Keystone (15 page)

There was more to the Mars
Landing Pod than first met the eye. It had been motionless on the surface of
Mars for over three hours, and the dust had finally settled in the thin air,
when the top half began to move upwards.

Looking like
two soup bowls placed one on top of the other, the thirty-foot wide MLP had
caught the imagination of the public on Earth as the closest thing yet to a
Flying Saucer
. They had quickly
overlooked the fact that it could not possibly fly; floating down to the ground
suspended by parachutes was the best it could do. They had also overlooked the
fact that it would only look like a flying saucer for a short time once on
Mars.

As the top
half of the MLP began to separate from the bottom, which remained firmly on the
ground, a thin rubber-like membrane extended in the increasing gap in-between.
The top continued to lift until the MLP stood fourteen feet high.
 
The flat rubber walls shook for several
minutes, and then stopped as they became taught.

Deployment of
the MLP had been completed.

Inside,
Captain Montreaux wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I don’t care what the
mission planners say; even at a third of Earth gravity it’s still damn heavy!”

“I didn’t
think the support on this side would click for a moment,” Jane laughed. She was
standing next to the newly extended rubber wall of the MLP. In the gap between
the bottom and top halves they had placed a series of titanium supports, about
an inch thick, each slotted neatly into two small holes at the top and bottom.
“I haven’t had
this
much fun since I
last went camping!”

“I agree, it
is a bit like a hugely expensive and advanced camper van, isn’t it?” Montreaux
laughed.

“I think you
two should see this,” Danny Marchenko said quietly from the other side of the
MLP.
 

Fully
deployed, the vastness of the MLP was striking. It was larger than the average
one bedroom apartment, at thirty-feet in diameter and with ten feet of internal
height.
 
It was difficult to believe that
they were on Mars.

They looked
over to Danny, who had his head pressed against a transparent segment of the
rubber wall.
 
The six windows had been
placed at regular twelve feet intervals along the MLP’s circumference, and they
each went to the closest one.

Outside lay the
cool grey dawn of a Martian sol. A slight orange hue from the soil was the only
sign that they were on the Red Planet and not in Arizona, USA. On the horizon,
light wispy clouds of dust drifted gently from left to right, the tail end of
the storm they had been waiting out.

The fantastic
reality of their situation hit them simultaneously, affecting them all
differently.
 
For his part, while the
Russian and the scientist celebrated behind him, Captain Yves Montreaux could
not help himself from shedding a silent tear. Despite his excitement, the
fulfilment of a life-long dream of visiting Mars, the only thought in his head
was of Su Ning, and the secret she had taken with her.

It took them
two hours to assemble the airlock. It was in kit form, and they had fun putting
it together and arguing over which bits should go where. It had all been good
natured arguing, as they were all fully trained in how to assemble the vitally
important apparatus.

Despite his
initial emotions, it had not taken Montreaux long to be caught up in the
moment. They had landed on Mars successfully, and were preparing for their
first Extra Vehicular Activity, or EVA.

Their landing
had been incredibly well executed by the on-board computer: Jane had already
noted that within fifty metres of her window she could see a small metal crate,
the deflated airbags that had protected it on its descent just visible in the
layer of dust and sand that covered everything around them. Danny commented
that being so close to the previous drops could be interpreted as very poor
landing; a bit to the left and they would have landed right on top of the metal
crates. Not only would it have been inaccessible to them, but the damage to the
MLP could have been catastrophic.

Their first
directive during their EVA would be to perform an exterior status check of the
MLP, followed by a quick reconnaissance of their surrounding area. The crate
seemed like a perfect place to start.

“There, all
done,” Danny declared triumphantly.

The airlock
stood six feet tall and five feet wide, to one side of the interior of the MLP.
A large round door gave entry to the airtight chamber inside, which could be
seen through two small windows. The status of anyone inside the airlock could
be visually monitored from there. The sides of the MLP were pre-equipped with
three ready-made hatches, one of which the airlock had been placed against. It
had been designed so that it could be placed on any side of the MLP, an
important contingency in the event that they should incur any damage on
landing, or land next to an immovable object, such as a boulder or cliff. The
outer door of the airlock lay flush with the rubber wall of the MLP. Opening
the door for the first time would pierce that thin membrane and lead on to the
Martian surface.

“OK, I think
that it needs a road test!” Jane said.

Montreaux was
already putting his EVA suit on. “Is everyone alright with the mission plan?” he
asked as he zipped and sealed his left boot.

Danny and Jane
looked at each other and smiled. “Absolutely, Captain,” they said in unison.

The Russian
sat down on a small bench next to where his EVA suit had been put, hanging from
the wall lifelessly. He unhooked it from the wall and started to unzip the
front of the jacket and trouser combination, ready to step into it. “I will
follow you once you give the OK.”

“And I will
stay here like a lemon and make sure that you are both having as much fun as
possible!” Jane said, pretending to be hurt.

Montreaux had
finished sealing his boots, and the scientist helped him with his gloves.
 
The atmosphere of Mars, and similar pressure
to Earth, had meant that their EVA suits could be designed very differently
from traditional suits used on the Moon and International Space Station.
Consequently, they looked more like divers than astronauts, the skin of the suits
hugging their bodies closely.
 
