Mars Life (2 page)

Mars is the most earthlike planet in the solar system. But that doesn’t mean that it’s very much like Earth.

Barely half of Earth’s size, Mars orbits roughly one and a half times farther from the Sun than Earth does. It is a small, cold, seemingly barren world, a frozen desert of iron-rust sands from pole to pole.

Yet Mars is a spectacular world. The tallest mountain in the solar system is the aptly named Olympus Mons, a massive shield volcano three times higher than Everest, with a base as wide as the state of Idaho. The main caldera at Olympus Mons’s summit could swallow Mt. Everest entirely. Other huge volcanoes dot the Tharsis highlands, all of them long extinct.

Almost halfway across the planet is Hellas Planitia, an enormous impact crater nearly the size of Australia and some five kilometers deep, gouged out when a huge meteor slammed into Mars eons ago.

Then there is Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, a gigantic rift in the ground that stretches farther than the distance between Boston and San Francisco, a fracture that is seven kilometers deep in some places and so wide that explorers standing on one rim of it cannot see the other side because it is beyond the horizon.

The atmosphere of Mars is a mere wisp, thinner than Earth’s high stratosphere. It is composed mostly of carbon dioxide, with traces of nitrogen, oxygen, and inert gases such as argon and neon. The air pressure at the surface of Mars is about the same as the pressure thirty-some kilometers up in the high stratosphere of Earth’s atmosphere, so thin that an uncovered glass of water will immediately boil away even when the temperature is far below zero.

Which it is most of the time. Mars is a cold world. At midsummer noon on the Martian equator, the ground temperature might get as high as seventy degrees Fahrenheit. But at the height of a person’s nose the temperature would be zero, and that night it would plunge to a hundred below or even colder. The thin Martian atmosphere retains almost none of the Sun’s heat: it reradiates back into space, even at noon on the equator.

There is water on Mars, however. The polar caps that can be seen from Earth even with an amateur telescope contain frozen water, usually overlain with frozen carbon dioxide: dry ice. Explorers found layers of permafrost—frozen water—beneath the surface, enough underground water to make an ocean or at least a sizable sea.

There is abundant evidence that water once flowed across the surface of Mars. The entire northern hemisphere of the planet may once have been an ocean basin. Mars was once considerably warmer and wetter than it is now.

But today the surface of Mars is a barren desert of highly oxidized iron sands that give Mars its rusty red coloration. Those sands are loaded with superoxides; the planetwide desert of Mars is more like powdered bleach than soil in which plants could grow.

Yet there is life on Mars. The First Expedition discovered lichen-like organisms living inside cracks in the rocks littering the floor of the Grand Canyon of Mars. The Second Expedition found bacteria living deep underground, extremophiles that metabolize solid rock and water leached from the permafrost.

And the human explorers discovered an ancient cliff dwelling built into a niche high up the north wall of the Valles Marineris. There were once intelligent Martians, but they were wiped out in a cataclysm that scrubbed the entire planet clean of almost all life.

Curious explorers from Earth sought to understand those long-vanished Martians. But others of Earth preferred to ignore them, to pretend that they had never existed. In an irony that stretched across two worlds, the greatest discovery made on Mars led directly to the determined effort to put an end to the exploration of the red planet.

Carter Carleton woke from a troubled sleep. The vague memory of a dream faded in his mind even as he tried to recall it more clearly. Something about the university and the board of regents’ kangaroo court, back on Earth. Better forgotten, he told himself as he pulled the thin blanket off his legs. Better in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, like Shakespeare said.

As he sat up on his narrow bed the aroma of brewing coffee wafted into his cubicle. With it came the nasal twanging of some country-and-western song. “Damned cowboys and their recordings,” he muttered, planting his feet on the floor. Then he grinned inwardly. Those cowboys have doctorates in geology and biochemistry, he reminded himself.

Officially, the base was named in memory of the late Darryl C. Trumball, the Boston financier who had donated a considerable share of his personal fortune to the exploration of Mars. But everyone called it Tithonium Base, situated on the floor of the Tithonium Chasma section of the four-thousand-kilometer-long Valles Marineris, the immense Grand Canyon of Mars.

The floor was radiant-heated but still it felt cold to Carleton’s bare feet. Not as cold as outside, he thought. A glance at the weather readout on the digital clock by his bedside showed the outside temperature hadn’t quite reached ninety below zero yet.

Morning on Mars. Carter Carleton still felt thoroughly out of place among the scientists and technicians who made up the personnel of the Tithonium Chasma base. He was older than any of them, gray-haired and getting pudgy despite his daily toil at the dig. The only anthropologist at the base. The only anthropologist on Mars. The only anthropologist within some hundred million kilometers, for that matter.

