it was better to comply, at least for now, than to confront Fenley.
31
July 2047
To the Pole
The implications of the new restrictions on travel did not affect them while they traversed the Tharsis lava flows, but getting down was nonetheless a slow process. Without the incredibly detailed topographic maps available and the ability of the Rollagon to maintain a decent speed over rocky and jumbled terrain they would have been forced to backtrack many times. Finally though, Olympus Mons was left behind.
They headed north to Acheron Fossae where they spent a few days poking about the lava filled craters, then headed north to Milankovic Crater, not because there was anything fascinating about this particular spot, but simply because it gave some relief from the boredom of the terrain. Milankovic was on the fringe of Vastitas Borealis. Vastitas Borealis had been at one time the bottom of the salty shallow sea that had covered virtually the entire northern hemisphere. Once they crossed its ancient shores the terrain was flat and, except for the diversion provided by the ejecta from the first age, almost completely without interest.
They were headed north in the fashion of sailors of old who set out for foreign places with no surety of arrival. It had been long established that the Polar Regions were covered in deep layers of water ice, topped with a thin layer of dust, volcanic, and other rocky debris. At the furthest reaches in winter, frozen carbon dioxide formed snow-like drifts. Missions that had land
ed very near the pole had employed controlled landings with chemical engines. Their rovers had quickly become bogged down in the unexpectedly soft surface, limiting travel to the immediate area of the landing.
It was in fact impossible to travel to the very pole by Rollagon and there was little of scientific value to be learned by going merely to the edge. Sam would arrive in late summer. The CO2 would be gone, and as much of the water as was going to go would be gone. Where and how close they could get was still, at this point, anyone's guess.
The AI raised the issue of the injunction as they crossed onto the plains. Sam momentarily considered pulling rank, so to speak, but he knew there was no point in arguing—the AIs might seem naive at times but they were sticklers for the rules. Instead he called a halt and stood down. Suspecting that he would be monitored for compliance, he waited a few hours until he was sure someone would have noticed, then he composed a message to George Sotheby, whom he hoped was still Chairman of the Science Committee.
In the tersely worded missive he advised that he was holding his current position pending the permission of the Science Committee to proceed across the plains enroute to the Pole. He was gambling on Sotheby having some residual trace of the British zeal for exploration that had marked that nation's history. Besides, he had placed the problem in the bureaucracy's lap, where he was sure Fenley wanted it.
Sure enough, the next morning permission was granted—on a one-time basis—to proceed across the Vastitas Borealis "for the purposes of conducting a scientific expedition to the northern regions, while remaining cognizant of the requirement to protect the fragile Martian environment."
Certain that the AI was already aware of the contents of Sotheby's message, Sam took genuine pleasure in the telling. Later, however, the AI exacted revenge by announcing that it had determined that their speed would henceforth be restricted to less than 15 kilometers per hour, as this was less damaging to the surface.
Sam complained vociferously about this, all the while secretly pleased. The higher speeds often rendered him ill.
Radio Days
Sometimes at night, as he sat or lay as mood directed on the front deck of the Rollagon, he fed demodulated sounds from his dish into the helmet speakers.
It was from a single receiver on a single frequency, and of course totally artificial since there was really no audio component to the signal. Still, the roars and crashes were hypnotic: synchrotron radiation from eons ago, the sound of creation and destruction and creation. The volume rose and fell. Inexplicably it filled him with loneliness and feelings of lost and hopeless love.
It was sad, but it was real and it was his. Here, far from Earth's teeming billions and abandoned loved and loving ones, in the middle of a Martian desert, far from the nearest human, it was possible to be even more alone—even more lonely.
The North-East Passage
During a stop at the Mars Phoenix site Sam took countless pictures from all angles of the lander, and in a moment of extreme sacrilege (for him), lay down and plunged his arm into the hole dug by the robotic arm, scooping up a handful of dust and pebbles, some of which he kept.
After a couple of days of looking it was time to move on. For a long time they proceeded northeast and things remained essentially the same. The days gradually became longer, the sunsets and sunrises drew closer together until finally, one day, the sun did not set. Thereafter neither did it rise very far into the sky. Sam had seen this before—the polar regions of Earth shared this phenomenon with Mars.
The rock strewn flatlands gave way to increasing amounts of dust and sand and then to large sandy dunes. They began to pass craters ringed with thin frost where the low-angled sun did not shine. The frost gave way to more substantial forms of water in several kinds of ice.
He stopped and examined the exposed ice in several craters. Typically it was composed of many thin whitish, opaque layers interspersed with dust and grit that in some ways resembled sedimentary rock. Surprisingly, in other places the ice was glacier blue and polished smooth, and obviously ancient beyond the telling.
It was a weird and wonderful place. The sameness was different. The dunes crossed their path at an angle. They slowed their progress and the rolling motion made him ill, often forcing him to resort to meds.