This also
improved their effectiveness during EVAs. Although it was not encouraged, it
had been possible during testing to run at quite some speed in the suits, and
the close-fitting gloves even made it possible to grip certain types of pen or
computer stylus and write with a degree of accuracy.

He stood up
and walked over to the airlock gingerly. His helmet was sealed, but the inbuilt
two-way radio system routed his voice through to the MLP’s speakers.

“OK, can you
hear me?” he asked.

“Ouch! Way too
loud!” she replied.

“At least when
you’re
out there, Jane, we will be
able to turn you down for once!” Danny joked from behind her as he prepared to
fit his head snugly into his helmet.

She shot him a
grin and prepared Montreaux for his EVA. She sprayed an aerosol solution over
the tight skin of his suit to check for leaks, before turning him around and
double checking his regulators.

“You’re all
set,” she gave him the ‘OK’ signal by making a circle with her index finger and
thumb and waving it in front of his visor.

Montreaux
returned the gesture and turned towards the door.

Entering the
airlock, he looked around. There were two small benches, one on each side. On
his left was the door he had just come through, leading into the MLP, on his
right, the hatch that led to the never-before-walked-on surface of Mars.

For some
reason he didn’t feel nervous.

He looked up
at the window in the wall and saw Jane looking down at him. Every few seconds
she checked a reading in front of her before repeating the OK gesture. Each
time he replied in kind. Suddenly, Danny’s head appeared in the window next to
her, in an EVA helmet. There was a huge grin on his face.
 
Montreaux gave the OK sign with both hands to
him, and he waved back.

Inside the
airlock, he could see two lights, one red and one green. The red light was on,
telling him it was not yet safe to open the hatch.

“How are you
doing?” Jane’s voice came through the headphones in his helmet.

“Fine, a
little cold, but I’m sure it’ll get warmer,” he replied.

Danny’s laugh
echoed loudly in his ears. “Oh, yeah, I hear it’s real sunbathing weather out
there: minus forty degrees Celsius. Get me some ice cream!”

Montreaux was
about to reply when the green light came on. He checked his forearm, where a
small OLED panel gave him vital statistics on his suit and the surrounding
atmosphere. It also let him control heat, airflow, lights and a video camera
mounted in his helmet. “How’s the video feed?” he asked.

“Crystal
clear!” Jane replied.

Looking up at
the faces in the window, he gave the OK signal one last time. “Here goes!” he
said. Turning towards the hatch, he took a deep breath and reached for the
handle, a recessed metal rod that lay vertically at its centre. He gripped it
with both hands and turned it a full ninety degrees anticlockwise. He was
rewarded with a dull clunk as the locks along all four edges of the hatch
disengaged. He pushed gently on the metal and felt the outer wall of the MLP
give as the hatch tore through it precisely. The hatch swung open slowly.

He fancied he
could feel the cold Martian breeze against his shins as he crouched down to fit
through the low opening. Ducking his head, he fixed the small ladder from the
inside of the airlock to the outside of the MLP, and stepped out. He descended
cautiously, and landed his left foot with a crunch, sinking several centimetres
into the dust and grit. His right foot followed, and he was standing outside
the landing craft. Turning round, he gently closed the hatch using the external
handle. He took a step back.

He was
standing on Mars.

He had
practised this moment all of his life, in his head. He had always imagined that
he would walk on the surface of Mars and say something monumental, something to
rival Armstrong’s immortal words of 1969, almost a century earlier. An icon for
a new generation: a symbol of hope.

He had
practised his speech so many times that in that instant, as he took several
further steps out onto the Martian plain, he completely forgot to say anything.

After a long
minute, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at the sky. Not red, as his
ancestors had believed, but blue and grey, like a winter’s morning on Earth.
And then it came back to him, the first words that he knew everyone on Earth
had been waiting for.

Over the past
couple of weeks, he had played the scene over and over in his mind. Maybe he
would use this chance, this opportunity to call for help, to denounce Su Ning’s
murder. It would be a heroic gesture, for sure, and certainly foolish: he had
no way of guaranteeing his words would ever reach Earth. His pre-written
walking-on-Mars proclamation, chosen for him by a panel of experts and mission
planners, was now long forgotten. He would instead use this one moment to show
his defiance by not using NASA’s words, but a mixture of his own and those of a
twentieth century American writer.

“Earth, this
is Captains Yves Montreaux and Dannil Marchenko, and Dr Jane Richardson of the
spaceship
Clarke,
” he said to the
eight billion people he hoped were listening across the gulf of space. His
breathing was all over the place with emotion as he spoke from the confines of
his suit’s helmet.
He looked out over
the Martian plain before him, and then let his eyes return to the sky, towards
home.

“We are calling from Mars, where our wonder
has indeed been renewed; space travel has again made children of us all.”

Martín reached for the small
radio clock on his bedside table and held it a few centimetres from his face.
Squinting at the display for a few moments he let his head fall back on the
pillow and groaned.
 

Almost seven
o’clock; he was late.

He swung his
legs over the edge of the mattress and pushed himself upwards, away from the
tempting warmth of the sheets.
 

