Well, that’s about it. I’m pooped. There’ll be lots more pictures—I’ve only attached a few to this e-mail, so you can get an idea of what it was all about.
Hope your trip is working out like you hoped. Your last message about the poacher’s camp sounded a bit gruesome. It’s dreadful to think that the few remaining wildlife are being butchered—and for meat!
I hope it wasn’t dangerous, riding along with the park rangers like that. We’ve heard so many dreadful stories over the years about game park incidents. Please be careful!
Oh, forgot one thing. The kids are honeymooning here for a few days. In fact Raoul and Katherine are staying on also. It’s about the only place those four can get some privacy. I’m looking forward to a few days’ peace myself. And it’s a lovely place. I’ll be flying back at the end of the week.
Miss you, you old curmudgeon! Take care of yourself!!
Much love, xxxx
Robbs
With Axelrod at her side, Julia launched herself into the wedding. In some ways this was the most terrifying part of the mission.
She hadn’t yet gotten used to all the media attention—camera snouts, microphones, shouted questions. But it was impersonal. She was just an astronaut, an object caught in the crosshairs of the media. This was different. She knew a great many of the guests now staring wide-eyed and entranced (or so it seemed) at the spectacle. Despite her finery, she felt naked.
Axelrod leaned over, whispered in her ear, “Someone with a small nuclear weapon could take out the entire Mars faction.”
It was just what she needed. The remark triggered her professional instincts. Axelrod was right. She caught sight of Bob Zubrin, Axelrod’s Mars guru, and many of the longtime Mars researchers at NASA—Chris McKay, Carol Stoker, Nathalie Cabrol, Geoff Briggs, John Connolly, and others, some retired, all a bit grayer, but still enthusiastic.
Why are they all here! The dreamers…
And some schemers, too. They had come because of something none of them could quite put into words. Marriage, Mars…
And then she caught sight of Viktor. And all the rest dropped away. He was grinning in sheer delight. He stretched out his arm in an unplanned gesture of welcome. She took his hand and knew that this was the right thing to do.
Later, thinking about the ceremony, all she could remember clearly was the fond expression in his eyes. The right stuff.
5
JANUARY 11, 2018
DESPITE MARC’S BEST EFFORTS, DINNER WAS NOT A CULINARY SUCCESS.
He was the foodie among them, forever trying out new variations of the limited range of kitchen stores. But they had long ago exhausted the narrow potential of the supplies for new tastes, and now everything they ate was too familiar to the tongue. No surprises.
Still, they did have luxuries. Marc’s favorite duck in burgundy sauce from a trendy L.A. restaurant, authentic borscht from a San Francisco Russian bakery, blue corn enchiladas from New Mexico, kangaroo steaks, and holiday treats. The list was extensive. But frozen meals lacked that just-cooked, fresh taste.
Food and the mealtime experience were part of an elaborate emphasis on the crew’s psychological well-being. There Axelrod had not cut back on the budget. No one on Earth really knew how tough it would be to live so long in a large tuna can surrounded by a hostile planet. So the psychologists intended the mealtimes to be extended breaks in the day. Chances to talk, relax, and eat good, nourishing grub. For Julia, plenty of comfort food—soups, meatloaf, chowder, oatmeal. They each had their own. “Evoke resonances of home,” a psych guy had pontificated. As one wag put it, eating is the only enjoyable activity you can do three times a day, every day.
Months before launch each crew member had filled out an exhaustive dietary survey, and then had been interviewed by a dietician. Finally, a computer program called “Meal Creativity” took all the input and attempted to create a set of enticing menus that could be prepared in their galley. The menus rotated their individual choices and the whole pattern repeated monthly. Of course the meals were balanced nutritionally by the inexorable program, which tended to homogenize them. The mission eating experience was designed to be like repeatedly visiting a favorite restaurant. Sure, the menu was familiar, but familiar was reassuring. So the theory went.
