The elite military and quasi-military crews gave way, as they always eventually must, to the Mission Specialist. Not so fit, not quite so in their prime, not so much the pride of a nation, not so white, not so male, but people who had the knowledge to answer the follow-up questions to "What colour is the dirt?" and "Do you see any Martians?" People who could answer the big questions that had ostensibly been behind the reasons humans had gone.
Sure, the poster boys (and finally poster girls) were still there, usually present as Mission Commanders. After all, who would trust a civilian to make the right decision as to who should live and who should die if something went wrong? Who else could guard the key to the weapons locker if such a thing became necessary? Who else would slam the magazine in, cock the action, aim the barrel and pull the trigger should a womb mate go off the rails, one who too had endured endless technological hell step outside the narrow confines of normality that had been crafted in some earthly consultation room? Who else could be counted upon to step up to the microphone after the fact and say it had to be done?
But then the visitors began to die. Not quickly, not so publicly as they had lived, but surely. Of leukemia, of odd and rare cancers, of blood disorders. Then the mad rush to be the next first person to do anything on Mars petered out. An interregnum followed in which the powers-that-be reconsidered the cost and found it to be too high, and in which too few were willing to pay the price.
Meanwhile, a resurgence of religious conservatism in the West once more resulted in the rise of isolationism, restrictions upon space exploration, and inevitably generated bad science with which to dissuade. Travel to Mars fell off again.
For a while it appeared that people would never go back, and what followed was a return to unmanned orbiter, lander and rover missions of increasing complexity and capability, to do the work left undone by the manned missions—the work of answering the great questions of Mars.
For the capability to establish a permanent presence of any meaningful size stressed the state of the art. Permanence needed not mean total independence, but the likelihood of success depended upon an ability to survive if resupply ships failed to arrive. They had arrived at a break point—establishing anything permanent implied an on-going commitment from the great powers. A great leap forward was required.
It was a full ten years after the last manned mission that the aged and aging scientists who had found their chairs at the table taken by younger persons saw their chance. These, the dispossessed, fought back in the court of public opinion and won. The global masses, always restless for something new and exciting and spurred on by a well orchestrated PR campaign executed in a time of renewed global economic prosperity and cooperation by long time proponents of Mars Colonization seized on the idea of space exploration as the fulfilment of human destiny. A one-way mission to prepare a permanent base, to be independent of Earth and suitable for long-term survival could be sold and was.
Of course, the timing of all of this was right. The world (or more accurately, the critical mass that mattered) had at least temporarily freed itself from entanglements of war long enough for a collective vision to arise. It helped too that the hold on the purse strings of the American, European Union and Russian governments (for this purpose and time lumped under the name USEUR) had been, at least for a space, pried from the electoral grasp of the trans-faith religionists whose dominant conservative beliefs forbade, specifically, the improvement of the human race through genetic modification, and as a mere doctrinal aside, considered all forms of space exploration extravagant and presumptuous before God.
Smelling the probability of success, corporate sponsors suddenly appeared, ready, willing, and eager to have their logo affixed to the side of something, anything in fact, that would soon appear live and in colour, direct from Mars.
And so it came to pass, as the story is told, that the decision was made by the governments of the major economic powers to return to Mars in force, to establish a permanent colony of scientists equipped to determine once and for all the answer to the great question: whether life had ever developed on Mars.
Inevitable advances in science made the task easier: stronger, lighter, more radiation resistant materials; smaller, lighter and more powerful nuclear reactors; more reliable and efficient closed ecosystems; suspension of life processes; more efficient solar cells; programmable matter; nanotechnology fully applied to medicine and to industry; and, in the world of micro-electronics, leaps in processing power that surpassed even the wildest projections. Biologically based neural networks, hyper-dense mass storage and reduced power consumption made it possible for true artificial intelligence to arise and for man to make machines that could make themselves in their own image.
This is not to say that there was universal accord. To some the end of modern mankind was clearly in sight. It was a sad fact that despite the New Enlightenment (as some were calling it), the great mass of humanity continued to live unexamined lives of unappreciated desperation. The haves increased with the re-emergence of Capitalist China from behind storefront communism and the sliding of the US and Europe into a state of storefront capitalism. The gap between the haves and have-nots continued to grow, almost as fast as CPU processing power. The persistent droughts brought on by climate change, plagues and famines and natural disasters did their fair share, but it wasn't enough. The industrialized world's response to rising sea levels was, as ever it had been, to build ever-higher dykes.
Similarly, the answer to rising numbers of displaced persons was to build higher fences. In the less-developed world, the have-nots' solution was to move to higher ground, regardless of who held it—by negotiation if time permitted, and by violent means if it did not. Many people cared, but not enough, and they were in the wrong places. An overheated Earth was going to hell and the haves were keeping quite busy organising the parade.