“What time is
it?”

He jumped and
shot a look over his shoulder. Seeing Jacqueline’s head emerging from under the
duvet on the other side of the bed, the night’s events started coming back to
him. “Late,” he managed to say.

Bringing his
hands to his head, he rubbed his face with his palms and tried to piece things
together. They had been drinking, he remembered, until the early hours. What
had they been celebrating?
 
The Mars
landing? Captain Montreaux’s unexpected quote? Jacqueline’s plan to use
Beagle 4
to spy on the mission? That and
a whole lot more.

“Is everything
alright?” he heard her say worriedly behind him.
 
He could imagine the look on her face. They
were in his flat, after their first night together. It was clear that she liked
him. How would he feel in her position? He still hadn’t even looked at her
properly!
 

“Martín, are
you OK?”

Everything
felt alright, aside from the obvious hangover.
 
He’d been here before, with others, but this was different. They would
both be late for work, but somehow that didn’t matter anymore.
 
He lay back down in bed and brought the duvet
up over his shoulder.
 
Turning towards
her, he found her arm under the covers, held it with his hand and smiled,
looking her directly in the eyes.

“Perfect,” he
said, relaxing as she melted into his embrace. “Everything is perfect.”

After weeks of
zero gravity and little activity save for the treadmills and dumbbells, NASA
had little requirement to tell the crew of the
Clarke
to start work straight away. The greatest barrier of all had
been getting used to the gravity of Mars. Although only a third of that
experienced on Earth, it was infinitely more than they had felt for months.

Jane had been
a natural adapting to the apparent weightlessness of the
Clarke
, and her two male crew members could only watch in envy as
she pranced around the MLP as if she had lived on Mars her entire life. It was
the astronaut’s version of Jetlag, and as with Jetlag, it only became apparent
sometime after landing. Montreaux had been surprised at the weight of a
portable computer, which had it not been rugged would almost certainly have
smashed as he dropped it on the floor. Danny for his part had already tipped
his tray of food over at lunchtime, saved slightly by the fact that they were
still eating from food packets from the
Clarke
.
As a result, only his peas had fallen, and he had spent an awkward minute on
his knees trying to collect them all from the grooves in the metal floor.

Their first
Mars-walk had been a resounding success, Danny and Montreaux having gone three
hundred metres from the MLP and completed a ninety degree arc before returning
to the lander. Their short walk took them less than an hour, but in that time
they managed to walk the perimeter of an area of more than a
 
square kilometre. The first robotic Mars rovers
had taken weeks to cover similar distances, and even
Beagle 4
would have taken several hours to do the same.

They had also
pinpointed six successful drop sites, covering everything from food and hygiene
supplies to clothing and scientific equipment. That thirty per cent of the
supply drops had been successful and fallen a few hundred metres apart was
nothing short of incredible, but what really impressed the astronauts was that
the MLP had landed within sight of them.

During this
time, Jane had already started to assemble her scientific apparatus inside the
MLP, and when her two colleagues returned she was already preparing sample
dishes and trays on a long trestle table to one side of the craft.

Now, four
hours since the first Mars-walk had taken place, she was getting impatient.

“Right, we
only have an hour or so of light left before the end of the sol.” She looked
across at Montreaux, who was checking the readings on the main control board in
the centre of the MLP. “We need to perform one more Mars-walk before sunset, to
set up the first perimeter beacons.”

“I think that
we need to wait until the morning, Jane,” Danny said, making Montreaux look up
at him in surprise. Catching his candid wink, he sighed and returned to his
work.

She glared at
the Russian. “Danny, I don’t really care what you think. There is no way I am
going to spend humankind’s first sol on Mars inside the MLP.”

“Doing the
washing up?” he laughed.

Montreaux
tensed and waited for the scientist’s response without looking up from the console.
 
Instead of the expected outburst, however, he
was surprised to hear her laugh.
 
Straightening up, he turned to face her and saw that it was genuine.

“Danny, if
there’s one thing that’s even more certain than the fact that I am going
outside in a minute, it’s the fact that today I am so happy, not even you can
wind me up!”

He laughed and
walked towards the airlock and the protection suits hanging on the wall. “OK,
whatever you say.”

Minutes later,
as she brought down the helmet over her head and fastened the clips to the neck
of her suit, she raised her thumbs at him and gave a huge grin.
 

Danny checked
the air regulator on his own suit and returned the OK signal, before winking at
her. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she
confirmed. “As clear as day.” She turned to the airlock and opened the inner
door.

From the
console in the centre of the room, Montreaux caught the look in the Russian’s
eye and groaned. Danny grinned in return.

“Oh, Jane,
don’t forget your flag,” he said, as matter-of-factly as possible.

She ignored
him and got into the airlock all the same. Danny followed and sat opposite
her.
 
From where he was sitting,
Montreaux could see Jane through the open door, and as it closed behind them
her eyes told him she was slightly annoyed by his joke. Smiling to himself, he
stood up and walked over to the airlock to perform the safety checks.
 

If anyone
could wind Dr Jane Richardson up, it was always going to be Captain Daniil
“Danny” Marchenko.