Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (90 page)

They gathered around and started
removing the airbags.

“Oh great,” said Abby, “it’s upside
down.”

Jeff harrumphed. “Figures. Okay,
Sue, you want to get in
Amos
and back him up to this so we can get the
winch on it?”

“Okay.”

Genesis’ wheeled undercarriage, airlock, and an
assortment of other items were all packed in an eight-foot by eight-foot
utility trailer that now lay wheels-up in the Martian sand. Susan turned
Amos
around and backed him to a position about twelve feet from the trailer.

“Okay, that’s good,” said Jeff.
“Set the brakes.” He walked to the rear of
Amos
, pulled out the winch
cable, and attached it to an I-pad on the side of the trailer. “Gabe, what’s
this thing weigh up here?”

“217 pounds.”

“Ugh. Okay, Sue, the three of us
will lift on this side and you – slowly – winch it up.”

“Got it.”

“When it’s on its side, stop.”

“Okay.”

They lifted and winched the trailer
up onto its side, then the three of them moved around to the other side.

“Alright, Sue, just pull it enough
to tip it, and we’ll lower it the rest of the way.”

“Okay, ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Here it comes.”

They gently lowered the trailer
onto its wheels.

“Excellent.” Jeff wound and secured
the winch cable and folded the trailer hitch down while Susan backed up to it.
Once hitched, they returned to the Genesis. “Alright, everybody out, let’s
unload.”

The tubular longitudinal frame of
the undercarriage was collapsed to fit in the trailer. They pulled it out, set
it alongside the Genesis, and extended it. Each of the wheels could be rotated
90º, and were currently aligned perpendicular to the main axis. Once extended,
they jockeyed the undercarriage beneath the Genesis then, using screw jacks
atop the landing A-frames, lowered the Genesis onto its mounts on the
undercarriage, and bolted it in place. Then they raised it again, turned the
wheels to their normal position, lowered it back to the ground, and removed the
A-frames. Then they hoisted the airlock into place and bolted it to the Genesis
aft docking collar.

Abby leaned back against Amos’.
“That was easier than it was on Earth.”

“It weighs a lot less,” said Gabe.
“By the way, Jeff, we’ve only got about 70 minutes of air left.”

“Yeah, I was just looking at that.
Um, why don’t you tell
Andy
to get his butt up here, then you and Sue
hop in
Amos
and take the trailer and go get the hab’s airlock. Abby and
I can finish installing the tanks. Connect to
Amos
’ O
₂
and
water reserve tanks if you need to.”

“Right.”

Gabe and Susan headed off down
Columbus drop line while Jeff and Abby installed half a dozen empty tanks on
the Genesis undercarriage and hooked them up. When
Andy
arrived, he
immediately backed up to the Genesis hitch and latched on.

“Abby, I’m just about redline on O
₂
, how
are you doing?”

“About the same.”

“Alright, let’s get in
Andy
and replenish.”

“Okay by me.”

When the PLSS oxygen tank was
exhausted, they could activate the Oxygen Purge System, OPS, that would provide
them with an additional 15 minutes of oxygen, but they preferred not to do that
unless absolutely necessary. The rover’s spare O
₂
and water tanks
could supply them for another eight hours, but only while connected. The Mark
III suit PLSS design could only be recharged with about one hour’s supply while
they were wearing it. To fully recharge, the PLSS had to be disconnected from
the suit.

They climbed into
Andy
and
hooked up.

“Ah, fresh air,” said Abby.

“Yeah, didn’t expect to get quite this low while we
were doing this.”

“Uh huh, and we’re not done yet.”

“Jeff,” said Gabe, “we’ve got the
airlock and we’re on our way back. Did
Andy
get there?”

“Yeah, we’re sitting in him right now, hooked up. We
were about empty.”

“Us too. We should be there in a
couple minutes.”

“Okay. I don’t think we’re gonna
wait for you. We’re just gonna head on down to the Sabatier, charge tanks and
inflate. That okay?”

“Fine, we’ll meet you there.”

“Roger that. On our way.” He
pointed south. “Abby, the Sabatier’s that way.”

“Rog.” She started
Andy
’s
engine, grabbed the joystick, pulled forward and turned south. “Hey, I’m
driving on Mars! Hee, hee, hee. Off-road racers of the world, eat your hearts
out.”

