Foothold, page 19
part #1 of Foothold Series
“Hey, it’s good to know where we’re going to,” John added over the video link. “We plan to make a serendipitous arrival in three days.”
Everyone groaned, even Josh, the usual master of lame humor.
“Serendipity it will be, then.”
***
Heidi produced respirators for each of them. “These have been customized for each of you,” she said, passing them out. “Keep them with you always, even inside, in case of emergency.”
They all examined their respirators with interest, being one item of technology that was new to them. They fitted snugly over their mouths and noses, and were constructed of what looked like some kind of transparent plastic, except two small bumps about the size of half a golf ball on either side of the chin, which were colored gray. The chin bumps had narrow slits underneath. There were no signs of straps or other methods for holding it in place.
“To put it on, push the mask into position like this,” she demonstrated, “and push the activation button on the right side here.” She indicated a small white round area that carried the familiar power switch logo.
David put the mask to his face as shown and fiddled to find the on button. To his surprise, and the others as they tried as well, the mask attached itself firmly to his face without any need for a strap.
“What…?” he uttered involuntarily, further surprised that his voice sounded almost… normal, despite wearing the mask.
Heidi smiled. “The latest in materials science from 45 years ago,” she said, pleased to have something to show off. “The mask has enough power to last for four hours. While it has power, it will stay attached and filter and concentrate the oxygen in the air as needed.
Once we get outside, you will feel the air being filtered through the nodules by your chin,” she said indicating the bumps on the sides of their mask. “It will also take care of modulating your voice so it sounds as normal as possible.”
“Wow,” Josh said. “I didn’t expect anything this… sophisticated. I thought we’ve have masks with backpacks.”
“We’re lucky,” Heidi admitted. “The atmosphere here is so thick and has so much oxygen that we can use these. Be warned, though, you won’t last long without the mask, so be careful of your power use. You will get a warning one hour before the power runs out, then 30 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes and every minute after that.”
“How long to… recharge?” Nigel asked with interest.
“Only five minutes,” Heidi replied. “Modern batteries have extremely high density and are quick to recharge. If we have to, we can take an extra battery pack that can be used to recharge the mask.” She hefted a small oblong box about the size of her hand that seem a lot heavier than it looked. “This will get you another seven charges, so up to 28 hours more if needed.”
“Impressive,” David said. “Has everyone got their mask in place and working?”
Everyone had, but David got Heidi to check them all anyway, before checking hers himself.
“Hope, are you still with us?”
“We sure are!” came the response.
David nodded. “OK, I don’t need to remind you we are about to make history. What we do now will be recorded and played back for generations of our people here and back home on Earth and Mars. Does everyone remember the script?”
“Yes,” came the collective affirmation.
David winked at the camera and saw an answering smile from Grace. They both remembered the somewhat surreal discussion with the President of the United States half a lifetime ago before they departed, and if by some long chance he was still alive when their broadcast reached Earth, and he had the means to see it, he was going to be disappointed.
“Alright then, let’s proceed.” He motioned for Heidi to begin.
Heidi went to the main door, which looked very much like a regular passenger jet door except it was wider to allow for the shuttle’s other role as a cargo hauler. She pushed the controls to unlock the door then opened a valve to equalize the pressure.
There was a brief whoosh of air as the pressure equalized, air from the shuttle rushing out as the native air of Serendipity was at a slightly lower pressure. There was no need for an airlock or to save the cabin air as the shuttle, like their respirator masks, had the capability of replacing it as needed by filtering and concentrating the native atmosphere. Heidi then pulled on the door release and the cabin door pulled in then folded out into the Serendipity day. Finally she deployed the steps and made sure they reached the ground properly. She stood back and turned to David.
“Captain?”
“Please proceed with the drone release.”
Heidi nodded and opened one of the overhead compartment lockers and retrieved two small drones. One by one, she activated them and tossed them through the open door. The two drones separated, one flying left and the other right, positioning themselves to record from the best possible angles.
Show time, David thought as stepped forward on to the small flat deck at the top of the stairs. He stopped and regarded the sight in front of him.
It was early morning on Serendipity but warm nonetheless. In front of him he could see a broad rocky plain that descended to the lake towards the north; sunlight glinted off the water. A gentle breeze was blowing from the east, off the sea in the distance. The sun was well up from the horizon and he felt the warmth on his skin with a burst of pleasure. It had been so long since feeling actual sunlight he had forgotten just how good it felt.
We’re not meant to be cooped up in spaceships – we need wide open spaces and sunlight on our skin.
He drew a deep breath of the alien air, not quite sure what to expect; the air however seemed perfectly breathable, but there was nothing much to smell. The filter no doubt would have removed any odor even if there were one, he thought. He could not help breaking out into a broad smile as he greeted the freshness of the new day.
