In the shadow of deimos, p.4
In the Shadow of Deimos, page 4
part #1 of Terraforming Mars Series
Stepping out of the rover into the pressurized vehicle station, Luka smelled Thor Town’s clinically clean air. Like everywhere he had been since he had left the spacecraft, he was breathing an artificial mix of oxygen and nitrogen extracted from nitrates in the soil and oxidized rock which was pumped into the environmental system. Filters removed extraneous carbon dioxide and trace elements so the hints of human odor, the smell of food, and the grease of machinery were taken away until the atmosphere was devoid of anything other than the gases needed to sustain human life.
The driver led Luka out into the main street that ran through the heart of the complex. It was almost like a little bit of humanity’s ancestral home had been transplanted to the new frontier. Even the lighting had a yellow tint to mimic the color of sunlight on Earth. Lining the street were rows of buildings that reminded Luka of the apartments, offices, and shops that he might have walked past in one of the suburbs of Cologne. The designer had even gone to the lengths of putting windows in the façades of the buildings, despite them only opening out to another version of inside. There was no such thing as letting in some fresh air in Martian cities: only letting in some exactly-the-same air.
There was a person in a salon having their hair cut, customers collecting pain medication from a pharmacy, and a shop selling luxury food. Luka found himself staring at a woman who was, in turn, staring at a single exquisite portion of cake made from soft, golden sponge which was displayed in the shop. It was small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. She was contemplating, no doubt, whether the experience of eating it would justify what was likely to be an exorbitant price. She was, Luka estimated, in her thirties, about the same age as him, but that was not the case for everyone he passed. A child no older than ten almost ran into him as an older boy – possibly his brother – chased after him. A man who had to be at least in his seventies caught Luka’s eye as they passed each other and smiled a silent hello. Luka was so surprised, he only thought to return the smile at the last minute.
It was a short walk to Anita’s office, located inside a giant structure at the end of the street. The building spread as high and as wide as the city enclosure itself and had a central door twice as large as was necessary for a person to walk through with the familiar ThorGate logo above.
The driver took Luka inside, squared everything with security and took him up two flights of stairs to Anita’s office where he made his excuses and left.
Anita stood from her desk. “Luka Schäfer,” she said and reached out a hand for him to shake. “I’m glad you could come.”
It was the first time Luka had seen Anita Andreassen without her rad-suit. She was shorter and younger than him with light brown skin that gave her face a healthy color while her deep brown eyes suggested an assured intelligence.
“Is that the offending component from the homicidal crane?” she asked, looking down at where Luka was holding the computer hardware he had yanked from the machine.
He placed it on the desk. “Al said you might want to examine it.”
“Why don’t you sit down and we can talk about that.”
Luka sat in the only other chair in the room and took the chance to have a proper look at the office. It was a sparse space dominated by Anita’s desk where, interspersed between three computer screens, were a half-drunk glass of water, a stray fork, and a plate with the crumbs of something left on it. The room had no view out onto the street and instead used a computerized window opposite the door which displayed an as-live image of an Earth landscape, as if her office had been built overlooking one of the last rainforests.
Anita glanced down at the computer screen to her left before looking back across the desk at Luka. “Your file says you had a successful career on Earth programming industrial robots.”
“That’s right,” said Luka.
“I thought you could tell me what might have gone wrong with the crane.” She nodded down to where Luka had placed the crane’s computer hardware. “Al said you exhibited an interest in understanding the reason behind the malfunction.”
“I haven’t had a chance to take a detailed look at it.”
“But you’ve had an initial look?” Anita suggested.
“I downloaded the code into my WristTab if that’s what you mean,” Luka said, feeling somewhat guilty for his actions. “If you’re asking me to take a professional guess, then I would say it was a hard disk failure which caused a subroutine to crash.”
“Could it have been sabotage?”
“Sabotage?” said Luka.
“There was a lot of anger when ThorGate won the contract to build Noctis City. Some of the other corporations think we wield too much influence on Mars.”
“ThorGate has more resources than any other corporation. It makes sense for it to be in charge of some of the major projects.”
“Not everybody thinks so. Some would even like it if we failed.”
“You think someone could have caused the crane to malfunction on purpose?”
“Could they?” said Anita.
Luka shrugged. “Sure, it’s possible. The shield plate was removed from around the computer component, so I suppose someone could have tampered with it and not had time to put it back. But equally, it could be shoddy maintenance. It doesn’t take much for Mars dust to get in there and do some damage.”
Anita thought for a moment. “So, you think cockup rather than conspiracy?”
“Without any evidence to the contrary, that would be my preferred explanation.”
She frowned. “Looks like I’m going to be speaking to my maintenance team.”
“That’s only my initial assessment. You should get someone else to make a proper evaluation.” Luka pushed the component across the desk towards her.
