In the Shadow of Deimos, page 6
part #1 of Terraforming Mars Series
He turned the stick over in his palm and, on the back, saw that someone had scratched the words, nel caso in cui. Someone’s name, perhaps?
Curious, but wary that data sticks could be used to infest a system with malware if an unwitting person gave it access, he double-checked his WristTab personal profile was backed up, isolated it from the Mars network, and plugged the stick into the WristTab connector. A video began to play on the small screen. It was of a man talking to the camera which appeared to be some sort of report or diary entry. Luka didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying while he completed a quick scan and confirmed the stick contained no malware and only videos. Dismissing it as not very interesting, he stopped it playing.
Luka jostled with the network cable at the back of the window again, to ensure it was securely plugged in, and the screen automatically loaded his profile. He placed it back into its slot on the wall and brought up a map of Thor Town to get a better idea of his bearings. He found details of where he would be working quite easily, and also memorized the short walk to the communal dining hall where he was due to meet Erik and “some of the guys.”
But the existence of the stick bothered him. The whole room had been stripped of every last remnant of anyone who had ever lived there. Like a hotel room, it had been scrubbed, cleaned, and made fresh for the next occupant. Except for the data stick. Almost as if it had been hidden deliberately. But hidden in such a way that a new occupant was bound to find it when they tried to set up their profile on the window.
Now he was curious. Luka sat back on the bed and streamed the contents of the data stick to the screen.
The video began to play again. The man talking to the camera was a little younger than Luka, probably in his late twenties. He was a white man with short dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard and wide, dark eyes. He appeared to be in the exact same room as Luka, except that he was sitting on a chair pulled up close enough to the camera so his face filled the frame. Hints of the room behind showed what it might look like when someone had been living there for some time. The bedclothes were ruffled, an item of clothing which might be a jacket was slung over the back of the man’s chair, and there was some sort of calendar, or works diary, pinned up on the wall behind him.
“The new boss started today,” said the man, in an accent Luka identified immediately as Italian. He had traveled extensively in Europe when he had worked on various robot projects. “She is… not what I expected.”
The man smiled and lowered his eyes away from the camera as if a little embarrassed. “She is feisty and dynamic, not intimidated at all by coming into an established team. She is Norwegian, obviously, because you can’t work for ThorGate without being managed by someone from Norway at some point down the line, but she didn’t act like she had a divine right to be in charge. Not like Lars used to be. Anita Andreassen came in like she was one of the team, doing everything she could to put us at ease. She even greeted me in Italian: ‘Piacere di conoscerti, Giovanni,’ she said. Her pronunciation was terrible, but it broke the ice.”
Luka realized he was looking at the face of Giovanni – or “Gianni” – Lupo, the man who was killed by the asteroid. The man whose job he had taken. The man whose room he was sitting in. He watched with greater intensity.
“There was something else about Anita.” Gianni dropped his eyes in embarrassment again. “I probably shouldn’t say this… but it’s my diary, so I can say what I like. I’m only talking to myself, after all. My first reaction when she came in was how beautiful she looked. When Anita laughs, it’s like she’s not just joining in with the joke, she’s spreading joy to everyone. Or maybe she was only spreading joy to me. Is it taboo to say that you fancy your boss? I think it is, so I won’t say it. I won’t even admit it to myself. I will be a good worker and carry out the tasks she asks of me to the best of my ability. Especially if she asks me to dinner.”
Gianni blushed as he looked away from the camera. “I’ve said too much for one day. Even to myself. Video recording off.”
There were more diary entries, but Luka didn’t watch any more.
Up until that point, Gianni had been just a name. His death had been a terrible tragedy, and it was awful to see how it affected other people, but it didn’t mean anything to Luka. Not really. Now, confronted by the ghost of the man, Gianni became a real person to him. A man who had a personal life, who had a work life, and who had very human emotions. All of which made his death seem more real and his loss more poignant. Luka had watched the asteroid which had killed him blaze through the atmosphere and crash only meters ahead of where he and the other migrants had crouched in fear. What had been merely terrifying at the time suddenly held a greater significance.
He hadn’t expected to feel sadness at the death of someone he had never known. But sitting there, in the same room where Gianni had sat and confessed to having a crush on his new boss, he felt they had a connection. The following day, Luka would be starting the same job the young Italian had left behind and he would, effectively, be stepping into a dead man’s shoes.
It was an uncomfortable thought.
Chapter Eight
Julie stood on the Tharsis uplands overlooking Noctis Labyrinthus in almost exactly the same spot as she had done on the day of the asteroid disaster. With no news crews or confused and worried workers wandering around, the place had a serene calm. Even the construction crew working on Noctis City further down the canyon were merely rad-suited dots quietly going about their business.