They took turns in the tiny galley. On the outbound voyage Julia bowed to the public’s expectation and dutifully did her time, but the others agreed that the results were definitely substandard, and she was relieved of cooking. Instead, she did extra cleanup.
That didn’t bother Julia, a dedicated non-foodie, who believed that eating was a somewhat irksome necessity. Food was fuel to power people through the day. Something to keep the “little gray cells” nourished, as her favorite detective said. But unlike Poirot’s fastidiousness in cuisine, her palate was undemanding. She went through school with a minimally equipped kitchen. Dumping a box of macaroni and cheese into boiling water stretched her limits. Viktor joked that he sure as hell hadn’t picked her for her kitchen skills. He had done most of the cooking for the two of them before the mission, and filled out her food survey. “Either that,” he had said, “or risk eating junk food, or worse, Vegemite sandwiches, on Mars.”
But there were limits to the technology. The microwaved frozen vegetables were especially resistant to creativity, but Marc kept trying. He and Julia worked in the greenhouse to grow fresh ones. He had asked for a wide range of spices as part of his personal picks. Some of his more infamous attempts had produced stomach-rumbling distress. Still, the food was much better than the freeze-dried horrors of NASA days.
“So what did you two do while we were gone?” Julia asked later over very slightly grainy pudding. The chocolate color disguised any visible traces of Martian dust, but the tongue found its sting.
Marc licked his spoon carefully. “Well, we were drilling into the giant gopher mounds again, ya know. Found something…interesting.” He went back to his pudding.
Julia glanced over at Viktor. Something was up. You didn’t live with people for two years without being able to read them.
Twenty years earlier, Earthbound scientists at NASA analyzing Viking photo data had discovered a field of dozens of regular, hundred-foot-tall hills just north of the small crater Thyra. They put forth a strong case that the hills were actually pingos, buried mounds of ice known from Earth’s arctic. But so far, Marc’s attempts to drill through what turned out to be layers of salt and rubble had been unfruitful.
“So what you found?” asked Viktor.
Marc stood up. With studied casualness he said, “C’mon, I’ll show you. You can watch the robot vid. It’s Raoul’s turn to clean up anyway.”
Aha. It’s something big. She decided not to challenge him. Just let him do it in his own way. Anyway, she was enjoying the mystery.
She helped as Viktor got up clumsily and hobbled to the control room. The tape was already loaded and ready to go. Marc and Raoul must’ve planned this. Julia wondered, why the production?
They settled into chairs and Marc started. “Looking back over the robot’s vid data, I found a hill where the morning fog seemed to have been a bit thicker or more persistent several times. Figured maybe the regolith covering was a little skimpier than on the others, ya know.”
The base sported two open dune buggies the size of ancient VW bugs that the crew used for short sprints of less than fifty klicks round-trip. By taking both buggies, two people could haul the drilling gear. The buggies had been part of the Outpost Mars robot post established by NASA in 2010 to characterize the future landing site. The buggies had been telerobotically operated from Earth, and later, from the hab at Zubrin Base. On arrival, Raoul and Viktor had added the seats to enable two people to ride in each buggy on manual mode. When not in active use, the buggies were sent out to robotically video areas of interest to the crew or to scientists on Earth.
Marc started the video. A large ruddy hill filled the screen.
Julia shivered, remembering the biting cold that morning she and Marc had first seen the fog over the mounds. Suit heaters cranked to the max, they had looked like colorful, quilted penguins. Their pictures now graced the cover of the Lands’ End catalog, wearing the parkas and leggings now called Marswear©, of course. It was the latest rage in macho-type clothes, and the licensing fees helped pay for the mission.
On that trip they’d used the big rover. As they’d prepared to leave it, she’d grabbed her tea cozy and worn it like a knit ski cap. That was only the first time she’d used it as extra insulation.
Marc was talking. “You can see that it has an exposed side. So I decided to try drilling horizontally into that. Saved hauling the gear up on top.”
He waved the remote and fast-forwarded the video, causing the two well-padded figures to waddle comically about as they positioned the gear and started drilling.