“That’s only part of the reason I asked you here.”
“Oh?”
“You heard about Giovanni Lupo, I assume?”
“Yes,” said Luka. “My condolences. I understand you two were close.”
The rumor was they were more than close. Talk in the migrant habitat was they were lovers. Her scream across the comms channel when she heard he’d died seemed to confirm the rumors were true.
The sentiment appeared to catch Anita off guard, and she dropped her gaze as she took a moment to compose herself. When she spoke again, it was with a noticeably dry throat. “Gianni was one of our main programmers here at ThorGate. His passing leaves an unexpected hole in my staff. A man with your skills could fill that position.”
“No.” Luka shook his head. “I signed up to be part of the construction crew. I came to Mars to do a physical job. I don’t want to be sat looking at computer screens all day.”
“And yet you downloaded the crane’s control code to look at on your WristTab. A computer man is always a computer man, no matter how much he might think he wants to walk away from it.”
“The answer’s still no. I know you must be dealing with a lot at the moment, I understand what it means to lose people you love in tragic circumstances, but I left my old job for a reason.”
“So I see from your file,” said Anita, glancing back down at her computer screen. “I understand that you want a clean break from your past, but I want an experienced programmer on my team. We can’t both have what we want.”
Luka thought for a moment as he sensed the helplessness of being backed into a corner. He realized what she was getting at. “The contract I signed means ThorGate virtually owns me, so I suppose I have no choice.”
“You do have a choice, Luka. I won’t compel if you really want to spend the next few years of your life helping to put an endless supply of red Martian bricks on top of other red Martian bricks. But don’t turn me down just yet.” She smiled warmly at him. “Let me show you something first.”
•••
Anita drove Luka the short distance from Thor Town to the worshipping panels of the solar array which surrounded the city. Although they had looked close to the building when approaching in the rover, in reality they lay further out from the complex than was advisable to walk. He realized why as the white disk of the sun began its descent into the afternoon and caused the shadow of Thor Town to grow longer. The distance of the solar panels was precisely calculated to avoid the shade cast by the building they served.
With a final check of their rad-suits completed, Anita and Luka stepped out of the rover to view the array in person. There were rows upon rows of panels, each filled with blue tessellating photovoltaic cells which shimmered like water to form an electronic moat of power to keep the city alive.
“This is what ThorGate is known for,” said Anita over the comms.
“Power generation,” observed Luka.
“Which makes what I’m going to show you a little embarrassing.”
They stepped closer and Luka could see that many of the panels were already collecting a dusting of Martian soil particles. On the panel directly in front of them, a small robot which looked like a toy tank with a large gun turret in the center, fired a jet of air across the cells and blew away the dust. Clinging onto the side of the panel, the robot tracked its way further up towards the top to blow another blast of air to disperse the debris.
“We’re quite proud of these things,” said Anita. “We used to have to clear all the solar panels by hand at least once a day. Brushing the dust off can cause minor abrasions so we used compressors to take air from the atmosphere, hold it until enough pressure is built up, and then release it to blast away the dust. It’s a bit like the leaf blower our neighbors used to use at home. We had a lot of trees where we lived in Oslo. They looked beautiful, but in the autumn when the leaves fell… Anyway, using valuable employees to spend all day walking up and down the solar array with modified leaf blowers was not efficient.”
“Which is why you have the robots,” said Luka. “I heard about them. Simple, but effective.”
“Yes and no,” said Anita, as the robot they had been watching finished the panel it was on and trundled along a connecting cable to the next one. “They’re great until they fall off. Which they do too often.”
Anita walked between the row of solar panels until she stopped at another one of the robots which was on the ground at her feet. She picked it up, brushed the dust from it and set it back on the array. The machine gripped onto the side, waited a moment as if adjusting to its new position, then blew a cloud of dust away from the cells.
“I appreciate the tour, but what has this to do with me?” said Luka.
“Gianni was working on a way to fix the problem of them falling off. At least, he was supposed to be. He seemed… a little distracted before he died.”
Luka looked out across the array and, once he saw past its shimmering beauty, he could see the black blobs of little robots working away on the edge of many of the panels. A couple of the rows seemed not to have their own robot, and that’s when he spotted two of the small black machines languishing on the ground like lone pebbles on a sandy beach.
The robot which Anita had replaced continued with its work and puffed another cloud of dust away from the photovoltaic cells. When it reached the bottom corner, it wobbled before making the turn onto the lower edge. Luka took a step forward and watched more intently as the robot stopped, drew in air from around it and puffed it out of the cannon. The force of the blast, although not much greater than a child blowing out their birthday candles, caused the robot to wobble again. But the plucky machine managed to hang onto the track, negotiate the corner and move up the other side where it had less trouble maintaining its grip.