They were neither the first human nor the first robotic mission to examine the North Polar Region. Several manned missions in the late twenties had spent time at the North Pole, picking up samples of ice, snow, and dirt from the polar cap before sprinting back into orbit, and AIs had ventured into the many small chasms that led into the interior. To his knowledge though, no one and no thing had been at the pole since the mission of 2029, and no human had ever been recorded as having entered Chasma Boreale, which Sam had chosen as his entry point because it offered the most northerly limit of surface travel.
The MGPS told them they were close, but there was no sign of anything on the horizon. They passed the mesa that marked the outer limit of winter snows. It was the smoothest feature Sam had seen on Mars. In ancient times, when the cap was much larger, it had been covered by ice. Before that, its peak had been at times an island in a cooling sea.
Chasma Boreale was no back alley. At its mouth it measured 200 kilometers wide, and in places the ice fields towered a full three kilometers above the floor. Around noon of 43 July Sam saw the glint of sunlight from a still unseen peak. They were fifty kilometers out, but from here on the horizon would change with each passing kilometer—and it did. At first two small white mounds separated by a hand's breadth rose above the horizon, and as the day wore on the gap widened and the peaks rose until they dominated the view screen. At day's end the Rollagon was clearly between the two sides.
It was darker than it had been in many days and the weight of the ice bore down on him. He had thought he would be eager to get outside. Instead, he felt an apprehension bordering on premonition. The lack of visible icefalls was a minor reassurance, but to one experienced in the lands of mountain ice and snow, this was a setup for disaster. Alarms bells were going off.
"I don't like this," he said to the AI. "Back off while I reassess."
"The ice is quite stable. There is no danger," the AI answered in an undertone that Sam took as patronizing.
"Back off."
The AI turned them in a short circle and retreated until they were out of the gap. "The ice is stable. There is no danger. I can assure you."
"It looks unsafe. I am not going into that place until I have more confidence in the stability of the cliffs. Take us to the left, there," he gestured in the direction of the western arm. The AI drove across the undulating dunes at a fair clip but Sam felt no illness from the motion.
From several kilometers away it was hard to tell where the ground left off and the ice began, but as they drew near, he could see there was a clear demarcation.
"Take us up to that blue area."
The ice rose in a series of steps from the dunes, half a klick thick at this point. It towered over them. Still, the open space at his back relieved his apprehension.
"I want you to plant a charge at the base of the ice. Then we'll back away and set it off."
"That should be an ample demonstration of the stability of the ice at this location."
The Rollagon moved forward until there was nothing to be seen except blue. Fine striations could be seen in the ice. The vehicle trembled as the AI drilled a shallow hole, then dropped the charge in place. They withdrew a full five kilometers and turned around.
"You be ready to haul ass if anything goes wrong. Understood?"
"Yes, of course. I am setting off the charge in 3, 2, 1, now."
Sam saw nothing initially, then a puff of dust. They watched the ice for a full five minutes.
"The charge was nominal. I register no seismic activity."
"Fine. We'll wait here 12 hours, then go in. I want to repeat the charges as we go."
"That will not in itself guarantee safety, if that is what you seek. There is a risk the v
ery act of setting off the charges may cause a collapse. It may not be possible to eliminate the risk."
He had no answer for this. Was it him? Was something from his past at work here, some childish fear? He thought back to his childhood. Yes, he had been trapped under snow once. An igloo made by some older boys had collapsed on him and another younger playmate—they had been covered only for a few seconds—but he was sure that was not it. Underlying it all, he thought, was a question of trust between him and the AI. He let it simmer.
In the morning they closed in again on the cliffs. There was no sign of anything new having fallen. He was somewhat reassured. "I still don't like it. I think we should stay to the middle and check for seismic activity every few klicks."
"That should be sufficient. There is little if any new build-up of snow. The ice seems very old and is in the process of erosion. I suggest that the dunes may hide a greater danger. The floor is underlain by ice to a considerable depth. The real danger is that sub-surface may be unstable. I suggest we deploy the GPR and proceed slowly. Caution is the best remedy."
"Agreed." Sam had been so concerned with the ice fields that he had not considered the dangers below.
The AI deployed the GPR and steered a course to the middle of the entrance, proceeding at a slow speed. Sam was no expert on the GPR but he could interpret the display well enough to tell where the overburden gave way to ice. In some places it was a meter or so, in other places many dozens. The danger was that the ice itself might be undermined. The AI had maintained that it could discern this condition from the GPR, but Sam was somewhat dubious of a system that could only see directly below.
The ice walls were at some places a full kilometer high. From the center of the valley the layering was not obvious, and dust tended to make the slopes seem a reddish brown. Through the viewer it could be seen that the layers were of uneven thickness.
Higher magnifications revealed that the effect was caused by many thin, alternating layers of dusty and less dusty ice. In several areas the ice cliff had receded leaving a series of low terraces each about ten meters thick. Sam felt it safe enough to approach these on foot.