The Mars Colonists set sail ahead of the fires that were to destroy the very ports of their departure. Such was the state of the world in the first half of the 21st Century.
15
March 2045
The Finding of the Tube
B109 was on a mission in the lava fields west of Tempe Terra.
To any observer the frequent stops of varying duration, the sudden resumptions of travel, and the constant changes in direction would have appeared to be the actions of a demented cockroach. In reality, the B unit was carrying out a sophisticated search in the most efficient manner possible.
Using ground penetrating radar B109 was looking for a particular set of returns that would indicate a high probability of a lava tube. Its seemingly random path connected the locations that had been determined by orbiters to have a higher than average probability. So far its search had been fruitless, but shortly after resuming work at sunrise on August 35 in the northern quadrant of Tempe the data set fell within the narrow bounds of the search criteria.
B109 signaled the MHM with its finding. It waited a few moments for an acknowledgment, then nothing being heard, began a spiral search pattern to determine the extent of the tube. By noon of the next day, having taken several hundred more soundings, it knew that it was onto something important.
The lava tube was on average fifty-five meters below the surface, thirty to fifty meters wide, of yet unknown vertical dimension, continuously present for at least a kilometer, and of a generally straight orientation. It appeared to be at surface atmospheric pressure.
B109 signaled the MHM with a high priority message and continued its efforts to determine the dimensions of the tube.
April 2045
The Light in the Tunnel
Almost lost in the noise of constant buzz of new data flowing in and out of the Station, the AI's discovery of a massive lava tube created no great commotion among the general population. Such things were addressed in their turn. It was almost a Martian month before a single human arrived in a dusty Rollagon accompanied by several specialized AIs.
Initially, a small borehole of five centi
meters diameter was put down. After fifteen meters of relatively easy drilling through regolith, the drill bit began gnawing through basalt, and the pile of tailings grew steadily beside the hole. The Martian surface, first laced delicately with AI tracks soon became a pulverized sand pit. The AIs sprayed the area for a dozen yards around with plastek, which when set provided a firm base for their work.
At fifty meters it broke through, and a probe was lowered though the hole into the chamber below. The void was at atmospheric pressure and over several hours exhibited some latency with surface pressure changes. This was taken as a sign that the chamber was open to the surface.
Next a LIDAR rangefinder was put down. Within the limits of its resolution it determined the chamber was of an oval cross-section and relatively smooth in texture, with a shallow fill of rubble at the bottom. It went off in opposite directions beyond the limits of the device.
The next step was to enlarge the hole sufficiently to allow an AI to be lowered in order to complete a full survey.
It took two full weeks of round the clock work, but at last the equipment eased back from the hole. In that time, no one but a solitary roving B unit came to the site. It looked things over briefly and then continued on its way.
It was late in the day when the enlargement was finally completed, and the sun was a few minutes from setting. In the fading light, Sam looked at the small gantry the AIs had erected over the hole. The thin plastek beams could have suspended a Rollagon on Earth but they failed to inspire confidence.
He opted to have himself lowered first. This was not the sequence of events that he had briefed to the OPI at the MHM in his latest status report, but there was little real risk, and in any event no one was present to override his decision.
He would be lowered to the bottom, release the cable, and have the survey AI follow him down. He fashioned a Swiss seat from the free end of the cable and strapped a lamp, a video camera, and spare batteries to his waist. He had looked up the correct way to make the seat on the Matrix and had practised tying it off several times the evening before and again that morning. He found it a much more difficult task when wearing a pressure suit than it had been inside wearing only shorts.
If there was to be a failure he suspected it would be in the seat, not in the cable or winch. He was unable to confirm the integrity of the knot except by feel—one of the perils of working alone. As he reached up for the winch controller, he felt several sharp tugs at his waist. He looked down and saw one of the B units withdrawing, its arms just now returning to the rest position. It took two steps back and halted. What was that all about?
Satisfied that his fate was in his own hands, he tried it out by making several tentative swings over the hole. Then with arms held in front in an attitude of prayer, he stepped out over the hole and pressed the descent button.
At ten meters per minute there was plenty of time for thought; in the close confines of the borehole the trip seemed endless. The rough walls formed by the regolith slid past. The debris of countless millions of years of hammering of the surface was layered here, and it streamed by his face at a million years a second. His knees brushed against the wall and dislodged loose material, sending it further into the past.
When he reached the basalt, the sides smoothed and became a featureless blur. The thin comm cable slipped by. Suddenly he passed out of the hole and into the void. It was dark. Really dark. Coal sack dark. Nothing, not even a solitary dust mote, reflected the lamp beam. A moment of primal fear came and passed. Leaning back, he saw the ceiling illuminated by his headlamp swing into view, then rush and fade away. Straightening, he began to swing gently. He continued down into the dark.