Kareem came out of the rover to join her, carrying a monitoring device, which was effectively a screen and a joystick with a short-range transmitter and receiver boosted via the more powerful equipment in the rover. The technology was used out on the planet surface to connect to remote cameras where it was impractical to take a fully equipped mobile monitoring station. “I was right,” he said over the comms. “ThorGate left their observational robot down there and it’s still working.”
Julie looked over his shoulder at the screen and saw the image relayed from the base of the canyon. It had been mostly cleared of rubble, although there was still the occasional small rock in the camera’s field of vision. “That robot’s an expensive piece of kit to simply have been left,” she said. “I think the official term you’re looking for is that they stationed it there.” She winked.
“I imagine they stationed it there in case they needed to examine the crash site further,” Kareem said. “If you have to take it down there and bring it back up every time you want to do that, you’re going to lose two hours out of your working day.”
“Handy for us.”
“Yeah,” said Kareem. “If we can find a suitable piece of asteroid debris to bring back up to examine, we can use the coordinates of the observation robot to guide our sample collector to the right spot.”
Julie was finding it difficult to make out anything specific on the screen, as the whole site had been dusted with a fresh accumulation of Martian dirt and it had all started to blend into the red landscape.
“Let me have a better look,” she said, taking the device out of Kareem’s hands.
“I told you, it would be easier to do this from inside the rover.”
“And I told you that we’ve made the effort to drive out here, we might as well get out and have a look around.”
“It’s Mars,” Kareem said, sarcastically. “It looks red and rocky, like any other part of Mars.”
Julie gave him a sideways glance. “One of these days I’m going to send you on winter assignment to one the polar regions so you can appreciate the white of the carbon dioxide ice caps.”
“No, you won’t. You need me too much.”
“Mmm,” said Julie, knowing he was right, but not giving him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
She concentrated on the image in front of her. With her hand off the joystick, the observation robot had stopped and was showing her an image across the base of the canyon. It looked like ThorGate had cleared away much of the rubble, most likely when they had removed what was left of Giovanni Lupo’s body, but the large remnants of the asteroid were still there. Julie swiveled the robot left and right to get a good view of the terrain and was able to make out three shards languishing in the place where they had fallen.
“You keep looking for a suitable sample to bring up and I’ll get the sample collector out of the rover,” said Kareem, as he turned away.
“Yeah,” said Julie, uncertainly. With the whole site sprinkled with red dust, it was difficult to see what rock was native to Mars and what rock had come from the asteroid belt.
Nevertheless, she endeavored to look. Steering the robot to around the back of the nearest shard, which was so tall it towered above the little machine’s field of vision, something caught her eye and she let go of the joystick. It was only small and at the edge of the image, but it looked like a piece of mangled metal. There had been metal objects inside ThorGate’s research station, of course, but this looked like something altogether different.
“Kareem!” she called over the comms.
“What?”
“Come look at this.”
“Just let me get this robot out of the rover.”
“Forget the sample robot, just come back!”
She heard him grumble over the comms, but she didn’t care because she needed his opinion.
Julie adjusted the joystick and closed in on the object. It was definitely metal and, even though there was an accumulation of dust on top, it was possible to see scorch marks where it had been subject to intense heat.
Kareem returned to her side. “What?” he said.
“What do you think that is?”
He peered at the image. “Part of ThorGate’s squashed research station, I imagine.”
“Do you think it could be part of the asteroid guidance system?”
“I doubt it,” said Kareem.
She handed him the device so he could see the screen more clearly. Then she watched his dismissive expression turn into something more thoughtful.
“Maybe…” he said.
“Part of the engine, perhaps, designed to withstand high temperatures. Look at the scorch marks!”
Kareem let out a long breath, which sounded loud coming out of the speaker at Julie’s ear. “What do you want to do about it?”
“Go get it,” said Julie, with excitement.
Kareem looked unimpressed. “It’s trapped under what’s left of the asteroid, you can’t expect the sample robot to pick it up. You’d need specialist equipment to move the rock or cut it out or something. We can call out a UNMI team, but by the time they get out here we won’t have enough of the day left.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Julie turned to look further down the canyon to where the construction crew was working to build Noctis City. “Why don’t we ask the people over there to do us a favor?”
Chapter Nine
ThorGate wanted to automate the construction of Noctis City as much as possible. Many of the tasks, such as taking materials to the bottom of the canyon, were labor-intensive and repetitive. Ideal for robots. The machines had been commissioned already, but their basic programming could only take them so far. Adapting them to specific conditions was Luka’s specialty. He had programmed construction robots from Cologne to Copenhagen, and making the transition to Mars was relatively easy. So, only a few days after his departure for Thor Town, he was back at the construction site for a meeting with Al Vertanen.
Luka made sure to get there early and take the opportunity to take a look around at what progress had been made.
It was impressive. There were literally hundreds of magnesium poles jutting out from the side of the slope and the team had built five platforms spaced about every hundred meters down the side of the canyon. The slope itself was dotted with up to thirty laborers all working away, the furthest of them like tiny white specks against the red vastness of the rock face.
