Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (110 page)

“I’m about halfway through the
checklist. So far, so good. As soon as you’ve got that LOX transferred I’ll do
the pressure test.”

“Rog. I’m gonna start connecting
hoses. Gabe, you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Ready when you
are,” she radioed from the commons.

“Okay, start at the top of the connection sequence.”

“Alright, Step 1: Remove the dust cap from the LCH
₄
supply valve, MRI1, on the MAV.”

“Got it. Done.”

“Step 2: Remove the cap from the LCH
₄
supply hose. That’s the red fitting.”

“Done.”

“Step 3: connect the LCH
₄
supply hose – the red fitting – to the supply valve, MRI1. Tighten hand-tight,
then give it one quarter turn with the spanner.”

“Done. Go ahead.”

“Step 4: Okay, open valve MRI1 all
the way, then turn back one-quarter turn, and flag it.”

Jeff opened the valve and attached
a red ‘WARNING’ streamer to it as a reminder to disconnect the hose and close
it before they took off. “Got it.”

“Okay. Step 5: Abby?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“You have power in there?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay, watch the CH
₄
tank one pressure gauge for a minute or so. We’re looking for a pressure drop
indicative of a leak.”

“Okay, watching.” A minute later
Abby called back. “No change. Pressure’s constant.”

“Good.”

And so it went until Jeff had all
four hoses connected and pressure tested. Methane and oxygen that boiled off
from the LCH
₄
and LOX stored in the tanks would be drawn off and
re-liquefied in the cryogenic stage and pumped back into the tanks via the
distribution manifold on the MAV. Further, all fueling of the MAV would now be
conducted via the cryo plant’s connections. To lift off from Mars and rejoin
the cruise ship in orbit the MAV would require 14.1 tons of propellant: 3.4
tons of LCH
₄
and 10.7 tons of LOX, all of which would take the
Sabatier reactors around eight months to produce.

“Okay,” said Jeff. “That’s done.
I’m gonna go hook up the LOX transfer tank and pump it into LOX tank one.”

Half an hour later all the LOX had
been transferred.

“Jeff,” said Abby. “I’m reading 37%
on the tank.”

“That sounds about right. You about
ready to conduct the pressure test?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, go ahead. I’m gonna haul
this second cryo plant over to the other MAV and set it in place, then come
back and get the transfer tank.”

“Alright. Are we gonna do the
second MAV today?”

“Nah, let’s do it tomorrow. I’m
getting hungry.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

While Jeff shuffled tanks and
equipment, Abby would close the MAV’s hatch and pressurize to 5.3 psi, 10% over
the modules design specification, for 15 minutes. Assuming the test was
successful, she would depressurize by pumping the O2 into the atmospheric
oxygen tank where it would remain until they again pressurized the module in
space following liftoff.

Thursday, June 8,
2017

MSD 50988.834 (Sol
238)

Jeff, sitting at the communications
computer, yelled toward the kitchen, “Hey, Abby, come here.”

She came out and walked up behind
him. “What?”

“Have a look.”

Abby looked at the screen and read.

From:
Commanding Officer, Strike Fighter Squadron 154

To:   LCDR
Abigail B. Nolan, USNR

Subj: Temporary
appointment, delivery of

REF:       (A)
navadmin 281/17

               (b)
10 Usc 14308

1. Your temporary appointment to Commander with the date of rank and
effective date of 29 May 2017, promulgated by reference (a) pursuant to the
provisions of reference (b) is hereby delivered.

2. You will indicate by endorsement hereon whether you accept or decline
this appointment.

r.f.schultz, by direction

Jeff stood, grinned, and gave her
hug. “Congratulations, Commander.”

She smiled. “Thank you. Wow, didn’t
see that coming. I haven’t drilled in two years.”

“Well, I guess somebody figured
you’re doing something useful.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“When we get home they’ll probably
give you your own reserve squadron.”

“That’d be interesting. There’ll be
a few unhappy pilots. Oh crap!”

“What?”

“Now I’m gonna have to get my
uniforms re-striped, buy new hats, shoulder boards, collar devices… ugh. That
shit’s expensive.”

“Oh, I think you can afford it.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Besides, you can have my old
shoulder boards and collar devices.”

She gave him a broad grin. “You
mean it?”