The others had fallen in behind him, and he held out his hands. Veronika and Nathalie stepped forward and took his hands in theirs. For a moment, he paused and let them soak in the ambiance of the brilliant new day that greeted their arrival, and then he led the way forward down the steps, which were just wide enough to accommodate them three abreast. At the bottom step he paused, and exchanged a quick smile with his two companions. He checked the surface that they were about to step onto; gray rock, with a scattering of sand and small pebbles. It looked sound enough. David drew a breath and looked forward in what he hoped was a suitably historic manner before beginning his speech.
“We come from a distant place, bringing the seed of life and intelligence to this new world. We come for all mankind, and we come in peace. As we step forward onto this world that we have named Serendipity, we give our promise that we will create a fair and just society in this place, we will respect and nurture that which we discover, and that one day we will return to aid those in need in our ancestral home.”
With that, he squeezed the hands of Veronika and Nathalie and together they stepped forward. From Russia, from America and from Europe, they stepped forward together as one into their new future.
To David’s relief, the surface was completely solid and no one fell over. Ceremony may have called for more decorum, but instead the three of them exchanged hugs; the moment was almost overwhelming. Nathalie and Veronika both had tears in their eyes; David took their hands again and they walked forward before he could succumb to the same. They stopped after some ten meters then dropped their handholds and pivoted back to the shuttle, standing now at attention in a precise row.
Josh, Heidi and Nigel walked forward, each bearing a flag: the flags of the European Union, Russia and the Stars and Stripes. They descended the stairs slowly and together, and then paused at the last step before they too stepped forward onto the surface of Serendipity. They marched forward several meters in a matched cadence and halted, each holding their respective flag forward with the staff resting on the ground.
David, Veronika and Nathalie snapped a salute and held it for a long moment, before David spoke once more.
“We give our thanks to those in our home nations that believed in our mission, and provided us with the means to journey here in your name. We will remember your contribution to our future, and build a free society based on the principles and ideals of the Russian Federation, the European Union and the United States of America.”
The next part of the script called for the flag bearers to plant each of the flags; David suddenly realized with horror that he hadn’t allowed for the fact they were perched on a rock. Fortunately, Heidi the practical engineer was with them and anticipated the problem. In a deviation from the script, Heidi now pushed her European Union flag forward a little and dropped to one knee. She then produced a small bracket from behind her back and attached it to the base of the flagstaff. Then she placed the staff on the ground and somehow it attached itself firmly. Moving with parade-ground precision she then regained her feet and marched in front of Josh, who was holding the Stars and Stripes. Following her lead, Josh dropped to one knee and Heidi attached his flag. Then she moved on to Nigel, who repeated the procedure for the flag of the Russian Federation. She marched back to her flag, and then the three of them took two synchronized steps back and saluted the flags.
The ceremony was over.
They had made history as the first people to land on an alien world.
Eastern Continent, Serendipity
May 1st, 2106
The team retreated to the Discoverer, leaving the flags snapping in the morning breeze. The first order of business was Heidi collecting their masks and showing them how to recharge them. They had been outside for less than half an hour, but she insisted that their lives depended on keeping them charged, and no one was inclined to disagree.
The second order of business was brunch, which was approximately breakfast time onboard Hope. As they munched their way through some cookies washed down with tea, Veronika commented that she couldn’t wait until they had their gardens established and producing. “I’ve had enough of this stuff. We need something fresh.”
“The first step is to find a place for it,” David said, “So we may as well get started.”
The rocky plain on which they current sat had been selected by the probe’s automated landing systems based on its apparent stability, but they were pretty sure they could do better for their colony base. The best way to scout was from the air, so they resumed their seats and lifted off to begin their search.
The view from several kilometers high revealed the full extent of the lake that they had landed near.
“We would not want to be at the landing site,” Nathalie said. “It seems like it’s part of the flood plain for the river.”
“What about the coast?” Josh asked. The coast was only a few kilometers distant, and the river flowed into what looked like a useful natural harbor.
“We will settle there in time,” David said. “Right now though, we’re looking for low risk. Until we know what we will face from the waters, such as floods and the like, we should stay away from the shore.”
Josh nodded.
Nathalie was looking intently at the river below them. The river was sourced from the mountains on the other side of the continent, and wound its way across the plains to the sea, with its course punctuated by lakes. Below them were three lakes quite close together; the one below them, another of about the same size about 80 kilometers to the west, and a smaller one, of about 20 square kilometers that lay between the larger two, about 30 kilometers away from where they currently traced a lazy circle in the sky. To the south, the land was flat, and included areas that were obviously part of the flood plain for the river system. To the north, the country was folded into broken hills.
“We should not stray too far from the water,” she said absently as she studied the river below. “Somewhere near the river, where there is a good source of water, I think.
David, can you take us west, up the river?”
David obliged by angling the shuttle to the west and increasing their speed a little.
As they travelled up the river the nature of what they were looking at become clear.