They had also started work on a series of industrial elevators to make it easier to move materials and people down the slope from platform to platform. The flat base of the first elevator was already sitting at the top of the ridge on a pair of tracks and was ready to be tested with a significant weight. One worker, who Luka recognized as Morten Nilsen, had evidently decided that he – rather than a load of ballast –was going to be the first one to take a ride on it and stepped onto the elevator.
“Send me down!” Morten said over the comms. Luka chuckled at his enthusiasm.
The base jolted beneath Morten, and he staggered half a step sideways.
“Sit down, Morty!” came another voice. “Al will kill me if you fall off.”
Morten swiftly moved to a sitting position as the elevator moved down the tracks with the base safely remaining horizontal. “I wouldn’t be too happy about falling off either,” he admitted.
As the top of Morten’s helmet disappeared from view, another rad-suited figure emerged from a rover which had just arrived on site. Luka tried to work out if it was Al Vertanen, although he couldn’t tell until he got close enough to see his mustached face through the bubble of his helmet.
Luka switched his comms to broadcast on the workforce supervisor’s private channel. “Morning, Al!” he said.
“Congratulations on your promotion,” the supervisor replied.
“I’m not sure that’s what it is,” said Luka. “But thank you.”
“I’m told you’re the top man for the job, which is just as well,” said Al. “I want to start work at the bottom of the canyon, so I’m going to need those robots ready to go soon or I’m going to fall behind schedule.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I need to know how much you want to be automated and how much you want to be under the control of a human operator. The more you automate, the quicker construction can proceed, but the human element will always give you more flexibility, no matter how clever the robot or its programming.”
They talked technical details and options for some time. It was all familiar stuff to Luka as most of the variables which made Mars construction different to Earth construction were already accounted for in the robots’ core programming.
Some movement among the other workers caught Luka’s eye and he turned to see they had broken into a round of applause. Small clouds of dust rose from their gloves as they clapped them together, but there was no sound. He felt like he’d suddenly been struck deaf. Then he saw that Morten was returning on the elevator which had almost resumed its position at the top of the canyon. Morten stood and raised his arms above his head in a victory salute – almost falling over as the base juddered to a halt.
“What is he doing?” Al growled. Inside his helmet, his moustache bristled. “Excuse me.”
The workforce supervisor switched to broadcast on the team channel and strode through the gathering of applauding people to where Morten was stepping off the elevator. “What are you doing riding that thing before we’ve installed a safety rail?” Al demanded.
“I was careful,” Morten insisted.
“That’s not the point,” Al went on. “There are safety protocols for a reason. What if you’d fallen over the edge and killed yourself?”
“It needed to be tested. I tested it. It works. If we’d waited to set up a safety rail, we’d still be doing it into tomorrow…”
Luka mentally tuned out the health and safety squabble, although it continued to be relayed in his helmet as he saw another rover approaching. He thought, for a moment, it was Anita come to check up on him or to view the working elevator for herself. Then he realized the rover had come from the opposite direction to Thor Town.
The vehicle drove straight past the designated parking spot for rovers and stopped much closer to the ridge in a cloud of thrown up dust. A figure stepped out almost straight away, without the time it would normally take to operate an airlock, which meant they had probably been traveling fully suited up without bothering to pressurize the cabin. Usually, people only did that if there was a malfunction of the rover’s environmental controls or they were traveling such a short distance that it wasn’t worth making the cabin habitable.
Most of the other workers were still enjoying the spectator sport of Al and Morten’s argument, so when the rad-suited person emerged from the rover, none of the others turned to look. Only Luka was watching, which meant they naturally headed towards him, waving at him as they approached.
Luka had only been listening on the team comms and had to use the controls on the arm of his rad-suit to access the general channel.
“…hello?” said a woman in an American accent.
“Hello.” Luka waved back.
“Ah, you can hear me. Good,” said the American woman, walking up to him. “I wonder if you could do me a bit of a favor. I’m investigating the asteroid crash site a little way along the canyon.”
As she got closer, Luka saw enough of her face to recognize her. “You’re Julie Outerbridge,” he said.
She stopped. An amused smile played on her lips. “Yes, that’s right.”
Slightly taken aback at seeing a vaguely famous face, he offered a gloved hand and they shook, somewhat awkwardly through the bulky material. “I’m Luka Schäfer.”
“We’ve found something under what’s left of the asteroid,” she said. “Well, think we’ve found something. But we can’t get it out with the equipment we’ve brought with us. I thought you might be able to help? I know it’s a bit of an imposition, but…”
Luka didn’t even allow her to finish the sentence. After watching Gianni’s video diary and getting a sense of the man whose life was taken away far too young, he wasn’t one to refuse. “It’s not an imposition. Many people at ThorGate knew Gianni Lupo. I’m sure they would be happy to help the investigation into how he died.”