“Sure.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I’d be
proud to wear them.”

Jeff smiled and hugged her. “And
I’d be proud if you would.”

Sunday, June 25, 2017

MSD 51005.375 (Sol
255)

Jeff wandered into the kitchen. The
women were already there, busily preparing breakfast. He poured a cup of coffee
and sniffed. “What is that I smell? Smells like cornbread.”

“Close,” said Susan. “You’ll see.
It’ll be ready in a minute. Have a seat.”

He took a seat at the table, sipped
his coffee, and eyed them with curiosity. “What are you guys up to? Breakfast
isn’t usually this big a production.”

Gabe glanced at him. “What day is
it?”

“Where?”

She grinned. “Here, fool.”

“Um, sol 255. But you know that.”

“Yes. Does that day mean anything
to you?”

He chuckled. “Sure, it’s the
halfway point.”

Without turning from the stove,
Abby said, “He’s not as dumb as he looks.”

Jeff smiled. “Ah, so this is some
kind of celebration breakfast?”

Gabe nodded. “Something like that.”

A couple minutes later Susan set a
platter on the table and they all took seats.

Jeff stared at it. “Uh,
Johnnycakes?”

Gabe grinned. “Very good. You
remembered.”

“Of course, it’s the state food of
Rhode Island. Trying to find ways of using up our stock of cornmeal are we?”

“Not exactly.” She picked up a
pancake turner and served Jeff a couple Johnnycakes and some scrambled eggs.
“Try one.”

The women stared at him. He glanced
around at each of them and frowned. “Why am I always the guinea pig?”

Abby gave him a smirk. “Because
you’re only the mission commander and, as such, redundant.”

He grinned and nodded. “Uh huh.” He
nervously took a bite. “Hmmm, not bad. Actually, quite tasty.”

Gabe smiled broadly.

“Ahem, is there something about
this dish that I don’t know about?”

“Yes,” said Gabe.

His eyebrows went up as he stared
at her. “What?”

“This is indigenous Martian food.”

“Huh?”

“The cornmeal was made from
homegrown corn.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No. Eat, and I’ll explain.”

Jeff shrugged. “Okay.”

The women served themselves and
began eating. Between bites, Gabe explained. “We took a dozen ears of corn from
our greenhouse crop, sliced off the kernels, dried them, and ground them into
cornmeal.”

“How?”

“Well, we set the kernels outside
for a couple days and let Mars suck the moisture out of them, then ground them
with the grinder and a meteorite. So it’s also pretty much whole-grain.”

He chuckled. “The grinder and a
meteorite?”

“Yes. I picked a meteorite off the
front walk and ground a channel in it with the grinder. Then we set the
grinding wheel to just barely clear the channel and setup a hopper and drop
tube to feed kernels into the channel. And out the other end came cornmeal…
more or less. We had to run it through a couple times to get the right
consistency.”

“I’ll be damned. Is this something
you learned at Caltech?”

“No. The concept has been around
for thousands of years. We just adapted it to our circumstances.”

Jeff shook his head. “Not quite as
difficult to live here as we thought, is it?”

“It takes some adaptation, but it
is doable.”

“Wait until you see what she has
planned for supper,” said Abby.

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“You’ll see. Hope you like eggplant
and Parmesan cheese.”

Monday, July 17, 2017

MSD 51026.885 (Sol
276)

Jeff pulled the hose from the LOX
transfer tank to the MAV-2 cryo plant, and connected it. Then stepped around to
the control panel. “Okay Sue, at this point all you have to do is punch the LOX
fuel button, and the plant will align for fueling. The MAV knows what’s in the
tanks, and will automatically align the manifold to fill the next available
tank.”

“Got it.”

“Then we go back over here to the
service tank and start the pump. The valve will open, the pump will start, and
when the tank’s empty the pump will shut down, and the valve will close. Then
just set the cryo plant back to RECIRC, disconnect the hose, screw on the dust
caps, then haul the thing back to the Sabatier, and make more LOX. And that’s
about all there is to it.”

“Alright, sounds simple enough. How
much more LOX do we need?”

“Oh, eight tons or so.”

“And we have enough time left to
make that much?”

