Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (25 page)

“13.8 minutes,” said Gabe.

Chrissie shook her head and
muttered, “How does she do that?”

Jeff glanced at Gabe and smiled.

She shrugged.

“I hope the MRO is still working
when we’re up there, or some replacement. Otherwise, we may have to put our own
eyes in orbit.”

“I wouldn’t count on the MRO for
much longer,” said Gabe. “It was designed for a two-year mission, it’s already
been up there for six.”

“How far is the MSL landing site
from where we’re going?” said Susan.

“Oh, about as far away as you can
get and still be on Mars,” said Jeff. “It’s on the other side of the planet.
Here, I’ll show you. Chrissie, give me a split screen and bring up that USGS
Mars regional map, the pdf one.”

“Okay, just a second.”

“Our landing site in the
Margaritifer Basin is roughly 14
°
South, 338.3
°
East. The MSL is headed
for a spot in Gale Crater at around 5.4
°
South, 137.8
°
East. That’s about, um, I
dunno…” He glanced at Gabe.

“East or west?” said Gabe.

“How about the short route.”

Gabe thought for a moment. “Um,
5,875 miles east, give or take.”

Susan stared at her. “As Chrissie
said, how
do
you do that?”

Gabe shrugged. “59.275 kilometers
per degree at the equator, some simple geometry, and convert to miles.”

“Yes, I understand the math, but how
do you do it in your head? Algorithms?”

“No. I’m not what’s commonly known
as a ‘human calculator’. They use algorithms to perform a simple set of math
functions: multiplication, squares, factoring, that kind of thing. That can, to
some extent, be learned. I do it a little differently. I have two mental tools
– a slide rule and a chalkboard – both of which I can visualize and manipulate.
I do most things with the slide rule. More complex math, like calculus, I do on
the chalkboard.”

Susan bit her lip. “Um, but you
just came up with a solution with four significant digits. Aren’t slide rules
only good up to three?”

Gabe nodded. “The one I see has
about twice the resolution. I can usually get up to six significant digits
fairly easily.”

Susan’s eyes popped wide. “Good
grief! How complex an equation can you solve?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t found a
limit yet. I can solve repetitive iterations of complex quadratic polynomials,
like Mandelbrot sets.” She shrugged. “But at some point I get bored with it and
just stop.”

“And you can remember it all as you
go?”

“Uh huh.”

Susan smiled and shook her head.
“That’s incredible. What’s your IQ?”

Gabe shrugged and smiled
sheepishly. “I don’t know. Over 200.”

Susan’s jaw dropped. “And you have
eidetic memory?”

“Yes. I store things as sensory
images, mostly visual, or as text, depending on what it is.”

“And total recall?”

“Well, yes and no. I can recall
anything I’ve, um, stored in memory, but I don’t remember everything. I only
remember things that are important to me. But I usually need a fairly specific
set of search parameters to pull something out of long-term memory.” She
grinned and tapped her head. “There’s a lot in here to search.”

“I can imagine. May I ask you a
little more personal question?”

Gabe frowned. “I guess.”

“What do you dream about?”

She shook her head. “Huh? What do
you mean?”

“When you sleep, what’s in your
dreams?”

“I don’t know. I never remember my
dreams. I don’t know that I do dream.”

Susan nodded. “It’s been suggested
that a possible function of dreams is to remove junk memories and consolidate
others. If that hypothesis is correct, maybe you don’t dream. Maybe that’s why
you remember so much.”

Gabe shrugged. “I’d never thought
of that.”

“Have you ever been fully assessed?

“Assessed?”

“Yes, your intellectual abilities…
by a psychologist.”

Gabe bit her lip and stared at the
floor for a moment, then nodded slowly and whispered, “A long time ago.”

“Is this the one?” said Chrissie.

Jeff glanced at the screen. “Yeah,
Chrissie, that’s it.” Saved by the bell. “Okay, enlarge it to full screen
width.”

“Like that?”

“That’s good.” He pulled a laser
pointer from his pocket and pointed at the screen. “Okay, Sue, you see our site
in the Basin there?”

“Yes.”

Gabe stood frowning at the floor
for a moment longer, then left the room.

“Alright, way over here on the
other side of the world, on the edge of the Elysium Planitia, is Gale Crater.”