“Those are impact craters, aren’t they?” Heidi asked.
Nathalie nodded. “Quite large ones. I think a large asteroid that disintegrated close to the ground. The three lakes are the main impact sites, and the hills to the north the remains, although there is some evidence of volcanic activity there as well.”
“Triggered by the impact?” Josh asked.
“Perhaps,” Nathalie frowned. “Although that isn’t typical. It may be coincidence, or perhaps the crust was thinner when it happened. It must have happened a long time ago judging from the level of erosion.”
“Define a long time ago,” Veronika asked, with a hint of concern in her voice.
“At least a million years I would think,” she answered.
“Oh,” said Veronika, sounding relieved. Nathalie declined to voice the opinion that the age of the impact event would be unrelated to probability of it happening again in the future.
They continued their aerial survey until the late afternoon, stopping several times to investigate promising sites until they were all a little bleary-eyed and beginning to become confused by the myriad possibilities. David was about to call a halt for the day when Nathalie spotted something interesting. They were flying east over the north shore of the small middle lake at only a few hundred meters altitude at the time, and at such a low altitude some features of the hills to their left were visible that weren’t obvious from higher up.
“Wait! What is that over there, to the left? Can we go closer?”
David banked the shuttle and headed to the north. “It looks like some kind of cave.”
Nathalie peered ahead intently. “I think it’s a lava tube.”
“So, a cave?” Josh asked.
Nathalie looked at him. “A lava tube,” she said firmly. “But this one is massive, much larger than anything one would see on Earth. On Mars, though, they get really big with the light gravity there.”
The land below the low hills that included the cave or lava tube sloped gently towards the lake ten meters below. It seemed to consist of sandy scree interspersed with rocks and boulders, not unlike their initial landing site but with a slightly steeper slope down to the lakeside.
“Can you put us down?” Nathalie asked.
David brought them down to a slow forward hover. “This looks like a good place”, he said, setting them down close to the mouth of the cave, about the length of a football field away.
David killed the power to the engines, and the whine of the turbines gradually abated as they wound down.
He turned and looked back at the passengers behind him, raising an eyebrow.
“I supposed you’d like to explore?”
There was a chorus of “yes” from the passenger compartment.
“We’ve got about three hours of daylight left. So we can go for a quick look to investigate, but then back here for the night. If it looks worthwhile we can explore further tomorrow.”
Everyone agreed; they were all impatient for another outing, having spent most of the day inside the shuttle scouting. It was strange how they had withstood months, subjectively, confined inside a starship without any concerns, but now the outdoors was right there, they couldn’t wait to get outside.
David made them all go carefully through the procedures to prepare for going outside; the last thing he wanted to see was an accident on their first day.
Finally, they were ready, this time exiting without the drama or ceremony of their first time. Once outside, the size of the cave or lava tube became apparent: it was massive.
It must originally have been roughly ovoid in shape, but over time the bottom of the cave had accumulated soil that had built up to bisect the tube vertically. The mouth of the cave must have been the length of a football field wide, and twenty to thirty meters high. It was so wide that the top of the tube had slumped in the middle, and indeed the whole of the tube slumped forward somewhat as it had cooled, leading to it being somewhat higher behind the mouth. The effect was a little like a large rocky worm that had burst out of the earth and half-buried its mouth in the land. As they walked forward they could see that there was a truly cavernous space inside; it was easily the size of two or three football stadiums. It was also very light, and looking up, it was easy to see why. There was a large opening in the roof of the cave; it had obviously collapsed at some time in the past.
“My God, it’s huge!” Veronika exclaimed.
“The roof’s collapsed,” Josh said, reinforcing his talent for stating the obvious.
“Not just collapsed,” Nathalie observed. “Look underneath.”
Instead of a pile of debris under the void in the ceiling, there was instead a depression, with gently mounded rises in the sandy soil around it.
“That’s a meteor strike,” she said, “An old one by the looks of it, see how the crater rim’s eroded.”
“There are some other holes over there,” Josh said, pointing to where there were two smaller holes towards the back of the cave, illuminated by the last of the westering sun.
“Part of a meteor shower, I think,” Nathalie said. “Probably the same one that created the lakes.”
“Do you think they caused the lava tubes?” Veronika asked.
“No, I think they were already here, after all the tube couldn’t have a hole in its roof if it didn’t already exist, could it? Unless of course there were a number of meteor strikes over a period of centuries or millennia. But I think that this area was subject to volcanic activity before the meteors. It would explain these hills, there wouldn’t be enough ejecta from the meteors to build hills this large or extensive.”
David nodded. “Volcanic eruptions followed by meteor impacts. I’m beginning to see why this world is lifeless.”
Veronika looked worried. “Could it happen again?”
“Of course!” Nathalie replied, not allaying Veronika’s fears at all. “The only question is how often. It’s pretty obvious that this planet has had a lot of impacts.”