“Well, Ms. Parnelli Jones, while
you’re enjoying yourself, why don’t you find our broke-down kitchen module and
let’s have a look at it while we’re in the neighborhood?”

“Roger.” She selected the module on
Andy
’s computer search grid and punched GOTO.

Five minutes later, she pointed ahead of them.
“There it is,” and two minutes later she pulled up alongside the habitat
module.

Jeff looked down at the broken wheel. “Ugh. That
looks worse than the pictures. Broken wheel and wedged down between two rocks
that are too high to jack it over. Aye che’mama.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not at the moment. Sue, you copy?”

“Yes.”

“Would you and Gabe stop by this
train wreck and grab some pictures, and we’ll put the brain trust at Newport to
work?”

“Sure.”

Abby groaned. “Boss, you know
that’s our kitchen. If we can’t get it out of there I think we may have a wee
little problem.”

“Oh, we’ll get it out of there, one
way or another. We’ll just need to come up with a plan. Onward.”

Twenty minutes later Abby pulled up
alongside the Sabatier reactor and a collection of storage tanks on wheels, all
connected by hoses to a manifold on the reactor.

“Alright,” said Jeff, “let’s move like we have a
purpose, I’m dying to get out of this suit. The N
₂
tank is already
full, so all we need is water, LOX, and LH
₂
. We can fill the CO tank
later.”

“Roger.”

They connected the storage tank service hoses to the
three tanks in the Genesis undercarriage. “Alright, Ethel, fill ‘em up.”

“You know, if my mother had named me Ethel, as soon
as I was old enough I would’ve beat the crap out of her.”

Jeff laughed. “I wouldn’t blame you. Hit it.”

“Here it comes.” She punched three buttons on the
control panel activating pumps that filled the tanks. While the tanks were
filling, Gabe and Susan arrived.

“How’s it going?” said Gabe.

“Just about there.” At 90% capacity Abby shutdown
the pumps. “Okay, that’s it.”

“Rog,” said Jeff. “Hang on.” He closed the supply
valves on the Genesis tanks, opened an electrical box on the undercarriage and
punched a button labeled INFLATE. The control valve on the LN
₂
tank
opened, and the module immediately began to expand.

“Whoa, cool,” said Abby.

“Cool is right,” said Gabe. “It’s going to be
freezing in there.”

“Heaters are on,” said Jeff. “It’ll be tolerable.”

“Define, ‘tolerable,’” said Susan.

“What he means,” said Gabe, “is your flesh won’t
freeze upon contact with the atmosphere.”

“Oh, well that’s comforting.”

Seven minutes later when the module was fully
inflated at 7.2 psi, the LN
₂
valve closed, and the LOX valve opened.
And three minutes thereafter the Genesis was completely pressurized at 10.3 psi
with a 70-30 mix of nitrogen and oxygen.

“That’s it,” said Jeff. “Abby, top off the LOX tank
and let’s get on with it.”

“Roger.” She topped off the LOX tank, and drained
the hoses with gas from the Sabatier’s purge tanks.

They disconnected the hoses and capped the
connections.

“Okay,” said Jeff, “Abby, Sue, inside. And don’t
dilly dally.”

“We’ve got a lot of dust on us,”
said Susan. “Like it or not, this may take a while.”

“Understood, just get on with it.
Gabe and I will have a look around.” While Abby and Susan climbed into the
airlock, Jeff and Gabe wandered out into the flat, twenty meters or so south of
the Sabatier and the line of eight habitat modules that had been staged by
Amos
and
Andy
. The area was covered with rover tracks, evidence of
Amos
’
and
Andy
’s surveys. “What do you think of this site?”

“It looks fine, just like it looked
in the images. Flat, level, sandy, few rocks, no craters, and plenty big
enough.” She glanced around. “Not much of a view.”

“Does it matter? We don’t have any
windows.”

“No, I suppose not. Look,” she
pointed south-southeast, “see the peaks on the horizon?”

“Yeah. Those are the ones southeast
of the crater?”

“Yes.”

“Where you want to relocate
Pathfinder
to?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, we definitely have
line-of-sight from here.”

“They’re nearly a thousand meters
above us. With but a couple of small blind spots, a relay up there should give
us full comm coverage for at least a hundred kilometers in every direction.”

“That would be a nice backup for
direct comms with the orbiter.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, while we’re waiting,
shall we have a look around the trailer? Make sure everything is as it should
be?”

“Sure.”