Susan nodded, “Okay, yes, I see
it.”

“That’s where the MSL is headed.
Chrissie, go into that folder and open up MC-23, Aeolis.”

“Okay, just a minute.”

Jeff leaned toward Susan and spoke
softly. “Um, Gabe is… complicated. I’d ask that you hold off on the
psychoanalysis until you get to know her a little better.”

Susan nodded. “I’m sorry, I got
carried away. She is just so fascinating.”

“Yeah, but she’s not a lab rat. And
she’s fragile, tread lightly.”

“You do know that she may not be
entirely stable?”

“Yeah, I know. But she may well
have the finest mind on this planet. That’s an asset I’m willing to pay a lot
for.”

Susan smiled apologetically. “Good
point.”

“Here it is,” said Chrissie.

“Good. Okay, enlarge to 100% and
center on the upper left-hand corner. Good. Alright, there’s Gale, just
southwest of the Aeolis Mensae. Chrissie, there’s a JPEG topo map of it in that
folder called Gale MSL site.”

“This?”

“Yeah. Sue, the ellipse in the
northwest corner is where the MSL is headed. The mountainous area in the center
rises about three miles above the crater floor. The MSL site displays some
pretty strong evidence of water activity sometime in the past: water-carved
channels, an alluvial fan, layering, weathered clay deposits called
phyllosilicates, and sulfates.”

“Huh. How big is the crater?”

“Oh, about 95 miles across.
Chrissie, there’s a png THEMIS image in there.”

“Okay, just a second.”

Jeff turned back to Susan, “THEMIS
is the thermal camera on the Mars Odyssey Orbiter.”

“Is this it?” Chrissie asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Is that how it really looks?”
Susan asked.

“No, that’s a false-color image
made from a composite mosaic of day and night thermal images. Different types
of surface material – regolith – and features retain and lose heat at different
rates. In this image, the blue and white would indicate fine materials, like
sand, that lose heat quickly. Stuff like rocks, gravel and sedimentary layering
that lose heat more slowly are shown in yellow, red and brown.”

“So that’s how you tell what the
surface is like?”

“One way. Chrissie, in the
Margaritifer Basin folder there’s a jpeg file, THEMIS2, bring that up in the
other window, if you would, please.”

“Okay… here you go.”

“Thanks. Alright, Sue, recognize
that?”
            “Oh, wow, our landing site. And look at the Morava Vallis and the
big crater southeast. Is that clay sediment?”

“Maybe. Kind of looks like it ought
to belong there, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s just part of what
makes the Margaritifer Basin so interesting, at least to me.”

Gabe returned with a plateful of
crackers, cheese, and summer sausage. “I suddenly got hungry.”

“Gabe, didn’t I hear you say you
did some work on the MSL?” said Susan.

“Yes, some volunteer work at JPL.”

“What did you do?”

“Checked the checkers.”

“Huh?”

“Double checked the math of
somebody that was double checking the math of somebody that was, well, you get
the picture.”

“Isn’t that all done with
computers?”

“Yes, but the computer is only as
reliable as the human that’s programming it; the old ‘garbage in, garbage out’
syndrome. On the Mars Climate Orbiter somebody mixed up pound-force and newtons
and… splat.”

“Who’s going to be checking our
checkers? I’m no math wizard and, just for the record, ‘splat’ doesn’t appeal
to me.”

Jeff grinned. “Gabe has plenty of
contacts at MIT and Caltech. The plan is eventually to recruit a cadre of
volunteer grad students – budding young math, physics and engineering wizards –
that wouldn’t mind noting on their resumes that they were part of the project.”

Jeff walked over to one of the
sofas and took a seat. “Chrissie, let’s have those Viking images again.” Gabe
and Susan followed and sat beside him.

“Coming right up.”

He gazed at the image. “Ah,
wintertime at the south pole.”

Gabe put a slice of sausage and a
chunk of Brie on a Triscuit and offered it to Jeff. “A lot of snow and ice.”

“Thanks. Yeah, so much for global
warming.”

“That was 36 years ago, ten years
before I was born. How old were you then?”

“Um, thirteen.”

“It must have been really
exciting.”

“It was. For days it was about all
we talked about in school.” He downed the snack, leaned back and closed his
eyes. A moment later he felt his coffee cup being taken from his hand and
looked up with a start.