“Yeah. We got kind of a slow start
owing to the dust storm, but we should have a couple months to spare. If NASA
had been doing this, they would have sent adequate tankage up two years ago and
started making all the necessary methane and LOX back then. But due to our
short schedule and limited launch vehicles it just wasn’t logistically
possible. But we’ll make it. We’ll be fine.”

#

Abby called out. “Hey Jeff? You
better come see this.”

He got up from the desk in his
room, entered the commons, and found her seated at the comm terminal. “What?”

“We’ve got at least a 20% dropout
rate in data packets from Earth. Owing to our compression scheme, text and data
are so garbled, it’s essentially unreadable.”

“So we’re there, huh?”

“It seems so.”

Mars would be in solar conjunction
– on the opposite side of the sun from Earth – in nine days, and unusually high
solar activity so close to their transmission line-of-sight was corrupting data
transmission in both directions. “Okay, well, a couple weeks of peace and
quiet.”

“Yeah.”

“Send an uncompressed plain text
message to Newport, UHF, in triplicate. Hopefully someone will be able to make
some sense of it.”

“Okay. What?”

“Everybody take a vacation. Talk to
you in a couple weeks.”

Saturday, August 5,
2017

MSD 51045.986 (Sol
295)

Gabe slowly and awkwardly started to get up from the
sofa. “I’ll be right back.” She rubbed her ballooned tummy. “There’s not much
room left in here for a bladder.”

They were all sitting in the
commons watching
Red Planet
.

Jeff gave her a helping hand. “Want
me to pause it?”

“No, go ahead, I’ve seen it. And I
still think they’d have a lot better radiation shielding on a ship that big,
advanced, and expensive.”

He grinned and shook his head.
“It’s a movie, Gabe, they had to have a plot. Artistic license.”

“Yeah, okay, so they were stupid.
In any case, that was
Sojourner
that they gutted to make their little
radio. So, if they landed that close to
Pathfinder
, what cliffs and
canyons are those? There’s nothing like that within 300 kilometers of that
site.”

Jeff shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe they
landed in a crater.”

“What crater? Does that look like a
crater? Besides, there isn’t one that big up there. And if they did, how’d they
get out? You see them roll down those huge cliffs when they land, and there are
obviously more below them because Santen falls off one. But you never see them
climbing back up. What’s that all about? Looks more like they landed in the
Valles Marineris. But that’s over 2,000 kilometers from
Pathfinder
.”

He chuckled and rolled his eyes.
“Didn’t you need to use the bathroom?” He pointed to the right. “It’s that
way.”

“Oh, yeah.” As she reached the
hatch, Gabe stopped and grimaced. “Oh, ouch.”

Abby groaned and jumped up. “I’ll
get it, I’m closest. God, it’s like having a demanding pet cat.” Reaching Gabe,
she began rubbing her lower back. “Better?”

“Yeah, thanks. Oh, that hurts.”

Susan glanced at her. “How long?”

Gabe looked at her watch. “Sixteen
minutes.”

“Great, you’re making progress.
Contractions getting a little stronger and longer?”

Gabe grimaced. “Yes, thank you very
much. How much longer?”

“Well, you went into labor about
three hours ago so, I dunno, five hours? Something like that.”

“Oh god,” she whimpered, “I’m
tired.”

“I know, but you’re doing fine.”

After about forty seconds Gabe sighed
and took a deep breath. “Ah, thanks. That’s good. Okay, I’ll be back in a
minute,” and she disappeared through the hatch.

“How’s she doing?” Jeff asked.

Susan smiled and nodded. “Great.
Textbook. She’s young, strong, fit. I don’t know who’s looking over us, but we
need to thank them.”

“That’s good news.”

“Yeah, very. Look, I know it’s
early but it’s liable to be a long night. If either of you think you can get a
little sleep, you might want to try. We can stay up with her in shifts. She’s
not likely to sleep much and she shouldn’t be lying down.”

Abby shook her head. “I’m good.”

Jeff nodded. “Me too.” He grinned.
“If folks on Earth knew what was going on here I doubt many of them would be
sleeping either.”

Abby laughed, “It’ll be a game
changer alright.”

“Yeah.”

Gabe returned to the commons and
headed for the sofa.

“No,” said Susan, “you’ve got to
start walking again.”

Gabe groaned. “But I’m tired.”