Another day, he said to himself, grabbing his towel and toiletries. No, another sol, he corrected. Here on Mars they’re called sols, not days.

“Whatever,” he muttered as he trudged barefoot across his cubicle to the door of the common lavatory.

In his condo in Albuquerque, Jamie Waterman dreamed also. He knew it was a dream, yet the Navaho side of him also knew that dreams reveal truths hidden during the waking day.

The village stood before him, sturdy dried-brick dwellings three and even four stories high. The street was unpaved, of course: nothing more than hard-packed dirt. The sunlight felt warm and good on his shoulders, and Jamie realized that he was wearing nothing more than an old checkered shirt, faded denims, and his well-scuffed boots. No space suit.

The villagers looked strange, very different from Jamie. Why not? he asked himself. After all, they’re Martians.

Jamie walked among the Martian villagers unnoticed, unseen. They paid no attention to him as they scurried on their daily tasks. I’m just a ghost to them, he realized. I’m invisible. Unseen.

Then he recognized his grandfather Al striding along the bare dusty street toward him, wearing his best black leather vest and his broad-brimmed hat with the silver band circling its crown.

“Ya’aa’tey!” Grandfather Al called out the old Navaho greeting. “Grandfather!” Jamie called to him, astonished. “But you’re dead!”

Al grinned widely at him. “Naw, that was a mistake. I been right here, waitin’ for you.”

Jamie laid a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. He was as solid as the stone bear fetish Al had given his grandson so many years ago. Jamie still carried it with him wherever he went.

“You’re really here?” Jamie felt tears welling in his eyes.

“Long as you want me to be,” said Al. “And this village? This is the way it was?”

“Naw,” Al said. “This is the way it’s gonna be.” Then he added, “Go with beauty, grandson.”

By the time Carter Carleton had dressed and come out into the open central area of the base’s main dome, bright sunlight was streaming through the dome’s curving walls. Overnight, a polarizing electric current turned the plastic walls opaque, to keep the base’s interior heat from escaping into the frigid Martian night. By day, the current was turned off and the walls became transparent to allow warming sunshine in.

Sunshine always made Carleton feel better. That’s one advantage that Mars has, he said to himself as he headed for the cafeteria, off on the far side of the open area. There hasn’t been a cloudy day here in millions of years. Except for the dust storms.

The cafeteria was completely self-service. If you wanted eggs for breakfast you cracked open a plastic package of powdered eggs and fried them yourself on one of the hand-sized skillets hanging over the grill. Staff members took turns cleaning up after each meal. It was perfectly ordinary to see a tenured professor of microbiology loading the dishwasher or sponging down the tables.

This early in the morning the scrubbing robots were still scouring the tile floor. One of the squat, round little turtles was buzzing down the edge of the cafeteria counter; it stopped ten centimeters before Carleton’s loafer-clad feet. It beeped impatiently.

“Go around me, stupid,” Carleton muttered.

The robot dutifully maneuvered around his feet and resumed its route along the counter’s edge.

The grill still bore the same 
CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE
 sign that had been there the day before. This place is going to seed,Carleton grumbled to himself. The bakery odor of fresh toast tempted him, but instead he chose a bowl of cold cereal and poured reconstituted milk into it. As he was reaching for the fresh raspberries, grown in the greenhouse in the adjoining dome, he heard:

“Dr. Carleton?”

Turning, he saw it was one of the junior technicians. The name tag on her shirt read 
MCMANUS
. She was the base’s only nanotechnician.

“Doreen,” he replied, smiling the way he used to in his classrooms.

She had lovely, thickly curled auburn hair, but it was cropped close in a strictly utilitarian style. Her face was oval, with the large shy eyes of a waif. She was almost Carleton’s height, but so thin and bony that Carleton wondered if she were bulimic. Instead of standard-issue coveralls she wore a mannish long-sleeved shirt and creaseless slacks of pearl gray.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked, unsmiling. Her voice was low but sweet; Carleton imagined she was probably a good singer. Mezzo-soprano, most likely. He saw that she was carrying a tray that held only a mug of fruit juice and a slice of toast. Nothing more. The toast looked burnt, at that.

“I’d be glad of the company.”

It was still early enough that only a few of the tables were occupied. Voices murmured; the intercom speakers purred soft rock music. Carleton picked an empty table and put his bowl of cereal down.

Once she was settled in the chair on his right, Doreen McManus asked, “Are you going outside again today?”

Carleton groused, “Are you going to twist my arm again?”