“You dozed off, I didn’t want you
to spill it,” Gabe said.

Jeff rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. A
little tired.”

“Go ahead and sleep, I’ll wake you
in plenty of time, there won’t be much happening before cruise stage
separation.”

“No, I’m fine.”

Jeff yawned, sat back, and closed
his eyes again.

“It’s time.” Gabe said, while
shaking Jeff gently.

“Huh? What?” He ran his hand over
his face, “Damn. How long was I asleep?”

She smiled. “About two hours. Here,
fresh coffee.”

“Thanks. Guess I’m not very good
company at this hour.”

“Validation of that hypothesis may
require further experimentation.” She grinned.

Jeff chuckled. “Uh, yeah. Where are
we?”

Gabe nodded toward the screen.
“This is the live feed from JPL’s MSL Mission Control Center, though of course
they’re only relaying information as they receive it, so everything they say
happened fourteen minutes ago. The MSL should be right about at entry
interface, just about seven minutes from touchdown. We should know how cruise
stage sep went in about five minutes. They passed out the peanuts a few minutes
ago.”

“JPL and their damn peanuts. Did
you ever get any?”

“No, nothing much happened while I
was there.”

“Well, if they pull this off
tonight, I’ll buy you a jar of peanuts.”

Gabe grinned.

“What do you think the odds are it
will land in a small, steep-walled crater that it can’t get out of?”

Gabe laughed and shook her head,
“Don’t even think that. JPL would have to remove all sharp objects from the
building.”

“When will we see a HiRISE image of
the landing site?” Chrissie asked.

“If they get one, a couple weeks,”
said Gabe.

“A couple
weeks
?!”

“Yeah. Fifteen minutes to transmit the image to
Earth, a couple hours for the Deep Space Network to send it over to JPL,
another hour for it to reach HiROC, the HiRISE Operations Center, a couple
hours for them to process it, a week for the MRO position data to be
constructed, another couple hours of image processing and, if they feel like
it, they’ll post it on the HiRISE web site the following Wednesday.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. On the other hand, if they are
really curious and want to work through the night, we could see one tomorrow.”

“Will MSL images take that long?”

“Probably not. At least, not today.
As I said, we should probably see Hazcam images right away. JPL will be
understandably curious, though they will probably just be a couple thumbnails.”

“So when will we know if it
actually made it?”

“About twenty minutes, give or
take.”

They all focused on the countdown
clock in the corner of the screen.

JPL PAO: “Cruise stage separation.”
There was a big cheer from the JPL MCC.

Jeff smiled. “Well, that’s a step
in the right direction.”

At one minute forty seconds Gabe
said, “Chute deployment. 6,500 meters AGL. That’s ‘Above Ground Level,’
Chrissie.”

The clocked ticked down to 78
seconds. “Heat shield jettison, ground radar activation. 4,300 meters to go.”

40 seconds. “1,000 meters, chute
and backshell jett. Descent stage motors should be firing.”

14 seconds. “Hovering at 35 meters.
Skycrane lowering the lander.”

The clock stopped at 0:00:00.
“Touchdown.” She turned, looked at Jeff, and shrugged. “One way or another.”
Then she smiled. “Fourteen minutes and we’ll know if it’s alive, or just
another crater-full of manmade junk.”

Susan turned to her. “I sure wish
you’d stop talking about things landing on Mars and craters in the same
sentence. You make me nervous.”

Gabe grinned at her. “Occupational
hazard.”

Susan groaned.

Gabe turned back to Jeff. “Given
any thought to what we’ll do if it doesn’t work?”

Jeff shook his head. “Nope. But I
suppose some serious soul searching might be in order.”

Gabe nodded. “Yeah.”

The next seven minutes passed like
an eternity

JPL PAO: “We are beginning to feel
the atmosphere as we go in here.”

“Entry interface,” said Gabe.

Jeff nodded.

JPL PAO: “It is being reported that
we’re seeing gs on the order of 11, 12, or 13.”

“That’s encouraging,” said Gabe. “I
thought it would be closer to 15.”

They all watched silently for four
and a half minutes while the JPL MCC crew seemed to hold their breath.

JPL PAO: “Parachute is deployed.”

Another huge cheer arose at JPL.