About three dozen types of plants seemed suitable for colonists’ diets and the hydroponics system, including cultural superfoods like wheat, rice, and potatoes, various beans, and popular vegetables like broccoli and tomatoes. They’d grown some of these in the hab during the flight to Mars, in a prototype tank system called the Garden Machine.
Once on the surface, Julia established large hydroponic trays, then moved on to tests using Martian soil.
When she’d first heard of the project, she’d been skeptical. But in the large folder of research reports there had been just enough biology to interest her. No one really knew, for example, what the combination of low gravity and low sunlight would do to the plants. Earth-based agronomists had done their best to gene-engineer them for the light levels, about 43 percent of Earth’s, but the gravity effect was a virtual unknown. As with centrifugal gravity, the tests simply hadn’t been done.
So Julia’s work was cutting-edge research in its own right. As she’d planted her first seeds, she felt a kinship with ancient hunter-gathers, taking the first tentative steps toward agriculture by poking seeds into the still-mysterious ground. Their experiments had culminated by populating an entire world. Maybe hers would do the same.
Not as exciting as deciphering Mars life, but it was still satisfying. And they could eat the results.
There was something very calming about being surrounded by green leaves and vines, nodding gently in the endless updraft of the air from the hab. The floor level was distinctly cooler, as she and Viktor had experienced, even though it was set on an insulated pad and Raoul had managed some inductive coil heaters. They had taken advantage of the absence of Raoul and Marc, off on a rover trip, to make love amidst the plants. It had been an exciting, though chilly, experience. It’d always been a big turn-on for her to look over the shoulder of a lover into the foliage of a tree. Viktor joked that it showed she was a real primitive.
They all went to the greenhouse when they were tired of the endless sunset hues of Mars. Or when they longed to see something alive that wouldn’t talk. So she wasn’t too surprised when Marc slipped in the quick way they’d engineered, to retain the air.
She smiled to acknowledge him, then turned back to her plants, prepared to ignore him. Privacy was precious, and they’d adopted the Japanese habit of not intruding on one another’s space.
But Marc wanted to talk. He popped his helmet and parka, and came right over.
“Got some results you might be interested in.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“Did the isotopic dating on the pingo ice core, thought you’d want to know.” He looked expectantly at her.
“Well, of course I want to know. What’d you find?”
He grinned slyly. “It’s not what I expected.”
“Too old to date?”
“Nope.”
She stopped working, turned to look at him. He was drawing this out on purpose. That was Marc’s style when he had something important to say. He let you know by making a little drama out of it. Like the discovery of the pingo water.
“Do I have to guess or are you going to tell me?”
“Before I do that, do you remember the scenario I described for Gusev in particular, and Mars in general?”
“Sure. Basically, you said the planet’s engine had died, in fact some time ago. The fossils we found were old, belonging to a long-ago wet and warmer time. The fact that they were in two different levels separated by sediments and volcanic layers meant that there had been another warmer, wetter time. Gusev held a lake at least twice, and that’s why we found the fossils inside the crater.”
“Okay, given that scenario, how old would you expect the ice to be?”
“Pretty old, maybe a billion years or so.”
“Not a bad guess.”
“Is that what you got?”
“Nope.”
She was beginning to feel exasperated. “Well, then it isn’t a good guess.”
“No, no, it’s a good guess. It’s just that my scenario was wrong.”
“How?”
“Suppose I told you the ice was young—very young, in fact, for Mars.”
“How young, or do I have to guess again?”
“Say, ten million years old.”
“But that’s—”
“Way young, right.” He rushed on. “Not only that, the ice seems to be all about the same age, within the limits of dating error. So it all came up at once.”
“Wow. So what’s the bottom line?”
“The planet’s not quite dead. There’s probably volcanic activity still going on in that big cone, Apollinaris Patera, about two hundred klicks north of here.”
“Wait a minute, that means—”
He grinned. “Yep, your vent could be nice and warm down below, probably always has been. A comfy place for life.”
They were both grinning, like two schoolkids with a common dream.
They didn’t wait for dinner to call up the satellite downloads. As usual there were routine situation analyses—“sit-als”—done Earthside, from the raw data their hab systems shipped out automatically. The satellite web above kept Mission Control in constant touch, which could be a pain. Now that they were in trouble, it was a comfort.
Marc insisted on going through the sit-als first, but there were no red flags. When every breath you take is brought to you by a complex set of overlapping functions, chemical and hydraulic and electrical, you pay attention to early warning signs.