Unable to look straight down, he braced himself for the expected contact. When it came without warning he fell backwards and was gently lowered until he was resting on his back. He fumbled for the controller. Looking up, he saw the descent and comm cables reaching up out of sight.
Well Geordi, it is indeed a long way down to the bottom of the warp core.
He rested for a moment and then, turning on his side, he got to his knees and stood. He examined the surface around him. The floor was relatively flat and covered with small stones and flakes—rubble that had been spalled from the ceiling above, he guessed. There was no dust, there were no delicate footprints of Martian princesses, no lights in the tunnel thrown by flickering torches, no hastily discarded swords littered the floor. The sides remained invisible to the meagre power of his lamp, affirming that the chamber was immense—about what could be expected.
The moment of truth had arrived. He unclipped the descent cable and pressed the retrieve button. Soundlessly, the cable straightened, and then began to levitate, swinging slowly until it vanished into the darkness.
He was really alone now. A winch failure at this point and he had a measurable lifespan. He discovered that he hadn't fully considered this part. Now totally dependent upon the comm cable and the AIs for his survival, he called out, "Ready. Upon cable retrieval, send down the survey AI." If that did not happen, he was irrevocably screwed.
He sat down to wait, then laid back as best he could. As his lamp projected into the void above, he thought he could see things falling through the beam. Something struck his faceplate with an audible tick. The cables bumping the side were dislodging material from the walls of the hole.
He turned off his lamp. In time he thought he could see a glow above, and then it dawned on him that directly below was the wrong place to be. He turned on the lamp and moved across the rubble strewn floor to a safer spot. Sitting upright, he relaxed and waited. He pointed his lamp to the spot underneath the hole. To his surprise and relief he saw a column of debris illuminated in the lamp. The occasional falling pebble shot through the beam like a meteor.
Thirty-nine minutes after Sam had touched down, the survey AI came to rest on the bottom, unfurled its legs, and came over to Sam. It extended an arm towards him, palm perpendicular, fingers extended. Sam grasped it and pulled himself to his feet.
"Time to get started."
The AI turned without acknowledging. A pencil-thin laser beam shot out and began to sweep the chamber rapidly in a raster pattern. The work of measurement had begun.
His own needs satisfied, Sam returned to the surface, leaving the AI to its work. A second AI was waiting by the gantry. It accepted the cable from him with an outstretched arm, the grasping fingers almost human. "Good luck!" he offered. It dipped in acknowledgment. Quickly it clipped in and disappeared out of sight down the hole to join its compatriot. Sam returned to the Rollagon.
Stripping off his suit, he found his underwear drenched with sweat. That night he slept poorly and dreamt of falling.
After filing a report carefully edited to exclude his unauthorized adventure, he left the site, leaving the details of exploration to the care of the AIs. Several weeks later, while he busied himself poking around the ancient riverbeds of Kasei, a report arrived entitled 'Initial Explorations of Lava Tube Site Tempe Terra 324, 7 January.'
In the introductory text he read first with astonishment and then with growing interest a somewhat overly dramatized recounting of his first descent, complete with vids and images of the drilling, of the descent, and of the exploration itself.
Initially alarmed and fearful of discovery he comforted himself with the almost sure knowledge that no one read these things. Everyone, including Sam, relied upon Matrix browsers to ferret out specific data of concern. Surreptitiously, he attempted to find out the author, only to discover that there was none. That meant it had probably been filed by the highest intellect AI on-site. To his utter chagrin, he found that it had been widely distributed, even to Earth.
Well, that's showbiz.
The Construction of the Tube
Some months later, Sam was again traversing Tempe Terra enroute to an isolated research station.
While researching the available Matrix maps to find a more interesting route he noticed a new marker, indicating a nearby site of inte
rest. Looking deeper he found that the "Tube," as it was designated was the colony's current hot spot. He took a slight detour—if seventy kilometers may be considered slight—to fulfill a desire to see how things were progressing.
Of course, the Matrix term "hot spot" should not be construed to mean that every available resource on the planet was being employed in some mammoth exploration effort. From a distance across an undulating lava field nothing could be seen until the last rise was crested. Even then, except for several large storage tanks and a power generation unit, it appeared to be just a small collection of AIs and earth moving equipment.
As he drew near, the excavation revealed itself as a large gouge in the Martian surface. It was perhaps a hundred meters long and twenty meters wide at the bottom, with sides sloped for sixty meters. The lava tube itself was revealed only as a black hole at the bottom, framed by a plastek arch. He parked, suited up and went outside.
He saw no one about, at least no humans. Heavy equipment was busy widening the base of the approach and grooming the sides. C-types scurried about. He called out a tentative hello on the chat channel and was surprised that it went unanswered. After several more tries, he called out to anyone in charge. An AI responded with the customary salutation in a voice slightly tinged with a middle-eastern accent. Sam asked if there were any humans present.