The ‘trailer’ was essentially a
modified Bigelow Aerospace Genesis II module – a miniature version of the
Sundancer – on wheels, with a tow bar that could mate with the hitch on either
of the rovers. On Earth the 18.4-foot-long 8.3-foot-diameter module, including
the airlock and undercarriage, weighed 3,160 pounds, vastly exceeding the
rover’s towing capacity, but on Mars it only weighed 1,200 pounds. They had
reduced the Genesis II’s weight considerably, and gained a small amount of
interior space, by eliminating roughly one-quarter of the outer shell layers,
as the module was designed to operate in Mars thin atmosphere, not in the void
of space. Still, at 470 cubic feet, the trailer’s interior volume was only
about seven percent that of the Sundancer, of which the central truss consumed
almost one-third. It was cozy, and with all four of them inside, very cozy.

Most of the trailer’s power came
from an array of solar cells imbedded in the outer layer of the shell, and
covering the upper half of the module. Rechargeable batteries were located in
the truss. A Boeing-built plutonium-powered “Multi-Mission Radioisotope
Thermoelectric Generator” or MMRTG, identical to that on the MSL and located
under the airlock floor, provided emergency power and supplemental cabin heat.
But though its anticipated service life was in excess of 15 years, the MMRTG
only produced 125 watts of electricity, barely enough to power an incandescent
light bulb. Suspended within the undercarriage were tanks containing water,
oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, waste discharge, spare fuel for the rover, and a
compact Sabatier reactor to scrub exhaled CO
₂
from the atmosphere.

The Genesis had its own unified
microwave communication subsystem and navigation suite, including an S/K
_a
-band
high-gain dish antenna, four flush-mounted S-band omnidirectional antennas and
four VHF scimitar omnidirectional antennas located in pairs on the four corners
of the module. When connected, an umbilical provided access to the rover’s
communication, navigation, video, and command and control systems as well. In
the absence of GPS, surface navigation was conducted utilizing a combination of
ranging with transponders and the S-band system and high-gain antenna look
angles, including those on the
Pathfinder
orbiter in geostationary orbit
10,583 miles above Mars’ surface. Once the station and relay communications
suites were in place, the location of the Genesis trailer and rovers could be
accurately fixed at any given time to within 15 meters.

When suited up, the crew’s ground
communications were entirely VHF, but were relayed via S- or K
_a
-band
from the rovers, Genesis, or the station. Comms with Earth could be direct, via
the high-gain antennas, or relayed via the orbiter, offset 60º west of their
location, thus providing virtually constant communications with Earth, albeit
with a 20 to 45 minute round-trip delay depending on the distance between the
planets. Their only anticipated complete communications blackout with Earth
would occur in nine months when Mars was in solar conjunction, and behind the
sun. The blackout would last about three weeks, though in an emergency a relay
via one of several deep space satellites might be possible.

Jeff ran his gloved hand along the
side of the outer shell and looked at the streaks. “Not much dust.”

“No, the shell’s pretty
aerodynamic; the wind should keep it reasonably clean, though the undercarriage
is already pretty dirty.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem, we
anticipated that.”

“Uh huh.”

“All in all, looks pretty good.”

“Yeah.”

Jeff knocked on the side of the
airlock. “Abby, Sue, how you guys doing in there?”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Abby,
“we’re getting there. We’ve got most of the dust and sand collected. The vacuum
works pretty good, but once you’re inside we’ll probably need to do some
additional cleanup. We’re getting out of our suits now, but as you know it’s
really cramped in here.”

 “Rog. Take your time.”

“Probably another 20 or 30 minutes.
This is taking longer than it did in the sim.”

“Okay. Well, Gabe and I are gonna
get started on siting the hab.” He turned to Gabe. “Okay with you?”

“Sure.”

“Alright. Why don’t you take
Amos
and run on over and grab the suit room, and we’ll get it sited.”

“Okay.”

Jeff walked to the southeast corner
of the station site and picked a spot for the first of their habitat modules. All
the rest would be sited relative to it. As Mars had no magnetic poles, magnetic
compasses were useless. Thus
Amos
and
Andy
used geographic
features in conjunction with the USGS maps derived from Viking mission imagery
to determine true north. The station would be sited on a true north-south axis
so the solar cells on the roof of each hab module – which could only be tilted,
but not rotated – could maximize usage of the sun angle at local apparent noon;
on that day, 12:05:48 and 6.9º south.