“I know. But gravity is what moves
this process along and we don’t have a whole lot of it here. It gets the baby
down into position and it’ll be faster and less painful.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that a
thousand times.”

“Now don’t exaggerate, I’m sure I
haven’t told you more than 900 times.”

Gabe rubbed her head and chuckled.

Jeff got up. “Come on, we’ve got
that nice track opened up for you in the greenhouse, I’ll walk with you.”

Gabe nodded. “Okay.”

As they started for the greenhouse
Abby called to Gabe, “Have you decided on a name yet?”

Gabe shook her head. “I thought I
had one an hour ago, but changed my mind. I just don’t know.”

“Uh huh. I can see the
announcements now: Jeff and Gabe announce the birth of their child… what’s its
name.”

Gabe sighed. “I’m working on it.”
As Jeff and Gabe stepped into the greenhouse, she said, “When I see our
daughter, I’ll know what her name is.”

“You’re still sure it’s a girl?”

“Uh huh. I don’t know how, but I
just know.”

As they begin walking around the
outer perimeter of the greenhouse Gabe shivered.

“Cold?”

“Yeah, a little.”

It was approaching 2300 local time,
mid-autumn, and the temperature outside was nearing -100ºF. The path around the
greenhouse was lit by LEDs but otherwise there was nothing but starlight and,
on this night, the dim light of Phobos and Deimos, both moons ascending.

Jeff put his arm around her. “I’ll
turn up the thermostat on our next pass.”

“Thanks.” She leaned her head on
his shoulder. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

“Um…” she gazed off into the
darkness, “… are you glad it was me?”

Jeff stopped in his tracks and
pulled Gabe around to him. “Yes. I thought you knew that.”

“I guess I just needed to hear it.”

Gabe suddenly gasped and grabbed
her rather large belly. “Oh… gosh.”

“Contraction?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Breathe.”

Gabe began breathing rapidly, in
though her nose, out through her mouth, and reset the stopwatch on her
Speedmaster.

Jeff gave her time to get past it,
then asked, “How long?”

“That one was nearly a minute. Wow,
that hurt.”

“How long since the last?”

“Uh, fifteen minutes. Oh boy,
they’re getting closer and stronger.”

Jeff smiled. “That’s the way it
works.”

“Yeah. Next time you do it.”

Jeff grinned. “I’ll take it under
advisement.”

Two hours later, Susan stood from
the exam table, pulled down Gabe’s nightgown, and patted her knee. “Okay, seven
centimeters. Go walk some more.”

Gabe groaned. “Oh, god, do I have
to? I’m tired.”

“Yes, you have to. You’ve been
progressing a little slowly. Friedman’s Curve says dilation should progress at
1.2 centimeters per hour for at least two hours. You’re averaging about 1.1
centimeters per hour, and our hour is a little longer than what Friedman’s
watch said. It’s progress, but a little slow. Go walk.”

Sunday, August 6,
2017

MSD 51046.195 (Sol
296)

“Come on Gabe, push!” said Susan.

Gabe was squatting naked on the
floor, panting. “I am pushing! Oh god!”

Jeff knelt behind Gabe, his arms
wrapped around her and breathing along with her. “Come on, push it out. You’re
almost there.”

“Aaaaagh!” Gabe screamed.

Susan cradled the newborn child
onto the floor. “Ah, there we go. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Gabe, utterly exhausted, collapsed
back into Jeff’s arms.

“Abby, mark the time and start your
stopwatch.”

Abby nodded, then handed Susan a
warm damp washcloth.

“Got it. Thanks.” She syringed the
child’s nostrils as it wailed, wiped it off a bit, and handed the newborn to
Gabe. “Gabriel, here’s your little girl. Hold her close and bond for a while.”

Gabe took the child and held her to
her bosom.

Jeff peered over Gabe’s shoulder.
“Was it worth it?”

She stared at her child and nodded,
tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever
seen.” Then, looking up at Jeff, “Thank you.”

Jeff kissed her forehead and
wrapped his arms around both of them.

Abby threw a couple light blankets
she’d warmed in the clothes dryer over Gabe and her baby.

Susan sat back on the floor, took a
deep breath then turned to Abby, smiled, and gave her a thumb up. “Did you get
the time?”

Abby grinned and nodded. “Yeah.
3:41, on the dot.”