Her expression grew even more serious. “Dr. Carleton, you simply—”

“Call me Carter, please. When you call me ‘Dr. Carleton’ it makes me feel a hundred and fifty years old.”

“Carter, then,” she said, with the beginning of a smile.

“And you are going to twist my arm again, aren’t you?”

“That hard-shell suit of yours is awfully old.”

“It works fine. No complaints.”

“But the nanofabric suits are so much easier to work in.”

He picked up his spoon, hesitated, then put it down on the table again with a tiny clink.

“Everybody else uses the nanosuits,” she said earnestly.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t trust them.”

“But—”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, Doreen. I just feel safer inside an old, reliable hard-shell suit.”

She looked at him with her big puppy eyes for a long, silent moment. Carleton realized her eyes were an exotic grayish green color. It reminded him of a jewelry stone. What was it called? Tourmaline, he remembered. With an effort, he looked down and started spooning up his cereal.

“Would you mind if I went with you this morning?” she asked.

“In a nanosuit?”

“Yes, that’s what I’d be wearing.”

He grinned at her. “Trying to shame the old man?”

“You’re not old.”

“Old enough,” he said, with a practiced sigh.

“Would it be all right?”

“To come out this morning? Sure. The work’s pretty boring, though. Except for the explosions.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Okay, then.”

“Doreen, good morning!” Carleton looked up to see a dark-haired, thickset younger man approaching them. With a glance at Carleton, he plunked his tray on the table as he asked, “All right to sit here, Dr. Carleton?”

Kalman Torok, Carleton saw: one of the biologists. There were only two hundred and some people at Tithonium Base and Carleton—with his long years of memorizing students’ names—knew most of them on a first-name basis. Name tags helped, of course.

Behind him came an older woman whom Carleton recognized as Nari Quintana, the base’s chief medical officer, a diminutive, spare older woman with a bony, hard-edged face and mousy dull brown hair. She sat down without asking permission and began unloading her tray onto the table.

As he picked up his steaming mug of coffee Torok asked gloomily, “Have you heard the latest? They say they’re going to shut us down and ship us back to Earth.” He spoke in British English with a decided Middle European accent.

“Who says that?” Carleton snapped.

Torok raised his heavy black brows.

“It’s the buzz. Everybody’s talking about it.”

He talks with his eyebrows, Carleton said to himself. They’re more expressive than his whiny voice.

“I don’t believe it,” said Doreen.

“They’re closing the base over in Hellas, but not here.”

“Here,” said Torok, as if he had superior knowledge.

“They can’t shut us down,” Carleton said.

“That would be stupid.”

“Criminal,” Quintana agreed. “I’d have to return to Caracas.”

“Not to Caltech?” Doreen asked. “I thought you were on the medical staff there.”

She shook her head sadly. “I gave up my position at CalTech to come to Mars.”

“And what happens to your work?” Carleton asked Torok.

The biologist sighed. “It would be the end of my experiment on growing plants in the indigenous soil. I would write a paper on it when I got back to Budapest, I suppose.”

“Couldn’t you bring soil samples back to Budapest?” Doreen asked.

“What good would that do?” Torok countered, those thick dark brows knitting. “I’d have to start all over again and the university would never pay to build a simulation chamber large enough to be useful.”

He fell into a morose silence. Quintana picked listlessly at her plate of eggs and soymeat bacon while Torok took a sip from his mug.

“God, what I’d give for a decent cup of coffee,” the Hungarian groused, thumping the mug onto the tabletop. “Instead of this crap.”

“It has to be decaffeinated,” Quintana replied sharply. “Caffeine denatures vitamin C. You know that.”

“Yes, I know. Still—”

“Do you want to come down with scurvy, like they did on the First Expedition? You’re on Mars! Keep that in the front of your mind every day, every minute.”

Torok started to glare at the harsh-tongued physician, but shrugged instead and muttered, “I won’t be on Mars for much longer. Neither will you.”

Trying to make it sound bright, Doreen said, “Well, if we’re sent home you’ll be back with your wife and kids again, Kal.”

Torok’s face grew even more somber. “She prefers to have me here.”

“Oh?”

Carleton asked, “What about you, Doreen?”

“If we have to leave I’ll go back to Selene and work in the nanolab.”

“On the Moon?”

“You can’t do nanotech work anywhere on Earth,” she replied.

“Not legally.”

“And you, Professor?” Torok asked. “Where will you go?”

Carleton still winced inwardly when anyone addressed him by the title that had been stripped from him.

“I’m staying right here,” he said firmly. “And so are all of you. They can’t shut us down. Waterman won’t let that happen.”