Julia said mildly, trying to keep them talking despite their fatigue, “How can they use that?”
“They can’t reach water very easily,” Marc said. “I mean, they had to launch with some kind of plan, and I hadn’t found any ice back then, when they were figuring out their mission profile.”
“With lot of power, people can adapt,” Viktor said, toying with his cup.
“Yeah, that nuke can do a lot of work,” Raoul said.
“So there are plenty of maybes,” Julia said forcefully. “But the orbital mechanics, they can’t change.”
“Even nuclear obeys Newton,” Viktor said with a grin.
“If they miss the launch window in two months,” she said, “how long are they here for? Another two years?”
“Got to be,” Viktor said. “They freeze through winter, like us.”
“We had cold, but at least it was clear. They’ll get the southern summer first, with its dust storms,” Marc said. “Nasty time to get much exploring done.”
“Remember, they had no choice,” Julia said. “They launched late into a screwball trajectory. Going in as far as Venus, they’ve come through about twice the heating we had. Probably took a lot of fuel loss from boil-off, right?”
Raoul nodded. “But they have that extra push from the nuke. They could carry more of everything—”
“Speaking of that, what’s our supply situation?” She asked it although everybody knew the answer. She was afraid to let the conversation get out of the channels she wanted.
“The ERV has seven months times six people,” Marc said automatically, since he was in charge of provisions. NASA had provisioned it to return a full crew of six to Earth. “We’ve got maybe six weeks’ worth here for each, not counting greenhouse food.”
“I am surprised that we have not eaten it all,” Viktor said with an artificial lightness.
A clear signal to her. She saw that he, too, had caught the sense of gathering tension in the room, apparent in tone but not so far in words. Their advisors had trained “the couple,” as they termed it, in “counterconversational” tactics, useful to defuse conflicts.
Julia nodded, letting a silence grow for a moment, hoping that would help. Indeed, Viktor was right. They had devoured so much after the landing, as they adjusted to the heavy labor and constant cold, that early estimates showed them running out weeks early. So they had tapered off, watched their cold exposure—the real culprit, it turned out, not the muscle work—and got their eating rate down. Mars imposed harsh demands on the body, burning between five and six thousand calories a day. “I asked because we may have to be here until the very end of the launch window.”
“Why?” Raoul demanded suddenly.
“I mean, if the repairs take longer than we think—”
“They won’t.” He chopped the air with his hand. “I know the problems, we can make good progress.”
“I’m sure—”
“Right, Viktor?”
“I believe our fix, it is correct. Not the double line.”
A white lie, Julia thought. Viktor was plenty worried about the repairs.
Marc gave Viktor a skeptical scowl. “You’re sure?”
“No one can be sure until we have another test,” Julia said in what she thought was her best perfectly reasonable voice.
“I am sure,” Raoul said.
“You were sure before the test, too,” Marc said evenly.
“What does that mean?” Raoul shot back.
Julia tried to head them off with, “Look, I don’t believe—”
“Repairs, that’s your whole reason for being here,” Marc said, again with his deceptively easygoing manner.
“Rocks, that’s your reason,” Raoul said. “Which is harder?”
Marc said, “I’m just saying—”
“Maybe say less, would be better,” Viktor put in.
“Harder isn’t it,” Marc said. “Getting the job done, that’s it.”
Raoul said, “I explained out there, pretty clear I thought. We been sitting here in this sand, these ‘fines’ you geologists call them. Not just grit, but peroxide grit. Smaller than anything on Earth. Microsand! It gets into those systems, eats away, works on them for years while every day and night the temperature goes up and down, maybe a hundred and fifty degrees in a few hours. No way anybody could simulate or duplicate that on Earth. So no way to plan for it. No way. That ERV, it’s been here three years. We’re lucky any of it works.”
Raoul stopped abruptly, breathing hard, the moment teetering on a precarious point.
“Absolutely,” Julia said. “No way any engineer could know what that would do. Even the Outpost experience, that was with simpler systems, easier couplings, lesser pressures—right?”
It was a calculated risk, taking one side. Marc could run up his aggravation curve, go over the top. And she needed his support for more exploration.
But Raoul had to come ahead on this one, she sensed. If he lost heart, or even slowed his relentless labors, they were all in even more trouble.
She thought again of her strategy in initiating this discussion. Get everything out into the open, agree on tasks, relieve some of the tension. And get the okay to go exploring.