“That’s your weak point,” said Luka, pointing at the base of the panel. “The planet’s gravity is pulling at the robot. I know the gravity is less on Mars, but it’s still a significant force or we’d all be floating off into space. When it blasts air up across the panel, it acts like a jet engine creating thrust in the opposite direction. Whereas at the top of the panel, and to some extent at the sides, the direction of the thrust is different to that of gravity and the robot is able to hold on more easily. Negotiating the bottom corners also looks like it could be a problem. There must be some variable which means the robot sometimes falls off and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s probably something as simple as there being dust on the track.”
“That was our assessment too.”
Luka, getting carried away with the thrill of problem solving, formed the beginnings of a possible solution in his mind. “I imagine the robot could be programmed so it doesn’t travel along the bottom of the panel at all. Maybe it can clear the dust just by going along the top and sides. If it could also blow air at its own track to keep it free of debris, that might help.”
Through the bubble of Anita’s helmet, he could see she was smiling. “So, you’ll take the job?”
Luka felt outmaneuvered. In his own enthusiasm, he had fallen into her trap. “I didn’t say that.”
“I think you did.”
“This is just as much an engineering problem as a programming one,” he insisted. But his protestations did no good.
“If you understand that, then you are the person I need,” said Anita. “I’ll make the arrangements for you to join ThorGate’s technical team today. Someone can bring over your things from the construction habitat and you can get settled into a new room at Thor Town. You’ll find the facilities here are much better.”
Before Luka had the chance to reply, Anita had turned from him and begun the walk back to the rover. Luka took one last look at the little robot as it negotiated the connecting track to move onto the next solar panel and followed.
Chapter Six
Mah Chynna swiveled round on her chair and her long, black hair flicked back behind her. She sat in front of an array of screens, each showing a different aspect of asteroid data. Most were lists of technical detail, but the central screen displayed close up footage of a dark, gray, knobbly rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. On the far right, she had one of the screens tuned to the Interplanetary Cinematics reality channel with the volume turned down low, so whatever trivia the participants were talking about it was merely a burble within the gentle hubbub of CrediCor’s communal office.
“Mah Chynna?” asked Julie. She had been directed to the woman’s desk by one of the other employees who had pointed rather vaguely towards the back of the room. If the woman’s station hadn’t been the biggest in the office, Julie would still be wandering around asking other people where to find it.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize the time,” said the long-haired woman who, it appeared, was indeed Mah Chynna. “You’re Julie Outerbridge. I recognize you from the news.”
Julie felt self-conscious. She would never get used to meeting strangers who knew who she was because they had seen her face on TV. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Yes, of course. We can go into my boss’s office. It’s all arranged. Just one moment.”
Mah Chynna turned off all the screens on her desk and led the way past the other employees who pretended to busy themselves with work while they watched the two women out of the corners of their eyes.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” said Julie. “But is Chynna your given name and Mah your surname? I don’t want to get it the wrong way round.”
“That’s right,” said Chynna. “I’d much rather people ask me than make assumptions. You wouldn’t believe the number of ignorant people who call me ‘Mah’. Except they usually pronounce it ‘May’, like the month in English. I know now why so many Chinese say it’s easier to switch your name around. But I think, why should I change to the Western way of doing things? China has put a lot of money into the World Government and space exploration – it’s everyone else who should be changing their names round.”
Chynna led Julie into a modest sized office just off the communal area. It was clearly designed for one person with a single desk and a chair behind. It had a window which stretched along the whole of the back wall showing a live view of Mars out towards the impressive volcanic shield of Olympus Mons. On the near side of the room, away from the desk, were two low, soft armchairs upholstered in red fabric and placed around a small table. Chynna sat on one of them and offered Julie the other.
“Before we start,” said Chynna. “I want to say that I feel terrible about what happened. Everyone at CrediCor does. It makes no sense. I know people think we just grab the nearest asteroid and hurl it at Mars, but that’s not the case. Every aspect of each mission is carefully calculated and checked at every stage. It couldn’t have gone wrong.”
“Except it did,” said Julie.
“I’ve looked over the data and I don’t understand why.”
“I’ll get to that later, but let’s start at the beginning. You’re the Asteroid Controller for CrediCor here on Mars, is that right?”
“Yes, I coordinate the whole project from here, liaise with CrediCor teams in the asteroid belt, and monitor all operations from asteroid selection, through flight trajectory, mass and velocity calculations, crash site assessment – right up until the moment of impact.”
“What happened with this asteroid?”
“What they’re saying on the news is right. It fractured during entry – a piece splintered off and diverted from the planned trajectory. But it shouldn’t have happened. Each asteroid is carefully chosen and deep scanned to make sure it has the structural integrity to withstand the stresses of entry through the Martian atmosphere. That asteroid was as structurally sound as the other five we’ve brought down this year. It shouldn’t have broken apart.”
